Jeff J. Snider General, Links, Sports
Just FYI, a couple weeks ago I started a new site just for focusing on Joe Morgan (and probably other people who say stupid things about baseball). You can find it at http://www.joemorgansaid.com/. It has several items from this site, but there are a few posts that are exclusive to that site, and all future Joe Morgan content will go there instead of here. Enjoy.
1 comment September 5th, 2007 at 09:48am
Jeff J. Snider General, Sports
A week or two ago, there was a very interesting and thought-provoking article on ESPN.com about Michael Vick, the city of Atlanta, and the role that racism has played in the public response to the allegations against Vick. It is titled “A History of Mistrust,” but it was the little blurb below the title that caught my attention:
Having trouble understanding how so many black Atlantans see the Michael Vick case as a racial conspiracy?
Try walking a mile in their shoes.
I read the article. I tried “walking a mile in their shoes.” And while my opinions maybe aren’t quite as black-and-white as they were before I read it, I find my feelings mostly unchanged.
(more…)
Add comment August 24th, 2007 at 01:38am
Jeff J. Snider General, Sports, Web Stuff
You wanna know what bugs me? People who fling around superlatives like they have no meaning.
Example 1: Greg Anthony, a former NBA player and now a basketball analyst on ESPN, was asked who he thought would win the Western Conference Finals series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Utah Jazz. In (correctly) predicting that the Spurs would win, Anthony said, “Not that the Jazz haven’t had an unbelievable season — they have — but…” and then went on to explain why the Spurs would win. I’m sorry, Greg, but what exactly is “unbelievable” about going 51-31? Sure, they had a good season. I’d even go so far as to say that they did significantly better than they were expected to do. But unbelievable? Not unless you have a VERY weird standard of believability.
Example 2: On May 26, Manny Ramirez had a great game, going 4-for-4 and having a key hit in the game-winning rally. In the ESPN.com article about the game, Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell had this to say:
Manny really looks like he’s in a groove. When he’s stinging the baseball like that, when he’s going up the middle, that’s when he’s the most dangerous. It seems like he’s done nothing so far, but he’s still on pace to have a great season.
So Mike Lowell said Manny was on pace to have a “great” season. Now, where I come from, “great” means “really, really good.” In fact, A-Rod proved last season that even a season that would be considered great by normal standards can be considered less-than-great when compared to an individual’s past performance. I certainly think that Manny Ramirez would fall in that same category, having averaged 40 homers and 127 RBIs a year over the past nine seasons (not to mention his .314 career batting average and 1.006 career OPS). So let’s take a look at Manny’s season as of May 26 and see if Mike Lowell was correct. At that point in time, Manny was on pace for:
–24 home runs
–103 RBIs
–.272 batting average
–.798 OPS
All four of those numbers would be far lower than Manny has put up in any full season in the Majors, and none of them really stand out as “great” even for an average player. Simply put, Manny was NOT, on May 26, “on pace to have a great season.” I’m just sayin’.
Example 3: On my brother’s website, he has a recurring feature called “Children’s Letters to Raven-Symone.” I won’t go into too many details; suffice it to say that Eric gets lots of emails from people who think he is Raven-Symone, and he publishes some of the funny ones. A recent edition included this tidbit from a letter:
I am of Spain i and seen your video of the cheetah girls a good pile of times
Lots of people enjoyed the phrase “a good pile of times,” and for good reason. But one commenter said this:
“I am of Spain” is quite possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever read.
For real? The second-best thing in that sentence is the greatest thing you have ever read? We all have different standards for greatness, but I feel safe in stating that this guy’s standard is all sort of screwed up.
Example 4: This one is only tangentially related, but I’m putting it here anyway. People on the Internet (at least the corners of the Internet I frequent) have a tendency, when they read a clever or funny phrase, to say something along the lines of, “I need to remember to use that.” (In the previously cited Reven-Symone blog entry, Eric himself did it when he said, “In other news, ‘a good pile of times’ is my new favorite figure of speech.” He even used the phrase in his very next humor column, when he said, “I’d been to this place a good pile of times for various reasons and had never seen the same doctor twice.”) I don’t really mind that; in fact, I am often incorporating things into my regular vocabulary that I read somewhere, either in a book or in a magazine or on the Internet.
But sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. Case in point: on my message board, there was a discussion about the latest Harry Potter book (caution: SPOILERS in that link), and one fellow said this about the word “Horcruxiness,” which another poster had just created:
…Horcruxiness (a great word, by the way, and one that I need to find a way to incorporate in my everyday life)…
So let me get this straight: you are going to find a way to discuss a very specific aspect of the Harry Potter books every day, just so you can use a made-up word? That seems a bit overboard to me. I guess if you wanted to incorporate it into every discussion you have about Harry Potter and Horcruxes, okay. But your everyday life? I don’t think so.
So there you have it: four (or three) examples of something that bugs me. Enjoy.
1 comment July 31st, 2007 at 01:11am
Jeff J. Snider General, Sports
NOTE: I started writing this several weeks ago, and while I have tried to update all the references to time, I may have missed one or two. So if something doesn’t flow right, that’s why.
In mid-June on Sunday Night Baseball, Joe Morgan said the following (paraphrased):
You know I think wins are the most important stat to judge a pitcher by. There’s a big difference between pitching just well enough to win and pitching just bad enough to lose.
Then in his June 26th chat on ESPN.com, he had these two gems:
Bob (Brooklyn): What’s more important to evaluate a pitcher: Wins or ERA?
Joe Morgan: I’ve always believed that an ERA is like a batting average. It’s a personal thing. For instance, a guy could hit .300, but not be as valuable as a guy that hits .270. A guy that makes 7 outs out of 10 with guys on base, he’s not that valuable. But if you’re clutch, but hit .275, you’re more valuable. That’s why I think wins are better. It’s just as tough to win a game 7-6 as it is 1-0. The only thing that matters at the end of the year is how many games did we win.
Kyle (Kansas): What is the most overated stat in baseball?
Joe Morgan: Batting average and earned run average and this OPS stuff they do. OPS doesn’t tell you anything except about the individual. The same as the other stats. It doesn’t tell you anything about the team. A .300 average doesn’t help you win games, run production does.
Joe Morgan: I’m not saying those numbers don’t mean anything, I’m saying they’re overglorified.
I knew there were people out there who actually believed these things (based on the results of postseason awards voting), but it still surprises me to actually see someone put it that way. I want to address a couple things:
There’s a big difference between pitching just well enough to win and pitching just bad enough to lose.
That’s absolutely true, Joe. Unfortunately, you don’t actually find out where that fine line is for a given game until the game is over. So in the case of non-clairvoyant pitchers, the fact that this “big difference” exists does absolutely no good and makes no difference. The bottom line is this: a guy who pitches a no-hitter but loses on three errors by his teammates pitched a better game than a guy who gave up eight runs in five innings and wins 14-13. Sure, the one guy pitched well enough to win, but only because his teammates scored 14 runs. Wins and losses are a team statistic, and they are a very poor standalone judge of a pitcher’s effectiveness.
It’s just as tough to win a game 7-6 as it is 1-0. The only thing that matters at the end of the year is how many games did we win.
Now, Joe, you just took your true-but-pointless statement from above and ran it into the ditch of flat-out stupidity. First of all, no two 7-6 games are alike, just as no two 1-0 games are alike. So to lump them all together like that is silly. But more to the point, this statement is just false. In a 7-6 game, a pitcher can give up six runs. He may have felt just as much pressure as he would have in a 1-0 game (depending on when the runs were scored, etc.), but the bottom line is that he didn’t pitch as well, and if his team didn’t come through with the seven runs, he would have lost.
Let’s look at a hypothetical situation for a minute. Let’s say Josh Beckett pitches a complete game three-hitter with a dozen strikeouts and one run allowed. That’s a great game, right? Let’s say he pitches that exact game two starts in a row: the first time, the Red Sox don’t score, and Beckett loses 1-0; in the second game, the Sox pull it out and win 2-1. Beckett pitched the exact same excellent game both times, but he gets one win and one loss. Without doing anything different! Joe Morgan would have us believe that Beckett actually pitched better in the second game, because he pitched “just well enough to win,” whereas in the first game, he pitched “just bad enough to lose.” Those of us with brains can see that this is a stupid, ridiculous argument.
As for his point that wins are all that matters at the end of the season, that’s absolutely true — for a team. And the best way a pitcher can be a good team player is by putting his team in position to win every time out — by allowing as few runs as possible.
When I asked Rob Neyer if he was allowed to admit that Joe Morgan is a moron, he said:
I certainly wouldn’t say that Joe is a moron. He’s wrong about this, though. And frankly, I don’t think he really believes it. Just like you or me, he’d take Santana over Haren every time.
I want to believe that’s true. I really do. But at this point, I see no reason to think that Joe Morgan doesn’t actually believe that the guy with the best win/loss record is the best pitcher in the league. I’m sure it baffles Neyer, just as it baffles me, that anyone could actually be so dumb, but the only alternative is that Joe Morgan is some genius who is perpetuation the myth of his own idiocy for some reason that we mortals can’t quite grasp. Occam’s Razor tells me which is true.
1 comment July 31st, 2007 at 12:30am
Jeff J. Snider Web Stuff
An article by Kevin Hale over at Particletree about the pain of dealing with subdomains got me thinking, and I realized I actually have something very applicable and helpful to say on the subject.
I don’t think I have ever written here about the stuff I do 40+ hours a week for DigiCert. I work as Director of Web Development for DigiCert, and there are some things we do that I am pretty proud of. But this is the first time I have been moved to write about it.
Some background on DigiCert, and then I will tie it in with what Kevin wrote. We sell SSL Certificates, which doesn’t mean anything to a lot of people. Here’s the layman’s version: when you go to buy something online, the address will usually start with https instead of http. The “s” stands for “secure,” and it means the data you are submitting is being encrypted by an SSL Certificate.
There are two basic kinds of SSL Certificates: single certificates, which secure one “common name” (one specific fully qualified domain name); and wildcard certificates, which secure every first-level subdomain on a given domain. So for example, with a single certificate, you could secure “www.jeffjsnider.com” OR “mail.jeffjsnider.com” OR “secure.jeffjsnider.com.” A wildcard certificate would be issued to “*.jeffjsnider.com,” which means you could secure all three of those domain names (and as many other first-level subdomains of the “jeffjsnider.com” domain as you wanted).
Wildcard certificates do have one major limitation, though, which Kevin touched on:
One thing that we don’t like is that, since that certificate only works with subdomains, we have to do things like https://secure.wufoo.com/login/ to get an encrypted login url rather than having a simple url like this https://wufoo.com/login/ for our users to follow (and we’ll be damned before having to pay for two different certificates just for this kind of functionality).
The problem is, while a certificate issued to “*.jeffjsnider.com” would secure all those first-level subdomains, it wouldn’t actually secure just “jeffjsnider.com.” More and more of the web is subscribing to the idea that “www” is deprecated, which means it is becoming more and more important to be able to secure the base domain along with any necessary subdomains. As Kevin mentioned, the solution has always been to buy a wildcard certificate for all the subdomains AND a single certificate for the base domain.
Until now.
There is a little-used (but ridiculously widely supported by browsers) feature of SSL certificates. It is a field called Subject Alternative Name, and it allows multiple common names to be specified. We at DigiCert first put this to use a couple months ago, when we launched our Unified Communications Certificates, designed primarily for use with Microsoft’s Exchange and Live Communication Servers. DigiCert UC Certificates use the Subject Alternative name field to allow the customer to specify up to 50 common names to secure with one certificate.
Well, we were thinking about it, and we realized that the number one complaint about wildcard certificates was exactly what Kevin said: they do great on subdomains, but they miss the boat when it comes to NO subdomain. So we put the Subject Alternative Name to use in a way no one ever had before, and what we came up with was WildCard Plus, a simple and elegant solution to an irksome problem. As of May 14, 2007, every DigiCert WildCard certificate is issued with the base domain in the SubjAltName field, which means your certificate will work not only on all your first-level subdomains, but also on your base domain with no subdomain at all.
Like I said, it’s simple and elegant. And it’s included in the price of a regular WildCard certificate. I love being a part of a company that listens to its customers and develops solutions based on their needs.
Add comment May 25th, 2007 at 11:56pm
Jeff J. Snider Sports
At the beginning of the season, before Roger Clemens had made his decision to come back to the Yankees, I did some interesting research. At that point in time, National League teams had a total of eight former Cy Young Award winners (Brandon Webb, Chris Carpenter, Barry Zito, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Greg Maddux) who had combined to win the award 18 times; the American League, on the other hand, had only four former winners (Johan Santana, Bartolo Colon, Eric Gagne, and Roy Halladay) with a total of five awards (with Santana being the only repeater). If Clemens had gone back to the Astros, the NL would have had a 25-5 edge in awards and a 9-4 edge in winners. Instead, the edge is 18-12 and 8-5 — still pretty significant.
So those numbers got me thinking: does the National League really have better pitching than the American League? Let’s explore that idea. (And to be honest, at this point, I don’t know what the final answer will be, although I have a somewhat-educated guess.) Things to consider:
The difference between the leagues
Let’s face it: not all Cy Young winners are created equal. Winning the National League Cy Young Award says nothing about a pitcher in comparison to an AL pitcher; all it says (in theory) is that you were the best pitcher in your league. So you could, theoretically, have a guy who wins a dozen awards in one league and wouldn’t have won any in the other. So I thought I would take a look at each of these winners and compare him to the winner and runner-up from the other league that year. Here’s what I found:
Other than 2005, most of the guys on our list would have been roughly pretty competitive in the race in the other league. So while there are potential differences between the leagues, in actuality they even out pretty well.
The voters are sometimes idiots
The people who vote for the postseason awards — members of the Baseball Writers Association of America — are generally obsessed with counting statistics. The like home runs and RBIs and win/loss records. The don’t care as much for percentage statistics like batting average and ERA, and they absolutely crap all over anything more complicated than that. As such, they don’t always get things right. A simple example is last season, when Ryan Howard beat out Albert Pujols for the NL MVP Award because he had more homers and RBIs. Howard was clearly not as good as Pujols, but he won the award because he had the counting stats.
The same thing happens with the Cy Young Award, except worse. Home runs and RBIs reflect a hitter’s value far better than win/loss records do for pitchers, but the Cy Young voters often (stupidly) vote for the guy with the best record. In the past decade, I count five pitchers who won the award over a more qualified guy because of the record: Glavine over Kevin Brown in 1998; Zito over Pedro in 2002; Clemens over Johnson in 2004; Carpenter (and Dontrelle Willis) over Clemens in 2005; and Colon over Santana in 2005.
So, to put it simply, the Cy Young Award doesn’t actually mean you are the best pitcher in your league, which makes it a questionable tool when comparing talent.
Some of these mares just ain’t what they used to be
Of the 13 active former Cy Young winners, only two are still in their prime: Webb and Santana. Roger Clemens has been the best pitcher in the National League the past two seasons (and was the second best in 2004, when he won his last Cy Young), but he is undeniably 44 years old, and it is bound to catch up with him one of these days. Some of the guys are saddled by injuries (Colon, Gagne, Halladay, Carpenter, and Pedro); some are getting old (Clemens, Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine); one is old AND frail (Johnson); and one just isn’t as good as he used to be (Zito). So among Cy Young winners in their prime, the AL has a distinct advantage in Santana over Webb.
Second place matters too
And so does third place, probably. The American League has Curt Schilling, who has finished second in the voting three times (twice to Johnson and once to Santana). Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera have each finished second a couple times. And several of our winners have other Top 3 finishes to their credit.
Youth will be served
Every pitcher who has ever won a Cy Young Award was once a young pitcher who had never won one. That’s a fact of life. So when we’re looking at the leagues, we have to take a look at the young (or youngish) guys who could, realistically, win the award at some point in their careers. I looked at the pitchers who qualified for the ERA title in each league last year (38 in the NL, 39 in the AL) and just made a list of guys who could, in my opinion, win a Cy Young sometime in the next five or ten years. I counted eight in the NL and eleven in the AL (including two former winners in each league). This obviously isn’t a perfect approach, but it’s not bad. Here’s who I have:
National League:
American League:
The AL has the edge in numbers, and if you look closely, they have an edge in youth, too (among these guys, anyway). Based on this, here is my official declaration on this subject:
While the National League has more proven veterans who are past their respective primes, the American League seems poised to leave the NL in the dust over the next decade or so. If I were to write a blog entry five years from now with this same title (”Which league has the better pitchers?”), I suspect it would be a pretty stupid question.
Add comment May 25th, 2007 at 11:10pm
Jeff J. Snider Sports
I recently made a list of topics I wanted to eventually get around to blogging about. Looking back over the list today, I realized that four of the six topics (and a fifth one I added today) directly relate to race and its place in sports. Here are those five topics:
So I thought I’d kill several birds with one big, verbose stone.
Don Imus
Here’s what I wrote on my message board:
While I agree that the Imus thing was overblown, I don’t agree that what he said was not offensive. The only part that bothered me was how many people got offended who had no business doing so. There are only two groups of people who had a right to be offended: the Rutgers women’s basketball team, who could justifiably be upset about being called nappy-headed hos; and any actual nappy-headed hos who do not like being associated with a women’s basketball team. Anyone who is not a Scarlet Knight or an actual nappy-headed ho had no business being offended. (And being an actual nappy-headed ho only gives you the right to be offended if you are offended for the reason I stated above — I’m looking at you, Messrs Jackson and Sharpton.)
I’m glad Don Imus got fired for his statements, though. I think it was overblown, but I think anyone with a brain could have foreseen the reaction it got, and someone with no working filter on his brain-to-mouth connection has no business being on national radio. I hear people saying it is a free speech issue, but their arguments would only hold water if someone was actually trying to have him arrested for what he said. CBS Radio and MSNBC had every right — and a responsibility to their stockholders — to limit this guy’s “free speech” by giving him the boot.
Racist team names
Are “Braves,” “Indians,” and “Redskins” inappropriate team names? Yeah, they probably are. As far as offensiveness goes, they are certainly more mild than a lot of racial names that no one would ever consider, but the fact remains that they are at least somewhat offensive. So the question is, is the historical value of the name enough to keep it around even though it is inappropriate? That’s a tough question to answer. On the one hand, the names weren’t necessarily meant to be offensive when they were created; on the other hand, that’s because the names were created in a time when we as a society were far less concerned about the feelings of non-whites. I don’t think that’s an excuse, nor do I think it’s a legacy we ought to honor. The cities of Cleveland, Atlanta, and Washington certainly have plenty of history from which to choose a quality, inoffensive name.
Jackie Robinson and the Black Baseball Crisis
April 15 was a pretty cool day. I really enjoyed watching the Dodgers/Padres game and seeing everyone wearing number 42 on their backs. I thought the ceremony was handled wonderfully by the Dodgers and Major League Baseball. I thought Jackie’s widow, Rachel, was a marvelous, engaging guest in the booth with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. There were only two things that detracted from the overall greatness of the moment for me:
The number issue was interesting until it got boring. Originally, the idea was for each team to have one player wear number 42 to honor Robinson; then it was decided that the Dodgers, Robinson’s team, would all wear the number. Somewhere along the line, it was decided that anyone who wanted to wear it could wear it that day, and nearly every African American player did, along with a few players of other racial backgrounds and five or six entire teams. Torii Hunter was among those who cried overkill, and in a way it’s hard to blame him. Overall, though, I agree with Ken Griffey Jr., who is quoted near the end of that article I linked to:
“I didn’t know so many guys planned to wear the number. I sure wasn’t expecting whole teams to wear it,” Griffey told the newspaper of his gesture-turned-movement. “But I’m not going to look at it as a negative. This is a tribute for what the man has done, a day to celebrate.”
Let’s pretend that the tribute, instead of wearing the number, was to give $1 million to Rachel Robinson’s foundation. Would anyone be complaining that too many people were paying tribute? Or that people were doing it just to look cool? I don’t think so. A tribute is a tribute, and whether the motives of everyone involved were pure or not, a whole bunch of people paid tribute to a true pioneer that day, and that is a good thing.
So let’s talk about the “crisis.” Let me start by acknowledging that I am fully aware of the limitations I am up against as a white man, and I do not even pretend to understand the nuances of racism and the issues that people of other races face on a regular basis in this country. I know that I can never fully understand anything related to racism. All I have to go on is my own experiences (far too many people believe that it is impossible for a white man to understand “diversity”) and my common sense.
So I see this headline on March 29 on ESPN.com: Only 8.4 percent of major leaguers were black last season. And I realized: I don’t know what words mean. Are they referring to “black” as a race? Of course not. They are using it as a synonym for “African American,” which is certainly NOT a race. (For example: Joe Blow is a black man born in Milwaukee; his brother John Blow is born a few years later, after his family has moved to Canada. Joe is an African American; John is an African Canadian. But they are certainly the same race.)
So what this article is ACTUALLY saying is that only 8.4 percent of Major Leaguers are black AND U.S.-born. The way it is worded, you’d think it was a bunch of white guys and a few black guys. But no — it is 8.4 percent African American, with another (I would guess) 40 percent made up of Latinos from dozens of countries, quite a few Asians, etc. Included in that is a whole bunch of Latinos (especially from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) who are every bit as “black” as that 8.4 percent. I actually read an article decrying the fact that the Mets had no black players on their major league roster — yes, the same Mets who were led by Pedro Martinez, Carlos Delgado, and Jose Reyes.
So maybe this is all a quibble with semantics; my only real problem with the issue is that they are using “black” to mean something it doesn’t. So is it a crisis that only 8.4 percent of Major Leaguers are African American? I don’t think it’s a crisis, but I do wish it was different. Why? Because what that number actually represents is the fact that African American young men, if they are into sports, are more likely to be into basketball or football than baseball. But why doesn’t anyone care about the severe lack of Hispanic Americans in Major League Baseball? Or Asian Americans? If the problem really is about the game losing its standing among American youth (and not about grandstanding or, even worse, reverse racism), why don’t we care about all the youth of other races who aren’t playing baseball? Is it because they aren’t playing other sports, either?
Barry Bonds and Racism
One last time with the disclaimer: I am a white man, and I know I will never quite understand all there is to understand about racism.
So ESPN and ABC News did a poll about Barry Bonds, and they broke the results down based on race. I’m not going to rehash the results, but here’s a link. The results are interesting, but I only want to focus on one: 27 percent of blacks believe Bonds has been treated unfairly because of his race.
I don’t know a politically correct way to say this, so I will choose bluntness instead: that is stupid. Barry Bonds is treated the way he is (whether it’s fair or not) for two reasons: 1) he is perceived as a cheater; and 2) he is a jerk. Some of the most beloved players in the game are African American — Dontrelle Willis, Torii Hunter, Ryan Howard, etc. The two most beloved athletes in the world — Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods — are African American. In the sports world of 2007, you are judged on a lot of things, some fair and some not, but race is very far down the list for most people.
I dislike Barry Bonds because he cussed me out in a movie theater for asking for his autograph when I was sixteen years old. It didn’t help that he almost ran me over in the parking lot of Jack Murphy Stadium a year or two later. And his attitude over the years has done nothing to endear him to me. But I have never, ever thought, “Gee, I hate Bonds because he’s black.” If I were to list a million things I dislike about him, his race would NEVER come up. Jerk, sure. Steroids, absolutely. Plays for the Giants, boooooo. He’s black? I don’t give a rat’s behind.
I sat in Dodger Stadium a few weeks ago and joined in the heckling of Barry Bonds in left field. He was being heckled by people of all races, religions, and social classes. No one ever said, “You’re so black!” or anything like it. They chanted “BALCO,” they chanted “Shoot ‘em up Barry, shoot ‘em up!” They said, “Down in front, I can’t see the plate over your head.” But no mention of race.
Anyone who thinks Bonds is treated unfairly because of his race is an idiot. They may be black idiots, they may be white idiots, but they are idiots.
***
So there you have it. The entirety of my opinions on all things related to race and sports.
1 comment May 12th, 2007 at 03:45pm
Jeff J. Snider Web Stuff
I recently completed (mostly, anyway) work on the website for Metropolis Design, a Utah-based product-development firm. We kept their existing design, but we re-did it with Web Standards and search engine optimization in mind. There is also a lot more content up, which was one of their main issues with regards to search engines. I am excited to see how it moves up in the Google rankings.
Add comment April 12th, 2007 at 11:35pm
Jeff J. Snider Sports
I don’t always have a lot of time to write what I want to write, and sometimes when I get a minute, I have forgotten some ideas I had. So I thought I’d do a bullet list of things I want to write about, and when I get to each of them, I will link to them here in the list.
I will add more to this list as I think about it.
UPDATE: I killed five birds with one stone.
1 comment April 12th, 2007 at 11:31pm
Jeff J. Snider Sports
I want to like Buster Olney. He seems like a nice guy, he grew up a Dodger fan, and he has a dream job. And to be fair, he doesn’t say stupid things nearly as often as Joe Morgan does. But if he was banned from ever mentioning Alex Rodriguez again, his STP (Stupid Thing Percentage) would go way down, as he seems to have some sort of intelligence block when talking about A-Rod.
Let me put a disclaimer first. I don’t think Olney has it out for A-Rod. I also don’t think anyone who disagrees with me is automatically an idiot. I think there are probably some valid reasons not to like A-Rod as a baseball player; I just don’t believe that 99% of the people who dislike him don’t do so for any of the valid reasons. People either dislike him because he is paid so much (for real, people: if your boss offered you $25 million a year to do the same job you are currently doing, would you really turn him down???) or because he’s good looking and one of the best baseball players of all time.
So there’s my disclaimer. Now, for Buster Olney. This is actually from his blog from March 17, but I just got around to reading it this weekend:
David Cone always told players in A-Rod’s situation that the instinct of fans is that they want to cheer you. They want him to do well. If he does well, they will cheer him, and the stories will reflect that. And if you think that this is entirely media created, remember that it wasn’t the media’s decision to bat him eighth in the lineup in the playoffs last year (that would be Joe Torre, after a summer’s worth of frustration with A-Rod’s inconsistency), or to have teammates come out and say he needs to get his head right (which is what Mike Mussina and Jason Giambi said, in so many words). It would be pure fiction to suggest that all is well in A-Rod’s world.
A lot of people have jumped on this bandwagon, pointing out A-Rod batting eighth in a playoff game as proof that he had a lousy season. This revisionist history — as if the Yankee fans didn’t start booing him until he struggled in the 2006 postseason — is ridiculous, and anyone who uses it loses a ton of credibility in my eyes. But the really bad part is the part about A-Rod being inconsistent all summer. Allow me to quote myself from October 11:
He batted .290 with a .392 on-base percentage and a .523 slugging percentage. Despite all the talk about his failures in the clutch, he batted .302 with runners in scoring position, .313 with RISP and two outs, and .474 with the bases loaded. Despite all the talk about how he was lousy most of the season, he had only one truly bad month: June. In every other month of the season, if you quickly multiply his numbers by six to emulate a six-month season, you will get between 30 and 48 homers and between 96 and 168 RBI. Yes, he had a lousy season defensively, tying his career high with 24 errors. And no, no one is going to argue that he had a great offensive season by his lofty standards. But anyone who thinks he had a terrible year is simply a fool.
So Buster, in short, when you say, “[Yankee fans] want him to do well. If he does well, they will cheer him,” you are either being naive or willfully stupid. Yankee fans want a World Series. If they don’t win the World Series, they want to blame it on the highest paid player (or perhaps the player they see as the biggest threat to their resident pretty boy, Derek Jeter — and I mean no disrespect to Jeter, only to Yankee fans). You live in a pipe dream if you really believe all A-Rod has to do to be loved is to play well; he won an MVP award in 2005 and played very well in 2006.
Buster Olney, I want to like you. But I need you to stop being an idiot.
2 comments March 26th, 2007 at 10:59pm
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