“Of course, we won’t mind if you look around,” you’ll say. “It’s only twenty dollars per person.” They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.”– Terrance Mann

At 5 PM EST on March 1st, the commissioner announced that six games would be purged from the baseball season. It is the second time Rob Manfred has been unable to salvage games in a season. He could blame 2020 on the pandemic and the pandemic certainly takes most of the blame, but he effectively botched any chance of playing 100 or 120 games because of his inability to make a deal.

Any baseball fan worth their salt knows exactly where the quote from above comes from. Any baseball fan worth their salt can rattle off the most famous numbers or relive the greatest moments in the game’s history. When you are a commissioner of the sport you first and foremost must love the sport. Loving the sport enables you to take all of the stakeholders and force them to negotiate in good faith. It also prevents you from succumbing to hairbrained schemes that alter the game for the worst.

Rob Manfred must resign as commissioner. He must resign not because he couldn’t broker an agreement between owners and players. He must resign not because of the ghost runner at second rule, the Astros cheating scandal that was really a league wide cheating scandal, or because he absolutely fumbled the pandemic negotiations. Those are all just symptoms of the disease. He must resign because he clearly doesn’t love baseball. He doesn’t understand baseball at its core. Therefore, he doesn’t understand when he makes the moves he makes how that eats away at the sport itself.

The offseason has a certain arc to it. There are owner’s meetings. There are general manager’s meetings. There are winter meetings. Free agency opens in November and has multiple waves of activity. Teams and players exchange arbitration numbers and have hearings. There is a Rule V draft and trades that boggle the imagination. More importantly, there is the excitement from fans that weaves its way through all of that. They call it the hot stove league. Fans were robbed of it this year.

Owners locked out the players in December. Keep in mind that many of the issues the two sides are currently debating have been known since the labor strife of 2020. They predicted this then. When asked why he waited until February to start negotiating, Manfred simply fumbled about and talked about the last ten days of negotiation. Yup Rob, that was the point of the question. YOU HAD 80 DAYS PRIOR TO THAT AND YOU DID NOTHING.

This is not one of those “make me commissioner” kind of pleas. I’m not qualified for the job, but I do have one qualification that Rob does not have. I love baseball. Of course, I’m not the only one. I’m not even going to try to argue that my love for the sport is superior to anyone else’s. It is superior to Manfred’s and that is clear with the way he talks about the game. It’s clear with the decisions he’s made to make the game shorter. People who love baseball aren’t desperate to have less of it.

The job of commissioner is difficult, but it is also easy to explain. The commissioner is a shepherd of sorts. They marry the interests of owners, players, and fans together to grow the sport and make it profitable for all. If one of those groups distrusts the commissioner he can’t effectively do his job. If more than one group distrusts the commissioner then the entire sport will sink. Don’t mind us now, but the sport is sinking.

Sorry for being a little quiet, lately, y’all. I’m trying to help Ms. JJ while she’s out but I have been in one of those short-lived (I hope) periods of emotional overwhelm. Call it what you like, depression, grief – it’s that rock on my chest that refuses to move when I try to get out of bed. I walk around with a smile on my face, doing my daily business with a smile, all the while with knees shaking and my head repeating “just go back to bed. just go lay down. Just go close your eyes.”

My photos will show me smiling and at that moment, I’m genuine! But the happiness flitters away, the smile recedes, and the boulder settles itself back on my chest.

It’s been a tough year. So many of the comforts of a passing year that give us hope for renewal were just missing for a year. For me, baseball season is and has always been the ultimate symbol of everything being right in the world. My daddy always said there are three things you can always look forward to: Death, Taxes, and Opening Day. I used to get a phone call the first day pitchers and catchers reported to spring training. “Pitchers and Catchers Report!” he’d yell. I’d make an inane comment about how fast time flies and we’d trade texts and calls for the next few months about all things baseball. This has left a huge hole in my life every baseball season and each year it becomes harder to fill. Then came the pandemic.

My heart was almost mended enough from the sign-stealing scandal to give my Astros a new shot last year, but of course, Opening Day never came. The one person I wanted to share that with, my daddy, was no longer with me. He’d have thought the people cutouts were stupid but he would have probably bought one for me.

Opening Day came and went in 2021. Things are starting to get back to normal. My husband and I are fully vaccinated and can venture, masked, out into the world. But my husband’s mama and my daddy aren’t here, and I miss them. It’s funny how grief seems to sit dormant until all of a sudden it rears its head again. Because I believe in the baseball Gods, I’ve purchased some cheap seats to visit my team this weekend. I’ll be in the nosebleeds – with the real fans – and I hope my dad will be sitting in one of the seats that have been kept open to social distance, telling me which calls were shit and which rookies to watch out for. Hopefully the Astros get the COVID outbreak under control, soon.

I’ll feed my soul with some peanuts and popcorn, a hot dog, a giant ice-cold Dr. Pepper and a big foam sombrero. Maybe next week, the sun will shine a little brighter for me.

If you’re feeling depressed and would like someone to talk to, people are waiting at (877) 870-4673. Or just get going in the comments below, we’re good people here and would love to chat. If you are having thoughts of suicide, Please call 1-800-273-8255.

Oh, and one more thing. Just since it’s a politics blog I need to keep the theme. Ted Cruz Sucks.

Written by Nick Carraway on April 1 – 

“Put me in coach. I’m ready to play today. Put me in coach, I’m ready to play today. Look at me. I can be centerfield.” — John Fogerty

Today marks a special day in American lore. It’s Opening Day. Opening day represents so many things for so many people. For some it is a signal of the beginning of spring. For others it is the renewal of hope that this year will be the year that everything goes right. Still others consider the routine of seeing box scores in the newspaper (or online) and a game on the tube (or radio) every single night. For many of us it is all of those things.

I’ve written four books about baseball and half of those have been related to the Hall of Fame. Independent of my love for the Astros or any other specific player there is the love for the game. Opening day should be a national holiday. When done right, nearly every team is opening their season on the same day. Fans can go into a collective coma with copious amounts of beer, peanuts, and other tasty treats seated in front of the television watching a triple header on ESPN.

I’ve spent all of those books talking about the history of the game and settling arguments within it, but I’ve rarely talked about why I love the game so much. For me, it brings order to disorder. There is a symbiotic relationship between cold, hard facts and the thrill of not quite knowing what will happen on any given day.

My cousin (an avid gambler) once asked me how you handicap baseball. I told him you don’t. You can look at pitching matchups, hitting lineups, career averages, and all kinds of numbers and lose every time. Yet, over a long enough timeline the numbers begin to level out and everything begins to make sense. That’s the paradox that brings you back every time.

Numbers fluctuate in every sport and yet the numbers in baseball have a magic all their own. The .300 batting average always means something. 100 runs and RBI always mean something. 20 wins, a 3.00 ERA, and 200 strikeouts always means something. Of course, those meanings become magnified when they turn into career sums. Then it becomes 3000 hits, 300 wins, 500 home runs, and so forth.

In no other sport are the numbers that magical. Running backs and receivers may gain 1000 yards and quarterbacks may throw for 4000 yards, but those numbers have waned in their importance over time. Offenses change and evolve. A yard just isn’t a yard anymore.

Similarly, in basketball scoring has changed dramatically as offenses have changed. The irony is that all three sports have embraced advanced analytics and the analytics have driven the strategy. Where did analytics get its start? You guessed it. Baseball.

I suppose it would be natural for a history buff to love baseball. The game goes back to the American Civil War. Football and basketball can’t possibly compete with that. Few really care about soccer in the United States and few south of the Mason-Dixon line care about hockey. So, baseball was the best opportunity to marry a love of statistics, history, and symmetry.

Today is a day to take a break from Matt Gaetz, Joe Biden, voter suppression, gun violence and anything else we might care about just about every day around here. It is a day to feverishly check the scores to see how my fantasy teams did. It is a day to marvel at individual performances that might or might not be a predictor of things to come. It is a day to hope that my team will be perfect for at least one day. It is a day to allow all of that other stuff to go far far away. It will all be here when we get back.