Ferdinand Cesarano

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.

While the picture itself is not inherently degrading, the mere fact that the logo uses Native / First Nations people as mascots is enough to make the logo objectionable. The only way that such a depiction could be acceptable would be if it were initiated by Native / First Nations people.

Do you listen to the Minutemen enough that you encounter it that often? I've never listened to them, though I gather that that's one of their songs. I know of this pronunciation from a friend from California who expressed to me his intense hatred for that mispronunciation, as well as for the mangling of the name of Northern California's San Rafael, which is usually pronounced "San Rafel". We got onto the subject in the first place by talking about the fact that the movie Hoosiers is set in an Indiana city whose name Milan is, for some unfathomable reason, pronounced "Mylin". I then complained to him about the unfortunate pronunciation of the name of the New Jersey town of Bogota, with the stress on the second syllable, whereupon he topped me by mentioning San Pedro and San Rafael.

Is San Pedro not a natural harbour? (Side note: the pronunciation "San Pidro" annoys me.)

I'd say that both the court and the uniforms are improvements over what they had. But, if the team was going to reach back into its history, then it should have brought in the beautiful San Diego-era letter and number fonts. Also, the colours from that set had the feel of the sea, and would go well with a newly re-emphasised nautical theme. The beauty of the number font is best seen on the numbers 2, 3, and 4. A bonus: the name "Clippers" was spelt out in semaphore on the sides of the shorts. That's the kind of nice extra touch that feels in keeping with the placement of the latitute and longitude on the new court.

Definitely possible. There's something to be said for being able to ignore the presence of a player name on the back of a baseball jersey, just as we ignore the team name on the front of an NFL jersey. The whole Nike/Fanatics thing is still a mess; but the smaller names are not in themselves a bad thing.

The uniform debacle (specifically the see-through pants, and news anchors' reactions thereto) was mentioned on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight.

I certainly am here — not "lurking", but participating, just like you and everyone else here. And, yes, I consider the R logo to be amongst the best in the league, behind only those of the Panthers and the Battlehawks. Football has far too few letter logos. Of course, not every letter helmet logo is good. The LA logo of the original USFL's Express was terribly unimaginative; the XFL Vipers' V logo was pretty lousy; and the H logo of the Roughnecks is just unsightly. (That last one is made all the worse by the realisation that the team should rightfully be called the Gamblers, and so should be sporting the gorgeous G logo which ranks in the top tier all-time not only of letter logos, but of sports logos overall.) But the Renegades' R logo is a thing of beauty. Other great letter helmet logos were those of the LA Wildcats of the AAF, and of the original XFL's New York Hitmen, Chicago Enforcers, and Las Vegas Outlaws (especially the original one that was never used). The Renegades absolutely made the right move by putting the distinctive and well-designed R logo on the helmet (even if the previous helmet's stripe was much better); the clipart-style cowboy head is better relegated to the sleeve. Likewise, the Showboats, having inexplicably dropped the classic big-wheel riverboat logo for an incongruous speedboat-looking logo, should swap their helmet logo and their very nice M sleeve logo. And the Defenders should definitely restore the strong DC logo back to the helmet.

If they wanted visibility for the MLB logo, then they should have put that logo on the sleeve, where it was for all teams in 1969.

And the two words should be farther apart. The smooshing together of the words is a bad move that the Yankees made on the previous road set, and it is one that they are evidently going to continue on the wet paper bags.

This is VERY surprising to me. I would love to see this list, if possible. Here are the NHL valuations and the MLS valuations from Forbes.

I guess it depends on your definition of "live". That's certainly fine in much of flyover land and in country areas far outside of cities, but not enough for any desirable area of a big city, and not enough for home ownership in many cities. I live in New York City, and I am willing to reveal that I earn somewhere in the neighbourhood of the minimum salaries named in both those stories. That's definitely enough to live on even here, in one of the most expensive cities in the country. Can you live large and take annual cruises to Europe? No. But you can maintain a comfortable lifestyle if your habits are modest and sensible. On MLS: we've long since passed the point where the top MLS teams are worth more than the bottom NHL teams. Right now, all but five MLS teams hold that distinction, with the top MLS team being more valuable than half of the NHL's teams. Despite anyone's fantasies to the contrary, MLS is a major league in the U.S. and Canadian sports landscapes. On the broader point of what organisations are even to be considered: no one can deny that auto racing, tennis, and golf are huge sports. But they are not leagues. The premise of the question seemed to me to obviously rule out individual sports.

[Editing note: "who".] The top college football players make money now from name/image/likeness; but they are not paid by the teams for which they play. So in my opinion that doesn't qualify. I'd say that a major league is a league in which players can make their livings solely from playing. While this was not generally true even of Major League Baseball until the reserve clause was toppled, it seems to me to be a good benchmark of "major" status nowadays. That rules out the NLL and the PLL, and also the UFL and the arena/indoor football leagues, as well as the MASL. Regarding the WNBA, a site called Sportsnaut says that the average salary is $147,745, and that the minimum is $64,000. Business Insider puts the average at $113,295 and the minimum at $62,000. Either way, that's enough to live on. So for me that league qualifies as a major league.

Alex Johnson, who won a batting title with the Angels and who later played briefly with the Yankees (hitting a game-winning home run at Fenway in his first game with the team), was the brother of the Giants' running back Ron Johnson.

The real real answer: With this as the theme song. The Union and their fans have leaned heavily into the Franklin imagery. All Philly teams should follow suit. I join you in that bias. I would assert that Philadelphia City Hall is the most beautiful building in the world. The building is so grandiose that it cannot adequately be captured in pictures. You really have to go there and just marvel at its splendour. From all angles — including from within, in the passages to the internal courtyard — it is breathtaking. I've never been so awed by any other work of art. Still, the primary symbol of that city is Franklin.

So they're considering Omaha and its half-million population, and not the similarly-sized Quebec City or Halifax? As the lady from The Whitest Kids U'Know used to say: oh, hell no!

There's also the New Orleans Superdome, which has been renovated recently. Of a similar size is the Alamodome; both stadiums seat more than 50,000 for baseball — not that that sort of crowd is going to be a concern of the A's. More to the A's level, we've seen Major League teams in temporary homes in San Juan and Buffalo that seat around 18,000. I think that this idea of the team going dark for a few years is very unlikely to happen.