Being a Mets fan...

...is just God's way of preparing me for eventual martyrdom.

Baseball's Salary Wars Are About to Go Nuclear

Kyle Tucker

THERE IS A group of fans who are angry at baseball. There are a lot of them, and they do not exist only on social media. They are inside of group chats that talk about how much money the Los Angeles Dodgers are spending after winning the past two World Series, and they are in cities big and small that look at the Dodgers with envy masked by eye rolls and curses, and they might just want to devote more time to the game -- maybe they love the pitch clock or Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge or the in-person vibe or any number of things about the game today worth loving -- but they're not sure the whole thing is fair.

Owners are angry, too. Their franchise valuations aren't growing as quickly as their billionaire peers' in other sports, and they blame the system that governs Major League Baseball. They don't like it. Nearly every owner believes MLB needs a salary cap. Its presence, owners say, immediately would juice franchise values, with the labor cost essentially fixed and no more chasing Dodgers teams spending $500 million annually on players. At the same time, they say, it would provide a pathway to competitive balance, which they believe is entirely out of whack. They think a salary cap will fix everything, even if it means jeopardizing the 2027 season. "They are ready to burn the f---ing house down," one high-ranking team official said.

Read the rest here.

HT: BW

On a happier note...

Did you feel the ground shake Sunday night? Did New York suddenly tilt from the Bronx down to Queens?

For decades, Yankees fans scoffed at Mets fans, mocking them just for loving their little team in Flushing. The big, corporate Yankees sucked up most of the oxygen in New York, and if there was any left over, only then were the scrappy Mets allowed to breathe in the exhaust.

That all changed overnight, just as Steve Cohen, the newish multibillionaire owner of the Mets franchise, promised it would. The Mets took Juan Soto from the Yankees.

Soto played only one season in the Bronx, but he helped the team get to the World Series for the first time in 15 years. And then he did what no superstar, top-flight free agent had ever done in the past: He spurned the Yankees to join the Mets for more money. He accepted the Mets’ staggering offer of $765 million for a 15-year contract.

It definitely stunned the Yankees and their devoted supporters, who have absolutely no experience in losing out, at least when it comes to money.

“This is really crushing,” said Jeremy Senderowicz, a lawyer and lifelong Yankees fan from Yonkers. “The Yankees usually get the player they are going after. I naïvely thought it would happen again.”

Oh, the indignity of losing out to the Mets, who, like that younger sibling bursting into adolescence, finally won at playground one-on-one. Was it a fluke? Or did this portend a new reality?

Read the rest here.

The Mets

That was just ugly.

Food for thought

100 Years Ago

The first true "subway series" is set when the Yankees win the AL pennant beating the Athletics. They will play the National League champion New York Giants in a best of nine games series.  Because the Yankees do not yet have their own stadium, all games will be played at the Giants home field, the Polo Grounds. 

Story here.

RIP Tommy Lasorda

A man sometimes referred to as Mr. Baseball, Tommy Lasorda has died at 93. It was said that he bled Dodgers blue. I had the honor of meeting him back in the 1980s and can say he was a marvelous gentleman with a great sense of humor. One story he told was about the time he was in Chicago for a day game against the Cubs. It being Sunday and Tommy being a devout Catholic he went to Mass that morning. During the service he saw the Cub's manager, apparently also a Catholic, lighting candles in the front near the altar. Later in the game when the other manager was making a pitching change he sent a note to the opposing dugout 

"It won't work. I blew out your candles." 

The sun sets on the Wilpon era

Multiple sources are reporting that Steve Cohen is set to buy the New York Mets for roughly $2.4 billion. That makes the Mets the most expensive sports franchise sale in US history. Beyond which it will mark the end of an era likely to be remembered for tight payrolls and lackluster performance by the club. In fairness the Wilpons suffered some serious financial reversals in their investments which were hammered by the 2008-09 panic and also the loss of a significant amount of money invested with Bernie Madoff. But Cohen, assuming his purchase gets the green light from 23 of the other clubs, is a man with comparatively deep pockets. 

Happy Bobby Bonilla Day

Yep, it's that day again. July 1... when each and every year until 2035, the NY Mets drop another $1.19 million into Bobby Bonilla's bank account. The man is proof that not every professional athlete manages their money like an 18 year old who just won the lottery.

Baseball

Memo to the Nationals: If your gonna run a restaurant, it doesn't matter how well you set the table if you can't get the food out of the kitchen.

The Mets Fire Mickey Callaway

Details.

I am getting tired of this never ending history of failure. It's time to get serious about job performance, and the lack thereof.

pour encourager les autres

NOOOO!!!

MLB is considering a series of rules changes including making the DH universal.

Details.

Some of these ideas I can live with. But if they force that candy @$$ DH rule on the National League I am going to just give up and start watching golf or ping pong. And putting someone on 2nd base who didn't get there by swinging a bat is pure 100% Grade A fertilizer.

God, Sports and Martyrdom

There are quite a few people out there who seem to believe that He takes an interest in sports. This is not new. We know that as far back as the glory days of the Empire the Blues and Greens both called out for divine favor on behalf of their respective chariot teams in the Hippodrome. The Blues were generally supported by the upper crust of society and were associated with strict Orthodoxy. In contrast the Greens were seen as the team of the working class and were suspected of harboring at least some sympathies for Monophysitism.

Personally I have been rather skeptical of the idea. How could a just God allow something as abhorrent as the New York Yankees? See this earlier discussion by Dr. Hart. All of which said, I have been toying with another line of thinking. Perhaps God's intervention in sports is solely for the purpose of preparing the righteous for eventual martyrdom.

How else can one explain this...?

David Bentley Hart: The Yankees Are a Moral Abomination

I have had my occasional disagreements with Dr. Hart, but all is now forgiven...

Soberly considered, the New York Yankees and their fans present a moral dilemma. Our consciences, naturally abhorring everything abominable, tell us that such things simply ought not exist. And yet we also know that the evil they represent is one we would not really want eradicated. Somehow we depend on it, not because it appeals to some morbid subliminal fascination with the horrific in us, and not even because it teaches us about the world’s deep Darwinian laws, but because it answers to a psychological need.

By exciting in the rest of us that sweet cold loathing that only they induce — that strangely tender malice, at once so delicious and yet so purifying — the Yankees and their followers provide an emotional cleansing. They give us occasion for the discharge of a dark, dangerous passion, but one unburdened by guilt. The detestation that any rational soul spontaneously feels for the Yankees is so innocent, so uncontaminated by spite — just instinctive revulsion before something obscene, like the goat-headed god of the diabolists. And there are few luxuries more gorgeously nourishing than the license to hate with an unclouded conscience.

Yankees fans, of course, never having drunk from those healing springs, typically mistake this hatred for envy, and so for an inverted admiration. But nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, those of us whose teams hail from smaller markets sometimes fall prey to a slightly petulant, even bilious resentment of all that boughten glory — the exorbitant free-agent contracts, the legions of scouts, the colossal television revenues — but who can blame us? And how could we fail to be vexed by the fawning servility of a national media incapable of telling the beautiful from the meretricious?...

Read the rest here.

Yer Out! 1924

A great image from the golden age of baseball, the "sultan of swat" knocked cold after crashing into a concrete wall chasing a foul ball. The original caption to the photo from the Washington Star...

"This shows how completely Ruth was knocked out when he crashed into the concrete barrier of the right field pavilion chasing Judge's foul in the fourth inning of the opening contest. After being revived by trainers Al Woods and Mike Martin of the Yanks and Nationals respectively, shown administering to him, the Babe hobbled back to his post and carried on."

The full sized image can be seen here.

Take me out to the ballgame, take me out to the crowd...

Yankees vs Red Sox April 14th, 1931 starring Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mayor Jimmy "Beau James" Walker and thousands of people dressed better than most people are today for church. Appx 15 minutes with original sound.

Baseball

It's not a good sign when an article on your team includes this line...

"At least Mr. Met hasn't flipped off anybody in a couple of weeks."

Sources: Baseball's 21-year run of labor peace could be in jeopardy

Baseball’s streak of 21 consecutive years of labor peace is in jeopardy.

The owners will consider voting to lock out the players if the two sides cannot reach a new collective-bargaining agreement by the time the current deal expires on Dec. 1, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions.

A lockout would put baseball’s business on hold, delaying free-agent signings and trades until a new agreement is reached. The winter meetings, a joint venture between the majors and minors scheduled to take place from Dec. 4 to 8 near Washington D.C., might still transpire, but without the usual frenzy of major-league activity.

The possibility of a lockout stems from the owners’ frustration with the players’ union over the slow pace of the discussions, sources said. The two sides still have more than a week to complete a deal, but a number of significant issues remain unresolved.

“We don’t negotiate in the press,” commissioner Rob Manfred said. “We remain committed to the idea that we’re going to make an agreement before expiration.”

Read the rest here.

THE CUBS WIN THE WORLD SERIES!!!

Lord, you can take me whenever you are ready.

WOW!

The Cubbies hang on in a nail biter to win their first World Series game at  Wrigley Field in 71 years. Game 6 is on Tuesday. The Cubs are not dead yet.