My daughters have enough friends in the area that there's a sleepover probably three to four nights a week during the summer. This doesn't count the digital sleepovers they do with their friends in Arizona (which I think is awesome and is something I wish I'd had as a kid).
Oh, great.
Relevant to the conversation yesterday on parity issues with free agent compensation, international signing money, and such, Jack Moore of The Hardball Times wrote an interesting piece last month advocating for the institution of a free agency system for amateurs. It's worth your time if you have misgivings about the current structures in place, and I think it would be particularly interesting to see this adopted in tandem with a salary cap of the type ubes described here. My feeling is that I'd still like to see some compensation mechanism that forces a team to make choices about whether to trade part of its future to another team for signing a free agent – perhaps restricted to any player entering free agency for the first time from the team that helped him develop from amateur to pro.
I'd love to see the amateur draft as an auction with a salary cap. I'd definitely tune in.
Today, I am exactly as old as Billy Beane was the day he became GM of the Oakland A's: 12,986 days old.
no match.
I am exactly as old as Mel Gibson was the day The Expendables 3 was released.
Mrs. Hayes is exactly as old as Kurt Russell was the day Big Trouble in Little China was released.
Watched that again the other day. Still a classic.
So great. Mrs. Hayes definitely got the better end of the movie stick today.
There's still time for Jeff A, Action Hero!
It's been done:
I prefer to think of myself as The Sermonator.
Okay, I'm giggling now.
Give that man a buck.
"I'll be back."
I think that's Jeff A's boss' line.
Pretty sure that's who he was quoting.
Interesting.
I'm "exactly as old as William Marbury was the day Pres. Adams sent his name to Congress as a judge. (This began the process that resulted in the Supreme Court's Marshall vs. Marbury decision)."
And my wife got two, with two very, very different levels of importance:
The same age as Martin Luther King, Jr. was on the day the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, and the same age as Star Jones on the day The View debuted.
That's incredible. The View!
Wouldn't this be the appointment that led to Marbury v. Madison, not Marshall v. Marbury?
Yes, I think so. I copied and pasted what was there, having never actually heard of this decision, but a little googling tells me you are right.
I dunno. The case may have been called Marbury v. Madison, but in practical terms Marshall v. Marbury isn't wrong. 😉
I am the same age as Robert E. Lee was the day Stonewall Jackson turned Hooker's flank at the Battle of Chancellorville, and the same age as Brigham Young was the day of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Dubious distinction both.
Mine today:
That's exactly as old as Francisco Solano Lopez was the day the Battle of Tuyuty occurred. It's the biggest in South American history.
I don't know that battle, but at least I wasn't blanked.
I also see from the factoids below that I'm older than Lenny Bruce ever was. Not sure how long I thought he had lived, but it was longer than this.
Looks like a pretty busy day for the Citizens!
Sheenie is exactly as old as Francis Scott Key was the morning when the flag was still there.
Hmmm. Same age as Richard Crenna was the day First Blood was released.
I just missed 12 kilodays. I'm at 12001. But, Denzel Washington also just missed it when Cry Freedom was released.
Exactly as old as Agatha Christie the day she disappeared.
I'm the age of Fred Rogers when the first episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood aired.
Today, I am exactly as old as Robert Redford was the day The Sting was released.
Random picture generator!
Wow.
1 out of 5 right! So, at the Mendoza Line
I'd say they're more like 0-4 with a walk seeing as how the ATT logo is obscuring the one they got correct.
That was the part I liked the best.
Although I like imagining an alternate history where Rafael Palmeiro insisted on going by just Rafael.
Please tell me this was for April Fool's Day
That's one step short of the announcers saying "Well, they all look the same anyway."
It's hard to pick a favorite here, between the Sosa-Ichiro mistake since you couldn't have two more dissimilar stars, and the fact that the AT&T logo manages to obscure the only correct name.
Not to mention that Ichiro can't be anywhere close to the top of a list when you're looking at career HR by foreign-born players.
Closer to the top than Rod is.
Are the 5 pictures the 5 guys with the most hits?
I came in second only because I went to verify, I guess.
Images: top five career H, players born outside the US.
Names: top five career HR, players born outside the US.
R. I. P. Robert Hardy who played Cornelius Fudge in four Harry Potter movies, but is better known to us old people as Siegfried Farnon on "All Creatures Great and Small", at age 91.
All Creatures is still one of my all time favorite tv series, I loved him as Siegfried.
Never heard of the television program, but the Herriot books were outstanding.
Anyone interested in taking over FMD duties this week and next?
Sneak peak of Topps' flagship cards for next year. Of course it's a Yankee
*sees it's a Yankee and figures Aaron Judge is a reasonable choice*
*clicks link*
...Who is tha-Clint Frazier? Seriously?
Aaron Judge rookie cards are driving some of the recent card prices through the roof. The LCS* owner told me if I see any Bowman Platinum or Topps Chrome in any of the retail stores, buy them, and he'd make it well worth my while.
*local card shop
If you didn't see, B-R's FB post stated that Miguel Sano is the third Twin to hit 25 HR more than once before age 25. He's tied at second with two; who is in first and who did Miguel tie?
wooooooo
admit that's not the order you would have put them, though
Most definitely would have expected the flip.
late to the party, but I'll play:
My kids have zillions of friends but never have sleepovers. What am I doing wrong?
Sounds like you're doing everything right.
Addendum...yours are still on the young side, too.
Eh. I don't mind them at all. Easy for me to say when my kids are laid back, and so are (most of) their friends.
Both girls are having friends over tonight, as well.
Presumably you're not hosting, so there's one thing. I think there are some social-group cultural factors - i.e. as to whether that's a "just because" event or a special occasion event.
Also, I think I almost hate sleepovers. The girl isn't so bad, but when the boy is up half the night, the next day he's usually just awful.
In my experience, if you invite their friends to sleepovers at your place a couple of times, pretty soon your kids will be staying at their friend's houses.
Of course, it all depends on how comfortable the kids are sleeping in a strange house. Took my eldest a few false starts before she toughed it out.
Trey had a sleepover birthday party when he was 10 or so and one of his closest friends, who is about the same age and is in the same grade, wasn't allowed to sleep over even though my wife and I know his mom personally.
My 7 year old went to a birthday party sleepover once. I'd probably have one of her friends over to hang out, but never more because that just sounds like more work for me. My 10 year old...has some special needs that make me terrified to send him anywhere that isn't family. What if he destroys someone's house or eats an entire pan of their weed brownies in the night!?
Have you tried a pan of weed brownies yet for him yet?
Are they gluten free pot brownies? Because those cure all sorts of disorders.
The award winning sleepover at the Runner household has to be the post-Senior Prom night; the boys were kicked out (2AM?) and we ended up with 18 girls overnight. I had to watch where I walked making my way to the kitchen for breakfast. Best line was the girl coming down the stairs in the morning: "I slept with the Prom Queen!"
Troughs are underrated.
We had a (mostly) successful outing this afternoon to see some AA baseball: the Portland Sea Dogs v. the Richmond Flying Squirrels. We were at Portland's Hadlock Field, and a highlight was seeing a lighthouse rise up in behind the outfield for each Sea Dogs home run.
The final score was 10-11, with the Sea Dogs winning. Highlights included a couple autographs for the jalapeño (from Sea Dogs manager Carlos Febles and outfielder Danny Mars), seeing a grand slam, and a woman giving the jalapeño a ball she'd caught (well, she caught it after it hit her in the abdomen). You really had to be aware of where the ball was because getting hit with a foul ball was a real risk. We were in full sun the whole time, and it got very hot. The jalapeño seems to have gotten heat exhaustion, but we did learn that the guys in the first aid station are extremely nice.
I think our relatives, the reason why we moved, are in Maine now. They would be visiting the grandmother that's about an hour away, NNW, from Portland
They picked a good week--the weather has been wonderful. We stayed in Saco, which is 25 minutes SW of Portland.
I remember Carlos Febles. Looks like he was a perfectly cromulent player in his rookie year (1999) and for some reason was pretty blah for the rest. I wonder what that was about.
Late night reading:
The Sad Failure Of Donald Trump's Desperate Attempt At A Baseball League
I never heard of this proposed league before, but I remember Ben McDonald because his baseball card was a hot item when I started collecting.
It also got me thinking, what is there was a new baseball league (maybe something like a 6 or 8 team league) that popped up and had no "unwritten rules" and it was fun and progressive and signed maybe aging players that still had some left in the tank, or go to the Caribbean and sign those young players that usually get signed by the MLB.
I think baseball players are gonna baseball. The unwritten rules would probably exist despite the league's best intentions, unless they carefully curated the league down to each individual player. Even in this scenario, with the number of games in a baseball season of reasonable length, unwritten rules would pop up, whether they were new or well-established.