→ May 9, 2008
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Name-checked.

I’m working on that top ten cooking mistakes post I promised in chat – wrote six of them on the plane today – but in the meantime, here’s an interesting and slightly testy interview with St. Louis’ scouting director/director of player development Jeff Luhnow. Luhnow name-checked me in the following answer (the bolded section is the question, the unbolded section is his answer):

Pete Kozma wasn’t considered to be a “sexy” pick at the time he was drafted. A lot of different media outlets said that while he had solid tools across the board, other then power, he possessed no real standout tool. Yet so far Pete has been played extremely well. Are you surprised at how well Pete’s performed early?

If we wanted a “sexy” pick, we would read Baseball America, read Keith Law’s articles, and pick based on their opinions. But we don’t, and neither do any other clubs, because while the journalists are doing a good job of expressing their opinions based on the information they have, we have to live and die with our selections and the future of the organization is impacted by these picks. If the journalist is wrong, he just admits it (maybe) and keeps writing about the next guy or the next draft. They will still sell papers or get eyeballs. If we are wrong, we’ve missed a huge opportunity to make our organization better, and nobody wants to do that.

He’s dead on about two things there. One is that my process is nowhere near as thorough as a major league club’s process is on high draft selections. I might see a player twice – once over the summer, once in the spring – and the depth of my evaluation doesn’t match what a good scout will do by seeing a player five or six times just within a spring. I don’t have to worry as much about makeup and barely think about signability outside of the context of projecting the first round.

The other point Luhnow scores is on the consequences of a bad evaluation. If a scouting director doesn’t have productive drafts, he could lose his job. If my rankings turn out to be totally off base, the most I’ll lose is some credibility, and some pride as well, since I actually like to be right now and then.

Where he’s wrong … well, I think I’ve hit on it above. My looks are limited, and I make evaluations based on what I’ve got, but I take the task very seriously because I find it embarrassing when I make a poor evaluation, and I know that I do have to answer to the readers, including members of a lot of front offices and a lot of scouting departments. Their respect for me as an analyst is predicated on me getting stuff right, and making sure my opinions are backed up by strong arguments. And I feel an obligation to the wider readership to present objective opinions backed up by strong arguments, fact-based wherever possible.

I also think it’s silly to say that “the journalist” (first time I’ve been called that, I believe) won’t admit he’s wrong. If Pete Kozma turns into an above-average major-league player, of course I’ll admit I was wrong. And if I was foolish enough to try to finesse the bad evaluation, I doubt that futureredbirds or vivaelbirdos would let me get away with it anyway.

Luhnow, who is among the most intelligent people I’ve met in this industry, is using a lot of small verbal cues to put the “journalists” in their place, but really, isn’t our place on the outside anyway? I could shout from the rooftop that Pete Kozma was the worst first-round pick ever (he wasn’t), but it won’t have any influence on his career as a player. What I write and say doesn’t influence what happens on the field, so for any exec to worry about what I say is a waste of his time.

Filed Under: Media, Sports Tagged With: , , ,
→ May 6, 2008
→ By

Want to lay odds…

… on whether, the next time the Yanks come to Fenway, some Sox fan throws an umbilical cord at A-Rod?

Filed Under: Humor, Sports Tagged With: ,
→ May 6, 2008
→ By

New Orleans.

I had a quick trip through New Orleans to see Shooter Hunt Рreport to be posted on ESPN.com at some point this week Рand hit two of my favorite spots in one of my favorite eating cities in America, the Acme Oyster House and CDM (Caf̩ du Monde).

Acme Oyster House is a pseudo-dive – looks like a dive, but really isn’t one, and it pulls in its fair share of tourists because it’s in the French Quarter just off Bourbon Street. Their Cajun fare is excellent and fairly predictable, although I was a little disappointed in their chicken and andouille gumbo on this visit because the roux was slightly overcooked, giving the gumbo a very slightly burned taste underneath all of the other flavors. I’ve had the same thing happen to me when making gumbo at home, so I know it’s an easy thing to mess up, but I go to New Orleans to get perfect gumbo. The shrimp po’ boy, on the other hand, was perfect. A po’ boy is a sandwich served on French bread that’s been hollowed out to hold the fried shellfish products with which it’s stuffed. I ordered mine “dressed,” meaning it has lettuce, tomatoes, and mayonnaise on it, with pickle slices on the side. It’s hard to mess it up as long as the shrimp are fried properly, and these were.

After the game, I went to the 24-hour landmark CDM for beignets and coffee. I intended to have one beignet, which is a fried dumpling made of yeast-based dough (a zeppole to the Italians and New Yorkers in the audience), served under a blanket of confectioner’s sugar. Since you can’t order just one – one order equals three beignets – I got three, and ate all three. They’re beyond good – crispy exterior, light airy interior, with that slightly nutty flavor that properly fried dough has. The coffee is New Orleans-style, where the coffee is mixed with ground chicory root, and served au lait. It’s weak as hell, and I never drink much, but a few sips with the beignets just make for a more authentic experience. Or something.

I walked around the French Quarter a bit to walk off the calories, and I was surprised at how little it had changed from my last visit, December of 2003, pre-Katrina. I’m sure the reality is that it changed, and then changed back, but it appears that significant resources went into restoring the French Quarter to its maximum touristy goodness. That’s a good thing, since tourists are money and New Orleans has long depended on tourism and conferences for its economy, but at the same time, I wonder about areas of the city that didn’t fare as well in the storm and are probably still in need of rebuilding. The one facet of the French Quarter that had changed was security: There were police everywhere, and extra security guards in my hotel, the Marriott on Canal Street, where baseball held its winter meetings in 2003. It’s a shame that it’s necessary, but tourists are indeed money, and dead tourists are bad for business.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ May 5, 2008
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TV today (plus radio).

I’ll be on ESPNEWS in about a half-hour, 3:40 pm EDT.

UPDATE: I’ll be on ESPN 890 in Boston at 6:20 pm EDT, on NorthSound 1380 in Everett WA at 4:05 pm PDT, and on ESPN Radio The Pulse at 9:00 pm EDT tonight.

Filed Under: Appearances
→ May 3, 2008
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Independent People.

I love this book. It is an unfolding wonder of artistic vision and skill – one of the best books of the twentieth century. I can’t imagine any greater delight than coming to Independent People for the first time.

That’s not my take on Halldór Laxness’ novel; it’s from novelist Jane Smiley, who wrote a more direct takeoff on King Lear and provided the above blurb for the cover of Independent People. No, I didn’t think that the novel was a revelation on every page or a life-changing experience. I thought it was awful.

To be more specific, I think it is the most bleak, humorless, and misanthropic book I’ve ever read. Laxness himself admitted that his protagonist, Bjartur, was “stupid,” but it’s worse than that – he’s a complete asshole whose lack of regard for the feelings of others, above all women, borders on sociopathy. The ideal of “independence” around which the novel is structured is folly and leads to Bjartur’s ruin in various ways. And none of the supporting characters is built with enough depth or dimension to overcome the long shadow of Bjartur’s obstinate, materialist, misogynistic point of view.

Independent People is the story of Bjartur’s adult life as he leaves the servitude of the local Bailiff of Myri and attempts to build an independent life as a self-sufficient farmer on a local croft. He marries twice, although his stubbornness and lack of empathy lead to the deaths of both women. His eldest child, Asta Sollilja, is the only one to whom he shows any affection, but when she becomes pregnant at fifteen at the hands of a rapscallion whom Bjartur himself invites into the home, he throws her out and resolves (with finite success) to have nothing more to do with her. Depending on how you interpret the ending, his assholishness may lead to her death too. Around all of this happiness is famine, bankruptcy, fraud, parochialism, and the pointless deaths of several people and many animals.

What made the book so difficult to gut my way through was the complete lack of warmth. You could freeze your drink if you sit it too close to the novel; the only glimmers of empathy from any major character come from Asta, but they’re depicted as the confused feelings of an ultra-sheltered teenaged girl, and she too falls into a cynical stoicism when her father throws her out. Laxness tries to create some embers of emotion in the short conclusion, but it seemed forced.

Laxness won a Nobel Prize and appears to have a small but highly devoted following, at least in the literary world. All I can say is that I’m glad I went to Iceland long before I read this book, because I doubt he would have made the country come off any worse if he’d written that the locals bite the heads off of live puppies.

Next up: Italo Svevo’s Zeno’s Conscience, a modernist comedy of psychoanalysis and self-absorption.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ May 3, 2008
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Thanks and welcome…

There’s a neat thread going on over on Dodger Thoughts where writer Jon Weisman is asking his readers to list their favorite sportswriters, regardless of medium. Many readers have named me, and one even specifically cited the Dish. So to all of you who mentioned me on that thread, thank you, and to those of you who wandered over here from that thread, welcome.

Also, while I’m at it, I’ve recorded a segment for tonight’s V Show on ESPN Radio (hosted tonight by Amy Lawrence), and you can catch me on Sunday on ESPN 1000 in Chicago at 9:20 am CDT, on ESPNEWS via phone at 1:40 pm EDT, and on ESPN Radio’s Gameday at 2:20 pm EDT.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
→ April 30, 2008
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Mesa Grill.

Friday afternoon found me in Manhattan, and I had about a 45-minute window for lunch while I was downtown, so I decided to fulfill a long-standing goal and headed to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill. Overall, I was quite impressed, especially after the disappointment of Mario Batali’s Otto last year.

I sat at the bar and asked the bartender which fish dish he would recommend; without hesitating, he pointed to the ancho chile-honey glazed salmon. It was, as promised, outstanding. The salmon was covered with an ancho chile rub, seared, then glazed with honey and roasted. The three sauces (a spicy black bean sauce, an unidentified sauce that seemed to be based on roasted peppers, and a jalapeño crema) were all layered underneath the fish, so I could start by tasting the fish on its own and then add sauces to my liking. The spicy black bean sauce was the best option, spicy but not hot, with an earthy flavor that helped offset the spiciness both of the sauce and the rub. The crema was the worst, with almost no flavor, like little dollops of bland crème fraiche. The salmon was prepared medium-rare, slightly below where I like it, but the fish was incredibly fresh.

The pre-meal bread options are a bit different. One was a very plain, fresh white-flour roll, good because it was still warm, but otherwise not bringing much to the table taste-wise. The other was a corn muffin, although that doesn’t give you much of a feel for it. It was cornbread, shaped like a muffin, packed with yellow corn, made mostly with stone-ground blue cornmeal, with flecks of bell and jalapeño peppers, dense and moist and definitely heavy on the fat (which keeps a muffin or cake moist). I had a hard time getting through the entire muffin, although I toughed it out in the end.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , , ,
→ April 29, 2008
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Def Leppard.

My wife has Dancing With the Stars on, and Def Leppard is performing “live” in their studios … except this is clearly the original recording of “Pour Some Sugar on Me” from Hysteria. I’m not shocked that Joe Elliott can’t hit the same high notes he could 20 years ago, but I’d be shocked if a single microphone back there was on. This is Ashlee Simpson territory – all we need is for Elliott to make some rambling, breathless apology as the show is ending. As my wife said, “If you’re not going to actually play it, why come on the show?” Good question.

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: , ,
→ April 28, 2008
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TV this week.

I’ll be on ESPNEWS today at 3:40 pm EDT, and am tentatively scheduled to be on Tuesday from 4:10-4:30 pm as part of the Insider segment.

Filed Under: Appearances
→ April 26, 2008
→ By

Help.

I’m at a wedding and the dj is playing “Sweet Caroline” … and he’s pausing like we’re in the 8th inning at Fenway. Someone call 911 – I’m about to fake my own death.

UPDATE: He’s also played “Time to Say Goodbye” – beautiful song, not exactly appropriate for a wedding – and Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them.” Not sure I can explain that one at all.

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , ,