Baseball

[Tree]

Time to let Pete Rose into the HoF if it’s somehow possible. Fuck the roiders. They can wait.

[DooKSucks]

Rose broke a known rule. Rose is deservedly banned.

Rocket and Bonds deserve to be in the HOF.

[sardis]

Shoeless Joe Jackson

[DooKSucks]

There is a decent argument to be made that Shoeless Joe may have taken the money without doing anything to throw the games. The stats back it up too.

Ty Cobb ran into Shoeless Joe randomly late in life when Cobb stopped in Shoeless Joe's liquor store to pick up a fifth of bourbon. Cobb drank a fifth everyday to help deal with the pain from all of his ailments.

[The Gray Ghost]

Pete goes in the Hall the day after he dies. His punishment is never getting to profit from the honor.

[hedge]

"Cobb drank a fifth everyday to help deal with the pain from all of his ailments."

Yeah, that's what I tell myself too...

[Tree]

Never knew that about Cobb. Will have to Ty one on in his honor tonight.

[Jungle Rat]

Yeah. They say Joes stats prove he didn't throw it but he took the money. I've given up on Petes case. He deserves to be in there for on the field play no doubt. He won't change though. Still wears those god awful track suits.

[sardis]

We really don’t know for sure if he threw it or not. You can still perform well and make certain plays to help the other team.

But Joe was illiterate and his wife most likely was too. He started working in Brandon Mill (Greenville SC) at 6 years old and started on the Mill team at age 13. The Mill he worked at and the field he played on is still there. His attorney was employed by Comiskey, a conflict of interest, and his attorney had him sign his “X” on an admission even though his grand jury transcripts didn’t say as such. So, who knows.

I’ve never been there, but baseball nuts make the pilgrimage to Greenville to see his house, his liquor store, the mill, the field, and his grave. The grave is just a nondescript flat stone except for the fact these people keep littering it baseballs and metal baseball spikes. I guess that’s kinda cool.

[Jungle Rat]

Here ya go IB. Disect this. This is from a friend of mine who has been helping. Thugs, Drugs, Hugs.
--------

Since our young Afghan friend’s pioneering arrival in Bowling Green four months ago, 369 other Afghans have followed. I met some of the most recent arrivals on my visit last weekend and while the typical jolt of newness is still evident in their eyes, there are no tears. The fear I’ve encountered previously is softened now, no doubt, by the comfort in joining BG’s established community of resettled Afghans.

The latest prediction is that the number of resettled Afghans in BG may hit a whopping 500. The growing number is likely the result of significant capacity issues being faced by other resettlements around the country. The Washington Post recently ran an article detailing the lack of affordable housing for Afghans in the DC area. Many families are languishing in suburban hotel rooms there, cooped up for months with children unable to enroll in school because they don't have permanent addresses. Whatever previous housing bottleneck existed in BG now seems to have cleared. New arrivals move quickly into independent housing. Some of the placements are relatively nice....according to my son.

"I think their apartments are cool," my son reported after doing a solo trip last weekend to deliver food boxes. This might sound like good news until you've seen his slovenly room and know the nastiness with which he's comfortable.

And maybe that's the point. There are as many ways to be a resettled Afghan refugee as there are ways to be a member of my family.

From my observations, the young, single Afghan men seem to be having the best time of it—for many, this is a grand American adventure. There are close to 50 single men living in a nice enough apartment complex off of BG's Clay Street. At their request (and with your generosity), I bought them a volleyball net and a couple of volleyballs a few weeks ago so they could get some games going in a neighboring park. They've found a local barber who keeps them fashionably groomed, they wear hand-me down hoodies with unintentionally funny logos like "I Put the PRO in Procrastination," and most recently, they’ve traded in their American-issued, Afghan combat attire, to go to war for American industry.

Most of these former military men are now employed as die casters at BG's Trace Die Cast, many of them on the afternoon 2nd shift or the overnight 3rd shift. As shared by one former-special operations guy, the job of die caster, with all the furnaces and molten metals is "more dangerous than being in the Afghan military." Since the new Afghan die casters don't have cars, they are picked up by Trace's private transportation company that has developed an Afghan-resettlement bus route of sorts to get their new employees to work where they suit up in heavy protective equipment--helmets and goggles and ear protectors and leg armor. The work is tough. According to the rumor mill, it led a former Afghan military commander to quit in tears.

But this is the work that allows the resettlement agency in BG to thrive while other agencies struggle. Jobs. A couple months ago, a the peak of my concern with the BG resettlement, I held a meeting with the head of the BG resettlement agency and a couple of his board members. To comfort my worried mind, I was provided with a few statistics. There were hundreds of factory jobs to be filled in BG. Specifically with Trace. And Tyson Poultry is opening a factory in Bowling Green soon. To attract business to BG, there need to be workers. All the Afghans need jobs. At the rate of pay the Afghans receive in these full-time factory positions, they will be able to buy their own a home in BG within three years.

All of this is true. There are factories that need workers and there are Afghans who need a way to survive. The problem, of course, occurs when plans are made by one set of humans who have power for other humans who have little of it.

Our young Afghan friend was a devoted member of the Model United Nations club when he was in high school and, before he fled, he worked for a couple of non-profit organizations in Afghanistan that focused on gender equality and LGBTQ rights. He's not built to work in a die casting factory. And, even if he could find the right factory job, his dreams are not home ownership in Bowling Green, Kentucky. For those who've followed these posts long enough, you'll recall that our friend's greatest desire is to live a "meaningful life." When he mentioned to the head of the BG resettlement agency a couple months ago that rather than work in a factory he hoped to someday work for the United Nations, the head of the resettlement agency laughed at him and told him he was stupid. "YOU want to work at the United Nations?" he bellowed, "So do I!"

There is good news though. Thanks to you all, our young Afghan friend is now enrolled in Western Kentucky University, living in a dorm with his roommate Stone who is from middle Tennessee. He also has a college counselor to help him transfer the credits he is accumulating to one of his "reach schools" in the northeast...maybe a place like Harvard, he dreams in his wildest dreams.

How many others are there with dreams like his, I wonder.

[Jungle Rat]

P.S. Her family escaped Iran with the Shah in the 70s.

[DooKSucks]

Rat: how can we donate to help?

[innocentbystander]

Here ya go IB. Disect this.

Sure, but why the baseball thread?

They've found a local barber who keeps them fashionably groomed, they wear hand-me down hoodies with unintentionally funny logos like "I Put the PRO in Procrastination," and most recently, they’ve traded in their American-issued, Afghan combat attire, to go to war for American industry.

Most of these former military men are now employed as die casters at BG's Trace Die Cast, many of them on the afternoon 2nd shift or the overnight 3rd shift. As shared by one former-special operations guy, the job of die caster, with all the furnaces and molten metals is "more dangerous than being in the Afghan military." Since the new Afghan die casters don't have cars, they are picked up by Trace's private transportation company that has developed an Afghan-resettlement bus route of sorts to get their new employees to work where they suit up in heavy protective equipment--helmets and goggles and ear protectors and leg armor. The work is tough. According to the rumor mill, it led a former Afghan military commander to quit in tears.

But this is the work that allows the resettlement agency in BG to thrive while other agencies struggle. Jobs. A couple months ago, a the peak of my concern with the BG resettlement, I held a meeting with the head of the BG resettlement agency and a couple of his board members. To comfort my worried mind, I was provided with a few statistics. There were hundreds of factory jobs to be filled in BG. Specifically with Trace. And Tyson Poultry is opening a factory in Bowling Green soon. To attract business to BG, there need to be workers. All the Afghans need jobs. At the rate of pay the Afghans receive in these full-time factory positions, they will be able to buy their own a home in BG within three years.

They will be able to buy a home in BG in three years. Really? It's that cheap? Its that easy to get a home loan? I had friends that worked with me in a warehouse in Massachusetts for almost 5 years, and they still lived at home with their parents, and could not afford to buy anything. And that was in the late 1980s and early 1990s even. But I digress.

I'm not going to talk about the Afghan who refuses to work for Trace. He has dreams. Great. I had dreams. For me, reality and dreams came into conflict with one another. I had a dream of writing computer software. I attained that dream but that dream was never about writing supply chain software for ETL. That is rather boring, albeit, necessary. My dream was writing fun code, that never happened for me. I hope it happens for the Afghan dreamer.

Lets focus on the guys who are actually, working. I think its great that the resettlement in Bowling Green Ohio means that these Afghan guys now have manufacturing jobs. Great. They make some money. And business can create some real wealth. But I think the only reason why these refugees have jobs is the labor shortage. No shortage, no jobs for the refugees. They are playing volleyball all day instead. More importantly, no labor shortage, and probably no private transportation company either. I never worked for a company that drove me to and from work, never-ever. Great that Trace is doing that, but they are doing that because they MUST not because they MAY. (You want them there to work, you need to have a bus at their apartment to pick them up or else, they are playing volleyball.)

They employ the refugees because (unlike so many young US citizens today who would rather drive for Uber or Door Dash) they work, and are willing to work cheap. And the work they are doing is not skilled, its, boring, well-formed work. So they can be trained to do that almost immediately. I'm going to guess that none of those 50 guys ever dreamed of working as die casters. We never hear about how much the refugees are paying for their apartments in Bowling Green (if the rent is deducted from their paychecks) but I would guess you and I are paying their rent with our tax dollars.

Now having said all that, I think this is great. Excellent rat. I am happy that his is happening as opposed to those Haitian refugees who took their EBT cards (provided by you and I) and got butt surgery injections. At least the men (who we were once paid their paychecks from US tax dollars to do NOTHING in the Afghan military other than play volleyball) are now building things for Trace that Trace can sell for $$$$. Good. That is 50 of them. What are the other 320+ refugees in Bowling Green doing? I assume they are kids and in school or whatever.

Get back to me in 3 years rat and lets see if these guys are homeowners or if they are still in public housing. Actually, get back to me in 3 years rat and lets see if these guys are even still working, anywhere.

[Jungle Rat]

Rat: how can we donate to help?

I'll look into it. Might be best to follow her Instagram

[Jungle Rat]

Why the baseball thread? It's common courtesy you dumbfuck. No posts in a month here. Ain't bothering nobody.

[Jungle Rat]

And just like that. IB shits on the American dream of others because his life is a pile of shit.

[sardis]

"They will be able to buy a home in BG in three years. Really? It's that cheap? Its that easy to get a home loan? I had friends that worked with me in a warehouse in Massachusetts for almost 5 years, and they still lived at home with their parents, and could not afford to buy anything. And that was in the late 1980s and early 1990s even. But I digress."

They don't spend alot of money. They get initial help with healthcare, but their employer then takes over that cost. When I was in Charlotte our church helped these Myanmwar refugees who were persecuted for being Christian. They never go out to eat, not even fast food. They get clothes from goodwill and donations. They don't own a car initially. The employer usually comes in a van and picks them up. So after 4-5 years some of them were out of the Section 8 housing they were put in and had purchased a house and a car on their own. The house is still in marginal neighborhoods, and they sometimes team up with two generations, but to them, they are living the dream.

[Jungle Rat]

And it's Bowling Green, KY. Huge difference

[Jungle Rat]

It's an investment in our future. To them they are living a dream but they are also building a foundation for future generations of tax paying American citizens. That's the point. Yeah. They need help at the beginning. We all did. That same help available to them is available to every other American citizen if they want it. Those jobs are there for them too.

[innocentbystander]

And just like that. IB shits on the American dream of others because his life is a pile of shit.

Well, I told you I thought it was great. Guess that is not good enough for you.