Sunday, April 14, 2013
MLB seeks answer to increasing African-American participation in baseball - Sports - The Boston Globe
(bostonglobe.com)
posted on April 14, 2013 at 12:05 PM by Jim Furtado to brawls, jackie robinson, race in baseball, red sox, rumors
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The Boston Sunday Globe Sunday Baseball Notes.
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1 2 >There are perceived issues with taxes, weather, culture, travel (in having to clear customs on every road trip), and (most importantly) competitiveness.
Nothing against my Blue Jays friends, but that playing surface is pretty gross.
And I live nearby. While I know nothing about the taxes, the weather issues are not just perceived. ;-) .
Toronto is a world class city. It's probably similar to a more refined Chicago. Most people carry stereotypical views of cities they are not familiar with (although the Toronto weather is probably worse in spring than Balt).
And yet, Detroit still lands free agents.
Isn't spring training during March? Isn't spring training in Florida or Arizona?
The dome was closed for the game I went to on a Friday night and that was disappointing. I've seen two games in domes (Toronto and Tampa) and in both cases found the enclosed nature to really detract from the experience.
There's a perceived issue with culture? I've found Toronto to be closer, culturally, to Chicago and New York than it is to Montreal and Ottawa. It's the least "foreign" foreign city there is.
Travel, taxes, competitiveness...yeah. I understand that.
I agree. On my visit there, I came away describing it as being like a miniature version of NYC, except everyone was genuinely nice. If I was forced to move to another city, Toronto would absolutely be my preferred destination. Uehara is nuts.
I think of Vancouver as the most American non-American city, actually. Vancouver is just like the US except cleaner.
Especially the prostitutes.
Also -- Texas has a great shot at the playoffs and Toronto doesn't. If I'm a 37-year-old who's made $13 million in MLB (and presumably a good amount in Japan before that), I'm going to veto trades that lessen my chances of getting a ring whenever I have the chance to.
I'm Canadian, a Jays fan, and live in the suburbs of Toronto. All good things about Toronto aside, I don't blame anyone for having Toronto on their no-trade list. In Koji's case, he's 37 and just escaped Baltimore. Why is it crazy that he doesn't want to leave Texas to go to another AL East also-ran?
Also, Toronto's bullpen has a logjam of relievers at the top (Santos, Oliver, Cordero, Frasor, etc), so it's not like he'd have a good chance of being the closer. It's not like he has a good reason to accept being a middle reliever for a third or fourth place team in one of his last years as a pro.
Because he supposedly wants to go back to Baltimore.
Cordero was signed after Uehara veoted the trade. He was a Plan B. Uehara probably would have been the right-handed setup man, with Frasor slotting into the primary middle relief role.
conquerinvite them once and for all.I've read that Vancouver has the highest proportion of Asian residents of any city outside Asia.
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As for Uehara, one of the impeti for moving him into the bullpen in Baltimore was his tendency to wilt in the heat as he got to the middle innings of his starts. If the weather's effect on his pitching is what concerns him, he should be begging for a trade to Toronto, which surely has the most predictably moderate game-time conditions of any stadium in the majors, right up there with SoCal.
If he's talking about the weather he has to live in between games, well, that's different.
The reason we make it difficult is because Canada allegedly makes it very easy to immigrate or visit Canada. This fact is important because terrorists have been known to use Canada as an entry point into the US.
That's right, I totally forgot the proper timeline for those series of moves. I still don't blame him for not wanting to come to Toronto, but I'm running out of excuses.
There was momentum for such a proposal, but the outbreak of Bieber Fever killed any appetite for cooperation.
It's a ####### DOME, dude. "The weather"? My ass.
I lived two years in Mississippi and six in Alabama. Everyplace has mild humidity compared to the deep South.
If the weather in Toronto is so ####### great, then why do they need a ####### dome?
Because we don't like rainouts.
Ever.
This fact is important because terrorists have been known to use Canada as an entry point into the US.
Really? Which ones?
I mean documented cases, not scare quotes from politicians.
Bryan Adams, Alanis Morisette, Justin Bieber, Geddy Lee, etc.
Or sarcasm, I guess.
Ahmed Ressam is one. I don't know if there are any others.
But this may be an issue specifically for Japanese players. Don't know. Maybe being taxed as a resident of Japan is not a positive for him. Maybe there is no treaty between Canada and Japan.
As for winter, it's generally pretty mild by the standards of Canada. Buffalo gets most of the snow you'd think would be destined for Toronto (I think it's a very old treaty. Maybe something left over from the War of 1812). But mild by the standards of Canada is pretty damned cold by the standards of the rest of the world. And sometimes it's just flat cold -- particularly when the wind is just so. I've rearely been colder than I was a few years back when I went to the Bills game in Toronto.
All in all, I can't say as I blame him for wanting to miss out on the cold months.
You misspelled Nickelback.
You have this exactly backwards. The border crossing into Canada isn't difficult for Canadians. The border crossing is annoying for Americans going into Canada. Basically, Canadian customs treats Americans the way you'd assume US customs treats Mexicans. They are *really* tetchy about Canadian jobs being done by Americans, in my experience.
There's actually one case of a terrorist attempting to enter the US from Canada (Ahmed Ressam -- the Millenium Bomber), and he was caught at the border (before any of the new security measures were put in place.
The fears that Canada is easier for terrorists to get into than the US doesn't match up well with reality.
Toronto, culturally, is a cleaner Chicago. It's just the northern side of the Great Lakes Megalopolis. Montreal is its own sort of thing, by far the closest thing you'll find to a European city on the North American continent. Outside of Montreal, a regions culture lines up more vertically, by time zones, than by nation. Toronto is like Chicago, and a little like New York and Detroit. Winnepeg is something between Minneapolis and Pierre. Calgary is basically Billings or Bozeman with a little Denver thrown in. Vancouver is Seattle North.
Well, Canada might be easier to get into, but then the terrorists are like \"#### man, I have free healthcare and a decent job? #### this blowing myself up ########."
And while he did opt for Canada there's no real reason to think he'd have had any problems emigrating to the US in the first place. He opted for Montreal because of the language issue not for ease of immigration.
And did the bomb making in Canada because it's so hard to get explosive materials in the US.
The fears that Canada is easier for terrorists to get into than the US doesn't match up well with reality.
That's assuming they wouldn't start trying more if we relaxed the border restrictions.
#36, I've driven across the New York-Canada border a few times in the last couple of years, and never had any problems. I mean, there was a bit of a wait one time, but we weren't hassled at all.
And the top state income tax rates are New York and California, which have obviously given the sports teams in those state a decided disadvantage in signing free agents.
Hey aren't you from Ottawa, or am I wrong about that? Ottawa is #@!!% cold.
They kept telling me it was a mild winter. I told them to come to Georgia where the gods don't so clearly hate them.
There is one. There are also usually clauses in such treaties that specifically govern how the counties may tax athletes (and other entertainers). The US-Canada tax treaty exempts athletes on teams that regularly schedule games in both the US and Canada from tax in the other state - so Canadian baseball players aren't subject to US taxes, and vice versa. In the case of the Japan-Canada tax treaty, Article 17 specifies that Canada can tax the income of a Japanese-resident athlete for services performed in Canada (unless the services are performed as part of a cultural exchange) - so it's entirely possible that Uehara could have tax issues playing in Toronto that a US athlete wouldn't have.
WRT terrorists - during the heyday of the Soviet Union the KGB would send operatives to Canada, have them get Canadian citizenship, and then have them emigrate to the US - John Barron wrote about one such instance in one of his books or articles, don't remember which.
-- MWE
Yes, although the customs agents thought he was smuggling drugs and nearly blew up the Port Angeles waterfront by taking his jar of homemade nitroglycerine and shaking it.
So a bigger Billings, or, "Billings or Bozeman with a little Denver thrown in."
One of many reasons those places should never get a baseball team.
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