Posts Tagged ‘rules’

Three Pieces from 2023 You Hated but We Think are worth a 2nd Look

Posted: January 4, 2024 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration, catholic, culture, dablog
Tags: , , , , ,

Earlier this week we had our annual five top posts for 2023. Now it’s time to look at the bottom of the barrel. The posts that drew the fewest views of the year that we think deserve a little more attention then they got:

To be sure over the course of the year we’ll serve up a few lemons but these are posts that we’d like you to take a 2nd look at:

Let’s start with my favorite of the lot.

The Feast of The Passion of John the Baptist Playing Out Daily in America Against an Army of Woke Herodians

This piece is all about the war on truth. John told the truth which is why Herodias wanted him dead

There are still some who either because they still retain some backbone or fear the masses of the people more than the army of woke Herodians (who are actually much smaller then they appear) decide to reject them and side with the people and each time they it strikes fear in the hearts of the woke Herodians because they know their power is dependent on the fear of their Herods and the indifference of the masses.

There are John the Baptists out there. Tucker Carlson who faced the wrath of the woke Herodians but thrived despite it, Riley Gaines who refuses to bend the knee to Transgender Inc. Joe Rogan who talked openly about ivermectin to be used in Covid cases, Ron DeSantis who didn’t give in to either the COVID hysteria or the Disney/woke crowd on sexualizing children and yes Donald Trump as well who refused to bend the knee even as he is treated like an enemy of the state for being an enemy of dishonest elections.

I’m really at a loss why this one didn’t play better as the problem is the single most relevant thing going on.

Rules Rules Rules

It can be very dry to hear about federal bureau​crat​ic rules but our man Jon Fournier understands that they are important and has tackled them. His pieces on Internet rules, Drinking from the feds and on norms on Transgenderism, Guns and life deserved a bigger audience then they got, but the one I’m going to quote is this piece about the resending of a Trump era rule:

The Biden Regime is once again trampling on the First Amendment

The federal government forcing anyone to violate their religious beliefs is a direct violation of the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment.  The original 1973 law, which is now back in effect thanks to Biden’s executive order, did not go far enough because there is no “undue hardship” exception to the First Amendment.

As you can see from this next quote, President Trump understood the First Amendment far better than progressives because his rule was instep with the original understanding of the Free Exercise od Religion Clause.

This piece was from one year ago Jan 5th. The rest of the year didn’t go much better.

Reality Sucks

As I mentioned in the first post I referenced a lot of what is going on is a war on truth and this piece from July 11th illustrated it well:

Ring Doorbells, Paper Ballots and Palestinians

You see the ring camera doesn’t care what your race or religion or the desired narrative of the day is, what it does is show the image of what is actually happening, objective reality.

And while it might be considered a good thing for a homeowner protecting their property or a neighborhood wanting to keep criminals from using it as a stomping ground or even for the mother of boys discourage them from getting into the type of trouble that boys do when they’re young and stupid if you’re trying to sell a narrative based on unreality, well it can be a killer.

Wired magazine didn’t like ring doorbells suggesting it would lead to vigilantism what they really don’t like is reality stomping on the narrative.

After all why do you think so many of the J6 videos were suppressed?

Yesterday was an excellent day for our Days of Christmas fundraiser as we went from 4% of our goal to just over 21% of our goal. We’re still $2365 away from our goal and if you’d like to help us toward it please hit DaTipJar to the left or below:

Raise the Mound back to 1968 levels and Make Sign Stealing Legal in MLB

Posted: January 15, 2020 by datechguy in baseball, Sports
Tags: , ,

You knew what was coming, but so what?

a MLB hitter on facing pitcher Walter Johnson

With Democrat debates, Presidential rallies and impeachment going on, not to mention the turmoil in Iran I’ve decided it’s time for this blog to get back to a subject that really matters.

Baseball!

It’s been a busy week for MLB as the league has assessed still penalties on both AJ Hinch and Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow resulting in not only the Astros throwing them under the bus but in the Boston Red Sox deciding to part ways with World Series winning manager Alex Cora after only two years for his part before MLB even went after him.

Now I don’t have a problem with these penalties in principle as I’m a bit of a rules lawyer, if the rules say something they should be enforced ( I still think calling George Brett out in the pine tar game was the right call) but i’m also of the opinion that the rules on sign stealing are pretty stupid.

Sign stealing has been a part of the game since the day signs were and has been practiced with varying success by every team and the idea that sign stealing done one way (with no electronic help) is legal but sign stealing WITH electronic help is not frankly isn’t practical in a world of iPhones, I watches, instant replay and challenges.

So I propose a simple solution that will not only solve this dilemma but will do something that major league baseball is desperate to achieve, speed up the game.

  1. Make all forms of sign stealing legal
  2. Raise the mound back to the 1968 level

Getting rid of all restriction on sign stealing will have a liberating effect on all these teams that are doing their best to steal signs (and let’s not pretend they aren’t) by bringing this strategy out in the open you make it a more interesting part of the game and force a pitcher, catcher and coach to be more creative in their pitch calling.

Now you might argue that this will give an even greater advantage to batters in an age of lousy pitching and you’d be right, and that’s why it’s so necessary to add the second part of the equation to the plan, raising the pitchers mound.

Baseball’s panic move to lower the mound after the year of the pitcher (1968) was an action borne out of fear and did nothing to prevent the decline of the games popularity in relation to football, what it instead did was make offense easier at a time when you were increasing the number of pitchers in the game by 20% meaning that pitchers who would not have made a major league roster five years ago were not only pitching to the likes of Carl Yastrzemski , Hank Aaron Harmon Killebrew and Pete Rose but were doing it from a smaller mound.

50 years later we have smaller parks but 6 more teams meaning that there are 60 more pitchers who would not have been considered major league quality now pitching in those parks. It’s time to give the pitchers back an edge. Sure you might have a couple of Bob Gibsons emerge with microscopic ERA’s Max Scherzer instantly comes to mind but you would also give those other guys who frankly aren’t worth stealing signs against an actual shot at getting people out and speeding up the game.

Since the lack of a clock is a defining part of baseball the only way to make the game faster is to make outs easier. Raising the mound will do and doing so in conjunction with allowing all forms of sign stealing, including electronic ones will do so without overcompensating in favor of the pitcher.

And it will save everyone a whole lot of trouble.