84 thoughts on “March 29, 2018: When Everyone is at Work”

    1. I frequently would have done this in the past. Can't today, but will find a stream to watch on at work for at least part.

    2. I noticed too late that Opening Day was a Thursday, or I probably would have done the same. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to see the weekend games in Blue Earth.

      1. He never played in 1986, but there's the card. I wonder if Topps made one assuming he'd resign with the team? Or maybe it's standard for players to get one more card after they retire?

      1. I'm your huckleberry...
        I'll advocate it's appropriate in the spirit of apostrophe use in the place of missing letters...even though the emoji lock would theoretically replace all the letters missing.
        Furthermore, the pronunciation of the standalone "ed" is usually going to come out like the name "Ed" or the abbreviation of "Education" which would derail the pronunciation of "locked." As combining emoji and letters to expand words isn't exactly a well established convnetion, the use of apostrophe does signal a connection between the two, perhaps more effectively than they hyphen, which I assume would be the only plausible alternative.

        This is fun. Your turn.

              1. The Chicago Manual of Style is primarily focused scholarly publications (although many, many general book publishers also swear by it), so it offers no guidance. I don't have access to the AP style guide, but I wonder if it has anything on emoji (other than the fact that it calls them emojis).

                1. Style guides are terrible.

                  This opinion brought to you by 1L year and the Blue Book.

                  1. They serve their purpose. It's better for publications to be consistent in style even if a lot of people don't like the style. If style is inconsistent, a publication would just read like a blog written in a parent's basement.

        1. Really? Because then it reads like an editor's notes.
          (Don't lead with the incredulity. Just 'But then..." -ed.)

          2. Well, when words not normally verbs are turned into past tense verbs, such as in corporate conference calls, the stylebook I use puts -ed at the end, i.e., anniversary-ed. Of course, with emojis, it's different, but if there's no space included, it should be OK. But that might be what they were trying to avoid with the apostrophe. However, apostrophe in a word usually denotes that letters are missing, which is why it should be D'backs, not D-backs. (Although never T'wolves since Wolves should suffice).

            2. It's different if the letter is pronounced.
              "D-backs" is read "Dee-baks", while "D'backs" is read "dəbaks"
              "T-wolves" is read "Tee-wulvz" while "T'wolves" is pronouced "Twulvz" (closer to "twelves").

              1. That's how I look at it too.

                As soon as Spooky's first comment (and verified after Zee's response), I just knew this thread would blow up.

              1. There's the win... Except it was made into an opening single quotation mark instead of an apostrophe (or closing single quote mark).

          1. I think it depends on the emoji. Many read as nouns, but not not all. Context matters a lot.

  5. Delmon Young has been playing in Australia this winter (summer down there!) his slash line with 40 games played: .280/.351/.561/.911. 13 home runs (same amount as former Twins great Luke Hughes) in 174 plate appearances.

    #OneOfUs Mark Hamburger also plays for Melbourne, while he has struck out a bunch of folks (72 in 67 IP = 9.6 k/9) he has given up 20 homers and has an ERA of 6.82

  6. I didn’t want this to get buried in the Cup yesterday. Eno Sarris published an excellent piece on a former Giants farmhand’s experience of living on a minor league salary, with a particular emphasis on the new budget bill’s rider, the Save America’s Pastime Act, that limits pay of minor leaguers to their regular season only — no pay for Spring Training, no pay for offseason workouts, even the mandatory training regimen most players are expected to follow.

    The thing that it impressed on me is that the MLBPA must address the labor situation in MiLB in the next CBA (or, preferably, before). MLBPA has continually sacrificed the labor rights of low-level & as-yet-undrafted players in the interest of players who made it through their serfdom into MLB’s ranks, with particular emphasis on players reaching free agency. If the MLBPA is to be healthy in the long run, they need to make some serious gains for younger players, certainly to cut a year of service time before free agency, but especially to address the ghastly inequity of MiLB’s pay structure.

    1. Now that teams are extracting as much value as possible throughout players' careers, MLBPA really needs to add the "i" (and "I") to their pool. Depending on what happens in the 2019 and 2020 offseasons, I think the union needs to advocate for a salary cap , especially if teams are going to treat the CBT as a firm cap anyway.

  7. Nats-Reds game was rained out, so you might want to check your lineup to avoid having inactive players starting since every team was originally scheduled to play today.

    1. Round 1, passed. He had "Haversack". Girl before him misspelled "Crimp" with an "e", kid after him got "cleanser".
      Another kid got "Mathematics"... "M-A-T-H-[deep pause because the next letter is the only one that's gonna trip you up]-M-A-T-I-C-S" Completely forgot to even guess on the second vowel!

      1. To this day, I vividly remember getting knocked out of the school spelling bee by "adamant." I had never heard of the word and guessed on the vowels. I knew every word after I was eliminated and remember the winning word was kindergarten, which I thought was incredibly easy. I have never forgotten how to spell adamant.

        2. I got out on lack of enunciation.
          Patience: P-A-T-I-E-N-CEEE. They had to play the tape back because there was a split decision from the judges if I had said "C" really long or had said "C-E". 2-1 that I spelled "Patienc".

          ("Patience" may not have been the word... something ending in C-E)

          1. So I never competed in a Spelling Bee outside of the school, but I did make it to the State Geography Bee in 7th and 8th grades.
            I got 3rd place and so now I'll never forget "canopy" for the top layer of a forest. (Somehow the word I knew disappeared from my mind.)
            And I'll never confuse Craters of the Moon National Monument and Yellowstone National Park. (it was double-elimination.)

            1. My son just missed the National Geography Bee as a 6th and 7th grader. He studied hard to make it in 8th grade, and our school district forgot to register anyone for the state geography bee. He was robbed.

          2. I was in a class spelling bee another time, and I spelled dynamite, but the teacher thought I said "I" instead of "Y" or vice versa. I argued that I did say it correctly and was able to stay in but I went out on the next word, onyx.

        3. I won the 6th grade spelling bee at my school (and still have the trophy to show for it!), but I did terribly at the district level and was eliminated quite early. The most annoying thing is that I can't remember the word that was my undoing.

    2. Round 2, passed on "dyslexia". My sister thinks he got an easy one. He was definitely one of the most confident so far.

    3. Round 3, out on "summand", which he heard and spelled as "summoned".
      The word is a near-synonym for "addend", though apparently some pedants call the first summand the " auguend"and all remaining are the "addends".

    1. We didn’t. I can do some this weekend, as I’m not concerned how two days of action will affect predictions. If anyone is game for it before then, go ahead, as I’m loaded with obligations until Saturday.

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