Ironic irony, Stanley Cup edition

As the Kings wrapped up their title-clinching victory over New Jersey tonight, NBC's Mike Emrick made sure to throw some nonsense into the moment by trying to sound smart and clever (roughly paraphrased):

The Cup will make its rounds with the members of the team this summer, as every player will have some time with it in the offseason.  Ironically, it was the Devils who started that practice back in 1995!

Chris W is way better with the English language than I am, so I usually GChat him when I come across misuse of irony and ask him to concoct a way in which the situation in question could be modified to be made actually ironic.  I didn't even bother with this one, I don't even know if it's possible.  THE GAUNTLET IS SORT OF THROWN, CHRIS.  DO YOUR WORST IN THE COMMENTS.

As a freshly minted hockey fan, I can't say I have a lot of experience with a variety of play by play guys.  It's really just Emrick, the dudes from NBC's B/C/D teams (from earlier in the playoffs), and my favorite team's booth guys.  But to the extent that I can criticize him from my small sample size of time spent listening to his broadcasts, this is the problem with Emrick--he tries to sound smart and clever all the time, and he's neither.  Which is to say, he pretty much has the exactly same problem everyone who misidentifies/misuses irony has.

Also, one last time, why the hell not:

Nobody captures their identity better than Dustin Penner, their frustrating 6-foot-3 forward who's evolved into something of a whipping boy for the Kings faithful. One of the biggest guys on the team, Penner barely throws checks, much less punches. Every time he wades into the corner and goes through the motions of not hitting someone, you hear this chorus of pissed-off "COME ON, PENNER!" hisses coming from every direction. I always want him to do well, just because it's funny when he scores and the fans instantly flip that switch and pretend to be Penner fans again. But if you're trying to win the Cup? You need less Penners and more Ryane Clowe.

And sure, I'm the one who laughed uproariously at the idea of the Celtics making the NBA Finals, and then they almost did.  But 1) they didn't, 2) I blame Rose's ACL, and 3) I don't get paid to do this so neener neener neener and I hope Bill Simmons falls out of a blimp.

An article about baseball written by someone who obviously knows nothing about baseball

Back in the day, way back when that other FJM blog (the one that copied our name and stole our idea) was still active, they occasionally wrote posts picking on small-time sportswriters. Really small-time. Like, they'd pick on the guy who writes the sports section, entertainment section, and police blotter for the North Platte Plains Journal. I always thought that was kind of pointless; sure, those writers had really stupid things to say about sports, but it's not like anyone ever read their garbage. It kind of had the feel of a literary critic ripping apart entries from a middle school short story contest.

But you know what? Fuck that. If they can steal our ideas, we can steal theirs. Last week I stumbled into this piece by some dude from the Enid (Oklahoma) News and Eagle. And that dude, Dave Ruthenberg, has some really great and valid points to make about interleague play. So lean back in your porch swing, take a sip of homemade iced tea, and enjoy some small town sportswriting from a guy who really isn't too sure about this whole Facebook Twitter thing.

In the normal scheme of things, Tuesday’s 5-2 victory by the Florida Marlins over the Los Angeles Angels would garner nary a notice other than a mention on that ubiquitous lower-screen ESPN crawl on your television.

Well your first problem is that you're watching ESPN and expecting any kind of baseball coverage at all. TONIGHT ON SPORTSCENTER- JUST WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR WHAT CAM NEWTON HAD TO SAY ABOUT BEING COMPARED TO MIKE VICK IN A TWEET FROM LEBRON.

Certainly, the fact the Marlins and Angels were playing an interleague game bore little or no interest to most fans.

Whereas most Marlins games get coverage like the first moon landing.

Interleague play, once an intriguing an idea before the explosion of cable and satellite TV brought nearly every team from the American League and National League into our homes, has run its tired course.

Baseball has been shown on national TV since 1965. I understand that MLB Extra Innings is a little different than a single game being broadcast nationally once a week on ABC, but it's not like the only option for following games when interleague was conceptualized was to sit around your family's vacuum tube radio and hope you could pick up the Senators/Redstockings game.

Interleague play was a new idea in 1997,

All ideas are new ideas when people first have them. That is the essence of an idea.

but has quickly grown old and needs to put out to pasture. Be honest, does anybody care that the Detroit Tigers are playing the Colorado Rockies or that the Washington Nationals are playing the Seattle Mariners?

Does anyone care when the Tigers play the Mariners and the Rockies play the Nationals? Pointing out that unpopular teams play interleague games is not a reason to can it. Although I have to agree with the author's implied premise: baseball certainly would be more interesting if the AL consisted of only the Red Sox and Yankees and the NL consisted of only the Dodgers and Phillies. Geez, that would be so exciting that it might even be worth reconsidering this whole “let's shelve interleague” thing. Yankees-Phillies! Can you imagine?

Sure, there were a couple of intriguing matchups such as St. Louis and Kansas City

Yeah, a good 40% of Missouri was riveted to that one. THAT'S the one you pick?

or the Cubs versus the Mets.

Not to mention that White Sox/Rangers interleague series from a few weeks back!

But even those games have lost their luster in the middle of a baseball season that is sorely lacking intrigue or excitement.

You know what would help baseball regain its status as America's favorite sport? If it had more football in it.

So why would a game involving the Florida Marlins, who entered Tuesday with an 11-game losing streak, matter to anyone? Jack McKeon.

Hey, one of the league's least-followed teams hired an 80 year old dude to manage. NOW we'll see some intrigue and excitement.

/waits for Jack McKeon to say something racist or pee himself during a press conference

While baseball needs to retire interleague play, it is a little ironic

I don't want to be a grammar dick, but it's ironical.

that a manager long ago thought to have been put out to pasture, became, at least for now, baseball’s most interesting story.

So ironical. I guess in Dave's world, interleague play = boring, Jack McKeon = interesting. Geez, where does the fact that the Pirates just signed a contract with a new hot dog bun provider for PNC Parkfit on this scale? Can it even fit or do we have to acknowledge that some things are so incredible that they simply can't be categorized?

The 80-year-old McKeon was brought out of retirement to take over as interim manager of the woeful Marlins after Edwin Rodriguez stepped down as their manager. Rodriguez compiled a record of 78-85 since taking over one year ago but things were heading downhill swiftly but when the Marlins named McKeon, most observers snickered.

Editorial standards at the News and Eagle aren't what they used to be.

But really, an 80-year-old manager? McKeon is old-school and offers no apologies.

Unlike Manny Acta, who simply will not stop fucking apologizing for his age. It's really awkward, actually.

“Why should experience get penalized?” McKeon said after he took on the job.

Because as humans get older they tend to get shittier at everything?

“Maybe I’m not hip with the Twitter or Facebook or stuff like that,

Is there a more predictable way for an 80 year old in a young persons' industry to respond to a question about their age? I'm certain that there isn't. Eat your heart out, Ted Stevens. WELL I TELL YOU WHAT I DON'T KNOW TOO MUCH ABOUT THE INTERNET ROBOT MACHINES BUT I KNOW A LITTLE BIT ABOUT DOUBLE SWITCHES

but outside of that I don’t have any problem disciplining my kids – or these players.”

So McKeon will not be telling Hanley Ramirez to get his lazy fucking ass in gear via tweet or status message. Gotcha.

You have to admire straight-forward talk like that.

No you don't. You have to either 1) shrug it off as a stupid cliché or 2) nod along cautiously because you're also 80 and have no idea what Facebook and Twitter are.

Not being familiar with today’s so-called social media may be an advantage. How many games have been won via Twitter or Facebook?

Exactly 273, but who's counting? Yeah, I have to admit that the other FJM was onto something w/r/t these small time sportswriters. I might have to start checking in with Dave from Enid regularly. This guy rules.

Irony alert

We have a new definition for irony- "unfortunate, but moderately anticipated." Take it away, Jon Paul Morosi (MORE LIKE MORONSI) and sound byte artist Ryan Howard:

The Philadelphia Phillies are supposed to win the World Series. They have the Roys. They have Cliff. They have Cole. They just have to stay healthy.

Well here we are, still a week shy of St. Patrick’s Day, talking about how the Phillies can’t seem to stay healthy.

Ironic, don’t you think?

“I would guess so,” slugger Ryan Howard said with a rueful smile.

I would guess not. Both of you: get fucked.

Also fuck the Phillies and their fffffans in the fffffffface. What? Having a team where nearly every single major contributor (C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, LF, CF, SP, SP, SP, CL) is over 30 (really the only exception is Cole Hamels) ISN'T always such a great idea? Color me shocked! Of course, it's worth noting that Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, and Brad Lidge don't suck because they're over 30. They suck because they fucking suck and were terribly overrated to begin with.

Enjoy your 84 win season, Philadelphia.

Let's Just Change This Blog's Name to "Iron" Jay Mariotti

When an article's premise is that Justin Verlander is the best pitcher in baseball, you know you're in trouble. But here it is. (drumroll)

There is a touch of irony that Justin Verlander, the Tigers' staff ace, will enter his next scheduled start Friday night against the Pittsburgh Pirates with a career ERA of 3.90.

It's the same ERA Jack Morris posted during his major league career.

How is that ironic? They're nearly the exact same pitcher. Maybe if Justin Verlander were Bert Blyleven champion (and Jack Morris detractor) Rich Lederer and 3.90 were his average number of sentences per paragraph. But really, that would still be coincidental.

Oh in case you were wondering why Pat Caputo thinks Verlander's the best pitcher in the game?

Take any starting pitcher in baseball today. Who throws harder than Verlander? Who is bigger? Who combines it all with such a feel for pitching?

Nobody. In my opinion, Justin Verlander is the best starting pitcher in baseball today.

His ERA be damned.

Well then.

UPDATE: Irony Correctly Identified by Sportswriter!

Irony in its many forms has become a subject for Larry B and Jack M's ire. There are literally sixteen posts which are labeled with some form of "irony". (Note: this does not mean that there are literally sixteen posts which are labeled ironically: I suspect that at least 500 of our 1,098 posts are labeled ironically.) Several of them are celebrations of sportswriters' own ignorance, which causes a form of dramatic irony where the reader knows more than the sportswriter, in much the same way that an audience just wants to tell poor Othello about Iago's treachery. Too bad the writers' ignorace doesn't lead them to a similar tragic end. Perhaps, in some way, blogs like this one aim to restore harmony between writers and readers by exposing the writers' own ignorance, much as an audience might want to save the Moor by exposing his lieutenant in Act II.

ANYWAYS

You may have heard - on Monday night, the Dodgers beat the D-backs on a game-ending balk call. The situation was a little unorthodox. Earlier in the inning, James Loney had walked and advanced to second on Casey Blake's single - but was thrown out when he slipped while foolishly trying to advance to third. He thought he had killed a rally. Blake eventually worked his way to third and scored while distracting the D-backs' reliever, Esmerling Vasquez and causing a balk.

After the game, star MLB.com reporter Evan Drellich's column seems to have correctly used this contentious term:

For Loney, there was redemption knowing that the team won. And there was a little irony, too: Blake said he would not have tried to distract Vasquez with less than two outs.

In this case, I think it makes sense. Simply and naively defined, irony exists the separation between what's usually expected to occur and what actually occurs; or, verbally speaking, between what words are expected to mean in their literal sense and what they actually mean in the context they're used. That's mainstream sarcasm because the intended meaning of words doesn't correspond with the literal spoken meaning. The intended meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning.

In this case, Loney appreciates the irony because he thought his gaffe would have decreased his team's probability of winning. Consult:


As it turns out, Mr. Loney was quite right - the win probability chart above suggests that he decreased his team's chance of winning by nearly 20% with his stupid baserunning. Doubtless, in that case, it's better to play a little bit conservatively on the basepaths: there's no way that advancing to third would have raised the win probability by the corresponding amount.

Now the larger irony rests on Blake's statement - that, actually, Loney indirectly increased the win probability through his blunder - since Blake wouldn't have tried to distract Vasquez otherwise. If we take Blake's statement at face value, this is a textbook case of situational irony.

I feel like calling shenanigans on Casey Blake, though [postgame interview video here]. It's a pretty strong statement that you have absolutely no confidence in the batter if you're resorting to fake steals of home to try to get the picther to balk. Blake DeWitt, you got shamed.

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.]

Irony is Awesome

Two days after demonstrating that he has absolutely no conception of what the term "rally-killer" means, Jeff Francoeur decided today to go out and play a game of baseball.

For those of us that appreciate cosmic irony, Jeff Francoeur's performance tonight indicates that he has a deep and unique knowledge of what it means to be a rally killer - so much that he, with a mighty swing, managed to kill a ninth-inning rally better than any other man in baseball history.

Well done, Jeff. We salute you.

WMTMQR Part 2: Please Make the Dumb Man Stop

There is no intro I could possibly write that would do this justice. Let's begin.

This recent New York Times story about the work habits of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and Florida offensive coordinator Dan Mullen is both unintentionally hilarious, and disquieting.

Irony. So much delicious irony in that sentence.

The hilarious part: "The hours Mullen and Tebow spend together are geared around 1.3 seconds, the amount of time Tebow has to make a decision after the snap." This is another instance of the sports world's nutty obsession with claiming to be able to sense tenths of seconds.

Yeah, everyone knows that defensive linemen and blitzing linebackers and safties only move towards the QB in full second increments. Why bother practicing for a 1.3 second release when the defenders will only arrive after either exactly 1 second or exactly 2 seconds? How silly is that? I mean, come on, Tebow. Why bother with precision? Like, for example, say you need to throw a precisely timed pass to a receiver who's running an out route. Shouldn't it be good enough to say "Hey, I'll throw it about 3 seconds after the snap?" I think so. I mean, how much more precise could you get.

While we're on the subject, I think it's worth pointing out that a player who runs the 40 yard dash in 4.6 seconds is clearly no faster than one who runs it in 5.4 seconds. Why bother measuring the tenths? What a waste.

Gregg Easterbrook is so fucking stupid that I can't even creatively express my rage.

The NBA season has started, so it won't be long until an official somberly instructs a timekeeper to put a tenth of a second back on the clock.

Hopefully, because then he will write about it and then I will get to write a blog entry that looks exactly like this one in response.

There is no chance Tebow or any quarterback under game conditions can tell the difference between 1.2 seconds, 1.3 seconds or 1.4 seconds.

Very true. However, idiot, that's not the point of whatever these drills are. It's to give Tebow an innate sense of how long is too long to hold onto the ball. Say he runs drill X 100 times. He releases the ball after 1.2 seconds 25 times, after 1.3 seconds 50 times, and after 1.4 seconds 25 times. You think he couldn't pick out at least a few of the times he held the ball that fraction of a second too long? I'm reasonably sure he could. And while he may be incapable of doing that kind of thinking during a game, the point of a drill is to make it so you don't have to think when the game rolls around. You just act.

Probably a good quarterback can tell the difference between one second and two seconds under game conditions, which is impressive enough.

I can tell the difference bewteen 1 second and 2 seconds when I'm playing a pickup game with my friends. I am not a good quarterback. Anyone with a working brain should be able to make that distinction.

But, "Tim, make your read in 1.3 seconds" is a meaningless instruction.

You're a fucking idiot.

Coaches, officials and others in football and basketball talk about tenths of seconds because it makes them seem super-skilled -- obviously only an incredible genius could plan events down to the tenths of seconds!

Actually, they do it because tenths of seconds are often the difference between sacks and touchdown passes, or buzzer beaters (hence the name!) and waived-off non-shots.

No human being accurately senses the passage of tenths of seconds.

It doesn't take ESP or some kind of supernatural "sense." It takes an awareness of what it feels like to do something a certain way. This is what drills are for.

Sadly, Easterbrook is exactly right about what he considers the "disquieting" part of the NYT article (college athletes who devote excessive amounts of time to sport at the likely peril of their studies), so I won't rip it apart here. Moving on.

TMQ Accuracy Improves by 0.14 Percent: Over the weekend, Mike Pereira, the NFL's chief of officials, said officiating accuracy, which was 97.78 percent in 2007, was down this season to 97.64 percent. That's a difference of 0.14 percent! About 14,500 plays had been run in the NFL this season to the point of Pereira's statement; the difference breaks down to 20 more officiating mistakes leaguewide this season compared to last season. TMQ has always believed that most officiating decisions are correct, in college and high school as well as the pros. But 97.64 percent accuracy seems like runaway pseudo-precision.

So apparently, we can't trust division anymore. sure, my calculator says 25/4 is 6.25. But doesn't that seem a little too precise? Very suspicious. This is what astounds me about Gregg- his inability to follow a chain of logic that arrives at a sensible conclusion. If you told me "NFL officials were 97.64% accurate last year," I might be a little intrigued. I might say "oh yeah, how do you know?" And then, if you showed me this study, which shows that there were X blown calls on Y plays, and that (Y-X)/Y = 97.64, I'd say "Oh. Cool." Gregg's inability to do the same is mind boggling.

Stop Me Before I Blitz Again! Minnesota leading Houston 14-7 and facing third-and-3; seven-man blitz; long touchdown to Bernard Berrian.

See below for the Chiefs being hung out to dry by TMQ for not blitzing on a two point conversion, which, as you know, is roughly the equivalent of a third and three. (I admit that the compressed field a defense faces on a potential 2PC mitigates the "long TD" problem and makes a blitz seem slightly more logical. Still... shut up, Easterbrook.)

Arizona leading St. Louis 17-7; six-man blitz; long touchdown to undrafted Division III player Jerheme Urban.

If you'd seen this highlight, you would know that the defensive back who got "burned" for the TD literally had an interception in his hands on this play which he then miraculously flipped/tossed to Urban. This extremely unlikely occurrence is not the fault of the defensive coordinator who called for a blitz.

OK, time to wrap up with an angry and critical one-liner. Uhhhh.... Gregg Easterbrook is ugly.

There Are Probably About 30 Minutes Left in the ALCS

So this is definitely not a very timely post. Still, I have to request that Chip Caray stop referring to batted balls that make contact on the bat near the hitter's hands as having been "fisted." "Fisted to right... Drew is there." "Fisted towards Longoria." "Fisted.... just foul!" It really... how should I put this... uh.... there's just gotta be a better way to describe these hits. Please stop.

Update: Might as well turn this into a micro liveblog. Buck Martinez, on Rays reliever David Price-

Price was the winner in game 2 of this series. The irony of that was that he won a Major League postseason game before he won a regular season game!

Maybe that would be ironic if his name was David Regularseasonwin or something. As things actually are... Buck, you're not even close.

In addition to my proposed moratorium on "fisted," let's also just stop letting announcers try to identify irony. About 3% of them can do it correctly, and I just don't think the potential benefit to viewers of letting that 3% continue is worth the terrible cost to viewers of letting the other 97% continue to fuck it up.

Also, the Rays are now three outs away from winning this series. Is it really going to happen? Am I going to lose $20 to Dan-Bob, yet win happiness in Boston's demise that is worth so much more? We'll find out. I won't believe it until I see the Rays going apeshit in the clubhouse and Terry Francona giving a somber press conference.

Updated update: Slap my mouth and call me Joe Buck. They really did it. If you went to Vegas in March 2007 and found an oddsmaker that would take a $100 bet from you that the Rockies and Rays would each win a pennant in the next two years, how much would your payout be? A jillion dollars? I shouldn't answer my own rhetorical questions, makes me sound like Simmons. SPEAKING OF WHICH, segue.

Hey Bill... it's really great that you wrote a 15,000 word article on Friday about how the Sawks mounted a very cool and memorable comeback in game 5, beat the imaginary "curse of October 16th," or whatever you want to call it, and that they didn't get eliminated at home. But guess what? Go stick a plunger in a toilet and sit on it. You and your team both stink.

Zilcheroos.

One last update: John Kruk was just asked about the ramifications of the Rays starting Scott Kazmir in game 1 of the World Series. I think his response was the single smartest thing I've ever heard out of his mouth. I can't quote it directly, but his point was basically that the Phillies' power threats off the bench are all left handed. (Stairs, Jenkins, and maybe Dobbs [if your definition of "power threat" is flexible]) So by starting a lefty in the AL park, Joe Maddon probably forces Charlie Manuel to start backup catcher Chris Coste at DH. This subsequently makes pinch running for either catcher in the lineup dicey because if the other gets injured, everything goes to shit.

The Rays won a pennant.... John Kruk is talking sense... wow. Time to start watching the Arizona Cardinals verrrrrrry closely, and perhaps expecting Peter King to stop being fat and stupid. Or at least stop being stupid.

Best Title I Could Come Up With: Jemele Hill Flat Out Sucks at Writing About Sports

After more than a year at this blogowebpage, I'm starting to feel like I can assign specific adjectives to some of the writers we most frequently critique. When I think Mariotti, I think "ignorant." When I think Simmons, I think "obnoxious." And when I think Jemele Hill, it gets simpler: I think bad. She's terrible. She's just... fucking awful. I'm not linking the article. It's her most recent as of Sunday night.

More than a week has passed since the Boston Celtics won the NBA championship, and I've been patiently waiting for someone to point out the obvious.

Well, you're the sportswriter with the national audience. Maybe some dude in a bar in North Dakota made whatever point you're looking for, but it's unlikely more than six people heard him. Why don't you go out on a limb and take care of this big announcement yourself?

Fine, let me be the bearer of bad news.

Great. Glad you finally gave in.

The Western Conference is overrated.

That's it? That's your big point? Let's count the ways in which that is dumb and/or wrong.

1) Arguments about which conference/league/division is tougher or better than its counterparts are lame and pointless to begin with except in very special circumstances. (I'm honestly not sure I can make it through another college football season with this bullshit as the backdrop/main talking point. I might just have to take a fall off and hope that people find something else to yammer about by 2009. Yes, SEC, you have a lot of good teams. We get it. Go fuck yourselves.) Of course, assuming you buy into that like I do, much of this post immediately becomes very ironic. I already thought about that and I'm OK with it.

2) Six games between two teams, in the context of conference superiority, means nothing.

3) Not that it matters, see point 1, but it was pretty obvious that the Western Conference was a lot better than the Eastern Conference this year. The West was 66 games over .500 in matchups between the two. That's an enormous advantage. Yes, the Celtics were perhaps the best overall team in the league. (I still maintain that the Spurs or Jazz would beat them in the finals more than half the time, but whatever.) That, however, does not make the East better. Was the WAC better than the Big 12 because Boise State beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl? Was the NL better than the AL because the Cardinals beat the Tigers in the World Series? No, and no. Unless you're Jemele Hill, in which case: yes, and definitely, because you have a tiny brain.

The basketball certainly is entertaining. The Phoenix-San Antonio opening-round series was better than any of this year's NCAA tournament games.

It went a mere five games, and was never in question after the 1st quarter of game three. So... no. There were probably like ten March Madness games that most people would consider "better" than that series, regardless of how cool games one and two were. You sound like JA Adande.

And if I had been told I could attend only one NBA game this season, I'm positive I would have picked a Western Conference matchup.

But winning and entertaining are two different things.

Very true. And all season long, the West ran the East's collective ass up and down the court, winning 57% of the games they played against each other.

All season long, and especially during the playoffs, we heard nonstop about how much better the Western Conference is than the Eastern Conference.

If this is true, and I don't think the part about hearing it "especially" during the playoffs is, that's probably because every playoff team in the West won at least 50 games while the East sported just three 50 win teams (and one playoff team that as eight games under .500). Seems fair.

But if that's true, why has the East won three of the past five NBA championships?

This is perhaps the stupidest sentence in the whole article. Again, let's use a list to specify why:

1) Small sample size means the finals aren't indicative of much in terms of relative conference strength

2) I must have forgotten something, isn't this article about the 2007-2008 season?

3) Since in Jemele's mind it obviously isn't, I think we might as well point out that the West has won seven of the past ten titles

4) Oh wait- that makes no fucking sense; why does the fact that Detroit beat LA four years ago make the West overrated now?

5) Think about that for a second. Jemele wants you to believe that, contrary to popular belief, the West is not better than the East right now. Why? In part, because Detriot beat LA in the finals in 2004.

6) Wow.

(And when you consider the Pistons-Spurs series in 2005 lasted seven games, the East easily could have been winners of four of the past five.)

Nevermind about that last sentence being the dumbest in the article. Hey, if the Lakers don't blow that huge lead in game four of this finals, it goes seven, and you never know what can happen in a game seven. And if the refs hadn't stolen the 2006 series from the Mavs, they might have won it. So it's really the West that could have won four of the past five.

We're so fond of the style of play in the West, we've given the conference a free pass for how its teams have recently failed to show up in the NBA Finals.

The Lakers sort of showed up this year. (Not so much in 2004, but again, that was five finals ago.) On the other hand, the Spurs have obviously shown up in each of their three recent appearances, and the Mavs definitely showed up in 2006. That was a damn good series. What are we talking about again?

The past few Western Conference teams in the Finals have had one very obvious character flaw:

They've been softer than John Daly's midsection.

Wow, how do you ruin a John Daly joke? That's difficult to do. The Spurs are the opposite of soft. That Mavs team was also not soft. So let's go ahead and take what happened this year, and extend it several years back without regard for reality or facts. Sounds great.

The Mavericks mentally shrunk against the Heat in 2006.

Few could blame them, given the way that series unfolded. (They also lost games 5 and 6 by one and three points respectively, FWIW.)

The Lakers were completely undressed by the Pistons in '04. And this year, reigning MVP Kobe Bryant and his sidekick, Pau Gau-soft, were punked by the Celtics.

This is the big, bad West?

Yeah, it is. The same West that has flat out torched the East in head to head play each of the last several years. (60 games over .500 in 2006-07, 55 games in 2005-06, 62 games in 2004-05)

It's often been argued that if you entered Western Team A into the Eastern Conference, it'd either win the conference outright or at least be among the the East's top teams. But after watching how the Celtics annihilated the Lakers, how can that possibly be true?

Insanity. Absolute insanity. No explanation needed. (Except for the part about people saying Team A would outright win the East, which would obviously be untrue. And I don't remember hearing it this past season from any analyst.)

In fact, a lot of the Western teams have major issues lurking behind those pretty 50-win records.

Just as a lot of Eastern mid-tier teams have major issues "lurking" behind their 35-45 win records.

Houston can't win a playoff series.

Apparently, if you use some kind of advanced math, their inability to succeed in the Western playoffs proves that they wouldn't be one of the better teams in the East. You know, I don't see anyone out East besides Boston, Detroit, or Cleveland winning a whole lot of playoff series either.

Utah can't win on the road.

They won 17 regular season games there this year. Besides Boston, Detroit, and Orlando, no Eastern team won more than 18. In 2006-07, their 20 road wins were more than every Eastern team except Detroit and Cleveland.

Denver doesn't play defense.

Just like Washington and Cleveland don't play offense.

Golden State can't get focused (and doesn't play defense).

The Indiana Pacers, the East's #9 team this year (as the Warriors were in the West): a pillar of focusedness. Thanks, Jamal Tinsley and Jermaine O'Neal!

Phoenix can't get past San Antonio (and doesn't always play defense).

Just as with the Houston situation, apparently the fact that they can't get past a Western team that's won three titles in the last six years means they wouldn't cut it out East.

New Orleans doesn't have enough pieces and is too inexperienced.

Hilarious and inaccurate anecdotal bullshit.

Dallas has yet to regain its confidence after losing to Miami in the Finals.

They have managed, however, to continue to win lots of games.

And San Antonio, the West's savior, is starting to get old.

OK, you got me there. Clearly they suck. And Boston and Detroit are a couple of spring chickens. No key players of 30 on either of those teams.

At least in the East, there's no pretending. When Eastern Conference teams stink, they make it obvious (see: the 76ers', Nets' and Cavaliers' Finals appearances).

This is a direct contradiction to pretty much everything you've written so far.

A team with 37 wins (Atlanta) and a team with 45 wins (Cleveland) pushed the Celtics to seven games -- something the mighty West's Lakers had no shot at doing.

Something they had no shot whatsoever at doing, unless of course they managed to not pull an epic collapse in game four and lose in the final minute. Yeah, they were really miles away from making it go seven.

Both Boston and Detroit had a better winning percentage against Western Conference teams this season than against teams in their own conference. But outside of Boston, very few people thought the Celtics had a chance against the Lakers.

Why?

Because Vegas is close to LA, and because everyone thought Kobe would carry the Lakers because recent history suggests that having the best individual player in a Finals will lead to victory. I don't think conference superiority was at the forefront of most people's minds. Maybe it was tucked somewhere in the back. Maybe.

Understand, this isn't an argument about which conference is deeper. Clearly the West wins that argument. Every Western playoff team won more than 50 games, while just three teams in the East accomplished that. Only four Western teams had a losing record against the East -- the SuperSonics, Clippers, Timberwolves and Grizzlies. Just four Eastern teams managed a winning record against the West.

(Larry B slaps holds head in hands, slowly shaking it back and forth)

That ship sailed the second you started writing this, Jemele. You weren't on it.

But despite those gaudy, imbalanced numbers, the East's recent dominance in the NBA Finals

Probably the loosest usage of "dominance" I've ever seen.

has earned its teams the right to tell everyone to be quiet about how great the West is.

I sure hope the Celtics' and Pistons' shoulders don't get too sore from carrying those other thirteen teams around in the context of that argument.

At the very least, there should be a moratorium on that crazy talk that the NBA playoff format should be changed so that teams with the top 16 records make the playoffs, regardless of conference.

So Jemele can even admit (like five sentences ago) that the West is deeper than the East. But she still calls for a moratorium on this idea, which has been proposed precisely to award the conference with more depth. Let's hear it for consistency.

Golden State last season against the five, count 'em, five Eastern playoff teams that finished with worse records than the Warriors: 8-2. Yeah, it would have been totally unfair to let them into the playoffs in front of the 37 win Hawks or 40 win Sixers.

Horrendous.

Ironic Irony

I'm sure a lot of you out there were already familiar with this, but I just stumbled across it this weekend. Why, look at that... who's that handsome, mustachioed devil on the cover of "Baseball For Dummies?" I think I'm going to label this as a punchline that writes itself. In fact, it falls so deeply into that category that I'm not even going to let the damn thing write itself. Nothing at all needs to be said about the following image.

Oh, The Irony

Thanks to the results of today's wholly satisfying game, you'll probably see a lot less Boston bashing from me during the next few weeks. I feel so incredibly relieved. It's like an enormous weight has been lifted from my frail, un-muscular shoulders. Don't get me wrong; I still hate those teams and their fans just as much as I did 24 hours ago. But the proverbial itch has been scratched. Knowing that pretty much everyone north or east of Hartford feels like a bag of shit right now really frees up my mind. That said, I will still continue to post about Bill Simmons with the same frequency I have been. Boston-centric articles by him are on an entirely different level of awful than those written by other journalists.

I was going to post about this before the game, but things are a little busy right now. (Incidentally, after this, you won't hear from me again until Wednesday at the earliest. So if someone else around here wants to step up for a couple days... yeah... otherwise, see you when I see you.) From Simmons' Super Bowl pick column:

Over the past few weeks, I have become mildly obsessed with how this moment came to be -- and by moment, I mean "the chance to go 19-0" -- partly because everyone is dissecting the Patriots these days, and it's frustrating to hear dumb points or half-assed thoughts about my favorite team,

What is it again that you do at ESPN, Bill? Oh that's right. About 50% of the time, you write about the Sawks/Patties/Celts in a fashion that's totally uninteresting to people that don't already like them. The other 50%, you offer practically nothing but "dumb points and half-assed thoughts" about other peoples' favorite teams. Did you really write that and think your non-Boston readers wouldn't mind?

Who else out there is brimming with excitement to see what Bill comes up with re: the Super Bowl? I'm terrified that he'll puss out and not even write anything. But assuming he does... don't bother emailing me and requesting that I make a post about it. I'll already be halfway finished.

mike celzic fails to understand irony

the venerable msnbc.com journalist known as "hatguy" wrote this article back on sunday, but it's definitely still worth reviewing. re: mr. april (you know exactly who i'm talking about), and the possibility that his agent scott boras has already been talking with the cubs about him being a part owner upon retirement in addition to playing there for the rest of his career. now, follow along and see if you can find the irony.

The big magazine article is out, the denials are in place and Alex Rodriguez, near the end of one of what may be his greatest season as a hitter, is once again the center of controversy, seemingly without even trying.

how does he do it? i've always assumed it's because he has a job with every major media news outlet. so whenever he so much as takes a piss, he immediately goes to the offices of all these media outlets and gets a story about himself published. i mean, what other possible explanation is there for all the exposure he gets?

“Great players with great demand create great rumors,” Boras told the Associated Press, and even that denial reeked of spin and ego, as if this sort of thing is to be expected.

non sarcastically- yes, this particular rumor is a little bit outside the scope of the norm. it's not everyday you hear about a player possibly negotiating to own one of the most valuable teams in sports before he even plays for them. i acknowledge that. at the same time, i'm still comfortable saying:

sarcastically- how dare scott boras imply that a popular and hyperexposed player like a-rod (who plays in new york to boot) is often at the center of media firestorms! what is he, high? great players in great demand don't creat great rumors. we all know how it really works- shitty players not in demand at all create great rumors. did you hear journeyman reliever rudy seanez recently bought a new TV? true story, i read about it on teh internets.

What’s got to be annoying to the Yankees is the timing of this – a week before the playoffs. When the story should be about the Yankees’ remarkable comeback from 14.5 games back to the brink of the AL East title, it’s about A-Rod. It always seems to be that way.

funny how that works. i'm curious- what's your theory about why people constantly talk about arod, mike? maybe you and several hundred of your fellow sportswriters should write columns containing your explanations for this strange phenomenon for several years, and let the fans read them and decide. that might help clear things up because i currently have no idea. none. and for me it would kill two birds with one stone, because personally i feel like i don't know enough about a-rod. he's really kind of underexposed. what's his personal life like? does he have a girlfriend? do he and derek jeter hang out ever? please, someone link me.

i really don't have enough energy to address any of the other central points of the article. to sum it all up-

1. yeah, scott boras is a sleazy guy.
2. yeah, if this rumor is true, it's a sleazy thing to do.
3. yeah, the timing of it is maybe a little bit questionable.
4. but far and away, most importantly- here we have yet another goddamn column about arod. more specifically it's one about something related to him that hasn't even been verified. and within it- this column made out of guesswork, theorization, and vague attempts at serious analysis- hatguy has the gall to fucking complain about how arod is always in the news. unbelievable.

my parting shot, unrelated to the central idea of the piece-

He’s an incredible baseball player, but stuff like this sure does make him annoying, sometimes to distraction. He’s like the guy who cuts the cheese in a crowded elevator and doesn’t get why everybody’s trying to get away as far away from him as possible and making faces – after all, the odor doesn’t bother him.

who the hell does hat? who is this imaginary guy mike's referring to? i'm a 23 year old bachelor who still usually thinks bodily function jokes are funny. i have a lot of brash and crude friends who think pretty much the same way. and when we're hanging out together in private, we often laugh at any "cheese" that might get "cut" by one of us. yet i still have to say that i definitely don't know anyone like this guy, who would react as mike describes to a fart released among strangers. i'm pretty sure even the brashest and crudest of my beer swilling, self scratching, profanity using, about-their-appearance-and-demeanor-not-caring friends would be embarrassed to pass gas in a crowded elevator. this ridiculously off point "don't you readers know exactly who i'm talking about?" analogy kind of makes me wonder what celzic does when he lets one loose in a crowded public place. *shudder*

update: does woody paige write his own headlines? no, but i'm glad i asked

last sunday i posted about a ridiculously terrible pun in a headline attached to a woody paige article. a couple on-the-ball commenters pointed out that traditionally, writers do not come up with headlines. that's a responsibility left to editors. i know that, of course, but my line of thinking in this particular situation was that the pun was so bad paige must be bucking this trend and cutting the editors out of the process. well, who better to settle the question of whether or not this was the case than woody himself? i emailed him that night, asking for a clarification. his response is nothing short of hilarious. since i thought people might not believe he said what he said if i simply copied and pasted the text, i've decided to post a screen shot. i know it's too small to read as it appears here, so click to enlarge.

so, here's the deal: i was wrong, and now look like even more of an idiot. first i attribute a crime committed by an atlanta falcons DB ten years ago to the wrong guy, and now this! fortunately, woody bails me out by providing a deliciously ironic response to my question. sure, he's trying to be funny and jokingly self-degradating... but i think we can all agree he's actually just unintentionally telling things like they are. thanks woody! it was worth it for me to embarrass myself just to get that little "joke" from you in writing. sports journalism: it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

bitter middle aged man complains about allegedly bitter old man

before i dive into this let me clarify something: i'm well aware that i am a bitter young man. i'm four steps ahead of you. i'm heading you off at the pass. i know i'm about to write a very bitter post in which i criticize a bitter middle aged guy for being bitter about a bitter old guy, thus furthering the cycle of bitterness. don't worry, the irony is not lost on me.

now that that's out of the way, how dumb is this article by cbssportsline's gregg doyel? basically he's saying that as one of the most hallowed records in sports is about to be broken by a player well known to be cheater, the non-cheater who currently holds the record should stop answering the countless questions the media has for him about the occasion. that's right, just clam up and don't make a peep. either that or lie to them. let's laugh along:

Yammerin' Hank's bitter old man routine wearing thin

i'm not going to lie, "yammerin' hank" is a sweet parodic nickname. unfortunately the column goes way downhill from here.

OK, Hank Aaron. We hear you. Over and over and over. And again and again.

i'll bring this up about five more times throughout the post, but you know why we keep hearing aaron's comments on this situation? because the media keeps asking him. i don't think he's tracking down media members and holding them against their will until they write down what he has to say and agree to publish it. the media WANTS to know his thoughts, because they know plenty of their readers want to know. it's pretty simple. they don't always get it right, but ideally, that's how the media is supposed to work. they get information from inside sources that people without access to those sources want to know.

Point taken. You won't be there when Barry Bonds breaks your home run record. You won't fly to San Francisco if the Giants start a home series with Bonds at 754 homers, one short of your career total. You won't fly to Milwaukee if it might happen there. Won't fly to Cincinnati or Chicago either. Tired of traveling, you say. Tired of flying.

Unless of course the 755 circus comes to Atlanta. If that should happen -- and it could, with the Giants visiting Aug. 14-16 -- Braves vice president Hank Aaron won't even take a car to his own ballpark. Won't ride a train. Won't hail a cab.

At that point, Aaron will drag his weary bones onto a plane and get the hell out of town. Where would he go? Anywhere. Anywhere but Atlanta. Barry Bonds is a circus, and Hank Aaron can smell the elephant dung from here.

That's fine. That's his record, and he can handle its passing any way he sees fit. He has no obligation, as I'm reading on other websites, to be there for No. 756. You want to watch, watch. Don't want to look? Don't look.

good. i'm glad we've established that, because it's more than true. and while some of aaron's comments (as doyel will include later in his piece) definitely have a tone of bitterness to them, aaron's sentiment in and of itself is certainly not bitter. there's no rule that says you have to accept everyone's accomplishments with a huge smile and genuine congratulations. if you have reason to dislike what someone has done you're more than welcome to voice your feelings on the issue. this doesn't make you bitter, as long as your reason for dislike is rational and legitimate. does aaron have a rational and legitimate reason to dislike what bonds has done? i think he does. (to understand my point, you really only have to read the first 10 or so paragraphs. you also have to possess a brain.)

Just shut up already, Yammerin' Hank.


One sound bite at a time, he has crossed over from sympathetic victim to bitter old man.

one paragraph at a time, doyel has crossed over from journalist trying to make a valid point to bitter idiot.

Aaron has always had a touch of the bitters, but with reason. When he was going about his own record chase, tracking down Babe Ruth in the 1970s, America showed its ugly side. Aaron, a black man pursuing a white icon, received hate mail and even death threats as he closed in on Ruth. America's ambivalence was embodied by commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who was on hand for Aaron's record-tying 714th home run but didn't care to see No. 715.

i didn't know that, but that's kind of sad. i wonder what the circumstances were.

That capped a career that had begun in the 1950s, when various baseball teams, and various cities, were still being integrated. Aaron must have seen and heard things, must have lived things, that were unspeakable then and are unfathomable now.

In April 1999 Aaron told The Sporting News, "If someone had asked me about this 25 years ago, or 20 years ago, you would have found a very bitter person. (But) I've taken my mother's advice. She said, 'Things you have no control over, don't worry about.' And so I'm just going about my business. I have other things to worry about. I'm enjoying my life, period."

this quote is used heinously out of context. i'm going to guess aaron's mother was talking about racism or some other such "big" issue, not the home run chase. as of april 1999 no one was even close to threatening the record. mcgwire and sosa had just gone for 70 and 66 home runs in a season, respectively, but no active player with any kind of shot at breaking hank's mark was within 300 of 755 for their career. bonds had 409. i couldn't find the quoted article anywhere in order to get the original context, but suffice it to say aaron was almost definitely NOT talking about anyone breaking his record. now watch how doyel tries to use it in that context anyways.

Now? Not so much. Aaron isn't enjoying Bonds' pursuit.

nor does he have to.

In fact, he's clearly miserable that his record is being broken, which is understandable. It's a long drop from No. 1 to No. 2, and it could be as simple as that, although I doubt it. It's probably more accurate to say Aaron is bitter not just that his record will be broken, but that it will be broken by a player widely believed -- though not proven conclusively -- to have cheated with steroids.

as if this is not a fair or logical stance for aaron to take.

Aaron hit 755 home runs as a 6-foot, 180-pound marvel, notable physically only for the strength in his wrists. It was natural, that strength. Bonds' strength? Could be natural, but again, I doubt it. Bonds is a 6-1, 230-pound tank who has gotten noticeably bigger and more powerful in his late 30s, a feat heretofore thought impossible.

Bonds is going to get the record, but America will not rise as one and cheer. Aaron himself won't even be there, an unbelievable but understandable snub. Again, if Hank doesn't want to watch Bonds and his enormous chest and shoulders and skull step on home plate with No. 756, I understand.

But shut up already.

oh oh oh ohhhhhhhhhhhh. i see. i've been wasting my time arguing that it's well within aaron's rights to be bitter about bonds. you're instead implying that he should just stop giving interviews about the subject. but what kind of message would that send? my guess is, it would make him sound exactly as bitter as he does now! everyone knows that a "no comment" from a guy like aaron in a situation like this is exactly equivalent to any bitter, negative quip.

furthermore i have a hard time believing a majority of americans interested in the home run chase would, like doyel, prefer silence on aaron's part. aaron's position on bonds is a moderately interesting story if you ask me. certainly worth being written about as bonds closes the gap between the two and ultimately breaks the record. and i think doyel's view is the exception while mine is the rule on that subject. my advice to him and anyone out there with a similar view is that if you see an article whose title indicates it contains quotes from aaron about bonds, maybe you should just not read it. shouldn't be too hard to do.

Since April, Aaron has carved out his bitter position on Bonds, sounding angrier and sillier to the point he reached Thursday, when he was asked about Bonds and responded curtly: "I don't have any thoughts about Barry. I don't even know how to spell his name."

since the beginning of this column, doyel has carved out his bitter position on aaron... you get the idea.

In April, Aaron had told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he had no interest in speaking with Bonds as this season unfolds. He had no wisdom to share, no advice to give. Nothing for the baseball player to whom he forever will be linked.

as if aaron somehow owed this to bonds.

"I have no intention of trying to get in contact with him or doing anything with him in regard to his (pursuit)," Aaron said. "Nothing. Why should I? It's really not a big concern of mine. I don't know why I should have to do anything. I might send him a telegram."

In May, Aaron told the Associated Press he wouldn't be there for No. 756.

"I traveled for 23 years, and I just get tired of traveling," he said. "I'm not going to fly to go see somebody hit a home run, no matter whether it is Barry or Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig or whoever it may be. I'm not going any place."

Unless Bonds comes to Atlanta in August within range of the record. If that happens, Aaron said, "I'd probably fly to West Palm Beach to play golf."

yup, that all sounds pretty bitter. but perfectly permissible as a news story. and also kind of funny; i don't know if aaron was being serious or joking about sending bonds a telegram (can you even do that anymore?) but i like that quote either way.

Then on Thursday, Aaron acted as if he had barely heard of Barry Barnes or Bones or Bonds or whatever his name is. Great line, Hank. Make it your last on the subject.

just as this better be the last column i read on this particular subject.

Because America wants to hear one thing, and one thing only, from a bitter old man:

Silence.

i strongly disagree. i don't think america at all minds hearing the thoughts of baseball's current home run record holder on the cheater that's about to break said record, even if those thoughts are negative. and maybe it's because i'm a bitter young man who wants to learn as much as he can about being bitter from someone who does it well, but i personally want to hear three things and three things only from a bitter old man: (1) his thoughts on rap/heavy metal music, (2) his thoughts on whether youngsters these days have respect for their elders, and (3) whether or not this whole damn country is going to hell in a handbasket. oh, and if he's hank aaron, he can comment on barry bonds as well.