Frayed Knot

Edgy MD wrote: I didn't feel a particular imperative for the Braves to give up their nickname, or even the screaming face in their logo, but my wife reminded me that without the name, and the logo, we wouldn't have the stupid, stupid, tomahawk chop. Right as usual, Dear. What came first-- the Tomahawk Chop or the Seminole War Chant? Pretty sure the Braves just ripped off the collegiates on this. That's the way I heard it too. One story has it that it was some teammates/frat brothers of Deion Sanders who took the FSU chant to a Braves game during the time he was baseballin' in Atlanta and the FSU pantomime of throwing a spear into the ground, which an actual horse riding "Indian" does on the field prior to Seminole games, wound up morphing into the 'chop'.

49 y/o LA area realtor/developer Kurt Rappaport, sometimes described as 'Realtor to the Stars', "is in direct contact with the Mets' bankers, Allen & Co." with the idea of making a bid on the team. With a net worth of around $350 million, he wouldn't have the clout to buy the team on his own but, "multiple people familiar with the bid say that Rappaport, who won the Dave Winfield humanitarian award at a Major League Baseball event in 2018, is a baseball fan with heavy-hitter connections and could table a sizable bid." So this puts the list at four with known active interest joining: the very interested but can they get the help 'Team J-Rod'; the Harris/Blitzer private equity guys said to be sniffing around for a bargain; and the British born Reuben brothers with an eye towards surrounding real estate. Not mentioned is Steve Cohen although he's certainly watching the situation -- as a minority owner already he'd almost have to -- and, according to this latest Thorton McEnery piece, "it is not out of the realm of possibility that Cohen offers a bid, should the Wilpons fail to get their asking price". “Steve Cohen still wants the Mets,” one source said. “And he usually gets what he wants.” What seems increasingly clear is that it's unlikely any bid will top the previous $2 billion+ offer from Cohen. https://nypost.com/2020/07/02/la-real-estate-developer-latest-bidder-in-mets-sale/https://nypost.com/2020/07/02/la-real-estate-developer-latest-bidder-in-mets-sale/

=Ceetar post_id=39809 time=1593778462 user_id=102] but that's all wrong, and they DID invest with Madoff, and DID get 10+% returns for another decade.

It seems like most of the players who have opted out to date either are, or were at one time, Nationals: Zimmerman, Desmond, Joe Ross, and now Castillo (even though he's really just a paper Nat at this point) Must be a DC thing.

btw, as if the reaction to 'BB Day' wasn't predictable enough, I saw a headline (but was able to keep from clicking on it) which stated that Bonilla was to be "one of the highest paid Mets this season", a statement which is absolutely true except for deGrom, Cano, Stroman, Familia, Ramos, Porcello, Lowrie, Syndergaard, Conforto, Bettances, Cespedes, Diaz, Wilson, Matz, Marasnick, Wacha, Nimmo, Lugo, and Gsellman

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=39757 time=1593711920 user_id=68] Bobby Bonilla Day gets the fivethirtyeight treatment - with a video! Here's something to consider -- the Mets deferred the money owed Bonilla after the 1999 season to hold onto the $5.9M at stake and re-invest it in the team. The Mets then signed one of MLB's best and most sought after pitchers, Mike Hampton, who led the Mets to the 2000 World Series. When Hampton left via free agency, the Mets used their compensation draft pick for Hampton's deparure to select David Wright. So how bad did the Mets really do here?

Edgy MD wrote: It's funny how mismatched Steve Phillips and Bobby Valentine were. The former had such thin skin and the latter was such a showman that he couldn't help poking the bear. For a brief time, they were just the right matchup, and then it blew up. And how 'Bobby' is it to slide by on the technicality of claiming that he didn't say the things he was accused of saying in his speech? Oh yeah, I may have said a few of those things right AFTER the speech to some of the same people who were at the speech ... but during the speech? never said anything of the sort!

=kcmets post_id=39702 time=1593635703 user_id=53]how many inflation whittled installments are left before we can put this baby to sleep?

Deferred payments are nothing new in sports and certainly aren't unique to the Mets & Bonilla. This one just gets more pub than any other for a variety of reasons - it's the Mets who are the subject of a number of punchlines, sometimes deserved sometimes not - it's Bobby Bonilla whose latter half of his career also provided fodder for more than a few punch lines - the reasons behind this particular deferred agreement have ties to the Madoff scandal so that makes an easy target as well. The Wilpons obviously thought that their double-digit 'growth' off their Bernie investments were, like Sidra's tits, both real and spectacular so this looked like a wise deal to them at the time. Those chuckling at it each year at this time naturally all have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight - that there's little else going on in early July in the sports world means somebody's always got room to work it into their headlines - it gives the talking heads the opportunity to say 'see, we do too talk about baseball' while also provides them with an opening to do what they really want to do and that's knock baseball (you'd never see the brilliant NFL owners do something like this cuz they're smart enough to not guarantee contracts)

Speaking of that era NYM teams, some of y'all here will remember this blast from the past. https://nypost.com/2020/06/30/how-whartongate-internet-scandal-rocked-the-mets-bobby-valentine/Who the Fuck is Brad34?

=Ceetar post_id=39653 time=1593606725 user_id=102] I'd like to hear about his Python coding.

Overall #1 pick in '82 ... Well, yeah, that's how he got into this discussion: former #1 overalls who became Mets later in their careers, only Edgy conflated his Beckhams so this most recent pick up doesn't actually qualify even if he does make the squad. And the Mets totally would have drafted Dunston had they the top pick, they admitted as much themselves. They claimed to have Gooden #2 on their list while obviously other teams didn't but who knows with that stuff. 90%* of picks are made with the claim that 'This was the guy we really wanted in this slot' when probably about 90% are not. * totally made up percentages

Yeah, he was no longer a SS by that point but still had enough athletic skillz at age 36 to fit in a couple of different places. And, hell, he hit .344 in 93 ABs over those 42 games. He didn't draw a single walk as a Met but he barely did that during his entire career anyway so it wasn't like he was going to start then.

Yeah, I was thinking that 2019 was going to be the end of the line for Zimmerman ... at least with the Nats They got great use out of him as their first ever 1st round draft pick (and a semi-local from SE Virginia) but age and injuries were taking their toll on him just as his long-term contract was ending. But they re-upped him in January although for just one year at $2 million (down from a peak of $18) so both sides thought it worth a flyer. Turns 36 in September so, yeah, finding a deal next year if he wants one will be tougher still.

Diamondback Pitcher Mike Leake becomes the first announced player to opt out of the 2020 season oe: And now add Ryan Zimmerman to the list

Conflation alert: Gordon Beckham was drafted in the same draft as Tim Beckham who was the 1/1 pick that year. Both were from Georgia and neither lived up to his potential but the similarities ended there. Tim was a black HS pick who played the OF; Gordon is white, an IF, and was drafted out of UGa

He was purdy durn awful for the Nats last year.

but the owner's didn't want to play the season -- Bullshit. There were ZERO proposals to not play at all. The whole negotiation was over the owners wanting considerations given to playing in empty stadiums, something the players agreed to discuss in March but then refused to discuss. The player side wound up winning that standoff and the owners lost. And only in Ceetar-logic World can he be saying that the owners forced the players into a season while you argue they didn't really want to play at all, and yet somehow you're agreeing with him. The stands are closed. They're making no money off the number of games, they only make money from TV -- Your point being? The owners did impose it on the players. That's literally what happened. -- They didn't impose the existence of a season only the length of it (a power the player side granted to Manfred) after various proposals for different lengths failed to find agreement ... so that's literally THE OPPOSITE of what happened. They're the ones that (under pressure) stopped the season -- They HAD TO stop the season (before it started); not doing so wasn't even an option. And then they MUTUALLY AGREED with the union on the procedures for what needed to happen in order to restart. And again, what's your point here? My objection was that Raissman implies that the owners somehow forced the players into playing a season at all [Not true, the players could have opted out entirely] and by doing so forced them into a dangerous situation with their health as a pure money grab while ignoring the fact that EVERY proposal from the players was for a LONGER (and presumably more dangerous) season so that they could -- wait for it -- grab more money.

[bLOCKQUOTE]If MLB's TV bagmen, aka Fox, Turner Sports, ESPN, were not delivering billions of dollars for rights to air playoff games and the World Series, it would have been easy to do the right thing and shut baseball down this season. It would have been easy to protect players who now ... will be performing in dangerous conditions, on and off the field, with coronavirus running rampant and no end in sight for the pandemic.[/bLOCKQUOTE] This part of that piece implies that this stump of a season is one which the owners imposed on the players even though they had the power to do no such thing. The players, as we all know, actually wanted MLB to conduct a longer version, in some cases nearly twice as long, with, presumably, twice the "danger" involved. OF COURSE this partial season is being played in order to take in money, it's the reason that ALL seasons are played.

Or maybe some of those employees reported fake-positive results as an excuse to request permission to work from home rather than have to go into that ugly building.

I also didn't realize that they were building that thing right next to the 'coin slot' roofed football stadium.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Batgirl>That Girl Just the fact that Bat Girl had the good sense not to marry Phil Donahue makes that statement true.

I remember a friend of mine who, while out on a visit to Seattle, caught a game in the Kingdome. He said it was like watching baseball inside a Costco so the warehouse & beverage distributor analogies worked there too. Also, those seats just beyond the LF foul pole (both decks) look like they'd give you a great angle at seeing the LF'er and the CF'er ... and not much else.

it's the disingenuous lies about profits and trying to play as much of possible not mattering because they couldn't make more money for 80 games than 50. Bullshit! oe: OK I should probably expand on that brief comment. Again, I don't have any problem w/MLB being criticized (as mentioned I did enough of it myself) just with the ridiculous standards to which they hold baseball that they don't apply to any other sport. First of all, do you think if the NBA was losing 2/3 of their season (and the gate and TV $$ that went with it) on top of being forced to play their remaining sked in front of empty seats that they wouldn't be crying for a cost adjustment as well? And it wasn't the terms of the agreement that was being criticized but rather this whole thing was treated as if it was a contest to see who could get the first plan in place. Well the NBA "won" that war but will actually start later and currently sound less certain to start at all.

So I'm wondering, now that they have a firm date and only Covid, over which no one has any control, can seemingly screw up the plans from here, how quickly the national sports media is going to retract all their statements about how incompetent MLB is especially as compared to the wonderfully-run NBA who are starting a week After baseball although their carefully laid plans seem to be running into snags so who knows if that date will even hold. Actually that's a silly question because we know they're going to do no such thing. And, look, a lot of the shit MLB took was deserved and I certainly dished out my share. But, as usual, most of the commentary started with the bias that Adam Silver and the NBA -- aka: the 'House League' at the Four-Letter network to the extent that they're going to play out their season at what is essentially a TV studio on ESPN property -- are golden while MLB can't arrange a two-car parade. Not to mention that none of the criticism even considered the possibility that starting a season from scratch where 2/3 of it is lost and the remainder that you do have is likely to ALL be played in empty stadiums presented a lot more problems that needed solving than did the NBA & NHL where 85+% of their seasons were already in the bag (and, not coincidentally, so were 85 or so percent of the salaries and revenue) and all that remained to do was concoct the logistics of staging your playoffs.