10/14/06
Catching Up
Dozens of sports stories have been creeping by as I fumed about the Yankees ridiculous early departure from the playoffs. So to make up for my lack of minor rants last time around, I will now catch you up on everything you need to know through an all-minor-rant article.
Drew Fails: Drew Bledsoe failed miserably in his attempts to, ya know, throw the football last Sunday. Though clearly the purpose of the game of football is to get the funky-bouncing pigskin into Terrell Owens’ hands, Drew could not do it. It almost seemed like he was trying to win the game instead of giving T.O. the ball. I mean, he clearly under threw T.O. on deep routes, was obviously somehow responsible for T.O.’s drops when crossing the middle of the field, and come on people—13 throws in Owens’ direction is not nearly enough. It isn’t like Terry Glenn needed any balls thrown his way. Who has ever heard of him? Did he single-handedly destroy two franchises? No? Well then clearly he does not have the Power of Terrell Owens.
Joe Stays: Smart Yankee fans throughout the country scream in pain and disgust.
Baseball: Apparently, there is still baseball to be played. Who knew? Who cares, either? The Mets should run through the Cardinals, someone will win in the A.L., and the A.L. team will win the World Series because that is what A.L. teams do. I have no rooting interest, really. No one else does either. If you aren’t from Oakland, Detroit or St. Louis—or maybe the ten people in NY who root for the Mets—you don’t care. When the Yankees are in the playoffs, everybody cares, love them or hate them. Oh well. MLB’s loss.
Corey Lidle: You can’t say much about this. It is tragic. From a somewhat morbid, Yankee fanatic point of view, there is only one question: why didn’t he invite Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, Hideki Matsui and Joe Torre to ride with him? Shame.
Get This Man An Education: I’m not going to name names (though I suppose that sentence is a bit contradictory...), but a certain sports writer whose last name rhymes with “myth”, and who used to be a relatively regular sight on Around the Horn...
Stinks.
If you want a clinic in how *not* to write an article, read his articles. They are bad. You have to wonder how the guy got the job. Really. He isn’t a bad guy. On Around the Horn, where his super-informal and ultra unoriginal babbling belongs, he is a solid contributor. On ESPN.com, where the ability to write is somewhat useful, he just brings the whole site down.
Herm and Lovie: You know, I hate it when people bring race into everything. It doesn’t really need to be there. The NBA, NFL and MLB all have far more than the percentage of the population when it comes to diversity. And often, issues propounded as racial by the Stuart Scotts of the world have A) nothing at all to do with the color of your skin or B) it swings both ways. Take two black coaches in the NFL, for example. Lovie Smith and Herman Edwards coach the Bears and Chiefs, respectively. Lovie Smith was, for a long time, an underrated coordinator who finally landed a head coaching gig in Chicago. Herman Edwards has been, for a long time, one of the most overrated coaches in the league. Now if Lovie was being shunned due to his African roots, Herman was being grabbed due to those same roots. Or, if we could just admit that some African-American coaches are misjudged for reasons *other* than their color, we can dispense with the whole business.
Lovie Smith is now proving just how good he is. Herman Edwards is proving just how bad he is. He wrecked the Jets and is now doing the same to the KC Chiefs. He is bad. Lovie is good. Has nothing to do with what you see when you look in the mirror.
Leinart: Though the Cardinals lost last week, rookie quarterback Matt Lienart played extremely well in his first NFL start, showing why he was termed the “NFL-ready” QB during this most recent draft. I ached and pleaded and hoped against hope that the Titans would take Leinart and not Vince Young with the third pick in June. But no, they had to go with the “athletic” QB. The NFL’s obsession with mobile quarterbacks is unbelievable. Running QBs do not win. Let us look at the past Super Bowl winners:
Ben Roethlisberger
Tom Brady
Tom Brady
Brad Johsnon
Tom Brady
Trent Dilfer
Kurt Warner
John Elway
John Elway
Brett Favre
And the list could go on. Besides the preponderance of Bradys and Elways, the thing one should notice is that none of those QBs run very often. The closest a running QB ever came to winning a Super Bowl was Steve McNair’s 1 yard shy job in 2000, and McNair was, not surprisingly, morphing into the passer he would become for the next five years. Why do teams still go after running QBs? Running QBs don’t win. Accurate, smart passers win. Sounds a lot like Matt Lienart. Too bad for his sake that even accurate, smart QBs can’t win in Arizona. Heck, even 6’5”, 230 lb, laser-rocket armed quarterbacks could never win in Arizona.
Really though. Think about running QBs versus passing ones. Donovan McNabb was the most overrated QB in the league when he ran all of the time. Now that he throws the ball, he is dang good. Steve McNair was okay when he ran often, but he became a co-MVP when he started throwing the ball. You don’t want a cement-feet QB like Bledsoe, but a guy with mobility should use it to escape the rush and throw, not to escape the rush and run. All of the numbers back me up on that one, including Ws.
NBA: The National Basketball Association opened its exhibition schedule lately... internationally. I suppose it makes sense, since everyone in the NBA is now foreign, but still, should we re-name this league the IBA? Seriously. Let’s forget this whole shenanigan where players form other countries play on our teams while pretending it is still a “National” Basketball Association. Just make the thing international. Or maybe not. Just banning all international players would be better. Except Canadians. That way we can still see behind the back, over the shoulder, through the legs, off the backboard passes right into the waiting hands of a Phoenix player getting ready to dunk.
This Means...: Joey Harrington has replaced Daunte Culpepper as the Miami Dolphins QB, ostensibly due to Culpepper’s “injury”. If by “injury”, one means pathetic and awful playing, sure, Daunte is injured. The fact is, the Dolphins just want an excuse as to why they are playing so badly, and they have now invented an effective one. I would not care so much except that this means whenever Culpepper comes back again, everyone will be expecting him to play well again, and they will act surprised when he fails again. Until the Dolphins trade for Randy Moss, Daunte will be a below average QB.
What a Game: The Steelers Play the Chiefs this week. Dangit. Two horribly overrated teams playing is always a bad thing, because whichever team wins is suddenly proclaimed fantastic by the football pundits. If Pittsburgh wins, they are “back on track”, and if KC wins, they are “on their way”. Sure, they would have a winning record, but Kansas City beat the Cardinals. Every team should beat the Cardinals. If Pittsburgh defeats the Chiefs this week—which they might—it won’t be much of a victory. Beating a Herman Edwards coached team is like beating a glacier down a hill. Or something like that.
Japan Has it Right: In the Japanese baseball playoffs, the team with the best record gets a bye, while the second and third place teams duke it out for the chance to challenge the best team. Now I have for a long time been a proponent of some type of rule such as this, but Japan, in its unbelievably progressive baseball wisdom, takes it even farther. The team with the best record is spotted a game against the winner of the other series! It is a race to three victories, with the best team being given one to start with. Now that is the type of genius that the MLB needs to adopt. Of course, they won’t, because Bud Selig is an idiot (Steroids? What are steroids?), but that’s okay.
Is This Legal?: The Denver Broncos are favored to beat the Oakland Raiders by 15 points this weekend. That is a huge disparity. If the spread is 10 points, it is huge. 15 is gigantic. Well, okay, you say, the Raiders are bad. But do you know just how bad they are? The Broncos average 12 points a game.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
10/11/06 rant
10/10/06
New Levels of Incompetence
In my articles thus far, I have used size 14 print in my initial rant, and size 12 in my minor rants. To accommodate the sheer length that my initial rant will in all likelihood attain, I have made both sizes smaller.
Before I get onto the Yankees and the 4,000 things that went wrong with them, I’ll pay lip service to the other series’ to feign objectivity. You, the reader, will be completely fooled by this and walk away from my article smiling, saying things aloud like “he is a really complete writer. He gets every angle, covers everything, and does not pay undue attention to MLB, NFL, and the Yankees in general”. Absolutely.
I do not know what hideous sickness convinced me to pick the Padres in the series over the Cardinals. Oh wait, yes I do. Twas the hideous sickness called “fan-hood”. The Cardinals need to lose. They need to lose quickly, painfully, and badly. But I should never have *picked* them to lose. This is a lot like my March Madness bracket this year. Oh how stupid I am (just because Syracuse is Big East doesn’t make them good. *smacks self over and over and over*). I knew the Cardinals would win but I picked the Padres because I wanted them to win. The Cardinals need to disappear. Pujols' funky batting stance needs to disappear. Chris Carpenter needs to disappear. Tony La Russa really needs to disappear. Yet they did not, because they were playing the Padres.
Last year, the NL West got a team in the playoffs despite horrifically stinking. This year, they got two teams in the playoffs, not in spite of, but because they horrifically stink. With so many bad teams, their records managed to eventually cancel each other out until two terrible teams from a terrible division from a terrible league managed to get into the big shabang. They both lost quickly. Surprise surprise.
Meanwhile, the Twins got embarrassed. Violated. Strung up on the flag pole *in* their underwear. They were so thoroughly beaten it is hard to believe this team once looked formidable. How did they ever win a game Santana did not pitch? Speaking of Santana, even he was out pitched, at home no less. So much for everyone’s favorite MVP candidate. The A’s didn’t really score that much; Twins hitters simply looked awful. Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer did nothing until it was too late. So much for everyone’s second and third favorite MVP candidates (everyone always loves the Twins until they get into the postseason, and then we remember they are still the Twins).
Barry Zito is making his off-season payday bigger with every playoff start like that. I hope he now crashes and burns, so that when the Yankees inevitably pursue him, he will cost them less. He is a head case who will never survive in NY, and hopefully they only waste $10000000 on him instead of $12000000. Man that’s a lot of zeros. Can you imagine making that much and claiming you get minimum wage? Yeah well Torii Hunter can. And we saw what happened to his team. Once upon a time when he was relevant, Latrell Sprewell made similar comments. His teams fared no better. That should be a warning to overpaid athletes everywhere: stop complaining about money. The karma will kill you. You get absurd amounts of money to play a game.
Yet all of this pales in comparison to the ultimate underachiever, Alex Rodriguez.
Now the article changes. Now I become two people. First, I will give the fan’s take. What the die-hard Yankee fan who can’t believe what he just saw is saying about this team and what should happen. Then, I will give a more rational answer. This is not to say that everything said by a fan is unreasoning—quite the contrary, the fan knows best because the fan is the customer. But sometimes fans get a tad zealous.
A-Rod
The Fan’s Take:
Oh how we loathe you, A-Rod. Oh how we roll our eyes when you come up to the plate. Oh how we are not surprised when you look like a 5 year old swinging wildly at his dad’s best curveball. Oh how we aren’t surprised when you stare at a meaty fastball headed right down the center of the plate. Oh how much we want to get rid of you. Oh how we know it won’t happen, because baseball does not work like that. Oh how we rue the day when living memory has passed and your numbers are the only things to speak for you, and analysts proclaim you the greatest player of all time. Oh how wrong they will be. You are not even the greatest player of your generation, not even the greatest player on your team, for goodness’ sake.
The Yankees lost because A-Rod came up with the bases loaded instead of Scott Brosius. Brosius will barely be remembered in history books, but he was a better playoff performer than you, oh blue lipped, perfectly proportioned, blonde highlighted, pretty boy. Go back to Texas and play on last place teams where numbers in the regular season mean everything. Go ahead.
Rational Thought:
Alex Rodriguez knows how to physically hit a baseball. He knows how to hit it to left field, right field, the field next door, the moon, etc. What he does not know is when to hit a baseball. He gives no indication that he will ever be able to perform when his team needs him. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, but there are clearly some problems in the man’s head. Maybe it is New York—who knows. He gets a ton of scrutiny, and after a while you have to feel sorry for him. If he will never produce in NY, though, he needs to leave. If Lou Pinella can get him to produce...
Regardless, the fact remains that A-Rod tries hard and doesn’t come through. Will New York ever fit for him? Maybe, maybe not. How long are the Yankees going to wait to find out, and even if they determine he has to go, can they realistically get rid of him?
Division Series
The Fan’s Take:
In years long gone, the best teams won. They sent the team with the best regular season record to the World Series. That was it. That worked. Why? Because 162 games is a heck of lot more than 5, and it shows for more clearly who the better team is. The five game series does various things to baseball:
1) It makes it the ultimate me-first sport. Team baseball is useless. It is pointless. To win in the playoffs you need what the Diamonbacks had in ’01: two good pitchers, one good hitter, period. This is no team game anymore. This is a game where the guys in the lineup tell their pitcher to shut the other team down while we stare at our muscles and pose for endorsements. No game requires less teamwork than baseball as is, and such a short series turns it into a mess of egos. Look at the A’s. They have a good pitcher, a good hitter, and a spot in the ALCS. Of course, the Twins had that too, but the Twins got unlucky.
2) Speaking of which, the division series’ ridiculous number of games makes whatever you did in the regular season useless. Who cares if you were the second best team in your division? Who cares if you were the third best team in your league? Get one lucky, fluke of a game and the series is practically yours.
3) It doesn’t even make any sense. More games mean more money, and yet MLB doesn’t want it. Why? Probably so that every team has a chance. Yeah. And I could win the World Series of Poker. Technically, I could. But the chances are 9,000 to 1 against. Well the chances of your team winning are 7-1 against. Who cares if they are twice as good as the team they are playing against. That matters not. It is a roll of the dice.
4) For that matter, why don’t we just flip coins? Send the captains out there and have them pick sides, and then the ump flips a coin to see who wins, everybody cheers or jeers, and we move on. More efficient that way.
5) The Oakland A’s take the first half of the season off. Period. All the time. The Twins took it off this year. But they know that as long as they then sneak into the playoffs somehow, those games mean absolutely nothing. Being a wildcard doesn’t matter. Having no home field doesn’t matter. It is a freaking crapshoot, and the whole dang baseball world knows it.
Rational Thought:
There is an inherent fault in Baseball: the best team does not always win. This is obvious since the best team in the league has never lost fewer than 46 games. On average, the best teams loses 60 times. 60 times! How then, is one supposed to judge the season on a five game series? You can’t. It is stupid, it always has been, the best team does not win in the playoffs, the luckiest team wins. Seven game series are at least tolerable. Generally, in a seven game series, the better team will win—though it is still far from certain. But in a five game series, the Royals can win. Really. They swept Detroit in a THREE game series to end the season. And yet we are supposed to believe a five game series does any type of justice to the teams’ abilities?
This is why, in years long gone, the best teams won. They sent the team with the best regular season record to the World Series. That was it. That worked. Why? Because 162 games is a heck of lot more than 5, and it shows for more clearly who the better team is.
Brian Cashman
The Fan’s Take:
This bum never does a darn thing right. Randy Johnson for three years at $16 million a year, a guy with a 5.00 ERA? Carl Pavano? Jaret Wright? Kyle Farnsworth? There is no level of stupidity to which this man won’t fall.
Rational Thought:
Brian Cashman has given the Yankees a veritable All-Star team. The problem with these particular All-Stars is that the majority have not been All-Stars for years. He gets them old, washed up pitchers, and sluggers who know how to hit but not how to win. Cashman can evaluate talent pretty darn well; but Matsui, A-Rod, etc., apart from being somewhat no-brainers, are also somewhat terrible. Matsui is a guy who will give you good stats and terrible results. He is easy to strike out if one has a live fastball, and he gives second basemen around the league double play balls all the time. Acquisitions like Giambi and Sheffield seem good until you realize that the Yankees are paying them ludicrous amounts of money for two good years and then a washed up, old, bench player.
Nevertheless, the team Cashman has not-so-exquisitely put together (he does have a $200000000 payroll to work with... wow. Many a zero there) should win. Cashman’s problem is he hates change. When asked if A-Rod or Torre might be moving out after their embarrassing loss to the Tigers, Cashman replied as if it was is stupid question, wondering why they would possibly want to get rid of either of them.
Maybe because your team just got embarrassed and they were two huge reasons why. If you don’t win, why go out with the exact same team and expect to win next year?
Joe Torre
The Fan’s Take:
He sucks. Completely.
Rational Thought:
He sucks. A lot. Joe Torre clearly knows how to keep a cool head over the long regular season, and he is adept at appeasing the massive egos involved with the Yankees $200 million payroll. But he does not know how to manage the game of baseball at all.
Let’s just count a few of the many and vast mistakes he made this series:
1) He took out Wang in the seventh inning of game 1, when Wang was on a roll and the entire Yankee team was bulldozing the Tigers. It would never be the same again. Every Yankee fan with a brain was screaming at Torre as he walked out to the mound. It was one of the dumbest moves I have ever seen a manager or coach make in any sport. Torre has a history of pulling starting pitchers way too early, but this was unbelievably bad. Not surprisingly, Mike Myers gives up a home run, Scott Proctor has to work out of trouble, and the Yankees completely hand the high ground to the Tigers.
2) He batted A-Rod 6th in the line-up. What? That’s a great way to inspire confidence in a shattered mind. Make sure he knows he is pitiful enough to only deserve the sixth spot.
3) He played Matsui instead of Melky. I don’t know how much of this is Torre versus Cashman—Matsui makes way more money than Melky—but Cabrera is a far superior outfield, a faster base runner, and had far more experience at the plate this year. In addition, Melky is capable of doing all the things a team needs to do in the playoffs—moving runners over, making tough outs, not grounding into double plays, etc. Not to mention the fact that he is a switch hitter.
4) He dropped A-Rod to 8th in the lineup. Oh. Yeah. Great confidence booster there.
5) He did not play Giambi, the Yankees top home run hitter, in the final game. And it isn’t like Giambi is all or nothing. He can walk with the best of them. He is the best of them.
6) These and other such awful moves had the Yankee team as a whole disordered and lacking in passion. You could just see that the Yankees almost did not care. That is supposed to be Torre’s forte, and he failed even there.
This list doesn’t even include his destruction of the bullpen during the regular season. All of their relievers were good for the first half, but tired and died and stunk towards the end of the season. Why is this? Because Torre beats them all into the ground, by pulling his starters in the 4th inning when they have perfect games going and their pitch count is up to 37.
Despite all of this, Torre is defended by some of his players. Well... duh. Players love Torre. He is easy on them, lets them get lazy, doesn’t care if they play hard, and does his best not to step on any toes. Of course the players like him. Jaret Wright even came out with the ridiculous “he doesn’t swing a bat or throw a pitch” line. Well, if that were a valid excuse, no manager should be fired—ever! (After all, Grady Litle wasn’t the guy who was throwing gas in game seven of the 2003 ALCS). Gary Sheffield, the most honest, least politically correct player on the team—though he won’t be on for long—had the following to say about Torre’s decision-making:
"I think that (putting A-Rod eighth) affected the morale and psyche of the entire team, not just A-Rod. I'm not making any excuses, but everyone was wondering what was going on. It made it a real weird day. You would like to be treated with a little respect, I don't care who you play for.
"We were worrying about all of that stuff, and we still had a game to play. If I'm on the other side, and all of a sudden they're putting Rodriguez eighth and putting me or Jason on the bench, you wonder what's going on. Those guys [the Tigers] were asking me about it. I think it boosted their morale. It gave them confidence they didn't have.”
Amen, Sheff. Torre should be gone, won’t be gone, and now we all—Yankee fans and haters alike—get to watch Torre screw up yet another talented team for one more year—at least—through horrible over-managing.
New Levels of Incompetence
In my articles thus far, I have used size 14 print in my initial rant, and size 12 in my minor rants. To accommodate the sheer length that my initial rant will in all likelihood attain, I have made both sizes smaller.
Before I get onto the Yankees and the 4,000 things that went wrong with them, I’ll pay lip service to the other series’ to feign objectivity. You, the reader, will be completely fooled by this and walk away from my article smiling, saying things aloud like “he is a really complete writer. He gets every angle, covers everything, and does not pay undue attention to MLB, NFL, and the Yankees in general”. Absolutely.
I do not know what hideous sickness convinced me to pick the Padres in the series over the Cardinals. Oh wait, yes I do. Twas the hideous sickness called “fan-hood”. The Cardinals need to lose. They need to lose quickly, painfully, and badly. But I should never have *picked* them to lose. This is a lot like my March Madness bracket this year. Oh how stupid I am (just because Syracuse is Big East doesn’t make them good. *smacks self over and over and over*). I knew the Cardinals would win but I picked the Padres because I wanted them to win. The Cardinals need to disappear. Pujols' funky batting stance needs to disappear. Chris Carpenter needs to disappear. Tony La Russa really needs to disappear. Yet they did not, because they were playing the Padres.
Last year, the NL West got a team in the playoffs despite horrifically stinking. This year, they got two teams in the playoffs, not in spite of, but because they horrifically stink. With so many bad teams, their records managed to eventually cancel each other out until two terrible teams from a terrible division from a terrible league managed to get into the big shabang. They both lost quickly. Surprise surprise.
Meanwhile, the Twins got embarrassed. Violated. Strung up on the flag pole *in* their underwear. They were so thoroughly beaten it is hard to believe this team once looked formidable. How did they ever win a game Santana did not pitch? Speaking of Santana, even he was out pitched, at home no less. So much for everyone’s favorite MVP candidate. The A’s didn’t really score that much; Twins hitters simply looked awful. Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer did nothing until it was too late. So much for everyone’s second and third favorite MVP candidates (everyone always loves the Twins until they get into the postseason, and then we remember they are still the Twins).
Barry Zito is making his off-season payday bigger with every playoff start like that. I hope he now crashes and burns, so that when the Yankees inevitably pursue him, he will cost them less. He is a head case who will never survive in NY, and hopefully they only waste $10000000 on him instead of $12000000. Man that’s a lot of zeros. Can you imagine making that much and claiming you get minimum wage? Yeah well Torii Hunter can. And we saw what happened to his team. Once upon a time when he was relevant, Latrell Sprewell made similar comments. His teams fared no better. That should be a warning to overpaid athletes everywhere: stop complaining about money. The karma will kill you. You get absurd amounts of money to play a game.
Yet all of this pales in comparison to the ultimate underachiever, Alex Rodriguez.
Now the article changes. Now I become two people. First, I will give the fan’s take. What the die-hard Yankee fan who can’t believe what he just saw is saying about this team and what should happen. Then, I will give a more rational answer. This is not to say that everything said by a fan is unreasoning—quite the contrary, the fan knows best because the fan is the customer. But sometimes fans get a tad zealous.
A-Rod
The Fan’s Take:
Oh how we loathe you, A-Rod. Oh how we roll our eyes when you come up to the plate. Oh how we are not surprised when you look like a 5 year old swinging wildly at his dad’s best curveball. Oh how we aren’t surprised when you stare at a meaty fastball headed right down the center of the plate. Oh how much we want to get rid of you. Oh how we know it won’t happen, because baseball does not work like that. Oh how we rue the day when living memory has passed and your numbers are the only things to speak for you, and analysts proclaim you the greatest player of all time. Oh how wrong they will be. You are not even the greatest player of your generation, not even the greatest player on your team, for goodness’ sake.
The Yankees lost because A-Rod came up with the bases loaded instead of Scott Brosius. Brosius will barely be remembered in history books, but he was a better playoff performer than you, oh blue lipped, perfectly proportioned, blonde highlighted, pretty boy. Go back to Texas and play on last place teams where numbers in the regular season mean everything. Go ahead.
Rational Thought:
Alex Rodriguez knows how to physically hit a baseball. He knows how to hit it to left field, right field, the field next door, the moon, etc. What he does not know is when to hit a baseball. He gives no indication that he will ever be able to perform when his team needs him. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, but there are clearly some problems in the man’s head. Maybe it is New York—who knows. He gets a ton of scrutiny, and after a while you have to feel sorry for him. If he will never produce in NY, though, he needs to leave. If Lou Pinella can get him to produce...
Regardless, the fact remains that A-Rod tries hard and doesn’t come through. Will New York ever fit for him? Maybe, maybe not. How long are the Yankees going to wait to find out, and even if they determine he has to go, can they realistically get rid of him?
Division Series
The Fan’s Take:
In years long gone, the best teams won. They sent the team with the best regular season record to the World Series. That was it. That worked. Why? Because 162 games is a heck of lot more than 5, and it shows for more clearly who the better team is. The five game series does various things to baseball:
1) It makes it the ultimate me-first sport. Team baseball is useless. It is pointless. To win in the playoffs you need what the Diamonbacks had in ’01: two good pitchers, one good hitter, period. This is no team game anymore. This is a game where the guys in the lineup tell their pitcher to shut the other team down while we stare at our muscles and pose for endorsements. No game requires less teamwork than baseball as is, and such a short series turns it into a mess of egos. Look at the A’s. They have a good pitcher, a good hitter, and a spot in the ALCS. Of course, the Twins had that too, but the Twins got unlucky.
2) Speaking of which, the division series’ ridiculous number of games makes whatever you did in the regular season useless. Who cares if you were the second best team in your division? Who cares if you were the third best team in your league? Get one lucky, fluke of a game and the series is practically yours.
3) It doesn’t even make any sense. More games mean more money, and yet MLB doesn’t want it. Why? Probably so that every team has a chance. Yeah. And I could win the World Series of Poker. Technically, I could. But the chances are 9,000 to 1 against. Well the chances of your team winning are 7-1 against. Who cares if they are twice as good as the team they are playing against. That matters not. It is a roll of the dice.
4) For that matter, why don’t we just flip coins? Send the captains out there and have them pick sides, and then the ump flips a coin to see who wins, everybody cheers or jeers, and we move on. More efficient that way.
5) The Oakland A’s take the first half of the season off. Period. All the time. The Twins took it off this year. But they know that as long as they then sneak into the playoffs somehow, those games mean absolutely nothing. Being a wildcard doesn’t matter. Having no home field doesn’t matter. It is a freaking crapshoot, and the whole dang baseball world knows it.
Rational Thought:
There is an inherent fault in Baseball: the best team does not always win. This is obvious since the best team in the league has never lost fewer than 46 games. On average, the best teams loses 60 times. 60 times! How then, is one supposed to judge the season on a five game series? You can’t. It is stupid, it always has been, the best team does not win in the playoffs, the luckiest team wins. Seven game series are at least tolerable. Generally, in a seven game series, the better team will win—though it is still far from certain. But in a five game series, the Royals can win. Really. They swept Detroit in a THREE game series to end the season. And yet we are supposed to believe a five game series does any type of justice to the teams’ abilities?
This is why, in years long gone, the best teams won. They sent the team with the best regular season record to the World Series. That was it. That worked. Why? Because 162 games is a heck of lot more than 5, and it shows for more clearly who the better team is.
Brian Cashman
The Fan’s Take:
This bum never does a darn thing right. Randy Johnson for three years at $16 million a year, a guy with a 5.00 ERA? Carl Pavano? Jaret Wright? Kyle Farnsworth? There is no level of stupidity to which this man won’t fall.
Rational Thought:
Brian Cashman has given the Yankees a veritable All-Star team. The problem with these particular All-Stars is that the majority have not been All-Stars for years. He gets them old, washed up pitchers, and sluggers who know how to hit but not how to win. Cashman can evaluate talent pretty darn well; but Matsui, A-Rod, etc., apart from being somewhat no-brainers, are also somewhat terrible. Matsui is a guy who will give you good stats and terrible results. He is easy to strike out if one has a live fastball, and he gives second basemen around the league double play balls all the time. Acquisitions like Giambi and Sheffield seem good until you realize that the Yankees are paying them ludicrous amounts of money for two good years and then a washed up, old, bench player.
Nevertheless, the team Cashman has not-so-exquisitely put together (he does have a $200000000 payroll to work with... wow. Many a zero there) should win. Cashman’s problem is he hates change. When asked if A-Rod or Torre might be moving out after their embarrassing loss to the Tigers, Cashman replied as if it was is stupid question, wondering why they would possibly want to get rid of either of them.
Maybe because your team just got embarrassed and they were two huge reasons why. If you don’t win, why go out with the exact same team and expect to win next year?
Joe Torre
The Fan’s Take:
He sucks. Completely.
Rational Thought:
He sucks. A lot. Joe Torre clearly knows how to keep a cool head over the long regular season, and he is adept at appeasing the massive egos involved with the Yankees $200 million payroll. But he does not know how to manage the game of baseball at all.
Let’s just count a few of the many and vast mistakes he made this series:
1) He took out Wang in the seventh inning of game 1, when Wang was on a roll and the entire Yankee team was bulldozing the Tigers. It would never be the same again. Every Yankee fan with a brain was screaming at Torre as he walked out to the mound. It was one of the dumbest moves I have ever seen a manager or coach make in any sport. Torre has a history of pulling starting pitchers way too early, but this was unbelievably bad. Not surprisingly, Mike Myers gives up a home run, Scott Proctor has to work out of trouble, and the Yankees completely hand the high ground to the Tigers.
2) He batted A-Rod 6th in the line-up. What? That’s a great way to inspire confidence in a shattered mind. Make sure he knows he is pitiful enough to only deserve the sixth spot.
3) He played Matsui instead of Melky. I don’t know how much of this is Torre versus Cashman—Matsui makes way more money than Melky—but Cabrera is a far superior outfield, a faster base runner, and had far more experience at the plate this year. In addition, Melky is capable of doing all the things a team needs to do in the playoffs—moving runners over, making tough outs, not grounding into double plays, etc. Not to mention the fact that he is a switch hitter.
4) He dropped A-Rod to 8th in the lineup. Oh. Yeah. Great confidence booster there.
5) He did not play Giambi, the Yankees top home run hitter, in the final game. And it isn’t like Giambi is all or nothing. He can walk with the best of them. He is the best of them.
6) These and other such awful moves had the Yankee team as a whole disordered and lacking in passion. You could just see that the Yankees almost did not care. That is supposed to be Torre’s forte, and he failed even there.
This list doesn’t even include his destruction of the bullpen during the regular season. All of their relievers were good for the first half, but tired and died and stunk towards the end of the season. Why is this? Because Torre beats them all into the ground, by pulling his starters in the 4th inning when they have perfect games going and their pitch count is up to 37.
Despite all of this, Torre is defended by some of his players. Well... duh. Players love Torre. He is easy on them, lets them get lazy, doesn’t care if they play hard, and does his best not to step on any toes. Of course the players like him. Jaret Wright even came out with the ridiculous “he doesn’t swing a bat or throw a pitch” line. Well, if that were a valid excuse, no manager should be fired—ever! (After all, Grady Litle wasn’t the guy who was throwing gas in game seven of the 2003 ALCS). Gary Sheffield, the most honest, least politically correct player on the team—though he won’t be on for long—had the following to say about Torre’s decision-making:
"I think that (putting A-Rod eighth) affected the morale and psyche of the entire team, not just A-Rod. I'm not making any excuses, but everyone was wondering what was going on. It made it a real weird day. You would like to be treated with a little respect, I don't care who you play for.
"We were worrying about all of that stuff, and we still had a game to play. If I'm on the other side, and all of a sudden they're putting Rodriguez eighth and putting me or Jason on the bench, you wonder what's going on. Those guys [the Tigers] were asking me about it. I think it boosted their morale. It gave them confidence they didn't have.”
Amen, Sheff. Torre should be gone, won’t be gone, and now we all—Yankee fans and haters alike—get to watch Torre screw up yet another talented team for one more year—at least—through horrible over-managing.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
10/08/06
Surprise. Surprise? Surprise!?
Why, why, why is anyone surprised anymore? For the first four weeks of the NFL season, numerous commentators, analysts, pundits and fans have acted “surprised” that Daunte Culpepper has performed terribly... you know, the way he has performed in every game since the loss of Randy Moss. He stunk last year before his injury. Did everyone just forget this? The 12 interceptions and 2-5 record? All gone? He didn’t get injured before that, guys.
He is now in Miami, playing awful, and everyone is feigning shock. People are even trying to make excuses for him: his mobility isn’t back yet; his offensive line is terrible, etc. So? He played exactly like this last year when he had all the mobility in the world, and his offensive line was fine. Brad Johnson (not exactly a guy who is going to strike fear into defensive coordinators) took the exact same team Culpepper had, and went 6-3 with it. Why couldn’t Culpepper do that? Because he just isn’t good.
This same type of attitude is always visible in the critics’ criticizing. For instance, does anyone know who Adrian Beltre is? If you do, you are a baseball aficionado. Here are his career stats. Pay attention to *all* of the years besides 2004.
http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/stats/mlb_individual_stats_player.jsp?playerID=134181&statType=1
Remarkably consistent hitter, isn’t he? He hits between 15 and 25 home runs, drives in about 60-80, averages somewhere in the .260 range. So, his contract should be pedestrian, right? Orlando Bloom doesn’t get Harrison Ford type money, right? Uh... wrong, apparently. The Seattle Mariners signed him to a $64 million dollar deal. Now what is a glorified Craig Wilson doing with all that money? Probably wasting it, but as you probably guessed, the intent of my question was thus: what was Seattle thinking? Well, they were snowed. In his contract year, 2004, Beltre hit 48 home runs and batted .334. Clearly then, he was going to produce those numbers every year, and there was no sense in Seattle exercising the least bit of caution about a guy who only seems to hit in contract years. I mean, if they had given him a 1 year deal worth $20 million, it would have been a better idea. What possessed them to go all loony over a guy’s contract year? Yet still, they can be forgiven for playing the optimist, over paying in the hopes that Beltre had finally matured and would continue to produce, etc.
But how could anyone be surprised when this guy went back to normal? All over the place people were wondering why he wasn’t a regular Barry Bonds. Well, I’ll tell you why! He just isn’t that good.
The reason players so often disappoint is because players are almost always overrated. Who knows why, but except for the sarcastic ego-bludgeoning writers of Page 2 and other such columns, the experts and commentators gush about almost everyone. Why the strange optimism? Same reason they are surprised when Rex Grossman plays like a National Football League quarterback.
Contrary to their own opinion, the experts don’t predict, they extrapolate. Have you ever seen someone pick a team to go the World Series who had a losing record the year before? Probably not. They really only tell us what we already know. Because of this, when something new happens, i.e. Rex Grossman turns into a good QB, they act like they just saw the Sixth Sense for the first time. I mean, they drafted Grossman high for a reason. Stood to chance that someday he would be good.
Credentials: I do not know what type of resume one needs to land a job at ESPN as an analyst, “expert” or commentator, but the most basic of requirements—one would think—is the ability to annunciate. I cannot understand a darn thing Lou Holtz says. Can anyone else? I don’t want to crap on old people, and I think he is a stand up guy with—in the few instances I can understand him—non-objectionable things to say. But my goodness, he sounds like Mohammed Ali combined with George Bush, and that is not a swell combination. You would probably have a better shot at understanding Morse code than Lou Holtz.
Speaking of Which: Check out these quotes, from authors who will remain anonymous. At least two of the quotations come from those who hold the title “senior writer” at ESPN.com. Now besides the incorrect grammar in the last sentence that would cause the hair to stand up on the back of any decent English-teacher’s neck, these samplings are simply indicative of the dirt-poor writing one finds online these days.
“The much-anticipated showdown of NFC unbeatens turned into a beat-down, with the Bears beating the Seahawks 37-6.”
Beat-down plus beating. Most people would notice that the double use of a word is undesirable. The “beating” should most likely be replaced with “defeating” or something similar. This might seem picayune, but this is not an exception. These types of ridiculous sentences make up the majority of the reading available in articles on ESPN.com, MLB.com, and NFL.com, though ESPN has the largest problem.
“The Raiders completed just nine passes against the Browns on Sunday, and (the Raiders) still managed to blow a 21-3 lead to remain winless.”
“Still”? He makes one negative statement; then he follows it up with another negative, and yet interjects “still” in between. Suffice it to say, you will not be getting high SAT scores with horrific recognition like this. Is it that hard to write well? If so, I must be a genius because I have no trouble writing far better than this.
WARNING: If you suffer from post-grammatical-error-trauma, do not read the following sentence.
“It's also helped that assistant head coach/offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg coached with Reid in Green Bay and before that at Texas-El Paso and Missouri.”
If you cannot find the blatant grammatical error in here, I suppose you are exactly the type of audience ESPN.com is writing to appease. I don’t only blame this one on the writer; I blame the editors. How did they miss this one? If this was an isolated incident, one could conclude it a minor error that is almost inevitable given the number of things written on ESPN.com. Unfortunately, these types of nonsensical inaccuracies are all over the place. Is this what it takes to be an ESPN writer/editor? Nothing?
There are exceptions of course. Humorous or non-serious articles gain leeway because they aren’t meant to be professional. Small avoidance of grammar in official articles can be understood somewhat, even if not completely justified. (Example, using periods to denote frustration. “Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again.” or something similar). But this complete lack of both grammar and writing ability astounds, from paragraph to paragraph. It is not hard to recognize any of the obvious errors listed above. One is an example of bad writing, with nothing grammatically faulty. Another uses a fallacious turn of phrase. The final sample is simply, horrifically wrong. I did not go searching for these errors either. I found them randomly within the time it takes to read three articles.
I write a blog which seven people read. I do it for fun. I don’t edit it. Even then, the only major errors are misspellings. Sure, a few things slip through the cracks but come on people, I could easily, easily write for ESPN by these standards of mediocrity, and in all likelihood, you could too! We could write far better, and that is not a boast on our part, it is an insult to their (lack of) writing ability. I demand that the major sports leagues, networks and sports’ sites start delivering premium, talented authors to provide us with information. This second rate garbage they are spewing right now is inexcusable for organizations as large and resourceful as they.
Surprise. Surprise? Surprise!?
Why, why, why is anyone surprised anymore? For the first four weeks of the NFL season, numerous commentators, analysts, pundits and fans have acted “surprised” that Daunte Culpepper has performed terribly... you know, the way he has performed in every game since the loss of Randy Moss. He stunk last year before his injury. Did everyone just forget this? The 12 interceptions and 2-5 record? All gone? He didn’t get injured before that, guys.
He is now in Miami, playing awful, and everyone is feigning shock. People are even trying to make excuses for him: his mobility isn’t back yet; his offensive line is terrible, etc. So? He played exactly like this last year when he had all the mobility in the world, and his offensive line was fine. Brad Johnson (not exactly a guy who is going to strike fear into defensive coordinators) took the exact same team Culpepper had, and went 6-3 with it. Why couldn’t Culpepper do that? Because he just isn’t good.
This same type of attitude is always visible in the critics’ criticizing. For instance, does anyone know who Adrian Beltre is? If you do, you are a baseball aficionado. Here are his career stats. Pay attention to *all* of the years besides 2004.
http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/stats/mlb_individual_stats_player.jsp?playerID=134181&statType=1
Remarkably consistent hitter, isn’t he? He hits between 15 and 25 home runs, drives in about 60-80, averages somewhere in the .260 range. So, his contract should be pedestrian, right? Orlando Bloom doesn’t get Harrison Ford type money, right? Uh... wrong, apparently. The Seattle Mariners signed him to a $64 million dollar deal. Now what is a glorified Craig Wilson doing with all that money? Probably wasting it, but as you probably guessed, the intent of my question was thus: what was Seattle thinking? Well, they were snowed. In his contract year, 2004, Beltre hit 48 home runs and batted .334. Clearly then, he was going to produce those numbers every year, and there was no sense in Seattle exercising the least bit of caution about a guy who only seems to hit in contract years. I mean, if they had given him a 1 year deal worth $20 million, it would have been a better idea. What possessed them to go all loony over a guy’s contract year? Yet still, they can be forgiven for playing the optimist, over paying in the hopes that Beltre had finally matured and would continue to produce, etc.
But how could anyone be surprised when this guy went back to normal? All over the place people were wondering why he wasn’t a regular Barry Bonds. Well, I’ll tell you why! He just isn’t that good.
The reason players so often disappoint is because players are almost always overrated. Who knows why, but except for the sarcastic ego-bludgeoning writers of Page 2 and other such columns, the experts and commentators gush about almost everyone. Why the strange optimism? Same reason they are surprised when Rex Grossman plays like a National Football League quarterback.
Contrary to their own opinion, the experts don’t predict, they extrapolate. Have you ever seen someone pick a team to go the World Series who had a losing record the year before? Probably not. They really only tell us what we already know. Because of this, when something new happens, i.e. Rex Grossman turns into a good QB, they act like they just saw the Sixth Sense for the first time. I mean, they drafted Grossman high for a reason. Stood to chance that someday he would be good.
Credentials: I do not know what type of resume one needs to land a job at ESPN as an analyst, “expert” or commentator, but the most basic of requirements—one would think—is the ability to annunciate. I cannot understand a darn thing Lou Holtz says. Can anyone else? I don’t want to crap on old people, and I think he is a stand up guy with—in the few instances I can understand him—non-objectionable things to say. But my goodness, he sounds like Mohammed Ali combined with George Bush, and that is not a swell combination. You would probably have a better shot at understanding Morse code than Lou Holtz.
Speaking of Which: Check out these quotes, from authors who will remain anonymous. At least two of the quotations come from those who hold the title “senior writer” at ESPN.com. Now besides the incorrect grammar in the last sentence that would cause the hair to stand up on the back of any decent English-teacher’s neck, these samplings are simply indicative of the dirt-poor writing one finds online these days.
“The much-anticipated showdown of NFC unbeatens turned into a beat-down, with the Bears beating the Seahawks 37-6.”
Beat-down plus beating. Most people would notice that the double use of a word is undesirable. The “beating” should most likely be replaced with “defeating” or something similar. This might seem picayune, but this is not an exception. These types of ridiculous sentences make up the majority of the reading available in articles on ESPN.com, MLB.com, and NFL.com, though ESPN has the largest problem.
“The Raiders completed just nine passes against the Browns on Sunday, and (the Raiders) still managed to blow a 21-3 lead to remain winless.”
“Still”? He makes one negative statement; then he follows it up with another negative, and yet interjects “still” in between. Suffice it to say, you will not be getting high SAT scores with horrific recognition like this. Is it that hard to write well? If so, I must be a genius because I have no trouble writing far better than this.
WARNING: If you suffer from post-grammatical-error-trauma, do not read the following sentence.
“It's also helped that assistant head coach/offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg coached with Reid in Green Bay and before that at Texas-El Paso and Missouri.”
If you cannot find the blatant grammatical error in here, I suppose you are exactly the type of audience ESPN.com is writing to appease. I don’t only blame this one on the writer; I blame the editors. How did they miss this one? If this was an isolated incident, one could conclude it a minor error that is almost inevitable given the number of things written on ESPN.com. Unfortunately, these types of nonsensical inaccuracies are all over the place. Is this what it takes to be an ESPN writer/editor? Nothing?
There are exceptions of course. Humorous or non-serious articles gain leeway because they aren’t meant to be professional. Small avoidance of grammar in official articles can be understood somewhat, even if not completely justified. (Example, using periods to denote frustration. “Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again.” or something similar). But this complete lack of both grammar and writing ability astounds, from paragraph to paragraph. It is not hard to recognize any of the obvious errors listed above. One is an example of bad writing, with nothing grammatically faulty. Another uses a fallacious turn of phrase. The final sample is simply, horrifically wrong. I did not go searching for these errors either. I found them randomly within the time it takes to read three articles.
I write a blog which seven people read. I do it for fun. I don’t edit it. Even then, the only major errors are misspellings. Sure, a few things slip through the cracks but come on people, I could easily, easily write for ESPN by these standards of mediocrity, and in all likelihood, you could too! We could write far better, and that is not a boast on our part, it is an insult to their (lack of) writing ability. I demand that the major sports leagues, networks and sports’ sites start delivering premium, talented authors to provide us with information. This second rate garbage they are spewing right now is inexcusable for organizations as large and resourceful as they.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
10/04/06
Power of the Press
Editor’s note: To truly appreciate the following article, one most take note of the bolded portions of text. These portions should be read as if they were being dictated by that announcer guy from the movies, whilst in his most grave, serious, all-important tone of voice. In the meantime, read all non-bold parts completely normal, to exacerbate the effect; this will provide a more enjoyable reading experience. You may now proceed.
There are few stories/articles which automatically grab the attention of all viewers/readers—and hold onto that attention like a parsimonious old billionaire geezer holds onto money—with the force which “Power Rankings” can. For those three people left in the world who do not know what “Power Rankings” are, here is a quick synopsis:
Power Rankings determine the order of everything in the universe. Even random fluctuations of molecular cohesion in the Alpha Centauri system look up Power Rankings to figure out what they should do. Of course, if you want a more accurate explanation of Power Rankings, go look them up, or read the next paragraph.
Power Rankings hold such sway over their audience because they are short (absolutely every little blurb must not exceed one sentence... well, not exactly), sweet (well, not exactly), completely pointless (does anyone really care who Pete Prisco thinks is the best team in the league? Not exactly), but most important of all, they tell you exactly how good your team is, and it usually determines whether or not your team will do well in the postseason! (This explains why the Chicago White Sox dominated the ESPN MLB Power Rankings the entire first half of the year).
Now besides an overwhelming flood of parenthetical phrases, the last paragraph should have convinced you that I, the author, believe Power Rankings to be inutile (love that word), impractical, unhelpful and lacking in trustworthy information. Maybe so, but I am every bit as snowed by them as the rest of the world, and I read them. All of them. I wake up on Tuesday and immediately search for them—on three different sites, no less—to discover what the major networks believe about the relative Power of each team. As silly as this is, I will now join them. Here then, are my NFL Power Rankings, which will occur every four games, i.e. quarterly.
The only things of which I have to make sure are: every team’s blurb must be no longer than Tony Kornheiser’s hair—or in other words, two sentences at most; the numbers, which are far more important than anything else, must be prominent and important-looking. I have also decided to rank my teams from worst to first, instead of 1-32, since the suspense and anticipation of discovering which team is best at the final possible second is well worth the trouble of counting backwards from 32. And for you troublemakers insinuating that one can deduce the first place team by looking at the first 31 teams listed and noting who isn’t there... Go put your name on a steroids affidavit.
TheSportsRant’s Quarterly NFL Power Rankings
32. Oakland: For a brief moment, it looked as if they might win a game. Oh well.
31. Tennessee: Floyd Reese (the GM) needs to be fired. So do all of the players.
30. Miami: They have proven three things this year: Daunte Culpepper is awful; they can beat Tennessee and they can’t beat anybody else.
29. Detroit: If Matt Millen does not get fired soon, he needs to be assassinated by a loyal fan wiling to sacrifice the rest of his life’s personal freedom for his team, the Lions. This team stinks, and it has for a long time.
28. Cleveland: Coming back from 18 down against the Raiders was okay, but what were they doing being 18 down against the Raiders?
27. Arizona: Once again, the big name offensive stars had all of the pundits crying to the heavens that this would be Arizona’s year. Get over it people; Arizona doesn’t GET a year.
26. Houston: Having the Texans this high seems sacrilegious, but it is akin to admitting that Orlando Bloom is a better actor than David Caruso. Sure, it sounds awful to put “Orlando Bloom” and “better than” in the same sentence, but it is true.
25. San Francisco: No, they aren’t deserving of this spot. Still, at least they play hard.
24. Green Bay: They stink, but they still have Brett Favre (pronounced: FARV). That counts for something.
23. Tampa Bay: No, they don’t have any wins, and yes, they suffer from a severe one-side-syndrome, and yes they have no QB, but you know you’d still take them against any of the other cellar-dwelling, powder puff, cup-cake, barely-NFL caliber football teams.
22. Kansas City: Herm Edwards coaches like... someone who coaches really badly.
21. St. Louis: Yeah, yeah, they are 3-1, and they could potentially be very good; I know. In response to your unspoken question about their low ranking, I say that all Power Rankings have at least a few terrible choices, and mine must be no different.
20. Minnesota: Everyone got Minnesota-loopy—until they lost to Buffalo. Speaking of which.
19. Buffalo: I don’t think they are very good, but see my note on the Rams.
18. Pittsburgh: I heard an interesting rumor involving Pittsburgh the other day: since they shamefully stole Super Bowl Extra Large from the Seahawks, perhaps the football Gods are acting as if the real result—the intended result—really happened, and are punishing Pittsburgh as the “Super Bowl losing team that doesn’t make the play-offs the next year”, while Seattle, who should have been that team, is playing just fine. I don’t know if this is true (it wasn’t a rumor, after all), but I was predicting Pittsburgh’s season like this for a while; they just aren’t that good.
17. Jacksonville: Byron and the offense finally score some points, and the defense takes the day off? What the heck?
16. Denver: They don’t look that good, drubbing of New England and all.
15. Washington: This is a strange, strange team. I predict a season very much like they are currently having: 8-8.
14. N.Y. Giants: They have the talent to be number 1. They have the coach to be number 32.
13. N.Y. Jets: There is really no reason for them to be this high, except that they are literally two possessions away from being 4-0.
12. Dallas: I don’t think Dallas is particularly good, but beating any NFL team 45-14 earns you a higher spot.
11. Philadelphia: I think they are much like the rest of the NFC East teams: overrated. Philly just has an easier schedule.
10. New Orleans: NO gives you that same feeling that the series premier of Studio 60 gave you: they were too busy introducing plot lines and characters to actually do anything interesting or funny, but you can’t really give up on the show because you haven’t seen anything yet. If the team turns out like the show, this could be a heck of a year.
9. New England: How could I have them ranked below Cincy? Cuz they ain’t as good as Cincy (What? 38-13? Are you serious?).
8. Cincinnati: But then, who knows how good this team is. Sometimes they look unbeatable, other times they look like... well, what they used to look like.
007. Carolina: Yeah I know: they are 2-2. But they are 2-0 with Steve Smith; in addition, see my note on the Rams.
6. Atlanta: In the playoffs, Atlanta will stink. In the regular season, they are very, very good.
5. Seattle: They can beat the snot out of bad teams, and get the snot beaten out of them by the Bears. Have you noticed just how many teams in this blasted league aren’t the Bears?
4. San Diego: They lost to Baltimore, but they are like 1/8 of the league in that respect. They are still very strong.
3. Indianapolis: Here is what I say about the Colts. This team is ridiculous, I mean, every year they look unbeatable in the regular season, but you just know they will choke when it comes playoff time, because even though Peyton Manning pulls so many game winning drives out of his pants that you’d think they would have giant holes in them, and their defense looks so dang good when they are leading by 100 and all they have to do is sit there and respond to the pass, and their running game doesn’t seem to matter because they have Peyton Manning, and I would love to rank them higher, you just know that when they play a really good team in a really important game, they will lose because they always do, like when that Harper guy ran right into Ben Roethlisberger instead of evading him in last year’s playoffs, and I’m not exactly condemning a defensive player for doing what he is usually trained to do but come on, you have the BALL in your hands—you know, that one that bounces all weird—and you don’t realize you should stay as far away from the other team as possible, so basically even though I am violating the spirit of Power Rankings with this ridiculously long sentence, there is now way to sum up the Colts in less than one sentence so it had to be done, and I maintain the letter of the law regardless, but I suppose you actually could sum up the colts with two words: Peyton Manning.
2. Baltimore: Who cares if Steve McNair can’t play until the last drive of the game. With that defense they don’t need him to play until the last drive of the game.
1. Chicago: Does this need an explanation at all?
Big Predictions: I don’t know how I could possibly have gotten my predictions on Frank Thomas better. He hit home runs, the A’s won, they would have lost without his homers. Why pitch to the man? They don’t have anyone backing him up. The only way I can be even more correct is if his batting average dips in the next few games. It will. Oh yes. It will.
Johan?: The Greatest Author of All Time recently wondered why Johan Santana is not yet referred to as “Johan”. Pedro Martinez became Pedro, Michael Jordan is Michael, Tiger Woods is Tiger, etc. When will Johan be on a one name basis? I say never. Why? Because he isn’t that kind of great. He is great, no doubt about it. Probably the most fantastic pitcher of our day. But in the first year we have ever had a lack of twenty game winners, that is not saying much. This talk for Santana as MVP was and is ludicrous. He had a very good year, and he usually does. But he wins 19-21 games, with lots of strikeouts, and ERAs around 2.5-3. I love the guy, he is great, but those numbers aren’t MVP type, or first name type. When Pedro was Pedro, you expected him to throw a perfect game every time out. Michael was expected to win single handedly—and he did. Tiger dominates his field like no one else has (or so I am told—I only follow real sports). Johan Santana pitches very, very well. But he isn’t like no one before him.
Torre: For a moment I will simply give you all the adjectives that describe Joe Torre’s managerial failures (see the bullpen fiasco he created in game 1 against the Tigers). Ostentatious, overbearing, meddling, awful, destructive, wasteful, dangerous—what? You say you could just look in a thesaurus? Oh. Anyway, maybe we should call this Torre syndrome. Indeed, that is what “we” will do. Torre syndrome involves over-managing (or over coaching) to such an extent that it isn’t even superficial posturing, it is actually harmful to the team.
Power of the Press
Editor’s note: To truly appreciate the following article, one most take note of the bolded portions of text. These portions should be read as if they were being dictated by that announcer guy from the movies, whilst in his most grave, serious, all-important tone of voice. In the meantime, read all non-bold parts completely normal, to exacerbate the effect; this will provide a more enjoyable reading experience. You may now proceed.
There are few stories/articles which automatically grab the attention of all viewers/readers—and hold onto that attention like a parsimonious old billionaire geezer holds onto money—with the force which “Power Rankings” can. For those three people left in the world who do not know what “Power Rankings” are, here is a quick synopsis:
Power Rankings determine the order of everything in the universe. Even random fluctuations of molecular cohesion in the Alpha Centauri system look up Power Rankings to figure out what they should do. Of course, if you want a more accurate explanation of Power Rankings, go look them up, or read the next paragraph.
Power Rankings hold such sway over their audience because they are short (absolutely every little blurb must not exceed one sentence... well, not exactly), sweet (well, not exactly), completely pointless (does anyone really care who Pete Prisco thinks is the best team in the league? Not exactly), but most important of all, they tell you exactly how good your team is, and it usually determines whether or not your team will do well in the postseason! (This explains why the Chicago White Sox dominated the ESPN MLB Power Rankings the entire first half of the year).
Now besides an overwhelming flood of parenthetical phrases, the last paragraph should have convinced you that I, the author, believe Power Rankings to be inutile (love that word), impractical, unhelpful and lacking in trustworthy information. Maybe so, but I am every bit as snowed by them as the rest of the world, and I read them. All of them. I wake up on Tuesday and immediately search for them—on three different sites, no less—to discover what the major networks believe about the relative Power of each team. As silly as this is, I will now join them. Here then, are my NFL Power Rankings, which will occur every four games, i.e. quarterly.
The only things of which I have to make sure are: every team’s blurb must be no longer than Tony Kornheiser’s hair—or in other words, two sentences at most; the numbers, which are far more important than anything else, must be prominent and important-looking. I have also decided to rank my teams from worst to first, instead of 1-32, since the suspense and anticipation of discovering which team is best at the final possible second is well worth the trouble of counting backwards from 32. And for you troublemakers insinuating that one can deduce the first place team by looking at the first 31 teams listed and noting who isn’t there... Go put your name on a steroids affidavit.
TheSportsRant’s Quarterly NFL Power Rankings
32. Oakland: For a brief moment, it looked as if they might win a game. Oh well.
31. Tennessee: Floyd Reese (the GM) needs to be fired. So do all of the players.
30. Miami: They have proven three things this year: Daunte Culpepper is awful; they can beat Tennessee and they can’t beat anybody else.
29. Detroit: If Matt Millen does not get fired soon, he needs to be assassinated by a loyal fan wiling to sacrifice the rest of his life’s personal freedom for his team, the Lions. This team stinks, and it has for a long time.
28. Cleveland: Coming back from 18 down against the Raiders was okay, but what were they doing being 18 down against the Raiders?
27. Arizona: Once again, the big name offensive stars had all of the pundits crying to the heavens that this would be Arizona’s year. Get over it people; Arizona doesn’t GET a year.
26. Houston: Having the Texans this high seems sacrilegious, but it is akin to admitting that Orlando Bloom is a better actor than David Caruso. Sure, it sounds awful to put “Orlando Bloom” and “better than” in the same sentence, but it is true.
25. San Francisco: No, they aren’t deserving of this spot. Still, at least they play hard.
24. Green Bay: They stink, but they still have Brett Favre (pronounced: FARV). That counts for something.
23. Tampa Bay: No, they don’t have any wins, and yes, they suffer from a severe one-side-syndrome, and yes they have no QB, but you know you’d still take them against any of the other cellar-dwelling, powder puff, cup-cake, barely-NFL caliber football teams.
22. Kansas City: Herm Edwards coaches like... someone who coaches really badly.
21. St. Louis: Yeah, yeah, they are 3-1, and they could potentially be very good; I know. In response to your unspoken question about their low ranking, I say that all Power Rankings have at least a few terrible choices, and mine must be no different.
20. Minnesota: Everyone got Minnesota-loopy—until they lost to Buffalo. Speaking of which.
19. Buffalo: I don’t think they are very good, but see my note on the Rams.
18. Pittsburgh: I heard an interesting rumor involving Pittsburgh the other day: since they shamefully stole Super Bowl Extra Large from the Seahawks, perhaps the football Gods are acting as if the real result—the intended result—really happened, and are punishing Pittsburgh as the “Super Bowl losing team that doesn’t make the play-offs the next year”, while Seattle, who should have been that team, is playing just fine. I don’t know if this is true (it wasn’t a rumor, after all), but I was predicting Pittsburgh’s season like this for a while; they just aren’t that good.
17. Jacksonville: Byron and the offense finally score some points, and the defense takes the day off? What the heck?
16. Denver: They don’t look that good, drubbing of New England and all.
15. Washington: This is a strange, strange team. I predict a season very much like they are currently having: 8-8.
14. N.Y. Giants: They have the talent to be number 1. They have the coach to be number 32.
13. N.Y. Jets: There is really no reason for them to be this high, except that they are literally two possessions away from being 4-0.
12. Dallas: I don’t think Dallas is particularly good, but beating any NFL team 45-14 earns you a higher spot.
11. Philadelphia: I think they are much like the rest of the NFC East teams: overrated. Philly just has an easier schedule.
10. New Orleans: NO gives you that same feeling that the series premier of Studio 60 gave you: they were too busy introducing plot lines and characters to actually do anything interesting or funny, but you can’t really give up on the show because you haven’t seen anything yet. If the team turns out like the show, this could be a heck of a year.
9. New England: How could I have them ranked below Cincy? Cuz they ain’t as good as Cincy (What? 38-13? Are you serious?).
8. Cincinnati: But then, who knows how good this team is. Sometimes they look unbeatable, other times they look like... well, what they used to look like.
007. Carolina: Yeah I know: they are 2-2. But they are 2-0 with Steve Smith; in addition, see my note on the Rams.
6. Atlanta: In the playoffs, Atlanta will stink. In the regular season, they are very, very good.
5. Seattle: They can beat the snot out of bad teams, and get the snot beaten out of them by the Bears. Have you noticed just how many teams in this blasted league aren’t the Bears?
4. San Diego: They lost to Baltimore, but they are like 1/8 of the league in that respect. They are still very strong.
3. Indianapolis: Here is what I say about the Colts. This team is ridiculous, I mean, every year they look unbeatable in the regular season, but you just know they will choke when it comes playoff time, because even though Peyton Manning pulls so many game winning drives out of his pants that you’d think they would have giant holes in them, and their defense looks so dang good when they are leading by 100 and all they have to do is sit there and respond to the pass, and their running game doesn’t seem to matter because they have Peyton Manning, and I would love to rank them higher, you just know that when they play a really good team in a really important game, they will lose because they always do, like when that Harper guy ran right into Ben Roethlisberger instead of evading him in last year’s playoffs, and I’m not exactly condemning a defensive player for doing what he is usually trained to do but come on, you have the BALL in your hands—you know, that one that bounces all weird—and you don’t realize you should stay as far away from the other team as possible, so basically even though I am violating the spirit of Power Rankings with this ridiculously long sentence, there is now way to sum up the Colts in less than one sentence so it had to be done, and I maintain the letter of the law regardless, but I suppose you actually could sum up the colts with two words: Peyton Manning.
2. Baltimore: Who cares if Steve McNair can’t play until the last drive of the game. With that defense they don’t need him to play until the last drive of the game.
1. Chicago: Does this need an explanation at all?
Big Predictions: I don’t know how I could possibly have gotten my predictions on Frank Thomas better. He hit home runs, the A’s won, they would have lost without his homers. Why pitch to the man? They don’t have anyone backing him up. The only way I can be even more correct is if his batting average dips in the next few games. It will. Oh yes. It will.
Johan?: The Greatest Author of All Time recently wondered why Johan Santana is not yet referred to as “Johan”. Pedro Martinez became Pedro, Michael Jordan is Michael, Tiger Woods is Tiger, etc. When will Johan be on a one name basis? I say never. Why? Because he isn’t that kind of great. He is great, no doubt about it. Probably the most fantastic pitcher of our day. But in the first year we have ever had a lack of twenty game winners, that is not saying much. This talk for Santana as MVP was and is ludicrous. He had a very good year, and he usually does. But he wins 19-21 games, with lots of strikeouts, and ERAs around 2.5-3. I love the guy, he is great, but those numbers aren’t MVP type, or first name type. When Pedro was Pedro, you expected him to throw a perfect game every time out. Michael was expected to win single handedly—and he did. Tiger dominates his field like no one else has (or so I am told—I only follow real sports). Johan Santana pitches very, very well. But he isn’t like no one before him.
Torre: For a moment I will simply give you all the adjectives that describe Joe Torre’s managerial failures (see the bullpen fiasco he created in game 1 against the Tigers). Ostentatious, overbearing, meddling, awful, destructive, wasteful, dangerous—what? You say you could just look in a thesaurus? Oh. Anyway, maybe we should call this Torre syndrome. Indeed, that is what “we” will do. Torre syndrome involves over-managing (or over coaching) to such an extent that it isn’t even superficial posturing, it is actually harmful to the team.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
10/01/06
10/01/06
Playoffs
Scintillating title there, don’t you agree? Well here we go. I’m going to begin by very vaguely writing about the playoffs in general thanks to this stupid league’s propensity for not figuring things out until the last day (and yet baseball has no parody... what a joke).
The first thing to notice is: where are the pitchers?
NOT PITCHING! BECAUSE PITCHING ISN’T EVERYTHING!
*takes calming breaths*
The Yanks, Twins, and everyone in the NL has at most two good starters, and by “at most”, I mean the Yankees, who have Wang and Moose (wonderfully odd combination of names there...) Detroit and Oakland both rely on their pitching, but neither can hit worth General Motor’s stock price. If it plays out the way it should, Detroit and Oakland will both lose in the first round, and no teams with “good pitching” will reside among the final four teams alive. What does that tell all of you “pitching wins championships” freaks? (I think the Yankees have better pitching than Detroit, but I digress... again).
In all reality, the Yankees will win unless they play awful. Really. You can’t beat a team that good; they have to beat themselves. They might do that, thanks to the return of Hideki Matsui, one of the most overrated players of our time. Man on first, less then two outs, Hideki up to bat: there is a guaranteed double play. Every time. He is a rally killer. This team won the division because they made rallies, not because they hit an inordinate amount of home runs—Giambi and A-Rod lead the team with 37 and 34, respectively; after that, the next highest total is their lead-off man’s 22. Matsui means “rally killer” in Japanese, or at least in some bizarre dialect. Why they locked him up for a thousand years at a billion dollars is beyond my reasoning, and clearly I have irrefutable reasoning.
The Twins have to be wondering if they are ever meant to win a playoff series. The Twins would, undoubtedly, hold the mantle of “favorite” if Francisco Liriano was healthy, but a phantom injury has him out: he blew hitters away, felt soreness in his arm, they took an MRI, it revealed nothing, he came back a few weeks later, blew hitters away, felt soreness in his arm, was done for the season, and yet tests revealed nothing. Explain this to me as anything other than a karma-induced, black magic-related miracle (for the rest of the league) brought on by Torii Hunter’s whining about his $10 million minimum wage, and their uber rich owner’s refusal to give them any type of a payroll. Despite the best pitcher in the league starting for them, the Twins simply have no shot. No team can overcome that kind of evil mojo. They might win in the first round thanks to their newfound homefield advantage, and Johan Santana’s habit of winning there (someone should mention this guy for Cy Young, I mean seriously), but no way are they winning it all. (Though, since I predicted the Twins would win it all when they were still below .500, I am right either way).
The A’s are a strange team. They don’t hit. One would think that playing baseball, or to be more specific, winning baseball, would require hitting. The A’s obviously find it unfashionable (or maybe it is simply not required by “moneyball”), because they treat hitting like a mysterious white powder rubbed on a raw chicken wrapped in spinach. Their only offensive force is Frank Thomas. Yes. Frank Thomas. He must be ninety by now. (Though I loathe this digression, a very reasonable argument was made for him being the greatest hitter of his era on ESPN.com’s Page 2. If you get rid of the steroid induced numbers of Bonds, Sosa, etc., Frank Thomas looks very, very good. Of course, he might have been on steroids also. Alas...) The pitching for this team looks good. Sort of. When you factor in Barry Zito’s career ERA against the Yankees, this team suddenly looks hopeless, even if they get by Minnesota.
Detroit got beaten into a pulp by the Yanks this year, and there is no reason to believe they will even get to the Yankees. Before I found out the Twins won the Central, I wrote the following regarding the Tigers’ first series: “If Frank Thomas hits a solo homerun in one game of the Oakland/Detroit series, that will likely be the only offense you see the entire time. Oakland’s pitchers will shut Detroit down, and vice versa. Most likely, the Big Hurt...ing Old Guy will win the series for the A’s by batting .120 but hitting only homeruns.” Thank goodness for the ratings that this hitter’s nightmare was no realized. Technically, it is still be a possibility in round duex, but you will see a pool scene containing Matthew McConaughey wearing his shirt before you see that. As is, Detroit will simply get “beaten into a pulp by the Yanks”.
Out in the National League, only one team has a chance to do anything in the World Series (i.e. not get swept): the Houston Astros. Unfortunately, they did not even make the playoffs. Yes, the best pitching team in the world is not even in the playoffs. Just thought I would rub this in—I mean, mention this—one more time: the best pitching team in the world is not even in the playoffs.
The Mets might not even make it out of the first round. If they do, they will likely get to the World Series. In a seven game series, two bad days don’t hurt you as much, so a team that relies solely on its hitting has a greater chance of winning (people claim the Yankees have this same problem, but name me another team that has two guys as good as Wang and Mussina at the front of their rotation... besides the Astros). The Mets also don’t have to worry about some other team pitching particularly well, since the NL is strangely lacking in pitching. (If an entire league can’t hit, where do all these bad pitching numbers come from? I suppose the Mets single handedly made the NL pitchers’ ERAs appear awful).
Lots of pundits are preaching the Dodgers, thanks to their staff of “Lowe, Maddux and Penny”, but has anyone bothered to check their stats, and not just their names? The Dodgers could very well come out of the NL, but only because every team has a chance in this horrific mess. (The NL reminds me of feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon... not sure why.)
The Cardinals are so bad they barely even made the playoffs despite an 8 ½ game lead entering the final two weeks of the season. They have one pitcher and one hitter. That’s it. Let us now once again ponder the awfulness of the NL. If you had to bet your life on a team winning a series, you would pick any of the AL teams against any of the NL teams, and you know it. That is just bad.
I’d talk about the Padres but in all likelihood, you are sick of my pejorative ranting about the putrid and sickeningly awful NL. I suppose I could most likely come up with adjectives that mean “bad” for another two pages. I doubt you want that, do you?
I will now get onto the specifics of each series, going into startling detail and covering every possible angle.
ALDS: Yankees over Tigers in 4
ALDS: Twins over Athletics in 5
ALCS: Yankees over Athletics in 6
NLDS: Mets over Dodgers in 5
NLDS: Padres over Cardinals in 4
NLCS: Mets over Padres in 5
World Series: Yankees sweep Mets
What are you giving me that dubious look for?
Money oh Money: Public service announcement here: John Henry, owner of the accursed Red Sox, is now negotiating to buy at least one other NASCAR team. He has plenty of money to spend on the SAWWWCKS, he just refuses to. So shut up, you puling loser fans. Related note: The Minnesota Twins (an organization oft referred to as the anti-Yankees) ownership has plenty of money too. More than Steinbrenner, in fact. Their miserly ways are not the Yankees fault. Why should good ol’ George stop spending money because his colleagues are cheapskates? That makes as much sense as the Texans drafting Mario Williams...
Although!: Sense can finally be made of the world! I heard an interesting rumor the other day. It must be true because A) rumors obviously always are and B) it is the only explanation possible. The Texans did not want to draft Mario, they were forced to by the league! Everyone wanted the Saints to do well, so the League, correctly surmising that Reggie Bush would help the Saints win, fixed the draft in a massive conspiracy. Obviously the Saints victories would create feel-good stories and drama all over the place, thus enhancing the NFL’s product. So they made the Texans draft Mario Williams. Had to be what happened. I will accept no alternate theory.
Dealing in Stupidity: It is no secret that contestants on Deal or no Deal are idiotic in their attempts to overcome odds. But does anyone else remember another game show that offered a million bucks in relatively recent years? It possessed the extremely original title “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Think about when people took the money and ran on that show. As soon as they got past 32 grand, FUGEDABOUTIT! If they weren’t positive that they knew the answer, they would not risk the money. They had a 1 in 4 chance of getting it right, every time—probably better if they could eliminate an answer choice or two. Yet in Deal or no Deal, contestants routinely take odds no better than that, and after losing, they walk away with $10 (whereas a faulty answer in Millionaire still nets you 32 large). Think about this. America is not only stupid, it knows it is! People would rather have the random decisions of sealed boxes choose their money for them than their own knowledge—often times at worse odds! I blame the public school system.
Move 50: ...Kbr2: The World Championship match between Topalov and Kramnik has been delayed, and many fear for its continuance. In a Bobby Fischer-like protest, Kramnik refused to appear at the fifth game of the match, forfeiting it, allowing the official score to close to 3-2, still in Kramnik’s favor. The reason for Kramnik’s absence has got to be one of the funniest stories there has ever been. Indeed, I know chess is not a viable spectator sport, but this drama is too fantastic for ESPN to turn down.
Topalov complained about Kramnik’s behavior recently, and it was in protest to this which incited Kramnik to abscond. The complaint which Topalov levels: Kramnik has gone to the bathroom an average of fifty times per game! Apparently the bathroom is the only room without cameras, and Topalov find this suspicious. I would! Good heavens what is Kramnik doing in there!
As funny as this is, it is also extremely disappointing. This match needs to go on, and Kramnik’s shady ways (or perhaps just a very tiny bladder) are threatening to do to this match what ’94 did to baseball.
Playoffs
Scintillating title there, don’t you agree? Well here we go. I’m going to begin by very vaguely writing about the playoffs in general thanks to this stupid league’s propensity for not figuring things out until the last day (and yet baseball has no parody... what a joke).
The first thing to notice is: where are the pitchers?
NOT PITCHING! BECAUSE PITCHING ISN’T EVERYTHING!
*takes calming breaths*
The Yanks, Twins, and everyone in the NL has at most two good starters, and by “at most”, I mean the Yankees, who have Wang and Moose (wonderfully odd combination of names there...) Detroit and Oakland both rely on their pitching, but neither can hit worth General Motor’s stock price. If it plays out the way it should, Detroit and Oakland will both lose in the first round, and no teams with “good pitching” will reside among the final four teams alive. What does that tell all of you “pitching wins championships” freaks? (I think the Yankees have better pitching than Detroit, but I digress... again).
In all reality, the Yankees will win unless they play awful. Really. You can’t beat a team that good; they have to beat themselves. They might do that, thanks to the return of Hideki Matsui, one of the most overrated players of our time. Man on first, less then two outs, Hideki up to bat: there is a guaranteed double play. Every time. He is a rally killer. This team won the division because they made rallies, not because they hit an inordinate amount of home runs—Giambi and A-Rod lead the team with 37 and 34, respectively; after that, the next highest total is their lead-off man’s 22. Matsui means “rally killer” in Japanese, or at least in some bizarre dialect. Why they locked him up for a thousand years at a billion dollars is beyond my reasoning, and clearly I have irrefutable reasoning.
The Twins have to be wondering if they are ever meant to win a playoff series. The Twins would, undoubtedly, hold the mantle of “favorite” if Francisco Liriano was healthy, but a phantom injury has him out: he blew hitters away, felt soreness in his arm, they took an MRI, it revealed nothing, he came back a few weeks later, blew hitters away, felt soreness in his arm, was done for the season, and yet tests revealed nothing. Explain this to me as anything other than a karma-induced, black magic-related miracle (for the rest of the league) brought on by Torii Hunter’s whining about his $10 million minimum wage, and their uber rich owner’s refusal to give them any type of a payroll. Despite the best pitcher in the league starting for them, the Twins simply have no shot. No team can overcome that kind of evil mojo. They might win in the first round thanks to their newfound homefield advantage, and Johan Santana’s habit of winning there (someone should mention this guy for Cy Young, I mean seriously), but no way are they winning it all. (Though, since I predicted the Twins would win it all when they were still below .500, I am right either way).
The A’s are a strange team. They don’t hit. One would think that playing baseball, or to be more specific, winning baseball, would require hitting. The A’s obviously find it unfashionable (or maybe it is simply not required by “moneyball”), because they treat hitting like a mysterious white powder rubbed on a raw chicken wrapped in spinach. Their only offensive force is Frank Thomas. Yes. Frank Thomas. He must be ninety by now. (Though I loathe this digression, a very reasonable argument was made for him being the greatest hitter of his era on ESPN.com’s Page 2. If you get rid of the steroid induced numbers of Bonds, Sosa, etc., Frank Thomas looks very, very good. Of course, he might have been on steroids also. Alas...) The pitching for this team looks good. Sort of. When you factor in Barry Zito’s career ERA against the Yankees, this team suddenly looks hopeless, even if they get by Minnesota.
Detroit got beaten into a pulp by the Yanks this year, and there is no reason to believe they will even get to the Yankees. Before I found out the Twins won the Central, I wrote the following regarding the Tigers’ first series: “If Frank Thomas hits a solo homerun in one game of the Oakland/Detroit series, that will likely be the only offense you see the entire time. Oakland’s pitchers will shut Detroit down, and vice versa. Most likely, the Big Hurt...ing Old Guy will win the series for the A’s by batting .120 but hitting only homeruns.” Thank goodness for the ratings that this hitter’s nightmare was no realized. Technically, it is still be a possibility in round duex, but you will see a pool scene containing Matthew McConaughey wearing his shirt before you see that. As is, Detroit will simply get “beaten into a pulp by the Yanks”.
Out in the National League, only one team has a chance to do anything in the World Series (i.e. not get swept): the Houston Astros. Unfortunately, they did not even make the playoffs. Yes, the best pitching team in the world is not even in the playoffs. Just thought I would rub this in—I mean, mention this—one more time: the best pitching team in the world is not even in the playoffs.
The Mets might not even make it out of the first round. If they do, they will likely get to the World Series. In a seven game series, two bad days don’t hurt you as much, so a team that relies solely on its hitting has a greater chance of winning (people claim the Yankees have this same problem, but name me another team that has two guys as good as Wang and Mussina at the front of their rotation... besides the Astros). The Mets also don’t have to worry about some other team pitching particularly well, since the NL is strangely lacking in pitching. (If an entire league can’t hit, where do all these bad pitching numbers come from? I suppose the Mets single handedly made the NL pitchers’ ERAs appear awful).
Lots of pundits are preaching the Dodgers, thanks to their staff of “Lowe, Maddux and Penny”, but has anyone bothered to check their stats, and not just their names? The Dodgers could very well come out of the NL, but only because every team has a chance in this horrific mess. (The NL reminds me of feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon... not sure why.)
The Cardinals are so bad they barely even made the playoffs despite an 8 ½ game lead entering the final two weeks of the season. They have one pitcher and one hitter. That’s it. Let us now once again ponder the awfulness of the NL. If you had to bet your life on a team winning a series, you would pick any of the AL teams against any of the NL teams, and you know it. That is just bad.
I’d talk about the Padres but in all likelihood, you are sick of my pejorative ranting about the putrid and sickeningly awful NL. I suppose I could most likely come up with adjectives that mean “bad” for another two pages. I doubt you want that, do you?
I will now get onto the specifics of each series, going into startling detail and covering every possible angle.
ALDS: Yankees over Tigers in 4
ALDS: Twins over Athletics in 5
ALCS: Yankees over Athletics in 6
NLDS: Mets over Dodgers in 5
NLDS: Padres over Cardinals in 4
NLCS: Mets over Padres in 5
World Series: Yankees sweep Mets
What are you giving me that dubious look for?
Money oh Money: Public service announcement here: John Henry, owner of the accursed Red Sox, is now negotiating to buy at least one other NASCAR team. He has plenty of money to spend on the SAWWWCKS, he just refuses to. So shut up, you puling loser fans. Related note: The Minnesota Twins (an organization oft referred to as the anti-Yankees) ownership has plenty of money too. More than Steinbrenner, in fact. Their miserly ways are not the Yankees fault. Why should good ol’ George stop spending money because his colleagues are cheapskates? That makes as much sense as the Texans drafting Mario Williams...
Although!: Sense can finally be made of the world! I heard an interesting rumor the other day. It must be true because A) rumors obviously always are and B) it is the only explanation possible. The Texans did not want to draft Mario, they were forced to by the league! Everyone wanted the Saints to do well, so the League, correctly surmising that Reggie Bush would help the Saints win, fixed the draft in a massive conspiracy. Obviously the Saints victories would create feel-good stories and drama all over the place, thus enhancing the NFL’s product. So they made the Texans draft Mario Williams. Had to be what happened. I will accept no alternate theory.
Dealing in Stupidity: It is no secret that contestants on Deal or no Deal are idiotic in their attempts to overcome odds. But does anyone else remember another game show that offered a million bucks in relatively recent years? It possessed the extremely original title “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Think about when people took the money and ran on that show. As soon as they got past 32 grand, FUGEDABOUTIT! If they weren’t positive that they knew the answer, they would not risk the money. They had a 1 in 4 chance of getting it right, every time—probably better if they could eliminate an answer choice or two. Yet in Deal or no Deal, contestants routinely take odds no better than that, and after losing, they walk away with $10 (whereas a faulty answer in Millionaire still nets you 32 large). Think about this. America is not only stupid, it knows it is! People would rather have the random decisions of sealed boxes choose their money for them than their own knowledge—often times at worse odds! I blame the public school system.
Move 50: ...Kbr2: The World Championship match between Topalov and Kramnik has been delayed, and many fear for its continuance. In a Bobby Fischer-like protest, Kramnik refused to appear at the fifth game of the match, forfeiting it, allowing the official score to close to 3-2, still in Kramnik’s favor. The reason for Kramnik’s absence has got to be one of the funniest stories there has ever been. Indeed, I know chess is not a viable spectator sport, but this drama is too fantastic for ESPN to turn down.
Topalov complained about Kramnik’s behavior recently, and it was in protest to this which incited Kramnik to abscond. The complaint which Topalov levels: Kramnik has gone to the bathroom an average of fifty times per game! Apparently the bathroom is the only room without cameras, and Topalov find this suspicious. I would! Good heavens what is Kramnik doing in there!
As funny as this is, it is also extremely disappointing. This match needs to go on, and Kramnik’s shady ways (or perhaps just a very tiny bladder) are threatening to do to this match what ’94 did to baseball.
Friday, September 29, 2006
09/29/06 rant
09/29/06
How to Lose a Division Lead in Two Weeks
Inspired by the complete and utter catastrophe that is the St. Louis Cardinals as of late, Professor Julian Bashir is now commencing a lecture series on how to lose a large division lead in two weeks. He gave the first lecture today and I was lucky enough to sit in on it:
“Okay, time to see who is here. Ah, the Vikings of a few years back are here, good. Also, back there, the Red Sox of perpetuity. No, don’t be ashamed, your division leads lost have been large enough to warrant invitation to this prestigious gathering—especially that one in ’78 or whenever it was. Who else is there... is that the Angels from, uh, ‘95? Ah good. Well let’s begin.
“Division leads are very overrated,” he began, while pacing around the room. “That is the first thing we have to have understood. Being in first is unimportant. When you are in first, you have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Everyone will be playing with more intensity than you possibly can, because while they are the underdog attempting a revolution, you are only attempting to keep the status quo. And besides, thanks to professional sports leagues’ obsession with ‘wild card’ teams, you can still sneak into the play-offs despite your obvious inferiority. It no longer matters that the Cardinals were better over a 162 game season last year! The Astros received the privilege of representing the Nation League in the World Series because they won in the playoffs. And cleary, the 162 games played during the season were not nearly as strong of an indicator for a team’s strength as the six games the Astros and Cardinals played.
“Pittsburgh,” he continued, “a team which barely even reached the playoffs last year, won the Super Bowl despite not winning their division. No, no, it isn’t important that they only won the first game thanks to Carson’s injury; or that they only won the second game because the Colts choked like the Colts do (I mean, Ben Harper let a QB tackle him on that fumble return...); it is even unimportant that the Steelers got Super Bowl XL handed to them on a platter by convicts (what? prisoners don’t wear black and white stripes? Oh.) No, the only important knowledge to draw from this is that Pittsburgh did not win their division, and managed to steal a Super Bowl.
“This could be you! The necessary personnel for such a job are not particularly easy to come by, but most likely, you can get the parts you need on eBay.
“First, you need a very secure manager/coach,” he said, now sitting down and pounding his fist on a table. “You can’t have someone who is on the hot seat, and thus, needs to produce. That might compel them to effectuate change in the team’s attitude, and possibly stanch the tide. You need to lose fast and furiously to get out of a division lead in two weeks. No time for rumors about a manager/coach’s job security. Preferably, the manager/coach holds the mantle of ‘genius’. Tony La Russa is a perfect example of this; his team is doing an admirable job of throwing their division away. Tony is a ‘genius’, however, so he needn’t worry about a peep from his GM.
“Secondly, it is very helpful but not entirely necessary to have one of the following: A team which has so comfortably won its division in recent years that they forgot how to play the game in the last few weeks of the season, OR a team so used to losing that they simply revert back to this when the pressure is on in late months.
“I would go onto a third point but that is unwanted—we are trying to finish second here, not third. Now get your genius managers, one man line-ups and aging pitchers and start losing those divisions! I know you won’t let me down! Next week we will have a lecture on how to deal with the morale crushing blow of almost losing that division lead, but hanging onto it at the last second. The White Sox of ’05 will be here to share their heartbreaking story.”
Professor’s credentials: Julian Bashir is an accomplished underachiever. Born stupid, he was genetically enhanced through shady, technological means. To hide his brilliant but illegal brain, he purposefully finished second in contests, would work only so hard as to be the second best in his class, and would always make sure he got the second best score on tests. He has been giving talks and seminars on the benefits of coming in second ever since his genetic enhancements were revealed thanks to a holographic doctor, an uncharacteristically unreliable best friend, and a parental feud dating back years. Indeed, he created the second best time machine of all time to reach beings of the 21st century and share with them the good news.
Enough Already: Joe Morgan’s love affair with Albert Pujols has to be one of the strangest things I have seen in the world of sports. Maybe Joe likes him because he wears a red uniform, and Joe mistook Albert for a “Red”; maybe Joe likes him because “A” is only 9 letters before “J” in the alphabet; maybe Joe likes him because Joe mistakes him for his favorite food; maybe Joe likes him because Joe decided he needed to pick a favorite player, and Albert’s name came out of the hat. Who knows.
Whatever the reason, Joe has taken it upon himself to make sure the entire world knows just how good this Pujols guy is. Albert’s massive numbers seem to speak for themselves, but Joe does not apparently think so (which is ironic considering how much Joe loves the guy). At every possible turn, he will call him the greatest hitter alive, and possibly the greatest hitter of all time (and by “every possible turn”, I literally mean every turn Albert has at bat). At every possible turn, Joe will speak of his underrated defensive ability at first base (and by “every possible turn”, I mean every single time the camera view includes Pujols at first base). At every possible turn, Joe says Pujols should be the MVP (and by “every possible turn”, I mean every time anyone says his name. Period).
It is downright frightening, in a not-very-funny, not-very-informative, “Joe must want to marry him” way. Cut it out Joe. You’re creepy.
Roughing It: Everyone, except the networks, knows that sideline reporters are completely inutile (that’s a synonym for “useless”, if you didn’t know, *wink, wink*). One of the reasons behind their dysfunctional nature hit me as I was watching Rachael Nichols blabber on about who-knows-what the other day.
It is all rehearsed.
Think about what a sideline reporter’s advantages might be (for those of you tempted to say “there aren’t any”, I agree, but bear with me a moment). They are right in the action. They aren’t in the cozy living room-esque settings of a studio in air conditioned rooms debating silly things like whether or not it is polite to call Peyton Manning the Dan Marino of this generation in Dan Marino's presence. They are supposed to be out there, roughing it, giving up the niceties of the indoors to get a scoop on your favorite team (unless your favorite team plays in a dome, in which case... they are inside anyway. I digress). The point I am making is: they should be like those guys in the hurricane news reels, desperately attempting to stay upright while 70 mph winds knock everything in sight silly. Or, at least, they should seem like they are. But they are like anchors for Sportscenter (sometimes literally, I suppose), save for the different venues.
Sideline reporters’ hair is too good, their clothes too nice, their shoes too high, and their stories so rehearsed that you wonder how many times they debated whether to put that “immovable object versus unstoppable force” in the script (speaking of which, that phrase has officially entered... well, you’ll see). They shouldn’t have polished, clean delivery; they should be stumbling, bumbling, and tripping over their words (well... they do that anyway, but only because they are terrible speakers. I want them stumbling because they aren’t reciting a memorized script).
If no one understands what I am talking about here... well, no problem. Sideline reporters will never be useful. I just thought I’d illuminate one of the many faceted problems they pose. They need to look like they are giving a breaking story about something they saw while attempting to interview a head coach; they do not need to give those ridiculous “emotional” stories about players that no one likes.
Play-Offs!: I intended to print my baseball playoffs preview today, but thanks to AAAA’s incessant parody (all of the teams are equally bad), there is still only one playoff spot clinched, with three games to go! Remind me to file an official complaint with the commissioner of MLB.
Overachievers: The Red Sox took Dr. Bashir’s message to heart. Too much so, apparently. Not only did they fall completely out of the division race, they are now in third in the division! Go Blue Jays. (Ya know, seeing as the number five can only be divided in half with decimals, it is possible to now say the Red Sox are in “the bottom half” of the division!)
Dial ‘em Up!: List of phrases sports people use way too often:
“Dialed up”. They dial up plays, they dial up intensity, they dial up the bullpen... at least on that last one the phrase has some semblance of meaning.
“This team is on a mission”. Aren’t all teams supposed to be on missions to win?
“Team chemistry”. Oh save it already. The Heat won the NBA Championship. Baseball doesn’t require players to interact with each other. The NFL... well sure you need it there, but it is so meaningless that it is akin to saying:
“Pitching wins championships”. And... I think I hit this one already.
“Immovable object versus unstoppable force”. If I hear this again, I’m ripping Sal Pal’s head off. (And yes, I came up with that nickname for him because I have no idea how to spell his last name).
On a related note, Chris Berman has got to be stopped. If he injects one more “oh by the way” into a spot where it simply does not fit, he needs to be shot. He’s an okay guy, and besides his incessant “back-back-back-back” (which starts to sound more like a chicken than a home run call), I don’t think he is a bad commentator. But his squeezing, twisting and forcing of “oh by the way” into these spots is sort of like that guy who has obviously never cursed in his life, wants to be “cool”, so he starts dropping f-bombs in all the wrong places, and sounds far more like a moron than he would have had he kept his mouth clean.*
*Editor’s note. Cursing is bad. Don’t do it. The author was only illustrating a ******* point. Oh. Oops.
How to Lose a Division Lead in Two Weeks
Inspired by the complete and utter catastrophe that is the St. Louis Cardinals as of late, Professor Julian Bashir is now commencing a lecture series on how to lose a large division lead in two weeks. He gave the first lecture today and I was lucky enough to sit in on it:
“Okay, time to see who is here. Ah, the Vikings of a few years back are here, good. Also, back there, the Red Sox of perpetuity. No, don’t be ashamed, your division leads lost have been large enough to warrant invitation to this prestigious gathering—especially that one in ’78 or whenever it was. Who else is there... is that the Angels from, uh, ‘95? Ah good. Well let’s begin.
“Division leads are very overrated,” he began, while pacing around the room. “That is the first thing we have to have understood. Being in first is unimportant. When you are in first, you have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Everyone will be playing with more intensity than you possibly can, because while they are the underdog attempting a revolution, you are only attempting to keep the status quo. And besides, thanks to professional sports leagues’ obsession with ‘wild card’ teams, you can still sneak into the play-offs despite your obvious inferiority. It no longer matters that the Cardinals were better over a 162 game season last year! The Astros received the privilege of representing the Nation League in the World Series because they won in the playoffs. And cleary, the 162 games played during the season were not nearly as strong of an indicator for a team’s strength as the six games the Astros and Cardinals played.
“Pittsburgh,” he continued, “a team which barely even reached the playoffs last year, won the Super Bowl despite not winning their division. No, no, it isn’t important that they only won the first game thanks to Carson’s injury; or that they only won the second game because the Colts choked like the Colts do (I mean, Ben Harper let a QB tackle him on that fumble return...); it is even unimportant that the Steelers got Super Bowl XL handed to them on a platter by convicts (what? prisoners don’t wear black and white stripes? Oh.) No, the only important knowledge to draw from this is that Pittsburgh did not win their division, and managed to steal a Super Bowl.
“This could be you! The necessary personnel for such a job are not particularly easy to come by, but most likely, you can get the parts you need on eBay.
“First, you need a very secure manager/coach,” he said, now sitting down and pounding his fist on a table. “You can’t have someone who is on the hot seat, and thus, needs to produce. That might compel them to effectuate change in the team’s attitude, and possibly stanch the tide. You need to lose fast and furiously to get out of a division lead in two weeks. No time for rumors about a manager/coach’s job security. Preferably, the manager/coach holds the mantle of ‘genius’. Tony La Russa is a perfect example of this; his team is doing an admirable job of throwing their division away. Tony is a ‘genius’, however, so he needn’t worry about a peep from his GM.
“Secondly, it is very helpful but not entirely necessary to have one of the following: A team which has so comfortably won its division in recent years that they forgot how to play the game in the last few weeks of the season, OR a team so used to losing that they simply revert back to this when the pressure is on in late months.
“I would go onto a third point but that is unwanted—we are trying to finish second here, not third. Now get your genius managers, one man line-ups and aging pitchers and start losing those divisions! I know you won’t let me down! Next week we will have a lecture on how to deal with the morale crushing blow of almost losing that division lead, but hanging onto it at the last second. The White Sox of ’05 will be here to share their heartbreaking story.”
Professor’s credentials: Julian Bashir is an accomplished underachiever. Born stupid, he was genetically enhanced through shady, technological means. To hide his brilliant but illegal brain, he purposefully finished second in contests, would work only so hard as to be the second best in his class, and would always make sure he got the second best score on tests. He has been giving talks and seminars on the benefits of coming in second ever since his genetic enhancements were revealed thanks to a holographic doctor, an uncharacteristically unreliable best friend, and a parental feud dating back years. Indeed, he created the second best time machine of all time to reach beings of the 21st century and share with them the good news.
Enough Already: Joe Morgan’s love affair with Albert Pujols has to be one of the strangest things I have seen in the world of sports. Maybe Joe likes him because he wears a red uniform, and Joe mistook Albert for a “Red”; maybe Joe likes him because “A” is only 9 letters before “J” in the alphabet; maybe Joe likes him because Joe mistakes him for his favorite food; maybe Joe likes him because Joe decided he needed to pick a favorite player, and Albert’s name came out of the hat. Who knows.
Whatever the reason, Joe has taken it upon himself to make sure the entire world knows just how good this Pujols guy is. Albert’s massive numbers seem to speak for themselves, but Joe does not apparently think so (which is ironic considering how much Joe loves the guy). At every possible turn, he will call him the greatest hitter alive, and possibly the greatest hitter of all time (and by “every possible turn”, I literally mean every turn Albert has at bat). At every possible turn, Joe will speak of his underrated defensive ability at first base (and by “every possible turn”, I mean every single time the camera view includes Pujols at first base). At every possible turn, Joe says Pujols should be the MVP (and by “every possible turn”, I mean every time anyone says his name. Period).
It is downright frightening, in a not-very-funny, not-very-informative, “Joe must want to marry him” way. Cut it out Joe. You’re creepy.
Roughing It: Everyone, except the networks, knows that sideline reporters are completely inutile (that’s a synonym for “useless”, if you didn’t know, *wink, wink*). One of the reasons behind their dysfunctional nature hit me as I was watching Rachael Nichols blabber on about who-knows-what the other day.
It is all rehearsed.
Think about what a sideline reporter’s advantages might be (for those of you tempted to say “there aren’t any”, I agree, but bear with me a moment). They are right in the action. They aren’t in the cozy living room-esque settings of a studio in air conditioned rooms debating silly things like whether or not it is polite to call Peyton Manning the Dan Marino of this generation in Dan Marino's presence. They are supposed to be out there, roughing it, giving up the niceties of the indoors to get a scoop on your favorite team (unless your favorite team plays in a dome, in which case... they are inside anyway. I digress). The point I am making is: they should be like those guys in the hurricane news reels, desperately attempting to stay upright while 70 mph winds knock everything in sight silly. Or, at least, they should seem like they are. But they are like anchors for Sportscenter (sometimes literally, I suppose), save for the different venues.
Sideline reporters’ hair is too good, their clothes too nice, their shoes too high, and their stories so rehearsed that you wonder how many times they debated whether to put that “immovable object versus unstoppable force” in the script (speaking of which, that phrase has officially entered... well, you’ll see). They shouldn’t have polished, clean delivery; they should be stumbling, bumbling, and tripping over their words (well... they do that anyway, but only because they are terrible speakers. I want them stumbling because they aren’t reciting a memorized script).
If no one understands what I am talking about here... well, no problem. Sideline reporters will never be useful. I just thought I’d illuminate one of the many faceted problems they pose. They need to look like they are giving a breaking story about something they saw while attempting to interview a head coach; they do not need to give those ridiculous “emotional” stories about players that no one likes.
Play-Offs!: I intended to print my baseball playoffs preview today, but thanks to AAAA’s incessant parody (all of the teams are equally bad), there is still only one playoff spot clinched, with three games to go! Remind me to file an official complaint with the commissioner of MLB.
Overachievers: The Red Sox took Dr. Bashir’s message to heart. Too much so, apparently. Not only did they fall completely out of the division race, they are now in third in the division! Go Blue Jays. (Ya know, seeing as the number five can only be divided in half with decimals, it is possible to now say the Red Sox are in “the bottom half” of the division!)
Dial ‘em Up!: List of phrases sports people use way too often:
“Dialed up”. They dial up plays, they dial up intensity, they dial up the bullpen... at least on that last one the phrase has some semblance of meaning.
“This team is on a mission”. Aren’t all teams supposed to be on missions to win?
“Team chemistry”. Oh save it already. The Heat won the NBA Championship. Baseball doesn’t require players to interact with each other. The NFL... well sure you need it there, but it is so meaningless that it is akin to saying:
“Pitching wins championships”. And... I think I hit this one already.
“Immovable object versus unstoppable force”. If I hear this again, I’m ripping Sal Pal’s head off. (And yes, I came up with that nickname for him because I have no idea how to spell his last name).
On a related note, Chris Berman has got to be stopped. If he injects one more “oh by the way” into a spot where it simply does not fit, he needs to be shot. He’s an okay guy, and besides his incessant “back-back-back-back” (which starts to sound more like a chicken than a home run call), I don’t think he is a bad commentator. But his squeezing, twisting and forcing of “oh by the way” into these spots is sort of like that guy who has obviously never cursed in his life, wants to be “cool”, so he starts dropping f-bombs in all the wrong places, and sounds far more like a moron than he would have had he kept his mouth clean.*
*Editor’s note. Cursing is bad. Don’t do it. The author was only illustrating a ******* point. Oh. Oops.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
09/28/06
09/28/06
Inspiration
In my last rant-and-rave session, I reported the disappearance of my humor. Maybe, if all goes well and I can manage to be funny after this first story, I will be able to report its discovery. Unfortunately, during this first segment, you will most likely be shouting something along the lines of “Start making me laugh! And where are the sports?”
I will commence with little pretense. The inspiration to start writing a sports blog dropped on my door step in the form of Page 2, on ESPN.com. For those ignorant among us, Page 2 is a mind-bogglingly hilarious feature which brings realism, entertainment and some self deprecating humor into a world—the sports world—that is in desperate need of such medicine. Page 2 has several writers, including the greatest sports writer alive. Outside of articles devoted entirely to humor, there are also very well thought out treatises (which still contain fair amounts of laughs) on issues from the mainstream to the totally obscure—with clichés and stereotypes often effectively challenged.
Writers, commentators, players and even some fans take sports as a way of life rather than an entertainment source these days, and Page 2 is refreshing, in a “I just downed a cold soda on a 99 degree day with the humidity in the 110% range after playing basketball for three hours” kind of way, by reminding us all what a “sport” really is.
If Page 2 can get a lazy teenager to write, it must be doing something right. Recently, however, a nasty and childish feud between Jason Whitlock (a Page 2 writer—and a good one at that) and other ESPN employees has left Whitlock no longer employed by ESPN, Page 2 down a good writer, and bad tastes in all mouths.
Most people have never heard of Page 2, Mike Lupica, Scoop Jackson or Jason Whitlock, although a few might have seen him while filling in for Jim Rome on “Rome is Burning”, or Michael Wilbon on “PTI”. Whitlock is an opinionated, well-spoken man who usually has interesting ideas to discuss.
After referring to Mike Lupica, part of the show “Sports Reporters” as an “insecure, mean-spirited busybody”, and referring to Scoop Jackson, another Page 2 writer, as a “clown”, Whitlock was quietly dismissed by ESPN, whom Whitlock also spoke of when he said “And the publishing of (Jackson’s) fake ghetto posturing is an insult to black intelligence”. Jason Whitlock is an African American, and while he often injects racial issues into stories, more often than not his complaints reside in African Americans treating their own people in a way that would make Fifty Cent proud.
Jason Whitlock wrote an article published in the Kansas City Star in which he explained his side of the issue. He admitted ESPN had every right to do what they did, and said that he regards ESPN as a great network, but nonetheless one far too sensitive to differing opinions.
He fails to distinguish between differing opinions and name calling. He can claim Lupica and Jackson are wrong about everything (and they are often), and even report to them or to their employer (who happened to be his employer at the time) the problems he so clearly detailed in his interview on thebiglead.com. But going public with such ad hominem nonsense is cheap, childish and wrong.
Page 2 made me want to write. Now it makes me wonder if these guys do any writing at all, or just get in cat fights.
Oh well. There is still the greatest sports writer of all time and his articles on Art Shell. (if you haven’t read them... go read them. I kiddeth not).
Inspiration
In my last rant-and-rave session, I reported the disappearance of my humor. Maybe, if all goes well and I can manage to be funny after this first story, I will be able to report its discovery. Unfortunately, during this first segment, you will most likely be shouting something along the lines of “Start making me laugh! And where are the sports?”
I will commence with little pretense. The inspiration to start writing a sports blog dropped on my door step in the form of Page 2, on ESPN.com. For those ignorant among us, Page 2 is a mind-bogglingly hilarious feature which brings realism, entertainment and some self deprecating humor into a world—the sports world—that is in desperate need of such medicine. Page 2 has several writers, including the greatest sports writer alive. Outside of articles devoted entirely to humor, there are also very well thought out treatises (which still contain fair amounts of laughs) on issues from the mainstream to the totally obscure—with clichés and stereotypes often effectively challenged.
Writers, commentators, players and even some fans take sports as a way of life rather than an entertainment source these days, and Page 2 is refreshing, in a “I just downed a cold soda on a 99 degree day with the humidity in the 110% range after playing basketball for three hours” kind of way, by reminding us all what a “sport” really is.
If Page 2 can get a lazy teenager to write, it must be doing something right. Recently, however, a nasty and childish feud between Jason Whitlock (a Page 2 writer—and a good one at that) and other ESPN employees has left Whitlock no longer employed by ESPN, Page 2 down a good writer, and bad tastes in all mouths.
Most people have never heard of Page 2, Mike Lupica, Scoop Jackson or Jason Whitlock, although a few might have seen him while filling in for Jim Rome on “Rome is Burning”, or Michael Wilbon on “PTI”. Whitlock is an opinionated, well-spoken man who usually has interesting ideas to discuss.
After referring to Mike Lupica, part of the show “Sports Reporters” as an “insecure, mean-spirited busybody”, and referring to Scoop Jackson, another Page 2 writer, as a “clown”, Whitlock was quietly dismissed by ESPN, whom Whitlock also spoke of when he said “And the publishing of (Jackson’s) fake ghetto posturing is an insult to black intelligence”. Jason Whitlock is an African American, and while he often injects racial issues into stories, more often than not his complaints reside in African Americans treating their own people in a way that would make Fifty Cent proud.
Jason Whitlock wrote an article published in the Kansas City Star in which he explained his side of the issue. He admitted ESPN had every right to do what they did, and said that he regards ESPN as a great network, but nonetheless one far too sensitive to differing opinions.
He fails to distinguish between differing opinions and name calling. He can claim Lupica and Jackson are wrong about everything (and they are often), and even report to them or to their employer (who happened to be his employer at the time) the problems he so clearly detailed in his interview on thebiglead.com. But going public with such ad hominem nonsense is cheap, childish and wrong.
Page 2 made me want to write. Now it makes me wonder if these guys do any writing at all, or just get in cat fights.
Oh well. There is still the greatest sports writer of all time and his articles on Art Shell. (if you haven’t read them... go read them. I kiddeth not).
Monday, September 25, 2006
09/25/06
Athletes
It is no secret that many commentators have recently opened a debate regarding Tiger Wood’s candidacy for “Greatest Athlete of all time”. I do not need to elaborate on the reasons Tiger Woods is so undeserving of such a title, but I will introduce them to elaborate on the main purpose of this article
Tiger Woods does not run, jump, lift, throw, or in essence perform any athletic acts. Hence, he cannot be on the top 1,000,000 list of greatest athletes of all time. Him being the greatest athlete is an absurd claim. But who else is not the greatest athlete of all time?
Roger Federer.
Bill Russell.
John Elway.
Michael Jordan.
Babe Ruth.
Hank Aaron.
Etcetera. (And he is a dang good player)
Some of these are tremendous athletes. But none of them are the deserving of such a title as greatest athlete of all time. Even ignoring the ego-centric premise behind naming any of these men as such (which is based upon the view that only the 20th and 21st centuries matter), they are not the greatest athletes even of our day. Sports of skill and precision have so dominated our psyche that we forget “athletics” are not confined to, or even defined by, sports. The definition of athlete is:
A person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength;
Sounds like the Olympics to me. And that is where—if anywhere—you will find the greatest athletes of all time: The Olympics. There, pure strength, pure speed, pure stamina, etc. is tested in a way that professional sports players never are. Deion Sanders was perhaps the fastest football player to ever play. He couldn’t hold a candle to Maurice Green’s speed. Michael Jordan could jump like nobody’s business, but he never competed in the long jump—and not just because he would get a ton of sand on his tongue. Lawrence Taylor could drag Quarterbacks down with a few fingers, and broke Joe Theisman’s leg into a hundred tiny pieces seemingly without effort; yet he would never last against the strongest men in the world. Randy Johnson could throw a ball 104 mph. But he could not have competed in javelin toss.
Indeed, the only modern sports hero who might have a legitimate hold upon such a title as “greatest athlete” would be Lance Armstrong, pained as I am to say that. Sure, all he does is ride a bike, but that’s the point. There is no trickery, no fake field goals, no play action, no spitballs, no knuckleballs, no crossovers—he just rides harder, longer and faster than anyone else. It is a sport that would bore one to tears, but it does show who holds the most stamina and speed on a bicycle. Of course, Lance cheated in all likelihood, but since we know that everyone else did too, that doesn’t do much to shatter his accomplishments.
The greatest athletes of all time will be found not on the diamond, the court or the field, but where the five rings intertwine.
HoFmann?: Trevor Hoffman broke... uh... Lee Smith’s save record recently (Lee Smith? Who?), and many proclaim Trevor Hoffman a “shoo-in” for the Hall of Fame. Lee Smith isn’t in the Hall of Fame, so breaking his record certainly doesn’t make Trevor a Hall of Famer immediately. He isn’t a shoo-in, but who really cares.
But that is besides the point. This guy has had a remarkably consistent ten year run (minus 2002), in which he saved around 40 games a year. No one really cares. He has had very respectable ERA’s. No one cares.
The truth is: Trevor Hoffman is as exciting as watching Anatoly Karpov win a chess game. Hoffman does not blow people away, he doesn’t fool them with curveballs... he just throws a changeup. Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time (who, by the way, has 413 career saves), has a pitch which either makes the hitter look stupid when they stare at strike three, or makes the hitter look stupid by breaking the bat and grounding weakly to short. Eric Gagne, in his not-so-remarkable steroid-induced run (tell me someone else has seen the oddities of his career and immediately thought “roids”...) would launch fastballs by people or make them whiff at curveballs in the dirt. Heck, even Bobby Jenks, who does nothing but throw 98-102 mph fastballs, is more interesting than Trevor Hoffman. He throws a change up. No one really gets excited by a guy who just throws change ups (and not only because they don’t understand why hitters still get fooled when they know it is coming).
But more than anything, no one cares about Trevor Hoffman for the same reason no one cared about possibly the greatest hitter of our age, Tony Gwynn. He plays in San Diego. They reach the play-offs about as often as the Marlins win the World Series. If you live on the west coast—where the closer doesn’t come in until 1:00 am—you have to make the play-offs or do something remarkable to get noticed.
Passing a guy who isn’t even in the Hall of Fame hardly qualifies as “remarkable”.
“Experts”: It seems the self proclaimed pundits of the major sports leagues have resorted to new tactics in their efforts to cease being wrong all the time. How have they accomplished this? By never offering an opinion. Take this ridiculous quote from Mark Schlereth on espn.com, in response to the following question:
Are the bears the most complete team in the NFL?
Mark Schlereth: “Although they've played extremely well and have dominated their first two opponents, they haven't played a good team yet. Before they get anointed a great team, they have to play a good team...”
At first glance it seems like he is saying something relatively reasonable, but peer a little closer. What he said was “You can’t say anything until they have beaten a good team”. OF COURSE YOU CAN! You are the “expert” Mark Schlereth! You are supposed to tell us whether or not they can beat a good team! If everyone adopted your standards, we would have people refusing to commit to anything until it had already been proven—err, wait, these are the standards everyone has adopted. Taken alone, perhaps this one answer can be forgiven. But it is definitely the norm these days and not the exception.
No longer do our pundits on TV stick their neck on the line and call it like they see it, attempting to show their knowledge by predicting correctly. Nope, they are too smart for that. Now they wait until after the game is over, and then they tell us who the best team is! How brilliant! Why did no one think of this before? I mean, after all, it is much more useful to have our “experts” telling us that the Dolphins are worse than the Steelers after they have lost, right? Because, the outcome of the game was not enough, right?
Schlereth and others like him recently answered a question on NFL Live regarding Carson Palmer: “Fact or fiction: (Carson Palmer) will be the best QB in the league by year’s end.” Their answers? Resounding... “we don’t knows”. They all technically said that this was fiction, because to be the best, you have to beat the best, and they aren’t willing to say Carson will be the best until he has beaten Manning and Brady. Well, duh! The question was “will he”. No one said he is yet. The question was: will he. Instead of answering, they stick their tails between their legs and invent an excuse about having to beat Peyton Manning. Brilliant, guys, brilliant. Sports annotation is in capable hands with the likes of these experts.
(To further prove that Reggie Bush should have been drafted first this past spring, all the experts said so—before the Texans took Mario Williams. This might be stronger proof than anything that the Texans made a completely idiotic move, since our experts never put their credibility on the line unless it is a sure thing.)
Addendum: There are experts still who actually have incredible amounts of knowledge stored away, seem to live *insert football/baseball/basketball here* and do not shy away from offering opinions. These are the Joe Morgans, Tim Kurkjians and Ron Jaworskis of the world. One would think this would make me, the eternal hater of all things wishy washy, happy. But these people scare me.
For instance, the other day, during one of the many recent attempts to kindle a tear from our eye regarding the return of football to New Orleans (seriously, do we need ESPN giving us these sob stories?), a commentator from a baseball game made a comment similar to “of course, as important as the football game is, it is pretty insignificant compared to the real life stories of these people, and no sport is as important as this, blah blah blah”. And it looked like Joe Morgan was straining not to say something like “No, no, baseball is more important than reality. It is more important than life. It is all that matters.” It seemed like the only reason he was silently sitting there, seemingly in accordance with the claim of the relative unimportance of sports was that he knew it would be politically incorrect to say otherwise.
But this makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, Tim Kurkjian can tell you who won the NL Cy Young in ’72 off the top of his head (it was Steve Carlton, in case you were wondering). Ron Jaworski always starts every sentence by saying “After watching the tape on this game for the tenth time....” and so on and so forth. These guys do nothing but study this one thing, and instead of it being related to the meaning of life, like philosophy, or their salvation, like theology, or how to build more efficient machines with physics, or curing diseases by studying biochemistry, they study...
A game. That thing you do from the time you are 2 years old. We all love them, but in the end, every professional baseball player in the world could go up in smoke, and the world would continue on just fine—get rid of all the doctors and we have an epidemic on our hands in every way.
The truth is: they need to believe in the usefulness of their chosen field—how else could one apply one’s self so wholeheartedly? And I love these guys, minus Joe Morgan (more on him next time...), so I don’t say this disparagingly. I mean, I feel like I didn’t know what football was until Jaws started explaining it to me. Without Tim Kurkjian, who would know Jason Bay is a good baseball player on the pirates and not an ocean resort? I love Jaws. I love the Baseball Encyclopedia. They are somewhat frightening in their devotion, but at least they have the decency to tell us whether Carson Palmer will be the league’s best QB by year’s end.
Humor: Where’s the humor gone, you say? It is hiding in Al Saunders’ seven hundred page playbook. Or at least, that’s what I thought initially. Then I realized Randy Johnson put it the same place he put his talent. Someone stole it from his hideout, though, so this information did little to aid the progress of my investigation into my humor’s disappearance. I heard a rumor that it got traded for two minor leaguers and, ostensibly, a player to be named, but my general manager never informed me of this so I am not yet going to believe it. Another interesting rumor says that it went to wherever Ricky Williams went, and is now smoking whatever Ricky Williams was smoking. I have serious doubts about this theory. My sense of humor has always been “dry”; I highly doubt it would want to be labeled “high and dry”. There is the possibility it is in Nebraska, in its many fields of corn, re-energizing itself so it can make more comments like the previous one about “high and dry”. Wherever it went, I hope it comes back soon; I feel like the Yankees without Mo, the Colts without Peyton, the Bulls without Jordan, the Texans without Reggie Bush—oh... wait. Never mind.
Athletes
It is no secret that many commentators have recently opened a debate regarding Tiger Wood’s candidacy for “Greatest Athlete of all time”. I do not need to elaborate on the reasons Tiger Woods is so undeserving of such a title, but I will introduce them to elaborate on the main purpose of this article
Tiger Woods does not run, jump, lift, throw, or in essence perform any athletic acts. Hence, he cannot be on the top 1,000,000 list of greatest athletes of all time. Him being the greatest athlete is an absurd claim. But who else is not the greatest athlete of all time?
Roger Federer.
Bill Russell.
John Elway.
Michael Jordan.
Babe Ruth.
Hank Aaron.
Etcetera. (And he is a dang good player)
Some of these are tremendous athletes. But none of them are the deserving of such a title as greatest athlete of all time. Even ignoring the ego-centric premise behind naming any of these men as such (which is based upon the view that only the 20th and 21st centuries matter), they are not the greatest athletes even of our day. Sports of skill and precision have so dominated our psyche that we forget “athletics” are not confined to, or even defined by, sports. The definition of athlete is:
A person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength;
Sounds like the Olympics to me. And that is where—if anywhere—you will find the greatest athletes of all time: The Olympics. There, pure strength, pure speed, pure stamina, etc. is tested in a way that professional sports players never are. Deion Sanders was perhaps the fastest football player to ever play. He couldn’t hold a candle to Maurice Green’s speed. Michael Jordan could jump like nobody’s business, but he never competed in the long jump—and not just because he would get a ton of sand on his tongue. Lawrence Taylor could drag Quarterbacks down with a few fingers, and broke Joe Theisman’s leg into a hundred tiny pieces seemingly without effort; yet he would never last against the strongest men in the world. Randy Johnson could throw a ball 104 mph. But he could not have competed in javelin toss.
Indeed, the only modern sports hero who might have a legitimate hold upon such a title as “greatest athlete” would be Lance Armstrong, pained as I am to say that. Sure, all he does is ride a bike, but that’s the point. There is no trickery, no fake field goals, no play action, no spitballs, no knuckleballs, no crossovers—he just rides harder, longer and faster than anyone else. It is a sport that would bore one to tears, but it does show who holds the most stamina and speed on a bicycle. Of course, Lance cheated in all likelihood, but since we know that everyone else did too, that doesn’t do much to shatter his accomplishments.
The greatest athletes of all time will be found not on the diamond, the court or the field, but where the five rings intertwine.
HoFmann?: Trevor Hoffman broke... uh... Lee Smith’s save record recently (Lee Smith? Who?), and many proclaim Trevor Hoffman a “shoo-in” for the Hall of Fame. Lee Smith isn’t in the Hall of Fame, so breaking his record certainly doesn’t make Trevor a Hall of Famer immediately. He isn’t a shoo-in, but who really cares.
But that is besides the point. This guy has had a remarkably consistent ten year run (minus 2002), in which he saved around 40 games a year. No one really cares. He has had very respectable ERA’s. No one cares.
The truth is: Trevor Hoffman is as exciting as watching Anatoly Karpov win a chess game. Hoffman does not blow people away, he doesn’t fool them with curveballs... he just throws a changeup. Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time (who, by the way, has 413 career saves), has a pitch which either makes the hitter look stupid when they stare at strike three, or makes the hitter look stupid by breaking the bat and grounding weakly to short. Eric Gagne, in his not-so-remarkable steroid-induced run (tell me someone else has seen the oddities of his career and immediately thought “roids”...) would launch fastballs by people or make them whiff at curveballs in the dirt. Heck, even Bobby Jenks, who does nothing but throw 98-102 mph fastballs, is more interesting than Trevor Hoffman. He throws a change up. No one really gets excited by a guy who just throws change ups (and not only because they don’t understand why hitters still get fooled when they know it is coming).
But more than anything, no one cares about Trevor Hoffman for the same reason no one cared about possibly the greatest hitter of our age, Tony Gwynn. He plays in San Diego. They reach the play-offs about as often as the Marlins win the World Series. If you live on the west coast—where the closer doesn’t come in until 1:00 am—you have to make the play-offs or do something remarkable to get noticed.
Passing a guy who isn’t even in the Hall of Fame hardly qualifies as “remarkable”.
“Experts”: It seems the self proclaimed pundits of the major sports leagues have resorted to new tactics in their efforts to cease being wrong all the time. How have they accomplished this? By never offering an opinion. Take this ridiculous quote from Mark Schlereth on espn.com, in response to the following question:
Are the bears the most complete team in the NFL?
Mark Schlereth: “Although they've played extremely well and have dominated their first two opponents, they haven't played a good team yet. Before they get anointed a great team, they have to play a good team...”
At first glance it seems like he is saying something relatively reasonable, but peer a little closer. What he said was “You can’t say anything until they have beaten a good team”. OF COURSE YOU CAN! You are the “expert” Mark Schlereth! You are supposed to tell us whether or not they can beat a good team! If everyone adopted your standards, we would have people refusing to commit to anything until it had already been proven—err, wait, these are the standards everyone has adopted. Taken alone, perhaps this one answer can be forgiven. But it is definitely the norm these days and not the exception.
No longer do our pundits on TV stick their neck on the line and call it like they see it, attempting to show their knowledge by predicting correctly. Nope, they are too smart for that. Now they wait until after the game is over, and then they tell us who the best team is! How brilliant! Why did no one think of this before? I mean, after all, it is much more useful to have our “experts” telling us that the Dolphins are worse than the Steelers after they have lost, right? Because, the outcome of the game was not enough, right?
Schlereth and others like him recently answered a question on NFL Live regarding Carson Palmer: “Fact or fiction: (Carson Palmer) will be the best QB in the league by year’s end.” Their answers? Resounding... “we don’t knows”. They all technically said that this was fiction, because to be the best, you have to beat the best, and they aren’t willing to say Carson will be the best until he has beaten Manning and Brady. Well, duh! The question was “will he”. No one said he is yet. The question was: will he. Instead of answering, they stick their tails between their legs and invent an excuse about having to beat Peyton Manning. Brilliant, guys, brilliant. Sports annotation is in capable hands with the likes of these experts.
(To further prove that Reggie Bush should have been drafted first this past spring, all the experts said so—before the Texans took Mario Williams. This might be stronger proof than anything that the Texans made a completely idiotic move, since our experts never put their credibility on the line unless it is a sure thing.)
Addendum: There are experts still who actually have incredible amounts of knowledge stored away, seem to live *insert football/baseball/basketball here* and do not shy away from offering opinions. These are the Joe Morgans, Tim Kurkjians and Ron Jaworskis of the world. One would think this would make me, the eternal hater of all things wishy washy, happy. But these people scare me.
For instance, the other day, during one of the many recent attempts to kindle a tear from our eye regarding the return of football to New Orleans (seriously, do we need ESPN giving us these sob stories?), a commentator from a baseball game made a comment similar to “of course, as important as the football game is, it is pretty insignificant compared to the real life stories of these people, and no sport is as important as this, blah blah blah”. And it looked like Joe Morgan was straining not to say something like “No, no, baseball is more important than reality. It is more important than life. It is all that matters.” It seemed like the only reason he was silently sitting there, seemingly in accordance with the claim of the relative unimportance of sports was that he knew it would be politically incorrect to say otherwise.
But this makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, Tim Kurkjian can tell you who won the NL Cy Young in ’72 off the top of his head (it was Steve Carlton, in case you were wondering). Ron Jaworski always starts every sentence by saying “After watching the tape on this game for the tenth time....” and so on and so forth. These guys do nothing but study this one thing, and instead of it being related to the meaning of life, like philosophy, or their salvation, like theology, or how to build more efficient machines with physics, or curing diseases by studying biochemistry, they study...
A game. That thing you do from the time you are 2 years old. We all love them, but in the end, every professional baseball player in the world could go up in smoke, and the world would continue on just fine—get rid of all the doctors and we have an epidemic on our hands in every way.
The truth is: they need to believe in the usefulness of their chosen field—how else could one apply one’s self so wholeheartedly? And I love these guys, minus Joe Morgan (more on him next time...), so I don’t say this disparagingly. I mean, I feel like I didn’t know what football was until Jaws started explaining it to me. Without Tim Kurkjian, who would know Jason Bay is a good baseball player on the pirates and not an ocean resort? I love Jaws. I love the Baseball Encyclopedia. They are somewhat frightening in their devotion, but at least they have the decency to tell us whether Carson Palmer will be the league’s best QB by year’s end.
Humor: Where’s the humor gone, you say? It is hiding in Al Saunders’ seven hundred page playbook. Or at least, that’s what I thought initially. Then I realized Randy Johnson put it the same place he put his talent. Someone stole it from his hideout, though, so this information did little to aid the progress of my investigation into my humor’s disappearance. I heard a rumor that it got traded for two minor leaguers and, ostensibly, a player to be named, but my general manager never informed me of this so I am not yet going to believe it. Another interesting rumor says that it went to wherever Ricky Williams went, and is now smoking whatever Ricky Williams was smoking. I have serious doubts about this theory. My sense of humor has always been “dry”; I highly doubt it would want to be labeled “high and dry”. There is the possibility it is in Nebraska, in its many fields of corn, re-energizing itself so it can make more comments like the previous one about “high and dry”. Wherever it went, I hope it comes back soon; I feel like the Yankees without Mo, the Colts without Peyton, the Bulls without Jordan, the Texans without Reggie Bush—oh... wait. Never mind.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
09/21/06 rant
Congratulations to the Super Bowl Winning Bears!
I will now follow in the grand tradition of every ports columnist and self proclaimed pundit ever to put pen to paper, finger to keyboard, voice to radio, or silly re-creations of plays to a fake mini-field. I will completely overreact to the first two weeks of the NFL season, and let you, the avid reader, know exactly what will happen over the next five months of Professional Football. Here is my team by team analysis, complete with a ton of “obviously”s and “clearly”s, just to show how right I obviously must be.
AFC:
Buffalo: This team seems to play with sheer heart, but it when it comes to sheer talent, they have very little. How many players on the Bills can you name besides Willis McGahee? And you only know his name because his agent is Drew Rosenhaus. Eventually, talent wins in the NFL, and the Bills don’t have any. But since they are 1-1, obviously they end the season at 8-8. Sure, their defense looked good against Miami, but...
Miami: That hardly counts. I am currently portraying Mr. Overreaction but I would have said this exact same thing before the season started. Miami is hopeless. Why? They have Daunte Culpepper as their QB. He stinks. As is always the case with him, his stat lines do not even begin to show his awful performances. He throws short passes into the ground, long passes into the moon, medium passes into defender’s arms, and sometimes he fumbles the ball before he ever gets a chance to make a pass. The guy is awful. He might, eventually, learn how to play without Randy Moss, and if that happens, perhaps Miami will finish the season slightly better than they started it, but by then it will be far too late. Thanks to a decent defense and a weak division, the Dolphins might scratch out six or seven wins, but that is it.
New England: Tom Brady looks pathetic, their receivers look... well I’d tell you, but they don’t have any receivers left after trading Deion Branch—though, trading him for a 1st round pick was a steal, to be sure. Their defense looks mediocre, their offense looks mediocre, but somehow, they are 2-0. Thanks to a crappy division, they win easily, and once the patriots get into the play-offs, who knows what the inventor of football, Bill Belichickickickick, can accomplish.
New Jersey, err, New York: Chad Pennington looks fantastic. We can now forget we ever questioned his arm strength, as evidenced by that hail mary, err... twenty yard pass to end the game this week. The rest of the team looks bad. Bad Bad Bad. This team is going nowhere, obviously.
Baltimore: Here is your AFC Champion. Clearly, no team will ever score on them, and their offense will average 26 points a game. Their competition (Tampa Bay, Oakland) has nothing to do with it. I mean, it isn’t like those teams combined to score 3 points against non-Raven teams or anything...
Cincinnati: Another great defense. Clearly, giving up only seventeen points to the Browns makes them among the league’s best defensive units. After all, the Browns are... sort of a pro team. Beyond that, Cincy has Carson Palmer, the best QB in the league. Peyton Manning you say? Well Carson Palmer has a great weapon in Chad Johnson, but stick Carson Palmer on Indy and that team scores 100 points a game. Carson has a bigger and more accurate arm than Peyton. And he doesn’t do all those annoying hand signals at the line.
Cleveland: They stink. Clearly there is no point in discussing them.
Pittsburgh: Obviously Charlie Batch is their quarterback of the future. He showed great promise in that 3 TD win, and this Roethlisberger guy? He is clearly no good. Time to give up on him. They can’t score against any team not named Miami, and that does not count, so Pittsburgh is obviously going nowhere.
Houston: This team will be cursed forever. Their brilliant idea to draft a mediocre, ubiquitous defensive end with the first pick in the draft has resulted in them giving up 43 points to the Colts. I’m sure Peyton Manning felt Mario Williams breathing down his neck all day. Houston is going nowhere.
Indianapolis: Peyton Manning is the best QB in the league. Carson Palmer may have a bigger arm but can you argue with 400 yards and the best offense in the league? Peyton may run like a duck and flaps his hands like one at the line, but no one throws a spiral like he does. Obviously scoring 43 points against the great Texans makes Indy the favorite to win everything, and they would—except Peyton will once again choke in the playoffs. When he plays Baltimore.
Jacksonville: This team is fantastic. Who cares if they don’t have any receivers faster than I am—they have Josh Scobee. If Josh Scobee kicks three field goals in a game and they win, against the... *cough* *wheeze* defending champions (yes, it is still painful to refer to the Steelers as “champions”), they must be good. Their offense obviously can’t score, but who needs to? They coast into the playoffs only to be debunked by Peyton Manning, who lights up their D for a big game, sending all the pundits into yet another pro-Peyton frenzy, until he blows it against Baltimore.
Tennessee: Everyone says it is amazing that Kerry Collins was sitting on his farm without a job one week, and starting at QB the next. Well, sure, it is amazing that Titans’ management has fallen so low as to do something so STUPID. But it really isn’t amazing from Kerry Collin’s perspective. I just don’t think it is that hard to go 6-19 while throwing 2 INTs. I dunno. I have never played football but it intuitively seems like playing horribly would be pretty easy to do after sitting on your farm, unemployed, a week earlier. The Titans will eventually start playing Vince Young, and this season will be wasted.
Denver: Jake Plummer is obviously a horrible QB. He should be benched. I mean, he has gotten to play TWO WHOLE GAMES. Obviously you can judge the effectiveness of a QB based on that (See: Peyton Manning). The rest of this team is mediocre. They will win a few games just because they get to play KC and Oakland. But 8-8 is really all they can hope for—with a rookie QB.
Kansas City: Herman Edwards can’t coach. When will people learn this? His team stinks. They have no offensive line, no QB, no receivers... and their offense is supposed to be their strength. KC is a classic example of a team being good on one side of the ball for so long that they take it for granted. For the last three seasons, they have completely neglected their offense in attempts to strengthen their woeful defense. After all, leave the offense alone, they are doing okay. But now that their offense clearly is no good, the defense they attempted to fix for so long is having to live up to its money, and it isn’t. Period. This team is going nowhere.
Oakland: This is officially the worst team to ever play the game. Ohio State would beat this team. Mario Williams could get by this offensive line. Herm Edwards would be a better coach than they have. Kerry Collins—fresh off the farm—would be a better QB than what they have. The Kansas City defense would be better than what they have. This team has Randy Moss, and then nothing. Even Randy is wasted, with no QB to throw him the ball. Art Shell has to be the worst coach ever. This team goes winless. I mean is there any arguing that point?
San Diego: This team wins the division in a landslide because they have the greatest offense ever, scoring amazing amounts of points against two stout defenses—Tennessee and Oakland. They also obviously have a great defense since they only gave up a total of seven points to those two scary offenses. But leaving the sarcasm behind for a moment, LT is amazing. People keep claiming we haven’t seen a player of Reggie Bush’s caliber for forty years. Umm, hello? Have you watched a San Diego game recently?
NFC:
Philadelphia: This team was picked by everyone as the division loser. Well, Philly showed all of their critics by... beating Houston. Then they blew a 17 point 4th quarter lead. They also blew their season. McNabb will have another good statistical year, while his team goes something like 7-9, never really recovering from that Giant blow.
Dallas: That brilliant offense has been on display with grand showings of... 17 and 27? Isn’t the T.O./Terry Glenn/Marion Barber offense supposed to be better than that? Oh wait... DREW BLEDSOE is their QB! No wonder they have showed little explosive potential. Oh well, Tony Romo (who?) is waiting in the wings, to take over for this 8-8 team.
New Jersey, err... New York: Eli is now the greatest QB ever because he took his team from 17 down in the fourth quarter. Never mind that he LET them get down by 17 in the fourth quarter. A bunch of “experts” have been saying how they would rather have a QB who was great in the 4th than in the first three. Uhhh.... Uhhh... Can you people do math? 3>1. I love a QB who excels in the 4th, but if he played that well in the first three quarters instead of the last one, the Giants would have won 51-24. Despite this, no one else in this division seems to want to win, so based on talent alone, the Giants are the winner.
Washington: The moment Tom Cruise entered their stadium, the season was over. I feel bad for Clinton Portis, Mark Brunell, Sean Taylor, Joe Gibbs, and their 700 page playbook. It isn’t their fault. NO ONE can overcome Cruise’s bad karma right now. (Washington might have even had a shot had Tom Cruise ONCE let go of Katie’s—I mean, Kate’s—hand, but did he do that? No.) The football gods are insulted that Cruise was even allowed in the building. Washington won’t win at all this year.
Carolina: A trendy Super Bowl pick before the teams had shown whether they can play or not, the Panthers suddenly do not look so hot. Steve Smith’s hamstrings better get better or this team will be no better than Pittsburgh. By the way, you know the SI cover jinx? Maybe it extends to their predictions, also. They predicted that the super Bowl would be Carolina versus Miami. Yes, they picked Miami. No, I don’t understand how people who claim to know sports for a living got away with that.
Atlanta: Michael Vick is now what everyone expected him to be! The Greatest QB of all time! He can run, he can pass, he can—well, okay, so he still can’t pass. But since the Falcons haven’t even hit their stride running the football yet (only a paltry average of 275 yards a game so far), you can expect only great things from Atlanta. They are probably the only team in football that could win without throwing the football once. (Sorta like Navy, in college. Navy averages 13.5 pass yards. Per game.) Unfortunately for the Falcons, the Bears will get in their way to a Super Bowl run...
Tamp Bay: This team falls in the same classic category as Kansas City, but opposite. They forgot about their vaunted defense, it is now in shambles, and the offense hasn’t been able to pick anyone up. They have been outscored 43-3 in their first two games. At this rate they will score 24 points all season, which means they are going nowhere.
New Orleans: This team has impressed the ESPN analysts by being 2-0. Other than that, they have impressed nobody, beating awful, awful, awful teams in ugly, nail biting fashion. Yet they are still 2-0. And since wins are everything, you can expect tons from NO this year!
Minnesota: Same situation exactly as the New Orleans Saints. Minnesota has beaten two crappy 0-2 teams, hence they must be great. Jump on their bandwagon before there is no room!
Detroit: This team is the worst sports franchise of the 21st century. They are AWFUL, and apparently the awfulness will continue. They stink worse than feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon.
Green Bay: Brett Favre threw an interception this week. Yes, just one! And everyone is happy about it. The guy is just not on a good team. They stink worse than something that stinks worse than feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon.
Chicago: Clearly the super Bowl winners. Everyone knew they had a suffocating defense, but now they have a powerful offense. And no, you should not be worried about Rex Grossman getting injured. No, he has not missed the majority of the last three seasons with injuries! No, he does not have to show consistency over a full season! You saw him throw 4 TD passes. Obviously he is for real and obviously he is un-injurable. Who cares if that isn’t a word, the Bears will never lose this year, since they are on pace to win 16 games, and then win the Super Bowl. Stand aside, Don Shula. The Bears are about to take your record from you.
St. Louis: This team lost to San Francisco. Obviously, that means doom upon them, and their children, and their children’s children. Last year, Tampa Bay lost to San Francisco, and look what has happened to them. A playoff loss thanks to a bad call by officials, and now a lost season. Well, since St. Louis lost so early this season to San Fran, they don’t even get to wait until next year to feel the full effects of losing to such a horrendous team. I mean, San Francisco doesn’t smell like feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon. They are feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon.
San Francisco: Obviously the 49ers must be good because they have won a game. Yes, Virginia, the 49ers won a game. They are at .500, and we are two whole weeks into the season. They are 1-1. Extrapolate, people. This team is going 8-8. What a year for them.
Arizona: They beat the 49ers... which means they have dignity. They lost to the Seahawks, which means dignity does not do much if you aren’t very good. Sure, the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl and only lost because Pittsburgh mugged the refs and ensconced their own spies as the zebra looking old guys with whistles, but Seattle is no great team so Arizona is obviously not either.
Seattle: They are probably still having nightmares of Zebras stealing games from them. Thanks to that, they lose a lot of games they aren’t expected to, but thanks to a cupcake schedule (they play in the NFC West, people) they will get into the playoffs.
Soccer news: Huh? Did someone say soccer? Oh that’s right. This is a sports column. No soccer here.
Chess news: Kramnik and Topalov will play a standard match for the World Championship title from September 21st to October 13th, finally uniting the fractured and somewhat meaningless title of “champion” under one banner. No longer will there be four claiming the crown—it will be Topalov or Kramnik, plain and simple. I am rooting for Topalov; I do not remember much about him, but I remember he is more adventurous than Kramnik, who plays a lot like Karpov, the most boring chess player ever born. Kramnik is one of those d4 loving, semi-slav playing defenders who have ruined chess. Gone are the days of King’s gambits and wild sacrifices. Enter the era of boring positional calculation, and infinite supplies of long, drawn out end games where the outcome is dependant on one’s technical ability rather than creative genius. Anyone good at writing eulogies? Get one ready for chess. It won’t be long.
A-Rod: No column goes by these days without A-Rod being mentioned, so it is my duty as a sports writer (self employed as I may be) to mention him. Period. He has been mentioned. This column can continue.
Gridiron Yawn: Has anyone seen gridiron gang? I have not, in the strictest sense of the term. But I have, indeed, seen it. It has been called many things, but it is the same sports movie we have all seen a hundred times, with different actors and maybe a slightly different location. But I’ll bet anything that the juvenile delinquents are very difficult to control, get a ton of tough love from the Rock, come together as a team and triumph in the end. Right? Thought so. This is the same reason I never saw Glory Road, Coach Carter, Invincible, etc. etc. They are all the same.
A-Rod: It seems I have neglected one part of my duty in mentioning A-Rod. I don’t just have to mention him; it is also of paramount importance that I laud his gaudy numbers, while at the same time doing my absolute best to portray him as a selfish, me-first, choke in the clutch, egotistical, blue lipped, prancing pig. Here goes: A-Rod has better numbers than anyone ever, and will be regarded as the greatest collector of stats ever to live. As soon as living memory is extinguished, he will be remembered as the greatest player of all time. Until then, people who watched him play will remind us all that he is a selfish, me-first, choke in the clutch, egotistical, blue lipped, prancing pig
I will now follow in the grand tradition of every ports columnist and self proclaimed pundit ever to put pen to paper, finger to keyboard, voice to radio, or silly re-creations of plays to a fake mini-field. I will completely overreact to the first two weeks of the NFL season, and let you, the avid reader, know exactly what will happen over the next five months of Professional Football. Here is my team by team analysis, complete with a ton of “obviously”s and “clearly”s, just to show how right I obviously must be.
AFC:
Buffalo: This team seems to play with sheer heart, but it when it comes to sheer talent, they have very little. How many players on the Bills can you name besides Willis McGahee? And you only know his name because his agent is Drew Rosenhaus. Eventually, talent wins in the NFL, and the Bills don’t have any. But since they are 1-1, obviously they end the season at 8-8. Sure, their defense looked good against Miami, but...
Miami: That hardly counts. I am currently portraying Mr. Overreaction but I would have said this exact same thing before the season started. Miami is hopeless. Why? They have Daunte Culpepper as their QB. He stinks. As is always the case with him, his stat lines do not even begin to show his awful performances. He throws short passes into the ground, long passes into the moon, medium passes into defender’s arms, and sometimes he fumbles the ball before he ever gets a chance to make a pass. The guy is awful. He might, eventually, learn how to play without Randy Moss, and if that happens, perhaps Miami will finish the season slightly better than they started it, but by then it will be far too late. Thanks to a decent defense and a weak division, the Dolphins might scratch out six or seven wins, but that is it.
New England: Tom Brady looks pathetic, their receivers look... well I’d tell you, but they don’t have any receivers left after trading Deion Branch—though, trading him for a 1st round pick was a steal, to be sure. Their defense looks mediocre, their offense looks mediocre, but somehow, they are 2-0. Thanks to a crappy division, they win easily, and once the patriots get into the play-offs, who knows what the inventor of football, Bill Belichickickickick, can accomplish.
New Jersey, err, New York: Chad Pennington looks fantastic. We can now forget we ever questioned his arm strength, as evidenced by that hail mary, err... twenty yard pass to end the game this week. The rest of the team looks bad. Bad Bad Bad. This team is going nowhere, obviously.
Baltimore: Here is your AFC Champion. Clearly, no team will ever score on them, and their offense will average 26 points a game. Their competition (Tampa Bay, Oakland) has nothing to do with it. I mean, it isn’t like those teams combined to score 3 points against non-Raven teams or anything...
Cincinnati: Another great defense. Clearly, giving up only seventeen points to the Browns makes them among the league’s best defensive units. After all, the Browns are... sort of a pro team. Beyond that, Cincy has Carson Palmer, the best QB in the league. Peyton Manning you say? Well Carson Palmer has a great weapon in Chad Johnson, but stick Carson Palmer on Indy and that team scores 100 points a game. Carson has a bigger and more accurate arm than Peyton. And he doesn’t do all those annoying hand signals at the line.
Cleveland: They stink. Clearly there is no point in discussing them.
Pittsburgh: Obviously Charlie Batch is their quarterback of the future. He showed great promise in that 3 TD win, and this Roethlisberger guy? He is clearly no good. Time to give up on him. They can’t score against any team not named Miami, and that does not count, so Pittsburgh is obviously going nowhere.
Houston: This team will be cursed forever. Their brilliant idea to draft a mediocre, ubiquitous defensive end with the first pick in the draft has resulted in them giving up 43 points to the Colts. I’m sure Peyton Manning felt Mario Williams breathing down his neck all day. Houston is going nowhere.
Indianapolis: Peyton Manning is the best QB in the league. Carson Palmer may have a bigger arm but can you argue with 400 yards and the best offense in the league? Peyton may run like a duck and flaps his hands like one at the line, but no one throws a spiral like he does. Obviously scoring 43 points against the great Texans makes Indy the favorite to win everything, and they would—except Peyton will once again choke in the playoffs. When he plays Baltimore.
Jacksonville: This team is fantastic. Who cares if they don’t have any receivers faster than I am—they have Josh Scobee. If Josh Scobee kicks three field goals in a game and they win, against the... *cough* *wheeze* defending champions (yes, it is still painful to refer to the Steelers as “champions”), they must be good. Their offense obviously can’t score, but who needs to? They coast into the playoffs only to be debunked by Peyton Manning, who lights up their D for a big game, sending all the pundits into yet another pro-Peyton frenzy, until he blows it against Baltimore.
Tennessee: Everyone says it is amazing that Kerry Collins was sitting on his farm without a job one week, and starting at QB the next. Well, sure, it is amazing that Titans’ management has fallen so low as to do something so STUPID. But it really isn’t amazing from Kerry Collin’s perspective. I just don’t think it is that hard to go 6-19 while throwing 2 INTs. I dunno. I have never played football but it intuitively seems like playing horribly would be pretty easy to do after sitting on your farm, unemployed, a week earlier. The Titans will eventually start playing Vince Young, and this season will be wasted.
Denver: Jake Plummer is obviously a horrible QB. He should be benched. I mean, he has gotten to play TWO WHOLE GAMES. Obviously you can judge the effectiveness of a QB based on that (See: Peyton Manning). The rest of this team is mediocre. They will win a few games just because they get to play KC and Oakland. But 8-8 is really all they can hope for—with a rookie QB.
Kansas City: Herman Edwards can’t coach. When will people learn this? His team stinks. They have no offensive line, no QB, no receivers... and their offense is supposed to be their strength. KC is a classic example of a team being good on one side of the ball for so long that they take it for granted. For the last three seasons, they have completely neglected their offense in attempts to strengthen their woeful defense. After all, leave the offense alone, they are doing okay. But now that their offense clearly is no good, the defense they attempted to fix for so long is having to live up to its money, and it isn’t. Period. This team is going nowhere.
Oakland: This is officially the worst team to ever play the game. Ohio State would beat this team. Mario Williams could get by this offensive line. Herm Edwards would be a better coach than they have. Kerry Collins—fresh off the farm—would be a better QB than what they have. The Kansas City defense would be better than what they have. This team has Randy Moss, and then nothing. Even Randy is wasted, with no QB to throw him the ball. Art Shell has to be the worst coach ever. This team goes winless. I mean is there any arguing that point?
San Diego: This team wins the division in a landslide because they have the greatest offense ever, scoring amazing amounts of points against two stout defenses—Tennessee and Oakland. They also obviously have a great defense since they only gave up a total of seven points to those two scary offenses. But leaving the sarcasm behind for a moment, LT is amazing. People keep claiming we haven’t seen a player of Reggie Bush’s caliber for forty years. Umm, hello? Have you watched a San Diego game recently?
NFC:
Philadelphia: This team was picked by everyone as the division loser. Well, Philly showed all of their critics by... beating Houston. Then they blew a 17 point 4th quarter lead. They also blew their season. McNabb will have another good statistical year, while his team goes something like 7-9, never really recovering from that Giant blow.
Dallas: That brilliant offense has been on display with grand showings of... 17 and 27? Isn’t the T.O./Terry Glenn/Marion Barber offense supposed to be better than that? Oh wait... DREW BLEDSOE is their QB! No wonder they have showed little explosive potential. Oh well, Tony Romo (who?) is waiting in the wings, to take over for this 8-8 team.
New Jersey, err... New York: Eli is now the greatest QB ever because he took his team from 17 down in the fourth quarter. Never mind that he LET them get down by 17 in the fourth quarter. A bunch of “experts” have been saying how they would rather have a QB who was great in the 4th than in the first three. Uhhh.... Uhhh... Can you people do math? 3>1. I love a QB who excels in the 4th, but if he played that well in the first three quarters instead of the last one, the Giants would have won 51-24. Despite this, no one else in this division seems to want to win, so based on talent alone, the Giants are the winner.
Washington: The moment Tom Cruise entered their stadium, the season was over. I feel bad for Clinton Portis, Mark Brunell, Sean Taylor, Joe Gibbs, and their 700 page playbook. It isn’t their fault. NO ONE can overcome Cruise’s bad karma right now. (Washington might have even had a shot had Tom Cruise ONCE let go of Katie’s—I mean, Kate’s—hand, but did he do that? No.) The football gods are insulted that Cruise was even allowed in the building. Washington won’t win at all this year.
Carolina: A trendy Super Bowl pick before the teams had shown whether they can play or not, the Panthers suddenly do not look so hot. Steve Smith’s hamstrings better get better or this team will be no better than Pittsburgh. By the way, you know the SI cover jinx? Maybe it extends to their predictions, also. They predicted that the super Bowl would be Carolina versus Miami. Yes, they picked Miami. No, I don’t understand how people who claim to know sports for a living got away with that.
Atlanta: Michael Vick is now what everyone expected him to be! The Greatest QB of all time! He can run, he can pass, he can—well, okay, so he still can’t pass. But since the Falcons haven’t even hit their stride running the football yet (only a paltry average of 275 yards a game so far), you can expect only great things from Atlanta. They are probably the only team in football that could win without throwing the football once. (Sorta like Navy, in college. Navy averages 13.5 pass yards. Per game.) Unfortunately for the Falcons, the Bears will get in their way to a Super Bowl run...
Tamp Bay: This team falls in the same classic category as Kansas City, but opposite. They forgot about their vaunted defense, it is now in shambles, and the offense hasn’t been able to pick anyone up. They have been outscored 43-3 in their first two games. At this rate they will score 24 points all season, which means they are going nowhere.
New Orleans: This team has impressed the ESPN analysts by being 2-0. Other than that, they have impressed nobody, beating awful, awful, awful teams in ugly, nail biting fashion. Yet they are still 2-0. And since wins are everything, you can expect tons from NO this year!
Minnesota: Same situation exactly as the New Orleans Saints. Minnesota has beaten two crappy 0-2 teams, hence they must be great. Jump on their bandwagon before there is no room!
Detroit: This team is the worst sports franchise of the 21st century. They are AWFUL, and apparently the awfulness will continue. They stink worse than feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon.
Green Bay: Brett Favre threw an interception this week. Yes, just one! And everyone is happy about it. The guy is just not on a good team. They stink worse than something that stinks worse than feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon.
Chicago: Clearly the super Bowl winners. Everyone knew they had a suffocating defense, but now they have a powerful offense. And no, you should not be worried about Rex Grossman getting injured. No, he has not missed the majority of the last three seasons with injuries! No, he does not have to show consistency over a full season! You saw him throw 4 TD passes. Obviously he is for real and obviously he is un-injurable. Who cares if that isn’t a word, the Bears will never lose this year, since they are on pace to win 16 games, and then win the Super Bowl. Stand aside, Don Shula. The Bears are about to take your record from you.
St. Louis: This team lost to San Francisco. Obviously, that means doom upon them, and their children, and their children’s children. Last year, Tampa Bay lost to San Francisco, and look what has happened to them. A playoff loss thanks to a bad call by officials, and now a lost season. Well, since St. Louis lost so early this season to San Fran, they don’t even get to wait until next year to feel the full effects of losing to such a horrendous team. I mean, San Francisco doesn’t smell like feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon. They are feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon.
San Francisco: Obviously the 49ers must be good because they have won a game. Yes, Virginia, the 49ers won a game. They are at .500, and we are two whole weeks into the season. They are 1-1. Extrapolate, people. This team is going 8-8. What a year for them.
Arizona: They beat the 49ers... which means they have dignity. They lost to the Seahawks, which means dignity does not do much if you aren’t very good. Sure, the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl and only lost because Pittsburgh mugged the refs and ensconced their own spies as the zebra looking old guys with whistles, but Seattle is no great team so Arizona is obviously not either.
Seattle: They are probably still having nightmares of Zebras stealing games from them. Thanks to that, they lose a lot of games they aren’t expected to, but thanks to a cupcake schedule (they play in the NFC West, people) they will get into the playoffs.
Soccer news: Huh? Did someone say soccer? Oh that’s right. This is a sports column. No soccer here.
Chess news: Kramnik and Topalov will play a standard match for the World Championship title from September 21st to October 13th, finally uniting the fractured and somewhat meaningless title of “champion” under one banner. No longer will there be four claiming the crown—it will be Topalov or Kramnik, plain and simple. I am rooting for Topalov; I do not remember much about him, but I remember he is more adventurous than Kramnik, who plays a lot like Karpov, the most boring chess player ever born. Kramnik is one of those d4 loving, semi-slav playing defenders who have ruined chess. Gone are the days of King’s gambits and wild sacrifices. Enter the era of boring positional calculation, and infinite supplies of long, drawn out end games where the outcome is dependant on one’s technical ability rather than creative genius. Anyone good at writing eulogies? Get one ready for chess. It won’t be long.
A-Rod: No column goes by these days without A-Rod being mentioned, so it is my duty as a sports writer (self employed as I may be) to mention him. Period. He has been mentioned. This column can continue.
Gridiron Yawn: Has anyone seen gridiron gang? I have not, in the strictest sense of the term. But I have, indeed, seen it. It has been called many things, but it is the same sports movie we have all seen a hundred times, with different actors and maybe a slightly different location. But I’ll bet anything that the juvenile delinquents are very difficult to control, get a ton of tough love from the Rock, come together as a team and triumph in the end. Right? Thought so. This is the same reason I never saw Glory Road, Coach Carter, Invincible, etc. etc. They are all the same.
A-Rod: It seems I have neglected one part of my duty in mentioning A-Rod. I don’t just have to mention him; it is also of paramount importance that I laud his gaudy numbers, while at the same time doing my absolute best to portray him as a selfish, me-first, choke in the clutch, egotistical, blue lipped, prancing pig. Here goes: A-Rod has better numbers than anyone ever, and will be regarded as the greatest collector of stats ever to live. As soon as living memory is extinguished, he will be remembered as the greatest player of all time. Until then, people who watched him play will remind us all that he is a selfish, me-first, choke in the clutch, egotistical, blue lipped, prancing pig
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