Jeter Month Continues

Well, it's still Jeter month, and the spectre of the Jeter love that will be spilling all over baseball this season is enough to make fans of the actual game of baseball somewhat ill. This one comes from Anthony Castrovince, an MLB.com reporter. I know, I know, MLB.com is just a mouthpiece for happy puff pieces, but this one takes the cake.

Jeter stays stoic in face of impending farewell tour

Gag. The headline makes it seem like he's facing chemotherapy or something, instead of a season of thousands of people kissing his high butt.

We don't really know Derek Jeter.

I can only imagine that some poor parent had to deal with that problem as some impressionable ten-year old who stumbled across the New York Post.

"Hey mom, why does Derek Jeter give away autographed baseballs to those ladies?" '

"I don't know, son, we don't really know Derek Jeter".

We know his feats and his impressive lack of public foibles. We know all about the World Series rings, the stats that will make him a first-ballot Hall of Famer and the moments that will make up whatever highlight reel serves as the standard.

Is Jeter's lack of public foibles all that impressive? I know he has played under close scrutiny in New York over all these years, so maybe it is. Then again, maybe after being on several World Series winning teams as a young player gave him the status in the city to have his foibles conveniently left out of the press.

We know that nobody who has played with or against him has even a harmlessly unflattering word to say about him. We know he's got a huge waterfront home down here with an annual real estate tax bill likely larger than your total mortgage, and, yes, we know he's dated or otherwise befriended some gorgeous girls over the course of two decades on the big league stage.
"Mom, what does or otherwise befriended mean?"

"I don't know, son, we really don't know Derek Jeter"

Even in an era of unfathomable finances and TMZ and 24/7, well, everything, 

&*&% the heck? What are unfathomable finances? Is Mr. Castrovince really so flummoxed by the state of the world in 2014 that he calls it an era of 24/7, everything? You'd think a man paid to write words could look a little harder for them.

he's been one guy you can feel pretty good about your kids adoring and emulating. That's legacy enough.

There are plenty of other players who you can feel pretty good about. In fact, I'd venture to say there are more players you can feel pretty good about your kids adoring and emulating than ones you feel bad about. It's just that the bad ones get notice. I bet on most MLB teams, 23 or 24 of the guys you can feel pretty good about. There are a dozen Sean Caseys for every Milton Bradley.

But we don't really know the man, and that certainly wasn't going to change Wednesday morning, in a big room full of reporters and cameras and teammates and 27 minutes' worth of questions and something resembling answers.

Good job linking the specific details to your thesis, Anthony!

"I still have a season to play," Jeter told us
Wow!

Even that phrase -- "press conference" -- was not to be embraced.

Why the passive voice here? Who is doing this not-embracing?

"Media availability" was the preferred terminology, because that's something Jeter is annually accustomed to on the position-player report date, and no Facebook retirement announcement was going to change that.
Sounds like a good old fashioned euphemism to me. It would sound arrogant of Jeter to go to a press conference to talk about himself, so instead he went to a place where he would be available to the media to talk about himself. I don't mean to criticize Jeter here. I'm sure he has to do it. But it sure smells of spin.

And so they poked and prodded him with queries about any emotions that might be bubbling beneath the surface here on the eve of his final season in pinstripes. But nobody honestly or realistically expected the curtain to suddenly be pulled back and the inner "Bachelor" contestant -- the tears, the fears, the sneers -- to be revealed.

No, but that would've been awesome.

"I have feelings," Jeter said, believably. "I'm not emotionally stunted. There's feelings there. I just think I've been pretty good at trying to hide my emotions over the years."

"I have feelings," Jeter said, believably. Ostensibly Mr. Castrovince is an actual paid sportswriter who gets paid actual money to write about how Jeter talked so believably about an utterly banal statement true of every single human being ever except maybe Jeffrey Dahmer and even he probably had feelings they were just really messed up feelings.

An understatement if ever there was one, and that's probably what makes Jeter's particular exit strategy so surprising.

Here's where this article is about to go off the rails: Castrovince's utter naivete / hero worship is going to shoot through the roof. Hold on to your hats, people.

"I was shocked he was doing it on Facebook," teammate Ichiro Suzuki said through an interpreter.

Well, sure, that's part of the intrigue. Who knew Jeter had a Facebook page, for one? It's not like he's going to use the medium to show us vacation photos or share his "feeling" status, with accompanying emoticons.

But we know Jeter has feelings. He said so, believably. Can you believe Jeter doesn't post a Facebook status about his emotions? Of course he doesn't/ His Facebook page is almost exclusively about his charity work. It has tons of pictures of the smiling children that are benefitting from his millions. I'm sure, like most players, he doesn't write a word of it. It's just a way to polish his image.

But what's most shocking of all, perhaps, is that Jeter is willingly subjecting himself to the Mariano Rivera-like farewell tour and all the attention, glad-handing, marketing ("Captain's Final Voyage" seems to be the working title), and, yes, the gifts it's sure to contain.
How torturous! Can you believe Jeter is willingly subjecting himself to more praise and Corvettes? The media crap is already out there preparing for the tour. It's just shocking that Jeter would do this. Shocking.

All Jeter has ever wanted is a career free of undue distractions from his annual goal of winning a World Series,

Well, he's sure going to be spending a lot of 2014 dealing with the undue distraction of every team giving him a Rolex or something and celebrating him for playing a lot of baseball games. Obviously Jeter's retirement announcement (or speculation about it, if he didn't announce it), no matter how he handled it, would have caused some distraction, but it hardly seems like the method he chose was anywhere close to minimizing the distraction.

and that's why he was so adamant at controlling the tone and tenor of this -- ahem -- media availability. The reason he used Facebook as his parting platform, he said, was to have his message heeded in full and his charitable foundation highlighted, two worthy goals.

His letter only included one word about the charity foundation, but the letter was spread out over tons of pages of Jeter helping kids and stuff.

But there will be so many elements of this endeavor that are sure to be out of Jeter's scope of comfort,

I like how the opening statement We don't really know Jeter has been abandoned here, since we know for sure that all this attention is just going to make old Derek uncomfortable, since he really is a small-town boy who doesn't like any kind of attention at all.

because, as you might have noticed, we tend to like to overdo things here in the land of the free and the home of the Super Bowl.
I submit this encomium as evidence.

"I can't comment yet [on what the farewell tour will be like]," said Jeter, "because I don't know what that means. I don't know what's going to happen. I really don't know."

Astonishing of Jeter to not know about what's going to happen on the farewell tour as he was announcing his retirement. But that's not a big deal. No doubt Mr. Castrovince had to include a certain number of quotations from Jeter himself in this article, and he probably only had blandness to choose from. But get yourself ready for some really miserable buttkissing:

We should thank him, then, for the opportunity to say thank you and providing the heads-up that 2014 would be an awfully good time to come to the yard and see No. 2, if you haven't already.

I'm just going to highlight that bit:

We should thank him, then, for the opportunity to say thank you
We should thank him, then, for the opportunity to say thank you
We should thank him, then, for the opportunity to say thank you

Listen people, you can start thanking Jeter now for being so kind as to subject us to a season full of Jeter's last Tuesday-afternoon appearance in the Rogers Centre on deck circle updates. Otherwise what would we talk about? Actual baseball?

Reading that paragraph made me feel like I was witnessing a middle-school team statistician kissing the butt of the star of the team.

And it's not like anyone who hasn't already come out to watch the Yankees is going to be telling their children, "I almost missed it, but I'm sure glad I got to see a kind of over the hill Jeter play!" If they haven't come to see the Yankees in the last 20 years, I don't see the point in coming out to watch Jeter now that he's far past his prime.

Now for some writing that isn't so much overly sentimental but is just poorly executed:

For the Yankees, though, it's a situation that is not without its potential pitfalls. The prevailing pleasantry about Jeter's adieu

Holy alliteration! Holy synonyms!

has been that he's "going out on his terms," but that's a little on the presumptive side. His physical condition will dictate the terms, and that condition is a constant concern for the rare animal that is the 40-year-old shortstop.

Animal? I suppose it is a stock phrase, but is there any reason to think of Jeter like a zoo specimen?

There will be days when Joe Girardi rests him for the betterment of the bottom line,
Doesn't that phrase usually refer to money? I'm confused.

and some kid in the stands who has never seen Jeter in action will be robbed of that pleasure.

An allusion to DiMaggio's famous comment about playing hard for that kid? Only Joe D retired at 36, and actually retired on his terms.

Backup shortstop Brendan Ryan has said he's already preparing to "embrace the boos" that will come with his job.

I wonder what Brendan Ryan is doing to prepare himself to embrace the boos. Does he ask his family and friends to practice booing him, then setting a steely face? Does he watch old videos of him striking out or making errors? Does he keep a picture of the high school crush who turned him down for a date in his locker?

"[Jeter] has always made my job difficult when you want to give him a day off," Girardi said. "I remember him always yelling at Mr. [Joe] Torre when he wanted to take him out of games and [asking] how was he ever going to break Cal's [Ripken] record if Torre kept pulling him out of games. We want him in the lineup as much as possible. But we also have to make sure he's productive."

I'm not going to argue with this too much. Jeter will most likely end up playing the second most games at shortstop in MLB history. But this article suggests that Jeter's attitude was a lot less grindy than Girardi claims here. And of course Jeter should've stopped playing shortstop in 2004 anyways. But he did play a lot of games and that's no mean feat.

It says here that Jeter has been blessed with too charmed a life to run out of good mojo now.

@#$% the heck again? What "here" is Castrovince referring to? Is he holding an imaginary conversation with a midget in his head?

Maybe his career won't end with another World Series trophy in hand, because there are far too many variables at play.

MAYBE.

But all any of us can reasonably hope is that the final ride is free of physical potholes.
I don't know. I wouldn't go so far as to wish misfortune on Jeter, but if he hurt himself tomorrow and was out all season and never played another game, I wouldn't feel too bad for him.

He's earned at least that and probably much more.

PROBABLY

Jeter has also, whether he wants to embrace it or not, earned all the applause and adulation and alms and awards sure to come his way over the next seven-plus months.

No he hasn't. He hasn't even earned all of the applause and adulation that sportswriters gave him in the first seven days after his announcement.

At some point, there will be a farewell speech, there will be a final tip of the cap, there might even be a few tears from the otherwise stoic shortstop.

How stoic.

For now, though, all we know is that Jeter will soon venture into a life after baseball centered on his foundation's work and his hope of starting a family (no, we don't know with whom). And we know, most importantly, that he still has one more season in him, which is why, on a dais reserved for him and him alone, and on a day assumed to serve as celebration of all that was and all he is, Jeter paused mid-availability, pointed to his teammates assembled on one side of the room and said this:

Seven commas in one sentence: generally not a good idea if you're trying for any semblance of clarity.

"If these guys got to go to work, go work."

That doesn't make any sense.

We don't really know Jeter. But we do know that's what's most important to him

Gift baskets for one night stands, only playing one position at the expense of his team, and being celebrated and applauded on every road trip this season?

Back to the Bread and Butter

Hey folks, it's been awhile, but I got a bit riled up reading a post by John Fay, a Reds' beat writer, entitled "Statheads Love to Hate Dusty", and I had to come back.  The namesake of this blog made its money hammering at stupid things said involving statistics, journalism and baseball, so this one's a hearkening back to the old days.  

Everything in baseball these days seems to come down to a Sabermetrics vs. Old School debate. That’s what the Aroldis Chapman argument revolved around. That was the whole basis for the Miguel Cabrera vs. Mike Trout MVP debate.

Did I miss something about Sabermetrics involving Aroldis Chapman?  I think he's not a very provocative player to cite in this debate, seeing as Sabermetric fans are probably amazed at, say, his incredible ability to acculumate 3.6 WAR while playing in only 71 innings or his 15.3 K/9... while Old School fans are probably amazed at, say, his incredible ability to throw a ball one billion miles an hour for strikes.

The thing that continues to amaze me is neither side ever seems to find any merit in the other side’s argument.

This line is Fay's attempt to position himself as an objective party in this debate.  Unfortunately he will consistently undermine this position.

Covering the Reds is debate central. The Saber crowd loves to scream about Dusty Baker. Baker is Public Enemy No. 1 to Sabermetric enthusiasts.

It's not a good idea, when trying to position yourself as objective, to characterize one side by calling them a "crowd", characterizing their arguments as "screams", and overdramatizing their point of view.

Baker definitely manages by the book that was written before WAR meant anything other than a conflict between nations. But so does just about every other manager in baseball.

Wow, that's a Simmonsesque joke. What about the book that war written before WAR meant anything other than a card game of pure chance involving two eight-year-olds?

So why is Baker such a lightning rod? I think there are two reasons Baker comes to the forefront of the debate: a) he doesn’t back down when asked about things like RBI vs. on-base percentage. His quote about walks clogging the bases is Exhibit A; b) I think some of the Sabermetrics crowd has a hard time accepting that an old baseball guy might know something about the game that they don’t.

Now I remember why I hate people.  

Most recently, Baker has infuriated Sabers by batting Zack Cozart second in the lineup. I inadvertently got pulled into the debate via Twitter. Keith Law of ESPN.com had a “Baker rant” on his podcast.

I dismissed it in a tweet with something along the lines of: Saber guy disagreeing with Dusty, I’m shocked.

That sure was nice of Fay to be honest about how he dismissed Law's point  without discussing its merits.  I'm glad Fay didn't decide to be a police officer.  

I stirred it up with that.

“Anyone who knows math would disagree with Dusty,” a follower tweeted.

“So Albert Einstein would be the ideal manager?” I replied with a tinge of snark.

I'm pretty sure this whole blog is about snark, as Larry B famously noted back in January 2008 when he introduced the famous Reader Participation Fridays.  I took Jeff Pearlman to task for it in a classic March 2008 masterpiece.  Either way, Fay's comment is stupid.  Everyone knows Albert Einstein would be a shitty manager.  He didn't even understand baseball.

I ended up listening to Law’s podcast (or at least the rant portion). 

I'm glad he did that after tweeting about it, and I'm glad he didn't even listen to the whole podcast.  I don't have a critical opinion of Fay as a whole (I'm too far out of sports journalism these days to offer sensible generalizations), but this very sentence just about makes me feel like I just got really bad news from my doctor.

It was about Cozart and the No. 2 spot. I agree that Cozart is better suited to hit down in the lineup. I completely disagree with Law’s contention that Joey Votto should hit second.

Watch that second sentence.  He's going to agree with Law here, and then contradict his own point later.

Law’s rant said Baker’s “willful ignorance” led him to make out his lineup without using the data on on-base percentage. Law cited “Moneyball” and the Red Sox as proof the theory works. (Anyone who thinks the A’s won because of Billy Beane’s grasp of on-base percentage and not starting pitching may be willfully ignorant, but that’s not the point here.)

I wonder if it's possible that the A's won because of both of those things.  Or is that just too hard to imagine?  Is this just a binary world where everything is either completely caused by one thing or another?  Is every person a Democrat or a Republican?  Can every number just be a zero or a one?  Can every bathroom just be gentlemen or ladies? 

Also, reducing Moneyball to "Billy Beane's grasp of on-base percentage" is shallow and miserable thinking.  It reminds me of the Book-a-Minute spoofs which reduce classic literature, except those are done for humor, and John Fay ostensibly gets paid real live American dollars to offer sensible and serious opinions about baseball.

Baker is batting Cozart second because he thinks it will work, not because he doesn’t know about on-base percentage.

Well of course.  But John Fay doesn't think it will work, as he's already said, but will for some unknown reason attempt (and fail) to refute himself in the next sentence.

It worked last year. Cozart hit .324 with a .378 on-base percentage and a .491 slugging percentage in the No. 2 spot compared to .246/.288/.399 overall.

Why does Fay even mention this?  He just said he disagreed with Dusty in batting Cozart #2!  I wonder if it would be relevant to put that, last year, Cozart's .324 average came in just over 100 at bats, and at the time of this writing, Cozart was hitting .198/.221/.363 in just under 100 at bats.  Given the sample size of his whole career (748 PA), his line is .245/.282/.398, I think it's safe to say that last year's performance in the #2 spot is likely to be something of an aberration.  Why would he even mention that statistic? That makes like negative sense, for anyone who knows math about negative numbers. Who would want Cozart hitting second in any lineup? It only undermines his point about Dusty and skjcnsecjnsejvnsdkjvnkdsjvnk. I can't even go on any more about how stupid this is.

I hate people.  Go Reds.

Rick Sutcliffe Spouts a Gem

Tonight's Twins-Yankees game got rained out. Consequently, ESPN aired a bunch of look-ins at various other games around the league - inspiring one ESPN head to encourage us to "see a few players you wouldn't normally see". Gee, it sure would be nice to see those players in regularly scheduled programming, instead of the usual Yankees-Red Sox-Cubs repetition.

But the best part came later in the broadcast, when Rick Sutcliffe began to describe the way winners help their team win in baseball. He said that these winners go into the dugout and say:

"I don't know if we're going to win this game, but we're not going to lose it"

Ladies and gentlemen, winners acknowledge the possibility of a tie.

Also, what does Rick Sutcliffe know about winning? He spent most of his career on the Cubs.

Pat Forde Passed Tenth-Grade English

As bad as the article chris w posted last week with the overextended introduction via Death Cab For Cutie was, I think this is even worse.

It's right in the middle of a slow offseason for college football fans; the recruits are settled and Terelle Pryor plans to make a decision next week, but the season doesn't start for another month and a half. So, of course, the WWL's football showpiece, Pat Forde, needs to do something to drum up interest and draw out an article. Rather than just predicting, Pat decided to go with a theme as well. I imagine Pat's final list of themes for the article looked something like this:

1. American heroes - as it's almost July 4th and everyone likes fireworks.
2. Aliens and extraterrestrials - celebrating the Will Smith classic Independence Day and a celebration of world multiculturalism and xenophobia.
3. Gas prices and the war in Iraq - for those of you scoring at home, the terrorists are currently winning.
4. Shakespeare - why not?

Because it's June, and because June is slower than an Ivy League defensive back when it comes to college football news, the boss e-mailed me with a quirky story idea.

The throwaway gag aside, I wonder who Pat's boss is, and I wonder if this is really how things work over at the ESPN Offices, which are doubtless the sort of wacky and fun offices that we glimpse in those hilarious SportsCenter commercials.

The curiosity in me wants to see this email...

He pointed out that Midsummer's Eve was upon us, and the day has a long tradition of being a time for telling fortunes. Some guy named William Shakespeare even built a story around Midsummer's Eve -- and the suggestion was that I do the same.

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal" - Eliot.

"Fuck it, man, the boss wants me to sound like a pretentious asshole while I'm writing about college football, why the hell not?" - Pat Forde

Who can turn down an offer like that?

Good question, Pat. You can't, I guess, but I'm not sure this really applies to anyone else in the world... most of our bosses don't ask us to do things like this.

After reacquainting myself with "A Midsummer Night's Dream,"

Do you think he read the play? It seems that he deliberately avoided saying that he re-read the play; I think, in this context, "reacquainted" means "read the SparkNotes".

it seems Shakespeare himself might have had football on the brain when he wrote it. You don't believe me? I have the evidence.

This is so funny!

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" -- Was that Puck? Or Tim Tebow?

Why would Tim Tebow say that? Am I missing something?

So he rambles on about some connections between Shakespeare and football and whatever. But on to his predictions:

1. Notre Dame will be better.

No shit. Notre Dame was awful last year. This is a lousy prediction.

Perhaps improved enough to lose another bowl game.

Good thing you qualified that. You wouldn't want to predict a six-win Notre Dame team. That would be really going out on a limb.

But part of the Fighting Irish fan base won't notice, because it'll be consumed with watching for Scourge of Humanity Ty Willingham to fail at Washington.

Most likely. It'll be better than watching Notre Dame play USC, for sure.

3. Rick Neuheisel won't bet on his own team in the office bowl pool.

No shit. His team sucks, and he'll never coach again if he gets in trouble. What kind of predictions are these?

4. Ohio State at USC is the nonconference game of the year.

No shit! I'm glad you predict this, Pat!

Honestly, I really want to know how long it takes these writers to write these articles. I could write this shit in like an hour. At that rate, Forde should pump out eight of these a day, but his archive suggests he gets one out every four days or so.

5. Georgia at Arizona State won't be bad, either.

What a lousy prediction. They both won 10 games last year. You suck, Pat.

There are some other predictions but they're either boring or poor attempts at humor. In sum: The article was poorly written, it has an inane and questionable theme, and the predictions are mostly nonsense. I realize ESPN has to provide some content to the college football fans who need something to read during the offseason, but this is ridiculous.

Here's what's even more ridiculous: the picure and the caption. Voila:

William Shakespeare isn't the only one who can pen a midsummer night's dream.

*&^$ the heck? I wonder what the caption writers were thinking. How many levels of irony can you spot in that statement? I'm finding at least four....

It's time to close this critique. If you haven't fallen asleep while reading it, or if I've offended you with this commentary, just pretend it was all a dream... because Pat Forde certainly chose a weak and idle theme for this article.

Jim Caple Complains About Being Poor

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you some of the true innovators in human history:

Thomas Edison, Archimedes, Walter O'Malley, Al Gore and Jim Caple.

Go East, MLB, Go East

The title is Jim showing off his expert knowledge of history- which he acquired by spending weeks studying Horace Greeley in order to ace the AP US History exam, for which he received the score of 3.

In this article, Jim also shows off his excellent knowledge of baseball history. For example, way back in 1958, baseball teams moved to the West Coast. Jim suggests that a similar expansion to Japan is getting close.

There is no timetable for expansion overseas, but it makes enough financial sense to be a good possibility before Evan Longoria calls it a career. Hell, we might see it before Eva Longoria calls it a marriage with Tony Parker.

Hell, we might see it before Longoria Wines brings out their next Pinot Noirs! This is a Bill Simmons joke! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find websites about things called Longoria if you're not looking for pictures of a celebrity? [A: Not really, surprisingly].

Obviously, the biggest issue is the distance, which was also true before baseball expanded to the west coast. Commercial aviation made MLB's move to California possible by cutting travel time between America's coasts. As Paul Archey, the head of MLB International, put it: "You wouldn't have been able to expand to the West Coast if you were still taking trains."

Obviously, the biggest issue is distance. Obviously, the last time distance was a problem, the transportation industry solved it by providing a quantum decrease in travel time. Obviously, the biggest issue is still insurmountable based on this empirical data obtained by a blogger with a computer and five minutes to spare:

Boston to San Diego: 3044 miles
Miami to Seattle: 3360 miles
Boston to Tokyo: 6704 miles
Miami to Tokeo: 7456 miles

Distances according to Google Maps Distance Calculator

Obviously, this article didn't need to be written.

Actually, travel times aren't that bad now -- you can already fly from Japan to Seattle in eight and a half hours (flying the opposite direction takes about 10 hours).

I like how he puts the longer time in parenthesis, as though it were extraneous information that has nothing to do with his topic, even though it's perhaps the most relevant information in this entire fucking piece.

That's less than it took me to fly from DC to Seattle this week (counting the connection in Chicago).

Probably because you're poor and don't fly on charters like MLB players do. This is not your fault, Jim; I am the same way. This is because the services we provide to society are not as rare as the skills major league players provide to society - anyone, it seems, can be a shitty sportswriter these days, and god knows anyone can do what I do.

Traveling between the West Coast and Japan just isn't that difficult, and frankly, lots of people in all sorts of fields do it all the time.

I like how he assumes that nobody from the East coast will ever have to play these Japanese teams. Maybe Caple is suggesting that MLB contract some East coast teams to make room for them? Hell yeah - I'm tired of the Red Sox anyways.

This is such a ridiculously specious argument:
1. It takes 8-10 hours to travel from the Seattle to Japan.
2. It takes Jim Caple 8-10 hours to travel from DC to Seattle.
3. Major League baseball players won't be significantly affected by having to fly sixteen hour flights to play baseball games.

You don't need a lot of recovery time, either. A day would suffice, two at the most.

Baseball teams don't *have* a day or two on these trips. Baseball teams have to cram a 162 game season into about 180 days. They get one day off a week as it is.

As every experienced traveler knows, jet leg can often be a matter of expectations. If you expect to feel awful after a 4,500 mile flight, you surely will.

1. Is this true? Can I get some research to support this? This sounds like "anecdotal bullshit".
2. As I explained above, 4500 miles only gets you from Japan to the West Coast. If you're traveling all the way to the East coast, you have three more hours' time difference and 3000 more miles.

If you think jet lag won't be that bad, it becomes pretty manageable -- if not downright pleasurable if you're a big leaguer flying first class with someone else carrying your bags and arranging your tickets and doing everything else short of feeding you peeled grapes.

It's true, Jim, that major leaguers are richer than you; however, this has nothing to do with your article. Expansion is only feasible if the players aren't experiencing significant physical side effects. Your whole article is based on your personal experience about how flying doesn't affect you that much.

Also: do peeled grapes taste better than unpeeled grapes?

The difficulty is convincing pampered players who already spend 120 nights on the road that it isn't that big a deal to add a trans-Pacific trip to the schedule.

The difficulty is also convincing fans and anyone interested in competitive balance in baseball that this won't significantly hurt certain teams' chances of winning. And you know what, Jim? Baseball players are pretty pampered. But they do push long hours and are away from home a hell of a lot.

Heck, I once listened to a player complain about traveling to Canada.

I once listened to an ESPN senior sportswriter complain about how poor he is.

But if 60-year-old flight attendants can not only manage the trip but can also pour coffee and wheel food carts up and down the aisles for much of the flight, athletes in their prime should be able to manage sitting, sleeping and watching movies during the same trip.

Except that's not the problem: nobody doubts that they can manage it.

This analogy is so stupid: flight attendants don't need their reflexes tuned to the microsecond when they're working; millions of baseball fans will scrutinize the baseball players' reflexes when they are working.

Especially when they get a $40,000 bonus for doing so (as the Red Sox and Athletics did this spring).

What is Jim's problem with athletes' salaries? The problem is, Jim, that you are doing something anyone can do - in fact, that completely unprofessional people like me can actually do better - and baseball players are doing something only a few people can do. That's the point of capitalism, meritocracies, and the like.

I'm all for baseball expanding to all corners of the world. As soon as someone invents a teleporter, or at least a viable supersonic spaceship that can fly people to far away places in very short times, baseball isn't going to go to Japan. That's why baseball expanded in 1958: technology advances solved a limiting problem.

As a baseball fan, I sure would be fucking pissed if the Reds were in the final week of the season in a playoff race and they had to go play a series in Nagoya and they had to spend thirty hours in a plane to get there and back, while their competitors had to travel to Milwaukee.

According To The Mini Biography That Appears At The End Of Everything He Writes, Gene Wojciechowski Is The Senior National Columnist For ESPN.com

But why? Someone down at the World Wide Leader needs to start asking some questions as to how this guy has a job at all, let alone a job as "the senior national columnist" for their website. Next to Gregg Easterbrook and Bill Simmons, there isn't a more annoying idiot writing there. It's columns like this one that really separate Gene from the pack when it comes to not knowing anything about sports despite being paid to analyze them.

Even in victory, Broncos can't hide flaws

DENVER -- About the nicest thing you can say about the Denver Broncos is that their uniforms make them look like very large traffic cones. Otherwise, there's no reason to pay attention to this team.

Not yet, at least.

Traffic cones? Either Gene hasn't watched a Broncos game since they changed uniform designs in the mid 90s or the department of transportation where he lives uses blue cones. I'd imagine those would be hard to see at night, but I guess it's possible.

Yes, I know, they upset the sluggish Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-28, on a meat-freezer-cold Sunday night at Invesco Field. Thing is, you couldn't tell who was more surprised by the outcome, the Steelers or the Broncos.

OK, that's not exactly true. The Broncos insist that the last-second victory was no accident, that they were never as crummy as their 2-3 record and three-game losing streak made them look.

"I kept telling you guys we were confident in the locker room," said quarterback Jay Cutler, who remains a work in progress. "We had a bye week. We knew we were a good team. We just weren't playing up to our potential."

So: we have a strong statement of opinion from Gene about game. Followed immediately by quote from a player that directly contradicts said statement. Now that's journalism. "I had a hamburger for lunch today. Well, that's not exactly true. I actually had some pizza."

Cutler wasn't the only one to chide reporters about their lack of faith in the Broncos. Cornerback Dre Bly, whose injured right shoulder featured a puncture mark from a pain-killing shot, happily provided the obligatory cliché.

"Nobody was giving us any shot to win this game," Bly said.

Maybe that's because the Broncos hadn't earned the benefit of the doubt. With the exception of Jason Elam (Is it a good thing when the best player on your team is the place-kicker?), nobody on this team had played exceptionally or consistently well.

Obviously the term "best player" is being applied loosely here. A kicker is like a closer; they don't get into games very often relative to the rest of the players on their team, but when they do it's often in high-leverage situations. So simple minded fans might be tempted to think when they play well, as Elam has, they are their squad's best player. In reality, it's incredibly difficult to measure their abilities against those of other players, but it's probably a huge reach to say that anyone on Denver's roster not named "Champ Bailey" is the best player on the team.

Sheesh, where are my manners, listen to me ramble on and on like a cocaine addict... what I'm trying to say is that Gene is a travesty of a writer.

Also, let's look his main point so far, which is: the Broncos won, but they shouldn't be happy about it. That's right. They should not claim that their previous losses were caused by them failing to playing up to their potential, or be excited about the fact that they beat a favored Pittsburgh team. No. Instead, they should tell the media "We wanted to lose. We expected to lose. We are ashamed to have won. More than anything we'd like to thank the Steelers for graciously handing us this victory, which was 100% due to their lack of execution and 0% due to our own good play." Sounds about right.

Elam's 49-yard walk-off field goal as time expired was his third game-winner of the season. Without him, the Broncos don't beat Buffalo on the road, don't beat Oakland in overtime and don't beat Pittsburgh. '

Well yeah. I guess. Assuming Elam wasn't there, and the Broncos didn't have anyone else try to kick the ball during the last play of those games and instead just snapped the ball to the holder so he could sit there like an idiot until he got tackled... you're right, they would have lost all three. But if they had a different kicker attempt the same plays, who knows what the outcome would have been? This is like saying "without David Eckstein, the Cardinals would never have won the World Series last year." Um, what if they replaced him with someone else who also played pretty well? The "without him" argument should only apply to ridiculous all-time greats like Michael Jordan.

"We'll take it if we can get it," Elam said. "If we can get 20 of 21, we will take it."

Elam was talking about the World Series-bound Colorado Rockies, who actually have won 21 of their past 22 games. If Elam thinks this team is going on some sort of Rockies-like miracle run, he's mildly nuts or oxygen-deprived. These Broncos have too many flaws to overcome. You can't keep winning on inside straights forever.

Apparently playing your opponent evenly all game, and then winning on a field goal as time expires, is the same as winning on an unlikely inside straight in poker.

Cutler completed 22 of 29 passes for 248 yards and three touchdowns. But he also threw two interceptions, including one on which the Steelers had a team photo shoot going around intended receiver Brandon Marshall.

Two? TWO? Fucking two fucking interceptions? What a piece of shit quarterback that guy is! I can't believe the game was even close at halftime! I mean, how many times has a team thrown two interceptions and gone on to win? What a miracle. They must've converted 100% of their third downs and averaged 8 yards per carry on the ground to overcome that Ryan Leaf-like performace.

"They kind of fooled me," Cutler said.

Obviously. Otherwise you wouldn't have thrown those two picks, like the total waste of a person you are.

Cutler is getting better. He did lead the Broncos from their own 20 to the Steelers' 31 in the last 70 seconds of the game, just close enough for Elam to do the hero thing again. Of course, it helped that Steelers linebacker James Harrison was nice enough to line up offsides on a third-and-1 play earlier in the drive. The mistake handed Denver a first down.

On that play, Cutler snuck for the first down anyways. But nice try. (And no, the three extra yards they gained due to the penalty didn't affect the field goal; it would have been good from at least 5 yards further back.)

"It's still early in the season, and we've got a lot of talent on this team," wide receiver Brandon Stokley said. "I think everybody around the league knows what we're capable of … The sky's the limit for us."

If the sky is the AFC West lead, then, yes, the Broncos have an outside chance at that. Otherwise, they're not going to reach playoff altitude. And even if they do sneak in somehow, does anyone really think they could beat the New England Patriots, the Indianapolis Colts or even these same Steelers again?

$%*# the heck? No one is touting the Broncos as some kind of championship caliber team... no one. Preseason, a handful of analysts picked them to win the AFC West. None that I heard claimed they were going to high-step to the Super Bowl. No one even implied they were on the level of the Colts or Patriots. And they certainly aren't doing now just because of this one close win. This is what we call a straw man argument. It's like saying "Sure, the Washington Nationals weren't as bad as people thought they would be last season. But I'm tired of everyone saying they're going to win the World Series next year."

Since losing to the Steelers in the 2005 playoffs, the Broncos have bordered on postseason irrelevancy.

Since that loss, there has been one postseason. The Broncos did not participate. That's not bordering on irrelevancy, that's being irrelevant. It's also a sample size of one. I can't tell which of those angles better proves that Gene is a moron.

Something happened to this franchise. It lost its mojo, and the rest of the NFL noticed.

Oh my God... I can't believe he set me up like this... maybe they should enlist Austin Powers to help them get it back! LOLOLOL! (I'm embarrassed. It's because of jokes like these that I'm writing this on a dusty old PC from my parents' basement while professional journalists like Gene write their articles on golden typewriters from their mansions on the moon.)

"You show any weakness in this league, and people stop fearing you," said veteran safety John Lynch. "The nature of this league is scoreboard, and we've struggled at home of late, in particular. The only way to change that is do something about it. And I think we took a step toward that tonight in beating a very good football team. Ever since they beat us in the championship game, we kind of lost that dominance at home."

There's a big difference between a step and a leap. The Broncos are 3-3, but four of their next six games are on the road. The two home games are against the Packers and Tennessee. So good luck with that.

Ha! Gene scoffs at your ambitions, Broncos. Why even show up for those games? Might as well save yourself the bumps, bruises, and airfare and just stay home.

"We know we're a championship-caliber team," Broncos linebacker D.J. Williams said. "Definitely a playoff team."

If that's a promise and a prediction, the Broncos need someone other than Elam to win games.

Lord knows no one else has helped them to those three victories. That's why they call football "the sport determined by kickers and kickers alone, unless you're the Patriots, in which case you're 53 guys working as one towards a common goal."

Otherwise, this city could become the unthinkable.

A Rockies town.

As if Gene cares which of their teams Denver residents like most at any given time.

Gene Wojciechowski is the senior national columnist for ESPN.com.

Again, why?

You can contact him at gene.wojciechowski@espn3.com. He co-authored Jerome Bettis' autobiography, "The Bus: My Life In and Out of a Helmet," which is available now.

Could this be the source of the sour grapes tone in this article? Because he wrote a biography of a former Steeler? I'd like to think so. The only other guess I can come up with is Gene was told by his editor on Sunday evening that he's not allowed to write anything about Lou Pinella for the next 5 months. This upset him, so as a result he decided to make himself feel better by journalistically shitting all over whichever team won the Sunday Night Football game that was happening when he received the news.

Color Commentators Operate Blogs

I suppose that I should start off by introducing myself. My name is Jarrett, and I now blog here. I'm not quite as angry as I should be to blog here, and I certainly don't care for grammar's "rules". What I do care about is hockey. Now that I've stopped everybody from reading any more, I urge the "hockey is on Versus, therefore I shouldn't care about it" crowd to wait a couple days for everybody else here to post. You'll get your kicks then. Foreplay aside, I'm here to make you read, and read you shall.

Daryl "Razor" Reaugh is the color commentator for the Dallas Stars. A former goalie in the hockey equivalent of AA baseball, he must really know his hockey. But put a computer in front of him, and this happens.

According to The Hockey News and their league sources, NHL players will be traveling more and resting less starting next season when the league does away with the unbalanced schedule and opens the regular season one week later.

Multiple high-level sources have confirmed to THN.com that the NHL will push back its starting date next season by one week, to either Oct. 9 or Oct. 10.

Sources have also indicated that the league will kick off in Europe next year with two games in Prague between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Ottawa Senators (It had previously been reported that the Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning would play those games).

Because the whole "regular season in Europe" thing worked out so well this year. The only thing the league is doing is stealing games away from season ticket holders for the Penguins who fill the ancient igloo in Pittsburgh... but that's not why I'm targeting his comments.

This season, not including the two games played in England between the Los Angeles Kings and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, started Oct. 3.

In order to accommodate the change, the league will further compress the schedule early in the season rather than have the season run one week longer.

My take?

Here's why I'm writing.

Schedule Change: Great news. If you have a league of 30, have all 30 play each other. (Isn't that the point of a league?)

I have to say that I agree with every part of this. The NHL really screwed up having teams play so much in their own division and not having the new line of NHL superstars playing against every team. This Saturday will be Alexander Ovechkin's first trip to St. Louis, and I'm excited.

Delayed Start: The delayed start is a step in the right direction but one week isn't enough. The NHL should seriously think about starting no earlier than Oct 15th, and preferably not until November 1st. (Let the NFL get into the ho hum middle of their schedule, same with college ball, and avoid clashes with MLB playoffs)

No. Not at all. No. Yesterday was October 15th. What a day it would have been to start the hockey season, because it wouldn't clash with baseball's playoffs at all. The NHL starts at the right time as it is. A little more than 2/3 of baseball's fans have been eliminated from their favorite team playing in the postseason. With only 16 games in their season, I would hardly call any part of it "ho hum," but that early it's hard to tell if a team is good or not, I suppose. Or go with Razor and start your season in the middle of the LCS. I don't care about any of the teams playing, but I still watch because the games can be exciting. Some nights, you are rewarded with a call that still has 30 people talking and other nights you stay up for three hours to see the Indians humiliate the Red Sox. Leave the start of the season alone.

Condensed Schedule: Call a dumbulance!

Take THAT, NHL! What a moronic move! So dumb, in fact, that a specific vehicle dispatched by 911 should be called to your schedule gurus!

The NHL doesn't need to gift their coaches a reason to play even more conservatively.

Gift suggestions: A large book of quotations that a color commentator could look at so he can turn a phrase correctly. "gift their coaches"? Let's see how he stumbles to the finish line.

I've always maintained that in order to maximize intensity two things should change; Teams should never have more game days than off days during any given week of the regular season. And, the season should be trimmed from 82 games down to 72.

A Jay Mariotti flip-flop special! You want every team to play every team, and rest in between, but you want to trim the schedule down for less games? HINT! The names of the conferences - - Eastern and Western - - denote the teams might be on the opposite side of the continent as the others! How about you change the game while you're at it? Add 3 more players per team to the ice, an extra puck, but to make sure they don't get tired, have the periods trimmed from 20 minutes to 2.

Worst Transition of All-Time

From the beginning of Jay's article about the Bears/Packers game:

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- What a dope, that Ashton Kutcher. Didn't he have better things to do with his life? A lifelong Bears fan from Iowa, he and wife Demi Moore ventured from Hollywood to Cheesewood to see his team play the Packers. They even brought their friends, lovebirds Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake -- the same Timberlake who participated in an infamous wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl.

I would have predicted a franchise malfunction Sunday night.

Here comes a sentence I didn't think I'd have to type when I woke up this morning. Jay, if Ashton Kutcher-related bullshit doesn't have anything to do with your column, DON'T PUT IT IN THERE!

This reminds me vaguely of Mike Patrick blabbing about Britany Spears near the end of the Georgia game from a few weeks ago.

TXTNG MY BFF TG

Peter King finds new ways to entertain me every single week. I need a reason to read MMQB, which I do every single week, religiously, and it's certainly not for the analysis or predictions.

King is like that high school cheerleeder. You know, the one with several UTIs and a hilariously scandalous reputation by the time she graduates. And I say that because there is no way that anybody in the world has fellated as many all-star or former all-star QBs as Peter has.

I don't mind his inside information about Trent Green's brutal concussion from laying out a low block; in fact I think it's kind of cool (in a creepy stalkerish kind of way) that he has so much personal knowledge about so many players. Here is a text message conversation (or in text message terms, convo) between Peter King and Trent Green after the game

Here's the exchange:

King to Green, 5:14 p.m.: "peter king here. just texting to wish you well and to say hope you come out of this okay.''

Green to King, 9:06 p.m.: "Will b ok. Not like lst yr. TG.''

King to Green: 9:08 p.m.: "hey -- how about johnson calling your block a malicious hit? feel better. peter.''

(And this is the one I found interesting.)

Green to King, 9:12 p.m.: "He outweighs me by over 100 lbs. Where shld I blk him? TG.''

Here is what I find interesting:

1) Trent Green writes text messages like a preteen girl
2) Peter King Actually has Text Message conversations with NFL players

LOL OMG WTF UR RITE TRENT :)

Bonus Peter King Baseball Analysis that doesn't involve the Red Sox

d. There can't be a more improved player in baseball over the last couple of years -- other than maybe Carlos Pena -- than Kaz Matsui.

I love Matsui and all but let's look at the numbers (OPS+)

2004: 88
2005: 72
2006: 76
2007: 87

He was injured most of '05 and '06. So in between his rookie year and this season, his OPS+ has gone up by a staggering -1! WOW! Kaz has become an outstanding defensive second basemen though, but I'm pretty sure that's not what king was looking at. And I'm certain that the only 3 rockies games king has seen all season were against philly in the playoffs, so I guess give Kaz "Babe Ruth" Matsui due props.

Last second edit:

Just to clarify, I personally think Matsui has improved even though the OPS+ hasn't changed.

1) He's played almost a full season
2) He's been really solid defensively as I mentioned above.
3) Adjusting OPS for park factors really hurts a hitter like Matsui at Coors Field, who gets on base through infield hits, bunt hitting, and gets a ton of Extra Base Hits by hitting low line drives (especially down the first base line). All of those batting numbers aren't really changed from park to park. Still though, Most Improved Player in all of Baseball? Coooooooome Onnnnnn

one of the most confusing dumb fan comments you'll ever hear

the scene: tonight's giants/padres tilt at AT&T park. bottom of the second. fred lewis on first. omar vizquel laces a ball into the huge right center field gap, and ends up on third when all the dust clears. guy standing behind me:

"Wow... an in field triple!"

what the hell? i mean, i guess he's right... sort of.

I*&^# the heck?!, Larry Dobrow!

A guy who reviews "ModernBride" magazine should not be writing articles telling people how to behave at baseball games.

Here's the best part:

Playing favorites: Avoid, with great prejudice, any shirt or related item that brands you as a newbie. For instance, right now my love for Joba Chamberlain and his Darting Slider Of Death is so intense that I'm beginning to question my heterosexuality. But heck to Betsy, the guy's thrown eight major league innings.

"heck to Betsy?! What?!. I googled the phrase with quotes around it, and discovered that the only articles to use that phrase are:

Larry Dobrow's review of ModernBride magazine
Larry Dobrow's review of Night Sky magazine
A couple of unsigned message board posts most likely made by Larry Dobrow.

If I were running a sports website, and I were going to get someone to write an article, I would make damn sure they knew shit about baseball, and also that they never wrote a review of Modern Bride magazine.

&*%$ the heck, SportsLine.