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The sporting world is coming back down to earth in the after math of the Super Bowl and the one thing we baseball fans can take away from the past 36 hours is how much our world of sports is fueled by the brilliance of second guessing. After all, the second guess is always foolproof. Nothing ever goes wrong win the alternate reality.
There is a huge amount of second guessing going on amidst NFL circles right now, and that will not stop for years to come. We know this to be true, because we have such stories ourselves. It fuels OUR baseball passion is a part of our lore. Take, for example, "that date on the calendar that does not exist". If you don't know what I am talking about, it's only because you are relatively new to HH. We have an entire 2014 LDS, a Game 6, a 1995 season and on and on and on. If we solicited community input and everybody participated, we would have thousands of comment entries.
And thinking about this leads me to the conclusion that our life as fans can be broken down into three categories and only two of those matter. One would be the seasons that end in ultimate success. Two would be the seasons that were ended by random misfortune. And, three, every other season that ended only because things happened in a way that fans know should have been done in the other way (regardless of what that other way might be). We LOVE the ultimate success, for sure, but we LIVE off the second guessing.
Remember that whenever you chime in. It's what we do and we shouldn't be shy about it. You can begin by second guessing my thesis. Meanwhile, we got Links:
A Teensy-Weensy Bit of Angels News
I missed this. In case my backups didn't get it, the Angels get a solid B+ for this off-season............
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Everywhere In Baseball
Ok, here we go. Now that we just signed a fresh CBA and missed the chance to work with the players on rules changes, let's just go out there and starting proposing rules changes. First off, think of all the time America can save by not having to make 4 soft tosses to the catcher on an intentional walk. If you got 20,000 fans in a stadium and 75,000 watching on TV, and it takes 90 seconds more to complete an IBB versus just sending the batter to first base directly, that's another 2,375 man-hours that could be better spent playing with cell phones! As for raising the strike zone to ABOVE the knees, methinks this is just a method to get the umpires to start calling strikes on pitches AT the knees, as it should be. That'll park an asterisk on Mike Trout's numbers someday...........As anticipated, not everyone is a fan. Pitchers, umpires, and people really into lawn care leading the charge............Hell, there is even push back against eliminating the IBB (which I don't care about either way, outside of commenting on worthless the change would be), and coming from one of the focal points of statistics, no less.............
Hey, if we are going to make rules changes, how about in the scoring of games? Maybe deal with that Sac Fly thingy?(I really like linking to TSN since they changed their web site color scheme to that of Pautzky's Balls O' Fire fish bait!)............
Andrew McCutchen is not the only guy switching positions this upcoming season. (Although, he might be the coolest dude about it.) Which begs the question: is it really and truly so difficult to switch positions on the defensive side? For catchers and pitchers, sure. And some guys are not athletic enough to move off the foul line and have to cover territory in both directions. It would seem to me that such flexibility would surely improve one's odds of higher contracts come FA season. I never had issues moving all over the field when I played. Of course, I stopped playing at the age of 16 so what do I know?............
The Texas Lieutenant Governor made the call for the Texas Rangers to get involved in the official investigation concerning the theft of Tom Brady's game jersey. The MLB namesake franchise jumped in and volunteered to assist. Just sayin', but that crew in Arlington wouldn't be my first choice for tracking down a championship uniform..............
We keep lamenting the loss of Randal Grichuk. We need to remember that the jury is still on the guy...........
There are a ton of huge issues that angry people don't think about when they start carping for secession (Social Security, military-industrial economic impact, international finance and tariff rules and regs, homeland defense, water rights, the power grid, shit like that). But playing Major League Baseball games across borders is not one of them...............
TIL: there really are baseball players and coaches in 2017 that reject the math of the optimal swing plane. One of the leading Change Factories is right here in Southern California............
What? A dysfunctional MLB Front Office? Who ever heard of such a thing?..........
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Trade Winds
Jason Hammel almost went to the Mariners, who made him a one-year offer. Instead, the Royals doubled up on the M's with a two-year deal and Hamels will be a Royal. And we will now learn how real Hammel is and whether or not another $6 million a year on our payroll for his services might have helped or hurt us..............
The Yankees are in an arb stare down with their closer Dellin Betances. That's pretty ballsy, since Betances is a proven rock star............
The Duffle Bag
If the Oakland A's were going to honor Rickey Henderson by naming their playing field after him, wouldn't it be more honorable to wait until they have a shiny new playing field instead of one that gets flooded with raw sewage?...........Chris Iannetta being used as a foil for Miguel Cabrera's awesomeness is kind of embarrassing...........Growing pains for live sports streaming, would be the reality that bandwidth is not (yet) as great as the old analog television system...........Whoa! WTF? The BBWAA has gotten a facelift, and their web site has moved all the way into the 21st century...........Boston Super Blooper. Wish I had a copy. Maybe eBay...........I'm in love. Of course, I actually HAVE one of these cupie versions, but for the Angels.............I always find it cool to witness pro athletes being just regular sports fans like you and me when it comes to the sports they don't participate in............
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Halo-Oppo-ly
What? You thought I was going to forget about Chance/Community Chest cards??
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