Not much news emerged out of Camelback Ranch on Friday, but one bit of information that surfaced was something we began to fear on Thursday evening—the start of the regular season will likely run past the delay that the MLB front office initially anticipated.
The Major League Baseball Players Union was busy early Friday making sure everything was copacetic as far as the rights and welfare of the players go.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweeted a list late Friday afternoon highlighting several of the outcomes from today’s discussions.
If you missed Andy’s column on Thursday, she outlined how the MLB cancelled the remainder of its Spring Training games, while also announcing that the start of the 2020 regular season will be delayed by at least two weeks due to the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic.
However, even though the MLB has not officially discredited the initial two-week delay, many pundits believe it might be extended quite longer in light of the national emergency that was declared by President Trump on Friday afternoon.
In its early statements, the MLB said precautions are “being taken in the interests of the safety and well-being of our players, clubs and our millions of loyal fans.”
When asked about his own thoughts on the delay to the 2020 regular season, skipper Dave Roberts on Thursday told reporters he thinks that “it’s the responsible thing” to do.
For the readers of Think Blue Planning Committee who stop by regularly to check out our daily content, we’re sad to inform you that our four-year daily streak which began in the summer of 2016—including holidays—is about to come to an unfortunate end.
We believe that while staying in tune with the Dodgers is indeed important, there are much more critical things in our country to be concerned about rather than reporting insignificant speculation about baseball.
Nevertheless, we plan on publishing any Dodger-related news or any subsequent information about the prospective Opening Day, so please be sure to check back periodically. Additionally, Andy has been toying with the idea of composing a few historical pieces.
For the sake of our country—not just baseball—let us hope that all Americans can put their differences aside for the time being and come together to conquer this fierce pandemic.
Think Blue Planning Committee 
I do not think this is going to pass quickly. I believe a late May or early June start might be what happens depending on how soon they get a handle on the disease.
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First we have all our sports taken away and now no daily post from TBPC.
Hopefully, we’ll all be back here on a daily basis within the next couple of months.
In the meanwhile stay well everyone and be nice to each other.
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With no baseball, al we have is to talk to each other.
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Hey, Keith… Please feel free to talk away. If an interesting topic squeezes through, I’ll put a story together!
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Here is an idea Dennis. How about Dodgers who are in the hall, and the one glaring omission…Gil Hodges. To me it is a travesty that he is not in.
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Good idea. Maybe I’ll do a story along those lines early next week.
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Certainly we can talk about more than just baseball. Let’s pick a topic each day. Best book we ever read. Best movie. First car. Our little league teams.Just missed out on Williamsport in 1965. Levittown American Little League. Lost in the Eastern Regionals to Windsor Locks Connecticut who won it all that year. Still hurts to this day! Cmon we have more to life than just the Dodgers! We need something to do when we’re all quarantined in our homes and eating dry spaghetti and cereal!
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Hey Rich… A few months ago, I was sent a recently published book to review about the 1981 Dodgers that I’m probably not gonna have time to review. You’re more than welcome to it if you want it. Just shoot me a mailing address through email.
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My first car….a 1954 Nash Rambler station wagon that I paid 35.00 for. Not much, but it got me here and there. In 1969 after I was married, I bought my first new car. A 1969 Ford Fairlane 2 door hardtop. 3 on the tree and a 260 cubic inch 6. Bugger would do 110. I took it to Germany when I was sent overseas. Had trouble getting parts over there so we had to use the JC Whitney catalog for every thing. Pressure plate went out and took 6 weeks to get there. Needed a new shifter after a friend broke the stops on the one on the steering column. Shifted by using the linkage which was protruding up through a hole we had cut in the floor. Took about 5 weeks for that to arrive. Put it in and realized I had reversed the linkage so that R was where 1st was supposed to be. Got that fixed and drove it until I went back to the US and bought a Maverick to replace it.
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I think they will end up playing half a season or maybe a 100 game season that starts in June sometime. The All-Star game probably gets axed and doesn’t happen and if there is a trade deadline it probably comes in the middle of August instead of the end of July. Hopefully this thing burns itself out quick so the earth starts spinning again.
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Thx Dennis, just e mailed you. Can’t wait to read it!
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Best baseball book, fiction and non fiction. There have been a few. There was a writer John R Tunis that wrote a series of books about the Brooklyn Dodgers. All were works of fiction, and as a kid I read them all. Main character was a outfielder named Roy Tucker from Thomkinsville. I enjoyed them all, and of course there is always the debate over which was the best baseball movie ever.
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There are a couple of baseball non fiction works that I really enjoyed. One was Ball Four, by Jim Bouton, and the other naturally was The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn. Khan’s book was not so much as a chronicle of his time as a team reporter for a Brooklyn paper, as it was a character study of the men playing the game. The chapter on George Shuba I found to be very illuminating. Here was a guy who never was a regular, yet respected his job so much that he put in an effort to keep better than few could match. He had a string hooked to the ceiling of his basement with a ball on the end of it. He would take 1000 swings a day at that ball to keep sharp. That’s commitment. And his in depth interview with Duke Snider was an eye opener too. Duke had given an interview that sad something to the effect that he did not care about the fans and he was in the game for the money. He was pretty much crucified in Brooklyn for a while. I think the gist of the problem was that he felt the fans expected more of him than he was capable of, and it seemed to him that no matter what he did, it was not enough. Duke weathered the storm, and a couple of stellar World Series performances in 53 and 55 pretty much entrenched him as The Duke of Flatbush. Bouton’s book, was a far different look at baseball. He took the reader somewhere they had never heard about before. Inside the locker room. His former team mates, especially the Bronx Bombers were less than amused. That kind of thing was supposed to be taboo. He basically made the manager, Joe Schultz look like some sort of cartoon character. The book itself is very well done and an easy read.
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The business of baseball continues. Mancini had a malignant tumor removed yesterday, and today Hunter Strickland was released by the Nats……..want to see a good baseball movie>? Watch ” Bang the Drum Slowly”
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I saw “Bang the Trashcan” a few years back. Didn’t impress me to much. 🙂
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Apparently it was very well received in Houston but not so much in other cities.
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Very impressive. Bang the Drum Slowly is pure fiction of course. Michael Moriarty and Robert DeNiro were the stars. Moriarty plays a star pitcher on the New York Mammoths. He is also an insurance salesman in the winter. DeNiro is the 3rd string catcher on the team. He is diagnosed with terminal cancer. So Moriarty when he negotiates his contract makes the team tie his catchers contract to his, so if he is traded, so is DeNiro. DeNiro’s character is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and he is pretty much not in all of the cliques in the clubhouse. But as the season progresses and the team slowly learns of his condition, thing change. Not much actual baseball played in the movie, but it does tug at the heart
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TCM has had some pretty good movie added to the roster this week. 2 of them have baseball themes and both are from the 30’s. One is Alibi Ike. Joe E Brown is the star, and his manager is played by William Frawley. Of I Love Lucy fame. The other is Elmer the Great. Both are pretty funny.
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Still reading, got nothing much to offer. So many friends I tried to warn weeks ago called me an alarmist, I think they were caught up listening to the dumbf*uckery dialogue coming out of the… let’s call it the non-science leadership community. Our response was so incredibly slow it was maddening to those who saw what was coming.
I too am watching tv and reading books. We’ve got plenty of supplies, avoided the rush by planning ahead. I have no idea where this goes but I heard from a leading scientist we won’t really know where this headed until late March to mid April. Stand by.
Best book? Path of the Masters, by Dr Julian Johnson. A life changer for me. Best movie? Too many from which to choose. Best Dodger memory? – easy…. sitting right in front of Joe DiMaggio and right behind Nat King Cole, Row 7, in front of the steps to the Dodger Dugout, LA Coliseum, watching Koufax pitch against the White Sox, Game 5, October 6, 1959. My Uncle Bob took me. The day started with my uncle and I driving to the house of William Randolph Hearst in LA to pick up tickets. Uncle Bob was dating Millie Hearst, William Randolph’s granddaughter. I had no idea who these people were, nor did I know people lived like that. I was 11. The house was enormous, at the end of a long tree lined driveway. I met and played briefly with a grandson, don’t recall his name, but he lived in his own apartment above the garage, which was freakin huge. He was maybe 12 or 13. He had an electric train set that wound all around the apartment. He also had this incredible chemistry set and while I was there we made a small explosive device. Blew up a trash can. Apparently he did it a lot. We got into some trouble but he didn’t care. Millie was nice to me. Very sweet and kind lady. What a day.
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Wow, quite the story about your uncle’s connection to the Hearst family. Just think, when that grandson talks to his grandkids these days he tells them “the best day I ever had was when Scoop came over and we blew up a trash can”. By the way, he went on to become a silent partner in the Astros.
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If memory serves I believe he found me boring. Maybe it’s because I let him do all the talking. I remember he didn’t much care for baseball and frankly I wasn’t the chemistry set kinda kid. Blowing sh*t up was cool.
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Best book, fiction, The Godfather, non fiction Tommy Lasorda wrote a book back in the early to to mid eighties, it was hilarious, can’t remember the title though. Oh, and I hate to admit this to you guys, but my second favorite book, and it is only by a hair is, Pride and Prejudice, I know I’ll probably have to turn in my man card for admitting to it, but it is the best romance, ever written. I’ve read all of Jane Austen’s novels. Bear will never let me live it down.
First car- 1966 Lincoln continental, black with suicidal doors, pop paid five hundred dollars for it in 1977, I got it from him and my mom in “78” when I started driving.
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Naw Keith, never get on someone for their literary choices. You are just embracing your feminine side. I have read so many books over the years. I like novels that use actual history to weave the story. So I really liked anything Herman Wouk wrote. I read the Winds of War long before it was made into a mini series and it’s sequel, War and Remembrance. And he wrote The Caine Mutiny too. Leon Uris’s books were always great. As much as I liked Exodus, I think QB VII was about as riveting a story as I have ever read. One thing about The Godfather, It was one of those that when you started reading, you just did not want to put it down. Badger is one up on me. Never been to a series game, but Sandy lost that one 1-0. Only Dodger losses in that series were shutouts. But I did get to go to game 2 of the 1981 NLCS. Fernando pitched and the Dodgers lost 3-0. They were beat by Ray Burris, who pitched a complete game shut out. Series went back to Montreal tied 1-1. Montreal won the first game, and the Dodgers won the next 2 to win the pennant and go on to play the Yanks in the series. Rick Monday’s blast off of Steve Rogers won it. The save went to Bob Welch.
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I went to the first two games of the ‘83 Series in Baltimore. Morgan, Rose and Schmidt. Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken Jr. A friend of mine won 2 tickets on a local radio contest. Great seats. 15 rows back, halfway between home and third. Baltimore in October sucked, but going to a World Series was cool. I lived in Eureka at the time. Long trip.
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Totally cool. I haven’t done that. I wish I had, but I still have the memory of singing the anthem for what turned out to be a championship team. Best memory ever.
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I read all three of those Herman Wouk books, but it has been a long time.
John jakes had some good books that wove through history, have you ever read any of his stuff bear?
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How the heck did you get the chance to sing the anthem at dodger stadium bear?
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Cher backed out at the last minute. When asked if anybody here can sing this, Bear raised his hand.
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😀
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