We’ve had enough of 2020

We’ve made it through eight months of this stupid year.  I’ve had enough of 2020, but hopefully the next four months will be better.  We will be finishing the basketball, hockey, and baseball seasons, football is starting (we’ll see if it finishes), maybe there will be some good news on a vaccine, and the election...well it’s good to have an election, but it’s bad if Trump or Biden is going to be elected president.

Last night reminded me of another thing I hate about 2020:  the stupid extra innings rule in baseball.  The Dodgers beat the Diamondbacks in 10, but I hated almost everything about the tenth inning.  The Diamondbacks scored a run on a walk, hit by pitch, and a walk.  So the Dodgers were down by a run with a runner on second to start the bottom of the tenth.  Chris Taylor led off with a bunt and the Dodgers tied the game on an error on a fielder’s choice and Taylor got to second.  I like bunting in that situation to put some pressure on the other team to make the right play and the Dodgers were rewarded when the ball was thrown away, but I definitely don’t like that each half inning starts with a situation where a sacrifice bunt is possible.  Joc Pederson grounded out to advance Taylor to third.  Will Smith won the game on a line drive to left with the outfielders playing shallow.  So the Diamondbacks scored a run only because they started with a runner on second base.  The Dodgers scored two to win, but nothing about the bottom of the tenth would have been the same if you’re not starting with a runner on second base (the Dodgers wouldn’t have been down by a run and Chris Taylor wouldn’t have led off with a sacrifice bunt).  Like if Taylor had hit a home run to win it, I would have been like, cool, they would have won in the tenth even if they weren’t playing with stupid rules (the Dodgers would have outscored the Diamondbacks 1-0 in the tenth instead of 2-1), but I hate to see the game played totally differently because of a silly rule.

I hate that 2020 has brought stupid rules to baseball.  I hate that Rob Manfred is promoting stupid rules.  Baseball fans love baseball the way it is.  Why try to make baseball something that baseball fans aren’t going to like as much?  NL fans don’t like the DH.  So why are they trying to put the DH in the NL?  I would completely abolish the DH, but I can live with having it in the AL (they didn’t have it for a long time, but they had it for more than a decade before I was born).  The point of the mystery runner at second is to end games quickly.  And for the minor leagues, whatever, it’s not like it really matters who wins anyway.  But for the Major Leagues, you’re ruining potentially classic games.  I love a good long extra innings game.  I get that it stinks if you go to a game on a Tuesday night and you have to leave after the tenth inning because you have work the next day, but I love watching a game on TV or in person on a Friday night or weekend afternoon or any night during summer vacation for me that goes long.  And it’s rare that games go very long anyway.  Let’s look at some numbers.  Last year, 8.6% of games went to extra innings.  Only 2.3% of games went past the 11th inning.  Off the top of my head, here are my favorite Dodger games that I can remember watching in chronological order:

2013 Opening Day- I was there and Kershaw shut out the Giants and hit a home run.

Kershaw’s no-hitter against the Rockies in 2014

Game 2 of the 2017 NLCS- Justin Turner hit a three-run home run to win the game in the bottom of the ninth and give the Dodgers a 2-0 lead in the series and it looked like the Dodgers were on their way to the World Series.

Game 5 of the 2017 NLCS- Kershaw and the Dodgers blew out the Cubs to get to the World Series for the first time in 29 years.

Game 1 of the 2017 World Series- Kershaw dominated the Astros because the game was at Dodger Stadium and the Astros weren’t cheating.

Game 3 of the 2018 World Series- Max Muncy won the game with a home run in the bottom of the 18th and it looked like the Dodgers had life in the series (people don’t remember now, but the Dodgers blew a lead in Game 4, that could have been a long series, but the Red Sox ended up winning in five games).

So most of those games feature Clayton Kershaw, but I want to look at the two exceptions.  Game 3 of the 2018 World Series is completely ruined if you use the silly mystery runner rule.  It’s an all time classic, but it almost certainly wouldn’t have gone 18 if you’re starting with a runner on second starting in the tenth.  Game 2 of the 2017 NLCS didn’t go to extra innings, but you started the ninth with the game tied.  What’s the most important inning of a baseball game?  I would say any extra inning is the answer.  Obviously, any inning can be important.  If you score eight runs in the fourth, you’re probably winning the game, but there’s no way to know that going into the inning.  In extra innings, neither team starts with the advantage and the game has a chance to end in that inning.  There’s one other situation where that’s possible:  the ninth inning in a tie game.  Obviously the ninth inning is very important if one team has a one-run lead, but that team has an advantage.  If you start the ninth inning with one team leading by six, it’s not so important.  But the ninth inning in a tie game is essentially the same as any extra inning, except now you’re playing extra innings with different rules.  Why are you playing the most important part of the game with a different set of rules?  (Note that this is also what’s wrong with college football overtime.). If we’re going to play extra innings like this, why not put a runner on second in the ninth if the game is tied?  Wait, no, forget I said that, I don’t want to give Manfred any more dumb ideas.  And the other problem is that nothing is just given to you in baseball for no reason.  Either you have to do something right or the other team has to do something wrong.  (Note that this is also another problem with college football overtime with teams being given good field position for no reason.)

The problem with the length of games in baseball is that it takes too long to play nine innings because of too many pitching changes, too much time between pitches, too much time between batters, etc.  The problem isn’t the 2.3% of games that go 12 innings or longer.  Make nine inning games shorter and let us appreciate the rare long extra innings game when it happens.  Stop trying to change what baseball fans like about the game.

I meant for my extra innings objection to be concise.  It was not.  Anyway, let’s look at some other things in sports.  Here’s one thing I’m okay with for this season that might surprise you:  seven inning games in double headers.  Now, I wouldn’t do it in a normal year, but I’m fine with it for this year.  Why?  This year you have so many games getting cancelled because of the virus so it would be asking a little much for the Mets and Yankees to have five nine-inning games in three days (they just had two double headers in three days).  Also, the possibility of baseball games that were shorter than nine innings has always existed.  If there was a freak thunderstorm in Los Angeles tonight after five innings and the Dodgers had the lead, that game would count as a win for the Dodgers.  So for a year when double headers are much more common than usual, I’m okay with shortened games.

What does the rest of this year hold?  It looks like the NBA will complete their season and the Celtics have a chance to win the championship.  Of the eight teams left, none of the teams in the East would shock me if they won the championship (a few days ago I would have been surprised by Miami, but they’re up 2-0 on the Bucks) and the Clippers and the other Los Angeles basketball team have a chance also.  I’m hoping that baseball will complete their season.  They’ve made it this far (which I didn’t really expect early in the season) and it sounds like they’re going to have bubbles for the playoffs.  I just hate that first round of the playoffs this year.  The Dodgers are likely to finish with the best record in the NL, but they’ll have a three game series with the 8 seed.  In baseball, the best team in the league is going to lose a series at home sometimes even against mediocre or bad teams.  The Dodgers look like the best team in baseball, but that doesn’t mean they’re definitely getting past the first round.  I get doing the playoffs like that this year because it’s such a short season, but I wish they would have made it so that the three division winners in each league got two games at home and they had to lose both to be eliminated.  I’m fine with the 4 vs. 5 matchup being best of three.  If they let more than half the teams into the playoffs when we get back to having a normal season, that would just be silly.

It looks like college football will start.  If they start the season, I certainly hope they finish, but I’m not optimistic that they will.  What happens when a team has an outbreak during the season?  They’re cancelling baseball games every time somebody tests positive.  It’s a lot easier to make up professional baseball games than it is to make up a college football game.  Obviously college football teams are much bigger than baseball teams.  The concern might be more about the virus spreading among a position group than among the whole team.  Well what happens if two or three starters on the offensive line test positive?  And as we’re seeing with colleges that have students on campus, things are not going well.  I just can’t see the season being completed without many games getting cancelled.  If they play and finish the season, Notre Dame and Clemson have a chance of playing three times.  They’re scheduled to play at Notre Dame in November.  They could easily meet in the ACC Championship Game (I feel dirty typing that).  If they play twice and split the two games, there’s a decent chance that both teams will make the playoff (especially with no Big 10 or Pac 12 teams to compete with).  This has to be the least excited I’ve been for a college football season since before I went to Notre Dame, but I’ll try to enjoy whatever college football we get this year.

Hopefully our lives will return to normal in 2021.  The Spanish flu lasted 15 months in the United States.  Hopefully this virus will go away on its own or we’ll have a vaccine by next summer.  I’ve been thinking about what I want to do when life is back to normal.  As far as I can remember, this year is probably going to be the first year since 2001 that I won’t fly anywhere.  I can’t say that I miss the experience of being in airports and being stuck on a plane for several hours, but I do miss going to places that require flying to.  The only sporting event that I went to in 2020 was an NBA G-League game in January.  I think this will be the first year since 1988 that I don’t get to a Major League Baseball game and the first year since 1987 that I don’t go to a Major League Baseball stadium (I am fairly confident that I was at Shea Stadium for Dodgers-Mets on September 4, 1988, but the game was rained out).

So I’m going to have to make up for what I’ve missed out on this year whenever life gets back to normal.  I definitely want to get to some baseball games next year.  Next year’s Major League Baseball schedule is already out (assuming that we’re back to playing a normal season).  Opening Day for the Dodgers is my first day of Easter vacation.  They open on in Colorado for a series that goes from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday.  It’s unlikely I’d go to that.  Their next series is in Oakland.  I’m not going to Oakland again until the A’s get a new stadium.  Their first home series is the last three days of my Easter vacation against Washington.  The problem with that is that I want to get to two games the next time I go to Los Angeles (and maybe even sneak in a third game) and I’d only be able to go to the first two games of the series, but the home opener is likely to be really expensive and not likely to feature Clayton Kershaw assuming that he’s pitching on Opening Day in Colorado (he’d then start in Oakland before the Dodgers come home).  So I’ll probably try to get out to Los Angeles next summer.  The Astros will be in Los Angeles on August 3 and 4.  One of the worst things about sports in 2020 is that the Astros haven’t had to face the fans this year.  I hope fans will be able to boo Altuve, Springer, Bregman, Correa, Gurriel (people forget that he should have been suspended during the World Series in 2017), and Reddick next year.  I would definitely consider going to Los Angeles for those games, but they are on a Tuesday and Wednesday (which doesn’t really matter for me, but it might for my brother and Pete), they would probably be pretty expensive, and they are bookended by Dodger off days (so it’s not like I could go to one game against the Astros and one against another team where the demand wouldn’t be so high).  But I do plan on getting out to Los Angeles some time next summer if it’s safe and they’re playing a regular baseball schedule with fans in attendance.  The Dodgers are scheduled to come to New York to play the Mets from August 13-15.  Ordinarily that would be ideal because it wouldn’t conflict with other sports, but I guess there’s a chance that the NBA playoffs could be going on at that time next year.  But the Celtics won’t be playing three days in a row so I should be able to get to at least one of those games without missing the Celtics in the playoffs.

And I have now been to every Major League Baseball stadium except for the new stadium in Texas.  So I’d like to get there next year.  That could be an Easter vacation trip or it could be a stop before or after Los Angeles next summer.  And Buffalo is hosting Major League Baseball this year.  The Blue Jays should be back in Toronto next year, but I’m putting Sahlen Field high on my list of minor league stadiums to visit next year.  I thought about going all the way to Buffalo last year on my upstate New York tour, but I only got as far as Rochester.  There was talk about restructuring the minor leagues even before the pandemic, but I think Buffalo is safe as a minor league city.  Whenever fans can go to games again, the Blue Jays should do a weekend series there as a thank you to Buffalo.  If they did, I would love to get to that, but I’d be fine with going to a minor league game there.  Sahlen Field’s capacity is about 5000 less than the average attendance for the Blue Jays in 2019 so it would be a sacrifice, but not a huge sacrifice (they could easily do one game there if they didn’t want to do a whole series).

The other minor league stadium I want to get to next year is PNC Field, home of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.  Why?  Because I want to go to Scranton (the stadium isn’t actually in Scranton, but it’s not far).  Why do I want to go to Scranton?  I’ve spent so much time watching The Office and Scranton isn’t that far away so I feel like I should go.  There are places that are mentioned in the show that actually exist that I’d want to check out like Poor Richard’s, Cooper’s, and the Steamtown Mall.  There’s also Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe.  Pizza By Alfredo (which was described as “a hot circle of garbage”) is made up, but Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe is real.  As somebody from Long Island, I just assume that all pizza from outside the Pizza Belt is a hot circle of garbage so I wouldn’t be as excited to get to Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe (I would go if I had time, but I’d be totally fine with not checking it out). And while Scranton is close to the Pizza Belt, it is clearly outside of the Pizza Belt:

And then there’s football.  I haven’t been to a football game at Notre Dame since 2016 (and that game was a disaster).  I haven’t been to a football win at Notre Dame since Stanford in 2014.  I have seen wins against Navy at FedEx Field (that one wasn’t interesting enough to write a blog post about), Boston College at Fenway Park, Syracuse at Yankee Stadium, and against Duke on the road, but it’s time to see Notre Dame win a football game at home again.  Next year’s home schedule is Toledo, Purdue, Cincinnati, USC, North Carolina, Navy, and Georgia Tech.  Obviously, the most interesting game is USC.  North Carolina might be good also, but one of those two games is likely to conflict with the World Series.  Toledo, Purdue, and Cincinnati aren’t the most exciting opponents, but they’re in September so the weather should at least not be terrible.  Georgia Tech is the week before Thanksgiving so that’s the one I’d immediately rule out since the weather is likely to be cold to quite cold.  I wouldn’t rule out a road game (Florida State and Virginia are both interesting), but I want to get to a home game for sure.

Sports are weird in 2020.  I wish the Dodgers could win the World Series at Dodger Stadium with fans in attendance, but that won’t happen this year.  And whoever wins the World Series this year, people will say there’s an asterisk since the season was only 60 games.  Here’s my attitude about that.  If the Dodgers don’t win the World Series, it will be easier to take this year.  But if they do, I’m celebrating it like it was any other World Series.  There’s still only going to be one champion and after what happened to the Dodgers in 2017, I don’t want to hear about any asterisk if they win.  As for the Celtics, they could win the championship or they could lose to the Raptors.  Nothing would surprise me with them.  But even if they lose to the Raptors, they have Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum so they are set up to be good for a while.  And with college football, I’ll take whatever I can get.  If Notre Dame goes 8-3, whatever.  I mean, we probably should beat everybody except for Clemson because our schedule is stupid now that we’re a member of the ACC for this year.  But the team could have a coronavirus outbreak and I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up 4-2 or something with games being cancelled and the season not getting completed.  One thing I am looking forward to is the Big 10 not playing.  I’ll miss Pac 12 football (I enjoy a nice weird Pac 12 After Dark game), but the only bad thing about the Big 10 not playing is that Michigan can’t lose.

Ordinarily I spend the month of August just waiting for college football to start.  This year I spent it trying to enjoy baseball and basketball as much as possible.  It’s going to be weird when we get to November and football is the only sport going on (I’m going to have to figure out what movie or old game to watch on Election Night so that I don’t have to watch election coverage).  But if we get to like February next year and there’s a vaccine and we’re going to have the NCAA tournament and a normal baseball season, the anticipation for that is probably going to be even bigger than what it normally is when I’m waiting for college football in August.

Go Celtics.

Go Dodgers.

Go Irish.

The Office: An American Workplace

I just completed rewatching the complete run of the Office for maybe the third time (I’ve done a couple of other times when I skip season 8 and most of season 9 because they’re not good).  Occasionally you’ll hear about a reboot or a reunion and I doubt that will ever happen.  You could do like a sequel where they’re doing a documentary about a different office, but there’s no way that would be as good.  A reboot doesn’t really make sense because so many of the characters had moved on by the end of the series.  A reunion would be cool, but I wouldn’t want to see it without Steve Carell or John Krasinski and I doubt you’d get them to do it.  But if you could get them, my idea for a reunion would be having Michael and Holly celebrating an anniversary by visiting Scranton and getting everybody back together.

So I doubt we’ll ever get any new episodes of the Office, but watching the Michael Jordan documentary gave me an idea that could be done pretty easily.  And I’m sure NBC isn’t producing much new content these days so they could use something to fill some airtime this coming year.  Just make the documentary that came out in the universe of the show at the end of the A.A.R.M. episode.  Sure, it would be mostly a clip show, but it would be interesting to see how the story is told as a serious documentary.  The Michael Jordan documentary played with the timeline so The Office:  An American Workplace doesn’t have to be completely chronological.  You could introduce a narrator if you wanted to.

What do we know about the documentary?  Not much.  In the episode Promos, it was advertised as being shown over the course of nine nights on PBS.  How long was each episode?  We don’t know that.  If each one was an hour on PBS without commercials, that would be like an hour and a half on NBC with commercials.  Of course, each one could have been an hour and a half or two hours (I doubt they would have been any longer than that).  The Finale happened after the documentary so there were 200 episodes that could have provided material for the documentary.  If each episode was 21 minutes without commercials, that would be 70 hours of content (of course, some were longer, but I’m just estimating here).  So the PBS documentary cut that 70+ hours into a documentary that was probably in the 9-18 hour range.

We also know how the documentary starts.  It was Jim in Michael’s office from the Pilot.  But that’s about all we know about the content.  I came up with a plan of what I would have covered in each episode of the documentary (there are definitely other ways to do this, but I think I came up with something logical).  Each episode would have two themes.  You could kind of go back and forth in each episode like how the Jordan documentary went back and forth between Jordan’s last season and the rest of his career or you could do kind of a Ken Burns Baseball thing where you pretty much split each episode into two halves (like he did with each inning of the baseball documentary).  Here’s what I came up with for each episode:

Episode 1- People in the Office/Pam and Roy.  You have to establish the people who worked in the office in the first two seasons.  When you get into the Pam and Roy story, Jim will be a big part of that also.  This episode would use material mainly from the first two seasons of the show.

Episode 2- Michael and Jan/Sales.  You get into the corporate side of Dunder Mifflin a little bit as you get into the relationship between Michael and Jan.  David Wallace is introduced.  Then we’re focusing on the work done by the sales staff.  So you’d have lots of Jim, Dwight, Stanley, and Phyllis.  We’re still mainly in the first two seasons here.

Episode 3- Jim and Dwight/Stamford.  I’m sure the previous episode would get into the relationship between Jim and Dwight, but this episode would go much deeper into that and it would lead up to Jim’s transfer to Stamford (so Pam would be a big part of this episode as well).  Now you have the people who work in Stamford introduced and it would end with the merger.  This one would use mostly stuff from seasons 2 and 3.

Episode 4- Jim and Karen/Accounting.  Now Jim is back in Scranton and we’re focusing on his relationship with Karen (so again, we have a lot of Pam).  That part of the episode probably finishes up with the interviews for the corporate job in New York (Jim’s interview is probably the last thing you see with that).  Then we’re focusing on the work done by the accounting staff.  So we’d have lots of Angela, Oscar, and Kevin and it would set up some storylines for later in the documentary.  Andy and Angela get engaged, but they don’t get married.  The Jim and Karen stuff is pretty much all season 3, but the accounting stuff could come from several seasons.

Episode 5- Corporate Ryan/Side Characters.  Of course, Ryan got the corporate job.  So we’re going deep into his character.  This part of the episode would come from seasons 1-4, but it would be mostly season 4 after he gets the corporate job.  And then we’re focusing on the other characters in the office that haven’t gotten a lot of attention yet.  So we’re talking about Creed, Meredith, Kelly, Toby.  There would be plenty of Michael and Toby stuff here, but then Toby leaves and Holly is introduced.  So this part of the episode would come from several seasons.

Episode 6- Jim and Pam/The Michael Scott Paper Company.  The previous episodes would have covered everything between Jim and Pam up until he withdraws from consideration from the corporate job and decides to stay in Scranton.  Pam did say in the Finale that she didn’t watch the whole documentary because it was too painful and she wanted to scream at herself so it would make sense not to get to Jim and Pam getting together too quickly.  So we’re waiting until the sixth episode to focus on Jim and Pam dating, getting engaged and married, and having kids.  Then we’re looking at Michael deciding to leave Dunder Mifflin to start the Michael Scott Paper Company and how that affected Dunder Mifflin leading up to the buyout and Michael, Pam, and Ryan coming back to Dunder Mifflin.  Erin is introduced for the first time after she replaces Pam as the receptionist.  I would also include Jim’s promotion to co-manager in this episode.  This episode would come from seasons 4-6.

Episode 7- Erin/The Warehouse.  Now that Erin has been introduced, we’re focusing on her.  She is pretty easily the best character who wasn’t part of the original cast (there’s not much competition because all the other characters that get added and become regulars are pretty terrible).  Since we’re focusing on Erin, there would be a lot of Andy as well (another character who wasn’t part of the original cast, he’s okay sometimes, but terrible other times).  And then we’re getting into the warehouse.  Roy would have been a big part of the first episode so we would have seen the warehouse a little and I’m sure Darryl would have been introduced, but Darryl is now going to become a big part of the documentary.  The Erin stuff all comes from season 5 or later, but the warehouse stuff could probably come from the whole series.

Episode 8- Sabre/Michael and Holly.  Sabre buys Dunder Mifflin and David Wallace loses his job.  Jim returns to sales after being co-manager.  Unfortunately, Sabre buying Dunder Mifflin means that we’re introducing Gabe.  Darryl starts working in the office instead of the warehouse.  There’s the stuff with the defective printers with Michael being the face of the company and that eventually leads to the return of Holly.  So the second half of this episode focuses on the relationship between Michael and Holly with the two of them eventually moving to Colorado.  So this episode is coming from seasons 5-7.

Episode 9- Life after Michael/Dwight and Angela.  Michael is gone, unfortunately that means that Andy becomes the manager and Robert California is his boss.  Also unfortunately, we have Nellie introduced as well.  David Wallace buys Dunder Mifflin.  Kelly and Ryan end up leaving for Ohio and Pete and Clark are hired.  Jim starts Athlead and eventually gives up on that business to save his marriage.  Darryl leaves Dunder Mifflin for Athlead.  Eventually Andy leaves.  That’s pretty much seasons 8 and 9 and we’re spending as little time on all of that as possible.  Then we’re focusing on Dwight and Angela from like season 5 to the end.  We would have covered their relationship a little bit in episodes 2-4.  There’s the Angela, Senator Lipton, Oscar love triangle that eventually ends with Angela’s sham marriage falling apart.  The documentary ends with Dwight getting promoted to regional manager and then getting engaged to Angela.

I really want them to produce the PBS documentary.  I think I came up with a nice little plan for it.  I’ll end with some final thoughts on the show.  I did a little research where I found the average IMDb user rating for the episodes in each season.  I was interested to see how the seasons would rank.  From best to worst, it goes like this:  3, 4, 5, 2, 7, 6, 1, 9, 8.  Those rankings aren’t bad.  I think season 2 is pretty underrated there.  I think the best run of the show is seasons 2-4.  I’d probably put season 2 number 1.  And I’d put season 5 ahead of 4 just because it has so many more episodes (because of the writers’ strike).  I’d keep 7 ahead of 6 because the last few episodes with Michael are some of the best of the series (but David Wallace doesn’t appear in season 7 so that’s a drawback).  I’d flip 1 and 9.  I like season 1, but it’s only six episodes.  Season 9 has some really bad stuff (especially with Andy), but the last three episodes are really good.  And season 8 is just terrible.  Michael is gone, David Wallace doesn’t come back until the end of the season, Andy is the manager, and you have way way too much Robert California, Gabe, and Nellie.  I didn’t need any of them, they’re the three worst characters in the whole show (season 9 Nellie is whatever, season 8 Nellie is terrible).  If you took all the screen time they got and gave it to Nate instead, then you would have had something (he was the rare late introduction to the show who was a really good character, but he was a minor character).  Michael was the best character on the show so of course it wasn’t going to be as good, but they tried to replace him with terrible characters.  Besides Robert California, Gabe, and Nellie, there’s way too much bad Andy.  I never really liked Andy, but he was at least interesting when he was a salesman.  By season 9, he’s mostly terrible (A.A.R.M. is a great episode, but the Andy part is awful).  They should have relied more on Jim and Dwight after Michael left.  The best part of seasons 8 and 9 is how the relationship between Jim and Dwight develops, but there’s just too much bad stuff in those seasons.  So my rankings go like this:  2, 3, 5, 4, 7, 6, 9, 1, 8.  So yeah, I hate season 8 and much of season 9 isn’t good, but it was one of the greatest shows ever for seven seasons and it ended on a high note with some really good stuff at the end of season 9.  Make the documentary, NBC.  You need to put something in prime time this year so that’s something you could put on pretty easily.

“Guessing’s harder than knowing”

We’re a week into the return of sports and there’s been some good and bad.  The best thing so far was the Dodgers sweeping the Astros in Houston.  They might not finish the season, but at least that happened.  But it still doesn’t make up for the Astros cheating to win the World Series in 2017.  Jose Altuve, Alex Bergman, George Springer, and Josh Reddick combined to go 0 for 28.  In Games 3-5 of the World Series, they were 13-50.  As Orel Hershiser said, “Guessing’s harder than knowing.”  Now, 13 for 50 isn’t crazy, but they were 11 for 35 if you take out Game 4.  Why is Game 4 significant?  Alex Wood was changing signs even when a runner wasn’t on second base in Game 4, making it a lot harder for the Astros to cheat.  So they were ridiculous in the two games when they were definitely cheating and bad in the one home game when it was difficult to cheat.  Of course, that was the one game the Dodgers won in Houston in the World Series.  They scored 12 runs in Game 5 and that wasn’t enough because the Astros were cheating.  That World Series was stolen from the Dodgers.  And there’s one thing that everybody forgets about that World Series because now everybody focuses on the cheating (because, you know, the Astros cheated to win the World Series).  Yuli Gurriel should have been suspended for what he did with Yu Darvish pitching in Game 3.  Oh, that’s right, he was suspended, but it was for five meaningless games the following season.  If you want to actually punish him, suspend him for two World Series games.  In Game 5, Gurriel had a home run and a double.  The home run was a three-run homer to tie it in the fourth.  Of course, if Gurriel had been suspended, the Astros would have just had somebody else in the lineup cheating so maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.

And now let’s talk about Joe Kelly.  Baseball announced an eight-game suspension for Joe Kelly for not hitting anybody.  Now, he threw a fastball near somebody’s head and it was probably intentional so I’m fine with a suspension, but eight games was excessive (there’s no precedent for a suspension that long for throwing near somebody).  And Major League Baseball’s explanation made no sense.  Here’s what they said:

“Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly has received an eight-game suspension for his actions in the bottom of the sixth inning of Tuesday night’s game against the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park. Kelly, who has previously been suspended in his career for intentional throwing, threw a pitch in the area of the head of Alex Bregman and later taunted Carlos Correa, which led to the benches clearing.”

Like I said, I’m fine with suspending him for throwing near somebody’s head, but if they added any games to his suspension for taunting Carlos Correa, that’s absurd.  The Astros cheat to win the World Series and nobody gets suspended, but you’re going to suspend Joe Kelly for taunting Carlos Correa?  Also, Kelly wasn’t even thrown out of the game.  The benches cleared because the Astros didn’t stay in their dugout.  And I get that you don’t want an altercation where people could be spreading coronavirus, but blaming Joe Kelly for the Astros coming out of their dugout because Joe Kelly made a silly face and said something not nice to Carlos Correa is ridiculous.  You can give him two or three games for throwing a fastball near somebody’s head, but the rest of it is absurd.  And then I saw the Astros complaining about Joe Kelly throwing at somebody when he wasn’t on the 2017 Dodgers.  That’s right, but he was on the Red Sox and the Astros cheated against them in the playoffs also.

The second game of Dodgers-Astros was my first Major League experience with the ridiculous extra innings rule.  The Dodgers ended up beating the American League Houston Astros after the Dodgers’ DH hit a two-run home run to lead off an inning.  Ten-year-old Jim would be very confused.  The rule is very stupid, but I was happy that the game refused to end and went 13 when the point of the rule is supposed to be to end games quickly.  Baseball games end when they’re good and ready and that’s one of the things I love about the game.  They played four extra innings and the Dodgers only scored in two of them.  In the two innings where the Dodgers didn’t score, the Astros definitely should have laid down the sacrifice bunt to lead off, but they didn’t (sacrifice bunting with a man on second and nobody out in the third inning is stupid, but when you only need one run to win the game in extra innings, you should absolutely take a runner on third with one out).  Hopefully they will just get rid of the stupid rule when we get back to regular baseball, but Rob Manfred is the commissioner so anything is possible.  I heard a podcast where they were talking about having the magical runner starting in the 12th or 13th or something.  They also mentioned going to a points system where you get two points for a win and none for a loss, but if you get to the 12th or 13th or something, you get one point for a loss.  Here’s my reaction to that:

This isn’t hockey and don’t give Manfred any more stupid ideas.  I hate the DH, but I heard an idea that would make it more palatable.  I am 100% against the DH, but this idea would be better than just having it all the time:  you lose the DH when you take out the starting pitcher.  The bad part of this idea is the DH.  The good parts of this idea are losing the DH at some point, giving an incentive to keep starting pitchers in longer, and the strategy of where to put the DH in the lineup (early in the lineup to get as many at bats as possible or later in the lineup to make it easier to deal with after you lose the DH) and dealing with that spot once the DH is gone. They’re also talking about seven-inning games for doubleheaders. I don’t like it, but I could live with it for this season when you have limited off days and lots of games possibly getting cancelled. It’s definitely not worse than the NL having the DH and the magical extra innings runner.

And then there’s the coronavirus situation with the Marlins.  It took less than a week for games to be cancelled because of the coronavirus.  It seems that the rest of the league is doing okay so far (but people who work for the Phillies have now tested positive since the Marlins played there), but that doesn’t mean that will continue.  I’m not optimistic about the season finishing.  Hopefully there will be a vaccine available by next season and we can just get back to playing sports regularly (ideally I’ll be at Dodger Stadium in August 2021 to boo the Astros), but that might not happen.

So what can baseball do?  Things seem to be going better for the NBA with their bubble.  So Major League Baseball should be making plans for next year in the event that the coronavirus is going to affect next season as well.  It’s a little easier for basketball with smaller teams.  They can put 22 teams at Disney World and have their bubble.  Hockey has two bubbles going in Canada.  I think baseball could do three bubbles.  You could have the East play in New York, the Central play in Chicago, and the West play in Southern California.  It’s not as easy as having everybody at Disney World, but it can be done.  In New York, you have Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, and minor league stadiums in Brooklyn and Staten Island.  Chicago has Wrigley Field, whatever the White Sox stadium is called, and the Kane County Cougars’ stadium a little over an hour from Chicago (also the South Bend Cubs are two hours away).  Southern California has Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium, and minor league stadiums for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, Inland Empire 66ers, and Lake Elsinore Storm about an hour from Disneyland. The disadvantage for Southern California is that it’s more spread out, but the advantage is that you could have the teams at Disneyland.

A full day of games for each region would be five games.  You could play four at the Major League stadiums each day and one at a minor league stadium (or use more than one minor league stadium and then you don’t have to have two games at both of the Major League stadiums each day).  There was some talk of having Arizona and Florida bubbles with the spring training sites, but I don’t think that works with the summer weather in those places.  You definitely can’t play afternoon games outdoors in the summer in Arizona.  I remember landing in Phoenix at night in July and it was still 100 degrees so even night games outdoors could be rough.  Florida has heat and rain to deal with.  You can definitely play afternoon games in New York and Chicago.  If you’re playing four games per day at Dodger Stadium and Angel Stadium, that would mean two afternoon games per day.  You would have some days where it’s pretty hot (my second game ever at Dodger Stadium was an afternoon game when it was 97 degrees), but the Dodgers and Angels do play afternoon games in the summer.  And if you wanted to limit the afternoon games in Southern California, you do have three minor league stadiums in the area.  Hopefully we won’t have to worry about any of this, but baseball should be preparing for that possibility.  One issue is what to do with players not on the active roster.  Right now everybody has those players working out nearby (the Dodgers have them at USC).  Maybe you could have those players staying in the bubbles and playing games at nearby college fields or something.

And we’re still pretending that football is happening in the fall.  The NFL should probably do four bubbles by region (I’m not putting thought into where they would be).  That would be up to four games each week for each region (you would need multiple fields).  Play everybody in your division twice and everybody in the other conference once and that gives you a season of ten games.  But they’re going to try to play a normal season and that seems guaranteed to fail in football.  I saw somebody saying that baseball was more risky than football because football is only one game per week.  I have a hard time believing that because football is a contact sport, rosters are much bigger, and you have practices.

College football is allegedly happening with modified schedules.  Allegedly, Notre Dame is playing an 11-game schedule as a member of the ACC with ten conference games.  We’re going to travel to North Carolina twice and Georgia for games.  Since college football is talking about ideas that aren’t actually going to happen, I’ll give you my plan.  It won’t happen, but it makes more sense than what they’re planning on.  I kind of alluded to this in my last post, but I’ve put more thought into it.  You create temporary pandemic conferences that are mostly based on geography and play in the spring when things are hopefully better.  You only play eight games to keep the season as short as possible so that you have as much time as possible between this season and the following season.  If you’re playing eight games, the ideal number of teams in a conference would be nine.  Unfortunately, there are 130 FBS teams so you can’t have every conference with nine teams.  I came up with 14 conferences and all but two have nine teams.  I couldn’t figure out what to do with the MAC so I just left it alone.  So the MAC still has two divisions of six teams so you play everybody in your division once and three teams from the other division.  And then there’s my Northeast Conference with ten teams.  Teams in that conference would play everybody except for one team in the conference.  So you play eight games in nine weeks (you would need to have one team off each week with nine teams in a conference).  There are no conference championship games.  In most conferences, you’re playing everybody so you just go on record for the conference champion.  Then you play an eight-team playoff with no other bowl games.  To make the playoff, you have to be a conference champion.  So these are based on geography, but there’s definitely some overlap.  Notre Dame ends up in a pretty good conference, but that means it would be harder to win the conference.  I named the conferences and I like some of the names, but others could be improved.  I tried to keep as many rivals together as possible.  Here we go:

MAC

The same 12 teams that already make up the MAC

Northeast Conference

Boston College

UMass

UConn

Army

Syracuse

Rutgers

Navy

Maryland

Penn State

Temple

Great Lakes Conference

Pittsburgh

Ohio State

Cincinnati

Notre Dame

Indiana

Purdue

Michigan State

Michigan

Northwestern

Great Plains Conference

Illinois

Wisconsin

Minnesota

Iowa

Iowa State

Nebraska

Missouri

Kansas

Kansas State

Jefferson Conference

Kentucky

Louisville

Western Kentucky

West Virginia

Marshall

Virginia

Virginia Tech

Liberty

Old Dominion

Oklahoma/Texas Conference

Oklahoma

Oklahoma State

Tulsa

Texas

Texas Tech

Texas A&M

Baylor

TCU

Houston

Ark-La-Tex Conference (I definitely don’t like this name, but apparently this region is called that)

Arkansas State

SMU

North Texas

Rice

Texas State

UTSA

Louisiana

Louisiana Monroe

Louisiana Tech

Deep South Conference

LSU

Tulane

Ole Miss

Mississippi State

Alabama

Auburn

Arkansas

Southern Miss

Troy

Florida Conference

FIU

FAU

Florida

Florida State

UCF

USF

Miami

South Alabama

Georgia Southern

Tennessee/Georgia Conference

Memphis

Middle Tennessee

Tennessee

Vanderbilt

Coastal Carolina

Georgia State

Georgia

Georgia Tech

UAB

Tobacco Conference

Clemson

South Carolina

Appalachian State

Charlotte

Duke

East Carolina

NC State

North Carolina

Wake Forest

Desert Conference

UTEP

New Mexico

New Mexico State

Arizona

Arizona State

Colorado

Colorado State

Air Force

Wyoming

Mountain Pacific Conference

Washington

Washington State

Oregon

Oregon State

Hawaii

Utah

Utah State

BYU

Boise State

Gold Rush Conference

Cal

Fresno State

San Diego State

San Jose State

Stanford

UCLA

USC

Nevada

UNLV