Independent Sports Column & Sports Podcast: MLB, NBA, NFL, NCAA News & Opinion

Yankees played Moneyball better than anyone in 2009

2009-11-05T03:35:00.000-05:00

There was one very logical reason for Michael Lewis not to base his 2003 best seller “Moneyball” on the New York Yankees: Americans don’t like rooting for Goliath. It’s in our fabric to favor the underdog, the little guy who everyone counts out. That’s what made the scrappy Oakland A’s the perfect choice for Lewis. They were the team competing with the Yankees with only a fraction of the payroll thanks to a quirky general manager and his staff full of number-crunchers who never let their gut-feeling get in the way.

But if Lewis’ book was about a progressive franchise exploiting market inefficiencies to overcome all the odds, then the 2009 season proved once and for all that the market has fully corrected itself. Thanks in part to “Moneyball,” in part to the guys at Baseball Prospectus and in part to the simple evolution of the game, every team now realizes that on base percentage is far more important than batting average and that RBIs or Wins aren’t the most telling statistics when assigning value to a player. Everyone has caught on.

And when everyone follows the same blueprint, Goliath becomes an even bigger favorite.

To say the Yankees bought their World Championship this wouldn’t be fair to the guys who got it done on the field all year, but it wouldn’t be totally inaccurate either. The Yankees bought this season the same way they bought third place last year or the Wild Card before that or those runner-up finishes earlier this decade.

What made the difference this year was they bought the right players this time around. With all due respect to the core four, as the media suddenly refers to Jeter, Rivera, Pettitte and Posada, the Yankees would have missed the playoffs again if they had not signed C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira last winter.

We forget how poor the world’s richest sports franchise looked at the end of last season. They didn’t have a legitimate number two starter, let alone an ace pitcher. And for all the complaining about Alex Rodriguez not coming through in the clutch, the truth was ARod had very little protection in the lineup. An overhaul was needed.

Enter Sabathia and Teixeira. In Sabathia, the Yankees signed the most reliable starting pitcher in all of baseball. In Teixeira, they brought in the perfect complement to Rodriguez, the guy who would ensure ARod was going to see more pitches to hit. For the first time in recent memory, the team went out and purchased the best possible players, two guys in the prime of their careers, as opposed to the aging stars they usually seemed to end up with.

For a team that has had the highest payroll in baseball for over a decade, the Yankees may have spent their money more foolishly than anyone in the game. They couldn’t seal the deal with Manny Ramirez or ARod in 2000. They couldn’t land Vladimir Guerrero in 2004 or Carlos Beltran the following year. They even passed on trading for Johan Santana before last season.

Sure they were buying up loads of free agents every year, but they never seemed to land that top guy. That changed this year and the Yankees reaped the benefits. Sabathia and Teixeira, more than anyone else, delivered this championship.

And that’s how Moneyball really works. You perfect the art of winning an unfair game by exploiting your biggest strength – being unfair. It took almost an entire decade to figure it out, but now that they have, we all better watch out.

Book Review: "The Book of Basketball" by Bill Simmons

2009-10-30T17:42:00.004-04:00

Remember when you were in high school and your English teacher made you write a paragraph, then cut it in half, and then cut in half again in an attempt to help tighten your work? Well Bill Simmons stayed up late watching Cheers the night before and skipped class that day. No one likes words more than Simmons, who, as his ESPN colleague Rick Reilly once said, might be the only columnist in history to have his column jump to another page.

But it might be just that, the tangential style that intertwines endless pop culture references with hilarious personal stories and occasionally well-researched topics, that has made him one of the most popular writers in the country today.

In his latest book, “The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy,” you essentially get a 700 page Simmons column, complete with lists of the 96 greatest players of all time, the ten best teams in history and of course, around 1,500 words on how Kobe Bryant compares to Teen Wolf.

After reading the book in its entirety, I’m convinced of one thing: Nobody knows more about the history of basketball than Bill Simmons. At times, it reads as though he’s trying to prove that to you, particularly when he writes about the sport prior to 1975. He was born in ’69, so in those parts, he relies heavily on the hundreds of books he read to fill in what he didn’t witness first hand.

From there, it’s vintage Simmons. For a guy who calls the year he stopped writing and smoked way too much weed the best decision he ever made, the man has a remarkable memory. He tells the laugh out loud story of how his developing love for basketball made him wish he was black (haven’t we all?). And he comes off as guy who recognizes how privileged he was to grow up in a time where he and his father could afford season tickets to some of the greatest Boston Celtics teams in history. It’s actually quite endearing.

For those who read him regularly, the book meets all expectations. He even addresses some of his longstanding beefs with certain players or coaches. Early on, he describes how Isiah Thomas, a man he crucified over the years in his column, taught him the secret of basketball. The secret is a theme throughout the book; players and teams who understood the secret were rewarded. Those who couldn’t were guys like Vince Carter, who Simmons is harder on than just about anyone who ever played, with the exception of Kareem Abdul Jabar.

While some sports writers use lists as a lazy way of mailing in a column or giving length to a book, Simmons’ top 96 player list is the central premise and unquestionably, the best part of “The Book of Basketball.” Spanning 338 pages, from Tom Chambers at 96 to Michael Jordan at No. 1, he recreates the basketball Hall of Fame the way it should be, devising a pyramid that separates the players by level of greatness.

All of it, of course, is his opinion. But he backs so much up with statistics, knowledge and his passion to persuade everyone to think exactly the way he thinks, that you have to question yourself before you start calling Simmons a homer who let all that pot get to his head. Full disclosure: The minute I received the book, I skipped to see where he listed my favorite player of all time, Allen Iverson. He has him about 30 spots higher than I expected.

From there I was sold.

And chances are, you will be too. The book isn’t without its flaws. It occasionally reads like a 700 page book might and the pop culture references will surely be out-of-date by the time Simmons’ children are old enough to read it. But he also delivers the most entertaining history of an entire sport you’ll ever read. Baseball is a sport too stuffy, too set in its ways, to have a book written like this. Football is too much team, not enough individuals.

Basketball is just right. And Simmons was the perfect author to capture it all.

In the court of public opinion, Donaghy might come out on top

2009-10-30T02:21:00.002-04:00

The NBA may have scared Random House into putting the kibosh on disgraced referee Tim Donaghy’s tell-all book, “Blowing the Whistle: The Culture of Fraud in the NBA,” but that doesn’t mean the league and its current referees don’t have some explaining to do.

You know why?

Because nothing Donaghy claims seems unbelievable.

In excerpts released to Deadspin.com, Donaghy describes how some referees would place wagers amongst themselves on various aspects of a game, including who would call the first foul and who would give a technical foul to the league’s troublemakers. He also suggests that some referees would alter the way they blew their whistle depending on the amount of fouls a team’s star might have or whether or not a high profile, big-market team was playing.

Donaghy goes as far as writing that a referee’s relationship with a given player was so influential that he often made his picks or tipped off gamblers based on who was covering a certain game.

“Allen Iverson provides a good example of a player who generated strong reaction, both positive and negative, within the corps of NBA referees,” he claims. “For instance, veteran referee Steve Javie hated Allen Iverson and was loathe [sic] to give him a favorable call. If Javie was on the court when Iverson was playing, I would always bet on the other team to win or at least cover the spread. No matter how many times Iverson hit the floor, he rarely saw the foul line.”

“By contrast, referee Joe Crawford had a grandson who idolized Iverson. I once saw Crawford bring the boy out of the stands and onto the floor during warm-ups to meet the superstar. Iverson and Crawford's grandson were standing there, shaking hands, smiling, talking about all kinds of things. If Joe Crawford was on the court, I was pretty sure Iverson's team would win or at least cover the spread. “

For anyone who has watched, covered or played in the NBA in the past decade, Donaghy’s allegations are hardly shocking. He points to highly controversial contests - like the infamous game six of the 2002 Western Conference finals – as examples of referees making calls for the benefit of the league. In that game, the Los Angeles Lakers, the league’s most storied franchise, went to the foul line 27 times in the fourth quarter to force a game seven against the small-market Sacramento Kings.

At the time, even the most rational people -not just NBA conspiracy theorist- were questioning whether or not the fix was in. Even sports columnists in Los Angeles thought something was fishy. According to Donaghy, something was.

“In the pregame meeting prior to Game 6, the league office sent down word that certain calls-calls that would have benefitted the Lakers — were being missed by the referees,” Donaghy writes. “This was the type of not-so-subtle information that I and other referees were left to interpret. After receiving the dispatch, (Dick) Bavetta openly talked about the fact that the league wanted a Game 7.”

While none of Donaghy’s accusations are all that surprising, they do call into question the integrity of the league. Commissioner David Stern has always dismissed the former referee’s claims, calling them a desperate act of convicted felon. But that’s what good lawyers do. They attempt to make the opposition look weak.

But Donaghy isn’t trying to save his own butt. His reputation is irreparable. More than anything, he comes off as someone who doesn’t want to go down as the only fraudulent referee in the history of the NBA, not when he’s positive others were guilty too.

And here’s what makes him so dangerous: Nobody can disprove any of his claims. It’s his word against the NBA’s, and everything he says seems possible. Even likely.

He may be a desperate convicted felon, but in the court of public opinion, Donaghy has to like his odds.

McGwire's resume speaks for itself

2009-10-28T03:17:00.002-04:00

You know who has zero sympathy for Larry Johnson, the Kansas City Chiefs running back who questioned his head coach’s credentials on Twitter earlier this week? Baseball players. That’s because their hitting coaches have weaker job resumes than your average high school sophomore.

I’m not kidding. Have you done a background check on your favorite team’s hitting coach lately? More importantly, has your favorite team done a background check on its hitting coach? Eight teams have coaches who never made it to the Major Leagues, not for a single day. Even Pete Rose Jr. got a cup of coffee in the bigs.

Then you have the ones who actually did make it to the show. Most of them were journeymen and backups for their entire careers, and their numbers tell you why. Greg Maddux would be more likely to come through with a big hit than some of these guys. Case in point: Seattle hitting coach Alan Cockrell. Cockrell played for five different organizations during his 12 year pro career.

He collected just two hits in the Major Leagues.

There isn’t a hitting coach in baseball with a resume that compares to Mark McGwire’s, which is why I can’t understand why people are making such a fuss over Big Mac returning to the sport to coach the St. Louis Cardinals. If Jack Howell, a career .239 hitter, is allowed to teach big leaguers how to hit, surely McGwire must have something to offer, right?

And don’t tell me baseball just isn’t ready to embrace a steroid user. Not after I had to hear about what a warrior Andy Pettitte is after he helped the Yankees win the pennant on Sunday night. This year we watched Alex Rodriguez giving curtain calls, Manny Ramirez return to cheers after a 50 game suspension and David Ortiz receive standing ovations following the news that he may have cheated. Our nation’s biggest baseball hotbeds sent the message McGwire preached years ago: We aren’t here to talk about the past.

But at least McGwire has a past worth talking about. The same can’t be said for the majority of hitting coaches in baseball. If you take Don Mattingly out of the equation, the rest of the group combined to make eleven All Star teams. McGwire made twelve appearances himself, which happens to be twice as much as Donnie Baseball.

The biggest complaint, by far, is that McGwire was a one-dimensional hitter. Of course, no one seems to care that most of these guys were no-dimensional hitters. Rick Eckstein, the Washington Nationals hitting coach, was a .220 hitter in college and never played again. Joe Vavra, who coaches in Minnesota, had three career homeruns in the minors and never got past AAA.

The truth is McGwire’s .263 career batting average is actually respectable compared to his counterparts. Only eight current hitting coaches have higher career batting averages, unless you count Lloyd McClendon’s Little League World Series numbers. No one has more homeruns, RBIs or a better slugging percentage than McGwire.

There seems to be only one common trait that almost every hitting coach has, from Eckstein to Mattingly. They’re all inherently likeable. If they weren’t, they’d have washed out of baseball when their playing days were over. What keeps these guys around more than anything is the fact that players trust them and managers enjoy their presence.

And was there any baseball player in history more loveable than McGwire? Big Mac was Big Bird friendly his entire career, which is probably his only defense when it comes to the steroid use. McGwire’s roid rage came in the form of bear hugs and wide smiles for fans and teammates alike.

Once again, McGwire’s credentials are unmatched.

No matter what, it’s hard not to root for the guy. No athlete has watched his fame vanish the way McGwire’s did following his disappearing act in 2005. Once larger than life, he’s now just trying have a life in the sport he helped save 11 years ago.

And you can’t say he’s not qualified.

Football can work in England. I'm sure of it.

2009-10-25T09:47:00.002-04:00

It’s that time of the year again. The time when England 2.0 invades the motherland and tries to force our version of football on the unsophisticated British, who don’t much care for the booze, breasts and broken bones we root for every week each fall.

Oh wait. The Brits are human too?

That’s not what American sportswriters are telling us across the ocean. Almost unanimously, the media is against the NFL going global, mostly because they believe the rest of the world has no interest in the forward pass or our silly penalties, which result in a watered-down version of rugby.

I call bullshit.

What’s not to like about making an all-day event out of a two-and-a-half hour game? Aren’t the British as proud of their drinking ability as they are of their healthcare system? So you start with the tailgate and go from there. By the time anyone heads into the stadium, you’re so drunk you really don’t care what you’re about to watch. Ask the majority of college students over here who only attend football games so they can play beer pong for breakfast. The actual game is secondary.

Or maybe thirdary. We also run half-naked women out there just in case you get bored watching giant men run into other giant men. The benefits are two-fold. The men in the stands get to watch a live peepshow and the women get to watch acrobatic excellence. Both sides enjoy the performance.

Of course, you can also appreciate the game if you’re so inclined. What’s better than seeing some nancy boy quarterback getting crushed as he tries to run away from the defense? You can enjoy both sides. The hitting, which all men love, and the retreating, which the British know a little something about.

We haven’t even got to the best part yet. The gambling. The sole reason football has become the most popular sport in the United States. This is right up any Englishman’s alley, seeing as how there are more betting parlors in London than medical marijuana shops in Los Angeles.

You can pretty much bet on every aspect of a football game, including the score. See that’s where Americans get a bad rap. The rest of the world thinks we are obsessed with points, but that is only partially true.

Half of us like to bet the under.

And just wait until fantasy sports takes over the rest of world.

I’m convinced this football thing can work anywhere and everywhere. As it turns out, there are far more heavyset people throughout the world than there are seven footers, yet everyone still seems to have taken kindly to basketball. Football is far more inclusive.

Just don’t mention the head injuries…

ARod went from despised to beloved in 2009

2009-10-19T23:06:00.000-04:00

There are very few players in the history of baseball who could hit the kind of opposite field, flick-of-the-wrists homerun Alex Rodriguez hit to tie game two of the American League Championship Series Saturday night. And when you consider the near-freezing temperatures along with the rain that was falling at Yankee Stadium, that number can probably be counted on one hand.

Barry Bonds. Mark McGwire. Sammy Sosa. And ARod.

The connection is obvious. Call them the Mount Rushmore of the steroids era in baseball. Of course, they weren’t the only guys cheating, but no one benefited from performance-enhancing drugs more than they did. Bonds, like it or not, is the all-time homerun king. McGwire and Sosa helped save baseball in the late nineties. And Rodriguez signed an unprecedented contract that might remain a record for decades.

Yet while the rest of the group has essentially been blacklisted by Major League Baseball, Rodriguez might actually be more popular than ever. The man has given more curtain calls than Derek Jeter this postseason. He hit another homerun Monday night in game three, and is undoubtedly the favorite to win the MVP of the series if the Yankees go on to defeat the Angels. Suddenly, Mr. May is clutch and everyone seems to have forgotten the sheepish display he put on at the beginning of the season.

Oh right. The confession. When Rodriguez fumbled his story more than the balloon boy’s family, stuttering and crying his way to being one of the most pathetic stories of the year. Is it coming back to you yet? Remember when he stumbled through that interview with Peter Gammons, who isn’t exactly Walter Cronkite, back in February.

At that point, he had the public approval rating of George W. Yankees fans were more likely to cheer for David Ortiz than their third basemen. So what happened? How did ARod win over everyone, even those that couldn’t stand him before he came clean about his steroid use?

Part of it was that he assembled a PR team capable of making Charles Manson as loveable as Charlie Bucket. He was always image conscious, but this year he took it up a notch. He also was one of the most productive Yankees when he returned to the team in May following hip surgery. 30 homeruns and 100 RBI in what had to be the most demanding season of his career is an impressive feat.

But more than anything, the apology, as weak as it appeared, is probably what sealed the deal for Rodriguez. Keep in mind that he is the only one in the group to admit using steroids. Bonds still denies cheating today. Sosa stopped speaking English. And McGwire went into hiding - his hometown is now listed as Parts Unknown.

Rodriguez dealt with it the way his teammate Andy Pettitte did the year before. He was open and before you knew it, the case was closed. We’ll always know that Rodriguez admitted cheating, but no one will really care. He was honest and we like that in our athletes.

Forbes just released a list of the most popular athletes in our country and said that Americans like athletes to be trustworthy and sincere. Tiger Woods, Chris Paul and Tim Duncan were there, proving you don’t have to be all that interesting to be loved by fans.

Rodriguez didn’t make the list. But let’s see what a World Series ring does for him.

Random Rumblings: Media had an agenda with Limbaugh

2009-10-18T23:28:00.002-04:00

I agree with Rush Limbaugh about as often as he agrees with the President, but he was spot-on when he blamed the liberal media for thwarting his bid to own a piece of the St. Louis Rams last week. The controversy was your classic example of a media-created, media-driven story that only started to make headlines when the right players were asked the right questions about the conservative talk show host.

Think about it. The players who told the New York media that they would never play in St. Louis if Limbaugh had anything to do with the team were Bart Scott and Mathias Kiwanuka. These aren’t your average football players who can’t break double digits on the wonderlic test. Scott majored in business at Southern Illinois, one of the best public schools in the Midwest. Kiwanuka went to Boston College and is the grandson of a former Prime Minister.

There aren’t many guys in the league more capable of offering an intelligent, eloquent opinion than those two. In fact, as I wondered earlier this week, there probably aren’t many guys in the league who would have had an opinion on the subject at all. Would Eli Manning actually have anything valuable to say? How about Braylon Edwards? As long as it’s not Cleveland, he doesn’t care where he’s playing.

The guys that asked Scott and Kiwanuka about Limbaugh knew exactly what they were doing and their mission was accomplished. A firestorm ensued. The only real loser here is Limbaugh, which isn’t a bad thing. I’m certainly not going to shed any tears for a man who pollutes millions of minds each year, but the question has to be asked: If the media asked a guy who went to Florida State about Limbaugh, would the rest of us have been in such an uproar?

***Condolences must go out the family and friends of Jasper Howard, the UConn football player who was stabbed to death early Sunday morning. It’s too early to tell exactly what took place on the Storrs campus, but this much is clear: All colleges, particularly the ones with big time athletic programs, need to do a better job of monitoring the outsiders they let on campus.

As someone who has spent plenty of time making a fool out himself during Spring Weekend, I can tell you firsthand that there is almost nothing preventing anyone from heading over to Xlot or Celeron for a night filled with booze, couch fires and yes, plenty of fights. Sounds like something similar happened on Homecoming night. Only much worse.

***After being stripped of play-calling duties by higher-ups, is Jim Zorn the coach of Washington Redskins in name only?

***Anyone who had the New York Giants atop their power rankings heading into week six completely forgot that the team had play four of the worst six teams in the league and should have lost to an average Dallas team.

The best team in the league, New Orleans, set them straight on Sunday.

***Thank you the Philadelphia Eagles for making me the guy who couldn’t make it to week seven in my survivor pool.

***I think the Phillies and Dodgers could go the full seven games, but it’s hard to get excited for a race for second place, which is exactly what the NLCS is this season. No one is beating the Yankees.

***Connecticut star Maya Moore tipping (they called it dunking) a ball in the basket at midnight madness Friday night was the number one play on SportsCenter. Moore may very well end up the winningest college basketball player in history and has the chance to be the greatest women’s player ever, but she only makes SportsCenter when she’s trying play like the guys.

This is one of the biggest problems with women’s basketball. Those who enjoy watching the sport appreciate it for the play calling, the backdoor cuts and the excellent shooting. We don’t care if Moore can dunk or not.

***I’m not sure how far the USA soccer team can go at the World Cup, but I know I’ll be checking football odds at some online sports betting site to figure out if they’re worth betting on. After watching the late goal that helped the team tie with Costa Rica last week, it’s safe to say I’m pumped up for next summer.

In weather like this, there's no such thing as home-field advantage

2009-10-16T18:07:00.002-04:00

It is 72 degrees and sunny in Vallejo, CA today. According to idcide.com, the temperature rarely falls below 60 this time of year and you’re more likely to witness an earthquake than see more than an inch of rain fall in the month of October. Sounds like a nice place, right?

That’s where C.C. Sabathia grew up and there’s no question he’d rather be making his ALCS game one start in his hometown’s weather conditions. Instead, the biggest start of his career will come tonight at Yankee Stadium, where game time temperature will be somewhere around 40 degrees and rain is expected for the duration. It’s a night in which the game might normally be postponed, but the weather is expected to be worse the next few days and Major League Baseball doesn’t want to see the entire weekend washed away.

So the Yankees and Angels will meet in an environment more fit for playoff football, where the only people more miserable than the fans will be the players, who won’t be able to wear winter coats on the field. But while the Yankees have certainly played in colder weather, don’t expect the same October electricity that came from the crowd when the team was playing across the street. The energy that somehow managed to warm up the stadium on even the most frigid nights will be missing as more fans opt to watch the game from inside the bars, restaurants and gift shops instead of their almost-frozen over seats.

That’s been the problem with the new Yankee Stadium all along. It brought in a new crowd. A pretentious crowd. Because the team essentially priced out many of the diehard blue collar fans, the there are a lot less Bobby’s from Bronx and a lot more Robert’s from New Canaan attending games in the new stadium. There’s a good chance the crowd tonight will be as subdued as a tranquilized hospital patient.

If you couple the lack of excitement in the stadium with the fact that, like Sabathia, the majority of Yankees players grew up in much warmer surroundings, you have to wonder how much of a home-field advantage the team really has.

With the exception of Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada, who have played plenty of October baseball in the northeast, the Yankees lineup is filled with guys who grow up in the south or in Latin America, where wind-chill is not in anyone’s vocabulary. It’s the same problem every team faces at the beginning of each season. Most guys aren’t slow starters because April is their unlucky month. It’s just that most parts of the country are still really cold in April.

Of course, the Angels have to deal with same elements. But they aren’t the home team. Their job is to steal one on the road in what should be a hostile environment. That won’t be the case tonight. The Yankee Stadium crowd will be more interested in putting on their snuggies than watching baseball and juggernaut Yankee offense might very well freeze over.

Good luck, C.C. So much for that advantage.

Is the NFL really against Limbaugh?

2009-10-13T02:18:00.001-04:00

Remember when Major League Baseball started testing for performance-enhancing drugs and it seemed like every player was in favor of taking down any and all cheaters? Even the dirtiest guys in the game were out there talking about cleaning up the sport. Well that was your classic union play, the ultimate political maneuver. The players were forced to react that way because they had no other option. Coming out against drug testing was a PR nightmare. But do you really believe all those guys who made millions thanks to steroids were happy to see that money disappear? Me either.

NFL players are now facing a similar situation – not quite as large, but just as controversial. Rush Limbaugh, a man who reminds most minorities of the Cameron Alexander character in American History X, is a member of the ownership group interested in purchasing the St. Louis Rams. Of course, the very idea has brought out all of the usual suspects. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are in a tizzy. Jason Whitlock is against it. MSNBC has pounced on Limbaugh.

But while liberals everywhere are ready to stand up and unite against the controversial radio host, you have to wonder if the sentiment within the league is similar. Mathias Kiwanuka of the Giants and Bart Scott from the Jets said they would never play for a team owned by Limbaugh and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay claimed he wouldn’t vote to allow Limbaugh into the league. But is this small group really speaking for the rest of the NFL?

The risk of acknowledging a willingness to play for Limbaugh is enormous. White guys would be labeled racists. Black guys would be called sell-outs. But that wouldn’t be true at all. Most of these guys are desperate for money, no matter who is writing the checks. The numbers don’t lie. 78 percent of NFL players go broke within two years of leaving football. I’ll repeat that so it really sinks in. 78 percent of NFL players go broke within two years of leaving football.

All things considered, it doesn’t seem like a smart financial move to alienate a possible employer because he thinks Donovan McNabb is overrated.

Not to mention, St. Louis is an attractive place to play for a lot of guys. Sure, right now the Rams look like a pee-wee football team, but we’re only a few years removed from the greatest show on turf. The ability to play eight games in perfect weather conditions is pretty appealing to offensive players. As numbers soar, so do contracts.

It all goes back to the money (just ask any player who has been involved in a contract holdout) and if Limbaugh and his ownership group have enough, I’m pretty sure 78 percent of the league would be willing to play for the Rams.

And I’m damn-near positive 75 percent of the owners would be willing to allow Limbaugh in if it means more money in their pockets. That’s what it takes to gain acceptance in the NFL. Yeses from 24 owners. For Limbaugh, winning over a group of mostly-conservative owners will be even easier than the players. He’s probably already won most of them over. That is what he does for a living after all.

In the end, it comes down to public relations versus looking in the mirror. The players and owners can all say one thing, but chances are they aren’t being honest. If they were, this wouldn’t even be an issue.

Only one reason sports should upset us

2009-10-08T21:48:00.002-04:00

Watching sports should be a lot more depressing than it is. Here we are sitting around eating chips and wings and drinking cheap beer while watching other men on television, making millions for playing a game. We’ve got friends. They’ve got entourages. We’ve got girlfriends. They’ve got groupies. We hate commercials. They make ‘em.

And as if all the perks that come with being an athlete aren’t enough, they’re better people than we are as well. At least that’s how the talking-heads see it. Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever because he had the will power the rest of us lack. Brett Favre is still throwing touchdown passes because he’s got more heart than us mortals. It’s LeBron James’ courage that separates him from me, not his size or athletic ability. In fact, talent almost always finds itself somewhere behind determination, work ethic, drive, focus, intensity and confidence.

Really makes you want to pass up the Pabst and start pounding Prozac, right?

Well don’t, because the truth is most athletes are more flawed than a handbag from Canal Street. Case in point: Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera and former Cleveland Browns receiver Braylon Edwards. Both players made news last weekend for foolish off-the-field behavior that resulted in the Tigers missing the playoffs and Edwards being traded to New York.

With his team needing to win its final two games in order to wrap up the American League Central, Cabrera focused on getting frat boy drunk early Saturday morning and then proceeded to go home and get into a fight with his wife. A fight that was serious enough for the police to be called to their residence and for Cabrera to be taken into custody.

Imagine the phone call made to Tigers team president Dave Dombrowski, who had to go pick up his star player at the station a few hours before the biggest game of the season. Probably took a lot of will power not to strangle Cabrera right there on the spot. But you have to protect your assets, even when they act like asses.

You know the rest. Cabrera took an o-fer (he didn’t get a hit all weekend) and the Tigers lost. A win Sunday forced a one-game playoff with the Minnesota Twins. Their season ended Tuesday night.

Roughly ten hours later, the Browns were completing a trade that sent their troubled star to the Jets. Edwards didn’t catch a pass in another Browns loss last Sunday and was determined to drink his woes away that evening. He complained to a local media member and then he punched one of LeBron James’ friends in the face.

That’s not courage. That’s beer balls.

But of course, Edwards got what he wanted all along. No thanks to hard work or perseverance, though. He whined and cried and became enough of a disturbance to the Browns that they sent him away, giving him a new lease on life with a much better team.

Now Edwards should get to the playoffs for the first time in his career. Maybe even the Super Bowl. That will probably earn him a new contract and the same praise another entitled crybaby, Randy Moss, got when he came to New England. They’ll call him rejuvenated, a player who just needed a change of scenery.

Life is even easier for Cabrera. He was reprimanded, but what can Dombrowski and the Tigers really do with him? This was only the second of an eight year, $153 million dollar contract and he’s guaranteed every penny no matter how often he shows up to the field hung over.

So as it usually plays out in these situations, the bad guys won. And that’s the only reason for being depressed when it comes to sports.

When athletes stop supplying but keep demanding.

Random Rumblings: On the baseball season

2009-10-06T13:33:00.001-04:00

Is it me or was Major League Baseball about as predictable as Seinfeld reruns this season? You don’t even need 150 characters to break down the entire summer: Steroids. Rich teams won. Albert Pujols. National League stunk.

Case closed.

But for those who would like me to expand on a season that has played out almost the exact same way for the past decade, here goes nothing…
The steroids controversy continued. Alex Rodriguez admitted using. Manny Ramirez was suspended. David Ortiz promised he would get to the bottom of his positive test and never spoke again. All three were welcomed back with open arms by their fans and all three helped their team reach the playoffs.

The bad guys won.
So did the rich ones. If the Tigers beat the Twins today, six of the top nine payrolls in baseball will have made the playoffs while none of the bottom twelve will have reached the postseason. The numbers don’t lie. You can pretty much count out almost half the sport on opening day.

Contraction anyone?
In order, the second, third, fourth and fifth greatest hitters of my lifetime: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Ken Griffey Jr..

The best, and it’s not close, is Albert Pujols. The NL MVP hits the way Bonds did at the height of his steroid use, seeing one strike a night and usually crushing it. He’s more consistent than ARod or Griffey ever was and hits for more power than Manny ever did. And the man carries his team unlike anyone, at any time, ever has.
Pujols is so good that we forgive him for playing in the AAAA League. It’s not his fault the National League has the Nationals, Pirates and Padres. And really, you don’t even have to look at the teams to tell how poor the NL was this season.

Just look at two names: Brad Penny and Julio Lugo.
You know what we stopped hearing this year? What a great game-caller Jason Varitek is. That’s what happens when you can’t even hit your wife’s weight over the final two months of the season.
The Yankees and Red Sox had a little role-reversal this year. For the first time in over a decade, the Bombers were actually likeable. The zillion dollar additions of C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira and the less pricey Nick Swisher helped the team win the AL East and actually loosened up the clubhouse in the process.

The Yankees popped champagne when they clinched the division and set the all-time record for pies to the face following walk off wins in a season. Even ARod made friends.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox dealt with Ortiz and his steroids, Daisuke being overpaid and overweight and Kevin Youkilis calling out the fans of Boston.
Something just feels different this season.

Even when everything else remained the same.

NFL drops ball by blacking out Lions game

2009-09-28T16:27:00.001-04:00

In the early 1920s, parents in this country would tell their children to “remember the starving Armenians” as a way to remind them that life could be much worse. Almost a century later, it’s scary to think that the present day equivalent to that statement isn’t referring to people in Africa or Afghanistan or Communist China.

It’s referring to the people of Detroit, as in, “we might be broke, but at least we don’t live in Detroit,” or Delaware’s motto: “we might not have a national park, but at least we’re not Detroit.” That’s how rough things are in the nation’s eleventh largest metropolitan area, where the unemployment rate is about to eclipse 30 percent.

And just to kick a beaten man while he’s down, virtually no one in the city got to see the Lions win for the first time since John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani were still Presidential hopefuls. That’s because the NFL blacks out any local market game that isn’t sold out at least 72 hours in advance. It’s a policy meant to punish fans for not supporting the home team enough to purchase tickets. The league thinks of those people as freeloaders, and you can’t make money off people like that.

Except the NFL does. In fact, it just made $4 billion from DirecTV, which locked up exclusive rights to the league’s Sunday Ticket, the package that encourages fans to stay home and watch every game as opposed to actually going out and buying a ticket.

Of course, not even someone willing to pay $299 for the Sunday Ticket could sneak past NFL blackout restrictions. I learned that today when I spoke with a customer service agent at DirecTV. I wanted to know roughly how many people in Detroit were fortunate enough to watch the Lions win over Washington on Sunday and he informed me that the same rules apply to DirecTV subscribers as everyone else in the area.

“If a team can’t sell out, we can’t show their games locally,” the agent said. “The NFL has rules.”

But in a case like Detroit’s, it’s not about how strict the league is. It’s about how out of touch a multi billion dollar industry is with the people who helped it grow in the first place. Almost a third of these folks can’t find a job, let alone come up with the cash to purchase tickets to a game. That’s rent money. Or food money. These people are forced to be freeloaders. Sorry that helping the Lions sell out isn’t a top priority right now.

Some will say the people of Detroit should be thinking more about finding a job than watching Matthew Stafford play quarterback. You think they aren’t? That doesn’t mean they deserve to be shutout completely.

Sports can play a very powerful role in times like these. No, they aren’t helping anyone find a job or put food on the table, but they can unite a region. Ask someone in New England. Or just ask those that followed Michigan State’s magical run to the Final Four last April.

The games do matter.

Just not to the NFL.

Random Rumblings: I now live in a basement

2009-09-26T14:27:00.008-04:00

I now live in a basement. That’s why I haven’t written in a week. I was moving into a basement studio on the other side of Providence and it took me a little while to come to terms with the fact that I now exemplify the stereotype all bloggers, online poker players, WOW players and consequently single men in their 30’s despise. I now live in a basement. Thankfully, it’s not my parents’ basement, I’m not in my 30’s (I’m just 23) and I’m not into avatars, which I’m pretty sure is a prerequisite of all gamers and internet gamblers.

So there you have it. That’s why I’ve been MIA. I now live in a basement. Luckily, calling a place with no windows home has yet to make me claustrophobic and hasn’t stopped me from reading The Lost Symbol (better than Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons) and following the world of sports (pretty boring week).

Moving on...
The week’s most-used statistic is that since 1988, at least one team that started out 2-0 has made it to the Super Bowl. But here’s a stat that might be more interesting given the teams facing this circumstance heading into week 3: In that same timeframe, only four teams have made the Super Bowl after starting 1-2.

That means that some of the sexiest Super Bowl picks (New England, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Green Bay, and Philly) are essentially playing must-win games this weekend. It should be noted that all five are favorites in Vegas this weekend, but if I was going to pick anyone to lose again this week, it would be the Patriots, who have a difficult matchup with Atlanta.

The truth is, if it were any other team in the league, New England would be an underdog this Sunday. Playing with a still-rusty quarterback, no running back, their leading pass catcher injured and a shaky defense, the Pats are up against one of the best teams no one is talking about in the league. The Falcons have an emerging star at quarterback, a top five running back and made the best move of the off season in acquiring Tony Gonzalez. This is a team that has every right to be thinking about the Super Bowl. Yet because no one is willing to make a Bill Belichick coached team an underdog at home this early in the season, the Patriots are somehow 4 point favorites.
Gilbert Arenas is the classic example of why NBA franchises shouldn’t just hand out $100 million dollar contracts to their most marketable players. Arenas became a national star more for his goofy personality than his ability on the court, and now the Washington Wizards are paying for it.

That’s not to say that Arenas isn’t a great scorer. But why would any team want an injury plagued, shoot first, second and third point guard leading the way?
Let’s call these little scuffles between the Kansas men’s basketball and football teams exactly what they are: Kids being kids. It wasn’t about gangs or hip hop’s negative influence on young people. It wasn’t a bunch of thugs pretending to be college students. It was a few fist fights, the type of altercations that take place every day, in every neighborhood, all over the world.

In other words, the situation was no big deal.
Give Joba Chamberlain credit for this: While the Yankees have been using him as a guinea pig for the past two years, he has stayed quiet and accepted his role no matter what. There probably aren’t many guys with that much ability that would be willing to be this flexible.
I consider Gilbert Arenas to be one of the most delusional men in sports, but if there is one guy topping him, it’s Floyd Mayweather. Mayweather may very well be the greatest fighter of the decade, but it took his opponent admitting that he drinks his own urine to get people to buy their fight on pay per view last week.
The biggest concern for college football right now is that one side of the National Championship Game is pretty much locked up by Penn State, who is going to be on cruise control following a victory over Iowa tonight.

Why is that bad? Because the Nittany Lions are going to be a two touchdown underdog against any team they play in January.

Jordan disappoints during crowning achievement

2009-09-16T09:49:00.002-04:00

This past weekend taught us once and for all that if we’re going to expect celebrities to be more than they are, we better be prepared to be disappointed. Kanye West, a man convinced he’s the voice of a generation, proved that Sunday night when he decided to embarrass Taylor Swift at the VMAs. Serena Williams proved it when she made a fool of herself at the U.S. Open, acting like the spoiled country club brat she was never supposed to be. And worst of all, there was Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player in history, proving that’s all he’ll ever be.

On the surface, what Jordan did at his Hall of Fame induction doesn’t compare to Kanye humiliating a wide-eyed teenager in front of the world or Serena’s childish antics on her sport’s biggest stage. But then you have to remember that West and Williams don’t ever belong in the same sentence with Jordan. Kanye is a successful musician. Jordan is the Beatles. Serena is a world-class champion. Jordan is Sampras and Federer combined.

We expected the most from Jordan. We got the worst.

I couldn’t wait to watch MJ’s induction speech Friday night for one reason: Of all the great memories I had of him, the one thing I didn’t remember was his voice. By the time I became a big sports fan, Jordan had already turned his back on most of the media. He didn’t need ‘em. He had established a brand bigger than any newspaper, much less some reporter or columnist. So, like Babe Ruth did 70 years before, he hand-selected the people he was willing to talk to and they pledged their allegiance to him.

What we were left with was Jordan in cuts. 30 seconds here, some commercial there. But never any substance. His motto became, “never piss off someone who might write you a check,” something that has become commonplace in sports today.

That wasn’t the case in Springfield, where Jordan decided to deliver a resentful, bitter-sounding speech that would have left a lot of people embarrassed had it been someone else speaking. Instead, most in attendance, including Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post, summed it up in two words: “That’s Michael.”

Jordan uncensored took shots at the high school coach who didn’t pick him for varsity and the player who was selected over him. He blasted Jerry Krause and Bryon Russell and suggested that he still hasn’t gotten over Dean Smith not allowing him to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated his freshman year at North Carolina.

If that was Michael, we’ve all been duped.

If that rant was fueled by anything but a few too many drinks, then we should all be disappointed in the man we made our hero.

More than anything, it proved that basketball is all Jordan will ever be defined by. We remember Ruth for more. We remember Ali for more. But Jordan is the epitome of what William C. Rhoden calls the $40 Million Dollar Slave, though he made much more than that in his career. He was controlled by the people at Nike and Gatorade every step of the way, no matter how often it appeared otherwise.

On Friday night, he finally got the chance to send a message. And he did. Just not the one we were looking for.

NFL 2009: 25 thoughts, questions and predictions for the season

2009-09-11T01:19:00.003-04:00

I’ve never claimed to be an NFL expert. In fact, I fully admit that I only enjoy watching pro football because of fantasy and the fact that it’s the easiest sport to gamble on. So if you’re looking for more accurate previews, go here, here and here. But of course, I like to try to hold myself accountable, so the following is 25 very random thoughts on the season. It was written following the Steelers win over the Titans, but includes nothing about Troy Polamalu’s injury. Go figure.

1) Given what’s expected, the New England Patriots will be underwhelming. If any other team in the league had a quarterback who missed all of last season, a running back by committee system and a run defense that would be mediocre in college, it would hard to call them a .500 team. People need to stop predicting a repeat of two seasons ago and call the Pats what they are: An average team playing in a division that will allow them to win 11 games.

2) We really need to make up our minds when it comes to the importance of coaches. When it’s convenient, we like to treat football like this sport where only the most intelligent people can survive, but then when it comes to Baltimore, the fact that the team lost Rex Ryan means nothing.

3) AFC East predicted order of finish: New England, New York, Miami, Buffalo.

4) Carson Palmer is going to reclaim his spot as one of the top quarterbacks in the league, and while he still won’t get the Bengals to the playoffs, chances are he’ll get your fantasy team there.

5) Everyone forgets that Cleveland was the sexy pick to make the playoffs last year. Same thing happened with the Detroit Tigers in baseball this season. The Browns have a strong offensive line, a quarterback who, by all accounts, is ready to break out and one of the best receivers in the league. That’s another thing everyone forgets. Don’t take that drops stat too seriously with Braylon Edwards. Drops are more subjective than assists in the NBA. The Browns will be a Wild Card team.

6) AFC North predicted order of finish: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Baltimore, Cincinnati.

7) The two most frustrating teams in the league are San Diego and New Orleans. Both should be favorites to get to the Super Bowl, but always seem to find a way to screw it up. At least the Chargers make it to the playoffs. The Saints have only gone over .500 once in the last six seasons, yet they always seem to be a sleeper pick.

8) Here’s the question no one has asked about Michael Vick: How do the guys in the league, teammates and opponents, actually feel about him? We’re talking about married men who have children and probably own dogs. How do they explain man-hugging a puppy killer to their families?

9) AFC South predicted order of finish: Indy, Houston, Jacksonville, Tennessee

10) This will be the make-or-break year for Vince Young. He’ll start in at least five games for the Titans, whether it’s because of an injury to Kerry Collins or because the team will be out of contention by week 12.

11) There are at least nine teams (Detroit, Tampa, St. Louis, San Francisco, Oakland, Kansas City, Denver, Cincinnati and Buffalo) that have a chance to be the worst team in the league. The more difficult prediction is which of these will overachieve and go .500 (this is inevitable). I say the Bills.

12) AFC West predicted order of finish: San Diego, Denver, Kansas City, Oakland

13) The NFC South will be the most exciting division in the league this season. Atlanta, Carolina and New Orleans couldn’t be more different in the ways they get it done, but all have a shot to win the division.

14) The Washington Redskins are the Minnesota Twins of the NFL. No team is more consistently mediocre than the Skins.

15) NFC East predicted order of finish: Philly, Dallas, New York, Washington

16) Amidst overwhelming media pressure, the NFL will change its local blackout rule, which will affect about a third of the league this season.

17) How can Minnesota be the consensus pick to win the NFC North? They’re starting a quarterback who skipped training camp and whose teammates aren’t sold on him. Everyone just assumes Brett Favre will go along with a run-first offense, which is just as silly as the Detroit Pistons assuming Allen Iverson would be fine taking a backseat to Richard Hamilton.

18) NFC North predicted order of finish: Green Bay, Minnesota, Chicago, Detroit

19) The Arizona Cardinals are the favorites to win their division. Say that aloud. This can’t possibly go right, can it?

20) Top five quarterbacks in the league by the end of the season: Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Carson Palmer, Aaron Rodgers and Donovan McNabb. Brees will be the MVP, but McNabb is the one getting to the Super Bowl.

21) NFC South predicted order of finish: New Orleans, Atlanta, Carolina, Tampa

22) Without a big time receiver, Eli Manning will prove to be the biggest waste of money this off season.

23) Houston and Seattle seem to be everyone’s picks to make the make the jump into the playoffs this season. The Texas feels too much like the Browns last season, but I’m on board with Seahawks, who were the most injured team in the league a year ago.

24) NFC West predicted order of finish: Seattle, Arizona, St. Louis, San Francisco

25) AFC Championship Game: Chargers over Colts 24-21 NFC Championship Game: Eagles over Packers 27-21 Super Bowl: Chargers over Eagles 26-23

Iverson should be remembered for whole career

2009-09-10T21:42:00.001-04:00

So this is the thank you Allen Iverson gets. This is what it has come to for the most influential athlete of my generation, the guy who proved you didn’t have to be named Jordan to be immensely marketable. He’ll end his career with the Memphis Grizzlies, but that’s not the story here. It’s about the complete lack of respect being given to one of the most exciting players in the history of basketball.

It’s ironic, really, that Iverson would receive this kind of treatment. He was once the face of the new NBA, the controversial, outspoken, incredibly talented and wildly popular player who bridged the gap between Michael Jordan and today’s league. Yet the same people who grew up watching basketball simply because they worshipped A.I. are the ones comparing him to Brett Favre today, ridiculing him for not wanting to give it up just yet.

They’re mostly 20-somethings (like me), just finishing college and entering the workforce, more likely to have blogs and tweet regularly, and also more likely to focus on the present with little regard for the past.

That’s what knocks Iverson from his pedestal. You could argue that he entered the league at the perfect time, an outlier of sorts, when the fans needed a new hero, David Stern needed a superstar and franchises were willing to dish out insane contracts to anyone who could put up 20 points a night. But now he’s on the downside of his career in the 24/7 media era, when more people have the ability to witness his eroding abilities than ever before. Makes you wonder how Ali would have been treated if he were fighting today. Or Willie Mays. Even Jordan got a pass.

No one has had a more difficult time stepping away than Iverson, whose fall from grace has been uglier than any off-the-court incident he’s ever been involved in. He’s probably the first superstar athlete of this generation to have the entire world watch his game deteriorate. At least Favre had a playoff team interested in him. Iverson had the Clippers and Knicks and ended up in Memphis.

This isn’t how we should remember The Answer.

If you became a sports fan in the mid-late ‘90s, you’ve watched Iverson closer than any other athlete. You’ve criticized him for acting a fool. You’ve been amazed by his ability. You’ve realized that while Shaq might get hacked, AI gets decapitated. Yet he continues to get up. You respect him for that. ESPN’s Rick Reilly once wrote that if there was one player he’d pay twice the ticket price to watch, it would be Iverson, who really makes you think twice about cheering for someone like Manny Ramirez.

But for all he’s one done in the game, his impact off the court might be what truly defines him. He’s been called a thug for always speaking his mind at a time when you can’t buy a quote from a great athlete – see LeBron, ARod and Tiger. Seemingly cut from the same cliché, those three will never reach people quite the way Iverson did. If you think about it, he and Eminem probably did more to bring two completely different cultures together than any celebrities in history. For awhile, his sneakers, jersey and crossover gave every sports fan something in common.

Iverson’s legacy stretches well-beyond basketball, which he was as good at as almost anyone at any time. It’s about his place in popular culture. It’s about his impact on fans of the NBA and even today’s players, like his new teammate, Mike Conley.

“I'm excited," Conley told the Associated Press. "He’s a guy I always watched growing up.”

We all did. Let’s not forget that.

(Full disclosure: Some of this was copied from a piece I wrote about Iverson last season)

Melanie Oudin is the best story of the summer

2009-09-08T15:44:00.001-04:00

Leave it to the best to make the finest point when it comes to teenage tennis sensation Melanie Oudin:

“She's beaten great players on the way now and it's nice for a change that somebody's coming up we haven't heard about much before. I think this is very exciting and very much needed on the women's side.”

That was Roger Federer, one of the greatest to ever play, talking about the kid from Marietta, Ga. who has stolen the U.S. Open from him, from the Williams sisters and from anyone else who felt like this might be their time. It’s all about Oudin, no matter what she does, from here on out.

Federer’s comments were spot-on because he pointed to both the sport’s biggest flaw and its greatest attraction. There are only two great players in the men’s game (Federer and Rafael Nadal) and the top players on the women’s side, the Williams’, treat the game like a boyfriend who can’t quite get over them, dismissing it and then returning to it as they please. There is no sport in need of a change as much as tennis.

Enter Melanie Oudin.

From out of nowhere comes this young American, showing all the ability and toughness and genuine enthusiasm Venus and Serena displayed a decade ago. No other sport can match this. We generally know who the next great ones will be in the major sports. They light up the minors or the college ranks and so they’re pre-packaged stars by the time they reach the professional ranks. That’s not the case with Oudin.

You’ve never heard of her because she’s the 70th ranked player in the world and chances are you don’t know 65 of the players ahead of her. The girl barely had a Wikipedia a few days ago. But there she was, stunning Elena Dementieva and Maria Sharapova and Nadia Petrova to become the best story in sports.

Women’s tennis will always draw eyes for the same reasons Sports Illustrated puts out a swimsuit edition. There’s a massive market for blondes with nice bodies. But that’s not why we should all be glued to our televisions to watch Oudin. She’s a kid, only a few years older than the boys who play in Williamsport, winning on the biggest stage there is. With that comes the excitement and energy of a teenager, as well as the unmistakable passion. That’s the best part. Kids aren’t good at hiding their emotions, so everything we see with Oudin is real.

And that’s what makes the Melanie Oudin story so refreshing. Win or lose.

Kevin Youkilis' big mistake

2009-09-01T10:18:00.002-04:00

Could Kevin Youkilis have picked a worse time to call out the people of Boston? In the same week that an icon who spent his entire life in the public eye passed away, there was Youk whining about how fans are too negative nowadays. It felt like he was playing the us-versus-them card. It sounded like he doesn’t appreciate a city that puts the Red Sox above all else, including its favorite family.

It was all wrong.

And you just know that right now, Ted Kennedy is somewhere sipping his gin and tonic and wishing Youk would suck it up.

Athletes, of course, are not elected; in places like Boston, they’re actually more like royalty. And aside from Tom Brady and Dustin Pedroia, there might not be anyone more revered by fans than Youkilis. The man is a walking cliché – he’s a grinder, someone who plays every game like it’s the World Series, a guy who gives it all up for the team.

He’s the type of player all kids should model their game after. Except, you know, for the tantrums. No one wants to see their child throwing his helmet after every poor at bat. And no one wants to see their favorite Major Leaguer do it either. Youkilis is to the current Red Sox what Paul O’Neil was to the Yankees in the ‘90s. He’s the guy you want at the plate with the game on the line, but also the guy most likely to throw the water cooler into the crowd when he screws up.

That’s what gets to Sox fans. Youkilis said he feels like he’s portrayed wrongly by the media. But you don’t have to watch a game on NESN or pick up the Globe to find out what piece of equipment broke this time (in fact, he’s probably protected by those outlets a lot of the time) all you have to do is attend a game and it’s all there on display.

He calls it intensity. We call it insanity.

He probably doesn’t know it, but he sounded a lot like Ted Williams when he told Dan Shaughnessy that the thing he loves most about Boston is “from 7 o’clock until the last pitch is thrown.” That’s about the only time Williams felt comfortable in the city as well. He despised the press only slightly more than the fans, who he often compared to a pack of wolves.

But Williams had it much worse. There were seven daily newspapers in the city during his playing days. And they covered sports the way the media in the ‘80s covered Kennedy, always looking for dirt, waiting for the next slipup. They attacked the Splendid Splinter every chance they had. And, you’ll remember, he never won a World Series.

Youkilis already has the ring Williams never won. He’s playing at a time when the fans have never been as loyal and the media has never been as friendly to the team. Hell, the Sox control most of the media. There are probably 20 popular Red Sox blogs and you’ll almost never find any of them criticizing the team. It’s a cakewalk for Youk.

Now Kevin Youkilis has broken the cardinal rule, the one Kennedy never did and the one Williams never cared about: Never turn on the people who want to accept you. Something tells me the rest of his season will be spent more like a politician than a ball player.

In full recovery mode.

Williamsport can't be all bad

2009-08-30T10:12:00.003-04:00

They come out in droves this time of year. They fill up message boards or their parenting blogs or whatever outlet they can find to talk about the flaws of little league Baseball. They believe they’re just pointing out the truth. The 12 year olds from Chula Vista, Ca might call them haters. Some might call them pathetic.

More than anything though, I think those who spend the last few weeks of August criticizing the kids playing baseball on ESPN are missing the point. It’s not about some 12 year old’s draft prospects six years from now. It’s about kids from the neighborhood, could be any neighborhood, putting together a magical run of baseball for an entire summer. It’s about the commitment these kids and their families make to the team. It’s about the community that embraces them for it. That’s the stuff that doesn’t quite get through on television.

No, the kids playing in Williamsport probably aren’t the best 12 year old ball players in the world. But they are the most impressive. Little league has restrictions. Teams can’t just put together the best players from a region and see what happens. You go with what you’ve got. Most teams never make it past districts, the initial stage of All Stars. Usually everything after that is icing on the cake. To make it all the way to Williamsport is one of the most special accomplishments in all of sports.

And it’s something none of these kids and no one they know will ever forget.

Forbes Magazine recently called Chula Vista one of the most boring cities in America. That’s not true anymore, not to the folks from San Diego County’s second largest city. They’ll fill up pubs and restaurants and they’ll be glued to the television watching their boys. All the flaws of little league baseball and the people who like to talk about them can go to hell.

Chula Vista will remember this forever. 20 years after Trumbull won the World Series, people in Connecticut still talk about that team. The banner still hangs in the city. My girlfriend is from Cranston, RI and was 12 when her town made it to the finals. They were rock stars, she says. My freshman year of college, I had a kid in my Western Civ course who was the star of the Tom’s River, NJ team that won it all. Our professor even knew who he was.

This means the world to these kids and their communities. And anything that brings that many people that much joy can’t be all bad.

As teams schedule for a championship, college football loses relevance

2009-08-28T02:44:00.001-04:00

I’ve always had a strange affection for the BCS. I loved the idea from the beginning. Having two teams actually play for a National Championship as opposed to letting writers (the sports version of death panels) pick the champion was what college football had always been missing. And when it screwed up and the wrong teams ended up playing for the title, I stuck by its side, turning my head the way a delusional parent does when they find out their angel of a child is actually using pages from his math book as rolling paper.

Put simple, I might be the system’s biggest apologist. But if Rutgers ends up playing Penn State for the National Championship, I’m out. I will disown the BCS forever.

Normally this wouldn’t be a concern at all. It’s been strange enough to see the Scarlet Knights finish in the top half of the Big East the past few seasons and the Nittany Lions are typically a mortal lock to screw up at least one must-win game every year. But given their embarrassing schedules, both teams have a realistic shot to run the table, a notion that has to make the people at ABC queasy.

If Rutgers is unbeaten after it travels to Maryland (a team that might win four games all season) at the end of September, the talk of a perfect season will start to get loud. The Scarlet Knights get Pitt, South Florida and a down West Virginia team at home and something tells me Army just won’t have what it takes to stop them.

Meanwhile, Penn State is more likely to get beat by its practice squad than the nonconference teams it scheduled. In what most people consider the easiest schedule of any BCS program, the Nittany Lions play Akron, Temple, Syracuse and Eastern Illinois and go on the road just four times all season. Joe Paterno himself could quarterback his team through this schedule.

It’s not just the two teams from the northeast guilty of scheduling for a championship. Ole Miss, who beat Florida last season, is a top ten program playing two games against IAA teams and two others against schools who couldn’t win a high school championship in most states (Memphis & UAB). Wisconsin misses Ohio State in the Big 10 this season, plays three nonconference games against teams that won’t finish in the top 100 and also has a IAA team on its schedule. And don’t forget about Notre Dame, who crazy Lou Holtz picked to play for the BCS Championship specifically because of its weak schedule.

The only thing worse than not having a playoff decide the champion is allowing a team that has five variations of Wofford on its schedule to reach the title game. And that’s what could very well happen this season.

If it does, college football will be hockey to me.

National League is the greatest performance-enhancer of all

2009-08-26T00:32:00.002-04:00

Given the times, there was a lot of speculation. There were rumors, as there are for anyone who puts up those kinds of numbers. Some even had him on a list or two. But even though his sin was more evident than just about anyone in the history of baseball, no one could get him.

Until now.

Albert Pujols is guilty of playing in the National League, which is undoubtedly the greatest performance-enhancer of all.

Pujols cracked homerun number 40 on Sunday afternoon, but a better indicator of just how far the certain NL MVP is from his competition might be new teammate John Smoltz. After putting up numbers your beer-league softball pitcher would be ashamed of in Boston, Smoltz pitched like Bob Gibson in his first start for St. Louis, setting a Cardinals record by striking out seven consecutive hitters and getting the win.

Smoltz is just the latest player to come over and dominate the inferior league. Matt Holliday was traded to St. Louis just before the deadline and hit .400 for over a month. Since his trade to Philadelphia, Cliff Lee has been the best pitcher in baseball. And of course last year you’ll remember C.C. Sabathia and Manny Ramirez were sent to the National League at mid-season and proceeded to lead Milwaukee and Los Angeles to the playoffs.

Pujols has been there all along, exploiting thin pitching staffs to the point that he’s become the most realistic Triple Crown threat in decades.

That he plays in the weaker league doesn’t necessarily make Pujols’ numbers any less impressive or authentic. Or does it? Any Cardinals fan would be quick to point out that he is a career .355 hitter against the American League, but it is worth noting that he is on pace to have his best season at a time when the gap between baseball’s two leagues has never been so wide.

Two of the top three teams on the planet might play in the National League. But the next 13 come from the American League. Then you have a handful of teams from the International League. And you might have to look at a few teams playing in Williamsport this week after that.

Only then can you start to consider the rest of the National League.

This is the same argument that has been made in some of the other sports. Nobody took the NBA’s Eastern Conference serious two years ago because three of its playoff teams were .500 or worse for the season. In College Football, it’s a virtual guarantee that whatever Big East team qualifies for a BCS Bowl will face criticism for playing in such an awful league.

Pujols probably deserves to be subjected to similar questions. He might very well be the best player in baseball, but it’s only fair that we put his gaudy numbers in perspective. It’s not his fault, but his second-rate competition hurts his mystique.

If losing a banner is the only penalty, why wouldn't college coaches cheat?

2009-08-21T15:59:00.004-04:00

John Calipari is the best recruiter in America. He’s got the top coaching job in college basketball. And he’s going to make more money at Kentucky than John Wooden, Dean Smith and Bob Knight ever could have dreamed of. But unlike those legends of the sport, and unlike many of his current rivals (Pitino, Calhoun, Krzyzewski, Williams, Izzo – all guys he makes more money than) Calipari has never reached the Final Four.

At least that’s how the NCAA sees it.

Yesterday, the NCAA ordered Memphis basketball and its former coach to vacate its record 38 wins and appearance in the 2008 National Championship Game because Calipari had an ineligible player on the roster. Calipari became the first coach in history to have two Final Fours with two different teams erased from the record books. In 1996, his UMass team reached the Final Four and later forfeited its season because the NCAA found that Marcus Camby had accepted gifts and cash from an agent.

In a world, particularly the sports world, where we want nothing more than to see the punishment fit the crime, this penalty amounts to nothing more than a harsh warning. Only nothing comes after the warning, as Calipari has proved. It’s an out-of-date sentence that might have worked years ago when history and records were only found in almanacs. But what does it prove now? We all witnessed Memphis’ title game run and if you haven’t you can check it out on YouTube. Everything is on YouTube.

And if we’re being real, the only question that should come from the NCAA’s ruling is this: Why in the world isn’t every college program cheating? If losing a banner is the only punishment, doesn’t it seem worth it? Those banners are ugly and can be replaced with sponsor logos anyway, right?

Or maybe everyone is cheating. Memphis made it five Final Fours in the last 17 years that have been corrupted by a team doing something un-amateur. Chances are UConn would have joined them this season if Nate Miles wasn’t tossed out of school before classes started last fall.

Maybe this stuff is as prevalent in college basketball as steroids in baseball were in the nineties and at the start of this decade. The juice made you bigger, faster, stronger and more durable and up until a few years ago, pro wrestlers were more likely to be caught using than baseball players.

There was only upside.

It appears the same goes for recruiting in college basketball. If attempting to erase history is the best the NCAA can do, then coaches will take advantage.

Coach Cal sure did.

Minnesota players will have high expectations for Favre

2009-08-18T20:32:00.003-04:00

My senior year of high school we had a kid on our baseball team who got away with everything. He was lazy, smoked too much, drank even more and despised every teacher almost as much as they despised him. He was that guy. He’d show up late to every practice with what appeared to be a running hangover. He’d ditch class in favor of playing gym softball, except when he blew that off too. But our coach always catered to him, helping him stay out of any real trouble and somehow managing to keep him on the field for a full season.

We didn’t necessarily resent him. We weren’t jealous. We never really bitched about the puking during batting practice. In fact, the preferential treatment wouldn’t have bothered us at all if he could hit. Hell, I’d have taken whatever Home-Economics test he couldn’t pass if he was batting .400 for us. Our biggest problem with him was that he simply wasn’t that good.

You have to wonder if a segment of the Minnesota Vikings will feel that way about Brett Favre now. Of course he’s going to be treated differently. One could even argue that at his age, he’s earned the right to skip training camp. And there’s no doubt that 464 career touchdown passes does wonders for his credibility.

But isn’t his league leading 22 interceptions last season a cause for concern? Is having a gunslinger at quarterback on a run-first, second and third team really a recipe for success? Favre might be a much better option than anyone else the Vikings had, but he also could make Adrian Peterson a lot less effective. At least initially, defenses won’t stack the box the way they did last season; but when they realize the quarterback is just as likely to throw a pick as he is a touchdown, they’ll go right back to focusing on the run. And that’s when Favre will start trying to make plays you couldn’t make on the new Madden.

It’s not as though the Vikings signed him for his leadership ability either. Ask anyone on the New York Jets about that. Last year, an anonymous player told Newsday that “there was a lot of resentment in the room about him (Favre). He never socialized with us, never went to do with anyone.”

At least we liked our teammate.

To the Vikings comes a big arm with an even bigger ego. He gets a pass for being too lazy to attend camp and for flip-flopping on his retirement decision like a bad politician. But something tells me his teammates won’t be as forgiving as mine were with our drunken second basemen. The NFL is a results-first, what-have-you-done-for-me lately league, so the new guy better produce right away or be prepared to be run out of the locker room.

Tiger being Tyson?

2009-08-17T11:20:00.001-04:00

Veteran sportswriters love golf. I don’t know what it is, but every Sunday following a Major, every scribe over 50 in the country suddenly becomes Mark Sanford and starts writing about golf as though it were their Argentinean soul mate. For that reason, I’m going to leave it to the Mike Lupica’s and Rick Reilly’s (you’ll have to wait until Wednesday for Mr. Reilly) of the world to discuss what YE Yang’s come-from-behind victory over Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship means for the history of golf.

I’ll just point the obvious out: You can spin it however you want, but Tiger shit the bed. It wasn’t quite the Yankees in 2004 or the USSR hockey team in 1980 (I consider those the two biggest chokes in sports history), but it was significantly worse than Michigan losing to Appalachian State or the Mets September collapse in 2007.

The best comparison to Tiger’s breakdown might actually be Mike Tyson’s loss to Buster Douglas in 1990. Think about it. Each was the best in the world at his respective sport (Tiger still is). They were insane betting favorites (An Irish sportsbook paid out to those who bet on Woods before play began on Saturday and leading up to the Tyson/Douglas fight, virtually no sportsbook would even take bets because it was expected to be so lopsided.). And while Tyson was undefeated overall, Tiger had never lost when leading a Major heading into the weekend.

The end-result wasn’t a Yang and Douglas win so much as a Tiger and Tyson loss. Tiger played too conservatively on Saturday and watched everything go right for his opponent on Sunday. Tyson didn’t take his challenger seriously and fought virtually the entire fight with vision in only one eye thanks to his cornermen forgetting to bring an endswell to the ring.

Add it all up and voila! You’ve got two of the most memorable choke acts in sports history.

Of course, that’s probably where the comparison between Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson ends. Something tells me Woods will never take a chunk out of Phil Mickelson’s ear (although it would make golf infinitely more entertaining) and considering his biggest offense to date is swearing on the golf course, I doubt he’s going to end up in the clink.

But it should be pointed out that for the first time in five years, Tiger Woods will not be the defending champion at any Major and despite playing pretty well this weekend, he still missed the cut at the British Open and wasn’t really in contention on Sunday at either the U.S. Open or the Masters.

Will he bounce back from what must be considered a failure of a season? Or can Jack Nicklaus breathe a little easier today?

Am I getting ahead of myself? Probably. But history shows that some athletes and teams are never the same following their most noteworthy collapses.

Just ask Mike Tyson.

If you can find him.

Random Rumblings: Look on the bright side, Red Sox Nation

2009-08-16T10:26:00.005-04:00

Wasn’t 2004 supposed to lift the weight off of Red Sox Nation? After winning for the first time in 86 years, weren’t fans expected to halt their whining when things stopped going the team’s way? Maybe it was the second World Series that did them in, that got them too comfortable with being on top, because it has become clear that the Nation is more panic-ridden than ever.

Reaching the playoffs in baseball is more difficult than in any other sport, and if the season were to end today, the Sox would be heading to Los Angeles as the American League Wild Card winners despite…

*A pitching staff once considered the deepest in baseball that now runs thinner than any team over .500 in the sport.

*A top slugger who picked 2009 as the year he wanted to go clean for the first time since he was sitting the bench in Minnesota.

*A catcher who last year didn’t have the bat to break your beer-league softball lineup and this year doesn’t even have the arm. No one is talking about his game-calling ability this year, by the way.

*The 2008 AL MVP hitting the sophomore slump in his junior year in baseball.

*The closer allowing more base runners than he’s ever allowed before.

*The 18 game winner a year ago that won just once before the team realized he was too out-of-shape to even bother using.

*The combination of Julio Lugo, Jed Lowrie, Nick Green and whoever else played shortstop this season.

I could go on forever, but the fact remains if simply getting to October should ever be good-enough for Red Sox Nation again, 2009 is that year.

You can slam Rick Pitino all you want. Call him an embarrassment to his family. Label him a baby killer. But if he walked into your house to recruit your kid, you’d melt for him the way Turtle did for Tom Brady on Entourage last week.

And if you did actually hold your ground and spit on Pitino, he’d just go right to the next kid on his list and chances are it would be your son that loses in the end.
Notice that you hear nothing about Vince Young when plays well, as he did last night in the Titans second preseason game. It seems to me Young has been labeled in such a way that he will actually have to be a Hall of Famer to ever be liked in the NFL.

How unfortunate. Young isn’t a puppy-killer or worse yet, a drunk-driving murderer like other guys in the NFL. He’s not getting arrested three times a year or shooting himself in the foot in night clubs. He’s simply the victim of overhype, much like two other prominent players in his draft class, Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart.
It’s crazy to think that 89 years after a ball player named Ray Chapman died from a pitch to the head, we still have players getting hurt the same way today. In the last century, we’ve figured out how to juice the balls, the bats and god knows the players. Why haven’t we juiced the helmet yet?
I’m not Tiger Woods’ biggest fan by any means. But I enjoy dominance in sports and there is perhaps no more of a sure-thing than when Tiger heads into Sunday leading a Major. I hope that continues today and forever so that I can say that even though I grew up in a time when sports was littered with cheaters and drug addicts and criminals, I got to watch the single most dominant athlete in history.