"It's Indiana."

Tonight, Indiana hosts Florida Gulf Coast to open their 2010-11 basketball season. I'm going, but this week will be a win for IU no matter what happens (okay, that's not true. If they lose to FGC, that will really suck). Indiana basketball has already won the week because yesterday afternoon, Cody Zeller committed to come to Bloomington next year.

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When Tom Crean took over as coach a couple of years ago, he was asked why he, a successful coach who'd build a very nice program and life for himself up at Marquette, would want to take over the absolute quagmire that IU basketball was at the time. Honestly, even as an IU student and life-long fan, I couldn't figure it out. I suppose on the surface it made sense as a classic high-risk, high-reward move - if he succeeded, he'd be enshrined as the man who restored Indiana basketball to its former glory, a basketball savior in a state that lives and breathes basketball; if he failed, though, he'd be the person who couldn't save the Hoosiers, the one who left a safe, good program and was left out in the cold by the full collapse of the program.

His answer, though, made perfect sense. "It's Indiana." Not only did that answer fully encompass the "high-reward" part of my original equation, it added a new factor. Yes, at the time IU basketball was probably at its lowest point. Crean was coming into a program that had just narrowly escaped the NCAA's death penalty, but had crippled itself with its own sanctions (as well it should have done, by the way). For years the high standards set by Branch McCracken and Bob Knight had been slipping - not so much under Mike Davis, but drastically under Kelvin Sampson (by the way, they were slipping under Bob Knight at the end as well). Almost the entire team left when Crean was hired, which had been expected for the most part - only two players, Brett Finkelmeier and Kyle Taber, were left.

But it was still Indiana. There were still five national championship banners hanging in Assembly Hall. Players like Scott May, Steve Alford, and Jared Jeffries hadn't ceased to exist. When a school has a history in a sport, a down period doesn't erase the history of that program. It doesn't destroy a fanbase. It simply forces it into hibernation, awaiting something to revive it. And that process started when a coach came to Bloomington who understood, truly, that this was Indiana. And that coach immediately set out to raise the program and the recently jilted fanbase from the dead.

That process did not start with the commitment of Cody Zeller to IU - hell, even when the team wasn't great last year, attendance was high, as was optimism among most of the fans with whom I come into contact. That's part of the beauty of Indiana basketball, what makes it what it is - the fans knew that the team would not be great, but as soon as they knew that the team had a steward who understood the weight of his responsibility, and who was bringing in players who not only were highly skilled, but who also understood that responsibility, they re-invested in the program.

What Zeller represents is a reward for those fans, the ones who trusted Crean. Cody Zeller is a top prospect, but even if he doesn't end up being a top player, he is still a win for Indiana. He's an in-state prospect who's staying here, and at the expense of other top programs. Zeller chose IU over North Carolina and Butler: respectively, a program with five championships, just like Indiana, but with more recent success and Zeller's older brother Tyler; and a program also in Indiana coming off a national runner-up performance and likely still on the rise. Crean went up against those competitors (and surely more) and won.

Zeller's influential - in his comments yesterday, Zeller said that he'd call Yogi Ferrell (another IU target and friend of Zeller's) "in the next day or two," and Ferrell's father has said Yogi is "very excited" about Zeller's decision. Does that mean that Ferrell and others will commit to Crean tomorrow? No, of course not. But it shows that there is a domino effect of sorts here, that one recruit can make a program more attractive to others.

And that is what Zeller means to Indiana. He was the big catch, the crown jewel recruit, and we got him. Cody Zeller is a signal that Indiana University can recruit, attract, and lock in players of the highest caliber once again; a signal that Bloomington is once again a destination for the best young basketball players in the country.

When Tom Crean first took the job at IU, I'll admit that I had tempered hopes. I loved the hire, and I felt like if anyone could save this program, it would be him or someone like him. But I'm a pessimistic person a lot of the time, and I felt like there was a good chance that it wasn't possible to bring the program all the way back to where it had once been. After all, this was a team that hadn't won anything of import in the lifetimes of the players Crean would be trying to recruit. I figured that it would be hard to attract players who were worth attracting to a school that hadn't won a championship since 1987, and hadn't challenged for one since before I was in high school. At best, I assumed that it would be several years before top players wanted to come to Bloomington. I was wrong.

It's Indiana. And history doesn't die. The college basketball world should step lightly, as there's a sleeping giant in Bloomington, Indiana, and that giant may be truly stirring for the first time in twenty years.

Sunday night liberation

When I found out that ESPN was shaking up its Sunday Night Baseball announcing team, replacing both Jon Miller and Joe Morgan, this was my first reaction. In short, sheer jubilation.

I've never had a problem with Jon Miller; in fact, I think he's a pretty good play-by-play announcer. As he's gotten older he's become more prone to making mistakes, but he typically catches them and corrects them. I like his voice and the energy he brings to a game, and he has a good feel for the rhythm of a baseball game. Others feel differently, but I've never really understood most of the complaints about him. He'll be missed, at least by me.

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An aside: one of the most common complaints that I've heard about Jon Miller is that he mispronounces Carlos Beltrán's name (obviously, this is a complaint that I hear mostly from Mets fans). Now if there's anyone who reads this who has more expertise in Spanish than I, please correct me, but from four years of studying the language, I'm 99% sure that I have this right. Beltrán's name is spelled as I have it, with an accent mark on the "a." Typically in Spanish the penultimate syllable is accented, unless there's a mark as there in in this case. Additionally, all "a" sounds in Spanish are short (like saying "ah," like when a doctor's examining your throat). Long story short, Jon Miller (who's fluent in Spanish, if you're wondering) is right, and everyone else is wrong.

Joe Morgan, on the other hand, is the cause of my glee. I don't think I need to go into why I and practically all other baseball fans dislike him; hell, there was a whole website devoted to his suckitude for a period of several years. Suffice it to say, I'm happy for the change, and this all has me thinking of how enjoyable SNB could become next season. That all depends, though, on who the new team is. Fire up the Speculation Machine!

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Jon Sciambi: This is my first choice, as well as a fairly unlikely one. ESPN's probably going to go with a well-known game with a lot of experience, a person who the casual fan already knows. Sciambi is not that. However, he is one of my favorite baseball announcers.

He has experience with the regional networks of both the Marlins and the Braves, and he is presently working for ESPN, usually in mid-week games. You may have never seen him call a game; trust me, he's good.

One of the things I like most about Sciambi - and a marked change from the old crew - is his progressive take on the game. He's not an old-school baseball guy, and he's well-versed in sabermetrics and advanced analysis methods. He's still mindful, though, of the fact that the vast majority of the baseball-watching public is not on the cutting edge or even near it, and works advanced thinking into his game calls in an easily accessible way. He talks about doing just that here. In my eyes, Sciambi really brings the whole package, and would be a great straight man for a SNB broadcast team.

Dan Shulman, Dave O'Brien: I don't know as much about either Shulman or O'Brien as I do about Sciambi, so I may be underrating them, but in watching games that they've called, they've been pretty middle-of-the-road. They seem to be roughly replacement level announcers - they aren't outstanding, as far as I can tell, but they aren't terrible enough to drag a broadcast down. They'd be adequate, and because of that they're the most likely choices (that, and the fact that like Sciambi, both are currently employed by ESPN).

Chris Berman: OH HOLY GOD PLEASE NO. All I need is to have to listen to "BACK BACK BACK BACK" and "HE HIT THAT ALL THE WAY TO KENDALL PARK" every week. I hate almost everything about Chris Berman. It's bad enough that he exists at all; please don't let him ruin my favorite sport more than he's already ruined football. Since this is what I want least, it is of course the thing that is probably going to happen.

Color commentator

Steve Stone: I used to hate Stone when he was with the Cubs, back when he and Chip Caray were on WGN together almost daily. It had little or nothing to do with Stone, I just didn't like the Cubs much at the time. But in retrospect, he's a really good announcer. He knows a lot about the game, and he's particularly good at explaining what's happening without sounding smug and holier-than-thou (like Morgan did so much of the time) or sounding like a total idiot (the best example of this would be Rob Dibble). In particular, I like the fact that he had the guts to call out the Cubs that year for underachieving, which ended up getting him fired. That's something that I'd like to hear from a color guy - tell me why what a manager or team is doing is wrong, if it is. Don't pull punches if punches need to be thrown. He would be a very good pick, and is my favorite candidate.

Orel Hershiser: Again, Hershiser is pretty much a replacement level broadcaster, or maybe slightly above. I liked him relatively well on SNB, and he was definitely a step up from the atrocious Steve Phillips. He was willing to call out Morgan for some of the stupid things he'd say, and that's no small feat, considering how ensconced Morgan was at ESPN. He'd be acceptable, and maybe even good with Morgan out, but Stone would be far superior.

Jeff Brantley, Rick Sutcliffe: Kill me now. What I said above about Dibble goes for both of these former players as well. Neither is particularly intelligent, neither has a good television voice (the two are oddly similar, with a drawl that sounds vaguely self-important, like every comment is a gem worthy of immortality). Sutcliffe is more likely than Brantley, due to the fact that he's already an ESPN employee. Listening to either one weekly would be eardrum suicide. Sutcliffe or Brantley would be the worst possible scenario, and if either one ends up on SNB, I'd recommend against watching. It would be a Morgan redux.

So to sum up, the most likely team is probably one of Dan Shulman or Dave O'Brien teamed with Orel Hershiser. All are inoffensive, all are already employed by ESPN, and none are particularly widely disliked. That would be a good, solid team that I wouldn't hate, though it also wouldn't excite me. My dream duo would be Jon Sciambi and Steve Stone, but they're not likely (in large part because it's what I want most in the world). They'd be smart and progressive, and would actually improve the broadcast rather than dragging it down into stupidity and screaming. Which, incidentally, is exactly what would happen if ESPN put Berman and Sutcliffe or Brantley on Sunday Night Baseball. In fact, if that happens it's possible that Major League Baseball will fold on principle.

With the end of the Miller-Morgan administration, there's a chance that Sunday Night Baseball could turn the corner and become a truly great baseball broadcast. Knowing ESPN, though, they'll probably give us Chris Berman and Rick Sutcliffe, and I'll put a brick through my TV. At least now we'll all know what we're missing.

Arsenal 0-1 Newcastle: Do I have to do this?

When a team plays like Arsenal did Sunday, it makes it really hard to go back and look at the game dispassionately. That's why this took me so long to write - every time I sat down to start, I had a Vietnamesque flashback to Cesc Fabregas lobbing a long pass into the box and had to find something else to do. I think I'm finally ready to get some thoughts out now.

The first thing, and most important thing about Sunday's monstrosity, is that this is a team game, and Arsenal played horribly as a team. Something just seemed off from the start of the game - there was no chemistry or communication; it seemed like nobody had any idea what anyone else on the pitch was thinking. They looked a bit like a pick-up squad, a bunch of guys who know each other so they think they know what people are going to do, but haven't played together enough to actually know. Players weren't finishing runs, passes were going awry seemingly on every possession, defensive responsibilities were abandoned expecting help where none was coming. It just seemed like the rhythm and pace of Arsenal players were unsynchronized and wrong all game, and that was reflected in the scoreline.

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I want to talk a bit about Łukasz Fabiański, because it's related to what I just said about winning and losing as a team. I'll preface this by saying that I think we should have bought a keeper this summer, not necessarily because I think the current crop Arsenal have are bad, but because once it came out that Wenger was looking for a keeper, we needed to get one. You can't publicly say that you are looking for a player's replacement, fail to do so, then ask that player to perform well. Honestly I've been impressed with Fabiański and Almunia this year for that reason - instead of losing confidence, both seemed to have set out to disprove the idea that they were useless.

Yesterday, Fabiański cost Arsenal a goal. That much is for certain. But he wasn't the only one who had a hand in the matter. There was a chain of events that occurred causing the goal; there were many points in that chain in which an Arsenal player could have done something to prevent the goal, and at each opportunity, he failed. As Tim from 7amkickoff said,

Cesc gave the ball away, Sagna fouled, and 3 Arsenal players couldn't stop Carroll

Fabiański could have stopped the goal from scoring, and should have. But the same could be said for Fabregas, Sagna, and others. The "Flappyhandski" meme does not need to make a return, and honestly it can only hurt the team. He made an error that I've seen plenty of goalkeepers make (like, for example, Tim Howard against Spurs a few weeks ago), and he got no help from his midfield or defense on that particular play. This loss is not his fault, it's the team's fault.

So why did this happen? I wrote yesterday about the Wenger controversy, and how it might affect the team. I don't know if it did or not - not being in the locker room, I don't really have any way of knowing, as nobody would admit that publicly - but it's possible. There's a chance that the team wasn't properly prepared due to the manager's preoccupation, but Wenger has never been anything but professional in my eyes, so I find that to be an unlikely scenario. Whatever effect that had, there had to be something else. I really hope that they didn't take the opponent for granted, as one would think the West Brom and Shakhtar games had taught them a lesson. If not, this is extremely worrying.

Arsenal is best when Cesc Fabregas is at his best. That should be pretty obvious to a knowledgeable observer (or even the ignorant observer, sometimes). Yesterday he very clearly was not at his best. He missed the mid-week Champions League game ostensibly due to injury - the hamstring was tight, I believe the story was - but played all 90 minutes yesterday. He was very clearly not himself. It's possible that he just had a bad game, but there's a distinct possibility that the injury is still bothering him. If that's the case, he needs to sit until he's fit. Wilshere can play Fabregas' role - not as well as Cesc, but well enough - and it's clear from Newcastle that an injured Fabregas (if that's the issue) cannot win a game on his own, and honestly is a drag for the rest of the squad. Orbinho on Fabregas' performance:

Cesc completed 67% of passes so far, the lowest of any Arsenal player.

That rate continued to the end of the game. According to Orbinho, that was his worst passing performance since 2006. That's not going to get it done. As I said above, this is a team game, and I am not trying to say that Fabregas single-handedly lost Arsenal the game. What I am saying is that a team can't win if its captain and on-field maestro can't play his game, and resorts to a Blackburn-esque strategy of lobbing balls into the box over and over again, hoping for magic.

I think we sent players onto the pitch who weren't ready to play, due to injury or lack of match fitness. I think we were tactically monolithic, and didn't play Arsenal football (to our detriment). I think this was a flat, uninspired performance from a team that was just wrong from the start. I don't know if Wenger is to blame or not, but if so, he needs to step his game up. I can say for certain that the players on the pitch - all of them - need to.

Man of the match: All of us, for actually watching this crap.

Arsenal v. Newcastle: a game preview wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery

This has quickly turned into a pretty crazy week for Arsenal, and with things flying around the squad as they are, an already important fixture is becoming more so seemingly by the day. But no pressure, boys.

We play Newcastle, who are right smack in the middle of the table (9th, to be exact). They're as good on the road as they are at home record-wise (2 wins, 1 draw, and 2 losses home and away) but they are +7 at home in terms of goal differential, where they're -2 away. So the record may be a bit deceiving, but they're more than able to win on the road. They are not to be taken lightly. Nobody in the Premier League is; a lesson Arsenal learned the hard way when they brought a weak effort to West Brom's visit, and were handed their heads.

That's not the only pressure placed on the Gunners.

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Manchester United won yesterday, but Chelsea plays Liverpool today. Even with the Merseysiders playing beneath their station this year, they should be a tough out for Chelsea, and this could be an opportunity to pick up points. Manchester City have West Brom, who they should theoretically be able to handle (but Arsenal knows how that kind of thinking can hurt you). The upshot is this: the pace must be maintained; wins are required, especially at home.

The big news in the week was the weird loss to Shakhtar Donetsk. The team was flat, and honestly didn't look to be a great threat to a team they had already beaten handily once. Granted several players were missing due to injury concerns, but the effort was not there (much like in the West Brom game), and even with players missing if effort had been present, it's likely that the outcome would have been different. Now the Newcastle game will be looked at as a chance to bounce back, lest a losing streak begin.

The strangest news came in the weekend, when reports surfaced that Arsène Wenger is involved in an extramarital affair. I'm not going to go into the details here, for a few reasons. I'm a sports blogger, not a gossip blogger. I don't feel like I'm qualified to comment on the personal lives of players and personnel. Honestly, I hate the idea of adultery, and it's something that I would never condone. But Wenger (as far as I can tell) hasn't commented on the matter, and all I have to go on is tabloid reports. I'm not going to fly into a rage every time the British tabloids say something about an Arsenal player, nor their manager. To put it succinctly, I do not care about this story. Things that don't directly have an effect on Arsenal's play are not my business, and this falls neatly into that category.

Or at least it should. It's relevant here, because it's something that's in the news, and because of that, even though it really shouldn't, this has the potential to have an effect on Arsenal's play. The old chestnut of "off-the-field distractions" rears its ugly head; whether it's Fabregas leaving for Barcelona, Wenger's comments on officiating, or this, media memes can be a distracting force against a team that really doesn't need the trouble. I really hope that one way or another, this doesn't become a long-term issue - Wenger either needs to admit to what happened, deny it, or refuse to comment based on principle (this, if you're wondering, is the one that I'd choose), and then put it to bed. Whatever happens, don't let it fester, because that could be disastrous.

There is one piece of (hopefully) good news to cleanse the palate, though. According to the Daily Mirror (via Young Guns), Robin van Persie has been named to the squad for today's game. It won't be known for sure until near game time whether he'll be starting or in the bullpen (if I had to guess, based on how long he's been gone, I'd bet my house on the latter), but either way this is an encouraging sign. The walking wounded are finally nearly all back - still waiting on you, Vermaelen - and Wenger will soon have the enviable issue of finding playing time for everyone. Skill has come from unexpected places, and it will take deft management to keep everyone sharp. Again, though, that is a good problem to have.

With the number of problems facing Arsenal, it's nice to have one good one.

The revolution begins...at 2 PM Eastern

Today begins a new era in Mets baseball, one that honestly should have begun years ago - the post-Omar era. Sandy Alderson will officially be named the new general manager, and based on what I've read about him I'm very excited about the next four years.

I'm not a fool, I don't expect miracles from Alderson and his new regime; in fact, quite the opposite - I'd bet the Mets of 2011 won't be appreciably better than the Mets of 2010, unless the changes made in the roster are more drastic than I think they will be. The changes that Alderson will bring, though, are going to go far beyond the team's win-loss record, and that's what excites me.

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Over the past decade or so, the Mets have been a wreck, both on and off the field. They went to the World Series in 2000 and were arguably the best team in baseball in 2006 (though they lost in the NLCS). Aside from that, as a baseball-playing group, they've failed. They were "contenders" who missed the playoffs in 2001, 2007 and 2008 (spectacularly so in the latter two years). Every other year in the 21st century, the Mets have been flat-out bad. And I'm sure that it goes without saying that rooting for a crappy team isn't much fun.

If anything, the Mets have been even worse off the field. They haven't had quite the issues with players that some teams have, Francisco Rodriguez and Johan Santana notwithstanding. The real issue has been the non-player staff. Let's go through the greatest hits:

- In 2009, VP for player development Tony Bernazard challenged minor leaguers to fight after a game. The incident included Bernazard taking his shirt off, a la Jersey Shore.

- Shortly after that incident came to light, Bernazard nearly got in a fight with K-Rod after a game, for no discernible reason. He kept his shirt on that time.

- Obviously, getting in fights with the players isn't good, so Omar Minaya (finally) fired Bernazard. Simple enough? Well, not if the general manager of the Mets openly accuses a beat writer of "lobby" for a job with the team. (Read this transcript of the press conference. It pretty much explains all of the problems that Omar Minaya had as GM of the Mets.)

Beside all that, actual player decisions were made in a totally irrational fashion. Rich, long-term contracts were given to ageing and inconsistent players. Terrible trades were made. Player injuries were handled in a haphazard and simply dangerous fashion. Player development was, to put it bluntly, a joke. In short, Omar Minaya's Mets did everything wrong.

As a fan of a team, you want to be able to defend against outside mockery. When rival teams' fans take shots at your team, you want to be able to have something, anything, to use to defend your team. When Omar was in charge, there was no way to do that. The team was run in an irrational manner, and there's no way to rationally defend irrationality.

And that is a big reason why I'm thrilled about the installation of Sandy Alderson. I don't expect domination. I don't even expect a championship. I am smart enough to know that it's really hard to win a World Series, and that while fans should definitely hope to win, expecting to win is really only the realm of the arrogant and the egotistical. But what I do expect is rationality. I'm listening to Alderson's introductory press conference right now, and what I'm hearing is what I expected, based on what I know about Alderson - a smart, well-spoken man who thinks rather than feels. When Minaya was in charge, it seemed that most decisions were made based on faulty reasoning and gut reactions. Alderson says things like "the mathematics don't lie" and that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are important. That's the way to build a team that has the ability to win a championship, and more than anything, it's the way to make a franchise respectable again.

The Mets may not win the pennant every year for the next decade - in fact, they probably won't. But at least we know that the people in charge know what they're doing, that they will create and execute a plan, and that the plan will be based on sound principles. We know that we no longer have to fear that at any moment, team officials could be forcing a guy with a concussion to play, or challenging 20-year-old kids to fights. The team will not be a laughingstock, and that's a damn good first step.

A hurried baseball playoffs preview

I went for a run last weekend, and I needed to wear a glove. It's cold out, but it's still the kind of cold that makes you feel more awake than you really are, rather than the kind of cold that makes you wish you lived in Mallorca. And while this means many things, the thing it means for the purpose of this blog post is that it's time for playoff baseball.

It's been a rough couple of years for me as a baseball fan. The Mets haven't been legitimately good since I was a freshman in college. The Red Sox are out of the playoffs for the first time since that same year, but they haven't been a legitimate championship contender since the 2007 season (in which they were really strong contenders, contending longer than anyone else). In the past two seasons, the two teams I most hate - the Phillies and then the Yankees - won championships. It got to the point where I was sort of rooting for the Braves at one point this year. The Braves.

But though it's not much fun, with my favorite teams on early-fall vacations and my most despised primed for glory, I'm a baseball fan, so I'm obligated to watch the playoffs. Why? Because the playoffs are awesome, no matter who's playing. The only sport that has an argument for a superior playoffs is hockey, and that's mostly just because they have a cooler trophy. But that's not what I'm interested in talking about right now, mostly because it's far too Costasian and I'm far too tall to write like he talks.

I'm sticking to who's going to win and why it's going to happen. I know the games have started, but I tweeted the picks earlier. So I'm not using the first slate of games as a barometer - these are blind picks. They're blind in another way - though I love me some statistics, I'm going against my own advice and going mostly on gut feelings. We'll see how much I know about a baseball season that I largely ignored, for the sake of my emotional state. I'll talk a bit about the championship series and the World Series as I pick them, but I'll cover that more after the actual teams are set. I'm assuming I won't have a perfect record of picks here. Let's do this thing.
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ALDS: Rays over Rangers (3-1), Twins over Yankees (3-2)

There are two reasons I'm picking the Rays to win the first of the divisional series to start. First of all, I'm totally unconvinced that any team expecting to get anything out of Jeff Francoeur can win. He's played pretty well since the Mets traded him, but that's mostly (if not entirely) due to the small size of the available sample. He is not a good hitter. Of course, he's a bench player, because though he's a cocaine fan, Ron Washington is still apparently smarter than Jerry Manuel. So he's not really that much of a factor.

The main reason I'm picking the Rays is because I think they're much deeper than the Rangers. Josh Hamilton has been hurt, as has Evan Longoria. But the Rays don't rely on Longoria the same way that the Rangers lean on Hamilton. They also have a deeper pitching staff, to my eye. I feel like the Rangers have, to an extent, gotten fat on a weaker division out west, while the Rays have had to deal with the Yankees, Red Sox, and Blue Jays all summer. The Rays have performed better against better competition, and that's why they'll win this series.

In the other series, I'm going against history. The Yankees have beaten the Twins in the playoffs several times in the past decade, but this year I think the twins are going to finally break through. The main reason for this is my belief that these Yankees are very overrated. CC Sabathia is a very good pitcher (not the best in the league, but that's another post), but after him, they'll be relying on the injured Andy Pettite and the unknown quantity that is Phil Hughes. Their bullpen is Mariano Rivera and a collection of inconsistency. Their lineup is very good, but hitting doesn't win in the playoffs the same way it does in the regular season. They're going to have to lean on their pitching, and their pitching is going to crack at some point. The Yankees are going to win two games, but that's all.

NLDS: Phillies over Reds (3-0), Giants over Braves (3-1)

The Phillies are a good team. They have three pitchers better than the Reds' best, and I see no situation in which the Reds will be able to beat the Phillies. The Reds have some hitters, but I don't think that they'll break through against Halladay or Oswalt. Hamels is a bit less reliable in my eyes, but he's still better than Johnny Cueto. Also, as much as I dislike Hamels, he hasn't ended anyone's career.

The Giants and Braves can both pitch. Neither can hit. The Giants are better at pitching. They're going to win. (That, by the way, is the most laconic thing I've ever written.)

ALCS: Twins over Rays. This will be a very even series if it happens. Fundamentally sound, well-played baseball - entertaining for the fans, but maybe not anyone else. I see Joe Mauer having a huge series, and Jim Thome right behind him.

NLCS: Giants over Phillies. There will be about six runs scored in this series. The Giants are more used to having to scrape together runs, so they'll be better suited for a matchup like this.

World Series: Twins over Giants. The streak continues for San Francisco. Minnesota christens their new ballpark in style. Also, I'll get to say "Well played, Mauer" a lot.

Feel free to offer your own predictions in the comments, if you like. And if I said something stupid that is statistically unprovable, feel free to call me on it, but remember that this is based on my feel of the series, rather than...well, things that you can prove. It's less accurate, but it's more fun that way.

Spurs 1-4 Arsenal: Are you watching, Tottenham?

Lansbury is really pumped about scoring against Spurs. (Tom Jenkins, The Guardian)

I've only been an Arsenal fan for a few years, but in those years I've grown to love the club dearly. As a person living on the far side of the Atlantic, and a person who didn't grow up with the club, it's taken a lot of effort to learn all about Arsenal - the history, the traditions, and all that.

It has taken no effort to hate Tottenham Hotspur.

I really don't know why. I don't know whether it's the players, or the manager (let's be real, 'Arry is pretty hateable), or the fans. Probably all of the above. It's just something that's come so naturally to me that it's almost disturbing. Naturally, I blame Spurs for this personal deficiency. See how easy it is?

So even when Arsenal play Spurs in a largely meaningless Carling Cup game (because honestly, nobody cares about the Carling Cup) I get amped up. It would appear that I'm not the only one, because Arsene Wenger - from on high in the director's box while serving his one-match ban for not just hauling off and punching a referee on Saturday - fielded a not-terrible team, which is unusual. There were only three overlapping starters from the Sunderland match, but players like Eboué, Gibbs, Denilson, and Rosicky starting and most of the first team on the bench, you could tell the match was actually being taken seriously. Even though Fabianski was in goal.

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The first half was extraordinarily one-sided. The scoreline wasn't, with Arsenal up only 1-0, but they had control of the ball for what seemed like about 90% of play. Spurs were getting passed into oblivion, but Arsenal couldn't finish but once; a great ball in the box from Jack Wilshere was bombed in by Henri Lansbury, both of whom are younger than I am. It was a game in which missed opportunities could have come back to haunt the Gunners, and it almost did.

Just after the half, Robbie Keane received a ball over the top in the box, and slid it past a diving Fabianski, who was honestly just there for decoration. It was a fine play, but would have been better had Keane not been criminally offside. The call wasn't made, the goal stood, and the score was leveled. (This was compounded by the fact that Arsenal left-back Kieran Gibbs had a chance fraudulently taken away for offside before the half, by the same linesman no less.)

The score remained unchanged through full-time, setting the stage for a barrage in extra time. Twice Arsenal were awarded penalties: once for a foul on Samir Nasri and again for one on Marouane Chamakh. Rosicky's penalty miss Saturday (along with many, many other things) cost two points, but Nasri wasn't as wasteful. He took both shots, and Spurs keeper Stipe Pletikosa guessed wrong both times. Andrei Arshavin finished the scoring with a solid shot, and Arsenal coasted to the finish.

Hopefully Gibbs won't end up being the biggest story. Reports after the game are saying that he may have a broken bone in his foot, which is similar to the injury that put him out for three months last year. It would be a major setback for a player who has looked better than first-teamer Gael Clichy so far this year, so hopefully it will not be as bad as is feared. More on that will probably be available today, so we'll see.

Here are some stats, courtesy of Orbinho...Spurs come first then Arsenal, as usual in football.

Goals: 1-4

Shots: 12-24

On target: 4-7

Possession: 36%-64%

Passing accuracy: 77%-84%

Fouls: 23-14

Duels won: 47%-53%

Man of the Match: I'm going to go with Koscielny, but that's primarily due to my slowly-developing mancrush on him. He's shown himself to be a supreme badass since coming over to the Gunners, and I didn't get to shower him with praise after the Sunderland match. Second star is Jack Wilshere, who's developed into a bit of a mini-Cesc. I'll give third star to Nasri for not missing any penalties, unlike freaking Rosicky (whose name is not pronounced the way it looks like it should be, if you're wondering).

Arsenal 6-0 Blackpool: Welcome to High School

I was about as happy as he was. (sportinglife.com)

Last week, Blackpool beat Wigan 4-0 to win their first top-flight league game since 1971. They were a Cinderella story all week leading up to their first ever voyage into the Emirates Stadium. A candidate for relegation from second-level football last year, they won their league to gain promotion, and shocked everyone with their grand first performance.

And today, they found out just how tough Premier League football really is. Wigan was a team in disarray, but even with a summer of transfer rumor -- Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona, new keepers and defenders, just to name a few -- Arsenal weren't comparable, and defeated Blackpool fairly easily by a final score of 6-0.

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First off, all the credit in the world to Blackpool's players and manager. They were put to the sword and unlike many teams in the Premiership, they played class football and didn't resort to chippy tackling and time-wasting. They continued to play their game, knowing full well that it probably wasn't going to get them any points. They didn't go for injuries, in short. Ian Holloway, Blackpool's manager, said after the game that "Arsenal are class, their manager is class, the way they play is class, and they gave us masterclass." Thanks, and the same to you.

Last week against Liverpool, Arsenal looked pretty lame, to be perfectly honest. Though possession was rampant, they had no finishing skill, and the defense (while better than expected) wasn't particularly strong. Today was quite the opposite. Goals were available almost at will, and Blackpool had only two real chances at goal with the backline nearly omnipresent.

Speaking of omnipresent, Theo Walcott was amazing. He was able to match his England international performance against Croatia a couple of years ago with a hat-trick, his first for Arsenal. He also earned the distinction of being the first Gunner to score this season, so good for him. His speed carved up the Tangerine defenses, and for once he had the passing ability and the finishing touch to match that. If he can consistently manage that combination, he can be deadly.

Andrey Arshavin came off with about half an hour left in the game for Robin van Persie, but he more than made up for the poor effort he put forth at Anfield last week. He had a goal on a penalty, as well as at least one assist. He also had a few near misses, including one stinging finish in the box that was saved spectacularly. There were rumors last week that Arshavin was hurt or tired from the preseason; if that was the case, it looks to have been mostly cleared up.

The defense has been the source of a lot of talk (including some new rumors from L'Equipe today), and with Laurent Koscielny out this week due to his (absurd) red card against Liverpool, I was even more worried than usual. However, the back line was quite good. Blackpool chances were limited, and the gang did a good job in the attacking half as well -- the 4th Gunner goal was a Diaby finish from a Sagna cross, after he'd run the length of the pitch with the ball. Especially good was Alex Song, who usually is a midfielder but filled in for Koscielny today. I still think we need at least one center-half signing for depth, but the personnel we have are good enough to move forward, I think.

I'll wrap up with this: I'm almost always impressed by the players Arsene Wenger manages to bring in for this club. Last week I was thrilled with Koscielny's play. This week, I was thoroughly impressed by Marouane Chamakh. He had a ton of chances in front of goal and was unable to convert most of them (including one late heartbreaker in front of a mostly open net). However, he was perpetually in the right places to make things happen, and though the finishing was lacking, that can be improved, hopefully. Two plays stuck out. First, obviously, was the goal that he did score. van Persie looped a corner kick into the box and Chamakh put his head on it forcefully for a score. This is the kind of play I hope to see often from him, especially as it's something that's been lacking from Arsenal strikers since I've been watching them. Secondly was the breakaway where Ian Evatt was forced to brink Chamakh down from behind, drawing a red card and the penalty shot that Arshavin buried to make it a 2-0 Arsenal lead. Placement and presence are crucial in football, and Chamakh had both down pat today.

The game at Anfield was worrying; today's washed most of those worries away. The common Gooner refrain from this summer will make a return: if we can get another center-half and a new goalkeeper, Arsenal can definitely challenge for the title.

Man of the match: Theo Walcott
Second star: Alex Song
Third star: Marouane Chamakh

Follow Friday: Arseblog

As you will see soon, I am getting pretty excited for the young Premier League football season. Pretty soon I'm going to have a post up about why I love football so much (and why I refuse to call it soccer). But for now, all I have is the latest Follow Friday post.

I've been reading a lot of Arsenal blogs lately in preparation for the season. Some have really good analysis, some are very well written, and some are really funny. My favorites, though, are those that combine the three. The first, best example of this is the one and only Arseblog.

Arseblog is a daily production of the highest quality, and there's a regularly published podcast (the Arsecast, available free on iTunes) to boot. Arseblog is on Twitter and Facebook as well. So if you have any interest in Arsenal, check that all out.

Sample post: Arseblog's 2010-11 season preview (link)

Alas! I return

So I don't have any good excuse for the fact that I haven't posted since the NBA Draft, other than general lack of being productive. Sorry to anyone who had actually been reading this regularly -- I'm going to try to get back into it now.

It's a good time of year for me, sports-wise. I'll have a lot to talk about pretty soon -- Premier League football started this weekend, with Arsenal playing this morning; the NHL will be starting up again soon enough, so I'll have the Islanders and (to a lesser extent) the Capitals to complain about; and the NBA season is also nigh, with the Pacers looking relatively watchable after this week's Big Trade. And I might talk about American football as well, if I get bored enough. I assume the Steelers are still operating, so there's something for me to mildly care about.

So if I can manage, there should be plenty of stuff for me to post about. I'll also talk about music, movies, TV and random crap like usual. So join me, once again, for a jubilant ride through the world of sports and my mind.

NBA Draftapalooza 2010: The Heyward Ultimatum

E-A-S-Y

The New York Post is mostly trash, but this is pretty awesome.


Take that, The Sun.

Also, this is my 50th post here. So that's also pretty cool.

TONIGHT: The Draft

I miss this.

It's been a while since I've posted, due to some business on my part. So apologies for that; I'll try to do a better job of keeping on task.

Tonight, of course (?) is the NBA Draft. I'm going to be liveblogging it here with some help from my friend Joe. As Pacers fans, our focus will be on whether or not Larry Bird can manage to draft someone who doesn't suck, but we'll likely also discuss Stephen A. Smith's inanity, ridiculous wardrobe choices, and whether tattoos make you a bad person.

Join us at 7:30 or so, for FUN and GLORY.

Soc-cer?

Will I care about one of these people? Or will it be some other group of people?

As I mentioned yesterday (and if you have ever watched ESPN, you're probably already aware) the World Cup is ongoing. My personal interest is ebbing for the moment; even though I have pretty much every match on the television, at this point I'm just waiting for the next U.S game (which is Friday morning). I will say that I was particularly disappointed in the Spanish for losing, though I'll blame it on my personal hero Cesc Fabregas being injured.

Just like the last World Cup, though, this one is having a strange and drastic effect on my life as a soccer fan. In 2006, I became one. I hadn't really watched soccer at all before that World Cup, and I ended up watching practically every game that was played, if not actually every game. From there I fell into club soccer via the next summer's Champions League (I'll admit that I almost became a Chelsea fan), and then I became a full-fledged Arsenal fan soon after, after some convincing by a friend.

Now, though, I fear that I may have gone too far. I am considering taking on an MLS team.

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Now, I know what you're saying. "Thomas, the level of play in MLS isn't high enough to warrant that commitment." "Thomas, you're already dangerously overloaded with sports, with all four major sports and the EPL." "Thomas, soccer sucks." And you're right, except for whoever said the last one. No, you suck, whoever you are.

But I don't think I care. No matter how worthless it seems to be, I think it may be time. I am a soccer fan, and I am an American, so it should stand to reason that I am an American soccer fan. It would be nice if someday, the MLS wasn't considered to be essentially a minor league, not even really on par with the lesser European leagues. So I'm going to jump on the MLS bandwagon now, I think, and get ahead of the game.

Here's the problem, though: I have no idea what team to root for. There's no team in Indianapolis. There is one in Chicago, but I am not really a Chicago sports fan, so I'm not sure whether I want to get into that. Typically I'm a New York/Boston sports fan, but I refuse to root for a Red Bull team, and for some reason the Revolution don't really do anything for me.

I'm thinking I may go old-school with my pick. I've always had an odd affinity for the Pacific Northwest for some reason; I think it may be due to my political leanings as well as the fact that much of my mother's family is from that part of the country. Also, I used to be a huge Mariners fan, back when Ken Griffey, Jr. was the best baseball player in the world.

There are a few teams in that area. Currently only one is actually in MLS; that would be Seattle Sounders FC. Also though, in the next couple of years two more teams will join MLS in the region: the Portland Timbers and the Vancouver Whitecaps. So I guess if I'm willing to wait until 2011, I can go with one of those two.

I'm really bad at making decisions, and since all of these teams are rivals I can't just root for all of them. So I am opening the decision to you, my loyal readers. If anyone has suggestions or input, I welcome it. I won't necessarily just count up votes, but I'll take all input into consideration.

Arsenal is non-negotiable, though.

This is awesome: Best rant ever

In honor of the Mets beating the Indians last night (barely, thanks to the fact that Frankie Rodriguez is incapable of making anything easy ever), I present to you the greatest baseball rant in the history of baseball or rants. This is Bruce Drennan, Indians sportscaster, decrying their crappiness.



I don't know what he'd do if he was working for the Pirates.

Music "Monday": Greg Graffin is my hero

There are few rock musicians whose Wikipedia articles start thusly:

Gregory Walter Graffin, Ph.D. (born November 6, 1964 in Racine, Wisconsin) is an American punk rock musician and college professor.

Greg Graffin, the lead singer for Bad Religion, is a paleontology professor at UCLA on the side. How freaking punk rock is that?

I'm having massive amounts of trouble picking a song to include, so I'm going with multiple songs. First is "Generator," from the 1992 album of the same name. It is awesome.



Next is "New Dark Ages," from 2007's "New Maps of Hell." It is also awesome. Epitaph Records is pretty awesome too, because they let me embed this video, which practically no other labels do.



Finally, we have "All There Is" off of 2004's "The Empire Strikes First." This is probably my favorite Bad Religion song. It is also awesome.



Bad Religion is a pretty good band.

Emmanuel Adebayor is kind of an idiot

It's the World Cup (USA! USA) and BBC is in full swing with their coverage of the tournament. Like most networks, they brought in "expert" analysts to help make sense of what's going on. Unfortunately, they decided to go with Emmanuel Adebayor.



And no, I'm not just bitter that Ade took Man City's money and ran, rather than staying with Arsenal. Seriously, I went through a year of high school and four years of college and I never once forgot to silence my phone. You'd think he'd manage to do that when he's on freaking national television.

This is why the economy tanked

Evidently, bros are icing bros at Goldman Sachs and Raymond James. One would think that they have better things to do than frat boy crap like this, but evidently managing all of the money in the world doesn't take that much effort.

I'm with Drew Magary. This is lame. Stop doing it, kids of America.

A non-Blackhawks fan celebrates

I am not a Blackhawks fan. However, my close friend Peter is. Peter introduced me to hockey, and I was lucky to get to watch Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals with him last night. The Hawks won in overtime on an absurd Patrick Kane goal, and it was honestly one of the coolest moments ever for me as a sports fan.

I see a lot of me in Peter's Hawks fandom. Hockey is his favorite sport, baseball is mine. He's been a Blackhawks fan basically from birth, much like I am with the Mets. Before tonight, neither of us had ever seen our favorite team win a championship; however, we'd both seen our second teams win (the Lightning for Peter, the Red Sox for me). And we'd both recently been close: the Hawks lost in the Western Conference Finals last year, and in 2006 the Mets lost the National League Championship Series.

When Kane scored, Peter jumped in my arms (me being the closest person available) and we all screamed and cheered and so on. And in that moment, I could see a possible future. David Wright hitting a walk-off home run to win the World Series. And I could see myself acting exactly the same way. I'm so glad that Peter got to experience that. Now I hope that I will someday as well.

In celebration, here is Blackhawk Dustin Byfuglien getting creeped on by Pierre McGuire. He's not the first, but this is probably the funniest.

Some things about Stephen Strasburg

The Blitzkrieg with pie on his face. Nice game, rook.

The history of humanity is littered with those who couldn't live up to the hype. Kwame Brown, Darko Miličić, Mark Prior, Brien Taylor. Every now and then, though, someone actually breaks through. When LeBron James was first coming into the NBA, and the hype surrounding him was at its height, I remember thinking that there wasn't any way for him to match expectations. Somehow, he did.

Seven innings pitched, 14 strikeouts, no walks.

I didn't think that there was any way that Stephen Strasburg could possibly come close to living up to the hype. I mean, Curt Schilling said a few weeks ago that he'd be the best pitcher in the majors the day he first stepped on a mound. These were lofty expectations that Strasburg had been saddled with. And somehow he actually surpassed them.
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I don't want to go too far into this, for a few reasons. Most of what can be said has already been said by people who said it better than I would have anyway. But I do want to mention a few things.

First of all, we need to not get too far ahead of ourselves. His first game was spectacular, but I've heard people talking about the Hall of Fame already. Nick Evans looked like a Hall of Famer after one game and now nobody even knows who he is. It was against the Pirates, it was a pitchers' umpire...blah blah blah. My newfound sabermetrics expertise leads me to say that the sample size is far too small to make a real judgement.

Now that I have that out of the way, HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE HIM PITCH. I have never seen anything like that. Literally. I've been watching baseball for a long time, and I've never seen a pitcher like Stephen Strasburg, even for one start. I went to a restaurant with some friends to watch him. I was the only one who really wanted him to do well; one was a Pirates fan, the other didn't really have a reason that I'm aware of. They were both talking some smack before he started pitching. After about an inning, it died down because there wasn't anything to say. He gave up a home run; it was on a good pitch. He made next to no mistakes.

The most impressive thing to me was the fact that I was impressed by him. I'm not usually easily impressed, but at one point during the game I actually yelled with surprise at one of Strasburg's curveballs. It was moving at apparent fastball speed, and then it dropped about two feet. I have no idea how anyone's supposed to hit that.

It's going to be a little while before we know how good Stephen Strasburg's going to be over the long-term. But for one night, I'm willing to throw sample size and rationality out the window. That was a damned good performance by Strasburg last night, and it was fun to watch. And I am impressed.

(Could we ditch the "Mr. Precedent" nickname, also? Because it's horrible. Come up with something more awesome. Like The Blitzkrieg - after all, he does have a German-ish name.)

This is awesome: Wikipedia is my favorite

Okay, this is the best thing ever. Evidently Tom Izzo, coach of the Michigan State basketball team, is the king of Mars.

Click to embiggen.

That's right. He's not going to end up coaching LeBron James, he's going to coach the Monstars.

This is awesome: IKE FREAKING DAVIS

Ike Davis is my new personal hero. I've already commissioned a gold statue.

Stephen Strasburg is a chump. There's no way he can hit a ball this far. Ike Davis is already better than Albert Pujols, and he's closing fast on Lou Gehrig. Not quite to Keith Hernandez's level yet, though.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Stephen Strasburg is not a chump. This is all hyperbole.

Music "Monday": 1995 redux

Okay, so I missed Music Monday yesterday. Sorry. Like I said, busy weekend bled into busy Monday. So here's the weekly music fix a day late.

I'm going with Green Day this week. I have two reasons for this. First of all, Green Day is awesome. They were my first favorite band back when I was in elementary school, and I still love them, despite the fact that they're way overplayed on the radio. Of course, if you still listen to the radio for music, I guess it's your own fault if you end up with stuff you don't like - but I digress.

The second reason is the fact that Green Day: Rock Band just came out today. If you know my brother, you know that this is pretty much the best day of his life. I, on the other hand, have not gotten to play it yet. Can't wait to see someone try to play these songs on drums.

I went with "Brain Stew," because it was my favorite song in 1995. Also, it's a really cool song, and I'm in the mood for that.

Learning sabermetrics: a beginning

First of all, apologies for the slow weekend. I've had some other things going on, not the least of which is my ongoing attempt to find a paying job. Posting may be slower than it's been (like, down to two or three posts a day instead of four or five a day), but I'll try to keep up.

So now on to what I actually want to talk about. I have decided that I'm tired of just making stuff up, so I'm going to learn about sabermetrics. I know very little about statistics, so I asked my friend Nate, a noted sabermetrician, for some guidance as to what sources I should explore. I've decided to share my journey of self-improvement with you.

This one's going to be pretty short, because other smarter people have already done most of the work for me. Right now, since I'm at the beginning of this project, I'm looking for the most basic information available. I found a really cool source at Sabermetrics Library. Basically they have created a short online class on sabermetrics, including sections on why they're necessary, on the principles of the statistical process, and on individual stats.

I recommend the course for the uninitiated. If you prefer a more piecemeal approach, though, I'm planning on doing a continuing series on sabermetrics. So expect more to come, as I figure this whole thing out. It should be fun, and maybe at the end I'll be able to tell why Derek Jeter is so overrated defensively.

The least surprising thing ever

Pete Rose, circa 538 AD.

So evidently en route to the major league career hits record, Pete Rose was corking his bats. Considering what we know about Pete Rose already, this isn't surprising, and it's just another reason for me to not like him. I have many of those already, but this is a nice new one.

The best part is that corking your bat doesn't even help. So beyond the fact that Pete Rose is evidently a cheater, he's not even a particularly good one.

[via Deadspin]

Saturday Morning Amusement: Old Gregg

This is the greatest thing ever. It's from a British sketch comedy series called The Mighty Boosh. I have no way to explain it, just watch it. You won't regret the decision.

This is awesome: Why I'm rooting for the Celtics

There are many reasons, but this is high on my list.


I don't even have anything to add.

[via The Sports Hernia, who got it from SportsByBrooks]

EDIT: This is supposed to be an animated GIF, but it's not working. Just go to one of those links if you want to see it in all its glory. It'll be worth it, I swear to you.

Follow Friday: Amazin' Avenue

This week's Follow Friday blog is a good one (well, obviously I think they're all good, or else I wouldn't be recommending them). This week, I'm going with Amazin' Avenue, which is one of my favorite Mets-centric blogs, if not my favorite.

It's a really smart blog that leans toward sabermetric analysis (like most of the well-run teams in Major League Baseball) rather than uninformed gut reactions (like the Mets); however, it's not nerdtastic to the extent that the average reader won't understand what's going on. When I initially started reading I wasn't a stat nerd, but I still found the analysis they give to be incredibly informative and easily absorbed. There was the additional benefit of prompting me to start looking into sabermetrics, which has greatly enhanced my understanding of what the hell is going on in baseball.

The main reason I like it, though, is the fact that it has what I think is the most important thing a blog can provide, which is a community. The regular commenters are intelligent and contribute a lot to the blog, and they have a great rapport with the writers. All-around, Amazin' Avenue is a really good blog.

Suggested posts:
Jose Reyes Cumulative WAR Versus Other Shortstops: This shows how statistics can prove dumb sportswriters wrong for trashing players you like.
What Historical WAR Can Tell Us About David Wright: This shows how statistics can frighten you into thinking your favorite player may have some issues, but he also may not.
New York Mets Look-A-Likes: This shows how there are a lot of people around the Mets organization who look like famous people. Also, AA is funny.

An executive decision

I've made one. I'm tired of hearing about the not-perfect game. I'm tired of thinking about it. I'm tired of talking about it. I was going to write an enormously long post about it for today, but it's just annoying and there's nothing to be said about it that hasn't already been said. So instead of copying the echo chamber, I've decided not to add to the cacophony.

So consider this my post on the not-perfect game: it's a crime that it happened. He should have made the call, and the umpires should have conferenced to make sure the call was right. When they didn't, Bud Selig should have invoked the "best interests in the game" clause and declared it a perfect game; there is no "dangerous precedent" to set because this has never happened before and likely never will again. It is cut-and-dried 100% certain proof that instant replay should be expanded in baseball - as my brother said, "It's tradition to have the 'human element,' but it was also tradition to use the Pony Express to deliver mail and we got rid of that nonsense."

I may post later on instant replay, and on the recent overall incompetence and jackassery of MLB's umpires. I feel pretty strongly on both, and I think I have something creative to say. But on the subject of Armando Galarraga's newfound fame, I think everything that needs to be said has already been said.

One week

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Well, I somehow missed this yesterday, but this blog is now officially one week old. I know that one week is a really lame anniversary to celebrate, but I like anniversaries a lot, so back off. It seems like it's been way longer than that (especially since I think I've been through three different layouts thus far), but I think that's a good thing, somehow. Personally I'm just impressed/disturbed that in a week I've already had three posts tagged "vampires." That's the same number that I have on hockey. What the hell?

Anyway, thanks to anyone and everyone who's stopped by so far. Hopefully you have liked what you've seen, and you'll keep coming back. I'll try to keep coming up with words for you to read.

This is awesome: Best comeback ever

This is my first football post. I don't really like football, so that's why. Sorry.

Okay, so evidently Visanthe "I Don't Have a Real Name" Shiancoe and Darren "X Marks the Spot" Sharper are having a Twitter fight. The particulars won't be revisited here, mostly because they're irrelevant. What's relevant is Shiancoe's final salvo.

During a team visit with the Minnesota National Guard, one soldier "suggested a custom target for" Shiancoe, which he then tweeted:


Well played, Shiancoe.

The real hero

He used to make these catches ALL THE TIME. Most spectacular player I've ever seen.

I'm really upset by the non-perfect game last night. It's terrible that the game had to go down the way it did. But the biggest reason I'm upset is the fact that because of that horrible call, the greatest player of our time is being overshadowed on a day where he should be celebrated.

The third headline on ESPN.com today is the retirement of Ken Griffey, Jr. It's the second headline on MLB.com. Hell, even Fangraphs has more stuff on the imperfect game than on Griffey. And now I've talked about it for two paragraphs. And that is unfair to the career of one of the greatest baseball players ever.

Ken Griffey, Jr. was a large part of the reason why I'm a baseball fan. When I was a kid, the Mets weren't very good, and I wasn't a Red Sox fan yet. My connection with baseball was based primarily around my father, and the video game Ken Griffey, Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. I played the game and I watched Junior play, and I was obsessed. I had a Junior signature glove. I had a Mariners hat. If you know me, you know I wear my hats backward most of the time. Well, I started that because of Junior. He was my idol like probably no other player has been. And for almost everyone around my age, I think it was about the same way.
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It wasn't just the fact that he was better than everyone else, though that helped a lot. For a kid, there's nothing cooler than a player who can do everything - he hit for average, he hit home runs, he hit in the clutch. He was a spectacular outfielder (I can't find numbers on this, but I'll hit anyone who tries to tell me he wasn't the best centerfielder ever). He could run. He did everything.

But beyond that there was the persona. He was just so damn cool. Before the injuries, when he was still The Kid, Junior had this ebullient air of awesomeness no matter what was going on. He seemed like he was happy to play baseball, and it never seemed like he even had to try that hard to be great and to look cool doing it. That's where the hat comes into play, I guess. He was totally effortless in all phases on the game, and seemingly outside the game as well. He was like an angel or an alien who had been sent here to show the children of the world what baseball was supposed to look like. He was the commercial king before Jeter, too. I found a couple of old ones:





Events conspired against Junior, though. Parts of his career kept getting taken from him by factors largely outside of his control. His early prime was largely robbed because of the players' strike in 1994, at least in terms of public recognition. After the strike people pretty much stopped watching baseball; it wasn't until the home run race in 1998 that baseball really came "back." But some of Junior's best seasons came during that period. Hell, he hit 40 home runs in 1994 and the season ended 50 games early. That's on pace for 58 home runs (which would have been a career high for him).

That wasn't the worst of it, though. You're probably already aware of Junior's injury history. After he asked to be traded to the Reds, he was riddled by major injuries (mostly to his legs) that robbed him of the meat of his prime years. He finished his career yesterday with 630 career home runs. Since I'm evidently a numbers junkie now, I decided to run a number-crunch on how many home runs Junior would have today in a just universe. This won't be exact, as I'm making a lot of stuff up, but I have to for this exercise, so we'll just have to deal with that. The relevant variables are as follows:

Games: 2671
HR: 630
Seasons: 22

To correct for days off and minor injuries over the course of a season, I'm going to assume 140 games a season (his average during his first stint in Seattle). His HR/G rate for his career was 0.236 (to three significant digits). So assuming 140 games a season for 22 years, Junior should have 727 home runs. And that's a conservative estimate, since I included the strike season and a 72 game season (he missed almost three months in 1995 after breaking his wrist while making a catch) in the games per season calculations, and I didn't correct for the terrible seasons Junior had recently. Even with those caveats, he could have outhomered Babe Ruth.

There was another way in which Junior's career is a bit tragic. He very clearly was one of the greatest players in the history of the game. He did this during the steroid era, when it's been basically assumed that every good hitter in baseball was cheating (mainly because we've discovered that most of them were). And yet there's never been even a hint of a suspicion that Ken Griffey, Jr. was a steroid user. All the evidence indicates otherwise, even. Junior has never even been rumored to have failed a steroid test. His career arc roughly followed that of a non-user: spectacular as a young man, improvement into the prime, a plateau, then a steady decline into middle age. His body did the same thing: thin as a kid, strengthened into his prime (but not enormous), and then as he aged he got kind of fat and got hurt a lot.

He wasn't a user, and to most that just means that his numbers will be obscured by those of the sluggers who did cheat. That's a fair assessment; the 56 home runs that Junior hit in 1998 would have been amazing most years, but that year it was good for third behind Mark McGwire's 70 and Sammy Sosa's 66. McGwire's admitted to using steroids that year, and while Sosa hasn't, it's pretty much assumed by most people that he was, whether that's fair or not. He had huge numbers, but they weren't as huge as those of Bonds and the others.

But what gets overlooked is the fact that most of the pitchers were probably using too. Not only was Junior competing against hitters who were juicing, but he was batting against pitchers who were unnaturally good as well. If we take steroids out of the game, the numbers would drop almost across the board, most likely. But it's quite likely that Griffey's would actually have risen.

This is all very depressing. To think that Ken Griffey, Jr. should probably be atop the all-time home run list rather than Barry Bonds, to think that as good as he was he should have been even better...that all isn't much fun. So today, let's not think about that.

I got to see Ken Griffey, Jr. play several times as a member of the Reds, but I also got to see him once as a Mariner. It was 1999, and I was in Seattle with my family for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. All I cared about, though, was the fact that we were going to get to see Junior play. It was Ken Griffey, Jr. Hat Day, and when we walked in we all got these great hats, which my brothers and I immediately put on. What we didn't know at the time was that Junior was sick, and questionable for the game. He probably shouldn't have played, but it was his hat day, and he knew that there were going to be thousands of kids like my brothers and me who were there just to see him. So he played sick, and he made my childhood. Things like that are the things I'm going to remember about Junior.

So for today at least, let's not remember the injuries, or the years where Junior had to take a backseat to cheaters. Let's remember the diving catches. Let's remember the long flies. Let's remember the Home Run Derbies where he stood in the batter's box, hat turned back, and blasted baseballs deep into the night using nothing but a wood stick and his raw skill. Let's remember the video games we played as kids, and the heroes we had. Let's remember him as Junior. Let's remember him as the Kid. Today, let's remember Ken Griffey, Jr.'s career not as what it could or should have been, but as what it was: one of the greatest in the history of Major League Baseball.

This (Sean Casey) is awesome

I just came across this video while looking at stuff for the thing I'm writing on Ken Griffey, Jr. for later, and it displays two things. First, Ken is not the best ever at reading lines. Secondly, though, and more importantly, Sean Casey is awesome.

A bad day

In some alternate universe Junior never got hurt, and he hit 760 home runs. And nobody cared about Barry Bonds.

Yesterday was quite possibly the most depressing day I've had as a baseball fan since Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS (the 97-win Mets inexplicably losing to the not-that-good Cardinals). It was just very upsetting.

I'm planning on going into more detail about all of this later, but I was unhappy enough when I found out that Ken Griffey, Jr. was retiring. The Armando Galarraga/Jim Joyce snafu made things even worse. And then the Mets lost in about the worst way possible: Johan pitches well, Ass-Rod blows the save, and there's a walk-off grand slam.

Clearly I have done something to anger the baseball gods. I offer them this sacrifice, to appease them:

God, I hate him.