Thursday morning linkagery

[wombat_socho]

So much for taking a break. Michele talks about what's happened to the left and the Democratic Party during this election cycle. I think she spends a little too much time getting her feet wet in the DU fever swamps, but then you see Michael Moore in the place of honor at the Democratic National Convention, and you wonder.

I haven't read Newsweek in years, since it doesn't seem to be any different from Time magazine, which I gave up on during the Ford Administration as being hopelessly partisan and biased. Apparently Newsweek recently ran the obligatory hit piece on bloggers, and Professor Death takes them to the woodshed, including a link to today's Bleat, which does somewhat the same for local blowhard Nick Coleman.

As much as I like the idea of major league baseball coming back to Washington (if only to stick a thumb in the eye of Orioles owner Peter Angelos) Michelle Malkin has the right of it; there is no reason to rip off the taxpayers to give the relocated Expos a new home. Besides, not only is the new stadium a bad idea (RFK should be preserved as a bad example, if nothing else) stealing the team from Montreal is a much worse idea and may yet fall victim to the courts, as Colby Cosh points out. Either the Rangers should come home or we should get another expansion team. It's only fair...besides, think of the joy Mark Teixeira would create beating up on the hapless pitchers on the O's and D-Rays.

Comments

Yeah...

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I read both the article in Newsweek & Coleman's column & came away with a "Wha the fu..." attitude (well, more to Coleman's piece. I can't rightly recall exactly what was in the N article. Did hear whoever-it-was that just recently trashed MSM (David Something-That-Starts-With-A-"B") on NPR.

Keeps me thinking of my great grandfather to the nth degree who got involved in a small revolution in Canada and hide a printing press from the government. What would he think of all this? Heck, he'd be bloggin' with the best of 'em.

Now I'm confused (but that's a given when it comes to baseball...) I thought the Washington Senators came to Minnesota & became the Twins.

Re: Yeah...

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Yeah, your great-grandpa would fit right in...there's a thriving bucnh of bloggers in the Old Country, for that matter. Check out Colby Cosh's site sometime - he's got quite a blogroll of Canadian sites to look at.

*nods* I understand your confusion. The original Washington Senators (the ones that actually won a World Series back in 1920 or something) moved here in 1961 and became the Twins. They were replaced by one of the first expansion teams, which stayed in Washington until 1972 when they were moved to Arlington Texas by Minnesota trucking magnate (and big wheel in the DFL) Bob Short. I still haven't forgiven him or the Texas Rangers, which is what the expansion Senators changed their name to.

[(Anonymous)]

I know little of sports but even I noted the whole Expos thing going on. (This is a remarkable event, considering a few years ago, I was a Baltimorean living in Pittsburgh who had no idea what teams were playing in the Superbowl... yes, _that_ Superbowl--suffice to say sports don't rate high on my radar.)

I gotta say Washington needs to learn from Baltimore if it thinks a new stadium makes things happy and better. Here Camden Yards wasn't so bad (but a LOT of taxpayer money), but Ravens Stadium (AKA the Big Purple Eyesore) was a horrible waste of money that needs to go into other things... you know, like infrastructure. Neither stadium draws as much tourism as the city promised, and mostly have been a maintenance drain on the City. Washington needs to look at cities around it and think more clearly about what they want to do before they waste money.

As for "stealing" from Montreal I don't think that's so bad... at least, it seems like a fairly good and fair deal as far as what I've seen, but then again I am no judge of such things.

I sincerely doubt the O's are going to suffer as much as the media cynics predict--whether you want to stick a thumb in Angelos's eye or not. The O's have an extremely loyal fanbase I doubt they're going to lose much of... and the real baseball fans will probably go to both DC and Baltimore to get their games. Besides, there's much to be lucrative about rivalry in merchandising alone...

DQ

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Ah, Washington is such a fount of bad ideas from City Hall to the Congress...idiocy for all tastes and dispositions, truly. RFK never did a thing for the neighborhood it sits in, and very few of the new stadiums have unless you do a buttload of development along with them, as with Camden Yards and Jacobs Field. I don't see DC having that much sense, though.

The reason I fell the way I do about the Expos is that I lived through the Senators leaving in 1972, and I don't think I felt nearly as bad until my first GF wound up marrying some other guy. My Dad went through the same thing when the Braves left Boston for Milwaukee in 1952...we both got scarred and stopped paying any attention to MLB for years afterward. (Well, I'd look at the sports section every so often to make sure the Rangers still sucked.) I didn't even watch the 1987 World Series, and it was going on right here in Minneapolis, for heaven's sake! So I can feel for the fans in Montreal. The team's been mismanaged, hosed, and very much put upon, and I kinda hope they win their lawsuit.

I agree that the new Senators (I think they ought to call them the Homestead Grays, myself - that Senators name has bad karma) won't hurt the O's. The way Angelos has been hollering and making a nuisance out of himself over it, though, he deserves any tsuris that comes his way.