southsider2k5

It doesn't have to be international even, though that was the crux of the names that came up.

There have been early studies here that show that masks limit virus load and might be serving as a pseudo vaccine as it limits your exposure to a small enough load where many just get mild symptoms.

One of our absolute favorite things is there is a bar they put up at our beach about 5 years ago. It is on a rooftop about 100 yards from the water with perfect views of the lake, the lighthouse and Chicago skyline. We would take the kids up there, and let them play on the beach (where we could see them) and we'd have a couple while watching the sunset and hanging out with friends. Sadly the place never even opened this year, as most of the summer our beach was shutdown. It sucked. For me its been live sports. Even besides Sox games, I do a TON of stuff for our HS teams. I run scoreboard for football. I help out at basketball. I announce track meets. It has been so strange to have sports complete disappear until July, and even then to not be a regular part of life for me.

Yeah, it has been a long seven months. I didn't attend a live sporting event from March 9th until the middle of September. And even that one was running the scoreboard alone int he pressbox for a JV football game. I worked two other games this year. I haven't been to a barber since February. I haven't eaten a sitdown meal in a restaurant since early March I haven't done any out of state travel for almost exactly a year if you don't include Chicago. if you do, it since January when we saw the last Chicago showing of Hamilton the first weekend of 2020. We took our first overnight getaway from home since January last week. It took us a week to figure out, but we went to state park down state Indiana, and got a single family cabin, and spent two days hiking. We didn't even include any weekend days so that we wouldn't be around too many people hiking. We brought food and either made it ourselves, or ordered carryout for two meals. Our kids just went back to school in person on Monday, and we weren't sure we were even going to do that. We might still pull them back out for virtual if we don't feel good about it after a week or two. We haven't been indoors with either mine or my wifes parents since Feb. People are being less and less careful, so you know there is no reason for optimism. I get it for sure. Winter is going to suck.

We have two employees who have never seen our office. It is so weird, but we make it work. No one on the outside knows the difference,

Shared air supply in a place where the same people are for long periods of times are about every red flag possible for this.

None of these things are mutually exclusive. You can be upset about political situations in this country and still have the perspective on how much less important baseball is, while still being shitty about the Astros cheating. No one is putting it ahead of actual life or death situations here.

To further I really think the expectation that we will be spending big this winter might be optimistic. I know we have a lot coming off of the payroll, but we also have around $20 million in raises to give and a guy like Giolito going to arb for the first time.

It is an unprecedented opportunity for a team who is willing to make an investment here. I am sure there are plenty who don't want to leave who could be snatched up by a team willing to take them on. It is essentially a massive free agency for front office people.

I am included the quotes from the Cubs cuts, just because they are the most current ones, but the point is bigger. There is a metric f*ck ton of major league baseball talent being scattered to the winds across MLB because of the cost cutting due to COVID. Almost as much as I would like to see the Sox spend in free agency this winter, it would be even better to see the team spend a couple of million dollars to target the all stars of scouting and development around MLB who are now unemployed. Even if it means we don;t spent that couple of million on something like a back up catcher, bring me the guys who scouted people like Eloy and Gleyber. Expand and improve our ability to ID and sign cheap talent to later replaced talent that gets older and expensive. You want to keep a long sustained run going you need to have a source of young and cheap talent flowing into the big league club as other guys leave or start to fade.

Those are pretty specific numbers for not having hired the guy who is going to fill out the line up cards yet.

Vera getting work in

Well except when he was saying that China had this all under control and their dictator was doing a great job

A LOT of teams have had chances at Yermin and yet he is still here.

Right. Hopefully you aren't expecting Mike Trout here.

I squint and see Paul Konerko.

How many baseball teams do you think would be willing to hire a guy who wasn't a team player and actively was undermining his last employer after quitting on them?

At that point then he has to answer to the media as to why he left in the middle of a season, and with no actual family situation to feed the media they get to then speculate endlessly as to what happened for him to quit on a championship level team in the middle of the year. He also gets to go into every interview from there on out (if he can get any) and either lie about why he quit to his new teams as well, or let each team he interviews with in on the secrets of the Astros, both of which makes him look awful in an interview situation.

New name from Jimmy via Peter Gammons.

Pretty sure when you interview for a job, they don't come out and tell you the illegal things they are doing until at least AFTER they hire you. He wouldn't have known this stuff until he walked into it.

Welcome to the USA, where a snitch is worse than the actual crime.