‘Chat’ Update … MLB Notes

Now that September has arrived, I want to note that the July and August schedule for blog topics will continue through the remainder of 2025.

Progressives Chat, by the end of June 2025, published 640 topics since it launched September 25, 2017. September 1, 2025 makes it 645. For a nice rounded number, I am going to end the year with 650.

Above is the schedule for the rest of 2025.

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Flashback 1971: ‘The Game that Changed Baseball…’

 

September 1, 1971 was a day in Major League Baseball which since has not been repeated.

In 1971, Pittsburgh Pirates won the fourth of their five World Series championships. But, before that occurred, and while the regular season was still in progress, manager Danny Murtagh (1917–1976) assigned that day’s fielding positions to a group of players who stood out.

The above video tells the story.

Fall Classic Possibility

September is the final full month of this current 2025 Major League Baseball season. 

I am certainly pulling for my home team, Detroit Tigers. 

I applaud Milwaukee Brewers, which took over in July with the best record not only in their division (National League Central), but also in their league and all of MLB. (I had written this, in June 2025, of the American League Central Detroit Tigers.)

I have their logos above for at least two good reasons: 

• With the games concluding Sunday, August 31, 2025, Detroit’s record—the best in the AL—is 80–58 (.580) and Milwaukee’s record is 85–53 (.616).

• They would make a nice 2025 World Series match.

Detroit Tigers has four World Series titles won in 1935, 1945, 1968, and 1984. Their fourth was a wire-to-wire season, managed by George “Sparky” Anderson (1934–2010), the first in such role to win World Series in both leagues. (He previously won with the 1975 and 1976 NL Cincinnati “Big Red Machine” Reds.) Players included Alan Trammell and Lou Whittaker—the duo fielded shortstop and second base from 1978–1996—and Kirk Gibson as well as pitching ace Jack Morris and AL MVP and AL Cy Young reliever Willie Hernandez (who saved 31 games and blew just one).

Milwaukee Brewers has been to the World Series just once. This was back in 1982. At that point, Milwaukee Brewers were still in the AL. They lost to St. Louis Cardinals. The team was managed by Harvey Kuenn (1930–1988). He won the 1953 AL Rookie of the Year and the 1959 AL batting title with Detroit Tigers. Milwaukee’s roster included star players Cecil Cooper, Paul Molitor, and AL MVP Robin Yount as well as 1981 and 1982 AL Cy Young winners Rollie Fingers (also MVP) and Pete Vuckovich.

Realignment with Expansion

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, who is in his position until at least 2029, revealed on the August 17, 2025 ESPN Sunday Night Baseball that the 30 MLB teams will expand to 32.

The cities much-discussed are, in the more east half of the U.S., Nashville, Tennessee and Charlotte or Raleigh, North Carolina; in the more west half of the U.S., Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon. (Also mentioned: Orlando, Florida as well as Austin and San Antonio, Texas. Also suggested but outside the U.S.: Montreal and Mexico.)

The current structure of 30 teams have 15 in the National League (NL) and 15 in the American League (AL) with both leagues’s three divisions—East, Central, and West—each consisting of 5 teams.

Manfred offered that he would realign the divisions to reset the balances with the same number of teams but with a more concentrated focus on geography (and rivalries). Why? To cut down on the stress of teams’s travel schedules and to yield more control over difficult television schedules which have team matchups which involve very different geographic areas. (For example: A game with a road team from the east vs. a home team from the west would not usually start until around 10:00 p.m. ET. This is not convenient for any person who must be in bed to wake up early the next day.)

The change would consist of four divisions each with eight teams…or eight divisions each with four teams. 

I think the latter will occur.

I also think, although it may be early, the expansion teams will be Nashville and Salt Lake City.

Some people want realignment to take geography so seriously as to mix NL and AL teams. An example is to have one division mixing the AL New York Yankees and the NL New York Mets and the AL Boston Red Sox and the NL Philadelphia Phillies. 

I do not think this would be wise. I am very certain…what those big-money NL and AL teams want is to not be mixed together regularly in one division. MLB is very capitalist. They don’t want more competition. They want less competition.

There is more to consider.

Baseball, in the U.S., is traditional. Making a dramatic change—like instituting the Designated Hitter in the NL in 2022 (after the AL did so in 1973)—is usually done when there is no point fighting against such move. But to mix a good number of league switches, especially involving any teams 100 or more years in age, bastardizes histories of those teams.

Some people also think it would be wise to drop National League (NL) and American League (AL) altogether. I strongly disagree. This would be an insult to many which have pride in their storied histories and how identity is a part of their history. In the NL, you have teams like Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, and St. Louis Cardinals. In the AL, you have teams like Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, and New York Yankees. Want to try to take away a part of their identity?

I think what will actually happen would follow some of the model of National Football League. There would be eight divisions each with four teams. NL and AL remain intact. (You don’t have to pronounce their league names. You can speak their letters.) Nearly every current NL and AL team remain as such. Due to geographic reasons, and their histories suggests a league swap may actually advantage them, and that they are both less than 50 years in age (each was established in the 1990s), a switch would be wise for two teams: Colorado Rockies (NL to AL) and Tampa Bay Rays (AL to NL).

I would change the division names, in each league, to East, North, South, and West. That is listing them in time zone order, from Eastern Time to Pacific Time, in case that seemed weird. This would also be borrowing, to some extent, from NFL. I put together a list, presented in above chart, which just-so-happens to be exactly the same proposed, on the below maps, by The Athletic’s Stephen J. Nesbitt.

Trump’s Distractions

United States president Donald Trump, during his Campaign 2024 promises, expressed determination to uncover the truth with the Epstein Files. Instead of doing that, he put forth one distraction after another. That included his bogus claim that it is nothing and, if his “MAGA” supporters are not accepting of this, they are doing the Democrats’s work.

My take on the case with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is that, yes, he was murdered and, no, TPTB intend to make sure the truth—including his clients list (which may include Trump)—never sees light. Just like the people of wealth connected with the child predatorial ring, which included the rapes of children, fifty years ago on North Fox Island in 1970s Michigan. Its leader, wealthy philanthropist Francis Shelden, was never caught, escaped the U.S., and died in 1996.

Another distraction of Trump’s is with trying to steal U.S. House seats in states normally aligned Republican for U.S. President so the 2026 Democrats either don’t flip the lower chamber of Congress…or they don’t win as many net gains. (Some Democratic-aligned states’s governors have said they are prepared to counter by doing the same against the Republicans.)

In early-August, Trump fired the labor statistics commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, due to the July 2025 jobs numbers report. As if this action by Trump is a win for people, including those who will vote in the 2026 midterm elections, because they would supposedly embrace this incumbent party.

I must confess that none of this is surprising. But, I care. And it is upsetting. 

I am reminded, in some way, how the presidencies of Joe Biden and Donald Trump—Parts I and II—are not meaningfully different. They are both authoritarians. They are terrible U.S. presidents. And their leadership intentionally hurts particular people via their policies.

Next year will be the 250th anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence. When that date arrives, and given what has become of the United States, having a sense of humor will not only be helpful but also necessary.

Flashback 1975: Jimmy Hoffa Disappears

Last Wednesday was July 30, 2025. It marked 50 years since the anniversary of the disappearance of Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa.

Born February 14, 1913, in Brazil. Indiana, Hoffa served as General President from 1957 to 1971.

Hoffa was a labor union president who had ties to the mob.

He disappeared Wednesday, July 30, 1975, at the age 62, apparently outside then-Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township in Oakland County, Michigan. (General area in Detroit.)

Hoffa was declared Dead in Absentia seven years later, on the same calendar date, in 1982.

Below is a video, from 2019, by WDIV (“Click on Detroit), the NBC-affiliated station in Detroit, Michigan. It is titled, “Jimmy Hoffa: A closer look at the labor leaders’s life, work and disappearance.” Comments to this video are turned off. But, it has more than 6 million views. Duration is 48 minutes.

 

More videos follow. They come Detroit, Michigan stations WDIV and WJBK (Ch. 02, Fox). They actually were timed just days before this blog topic was published. (WDIV’s video was published July 30, 2025.) So, while I thought of publishing this topic before the anniversary date…it turned out to be even better that I waited.

Flashback 2024: Biden Drops Out

This month marks one year since the presidency of Joe Biden was drawing to its effective close.

The 46th U.S. president and 47th U.S. vice president and six-term U.S. senator from Delaware had a low job approval consistently in the 30s percentile range.

This clearly pointed to a Republican pickup year and a non-consecutive second-term re-election for 45th and, now, 47th U.S. president Donald Trump.

What eventually undid Biden is that the party support ended. 

For numerous reasons. 

Among them:

• Polls showed there were self-identified Democrats who would not vote to re-elect Biden

• More states, beyond the 31 carried by Trump, were emerging as potential GOP pickups

This was also a problem with donors letting the Democratic Party Establishment know, given this and other considerations (like Biden’s condition), they would not contribute to Team Blue.

Add to this that Trump, who could have gone on to win not 31 but more like 41 states, meant that approximately ten more states would become vulnerable to Democrats not only at the presidential level…but also for U.S. House and, for those on the schedule, U.S. Senate. Devastating downballot impact.

On July 21, 2024, Biden dropped out.

(I know there is no need to write more in depth about this. We are well-aware. But it ended up, for me, one more reason why I reject the Democratic Party.)

Upcoming Schedule for Progressives Chat

Blog topics for next month will publish on Fridays, August 1 and 15, 2025.

'Jaws’ and ‘Nashville’ Turns 50

Summer has long been embraced as a time away from school, from work, and from the usual routine. 

I will do some of this as I give Progressives Chat some rest. 

Rather than a weekly schedule, Progressives Chat will have July and August 2025 topics scheduled for the 1st and 15th of each month. Four topics. 

In July, these dates will fall on a Tuesday. In August, they will be on a Friday. This is to give me, frankly, some break. I am honestly needing it. (I have some personal matters but will still post in Comments.)

Progressive Chat will return to Mondays beginning on September 1, 2025.

I have expanded Comments to allow up to 30 days from a blog topic’s publishing date. 

For this first entry in July 2025…

Fifty years ago, in 1975, saw the releases of two acclaimed motion pictures.

Wednesday, June 11, 1975 was the date director Robert Altman’s groundbreaking film, Nashville, was released.

Friday, June 20, 1975 was the date director Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was released in movie theatres.

Jaws is better known, to most people, and it is the ultimate thriller. The enemy being a shark who goes on the hunt at a New England beach. Roy Scheider plays the police chief. Richard Dreyfuss as the marine biologist. Robert Shaw is the shark hunter.

Jaws was adapted to the screen by Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley. It is based on the latter’s 1974 novel. It was of the early-enough blockbuster films which changed the course of Hollywood standards in movie-making. It is genius work by Spielberg.

Nashville was my favorite film of 1975, the 1970s, and of what I have seen in motion pictures during the second half of the 20th century. It is an all-American look at 24 different and complicated individuals who are gathering for a presidential candidate. The music is, mostly, Country.

Jaws and Nashville are masterpieces for directors Spielberg and Altman. But, I must apply that old adage, “Behind every great man [there] is a great woman.” They are Verna Fields and Joan Tewkesbury. Fields won the 1975 Oscar for Film Editing and is key to why Jaws grips and scares the hell out of people. Tewkesbury wielded magic in her written-directly-for-the-screen Nashville with convincingly integrating and circulating those 24 characters in the same orbit.

Jaws was Oscar nominated for Best Picture of 1975 but, amazingly, Steven Spielberg was not nominated for Best Director nor were Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley for Adapted Screenplay nor Robert Shaw for Supporting Actor. 

Nashville won the 1975 Original Song Oscar, for “I’m Easy,” for its songwriter and performer and actor Keith Carradine. It was nominated for Best Picture, Director for Robert Altman, and Supporting Actress for each of Ronee Blakley and Lily Tomlin. Strangely, Joan Tewkesbury was not nominated for Original Screenplay nor was Henry Gibson for Supporting Actor.

Much more could be written of both films. But, I will post more in the Comments.

The following two clips include something having to do with a boat and an astonishing opener…

U.S. Bombs Iran

As reported by USA Today, on Saturday, June 21, 2025, “President Donald Trump on Saturday night announced American warplanes dropped bombs on three nuclear sites in Iran, with the U.S. officially entering the war more than a week after Israel’s initial attack.”

Link: 

US bombs Iran: What to know about possible weapon, the 'bunker buster'

This is not surprising.

It is destructive.

I will post some related videos in the Comments.

Progressives Chat Update

Next week’s blog topic will publish Tuesday, July 1, 2025 at 06:00 a.m. ET.

Latest Developments…

Over the last few days:

• Israel struck Iran and Iran struck Israel. Naturally, there are tweets on X weighing in. And there are defenders of Israel who want U.S. involvement and its soldiers to fight. It is, and this is putting it kindly, supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump—MAGA World—who are there for wherever is Trump. Those not in support get to clash with those in support of Israel. The nation’s leaders, and their administrations, have talked for years about going to war against Iran. Of course, that is what this country does—wars—and we will find out what more may come.

• Minnesota politicians targeted for assassination. Two state legislature figures were targeted for assassination. Melissa Hortman, age 55 and DFL leader in the Minnesota House of Representatives, along with her husband Mark, was assassinated in her home. Also targeted for assassination, but having survived, was John Hoffman, DFL, a state senator and age 60, along with his wife Yvette. Their adult daughter, shielded by her mother, was not shot. The suspect, following a weekend manhunt, has been apprehended. He is Vance Luther Boelter, 57.

There likely will be more up-to-date details during the week.