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The owners of the Diamondbacks are suing the Maricopa County Stadium District in an effort to break their lease and get themselves a new stadium. I was going to link to that and make some comments, but then I started to dig. It's a rather long and complex story, and missing some key information that requires more serious research.
From what I can gather, the County is on the hook for some regular maintenance. The County is broke, so that money is slow in coming. But it also appears that the DBacks are adding addition work to the maintenance plans, with the intent of reducing the seating capacity of the stadium in order to drive up prices (and the per caps). Since the County is balking on that plan, the ownership has been trying to make and end run around them, going to the Governor and the Mayor of Phoenix (who publicly confessed that DBacks plan to shrink capacity). So the DBacks are saying that, since the County won't do their $187 million rebuild plan (which the DBacks are calling maintenance for the sake of fan safety), they are suing for breach. And somewhere in the middle of this the County found a secret third party group of private investors that wanted to build up the area around the stadium. Since this would not make the DBacks a primary beneficiary, the DBacks balked.
Literally, I have 22 tabs open in another browser window right now that give a hell of a lot of this backstory. I'll post them if you want them. But that paragraph sums it all up.
I lead with this because it is topical. We have our own stadium mess, still unresolved, to deal with. The events unfolding in Arizona might not directly apply, but they are indicative of where sentiments lie. We should be asking questions of the principals at every opportunity.
Do some Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
Ok. This thought piece on Mike Trout having the legal ability to walk away from his contract due to some unusual California Labor Law just blew up the Internet. It's why the world is full of lawyers. But the legal out capability doesn't trump the CBA and allow any other MLB team to sign him. If he (or any other affected player) could work their legal magic and grab that contract out, it would merely allow them to play in Japan or Korea or some such place. Which no player in their prime would ever do to their career counting stats and legacy...........
When the count is 0 balls and 2 strikes, which players are most likely? Well, the guy most likely to swing and miss is our new 2B, Danny Espinosa. And the guy most likely to be freaking awesome is our own Mike Trout. Frankly, with Mike's willingness to start so many AB's at 0-1, I'm surprised he is not the Most Likely for every 0-2 category..........
Yesterday we teed off on Doug Miller, MLB-favored "writer" blessed to cover the Angels beat even though he is mailing in his content. Today we get to go after Michael Clair, another MLB "writer", insider too, who 'broke' the human interest story of Andrew Heaney and his wife bashing a gingerbread house ala Office Space. Yeah, a full week after the fact. A week after Josh rolled the story here and we all celebrated. Keep up the good work over there, Important Baseball Writer Team Guys..........
St. Louis might have their hockey game in Busch Stadium, but we got our giant dirt piles. Just in time for heavy rains, too...........
How many Angels can you identify in this wedding photo?............
Hmmm. I wonder. Have the Mariners truly upgraded themselves this off-season more than have the Angels?..........
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Everywhere In Baseball
Yeah. It's time to re-think the HoF voting community altogether. We no longer live in a society when the only guys who saw enough careers to be even close to meaningful were the guys who rode in the trains with the players themselves. I still remember the Dan Le Betard ballot that he sold to Deadspin, and Deadspin crowd-sourcing the vote, ending up ins a pretty damned good ballot submission...........
Cool history bit on some of the backstories behind the more fundamental rules of baseball...............
Pitching coach for the Pirates, Ray Searage, would advise his Pirate charges not to pitch in the WBC. It sounds so old school, but in this day and age of pretty tightly controlled year-round regimens, maybe he has something there..........
An amalgamation of amalgamations, we have a newer HoF projection and the outcome shows 5 guys getting voted in, Including Vladimir Guerrero.............
Kris Bryant could be destined to be a monster talent......or Kris Bryant might run headlong into baseball, a game of no sure things..........I link to these because these are the kinds of stories that we never find about Mike Trout. Nobody has these kinds of questions about Trout..........
Not baseball related, but sports related. Sports franchises leverage media channels as free marketing to sell their product. It's still a long way off before they are enlightened enough to figure out a way to embrace and leverage us heathens, so we don't have the membership in the community of brothers and sisters at arms. Someday, well past my time, we shall, And we will have to figure out how to work with the teams themselves, which can be full of knuckleheads doing dumb things. Seriously, don't make a molehill out of nothing, don't make a mountain out of a molehill, don't bite the hand that feeds you, and don't piss off the people who by trade will ALWAYS have the final word...........
I can't say that I feel sorry for a Darin Ruf. A cut-off date has to be set somewhere, and somebody is going to fall just on the wrong side of it. Them's the breaks. He still has the chance to make bazillions more playing baseball than most folks will in blue collar careers...........
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Trade Winds
You wanted Tyson Ross, didn't you? Not getting a Tyson Ross would be sad. Seeing a Tyson Ross pitching against us in the AL West - in a Rangers uni, no less - would be even sadder..........
Mark Trumbo should have taken that Qualifying Offer that he got from the Orioles. Because now that Trumbo is not getting a contract, it's suddenly become obvious why Trumbo is not getting a contract............Unless Trumbo gets a contract from the Oakland A's, who have morphed into just another MLB team without any magic bullets.............
Speaking of the A's morphing into just another team, they are signing Rajai Davis fresh from his World Series heroics. It's going to cost them $6 million for a single season, which is a heck of a lot more than he cost them his first stint in Oakland, back in 2009/2010. Back then he was a little less mediocre. But this has become the new Oakland M.O., signing a guy and hoping to extract any remaining value, but willing to trade him back to some contender for prospects at the deadline...........
The Duffle Bag
(h/t reddit) Scoreboard catching fire during Phillies-Reds game back in 1966. It's why we have electrical codes, folks.........Way OT: The Amazon "Death Star of eCommerce"..........Doe the HoF Veteran's Committee have a race problem? Maybe..........Good news for 2017: Rockies' pitcher Chad Bettis had cancer surgery, declared cancer free...........Send an email to this address: uniwatchraffle@gmail.com, with your shipping address, and enter a raffle for a chance to win this. Actually, in the email you also have to tell them your choice from this catalog. One entry only, though........
Halo-Oppo-ly
My 2016-2017 Winter Project: Monopoly for the Rest of Us. You, too, get to try your hand as Arte Moreno-bags. We begin with the properties.
Oh, yeah! Did we forget?? We need a pair of "utilities". How about the clean-up crew that was mandated by the County Health Department to get the damnable job done nightly and keep down the rat infestation, done in response to Arte and Carpino thinking that if they left it all to the next day they could save some overtime labor costs?? Idiots.
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