Let’s handle the Rushmores first.
Rushmore of TV shows with a title for a female character: “Roseanne” and “I Love Lucy” are the first two I thought of, and there were some other great nominations (and especially loved the “Cagney and Lacey” shoutout), but my final two are the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Oprah,” with monster apologies to the ear-pulling genius of Carol Burnett.
Rushmore of dolls: “Guys and Dolls,” Barbie, the Dollhouse in Fort Lauderdale that Motley Crue made famous, and of course Dolly Parton.
Rushmore of movie QBs. This one was downright difficult friends. Heck, we might have to have a bracket-style elimination for this thing. For sure, we’re splitting this into levels. High school: Lance Harbor, Johnny Walker, Paul Blake and Reno Hightower. College: Joe Kane, Stan Gable (all-conference for the Adams Atoms gang), Shane Falco/Johnny Utah (both were All-Americans at THE Ohio State) and Frank ‘Cush’ Cushman; Pro: Paul Crew, Cap Rooney, Seth Maxwell and Flash Gordon.
Rushmore of Ivan: Rodriguez, Drago, the Terrible and Reitman. (Although the wrestler nominated and the Gordon Solie reference this week were genius.)
To the mailbag.
From a slew of you
So the lockout’s over. When does Freddie get signed?
Gang –
To paraphrase a historic one-liner about the monarchs and nobles, “The labor strife is dead. Long live the labor strife.”
This lockout is over, but baseball specifically and sports in general will always have issues between players and owners.
Players want more salary, and the owners want profits. Period, end of discussion, and those two goals are so diametric at the core, this will happen again.
This accord is a bridge to the next one because baseball may actually have read the room this time and realized a lot of us were prepared to walk.
Here’s what we believe we know moving forward after the 99-day lockout was ended.
April 7 is opening day, and the plan is for a 162-game regular season. Hello DHs, and all the ‘canceled games’ hubbub seems much ado about nothing now.
There will be a universal DH. My stance on this has changed. I no longer want to watch pitchers fail to bunt with two strikes.
The ghost runner on second base to start extra innings is as dead as Cy Young’s father-in-law. And the bases will be 3 inches bigger in an effort to encourage more base-running activity. We’ll see.
The financials, of course, are layered and available at other websites, like here.
And now the business of baseball is back after the business side of baseball made all of us angry.
And the question we should all consider is where Freeman signs, not when. If the Braves are truly entrenched on five years and five years only, well, Freeman will be hitting second and playing first for the Dodgers (or maybe even the Yankees) by the time the next mailbag hits the interwebs, if not sooner.
Make this happen, AA. Like Obi Won to Leia, you’re our only hope.