Major League Baseball (MLB) is desperately looking for ways to salvage at least a potion of their 2020 profits, er, season. Since it seems unlikely that mass gatherings will be permitted before autumn, team owners are considering plans to host teams in Florida and/or Arizona to play an abbreviated schedule in empty ballparks.
Several teams – Tampa Bay, Oakland, Cleveland, and others – have argued that their teams do not actually draw large crowds, especially toward the end of the season, but these teams are not expected to receive waivers.
While some options have been disclosed publicly, other possible changes to the rules of baseball that might allow major league games to resume have not been publicly revealed.
Until now, it seems.
Here is what we know about potential changes to baseball to make it more virus-resistant.
Benches will be removed from the dugouts and bullpens and will replaced by individual chairs anchored six feet apart.
Players and umpires will be required to stay six feet apart at all times. This will move the catcher back six feet from home plate and the plate umpire six feet behind the catcher. First basemen will not be able to hold baserunners close to the bag. To prevent an avalanche of stolen bases, runners will be limited to leads of no more than six feet.
To prevent defenders from having to tag out baserunners, they will be permitted to throw the ball at the runner from six feet or more away. If the ball hits the runner before the runner reaches the base, he will be out. Infielders may relay their throws to the first baseman, who will throw the ball at the runner. Alternatively, infielders may hit the runner directly with their throws. If the defender must move to within six feet of the base to receive a throw, he will have to retreat to a distance of six feet from the base before he can throw the ball at the runner. Runners will be required to wear chest protectors and shin guards.
All players will wear masks at all times. Since all players will be masked, pitchers and catchers will no longer have to cover their mouths with their gloves when they hold mini-conferences in the mound. During such conferences, players must remain six feet apart. To prevent opposing players from hearing these discussions, stadium organists will play the 1812 Overture at the highest volume setting while pitches and catchers are conversing.
No mound visits from coaches or position players will be permitted. Managers or pitching coaches may send one written note to each pitcher per inning. The notes will be carried to within six feet of the mound by batboys equipped with N95 masks, face screens, and bio-hazard protective suits.
Houston players must remain six feet away from any trash cans in the tunnel behind their dugout.
Walk-off-win celebrations will be conducted on Zoom.
A reminder on what would have been Opening Day. Today we are in a dark place. But at some point, we are going to come out of the shadows and back into the sunlight. Our journey will be shorter and easier if we make the effort now to act with compassion and consideration for others. If you have an opportunity to ease someone else’s burden, now would be a good time to consider it. The Red Cross needs blood. Food banks need donations. Other people need a few of those antibacterial wipes you have stacked in the basement. Everyone needs you to be careful, for your sake as well as theirs.
The Air Show is in town this weekend, featuring hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the latest military aviation technology, flown and maintained by the best of the best. An event that is all-but-certain to make the heart of every true American swell with pride.
So, naturally, we went to the wiener dog races at the fairground.
The show ring at the livestock barn was packed to the rafters and the crowd yelled themselves horse (kind of a livestock joke there..) as the little canines zig-zagged their way to the finish line. The crowd was into it, the dogs seemed to enjoy it – they all got pets and treats at the finish line, even if it took them two minutes to cover the sixty feet – and money collected by registration fees supports a dachshund rescue organization.
Like the sign on the wall said, “There are no losers, only wieners.”
I keep seeing posts and
memes in support of term limits for members of Congress. It appears that term
limits for Congress is a popular idea. This
is somewhat confusing, as I always thought that terms were already limited. I
am sure I read somewhere that representatives serve two-year terms and senators
serve for six years.
If a member of Congress
serves longer than a single term, isn’t it because the voters he or she represents
want them to continue in office? Incumbent officeholders still have to run in elections
to remain in office, right? If voters are dissatisfied with their performance,
can’t they elect someone else?
So, by imposing term limits,
are we saying that voters aren’t competent to select their own representatives? If so, why hold elections at all?
Or are we saying that
experience in Congress is automatically undesireable? Do we prefer other professionals to be
inexperienced? Emergency Medical Technicians? Nuclear power plant operators? Auto
mechanics? (“Wow, that’s a complicated piece
of engineering there, Mr. Jones. I’ve never actually seen an engine like this. I
did read a little about them when I was in school last year, so let’s take a
look. Please hand me that hammer and step back…”)
Is there data that shows
that inexperienced legislators are more effective? Actually, there is data, based on the experiences
of state legislatures which have already implemented term limits, and it does
not support the idea that term limits reduce corruption or otherwise improve
the performance of legislators. In fact, there is evidence that less
experienced legislators are more dependent on lobbyists and other interest groups.
There are plenty of
problems with Congress, starting with the fact the fact that there are no real
incentives for bipartisan cooperation. Changing out the people working in a
wildly dysfunctional system is the political equivalent of rearranging the deck
chairs on the Titanic as the ship fills with water.
Term limits probably won’t
hurt much, except in cases where effective and popular legislators are
prevented from running for re-election and are replaced by inexperienced
legislators who rely on special interest groups to help them ‘understand’
complex policy issues. But as a means of improving Congressional performance,
they are a simplistic and ineffective answer to a complex problem, and any
energy spent on advocating term limits is effort that could be better used elsewhere.
Economic inequality is threatening to destroy capitalism in America, and the only people that can save capitalism are the people who are benefiting from it the most. That is the message of Peter Georgescu, Chairman Emeritus of the global marketing and advertising firm Young and Rubicon. Georgescu has written about his concerns in a book titled Capitalists Arise. Yesterday he spoke about his concerns at the Cleveland City Club.
Peter Georgescu at the Cleveland City Club.
Free-market capitalism is the best system ever designed for creating wealth, he said. Capitalism has lifted billions of people out of abject poverty across the globe, created America’s middle class, and funded America’s rise as a great power. But the capitalist system that has done so much good is in peril. Not because of the lure of competing systems, but because of capitalism’s own failure to provide opportunity to all citizens.
“I am afraid we are going to kill the golden goose,” he said.
Today, capitalism works for just the top 20 percent of Americans, said Georgescu. “For the upper 20 percent of Americans, life is good.” he said. “But 70 to 80 percent of Americans are in deep trouble.” Sixty percent of Americans increase their debt load every year. They are functionally insolvent and are at risk for financial catastrophe if struck by an unexpected event, like loss of a job, high medical bills, or even an expensive auto repair.
Income inequality is exacerbated by the physical separation of American society into enclaves of prosperity and enclaves of poverty, co-existing side-by-side. “We have achieved complete success at segregating ourselves by income with disastrous consequences,’’ he said.
The result is a vicious cycle where residents of poorer neighborhoods suffer from increasingly poor services, fewer opportunities, and a loss of hope, while residents of prosperous neighborhoods are shielded from the impact of economic inequality.
The disastrous consequences for most Americans include bad schools, virtually no early childhood education, escalating consumer debt, few jobs, high unemployment, stagnant wages, drug and alcohol addiction, and a dramatic drop in life expectancy.
America’s low labor participation rate disguises the nation’s true level of unemployment, he said. “Unemployment in this country is not 3.7 percent,” said Georgescu. “That’s ridiculous. Look at the labor force participation rate, which is near historical highs.” People leave the labor force when they become discouraged. “People give up,” he said. “These are not lazy people; they are desperate people. That’s what the opiate crisis is all about.”
For forty years America’s system of free-enterprise capitalism generated wealth for most Americans, said Georgescu. Business received “humongous advantages” in the form of favorable tax rates, limited liability, and public investments in infrastructure and education. In return, business promised to behave like a good citizen by treating people fairly. Business leaders were committed to stakeholder capitalism, where the fruits of capitalism – profits – were shared with customers, employees, the corporation, shareholders, and society.
By following this simple model, American business worked magnificently, he said, providing wealth to a majority of Americans and strengthening the nation. “But today, that beautiful machine is in trouble.”
Beginning forty years ago, the focus of business shifted from socially responsible, long-term-focused stakeholder capitalism to a focus on one stakeholder: shareholders, to the exclusion of everything else, Georgescu said. Shareholder primacy has led companies to favor short-term profits over the long-term health of the corporation and society. As a result, businesses have reduced investments in employees, facilities, productivity, and society.
“The change from multiple stakeholders to shareholder primacy happened gradually, slowly over time, without a clear understanding of what the consequences would be,” he said. Most businesses now view employees as a cost to be lowered by holding down wages, limiting benefits, cutting training, and replacing workers with machines. “Instead of using technology to help people become more productive, we have used technology to get rid of people,” he said. “But these are the people that add value and generate productivity.”
The results have been disastrous.
“Signs of unrest are everywhere now,” he warned. “When an inequality crisis gets too severe, it solves itself in one of two ways: society redistributes wealth through taxation, or poverty gets redistributed through revolution.”
Nearly all CEOs that he has discussed this with agree with his analysis, he said, but they often don’t know what they can do. They fear they will be ousted by shareholders if they reduce shareholder rewards. But some companies are already moving away from shareholder primacy said Georgescu, citing Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Costco, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google as examples. These companies – and others – invest in research and they invest in long term outcomes, not short term. They are not perfect, but good, he said.
Business has a responsibility address inequality, he said, because business is primarily responsible for creating the problem. Government didn’t create this problem and government cannot solve it. Government can assist, but the heavy-lifting must be done by business.
What can business do? The starting point, he said, “is to reinvent the relationship between the corporation and employees. We cannot allow employees to be totally disregarded.” In addition, “business needs to be honest, fair, and just to all of society.” Business must act now and with urgency, he said. Business and government must collaborate to create a more just, more fair, and more productive society. Business must stand for human value, morality, and truth.
Who can make the changes necessary? Boards of directors, shareholders, banks, government, CEOs – all must pull together, he said. “But today’s CEOs must lead the change.”
“We know what to do,” said Georgescu. But it will not be easy. “It is hard going. We are working against the clock.”
For more information, see Capitalists Arise, by Peter Georgescu and David Dorsey; Berrett-Kohler Publishers, Inc.; Oakland, CA; 2017. https://petergeorgescu.com/books/capitalists-arise/
Want to know how best to commemorate the sacrifices American military personnel on Memorial Day – and every other day? Here’s a poignant and thoughtful suggestion from a combat veteran, as shared in a social media post by Jake Trapper of CNN:
Someone on social media was wondering why President Trump capitalizes words that shouldn’t be capitalized.
The answer, of course, is that he is the world’s foremost expert on the development of grammar in West Germanic languages and he intuitively understands the complex relationship between capitalization, philosophy, economics, and the evolution of western political thought. Every character of every tweet is painstakingly calibrated to communicate precisely the correct message to precisely the correct audience. He is playing three-dimensional chess while his detractors are playing chutes and ladders. Either that, or he’s an idiot.
I’ve resumed working
out regularly with weights. Not that I
want a better body, but it’s pretty well-accepted that some weight training is
very helpful for maintaining flexibility, stamina, and mobility, especially as
you age. And that pretty much sums it up for me.
Plus, as I like to
tell my young bride, chicks dig it.
And because you wouldn’t want to fall over and break a hip while putting on your socks when, with a little more effort, you can trip over a pile of free weights and crack your skull on a five-ton gym apparatus.
I keep seeing posts and
memes in support of term limits for members of Congress. It appears that term
limits for Congress is a popular idea. This
is somewhat confusing, as I always thought that terms were already limited. I
am sure I read somewhere that representatives serve two-year terms and senators
serve for six years.
If a member of Congress serves longer than a single term, isn’t it because voters want them to continue in office? Incumbent officeholders still have to run in elections to remain in office, right? If voters are dissatisfied with someone’s performance, can’t they elect someone else?
So, by imposing term limits,
are we saying that voters aren’t competent to select their own representatives? If so, why hold elections at all?
Or are we saying that
experience in Congress is automatically undesireable? Do we prefer other professionals to be
inexperienced? Emergency Medical Technicians? Nuclear power plant operators? Auto
mechanics? (“Wow, that’s a complicated piece
of engineering there, Mr. Jones. I’ve never actually seen an engine like this. I
did read a little about them when I was in school last year, so let’s take a
look. Please hand me that hammer and step back…”)
Is there data that shows that inexperienced legislators are more effective? Actually, there is data, based on the experiences of state legislatures which have already implemented term limits, and the data does not support the idea that term limits reduce corruption or otherwise improve the performance of legislators. In fact, there is evidence that less experienced legislators are more dependent on lobbyists and other interest groups.
There are plenty of problems with Congress, starting with the fact that there are no real incentives for bipartisan cooperation. Changing out the people working in a wildly dysfunctional system is the political equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as the ship fills with water.
Term limits probably won’t hurt much, except in cases where effective and popular legislators are prevented from running for re-election and are replaced by inexperienced legislators who rely on special interest groups to help them ‘understand’ complex policy issues. But as a means of improving Congressional performance, they are a simplistic and ineffective answer to a complex problem, and any energy expended advocating term limits is effort that could be better used elsewhere.
A film called “Green Book” has won the Oscar for Best
Picture. I don’t know anything about the film, but I know a little about the
actual Green Book.
The Negro Motorist Green Book was a travel guide written and published by a former mailman named Victor Hugo Green. It listed places across the country where black citizens could actually buy gas, a meal, or a room for the night. It was a sadly necessary resource for black Americans for most of the twentieth century, when segregation was legal and might at any moment be enforced by violence.
Although the film is described as a “comedy-drama,” I don’t think real-life black Americans found much amusement in the fact that they were banned from commercial establishments all over their own nation.
If I were to make a film referencing the Green Book, I think I would focus on a middle-class black family and describe the extraordinary obstacles they faced in doing something as simple as driving across their own country – on roads supported by their tax dollars.
I am sure it was great fun to worry about where you might be able to get gas – that is, where you might find a gas station (or a restaurant, or a motel) that would actually serve you. The film would include a heartwarming scene in which the dad – a combat veteran perhaps – has to explain to his young son why they are not allowed to stop at most of the places they pass and why there are some towns that they must avoid after dark – lest they be beaten, jailed, or both. It would also be inspiring to hear how they feared local law enforcement officers at all times.
Of course, I guess that scene would be unrealistic, as no black kid in America ever misunderstood the effects of legal discrimination, segregation, and racial hostility.
