Ferdinand Cesarano

I'd bet that there are plenty of veteran 19th century players with no career home runs.

All blame here goes to A's ownership. The Giants demonstrated that a committed ownership that is willing to pay the majority of the costs for a new park can turn a struggling Bay Area team into an overwhelming success. Even those who (correctly) criticise public expenditures for sports teams, such as Neil DeMause, acknowledge that the Giants, with their minimal public involvement, did it the right way.

That guy, Donald De La Haye, is not a "no-name social media influencer". He is a former Division I college player. He's qualified to offer analysis on an XFL game. What's more, De La Haye's story is worth telling. He was thown off the UCF team for monetising his "Destroying" YouTube channel. And now YouTube is his career. He's the Jomboy of football, except with high-level playing experience. De La Haye beat the system, and his success is a feel-good success story.

Every USFL game is a beautiful uni experience! This is the first time I am seeing the Maulers, and their look is outstanding (with the exception of a minor quibble about the toilet collar). Having just watched the San Antonio Brahmas, who have colours similar to those of the Maulers, I am struck by how much better the Brahmas would look if they, like the Maulers, used light-coloured pants (either grey or white). Likewise, St. Louis looks silly in all blue, but would look great with white pants paired with the blue jerseys. One really nice thing about the Maulers' uniforms is that the player name is very unobtrusive in white on the yellow yoke. Well done on that.

I saw on a Casey Pratt report on the news that it is dependent on legislation in Nevada that hasn't been passed yet. But the passage of that legislation is likely. Pratt puts the chances of the move happening at 95%.

It's true that no one is going to make a trip to Las Vegas to see an A's game; or, more precisely, the number of people who will do that is dwarfed by the number of people who will do that to see a Raiders game. But, if the A's ballpark is walking distance from the casinos, then it will attract vacationers who go to Las Vegas for the usual reasons, and who decide once they are there to take in a game. Also, any talk about changing the team's name is downright offensive. Civilisation needs to be protected from baseball "fans" who openly declare that they don't care about history. The move of the team is sickening enough; but trashing the team's long history would be compounding the crime.

This sure is wonderful. And the XFL is doing the same thing with Dean Blandino, whose descriptions and explanations are even more thorough than Perrera's. Also, even when there is no conversation between the referee and Blandino, sometimes the announcers call on Blandino to explain something to them (and to us). Wow. OK, the XFL is not doing that! The league that started it in the U.S. is another AFL, the Arena Football League. In that league there was no separate replay official. The referee himself would go over to the replay screen and ask the truck for various angles, while describing his reasoning for the television audience. This is all very good. But the only thing that I am uncomfortable with is the limited number of coach's challenges. Getting the calls right should be a matter of general integrity, not a part of the competition. But here the philosophical collides with the practical; coach's challenges cannot be totally unlimited, as no one wants a game stopped after every play. But I don't really like tying it to time-outs. Still, toward the end of the integrity of the officiating, in the XFL, Blandino can overturn any call (or non-call) on his own initiative, without any challenge. That feels like the right approach. Also, it's worth noting that in the XFL the coach can be as specific or as general as he wants in the challenge of a non-call. He can say "face-mask, number 90", or he can say "there was holding somewhere in there". [Edit: This is wrong. The coach has to specifiy what he wants the replay official to look for. I think I heard a sideline comment from St. Louis coach Anthony Becht to the effect that "there has to be something there"; but, by the time he formally put in the challenge, he would have to have refined what exactly he was claiming.] Indeed, the speculation is that coaches will try to save a time-out so that they can challenge a non-call on the opposition's game-winning touchdown, on the theory that, if you look hard enough, you can call holding on every play. It will be interesting to see how this plays out during the XFL's final week, the playoffs, and then next season. Anyway, I know that, practically speaking, we don't want the game to be stopped after every play. But there is a problem with tying the correctness of the calls to the team's management of timeouts.

Right. The current version of Yankee Stadium was explicitly designed to resemble the pre-renovation look of the original Stadium. (Not to mention that it has the same bloody name.) So pairing the 1923 Stadium and the 2023 Stadium in a picture on the anniversary of the opening of the original Stadium is perfectly appropriate. To even think to complain about this is bizarre.

So Paul and Ringo better not pose for any pictures in connection with the 60th anniversary of the Beatles' first album. Egad.

Oy. It's the anniversary of an historic event. Next year will be the 60th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' first album. And it will be celebrated as such. Absolutely no one thinks that the celebration of that anniversary implies that the Beatles are still together. The year 1923 is the date of the opening of Yankee Stadium. That will be worth celebrating in 2023, in 2073, in 2123, and so forth — no matter what stadiums the Yankees are playing in at those times.

Which it is, as the original Yankee Stadium opened in 1923.

It's a hundred years since the opening of the original Stadium, an event that changed the course of baseball history. So this is good.

Here's a glimpse of it from a 1997 ESPN2 broadcast.

Why are Red Bull Arena and the Union's park not options? Surely the USFL have noticed the D.C. Defenders' ability to fill D.C. United's stadium, and would be willing to pay even an inflated rent to get the Generals and Stars situated in similar-sized stadiums.

Egad, man. Every USFL tram looks better than every XFL team outside of D.C. when they don't wear monochrome. The Houston - Michigan game was spectacular-looking. The logos, the colours, the stripes! And Philadelphia's colours are absolutely gorgeous. (Incidentally, their side panels are my only uni-related quibble in the league.) Finally, it appears that all USFL teams have the good sense not to use monochrome (apart from white-over-white, which is appropriate for all teams). I don't hate the XFL's uniforms (other than the terrible prevalence of monochrome). But the USFL's uniforms are several levels above.

Memphis is one of only two USFL teams whose games are on local radio. The station is WKIM 98.9. The other team with a radio deal is Michigan, on Detroit's WJR 760. (By contrast, no XFL teams have local radio.) I don't have cable, and I am certainly not going to pay for any Fox Sports app. So radio is how I followed today's Memphis - Philadelphia game. I do have a Peacock subscription; and at least one USFL game is on there each week, including one of tomorrow's games.

Which is a strike against Montreal Milwaukee, Kansas City, Seattle, and Washington say hello. No. We know that one particular owner couldn't make it work. That says nothing about how another owner would operate. Irrelevant. That had to do partly with the idiosyncracies of one individual, and partly with a rare opportunity to right a historic wrong by bringing the team back to Los Angeles. It has no bearing on how a different ownership group might fare in that city. The important point is that each case presents a unique set of circumstances. No valid generalisations can be made, as any given case is unlike the others.

To be fair, the XFL 3.0 uniform bar is veryyyy low Maybe so. But that was a good-looking game for any league.

The DC - Seattle matchup is the best-looking game of the year. How beautiful to have no monochrome, and to have each team wearing something white. Not only that, but both teams are wearing socks that contrast with the pants. It's like someone suddenly remembered what football uniforms look like. What a pleasure to see this. And that Abram Smith fellow sure is fun to watch. Like Joe Morris with the Giants when I was in college.

Bob Melvin, April 17, 2018: Ah! Good point. I wasn't considering throwback days.

The stage is set for their season to be rescued by...

The last A's manager to wear the white coaches' cap was the guy who got rid of it, Billy Martin.

The uniformity is indeed beautiful. Uniforms without numbers are for batboys and ball girls.

Because we would be losing something beautiful about the look of baseball, for no good reason. I imagine you are probably joshing. But Benito Santiago's use of 09 with the Padres suggests that 09 and 9 are the same number. On the other hand, the Blue Jays once had, at the same time, players wearing 0 (Al Oliver) and 00 (Cliff Johnson).