caulfield12

Anything less than 70-78 games seems crazy...and 100-114 was never going to feasible with the current Covid trajectory, even without any fans.

According to Andrew Marchard of the New York Post, MLB and Turner Sports have reached a new billion-dollar agreement to continue broadcasting postseason games on TBS and TNT. Exact terms of the deal have not been revealed. However, it is known that Turner Sports will retain rights to one league championship series. In 2012, Turner Sports committed to pay $325 million a year for a package that includes one league championship series, two division series and extensive digital rights, according to Sports Business Journal. That contract, which included 13 regular-season Sunday afternoon games, is set to expire following the 2021 season. During that contract, Turner Sports alternated broadcasting the ALCS and NLCS with FOX Sports. The report notes that ESPN/ABC was making a move to acquire more postseason broadcasts before the Turner deal was reached. If and when MLB expands its postseason, that would open up another opportunity for ESPN to jump in. That decision seems inevitable at this point given the money Turner Sports and FOX Sports have been willing to spend. In 2018, FOX agreed to pay $525 million annually for regular-season games, the All-Star game and postseason games through 2021. https://sports.yahoo.com/report-mlb-turner-sports-reach-billiondollar-agreement-to-broadcast-playoff-games-202757382.html When you start talking about additional contracts in the billions, a loss of $15-25 million on the season per team is nothing. If the operating margins are that thin, then just sell to another owner who can actually afford to run a competitive team. There’s always going to be interested parties out there with so many new billionaires in this tech/venture capital/hedge fund economy.

The % number of deaths increasing in Sweden in 2020 is going to end up at roughly 25%. 370 per day through early June, compared to a normalized rate of 240-250. Whatever bullshit graph you show that skews deliberately misleading statistics is not going to change that.

How much do you cost each franchise to lose in value if you don’t play this year? How many more corporate/suite ticket sales get cut from corporate budgets permanently? Same thing with advertising. The financial benefits of playing this season (especially if football can’t go on with crowds) are much greater for the game long-term than missing this year entirely and then looking at another stoppage over the CBA. Plus, the risks to owners permanently devaluing those assets (their own teams) of not playing are simply too high. How much more divisive will the future CBA negotiations be, and just the general “aura” of dread around perhaps the most perpetually optimistic (well, there’s always next year) Opening Day sport in the world?? Cue James Earl Jones speech in Field of Dreams. I consider myself a pretty big baseball fan and haven’t even cared that much about the draft this year. Lots of more casual fans are at risk of being lost, and if you alienate the 40-70 year olds, you start to lose their kids and grandchildren as well. Real life issues like Covid and job losses/the future are increasingly important to everyone. The game has to evolve, just like the movie industry/cinemas, cruise ships and airlines, restaurants, etc. Without a continuous drive to innovate and adapt to an increasingly changing world, baseball risks being left behind, the Blockbuster or AOL of major sports.

Where are March and April of 2020? You realize the majority of these record months are in the heart of the 3-4 coldest winter months of the year...right? You realize the quality of health care in Sweden has gone up exponentially in Sweden since the early 90’s, leading to much longer lifespans and fewer natural deaths due to increased longevity? https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ 46284 deaths in 125 days 370.3 deaths per day Gives you 135,160 yearly deaths on the same pace...the average for Sweden the last five previous years is 91,000. So even going by that “normalized” rate of 249 per day from here on out...59760+46284=106,044 That’s a 16.5% increase in deaths compared to normal years. But the likelihood is that death rate could fluctuate the next 2-3 months and will definitely go up again in October/November/December (winter/flu season.) Split the difference and you’re at 120,602 deaths in 2020, compared to the normal 91,000 trend line. That’s an increase of almost 33%.

Sad they’ve already lost the 4th of July weekend and the fate of the Field of Dreams game is up in the air. Now they’re on the verge of losing the following weekend as well. https://www.foxsports.com/midwest/story/field-of-dreams-game-no-one-knows-if-they-will-come-to-iowa-061120

Since Memorial Day on May 25, the number of coronavirus hospitalizations has goneup in at least a dozen US states, according to data CNN aggregated from the Covid Tracking Project. They are Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. As states across the country reopen their economies, people are being forced to live alongside the virus. A closely watched coronavirus model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington was updated on Wednesday is now forecasting nearly 170,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by October 1. ... The rising number of coronavirus cases in the United States has unnerved Wall Street. A second wave of infections could force many businesses to close again just after they reopened. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the US economy wouldn't be shut down again despite the rising case count. "We can't shut down the economy again. I think we've learned that if you shut down the economy, you're going to create more damage, and not just economic damage, but there are other areas," he told CNBC in an interview. Mnuchin said more than a trillion dollars would be pumped into the economy over the next month. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/investing/global-stocks-coronavirus-fed/index.html

Three homer game...at a time and place when it really meant something. July 14, 1979 Claudell Washington Chicago White Sox, AL H

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/jeffrey-gundlach-sees-unemployment-wave-hitting-white-collar-jobs-224443437.html https://www.axios.com/white-collar-layoffs-coronavirus-second-wave-efb18079-e24b-4b6e-8c89-d884a4f3881d.html Close to 6 million jobs are at risk of being lost in coming months as a second wave of coronavirus-induced layoffs is headed for the U.S., according to a new report from Bloomberg Economics. What's happening: The job cuts are expected to include higher-paid supervisors in sectors where frontline workers have been hit first, such as restaurants and hotels. It also includes the knock-on effects to connected industries such as professional services, finance and real estate. "It will get worse before it gets better — white-collar workers will now bear the brunt," said Yelena Shulyatyeva, senior U.S. economist at Bloomberg Economics. "Even if states and businesses reopen, we’re likely to see this second wave of losses," since the labor market tends to lag economic activity, she said. Don't sleep: The expectation for white-collar job losses tracks with surveys of top executives from accounting firm PwC that I wrote about in May, which found 31% of CFOs thought layoffs would occur in the next month, double the percentage who expected to lay off employees at the end of March.

It’s also why it’s extremely difficult if not impossible for lowly deca millionaires/ultra high worth celebs like A-Rod and JLo to put together a competitive bid.

https://books.google.com/books?id=YkYlDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA416&lpg=PA416&dq=how+many+MLB+owners+borrowed+money+to+buy+their+franchises?&source=bl&ots=7M9YHMdRMt&sig=ACfU3U0jRWcNCSqmUjvhuUBY618PPNFwBQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdr9L-7_XpAhUHa80KHYuzDI0Q6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=how many MLB owners borrowed money to buy their franchises%3F&f=false Read page 416 on debt. Ricketts is the poster boy. MLB changed the debt rules dramatically in 2005, paving the eventual path for him with gold-plated bricks. They have nobody to blame but themselves (shakes head, reflecting on the deregulation and “moral hazards” that led to the Great Financial Crisis at exactly this same time, where mortgage companies completely ignored credit histories/salary information in order to sign contracts and make higher commissions.)

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/opinions/meat-processing-plant-distance-lake/index.html The saddest Zoom call there ever was

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/washington-family-accused-antifa/index.html The family told the group they weren't affiliated with Antifa and had to drive their bus around multiple vehicles as they left the store, police said. As the family got on the road again, they told police they were followed by at least four vehicles -- two of which seemed to be carrying passengers with semiautomatic rifles. When they reached their destination and set up a tent, they began hearing gunshots and power saws, police said. "The family, concerned for their safety, decided to pack up their camp and leave. As they drove back down the spur road they discovered someone had fell trees across the road, preventing their exit," according to the sheriff's department. Four high school students who were in the area called police and used their chainsaw to clear the road, police said. The sheriff's office is conducting a criminal investigation.

A secret police scanner! A trick fall! A potential ANTIFA setup! It’s like the Triple Crown of Trump crazy all jammed into one cockamamie tweet. But maybe he’s on to something, so perhaps let’s track down the pseudo-sourced allegation, which originated from the pseudo-news organization OANN. So what kind of reporting was Trump relying on from the far-right propaganda outlet? Take a look for yourself. Seriously. It literally sounds like it was narrated by a Russian-accented computer program. It’s like Siri went to Moscow and had a stroke. Let’s leave aside the veracity of the report, which, come on, and drill down on the fact that Trump watched this piece of creepy video spam and thought: That’ll play. People are saying, just asking the questions, after all. To quote our new Russian cyborg overlord: “an old trick.” Yes, indeed, comrade. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/trump-crazypants-oann-news-report-narratedrussian-accented-computer.html

Trump's tweet: Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2020

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/john-henry-step-save-baseball-162046461.html John Henry can step up and save baseball, or sit back and watch it die

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/satellite-data-suggests-coronavirus-may-hit-china-earlier-100416976--abc-news-topstories.html Here’s where those brilliant Harvard people didn’t take into account how many people arrive at hospitals in China by subway, public taxi, private taxi, bus, scooter, walking, etc. Another factor is that on 10/10, everyone was already back at work for three days after weeklong October national holidays. Families tend to go to the hospital during those holiday times, even though the wait times are MUCH longer. Another factory might have been groups coming into town for the World Military Games held Oct 18-27.

Trump...I am not even sure he’s 100% racist, I think he simply is a master at manipulating his base with dog whistles, another version of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater. His father was definitely racist, which he absorbed and then mainstreamed to make it palatable enough to serve his purposes. He knows exactly where that line is (unlike with his treatment of women), and he keeps pushing at it and pushing at it, except he doesn’t realize that he’s no longer on the winning side of the NFL anthem argument or the winning side of the “law and order” argument. Charlottesville was close to going over the edge. As a businessman, he knows he risks endangering his brand...which makes him much more dangerous than a common, everyday run of the mill racist...because he manipulates his followers to act out without having to face any real consequences of his exercise of free speech. That said, if you asked everyone in America who was an independent or unregistered voter if “defunding police departments” (without explaining how those financial resources would be reallocated) you’d likely have a majority in favor of preserving police departments, including the current and likely to be former mayor of Minneapolis.

I would like to personally nominate Greg775 to replace Kristin McEnany as WH press secretary when she too, inevitably, gets fired. If that doesn’t work, he can do anti-China twitterverse fighting off propaganda bots. George Floyd Thread today...which will be spun be clapped back as “cancel culture” quite quickly.

I didn’t write anything about someone being owed more. The reality is that we spend many hundreds of billions of dollars on socialism, in the form of corporate welfare supported by both parties. Where are the protests against that? There haven’t been any since Occupy Wall Street got nowhere. The Communist solution here in China is to provide scholarships to ethnic minorities, to provide a free house or financial subside for those moving to less developed, western provinces of the country where most ethnic minorities live. In addition, if you have a child as a single mother, it is not entitled to a public/government education and you also have to pay all the childbirth expenses by yourself. Is that what we want? Or an abortion/unwanted kids/one child situation that has caused an imbalance of six males for every five females...meaning 1 in 6 boys can’t get married to a Chinese woman and have/raise a family, leading to a birthrate of barely 1 child per family and a rapidly aging population that 20-30 years from now won’t be supportable due to aging demographics. In fact, because of the extraordinary costs of raising children in China/South Korea/Japan, many are choosing single life and freedom instead of marriage. So every system in the world comes with a cost, either short or long term.

I thought George Soros was the boogeyman, as he’s somehow behind every worldwide conspiracy over the last 50 years? The answer to your first question is subsidizing corporations and the richest individuals in America. Social welfare includes things like Medicaid, SNAP (what used to be called food stamps), housing assistance, and home energy assistance. But it also includes things like unemployment and veteran’s benefits. It’s challenging to get a hard number on what the US spends on social welfare programs because different reports include and exclude various programs. Back in 2011, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama released a report that included 83 different programs and clocked in the spending at $1.03 trillion. The CATO Institute published similar numbers the following year. But both of those numbers include things like The Earned Income Tax Credit, which you have to work to earn. The clue is in the name for cripes sake, earned. They also include funding for Head Start programs. I know some programs can be abused, but I’m pretty sure Head Start is something we can all agree is a good thing. Education for little kids from low-income families is pretty hard to demonize. If we separate those kinds of programs from things like SNAP and housing vouchers, the kind that some people seem to resent, the spending comes in at about $212 billion per year. That’s a lot, but it’s a lot less than $1 trillion. https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/corporate-welfare/

Well, pretty much every Japanese-American from the western United States from 1942-1945.

Since we’re on the subject of single parents and broken homes, two of our last four Presidents came from broken homes. Bill Clinton’s biological father died in a car accident before he was born, and he was raised by his grandparents until the age of four... Although he immediately assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Clinton turned 15[12] that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward him.[4]Clinton has described his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and half-brother, Roger Clinton Jr. He threatened his stepfather with violence multiple times to protect them.[4][13] Perhaps their backgrounds are what made them uniquely suited (empathy/vision) to win two consecutive terms, something not accomplished by a member of their party since FDR. Without those formative life experiences, they arguably wouldn’t have succeeded to the degree that they did.

https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by-race#detailed/1/any/false/37,871,870,573,869,36,868,867,133,38/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431 The data (single parent households by ethnicity) hasn’t changed much in the last decade. White single mothers remaining at 24%. For all ethnic groups, +/- 2%, basically. There are many other factors at play, but this is where you see a strong correlation with standardized test scores (with Asian families far and away leading the pack). That said, many Asian kids (both inside and outside the US) are subjected to both psychological and physical abuse (a few of my Vietnamese born students in Kansas City remarked that anything less than an A in math would result in a whipping)...and there’s certainly a much higher incidence of suicide as well, with heightened study pressure being cited as one of the primary factors. And it’s easy to point out problems. But what are the solutions? It certainly won’t end up being “defund the police/let looters and lawlessness run free,” but that requires a much more sophisticated, nuanced conversation. The problem here is that BOTH sides have to be willing to communicate and make compromises. As soon as the President and leaders in the GOP (besides Mitt Romney standing alone) acknowledge there actually is a systemic societal problem, not just about policing, but massive wealth-economic inequality across the board, maybe there can be some forward progress. Or they can continue to refuse to listen at their own electoral peril.

There are currently 1,935 Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the state, topping the previous hospitalization record of 1,888 patients on May 5, according to new data from the Texas Department of State Health Services. Texas was among the first states to relax its statewide stay-at-home order, allowing it to expire April 30 and some businesses to resume operations May 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/texas-reports-a-record-high-number-of-hospitalized-coronavirus-patients-after-state-reopened-early.html It’s much more likely from a scientific standpoint that Covid-19 is currently declining in virulence compared to re-opening not being correlated to jumps in the massive, across-the-board numbers of cases and hospitalizations. That said, we’re far from out of the woods in the Western Hemisphere due to all the problems in South America, Central America, Mexico and pretty much the entire South, Southwest and West of the United States...