I’d originally written “Happy Thanksgiving, Turkeys,” meaning you turkeys. But then I realized it would read like I was simply wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to the turkeys of the world, which, well, probably not the right day for that.
In any case, I hope you do have a very Happy Thanksgiving. I have been blessed up to my eyeballs, and it’s a very thankful day for me. That’s no less true around here, where I genuinely feel like I’ve got an extended family (complete with no fewer than three crazy uncles) that I get to hang out with every day and talk about the team I love. And sometimes we fight like families on Thanksgiving, too!
I’m also thankful that it took just a few hours for you to donate enough money to JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a charity near and dear to the Santo family, for example) that I’m now committed to wearing this ugly Cubs holiday sweater for the entirety of the Winter Meetings. I didn’t want to set the donation bar too high ($500), but clearly I underestimated your generosity. I’ll have more on this soon, but it’ll be an Ugly Sweater Winter Meetings for everyone at BN. Start getting those sweaters ready for the week of December 8, because I’m going to want some pictures to share.
To the extent you’ve seen any of the many bleacher stories in the past two days but missed it here, let me summarize: Crane Kenney mentioned at the blogger forum earlier this week that there was a chance the bleachers, currently torn down, will not be completed in time for Opening Day thanks to a variety of delays. If you’re a season ticket holder in the bleachers, the Cubs will accommodate you elsewhere in the stadium if the bleachers aren’t ready for Opening Day. As for single-game tickets, the Cubs will know by March 6 – when single-game tickets go on sale – whether the bleachers will be available or not. If not, they simple won’t sell one-off bleacher tickets. Obviously the goal remains to get those bleachers ready. It would be a little embarrassing to have the Opening Night Game on ESPN to showcase, in part, the start of the renovations … and the bleachers aren’t functional.
Wonder which teams have the most committed money in each year going forward? This FanGraphs piece has the answer, and, in the near-term, the teams won’t surprise you – Dodgers, Yankees, rinse repeat. The Dodgers, for example, are already over $200 million for 2015 solely in guaranteed contracts. The Yankees are the 2016 leader in the clubhouse, however, at $170.7 million. The 2019 and 2020 leader? It might surprise you. It’s the Rangers, at $67.7 and $69.2 million each year. That big TV money is a good thing, but it sure can get you feeling comfortably spend-y.
I’ve already expounded on the proliferation of teenage Twitter rumor breakers, but there are two things to add to that industry story: (1) a write-up on the topic in the New Yorker; and (2) the following tweet, which sums up the kind of episode that can happen when people who don’t follow a reasonable protocol for evaluating and vetting sourced information are trusted by far too many well-meaning, but insufficiently suspicious people:
That rumor blew up on Twitter last night such that it “had” to be refuted by numerous legitimate reporters, even though it was pretty clear from thing one that it was deeply suspect. The young man behind that one has been credited with breaking the Hanley Ramirez signing (I’m not so sure it actually played out like that, but that’s another story), so folks imbued him with perhaps a little too much trust. Ultimately, I blame him far less for this kind of episode – he’s 14, for crying out loud – than folks who should probably know better than to prop him up in a position to fail in the first place. We all love rumors, and there’s unquestionably something fun about discovering some random person on Twitter breaking big news (even moreso if it’s a youngster), but there’s a reason the pros out there have a methodical, deliberate process for confirming and publishing rumors/news. Be more suspicious, and you’ll ultimately be doing a greater service to the young person trying to break rumors.
NEWSLETTER
