When was Baseball's Golden Age?

It's almost Baseball season (no preseason doesn't count) and don't give me that nostalgia of Pitchers & Catchers reporting as being the start of the season, that's just a throwback to the earlier times when ball players had jobs and didn't work out in the off-season.

In the Star Trek: DS9 universe Capitan Benjamin Sisko loves baseball and his favorite player is a Japanese born shortstop "Buck Bokai", who breaks Joe DiMaggio's immortal 57 game hitting streak, in 2026, but by the 2040's baseball's steep decline in popularity leads to the sports demise.

Nowadays with the massive amounts of money floating around Baseball and the valuation of the Yankees $6 Billion and the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs at $4 Billion it seems far-fetched to imagine baseball disappearing in 20 years.  But, back when DS9 was on the air, baseball still hadn't recovered from the destructive 1994 strike and the 1998 Home Run chase by Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire was still a few years off, it seemed possible baseball might end.

So, in the DS9 universe the baseball of the 21st century was the Golden Era as it encompassed the actual Earth with the Planetary League replacing the Major Leagues but, when was Baseball Golden Age here in the semi-real world?

Tangentially, one of the ideas that baseball trainers and managers believed back in the day was for ballplayers not to lift weights because it will make them "muscle-bound".  Well, despite the now universal belief that weight-lifting is the best thing you can do for your body I sincerely hope teams and players are re-evaluating the idea that getting jacked is an unqualified benefit for ball players.

Last season, White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito decided to become the latest Chicago player to bulk up and he pitched terribly, now new Cubs player from Japan Seiya Suzuki decided he needed more muscle to make it through the grueling MLB season, but his added muscle mass appears to have led to an oblique strain which is apparently serious enough to keep him out of the World Baseball Classic and the foreseeable future for the 2023 Season.

After some consideration I decided a 25 year era bracketed by the bench mark years of 1947 (Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier) to 1972 (Roberto Clemente's untimely death) as a good representation of the best of baseball.

Anything prior to World War 1 can almost be considered a different game and even all the way up to the 1927 Yankees with Murderer's Row can be considered the Stone Age.  The interwar years showcase the greatness of Baseball as a game heard on Radio but, can't really be called a Golden Age due to segregation, training, and equipment.

So, in considering 1947-1972, we get a lot of all-time greats; Stan Musial, Sandy Koufax, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Carl Yastrzemski to name just the greatest.  You also have the great westward expansion as the Giants and Dodgers move to California, plus Kansas City gets the A's then the Royals, and the Senators keep getting eliminated first as the Minnesota Twins, then as the Rangers asTexas gets a couple teams.  So, Baseball had become a nationwide sport. 

It's also before the horrible round multi-use stadiums of the 1970's, or the home run happy Steroid Era, and the Moneyball stupidity of maximizing every at-bat leading to the bore-a-thon 3 True Outcome Era and 3-4 hour games.

And no a strikeout is not the same as any other out, and no the shift isn't bad for baseball, and no walks are not just as good as hits, and no home runs are not the most exciting thing in sports.

Baseball has finally recognized this and adopted a raft of changes for the 2023 season but, is it too late to arrest the current perception of baseball being a boring game? 

Play Ball...

No Time to Terminate the Dark Fate of Life after Ghostbusters but, that's not how the Fast & Furious Force works

 You can't go home again or Let dead Demon Dogs lie 

So... Ghostbusters was terrible.  Now, this isn't a rant because the little girl was made the prime protagonist.  The directors and producers tried to make her a plucky, gawky, and precocious hero and it was contrived, flat, and unbelievable.  But, there are numerous plot holes big enough to march the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man through in this forced crappy plot and stupid ha-ha homages to the first film but, you know what... who cares?

All of this lays at the feet of the current Studio system and Movie Making process.  There are seemingly only two types of films made by Hollywood studios these days; grotesque billion dollar blockbusters and remakes.  The moderate and mid-sized movie project or non-reboot is fading and seen as too risky; as proved the case with the ill-fated The Last Duel which is going to lose some $50 million dollars.  So, in studio accountants eyes it makes sense to green-light remakes (another version of Little Women perhaps?) or reboots or long delayed sequels and prequels.  Because there is believed to be a natural floor of support or a rabid enough fan-base to make the film profitable.

What no one wants to admit and no Hollywood executive wants to understand or confront is these film franchises (and I'm sure there are others I'm missing) are finished:

• Jurassic Park
• Alien
• Terminator
• Star Trek
• Star Wars
• James Bond
• Fast & Furious
• Harry Potter
• Pirates of the Caribbean

Those films had their day.  They told their stories.  But, like legendary aging athletes their day is done.

Now, maybe I'd be willing to watch films set in those universes; Rogue One, which told a story of characters you never heard of was the "best" film to come out of the Disney Studios Star Wars Era (and it wasn't that good) and the best scene was still Darth Vader murdering Rebel scum. 

Films as a story vehicle had their great runs before World War 2 and in the gritty, grimy story telling America post-Vietnam.  There's always been an appetite for serialized content.  From the olden days of radio to the mythical 1930s mini movie series, Americans have loved long form story-telling experiences.  But, we are now in the Era of Serial Television Series, which are afforded greater production value, content latitude, and story telling time which was not available to the sitcoms and soapy dramas of yesteryear.  And now (especially Covid influenced) viewing habits are vastly different; trending towards Binge watching and allowing the watcher to set the time for breaks and intermissions.

Of course, the biggest counter-point to my entire argument is everyone of those remakes, reboots, and sequels is still making big, big bucks for the film studios.  Ghostbusters: Afterlife has made about $185 million thus far on a budget of $80 million.  So, even as individual brick-and-mortar theaters and their parent companies suffer and go bankrupt expect another thoughtless, witless literally juvenile Transformers movie.

Plagiarist Paul Ryan is back to crush the poor and starve children

Ah, P90X Ryan, the poster boy of everything wrong with the Republican Party is back to his Lyin' Ways.

While Representative Paul Ryan has been anointed the Republican Budget Whiz... because... just because... he's also still one of the young up and comers in the Party, even with that Big Loser Donut hung around his neck from the 2012 Presidential election.

If Ryan had managed to weasel his way into the White House the Romney/Ryan Plan would have raised taxes on millions of Americans and transferred the burden of supporting the government onto the backs of the middle class and poor.  From the Tax Policy Center Urban Institute and Brookings Institution August 1, 2012 Report

However, on average, after-tax income for taxpayers earning less than $200,000 would need to decrease by 1.2 percent, an effective tax increase of $500 per household.

95% of Americans, everyone who earned $200,000 or less, would have seen their taxes go up 1.2% under the Romney/Ryan Plan, but those Americans earning $1,000,000 or more (like R-Money himself) would have enjoyed an average tax break of $87,117.

But, what about the Top 0.1%? Ah! Those "earning" more than $3,000,000 in income would have seen $725,000 transferred to them from the increased tax dollars taken from the poor.

Thankfully, America was spared the a Romney/Ryan Presidency which would have accelerated the Plutocracy's Goals of eliminating the Middle Class and shackling the working class with the chains of Wage Slavery and Corporate Bondage.

But, election defeats does not mean Republicans give up the goals of their Moneyed Masters or the conservative principles of Oppression, Intolerance and Adulation of the Rich.

During CPAC 2014, that right-wing parade of mean-spirited charlatans, wild-eyed lunatics, and shifty grifters Paul Ryan let the audience know his party would be the Party of Ideas. But, turns out Paul Ryan, like all Republicans, is an intellectual property thief and the Chief Republican Idea appears to be thievery. Excerpts from Ryan's Speech;

"Take Obamacare", the estate of Henny Youngman the King of the One-Liners called for his check, please.

"What they're offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul."

This line was stolen from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Chain of Command II, a very famous episode because of the prescient way it anticipated the Bush/Cheney Regime ideas and use of Torture.

In the scene, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is being held as a terrorist by the Cardassians who have been  torturing him for military intelligence but, also for sadistic pleasure. Picard has been broken physically, but is still fighting his chief antagonist Gul Madred, the two debate on whether Militarization was good or bad for the Cardassian people,

Gul Madred: What do you know of Cardassian history? 

Picard:I know you were a peaceful people that you had a rich spiritual life --- 

Madred: And what did peace and spirituality get us? People starved by the millions. Bodies went unburied, disease was rampant. The suffering unimaginable... 

Picard: Since the military took over hundreds of thousands more have died --- 

Madred: BUT, we are feeding the people. We acquired territory during the wars. we developed new resources... we initiated a rebuilding program... we have mandated agricultural programs. That is what the military has done for Cardassia. Because of that my daughter will never have to worry about going hungry.

Picard: Her belly may be full, but her spirit will be empty.

But, the biggest theft happened to be Ryan's anecdotal story of Brown Bag Lunch Boy. 

"This reminds me of I story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. He told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch, one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand."

Well, it turns out this "story" was stolen from Laurie Schroff's book An Invisible Thread, and apparently originated from a television interview with Maurice Mazcyk, a young homeless boy featured in book.

Meanwhile, while Ryan is pushing the Republican Goal of eliminating assistance for hungry children  it's fine for Ryan to be swilling $700 worth of free Pinot Noir while on a romantic dinner date with Hedge Fund Manager Clifford S. Asness because Ryan is one of the elected.

Every one of these anecdotal stories Republicans find which conveniently conform to their bigoted, intolerant, oppressive worldview always fall apart under the slightest investigation. It's a conservative axiom; If the evidence doesn't exist, Then just make it up.

So, we understand you and the Republican Party, Paul Ryan. You want the working class to work themselves to death. You hate when the Government does anything to aid the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden. How stupid of Obamacare to offer Americans the chance to stay at home and raise their children or taking time from work to care for a loved one or elderly parent instead of working themselves to exhaustion for bare bones medical care.

So, we understand you Paul Ryan. The Republicans have nothing to offer 99% of Americans. Their ideas and goals are to further enrich the 1%, cement income inequality, and shackle the working class with the chains of unbreakable Corporate Bondage.

The Iran Deal II: The Wrath of the Khan-servatives

The Right's reaction to a diplomatic success was as predictable as it was unhinged. Now, unfortunately the P5+1 Iran Nuclear Deal should be called Obamacare III: The Search for Conservative Sanity because Republicans declared the so-called "Nuclear Option" ending the filibuster to be Obamacare II but, I'm not fluent in right-wing klingon.

Fortunately, the internet provides many who are able to translate right-wing shit-talking and what they uncovered is President Obama's Diplomacy is Munich and the President himself is Neville Chamberlain or A. Hitler.

The constant references to Hitler and WWII go beyond "Godwin's Law" and show us right-wingers have a paucity of reading, knowledge, understanding of any historical time frame to draw upon other than WWII.

Andrew Deadbart's successor Ben Shapiro stated, The easy comparison is to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in Munich in 1938.

Mark Levin, the brains behind Sean Hannity went further, Obama's destruction spreads worldwide; we surrender to Iran.

Munich 2; Deal Reached On Iran's Nukes, howled Joshuapundit. ...President Obama and the West have just decided to accept a nuclear armed Iran.

This is like Munich and Chamberlain all over again, isn't it? said Robert Stacy McCain. Even to think of negotiating with the Tehran regime is a disgrace.

So, Conservatives wasted no time assuring their duped and brain battered followers that Diplomacy by President Obama is tantamount to surrender. Gotta Blame Barack for something!

Of course, its' only inside the American Right-Wing fart bubble of outrage that such diplomacy is seen as surrender, partly because the grifters who continually pump there noxious emissions into the right-wing blog-o-sphere need a fresh supply of outrage to keep fleecing the conservative rubes but also because secretly down in their shriveled loins conservatives hope some Right-Wing Second Amendment Hero will rid them of President Obama.

However, the worst of the worst has to go to NeoClown John Bolton, Former UN ambassador and never right about anything, who let it be known that Israeli has his blessing and the moral duty to launch nuclear attacks on Iran immediately for the dastardly crime of diplomacy,

"So in truth, an Israeli military strike is the only way to avoid Tehran’s otherwise inevitable march..."

Once again, Israel is treated as the 51st and yet most important State in the Union by the Right.

A reason for this was hit upon over at Addicting Info, T. Steelman who believes that underneath all of the furious beating of conservatives' man-boobs lies the belief by the right-wing religious fanatics that Wars in the Middle East will usher in the end-times,

This agreement throws a wrench into their Armageddon plans. The situation in Syria has petered out for the moment so Iran now draws their attention again. For their End Times scenario to work, there must be conflict in the Middle East. Every step to alleviate that drives another nail into the coffin of their twisted religious doctrine. The way these people talk about this — their codes and dog-whistles — clearly paint Obama as the Antichrist. They believe that his actions, especially concerning the Middle East, will jump-start their little end-of-the-world drama. They WANT war in the Middle East. They WANT death and destruction. Because they believe that will usher in the Second Coming. They see everything as the end of the world because they WANT it to be. And that is just some premium sick, to my mind.

So, it does seem the conservative Chairborne Commandos who've never stepped into the yellow footprints let alone heard a shot fired in anger beat feet to their keyboards to furiously demand that Neville Chamberlain/Obama/Hitler renounce his kenyan muslim marxist ways and declare immediate war on Iran.

Teabaggers to be Subverted into the System; Resistance is Futile

We are the Republicans, you will be Assimilated. ~ The RepublicBorg Party

Like the Borg, the Republican Party has become a soulless automaton whose only purpose is to absorb more and more Americans and increase their power and control. Now, there is a revived spirit of anti-government rhetoric which the Republicans have set their laser eye beams upon.

The Tea Party is generally grounded in good ideas but the group(s) have been subverted from within and are now being assimilated from without, as the Resplendent RepublicBorg Queen Palin told them.

The Tea Party principle of less government spending is something I can support; halt the 750 Billion plus annually doled out to the Military and the Merchants of Death, stop the subsidizes to the Agri-Business Giants and the Oil Conglomerates, end the no-bid government contracts to Halliburton, and the Mercenaries at Xe (Blackwater), DynCorp, Triple Canopy, stop the Bank Bailouts. Fiscal Responsibility is something I can certainly agree with; the ending of Government's Role as Corporate Welfare Provider and Partner, the ceasing of the US policy of Subsidizing Losses and Privatizing Profits, all worthy goals. Government should be designed to help it's citizens not be controlled and used as a weapon of Oppression the way the Republicans (and Democrats) have usurped her.

But, the Republicans are Hypocrites. They only remember to wear their fiscal responsibility diapers when the Democrats are in office. When they control the Levers of Power Republicans shit upon Americans and Steal as much money as they can and often times Kill Americans just to watch them die.

But, even if a more responsible government was the goal of the Teabaggers, that's not what I or the rest of America saw. Immediately, the images and message coming from the Tea Party was 'Where is Obama's Birth certificate?' and vile racist attempts to undermine Obama by using round about and sometimes explicit bigoted imagery and language as a way to de-legitimize him.

Now I tend to believe agent provocateurs from the Republican Party infiltrated set the fire and worked to subvert the Tea Party from within as high profile Republicans have worked to assimilate the Tea Party from without. But, the end result will be absorption of the Teabaggers into the amorphous Karl Rove-esque blob like body of the Republican Party, which prides itself on being made up of Racists, Punks, Bullies, Chicken Hawks, Thieves and Murderers.

And no matter the Republican running, even Mark Kirk a decorated Naval Intelligence Officer who is hated and reviled by conservatives because he actually served in the military and deployed overseas, I can not bring myself to vote for a Party which has fooled me and the American people.

As a famous Republican Statesman stated, "Fool me once shame on... shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again."

Update:
A Tea Bagger Warner Todd Huston, inadvertently told the truth about The Tea Party, "So, there you have it, America. Tea Party protesters just 'hate the government,' they are racists, they are all white folks, they are angry, and they associate with secretive white supremacist groups that want to over throw the U.S. government."

Related:
Ron Paul tells Rachel Maddow Tea Party infiltrated by NeoCons [Raw Story]
Jonathan Kay of Newsweek: Tea Party movement now dominated by conspiracists 'dangerously detached from reality' [Crooks and Liars]