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Stupidity is only thing standing in baseball’s way of saving season: Sherman

I don’t care.

What the owners make, what the players make.

I hope for fairness. That no one is exploited. That transparency wins.

I do think the players are the engine of the game, the product that fans spend money on. Thus whatever players receive you will never read in this space that they are greedy or undeserving. Still, when covering, say, Gerrit Cole’s negotiation if he received $10 million a year, fine; if he received $50 million a year, fine. Don’t care.

In the current negotiations to restart the season, the advocates from both sides try to twist me to their view. And, in real time, both sound reasonable and right. If I must decide on a jump ball, I will do the best possible to figure out where I stand.

But whether the advocates believe it or not — and most times I think they do not — I really don’t care how they split the money until it encroaches on what I do care about.

The baseball. The history. The integrity. The continuity.

MLB is talking about implementing a 50ish-game season that feels a slander to the league’s history, integrity and continuity. In a pandemic maybe you take what you get. But it is not the virus stopping owners and players from staging a more representative season. It is the money.

When this is all forensically gone over in the future, I suspect we will discover that if the sides had been cooperative they already would have been in spring training for a few weeks now and been capable of playing a regular season that ends in September and was 100 or more games.

MLB’s first offer of 82 games was going to invite asterisks. But at least it is half a season. Being in first place at roughly the traditional All-Star break feels relevant, if incomplete. Teams reach 50 games at about Memorial Day, normally the first pitstop to assess the season, not determine everything from ERA titles to championships.

Maybe expanded playoffs would cover some shorter-season sins. But the 50ish game season with full prorated pay would be something forced upon the players. They would have to approve going from 10 to 14 postseason teams, and why would they do that moneymaking favor for the owners?

MLB has had five teams (10 total) in each league make the playoffs each season since 2012. Seven times in those eight seasons a World Series participant was not in postseason position through Memorial Day, including the champion Nationals last year and both the AL-winning Tigers and champion Giants in 2012.

Using June 30 for an approximation of when teams reach 82 games, five 2012-19 World Series participants still were not in one of the 10 playoff spots. But if the playoffs expanded to 14 clubs all World Series teams would make the playoffs except for last year’s Nationals, who would have had to compete in a play-in as they were tied for the final playoff spot, and the 2012 Tigers, who were just 38-40 though June 30.

If the playoffs were kept to 10 teams, the numbers rise slightly with 57 of a possible 80 teams from 2012-2019 in postseason position through June 30, compared to 54 through Memorial Day.

But there has to be more than just the data here. This sport just had to penalize the 2017 Astros and 2018 Red Sox for illegal sign stealing, throwing further doubt on the credibility of those champions. Again, 82-100 games would not be perfect. But a half season-plus of accomplishment is way meatier than one-third. Baseball is a game appreciated for its daily, serial journey. The endurance is part of the joy. And I believe, fans would have provided a lot of the needed credibility if MLB and its players were maneuvering together to play as many games as possible during a pandemic.

Not playing when MLB could be a unifying force in time of racial strife, a monetary boon amid financial disaster (don’t forget how many subsidiary jobs in travel, hospitality, transportation, media, etc, benefit from the game) and a symbol that some form of normality will rise with all the sickness and death is so short-term, blinders-on stupid for both sides that they are not going to get any benefit of the doubt by playing less not more.

Really, I don’t care how they split the money. But I do think more would be there than is projected. There are avenues in which some attendance returns and opportunities to do marketing deals with so little fresh entertainment content available from, say, Hollywood. There are expanded playoffs. The chance to get larger than prorated dollars from regional sports networks.

But the sides are losing time to do that to the best use, which is starting by the Independence Day weekend and playing no fewer than 82 games.

Already by fighting so publicly on this matter, MLB has hurt its reputation. Putting on a season shorter than it needs to be will do credibility damage that carries well beyond a schedule of any length.

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Scientists learn how tiny critters make ocean ‘snot palaces’

KENSINGTON, Maryland — Master builders of the sea construct the equivalent of a complex five-story house that protects them from predators and funnels and filters food for them — all from snot coming out of their heads.

And when these delicate mucus homes get clogged, the tadpole-looking critters — called giant larvaceans — build a new one. Usually every day or so.

These so-called “snot palaces” could possibly help human construction if scientists manage to crack the mucus architectural code, said Kakani Katija, a bioengineer at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Her team took a step toward solving the mystery of the snot houses and maybe someday even replicating them, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.

The creatures inside these houses may be small — the biggest are around 4 inches — but they are smart and crucial to Earth’s environment. Found globally, they are the closest relatives to humans without a backbone, Katija and other scientists said.

Together with their houses “they are like an alien life form, made almost entirely out of water, yet crafted with complexity and purpose,” said Dalhousie University marine biologist Boris Worm, who wasn’t part of the study. “They remind me of a cross between a living veil and a high tech filter pump.”

Also, when they abandon their clogged homes about every day, the creatures collectively drop millions of tons of carbon to the seafloor, where it stays, preventing further global warming, Worm said. They also take microplastics out of the water column and dump it on the sea floor. And if that’s not enough, the other waste in their abandoned houses is eaten by the ocean’s bottom dwellers.

Snot Palaces

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U.S. Should Have ‘Couple of Hundred Million Doses’ of Coronavirus Vaccine by Early 2021: Fauci

The U.S. should have a “couple of hundred million doses” of a vaccine for the new coronavirus, COVID-19, ready to go by the beginning of 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday.

Fauci said that he’s “cautiously optimistic” that one of the several ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials will be a success and can be mass-produced for Americans to get next year, he said in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association, CNN reported.

The infectious disease expert said that he expects that one of the four or five vaccine trials in the works will be able to produce millions of doses of a vaccine by the end of this year, and the “couple of hundred million doses” will follow early next year.

One of the most promising trials is run by biotech company Modena, which is expected to begin their final stage of volunteer human trials in July. This phase will include around 30,000 people from age 18 up to the elderly and those with underlying conditions.

"The real business end of this all will be the Phase 3 that starts in the first week of July, hopefully," Fauci said. "We want to get as many datapoints as we can … It’s going to be the entire spectrum.”

He is also encouraged by the early results from another vaccine trial run by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that with the multiple candidates that we have with different platforms, that we're going to have a vaccine that shows a degree of efficacy that would make it deployable," he said.

If any vaccine trial is looking promising towards the end of this year, they will begin to manufacture millions of doses before they know for sure that it works, just to have them ready to go if they do.

"It isn't as if we're going to make the vaccine, show it's effective and then have to wait a year to rev up to millions and millions and millions of doses," he said. "That's going to be done as we're testing the vaccine."

Fauci added that while some people have severe cases of COVID-19, most are able to recover from the virus, which is an encouraging sign that a vaccine will work.

"If the body is capable of making an immune response to clear the virus of natural infection, that's a pretty good proof of concept to say that you're going to make an immune response in response to a vaccine," he said.

Though he cautioned that there is "never a guarantee, ever, that you're going to get an effective vaccine." Fauci has previously said that vaccines typically take at least 12 to 18 months to develop, but the COVID-19 vaccine trials have been sped up.

Along with working on a vaccine, there is a “major push” to find an effective treatment for those who have COVID-19.

“That is a very, very high priority,” Fauci said.

As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from CDC, WHO, and local public health departments. PEOPLE has partnered with GoFundMe to raise money for the COVID-19 Relief Fund, a GoFundMe.org fundraiser to support everything from frontline responders to families in need, as well as organizations helping communities. For more information or to donate, click here.

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Couple Gets Engaged in Middle of N.C. Protest: 'Making History While Witnessing History'

Last Saturday, Alston said she wanted to attend a protest in downtown Raleigh, and so Young called out from his job at a local grocery store to protest with her, making sure to grab the ring he’d had locked up in his car glove compartment “just in case the moment presented itself.”

“[A crowd] gathered pretty dang quick,” he says of his proposal. “I had to stop and start over again, ‘cause I know she couldn’t hear me. I looked around and was like, ‘Whoa, there’s a lot of people here. So I gave it a second, gathered myself, let her get her composure… The funny thing is, she couldn’t even hear me. She knew what I was asking, so she just shook her head yes.”

He adds: “She probably didn’t want the attention, but you know what? She deserved it.”

The protest in Raleigh was just one of hundreds across the United States that have emerged in the fight against police brutality and systemic racism following the May 25 death of George Floyd, who died while in police custody in Minneapolis after an officer knelt on his neck for several minutes as he cried out for help.

Though Young never expected to propose in the middle of such a pivotal moment in American history, he says he wouldn’t be surprised if a photo of their engagement ends up in future history textbooks as part of a chapter on 2020.

“The more and more that I see people are still finding out about it or freaking out about it, the more and more epic it is,” he says. “’Cause 2020, I think it’s unanimous, we’re in agreement: we’re like, ‘This is going down in history.’ And with this whole COVID, and the state of America now socially, they’re going to talk about it.”

As they await the birth of their child, whom they’ve dubbed “Baby Batman,” Young and Alston have already started wedding planning, and hope to tie the knot in September 2021.

“We’ll have a baby by then," he says, "so we’ll just take that baby and hit the dance floor."

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This Museum Wants to Include Your Teenage Memories In Their Collection

The Museum of Youth Culture in the U.K. is crowdsourcing photographs, objects, and other artifacts from people’s youths to bolster their collection, Lonely Planet reported. It doesn’t matter when you were a teenager or young adult, where you're from, or what types of items you have either.

After all, we all were teenagers once, and who doesn’t love a little nostalgia?

Currently, the museum is a digital archive with over 150,000 photographs and texts from many different contributors that highlight the impact young people have had on our heritage, according to its website. They plan to open a physical location in London sometime in 2023, according to Atlas Obscura.

There are dozens of collections that are currently up on the website. Although most collections are from the 80’s and 90’s, the museum is interested in youth artifacts from every era.

The museum is looking for items for its “Grown Up Britain” project, but is also open to submissions from all over the world, according to Lonely Planet.

“From the bomb-site Bicycle racers in post-war 1940s London, to the Acid House ravers of 1980s Northern England, the Museum of Youth Culture empowers the extraordinary everyday stories of growing up in Britain,” the museum wrote on its website of their “Grown Up Britain” project.

Whether you're from the U.K. or not, old photos of your unfortunate fashion choices or your old poems from freshman year are all worth sending in. In order to submit, simply visit the submission page on the museum’s website and include the story behind your submission, or other stories about your youth. Submissions must have a photo image of the artifact, as well.

In addition to the call for submissions, the museum is offering downloadable worksheets, coloring pages, and other at-home activities to do if you’re stuck at home due to coronavirus lockdown. There are even some resources on how to interview your family members about their youths too.

For more information and to browse the collection, visit the Museum of Youth Culture website.

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Get 20% off Ikea garden furniture with its loyalty scheme

IF you’re planning on buying new garden furniture in one of Ikea’s reopened stores, you’ll want to take advantage of the Swedish retailer’s loyalty scheme where you can get 20 per cent off outdoor goods.

Ikea has recently reopened 19 of its stores following the coronavirus lockdown.

Its grand reopening saw thousands of shoppers queuing for up to three hours to start shopping, with some customers having arrived at stores at 5.30am.

If you're in the market for some new Ikea garden furniture, we explain how you can save 20 per cent with its Ikea Family member scheme.

What is the Ikea Family member scheme?

The Ikea Family member scheme is free to sign up to and it offers a range of freebies and discounts.

You can sign up for free on the Ikea website – the webpage also lists its current offers, which change every few months.

What other offers can you get with Ikea Family?

DISCOUNT on garden furniture isn't the only benefit of signing up to the Ikea Family member scheme.

Here's what else you can get – although keep in mind some offers are time sensitive and will be replaced by new deals once they expire.

These deals are accurate at the time of writing.

Free tea and coffee in in-store cafes, Monday to Friday. Normally, the hot drinks cost £1 each. This is a permanent benefit.
Money off Ikea food in in-store cafes, Monday to Friday. Ikea cafes are currently closed, but before the coronavirus epidemic, you could get money off in-store food. On its website, it has various discounts still listed including two mains and desserts for £10, instead of its usual price of between £11.20 and £15.80. Offers on food are also always available.
Free "Oops-insurance". When you swipe your card at the checkout you receive Oops-assurance – so if something breaks, Ikea will replace it for free. This can only be redeemed within 90 days of purchase. Like the free tea and coffee, there is no end-date for this freebie.
25 per cent off the SOLBLEKT range. You can view the full range online here. Discount only valid until 10 June, 2020.
20 per cent off NATTJASMIN fitted sheets. You can view the full range online here. Discount only valid until 10 June, 2020.

Once you've signed up, you'll then be sent a card which you'll need to show in store to claim any current discount.

If you're shopping online, you'll need to be logged into your Ikea Family account.

Discounted items can be identified by blue stickers both in stores and online.

What offers are currently available through Ikea Family?

At the moment, Ikea is offering its loyalty card holders 20 per cent off outdoor furniture.

This discount only includes a select range of items, so not everything in Ikea's outdoor collection will be included.

This offer is also only valid until 31 July, 2020.

When The Sun checked this afternoon, Ikea Family members could purchase a TÄRNÖ two chair outdoor seating set for £28 instead of £35 – a saving of £7.

We also spotted this ÄPPLARÖ wooden sunlounger reduced to £64 from £80 – a discount of £16.

As always, you should still compare prices in other stores to make sure you're getting the best deal.

An item is also only a bargain if you were planning on buying it anyway.

We've rounded up other Ikea Family offers in the box above.

Ikea has shared the exact recipe for its meatballs and there are only six steps.

The Sun has rounded up the full list of reopened Ikea stores here.

But the Swedish retailer has banned families from visiting to help reduce the number of customers in stores at one time.

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Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter tell high school grads: ‘Party on!’

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter joined San Dimas High School’s virtual graduation ceremony on Tuesday to deliver a totally bodacious message to the class of 2020.

Reeves and Winter starred in the 1989 film “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” which takes place in San Dimas, Calif., with Bill and Ted attending the high school. The cult classic centers on a history project Bill and Ted must complete for school, but their world is turned upside-down when they find a time machine and use it to interact firsthand with some of history’s biggest names.

Before the graduating seniors’ names were read, Reeves and Winter appeared with a video message for the San Dimas students. Reeves sported a “Be Excellent to Each Other” t-shirt, referring to a quote from “Bill & Ted,” and the two introduced themselves as the “Wyld Stallyns,” the name of Bill and Ted’s band in the film. They then offered words of encouragement to the graduating class.

“We know that it’s a tough time right now and you’re having to do this virtual graduation,” Winter said. “We want to wish you the best of luck moving forward.”

“Congratulations to the graduating class of 2020. Well done,” Reeves added.

Reeves and Winter couldn’t resist adding in a few more nods to “Bill & Ted.”

“San Dimas High School football does rule,” Winter said, again referencing a famous line from the film. “But most importantly, we wanted to tell you to be excellent to each other.”

Reeves then ended the video message with, “And party on!”

Reeves and Winter both starred in the movie’s 1991 sequel, “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” and started production for the third installment, “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” in June 2019.

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Lennox Lewis’ ultimate boxer based on opponents including Briggs power and Holyfield skills… but Tyson doesn’t feature – The Sun

LENNOX LEWIS named Evander Holyfield and Shannon Briggs in the list of best fighters he has faced – but left out Mike Tyson.

Lewis has done it all in the heavyweight division, losing just twice, in shock upsets to Olivier McCall and Hasim Rahman, but avenged both – meaning he beat every man he shared the ring with.

In an interview with Ring Magazine in 2015, the Brit broke down his past opponents and who was the best in what department.

Holyfield, who he draw against before beating in their rematch, was named as the greatest Lewis faced as well as the most skilful with the best defence.

He said: "Holyfield was the best opponent I faced in my career.

"Evander was very talented, although I was disappointed that he used his head as a punch in those fights. The word was that he was the greatest heavyweight of our era but nobody could say that until he fought Lennox Lewis.

"In the first fight he was overconfident, singing during his ring walk, so I went after him and he was shocked to get that draw.

"Second time around he knew what to expect so it was a tougher fight but I still won comfortably.

"Holyfield had excellent variety to his defence. He could cross his arms like George Foreman but he was also well schooled in the traditional type of defence you get taught in the amateurs.

"Evander presented a real challenge and I had to put in a lot of effort to break through. I couldn’t just land one or two shots and be content; it had to be threes, fours and fives."

I don't want lockdown to end – it means finally meeting the man I'm dating

Back in March, uncertain and afraid of the world as coronavirus spread and people moved indoors, I re-downloaded Tinder as a form of escapism.

I’ve used different dating apps off and on for almost six years, but Tinder is my favourite, because it’s the simplest: we swipe, chat, meet up and have a fun night. That’s all I look for – or it was, until I met Marco.

I should preface this by saying that I’ve never had a third date with someone.

When it comes to meeting someone new, I envision everything that can go wrong: I get scared that I’ll say something embarrassing, that I’ll talk too much, that they’ll think I’m unintelligent, or worse – ugly. Drinking on a date helps me become a more confident and desirable version of myself, free of angst and awkwardness.

All of the dates I’ve had in the past have ended the same way: with no recollection of the evening before, thanks to the consumption of a lot of alcohol, and no further contact.

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About a week before lockdown, Marco and I matched on the app.

We had organised to meet in Hampstead Heath, but then I went home to Wales to spend the following months in my parents’ house with a garden and a strong WiFi connection, because I don’t have that in London.

So, I asked Marco if he wanted to have a virtual date instead.

‘This is perfect for you, you’ll be less nervous,’ said my friends, reminiscing about all the times at university when they watched me down half a bottle of wine before going on a date. But I wasn’t less nervous on our virtual date.

Virtual me is the same as real me. However, this time, even though I woke up the next day without much memory of what we’d talked about, thanks to a lot of drinking, I knew I’d had fun. I remembered his soft Sydney accent, his dimpled smile, and the moment when we had tried to guess how tall we both are by standing in front of our bedroom doors.

On our second date, only a week after our first, we pretended that we went to a posh bar. I wore a short sparkly dress and put more makeup on my face than last time. We drank and talked for three hours, lying in bed with our phones on our pillows, and when our screens finally went black, I couldn’t stop thinking about sex. If we’d had two real-life dates, would we have done it by now?

In my experience, sex stands in the way of dating. If I’m physically intimate with someone, I never get the chance to do the same emotionally with that person, because it’s either they’re interested in me but I’m not interested in them, or, I’m interested in them but they’re not interested in me – it’s never the right combination.

Usually, I tend to veer towards men who care more about getting to know my body than my mind, but having an emotional connection has become important to me, especially because of the virtual experience.

Virtual dating has also allowed me to have my first-ever third date.

To finally have this opportunity is exciting. Plus, the fact that he is taking the time to get to know me well makes me feel good. It must – hopefully – mean that I am not only desirable, I am likeable too.

Virtual dating has become my new norm, and a welcoming one at that: I’m able to take the time to articulate what I want to say, and I’m less self-conscious about my appearance. I get to decide from which angle and in which lighting Marco sees me. I’m also drinking less on our dates now that I feel more comfortable and know Marco quite well.

Over video call, it also relaxes me to know that if I need to – if I start to feel nervous or I don’t know what to say – I can pretend to have a technological malfunction and switch my phone off.

Although I’m excited to meet Marco in real life, which will probably be in July – after four months of dating, I can’t help but also feel incredibly anxious. I want something of significance to come out of this.

I like that he asks about my day, talks to me about his family and praises my work. We discuss our favourite books, share links to our favourite music, and watch new films together. He’s a nice guy – a properly nice guy – who takes a genuine interest in who I am.

I’m scared of what will happen when we meet, that there won’t be any sexual chemistry and that he might lose interest in me once we get to socialise again post-lockdown. I’m not sure if he shares the same worries, but he did say that it’s strange to think that we’ve never touched before. ‘I don’t know what you feel like,’ he laughed – meaning in the simplest, least sexual sense.

We have spoken briefly about one another’s fears – about our lives in general and about meeting up – but we haven’t discussed any of our anxieties in depth so far, because it feels too soon.

We are planning to meet up when I’m able to travel back to London, but we don’t know when that will be. I’m trying not to think too much about the future.

For now, knowing that a kind, handsome man somewhere in Kentish Town can be bothered to ask a woman he’s never met how she is – every single day – is a rather lovely feeling.

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What to Do if You're Hit by a Police Baton

Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, mass protests, some violent, have erupted through the United States.

Amidst the violence, law enforcement officials have been cited as using shows of force, including with weapons considered less lethal: tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and police batons.

Police batons are considered an “impact weapon,” and can come in straight, side-handle, or collapsible versions.

But “less lethal” doesn’t equal painless. A police baton is still a club, and can cause immediate and lasting injuries to a person.

What happens when a police baton hits the human body? What effects does the impact have? What does being hit with a baton feel like, exactly? And if you are hit with one, is there anything you can do to immediately lessen the pain and effects? If you see someone hit with a police baton, what can you do to help them?

To get answers, we turned to Jeffrey M. Goodloe, M.D., F.A.C.E.P., member of the Board of Directors for the American College of Emergency Physicians and Chief Medical Officer for the Emergency Medical Services System for Metropolitan Oklahoma City & Tulsa.

Here’s what you need to know about police batons, the injuries they can cause, and how to treat those injuries should they occur.

What happens when a police baton hits the human body?

While a police baton strike has fewer variables than a projectile rubber bullet, there are still factors that can change how the strike affects your body.

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“A baton is pretty much a face-to-face, hand-to-hand weapon,” says Goodloe. “The strike usually occurs within two or three feet or less. I’m not aware of too many law enforcement officers who are trained to swing softly. There’s going to be a fair amount of energy.”

The variability comes from where you are hit. “Police batons are designed more for impact on the extremities: the arms, thighs, upper legs,” Goodloe says. If you’re hit in those places, the impact will likely be painful to the point of temporary debilitation.

Fractures do occur, and often out of self-defense. “A lot of injuries we see in the emergency department come from forearm fractures, when someone uses their forearm to block a hit to the face,” says Goodloe.

Police baton strikes can occur to the head, the effects of which can range from simple bruising of soft tissue on the scalp to internal brain bleeding to eye injuries. Strikes to the chest or abdomen can result in fractures or internal bleeding.

What does being hit with a police baton feel like?

Zbynek Pospisil

“Imagine you’re out playing ball with a young child and they’re swinging a baseball bat and it hits you in the leg,” says Goodloe. “It’s a five-year-old swinging the bat, so you’re most likely not going to get a fracture, but it’s going to hurt.”

The amount of pain also depends on the style of police baton and what part of the baton made contact with your body. All-metal batons are likely to deliver more pain than ones made of composite material. Being struck with the more tapered end of a collapsible baton would affect less surface area than being struck with less tapered end.

What should you do if you’re hit with a police baton?

If you’re hit in a extremity, most of the time you’re going to be okay, says Goodloe. You’ll feel pain for a few days. Ice the bruise, monitor it for infection, and take Tylenol and ibuprofen.

If you suffer a blow to the head and pass out, that’s not normal: “You need to go to seek emergency services. You could have a mild concussion or internal brain bleeding,” says Goodloe.

Same goes if you’re hit in the neck. “If there’s any concern that you’re in trouble, find help via emergency medical services, using on-scene care if it’s available,” Goodloe says.

What should you do if you see someone hit by a police baton?

Get them away from danger, safe from where they (and you) could be the victim of further baton strikes. Ask them if they’re okay: “What month is it? What year is it? Who is the president?” (Regardless of political beliefs, almost everyone knows who the president is.) Assess their breathing ability and consciousness. Check for bleeding. Then, when you are safe and informed, contact emergency medical services.

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