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    Joe Posnanski's top 100 Baseball Players of All Time

    Re Lajoie: Ah yes, easy to forget how pervasive money and gambling were in baseball at that time.
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    Joe Posnanski's top 100 Baseball Players of All Time

    Interesting - the standard account of the 1910 batting title controversy is that the Browns tried to rig things for Lajoie because he, unlike Cobb, was well-liked and popular. I wonder now if this is another story that has been repeated over and over without ever really being truly investigated...
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    why i think they should cancel the season or play a 82 game season

    The only thing that can rescue any business or activity in America in the near future is mass testing. If there is mass testing, and someone gets the virus, the rest of the team does not have to be quarantined because they can be tested right away. And not because they got special treatment...
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    Price is right

    I think Eckersley self-sabotaged himself a bit with his usual florid style. He should have said, "I don't care," and he basically did say that, but he said it in his colorful Eck way, and that was enough to inflame Price once again. I don't think anyone (including Finn) looks particularly good...
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    2018 Tom M-F&^%$ing Brady: Still Proving It

    For whatever it may be worth, while baseball does have a history of prosaic alliterative nicknames (Rapid Robert, Hammering Hank), Tom Terrific was originally supposed to be an allusion to a now-forgotten cartoon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Terrific. I would definitely think of it as...
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    Changing Up The All Star Break Activities

    There was a skills competition in the late 1980s, and it was discontinued in large part because Barry Larkin really did wreck his elbow during it and was out for the year.
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    Yawkey Way now Jersey St again

    This is an old post, but I think in 1977 Harrington was still a mid-level team factotum and not a person with much clout. If anyone greased the skids it was probably Jean Yawkey herself. Interesting that Louise Day Hicks was still on the council at the time (and Dapper O'Neil, of course).
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    2018 HoF Ballot

    A moderately interesting fact is that the 1984 Tigers had been one of the few teams to win the World Series without any Hall of Famers on the roster (unless you count the manager). Also true (and likely to remain true) of the 1988 Dodgers (unless you count the manager again and also the aged...
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    NBC Sports: MLB considering expansion, radical realignment...

    I agree that Mexico City is a dubious idea for more than one reason, but there is a Mexican League team in Mexico City right now (Los Diablos Rojos), as well as teams in nearby cities that have similar elevations. How has the elevation affected their play?
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    NBC Sports: MLB considering expansion, radical realignment...

    Charlotte strikes me as being in the same position now that Denver, Miami, and Phoenix were in the 1990s - it has become a major American city and ought to have a major league team. (I know that that is an out-of-date baseball-centric worldview and Charlotte has had a team in the real national...
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    Spygate 2: Red Sox Stealing Signs and Relaying Electronically

    2.5 years ago there should have been no penalty at all. At least Spygate (like this) was a genuine minor offense.
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    Yawkey Way now Jersey St again

    Gerry Callahan, probably the last person I would have expected to favor the name change, has come out in favor of it because of the Fitzpatrick case. It is interesting how every few years that story comes up in the media but never quite gets the front-page publicity it deserves. The version...
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    Yawkey Way now Jersey St again

    Unfortunately, the entire Yawkey era was marred by racial bias. If anything, the 1976-1992 era (when Jean and Haywood Sullivan were owners) was worse than the 1959-1976 era (after desegregation and while Tom Yawkey was still alive). The 1960s and early 1970s teams usually had several black...
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    Yawkey Way now Jersey St again

    I guess I have the same thoughts that a few people above had as well. In the popular mind a handful of individuals (Cap Anson, Ty Cobb, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Dixie Walker, Ben Chapman, Yawkey, and maybe a few others) are designated as the Official Baseball Racists, and everyone else is left...
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    Shank aka CHB calls out David Price calling out Eck

    I never criticized Price for not talking to the media, and I have no criticisms of his general character either. I just think "I will try to get the last word even if it keeps the story alive unnecessarily" is usually a bad strategy. If/when Eckersley does the same (by no means an unthinkable...
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    Shank aka CHB calls out David Price calling out Eck

    I agree that this story ought to die, but unfortunately it seems to be Price himself who has now kept it alive with his foolish follow-up comments. I think the cleverest thing to say in a situation like this would be "I apologize that I lost my temper." You renounce the outburst and avoid the...
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    Shank aka CHB calls out David Price calling out Eck

    If this has all been reported accurately, I think the actions by Price (and even more so by the alleged clappers) would be thin-skinned and immature regardless of who the target was. I am not emotionally invested in Eckersley in particular. And I guess you could make the case that using a...
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    Race and the Red Sox

    I think the related but more directly relevant question is "Could David Ortiz have played in the major leagues before 1947?" I think that the answer to that is clearly no. My understanding is that some of the handful of Cubans who played in that era were probably of mixed ancestry but were...
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    Aaron Hernandez: Had Advanced CTE - NEP Sued

    Well, it wasn't personal if it was the motive for the murder! What I find strange is this alternative version of a previously straightforward story, not the fact that it involves homo/bisexuality specifically. If the Lloyd murder were suddenly being explained by a motive related to drugs...
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    Aaron Hernandez: Had Advanced CTE - NEP Sued

    It seems crazy to me that all of a sudden we have this new, never before-mentioned motive for the Lloyd murder. Is this meant to imply that he really was not guilty of the other murders after all, or just that the two crimes were unrelated? And he killed to prevent this secret from being...