Jay Paris screws up a ballot.
(Hat tip to Jeff from Rotowire.)
→ January 3, 2009
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→ December 27, 2008
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“Girls were also romancing each other.”
Now that I have your attention, go read the excellent New York Times article from which I took the title quote. It’s about the recruiting of a star high school football player, and let’s just say that the University of Texas’ PR department is probably displeased with the Gray Lady this week.
(Hat tip: Infinite Sportswriter Theorem.)
UPDATE: Texas fans and supporters are questioning the veracity of the recruit’s claims about Texas – shocking – and the Texas section of rivals.com has a retort (but not a disproof – more of a claim that the Times writer is biased against Texas) here.
UPDATE #2: The recruit himself is now backing away from some parts of the English-class essay that was quoted in the Times article.
→ December 24, 2008
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Want to get dumber?
Then read this, an article by an self-proclaimed ethicist on why no one signed Barry Bonds. He compares Bonds to a murderer, a convict, and a drug abuser; misunderstands the purpose of the Mitchell Report (it was about getting Congress to back off, and perhaps scoring some PR points); and argues that teams also didn’t sign Bonds because he wasn’t a good bet to “duplicate” his previous performances, even though a 20% drop in performance would still make him obscenely valuable.
I thought THT took a great step forward in adding Craig Calcaterra’s Shysterball blog – among my must-reads every day – but content like this “ethics” article is just inexcusable.
UPDATE: The article’s author, Jack Marshall, posted a lengthy rejoinder in the comments below.
→ December 19, 2008
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Five laughable sports leagues.
My editors at ESPN have always hammered home one point, even mentioning it before I was hired: Readers love lists. That’s why we rank everything – prospects, draft prospects, free agents, and so on. And I guess I’m just as susceptible as any other reader, since I was sucked into Mental Floss’s various lists (discovered by way of Shysterball), including their list of 5 Sports Leagues That Didn’t Make It, including Roller Hockey International and the WFL.
I’m curious why they stopped at five, though. I’ve always been fascinated by the business of sports leagues – a sort of empires rising and falling without all the war and death and backstabbing (okay, some backstabbing) – particularly the ways in which they respond to success (overexpansion, usually) and setbacks. I imagine this economy will prove particularly tough going for some of the fringe leagues out there, such as the National Lacrosse League, which hasn’t exactly been a hallmark of stability but is still going after 22 years with one of its original franchises still extant. (I’ve been to probably half a dozen NLL games, although none since the original Boston Blazers went under in 1997.)
Anyway, here are five other leagues that didn’t make it and included some silliness:
- The North American Soccer League. This league did at least have a peak, packing Giants Stadium for New York Cosmos games and employing some of the best players in the world, including Pele, but they expanded like crazy, ran up huge debts, tried to run a winter indoor season to compete with the similarly ill-fated MISL, and – worst of all – named a team the Tea Men, which was marginally acceptable when they were in New England, but just plain stupid when the team moved to Jacksonville and kept the nickname.
- The American Lacrosse League. This ALL didn’t finish its first season, in 1988, because the entire operation was a financial scam run by the two founders. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the league included five teams in the northeast … and one in Denver. That’s a good way to manage your travel costs.
- The National Professional Soccer League. Originally called the American Indoor Soccer Association, the NPSL used a weird scoring system where goals could be worth more points if they were shot from farther away. It didn’t help.
- Major League Volleyball. A women’s volleyball league that lasted a year and a half, and part of the now-quaint trend of giving women’s sports teams feminine names like the Dallas Belles. I actually am surprised that there hasn’t been an effort to start a men’s professional volleyball league in the United States; while it may always be a fringe sport, it’s very popular in other countries (face it – we are a country of people from other countries), is fun to watch, and doesn’t require construction of giant or single-use facilities. But if there’s been a financially successful women’s pro league in any sport in the U.S., it’s news to me – and no, the WNBA doesn’t count.
- World Basketball League. Another of my all-time favorite wacko sports leagues, for two reasons. First, the league had a height restriction: Players over 6’5″ were ineligible to play in the league. Second, the league was funded with money the founder had embezzled from his other company, the discount pharmacy chain Phar-Mor. I thought that Bo Jackson was drafted by an Orange County entry in this league, although the one article I managed to find on the subject identifies that league as the International Basketball Association, which appears to have held a draft (easy) but not to have played a game (hard).
→ December 5, 2008
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BBRAA stuff (from November).
Three lost posts, which I’ll just consolidate into one:
So if you scrutinized the NL MVP voting results, you might have noticed two things:
1. Pujols was listed on every ballot, but one voter had him seventh. That was Milwaukee writer Tom Haudricourt, who put Howard first and had Sabathia and Fielder ahead of Pujols, as well as three Brewers in his ten names.
2. Someone omitted Ryan Howard entirely. That was Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star writer Rich Campbell, who covers the Nationals.
I’ll save other thoughts on the results of this vote – and tomorrow’s, which should be really interesting – for my chat this Thursday.
Edinson Volquez appears on three NL Rookie of the Year ballots, even though he’s not a rookie. It wasn’t even something esoteric like the days-on-the-roster rule; he threw 80 innings for Texas prior to 2008, and the cutoff is 50.
I think the truth about my rejected membership is that I failed the board’s intelligence test – I have some.
UPDATE: The three voters who included Volquez were Jeremy Cothran of the Newark Star-Ledger, John Klima of the Los Angeles Daily News, and Jay Paris of the North County Times in San Diego.
Other – um, harsher – takes: Dugout Central, The Slanch Report, Shysterball, Epic Carnival, Fanhouse.
Named on 27 of 28 ballots … not sure how I feel about his omission. It could go either way – an anti-stathead/anti-twerp vote, or someone like antone, who looks at production (but not versus replacement-level?) and sees Pedroia’s production as not really MVP-caliber.
UPDATE: Just found this fisking of Paul Sheridan’s anti-intellectual whine today about Ryan Howard not winning the NL MVP award.
UPDATE #2: Evan Grant is the one voter who didn’t include Pedroia, and he said he’ll try to blog about his ballot later today. He did send it to me, and it’s a mix of favorite players of both camps.
→ September 29, 2008
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Awards picks.
On my ESPN blog.
Milwaukee writeup soon.
→ September 28, 2008
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Link – final-day live blog.
Those of you looking for a live blog for the final day of the regular season should check out Vegas Watch, where our favorite degenerate gambler will be providing commentary on the four games of relevance.
→ September 11, 2008
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Quick links.
Working on a book writeup, but two links worth seeing:
- Someone did, in fact, estimate where the Twins would be if they’d done nothing this offseason. I think the answer is pretty aggressive, but a three-win swing is probably the difference between playoffs and no-playoffs for them.
- Tom Brady is worth 1.35 Albert Pujolses. Or something like that. Of interest: Matt Cassel went to the same high school that later produced Mike Moustakas and Matt Dominguez (corrected – never blog before the double-espresso).
- If you didn’t get the Rob Dibble stuff in today’s chat, here’s what he said about me. I’m terribly broken up about it.
- Bad news for libertarians … and anyone else who dislikes corruption and subsidies for billionaires.
More shortly…
→ July 20, 2008
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On naming rights.
Richard Sandomir wrote a slightly polemical piece on Citi’s $20 million purchase of naming rights to the Mets’ new ballpark, arguing largely that it’s unfair to the Citi employees who’ve been laid off during the bank’s recent financial troubles. It’s the type of side-by-side comparison that offends our sensibilities: Big, bad, insensitive Corporation and its Greedy Executives light cigars with $100 bills, cackling as they sign pink slips for the proletariat.
The problem is that Sandomir doesn’t address the one question that underlies the comparison: Does Citi get a higher return from spending the $20 million on naming rights and cutting the employees, or would they get a higher return from foregoing the naming rights and keeping the employees?
I don’t know the answer. Neither does Sandomir, but he’s arguing that Citi’s executives have made a mistake without knowing whether or not they did. If the return on the naming rights option is higher than the return on the employee-retention option, then Citi’s executives made the right call for their stockholders, for the remaining employees, and for their own pockets as well. If the return on keeping the employees is higher, then the executives just screwed up. All Sandomir offers, however, is this:
Even in the flush times during which it was signed, the deal seemed questionable. With high name recognition and a place among the world’s banking leaders, Citigroup hardly needed the Citi name plastered on a ballpark to enhance itself. Will fans move their C.D.’s to a Citibank branch because of the Mets relationship, any more than air travelers will consider flying American Airlines because its name is on two professional arenas?
Will the corporate suite-holders at the Mets’ new home want to do more or new business with Citigroup because they share deluxe accommodations at Chez Wilpon?
I don’t know the answers to those questions, Richard. Do you? And if you don’t, why are you asking these questions as if the answers are all going to support your underlying argument that the naming-rights deal is a dud? The closest we get to this is a generic quote from an academic who raises the same questions I do without providing answers, although he misses one of the fundamental (presumed) benefits of stadium naming rights – the frequent repetition of the stadium name during game broadcasts, on news and highlight shows, and in print coverage of games.
Sandomir calls the deal “an investment that seems to thumb its nose at laid-off workers.” In reality, Citi is responsible to more than just the workers they laid off; they’re responsible to their stockholders, remaining employees, and maybe even their customers. If the naming-rights deal is a bad one, then the executives are putting more than their noses at risk.
Related: BBTF discussion of the article.
→ July 16, 2008
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In extra innings…
…you don’t actually have to tag a runner for him to be called out.
It’s a new rule. You just haven’t heard about it before.