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But, okay, I'll be baited. Because the bait is a delicious juicy worm of an article about Boston vs. New York, pierced on the lure of an expert sportsman who looks like this:
I've missed you old buddy. Welcome back. How does Boston compare to N.Y.? It doesn’t
Big Apple superior to Boston in nightlife, atmosphere, and especially sports
Let me begin by agreeing, agreeing, and saying: "Fuck the heck?" Among even the most ardent supporters of Boston, MA you will find few who think it is a "better" city than New York. New York is much larger, has many more people and things, and stays open very late. New York is awesome. Boston is also awesome, but in a smaller, more ornery way.
This is why I believe that this is one of those fun sports journalism articles designed to rile people up, get them screaming and yelling on the comment boards, make them send the link of the article to their buddy Weebs in Rehoboth with a note that says "Look at this fucking guy who thinks Boston sucks!" and drive traffic to the site. It's pretty transparently concocted to drive Boston fans nuts. Having said that, and knowing that I am 100% on to you, HatGuy, let me now spend two hours of my life reprinting and dissecting it. Then you'll see who's boss!
Beantown? That’s it? Beantown?
There may be a city with a worse nickname somewhere, although I’m not sure what it could possibly be. Is there a Phlegmville out there?
Well, thanks to the fine people at this site, I can offer you some options:
Annapolis, Maryland is "Crabtown." That's pretty bad. Beaver, OK -- already a terrible name for a place -- proudly self-identifies as "The Cow Chip Throwing Capital of the World." Well done. Birmingham, AL can't even really distinguish itself, when it announces that it's "The Pittsburgh of the South." Lyons, KS, about 30 miles due north of me here in Partridge, advertises itself as "The Unexpected Pleasure." Dubious, if you've ever been to Lyons. Santa Rosa, NM boasts that it's "The SCUBA-Diving Capital of New Mexico," which: isn't NM a land-locked desert? Noxubee County, Mississippi, waves on its flag: "Home of the Dancing Rabbit Festival and Magnolia Pilgrimage," next to which "Beantown" looks pretty effing good.
Boston also has: The Athens of America, The City of Kind Hearts, The Cradle of Liberty, The Hub of the Universe, and Puritan City, which are all pretty good.
On the one hand, you got Beantown. On the other, you got the Big Apple, Gotham, the City that Never Sleeps. Did Sinatra ever sing a song about Boston? Did anybody? Even the old rock group “Boston” never sang a song about Boston.
I don't love "The Big Apple," particularly, though it did lead to a truly excellent moment in rock music history when Mick Jagger exhorted: Go ahead / Bite the Big Apple / Don't mind the maggots. Gotham is okay, the City that Never Sleeps is wonderful. As for Sinatra, no, I don't believe he did ever sing about Boston. Though the band Boston certainly did. They even mention Hyannis, which is like Sinatra adding a line to "New York, New York" about how fun it is to hang out in Amagansett.
What were we talking about? Oh right -- nothing.
No wonder Boston has such an inferiority complex. Compared to New York, it really is inferior.
Again, in terms of cities qua cities, not a lot of dissent here. Not proving anything. Not getting anyone riled up. New York City, population: 8.2 million or so, the cultural, economic, and all-night society capital of the country/world, is "superior" to Boston, small/ancient/ provincial whaling town, population 600,000+. You really know how to take a controversial position.
This is like saying: "Benin? Fuck that. America is the superior country."
You want to put Boston in a good light, pick a comparable town. Like Cleveland. Or Sacramento. Maybe Minneapolis.
This is probably a good idea, actually. Comparable cities and climates (except Sacramento). I think Boston rates pretty favorably here, though the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra is among the finest in the world, and Minneapolis has an excellent music scene. Anyway, all fine cities, all better comps for Beantown than New York, which should only be compared to like London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo...places like that.
Now let's get to the really stupid part: sports.
OK, Boston’s won two World Series in the past four seasons and the Foxborough Patriots have won three of the past six Super Bowls. Even a New Yorker will admit that’s a nice little run. But can we have a little perspective here?
Most days of my life recently have included someone -- friend or new acquaintance -- saying some version of this to me: "Wow -- life is pretty good for you right now." And they are right, and they are not talking about my recent promotion to Associate District Director of Claims Oversight here at Fremulon Ins., Inc. What they are talking about is my love of New England-based sports franchises. And they are saying it because -- if you don't closely follow sports but somehow closely follow this blog -- the NE Patriots are about to play in their fourth Super Bowl in seven years, and feature a quarterback who is somehow handsomer at the end of each game than he was at the beginning; the Boston Red Sox have won two of the last four World Serieses; the Boston Celtics are 33-6; and also there is a hockey team.
That's a pretty amazing run, by any city's standards.
And since we are pretty clearly heading for a HatGuy history lesson, allow me to add for the record that the Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2000; the Giants are currently in the Super Bowl (the ostensible point of this article, I guess) but haven't generally been that good in the last several years; the Jets are the Jets; the Mets are the Mets (and were doubly the Mets last year); the Knicks, one suspects, are about to be disbanded after what will most likely be some kind of like RICO-style Federal intervention; and also there are two hockey teams.
In the first decade of this young century, there can be absolutely no question that Boston is the all-sports center of the universe. That's not fanboyism. That's just the situation. Soon, the ride will end, and maybe New York, or Dallas, or San Francisco, or Atlanta will emerge. But 2000-2008, so far, taking all sports into consideration, it's Boston, and anyone who says differently is stubborn or weird or looking for a scrap. Or HatGuy.
The Yankees won the World Series five straight years from 1949-53 and went to the World Series in 10 of 11 seasons. More recently, they won three straight and four out of five. The Red Sox have, what, six titles? Call me when you get to 26, which is what the Yankees have, and then I’ll start adding in all the titles won by the Giants, Dodgers and Mets and you can slink back up I-95 and comfort yourselves with a nice, warm pot of beans.
As far as baiting goes, this is pretty tepid stuff. My blood can boil, friends, and right now I'm maybe at like 98.7 or so. History doesn't concern me so much. England ruled the world for hundreds of years, but I'd invest in China right now over the UK if given the choice, no matter how many pro-Henry IV essays you might churn out. It also doesn't help your case so much when you point out that New York has had four professional baseball franchises, since it only highlights how absurd the comparison is between the two cities. (You think the Peruvian army is awesome? How about I send the US Marines, Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and various state militias! Then we'll see how good Peru's army is!)
I’ll grant you that nobody has ever dominated any sport the way the old Celtics did back when the NBA wasn’t important enough to get its playoff games broadcast nationally. And the Bruins were a pretty good hockey team back when the Knicks, which used to be a basketball team, were also pretty good.
Thank you for acknowledging that the Celtics (still) have the most NBA titles. Bill Russell has more rings than fingers to put them on.
But what have you guys really done? Three football titles, which matches the three that the Giants and Jets have won — not counting pre-Super Bowl championships, of which the Giants have four.
What have you guys done? Three football titles, which is barely the same number as these two teams have when added together! Pathetic.
A couple of World Series wins after 86 years of nothing, zip, nada.
Yes, those were bad, dark days. Fortunately, they are over now, and the team has now won two of the last four. So things are looking up, I'd say.
A basketball team that could win a title again — 22 years after its last one. In the immortal words of former Net Derrick Coleman, whoop-de-damn-do.
It will be its seventeenth, if it happens. Why are you allowed to cite Yankee championships of the 1940's, Jet championships of the 60's, and Giant championships of the 80's, but all previous Celtics championships are disregarded with a pithy Derrick Coleman rebuff? As Mark Eaton once said, "What the fuck is your point?"
And when you get done feeling good about all of that, what’s left? New York has Broadway and Wall Street and Fashion Avenue and Harlem and Spanish Harlem and more museums than you can shake a palette knife at. Boston has, well, I’m not sure what it has. I was going to say Harvard and M.I.T., but those aren’t really in Boston; they’re across the river in Cambridge.
Burned! Boston, you got burned. Hard. That is a hard burn, man. Wow. That is some cold, cold shit right there. Damn! Burned to a crispy carbony ash. Bam. Shut down. Down for the count. TKO, HatGuy.
HatGuy is schizophrenically having the kind of argument two five year-olds might have about their dads.
"My dad has won a lot of sports championships recently." "...Well...but...my dad has a Porsche." "What does that have to do with sports championships?" "...My house is bigger."
Anyway, even if we give Boston Harvard, when all of those movers and shakers take delivery of their sheepskins and go out into the great world, they don’t stay in Boston. They go to New York or Washington or somewhere else important.
Some of them stay in Boston. But yes, many of them do leave, so they can be in much bigger cities with more cultural, political, and economic advantages, like New York. You are so totally proving an awesome point!
Now, it may be that Boston has charms that I haven’t seen during my many visits to that town. And given the condition of the local streets, I never will see them.
Have you ever tried to get anywhere in Boston? There’s not a single 90-degree intersection in the entire city. And the next time someone stops for a red light will be the first.
New York -- and I say this having lived for several years in both places -- is a far more dangerous town for pedestrians. This might be due to the fact that it has 7.6 million more people, and people walk a lot more. I would put Boston navigation on the far end of the bell curve for difficulty, yes, but you really haven't seen difficult until you emerge drunkenly from a bar deep in the West Village at 4:18 AM and try to find Seventh Avenue.
OK, so there are subways, but they close down at night. What good is that?
It's not terrible. For a city of its size, Boston's T system is pretty clean, safe, and effective. And not surprising that New York's subways remain in operation for more hours, given, again, the 18.4 million person/tax base advantage they service.
Speaking of subways, have you ever wondered why in New York the subways are identified by letters and numbers, while in Boston they go by colors? Could it be that when they built their systems, people in New York could actually read and count? Just asking.
Am I most upset by (a) how bad a joke this is, (b) how lame a dig it is, (c) how clumsily it is presented, (d) how transparent an attempt to get Bostonites angry it is, or (e) that he ended it with "Just asking," as if that's like the final twist of the knife after this devastating indictment of Eastern Massachusetts's intelligence level? Oh -- or (f) the fact that Boston is famously like hyper-literate, rendering the whole dumb gambit nonsensical, to go along with lame and sad?
I'll say: (a).
I’ll grant that Boston was a great city as recently as 220 years ago. And while New York was coddling Tories because that’s where the money was, Boston was off firing the shot heard round the world and starting the Revolution. (Of course, once Boston started it and fought a battle or two, it shipped the whole thing off to New York, New Jersey and Philly and finally to the Carolinas and Virginia and took the rest of the war off.) Back then, the only city with as much cachet as Boston was Philadelphia.
Can anyone effing believe how long an article this is?
But when it came time to choose a capital for the newly formed United States, George Washington rode up to New York City. And when the Founding Fathers were looking for a place to put the National Treasure, they put that in New York, too — or was that just a movie?
I honestly wonder whether HatGuy knows that the U.S. Capital is currently not New York.
Anyway, it’s been a while since the days when if you said “Adams,” people didn’t automatically think of beer. Boston’s a fine little town, one that I have had many wonderful times in. But it ain’t New York, not in sports and not in anything else.
No, it is not New York in many many aspects. But it is far superior to New York in sports, 2000-present. And you are a poor flame-fanner.
I admit it’s not perfect in New York. We do have to put up with Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani refuses to shut up and go talk family values with his third wife.
Peter gets a gold star for being the first to point out that HatGuy's dig about the Pats' home town actually being Foxborough is DoubleDumb, because (a) they are called the New England Patriots, and Foxborough is in New England, and (b) you can't nail them for not "counting" as a Boston franchise in a pointless Boston-NY article because both NY NFL teams play in New Jersey.
I hyperbolically set the population of NYC at 19 million, but it was (understandably) confusing people, so I have changed the figured to accurately reflect the 2005 census.
Blue Hole Santa Rosa�s Blue Hole is an 81-foot-deep artesian well bordered by a ring of sandstone featuring azure waters in a soda bottle-shaped configuration.
The well was once used as a fish hatchery, but it now serves as a dive-training and recreational site for those with water on their minds.
Because the water has a stable temperature of 61 degrees F, you can dive here year-round (winter is the busiest season) with just a quarter-inch wetsuit as thermal protection. Down in the well, the scenery is surreal.
The cylindrical sides are as wide as 130 feet in places, and the gray rock walls are covered with a thin film of algae. The water itself is a deep, clear blue, with visibility up to 80 feet. A metal grate covers the opening to the spring, which feeds the well with a flow of 3,000 gallons of water per minute. The Santa Rosa Dive Center is open on weekends to rent gear and provide air fills. The shop opens midweek only by appointment for certified divers and groups.
I take no issue with your picking apart of Hat-Huy's article, but me being a Mississippi boy, I must take issue of making fun of Neshoba County and Dancing Rabbit. Remember, that is where the Choctaw Indian Reservation is located and Dancing Rabbit Country Club features two Tom Fazio designed courses. One of those courses was named in Golf Digest and Golf Magazine as one of the top 100 places to play in the country.
Yeah, there's Silver Star and Golden Moon Casinos as well. And it's really nice, come on down from Partridge and let's play a few holes and gamble some.
Let's also note that the Giants, pre-Super Bowl, lost in the Championship game a whopping eleven times. So those four victories kind of look embarrassing in retrospect.
HatGuy, Red Sox, Heyman, A-Rod, And Super Special Surprise Guest!
It's all happening at once, people. Let's savor this, the day after the final day of baseball, before we all begin obsessively following Memphis Grizzlies basketball and Columbus Blue Jackets hockey and Columphis Blue Grizzlies Lazyjokemashupball.
The Red Sox had generations of teams that were characterized by 25 players taking 25 cabs. No wonder they spent 86 years between championships. Now, they’ve won twice in four seasons by becoming a band of brothers who seem to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. They have stars, but you think of them as a true team.
Of course! Fuck! Why'd they wait 86 years? Friends are what win in baseball! Friendshipball! Watch out, Red Sox. Your 2008 favorites for the championship: my uncle Steve and his friend Mike. So what if they're only two guys instead of twenty-five and Mike has a shriveled left arm and Steve drinks crystal meth dissolved in Mountain Dew Game Fuel, the Halo 3-themed Mountain Dew. They go deep-sea fishing on the weekends! They're friends!
Now let's readjust our monocles and look at the bread around this idiocy sandwich:
That’s why he won’t end up in Boston. The Red Sox had generations of teams that were characterized by 25 players taking 25 cabs. No wonder they spent 86 years between championships. Now, they’ve won twice in four seasons by becoming a band of brothers who seem to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. They have stars, but you think of them as a true team. To add a person who has never had many friends in the clubhouses he’s inhabited doesn’t make sense.
Zero guesses as to whom HatGuy is referencing. Negative three guesses. Yep, you got it, and I took guesses away from you before you made any. There you have it. Not enough friends = no deal. I like the image of A-Rod calling up his old teammates, begging them to tell the Red Sox that yes indeed, I, Hank Blalock/Jay Buhner/Bobby Ayala/Hideki Irabu, was A-Rod's friend you better believe it.
I am undecided whether A-Rod will be worth the hundreds of millions of dollars he will be seeking, but the number of friends he has on Facebook will be low on my priority list.
Now you, Jon Heyman, sally forth with your offering!
The Red Sox disproved the old "crapshoot'' theory espoused by a lot of folks who keep losing in the playoffs. The best team won in 2007, and that is no fluke.
Look, I'm not losing in the playoffs. My favorite team isn't losing in the playoffs. Joe Torre has won a lot in the playoffs. Joe Torre often disagree, but he and I agree on two things: Top Chef is now more enjoyable than Project Runway and as long as the series remain as brief as they are, the playoffs are distinctly, perversely crapshootish. The best team probably won in 2007, but how about just last year? 83-78 sound right to you, Jon? Was that a fluke?
And finally, we grow closer to the emergence of our special guest star for the evening, who appears courtesy of Bob DiCesare:
Rodriguez appeared in the American League Championship Series twice with the Mariners, once with the Yanks, and distinguished himself in none of the three.
Exactly right. None of the three except for the first two, in which he slugged .773 and .516 and slammed a combined 4 HR and 10 RBI. And hey, in that last one he OBP-ed .353 and hit a horrible, team-damaging solo home run.
One number echoes within the mountains of glorious statistics compiled by Rodriguez throughout his career:
13.7, his earth-shattering WARP3!
zero, his number of accrued World Series at-bats.
Oh.
Fact is, the Yankees are in far greater need of a Scott Brosius, a Bernie Williams, a Paul O’Neill than an uninspired (and uninspiring) A-Rod.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Brosius nostalgia tour continues. May his glorious name live on throughout the offseason and for all offseasons throughout eternity!
For two years now, even as he compiled (literally) MVP-level statistics, the press has been asking: "What's wrong with ARod?" They based their ideas that something was wrong with ARod on his performance in a very very small number of games in October, which is like basing John Gielgud's acting career on "Arthur 2: On the Rocks."
Yes, he swiped the ball from Arroyo's glove, and yes, he failed to come through in the "clurmtch," or whatever that word is. But so did every other Yankee. Sheffield popped the ball up in key at bats. Matsui K'd a lot. Giambi forgot to take his medicine and turned back into a pumpkin. They all fell apart, but only ARod got blamed. And in the 2005 postseason, when he went 1-14 (the very definition of a small sample size) the press was all over him like a cheap suit.
Now he's off to a torrid start, and the new fun story to write is "ARod Finally True Yankee!!!!" But whom are they going to blame now, based on a tiny sample size?
Not...surely they wouldn't...oh my God...Run!!!!!!!!!!
Time to ask ... what’s wrong with Jeter?
As A-Rod's fortunes soar, Yankee captain down in dumps
By Mike Celizic
MSNBC contributor
Mike Celizic
Alex Rodriguez has undoubtedly had many moments — some of which could be timed with a calendar — during which he wished he were Derek Jeter. This is not one of them.
The Yankee captain and New York’s favorite baseball player since Don Mattingly has been having a rough go of it this year. It’s not so much his hitting, although his average is sinking fast after a torrid start and he’s got just three RBI in 12 games, but his fielding that’s been a problem.
Jeter has made a lot of errors so far. But so has Mike Lowell. And unlike Jeter, Lowell is actually a good fielder. Freaky things happen in small sample sizes. That's why after a week Ian Kinsler is 2nd in HR. That's why people say things like "At this pace, Garth Iorg will have 300 RBIs!" and then he ends up with like 34. You really can't tell anything about a player's year after 40 AB or 10 games in the field.
For the record, the reasons Jeter has made a lot of errors are probably: (a) it's been really crappy playing conditions, or (b) he's never been that good a defensive SS, or (c) it's a complete fluke.
Jeter has won three Gold Gloves, but he’s not on his way to winning a fourth. Through 12 games, he has six errors, the most in the major leagues.
For the millionth and final [sic] time, Gold Gloves are 99% meaningless.
Everybody’s writing about his problems catching and throwing, but no one’s trying to run him out of town. Yankee Stadium with him would be like the Sistine Chapel without Michelangelo’s ceiling work.
I’d ask you to imagine A-Rod in the same situation, but you don’t have to, because we’ve seen what would happen...He was booed at every opportunity and flayed daily by the talk-show guys and the columnists, many of whom suggested the only way for him to fix things was to take the first plane out of town. I was one of them, and I don’t apologize for it.
You should. It was insane. In 2005-06 he hit 83 HR, drove in 251. He walked 181 times. His OBPs were .421/.392.
SLG .610/.523.
EqA .354/.319.
His WARP3s were 13.0 and 7.5 (same as Troy Glaus in 2006, BTW), and if he had been able to play his natural position on the field, they would probably have been much higher, all things being equal.
Even when he had his legendarily "terrible" year, when everything "fell apart," when he hated New York and was a "head case" and everyone in the world wrote about how he didn't fit in with the Hallowed Pinstripery of New York, he was an awesome, awesome baseball player. Who in his right mind can think differently?
He had come to the Yankees as the best player in baseball.
By last season, he wasn’t even the third best third-baseman.
J'accuse, Monsieur de Chapeau!!!
And the worse it got for A-Rod, the better it got for Jeter. Every bad throw, every late-inning out, every clumsy attempt to explain himself made A-Rod look more misplaced and Jeter more the true Yankee hero.
Jeter had a great year last year. ARod had a very very good year that looked bad only in comparison to his outstanding previous years. It happens.
So this year, A-Rod showed up wearing high stirrups and after a couple of games to warm up started hitting — for average and power, in early innings and late, by day and by night.
I don't think this makes cognitive sense. "...after a couple of games to warm up started hitting." Does that mean, "after taking a couple of games to warm up?" Also, the part that comes after the dash reads like a weird parody of "Paul Revere's Ride."
After three years of waiting for him to do his part, he was suddenly doing everybody’s part.
He has been doing pretty much what he did in his 2005 AL MVP Season, when he went .321/.41/.610 with 48 HR, a .354 EqA and a 13.0 WARP3. This didn't come out of nowhere, people. He has always been this good. He was this good even while you were all talking about how bad he was.
But there’s something wrong with this picture — the Captain’s early-season slump, especially in the field. The SABRE folks will tell you that Jeter has never been a particularly good shortstop despite the Gold Gloves, but his teammates, his manager and anybody who watched him every day will differ.
"The facts will tell you some information. Some casual anecdotes will contradict this. Your choice."
There are some things the stats don’t tell you, and unless you watch the guy every day, there’s no way to tell you about them.
I've seen somewhere in the vicinity of 500 Yankee games, I'd say. And I think Jeter is vastly overrated as a fielder by every anecdote-toting sportswriter and fan out there. Twice a year he goes deep into the hole to his right, stabs a backhand, jumps in the air and gets the guy at first by a step. It's very impressive and flashy, but it doesn't nearly make up for the fact that he gets nothing to his left. He has what people often call a "high baseball IQ" in that he is very alert and smart when the ball is in play -- I will give him that. He takes relays well and is very athletic. But he is nowhere near the league of the Vizquels, Everetts, or even Cabreras of the world.
But there’s no denying he’s killing his team in the field right now, and his hitting isn’t that great either. Come to think about it, he’s not even stealing bases with his normal ease — just one-for-three on the season.
He's not off to a great start, but his OBP is .390, which tells you his patience is still there. And it's been like 50 AB. In 2004 Jeter had an 0-32 in April, and ended up having a fine offensive year.
It’s as if he and A-Rod are two yo-yos that are out of synch. When A-Rod was down, Jeter was up. And now that A-Rod is tearing the cover off the ball, Jeter is down. It’s a little spooky. It’s as if he thrives on A-Rod’s negative energy and is being sapped by A-Rod’s success.
Or, alternately -- and I don't mean to disparage the Yo-Yo/Vampire-Energy-Suck Theory, which seems air-tight -- ARod has always been awesome, Jeter had a mediocre first 50 AB, and this is all pointless and stupid.
I’m sure — well, pretty sure, anyway — it’s just an aberration, that Jeter’s problems are just a slump that will pass and not the result of him trying for the first time since A-Rod arrived, to keep up with and outdo his teammate.
Yeah, probably. Or -- and bear with me here -- what if ARod, brimming with jealousy and malice, is secretly poisoning Jeter with a magic serum that causes him, Jeter, to have a slightly mediocre first 50 AB of the season and be slightly worse in the field than normal? Could such a serum exist? Get on this. Pronto.
You never thought of Jeter as needing to outshine anyone. He’s shared the stage with plenty of great players, and it’s never stopped him. On the other hand, in the three years that A-Rod’s been playing next to him, he’s always been the leader and A-Rod the guy trying to keep up.
The roles are reversed right now. Jeter says it’s just a slump. So do Joe Torre, his manager, and Brian Cashman, the team’s G.M. They’re probably right.
But what if they’re not?
I said get on this! Visit every witch doctor in the city! Search ARod's home for boiling cauldrons! We will get to the bottom of this, fair readers. That I promise.
My theory is that for years, Joe Torre has been secretly feeding Jeter an experimental Awesome Serum concocted by a Haitian witch doctor in Queens. This season that witch doctor has gone missing, perhaps kidnapped by his mortal enemies, the yakuza.
So you see, KT, the real problem here is the absence of a serum rather than the presence of one.
Today, I'm going to talk about HatGuy talking about people thinking about whether A-Rod's sleepovers with Jeter are important. So many operators! (Math guys, you know what I'm talking about. (I am not a math guy, no emails about math please.))
A-Rod must learn it’s not about getting along
I don't fundamentally disagree with him there. "Must" is a bit strong.
Alex Rodriguez thinks it’s important that he and Derek Jeter don’t get along.
And you think it's so unimportant you're going to write an article about why his thinking that it's not important is important enough that he "must" change for the good of the team? More "important"s in the next sentence? No problem -- this is so unimportant I can't believe I'm bothering to critique how important he thinks it important is important important.
As he said in his first interview in Yankee camp, relations are so strained that the two superstars, who were once fast friends, don’t even do sleepovers any more.
Sleepovers? The word conjures up visions of little A-Rod’s mom calling little Derek’s mom to arrange a play date.
Here HatGuy is extremely charitable about what visions of A-Rod sleeping over at Jeter's place actually conjures up. Kudos on the restraint. Joke grade, though: C.
Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, the two greatest players on the first Yankee dynasty, didn’t speak to each other, and the Yankees just kept on winning titles. In the 1960s, most of the Dodgers had no use for Don Drysdale, but none of them called press conferences to whimper about it.
Yes. Slap a fedora on me -- HatGuy is making an argument against chemistry!
Every athlete who’s ever played a game realizes that there are going to be teammates who aren’t going to like each other. Everyone would love for every team to be one, big happy family, but it’s not as important as winning.
This paragraph is like the cherry on top of the whipped cream on a hot fudge sundae that I'm eating out of my hat!
A-Rod’s stature is born of the same reality. If his teammates tend to be annoyed with him, it’s not because of how much he makes — they all make plenty — but because he doesn’t come through nearly often enough in the clutch.
Oosh. You had me at "no such thing as chemistry" and then you had to go run your mouth about clutchyclutchness. I think the Yankees probably don't like A-Rod because he's a weird, aloof dick. (And also the clutch thing. They all believe in that stuff, so it's definitely possible.) People hate Barry Bonds because he's a weird, aloof dick -- a much bigger one than A-Rod. Has nothing to do with clutch or not clutch with Barry (not anymore at least).
You could imagine them rolling their eyes at this latest confession by their third baseman and wishing he’d just forget about his image and go out and pound the baseball. That’s all anyone’s ever wanted from A-Rod — performance.
Deep, deep sigh. How many times do we have to go through this? Statistics are a record of what happens on a baseball field -- a measure of "performance," if you will. Certainly, they're an imperfect measure, but a measure nonetheless.
As a New York Yankee, Alex Rodriguez has posted EqAs of .311, .354, and .318. He's hit 119 home runs. He may have been the best player in baseball for one of those seasons. These are great performances. Not historically great, perhaps, but great. What’s funny is that A-Rod has the reputation for being slick, but it is Jeter who is slicker than snot on a doorknob.
Snot on a doorknob? Snot on a doorknob? That's it. I'm done. Not worth it. I'm out of here. See you later.
[door slam]
[car driving away]
[weekend on private island in Dubai shaped like part of a palm tree]
Okay, I'm back.
Fine, one more section.
What they want is for A-Rod to hit the ball when it counts. They don’t care what he does or doesn’t say, as long as he does his job, which is to get big hits in big games, to carry the team when it’s down, to forget about his image and use his enormous talents to take the game by the throat and not let go.
They don’t care about stats or all-star appearances or endorsement deals. And they absolutely don’t care about his feelings.
They care about what the fans care about — performance.
They don't care about stats, they care about performance? Stats are a measure of performance.
STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE. STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE. STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE. STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE. STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE. STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE. STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE. STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE. STATS ARE A MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE.
They're not made up numbers that have nothing to do with baseball. They're a pretty good measure of how valuable you've been on a baseball field. Consider this: if you watched all 162 Yankee games last season, could you rank the Yankee players in order of most to least valuable? I bet you'd be pretty wrong in several cases. But stats -- numbers -- can give you a better, more accurate picture. Because you can't catalog, quantify, and remember everything you've seen. You have no idea if A-Rod went 166-572 or 148-593. That's why we write things down. It helps our brains out, it doesn't hurt them. Sure, you can add in things that you observed that are difficult to quantify to your overall evaluation of a player. But I can't stand when people say "stats" are that grossly different from "performance." They're a reasonably close approximation. They just are.
Of course, he pretty much sucked in the last two playoff seriees he played.
P.S. He wasn't that bad in the playoffs before those series.
As everyone is well aware, the Bears are getting less respect than a Park Avenue interior decorator who shows up in the infield at Daytona in a Volkswagen Beetle with a fresh flower in the dashboard vase.
Everyone is well aware of that, specifically?
Nice work, Celizic.
As dak just pointed out to me, the man who wrote this gets to vote on who goes into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Al I Wanted for Christmas Was a Mike Celizic-Brand Hat
And instead I got, like, a shirt. And "The Wire: Season 2" on DVD. Which is awesome, but it's no Celizic Hat. And I'm angry.
For this reason, and also because Junior's last couple posts contained an unreasonably small amount of anger/swearing, I present some thoughts on Magic Mike's latest word-conglomeration, which is sub-titled, hilariously:
Bronx Bombers could have enough to being in Zito after dealing Big Unit
Like the Yankees couldn't pay for them both. Like they care if their payroll is $206 million or $222 million. Whatever. Let's see why ol' Mikey thinks the Yankees should deal Unit and pick up Zito.
The Yankees went into this offseason saying they wanted a leaner payroll and younger lineup in 2007. Word out of the team’s front office also was that Brian Cashman, the general manager who looks like Jeff Van Gundy, but without the sunny disposition, had wrested control of the team away from George Steinbrenner’s Tampa-based committee of crack baseball advisers.
I'd just like to say here that the patented Mike Celizic "...x is like y..." comparison used in this paragraph is actually not totally, completely terrible. Calling Cash a grumpy version of Jeff Van Gundy kind of makes me laugh. Maybe he's getting less hacky/boring with his jokes.
Experience has taught us to take such pronouncements with a grain of salt the size of the Matterhorn.
Nope. He's not. That's pretty hacky/boring.
Invariably, every Yankee long-range plan crumbles the moment an overpriced and superannuated superstar comes on the market. They couldn’t help themselves; it was the Steinbrenner way, and to expect them to behave any differently was like expecting a St. Bernard to swear off drooling.
And that one is just weird. In fact, it's fucking weird. (Take that, Junior.)
But this year, it’s been different...[excised discussion of Sheffield and Wright trades] And now, word is that the Yankees are shopping the Big Unit himself, Randy Johnson. Suddenly, the idea that the pinstripes have an actual plan that will not only keep them competitive but also build for a future that’s farther away than next March, isn’t so farfetched after all.
Read that last sentence. Savor its tangled syntax. St. Bernard-style drool over how hard it is to parse.
Can this mean the Yankees are about the join the Barry Zito sweepstakes? Yankee fans hope it does; Red Sox fans hope it doesn’t.
Huh. Red Sox fans hope the Yankees don't get Barry Zito, you say?
Barry Zito 3-Year Splits vs. Red Sox, 2004-2006
2-3, 6.45 ERA (7.20 at Fenway) 7 GS 38.2 IP 50 H 27 ER 30/22 K/BB .309 BAA
Yeah. We wouldn't want that coming at us four or five times a year. Especially if it's instead of this guy:
Randy Johnson 3-year Splits vs. Red Sox, 2004-2006
7-1, 4.87 ERA 10 GS 61 IP 59 H 33 ER 64/32 K/BB .252 BAA
Both relatively small sample sizes, obviously, but still.
Moving Johnson makes all the sense in the world for New York, which is another reason it is so surprising. This hasn’t been a team that’s made a lot of intelligent moves ever since its run of four titles in five years ended after the 2000 season.
Since then, they got: Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, Randy Johnson, and Bobby Abreu. They also kept: Chien-Ming Wang, Robby Cano, Melky Cabrera, and Phillip Hughes. There have been a bunch of high-profile disasters, absolutely. Lots of them. But don't tell me that these weren't intelligent moves.
Johnson is a first-ballot Hall of Famer and one of the most dominant power pitchers of all time. But he’s 43, he’s coming off his second back surgery, his 2006 ERA was 5.00, and he’s got $16 million coming in salary next year. By some measures — 17 victories being the primary one he’s still a premier pitcher. But for $16 million, a team can buy a lot of replacement.
I don't get this. Yes, he is clearly old and passed his prime. No question. He might be worse next year than he was in '06. But he might be better. And even though he was hurt, he still threw 205 innings. And, best of all, after next year, he's off the books -- he's a one-year committment right now, to a team that doesn't care about money anyway.
Trading him might be a good move, depending on what you get back. But not because of his salary. They don't care about his salary. I promise, they don't.
So let's see what Mikey's plan is.
[$16 million] just happens to be the annual salary Zito, the premier free agent on the market, wants for each of the next six years...Zito is still on the good side of 30 and has never had injury problems. He’s not the same pitcher who won the Cy Young four years ago, but he’s still the best starter available and one of the best lefties in the game. In other words, he’s exactly the kind of pitcher the Yankees need to continue to control the AL East; exactly the kind of guy they’ve always pursued with the single-minded determination of a border collie chasing a Frisbee.
First of all, sweet metaphor. Second: Barry Zito wasn't the ace on his own team. His OPS-against over the last three years is basically idenitical to that of Mike Mussina, to whom you are about to refer as: ...39 and losing effectiveness. (He also has like 2.5 times as many BBs as Mussina in that time frame.) Zito's pretty good, but a #1? Seriously?
[The Yankees] aren’t going to win the World Series without a couple of top young arms in the starting rotation. Wright wasn’t it. Carl Pavano shows no signs of being the man, either. Johnson is old and very hittable. Chien-Ming Wang is a terrific number two or three starter, but he’s not an ace. Mike Mussina is 39 and losing effectiveness...[R]ight now, the Yankees need a number one. Zito could be that man. And if Randy Johnson can be made to disappear, the Yankees could have the money to sign him.
Wang is a way better candidate for a #1 than Zito right now. I don't know how he does it, with his like 0.04 K/IP, but he does it. That power sinker is something to behold. Zito is a flyball pitcher who walks a ton of dudes, and he'd be making 30% of his starts against the Sox and Blue Jays. And they'd have to sign him for 6 or 7 years.
Also, again, the Yankees have enough money to sign him regardless. They have enough money to sign anyone. That is not the reason to move RJ. And where is the section of this article where you discuss the oft-cited rumors that RJ wants out of NY? I mean, the guy has a no-trade, so in order for these discussions even to be happening, he kind of has to want out, right? And where's the obvious counter-point that if they do not pay Boras/Zito $100 million over 7 years, they would have that money, plus the RJ-off-the-books money to pay for Carlos Zambrano, a far better pitcher than Zito, when he becomes a free agent in 2007? Are you going to talk about that, Mike?
2. I think Zito is a slightly better bet to pitch well in 2006 than Johnson. Not a lock, of course -- my guess is that RJ will lower his ERA a little from last year, and if Zito were to join the AL East you'd think his might go up. But still, Zito's had ERAs the past three years ranging from 3.83 to 4.48, and he'll probably end up somewhere in there. Unit, meanwhile, did post that ugly 5-spot last year and he's not getting any younger or healthier. (It is interesting to note that Zito's WHIP was 1.40 in 2006 and Johnson's was 1.24.) So if you think like I do that Zito will be overall a better pitcher, then yeah, I would rather the Yankees stand pat regardless of their numbers against the Sox, because he'd help them win more games over the course of the season.
3. Season 3 is the best. 2 seems almost like a different show from all of the other seasons.
4. Now HatGuy is on a dog kick (St. Bernard, border collie)? What happened to ice cream sundaes? Can we look forward to "Omar Vizquel ate up that baseball like a Weimaraner slurping up a banana split"?
I think RJ's #'s will come down next year. As you pointed out, that 1.24 WHIP is nothing to compain about. And like I said, yes he is old, but he is also only a 1-year committment I look at Zito for 7/$100m and see an AL East mistake waiting to happen. He should go to Shea.
Ziggy Sobotka is by far my least favorite character in The Wire. Must be the revulsion of self-recognition. KT, I think you are Proposition Joe.
Well, Zito went to the Giants, so this conversation is moot now. 7/$126m is a pretty big overpay, but you just knew he was gonna get it in this market. I think he'll do well for himself in the NL. It makes you wonder what the Giants' long-term plan is. "Stay sort of okay for perpetuity"?
Everybody makes mistakes, but not everybody admits them. And, when you get high enough up in a hierarchy, getting someone both to admit to a mistake and then correct it can be like spending your days down at the docks waiting for the Titanic to come in.
That's the opening paragraph. Yikes. "When you get high enough up in a hierarchy?" "...getting someone both to admit to a mistake and then correct it can be like..." Is that English?
And what is that analogy? The Titanic? Seriously? The only thing hackier than making a reference to the Titanic as a classic disaster is making a reference to New Coke.
That’s why it was so refreshing to hear NBA commissioner David Stern not only admit that his beloved high-tech synthetic basketball was a bigger mistake than New Coke
Oh my holy Lord.
but also order the microfiber ball banished at the turn of the new year and replaced with the familiar cowhide sphere the players know and love.
For Stern, it was a do-over. And seeing it happen had to make a lot of people wish there were more mulligans in sports, because the landscape of the games we pay to see other people play is littered with the kind of mistakes that cry out for correction.
The first thing I thought of that could and should have been corrected in the first two months after it was introduced was the designated hitter. The American League came up with that abomination in 1973, and it should never had made it to 1974.
Pretty sure that should read: "...should never have made it..."
That’s just my opinion
It's not iron-clad mathematical fact? You have misled me, sir!
and I recognize that many baseball fans whose powers of reason are otherwise in tip-top order believe the DH is the greatest thing to happen to baseball since beer vendors.
Mike Celizic writes like a man who has seen witty, urbane, humorous men speak in old movies and television shows and is trying to imitate them, but who dropped out of school in 8th grade and drinks a lot of really cheap brandy every morning at 11:00. And wears a funny hat.
But there are a lot of other situations that everyone would agree would have benefited greatly if teams and individuals could do it all over again...
I’m pretty sure the day will come when Michelle Wie will wish she’d have put off turning pro until a couple of years after her Sweet 16 party and concentrated on winning in the women’s game before taking on the men.
Really? She's still like 17 or something and is super super rich, and famous, partly (largely) because she got a lot of press for playing with men.
If Brett Favre could do it all over again, he might want to revoke his decision to play one more year with the Packers instead of either retiring or asking for a trade to a team that could actually play football.
Maybe. The Packers are terrible. But that dude really likes playing football. And you really think he would ask to be traded? Really?
These are the best examples of "Mulligans People Would Like To Take In Sports?" Not like Jean Van de Velde at the 1999 British Open? Or Mike Martz running Marshall Faulk more in the 2002 Super Bowl? Or the Trail Blazers taking Sam Bowie over Jordan in the draft? No? You're going with "Michelle Wie shouldn't have turned pro?" and "Bret Favre should have asked for a trade?" Okay. Hennessy's in the cabinet, Mike -- help yourself.
If we could only hit control-Z for life’s well-intentioned blunders
You know he just learned how to do that on his computer.
how much easier would it be? Alex Rodriguez could have reversed his trade to the Yankees and found a home in a city with more adoring media and fans. And the Houston Texans could have decided a month into the season that they were going to take either Vince Young or Reggie Bush after all and let somebody else have Mario Williams.
ARod, maybe. Texans, definitely. Now you're cooking with gas, Celizic!
Pete Rose could go back to when he agreed to a life-time ban and started confessing his sins right then and there.
This is effing genius. Pete Rose would not go back to the first moment he bet on baseball and decide not to bet on baseball. He would go back to the moment he agreed to the lifetime ban for betting on baseball and apologize. Excellent plan.
If the NHL’s players association had the ability to go back and fix a bad decision, we would have had a hockey season in 2004-2005. Same thing for major league baseball had the players had the ability to say, “oopsie,” and ask for another shot at getting it right in 1994.
I know that 22 years later, Portland still wants to throw Sam Bowie back into the NBA draft pool and take that Michael Jordan fellow who went third to the Bulls.
There it is. Right after "the NHL shouldn't have struck in 2004." Well placed.
Back in 1979, the entire National Football League ignored a pretty good college quarterback because of what they thought was certain knowledge that the kid was a little too small and didn’t have a strong enough arm for the big time. Finally, in the third round, the 49ers wasted a pick on Joe Montana, who worked out all right in the end.
Here's my problem with this: Yes, obviously, all those other teams would have loved to have had Montana. But is it a "blunder" not to have taken him? No. He happened to be the perfect fit for the newly-designed Bill Walsh offensive juggernaut in San Francisco. But that doesn't mean he would have been just as awesome for the Browns or something.
To me, a "blunder," a thing you should want to take a mulligan for, is a thing that everyone in the world can see is a mistake, but you ignore them and do something else. Like not drafting Jordan. Or not drafting Reggie Bush. Or not pulling Pedro in Game 7 in 2003. Sometimes things happen that are very unexpected -- like, say, Tom Brady turning out to be a great QB. But the fact that Tom Brady turned out to be a great QB doesn't mean that all the other teams blew it by not drafting him before the 6th round. Because that would mean the Pats themselves actually blew it like 5 times. See?
Tom Brady, like Montana, was passed up repeatedly before going in the sixth round to the Patriots.
Oh. You don't see.
If life came with do-overs, Grady Little could go back and pull Pedro Martinez before the Yankees could come back and win the 2003 ALCS. Leon Lett could run across the goal line in the Super Bowl with his fumble recovery before holding the ball out for Don Beebe to knock loose.
Pedro thing: absolutely. Lett thing: embarrassing, but the Cowboys won that game like 78-4.
Ara Parseghian could have gone for the win against Michigan State in 1966.
Look, I hate ND. But this famous slam on Parseghian is a mystery to me. The Irish had lost like three guys (Nick Eddy, their QB Hanratty, and someone else who I am too tired to look up) and their back-up QB was (I believe) diabetic or something and was like vomiting from exhaustion. And the next week they beat USC 300-0 and won a share of the national title. Maybe the more manly thing would have been to try to score, but I kind of don't blame the guy for playing for the tie. Neither here nor there.
Ralph Branca could throw a different pitch to Bobby Thomson.
Sure.
John McNamara could have put in a late-game defensive replacement for Bill Buckner.
Dave Stapleton was ready and willing. You're on a roll, Mikey!
Dennis Eckersley could have pitched around Kirk Gibson.
Oops.
Pitched around him? Gibson hadn't played in forever and had like 3 bad knees, and Eck's ERA was like 0.000003 and there were two outs and a guy on first and Steve Sax was on deck. Pitched around him? Are you serious?
Maybe you can argue he shouldn't have thrown a backdoor slider on 3-2. But you cannot argue, ever, that Eck should have "pitched around him."
Mike Tyson could decide to find a protein source that wasn’t attached to Evander Holyfield’s head.
Hilarious.
If only it were as easy for all of us as it was for David Stern.
If only you would retire and run a men's haberdashery, like you are destined to do.
Maybe Someday, Kirk Gibson Will Finally Show Up in the Playoffs
Does the name Mike Celizic mean anything to you guys? He's a typist for MSNBC.com, who sometimes types about sports. I can't remember if we've ever written anything about him before...check the archives. There might be one or two musings on his talents. I honestly can't remember. Anyway, he just wrote an article for MSNBC.com called -- I kid you not --
As in, the guy who clinched the 1995 World Series with this line:
8 IP, 0 R, 1 H, 8 Ks.
And the guy who won Game Two of that same WS with this line:
6 IP, 2 R, 3 H, 3Ks.
The guy with a 2.47 World Series ERA. The guy who has given up (pay attention to this) 33 hits in 58.1 WS innings.
That guy. That guy finally erased his playoff demons with a Game Two Division Series win over the Dodgers.
I know he's had some crappy outings in the playoffs. I know that he's like 13-15 lifetime in the postseason. But when you play in the postseason every year for 32 consecutive seasons, you'll have some crappy outings. Whitey Ford was 10-8 in the postseason, and had an ERA over 8.00 in his final World Series. Think he had any playoff demons?
Good Lord, HatGuy must be the most consistent idiot in the vast, vastly important world of Internet sports journalism. If for some reason everyone started calling retarded MSNBC.com columns hits instead of retarded MSNBC.com columns, he would have crushed Joe DiMaggio's hit streak like six years ago. Even when he's right, he's wrong. Refresh my memory. Haveweeverwrittenaboutthisguybefore?
Anytime a ballplayer starts arguing his own case for a major award, it means just one thing: He doesn’t think he’s going to win it.
Wrong. It could mean that. It could also mean he thinks he's going to win and he just wants to make sure of it. It could mean he's bored and he decided to answer one question out of a thousand honestly instead of diplomatically. It could mean he's under a lot of stress because Wily Mo stuck a banana in the tailpipe of his GMC Yukon. That’s certainly the case with the Boston Red Sox's David “Big Papi” Ortiz, who spent time Sunday presenting his AL MVP portfolio to ESPN. Everything he said is pretty much right on. He confessed to having the best offensive season in the American League and to be deserving of the award.
Wrong. He's not pretty much right on. Travis Hafner is having the best offensive season in the AL thus far. He probably won't finish with it now that he's hurt, but still. Check this page out. Or this page. You will find that David Ortiz ranks fifth in the AL in VORP and fourth in EqA. Hafner is first in both.
If he doesn’t get it, he went on, three other very worthy candidates would be Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko of the Chicago White sox and Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins.
Or, I don't know, Hafner. Of course he won't get it. He's out with an injury. And his team isn't playoff-bound, so he's automatically not valuable. Papi was my choice for MVP last year, when he carried the Red Sox into the playoffs and was what he is this year — the best clutch hitter in the game.
Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees collected the hardware instead, despite the certain knowledge among Yankees fans that, despite a statistically terrific year, he wasn’t even the MVP of his own team.
You couldn't be more wrong. Who, HatGuy, was the HatGuy Most Valuable Player on the Yankees in 2006? Please, if you're reading this, let us know in your next completely, utterly wrong column. (Last year, Alex Rodriguez posted a .351 (!) EqA.)
Papi argued that if A-Rod could be MVP for a last-place team, he can be MVP of a Boston team that finishes out of the playoffs. There’s nothing wrong with his logic. I disagree with the premise to start with and would never choose a player from a losing team as the most valuable in the league.
Because you, HatGuy, represent everything that's wrong with MVP voting -- again, a thing I shouldn't care about at all but is still fun to get all snippy about. There you go being wrong again.
In my book, to be MVP, you have to be the most important player on a team that wins something, or, at a minimum, comes within a whisker of winning.
A whisker being a baseball term for "a measure of whatever I feel like determining when I put my hat on in the morning." Your book = W is for Wrong (FINALLY A SUE GRAFTON PARODY ON FJM).
I would never have given the award to Ernie Banks when he played for the pathetic Chicago Cubs, if that’s not redundant.
It's not. Your sense of humor is wrong, though. I wouldn’t have given it to A-Rod when he played for the Rangers, either.
Let me think what you would have been that year, then ... oh, right: wrong.
The award isn’t for the best offensive player in the game. It’s for the most valuable player, which is why pitchers get to win it now and then.
No, it's not. It's for the Most Valuable Player on a Team That Wins something, or, at a Minimum, Comes Within a Whisker of Winning. Unless, by your own standards, you're admitting you're wrong.
But the MVP is so poorly defined, that writers have on occasion handed it out to players whose greatest value was helping their team to finish within 35 games of first place instead of 45 games.
How does that contradict the definition of the Most Valuable Player being the most valuable player in the league? If Weird Al Yankovic were writing a song parody about this article, it would be a Sisqo takeoff called "The Wrong Song" (FINALLY A SISQO MENTION ON FJM). This year, it’s a different story. No one other than Ortiz is having the kind of year offensively he had last year.
David Ortiz 2005 EqA: .333 Manny Ramirez 2006 EqA: .345
Jim Thome and Hafner are also up there. Heck, Jeter's at .324.
I happen to think Jeter should get the hardware, but that may be because I see him more often than I see the others.
Wait. Are you saying you watch the Yankees more than any other baseball team? Huh. I'm going to have to revise my assessment of you, HatGuy. Youareblowingmymind. All I know is that the Yankees lost Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield early on for nearly the entire season.
I'd like to think that HatGuy is making a profound statement here. Like seriously, the information in this one sentence is all I know. I don't know how to operate a toaster. I cannot recognize the secondary sexual characteristics of a female human. I don't know the difference between right and wrong.
They had multiple problems with the pitching staff. They lost Robinson Cano for a stretch and have seen Jason Giambi miss time. For long stretches, A-Rod has been all but invisible.
But, but -- I thought all you knew was ... never mind.
And through it all, Jeter has been the glue that’s held it all together, hitting anywhere manager Joe Torre needs him and doing all the little things that add up to winning ballgames.
Doesn't Joe Torre get any glue credit? Certainly Torre is a little gluey. What about Damon? I keep hearing good things about his glueiness.
He won’t lead the league in slugging, but he’s near the top in on-base percentage, may win the batting title, and is one of the best situational hitters in the game.
He also makes every play his team needs in the field.
Except the ones to his right. Is it his right side he can never get to? I forget. Remember that one play where A-Rod came over to make a catch and then Jeter nudged him and neither one of them caught it, and then Jeter gave A-Rod a dirty look? That was a funny dirty look.
I also know that when the Red Sox lost Jason Varitek, their catcher and captain, they collapsed despite Ortiz’s continuing presence in the lineup. To me, that makes Varitek, not Ortiz, Boston’s MVP.
Oh man. I stopped writing the word "wrong" in every response a few paragraphs ago because even I got sick of it, but let me make up for it here:
Correlation is not causation. Jason Varitek, a catcher with an EqA of .257 this year, is not more valuable than David Ortiz, a monster of a man who wins baseball games with the sheer brightness of his smile and controls the weather with his mind.
As I said, I don’t believe in giving the MVP to pitchers, but it’s done.
Great. Is it okay if I retroactively blame you for Pedro Martinez not getting the MVP in 1999? It is? Cool.
I’d give it to Jeter.
I know. You said that already. And crazily, that might be the only thing you're not wrong about in this whole article.
It seems like HatGuy has butterscotched quite a little brownie here. Perhaps he'd do better to milkshake a whipped cream, and candy bar himself before he flans another pie.
Someone at MSNBC.com is keeping tabs on us. For six whole days, the Mike Celizic article that I just wrote about sat untouched, obvious factual and grammatical errors be damned.
Four and a half hours ago, I pointed some of the aforementioned errors out.
Two and a half hours ago, a few of them were fixed.
Can you imagine the possibilities if Joe Morgan read this site and forced ESPN to rerecord his audio for Sunday Night Baseball and air it again the following night, error- and banal Morganism-free?
I saw the post title, and thought for a brief second that the BBWAA had agreed to use a combination of VORP, EqA and RC27 to determine the MVPs of each league.
I go out of my way to think of reasons to be late to the office just so I can listen to his show, which starts at 10 a.m. in New York.
What HatGuy is saying is that the only benefit of the Colin Cowherd radio show is that it increases the chances, however slightly, that HatGuy will miss his deadline and fail to turn in a HatGuy column.
If you read on in HatGuy's blog, you will find that he believes the mistake Paul LoDuca made was cheating on his wife with a "girl" instead of a "woman" because "girls blab" and "women don't talk."
A follow-up to Junior's post below. Let's also look at this section:
It’s not fair, but that’s what selling yourself as the greatest ballplayer who ever lived and coming to town with all that money gets you.
ARod "sells himself" as the greatest ballplayer who ever lived?! To the best of my knowledge, ARod has never been Muhammed Ali, exactly.
Players never think of that end of the bargain when they’re demanding an emperor’s ransom as free agents. The never stop to realize that when you make that much and make such claims, the fans are going to expect you to live up to the hype and the numbers on your paycheck.
Tom Hicks gave ARod $100 million more than the next highest bidder was willing to give. Should he have turned it down? No, he should not have. Also, he was traded to the Yankees. He has never made salary claims from the Yankees. Also, during the time when he was almost traded to the Red Sox, ARod tried to restructure h
