dave mcbride

I don't think there is a player I find more painful to watch in baseball than Giancarlo Stanton. On the surface, his numbers are OK (but terrible for a guy making $30 million a year), but watching him repeatedly wave feebly at sliders WAY off the plate is almost like an anti-sporting event. When Judge strikes out, it's usually a competitive at bat. When Stanton strikes out, not so much.

Gallo is one of those super boring players to watch on offense — the epitome of a 3-true-outcomes player. But the Yankees need a lefty who can hit home runs, so I get it. But … if you click through to the players the Yankees are giving up, every last one of them is performing well this season: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/07/yankees-to-acquire-joey-gallo.html. Pereira and Vasquez look like they’re staying.

But what about the Bosa precedent? Offset language and bonus payout seem to be the issues that can cause impasses: https://www.sbnation.com/2016/8/8/12402198/joey-bosa-contract-holdout-san-diego-chargers-why . I'm not saying this won't work itself out quickly. Given that he's a qb, he really needs to be at camp, and the Jets need a qb. It doesn't make sense to drag out.

The deed had been done by the time the BOR actually passed, and it was used by minorities all of the time going forward to secure their rights. Suggestion for you: read the Constitution of 1787 and then assume that the BoR never got appended. Seriously. Not sure you know this, but Tretter is from Buffalo and went to the Industrial and Labor Relations school at Cornell (one of the state funded schools at Cornell and where my son Sam is a rising senior). Plus he interned during his summers at one of the best economic development non-profits in Buffalo (my wife Leah runs an economic development nonprofit in Brooklyn and knows about the one he worked at; she’s from Buffalo). Anyway, Tretter is really, really smart and on the ball. It pains me that he’s not on the Bills!

Thank you! That is really informative, and the reason I said what I said is because of Beasley’s tweet in which he basically said “What about God?” (Plus the guy is from kinda hardcore Texas and went to SMU.) Maybe he should be more clear in his stance and less cryptic (can’t believe I’m saying this!). The Constitution is about race in fundamentally bad ways. But the Bill of Rights? No, not really, except for maybe the 10th amendment (in a real stretch) and more plausibly the second amendment (but again, very debatable). https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/bill-of-rights. The other 8 aren’t about race at all.

I have been very critical of Beasley, but I take issue with your argument here. In the US, the terms "majority" and "minority" are not always tied to race. In fact, nearly the entire Bill of Rights is about protecting minority rights from majorities--in ways not really related to race at all. It's a discourse that runs deep in American politics, and people who are very religious (and Beasley seems to be very religious) are very invested in protecting minority religious rights and talk about it all of the time. Not surprisingly, the issue of majorities vs. minorities distinct from race is one of the dominant themes in US constitutional law. Beasley may have had race in mind when he wrote this, but it's just as plausible that he was thinking about the concept in its Bill-of-Rights sense. And seeing "minorities" and "majorities" in this way is hardly rare or obscure in American life. It literally comes up all of the time in law and politics. Whole American colonies were started by religious minorities fleeing majorities.

Not sure if it's a "bad" rule so much as an unsolvable problem. It seems to me that the real issue with the rule is that it's one in which the proverbial unstoppable force and the unmovable object collide: preserving the integrity of the game and preserving the health of the labor force that makes the game so popular. The purpose of the rule really amounts to one of the league's prime directives: keep gambling from unduly influencing the sport as much as humanly possible in order to maintain the integrity of the game. However, another prime directive is to keep players healthy as much as possible in the most violent team sport around and which is filled with a lot of violent people with bad intentions. There is no doubt in my mind that broadcasting every injury would result in more targeting. There is a reason Gregg Williams was able to hang around for as long as he did after what happened in NO.

The thing about Beasley is that he seems to have a fantastic mental connection with Allen. He knows how to get open as well as anyone in the league and Allen always seems to have an awareness of which option he'll take on the many option routes he runs. He is extremely valuable to the offense. Sanders can play the slot, but the Bills are better off if he's basically mirroring Diggs on the other side of the field (he's a similar player to Diggs, which is great) with Beasley coming out of the slot. That presents a brutal matchup to NFL defenses.

And better yet, it appears that people can’t comment on Beasley, Diggs, Hughes, Feliciano, etc. without being shut down—despite the fact that it’s precisely the only issue animating most Bills fans outside of this particular forum right now. To be fair, I am partly speaking for the lady Bills fans, who among the ones that I know (most of my Bills fan friends, truth be told) have talked about this with me incessantly over the last couple weeks. But hey, let’s pretend everything is OK and focus on Dane Jackson’s progress! Of course, this board is a 100 percent sausage fest since Lori left years ago.

He did attend a game in Phoenix (there are pix and everything), but vaccination was not required: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2021/07/02/will-masks-be-required-suns-games-covid-19-delta-variant/7832049002/. Masks were recommended, but apparently a lot of people didn't follow rules.

He dropped an easy td vs the Pats in that game the Bills pulled out 24-21 (and probably should have lost) and had a dropped td vs the Ravens in the playoffs. He put up huge numbers with Barkley in the blowout finale too, and that skewed his stats. Don’t get me wrong, I like Davis. He had a good rookie season overall. But that Buff News article doesn’t mention the mistakes and the padding, which makes me think that it reads like One Bills Drive-sponsored propaganda.

Best post of the thread. He is still upper echelon and was playing well before getting hurt last season.

65 percent of all Americans over 18 have had at least one shot and 62 percent of all Americans over the age of 12: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage.

I think that’s why they have an 85 percent threshold.

If you look at Hapless’s post above about the Florida evidence, it’s more for the flu but only in the sense of a rounding error.

Again, not my point. More deadly than “not really deadly at all” doesn’t tell you much in the actuarial sense.

Of course it is because the risk covid presents to children is negligible. That’s not my point. My point is that overall in public health terms writ large, covid is a far more deadly illness than the flu. The flu still kills very few children despite being more deadly than Covid for kids.

Lots of vaccines have been mandated for school attendance over the years (eg, MMR), but those ones tend to focus on long-term to lifelong protection. The flu vaccine is different because it’s not entirely effective (more effective than not getting it, of course) and changes every year. To enforce a flu vaccine mandate, which won’t happen, you’d have to ride everyone every year. The flu isn’t nearly as deadly as Covid, of course.

Fair point. I was speaking more of actual physical harm to others, but you’re not wrong.

Godwin’s law was a predictable outcome for this thread …

There is a difference. In not wearing a seatbelt, you basically put yourself at risk but not others.

I think it’s less about being morally superior and more about two things: a) his position is dumb on its own terms based on what we now know about the vaccines; b) since we all love the Bills and his presence on the team, his position has a chance to hurt the team in a season where they actually have a real chance to win it all.

@K-9,I had Covid twice: once last March (untested but just about ALL of the symptoms right after riding on the NYC subways right up through March 13 of 2020) and again in December (positive test), when it was worse (9 straight days of a fever between 101 and 102; loss of sense of taste/smell; physically out of sorts for another month-plus afterward). I have no idea how I got it the second time given that I was very careful (possibly my college-attending son), but the more contagious variant entered NYC in November, so that might explain it. I am fine now and in good health, but my sense of smell (not taste) is screwed up and may be forever changed (we’ll see; https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/health/covid-smells-food.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Health). To be fair, it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s certainly real. Anyway, the idea that you become naturally immune is silly, and I’m frankly tired of the sort of BS he’s spewing. It is utter nonsense. To reiterate, though, I really do love his game.

Love the way he plays and what he brings to the team, but what a drama queen and what a fool. Oh well.

Best first pitch ever: