Major League Baseball Gets it Right. And Wrong.

The Wrong:
As part of Major League Baseball’s new collective bargaining agreement, each league will now have a second wild card team competing in post-season play. These two wild card teams will play each other in a one-game playoff with the winner advancing toward the League Championship series against the three division champions. I suppose the hopes are that this will benefit a Cinderella team, but I think what’s going to happen is that this simply guarantees that both the Yankees and Red Sox make the playoffs every year. I’m not a fan of baseball’s wild card playoff system and I’m even less of a fan of this.

The Right:
This next bit of baseball news is exciting and almost eclipses the goofy two wild card teams news. The new collective bargaining agreement also includes, for the first time, testing players for Human Growth Hormone. This has been a sticking point in the past because the Player’s Association has objected to testing for HGH in the past because urine tests were unreliable and blood tests were believed to be too intrusive. Testing will begin as players report to Spring Training and a positive test will net a 50-game suspension. That’s pretty big. In a way, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal that players will finally be held accountable for doing something illegal, but I still like the move. It’s nice to see baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and the baseball powers that be do finally do something for the integrity of the game.

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It’s Monday and that means it’s “Monday Music Moves Me”!

The theme for today’s MMMM is “What song and/or songs are you thankful for?”

I love music and it’s always been a big part of my life so I guess I’m thankful for pretty much all songs and all music. I’m also thankful for everyone who comes here and reads my rants and takes the time to leave me comments. I really appreciate that.

Here are some songs of ‘thanks’:

Some Funky Thanks:

Some “Glam” Thanks:

And some Vintage Thanks: