Keith Law, world's biggest sourpuss, hated Moneyball (the movie)

Reading back over this post after I've finished it, I have come to the conclusion that it's atrocious. I have just one excuse but fortunately that excuse is pretty good. Whereas I write most FireJay posts (especially the ones that come in at less than 200 words) in a single sitdown, it took me five to write this one. Two of them were on airplanes, where the recycled air makes you think any thought you put into written word is hilarious when in fact you're barely forming complete sentences. But overall it's pretty atrocious and way too long. And I'm not sorry for either of those two facts. Whether you read it and don't enjoy it or decide not to read it after sifting through this preview, what you need to know is this: Keith Law is a cockhole. Now let's give him the floor. Oh yeah, and there are spoilers in here or whatever.

Moneyball, the movie, is an absolute mess of a film, the type of muddled end product you’d expect from a project that took several years and went through multiple writers and directors.

Keith Law's review of Moneyball, the movie, is an absolute mess of a blog post. It's the type of muddled end product you'd expect from the biggest sourpuss in sports media. (Complicating matters is the fact that he owes allegiance to both sides of the traditional scouting vs. modern statistical analysis debate, which means he can hate the movie from two different angles.) Seriously, is there a more negative sportswriter than Law? I'm not the nicest/most positive person in the world but he makes me sound like Helen Keller. His average SportsNation chat is pretty much the following exchange repeated 25 to 30 times.

MinorLeagueFan (Springfield): Hey Keith, thanks for taking my question! What do you think about [my favorite team's best prospect]? How soon until he's in the majors?

Klaw: NEVER. HE FUCKING SUCKS.

I hate Keith Law. Not because he's not knowledgable, but because he makes talking about baseball unfun. Everyone stinks, all teams are poorly run, and everything is trending downwards. Fuck Keith Law. Go live under a bridge and stop bothering people. I understand it's hypocritical for me of all people to complain about someone who's too negative, but that tells you just how awful Law is. He makes me want to go lie down in a big sunny field and look up at the clouds and say "Hey, life's pretty good." I'm just a simple hater; Keith Law is a bona fide card-carrying asshole.

Even good performances by a cast of big names and some clever makeup work

Unless he thinks the young version of Beane was also played by Pitt, which is not the case, there is no reason to laud the movie's makeup work.

couldn’t save this movie, and if I hadn’t been planning to review it, I would have walked out.

Keith's probably the kind of guy who boos mediocre singers at karaoke bars.

The movie failed first and foremost for me as a movie, not just as a baseball movie. (I’ll get to the baseball parts later.)

There are two big problems with Keith's viewpoint on this matter. As annoying as his analysis of the movie as a movie is, though, the real issue is the cognitive dissonance in his review of the movie as a movie and then of the movie as a baseball movie. So to understand what a piece of shit this review as a whole is we have to look at both portions of it.

In any case the first problem with the "movie as a movie" side is that Law is bothered by parts of the movie that drastically alter (or inaccurately add to) the story told in the book, when the movie's directors/writers simply made those changes/additions to create tension and add drama. To use a term of art, they movie-ized the story.

Is there anything wrong with that? Look, it would have been interesting to see them try to pull of an exact duplication of the book's narrative, but it would have been extremely difficult and ill-suited for mass consumption. If you're going to get a movie made starring Brad Pitt and released nationwide at the same time TV's fall season is starting you've got to make it marketable to mainstream audiences. This is a movie "based on a true story;" if it told the exact true story in the manner the book tells it, it wouldn't really be much of a hit with anyone besides baseball fans. Instead, it's going to be a hit with everyone who likes movies because it's got a lot of human drama built in that isn't really present in the book. If this is such a problem for you that it ruins the movie, you shouldn't have gone to see it in the first place (even for the explicit purpose of reviewing it; that "excuse" would make you even more of an asshole than you already were).

The second problem, which is sort of like the opposite side of the same coin, is that he's bothered by several parts of the movie that are more or less exact recreations of relatively trivial/boring stuff in the book and aren't interesting enough to him to be part of a movie. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? He's Keith Law and he doesn't like anything so it doesn't have to make sense. You'll see what I mean. To sum up, he hates parts of the movie that were changed from the book to make them more movie-ish, and he hates parts from the book that were not changed because they are boring.

The general plot here is that the A’s lose their 2001 ALDS to the Yankees and are about to lose three major players to free agency, so Billy Beane goes hunting for a new way of doing business. He runs into a stats geek working in Cleveland’s front office named Peter Brand, hires him, and Brand brings the sabermetric philosophy that we now associate with the early 2000s Oakland teams. This causes friction with Oakland’s scouts, who are all idiots,

As they were presented in the book.

and Art Howe, who was a stubborn idiot (this is the movie, not my opinion),

As he was occasionally presented in the book (although without the confrontational nature his character possesses in the movie).

and Billy might even lose his job until the A’s get hot and win 20 games in a row. Meanwhile, we are to believe that this is all so Billy can purge the personal demons created by the failure of his playing career.

While Lewis kind of dances around this subject, it's more than reasonable to draw this conclusion from it. Beane as presented in the book certainly hates the mindset inherent in baseball that led scouts to (probably) overvalue him in the draft and refuse to give up on him when it was obvious he wasn't going to be a successful major leaguer. It is at least partially this "he's got the good face, he looks like a ballplayer, he's got all the tools" bullshit that makes book Beane a motivated GM who wants to buck those trends and make decisions about his team based on more reliable indicators of MLB ability. Inferring from this that he's trying to purge some personal demons from his playing days (while also being awesome at his job and making money and winning and all that good stuff) is completely fair.

Movie Beane is more dramatic, because he's played by Brad Pitt and he's in a movie, but I don't think the movie strayed inappropriately far from the book in the way it presented Beane's reflections on his own past. Saying "we are to believe that this is all so Billy can purge his personal demons" is like saying we are to believe that George C. Scott's movie version of General Patton was a mean guy who really liked to win battles. Sure, the way he acts and what he does is drama written for the silver screen. But the burden is on you to prove that you're right and the screenwriters were wrong if you want to make a snarky comment about the character's reasonable motivation that begins with "We are to believe." Of course Law doesn't do this, he just wanted to take a cheap shot at the movie before enumerating the other 50 things he hated about it.

Billy is the only fully realized character in the entire movie, and even at that his disparate pieces don’t tie all that well together.

Guess how many "fully realized" characters the book had? If you really wanted to stretch it you might be able to count Hatteberg and Bradford since Lewis gets pretty deep into their backstories, but that only happened to better develop what made Beane such a genius for acquiring them and using them as he did. If you really really really wanted to stretch it you could try to add Bill James to the list but... no.

Peter Brand, a.k.a. Paul Antipodesta, is a mousy number cruncher who looks like the lay viewer would expect a stat geek to look - unathletic, dressed in dull collared shirts and ties, intimidated by the players, with no complexity to the character.

And yet he's far more developed and interesting than Depodesta is in the book, particularly because of the scenes in which Billy tries to instruct him on how to be a full-fledged GM and the scenes in which he interacts with the players.

Howe is nothing but a holier than thou obstacle for Beane whose entire motivation for his stubbornness is his desire for a contract extension - a hopelessly tired plot device that makes for a one-dimensional character.

Right, Howe got movieized. But movie Beane needed more conflict and drama, and book Howe was a zero dimensional character. So whatever.

Even Casey, Billy’s daughter, who is shoehorned into this weird plot strand about him possibly losing his job, is nothing more than the plot strand requires her to be.

Right, Casey's not even in the book and her movie character pretty much just exists to be cute and bubbly and let us see movie Beane's emotional side. And the idea that Beane's job was in jeopardy during the 2002 season is laughable. Whatever. Like I said above, without stuff like this the movie isn't as fit for mass consumption and probably doesn't get made in the first place. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

The lack of multi-dimensional characters is exacerbated by the languid, aimless plot

The plot is anything but aimless. It's got a bunch of threads going at once, maybe too many, and some of them are completely fabricated and don't reflect how the real life A's or real life Beane operated. But it's certainly trying to tug on our heartstrings and get us to care about the outcome of the season. Remember the whole thing about how Beane might lose his job that annoyed you? That's called a plot device. Maybe you think it's dumb and unrealistic, but it means the plot has aim and purpose. Sheesh.

and stop-and-start pacing.

I can't really argue with this, but the book works the same way. Whatever.

The film mopes through Opening Day and the beginning of the A’s season, races through their midyear turnaround, then jumps through most of the winning streak until the twentieth victory, at which point we’re handed slow motion views of the A’s blowing an 11-0 lead … and of Art Howe thinking, with no sound at all.

Yeah. I thought it was a pretty cool and effective method of amplifying the action and making a single regular season game seem a lot more meaningful that it really was.

Even the paces of conversations are strange and often forced; one of the “action” scenes, if I could call it that, involves watching Billy juggle three GMs (Shapiro, Phillips, and Sabean) to try to acquire Ricardo Rincon. All three GMs come off as stooges,

As they do in the book, on multiple occasions (during the leadup to the first round of the 2002 draft, in Beane's acquisition of Bradford from Chicago).

but more importantly, it’s boring as hell to watch anyone, even Brad Pitt, talk on the phone.

ARRRRRGH FUCK YOU. That's what GMs do. That's how it works. If you're going to complain about how the characters and stakes got altered to make the movie more dramatic, and complain (as he will in a few paragraphs) about how unrealistic it is for Beane to travel in person to Cleveland to discuss a few simple trade ideas, don't complain when the movie shows Beane doing the same stuff a real GM does.

I could have tolerated a lot of flaws if Moneyball had just given me a good baseball movie,

Here's where it gets really good/infuriating.

with some real tension to it,

Look, dumbass, the movie takes the amount of tension present in the book and amplifies it quite a bit by creating artificial conflicts. Artificial conflicts you just spent several paragraphs bitching about. There's no way to make it more tense without making it less realistic. Your insinuation that you were bored by the movie as it was made and would like to have seen a little more drama and your complaints that Beane wasn't ACTUALLY about to lose his job and that Art Howe wasn't ACTUALLY just gunning for a contract extension all year are kind of dissonant, no?

or perhaps a strong character study of Billy Beane.

The film more or less provides this, inasmuch as it can be done in 130 minutes. It's not a 10 hour HBO miniseries. I think we still get a very good idea of what makes Beane tick and why he turned down John Henry's BoSox offer.

But the film provides neither, and I spent most of the movie wondering what was really on the line here. The A’s don’t win a playoff series in 2002, so the script can’t set that up as a goal or use the playoffs as a climax. Beane took a $39 million team to the playoffs the year before; he wasn’t going to be fired in May for taking a few risks that his owner more or less told him to take (and if he had been fired, he would have been hired by someone else in a heartbeat, despite the character’s later claim to the contrary). His daughter is worried about him because she doesn’t see the big picture, but neither she nor her father is in any real jeopardy at any point in the film. We’re not playing for anything here.

Fuck. You.

Then there’s the baseball stuff, which is not good. For starters, the lampooning of scouts, which draws from the book, isn’t any more welcome on screen (where some of the scouts are played by actual scouts)

Relevant because?

than it was on the page;

Might not have been welcome to you because of your experience in the world of scouting, but I'm pretty sure most readers/viewers enjoy it. It might not be 100% fair, but it's close to 100% entertaining.

they are set up as dim-witted bowling pins for Beane and Brand to knock down with their spreadsheets. It’s cheap writing, and unfair to the real people being depicted.

The movie's depiction of the scouts and their line of thinking differs from the book and might be considered slightly unfair because it makes the scouts seem a little dumber and a little more hard-headed than they're depicted in the book. (The movie also makes them look pretty buffoonish, which may or may not be accurate/fair.) But the book's depiction? As long as Lewis didn't put any words in anyone's mouths, and there's no reason to believe he did, it's 100% fair. Law might be bothered by the villainization of scouts but facts are facts. There really are people out there whose job is evaluating young baseball players who think "the good face" and having a "high butt" are more important than the outcomes those players create on the field. That's insane and the people who hold opinions like that deserve to be made fun of. The fact that they're hardworking and firmly believe in their viewpoint doesn't make it "unfair" for them to be mocked for it.

Current Oakland scouting director Eric Kubota also gets murdered in a drive-by line that depicts him as a clueless intern given the head scouting role after Beane fires Grady Fuson in April after a clubhouse argument (that never really happened).

Saying Kubota gets "murdered" by the line is hyperbolic. It takes a guy who obviously worked very hard to get to where he is today and mildly diminishes his efforts by making it seem Beane promoted him simply because he never played professional baseball. It doesn't demean or insult him. It doesn't make it seem like he knows nothing about baseball. It's a fictionalized scene that is used to drive home a point about Beane; that he doesn't like the mindset of most traditional scouts (a point repeatedly reinforced in the book). I would guess that about 0.1% of the movie's audience came away from that scene feeling like it wasn't really fair. Probably a reasonable sacrifice on the part of the directors.

I’ll confess to laughing at the scout referring to “this Bill James bullshit,” although the A’s bought into that bullshit years before the film claims they did -

Very true; a detail that was movieized.

and, in fact, hired Paul Depodesta three years before the movie-A’s hired Brand.

And another. But there's more to this; see below.

The film also relies on some pretty gross misrepresentations or oversimplifications of the business.

My favorite paragraph.

The idea of a GM getting on a plane and flying two thirds of the way across the country to meet another GM to discuss a trade for a left-handed reliever is so absurd that it should set off alarm bells in even the casual fan. Do you really think that GMs only talk trades in person? That they fly to meet each other for tete-a-tetes before consummating any deal? Do you really think that GMs only talk trades in person?

Well how else was movie Beane supposed to meet Peter Brand? By looking at his resume and then having an interview with him OVER THE PHONE? Even Brad Pitt can't liven up a scene that boring.

Similarly, teams don’t sign injured players to guaranteed contracts by flying out to their houses (on Christmas Eve, apparently) without having them go through physicals.

Right, another sequence of events that would have been more realistic had it been portrayed as happening entirely with a series of phone calls. Eat a turd, Law.

I wasn’t as concerned with the script having Beane trade Carlos Pena to Detroit for a reliever and some money (as opposed to the actual three-team, seven-player deal including Jeff Weaver and Jeremy Bonderman) as I was with seeing Pena, an intelligent, gregarious person, depicted as a sullen Latino player.

He wasn't portrayed as sullen, he was portrayed as disappointed in his trade. This is done in order to play off another scene in which Beane tells Brand players who get traded are inevitably disappointed, but that GMs have to give them the bad news all the same. While that scene wasn't in the book, I think its existence in the movie is pretty fair and helped build both the Beane and Brand characters. On the other hand, Pena was portrayed as Latino, because, well, yeah.

And the film’s emphasis on Beane not making it as a player seems to point to questions about his makeup, especially his confidence, which hardly ties into a film about how makeup is overrated.

If you think that's what the movie was about, I have bad news for you.

If you do end up seeing the film, and I imagine most of you will, there is one scene towards the end that stood out for me as incredibly spot on, so much so that it didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the film. Beane is sitting in what was then called the .406 club at Fenway Park with John Henry, who is about to offer him a record-breaking deal to become the Red Sox’ new GM. Henry expounds on how Beane’s method of doing things is going to sweep through the industry, and how critics within the game weren’t just trying to protect the game, but were expressing their own fears about their livelihoods. That speech applies just as well to any industry undergoing the kind of creative destruction ushered in by Bill James, Sandy Alderson and Billy Beane. Remember that when you see the next written attack on “stat geeks” who are ruining the game along with a defense of RBIs or pitcher wins.

Also remember it next time you read a review of the movie by someone like Keith Law who's deeply offended with the way stubborn old scouts are portrayed by the filmmakers (and Lewis).

If you haven’t already done so, go read the book before thinking about seeing this movie, and maybe go watch Brad Pitt steal every scene he’s in in Snatch instead.

Are you interested in seeing a baseball movie? Then you'll love a movie about organized crime in London.

Look, I'm a big fan of the book but I didn't love the movie. It was pretty good. I'd give it a solid B, maybe a B+. The criticisms Law offers just blow my mind. What. An. Asshole. He highlights the biggest flaws in the movie but inexplicably fails to understand why they are the way they are. He also complains about ten things he didn't need to complain about. He also simultaneously says that scenes realistically depicting GM work are boring while saying scenes that embellish how interesting it is to be a GM are stupid and unrealistic. In the four and a half years this blog has existed we've never picked on Law with good reason. He's smart, he works hard, and generally does more good than harm (as opposed to, say, 75% of all sportswriters). It's too bad that he's also such a Negative Nancy. I'm now well past my breaking point for ignoring his whining. I've probably made this pretty clear by now but Keith Law can eat a big fat bag of shit. He's the worst.

Mind boggling

I am a diehard Rockies fan, born and raised 30 minutes from Coors Field. I thought October 1, 2007 (Matt Holliday STILL hasn't touched home plate!) could never be topped. I was wrong. That is all.

Update: OK, that is all.

WMTMQR: Show me the funny

Gregg's in the mood to tell jokes this week, moreso than usual. That's a good thing for us. Also, a shoutout to reader Daniel who went 2 for 3 in the prediction he made in the comments section last post. Buffalo's 3-0 start gave Gregg cause to talk at length about the undergrad institutions attended by Ryan Fitzpatrick (Harvard? I had no idea!) and Fred Jackson. Somehow he forgot to talk about how Stevie Johnson was a 15th round draft choice, though. Of course that's not the real reason Johnson rules--he rules because he blamed God for a dropped pass. But enough about me. Let's talk about pretentious faux intellectuals who write about science fiction and football.

Of course, children, I am referring to the Buffalo Bills and the Detroit Lions. And no, I don't know what "Bills" are, either. This has been lost to the mists of history. Perhaps the team was originally called the Buffalo Williams.

/bike horn

/slide whistle

Told you he was in the mood to yolk around.

The Bills-Patriots game even produced a moment in which the unassuming Chan Gailey, fired twice in the past five years and OOF -- Out of Football -- entirely in 2009, out-Belichicked Bill Belichick.

Do tell.

Game tied at 31, Buffalo's Fred Jackson -- undrafted from Division III Coe College, now one of pro football's top performers -- caught a 39-yard pass, lunging across the goal line with 1:43 remaining. Zebras signaled touchdown. Then booth review began. Jackson's knee went down at the 1, as replay ultimately determined.

Jackson not scoring was great for Buffalo! Belichick immediately realized that if the play was ruled a touchdown, Brady would have 1:43 and two timeouts to try for overtime. If instead Jackson was ruled down at the 1, Buffalo could kneel three times, force Belichick to burn the timeouts, then kick a field goal, leaving New England mere seconds to reply. Belichick gestured angrily at the officials -- he wanted them to count the touchdown. Belichick was demanding that his opponent be awarded a score!

As it happened, a personal foul against the Patriots allowed Buffalo to use the entire clock and launch the winning kick as time expired.

So "doing what any person with a brain and basic knowledge of football would do" now counts as outsmarting a guy who wins Super Bowls and deviously wrecks marriages on a semi-regular basis.

Postgame, Belichick had to explain to baffled sportswriters, in gruff terms, that he called time-out the moment the replay decision was made, because once officials determined the runner was down inbounds, the clock would restart as if Jackson had been tackled at the 1. How could it be that sportswriters who do nothing but football all year round don't know that rule?

How dare those sportswriters not know a basic thing about football! They should be ashamed. I bet they also don't know that if you lose by a field goal on the last play of the game, you could have prevented it by... and you know the rest.

An ideal outcome for the 2011 NFL season would be for two underdog teams from fading old-industry cities to meet in the Super Bowl. From now on, a Buffalo-Detroit Super Bowl is what this column is rooting for. As TMQ noted last week, if Buffalo and Detroit met in the Super Bowl, "One of them would have to win -- I think."

/laugh track

Stop citing to your own columns and unclever pithy remarks.

In Indianapolis Colts news, Peyton Manning seems a long shot to return this season. This would end football's version of "Narnia." Eustace, Lucy, where are you?

I killed the hyperlink- that was another citation to his own (awful) work. Come on man, who are you? Jason Whitlock?

Stats of the Week No. 3: Jay Cutler has been sacked 101 times in 34 starts for the Chicago Bears. While playing for the Denver Broncos, he was sacked 51 times in 57 starts.

Average mouth-breathing Bears fan: "CUTLER IS A PUSSYFACE WHO DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO WIN"

Stats of the Week No. 5: Since earning home playoff dates at the end of the 2010 regular season, the Atlanta Falcons and Kansas City Chiefs are a combined 1-7.

But just ask any Peter King; with their comically overrated QB and unremarkable defense, the Falcons are a lock to win the NFC this year.

Sweet Play of the Week: The Houston Texans leading the New Orleans Saints

You mean the Moo Cows and the whatever the fuck your nickname for the Saints is-es?

Sweet Play Called Back: The Green Bay Packers,

Shit, forgot this one too.

leading by 10, punted to the Chicago Bears

YOU MEAN MING DING XIONG! BEARS WHOSE OUTCOMES ARE DETERMINED BY FATE!

Sour Play of the Week Washington leading Dallas 16-15 just before the two-minute warning, the Skins had the Boys facing third-and-21 on their 30. Since the average NFL snap gains somewhat over 5 yards, and Washington this season is allowing 6.1 yards per snap, all the Redskins needed do was play straight defense and a stop was likely.

Joe Morgan was right. Statistics ARE stupid because you can make them say anything you want. Also, remember those reporters who didn't understand the rules about the clock following a challenge? What a bunch of clowns!

That cannot seriously be an eight-man blitz on third-and-21! The eight-man blitz is almost never seen, because it is like handing out a card that says "Please score a touchdown." Tony Romo threw a 30-yard completion to the single-covered Dez Bryant, penalty yardage was added, and a moment later the home team launched the winning kick.

Bryant was at 75% and Miles Austin was sitting. Blitzing makes much more sense when you can easily use man coverage against the other team's WRs. Not saying it was definitely the right call here, but let's add some context, you know? No? OK, no context.

On the possession, Washington defensive coordinator Jim Haslett called an eight-man blitz on first down, a seven-man blitz on second down

Wonder how those worked out? My guess is that Dallas was already in the end zone after each- so I'm not sure how it could have been 3rd and 21.

and an eight-man blitz on third down.

One fluky scramble and one bad play by DeAngelo Hall (who saw that coming?) later and the Cowboys were back in business. Debate settled: blitzing never works.

He also handed out cards saying "Please score a touchdown." Dallas settled for as field goal.

What?

He also handed out cards saying "Please score a touchdown." Dallas settled for as field goal.

I think that joke is unintentional, but it still made me chuckle. Also, if you watched Washington's victories over Arizona and New York (by which I mean Jersey/A!), you would know that heavy blitzing was a big part of both of those games. But acknowledging that would require Gregg to provide his analysis after considering the facts, rather than only talking about the facts that fit the analysis he wants to provide. Very inconvenient.

Just to prove this was no fluke, at the two-minute warning, the Texans faced third-and-15. New Orleans showed the conservative three-man front that's become popular in long-yardage situations -- then rushed five, sacking Matt Schaub and all but ended the contest. Sweet. Nickelback Leigh Torrence came through untouched for the sack, though Houston had six available to block five. Sour.

I like how he carefully avoids using the work "blitz" when a blitz is successful. Blitz? What blitz? That was a "rush."

Bad Predictions Watch: Reader Tyler Smith of Zionsville, Ind., notes students at Hamilton College tracked a year's worth of predictions by political pundits, and found the average pundit no more accurate than a coin flip. Hamilton College students also discerned a hidden pattern: "Prognosticators with a law degree were more likely to be wrong."

Nothing to get the funny bone tickled like dumping on lawyers! Those stupid lawyers. They're so full of themselves and yet so stupidly stupid. Hey, what do you call 100 smarmy sportswriters at the bottom of the ocean? A PRETTY GOOD START!

A Fine Whine: The San Diego Chargers are plowing new ground by marketing a team wine. The beverage offers "vibrant fruit flavors and toasty oak." Considering the Bolts' performance in 2010 -- first in offense, first in defense, missed the playoffs -- TMQ suspects the wine is made to the highest possible standards from the very finest grapes, and tastes bad.

What if other NFL teams marketed wines?

• Dallas Cowboys Missing Seats Merlot: Rich with deceptive promises, this wine will make you want to stand up throughout any dinner or social occasion.

And then he does like eight more of these. It's depressing.

It's not just that Martz has made the pass-wacky offense one-dimensional: counting sacks and scrambles, he has called 131 passes versus 48 rushes. The 1-2 Bears seemed discombobulated at critical moments against the defending champion Packers. Former head coaches tend to project ego fields.

Nah, that's just Charlie Weis's gravitational field.

/shows self out

Many don't really want to be taking orders, and don't want to be questioned by players or each other. There are so many ego fields on the Chicago sideline, they may be interacting negatively.

That's gotta be it. I can't think of any other reason the Bears could be 1-2, other than the slight possibility that playing at New Orleans and then hosting the pass-rush heavy Packers on consecutive weeks is going to hang plenty of teams with two losses.

What Tom Brady Will Do After Football: Last week TMQ said auto shows feature "glamorous models draped over concept cars you probably wouldn't even want. The models are always women, not male-model hunks, which must be the car industry's way of acknowledging that only men can to inveigled into spending huge amounts of money on cars." Reader Balázs GyQrik, of Budapest, Hungary, reports Citroen had a male model adorning its latest product at the Frankfurt auto show. He notes, "Sure, it's only a drop in the sea, but can hunks in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue be far behind?"

Nope! And that's fifteen seconds you'll never have back.

Are Greek Bonds Backing the Movie "Moneyball"? The movie "Moneyball" is winning rave reviews. Michael Lewis's 2003 book of the same name is also a great read, though handicapped in spots with the contemporary publishing-industry imperative of the nonfiction work that claims an amazing single insight that explains everything about a topic.

I have read Moneyball twice. At no point does Lewis present any thesis that comes off like it was concocted by some dipshit like Malcolm Gladwell. If you got that from it, either you were reading too fast or you are Tim McCarver.

In the film, the handsome Brad Pitt plays Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, who is himself handsome -- maybe Beane could play Pitt in some future flick.

Seems pretty unlikely.

The book and the movie both portray Beane as a super-ultra genius for applying the Bill James sabermetric approach to baseball decision-making, then using James-style data crunching to guide the low-rent, underdog A's to a division title in 2002.

Lewis' book stops in that year, which is handy for its thesis.

Also handy when you consider the fact that Lewis wrote it during 2003 after spending 2002 doing research specifically so he could write the book the following year. WHAT ARE YOU HIDING, LEWIS? ADMIT IT! ADMIT YOU PAID OFF THE A'S TO MAKE THEM WIN THAT 2002 AL WEST CROWN!

Beane continues to run the Athletics using the moneyball approach: yet Oakland has not finished above .500 in five years, and currently is a dreary 72-88. Nor did the moneyball approach ever take the team into the World Series.

Oh brother. Here we go again.

One possibility is that the whole moneyball idea is hype: that Beane had some beginner's luck, which Lewis, wanting to puff up a book proposal, converted into a claim of a sweeping insight about sports economics. Since Beane took over the A's, there are many MLB teams that have reached the World Series without asserting they possess any stunning conceptual breakthroughs about whom to sign.

And nearly all of them have had good luck w/r/t injuries and excellent situational hitting/bullpen work. Two things that have exactly nothing to do with the Moneyball approach, and which the A's teams of the early aughts couldn't quite get right. And of course eventually everyone else caught up with the idea of exploiting market inefficiencies (except the Astros).

It is also possible that Beane fell victim to "commoditization," which happens with increasing speed in a globalized environment. This would mean Beane did in fact have an important insight, but his idea has been copied by most if not all MLB franchises, turning the idea into a mere commodity that, possessed by everyone, confers no advantage.

So you knew all along and just wanted to take a shot at Beane and Lewis before acknowledging it. Nice. Joe Morgan and Gregg Easterbrook have never been seen in the same place at the same time. COINCIDENCE????

Here's what your columnist wrote about commoditization in my 2009 book "Sonic Boom":

JESUS CHRIST. Stop.

Commoditization is a reason the international economy grows more productive and simultaneously more turbulent -- when some business has a good idea, the rest of the world learns to imitate that idea with increasing alacrity. In Beane's case, once the book "Moneyball" was published in 2003, the rest of baseball had a road map -- available for $27.95 in a bookstore -- on how to apply sabermetrics to free agency decisions. The idea was commoditized, and the A's sunk back into mediocrity.

The idea that other teams wanted to know how the A's were succeeding with such low payrolls, and couldn't figure it out on their own, but then eventually were able to figure it out by reading Moneyball, makes me chortle. Can you imagine Brian Sabean and Dave Dombrowski standing in line at Barnes and Noble, excitedly flipping through the pages? Lord knows I can and it's a glorious image. Chortle chortle chortle.

Rule quirk: The other thing Oklahoma State might have done [to run out the clock on the last play of the game] is have the quarterback heave the ball deep down the middle. The clock stops when an incompletion crosses the out-of-bounds markers on the sidelines. But for a pass thrown through and out of the end zone, the clock does not stop until the ball crosses the backline. Surely a high-arcing pass would take more than 5 seconds to traverse from the Team A 39-yard line to the back of the Team B end zone. So in the situation faced by the Cowboys, this would seem a safe way to kill the final 5 seconds. But you'd be gambling that the zebras knew this rarely invoked rule.

You would also be gambling that a college QB can throw the ball 75 yards (or that if they can't, the other team's safeties couldn't track the ball and intercept it and have a chance for a return TD) which would make you incredibly fucking stupid.

That's all I can take- just don't have the energy to pick apart the obscure college score of the week. Later on I plan to post a review of Keith Law's review of Moneyball. Did Keith like it? Does he ever like anything ever? Do I wish someone would kick him in the balls and tell him to lighten up a little (yes, I know I am being a hypocrite)? All these questions and more will be answered later this week! Maybe!

Unified Theory of Creep!

Not only is the Super Bowl still months away, the NFL playoffs haven't even started!

More later today. I've been a bum lately. Time to get things rolling and be a bum who posts slightly more often.

This is why he makes the big bucks

This source is extremely old, but apparently Boomer Esiason was making $1.6 million per year to be a color commentator back in 1998. Let's assume he's still making that same amount today (no, I will not adjust for inflation, because I want to spend fewer than 45 seconds on this post). Why shouldn't he when he offers insights like he did yesterday?

/Tom Brady, under pressure, completes a screen pass to Rob Gronkowski which goes for 15ish yards

You know... the Patriots lead the league in plays where they just get it done.

Beat that, Aikman. The gauntlet is thrown.

The most Rick Reilly article Rick Reilly has ever written

Geez, if I was told the description but was not told it appeared on ESPN.com, I would assume it was a parody written by some jokester. It's almost too good to be real.

WMTMQR: In which Gregg admits that he's a dope

I mean, he admits it really really really really indirectly. But we'll take what we can get. First: an extended metaphor that football fans can surely appreciate.

"In the last days of Narnia..."

So begins the final book of "The Chronicles of Narnia" --

Are you sure that wasn't the opening sentence of "The Old Man and the Sea?" This can only go good places. Hopefully he breaks down how scientifically unrealistic the Narnia series is.

a volume that's unlikely to become a big-budget Hollywood movie, since all the children and the cute talking animals are slaughtered by a hideous demon named Tash.

How is that different than Toy Story 3?

Which sounds a little like Texans.

Yes, they both start with the same letter.

The Indianapolis Colts under Peyton Manning have been the Narnia of the NFL. Everything's always sunny. Manning always starts: opening day was the first time he didn't start since 1997.

Strrrretching the metaphor

The seasons are always good: The Colts have made the playoffs a record-tying nine straight seasons.

Strrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeetching

Players and coaches are composed, behaving with dignity.

Except when Tony Dungy claims that homosexuals will burn in hell forever.

The crowd is orderly.

And fat.

The two domed stadia in which Manning toiled have been the gleaming Cair Paravel of pro football. And like all great champions in mythology, Manning wears a special ring.

STRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEETCHING

The primary hero in the C.S. Lewis books is an English schoolboy who becomes Peter the High King -- tall, brave and humble, just like Manning.

Tall, brave, and fetus-headed.

(A standard literary criticism of Lewis' creation is that the strange races of Narnia need a white male to lead them.)

Just another reason Avatar is fucking stupid.

For more than a decade, Manning has been Peyton the High King to the NFL.

Tony Dungy, the Colts' coach for most of the Manning years, and for their Super Bowl win, has been the NFL's Aslan, a superpowered being. Even today, having left the game, Dungy is turned to for wisdom more than any other figure in football.

And thrusts his self-righteous wisdom upon those who don't ask. "If I'm [name of player who is in trouble with Goodell for being photographed having a beer], here's what I do now: donate a game's paycheck to Focus on the Family. Then..."

If he took over the reins in Indianapolis again, he would be greeted like Aslan returning to end the perpetual winter of the second Narnia volume.

Nah, things have been going just great under Jim Caldwell.

/imagines Caldwell stand expressionless on the sideline during another Colts playoff loss

And Dwight Freeney is the Reepicheep of the NFL, far more powerful than his modest stature -- OK, enough with this metaphor.

Yeah, you think? And then he went on for two more paragraphs, which I didn't bother to copy and paste. If nothing else, Greggggggg has his finger squarely on the comedic pulse of his readers.

Ivy League quarterback note: Fight Fiercely Harvard! Ryan Fitzpatrick, Harvard '05 -- married to Liza Barber, Harvard '05, a former Crimson soccer star -- threw four touchdown passes and no interceptions on the road against the Kansas City Chiefs, a 2010 playoff team. Pip pip! Right you are! Buffalo Bills teammates kept Fitzpatrick fired up by singing on the sidelines, "Come on chaps, fight for Harvard's glorious name/won't it be peachy if we win the game!" Fitzpatrick has asked Bills' management to institute a postgame sherry hour.

Oh yeah, assuming his readers are pretentious wine-sipping twats, he definitely has his finger squarely on their comedic pulse.

Sweet Play of the Week: TMQ's immutable law holds: Rush Eight If You Want to Block That Punt. NFL coaches rarely send a big rush after the punter, fearing a roughing call and generally being hyper-conservative.

This happens like three or four times every game.

Trailing 24-17 midway through the fourth quarter, Jersey/B forced a Dallas punt: and shocked the visiting Cowboys with an all-out eight-man rush.

It wasn't so much "shock" as "a shitty blocking scheme" (Cris Collinsworth broke it down beautifully on SNF) that caused the block.

Speaking of nutty, the Ryan brothers ran every funky defensive front in the book against each other. My favorite was a Dallas defensive snap with three down linemen and both corners blitzing. Yet the result of all the funky defensive tactics was a 27-24 final score with 390 offensive yards gained by one team and 360 yards gained by the other. That's a pretty conventional outcome. Maybe one of the Ryans should try a standard 4-3.

/head asplodes

This just in, people: if an unconventional scheme produces an outcome that isn't weird or wildly successful, there was no point in instituting it.

Sweet 'N' Sour Play of the Week: In the season opener, the count was Green Bay 42, New Orleans 34, Saints on the Packers' 1 for an untimed down following a penalty in the end zone as time expired. The Saints employed a heavy package with six offensive linemen and three tight ends. Power back Mark Ingram went straight up the middle, run stuffed, game over. That was sweet for fans of the defending champion, and in this game, a rare play that looked like old-fashioned football (see more below).

Where the fuck were the Football Gods? Shouldn't they have been rewarding the Saints for playing old skool hardnose smashmouth three yards and a cloud of dust in your face cliche cliche cliche football?

Sour for Saints' fans was a bland call from usually daring Sean Payton.

Just like the Immutable Law of Cold Coach states "cold coach equals victory unless the more warmly dressed coach wins in which case don't write about it," the Football Gods only reward smashmouth play calls when those calls work. It's quite the feedback loop.

Maybe It's an Amateurs League: Entering the 2011 season, 16 of the 32 NFL head coaches have never won a playoff game.

Well, every year there are 11 playoff games. There will be between 4 and 8 teams that win those 11 games, usually probably either 6 or 7 (considering the wild card winners rarely fare well against the top 2 seeds who had a first round bye). Many teams do well season after season (such as the Colts, or should I say the Aslans) so over the course of any 5 year stretch you might have.... geez, I don't know, somewhere around 20 different teams that win playoff games (none of which are the Bills). Coaches turn over pretty quickly. So what I'm trying to say is that if you're shocked that half of all coaches have never won a playoff game at any certain point in time, you're a fucking dope.

Sci-Fi Update:

Finally!

The science fiction scene on television remains weak. The "Star Trek" and "Stargate" franchises are no more, "Fringe" has veered into the silly, and TNT's "Falling Skies" is so lame in plot and dialogue it doesn't even merit an insult. Will Steven Spielberg put his name on anything?

Well, he put it on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. So I'm not sure there's much he WON'T put his name on.

"Stargate Universe" ended in May, concluding the run of "Stargate" serials. "Universe" was poorly written in its first season, canceled early in its second. Then a surprise: Midway through the second season, the writing improved noticeably. But the first season lost the audience, and by the time quality improved, nobody was watching. The last few episodes were terrific, building to a series finale that numbers among the best in television annals.

Lollerskates

In the finale, the starship crew decides to attempt something dangerous and noble. The characters make sentimental promises to each other, then the ship disappears into the distance. The last frame is a character admiring the grandeur of the cosmos. Viewers never find out the ship's fate.

Sounds riveting. Move over, M*A*S*H and Newhart. There's a new contender in town for best finale ever.

The premise of "Stargate Universe" was that a wormhole accident put a group of present-day soldiers and civilians aboard a million-year-old automated starship built by an extinct civilization. Though the vessel had been exploring the universe on its own for a million years,

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Then Baltimore went for two out of a PAT kicking formation -- a tactic TMQ has always thought should be used more often, given most defenders nap through the PAT attempt.

And if that tactic were used more often, defenders would definitely not change their behavior on conversions at all.

Holder Sam Koch ran for two untouched. The surprise deuce essentially ended the game, putting Baltimore ahead 29-7.

28-7 late in the 3rd? Still a game. 29-7? Warm up the bus.

And there was a psychological component: The deuce said to Pittsburgh, "You have toyed with us, now watch us toy with you."

Also: where were the Football Gods when they were supposed to be punishing the Ravens for running up the score? It's classless, sets a bad example for the millions of youthy youths who play football, etc. It's almost as if Gregg is wildly inconsistent in the way in which he applies ideas. Geez, if I weren't crazy, I'd go a step further and say it's almost like Gregg has no fucking idea what he's talking about at any point in time.

Rick Perry Was Once a Male Cheerleader, As Was Woodrow Wilson: Mark Sanchez just posed shirtless for GQ. With scantily clad cheer-babes part of marketing throughout the NFL, and increasing women's interest in football, TMQ continues to believe the league is missing an opportunity by not fielding shirtless male cheer-hunks.

I bet Gregg is one of those people who thinks women are the primary audience for Playgirl. Having shirtless male cheer-hunks on the sideline might increase the NFL's appeal with a certain demographic, but I doubt they're doing too bad with that demographic right now anyways considering that demographic consists of males.

Monday Night Doubleheader, Oakland at Denver: As the home Denver crowd chanted for Tim Tebow, Oakland won its eighth straight within the division. The Raiders will become a contender if they show they can prevail outside the AFC West. Oakland's Ryan-brothers-flavored defensive game plan of frequent safety blitzing did not stop Kyle Orton.

/remembers watching Orton constantly run from pressure, throw a pick, lose a critical fumble, completely barely 50% of his passes, and not throw a TD until late in the 4th quarter

Yup. Neckbeard was in the zone last night.

But the Broncos stopped themselves by rushing for a paltry 38 yards on just 13 attempts. Nobody wins at home with those kinds of stats.

Except the Jets, who ran for 45 yards on 16 attempts.

Now it's the fourth quarter, New England leading 31-17 with possession on its own 1 -- after a terribly shaggy failed fade by Miami on fourth-and-goal from the 1. (Can't anybody run up the middle anymore?)

But don't forget- the Saints were morons for running up the middle on their game's final play. Can't anyone call imaginative short yardage plays anymore?

In the heat of the moment, it's not realistic to expect that players will calculate that the team is better off with them not scoring. This responsibility falls to their coaches. Yet after the game, new Maryland coach Randy Edsall criticized Chism for not realizing the scoreboard situation and getting on the ground following the interception.

Maryland has 10 full-time football coaches and apparently not a one of them realized they were facing a "knock it down" snap. Thus the endgame error was by the Maryland coaches, not by a Maryland player -- yet the head coach criticized a player.

And we know for a fact that the coaches did not instruct the defenders to knock down 4th down passes instead of intercepting them or take a knee rather than returning them for a TD when doing so would actually help the team win. Since we know that unassailable fact, it's right for us to criticize the coach for criticizing his player.

Obscure College Score of the Week: Elizabeth City 49, Limestone 7. In 2000, when yours truly started writing TMQ, I worried about running out of things to say. That didn't seem to happen.

If only you had worried about possessing the analytical abilities of a turtle while not running out of things to say.

In 2002, when I started Obscure College Score, I worried about running out of obscure colleges. That hasn't happened either.

And we're all ecstatic that you're still running this exhilarating item.

Let's conclude with Gregg's semi-quasi admission of imperfection. I mean it barely counts. You be judge.

TMQ Readers Know Too Much (New Running Item): A couple weeks ago, a picture of a mouflon appeared next to an explanation of the TMQ cognomen "Les Mouflons." Striving to be erudite, Page 2 captioned the photo, "Une mouflon." Readers, including Caroline Stevenson of Austin, Texas, wrote to note that the sheep was male (horns) and therefore the caption should have read "Un mouflon." This caused your columnist to exclaim, "TMQ readers know too much."

Last week's column had a raven saying "you can quoth me" about Baltimore's need to beat the Steelers. Jeffrey Roth of Davidson, N.C., writes, "The pictured bird is not a raven, rather, a Daurian Jackdaw. Yes, it's another type of corvid, but an entirely different genus." TMQ readers know too much! If you know too much, show off by sending an esoteric comment to TMQ_ESPN@yahoo.com.

Notice how he won't admit that he's full of shit- the problem is that the readers are not full of enough shit. Still, I'll take it. And while I won't email trivial corrections to him, you'd better believe I'm sending him a strongly worded letter next time he breaks out his "tenths of a second don't exist" or "if they had run up the middle at some point in the 3rd quarter, the clock would have run out before the game winning field goal attempt" bits. Oh please believe.

WMTMQR: There shall be no TMQR

What a bummer. How could this be? The guy writes an entire column centered around making predictions for all 32 teams in haiku format--yes, haiku format--and I can't find anything in it really worth picking on. Seems ridiculous but it's the case. I dunno, maybe I'm going soft in my old age. Maybe Gregg has written moronic drivel intentionally all these years and decided to cut his act this week. Maybe all this hoping to one day study law is giving me some kind of a mental block. Whatever the reason, Gregg gets a pass this week. I'm sure he'll be back to his old tricks next Tuesday, speculating that Team X kicked a 48 yard field goal on 4th and 12 that made the score 24-3 early in the third quarter because Team X's coach was trying to avoid having a shutout on his resume.

And since there's no TMQR I think I will turn this into a grab bag of a post. When you live in your Grandma's basement (my parents recently gave me the heave-ho out of theirs because I was too busy writing about baseball without knowing what sunlight feels like to help them with the chores), you can do whatever you want with your blogoblog.

Speaking of basement dwelling trolls who know nothing about how baseball actually works, I can't wait for the release of the Moneyball movie because 1) it looks like a decent flick and 2) it'll give crusty old fuckasses like Plaschke a chance to roll out the same sorry criticisms of Beane and his methods they've been rolling out for five or six years now. HEY THE A'S NEVER WON A WORLD SERIES SO THAT PROVES BEANE KNOWS NOTHING. AND LOOK, THE A'S HAVEN'T BEEN GOOD FOR SEVERAL SEASONS WHICH ALSO PROVES THAT BEANE'S MANAGERIAL METHODS DID NOT STAND THE TEST OF TIME.

Moving on. I need to make couple apologies.

To Jeff Pearlman: you were right. Jason Bay is fucking terrible. He's not terrible for the reasons you said he'd be terrible, but he's terrible all the same. You saw it coming. A feather in your cap, sir. And I still want my free copy of The Rocket That Fell To Earth whenever you get a chance.

To Phillies fans: I was wrong. Despite a buttshit lineup (team OPS+ of 97), your team is going to win like 103 games. Good for them. I hope they win their first two against the Diamondbacks easily, then drop the next two in Arizona, and then lose game five at home as Ryan Howard strikes out looking with the game winning runs on base. As long as your team is going to have a starting staff capable of annual regular season success, the least I can wish upon your cavalcade of trashball moron fans is a devastatingly painful annual playoff disappointment. Worst of luck to you in October.

Finally, a minor rant. After realizing TMQ had nothing to offer me this week I moved on to a well that never runs dry- CBS's Scott Miller. He wrote a column about who deserves to win baseball's individual awards this season. It was actually pretty inoffensive minus this little bit of cognitive dissonance:

NL Cy Young

Ian Kennedy, Diamondbacks

Arguments for: Leads NL with 18 wins, instrumental in bringing baseball relief to desert.

Arguments against: Haven't we learned enough from sabermetrics that pitchers just can't, ahem, control wins very much? And Kennedy's other numbers don't come close to stacking up.

AL MVP

Jacoby Ellsbury, Red Sox

Arguments against: Ellsbury is 27 runs behind Curtis Granderson.

Curtis Granderson, Yankees

Arguments: Granderson leads the majors with 125 runs scored, 27 more than the No. 2 run-scorer.

Ah yes, finally, in the year 2011, even mouth-breathers like Miller understand that pitching wins are a pretty useless statistic. But runs scored? Now there's something you can set your watch to.

That's not where I'm going with this, though. Where I'm going is directly into the eye (with a sharp object) of anyone who wants to say that Justin Upton is worthy of winning the MVP. Now I don't hate Upton, he's a good player who's had a good year. But there's a problem that prevents me from saying he should win big-time hardware: I'm a Rockies fan. And I will never, ever, ever, ever stop being furious with writers who diminish the accomplishments of any Rockie because of the Coors Field effect while ignoring the home/road splits of every other player in the league. Yes, many Rockies have sizable differences between their road and home numbers. Yes, lots of non-Rockies have the exact same problem. No, this criticism is never leveled against them and it makes me want to throw puppies off a cliff.

Such is the case with Upton this year, hitting .348/.427/.641 at Chase and .246/.331/.444 everywhere else. If the Rockies and Diamondbacks switched spots in the standings and Carlos Gonzalez had Upton's splits, you'd never hear the end of how Gonzalez is nothing but a guy who's lucky to play half his games at Coors and would otherwise be a 4th outfielder. Chase isn't Coors, but it's a pretty solid hitter's park. Don't expect the average baseball writer to know that. Instead it's all DERP DERP DERP LOLCOORS DERP. Any writer who gives his or her #1 vote to Upton this year but didn't give his or her #1 vote to "Coors Creation" Matt Holliday in 2007 (.301/.374/.485 on the road) should be immediately dragged into the nearest town square and beaten to death with bricks. That is all.

I'm a week behind on TMQ

So I will try to get to this week's column later today. Here's the best thing he said last week:

Rare is the spectator who cares about the punter, but by midseason, Falcons fans may wish their team had tried harder to retain Mike Koenen, who left for City of Tampa in free agency. Koenen was both skilled at downing punts inside the 20, and as a kickoff man, finished third in the NFL last season for touchbacks. With the kickoff line moved up 5 yards this year, the strong-legged kickoff man rises in value, and teams like Atlanta, that score a lot, benefit most from lots of touchbacks.

That part about strong-legged kickoff guys rising in value as the kickoff line is moved forward is correct, except that the exact opposite is correct. What a blithering idiot.