Category: Soap Box

Happy New Year

I wish you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

You can’t stop progress, but sometimes we all wish we could. I know that the good old days weren’t always as much fun and good as we say they were, but in our minds they were. Life was both simpler and harder in many ways.

Today many people in the USA are struggling just to have a roof over their heads and be able to put food on the table not to mention being without a job, worrying about medical insurance and many other of life’s problems like ICE pounding on their door. As an immigrant myself I can say that without the immigrants this country would not be what it is today. This country was built by immigrants that worked their butts off and fought to protect this country in many war’s and yet now we treat them like outsiders that don’t belong. They are rounded up by mask-wearing ICE, breaking up their families and being shipped out of this country without a fair hearing. That is not the principles this country was built on.

Granted many of them arrived here through illegal means but since they arrived they have become hard-working people just trying to make a living like everyone else. Many of them have served this country in the armed forces, paid taxes and helped build the communities they live in. Maybe we should just stop this BS and face facts. Sure, some of the immigrants are criminals but so are many of our citizens. They should all be judged in front of their peers, not shipped out of this country in the dark of night in unmarked planes.

This country needs to wake up and smell the roses, without immigrants this country will not remain the great country it has been when it welcomed immigrants. There are jobs that go unfilled without immigrants. You say you lost your job because of the immigrants, prove it, show me and tell me how it happened, I would really like to know.

It is time for Congress to come up with a plan that allows the immigrants that are here now to stay here under some type of plan that will allow them to earn legal citizen status over a reasonable period of time. It is time to suck it up and say you have earned the right to stay here. Don’t give me that “they are here illegally crap”. What about all the people that have the dollars to buy their way in to become citizens, is that fair? So you are saying if you are rich you can become a citizen? That is pure BS .

I have ranted long enough here and I will close by saying that this too will pass and we need to look out for each other and take care of each other. If you don’t agree with what I have said here, so be it, that is why we have free speech in this free country.

Have a good day now,

Stoke

Are Rob Manfred and MLB serious?

It appears that yesterday MLB released another trial balloon offering to play the players their pro-rated pay in 2020 but the season would be only 50 game long. Is this some kind of a stupid and sick joke?

I have stated in the past that baseball is like a marathon and not a sprint. I find it ironic that a game with no clock tests teams in every way possible during its 162 game schedule but time is the final true test in determining the champion. Teams having winning streaks, teams go through pitching and hitting slumps, teams suffer long losing streaks, players get injured and players no one has heard of sometimes unexpectedly rise from the minors to help carry their team to victory. This is what makes baseball such an interesting game.

Now MLB is proposing a 50 game season? What a joke. I know that I miss baseball as do all baseball fans everywhere but who in the heck wants to see a 50 game season? I know I don’t, and I have little to no interest in following baseball and my favorite team, the Minnesota Twins in 2020 if that they don’t play a minimum of 100 games. A 50 game MLB season would be a sham and Rob Manfred and his cohorts should be embarrassed to even throw out a proposal like this.

As for the players side of this, if the players accept this proposal and are willing to play this short schedule and risk their health for this proposal, you are not as smart as I thought.

Twins HOF voting by fans not what it is cracked up to be

On January 24th the Minnesota Twins announced that former Twins first baseman Justin Morneau has been elected to the club’s Hall of Fame. Morneau will become the 34th member of the Twins Hall of Fame when he is inducted during an on-field pre-game ceremony at Target Field before the Twins host the Chicago White Sox on Saturday, May 23. This is all well and good because Justin Morneau is certainly deserving of the honor.

However; one player that stands out in my mind that played for the Minnesota Twins from 1965-1972 that has been left out of the Twins HOF once again is Cesar Tovar. Tovar passed away in 1994 at the age of 54. Cesar Tovar entered the Venezuelan Sports Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame as part of its first class in 2003. He is still remembered as one of the greatest players in the history of his nation’s winter league. As Tony Oliva said of their days with the Twins, “If we’d had nine players like him, we wouldn’t have needed any others.” Yet as we enter 2020 Tovar is still not in the Minnesota Twins HOF, what an injustice!

Continue reading Twins HOF voting by fans not what it is cracked up to be

The Angels knew and now they have to pay

Tyler Skaggs – Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images

The recent news that the Angels organization was aware that pitcher Tyler Skaggs was an opioid abuser and that they actually helped him acquire the drugs is an unforgivable act and obviously a crime. In my opinion this is many times worse than cheating, gambling, or hacking into another teams data.

The fact that the Angels knew what was going on and didn’t report it is inexcusable. In today’s business world harassment must be reported but in MLB apparently drug use is not only allowed but encouraged. Looking the other way is not acceptable, what happened to “if you see something, say something”? How did Skaggs get by with this? Where is the drug testing that MLB is so proud of? Do we need to test front office personnel too?

The Los Angeles Angels organization must be punished and longtime Angels PR official Eric Kay should be arrested and should be looking at serious jail time. But what kind of punishment should be applied to the Angels organization? No question Eric Kay should get a lifetime ban from MLB, but what about the others?

I think you start at the very top of the Angels food chain with owner Arte Moreno. The man has more money than he knows what to do with so a fine is not in play. If I am the the MLB commissioner I give owner Moreno a choice, either sell the team in the next 180 days or face a life-time suspension whereas he can’t even be seen at any Angels facility or provide any input into how the team is run for a minimum of two years at which point his case would come up for review. Team President Joe Carpino is also suspended for one season with no pay simply because this happened on his watch, the buck stops at the top. No excuses here!

That addresses some of the key individuals, but how about the team itself? They can’t go scot free in this ordeal. There has to be a severe punishment applied and there are not many ways to do this. You could fine the organization a ton of money but I don’t think a fine is the answer. As far as I know no MLB team has ever been banished from the playoffs but that is an option. Taking away draft choices is an option that has been used in the past. How about a imposing a salary cap on the Angels for a couple of years?

The team must be punished in some fashion to send a message to all of MLB but no matter how you look at it, Angels fans and players that are clean in this terrible situation are the big losers. None of the penalties that MLB will impose on the Los Angeles Angels will compare to the price paid by Tyler Skaggs who paid the ultimate price just to play a game. In the end, that is all baseball really is, a game.

MLB could become America’s pastime again if they …

The 2019 Forbes MLB team valuations are out and as always they are an interesting read. The average operating income for a MLB team in 2014 was $21 million and just four years later in 2018 it was $39.7 million per team. Every single MLB team is worth at least $1 billion.

Baseball Team Values 2019_ Yankees Lead League At $4.6 Billion

As much as I disagree that MLB players are overpaid, it seems that there is plenty of money to go around for ownership and the players. The only part of baseball that seems to get the short-end of the stick is the fans, who are forced to pay higher and higher prices every year for tickets and concessions.

Continue reading MLB could become America’s pastime again if they …

Tell me again why baseball is better today than it was yesterday

Truth be told, I have never played organized baseball but I have followed major league baseball since the mid 50’s and now sixty some years later I still follow and love the game. But baseball has changed and is changing at a faster pace than ever before. The so-called baseball experts say that baseball is better than ever, the players are bigger, faster and stronger than ever before.

I am not so sure. Oh, I agree that the players are probably more athletic and they have better equipment at their disposal but that doesn’t necessarily make baseball a better or more fun game to watch today than it was back in the day. 

Earlier this week I was out at the CenturyLink Sports complex watching the Minnesota Twins and some of their minor league players work out and it got me to thinking how much the game has evolved since I started to follow America’s pastime.

Continue reading Tell me again why baseball is better today than it was yesterday
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Too many cooks in the kitchen

I think I liked the past better as far as baseball is concerned.

The 1960 Chicago Cubs finished with a 60-94 record, their 14th consecutive season without a winning record and owner P.K. Wrigley had seen enough. Wrigley announced in December of 1960 that the club would no longer be run by a manager but instead by a committee of eight coaches. The plan was dubbed the “College of Coaches”. The plan was for all the coaches to manage at different times throughout the season plus they would rotate through the minor leagues teams as well. Wrigley’s thought was that eight heads had to be better than one. In announcing the experiment, Wrigley argued, “Managers are expendable. I believe there should be relief managers just like relief pitchers.” Wrigley’s plan was ridiculed by most of baseball but he implemented the plan in time for Spring Training in 1961.

Continue reading Too many cooks in the kitchen

If I had a MLB Hall of Fame vote:

If I had a MLB Hall of Fame vote (which I don’t) I would vote for the following players this year. The players are listed in no particular order.

  1. Mariano Rivera
  2. Edgar Martinez
  3. Fred McGriff
  4. Mike Mussina
  5. Billy Wagner
  6. Larry Walker
  7. Manny Ramirez
  8. Todd Helton
  9. Roy Halladay
  10. Omar Vizquel

Good Luck guys, you were all certainly fun to watch and in my opinion worthy of a plaque in Cooperstown.

Keep the “shift” in baseball and quit crying about it

(Original Caption) This photo diagram shows the positions of the Cleveland infield and outfield in the so-called “Cleveland Shift” defense against terrible hitting of Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox during the game in Boston. This photo was made after Williams had found a chink in the defense and slapped one to the left for a single. Left fielder case of the Indians recovered the ball to hold Williams on first. The Indians won the game 6-3.

I am not a huge fan of the shift in baseball but now that it is here and used as often as it is, MLB should keep its hands off of it. I know there a lot of players that don’t like it and there are rumors floating around that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred would like to see it be eliminated. I have no idea if this rumor is real or just fake news but I think baseball should just let it be.

As a long time fan I think it is odd to see the team in the field set up so different then I have normally seen baseball played but we all need to be willing to see our game change. Some changes are for the better and maybe some are not but that is how life goes.

The pitching mound was lowered in the past and the strike zone has been adjusted several times. Players in the field used bigger and better gloves now then they had in the past.

The bottom line in a baseball game is that you need to score more runs than the other team to win the game. The players in the field should be allowed to line up any way they want to best get the batter out. 

Hitters need to adjust and learn how to counteract the different shifts. MLB players are professionals, they need to quit crying and start learning how to hit the ball the other way or maybe just bunt now and then. Baseball is not just about hitting the ball over the fence. What happened to “there is no crying in baseball”?

Why Baseball Revived A 60-Year-Old Strategy Designed To Stop Ted Williams