The franchise moves that almost happened – My latest for The Hardball Times

Can you imagine the Senators moving not to Minnesota but to Los Angeles?
What about the Milwaukee White Sox?
Or the Tampa Bay Giants?
Or the North Carolina Twins?
Or the A’s playing in just about any American city save for Walla Walla Washington?

Well they almost happened, and I wrote about them in my latest for The Hardball Times.

These are the franchise moves that ALMOST happened. And some were real close to being finalized. The Padres move from San Diego to Washington looked like such a done deal in the mid 1970s that Topps actually printed cards with the Padres players but the team name was “Washington National League.”

You want to read more of these strange “What if?” scenarios?

Check out the article HERE.

Not much is different in Marlins land

Meet the new boss.
Same as the old boss.

Actually he IS the old boss.
The REALLY old boss.

Chris Jaffe wrote a great piece on how old Jack McKeon is for The Hardball Times.
Well his first decision didn’t bode well for the return of Trader Jack.

He benched Hanley Ramirez.
Yeah yeah yeah. He was showing his star that nobody was safe.

Yeah yeah yeah. Old School blah blah blah.

The team lost again.
They lost their 11th straight game.
They lost 2-1.

Hanley Ramirez could have been helpful.

The Fish had better win a game pretty soon. They are 9 games in the loss column out of a Wild Card spot.

Or else Trader Jack might be trading away some of his players.

A nice ass whippin’ is always nice

Seriously Red Sox fans… were you ever nervous?
Even when the Padres tied the game, did you ever think for a second that the Red Sox were losing this one?

Even with Andrew Miller pitching and the Sox blowing a 3-0 lead… seriously. Who thought “Oh man… the Sox are in trouble”?

And a nice little 10 run inning later, the game was a laugher.

I could use more games like this.
And oh yeah…

The Magic Number is 90!!!!