There were 3 unlikely heroes in last night's Phillies' game: the last position player on the bench whom most fans view as a mistaken free agent signing, a reliever who should get the Duncan yo-yo endorsement for most times being yanked up and down from the majors to AAA during a season, and a promising fourth outfielder who had trouble seeing the ball early in the contest.
The Phillies beat the Cards in 14 last night, 7-4, leaving themselves 1.5 games behind the Mets in the NL East and 1.5 games behind the Padres for the wild card. They're either on the verge of a great finish that will enable them to make the playoffs or they'll finish as the fifth best team in the NL for the third year in a row, narrowly missing the playoffs. All that said, they're fun to watch, a team with a World Series-caliber position playing lineup and a pitching staff that could give Six Flags' best roller coaster a run for its money.
Last night, the Phillies went into the top of the 14th tied at 4 with the Cardinals. Chase Utley was on second, Aaron Rowand on first, with two outs. Because of a double switch earlier in the game, it was the pitcher's turn to bat. The Phillies had one position player left on the bench, reserve catcher, Rod Barajas. Barajas was signed as a free agent in the off-season and handed the starting catcher's job, which he promptly lost to both second-year player Carlos Ruiz and the Disney movie waiting to happen, second-year player Chris Coste, who made the majors for the first time last season at the age of 33. Barajas was put on the DL about a month or so ago with an NBA-type of injury, came off without much fanfare, and has hardly played. Needless to say, when I saw him come up to the plate, I figure that the Phillies' bullpen would need to hold -- again -- to survive for the 15th inning.
I was wrong. Barajas, ever the professional, was ready for his moment, smacked a hard single to right center driving in a sprinting Utley to make the score 5-4. It was a clutch piece of a hitting for a team that knew that the Mets had collapsed against the Nationals in DC earlier that night and a win could put them within 1.5 games of first in the NL East. What a lesson Barajas taught us all -- that a true teammate stands ready to play whenever he is called upon. Barajas did just that.
Then there was Werth, who had left 6 men on base and struck out twice in key situations earlier in the evening. Werth is playing a lot in right because he's had a hot bat and because the incumbent, Shane Victorino, still hasn't fully recovered from an injury to his calf that he sustained in July. Werth followed Barajas to the plate with the opportunity to give the Phillies a few insurance runs. Showing that a short memory is key for a good hitter, Werth hit a tailing line drive a few feet inside the first-base foul line that made it was to the rightfield corner. Two runs scored, and the Phils were up 7-4.
Enter Clay Condrey, the reliever who should win the Puddle Jumper Airlines' Man of the Year award for how much he's rode the shuttle to and from Ottawa, home of the Phils' AAA farm club. Condrey also demonstrated what a professional he is, because the night before he let in 5 runs in relief en route to an almost-disaster for the Phils, who held on to win 13-11. He pitched a strong final inning for his first career save (and was about the 8th Phillies' reliever to notch a save this year). Condrey obviously blocked out the horrors of his Monday night performance and came up with a key inning last night.
And the Phillies' bullpen came up with the following stats last night:
11 IP
6 H
1 R
1 ER
2 BB
8 K.
A great job by an oft-maligned (deservedly so at many intervals) group.
As for who's left to spell Jamie Moyer tonight, there are a few guys, that's for sure. But what wins championships for teams are not only the outstanding day-in, day-out performances of the Utleys, Rollins and Howards, but also the lesser publicized efforts of guys who many fans probably forget 5 years after they leave town, the Barajases, Condreys and Werths. And while that may be, let's remember this: last night, when it really mattered, they played like Hall of Famers.
All of us should take stock in what Rod Barajas, Clay Condrey and Jayson Werth accomplished last night. All have taken many knocks this season, and all bounced back to make the most of their opportunities last night. That's a great measure of a player and a person -- not only basking in the good times, but getting up after the bad ones.
The 14-inning game was exciting, and the Phils provided a few extra lessons in the final innings.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Stop Snitchin' is the Credo in the NFL
at least among coaches.
Okay, it's really not the same thing as people who live in innercity neighborhoods who are strongly encouraged not to cooperate with the police and prosecutors. NFL coaches and front offices will cooperate with the league when asked or else they'll find themselves without draft icks or in some doghouse somewhere. But then again, they don't find themselves going to the authorities when they see bad things happening, or, at least, that's what the credo about Peter King writes in Sports Illustrated this week.
What do you think? Should teams tell the league about other teams' transgressions or should they try to work it out amongst themselves?
Well, two teams last year did call the Patriots last season on what's now become the most publicized fascination with tape since the Nixon Administration and Watergate, and, guess what? It apparently didn't work, because the Pats continued their tried and true old tricks this year. Perhaps they did promise two NFC teams whom they won't see again for a while that they won't illegally tape events in the future. But perhaps they didn't say they wouldn't do it again, period. If that's the case, do you have a choice? Don't you turn them in because they were warned?
Rex Ryan, the defensive coordinator for the Ravens and Buddy's son, makes the most sense when he says that coaches should spend their time on how to beat the other team rather than how to disguise their signals. He's absolutely right about that.
When, or how, will this scandal finally go away?
Well, here's one solution. O.J. Simpson did make bail, and he allegedly has a weapon, so there's no telling what he might do. As Dustin Hoffman's character in "Wag the Dog" said about a president whose administration was in trouble and needed a distraction, "What we need now is a pageant."
Indeed.
Okay, it's really not the same thing as people who live in innercity neighborhoods who are strongly encouraged not to cooperate with the police and prosecutors. NFL coaches and front offices will cooperate with the league when asked or else they'll find themselves without draft icks or in some doghouse somewhere. But then again, they don't find themselves going to the authorities when they see bad things happening, or, at least, that's what the credo about Peter King writes in Sports Illustrated this week.
What do you think? Should teams tell the league about other teams' transgressions or should they try to work it out amongst themselves?
Well, two teams last year did call the Patriots last season on what's now become the most publicized fascination with tape since the Nixon Administration and Watergate, and, guess what? It apparently didn't work, because the Pats continued their tried and true old tricks this year. Perhaps they did promise two NFC teams whom they won't see again for a while that they won't illegally tape events in the future. But perhaps they didn't say they wouldn't do it again, period. If that's the case, do you have a choice? Don't you turn them in because they were warned?
Rex Ryan, the defensive coordinator for the Ravens and Buddy's son, makes the most sense when he says that coaches should spend their time on how to beat the other team rather than how to disguise their signals. He's absolutely right about that.
When, or how, will this scandal finally go away?
Well, here's one solution. O.J. Simpson did make bail, and he allegedly has a weapon, so there's no telling what he might do. As Dustin Hoffman's character in "Wag the Dog" said about a president whose administration was in trouble and needed a distraction, "What we need now is a pageant."
Indeed.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Truth of the Matter. . .
is that if you're a Philadelphia Phillies' fan, no lead is safe.
I went to bed last night with the Phillies holding an 11-3 lead over the Cardinals. I went to bed hoping that the bullpen would be good enough to hold onto the lead.
Seriously.
Ask a Phillies' fan, anywhere, and he'd tell you the same thing -- that no lead is safe.
I wasn't surprised when I read in the morning's paper that they held on to win -- 13-11 (they had led 11-0).
Such is the life of a Phillies' fan. You have a position player lineup that is capable of winning the World Series. And you have a pitching staff that is capable of winning the Little League World Series. Okay, that's a bit harsh, but it's been like this all year in the City of Brotherly Love. The hometown nine are fun to watch, there's no disputing that. But those under a cardiologist's care should not watch the game from the 6th inning on or when either J.D. Durbin or Adam Eaton is the starting pitcher, for that matter.
I went to bed last night with the Phillies holding an 11-3 lead over the Cardinals. I went to bed hoping that the bullpen would be good enough to hold onto the lead.
Seriously.
Ask a Phillies' fan, anywhere, and he'd tell you the same thing -- that no lead is safe.
I wasn't surprised when I read in the morning's paper that they held on to win -- 13-11 (they had led 11-0).
Such is the life of a Phillies' fan. You have a position player lineup that is capable of winning the World Series. And you have a pitching staff that is capable of winning the Little League World Series. Okay, that's a bit harsh, but it's been like this all year in the City of Brotherly Love. The hometown nine are fun to watch, there's no disputing that. But those under a cardiologist's care should not watch the game from the 6th inning on or when either J.D. Durbin or Adam Eaton is the starting pitcher, for that matter.
The Problem That Just Can't Get Solved That Easily
The nation loves its football. It's the national pastime now, and there are many factors as to why it has eclipsed baseball. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Media advancements have made it a much more exciting game to watch than baseball, especially on television.
2. It's very easy to bet on, and, at heart, many of us like a good wager that's easily discernible. You can't bet on baseball that easily, and it's more a question of the odds you get than a point spread, and Americans love their point spreads.
3. It's violent, and our society has become more violent, so instead of hitting our neighbors who mow their lawns at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday we want our hometown gladiators to maul the guys from Dallas. (Okay, so that argument would bode well for hockey, which isn't nearly as popular as football). Still, there's some appeal to this logic.
4. The baseball strike of 1994, where they actually canceled the World Series, opened the door for football to become more popular because the NFL didn't have the labor strife that MLB did. Many sports fans were very angry with baseball for years.
5. The NFL's salary cap gives every team a chance to rebound and rebuild very quickly, whereas, well, the lack of a salary cap has rendered Pittsburgh and Kansas City, among other clubs, perennial doormat status in Major League Baseball.
I actually don't know what the root cause is/was/has been of football's great rise, but that rise has come at a historic cost that is the very sad underbelly of the NFL and, for that matter, all of football -- the permanently injured. Read this article about recent testimony before Congress on the frustrating issue of making sure that injured retirees don't end up living in squalor because they don't have sufficient funds to address their medical needs, some of which are substantial. After all, most of us don't make our living hefting weight or colliding with people, and those who do start playing at 7 and some don't finish until they're 32 (while many never play in college, many who play in college don't play in the pros and many pros don't play more than a handful of games). That said, there are about 2 decades worth of violent, bone-jarring collisions replete with breaks, strains, sprains, dislocations, pinched nervers, concussions and the like that are serious injuries. Put differently, the heroes of their prime could be the same guys you see limping into an old timers' day.
It's with great hope that the NFL owners and teams and television networks will pony up to make sure that the players are well provided for. Americans derive great joy from the sport, but the costs are very high -- the wreckage of bodies and lives resulting from the long-term damage the game does to people. That price is too much for any of us to bear.
And that leads to another question -- will people be playing the game in 50 years? On the pro side, the medical advancements and equipment should be much better. On the con side, the evolution of man is such that you could have 6'5", 300-pound linebackers running 4.5 second 40-yard dashes colliding with running backs who are 2/3 their size. What happens then? And to those players 20 years after they retire? How much of the "All Jacked Up" film do we want to see on ESPN? Will society say the game is too violent -- or will it want more and more?
Let's hope that the players' union, the league and the owners resolve this bad problem soon and well. The retired players deserve better than they get. I'm not assigning blame here, because some say that the union hasn't represented the players well enough in this regard and others say that the teams haven't cared enough. The bottom line is that we're talking about players who have played hard and made great sacrifices for the hometown team. Whether or not the game is wise is another story, but given its popularity today, the league and the union should make this issue their top priority.
1. Media advancements have made it a much more exciting game to watch than baseball, especially on television.
2. It's very easy to bet on, and, at heart, many of us like a good wager that's easily discernible. You can't bet on baseball that easily, and it's more a question of the odds you get than a point spread, and Americans love their point spreads.
3. It's violent, and our society has become more violent, so instead of hitting our neighbors who mow their lawns at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday we want our hometown gladiators to maul the guys from Dallas. (Okay, so that argument would bode well for hockey, which isn't nearly as popular as football). Still, there's some appeal to this logic.
4. The baseball strike of 1994, where they actually canceled the World Series, opened the door for football to become more popular because the NFL didn't have the labor strife that MLB did. Many sports fans were very angry with baseball for years.
5. The NFL's salary cap gives every team a chance to rebound and rebuild very quickly, whereas, well, the lack of a salary cap has rendered Pittsburgh and Kansas City, among other clubs, perennial doormat status in Major League Baseball.
I actually don't know what the root cause is/was/has been of football's great rise, but that rise has come at a historic cost that is the very sad underbelly of the NFL and, for that matter, all of football -- the permanently injured. Read this article about recent testimony before Congress on the frustrating issue of making sure that injured retirees don't end up living in squalor because they don't have sufficient funds to address their medical needs, some of which are substantial. After all, most of us don't make our living hefting weight or colliding with people, and those who do start playing at 7 and some don't finish until they're 32 (while many never play in college, many who play in college don't play in the pros and many pros don't play more than a handful of games). That said, there are about 2 decades worth of violent, bone-jarring collisions replete with breaks, strains, sprains, dislocations, pinched nervers, concussions and the like that are serious injuries. Put differently, the heroes of their prime could be the same guys you see limping into an old timers' day.
It's with great hope that the NFL owners and teams and television networks will pony up to make sure that the players are well provided for. Americans derive great joy from the sport, but the costs are very high -- the wreckage of bodies and lives resulting from the long-term damage the game does to people. That price is too much for any of us to bear.
And that leads to another question -- will people be playing the game in 50 years? On the pro side, the medical advancements and equipment should be much better. On the con side, the evolution of man is such that you could have 6'5", 300-pound linebackers running 4.5 second 40-yard dashes colliding with running backs who are 2/3 their size. What happens then? And to those players 20 years after they retire? How much of the "All Jacked Up" film do we want to see on ESPN? Will society say the game is too violent -- or will it want more and more?
Let's hope that the players' union, the league and the owners resolve this bad problem soon and well. The retired players deserve better than they get. I'm not assigning blame here, because some say that the union hasn't represented the players well enough in this regard and others say that the teams haven't cared enough. The bottom line is that we're talking about players who have played hard and made great sacrifices for the hometown team. Whether or not the game is wise is another story, but given its popularity today, the league and the union should make this issue their top priority.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
You Couldn't Make The First Two and a Half Quarters Up
Last night, in Princeton, the defending Ivy co-champs hosted Lehigh for their first game of the season. In the first two and a half quarters, the Tigers proceeded to do the following (and if you wrote this as a part of a script, few would have believed it):
1. Lose a fumble on the first play from scrimmage.
2. Throw two interceptions (one on a tipped ball, the other on a bad throw).
3. Muff a punt (ball was rolling slowly to the Tiger returner, with Lehigh coverage guys right on him, and he pulled a Philadelphia Eagle stunt and muffed the ball), with Lehigh recovering it.
4. Had a punt blocked in their own end zone for a safety (the snap was from about the Tigers' one yard-line, and the punter never had a chance. He made a great play by falling on the ball and preventing a Lehigh TD); and
5. A kick returner failed to run under a short kick, letting it bounce, and, again, Lehigh covered the kick well and recovered it.
The final score was 32-21, Lehigh, but the game wasn't that close. The Tiger team as a whole looked unprepared for the game -- from the coaches to the offense to the special teams. In fairness to the defense, while Lehigh looked quicker, they were on the field so much they had to be exhausted. It was a bad night overall for a team that came into the season with so much promise.
That said, one game doesn't a season make, and the best you can say is that the Tigers got out the rust and cobwebs from the off-season and will leave these mistakes behind and excel in their next nine games. Of course, if the first game is a harbinger of things to come, it could be a long season. It's way too early to pass judgment on the Tiger squad, but last night was a bad game for Princeton.
1. Lose a fumble on the first play from scrimmage.
2. Throw two interceptions (one on a tipped ball, the other on a bad throw).
3. Muff a punt (ball was rolling slowly to the Tiger returner, with Lehigh coverage guys right on him, and he pulled a Philadelphia Eagle stunt and muffed the ball), with Lehigh recovering it.
4. Had a punt blocked in their own end zone for a safety (the snap was from about the Tigers' one yard-line, and the punter never had a chance. He made a great play by falling on the ball and preventing a Lehigh TD); and
5. A kick returner failed to run under a short kick, letting it bounce, and, again, Lehigh covered the kick well and recovered it.
The final score was 32-21, Lehigh, but the game wasn't that close. The Tiger team as a whole looked unprepared for the game -- from the coaches to the offense to the special teams. In fairness to the defense, while Lehigh looked quicker, they were on the field so much they had to be exhausted. It was a bad night overall for a team that came into the season with so much promise.
That said, one game doesn't a season make, and the best you can say is that the Tigers got out the rust and cobwebs from the off-season and will leave these mistakes behind and excel in their next nine games. Of course, if the first game is a harbinger of things to come, it could be a long season. It's way too early to pass judgment on the Tiger squad, but last night was a bad game for Princeton.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Why Wasn't Bill Belichick Suspended?
Good stuff on ESPN Radio this morning regarding the Tape Worm that New England has afflicted the NFL with. Chris Mortensen reported that he spoke with 6 NFL teams, and half thought the punishment was okay and half thought it wasn't enough. I agree with Mortensen that it might not have been enough, especially since the Pats have two first-round picks in the 2008 NFL draft -- their own and San Francisco's.
And I'll go one further. . . why wasn't Belichick suspended?
Fine him $500,000 -- he can afford it.
Fine the team $250,000 -- it will hardly hurt their bottom line.
Strip them of draft picks depending on whether they'll make the playoffs -- they're such good drafters, the league didn't take enough picks away.
But take Belichick out of the building for an entire season?
That would get people talking.
No coaching input.
No drafting input.
Put him on his house in Martha's Vineyard and make him watch HSN and HGTV and write reports on the evolution of "The Andy Griffith Show" as it appears on TVLand. Put him to work, yes, okay, for a better cause (such as leading a one-year task force to reduce injuries in the NFL and to increase the lifespans of former players), but keep him out of coaching.
That would send a message -- to owners, to players, to front-office people, to fans -- that the NFL is most serious as to how it treats transgressors. Because recently, it has send conflicting messages. Cheat on substances if you're a player, and you could miss anywhere from four games to a season depending on the circumstances. Cheat on the fundamentals of good sportsmanship -- taping other teams' signals, allegedly wiring defensive linemen, causing teams headsets to not work at New England's home stadium -- and you get fined but you still get to do what you love. Pac-Man Jones acts like a total goofball and embarrasses the league and he's out for a year. Bill Belichick doesn't throw $80k at strippers and causes a riot in the process, but he damages the foundation of the game. And he still gets to do what he loves. Many players have trouble regaining their form after missing a year, but coaches can sit out 15 years and win a Super Bowl (such as Dick Vermeil). How does that square?
I like the fact that Roger Goodell isn't bashful about being out in front of issues. He's gotten off to a great start and he's confronted some serious problems. That said, he should have whacked this coaching titan (however misanthropic he may be) much harder.
Sure, now, there will be speculation about the outcome of games that were played since Belichick has been in New England. Leo Durocher, who managed the NY baseball Giants to a miraculous comeback in the 1951 season (the one that led to Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Round the World" home run to win the three-game playoff against the Dodgers to get into the World Series), has been shown to be a cheater -- he had cameras in centerfield to steal the Dodgers' signs and posthumously has been vilified (it hasn't helped Leo's cause that he was much more of a rogue than most managers and coaches past and present were or are). What has Belichick perpetrated that's any different?
Not much, and I think that folks just find it hard to believe that this so-called coaching genius who went to Ivy-like Wesleyan University could have done any such thing. After all, he's the coaching genius, so it couldn't have happened, because the Pats won because Belichick is so brilliant and Tom Brady is so cool. Except that it did happen, and now fans and players and coaches will wonder about how New England's change of game plan in a second half was so perfect or why the headphones went out during a key drive and all of this other petty, parlor-trick stuff that's supposed to be reserved for the villians in Disney movies. And, naturally, speculation will turn to other successful teams as well. Were their victories so much that their coaches had them better prepared or that their coaches had wrongly obtained key information that was tantamount to stealing a playbook?
Bill Belichick has no one to blame but himself. He is a very smart and accomplished coach, but no one compelled him to breach the boundaries of the rule book and good sportsmanship the way that he did. Yes, we do admire those who play aggressively -- but within the limits. And, no, we don't remember the guys who act with dignity and stress fair play and lose (I happen to remember Illinois' Lou Tepper, but most people don't). Is that what it's come to -- cross the line and win or don't and be out of a job and forgotten?
Roger Goodell would have answered that question -- once and for all -- by enforcing a lengthy vacation for Mr. Belichick.
And I'll go one further. . . why wasn't Belichick suspended?
Fine him $500,000 -- he can afford it.
Fine the team $250,000 -- it will hardly hurt their bottom line.
Strip them of draft picks depending on whether they'll make the playoffs -- they're such good drafters, the league didn't take enough picks away.
But take Belichick out of the building for an entire season?
That would get people talking.
No coaching input.
No drafting input.
Put him on his house in Martha's Vineyard and make him watch HSN and HGTV and write reports on the evolution of "The Andy Griffith Show" as it appears on TVLand. Put him to work, yes, okay, for a better cause (such as leading a one-year task force to reduce injuries in the NFL and to increase the lifespans of former players), but keep him out of coaching.
That would send a message -- to owners, to players, to front-office people, to fans -- that the NFL is most serious as to how it treats transgressors. Because recently, it has send conflicting messages. Cheat on substances if you're a player, and you could miss anywhere from four games to a season depending on the circumstances. Cheat on the fundamentals of good sportsmanship -- taping other teams' signals, allegedly wiring defensive linemen, causing teams headsets to not work at New England's home stadium -- and you get fined but you still get to do what you love. Pac-Man Jones acts like a total goofball and embarrasses the league and he's out for a year. Bill Belichick doesn't throw $80k at strippers and causes a riot in the process, but he damages the foundation of the game. And he still gets to do what he loves. Many players have trouble regaining their form after missing a year, but coaches can sit out 15 years and win a Super Bowl (such as Dick Vermeil). How does that square?
I like the fact that Roger Goodell isn't bashful about being out in front of issues. He's gotten off to a great start and he's confronted some serious problems. That said, he should have whacked this coaching titan (however misanthropic he may be) much harder.
Sure, now, there will be speculation about the outcome of games that were played since Belichick has been in New England. Leo Durocher, who managed the NY baseball Giants to a miraculous comeback in the 1951 season (the one that led to Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Round the World" home run to win the three-game playoff against the Dodgers to get into the World Series), has been shown to be a cheater -- he had cameras in centerfield to steal the Dodgers' signs and posthumously has been vilified (it hasn't helped Leo's cause that he was much more of a rogue than most managers and coaches past and present were or are). What has Belichick perpetrated that's any different?
Not much, and I think that folks just find it hard to believe that this so-called coaching genius who went to Ivy-like Wesleyan University could have done any such thing. After all, he's the coaching genius, so it couldn't have happened, because the Pats won because Belichick is so brilliant and Tom Brady is so cool. Except that it did happen, and now fans and players and coaches will wonder about how New England's change of game plan in a second half was so perfect or why the headphones went out during a key drive and all of this other petty, parlor-trick stuff that's supposed to be reserved for the villians in Disney movies. And, naturally, speculation will turn to other successful teams as well. Were their victories so much that their coaches had them better prepared or that their coaches had wrongly obtained key information that was tantamount to stealing a playbook?
Bill Belichick has no one to blame but himself. He is a very smart and accomplished coach, but no one compelled him to breach the boundaries of the rule book and good sportsmanship the way that he did. Yes, we do admire those who play aggressively -- but within the limits. And, no, we don't remember the guys who act with dignity and stress fair play and lose (I happen to remember Illinois' Lou Tepper, but most people don't). Is that what it's come to -- cross the line and win or don't and be out of a job and forgotten?
Roger Goodell would have answered that question -- once and for all -- by enforcing a lengthy vacation for Mr. Belichick.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Annals of Bad Coaching Decisions: Greg Ryan, U.S. Women's Soccer
In Rocky IV, one of the worst "Rocky" movies and one where Sylvester Stallone got way too full of himself, improbably Soviet (yes, Soviet, and not Russian) fans started rooting for Rocky Balboa after he bloodied the steroid-fed and seemingly invincible Soviet champ Ivan Drago in a title match deep inside the Evil Empire.
Fast forward to today, where the North Korean women's team, a young, spritely bunch, played like attacking, aggressive Americans and the U.S. women's team, not the team per se but its coach, acted like a puppetmaster over such a dominant empire that he refused to believe his team was vulnerable and made the bonehead move of the sports week (which takes a lot given what went on in the NFL over the weekend). The U.S. women's team went into this game ranked Number 1 in the world, with the North Koreans #5. The North Koreans pushed the action in a scoreless first half in rainy conditions, only to have the U.S.'s star striker, Abby Wambach, score at the 50 minute mark to give the U.S. a 1-0 lead. To paraphrase from another famous sports movie, the U.S. women started playing "old-time soccer" right after the half. (Okay, so perhaps they didn't put on the foil).
And then a funny thing happened on the way to a victory. Wambach cut her head on a play near the U.S. goal on a set piece a few minutes later and went off -- but was not substituted for. Okay, she's one of the team's stars, but the cut was worse than expected. The U.S. coach didn't substitute for her, which meant that the U.S. played a woman down -- for over 10 minutes. (Ryan said in this article that he was told Wambach only would be off for a few minutes). During that time, the North Korean team smelled blood and played like their lives depended on winning, scoring two goals a few minutes apart. They attacked, they didn't relent, and they pushed hard (okay, so one of the goals resulted as much from so-so goaltending from U.S. goalie Hope Solo -- the ball hit her smack in the hands and then went over her head and into the goal as much as it was a great shot) and they took the lead. It took a heady play by U.S. midfielder Heather O'Reilly later in the game to tie it at 2, which is the way the game ended.
It was an exciting game, but make no mistake about it, the North Koreans were the aggressors. The U.S. looked like George Foreman on the end of Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope strategy, flat, a step slow, lunging at balls, playing without much verve, not looking confident. No, U.S. fans didn't switch sides and root for North Korea, but the team that showed U.S.-like grit and determination wasn't wearing the red-white-and-blue. It was wearing red.
Which is what U.S. fans should be seeing. Greg Ryan blundered for certain. You can't simply give a world class World Cup team a person advantage for 10 minutes and expect to get away with it. Sure, Wambach is a star, but you have derived your team from a country of 300 million people, so the substitutes, after all of the competition, should be pretty good -- and eager to show that they deserve more playing time.
One more thing -- the broadcasting wasn't very good at all. Neither Julie Foudy doing the color commentary nor Heather Mitts doing the analysis in the studio added much this morning. Both are still too close to the U.S. program and players to be objective, and while Foudy was constructive at times, she didn't at all address Greg Ryan's coaching decision regarding Wambach. How could you miss something so obvious -- it was a key part of the game, it had to be addressed, and she whiffed. Also, she commented on the U.S. team's 47-game unbeaten streak and said that it would have been good for this team to have lost before the World Cup so that they would have learned how to bounce back and handle adversity. That's an interesting point, but how far before the World Cup? Two years, two months? There's a huge difference. This team needed to come into the World Cup with full confidence it could beat anyone -- and winning -- not losing -- usually does that.
Let's chalk this one up to a bad day all around. That said, the going won't get any easier for the U.S. team. They now play #3 Sweden, which tied Nigeria today, 1-1.
Fast forward to today, where the North Korean women's team, a young, spritely bunch, played like attacking, aggressive Americans and the U.S. women's team, not the team per se but its coach, acted like a puppetmaster over such a dominant empire that he refused to believe his team was vulnerable and made the bonehead move of the sports week (which takes a lot given what went on in the NFL over the weekend). The U.S. women's team went into this game ranked Number 1 in the world, with the North Koreans #5. The North Koreans pushed the action in a scoreless first half in rainy conditions, only to have the U.S.'s star striker, Abby Wambach, score at the 50 minute mark to give the U.S. a 1-0 lead. To paraphrase from another famous sports movie, the U.S. women started playing "old-time soccer" right after the half. (Okay, so perhaps they didn't put on the foil).
And then a funny thing happened on the way to a victory. Wambach cut her head on a play near the U.S. goal on a set piece a few minutes later and went off -- but was not substituted for. Okay, she's one of the team's stars, but the cut was worse than expected. The U.S. coach didn't substitute for her, which meant that the U.S. played a woman down -- for over 10 minutes. (Ryan said in this article that he was told Wambach only would be off for a few minutes). During that time, the North Korean team smelled blood and played like their lives depended on winning, scoring two goals a few minutes apart. They attacked, they didn't relent, and they pushed hard (okay, so one of the goals resulted as much from so-so goaltending from U.S. goalie Hope Solo -- the ball hit her smack in the hands and then went over her head and into the goal as much as it was a great shot) and they took the lead. It took a heady play by U.S. midfielder Heather O'Reilly later in the game to tie it at 2, which is the way the game ended.
It was an exciting game, but make no mistake about it, the North Koreans were the aggressors. The U.S. looked like George Foreman on the end of Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope strategy, flat, a step slow, lunging at balls, playing without much verve, not looking confident. No, U.S. fans didn't switch sides and root for North Korea, but the team that showed U.S.-like grit and determination wasn't wearing the red-white-and-blue. It was wearing red.
Which is what U.S. fans should be seeing. Greg Ryan blundered for certain. You can't simply give a world class World Cup team a person advantage for 10 minutes and expect to get away with it. Sure, Wambach is a star, but you have derived your team from a country of 300 million people, so the substitutes, after all of the competition, should be pretty good -- and eager to show that they deserve more playing time.
One more thing -- the broadcasting wasn't very good at all. Neither Julie Foudy doing the color commentary nor Heather Mitts doing the analysis in the studio added much this morning. Both are still too close to the U.S. program and players to be objective, and while Foudy was constructive at times, she didn't at all address Greg Ryan's coaching decision regarding Wambach. How could you miss something so obvious -- it was a key part of the game, it had to be addressed, and she whiffed. Also, she commented on the U.S. team's 47-game unbeaten streak and said that it would have been good for this team to have lost before the World Cup so that they would have learned how to bounce back and handle adversity. That's an interesting point, but how far before the World Cup? Two years, two months? There's a huge difference. This team needed to come into the World Cup with full confidence it could beat anyone -- and winning -- not losing -- usually does that.
Let's chalk this one up to a bad day all around. That said, the going won't get any easier for the U.S. team. They now play #3 Sweden, which tied Nigeria today, 1-1.
Bird Brains
Okay, so kids today don't use that expression to say that something is stupid.
I once heard a good coach say that while it's good to learn from your own mistakes (hopefully relatively small ones), it's better to learn from the other team's mistakes. Which is precisely what Andy Reid and the Philadelphia Eagles did not do this past off-season. And, worse, they didn't learn from the big mistakes of the baseball team that dwells right across the street from them.
Flash back to the past baseball off-season, where everyone in Philadelphia knew that the Phillies needed to upgrade their bullpen. They failed to do so, signing only an overweight Antonio Alfonseca and hoping that a bunch of guys who couldn't make the Last-Chance Hotel's team would have a puncher's chance to form a good 'pen and lead the Phillies to a playoff berth (as the hometown nine just missed making the post-season in each of the past two seasons). So what happened this season? Pat Gillick's failure to act led to a bullpen that blundered more than the Larry and Curly in "The Three Stooges," and the Phillies might "just miss" making the playoffs for a third year running.
Even if you're holed up as a grad student in Penn's physics lab you've got to know that the Phillies have bullpen problems and had them going into the season.
Which means that the jocks at the NovaCare Complex and Lincoln Financial Field had to know about this too. I mean, they're sports fans, and some of them actually have some free time to watch baseball. So, analogously. . .
Going into the season, the Eagles' return game was sub-par. So, you would have figured that they would have done something to buttress it, and they did. First, they signed Bethel Johnson, and, second, they hoped that their fifth-round pick from two years ago, Jeremy Bloom, could do the trick. These hopes, by the way, turned out to be as good as the Phillies' signing Antonio Alfonseca (who, by the way, had some good moments this season before they tired him out, which is more than you can so for Johnson and Bloom combined). Johnson was cut after the spring mini-camp, and Bloom did nothing to distinguish himself in training camp, thereby taking the bloom off the punt return game.
Which meant that the Eagles were caught flat-footed. They cut bloom too, and they asked a couple of guys who hadn't returned punts before to return them at the season's outset -- Greg Lewis and J.R. Reed. It would be one thing if you asked your best athlete on your HS team to add this job description to his already full load of RB, FS and kickoff returner, but this is the best football league in the world where specialization is everything. I mean, the Bears have Devin Hester, and while we don't expect to have our returners be that good, at least they should know when to call a fair catch and when not to dive for a ball during a fair catch.
But Lewis didn't do the former, Reed didn't do the latter, and their muffs cost the Eagles 10 points and the game. Okay, so the offense looked sluggish, but the D looked good and the Birds should have won the game.
I mean, losing a game on 2 muffed punts in the NFL? Even the lowest-ranked DI teams probably catch the ball on punts. Yes, we're talking Temple, Rice, Stanford. . .
All because the front office failed to act in the off-season and failed to learn from the failures of the baseball team across the street, to wit: if you have a gaping problem, acting decisively to fill it, or other market forces will fill it for you -- with bad results.
It's one thing to make a play call that doesn't work, call a blitz, or miss a 53-yard field goal.
It's another thing to show up for your opening game unprepared.
I once heard a good coach say that while it's good to learn from your own mistakes (hopefully relatively small ones), it's better to learn from the other team's mistakes. Which is precisely what Andy Reid and the Philadelphia Eagles did not do this past off-season. And, worse, they didn't learn from the big mistakes of the baseball team that dwells right across the street from them.
Flash back to the past baseball off-season, where everyone in Philadelphia knew that the Phillies needed to upgrade their bullpen. They failed to do so, signing only an overweight Antonio Alfonseca and hoping that a bunch of guys who couldn't make the Last-Chance Hotel's team would have a puncher's chance to form a good 'pen and lead the Phillies to a playoff berth (as the hometown nine just missed making the post-season in each of the past two seasons). So what happened this season? Pat Gillick's failure to act led to a bullpen that blundered more than the Larry and Curly in "The Three Stooges," and the Phillies might "just miss" making the playoffs for a third year running.
Even if you're holed up as a grad student in Penn's physics lab you've got to know that the Phillies have bullpen problems and had them going into the season.
Which means that the jocks at the NovaCare Complex and Lincoln Financial Field had to know about this too. I mean, they're sports fans, and some of them actually have some free time to watch baseball. So, analogously. . .
Going into the season, the Eagles' return game was sub-par. So, you would have figured that they would have done something to buttress it, and they did. First, they signed Bethel Johnson, and, second, they hoped that their fifth-round pick from two years ago, Jeremy Bloom, could do the trick. These hopes, by the way, turned out to be as good as the Phillies' signing Antonio Alfonseca (who, by the way, had some good moments this season before they tired him out, which is more than you can so for Johnson and Bloom combined). Johnson was cut after the spring mini-camp, and Bloom did nothing to distinguish himself in training camp, thereby taking the bloom off the punt return game.
Which meant that the Eagles were caught flat-footed. They cut bloom too, and they asked a couple of guys who hadn't returned punts before to return them at the season's outset -- Greg Lewis and J.R. Reed. It would be one thing if you asked your best athlete on your HS team to add this job description to his already full load of RB, FS and kickoff returner, but this is the best football league in the world where specialization is everything. I mean, the Bears have Devin Hester, and while we don't expect to have our returners be that good, at least they should know when to call a fair catch and when not to dive for a ball during a fair catch.
But Lewis didn't do the former, Reed didn't do the latter, and their muffs cost the Eagles 10 points and the game. Okay, so the offense looked sluggish, but the D looked good and the Birds should have won the game.
I mean, losing a game on 2 muffed punts in the NFL? Even the lowest-ranked DI teams probably catch the ball on punts. Yes, we're talking Temple, Rice, Stanford. . .
All because the front office failed to act in the off-season and failed to learn from the failures of the baseball team across the street, to wit: if you have a gaping problem, acting decisively to fill it, or other market forces will fill it for you -- with bad results.
It's one thing to make a play call that doesn't work, call a blitz, or miss a 53-yard field goal.
It's another thing to show up for your opening game unprepared.
Monday, August 06, 2007
The Economics and Risks of Football or
I wonder what the "Freakonomics" guys would say about the average NFL career, the costs of the health problems of the average NFL retiree, the longevity of that retiree, the cost of elder care, etc. I'm thinking aloud and mixing a few concepts, but I would love to see a study as to whether the risks of long-term health problems and financial burdens are worth the rewards that some get in terms of big contracts and endorsements. For some, the answer is obvious. The question, though, is for how many?
What's the average career? What's the average salary? What is the average injury profile? The average traumatic injury profile? The average profile for problems with joints, neck and spine? The average costs for that care -- for those who qualify for union benefits and those who don't (presumably because they didn't play long enough)? What's the type of post-football career these guys enjoy? How many former players will be able to live healthy, productive lives 10-20 years after leaving the game?
Frankly, the NFL Players' Association should commission a consultant to dig heavily into this issue so that they can advocate for better money and benefits in the next contract. Sure, the owners have a lot of leverage and the players probably won't walk out, but they might get the court of public opinion on their side if they put out statistics that shows that society and the NFL don't take good care of their gladiators post-career. In fact, it would be wise for the NFL itself to conduct this type of study so that it can get a handle on the problem and propose prophylactic measures that do the right thing.
There are a lof of metrics to measure, and there is a lot of data to collect, but it's well worth it. Football is a collision sport, and it hurts. People play hurt, players don't want to lose their jobs, and you have big people banging into each other. The public loves it, but the collisions cost those who play the game. Quality of life, careers, money, mobility. And from recent articles, it doesn't seem that the game or the players' union can afford to take care of the old-timers the way they should.
Do the study, gather the data, and then share it with the public. The data, I believe, won't be pretty, and it will reveal that for many players, the risks aren't worth the rewards.
What's the average career? What's the average salary? What is the average injury profile? The average traumatic injury profile? The average profile for problems with joints, neck and spine? The average costs for that care -- for those who qualify for union benefits and those who don't (presumably because they didn't play long enough)? What's the type of post-football career these guys enjoy? How many former players will be able to live healthy, productive lives 10-20 years after leaving the game?
Frankly, the NFL Players' Association should commission a consultant to dig heavily into this issue so that they can advocate for better money and benefits in the next contract. Sure, the owners have a lot of leverage and the players probably won't walk out, but they might get the court of public opinion on their side if they put out statistics that shows that society and the NFL don't take good care of their gladiators post-career. In fact, it would be wise for the NFL itself to conduct this type of study so that it can get a handle on the problem and propose prophylactic measures that do the right thing.
There are a lof of metrics to measure, and there is a lot of data to collect, but it's well worth it. Football is a collision sport, and it hurts. People play hurt, players don't want to lose their jobs, and you have big people banging into each other. The public loves it, but the collisions cost those who play the game. Quality of life, careers, money, mobility. And from recent articles, it doesn't seem that the game or the players' union can afford to take care of the old-timers the way they should.
Do the study, gather the data, and then share it with the public. The data, I believe, won't be pretty, and it will reveal that for many players, the risks aren't worth the rewards.
Man Bites Gamecocks
Steve Spurrier is ticked that the University of South Carolina admissions office rejected a couple of his recruits.
According to the coach, the university's president is on his side.
Who's working for who here? The bet is that Spurrier makes more than President Andrew Sorensen.
Which begs the question -- which is better, the football team or the school? Okay, so that's not really fair, but what has more importance, the football team or the education of the average kid in South Carolina?
Slow news day anywhere except in the SEC, where football is almost a religion.
The entire story must be interesting. The implication from Spurrier's pique is that he wouldn't have offered the kids full rides if he thought they'd get rejected. Or, more significantly, that he had vibes that they'd get in. The Admissions Office, of course, cannot speak on the topic because of various legal restrictions, and it would be wise not to fight back. The reason: the head coach didn't get two prized recruits in, and that's all that matters to many.
But what really happened? Did the Admissions Office err in giving Spurrier a heads up? Or, were they applying standards that these kids' transcripts couldn't meet? Or did they simply take a proper stand that two kids didn't belong at South Carolina?
Wags who aren't from the Southeast would say, "Imagine that, a football recruit not getting admitted at an SEC school. How could that happen?"
Those who aren't wags, though, and who are diehards, probably say the exact same thing.
Reading in between the lines, you wonder whether coaches at the BCS conference schools believe that the only admissions standards are the NCAA minimum requirements. I get a sense that this could be the case with these two recruits at South Carolina, but the article doesn't go into sufficient detail. Spurrier seemed to say as much, and that makes you wonder who really runs the show at these schools.
Andrew Sorensen, what say you? Your head coach threw your admissions office under the bus. He implies that you agree with him.
Who's running the school, anyway?
According to the coach, the university's president is on his side.
Who's working for who here? The bet is that Spurrier makes more than President Andrew Sorensen.
Which begs the question -- which is better, the football team or the school? Okay, so that's not really fair, but what has more importance, the football team or the education of the average kid in South Carolina?
Slow news day anywhere except in the SEC, where football is almost a religion.
The entire story must be interesting. The implication from Spurrier's pique is that he wouldn't have offered the kids full rides if he thought they'd get rejected. Or, more significantly, that he had vibes that they'd get in. The Admissions Office, of course, cannot speak on the topic because of various legal restrictions, and it would be wise not to fight back. The reason: the head coach didn't get two prized recruits in, and that's all that matters to many.
But what really happened? Did the Admissions Office err in giving Spurrier a heads up? Or, were they applying standards that these kids' transcripts couldn't meet? Or did they simply take a proper stand that two kids didn't belong at South Carolina?
Wags who aren't from the Southeast would say, "Imagine that, a football recruit not getting admitted at an SEC school. How could that happen?"
Those who aren't wags, though, and who are diehards, probably say the exact same thing.
Reading in between the lines, you wonder whether coaches at the BCS conference schools believe that the only admissions standards are the NCAA minimum requirements. I get a sense that this could be the case with these two recruits at South Carolina, but the article doesn't go into sufficient detail. Spurrier seemed to say as much, and that makes you wonder who really runs the show at these schools.
Andrew Sorensen, what say you? Your head coach threw your admissions office under the bus. He implies that you agree with him.
Who's running the school, anyway?
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Brief Reflections on Baseball
I've watched a bunch of games this summer and have the following observations:
1. The Philadelphia Phillies are fun to watch. And a pox on the house of my Met-fan colleague who argued that Jimmy Rollins was limited offensively and that Shane Victorino isn't proven. If Rollins is limited, then the sky is his max. Also, the advent of Davey Lopes as a Phillies' coach apparently has sprung the fleet Victorino into his newly found role as a base stealer. The team leads the National League in runs scored (significantly so). Okay, so their pitching staff is leaky, two outfielders got hurt last night and Chase Utley is on the DL, but every team has problems. That doesn't mean that this team isn't fun to watch.
2. The Phillies Look Like They're Having Fun. Charlie Manuel deserves some credit -- this is a loose ball club. The position players, at least, looking like they're enjoying themselves immensely. So does Cole Hamels. Manuel also deserves credit, I think, for mentoring some players into being better hitters, with Rollins being Exhibit A.
3. Will the Phillies Fire Charlie Manuel After the Season? Jayson Stark was on my local ESPN Radio station last week, and he had some interesting points. Stark thinks that if Manuel doesn't get this team into the playoffs -- pitching shortages, injuries and all -- that Manuel gets the axe after the season. But Stark believes that if he gets the team to 83 wins with the pitching that he has (and he made these comments before Chase Utley got hurt and before both Shane Victorino and Michael Bourn went down with injuries), that Manuel should be Manager of the Year. Yes, Stark pointed out, Manuel can make iffy pitching moves. But the team is winning baseball games, too. Manuel has grown on me -- his team plays relaxed, and what are they going to do, replace him with a Larry Bowa type? Why? Okay, so there could be someone else, but the ownership shouldn't be so quick to dispense with Charlie.
4. Battle of the Shanes. On Saturday night, Shane Youman of the Pirates faced Shane Victorino of the Phillies. I'd bet it's the first time that a Shane pitched to a Shane in MLB history. I don't think that former Mariner and Phillie Shane Rawley faced any Shanes during his day. Victorino's team scored 8 runs in the bottom of the fifth on Saturday night and won going away.
5. A Tale of Two Cities. About 3 weeks ago I watched games in Philadelphia and Baltimore on back-to-back nights. The atmosphere in Philadelphia was electric -- Utley, Howard, Rollins and rookie pitcher Kyle Kendrick. Fans got to the park early, the Phillies banged out 23 hits and won 13-3. The following night we went to Baltimore, and the once-exciting place was funereal. I suppose that's what happens when you have ownership that is possibly worse than your neighbor 2 hours and 15 minutes to the north and you're on the verge of your tenth straight losing season (come to think of it, you haven't had that much to cheer about since you won the Series in 1983). Okay, Miguel Tejada and Melvin Mora were hurt, but this once was the premier baseball town in America (with St. Louis a close second). The fans were listless, and I suppose it's hard to get excited when your outfield includes Jay Payton and Corey Patterson, both of whom laid eggs with the fans as far as I'm concerned because they didn't sign one autograph before the game. They should feel fortunate to be in the majors and to have fans watching their product (as it turned out, the game was exciting, and the O's won in the bottom of the tenth on a Nick Markakis hit). In contrast, Jamie Moyer stood outside in a hot sun last Saturday night, the day after he pitched, and signed autographs for at least 20 minutes, maybe more.
That's about it for now. All typos are mine.
1. The Philadelphia Phillies are fun to watch. And a pox on the house of my Met-fan colleague who argued that Jimmy Rollins was limited offensively and that Shane Victorino isn't proven. If Rollins is limited, then the sky is his max. Also, the advent of Davey Lopes as a Phillies' coach apparently has sprung the fleet Victorino into his newly found role as a base stealer. The team leads the National League in runs scored (significantly so). Okay, so their pitching staff is leaky, two outfielders got hurt last night and Chase Utley is on the DL, but every team has problems. That doesn't mean that this team isn't fun to watch.
2. The Phillies Look Like They're Having Fun. Charlie Manuel deserves some credit -- this is a loose ball club. The position players, at least, looking like they're enjoying themselves immensely. So does Cole Hamels. Manuel also deserves credit, I think, for mentoring some players into being better hitters, with Rollins being Exhibit A.
3. Will the Phillies Fire Charlie Manuel After the Season? Jayson Stark was on my local ESPN Radio station last week, and he had some interesting points. Stark thinks that if Manuel doesn't get this team into the playoffs -- pitching shortages, injuries and all -- that Manuel gets the axe after the season. But Stark believes that if he gets the team to 83 wins with the pitching that he has (and he made these comments before Chase Utley got hurt and before both Shane Victorino and Michael Bourn went down with injuries), that Manuel should be Manager of the Year. Yes, Stark pointed out, Manuel can make iffy pitching moves. But the team is winning baseball games, too. Manuel has grown on me -- his team plays relaxed, and what are they going to do, replace him with a Larry Bowa type? Why? Okay, so there could be someone else, but the ownership shouldn't be so quick to dispense with Charlie.
4. Battle of the Shanes. On Saturday night, Shane Youman of the Pirates faced Shane Victorino of the Phillies. I'd bet it's the first time that a Shane pitched to a Shane in MLB history. I don't think that former Mariner and Phillie Shane Rawley faced any Shanes during his day. Victorino's team scored 8 runs in the bottom of the fifth on Saturday night and won going away.
5. A Tale of Two Cities. About 3 weeks ago I watched games in Philadelphia and Baltimore on back-to-back nights. The atmosphere in Philadelphia was electric -- Utley, Howard, Rollins and rookie pitcher Kyle Kendrick. Fans got to the park early, the Phillies banged out 23 hits and won 13-3. The following night we went to Baltimore, and the once-exciting place was funereal. I suppose that's what happens when you have ownership that is possibly worse than your neighbor 2 hours and 15 minutes to the north and you're on the verge of your tenth straight losing season (come to think of it, you haven't had that much to cheer about since you won the Series in 1983). Okay, Miguel Tejada and Melvin Mora were hurt, but this once was the premier baseball town in America (with St. Louis a close second). The fans were listless, and I suppose it's hard to get excited when your outfield includes Jay Payton and Corey Patterson, both of whom laid eggs with the fans as far as I'm concerned because they didn't sign one autograph before the game. They should feel fortunate to be in the majors and to have fans watching their product (as it turned out, the game was exciting, and the O's won in the bottom of the tenth on a Nick Markakis hit). In contrast, Jamie Moyer stood outside in a hot sun last Saturday night, the day after he pitched, and signed autographs for at least 20 minutes, maybe more.
That's about it for now. All typos are mine.
Driving Miss Dana
The Philadelphia Daily News' Dana Pennett O'Neil has a great column about riding along with Villanova assistant men's basketball coach Brett Gunning as college coaches survey the top high school talent at showcases in Las Vegas.
She's right, it does sound like dating.
No, not her and the Villanova assistant. The coaches and the players.
See and be seen, make sure your guys know that you're there.
Sounds glamorous, doesn't it? Chasing around 17 year-olds, 18 year-olds, their AAU shepherds and their parents and guardians, trying to get them to sign with your school. Heckuva way to make a living.
Hopefully they'll go to class and be able to distinguish GAAP from The Gap, writing computer text versus texting, Brahms from The Palms and Fitzgerald (from Madden 08) from Fitzgerald (the guy who wrote a few great books). Too much to ask for?
Read the whole thing.
She's right, it does sound like dating.
No, not her and the Villanova assistant. The coaches and the players.
See and be seen, make sure your guys know that you're there.
Sounds glamorous, doesn't it? Chasing around 17 year-olds, 18 year-olds, their AAU shepherds and their parents and guardians, trying to get them to sign with your school. Heckuva way to make a living.
Hopefully they'll go to class and be able to distinguish GAAP from The Gap, writing computer text versus texting, Brahms from The Palms and Fitzgerald (from Madden 08) from Fitzgerald (the guy who wrote a few great books). Too much to ask for?
Read the whole thing.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
The Dangers of Spell-Check
Or, at least, the program in Word that can help create an unintentionally amusing situation.
And, here, I'm telling a story on myself.
Yesterday, I was sending an e-mail to a colleague asking him to create a summary to help justify a project. I told him to include all sorts of information, and I asked that the first two lines summarize the importance of the project (so that he could hook the reader right away).
The problem was, though, that I type fast and created a typo. Spell-check caught it, and as I ran through spell-check I hit "ok" or "change" to the first alternative that was offered up to correct my typo, thinking that it would pick the right word.
It didn't, and the result was hilarious, at least to me. (I ultimately caught the error, arranged to recall the message and believe I did so successfully, although it can be hard to tell). I'm sure if I didn't recall it the people to whom I sent it, with whom I've worked for a while, would have laughed at the error too.
So here goes: I meant to tell the recipient to discuss early on the importance of the project (okay, it sounds obvious that that's what you should do in a summary, but so be it). As I said, I type fast, and I misspelled "importance". I left out the "r", so that "impotance" is was showed up. Writing quickly, I assumed that the first alternative spell-check would have offered would have been "importance", so as I rushed my way through spell-check I accepted the first alternative that was offered without looking too closely.
Except it wasn't "importance." It was, you guessed it, "impotence."
I had occasion to re-read the message about two minutes later when I went to check to see if I conveyed a key detail (I had), and I caught the mistake. "Please make sure that you write about the impotence of the project early on to hook the reader." Or something like that.
And I had to admit, it was a classic, a 180-degree goof up. Yes, my fair colleague, please write about how bad the project is in the first two sentences and why it won't work. Given how hard I've been working lately, I could only laugh at myself at how silly the sentence read, and I learned a lesson, which is that you have to take more time with spell-check.
Or else risk using words that convey the opposite of what you intended.
Even if they create temporary amusement in the process.
And, here, I'm telling a story on myself.
Yesterday, I was sending an e-mail to a colleague asking him to create a summary to help justify a project. I told him to include all sorts of information, and I asked that the first two lines summarize the importance of the project (so that he could hook the reader right away).
The problem was, though, that I type fast and created a typo. Spell-check caught it, and as I ran through spell-check I hit "ok" or "change" to the first alternative that was offered up to correct my typo, thinking that it would pick the right word.
It didn't, and the result was hilarious, at least to me. (I ultimately caught the error, arranged to recall the message and believe I did so successfully, although it can be hard to tell). I'm sure if I didn't recall it the people to whom I sent it, with whom I've worked for a while, would have laughed at the error too.
So here goes: I meant to tell the recipient to discuss early on the importance of the project (okay, it sounds obvious that that's what you should do in a summary, but so be it). As I said, I type fast, and I misspelled "importance". I left out the "r", so that "impotance" is was showed up. Writing quickly, I assumed that the first alternative spell-check would have offered would have been "importance", so as I rushed my way through spell-check I accepted the first alternative that was offered without looking too closely.
Except it wasn't "importance." It was, you guessed it, "impotence."
I had occasion to re-read the message about two minutes later when I went to check to see if I conveyed a key detail (I had), and I caught the mistake. "Please make sure that you write about the impotence of the project early on to hook the reader." Or something like that.
And I had to admit, it was a classic, a 180-degree goof up. Yes, my fair colleague, please write about how bad the project is in the first two sentences and why it won't work. Given how hard I've been working lately, I could only laugh at myself at how silly the sentence read, and I learned a lesson, which is that you have to take more time with spell-check.
Or else risk using words that convey the opposite of what you intended.
Even if they create temporary amusement in the process.
Where Water is Thicker Than Blood
Okay, so this is the life they chose. . .
No, that doesn't mean that a la "The Sopranos" or "The Godfather", someone gets whacked. All that it means is that baseball is a business, too.
The Phillies traded a minor-league pitching prospect for the ChiSox starting second baseman, Tadahito Iguchi. They figured to do something after a wild rookie pitcher for the Nats broke Chase Utley's hand on Wednesday.
The prospect they traded? A Class A pitcher named Michael Dubee.
So what, you say?
He's the son of the Phillies' pitching coach, Rich Dubee.
Maybe this is an amusing story, maybe it isn't, but perhaps it would be more newsworthy if Dubee's last name were Gillick and the Phils' GM traded his own son to help the team. You know the line, "he'd throw at his own mother if it would help the team win."
In this case, he'd trade the son of his own pitching coach to help the team win.
It's just business, though, not personal.
No, that doesn't mean that a la "The Sopranos" or "The Godfather", someone gets whacked. All that it means is that baseball is a business, too.
The Phillies traded a minor-league pitching prospect for the ChiSox starting second baseman, Tadahito Iguchi. They figured to do something after a wild rookie pitcher for the Nats broke Chase Utley's hand on Wednesday.
The prospect they traded? A Class A pitcher named Michael Dubee.
So what, you say?
He's the son of the Phillies' pitching coach, Rich Dubee.
Maybe this is an amusing story, maybe it isn't, but perhaps it would be more newsworthy if Dubee's last name were Gillick and the Phils' GM traded his own son to help the team. You know the line, "he'd throw at his own mother if it would help the team win."
In this case, he'd trade the son of his own pitching coach to help the team win.
It's just business, though, not personal.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Compared to Barry Bonds, He Is
The volcano that is Curt Schilling's mouth blew molten lava all over the baseball world, with the best money pitcher of his generation blasting Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro over steroid usage on Bob Costas's show on HBO.
Among Bonds' responses was that Costas is a "midget" who knows nothing about baseball.
Interesting choice of words, Barry. After all, you are a Giant. . . and, well, a giant, so compare to you most folks in baseball are midgets.
At least now they are.
But were they in the early 1990's when you were a Pirate? Were you a giant then? Or did something change?
The bet here is that the difference in bulk and girth between you and Costas is much greater today than it was 15 years ago, and that hasn't come from simply eating "Rice-a-roni", the San Francisco treat or bowls of seafood-laden pasta at Fisherman's Wharf.
Be careful how you choose your words, Mr. Bonds, or else people will scrutinize your physique more than you should draw attention to it.
Bob Costas shouldn't be too upset, especially if he considers the source.
As for Curt Schilling, his comments are an enigma. Wasn't it he who once said in the late 90's or early 00's that he had walked through a locker room and slapped a few teammates on the butt and was asked by them not to because apparently that's where they took their injections? (I think he was with the Dbacks at the time). And then didn't he subsequently close ranks with his fellow trade unionists and go mum on the steroids issue? And now this?
Schilling talks, Bonds calls people names.
What say you, Bud Selig?
Among Bonds' responses was that Costas is a "midget" who knows nothing about baseball.
Interesting choice of words, Barry. After all, you are a Giant. . . and, well, a giant, so compare to you most folks in baseball are midgets.
At least now they are.
But were they in the early 1990's when you were a Pirate? Were you a giant then? Or did something change?
The bet here is that the difference in bulk and girth between you and Costas is much greater today than it was 15 years ago, and that hasn't come from simply eating "Rice-a-roni", the San Francisco treat or bowls of seafood-laden pasta at Fisherman's Wharf.
Be careful how you choose your words, Mr. Bonds, or else people will scrutinize your physique more than you should draw attention to it.
Bob Costas shouldn't be too upset, especially if he considers the source.
As for Curt Schilling, his comments are an enigma. Wasn't it he who once said in the late 90's or early 00's that he had walked through a locker room and slapped a few teammates on the butt and was asked by them not to because apparently that's where they took their injections? (I think he was with the Dbacks at the time). And then didn't he subsequently close ranks with his fellow trade unionists and go mum on the steroids issue? And now this?
Schilling talks, Bonds calls people names.
What say you, Bud Selig?
The Phillies Need a Song. . .
For the seventh-inning stretch.
In Baltimore, they play the late John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." (I don't really consider Baltimore "country", although it is south of the Mason-Dixon line and there were many secesh sympathizers there during the Civil War, including some assassins who tried to knock off President-Elect Abe Lincoln as his train made his way through Crab City before his inaugural in 1864). I am curious, though, how this song came to be so embedded in the culture of Oriole Nation.
In Boston, they play Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline." (Diamond is from Brooklyn, and I'm not from Boston, so I wonder what the significance is).
In Philadelphia, they need a complement to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
Here are some suggestions (in no particular order of preference):
1. Chubby Checker's "The Twist." An old Philadelphia classic, and good for aerobic exercise after the 7th inning stretch. A contender.
2. Bobby Rydell's "Volare." Another old Philadelphia classic, and on the same label as "The Twist." Can you tell me the label? Anyway, it's a bit schmaltzy, and now most of the people who heard of it are grandparents. Probably a long shot.
3. "Gonna Fly Now." This is the theme from Rocky, but it's not known for it's lyrics, and you don't always want to summon up the image of a local fighter getting pounded. Right now, it hits the hometown bullpen too close to home. While Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" is a great "pump me up" type of song (and at the core of "Rocky III"), remember the word "Tiger." It isn't eye of the Phillie, but, then again, what really is a Phillie? Pass.
4. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, "We're Havin' a Party." It's a great song, one that everyone can sing along to, and it's really upbeat. Sure, Southside is from the north Jersey Shore, which means that many of his fanatics are Mets or Yankees' fans, but the music is good (even though few listen to music on the radio anymore, and, well, that pastime fits into the song's lyrics pretty well). Then again, you have to be a pretty good time to have this upbeat a song. And the Phillies can score runs, so they definitely have an offensive party in their bandbox of a ballpark. I don't think this would work in Baltimore, where the hometown nine is en route to a tenth straight losing season. A contender, if a bit of a darkhorse.
5. Sister Sledge's "We are Family." Great song, and sung almost 30 years ago by native Philadelphians. Problem is that the cross-state Pirates made this song famous with their '79 Series victory, when they came back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Orioles. This song is akin to a retired number -- no one really should use it as a theme song any more -- they won't be able to do it justice the way Willie Stargell and the Pirates did it. (One note here: the Phillies' AAA team will move from Ottawa to Allentown, Pennsylvania starting next season and be named, gulp, the Allentown Iron Pigs. Here's to hoping that Billy Joel's "Allentown", in which he sings of "closing all the factories down" doesn't make it to the Iron Arnold Ziffels' seventh inning stretch). Not an entrant -- it's retired.
6. The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie." Okay, it's an oldie, but it's one that the fans can sing along to, dance to, and drink beer to, and given how many $6.50 Buds they sell at Citizens' Bank Park (why can't they at least sell a fine Pennsylvania beer, Yuengling, instead of send money the Cardinals' way is beyond me). Choruses of "Louie, Louie" will echo throughout the stadium and make every night seem like a summer beach party. A little lowbrow, but it has a shot.
7. "I Feel Good" by James Brown. Now, Brown didn't necessarily lead a stellar off-the-stage life, but how can professional sports owners really complain given all the scandals that have befallen them? Steroids in baseball, Epogen in cycling, a corrupt ref in the NBA (allegedly), a dog-fighting scandal in the NFL (allegedly), so James wasn't a saint. But the song is really upbeat, you have that cool shriek at the beginning, and, well, to be outside at a baseball game in the summer, with family and friends, should make everyone feel good. Then again, if your startingpitching staff if populated with AAA refugees, perhaps "I Feel Good" isn't the message you should send (but you won't play Elton John's "Rocket Man", either, and I doubt the players' union would let you create innuendos against your pitching staff anyway). Intriguing candidate.
8. The Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up." Great to get the juices flowing in the seventh inning, even though after the initial words it's not the easiest to understand the lyrics. And perhaps this song gets overplayed and overused that it could end up being a cliche at the ballpark. Pass.
But for another "fire me up song", how about. . .
9. C&C Dance Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat." Martha Wash belts out "Everybody Dance Now" in a Hall-of-Fame caliber performance, and Freedom Williams' provides a complementary rap. Hearing "Everybody Dance Now" after sitting for seven innings could be just what the hometown crowd needs. This song should be a contender, even if it doesn't have the shmaltz of "Sweet Caroline" or the hillbilly, feet-stomping appeal of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." The problem probably is that outside of Martha Wash's exuberant singing of "Everybody Dance Now" the song isn't the strongest in the world. A contender, but not a strong one.
10. Al Alberts' "One the Way to Cape May." Alberts (who had a kids' variety show on local TV for years and who's now in his late 70's, composed this little ditty many years ago about driving down to the various points at the South Jersey shore, culminating in Cape May. It's shmaltzy, it's summery, and it's just flat out great. Perhaps, above all, this should be the song that they play after "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Could be the winner -- shmaltzy, you can sing along to it, and it has a tie to the Phillies' Nation.
Now, as for after the ball game. . .
How about John Lee Hooker's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer"?
After all, that's probably what Charlie Manuel and his coaches down after watching the bullpen blow a 4-2 lead after an excellent performance by Cole Hamels.
Follow the bouncing ball. . .
In Baltimore, they play the late John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." (I don't really consider Baltimore "country", although it is south of the Mason-Dixon line and there were many secesh sympathizers there during the Civil War, including some assassins who tried to knock off President-Elect Abe Lincoln as his train made his way through Crab City before his inaugural in 1864). I am curious, though, how this song came to be so embedded in the culture of Oriole Nation.
In Boston, they play Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline." (Diamond is from Brooklyn, and I'm not from Boston, so I wonder what the significance is).
In Philadelphia, they need a complement to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
Here are some suggestions (in no particular order of preference):
1. Chubby Checker's "The Twist." An old Philadelphia classic, and good for aerobic exercise after the 7th inning stretch. A contender.
2. Bobby Rydell's "Volare." Another old Philadelphia classic, and on the same label as "The Twist." Can you tell me the label? Anyway, it's a bit schmaltzy, and now most of the people who heard of it are grandparents. Probably a long shot.
3. "Gonna Fly Now." This is the theme from Rocky, but it's not known for it's lyrics, and you don't always want to summon up the image of a local fighter getting pounded. Right now, it hits the hometown bullpen too close to home. While Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" is a great "pump me up" type of song (and at the core of "Rocky III"), remember the word "Tiger." It isn't eye of the Phillie, but, then again, what really is a Phillie? Pass.
4. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, "We're Havin' a Party." It's a great song, one that everyone can sing along to, and it's really upbeat. Sure, Southside is from the north Jersey Shore, which means that many of his fanatics are Mets or Yankees' fans, but the music is good (even though few listen to music on the radio anymore, and, well, that pastime fits into the song's lyrics pretty well). Then again, you have to be a pretty good time to have this upbeat a song. And the Phillies can score runs, so they definitely have an offensive party in their bandbox of a ballpark. I don't think this would work in Baltimore, where the hometown nine is en route to a tenth straight losing season. A contender, if a bit of a darkhorse.
5. Sister Sledge's "We are Family." Great song, and sung almost 30 years ago by native Philadelphians. Problem is that the cross-state Pirates made this song famous with their '79 Series victory, when they came back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Orioles. This song is akin to a retired number -- no one really should use it as a theme song any more -- they won't be able to do it justice the way Willie Stargell and the Pirates did it. (One note here: the Phillies' AAA team will move from Ottawa to Allentown, Pennsylvania starting next season and be named, gulp, the Allentown Iron Pigs. Here's to hoping that Billy Joel's "Allentown", in which he sings of "closing all the factories down" doesn't make it to the Iron Arnold Ziffels' seventh inning stretch). Not an entrant -- it's retired.
6. The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie." Okay, it's an oldie, but it's one that the fans can sing along to, dance to, and drink beer to, and given how many $6.50 Buds they sell at Citizens' Bank Park (why can't they at least sell a fine Pennsylvania beer, Yuengling, instead of send money the Cardinals' way is beyond me). Choruses of "Louie, Louie" will echo throughout the stadium and make every night seem like a summer beach party. A little lowbrow, but it has a shot.
7. "I Feel Good" by James Brown. Now, Brown didn't necessarily lead a stellar off-the-stage life, but how can professional sports owners really complain given all the scandals that have befallen them? Steroids in baseball, Epogen in cycling, a corrupt ref in the NBA (allegedly), a dog-fighting scandal in the NFL (allegedly), so James wasn't a saint. But the song is really upbeat, you have that cool shriek at the beginning, and, well, to be outside at a baseball game in the summer, with family and friends, should make everyone feel good. Then again, if your startingpitching staff if populated with AAA refugees, perhaps "I Feel Good" isn't the message you should send (but you won't play Elton John's "Rocket Man", either, and I doubt the players' union would let you create innuendos against your pitching staff anyway). Intriguing candidate.
8. The Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up." Great to get the juices flowing in the seventh inning, even though after the initial words it's not the easiest to understand the lyrics. And perhaps this song gets overplayed and overused that it could end up being a cliche at the ballpark. Pass.
But for another "fire me up song", how about. . .
9. C&C Dance Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat." Martha Wash belts out "Everybody Dance Now" in a Hall-of-Fame caliber performance, and Freedom Williams' provides a complementary rap. Hearing "Everybody Dance Now" after sitting for seven innings could be just what the hometown crowd needs. This song should be a contender, even if it doesn't have the shmaltz of "Sweet Caroline" or the hillbilly, feet-stomping appeal of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." The problem probably is that outside of Martha Wash's exuberant singing of "Everybody Dance Now" the song isn't the strongest in the world. A contender, but not a strong one.
10. Al Alberts' "One the Way to Cape May." Alberts (who had a kids' variety show on local TV for years and who's now in his late 70's, composed this little ditty many years ago about driving down to the various points at the South Jersey shore, culminating in Cape May. It's shmaltzy, it's summery, and it's just flat out great. Perhaps, above all, this should be the song that they play after "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Could be the winner -- shmaltzy, you can sing along to it, and it has a tie to the Phillies' Nation.
Now, as for after the ball game. . .
How about John Lee Hooker's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer"?
After all, that's probably what Charlie Manuel and his coaches down after watching the bullpen blow a 4-2 lead after an excellent performance by Cole Hamels.
Follow the bouncing ball. . .
Deion Sanders on the Michael Vick Case
From yesterday's Southwest (Florida) News-Press. Roger Cossack or Nancy Grace he isn't.
Read the whole thing and be thankful that not every former athlete or movie actor turned public figure has something to say or is someone we should follow. Deion writes himself into a corner at every turn in this piece, and the point about society's "using" Michael Vick because the sporting world right now is boring would be comical if it weren't so off-base.
To be clear, I don't want to stick the proverbial Nifong into Vick yet. The justice system will take care of that, and Vick has hired high-priced legal talent to represent him. But when Prime Time starts explaining why athletes like dog fighting, he loses me completely.
Heinrich Heine once wrote that "people who burn books will someday burn people."
What do we say about people who train dogs who will fight to the death -- for the sporting pleasure of those adults?
Read the whole thing and be thankful that not every former athlete or movie actor turned public figure has something to say or is someone we should follow. Deion writes himself into a corner at every turn in this piece, and the point about society's "using" Michael Vick because the sporting world right now is boring would be comical if it weren't so off-base.
To be clear, I don't want to stick the proverbial Nifong into Vick yet. The justice system will take care of that, and Vick has hired high-priced legal talent to represent him. But when Prime Time starts explaining why athletes like dog fighting, he loses me completely.
Heinrich Heine once wrote that "people who burn books will someday burn people."
What do we say about people who train dogs who will fight to the death -- for the sporting pleasure of those adults?
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Tim Donaghy Affair
Tim Donaghy has a mess on his hands, he's been called a criminal, he's been convicted in the media, and he hasn't been indicted yet. There are conflicting media reports about the following: a) whether any players and any other refs are implicated and b) whether Donaghy did anything more than bet on games in which he officiated (read: fix them). The latter point is somewhat humorous, because the odds are that if someone bets on something where he can affect the outcome, he will. In basketball, that means using your whistle more (or less) than you were trained to. I'm sure that the people who dig deep into the numbers will examine Donaghy's recent history very closely. Check that, they already have.
So what will all sports do now? Will they keep all sorts of metrics on their officials to determine whether there are any statistical outliers and how the outcomes of the game match up against Vegas lines (read: if Ref X refs in too many games that hit the under, does that raise a red flag?). If Official Y in the NHL calls 10% more major penalties than the next guy, and half of those aren't against guys who are labeled "goons," does that mean there's a problem? Do you automatically terminate the guys at the top of the suspicion list to keep everyone honest? And how would that type of taxation affect behavior? Instead of doing what they're trained to do, will refs then look at the stats and adopt "make up" calls in subsequent games to put their averages back within the norms? Will a committee be required in the NBA before a second technical is given or when a ref now wants to eject a player right off the bat by issuing two technical fouls at once?
It would be interesting to see what "randomization" security measures are in place now to make sure one official doesn't officiate in the same venue too many times during a season. It would be interesting to see what type of screening goes on, because there is no screening that can assess the vices of a referee that effectively. Even if the newspaper reports about an investigation into Tim Donaghy two years ago are true (the NBA allegedly investigated Donaghy), the investigation didn't result in a suspension or termination of Donaghy.
This whole affair reminds me of the guy who owns the beach house and who is obsessed with cleanliness. He goes ape when a grain of sand appears on his dining room carpet. What he doesn't realize is that while he can keep the beach out of his house and buckets of sand out of his house, if he's to have any enjoyment of the beach, grains of sand will find their way into his house. While Donaghy's alleged conduct stained the NBA, it is tantamount to a grain of sand. For unless there's a huge pattern of game-fixing that implicates players and refs (read: the beach now is in the house) or a pattern of refs conspiring to fix games (read: the buckets have made their way in), Donaghy is like the grain of sand that makes his way in -- the league really couldn't have done much to prevent this from happening.
I'm sure it officers an Employee Assistance Program to those who need help, but my guess is that Donaghy (if the charges are true), like others with problems, wouldn't have admitted to it and therefore wouldn't have availed himself of the program. That said, what could the NBA have done other than to impose measures that a) from the get go would tarnish their officials' reputations and b) would invade their privacy in significant ways. Is there really a need for that?
Sure, new forms of checking metrics will arise that will red flag certain behavior (if those forms don't exist already), and that's okay. Usually those metrics weed out incompetence and not corruption. But let's be careful not to besmirch the reputations of many over the conduct of a single actor.
Not everyone cheats. Not everyone corrupts the system and their job. Not everyone tarnishes the reputation of an entire group through the actions of an individual. In fact, most people out there do the best they can and don't cheat.
Let's not forget that when watching an NBA game the next time.
So what will all sports do now? Will they keep all sorts of metrics on their officials to determine whether there are any statistical outliers and how the outcomes of the game match up against Vegas lines (read: if Ref X refs in too many games that hit the under, does that raise a red flag?). If Official Y in the NHL calls 10% more major penalties than the next guy, and half of those aren't against guys who are labeled "goons," does that mean there's a problem? Do you automatically terminate the guys at the top of the suspicion list to keep everyone honest? And how would that type of taxation affect behavior? Instead of doing what they're trained to do, will refs then look at the stats and adopt "make up" calls in subsequent games to put their averages back within the norms? Will a committee be required in the NBA before a second technical is given or when a ref now wants to eject a player right off the bat by issuing two technical fouls at once?
It would be interesting to see what "randomization" security measures are in place now to make sure one official doesn't officiate in the same venue too many times during a season. It would be interesting to see what type of screening goes on, because there is no screening that can assess the vices of a referee that effectively. Even if the newspaper reports about an investigation into Tim Donaghy two years ago are true (the NBA allegedly investigated Donaghy), the investigation didn't result in a suspension or termination of Donaghy.
This whole affair reminds me of the guy who owns the beach house and who is obsessed with cleanliness. He goes ape when a grain of sand appears on his dining room carpet. What he doesn't realize is that while he can keep the beach out of his house and buckets of sand out of his house, if he's to have any enjoyment of the beach, grains of sand will find their way into his house. While Donaghy's alleged conduct stained the NBA, it is tantamount to a grain of sand. For unless there's a huge pattern of game-fixing that implicates players and refs (read: the beach now is in the house) or a pattern of refs conspiring to fix games (read: the buckets have made their way in), Donaghy is like the grain of sand that makes his way in -- the league really couldn't have done much to prevent this from happening.
I'm sure it officers an Employee Assistance Program to those who need help, but my guess is that Donaghy (if the charges are true), like others with problems, wouldn't have admitted to it and therefore wouldn't have availed himself of the program. That said, what could the NBA have done other than to impose measures that a) from the get go would tarnish their officials' reputations and b) would invade their privacy in significant ways. Is there really a need for that?
Sure, new forms of checking metrics will arise that will red flag certain behavior (if those forms don't exist already), and that's okay. Usually those metrics weed out incompetence and not corruption. But let's be careful not to besmirch the reputations of many over the conduct of a single actor.
Not everyone cheats. Not everyone corrupts the system and their job. Not everyone tarnishes the reputation of an entire group through the actions of an individual. In fact, most people out there do the best they can and don't cheat.
Let's not forget that when watching an NBA game the next time.
Friday, July 20, 2007
The NBA's Worst Nightmare
I've frequently wondered when this would happen, and not if, and the reason simply is the disparity between the money that those who officiate the game make and those who play it (analagously, given the penury with which some judges are treated and the money the lawyers before them can make, I've had occasion to wonder not if, but when this type of controversy would hit a well-known court as well) as well as the fact that, well, people are human. Sorry, call me cynical, but human behavior is what it is -- flawed. I've once had a friend refer to an ad that said "name your top 10 at this profession -- one of them is an alcoholic." That doesn't mean, of course, that professional referees are prone to corruption. It's just that they're human, and, well, even with the best screening mechanisms a problem like this could occur.
Allegedly, of course, because no blogger or media member should "Duke Lacrosse" anyone who has been charged with a crime, even if he's Michael Vick and the accusations are hideous. I don't know whether the accused NBA ref is guilty or not, but the accusations -- as I've heard them piecemeal -- are upsetting. (The one good thing that happened today was that the media outlets named the ref who is under suspicion. Earlier in the day The New York Post and others said that an NBA ref is under suspicion, leaving the entire NBA fan base wondering which referee was the guy in the spotlight, thereby casting aspersions on all referees).
Americans love the integrity of their games. I recall a scene in the original "Longest Yard," when the former star quarterback (played by Burt Reynolds), asks the character named Caretaker why people hate him so much given that the prison population was a violent bunch. Caretaker said something like this: "What you have here are your robbers, arsonists and murderers, but you threw your own football games. Now that's un-American."
Ref likes to bet. Ref makes bad bets. Ref gets into guys who don't like that people owe them money and can't pay them back. The shylocks ask for something he can give them. Ref gives them outcomes of games, shylocks bet on those outcomes and win large dollars. Twenty, fifty large. Over many games. People can't keep secrets. Someone gets pinched, someone trades something juicy to a prosecutor eager for a headline (and there are those prosecutors who love headlines). Wiseguy sings, gives up a non-wiseguy, so maybe he angers a fellow button man by killing a golden goose, but he doesn't rat on a buddy. Prosecutor gets something juicy, something that will stick.
Plausible? Seems that this is what's going on.
And the NBA has a mess on its hands.
A big mess.
Now some former prosecutor turned big New York law firm partner will conduct an investigation, review tape of all games where this ref tried to influence the outcome. They interview players, fans with good seats (who might have overheard what the ref said when teeing up a player or coach in the heat of a game), interview the scorer's table officials, and publish a 500-page report after thousands of hours of investigation at $500 per hour, at least. The average official, who has done nothing wrong, will suffer. Fans will ask him how much he's being paid to throw a game, and fans sit close to these refs and the refs can hear. A player might say something during the heat of the moment. And the league will put in place some rigorous screening system for its refs and perhaps for technical fouls and for calls in the last five minutes of a game. The league will certainly overreact, as Congress typically does after there's a scandal. And what they'll find, ultimately, is that they can't legislate behavior. All they can do is perform better background checks.
The refs in the NBA have added flavor to the game over the years, and there have been and are many outstanding ones -- something that must not be forgotten. I remember once, years ago, I was sitting behind the basket at 76ers-Celtics game at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. I can't remember precisely who the players were, but I was yelling at the great referee Earl Strom that the Celtics' center (it might have been Dave Cowens, whom I thought was excellent) was backing in play after play and elbowing the 76er defending him time after time without getting called for an offensive foul. Finally, on the next play, Strom called an offensive foul on the offending Celtic player and then there was a timeout on the floor. I stood up to stretch and I see the referee pointing at me. I was probably an old teenager at the time.
Me (surprised that someone of Strom's stature would notice me): "Me?"
Strom (smiling): "Yes, you." (smiles again). "So what did you think of that?"
Me (smiling widely, giving the thumbs-up sign): "Great call, great call, keep it up."
Strom smiled, put his whistle in his mouth and ran back toward the floor. I'm sure I had nothing to do with me, but he did hear my voice (otherwise why would he have said something?), and that was his personality. He loved every minute of what he did, and it showed. All he was doing with me was having fun with a kid who loved the game as much as he did (and, who knows, as a kid he might have been as partisan for a team as I was for mine). And now there are doubts about all NBA referees, and that is a shame.
Because all we know is that there are allegations that one guy might have altered the outcome of games because he got in with the wrong crowd.
So let's not jump to conclusions. All we have are allegations. Nothing has been proven. But even if they stick, does that mean that the NBA is rotten to the core? Hardly. What it would mean if true is that flawed human behavior victimized the NBA. And before we go off on our high horses, let's be careful not to hold the NBA to higher standards than we hold ourselves or our own favorite employers, because I'm not sure that the best compliance system in the world could have stopped this.
The NBA will investigate, the Justice Department will do its thing, and the referees' union will do what it should, which is protect its own membership.
These guys have some of the toughest officiating jobs in any sport. They run, they get screened out of plays, and they have big guys flying at them, and they make instant decisions. They're not always right, and the fans and players and coaches just want them to call the game consistently for both teams. And almost all of the time they do.
All that said, the NBA does have a credibility issue here, at least with some people, if not with me. Uncertainty helps create credibility problems. The slow passage of time until the indictment is announced will be torture to the NBA. Until the case is tried and the NBA's investigation concludes, no one will know exactly what happened. And that's what the NBA is up against now -- doubt and uncertainty.
And a populace who is shocked that an official could have done something like this.
Allegedly, of course, because no blogger or media member should "Duke Lacrosse" anyone who has been charged with a crime, even if he's Michael Vick and the accusations are hideous. I don't know whether the accused NBA ref is guilty or not, but the accusations -- as I've heard them piecemeal -- are upsetting. (The one good thing that happened today was that the media outlets named the ref who is under suspicion. Earlier in the day The New York Post and others said that an NBA ref is under suspicion, leaving the entire NBA fan base wondering which referee was the guy in the spotlight, thereby casting aspersions on all referees).
Americans love the integrity of their games. I recall a scene in the original "Longest Yard," when the former star quarterback (played by Burt Reynolds), asks the character named Caretaker why people hate him so much given that the prison population was a violent bunch. Caretaker said something like this: "What you have here are your robbers, arsonists and murderers, but you threw your own football games. Now that's un-American."
Ref likes to bet. Ref makes bad bets. Ref gets into guys who don't like that people owe them money and can't pay them back. The shylocks ask for something he can give them. Ref gives them outcomes of games, shylocks bet on those outcomes and win large dollars. Twenty, fifty large. Over many games. People can't keep secrets. Someone gets pinched, someone trades something juicy to a prosecutor eager for a headline (and there are those prosecutors who love headlines). Wiseguy sings, gives up a non-wiseguy, so maybe he angers a fellow button man by killing a golden goose, but he doesn't rat on a buddy. Prosecutor gets something juicy, something that will stick.
Plausible? Seems that this is what's going on.
And the NBA has a mess on its hands.
A big mess.
Now some former prosecutor turned big New York law firm partner will conduct an investigation, review tape of all games where this ref tried to influence the outcome. They interview players, fans with good seats (who might have overheard what the ref said when teeing up a player or coach in the heat of a game), interview the scorer's table officials, and publish a 500-page report after thousands of hours of investigation at $500 per hour, at least. The average official, who has done nothing wrong, will suffer. Fans will ask him how much he's being paid to throw a game, and fans sit close to these refs and the refs can hear. A player might say something during the heat of the moment. And the league will put in place some rigorous screening system for its refs and perhaps for technical fouls and for calls in the last five minutes of a game. The league will certainly overreact, as Congress typically does after there's a scandal. And what they'll find, ultimately, is that they can't legislate behavior. All they can do is perform better background checks.
The refs in the NBA have added flavor to the game over the years, and there have been and are many outstanding ones -- something that must not be forgotten. I remember once, years ago, I was sitting behind the basket at 76ers-Celtics game at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. I can't remember precisely who the players were, but I was yelling at the great referee Earl Strom that the Celtics' center (it might have been Dave Cowens, whom I thought was excellent) was backing in play after play and elbowing the 76er defending him time after time without getting called for an offensive foul. Finally, on the next play, Strom called an offensive foul on the offending Celtic player and then there was a timeout on the floor. I stood up to stretch and I see the referee pointing at me. I was probably an old teenager at the time.
Me (surprised that someone of Strom's stature would notice me): "Me?"
Strom (smiling): "Yes, you." (smiles again). "So what did you think of that?"
Me (smiling widely, giving the thumbs-up sign): "Great call, great call, keep it up."
Strom smiled, put his whistle in his mouth and ran back toward the floor. I'm sure I had nothing to do with me, but he did hear my voice (otherwise why would he have said something?), and that was his personality. He loved every minute of what he did, and it showed. All he was doing with me was having fun with a kid who loved the game as much as he did (and, who knows, as a kid he might have been as partisan for a team as I was for mine). And now there are doubts about all NBA referees, and that is a shame.
Because all we know is that there are allegations that one guy might have altered the outcome of games because he got in with the wrong crowd.
So let's not jump to conclusions. All we have are allegations. Nothing has been proven. But even if they stick, does that mean that the NBA is rotten to the core? Hardly. What it would mean if true is that flawed human behavior victimized the NBA. And before we go off on our high horses, let's be careful not to hold the NBA to higher standards than we hold ourselves or our own favorite employers, because I'm not sure that the best compliance system in the world could have stopped this.
The NBA will investigate, the Justice Department will do its thing, and the referees' union will do what it should, which is protect its own membership.
These guys have some of the toughest officiating jobs in any sport. They run, they get screened out of plays, and they have big guys flying at them, and they make instant decisions. They're not always right, and the fans and players and coaches just want them to call the game consistently for both teams. And almost all of the time they do.
All that said, the NBA does have a credibility issue here, at least with some people, if not with me. Uncertainty helps create credibility problems. The slow passage of time until the indictment is announced will be torture to the NBA. Until the case is tried and the NBA's investigation concludes, no one will know exactly what happened. And that's what the NBA is up against now -- doubt and uncertainty.
And a populace who is shocked that an official could have done something like this.
Bud's Dilemma
To go or not to go, that is the question.
Bud Selig hasn't indicated whether he'll be present when Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's all-time home run record.
Here are the reasons not to go: you've taken a big stand against steroids, you're conducting an investigation headed by the former Majority Leader of the United States Senate, no one's cooperating, and you are a born-again righteous "purity of the game" person and don't want this alleged transgressor getting the adulation that Henry Aaron rightfully deserved.
Here are the reasons to go: if you don't go, you're a hypocrite, because you, your then fellow-owners, the writers who can act as toadies, managers, general managers, the players' union -- everyone close to the game, in fact -- took a powder after the damaging, season-ending strike of 1994 and for many seasons thereafter fell in love with smaller parks and the giant men who were bashing the ball out of them. All of a sudden many parks had a carnival-like atmosphere, and guys like McGwire, Sosa and Bonds were the featured attractions. Baseball rebuilt its image and the owners for whom you front cashed in, big time. And where were you and the boys when all this was taking place? Counting the money. Another reason, not well articulated on ESPN Radio by Peter Gammons (who is very knowledgeable about the game but just dead wrong on this point and sounds terrible making his case, like someone who isn't taking the problem seriously -- Gammons doesn't even apologize for it and sounds like the septuagenarian roving minor league catching instructor who scratches his crotch in public) this morning, is that you'd be dishonoring the game if you didn't go or that every era had problems -- gambling, spit balls, alcohol, pep pills, you name it. So, why single this particular guy out and urinate on what should otherwise be a celebration?
Helluva choice, huh?
Jim Bouton's epochal words from "Ball Four" ring true: "If a pitcher could take a pill that would guarantee him a 20-win season even if it would take five years off his life, he would do it." And home run hitters would do so for the analagous 50 home-run season. All while the Lords of Baseball,Knights of the Keyboard and Squires of the Screen said absolutely nothing, even if the average size of a baseballer increased markedly from '94 on (just look at films from the '80's to see how much bigger players have gotten, and don't just say it's because of the nation-wide obesity epidemic or because of the hormones found in cows and chickens and therefore in our meals). There was something more to it.
So what do you do, Bud?
If you go, you won't look happy, and you think you're a hypocrite because you're not taking a stand against the Darth Vader of the Evil Empire of Steroids.
If you don't go, you'll look like a grudge-bearing sourpuss who is fighting over something that so far hasn't been proven.
Or, you'll look like someone who is taking a stand for something he believes in.
What would you do? What would you have Bud Selig do?
Pray that A-Rod goes on a home-run hitting tear and breaks Bonds' record within the next five to seven years. . . and that Barry Bonds goes away.
Or send Jose Canseco in your place.
Bud Selig hasn't indicated whether he'll be present when Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's all-time home run record.
Here are the reasons not to go: you've taken a big stand against steroids, you're conducting an investigation headed by the former Majority Leader of the United States Senate, no one's cooperating, and you are a born-again righteous "purity of the game" person and don't want this alleged transgressor getting the adulation that Henry Aaron rightfully deserved.
Here are the reasons to go: if you don't go, you're a hypocrite, because you, your then fellow-owners, the writers who can act as toadies, managers, general managers, the players' union -- everyone close to the game, in fact -- took a powder after the damaging, season-ending strike of 1994 and for many seasons thereafter fell in love with smaller parks and the giant men who were bashing the ball out of them. All of a sudden many parks had a carnival-like atmosphere, and guys like McGwire, Sosa and Bonds were the featured attractions. Baseball rebuilt its image and the owners for whom you front cashed in, big time. And where were you and the boys when all this was taking place? Counting the money. Another reason, not well articulated on ESPN Radio by Peter Gammons (who is very knowledgeable about the game but just dead wrong on this point and sounds terrible making his case, like someone who isn't taking the problem seriously -- Gammons doesn't even apologize for it and sounds like the septuagenarian roving minor league catching instructor who scratches his crotch in public) this morning, is that you'd be dishonoring the game if you didn't go or that every era had problems -- gambling, spit balls, alcohol, pep pills, you name it. So, why single this particular guy out and urinate on what should otherwise be a celebration?
Helluva choice, huh?
Jim Bouton's epochal words from "Ball Four" ring true: "If a pitcher could take a pill that would guarantee him a 20-win season even if it would take five years off his life, he would do it." And home run hitters would do so for the analagous 50 home-run season. All while the Lords of Baseball,Knights of the Keyboard and Squires of the Screen said absolutely nothing, even if the average size of a baseballer increased markedly from '94 on (just look at films from the '80's to see how much bigger players have gotten, and don't just say it's because of the nation-wide obesity epidemic or because of the hormones found in cows and chickens and therefore in our meals). There was something more to it.
So what do you do, Bud?
If you go, you won't look happy, and you think you're a hypocrite because you're not taking a stand against the Darth Vader of the Evil Empire of Steroids.
If you don't go, you'll look like a grudge-bearing sourpuss who is fighting over something that so far hasn't been proven.
Or, you'll look like someone who is taking a stand for something he believes in.
What would you do? What would you have Bud Selig do?
Pray that A-Rod goes on a home-run hitting tear and breaks Bonds' record within the next five to seven years. . . and that Barry Bonds goes away.
Or send Jose Canseco in your place.
Monday, July 09, 2007
The Home Run Derby
I write this before its conclusion, having only watched what seemed to be the interminable first round. I have a few observations:
1. It was way too long, taking almost 1.5 hours to complete.
2. You need "fun" announcers but not clowns. Joe Morgan is an announcing nerd who takes himself way too seriously. John Kruk in the booth would have been a much better choice.
3. Chris Berman is becoming a cliche.
4. Kenny Mayne played the role of the clown -- watching him in a kayak was painful and it wasn't funny.
5. It's much better to have these things at night than at twilight. Some hitters had to hit balls coming out of bright sunlight.
6. There's no drama unless a contest like this is held during the night.
7. There's no drama having a home run derby in a pitcher's park, which is what the park in SF is.
8. The whole thing seemed to lack energy, which is either because Northern Californians are too mellow or because Barry Bonds casts such a long (and bad) shadow over this game that his story dwarfs this contest.
9. The production dishonored the dignity of Willie McCovey, a class act if there ever was one.
10. There were way too many commercials and way too much studio analysis.
11. Yes, 40,000 people paid $175 apiece to watch this event -- they and the TV audience should get refunds.
Home run contests like this should be magical affairs.
This one, at least in round one, was a lead balloon.
1. It was way too long, taking almost 1.5 hours to complete.
2. You need "fun" announcers but not clowns. Joe Morgan is an announcing nerd who takes himself way too seriously. John Kruk in the booth would have been a much better choice.
3. Chris Berman is becoming a cliche.
4. Kenny Mayne played the role of the clown -- watching him in a kayak was painful and it wasn't funny.
5. It's much better to have these things at night than at twilight. Some hitters had to hit balls coming out of bright sunlight.
6. There's no drama unless a contest like this is held during the night.
7. There's no drama having a home run derby in a pitcher's park, which is what the park in SF is.
8. The whole thing seemed to lack energy, which is either because Northern Californians are too mellow or because Barry Bonds casts such a long (and bad) shadow over this game that his story dwarfs this contest.
9. The production dishonored the dignity of Willie McCovey, a class act if there ever was one.
10. There were way too many commercials and way too much studio analysis.
11. Yes, 40,000 people paid $175 apiece to watch this event -- they and the TV audience should get refunds.
Home run contests like this should be magical affairs.
This one, at least in round one, was a lead balloon.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Take Me Fishing
A couple of years ago I took my then seven year-old and five year-old fishing off the heels to a successful trip to the Pocono Mountains where a beautiful seven year-old girl cast like a pro and caught 6 fish in two mornings of fishing -- bluegill, bass, sunfish. Several months after that, I took them fishing at a local pond, and we didn't catch anything, well, except that when my son cast his Scooby Doo rod, he caught the meat part of his right thumb. After that, he wasn't too enthused about fishing.
Over the past couple of years, in about five or six sessions we came up empty. The fish took most of our bait, or they didn't bite, or a huge orange grass carp stared at my daughter's line but didn't grab at the bait. Perhaps we went too late in the morning or too early in the afternoon, the bait was wrong or the hooks were too big. We tended to buy earthworms at a local beer distributorship, only to learn that other locals catch their fish with frozen hot dogs, corn and bread.
The great thing about fishing is that fishermen are eager to share their wisdom and that you definitely learn from your experiences. For example, two years ago we learned that on overcast days the fish are more likely to come out than on bright, sunny days, because like people they don't like to stay out in the sun too long. Translated, that meant that glorious casting bore results on overcast days, while dropping our lines close to the dock worked on a sunny day. The fish liked the shade that the dock offered.
Our collective wisdom taught us a few things this morning. First, it was hot and humid, so we decided to drop our lines near the dock, especially after a man on a bass boat told us while alighting from his boat when we arrived at the dock that the fish weren't biting. Second, after trying with mid-sized hooks and bread and failing, we went to school on advice that a man who worked at Dick's told us the night before -- use smaller hooks for the lake we were fishing. So, we switched to rather small hooks. Lastly, we switched to red trout worms, figuring that live bait would work better than bread. I also improved my knot-tying and untangling of lines.
What happened was instant success. We were oh for our careers fishing in our home county, and last Sunday the fish took about 22 of our worms and we caught nothing. Once we switched to live bait and smaller hooks, the sunnies and bass attacked our lines with reckless abandon. My now seven year-old son caught 6 fish in an hour (and, yes, we catch and release), working so quickly that I hardly had time to put my line into the water. Finally, when he took a break, I dropped my line right near the dock and landed a nice-sized bass. Very gently each time we removed the hook and released the fish back into the water.
It was a great morning, standing on a dock, with a slight breeze, talking to my son and concentrating only on fishing. Yes, we wished it were a little cooler and, yes, we wished that casting longer distances would bring us more fish, but you take your fishing opportunities as they come, learn from them, and then have fishing tales to tell.
I find fishing particularly relaxing because there's no collateral noise. The boats are quiet, as are the fishermen, and the people who come out to enjoy this particular park do so with a degree of reverence. It's about enjoying nature, not seeing how loud you can be in an open space. The fact that tying knots, putting on bobbers and leaders and the right hook requires concentration removes you from thinking about your daily routine and what might await you at the office the following week.
It's also a very affordable hobby. A Pennsylvania fishing license (with a trout stamp) costs $31, but all told your fishing rod, reel, bait, hooks, leaders, bobbers and pliers (yes, you need the latter to help you remove problematic hooks from a fish's mouth) won't run you more than another $50 total (you don't have to spend more than $30 for a good rod, and there are kits that you buy that give you all sorts of lures, leaders and hooks in addition to a rod). You then go outside, stand on a dock or the side of a lake, and cast away. Bring a chair to sit in, bring your sunscreen and a playmate cooler with a cold drink, and you're all set.
Sounds pretty simple and peaceful, doesn't it?
And that it is.
Over the past couple of years, in about five or six sessions we came up empty. The fish took most of our bait, or they didn't bite, or a huge orange grass carp stared at my daughter's line but didn't grab at the bait. Perhaps we went too late in the morning or too early in the afternoon, the bait was wrong or the hooks were too big. We tended to buy earthworms at a local beer distributorship, only to learn that other locals catch their fish with frozen hot dogs, corn and bread.
The great thing about fishing is that fishermen are eager to share their wisdom and that you definitely learn from your experiences. For example, two years ago we learned that on overcast days the fish are more likely to come out than on bright, sunny days, because like people they don't like to stay out in the sun too long. Translated, that meant that glorious casting bore results on overcast days, while dropping our lines close to the dock worked on a sunny day. The fish liked the shade that the dock offered.
Our collective wisdom taught us a few things this morning. First, it was hot and humid, so we decided to drop our lines near the dock, especially after a man on a bass boat told us while alighting from his boat when we arrived at the dock that the fish weren't biting. Second, after trying with mid-sized hooks and bread and failing, we went to school on advice that a man who worked at Dick's told us the night before -- use smaller hooks for the lake we were fishing. So, we switched to rather small hooks. Lastly, we switched to red trout worms, figuring that live bait would work better than bread. I also improved my knot-tying and untangling of lines.
What happened was instant success. We were oh for our careers fishing in our home county, and last Sunday the fish took about 22 of our worms and we caught nothing. Once we switched to live bait and smaller hooks, the sunnies and bass attacked our lines with reckless abandon. My now seven year-old son caught 6 fish in an hour (and, yes, we catch and release), working so quickly that I hardly had time to put my line into the water. Finally, when he took a break, I dropped my line right near the dock and landed a nice-sized bass. Very gently each time we removed the hook and released the fish back into the water.
It was a great morning, standing on a dock, with a slight breeze, talking to my son and concentrating only on fishing. Yes, we wished it were a little cooler and, yes, we wished that casting longer distances would bring us more fish, but you take your fishing opportunities as they come, learn from them, and then have fishing tales to tell.
I find fishing particularly relaxing because there's no collateral noise. The boats are quiet, as are the fishermen, and the people who come out to enjoy this particular park do so with a degree of reverence. It's about enjoying nature, not seeing how loud you can be in an open space. The fact that tying knots, putting on bobbers and leaders and the right hook requires concentration removes you from thinking about your daily routine and what might await you at the office the following week.
It's also a very affordable hobby. A Pennsylvania fishing license (with a trout stamp) costs $31, but all told your fishing rod, reel, bait, hooks, leaders, bobbers and pliers (yes, you need the latter to help you remove problematic hooks from a fish's mouth) won't run you more than another $50 total (you don't have to spend more than $30 for a good rod, and there are kits that you buy that give you all sorts of lures, leaders and hooks in addition to a rod). You then go outside, stand on a dock or the side of a lake, and cast away. Bring a chair to sit in, bring your sunscreen and a playmate cooler with a cold drink, and you're all set.
Sounds pretty simple and peaceful, doesn't it?
And that it is.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
I'm Not the First One With This Theory, But
here goes.
Everything evolves, some things for the better, some for the worse. People, products, environments. The average NBA player is much taller today than, say, 30 years ago, flat-panel TVs are much cheaper now than even three years ago, and bald eagles have come back while I've heard that cell phone usage is harming bees. I'm not a little bit out of my depth on some of these issues, but I think that I've painted my point with a broad brush. Change happens.
Tony LaRussa helped evolve the role of the modern pitcher. Long gone are the days when teams like the Orioles had a four-man rotation, whose members each won 20-games. You could look it up, but Messrs. Palmer, McNally, Dobson and Cuellar did just that. At some point rotations morphed into five-man efforts, and, yet, seemingly pitchers started to get hurt more than ever. Relief pitching a half century ago was the refuge for those not good enough to be starters. That still holds true today, the theory being that starters have enough stuff to get through a lineup three and four times, while relievers have (many) fewer "out" pitches and basically could go once through a lineup, if that (and those relievers are the "long" relievers). Let's put closers in the discussion's parking lot for a moment, because they've been heralded as a different breed of cat.
If there's any doubt that starters have more talent and stuff than relievers, witness various World Series of seasons past. The fifth starter (and sometimes the fourth) gets primo bullpen service time. The reason -- his stuff is more electric than the stuff of the hypothetical, average long man (where there's no guarantee that his stuff will be there year-in, year-out, which is why there's significant turnover in bullpens year-in, year-out). The starter has 2 or 3 excellent to pretty good pitches, while the reliever might have one "out" pitch. Therefore, he'll have a better chance to get people out, even if he doesn't have much experience coming into the game out of the bullpen.
Tony LaRussa changed the role of the closer. Say 25-30 plus years ago, the closer came into the game near the end, but not exclusively in the ninth inning. If the starter got into trouble in the eighth with one out and two on, the closer would come in, put out the fire (hence the term "fireman" and the Rolaids "Fireman of the Year" Award). Invariably, he then would pitch the ninth. Check out the records of guys like Rich Gossage and Bruce Sutter, not to mention Dan Quisenberry, and see what I mean. Those guys literally saved the game; they just didn't pitch the ninth. They were closers and finishers in every sense of the word, and, I'd submit, among the best relief pitchers -- ever.
LaRussa changed all that by creating relief specialists. Long relievers have existed for a while, the guys who you want to keep the game close and honor Hippocrates' oath of "First, Do No Harm" and whom you pray won't bring gasoline to the fire. But they came in when your starter got lit for five runs in the first three innings. LaRussa created the lefty set-up man, the right set-up man, and even the mid-game specialists. Look at a box score of LaRussa-managed teams going back to Oakland and see what I mean. To the discerning, his managerial moves were a work of art. The man truly knew his staff and which buttons to push.
In evolving the role of the bullpen, though, he led the transformation of the "macho" fireman who would come in and put out a late-inning fire into the guy who pitches the ninth. Even Mariano Rivera, the best closer ever, pretty much pitches the ninth. To Joe Torre's great credit, the Yankee skipper would bring in Rivera in the eighth to pitcher either two full innings or at least part of the eighth before finishing the game, especially in late-season games and in the post-season. By doing this, Torre put the "fireman" back into Mariano's job description, at least during certain moments. Make no mistake, though, Rivera is an exception. He's one of the best ever, and he would have thrived in the days of Gossage and Sutter. I'm not sure many other modern closers would have.
Today, the hypothetical, average closer pitches the ninth. His team could be up one to three runs (any more wouldn't qualify for a save), but there is no real danger (except, perhaps, for the heart of the opposing team's order coming to the plate in the ninth). In this fashion, he's not putting out a fire, he's merely closing out the game and pitching the ninth. While it's nice to have a flamethrower like Billy Wagner pitch the ninth, I would question whether it's that imperative to have that intimidating closer finish the came. Couldn't someone else do it? A less dominating pitcher who has good control and probably won't put more than one baserunner on? I know that relief pitching is in (very) short supply this season, but what I'm really getting at is whether you need your best reliever to pitch the ninth. Do you?
Or do you need him to come in during situations like this: you're up one run, on the road, in the bottom of the seventh, the other team has men on second and third with one out. Shouldn't you put that lights-out pitcher in then, to put out the fire? You can do a double switch if you want him to pitch more than an inning (admittedly, if he pitches 2 1/3 then he might not be available for a couple of days, but these situations don't happen every game), but then you're putting your best pitcher in the game in an appropriate situation. He can change the tide of the game and help your team put it away. Put in a middle guy, he gets shelled, and then you're down at least a run and you might never get the opportunity to use your best reliever. Do you think the game could evolve in this fashion? Are closers becoming too much of a luxury? And why do closers burn out, and why do teams change closers more frequently than you would think?
My view is that the game will evolve in this direction -- using your best reliever in the toughest situations. Look, you don't want a weak pitcher to finish the game, but you definitely want a strong one to put out the fire, because closers no longer do that. And that pitcher might become your most valuable non-starter, because he's the guy to stop the bleeding and, perhaps, change the tides of the game. Because if that guy puts out the fire in the seventh and then uses his lights-out stuff at least in one more inning, the whole tenor of the game changes. As an example, remember El Duque's performance with the sacks jammed and no outs in the fifth inning of a Sox-Astros World Series game several years ago. El Duque came into the game as a reliever, and he ended the threat. Checkmate.
I write this from the vantage point of watching my hometown Phillies put in nameless souls game after game who haven't been able to stop the bleeding. There's decent talent on that team to finish about .500, and its Achilles' heel is its relief corps (and it was so at the season's outset). True, they have two injured closers (one of whom is a recently converted starter), but they haven't had anyone (not even the heretofore reliable Geoff Geary, whose pinpoint control took a holiday, costing Geary an unplanned summer trip to AAA Ottawa) to stem the tide. The Mets excelled last season because they had a transcending 'pen, with several guys who could do just what I've written about. Okay, so the worst team to win the Series in decades beat them in the NLCS, but the teams that have gotten to the top (Detroit, for example) had guys other than closers who could put out the fire (and you could argue that setup man Joel Zumaya, when healthy, is the best reliever in Motown).
So watch the evolution of pitching staffs during the next ten years, and watch front offices dissect the situations I've highlighted and how they're best handled. And then take a solid GM with a manager willing to take a few more chances to win, and you'll start seeing some very solid relievers emerge in a new role: The True Fireman.
Everything evolves, some things for the better, some for the worse. People, products, environments. The average NBA player is much taller today than, say, 30 years ago, flat-panel TVs are much cheaper now than even three years ago, and bald eagles have come back while I've heard that cell phone usage is harming bees. I'm not a little bit out of my depth on some of these issues, but I think that I've painted my point with a broad brush. Change happens.
Tony LaRussa helped evolve the role of the modern pitcher. Long gone are the days when teams like the Orioles had a four-man rotation, whose members each won 20-games. You could look it up, but Messrs. Palmer, McNally, Dobson and Cuellar did just that. At some point rotations morphed into five-man efforts, and, yet, seemingly pitchers started to get hurt more than ever. Relief pitching a half century ago was the refuge for those not good enough to be starters. That still holds true today, the theory being that starters have enough stuff to get through a lineup three and four times, while relievers have (many) fewer "out" pitches and basically could go once through a lineup, if that (and those relievers are the "long" relievers). Let's put closers in the discussion's parking lot for a moment, because they've been heralded as a different breed of cat.
If there's any doubt that starters have more talent and stuff than relievers, witness various World Series of seasons past. The fifth starter (and sometimes the fourth) gets primo bullpen service time. The reason -- his stuff is more electric than the stuff of the hypothetical, average long man (where there's no guarantee that his stuff will be there year-in, year-out, which is why there's significant turnover in bullpens year-in, year-out). The starter has 2 or 3 excellent to pretty good pitches, while the reliever might have one "out" pitch. Therefore, he'll have a better chance to get people out, even if he doesn't have much experience coming into the game out of the bullpen.
Tony LaRussa changed the role of the closer. Say 25-30 plus years ago, the closer came into the game near the end, but not exclusively in the ninth inning. If the starter got into trouble in the eighth with one out and two on, the closer would come in, put out the fire (hence the term "fireman" and the Rolaids "Fireman of the Year" Award). Invariably, he then would pitch the ninth. Check out the records of guys like Rich Gossage and Bruce Sutter, not to mention Dan Quisenberry, and see what I mean. Those guys literally saved the game; they just didn't pitch the ninth. They were closers and finishers in every sense of the word, and, I'd submit, among the best relief pitchers -- ever.
LaRussa changed all that by creating relief specialists. Long relievers have existed for a while, the guys who you want to keep the game close and honor Hippocrates' oath of "First, Do No Harm" and whom you pray won't bring gasoline to the fire. But they came in when your starter got lit for five runs in the first three innings. LaRussa created the lefty set-up man, the right set-up man, and even the mid-game specialists. Look at a box score of LaRussa-managed teams going back to Oakland and see what I mean. To the discerning, his managerial moves were a work of art. The man truly knew his staff and which buttons to push.
In evolving the role of the bullpen, though, he led the transformation of the "macho" fireman who would come in and put out a late-inning fire into the guy who pitches the ninth. Even Mariano Rivera, the best closer ever, pretty much pitches the ninth. To Joe Torre's great credit, the Yankee skipper would bring in Rivera in the eighth to pitcher either two full innings or at least part of the eighth before finishing the game, especially in late-season games and in the post-season. By doing this, Torre put the "fireman" back into Mariano's job description, at least during certain moments. Make no mistake, though, Rivera is an exception. He's one of the best ever, and he would have thrived in the days of Gossage and Sutter. I'm not sure many other modern closers would have.
Today, the hypothetical, average closer pitches the ninth. His team could be up one to three runs (any more wouldn't qualify for a save), but there is no real danger (except, perhaps, for the heart of the opposing team's order coming to the plate in the ninth). In this fashion, he's not putting out a fire, he's merely closing out the game and pitching the ninth. While it's nice to have a flamethrower like Billy Wagner pitch the ninth, I would question whether it's that imperative to have that intimidating closer finish the came. Couldn't someone else do it? A less dominating pitcher who has good control and probably won't put more than one baserunner on? I know that relief pitching is in (very) short supply this season, but what I'm really getting at is whether you need your best reliever to pitch the ninth. Do you?
Or do you need him to come in during situations like this: you're up one run, on the road, in the bottom of the seventh, the other team has men on second and third with one out. Shouldn't you put that lights-out pitcher in then, to put out the fire? You can do a double switch if you want him to pitch more than an inning (admittedly, if he pitches 2 1/3 then he might not be available for a couple of days, but these situations don't happen every game), but then you're putting your best pitcher in the game in an appropriate situation. He can change the tide of the game and help your team put it away. Put in a middle guy, he gets shelled, and then you're down at least a run and you might never get the opportunity to use your best reliever. Do you think the game could evolve in this fashion? Are closers becoming too much of a luxury? And why do closers burn out, and why do teams change closers more frequently than you would think?
My view is that the game will evolve in this direction -- using your best reliever in the toughest situations. Look, you don't want a weak pitcher to finish the game, but you definitely want a strong one to put out the fire, because closers no longer do that. And that pitcher might become your most valuable non-starter, because he's the guy to stop the bleeding and, perhaps, change the tides of the game. Because if that guy puts out the fire in the seventh and then uses his lights-out stuff at least in one more inning, the whole tenor of the game changes. As an example, remember El Duque's performance with the sacks jammed and no outs in the fifth inning of a Sox-Astros World Series game several years ago. El Duque came into the game as a reliever, and he ended the threat. Checkmate.
I write this from the vantage point of watching my hometown Phillies put in nameless souls game after game who haven't been able to stop the bleeding. There's decent talent on that team to finish about .500, and its Achilles' heel is its relief corps (and it was so at the season's outset). True, they have two injured closers (one of whom is a recently converted starter), but they haven't had anyone (not even the heretofore reliable Geoff Geary, whose pinpoint control took a holiday, costing Geary an unplanned summer trip to AAA Ottawa) to stem the tide. The Mets excelled last season because they had a transcending 'pen, with several guys who could do just what I've written about. Okay, so the worst team to win the Series in decades beat them in the NLCS, but the teams that have gotten to the top (Detroit, for example) had guys other than closers who could put out the fire (and you could argue that setup man Joel Zumaya, when healthy, is the best reliever in Motown).
So watch the evolution of pitching staffs during the next ten years, and watch front offices dissect the situations I've highlighted and how they're best handled. And then take a solid GM with a manager willing to take a few more chances to win, and you'll start seeing some very solid relievers emerge in a new role: The True Fireman.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Yeah, Right, Alexei Lalas
The sitting GM for a Major League soccer team and former World Cup player has garnered a lot of attention by saying that the U.S.'s Major League Soccer is on par with England's heralded Premiership.
Yeah, right.
Lalas also said that when David Beckham gets to the U.S., he'll be a bigger story than Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan.
Yeah, right, again.
What Lalas is forgetting is that the world's best soccer is played in the Premiership and the "A" leagues in Italy and Spain, not to mention in Lyon, France. What he also neglected to say is that Beckham is on the downward slope of his career, while Jordan was transcendant almost to the end and Woods is at his peak, which, for him, is a lengthy high-level plateau of excellence. Almost a year ago, when asked to fill in the blank to "David Beckham is . . .", Premiership and American World Cup goalie Kasey Keller said "a poseur." Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
I've blogged on this before, and I've opined that the reason the U.S. team hasn't fared well internationally is because many of the players play their professional ball in the United States, where they are not competing against the best. That statement holds up because when you look at the elite international teams -- Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, England and Germany -- their players are all playing somewhere in Western Europe. The elite Brazilians are not playing in the Brazilian League, the elite Argentines aren't spending their prime playing for Boca Juniors or River Plate, and the elite Western Europeans aren't playing in the United States. To be the best you have to play and succeed against the best. The U.S. players haven't done that, and that's why the U.S. World Cup team hasn't had much success in the World Cup.
Lalas clearly is trying to draw attention to his league and his team, and it's working. Those comments will draw blog posts like this for a few days, at least, but his claims for the moment ring hollow. Until U.S. players who populate MLS teams get the U.S. to the semis in a World Cup, the MLS will be deemed, rightly, as an inferior league.
As for Beckham, he was predominant at one time, but no longer. According to one English friend, he's great on the set pieces (for you Americans, that means penalty kicks, free kicks and the like) but overall a bit too worn down and slow for international play. Still, the U.S. will get a good player with star power.
But no longer an internationally elite one.
Yeah, right.
Lalas also said that when David Beckham gets to the U.S., he'll be a bigger story than Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan.
Yeah, right, again.
What Lalas is forgetting is that the world's best soccer is played in the Premiership and the "A" leagues in Italy and Spain, not to mention in Lyon, France. What he also neglected to say is that Beckham is on the downward slope of his career, while Jordan was transcendant almost to the end and Woods is at his peak, which, for him, is a lengthy high-level plateau of excellence. Almost a year ago, when asked to fill in the blank to "David Beckham is . . .", Premiership and American World Cup goalie Kasey Keller said "a poseur." Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
I've blogged on this before, and I've opined that the reason the U.S. team hasn't fared well internationally is because many of the players play their professional ball in the United States, where they are not competing against the best. That statement holds up because when you look at the elite international teams -- Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, England and Germany -- their players are all playing somewhere in Western Europe. The elite Brazilians are not playing in the Brazilian League, the elite Argentines aren't spending their prime playing for Boca Juniors or River Plate, and the elite Western Europeans aren't playing in the United States. To be the best you have to play and succeed against the best. The U.S. players haven't done that, and that's why the U.S. World Cup team hasn't had much success in the World Cup.
Lalas clearly is trying to draw attention to his league and his team, and it's working. Those comments will draw blog posts like this for a few days, at least, but his claims for the moment ring hollow. Until U.S. players who populate MLS teams get the U.S. to the semis in a World Cup, the MLS will be deemed, rightly, as an inferior league.
As for Beckham, he was predominant at one time, but no longer. According to one English friend, he's great on the set pieces (for you Americans, that means penalty kicks, free kicks and the like) but overall a bit too worn down and slow for international play. Still, the U.S. will get a good player with star power.
But no longer an internationally elite one.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The Handicap of Wealth
In his wonderful book on Bill Bradley, A Sense of Where You Are, John McPhee wrote that en route to becoming a star player, Bill Bradley had to overcome the "handicap of wealth." Bradley was the only child of a bank president and used to dribble his basketball on the decks of the cruise ships his folks would take him on as a young man. His background wasn't the same, say, as that of his Knicks teammate Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, who used to run home from school everyday, in part because he had to travel through some hostile gang territories to do so and who matriculated at Winston-Salem because most of today's big-time schools didn't recruit black players in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
I remember once attending a lunch where retired Princeton hoops coach Pete Carril spoke. Some of the old alums asked about the chances of a tall walk-on, whose father was a CEO of a prominent company. Carril looked glum. "I knew I was doomed when I rang the bell and a housekeeper answered the door." Basketball, after all, is about wanting -- no, having to have -- the rock, and if you have many of life's good things at your beck and call, so the theory goes, you're less likely to have the hunger that kids who sometimes go hungry have.
Having just read Cait Murphy's brilliant Crazy '08 (which I just blogged about and is a must read), I got to thinking. What prompted Hall of Famers like Ed Walsh and Christy Mathewson to pitch in 7 games in 10 days at season's end, to pitch over 400 innings in a season, and to pitch both ends of a doubleheader? Why did those guys work so hard, and why weren't they as brittle, seemingly, as the starting pitchers today, who get four days' rest and get about 35 starts in a season, don't go more than 6 innings and are considered aces if their ERA's are below 4.50 and they win 15 games.
Is the reason the "handicap of wealth?"
Remember, there was a strong reserve clause in those days, no union, and dire circumstances. Walsh, Hughie Jennings and others came from Pennsylvania's coal country in the northeastern part of the state. Shamokin, Kingston, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton. Kids started working by 6 or 7, went deep underground, worked as "breaker boys" sifting through coal chunks after they came down the chute into a bin, frequently got maimed, the mortality rate was high, and the wages were about 5 cents an hour. Many Eastern Europeans emigrated to America for a better life, seemingly in retrospect, for future generations, as their personal "present" could not have been all that pleasant. These fellows did not want to go back -- starring in baseball was a way out for them and many others, and there were always many who would take their place. The mines were a spectre, a place to come from, not to default too. Ditto for sweatshops and subsistence farms. To a great degree, there wasn't much, if anything, to fall back on.
Today, the players can become free agents, the average player's salary is somewhere around $2 million, the travel is nice, the per diems generous, the royalty monies from the Players' Association's licensing deals terrific. Many players go to college, and even those who didn't, for the most part, come from much better living situations than players at the turn of the 20th century. Cars, IPods, nice sneakers, air conditioning, better medical care, etc. Put differently, if these kids don't make it, they won't go work underground for five cents an hour in dangerous conditions.
So, does that mean that the modern player isn't as driven for the big records? For 300-inning seasons, 30 wins, pitching through more pain? Clearly, today's professional athletes are motivated and want to win. But they're also more specialized and coddled than ever before. At the turn of the 20th century, the team's trainer, who probably had little formal training, used to create a rubdown ointment by mixing Tabasco sauce with vaseline and rubbing it on a pitcher's arm (one team called that concoction "Go Fast"). Today, there are all sorts of resources for players to train, both at the ballpark and available for a fee. Ditto for medical attention. Pitches are charted, exercise regimens are tailored, and many teams have detailed video libraries about every at bat a position player has taken and every pitch a pitcher has thrown. And there's also the most successful union in the history of organized labor, the Major League Baseball Players Association, that looks out for the interests of the players. And, of course, every player has an agent to look after him.
And many have luxury cars, more than one house, lots of trappings.
But are they as hungry? They're competitive and motivated, but I'll submit that they're not possibly as hungry as they were 100 years ago. First, they literally aren't as hungry. Read the oral histories of those who played in the "outghts" and teens and you'll figure that out in a hurry. Second, the union provides some excellent benefits to assist players, and the pension is outstanding for those who qualify. There were no such benefits 100 years ago. Third, the pitchers way back when just didn't know any better. There weren't 100 years of metrics that the statheads have pored over in excruciating detail (and providing front offices with kernels of wisdom to enable them to rest their pitchers and spot them when necessary), and "sports" medicine was about 70-75 years from starting. Fourth, well, just look at the top two reasons. The players didn't come from money, they didn't have any leverage, and the teams did absolutely everything they could to win. There was no safety net.
Take a look back at the 2001 World Series, when Randy Johnson, having started a few days earlier, came out of the bullpen for the Diamondbacks to win, in relief, Game 7 of the World Series. And who could forget a trio of Red Sox pitchers, Curt Schilling among them, walking out to the bullpen in the 2004 American League Championship Series, to do anything it took to help the BoSox come from 3 games down to win that series? Why did we like that drama so much? Because it was all hands on deck, and because it was the way that teams did things many years ago. No safety net. No tomorrow. Just pure baseball, figuring out any way to win a game to play another day.
Take a look at the records -- the number of wins Jack Chesbro had for the Yankees in a season, the tales of "Iron Man" Joe McGinnity, who pitched both games of a doubleheader and won (but earned the nickname for having worked at an iron foundry in the off-season), the number of innings Walter Johnson pitched season after season, the 511 wins of Cy Young, and the reports of pitchers starting 5 games in 10 days.
Those were the days when it was win and have a nice life or go home and have an uncertain one. That history might explain, for example, why there are so many players from the Dominican Republican, many of whom wouldn't have much to go home to if they didn't make it. And it also might explain why certain records will not be broken in our lifetime, if ever.
So, does the "handicap of wealth" permeate into baseball? Or is it a handicap of too many comforts and the trappings of wealth? Or, perhaps, is it progress?
I remember once attending a lunch where retired Princeton hoops coach Pete Carril spoke. Some of the old alums asked about the chances of a tall walk-on, whose father was a CEO of a prominent company. Carril looked glum. "I knew I was doomed when I rang the bell and a housekeeper answered the door." Basketball, after all, is about wanting -- no, having to have -- the rock, and if you have many of life's good things at your beck and call, so the theory goes, you're less likely to have the hunger that kids who sometimes go hungry have.
Having just read Cait Murphy's brilliant Crazy '08 (which I just blogged about and is a must read), I got to thinking. What prompted Hall of Famers like Ed Walsh and Christy Mathewson to pitch in 7 games in 10 days at season's end, to pitch over 400 innings in a season, and to pitch both ends of a doubleheader? Why did those guys work so hard, and why weren't they as brittle, seemingly, as the starting pitchers today, who get four days' rest and get about 35 starts in a season, don't go more than 6 innings and are considered aces if their ERA's are below 4.50 and they win 15 games.
Is the reason the "handicap of wealth?"
Remember, there was a strong reserve clause in those days, no union, and dire circumstances. Walsh, Hughie Jennings and others came from Pennsylvania's coal country in the northeastern part of the state. Shamokin, Kingston, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton. Kids started working by 6 or 7, went deep underground, worked as "breaker boys" sifting through coal chunks after they came down the chute into a bin, frequently got maimed, the mortality rate was high, and the wages were about 5 cents an hour. Many Eastern Europeans emigrated to America for a better life, seemingly in retrospect, for future generations, as their personal "present" could not have been all that pleasant. These fellows did not want to go back -- starring in baseball was a way out for them and many others, and there were always many who would take their place. The mines were a spectre, a place to come from, not to default too. Ditto for sweatshops and subsistence farms. To a great degree, there wasn't much, if anything, to fall back on.
Today, the players can become free agents, the average player's salary is somewhere around $2 million, the travel is nice, the per diems generous, the royalty monies from the Players' Association's licensing deals terrific. Many players go to college, and even those who didn't, for the most part, come from much better living situations than players at the turn of the 20th century. Cars, IPods, nice sneakers, air conditioning, better medical care, etc. Put differently, if these kids don't make it, they won't go work underground for five cents an hour in dangerous conditions.
So, does that mean that the modern player isn't as driven for the big records? For 300-inning seasons, 30 wins, pitching through more pain? Clearly, today's professional athletes are motivated and want to win. But they're also more specialized and coddled than ever before. At the turn of the 20th century, the team's trainer, who probably had little formal training, used to create a rubdown ointment by mixing Tabasco sauce with vaseline and rubbing it on a pitcher's arm (one team called that concoction "Go Fast"). Today, there are all sorts of resources for players to train, both at the ballpark and available for a fee. Ditto for medical attention. Pitches are charted, exercise regimens are tailored, and many teams have detailed video libraries about every at bat a position player has taken and every pitch a pitcher has thrown. And there's also the most successful union in the history of organized labor, the Major League Baseball Players Association, that looks out for the interests of the players. And, of course, every player has an agent to look after him.
And many have luxury cars, more than one house, lots of trappings.
But are they as hungry? They're competitive and motivated, but I'll submit that they're not possibly as hungry as they were 100 years ago. First, they literally aren't as hungry. Read the oral histories of those who played in the "outghts" and teens and you'll figure that out in a hurry. Second, the union provides some excellent benefits to assist players, and the pension is outstanding for those who qualify. There were no such benefits 100 years ago. Third, the pitchers way back when just didn't know any better. There weren't 100 years of metrics that the statheads have pored over in excruciating detail (and providing front offices with kernels of wisdom to enable them to rest their pitchers and spot them when necessary), and "sports" medicine was about 70-75 years from starting. Fourth, well, just look at the top two reasons. The players didn't come from money, they didn't have any leverage, and the teams did absolutely everything they could to win. There was no safety net.
Take a look back at the 2001 World Series, when Randy Johnson, having started a few days earlier, came out of the bullpen for the Diamondbacks to win, in relief, Game 7 of the World Series. And who could forget a trio of Red Sox pitchers, Curt Schilling among them, walking out to the bullpen in the 2004 American League Championship Series, to do anything it took to help the BoSox come from 3 games down to win that series? Why did we like that drama so much? Because it was all hands on deck, and because it was the way that teams did things many years ago. No safety net. No tomorrow. Just pure baseball, figuring out any way to win a game to play another day.
Take a look at the records -- the number of wins Jack Chesbro had for the Yankees in a season, the tales of "Iron Man" Joe McGinnity, who pitched both games of a doubleheader and won (but earned the nickname for having worked at an iron foundry in the off-season), the number of innings Walter Johnson pitched season after season, the 511 wins of Cy Young, and the reports of pitchers starting 5 games in 10 days.
Those were the days when it was win and have a nice life or go home and have an uncertain one. That history might explain, for example, why there are so many players from the Dominican Republican, many of whom wouldn't have much to go home to if they didn't make it. And it also might explain why certain records will not be broken in our lifetime, if ever.
So, does the "handicap of wealth" permeate into baseball? Or is it a handicap of too many comforts and the trappings of wealth? Or, perhaps, is it progress?
The Best Baseball Book in a While
I read all sorts of books, from popular fiction that's considered "beach reading" to military histories to all sorts of books about sports. I'll review a few of them here over the course of the next several weeks (highly recommending one, recommending another and suggesting that you read the third only if you haven't read anything on the topic anywhere else). In any event, I stumbled upon a gem at the book store over a month ago. I didn't know what to expect, and it turned out to be a real find.
The book is entitled Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, about, for the most part, the 1908 baseball season, the year of a torrid pennant race in the Senior Circuit among the Giants, Cubs and Pirates, the year of "Merkle's boner," of very brave umpires, corrupt or pusillanimous league officials, fiery players, some of whom literally did anything it took to win, while others displayed sportsmanship that was well ahead of its time. Mixed in with the detailed research and punchy, fluid prose, is some social history from the era. Murphy, a college softball player at Amherst a few decades ago who now is an editor at Fortune, hits a home run.
Baseball about 100 years ago was far different from the game today. Fans could actually sit on the field if the grandstands overflowed, thus creating some interesting ground rules. All players had jobs in the off-season. A future Hall of Fame catcher, for example, worked as a private detective. You'll read of the players' hatred of the reserve clause even way back when, the determination of many to make it at all costs because of the poverty they desperately wanted to leave behind, the threats that gamblers posed to the game, and you'll even see a photo of Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown's fabled right hand.
You'll read about the Cubs' Orval Overall and the Phillies' "Giant Killer" Harry Covaleskie, who beat the New York nine three times in the last few weeks of the season to cause the Giants endless grief. (And you'll hear a continuation of the stories told in Lawrence Ritter's brilliant Glory of Their Times as to whether the young pitcher left baseball because of a sore arm or because the bench jockeys swore he kept bologna in his back pocket and rode him mercilessly about his snacking habits, driving him from the game).
I wrote earlier that Cait Murphy hit a home run with this book, but she actually achieved a Triple Crown. First, she researched the heck out of the subject matter and tells detailed "back stories" to some of the stories that many baseball fans and self-described experts thought they already knew. Second, her writing style is unique, transcendant and entertaining. She doesn't mince or waste words, and the combination has a very real feel to it, as if someone were narrating a documentary with vivid photos scrolling on a screen. Third, she takes you back in time and makes you feel like it really is 1908 and you're there.
Baseball fans -- just go out and buy this book. You will not be disappointed.
The book is entitled Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, about, for the most part, the 1908 baseball season, the year of a torrid pennant race in the Senior Circuit among the Giants, Cubs and Pirates, the year of "Merkle's boner," of very brave umpires, corrupt or pusillanimous league officials, fiery players, some of whom literally did anything it took to win, while others displayed sportsmanship that was well ahead of its time. Mixed in with the detailed research and punchy, fluid prose, is some social history from the era. Murphy, a college softball player at Amherst a few decades ago who now is an editor at Fortune, hits a home run.
Baseball about 100 years ago was far different from the game today. Fans could actually sit on the field if the grandstands overflowed, thus creating some interesting ground rules. All players had jobs in the off-season. A future Hall of Fame catcher, for example, worked as a private detective. You'll read of the players' hatred of the reserve clause even way back when, the determination of many to make it at all costs because of the poverty they desperately wanted to leave behind, the threats that gamblers posed to the game, and you'll even see a photo of Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown's fabled right hand.
You'll read about the Cubs' Orval Overall and the Phillies' "Giant Killer" Harry Covaleskie, who beat the New York nine three times in the last few weeks of the season to cause the Giants endless grief. (And you'll hear a continuation of the stories told in Lawrence Ritter's brilliant Glory of Their Times as to whether the young pitcher left baseball because of a sore arm or because the bench jockeys swore he kept bologna in his back pocket and rode him mercilessly about his snacking habits, driving him from the game).
I wrote earlier that Cait Murphy hit a home run with this book, but she actually achieved a Triple Crown. First, she researched the heck out of the subject matter and tells detailed "back stories" to some of the stories that many baseball fans and self-described experts thought they already knew. Second, her writing style is unique, transcendant and entertaining. She doesn't mince or waste words, and the combination has a very real feel to it, as if someone were narrating a documentary with vivid photos scrolling on a screen. Third, she takes you back in time and makes you feel like it really is 1908 and you're there.
Baseball fans -- just go out and buy this book. You will not be disappointed.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Why is the College World Series So Late?
Unless the colleges participating in the CWS are on trimesters and, as a result, let their kids out in late June, most schools participating finished their academic years at some point in May. Which raises the question as to why the "Super" Regionals have just finished up and why the College World Series will begin in the middle of June?
While Major League Baseball is very popular in the U.S. (if not the number one sport), college baseball always has been a poor cousin to college football and college basketball. It's almost as if the lack of popularity of college baseball supports an often-heard maxim down south that there are two sports, football and spring football, and that the fans of the former foresake their college baseball team to watch spring practice. Alternatively, after two intense seasons watching big-time sports, they take the spring off. Either way, the average sports fan can name many college football and basketball players and coaches, but I'll bet even the best fans can't name ten college baseball coaches and players.
Which leads me back to the premise of this post -- why is the CWS so late? And does anyone really care other than those who play, their families and friends and certain members of college athletic departments? Does college baseball suffer from the professional ice hockey syndrome -- that the only fans are the ones who go to the games? And why does it make sense to start the CWS in mid-June? No one is around, and most students are off to summer school or their summer jobs? The magic of March Madness is totally lost on the NCAA and its member schools.
Why is baseball so baffling? The World Series starts so late at night that young fans can't watch more than the first few innings, and the games take so long that even an average fan must turn them off in order to be in reasonable shape for work the next morning. Its college counterpart is equally inept and drawing a longer-lasting fan base, although in fairness professional baseball has historically eclipsed college baseball to a degree not found in football or basketball. Still, starting a tournament when most schools aren't in session (other than summer session) strikes me as silly. Again, another opportunity lost to garner young fans.
Will I watch? Perhaps and perhaps not. But what's compelling about this tournament to watch it?
There's one and only one March Madness. What do you call this?
The NCAA's June Swoon?
While Major League Baseball is very popular in the U.S. (if not the number one sport), college baseball always has been a poor cousin to college football and college basketball. It's almost as if the lack of popularity of college baseball supports an often-heard maxim down south that there are two sports, football and spring football, and that the fans of the former foresake their college baseball team to watch spring practice. Alternatively, after two intense seasons watching big-time sports, they take the spring off. Either way, the average sports fan can name many college football and basketball players and coaches, but I'll bet even the best fans can't name ten college baseball coaches and players.
Which leads me back to the premise of this post -- why is the CWS so late? And does anyone really care other than those who play, their families and friends and certain members of college athletic departments? Does college baseball suffer from the professional ice hockey syndrome -- that the only fans are the ones who go to the games? And why does it make sense to start the CWS in mid-June? No one is around, and most students are off to summer school or their summer jobs? The magic of March Madness is totally lost on the NCAA and its member schools.
Why is baseball so baffling? The World Series starts so late at night that young fans can't watch more than the first few innings, and the games take so long that even an average fan must turn them off in order to be in reasonable shape for work the next morning. Its college counterpart is equally inept and drawing a longer-lasting fan base, although in fairness professional baseball has historically eclipsed college baseball to a degree not found in football or basketball. Still, starting a tournament when most schools aren't in session (other than summer session) strikes me as silly. Again, another opportunity lost to garner young fans.
Will I watch? Perhaps and perhaps not. But what's compelling about this tournament to watch it?
There's one and only one March Madness. What do you call this?
The NCAA's June Swoon?
The Flip Side to NFL Glory
Read this and see what I mean.
Someone once wrote that the winners write the history books, which means that you don't frequently see stories like this. Most likely, the only stories you see about former NFL players are about the superstars when they make the Hall of Fame. Seldom do we see stories about those who are less fortunate but no less critical to the success of the NFL -- the average player.
And it's no surprise that the detritus of the NFL survives in the form of broken bodies. After all, how would you fare if since seven or eight, and into your late twenties or earlier thirties, you spent a good part of your young life colliding with other people? It seems that both the NFL Players' Union and the NFL are woefully unprepared to deal with the massive problems that certain former players have.
For some, being an NFL superstart is a glamorous life. For many others, this story is a sobering reminder of what being a pro player is all about.
This story also makes me reflect on the "early" retirement of Giants' RB Tiki Barber.
Smart guy.
Someone once wrote that the winners write the history books, which means that you don't frequently see stories like this. Most likely, the only stories you see about former NFL players are about the superstars when they make the Hall of Fame. Seldom do we see stories about those who are less fortunate but no less critical to the success of the NFL -- the average player.
And it's no surprise that the detritus of the NFL survives in the form of broken bodies. After all, how would you fare if since seven or eight, and into your late twenties or earlier thirties, you spent a good part of your young life colliding with other people? It seems that both the NFL Players' Union and the NFL are woefully unprepared to deal with the massive problems that certain former players have.
For some, being an NFL superstart is a glamorous life. For many others, this story is a sobering reminder of what being a pro player is all about.
This story also makes me reflect on the "early" retirement of Giants' RB Tiki Barber.
Smart guy.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Indy Car Tires
I read an interesting article in this month's "ESPN The Magazine" about Goodyear and the manufacture of Indy car tires.
Did you know that
a) They cost $418 apiece;
b) a car uses about $30,000 of tires per race; and
c) (the most compelling item in my opinion) at any one time in a race, the only rubber hitting the track (of all 4 tires combined) is roughly the size of the sole of a men's size 11 shoe.
It's always great to read articles in national publications that actually teach you something. It's also a small article, a two-page layout, but great stuff nonetheless. There really isn't a good hypertext link to the article, but go within the ESPN website and find the magazine, and check it out.
Did you know that
a) They cost $418 apiece;
b) a car uses about $30,000 of tires per race; and
c) (the most compelling item in my opinion) at any one time in a race, the only rubber hitting the track (of all 4 tires combined) is roughly the size of the sole of a men's size 11 shoe.
It's always great to read articles in national publications that actually teach you something. It's also a small article, a two-page layout, but great stuff nonetheless. There really isn't a good hypertext link to the article, but go within the ESPN website and find the magazine, and check it out.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Take That, Boston Celtics
In the freak show that is the NBA Lottery (picture the scene at Jabba the Hutt's bar in "Return of the Jedi"), the NBA and the Boston Celtics lost tonight.
Bigtime.
First, the NBA. Two of the best players to come out of college in a long time will be playing their pro hoops in those basketball hotbeds -- Portland and Seattle. Those pro teams were hot in the late 1970's, but I'll bet that Greg Oden and Kevin Durrant know only that Bill Walton is a TV hoops commentator, and I doubt they know of Downtown Freddie Brown, Jack Sikma or Maurice Lucas. Most of the country doesn't follow West Coast teams because of the time difference, so it's hard to figure that they'll pay much attention to either the Trail Blazers or the Sonics. Since those teams finished 1-2 in the lottery, they're the most likely to come away with Oden and Durrant.
Second, the Celtics. They ran their team into the ground a la "The Producers," doing everything this season but staging "Springtime for Hitler" on their home court in order to tank their season and finish first in the lottery sweepstakes. But somehow, the basketball gods were throwing thunderbolts at that storied franchise. Okay, so they didn't use their magic to elevate the Philadelphia 76ers, who had about a 1% chance to enter the top 3, into the top 3. The 76ers, you'll remember, traded Allen Iverson to Denver and could have let their season fall by the wayside. Instead, the former supporting cast, ride of the ball and chain of a shoot-first point guard, revived themselves and had a strong finish. The 76ers should be proud of their body of work after the AI trade; the Celtics should be downright ashamed.
And they won't be rewarded with one of the two plum prizes in this year's NBA draft, and that's the way it should be. The NBA also gets punished, as I'm sure that their production staff already had been figuring out ways to tout Greg Oden in the Celtics' classic uniforms.
Naturally, as a native Philadelphian who rooted tirelessly for the 76ers, I have a bit of schadenfreud when it comes to the Celtics' predicament here, but the Celtics got what they deserved.
As did the NBA.
The NBA's western conference is, to a great degree, stronger than the east. Yes, the Pistons are formidable, but they're getting older, and the Cavs really don't scare anyone. The rest are, well, the rest. Meanwhile, in the west you have four of the five best teams in the league already and, when you bring Oden and Durrant to the west, you're close to making the league lopsided from a talent perspective. It could well get to the point that making the playoffs in the west will be tougher than winning the east.
What a mess.
Bigtime.
First, the NBA. Two of the best players to come out of college in a long time will be playing their pro hoops in those basketball hotbeds -- Portland and Seattle. Those pro teams were hot in the late 1970's, but I'll bet that Greg Oden and Kevin Durrant know only that Bill Walton is a TV hoops commentator, and I doubt they know of Downtown Freddie Brown, Jack Sikma or Maurice Lucas. Most of the country doesn't follow West Coast teams because of the time difference, so it's hard to figure that they'll pay much attention to either the Trail Blazers or the Sonics. Since those teams finished 1-2 in the lottery, they're the most likely to come away with Oden and Durrant.
Second, the Celtics. They ran their team into the ground a la "The Producers," doing everything this season but staging "Springtime for Hitler" on their home court in order to tank their season and finish first in the lottery sweepstakes. But somehow, the basketball gods were throwing thunderbolts at that storied franchise. Okay, so they didn't use their magic to elevate the Philadelphia 76ers, who had about a 1% chance to enter the top 3, into the top 3. The 76ers, you'll remember, traded Allen Iverson to Denver and could have let their season fall by the wayside. Instead, the former supporting cast, ride of the ball and chain of a shoot-first point guard, revived themselves and had a strong finish. The 76ers should be proud of their body of work after the AI trade; the Celtics should be downright ashamed.
And they won't be rewarded with one of the two plum prizes in this year's NBA draft, and that's the way it should be. The NBA also gets punished, as I'm sure that their production staff already had been figuring out ways to tout Greg Oden in the Celtics' classic uniforms.
Naturally, as a native Philadelphian who rooted tirelessly for the 76ers, I have a bit of schadenfreud when it comes to the Celtics' predicament here, but the Celtics got what they deserved.
As did the NBA.
The NBA's western conference is, to a great degree, stronger than the east. Yes, the Pistons are formidable, but they're getting older, and the Cavs really don't scare anyone. The rest are, well, the rest. Meanwhile, in the west you have four of the five best teams in the league already and, when you bring Oden and Durrant to the west, you're close to making the league lopsided from a talent perspective. It could well get to the point that making the playoffs in the west will be tougher than winning the east.
What a mess.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
The Magic of the Ballpark
Last night the family and I went to Citizens Bank Park to watch the Phillies play the Blue Jays. As SI pointed out, the hometown nine has a decent chance to make up some ground on the Mets if only because the Phillies' inter-league play schedule is easier than that of the Mets. Whether a team that has as regulars Wes Helms, Abraham Nunez and Rod Barajas in it and a bullpen has signs on the inside of its uniform jerseys that warn "do not put this pitcher near an open flame" can actually catch the Mets is, of course, another story, but that's why they play the games.
We always have fun driving down I-95 to the park, and last night was no exception despite the fact that it was about 55 degrees with a stiff wind blowing. Funny, but having lived in northern California for a while, I thought for a split second that I was at Hunter's Point at Candelstick Park and that there was a chance that a diminutive pitcher could get blown off the mound. The kids donned their Under Armour under their Phillies' shirts, and we took plenty of layers. Fortunately, our seats were under cover, as the weather couldn't make up its mind whether to pour or to let the sunshine in. Instead, there was a fine mist for a good part of the night.
A good ballgame figured to be in the offing. The night before, a rookie Jay's pitcher no-no-ed the Phils for four innings before combusting in the fifth, and the Phillies won the game. Last night, another youngster was taking the hill for the visitors, and he looked sharp early too. Still, we didn't think it would matter, because we had the veteran Jamie Moyer hurling for the home team (it was the fans who would end up wanting to hurl before the night's conclusion), and it was his folk's fiftieth wedding anniversary to boot.
Before the game, we bought dinner (spending a relative fortune for food that's lucky to have escaped Morgan Spurlock's classic "Supersize Me"), and, after the kids finished their shared cheesteak and steak fries and I ate my Italian sausage with grilled onions and peppers, we made our way to behind the Phillies' dugout, once again looking for autographs. My wife, meanwhile, stayed in our seats and was trying to enjoy a more nutritious dinner (if you call a turkey hoagie more nutritious).
We clearly weren't in the right spot for autographs last night, but we were the only ones standing where we were, and about 5 minutes before game time a cameraman walked in front of the dugout where we were standing and put the camera on us. Several seconds later, we realized that we were on "Phan-a-vision", the big-screen TV on the huge scoreboard above left field, being broadcast all over the ballpark. We smiled and laughed (thankfully, the kids are actually photogenic and, yes, much more photogenic than dad), and Mom saw her family (as did about 39,999 others) for about 20 seconds or more. She said that she enjoyed the moment very much, as did we.
The magic continued.
Sort of.
Moyer laid an egg on the big night for his folks, and he looked more like a batting practice pitcher out there than a guy who has a couple hundred wins. Even the outs were hit hard, and Troy Glaus and Lyle Overbay hit three-run shots off him. By the time Chase Utley came up in the fifth inning, it was 7-0, Jays.
Chase Utley batted that inning, and I said the following for my family to hear as he approached the plate (others in the row before us heard it too).
"Okay, guys, I can feel the magic now. On the second pitch, Chase hits a homer to right."
First pitch was a ball.
On the second pitch, the All-Star second sacker hit a ball into the upper deck.
The kids and my wife laughed and laughed, as did I. The people in the row before me nodded in approval.
Then my daughter, whose the big Chase Utley fan in the family (my son was disappointed that Ryan Howard is on the DL), met my eyes.
"Way to go dad."
"Let's face it," I said, "I'm a wizard."
More laughs.
But a wizard with limited powers.
We left after 7 (the kids got cold and the hot chocolate was a disappointment; why the Phils can't partner with Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks for better hot drinks is beyond my comprehension, except that while they might be able to get away with charging, gulp, $6.75 for a Bud or Bud Light, they can't charge $7 for a grande latte), and we started to listen to the game on the radio. Apparently journeyman reliever Clay Condrey put some TNT on the fire and contributed to yielding an additional six runs, walking three and hitting two.
Final score, Blue Jays 13, Phillies 2.
Would we have had more fun had the hometown nine actually won the game?
Absolutely.
But did we have fun anyway?
Of course.
After all, it isn't every night you get to be on TV.
[As an aside, many of you have wondered whether I had given up on this blog or why I was AWOL. Actually, may day job and principal extracurricular activities have kept me quite busy, and blogging will be intermittent between now and early June. I am reading some good sports books on which I'll blog, and I'll offer some commentary on kids' sporting activities. Thanks for your patience.]
We always have fun driving down I-95 to the park, and last night was no exception despite the fact that it was about 55 degrees with a stiff wind blowing. Funny, but having lived in northern California for a while, I thought for a split second that I was at Hunter's Point at Candelstick Park and that there was a chance that a diminutive pitcher could get blown off the mound. The kids donned their Under Armour under their Phillies' shirts, and we took plenty of layers. Fortunately, our seats were under cover, as the weather couldn't make up its mind whether to pour or to let the sunshine in. Instead, there was a fine mist for a good part of the night.
A good ballgame figured to be in the offing. The night before, a rookie Jay's pitcher no-no-ed the Phils for four innings before combusting in the fifth, and the Phillies won the game. Last night, another youngster was taking the hill for the visitors, and he looked sharp early too. Still, we didn't think it would matter, because we had the veteran Jamie Moyer hurling for the home team (it was the fans who would end up wanting to hurl before the night's conclusion), and it was his folk's fiftieth wedding anniversary to boot.
Before the game, we bought dinner (spending a relative fortune for food that's lucky to have escaped Morgan Spurlock's classic "Supersize Me"), and, after the kids finished their shared cheesteak and steak fries and I ate my Italian sausage with grilled onions and peppers, we made our way to behind the Phillies' dugout, once again looking for autographs. My wife, meanwhile, stayed in our seats and was trying to enjoy a more nutritious dinner (if you call a turkey hoagie more nutritious).
We clearly weren't in the right spot for autographs last night, but we were the only ones standing where we were, and about 5 minutes before game time a cameraman walked in front of the dugout where we were standing and put the camera on us. Several seconds later, we realized that we were on "Phan-a-vision", the big-screen TV on the huge scoreboard above left field, being broadcast all over the ballpark. We smiled and laughed (thankfully, the kids are actually photogenic and, yes, much more photogenic than dad), and Mom saw her family (as did about 39,999 others) for about 20 seconds or more. She said that she enjoyed the moment very much, as did we.
The magic continued.
Sort of.
Moyer laid an egg on the big night for his folks, and he looked more like a batting practice pitcher out there than a guy who has a couple hundred wins. Even the outs were hit hard, and Troy Glaus and Lyle Overbay hit three-run shots off him. By the time Chase Utley came up in the fifth inning, it was 7-0, Jays.
Chase Utley batted that inning, and I said the following for my family to hear as he approached the plate (others in the row before us heard it too).
"Okay, guys, I can feel the magic now. On the second pitch, Chase hits a homer to right."
First pitch was a ball.
On the second pitch, the All-Star second sacker hit a ball into the upper deck.
The kids and my wife laughed and laughed, as did I. The people in the row before me nodded in approval.
Then my daughter, whose the big Chase Utley fan in the family (my son was disappointed that Ryan Howard is on the DL), met my eyes.
"Way to go dad."
"Let's face it," I said, "I'm a wizard."
More laughs.
But a wizard with limited powers.
We left after 7 (the kids got cold and the hot chocolate was a disappointment; why the Phils can't partner with Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks for better hot drinks is beyond my comprehension, except that while they might be able to get away with charging, gulp, $6.75 for a Bud or Bud Light, they can't charge $7 for a grande latte), and we started to listen to the game on the radio. Apparently journeyman reliever Clay Condrey put some TNT on the fire and contributed to yielding an additional six runs, walking three and hitting two.
Final score, Blue Jays 13, Phillies 2.
Would we have had more fun had the hometown nine actually won the game?
Absolutely.
But did we have fun anyway?
Of course.
After all, it isn't every night you get to be on TV.
[As an aside, many of you have wondered whether I had given up on this blog or why I was AWOL. Actually, may day job and principal extracurricular activities have kept me quite busy, and blogging will be intermittent between now and early June. I am reading some good sports books on which I'll blog, and I'll offer some commentary on kids' sporting activities. Thanks for your patience.]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)