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MC Fresh Breath

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by MC Fresh Breath

  1.  

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    ariners Terminate Contract of Dr. Lorena Martin, Director of High Performance, Amid Controversy

    The Mariners have terminated Dr. Martin’s three-year contract after just a year, and Dr. Martin has alleged racial discrimination

    By John Trupin and Isabelle Minasian  Nov 12, 2018, 4:12pm PST
     

    Screen_Shot_2018_11_12_at_3.50.40_PM.0.p

    While waiting for news to break of where LHP James Paxton would next be headed, the Marinersorganization has instead delivered a bombshell of far more distressing proportions. The news itself is troubling at best: Dr. Lorena Martin, hired just one year ago to the position of Director of High Performance, has been fired by the organization.

    With two more years on her contract, reportedly, it seems the issues were severe, and the Mariners appear to feel they are an aggrieved party in the situation, such that they are attempting to avoid paying the rest of Dr. Martin’s contract. While it’s unknown what the details of her contract were, it is common in sports for coaches and coach-like personnel to have “for cause” clauses in their contracts. These clauses tend to protect the employee from firing without pay before the conclusion of their deal without specific cause - in other words not just because they weren’t performing their job as well as desired. This is famously common in college football, although prevalent throughout many sports, and other professions, where coaches often receive significant payouts after delivering poor results due to having received guarantees of payment barring a “for cause” firing (see, Petrino, Bobby).

    The situation, however, only gets thornier from there. Dr. Martin outlined a list of issues with the Mariners organization on both her Instagram and Twitter accounts, which touch the highest levels of the front office.

     

    The Mariners organization has issues.
    The things I’ve witnessed first hand have left me shocked, GM Jerry Dipoto, Manager Scott Servais, and Director of PD Andy McKay speak about players like this
    Calling LATINOS, LAZY, DUMB, and STUPID, especially DOMINICANS#discrimination

     
    325 people are talking about this
     
     
     

    As is sometimes the case, Tweets and posts get deleted, so should that occur, here is the text from Dr. Martin’s post:

     

    Lorena_Martin_statement.jpegDr. Lorena Martin

    Dr. Martin further elaborated in response to Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times outlining the situation, stating that the Mariners organization had been in negotiations with her about a more quiet parting of ways.

    dToqsTWH_normal.jpeg

    The Mariners decided to terminate the contract of Dr. Lorena Martin, who was hired to be the team's high performance director last offseason. Martin has commented on the situation on her instagram account. https://www.instagram.com/p/BqGUTHYhzq3/ 

     
     

    From all angles this is a disastrous situation. These allegations come on the heels of further organizational problems and controversy. Earlier in the 2018 season a Seattle Times exposé found that the Mariners dealt with three reported cases of reported sexual harassment by high-level officials, including current President Kevin Mather. Mather, save for a public apology following the article, has done nothing and continues to preside over the organization, while the women involved all left the organization shortly after reporting. And, of course, there was a clubhouse fight near the end of the season, with Jean Segura, a native of the Dominican Republic, at the center.

    We have reached out to the Mariners and Dr. Martin for further comment, and will refrain from speculating until we’ve heard from the respective parties.

    UPDATE: 4:55 PM PT

    The Mariners have released their statement:

     

    Mariners press release regarding the statements made by Dr. Martin.

     

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    Took a break and saw it today at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.  Normally I would rent this kind of thing, but some of those shots on the big screen made it worth it. Bonus:  Whenever you see it the theater probably won't be all that crowded.

     

     

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    In 1923, the mountaineer George Mallory gave an interview to The New York Times in which he famously explained why he was determined to summit Mount Everest. “Because it’s there.” He died in the attempt the following year. Alex Honnold, who last year became the first person to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan alone and without a rope, seems to have a different explanation for why he climbs. “Because I’m here.”

    Honnold, who is 33, doesn’t quite put it in those words, at least not in “Free Solo,” the documentary film about his historic ascent of nearly 3,000 feet of vertical granite. But it’s what transforms the movie from one that’s about a remarkable feat of daring and athleticism into something altogether deeper.

    On Tuesday I went to see “Free Solo” for a second time, after I couldn’t get it out of my head. I still can’t. The film is a drug. It causes your pupils to dilate, your palms to sweat, and your mind to boggle. Even as you know that Honnold is going to make it to the top, you can’t believe what you’re seeing — a young man, millimeters from extinction, transforming the unthinkable into the sublime. “Free Solo” is 97 minutes long and if you could hold your breath the whole time you probably would.


    But the thrills of the movie turn out to be incidental to its real purpose, which is less about climbing than it is about living. Honnold, it turns out, isn’t simply the most accomplished rock climber of our time. He also has a first-rate mind, capable of thinking through both the minute choreography of his moves across the wall as well as the basic questions of his time on earth.

    Questions like: Should long life be a goal of life? What about happiness? If not happiness, what about excellence? If excellence, what (if anything) should we sacrifice in its pursuit? Love? And when does the pursuit of excellence become mere recklessness?

    Honnold has plainly given the questions serious thought — appropriately, since by his own count he’s climbed rope-free more than 1,000 times and free soloists have notoriously short lifespans. “Anybody could conceivably die on any given day,” he says philosophically. “Soloing just makes it feel much more immediate and present.”

    It is that presence and immediacy that makes free soloing so appealing to Honnold and his peers — not because it brings death so much nearer, but because it makes life so much more vivid and significant. Most of us have been told, at one point or another, to work, study or perform as if our lives depended on it. There just aren’t many activities where it’s literally true.

    Free soloing is one of them. Every move counts. Every motion is considered. No decision is inconsequential. There is no cushion, no second chance, no helping hand. The only route to safety is through the relentless disciplining of body, mind, uncertainty, and fear. In a world of B.S. artists — and in a country led by one — Honnold is modeling something else, a kind of radical truthfulness. Either he’s going to get it exactly right, or he’s going to die.

    How Honnold gets it exactly right is the real heart of “Free Solo,” and why the movie is worth studying. Honnold is not a thrill seeker. He’s a perfectionist who understands that the achievement of one supreme thing depends on the mastery of a thousand small things. Much of the perfectionism seems to come from his mother, Dierdre Wolownick, a retired French professor for whom, as Honnold puts it, “good enough, isn’t.”

    But it’s his mother who also best understands why her son constantly puts his life at risk — and why she doesn’t quarrel with the choice. “When he’s free soloing is when he feels the most alive, the most everything,” she says. “How can you even think about taking that away from somebody?”

    I’m not sure there are many parents who would say the same thing. Why can’t Honnold just be a lawyer or doctor or some other ostensibly respectable profession? Why can’t he put life’s normal fulfillments — his relationship with his lovely girlfriend, Sanni McCandless, for starters — ahead of his seemingly lunatic ambition to achieve something of no obvious utility? Isn’t he merely selfish, and doesn’t his fatalism about life make that selfishness worse?

    You can’t watch “Free Solo” without wondering about all this. As a father, I doubt I could muster Wolownick’s apparent sang-froid were my kids to take similar risks. Perhaps it’s a function of my own deep selfishness, both emotional and biological, that I want my children to bury me, not the other way around.

    And yet.

    On June 3, 2017, Alex Honnold free soloed the Freerider route of El Capitan in three hours and 56 minutes. It wasn’t an act of recklessness but of the kind of planning worthy of a moon landing. It wasn’t an act of selfishness but an extraordinary gift to everyone who believes that the limit of human achievement is far from being reached. It wasn’t a useless stunt but a reminder that utility alone is a poor way to measure the grandeur of one man’s spirit.

    Go see the movie. You’ll see what I mean. And you will be grateful that Alex Honnold is here.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/alex-honnold-free-solo-movie.html#commentsContainer

  3. 8 hours ago, Queen Bitch said:

    The “glitch” is if you vote straight D, your  Senator vote changes to Cruz. If you vote straight R, it votes for no one.

    This goddamned shit is so fucking rigged.

    Is that real?  Now I'm a bit more concerned.  Any more info on this that's not a twitter link?

    Edit: OK, saw the Star-Telegram Link.  Man, I *think* I double checked that, but now some self doubt creeping in.  Dammit.

     

  4. 18 hours ago, bernorange said:

    You know how I know you haven't watched The Punisher?

    Sorry, forgot about that one, and you're right, that was a really good one as well...but our intro to him in terms of Netflix was DD season 2, so I must have mentally grouped him in there.

     

  5. On 10/20/2018 at 6:54 PM, Pato del Muerto said:

    Iron fist and now Luke cage?  Clearly the Hand has infiltrated Netflix. 

     

     

    I'm only about 6 episodes into Daredevil, and really, everything about is top notch.  The other Marvel series on Netflix just suffer in comparison, and just have from the start. 

    I never watched Iron Fist, but had heard enough bad things.  I thought Luke Cage's second season was an improvement from the first season, mainly because the second half of that first season was just horrible, in my opinion.

    Anyway, I hope Daredevil hangs on, and I guess at some point I should watch the second season of Jessica Jones.  I've heard it suffers from a lack of Kilgrave.

    • Like 1
  6. 4 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

    Stark:

     

    Thanks, as always for posting this.

    It is awesome that there was a pitcher named Three Finger Brown, who was apparently very good.

    I also did not know the Dodgers' salary went down this season by that much.  I'm guessing someone dropped from the roster and my brain isn't thinking of who right now.

     

  7. Think ya'll are gonna be allright.  From KXAN:

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    The utility says there are no positive tests for bacteria in the system as of early Monday morning.

     

     

     

     

    But sadly, yes, one day you and I and everyone you know will be dead.

    • Like 1
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