Jon Heyman Makes the Big Bucks For a Reason

Roy Oswalt has demanded a trade. Jon, how's that going to shake out?

While it's logical that Oswalt should go (possibly along with longtime teammate Lance Berkman), there's no guarantee that he will, and there are two very good reasons for this:

So there's no way we can be sure that events in the future can happen. They might, or they might not. We can't make any guarantees. Constantly acknowledging this reality is known as "Morgan Syndrome."

1) There's no guarantee that Astros owner Drayton McLane wants to trade Oswalt, despite Oswalt's wishes; and

See: above.

2) there's no guarantee that the Astros can find the right trading partner, considering the $31 million remaining on Oswalt's contract through next season, teams' general unwillingness to spend big bucks while also surrendering top prospects, and frankly, no obvious matches.

See: above. And please note that $31 MM for a guy of Oswalt's caliber is chump change for the Yankees. You can probably throw the Red Sox, Giants, Cubs, Nationals, and Mets onto a list (not that the Mets will have any use for him) of teams that would be more than happy to find a way to make a trade for Oswalt work. The Dodgers would be on the list if not for the messy McCourt divorce. I'm sure whichever teams are interested and the Astros will bullshit around the bush about what kinds of deals they're willing to accept for the next few weeks/couple of months, but if Houston is in last place in July, I'm pretty sure he'll move.

In the meantime, Jon, feel free to continuously remind us that there's no way to be absolutely sure what's going to happen in this crazy, wacky, post 9/11 world of ours.

Great Moments in Sports Journalism Ledes

From Pete Prisco's article about overrated and underrated NFL players:

Overrated.

The word isn't very nice, but let's face it: There are a lot of things overrated.

There's sushi, the first snow, New Year's Eve, Bruce Springsteen, Julia Roberts and dark beers.

Oh, and plenty of NFL football players.

By contrast, there are also a lot of underrated things. Some of them are: The first bite of pizza, a hot shower, a cold beer after a round of golf and tree-ripe peaches.
Oh, and plenty of NFL football players.

Now THAT'S sportswriting!

BREAKING NEWS: DUSTIN PEDROIA IS SHORTER THAN MOST MLB PLAYERS

Seriously, sports media- give it a goddamn motherfucking rest. This is not basketball, where height is usually integral to one's performance. This is not football, where height is a huge asset for QBs, WRs, CBs, and DEs. This is not boxing or MMA. This is a sport where players on opposing teams make physical contact with one another about once every 40 games. This is a sport where being short provides a key advantage to a hitter (smaller strike zone) and doesn't exact hurt a second baseman's ability to field ground balls cleanly. Hell, soccer has way more physical contact in it than baseball, and short guys thrive there as high paid/high profile finishers. Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi are both like 4'7". Pedroia deserves plenty of press for being a good player. He deserves absolutely none because of his height. Let's keep it that way. Right after I tear apart this article that some clown named Tim Brown wrote for Yahoo.

Pedroia stands tall for Boston

There was a time when the soul of the Boston Red Sox would be found within broad shoulders and towering frames, amid men who filled the role as they did the uniform.

Men who were complete and total assholes, like Ted Williams and Jim Rice.

Now there’s Dustin Pedroia.

Such deft juxtaposition! My head is spinning. Also- Pedroia is the only short star the Red Sox have ever had in their 100+ year history.

So, the organization leans a little more toward Kevin Youkilis and, of course, to Pedroia, who might not fill the uniform, but does the role as the new soul of the Red Sox.

He does fill the fucking uniform. It's a slightly smaller uniform than most MLB players wear. WHAT PERSEVERANCE AND HEART HE SHOWS JUST BY TAKING THE FIELD. Jesus Lord of all that is holy in heaven. The guy went to Arizona State, pretty much the best college baseball program of all time. This is not an underdog story. Stop trying to make it one. At least when writers get all up in Eckstein's jock, they're talking about a guy who isn't particularly good at the MLB level. Pedroia is good. He's been good for three years.

It is one thing to be league MVP (Pedroia was two seasons ago), another to lead a clubhouse splashed in champions,

CHAMPIONS WHO ARE ALL SLIGHTLY TALLER THAN HIM!!!

another still to get behind and push from an exaggeratedly reported 5-foot-9, with sloped shoulders over a body that, kindly, is less-than-classically constructed.

Oh my! Billy Beane would cringe at this description. A non-classically constructed body? Send him to the glue factory.

“I don’t know,” Pedroia said. “I just try to show up every day and play hard. That’s pretty much all every player can do.

Besides be tall.

We show up, play to win. If we win, we win. If we lose, you know, we try to go get ‘em tomorrow. Your attitude always has to be good and you have to do the little things to be a championship team. That’s what I’ve had to do my whole life to be successful.

You mean you haven't constantly focused on your physical stature, and tried to overcome the rough hand life dealt you?

The little things, that’s the biggest part of baseball.”

Right. The little things, like you.

“He’s a competitor, man,” Lackey said. “The dude is one of the most intense, driven players I’ve ever been around. His baseball sense is as high as I’ve ever seen.”

About that size, Lackey said, “He’s doing all right with it, isn’t he?”

I doubt this is really the case, but I hope that was Lackey subtly telling Brown "Why don't you go write about something else, you clod. No one cares that he's two or three inches shorter than many HOFers who never got this kind of attention."

“We’re grinding, man,” Pedroia said.

Of course they are. They can only follow their soul.

You're atrocious. You make me want to read a Rick Reilly column about a dwarf long jumper who was born blind but still made his high school track team.

Hey, Yankees/Mets!

I started this post intending to write a meticulously analyzed breakdown of the performance of the announcers of tonight's Sunday Night Baseball. [In an astonishing move that will be questioned for years to come, ESPN decided to air the Yankees/Mets game!] Only on this blog is it laudable to spend a few hours watching a sports game and then not writing about the sports.

Top of the 3rd
Morgan: "I've never seen Jeter with his average so low. It has been at times, but I've never seen him play when it was this low."

Who cares if you actually saw him play when his average was low, Joe? Jeter promptly ripped a single to right.

Bottom of the 3rd
Miller: "Actually, Jeter's Zone Rating has gone up the last few years, even though he's had trouble going to his left on a couple of balls tonight."
Morgan:"I don't know anything about Zone Ratings and all that, I just watch a guy and see how he's moving, and he did not move too quickly on that."

This is just good old fashioned JoeTalk, demonstrating ignorance of statistical terms that are (a) very relevant to his profession and (b) not all that hard to comprehend. It's been awhile since we had a good dose of Joe on this site, and it makes me yearn for the good old days.

I got kind of distracted as the game went on, so I don't really have any more silliness to report. But hey! Joe is still alive and kicking and he hasn't destroyed the Reds yet, so so far, so good!

And since this post is so short, I'll embed a video that I found while scrolling through the old FJM:



Also, RIP Jose Lima.

Melissa Isaacson Annoys Me While Saying Something I Generally Agree With

Here's the thing: Brian Urlacher is not my favorite guy off the field. He can't keep his haploids from making diploids with trashy women. He pops off at the mouth. He looks like a bad guy in a Steven Segal movie. All that sort of thing. The dustup he's had recently with Gale Sayers is no exception--Urlacher thinking that taking shots at an all-time great for "not having won anything" will function as a comeback to Sayers's critiques of the current Bears team kind of typifies why Urlacher's a shithead.

So I agree in principle with Melissa Isaacson's column on why Urlacher is an asshole in this incident. But that just makes the trainwreck that is her column all the more difficult to watch.

For a big, tough linebacker, Brian Urlacher sure is sensitive.

Gale Sayers speaks nothing but the truth in answering questions at a banquet two weeks ago in Omaha, Neb., and next thing he knows, he is being torn apart by a guy who needs to stop getting annoyed by comments he thinks are mean and unfair and concentrate on making his team respectable.

Off to a smashingly snarky start, Melissa. I'm going to go ahead and nominate that second "paragraph" for "most awkwardest sentence of the year award."

Sayers told the Chicago Tribune he was just being honest. Good grief, the guy wasn't even being controversial.

Isaacson can't really be this stupid right? Since when is an ex-superstar ripping an organization "not controversial"? Isaacson is trying to make the point that what Sayers said in his critique is "true" and therefore not controversial:

"[Jay] Cutler hasn't done the job," Sayers said.

Um, that would be true.

"Urlacher, I don't know how good he's going to be coming back [from surgery]," Sayers continued. "He's [32] years old [this Tuesday]. They need a couple wide receivers, a couple defensive backs. They haven't done a good job."

....

"If Lovie [Smith] doesn't do it this year, I think he's gone," Sayers said in answering another question and giving his opinion, which is basically acknowledged as fact.

"He had a good team the Super Bowl year. Nothing came together for him the last couple years."

Stop the presses.

....

For these factual observations, Urlacher found it necessary to rip one of the most revered players in Bears history.

...but clearly that misses the point. What is eminently obvious is that the controversy of the statement comes from Sayers' decision to speak up in the first place and rip the organization--right or wrong. Something Urlacher explicitly commented on in his remarks:

"Does it bother me? There are enough people throwing daggers at us right now. Why does one of our ex-players have to jump in? There are enough experts talking [expletive] about us, so why does a Bear, an all-time great, have to jump in? I just don't like that."

And for the record let me take a Melissa Isaacson-like look at the "validity" of Urlacher's comments. I'll try to maintain the classic Isaacson snark:

"Let me ask you a question: 'How many championships did Gale Sayers win?'" Urlacher told the Tribune in one of the least classy retorts in memory.

"How many playoff games did he win when he played? None. None. None

Um, that would be true. Stop the presses.

Anyway, more Isaacson, in response to Urlacher's comments about Sayers's failure to make the playoffs:

Boo-hoo. Now Urlacher is bragging about making it to the Super Bowl and being embarrassed. Sorry, doesn't work that way around here.

Wow. I knew the NFL was a bottom-line league, but I didn't realize that someone who's made the playoffs 3 times in his 10 year career and led his team to a Super Bowl had absolutely nothing to hang his hat on. Sorry, Brian--Melissa's not impressed with your resume unless you win the Super Bowl. I'm anxiously anticipating her thoughts on LaDainian Tomlinson.

Hall of Famer Dan Hampton joined Hall of Famer Dick Butkus in talking about Hall of Famer Sayers and telling Urlacher to grow up.

"This is the overarching point," Hampton said. "You can't have thin skin if you can't win. That's just the way it is. Buddy Ryan used to say, 'We're not in the business of playing football, we're in the business of winning games.

"Ultimately, [the Bears] haven't been successful in three years. However you want to cut it, those are the facts. Gale Sayers just had the audacity to point it out."

The only reasonable words in this column are the ones penned neither by Isaacson, Urlacher, or Sayers. You know what the difference between Hampton's comments and Sayers's comments is, Melissa (or the difference between Sayers's comments and an ESPN analyst saying the same thing)? There was a reason for Hampton to give them. There is absolutely no reason for an ex-star to call the team out on the carpet besides being a self-important asshole (which, incidentally, Sayers has shown himself to be time and again).

Sayers was not just admired, he was beloved. And after just six seasons, he was a legend, a player whose legacy has never dimmed, even in the shadow of Walter Payton's greatness.

So fucking what? Sayers was a phenomenal running back who everybody loved. I guess that means it's beyond the realm of possibility that he could ever do anything wrong.

No, that's clearly a low blow and not really relevant. I just wanted to post that picture. But seriously, plenty of world class athletes and class act individuals tend to pop off at the mouth upon retiring. Hank Aaron was a fantastic human being as a ballplayer and one of my all time heroes but after retirement he sometimes fell into the habit of giving his unsolicited, cranky old man opinion with eye-roll inducing results. He's softened a bit as the years went on and he's never been as bad as Sayers, but the point is that talking about how great a guy Sayers was 40 years ago when he was still in the spotlight and everything was smiles and lollipops really doesn't do anything to mitigate him being that obnoxious know it all from the living room coach--only with a voice in the MSM that you have to listen to.

You want tough? Try playing on Sayers' knees in the days before advances such as arthroscopy and the sort of therapy taken for granted by players like Urlacher, whose career could have been over after his neck injury, and again last year, if he had been playing in the '60s.

And Sayers's career would probably have been over much earlier if linebackers in the 1960's weighed 275 pounds and ran mid-4's 40 yard dashes. Big fucking whoop.

Sayers has earned the right to make whatever observations he wants to make about his former team for as long as he lives, the least of which benign comments that happen to be true.

I guess that's technically true insofar as he lives in America and the first amendment is still in play (even though da guvment don't like it!), but as far as "being a good player and a generally good guy" giving him license to be an asshole without getting called on it? Not so much.

"You're part of building a huge company, you're ultra-successful, you retire and the thing goes into crapper," Hampton said. "You're offended; you resent it. If you didn't care, you wouldn't say a word.

"The doublespeak part of the whole thing is since Gale and Dick Butkus didn't win a Super Bowl, maybe they don't have the right to say anything. Well, I beg to differ. Their rings say 'Hall of Famer,' and last time I checked, that was a pretty select group."

That's an absolutely reasonable rebuttal to Urlacher's utterly obnoxious comments. Too bad Isaacson couldn't follow Hampton's lead.

Clearly Urlacher is touchy because neither he nor his team has played close to anyone's expectations the last three years. Maybe because he smells the end of a career that, while impressive overall, individually speaking, still doesn't feel fulfilled. Or maybe because the Bears gave him $6 million guaranteed in a signing bonus last summer, he'll get more than $22 million the next three years and he feels guilty.

Or maybe not.

She gets paid to write this.

Isaacson closes with another solid, reasonable quote from Hampton about if Urlacher doesn't like it he should go 14-2, which is the only intelligent move she makes in this column. But the damage is done. What a steaming turd this column is

Crap!

It slipped right past me, because I am too busy living in my parents' basement and eating junk food, but FireJay recently turned three years old. Hard to believe. In case anyone was wondering, even though we don't post as often anymore, we are still part of the "blogosphere."

A New Low for "Irony"

To fucktarded members of the sports media, lots of things are ironic. Things that are coincidences are ironic. "Ironically, he played a really great game just one night after playing a really awful game!" Things that are interesting are ironic. "Ironically, this will be the first time he's played against his former team since they traded him to his new team for a bag of magic beans!" But tonight, as I listened to the Yankees/Red Sox game on WCBS radio while driving cross country via rental car (hey, YOU try finding something else to listen to on AM/FM radio in the middle of East Bumfuck County, Pennsylvania), I heard Yankees broadcaster John Sterling take "irony" to a whole new level.

Side note: hey Chris W, isn't the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry so rich and full of history?

Other side note: Sterling's broadcast partner is still Suzyn Waldman. I thought they fired her for crying on the air during a postgame show. OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS. OF ALL... OF ALL THE DRAMATIC NON-FIRINGS I'VE EVER SEEN.

Anyways, here's what happened during the game: bottom of the ninth. Yankees down a run. Guys on 1st and 3rd, one out. Batter hits a weak grounder back to the pitcher, whose only play is to first. Now there are guys on 2nd and 3rd with two outs. John, your analysis?

And the irony of the situation is that a single will now win the game.

Wow.

The basic reality/facts of any given situation, as well as any cause/effect relationships you can identify in one, are now ironic. I was hungry this morning, so ironically, I ate breakfast. It was ironic that because Barack Obama won the Democratic primary race in 2008, he became the Democratic nominee for president. Ironically, getting into field goal range when you're down two with 0:01 left on the clock in the 4th quarter gives you a chance to win a game. (A FOOTBALL game on a FOOTBALL field, to be specific.) Thanks John.

Is there anything left that's not "ironic?"

[Note: I'm almost willing to imagine a scenario in which John was trying to indicate that before the productive out, a single would have only tied the game, but after, even though an out is a "bad" play, a single will now win the game. So in that sense the bad play had a good outcome. Which wouldn't really be ironic, in the context of baseball, but would be in the vague neighborhood of irony. Almost. I think it's about a billion times likelier, however, that he was just throwing the word around for the fuck of it. I dunno. If you want to defend him, go for it. I have my theory and I'm sticking to it.]

(Double!) Short Bullshit Post

Argh, don't have anything substantial to riff on so I'll just make it short with a couple general complaints. I'll do a full writeup of something shitty later in the week. Suggestions welcome in the comments.

1) This complaint pretty much speaks for itself- Chris Berman hosted Sportscenter tonight. Seriously. First time I've seen him on there in more than a year. Guess what? He was terrible. Fuck that chodemunch. Hacky, unfunny, and unnecessarily drew attention to himself. BACKBACKBACKBACKBACKGAWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNN OH GOD I AM A WORTHLESS PECKERHEAD. I can't believe he used to pretty much be the network's "go to" guy for highlights (like 15, 20 years ago). And I can't believe he still gets to do NFL Live every fall. Thank God MLB network is so good. I can turn to their Baseball Tonight-ish show to get my fix in that department, and reluctantly turn back to ESPN if absolutely necessary for other sports.

2) This is a complaint that requires a little more nuance. Are real horse racing fans as hung up on the fact that there hasn't been a Triple Crown winner in however many years as most major sports websites make them out to be? Do they care that much? Are they desperate for it? The media really makes it seem like it's a huge deal- and if that's the case, I don't think I understand why. I don't care about horse racing (in fact I despise it) so I can't relate directly. But I can relate, at least to some extent, by thinking about how much I care about very rare accomplishments in sports I do like a lot.

When the Patriots went 16-0, I didn't care. Not because I despise the Patriots, but because it's not a big deal to me to see a team accomplish that very rare feat. To make a better example, I don't hate or like the Colts, but I've never been super excited to see them open 10-0, 12-0, whatever. I'm not sitting here, hoping some team goes undefeated for a season just for the sake of it. Doesn't matter to me.

How about someone in baseball hitting .400? That hasn't been done in forever, but it's not like I find myself being really excited when Mauer or someone else is over .400 in June. Whatever. It's just not that compelling to me. Same goes for long hit streaks. Didn't Ryan Zimmerman get to 35 or something last summer? I actually kind of like the Nationals, but I wasn't desperately hoping he'd get into the 50s.

Of course, these analogies are imperfect for a number of reasons. The football one isn't great, because I have a favorite football team, whereas many horse fans hoping for a Triple Crown don't have a favorite and will just root for whoever wins the Kentucky Derby to win the Preakness and Belmont. And the baseball ones are about secondary accomplishments, not winning "championships." But still- are horse racing fans really super hung up on this? Are they desperate to see that accomplishment just for the sake of seeing the accomplishment? Would they feel OK seeing it if it was done by a relatively unimpressive horse against terrible competition, as opposed to an all time great horse against good competition? I don't know. I certainly won't lose sleep about it, but I do wonder.

Long story short: horse racing is fucking stupid and I wish it would leave major sports media coverage forever. Keep it where it belongs: as a place for gambling addicts to squander their last few dimes before telling their wives to divorce them and to please take the kids.

Rick Reilly Chooses His Examples Poorly

Now, I don't support Jeff Ireland asking Dez Bryant if his mother's a prostitute. By no means do I think that's an acceptable thing to ask. I'm trying to think of a context where that question would be acceptable. Maybe if right before Ireland asked it, Bryant had said, "...and just last night my mother had sex for money like she very often does." But even in that circumstance it would probably be over the line to ask a question like that. And the question is certainly not acceptable, in my opinion, in the interest of "gathering character information to protect his investment" as Ireland claimed his query was.

THAT SAID, if you were going to take the guy to task for this, as Rick Reilly attempts to do in his ESPN column, you might want to choose your counterpoints a little more carefully than the Million Dollar Man does. Let's check it out!

Let's play a game. I'll describe a childhood, and you figure out who had it.

Person No. 1 -- Raised in his grandmother's brothel, the son of a prostitute, he was raped by a neighbor at 6 and molested by a Catholic priest during catechism.

Person No. 2 -- Considered useless and distant, teachers wrote of him, as noted in Catherine Hurley's "Could do Better": "Certainly on the road to failure … hopeless … rather a clown in class … wasting other pupils' time."

Person No. 3 -- Raised in the brothel run by his aunt, he was once sent home from school for "insufficient clothes" and was arrested at 15 for breaking into cars.

Give up?

1. Richard Pryor.
2. John Lennon.
3. James Brown.
Arguably the greatest comedian, songwriter and soul singer of the 20th century, respectively.

The question isn't: "Why did Miami Dolphins GM Jeff Ireland ask Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant if his mom was a prostitute?" The question is: "Why should it matter?"

You're not drafting the mom, you're drafting the son!

Well, like I said, I agree with Reilly's general point but let's look at his counterexamples--all great "artists" (depending on how willing you are to call a joke-teller an artist) to be sure, but perhaps poor examples of people suited to the level of discipline required to be an NFL superstar. Let's take a photojournalistic look at Reilly's examples.

1. Richard Pryor

2. John Lennon

3. James Brown

IT'S NAWT FAY-UHHHHH!!!

Never before in the history of sports have a city's NBA, NHL, and MLB teams all lost on the same day. Ever. So let's all cut Bill Simmons some slack and let him wallow in self-pity, OK? Or, alternatively, let's review some of his tweets from yesterday and laugh at them.

Tonight: Huge C's home playoff game, B's playing for Conf Finals, big Sox-Yanks Fenway tilt... Are we back in the mid-80's?

He's so excited! Also, other than 1986, there were no seasons during the "mid" 80s (assuming neither 1981 nor 1988 counts) during which both the Red Sox and Yankees finished within 10 games of making the playoffs. Anyways, let's move to the middle of the Cavs/Celtics game.

Early start + awful traffic + late-arriving crowd + Jay-Z + locked-in LeBron + pro-Cle refs + flat Pierce = this sucks.

THE REFS AHHHHH AGAINST US! THE LEAGUE HATES US! Granted, the league probably wants LeBron to win a title. But I doubt they'd shed any tears if the Celtics won the series.

(This exchange sums it up.) My Dad: "Nate gave us a spark." Me: "We're down 26!" Dad: "Yeah, but we were down 30."

I hate you, Bill's dad. You sound like a twatmunch. So how did the day finish up?

It's official: Black Friday in Boston. Glad I flew cross-country to be here. I'm gonna go wander in traffic.

BLACK FRIDAY. WOE IS US. THE BRUINS ARE ONLY UP 3-1 IN THEIR SERIES, THE CELTICS ARE DOWN 2-1, AND THE RED SOX LAWST A SINGLE GAME IN A 162 GAME SEASON. What a fucking loser Bill is. It boggles my mind. This is almost as hilarious as last October, when the Patriots lost and the Red Sox were knocked out of the playoffs on the same day, making it "Black Sunday."

And ate a whole wheel of cheese. I'm not even mad. RT @sehart: LBJ just pooped in your refrigerator.

Like in that movie that everyone has seen and likes to quote!