April 26th, 2007
Why do I hate the Orioles? Let me count the ways.
The Orioles are home to two of the biggest punks to wear a Red Sox uniform in the past half-decade: Jay Payton, whose agent actually warned the Red Sox that Payton was planning the throw a fit to ensure his release in 2005 (this because he was upset about his playing time), and Kevin Millar, who did his best to seize the whiny little bitch crown Payton left behind by using former Herald reporter Howard Bryant to anonymously “call out” Schilling. (Think about this: there’s so much crap about Millar I don’t even need to remind people that last year he actually left a bag full of dog shit for Terry when the Sox visited Baltimore.)
So I wasn’t surprised when the tired, pathetic, bloody-sock-or-not debate reared its tired, pathetic head courtesy of a tired, pathetic Orioles broadcaster. (I actually don’t know if that last part is true.) And even though the whole thing has apparently been taken care of — one big misunderstanding, blah blah blah — I’m also not surprised that Doug “Devil Dog” Mirabelli was somehow in the middle of all this. There were some Red Sox I liked, some I felt indifferent to, and some I both admired and was annoyed by. Mirabelli was the only guy I just felt was a flat-out jerk. Except that’s not the language I normally use to describe him.
April 26th, 2007
You will fear any man who possesses the middle name of a Northern California suburb
I’ve been a WMP cheerleader since last August, when he put an absolute hurt on the ball; less than two weeks ago, I once again was pleading his case.
He hasn’t been making me look good. In the days after my post, Wily Mo did indeed get into a few more games, and then, with Coco’s injury, a few more…and he looked god-damned awful. Coming into tonight’s game, he was hitting — and no, this isn’t a typo — .120. His slugging percentage was a pathetic .240. Sure, he’d only gotten 25 at bats…but he’d struck out in more than half of them.
All of which is to say I would have walked Varitek to load the bases and put Wily Modesto at the plate in the top of the eighth of tonight’s game. You had better then even odds that he’d be back on the bench without putting the ball into play, and even if he wasn’t whiffing with such frequency, you’d be setting up a possible double play with one out and a one-run lead.
Pena, of course, didn’t strike out, nor did he ground weekly to short; he did blast a game-winning granny…which should, at the very least, quiet the Fenway boo-birds for a couple of games. Unless, of course, he strikes out with the bases loaded and the Sox down a run in one of this weekend’s Yankees games…
April 23rd, 2007
There’s no way I could just let this pass by without comment
On SportsCenter, Chris Berman just said that outside of Pearl Harbor, more people knew about Hawai’i because of Don Ho than any other single thing.* Then Berman teared up, looked to the sky, and said, “Don, you’re with the me, leather.”
* This part is actually true.
April 23rd, 2007
No atheists in a foxhole…
I don’t believe in superstitions…although I do hit my dashboard when I go through yellow lights. And I don’t let myself to be separated by an inanimate object (street sign, tree, etc.) from someone I’m walking with. (Don’t ask — it’s apparently an old Mnookin family tradition that I don’t pretend to understand.) Oh, and during the ‘04 playoffs I didn’t take off the t-shirt I was wearing during Game 4, which only became really problematic when I went to the gym.*
So…when I didn’t post after Friday’s game, well, that was it until the series was over (or until the Sox lost). (Also, I’m supposed to be moving — or at least completing the purchase of some New York City real estate — which is fairly hectic.) (Another aside in an already parenthesis-happy post: how is it people decide what they’re going to be superstitious about? I had no problem changing my underwear in ‘04. And even though I saw Volver on Friday, I didn’t feel compelled to watch an Almodovar movie every day.)
Anyway. It felt like a damn good weekend.** Friday night was spectacular. Watching Manny punish a ball was a welcome sight. As was Drew, Lowell, and Varitek’s following rockets. As was the fact that the Yankees rotation is in shambles and that Torre’s being forced to abuse his bullpen even earlier than usual.*** As was Coco’s hot bat. As was Tek’s hot bat. As was Pedroia’s snag tonight in the eighth. As was Beckett’s performance, and his first four games (which are fundamentally different from his first starts last year; if you want to get all geeky about it, check this out). As does the emerging brilliance of Hideki “Darkman” Okijima (nickname courtesy of Peter Naboicheck via Gordo. As was…well, you get the idea.
Now everyone get some sleep. We’re going to do it all again next weekend.
* I wasn’t the only person who had some weird superstitions that October: John Henry and Larry Lucchino watched Game 6 in the living room of Lucchino’s Brookline house, and after they took a lead, no one was allowed to move.
** Still, let’s point out one tiny silver lining: the Sox had their three best pitchers and a fully rested bullpen. The Yankees had Andy Pettitte and a couple of Double-A schlubs. (And that’s only a slight exaggeration.) The series was at Fenway. And over three games, Boston outscored New York by a total of…four runs. Not much margin for error there.
*** I attribute the ‘o4 ALCS to four things: David Ortiz, Keith Foulke, Curt Schilling, and Torre’s Dusty Baker-esque abuse of Tom Gordon during the regular season.
April 20th, 2007
I guess I would have written it too…
I’m not sure if this explains the Michael Lewis “Jock Exchange” piece or means it’s even more frustrating that there’s still so much A’s material in there…but there are rumors (via Gawker via Dealbreaker) that Lewis is making $12 a word(!) for his Portfolio stories. By that count, this post would net me a bit less than $1,500, and I’d have made somewhere north of a million bucks off of this blog. Instead, I’m paying for the server space.* If that figure is anywhere near accurate, one thing’s for sure: he’s a lot smarter than I am about monetizing his labor.
Update: According to any number of people who’re in a position to know, that figure isn’t anywhere remotely close to being accurate. Which makes me feel better. Or at least like less of a chump.**
* After two months, I took down the Google AdSense ads from the sidebar; they netted me a total of $15.79.
** I should know better than to think that anonymously posted comments put up in a blog have even the slightest relationship to reality. Actually, I do know better. Oh well.
April 19th, 2007
The Michael Lewis/Oakland A’s love affair: it’s time to move on…
In the inaugural issue of the mildly confusing Portfolio, Conde Nast’s new business magazine, Michael Lewis has a story about a “Jock Exchange” that would function like much like the stock exchange. As is almost always the case when Lewis references baseball, the piece is heavy with references to the Oakland A’s. And as is increasingly the case, many of these references are out of date and are used to illustrate points that might have been true four or five years ago, but aren’t any longer.
To wit: the A’s are not “by far the most cost efficient team in baseball,” as Lewis says: since 2001, the Florida Marlins have paid approximately $488,000 per win, while the A’s have paid about $525,000 (and the Twins approximately $542,661). Lewis credits this incredible cost efficiency largely to the work of Paul DePodesta, who left the A’s “first to become the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers and then the San Diego Padres’ special assistant for baseball operations.” Left unmentioned is the fact that DePodesta was fired after two years as the GM of the Dodgers…having spent more than twice as much as the Marlins, A’s, or Twins on each L.A. win.
Lewis is a great writer, and Moneyball is inarguably one of the best books ever written about baseball. He’d be doing himself a favor if he let it stand for itself and stopped writing pieces that use increasingly outdated research to do current articles.*
* Note: hopefully I will follow this advice.
April 19th, 2007
Free-agent signing of the year
It’s true: Rob Bradford, who’d been toiling in the purgatory of the Eagle-Tribune, has been hired by the Herald. I’ve long been a fan of Rob’s — he’s one of the best guys on the beat, and goes out and reports out new stories with new angles, an especially difficult task in Boston. (This isn’t a slam on anyone else covering the Sox: I’m a big proponent of newspapers dedicating staffers to reporting on sports as opposed to asking the same guy/gal who’s writing up game summaries and doing a Notes column to also come up with enterprise stories. It’s no accident that the San Francisco Chronicle’s Balco reporting came from the work of two investigative reporters and not the paper’s Giants beat writers.)
This is the second Herald poach of an Eagle-Tribune staffer in the past year: John Tomase, who preceded Bradford as the E-T’s Sox writer, was hired by the Herald last year to cover the Pats (and pinch hit when needed on baseball). That’s two good guys coming out of the E-T and two great hires by the Herald. For all the talk over the last several years about the Herald’s tenuous business situation (and it’s purported $2 million a year in operating losses), they’ve an impressive investment in what’s long been the most profitable beat in Boston. (For the papers, that is…not the reporters.)
In other Red Sox-media news, it’s nice to see that Schilling not only agrees with me about Bradford, he also shares my opinion of my favorite punching bag, the ineffable Murray Chass. From a Q&A Schilling posted on his blog yesterday:
“Boston, like any other city, is what the player makes it, period. Every city has it’s CHB* to some degree. That miserable curmudgeon who will be the ‘anti-opinion’ guy because that’s the only niche he can fill. You come to realize that most times that person, or those people, are just bitter unhappy people and it has nothing to do with you in the end. If you allow people like that to skew your perspective on guys like McCadam (sic), Bradford, Browne, Buckley, Maz, then you can miss the boat. … [When] you read weekly sludge from the Murray Chas’ (sic) of the world it gets easy to let it roll off your back. There are going to be bad people with rotten agendas in any workplace, you just laugh and move on.”
I’ve taken a couple of weeks off from reading Chass; I was, frankly, worried about my blood pressure. I’m sure that’ll end soon…
* CHB=Curly Haired Bastard/Curly Haired Boyfriend=a Carl Everett-coined nickname given to Shaughnessy, although Simmons gets credit for the acronym.
