Ferdinand Cesarano

The appropriate context is the fact that an attendance of 31,000 is still excellent. That's far more important than the drop from the all-time record. It would be a mistake to consider that huge attendance to be some kind of problem. To expect the team to set a new record every home game is not reasonable.

And, as it turns out, it's a choice that worked out well. Fox is now able to switch to the Michigan - San Antonio game during the lightning delay in Birmingham.

This guy is comedy gold.

I have to admit that I had not noticed the NY on the bottom left! Very nice observation! However, I don't think that that's meant to be a W on top. At any rate, the NBC network's flagship station that later became WNBC was called WEAF at its inception; it wouldn't become WNBC until 1946 (when, incidentally, the logo in question was dropped), changing to WRCA for a while, and then back to WNBC in 1960 through to the station's end in 1988. (Side note: up until the early 1940s, RCA had two radio networks, which it dubbed the NBC Red Neword, and the NBC Blue Network; WEAF was the flagship of the Red Network The FCC eventually ruled that RCA had to give up one of these networks; RCA gave up the Blue Network, which was headed up in New York by station WJZ. The Blue Network became ABC; in the 1950s the call letters of WJZ were changed to WABC.)

This is one of several NBC logo hats that I have, and it's the one that felt right on that particular day. When I went looking for that hat in order to take the picture, I did a quick count of all of the NBC-related hats that I have, those having network logos, and those having show logos. I came up with 13. (Or 15 if you want to include Star Trek, which is now more associated with CBS.) But the mere act of looking through the hats gave me pleasure. This is why I think you should hold on to your jerseys. Edit: I see now that this logo was adopted in 1943. But it's still in the heyday of old-time radio — indeed, even moreso than it would have been if it had been a 1930s logo.

I say a combination of A and D (depending on your kid's interests). My brother is, like me, in his late 50s. I collect hats; he collects jerseys, and we have done so for decades. We each estimate that we have about 200 of our preferred items. He has a big closet with all his jerseys. He wears them when he goes out socially, like to a party. He also wears one that has a connection (however tenuous) to a given event. For instance, he recently went to see the play Brooklyn Laundry (with the incomparable Cecily Strong), and to that he wore a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey. (I do a similar thing with my hats: to a play dealing with old-time radio, I wore a hat with a 1930s-era NBC logo.) But for the most part, my brother just keeps the jerseys in his closet. (His one adult child doesn't care about jerseys or sport history; if his son did care about that, then my brother would surely be happy for his son to wear the jerseys.)

The only problem with this uniform is that the collar doesn't go all the way around, that it's just two flaps. But I, as someone who generally disapproves of pullovers and of coloured jerseys (and definitely of coloured pants), just love this uniform. My other quibble is that the uniform's early-20th-century aesthetic doesn't really go with the hat that is worn with that set. Instead of having the 70s-style "SOX" logo, the hat should have had the C from the uniform's wordmark. Still, overall, even given a couple of flaws, this uniform is a beauty.

Eh, not quite. That guy attacked a good uniform.

The uniforms will arrive on Tuesday.

In my opinion, the Reds should return to this look, which was their best ever:

I'm still anazed by the realisation that the Mets are now older than the Yankees were when the Mets began. The Mets are in their 63rd season; the Mets' first season of 1962 was the Yankees' 60th season. (It works even if you count the two years in Baltimore as part of the Yankees' franchise.) This feels bizarre because, when I was a kid in the early/mid 1970s — and when I was a Yankee fan — Met fans used to razz us by asking "Who's won more pennants and World Series in the past five years?" And our retort was "You have no history." This whole passage of time thing is a mf-er.

Fisher had his chance to sell the team, to Joe Lacob, a sale that would have netted Fisher a profit of one billion dollars. Then he could have had an expansion team in Las Vegas, one which would have been more warmly received than the A's. No one will ever be able to explain why he chose not to go that route. The White Sox' flirtation with Tampa-St. Pete might have been a ploy. But the Giants were really going there, until Peter Magowan stepped up to buy the team from Bob Lurie. And Lurie had bought the Giants in 1976, saving them from an already-announced move to Toronto. A couple of years later, Charlie Finley agreed to sell the A's to Marvin Davis, who would have moved the team to Denver for the 1978 season. But that sale was contingent on the A's ability to get out of their lease at the Coliseum, which they ultimately could not do. In the NHL, I believe that there were nearly-completed moves of the St. Louis Blues to Saskatoon and of the New Jersey Devils to Nashville. No way. The only times that a team nickname has been retired were when the two Washington Senators franchises (the original one and the expansion team) moved to other cities. Unlike the name "Senators", which would not make sense outside of Washington, the name "Athletics" can work anywhere. The move is going to be bad enough; to dump the historic name would compound the tragedy. The A's name has survived multiple moves. It deserves to live on.

And he hit it from that distance twice. The announcers: "So much for icing the kicker." The funny thing is that Mike Nolan said before the game that, even though he had seen Jake Bates making field goals from 65 yards in pregame warmup, he wasn't going to use Bates from that distance. From 65 yards? Nooo, nooo, no way, not a chance. From 64 yards? Get in there!

Oh? I thought that I had read here that the NFL owns this mark.

Happy to oblige. The Astros did nothing that is not done by every single other team — including the crybaby Yankees. Stealing signs is absolutely part of the game. The 1951 Giants used high-powered binoculars. Here is where this mindset gets dangerously divorced from reality. Armstrong mainly used his own blood. Even people who get squeamish about steroids should be able to acknowledge that using one's own blood is unobjectionable. No blowing-off is taking place. When the question is whether those players are good people, those facts form the basis to conclude that they are not. Those bad acts have nothing to do with the question of whether the players in question were amongst the greatest players ever — the answer to which is an unequivocal "yes". The essential point here is that ranking those players where they belong amongst the greatest ever neither ignores nor excuses those players' bad behaviour. It's an unreasonable rule, as it plays "let's pretend" with the facts of history. As I mentioned earlier, banning Pete Rose from working in baseball on account of his gambling was appropriate. But acting as though he does not have a playing record but deserves recognition is a crime against history — especially considering that the gambling that got Rose banned from baseball happened after his playing career was over. Straw man alert! To say that a substance should not be illegal is not the same thing as promoting its use. (But you knew that.) Note that there are legal things that are best avoided, most notably tobacco. I do not speak hypothetically; the person whom I loved most died at age 39 from the ravages on her body caused by the abuse of heroin and cocaine (as well as tobacco), substances which I would recommend to nobody. Indeed, I wouldn't even recommend the use of steroids, on account of the risk of cancer, as happened to Lyle Alzado. Still, a person has a fundamental right to put into his or her own body that which he or she chooses to put there. This acknowledgment of one's sovereignty over one's own body provides the incontrovertible moral basis for opposing prohibition of even the most dangerous substances. Well, the players from the 1960s would definitely disagree with you about amphetamines. Those players were convinced that "greenies" helped them recover from injuries and deal with fatigue. Jim Bouton wrote about this. While I have not used cocaine, plenty of people whom I know have used it. And they say that that drug gave them the ability to overlook certain types of pain. So it is safe to say that the use of that drug allowed ballplayers to play when they otherwise would not have been able to play.

I didn't say that steroids didn't help those players. They certainly did help them. And there's nothing wrong with that. If those players' performances had been enhanced by taking vitamins, or by excersise and a good diet, no one would complain. There is no fundamental difference between those things and the use of steroids. And before anyone claims that the difference is down to natural versus artificial, consider the absurdity that athletes in other sports have been banned for re-injecting their own blood, with no foreign substances involved. Also, let's remember that Willie Mays used amphetamines, and that Babe Ruth almost certainly used cocaine. This does not diminish their accomplishments one bit, just as the greatness of Bonds and Clemens and the others is undiminished. Irrelevant. (By the way, since you brought up Pete Rose, I'll mention that Rose, unlike the steroids guys, actually did do something wrong. To ban him from working in baseball from that point on is appreciate. But what is inappropriate is to ignore his brilliant playing career by keeping him out of the Hall of Fame, as all of the substantiated gambling accusations are from after he had retired as a player.) We could certainly find something contemptible about every single pro athlete. While it's perfectly sensible to criticise a pro athlete — or anyone else — for his or her bad behaviour, we should be intellectually honest enough to recognise the greatest players purely on the basis of their performance, while understanding that doing so amounts to no endorsement of any other action those players have taken during their lives. Please do not pretend that that indefensible law is some kind of moral standard. From the standpoint of morality, laws on "controlled substances" are an abomination. The important point is that the function of a hall of fame is to provide an honest recounting of a sport's history by recognising its greatest players — no matter whether those players were good people or bad people. For the Baseball Hall of Fame to refuse to include the home run king and the hit king is shameful. This is offensive to me as a fan of baseball history. Until Bonds and Rose, and all the other unjustly denied players, are granted the recognition that they earned, the Hall of Fame will be disgracing itself.

Well, the steroids guys are another matter entirely. That's where the writers have really gotten it wrong. Here is something worth being upset about. All those guys — Palmeiro, McGwire, Sosa, Clemens, and especially Bonds — not only deserve enshrinement, but they also deserve a formal apology. I can only hope that a committee will come along one day to right that wrong. So you'd like to *fault* a guy for playing his whole career on the same team? Is this opposite day? If playing for one team for your whole career is going to cut in any direction on a guy's legacy, it's only going to enhance it, as it does for Kirby Puckett, George Brett, Robin Yount, Tony Gwynn, Mike Schmidt. In any case, when it comes to a case for the Hall of Fame, enhancing factors such as the World Series or playing for one team apply only to borderline guys, such as, let's say, Thurman Munson. For a player who has dominated as much as Trout has done, you never even get to those other factors.

If only life actually worked like that.

I don't think we are. You're saying that the Angels' lack of pennants should diminish Trout's Hall of Fame case (even though you acknowledge that it will not). I consider that argument to be without merit.

I'm sorry, but that is not a sensible position. If the Angels have made the postseason only once during Trout's career, that's not on account of any inadequacies of Trout's contributions — just as the Cubs' lack of pennants was not down to anything that Banks failed to do. To punish Trout for the failures of other players is illogical. This guy is a three-time MVP; that alone would qualify him as a legit Hall of Famer if he retired today. The expected 500 home runs will only make him ridiculously overqualified. Nothing can diminish all of that.

You can bring in other factors on players who don't have overwhelming numbers. But once a player gets to a certain level of accomplshment, there's no longer any argument.

You called Trout irrelevant. No one with 500 home runs and well in excess of 2000 hits (both of which he will almost certainly reach) is irrelevant.

Bad take. See: Ernie Banks.

Wet paper bags.