{"id":42935,"date":"2020-05-29T17:09:40","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T17:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42935"},"modified":"2020-05-29T17:09:40","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T17:09:40","slug":"no-hardball-for-a-lot-of-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42935","title":{"rendered":"No hardball for a lot of communities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=SodSquad%20%23SodPoodles%20%23minorleaguebaseball%20%23pandemic&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/ama-sod-poodles.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-36571\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/ama-sod-poodles-300x163.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"163\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/ama-sod-poodles-300x163.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/ama-sod-poodles-768x418.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/ama-sod-poodles.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Oh, I do hate exposing myself to being called a Negative Ned, but I believe I am hearing the death knell for the 2020 minor league baseball season all across the nation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/sports\/mlb\/report-hundreds-of-minor-leaguers-released-season-in-peril\/ar-BB14JiBU?ocid=msedgdhp\">Reuters is reporting<\/a> that &#8220;hundreds&#8221; of minor league baseball players have been released by their teams. They&#8217;ve been let go. No baseball for these fellows, at least not this year. The coronavirus pandemic has all but shut down minor league ball this season.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the Major League Baseball gurus\/moguls\/tycoons are struggling to find a way to launch a dramatically shortened season by the Fourth of July. To do that, they are having to slash costs associated with running a big league franchise. Who pays for that? The folks in the minor leagues.<\/p>\n<p>Now, this is where it cuts a bit close to the quick for yours truly. A team I have been following from some distance now appears to be in some peril. I refer to the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the AA franchise affiliated with the San Diego Padres.<\/p>\n<p>I lived in Amarillo for 23 years. I have a lot of friends there. Many of them have become devoted fans of the Sod Poodles, who in their first season ever won the Texas League championship. They play in a brand new venue in downtown Amarillo. They draw full-house crowds on game day\/night.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that Season No. 2 is slipping away. This breaks my heart. It saddens me that the defending champs will have to wait a year to, um, defend their title.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t want this to happen. I want my friends to be able to cheer on the Sod Poodles. Alas, it is looking &#8212; at least to me &#8212; as if it ain&#8217;t gonna happen.<\/p>\n<p><em>Dang!<\/em><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=SodSquad%20%23SodPoodles%20%23minorleaguebaseball%20%23pandemic&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, I do hate exposing myself to being called a Negative Ned, but I believe I am hearing the death knell for the 2020 minor league baseball season all across the nation. Reuters is reporting that &#8220;hundreds&#8221; of minor league baseball players have been released by their teams. They&#8217;ve been let go. No baseball for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42935\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No hardball for a lot of communities<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[7881,9236,5631,9261],"class_list":["post-42935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-sports-news","tag-amarillo-sod-poodles","tag-coronavirus","tag-minor-league-baseball","tag-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42936,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42935\/revisions\/42936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}