Friday, March 30, 2007

What the hell do I know?



Yeah, everybody does it -- but it's pointless to predict the upcoming baseball season.


There are three possible outcomes.

1) I get it wrong, so six months from now, people look back and laugh at what a fool I was. Why didn't I realize the Yankee rotation had so many question marks? Why didn't I pay more attention to the Cubs' off-season spending spree? And so on.

2) I get it right, but six months from now, it all seems so obvious. Well, of course the Yankees were going to win the A.L. East. They win it every year. Oh, you said the Cubs wouldn't win? Yeah, way to go out on a limb there. Got any other predictions, Nostradumbass?

3) I get it right or wrong, but six months from now, nobody remembers or cares what I said anyway.

Option 3, of course, being the most likely.

Damn it all, I will make my predictions anyway. Behold!

A.L. East: Yes, I think the Yankees will win it again, for the 10th straight year. I'll even say they'll win 100 games, for the first time since '04. The best lineup in baseball plus Mariano Rivera. The rotation will be fine;
there's no need to do anything drastic. The Red Sox will win the wild card, the Blue Jays just behind them in 3rd, then Baltimore and Tampa Bay battling it out for the bottom.

A.L. Central: The best division in the A.L. last year, the worst this year? The Sporting News Baseball 2007 had the Twins as the best team in baseball. (No, they didn't make their predictions before Francisco Liriano's injury.) What the hell? I don't think they'll win 90 games this year. In fact, I don't think any team in this division will. There will be a big pile-up in the high 80s, with everybody but the Royals having a shot. I'll go with the Indians to come out on top, even with Joe Borowski as their closer. (Although I am a little nervous as they've suddenly gone from sleeper pick to favorite.)

A.L. West: As a Yankee fan, I gotta say anybody but the freaking Angels. I'll go with Oakland to repeat, and win about 93 games again. Why? I liked Moneyball. Seriously, I think Los Anaheimeles will take a step backward, especially since Sports Illustrated picked them to win the A.L. In fact, they might fall behind the Rangers, who will be better this year (but not as good as some people think.) The Mariners will be a distant fourth, and only because they can't finish fifth in a four-team division.

N.L. East: I think the Phillies will give the Mets a run for their money this year, but I think the Amazins will repeat. Hey, I may be a Yankee fan, but I have nothing against the Mets. (It's Mets fans I don't like.) Their pitching staff is a nightmare, but they should be able to bash their way to 90 or so wins. The Phils will be a game or two behind them, which should be just good enough to win the wild card. Atlanta will be around .500; Florida will fall apart, maybe even finishing behind Washington.

N.L. Central: Wow, both Centrals are looking very weak to me. St. Louis? It's not a good sign when Kip Wells is your No. 2 starter. But then you look at the rotations in Cincinnati, Houston and Chicago. Good lord. In fact, the Brewers probably have the best starting five, but they'll be held back by their offense. And the Pirates... are still the Pirates. Still, one of these teams has to finish above .500 and win the division, so what the heck -- let's say Houston. (Do you realize the Astros have finished 2nd in the division for five straight years?)

N.L. West: The Padres have enough pitching to win a third straight N.L. West title, and I think just enough hitting. I know
lots of people are picking the Dodgers, but they always find a way to screw it up. They'll probably build up a nice division lead going into August, and then their all-AARP team will fall apart. Who knows what to make of the Rockies and their crazy humidor; put them around .500 with the Diamondbacks. The Giants will finish last, but at least we all get to say good-bye to Barry Bonds.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Divorcing the Yankees

As if getting divorced wasn't bad enough, Steve Swindal is not only losing his wife but also the New York Yankees. (that's a picture of the lovely couple in "happier" times)

All morning, guys have been calling ESPN's sports talk radio station professing their love for Jennifer Steinbrenner. Granted, she's not much of a looker, but she does come with Derek Jeter, not to mention the most famous franchise in the history of sports. Swindal was the heir apparent to succeed Steinbrenner, as his own two sons aren't interested and his other son-in-law is actually his other daughter's second husband, so he had to move to the back of the line.

Before anyone goes crazy with the "why the hell would he divorce her?" comments, Jennifer is the one dumping Steve, apparently. If you remember, Swindal was arrested for drunk driving last month, but maybe that wasn't the cause as much as a symptom of ongoing problems. Reportedly, Swindal had been living in St. Petersburg, away from his wife and two children, at the time of his arrest.

Swindal is still a general partner in the Yankees and chairman of Yankee Global Enterprises LLC, and hasn't resigned. But Boss George has never had trouble getting rid of people he didn't like.

Gothamist has a humorous observation: The other former Steinbrenner son-in-law, a former general partner also, is now an assistant middle school principal.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

And now for something a little different

You may be unaware of this, but the World Swimming Championships are currently taking place in Australia. Not many people know this about me, but I am one of the few olympic fans left in the U.S. Currently the U.S. is third in the overall medal race with 8 gold medals to China's 9 and Russia's 11.

However the United States is blessed with perhaps the greatest swimmer ever to strap on the goggles. Michael Phelps has absolutely wrecked every event he has participated in. He lowered his own world record in the 200 meter butterfly by 1.67 seconds, the largest single drop in almost 50 years. He beat the second place finisher, China's Wu Peng by over 3 seconds. This would be like Jeff Gordon winning the Daytona 500 by three laps. It was total and complete domination. Phelps is on pace to win 8 gold medals all by himself. If you didn't watch the last summer olympics, make sure you watch the 2008 games in China. The way the man cuts through the water is something to behold.





Michael Phelps current records

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Great baseball website

This time of year, this is my favorite website. Each baseball team's depth chart is linked. It tells you who is starting at every position on every team. If a player has a little yellow sticky next to his name there is news concerning him. If he has a little red cross it means he is hurt. (It also gives the details of the injury and estimated healing time) I have to keep myself from spending all day reading up on my favorite and least favorite players.

Enjoy!!


R.I.P., Jerry Girard

If you grew up in the Greater New York area in the 1980s, you probably remember two things about Channel 11.

The first was this mini-TV show, really a long station promo, where kids would call in to play a live on-screen video game (kind of like Atari's Star Wars, or maybe it was Star Wars), where the kid would say "Pix!" to fire. (Since there was a lag, usually the kid wouldn't do so good. At least half the kids just repeatedly screamed "PIX PIX PIX PIX PIX" regardless of what was happening on the screen.)

The second thing was Jerry Girard, the wise-cracking sports anchor with a hair-do like a steel helmet. For most of his career -- from 1974 to 1995 -- there was no ESPN, WFAN or the Internet. If you wanted to find out what happened in sports, you either had to wait for the morning paper or tune in to the nightly news. Jerry Girard was the guy I always watched.

Girard was smart, funny and always different. He would do this thing on Monday nights when he would show the little-noticed plays from Sunday's games. Instead of showing the clip of Dave Meggett diving over the pile into the end zone -- which by Monday night everyone had already seen more than once -- Girard would show the play just before that one, where Chris Calloway made a huge catch for a key third down conversion. He had the insight to know which was the true key play and trusted his audience would care about that too.

He also was funny, and I don't mean like the asshats on Best Damn Sports Show or Fox football pre-game. This little clip of Girard has some of his wry humor. You would always hear the other people on the set cracking up as he dead-panned a classic line.

Girard died Sunday from cancer. He was 74, born in Chicago but raised in the Bronx, and was always a Yankee fan. (For some reason, a few of the obits say he was 75 and born in the Bronx, but I'm going by the "official" obit from Channel 11.) In one obit, he was quoted in a 1984 interview saying, "I made a pledge to myself when I first went on the air that I was going to be myself, sink or swim." He maintained that attitude right 'til the end, resigning in 1995 after more than 20 years rather than accepting a demotion as sports anchor. He hasn't been seen on TV since.

Rest in peace Jerry. Thanks for some great work.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Strength of Character

This isn’t a post about being a Yankee fan, which I am. This is a post about playing baseball in NY, which I think most baseball fans will admit, is a little bit different than playing in Kansas City. It is also about building a championship team. Only in New York could A-Rod’s 2006 35 HR 121 RBI season be considered a bust. Take the most intense situation you can think of, multiply it by 10 and you are getting close to the scrutiny that a star baseball player faces in NYC.


When you have a player that can do it, take the heat and succeed, you should hold on to him. If for whatever reason you can’t hold on to him, if he becomes available again, get him back. The ability to handle the bright lights of New York and perform is almost as important as raw talent.

Who am I talking about?

The unflappable Jonathan Ray Lieber.

If you look at Lieber’s career numbers he has been remarkably consistent. A down year last year and a trade for Freddy Garcia removed him from the Phillies plans for 2007. However, statistical evidence suggests he will pitch closer to his 2004 and 2005 numbers than his anomalous 2006 season. In 2004 he went 14 - 8 for the Yanks and was incredibly steady.



The Yankees currently have a significant problem with their starting pitching. Chien Ming Wang and Andy Pettitte are ailing. Mike Mussina is ok and despite the large amount of walks he had this spring I am very high on Kei Igawa. Carl Pavano has stolen the Yankees money for two years after throwing an ineffective 100 innings in 2005 and being dishonest about his health for much of 2006. If I was Brian Cashman I would punt Pavano for a bucket of balls, but fortunately for the Yankees, I’m not. Pavano was a borderline superstar when the Yankees signed him and even if he is 70% of what he was he is better than almost anything else the Yankees have.



Jeff Karstens is going to fill a slot while the injured players recover and while he pitched well in spring training this season he is NOT a long term solution. Super prospect Philip Hughes makes Yankees fans drool, but throwing him into the fire and possibly damaging his confidence long term is not something the Yankees want to do.



All of that brings us back to Jonathan Ray Lieber, his very hard slider, and the fact that the Phillies need to trade him. If the Yankees traded for Lieber they guarantee themselves 12-15 wins, 180-220 innings, almost no walks and someone who will take the ball every five days and stand tall before everything that New York has to throw at him. I don't think it would take that much, maybe Melky Cabrera and a minor leaguer. If that is the price, for the sanity he would bring to the Yankees rotation, I say bring him back.



Bring him back.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The Beauty of Baseball. Part 1 An Overview


I have talked to people in my life, men and women, that don't like sports. They don't understand them. Once, when I was traveling overseas and a less temperate person I almost got into a fistfight with a Peace Corps volunteer who argued that sports in general degraded society as a whole. I know that doesn't say a lot for me as a person, but I am pretty sure, if you are a sports fan, you would have been on my side.

Sports polarizes society in a lot of ways. Even the most casual sports fan has heard the phrase performance enhancing drugs in relation to baseball. For the moment let's take that out of the mix and look at the beauty of baseball.

In many ways the baseball season is perfect. Spring training is a month long season of hope. Fresh faced youngsters take the field with dreams of defying the odds. Grizzled veterans arrive ready to fight for one last shot at glory. Wounded superstars test their surgically repaired limbs and hope a lifetime of work wasn't ruined by a surgeon's scalpel.

April opens the season and every coach, player and fan check the box scores daily. Who got off to a hot start? Who is surprisingly cold? Fandom is light in April. Every team is in the hunt for the World Series. Every rookie is the second coming of Joe DiMaggio and someone will hit 5 home runs the first week of the season prompting a joke on Sportscenter that particular player is on pace to break every statistical record in baseball.

May and June show the teams with a chance to win it all. Usually there is a surprise or two and every baseball writer in America wonders if the surprise team can keep it up for the whole season. (My bet is on the Milwaukee Brewers this year) A serious injury or two befall young pitchers and a slew of stories appear about the stress of pitching on young arms and what teams can do to protect their youngsters.

The beginning of July starts the trade rumors in earnest. Who is buying, going for the championship this year? (I say the Phillies) Who is selling, packing it in with the hopes of retooling their organization for the future? (Seattle, bank on it) We watch the All-Star game which invariably prompts a mindless debate on the fairness of the selection process and players that were left off the team are highlighted all over the press. July however, is just getting started.

You have not seen a media or fan frenzy until you really watch baseball as the trading deadline approaches. Speculation is rampant, who will be traded before the deadline? Who will stay with their team? Which player will demand a trade because his team doesn't care about winning? Which franchise will irritate its fan base by not making any deals? Every team will be burning up the phone lines exploring possibilities. Should they trade their future stars for a veteran that can help them now? Should they stand pat and hope their team has enough talent to go all the way? If you see a mid-season managerial firing, July is often the time. There is usually enough intrigue and posturing in baseball in July to make Machiavelli posthumously proud.

August is the calm after the storm of July and before the storm of September. The teams with the most endurance survive August, either leading their division or in contention. It isn't unusual to see a team completely implode in August as nagging injuries and under performance take center stage in the news. (Look for the Dodgers to embody this in 2007) August will bring out individual stars for the media to highlight. Will someone be on pace to break the home run record? (Doubtful) Will someone be hitting close to, or over, .400? (Robinson Cano)

The benign laziness of August becomes the frenzied race for the finish line. The main group of contenders are usually well entrenched and are battling each other for playoff position. The last couple of remaining playoff slots are being hotly contested every night. You will see Minnesota Twins, Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, and Boston Red Sox staring out of their dugouts every night at the out of town scoreboard, gauging if at that moment, they are in or out of the playoffs.

The last two weeks of the season are breakneck. Every pitch matters. An ill timed error can break the collective heart of an entire city. A critical injury can leave a team with a gaping hole at a crucial position and there will be an opportunity for someone you never heard of to capture your imagination in one moment. (Kevin Kouzmanoff)

And then, ever so abruptly, the regular season ends.

But it isn't over.

The playoffs rain down on our senses and the intensity of September is exponentially magnified in October. Baseball fans are up late watching games until after midnight because there is so much riding on every pitch. Stories are written about courage and fortitude and each match up is broken down to statistical minutia so tediously intricate that you can't help but wonder about the private lives of the statisticians who invented them. You hear terms like VORP and OPS+ and only have a moment to wonder about them because Albert Pujols hits a ball farther than you have ever seen and Busch Stadium in St. Louis explodes on your television set as a city full of baseball fans rejoice as one.

Someone is crowned champion in mid-October as champagne showers down in their clubhouse. Stories are written about unexpected contributions from middle relievers and pinch hitters. We know about the heroes families and how they overcame adversity to make the major leagues. We rejoice with the victors and sympathize with the vanquished who left everything on the field. Together, as baseball fans, we are filled with its beauty.

The day after the World Series ends there is a bit of emptiness, but don't worry, only about 120 days until pitchers and catchers report for the next season.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Looking for Spring?

"This shit don't count. This shit don't go on the bubblegum card."
-- Rickey Henderson on Spring Training

There's just two weeks to go until Opening Day, and Spring Training games are starting to get a little more serious. Starting pitchers are now going four or five innings, and youngsters with no chance of making the big club are getting re-assigned to the minors. At this point in Spring Training, if your ERA is still in double-digits, you stop tinkering with that new pitch. If you still aren't hitting, you've passed the point where you can smile and say you're just "shaking the rust off."

In addition, this weekend and next weekend are when most people will have their fantasy baseball drafts, so I would expect
Spring Training stats are getting renewed scrutiny.

Should anyone bother? Can anything be learned from looking at Spring Training stats?

I took a look at the
Spring Training leaders from 2006 with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Several players who had big years started off with big springs. Raul Ibanez hit .443 in spring training, then went on to set career highs in hits, runs, homers and RBIs. Orlando Hudson posted career highs in everything after hitting .473. Jim Thome, coming off a year when he hit .207 with a .352 SLG in 59 injury-plagued games, bounced back with a huge 2006 after leading the Cactus League with 8 HRs in spring training (.895 SLG!). Justin Morneau, after hitting just .239 with a .741 OPS in '05, looked like an MVP candidate with a .375, 1.019 OPS in spring. Maybe there would have been more talk about Robinson Cano as a potential batting title winner if we'd paid more attention to his Grapefruit League-leading 28 hits.

Yet for every guy whose Spring Training stats proved to be a vision of the future, there's at least two guys where it was a mirage.
Eric Munson hit .364 with a 1.164 OPS, convincing some he was finally worth drafting -- then hit .199 with a .617 when the games counted. Red Sox fans were happy to see Coco Crisp, coming off a year when he hit .300, hit .434 with an 1.123 OPS in Spring Training -- but then he hit .264 with a .702 OPS. In March '06, Angel Berroa hit .439 with a .684 SLG, looking like he had regained his form as the 2003 Rookie of the Year. (Remember, voters, how you preferred him over Hideki Matsui? I hope the "Japanese stars aren't rookies" rule is remembered if Daisuke Matsuzaka proves to be all that and a bag of chips.) But when the season started, Berroa had his worst year yet, hitting just .234 (.592 OPS). The list goes on and on... Jonny Gomes (.371, 1.114 OPS to .216, .756 OPS); Kevin Mench (.417, 1.336 to .269, .732), Yadier Molina (.421, 1.154, to .216, .595)...

Then there's the guys who had crappy springs but had good years anyway.
Corey Patterson, coming off a year when he hit .215 with a .602 OPS, was a great investment on Draft Day, as he hit .276 with 16 HRs and 45 SBs. Yet in Spring Training, he looked much more like '05 than '06: .225, .573. Nomar Garciaparra, after hitting .283 with a .772 OPS and missing half of '05, looked like a big question mark for the Dodgers after hitting just .242 with a .578 (0 HR) in the Cactus League; then he hit .303 with an .872, including 20 HRs. Wes Helms hit .261 with a .669 OPS, then put up career highs in BA, OBP and SLG.

With pitchers, it's the same thing, only more extreme.
Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter had good springs and good years; Randy Johnson and Arthur Rhodes had good springs and bad years; Brandon Webb and Kenny Rogers had bad springs and good years.

Why are Spring Training stats of limited value? Small sample size and different conditions (ballpark, level of competition, etc.) from what you'd expect in the regular season.

All that said, if you're dead set on looking at Spring Training stats before heading into your draft, here's a nugget from the
Roto Authority (actually, quoting John Dewan of Baseball Forecaster): Target a player whose Spring Training slugging percentage is 200 points higher than his lifetime slugging percentage.

Roto Authority listed 24 guys who put up a slugging percentage 200 points higher than their career average. Of the 24, 14 went on to put up a higher SLG than their career average in '06 (
check out Roto Authority's chart). Of the 10 guys who didn't have an increase in their career SLG, there were guys who had what could be considered "normal" years, like Jason Bay, J.D. Drew and Garret Anderson, as well as guys who had bad years, like Mench and Brad Wilkerson.

There's still a bunch of games left, but let's take a look anyway. At the top of the list of guys putting up 200-point SLG increases so far this spring are, weirdly, brothers
Scott Hairston (+467) and Jerry Hairston Jr. (+362). Outside the Hairston family, a quick look at the A.L. and N.L. spring leader boards reveals Howie Kendrick (+341), Eric Byrnes (+318), Sammy Sosa (+287), Ryan Zimmerman (+271), Derrek Lee (+265), Morgan Ensberg (+256), and two guys who were on the list last year, Orlando Hudson (+305) and Mike Cuddyer (+221).

Something to think about, anyway, until the games start for real.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

A dumb idea... that keeps getting dumber

I root for the New Jersey Devils -- but, to be honest, I'm not really much of a hockey fan. I won't tune out on the rare occasion they start talking hockey on sports talk radio. Every once in awhile I'll watch a game on TV or read an article in the paper to see how they're doing. Like most casual hockey fans, I really don't pay much attention until the playoffs start.

All that said, it is a lot of fun to watch a hockey game in person. On TV, it's hard to get an idea for just how big those guys are, and how fast they're going, and what happens when they slam into each other. The fact that they're doing all that while trying to hit a little piece of rubber into a net is just astounding. And the fans are great. I don't know why hockey is the only sport to have figured out that people shouldn't be allowed to return to their seats while there's something happening in the game. Just stand there in the aisle until the ref blows a whistle, OK? Maybe if you sip some of your beer you won't wind up spilling half of it on my shoes.

And now that the Devils are moving from their current home in the Meadowlands, I might be going to more games. But I'm probably the only one.
The Devils are moving to Newark, perhaps the dumbest idea in hockey since the Indianapolis Ice signed Manute Bol.

Newark is not exactly a hotbed of hockey fandom. Anybody can be a hockey fan, but let's face it, hockey is primarily a sport watched by white people. As has been said many times before, "the only thing black is the puck." According to the 2000 Census, whites make up about 26 percent of Newark's population -- most of them being 80-year-old grandmothers. Not exactly the NHL's target demographic.

Now, it is true that there will be more hockey fans within walking distance of the Newark arena than there were at the Continental Airlines arena. That is because the Continental Airlines arena is literally in a swamp. The only way to get there, if you don't have a car, is by bus... or canoe.

But the three hockey fans living in Newark aren't going to fill the new arena, so they know they're going to have to get all those white guys, with their 12-year-old sons in Brodeur jerseys, to drive from the suburbs to Newark to go to hockey games. Now, weren't these the same dads who weren't driving to the Continental Airlines Arena? Why are they suddenly going to drive to Newark? Oh wait, I know -- it's because everybody loves driving in Newark. Yes, there are more mass transit options available in Newark than there are in the Meadowlands, but no matter how many trains and buses are available, most people will still prefer to drive.

How do I know people won't go to Devils games in Newark? Because Newark already has a professional sports team that nobody goes to: The Newark Bears of the Atlantic League. The Bears have had some notable players over the years -- Rickey Henderson, Jose Canseco, Hensley "Bam Bam" Meulens. They won their league championship in 2002. Yet the team never draws huge crowds, as do other Atlantic League teams located in the 'burbs. They supposedly have to draw about 4,000 fans a game to break even. They don't.

As if all this wasn't bad enough, the Star-Ledger reported today that, once they move to Newark, the Devils are going to double the price of their best season tickets.

Are they kidding?

Maybe they're just so clueless that they think they can charge whatever they want and the place is going to be packed to the rafters anyway. Or maybe they realize they're going to have to squeeze every last penny out of the diehards who will show up in Newark.

Look, I hope the Devils sell out every home game and the Stanley Cup is paraded down Broad Street to throngs of screaming fans. But I can also see, after a few years of playing great hockey in front of an empty building, the Devils leaving New Jersey (and giving up one of the best sports team names in history), and we'll have to hear all those politicians whining about how they had no idea hockey in Newark would be such a failure.

Yeah, who could've predicted that?

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Here's the pitch...

It must be tough to be a sports reporter during the first two weeks of Spring Training. The Super Bowl is over, March Madness is a month away, and nobody gives a crap about regular season hockey or basketball. Everyone is hungry for baseball, but there's not even any real spring training games yet, just pitchers and catchers reporting. So you write the annual Spring Training stories about who is in "the best shape of his life" and who looks fat, which player can't get a visa and which player is rehabbing ahead of schedule. And then you go play golf and complain that it's a little overcast and only 70 degrees.

Then there's another annual spring story: The pitch! Every pitcher comes to camp talking about how he's going to throw a certain pitch more. Or less. Or earlier in the count. Or when he's ahead on strikes. He's trying a new grip. Or a different arm angle. Maybe he's going to start dropping down. He's learned a new pitch this off-season. He's going to go back to using an old pitch.

And every spring it seems there's a pitch that's suddenly in vogue. Some years it's the four-seamer, other years it's the two-seamer. Some years it's the cutter and some years it's the splitter. One spring every pitching coach wants to bring back the big 12-to-6 overhand curve and then the next spring every camp has somebody toying with a knuckler.

I thought this year's pitch was going to be the mysterious gyroball, but that disappeared faster than Toe Nash. No, this year's pitch is... the humble changeup.

I've never seen the changeup get as much press as it has gotten over the last few weeks. Chris Reitsma wowed J.J. Putz with one. Greg Maddux worked on one with Clay Hensley. It's going to be used more this year by Josh Beckett, Jeremy Bonderman, A.J. Burnett, Ben Sheets, Brandon McCarthy... and that's just the Bs. If you thought Chris Carpenter, Billy Wagner and Mariano Rivera were good before, wait 'til you see them throwing changeups.

Why the changeup?

If you're a graduate student desperate for a thesis for your Master of Sports Science Degree Program, here you go: The "in" pitch of each year's spring training is a reflection on society at that moment in time.

The pitch in Spring 2000, with the stock market soaring on the soon-to-burst dot.com bubble, was the illusionary rising fastball.

Spring 2001, as the nation spirals into recession? Time to get stingy with pitch counts and start throwing the GIDP-inducing sinker.

Two years later, at war and with our president strutting around in a stuffed flightsuit, we turned to the ultra-macho triple-digit fastball.

And now, with a newly elected Democratic majority in the House and Senate and more and more Americans saying they don't want to "stay the course" in Iraq, it's no surprise this spring's pitch du jour is the changeup. Add about 5,000 words of academic goobly-gook and there you go, one master's degree.

You're welcome.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

"Buyer's Remorse?"


I've heard this term a whole bunch lately when people talk about the 55 million dollar contract the Angels gave Gary Matthews Jr. in the off season. A load of shit if you ask me.

1. The Angels had to know something was up. The guy had been an average player for the previous 10 seasons. Now, after the age of 30, the guy has a career year.

2. He happens to have this year during the last one of his current deal.

3. There is no test in place for HGH.

Hmmmmm

Doesn't take much to connect those fucking dots. In EIGHT seasons this guy's best line was .255 avg., 17 HRs, 55 RBIs.

Last year? .313/19/79

And he's 32 years old! I guess by the grace of Jesus he found his power after all that time?

Brady Anderson any one?

The Angels knew who and what they were signing. The fact is, they overpaid and got what they deserved and I hope his dick falls off in the owners soup someday.

And people that are mad at Gary Matthews Jr. need to get over themselves.

If I told you.... "go on the Internet right now and order an illegal substance, that won't kill you if you take it" Then I promised I'd hand you 55 million in guaranteed money after taking that substance for one year.... Are you seriously saying you wouldn't do it?

Fuck you, of course you would! As did Gary Matthews Jr.

God bless America

Friday, March 2, 2007

Why am I a Packer fan?

Growing up in New Jersey -- literally about a thousand miles from Green Bay, Wisconsin -- and coming of football age at a time when the Packers weren't very good (Tony Mandarich, anyone?), I have frequently been asked why I'm a Packer fan.

It hasn't been easy. I came of football age in the mid-1980s, the post-Lombardi, pre-Favre years. Over the first 18 years of my life, the Packers had a winning record just three times -- which includes going 5-3-1 in the strike-shortened '82 season, and 8-7-1 in '78. When I was in high school, the Giants were awesome and the Jets were, well, the Jets, but still better than the Packers. Everyone who wasn't a Giants fan or a Jets fan was rooting for the Broncos, the 49ers, the Redskins -- you know, those teams that won once in awhile.

So... why am I a Packer fan? Did I have a crush on
Jan Stenerud? Did I hunger for some cheese? Was I conceived at the Vince Lombardi Service Area?

Here's what my mother told me, when I asked her why she'd given me a Packer jacket to wear to elementary school and forced me to endure the taunts of children rooting for better teams.

She used to go to the same diner every morning. So did a guy she hadn't met yet who would turn out to be my father. She asked the waitress if she knew anything about that guy, and the waitress said he just sits at the counter, drinks coffee and reads the sports pages. (The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.)

So one morning my mother summoned up the courage to sit next to my father at the counter, and saw he was reading a story about an upcoming game between the Giants and the Packers.

She asked him who he thought was going to win, and he said the Giants.

"I bet you the Packers will win," she said. "If the Packers win, you have to take me out to dinner."

"OK," he said. "But what if the Giants win?"

"If the Giants win, I'll take you out to dinner."

She'd really figured out all the angles on this one!

Well, the Packers won, and he took her out to dinner, and eventually, they got married and I was born. A nice little story if it hadn't ended a few years later in a bitter divorce and the
John Hadl trade.

Apparently, in the divorce settlement, in addition to the house and custody of the kids, my mother also retained the Packers, which she then passed on to me. And eventually, I got to root for
#4, so the story has a happy ending after all.

There is a post-script, however.

This year I brought the story up to my father, who confirmed, yes, it is basically true. Except for one little detail.

He remembers it as a college football game.

"I think it was Rutgers vs. Villanova," he said.