Stuff YOU Should Know
Baseball Minor Changes
Are you a minor league baseball fan? If so, get ready: there will be some changes to the game in time for the 2018 season, particularly where extra innings are concerned.
League officials are looking to improve the pace of the game by speeding it up a bit. They think this will make the experience more enjoyable for fans. Also, shorter games mean less chance of injury or exhaustion for the players themselves.
There are some changes going in minor league baseball this season. Credit: steven r. hendricks/Shutterstock
If you’re nervous about the changes, don’t be. All of them are relatively . . . well, minor. Here they are:
- Currently, a pitcher has 20 seconds to begin his pitching motion. This will stay the same when there are runners on base. However, when there are no runners on base, the pitcher will now have only 15 seconds to begin the motion.
- The tenth inning will begin with a runner already on second base, before a single pitch is even thrown, in an effort to speed up extra innings.
- There will be a cap on the number of times coaches and other players can visit the pitcher’s mound.
Some fans are nervous about the way these new rules might change the game. But league officials remain enthusiastic. And if the rule changes are successful at the minor league level, they may be implemented in the major leagues someday as well.
What Do You Think? Write a letter to the editor of your local paper saying whether or not you think the proposed changes to minor league baseball are a good idea, and why.
Russian Spy Poisoned
On March 4, 66-year-old Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were poisoned with a military-grade nerve gas called Novichok. Currently, they remain critically ill in a British hospital.
But who is responsible for the crime? According to the UK government, Russia is to blame. Novichok was initially developed by the Soviet Union. British representatives claim that Russia has been building up its supplies of the nerve agent for the last decade, as well as studying how it might be used in assassinations. But Russian president Vladimir Putin–re-elected this month for another term–denies that Russia had anything to do with the attack. In fact, he says, Russia destroyed its supply of chemical weapons and was actually the first nation to do so, and that, unfortunately, other nations have not been as cooperative. In fact, some representatives of the Russian government have gone so far as to accuse the UK of developing the nerve agent themselves.
Nevertheless, British officials have already deported 23 Russian diplomats based in London. Russia’s response was to expel the same number of British diplomats from Moscow. Britain has also announced economic sanctions against Russia, as well as canceling meetings and a visit to Russia for the World Cup this summer. The United States has voiced its agreement that Russia is to blame for the crime and pledged its full support to the UK government. But it’s unlikely that the U.S. will impose any economic sanctions over an event that happened on foreign soil.
What Do You Think? Some political experts feel that the Trump administration should have come out more strongly against this latest show of Russian aggression by imposing sanctions or taking other actions. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Not Child’s Play: Toys R Us Goes Bankrupt
If you were like most American children, you probably visited a Toys R Us store growing up. For 70 years, the chain has remained the number one toy seller in the United States. But now, all of that is coming to an end. The company is going out of business and officially closing doors on all 735 of its stores nationwide. Over 30,000 Toys R Us employees will be left without jobs.
It’s the end of an era, but not terribly surprising. There are many reasons for the decline of Toys R Us. The first is competition. Other large “box” stories, such as Target and Walmart, often can sell the same toys more cheaply. Over time, these have edged out Toys R Us as the leading toy retailer. Also, the online shopping boom has caused many so-called “brick and mortar” stores to go out of business. Busy parents often prefer to order gifts for their children with a few swipes of their phone, rather than spend a long time browsing aisles and standing in check-out lines.
But it’s not just changing shopping habits that have spelled doom for the toy store giant. The way children play is also changing. Today’s children often have schedules full of sports, playdates, and other activities. This leaves them less unstructured time to play. And when they do find themselves with free time, they often gravitate toward electronic games. Parents, too, have less time to play with their children, and so are less likely to invest in traditional toys.
No firm timeline has been set yet for when the stores will begin to close, but it’s likely that they will all be shut down sometime in the next two months. And if you have any old Toys R Us gift certificates lying around, now is the time to use them: they will only be honored for the next thirty days.
What Do You Think? Some experts have expressed hopes that closing TRU will help the owners of small toy-store businesses to succeed. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Upset in Pennsylvania
Last week was another Congressional special election–this time in Pennsylvania’s House District 18. This special election was to fill the seat left empty by Republican Representative Tim Murphy, who resigned last October due to a personal scandal. And like special elections in several other states recently, a Democrat won a district that was “supposed” to go Republican.
This time, the victor was Conor Lamb, a 33-year-old federal prosecutor and Marine Corps veteran. It was Lamb’s first time running for office. A more conservative Democrat, he focused his campaign on helping unions and fighting the opioid crisis. His support of unions is likely the most important factor that helped him get elected in this district, which has 86,000 union households.
But what makes Lamb’s victory remarkable is that on paper, it never should have happened at all. Republican Tim Murphy, whom Lamb replaces, easily won his last eight elections. (He most recently ran unopposed, which means that no Democrat even bothered to run against him.) Moreover, Trump won the district–which is largely white and working class–by 20 points in 2016. In fact, Trump himself came out in person to support Lamb’s opponent, Republican Rick Saccone. The fact that Democrats won in an upset like this may suggest that even among districts that represent Trump’s core supporters, there could be backlash building. Republicans are concerned about what this will mean for the party holding onto its congressional majority in the 2018 midterm elections.