The Innings Will Continue Until Morale Improves: Tuesday Open Thread

I didn’t even watch the World Series game last night and I’m exhausted.

Allow me a Grumpy Old White Guy rant: Trunk or Treat when “traditional” suburban trick-or-treating is available. It devalues the entire enterprise by making a huge caloric haul available with minimal effort.

I’m not saying kids have to “earn” their candy by roving across great swaths of the landscape, like the hunter-gatherers of old. It’s that each house visited, each piece of candy obtained is an individual transaction that forms a larger quilt of the whole occasion.

Last night was our first Trunk or Treat. There were about a hundred kids milling around, going from parking space to parking space picking out candy in a barely-cognizable blur of weird decorations and mumbled “Trick or treat”s. You don’t remember which house had the Good Candy and who gave out toothbrushes; the kids are (very reasonably) already onto the next RAV4 to maximize their return.

I was deeply socially awkward as a kid (I have since graduated to “awkward but personable in short sprints”). My kids, unsurprisingly, are the same. The miniature, limited social interactions of the Trick or Treat ritual are an essential training ground for kids like that. Everyone knows what’s expected- you say your line, you get a compliment on your homemade Thundercats Lion-O costume, the treats are produced, you say thank you and leave. Deal done. Things didn’t get weird, you got positive reinforcement (Milky Way!) and you have until the next house to calm down and reset for the next interaction.

Trunk or Treat is basically just going to the grocery store dressed as an astronaut. Which, you know- whatever blows your hair back, no shame. But for the kids? No, thanks.

NFL NEWS:

-The trade deadline is upon us, and with one week to go things are relatively quiet. I attribute that to a very weird year in which a fair number of teams are clustered in the upper-middle, at the expense of a couple utter dogshit bottom-dwellers (Jets, Tits, Raiders)  giving out free wins like it was Trunk or Treat. In the abstract that would suggest many potential buyers looking for One Last Piece to seize the opportunity. But I see it as creating a “Srious offers only- I know what I hav” attitude among potential sellers; most of what they have is junk, and they are asking too much for their few decent wares. Also, I think the number of high-profile injuries has some teams gun-shy about pushing too many chips into the middle for one guy.

Deals I would like to see:

*Jeffrey Simmons to the Bills. The Tits need a lot of resources for their coming rebuild. Unlike many general managers of habitually-dogshit bottom-dwellers (sorry, DonT), new GM Mike Borgonzi will be around to spend any picks he can generate, which could entice him to part with Simmons. DT is not traditionally a position you can build around. Meanwhile, the Bills were as vulnerable to the run as a shitty pair of nylons BEFORE Ed Oliver went down this past weekend. Maybe Simmons can salvage this season. Maybe teaming him and Oliver next season will give Drake Maye pants-shitting nightmares.

*David Njoku to Baltimore. Mark Andrews is a great dude, but he’s Washed. Isaiah Likely has regressed. Derrick Henry is still punching hard, but Time remains the undefeated champion and they cannot afford a Lost Season this close to his actuarial limit. Njoku gives them an Andrews-lite weapon that should open the offense back up.

*Trey Hendrickson to…anywhere. Seriously, this poor schmuck. Out there like Horatius at the bridge, only instead the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods, motherfucker’s out here dying for Mike Brown and Skyline Chili. Let the man go.