The late-night music club for night owls, early-risers and Cubs fans abroad asks you who the Cubs’ second-best prospect is.

It’s another edition of BCB After Dark: the baseball, music and movie club for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. So glad you could join us again tonight. Please come in and get warm. Let us take your hat and coat. No cover charge tonight. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

Yesterday I asked you if you thought that Cubs outfielder Ian Happ should give up switch-hitting and just hit from the left side only. By a pretty strong margin of 72 percent to 28 percent, you think Happ should just forget about switch-hitting.

There’s still a lockout, but at least there is “progress” in the talks.

I don’t do movie talk on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, but you can always go back and look what I wrote about Rome, Open City last night. I’ll have a little more to say about it again tomorrow night.

But there’s always time for some jazz, so those of you who want to skip that should do so now. You won’t hurt my feelings. Unless you’re rude about it.

Tonight we have a treat in a jazz concert by pianist Jon Batiste on NPR’s “Jazz Night in America” from 2020. Most of you know Batiste primarily as the bandleader on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” but of course, he’s also a first-rate New Orleans jazz piano performer and band leader. He’s only 35 years old and already he has an Oscar and he’s likely to win his first Grammy this year as he’s been nominated 11 times.

Welcome back to those who skip the jazz.

Tonight you’re going to help me with my job. As you probably know, every year I do a ranking of the Top 20 Cubs prospects and I’m working on the 2022 edition right now.

This year has been especially difficult to rank the Cubs prospects because the system doesn’t have many elite prospects but it is swimming in very good ones. Basically, numbers two through ten on my list are practically interchangeable. At least they are in my mind.

But because I’m stuck for a topic tonight, I’m going to ask you who is the second-best prospect in the Cubs system. I’ve already made my choice and I’ll reveal it soon, but I’m asking for your opinion. I want to know what you think. Who knows? Maybe I’ll change my mind between now and when we publish. (I hope not.)

As far as who the number-one prospect, is, I’m not going to spoil it by telling you. But I’m pretty sure you already know who it is. He’s clearly the best prospect in the Cubs system at the moment and he’s not far away from the majors. Anyone who follows prospects knows who it is already. For me to pick one of these players as number one would be me being stupid for the sake of being contrarian.

So who is the second-best prospect in the Cubs system? Here’s a list of plausible candidates. I didn’t consider all of them for the number two slot, but they’re all players whom someone might reasonably say could be the second- best prospect in the Cubs system.

Thank you so much for stopping by. Please tip the waitstaff. We’ll have someone bring you your hat and coat. Get home safely. Try to stay warm. And join us again tomorrow night for another edition of BCB After Dark.

“Big Papi” is headed to Cooperstown.

David Ortiz, slugging DH for the Minnesota Twins and Red Sox who helped lead Boston to three World Series titles in 2004, 2007 and 2013, was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America in the vote revealed Tuesday, with 77.9 percent of the vote.

Ortiz, a 10-time All-Star, batted .286/.380/.552 with 541 home runs in a 19-year MLB career that began at Wrigley Field in September 1997. He hit 17 home runs in 85 postseason games in nine different seasons for Boston.

Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, in their 10th and final year of BBWAA voting eligibility, fell short of the 75 percent vote needed for induction. Bonds wound up with 66 percent of the vote and Clemens got 65.2 percent of the vote.

Bonds and Clemens are controversial figures in baseball history despite their accomplishments on the field. It can be, and has been, said about both that their numbers rated Hall induction even before they allegedly began taking performance enhancing drugs sometime in the late 1990s.

There were PED rumors about Ortiz, too, but nothing was ever proven and he became a beloved elder statesman of the game in his later years in Boston.

The writers have spoken. It remains to be seen whether either Bonds or Clemens will be voted in by one of the various “veterans committees” that vote on players passed over by the BBWAA as well as other baseball figures not inducted by other means.

Last December, two of those committees cast votes for six men to be inducted in Cooperstown this July. The Early Baseball Era Committee voted in Negro League legends Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil (who also served as a scout and coach for the Cubs), and the Golden Days Era Committee voted in Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso, and Tony Oliva. Kaat and Oliva, both now in their 80s, will be in Cooperstown this summer to accept their plaques.

Here is Ryan Thibodaux’ spreadsheet with all the publicly revealed ballots (plus some anonymous ballots) that were known at the time the induction announcement was made. Former Cubs star Sammy Sosa, also in his final year on the BBWAA ballot, received 18.5 percent of the vote, up from 17 percent a year ago, but still far short of induction.

Here is the full vote from the BBWAA.

The 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place Sunday, July 24 in Cooperstown and it will be televised live on MLB Network at 12:30 p.m. CT. They’ll likely have someone accept on the late Buck O’Neil’s behalf, but seriously, that person shouldn’t have to make a speech — all they need to do is replay this, which if you haven’t watched, you should, and if you have previously seen it, it’s worth another seven minutes of your time:

Not MUCH progress. But it wasn’t nothing.

The second day of negotiations between MLB players and owners took place Tuesday in New York City and there were actual concrete proposals made. Here’s a summary:

The numbers proposed by MLB owners are far from what players have stated they want:

Honestly, those numbers are laughably far apart. This isn’t totally unusual for a labor negotiation. What’s important is how quickly the parties can narrow the gap. At this time that’s unknown. As Jeff Passan notes:

Depending on how that bonus pool is divided and how it’s determined which players are part of it (potentially by WAR?), this will not affect a large number of players. But it would get them paid more during their younger, more productive years, and that’s one thing players have been quite adamant about, because free agency is not going to change (at least in terms of how many years of service are required to get there).

Clearly, the difference between MLB’s $10 million offer and the MLBPA’s desire for $105 million in this pool is indeed laughable. Whether this gap can be bridged will go a long way toward telling us whether a deal can be reached without losing any games this year.

There are reports that further discussions on “non-core economic issues” will happen later this week. Good. Clock’s ticking.

No clues here, you’re thinking. Again, you’d be wrong.

Before we begin, again, credit where it’s due. Here’s where I found this one:

And I know what you’re thinking: C’mon, Al, you can’t possibly figure this one out. It’s just warming up in the bullpen pre-game. No scoreboard visible, no opponent, just part of the bleachers and Fergie Jenkins and Leo Durocher (and a partly-visible coach, probably the pitching coach).

Of course I can figure this one out! It wasn’t even that difficult.

Your first clue is the uniform. The Cubs began wearing the beltless pants in 1972. Fergie made 19 starts at Wrigley Field in 1972.

But we can quickly narrow that down with clue number 2: Durocher, who was fired July 23, 1972. So it can’t be after that date. That eliminates seven games, now we’re down to 12 possible starts.

The ivy is full-grown on the bleacher wall. Now we can eliminate April and early May, that’s three more games, nine to go.

The next thing to do is check weather conditions. It’s clearly a warm summer day — bleacher fans are dressed for summer. It could possibly be that warm in late May, and Fergie made three starts at Wrigley then, May 23, 27 and 31. Game time temps: 63, 67 and 50. I suppose 67 is a “maybe,” but the fans look dressed for warmer weather than that, and the ivy likely wouldn’t be that full-grown by then.

So that leaves six games, as follows. All but one had weather conditions listed in the boxscore:

• June 14: Weather reported as 85 degrees, sunny. It’s partly cloudy in that photo.
• June 18: Weather reported as 62 degrees, sunny. Fans are not dressed for 62 degrees.
• June 23: Weather reported as 57 degrees, cloudy. Nope.
• June 27: Here’s the one with no weather in the boxscore. I looked it up in the Tribune archive. Sunny, temps around 80. Again, it’s partly cloudy in that photo.
• July 13: Weather reported as 78 degrees, cloudy. This is a maybe.
• July 17: Weather reported as 68 degrees, overcast, rain. Nope.

The Tribune further reported that it was going to be sunny June 27, cloud up overnight June 28 and storms were forecast for June 28. The Cubs were out of town June 28, but I am inclined to say “no” for that date — because that was a doubleheader and would have started at 12:30 instead of the 1:30 single game time in 1972. Further, it’s not really “sunny” in that photo, though you can see some sun, it’s actually partly cloudy.

I’m going to say this is the July 13 game. “Cloudy” is relative, and back in the day the conditions reported for game time were generally taken from the official Chicago lakefront reading at 1 p.m. It very well could have been “cloudy” at that point at the lakefront station, which at the time was at Meigs Field, about five miles from Wrigley. The temperature would seem to be a match, though.

Fergie was having a fine afternoon, allowing just one run and seven hits through eight innings, and the game tied 2-2. Now? You’d bring in a reliever. Then? Fergie went out for the ninth and got hit pretty hard, allowing four hits, including a home run. Then reliever Dan McGinn came in and allowed another homer, and the Cubs lost the game 7-2 in front of 13,427. Also, if that’s the pitching coach in the photo, that’s Larry Jansen, who was Cubs pitching coach in 1972 and 1973.

Durocher was fired only 10 days later. Jenkins won 20 games, his sixth straight 20-win season, and finished third in Cy Young voting that year.

Coming Thursday, comments will look different.

Hey everyone. I’m Tanya, and I oversee all of our baseball communities for SB Nation.

This Thursday will be a big day for our community: we’re moving our comments to a new platform, developed especially for SB Nation. All of our MLB communities will be moving to the new platform, and I’m excited about the change.

Some of you may already be familiar with this new platform as it rolled out to our NFL communities in 2020 and to many of our soccer sites and our NHL and NBA communities last year. Over 30 updates to the platform have been released since our initial launch, each bringing new features for SB Nation communities specifically, and changes to the user experience based on community member feedback. It’s a very different platform today than it was in 2020, and I can’t wait to show you.

Why this change? We’ve been using the same commenting platform for over a decade and it’s time for an upgrade. The old system is brittle, and prone to outages. It’s not built for the modern web, and even just maintaining it gets tougher every year.

Nobody likes change, but this is a necessary one, and it brings real improvements that’ll make our whole commenting experience better.

In the new system, you’ll see features that we’ve wanted to add for years, including:

• Easier embeds (just paste the Twitter/YouTube link)
• Easier rich text shortcuts (control-B for Bold, control-I for italics)
• Email notifications when someone replies to you
• See who’s Rec’d your comments
• Better flagging options and strong anti-abuse controls
• A GIF library for easy image posting
• The ability to mute commenters you don’t want to see
• Easily find the most Rec’d comments

Plus a whole host of features that we’ve kept because they make our communities special, such as new comment highlighting, color changes with high Rec counts, Z key scrolling, external image embeds, sarcasm font, and much more.

This platform has been built specifically for SB Nation communities and, for the first time, we now have a team dedicated to constantly evolving and improving our commenting tools.

I know that new things take a bit of time to get used to — I ask only that you give it a chance, try it on a few articles, and then tell us honestly what you think. This is a permanent work in progress — we will continue to evolve the tools over the coming months and years, to give you the tools and platform you deserve. In fact, we have already added dozens of new features based on feedback from our audiences since our initial launch on NFL communities last year. You can help make it better by giving us your feedback in the comments or emailing coralsupport@voxmedia.com

Some important information about the change: your old comments are being saved and will be returned to the pages in the future, but for now, stories won’t contain comments posted prior to the changeover. So please be mindful that any discussions happening at the time the switch is flipped will be interrupted.

Your comment history will now be located under the My Profile tab at the top of the comments (not the top of the page), which is also where your comments archive will be restored when we bring them back.

The new platform will go live on Bleed Cubbie Blue beginning Thursday afternoon. You can use the same login as always.

Thanks as always for being here. Now let’s talk.

Baseball owners seem to have forgotten one very important part of their business — their customers.

If you were cautiously optimistic over Monday’s report that MLB players and owners would meet for CBA negotiations for a second straight day, you might want to think again after reading this, via Evan Drellich at The Athletic:

In a meeting with the Players Association on Monday, Major League Baseball deputy commissioner Dan Halem said that MLB is willing to lose games over some of the outstanding issues the sides have, people with knowledge of the talks said. Whether Halem was issuing a threat, or merely providing a statement of the obvious — the owners did start a lockout, after all, and there’s been no agreement since, so what else would happen if there’s no movement? — depends on whom you ask. Some on the players’ side indeed thought it was notable that Halem would verbalize the possibility of missing games, that it did amount to a threat, while the commissioner’s office disagreed.

The headline to Drellich’s article called the talks “Heated MLB bargaining,” and that certainly doesn’t sound like a good sign. Neither does this:

Some on the players’ side were irked, too, by Rockies owner Dick Monfort, the chair of commissioner Rob Manfred’s seven-owner labor policy committee. Monfort, people with knowledge of the meeting said, complained about the difficulty at least some owners have affording teams, and the ancillary costs of ownership such as security and COVID-19 measures.

That sort of thing is definitely not what players want to hear from someone who’s part of an $11 billion business (even granted that MLB had some revenue losses from lack of ticket sales in 2020 and sales being down in 2021).

It’s absolutely not what baseball fans want to hear, and Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic went into that in an article headlined “The longer the MLB lockout goes, the clearer it gets that the real losers are the fans,” a sentiment I agree with 100 percent.

Ghiroli asks:

Will fans, some already turned off or tuned out this winter, still care by then? Will a country entering year three of a pandemic have much sympathy if — for the second time in three seasons — baseball plays an abbreviated schedule? Or will some fans go elsewhere? Will they find themselves, as I often do, reading about the NFL or the NBA with more frequency because baseball’s headlines are the same, frustrating mantra: no movement, no target start. There are no rumors right now. No speculation, no Hot Stove action.

Nothing to keep the diehard fan engaged, let alone the casual one.

If a professional baseball writer is reading more about the NFL and NBA, you can imagine what the casual fan is doing, especially since Major League Baseball has gone out of its way to pretend that its current players don’t exist:

The league’s websites are bare. MLB Network is prohibited from using the likeness of active players, while reporters for MLB.com aren’t allowed to write about them. In an unprecedented move compared to other leagues, teams can’t even allow their injured players to use their facilities and staff during a work stoppage. Everything the league can leverage, it has. But while the players’ shortsightedness is understandable given the quest to improve the game while they’re playing, the league’s is not. Who is ensuring the game is viable in 20 years, let alone 50? Shouldn’t those in it for the long haul care, just a little, about the viability of that product?

I cannot argue with any of this. I have tried, myself, to keep engaged with baseball and to keep you, the BCB reader, engaged with baseball by writing about the rich history of our favorite team and ballpark. While those memories of Cubs baseball are wonderful and reminiscing is fun, that’s not going to move the needle on the sport going forward. And make no mistake, Ghiroli agrees with me that this is all on ownership:

Perhaps the sport’s owners — who have rejected any changes to revenue sharing or discussion of paying players earlier in their career — are willing to sacrifice some fans or tickets sold if it means they can continue keeping profits high and payrolls low. After all, baseball shares revenue among teams more than any other professional sport; the owners enjoy an antitrust exemption that’s also unique to baseball. Billionaires with many tax loopholes fighting to keep its players, its product, from a bigger slice of the pie isn’t something the average fan can sympathize with.

A week ago, I wrote that this lockout puts MLB’s future in peril. I’m clearly not the only one who feels that way. Ghiroli’s article quotes some other fans who do, and many of you have expressed similar sentiments right here at BCB. Ownership continues down this road at great risk to their own businesses and to the sport we love.

The latest in our long-running series of #Cubs-related news articles. #MLB, #MiLB, too. This edition is feeling Hall of Fame-ish.

It’s going to be a big day... or perhaps a not-so-big day for the 2022 Hall of Fame candidates. Later today (Tuesday, January 25) the tallied votes will be revealed, and we will find out who (if anyone) has made it into this year’s class of the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame.

This is Cubs-worthy primarily because it’s Sammy Sosa’s final year on the ballot and it seems distinctly unlikely he’s going to make the cut (though he can still be elected later by the Eras Committee).

Based on the collected public ballots (which you can track here), with under 50% of known votes there are three candidates with a solid shot at getting in this year. First ballot contender, David Ortiz; superstar slugger Barry Bonds; and pitcher Roger Clemens. This is by no means a sure-bet list of who will gain entry, but those are the three players currently trending over 75%. We’ll know for sure by tonight!

Let’s take a quick look at Cubs social media, shall we?

Several former players were thinking back on the 2015 passing of Ernie Banks.

• While we’re on the topic of the Hall of Fame, Matt Kelly looks at a few players who were finally elected on their final year on the ballot.
• David Schoenfield tries to follow the known ballot numbers to determine who will (and who might not) make the cut.
• The Sports Illustrated staff take a stab at determining who will make it in.
• Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma spotlight the Cubs’ offseason program for prospects. (The Athletic subscription required)

Cubs birthdays: Jimmy Adair, Mel Roach, Jose Macias, Dan Serafini

Food for Thought:

And a very cool, in-depth look at how clever the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Disney’s Encanto is, from a musical perspective.

Thanks for reading. Cub Tracks and Bleed Cubbie Blue do not necessarily endorse the opinions of writers whose work is linked in this series of articles. We try to present a balanced view, and let the facts speak for themselves.

The swinging night spot for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad asks if Ian Happ should give up switch hitting.

Welcome back to another week of BCB After Dark: the cool late-night club for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. So happy to see you again this week. I hope you had a pleasant weekend. No cover charge. We’ve still got a prime table for you in the second row. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

Last week, I asked you how many teams should make the playoffs. The vote was pretty clear as 51% of you thought that the current ten teams was the ideal amount. Another 28 percent wanted to go back to only eight teams in the postseason. It can’t make MLB happy that only 21 percent of you picked one of the three options to expand the playoffs to 12, 14 or 16 teams.

Here’s the part where I talk about jazz and movies. Feel free to skip ahead to the baseball question at the end. You won’t hurt my feelings.

It’s been a while since I featured any Dave Brubeck, which is a shame because I don’t think any jazz artist better represents the “late-night cool” vibe that I’m going for with this virtual late-1950’s night club that I’ve created better than Brubeck. Some might consider that characterization of his music as a criticism of Brubeck, so I guess your mileage may vary.

But here’s a performance of “Unisphere” by Brubeck. The “Unisphere” is that big giant globe that was built for the 1964 World’s Fair that still stands near Citi Field in Flushing, Queens.

So with Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on sax, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums, here’s Brubeck’s tribute to the Unisphere and the spirit it represents. This is a performance from 1964 in Helsinki, Finland.

This week’s film discussion is about Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist trilogy (also called the “war trilogy”), Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1947). These are three of the most influential films in history. Tonight, the focus is on the first one in the series. I hope to say more about the three as a whole either later in the week or next week.

The most amazing thing about Rome, Open City is how it was even made in the first place. The script and preparations for the film started while Rome was still occupied by German forces and actual filming started in January of 1945, while the war was still going on. In fact, the front lines were just about a two-hour drive to the north. As you might expect, you can’t make a film under those conditions in the same way you would during peacetime. Rossellini had no access to film stock and was forced to use whatever film he could find on the black market or whatever he could beg, borrow or pilfer from the advancing American troops. That meant that that the film has an incredibly uneven look to it, since different scenes were shot with different types of film. Rossellini actually turns this into an advantage as it increases the “war documentary” look of the overall picture.

What makes these three films different than other war films that you might see is that for the most part, these three films aren’t about the soldiers and Rome, Open City barely mentions the fighting at all. Instead, Rossellini turns his focus to the “common people” and how the war has changed them. Rome, Open City is also a pretty strong statement about Italian nationalism and a call for Italians to realize that they have more in common with each other than they have differences.

Rossellini came into Rome, Open City with dirty hands. He had been a director under Fascist Italy and was a close friend of Vittorio Mussolini, the son of fascist leader Benito Mussolini, who saw himself as a kind of movie mogul and got himself put in charge of the Italian film industry. Rossellini made several films under Mussolini, including three that came out during the war that can only be described as fascist propaganda. It’s always been a big debate whether Rome, Open City was a way for Rossellini to atone for his earlier sins or whether he just saw Italian anti-fascists (and the Americans) as a new patron to please. In any case, Rome, Open City is about as damning a portrait of fascism and Nazism as one could make under the circumstances.

The title Rome, Open City refers to the period from August of 1943 to June of 1944 when the German authorities occupying Rome had declared Rome an “open city,” meaning that they would not defend the city if it were attacked in an attempt to spare the people and landmarks of the city from further harm. But Rome was still under the control of the Italian fascist puppet government until the Americans arrived, which meant that Nazi Germany was actually in charge of things. Rome, Open City tells the tale of the Italian resistance to the German occupation. It’s certainly a heroic portrait of the common Italian people and it ignores that many Italians at the time still supported Mussolini and fascism. Even the collaborators are driven to betraying their country by their weaknesses and unfortunate circumstances.

The Italian neorealist movement is generally described as a postwar movement that tried to recreate the actual lives of real “common” people as much as possible. The films were shot on location and not on sets. They generally eschewed the use of actors in favor of just finding non-professional people and having them act out scenes similar to their own lives. Most of the scenes were improvisational, as there either was just a loose outline of a script or no script at all.

While all of those conditions were true of Paisan and Germany, Year Zero, Rossellini had not yet full embraced all of those traits in Rome, Open City. While much of Rome, Open City was shot on city streets, Rossellini did construct some sets in basements of abandoned buildings for some scenes. Instead of improving, there was a script written by Rossellini, Federico Fellini, Sergio Amidei and Alberto Consiglio. The story was one of those “based on true events” tales like you’d see on a modern episode of Law & Order. In particular, it was a fictionalized version two well-known incidents during the German occupation of Rome—of which I won’t spoil here.

And unlike in Paisan and Germany, Year Zero, Rossellini uses real actors here. In particular, Aldo Fabrizi, who plays the the priest Don Pietro, and the magnificent Anna Magnani, who plays the pregnant widow Pina, who is engaged to be married. Other professional actors populate some other major roles and minor roles are filled in by non-actors “in the business” like cameramen or producers, or sometimes by their friends and relatives.

Fabrizi and Magnani turn in the top performances, however. Magnani, also known as La Lupa, or “She-Wolf” of Italian cinema, was renown for her representation of fiery Italian womanhood on the screen (Apparently, it wasn’t much of a stretch from her actual personality.) She would go on to become the first person to win an acting Academy Award for a part that was entirely in a language other than English when she won the Oscar for Best Actress for The Rose Tattoo in 1955.

The scene in Rome, Open City where Magnani’s Pina chases after the truck her fiancé is being taken away in is one of the most iconic in the history of cinema.

Magnani is playing Pina, a working-class widow with communist sympathies, who is pregnant and engaged to a resistance leader in Rome whom the German authorities are looking for. Fabrizi’s Don Pietro is a Catholic priest who represents the conservative and monarchist right in Italy. Normally, Pina and Don Pietro would be enemies in Italian society, but the occupation has brought them together. Don Pietro is willing to officiate Pina’s wedding despite her pregnancy. Pina, despite not being religious, wants Don Pietro to perform the ceremony because “at least he’s on our side” (meaning against the Nazis) rather than the fascist bureaucrats at City Hall.

Fabrizi also provides much of the humor in the movie, which gives his character a great deal of range. On the one hand, he gets caught up in soccer game that his parish’s boys are playing at one point, forgetting his mission for the Italian underground until he gets hit in the head with a soccer ball. Don Pietro also has a scene where he has to go into a shop to get a package that he has to deliver to the underground. While he waits for his contact to return, he notices two statues of a naked goddess Venus and St. Francis of Assisi facing each other. He sheepishly turns the two statues away from each other.

But this humor is contrasted against the real evil that Don Pietro is forced to confront when he is brought in by the Nazis for questioning. As a priest, Don Pietro is trained to believe that all people are good and capable of salvation. But as an Italian, those beliefs are sorely tested by the Nazi occupation, and Fabrizi is always cognizant of that dichotomy in Don Pietro’s character.

I’ll have more to say about Rome, Open City later in the week, but I think tonight’s edition has gone on long enough. I also hope that I’ll have a chance to say something about Paisan and Germany, Year Zero as well. But Rome, Open City often ends up on those lists of the 100 Greatest Films of All-Time and its influence on the world of cinema would probably put it in the Top Ten. It’s definitely a film that every film buff and movie fan should watch at least once.

Here’s a trailer for the film connected to a recently-restored version.

Today’s question is inspired by Orioles outfielder Cedric Mullins and this article by Jake Mailhot of Fangraphs. To be blunt, it’s been hard to be an Orioles fan in recent years, but last season the performance of Mullins was a rare joy.

Mullins had never been a top prospect in the Orioles system. He was a 13th-round draft pick in 2015 and slowly worked his way up Baltimore’s system, but he was never seen as more than a possible fourth outfielder. In fact, that how Baseball America categorized Mullins when they ranked him as their 9th-best O’s prospect in 2018. That’s as high as he ever got in the rankings.

After mediocre-to-poor cups of coffee with the Orioles in 2018 and 2019, Mullins spent all of the abbreviated 2020 in the majors (well, there were no minors) and hit .271/.315/.407 with three home runs in 48 games. That seemed like a major victory, but those are also the numbers of a fourth or fifth outfielder for any team better than the Orioles were.

But Mullins exploded in 2021. He played 159 games and hit .291/.360/.518 with 30 home runs and 30 steals. He made his first All-Star Game and he deserved to be there. Mullins won a Silver Slugger Award and finished 9th in American League Most Valuable Player Award voting.

What did Mullins do differently in 2021? He gave up switch-hitting. Mullins hit far better as a left-hander in 2020 (against right-handers) than he did batting right-handed. It was a huge platoon differential as his split OPS+ against right-handers was 115 and against left-handers, it was 36. When Mullins decided to hit left-handed against left-handed pitching, that OPS+ split in 2021 went all the way up to 115.

Now Mullins also increased his OPS+ split against right-handed pitching up to 154, so it’s not like all of the improvement in his game came from batting left-handed only. But I can certainly see how not having to worry about his right-handed swing could improve his ability to hit right-handed pitching from the left-handed side of the box, so I don’t think you can discount that it played a bigger role than those splits might indicate.

In Mailhot’s article linked above, he tries to find the next Cedric Mullins, or a switch-hitter who might benefit from hitting from one side of the plate only. The first name he comes up with is Ian Happ.

To be clear, Happ’s splits are not anywhere near as extreme as Mullins’ were. Happ’s career line as a left-handed batter is .244/.346/.496 with a OPS+ of 109. His line as a right-handed hitter is .233/.312/.382 (OPS+ 74). That’s a pretty big drop-off in power, but a more normal platoon split for the batting average and on-base percentage. His OPS+ splits for 2021 were right in line with that with a 116 OPS+ from the left side and a 79 OPS+ from the right.

Now changing the way that you’ve batted your entire career is a big deal. It’s not something that’s easy to do. But were Happ to concentrate on just hitting from the left side, he’d only have one swing to worry about going forward. So that might be a help.

So what do you think? If the Cubs are going to do anything in 2022, it’s clear to me that Ian Happ is going to have to be a big part of that. And that means hitting better and for more power than he has in his career. Happ is the same age as Cedric Mullins, so it’s not like he’s too old to make a change. He could go back to switch-hitting if it didn’t work, but it might mean a lost season. It’s still a big gamble.

Thank you so much for stopping by this evening. Please let us get your hat and coat for you. We hope you’ve been able to get warm and relax for a little while this evening. Please tip your waitstaff generously. Drive home safely. And join us again tomorrow night for another edition of BCB After Dark.

So, progress?

Major League Baseball owners’ representatives and the same from the MLB Players Association met Monday at the MLBPA offices in New York City.

For the first time, we have a tiny bit of progress to report, per Evan Drellich at The Athletic:

The Major League Baseball Players Association dropped its request to introduce an age-based free agency system into the sport on Monday, withdrawing a proposal in one of the three major areas MLB had shown no interest in changing, a person with knowledge of the negotiations told The Athletic.

The union also revised its proposal to alter revenue sharing between the teams, another of the three areas MLB has resisted changes toward — and traditionally, a hot-button topic for the owners themselves. Between revenue sharing and free agency, the union feels it made two significant concessions.

Well, that’s something, at least, and as noted by Drellich, these are things that ownership likely wasn’t going to budge on anyway. The players’ position on another key negotiating point hasn’t changed, though:

With the time-to-free-agency question gone, the two major hurdles remaining are whether MLB could become amenable to any changes to revenue sharing; and what will happen to the other particularly contentious bucket, the time it takes a player to reach arbitration. The players’ decision to drop their request to get players to free agency sooner wasn’t particularly surprising, considering what the union has been talking about for years, publicly, is the plight of younger players.

The union’s proposal to get players to arbitration after two years from November went unchanged on Monday. At the time, the league said it had no interest in discussing it.

So... although there was some progress, it doesn’t seem as if a lot of progress was made between the two sides on more important core issues regarding free agency and service time.

This, though, is positive news:

So, the MLBPA did move somewhat in the direction of MLB regarding revenue sharing. And, the parties will meet again Tuesday, which would be the first time that’s happened since the lockout began.

Progress? Maybe, but very very very slow progress. We’re not too far from the time when Spring Training is going to have to be pushed back if they don’t have an agreement.

Repeat after me: “As always, we await developments.”

The Cubs look to continue their hot streak.

When last we travelled to 1989, the Cubs were winning a pair of series against west coast foes, winning five of seven games in the process. Unfortunately, the Expos were unyielding and they finished the week pretty much right where they started. That is, they were still 3½ games out of first. With the power of hindsight, we know things worked out well, but in those days with so many years of Cubs ineptitude, the season was starting to look at least a little like a pleasant surprise that would come up short. After all, in this 17th week of the season, the Cubs will cross 100 games played. That is right about the time when baseball feels like the unending marathon is starting to look a bit like a sprint.

As that sprint begins, we’ll look at six games. The first three of those are a series in St. Louis. You’ll recall this is an odd stretch scheduling-wise. The Cubs played seven games last week, three in Los Angeles and four in Chicago. This week, they’ll travel to St. Louis for three, then finally get an off day after 14 consecutive games coming out of the All-Star break. Then after the off day, they head back to Chicago for three with the Mets. As the Cubs get back into division play, let’s see how they held up.

Game 98, July 24: Cubs 3 at Cardinals 2 (54-44)

The Cardinals wasted no time getting on the scoreboard against Mike Bielecki. Willie McGee started the game with a single, moved to third on a double by Milt Thompson and scored on a groundout by Pedro Guerrero.

In the third, the Cubs evened it up. It started with a one out single by Shawon Duston. He moved to second on a Bielecki sacrifice, then stole third. He was there when Jerome Walton singled, tying the game.

In the fifth, it was the bottom of the Cubs order again breaking through against Cardinals starter Scott Terry. Damon Berryhill singled, advanced to second on a groundout, moved to third on a Dunston single and then scored on a squeeze play executed by Bielecki.

The Cubs were clinging to a one run lead and facing once dominant closer Dan Quisenberry in the eighth inning. Dunston started the inning by bunting for a hit. Two batters later, he was still standing at first when Ryne Sandberg stepped to the plate. Sandberg doubled and Dunston came all of the way around to score and give the Cubs what turned out to be a key insurance run.

In the Cardinals half of the eighth inning, McGee led off with a single against Steve Wilson. But Wilson bounced back with a double play ball to Thompson. Guerrero doubled and that was it for Wilson. Les Lancaster came into the came to face Tom Brunansky and allowed an RBI-single.

Mitch Williams recorded the final four outs for his 24th save. But it wasn’t without drama. He allowed a one-out double to Ozzie Smith. Smith would later steal third, but was stranded there as the Cubs stayed hot and matched a then season-high 10 games over .500.

• Superhero: Mike Bielecki (.328). 7IP (27 batters), 4H, 2BB, R, 6K (W 10-5)
• Hero: Mitch Williams (.238). 1⅓ IP (5 batters), H, K (Sv 24)
• Sidekick: Shawon Dunston (.161). 3-3, 2R, SB
• Billy Goat: Les Lancaster (-.099). 0IP (1 batter), H
• Goat: Dwight Smith (-.067). 0-4, K
• Kid: Mark Grace (-.065). 0-4, K

Game 99, July 25: Cubs 4 at Cardinals 2 (55-44)

The Cubs struck first in this one with two runs in the second inning. The inning started with a pair of doubles by Andre Dawson and Lloyd McClendon. Then it seemed like the Cardinals would get out of the inning without much trouble. With two outs, McClendon was still standing on second when Shawon Dunston was intentionally walked to get to Cubs starter Paul Kilgus. But Kilgus singled and extended his lead to work with to two.

The Cardinals got one back in their half of the third and it was their pitcher who got things started. Joe Magrane doubled leading off the inning. A sacrifice bunt by Vince Coleman and a sacrifice fly by Willie McGee got the run in. Score one for small ball and putting the ball in play.

Kilgus got things started for the Cubs again in the fifth with a walk. He moved to third on a Jerome Walton double and scored on a sacrifice fly by Ryne Sandberg. Once again, the Cubs got an insurance run involving Dunston when he homered in the ninth inning.

That made things a little less uncomfortable when Mitch Williams, who had entered the game with a runner on first in the eighth inning, issued a two out walk to Jose Oquendo. That seemed innocuous enough, but then long time Cub Leon Durham delivered a pinch double. An error that play led to the run scoring. Williams recorded the final out, stranding Durham at third and the tying run at the plate.

• Superhero: Paul Kilgus (.220). 6IP (22 batters), 4H, BB, R, 2K (W 6-9)
• Hero: Mitch Williams (.183). 2IP (8 batters), 2H, BB, R (0ER) (Sv 25)
• Honorable Mention: Paul Kilgus (.145). 1-1, BB, RBI, R
• Sidekick: Les Lancaster (.078). ⅓ IP (1 batter)
• Billy Goat: Vance Law (-.080). 0-4, K
• Goat: Calvin Schiraldi (-.077). ⅓ IP (3 batters), 2BB
• Kid: Damon Berryhill (-.060). 0-4, K

Game 100, July 26: Cardinals 2, Cubs 0 (55-45)

This one was a dandy pitchers’ duel between Jose DeLeon and Rick Sutcliffe. The game was scoreless into the third inning when Terry Pendleton and Tony Pena started the inning with back-to-back singles. After Sutcliffe struck out DeLeon, Vince Coleman hit a grounder to second. Even the talented middle infield combo of Ryne Sandberg and Shawon Duston couldn’t turn a double play on the lightning fast Vince Coleman and that allowed a run to score. The speedy Coleman grounded into a somewhat surprising 45 double plays in over 5,400 plate appearances. Oddly, 21 of those fall within three seasons (‘87, ‘90, ‘95), two of which were pre-injury.

In the eighth inning, Pendleton again got things started with a single off of Sutcliffe who was still in the game. Pena followed with a sacrifice bunt. After Sutcliffe struck out pinch hitter Denny Walling, Coleman came to the plate again. Once again he came through, this time with an RBI-single. With only 346 RBI in his career, Coleman only had 65 multi-RBI games. Unsurprisingly, with unbalanced schedules, seven of those were against the Cubs.

Offensively, the Cubs managed just two hits. They did draw three walks. They had one scoring chance in the seventh inning. Vance Law had a one out single and moved to third on a rare Ozzie Smith error. But Sutcliffe was the next batter and grounded out to end the inning.

The Cubs reach the 100 game mark winning 55% of their games. In this series, they held the Cardinals to exactly two runs in all three games. They won two of those three, stretching the recent hot streak up to seven wins in 10 games. Briefly reaching a season-high 11 games over .500.

• Superhero: Rick Sutcliffe (.098). 7⅔ IP (28 batters), 5H, 2BB, 2R, 5K (L 10-9)
• Hero: Steve Wilson (.008). ⅓ IP (1 batter)
• Sidekick: Shawon Dunston (.005). 0-3, K
• Billy Goat/Goat: Ryne Sandberg/Vance Law (-.132). Sandberg: 0-4, 2K; Law 0-3
• Kid: Jerome Walton (-.064). 1-4, 2K

Game 101, July 28: Cubs 6, Mets 5 (56-45)

This was one of those games with a peculiar game “shape” to it. The Cubs led early, coughed it up in a big way, but battled back and won. With David Cone on the mound for the Mets, Ryne Sandberg had a one out double in the first. He then scored from second(!) on a wild pitch for the game’s first run.

In the second, Damon Berryhill led off with a double, advanced to third on a Vance Law ground out and then scored on a squeeze play by Shawon Dunston. Don Zimmer loved the squeeze play and the bunt in general. It was a real weapon for that team.

But in the third, the wheels fell off for Cubs starter Scott Sanderson. It all started with a leadoff single by Cone. One out later, Dave Magadan added a double. Future Cub Howard Johnson followed with a three-run homer.

That wasn’t all though. Daryl Strawberry and Kevin McReynolds followed with a pair of singles, chasing Sanderson. The Cubs summoned Jeff Pico, who did retire the first batter he faced. But then he walked Gary Carter to load the bases. Kevin Elster capped the scoring with a two-run single.

The game stayed 5-2 into the seventh inning and Cone stayed on the hill after largely righting the ship from his rough start. Vance Law and Shawon Dunston started the seventh with a pair of singles and after Law went to third on Dunston’s single, it left a base open. Dunston stole that base, putting runners on second and third with no outs. A strikeout and a sacrifice fly from Jerome Walton cut the deficit to two, but it also put two outs on the board. With Sandberg coming to the plate, the Mets brought in another future Cub in Rick Aguilera. Sandberg responded with a single, scoring the second run of the inning.

That brought Dwight Smith to the plate as the go-ahead run. If it wasn’t for the oddity of a 30-game hitting streak by a rookie, Smith might have been the Rookie of the Year. And the reason is because when the Cubs had big moments, he was often right in the middle of them. This was one of those. Smith hit a two-run, go ahead homer that turned out to be the game winner. Mitch Williams faced just four hitters to retire the final four Mets and nail down another save.

• Superhero: Dwight Smith (.398). 1-4, HR, 2RBI, R
• Hero: Mitch Williams (.243). 1⅓ IP (4 batters), H (Sv 26)
• Sidekick: Ryne Sandberg (.169). 2-4, 2B, RBI, 2R
• Billy Goat: Scott Sanderson (-.267). 2⅓ IP (14 batters), 8H, 5R
• Goat: Jeff Pico (-.091). 1⅔ IP (7 batters), H, BB
• Kid: Andre Dawson (-.082). 0-4, 2K

Game 102, July 29: Cubs 10, Mets 3 (57-45)

The Mets actually led in this game, scoring a pair of runs off of Cubs starter Greg Maddux in the top of the second inning. It started innocuous enough, with two outs in the second, eight hitter Kevin Elster slugged a two-run homer. If allowing a homer to a fairly weak eighth hitter wasn’t upsetting enough, Maddux followed by walking Mets starter Wally Whitehurst. Juan Samuel followed with a double and a Cubs miscue in the outfield allowed the second run to score.

In the bottom of the third, Jerome Walton led off with a single. This was the eighth consecutive game in which he had a hit. Ryne Sandberg followed with a game-tying two-run homer. Dwight Smith followed with a double, then advanced to third on a groundout and scored on a sacrifice fly by Andre Dawson. With the Cubs already up one, Damon Berryhill followed with a solo homer. Two more singles in the inning chased Whitehurst, but the Cubs couldn’t add on.

The Cubs did even more damage in the fourth off Mets reliever Jeff Innis. Walton started the inning with his second hit of the day, a bunt single. That started off a parade of singles. Sandberg followed with a single of his own, putting runners at the corners. Smith followed with an RBI-single and then so did Mark Grace. That put the Cubs up by four. But a double play followed, diffusing what looked like it could be a huge inning.

Innis was still on the hill in the sixth when Walton continued his torrid hitting. He singled to start things off. After a fielder’s choice, Smith singled, putting runners at the corners. Grace followed with a ground out against new Mets reliever David West, driving in a run. West then walked Dawson intentionally. Berryhill followed with an RBI-single. Vance Law followed that with an RBI double and the Cubs led by seven.

Howard Johnson drove in a run in the seventh, aided by a Mark Grace error. Johnson got the run in on a groundout. With two outs in the seventh, Sandberg walked and scored on a Dwight Smith double to cap the scoring.

Sandberg reached four times, scored four times and had three hits. 35 times Sandberg had four or more hits in a game, including two five his games. I counted 142 times where he had three or more hits. How we evaluate and value players has changed over the years, but by any measure Sandberg was a star among stars.

Smith had four hits in this one. Smith had two doubles, two RBI and two runs. He had just two four hit games in his career.

• Superhero: Ryne Sandberg (.267). 3-4, HR, BB, 2RBI, 4R
• Hero: Damon Berryhill (.133). 3-5, HR, 2RBI, R
• Sidekick: Dwight Smith (.105). 4-5, 2-2B, 2RBI, 2R
• Billy Goat: Andre Dawon (-.025). 0-2, BB, SF, RBI, R, DP
• Goat: Vance Law (-.021). 2-5, 2B, RBI
• Kid: Mark Grace (-.009). 1-5, 2RBI

Game 103, July 30: Cubs 6, Mets 4 (58-45)

The Cubs jumped out early in this one, as Ryne Sandberg had a one out single in the first. He moved to third on a Mark Grace single off of Mets starter Bob Ojeda. He then scored on an Andre Dawson sacrifice fly. Ojeda probably prefers to be remembered as a member of the 1986 world champion Mets team. But he might be best remembered as the survivor of a boating accident that killed two Cleveland pitchers.

The Cubs also scored in the third inning. Jerome Walton led off the inning with a single to extend his hitting streak to nine games. Sandberg then reached on an error putting two on with none out. Mark Grace followed with one of just 17 successful sacrifice bunts in his career. Dawson was intentionally walked to get to Lloyd McClendon who drew the unintentional walk to plate the game’s second run.

When Shawon Dunston homered leading off the third inning, the Cubs were flying high and looking like they might cruise to a three game sweep. But the Mets came battling back. Mike Bielecki walked Daryl Strawberry to start the fifth. Kevin McReynolds followed with a double, putting two in scoring position with no outs. Greg Jeffries drove in the Mets first run on a ground out. Gary Carter drew a walk. Kevin Elster hit a sacrifice fly and the lead was down to one.

Dunston led off the bottom of the sixth with a walk. Bielecki sacrificed him to second. That’s where he was when Jerome Walton flew out for the second out. Dunston tagged and went to third. The throw was wild and he scored to make it 4-2 Cubs.

Bielecki recorded the first two hitters in the seventh inning, but then Elster doubled. The Cubs then went to the pen. Keith Hernandez delivered a pinch two-run single off of Mitch Williams to tie the game. Hernandez had to have been hurt at the time, as Ron Darling pinch ran for him. Darling moved to second on a wild pitch and that was the end of Williams. Les Lancaster came in and got the final out, Darling trying to advance to third on a ground ball off of the bat of Juan Samuel.

Walton delivered a one-out single against Rick Aguilera in the ninth inning. He moved to second on a wild pitch. One out later, the Mets summoned the man Cubs fans will remember as Randall Kirk Myers from his time with the Cubs. Myers coughed up a walk-off two-run homer to Mark Grace:

• Superhero: Mark Grace (.420). 2-3, HR, SH, BB, 2RBI, R
• Hero: Les Lancaster (.305). 2⅓IP (7 batters), K (W 3-0)
• Sidekick: Jerome Walton (.177). 3-5, 2R, SB
• Billy Goat: Mitch Williams (-.272). 0IP (1 batter), H, WP
• Goat: Vance Law (-.123). 0-4, K
• Kid: Damon Berryhill (-.080). 1-4, K

That was a successful week by any standard, the Cubs won five games in six tries. That pushed them to a new season high, 13 games over .500. The Friday and Sunday wins against the Mets each shaved a game off of the deficit in the division and the Cubs ended the week just 1½ games out of first. With 59 games remaining in the season, it once again looked like the Cubs had a very good chance of winning the division.

The big challenge now would be to go out on the road and keep it going. With 10 wins in 13 games, they were smoking hot. But, they faced a big challenge in heading east for five games in four days in Philadelphia. That would be followed by three in Pittsburgh.

1989 Cubs Historical Heroes and Goats Player of the Week: Mike Bielecki

Mike was drafted initially by the Royals in the sixth round of the 1979 draft. He didn’t sign and was drafted again as the eighth pick in the June supplemental draft by the Pirates. Mike pitched just one season in college. But that was because he went to Loyola College in Maryland. Their baseball program folded after Mike’s first year.

Bielecki would reach the majors for the first time in 1984, pitching in four games for the Pirates at the age of 24. The following year, he made seven starts among 12 appearances for them.

In 1986, Bielecki had his first significant time as a starter, making 27 starts and logging 148⅔ innings with a 4.66 ERA. He made just eight starts in 1987. He was traded to the Cubs in 1988 for Mike Curtis in the offseason. In 1988, the Cubs used Mike largely in the bullpen, starting just five out of 19 games.

1989 was like an oasis in the desert of the career of Mike Bielecki. He made 33 starts with a 3.14 ERA and won 18 games. He finished ninth in Cy Young voting despite basically being the Cubs third starter.

That was the only season out of 14 big league seasons that Mike threw over 200 innings. His numbers would tail off the following year and by 1991, the Cubs traded him along with Damon Berryhill for Turk Wendell and Yorkis Perez.

After leaving the Cubs, Mike threw for the Braves, the Indians, the Braves, the Angels and the Braves. In 1996, he was on the postseason roster for a Braves team that reached the World Series. Mike made appearances in six games over three series, logging a 0.00 ERA over 6⅔ innings of work.

For his career, Bielecki threw 1,231 innings across 347 games in 14 seasons. He had a 70-73 record with a 4.18 ERA. He saved five games. He had a 41-31 record and a 4.05 ERA for the Cubs. But he pitched in parts of five season as a Brave with a 3.09 ERA, starting only 20 games out of 130 appearances.

There’s a story that Mike was invited to be on the boat on that fateful day with Bob Ojeda, Tim Crews and Steve Olin. He declined. He also has the distinction of being the starting pitcher on the first official night game at Wrigley Field on August 9, 1988 (with the original game the night before being rained out).

I couldn’t get this, and neither could a lot of people on Twitter.

First, again, credit where it’s due. Here’s where I found this:

This is a great shot of Wrigley Field, obviously fairly recent. You can see a number of guesses as to the date in the replies to this tweet, which are all over the place.

Of course, I had to try my hand at this. The one truly clear clue is the Toyota sign in left field. That dates it to between mid-2010 and 2014.

At that point I tried to read the scoreboard, and... well, it’s pretty much impossible. One thing a number of the replies on Twitter noted, and I agreed, is that this almost had to be a Friday game, as you can at least tell that the board shows “NITE GAME” for every game except the one at Wrigley. That narrowed it down somewhat. You can see visiting players warming up on the field, but at that distance it’s impossible to tell what team it is.

Some of the blurs on the scoreboard are of lengths where you can sort of tell which teams are home and which are on the road. NEW YORK appears to be a visiting team in the AL and TEXAS is a home team. LOS ANGELES is a home team on the NL side. But remember, we are now in an era where there’s not enough room on the board for all games AND also there’s interleague play, which means it’s possible that some teams could be listed on the “wrong” side of the board.

As usual, I sent this to Mike Bojanowski. He and I went back and forth on a number of emails and at one point I sent him this closeup screenshot of the board:

Look at that long enough and your eyes will bug out.

The message board is of no help, it just says “WELCOME TO WRIGLEY FIELD.” You can kind of tell some of the team name lengths, but also there are places (especially on the left side) where what appears to be blank space in a two-word city (think “NEW YORK”) is actually a shadow cast by the lights on top of the scoreboard.

We went back and forth a number of times and I finally had to admit defeat on this one, I could not figure it out.

So I emailed Curt Waltz, who has taken aerial photos of Wrigley previously for BCB, and who is behind the @WrigleyAerials Twitter account where the photo was originally posted, to get the answer.

Friday, May 27, 2011, Cubs hosting the Pirates. That would make the board matchups as follows:

NL: FLORIDA/LOS ANGELES, ST. LOUIS/COLORADO, CINCINNATI/ATLANTA, PHILADELPHIA/NEW YORK, SAN DIEGO/WASHINGTON, PITTSBURGH/CUBS

AL: NEW YORK/SEATTLE, KANSAS CITY/TEXAS, LOS ANGELES/MINNESOTA, BOSTON/DETROIT, CLEVELAND/TAMPA BAY, CHICAGO/TORONTO

This makes sense from the way the board is normally organized these days: West Coast games at the top (since they’re the last ones to start), and “less important” games (in this case BALTIMORE/OAKLAND and ARIZONA/HOUSTON) not listed at all.

After I got the answer to this I found this entire game saved on YouTube:

About an hour into the game there’s a clear shot of the board:

And that’s a match.

Can’t get ‘em all, but I thought you’d enjoy seeing the thought process. At least one of the Twitter replies got it right.

Lastly, although it looks like that’s a glorious summer day at the ballpark... it’s not. The boxscore indicates the game-time temperature was 48 degrees and Len Kasper and Bob Brenly made several mentions of how cold it was that day on the broadcast. The Cubs lost the game 4-2. A two-run homer by Alfonso Soriano in the ninth prevented this one from being a shutout.

And let’s be clear: This is all on ownership.

News item:

My expectation of this meeting is that it will last as long as the previous meeting between MLB owners and representatives of the MLBPA, about an hour. The presentation that players make will almost certainly will be rejected out of hand by ownership, and we’ll be another day closer to having Spring Training and the 2022 regular season delayed.

Evan Drellich of The Athletic, who does great work on this topic, wrote this article on the stalled negotiations last week and sums up the process this way:

Everything we’ve seen thus far suggests MLB owners want to test the players. That they intend to wait out the players as long as possible, to see if they’ll crack under the threat of losing paychecks.

This lockout strategy at the commissioner’s office appears designed around one goal: minimizing how much owners have to give up. If you, as an owner, wait until the last minute, players might grow impatient, and you can surrender less than you would otherwise. Or if the players totally crumble, maybe you part with close to nothing. And if the players stand tall? Well, at least you didn’t give up any more than you had to, any sooner than you had to.

That doesn’t sound like a way to make an agreement where both ownership and the players can get something (but not everything) they want, does it?

Before the lockout even happened, Commissioner Rob Manfred said this:

November 18 — let’s see, that was 65 days ago. How has the process moved forward since then, Rob?

Crickets, that’s what I hear. From Drellich:

MLB, meanwhile, has taken a tack of obfuscation. The league often argues that it’s actually delivering the changes the players want, or should want: The players want younger players to be paid more, right? Look, we’ve made a proposal to do that! How can they still be unhappy?

MLB has indeed made proposals that technically address areas like pay for young players. But in most if not all cases, those gives have been small, at best, and sometimes, they shouldn’t rightly be considered gives at all. These proposals are rarely made in isolation. They’re made as packages, where acceptance of one condition requires acceptance of others. Thus far, league packages have come with trade-offs that the players feel ultimately would make their standing worse overall, or would not meaningfully improve it.

For example, one of the reasons the players so disliked the proposal MLB made in August to institute a salary floor was because it came with modifications to the luxury tax that would’ve severely hampered free agency. The owners have offered to raise the luxury tax thresholds slightly, while simultaneously increasing the penalties to exceed them. And on the question of getting younger players paid more, MLB keeps offering to pay players by a formula that, in the short term, might bring a little more money to players, but would also sacrifice the salary arbitration process — a mechanism players greatly value because it allows them to argue for higher pay to a third party.

I wrote about that “formula” back in November. It was remarkably similar to a proposal made by owners to players called “Pay For Performance” during the 1990 lockout — more than 30 years ago! Guess who was behind that?

“Other reports credited the authorship of PFP to PRC lawyer Rob Manfred, Mets executive Frank Cashen, and Brewers executive Harry Dalton.” (PRC stood for “Player Relations Committee.”)

Ah, ha. What’s old is new again. Do the owners think players are stupid?

Today, a counteroffer from players will be made to owners. It will be interesting to see what’s in it, of course, but I don’t expect it to move the needle at all, and I don’t expect any further “bargaining sessions” to happen in the near future.

Today, we are 33 days from the Cubs’ scheduled Cactus League opener at Sloan Park against the Dodgers, and probably about two weeks less than that to pitcher and catcher report days (which have not yet been officially announced). It’s getting close to the time where that game and other Spring Training openers are in jeopardy.

As always, we await developments, and I suspect we’re going to be waiting a while.

The players intend to offer a new proposal to the owners today. What losing another Spring Training would mean. The Hall of Fame voting is announced this week.

I finally took down my Christmas decorations this weekend. I somehow felt I needed to tell you that. Probably because I have nothing else to say up here.

• The Major League Baseball Players Association is expected to make a counter-offer in the collective bargaining talks today. Considering how far the two sides are apart, it seems highly unlikely that the owners will accept the MLBPA’s proposal, but maybe both sides will term the proposal as “progress,” which would be the best we can hope for. But I’m not expecting that, either.
• Mike Axisa has the “drop-dead” dates that a new CBA would have to be agreed upon for various events to begin on time. He even takes the dates out to 2023 in case we miss the entire 2022 season.
• Bob Nightengale looks at the impact another abbreviated or missing Spring Training could have on the game, as well as the businesses of Arizona. Nightengale also mentions later in this “notebook” column that Montréal and Nashville are the favorites for the next two expansion cities.
• MLB has said that there won’t be expansion until the Rays’ and the Athletics’ stadium situations get resolved. Hannah Keyser looks at where the Rays might go from here now that their “split-city” proposal has been nixed by MLB.
• And some good news as the proposed Howard Terminal Stadium for the A’s passed another procedural hurdle. (The Athletic sub. req. for the entire article, but the details on what happened are free.) Still a lot of hurdles to clear, however.
• The 2022 Hall of Fame voting will be revealed on Tuesday. Anthony Castrovince has what you need to know.
• Zach Crizer wonders if David Ortiz gets elected, is that a sign that Cooperstown voters are dropping their bias against designated hitters or if it’s just a sign that Ortiz was too good to ignore?
• Gabe Lacques writes that it’s the Hall’s loss if they don’t induct Barry Bonds.
• Jayson Stark reveals his Hall-of-Fame ballot and explains his vote. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Blue Jays pitcher Kevin Gausman reveals that his former team, the Giants, never made him a contract offer during his free agency this past fall.
• R.J. Anderson lists the biggest flaw of the top ten remaining free agents.
• David Schoenfield has one “fun” fact that you probably don’t know about each MLB team. (ESPN+ sub. req.) Except you probably do know how well Frank Schwindel hit last season. But maybe you won’t know the “fun” facts about other teams.
• Baseball Prospectus revealed their Top 101 prospects. Four Cubs made their list.
• Payton Pallette, expected to be a Top 10 draft pick in 2022, will undergo Tommy John surgery. (The Athletic sub. req. for the entire article, but the details on what happened are free.)
• Ken Rosenthal reports that two coaches, Brian Butterfield and Tom Goodwin, were looking at unemployment because they refused to get vaccinated. (The Athletic sub. req.) Goodwin eventually got vaccinated, but it was after most coaching jobs were filled and so he will serve as a minor-league roving instructor for the Braves in 2022.
• Umpire Angel Hernandez’s discrimination lawsuit against MLB was thrown out by a judge for a second time. (The Athletic sub. req.) Hernandez says he intends to appeal again.
• The home run hit by Braves outfielder Jorge Soler in the World Series that completely left Minute Maid Park is up for auction. Bidding now tops $36,000, but you have until February 5 to get your bids in.
• Ben Clemens proposes a new way to do a baseball line score. As he notes, it made sense back in the 1860s to list “errors.” It’s not clear it does anymore, but he suggests more changes than just that.
• Mets manager Buck Showalter remembers how good a baseball player NFL Hall-of-Famer Deion Sanders was. Sanders really was a good baseball player and if he’d have dedicated himself to the sport, I’m guessing he would have made at least a few All-Star Games. He most likely wouldn’t have made Cooperstown, however, so he probably made the right decision to focus on football. But he could have been Brian Jordan with better speed and defense.
• And finally, “Big Sexy” Bartolo Colón gives a preview of his 12-year-old son Randy pitching. Randy looks pretty good for a 12-year-old, but Colón says his son “likes to hit.”

Let’s end the lockout, commissioner Manfred.

A thrice-weekly look at #Cubs, #MLB, and #MiLB history.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Bleed Cubbie Blue brings a you a light-hearted, Cubs-centric look at baseball’s colorful past, with plenty of the lore and deep dives into various narratives that expand over the course of time. Here’s a handy Cubs timeline, to help you follow along.

Today in baseball history:

• 1900 - Officials from the National League hold a secret meeting in Cleveland, supposedly to discuss dropping the Baltimore, Cleveland, Louisville and Washington, DC franchises from the league roster. Indeed, the four teams will be contracted before the start of the season.
• 1913 - In a story in the New York Times, Detroit Tigers President Frank Navin blames the length of the games on the coaches’ boxes. Navin, reacting to American League President Ban Johnson’s complaint that too many games the previous season had taken two hours to play, says the boxes should be moved back so that the catcher can give the pitcher his signals more quickly. From where they are now, he said, the coaching players can detect the catcher’s signals unless he takes a lot of time to hide them. Navin said this slow signaling is the reason for the longer games.
• 1973 - Left-handed pitcher Warren Spahn is elected to the Hall of Fame by the BBWAA. Spahn, in his first year of eligibility, is named on 316 out of a possible 380 ballots. Spahn won a total of 363 games during a 21-year major league career.
• 1980 - Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon head a group of investors who purchase the New York Mets from the DeRoulet family for a reported $21.1 million, the highest price paid for a major league franchise up to that time. Doubleday, whose publishing company supplies 80 percent of the purchase price, and is also a relative of Abner Doubleday, will serve as chairman of the board, while Wilpon, a former teammate of Sandy Koufax’s at Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School, will serve as team president and chief operating officer.
• 2018 - Four players are elected to the Hall of Fame by the BBWAA: 3B Chipper Jones and 1B Jim Thome both make it on their first attempt, while P Trevor Hoffman and OF Vladimir Guerrero, who had both missed induction by a handful of votes in 2017, make it over the 75% threshold this time.

Cubs birthdays: Cliff Heathcote, John Briggs, Tim Stoddard, Jose Quintana (pictured)

Today in world history:

• 41 - Claudius succeeds his nephew Caligula as Roman Emperor after the latter’s assassination by officers of the Praetorian Guard
• 1848 - James Marshall finds gold in Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California
• 1984 - Apple Computer Inc unveils its revolutionary Macintosh personal computer

Common sources:

• (1) — Today in Baseball History.
• (2) — Baseball Reference.
• (3) — Society for American Baseball Research.
• (4) — Baseball Hall of Fame.
• (5) — This Day in Chicago Cubs history.
• For world history.

There is a very active baseball history community and there are many facets to their views. We strive for clarity. Please be aware that we are trying to make the historical record as represented by our main sources coherent and as accurate as is possible. No item is posted here without corroboration. Some of these items spread from site to site without being verified. That is exactly why we ask for reputable sources, so that we can address them to the originators. BBRef is very cooperative in this regard, as are SABR and the Baseball Almanac. We have removed thenationalpastime from our sourcing list, as there have been multiple complaints about their content and they do not respond to attempts to communicate.

Also please remember that this is supposed to be fun.

Thank you for your cooperation. And thanks for reading!

You might think there aren’t enough clues here, but there are.

Getty Images says:

Tom Herr #28 of the St. Louis Cardinals sets to take the throw down at second base against the Chicago Cubs during a Major League Baseball game circa 1983 at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. Herr played for the Cardinals from 1979-88.

Nope nope nope. This is not 1983.

How do I know that? Because the Cardinals wore light blue road uniforms until 1984.

So that limits this to the years 1985-88, because Leon Durham, shown running the bases, was traded to the Reds in May 1988. Oddly enough, that trade was made on the very day that the Cubs completed their first home series that year against the Cardinals. Durham had been benched at the end of April when Mark Grace was called up from Triple-A to play first base and had only four PA for the Cubs in May before the trade, all as a pinch-hitter, and didn’t appear at all vs. St. Louis at Wrigley that year. Sadly, Durham’s career was derailed by substance abuse problems and he was out of baseball after 1989.

Back to the photo: There’s one other thing that narrows this down quickly — the lack of ivy on the outfield wall. That means this has to be from April, an early-season series.

There are four such games in this time frame: April 22, 1986, April 23, 1986, April 7, 1987 and April 9, 1987.

Thinking that there might be some ivy beginning to grow by late April, I decided to check the 1987 games first.

The April 9 game has a matching play. Durham led off the second inning with a walk, and one out later Shawon Dunston hit a ground ball to third on which Durham was forced at second.

I checked the other games and this is literally the only play that matches.

So: Bottom of the second inning, Thursday, April 9, 1987, in front of 12,441. The boxscore doesn’t give the weather conditions that day, but I checked the Tribune archive. It was a pleasant afternoon and the high temperature reached 72. The Cubs lost the game 4-2, the Cubs runs coming on solo homers by Ryne Sandberg and Andre Dawson. The Dawson home run was his first as a Cub.

Hot off the presses, here’s a somewhat Twitter-heavy edition of our #Cubs news and notes column.

It’s my turn to fill in for Duane on Cub Tracks. Here’s your thinner-than-usual Sunday edition!

• Logan Whatley of Cubbies Crib thinks the Cubs should pursue Clayton Kershaw on a short-term contract.
• Russell Dorsey, who is leaving the Sun-Times at the end of the month, lists a few relievers he thinks the Cubs should look at once the lockout is over.
• From Dan Cichalski at MLB.com, here’s a detailed guide to Four Winds Field, home of the South Bend Cubs. (I’ve been there, it’s worth the trip, and especially if the MLB lockout extends through the scheduled start of the season.)

Here’s how that ballpark looked on Friday, though:

• Jim Henry of the Tallahassee Democrat spoke to Tallahassee native and offseason resident David Ross, who is in “Dad mode” during the offseason, even while preparing for 2022.
• Bill Chuck presents a fun baseball quiz with Cubs questions, as well as general baseball questions.
• News from the Cubs farm system:

• Some video of a recent Cubs international signee:

• And more video, this one of top prospect Cristian Hernandez, who now ranks 81st in Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects despite having not played a single game stateside:

• More prospect video, this time Owen Caissie!

More Caissie:

• And even more prospects, this time pitching:

• Kohl Franklin:

• A bit of fun featuring prospect Kevin Alcántara and a bird:

Cubs birthdays: Dick Burwell, Joe Amalfitano, Don Nottebart, Jeff Samardzija

Today’s food for thought is a question:

For me I’d have to say Mr. Spock in Star Trek II. (Although, he eventually did come back to life.)

Enjoy your Sunday. It’s fewer than five weeks until the first scheduled Spring Training game. Hoping it happens as scheduled.

This action shot came with a year. But what date?

Getty Images supplied the following information with this photo:

Dave Concepcion #13 of the Cincinnati Reds braces himself at second base against a hard slide by Bob Dernier #20 of the Chicago Cubs during a game in 1984 at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. Concepcion played for the Reds from 1970-1988.

All right, so now we know the year. The Reds, as was the case for NL West teams in that era, played six games at Wrigley Field in 1984. This is made easier by the fact that Dave Concepcion played third base in two of the games in May, and this is obviously (beyond what’s said in the caption) a play at second base. Concepcion did play shortstop for part of the third Cubs/Reds game at Wrigley in May, and Dernier did steal a base in that game — but before Concepcion entered in the eighth inning.

So we’re left with three games in late August — a doubleheader August 28 (makeup from a rainout during the May series) and a single game August 29.

Dernier did not attempt a steal in Game 1 of the DH, and Concepcion didn’t play in Game 2.

So we’re left with a Cubs/Reds game on Wednesday, August 29, 1984.

Sure enough, in the bottom of the eighth inning, Dernier reached base on a force play, and one out later, stole second and advanced to third on a throwing error. This is what we are looking at here — Concepcion’s reaction to the ball not being where he expected it to be. Dernier eventually scored on a single by Thad Bosley and the Cubs won the game 7-2, improving their record to 79-53. They led the NL East by 5½ games.

Just another little slice of Cubs history, now almost 38 years ago.

Your latest look at the news, such as it is, from the world of the Chicago Cubs, featuring Ian Happ.

I’m pinch-hitting for Duane today and handling Cub Tracks. So please bear with me as I try my best to keep you informed about what’s up in the world of the Chicago Cubs over the past two days.

Also, I’m afraid that I’m not plugged into the science social media world like Duane is. So I’ll just present a few things that caught my eye in the rest of the world recently.

• Jordan Bastian spoke with Cubs VP of international scouting Louie Eljaua about the Cubs recent international signings, including Alexis Hernandez (brother of Cristian) from the Dominican Republic and Panamanian catcher Adan Sanchez.
• Evan Altman thinks Cubs’ 2021 second-round pick James Triantos could be “freaky good.”
• Cubs pitcher Brad Wieck is back throwing off a mound after off-season heart surgery.

Here’s an example:

• Darragh McDonald looks at Cubs’ outfielder Ian Happ’s trade value. Although he admits the Cubs don’t have any reason to trade Happ at the moment.
• Michael Brakebill thinks Ian Happ would be better off giving up switch-hitting. (This echoes an article on Happ that Jake Mailhot wrote for Fangraphs a week ago.)
• Richard Johnson wonders if Patrick Wisdom can cut down on his strikeouts.
• Former Cubs Andre Dawson and Jamie Moyer had a few things to say at the Reading Hot Stovers Banquet.
• Bryan Smith tries to build a top ten 2022 draft board for the Cubs.
• Sad news as Pat Brickhouse, the widow of the Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse, died at the age of 91. Our condolences go out to her friends and family.
• And disturbing news as former Cubs pitcher Sergio Mitre was sentenced to 40-to-60 years in prison in Mexico for the murder of his stepdaughter. (Obviously there’s a disturbing content warning here.)
• Just because they can’t report to Spring Training doesn’t mean they’re not out there throwing.

Here’s Adbert Alzolay:

And here’s Justin Steele.

Those two are good friends, by the way.

Minor leaguer Max Bain got in on the action.

• You should really read this Twitter thread by Ken Arneson on why the new Athletics stadium (if it ever gets built) will likely be a hitter’s paradise. This as close to science social media as I get.

Food for thought:

• David Hudson looks back at the career of the legendary Sidney Poitier.
• Time Out ranks the Top 100 French Films of All-Time.
• There’s finally an official Lego to represent an anus.
• Here’s a list of the 10 least popular car options of 2021. I can’t understand how more people didn’t order a “Dashboard Dynamic Ham Clamp System.” I would have if it was available for our Honda Accord. Or if it were actually a real thing.

Let’s end the lockout. Let them play.

Wait, what?

Getty Images says:

Tony Oliva of the Minnesota Twins poses before a MLB game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. Oliva played for the Minnesota Twins from 1962-76.

Well. You certainly know that the Minnesota Twins did not play a single game in Wrigley Field during Oliva’s MLB career; the first Twins game at Wrigley in interleague play didn’t happen until 1997.

However, that’s definitely Oliva, and it’s definitely Wrigley Field. Here’s the full photo:

Photo by Ron Vesely/Getty Images

So, this has to be some sort of exhibition game, for Oliva to be in full Twins uniform. The first clue — which you will have to look closely for — is the “BUD LIGHT” ad on the Wrigley scoreboard. That ad (and a similar “BUDWEISER” ad on the left side) were there from 1983-86.

Now we’ve got a time frame. But... what sort of game was this?

I sent the photo to Mike Bojanowski, who looked through his collection of scorecards and program magazines. The Cubs published the latter for many years starting in 1982.

The magazine noted a series of Old Timers Games, sponsored by True Value Hardware, beginning in 1982. But it can’t be ‘82, since as noted, the BUD LIGHT ad wasn’t on the board until ‘83. Oliva did, in fact, play in a Wrigley Old Timers Game, Cubs old-timers against an All-Star team, in 1982.

Oliva also played in the 1983 game, and that’s when this photo had to be taken, since Oliva was a MLB coach for the Twins from 1985-91, and the 1984 True Value game was billed as “The World Series that should have been,” between Cubs and Orioles old-timers, the Series we all would have loved to see in 1969.

This game took place before the regularly scheduled Cubs/Pirates game on Saturday, June 4, 1983. Robert Markus reported on it in the Tribune:

Same old Cubs. First they win your heart, then they break it. A team of old-time Cubs’ heroes jumped to a quick 2-0 lead in the Hall of Fame Classic against a team of former All-Stars.

But, with ex-Minnesota Twins great Tony Oliva blasting a home run into the right-field bleachers, the All-Stars came back to earn a 2-2 tie. It was all in fun of course, but there was some serious baseball played.

Don Kessinger ranged behind second base and made a backhand flip for a forceout to show why Cubs’ fans remember him as the fanciest fielding shortstop of his era.

So not only do we have a photo of Oliva from that afternoon, he was one of the hitting heroes of the old-timers’ game. Oliva, who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown this summer, was a few weeks short of his 45th birthday on this date, and Kessinger was about to turn 41.

But some really old old-timers also played in this contest. Johnny Vander Meer, who briefly pitched for the Cubs but is more famous for his back-to-back no-hitters in 1938, threw an inning — at age 69, and Guy Bush, a Cubs rotation stalwart in the 1930s, gave up a hit to Lou Brock. Bush was almost 82!

In the Cubs/Pirates game that afternoon, Fergie Jenkins — some of whose Cubs teammates played in the Hall of Fame Classic — threw six strong innings, allowing two runs, and the Cubs won the game 5-3, the fourth win of what would become a seven-game winning streak. From Markus’ Tribune recap:

“We played eight years together,” said Jenkins, referring to the players turned businessmen who had frolicked once again on the green grass. “It was a lucky throw of the dice that I’m still pitching.”

Here’s the card with the rosters of the Cubs and their “honored opponents” with brief bios of each that was handed out on that June day 39 years ago. The youngest of the group was Steve Stone, who had retired from baseball just two years earlier and was 35 years old.

Click here and here for larger versions of the images below.

I don’t think I’d want to live in that future.

As you have probably heard — and if you haven’t it’s been covered in depth in today’s Outside The Confines — the Tampa Bay Rays’ plan to have two stadiums built for them, one in Tampa, one in Montreal, and operate as a two-city team, were nixed by MLB’s Executive Council.

I wrote that this was a bad idea back in October, and later that month wrote another article saying that this proposal was probably about leveraging a stadium to be built in the Tampa Bay area. What’s a bit surprising, then, is that the Executive Council of MLB owners basically agreed with this in telling the Rays they couldn’t do it.

Back to square one, then, the Rays will investigate stadium locations in the Tampa Bay area. But what I found most interesting in Sternberg’s comments in this article by Andy McCullough in The Athletic:

Sternberg described the plan as a “bold concept” which he believes will be raised by other clubs in the future.

“Partial seasons are going to be the wave of the future in professional sports,” he said.

I don’t understand where this comes from and why Sternberg thinks so. It seems counterintuitive to everything we now know about being a fan — the team reps the city you grew up in, or have adopted by moving there as an adult. How would playing only half your games in a city promote that team?

Let’s apply this to the Cubs. What if Tom Ricketts suddenly decided that the Cubs should play half their games in, oh, I don’t know, Albuquerque. (I chose that city because it’s about as far from Chicago as Montreal is from Tampa.) What would that do to the Cubs fanbase other than anger them? Granted, most fans follow their team on TV these days and a move like that wouldn’t change the way the majority of people watch Cubs baseball — although things like this would only really work if blackouts were completely eliminated. (Good luck with that.)

Beyond that there would be players who would have to uproot themselves and their families halfway through the season. Presumably there would be financial compensation for doing this, but why would any player want to disrupt his family this way? It’s one thing for a player to have a winter home and another home in a MLB city — now you’re asking the player to do that twice? I cannot see the MLB Players Association ever signing off on such an idea, and they’d have to in order to make it work.

The Green Bay Packers played almost half their schedule in Milwaukee from 1953-94. That’s not nearly the same thing because: a) one game a week, b) it’s still basically the same fanbase, since Green Bay is only a little more than 100 miles from Milwaukee and c) even now, a large number of Packers season ticket holders live in Milwaukee.

The NBA Kings franchise, now in Sacramento, split their time between Kansas City and Omaha for three seasons, from 1972-75. This isn’t remotely comparable because a) the NBA wasn’t nearly as popular then as now, only about 30 years old, b) it wasn’t really “split” as only about one-third of home games were played in Omaha and c) the primary reason for this odd split was that the Kings’ arena in Kansas City was a couple of years away from being completed at the time the franchise moved out of Cincinnati.

In baseball, I just don’t see how this works. Who’s going to pony up $1 billion for a baseball stadium that would be used only 40 times a year? What happens when the split team makes the postseason and half its fans don’t get any home playoff games?

I don’t see how this is the “wave of the future.” In fact, I think MLB executives did the right thing by putting the kibosh on this wacky idea. The Rays will either have to get a stadium built in the Tampa area, or move to Montreal.

They can’t have both.