Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Quick Hits: Volume CCXXI

- In what has become the ultimate evergreen sentiment, we live in very stupid times.

The latest affirmation is the outrage being ginned up over Oklahoma St. football coach Mike Gundy wearing a t-shirt with One America News Network's logo on it. The flap began when OSU running back Chuba Hubbard took exception to his coach showing support for a network which he feels diminished the plight of black people. One allegation is OANN host Liz Wheeler claimed Black Lives Matter was a "farce."

Ms. Wheeler provided clarification.




Pro Football Talk writer Mike Florio wrote in a Monday piece that Gundy "was wrong to wear a T-shirt supporting a news outlet that pegs the needle to the right of FOX News, that traffics in ridiculous and dangerous conspiracy theories, and that employs a host who has called Black Lives Matter a criminal organization."

Apparently Florio is selective in his outrage over controversial apparel. For 3+ years, Florio has advocated almost weekly that Colin Kaepernick be given a job in the NFL in spite of the fact Kap once donned a t-shirt which praised murderous tyrant Fidel Castro. If Kaepernick's t-shirt incident was ever cited by NFL teams as a reason they didn't sign him, I'm betting progs like Florio would go so far as to attempt to write nuanced think pieces on Castro's "complicated legacy."


- This simple little video mocking CNN host Chris Cuomo has gone viral.




Sure, it's utterly hilarious. However, Cuomo has often had a less than perfect track record on his views regarding the First Amendment. Remember when he erroneously thought it didn't cover "hate speech?" Good times.


- So this is utterly depressing.

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN on Monday he is "not confident" that there will be a 2020 baseball season and that "as long as there's no dialogue" with the MLB Players Association, "that real risk is going to continue."

In a conversation with Mike Greenberg for ESPN's The Return of Sports special, Manfred walked back comments made to ESPN last week, when he said "unequivocally, we are going to play Major League Baseball this year" and pegged the likelihood at "100 percent."

"I'm not confident. I think there's real risk, and as long as there's no dialogue, that real risk is going to continue," Manfred said when asked if he is certain there will be a season.

The chance that there will be no season increased substantially on Monday, when the commissioner's office told the players' association that it will not proceed with a schedule unless the union waives its right to claim that management violated a March agreement between the feuding sides, a source told ESPN, confirming a report by the Los Angeles Times.

Look, I get it. Given the fact we're enduring a global pandemic with COVID-19 in addition to racial tensions in America boiling over, not having a baseball season is not a literal tragedy in the grand scheme of things. But if we lose even an abbreviated season of MLB, this could spell serious trouble for its future. Remember in 1994 when a players strike resulted in the postseason being cancelled? It took a solid four years for fans to start coming back to the ballpark, and that was due in large part to an impossible-to-predict historic 1998 season featuring the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run binge.

Another large concern MLB has is the current Collective Bargaining Agreement with players will expire after 2021. With the sport already losing fans and failing miserably at gaining new ones, it's not an understatement to say that Major League Baseball is dangerously close to becoming irrelevant.

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