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.
Friday, September 29, 2006
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
Thursday, September 14, 2006
09/14/06
Pitching is for Losers
The age old baseball proverb is “pitching wins championships”. Actually, as is the case with many “sayings”, there are as many different version of the saying as there are versions of “Diddy”s name. “Pitching wins in the postseason”, “good pitching beats good hitting” and other such adages abound in the dreary repetition of commentators’ favorite phrases.
Like most such anecdotes, there is a grain of truth to the statement, but the rest of it just doesn’t make any sense. Let’s look at the three main versions of the statement.
“Pitching wins championships”. Umm, duh? What is the point behind this statement. It is reminiscent of “defense wins championships”, or “accurate quarterbacks win championships”, or “teamwork wins championships”. Is it even worth saying? You do three things in baseball, two of which are most important: hitting and pitching. Is it a big surprise that teams who win are usually proficient at, you know, an entire half of the game? Or, on the subject of Super Bowl teams, is it hard to believe that the best team in the league has a good defense, or an accurate quarterback, or team chemistry? (Nevermind the fact that in another major sport, the NBA, you don’t need team chemistry, you need Dwayne Wade, Shaq, a ton of useless role players, and refs who call everything for the leagues “stars”, but I digress.)
So from that point of view, of course pitching wins. Teams that win are good teams. Good teams generally have good pitching. This is not some useful, genius statement. It is tantamount to noting that “Good teams win championships”.
“Pitching wins in the Postseason”. Now this phrase is every bit as redundant as the first phrase, but it tends to have an assumed corollary: pitching wins, and hitting doesn’t. First off, this simply is not true. The Red Sox of ’04 won with the league’s best line up and a couple hired gun pitchers. The Angels of ’02 won without the league's best line up or hired gun pitchers; they just won with the league’s hottest lineup, which decided to bang the ball at precisely the right time.
What about those other teams, you say? What about the White Sox, what about the Marlins, what about the Yankees? Yes, what about them. The Marlins of ’03 and the White Sox of ’05 both won for the same reason, and, they both won for the same reason the Red Sox and Angels won: they got hot at exactly the right time. The only difference is it manifested itself in the pitching more than the hitting. But the reasoning behind the “pitching>hitting” rule is that pitching is consistent while hitting is streaky. This just is not true. The White Sox stunk in September last year. Their pitching got hot in October, and they threw their way to a world series (with, by the way, a line up that hit over two hundred home runs in the regular season. So even if their pitching rightfully took the spotlight, their hitting was still top 3 in the league). The Marlins also had a good line up in ’03, without which they would not have been able to score eight runs in an inning, overcome the Cubs and reach the World Series.
So what about the Yankees? What about that pitching dynasty, that unbelievable 125 win team? Well, people don’t want to admit it, but while their starters were good, they were... good. They were not great until Roger Clemens came along at the tail end of the run. David Wells, David Cone, Andy Petitte; we are not talking about Hall of Famers here. But that ’98 team? They scored 965 runs in the regular season! In case you were wondering, that is only ten fewer runs than the legendary ’27 Yankees knocked in. It was the best hitting team in recent memory, maybe in living memory, since 1927 was a long time ago. Sure, they had pitching also. But wouldn’t the best team of all time have to have both?
“Good pitching beats good hitting”. If there was ever a false statement, this is it. It simply is not true. It is wrong. It is erroneous. It is about as real as Suri. Almost every All-Star game every played testifies against it. Why, when the best hitters and best pitchers get together, are the scores so darned high? Because good pitching does not beat good hitting. The reason this myth pervades society like bad horror movies is because pitchers have a 9 to 1 advantage.
A good pitcher can indeed dominate a game. A good hitter cannot do a darn thing if the other team intentionally walks him. Every line-up would need nine good hitters (you know, like the Yankees) to test this myth (you know, like all star games). Because even though most line ups have at least one good hitter, maybe two, three or even four, a good pitcher is the only guy needed for the defense.
In football, nobody would argue that an offensive lineman is more important than the QB. Why? because there is one QB, and five linemen. Just the math of the whole matter makes the QB more important. But is he more important than the whole offensive line? Of course not!
In the same way, a good line up can beat the crap out of a good pitcher; good line ups are simply far more rare than good pitchers.
Minor Rants
Perhaps he Should Call Luigi: While writing this article I happened to notice a show on ESPN about some NFL rookies, including Mario Williams, Mr. #1 overall pick. It was clear in the show—and this is one of those shows where nothing except the positive gets shown, and any negative is at best ignored, if not outright lied about—that Mario Williams was having serious problems in the Texans training camp. He is a defensive end, and he was having trouble even getting by the tackle, much less getting a sack.
Think about who he was practicing with: Texans offensive lineman. TEXANS OFFENSIVE LINEMAN. Mario Williams is the only guy on the planet who hasn’t blown by the Texans O-line. This line is so pathetic they have led the league in giving up sacks for the last forty years, which is impressive seeing as the Texans have only been around for about five. They would let seventy year old grandmothers by. They would let me by. They would let you by (unless Mario Williams happens to be reading this, which I doubt). They would find some way to let a sloth by. They would find some way to let a Diet Pepsi machine—err, wait, Diet Pepsi machine is a pretty good player. Scratch that. BUT YOU GET THE POINT! Mario Williams can’t beat the Texans offensive line. He is hopeless. Mark it down.
Fans: There are two kinds of fans: realistic ones and unrealistic ones. I consider myself a realistic fan. Sure I root for the Titans, but they aren’t going anywhere this year and I am not crazy enough to think otherwise. The two kinds of fans can be better categorized as: Bill Simmons and Skip Bayless. Both are die-hard Red Sox fans, and that is where the similarities end.
Bill Simmons hates the Yankees every bit as much as Skip, but he doesn’t lie about them. Skip tries to pretend the Yankees have a mediocre offense, a wretched starting rotation and no bullpen besides Rivera (whose greatness, it might be added, even quasi-morons like Skip can’t deny). Bill Simmons has them as the favorite to win the World Series. Skip says the Red Sox were the best team in the league this year until they got hit by injuries, and says he would STILL take a healthy Red Sox over the Yankees. Bill Simmons thinks the Red Sox overachieved, were never that good, and relied on the NL (14-2 record against NL opponents) to stay afloat. This is obviously true, since the Red Sox have a losing record against AL teams. And this injury nonsense is ridiculous. The Red Sox lost Jason Varitek. He was batting .239. The Yankees lost Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield, both of whom are 30+ homer guys—for almost the entire SEASON. Varitek was out for about a month.
Sure the Red Sox started losing guys later (funny how the team had one massive injury bug as soon as they found themselves 8 games back), but by then the division was well in hand. Bill Simmons, I salute you for your baseball integrity. Skip... you are funny to watch, much for the same reason Tom Cruise is funny to watch. It is hard to imagine someone being so darned wrong.
Topics: Yes I am a bit partial to Yankees/Red Sox topics, and yes this was supposed to be a weekly column, but if every random writer on ESPN can get away with favoritism and unpredictable schedules, so can I, darnit.
Pitching is for Losers
The age old baseball proverb is “pitching wins championships”. Actually, as is the case with many “sayings”, there are as many different version of the saying as there are versions of “Diddy”s name. “Pitching wins in the postseason”, “good pitching beats good hitting” and other such adages abound in the dreary repetition of commentators’ favorite phrases.
Like most such anecdotes, there is a grain of truth to the statement, but the rest of it just doesn’t make any sense. Let’s look at the three main versions of the statement.
“Pitching wins championships”. Umm, duh? What is the point behind this statement. It is reminiscent of “defense wins championships”, or “accurate quarterbacks win championships”, or “teamwork wins championships”. Is it even worth saying? You do three things in baseball, two of which are most important: hitting and pitching. Is it a big surprise that teams who win are usually proficient at, you know, an entire half of the game? Or, on the subject of Super Bowl teams, is it hard to believe that the best team in the league has a good defense, or an accurate quarterback, or team chemistry? (Nevermind the fact that in another major sport, the NBA, you don’t need team chemistry, you need Dwayne Wade, Shaq, a ton of useless role players, and refs who call everything for the leagues “stars”, but I digress.)
So from that point of view, of course pitching wins. Teams that win are good teams. Good teams generally have good pitching. This is not some useful, genius statement. It is tantamount to noting that “Good teams win championships”.
“Pitching wins in the Postseason”. Now this phrase is every bit as redundant as the first phrase, but it tends to have an assumed corollary: pitching wins, and hitting doesn’t. First off, this simply is not true. The Red Sox of ’04 won with the league’s best line up and a couple hired gun pitchers. The Angels of ’02 won without the league's best line up or hired gun pitchers; they just won with the league’s hottest lineup, which decided to bang the ball at precisely the right time.
What about those other teams, you say? What about the White Sox, what about the Marlins, what about the Yankees? Yes, what about them. The Marlins of ’03 and the White Sox of ’05 both won for the same reason, and, they both won for the same reason the Red Sox and Angels won: they got hot at exactly the right time. The only difference is it manifested itself in the pitching more than the hitting. But the reasoning behind the “pitching>hitting” rule is that pitching is consistent while hitting is streaky. This just is not true. The White Sox stunk in September last year. Their pitching got hot in October, and they threw their way to a world series (with, by the way, a line up that hit over two hundred home runs in the regular season. So even if their pitching rightfully took the spotlight, their hitting was still top 3 in the league). The Marlins also had a good line up in ’03, without which they would not have been able to score eight runs in an inning, overcome the Cubs and reach the World Series.
So what about the Yankees? What about that pitching dynasty, that unbelievable 125 win team? Well, people don’t want to admit it, but while their starters were good, they were... good. They were not great until Roger Clemens came along at the tail end of the run. David Wells, David Cone, Andy Petitte; we are not talking about Hall of Famers here. But that ’98 team? They scored 965 runs in the regular season! In case you were wondering, that is only ten fewer runs than the legendary ’27 Yankees knocked in. It was the best hitting team in recent memory, maybe in living memory, since 1927 was a long time ago. Sure, they had pitching also. But wouldn’t the best team of all time have to have both?
“Good pitching beats good hitting”. If there was ever a false statement, this is it. It simply is not true. It is wrong. It is erroneous. It is about as real as Suri. Almost every All-Star game every played testifies against it. Why, when the best hitters and best pitchers get together, are the scores so darned high? Because good pitching does not beat good hitting. The reason this myth pervades society like bad horror movies is because pitchers have a 9 to 1 advantage.
A good pitcher can indeed dominate a game. A good hitter cannot do a darn thing if the other team intentionally walks him. Every line-up would need nine good hitters (you know, like the Yankees) to test this myth (you know, like all star games). Because even though most line ups have at least one good hitter, maybe two, three or even four, a good pitcher is the only guy needed for the defense.
In football, nobody would argue that an offensive lineman is more important than the QB. Why? because there is one QB, and five linemen. Just the math of the whole matter makes the QB more important. But is he more important than the whole offensive line? Of course not!
In the same way, a good line up can beat the crap out of a good pitcher; good line ups are simply far more rare than good pitchers.
Minor Rants
Perhaps he Should Call Luigi: While writing this article I happened to notice a show on ESPN about some NFL rookies, including Mario Williams, Mr. #1 overall pick. It was clear in the show—and this is one of those shows where nothing except the positive gets shown, and any negative is at best ignored, if not outright lied about—that Mario Williams was having serious problems in the Texans training camp. He is a defensive end, and he was having trouble even getting by the tackle, much less getting a sack.
Think about who he was practicing with: Texans offensive lineman. TEXANS OFFENSIVE LINEMAN. Mario Williams is the only guy on the planet who hasn’t blown by the Texans O-line. This line is so pathetic they have led the league in giving up sacks for the last forty years, which is impressive seeing as the Texans have only been around for about five. They would let seventy year old grandmothers by. They would let me by. They would let you by (unless Mario Williams happens to be reading this, which I doubt). They would find some way to let a sloth by. They would find some way to let a Diet Pepsi machine—err, wait, Diet Pepsi machine is a pretty good player. Scratch that. BUT YOU GET THE POINT! Mario Williams can’t beat the Texans offensive line. He is hopeless. Mark it down.
Fans: There are two kinds of fans: realistic ones and unrealistic ones. I consider myself a realistic fan. Sure I root for the Titans, but they aren’t going anywhere this year and I am not crazy enough to think otherwise. The two kinds of fans can be better categorized as: Bill Simmons and Skip Bayless. Both are die-hard Red Sox fans, and that is where the similarities end.
Bill Simmons hates the Yankees every bit as much as Skip, but he doesn’t lie about them. Skip tries to pretend the Yankees have a mediocre offense, a wretched starting rotation and no bullpen besides Rivera (whose greatness, it might be added, even quasi-morons like Skip can’t deny). Bill Simmons has them as the favorite to win the World Series. Skip says the Red Sox were the best team in the league this year until they got hit by injuries, and says he would STILL take a healthy Red Sox over the Yankees. Bill Simmons thinks the Red Sox overachieved, were never that good, and relied on the NL (14-2 record against NL opponents) to stay afloat. This is obviously true, since the Red Sox have a losing record against AL teams. And this injury nonsense is ridiculous. The Red Sox lost Jason Varitek. He was batting .239. The Yankees lost Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield, both of whom are 30+ homer guys—for almost the entire SEASON. Varitek was out for about a month.
Sure the Red Sox started losing guys later (funny how the team had one massive injury bug as soon as they found themselves 8 games back), but by then the division was well in hand. Bill Simmons, I salute you for your baseball integrity. Skip... you are funny to watch, much for the same reason Tom Cruise is funny to watch. It is hard to imagine someone being so darned wrong.
Topics: Yes I am a bit partial to Yankees/Red Sox topics, and yes this was supposed to be a weekly column, but if every random writer on ESPN can get away with favoritism and unpredictable schedules, so can I, darnit.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
12/09/06 rant
09/12/06
Big Papi? Big Ego.
I figured I might as well open up my free, useless, nothing but a reason to rant about sports column with my favorite thing in the world: ripping the Boston Red Sox.
Unfortunately, on this momentous new opening of the frightening inner workings of my mind, I am disappointed. The one Red Sock I had a tiny bit of respect for is now proven to be just like the rest of ‘em. What a joke.
His comments upon the MVP award, and his unbelievably arrogant claims that only he should win the trophy, make him seem selfish, whiny, and spoiled. Somewhat like the rest of the “Red Sox Nation” and their incessant puling.
Never mind the blatant contradictions in his own words—he says playoff position should not matter in the MVP voting, but later goes on to say that if he had a vote, he would vote for either Jermaine Dye or Justin Morneau, depending on which team gets into the playoffs! And, for the moment, let us even forget that he rather strongly insults his own team, by claiming that Jeter hits in a great Yankee lineup, while Ortiz—the poor guy—has to deal with the Red Sox lineup around him (excuse me? Is this not the same “Big Papi” who had never hit twenty homers in a season before he saw all the fastballs that Manny Ramirez gives him by batting fourth? Yeah? Thought so). Beyond even these absurdities, he tells us he isn’t “worrying” about it. What? Huh? He is contradicting himself yet again.
No, even had he not offered all these signs of a deeply troubled intellect, the very fact that he is trying to convince people that he should win the award is unacceptable. It is completely lacking in class. Further, it is lacking in brains. Does he think he is going to sway anyone with this gibberish? If anything, voters will look at this sad attempt and refrain from voting for him.
Yet perhaps the best response possible to this garrish act of self centeredness was Jeter’s. Responding to Ortiz’s challenge to “do it in (Ortiz’s) lineup”, Jeter says:
"I don't have to do it in his lineup. I'm not thinking about winning the MVP. I'm just thinking about winning the division. No one's focus here is on individual awards. We've got something to play for."
After all, where was Ortiz when it was all on the line in the five game sweep? Jeter was at the forefront, winning games for his team. Ortiz was... well he was not helping his team win games, because they did not win any. As Jeter says, the Yankees still have something to play for, and that makes Jeter’s case all the more compelling.
Big Papi? Big Ego.
I figured I might as well open up my free, useless, nothing but a reason to rant about sports column with my favorite thing in the world: ripping the Boston Red Sox.
Unfortunately, on this momentous new opening of the frightening inner workings of my mind, I am disappointed. The one Red Sock I had a tiny bit of respect for is now proven to be just like the rest of ‘em. What a joke.
His comments upon the MVP award, and his unbelievably arrogant claims that only he should win the trophy, make him seem selfish, whiny, and spoiled. Somewhat like the rest of the “Red Sox Nation” and their incessant puling.
Never mind the blatant contradictions in his own words—he says playoff position should not matter in the MVP voting, but later goes on to say that if he had a vote, he would vote for either Jermaine Dye or Justin Morneau, depending on which team gets into the playoffs! And, for the moment, let us even forget that he rather strongly insults his own team, by claiming that Jeter hits in a great Yankee lineup, while Ortiz—the poor guy—has to deal with the Red Sox lineup around him (excuse me? Is this not the same “Big Papi” who had never hit twenty homers in a season before he saw all the fastballs that Manny Ramirez gives him by batting fourth? Yeah? Thought so). Beyond even these absurdities, he tells us he isn’t “worrying” about it. What? Huh? He is contradicting himself yet again.
No, even had he not offered all these signs of a deeply troubled intellect, the very fact that he is trying to convince people that he should win the award is unacceptable. It is completely lacking in class. Further, it is lacking in brains. Does he think he is going to sway anyone with this gibberish? If anything, voters will look at this sad attempt and refrain from voting for him.
Yet perhaps the best response possible to this garrish act of self centeredness was Jeter’s. Responding to Ortiz’s challenge to “do it in (Ortiz’s) lineup”, Jeter says:
"I don't have to do it in his lineup. I'm not thinking about winning the MVP. I'm just thinking about winning the division. No one's focus here is on individual awards. We've got something to play for."
After all, where was Ortiz when it was all on the line in the five game sweep? Jeter was at the forefront, winning games for his team. Ortiz was... well he was not helping his team win games, because they did not win any. As Jeter says, the Yankees still have something to play for, and that makes Jeter’s case all the more compelling.
Minor rants
Irony: You have to wonder if Ortiz is just... off... a bit due to his recent health problems. He also made that minor stink about the “hit” Ramirez had in the Yankee series which was ruled an error. One hit, guys? Is it that important? In an extreme case of irony, the play was ruled as an error on Jeter; did he make any attempt to have it changed to a hit? Of course not. Jeter has class, as well as meaningful games to focus on.
Obvious: Some commentators have remarked lately that the Twins, Yankees, White Sox and Tigers are playing somewhat mediocre baseball. How can anyone make this argument? Well because the records seem to signify as much. They are either below .500 or not far above it in recent stretches. Well why is this? Because they are playing each other! No matter how great they are, on the whole, their records will look pedestrian because they are tearing each other to pieces.
Speaking of which: Many complain that the All Star game should not decide home field advantage for the World Series. Maybe they are correct. But those who say the team with the best record should retain this advantage are nuts. Why on Earth should the Mets get home field advantage this year because they play in quadruple A? Should they be rewarded for playing teams that stink? The AL destroyed the NL in interleague play this year. Yet the Mets would most likely “earn” home field for the World Series because they get to play the Braves, Phillies, Nationals and Marlins on a regular basis. So, you say, why does the “best record” system work in other sports?
WHAT other sports? The only one of the “big three” that chooses on such a basis is the NBA. The NFL has a neutral location, which is probably as fair as it gets (yes, once again the NFL is worlds ahead of the other sports). The NBA also has much larger integration between the two conferences. And each team doesn’t play almost %50 of its games against its own division! It is bad enough that the Tigers or Yankees could be penalized for being in good divisions by not having as many wins as the A’s (unlikely, but possible). There is no way they should have to play the Mets four times in Shea just because the Mets get to play in a league where one team (ONE TEAM!) is ten games over .500
Yes, it was as dumb as it seemed: %5 of the people who know the Texans took Mario Williams with the first pick in this year’s NFL draft instead of Reggie Bush were confused. The other %95 were not, because there was and is only one explanation: the Houston Texans organization is idiotic. It turns out we were correct. Week 1 of the NFL season will be repeated often: Reggie Bush had 141 all purpose yards. Mario Williams had zero—count them again—zero sacks, and only two tackles. The Houston Texans’ leading rusher had 32 yards.
Federer: There is nothing one can say about Roger Federer anymore, so I have decided to simply make his name a new term. Anytime one needs to describe some unbelievably dominant, consistent, unflappable force in life, call it “federerish”. Not the easiest word to say, but could you possibly describe it better?
Irony: You have to wonder if Ortiz is just... off... a bit due to his recent health problems. He also made that minor stink about the “hit” Ramirez had in the Yankee series which was ruled an error. One hit, guys? Is it that important? In an extreme case of irony, the play was ruled as an error on Jeter; did he make any attempt to have it changed to a hit? Of course not. Jeter has class, as well as meaningful games to focus on.
Obvious: Some commentators have remarked lately that the Twins, Yankees, White Sox and Tigers are playing somewhat mediocre baseball. How can anyone make this argument? Well because the records seem to signify as much. They are either below .500 or not far above it in recent stretches. Well why is this? Because they are playing each other! No matter how great they are, on the whole, their records will look pedestrian because they are tearing each other to pieces.
Speaking of which: Many complain that the All Star game should not decide home field advantage for the World Series. Maybe they are correct. But those who say the team with the best record should retain this advantage are nuts. Why on Earth should the Mets get home field advantage this year because they play in quadruple A? Should they be rewarded for playing teams that stink? The AL destroyed the NL in interleague play this year. Yet the Mets would most likely “earn” home field for the World Series because they get to play the Braves, Phillies, Nationals and Marlins on a regular basis. So, you say, why does the “best record” system work in other sports?
WHAT other sports? The only one of the “big three” that chooses on such a basis is the NBA. The NFL has a neutral location, which is probably as fair as it gets (yes, once again the NFL is worlds ahead of the other sports). The NBA also has much larger integration between the two conferences. And each team doesn’t play almost %50 of its games against its own division! It is bad enough that the Tigers or Yankees could be penalized for being in good divisions by not having as many wins as the A’s (unlikely, but possible). There is no way they should have to play the Mets four times in Shea just because the Mets get to play in a league where one team (ONE TEAM!) is ten games over .500
Yes, it was as dumb as it seemed: %5 of the people who know the Texans took Mario Williams with the first pick in this year’s NFL draft instead of Reggie Bush were confused. The other %95 were not, because there was and is only one explanation: the Houston Texans organization is idiotic. It turns out we were correct. Week 1 of the NFL season will be repeated often: Reggie Bush had 141 all purpose yards. Mario Williams had zero—count them again—zero sacks, and only two tackles. The Houston Texans’ leading rusher had 32 yards.
Federer: There is nothing one can say about Roger Federer anymore, so I have decided to simply make his name a new term. Anytime one needs to describe some unbelievably dominant, consistent, unflappable force in life, call it “federerish”. Not the easiest word to say, but could you possibly describe it better?
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