MLC x GTB: Vol. 1, Episode 7

We were in the habit of closing each season at Misery Loves Company with this lovely bit of baseball poetry from the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, former commissioner of Major League Baseball:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

For at least one of us, the only outcome that temporarily disguises the game's essence happened in 2004 (and again in 2007) and brightened one half of the MLC clubhouse. After the Sox swept the Rockies to win the 2007 World Series, I amended Giamatti's impeccable verse thusly:

It breaks your heart and it lifts your soul. It is designed to do both at intervals. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains stand ready to wash away another season, time stops for one glorious week. The Indian summer sun bathes you in its comforting glow before fading and leaving you to face the fall alone but for the long-lingering warmth of your memories. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it delivers again. And begins once more in the spring.

The Sox gave us the usual ending this year. Their 3-1 win over similarly mediocre Tampa Bay gave them an 81-81 record, good for third in the AL East, five games from a postseason slot. I note with some chagrin that the Sox went 16-24 over the season's final quarter, starting with the first episode of this pop-up blog special. 

And yet, there's hope. It does begin once more in the spring, and there's a good bit of young, exciting talent on the Boston roster. The Sox - the Boston Red Sox(!) - were third in the American League in stolen bases. Runs, too. They were also second in the majors in errors, and the pitching faded badly down the stretch. There's work to do.

Now, though, we turn our attention to Queens and we root for the Blue and Orange. May their fans get the second version of the baseball poem.

* * * * *

As The Cult's Ian Astbury crooned to open the last great album they ever made...

This is where it all ends...

Yep, this is it. When we spawned this Misery Loves Company redux reboot whatever, the Sox and Mets were just on the outside looking in, and with a quarter of the season left, there was plenty of optimistic reason to believe that each of our squads could make a run. Based on the 2003-2009 lifespan of MLC, rob had much more reason to believe. But we both had Paul Giamatti's dad's wide-eyed springtime-in-August belief.

The New York Mets, bolstered by Grimace, OMG, and 1/2 of MLC, went 23-10 after we launched this resurrection. Everything was clicking. Players like Lindor and Alonso -- fan faves who languished early in the season -- were just mashing. The Mets were winning every which way but lose -- sometimes ugly as hell, sometimes lucky ducks, sometimes just good. It was blissful.

With a handful of games remaining, the Mets were a click or two away. And then... pffft. Bats went silent, pitchers started surrendering grand slams... as Donna would acronymize, OMDL. They dropped 3 in a row in very poor form before salvaging it with a win Sunday. 

Please, no. Come on.

Due to Hurricane Helene, who, as you may have read, decimated Asheville to its core (among other spots), it comes to this: the day after the date formerly known as the last day of the regular season, the New York Mets will visit the Atlanta Braves for a daytime doubleheader. That's today.

I'd say it's for all the marbles, because both teams are vying for a wild card spot, but there's a wrinkle. The Arizona Diamondbacks are in the mix as well. Their regular season is done. It looks like this:

Atlanta..............88-72

New York..........88-72

Arizona.............89-73

The Dbags lose out in case of a 3-way tie. So the Mets, as well as their longtime rival the Braves, need just one win tomorrow to get in.

Just. One. Win.

Game 1 - 1:10 PM

Game 2 - 4:40 PM

Anxiety is high, very high, as we look at the long slog of the 2024 season coming down to a pair of games against a very good team. It comes to one of two conclusions:

1. I encouraged rob to resuscitate our old blogging content in order to capture a dramatic, rather unlikely trip to the playoffs for my favorite ballclub.

2. I encouraged rob to resuscitate our old blogging content in order to kick myself in the groin with an 11th hour collapse.

Here's my ask. Misery Loves Company was a super-rewarding, wonderful escapade with my best buddy. But it was also a one-sided affair featuring one season of pure heartbreak for rob (2003) followed by unbridled bliss. For me, I laughed, cringed, and cursed the ineptitude of my team for a few years, then saw them (in person) be denied the World Series in gut-wrenching fashion. Then a historic late-season collapse. And then more suck. It was rough.

None of us deserve a damn thing, but please... give me this. One win. 

I love this team like Coach Dale loved the Hickory Huskers. Let's do this.

LFGM. 

What Gheorghe is Reading

Taking the mantle from Sentence Dave this morning to recommend a pair of long-form magazine pieces for your edification and/or extended bathroom reading.

First, The Washington Post published a really excellent piece entitled "The Searchers" as part of its ongoing series profiling generally obscure public servants working on a broad range of Federal government programs. Written by Dave Eggers, the article is an exploration of work being done by scientists and researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. 

The giant brains at JPL are working on the wondrous challenge of determining whether sentient life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, and yet the dominant theme of Eggers' piece is humility. Instrumental Technologies Vanessa Bailey (who just happens to have found one of 82 known exoplanets as a graduate student at the University of Arizona) says in a quote that captures the essence of the thing, "...[P]ersonally, I would find that incredibly inspiring, finding life on another planet. I like feeling small. I like going into Yosemite with the mountains and feeling part of an inconsequential piece, but part of this bigger whole. So, to me, I think finding life elsewhere would only expand that sense, but in a very positive and I think a hopeful way. It also lessens the pressure on you to get everything right because you’re not so special.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates famously doesn't find himself all that special, even though his peers in journalism and writing do. Ten years after his groundbreaking work in The Atlantic, "The Case for Reparations", Coates is back with a new book tackling the light subject of Israel, Palestine, and the American media.

Ryu Spaeth offers a detailed and thoughtful review of both Coates' new book, The Message, and the evolution of the author's thinking on the subject matter in New York Magazine. In it, Spaeth chronicles Coates' deliberative and expansive writing process, his deep dives into source materials, and in the case of this book, his ten-day trip to Palestine in the summer of 2023 to experience the region first-hand. Coates returned to America shocked and saddened by what he saw, and its parallels with some of his home nation's worst days. As Spaeth writes, "For Coates, the parallels with the Jim Crow South were obvious and immediate: Here, he writes, was a “world where separate and unequal was alive and well, where rule by the ballot for some and the bullet for others was policy.” And this world was made possible by his own country: “The pushing of Palestinians out of their homes had the specific imprimatur of the United States of America. Which means that it had my imprimatur.”"

In particular, I was struck by the way Coates dismisses bullshit for what it is. Having been told that the conflict between Israel and its subjugated territories is "complicated", he gets angry, saying, “It’s complicated, when you want to take something from somebody.”

I hope you get a few moments to check out the two pieces. We'll return to your regularly scheduled dipshittery in short order. There's money to lose gambling on college football.

The FAFO Chronicles

This post makes me a little nervous, for reasons that will become obvious. But I'm tired of fretting about jinxes when the truth, the righteous path, the black and white are staring us in the face.

Back in the olden times, before the fuckery descended upon the land like a wet blanket that smelled of tanning oil and dogshit, I wrote a post entitled "Explaining Trump" that used a Drew Magary GQ piece as source material. Magary had attended a Trump 2016 rally, and come away if not at all sympathetic, at least clear-eyed about the candidate's appeal. As did I.

We return today to Magary's work as what I hope might wind up a bookend on a benighted era for our society. In his regular SF Gate column, Magary excoriated the New York Times for its reflexive bothsidesism, its sanewashing of Trump's patently unhinged public expectorations. The thesis of the piece is captured in this quote: "The Times cares more about its place in the power structure than in actually affecting that power structure." 

It's an interesting piece, but that's not the element that caught my attention. Rather, it was this passage from the opening graf: 

We’re just over a month away from the presidential election and, if you ask the New York Times, the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president/Keystone kriminal Donald Trump remains “deadlocked.” Despite the fact that Trump is losing in Pennsylvania, a state he needs to win, by four points. Despite the fact that polls in North Carolina just turned in Harris’ favor. Despite the fact that a grassroots campaign for Harris, one that numbers in the hundreds of thousands, sprung up the instant her boss ceded his spot in the race to her. Despite the fact that Trump got his ass beat in a nationally televised debate with Harris after repeating, with supreme gusto, the lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets. The lie that his own running mate openly said was a lie.

You don’t have to work terribly hard to sum up this race as it stands: Harris is destroying Trump, because Trump is a deranged old s—tbag. See how easy that was?

See what I meant about nervous? That kind of talk is anathema to lefties and Boston Red Sox fans, and I'm both. But there are reasons to believe that the worm is turning. That we're finally, slowly, slowly (said the sloth), but hopefully inexorably towards karmic retribution. 

As Jack Nicholson's Joker once said, "This town needs an enema", and we're starting to see some of the shit that's been packed into our national intestinal tract [did TR return from the wilderness to write this?] slide down the drain. It seems The Finding Out may have commenced.

Steve Bannon is in prison. The Department of Justice issued an indictment alleging that some of the right-wing looniverse's most execrable dopes have been unwitting Russian assets for years (and if you don't think Ben Shapiro isn't getting his affairs in order, you don't give the KGB enough credit). Cretinous Trump body man and Project 2025 advisor Johnny McEntee allegedly sent sexually aggressive texts to 18 year-olds from a business Instagram account. At least McEntee was savvy enough to confirm his targets were 18, which Matt Gaetz seemingly didn't when he attended a "sex party" with a 17 year-old, according to sworn testimony.

We could go on. And we will, because holy fucking shit have you read about Mark Robinson?

I hope I'm not stomping on OBX Dave's Carolina beat here, but if you haven't been following the recent news about current North Carolina Lieutenant Governor and GOP gubernatorial candidate, let me sum it up in a few words:

He's a wannabe Nazi slaveowner with a who fucked his sister-in-law and wrote about it on a porn website he frequented. And I swear that all of those things are true. Allegedly*.

*Nah, that shit is dead real. Sue us, Lt. Governor. We could use the money we'll get from counter-suing. We have top notch legal counsel. Top notch.

There are miles to go before we sleep, and if the last eight years have taught us anything, we write off That Fucking Guy and his enablers at all of our peril. God damn, but we need that cleanse, to wake up in the shower like Patrick Duffy and realize if was all a dream. Or that we need to invest in real estate in Portugal.

We've long said here that karma is a bitch. Sometimes she takes her sweet time. But if she gives us Stephen Miller's head on a stick, we'll call it almost even.

Red Eyes, Full Heart, Need Sleep

I am not a fan of air travel that starts at night and ends the following morning. There are times when I'm able to power through and be somewhat productive. Case in point the 2023 trip Whit and I took to Edinburgh with the boys. In that situation, "power through" meant "start drinking Guinness and Innis & Gunn as soon as possible and use the momentum to coast into the evening". 

Today, though, I'm on the wrong end of a shortish redeye from Denver to Dulles that followed an excellent weekend with my kidlet and several FoG:TBs in Boulder. There was a lot of food. And drink. And wildly exciting college football. All of which has left me happy and extremely drained.

So in the spirit of powering through, content-wise, you guys wanna see Christopher Walken playing a squirrel in an advertisement for an investing platform? Of course you do.

NIL Of A Predicament

As college athletics avails itself of labor law and bumper cars its way around the present landscape, the Big Hats believed they had some guidelines in place that would provide a semblance of direction and stability. That is, until a Federal judge said, ‘Nope, this won’t fly; back to your legal pads and laptops.’ 

Last May, the NCAA and remaining Power Conferences agreed to settle three cases that challenged the payment of athletes – the primary one known as “House v. NCAA” and two similar cases. The major points were that the NCAA and P4 would pay out $2.78 billion in damages to current and former athletes who were denied the opportunity to make money from their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), dating back to 2016. Conferences also agreed to a revenue-sharing plan that would permit schools to direct approximately $22 million annually to athletes for use of their NIL, beginning as early as next season if the settlement is approved. Across-the-board increases in scholarship limits and roster sizes are also part of the deal. 

This does NOT look like 
a person to be trifled with

The settlement also attempts to eliminate spiraling payments to athletes by boosters and collectives, verboten by the old NCAA but shelved in 2021 as unworkable if not illegal. Instead, payments would be funneled through schools, where they would be regulated and where outside arbitrators would determine if rules were violated. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken studied the settlement proposal and, in a Sept. 5 hearing, voiced concerns and objections. Among them: the notion of the NCAA attempting backdoor restrictions of payments to athletes; whether it’s possible to distinguish between allegedly legitimate business/endorsement deals and straight-up NIL payments without restricting athlete compensation. 

Though the settlement and proposed model quacked and waddled, the NCAA insisted that it was not in fact waterfowl, which led to this exchange during the hearing: NCAA: “Our position is that pay-for-play is prohibited.” Wilken: “But in this ‘House’ settlement, if it is approved, you will be explicitly paying for play or allowing schools to pay for play. So that ‘no pay-for-play’ thing is kind of not going to be there anymore, is it?” NCAA: “There’s still going to be a prohibition on pay-for-play, and there’s discretion for schools to make payments as they see fit under the new regime.” Wilken, incredulously: “And that won’t be pay-for-play?” 

Wilken, you might recall, isn’t some judicial naif wading into the athletic bog. She ruled against the NCAA a decade ago in the O’Bannon case, saying that the NCAA violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by prohibiting athletes from earning money from their names and images when they were used by schools, conferences and businesses to generate revenue. This time, she told the NCAA and the conferences to at least alter some of the language, if not the entire proposal, and she would revisit it in the coming weeks. The inference being that they likely would be kneecapped again in the courts if challenged. 

Indeed, plaintiffs’ attorney and apex legal predator Jeffrey Kessler said in the hearing that NIL payments for athletes from boosters or collectives are likely to increase in the coming years, not remain static or decrease due to a settlement. There’s a Wild West, gold rush mentality afoot. Recent stories pegged Ohio State’s football roster at approximately $20 million for transfers, recruits and retention of current players. Most top-25 programs spend well north of $10 million. 

CBS Sports took a crack at an NIL transfer portal pay structure for football back in May and determined that quarterbacks cost $500,000-$800,000, with a few receiving as much as $2 million. Running backs typically cost $200-300,000, offensive linemen $350-500,000, receivers between $75-300,000 and defensive linemen $250-600,000, with top-shelf edge rushers likely commanding a little more. 

For a hoops example, University of Washington transfer Great Osobor, a Spanish-English power forward who previously starred at Montana State and Utah State, will receive $2 million in NIL money, according to ESPN. Here's a couple of examples closer to home, from friends and former colleagues plugged into the Virginia college athletic scene: A defensive lineman who played at Alabama chose to transfer after last season. He considered both Virginia Tech and Michigan. He was told by Tech interests that if he didn’t visit Michigan, he could expect $600,000 in his bank account. Reporters haven’t seen the player’s bank statements, but he didn’t board the plane for Ann Arbor, and he suits up for the Hokies. 

A Tech booster boasted that he helped facilitate the transfer of a quarterback from UCLA, also supposedly for $600,000. The young man is a redshirt senior and the Hokies’ backup, so even considering the possibility of exaggeration, it’s likely that Tech interests sank at least a half-mil for a one-season rental who may not see the field. 

And then there’s the scholarship and roster size component of the proposed settlement. Division I programs will now be able to offer scholarships to every player on every roster, eliminating sports-specific restrictions that have been in place for decades. For example, D1 baseball programs were allowed a total of 11.7 scholarships, and men’s soccer permitted 9.9 – obviously, far fewer than the number of players on the roster. Aid was routinely chopped up and parceled out, a half-scholarship here, a partial scholarship there. Under settlement terms, baseball can now offer full schollies to a maximum of 34 players on the roster, men’s soccer can offer to a roster max of 28 players. Scholarships can still be carved and parceled but overall costs most certainly will increase. 

Football figures in the mix, as well. FBS programs are permitted to carry 105 players on their rosters, but scholarships presently are capped at 85. Under settlement terms, programs can now offer scholarships to all 105 players. For Power Conference schools, it would be competitively irresponsible not to fully fund the roster. And don’t you know that if a department suddenly funds 20 more men’s scholarships, there are Title IX and women’s sports advocates who will bang on the door and seek 20 more for women, justifiably so. Many major D1 programs have approximately 500 scholarship athletes. The settlement proposal could increase that number to 1,200. 

Programs are planning to goose their scholarship budgets by $5-10 million. Factor in the previously mentioned $22-million NIL outlay for athletes and scholarship increases, and some schools are looking at forking out at least an additional $30 million per year. 

If you wonder, is this sustainable, you aren’t alone. Massive TV contracts and payouts for the Power Conference schools will absorb some of the blow. Alphas Big Ten and Southeastern conferences will distribute somewhere above $60 million per school annually, while ACC and Big 12 schools will receive an estimated $40 million per year. But all that cabbage is earmarked for far more than gaps and shortfalls. Group of Five conferences and lower-tier D1 athletic programs will simply be unable to keep up and left to conduct business as usual. 

Perhaps the most sensible path forward is also the least appealing to many suits and traditionalists. Collective bargaining, a la union and organized labor practices, would provide guardrails and structure for payments and athlete compensation. It also would essentially concede that athletes are employees of universities, something the NCAA has fought forever (worth noting that the NCAA introduced the odiously self-serving term “student-athlete” in 1953 as part of a strategy to avoid paying workmen’s compensation for injured players). Courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of athletes as the arrangement between management and labor climbed into Gilded Age territory this century. Predictable doom arguments that paying athletes and a departure from the status quo would lead to the demise of major college athletics have been every bit as inaccurate as contentions decades ago that free agency and increased salaries and player movement would kill professional sports. 

Which brings us to where we are now, with the NCAA and college athletics playing catch-up because they were unable or unwilling to read the room and prepare accordingly. They would dearly love for Congress to step in and legislate … something. Maybe an exemption that permits collective bargaining without granting athletes employee status (good luck threading that needle). Perhaps a strategy of legal duck and delay, as any march through the court system likely will take years, and who knows what might transpire in the interim? It’s exhausting. Free markets can be so unruly when they’re open to the help. And billable hours remain undefeated.

Caption This (These?)

Who doesn't want a little Teej Thursday filler? I think it was about a year ago that we participated in a similar captioning exercise with me behind a podium outside the Capitol. Similar proximity, slightly different shot(s). Have at it, folks...

"My name is the Teej, and I approve this caption"

A guy walks into a Senate office for a papal ballot..."

"I cannot -- I will not -- abide the Subway $5 footlong now costing $7!!"

"These hand motions will get more demonstrative until morale improves."

Lovely Human Tricks

I don't think much of Ed Sheeran. Or rather, I don't think about Ed Sheeran very often. His music is inoffensive and toe-tappy, if a bit slight, though he's clearly a talented vocalist. In general, his stuff just isn't in my musical wheelhouse. Galway Girl is kind of a bop, though

It occurred to me today when I saw an Instagram post from Sheeran that nearly every time I see something about him on the interwebs, he's doing something that shows sincere humanity. For instance, he cut this video to celebrate his boyhood football club's return to the Premier League (he's a 1.4% owner in Ipswich Town, known as the Tractor Boys):

His fan interactions seem genuine and lovely, as well, as you can see in this video where he surprises a young singer performing one of his songs:

All of which brings me to the video I saw this morning, where he serenaded a jogger who happened to be running along a canal where Sheeran was filming a video onboard a boat. Check it out:

The young jogger in question, who's named Nikki Atkins and is a teacher in London, spoke about her experience with the BBC. In all, just a lovely moment from a guy who seems to specialize in such things. Since Dave Grohl has stepped on a banana skin recently, we may be in the market for a new good human celebrity.  

MLC x GTB: Vol. 1, Episode 6

Shitty-Ass Red Sox Update

Record: 75-75

4.5 GB AL Wild Card, 6th place in Wild Card race

When we commenced this exercise in fandom, futility, and friendship, the Red Sox stood at 65-57, a mere 2.5 games out of the postseason picture. Since then, the math ain't been kind. 10-18 during the season's stand up and be counted phase is suboptimal. Redolent of the 2011 Fried Chicken and Beer Kerfuffle when the Sox went belly up, finishing the campaign on a 5-16 run to miss the playoffs after leading the AL East for 72 days during the season. As in, they both stink.

So were left effectively playing out the string and having fun with great baseball terminology. We talked about TOOTBLAN in a previous episode. Today we bring you ducksnorts, seeing-eye singles, bloops, and gorks. Cedanne Rafaella gave us the former to plate a couple of runs in a win over Baltimore early last week before the Sox shit the bed in the Bronx. The letter three came during a lively text conversation between me, Whit, and Marls as the Sox and Mets were part of an epically poor series of results last Tuesday.

On that evening, we were following six games with outcomes that impacted the race for the postseason. the teams we were rooting for all...ALL...lost, by a combined score of 49-10. I'm told by reliable sources that such a combination is scientifically impossible, and as such have filed a protest with CERN.

Those gorks led us to one of the great baseball movie quotes of all time, from likely the greatest baseball movie ever made:

“You know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. Twenty-five hits in 500 at-bats is 50 points, OK? There’s six months in a season. That’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week, just one, a gork, a ground ball — a ground ball with eyes! — you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week and you’re in Yankee Stadium. You still don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

And so, if I get nothing else out of this godforsaken exercise, I get to talk ball with my pals. And that's worth something.

This Week in Mets (T.W.I.M. Notes)

81-68
9 GB NL East, Tied for Last NL Wild Card

Well, the Mets Machine has sputtered a bit in the past week.  Here are quick hits, something the Mets haven't had enough of lately.

3-3 since last update:

1. Losable win vs Jays, a real gift thanks to 8th inning progression of walk / infield single & error / walk / wild pitch / passed ball
2. Ugly loss vs Jays, former Met Chris Bassitt confounding our guys
3. Losable win vs. Jays, Mets were no-hit through 8 innings, then Lindor homered to open the 9th* and the Mets poured it on for 5 more
4. Lovely win vs. Phils, an 11-3 romp with Earl Weaver's principles ("pitching, defense, and the three-run homer") on full display... Alvarez, Nimmo, and Bader each hit 3-run bombs
5. Winnable loss vs. Phils, blew a 4-run lead, bullpen was leaky, Mets' bats were 2-14 to close the game out
6. Winnable loss vs. Phils, blew a 1-run lead in the last pair of frames and the Phillies walked off with a Diaz loss

*I was watching the game and text-chatting with rob and Marls. Ending the no-hit bid looked like this:

Fun stuff. 

The Metropolitans were pretty close to a disastrous 1-5 road trip that would mean a steeper uphill battle down the stretch. We'll take 3-3 as they come home for 7 games.

The truth is that as middling as the past week was in outcomes, when it comes to scratching out wins in late innings against the odds, the Metmen are faring pretty nicely. Sometimes lucky, some times skilled. Let's be both.

Tonight is the first of 3 must-win games against the Washington Nationals. The Nats have the inverse record of the Mets, with 81 losses and 81 more runs allowed than scored. They're not great. But they've won six of the past nine and three in a row. 

They are historically flies in the Mets' ointment. Gnats, if you will. 

With 4 daunting games against the The Phightins coming up next weekend, the Mets cannot afford to lose even one of these three games. 

LFGM. Here's some closing theme music and some images of bygone years, players, and plays to inspire all of us, especially the boys in royal blue and blaze orange.

Picks Are Back!

Credit for the push goes to Whit. Thanks? Please don't mistake this for a precedent. And if I may motion for this to be an open-source sort of post, Aye. Ya got some winners? Slide'm in here mate. Perverts. If you're looking for completely anecdotal, non-evidentiary backed picks, you've come to the right place. 

Much has changed since the last time we did this, which was...'18? '17? Dare I ask? Whatever the year, the amount of football viewing afforded to me then was considerably different than today. More then, less now. Damn kids. Well let's get on with it, shall we?

Texas A&M -3.5 at Florida

What little football I have watched included games w/these two mediocre squads. Plus, I'm pretty excited to report that my middle daughter & I will be in attendance for this one. 

When A&M played Notre Dame, the team of GTB and me, I was at a neighbor's house sitting around a table sipping on wine pretending to be fully engaged in conversation while peeking at my phone. I made it home for the 4th qtr. As any real fan would do, I watched the game in its entirety a day later. Yes, it was a great win for Marcus Freeman and ND, but by the time the game was over, I wouldn't go as far to say that it was apparent to me that both teams were not that good, but the possibility was considered. ND b/c of QB & endless mistakes that have carried over from last year, namely penalties (coaching), and A&M b/c of their QB, Conner Weigman. Even after playing McNeese State last week and winning by 6 TD's, he's 23/44 w/2 INT's and a lowly 5 yards per reception through his two games (taken out early in last week's blowout).

Big game for Billy Napier. His seat is warm. They lose this and it is....swahm-puy. A couple of his coaches bolted to A&M last year along with a pair of players adding a dash of extra incentive. A&M has the 12th man, but last I heard they don't make road trips. UF has Super Senior Graham Mertz - 6th season. Alliteration. Coming off an injury in the Miami game, Graham is questionable. But that's okay, because the next guy up is frosh DJ Lagway who killed it against Samford last week. Though I'm long on A&M and new coach Mike Elko, Florida is going to get in Weigman's kitchen early and often, rendering him useless. Chomp chomp. I'm going Gators outright. Come'n get sum.

Gators 24 - Aggies 20

Oregon -16.5 at Oregon State o/u 49.5

If you haven't been paying attention, Oregon hasn't been "Oregon", eeking out a win last week at home against Boise, and struggling a wee bit in week 1 at home against Idaho, scoring 61 points between the two games. WTF Ducks? Looks like Bo Nix was their everything. As a reminder, this will be the first time these two have met as nonconference opponents since the Beatles we're getting hot. This used to be one of the biggest rivalry games of the year, named the Civil War. I wonder what Honest Abe would think of that moniker.  

Oregon State has a stout D allowing under 80 yards of rushing per game. Lo and behold, this is where Oregon's struggles reside, in the rushing game as well as pass protection.

The oddsmakers know what they're doing obviously. And that scares me. Does Oregon have its coming out party this week? I'm saying no, but they should come out victorious. (but don't be surprised by a home team victory)

Oregon 27 Oregon State 24 (and the over)

Week 3 of CFB, coming at ya!

The Most Unexpected Sort of Joy

San Marino is a mountainous, verdant, and generally beautiful country in the Apennine Mountains, fully surrounded by Italy. It's the fifth-smallest country in the world, home to only 33,000 people. Since 1990, the country has fielded an official FIFA national team. And since 1990, that team had played 176 matches, drawing five and losing 171. Had being the operative word in that sentence, for last Thursday La Serenissima scored a 1-0 win against visiting Liechtenstein in a home UEFA Nation's League match to break one of global sports' most impressive losing streaks.

On his national team debut, teen striker Nicko Sensoli broke a 0-0 halftime deadlock early in the second frame, poking the ball home after a mistake by Liechtenstein keeper Benjamin Büchel to give San Marino the only goal they'd need. After a nervy final few minutes, the final whistle blew, and the most interesting sort of unbelieving pandemonium set in.

San Marino's most fervent supporters call themselves "Brigata Mai 1 Gioia" (Never Any Joy Brigade), and embrace their nation's standing as the 210th-ranked side in the FIFA World Rankings. There are 210 official national teams. Now, they're distant cousins to pre-2004 Boston Red Sox fans, trying to navigate a world they only hoped to ever visit. 

The Things They Carried

My wife has a new role in the educational system. After more than a decade in the classroom as first a Teaching Assistant and then a middle-school Special Education teacher, she got hired this summer as an Educational Diagnostician. Basically, the diagnostician's role is to test kids who are referred for evaluation for eligibility for a number of different kinds of services, prepare reports based on the test results, and sit on the evaluation panel that makes a determination about the student's eligibility. 

We're about a month in to her new role, and I'd say it's going well. In fact, I got a text from her on Friday which read: "I. Love. My. Job." Instead of working in one school, she supports a cluster of three (one elementary, one middle, and one high school), all of which are within five minutes of our house. Her biggest concerns at the moment seem to be feeling weird that she has free time to get coffee, or leave for lunch, or go to the bathroom whenever she feels like it. Not wherever, like Dave. It makes me happy to see her happy.

There was a moment last week that, while a little bit related to her new role, completely and tangentially took me back nearly 45 years in a flash of memory and stuck with me as an example of how our wildly complex and lunatic brains process information and retain ephemera. 

She was reviewing one of the testing kits that she uses as part of the evaluation process. The battery in question is called the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA). It's a fairly standard instrument that's been in use for a long time. As she flipped through the pages, I had a flashback.

When I was 9 or 10, I was tested by the school in Alabama where I lived to see if I was eligible for the district's gifted and talented program. (I know what you're thinking, and I agree: wasn't it obvious, and why did they even bother with a test?) I don't remember very much about the test, save for one thing, and that memory is as vivid as if it were yesterday. The question in, um, question offered a logic question in the guise of a spatial relations question. I was presented with a square that represented a pasture, and told by the woman doing the testing that my ball was lost in the pasture. The task was to use my pencil to trace the path I would take to most efficiently and effectively find the ball.

Friends, I tell you verily that my pencil tip roamed all over that fucking pasture, to, fro, up, down, diagonally in no particular pattern with no particular rhyme or reason. The lady testing me did an excellent job of disguising her amusement at the little whackadoodle sitting in front of her. My answer looked something like this:

I have no idea whether I found my fucking ball. I remember nothing else about that test, which I passed with flying colors, according to my mother, who I recounted my recollection to over the weekend. But I remember walking out of the test berating myself internally for how badly I fucked up that answer. I knew immediately that my path was batshit dumb. I knew it while I was tracing it, as a matter of fact. And I know that I knew it because my dumb brain won't let me forget it.

For damn near five decades I've remembered that one question from that one battery I took and aced. The memory comes back on a regular basis, and it came flying back when I saw the testing kit my wife was working with. 

Ain't memory a bitch? And ain't it fascinating how we hold on to things that matter not a whit while we forget things of vastly greater import. Maybe it means I'm a creative thinker. Maybe it's a sign that my genius can't be constrained by the normies' notions of efficiency and order. Or maybe there's another explanation.

The lesson, as always, is that I'm an idiot. Turns out I've been on for a long time. At least my wife is happy.

MLC x GTB: Vol. 1, Episode 5

Let's write about baseball again, he said. It'll be fun, he said. Pennant race, he said. He's a jerk.

This Time in Red Sox

72-71
10 GB AL East (we should probably stop worrying about the AL East), 4 GB the last AL Wild Card

Chris Flexen is the very definition of a journeyman. The 30 year-old righthander has started 109 games over seven seasons (including three as a Met). He won 14 games for the Mariners in 2021, nearly half of his career total of 29. He sports a career ERA of 5.04. And this season, he's broken records as a member of the Chicago White Sox rotation. 

Going into today's game in Boston, the White Sox had lost 20 consecutive games when Flexen started. He's 2-14 with a 5.26 ERA and a 1.52 WHIP. There's an argument that he's been the worst pitcher in baseball this season. I think you know where this is going.

After winning the first two games of the series against Chicago, the Red Sox took a 1-0 lead into the sixth inning, where they promptly gave up two unearned runs. Wilyer Abreu tied the game in the bottom of the frame on a homer, and it stayed 2-2 until the top of the 9th. When the White Sox scored five times, two of those runs scoring on an - altogether now - error. 7-2 bad guys, while the good guys have fallen into sixth place in the American League, even as the gap to the final playoff spot has remained stubbornly constant.

Nineteen games to play, against the Orioles (3), Yankees (4), Rays (6), Twins (3), and Jays (3). Nine at home, ten on the road. Not that much ball left, and the target's annoyingly out of reach. Whitney rooted for the Sox in 2004 when it became apparent things weren't going the Mets' way. I'm not that far from breaking out my blue and orange stuff.

Right Now in Mets

78-65
7 GB NL East, Tied for Last NL Wild Card

Not so fast, my friend. 

What the last 24 hours in Mets Township have taught us is that anything can happen in baseball in a single game or a short series. 19 games is a season's equivalent of a short series. The Sox have 9 games against sub-.500 teams and 3 against a Wild Card foe. As Kate Bush sang to Peter Gabriel in 1986, Don't Give Up.

Meanwhile, the Mets' own n-n-n-nineteen games come against the Jays (3), Phils (7)(!), Nats (3), Braves (3), and Brewers (3). 7 home, 12 away. 10 games against division-leading teams assured of playoff spots, maybe runs. It's a stretch that leads off with a telling week in Toronto and Philadelphia. Yipes.

But let's take a quick second to pat the Metsies on the back. Putting together 9 victories in a row during a key turn in the season has proven absolutely vital. The Braves, our nemesis this year as in history, have won series after series, annoyingly so. But they dropped 3 of 4 to the surging Phillies, and that gave the Mets a chance to pull even in this sprint.

Francisco Lindor, please keep up this torrid pace. Need ya down the stretch. Pete, keep on clubbing it. Mark Vientos, stay the course. And to the pitching staff... please continue firing away. Build on the very good we saw lately.

Yesterday's smothering by the scrubby Reds and their so-so arms was frustrating, but I guess those games are just going to happen. Winnable losses are still something we are looking to dodge.

But let's face it -- the road to the postseason is fraught with potholes and landmines, darting squirrels and deer, slowing gravel and halting road signs. The Phillies themselves represent a scowling statey with flares checking for inebriated drivers. So let's not get too drunk on a great nine games. 

So much work left to do. But we are where we wanted to be when we began this sprint. LFGM.

Ch-Ch-Changes

Humans are a curious lot. Kind and cruel, generous and selfish, adventurous and timid, welcoming and intolerant, yin and yang. Complex creatures. Or, less charitably, contradictions with feet. We are wonderfully adaptive yet often averse to change unless it benefits us directly, in society and even in our diversions. 

Get me a fat guy with a chain, he said

The start of football season provides a small reminder that some practices die hard and persist for no good reason. The technology exists to measure the length of golf shots to the inch, to separate race finishers by thousandths of a second, to call balls and strikes consistently, to determine whether an attacker’s shoulder was behind a defender when a pass was struck for offside in soccer. Yet for a couple of its elemental components, football still relies on a field official eyeballing ball placement and two fat guys carrying a ten-yard length of chain attached to two poles. 

Seems less than ideal and a mite archaic, witness Afghan villagers who say, “Chain? Poles? Dibs on that.” It's not as if football is stuck in the 1950s. We’ve had replay for years and slo-mo, hi-def looks at whether a receiver got his feet in bounds and if a ball carrier’s knee touched the ground before he fumbled. The NFL has computer tablets with in-game pics and printouts on the sidelines and in-helmet communication on the field. Third-down and long-yardage tendencies are available with a few clicks. Sensors and miniature mobile devices, wearable technology, track speed and performance and bodily functions. Training and recovery practices are well beyond cold and hot tubs. The league has finally come around to concussion concerns, albeit slowly and reluctantly. But two of the game’s fundamental features – Where should the ball be placed? Did the offense advance ten yards? – are decided pretty much identically to how it was done seventy years ago. 

It’s a little like doctors embracing the medical innovation and equipment of recent years yet still falling back on rectal thermometers [NOTE: That's the example you chose?] and bloodletting. Granted, coaches may challenge the spot of the ball, just as they can fumbles and receptions and incompletions. It shouldn’t come to that. 

For something as basic as ball placement, there should be as little ambiguity as possible. The field official should have an earpiece with a direct line of communication to Command Central, with all its TV monitors and angles and replays. When he spots the ball after a play, the person at HQ gives a thumbs-up if he got it right, or if he didn’t: “Not there. Move it back a foot.” Ninety percent of the time those calls aren’t critical, since most plays conclude well short of or well past the ten-yard threshold. But on third- and fourth-down plays, and inches short or inches converted, exactitude is of some importance. When HQ determines where the ball should be spotted on first down, it also knows precisely where ten yards downfield is. It isn’t left to a guy trying to get the spot right among tangled bodies and high emotions, and then a couple guys schlepping the chain across the field trying to measure accurately. 

Yes, a bit of drama is lost when fans don’t get to see the chain stretched out on the Jumbotron or on the flatscreen at home signifying that a team did or didn’t make a first down. Do you want a moment of theater, or do you want to get it right? The potential criticism that giving ball spots and contested third- and fourth-down conversions to “the booth” or HQ will further disrupt game flow doesn’t exactly hold water. Football is already chopped up like an elementary school music recital – usually six or seven seconds of action followed by 30 seconds of huddles and substitutions, never mind the TV commercial breaks, replay reviews, injury interruptions and Tom Brady hawking diet supplements and self-improvement programs. 

The NFL gets into the weeds all the time with peripheral stuff. Spare us tweaked kickoff formations and altered overtime rules for postseason and mind-numbing explanations about “When is a catch a catch?” and “Did he complete a football play?” Address the basics and let the players take care of the rest. That and maybe Jerry Jones in a dunking booth during Super Bowl Week – something both optimists and grumps could get behind.

Things That Suck

Croix Bethune is a star in the making. The rookie attacking midfielder for the NWSL's Washington Spirit tied the single season league record for assists last month, dropping her 10th dime in a 4-1 Spirit win over the Kansas City Current. We gave her a shoutout at the time. She also won a gold medal as an alternate on the U.S. Women's team that took the title in Paris. She was flying.

Life can be cruel sometimes. 

On August 28, Bethune joined fellow DMV-area athletes Torri Huske, Casey Kreuger, and Hal Hershfelt to throw out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game. Yesterday, it was reported that Bethune tore the meniscus in one of her knees and will miss the remainder of the NWSL season. She'll end her rookie campaign with five goals to go with the aforementioned assists. 

Just one more bit of evidence that baseball is stupid.

MLC @ GTB Vol. 1, Episode 4

Yes, GTBers, it's more Mets and Red Sox drivel. Hoping you are enjoying this throwback venture, and if not, well, I guess I'd suggest that you get off your collective keister and add some content of your own. Other than a solitary Teej joint in June, only OBX Dave has buffeted the (mostly) rob and (way less) Whitney show this summer. 

Game 2 of the GTB Derby
Red Sox at Mets
7:10pm, Tuesday, September 3

With our Sox correspondent RR taking in some of New Zealand's finest smooth music (ever) tonight, that leaves me to watch the Met-iocrity and paint something of a picture for him upon his return from the Trap. We'll drop a few Crowded House references in here for fans.

Met lefty David "Sgt." Peterson on the hill tonight. Last season he spent six months in a leaky boat (Not even Crowded House! Their brother act Split Enz! Wow!), but this year he's plugged the holes and is sporting a 2.83 ERA.

Oh, and it's his birthday tonight. O/U on mentions of that unimportant fact in the broadcast: 16.5.

Peterson is on tonight: 3 K's in the first. (Ed Note: 8 K's through 4, and he ended up with 11 through six frames.)  But Sox hurler Kutter Crawford matched him -- if not in strikeouts, sheer dominance. He surrendered just one hit and 2 walks over six strong innings while fanning 8.

Thing is... that one hit was a 2-run job by Francisco Lindor. Crushing it, my man.

So, I think I failed to get through to the GTBitterati how good a reference this was in the last post:

His name sounds like Roger Clemens and Mariano Rivera had a baby.

See, for the uninformed, Roger "Shamuel Longhorn" Clemens named his sons Koby, Kory, Kacy, and Kody to reference his lofty K total. It's cool, no, really. And Mariano Rivera was the maestro with his cut fastball, referred to as the "cutter." You know what they say about jokes you have to explain. Sigh.

Anywho, Kutter Crawford kept the Mets hitters utterly locked out beyond that one mistake. Kid has some sick off-speed weapons in his arsenal. 

Peterson leaves after 6, up 2-1.  His only allowed run came on a flare, a gork, a dying quail, to quote Crash Davis. Not bad.

José Buttó comes on in relief. I'm not thrilled. This guy's work makes me mangle his name in a horrible way utilizing a certain Long Island Lolita Lothario and the f-word. Be cool, Whit. Deep breaths. And then he mows the Sox down 1-2-3.

Keith Hernandez sees a toddler smiling adorably for a sideline camera and takes the time to point out that there's chocolate on her face and that her mother should clean her face. Yeah. You tell her, Keith.

Crawford leaves after 6, down 2-1. Mark Vientos promptly hits something so strong into the left field seats in the bottom of the 7th. That's our 3B, baby.

Then the same Mets pitcher walks the first two batsmen in the Red Sox 8th. Buttofucko! He's quickly yanked for Reed Garrett, but after an infield single, there are bases loaded with nobody out. A sac fly later, Rob's speedster Masataka Yoshida comes up with a chance to break our backs. Don't dream it's over, boys. (You knew it was coming at some point.)

4-6-3. Phewwwwwwww. Feels like we've seen that go the other way too many times, but as we know, history never repeats. 

Need some insurance here, Metsies, I say aloud to a television. Up 3-2, bottom 8. As if to say "I got you," the Mets bats come alive. 38-year-old Sox reliever Chris Martin is in trouble immediately, firing nothing at the speed of sound (gauche to mix bands, but that's his name). McNeil singles!

"You know, if I thought Alvarez could bunt, I'd say it'd be a perfect spot to let him do something successful offensively."

      -- Gary Cohen backhanding our catcher, who's free-falling in a slump

And then Alvarez, in defiance of that slap, hits one the opposite way. 2 runners aboard. Then Flushing's conquering hero Lindor doubles off the wall. Keep it up, lad.

Darude's "Sandstorm" is playing at Citi Field. Um, that's a Gamecocks song! Ask Mark or Greg! Oh well. It's out. And it's fun.

A sac fly and a strikeout later, Polar Pete crushes one to left to make it 7-2. Hoo boy.

The Sox go down in order in the 9th as the Met with the worst haircut (Ryne Stanek) closes it out. Mets win. Happy Birthday, David Peterson.

I'm hoping rob isn't giving up the ship yet. But I need one more W tomorrow night.

MLC @ GTB, Vol. 1, Episode 3

A little bit of a delayed release schedule from the MLC editorial team, what with the holiday weekend, and everything. We'll try to do better next week.

This Week(ish) in Red Sox

70-67

9 GB AL East, 4.5 GB Last AL Wild Card

When we last gathered here to talk baseball, I posited that the Sox' upcoming homestand offered a chance to breathe after a pair of tough road series. Then the Sox proceeded to lose seven of 10 to dent their postseason chances none too slightly. 

As we type this, the Sox are locked into a Monday night battle with the Metropolitans. In the past 10 minutes, we've seen New York centerfielder Brandon Nimmo let a hard-hit ball by Ceddanne Rafaela get under him for a triple, which turned into a run-scoring single by Jarren Duran, which in turn became a top-notch TOOTBLAN. After the end of the half-inning, Duran misplayed a Nimmo flyball into a double that gave the Mets a 2-1 lead. Right as Mets' color man Keith Hernandez was talking about the putrid nature of the Sox' defense. Sigh.

Let's talk TOOTBLAN a bit, because it's more fun than the Sox right now. It's an acronym for Thrown Out On The Bases Like A Nincompoop, originally coined by Cubs blogger Tony Jewell in 2008. Jewell actually turned it into a statistical measure, defined as "... any non-force out a player makes on the bases, including outs made while attempting to take an extra base, outs on would-be sacrifice flies, pickoffs, double-offs, fielder’s choice outs with an open base, batter and runner interference and getting hit by a batted ball." Whit and I concur that it's one of the better framings out there, fun to say and as silly as the play that causes one to invoke it.

Connor Wong just dropped a foul pop to keep a Jeff McNeil at-bat alive. I assume it'll become a homer. That's the team's 100th error of the season. Maybe I'll workshop a TOOTBLAN-like acronym to capture the absurdity of this team's defense. 

Actual photo of Tyler O'Neill with his glove

It'll be useful for describing what Tyler O'Neill just did, chasing a ball into the corner and then batting it about like a golden retriever puppy learning how to fetch and allowing the keg-shaped D.J. Stewart to score from first. How does Mangled And Muffed Like A Dude With Pan Hands? MAMLADWPH? I'll keep working on it.

The game's settled into a comfortable rhythm, a couple of doubles here and there, bunch of strikeouts, no real threats for either team on a windy evening in Queens. Baseball that matters, at least a little, at this time of year is nice.

Citi Field folks just put up an Amazin' Mets, Amazin' Dunkin advertisement behind the plate. Against the Red Sox? Them's fighting words. 

Sox got runners at 2nd and 3rd with two out in the top of the eighth and Danny Young struggling to find his command. Rafael Devers came to the plate and...dribbled one to second to end the inning. Went down meekly in the ninth to lose, 4-1.

With 25 games to play, the Sox are both going to need to get moving and have one or both of the Twins and Royals to scuffle. The latter have been trying to oblige, losing six of seven while the Sox have slumped. Meanwhile, the Tigers have won eight of 10 to climb within one of Boston, and Seattle are only a half-game further back. It's getting late early for the good guys.

This Mini-Week in Mets

74-64

7.5 GB NL East, 0.5 GB Last NL Wild Card

TOOTBLAN.  MAMLADWPH. WTFMFWTFAYT? These and other disparaging acronyms are, at varying times, more than apropos for the New York Mets. The thing is, right now... dare I say it... we're seeing a fair bit less of the dunder-headed gaffes that have plagued the Mets through their failed seasons.

What we're seeing instead is timely hitting, solid pitching, just enough defense not to be mocked like the Sox (Brandon Nimmo's whoops-a-daisy and DJ Stewart's wik-wik-wonk last night excepted), and the ability to capitalize on the mistakes of opponents. As was live-blogged above.

Us History: After the games of June 2, the Mets were dangling at 24-35 and once again sporting a look that warranted an Office Space caption of "What would ya say... you do here?" It weren't pretty. After the games of last night, precisely three months later, the Mets sit at 74-64. That's a 50-29 clip. To which I tip my cap. 

(Them History: The Sox were at 30-30 on June 2 and they're now 70-68... nothing disastrous, just midgrade.)

That said, all that matters, mathwise, is that the Metros are still on the outside looking in for that last Wild Card slot. By the skinniest of margins but still -- not in. 24 games left. Three solid teams ahead of them, each following every mini-slide with a bigger mini-streak. Gaining ground has been challenging. 

The Mets' David Peterson on the hill at Citi tonight. Solid lately. The Sox send Kutter Crawford out there. His name sounds like Roger Clemens and Mariano Rivera had a baby. Let's hope he doesn't channel either of them tonight. LFGM.

Small Victories

Reporters are rarely sympathetic figures, owing to all those bothersome questions, fake news conspiracy projects and sketchy table manners. On occasion, however, their fellow citizens treat them charitably, if not equitably. That those calls sometimes are made posthumously isn’t ideal, but free buffet vouchers probably aren’t in the cards. 

Jeff German

You may have seen the news item recently that a former Las Vegas politician and administrator was convicted of murdering a local investigative reporter in Sept. 2022. Longtime Las Vegas Review-Journal snoop Jeff German was stabbed to death outside his home after he wrote stories detailing the shady and shoddy conduct of Robert Telles, who oversaw a county administrative office at the time. We wrote about the murder in this space when it occurred because it was both alarming and peculiar. Reporters getting iced for doing their jobs is an outrage and an act more associated with authoritarian or criminal settings. 

German covered corruption and organized crime and scandal in Vegas for more than three decades. But it was a disgraced low-level bureaucrat who killed him, a jury ruled, which may be even more jarring. It’s like handling rattlesnakes your entire life and being taken out by a mosquito bite. Prosecutors produced surveillance video and DNA and physical evidence that put Telles near German’s home the morning of the murder, including parts of a disguise that were found cut up later at Telles’s home. 

Telles, for his part, maintained his innocence and wove a tale that a shadowy group that included former colleagues and a local real estate company hired a hit man and then framed him because he planned to make unpopular changes within his office. Telles’s attorney stopped short of peddling that theory and argued instead that there was insufficient evidence to convict. The jury disagreed, and Telles, 47, was sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole after 20 years. 

Review-Journal executive editor Glenn Cook in a statement called the verdict “a measure of justice” for German and for all murdered journalists, which it is. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said that the verdict sends the message that “any attempts to silence the media or to silence or intimidate a journalist will not be tolerated,” which sounds good but is less enforceable. 

The truth is that reporters and journalists are no more protected or exempt from violence or bad actors than anyone else. This is as it should be, though the Framers thought enough of a free press to highlight it in Constitutional Amendment Uno. German was the only journalist killed in the U.S. in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, though at least 67 journalists were killed worldwide that year, most in war zones and while reporting on crime, corruption and authoritarian regimes. Reporters don’t ask for special treatment, only basic courtesy and an acknowledgement that their jobs are at times difficult and necessary. An occasional open bar would be nice, as well.