MLB | Bryan Joiner

October 30, 2009

Game 2

Game 2 is in the books, and it’s a little gloomier outside this morning, and not just literally. The Yankees have tied the series, even if MLB poster child Derek Jeter made one of the all-time stupid mistakes last night and it was discussed less than Jay Z and Alicia Keys.

Jeter came to bat in the seventh inning with men on first and second and no outs. There were two strikes. He tried to bunt, he bunted foul, and he was called out. Derek Jeter hit .334 this year, and his lifetime batting average is sixth among active players. Even after his 3-for-5 game on Wednesday, the bunt attempt shows that the pressure of the World Series might be getting to him. Or, at least, that it affects him sometimes. He should talk to his buddy A-Rod (0-for-the-series) about it. Maybe a sleepover is in order.

Cheap shots aside, the story of last night wasn’t Pedro—who pitched pretty much in line with expectations—but A.J. Burnett, the angry-looking, unpredictable Yankee hurler. Burnett’s certainly got the stuff to dominate on any given night, but every pitch is like a coinflip: it either zips, unhittable, over the corner of the strike zone or careers away from it, often into the batter (Burnett was fourth in the league in hit batsmen this year, with 10. The leader? Joba, with 12). The story with watching Tim Wakefield, the Sox’ knuckleballer, is that things can fall apart in an instant, with no real warning signs: the knuckler is fickle. So is Burnett. Every inning, he looked dominant, but there was always that chance that he began to unravel. It never happened.

The Yankee bullpen managed to lock the game down, but not without some trouble. Characteristically, Mariano got the team out of danger, but uncharacteristically, he was also the one that put them there. It’s not unusual for closer to flirt with danger before sealing the deal, but it is unusual for this closer to do it. Whether that’s a harbinger of things to come or an aberration might determine who’s sizing their ring fingers in a couple weeks.

Back to Pedro. He pitched well, if laboriously, through the first few innings, displaying virtuoso skill with sub-master power (Imagine Picasso, too old to hold a brush, or Will Arnett playing the straight man). His changeup was a sight to behold during his prime, and now it’s really amazing: it’s one of the slowest pitches thrown by anyone in the entire league, and it’s brutally effective. Teixeira’s a terrible matchup for Pedro, however, and Tex made him pay. When he was finally pulled (in the seventh inning!) he walked off the field to chants of “Who’s Your Daddy?” and couldn’t help but break into a big smile. He’s Yankee Stadium’s ultimate heel, and he loves every second of it.

The series heads to Philly tomorrow with bizarro-Philadelphian Cole Hamels chucking against Andy Pettitte, whose pot-luck postseason history might be due to turn against him. Hamels, confounding on and off the field, has the ability to shut down the Yankees, but will he? If he does, the Phillies will be in a good spot. They’d get a crack at CC Sabathia on short rest in Game 4, and follow that up with the Unstoppable Cliff Lee® in game five going back up against Burnett… and those coin flips can’t keep coming up heads, can they?

2 Comments

October 29, 2009

Pedro

There are times when I write this blog that I should be working. Then there are times I really should be working. Then there are times like now, where I kind of should be working, but I’m riding the high of a Dunkin Donuts Pumpkin Latte. The secret ingredient is sugar! Anyhow, you can only sort through so many work emails before it dawns on you that PEDRO MARTINEZ IS PITCHING IN THE WORLD SERIES TONIGHT.

Forget that it’s against the Yankees, if only for this paragraph. Pedro. Is pitching. In the World Series. Tonight.

Okay, now you can remember that it was the Yankees. And why this looks oh so very scary for Phans of the Phils.

I love Pedro. He was really, really, really good at baseball once. Actually, he was better than that. Now, he’s merely good. But the Yankees are a whole lot better than good. The last time the Yankees faced Pedro in the playoffs, he gave up two runs in one inning of work in a vanity appearance in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. The holdovers from that team are Jeter, A-Rod, Matsui and Posada (on offense), and the Yankees will bring the firepower with Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano, and, mostly absurdly, Johnny Damon.

Yes, Pedro the Phillie will pitch the Damon the Yankee in the bottom of the first inning. Egads.

The one thing Pedro has going for him is that he’s got absolutely nothing to lose. I think pretty much everyone expects him to fail tonight, with a 5-inning, 2-run performance serving as the best-case scenario. And really, against this lineup that wouldn’t be bad. He’s not the guy who struck out 17 Yankees any more. He’s not even the guy who signed with the Mets. He’s Jordan with the Wizards, coming out of exile to throw his remaining skills at the wall and see what sticks.

Last night, he gave a doozy of a press conference where he said:

I remember quotes in the paper, ‘Here comes the man that New York loves to hate.’ Man? None of you have probably ever eaten steak with me or rice and beans with me to understand what the man is about. You might say the player, the competitor, but the man? You guys have abused my name. You guys have said so many things, have written so many things.

There’s only one guy who can get away with saying that, and it’s Pedro. He knows he’ll still be the man when tonight’s game is over, win or lose. And that is the single biggest thing he has going for him.

11 Comments

October 29, 2009

Cliff Lee

Cliff Lee’s real name is Clifton, which is just fitting, somehow. It’s fitting that Clifton Phifer Lee pitched the best World Series game in six years, in the same spot as the last truly great one. In 2003, Josh Beckett put Yankees (and, to some degree, Red Sox) fans out of their misery with a nine strikeout, two-walk performance to give the Marlins the title. But for the fact that Lee pitched in Game 1, his game could be considered even better.

Beckett has always been the exemplar of rock-and-fire dominance when he’s on; he is the spiritual successor to fellow Texans Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Kerry Wood, whose superlative career only exists in the mind. Lee is something different. With the best control in baseball, he exerted totally casual dominance over the Yankees last night, making New Yankee Stadium his own and chasing any mystique and aura right out of the place. He could one lazy hit ball with complete nonchalance, not even looking at the glove as it plopped in, and snagged another one behind his back as it threaten to whiz past for what would have likely been another sequel-free Yankees hit. Even he had to laugh at that one.

The only time he wasn’t laughing or going about his business was the ninth inning, when shortstop Jimmy Rollins threw a ball into the stands, resulting in the Yankees’ only run. Lee was obviously miffed for a second, then went right back to chucking. Two pitches later, the camera panned back to Rollins, and now he was laughing, as if Lee was so dominant that the run he gifted them was its own sort of joke. It was that ridiculous to think the Yankees could score.

The Phillies had taken an early lead on a home run by Chase Utley that would have been an out in 29 of 30 professional baseball stadiums; lucky for him, he picked the right week to play in the Bronx. He followed that up with one that would have cleared the right-center field fences in all 30, and by the time Phil Hughes began the Yankees’ reliever death spiral in the eighth inning the result was never in doubt.

Still, it was a joy to watch. The Phillies had tried to acquire Blue Jays starting pitcher Roy Halladay before the trading deadline but had to “settle” for Lee, which is like “settling” for the second-best free steak dinner in the city. (Not that Lee was “free,” but for what they had to give up, close enough). Anyone who’s watched Halladay knows that he’s a grinder, a physical presence that wears down opponents. Lee just drops the hammer and goes. His delibery is the most consistent in the game today, and the results tell the story.

The best part about this, of course, is that it happened on the Yankees home turf. My only fear is that this Yankees squad draws strength from it. If they somehow lose to Pedro Martinez tonight—and if there’s any Lee hangover, or AJ Burnett pulls one of his Ricky Vaughn routines—they’d be down two games heading to Philadelphia. Normally, that would be good news, but this team has a decidedly 1996 feel about it: I think being against the wall is only going to make them stronger. There’s a long way to go in this series, even if the Phightin’s win tonight. It’s not my “I’ll believe the Yankees are dead when I see it” routine; it’s the “I’ll believe this team is dead when I see it.” There’s too much talent there to thinkt they couldn’t rip off four in a row against anyone. This is, however, a good start.

4 Comments

October 28, 2009

The Series of the Whole World

The World Series is not named after the world. It’s named after the long-defunct New York World newspaper. It’s a good thing that it wasn’t the New York Crab or something similarly ridiculous, because otherwise it would be hard for us to conflate the results of up to seven baseball games with ruling the Earth. But as a good friend of mine reminds me: don’t take points off the board. The World Series it is, and you can make of it what you want.

Already, I’ve seen one of my friends from Chicago say he tuned out baseball a month ago, implying that what we’re doing out here, one local and three express train stops from where I’m typing, is a fancy little East Coast party in which “real America” has no interest. Well, “real America” can bite my b***s. Your teams had a chance to make it, but your teams sucked. Plus, the writer in question roots for the Cubs. Which is its own problem.

This World Series may be East Coast-centric, but it has the chance to be the best since the 2002 series, which pitted NoCal (Giants) vs. SoCal (Angels) in a Bonds-fueled fight to the finish. I didn’t hear anyone complaining about West Coast Bias then, but that’s because almost nobody watched. Anyone skipping this year’s game has the potential to miss a Fall Classic that lives up to that capital C.

To put it simply, both these teams are bad-ass, and feature awesome and compelling baseball players. Even better, both teams deserve to be there. These have been the best teams over the course of the season, and they’ve pulled off the rarest of modern feats by turning April to September skill into October magic. These teams aren’t just happy to be here, nor did they expect to be. They went out there and kicked butt every day to get to this point.

In that sense, this Series has a distinctly retro feel, and not just because these teams are both more than 100 years old. This one harkens back to the days of AL winner vs. NL winner, stacked club vs. stacked club. Furthermore, you’ve got the historically best franchise against the defending champion, which makes for all sorts of compelling, if possibly silly, storylines. If Cliff Lee is nervous enough to be intimidated by the Yankee Stadium atmosphere, he’d probably have quit playing after A ball.

Lee is one of two midseason Philly acquisitions that pushes this series over the top. The other is Pedro Martinez. Lee and Pedro will start games 1 and 2 in Yankee Stadium. I’m a little worried about that second one. Here’s where nostalgia may work against the Phillies. The idea of Pedro pitching a World Series game in the Bronx is cool on the surface—but, like the Limericku, in practice it might be clunky. I see Mark Teixeira batting against Pedro and I can feel the fear in my stomach.

Alas, after that the pitching matchups turn in favor of the Phillies if pretty boy Cole Hamels can put it together. And if you thought this series was East Coast-centric now, wait until game four, which is scheduled to take place four hours after the Giants/Eagles game ends, across the parking lot. If there’s such thing as a New York/Philly rivalry, it is most usually most loudly demonstrated in Giants/Eagles. If you’re turned off by East Coast sports, this isn’t the day for you.

But you know what days will be? Games 5, 6, and possibly 7. At some point, this series is going to become good enough that any baseball fan won’t be able to afford to miss it. This is the real deal, and the type of World Series matchup we’ve waited for for almost a decade—a pairing worthy of the name.

4 Comments

October 27, 2009

Behold the World Series. Behold the Limericku.

We gather here tonight, on my couch, to observe the Festivus of the baseball season. The World Series begins in two days between the Yankees and the Phillies. With the talk of lawsuits and Met exasperation in the air, it’s time to break down this series, Bryan Joiner-style. That’s right: it’s time for the Limericku.

For those of you who don’t know about the Limericku, it’s a limerick with a haiku tucked into it. It’s the literary equivalent of a Morkie, the half-man, half-Yorkie dog like my brother owns: it doesn’t exist in nature, but we went and one-upped sh*t. William Shakespeare would be rolling over in his grave but only in sheer amazement.

Here are the haikus we’ll be using, written in a haste over some aged grape juice, following the traditional rules of haiku:

Yankees teem* in autumn

Against the halogen lights—

Crack toward victory

(* not a typo)

Philadelphia

Has owned its championship

For all the seasons

A new fall classic

Will end in less than two weeks

A title, bestowed

These are the building blocks. The foundations, if you will. (You will.) I have constructed Limericks around them, remembering that Limericks are meant to be flippant. Behold the Limerickii:

The Phillies think that they got’em

The Yankees teem in autumn

Against the halogen lights

Crack toward victory, they fight

And all the good players, they bought’em

The Mets fans moaned

‘Cuz Philadelphia has owned

Its championships for all

the seasons, from Fall

To Fall, the NL they’ve T-boned

With winter around the bend

A new fall classic will end

In less than two weeks

A title bestowed, a peak

For the team that next year will defend

Of course, if you removed the haikus from the limerickii you also get poems. And these poems also rule.

The Phillies think they got’em

They fight

And all the good players, they bought’em (Not entirely true, but not bad!)

The Mets fans moaned

From fall to fall

The NL they’ve T-boned (actually not that bad, if you consider the Mets a giant car wreck. Which they are.)

With winter around the bend

A peak for the team

That next year will defend (alright!)

I don’t know what else to tell you, except to remember where you were when the limericku was invented. You’ll be telling your kids. And remember that the World Series inspired it. I’m so happy that I invented a whole new way of communicating. If the Yankees win, I won’t be happy any more, but the Limericku will still exist. No matter what, we all win.

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October 26, 2009

Do Yankees Fans Have Legal Rights?

One year ago last month I served as best man for my friend Mike’s wedding. He married Laura, despite the fact she is a Yankees fan. He is a Phillies fan. Today, this is a problem.

Facebook comments have already suggested that divorce proceedings are being discussed, and possessions are already being separated. The problem here is that Laura is a lawyer, and Mike is not. She has crafty advantages as they sort through their property. At particular issue is the dog, whose name is Brooklyn. They both want him.

Being on the side of things that are good, I decided to consult some other attorneys, who, also in the name of good, have volunteered to help Mr. Tepper, pro bono. Here is what I have learned.

• Being a Yankees fan is grounds for divorce in 49 of 50 states.

This is not altogether surprising. Anti-NYY sentiment dates back as far as the Magna Carta, and was written into the Declaraton of Independence (it’s the stuff in invisible ink, on the back). While marrying a Yankees fan is one of the freedoms permitted by our First Amendment, it wasn’t always clear that this was the case, and most states put some sort of Yankees divorce clause into their charters just to be sure. The only one that didn’t, interestingly enough, was Massachusetts. “If you marry one, it’s your own damn problem,” was written into the Commonweath of Massachusetts charter in 1629 after being devised on the Mayflower.

• The rights of Brooklyn shareholders

As a full-time resident of Brooklyn, it is within my legal rights in the State of New York to claim Brooklyn the Dog by eminent domain. Pennsylvania (as the couple is, it is important and overdue to note, based in Philadelphia) and New York have an extradition arrangement wherein if a judge were to approve my motion, the dog would have to be delivered to me within two (2) business days. The dog then becoming mine, I could give him to Mike and Mike alone, whereupon he could either withhold the dog until Mrs. Mike decided to renounce her Yankees fandom or moved more than 500 feet away, the standard distance applied by Pennsylvania law for those seeking to avoid Yankees fans.

• Superseding clauses

The kicker is that Laura actually has no rights to any possessions as a Yankees fan. While some declare the law to be “wildly unconstitutional” and upheld during only the “darkest hours on our Supreme Court,” McGonigle vs. McGonigle ruled that Yankees fans are inherently Treasonous against the American ideals of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and as such are not entitled to hold U.S. property. They simply live among us, like UFOs that have taken the shape of humans, and are not protected by the Constitution. It is only by marrying Mike—a living, loving, breathing human being—that she is entitled to protection under our laws. Notable is that President George W. Bush attempted to overturn this law in the final days of his second term, only to have his deep unpopularity torpedo it. His successor, elected on a populist platform, announced during his Inauguration address that he would uphold the current law, drawing a rousing cheer from the millions on the Washington Mall. In subsequent months, despite harsh criticisms on literally every other front, right-wing critics such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have applauded Mr. Obama’s leadership on this issue.

In short, we see nothing to indicate that Mike has anything to worry about, in a legal sense. In a baseball sense, this is a hell of a series, but the games will be fleeting (and hopefully, given the strength of both teams, great for everyone). He has chosen the path of life and liberty, and is legally protected into the far future.

4 Comments

October 23, 2009

True Phillies and Fake Yankees

I missed the baseball game yesterday (just saw the highlights. Yikes). Oh, the Yankees lost? Splendid. Lest I spew any pessimistic garbage about how they’re probably going to win anyway—which is true, even if only according to TEH PROBABILITIES—let’s ride this ALCS out to another game. 2004 did wonderful, wonderful things, my friends, and one of those is keep hope alive for the little guy against the Yankees. Sure, the little guy spends a ton of money, but don’t let facts get in the way. Anyone’s little next to the Yanks, like Conan O’Brien standing next to Shaq.

Whoever wins the series—and it will be the Yankees—will play the Phillies. Wild note about the Phillies: they’re the first team since the 2001 Yanks to make the World Series in consecutive years. A little mind-blowing, no? In basketball and hockey, it’s happened within the last two titles (hockey had a str8 up rematch last year). In football, it hasn’t happened since The Trits® threw down on the Iggles in 2004 and, as a result of their victory, I threw up in a bucket on camera, which was subsequently broadcast on Manhattan Public Access TV. Some things are better left unseen, though I feel bad for the alien spaceship cruising Orion’s belt that only gets MNN and is destined to pick up the signal in 400 million years. Not as bad as they’ll feel for me, I’m sure.

(One thing that should be noted about these aliens—or ones with a full array of channels—is that the switch to digital cable is going to seriously impact their ability to watch TV. Or will they be able to see even more channels with the rise of satellite TV? Or will they not see because the satellites are pointed at Earth, whereas old-fashioned signals broadcasted out from Earth? Is it that simple? And if not, how much bullshit is it that these future aliens can get the NFL package and I can’t?)

An… y… how… this Philies team has the possibility of becoming an iconic team, the type of which that even your mom knows who Chase Utley and Ryan Howard are. The Yankees, it should be noted, are like this every year. Given their outsized payroll and ego, the Yankees are always the self-fancied cock of the walk, each one trying to get their “true Yankee” cred. When people say player such-and-such “couldn’t make it in New York,” they usually mean that the player was unable to deal with the garbage of being booed mercilessly in the hazing process of becoming a “true Yankee,” the title of which, once bestowed, allows you not to be booed right up until the fans decide to yank it away. Which can be at any time. My boss, without a shred of irony, told me yesterday that A-Rod had finally become a “true Yankee” in this postseason. In his sixth year on the team. It’s not just that my boss is wrong in principle (he is), he’s also wrong on the facts. By trying to be Jeter Junior, A-Rod wore himself out, physically and emotionally, to the point where he corkscrewed himself into oblivion come playoff time. It was only after disowning that nonsense that he’s managed to absolutely rip it in October. A-Rod hasn’t become a true Yankee—he’s transcended it.

Of course, the label is silly and self-gratifying to begin with. The thing about the Phillies is that the fans have unconditionally loved them since April, and embraced newcomers along the way (Pedro Martinez and Cliff Lee) like new members of the family. That’s true love, in the best sports sense. The Phillies may not win the World Series, but they know a good thing when they see it.

5 Comments

October 22, 2009

Content vs. Promotion

Minor League Baseball teams are masters of promotion. Last night, I was watching an episode of Man vs. Food where Adam Richman traveled to three separate minor league stadiums to sample their gimmicky food items. I saw him eat a bacon cheeseburger with a fried Krispy Kreme donut bun in Sauget, Illinois and a five-pound, five-cheeseburger Super Burger in Grand Rapids, Michigan, before I changed the channel. You’d never see these food items at a major league ballpark, not leastwise because healthy-eating groups would have a field day (One can only imagine Mayor Bloomberg’s reaction if the Yankees started selling a five-pound burger. He’d outlaw all stadium food, and spend $20 million to do it.) You see it in minor league stadiums because minor league baseball needs to give fans every reason possible to come to the park to watch something that is an inferior product.

Those who argue that promotion is more important than content on the Internet could learn something here. Superior products sell themselves. Major League Baseball has an advertising budget, to be sure, and has blistered the airwaves with their “Beyond Baseball” commercials this fall. But they do it because they’re competing against other forms of entertainment for dollars—not other forms of baseball. Geographic factors aside, Major League Baseball does not need to worry about Minor League Baseball stealing its market share. It’s just not happening.

But wait, promotion junkies might say: what if Minor League Baseball had Major League Baseball’s advertising budget? Then the playing field would be even, except it wouldn’t: MLB would still have the product. MLB has long been accused of not selling the game well enough in the “hip-hop era” (I can’t believe I just used that term), yet attendance is up and while food at the ballgames is a draw, it’s not the draw. There are easier ways to get Shake Shack than to go to Citi Field. There aren’t really easier ways to get five-pound burgers than to go to a West Michigan Whitecaps game.

It’s the same on the Internet. As my friend Dustin, a comic strip artist, wrote in response to my previous post, here’s the phenomenon of Digg, in a nutshell:

Let’s say you get on the front page of Digg. I’ve done it a few times. You get 3,000 Diggs, it translates into 100,000 hits in one day. You’re like WOW, fuck yeah, this is awesome! The next day you get maybe 15,000 hits. The next day 3,000. Then it gets smaller and smaller and next week you are back where you started. That’s the thing with social media. It doesn’t build your fanbase unless youre constantly generating content that does well. It just gives you spikes in traffic.

Those Diggs are like the Krispy Kreme burger. They’ll get people to come to your MiLB game despite its obvious inferiority, but eventually the popularity will wane. (A result of a Lipitor scarcity, perhaps). That’s why MiLB are constantly running ridiculous promotions, like one in Pennsyvlania where 800 kids stood on the field as a helicopter dropped 100 pounds of marshmallows and 100 pounds of candy toward them. Or the one from 2008 where the Quad Cities River Bandits of Davenport, IA (hey, I’ve been there!) offered free season tickets to anyone who got a team tattoo. For Minor League Baseball, promotion is a full-time job because the product is inferior. The promotion is the product. If you’re starting a blog and have an inferior product, yes, you should focus on promotion. But the better solution would be to spend most of that time creating better posts.

UPDATE: The minor league hijinks are not, it seems limited to baseball.

2 Comments

October 21, 2009

A-Rod

I’ve probably written more about Alex Rodriguez than I have about any other athlete (last winter’s entry here). He has been everything a sportswriter could ask for: outgoing, vain, naive, foolish, and a hundred other celebrity adjectives. He’s been proud of all of them, even as his on-the-field performance—you know, his job—has suffered at the times it’s needed most. The stats tell part of the story. Until this year, he has been ordinary in the playoffs: not as bad as his critics say, but nothing befitting one of the best players in the game. Three years ago, he was benched against the Detroit Tigers when he was supposed to be carrying the Yankees past an inferior team. At the beginning of this year, he was outed as an incurable narcissist and steroid user in a book by Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts. It was the best thing that could have happened to him.

For years, A-Rod had been embarassing himself in increasingly ridiculous ways, and this March, the bubble finally burst. Short of being convicted of any sort of crime, the public’s love affair with the A-Rod foibles was over. People like intrigue, but they don’t cheaters (or what they consider cheaters, at any rate). So A-Rod fell into the background like only he could: he stopped talking, and started dating Kate Hudson. Only in A-Rod-Land can you start dating Goldie Hawn’s daughter and somehow become less interesting, but that’s exactly what happened.

Instead of being the incurable narcissist with the cerebral, psychologist wife whom he tried to please, he started a frivolous relationship with someone who actually appeared to like him. For all A-Rod’s popularity, he has always seemed very alone, trying to fill the significant gaps in his life with newspaper headlines and the plaudits of the baseball aristocracy. His bizarre fascination with cooler-than-thou Derek Jeter was odd, unsurprising evidence of this.

With a relaxed, simmed down A-Rod tearing up everything he sees at the plate, the rapport between him and Jeter has mellowed significantly. Every time something happens that’s good for the Yankees, it’s the two of them clapping and hollering on in lockstep. That is, unless it’s another one of A-Rod’s home runs. Then it’s only Jeter, clapping away on the top step for a teammate he finally respects.

It’s hard to talk about A-Rod without talking about Jeter, and I suspect that Jeter realizes how much he needs Rodriguez these days. Jeter is still a great player, playing at a Hall of Fame level, but the needy, nervy A-Rod threatens to suck the life out of a Yankees team with brutal efficiency. It’s possible and likely that the Yankees’ new additions have kept the clubhouse “loose,” and with Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia working their magic, A-Rod feels like he’s just part of the club of elites instead of bearing the weight of the Yankees season on his shoulders. If Jeter was impervious before, maybe he was oblivious to how much the toll took not on Rodriguez, but the team as a whole. For the first time, it appears they genuinely like each other.

Make no mistake: if the Yankees win this title, it will be A-Rod’s World Series. Jeter will get “one for the thumb,” but the talk will all be about Rodriguez. He’s done so much to lead them there so far it’s almost inspiring to think that he might be able to keep it up. Just as Barry Bonds transcended his October woes to turn in a signature postseason, it appears A-Rod is going the same. The difference is that Bonds did it through methods that ultimately made him a villain (and perhaps not incidentally, he lost). A-Rod did it the other way: by finally becoming the good guy.

7 Comments

October 20, 2009

Am I Missing Something, Or Have The Sane Baseball People Gone Wacko?

Old-school baseball writers and announcers have, by and large, become a straw man for online critics, who broadside their often ridiculous generalizations with statistics and watch them try to wriggle out of them or double down on their assertions that Derek Jeter is “clutch” without providing any new evidence. This was the entirety of the idea behind the website Fire Joe Morgan, and spawned a new type of “journalism” — take down the stupid guy! Yeah!

The problem with this type of work is that the people doing it are starting to double back on themselves. They’re so concerned with what everyone else is writing that they’re missing the low-hanging fruit. There are so many observations that could be made about what’s going on in the baseball playoffs that aren’t being made by either the “traditional” or “new” media that the “observations” they’re making instead are ridiculous.

Take the play for which Jeter was heartily lauded by Joe Buck and Tim McCarver last night. Bobby Abreu hit a ball into the right center field gap, and took a wide enough turn around second base that he couldn’t get back before Jeter threw to first baseman Mark Teixeira, who had raced over to cover. On the play, second baseman Robinson Cano had stationed himself in front of Jeter, but Melky Cabrera’s throw went over Cano’s head and into Jeter’s glove. Seeing Abreu lose his footing, Jeter snapped a perfect throw off, to the delight of Buck and McCarver.

Was it a good play by Jeter? Yes. But did anyone ask why it happened, then or now? Everyone said Abreu screwed up—and he did—but they never asked why. If you follow the play, it’s easy to see that Abreu was so far around second that there’s no reason for him to think he could have gotten back if there was someone there. So one might ask: why would he do this? How about because the second baseman and shortstop were both in front of him? It’s incredibly likely that Abreu thought there was no one on the base, but there was Teixeira, who had raced behind Abreu to make the play you’re taught to make in Little League but gradually forget to do. It was a brilliant play, for sure, just not for the person who got credit for it.

If Will Leitch wants to know why people hate Joe Buck, that’s why. Also, he announces the game’s like he’s Jacob Silj. But my real pet peeve is Buck’s constant attention to what critics will say. He always unloads, “well, the critics will say…” and ping-pongs opinions on the game. That’s not inherently a bad thing, but he does the faux-equivalency thing the MSM is guilty of w/r/t political reporting. Just because there are two opinions does not mean they are of equal merit. STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE WILL SAY ABOUT THE GAME, AND TALK ABOUT THE GAME. (Oh, and being better than Chip Caray doesn’t make him good.)

Unfortunately, Leitch’s buddy at Deadspin, Tommy Craggs, is not much better. An Angels fan took a video of Mariano Rivera spitting on the ball last night and got a overboard with his analysis… leading Craggs in the odd position of trying to argue against video evidence to try and make a point. Perhaps realizing the silliness of his endeavour, at the end of the post he said it would be “just about the coolest thing ever” if Rivera did throw a spitter—just in case, he, you know, did. Which he did. Craggs’ point, I guess, is that some random Angels fans on a blog are more worth making an example of than focusing a laser beam on the obvious:

1) That yes, Rivera threw a spitter.

2) Yes, it’s cool (I agree).

3) If Rivera is throwing spitters, it stands to reason pretty much everyone else is. So calm down.

Concerned with this? No, he’d rather tell you why your eyes don’t work. (Don’t worry, they work fine.)

I’m all for criticism (as you can see). But base it on what you see, and not what other people say. The game’s the thing. If you read something that’s tearing someone else down just for sport, just quit reading. You’re not going to learn anything anyway.

UPDATE: ESPN’s Amy K. Nelson tweets: “rivera spitball” No. 19 on google trends right now. so stupid.” Right, it’s stupid for people to be curious of things. The commissioner’s office also thinks you’re stupid, btw. They’ve just released a statement saying there’s no evidence he spit on the ball. I’ll assume they mean besides the evidence they have. Did Sammy Sosa have a corked bat or not?

Look, do I think the spitting thing is a big deal w/r/t fair play? Of course not. It’s silly and will pass, and I agree with Craggs that it’s even pretty cool. But it did, you know, happen.

UPDATE 2: Amen to new pals of this website Stupid Sports Blog for nailing this.

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Category: MLB