The Twins had a nice come-from-behind win last night. Pelfrey put the Twins into an early 3-0 hole, but by the ninth, all hurdles were handled and the Twins ended up winning on a Herman pinch hit.
The Twins have been playing above .500 since the All-Star break. And I'm still watching.
Baseball did something radical and out of character yesterday. They did the right thing.
They decided that with the way technology is today that they can expand video replays on all sorts of plays including close plays at first base and safe or out calls at home plate. All details haven't been worked out yet, but it looks like each manager can have three challenges a game AND that replay officials watching in New York will be watching the replays and making the final decisions.
At this point that means it doesn't look like the umps on the field will have to all leave the field and huddle in the dugout looking at a monitor every time there is a disputed call. The game will continue much faster that way, especially now that managers won't have to stand around and argue every time something stupid happens.
In effect, this is EXACTLY what I've been asking for all along. I didn't want them to be like football and have officials leave the field, I wanted officials watching the game to make those critical calls to keep the game's pace going. This is way better than NFL and college football are currently doing.
Wow. I got another one right! Everybody (players, owners, umpires) still have to okay all of this, but most of the discussions have already taken place. No one expects there to be any problems with implementing all of this.
One caveat: It's still possible that the players or umpires could still squash all of this when final votes are taken. For some reason, both groups always hate change. Here's hoping they are open to a game where quarter-billion-dollar players determine the outcome of most games instead of buck-and-a-half umpires.
Adrian Peterson is in support of college football players making money off their own names which means he thinks Johnny Football should be able to sell his own autograph. He thinks most players at all levels would agree with him.
He went on to say that there is no reason that NCAA football players shouldn't be treated as well as Olympic athletes who get "paid" just by being top performers.
It's time for more players to speak out about this. At the same time, and this is critical, we can't have an NCCA system that starts bidding on high school kids services. Imagine Notre Dame buying the kid a $500,000 house for his family and then Michigan matching that but throwing in a couple of really nice sports cars to sweeten the deal.
What happens next is going to be interesting. What we are seeing now is about to change dramatically. If it doesn't, we might even see investors starting a whole new league, featuring high school graduates, playing for money competing against the NFL and the NCAA.
There are massive amounts of money being made off of these kids right now and these kids will someday figure out, for themselves, how to keep much of that money for themselves.
That's the free-market economy at work.
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