Mid-Week Musings

Does MLB Network need to be this lazy in the offseason, desperately seeking a Twitter replacement, and a great one retires.

Geez, Trouble With the Curve Again?

Pitchers and catchers are less than a month away, so we are anxiously awaiting the first declaration from a player telling us he’s in the best shape of his life. It also means that MLB Network programming will start to fire up again after largely sitting in the garage for the off-season. That’s a network that is unfortunately programmed as uncreatively as possible during the winter; every year I wish they would show some more imagination when putting the schedule together and every year they let me down.

I recognize that it is a challenge to fill up 24 hours on a network devoted to a specific sport in the idle portion of the year, but they barely try. Too many primetime hours are lazily filled with either endless reruns of the Ken Burns documentary, or a recurring loop of the same dozen or so baseball movies. There’s gotta be a better way to go. Is it that cost prohibitive to air some Caribbean Winter League games? I love watching the first Naked Gun movie as much as the next guy, but I don’t need to see it on the schedule multiple times each month, especially with such frequent commercial interruptions.

What makes it worse is that they could produce plenty of original programming without busting budgets. The network has decades worth of game footage and archival interviews at its disposal and could put together as many specials and docs as they wish. There are several terrific programs they’ve produced under the MLB Network Presents banner, but they limit themselves to only a couple each year and generally wait to premiere them around the All-Star break. Why not intro them during this down time? It could draw more eyeballs to the network at a time of year when they would really need it. During the COVID shutdown they ran several episodes of a show called Sounds of Baseball. They consisted of Bob Costas and Tom Verducci in their respective home studios focusing on a legendary broadcaster and showing classic clips of their calls. There are plenty of names not included in that initial round of shows that are just as worthy of a similar hour-long retrospective.

I don’t have much of an issue with the network’s in season content. Well, there are assorted MLB Tonight commentators that make me grab the remote, but that’s another issue. There are about 3 months or so when the sport is essentially in dark mode, and its network falls well short of its potential during that time.

Elon’s Sandbox

Twitter is constantly described (good naturedly?) as “this hellsite.” I suspect most users, whether frequent or casual, have always had mixed emotions about the platform. Ever since Elon Musk completed his takeover this ambivalence has grown more prominent. I admit that I wasn’t sure if the hellsite would last under his stewardship, but for now it appears to be surviving.

There is still major uncertainty about its ultimate viability. Plenty of people whom I enjoy following have left, and others have made their accounts dormant. And of course most of those who had previously been banned have now been welcomed back. True fact - a plethora of white supremacists doesn’t attract many high quality advertisers, and that also forces reasonable people to question what they’re even doing in that corner of the internet. I’m one of the many who would love to cut that cord, if there were only an ideal replacement.

In the early days of the Musk reign, there were constant discussions about the best alternative. Mastodon was the trendy choice, but to me the setup seems too complicated. Eventually I settled on Post, and there is a lot I like about it. It has similar functionality as Twitter does, and they do seem to be doing a better job of keeping the trolls out. The major drawback is that there are not very many people whom I follow on Twitter that are currently on Post. Even fewer actually use it, as they have accounts set up but haven’t been posting. That suggests that people have been preparing themselves so that if Twitter does in fact implode, they’re all set to jump onto a new platform. Post clearly has potential, but it has a long way to go if it’s going to become the new destination.

Have any of you found good Twitter replacements? Is Mastadon worth going through the setup process? Has anyone tried out Hive? Or are you content to stick with Twitter until it burns to the ground?

Godspeed, Maya Moore

Earlier this week Maya Moore announced her retirement from the WNBA. Although she hasn’t actually played in several seasons, this makes her departure from the game official. She steps away as one of the greatest winners in recent memory in any sport, in addition to leaving a legacy that transcends her considerable athletic achievements.

And her hardwood CV is damn impressive. From a team wide perspective she tallied 2 NCAA crowns, 4 WNBA titles in only 8 seasons, and 2 Olympic gold medals. Her personal trophy case contains awards for NCAA MOP, WNBA rookie of the year, WNBA MVP, and WNBA finals MVP.

There’s a good reason why her professional career only lasted 8 seasons. The Cliff Notes version is that she stepped away from the game to focus on criminal justice, more specifically fighting for the freedom of Jonathan Irons, who was serving a 50 year sentence for a murder that he did not commit. He was released and exonerated, and Moore and Irons eventually wed.

It was clear as each season came and went that she had no intention of returning, but now it’s set in stone. This leads to an interesting decision that those in the Naismith Hall of Fame will need to make. The hoop hall has a 4 year waiting period after retirement, so she was technically eligible for induction a year ago. The Hall understandably did not put her name up for consideration just in case she would attempt a comeback. Now that she has officially called it a career her situation has changed but the process of selecting this year’s class has already begun. Last month the preliminary list of potential nominees came out, but she was not on it. Is it possible to still add her name? This year’s class promises to be a star-studded one, as Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade, and Pau Gasol are among the first year eligible candidates. Moore is as big of a no-brainer as the others, so I certainly hope they find a way to include her in this class.

Sundry

As always, thanks for reading, and if you like what you see why not tell two friends, so they can tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on?