Shabbot before the Drive

Shabbot Shalom, Stroock's Books Kibbutzim. We don't know if we're going to services tonight or attending a Shabbot dinner at our commie friends' house - or packing for the I-95 Corridor trip. 

Our own sense this morning is that Israel's Rafah campaign is slowly coming together. The Regime is calling for 'targeted operations' etc etc. Which is what the Rafah attack was always going to be, just like the other operations in Gaza. Israel is leaking plans to evacuate Gazan civilians. There's more talk about 'day after' plans involving the Palestinian Authority.  Meanwhile the IAF's tempo of operations against Hezbollah is gradually increasing, with more IAF airstrikes deeper into Lebanon, and a large attack on Aleppo's airport. The IDF conducted a snap Lebanon drill yesterday. 

At home the Israeli Supreme Court has spoken on the Haredi draft issue. Nut graph, as the J-school losers would say: no conscription, no funding. We don't like the tool, but we like the result. We think Netanyahu's government survives this, simply because the Haredi parties have nowhere else to go. Drive an ambulance, be a medic, or a military chaplain for a year. Reminder, this isn't a pacifism/conscientious objector thing. This is a 'we sit around all day studying Toray thing.' These people....

Yesterday commenter Unknown asked where we're staying in Baltimore and warns against venturing out at night. We know the hotel he mentions, but are staying much closer to the Inner Harbor. When we lived in Northern Virginia, back in the 1990s, we would make perhaps half a dozen trips to Baltimore, walk about the inner harbor, visit Lexington Market, and take in an Orioles game. We last visited Baltimore 20 years ago, taking our grandfather to a Yankees-Orioles game on 9/11. We've no memory of the game, but here's the box score.

We didn't even realize Thursday was baseball's opening day. We haven't cared about the Yankees in more than a decade now. Okay, we were mildly interested when the 'baby bombers' came up in 2017-2018. But the prospects were busts (Sanchez, holy-crap) and Judge is injury prone. We do catch a few innings of Mrs. Stroock's Phillies at night. But we're a long way from being able to watch any baseball game, as we were in the late 1990's, the golden age of our baseball fandom. 

Segue to the 1990s Beat: by the late 1990's fashion colors had gotten weird with a lot of earthy, yet bright schemes. Baseball was not immune to the trend. In 1998 one could buy yellow or lime green Yankees baseball caps. Pro tip: those ain't the Yankees' colors. One night that summer, MLB had a 'turn ahead the clock night', chronicled here. Keep scrolling to see the monstrous Pittsburgh Pirates uniform. Yikes. Thankfully Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was a uniform purist, and the team wore the classic road grays that night. Best road uniform in sports.