Dodecahedron

In the late 80s, people loved the Street Sports Baseball game, and the franchise in general. By this time, Hardball had been out for a while, so I found this game (and every other baseball game of the era) unplayable. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Street_Sports_Baseball La Russa's Ultimate Baseball is a close second to the original Hardball. Hardball's drawback was once you started running (or stealing), you could not change your mind and run back to the base. Ultimate Baseball had this feature, but was otherwise a tad boring in comparison.

There are people who play the original Hardball on the C-64 and manually keep track of stats. If you go to the "Forums" section on this website, you'll find the thread. https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34474

It's Monday -- so we know the Vikes will find a way to look embarrassing on the national stage.

It's good that Maeda got his due recognition.

There was a rumor that the Sox are also bring back Dummy Hoy and Fielder Jones, to help out with coaching batting strategy and fielding. I did not believe the rumor at first but I saw a picture of Dummy's new locker, so it's real.

I expect him to ask for a 4-year contract. He might get three, but it'll be $15M/per either way. I see $12M thrown around in this thread -- he will get more than that even if he can only get another 1 year deal.

He retired at age 87, which is incredible. I wonder how much he cared about making money by the end. One wonders how much work he was really doing by that time, or if he was like Joe Paterno who was "the coach" at Penn State in spite of never appearing on the field for several years.

This is a genius move by the White Sox. They add another hall of fame manager while spending, well, nothing at all. Dollars-to-wins, this is the best move in MLB history.

A lot of teams will be looking at Odorizzi, in spite of him being a career #3. I would caution against overvaluing his 1 year as a #1/#2, unless the Twins are certain that it wasn't a fluke. Odorizzi will want a long contract, and he will not be cheap. I'm not sure the Twins want to plop $60M on Odorizzi right now.

To answer the question in the title, I would think the money would need to come from the MLB team. It does not make much sense for a minor league team to pay its own league for the right to become an affiliate. It would certainly make sense for the MLB team to need to pay for the privilege.

La Russa is going to be fine, I wouldn't worry about him being "cancelled" -- whatever that actually means. La Russa's hiring seemed out of place from the start, just by the fact that he has not managed for a decade and his age. Seems like once we turned over the stone and looked at what was underneath, his hiring seems even more out of place. It's correct for people to say he does not seem to be a fit for a team in Chicago, given the other facts that are coming to the surface. (Even for the DUIs -- Chicago may be a huge drinking city, but there are trains. )

To be fair, he was barely over the limit for his first DUI and he seemed to take responsibility.

This will be La Russa's second DUI. We will see if this makes a difference to the White Sox at this point. 76 seems a little old to be getting DUIs. I'm 50 and binge drinking hasn't been fun for me for as long as I can remember. After a while it's sort of like, "Oh, this feeling again. Big deal."

La Russa being back is interesting. Calls of him being "out of touch" are impossible to verify. He last managed ten years ago with a WS title. Some of his St. Louis teams were light on talent (and low on spending) but high on wins. He knew something other managers didn't. What the La Russa hiring says is that the White Sox want to win it all *right now*. Expect them to go all in with spending. You don't hire a 76 year old manager to win three years from now. This is an interesting strategy in the middle of a pandemic and in a city that has stricter quarantine rules than the rest of the state and country. Perhaps the White Sox expect it to be cheaper to go "all in" now than in the upcoming years.

It takes the same amount of time. A manager won't "make the change" until the start of the half inning in case the game situation changes, and every new pitcher is allowed the same number of warm up pitches on the mound.

Yes.

Rigged!

He did that well? Wow. The Twins could have used that last year for sure. If you believe the window is closing for the Twins, the Twins lost that trade. I doubt anyone here believes that, but it's a possibility as there will be changes next year.

Odorizzi is Pavstache 2.0 ... just let him go and let his constant clownish injuries be someone else's problem. He gave the Twins a good year, celebrate that and let him go elsewhere.

Depends on what you mean by "far off" I suppose. This team can turn it around quickly to be a bubble playoff team that either just misses or is eliminated after a round or two. After all, this is how they have been for a decade and the division is constantly in flux; even if they're not very good, in many years they will have a chance to make the playoffs and even get ten wins. If by "far off" you mean a visit to the conference championship or superbowl, yes they are very far off.

If you consider the history of the franchise, Cousins is the most perfect Vikings quarterback ever. He fits exactly with what other "Good" quarterbacks have done with this franchise. Good stats, no clutch ability. I was happy when the Vikings gave him a long and expensive contract because everything about him being a Vikings quarterback is just so perfect. I knew I didn't have to stress about anything; any team led by Cousins is going to implode. This leaves me to sit back and enjoy Vikings games stress-free. If they lose, it's as the gods willed it. And lose is what they will do; even a 15-1 season won't produce a super bowl win with Cousins at the helm. With Cousins, the Vikings are "business as usual" -- we can look at basically any past Vikings season and know what's going to happen when Cousins is under center. It's great. Thank you, Vikings, for making this so easy for us fans. We have no chance of getting sucked in to the mirage and having our hearts broken again in the playoffs -- we can already predict it with precision certainty. Again, THANK YOU. Finding the quintessential Vikings quarterback and overpaying him with a long contract is absolute perfection. It's beautiful. Now, we are talking about who we should get rid of after this bad year. Zimmer, Spielman, Cousins? Cousins won't go anywhere, but the Vikes should be aggressive about signing a good-to-great #2 and let that work itself out naturally. Cousins will be gone before we know it (albeit at the end of his contract), and that has to be planned for. Zimmer should not go unless he demanded Cousins get that large contract extension. Zimmer is many things, but dumb isn't one of them, so I doubt that's the case. And anyway, who would the Vikings find who is any better? This leaves Spielman. And sure, he should go. He had a nice run but his era hasn't exactly been scandal-free or elite. It's time for a reset there.

"The Shift" has taken on a new life in the statcast era. In retrospect, this is an obvious evolution and was no doubt one of the selling points of statcast in the first place. Teams would be dumb to have all this data and not use it. The MLB would be dumb to give them this data and then tell them they can't use it. HOWEVER, I can see the MLB banning the fielders from using the lineup cards they are using while in the field. Using these "cheat sheets" to know where to stand is not cheating, but it seems against the spirit of baseball. Players should either memorize where to stand, or the dugout can use signals. If pitchers and catchers can't use cheat sheets to do their jobs, neither should anyone else in the field.

With the new rules around when you can switch out a relief pitcher, coupled with his declining performance, Romo has no role.

Not sure, but in general the MLB favors playing early season games in southern climates. Certainly that's not universal, but weather is something baseball considers when making schedules and the Twins considered when building Target field. Anyway, outdoor baseball is what the fans wanted. If the Pohlads had built another dome, there would have been riots in the streets!

The field is heated. The Twins would probably cancel a snowy game just to keep people from traveling, but they could play if they want. It's much more miserable to me when it is rainy and windy and in the 40s-50s than it is when it is snowing, and most of the country gets that during the fall and spring.