Tag Archives: Baseball

Open Tabs

Open Tabs [4/28/14]: Liberal Catholics; Build a Baseball Team; Sainthood

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Catholics are a lot more liberal than Evangelicals
[Brandon Ambrosino]

Fascinating piece from Ambrosino.

Here are a few surprising comparisons from the survey:

  • Two-thirds of Evangelicals oppose same-sex marriage compared with only 37 percent of Catholics.
  • Almost 4 out of 5 Evangelicals think sex between two adults of the same gender is morally wrong, while just under half of Catholics think it’s wrong.
  • About twenty percent more Evangelicals than Catholics think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
  • More Catholics (78 percent) than Evangelicals (61 percent) support raising the minimum wage to $10/hr
  • Almost twice as many Catholics (62 percent to 34 percent) believe the government should guarantee health care to every citizen — even if it means increasing taxes
The percent gap between Evangelicals and Catholics varied by question. Both groups, however, were most closely aligned in their beliefs about equal opportunity. Less than half of all Catholics (47 percent) and Evangelicals (42 percent) think it’s “not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others.”

What’s The Best Way To Build a Major League Baseball Team?
[FiveThirtyEight]

If you love Moneyball, you’ll love this article.

“Moneyball” told the story of a plucky Oakland A’s team that exploited market inefficiencies, overcame the loss of several excellent players and went on to have one of the best seven-year runs in franchise history. Today’s A’s have won two straight AL West titles and are in the hunt for a third. They also have fewer elite homegrown players than their predecessors did a decade ago — even the most hardcore baseball fans would have a tough time naming a single A’s superstar. Given their lack of top talent, and theextremely subtle methods they’ve used to build a winner, you could argue that today’s A’s are even more “Moneyball” than their forebears were.

The A’s lack of reliance on star players, combined with their recent success, has engendered numerous articles singing their praises and extolling the virtue of a team that uses balance, depth and versatility (and not star power) to win games. Hell, even the defending champion Boston Red Sox — a big-revenue ballclub with a $155 million Opening Day payroll — embraced the power of roster balance and depth to win it all.

How the Catholic Church makes saints
[CNN Belief Blog]

I learned a lot in this article. Perhaps you will too.

(CNN) – On Sunday, for the first time in history, the Catholic Church will canonize two popes on the same day.

Pope Francis will preside over a special ceremony that is expected to draw upwards of a million pilgrims, who will gather in St. Peter’s Square to witness Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII enter the celestial community of Catholic saints.

Here’s a bit about the Catholic Church’s canonization process.

What is a saint, and how many are there?

Catholics believe a saint is someone who lived a holy life and who’s already in heaven. Saints are considered role models for people still on Earth, and are capable of interceding with God on someone’s behalf when a request for help is made in prayer.

The actual number of saints is impossible to calculate. One well-known work called “Lives of the Saints” lists 2,565 Catholic saints, but that doesn’t count thousands of others celebrated in local regions all over the world. The Catholic Church has a feast, All Saints’ Day, on November 1 to honor the countless saints who aren’t formally canonized.