Ferdinand Cesarano

23 minutes ago, BBTV said:

"other factors" should negate the overwhelming numbers.

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.

2 minutes ago, BBTV said:

I've made my case.  Yours is simply "a guy with numbers matters."  I don't think it's that binary.  

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.

4 minutes ago, BBTV said:

That's the literal definition of taking something out of context.  You cut off the rest of the sentence, and everything else, where I clearly stated that winning a championship isn't necessary to be a HOFer.

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. 

13 minutes ago, BBTV said:

Mike Trout has meant zero to the history of the game.  . . . He hasn't contributed to a championship team . . .

Bad take.

See: Ernie Banks.

32 minutes ago, AstroCree said:

I can only imagine how this will look once July hits.

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.

24 minutes ago, LaGrandeOrange said:

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

(Side note: the pronunciation "San Pidro" annoys me.)

 

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.

1 hour ago, B-Rich said:

One other thing, although Los Angeles is on the water, Los Angles Clippers is about as appropriate as "Los Angeles LAKERS". Los Angeles has no natural harbor...

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.

Just now, floydnimrod said:

I know there's a lot wrong with the new jerseys and we're all enjoying the pile on, but is it possible that last names were way too damn big to begin with?

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.

2 hours ago, McCall said:

 Shhh. He's here. Lurking. Just waiting for someone, anyone,  who dares criticize the 'DR' logo or implies it's not primary and helmet worthy...

 

Oh no. It's too late. He's already done it. He's given you the... thumbs down!

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. 

4 hours ago, aawagner011 said:

This article claims that it was MLB, not Nike nor Fanatics, that led the decision to move the batterman logo down. The reason? Greater visibility.

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.

4 hours ago, Survival79 said:

21 hours ago, BJ Sands said:

The wordmark should be bolder. 

 

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.

Just now, Cujo said:

4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

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. 

 

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.

54 minutes ago, BBTV said:

19 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

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.

 

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.

1 hour ago, GDAWG said:

We all know the Big 5 (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS) but is there a sixth major league and if so whom?  There's the WNBA, NWSL and NLL as options.  NLL is because its lacrosse and the WNBA and NWSL are women's leagues in basketball and soccer.  

[Editing note: "who".]

58 minutes ago, raz said:

Definitions mean everything. If by "major league" you mean paid athletes (to some degree), big TV contract, nationwide spread, big numbers, big events ... I'd wanna throw college football in there. Before even MLS. 

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.

7 hours ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:

But the real answer?

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.

7 hours ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:

Although I may be biased in that Philadelphia's City Hall is one of my favorite buildings of all time.

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!

36 minutes ago, McCall said:

The only MLB-"level" stadiums that exist outside of MLB is Olympic Stadium in Montreal and soon the Oakland Coliseum.

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.

2 minutes ago, Walk-Off said:

I would argue that John Fisher and his allies across both the A's organization and MLB in general have themselves been creating problems in search of solutions, and thus forcing "gymnastic" ideas to be put into play, ever since Fisher et al. decided last spring to bail on Howard Terminal and instead go full speed ahead on what has become an increasingly convoluted effort to move the A's to the Las Vegas market.

Also, this guy could have agreed to sell the A's to Joe Lacob, who was willing to buy the team. Then he could have taken his one billion dollars of profit as compared to his purchase price, and could have used that to get an expansion team for Las Vegas.

2 hours ago, Bomba Tomba said:

Not this upcoming one, that's for sure

 

The Ravens purple and/or the Lions blue would've broken up all the red

The awfulness of the Ravens' and Lions' numbers and of their overall uniform designs more than cancels out the beauty of those teams' colours.

The best the Nationals ever looked is this:

That right there is a baseball uniform. It's a classic Tigers-level design that should have remained in place forever. The unique front number location on the home set made that dignified uniform very distinctive.

That look was satisfying particularly because the team had overcome a very bad initial look with the bevels. Every change since this point — including the use of the script wordmark at home — has been a downgrade. The new set drastically accelerates the downward trend.

8 minutes ago, LMU said:

Since the joke apparently didn't translate to Esperanto, let me repost it in GIF form.

Ah! I confess to my very wide ignorance in the realm of movies.  Dankon pro la klarigo.