Max Scherzer was ejected from the 4th inning after Phil Cuzzi decided the legal substance he was using was too sticky.
Is anyone actually surprised Phil Cuzzi made this about Phil Cuzzi? Now that pitcher checks are becoming more common again, the “look at me” umps must be so excited.
99.9% of the time, I don’t miss Twitter. I don’t miss the nonsense and drama and public shaming and ill conceived thoughts.
But something I was acutely aware might happen was that once baseball season started, I’d feel a small void from not being able to live tweet games.
And I felt it when Aaron Judge hit his first HR of the year, in his first at-bat of the season.
I won’t be going back to Twitter for all of the reasons I stated above (I still get news from my Baseball Twitter list thanks to Reader by Readwise), but I might be turning to Mastodon more…at least during baseball season.
This piece by David Kagan at The Dispatch perfectly captures all of my issues with the MLB’s rule changes…and the clear evidence that Manfred doesn’t care about baseball.
Finally, we have the ghost-runner rule, Manfred’s most notorious bastardization of the game. The rule places a base runner at second base to begin every extra-inning frame. Initially adopted during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, it was introduced to spare the arms of pitchers in the 60-game sprint to the playoffs. The purported explanation was that too many games were going deep into extra innings, and the league couldn’t afford overtaxed arms late in the season. In reality, the rule is there to keep extra innings to a minimum. Apparently fans can’t be asked to sit through more than a couple innings of sudden death baseball.
Above all others, this rule is the furthest deviation from the national pastime. Once a game hits extra innings, it’s no longer baseball. As Joe Morgan said in Moneyball, “You have to steal, you have to bunt, you have to sacrifice, you gotta get men in scoring position and then you gotta bring ’em in.” Not in extra inning games. A bunt and a sacrifice fly—or just a bloop single–can win you a ballgame.
Except not in the playoffs. Because the MLB thinks it would be silly to decide important games like this.
Read here: Manfredball and the MLB’s Crisis of Confidence – The Dispatch
Quick Preamble: I’m starting a new short form post on this site where every Friday I post 3 things I’m grateful for. You can eventually find them all in the Grateful archive.
3 things I’m grateful for, this first week of August 2021:
The Studio Neat Totebook Mini: I LOVE notebooks. I have a whole drawer full of field notes, and I use a customizable notebook for my planner and journal. But these pocket notebooks from Studio Neat as absolutely perfect to write in. They are a great size, support fountain pens, lay flat, and have a sturdy cover. They might just be my new go-to pocket notebooks.
Highland Orchard: On Saturday we took the kids peach picking at a local orchard and they had a blast. We got to spend some time outside on a beautiful day, and by the end the kids were so tired, bed time was a breeze. Fun day + easy bed time = TKO to this parent.
Baseball: I love baseball. I think about it a lot. I read about it. I watch it whenever I can. And with. the Yankees picking up Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo they look like a good team again. They are playing the Field of dreams game next week. Plus, Team USA is going for gold this weekend in the Olympics. It’s a good time for baseball.
That’s it for this week! What are you grateful for? Let me know in the comments!
In the shameless self-promotion file, we have:
I also did a couple of write-ups for Web.Appstorm.net about Amazon’s new Cloud services:
As if you needed another reason why both of these guys are awesome. Alec a little more so.
Some other news: Â Today is Super Bowl Sunday (go Pack!), as well as Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Also, I worked on a simple Reading List plugin for WordPress this week. You can see it in action on my blog here, though I have made some changes that I will release this week.
One of my clients asked how I run 3 podcasts with 3 kids at home. The answer: my processes and automations. And now, you can get those templates, completely for free.
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