ThirdGen

This is the worst apology thread in history. 20 posts, three apologies!

Grandal is coming off a knee injury and this game is being played on a wet field. Sometime decisions are not based strictly on stats.

The $20 million also included the ballpark and land, which they sold to the city a few years later in a leaseback deal prior to the new park being built. So they got a chunk of that $20 million back in a few years, making the return on the portion that was actually the team even greater.

I was really disappointed in what happened with Hemond. All those years with Allyn and Veeck left me wondering what he could do with a team that wasn't perpetually borderline bankrupt. Then JR/EE buy the team, and at the time they were willing to spend money like everyone else. After the quick success of 1983, Hemond couldn't do anything with it. Harrelson came in with lots of out of the box big ideas and they thought it was worth a try. When put in practice, they quickly discovered why other teams didn't have multiple pitching coaches, multiple hitting coaches, lots of old time stars hanging around. Caused more problems that it fixed.

See the quote from Harrelson below. He flat out admits it was his idea. I've heard him admit it at least 5 times since then. There was a lot of finger pointing going on at the time, and LaRussa wasn't pinning anything on Harrelson at the time. Reinsdorf rewarded him for his loyalty by setting him up in Oakland for a soft landing. There's Nothing Major League About White Sox Circus - The Washington Post In the lastest schizophrenic White Sox development, Harrelson "surrendered" last Friday in his power struggle with LaRussa and agreed to let the manager actually manage the team. "My ideas weren't working," he said. "Let Tony have a clean shot doing it his way." Out the door went two Hawk coaches, Willie Horton (best known as Martin's bodyguard and "tranquility coach" in New York) and Moe Drabowsky (best known as the Orioles reliever who once ordered carry-out Oriental food on the bullpen phone -- from a Hong Kong restaurant.) In the door came Fisk, who's catching again. For now. "I feel very vulnerable," said the .208-hitting Fisk, who did bike work and aerobics for agility for months and now has switched back to his mega-iron-pumping regimen for bulk behind the plate and home runs at bat. "I don't know whether the whole thing has done more harm to my head or my body, but I certainly feel damaged." SPORTS PEOPLE; Into Left Field - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Frick Award Completes Hawk Harrelson’s Career Comeback After Tumultous Stint As White Sox GM (forbes.com) A Conversation With: Tony La Russa (si.com)

Eloy is also a pro ballplayer. He will also be fine. After surgery and a six month recovery, that is.

Vaughn definitely has a better chance than Fisk did. Fisk was completely opposed to the move, Vaughn has reason to be agreeable. And he can definitely move better and adjust better at 23 than Fisk could at 38. I just think everyone is underestimating how difficult the OF is. Reading the ball against the high sky in Arizona is different than a night game at GRF, different than a day game in overcast weather, different than in a dome. The correct first step, correct routes, its the difference between outs and extra base hits. And most MLB OF's spend years in the minors or college learning that. We're giving this guy a week. When he also needs to focus on hitting MLB pitching with limited MiLB experience. He is being set up for failure. And he is every bit as likely to run into a wall (including the dangerous low walls at GRF in foul ground) as Eloy was. The only advantage is he is too short and probably doesn't have the vertical leap to get hung up on any outfield walls like Eloy did.

You have the Fisk experiment completely wrong. It was 100% Harrelson's idea, LaRussa was completely opposed. It was a major part of the feud that led to LaRussa's firing. I do agree that Vaughn should not be our left fielder.

It should also be pointed out the Bulls and Blackhawks had the same issues. IIRC, the Blackhawks were completely off TV prior to Sportsvision, home and away,

Sportsvision was originally an over the air scrambled broadcast that you needed a decoder box to view, same as the movie channel OnTV. Both existed because vitually no one had cable back then in Chicago. They did have some games on over the air, but no one was interested in the entire schedule. Veeck dealt with a lot of complaints when the Sox were on 44, and made it clear that no one else wanted them. That's why he was going to move the games to Cablevision (home games at least) before he sold the team, as 44 was ceasing operations. JR voided that contract as no one would be able to see the games, and attempted the over the air idea instead, which also flopped (I assume because of cost). It moved to cable when cable became more common.

The alternative was to not broadcast many games at all. Veeck had already made a deal to move the games to Cablevison before he sold the team. 44 was the channel of last resort for the Sox, when that went away they were screwed. It didnt work, but what was the alternative?

At one point he was talking about putting a fixed dome over Comiskey Park. He would have built a shell around the park to support the dome. DeBartolo loved domes. He was also rumored to want to move a baseball team to New Orleans Superdome.

Did you adjust the tickets requested in the upper left hand corner? It defaulted to 2, and by default only showed pods of two. But if you changed it to 4 or 6 it then showed the pods for that quantity. Lots of 4 seat pods on the LD when I logged in. Also I know for a fact that there was at least one earlier login at 10 am.

He might be the only coach or manager in pro baseball that doesn't understand that they are hired to be fired. Lots of good managers and coaches get fired. I'd love to know the total number of coaches and managers who were fired in MLB during Cooper's run here. The Sox loyalty to him was borderline historic, can't believe he can't see that.

I was run down and head achey after both shots, fine in 24 hours. Kind of like a hang over without the booze.

Ricketts has commented multiple times (when seeking renovation approvals) that 50-60% of the fans at a typical Cubs game are from out of town. With travel still down significantly, and convention business non-exisitent the Cubs lose a significant amount of their actual attendance. Now lots of those tickets are sold to brokers, so its possible the attendance numbers could still be high with just a ton of empty seats. For some reason I thought the Cubs fans would stop obsessing with how wonderful they are by buying lots of tickets and focus on the field after finally winning a World Series, like fans of the other 29 teams. Guess the allure of the mythical attendance trophy the Cubs must send them every year is still important to them.

I'd be in favor of a one year ban for anyone who gets tossed for this.

Based on the way the email is worded I'm guessing that not all partial season ticket holders will even be offered tickets.

If I read it correctly, you are suggesting linking ticketing systems to a CDC vaccination database that doesn't exist, and somehow relinking to the non existent database any time the ticketholder changes (via stubhub or ticket transfer). If I purchase 4 tickets, how does the database know who is using the other three? How does it even know I'm actually using one of them. And the only way I could imagine linking identities across medical records and ticketing systems would be to require SS #'s, which is a nightmare. And, to complicate things, none of this exists or is in process. Vaccination data is held in thousands of disparate databases, not centralized. Ticket data is in numerous databases. And the person at the gate is lacking medical training. Opening day is three weeks away. It would take years to develop the systems you want. I agree it would be awesome if this could be done. Its totally impossible, and doing something half-assed like requiring people to flash their Covid vax cards to an 18 year old kid at the turnstile would just give a false sense of security. Better to concentrate resources on enforcing distancing and masks in the park itself

The vaccination cards are hand written on a piece of cardboard. In many cases people are writing the name and DOB themselves. With my limited photoshop skills I could create hundreds of them per day. And they can be transferred from person to person easily. There simply is no practical way to have people prove vaccination status reliably on entry. It would be pointless theatre designed to act as though it provides safety without having any actual impact.

Half the people at a Cubs game are tourists. They won't drink much as they think they are on a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine. So double the number to account for that, and the local Cub fans are right about where you would think they would be.

I think it is safe to say that for better or worse the Sox have never given a moment of thought to optics when making decisions during the JR era.

Agree with this completely. He has 250 very good innings, and a lot of garbage before that. The history books are full of pitchers who were dominant for that length of time, and mediocre otherwise. Hope that doesn't happen, but I wouldn't bet a nine digits in guaranteed money that it won't.

It should be pointed out that Sale played most of his Sox career under the most laid back non confrontational manager possible in Ventura. It would be interesting to know if the jersey incident, the LaRoche nonsense he was involved in, or his locker room break in with the Royals would have occurred with a LaRussa type personality in the clubhouse. If nothing else, I think its safe to say that Sale proves that even if there is a clubhouse incident this year, it is possible that it may not be 100% TLR's fault, although it will be painted that way by some no matter what.

According to newpaper reports he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. He has never been convicted of a felony. La Russa: 'I regret' incident - Sun Sentinel (sun-sentinel.com) If you need to lie to make a point, the point is probably invalid.