The View from Right Field

Silly Question of the Day: “Is testing for MLB diverting resources?”

The headline of the lead article in today’s Chicago Tribune asks (in the print edition): “Is testing for MLB diverting resources?”  Really?  That’s the most important question today?  If so, we must be in pretty good shape.  Because the amount of resources used by MLB for its testing program is pretty small compared to our whole country.  Especially since MLB hired a company that wasn’t already doing testing to set up a new testing program for MLB.  But even with that, one of the people quoted in the article worried that the MLB program was diverting swabs and other testing supplies that could be used elsewhere.  As I said, if the biggest question in the United States today is whether MLB is diverting swabs, etc., so it can test a few thousand people more frequently than otherwise, we are in pretty good shape.

Except, of course, we aren’t in good shape.  We need to test lots more.  We need to be able to test lots more people lots more frequently.  Testing, testing, testing is how we can stall this virus until we can get a vaccine.  But we’re not there.  The federal government¹ needs to ramp it up.  Big time.  We probably should have had this kind of testing capability in reserve.  But nobody in Washington, of either party or any administration, apparently cared enough, or had enough foresight, to do that. 

As the Cubs Start, More on Why 108 Years Was 108 Years – Even If You Weren't 108

[I was going to post this in the middle of March, but then, when Covid-19 caused MLB to delay the season, I decided to wait until baseball was ready to start again. I didn’t realize it would be this long.  In any case, here it is.]

Before I left for our trip to Egypt in February, which seems forever ago, I wrote a post I titled “Congratulations, Chiefs Fans. But 50 Still Isn’t 108.”  In it, I tried to explain why, even for Cubs fans who weren’t around for 108 years (or who weren’t even around for 30 years), the Cubs’ 108 years was different than the Chiefs’ 50 years.  In doing so, I mentioned that the media was always talking about how it had been 108 years and that’s what everybody read about.

But while I was gone,¹ I realized that wasn’t it.  Yes, the media constantly harped about the 108 years,² but that was only part, and not the main part, of why fans, even those in their 30s, felt they had been there for 108 years.  It was, instead, that special tie between sports fans of different generations, a tie that I think is especially deep for Cubs fans.  Maybe this is because things have not always gone well for the Cubs.  When Ryan Dempster gave up that two-out, two-strike grand slam to James Loney in game 1 of the 2008 NLDS, people remembered the Marlins’ eight runs in the eighth inning of the game 6 of the 2003 NLCS, the 9th inning home run by Javy Lopez off Kevin Tapani in game 2 of the 1998 NLDS, the grand slam home run off Greg Maddux in the 1989 NLCS (when Giants batter supposedly read Greg’s lips), the ball that went under Leon Durham’s Gatorade-soaked glove in the 1984 NLCS, and so much about 1969.^3,4  All of them were part of being a Cubs fan.

I Guess I Have Been Missing Baseball More Than I Thought

People have asked how I am doing with no baseball.  I thought I was doing pretty well – until recently.  Recently, I have noticed feeling a little down, now and then.  I thought it was because politics is horrible.  We have a terrible president, but the people running to replace him aren’t much better, if any.  I don’t want the current person to be reelected, but the alternative could easily be just as bad. 

And then there are the riots accompanying the peaceful protests that we have had.  I’m not really sure how tearing down a statue of George Washington does any good.  Sure, he had slaves, but he was also, in the title of James Thomas Flexner’s book, The Indispensable Man.  Without George Washington, there is no United States.  Maybe the people pulling down his statue think that would be good.

Five Years Ago Today: My First World Series Win

As people who know me know, it was a BIG deal when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. (There is a reason I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads “11-2-2016 11:47”.)  It was, obviously, the first World Series the Cubs won in my lifetime – and in the lifetimes of almost everybody alive in 2016 (except maybe people in Georgia).

But 2016 it wasn’t my first World Series win.  My first World Series win was in Omaha in June of 2015, when Jennie and I saw the University of Virginia win the College World Series.  It was great.  I blogged about it here.  At the time I thought it might be my only World Series victory.  (I was, after all, a Chicago Cubs fan.)  It wound up not be my only World Series win, but it will always be my first.  #GoHoos!

Here we are in Omaha, with the championship dogpile in the background:

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UPDATE (6/24/20 7:30 am): Added picture. 

“Manfred-Ball” Is (Or May Be) Coming to a Park (or TV Screen) Near You Soon

As part of their continuing effort to screw up baseball, which Commissioner Rob Manfred and player union head Tony Clark are doing a good job at, the owners and players have given up trying to reach an agreement.  After all, they only had three months to talk about one since their “mini agreement” in March, so how could you expect them to agree to anything.  Of course, the fact that Messrs. Manfred and Clark apparently only met in person once during that time may have had something to do with it, though if you really don’t want to agree, because it’s more fun to argue, then not meeting in person is a good idea.  Who knows, if you’re talking in the same room, you might actually reach an agreement by accident.  And it looks like nobody wanted that.  So, Rob Manfred got to decide.

Well, what's "Manfred-Ball" going to look like?  First, there will be 60 games, the fewest since 1878, when they also played 60.  They will not have the “all-in” playoffs the owners wanted.  I think the owners wanted sixteen teams in the playoffs, instead of ten, but the main thing was, I would imagine, that ESPN, et al, wanted to set the bar low enough so they could be sure both the Red Sox and Yankees made it.  (It’s the “Sunday Night Baseball Rule.”)

The @Royals Are Attracting Undrafted Players by Being Nice to Their Minor Leaguers. Not Something the @Cubs Are Doing.

The Kansas City Royals have come up with a unique way to attract quality, undrafted players this year.  A “market inefficiency,” as people like to call it. 

In order to save money, MLB shortened the draft this year from 40 rounds to five and put a limit on how big of a bonus could be paid to undrafted players.¹  Which means there are a lot of good quality undrafted players out there.  Jared Diamond wrote in The Wall Street Journal on how the Royals made themselves attractive to those undrafted players: They didn’t treat their current minor league players like crap, releasing dozens of them to save the $400 a week they would have otherwise had to pay them.²

“To Be or Not To Be”: The Baseball Version

The question is not when baseball is going to start, but if – and whether I’m going to care whether it does or doesn’t.  I understand the players and the owners both think they are standing on principle.  The players think they agreed to a pro rata payment based on the number of games played, and the owners think they can’t pay the players full pro rata salary if there aren’t fans in the stands.  

Jeff Passan at ESPN.com goes into great detail on the two sides’ positions and the reasons and principles behind them.  And each side has lots of reasons for their positions, reasons that they think are legitimate.  But ultimately, you know what.  I don’t care.

#Cubs Convention Photos of Baseball Greats: Bob Feller

Pictures in this series of posts have been of Cubs players (or other people connected with the Cubs).  Bob Feller is neither, but he was at the Convention several times, promoting his museum in his hometown of Van Meter, Iowa (just off I-80 at exit 113),¹ and you can’t not include a picture of him (even if it isn’t the best picture in the world).

I’m not sure how much most baseball fans know about Bob Feller today, but I am pretty sure it’s not enough.  I’m not going to go into a long story.  Let me just mention a few things:

Let’s Talk Baseball. Or, Rather, Let’s Play Baseball.

The question is how are we going to get there.  MLB owners and MLB players are both, in made-up words of Paul Sullivan’s fictional Tom Hanks trying to negotiate a deal¹ between the owners and players: “bat[bleep] crazy.”  So how are they going to agree?  Let me make one small suggestion, which probably isn’t going to happen but could work (it would have a better chance than what is going on now).

Get a couple of people from each side together in a room, a large room, so they can socially distance.  Socially distancing shouldn’t be a problem since they don’t like each other all that much.  Take away their phones and their computers.  Make them talk to each other, face-to-face instead of via press releases and fancy statements.²  It’s easy to say “no” in an email.  It’s harder to say no to somebody in person.

A Thought on Baseball and Whether We’ll See It This Year

Actually, my main thought is that I don’t know.  But I do have a thought on why baseball is having the kind of problems that other sports are not   The reason: The owners in other sports already have what the owners in baseball would like – a salary cap.¹  Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap because baseball players have the strongest union in American team sports.  Players in other sports don’t have as strong a union as the baseball players do, so those sports already have a salary cap.

While salary caps can work differently, it is my understanding the salary caps in other sports are tied to a percentage of revenues.  Which is what the baseball owners suggested to the players this year – at least the percentage of revenues part.²  When the players told the owners where to put that proposal (where the sun don’t shine, in essence), the owners came back with their current idea: Because the teams won’t be getting ticket and concessions revenue, they want to reduce players’ salaries more than just pro rata for the number of games not played, and they suggested cutting the higher-paid players more than the lower-paid players (sort of a progressive income tax).  The union didn’t like this idea because the union wants the most money possible.  Basically, it’s the kind of thing workers and management frequently argue about.  And it’s happening in baseball now.