Real life sports

Wow. This situation surrounding the A’s just continues to get more and more fascinating(ly terrible). I can’t remember a major league franchise ever getting run into the ground this badly in my lifetime.

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Don’t know if it happened in your lifetime but what happened to the '97 Marlins was way more egregious. The A’s dismantled a good club, but the Marlins had a fire sale on the world series champion team.

The '94 Expos onward are a strong parallel to the Oakland situation, except maybe a little scummier and more incompetent.

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Those were both in my lifetime! Perhaps I’m guilty of recency bias. I’ll have to do a bit of research.

bears need to retire the reeces pieces look. inauspicious

Giants lost but the game was really fun to be at in person. This home run from our young Puerto Rican star, on Roberto Clemente day, was incredible to see live

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Seeing home run balls land among the boats at Oracle is my favourite non-Blue Jays thing in all of baseball.

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Day 10 of the September basho is in the books, and Onosato continues to stake his claim at the top of the leaderboard. On paper, the highlight match of the day was Kirishima (8-1) v Onosato (9-0), both ranked at Sekiwake.

In reality, the bout was a bit of a disappointment:

Kirishima v Onosato

I expected a better showing than that from Kirishima. Onosato saw the henka attempt early enough, and did well to maintain balance and easily turn on Kirishima and that was that.


I thought this bout between Abi and Ura was good

Ura does well to see and catch Abi’s arm and execute the throw.

Down in Juryo, Takerufuji came in at an undefeated 9-0 and was looking unstoppable… or so we all thought:

Tohakuryu v Takerufuji

Top division leaderboard info after day 10

10-0

  Rank Name Stable
Onosato West Sekiwake Onosato Nishonoseki Stable

8-2

  Rank Name Stable
Kirishima East Sekiwake Kirishima Otowayama Stable
Wakatakakage East Maegashira #7 Wakatakakage Arashio Stable
Nishikigi West Maegashira #13 Nishikigi Isenoumi Stable
Takayasu East Maegashira #15 Takayasu Tagonoura Stable

This is Onosato’s basho to lose at this point, and I’m not sure how the JSA match-setters are going to schedule his run to the end. He hasn’t fought most of the other top-rankers, however his competetion for the leaderboard are at M7, M13, and M15 and it would be reasonable to have to face them.

Wakatakakage v Nishikigi is on the card for day 11, so that will filter one of them out of the race.


Juryo division leaderboard info after day 10

9-1

  Rank Name Stable
Chiyoshoma East Juryo #1 Chiyoshoma Kokonoe Stable
Takerufuji West Juryo #11 Takerufuji Isegahama Stable

7-3

  Rank Name Stable
Asakoryu East Juryo #8 Asakoryu Takasago Stable
Tomokaze East Juryo #11 Tomokaze Nakamura Stable
Kayo East Juryo #14 Kayo Nakamura Stable

I suspect everyone was surprised to see Takerufuji lose today. I expected to see him go 14-0 in to a final day match up against Chiyoshoma, and probably win it for a perfect 15-0, which is probably the only score that would see him catapult directly back up to the top division. I think a 14-1 victory will see him at J1 in November.

There was some motorsport this weekend!

On the fun and interesting side, the WEC had the 2024 6 hours of Fuji

One race to go, November 2nd in Bahrain.


...and on the boring-but-I-still-watched-it side, the F1 went to Azerbaijan

At least the last few minutes had a moment of interest, and I was happy for Piastri in general. He drove well, and the overtake on Leclerc was bold and brave but still perfectly under control.

Idk that was a stellar F1 race imo, been a really good season since they went back to Europe. Next year lining up to be an all timer (just in time for regs to change…)

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i liked what i saw of the F1 race too. granted it was early in the morning and i kept taking naps over the course of it, but most people were in agreement that it was a solid race. baku is a circuit of extremes, either it sucks or it’s a classic

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For the baseball fans, some fun history at stake as things wind down.

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Agreed. Baku is the one street circuit I always enjoy watching, and this was a fun race for sure.

Great seeing Piastri continue to elevate his game and show his confidence.

Also, as a Hamilton fan, I now enjoy seeing the Ferraris fighting for podiums, and continue to keep my fingers crossed for HAM to get one more chance at WDC #8 next year. Despite his age, I still rate him ahead of Leclerc and think he could maximize that situation enough to contend.

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I must have been watching a different race than everyone else!

For me, DRS is overpowered at Baku and other than Piastri’s overtake on Leclerc (also enabled by DRS) there was no exciting racecraft going on anywhere in the field.

I’m a Ferrari fan and Piastri is not only from my country but from my city also, so I am happy about the results – I just didn’t think it was an exciting race to watch for the most part.

I’ll agree that the season after the break has been more interesting than the first half was. It seems hard to believe watching the last few races that this is the same season where Max said he didn’t even need Perez’s help and would just win the constructor’s championship on his own.

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I admittedly have a lower standard for considering a race enjoyable. Basically as long as it keeps me interested until the end, I’m satisfied. I only hate races when whoever’s in P1 zooms off to an undisputed victory. So I do agree with your takeaways overall, but since I wasn’t sure who was going to be on the podium until the last few laps, I was happy.

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Season definitely took off after the Max domination to start. I think the budget penalty is doing a lot of the work as that would have limited RBs ability to upgrade the car, exacerbated by all the other off track issues that have gone on. Season with the most drivers with multiple wins is good stuff!

I don’t like overpowered DRS but I think Baku had a good balance, it wasn’t like Charles was able to come right back at Oscar and have a yo-yo situation, I enjoyed the tension of the battle even if there was no real racing action. Just having 3 different constructors within 5 seconds of each other for the majority of the race at the front is enough for me to enjoy. Plus Lando’s march, the Williams duo, and a garnish of Perez plowing into Sainz made a surprisingly solid Baku race. Expecting more of a procession in Singapore but hoping for a new winner to show up! A Sainz repeat would be sweet.

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Also NASCAR was at Watkins Glen this weekend, have not watched it yet but I do have a soft spot for those lumbering “stock” cars around road courses.

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I’m a stat nerd with baseball, but I’ve never cared nearly as much when it comes to football. It was odd to learn what a weird/poor stat QB rating is.

It’s not the most enthralling Secret Base video ever, but mediocre Secret Base is like mediocre pizza.

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I, for one, am actually feeling excitement about this!

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  1. CELTIC WON A CHAMPIONS LEAGUE GAME

  2. @yeso what’s up with the white sox

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dont know if youre big into baseball so can provide more detail if you want but will start with the shorthand:

  • owner doesnt like spending money and seems content to aim for “ok” level of quality
  • culture of hiring and retaining executives/mgmt based on “loyalty” and relationships rather than competence
  • bc of the first point, the team loads up on young (cheap) prospects and relies on a cohort of these sorts of players graduating to the bigs and excelling there rather than paying proven free agent players top dollar
  • this current cohort of young cheap players didnt pan out as it appeared they would in 2020/2021. In part due to injury and in part due to being overvalued internally (see 2nd point)
  • these players are at the close of cheap contracts, and rather than shell out cash they’re getting sold off for more prospects so the cycle may continue
  • the low ebb part of this cycle can be pretty brutal (others take the same approach and over time, it can pay off eg baltimore. That said, the Sox were innovators in this. But it is frustrating for an historic team in a major city that has a cool logo and uniform to operate this way!
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