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Eastwood

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Eastwood

  1. Walks into hornet nest. Wonders why he got stung.
  2. So livid they waited until Mike Fiers broke the locker room code of silence to speak out about it. They were all moving on with their lives while the MLB looked the other way for as long as possible. If Mike Fiers doesn't say anything, all of these "livid" players would grumble to themselves and then tell stories about it on TV a decade later after they take an analyst job. If the entirety of the MLB was livid, then why didn't any single one team speak up about it outside of the conference room of the MLB front office? You know what I think is behind all of this, to be honest? Pitchers are sick and tired of having the deck stacked against them. MLB is going to juice the ball, ignoring pitcher complaints in the process, AND do nothing while sign stealing gets more sophisticated? Eventually, something had to give and it's easier to pin the sign stealing crackdown on one team than to indict the whole sport, which has a romanticized tradition on cheating unless it isn't the right kind of cheating. Mike Fiers provided a window for people who didn't have the balls to come forward otherwise.
  3. Simple Apple watch-like buzzer system is all they need. Catcher wears it on his glove wrist, pitcher wears it on his. Tap out the sign, pitcher relays it back if he likes it. Connected directly by Bluetooth or even a step further having the devices exclusively paired and unable to pair with other devices. But hey, baseball was the last major sport to incorporate replay, resisting the computer called balls and strikes, and the old man sport will continue to yell at the cloud.
  4. It's a thread to consolidate the sign stealing controversy so the MLB offseason thread and the Astros offseason thread can talk about the ghosts of baseball future instead of the ghost of baseball past.
  5. Penn State and Baylor fans weren't mad because all the other schools were allowing the systemic rape of young boys over a 20 year period or covering up 50+ rapes over a 3 year period. There are plenty of takes to give on Astros fans not accepting why the rest of the league has turned on them, but that one ain't it.
  6. It goes deeper than that, in terms of the NFL. The rule that teams must interview at least one person of color for a head coaching or senior operations jobs before selecting a candidate is known as the Rooney Rule. As in Dan Rooney, the owner of the Steelers up until his death in 2017. The Rooney family still runs the Steelers. To accuse an organization like the Steelers, who has that kind of legacy, of covering up something like this is a level of stupid that could only be achieved by someone like Myles Garrett and those who continue to support him.
  7. I'll have you know, sir, that unlike aggy the Astros actually won something while cheating.
  8. HOF is an organization independent of the MLB. Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa all still have their stats. Bonds still has all of his records. Hell, the Giants retired his number and put him in their Wall of Fame just 11 years after he was indicted for lying under oath about his steroid use. He played 4 more years and broke Hank Aaron's record after admitting to steroids. The Astros cheated and were caught. The MLB doesn't have a history of retroactively vacating stats, awards, or titles. Slap the asterisk on it to put it behind everyone and move on. Until the MLB makes it their mission to clean up the sport from top to bottom, it will remain the second dirtiest sport behind NASCAR and the dirtiest sport of the Big 4.
  9. The MLB is only second to NASCAR in terms of passively tolerated cheating. There's the "rules," and then there's the "rules rules."
  10. Oh, and one more thing: all this talk about pitchers plunking Astros batters is absolute cowardly horseshit. Their balls were two sizes too small to plunk when they knew about it in 2018 and 2019, but all of a sudden grew like the Grinch's heart when they seemingly have the implied green light from fans and media. And the Astros batters know this. If the league doesn't get out in front of that in a big way early, we'll see some real violence instead of the millionaire bench clearing temper-tantrum slap fights that we normally see.
  11. Like. Fucking. Clockwork.
  12. Here's the thing that makes me absolutely livid about this... Cheating happens all the time in baseball. At all levels. All levels. The MLB itself cheats the game by juicing the ball. Players juiced to the absolute gills. Pitchers have been putting every substance known to man on the ball for an edge. Scuffing the ball. Pine tar. Snot. Whatever for an extra inch of movement. Corking bats and getting caught red handed. But almighty baseball and their decrepit, old as fuck, unwritten rules loving core fan base picks and chooses what is "real" cheating and what isn't. Teams knew what the Astros were doing DURING THE SEASON, as evidenced by mound visits and changing of strategy during the game, and don't say jack shit. People are willing to suspend belief and pretend like the players weren't talking about this behind closed doors while it was happening and sat on it because they were all doing some form of this one way or another. People want to pretend like the MLB home office didn't already hear about this while it was happening and sat on it the way MLB sits on everything. Red Sox did it with Apple watches but nobody cares because they didn't win anything using it. But Mike grows a conscious all of a sudden, goes to the press, and now because the media got its teeth into it and now the MLB is all fire and brimstone and shocked, absolutely shocked that cheating is going on in America's past time of only the holiest of holy integrity and sacred worship of all that is unwritten tradition. So now all of these players who have shared locker rooms with guys who cheat and said absolutely dick about it and continue to look the other way are getting their soundbites in, getting in their shots so as to appear to be above the cheating fray, but we all know how this is going to end. It's going to come out after all the damage is done to Houston that 16 other teams did this, too, and some of the guys dropping hot sound bites will be popped for some other form of unsanctioned cheating, but people aren't going to give near as much of a fuck as they did when Houston did it. Because that's how sports roll. The only thing people care about is how much blood you can put in the water to feed the frenzy. And if you're an East Coast media darling team that gets ESPN paid like the proven, multi-time champions of cheating NE Patriots, or the "no price is to high, no crime is too big" SEC, then who cares, still a dynasty, bruh. If the Yankees won a World Series and it came out this was happening, it would be "sign stealing has always been a part of the game. It's just more sophisticated now." Fuck, man, when Barry Bonds' head and hands grew 5 sizes in one summer from replacing his entire blood supply with the stem cells of 1,000 baby fetus, you still had people in the media saying "it doesn't put the bat on the ball for him! He still has to hit it!" And I'll say this: Mike Fiers isn't some hero in the front office behind closed doors. He went outside the family on this one. MLB will crush anyone who says that publicly and will continue to laud him as a catalyst towards "bringing integrity back to the game," but lets be real here. This is the same league that punted for as long as possible on juiced players because the home runs brought more eyeballs. It wasn't until the media started pushing the issue did the righteous indignation popped up. Mike Fiers brewed up a shit storm and nobody in the MLB front office is happy about this. Oakland isn't happy about this. That locker room just lost a little extra "sanctity" over this. A's players will be looking over their shoulder a little more with a guy known to spill the locker room secrets around them. Fiers is in his contract year this year. He had a fantastic first year. If he has anything less than a stellar year, the A's aren't re-signing him. MLB is quietly hoping that Fiers does everyone a favor and fades into the background. There. That's it. This is everything that I've been quietly ranting to myself about in traffic for the past two months. Now some 65 year old baseball purist can chime in and tell me how I don't know dick about the "real history" of the game and why what the Astros did was somehow different than the thousands of instances of systemic, continuous, and premeditated cheating that happens every season. It's either cheating or it's not. Either it's all punished or none of it is punished. Unwritten rules, my ass.
  13. Dozier's is on my way to family, so I go by there at least once a month. Anywhere that has you running the pit gets my business. Looking forward to it.
  14. Wait, so 10% of the global population is under lockdow over a virus?
  15. According to the Dan Patrick Show a couple of weeks ago, Dan's source in the NFLPA had said they have tried to intervene and basically hold an intervention with AB, but he very clearly and aggressively told them to gtfo.
  16. Start filling up Home Depot buckets and trash cans full of gas.
  17. Predators and prey always have a way of finding each other in these situations. This is on the very extreme side of the scale, but we all knew a sheltered girl who went off to college and just so happened to attract the biggest piece of shit on campus who then methodically mentally and emotionally abuses her until she essentially becomes his property. I'm assuming there is an element of that here for some of the victims.
  18. Old Austin died and New Austin is already dead, too. Austin is just another big city, now.
  19. 5 years later after Gus started his downturn? Fun. Should have been immediate.
  20. Jones doesn't give rematches to close fights.
  21. I had it 3-2. I would say that Reyes lost it in the last minute of the last round, but it's hard to overcome the stupidity of 49-46.
  22. Ranked 10 this year, one behind Texas.
  23. Tennessee is the bigger offender in that. Has been an absolute dumpster fireonger than UT but still rakes in top 5 recruiting classes, regardless of coach.
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