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Total Members Voted: 3

Voting closed: February 13, 2022, 10:41:25 PM

[bosox26d]

Cleveland should change their name to the Fighting Irish. That way they can be offensive and get away with it

[bosox26d]

Spiders seems to be the gaining traction on the internet

its got baseball history and the logo (above) is cool

Although I just read that some guy in DC front-ran the name last year and applied for a Cleveland Spiders trademark;

If the Cleveland Baseball Team (poetic-rolls off the tongue) can get around that issue, and go with Spiders,

I wonder if one of the legs hold a tomahawk?

I suggest, too...the Cleveland Rock, capitalizing on the RocknRoll Hall of Fame that really belongs in Philly.

Can't be in Filly. The Rock hall honors to many African Americans for a racist city like Philadelphia.

While that cap is cool AF, I am not sure the Spiders have a historical record of success.

You are correct sir😁😁

[bankshot1]

Spiders seems to be the gaining traction on the internet

its got baseball history and the logo (above) is cool

Although I just read that some guy in DC front-ran the name last year and applied for a Cleveland Spiders trademark;

If the Cleveland Baseball Team (poetic-rolls off the tongue) can get around that issue, and go with Spiders,

I wonder if one of the legs hold a tomahawk?

I suggest, too...the Cleveland Rock, capitalizing on the RocknRoll Hall of Fame that really belongs in Philly.

Can't be in Filly. The Rock hall honors to many African Americans for a racist city like Philadelphia.

While that cap is cool AF, I am not sure the Spiders have a historical record of success.

Isn't the reason Cleveland and rock n roll are associated is because Alan Freed a DJ, took payola to play RnR?

I think Memphis probably got rooked.

I heard the team soon to be nameless is holding on to the Indians until next year.

They still got stuff in inventory they got to move!
 

[Hairy Lime]

Spiders seems to be the gaining traction on the internet

its got baseball history and the logo (above) is cool

Although I just read that some guy in DC front-ran the name last year and applied for a Cleveland Spiders trademark;

If the Cleveland Baseball Team (poetic-rolls off the tongue) can get around that issue, and go with Spiders,

I wonder if one of the legs hold a tomahawk?

I suggest, too...the Cleveland Rock, capitalizing on the RocknRoll Hall of Fame that really belongs in Philly.

Can't be in Filly. The Rock hall honors to many African Americans for a racist city like Philadelphia.

While that cap is cool AF, I am not sure the Spiders have a historical record of success.

Isn't the reason Cleveland and rock n roll are associated is because Alan Freed a DJ, took payola to play RnR?

I think Memphis probably got rooked.

I heard the team soon to be nameless is holding on to the Indians until next year.

They still got stuff in inventory they got to move!

Actually Cleveland got the Rock Hall because of tax breaks, money from local businesses, exposed, swollen government teat, the usual. Alan Freed was window dressing.

[kidcarter8]

Isn't that a Richmond hat?

[bankshot1]

https://www.mlb.com/news/negro-leagues-given-major-league-status-for-baseball-records-stats

Major League Baseball has long celebrated the legacy of the Negro Leagues. But for the first time, MLB is officially recognizing that the quality of the segregation-era circuits was comparable to its own product from that time period.

Addressing what MLB described as a “long overdue recognition,” Commissioner Rob Manfred on Wednesday bestowed Major League status upon seven professional Negro Leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948. The decision means that the approximately 3,400 players of the Negro Leagues during this time period are officially considered Major Leaguers, with their stats and records becoming a part of Major League history.

“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”

I'm not a Manfred fan, but this decision is a home-run.

Black records matter too.

as do CDs tapes and...

[Hamilton Samuels]

Black records matter too.

as do CDs tapes and...

So...Jackie Robinson and Frank Robinson and Smokey Robinson...https://www.cbsnews.com/news/smokey-robinson-mispronounces-chanukah-viral-video/

Happy Chanooka!

[josh]

ABOUT TIME!

https://www.mlb.com/news/negro-leagues-given-major-league-status-for-baseball-records-stats

Major League Baseball has long celebrated the legacy of the Negro Leagues. But for the first time, MLB is officially recognizing that the quality of the segregation-era circuits was comparable to its own product from that time period.

Addressing what MLB described as a “long overdue recognition,” Commissioner Rob Manfred on Wednesday bestowed Major League status upon seven professional Negro Leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948. The decision means that the approximately 3,400 players of the Negro Leagues during this time period are officially considered Major Leaguers, with their stats and records becoming a part of Major League history.

“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”

I'm not a Manfred fan, but this decision is a home-run.

Black records matter too.

as do CDs tapes and...

[josh]

I missed this about Ump Brian O'Nora:

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2921363?iid=ob_article_organicsidebar_expansion

He was picked up as one of 8 in a human trafficking ring.

[Hamilton Samuels]

The impact could be sweeping. For example, Ted Williams has for eight decades been recognized as the last man to hit .400 in Major League Baseball. His .406 batting average for the Boston Red Sox in 1941 is a statistic permanently etched in the fabric of the sport, standing for generations as one of the pinnacles of athletic achievement.

However, Josh Gibson, the Hall-of-Fame catcher known for his time with the Homestead Grays, hit .441 in 1943, according to the Seamheads Negro League Database, a key source MLB used in reaching its decision. That means that Gibson not only tops Williams, but surpasses Hugh Duffy’s .440 for the 1894 Boston Beaneaters for the best ever.



 
---WSJ.com

Ted's head must be rolling around in his freezer.

[josh]

The impact could be sweeping. For example, Ted Williams has for eight decades been recognized as the last man to hit .400 in Major League Baseball. His .406 batting average for the Boston Red Sox in 1941 is a statistic permanently etched in the fabric of the sport, standing for generations as one of the pinnacles of athletic achievement.

However, Josh Gibson, the Hall-of-Fame catcher known for his time with the Homestead Grays, hit .441 in 1943, according to the Seamheads Negro League Database, a key source MLB used in reaching its decision. That means that Gibson not only tops Williams, but surpasses Hugh Duffy’s .440 for the 1894 Boston Beaneaters for the best ever.



 
---WSJ.com

Thanks.

[josh]

The impact could be sweeping. For example, Ted Williams has for eight decades been recognized as the last man to hit .400 in Major League Baseball. His .406 batting average for the Boston Red Sox in 1941 is a statistic permanently etched in the fabric of the sport, standing for generations as one of the pinnacles of athletic achievement.

However, Josh Gibson, the Hall-of-Fame catcher known for his time with the Homestead Grays, hit .441 in 1943, according to the Seamheads Negro League Database, a key source MLB used in reaching its decision. That means that Gibson not only tops Williams, but surpasses Hugh Duffy’s .440 for the 1894 Boston Beaneaters for the best ever.

Ted's head may be okay, not to mention Hugh Duffy's lead and Barry Bonds' as well.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/17/us/negro-leagues-major-league-baseball-records-spt/index.html

[Hamilton Samuels]

https://www.yahoo.com/now/how-will-mlb-handle-clubhouse-divisions-over-covid-19-vaccine-as-baseball-seeks-return-to-normalcy-230107345.html
The reality, however, will likely be much more complicated. Even when they seem to provide relief from the pandemic, vaccines are a divisive and controversial issue in this country. If they’re not mandated — and it seems they won’t be — a segment of the baseball population will almost certainly abstain, possibly compromising the safety or viability of the 2021 season.

“This is obviously a very challenging question and topic,” Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said on a Zoom with reporters.

The overwhelming majority of MLB managers that Yahoo Sports spoke to this week specified that they will themselves get the vaccine, but would not attempt to impose their personal views on the rest of their clubhouse.

“I will get vaccinated, yes,” Brewers skipper Craig Counsell said, “as of what I know right now.”

“That question is going to be answered probably through my wife because she's in charge and we got three kids so I'll let her decide,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “But, from what I've understood and learned to date, I would not be hesitant to get vaccinated.”

“I believe in the science of the vaccine. I believe the FDA has approved the vaccine for a reason, and that reason is extensive study,” said Giants manager Gabe Kapler.

“I need to talk to the doctors and see what, if any complications, there are with those of us that have had it before,” said Tigers manager AJ Hinch, who had COVID-19 earlier this year. “But I want to be safe and I want the freedom to move around the country and move around baseball.”

...In the case of strong opposition to the vaccine, most managers deferred to individual choice.

“It's your choice,” Nationals manager Dave Martinez said. “And that's the beautiful thing about this country is that we can make those kinds of choices.”

Nobody said they would require it for their players — “I don't think it'd be right for me to point the finger and say ‘you got to do this,’ we just don't operate like that,” Cash said — but that doesn’t mean they won’t talk about it.

“I will of course be open to having conversations with our players and talking about anything that they want to talk about,” Kapler said. “Happy to talk through FDA approval and talk through the different companies that are doing a pretty good job of developing vaccines and rolling them out.”

“I'll address it directly with our players, I'll let them know what my plans are and I'll let them disagree,” Hinch said. “If they disagree, we'll move forward with whatever rules are put in place by Major League Baseball.”

Will MLB mandate vaccination?
Deference to a higher mandate was another theme. Managers will be the ones implementing guidelines and mediating fallout in clubhouses, but if there is going to be a baseball-wide ruling regarding COVID-19 vaccinations, it’ll come from above the team level.

Asked about plans to issue any sort of guidelines or require vaccinations, MLB sidestepped the issue, telling Yahoo Sports in a statement, “In conjunction with our team of medical experts, we are tracking all developments related to vaccines. We are working on plans both to promote vaccination and to ensure that the members of our industry are vaccinated at an appropriate time.”

New guidelines issued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission allow employers to require COVID-19 vaccines. However, as it pertains to baseball, a vaccine mandate would almost certainly have to be negotiated with the MLB Players Association (one manager compared it hypothetically to the existing joint drug agreement) and it is highly unlikely the union would agree to make it mandatory.

“It's hard. If somebody disagrees and doesn't want to do it, I don't know what protocols we're going to have in place,” Hinch said. “I know we want a safe environment, I know we want the fans back in the stands. I know we want something to feel normal again, which is baseball in the summer with freedom to move around and leave the hotel and go to the ballpark whenever we want and live a baseball life that we've lived our whole lives.

“Part of that is going to be a responsibility to learn about the vaccine and the important safety protocols and follow them to the best of your ability.”

[Hamilton Samuels]

It was supposed to be different this time around.

Major League Baseball embraced the Black Lives Matter movement this summer, and pledged diversity in their front-office hirings this winter.

In the end, there were eight president of baseball operation and GM jobs filled this winter, and not a single job went to an African-American. Kim Ng was the only minority hired when she became the first woman and first person of East Asian descent to be the GM of a MLB franchise with the Miami Marlins.

The New York Mets hired two white men — Sandy Alderson and Jared Porter — to become their president and GM, respectively.

The Philadelphia Phillies hired a white man, Dave Dombrowski, to become their president of baseball operations.

There were new white GMs in Texas (Chris Young) and Anaheim (Perry Minasian)...

“Improving the diversity of our clubs’ baseball operations and on-field leadership positions remains a top priority for our industry,’’ Manfred said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports. “Through the Selig Rule, diverse candidates were considered for each of the five open club baseball operations positions.  While the hiring of Marlins General Manager Kim Ng was a historic moment in professional sports, we need to continue our efforts to recruit, develop and advance underrepresented talent across the league. … We remain committed to building a sustainable pipeline of quality candidates and opportunities for the near and long-term future.”

The problem is that the pipeline is filled with white Ivy League graduates. There’s a scarcity of minorities even among entry level internships.

And then there is Pittsburgh Pirates assistant GM Kevan Graves, who is Black and a 2003 graduate of Dartmouth who did not receive an interview this winter.

“How in the world does Michael Hill not have a job?’’ a team president told USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “He has been a president and a GM. He does an unbelievable job in Miami. And he has a Harvard education.

“If he was white, he could have had any job he wanted.’’

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2020/12/16/black-candidates-shut-out-mlb-front-office-jobs/3918722001/

[Hamilton Samuels]

https://slate.com/culture/2020/12/negro-leagues-major-league-baseball-record-books-complications.html

“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”

While a “backdrop” suggests flat scenery that quickly fades from the viewer’s attention, the institutionalized racism that spawned the Negro Leagues makes the recordkeeping MLB is attempting a fraught exercise. Excluding barnstorming teams and years prior to 1920 makes this accounting definitionally incomplete. Even for players who seem well documented, bucketing their records along with the rest of the major leagues struggles to capture the objective history people seek in statistics. Ironically, deeming certain incomplete numbers “official” puts a stamp of certainty on these stats that can’t possibly exist, and it risks diminishing mythic heroes like Gibson in the process...

...To some, such as ESPN’s Howard Bryant, pouring the stats of the segregated era into the monolithic major league database does not celebrate or elevate the Negro Leagues; it erases them.

“I think, if there’s one thing we know about baseball, [it] is [that] the numbers are always sacred. And I don’t think that you can … retrofit this,” he told PBS’s John Yang.

“You’re not looking at, well, OK, from 1920 to 1948, there was the American League and the National League on the white side and then there was the Negro Leagues on the other side.

That’s not what took place. What segregation did to Black players is, it destroyed them. It created a permanent inferiority that you cannot retrofit 100 years later. You had inferior conditions. You had tattered record books. You don’t know how many games guys played.”

The newly authenticated stats provide a minimum baseline of truth, but not the whole truth.
Gibson—a slugging catcher for the Homestead Grays who died at 35, months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier—presents perhaps the widest discrepancy between the legend and the newly official numbers. The folklore on Gibson is that he knocked nearly 800 home runs; it even says so on his Hall of Fame plaque. Where that number comes from, and whether it’s accurate, is hard to say. Whatever the source, there is an awkwardly large chasm between that legendary round figure and Gibson’s new documented mark of 238. (Ultimately, the Elias Sports Bureau will determine whether 238 or another official number will count as Gibson’s total.) That would put Gibson in a four-way tie for 264th place all time, alongside Earl Averill, Ray Lankford, and, for now, J.D. Martinez of the Boston Red Sox.


Baseball history enthusiasts—even many casual ones—know that Gibson sustained a Paul Bunyan–like legend. But statistics can outlast stories, and one wonders how a curious fan might view one of the 20th century’s greatest sluggers upon seeing him buried in a sea of good-not-great players on the home run list.

Babe Ruth had the called shot, but he also had jaw-dropping statistical achievements, such as in 1921, when he hit more home runs than half the teams in the league. Gibson, sometimes called the Black Babe Ruth, has a similar mythology, but the likely official stats will pale in comparison to Ruth’s—or any number of ultimately forgettable long-ballers of more recent decades.

Did Gibson hit more than 238 home runs? Probably. Did Cool Papa Bell swipe more than 345 bags? Seems likely. Did he ever get caught? Almost certainly. But there’s meaning and fun in thinking that he was never thrown out, and there’s just no possible way for us to ever know how many times he got caught, because racist institutions made it impossible. The newly authenticated stats provide a minimum baseline of truth, but not the whole truth.

So why bother doing this? Negro Leagues President Bob Kendrick called the move “extraordinarily important,” saying it gives “additional credence to how significant the Negro Leagues were, both on and off the field.” He added an important counterpoint, noting that Negro League players “never looked to Major League Baseball to validate them.”

Bryant was less charitable.

“I don’t think that this satisfies the Black players, but I think it makes people feel good about a period that nobody feels good about,” he said.

The league was already in an awkward position when it comes to certifying other leagues. In 1969, an all-white panel representing the National and American Leagues, the Baseball Writers Association, the Hall of Fame, and the commissioner’s office certified four leagues that existed briefly around the turn of the century—while ignoring the Negro Leagues. That panel’s certification became a sign of legitimacy, and its omission of the Negro Leagues an insult to the injury of racial exclusion.