Achmed nailed it – Royals in five

First, a tip of the cap to our crack sports prognosticator Achmed Walled (pronounced wall-ED). Before post season play began, in our October 4 Rants, Achmed correctly predicted the Royals would be World Champs in five games. The Royals are a team you might be able to beat for the first five innings but you better have a huge lead because they are going to come back at you in the last four – or sometimes seven. Their starting pitching is more than adequate and their bullpen is one of the best in recent years. Good to see a small market team win it all and particularly gratifying to see championship rings go to two truly nice guys, former Ray Ben Zobrist and his manager, Ned Yost.

Around Tampa Bay:

1. Good for bay area law enforcement heads who came out four-square against a ridiculous open carry law being proposed by some panhandle legislators. Second Amendment rights are one thing but turning tourism-dependent Florida into the wild, wild West is something else again.

2. In baseball parlance (because isn’t that the only thing the election was about?) the St. Pete electorate went 2 for 3 in last week’s election – wisely returning incumbent commissioners Charlie Gerdes and Steve Kornell to office. But voters whiffed big time in electing Lisa Wheeler-Brown despite a spotty resume that includes two arrests. The arrests from a few years back you might (emphasis might) be willing to overlook if she had not made similar errors in judgment during her campaign. But it was all about finding another lap dog for the Tampa Bay Rays and the people have spoken, albeit not wisely.

3. Mayor Rick Kriseman may be the best argument in Florida against a strong mayor form of government. He constantly gets ahead of his city commission. In a city manager form of government, if that happens too often, you fire the manager. Strong mayor form makes the commission wait for the next election to have the mayor fired.

4. Highest minimum water bill in Pinellas County? This should not surprise you – it’s Clearwater and another increase of some four percent is on the way.

5. You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time if you remember when there were Australian Pines and a trailer park just north of the main beach.

The diamond, the media and other stuff:

6. Shouldn’t NBC and CNBC’s flattering coverage of presumed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have some sort of “unpaid political advertisement” disclaimer attached?

7. They’ve beaten every team in their division but many remain skeptical of the Cincinnati Bengals – probably because of their ugly playoff record over the past years.

8. The baseball season has just concluded but one projection for 2016 (and beyond), the Mets are going to be scary good with that young pitching staff.

9. In a related note, the Washington Nationals tried to cheap out in their negotiations with Bud Black and wound up with bargain basement manager and thrice-fired Dusty Baker instead. They now have an older version of Matt Williams in their dugout. The one saving grace for the Nats was the hiring of highly regarded Mike Maddux as their new pitching coach which may prevent Baker from mangling the pitching staff which he has done in his previous stops.

10. When notified recently that Taylor Swift was coming to town, our Rants and Raves focus group (comprised of three old, cranky people) thought Taylor Swift was (a) a women’s clothing store; (b) the author of Captains and the Kings and (c) a running back for the Kansas City Chiefs. (Margin of error, in this case, 100 per cent).

So Nielsen is suing Bubba – should be the other way around.

First let us say what Bubba the Love Sponge, a well-known radio personality, did is by his own admission, inexcusable. Tampering with radio and TV diaries (to use a generic term) is an ultimate broadcasting no-no. But and this is a huge but, Nielsen and its predecessors have been screwing up ratings for years. Way too often some little old lady who lives with her 37 cats represents thousands of listeners because of their small sampling size. And while the ratings are a minor irritant to we the listeners and viewers in that our favorite series gets cancelled or the guy we listened to for years on the radio is no longer there; ratings when not accurate (and that is often) cost announcers, artists, programmers and general managers their livelihood. This is why astute broadcast companies wait at least two ratings periods before making any changes in programming because so often they find that little old lady with the 37 cats who represents thousands of people only listens to polka music – and all the ratings companies can say is whoops- sorry about that job you lost!