Going on vacation and MLB thoughts

 It has been a little while since I last posted. Nothing much new since then. Baseball is back. I was glad to see some of the players call out ownership and the commissioner and point out their lies. Manfred had to issue a public statement after the players rejected a lowball offer and cry about how now they wouldn’t be able to start the season until April 14 at the earliest. A day or so later, they met, ownership caved a little, the players union gave up some things, and the sport is back on again. This time, Manfred tries to take all of the glory, and now somehow the season could start a week earlier, on the 7th. Manfred is a liar who just wants to make money and doesn’t care about the welfare of the sport. 

All of this just makes me wish I had a union or more of a voice in some places that I’ve worked at. MLB has to have 45 days notice of a rule change, and actually has some say in it all. Some places I’ve worked at have changed the rules in the middle of the game to benefit management/bottom line, and never gave a crap about the employees making them the money. Things like making us work 4 10s instead of 5 8s, making us come in earlier, taking away quarterly profit bonuses in favor of a one time raise of 50 cents an hour. Things that ultimately benefited the company and gave them more profit and didn’t take the employees opinions into it. Not to mention that every place I’ve ever worked (or known people that worked for them) has (basically) a salary cap. Freezes on raises are common as well. Makes me wish I had a path into labor negotiating or some like career. I mean, just little things that have happened over the course of 20+ years working have just driven the fact home that corporate and high end management doesn’t care about the employees. Little things like departments fighting over a float. The problem isn’t the fighting over the float. The problem is the owner of the corporation not wanting to buy multiple floats leaving the employees to make do with an inadequate amount. You can tell me that ‘well that’s the way the world is not, get used to it’. I tell you ‘don’t settle for less than you deserve!’  It isn’t right that you and I have ceilings on our wages, many of us have freezes on raises ‘until the pandemic is over’, and are forced to work with little or no staff surrounding us, while some of these companies are seeing 100 and 200 percent profit increases in just the past year. I’m not saying give 100 dollar an hour raises to the whole staff and screw the business owners, but something’s gotta give. MLB players make a ton of money but they deserved not to be taken advantage of just like any regular person. Aside from all of the potential money, the thing players are there for us to win a championship. If owners don’t want to spend money to win one and try to tank games, they deserve penalties. Ownership can’t put half the league into the playoffs to try to give everyone a chance to win. The first time a sub 500 team wins the World Series, there will be hell to pay. Give the owners rules and penalize them for spending under a certain amount. Rank free agents and penalize them if they don’t sign an upper class free agent every 2 years. Just do something. 

At any rate, I am glad baseball is back. We are going on vacation in 2 days, and if our timing was a little better, we could’ve perhaps went to a game at Coors Field (or whatever the ballpark in Colorado is called). We typically take 2 week vacation and drive places and this year will be no different. We are leaving Florida sometime Wednesday after I get off of work, and will drive to Columbus, Ohio for a wedding. I have to admit, I’m not really looking forward to the first few days of vacation. There will be good parts, but Karens cousin Genie,who is getting married, is part of that family who drives down to Florida every July and expects us to drop our plans and hang out with them for 2 weeks straight. We plan to nap some on Thursday morning, do dinner with the relatives that night, visit the Columbus Zoo on Friday, do the wedding on Saturday, and leave on Sunday. If I were to guess (and you can mark my words), we’re going to get there, get dragged into lunch, do dinner, 2+people are going to invite themselves to the zoo, another dinner Friday, a lunch or brunch on Saturday, and a possible breakfast on Sunday. I guess it will all be good because I will be off work and it’s only 3 days that we’ll be there. 

I’m still not sure if Brody Koerner is coming to the wedding. He is still a free agent as of this writing, and didn’t get into the Topps Series 1 or Heritage issues. I'm still hoping he will make it out to the wedding and maybe I'll get a chance to talk to him, introduce him to Kyler, and possibly get some autographs. 

Sunday, we will head to Denver, Colorado. Karen spent about 2 years in Denver at National Jewish hospital during her teens, so she knows the area a little bit, and were hoping to reconnect with a doctor or two, and maybe see some snow if we are lucky. We're also going to see the zoo in Denver, and after that I'm not really sure (in fact, I can't really tell you exact details of the rest of the trip after that). Getting older and not having a good memory is bad sometimes. At some point, we will drive to New Mexico, and see Karen's cousin Devry and her husband Miguel (2 of her relatives that are normal and I actually look forward to seeing). We'll spend a few days there doing stuff and then drive home at some point to make it home Sunday night. It should be fun, even though there aren't really any baseball things involved. Maybe we'll find a card shop or a store that has Series 1 or Heritage. I'm looking forward to it, even if parts of it I will be faking a smile. 

I've been following all of these free agent signing and trades lately, and after seeing the Bankee$ get Donaldson and Kiner, I figured they were going to trade a Shortstop prospect for a catcher. I hoped they would keep Sanchez and he would continue his below .200 hitting, but I'm happy they got Donaldson. He is older than Urshela, and I just have a feeling he is going to be injured all year. Kiner is a good pickup. He can play multiple positions and is a gold glover, and has offensive upside. While at work today, I was thinking of catchers the team might try to acquire, basically thinking of teams who aren't in the playoff hunt. I figured the Pirates were out as they didn't have a big name, and the first name that came to my head was Sean Murphy from Oakland. I figured they would trade that Peraza guy who is the #2 shortstop in their system, and maybe add Voit and some other prospect and get Matt Olson. While they didn't get Olson (I'm thankful for that), I don't want to see them get a decent catcher. They will, of course. While reading up on the Yankee$ trades on MLB.com, an article suggested that they would trade Peraza and some pitching prospects for Murphy and one of the A's starters. Reminds me of like 2004 or so when the Rays needed a 2nd baseman and I figured they would get Nick Green for a reliever like Jorge Sosa (I think they ended up trading Jesse Chavez or somebody, but I predicted it). As for the Braves trade for Olson, what a steal the A's got!  Pache is going to be a decent outfielder, and the catcher (Langliers or however you spell it) is going to be good, as well. With the A's trading for a Catcher, that makes me think Murphy is gone. That's how I figured that the Yankees needed a catcher, just figuring out depth as far as positions. I also don't see how people are saying the Twins are moving towards winning. They got rid of a decent catcher (Garver), got a crappy one who might not hit (Sanchez), Urshela is a question mark, Kiner could've been a better infielder than Urshela, and even Sonny Gray is a question mark. Hopefully they will be a nice easy team for Detroit to beat about 15 times a year. 

That's about all I've got. I'll be off the grid for 2 weeks while on vacation, but maybe I'll post another post when I get back and update everyone on the vacation. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy