46 thoughts on “June 17, 2020: As It Looks”

  1. I just find myself not caring all that much whether they play or not. I'm glad some of our local kids teams are playing. As for the majors, well, it would be nice if they played, but if they don't, I'm not exactly lacking for other things to do.

  2. New Japan Pro Wrestling is back, so I can take or leave baseball. At least, that’s the easiest way to deal with the likelihood that this division is too wide to be solved.

  3. I mostly set up my website as a way to keep track of my baseball card collection and aid in trading cards, plus a few small side interests and triviality, but over the past several months the most visited pages are the Talking Jigsaw Puzzle series. We had picked up one of the puzzles back in the early 90s, and later on when I found there were others I managed to snag the rest on Ebay when someone listed any at a reasonable price. I had read how jigsaw puzzles were a big deal during stay-at-home, and indirectly I can confirm it.

  4. I thought it was a bad idea to even try to have the season in the first place, but its a bone headed disaster for Manfred and the owners to act like tool bags and also still end up with no season.

    1. I think my focus at this point is just making sure people know that it's 100% on the owners there's no season.

          1. Seriously. Isn't it obvious that they're all rated as pros? I mean, they're getting paid to play. That's the very definition!

      2. Outside of a couple writers who can't move off the "both sides" narrative, I've been pleasantly surprised by how the media has portrayed the owners' actions. Of course you have the "they should be happy to make anything playing a kids game!!1!" morons responding, but they seem outnumbered too.

        But to your point cheaptoy, COVID trends are moving in the wrong direction (both micro--like players testing positive--and macro) and could make all of this ugliness a moot point. So maybe the owners will have thrown a sh*t fit for nothing.

  5. The Russian Rugby league is starting play up this weekend. I've never watched it but I'm excited to watch something.

    I've adopted Metallurg as my team, based largely on the strength of their logo

    Let's go Metal Bears! 🤘🐻

    2. Novokuznetsk previously had a KHL team of the same name. That team is now in the second-tier Supreme Hockey League, affiliated with Sibir Novosibirsk.

      That is a pretty sweet logo.

      1. Do you know does Russia have sport clubs like say Real Madrid where they have a soccer team, basketball team, rugby team etc all under the same umbrella?

        1. Well, I can think of at least one historic example — ЦСКА Москва (CSKA Moscow). ЦСКА stands for “ Центральный спортивный клуб Армии” or “Central Army Sports Club.” We would’ve called it Red Army back in the day. I’m not sure when the various teams became privately owned, but CSKA Hockey is owned by Rosneft, while CSKA Basketball is owned by Norilsk Nickel, and CSKA Soccer is owned by VEB.RF. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gazprom, say, owned a sport in each league.

          1. There's a CSKA Rugby club too, turns out.

            I now realize I should have known the answer to my own question because yesterday when I was looking through the teams to pick one, I got to CSKA and went "Oh, like the soccer club".

            I have no idea about CSKA Rugby's ownership.

  6. As today's image confirms, I think we know where Hopper stands on The French Dip Question.

    1. If you look closely at reflections, you can see the man with his back to us is actually finishing off a french dip. A second napkin is being fetched for him, too

        1. Philly is to 5-cent cigar as French dip is to year-old ash-tray butts previously smoked by a bullfrog.

                2. When it comes to pistols, I find the revolver to be a more complete version of the derringer.

  7. The question posed does not specify MLB baseball. Is this one of those Phyllo things, where a thing can be either a thing or a sandwich but somehow not both, or is MLB sufficiently implied?

    2. Longenhagen said the MiLB season is believed to be cancelled but no one can admit it. The leaves independent ball or MLB forcing some absurd season.

      1. I wonder if the CBA prevents MLBPA from organizing MiLB players. Because if I were Tony Clark, I think that’d be the case I’d be making to MLBPA members.

  8. Target Field is a hitters park overall but suppresses home runs. Yankee Stadium III boosts both but disproportionately helps home runs. It's tied for the most HR happy of any. The Twins hit more home runs in a park that slightly suppresses them compared to a team in the homer happiest park of the last 20 years.

    1. New New Yankme was granted an exemption for a MLB rule requiring a 325’ minimum distance to the outfield wall which has been in place since 1958. Of all current MLB ballparks, only PacBell/SBC/AT&T/Oracle has a shorter fence — due to McCovey Cove, right field is only 309’ feet away, but there’s also a 25’ wall out there.

      It’s pretty clear this is a structural unfair advantage approved by the Commissioner’s Office. There’s no reason why the Yankmes should have been granted this exemption. Any protestation about the historicity of those dimensions should be laughed at — if historicity was so vitally important, the team wouldn’t have moved across the street from the actual ground where all of their greats played. The dimensions, the frieze, and all the rest are veneer on a baseball McMansion.

      1. If they cared about the historic dimensions, why did they move in the power alleys?

        1. Also a good point. It looks like the true alley in right-center has moved in 9’ from the old stadium, and that the curve from the left field line to left-center is shallower, permitting a 5’ encroachment over the 1988–demolition dimensions across the street. Those things are harder for sports bros casual fans to perceive, but provide yet another subtle advantage.

          However, the main point stands — without arbitrary end points at 318’ in LF and 314’ in RF, those power alleys are harder to achieve. Here are the dimensions for other parks exhibiting similar profiles, along with Target Field:

          Relevant Dimensions & Wall Heights

          Ballpark LF-(alley)-CF-(alley)-RF LF-CF-RF
          New New Yankme Stadium 318-(382)-408-(360)-314 8-8-8
          Great American Ballpark 328-(368)-404-(370)-325 12-8-8
          Guaranteed Rate Field 335-(365)-400-(365)-330 8-8-8
          Citizens Bank Park 329-(360)-401-(355)-330 11-6-13
          Miller Park 344-370-400-374-345 8-8-8
          Skydome 328-375-400-375-328 8-8-8
          Camden Yards 333-364-(400)-373-318 7-7-21
          Target Field 339-377-404-367-328 8-8-23

          All distances are from Andrew Clem; his estimates are in (). Camden Yards has a 410’ distance to deepest center, but it’s not true center. Camden also must’ve received an exemption for its RF distance, but its design compensated for it with the RF wall height. There’s also the matter of the massive B&O warehouse that probably compressed dimensions on that side, after accounting for crowd seating & pedestrian flow.

          Maybe Andrew Clem has the answer:

          Oddly, there is a fairly close correspondence in terms of outfield dimensions with the Metrodome, except for the left and right field corners.

          Ballpark LF-(alley)-CF-(alley)-RF LF-CF-RF
          New New Yankme Stadium 318-(382)-408-(360)-314 8-8-8
          HHH Metrodome 343-(370)-408-(352)-327 7-7-23

          1. That right field power alley at HHH also had the 23' wall. And, don't forget that for a large portion of the life of HHH there was a huge plexiglass wall extender in LF.

            1. Yup, although the plexiglass was not an original feature when the Dome opened. It was added to reduce the homers given up to those left/left-center dimensions!

              1. My recollection is that it was also added to reduce the number of ground-rule doubles from balls bouncing off the springy turf.

  9. Soooo, this seems like an odd situation:

  10. Hmm.

Comments are closed.