caulfield12

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/7/24/21336960/cubs-comcast-marquee-sports-reach-a-deal The Tribune's report does not say what — if any — cost will be passed along to Xfinity subscribers. Other providers carrying the channel have increased rates about $2 a month for customers with eligible packages to receive the channel.

The rain-shortened opening game between the New York Yankees and World Series champion Washington Nationals drew an audience of 4 million viewers, according to Nielsen fast nationals. That's the largest audience for an opening night game ever, breaking the previous record of 3.7 million viewers in 2017 (Chicago Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals). Thursday's game, which was cut short by rain in Washington, was also the most watched regular season MLB game on any network since 2011 — a span of nine years. It was way up from ESPN's opening night game last year: That contest between the Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariners drew just 1.19 million viewers. A late game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants delivered 2.76 million viewers, the largest ESPN audience ever for a late night (in the Eastern time zone) game. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/major-league-baseball-opener-sets-ratings-record-espn-1304386

https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds They have White Sox, Red Sox, Angels and Rangers fighting for 3 of 4 spots With Trout on the shelf though, huge advantage to both Sox and the Rangers if they can ever get fans into new ballpark.

https://theathletic.com/1948343/2020/07/24/sarris-which-mlb-teams-should-be-most-excited-about-the-expanded-playoffs/?source=dailyemail FGs: White Sox, Red Sox and Angels to finish at .500, #6-8 in playoff hunt ahead of Rangers, NL even more of a battle with 11 teams in contention

Fox Sports exec Michael Mulvihill is on record as saying he expects the network’s first weekend of games to increase 40 percent over last year’s openers. The first FOX window last year had a 1.5 rating, so that means a 2.1. If you’re expecting big growth, then that fits the bill. If you’re expecting record ratings or some otherwise historic turnout, not so much. Say Thursday’s Yankees-Nationals opener doubles last year’s comparable Opening Night window, a Red Sox-Mariners game that had just a 0.8. That 1.6 rating would mark a three-year high (Cardinals-Cubs had a 2.1 in 2017). Ratings would have to nearly triple in order to reach a 12-year high (Braves-Nationals had a 2.4 in 2008). Even with substantial growth, expect ratings to be closer to typical than historic. Predictions: 1.7 and 1.2. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2020/07/mlb-opening-night-ratings-predictions-nba-nascar-wnba-nwsl/ One key indicator is going to be the early TV ratings...granted, August is normally a "dead time" in terms of ratings and family vacations/back to school....but this year will be fascinating to watch play out with the new playoff format and quick as a whistle trade deadline.

But is there any entertainment product that has really been forced to compete/become more affordable? I guess you can argue internet rates, airline tickets/vacation packages and cable TV, but if you look at things like concert tickets, the costs across pretty much any sports product (even the lower/est tier seats), etc., movie tickets, they've all been rapidly advancing since at least the 1980's. Maybe with all the industries related to work having to adjust (e.g., less commercial real estate demand, more WFH, less need for business clothing or even eating out in general)...everyone's going to have adjustments eventually, right? What's driving the salaries higher? Continually increasing revenues....related to drivers outside of traditional metrics like attendance, souvenirs, concessions and parking, as well as the increasing number of billionaires or investment groups competing for professional sports franchises, that seems likely to continue as a trend as wealth/income inequality continues to separate the middle and upper class families as consumers, as well. On the plus side, there are still more ways to take in the sport (setting aside the blackout rules) than ever before. So, just like the cruise/tour/travel industries, the education industry and some of the other examples from above are going to have to adapt to survive, sports will, too, right?

Tried to get through Irresistible and only made it halfway.... Avatar pulled from August 21st, third schedule change this year. No new date announced. Nothing on Tenet yet. Avatar and Star Wars sequels pushed back a year. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/23/media/disney-mulan-star-wars-avatar-delays/index.html

I'm sure we aren't going to hear any more "death panels" attacks from the right in this election. Blaming Bill/Hillary and ObamaCare for the rationing/triage effect of caregiving in the middle of this current wave after spending years trying to tear down the current health care system without a viable replacement in sight, well, the emperor has no clothes anymore on that particular issue. https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/anthony-fauci-threats-coronavirus-095008504.html “I’ve seen a side of society that I guess is understandable, but it’s a little bit disturbing,” Fauci told CNN political commentator David Axelrod on the latest episode of “The Axe Files” podcast. “I mean, really? Is this the United States of America?” he asked.

Obviously also comes down to depth of pitching vs. having two guys like Schilling and Big Unit that could go so often in a seven gamer, or, another example, Bumgarner in 2014 vs. the Royals.

And yet the sudden death wild card games have been quite popular. Think back to the last ten days of the 2008 season. Some combination that protects the top 2-3 teams while giving more shots at underdog teams is a nice combination. I mean, it’s not like the Twins’ fans enjoy getting demolished any more by the Yankees in 2, 3 or 4 games...

Somehow our old friend Emilio Bonifacio earned a spot at age 35 on the Nationals' roster.

At least they should keep either 154 or no less than 140 games. The length of the season and the pace of a 6 month season has always been one of the most unique aspects of the sports...and playing from spring through summer into the late fall. No other team sport has that unique combination, other than soccer. If nothing else, the White Sox and Padres break their playoff-less strings and Thad Bosley has to develop a new and improved line of attack on ownership. In actuality, this is THE one season where White Sox attendance will be the least discussed issue surrounding the organization. That’s going to be a quite pleasant change. Wish Farmio was around to witness it after suffering through the last decade.

In the end, it means more new fans, and more interest. Less tanking. Making the sport a bit more national and less regional again. Baseball faces a direct threat from the NBA due to increased head-to-head scheduling the next two years as well as the CBA negotiations. Time to respond. There’s also an opportunity, as football of all kinds will definitely struggle this fall.

If they finish close to .500 and don’t show significant positive progress, sure. But there are so many wild cards with this, and losing Kopech wasn’t an insignificant blow right out of the gate. We’re really lacking in that true TOR shutdown guy, unless you’re counting on Giolito replicating last year instead of doing a post-2008 Gavin Floyd trajectory. Now it might be Cease, and Law’s predicting that, but we’ll just have to wait and see. At any rate, firing a manager after a 60 game stretch just doesn’t make sense unless a no-brainer suddenly becomes available.

Employee-Owned. State that gave Trump a 9% margin, although only 1.5% right now.

But but but...their uniquely advantageous media rights deals make the Dodgers and Yankees exceptions to any rule of economics if they really want a player.

We also have the countdown to extra $600 payments ending on July 31st (next FRI) and then numerous rent and mortgage collection amnesty periods expiring simultaneously.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/508623-tea-party-rises-up-against-mcconnells-1-trillion-relief-plan Shocking...

You can’t take a one year or semester leave from coaching? Position lost permanently? Guess it depends on how aggressive other candidates are about the position, and financial/safety issues as well. Also, what’s the current plan for HS football in Texas? Unlikely to play this fall...?

My cousin who teaches and is an instructional coach in Plano shared this on FB “I know there are A LOT of people with mixed emotions about starting the school year remotely. It’s hard. Every option at this point is hard. My job title has been Instructional Coach/Title 1 for the past few years. While I haven't had my own classroom since 2015, I have worked closely with many teachers and many students. From March to May, I saw classroom teachers work day and night trying to make their virtual classroom as effective as possible for their students. It breaks my heart to hear people claim that teachers had the last few months of the school year off. If I can make one general statement about teachers, it’s that they ARE NOT lazy. They ARE NOT paid by the hour, yet many work nights and weekends to squeeze as many difference making opportunities as possible into each 7 hour school day. Just as many have shared, neither remote learning nor “in-person spaced-out mask-wearing pandemic style” learning is a teacher’s preference. They want their small groups back. They want NORMAL social interaction back not only for themselves, but more importantly for your children. They want hugs back. And, most importantly, they want to help your kids grow as much as possible. While neither choice is optimal, what I wanted to share today is my opinion on virtual learning. I wasn’t planning on teaching summer school this year. I had vowed to take the summer off for the first time in 12 years. I was going to focus on my 1 year old, take him on playdates, make memories, maybe travel. All of those plans changed with COVID. I decided that teaching summer school was something that I just had to do. I wanted to see what it was like to have my own class of students in a virtual setting. I wanted to be able to help teachers with the virtual platform this fall, and that’s really hard to do without real, first hand experience. The days leading up to our 1st EVER virtual SS, I questioned my decision. I had convinced myself I made a mistake. I had NO IDEA what I was doing. I had zero experience teaching live-virtual lessons. I had joined Zooms with students and hosted Zooms with my teammates, but I had ZERO experience leading a zoom with my own students. While fear consumed me at the beginning, I always tell my students, “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.” Last Friday was my last day of summer school with my 4th graders, and I seriously had to fight back tears saying good-bye to the kids. In the fourteen days of summer school, I got to know these ten year olds in such a different way than students in the past. They learned from me, and I learned from them. I learned about their favorite foods, hobbies, past teachers, personal virtual learning experiences, siblings, pets, and favorite super heroes. They taught each other concepts. The students would help explain technology solutions to their peers using personal experience from the student viewpoint. When a student asked a question in the comment section on Google Classroom, their classmates would reply with feedback before the teachers even saw the comment. Whoever says that students can’t collaborate virtually, hasn’t seen a virtual classroom. When it came to technology, we ALL (teachers and students) learned together. Our mistakes enabled the students who might be afraid of being wrong to see that we ALL have a learning curve (and that’s ok). We stressed that we might not always have the answer, but the learning is in the trying. As my teammate would frequently tell the kids, “Practice makes progress!” Last Thursday I was leading a Guided Reading group when my computer suddenly died. As quickly as humanly possibly, I grabbed my charger, restarted my computer, logged into Google Classroom, and clicked on the link to the reading session. I expected the students to have left (we were near the end of the session anyway). What I saw when I logged back in is something that will stay with me for a long time. Not only were all the students still on, but one of the kids had become the host (it automatically assigned him host-status when I was booted off). This particular student had divided the students into break-out sessions to discuss whether or not their previous predictions were accurate. When I logged back on, he had just ended the break-out rooms and the kids were reconvening on their partner turn-and-talk discussions. Seriously?! Yeah- a 4th grader. I know I am BY NO MEANS an expert (NOT EVEN CLOSE), but my virtual classroom/ live-learning experience was one of my favorite teaching experiences to date. I will genuinely miss the connections we made with each other and how much we ALL learned together. I also know it’s not just me who feels this way. Our principal led a SS wrap up Zoom last week, and the teachers K-5 reiterated those same feelings. Out of the two fourth grade classrooms, there was only one student I have actually met in person. To make such strong connections with a group of people who (for the most part) have NEVER MET EACH OTHER is amazing to me. I know the state of the world is scary right now, but there are also really amazing things coming out of this. We are becoming more technologically advanced, real-world problem solvers (students and teachers alike). So I, for one, can’t wait to see what comes out of remote learning this year (for whatever amount of time it consumes our teaching). From March to May we were all in survival mode. We were living day to day, week to week. We learned a lot, but we were just getting the hang of it when the school year ended. I am predicting big strides for remote learning across the nation. Whatever happens, just know there are a lot of anxious students and teachers out there who genuinely want the best learning experience possible. Support the people around you. Be kind. Be patient. And remember, “If it doesn’t challenge us, it doesn’t change us.”

One Republican who paid close attention to the rise in distrust of science among the party’s base was Donald Trump, to whom the language and concepts of anti-scientific thought have come naturally. He has always arrived at his beliefs by intuition, rumor, and anecdote rather than any respect for evidence and study. During his career as a free-form pundit and huckster, Trump related naturally to the right’s suspicion of scientific authority — not only the concept but the language. Trump has frequently rejected not only the consensus view on scientific matters but also the very idea of expertise. Sometimes his source would be a “report.” (“I saw a report the other day, you may get AIDS by kissing,” he told Howard Stern in 1993.) More often, he would cite unidentified people. “I think the vaccines can be very dangerous,” he said in 2009. “And obviously, you know, a lot of people are talking about vaccines with children with respect to autism. And every report comes out, like, you know, that does not happen. But a lot of people feel that the vaccines are what causes autism in children.” He has denounced wind turbines on the grounds that “they say the noise causes cancer.” Trump recognized the financial possibilities of exploiting medical illiteracy as early as 2009, when he signed up to be a pitchman for a vitamin business, which was then renamed “the Trump Network.” Vitamins are unregulated by the FDA and are thus a lucrative opportunity for hucksters, who can sell billions of dollars in nutritional supplements to customers who — by and large — don’t need them. (The vast majority of people can get all the vitamins they need from a healthy diet.) The Trump Network took the basic vitamin scam and piled additional scams on top of it. The network sold a kit for $139.95 that would supposedly test customers’ urine, and the Trump Network used the results of the test to tell customers which pills they needed to buy from the Trump Network for another $69.95 a month, plus $99.95 every six months for additional testing. “They make an outrageous statement, which is that this testing and supplement regimen, this process, are a necessity for anyone who wants to stay healthy,” Dr. Pieter Cohen told Stat news four years ago. “That’s quite insane.” For good measure, the Trump Network created a multilevel-marketing structure — the colloquial term for this arrangement is pyramid scheme — to attract sales-people. “With cutting-edge health-and-wellness formulas and a system where you can develop your own financial independence, the Trump Network offers people the opportunity to achieve their American Dream,” he promised in a videotaped pitch. https://medium.com/new-york-magazine/american-death-cult-6e36338271bb American Death Cult from New York Magazine

Guerrero just doesn’t have enough movement on his pitches to get away with that to a FB hitter like Arcia.

Not happening. Madrigal, Collins and Dunning will get their chances, though.

Didn’t realize Benetti was also doing KBO broadcasts in the middle of the night. That dude is always working, pretty much year-round.