Here's something that doesn't suck

Normally I just link when I do a "something that doesn't suck" post, but this was ESPN Insider, so I'm posting it in full.  What you need to know is this: Buster Olney sometimes has dumb ideas.  This time, he has a really, really smart idea.

Mike Mussina spent each of his 18 seasons in the most treacherous waters pitchers have ever faced, among the whitecaps of what will always be remembered as an era of rampant steroid use -- and in the offense-rich American League East, no less. He was a fly ball pitcher who called two homer-happy ballparks -- Camden Yards and Yankee Stadium -- his home during his career.

It’s as if he navigated his way daily through one of those monstrous marble-hard golf courses in Scotland covered with bunkers that have names (such as St. Andrews' Road Hole Bunker), as compared to the Executive Par-3s of 2014. In 2000, Mussina’s last season with the Orioles, 47 hitters mashed 30 or more homers; in 2014, only 11 batters reached 30 homers.

Mussina finished his career with a 3.68 ERA and is 19th all time in strikeouts. He also is 24th in WAR among pitchers, and most of the guys ahead of him on the list are in the Hall of Fame. 

A park-independent stat would help (ERA+ of 123), but yeah, Mussina is a HOFer for sure.  UNLESS HE HAD BACKNE.

But his chances for induction will improve slightly this year because I’m abstaining from the voting for the first time, and won’t submit a ballot. The same is true for Curt Schilling, and Tim Raines, and at least two others who I think should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. 

Also both HOFers.  And I'm sure you all understand why Olney isn't voting, but I'll let him explain it.

To repeat: I think Mussina, Schilling and Raines and others are Hall of Famers, but it’s better for their candidacy if I don’t cast a ballot.

If that sounds backward, well, that’s how the Hall of Fame voting has evolved, squeezed between rules that badly need to be updated and the progression of the candidates linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The process needs to be pruned to allow voters to get back to answering a simple question about each candidate: Was his career worthy of the Hall of Fame?

How novel.  It's almost like, let's just put the best players in the hall (allowing for disagreement re: steroid users; that's not even why I'm posting this, even though Olney agrees with me), instead of making some guys wait because fuck you I'm a self-important sportswriter, or not voting for guys like Rickey Henderson on the first ballot because no one's ever been unanimous, or whatever.  Christ.  Baseball writers are the worst people on earth (besides NFL-only fanboys).

When I started covering Major League Baseball, getting the opportunity to participate in the Hall of Fame voting was something to really look forward to, a nice carrot through the long days of spring training, the travel delays of the summer and extra-inning games. 

Well now you're just mocking those of us with regular shitty jobs.

After being a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America for 10 years, receiving a blank Hall of Fame ballot for the first time, with voting instructions and pages of notes on each candidate also in the envelope, carried the same excitement as receiving a thick college admission letter.

So it's incredible that declining to cast a ballot is even a consideration. But in light of where we are, it seems like the right thing to do for the candidates involved, until the rules are adjusted.

For years, the rule that each writer can vote for no more than 10 candidates was probably irrelevant; it certainly was for me, given that I usually voted for anywhere from four to seven players. It's not clear why the "Rule of 10" was put in place, but I suspect it was originally designed to prevent writers from flooding their ballots with names of players who had no chance of being elected, just so they could report to their buddy that they had voted for them.

Christ.  Baseball writers are the worst people on earth (besides NFL-only fanboys).

A decade ago, nobody could have anticipated the quandary that has developed because of this rule, and because of the debate surrounding the steroid-era candidates.

Mark McGwire first appeared on the ballot in December 2006, five years after he retired, and he became the first real test case for what the voters would do with players either directly linked with performance-enhancing drugs or suspected of doing them.

As written in this space many times, I think all players should be judged within the context of the era in which they played, 

I'd like to burn that last phrase into Murray Chass's lawn.  Sadly, I won't be able to do that, because it's a crime, and because I don't know where he lives.

and during McGwire's career, the sport was saturated with performance-enhancing drugs, largely because over the period of about 15 years, no one within the institution of baseball -- not the union leaders, not MLB owners, not the commissioner, not the clean players, nor the media that covered the sport -- 

MURRAY SAW PIAZZA'S BACKNE.  HE SAW IT.  AND MAYBE HE REPORTED ON IT I'M NOT SURE, BUT PROBABLY NOT, BECAUSE IF HE HAD, WE'D NEVER HEAR THE END OF IT FROM HIM.

aggressively addressed the growing problem. 

Good thing Tony La Russa was triumphantly inducted into the HOF last summer!  Now there's a guy who is in no way linked to PEDs.

Through that inaction, what evolved was a chemical Frankenstein of a game. Like it or not, that's what the sport was in that time: no drug testing, lots of drug use, lots of drug users, lots of money being made by everybody. (And by the way, no team, baseball executive or player has offered to give back the money made in that time.) 

And this is why park- and era-adjusted stats are so useful--we can tell from McGwire's 163 OPS+ that even in an era when everyone and their brother was hitting 25 HRs per season, he was still way way way above and beyond most other players.  (I think he's a fringe HOFer, though; just 64 WAR, probably not on an HOF track when he started using.)

The idea of retroactive morality is ridiculous, 

I would also like to burn that into Chass's lawn.

especially given that the folks in the sport had a strong idea by the mid-'90s that there was a growing problem and nobody did anything about it. Here's Jose Canseco being asked about his steroid use on national television before the 1988 playoffs, right after Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal. And here's a Bob Nightengale story from 1995 in which then-interim commissioner Bud Selig was asked about the problem, and made mention of a "private meeting" the year before. Yet serious testing and penalties really weren't in place until 2006.

McGwire was a star during that time, with 583 homers, including his record-setting 70 homers in 1998, so I voted for him. That was a minority opinion, for sure: 23.5 percent of the 545 voters cast ballots for him, far short of the 75 percent needed for induction, but more than the 5 percent required to remain on the ballot. The McGwire test case continued, however, because his candidacy carried over to the next ballot, and so did that of Rafael Palmeiro and others, until they became stacked up like planes on a runway, their Hall of Fame situation stuck in a weird sort of purgatory.

This is how the rule that limits writers to 10 players became a serious problem. Roger Clemens became eligible, and Barry Bonds. Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza also hit the ballot, and while there is no indisputable evidence of steroid use by those two as there is for Palmeiro, who was suspended in 2005 after a positive test, a high number of voters apparently withheld votes for them because of suspicion of PED use. The career numbers for Bagwell and Piazza are overwhelmingly worthy for Hall of Fame election, but Bagwell has never finished higher than 59.6 percent in his four years on the ballot; Piazza, the all-time leader in homers for catchers, got only 57.8 percent of the vote in his first year.

If McGwire, Palmeiro and Sosa never make it, that's fine with me.  Bonds I will be more upset about, although it'll be annoying.  But fucking fuck, if Bagwell and Piazza never make it, I'm going to go to Cooperstown just to take a piss on that building.  Christ.  Baseball writers are the worst people on earth (besides NFL-only fanboys).

So the list of serious candidates grew well beyond 10 spots. Last year I counted 17 players I thought were Hall of Fame-worthy, from Greg Maddux to Tom Glavine to Craig Biggio. But because of the Rule of 10, I had to leave off seven players who I believe are of Hall of Fame caliber. That included Mussina, Schilling and Raines. For the first time since McGwire became eligible, I didn't cast a vote for him.

The way I picked among the 17 was to rank them in order among the first nine, from the best player on down, regardless of the PED question. I also included Jack Morris, who was in his last year of eligibility; I wanted to give Morris a fair last shot with my ballot, knowing that Mussina, Raines, Schilling and Jeff Kent probably would get enough votes to stay on the ballot for this winter.

Morris got his fair shot during his mediocre career, and during the previous 14 years.  But whatever.  This is all mostly reasonable.

But really, that didn't seem right, because there's nothing in the voting rules that suggest I should weigh the candidates against each other, or must consider the landscape of the ballot. There is no guidance for picking 10 players from a 17-man field of worthy candidates. There is only this:

"Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played."

That's actually more complex than I thought it was.  That's a lot of criteria.  You could elect Jeter based on any one of them!  Especially integrity, or something!

The practical reality was that I wasn't deciding on whether to vote for Mussina based on career performance. My vote was predicated entirely on his standing among an extraordinary volume of candidates, from Maddux to Glavine to Bonds to Piazza to Frank Thomas. (Let's again dismiss the notion that the "character" was ever used by writers as a serious criterion for election before McGwire's name appeared on the 2007 ballot. We all know the stories about some of the racists, alleged cheats, drunkards and PED users who already are in the Hall of Fame.)

If that commenter from last week who made the slavery argument wants to come back and discuss that analogy further, I encourage him/her to do so.

And while I think Schilling and Mussina are Hall of Fame-worthy, my ballot hurt them. My ballot counted against their percentage. Five hundred seventy-one voters cast ballots last year, and my ballot was among the 450 that didn't have Mussina included, which lowered his percentage.

That makes no sense. 

HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE LIKE JACK MORRIS AND HAD THROWN A SHUTOUT IN GAME 7 OF THE WORLD SERIES.  -stupid baseball writers

Christ.  Baseball writers are the worst people on earth (besides NFL-only fanboys).

The Rule of 10 seemed to factor heavily in the voting last year, dragging down the vote percentages for everyone from Morris to Clemens to Alan Trammell, whose numbers plummeted from 33.6 percent of the vote to just 20.6 percent. Clearly Trammell wasn't being judged based on his career; he lost votes last winter because of the choices made under the Rule of 10. 

Poor Trammell.  I'm sure White Sox fan Chris W feels the same way.

Maddux was a slam-dunk candidate after posting 355 career wins and four Cy Young Awards, 

BUT DID YOU BUY A TICKET TO WATCH HIM PLAY???????????  -stupid baseball writers

Christ.  Baseball writers are the worst people on earth (besides NFL-only fanboys).

but he was left off 16 ballots entirely. I don't know who all of those 16 were, but a couple of writers mentioned to me privately that in dealing with the confines of the ballot limit, they thought about not voting for Maddux and Glavine, knowing that they'd probably get in anyway. It would be a shame to think that Maddux lost any votes because of the Rule of 10 problem.

I'm sure he did, as well as the "we can't vote anyone in unanimously because DURRRR" problem.

Christ.  Baseball writers are the worst people on earth (besides NFL-only fanboys).

During the summer, the Hall of Fame adjusted some of its rules. Voters are now required to register to receive a ballot, writers can lose the right to vote, 

DAN LE BATARD DISGRACED THE HOLY AND SACRED RITUAL OF THE PREVIOUSLY TOTALLY PERFECT VOTING PROCESS.  WE MUST MAKE SURE THIS NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.  ALSO, JIM RICE IS A HALL OF FAMER AND LOU WHITTAKER ISN'T.

and players could remain on the ballot for a shorter period of time.

Surprisingly, however, the Rule of 10 was not altered. The same impossible math remains: I'm counting 15 worthy candidates right now for those 10 spots. Other writers are telling me they see anywhere from 12 to 20 worthy candidates, which means that in their eyes, they'll be leaving players they feel are Hall of Fame-worthy off their ballots. It means that as great as Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez were -- both should be unanimous, in light of their accomplishments -- they might lose votes as writers struggle with the question of how to deal with the ballot guideline that seems completely arbitrary. (Why not a ballot limit of 11? Why not 12? Why not eight? Why not six? Is it 10 only because it's a round number?) 

Since this was written a week ago, they have bumped it to 12.  Obviously the problem is now fixed, just like how the NFL fixed the totally idiotic fact that there are still ties by really really really mildly tweaking the regular season OT rules a couple years ago.  WE'VE GOT A GOLDEN GOOSE HERE, BOYS.  LET'S NOT MAKE A SENSIBLE RULE CHANGE AND RISK KILLING IT WHILE IT'S LAYING THESE GOLDEN EGGS.

Christ.  NFL owners are the worst people on earth (besides baseball writers and NFL-only fanboys).

Maybe I should've figured it out last year, but this puzzle cannot be solved. There's no way to judge each candidate strictly on his merits given the current ballot limitations, no fair way to vote.

I can't stand the protest ballots we've seen in the past, when someone signs a blank ballot that counts as a vote against all candidates. That's unfair. 

Someone, please fire this asshole and take away his ballot (and possibly his children, if he has any).

I've hated to hear the stories of voters who haven't voted for a player because they didn't like them personally. 

Baseball writers would never be so petty!  Don't be ridiculous!

The voting shouldn't be about the writer; it should be only about the players and whether they're worthy of induction.

You lost me there.  Please revisit that sentence, and figure out where backne fits in.

And I can't stand the idea of casting a ballot that works against players that I think should be inducted, such as Mussina, Schilling or others. So as much as it has been an honor in the past to participate in the voting, I'll abstain, and hope that in the future the rules change.

Christ.  You know the rest.

Hey look! Here's something that doesn't suck!

As a commenter on my last post pointed out, apparently Zach Lowe has always been the kind of dope who is interested in teams' logos and court designs, which is unfortunate.  However, notwithstanding that, apparently he's got a pretty good head on his shoulders.  This is most definitely a good read.  I mean, if you're not a mouth-breathing moron, you know this country's level of discourse about sports, particularly individual players' legacies, has basically been reduced to bunch of turds screaming at each other on TV, full of sound and fury and lacking any substance.  (Thanks, Mark Shapiro!)  But it feels good to see a very sensible article like this published on ESPN.

A sample, in case you're too lazy to click that link:

Narratives are fun, and interesting. They can get at larger truths, and they reflect the way that we, as fans and media, think and talk about basketball. There is value in just analyzing that — in digging into media discussions and fan behavior. The zoomed-out examination of basketball, and of positions, at FreeDarko changed the way a lot of us think about the game — for the better. Shining a light on some of the team-level “narratives” — the notion that a jump-shooting team can’t win it all, for instance — can reveal deeper truths about the game, even if anyone paying token attention already knew the basic conclusion.

Some narratives are also, frankly, dumb. The word “narrative” can act as a synonym for “line of thought that exists somewhere in the world, and is demonstrably false.” We use an awful lot of brain space addressing and rebutting “narratives” that probably don’t merit all that much attention, save for the fact that they bring clicks. The “LeBron isn’t clutch” narrative after the 2011 Finals was ridiculous, given his past buzzer-beaters, overtime baskets, insane streaks of consecutive points, and other playoff heroics. It was accurate to say that LeBron quaked under the pressure of his first Finals appearance with villainous Miami, but that’s very different — and less catchy — than just branding him a crunch-time failure.

The notion that Dirk Nowitzki was “soft” gained some traction after the 2006 Finals and the Mavericks’ subsequent flameouts, and it died only after Nowitzki triumphed in those 2011 Finals against the Heat. Nowitzki was never soft. He wasn’t even a much different player in 2011 than the one he had been in 2006 and 2007, when Golden State’s “We Believe” team pulled off an all-time upset over Dallas. He was more experienced, smarter, better at posting up the Stephen Jackson types who gave him fits in prior seasons.

But he hadn’t discovered some inner fortitude that allowed him to succeed in 2011 where he had failed before. Nowitzki before snuffing the Heat was, by almost any measure, one of the greatest postseason performers and clutch shooters in league history. He hit monster shots in monster moments every season, including in the last minutes of close games in those 2006 Finals, when Udonis Haslem frustrated him into some unusually bad shooting nights. Even then, Nowitzki was taking and making clutch baskets. They are on record. They exist. You can watch a lot of them online, for free.

Even better, the intro to the same piece:

Things changed at the end of Game 5 of last season’s Clippers-Thunder playoff series. Chris Paul made three critical mistakes in the final 45 seconds of an improbable Thunder rally, and Oklahoma City wrapped the series in the next game. The Clippers were vanquished again.

You began hearing it, and reading it, all over the place: Nine seasons in, Chris Paul, the alleged Point God, had yet to appear in the conference finals. It has been no different in this corner of the Internet. Andrew Sharp wrote incisively about how Paul’s future playoff fate, and all the variables that will go into it, would determine the way we remember and talk about Paul. As I stood backstage during the taping of the first Grantland Basketball Hour, attempting not to crap my pants at the thought of appearing on national TV between Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose (and Jalen’s bat), I listened intently as Simmons asked Jeff Van Gundy about Paul’s conference finals shutout: “What does it mean?”

I kind of wanted to rush the stage.

I'll tell you what it means, Bill.  It means you're a dumbass.

More about Bill later this week.

The infrequently used "something that doesn't suck" label gets its annual moment in the sun

This is really fucking good.

I'll just leave this here, because Sheehan says it better than I ever could

And by "this" I mean this.

Even if you are a sports-drugs absolutist, even if you believe that Alex Rodriguez did everything MLB seems to be claiming he did, and that he gets graded on a different curve for the same actions (like buying evidence), and that he can be nailed for one, two, even three violations at the same time, it is not possible to believe that Rodriguez did more to harm the game of baseball than the man who repeatedly violated federal law on his way to orchestrating the cancellation of a World Series.

The single most destructive act towards baseball in my lifetime isn't a player cheating, isn't Pete Rose betting, isn't a team snorting coke and it isn't baseball teams colluding. It's 1994, and 1994 happened because Bud Selig called a play that a Supreme Court Justice saw right through. Alex Rodriguez could kidnap the NL Central, the Texas League and the Southeastern Conference, shoot them up with heroin and drop them off a barge and not violate XII.B to the extent that Selig has. $1.2 billion, multiple violations of labor law and a cancelled World Series; materially detrimental to the best interests of baseball in violation of federal law, indeed.

Yup.

Knock me over with a feather

What the hell is this? Is that an interesting, well researched article by Bill Simmons that ISN'T also a) mainly Bill Simmons telling everyone about Bill Simmons and his family and friends or b) indefensibly wrong about sports in a dozen different ways? By jove I think it is. Good on him. When he sticks to basketball, and specifically sticks to telling a story about basketball with facts, he's somewhat inoffensive. I know that I haven't provided a link to a Simmons column in years, but go ahead and click that link. It's not a trick. Rick Astley is not waiting for you on the other side. That's one of the most interesting articles I've read in the last few months. No foolin'.

Of course, just in case you were worried that Simmons was turning some kind of corner, he's not.

LOL! I thought he meant Miami-OKC, until it turned out that he didn't

1) Fuck stories about your fantasy team, I promise you no one worthwhile cares 2) Fuck your AL-only keeper league 3) Depending on how the keeper rules work, that's either a bad trade or a comically atrocious trade

America's foremost Manning hater strikes again. HE'S NOT AS GOOD AS BRADY, HE JUST ISN'T, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PROVE THIS BUT I KNOW IT DEEP DOWN IN MY SOUL. I THINK IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT HE DOESN'T PLAY FOR THE GREATRIOTS. Bonus stupidity points for implying that Tebow has any kind of shot at ever being more than a mediocre QB.

Finally! The "Blow Up American Idol" draft everyone's been clamoring for!

Great idea for a sketch. Pitch it to Kimmel! No but seriously, that's a pretty bad joke.

Still, I strongly and non-sarcastically recommend the article I linked at the beginning of the post. It's very cool. Here, I'll provide the link again.

(Wait, no, don't click that one! Click the one at the top instead)

Time to roll out the ol' "something that doesn't suck" label

Because Chris W forwarded me a real winner. Dan Wetzel, the floor is yours.

I can't decide who I hate more: the NFL and its owners, or the NCAA and its administrators. I guess I don't necessarily have to choose. I can just hope they all contract lupus. And I do.

Haven't broken out the "something that doesn't suck" label in a while

But earlier tonight, there I was: reading a well-written and intelligent piece of sports journalism. The subject is the pending NFL lockout and Roger Goddell's warm-hearted promise that he'll take a salary of a dollar this year if the labor problem causes skipped games. Take it away, Ray Ratto:

The commissioners were, are, and will always be employees of the owners. It should be that they are paid by both the owners and players, but the owners would never share their go-fers -- not while they have so many people baffled into thinking they are running things.

Put another way, Goodell acting like the man means Jerry Richardson doesn't have to, and with Richardson's gift for loose-cannon-hood, Goodell is already worth his weight in platinum.

Ohhhhh yeah. That's good stuff.

The NFL being first to play the lockout game this time, it gets to be the first to hear the nation say with one grating voice, "Oh, shut your stupid mouths."

If only. The NFL is so popular right now that I'm pretty sure about 90% of fans are riveted to the back-and-forth between the two sides.

Everything the league has done to make the players look like the evil ones while failing to mention that this lockout is actually a referendum on the rich-owner/richer-owner dichotomy has made a joke of the coverage.

The average fan's response is unfortunately still DUHHHHH FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL HEY THE DRAFT IS COMING RIGHT UP IN TWO MONTHS! Ratto is 100% right though. The coverage is a fucking travesty.

So we'll say this again. If the owners want to refuse any income, then we'll say they're serious. Anything short of that, and the argument that they take the risk and should reap the rewards will be even more idiotic than it usually is.

I know I usually say this about sportswriters, but I'm going to change it up tonight: (most) owners of "big four" sports franchises are the worst people on the planet. I hope they all die broke and lonely.

Click the link and read the whole thing. It's pret-tayyyyy, pret-tayyyyyyyy, pret-tay good.

You are not Clever. Shut Up and Go Away

Mark Jackson, talking over a replay of a Kobe Bryant fadeaway during tonight's game:

And the question is, Ko-be or not Ko-be?

No. That's not the question. It has nothing to do with the basket Bryant just scored. That wouldn't even "be the question" if Bryant were onstage somewhere, performing Shakespeare. Go into a cave somewhere and don't come out.


Since this is a super lazy and short post, let's add some variety! This is an incredibly badass article. No sarcasm. Read it. It totally doesn't suck. Long story short, the commissioner of the Big 10 is an evil genius and the commissioner of the Big 12 is a complete fucking moron. Spicy stuff.

I'm a Basement Dwelling Blogger Who Keeps His Word

A few months ago, I promised friend of the blog Jeff Pearlman I would plug his new book. It's called "Boys Will Be Boys." It's about the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s. And it's available today. Although Jeff is a pretty cool guy, the real reason I made this promise was because I hoped it would induce him to offer me a free copy of the book before it hit shelves. Alas, that didn't happen and as a result I obviously haven't read it yet. So how can I still plug it? Easy. Kissing Suzy Kolber has done my work for me. And if reading their preview doesn't make you want to drop some money on the book and read the whole thing, well, I don't know what to tell you. Obviously you're either a tightwad or you don't like things that are funny.

Also, I forgot to link them when I initially made the post, but my implication from yesterday night that Rex Grossman is the kind of QB who thinks any pass not thrown into the end zone is for pussies isn't my own idea. It also came from KSK.

Jay Gets a Thumbs Down

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury of public opinion:

I present to you a careful, articulate, and darkly humorous rip of our own Jay Mariotti by one of his former colleauges. Though I don't read a lot of his movie criticism, I'm a bit impressed by Ebert's capable pen. I think he correctly calls Jay out for his childish antics, and comes off the bigger for it. It's not a long article, but I think it clearly explains some of the self-promoting, infantile and generally reprehensible aspects of Jay Mariotti - characteristics which are not just part of his personality, but which infect any of his professional activities.

Journalism has surely become quite the putrid cesspool, but if some kind of honest self-policing can take place, I have some hope that the profession and the news industry as a whole can re-make itself into an honest and worthwhile institution.

Blind Dayn Perry Discovers Proverbial Nut

Dayn Perry? Dayn Perry? The FoxSports.com Dayn Perry? Surely you jest. Did he actually write a decent article that comes to a very sensible and logical conclusion? Next thing you know, Mike Celzic will reveal his fondness for VORP and FRAA.

Re: the shoving match that took place in the Brewers' dugout between Prince Fielder and Manny Parra last week:

As sure as the smog in Beijing, there's going to be someone who attributes whatever happens to the Brewers in the coming days to the near brawl in the dugout. If they fritter away their lead in the NL Wild Card race and fall hopelessly behind the Chicago Cubs in the Central, then it'll be because there's too much infighting. If they hawk down the Cubs for the division lead or pull away in the Wild Card, then it'll be because Fielder's tantrum "lit a fire" under the Brewers or some such. The underlying assumption — that the shoving match has any bearing on what will happen on the field — is a faulty one.

So here's the thing: if there's any correlation between clubhouse chemistry and winning, then it's either A) so weak as to be unidentifiable, or B) so weak as to be meaningless. Winning baseball is about scoring runs, pitching well, playing defense, staying healthy, and strategizing properly.

I'm as shocked as you are.

A++

After reading larry b's Easterbrook piece below, I encourage everyone to check this out, about the backstory between Tony Gwynn Jr. and Trevor Hoffman. It's very interesting and well-done. Kudos, Tom Friend.

Much As I Hate The Patriots,

This is one of the best articles I've read recently. Almost makes me okay with the idea of a New England victory a week from tomorrow. Almost.

More Double Standards, Please

Whether they're created by the media or simply by the ignorant masses, sports are filled with them. Fighting in famous Pistons/Pacers brawl of 2004 shows that the NBA is filled with dangerous thugs. But fighting in baseball and hockey, which has at times also spilled into the stands, is just part of the game. Baseball is boring and unwatchable unless teams from New York, Boston, Chicago, or Los Angeles are involved. (I don't need to link this one; go look up the ratings for the 2007 NLCS.) But football is completely engaging and enjoys massive ratings even when teams from Pittsburgh, Seattle, San Diego, and Indianapolis consistently play deep into the playoffs. Vince Young (career: 21 TDs, 30 INTs, 0 playoff appearances so far) "just goes out and wins football games." Jeff Garcia (career: 149 TDs, 77 INTs) can't seem to keep a job; he's played for a different team each of the past 5 seasons. And according to a very reputable source who plays wide receiver for the Cowboys, he's probably gay.

But perhaps the most relevant and annoying double standard in all of sports today involves those fancy little pills, injections, and arthritic balms we're all so familiar with. We all know what the reaction to the Mitchell report has been so far; but chances are it'll intensify next April when baseball starts up again. Expect a chorus of boos for the named offenders and a hefty amount of bad journalism (even moreso than what we've got right now) to show up. But where was the outrage when this happened? Or this? I'm not saying no one cares about steroids in football. I'm not saying that offenders get a free pass. But it's incredibly disproportionate compared to the vitriol journalists and bloggers have spilled/will spill about baseball's users. It's very frustrating. And ESPN's Jayson Stark lays out a fantastic analysis of the situation here. It's a great read. I can't believe it took me two paragraphs to get to that point.

Ombudsman? More Like OmbudsWOman

I'm not trying to be some crazy, oversensitive, Birkenstock-wearing hyperliberal cootbag. I've just always thought it was weird how when a female gets a job that traditionally is titled with the suffix -man, you don't change it to -woman. If a lady who works for the USPS delivers your mail, can't you call her a "postwoman?" Is that so wrong? And fuck all that politically correct crap about changing the suffix to something gender neutral like -person. Foreperson, repairperson, and milkperson don't roll off the tongue. I just want to use "man" when it's a dude and "woman" when it's a chick. Simple as that.

Wait, what were we talking about again?

Oh yeah. LeAnne Schreiber is amazing. I'd even say that as far as my interest in blogging/sportswriting goes, she's my idol. If you haven't heard of her, she's ESPN's Ombudsman. (That still sounds funny to me but whatever.) She writes a monthly online column for their website which is basically a review of something the World Wide Leader did recently that elicited a lot of criticism or discussion. Recently she's addressed their handling of Barry Bonds's indictment, the Joe Torre melodrama, and Sean Taylor's death. Her tone is often critical, as it should be considering how shitty the product ESPN puts out often is, but it's also fair and objective. She's like a professional, non-angry, non-profane version of us who comments on a network as a whole rather than individual articles. If I'm allowed to define her as a journalist, she's easily my favorite anywhere on teh whole wide interwebs. Here's a link to her archive at ESPN; please read her last few articles if you haven't already. You'll understand why I'm hyping her up so much.

Stewart Mandel Tries To Talk Some Sense Into Dumb College Football Fans

I know what you're saying- isn't this an anti-sports media blog? Well the answer, of course, is yes. We do specialize bitching and moaning. However, our contract with Google states that we are legally allowed to make three (3) posts that are in support of a sportswriter per calendar year. And after reading what CNNSI.com's resident college football mailbag answerer had to say about the "my conference is better than your conference!" argument, I felt compelled to use one of our exemptions. After all, they don't roll over to 2008. Why not use 'em while you've got 'em?

You see, there's nothing that frustrates me more than fans getting hot and bothered about which conference is more powerful than the next. I rant about this to my real life friends (all two of them) at least once a week every fall. Honestly, people... how the hell can you tell which conferences are better than others unless a variety of teams from each square off against each other? You can speculate about common opponents, strength of schedule, coolest fight songs, and best tailgates all you want. But in the end there is no other way to judge conference A against conference B unless a bunch of their teams play. There just isn't.

Sadly, I often feel like I'm pretty much alone in holding this opinion. We live in a culture obsessed with trying to figure out what's going to happen next, rather than just basking in the here and now. Sports and sports media hype today is all about predicting the unpredictable. Which 9th grader is going to be the next 1,500 yard rusher in the NFL? I guarantee there are dozens of creepy rivals.com analysts out there who could debate this topic for hours. Who should be placed atop the eternally meaningless "power rankings" column on your favorite sports website? If you want to lose hope for humanity, check out the comments section attached to a power rankings article anywhere. How so many people so hung up on where a random sportswriter ranks their team is beyond me. How many more years will (suffering team X) go without a title? It's a topic tailor made for "Around the Horn."

And of course, debating the relative strengths of conferences fits right into this clusterfuck of unbridled speculation. But this doesn't stop it from happening ad nauseam every year from August until the first week of January. People just eat this shit up. Everyone and their brother wants "experts" to weigh in this meaningless argument and side with their local conference. It drives me bonkers. How about we just worry about the games that are actually being played? Do we really need to waste energy figuring out whether the Sun Belt is better or worse than the MAC at the halfway point of the season?

So on that note- thanks, Stewart, for articulating my feelings on the matter better than I ever could have. Either click the link and read his whole mailbag (which is very good), or if you're pressed for time, sit back and enjoy these excerpts.

Mind you, this whole thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. While people used to complain about certain teams' soft non-conference schedules (Kansas State, Virginia Tech, etc.), I really don't remember reading any 12-page manifestos championing the Big Ten over the Big 12 or the SEC over the Pac-10. These days, however, some fans get as worked up about defending their favorite conference's honor as they do cheering on their favorite team.

It seems to me this can be traced back to Auburn's 2004 exclusion from the BCS championship. While there were certainly BCS controversies before that one, I rarely remember conference affiliation entering the equation. But when this happened, fans of not only Auburn, but also the entire SEC, were indignant. To them, this wasn't just about an undefeated team being deprived an opportunity at the title; this was about an SEC team getting shafted.

And so, over the two years that followed, SEC coaches and fans alike took every opportunity to make sure such an injustice wouldn't happen again, beating it into the rest of the country's brains just how much tougher their conference was than everybody else's. This of course only intensified after Florida demolished season-long media darling Ohio State last January -- which in turn has caused backlash against the SEC from fans in the rest of the country.

All over a topic for which -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER.

We could literally go on like this for days, people, and we'd just keep going in circles. The only way to truly gauge the respective conferences is when their teams play each other, usually either early in the season or in the bowls, and even then, those results invariably come with asterisks.

When it comes to the various conference loyalists versus critics, it seems the truth is often whatever you want to make it. For the love of humanity -- and more importantly, my sanity -- can we please move on to some other topics?

I like it when professional journalists feel the same way I do! Almost makes me feel like I'm not living in my parents' basement and eating Pop Tarts three meals a day. If they can get paid for feeling this way, why can't I? You know, besides the fact that I have no journalism experience, no connections, and no writing skills.

some random asshole does something hilarious

credit where credit is due: saw this on deadspin. more important credit where credit is due: someone out there is about $15/year poorer because of this. and i think we can all agree it's money well spent. go to:

http://www.retardedvagina.com/

here's to you, unknown person with more money than they know what to do with and a well expressed disdain for for one mr. mariotti. your effort is appreciated.

jeff pearlman is a busy guy... SIKE

i mean, how busy could he be if he has time to answer questions for us here at firejay? seriously though, it's very nice of jeff to take some time out of his busy schedule for this. it's even nicer considering we've ripped him a new one on this very blog not once, not twice, not thrice, but a multitude of times. fortunately for us, jeff is a chill guy. the author of "love me, hate me" (which is a very good book, as i've mentioned before, and certainly should be just as well known as "book of shadows" when it comes to journalism that exposes barry bonds for what he is) speaks on blogs, anti-media types, east coast bias, and more in this interview.

LB: thanks for talking with us today, jeff.

JP: Sure. No problem.

LB: let's get the ball rolling with some "tough", so to speak, questions. how do you feel about this blog and others like it? nerdy nerds, sitting in their parents' basements, eating microwaved dinners, and criticizing hardworking professional journalists such as yourself. is this fair? is it right? what is your perspective on the rise of the "blogosphere" in this regard?

JP: I'm actually a fan of the blogosphere, because I like the idea of anyone/everyone having a voice. It doesn't seem fair that the only people allowed to vocally criticize a manager or player are the 500 newspaper columnists across the country. Why, by the basis of studying journalism in college, do we along get that right? Also, I'm a fan of writing. And the fact is, there are many blogs out there with excellent writers who are allowed to be angry, snarky, funny, etc. Unfortunately, your blog stinks. But nobody's perfect.

LB: have you ever had any discussions about anti-media blogs with other professional journalists? how do they feel about it? if not specifically anti-media blogs, what are your thoughts about criticism directed towards the sports media by average run-of-the-mill sports fans in general? surely you can't take people like us seriously.

JP: See, that's where you're wrong. I do take it personally, and so do alot of writers. How can't you? I slave over an article, put my all into something, stay up all night trying to craft it—and you just come along and thrash it. That hurts, and it makes no difference whether the thrasher is my mom, my brother, Dan Pasqua or Larry the blog guy. It always hurts. I suppose that makes me awfully thin-skinned. Such is life. It's who I am. Most writers probably take it better than I do.

LB: how, if at all, do you anticipate the landscape of sports journalism on the whole to change with the rise of the blogosphere? do you notice the line between professionals such as yourself and "amatuers" being blurred in any way? will major sports outlets need to make any major adjustments in the coming years should consumers continue to gravitate towards non-mainstream sources of analysis?

JP: The No. 1 thing is that the line between what's printable and what's not has been completely blurred. If a blog like Deadspin shows, for example, Matt Leinart or Vince Young doing shots with hookers in a seedy motel, mainstream papers have to—absolutely, positively have to—follow up. In the past, you didn't see those stories quite so often. Now it feels like they're everywhere. That's a result of Deadspin, of YouTube, of Facebook, etc. The web has opened everything up wide. I'm not sure how I feel about it, because for so-called celebs there's no longer any time off. You're in public, you're 100% under the radar.

LB: good point. i'm sure leinart could easily become involved with something several times spicier than that. anyways- is there anything you wish people like us knew about your job? this is your free opportunity to gripe about how hard it is and how we don't understand, etc. go ahead and tell it like it is.

JP: My one beef is this: Excellent writing comes with risks. Anyone can write a standard lede, a standard game story, a standard profile and never, ever get ripped. But I've always believed in pushing the envelope. It was something that was stressed to me at Sports Illustrated, and now at ESPN.com, too. The problem is, when you push the envelope it doesn't always work out. You take a lede too far, or your transitions suck, or ... a million different things. Instead of appreciating the fact that a writer tried for excellence, though, bloggers like yourself take great joy in killing us. You never, ever, ever kill Joe Smith of the Patent Trader for his boring take on Mahopac-Carmel. But dare Scoop Jackson or Mike Silver or Mark Kriegel try for the next level, you're always there with the knife. I'm obviously aware that I've written some real crap. We all have. But it comes not from laziness, but effort. I feel like that's lost among bloggers.

LB: ok, those are fair points. but it just so happens joe smith of the patent trader is one of my favorite writers. anyways, i want to ask you about something else. this is going to sound like a loaded question but bear with me. for obvious reasons, major sports outlets tend to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on teams from large media markets (new york, chicago, los angeles) while sometimes ignoring teams in smaller markets (seattle, milwaukee, cleveland, denver, etc.) that are making significant impacts on their leagues. your thoughts- is this just an unfortunate but necessary side effect of the nationalization of the sports media, or something that should be looked upon as a legitimate problem that needs a solution?

JP: I don't have a problem with it. Eight million people live in New York City. That's eight million people (well, not all of them) who live and die with the Mets and Yankees. Milwaukee, on the other hand, is home to approximately 550,000. To suggest fans care about both teams equally is illogical. When I was in college at the University of Delaware, our student newspaper would give the same coverage to swimming and diving as we did men's basketball. Then we realized six people were reading swimming and diving stories. So we stopped writing about it.

LB: clearly not the answer i was hoping for, but thanks for the honesty. shifting gears towards something you're very familiar with: hypothetically, say you're in san francisco on the night of august 7, and somehow end up with a ticket to a giants game, and you feel like, hey, why not go? and somehow, you emerge from the bottom of the pile in right center field with that oh-so-valuable baseball. i could care less about this fashion designer's little internet poll thingy. what would you do with home run #756?

JP: I have two kids, and college is insanely expensive.

LB: fair enough. it's getting worse all the time. let's talk barry bonds books. specifically, i'm curious about the relationship between "love me, hate me" and "game of shadows." how much have you ever talked with mark fainaru and lance williams? any? obviously you guys have a decent amount in common.

JP: I know Mark and Lance pretty well from our mutual Bonds experiences. I interviewed them both for my book; we've talked since and sort of bonded over devoting our lives to such a prick. In a way, I consider them my brothers of hell.

LB: are you mad at them for collaborating on a book? imagine if you had enlisted a co-author- you might have been able to beat them to a release date, and that might make "love me, hate me" the more commonly mentioned of the two books.

JP: How could I be mad at two guys responsible for doing such important work? I truly respect those guys 1,000 times over. They deserve what they've gotten. Do I wish my book came out, oh, a month earlier? Yup. But it is what it is—and they had the Balco goods. Thing is, I'm a fan of reporting. More than I'm a fan of writing. I respect people who dig into a subject like they did. No hard feelings. Also, there was a certain full-circleness (not a word) to it all. My first book, "The Bad Guys Won," was a biography of the '86 New York Mets that spent eight weeks on the NYT best-seller's list. It came out a couple of weeks before Mike Sokolove, an excellent writer, released "The Ticket Out," a killer bio on Darryl Strawberry's youth. So what comes around goes around, I suppose.

LB: gotcha. i didn't mean were you literally angry at them, i just wanted you to admit you wish "love me, hate me" had come out slightly earlier. so thanks for that. anyways, obviously you're still pretty young and want to continue moving on to bigger and better things as your career progresses. but how would you feel if when all was said and done your lasting legacy was "that guy who wrote that one book about barry bonds?"

JP: Ha. I'd be thrilled. Truly thrilled. That book was two years of my life, and it sort of vanished beneath Shadows. I'm proud of it; proud of the reporting and the digging and the effort I put into that thing. Plus, it's a helluva lot better than being the fucking John Rocker guy—which I still seem to be.

LB: let's give you time to plug whatever it is you're working on now. any books? other long term projects? anything you'd like to push, just in case more than ten people end up reading this? i mean, i have to give you some incentive for doing this interview.

JP: No incentive needed, but I'm wrapping up a biography of the 1990s Dallas Cowboys. That, and I'm raising my two kids. My daughter Casey is 4 and my son Emmett is almost a year. Emmett is not named for Emmitt Smith, by the way.

LB: sure he isn't! let's close up with some quick, simple questions. the title of your book comes from the barry bonds quote: "love me, hate me. i don't give a fuck." i think that really sums up barry's attitude very well. so give me a jeff pearlman quote that someone might use for a book title were they to pen one about you.

JP: "I pick my nasal hair in airport bathrooms."

LB: i can't tell if that's dirty or not. bloggers/amatuer writers with big dreams about getting into professional sports journalism should make sure they do what, in order to best increase their chances of one day making their living from writing? please don't say moving out of their parents' basements,

JP: First, start contributing to magazines/newspapers/online publications/etc. And do reporting—real, honest-to-goodness reporting. Interview people. Interview people's mothers and fathers and high school coaches. Pitch pieces to as many places as possible—the local weekly paper, the state's official magazine, Jugs, whatever. Bust yourass. The thing about blogging is that, while it's great, it's also lazy. I know—I write a lame blog, and it's literally me on the couch. It may well show you can write, but it doesn't show you can report.

LB: i'll keep that in mind. most of your recent columns are about baseball- if baseball didn't exist, what sport would you focus on the most?

JP: Running. My passion.

LB: understood. this is cheesy, but our several readers want to know- if you could have lunch with 3 figures from sports history, dead or alive, who would they be?

JP: Red Smith, Jim Murray, Tyler Ugolyn.

LB: i have no idea who those last two are, so i'll have to look them up. who finishes with more career HRs- bonds, arod or pujols?

JP: Bonds.

LB: my god, i hope not. finally, off the record- how the hell did you originally find our blog back in may of this year?

JP: On the record, Jesus led me to you.

LB: alright, that's all i've got. thanks for being here.

JP: Sure. No problem.

Best Side Job Ever

The Rocky Mountain News had a great writeup this morning about the guys who keep score for MLB's GameDay program (used by ESPN.com's Gamecast)

It's not an opinion piece, but I thought I'd post it because this looks like such an awesome job for someone who is a baseball fan.

Check it out

how long until every other sports media company besides espn shuts down?

not sure why he bothered to include this question (and subsequent answer) in his column. from stewart mandel's latest college football mailbag on cnnsi.com:

Why doesn't ESPN have any respect for the Georgia Bulldog program? We want a little RESPECT.-- Kenny L. Betsill, Fayetteville, Ga.

SM: I'm not sure, sir. You're going to have to take that up with the folks in Bristol.

this has the tone of a nerdy kid asking a slightly less nerdy kid why the cool kids don't like him (the first kid). kind of sad.

on the brighter side, later on stewart delivers this zinger to a media-hating reader who wishes he were cool enough to blog here at fjm:

Is your Daddy the CEO of SI or something? The reason I ask, is because you are a terrible writer. I too am a Journalist and the only way I can fathom how you got a job at Sports Illustrated is someone knew you personally and gave you a job you weren't qualified for. You need to go back to school and re-learn how to write.-- Joe, St. Louis

SM: Would it be like Billy Madison where I get to repeat each grade in two weeks? If so, I'm in. And while I'm there I'll be sure to pass along anything I learn about run-on sentences, capitalization and dangling prepositions that you might find useful in your role as a "Journalist."

joe from st. louis just got s-s-s-s-s-s-s-SLAMMED. how does it feel to be on a stewart mandel poster, joe? facial. total facial. joe will think twice the next time he wants to write a scathing "you is bad at riteing" email to a small-time sports journalist.