I’m pretty sure that this will be part of the future in MLB, the only question being when.
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I really think this is about ESPN shedding high dollar content - @Paolo_X has been standing on his soap box screaming at the top of his lungs that this was coming. ESPN doesn’t have an unlimited war chest of funds to outbid everyone for content. Also, cable has been shrinking and so has the money associated with it.
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George must be turning over in his grave.
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Right back at ya, George…EAT IT!
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I was going to post that. I can’t figure out why this has remained a policy for so long. Some beards look great on people and others, such as those that appear during the NHL playoffs, usually look terrible. Personal choice. I am happy as this actually bucks the controlling trend pervasive in the US these days.
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I think George’s buddy Lamoriello still has a facial hair policy with the Islanders.
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This reminds me to cheer anew for the Rays to leave Tampa Bay, for as orginally the Devil Rays, that franchise was simply George Steinbrenner’s pet project in cahoots with the slimy Bud Selig in the interests of his Yankees and his personal life, making a residence in the Tampa Bay area as do many New Yorkers and especially fans of the Yankees in Florida in general, more than for MLB day one.
I won’t ever tolerate the constant and entitled attempts at any sanctimony and patronization by THOSE people in any sport or in life in general.
I remind them when they are here in Philadelphia complaining about whatever that I95 will take them right back where they want to be, along with any of their trash they haul as well.
Yes, it’s a real thing known well here all over the East Coast though might have diminished since the pandemic with fewer of them down here for whatever any more. Good riddance.
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I see that the Blue Jays have 3 players ranked in the top 100 MLB prospects . 98th ranked Orelvis Martinez 2nd B
89th Ricky Tiedemann LP
69 th Arjun Nimmala SS
In other words , the cupboard is bare and yet they will let Vladdy run to free agency . The Cleveland Carpetbaggers have got to go . Shapiro and Atkins are clueless 
Buck and Dan will pitch the party line till the trade deadline and then try to justify a 81 and 81 season as a success .
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Interesting information on team payrolls and how the Mets outspend everyone yet haven’t threatened to win it all for many years. Nevertheless, the top 7 teams are all generally top teams and contenders. This is just as obviously because of what they spend, not because they have better scouting or management or baseball knowledge or anything like that. The Mets spending from 2021 to 2024 outstrips the payroll related spending of the Marlins, Rays and Pirates over the last 20 years. The Blue Jays were 9th last year, to no avail.
Love the game of baseball. Hate the league and how it is run. Wake me up when they wake up and invoke a salary cap.
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In the Shawn Lemon category, the representatives of Pete Rose are lobbying to have him inducted into the Hall of Fame posthumously.
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As do I.
I share your concerns that you have expressed previously.
But there we part company. Because I love the game I enjoy watching as much baseball as I can. I find the games very entertaining. Yes it’s a travesty that the top teams are the same ones every season, but I still enjoy watching the games.
I enjoy far more watching spring training baseball games than I would watching hockey. To each his own.
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Another interesting article rating how every team did in free agency. The highlight for me was the comment about my Pirates that adding Adam Frazier at second base when they already have half a dozen second basemen was needed as much as they need a rocketship made of Legos. 
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Yeah, I get it - totally on board with you. The owners/lords of baseball spent decades treating players like disposable assets with the reserve clause, collusion, and constant labor disputes, so now the players refuse to give an inch—and a salary cap is the ultimate non-starter for the Union. But at some point, MLB has to wake up and realize the league is very much broken. The disparity between rich and poor teams is ridiculous, the luxury tax is a joke, and fans are sick of watching small-market teams function as glorified farm systems for the Dodgers and Yankees. Hard cap, hard floor—force owners to actually compete. Love the game, but the league itself is a dumpster fire, and until they fix it, baseball’s just cannibalizing itself.
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This new criteria for the HOF could and probably will knock Clemons and Bonds and a few others out of HOF contention. they will have to have their estate try for a “Pete Rose”.
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Instead of putting this in the Oakland A’s or Tampa Rays threads I will put it here. great article on how these two teams pulling a “Phoenix Coyote” this year may affect baseball.
As an aside, the article also refers to other occasions that MLB teams could not or did not play out of their home stadiums for a period of time. One of them was when Oakland played 6 games in Las Vegas in 1996 while their stadium was being renovated. I was at one of the games, which was against Detroit and featured Alan Trammell among others. Oakland scored 6 in the 8th and one in the 9th to tie it, but eventually lost in 15 innings. As much of the crowd had left my buddy and I moved down to seats right behind home plate for the final 6 innings in what was then a beautiful Vegas minor league ball park.
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It looks like former Pirate and Yankees ace Garrett Cole is done for the year before the season even starts. Yankees in a world of hurt injury wise.
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A look at the marvelous new Rays clubhouse at the Yankees minor league park and a rundown of the massive changes made to the premises by the Rays.
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Oh well here we go, and such a shared wish may before too long be granted too, for the gloves of some of the owners are coming off for what is amounting to financial necessity now for MLB so as to keep the current number of teams intact and to have all markets healthy.
For the big-market teams that have enjoyed more than financial advantages for decades, they and especially their fans (Yankees the most) can cry a river whenever smaller or small-market teams prevail and beat them once in a while after they had been supported in some capacity by MLB so that essentially the league would not shrink and so that all those teams would not stink as reliably as the big market teams would desire.
There’s also the view, and I share it now despite all the hot talk about MLB expansion, that MLB will NOT be expanding for a much longer while if at all, given that clearly MLB has more than two teams now to shore up.
David Samson covers the matter so well here:
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MLB starts today in Japan
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