Goodbye, Good Guy: Indians trade OF David Murphy
July 28, 2015Joey Bosa and Ezekiel Elliott named preseason Big Ten Players of the Year
July 29, 2015
Welcome to Wednesday, one and all. It’s hot. It’s humid. The Indians suck. Patience is wearing thin. Lots of different topics today. Let’s get to it.
The Tribe lost again last night, 2-1 to the Kansas City Royals. Aside from the usual hitting troubles, they played a solid game. Trevor Bauer pitched nine innings, giving up just two runs. He threw first-pitch strikes to 26 of the 32 batters he faced. The defense behind him turned some tidy double plays. Jason Kipnis went 3 for 4. The Tribe notched eight hits, four walks, and six stolen bases. Didn’t matter. The gentlemen in red, white, and blue plated a single run, continuing a particularly poor trend. Bauer summed it up pretty well:
Trevor Bauer: "Freaking baseball, man. It sucks."
— August Fagerstrom (@AugustFG_) July 29, 2015
That makes six losses in a row for the Indians, all at home, all to division opponents. Their last win in Cleveland came on July 10. They’re now 45-54 and dead last in the AL Central. They’re 16 games behind division leader Kansas City, and 2.5 games behind next-to-last place Detroit. For the dreamer, they’re still just seven games out of a Wild Card spot with 63 games to play, but to paraphrase the construction workers from Major League, they don’t look too pluckin’ good.
There ain’t much to say. They really don’t seem like they should be this bad, but they are indeed this bad. I’m not going to get angry about it. I’m going to advise that you also do not get angry about it. Look at them less like a major league team and more like the Major League team. We might as well get some laughs out of it.1
On that note, a brief and deserved shout to game recappers Michael Bode and Andrew Clayman — and also series previewer Richard Pietro — for putting in what must be painful man-hours writing about this team. The ball has gone bad, but that has freed up our noble scribes to have some fun. Clayman’s weekend recap came with a segment channeling Waiting for Godot, Bode’s Monday summary evoked Gilligan’s Island, and Richard likened the Royals series to a trip to Pluto.
This is where this season has ended up. Are you in the Tribe?
Do you care about the Tom Brady suspension being upheld? I don’t. I mean, I suppose I do, since I’m bothering to even mention it here — I’m being like one of those people who claims to hate getting entangled in drama even as that is that same person’s defining characteristic. (This is not a great look for me, or anyone for that matter.) But it’s a thing that happened to a very important person on a very famous team in a very monolithic league, so it seems relevant to discuss. I’m just not the one to discuss it.
Why in the sam hell would I want to talk about cell phones and PSI and the latest folly at Uncle Roger’s Super Strict Summer Camp? Or the legal battle that seems set to ensue? It has nothing to do with anything good about football. It’s times like this that I wonder how the NFL became such a dominant entity. It’s times like this that I wonder if it can continue to be one.
Finally, apologies are in order. If you visited our fair site yesterday, you didn’t see it at its best. There were some pesky technical issues at hand — I’m suspecting some intersection of a feral rodent and a 28.8k modem — that mucked things up on our end and yours. Some of our posts went up without images, which nowadays is a bit like having cereal without milk or spaghetti without sauce. Things are back in order now. I hope this doesn’t change how you feel about us. Thank you for your patience. <3
With that, I leave you with a song. Hip-hop doesn’t get a ton of play in this space; let us change that, if only for a day. The song below comes to you from a North Carolina-based group by the name of Little Brother. LB separated in 2010, but before doing so they created a couple albums that I hold in high esteem, most notably 2003’s The Listening and 2005’s The Minstrel Show. Both are concept albums; the former plays like a day in the life of fictional radio station WJLR, while the latter takes place on the parodic UBN television network.
It’s heady stuff. It isn’t trunk music or dance music — or if it is, it wasn’t designed to be — and that’s the point. The group’s name is an homage to hip-hop groups that came before: De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, and the like. Little Brother considers those groups their big brothers, so to speak, and they aimed to make music in the same vein. Their records aren’t dripping with club bangers; many songs are about real-life ish that we all go through. You don’t need a dictionary or anything to understand it; you just gotta give it a little extra time and attention.
The song below, “All For You,” is about fatherhood. The first verse (by Rapper Big Pooh) deals with growing up with an absent father, while the second (by Phonte, who is an outstanding Twitter follow) is about becoming one himself and unwittingly coming to understand the frustrations and sympathizing with the behavior of his old man. Producer 9th Wonder gives the lyricists a sweet, melancholy canvas on which to paint, and the result is a song more poignant than the average rap tune. Give ‘er a try.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXv2exiuGjM
That’s it and that’s all, gang. Stay cool out there. Don’t let the man — or the Tribe — keep you down. Enjoy the day, and finish this month up like you mean it.
- This is easier for me to say than some; baseball is well behind basketball and football among my preferred sports. [↩]
56 Comments
The NFL does not need to be impartial or fair if the NFLPA agreed to Goodell being the final arbiter.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/dwio.gif
I never denied that circumstantial evidence doesn’t carry weight. I also understand the difference between preponderance of evidence and reasonable doubt.
I was simply making the point that many people claim that the NFL report PROVES that Brady cheated. “Read the report! Did you see the texts!?!?” Yes, evidence exists that could be construed to suggest that Brady orchestrated the whole thing. It’s just not he slam dunk some people seem to think it is. Does it meet the standard of preponderance of evidence? Very possibly.
Of course, if we want to pretend that this is a civil trial, we need to realize a great deal more evidence would emerge from both sides as well. Discovery is a b!@tch in that way.
So guess my point is that I’m hesitant to rush to judgement on circumstantial evidence that is coming from an interested party, especially when a fuller, fairer investigation would uncover more (about Brady and the Pats, but also about the NFL).
The U.S. Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) provides that a federal district
court may vacate an arbitration award, among other reasons, “where there
was evident partiality or corruption in the arbitrators.”
The only reason the judge did not render an opinion on the partiality of the arbitrator was because he already decided in Peterson’s favor based on other arguments (the retroactive enforcement of a new rule).
The court most definitely held the power to overturn the ruling if it felt that Goodell (or his rep) was in impartial.
Honestly, I’ll take your word for that’s how it’s structured. Be that as it may–and trust me, in my line I’ve seen a lot of mutually agreed upon arbitration agreements that are totally unenforceable–that BS procedure/self serving racket the NFL & commish have going on is begging for the courts to intervene and shoot down. I have no dog in this fight other than from a legal perspective—rooting for a sensible due process.
Here, we have all of the circumstances for an ideal challenge—the golden boy, very questionable/circumstantial advice, Goodell being the judge, jury and appellate judge, and a history of head scratching, arbitrary decisions on the part of the NFL. Ready your popcorn.
What kind of murder was it? ‘Cause, if it was a stabbin’ or a stranglin,’ then a smoking gun doesn’t really help. She should know that.