So far, actually not as bad as some recent seasons. The Angels, I mean.
Scheduled start time: 8:38 Central
Weather: Slightly sticky, start temp 65°
Opponent’s SB site is dead, a good indie one is Crashing The Pearly Gates
TV: BSNorth, MLB.TV Free Game (out of market). Radio: The choice of the discerning fan
Angels lefty Patrick Sandoval, who is not related to “The Panda” Pablo, was an Angels fan growing up in Mission Viejo, in Orange County. So it must have been a nice surprise when Houston traded him to Anaheim before he reached the bigs. He throws a low-90s fastball/sinker, a slider and a changeup. When he’s on, the slider is his best pitch. 2023 digits:
When last we checked in on the Angels, their star player was probably leaving and the former mayor was likely headed to jail for taking illegal bribes from the team to get a stadium deal. Obviously the player left. And the ex-mayor’s still guilty (he pled that way) but hasn’t been put in the slammer yet, these things take time.
I have always wondered, though… if it’s illegal for a politician to take bribes, why isn’t it illegal to offer them? Surely, if I offered a court judge a bribe, I’d be in trouble. And in fact sometimes some bribers do get in trouble… although the Supreme Court is now considering a case that would rend bribery almost impossible to prove in either direction.
Baseball reporter Bob Nightengale shared this sad fact about Trout:
Mike Trout has now hit 10 consecutive solo HRs dating back to last season.
He now has hit 235 of his 373 HRs with the bases empty (63.0%).
The only player in MLB history to have at least 373 homers with 60% or more being solo shots is Alfonso Soriano (249 of 412, 60.4%).
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) April 9, 2024
Across town, Trout’s former teammate Shohei Ohtani signed with the Dodgers, for a good deal of deferred money. That’s going to help the Dodgers stay competitive now, and make the total cost of his salary less expensive over time due to inflation. But it might cost California quite a lot in tax revenue. If, say, he moves to Japan after he retires, California won’t get to tax his deferred pay.
Some California lawmakers are asking Congress to alter this particular tax loophole; it was intended for regular pensioners who move to different states than where they originally worked – say, a Minnesotan who moves to Arizona for the warmth.
Let’s look at a strange promotional story I saw recently. It’s about a youth sports company called Perfect Game, and this company looks like it’s pretty huge, with offices all over (some of those look to be small office suites, though). The company’s head honcho, Rick Thurman, tells the promo writer that “what we’re trying to do is, we want to make baseball cool again … Where do you start doing that? You do it at the grassroots level. You grow the game at the very bottom.”
Since Perfect Game’s website has a .org domain name, you might think it’s a non-profit organization. But you don’t have to be non-profit to register as a .org. There’s actually no rules about using it at all. And if this isn’t just a money-grubbing enterprise, I’ll eat my hat.
Thurman tells the promo guy that Perfect Game “was unique in the youth travel sports system,” a gigantic ripoff for kids and familes that’s costing parents of young athletes more every year. And Thurman says “So many kids play baseball from 8-13. The problem is a lot of kids quit by the time they hit 14.” Then adds, “Let’s acquire other youth events companies, attatch them to PG, and then you have a pipeline going up.”
Yes, a pipeline. A money funnel for Thurman and his buddies.
Why, indeed, are kids quitting youth sports? Because of programs and pressures like this!
That’s something Linda Flanagan talked about in her recent book Take Back The Game: How Money And Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports – And Why It Matters. We reviewed that excellent book back in January. Flanagan talks to kids, parents, coaches, and psychologists, and concludes that it’s exactly this kind of pressure to join “travel leagues” and the like that’s ruining the fun and the positive lessons of sports for kids.
What’s Thurman’s background in talking to child development experts? I don’t know that. But I do know what profession he used to work in. He was a high-powered sports agent, running an agency called the Beverly Hills Sports Council. They had clients like Rickey Henderson, Mike Piazza, Trevor Hoffman, George Brett, and Barry Bonds. Thurman told one interviewer that his special insight was to “merge the entertainment business and the sports business. In the entertainment industry you have an agent, a business manager, a personal manager, a lawyer, a PR firm … my vision was to pull all of that under one roof and be a fully encompassed agency, where we were doing the accounting, the contracts, marketing, so on and so forth.”
Sounds like pretty much his plan for cornering the market on youth sports.
If you or anybody you know has kids in youth sports, and you’re looking for more resources to help them, ignore greedy gunk like this. You could look at the Positive Coaching Alliance (which Flanagan recommends), a real non-profit that’s not going to try to grab your money and promise your kids will be stars.
At least little kids should be allowed to have fun. Hopefully you do during this one!
You already knew about Sanó. And old friend Aaron Hicks is on the bench, too. He mostly bats against lefthanders.