I don't want to live on this planet anymore

Tigers extend contracts of Jim Leyland (2012) and Dave Dombrowski (2015)


My reaction, in a montage of images:

Dombrowski I can live with most days; while I want to throw him off the Ambassador Bridge for literally having nothing to show for talented 2B Scott Sizemore, not to mention some of his other boneheaded, short-sighted moves (o Jurrjens, where art thou?), he's done some good things while he's been in Detroit.
Leyland, however, proves that you don't have to do a good job to earn your money, or in this case, a new contract.  This was his put up or shut up year (a gift, as far as I was concerned, since I think last year would have been a nice time to cut bait) and he has yet to prove anything in a very weak AL Central.  Leyland is living off the afterglow of a lucky World Series appearance five years ago (plus a ring from almost 15 years ago) and he's done nothing since to earn his multiple contract extensions.


For those of you that don't know, here's how Leyland's teams performed in the second halves of his first five seasons in Detroit.  If you can count that high, you can see that this is less than a .500 winning percentage and therefore not good.


In 2006 the Tigers basically rode a ridiculous first half to an extremely lucky Wild Card berth, which should have been a division crown, something Leyland hasn't even been in the ballpark of (if you'll pardon the pun) since.  The 36-38 2nd half finish was the start of an alarming (unless you're Detroit's front office) trend.


2007 and 2008 saw a great start and typically poor finish, then a horrible first half plus .500 second half, respectively, and in both seasons, of course, Detroit failed to make it to the postseason. 2008's finish was particularly poor, not that the playoffs were realistic after a .500 start.  


2009, now that was a banner year--another strong start gave way to a .500 second half in which the Tigers found a way to almost earn a return trip to the playoffs, then give the Twins a foot in the door, then mismanage their way through a loss in the 163rd game (albeit with an indefensibly-missed Brandon Inge HBP).  Leyland favorite and titanic mountain of suck Gerald Laird got to remain in the game despite going 0-6 with two strikeouts in the most crucial game of the season and his team deservedly lost by a run in extras.


2010's second half was basically the opposite of the first, which meant that the Tigers got to enjoy another .500 season, some fine October golfing and the World Series on TV for all I know.  "Wonderful!" Jim Leyland cackled from his fortress of doom and incompetence.  "More opportunity to arrange some ill-timed poor decisions and make myself even more stubborn about hitting my second baseman second.  Polanco's still our second baseman, right?"


2011's first half saw the Tigers finish five games above .500, a not terrible record in a not-great division.  If you're of at least below-average intelligence, you can probably surmise that Detroit will continue its trend of sub-.500 second half baseball and miss the playoffs for the fifth straight year (after making it by a hair six years ago).  Still, it's reasonable to hope your team bucks this trend.  However, awarding another year of a contract to the guy that's been leading your team down this cliff instead of making him prove that he can find a safer way down?


Instead of canning the source of the problem (when the inevitable happens, may as well let him finish out the year) and going into the offseason with a plan to improve, Detroit will probably suffer through more Leylandball next year, fire him in the middle of the season then have to go through the annoyance of an interim manager and candidate search.

Listen:  fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.  Fool me three times, that's a crowd.  Fool me four times, maybe I should start to see a pattern.  Fool me five times and I'll give you a contract extension.

No, eBay, screw YOU

Somebody made one of these with a Michigan logo on it, but then I read the post and he hated Michigan and 'Shopped a pic of bin Ladin in a Michigan t-shirt, so screw that

A lovely email from eBay graced my inbox this evening, one several of you might have received as well (although I'm hoping not, as you'll see):

Dear caljr3000-half:

Several weeks ago, we wrote to tell you about coming updates that may affect your selling. This is a reminder to take action now to make sure you're ready.

Update to the way sellers below eBay's minimum performance standards are paid through PayPal

Starting May 31, sellers who fall below eBay's minimum performance standards may have their buyer payments show as pending in their PayPal account for a period of time to help ensure successful fulfillment.

Your account was below the minimum standard as of this writing. If you're subject to this update, you'll be notified when you list and you'll receive an email notification from PayPal when your funds are pending. You'll also find information in My eBay showing the estimated date funds will be available and steps you can take to help get your funds faster.

What you need to do:

• Stay on top of your status in your Seller Dashboard.
• Follow best practices to get above standard.
• Always upload tracking information to eBay and ship the same day the buyer pays to have your funds available faster. Note if you print shipping labels on eBay or PayPal, tracking information is uploaded automatically and funds will be available for shipping.

[then some other crap nobody cares about]

As always, we appreciate your selling on eBay.

Your eBay seller team 

Oh hi, extremely appropriate Google Image Search result!

Oh, well maybe my feedback got progressively worse--no, no, that's not, it, it's still at a little number I like to call 100% (155).

I guess it's because of all those times I didn't follow the "best practices" that bit me in the ass.  Except I always accurately and clearly describe what I'm selling and I'm great about communicating with buyers (and let me emphasize, I'm referring to the FEW times I sell on eBay--I don't do it as a living, just a couple times a year to unload stuff I don't want) and I've never received one complaint, with the exception of an idiot whose brain was too small to process the four letters in "as-is".

That leaves my failure to "upload tracking information...and ship the same day the buyer pays..." which I neglected to do exactly zero times.

Which means there's only one explanation:  this bullshit, plus eBay's selling fee jacking-up spree and the inability to leave negative feedback for buyers (buyers who've failed to follow "BEST PRACTICES" SUCH AS PAYING FOR ITEMS THEY WON WHICH HAPPENED TO ME MULTIPLE TIMES), not to mention hating on people taking "gift" payments through PayPal to avoid their ridiculous fees (and charging 15% for run-on sentences, which I only MIGHT be making up) equals eBay extending an olive branch to sellers, except instead of olives it's made of middle fingers and AOL CDs (the next worse thing I could think of at a moment's notice while trying to keep things PG-13).

So as of today, I'm done with selling on eBay.  It's become more and more detrimental to "sell" crap there and I've had enough.  It used to be one thing when you could pay a reasonable fee to post stuff for sale for a large audience and expect a pretty good result, but with eBay's ability to tax you more times than the IRS (assuming you even get paid, with almost no recourse for the buyer if you don't) it's just not worth it.  I may pursue other routes (in the few instances I look to sell; I'm more of a trader anyway) such as the BlowoutCards boards, COMC or more creative outlets, such as the ingenious Zoolbay.

As for others, I doubt anything will happen, but I'd be thrilled to see enough people get fed up that they get eBay by the short ones and force them back into rules and fees that make sense in 2011.  Put up with your bullshit one more time?  No, eBay, screw YOU.

[Sorry for the rant, back to real content in the next day or two, I promise.  Also, bonus "Topps is dumb" tag because they continue to pull stupid shit on the level of eBay and I like using it when I can anyway]

Update from Dirty josh via comments:

after a post on ebay's forum I am told that it's due to my DSR being low [requires 10 detailed seller ratings to be valid]. I have 6 DSR's so I am unable to access the seller dashboard they say to manage everything from. I mailed about 12 buyers that have not left feedback yet so now it's just a waiting game to see if they go leave feedback. I heard from a couple of them saying they haven't gotten the chance to test everything and make sure the item works and they'd leave feedback after that so that's a positive.

I will start leaving a note with the item [like I have received a few times from sellers] reminding them to leave feedback and to let me know before leaving feedback if there are any issues so I can correct them. I hope this helps other people that see this.  

It's not the seller's job to harass buyers for feedback that they should be leaving in the first place, so  eBay can continue to sit and spin.  However, thanks to josh for some constructive feedback.  Also, here's another funny picture:

How Topps MCG Could Be Better

[My apologies if many of you have written something similar recently, though I don't recall seeing anything related--I've got a couple opinions about this and I have nothing else to write about for now]

Topps' heart was in the right place with the Million Card Giveaway promotion in 2010 Topps baseball (since extended to 2010 Topps Football in the form of the Gridiron Giveaway).  Getting a code every few packs, which you'd enter on a web site to redeem for a buyback card, seems like a pretty cool idea at first--a bonus for buying their product.  The totally* random nature of what you might get adds a somewhat exciting slot machine feel to the process.

*Not totally

But that's pretty much where the fun ends, at least for someone like me.  I'm thrilled at the chance I might get a 1950s or 60s card, or even some random 70s player since I don't have that many.  Sadly, most of the time you get some junk wax crap that's going to sit in your virtual collection until Topps inevitably refuses to honor redemption of these cards.

Some collectors might remember that Topps did something similar for their 50th anniversary back in 2001.  In that case they actually inserted most of the cards into their packs (the bigger hits and oversized stuff was done via redemptions).  Did you or anyone you know actually pull anything that was worth keeping?  I know I didn't, even though I opened a ton of baseball packs and football rack packs.  The biggest difference for me this time is that I've actually been blessed with a few decent 60s and 70s pulls.  But that makes this current incarnation only slightly better than the previous one.  Here's how I think Topps could and should improve things, to make a good idea a great one:

1.  Let us view the collections of other users so it's easier to make trades
There's a reason I'm making this #1:  I have a couple cards that happen to receive pretty good demand for whatever reason--mainly my 60s stuff, plus a 1973 Pat Corrales.  I'm happy to trade these--hell, I WANT to trade them.  But when this is the typical offer for one of them,

well needless to say I start to get a bit disillusioned [by the way, if you're one of my readers and made this offer, I'm not ridiculing you, I'm making a point that you're just as negatively affected as me, and I'm getting to it].  This is one of several offers the same user has made for the Corrales, and none of them has been very good.  But if I could click on his username and see his collection, who's to say I wouldn't find one or two cards I'd be happy with so I could make a counter-proposal, knowing that he's already interested in? 
That brings us to a related point...

2.  Topps, your search sucks.  I'm talking Carlos Mencia when he's not stealing jokes, or even when he IS sucks
Scenario 1:  we're somewhat new to collecting, you don't know what you want to trade for.  Let's hit the "Make an Offer" link and get started searching for something we might like:

FUNKY BUTTLOVIN' that's a lot of pages to flip through, and some cards don't even have thumbnails?  And you get to see 12 of these suckers at a time?  F-, Topps.

Scenario 2:  we're smart collectors, we know what we want.  Let's say we psychically know that Willie Horton's '64 Topps RC has been unlocked (God help us if it hasn't).

Oops, Topps couldn't find it, I guess it hasn't been unlocked.  I'm going to go do something more valuable with my time, like buy Donruss and Fleer products from previous years since MLB thinks more than one baseball card company is too confusing.  Ok, wait--I'll give it one more try, I really would love to get this card.  Transmogrifier, show me all the Tigers cards you have from 1964:

Hey, that second one might be it.  It's a bit small, but I'll click on it like I can when I get a trade offer so I can see what the front and back look like--

Oh, nevermind, I forgot that in the small print on the code card it clearly stated that you need to have had some sort of advanced LASIK surgery that turns your retinas into microscopes (patent pending) to use this site.  G-

3.  Enough with the junk wax crap and cards from the last 2+ years

This is nothing new for most of you, but here's an actual list of redeemed cards from when I started writing this post.  Hell, I'm shocked something as good as a Griffey made it on there, even if it's from 1997.  Two 1960s, four 1970s, three 1980s and a 1990.  Mercy, someone help me, I think I have a case of the vapors.

If this is going to be anything special, make the buybacks entirely 1950s-1970s cards, or at most, throw in some of the key RCs from the later sets--Henderson, Ripken, Mattingly, Gwynn, etc.  I literally do not need any more junk Topps cards from the 1980s and most of the 90s.  And how excited should I be to redeem a code and pull a card from all the way back in 2007?  I'm just an unfrozen caveman lawyer*, Topps, your Transmogrifier technology frightens and confuses me.  Come on, guys, make pulling these cards something special, not an excuse to dump your crap overstock on other collectors (that's my job--enjoy your trade packages chummmmmmmmps!).

*Google Image Search result for Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer: 

Just those three improvements, off the top of my head, would go a long way towards making the MCG useful and fun, not soul-crushing and inevitably disappointing.  What else would you guys like to see Topps do to make this promotion better?

As a reminder, please refer to my previous post if you have any interest in trading with me (not that it's possible for us to look each other up on the site or anything)