NEWSLETTER
The Little League World Series has hosted its annual event every year since 1947, but this year will end that streak. The games that run up to the event, which had been scheduled for August, would be impossible to pull off, according to the league. An unfortunate, sad, but almost assuredly necessary decision in these times.
The hope remains that regular little league baseball, however, can still be played this summer in states and localities that permit it. The idea that no kids anywhere could play baseball this summer is the kind of gut punch that hits a little too close to home for me.
If you’ll indulge me a moment as a parent.
I’m not about to protest and orders or storm any statehouses, but as I think about all that my kids are losing right now … that’s the part of all of this that does remind me there has to be a gradual end to the shutdowns at some point. It’s easy enough on paper to determine what is necessary to control and slow the spread of the virus, and we make those things happen: we close schools, we cancel activities, we stay in our house, we don’t take our kids to their therapy services, we don’t see friends, we don’t see family. We’re all in this together, so we all do our part. We have, and we are.
But I’ve got three kids, ages 3 to 9, and they are struggling right now. I can tell. We as parents are doing the best we can to keep their spirits up, but when you start thinking about what could be lost this summer? Sorry, guys, still no activities. No sports. No friends. No socialization. Our kids have some specific developmental and mental health needs that are impossible to meet right now, and I think about what the long-term impact is going to be. It would be unreasonable to think a parent would not worry about that stuff.
We are sacrificing to be part of the solution here, but at what point is the impact on The Littlest Girl’s development – for one example – enough for me to say, “yeah, OK, I’ve balanced all the inputs here, and I think we need to be permitted to take her around other people for her services now”? When is it OK for me to get there? I don’t expect anyone out there to answer for me, but I know that (1) I’m a reasonable, science-based person; and (2) my kids come first, above anything else on this earth. The Wife and I will continue to sacrifice all that we can for the greater good. But I can foresee a limit some months down the road where I can no longer keep asking my kids to sacrifice at the expense of their physical and mental health. There will have to be a balancing of health needs, because that’s ultimately what all of this is.
Now, forgive me, but I need to hustle through the rest of these Bullets so I can prepare to do my best substitute physical therapy session for The Littlest Girl later this morning …
• OK. On to happier things. Ken Rosenthal sought out the last 10 pitchers to close out a World Series, getting their perspective and memories on the big moment. You may recall, though some people forget, that the Chicago Cubs won a World Series within the last 10 years, which means this guy came in for a talk:
Good morning to Mike Montgomery. pic.twitter.com/QjoixPVwPm
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) May 1, 2020
• Montgomery, to Rosenthal: “I hadn’t even talked about it for probably a year. It’s almost like you forget, especially when you’re in the grind of a season. The mental side is, ‘Don’t live in the past. Don’t live in the past.’ That’s true, but you also have to appreciate the past. You’ve got to appreciate the fact I was in the middle of some of the coolest moments in baseball history.”
• So many great anecdotes in that piece, including Jason Motte (2011, Cardinals) being so caught up in the moment celebrating with his catcher Yadi Molina that he didn’t think about the crush of players who were coming to swarm him over. He wound up falling awkwardly on his thumb, and hollering at the bottom of the pile that he thought he broke it. Molina responded that it was OK, because he had three months for it to heal.
• The independent Atlantic League (best known to many as the league that, owing to a relationship with MLB, worked in various gameplay experiments in recent years) intends to play this season:
Atlantic League affirms that it still plans to play in 2020. pic.twitter.com/DGGqSB2Wqy
— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) April 30, 2020
• Enter the Matrix:
.@jrfegan and @sahadevsharma put together All-Star, time-traveling teams from the last 20 years of Cubs and Sox baseball, and duked it out or something. https://t.co/vuqekCgMUr
— jon greenberg (@jon_greenberg) April 30, 2020
• Taking the best player seasons from each team over the past 20 years, and then building a team of Super Cubs to face a team of Super White Sox, you get two very evenly-matched teams, apparently. In the simulation, the Cubs won just four more games than the White Sox out of 162 tries, and then won a five-game playoff series 3-2.
• I really enjoyed thinking about the Cubs rotation as if it were a real thing that could actually exist together in a single season:
Mark Prior (2003)
Jake Arrieta (2015)
Carlos Zambrano (2004)
Jon Lester (2016)
Kyle Hendricks (2016)
• I was looking for something else but found this, and I was happy about it:
When it came to casually catching Kyle Schwarber bombs in his hat, Randy Rosario was the GOAT. pic.twitter.com/R6GrrUBs4s
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) May 1, 2020
• This is great:
https://twitter.com/Cubs/status/1255897071716007936
