Ferdinand Cesarano

13 minutes ago, TrueYankee26 said:

 

Baseball Reference did this a year ago; I thought that it was already official.

There must be some slight differences between the Major League Baseball numbers and the Baseball Reference numbers, as Major League Baseball has Josh Gibson's lifetime average at .372, while Baseball Reference has it at .373.

I see that Minnie Miñoso now has more than 2000 hits.  The biggest difference that I noticed as of last year's Baseball Reference decision is that Monte Irvin now becomes a career .300 hitter.  These things are important when one is playing the Immaculate Grid every day.

Willie Mays doesn't gain any home runs, though John Thorn says that there is one game in limbo due to the lack of a published boxscore.  So I guess it is still possible.  Also, Hank Aaron played in the Negro Leagues in 1951; however, the Baseball Reference officialisation of Negro League stats covers the years 1920 to 1948.  If the Majors follow the same guidelines, then, even if Aaron had hit homers in that season, they won't increase his career total.
 

24 minutes ago, infrared41 said:

If you gave me an hour to think of another umpire's name, I might be able to do it, but I doubt it

Steve Palermo and Ken Kaiser were known as good umpires in the American League; Doug Harvey and Tom Gorman were known as good umpires in the National League.

Also, Ron Luciano was pretty well regarded by everyone outside of Earl Weaver. And his ebullient personality charmed everyone — including, eventually, Weaver. (This is what makes the end of his story so terribly heartbreaking.)

In the old days, Bill Klem of the National League and George Moriarty of the American League were well known and generally well respected. (Except by John McGraw, when it came to Klem.)

9 minutes ago, McCall said:

So you think this league can be successful purely on perception rather than practice?

A full smaller stadium is not merely perception; it is a significant contributing factor to the quality of the broadcast presentation. The league can be successful if its television ratings can continue to attract sponsorships, and if those ratings allow the league to continue to sell its television rights to major networks. Revenue from attendance is unimportant by comparison.

16 minutes ago, McCall said:

Whether it [the Renegades' current logo] was released in 2020 or not, that was designed for the DALLAS Renegades, not Arlington.

No, it emphatically was not. If that R logo had been a "DR" designed for the Dallas Renegades, then that logo would have been used by the Dallas Renegades.  However, by the time that R logo came into existence, the name Dallas Renegades was gone, and there was thus no need for any "DR" logo. Kindly stop railing against objective reality.

27 minutes ago, McCall said:

38 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

There is no downside to aiming low. If a 5000-seat or 6000-seat stadium proves too small, then the league gets the PR benefit of reporting sellouts.

 

That makes more sense than paying exhorbident rental fees for stadiums that the teams cannot possibly fill, while at the same time degrading the televised product.

"Selling out". A 6k-seat stadium. 

Selling out a 6000-seat stadium would be a worthy accomplishment in any minor league in any city. Equally important, it would look very good on television.

Having those sellouts would justify moving up to the next level of stadium. Skipping this step is folly; worse, it's expensive folly, in terms both of wasted rental fees and of damaged public perception.

27 minutes ago, McCall said:

Like how Arlington fooled you into thinking the 'DR' logo was the better helmet option and now you defend it mercilessly, when everybody else knows it's crap, just because you can't be wrong.

The Renegades' R logo is beautiful; moreover, it makes for a great helmet logo in a sport that has far too few letter-based logos.  Memphis should take note, and swap the aesthetically pleasing M logo that it currently relegates to the sleeve with that incongruous speedboat thing that replaced the wonderful old riverboat on the helmet.

Also, as has been pointed out many (many!) times, the Renegades' logo is clearly not a "DR" because that logo did not even exist at the time when the team was called the Dallas Renegades.

Finally, I can definitely be wrong, for example, in my estimation of the intelligence — not to mention the intellectual honesty — of certain people.

2 hours ago, McCall said:

The XFL last year had only 2 teams average below 12k per game (one of them was Vegas playing in a dump of a stadium at your recommended smaller capacity). This league can easily get in at least the 15k if in the proper markets. Y'all are the same ones saying "one season isn't enough to decide to relocate these teams drawing poorly", yet seem to think it's a good enough barometer to decide the that this league should be settling for 6k-capacity stadiums.

There is no downside to aiming low. If a 5000-seat or 6000-seat stadium proves too small, then the league gets the PR benefit of reporting sellouts.

That makes more sense than paying exhorbident rental fees for stadiums that the teams cannot possibly fill, while at the same time degrading the televised product.

38 minutes ago, Sykotyk said:

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Are there no colleges in and around Detroit with stadiums that seat 5000? 

 

Tom Adams Field at Wayne State is just 2.6 miles from Ford Field and holds 6,000.

Perfect. The Panthers should jump on that.

40 minutes ago, Sykotyk said:

But then you're capped at 6,000 at an outdoor stadium.

That's not a problem. The Panthers can deal with that issue if they ever gets to the point where a 6000-seat stadium is too small.

39 minutes ago, McCall said:

If they’re looking for a 5K seat stadium where they’re at, then they need to move to another city because they aren’t succeeding there.

No way. St. Louis and D.C. are outlier,s. For any other team, filling a 5000-to-6000-seat stadium would be excellent.

This league needs to embrace reality. By playing in more appropriately-sized stadiums, the teams would pay a lot less in rent, while presenting a much better-looking spectacle. And, in the unlikely event that one of these stadiums proves to be too small, even that would be a good thing, in terms of creating demand for tickets.

If the league were to put a team in New York (I'd prefer it to be either the Hitmen or the Guardians rather than the Generals), it should look into renting Fordham's stadium (7000), or Icahn Stadium on Randall's Island (5000) — or even the stadiums at Wagner College (3000) or at St. John's University (2000).  Again, the key word here is "reality".

Are there no colleges in and around Detroit with stadiums that seat 5000? 

That's the kind of place that this team should be looking to rent.

2 hours ago, Sodboy13 said:

[West Texas] have announced they're playing Washington... Except, uh, Oregon is already playing Washington. Ah well, should sort itself out.

Maybe they can play a three-sided game, as the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers did in 1944.

21 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

I’m half-expecting Lee Hutton to be some AI creation now. It would at least explain why he never shows up. 

Both Lee Hutton and ChatGPT make up things that aren't true; but ChatGPT corrects itself when called on it.

21 minutes ago, Sykotyk said:

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Well, after having brought the league to its absolute height.

No. Because he sold their future for a fairytale. They existed solely on a few expansion fees being paid full price and the carrot on the end of the stick that the NFL was going to buy the league and magically make it profitable. 

Under Baker, the AFL's team values were at their highest, as was its players' pay. Most important of all, public awareness of the league was at its peak, with the games on NBC. 

Now that MLS has firmly established itself as the fifth major league, we should remember that the AFL, with its array of solid and credible owners, was well ahead of MLS, and appeared to be on the verge of attaining that status. 

This was no fairy tale. It was a reasonable gamble, one which for quite a while looked likely to pay off.  The fact that the NFL ultimately did not buy into the Arena League — as most observers believed would eventually happen — is not the fault of Baker, who got the league to its pinnacle.

It was a great run.

15 minutes ago, Sykotyk said:

Still need to do one on C David Baker and how he destroyed the original AFL first

Well, after having brought the league to its absolute height.

14 hours ago, Germanshepherd said:

The Storm will be playing…the team that just folded

If they want to play against a team that doesn't exist, then maybe they can face the CityHawks.

11 minutes ago, DCarp1231 said:

Nashville Tunes sounds a lot better than Tuners

Sorry, Charlie.

4 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Zype link works for the Albany Orlando game. I get no sound, however. Scorebug hides beneath my browser bar, which seems really odd.

 

Well, at least two teams exist.

I watched the entire Albany - Orlando game on the Vyre site. It turned out to be a great game, decided in overtime. This game could have been presented on the NFL Network, and would have made a fine showcase for the league.

At the same time, I listened to the Nashville Kats game on the local station 102.5 The Game, and I was delighted to hear that the announcer is none other than the great Eli Gold. This game was a runaway, as the Kats buried Minnesota (who are coached by former New Jersey Red Dogs quarterback Rickey Foggie). But Gold remaind completely engaged, and turned in a superb performance. 

Nashville's next game is on Thursday. I'm going to try to tune in for that— even though it will mean a delay in watching the new Star Trek episode.

Albany's crowd was very much into the game; and Gold mentioned a big crowd in Nashville, even though he didn't give an attendance figure. These two successful opening games are noteworthy, in light of the fiascos elsewhere in the league.

23 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

I just checked my program guide on Xfinity, and I think you should know that "NFL Total Access" isn't like a streaming alternate channel or something, it's the name of an NFL Network studio show.

Right, that was explained later in that same ArenaFan thread.  So I don't really know what it means to say that a game has been moved to NFL Total Access.  Does it mean that the game will temporarily replace the studio show that normally appears under that name, just as ESPN sometimes shows games on its ESPNews channel?  Does it mean that the "coverage" of the game will be limited to scores being read on that studio show? I don't know.

6 minutes ago, PTrudellJr said:

22 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

According to posts in the ArenaFan message board, the games that were to have been carried by the NFL Network are now off that channel's schedule.

 

On the NFL Network schedule, I see one game showing on Thursday 2-May at 20:00 EDT with a repeat at 00:30 on 3-May.

Ah.  Well, a post at 5:37pm EDT yesterday in this thread reads: "Update - all games this weekend are off the NFLN schedule".  A later post in that thread at 7:37 says that the Sling schedule shows that the Saturday game has been moved to NFL Total Access.

So, let's see what happens!

According to posts in the ArenaFan message board, the games that were to have been carried by the NFL Network are now off that channel's schedule.

It is entirely a matter of speculation whether someone at the AFL didn't make a payment, or whether the NFL Network was scared off by the Iowa Rampage's preseason game that was shown on YouTube and/or by the pictures of the Oregon Blackbears' preseason game that that team shared.

40 minutes ago, raz said:

40,000 one week, 31,000 the next week, 22% drop. I don't know how that's out of context. 

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.

1 hour ago, DCarp1231 said:

Putting two games on at the same time on the same channel is certainly a choice.

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.

23 hours ago, GDAWG said:

It's been a while since I posted about this moron:

 

Says his goal is to make MLFB the best football league in America and that they will be better than the NFL.  

 

In other words, he's a delusional schmuck.

This guy is comedy gold.

22 hours ago, rmackman said:

 

I love that the bottom left lightning bolt is actually NY where NBC studios is located, and above it is a W for WNBC, which is the radio official call letters. 

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.)

2 hours ago, rmackman said:

That's actually pretty neat. Would love to see the '30 NBC hat. 

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.

2 minutes ago, BottomlessPitt said:

Utah Two Utes. 

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.)

4 hours ago, burgundy said:

 

These were good uniforms? Collars and all?

 

 

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.