Ken Burns wants Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens to ‘suffer’
Me too, Ken. Also, I think they should be put in Cooperstown in a special “Cheats & Liars” wing. I’m thinking Clemens can go right next to the Black Sox.
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
Tag Archives: baseball
Three Stats and You’re Out
Will Leitch, writing on Sports on Earth:
The disconnect between the way advanced statistics are used in baseball front offices — the Philadelphia Phillies perhaps being the lone, stubborn exception — and the way they are used in media coverage of baseball is so vast that you’d almost think television is covering a different sport entirely. Inside the world of baseball, WAR and OPS+ and so on are simply the way general managers and team staff talk about their jobs, the way CPAs talk about spreadsheets and financial advisors discuss Roth IRAs, the way any profession talks about anything.
But outside, on our televisions, they’re treated as some wonky dork sorcery, pencil pushers trying to pretend they understand baseball more than those who have far more experience (and who may currently be wearing protective cups). Baseball broadcasters treat advanced statistics like Billy Bush and other red-carpet Oscar idiots would treat an experimental short film about lesbian sects in Uganda. They act like they don’t matter, when, in many cases, they’re almost all that does. It would be as if political reporters said, “Who cares about all those math nerds in their mother’s basements with their ‘electoral college’ charts? I want to know what’s in these candidates’ hearts.”
It’s attitudes like this that keep me coming back to baseball on the radio. Which is not to say that radio broadcasters are throwing around BABIP and xFIP. But that the anti-intellectual, vapid, “go git ‘em boys” locker room atmosphere that you hear on most TV broadcasts is nowhere to be found. Maybe because there’s no room for it with all the play-by-play. Maybe because there is a long, proud tradition of calling baseball on the radio with respect, verve and aplomb. Maybe for other reasons entirely.
How did ‘Monday’ become a racist slur?
How did ‘Monday’ become a racist slur?
The Boston Globe, earlier in the summer:
When news emerged earlier this month that Boston Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford said he’d been called a racial epithet by an off-duty Leominster police officer before a minor league game in New Hampshire, reaction was swift. After an internal investigation, which turned up additional racist comments, the Leominster mayor fired the officer on Thursday.
But the epithet itself still has sports fans and commentators scratching their heads. Allegedly, the officer called Crawford, who is black, “Monday.” Monday? The day of the week? Is this really an insult, and one that has anything to do with race?
Messed up.
Avila v. Citrus Community College Dist., 131 P. 3d 383 – Cal: Supreme Court 2006
Avila v. Citrus Community College Dist., 131 P. 3d 383 – Cal: Supreme Court 2006
I’ve started reading The Unwritten Rules of Baseball by Paul Dickson, which is pretty neato so far.
In it, he mentions a legal case from 2006 about being hit by pitches. Some background from the opinion by Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar:
During an intercollegiate baseball game at a community college, one of the home team’s batters is hit by a pitch. In the next half-inning, the home team’s pitcher allegedly retaliates with an inside pitch and hits a visiting batter in the head. The visiting batter is injured, he sues, and the courts must umpire the dispute.
The court ruled that, even though the rules of baseball state that a pitcher can’t intentionally hit a batter, it’s commonly accepted as an “inherent risk of the sport” and so can’t be sued over in this way.
Being intentionally hit is likewise an inherent risk of the sport, so accepted by custom that a pitch intentionally thrown at a batter has its own terminology: “brushback,” “beanball,” “chin music.” In turn, those pitchers notorious for throwing at hitters are “headhunters.” Pitchers intentionally throw at batters to disrupt a batter’s timing or back him away from home plate, to retaliate after a teammate has been hit, or to punish a batter for having hit a home run. (See, e.g., Kahn, The Head Game (2000) pp. 205-239.) Some of the most respected baseball managers and pitchers have openly discussed the fundamental place throwing at batters has in their sport. …
…
It is true that intentionally throwing at a batter is forbidden by the rules of baseball. (See, e.g., Off. Rules of Major League Baseball, rule 8.02(d); National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 2006 NCAA Baseball Rules (Dec.2005) rule 5, § 16(d), p. 62.) But “even when a participant’s conduct violates a rule of the game and may subject the violator to internal sanctions prescribed by the sport itself, imposition of legal liability for such conduct might well alter fundamentally the nature of the sport by deterring participants from vigorously engaging in activity that falls close to, but on the permissible side of, a prescribed rule.” (Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 318-319, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696.)
So there is legal precedent in the United States that, if you get hit by a pitch, you have to suck it up.
Horne’s ‘home run cycle’ has yet to be replicated
Horne’s ‘home run cycle’ has yet to be replicated
Lisa Winston for MLB.com back in 2006:
On July 27, 1998, playing for the Arkansas Travelers of the Double-A Texas League, [Tyrone] Horne hit four home runs in a 13-4 victory at San Antonio.
Now, four-homer games by themselves are rare, but certainly not unprecedented. This year, there have been two such performances in the Minors (Ryan Harvey of the Daytona Cubs did it on July 28 and Alexis Gomez of the Toledo Mud Hens hit four on Aug. 7).
But Horne hit a two-run home run in the first inning, a grand slam in the second, a solo shot in the fifth and a three-run homer in the sixth.
In essence, he “homered for the cycle,” something never done before in the Majors or Minors and has not been duplicated since.
And it hasn’t been done in the six years since the article.
The rest of the piece is a nice feel-good story about Horne.
Swarm of Bees Delays Giants-Diamondbacks Game
Swarm of Bees Delays Giants-Diamondbacks Game
As part of our continuing coverage of bees, here’s a report from the Associated Press:
The Diamondbacks’ grounds crew used a combination of cotton candy and lemonade to help disperse a swarm of bees that delayed the San Francisco Giants split squad’s 11-1 win over Arizona for 41 minutes in the second inning Sunday.
With runners on second and third and one out in the second inning, a dark cloud appeared in right field, sending Diamondbacks center fielder Chris Young sprinting toward left.
“I didn’t see them at first I just heard them,” Young said. “I am not afraid of one or two of them. I wouldn’t flinch at that. When you start talking about 500, 600 of them yea, I am afraid of that. …”
INTERRUPTING OUR NATIONAL PASTIME
WE MUST PUT AN END TO THIS MENACE
New MLB deal: No corporate tattoos
New MLB deal: No corporate tattoos
The AP:
Baseball’s new labor contract includes more video replay, the chance for a longer All-Star break and a small, but likely welcome perk for players: the chance to get a private room instead of a roommate during spring training.
… for players thinking about selling ads on their bodies, MLB has thought ahead. The agreement says “no player may have any visible markings or logos tattooed on his body” as part of the uniform regulations.
“Just trying to head something off at the pass,” said Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations.
- ‘Ili:
- WHAT DO THEY KNOW THAT WE DON’T
- Colin:
- Derek Monster.com Jeter
Octavio Dotel set to pitch for record 13th MLB franchise after reaching deal with Tigers
Octavio Dotel set to pitch for record 13th MLB franchise after reaching deal with Tigers
The AP:
Octavio Dotel is on the verge of an unusual record.
Dotel has reached an agreement with the Detroit Tigers on a one-year deal, with a team option for 2013. When he takes the mound for the Tigers next season, the right-handed reliever will be playing for a record 13th major league franchise.
Sweet.
Venezuelan TV: Kidnapped MLB catcher ‘found alive’
Venezuelan TV: Kidnapped MLB catcher ‘found alive’
Unbelievable story by Mariano Castillo for CNN:
Major league catcher Wilson Ramos has been “found alive,” two days after he was reported kidnapped by gunmen, Venezuelan state TV reported Friday.
Ramos was found by security forces in Montalban, a mountainous region about 60 miles from the north central Venezuelan town where he was last seen, according to a tweet posted late Friday by Communications Minister Andres Izarra.
…
“It has all the earmarks as a targeted kidnapping: selected victim, selected location, selected time,” said Chris Voss, a kidnapping specialist for Insite Security who has handled six cases involving Venezuela and who worked for the FBI for 26 years. “There’s an outside possibility that they thought they were grabbing another member of the family, but that’s extremely unlikely.”
The article actually goes pretty deep into kidnappings and sports players in Latin America. It’s pretty good.
[Shortstop Elio] Chacon… was eager but not very talented. And he kept running into the outfield and knocking down Richie Ashburn as he was about to catch a fly ball. And he didn’t speak any English, so Joe Christopher went to him and tried to explain this and then he went to Richie Ashburn and said, “If you’re going to catch a fly ball,” he said, “and you see Chacon coming out, what you want to say is, ‘Yo la tengo. Yo la tengo.’—‘I’ve got it.’ And he’ll pull up.” So Richie practiced, he said, “Yo la tengo” and a game came along and it was a fly ball. He looked up for the fly ball. Chacon rushed out for him. Richie said, “Yo la tengo, yo la tengo,” and he put his hands up—and was knocked flat by Frank Thomas, his left fielder. That was the Mets.
Roger Angell on the 1962 New York Mets, the losingest major league team in the modern era, as quoted by Geoffrey C. Ward in Baseball: An Illustrated History.