30 Helens Agree

Q1 Mixtape: In Which Damn Bitch My Feet Hurt

2011-04-06T14:38:00.002-04:00

Weird couple of months for music ... major releases ranged from surprising (Bright Eyes) to abysmal (STROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKES, ugh), with some weird outsiders pushing forward (looking directly at your weird ass, Nicolas Jaar). All in all, it makes for probably the most disjointed mixtape since this project started - still, it's also likely the highest-quality. Go and buy some albums, kids, amazing things are happening.

And, if you haven't yet, recognize that Odd Future is taking over the fucking planet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIOtLeJNrRU
Free Earl, indeed.

-"Yonkers," Tyler the Creator
-"Damn Bitch My Feet Hurt," Mz. Luscious
-"Bury Us Alive," Starfucker
-"Civilian," Wye Oak
-"All Die Young," Smith Westerns
-"Mirror," Burial/Four Tet/Thom Yorke
-"I Heart California," Admiral Radley
-"Blackberry Hype," Maxwell D
-"Invented You Now," the Hood Internet
-"Measurements," James Blake
-"Ungirthed," Purity Ring
-"Raid," Pusha T w/ 50 Cent
-"Will Do (XXXChange Mix)," TV on the Radio
-"Raw Spectacle," Miracle Fortress
-"Damn These Vampires," the Mountain Goats
-"Seafarer," Tennis
-"Suicide Demo for Kara Walker," Destroyer
-"Space is Only Noise if You Can See," Nicolas Jaar
-"Shell Games", Bright Eyes

Sherman Marched to the Sea, We Marched into a Dirty Garage

2011-03-17T12:23:00.003-04:00

11:15am

So it begins ... 3 of the 4 TVs are set up without trouble (the fourth exists, but we have no way to go VGA -> coax as of yet ... this is the definition of first-world problem). Fuck it, I'm sure TruTV.com will suffice.

I have Clemson early, and now kind of like Butler since ODU at -2.5 seems about 2pts too many. More on this another time, after beers.

There's meat in the smoker and homoerotic jokes about the meat in the hopper ... also, apparently Sam's Club orange juice does not need to be refrigerated. This was a surprise to me.

The crew so far:

-Troy: Poops too much, text-message ring tone is the Super Mario power-up noise, we had to turn on a fan onto him already. Expert meat-smoker, also insert own joke here.

-Tony: Loves cheese, walks on the beach, amateur pornography and the photography of Ansel Adams. Plays the banker in Monopoly, yet resists the urge to cheat. Just an all-around OK guy.

-Jared: Already bet his first buy-in for the Points Pool, thus being the first person to rebuy before noon on day 1. Stopped and played Golden Tee at 8am at the inimitable Johnny's Hall of Fame.

-Noonan: Canceled an entire day of SUPER-IMPORTANT insurance meetings in Minneapolis to drive down and get drunk. Hopefully has a job on Monday, but either way will have a story.

-Brent: it's his house. He's boycotting the Laptop Craze - there are literally four laptops and an iPad among us. Brent is using an abacus to select his picks, which is weird because he hates the Chinese.

-Justin: Loves betting the under, which is the worst watching experience in the history of basketball, to the extent that it's now referred to as "taking the pussy" (versus "taking the balls"). Somehow, "taking the balls" is better. No comment.

-RC: Let me tell you 'bout the Hurricane. The man the authorities came to blame, for something he never even done.

The Q4 Mixtape - The Assassination of Bad Lil Wayne by the Coward Bangladesh

2010-12-31T16:18:00.004-05:00

Download HERE!

(Year-end Best-ofs to come tomorrow-ish?)

1 - Girl Talk - "Triple Double" (download album at www.illegal-art.net/allday - legal!)
2 - Lil Wayne ft. Cory Gunz, "6' 7'"
3 - Shit Robot - "I Found Love (TBD Remix)"
4 - K-Os - "I Wish I Could Believe"
5 - Kanyeeeezeeee - "Lost in the World (ft Bon Iver)"
6 - Robyn - "Dancing on My Own"
7 - Deerhunter - "Coronado"
8 - Tennis - "Marathon"
9 - Ty Segall - "Girlfriend"
10 - Ye - "The Joy (ft Pete Rock and etc)"
11 - Diamond Rings - "You and Me"
12 - Perfume Genius - "Mr. Peterson"
13 - Vampire Weekend - "California English Pt 2"
14 - Girl Unit - "Wut"
15 - Jai Paul - "BTSTU"
16 - Crystal Castles ft. Robert Smith - "Not In Love"
17 - Drake - "Fireworks (Deadboy Slo Mo House Mix)"
18 - Destroyer - "Chinatown"
19 - Fabolous - "You Be Killin Em"
20 - Tonetta - "My Bro" (UNREAL)

The Q3 Mixtape: RIP Randy Moss (and, Hopefully, Jason Varitek)

2010-10-07T20:00:00.003-04:00

It's about that time again . . . this one's slightly more hip hop-heavy than usual because, well, it was kind of a shitty quarter for musics. At least for singles, anyway. Other than the Kanyeezy, that is- he's still ridiculous. What a beating - everything he's done is outrageously good. Download here!

-Cee-lo Green, "Fuck You"
-The-Dream, "Love King"
-Cali Swag District, "Teach Me How To Dougie"
-The Thermals, "I Don't Believe You"
-The Gaslight Anthem, "Bring It On"
-Das Racist, "hahahahaha jk"
-Atmosphere, "The Best Day"
-Curren$sy ft. Mikey Rocks, "The Hangover"
-How to Dress Well ft. Yuksel Arslan, "Decisions"
-The Cool Kids, "Gettin' Flicked"
-Arcade Fire, "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"
-Chromeo ft. Ezra Koenig, "I Could Be Wrong"
-Jukebox the Ghost, "Half-Crazy"
-Kanyeeze ft. everybody, "Monster" (Really, Nicki Minaj's entire freakout deserves call-out - INCREDIBLE)
-Les Savy Fav, "Sleepless in Silverlake (Acoustic)"
-Menomena, "TAOS"
-Robyn ft. Snoop Dogg, "U Should Know Better"
-Rusko ft. Gucci Mane, "Got Da Groove"
-Superchunk, "Crossed Wires"
-Wavves, "Idiot"
-Mark Ronson ft. Q-Tip, "Bang Bang Bang"

30:30 ... 4 Days in October Impresions

2010-10-05T23:38:00.003-04:00

It's a frigging overload. Some observations:

-Millar calling out CHB and telling him he'd start G7 at 2B and bat 9th was unreal - "Then you can take back that 'frauds' comment" was beautiful.

-Marriotti's stupid ass saying the Sox were done at every opportunity was wonderful. That wife-beating douche should spend his 40 days of community service shining the 04 trophy and learning how to do some sort of blue-collar profession so the world is never submitted to his shit again.

-The different versions of how Pedro went into the 7th game between Tito and Petey were the least surprising thing ever.

-Schilling's leg looked like the science experiment it was. Unfathomable. He also looked drunk in his interviews, but I'm OK with that.

-Bernie's noodle arm in center played SUCH a huge role, that I'm stunned I didn't recall in hindsight. What a great baseball player (and, reportedly, guy), but that guy wouldn't play CF on our slowpitch team. THROW BETTER YOU DOUCHE.

-Tony Clark's ground-rule double is the single luckiest thing that ever happened. I'm pretty sure ever.

-When you were a kid, you always just knew your heroes would come through, regardless of the situation - whether it was Superman, your dad, some guy in an apocryphal story, or whatever. For a long time, David Ortiz was that guy - you just couldn't imagine he wouldn't rip, wouldn't lose one with the game on the line, wouldn't come through. In hindsight, it's just so, so sick. He was Superman, your dad and Paul Bunyan all rolled into one fat dork who crushed fastballs.

-Calling Schilling "Old Man River" on the plane (and Pokey getting down) was just amazing - that's f-ing Pokey Reese! SERIOUSLY!

-I'm sure others won't get it - but it was one of the best hours I've seen on TV. I couldn't be happier.

<3 RC

In which people are still people, for better or for worse . . .

2010-07-15T18:37:00.002-04:00

It is absolutely Amazing - capital-A "Amazing," and not the banal offhand throw-away lower-case "amazing" tossed off by teenagers and people with nothing to say - Amazing the lengths to which guys will go to cheat at something like slow-pitch softball.

OK - the phenomenon isn't unique to weekend warriors on the softball fields. Guys (and girls) will cheat at literally anything, whether or not there is a tangible reward for success at the end. I'm pretty sure everyone knows this - but still, each and every example shocks me even further, each and every time.

I recently sold a relatively-rare bat online - one whose rarity and desirability are almost entirely driven by teenage girls who use it for high school and AAU/travel ball. This means the high price is actually driven by . . . dad, the guy who requires this specific rare bat to get His Dear Daughter (which is terminology actually used - kill me) the base hits and bombs needed to get a non-scholarship to a third-tier D-1 program. A used, 3-year-old bat goes for more than MSRP when it was new, simply because the belief exists that this bat is magic - this bat will put the individual over the top.

Sure, I'm an asshole for exploiting that system for my own profit (give or take 300% profit, if we practice full disclosure) - but the real inanity came in the offers I received for it. Multiple people offered me "shaved" or otherwise altered bats - bats for beer-league slow pitch that have had material removed from the inside to attempt to illegally increase performance. The smallest-midget theory is now being ass-raped by Godwin's law, resulting in this surreal place where guys will cheat to win a t-shirt.

My lovely girlfriend played in an all-woman's tournament last weekend. There, one of her teammates had an illegal bat tagged by the poor schlub of a woman working the registration desk. She knew the bat wasn't approved for play. She smiled and attempted to hit it - and eventually stopped not out of fear of being caught and being sanctioned, but instead because the swing weight was too heavy.

Sure, I'm cherry-picking from softball - 12 year old kids exploit map hacks and glitches to run up retarded scores in Modern Warfare 2 on the Playstation, and I can't tell you how many cockfaced teens have quit online games of Madden on me simply because I won. It's part of human nature, sadly - but these events, all in succession, really drive home just how ridiculous people can be. Amazing. Big A.

Q2 Music: In Which Big Boi Makes the Cut Because I Said So

2010-07-06T16:32:00.003-04:00

Tracks (download link) -

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - "Round and Round"
Janelle Monae - "Round and Round (ft. Big Boi)"
Crystal Castles - "Baptism"
Flying Lotus - "Do the Astral Plane"
Against Me! - "White Crosses"
Nada Surf - "Love and Anger"
Uffie - "ADD SUV (Armand Van Helden vocal mix)"
Reflection Eternal - "Just Begun (ft. Mos Def and Jay Electronica)"
Juvenile - "Drop That Thing"
Caribou - "Odessa"
HEALTH - "USA BOYS"
Sleigh Bells - "Tell 'em"
Kanyeeeezeee - "Power"
Big Boi - "Daddy Fat Stax"
The National - "Lemonworld"
Jay Electronica - "Exhibit C"
The-Dream - "Yamaha"
Wolf Parade - "Ghost Pressure"
LCD Soundsystem - "I Can Change"
Delorean - "Simple Graces"
Japandroids - "Younger Us"
Sage Francis - "The Best of Times"

Albums That Kept Me Awake and Sweating on Various Airport Tarmacs:
Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: the Son of Chico Dusty (HOLY BALLS)
Sleigh Bells - Treats
Delorean - Subiza
Against Me! - White Crosses
Crystal Castles - (self-titled)
The National - High Violet
Reflection Eternal - Revolutions Per Minute

Those Which Require More Time But Get A Prospective Thumbs Up:
Eminem - Recovery
Guilty Simpson - OJ Simpson
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
HEALTH - ::DISCO2
ceo - white magic
Javelin - No Mas
Murs & 9th Wonder - Fornever

2010 Q1: There was music.

2010-04-13T12:47:00.002-04:00

OK - Instead of piling it all at the end of the year, might as well break it into smaller chunks . . .

Tracks (download here), in no particular order:
-LCD Soundsystem, "Drunk Girls"
-Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, "Bottled in Cork" (ABSURD)
-Yeasayer, "ONE"
-Titus Andronicus, "Titus Andronicus Forever"
-Fang Island, "Life Coach"
-The Hold Steady, "Rock Problems"
-Broken Social Scene, "All to All"
-Pavement, "Gold Soundz" (reissued!)
-Vega, "She's Electric (Vega Italo Dub)"
-Big Boi, "Fo Yo Sorrows (ft. George Clinton)"
-Big Boi, "Shutterbugg" (Yep - there's two, it's worth it)
-Cults, "Go Outside"
-Drake, "Over"
-Blitzen Trapper, "Heaven and Earth"
-Hot Chip, "Take It In"
-Wiley, "Never Be Your Woman (Herve Mix)"
-TI, "I'm Back"
-Surfer Blood, "Take It Easy"

OMGOMGOMG
Surfer Blood, Astro Coast
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, The Brutalist Bricks
Hot Chip, One Life Stand
Titus Andronicus, The Monitor
Vega, Well Known Pleasures
Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record
LCD Soundsystem, This is Happening
Fang Island, Fang Island
Vampire Weekend, Contra

Like, Not Love
Love is All, Two Thousand and Ten Injuries
Spoon, Transference
Yeasayer, Odd Blood
jj, jj no. 3
Gonjasufi, A Sufi and A Killer
Freeway & Jake One, The Stimulus Package
Four Tet, There Is Love In You

New Day Rising (Falling [Dying?])

2010-03-19T12:26:00.006-04:00

11:25am

We'll go ahead and start over, since last night was too drunk to walk. Split the night games (push on SDSU, +2u on Wake, -2u on the UT/SDSU over (which was purely based on intoxication) . . . +4u for the tourney. Only one morning bet: +2 on Temple over Cornell at (-3.5).

Jared and I broke even at the casino . . . by which I mean he won a buck and I lost a buck. That's fun. I peed on Prairie Meadows on the way out. Nice forty 12s in a row, assbags.

Our trip to Village Inn this morning was completely uneventful . . . complete with disagreement with the "Did You Know?" that said a majority of people think sharing chocolate pie is the most romantic (answer is obv "Hair Pie"), Troy seeing a condor outside of the restaurant (it's 30 degrees in Iowa), and paying for a $9.95 tab with $12 and getting change back . . . with different 1's than were given to the waitress. Seriously? You didn't get that was a tip?

Also of note: no bloody mary mix at Walmart, Target or Casey's. HyVee was too far away, so we're starting with lovely mixed drinks that aren't bloody marys.

Justin's upstairs bathroom (the kid's bathroom; he's 2) now has toilet paper, so we're back to pooping post-Industrial Revolution. Also, the kid's shower has both shampoo and conditioner - his hair did look silky-smooth though, so who am I to judge?

I couldn't pull the trigger on anything for the UM/Xavier game, but that might be a true pick'em game, and the WVU line looks right (except for, y'know, Morgan State being up 5 right now) . . . We'll see what happens. LOVE GT though, in case any of you feel like printing money at +1.5.

--

4:15pm

Getting awesome - day 2 is always a wreck, because we start with liquor and you're re-drinking anyway. When you're pre-tarded, it doesn't take long to get into awful mode, and it's happening fast . . . for example, Tony and Troy just got locked up into a pseudo-humping position, where Troy threw some sort of f-ed-up wrist lock on Tony, then at the stalemate proclaimed "This is a weiiiiird situation." It was. It completely was.

During the early session, we had 2 games going, so TV3 featured an accidental change to infomercials . . . luckily it was "Brazilian Butt Lift." Just an epic infomercial, complete with lunges and hip thrusts and, uh, rubber bands. They offered the "pencil test" whereby you put a pencil under your buttock and if it doesn't fall, SURPRISE! You're fat!

Well, Troy's response: "If I did that, you wouldn't even see the fucking pencil."

Additional lines:

-"That guy would eat him from the butthole up" (in re: Badgers versus Terriers)
-Mettille does the Cap'n Morgan voice . . . "Calling AALLlellllelalll captains!" Brent then requests, "Say 'add green beans to the shopping list'" (he did)
-Brent: "We'll give you the tube steak - you've gotta work for the gravy." (also, he has a college education - this is not a NASCAR mentality or anything).

Wonderful. On the bright side, +3u on the afternoon session (split Wisconsin -10 and the under, then won Mizzou +2, Pitt -10 and Pitt moneyline -475 for 1u total win), putting me +5u for the tourney. Also took USU +3 against A&M, which looks TERRIBLE right now, so let's not get too attached to that. Punch me in the cock.

6:10pm

Decision time: so I kind of went nuts with the evening games (even though I only really like two of them) . . . so there's that. But first:

During a classic mid-afternoon drunktalk about what you would do with a hot tub time machine, Mettille gave the classic/normal "change some decisions"-type answer. Brent, however? He would "bring a pitcher of bahama mamas" to the party today . . . "one of those 2-gallon ones, that you have to use two hands on."

He followed up, 2 hours later, by saying "we need 1.5 liters of Bahama Mama."

Later: "No, this is my dick" followed by "My balls are too big, my penis cannot conquer them. They cannot divide. United they stand."

This was over a disagreement in beerpong rules: "Bitch I'm going to kill you. When you sleep." Later, wrestling with the kid and the dog, Brent said "UUGHHH, something just hit my balls . . . I hope it was the dog."

Riiight. So I love GT and moderately like both NMSU and FSU, so I did the obvious thing: 1u on each, plus a "wheeled" parlay with .5u on every two games plus all three games (for 2u total). I suppose I don't need to "win" or anything. Holy balls I'm a moron.

---

2am

Amazing night, spreadsheet-wise . . . ran the full boat for +5.5u in the night session (and my boy Jimmer ran along for much, much more money in Vegas dollars, which is always fantastic). Had everyone but OSU, plus a parlay, which is great.

In other news:

"I really thought only a loss would result in violent nudity. But I was wrong."

Riley stomps on shit: "If your kid were in Vietnam, he'd be DEAD."
BH: "If Riley were in Vietnam, he'd be Charlie."

Also, Verne Lundquist said earlier: "THAT'S A MAN'S JAM!" . . . uhhhh . . .

Nice life.

New Guy's in the Corner Puking His Guts Out

2010-03-18T12:44:00.006-04:00

11:45am

On like Donkey Kong, or really any number of applicable cliches about the beginning of something. Jared and I actually made it by tip, which lost Tony money (clearly the best part of any given day) . . . normally this would end with "EAT A DICK SON" but it might be a touch too early.

Fantastic. This morning, I saw a kindly-appearing older gentleman walking around the sculpture garden, in that dedicated way where you can tell its his exercise for the day. He had on finely-pressed pants and one of those old-guy golf hats . . . and a navy blue "SPAM" sweatshirt. That's the metaphor for today: looks nice, with four TVs working with every game and 20 laptops running gambling spreadsheets, but at the end of the day, it's drunken asshole fried Spam. So good.

I drew my first drink out of the mystery bag, and wound up with Mike's Hard Cranberry. This year's booby prize: Hard Cranberry Light. Apparently it tastes like shame and iced scrotum. More to follow.

My bets:

-Ark Pine Bluff +4 (and the under at 112.5): +1.5u
-BYU -5 1u
-Nova -17.5 1u
-ODU +4 .5u

Yeah. All looking GREAT. Also Loyd Jr. for BYU is a stud, but fucking A . . . how can you be a black dude and go to BYU? They didn't allow black guys to go to heaven until like 1981, and no black priests until the 90s. The 1990s. This really happened. But yeah, brother - keep on grinding out. I need the 3s.

UNI and Marquette both play at the same time tonight (6:10 and 6:20), so this will be a total shitshow. Watching Brent and JC fight over which one is on the projection screen (and both should be GREAT games) is super exciting, like when you're expected sexual intercourse at some point in the near future but you're not quite sure when, how or why. In other words, it's High School-level excitement in here - Brent's running around the house with a yoke on his neck, while JC is speed-bombing Mickey's and punching the pork shoulder that's being smoked. Also, LOTS of "smoked meat" jokes, which are SO FUNNY. Meanwhile, Troy is dancing around to C&C Music Factory on a Papa John's commercial and asking if "Y'all ready for this" DUN DUH DUH.

Aaaaaand a "fucked your mother" joke - beautiful. See you guys never.

2:05pm

HOLY GOD DAMN MY LIFE what a wonderful cover by BYU. I LOVE MORMON PEOPLE!

That puts me +.5u and +2 for the tourney.

Also, the cheer when Jimmer Fredette started knocking down those last two free throws was delicious (obv Tony lost on UF there). Nearly as awesome as Jimmer's awkward-as-balls wave to the camera on top of him after a particularly gruesome layup miss/foul.

So far, it's been excellent - the first three games featured a one-point loss (and fucking GOOOOOOOOODY putting back a 2-pointer with no time, down by three - perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever seen in a non-Iowa basketball game) and two overtime games. Just amazing - best two days of the year.

As per usual rules, pooping is relegated to the farthest bathroom . . . those pipes are still exposed in the basement, so Brent has greeted every flush through those pipes with "There goes his turd!" The assumption is that Troy's BM would sound like someone dying on South Park - just gurgling and bubbling and a melting noise, possibly with audible English words.

We had to vote on which game to project . . . Brent was roundly outvoted, then got pissed, claiming his vote only counts 3/5ths (and with some claims he's still waiting on his 40 acres and a mule). Mild racism is always funniest when it is rooted in the 1850s. I told him he has to take a test and pay a tax before he can go to the fridge, we'll see how that goes.

Line of the day so far, about Steve's shih tzu/poodle mix (obviously a shitoodle):

JC: "Wait . . . aren't shih tzus like, this big ? How does a shih tzu fuck a poodle?"
*loooooooong pause*
JJ: "Uh, well . . . I think the poodle fucks the shih tzu."

(place everyone going "Ahhhhhhh" here)

6:05pm

It's getting a little silly . . . apparently, Justin has an Olympic weight set, complete with a 45 lb bar. This makes almost zero sense, so obviously we jumped on it and had everybody max. After about 5 hours of drinking. Troy and Mettille actually put up something around 235 . . . I did not.

Also, Brent and JC are now jockeying for clothing for those in attendance . . . handing out either UNI or Marquette paraphernalia and trying to get people in it. I'm in a Marquette Spring Party 2001 shirt, for instance. Brent is now wearing an adult L that is so big on him, he took off his pants and borrowed a woman's belt so it looks like a dress. This somehow makes sense. Tony has on bicep wraps like the Ultimate Warrior made out of purple t-shirt sleeves. Troy cut off the stomach, so he's busting out of the thing - he looks like a gay offensive lineman in 1982. I am so confused.

I won on St. Mary's and KSU (2u), and lost on Vandy (SO BAD JFKDL:AHOFDL) . . . now +4.5u, and pushing this:

-Kentucky -18.5
-UNI Pk
-Marquette -1

Also I parlayed all four unders . . . I have no idea why. Drinking? I guess.

Additionally, some choice lines that I don't have time to fully write up:

Brent: "I pushed in your mother's backdoor"
JC: "What if one of us goes south?"
Steve: "That's why the large ones are hard to take"
JC: "I have a no-porno clause"
JC: "I don't want the black cards."
Mettille: "Look at the vein on that one."

Also the beerpong bracket has begun, the porno cards are out, and the sun is out. I suppose . . . I suppose.

Day 1: Early Lines

2010-03-16T15:30:00.003-04:00

So the early lines are up (on Bodog and, well, everywhere else) for Thursday's first-round NCAA action. The first round is, supposedly, the greatest gambling day of the year, because public money pushes the lines in all sorts of awkward directions, and reputation means more than results to a large swath of the population. Taking a look at the lines, there are a few that stand out:

[8]UNLV (-1) v. [9]Northern Iowa
It looks like the wrong team is favored here, with both Massey and KenPom giving UNI anywhere from a 1 to 1.5-pt edge. Of course, 2 points isn't a brutal edge, but when it flips the line, we pay more attention. Of course, depending on the money line, that might be the stronger play.

[6]Tennessee (-3) v. [11]SDSU
Both Massey and KenPom list this as closer to a 1.5-pt game . . . that other UT is a little overrated this year, and their "run-and-gun" style has been crippled by the 2nd Amendment (they're about average in pace) ... instead, they've done it with defensive efficiency, crushing 3P% for other teams. Unfortunately, SDSU is not a 3-oriented team (200th in 3PA/FGA), and SDSU crushes the offensive glass with a strong inside game that UT isn't tall enough to counteract. Could be a good matchup.

[4]Vanderbilt (-3) v. [13]Murray State
Massey has this at 3, while KenPom has it at 5.5+, giving some protection here. Vandy is likely overseeded a little, but Ogilvy in the middle may have a field day against Murray State.

[7]BYU (-5) v. [10] Florida
There are some that feel Florida is the worst at-large admitted to the field this year, and both Massey and KenPom think the true line is closer to 7. Good enough for me, even if BYU is, well, BYU.

[7]Richmond (-2) v. [10]Saint Mary's
Again, the wrong team is favored - Massey and KenPom have StM's as between a 1.5 and 3-point favorite. The Spiders have talent, there's no doubt, and this one might not pass the smell test based on matchups - Richmond is a bad O-reb team, a true "one-shot" offense that plays with pace and doesn't turn the ball over, while StM's is pretty bad at forcing turnovers. However, StM's can shoot the lights out, and if flying across the country doesn't slow it down, watch out.

And some quick hits:
-The numbers don't love Kentucky - that (-20) might be a little high, may be value in ETSU.
-Montana isn't particularly good, but nothing indicates that NMU should be a (-9) favorite in that game. May be a good place to pound the dog.
-It's not cut-and-dried, but it looks like KSU might clear the (-16) over UNT with some ease.
-Nobody has any clue what to do with the ND/ODU game. In fact, half the capping sites have ODU as a true favorite and the other half think (-3) is perfectly right. Unreal game really.

Loose Women, Hard Lemonade and Awkward Bank Shots

2010-03-15T16:51:00.002-04:00

It's so close, you can smell it - that smell that will linger on you (and JC's basement) for a few days afterward, one that you don't even notice anymore because now, well, that's just how the world smells. And it smells good. Kind of.

We're three short days away from the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament, where 64 teams will bludgeon each other over and over until one winner appears, ready to cut down the nets about 7 weeks after the tourney starts. Since it is an orgiastic day of basketball, gambling, and drinking, we've spent years (YEARS JERRY) perfecting how to best mix these three things together while still retaining jobs, families, and without driving anything anywhere at all. We've got it down to a science. A fat, hairy, awesome science. Here's from 07, and from 08, and from 09, although . . . I mean . . . I lived it, sister. I just don't remember any of it.

The gamboooling is clearly the most important part, however - and so I'll run down a little about my system for determining "fair" lines, which I'll use to coast to an even-money finish, losing again to Brent, who will brush his teeth before bed every night even though he passed out for hours in the afternoon.

The 'key' to the whole deal is what is known as the "log5" method of determining comparative win probability. That sounds complex, but it's not - basically, if one team is a .600 team and the other is a .550 team, we want to know how often the .600 team would win if they played a thousand times (hint: It's not .575). The formula is:

(A-A*B) / (A+B+2*A*B)

So in our example, the .600 team would be expected to win 55.1% of the time. We can then convert this to a money line/point spread - the 'real' line would be between 1.5 and 2.5 points (depending on your conversion method). Easy - and you can even do it in Excel after drinking all morning. Trust me, this is vital to any projection system.

The play-in game gives us a chance to test it out. Winthrop is a 4-point favorite over Arkansas-Pine Bluff, and when we look at the weighted "true" values for each team, it looks like our "true" spread should be anywhere from 2.8 to 3.5. Massey (www.mratings.com) puts his guess at 3.7 in the same direction, so we know we're in the ballpark as the big boys here.

Looking at some other factors (courtesy of www.kenpom.com - one of the greatest sites in the f-ing universe), Pine Bluff plays a moderately-paced game based around a solid defense and pretty frigging awful offense, while Winthrop . . . does exactly the same thing. In fact, their numbers are nearly identical - you would sleep with one and not realize it wasn't the other, at least until it rolled over and gave off the MangleFace Vibe. I don't know where I'm going with this, but the teams are remarkably similar. As a result, we have no need to shift our profile at all, so we can say we lean juuuuust a little toward taking the points and riding "The Harvard of Pine Bluff" as hard as possible (NOTE: in this analogy, Shooter's Bronco-Bustin' NASCAR Bar is the Yale of Pine Bluff, and the local Valero is Brown). Also note: don't bet this game, it's really too close to take any edge.

The Manning Fallacy

2010-02-07T14:23:00.003-05:00

There's a LOT of public sentiment (and money) moving toward the Colts, even with the line all the way to Indy giving 6. This, of course, leads to only one question:

Why?

You have to completely pretend the regular season never happened (or that the NFC is very much the Senior Circuit equivalent) to honestly believe this is a touchdown game. Most of the talk has centered around Peyton Manning "not allowing" this opportunity to pass - as if Brees & Co. have no idea of the ramifications of this game in cementing their legacies. However, if you'll indulge me, I'd like to posit something slightly controversial: while Manning is a legit 1st-ballot Hall of Famer with a legit claim to the title of "Best Ever", today, Drew Brees is a better quarterback.

Brees is 3 years younger (30 to Manning's 33), threw for more TDs and fewer INTs in fewer attempts (34:11 in 514 vs. 33:16 in 571), and completed a higher percentage of his passes (70.6 to 68.8). Manning led in DYAR (see www.footballoutsiders.com), a measure of success over raw yardage, but Brees was a close second, and his 12% fewer attempts can account for the entirety of the difference. If Manning is the gold standard, you're still measuring Brees in ounces Troy. It just might be 24k to 22k at this point.

Beyond that, the Saints can actually run the ball - first in the world in DVOA (again, FO.com), a measure of rushing success versus down-and-distance and game state, with three legit backs with vastly different profiles. The Colts will go one-dimensional and put it on the back of their Superman, but the Saints were actually in the top 10 against the pass this year, and Jabari Greer is a sound lock-down corner who can disrupt Wayne and/or Clark in coverage. While Manning picked apart the Jets using Collier and Garcon last week, Greg Williams gets 2 weeks to scheme against the crossing routes and limit YAC. It's a wash, at worst.

Besides that, the Saints are deeper at every position - and their depth also includes a number of possible big-play threats. While Indy is dicking around (and both teams' numbers are legit terrible on special teams), only NO really has the ability to break a punt or INT for 6.

For those reasons, I can't imagine laying the points - take the Saints, take the 6, profit.

The 2009 Mixtape

2009-12-22T17:15:00.004-05:00

So, I don't send out a Christmas card or anything - let's be honest, you don't want to hear about my incredible year when you're out of work, or my boxed dinners if you're married with kids, or my bar experiences if you're actually a fun person. Instead, like every year, I've put together a mixtape of the best music I heard in 2009 - rules are simple: 1.) fit on a CD 2.) don't suck. It doesn't.

DOWNLOAD THIS SHIT HERE!

Passion Pit, "Sleepyhead"
As per every other year, I'll start with the track I listened to the most in 2009 - "Sleepyhead" is an absolute masterpiece, hitting all the senses at once. From the oddly-looped samples in the background, to the chopped-and-screwed trills behind the bridge solo, to the low end just beating in . . . just an awesome pop song, one that isn't quite "pop" but definitely isn't "electronic," just "awesome."

Phoenix, "Lisztomania"
From the first second of jangly guitars, you know something amazing is on tap . . . but the left-field surprise is that the song is about exactly that expectation, that build-up. It's a great song about how impossible it can seem to write a great song - using Franz Liszt, who created an absolute hysteria in the late 1800s as a concert pianist in Europe, as the anchor. When Thomas Mars notes songs go "from a mess to the masses" then tells himself "this is your time/ this is your time/ this is you-r time.." he's not just talking about TMZ. Then, the song just ends - bliss, then silence. Metaphor is best subtle.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Heads Will Roll"
Almost like the spiritual (and literal reverse) of the Killers' "Mr. Brightside" - the night shimmers while the song does, but Karen O is the predator. Jagged guitars mix with smooth synth, plus organic-yet-cold drums and low end - try not to shake your ass to this in the car. The YYYs can still be edgy, even when being as cosmopolitan as possible.

Japandroids, "Wet Hair"
Just three lines, repeated about 50 times each - although each change in inflection and timing changes everything. Just two guys, overdubbed guitar and drums - although the wall of sound is impressive and inviting. That's all it takes. "We run the gauntlet/ we must get to France/ so we can French kiss some French girls" is summer in so many syllables.

Surfer Blood, "Swim"
Fun fact: these guys used to call themselves Jabroni Sandwich, which would be the stupidest shit I've ever heard if I hadn't spent all year listening to a band called Japandroids. Luckily the songs are better - just a massive anthem, in and out in 3 minutes, the way it's supposed to be.

Matt and Kim, "Daylight"
In a lot of ways, the 'idea' of Matt and Kim is much more successful than the band itself - their first record was "neat" in all of the ways that can be bad (or, more properly, annoying), but until "Daylight" it didn't all come together. A half-dozen commercials later, and you'll definitely recognize the song (if you don't already hate it), but it's still an absurd anthem I'll take with me.

The Big Pink, "Dominos"
The drum intro portends great things, like the "Mature -N" tag on a Cinemax late-night direct-to-DVD movie. You're expecting the song to just blow up - but the Big Pink has all the time in the world. Fuck that - you can sit through a little bit of an interlude before we break into the FUCK YOU chorus . . . five words, stretched to about 12 syllables, and the best MGMT impression you'll ever want to hear. British people: still awesome.

Animal Collective, "My Girls"
A slow-building, consistently-beautiful swinging ode from Animal Collective's Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox, also featured later) to 'his girls': his wife and young daughter. The music and lyrics swirl and wrap in on themselves, almost like a Celtic knot, ending in a plaintive refrain: "I don't mean/ to seem like I care about material things/ like social status/ I just want/ four walls and adobe slats/ for my girls" . . . then the OOOOoooooooohhh! takes it away and we start it all over again. It's a post-modern serenity prayer, and it's the best song I heard all year - not particularly close.

Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks"
When the keyboard and oh-ohs begin, pretty much the last thing you expect out of Grizzly Bear is for the low end to drop and a light drumroll to carry the tune through the verse - but that's exactly what happens, and Grizzly Bear does it all over again.

Florence and the Machine, "Kiss with a Fist"
If Neko Case is my indie-rock love affair (and make no mistake, she is - I would sit in her bushes for hours if I weren't scared shitless of her), Florence Welch is the rough-and-tumble UK response. Note that I'm assuming this song is metaphorical, although I guess the domestic violence overtones could go a variety of rad directions on their own. ELIN NORDEGREN WOODS JOKE HERE AMIRIGHT?

The XX, "Crystalized"
Languid, sexual, restrained but only barely, with elements of soul, electronic music, and even R&B. Of all the tracks on this CD, this is clearly the one with the best shot at "crossover" appeal - not Cadillac commercials, but sustainable chart-topping viability, soccer moms to douchebags like me.

Mumford & Sons, "Roll Away Your Stone"
Like a smart Dave Matthews Band who learned to play bluegrass instead of elevator music, a shit-stomping exploration of the self - with a COMPLETELY AMAZING banjo. It's not just the banjo, though - the entire sog oozes credibility, and "Darkness is a harsh term/ don't you think?" asks two questions at once: is it the "name of the term, or the time spent serving the term?

Girls, "Lust for Life"
Song titles matter. Listening to this track with the title in mind proves the rule.

Akron/Family, "River"
What's this? An extended nautical metaphor using a variety of musical styles, ranging from whistling to woodwind sections? Sure, it's not a brand-new formula for indie rock - it's basically what would happen if the Decemberists spent less time in drama class or at Ren Faires and instead smoked weed and spoke like regular fucking human beings. That's a good thing.

Atlas Sound, "Walkabout (ft. Noah Lennox)"
If you know much about Bradford Cox and Noah Lennox, the fact that it's a song about growing up, growing old and holding onto/releasing dreams and beliefs is completely unsurprising. The heavy Beach Boys influence is only slightly surprising. That it's an impeccable pop song makes perfect sense.

Big Boi, "Shine Blockas (ft. Gucci Mane)"
Don't tell Big Boi that rap has passed the Outkast formula by - he'll just prove it hasn't with this retro/funk kick to the dick, with the enigmatic Gucci Mane in tow. "Word to LeBrown James/ he some chicken chow mein/ anyway/ you done say some silly things" - he's talking to you, assholes. Even a Tyler Perry reference, for those huge TBS fans in the fucking HOUSE HOLLER.

Raekwon, "House of Flying Daggers (ft. Ghostface, Inspectah Deck, GZA & Method Man)"
Stunningly, Deck starts off: "We pop off like a mobster boss/ angel hair with the lobster sauce" . . . and we're off, with that same tremor and magic you've wanted since 36 Chambers (probably, Cuban Linx the Original). Not only does Deck sound relevant, Method Man is absurdly good, but most important: the Iron/Chef balance is back, and Ghostface goes fucking crazy: "from Benetton rugby skullies/ Oshkosh conductor jumpers/ the train hats fit me lovely/ Rae's job is to make sure the coke is fluffy/ While I politic his birthday bash with Puffy/ bagged Nia soon as I linked up, the kid ain't inked up/ I'm an old mummy, my gold weigh as much as King Tut/ slippers, robes is minked up, under the do-rag bro/ my three dimensional fade is clean cut" . . .

The Hood Internet, "Solid Gold from New York"
AZ/Ghostface mashed up with the Golden Filter - and it sounds like the way the song should have to start. The stark, street-oriented versus play brilliantly off the glittering synths, almost like an audio tour of the City itself.

Kid Cudi, "Make Her Say (ft. Kanye West, Common, & A-Trak)"
The best Lady Gaga song released, ever. Beautifully vulgar perfection.

Roll Deep, "Shake a Leg"
And now, calypso! I have a grime fixation, so this is no surprise - sure it wasn't released this year (in the US), but I hadn't heard it, so eat a dick son. "Know what would be dandy?/ a little glass of brandy" is my new favorite put-down.

Major Lazer, "Pon de Floor (ft. Vybz Kartel)"
The video says more than I ever could.

Biggy Smalls vs. Miley Cyrus, "Party and Bullshit in the USA"
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Top 15 Albums of 2009

2009-12-16T14:50:00.004-05:00

OK - since I NEVER F-ING POSTED all year (OK I did, but not at the . . . prodigious . . . pace of yesteryear), I've been pretty bad with music updates. For that reason I'll expand to 15 this year - but I won't like it, and I will probably drink enough to fight you as a result. If you want, drop me a line and I'll upload some of these so you can "sample" THEN CLEARLY GO BUY IT IMMEDIATELY AND IN CONJUNCTION WITH AMERICAN COPYRIGHT LAWS. Get me a smoothie while you're out, with the PlusProtein add-in? Thanks, dollface.

15: The Hood Internet - Mixtape Vol. 4

While not quite on par with the ridiculous "Vol. 1", the fourth installment from the Chicago DJ duo matches up the weird/experimental (Weezer over faux italo?) with legit bangers (AZ/Ghostface over the Golden Filter) and shit that just works (SPOILER: my favorite song of the year over "Back Dat Azz Up"). And it's free. Sick.

14: Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Easily the best AC album, and contains two of the best songs of the year ("Brothersport" and particularly the superb "My Girls" - more on that one later).

13: Major Lazer - Guns Don't Kill People, Lazers Do

Sure, it's inconsistent, jokey and smacks of a one-off . . . and there's a 4-song stretch in the middle that completely sucks (CHOKE ON SOMETHING LARGE, AMANDA BLANK) . . . but the bookends of the album are more fun than watching Cowboys fans lose. A car banger if there ever was one.

12: Roll Deep - Street Anthems

Cheating a little - this is a "retrospective" singles collection. Still, it's everything right with the UK Grime movement, in a tidy package.

11: The XX - xx

It's like Zero7 for smart people - breezy, seemingly-effortless, but with real depth and power. The drum machine actually allows for the band to open up, instead of being a constraint. Just a stunning, out-of-nowhere debut.

10: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Yeah yeah - it's a collection of obvious influences, almost like an indie-rock hybridization experiment (you can see the Mendel squares: "Dominant trait, Stone Roses - recessive, Pixies). But it's a GOOD one - full of harmony and that odd, cloudy-but-sunny disposition that make it work in the car or on the boat.

9: Dizzee Rascal - Tongue n Cheek

So the dude goes out and makes an electroclash album - and why not? Dizzee doesn't sound as fierce, as hungry, as he did in his first albums - but growth is a good thing, and sounding comfortable over an Armand van Buran beat works much better than chatting shit about geezers and gunplay. My British rap fixation continues unabated (insert own abating joke here).

8: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

Probably the best-named record of the year, because it really is a blitz - the YYYs keep the angular guitars, but lose the Joy Division for some New Order. Holy shit, it's an actual dance album - and Karen O's squawks and howls and lyrics fit the dance floor like a fucked-up bloody glove. This is the album the Killers wish they'd made instead of Sam's Town. "Get your leather on", indeed.

7: Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come

John Darnielle might be the best songwriter of this generation - he spins a story better than anyone, and can create consistent yet interesting album better than anyone this side of David Berman. A Biblical album without references to God, a spiritual journey that stops to ask questions, and a teacher who doesn't pretend to have all the answers - just a great, great album.

6: Japandroids - Post-Nothing

Beach songs about French kissing French girls, changing (or losing) dreams while growing up, or just simply reminiscing - all over the kind of fuzzed-out, devil-may-care attitude that takes years to master but minutes to hit hard. It's hard to sound this lackadaisical - and even harder to actually make the music matter as a result. Gorgeous.

5: The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You

Honestly, this was not an album I thought I'd enjoy (along with similar-yet-different group Mumford & Sons), but I and Love and You blew me away at first listen. The North Carolina bluegrass roots collide with an alt-folk mentality that reminds you of Wilco but quickly runs right past its influences - heartfelt and smooth, yet jagged with loss and despair.

4: Girls - Album

Everyone has the same thought their first listen through Album: "the dude who made this is totally and completely fucked up." Of course, the first song proclaims the singer is "fucked in the head" - it's not exactly subliminal, but it's still important, and his loss is our gain. Ranging from surf to 50s R&B to a hint of rockabilly and calypso at times, this is a beach record that wears its influences proudly but uses them to reinforce lyrical themes, rather than the other way around. An incredibly impressive effort from Girls.

3: Passion Pit - Manners

The new era of pop music will accept anything as an instrument - whether it's vocals or computer manipulation or banging on a trash can. Passion Pit's expansion to a full band pushed the falsetto and computer-assisted vocals further to the back but heightened their effect, creating soaring anthems that never cross into "Wind Beneath My Wings" schmaltz for longer than a second or two. Taking the 'build/release' formula of electronic music into the mainstream - the future is grand.

2: Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Part II

A swaggering FUCK YOU to anybody who thought OB4CL2 was vaporware of the music world, or would be a pussy-footed effort like The Blueprint 3 - instead, Raekwon and especially Ghostface blow the doors down then pillage all your snacks and shit. I'm not sure it was the second-best album on artistic merit, but it was certainly the album I listed to the second-most this year.

1: Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Unreal. Surreal. Perfect. Thomas Mars and Phoenix have come a long way in a short time, not by pushing boundaries, but by settling comfortably within their current vein and simply making pop music from a 60 degree angle. This album will always be the sound of 2009 for me, even if I want to murder a child every time I see the car commercial butchering "1901".

Lessons Learned?

2009-09-07T20:03:00.002-04:00

Well, the big ol' 2-1 split this week (2-1 ATS for the season), but we learned something from every game, didn't we kids?

-Utah/USU: A lot of points is a lot of points, especially in a grudge match game. Note to self: if you don't have a strong analytical edge, stay away from big numbers. This is kind of like falling down the bar-whore ladder at closing time - in the absence of something compelling, just get the fuck out.

-USC/NCSU: This one was pegged pretty well by the major tout guys, actually, and everything that needed to happen (low-scoring game; correlative factors) did. I'm not sure we had much edge here, but following well-reasoned advice in a game without much in the way of contradicting factors is always a smart policy.

-Oregon/Boise State: I think I nailed this game basically exactly, at least as far as what I needed to do to get to the highest-percentage place for a pool. Oregon's rushing attack indeed could not take advantage of Boise's several mistakes, and a sloppy game indeed went to the superlative home field advantage. Sometimes, Occam's Razor is the way to play, especially as evidence mounts to support it (and sample sizes get larger). This could also be construed as "when it's obvious, don't do anything stupid" and/or "don't buy into major-conference preseason hype when contradicting factors emerge, you believe-everything-you-read ninny." Point taken.

Next up: weighing factor-based computer rankings while teams get connected through early play, plus the Week 1 NFL lines. Holy shit, what a week.

It's that time again . . .

2009-09-03T17:17:00.004-04:00

Football season begins, which means drinking myself into oblivion with 80,000 of my closest friends every weekend. The season is a total grind - you're worn out by the time November gets around, or at least you are if you're like me (NOTE: don't be like me). This year, I'm in a bunch of confidence-type pools, so I figured I'd outline my process here, for posterity if nothing else (and so I can figure out what the fuck went wrong when I get plowed under). I generally cash in these, although I win pretty infrequently - that makes me think three things:

1 - FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

2 - It seems pretty likely I get a good handle on the "easy" games every week, but miss (at least in the sense that I don't break away from the pack) on the go-either-way types.

3 - I'm a fucking retard who talks himself into long shots for ridiculous reasons at least once a week.

I'll start with the Thursday college games, just to get warmed up (there's no action this week in any of my pools, because the NFL hasn't started and/or the dudes running it are lazy, lazy men).

Utah St @ Utah (-21)

According to Sagarin, Utah should be a 30+ point favorite on a neutral site. USU is just awful, and Utah doesn't have any sort of reputation for starting slowly. Unless Utah slams on the breaks (or inclement weather, but it's 90 and 10% chance of rain), I'm OK with going there, even acknowledging that USU was better than their record last year, and Utah will be markedly worse. Utah

South Carolina @ NC State (-5)

Bizarre game here, and tough to get a handle on because of USC's carousel of QBs last season and NC State being, well, average. I think USC is exploitable on offense (TAKE THAT, SPURRIOR HAIR CUT!) but I can't see NCSU really dominating on the offensive side of the ball either. Both Dr. Bob and Sagarin aren't big on the -5, so I'll sit on USC and hope Stephen Garcia can complete better than 53% of his frigging passes.

Note that in a "pick-the-winner (no line)" pool, I'd likely ride NCSU here - the five points are that important. I'm in both types, so I'll probably list the results independently.

Oregon @ Boise St. (-3.5)

This game is unreal, really - it looks like the line is basically perfect. Vegas, you win again (note that it opened at 5.5 - Vegas, you're full of fucking tards, but at least the market can bail you out). Oregon has only a handful of starters returning, while Boise lost its front 7 and skill-position guys. BSU's RBs are very solid, though - possibly better than the departing Ian Johnson on a per-carry/success basis. None have proposed after a Statue of Liberty, though, so I don't know any of their names off-hand - they're numbers in a douchey spreadsheet, and will stay that way until and if they rape/rob/fail their way out of school (clearly I'm an Iowa fan).

Here's the thing - BSU is probably a .5-point favorite on neutral turf. Add 3 and get the line, right? Wrong, fuck face - Boise's something like a 5.5-point favorite at home, according to Massey (not Mark - although that would be AWESOME) and just never loses there. Oregon's not a fantastic road team, although they're very good early. I wouldn't bet this game if you gave me the money (NOTE: that's a lie), but if a pool forced me to, I'd take Boise and pray the entirely-new Oregon line can't take advantage of the mostly-new Boise front 7, because Oregon's advantage should come on the ground, at least in theory. I hate this fucking game.

Oh. My. Science.

2009-05-20T14:30:00.002-04:00

So there's been a lot going on, and a lot of catching up to do . . .

Manny. Fuck.

Just in case you're the last apologist on the planet, now it's pretty safe to assume that anybody on Earth who had a.) money and b.) any common sense is, has or tried to beat the MLB drug testing policy. That's just how it was - it happened. To be honest, I would have done it too - both for the drive to become the best, and because HOLY SHIT TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS. That doesn't mean it's right, and there is absolutely no way to endorse its effects on children (which is really the true downside to athletes using), but there it is.

There are SO MANY great things about the Manny story, though. First, his excuse is, essentially, a "piss-the-bed" excuse - it requires about the same level of self-delusion as the time you woke up after a night of drinking and thought, "hey, I really sweated a lot last night - it is kind of hot out here, after all, and I'm nearly certain the sweat isn't localized in the crotch region either *whistles*" . . . and I assume everyone's been there. Oh, you haven't? Awkward. Manny's supposed infertility is awesome - dude's not even 40, and already has a kid. Good work, Boras - apparently your deal with Satan does not include believable lies.

Luckily, it appears that NO ONE CARES! Seriously - it was a two-day story and now . . . gone. Does this mean we're finally getting over the media-fueled hysteria and can start to focus on real issues (like, oh, teaching kids the dangers of steroids, or teaching players how to do them more safely so they don't die at age 44)? Probably not - it's likely apathy. What a world.

The most interesting part though? If reports that the MLB investigation was triggered by elevated synthetic testosterone levels are accurate, then holy shit . . . that means whatever steroid Manny is using is NOT CURRENTLY DETECTABLE BY MLB. All he had to do was keep that 4:1 ratio, and no one would have ever found out. We always suspected that, much like the Acme Anvil Company versus the Road Runner, rogue chemists were multiple steps ahead of testing. This is literal proof - this is the puff of smoke the Road Runner left behind, or the sour taste in your mouth left after a continuation of that hack analogy. Apparently, still - no one cares.

A-Rod. Fuck You.

Selena Roberts still, well, sucks - seriously, her righteous indignation over the "culture of masculine impropriety-slash-rich people are awesome-tude" during the Duke Lacrosse Shitshow makes Louis Farrakhan look like MLK (note: that comparison brought to you by the Rooney Rule). However, the A-Rod book (awesomely titled "A-Rod" - no shit!) is simply brilliant. If we ignore, well, any semblance of journalistic integrity, and simply take all this shit at face value, we learn:

-A-Rod had a clubhouse attendant put toothpaste on his toothbrush after every game. This is not only epic douchebaggery (not even the richest, most entitled fuck on Wall Street really thinks he's above toothpasting), it's also just amazing. Like, the first thing you're thinking after a game, at 11pm or whatever, is "boy, I really want to brush my teeth, but I'd like that to be facilitated for me so it is just a little bit less demanding of me and my time"? Shouldn't a wealthy pro athlete think "boy, I should send that clubbie out for hobags" instead?

-His pickup line was something along the lines of "who's hotter, me or Jeter?" Durrr, he fucked Mariah Carey and Jessica Biel while you traipsed around with manly Canadian strippers, you dense fuck. Boy, I wonder - who could it possibly be?

-Seriously, it just keeps going from there . . . Bitch Tits? Awesome.

Coming attractions . . .

2009-05-10T22:58:00.000-04:00

My life has been hysterical lately, so I have great posts on the way (look for the Manny analysis tomorrow) . . . however, to start: CBS's "The Unit" is a startlingly good TV series. It's actually better than 24 at this point, with the same need to set reality aside but with a much more appropriate use of tension, character development and audience interaction. Considering where it started (and how much I hate network TV), it felt like a good "props" section. I mean, whatever.

RIP Mark Fidrych

2009-04-14T09:10:00.002-04:00

The Red Sox AA affiliate played in my hometown (Bristol, CT) for a few years in the early 80s before moving to New Britain, and a bunch of prominent future Red Sox (Wade Boggs, Oil Can Boyd, Marty Barrett, Bob Stanley, etc.) played for the team for at least a short time. When I was a kid, they used to put on a charity softball game in town where former major leaguers would play personalities from ESPN (since it was in town) and other media outlets. The field where the game was held, and where I would later play high school ball, was this neat old field built near the beginning of the century. As a result, you were fairly close to the field and got to talk to all the players.

One year, when I was about 10 or 11, a family friend was asked to be the honorary third base coach. Knowing that I was a big baseball fan, he worked it out so that we could walk on the field before the game, watch the guys getting ready, and meet a bunch of the players. It was great; some of the players (Luis Tiant, Ozzie Virgil and Bob Stanley) were incredibly nice, and some others (Jim Rice and Bill Buckner) were rude or dismissive.

One person who stuck out especially though was Mark Fidrych. He stopped warming up and talked to my mom and I for about 10 minutes. He was impressed that I knew so much about his career (I was a bit of a baseball nerd even at that age), and he talked about being in the majors, making the All-Star team, and how lucky he was to be a major leaguer for even a short time. For a kid like me, getting to talk with a former big leaguer was a dream, and I was walking on air the rest of the day.

In talking to sportswriters and other people inside baseball in the years following that encounter, I found out that it really wasn't out of the ordinary. Fidrych was an incredibly kind person, and someone who realized how lucky he was to play in the majors.

So it was that I was sad to hear that Mark passed away yesterday after an apparent accident at his farm. It's a tragic loss, as he leaves behind a wife and a daughter. It's also tragic because the world lost a kind person far too soon.

Anatomy of a Drinking Draft

2009-04-07T12:14:00.003-04:00

So on Saturday, we had our 10-man live draft with my good buddies from home. It's a 5-player keeper league, where each keeper replaces a pick in rounds 1 through 5 - it's normal 5x5 but with OBP instead of BA (because we're progressive like that). Last season, I went into freefall late in the year as my pitching staff became decimated and injuries to key players (hi Ian Kinsler!) took their toll on my non-core stats.

An interesting thing happened - Lance Berkman didn't play a single game in the OF last season, forcing me into a situation where I had Berkman, Fielder and Howard all competing for 2 spots (1B and UTIL). Normally I would be apoplectic about being locked into my UTIL slot so early, but I genuinely feel all three are top-20 talents. In an effort to get younger, I made a trade, sending Howard (less valuable than usual in this league because it ends earlier and usually Howard's end-of-season tear coincides with his team sitting at home watching the playoffs) for BJ Upton (giving me much-needed youth and athleticism, insanely important in a keeper league). This made my five keepers David Wright, Lance Berkman, Ian Kinsler, Prince Fielder and BJ Upton - a very good collection of talent (all rated inside the top 35, with four potential top-20 guys) but not even close to the best in the league at this point, so I'd have to make up some ground in the draft:

Rim Job Larry
Berkman Lance 1B K
Fielder Prince 1B K
Wright David 3B K
Kinsler Ian 2B K
Upton B.J. OF K
McCann Brian C 6
Young Chris OF 7
Dunn Adam OF 8
Vazquez Javier P 9
Lowe Derek P 10
Myers Brett P 11
Tulowitzki Troy SS 12
Santana Ervin P 13
Fuentes Brian P 14
Danks John P 15
Street Huston P 16
Carpent Chris P 17
Drew J.D. OF 18
Duchscherer Justin P 19
Johnson Kelly 2B 20
Dukes Elijah OF 21

I selected 4th, and Dan Haren and Jake Peavy were off the board before it got to me. At this point, I made a snap decision - with basically every top-tier starter off the board, I would try to use a modified version of the old auction-draft move of piling 80% of your resources into position players, then filling your staff with high-K/low-WHIP guys, often using multiple relievers, even middle relievers. With our league having 3 SP slots and no mid-week changes, I wouldn't necessarily be able to run it to its fullest effect - I'd still need something for wins, and with a 10-team league, Ks from starters are still huge since the pool is deep.

Either way, I took the plunge, picking for value at 54 with the best catcher available (since I figured ESPN's hype would make Weiters/Ianetta/etc. overhyped; I was wrong) and possibly the best player available. I then capitalized on undervalued resources to fill my OF slots (OF is startlingly shallow this year, even in 10-team leagues) with Young and Dunn, who I likely should have selected in the reverse order, but since it was on the wheel no one cares.

Now that I had my position players solidly filled (and with what might be the best position-player lineup I've ever had in fantasy baseball), I started on the pitching. Vasquez is an obvious choice, in hopes that moving to the easier league and out of US Cellular knocks down the gopher balls while increasing K:BB ratio slightly, although he's still been valuable for years, while Myers fits exactly the role we're looking for while giving a good shot at Ws on a solid second-place team. Lowe goes exactly against the grain of the high-K lineup, but the value was way too solid at that position, and his WHIP plus ERA should still help. Tulo was the only non-garbage SS left (and was likely a steal), Drew shouldn't go that low even with his injury history, while Carpenter would have never made it back to me and thus forced my hand. I grabbed Dukes on a flier, knowing that I could DL Upton and add Jason Motte to get another reliever into the starting lineup.

Overall, I'm pretty damn happy with the draft - it's yet another all-offense/questionable-pitching RC team, but that's been my MO for years, and I'll just have to run waiver-wire games to keep the staff solid (or ditch SP for the Royce Rings of 2009; which I'm fine with).

Auction Draft: Teams Breakdown

2009-04-06T11:30:00.004-04:00

First off, this is amazing - absolutely ridiculously funny. Hat-tip to HighHeat on SoSH for this. Sick.

Here's how each team wound up in the auction team draft:

RC-
Milwaukee $3.75
Yankees $8.50
Oakland $3.50
St. Louis $2.75
San Diego $1.50

DD-
Cubs $8.25
Colorado $1
NY Mets $8
Pittsburgh$1.75
Washington$1

DM-
White Sox $5.50
Reds $3.25
Florida $2
LAA $8
Toronto $1.25

JJ-
Atlanta $3
Baltimore $1.75
Cleveland $7.50
LAD $7.50
Seattle $2

MM-
Arizona $4.25
Detroit $3.25
KC $3
SF $1.50
Tampa Bay $8

GR-
Boston $8.25
Houston $1.75
Minnesota $3.75
Philly $4.25
Texas $2

If the season plays out exactly according to the PECOTA predictions, my team's wins alone will be worth $51, with at least another $20 in playoff earnings and assorted bonuses based on division leads at the milemarker points - can't complain about that. At least not until the first major injury to the Yankees - and let's be honest, I'm freerolling the AL East with this setup. Life is good.

On Balancing Ranges in an Auction-like Nerd Setting

2009-04-05T16:49:00.003-04:00

Clearly, two of my favorite things, poker and baseball, have shockingly little in common. However, poker has informed much of my fantasy baseball gambling, including what I consider to be an epic draft from yesterday. We went back-to-back with our live draft, which I will outline a bit tomorrow (because I'm insanely hung over) - the concept is deviously simple: six men, drafting every team in baseball auction-style (arbitrary $20 action value; increments of $0.25), with each win for your teams worth $0.50 from each of the other five players, plus $7.50 paid to each of the division leaders after the first 2 months, second 2 months, and end-of-season. Depending on how you draft, costs can spiral somewhat rapidly - something like 35% of the trials result in at least one player losing $100. It's not "large potatoes" by any stretch of Dan Quayle's imagination - I'm simply pointing out that the fiddy-cent increment is kind of a red herring.

I used Baseball Prospectus's projected standings (PECOTA-enhanced); in terms of recent performance, they are by far the most predictive, although I did sprinkle with a hearty dose of common sense. Because I'm a massive, massive nerd, I needed a way to properly set valuation of teams in such an environment - I knew from last year that the 'best' teams would go for something in the range of $8 to $9, but also knew that $9 was the max anyone would pay. In order to jigger some valuation out of the deal, I figured that the worst team (Pittsburgh) would be 'worth' $1 and the best team (Yankees, at 99 wins - I know, fucking kill me) would be 'worth' $9. I then set up a spreadsheet to set the 'baseline' values and determine what each team should be worth between those two extremes. It turns out, since all teams need to be picked, an 81-81 team (such as, oh, the Angels) is worth about $4.40 or so - not surprising, but indicative of the odd valuation that a limited money environment forces.

I knew that I would have to overpay for a top team - my goal going in was to maximize EV, even at the expense of my best-case scenario (note: this is exactly the opposite of how I filled out my NCAA brackets; fuck my life). I figured if I could get one guaranteed 90+ win team, one other potential division winner, and two .500-level teams, my guaranteed 'shitter' 5th team would be successfully offset, and I'd be freerolling the division championship or wildcard scenarios. I was willing to pay out the ass for one great team, look for value in underrated teams in shitty divisions, and wouldn't worry too much about my last team unless I could get lucky (foreshadowing: I did not get lucky) - plus, I wanted to nominate secretly-shitty teams like the Angels, Astros and Marlins to bleed out dollars so I could dominate the late rounds.

The first team nominated was, of course, the New York Yankees, the probable best team in baseball (again, fuck me). I started the bidding at $5, effectively announcing that I wanted to be the proud new owner of the worst team since the SS. This was by far the weakness in my "system" since I set an arbitrary price for the team - however, I got the Yankees at $8.50, an amount that should be profitable unless I do something catastrophic the rest of the way. Luckily, I did not Thurmon Munson the rest of the draft.

The Angels were, predictably, massively overrated - although their division is TURRRR-BULL like Chuck Barkley's blowjob story, they're simply not a great value compared to the Yankees, even though they went for exactly the same price ($8.50). We were drafting with Cubs fans, so even though I love the Cubs in this kind of scenario, I wasn't willing to pay the $9 it would take (note: I also couldn't).

I did acquire the 'mediocre' fillers at reasonable prices - I got the Brewers and the Cardinals for $3.50 and $2.75, which are massively undervalued resources, and even give me a little bit of division-winner upside. I was able to leverage the low amount of remaining dollars into the A's at $4 too, giving me the second probable division winner to fill out my plan. I got stuck in a late-game bidding scenario where everyone could outbid me, so I wound up with the second-to-last of the shitty teams, with the Padres - make no mistake, the Pads are terrible, but hopefully the craptacular NL West can at least propel everyone to equivalent mediocrity. Still though, it looks like I should be +EV on the whole, with some upside to win serious money. Nobody's other picks really inspire any fear - I'll post each of the teams as soon as I get the spreadsheet. Good times.

Wait until tomorrow, when I'll compare the great success of this auction with the total misguided nightmare of the actual fantasy draft . . . note to self: draft a pitcher someday. God.

This Is How We Chill From '93 Till . . .

2009-03-20T11:53:00.008-04:00

10:00pm

So . . . uh . . . we drink too much. There's that. I tilted off everything - Wisky sucks like fucking Paris Hilton, except I would be much more comfortable with the green-tinted night vision camera, which is absurdly beat. I am terrible at sports betting.

Also I took Bob Morris, which is retarded - I did win a prop by knowing it's in Chicago, but yet I still want to fall into a fire. On the bright side, OSU is Crying Gaming Siena so life could be much worse. I might only lose a dozen this session.

A few great Brent quotes in the interim:

"I need a onesy with a butt flap . . . not for dudes inserting, for poopies outserting."

"I am not the president of the wyoming school for the deaf"
"but you're getting close"

"if you don't love the goo goo dolls, you're no friend of mine"

6:30pm

Loooooooooooooooong time between updates - such is life. Beer has switched to liquor, which is going great. More football resulted in more seal-clapping adventures, including Brent hitting multiple houses with his attempts to throw in the wind. It was . . . poor. Quite poor.

The WVU over/Mizzou -12.5 worked like clockwork, and life is suddenly slightly more easy . . . except I spun that into relatively big moves (3u) on Utah -2 and USC -2. Early in the week, I had Utah at +1, and a friend got +2.5 early in the week, so -2 is basically the "Bring out the Gimp!" moment of the tournament for me. Plus, Zona is up early, so I'm pretty much getting the date rape "C'mon, I won't tell anyone" treatment in the first few minutes. My 'system' (stealing from KenPom and Sagarin; converting to ML/'true' point spread) is doing amazingly well for big conferences and TERRIBLE for small conferences, so Utah will likely do me raw. If only Michael Cera had remembered his tiny bottle of lube.

We had another kid party, which was sweet - the Friday night dinner break is epic, just no games for two hours. We filled the time with Guitar Hero - here's a brief shot of what the setup looks like:

You can see the projector and several key televisions with the undercard games (or MacGuyver when Brent is feeling like a saucy fob), as well as a child who may or may not contribute to failing on that particular song. Riley was also the subject of a series of drunk-Troy barbs, including the epic "Riley looks like a less-attractive Justin" (to Riley's parents, of whom Justin is most likely one). He also told Justin that his kid was most likely gay. Twice. In succession, with no remorse. Just unreal.

You can see the drums on the right - however, what you can't see is that the drums are being manned by the three-headed retard hydra:

Yep - that's four drumsticks among three drummers, playing on one drum set. The highest they managed was like 92% - which is surreal. Three monkeys banging the drums with three typewriters got a 95 earlier. It's a hot drunken mess at this point, which is fiiiiine.

The Mormons are getting faceraped early, and Brent and I nearly just rolled a futon into the beer Christmas Tree (all the empties are being hung . . . hanged? hung? . . . from a base to look like a Christmas Tree - yep). So basically I'm reliant on Tim Floyd to save me, kind of like the Charlotte Hornets circa 1492. I'm 100% sure I'm fucked. Totally fucked.

Brian just got accosted by Troy's kid (~14 months), who immediately fell on a drum stick and cried. Troy told his kid that he should "wait until you can walk then kick him in the face" - Brent then told the kid to "wait until you take chemistry and learn biology then you can . . . I mean . . . yeah, biochemistry, right?"

Boy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoing.

2:40pm

So work's done forever (or until Monday...whatever) and the drinking has re-begun . . . the penalty Mike's (this time: Lime, which tastes like AIDS sherbet) went down gross and we're on to beer.

After a solid morning split, the wagers are WVU/Dayton over 129 and Mizzou -12.5 . . . I have that game with Mizzou as a "true" 14-pt favorite, but they look like total balls right now. Cornell is just staying solid on D and Mizzou is complying by taking terrible 3s on the break and not defending the interior in the slightest. Bodes poorly for a supposedly-solid defensive team - they're porous like crazy girl diaphragms.

We just had a lengthy conversation about how much it costs to remove hair via laser - I don't even know how or why, but it turns out that $300 is not enough to do armpits, and the average gross backhair costs around $5k.

My brackets are atrocious - it looks like Armageddon but with more black lines. If WVU follows through on their pending terrible loss, I'll be fucked like it's Eagle, CO - totally sweet. I think I even called that shot via email earlier in the week. Stab me in the face. When checking Brent's bracket (he's in just as much shit as I am), a couple derogatory lines were thrown out, and Brent responded with "You, sir . . . uh . . . IDON'TTHINKYOURFACEISATTRACTIVE." Interesting.

Pitt isn't really pulling away from ETSt., which might be interesting, but we'll chill for now - it's like talking during a no-hitter.

11:00am

Yeah . . . my sincerest fake apologies for the lack of late-night updates last night; we threw a 1-year-old party for a while, with the wives and children stopping by to make sure various Daddies hadn't drank themselves into a coma or a divorce proceeding. So far, so good - although seeing a 1.5-year-old passing out beers was pretty awesome, I must admit. Especially when he tried to "drink" from a (sealed, obv) can of Michelob Golden and left a GIANT Cheetos chunk on the rim, which was both disgusting and kind of impressive.

Although even that paled in comparison to Tony DRINKING THE CHEETOS BEER no less than an hour later. That's right; he not only pulled the Cheetos beer from a cooler at random, but it still had enough fake-cheesy flavor for him to recognize it (and nearly puke). Chester Cheetah, you make some deliciously disgusting food products. God drinking is awesome.

After that, there was drunk food (frozen pizza and Wendy's) and a pow-wow session with online poker while I excoriated Michigan for being stupid fucks because God I hate Michigan. I split the fade of the Big 10, then lost two epics by taking Binghamton +21.5 and VCU +8.5, resulting in a basically all-around craptacular day. It happens. Early action is on OkSU at +2 and Marquette at -4.5 (which I HATE as a number, but it's a sympathy pick for JC's homerism - don't be surprised if USU bounces the Golden Christ Warrior Eagles Whatever from the tournament entirely).

I'm not super encouraged about the rest of the games either way - Utah's line is all the way up to -1.5, so hopefully you guys playing at home with your play money (or in a pool) got that game at +1 . . . getting the game 2.5 points from the tip line is just absurd.

One event that we missed out on: there were plans for a midnight football game, using a glow-in-the-dark football. I can't even fathom how poorly this would have gone, but it would have been awesome, and I'm sorely disappointed it did not come to fruition. Maybe tonight?

Mormons, Bears, Bulls, Bigots and more Mormons

2009-03-19T11:28:00.012-04:00

8:30pm

Quick entry while I sweat the suddenly-possible cover by Nova . . .

RC: "Prop for $X: who was the greatest player in Gonzaga history?"
Tony/Troy/JC: "Adam Morrison!"
Brent: "Feliz Navidad!"

Holy shit. Also, Feliz Navidad is actually just as far from the correct answer as AdMo . . . Definitely getting rough. Real rough.

5:45pm

"What are the odds of me waking up on the floor with your feet on my face, versus the odds of you waking up on the floor with my balls on your chin?"

So basically that's where it has gone - we grilled on the patio during the "dead period" once UW got up fairly large . . . I added UW -6, so I might actually accidentally win a game. Weird.

The key, though, was throwing the football around out back while grilling. Brent is well on his way to out of his mind, and had the Jake Christensen/Brett Favre Memorial "Throw The Ball 90MPH On A Line" Problem (also known as "mashing the x-button for every pass") . . . we tried to play 500. That failed. Brent and Troy would try to track the ball in the air, then wave their hands wildly, then it would fall about 8 feet away. Simply stunning.

The best part was watching Brent try to catch regular passes - he looked like he was wearing oven mitts, or trying to catch the ball with the back of his hands like a clapping seal. High comedy - I would definitely take Warren from There's Something About Mary before him at a tailgate game.

Brent was just asked to say something retarded for the blog . . . mission accomplished: "The capitol of Djibouti is Djibouti." Thanks.

UW looks pretty great, and the SEC 'revival' may have been premature due to LSU just overmatching a less-athletic Butler team. I'm adding Villanova at -15, mostly because it's in Philly and American's SOS was rough . . . but I really need the 3 points from home-field advantage to stay in it. Thinking about just fading the Big 10, too, and going Clemson (-4.5) and Texas (-4.5). Further bulletins as events warrant.

4:20pm

So the UNI game was a shit circus - just all sorts of awkward, including multiple iffy charge calls that nearly sent Brent into convulsions. It's kind of sad, actually - he would have won a posthumous Oscar had he simply succumbed to the poor officiating (and Lunesta).

I've now officially lost every game, which is sweet - I can't complain yet, I mean, it's not like I spend hours and hours (of billable time) investigating this stuff. I'm really smart. Ugh.

We have a couple of choice Brent quotes so far:

"BLEED IN YOUR SKULL (to Robbie Hummel)" . . . when he learned about Hummel's fractured vertebra, it changed to:
"YOU BROKEBACK FUCK"
"I'm going to Pur-Doody in Tony's mouth" (the sixth or seventh such reference - I seriously have no idea)
"Captain Mother-Jizz-Mouth made my cocktail with Diet . . . dick."

Everyone (but me, obv) had the UNC under at 163 . . . the game was on pace for well over 600 points for a while, but these guys required zero scoring in the last 1:50. To a man, they were complaining about UNC's sportsmanship - like it was a low-brow move to keep playing. Apparently, Roy Williams has no class for allowing the team to continue to play hard . . . then, all sorts of high-fiving when the over missed. I love this weekend.

Oh, then Brent described the time Troy's wife saw his penis - it included the epic line, "put a little barbecue sauce on that, and it's a smokey leee-ink . . . "

So yeah - the smokey link. I guess. Unreal.

2:40pm

Forgot to add this (from during a Nemanja Calasan FT attempt):

TROY: "He's Serbian."
EVERYONE: "ORLY?"
BRENT: "He looks like Dwight Schrute's brother. Mose Schrute. He likes beets."

Uhhhh

2:20pm

UNI . . . not good. Purdue is very 'athletic' (and can't swim - hiyo! Insert own joke here!) and UNI is not. Brent is screaming and dancing and breaking things - he's referred to multiple people as "HUGE FUCKS" and he and Troy just each chugged a 24oz Natty Ice. Ahhh, 5.9% alcohol by volume . . . you never did me wrong. It makes me long for the halcyon days of the St. Ides Case O'Forties, "The beer to have when you don't have to remember.

Brent: "We got'em right where we want'em . . . we're gonna get Johnny Fuckface outta the lineup, we're gonna have seven less turnovers . . . that's what's gonna happen." Thanks, Adolph Rupp!

Brent also just referred to the opponent as "Pur-Dookie . . . like poop." Nah, we get it dude.

Troy: Q: "Is there a reason why we're not watching UNI?" A: "They're at halftime? And that one you're watching on the 4-way channel? That's a live look-in at the game we are watching."
Troy: "Oh. That answers that."

So the wheels are well on their way off - Cal is losing to Maryland, which is just fantastic because I'm completely resigned to losing every single game I attempt to cap, like some sort of reverse Midas Touch where every spreadsheet I touch turns into quadriplegic porn or infanticide.

Also Collin has to be ready to punch a clown - UCONN is in shit shape, up 2 with turnovers all over the hell. Ugly like the Horseface Killer (callback joke! Yay!)

1:30pm

Durrr . . . nice morning. The end of the LSU/Butler game was a Benjamin Button-style anti-climax, with a last-chance inbound to cover that resulted in yet another f-ing turnover. Great. That's OK - a lot of people start 0-3. At least Memphis kept the hope alive.

Brent is already going apeshit on the UNI game, and it's 2-2 18:51 in the 1st. Engelseder just made a free throw, which prompted JC to call him "put your Engelseed in my butt" . . . I have no idea.

BYU's loss was so predictable, Jared said that their God has used up "all his power" on Steve Young. So there's that - Mormons can fuck off, at least until the Utah game.

The next action is all over Cal at -1.5 - I have the 'true line' at -3.5, and UMD sucks, so hopefully we're fading the public instead of looking like idiots. Again. Brent said "Gary Williams can get AIDS - I hate him" which led to this exchange:

JC: "Well . . . I guess we all could get AIDS . . . "
RC: "I mean, that kind of requires . . . let's just say you'll need a little help from your wife."

Beer's going down well. Really well. God I hate Mormonism.

12:45pm

Ummmm . . . Memphis is barely hanging on. I have them winning every pool. I just dropped a tire iron onto my dick - that would result in a drunken mess all weekend, since I would officially be rooting for everyone else to fail miserably.

Butler has made a sick run - punctuated by Troy noting that Goose Island 312 Wheat is "better beer than Coors Light." Uh, really? If only that difference were reflected in their respective prices . . . Jesus. I also think filet mignon is better than human feces, and cooked pork is better than trichinosis.

The BYU game is unreal bad - A&M is making the Mormons look like the Washington Generals. On the bright side, BYU just had 5 white guys on the floor (SURPRISE!) and A&M five black guys . . . it looked like Brown v. Board of Education for a minute.

I'm now relying on the Cal Bears to resurrect this session, which is a boner. UNI starts in a few minutes - Brent is a massive UNI homer. Should they be the 12 who wins, he will drink himself into an Ed Kennedy brain tumor. Meanwhile, UCONN's coach is in the hospital - Memphis is now tied, so both might be dead by morning. Totally sweet.

11:50am

So I just got here and drank my 'ceremonial' Mike's Hard Lemonade (because they no longer make Zima - there's a planet where this makes sense, I promise) . . . it went down like anal. Life is easy.

My early action looks like Tara Reid's saggy boob job - A&M has missed exactly one field goal (they're now 11 for 12) and Butler has 10 turnovers in 13 minutes. No shit - they're on pace for more than 35 turnovers. Stab my neck. Mid-majors. Ugly. Teams that rely on "drive and kick" and jump shooting can go insanely cold in new buildings (or against athletic teams) so it's my own damn fault. I did not know Butler started three black guys, though, which makes me feel a little better about them coming back from 9 (really 7 since I'm getting the points.

Troy just invoked the "touched it last" rule on JC . . . I'm kind of glad I missed the morning run, and if I'm alive at 10pm I'll be insanely happy. Awkward bisexuality jokes are flying fast and furious, with Brent comparing Pogs to touching dudes. I don't even get it, which is a bad sign.

Butler is on the 8-foot projection screen, just adding to my embarrassment, while A&M is on the world's largest non-HD television still in existence. The model name is actually Smithsonian. I'm soul-crushed and it's only noon. Should be fun - I'm telecommuting, by the way, so I'm answering the phones and email from the dude-cave. I can't see anything going wrong there.

10:30am

It's basically that time again: Live-blogging our retardation as a result of the NCAA tournament, where multiple dudes shirk all semblance of responsibility for 2 to 4 days and drink until they feel like the sponge on the side of the sink. This is an especially poignant metaphor for me this morning, as I used the last of my soap in the shower, and may well be scrubbing myself with Dawn via that sponge tomorrow morning. Life is good, if not slightly degenerate.

We'll get started in a proper sense in about an hour - I'm sure JC is already three Captain and Diets in, since they drove to Sonic for breakfast (without me; fucks).

After last year's debacle playing off the same Bodog account (whereby I was a moderate winner, but we had an f-ing spreadsheet dedicated to keeping track who was up/down) we instead decided to just do a line/spread pool this year, along with the winner-take-all bracket. My current plays:

Alabama State +3.5 (DERP DERP) -1u

Butler +2.5 2u
BYU -2 4u
Oklahoma State +2 1u
Cal -1 1u (could be more; the 'true line' is like -3.1, but I just don't trust Cal)
Utah +1 4u
USC -2 1u
Binghamton +22.5 2u
Wisconsin +2.5 2u

Oh, and I picked Memphis to win. In every bracket. Go big or go home, am I right? Nope, I am an idiot.

Big Gulps Huh? Welp, See Ya Later!

2009-03-18T02:29:00.002-04:00

FUCK YOU CHIEF KICKINGSTALLIONSIMS, YOU SACK OF CRAP - NICE ZERO-POINT PERFORMANCE. CONTINUE BEING SEVEN FEET TALL AND AVERAGING FOUR BOARDS A GAME, YOU LAZY DOUCHE. AJKLFJDLKLSJFELKS

Always good to start down a game in the tourney . . . Anyway. Follow the rest of my picks as they go down (live!) over the course of the next few days - we're doing the "man cave 3.0" weekend again, and it should be . . . bad. Very bad. Very very bad.

In Re: Nerds in the Springtime

2009-03-17T13:20:00.003-04:00

It's the best gambling weekend of the year: March Madness, Rounds 1 & 2! I just had an incredibly interesting email exchange with a friend about vagaries of various brackets - one common (crappy) bracket structure is the "get bonus points equaling the difference between seeds for upsets" meme. Basically, if a 5 beats a 12, you get 1 point - if the 12 beats the 5, you get 7 points. This encourages wild first-round picks, but is it really worth it? Let's look at the math (note: this math relies on a somewhat-odd 1/2/4/16/32/64(!) structure - most are 1/2/4/8/16/32, which does change the Final Four math slightly, but only by a few percentage points):

Here's the odds breakdown for the big seeds (how often you need the lower seed to win to "break even" on rd 1):

15/2: about 8%
14/3: about 9%
13/4: 11%
12/5: 14%
11/6: 20%

If you assume that the higher seed would win the next round, too (so we're 'guaranteeing' the higher seed 3 points):

15/2: 20%
14/3: 23%
13/4: 27%
12/5: 33%
11/6: 60%

Here's the real problem, though: the massive jump between rd 3 and rd 4 makes this just ridiculous. If we assume each #2 seed has a 15% chance of making the Final Four (which would earn you 1+2+4+16=23 points), that means that the #2 seed is "worth" 3.4 points, which is why I used the numbers above. If we assume the breakdown is more like:

1-seed: 40%
2-seed: 25%
3-seed: 15%
4-seed: 8%
5-seed: 7%
6- and below: 5%

Then it's more like:
16-seed has to win 61% of the time
15-seed: 44%
14-seed: 31%
13-seed: 20%
12-seed: 23%
11-seed: something like 14% depending on how you assign that last 5%

Hilariously, if we look at historical data our WAG assumption isn't that far off - over the last 30 years, the chances for a particular seed to reach the Final Four:
1-seed: 42.5%
2-seed: 21.7%
3-seed: 11.7%
4-seed: 8.3%
5-seed: 4.2%
6-seed and higher: 11.7%

So we under-estimated the chances of Cinderella making a run, but past that, we're pretty close. Since it looks like with the notable exception of George Mason and the 2000 FF the seedings have become a pretty efficient market (NOTE: strong chance of confirmation bias after last season), we don't even really need to re-run the numbers. It looks like the best strategy for your "upset pool" at work or with friends is to pick every single 10/11/12/13 to win outright unless you think that the 4 or 5 has a big-time chance to make a deep run.

Oh, and the other big key: correctly pick the championship game. That's about half of your realistically-possible points right there, and it would be nearly impossible to lose under any scenario. Make money make money.

Also, my current first-round picks before the public money rapes the pooch:
Alabama State (+3.5) - very iffy one here, it's right at the Sagarin line but I trusted someone else who loves this line.
Butler +2.5 (it's probably closer to PK)
BYU -2 (LOVE this line)
Oklahoma State +2 (looks iffy with the latest efficiency ratings, but meh)
Cal -1
Utah +1 (should DEFINITELY be favored; money-line play if you can find one)

For reference, the lines for rds 1 and 2 are usually so bad that you don't need a "system" - just use kenpom.com and Jeff Sagarin's Predictatron point spreads, accounting in your mind for travel or probably home-court, and get there. That's the key: Get there.

Fantasy Baseball

2009-03-15T15:04:00.005-04:00

So, it's that time of year again. I'm in two leagues this year, both largely made up of friends from college. The first draft was today, and I was able to participate live on-line. Our friendly blog owner is in the same league, so I'll stay out of too much strategy analysis. It's a 10 team league, so the pickings got rather slim towards the end of the draft.

The A-Roids
Round Pick Player Position
1. (4) David Wright 3B
2. (17) Ian Kinsler 2B
3. (24) Lance Berkman 1B
4. (37) Dan Haren SP
5. (44) Brian McCann C
6. (57) Chad Billingsley SP
7. (64) Stephen Drew SS
8. (77) Corey Hart OF
9. (84) Jonathan Broxton RP
10. (97) Ricky Nolasco SP
11. (104) Nate McLouth OF
12. (117) Justin Upton OF
13. (124) Chris Iannetta C
14. (137) Lastings Milledge OF
15. (144) Kelly Johnson 2B
16. (157) Hunter Pence OF
17. (164) Chad Qualls RP
18. (177) Scott Baker SP
19. (184) Ubaldo Jiménez SP
20. (197) Cristian Guzmán SS
21. (204) Alex Gordon 3B

Overall I was happy with my draft. I waited a bit to get in on the pitching, and when I did I made my picks in spurts. My starting offense is fairly low-risk, although it's also for the most part only moderate reward. I probably reached a bit for a back-up catcher (in Ianetta), but I try to have two good catchers on the roster because of the injury risks. My outfield is deep but not particularly outstanding...I'm hoping that the numbers put up by Wright, Kinsler, Berkman and McCann will supplement my strictly-average outfield.

I got caught without a closer last year at the end of the year, and it cost me in some close contests, so I wanted to give a good effort at the position this year. I'm hoping that I made good choices in balancing draft position with productivity. Again, I'm very happy with my starting pitching, and I'm hoping that Baker's fly ball issues are the worst of my starting pitching problems this year.

I was also happy to get Johnson so late in the draft. I couldn't really turn down Guzman and Gordon with the last two picks. Overall I made a few reaches, but nothing too crazy.

My next draft is this week, but as I'll be in class, I'll be relying on the auto-draft option, which I hate.

Talking through heartbreak

2009-03-13T20:14:00.002-04:00

Obviously, I'm talking about the UConn game last night against Syracuse. Despite the pain of getting knocked out of the Big East tournament, and possibly losing a #1 seed in the NCAA's, I have to admit it was a great game.

It also got me thinking. I've been a UConn fan since I was a little kid, back to the Cliff Robinson days. My interest in UConn basketball is only exceeded by my allegiance to the Yankees. So, what are the best games I've seen as a UConn fan (in no particular order)?

1) UConn 71 - Clemson 70 (NCAA Sweet 16, 1990): This was the Tate George game. In case you haven't seen Scott Burrell's full court heave, and Tate George's turnaround jumper, then look it up on YouTube. The 1990 season was an incredible one for UConn fans, when the team put itself on the national map, and this game was the highlight of the season.

2) Duke 79 - UConn 78 (NCAA Elite 8, 1990): Yes, UConn lost. Yes, it was on a last-second shot by Christian Laettner. But, this was really the moment when UConn arrived. For a regional power to stand up to such a national powerhouse, and come a few seconds from winning, proved to everyone in the state that Jim Calhoun was building a fantastic program.

3) UConn 75 - Georgetown 74 (Big East Final, 1996): Everyone remembers this as the Ray Allen - Allen Iverson battle. Georgetown had a 10+ point lead with less than five minutes left, but the Huskies scored the last 12 points. The cherry on top was Ray Allen's one-handed leaner to win it.

4) 1999 National Championship: Both national titles were great, but this one was the best. Duke was stacked, with Trajan Langdon, William Avery and Elton Brand. But UConn kept it close in the first half, thanks in part to Ricky Moore's big first half. After years of whispers that Calhoun's teams couldn't get past the Elite 8, this was the team that did it, and most likely propelled Calhoun to the Hall of Fame. I'll never forget it.

This probably read way too much like an ESPN column, but after last night's game, I needed to write a fluff piece.

My email to Rick Reilly

2009-02-21T11:31:00.002-05:00

(Note: this is the actual text of an email I sent Rick Reilly regarding his latest comments on blogs)

Dear Mr. Reilly,
I noted a Newsday interview you did recently, where you talked about bloggers as guys who are holding down couch cushions, or something along those lines. This was the latest in a series of quotes you gave that criticize the blogosphere.

Now, it's cute to talk about bloggers and use the same old criticisms, evoking images of guys in their mom's basement, eating pizza rolls and furiously stabbing at a keyboard. The fact is, though, that it's wrong.

Now, there's no doubt that there are some poorly-written blogs out there. It's just the odds that, with that many blogs, there will be some run by people who can't write, or people who have their own issues.

However, how is that any different from some of the journalism that's out there? Is it different than Mitch Albom's plagiarism? Skip Bayless' consistent slamming of Lebron James? The cases of people like Jayson Blair?

Another classic criticism of blogs is that they allow for commenters to post hateful and sometimes racist and sexist comments. Now, while that may be true, have you had a chance to read the espn.com comments lately? They're not exactly a symbol of fair and pleasant discourse.

Now, here's the truth about blogs. There are many that are run by intelligent, productive members of society who just happen to love sports. Friends of mine who run blogs include lawyers, investment professionals, teachers, policy analysts, law students, MBA students...the list runs long with smart, interesting people with intriguing things to say.

I know that this email won't change your mind on blogs, and I'm not expecting you to write some long, powerful ode to the talented bloggers who are out there. That said, you're fairly popular with the American sports public, and it would make quite an impression if you were to at least stop slamming the bloggers out there.

Whether you actually read this email, or if it ends up deleted by some intern, who knows. But, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

All the best,
_______________
Law student, classically-trained journalist, and proud blogger

The biggest cheaters in the A-Rod scandal? Not who you'd think...

2009-02-21T11:17:00.003-05:00

As the only Yankees fan posting on this blog, I feel ethically obligated to at least post something about the A-Rod saga. Now, I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed by the revelations. I've always been a big A-Rod fan, and it's disappointing to me that A-Rod's legacy is now apparently compromised by steroid allegations. I'm also disappointed by the way the press conference and softball interview with Peter Gammons were handled; apparently his press people are the WORST PRESS PEOPLE EVER. Maybe it's the former reporter/PR professional in me, but I think there were probably about one million better ways A-Rod could have come out ahead of the story.

That said, to me, A-Rod isn't even the biggest "bad person" in this story:

1) Whoever leaked the information: So, let me get this straight. Someone tells the players that they'll be tested for performance-enhancing drugs, tells them that the information will be kept secret, and then, names are leaked. Does anyone wonder why the players don't trust any treatment program put forth by MLB?

2. The media: Now, as I've noted quite a bit on this blog, I used to be a member of the media, both for a local newspaper and for a college publication. So, in that time, I've been in a couple of locker rooms, and interviewed a few athletes pre and post-game.

That said, even with that limited experience, it puzzles me a bit when the media hides their heads in the sand as to their own culpability in the "steroid era" (which is a ridiculous term as is), but are ready to burn at the stake any athlete who used, or (as discussed on "Mike and Mike in the Morning" this week) any athlete who didn't turn themselves into the players' version of "Deep Throat."

I'm sure everyone remembers when AP reporter Steve Wilstein spotted Andro in Mark McGwire's locker and asked him about it, and the ensuing fall-out. Whether he did the right or wrong thing isn't the point; the point is that, with that "access" that the baseball writers are always so willing to trumpet, there's no doubt that there are reporters who saw evidence of steroid use and didn't report on it, or didn't mention it to managers or other supervisory personnel for that given team. I'm not advocating that they should have been tattle tales, but it's a little odd that those same reporters are now ready to crucify the players.

Finally...there's a lot of talk about putting some sort of sign in the Hall of Fame about the "steroid era." There are a couple of problems with this. First, there's already a sign in the Hall of Fame that talks about steroid use, and how it may or may not have affected the numbers of the era. Second, and most important, if we're going to do that, shouldn't there be a sign talking about the "greenie era" that preceded the "Steroid era?" All questions for anaother day I suppose.

Weirdest. Week. Ever.

2009-02-11T11:20:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure I can really absorb all this, so let's just count down the crazy crazy crazy that happened recently:

1 - NOT AROD. Nope - not when Roberto Alomar might have full-blown AIDS n (and it might cost him $15 million). Holy balls.

2 - ARod admits to steroid use within the friendly confines of a Peter Gammons interview . . . not that I don't love Gammons (it's borderline creepy) but it wasn't exactly a hard-hitting interview. Still, it makes perfect sense with ARod's purported personality defects - however, it's just one more unfortunate data point that shows Jose Canseco's giant, empty head might have been more right than wrong. Sucks.

3 - Marvin Miller totally flips his shit about the leaked "confidential" samples . . . dude's older than Utahraptor but he's still out kicking, and he's totally correct. Just unreal to hear the only voice of reason from a 91-year-old guy, who probably heard the news on the latest wax grammophone pressing that he picked up on his way home from getting a phosphate at the lunch counter.

4 - In a new book, Manny's wife blames the 64-year-old Red Sox clubhouse attendant for their altercation . . . apparently, the old guy was rude to poor ol' Manny. I mean . . . seriously?

5 - BP's early PECOTA standings have the AL East as the best division in the history of the Planet Earth, with the Sox winning 98, the Yankees 96, the Rays 93, the Jays 81 and the lowly Orioles outhitting every team in the league with a team OPS of .780. The Angels, meanwhile, project to finish sub-.500.\

6 - David Berman breaks up the Silver Jews for no apparent reason, then goes on an absolute tirade against his father, who is apparently a big-time tobacco/fatty foods/other unhealthy shit lobbyist. Wow.

7 - Chris Brown beats the shit out of Rhianna. Note to self: don't beat women. Additional note to self: don't tank career on aggravated misdemeanors . . . rob a bank or something, shoot heroin into a child's eyeballs, whatever. If you're losing (potentially) tens of millions of dollars, go big, you know?

...

453 - This is totally awesome.

Great Grunts in Rap History

2009-02-04T17:19:00.004-05:00

As part of my ongoing lecture series on Great Moments in Rap History, I thought I'd introduce one of our advanced courses: non-language in rap songs. Rappers, at least ostensibly, rely on colorful language (by which I mean n-bombs or, in the case of recent Mos Def, condescension) to make their living, which is apparently one often saturated with marijuana, cocaine, purple lean, and various large-assed women with a preternatural gravitational attraction to the floor. However, the English language cannot constrain the rap - aw hell naw. Often, a great rapper must fill in the blanks of the language with something less erudite and more guttural. With that in mind, I now present Five Great Grunts in Rap History.

5 - Juelz Santana, "There It Go (The Whistle Song)"
Juelz Santana blows the ass off the grunt (literally, kinda/sorta) at about the 1:04 mark, with the epic line "Sit it down, back up/ Bring it on back up/ Move it til you feel something hard in your back, HYUPP" . . . a true tour de force of using nonsense tones, as it even carries the "back up" rhyme into effect. Top down and back at it again, indeed - I run the whistle when I'm truly bombed at the bar. So far I'm 0-for-life, but that's not far from my batting average with every other method, so I'll blame sample size.

4 - Master P, "Make Em Say Uhhh"
A retard rap Odyssey so epic that there's absolutely no need to include times or anything, Master P's all-time dipshit marathon is more than notable for its use of two different nonsense intonations: the titular "UHHHH" and the follow-up "Nanana, nanana." The fact that cadence seems to actually go against the beat of the music, added to the knowledge that Mystikal actually earned money making music even though he sounds like a meth-head Vietnam vet who I'm trying to avoid at the liquor store, brings a somewhat depressing quality to pouring some out for our homeys. Thank God Cashmoney Records decided to produce . . .

3 - Lil Wayne, "A Milli"
. . . the self-proclaimed Best Rapper Alive, and truly the evolution of nonsense excess noise. Sure, we're stretching a little on this song, but the giggle after "Damn I hate a shy bitch/ Don't you hate a shy bitch?/ Yeah, I ate a shy bitch/ She ain't shy no more/ She changed her name to my bitch" (about the 2:07 mark) adds an ethereal quality to a spectacularly promethazine-fueled line that actually makes me giggle along with the manchild just about every time. The fact that he backs it up with giggles both before and after "and I'd rather be pushing flowers/ than be in the 'pen sharing showers" just adds to the surreal quality of the sizzurp-addled mind of a very rich pothead. We'll file it under great grunts because there's no WAY it was supposed to be in the mix until the producer (Bangladesh) heard it and laughed his ass off just like I did.

2 - Clipse, "Trill"
Another amazing 2-fer, this track starts with a very poignant "UH" before exploding into ray-gun synths that kind of remind you that, at one very bizarre point in time, Pharell Williams was an important human being. However, fuck that one - the better one is the absolutely astounding, off-beat "WHUT" thrown into the first line of the chorus (by Pharell, of course - he had to be in the track by contract), followed by "WHUT WHUT" after the next line of the chorus (starts at 0:34). Absolutely the most fun part of any rap song to sing in history - and even better, the song involves multi-tracked "uh" and "whuh" noises throughout, seemingly randomly. The Kings of VA's best song, and a worthy contender for the best grunts ever, save for likely the most important rap grunt in history:

1 - Notorious BIG, "Juicy"
On the shortlist for the most important rap song, period, two vital grunts have propelled "Juicy" onto the must-play list for virtually every DJ that plays to a crowd of predominantly white people (as, clearly, every white kid ages 32 and below are more than likely to know the majority of the words to this track - up to and including the shared wince at the "Blow up like the World Trade/ Bomb center" bit). First, the subtle beginning of the track, with "All good baby, baby, UH" gets the party started, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone not say that line as the track begins. Truly, a masterful beginning, topped only by the chorus-introducing "and it's still all good/ UH" - the song is broken into easily-digestible chunks differentiated by grunts. A grunt fires the listener into the track right out of the gate. BIG wields the grunt like a weapon, not unlike the one his posse used to kill Tupac years later, with similar posturing but markedly fewer awful airbrushed t-shirts or misguided celebrations of Tupac as a "poet" (not even considering "Poetic Justice" - I mean, holy fuck). With that, I don't think there is any doubt about the Greatest Grunt in Rap History.

And yet we still go on...

2009-01-31T01:09:00.002-05:00

A little over a year ago, my blogmate RC and I lost a very good friend of ours. Even though the days go by, there isn't a day when we don't think about our friend since she has passed.

RB, we miss you, and we still mourn the day you passed. You were an amazing person.

When Hooters goes bad

2009-01-20T15:47:00.003-05:00

It's no secret: I'm a dork. Dorks do amazing things, like do research for fantasy golf purposes . . . however, sometimes the sun shines down from Heaven onto hopeful men. One such time happened yesterday, when something great happened: my fantasy golf league is now the most famous one in the world.

No, seriously.

I went to high school with Kyle Moss, who has subsequently found a solid home in sports radio production and, apparently, being mocked on the air by his friends when they fill in for Jim Rome, as happened yesterday. Apparently somewhere between 3 and 5 million heard about true RC fantasy golf domination . . . finally, my team, John Daly's Parking Lot Naps, gets the airtime it has long deserved. Finally.

Obviously, the Naps are leading the league, too - in fact, I correctly played the winners of the first two tourneys this season. It is a day of hope, that fantasy prowess will be rewarded as the true meritocracy that it deserves, and joy, that I did not go with the Payne Stewart plane crash reference that I had chosen initially. Amen.

Face down, ass up/ That's the way we like to drink

2009-01-17T22:31:00.004-05:00

It's that time . . . of course, I mean more Tales from the Road!

This weekend's crapshow included a racial component, which brought out everything awesome about the awesomest racists who ever awesomed. Seriously, I couldn't even believe the white people in the crowd - simply stunning. Some highlights:

"I think [the plaintiffs] brought it on themselves - after all, if they hadn't put themselves into that situation, they couldn't have been assaulted."

"I don't think non-citizens should have rights in America. Rights are for citizens." (This same person may have decried Guantanamo later, but I can't recall an actual quotation, so you get shit and like it)

"I mean, I get that none of the [10,000 (literally --ed.)] other times involved any threat of injury, but you never know what the future holds. I don't think you can assume."

"It's not like he was pistol-whipped - stop whining."

"It sounds like whining, when they talk about Constitutional rights."

"So what does 'lawful authority' really mean, anyway?"

"Sure, I would just walk away from someone pointing a gun at me [if I didn't think they were police] - I've done it before."

"I know what you're thinking - 'Illegal! Illegal!' What's your name? PURPLE STICKY PUNCH."

OK so I made that last one up, but seriously, the Biodome reference just kept running through my head. The moral? Well, as always, it's "Don't get sued" - but also, that racial bias knows no boundaries, especially not those outlined by, like, the law. Or the Constitution. Or really even common sense. White privilege: apparently still awesome. White people: probably the problem.

Last note for the nerds: the best exchange is below, but it's really an awkward situation that, should you actually find it funny, you're likely a douche bag like me. Here goes:

Guy: "That wasn't proven! They never proved that!"
Me: "OK - well, 'proof' has a different definition in court than in life . . . this is a civil case, do you think it was more likely than not that [X] happened?"
Guy: "Well, yeah - I mean, that's probably what it was, but it wasn't proven."\
Me: STAB STAB STAB
Guy: "I am a preponderance of pretarded."

Initial Reaction: Teixeira Signing

2008-12-24T17:06:00.001-05:00

My Top 11 for 2008

2008-12-15T15:22:00.004-05:00

You have to have a list, right?

Honorable mention:
Wale, The Mixtape About Nothing
So it's a mixtape inspired by Seinfeld. For real. And it's incredibly good - just very odd, to the point of being kind of awkward. I don't think it's the 'best' anything this year, but it's so different that it's worth a shot - Wale is one of the brightest things to come out of 2008, a true cross-over-able intelligent rapper.

Just missed: Lil' Wayne, The Hold Steady, Okkervil River, The Black Ghosts

11- The Knux, Remind Me in 3 Days
I can remember starting college as a freshman and having a pretty extensive collection of very narrow music. Napster broke big, and completely changed my life - that's not even really hyperbole . . . there was a fundamental shift in my mentality courtesy of Napster. Two specific tracks then blew my mind: "Like Today" by Atmosphere, and "Letter from an Occupant" by The New Pornographers. All of the sudden, there was an entire world beyond Moon Records, Sublime and modern rock radio, combining elements I'd never seen mixed before. The Knux record surprised me like no rap record I've heard in a long, long time - not exactly traditional, not exactly backpack, not exactly even hip hop . . .

10- Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
Music is mostly about moods for me. By that, I mean that most music matches a feeling or time or place in my mind, and I'll usually go back to songs to match a certain place. For In Ghost Colours, that place is my car while in a completely unexpected good mood, such as a random endorphin high after leaving the office and heading to happy hour, or getting good news, or simply feeling good for no damn reason.

9- The Gaslight Anthem, The '59 Sound
Whenever a friend actively apologizes for liking an album (just like my incredible co-author C did, via Facebook no less, in re: this record), I almost invariably purchase/download it immediately. Sometimes this is good (like this), and sometimes it's bad (like ... almost every other time), but the search for a guilty pleasure marches on. I'm not even ashamed. This is probably the record that Craig Finn would have made at 15, if he weren't getting drunk in K-Mart parking lots in Minnetonka instead. We're all glad it went down like it did.

8- Titus Andronicus, The Airing of Grievances
A part of me will always want to light things on fire, or get into fights with assholes during rec league sports, or devastate people who have hurt me in the past, or rage against structure, or lash out at things that are completely unfair even if I can't do a single thing about it. That part doesn't really get out very much, and I'm pretty happy about that. I'm also happy that some bands rely on just that part of them as muse.

7- Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
When the days get shorter and winter sets in, slow nights can become almost interminable. The sun sets incredibly early, and weekdays are met with only brief periods of light. It's almost as if time passes more slowly - I can't tell you how many times I've looked at the clock and said "Holy God - it's only 8:30?" This has that same nearly-brutal quality, like waiting for warmth.

6- Of Montreal, Skeletal Lamping
Schadenfreude is a powerful phenomenon - people love seeing others going crazy, almost as if it validates their own sanity. Yet we also fear it - the guy outside Marlboro Market lobbing imaginary grenades at Charley can touch a little close to home, or maybe we can connect or understand with the way someone like Hannibal Lecter or Gordon Gekko rationalizes things when we know we shouldn't. Still, the spectacle draws our attention - Kevin Barnes is now the spectacle, by choice and by consequence.

5- The Cool Kids, The Bake Sale
In the video for Dude 'N Nem's "Watch My Feet" the group is rocking the coolest thing I've ever seen in my entire fucking life: a t-shirt (apparently put out on Shorty Capone's line, which I've never found for sale anywhere), in either black or white, with contrasting rhinestone-laden letters that simply spell out "SHIRT." I have no clue why I think it's so awesome, but I would kill a child for one. Basically, that's how I feel about the Cool Kids at this point, too.

4- Deerhunter, Microcastle
Music reviews throw around meaningless words like "dreamy" or "atmospheric" all the time - these are shitty shorthand, allowing for lazy journalism and truly uninspired review. Still, they perfectly describe this album . . . whoops.

3- Frightened Rabbit, The Midnight Organ Fight
I pulled a series of near-all-nighters to finish up a research study early this year - a good friend and the only other co-writer for that specific material made a tough choice to take another job, and I was left with a ton of work on a tight time frame. Obviously, it got finished, but it required typing in the back of a few bars like the Lift until closing time, knocking back beers with headphones as loud as they go. This was the perfect soundtrack for those nights - including how ridiculous I must have looked to everyone else.

2- TV on the Radio, Dear Science
There's a weird arc to the way sexual interaction happens in a relationship. At the beginning, there's some fumbling and struggling, definite awkwardness - but that's awash in a sort of animal interest, a drive that is both exciting and disorienting (Young Liars EP, Dirty Youth). As the relationship coalesces into the honeymoon phase, the frenzy remains, but there is some focus - you're discovering what each of you enjoys most, and you can apply that learning while retaining some of the fierceness, while still exploring and testing boundaries (Return to Cookie Mountain). Then, finally, you settle into a groove - you can become efficient and effective, and you can proceed with some pace, with just enough experimentation to keep it interesting . . . overall, this is the most satisfying phase, even while lacking many of the positives from the earlier phase. That's where TVOTR are today.

1- Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
It's always better to go to the beach when you're hung over - you can sleep more easily, the beer goes down smoother, and that little bit of dehydration makes everyone seem more attractive (even you, being a little more cut based on an utter lack of water in your body). This record will always be the sound of driving to the beach while hung over, and (hopefully) the party afterward.

The 2008 Mixtape

2008-12-13T11:28:00.006-05:00

Most people send Christmas cards (or Moses cards, I guess?). Then again, most people don't do many of the things that I think are generally hilarious - so instead of a silly photo and a list of all the ridiculous stuff I did this year, once again, everyone gets a mixtape. This is actually way better - this has much more to do with how my year went, anyway, and will be around long after memory has faded into Bolivian like Mike Tyson.

I had an incredible year - I mean that in the colloquial sense of "awesome or good or great or fun or cool" but also in the sense of "I'm actually incredulous that some of this actually happened." That's usually a good thing, but the roller-coaster nature of one of the weirdest years in American history is certainly reflected in the tape, just like everything else.

This is the year that rock made a comeback . . . kind of. I feel like the tape is more rock-oriented than years past, although obviously it's nerdy ass indie rock (you don't need me to make a tape of Beyonce tracks, even though "All The Single Ladies" is pretty fucking bomb) - don't read too much into the individual song choices, mostly out of convenience for me rather than any real inability to make a read. Just saying.

The rules are simple: I made it fit onto one standard-length (80 minute) CD, I picked the songs I liked most from this year, one per artist, and I didn't put them in any particular order (save the first track) other than some semblance of genre cohesion.

Download RC's 2008 Mixtape Here

Track List:

-Okkervil River, "Lost Coastlines"
We'll start with the best song I heard all year - somehow, it manages to sound both sparse and lush, with perfect pacing. When the "La-la" chorus hits, it forms a perfect crescendo - unreal.

-Frightened Rabbit, "The Twist"
The best Scottish song about fucking since . . . ever? Anyone who has ever been to a bar or had so much as a single drop of alcohol can relate - and the music frames it perfectly, creating an additional sexual metaphor out of the arrangement, complete with pulsating piano line, drums as heartbeat, and orgasmic climax. The chorus - "So twist and whisper the wrong name/ I don't care, nor do my ears/ Twist yourself around me/ I need company, I need human heat/ I need human heat" - leads directly into a sort of mid-song denouement that sort of makes me poop myself. Amazing - I think I actually lived this song in the last year, which is both amazing and frightening. I'm mostly kidding by the way - feel free to laugh at that.

-The Gaslight Anthem, "Great Expectations"
The proliferation of "emo" as a genre has opened the door to a new emphasis on mainstream music with emotional ties . . . and these Jersey greasers manage to fuse Springsteen to the northeast punk/rockabilly tradition in the process. Who would have thought we'd be better off because of emo?

-And the Moneynotes, "My Kid Smokin'"
I have no idea what to do with these guys as a group, but this song is balls - featuring by far the best chorus of the year. Try not to sing along . . . especially when we all understand that "bros before hoes" (or the female equivalent) often isn't just a cliche - it's an admonition that perhaps mistakes were made.

-King Khan & the Shrines, "Welfare Bread"
So I put the two bands that sound fresh out of the Big Lebowski together, but in reality, they couldn't sound any different - this one is a massive Indian dude pretending to be Jerry Lee Lewis, kind of. Hilariously, I wrote up an entire note about the track "Torture" off the same album . . . not important. Seriously, this song makes me feel like The Dude, to the point where I'm ready to have a White Russian even though it's not even 11am yet.

-Four Year Strong, "Catastrophe"
Yeah . . . this track is pretty much what you'd expect from a guy that owns every single Less Than Jake record (me). How many people in your life would be best described as "Such a catastrophe"? I'm guessing more than you'd care to admit. College rock: not just for people in college?

-Of Montreal, "Id Engager"
There's always that point after a breakup, especially on the 'dumped' end, where you walk outside and the sun shines in just the right way, and you start to feel confident again, like you're a predator and every girl at the bar is made of slow, drunk meat. That's this song - arrogance and confidence and opportunity are the currency we're dealing in. Also it's the only track off Skeletal Lamping that doesn't include overt references to black crossdressers, so there's that too.

-The Black Ghosts, "I Want Nothing"
Yeah, I have a little bit of a problem: electronic music. I try to hide it, but it slips through - it's painful and nerdy, but I have a little Eurotrash in me. However, not only is this a great song, it's the opposite of 'club-ready' - rock without guitars. Another song about being a cold-blooded killer, with the backbone to back it up. In fact, this is what the Killers always thought they would be, post-Mr. Brightside.

-Atmosphere, "Shoulda Know"
It's almost obligatory at this point. Sometimes you follow a band so religiously you start to feel like you "know" them - I forget that the Slug I hear is really a cardboard cutout, an image. Still, I feel like an old friend, so I do what I do to all my old friends: listen, then ignore his advice. Standard. Doesn't change the fact that I should have known better - nor the fact that I really don't care, even in retrospect.

-Deerhunter, "Never Stops"
The sound of floating through something you're not sure you really want to do - whether I'm at my desk or in an airport or riding in a shitty cab to an annoying hotel, this track is it. "Haunts my days" indeed - I have a tendency to pretend I'm facing life head-on because I do things like 'listen to this song in the airport' while I neglect festering real-world core-group issues . . . in a weird way, Bradford Cox taught me how to stop pretending (sort of) and learn how to pretend better (kind of). That has value.

-The Electric Dream Machine, "Dayman"
Literally the greatest thing that has ever existed ever, no hyperbole.

-Bon Iver, "Skinny Love"
The sound of an outpouring - the song is a straight blood-letting, the best track off the saddest, most pained album of the year. I won't even pretend - I went through an awkward breakup early in the year, and this album was a total beating, seemingly made of jagged, sharp ice and insecurity . . . however, it's one of those brilliant pieces of art where I feel like I learned something even as I wanted to die. The "m-my-my, m-my-my-MY-my" chorus makes you shake your head in the same knowing fashion as it was intended, then the hammer drops: "Told my love to wreck it all/ Cut out all the ropes and let me fall . . . "

-Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin, "Some Constellation"
My all-time favorite song is probably the version of "The Orchids" done by Califone. This song almost gets there, but with a sunny disposition (and a shockingly depressing subject). Oh yeah - and the worst band name in history too . . . holy shit guys, who thought this was a good idea? Good weed in Portland, apparently.

-Let's Wrestle, "I Won't Lie To You"
Sparse, rough, fun British rock - straightforward and smart. Party on, sad guy - Everyone can relate to something like "I won't lie to you/ I can't see that things are getting any better." I'm getting a stern look from a few of my friends right now, I can feel it - hey, I'm working on it, OK? Holy balls. You guys are dicks.

-Titus Andronicus, "Titus Andronicus"
Jersey kids who sing like Bright Eyes playing literate, scuzzy rock? Obviously, sign me up - the combination works more that well enough to overcome my annoyance at a song with the same title as the band. Imagine if, like, ABBA or Bon Jovi did this? Actually, I think the Village People did . . . then they got AIDS. Maybe I shouldn't have included this track.

-Lykke Li, "I'm Good, I'm Gone."
So yeah, she jacked "Working in a Coal Mine" - she's Swedish, it's allowed. While this seems like a weird transition from the previous track, it actually makes quite a bit of sense when you listen to the lyrics to each - although I'd much rather have sex with the latter (um, the latter performer, not the lyrics - hi English degree!). She's already an indie-geek sex symbol . . . given the raves about her live performance, a mainstream break seems likely in her future. You heard it here like 10,305th.

-Cut Copy, "Hearts on Fire"
The cheesy "Night at the Roxbury" vibe perfectly frames the song, a backdrop that gives it much more meaning than a track built from its parts would normally carry. The cheesy saxophone in the last third just blows it up when the bass drops back in . . . I secretly want to be Rod Stewart, and this song makes me shake my ass like I'm rich enough to not have to worry about looking like an aging douche.

-Dizzee Rascal, "Dance Wiv Me"
The most charismatic man in hip-hop (he can't really be considered 'Grime' anymore) breaks style to give us the closest thing to a club banger he's ever had - but it's much better suited for the car, or changing up your DJ sets while drunk, because singing is tech. An earworm of catastrophic proportions.

-TV on the Radio, "Golden Age"
The best single from the best album of the year (OMG foreshadowing!) - and a little treat for anyone who actually listens to the CD to the end, since the end puts the toe-tap upbeat shit all together. Total scam, I know.

-Santogold, "L.E.S. Artistes"
A completely un-ironic dressing-down of the Lower East Side crowd that, somewhat ironically, probably helped break her album. Douche bags are douche bags, no matter what.

-The Cool Kids, "88"
As the best things to happen to rap since Clipse got introduced to blow, the Cool Kids tear shit up while bragging about middle-class life, complete with two-door Grand Prixs and a little bit of gold and pager. Two smartasses save an entire genre of music, one jacked beat at a time.

-Lil Wayne, "Dr. Carter"
Whatever. Maybe this should be "Lollipop" - OK, it should probably be "A Milli" (I mean, seriously . . . "They on some f----t bullshit/ Call'em Dennis Rodman" for real?). But there's something about this track off Tha Carter III that hits me a little harder - just listen to Weezy's semi-feigned sigh at the beginning - "Ugh, another one . . ugh!" Perfection, from the best blogger alive.

-Wiley, "Wearing My Rolex"
This ALWAYS happens to me. Totally.

I Will Not Reveal the Wu-Tang Secret

2008-12-10T22:04:00.002-05:00

So obviously my work travel (in which I added yet another tiny-town courthouse bathroom to the illustrious rolls of "places RC has pooped") ended early, and obviously I got exceptionally drunk at the hotel bar playing live poker then internet poker then live poker again, then obviously the only flight I could get on in the morning is at 7am . . . and STL is an hour and a half away. Boner.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I keep laughing about one of the greatest questionnaire sets I've ever seen in my entire life, which included the following gems:

- A young man of 23 who listed his wife's occupation as . . . "Mother." Dude, how cool would it be if women couldn't vote? I KNOW!

- An old old old man who listed his reasons for not being able to serve as "Prostate has grown - have to pee a lot." There's obviously no better way to describe that - fuck it, let's go with straight-forward. Well played, Guy Who Doesn't Pay Attention To Flomax Commercials.

- And, obviously, the coup d'grace . . . a gentlemen listed his marital status as "widower" and his wife's occupation as . . . "retired." Apparently, permanently. Survey says! "Synonyms for Repose"! Sweet!

Moral of the story: the average person is markedly more stupid than you expect. You think it's bad? It's worse. Way worse. I now must retire for the evening, to the awkward sounds of tears from my non-existent spouse, who will be briefly widowed until I wake up at some retarded hour to drive to St. Louis. Life sucks - be prepared, Joe Buck, because I plan on raping your plastic face should there be any traffic at all. I hate you, and I hate your city, and I hate Rick Ankiel.

HOLLER!

2008-12-02T15:50:00.002-05:00

So a MILF nails an incredibly awkward-looking guardsman from the middle of fucking nowhere, IA . . . and it's not even my favorite story of the past 10 days.

Of course not.

You see, getting drunk and sloppily railing a true American (weekend) Patriot? That's par for the course. Honestly, ol' Lois probably hasn't felt that (drunk and) sexy since about 'Nam - she's just reliving her glory years, blowing the entire baseball team in the old abandoned barn behind Carroll Kuemper Catholic High School. I'm cool with that - chances are, the husband knew what he was getting into before he bought the ring, and realizes he won't be doing much better. No harm, no foul, and hopefully no AIDS. I do feel bad for the kids, one of whom definitely looks in the 15-16 year old range - every single one of his friends will be bringing over a box of Franzia and trying to fuck his mom. That's kind of a pain in the ass, I'd bet. It's awkward being 16 and from Carroll, IA anyway - now imagine dudes asking for camera-phone pics of your mom getting out of the shower? FML, indeed.

Let's be honest - she may well have blacked out, she may well have not, and we'll never know the answer to that question. However, we do know there was chanting and cheering, and that's pretty fucking awesome - I love running into people doing it at the bar, and let's face it, the Metrodome has long been essentially a giant, ugly bar for Iowa fans at away games. Pride.

No, clearly the best story is Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the thigh with his own pistol. Shot himself. In the leg. In a club. With his own gun. Let's run through the specifics:

-Bringing a loaded weapon to a club? Check. (This doesn't even bother me that much, given the Collier/Williams/etc. situations - these guys are targets . . . however, I mean, the club. I'd expect a deer would want a gun if it wandered into an NRA convention, but I'm sure there were other options.)

-Holstering said loaded weapon in the elastic waistband of your sweatpants? CHECK! (note here that it is awesome to be a rich black dude - I can barely wear sweatpants around the house and not look like a total douche, but the club? Baller! Also, clearly Plax didn't take a gun class, or he'd know that you're supposed to buy sweatpants with pockets instead of jamming into the elastic. Amateur hour.)

-Gun slips out of elastic (HA) while carrying a drink back to the VIP? Oh mother fuckin' check! (Booze has done a lot to me in its time - I have injuries, I have embarrassing moments, I have burned-in memories of incredibly unattractive girls . . . but booze has never fucking shot me. Wow.)

-Reaches for gun, shoots self? Obv.

The sheer enormity of this is staggering - think of every bad decision that had to happen for Plax to cap his own ass. If, at any time, that little angel on his shoulder had whispered, "Mr. Burress! If I could interrupt, it's important to realize that, perhaps, it is not the best decision to keep a loaded firearm with the safety off next to your penis, with only the loosest of K-Mart sweatpants elastic to keep it from sliding down into the Mandingo - pardon my boldness!" then this had NO chance of happening. None.

Any time you can do something so ridiculous that it makes the connection between "drink fuckload of wine -> vanish from seat -> meet stranger -> insert penis into kidshitter" look positively linear, you're living an awkward and probably cursed life. Here's to you, Plaxico Burress - just when you couldn't be any more of a piece of crap, you raise the bar.

The Red Box Menace

2008-11-24T15:20:00.002-05:00

This should come as no surprise to anybody, but I'm a nerd. A tremendous nerd - like, just short of comic-book nerd, but way beyond hipster-geek (also note that the very fact I can use these mile markers for different genres of 'nerd' is pretty fucking lame). One area in which I'm consistently dissatisfied with my own nerddom, though, is in film - I love movies. Seriously, I'm semi-hard at a great red-band trailer, and think that the movie is really the last form of transcendent art . . . plus, I laugh at farts, so that's cool too. However, I see far fewer movies than I really should - whether it's due to work, drinking too much, women, or simple laziness (or, likely, all of the above in some combination), I simply do not make the movies as much as I'd like.

Enter: Red Box. First, full disclosure: I'm fucking pissed I didn't think of this idea myself. That's really it - the best ideas are the simplest, and every redneck on EARTH will plop down $1 at the grocery store or McDonald's to see the latest regurgitated bit of shit that Hollywood has steamed onto their chests. Unreal. However, at the same time, the convenience and affordability really represent a new media era, especially as Sony and MS race to get streaming content from Netflix onto their respective platforms - movies are proliferating. This is a good thing - unless you're an idiot like me.

See, the Red Box Era creates a problem - the simplicity means that I can't justify not renting a movie when I have a free evening. After all, I need to catch up on all the shit I've missed, and it's a fucking dollar. However, the Red Box is generally picked over and has shitty selection to start - so we wind up with my last two rentals, which may be the two worst movies that have ever existed in any form anywhere. This is not exaggeration.

(WARNING: Fuck you. Obviously there will be 'spoilers' for the next few paragraphs as I purge my soul of the two films - it will not matter, as they are seriously that bad. I'd rather watch Holocaust footage on loop for days at the National Holocaust Museum than re-watch this garbage. So yeah.)

Flashbacks of a Fool: The Only Fool Was Me

Another confession, while I'm getting all Chris Carraba on your asses: there is a significant part of me that thinks Daniel Craig is the best James Bond, and by a good margin. This is even after the mediocrity of QoS - Casino Royale was actually that good. The brooding, complicated mess of the Craig Bond seriously tops the playboy perfection of Connery, at least in a theoretical sense in my mind - obviously there's no longevity yet, but I'm just laying it out there.

So yeah - the promise of Craig playing a disturbed, fucked-up washout actor with a 'seedy secret' prompted me to think, "Hey, self - this seems like a proven winning formula, there's no chance that a character-driven movie could write itself into oblivion, right?" Yeah. Whoops.

To make a long story short: NOTHING. FUCKING. HAPPENS. EVER. Short of some epic MILF boobs while Young Lead Character goes on a romp with the horny mom next door, absolutely nothing happens. Then, when the "dark secret" is revealed, it's not only a total and complete accident that Craig's character can't possibly consider to be his fault . . . but it involves a naval mine. Like, a mine that you would use to blow up ships. Like this:

Fuck my life. I actually laughed out loud at the denouement - I mean, a ship mine? Plus, this supposedly takes place in some ambiguous seaside village circa 1975-1980 (there is a complete anachronism dealing with timeframe for the flashback - whether this is intentional is completely up for grabs, but surprisingly, this is like the 30th worst part of the movie), and where in the hell would a naval mine from like WWII wind up but on a remote English seaside? Obviously. It's the worst Deus Ex Machina since the Tuck Rule Game against Oakland.

Finally, the movie (mercifully) just ends. I mean that literally - all the sudden, it's back to modern day, and the movie is over. We have no idea if the characters involved learned anything, or whether anything even really happened. We have no real reason to tie the (fucking terrible) plot twist to any sort of realization or character arc. It just . . . stops. It's just Daniel Craig and Eve the Rapper (with her tiger-paw boobie tattoos unfortunately hidden away) driving down the Santa Monica Freeway while I sat slack-jawed and tried to choke myself to death with my bare hands. Holy shit.

88 Minutes That Was More Like 130 That I'd Like Back

I don't even have a cute lead-in story for this one - I'd read the horrific reviews of this movie, but it was literally the only thing on the entire Red Box that I found remotely interesting that night, since I wasn't feeling Ed Norton as the Hulk (note: I'm an idiot). How bad could Pacino really be?

Answer: UNREAL.

Seriously - Pacino's limp-dick 'psychiatric profiler' performance is so badly mailed in that I'd almost have preferred Frank Caliendo doing his caricature of Pacino. The story is so fatally flawed that I wanted to punch myself in the penis during at least seven key points. The transparent attempts to connect the plot holes to Pacino's doting top student (whose unrequited love is so out-of-place, I kept waiting for the 'reveal' to be that she's a Mormon on Rumspringa and can bang with impunity) fall amazingly flat, as you know it's the weird-looking chick who sucks in everything as soon as she makes the crack about the "Law school" in the first 10 minutes. Even worse, the flashback scene unfolds so slowly and lamely that it actually began to make me upset - like "FUCK YOU, just stop with the slow-wipe camera work and the half-diffused look, we know they were drinking, GOD".

Add to this the fact that somehow, Pacino is tabbed as the "prime suspect" in the murders, yet convinces cops to just let him run free for no reason no fewer than FOUR TIMES (including one at gunpoint), and that the movie tries so hard to hide the ending that it becomes convoluted to the point of absurdity, and I can't even explain to you my utter disappointment. It might be the worst movie I've ever seen. Honestly, I can't even go into any more detail, other than to say that an Al Pacino movie was actually worse than a movie whose crux involved a fucking naval mine. Should this keep up, Pacino will rocket toward the early rounds in my death pool rankings for this year - fuck, I might just kill him myself, to preserve his legacy.

On the NL Cy Young Award -

2008-11-11T17:45:00.005-05:00

As first reported by my inexplicably Mormon-loving compatriot (via Facebook, your outlet to the WORLD!), the NL voters definitely got the Cy Young right, ignoring Won/Loss records (somewhat) and going with Tim Lincecum, the only professional athlete whose ass I could probably kick. Now, the strikeouts (A SHITLOAD) sell themselves, as does the sterling ERA, but there's more to the story, as Baseball Prospectus shows us below (click to see the full stats):

SNLVAR is shorthand for, essentially, support-neutral wins above replacement - i.e. how many more wins Lincecum provided his team in an environment devoid of the Pol Pot-level frightening run support Tiny Tim received from the Giants this year. The Giants, remember started a SS opening day that had never put up an OPS above .660 . . . in AA ball. This would be the equivalent of me subbing for a chess Grand Master in a tournament, or me getting Matt Jarmon to take the LSAT for me. LOVE YOU MATTY!

Anyway, the important things to note are that, by really any objective measurement from RA+ (64% above average for Lincecum, 60% for Santana) to SNLVAR, Lincecum put up better numbers while facing approximately equivalent competition (if you haven't yet, click on the image above, and check out Opponent's OPS - now check out the guys in the AL East . . . wow). The NL East simply wasn't good enough to make up the difference in either raw or adjusted numbers between Lincecum and anybody else, but especially not Santana.

Check out Cliff Lee's numbers, though - he's the odds-on favorite to win, and rightfully so . . . hopefully, in a similar season to the NL (where the top teams' top pitchers were markedly worse than the absolute cream of the crop), Lee can pull it out in the AL, and we'll feel all giddy and progressive, like the reverse Bradley Effect from a few days ago. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just don't yell at C - he's sensitive, you know.

Post-election, pre-change: The Thoughts of a Hopeful Republican

2008-11-09T10:38:00.004-05:00

I waited to comment on the election, in the hope that the time would allow me to comment intelligently. As a huge Presidential/political dork, I hoped that I would be able to say something thought-provoking or interesting about the election. Additionally, I got involved in a moot court competition (which I did pretty well in) and school stuff, which distracted me. If the following sounds more like the rambling thoughts of an over-worked law student, and less like the intelligent thoughts of a guy with a history degree, well, you've been warned.

As most of the people who read this blog probably know, I'm a Republican. So, this election was a bit of a disappointment for me, albeit a disappointment that wasn't completely unexpected. President-Elect Obama had momentum coming out of the primaries, ran a solid campaign, and never really allowed the momentum to slip. McCain made small gains at certain points throughout the summer and fall, but as anyone who has followed the polls can attest, he never really became a real threat, and the election was all but assured for Obama.

I went through the election with some conflicting thoughts. First, I'm a huge Romney backer, a fact that should be known to most of the readers of this blog. I'm not going to go into the reasons, but, needless to say, I was extremely disappointed when he lost in the primaries. So, after researching all candidates extensively, including Bob Barr, I supported the McCain campaign. Obama is a brilliant guy, with quite the impressive resume, but after doing research, I realized that I couldn't back him with my vote.

As the campaign progressed, I became less hopeful about the direction of the election. When it became apparent that McCain was going to select a woman as his running mate, I thought that Texas Congresswoman Kay Hutchison would be a wise choice. She's smart, has a ton of experience, and could have helped to sway independents. She held a number of conservative beliefs, and was someone I could readily support. However, she is also pro-choice, and while I hope that didn't disqualify her, I understand that the far-right portion of the base couldn't support her. As we all know, McCain chose Palin, and the rest is history.

Somehow, some way, a significant portion of my fellow party members have become anti-intellectual. What began as a way to criticize Obama (essentially, the "pointy-headed liberal" argument used since the Nixon campaigns) became an attack on all intellectuals. To listen to the talk-show hosts and some of the people during the Convention (Mike Huckabee, I'm looking at you), being educated was somehow a drawback. Being educated meant that you couldn't understand middle-class and lower-class America, that you couldn't be a part of the solution, that you were part of the problem.

My biggest fear coming out of this election is that the anti-intellectual portion of my party will only grow in the next four years. That shouldn't happen. Just as the smartest guy (or woman) in the room isn't always the best candidate, the smartest guy (or woman) in the room shouldn't be automatically disqualified. The party should be embracing the intellectual conservatives. We have brilliant conservatives like Romney, Jindal, and others, who could give us a real chance at taking back the White House in 2012.

I believe in the party, I believe in economic conservatism, and I believe that we could have found a way to be more competitive in this election. I just hope the party makes the correct decisions over the next four years, so that we can be in a good position (if not by the mid-term elections) by 2012.

You Beat One Wife, And All The Sudden You're A Wife Beater

2008-10-29T16:10:00.003-04:00

Bob Nightengale, the guy known for possibly using off-the-record conversations as sources in articles, has graced us with yet another hack piece - this time, truly doing God's work in allowing accused wife-beater Brett Myers the chance to tell his side of the story. Part of this side notes that the whole thing was a giant big ol' cliched misunderstanding. Part of this side can be summed up, somewhat surprisingly, as "BOSTON WAS MEAN TO ME!"

Obviously, this deserves a dissection, FJM-style, and we'll get there in a second. First, though - it's important to note that while Boston is indeed the city that accosted Jason Kidd in the 2002 playoffs for being a, well, wife-beater, it's also the city that embraced Derek Lowe and Julio Lugo, among others. In other words, it's not exactly some bastion of anti-domestic-violence thought, in spite of the vigilant (yet mannish) lesbians protesting something 24/7 outside Marsh Chapel at BU.

Phillies' Myers puts past behind him, on and off the field

Interesting - this actually seems relatively neutral, almost as if the guy is moving on and improving his life. Maybe he's entered counseling, or perhaps he's found Jesus or Jo Bu . . . nope, turns out he's just a pussy:

PHILADELPHIA — Brett Myers still hears the taunts from the stands. He gets the obscene letters.

"I know there are people out there that think I'm a jerk. There are people out there who think I'm a wife-beater. That will never change," says Myers, alluding to a 2006 incident in which he was arrested and charged in Boston with assaulting his wife, Kim.

Seriously - fuck all those people who label me a wife-beater, simply because I . . . (ALLEGEDLY) beat my wife. In all fairness to Brett, he was never charged. That's because, in what may or may not be classic abused-wife behavior, his wife did not cooperate or press charges. However, let's take a look at what eye witnesses said at the time:

"He was dragging her by the hair and slapping her across the face. She was yelling, 'I'm not going to let you do this to me anymore.' . . . He had her on the ground. He was trying to get her to go, and she was resisting. She curled up and sat on the ground. He was pulling her, her shirt was up around her neck. . . . He could have cared less that we were there."

There's also the issue that Brett is 6'4" and 240 lbs, while his wife Kim was noted by the BPD as being 5'4" and 120 lbs. Oh - also, this happened at 12:26am on the way home from the bar . . . and Myers was scheduled to pitch the NEXT DAY, a 1pm afternoon start. This is the "When's the next time I'll be in Haiti?" of silliness. The guy only works every five days, and that's the day he gets picked up for a drunken fight with his wife? If I get in a hatchet fight the night before the LSAT, it really doesn't matter too much whether the fight was my "fault" - how the fuck did I get in a hatchet fighting zone to start?

Look, I'm the last person who will claim eyewitness testimony is all that credible - trust me, it's my job to know that eyewitnesses are notoriously poor as evidence. However, any part of that statement being true kind of invalidates his entire defense. That's a big deal. So, yeah, Brett - some things will never change. Holy shit.

"But you know what, I really don't care what people think about me. … If people don't like me, they can deal with it. This is who I am."

Now, here's something I can get behind - I'yam who I'yam, just like Popeye! Except instead of spinach, I eat shots of booze! And instead of Bluto, I beat up on Olive Oyl! And instead of a blind sailor, I'm a redneck blessed with a golden arm! If you don't like that, you can deal with it! Because if you make me deal with it, I'll punch you in the brain then drag you by the hair all caveman-style, because I don't really care what you think about me!

Also - note that this does NOT, at all, sound like "putting the past behind him." In fact, this sounds like "pretending the past never happened." But maybe he's putting the past behind him in other ways?

This was supposed to be the culmination of Myers' dream. The Phillies were in the World Series. He was as responsible as anyone, going 7-4 down the stretch after a minor league stint and winning his first two starts in the playoffs.

But he couldn't escape the fear of the Phillies' possible World Series opponent. "I did not want to play Boston," says Myers, 28. "If Boston had beat Tampa, I would have gone to (manager) Charlie (Manuel) and told him, 'I don't want to pitch in Boston.'

"I don't ever want to pitch in Boston again."

Oh. Wait. So "putting the past behind him" means "never returning to where it happened" now? Jesus - that's like getting over the death of a grandmother by never seeing another relative, ever. I mean . . . it might "work" in the sense that you'll never "cry" but I'm not quite sure you're "over it." Look, I can see why a rape victim wouldn't want to return to the scene of the crime - same with someone who witnesses a death of some sort, etc. Trauma is incredibly difficult. Brett Myers is not a trauma victim, even if his version of the story is correct and the situation was misunderstood.

Let's skip ahead and see why poor lil' Brett hates Boston so much:

Myers planned to hire bodyguards for Kim if they played the Boston Red Sox in the World Series, he says. The Phillies summoned security when she was harassed by Los Angeles Dodgers fans in Los Angeles during the National League Championship Series, says Phil Myers, Brett's father.

The pitcher, too, heard taunts as he warmed up before Game 2. Fans called out, "How's your wife?"

[...]

Yet when Myers pitched the next day [after his arrest] in Boston, he was alone. He heard the vicious chants. He says he was pelted by plastic beer bottles and trash when he warmed up in the bullpen.

"What happened to me that day in Boston, on the field, I wouldn't wish that on nobody," Myers says. "It wasn't just the boos and the things people were throwing. It was just what people thought about me. I didn't have a chance to explain. My lawyers told me not to, so I couldn't talk.

"For me to even pitch that day was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in life."

Wow.

You know what? I'm perfectly willing to cut the guy some semblance of a break, and/or forgive a particularly stupid drunken moment of his life. No man should really ever lay a hand on his wife, but obviously most of us aren't really in a position to judge. Maybe they are stubborn douche bags and sometimes it gets out of control - OK, fine.

But to act like he's the victim because his actions resulted in fans (in Boston no less) absolutely burying him? To say that no man should go through that? How inane. If you plant the Turd Tree, you're going to get shitty little acorns all over the lawn. If you then mow the lawn, there's going to be shit everywhere. It's not the lawnmower's fault.

Oh . . . Sorry About That, Homey

2008-10-28T14:33:00.005-04:00

So, my hero, Charles Barkley, apparently stuck his immensely fat foot in his mouth during a speech given to reporters:

"I think [the Knicks] have a better coach. This coach probably won't try to kill himself."

Totally sweet, Charles - this makes his crack about the Angola basketball team being a "bunch of spearchuckers" look like the Emancipation Proclamation. Seriously, I don't really even follow the NBA, but I can really appreciate a good suicide joke, especially in front of a group of New York reporters. Maybe he can fly to Indy and get some material from Tony Dungy next. I'm sure Isiah sleeps well at night knowing that the fraternity of ex-players has his back . . . actually, he probably sleeps well at night because of the thousands of milligrams of Lunesta still coursing through his veins, but it's still good to hear Charles keeping it real stupid on camera. I would watch the dude eat, or pay money just to sit in the backseat of his car one afternoon.

I'm sure Sir Charles will take a ton of shit for this, and likely deservedly so, but it's actually kind of nice to hear an athlete make a real-person crack on a guy universally considered kind of a douche. Chuck will just have to drown his sorrows by losing hundreds of thousands of dollars at the Palms, or swinging a golf club like it's a live rattlesnake.

RIP Professor Falla

2008-10-24T22:24:00.002-04:00

http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/articles/2008/09/17/jack_falla_bu_professor_sportswriter_hockey_expert/

Apparently, I've been asleep for the past couple of months, because I missed that Professor Falla had passed away towards the end of September. I know we're pretty hard on sportswriters on this site (and justifiably so), but Professor Falla was one of the great hockey writers of all time, and a tremendous writer in general.

I got to know Professor Falla when I was a senior at Boston U, and I took his 8 am Sports Journalism class. He always said that he scheduled the class at 8 am because he only wanted students who would be serious about the course. That, of course, is because he was a serious, old school journalist. He had his pet peeves (no exclamation points, for one), and he expected you to work hard at your writing.

At the same time, he was incredibly supportive of his students, and always was willing to help a young journalist. His students have become beat writers for some of the most famous teams in sports, and media relations professionals at the highest levels. If you proved yourself to him as a writer, he became your fan for life, no matter what profession you chose.

I was lucky enough to count Professor Falla as a reference for my first couple of years out of college, and I traded emails with him whenever there was a big story in sports. His impressions were always honest, always to the point, and always on the mark. I consider myself extremely lucky that he was my Professor, and that I got the chance, however brief, to discuss sports with him.

He was an incredibly charitable person, a great teacher, and and a talented writer. He will be missed, terribly. Rest in peace, Professor Falla.

Bitch, I'm a Pipe . . .

2008-10-23T10:35:00.002-04:00

If you're unfamiliar with the works of Lil' Wayne (HI COLLIN!), he's the most brilliant retard alive in America today. He's the self-proclaimed "Best Rapper Alive," and likely is indeed the best rapper alive, should such a metric actually be possible. For instance, the very title of this post is the lead-in to one of my favorite lines ever:

Bitch I'm a Pipe, she like a crack addict
Saw me cooking eggs, she thought I was back at it

Lil' Wayne also has a blog on ESPN.com. I did not know this until today, and I'm planning on murdering every single one of you for not telling me about this sooner - HOLY SHIT this is amazing. Some choice quotes:

"I know the Rays got the Backstreet Boys to sing the national anthem before Game 1, and that's gonna be something. I thought Backstreet Road was closed for construction, but I guess not. Since I went to a postseason game in Tampa, I think they're gonna boo 'em."

"T.O. is an amazing talent but he's definitely a situation. But that's another difference between the old days and now. Back then there's no way you play football and then go cry on TV."

"It ain't Brad Johnson's fault. Everything is falling apart. I think Brad came into a bad situation. To tell you the truth I think the team sucks."

And the coup de grace:

"Did you see LenDale's touchdown this weekend? His little fat self ran 80 yards. They put the timer on SportsCenter and it took him like six seconds, but he made it and that's what matters. That guy is funny."

You heard it here first, guys - Lil' Wayne proudly declares that not only is LenDale White fat (dude looks like a potato in shoulder pads), but that this is proven by his consecutive THREE SECOND 40-yard dashes to score. Hey, it ain't trickin' if you got it, Weezy. This is my new favorite thing ever.

A Single Guy's Diary

2008-10-19T14:06:00.002-04:00

So it's been a grip since I moved back to the Midwest (we like to call it "Californee-way"), and I used to do a ridiculous examination of every bad decision I made for my friends here . . . since the Boston Coalition (note: not black) is a bit out of the loop, I figure I should let the People (note: still not black) know what's happening in RC's idiotic life.

Yesterday, I watched the Iowa Hawkeyes rape face against the remnants of the Wisconsin Badger Legacy. Sconsin's coach is Bret Bielema, a former UI lineman who has a gigantic Hawk tattoo on his shin. Beating Sconsin is like oral sex - it's perfect, no matter what. I drank a sixer of tall boys before the game, so I was legit drunk from 8am to whenever I stood on my buddy's patio with my clothes off yelling "WILDCARD BITCHES!" at my buddy's crazy girlfriend. That's foreshadowing.

Anyway, I don't want to discuss every bad decision I made last night - I just want to focus on one particular moment. I managed to eat 3 "walking tacos" at tailgate, then knocked down a chicken caesar from Pita Pit on the way back from IC . . . this results in poop that looks like Gerber baby food. I was split peas all day. Shit was gross.

So obviously, instead of pooping at home like an actual human being, I waited until we got to the bar for the Red Sox game. When the dump descended, I was landlocked in the Court Ave district . . . so I committed the Cardinal Sin. I dumped in the bar.

Well, Johnny's Hall of Fame (soft "J" - pronounced correctly "Yonny's") was just gentrified (I <3 living in Richguypartoftown), and the bathroom lights are connected to a motion sensor. My poop was moving like Ice Road Truckers, so I took a little bit more time than the sensors anticipated, I suppose . . . the lights actually turned off on me. I was pooping in the dark. I would have rather been waterboarded than sitting in my own stink in the dark in the bar, at 7pm. I literally considered every bad decision I'd ever made in my entire life that led me to that point. It was a nightmare.

Since the lights were motion-sensitive, I tried to move - I waved my arms like a retard, trying to trip the sensor. I looked like this:

It was so bad that my buddies actually entered the bathroom to check on me - they could see through the foggy-glass window that the light was off. I was mocked mercilessly for my pooping fiasco, and I deserved every bit of it. Also, did not get laid, although I got naked on the 9th floor of the Plaza downtown (while screaming "WILDCARD BITCHES" as previously noted). Just another blue-sign night as a single white dunce.

When a picture is worth 1000 words . . .

2008-10-17T13:29:00.004-04:00

So yeah. By Win Expectation, the Red Sox came back from a less-than-1% chance to win the game - that's Some Good. The Sox had a 1.1% Win Expectancy when they came up to bat in the 7th - that means they overcame a 99:1 longshot inside of nine outs. Unreal. You can't even make that stuff up, to be honest.

JD Drew gets treated like Scolari in BaseketBall, even by otherwise rational Red Sox fans - whether it's because of his calm demeanor, his relative inability to smash his helmet or argue with the umpire like Youkilis, or simply because he's from Georgia and, fuck, we sent Sherman after all . . . it's nonsense, but the image of JD Drew as an overpaid, lazy malingerer is still ripe within pockets of Red Sox Nation, like some sort of intellectual SuperAIDS, spurned by the methamphetamine of newfound entitlement felt by pampered and spoiled Sox fans (never though i'd write that . . .).

Well, I wrote about Mr. Drew in the past, but I think today provides us one stat that should usurp almost every other, even after the hangover from last night subsides:

Red Sox total WPA: .608
JD Drew's WPA: .554

Yep - JD Drew's HR and game-ending walk-off "single" (NOTE: I'll never understand why a walk-off ground-rule double doesn't automatically drive in both runs like a HR would, but I digress) accounted for 91% of the total Red Sox WPA for the game. You know our (my?) aversion to context-based stats like RBI on this very blog, but over a one-game sample, I have no problem noting that JD Drew was the balls last night.

Oh, and apparently a few of our friends were among the multitudes that left early last night, missing the entire comeback. I can only imagine this is the sporting equivalent of passing out during sex, or missing your flight to Vegas, or taking the LSAT during a bachelor party - sure, you'll hear about it later, but that has to make it worse, right?

Rob Neyer chat during Dodgers-Phillies

2008-10-09T22:12:00.001-04:00

Collin, CT: Will people (i.e. baseball writers) ever appreciate Chase Utley? I mean, they're so eager to pat Ryan Howard on the back, it's almost like they miss the fact of how good he is.

SportsNation Rob Neyer: (10:09 PM ET ) That's also true. Last year it was Jimmy Rollins. This year it's Ryan Howard. But Chase Utley is the best player on the team, and I don't think it's even close.

Yeah, that's right - Rob Neyer answered my question during a chat. I'm way too happy about this.

Genuflect at the Altar of Small Sample Size

2008-09-30T13:12:00.002-04:00

Today, the Twins and White Sox will gather to play a 163rd game - a one-game playoff for the entirety of the AL Central, the baseball equivalent of the Golden Goal but minus the open racism and flopping and Brazilian dudes with one name and Hope Solo is a lesbian too. Sorry, got a little out of control on the soccer analogy. Won't happen again.

The White Sox won the coin flip (even though Minnesota won the season series), so the game is at US Cellular - undoubtedly, this is an advantage for the White Sox, as both teams show larger-than-average home/road splits (likely because the White Sox can't do anything except hit homers, and the Twins play in a fucking putt-putt course with a baggy on top). Indeed, AccuScore lists the White Sox at a 62% predicted winning percentage, white BP lists the Sox as a 57/43 favorite. Either way you slice it, it's likely that a coin flip made the White Sox a 3:2 favorite in this game. Seems pretty fair, in a Shawshank sort of way.

The most interesting part, at least for me (NOTE: I'm stupid), is how this is explained by the media. The ESPN article above completely ignores everything we know about small-sample historical stats between a specific batter and pitcher - namely, that they aren't predictive over the entirety of MLB. So when ESPN tells us that Mauer and Morneau have shitrocked John Danks (hitting .667 in 12 ABs and .438 in 16 ABs, respectively), that seems pretty impressive . . . except for the fact that it is completely and wholly irrelevant beyond the player himself 'feeling good' entering today.

Additionally, Danks has had a great year . . . except for against the Twins at Chicago. His ERA on the year sits at 3.47, an ERA+ of 132 - but in four starts in Chicago against the Twins, his ERA is 7.45. Sounds pretty rough, right? Well, it's not - in three starts against Tampa (a markedly better team than the Twins), Danks has an ERA of 1.86 and a K/BB ratio of 5.25:1. We're playing the small-sample size game here, and it's eerily similar to falling down the bar skank ladder at closing time - at some point, you're just grasping for something to entertain. There's not much to learn here.

So why the (relatively) big advantage for the White Sox? Well, let's start with the easy one - Nick Blackburn kind of sucks. Now, his ERA+ of 101 is essentially league-average, but it's really not all that indicative of how well he's pitched. His ERA of 4.14 is bolstered by what professionals refer to as a "butt load" of unearned runs, as his RA is 4.86. His peripherals state that's much closer to what his ERA should look like - while his 3:1 k/bb ratio is serviceable, he's striking out less than 5 guys per 9IP. That's flaccid, Jamie Moyer (or Raphael Palmeiro, if you'd prefer a Viagra joke) territory - and without the 'guile' or move the NL that kept Moyer upright. As a result, his xFIP is more like 4.80.

So how is Blackburn doing it? According to Guillen after his win last week, the simple answer is "luck" (I believe Ozzie actually noted that Blackburn was "fucking terrible" and "didn't have shit" as well). As much as it sucks to say it, Ozzie's probably right. It appears Blackburn has gotten a little lucky on balls in play, with a BABIP of .314 but an unusual GB/FB/LD split, with 21% of all balls in play as line drives and a whooping 45% as groundballs. This means that his expected BABIP should be closer to .340. He's also benefitted from a good number of infield pop-ups, rare for a guy with a 1.3 GB/FB ratio. He's an enigma - and he's likely getting lucky, as his past numbers and "stuff" don't seem to reflect such an extreme split. As a result, his HR/G is way low, even though an average number of fly balls are going for homers.

So what to look for tonight? Well, in short, home runs. If Blackburn can get a few strikeouts from the free-swinging Sox (Alexei Ramirez last took a walk when Fidel was still alive, and the team as a whole has more hackers than gov.sarah@yahoo.com) and continue to get ground balls, the Twins will be well on their way, even though their defensive efficiency is way down from the recent past. Most likely, Blackburn will give up a couple of longballs into the shallow corners at the Cell, leading to the soft underbelly of the Twins bullpen - a unit with the potential to get Ike and Tina'ed at any given point until Nathan comes in. I wouldn't be particularly surprised to see Nathan throw 2+ innings tonight. Hell, Gardenhire has to play to win - Nathan could actually come in at any point and I wouldn't be too surprised.

The Twins will need Denard Span and Alexi Cassilla to keep up their Prestige-like morphing into Pedroia and Drew, and get on base in front of the lefty twins - Danks shows no real platoon split nor any real special ability to be hard on lefties, so removing Kubel for Cuddyer may actually be a mistake in a ballpark where mistakes land in the gentrified rubble of Cabrini-Green.

It should be a great game, with plenty of small ball and longball to keep both me and Tony LaRussa interested until we both pass out behind the wheel driving home. God bless playoff baseball.

Great Moments in Rap History, vol. XXIV

2008-08-29T12:47:00.002-04:00

On the way in for work this morning, our local KISS FM station (note: fuck KISS FM) played an all-time classic hip hop track, truly one of the few worthy of the legacy of Rakim, Grandmaster Flash and MC Paul Barman - the inimitable "Shake Ya Tailfeather" by P.Diddy and Nelly, off the Bad Boys II (not 2) soundtrack.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT, under any circumstances, click on the link above - the video for this masterpiece is absolutely, jaw-droppingly retarded. Massive numbers of extra chromosomes. Holy shit.)

I'm sure you've heard the song - it's the classic early-2000's ripoff of basically every latent regional rap trend to that point . . . it has sirens everywhere like it's down-south crunk (even though the artists are from NYC and St. Louis), it has the bouncy, lame "fake-horn-synths" for the beat like it's B-more gutter shit (note: this same trick works beautifully in MIA's "XR2" - well, and in basically any Diplo song), it has black chicks hitting the floor, hard, throughout the video. All in all, it's the balls.

However, at the beginning (about 1:39 into the video linked above, if you're fucking stupid and clicked), one of the most perfect moments in rap music shines its light on us all. As Diddy regales us with stupid ass chatter about God knows what and the women begin (indeed) shaking their tailfeathers, Nelly lets loose with the following declaration, cleverly drawn directly to the front by the over-engineered production:

AND THE BAND PLAYED ON!

Note that there is no lead-up to this, nor any indication of why, exactly, Nelly lets loose with this particular phrase. Because of that, it's clear that Nelly is referencing the 1993 movie of the same title, a seminal HBO production describing the rise of AIDS in the gay community of San Francisco in the late '70s and early '80s (note that the IMDB plot keywords has "male nudity" as the very first one - uh, guys?).

Very clever of Nelly to interject a little bit of knowledge into a song that he knew would receive immense airplay from its ties to a cinematic marvel starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. It's that kind of knowledge injection that led us to drop the moniker Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) just five short years after the disease was discovered. For that, I wholeheartedly endorse Nelly's insane "AND THE BAND PLAYED ON" as . . . a great moment in Rap History.

Christmas in August -

2008-08-19T22:08:00.003-04:00

It's that time again . . fantasy football season! While I haven't had even thirty seconds to really prepare, time waits for no man to be +EV against his friends and coworkers, and the first money draft took place tonight. It's a $20 12-team league, mostly guys having a good time - standard Yahoo scoring with bonuses (+4 for 300 yds/150 rushing/150 receiving), the only real "quirk" being that it's QB/RB/RB/WR/WR/WR instead of /Flex - I did not know this when I made my Round 4 selection, obviously. My team:

Urbanski'sWheelchair

Round	Pick	Player	Position
1.	(7)	Marion Barber	RB
2.	(18)	Braylon Edwards	WR
3.	(31)	Willis McGahee	RB
4.	(42)	Earnest Graham	RB
5.	(55)	Donovan McNabb	QB
6.	(66)	Donald Driver	WR
7.	(79)	Anthony Gonzalez	WR
8.	(90)	Matt Forte	RB
9.	(103)	Jonathan Stewart	RB
10.	(114)	Reggie Williams	WR
11.	(127)	Philip Rivers	QB
12.	(138)	Tony Scheffler	TE
13.	(151)	Drew Bennett	WR
14.	(162)	Indianapolis	DEF
15.	(175)	Josh Brown	K

Picking #7 overall is a weird spot - Steven Jackson actually fell there, but Linehan sounds serious about his contract issues, and I couldn't really pull the trigger. I'm wondering whether this is a mistake, but even if it is, it's probably only a handful of points over the course of the season and probably reduces my variance quite a bit.

The Graham pick should likely be Calvin Johnson (who went with the next pick), since it's a 2 RB league (and he has the same bye week as my two starters) - I'll likely try to package him for a middle-tier receiver if at all possible. Past that, I think this is as good as I can reasonably expect to do in a 12-team league - if my starting receivers were Edwards/Johnson/Driver (or Gonzalez, depending on whether Marvin Harrison's knees are made of glass and/or he shot someone) I'd be ecstatic, but I can't complain too much as-is, especially since projecting WRs is basically divining-rod bullshit at this point.

I love Forte, Williams and Bennett as sleepers, especially since I was able to take them incredibly low. This opens up a TON of trading opportunities for me in the regular season, and I can try to find this season's Colston or Bowe without worry of having to drop a "real" player. It's pretty win/win from this angle.

On the whole, I think this is a great example of letting the draft come to you - especially since the Yahoo auto-pick (of which there were four in this draft) overvalues receivers in this scenario because of the imbalance, I was able to parlay some very good players at late positions. I felt like I'd just nailed the prom queen after the McGahee and McNabb picks, and even have a small (very small, like Asian small) amount of backup in case those two get injured (note: both will get injured). Essentially, I got somewhere between 2 and 3 second-round picks, and picked up receivers who may just break through with 10 TD seasons with the right breaks, even after making a terrible pick in the 4th. Life is good.

Empathy for Alicia Sacramone

2008-08-13T02:46:00.004-04:00

Brown sucks.

On a serious note, modern sports media LOVES to focus on the "gritty" individual who elevates his or her game to a previously unexpected level under the brightest lights. We often forget that the opposite happens too - sometimes people "choke" when the stakes are the highest. Usually we empathize with poor Alicia because that is soooooooooo hard, while we shit our pants over those who excel in the "clutch" (the David Ortiz corollary) . . . however, honestly, these are top-tier athletes who have practiced and perfected their respective craft over hundreds of hours. There is no evidence that certain individuals "choke" - in fact, our sample size (often one or two events) means it's much more likely that dumb luck is the biggest factor.

However, "luck" is a shitty lead for NBC - instead, we get a crying 20 year old woman. We live in a weird world - I don't think we can characterize her performance as anything other than "choking" but I'm also not sure that characterization is really all that important. I have no idea why this seems so strange to me, or why I even sat and watched Olympic gymnastics tonight (actually, yeah I do - also I was drinking with friends, but w/e), but there it is.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

2008-08-12T11:46:00.002-04:00

So I've had more time to explore this invention they call the interweb as I enjoy my whopping 3 week vacation from law school (and by "vacation," I mean working 60 hours a week as opposed to working 50 while taking classes). As a result, I've been "enjoying" Murray Chass' new blog on baseball. To the 5 people who read this blog, you remember my earlier postings regarding an email conversation with Mr. Murray Chass, the Hall of Fame sportswriter previously affiliated with the New York Times. Well, after been reading Mr. Chass' postings, I have noted one important thing: he hasn't missed any opportunity to take a dig at his old news paper.

For example: http://www.murraychass.com/?p=85
and, earlier: http://www.murraychass.com/?p=25

Now, a couple of criticisms of the Times wouldn't be such a big deal, except for the fact that it's taken up an amusingly large portion of his blog postings. Is this a case of bad blood between the newspaper giant and its former employee? Is he starting to understand the blogger's criticism of the mainstream meda? Probably more the former than the latter, but still interesting.

Manuelito: 7.5 years of being the balls

2008-08-01T04:35:00.002-04:00

Blatantly stolen from SoSH: A pictorial, Manny-style. It was a great run, my man, you're still one of the most fun players to ever watch wear the whites.

Manny for Bay: Initial Analysis

2008-07-31T17:36:00.002-04:00

Initial Thoughts on Manny for Bay:

2008-07-31T03:11:00.003-04:00

Seriously - if as reported here (or any reasonable derivation), I'll punch a midget in the face then buy a medium Snickers blizzard. Also obviously I'm at work at 2am again. Better analysis tomorrow?

Mondays with Murray

2008-07-28T14:07:00.002-04:00

It's funny that my fellow blogger RC posted about Mr. Chass below because, as luck would have it, I just received an email response from the journalist-turned-blogger. Late one night, after a few hours of studying, and feeling a bit loopy, I decided it was as good a time as any to email Mr. Chass. He was one of the sportswriters I looked up to when I was younger, so it had been a bit disheartening to me to see him come out so strongly against the numbers revolution in baseball. After all, hadn't numbers been a part of the game forever? From Babe Ruth's topping 30 home runs in the 1920s, to Cy Young's 511 wins, to the feats of the present day, baseball has been defined by numbers. You hear 3,000, 300, 755, or .400, and you know the context immediately. I talked about how many of the proponents of the numbers game were guys who had played sports at high levels. For example, Billy Beane was a bench player in the majors for a handful of seasons and Paul DePodesta was a two-sport athlete at Harvard.

So, I emailed this to the great baseball writer, and anxiously awaited his reply...

Well, to cut the suspense short, I didn't get much. He essentially repeated his disdain for the new-age numbers, saying that they cheapened the human element of the game. I obviously don't agree, but the guy was cordial enough in his email, and most importantly, I'm just some random law student who isn't going to change his mind anytime soon. I replied, thanking him for his response, and that was that.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting, and I don't know that it was even worth the trouble to send off that email. But, those of us who are a bit more enlightened can hope that things will change, and can be happy that there are sites like Baseball Prospectus, Hardball Times, and others.

Town's the Fish, People are the Barrel . . . BAM! Fish in a Barrel

2008-07-21T14:47:00.003-04:00

I know the guys at FJM have been all over this so far (and let's face it, they do it much better than any of us ever could - that's why he's Mose Schrute and I play a lot of slow pitch), but that Pulitzer-winning curmudgeon and noted hater of VORP, Murray Chass, has a new blog located at his website.

There are multiple problems with this, upon first reading. To start, Chass abhors blogs - his "about" page notes that he one time answered a question on Charlie Steiner's radio program with the succinct and loquatious "I hate blogs." Why on Earth this man would then decide he needs to blog is simply mind-bending, but there it is. Second, for the last few years, Chass has decided to identify himself more and more as an "old school" Baseball Man (R). This means he hates new-fangled statistics, choosing instead to let his ancient eyes tell him who can or cannot play. Now, this is a preference, and I won't fault the preference - but it spills over to actual anger. A lot. No, more than that. This dude is essentially the drunk grandfather we've been trying to forget for years.

Well, in his latest blog update, Chass opines for the halcyon days where any retread former player could be guaranteed a job somewhere in baseball, regardless of his actual ability to coach, manage, fill out the uniform or really do anything beyond cashing a paycheck. The subject of this virtual handjob is Don Baylor - from all reports, a good guy, and a pretty solid player in his own right. Baylor win an MVP award and a handful of Silver Slugger awards, and put up a career 118 OPS+ that puts him at 18% better than league average over the course of his career. He put up solid numbers in an offensively depressed era, and if and when Collin and I open the "Hall of Very Good" just outside Schenectady, I want Don Baylor to cut the faux-velvet ribbon.

What I don't want Don Baylor to do is coach my favorite baseball team. Murray, however, disagrees.

Let's start with the core assertions Chass makes:

Baylor is qualified to manage or at least coach
Baylor is held back because of his "strong personality"
Baylor is held back because pansy ass managers don't want him looking over his shoulder
(Insert vague race claims here)

Baylor is "qualified" to coach like I'm qualified to make out with 19 year old sorority girls - that is, his only "qualification" is that he did it twice before, and not to any great success. We're talking about a guy with a career .476 winning percentage, and whose teams finished higher than third exactly one time. Indeed, the 2nd place finish in 1995 was one of only two times in which his teams outperformed their Pythagorean W/L record (the other being his first season), and most of his teams vaguely underperformed relative to their run scoring and run prevention (although the 2002 Cubs finished a woeful 9 games under their Pythag - simply stunning).

In short, there is really no evidence that Baylor's teams benefitted greatly from his presence. Part of that might be Baylor's "strong personality," which Chass notes repeatedly in his don't-call-it-a-blog-post. Often, top-tier athletes do indeed have "strong personalities" - in fact, it is a characteristic that helps define some of the best athletes. For Chass to note it here, then, I can only draw one conclusion: Baylor is an asshole. When I'm hiring a grown man to deal with other grown men (many of whom are also assholes), I'm pretty sure "asshole" isn't on top of my list of desired attributes. I can only imagine people rich enough to own a baseball team agree, or aren't stupid enough to hire people who disagree.

Beyond that, assuming that other managers don't want Baylor looking over their shoulder, ready to pounce and steal their jobs, seems specious at best. It seems just as likely that current managers don't want a hitting coach or bench coach who a.) hasn't really been successful as a coach anywhere and b.) is likely a huge douche bag. For Chass to (pardon) chastise others for passing over Baylor seems like wishcasting more than reporting, analysis or insight.

In short - why? Why are we pining for Don Baylor, Murray? What the fuck is the point? If you'd taken more than 15 minutes to do even a smidge of research, you'd come up with multiple plausible reasons why Don Baylor isn't on anyone's radar, and probably shouldn't be. Dusty Baker destroys young arms, but at least he's gone to the playoffs in the process. I know numbers are frightening, and this whole Internet thing is making you more and more obsolete, but clinging to dinosaurs such as Don Baylor doesn't help in your drive for relevance.

Yet another 10x10

2008-07-18T15:08:00.003-04:00

Brought to you by "hangover at work," ten more record reviews in ten words or less. Life is easy.

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
Seriously unreal. Nearly flawless. Jesus.
10/10

The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
Will grow on you - expands their sound, for the better.
8/10

Black Kids - Partie Traumatic
Surprise! The previously leaked tracks are the only good ones!
5/10

Bon Iv e r - For Emma, Forever Ago
Best opening sequence of songs in history. Close to perfect.
9/10

Air France - No Way Down
Pitchfork-fueled mirage - not enough substance to overcome monotony.
6.5/10

Cut Copy - In Ghost Colors
Solid effort that sways toward cheesy just a touch too often.
7.5/10

Tapes 'n Tapes - Walk it Off
Surprisingly inconsistent - hasn't caught hold in my CD player. Weird.
7/10

Nas - Untitled
Fuck Nas. Seriously irrelevant. This guy made "Illmatic"?

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Pershing
Still the worst name in music, still a great record. (Breaking my own rule but FU: download this. It's this year's "The Orchids" - a very good thing)
8.5/10

Shearwater - Rook
I don't get the hype - way worse than Okkervil River.
4/10

And you thought you had a bad day?

2008-07-16T12:54:00.004-04:00

So they played the All-Star Game last night, a gala event that plays second fiddle only to basically every other show on network TV, at least according to the ratings. On the bright side, the game was an absolutely barn-burner (barn-burner? Holy shit, how old am I?), a back-and-forth affair that featured multiple great comebacks, amazing pitching (including 34 strikeouts), and extra innings that brought both teams dangerously close to having to pitch position players. All in all, it was likely the best ASG since Ray Fosse got fucked up like Debo in Friday.

J.D. Drew (whose real name is David Jonathan, of course) won the MVP in Yankee Stadium, which is fucking awesome - if you recall my stalwart defense of the man, you'll realize how exciting this is for me. Then again, expecting a guy to improve on his worst season ever isn't exactly Nostradamus material, but whatever.

None of this is important, and in fact Josh Hamilton made all of this irrelevant two nights ago anyway. Still, the most important storyline of the game came to us in the form of a second baseman who looked like he wanted to puke for three straight hours - ladies and gentlemen, Dan Uggla!

Uggla, never known as a staunch defender, showed exactly why when he committed errors on two straight plays to load the bases in the bottom of the 10th. The first error looked like a simple rough hop that caught him on the heel - in short, the sort of thing that happens to a dude who has hands made of stone but hits too many homers to worry about it. The second, however, basically looked like this:Basically, Uggla got Charlie Brown'ed on the second one, so badly that he actually caught a spike and fell over. Well, it wasn't so much a "fall" as a slow-motion crumpling action - when the pitching coach came out to explain just how in the shit they planned to get out of a bases-loaded, none-out situation (run expectancy: about 2.15), Uggla stumbled in with his eyes wide like Kubrick and looking like he wanted to absolutely die. His teammates did the right thing, and completely ignored him while cutting him out of the discussion circle around the mound. Perfect.

While the NL would get out of the jam, Uggla would continue by making yet ANOTHER error (for a record total in the ASG) later in the game. Now, surely this story has a happy ending, right? Surely, the guy who makes the big errors will come up in a big situation and redeem himself, right? This IS a Disney movie, isn't it?

No.

Instead, Uggla struck out with the bases loaded and 1 out in the 12th, and also left the go-ahead run in scoring position later in the game. On the whole, he was 0 for 4 with 3Ks and 6 left on base. His WPA, a measurement of the change in his team's probability to win during his at-bats, was an absolutely dismal -.634, good for worst in the game by about .300. Put another way (that isn't technically correct, but makes for good shorthand), Uggla's at-bats cumulatively made the NL about 63% more likely to lose the game. That doesn't even include his errors. Just an unreal bad performance for a guy whose father grew up in the asshole of upstate NY and wanted nothing more than to see his little boy Danny play in Yankee Stadium.

Here's to you, Dan Uggla - unless I'm beheaded in Tehran and my mom watches the video, it's safe to say I'll never have a worse day than you had yesterday. I hope you got drunker than balls and nailed any hooker that crossed your path at Bemelman's - you earned it (and home-field advantage for the AL).

RIP Bobby Murcer

2008-07-12T18:21:00.005-04:00

Bobby Murcer died today after a long battle with cancer. It's incredibly sad, and the Yankees family has truly lost one of its best.

Pretty much everyone with knowledge of the Yankees knows how beloved Murcer has been the past few years, but the funny thing is, it wasn't always that way. When he came up with the team in the mid-60s, he was seen as the next Mantle. Like Mantle, he came through the minors as an infielder (a shortstop). Like Mantle, he was moved to the outfield when it became apparent that his fielding wouldn't work in the infield.

That's where the comparisons ended, though. Murcer was no Mantle, and for a long time, it seemed Yankees fans held this against him. He never won a World Series with the team, and he never put up Mantle-type numbers. He was probably most well-known as a player for delivering the eulogy at Thurman Munson's funeral, then hitting a three-run home run that same night at Yankee Stadium, when the entire team flew back to play the game.

That's only part of the story though. While he wasn't a Hall of Famer, Murcer was a very good player, the type of guy who deserved more credit than he received. He had a handful of excellent seasons in the 1970s (including back-to-back seasons in 72 and 73 where his OBP was above .980), and ended with very solid career numbers.

No, Murcer attained his popularity as an announcer with the Yankees throughout the 80s and 90s, into the 21st century, and it was in this capacity that I got to know of him. I started following the team in the mid-80s, and I remember my dad talking about following Murcer through the lean years of the late 60s and early 70s. His voice on Yankees telecasts became as well-known as that of Phil Rizzuto, Tom Seaver, or, later Ken Singleton and Jim Kaat. He always gave well-reasoned analysis, and didn't depend on being the loudest guy in the room. He seemed to be a voice of reason over guys like Al Trautwig and Michael Kay. From all accounts, he was as good a person as he was a baseball player and announcer.

When Murcer was diagnosed with brain cancer, there was an outpouring of support. He had finally gained that appreciation that was so lacking during his career.

So it is that today, we mourn the death of a Yankee. My thoughts go out to his friends and family.

CT You Next Tuesday

2008-07-11T15:21:00.003-04:00

Surprise! People who live in Greenwich are fucking dicks!

In the interest of full disclosure and Megan's Law, I'm required to tell you that I play whiffleball about 20 times a year. It's one of God's gifts - it's the only place where a limpdick noodlearm like me can strike out 22 dudes per game, it's one of the top 10 best beers you'll ever drink (it's below Concert Beer, Patio Beer and Tailgate Beer, but above Awkward Ex Girlfriend Beer and Coworker Happy Hour Beer), and if you're a lucky idiot like me, your inordinately competitive friends will apply pine tar to their skinny yellow bats. To overuse a teen meme, it's completely sick.

So a bunch of 16- and 17-year-olds got together, cleaned up a lot, decided to actually have some clean fun, and now their douchey neighbors in Greenwich want to boot them. These kids could be shooting heroin, fucking homeless people, or playing Grand Theft Auto 4 to do both - it's definitely important to keep them from playing whiffleball ON AN ABANDONED LOT. ABANDONED. NO ONE FUCKING LIVES THERE. I AM ANGRY.

Well, maybe the neighbors have a good point - let's see what Whiney McRichcunt has to say about it:

Oh. Never mind. Her objection is that kids should stop playing sports when they're twelve? Yes, young Eldrick Woods, put away the putter and start practicing for the CPA exam, you immature asshole. She's pissed because these kids should respect authority? Now, I know Cobwebs DeDirtybox has likely never heard of Tinker v. Des Moines, and I'm 100% sure she hates black people, but for fucking real? Who is the authority for the vacant lot? Some 95 year old neighbor? Come the fuck on.

I would have beat a child to have a field like this to play on as a kid. Maybe I only grew up semi-rich, removing me from the context that allows you to be a self-aggrandizing fuckface, but this is simply amazing to me. These kids have to explain themselves to a neighborhood association? That is absolutely insane. Just for these kids, I'm going to pour a little out for my homeys this weekend, then strike out dozens of batters looking with that sick rise ball.

Sorry, Collin - your state is fucked. Greenwich, you're terrible, and I hope you get Sherman'ed like Savannah. Viva la revolucion.

Gotta love it -

2008-07-07T22:37:00.003-04:00

Just a minute ago, the following exchange happened on ESPN's Baseball Tonight post-game:

Steve Berthiaume: "I don't even think you're really a Red Sox fan - you just like to complain."
Buck Showalter: "That's not what this show is for - that's what blogs are for."
Eric Young: "Message boards?"
Showalter: "Blogs and message boards, that's what they're for."

Now, notwithstanding that I heard this as I browsed SoSH's game thread and various off-topic posts containing stark nudity, I thought this was absolutely hilarious, and probably more true than we give it credit for. Since I can't just leave it at that, I'll give you this:

.118/.228/.176 (.404)

If you're playing along at home, that's (AL All Star) Jason Varitek's line over the last 28 days (68 ABs). Punch me in the dick, and expect a longer, whining post about that later.

Coming at you live from my parents' basement

2008-06-27T23:43:00.004-04:00

In case you didn't know, this is Will Leitch's last week at Deadspin (if you haven't heard of Deadspin, you're probably not reading our blog). The week included a series of retrospectives and, perhaps most surprisingly of all, an interview with Buzz Bissinger. You should read the interview for yourself, because it gives an excellent idea of 1) the debate between bloggers and the mainstream media and 2) just how big of a jerk Buzz Bissinger is after all.

I wanted to share a few thoughts on that first topic; I'm by far not the first person to share these thoughts, and they may not sound that original. Bear with me though...

In my mind, there seem to be a few very real issues that keep the mainstream media from truly accepting the new media in sports reporting:

1) The delusion that reporters = athletes: This seems to be one of the largest issues. If you talk long enough to a mainstream media member, they'll mention the word "access," and how it makes all the difference in the world. They'll usually say that, since they're the ones in the locker room, they're the only ones who know the real deal. If you listen long enough, you'll get the idea that the reporter thinks of himself or herself as a part of the team, in some strange sense.

The funny thing about that is, most pro athletes have a healthy disdain for the media. Reporters are invaders into athletes' personal space, whether that's on the field, in the locker room, or out on the town. Sure, you have guys like Stuart Scott name-dropping their athlete "friends," but it's by no means a mutual attraction. At best, this "access" simply results in clouding the judgment of supposedly unbiased journalists.

2. The idea that bloggers are some losers in their parents' basement: While this stereotype has become laughable, at best, one has to wonder about those who stick to it. The bloggers I know are well-educated, intelligent people who have day jobs, and do this as a hobby. Take this blog, for instance; you have an econ major, a consultant, and a law student as the three primary posters. Firejoemorgan.com includes a Harvard grad, and a group of successful TV writers. Deadspin is run by successful writers, one of whom is leaving for a pretty good editorial position. We're not talking about the dregs of society here, but intelligent, motivated people who have found an outlet for their love of sports.

3. Throwing profanity in the face of bloggers: One of the points raised by Buzz Bissinger, both in the television segment and the recent interview with Will, is that blogs have too much profanity to be taken seriously. Michelle Tafoya raised a similar point on ESPN Radio just after Bissinger blew his top on HBO. These comments are interesting; I would invite any of those critics to read the comments on ESPN.com, any story, any day of the week. Do they think those comments reflect badly on ESPN? If not, then what's the difference?

Additionally, if anyone took the time to read the comments on a site like Deadspin, one would find some very clever thoughts. Aren't we adults here? Can't we overlook some adult language?

I'm not expecting things to change anytime soon. Both sides have dug in their heels, and the mainstream media doesn't seem too eager to welcome the new media with open arms. For every Bill Simmons that manages to cross over, there is a Buzz Bissinger ready to slam the door. We can just do what we can, churning out thoughtful blogs, and hope that the Luddites catch on eventually.

Some thoughts on the NBA Draft

2008-06-27T13:13:00.003-04:00

So, I'm generally a casual NBA fan; while living in Boston I started following the Celts, and went to a bunch of games, so that's about as close as I come to following any one team. That said, here are some thoughts on last night's draft:

1) Stuart Scott should never be allowed in an unscripted situation again. During past drafts, his interviews with the new draftees have been awkward, at best, but last night was just painful. He looked like he was really stumbling over his thoughts, and he misspoke a number of times. Maybe it was all the more glaring because I remember Dan Patrick, and how well he did as a host, but ESPN should find a replacement for next year. The rest of the panel was ok, and was pretty much carried by Mark Jackson, who did a solid job (as always).

2) If I were a Nets fan, I would be hoping and praying every night that the team lands LeBron when he hits free agency. Otherwise, this whole gutting of team was in vain. They had a pretty good draft (Anderson will be a good scorer, and, against my better judgment, I don't think Brook Lopez will be terrible), but it's tough to defend the Jefferson trade.

3) It's nice to see that Portland has turned things around, going from the Jailhouse All-Stars to the up and coming team in the West. Adding Bayless to Oden and Roy is pretty incredible. They're like the Devil Rays of the NBA; they know how to use high draft picks and are developing quite the young core.

4)Miami did a great job as well; Beasley gives them a good #2 scoring option behind Wade, and Chalmers fits a need as an extra point guard. When Marion leaves as a free agent next year, they can throw money at Carlos Boozer. As long as Beasley doesn't do something stupid in South Beach, things should be fine.

5) Last thought; why is Dick Vitale on the draft coverage? The draft has turned into, for the most part, underclassmen. Vitale constantly rails against anyone leaving before their senior year. Doesn't sound like much of a match, and it turns into at least one venting session where he criticizes the whole process.

Anyway, that's it. I can't wait until next year and the discussion of A.J. Price's character issues.

FATALITY!

2008-06-26T11:28:00.002-04:00

In one of my favorite moments, well, ever, RHP Shawn Chacon did what every Phillies fan has wanted to do for years: he pretty much beat the piss out of General Manager Ed Wade. Basically, Chacon had sucked - a 5.04 ERA and 1.51 WHIP with a 1.2:1 K/BB ratio defines "suck" - and was upset that Wade and manager Cecil Cooper had the gall to move him to the bullpen, where he was markedly better last year in Pittsburgh. I'd be pissed, too, if management decided to put me in a much better position to succeed (especially when they're paying me $4 million for the right to suck). Right on, Shawn!

Here's how the man himself described the situation (from Baseball Musings):

"He started yelling and cussing," Chacon said of Wade. "I'm sitting there and I said to him very calmly, 'Ed, you need to stop yelling me. Then I stood up and said 'you better stop yelling at me.' I stood up. He continued and was basically yelling and stuff and was like, 'You need to (expletive) look in the mirror.' So at that point I lost my cool and I grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground. I jumped on top of him because at that point I wanted to beat his (butt). Words were exchanged."

Players quickly intervened to separate Wade and Chacon, who remembers being pulled away by backup outfielder Reggie Abercrombie.

Baseball aficionados will note that this is the first outfield assist Reggie Abercrombie's had all year - seriously, the dude sits while Michael Bourn puts up an insane .234/.289/.317 line that doesn't even earn a Jason Bourne joke this early in the morning - but even more important, look at the chain of events according to Chacon:

1. I'm calm
2. I'm calm
3. He's a dick, but I'm calm and stand up.
4. Still standing, still calm.
5. I attempt to kill a man.

Now, there's a fantastic saying in my line of work, related to the horrifying inconsistency and unreliability of eye-witness testimony - the classic "three sides to every story" line, about your side, my side, and the truth. However, Chacon's version of events absolutely makes me giggle to such an extent that I can only pray it's the exact truth - an old, douchey white guy screaming at a grown man earning millions, who pulls a motion-picture glare and warning before dropping the dude? This is why sports are awesome.

Ed Wade is legitimately a terrible GM - I mean, seriously - although his recent moves with the Astros have seemed moderately inspired, given the Astros' awful ownership mandate that they were indeed a contender when almost no measure agreed. In fact, I think he likely deserved an ass kicking, if for no other reason than the fact that he gets jobs over and over again while talented people like Kim Ng are left toiling as assists simply so the "old guard" can recycle the same shitty names over and over again.

However, to have a player listed at 6'3" and 200 lbs. drop the man over a demotion to the bullpen is just unbelievable - it's Latrell Sprewell all over again, but moving into the front office. Unlike Spre, I can't imagine Chacon will ever get another shot to play - after all, Sprewell was actually something resembling an elite talent at the time, while Chacon may define "fungible" - but this sets a new tone for clubhouses everywhere. Closed-door meetings will have beefy security guards, and office doors will be locked. Combine this with Milton Bradley attempting to attack an opposing team's announcer, and you're not even safe if you work upstairs. Stat nerds, beware - you might be able to statistically prove a player sucks, but don't say it out loud (or on a blog) or your ass will be choke-slammed.

This is, coincidentally, why the Blue Jays now cannot trade for Adam Dunn either way - he'd tear Ricciardi limb from limb. Now there's a limited no-trade clause.

A breath of fresh air...

2008-06-24T15:23:00.003-04:00

So, this isn't such a groundbreaking statement, and the fact that Chad Ford (who is extremely intelligent) made it, well, that's not surprising either. But, here is something Ford said in the Sports Guy/Chad Ford Mock Draft today (http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/draft2008/columns/story?page=DraftDebate-080624)

Ford: Yeah, that guy. No offense to the Page 2 VP of Common Sense, but common sense is seriously overrated. Maybe it's all of the college classes I'm teaching, but I've noticed that time and time again the pick from the "gut" is just wrong. Most people let emotion and years of blinding worldviews get in the way of the more analytical choice.

I know we think our guts are right. But that's because of something called cognitive dissonance. Once we make a choice, we have to convince ourselves that it was the right choice. So we marshall all the evidence that supports our choice and ignore everything that doesn't -- which is why now you're waffling on the Durant over Oden pick.

I'm not saying that stats have all the answers. But Hollinger's system outperforms NBA GMs every year. And he predicted, correctly, that Adam Morrison would be a bust.

Pittsburgh's Finest (not Iron City beer)

2008-06-23T16:58:00.002-04:00

Late last week, Girl Talk released his fourth proper album and the follow-up to minor smash Night Ripper, a genre- (and potentially law-)bending reinterpretation of pop music that ranked somewhere between "OMG" and "OMG Just Pissed Myself" on my list of favorite albums of all time. Anyone paying any attention to music probably knows by now that the record is in the same vein as Radiohead's In Rainbows, in that Illegal Art and Girl Talk are allowing people to name their own price.

While I'll give a brief review (I'm sure you can guess that I'm down with it), the truly amazing thing about the album is that Greg Gillis, the man behind the awful teen game moniker, finished mixing the album on Tuesday and his label had it up on the web ready for purchase on Thursday. The proper physical release is scheduled for September of this year - an amazing change from the usual music industry meme of carefully planned releases, A&R bullshit, and extensive (poor) advertising and placement on MTV or Grey's Anatomy.

The ability to go directly to the fans and bypass any price or positioning issues by effectively giving the music away for possible donations represents hope that the music industry might be taking off the Corky Thatcher glasses and moving into the 21st Century (or, at the least, the mid-90s). The rise of digital media, file sharing, iPods and even Pandora has punished the music industry, and the current state gives someone like me, who purchases somewhere between 100 and 200 albums a year, absolutely zero incentive to purchase a physical album. Moving distribution to digital (especially when lossless audio technology like FLAC encoding can be utilized to satisfy even the most dickish basement-dwelling audiophile) not only staunches the bleeding, but it should more effectively and efficiently play to the actual target of non-mainstream music. Well done, Girl Talk (and Illegal Art), and we can only hope others carry on in this vein. Radiohead may have truly changed the world, and not just through the annoying quasi-intellectual girl at happy hour who can't WAIT to break down Thom Yorke for hours while I wait interminably for a shot to have mediocre sexual relations.

As far as the album goes, it doesn't bend the mind the way certain elements of Night Ripper did, but it does show some expansion or growth of the genre. Again, the ephemeral and borderline-salacious elements of pop music are tossed in a blender and served cold - every type of cheesy pop is on display, from Thin Lizzy to UNK and everything in between. While Night Ripper played flawlessly as a "DJ set" from track to track (in fact, the listening experience is MUCH more enjoyable taken as an album instead of individual tracks), Feed the Animals shows much different pacing from track to track, giving some different moods and looks to the entire arrangement. It's subtle, but the formula is a little more broad than "rapping over a beat lifted from a '70s karaoke staple" - and it's a welcome shift.

Of course, the "Eminem rapping over that Yael Naim song from the MacBook commercials" parts are still pure, bizarre fun - a great summer album, and a more-than-worthy successor to Night Ripper. Plus, you can pay literally anything you want for it - if it's not worth your $2.50, I'm not sure what to tell you, other than it might be time to pick up a bartending job or something. Seriously, the economy's rough, there's no shame.

Download:
Grizzly Bear - The Knife (Girl Talk Remix)

Rebirth (but not the gross kind)

2008-06-20T00:46:00.006-04:00

Summer is rough - for instance, I tend to actually gain weight during the summer (even though I play a sport of some sort literally 6 nights a week), because patio season equals drinking, and everyone always wants to go out. This naturally leads to "blog fatigue" and fewer posts. Shit.

Anyway, I'm going to kick it up a bit, because the jury business goes dry until August, and presumably Deuce and Ryan have, like, stuff to do. Slack-picking-up becomes an art at some point.

I will do a full-on review of most of the best music from the first half of the year soon (hint: Bon Iver, good), but two recent releases tore me in such completely opposite directions that I thought it was best to go all "3-beer emo" on the blog.

Today, nine songs from the long-awaited Chinese Democracy album were leaked - and while demos had leaked for years . . . and years . . . and holy shit, years, these were complete, mastered tracks. Of course, Geffen has now put 14 years and just a shade over $10 million into the album, so the leaks were quashed early and often (including zShare links dropping like The Happening, with the same amount of derision and laughter). This is, of course, longhand for "why there won't be a link here" (but feel free to drop me a line and we'll talk) - but still, for those who got a listen, something incredible happened.

It's actually . . . kind of good.

Believe me, I don't want to play any sort of hipster card here - my daily life muddles that message enough as it is - but I simply did not expect anything resembling relevant music from GnR at this point. To me, Axl had become that annoying girl from high school who runs the reunion committee and really REALLY can't go away without contact information and a brief rundown of whether you'd prefer a potluck or a barbeque. Honestly, I expected a National Treasure-style "all signs point toward relic" re-washing of the past.

Instead, the leaked songs are stunningly relevant. Axl Rose's vocals even stand up, slightly, and the revamped production keeps the best parts of '80s/'90s cock-rock while expanding the sound just slightly so that I don't want to hang myself with my Death Cab t-shirt. Granted, I'm not saying Chinese Democracy will be making any of my top-whatever lists at the end of the year, but the impression remains - and impressed I truly am.

On the flip side, the Silver Jews released a new album this week as well, titled Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. David Berman is one of the underrated songwriters of the past 20 years, holding up well to similar and now-appreciated artists like Jeff Buckley. Now, I'm not exactly exuding credibility with that sort of commentary - it's somewhere near "you know, Bob Saget's comedy is really actually dirty!" on the scale of "shit everyone knows but people feel special sharing" scale - but this appreciation is rooted in an overriding, nearly crushing depression that becomes latent in the Silver Jews' past works. The new album pulls a neat trick, though - it's hopeful. Sort of.

Berman has overcome things I can't even fathom - drug addiction, failure, destitution, the full nine yards of music cliches. However, the key to great music is telling an old story in a completely new way, and Berman succeeds by tinging the happy songs with a wonderfully dark corollary - that sometimes, happiness leads to sloth, to laziness, to failure. This all comes on the heels of two amazing Silver Jews albums (American Water and Tanglewood Numbers), as well as a recovery from multiple addictions and renewal in his marriage.

I'm not going to deconstruct either album any further - this is long as it is, and obviously the latter album likely deserves its own post. However, I thought the juxtaposition was amazing - a colossally overrated band leaks a stunningly relevant album just as a criminally underrated band releases a mediocre album about the dangers of success. Everyone can relate - I know that some of my worst times have come on the heels of great (and usually easily gained) successes, via sloth or similar. Not to beat the dead horse further, but this is exactly the M. Night Shyamalan trajectory (other possible titular characters: Kevin Maas, Ted Kaczynski, Brett Ratner, Sean Daley, really just tons of names).

I would have never thought that I would like the new GnR album more than the new Silver Jews album. I'd never guess that getting happy would slide Berman's music into the "meh" category like that terrible Old Spice commercial. And who would have thought that Axl Rose, of all people, would flourish in the face of crushing expectations (and his own excess)? Beyond this, in a very specific way, Berman called his own shot. Not in a "oooh I live in Brooklyn and drink PBR and oh, it's 2004" sort of way - it's not meta-irony at all. He's singing about the shit that actually happened. Even beyond this, his album is destroyed by a dude who released The Spaghetti Incident - just a bizarre day, to say the least.

Maybe I allow irony to play too large a role in my daily life - however, I was mind-bent today, and sometimes that's enough to spawn 600 words and a bump on the Google lists. We gots to get paid, son.

Reputations and Rumors

2008-05-03T22:37:00.002-04:00

Apparently Marvin Harrison has been questioned with regards to a shooting that took place last week (see http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3378829). The circumstances involve a bar that Harrison owned, and reports are rather sketchy at the moment.

The story is big news, perhaps most significantly because of Harrison's public reputation. In a league with outspoken players like T.O. and Chad Johnson, Harrison was seen as a quiet superstar, someone who went about his business without any showy public displays. He didn't say much, and we, as fans, celebrated him for it. Whether that public persona hid a darker personal life is now up for debate. The story at espn.com talks about an alleged choking incident at the Pro Bowl, and the internet is filled with rumors and whispers about other issues.

I have always found it interesting how public figures shape their reputations. How is there such a difference in perception between a Pacman Jones and a Leonard Little, an Albert Belle and a Kirby Puckett, etc? How does a John McCain gain a maverick image while still building a conservative record? How does an Elliot Spitzer become a crusader in the governor's office, while keeping secret his sordid love life?

As I've probably said about a dozen times on this blog, I used to be a member, however limited, of the mainstream media, on a local paper, and I received one of my degrees in print journalism. I was able to meet and interview a number of public figures, some extremely friendly (Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra, Chris Berman, Bob Ley, Dan Patrick, Bronson Arroyo, Rob Dibble), and some not so friendly (Stuart Scott and Keith Olbermann). I know people who have worked for prominent political figures, who have told of both great and terrible experiences.

I'll be the first to admit that my experience is rather limited, but if it's taught me anything, it's taught me that someone's public image doesn't necessarily equal their real personality. Maybe that's true of Harrison, maybe it isn't. It's something to think about, though, as more details of the story unfold.

Finally: this is somewhat off topic, but everyone has heard Buzz Bissinger's comments by now about blogs, and his shameful performance on HBO. I have to say, I'm more than a little disappointed in Bob Costas and his apparent plan to trap Will Leitch. I'm continually surprised at how the old school media contingent continues to turn their nose up at anything new, whether it be the internet, statistical analysis, or anything else that threatens their iron grip on the sports they cover. There are some great reporters out there; I was lucky enough to have professors like Professor Zelnick and Jack Falla, who have embraced the new age of journalism. It's a shame that more of the old-school journalists can't see the writing on the wall.

One year ago

2008-04-25T09:49:00.003-04:00

A year ago today, at around 6 in the evening, my wife and I were running errands in the Hartford area when a drunk driver (going approximately 70-75 miles per hour) crossed over the center line and hit us head on. We were pushed backwards, and were hit again, on our passenger side by an SUV. We had to be cut out of our vehicle, transported by ambulance to a local hospital, and endured months of physical and emotion rehabilitation that, unfortunately, has not completely cured us. The experience is one that we will live with for the rest of our lives. Were it not for the fact that we were in an extremely safe car, I shudder to think what could have happeend. Doing absolutely nothing wrong, my wife and I were almost killed that day.

If you read this blog or contribute to this blog, I tell this story as a cautionary tale. If you drink, don't drive, and if you have are with someone who is drinking to excess, be a friend and be the designated driver. Taking a chance isn't worth it, and even if you don't hurt yourself, you could hurt or kill someone else.

Coming to you live from New England's Rising Star...

2008-04-02T10:31:00.002-04:00

So, a couple of quick notes:

- For the first time, yesterday, I was a caller on a sports talk radio show. When I got to campus for class last night, they were talking about parity in baseball on "The Back Page with Jason Page," a local show on ESPNRadio. Now, the discussion wasn't Cowherd-esque (saying loud incorrect things with no basis), but he did make a pair of bad points:

1) Only 2-3 teams have a reasonable shot at the World Series; and
2) The Giants are in trouble because of a lack of finances.

I felt the urge to call in because both of those statements are ridiculous; there are more than a handful of teams with a shot at the World Series, and the Giants are in trouble because Brian Sabean gives over-the-hill veterans long expensive contracts. I was all ready to debate him to the death on those topics, then remembered that I'd get 90 seconds of air time, tops. Basically, I tried to say as much on the air; to Page's credit, he let me talk for a while before loudly interrupting me. However, my phone freaked out as he was going through every major league team and asking me if they had a shot at a title. Overall, not a bad experience, and hopefully I didn't sound like an idiot to the 15 people listening throughout Connecticut.

- I'm excited because it looks like I'll be going to a New Britain Rock Cats/Trenton Thunder game in May. The Rock Cats are the AA affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, and previously the New Britain franchise was the Red Sox affiliate. As a result, I've gotten to see Jeff Bagwell, Mo Vaughn, David Ortiz, Doug "Long last name I can't spell," Tori Hunter, Bam Bam Meulens, and a whole host of other big leaguers play in the minors. This year will be fun because the Thunder outfield should include both Jose Tabata and Austin Jackson, possibly 2/3 of the future Yankees outfield. I'm enough of a baseball dork that this will be one of the highlights of my summer. Feel free to mock me starting...now.

It's Schadenfreude, Bitches!

2008-04-01T13:02:00.003-04:00

If there's anything those wacky Germans have done to make our lives infinitely better, other than (obviously) giving idiots the ultimate endgame to any online discussion, it would have to be the concept of Shadenfreude, allowing me a justification for my near-constant reveling in the difficulties, downfalls and disasters befalling others.

Well, Milwaukee fans, welcome to the shit show that is Eric Gagne circa today. While the Brews eventually pulled out the game in the 10th (War Plan Orange, anyone?), it was not before Kosuke Fukudome played Admiral Yamamoto to Gagne's USS Oklahoma,
rocking a 3-run bomb in the bottom of the 9th in his first MLB game. Fukudome went 3-for-3, accounting for all of the Cubs' offense.

The Fukudome signing was an inspired move by the Cubs, to be sure, but most projections show The Admiral (as I will now fruitlessly refer to him for about 3 weeks, until I am beaten by everyone I watch games with) as someone with about 15 HR power over the course of the season (but with great OBP - pretty much exactly what CHC needed, to be honest, which is why the signing was stunning at best). However, the $10 million to let Gagne get Pearl Harbor'ed by a moderate-power guy playing his first game against true major-league talent . . . well, that's not so much a great move. After watching dipshit have the confused look in the photo above for the Sox for a couple of months, I couldn't be any happier for the fine cheese-eating, beer-drinking, hedgehog-of-a-wife-fucking denizens of Wisconsin. Love your lineup, hate your closer, dudes - enjoy the 85-win season and underplaying your Pythagorean record by about 5 games (or, the difference between yourselves and the Cubs).

In other notes, Ben Sheets looked great, Josh Willingham needs to be on your fantasy radar if you're looking for off-the-shelf power in the OF/UTIL slots after taking Johan Santana deep (and with a solid PECOTA projection), the Giants may never score another run, trade Jim Thome immediately if you find someone silly enough to want him, and Chris B. Young is obviously on pace for 162 HRs, with a .250 OBP and nearly 500 strikeouts - and, really, only the HR number seems completely unreasonable (and not even by that much). By the way, I drafted him before the 6th round in a bunch of fantasy drafts - I would make out with the guy if I got the chance. He's Adam Dunn with stolen bases, and without hilarious quotations about being the most attractive All Star. He's the evolutionary Rob Deer, except he can actually play defense, run, whatever. It's an exciting time for Three True Outcomes devotees.

Thank God for baseball season - one day in, and I'm already stoked.

Lessons in Probability and Randomness (Courtesy of the Memphis Tigers)

2008-03-31T17:37:00.002-04:00

Everyone knows that causation does not equal correlation - you didn't even have to get a B in Statistics for Engineers like yours truly to understand and utilize this particular truth (to be fair, it was a two-credit class that was easy like Emerson sororities, and I'm pretty sure I actually skipped class during a test). I deal with correlative stats on a daily basis, though, and even I learned an important lesson while participating in perfectly legal NCAA pools this year: know the difference between "indicative" and "predictive" and how to apply correlations to sports wagering.

I found myself in an interesting quandary while filling out my brackets for this season's NCAA tournament - in every one, no matter how I did the analysis (and I did them in a variety of ways, from using basic stats to using advanced metrics to using who has the hottest cheerleaders), everything pointed toward one conclusion: the four #1 seeds in the Final Four.

This was a problem, because everyone knows that the four #1 seeds have never been in the Final Four prior to this year. Because it is such common knowledge, it's become a mantra at this point (just like picking a 12-seed over a 5 in the first round) - you never take the four #1 seeds into the Final Four, because it's never happened before. I know this happens because, even though I am basically a rational, stats-minded, in-depth gambler, I intentionally changed my bracket picks to exclude a #1 seed in this tournament (generally Texas over Memphis, although in one bracket I tried to expose a perceived inefficiency by taking Louisville over UNC - puke).

I'm not being results-oriented in claiming this was Corky Thatcher-level retarded, although that may be what it seems at this point - there is simply no viable reason for excluding the possibility of all four #1 seeds in the Final Four. Let's go through the perception, and see the issues.

First, there is really no way to support any assertions that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee shows any real inefficiencies in selecting the field, or more specifically the top 4 teams to become the #1 seeds in any given tournament. At every point in the tournament, the lower seed shows a higher winning percentage over lower seeds, from the first round on - all data shows that the selection committee, as a whole, gets it right.

But wouldn't that mean it would be incredibly unlikely to go this long without all four #1 seeds reaching the Final Four? To be blunt, no - it's not that unlikely, really. Given the modern 6-round structure of the tournament, even if a given #1 seed were a 3:1 favorite over every team it played (which seems like a fairly impossible situation), that team would only have a 23.7% chance to reach the Final Four - or approximately 1:4 chance. The variance is huge in a single-elimination structure.

That's really what the problem becomes, then - the fact that the Final Four had not been comprised of solely #1 seeds in the past should not be used as predictive - rather, it is simply indicative of the high variance involved in the tournament itself. This means you should recognize that even the better team will often lose over the course of a given six-game, high-pressure stretch, and that the tournament only gives the best team over that stretch, not over the course of the season. This is not an obtuse lesson, by the way - you can actually guide your selections using this information.

For example, Louisville was underrated by most predictions and most analysis systems because Padgett was hurt for approximately the first third of the season - Loiusville's true talent level was closer to their stats over the last half of the season, which showed them to be closer to the level of Texas than that of Pitt or Xavier. Wisconsin was underrated by most - their pace numbers and stifling defense play a low-variance game, one that is a.) well suited to tournament play and b.) subject to being derailed by a hot-shooting team. Wisconsin's matchup against Davidson was thusly terrible, while they should likely have been picked over Georgetown - that's the kind of brief analysis that can lead to much better tourney results.

At the end of the day, I shaped my Final Four picks around some flawed assumptions - namely, that I "had to" leave a #1 seed out, even when everything told me that Memphis was simply the best team in that bracket, and that they matched up well with both Texas and Stanford. Had I not, I would be in slightly better shape in my pools.

However, all is not lost - if Kansas wins, I win two pools outright (one a winner-take-all pool of the degenerates from the big opening-weekend bacchanalia) and finish either first or second in the last pool, with first place coming if the final is KU over UCLA. Why the reliance on Kansas? Well, according to some stats, KU was the best team in the nation and had the highest probability of winning each of its six games (thus, the highest EV) . . . according to others, this was not the best pick. UNC was going to benefit too much from its status as the #1 overall team in the nation, as they become a "trendy" pick among people scared of screwing up their pools and losing to people who "know more" (these fears are primarily unfounded, by the way), so I felt like there just wasn't the value in picking UNC that KU carried.

It turns out I was right - of the biggest/highest-payout pools I'm in, I'm the highest ranked player picking KU in all of them, and the champion-heavy scoring used by CBS and Yahoo! means that I'll win, even from 5th or 7th place, should KU pull it out. Now, this is definitely a flaw, but one I'm more than happy to exploit. However, I would have put a little more space between me and them had I stuck to both my gut and the stats, and stayed on with all four #1 seeds. Lesson learned.

Evan, Salty and the Business of Baseball

2008-03-27T13:15:00.002-04:00

Often, fantasy baseball and actual, real-life Major League Baseball run antithetical to each other in key (some would say foundational) ways - a simple example would be the role of defense, which is non-existent in most rational fantasy leagues, but can have a serious effect on a player's value (see: Braun, Ryan or Jeter, Derek) to a real-life team.

One of the often-ignored elements of baseball, from a media/fan perspective, is the business side of the game and its effects on the baseball operations side of things. Now, people like Maury Brown do a great job of breaking down the actual economics of the game beyond the playing field - that's not entirely the scope of our discussion here. However, the economic side plays a strong role in on-field strategy when it comes to the marginal cost of player retention, arbitrage opportunities, and projecting the economic landscape of MLB years down the road.

Us fantasy GMs carry only a small fraction of this responsibility, mostly related to keeper leagues or auction leagues, where projecting future performance versus your own likelihood of success this season can influence trades and player acquisitions. However, the real-world economics of baseball can have Chernobyl-level disastrous effects on fantasy teams if idiots like me are unaware.

One great example comes in Evan Longoria (sub req), the Rays' superprospect that BP projects to put up a .267/.339/.460 line with 25 HRs should he start at 3B for Tampa Bay's version of the Travolta sudden resurgence from the abyss. Just for comparison's sake, that .799 OPS would be slightly better than the 2007 numbers posted by stalwarts like Ryan Zimmerman and Casey Blake, and in the ballpark of Adrian Beltre and Chone Figgins. At age 22.

This would be a pretty sound upgrade for the Rays, who could then move Aki Iwamura to 2B, and count on a year's worth of improvement in their pitching staff and OF to drive them toward (if not above) .500. However, Evan Longoria will not be starting the season on my fantasy bench - he'll be starting it in Durham, playing AAA, the same place he tossed up a .900 OPS as a 21 year old last year (caveat: <200 PAs).

This is a great move for the Rays, as Longoria's service clock will not start, and the Rays can still call him in up in June and get ~400 ABs from their 3B of the future while likely hovering around the fringes of the Wild Card race. The Devil Rays will effectively gain an extra year of arbitration control, going through his age-29 year instead of 28.

Jared Saltalamacchia finds himself in a similar position - he's projected by PECOTA for a decent .269/.337/.446 line at age 23, which would fall right between the 2007 marks by Brian McCann and Jason Varitek. This would also top Gerald Laird's career line by over 100 points of OPS. However, Salty also found his way off my starting lineup, and onto a bus heading for Oklahoma City. This was under the guise of "catching every day" - but given the lack of information we have over catchers' defense, this is most likely a way of gaining an extra year of service time as well.

To be honest, these moves make perfect sense - an extra year later is much more important than the MLB-level development time now, as the next two years will not result in the next (first?) great Rays or Rangers teams. However, these two players, by virtue of being the best available option for these teams, made it well up my draft board and represented a good chance for me to make ground late in the double-digit rounds.

However, this arbitrage comes with risk (weird, huh) - the risk that the teams will actually do the right thing, and not put the best squad on the field every day. Unfortunately, teams are getting smarter (exception: Gordon, Alex) - and risks are getting bigger. This is how you wind up starting Mike Napoli behind the plate - and it's not a good feeling. Not good at all.

Pure Madness, Like "Our House" or Maybe "One Step Beyond"

2008-03-20T10:00:00.013-04:00

10:26 pm

So it's now officially a nightmare - just dead bodies everywhere. Troy's down, Jared's GONE, and life is easy.

Tony's fiance is wearing a t-shirt that says "Tri-City" on it - she explains it with "well, there were three cities in my area."

Tony notes, "What if there were two cities? Then it would be 'Bi-city' - which is awesome."

Also I added ND at -7, and JJ and TB took just about the full gamut of terrible o/u bets (UCLA over 126, Wisconsin under 136) . . .

7:15 pm

A little background: in the wayback, Brent and I both took time out of our busy schedules of not sufficiently pleasuring our significant others to dog sit for Tony and his fiance. Brent took Friday, and I took Saturday.

I had an uneventful Saturday - I drank beers with some friends, made it back to take care of the dog, fell asleep in the guest room . . . the dog, who is roughly Cujo crossed with the Indian from the Village People, can't be away from people or it shits/pisses everywhere. So, as a result, it slept across my body - it was borderline sweet, or maybe weird, I don't really know. Either way, it wasn't a problem in the slightest.

The next day, Brent called me and this conversation happened (verbatim):

B: "Hey . . . was the dog weird last night?"
R: "Well, he was a little forward - he slept with me."
B: "(sigh) Oh awesome - he was super odd with me, he was all over me."
R: "Uh, I was kidding - he just slept at the foot of the bed, what the fuck?"
B: "Oh - uh, well, I woke up with the dog spooning me. Like, he was behind me, with one paw over my body, caressing me. We were spooning."

Obviously this was the funniest thing I've ever seen - anyway, the dog just went apeshit toward Michael Beasley (RACIST OBV), and Brent laughed kind of uncomfortably, resulting in this comment:

Brent: "You don't know what it's like to make a walk of shame after the dog."

Also he's a fucking mess - he's a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West. He'll be Rumplestiltsken within the half-hour. Just unreal.

KState looks great even with Beasley in foul trouble, A&M is just puking all over itself, and WSU makes me want to abuse my pets - what an awkward evening. Tony's in full-on "press" mode - every bet is for the roll (obv a reload later).

By the way - Tony just got a little live with Brent, telling him the reason A&M isn't ahead is because the Mormons "put the orange thing in the hoop."

Well, Brent replied with "I put my little red thing in your mom's vagina over and over again, and I never won anything."

It's going to be like that, apparently.

3:56 pm

Well, Baylor can die in a fire - my plan of "fade the Big Ten" is running hot like Hindenburg. The moral? Lots of variance in sports betting. On the bright side, I accosted Tony (in the mouth, obv) in the UNLV game, and I'm approximately even on the day (minus juice, so like -$3 on the day).

Except for I'm down $20 to Brent on a sick prop bet, where I thought the black kid in the Subway "CONGRATS FOR 10 YEARS OF NOT DYING, JARED!" commercial was actually a midget (specifically, Gary Coleman) - apparently, it's just a kid. Easy mistake to make, really.

So there's that - I'll keep you updated when the bloodbath ends. Tony just tilted off his case money, taking Stanford at -15 in a desperate attempt to actually win a game. Clearly, stay away from Stanford tonight - basically, the Lopez brothers are effectively covered in AIDS.

Also, I think I'm on beer 9, and I'm leaning like a V8 commercial. I can only imagine bad things happening from this point - right now, I'm Bobby Hurley getting drafted by the Kings. An hour from now, I'll be Car Accident Bob Hurley. Which is nice.

2:42 pm

Troy might have to head home for a minute to "help pump" for his newborn - I have no idea what that even means. This started a conversation between the new dads about pumping . . . which is just great, really. It's not that it's gross, as much as I just can't imagine these two kids having children. I'm already composing an affidavit for Child Services.

Tony asked JC if he'd ever just wanted to try it himself, and if he would help pump. JC noted that wouldn't work, because "she gets milk, I would just get blood."

After a stunned silence where all eyes were on him, he asked, "wait, did you mean pumping my boob?"

Uh, no.

PS - Marquette is struggling and looking every bit as up-and-down and awkward as they have all season (JC looks like he's going to choke himself to death), Baylor is raping my face, but I've reset on the bright side UNLV is making me look like a genius. Thanks for the free money, kenpom.com!

Additionally, Tom Crean looks exactly like Dwight Schrute. This has caused an uproar of jokes, including:

-"Tom, did the other guys put all your shit in Jello molds?"
-"Coach Crean, let's form an alliance against downsizing!"
-"Ousman, which is the most dangerous bear? FALSE - Black Bear."
-"Ape and I are heading to Coach Crean's bed and breakfast this weekend . . . "

1:50 pm

Quick re-post - Brent bought McDonald's for everyone for breakfast, which is amazing because a.) he weighs 135 lbs. at 5'10" but eats garbage all day and b.) it's not Tasty Tacos, and the guy eats Tasty's like it's covered in oxycontin. Seriously, it's impressive, but in that kind of awkward-impressive way, like fake boobs or being really good at Guitar Hero.

Anyway, Brent ate approximately 50% of a steak burrito before he hit an "onion pocket" - no joke there, just follow with me - and he's been trying to pass that off on someone else since 9:45. Well, Troy, who is lovingly known as the "trashcan with legs," not only just ate it, but ate it without microwaving it.

I think he'll probably get trichinosis and die - yes, I know that's from pork. I'm pretty sure McD's steak is like 30% pork, and if it's not, well . . . Troy's got worms.

1:40 pm

WOW - What an early session . . . TB and I both took a bath on Temple at +7, who couldn't actually guard MSU's big guys in the slightest, but Xavier pulled the MIRACLE COMEBACK for the most insane cover in history.

So I split, losing the juice - the sportsbook wins again. Weird, they're good at what they do.

TB and I are playing on the same Bodog account, and wanted opposite action on UNLV/Kent State - so now the wager is on, with me taking UNLV +2.5 (so add that to the issue).

Troy showed up - he's a monster, who managed to take his Mike's Hard Lemonade starter beer and chug it in 13 seconds. Justin noted, "it took me 3 hours to drink 4 beers - you're on three in less than 5 minutes." It's the truth - Troy just had a kid too so shit will hit the fan.

JC is a Marquette fan (he's an alum, although we've never seen his actual diploma, so who knows) which means we're all painting ourselves Kentucky Blue and raping our cousins. In honor of Kentucky and Rick Pitino, I picked Louisville to go to the Final Four in a few pools, plus I'm slicking my hair back and planning on sucking like Ashley Alexandra Dupre at my next job. Also I might have intercourse with an animal - I think that's Kentucky, but also, y'know . . . Penthouse Letters.

Dan just arrived too - he has to blow into his steering wheel before he can drive. This is pretty rad - he constantly makes "wanna get some fucking . . . FRENCH TOAST" jokes, so at least he has a good sense of humor about his willingness to put his own life and the lives of others in danger. He's degen like rheumatoid arthritis, which is fantastic. Just a good dude, minus the "blow-n-go" thing.

JC just yelled, "GO UP STRONG WHITE BOY . . . YES! YES!"

Ever see a grown man cry? Here comes . . . he just claimed he "only" pouted for 6 hours last year after Marquette lost. It was more like 26 hours. He might rape a kid if this gets any worse - he's an only child. Clearly.

11:50am

And it has begun - Zima does not, in fact, actually exist any more, which was a surprise to not only me, but also the gruff old fuck I asked at the Last Stop Liquors next to the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Just so you know, it's probably kind of racist that we decided to look there. My bad. He didn't even say no, he just shook his head in a kind of sad, downtrodden, confused, "wanted to stab us" way.

So the initiation beer is now . . . "reach into a box and pull out a rando Mike's from the pick-a-mix collection of shit beers." I just finished a Mike's Cranberry - it can officially touch me where I pee.

The Xavier pick looks fucking awful - down 6 with 6:06 left in the first half. Minus one unit, apparently - however, Temple looks solid on MSU, playing some solid D. They really need to stay out of foul trouble, however.

All three games are up on the TVs just fine - we had one issue, where JC decided to follow DirecTV's instructions to "press RED button to find out more!" about AXE deodorant and the TV was locked on a fucking commercial for about a half an hour. It took the DirecTV manual, the Internet, and a little luck to get it un-stuck. His explanation? There was a chick wearing a towel on the side of the screen. Weird, married guy - who would have thought?

The lineup:
Me: Retarded.
Brent: Angry at the world, and pro-all things Missouri Valley. This is why people don't care about the Midwestern states. Just got pissed about a UPS commercial, because "everybody delivers to Portland."
Tony: Basement will soon have poop on the walls, thanks to this group of orangutans. Probably as nerdy as me, but much better at basketball.
JC: Just had a baby, so his drinking regimen has declined profusely. He likes to get naked and hide in his pantry.
Jared: Degenerate. Wearing tear-away pants. He's drinking out of a mug shaped like a ceramic boob. Like, you drink out of the nipple.

So there's that.

9:04am

So yeah - I just made a reference to two different '80s ska songs, which means today is going to be a looooooooong day. I'm sitting at my desk finishing up recommendations for a $30 million lawsuit, then I'm going to head to a semi-finished basement and yell, drink, gamble and just generally appear to be a nightmare. Meanwhile, updates will be posted here - what a country!

Last year's shitshow is up for all to see - so we're going to try it again. Why not? We've got four TVs set up ranging from wall-projector huge to airport-terminal tiny, with theater-style seating for somewhere between 8 and 25 and two Wiis set up for when UNC is inevitably the only game running at the dinner break and they're already up by 29.

My Thursday action so far:

-Xavier -8.5
-Temple +7
-Baylor +3
-KState +3.5
-WSU -9

So the countdown begins - not the countdown to the games, mind you, but the countdown to the beginning of the party. This year's initiation: your first drink has to be a warm Zima. I didn't even know they sold Zima anymore - I figured these guys were the last official Zima drinkers. Apparently I'm about to be proven wrong.

I hope it goes well with McGriddles, because G-d damn it, that's what it's getting.

Here's the track of the day to get you started:
Cheeseburger - Tiger

NCAA Tourney Starts Tomorrow

2008-03-19T18:57:00.003-04:00

Yeah, so the tournament starts tomorrow and everyone you know has suddenly started asking your opinion on BYU (my thoughts? Mormons are dead inside). Personally, I know less than nothing about college basketball. My bracket is usually just random tidbits I pulled from other sites and my own stupid thoughts such as:

-I picked St. Joes and St. Marys to upset because Easter is this weekend and Jesus has a lot running on this shit.

-I picked Duke to lose to Arizona because....well..Fuck Duke in the ear.

- I picked Xaiver to go to the Elite Eight because X's are cool man, just ask Bender.

- Finally, I picked UCLA to win it all because..... I start drinking at work early? I really have no answer. Call it random idiocy.

So there you have it, I'm no better than that annoying secretary in your office. I think RC is going to be live blogging tomorrow with a little more insight than I can provide. I will be watching from my office and yelling nonsensical gibberish at the screen about missing free throws.

Bear Stearns Shits Bed; Lehman says "That Looks Like Fun"

2008-03-17T19:43:00.004-04:00

I'm proud to say that I personally helped Bear Stearns into collapse like a nurse easing an old man into a bath. Seeing as my firm is a rather large client of Bear, we def. pulled a 1870's style run on the bank. Which was fun, even if it did lack old timey music and occasional gunfire.

The fallout of all of this is that Bear isn't the last that is going to shit the bed, and as the Fed tries to prop up our economy, the dollar is going to be worth less than whore diamonds on the Emperor Club website. This is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I hope everyone enjoys bread lines and hobo sticks.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan bent Bear over a table by buying it at 2 dollars a share (which is insane in itself as the building is worth at least 1.3 billion) and leaves us with this amazing picture from the news this morning:

Seeing that as you walk in the door to your soon to be non existent job has to be a fucking punch in the balls. Especially if you just lost half you net worth. Ain't America grand?

Fantasy Draft Hangover

2008-03-14T09:27:00.003-04:00

So we had our fantasy draft last night, and while I won't go into strategy too much (30 Helens Agree creator Mitch Kayak is another member of said league), I have to say that my draft was ok, but not as good as I would have hoped. This was the first year where I've had the #1 pick in any draft, which was a nice surprise. However, this is also the first year where I don't have a premium shortstop, which makes me a bit nervous. I reached quite a bit on Upton, which I realized almost immediately, but his eligibility at both second and in center will be helpful, and I was nervous as to the quality drop-off in second basemen after him. Gallardo is hurt, but I thought his potential value could outweigh any issues at the beginning of the season.

Overall, I should be good for stolen bases, home runs and RBI, while batting average could be an issue. Not my best draft, but hopefully good enough to win the league.

(1) Álex Rodríguez
(20) B.J. Upton
(21) Carlos Beltrán
(40) Erik Bedard
(41) Travis Hafner
(60) Chris Young
(61) John Lackey
(80) Matt Kemp
(81) Takashi Saito
(100) Rafael Furcal
(101) Geovany Soto
(120) Nick Swisher
(121) Yovani Gallardo
(140) Chad Cordero
(141) Jeff Francoeur
(160) Joba Chamberlain
(161) Edwin Encarnación
(180) Orlando Cabrera
(181) Adam Wainwright
(200) Orlando Hudson
(201) Billy Butler

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

2008-03-13T12:26:00.003-04:00

From the "Seriously? Seriously." files - it appears Astros 2B Kaz Matsui will be out for a few days . . . with an anal fissure. That's pretty awesome of Rotoworld to let us know that a fissure is "an unnatural crack or tear in the anus skin" - this simultaneously lets us know that there are, apparently, natural cracks/tears in the anus from which the fissures must be separated, and heads off any easy "DOCTOR I HAVE A CRACK IN MY ASS TOO!" jokes at the pass. Truly inspired journalism.

I can't imagine how you even approach the trainer with that one - I mean, seriously, what does that even feel like? I guess I can see how anal tearing would prevent a good pivot at the ol' keystone, sure - I just can't even imagine broaching the topic with the trainers, especially if I didn't speak English. Can you make international signs, charade or mimic something like "my anal passage is shredded" or "I'm pooping a LOT of blood, and it is frightening me"?

That's without any conjecture as to how you, y'know, tear up your anus. There is some precedent for this situation among Japanese players (note: that's a joke), but regardless, it's good to know that soothing balm is on its way to solving Matsui's "issue" . . . and while I don't want this to turn into a nature vs. choice debate (mostly because people on the "choice" side of that debate make me want to murder a hobo), I don't think it's quite fair to say this has the potential to go "chronic." Let's keep it neutral, Rotoworld - nice and neutral. I cannot WAIT for someone to draft him in any upcoming fantasy drafts. Holy crap I'm excited.

ASIDE

If anyone caught Bob Knight on ESPN last night discussing the NCAA tournament, it was a pure shitshow. Knight took pains to refer to himself as a "consultant," in an attempt to separate himself from the "media" he spent years hating. What a nightmare - the guy has become who he hated, and now has to separate himself from it on TV - all the while being reminded (by the host, no less) that he is now indeed a member of the "idiot" media.

I don't think I've seen self-loathing like this since Sybil - it makes a Woody Allen movie look like Stuart Smalley's self-help group. Just unreal.

ROUND ONE: FIGHT

2008-03-10T12:12:00.003-04:00

It's that time of the year, yet again - just like the salmon of Capistrano, we return to our embryonic chrysalis seeking warmth, WHIP and some of our friends' moderately hard-earned money. Like the first robin of spring, the first fantasy draft brings a mixture of hope and expectation (both in terms of "looking forward" and also "expected value"), along with drinking beer in the morning and making fun of the guy who drafts David Eckstein (11th round in this draft; best lines included "Is 'getting blown by Joe Buck' a category?' and "finally, someone shorter than Conklin" among many, many others).

This is a money league; small time though, $20 entry/10 teams/both leagues, with the following categories:
Batting: R, H, HR, RBI, SB, BB, K, AVG
Pitching: IP, W, L, SV, BB, K, ERA, WHIP

Let's just start off by saying the draft went pretty damn well:

Stop Snitching Andy

View All

Round	Pick	Player	Position
1.	(5)	Hanley Ramírez	SS
2.	(16)	David Wright	3B
3.	(25)	Brian Roberts	2B
4.	(36)	Mark Teixeira	1B
5.	(45)	Adam Dunn	OF
6.	(56)	Cole Hamels	SP
7.	(65)	Chris Young	OF
8.	(76)	Dan Haren	SP
9.	(85)	John Smoltz	SP
10.	(96)	Nick Markakis	OF
11.	(105)	Francisco Cordero	RP
12.	(116)	Brett Myers	SP,RP
13.	(125)	Nick Swisher	1B,OF
14.	(136)	Matt Cain	SP
15.	(145)	Matt Kemp	OF
16.	(156)	Rafael Soriano	RP
17.	(165)	Derek Lowe	SP
18.	(176)	Jarrod Saltalamacchia	C,1B
19.	(185)	Stephen Drew	SS
20.	(196)	Randy Johnson	SP
21.	(205)	Lastings Milledge	OF

Yep - winners go home and fuck the prom queen, but not after getting perhaps the second-best fantasy player alive with the 16th pick, after getting a consensus top-5 guy at #5 also. Thanks to Baseball Prospectus's invaluable Player Forecast Manager utility, I wound up with the guys ranked at #s 1, 3, 12, 18, 20, 21, 27 and 28. That's the equivalent of picking 8 times in the first three rounds, and not even Chris Wallace or Steve Phillips could fuck that one up.

At every position, I wind up with a premium player, and even get to take a shot at some high-upside guys in Kemp and Milledge. I bought low on Randy Johnson and might squeeze a great half-season, and that's the kind of arbitrage I simply can't pass up. The Steve Drew pick is likely shitty, but I sort of panicked and put on the baseball equivalent of a "handcuff" to Hanley in case of injury. I should win steals every week, and although Dunn and Hanley will make it tough to win batting K's every week, the increase in every counting category should make my hitters unbeatable.

Beyond that, I have a solid, moderate-risk staff, with some superstar potential in Hamels and Myers and Haren (even though all pitch in bandboxes) and the ability to move from strength for more as the season goes on. I just got hard talking about it - I feel like Enzyte Bob, except I get to live freely for the next 20 or so years of my life.

Bobby Knight on ESPN

2008-02-29T10:32:00.003-05:00

So listening to "Mike and Mike" this morning, Bobby Knight made one of his first appearances as an ESPN analyst. Here's how it went:

1) He basically said that whoever scored the most points would win the NCAA tournament games, and that free throw percentages aren't important if you score more points than the other team.

2) He refused to answer questions about Indiana, changing the subject, then telling Greenberg that the matter was off-limits.

I wonder how much ESPN is paying for that type of insight?

Old People Try Too Hard

2008-02-28T11:54:00.004-05:00

Well, the only really strong sports news lately (if you don't count Yao Ming getting broken, just completely Andy Dufresne'ing my fantasy basketball team) was GW making fun of Manny and his dead grandpeople (which was, admittedly, awesome), so we turn back to the world of music, where we've proven one more age-old adage: old people who try to sound hip usually suck.

Mariah Carey, widely known for peaking at age 20, flipping her shit on MTV's Cribs, having ridiculous fake boobs and having sex with a diving Derek Jeter (luckily, she wasn't seven feet to his left, or they never would have hooked up), has released a new single called "Touch my Body" (which you can listen to on just about every radio station in the country, if life is no longer worth living).

Here are the opening lines to Ms. Carey's current bon mot:

If there's a camera up in here, then it's gonna leave with me
When I do (I do)
If there's a camera up in here then I'd best not catch this flick
On YouTube (YouTube)
'Cause if you run your mouth and brag about this secret rendezvous,
I will hunt you down

So wait - she's doing some dude, but she's worried he's going to tape her getting railed. Her worry about said taping is that it will land on YouTube. Her defense, then, is to inform the inferred gentleman that "(she) will hunt (him) down." Got it.

That shit's crazy, kids - Mariah Carey scares the living God out of me. What a song formula - check how this worked out:

Direct implication of sluttiness? CHECK
Intimation of taping sex act? CHECK
Awkward use of modern media that "the kids" use? BIG FUCKING CHECK
Death threat (either real or implied)? OH, YEP - CHECK

This record should come hermetically sealed with Agent Orange, with a heavy dusting of silver nitrate on the album so we can mark all of the absolute retards in one fell swoop - instead of the scarlet letter, welcome to the blue-hands 'tard coalition. Instead of a "Parental Guidance" sticker, it should just have a photo of record companies raping children, because how on Earth does this record get a green light?

Just out of curiosity, how many times do you think Mariah Carey, the human shitshow that brought you Glitter, has actually gone onto YouTube to do anything? Remember, she's not exactly a MENSA candidate - I'd guess she can't even "surf" her shiny ass to YouTube, there's just no chance she would even know the URL. YouTube? Seriously? I'd be much more worried about RedTube at this point in your career, you decrepit, irrelevant douche - seriously, the sooner you actually leak a sex tape, the more I'll actually care about you. For ten minutes. Then I'll take a nap.

Learning is Fundamental

2008-02-19T18:22:00.003-05:00

To kick off the fantasy moneymaking season for 2008, I wanted to look back at last year's big keeper-league draft, to try to point out places where I could perhaps make an improvement going into this year, and just generally giving retrospective opinions on the entire deal. Also, since this was technically my worst fantasy finish since Teapot Dome, my little ass probably should hit the books, since even the goofiest bastards have 24/7 access to (usually shitty, but still existent) fantasy advice.

My original interpretation of the draft is located here, with some piss-poor analysis that I probably did while slightly hung over at work. I finished fourth in the regular season, then lost a quarterfinal game and punted the rest of the playoffs for draft position (unsuccessfully, I might add - 6th overall). It sucked.

The first five picks were my 5 "keepers" - which, clearly, became an unmitigated disaster after the unfortunate death of Jason Bay's talent (and knee cartilage), Joe Mauer thankfully donating some of his knee to try to help Mr. Bay (which was an unmitigated failure, on par with "Operation: Nail Freshman Girls" at my Bay State brownstone in 2000) and collapsing like Tacoma Narrows in the process, and BJ Ryan's elbow exploding just four short months too early.

The lesson here is pretty clear - sometimes, players will just slip, like Bay. Mauer's injury was moderately predictable, and he might have been a reach in the 4th round anyway, while for all of Ryan's superb stats and peripherals, he's still a closer, and we know the rule: never draft a closer high.

Luckily, I was able to resurrect the draft by pseudo-keeping Adam Dunn with my 6th round pick (making this the 7th consecutive season of watching Big Donkey be my most valuable terrible outfielder - he is sick in this league because it uses OBP instead of BA), so we'll count that as a keeper, which still gives me a C- overall. I must improve this year - luckily, I have four no-brainers for keepers (Wright, Howard, Fielder and Dunn), along with the potential to either keep Granderson or pick up the best player not kept by the remaining teams with my 5th-rounder (which will usually yield a 3rd-round talent, as dudes keep man-crushes instead of the best players).

The most striking problem with my draft was almost certainly my high-risk strategy for pitching, which relied on old guys with breakdown potential (Schilling, Wagner) and young guys with high-risk projections (Bush, Reyes). These guys ate me up, while the more-intelligent risks of buying low on Penny and Escobar worked masterfully and carried my team through most of the season (along with Randy Wolf's first half).

The lesson is easy: work harder to diversify, and keep a solid selection of pitching around. There's no reason to overpay for a mid-range guy (even Dan Haren counts here this year), but while there's no need to be a risk-adverse pussy, it is important to keep some reliable guys on hand and dodge an entirely youth-oriented team because of the dangers of pitching projection in general.

The "closing off the closers" strategy worked exceptionally poorly, as most teams were unwilling to trade even bottom-end starters for closers, and the point in which such trades make the most sense (at the first half of the season) for you are the times when people are most adverse to trades (because of waiver-wire enticement). It's kind of like dominating the Golden Tee machine at the bar - it's a great idea for what it's worth, but you can't parlay it into getting laid, so you have to make sure your priorities are actually aligning with your strategy. As it ended, I wound up with a great closer system (with 4 guys), including exactly one of the closers (Wagner) that I started with, and missed a LOT of potential value guys at the bottom of the draft (FUCK YOU BRANDON PHILLIPS-SLASH-FRANCHISE). I will likely avoid this strategy, even if I get as much cooperation as I did in that draft.

One other quick point: while it's easy to play for guys moving positions to try to capitalize on hard-to-fill positional eligibility, these guys often have an adjustment period. Hall killed me here, even being SS-eligible. BJ Upton appears to be the exception here, but it's worth noting going forward.

Essentially, I completely mismanaged risk in this draft, and left myself open to exactly what happened: injuries decimating my team in places where I could not handle them. I thought I had a nice balance of risk and upside, but that could not have been further from the truth in hindsight. Boo fucking hoo.

An Awkward Search for the Truth

2008-02-15T16:39:00.002-05:00

As most of you know, Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee, along with their entourage of attorneys and advisors, were the focus of a Congressional Hearing this past Wednesday. Carried by the full range of ESPN networks, C-Span, and countless other media outlets, the supposed aim of the hearings was to flush out the truth about the Clemens/McNamee accusations, and take another step forward in ridding sports of steroids. While apparently there is some regret regarding the hearing (see http://blogs.usatoday.com/sportsscope/2008/02/waxman-regrets.html), that can't change the fact that it has happened.

The question then becomes, what did the hearing produce? A lot of he-said/he-said, accusations thrown back and forth, possible witness tampering, and an interesting display of lawyering. While that may make for great TV, it really didn't get anyone any closer to the truth.

So, with this hearing joining the Barry Bonds situation, the previous Congressional hearings (Selig/Fehr, McGwire/Palmeiro/Sosa, etc.) and the Mitchell Report, are we any closer to solving the problem? And, if we are, what is the solution?

I don't have quite as much of an issue as some people with Congressmen (and women) spending time, and thus taxpayers' money, on this, if the aim is true. People claim that this is a public health issue, and if it that is the true impetus behind the hearings, then so be it.

Yet, there are some aspects of this that don't make sense. If you're going to call in Clemens and Petitte, why not call in Adam Piatt, Jack Cust, and the others who were named in the Report? Of course, we all know that putting Adam Piatt before Congress doesn't have quite the same flair as Roger Clemens.

Also, if the talking heads at ESPN are going to give their spins on the testimony and developments, why not leave that to the experts? Bring on someone with a sports medicine background (Will Carroll for instance), or people with legal experience, and leave the analysis to them. No offense to John Seibel, Stephen A. Smith, or any one of the other anchors or commentators on the network, but most of them have no relevant experience, besides covering the athletes who are involved. The opinions of Smith, Colin Cowherd, and a number of others have little to no value, if for no other reason than they don't have the professional or educational background to comment intelligently on the issues. This isn't a rehash of a baseball game; it's a moderately complex situation involving the worlds of sports, law and medicine.

Do we know anything more than we did a year ago? When I ask that, I don't mean just the names that have been released, but do we know more about the problem itself. Do we know about how to get effective testing in place? Do we know how to put out education programs to schools, so that young athletes don't start using steroids, HGH, or other performance enhancers that could endanger their health? Do we know how to improve the next 30 years, rather than how to rehash the last 20? Do we know how much of a problem steroids are in all sports, at all levels, from youth leagues to professionals?

These public displays may be good fodder for the evening news, but whether they get us any closer to answers depends a great deal on the questions we are asking.

We ain't worried 'bout nothing/ Hakuna Ma Tata

2008-02-13T19:27:00.003-05:00

It's that time, boys and girls - Clipse (along with sidecars Ad Libba and Sandman, cumulatively the Re-Up Gang), fresh off a new record deal, have released We Got It For Cheap v.3 - an obvious must-have at the cost (free, obv).

A cursory listening agrees with the Pitchfork review - it's not nearly the same level of legendary as vol. 2 (which included "Zen," one of the best songs of 2005) or Hell Hath No Fury, which was a top-5 album of 2006. Still, living up to those lofty expectations would likely prove impossible - what you do have is a great album of rips and punchlines, mostly based around slangin' rock. Nothing wrong with that shit.

A cursory listen puts this album in a MUCH more relaxed vibe - the angry snarls and shunting of other rappers has largely disappeared, as is wont to happen when you've blown out just about every other mainstream rapper not named Kanye in the past few months (and, even then, I mean . . . dorks like me love Clipse, and Kanye didn't even make my list).

Genuine introspection is difficult territory for the Re-Up boys - there are some legit stumbles where the lyrical content reaches too far, or inadequately describes just why it sucks to be rich and respected. Still, though, it's legit growth, and the majority of the first listen proved beyond satisfactory and head-nod-able. It's 100% worth the download, and should likely get spins in the car or on the subway - it seems perfectly situated for people-watching or observing in those types of situations.

The Dangers of Pretty Things

2008-02-11T12:31:00.000-05:00

One of the most bizarrely difficult issues for sports fans to agree about or reconcile comes in that grand issue of "clutch" - and, while I won't open that can of worms today, it is certainly part of a larger intangible issue that fascinates people in general: response to difficult circumstances. From US Magazine to The Hills to news reports about surviving attempted decapitation, people love to see others cope - even if the coping strategy results in dismal, bloody, excruciating failure. Shit, some would say especially when it ends in massive, bowel-clearing failure.

One of the best illustrations in recent memory came in Juno - while a well-done movie by almost any regard, one scene stands head and shoulders above the rest. After Jason Bateman's character completes the 90' turn into creepdom and Juno realizes the shit just hit the fan, she drives down the road, ultimately pulling the minivan over to break down and cry on the side of the road. Basically, the cut-and-dried, simple, perfect solution she crafted to escape her shitshow pregnancy has just disintegrated into disaster.

Really, this is a great point - we often become enamored with things that are easy or "perfect" solutions to existing problems. This can lead to sloth. Think of how many times you've seen someone select the least-horrible of a series of shitty options, only to work hard and find that the results far outpaced anyone's expectations. Now, think of how many times slam-dunk setups have failed miserably, only to result in black tar heroin and concomitant residency under bridges or in bus station men's rooms (or, like, just bad stuff happening).

After last week's revelation that Curt Schilling's biceps tendon looks like "three strands of spaghetti" there is a small chance that the Boston Red Sox have fallen for The Danger of Pretty Things - that solution that seems so easy that it's a no-brainer, although the fallout of its failure would be much more drastic than the solution's elegance would let on.

The Sox starting rotation would have set up beautifully - run out Beckett, Matsuzaka, Schilling, Lester and Wakefield, most of whom will need at least a few weeks on the DL. Keep Buchholz in Pawtucket, on a strict innings limit of 5IP/start, ready to fill gaps as needed. Get Buchholz ~120 IP in the majors, keeping him around his 180IP limit for the season (and, hopefully, keep him in AAA until mid-May, so his service clock gains another year before free agency).

Now, though, there's a problem - either Buchholz starts the year with the big club, which would give the team the best pitcher in the group but one with a strict innings limit because he is still right within the injury nexus, or you run out there with Julian Tavarez, who put up as heroic a season of 5.25 ERA ball as has ever come from a man in such dire need of plastic surgery. There are external options, but given there are about 5 days before pitchers and catchers report, that field is winnowed to the bloated corpse of Bartolo Colon (who reportedly couldn't hit 90 in winter ball, and was making the 6th inning look as impossible as scaling K2), the consistent mediocrity of Kyle Lohse (who is certainly no solid bet to perform better than Tavarez), or paying Billy Beane's mortgage for Joe Blanton, a 200IP workhorse who looks oddly like John Daly.

The rotation solution was so elegant that its downsides become almost stark in contrast - and while the "problems" are really pretty nice to have (the Sox still have one of, if not the best, rotations in baseball), the current scenario is simply way worse for the team. Interestingly, there are other places where this might even be more true - any injury to Lowell or Youkilis will give a couple hundred ABs to Sean Casey, who should be good for an OPS+ of about 92, and corner-outfield issues would immediately either force Bobby Kielty into the lineup, or require an unreal LF/CF combo of Ellsbury and Crisp, turning the Red Sox into some bizarre version of the '86 Cardinals. The bullpen isn't really set up for losing Papelbon for any amount of time, unless Manny Delcarmen continues to make strides - and I say this as someone who wholeheartedly rejects the myth of the closer.

Now, I don't mean this to be a doomsday-scenario, chicken-little'ing of the Sox this season. Indeed, the Red Sox are still the likely favorites to win the AL, and should be considered such by a fairly good margin. While Lowell will likely never repeat his BABIP/LD%-increase-fueled career year, and while Pedroia and Youkilis have likely shown near-peak capability already, a moderate rebound from Manny and Drew would more than offset this, and getting an .800 OPS from CF while staying within -5 of Crisp's defense would be a remarkable upgrade. It's an incredibly well-rounded squad, one which is built to survive through many different styles of baseball, and built to win both in the regular season (with power bats and lineup depth) and post season (the "secret sauce", run prevention, very strong front-end starters).

No, let's not lament or cry for the Sox just yet - while losing a legit hero in Schilling, his PECOTA projection was for 125IP at 4.18 ERA, which passes the smell test - but it seemed worth noting that the ultimate failure of the Schilling scenario, at least to this point, really indicated a "Pretty Things" problem to the best possible effect. Interestingly, if Schilling's rehab actually works (and Dr. Morgan obviously thinks that will not be the case), he can come back after the All-Star Break and contribute important innings down the stretch, resting all of the pitchers for a few weeks. This, my friends, is pretty much the definition of the tantalizing idea that might just be too seductive for its own good. Once again, I've fallen for the Danger.

I can't believe my favorite team won the Super Bowl

2008-02-03T22:09:00.000-05:00

I wish I could put into words the feelings I'm having right now. All I can say is this: tonight goes up there with the first World Series of the Joe Torre era and UConn beating Duke in the NCAA Tournament as the happiest I have been as a sports fan. I can't accurately describe how loud I started yelling when Plaxico caught the winning touchdown.

Holy cow. Go Giants!

My team is in the Super Bowl? Seriously?

2008-02-01T12:03:00.000-05:00

If you had told me at the beginning of the season that my beloved Giants would be representing the NFC in the Super Bowl, I would have laughed. A lot. Then I would have called you a liar and berated you for getting my hopes up. Now, in a mere matter of days, the team I have followed since the days of LT and Mark Bavaro will be facing the Pats. To say I am shocked would be an understatement.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a huge Giants fan and have been for a number of years. Besides the Yankees, there is no team that I follow more closely. However, being a Giants fan is like driving 100 miles to a really nice dinner, only to find out the dinner has been cancelled. Since the Parcells years, the team's history has been filled with play-off collapses or mediocre regular seasons, save for a shocking trip to the Super Bowl against the Ravens. Of course, Kerry Collins played a terrible game, the Ravens defense locked down, and there was no shot.

There were unfortunate draft picks (Derek Brown, Tyrone Wheatley, Thomas Lewis, Dave Brown in the supplemental draft), horrid coaching changes (Ray Handley anyone?), uninspired quarterback play (Dave Brown, Kent Graham), and a number of other times when we as Giant fans held our head in shame.

This year feels differently though, and not because I think they have any more chance of winning. As someone who has become more and more interested in the statistical analysis of sports, there are still moments when I just let the emotion of the moment fall over me and wash away all rational thought. This playoff run has been one of those times.

Watching this team go into Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay, and come out of all three with victories, has been unreal. The shock won't have worn off by the time the team runs onto the field on Sunday, and no matter what happens against the Pats, this has been a tremendous season to be a Giants fan.

The Santana Trade

2008-01-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

I'm sure most of you know by now that the Twins have nearly completed the long-awaited trade of Johan Santana; it is only pending Johan's agreement to a new contract. The team is sending Santana to the Mets for outfielder Carlos Gomez, as well as pitchers Philip Humber, Deolis Guerra and Kevin Mulvey. The trade is surprising, not because the Mets will end up with Santana, but because it cost them so little.

Throughout the winter we have heard that Bill Smith, the Twins GM, would hold out for a monster package. There were rumors about Philip Hughes and Ian Kennedy from the Yankees, and Jon Lester and Jacob Ellsbury from the Red Sox. In the end, the Mets took a package that didn't include a prospect of the level of Hughes or Lester (or, arguably, Ellsbury).

Gomez and Guerra are most likely the two "prizes" of the trade; Gomez is one of the fastest players in the game, and reportedly a very good defender. On ESPN radio last night, Keith Law of ESPN said that Gomez graded out at a 70-80 on the scouts' scale for speed (scale going 20-80). That said, he's a slap hitter who hasn't shown a whole lot of offensive potential beyond making contact and running. Guerra is 18 (he'll turn 19 at the beginning of the season), and is all projection at this point. The other two prospects were among the highest rated in the Mets system, but weren't the premium types one would expect to get for Santana.

So, the question becomes, what happened? Did Smith wait too long, when he should have taken a deal from the Yankees or Mets? Did he misjudge the market? This was a big moment for the Twins, trading one of the best pitchers of the generation. It's still early, but (assuming this trade goes through), it looks like Twins fans should be disappointed.

As for Mets fans, this is a great deal. As Nate Silver points out on Baseball Prospectus, Johan is going from a pretty good pitcher's park to a great one; the difference won't be as large as some people believe. That said, Nate puts Johan's PECOTA projection at the following: 32 games, 16-8 record, 225 innings, 184 hits, 60 walks, 239 strikeouts, 2.94 ERA, SuperVORP (an adjustment of VORP, or value over replacement player; SuperVORP takes into account league difficulty, quality of defense behind the pitcher, etc.) of 56.8, and WARP of 7.5. Now that's one good season.