Is baseball "dying"? Keith Olbermann makes an arguable case post #1994strike

Olbermann, on the 20th anniversary of the 1994 players' strike in Major League Baseball, and the approaching replacement of Bud Melman Selig as commissioner has a great video about how, even though baseball seems to be a cash cow today, demographics plus marketing raise concerns for the future.



"The kids are disappearing," he says.

First, here's this part. Olbermann says that wunderkind Mike Trout ranks only No. 100 among top athletes among today's youngsters 12 and older. Chris Paul, not the most popular NBA player, though high up, is ahead of him at No. 86. O.J. Simpson, retired for 30 years, a civil suit loser for about 20, and a felon for better than half a decade, is just behind Trout at No. 105, he says. Babe Ruth, at No. 18, is far ahead of Trout, even if dead for 66 years. And, LeBron James, mentioned near the end, is far, far, far ahead of Trout. As Olbermann notes, unretired swimming star Michael Phelps (maybe it's the bong hits?) and soccer/world football star Lionel Messi also rank ahead of Trout.

Other points?

National baseball broadcasts, as opposed to regional sports network ones, are tanking. So much so that national NBA broadcasts are ahead of them.

Avid baseball fans, by age, are three years older than the national average. At the time of the strike, they were a year younger. Olbermann notes that NBA fans have aged, too, but less than the country as a whole.

Contra occasional troll-level NBC Sports blogger Craig Calcaterra, where I first saw this, and who regularly does a strawmanning "baseball is dying" post, Olbermann's on a fair amount of solid ground here.

His solutions?

Getting rid of interleague play might help national game of the week broadcasts. I'm not sure. But, I get his drift. Baseball has become too much like other sports. That larger point is right.

Calcaterra's sneer about worrying about depending too much on regional sports network money, which does not face full revenue sharing, is also right. It's true that the NBA, which has less than full revenue sharing, unlike the NFL, has small-market Milwaukee and semi-small market Sacramento and San Antonio. (If one semi-cheats and includes metro Austin, San Antonio isn't a small market at all.)

But baseball also has Pittsburgh and Kansas City. And Cincinnati and Cleveland. The last three, while all bigger than Milwaukee, which is in both sports, are all smaller than Sacto and San Antonio (without Austin). That said, the NBA's Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City are smaller yet.

However, because the NBA's national audience is better than baseball's, it addresses equality — and fandom — issues better.

Sadly, it's too late to eliminate interleague play, or other Selig follies.

We can, though, do too things.

Enforce rule 6.02, about keeping batters in the box, and 8.04, about time between pitches. Those alone would speed up games a lot, and can be done without nuttier independent minor league ideas.

So too, would the next best thing to killing interleague play — killing the DH. Do all of that, and even a Red Sox game, with David Ortiz either on the bench or else at 1B, shouldn't need to run more than 3 hours.

(For more on how Rob Manfred is NOT a slam dunk to replace Selig, read this NYT piece. Also note the "takedown" of Tom Werner in Olbermann's video. Trumping both plus Tim Brosnan? She's not African-American, but Kim Ng is a minority and a woman. And, per Olbermann and demographics, younger than any of the three finalists, too. Food for thought.)

Why does #GregAbbott hate the #EPA guaranteeing water quality?

That, and political red meat to tea partiers, is about the only reason he can write the letter he did to the Environmental Protection Agency opposing its new ideas on wetlands, namely, to include seasonal and rain-dependent areas.

Abbott and tea partiers know that this includes lots of West Texas river headwaters, headwaters of rivers that, when damned further downstream, provide a lot of drinking and industrial use waters for Central and East Texas.

But, instead, we get the pout:

The proposal “is without adequate scientific and economic justification and, if finalized, would erode private property rights and have devastating effects on the landowners of Texas,” he wrote as part of a public comment period on the proposal, threatening to sue if it’s not withdrawn.   

Which is, of course, untrue. (The "without adequate scientific ... justification.") The lawsuit threat, coming from Dr. Strangeabbott, is quite real.

The economic justification is also adequate, as I explained above.

On private property rights? I believe said seasonal streams are already marked on maps of deeds, etc., accepted as legal by the state of Texas via its 254 counties. So, this wouldn't involve any change in property rights.

Abbott isn't even a good shyster attorney at times, if I can rebut him that easily.

Meanwhile, the Texas Trib sets this in the background of previous battles by Abbott, often in conjunction with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, against the EPA.

That said, there's one person, even more than the political lackeys at the TCEQ, who has the power, in some way, shape, or form, to protect Texas' water quality, and water supply.

His name is Ken Kendrick, and he will potentially have this power if you help elect him as Texas' Agriculture Commissioner.

Friend Perry, about 10 days ago, did an excellent blog interview with Kendrick.

As Perry notes, Kendrick has a broad-ranging campaign that covers:
1. Water safety
2. Water conservation
3. Corporate accountability
4. Food labeling

And more. 

Don't even think about other names, whether they've got a fake D with a camouflage R after their name, or a bright red R.

Just look at Ken Kendrick.

Update: I emailed this link to Kendrick, and he responded, asking what I thought was a good next step forward.

I told him to "preach" the water quality and water supply issues to Central and East Texas. Especially campaigning against two Republicans, he's got a chance to make inroads in any metro area that gets its water from the Brazos or the Colorado.

Those "seasonal streams" that Abbott doesn't give a damn about? In West Texas, they're called "draws" or "arroyos" and they're the headwaters of both those rivers. Other "seasonal streams" feed the Pecos and Rio Grande.

Dear #TigerWoods: Please stop lying -- to yourself

Because that's the point we're at.

Whether to please a sponsor or whatever, you came back too early from your back surgery, then lied about how ready you were. Maybe it was you trying to live up to the myth of superhumanness that's gone from myth to cartoon.

Then, you obviously liked about your back before the start of the PGA. And, were forced to eat your words.

Please don't follow this with groveling to Tom Watson for a Ryder Cup berth for the prestige. 

The US is going to get smoked like cheap brisket whether you're on that team or not. It's an event where you have a poor track record. And your interest in being named to the team seems to be more about your prestige, or "brand," or something, than it does reality.

As a friend of mine said, maybe daddy Earl, were he still alive, might be able to tell you to stop and put down the clubs. I don't know if your mom can do that, let alone help you escape the myth of your own (and Earl's) building, or not.

Anyway, you're not "lying" to us as much as you are entertaining many of us through how flimsy this all is. You're lying to yourself.

And, until you accept some reality, you're only shooting yourself in the foot with the lies. Until you accept the new reality, hitting the peak of whatever realistic peak you still have left is impossible.

I'm nowhere near your favorite fan, but I would find you to deserve a little bit more rooting, at least, if you would practice yet more "acceptance." You seemed to indicate you would, in part by dipping into your mother's Buddhism, after Hydrantgate. Doing more would be good. 

Update, Aug. 13: Thank you for being honest with yourself, and the golf world, by withdrawing from Ryder consideration, and also for announcing you would sit everything out until early December.

Texans have a real option in the Ag Commissioner race

The Texas Green Party's best candidate this year, by far, is Ken Kendrick, running for state agriculture commissioner.

Kendrick rose to fame through exposing salmonella problems at two Peanut Corporation of America facilities. He knows food safety, and as a whistleblower, he knows the need to protect other people telling the truth on food safety.

But, his campaign is far more than that.

Friend Perry, about 10 days ago, did an excellent blog interview with Kendrick.

As Perry notes, Kendrick has a broad-ranging campaign that covers:
1. Water safety
2. Water conservation
3. Corporate accountability
4. Food labeling

And more. 

Don't even think about other names, whether they've got a fake D with a camouflage R after their name, or a bright red R.

Just look at Ken Kendrick.

Dear Leader headed for deep doo-doo on Iraq

First, Dear Leader announced last Friday, which I blogged about, that he was going to use air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. In making his announcement, he ignored such things as the possibility that ISIS might have Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

The fact that he said this:

“I don’t think we’re going to solve this problem in weeks,” Mr. Obama said before leaving for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. “This is going to be a long-term project.”

Followed by this:

“The most important time table that I’m focused on right now is the Iraqi government getting formed and finalized,” the president said before boarding Marine One.

And knowing the reality of the last pre-election government under Nuri al-Maliki, made me wonder if he was willing to condone a coup, or a semi-coup, to change course in Iraq.

Well, this morning, my suspicions deepened. Iraq's president,  Fuad Masum, said he was naming a new prime minister candidate,  Haider al-Abadi, to replace Maliki, who through Iraqi factionalism mixed with his own growing authoritarianism, has not been able to form a government himself since the latest elections.

At the least, even if we don't call it a semi-coup, it's about like the U.S. cutting off financial aid to the Palestinian Authority any time it breathes in the same air as Hamas.

At the same time, Abadi may turn out to be an even tougher, or smarter, or more corrupt, political and sectarian infighter than Maliki. The Times notes of him:

As an adviser to Mr. Maliki, he was instrumental in expelling former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari from the Dawa Party in 2008.

Well, that's that!

And now, we're directly arming the Kurds, which gives ISIS more reasons to fire back, the Kurds more opportunity to "go their own way" should they defeat ISIS soundly enough, and the rest of Iraq more reasons to fear that.

Hey, Mr. Veep Biden? Your once-touted threefold division of Iraq is nearing reality.

Update, Aug. 12: ISIS is playing 11-dimensional chess against Obama on the airstrikes.

Update, Aug. 13: Shades of Vietnam: Obama is sending more military advisers to Iraq. And talking about using ground troops for "humanitarian" missions.

On that latter?

“What he’s ruled out is reintroducing U.S. forces into combat on the ground in Iraq,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser said. He added, using an alternative name for (ISIS), that the deployment of ground troops to assist a rescue was “different than reintroducing U.S. forces in a combat role to take the fight to ISIL.”

Yeah, but ... this is just like the Stinger situation with airstrikes. U.S. troops get shot, and U.S. troops are going to want more manpower to fire back.

In short, this is Shrub Bush's Iraq strategy run through a sieve of neoliberal micromanagement.

Your #GregAbbott movie text of the week is #Kirby

"Thank" Greg Abbott for interrupting your movie.

I blogged recently, as shown by the photo at left with my Photoshopped image bubble, about Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott's new barf-inducing low of asking people to text him from movies:

In a new twist, Abbott is taking his campaign to the movies. He is running an ad in two dozen movie theaters across the state, playing on every screen a film is being shown. The ad asks moviegoers to text the word “FREEDOM” to the campaign. The effort is aimed at collecting information the campaign can use to identify and boost turnout in November.

This combines three barf factors of the modern movie-going experience:
1. Ads before movies;
2. Political advertising in general today;
3. People using cellphones at movies.

This is also another post-Citizens United sign of a political system so damned swamped with money that candidates don't even know what the hell to do with all of it, other than inundate us even more.

That said, if you don't want to follow the photo and text "fuck off," there are other options.

For example in light of Wendy Davis' first campaign video:



The text to Abbott for this week is "Kirby."