Showing posts with label Baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baseball. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
R.I.P. Marvin Miller
Baseball’s FDR
His "new deal" made the MLBPA one of the strongest labor unions in the country -- and revitalized America's pastime
ALLEN BARRA
WEDNESDAY, NOV 28, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/28/r_i_p_marvin_miller_baseballs_fdr/
In 1990, I got phone call that changed my life. The man calling was Marvin Miller, whom I knew of as the labor leader who had transformed the Major League Baseball Players Association from a company union to the most successful labor organization in America. He had seen a few things I had written in the Village Voice and asked me if I’d like to work with him on his autobiography, which he later decided to call “A Whole Different Ball Game,” published in 1991.
I thought I knew baseball and business. Working with Marvin quickly disavowed me of this notion. But within a year and a half, I got an education. Meeting with him every other day for almost 18 months, Marvin and his wife Terry – “the dynamic Terry Miller,” as sportswriter Bud Collins called her – proved to be a revelation.
To be honest, I really didn’t know how important Marvin Miller was to baseball and all of professional sports. I didn’t find out until I began interviewing his contemporaries. There’s a quote you’ve probably been reading or hearing in the blizzard of praise since Marvin’s death was announced yesterday, the great old-time Brooklyn Dodgers and later New York Yankees announcer Red Barber saying, “Marvin Miller, along with Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, is one of the three most important men in baseball history.”
Actually, what Barber told me was, “I’d reckon him to be one of the three or four most important men in baseball history. Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, of course. I’d have to put Branch Rickey in the top four. But probably Marvin before him.” I remember Marvin smiling when I told him what Barber had said. “I certainly wouldn’t object if he put me in back of Branch Rickey,” was his reply.
I’m not sure that Marvin’s legacy is truly understood even now. In the nineties, he was constantly bombarded with questions like “Now that the players have won, can’t they afford to give something back to the owners?” Marvin would smile and calmly explain that there is no such thing as “winning” unless the union continued to keep free agency open for new young players coming into the league – they were the ones who the older players had risked the work stoppages for, to preserve their free agency rights.
He would also explain that there could be no questions of “giving something back” because baseball’s management was, in fact, benefitting from baseball’s “new deal.” (He liked that phrase, because of its political connotations – the original subtitle of his book was “The Sport and Business of Baseball,” which both he and I hated. He managed to get it changed to “The Story of Baseball’s New Deal” in subsequent editions.
Two years ago in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote what seemed to be a laudatory feature on Marvin’s influence not only on baseball but in fact all of situations where talent negotiated with management. His conclusion:
“If one side so thoroughly dominates another in the marketplace, is it really market pricing any more? A negotiation in which a man can get paid twenty-two million dollars for hitting a baseball is not really a negotiation, it is a capitulation, and the lingering question left by Miller’s revolution is whether the scales ended up being tilted too far in the direction of Talent – whether what Talent did with its newfound power was simply create a new authority ranking, this time with itself at the top. A few years ago, a group of economist looked at more than a hundred Fortune 500 firms, trying to figure out what predicted how much money the C.E. made. Compensation, it turned out, was only weakly related to the size and profitability of the company. What really mattered was how much money the members of the compensation committee of the board of directors made in their jobs. Pay is not determined vertically, in other words, according to the characteristics of the organization an executive works for; it is determined horizontally, according to the characteristic of the executives’ peers. They decide, among themselves, what the right amount is. This is not a market.”
This is wrong in so many ways it’s difficult to know where to being. Let’s start here: executive pay is decided by other executives. The salaries of baseball players are decided by negotiations between the team, the player and his representative. The bottom line is that no one puts a gun to a baseball executive’s head to force him to offer a player a contract. The Texas Rangers offered Alex Rodriguez that $250+ million contract not out of generosity or because they were forced to or because Rodriguez demanded it, but because it helped them bring in a more than $250 million in new revenue from the cable network. The Yankees paid him even more money not because someone twisted their collective arm but because they had the money and believed he was worth it — in TV ratings and ticket and merchandise sales. (I could go into an argument here that he was, after all. He won two MVP awards and helped them win their only World Series in the entire decade, but I’ll let that pass.)
The point is that in any negotiation, no one forces a baseball executive to do anything, let alone to show a modicum of common sense. A-Rod didn’t get together with a group of his peer and decides how much his salary would be.
The larger point though is that so many did not see – and still don’t – that the Major League Baseball Players Association is a union, and succeeded because it held together as a union.
Oddly enough, this prejudice against the MLBPA is more prevalent among lefties than those on the right. Conservatives, at least some of them, can grasp the concept that everyone deserve to be paid what they can earn on the open market, and that that market is determined by negotiations between labor — or in this case, talent, if you will – and management. Liberals, particularly if they are baseball fans, have always been inclined to say things like, “Who cares if those guys win their negotiation? They’re just a bunch of multimillionaires, like the owners.” They also say things like “Why should they be paid so much money for hitting a baseball?” It never seems to occur to them that they’re the ones who are doing that paying and that if the money didn’t go to the players, the owners would simply pocket it.
This last point is one that needs to be made over and over because each new generation of fans needs to be educated. The baseball players union may not seem to have much in common with steelworkers (though Marvin, who was an economist with the steelworkers union for many years, would take issue with that) or Wal-Mart employees trying to form their own union, but the inspiration is there. What Marvin told baseball players when he became executive director founded the union in 1966 can be true for any union member, “If you hold together, you can have thing you want within reason.”
Which is why it was so important for Marvin Miller to be elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame, and also why it will never happen. Today, the day after his death, I’m reading articles in just about every major paper and website in the country ripping baseball’s hierarchy (as exemplified by the mealy-mouthed hypocrite, Commissioner Bud Selig) for keeping the vote rigged so Miler would never make it to Cooperstown. They are right, but they’re missing the more important point. Let’s be honest – what else would you expect from the management class whose collective asses Miller so thoroughly whipped? (Even if they were too arrogant and mean-spirited to understand that the union’s victories only increased their revenues and vastly expanded the popularity of the game?)
I don’t blame the baseball owners, I blame the players. The simple truth is that if they had recognized from the start that it wasn’t their talent that made them rich but their support of the union which brought them free agency in the first place, then they would have seen to it that the man who brought them this good fortune was voted into the Hall of Fame. As Bill James shrewdly observed, it’s the players’ balls and bats and gloves which make the Hall of Fame. Without those things, it’s just an empty building. If they had insisted on getting the right people on the committees and changing the voting rule, then Miller would have had a plaque in Cooperstown years ago.
Conceited jackasses like Reggie Jackson never faced up to this responsibility. Reggie was one of the first players to benefit from free agency in a big way, and even before the reserve clause was struck down, Marvin had helped Reggie to negotiate his contract with Oakland A’s war horse owner Charlie Finley. But when the time came to throw support to Miller in 2003, Jackson declared publicly, “I think only players should be in the Hall of Fame.” As if anyone asked Reggie to make such a judgment.
Anyway, with the permission of Marvin’s daughter Susan, I’m going to include here the letter Marvin wrote to Jack O’Connell, secretary of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, on May 16, 2008:
“Dear Mr. O’Connell,
Paradoxically, I’m writing to thank you and your associates for your part in nominating me for Hall of Fame consideration, and, at the same time, to ask that you not do this again. The anti-union bias of the powers who control the Hall has consistently prevented recognition of the historic significance of the changes to baseball brought about by collective bargaining. As former Executive Director (retired since 1983) of the Players’ Union that negotiated these changes, I find myself unwilling to contemplate one more rigged Veterans Committee whose members are handpicked to reach a particular outcome while offering the pretense of a democratic vote. It is an insult to baseball fans, historians, sports writers and especially to those baseball players who sacrificed and brought the game into the 21st century. At the age of 91 I can do without farce. Sincerely, Marvin J. Miller”
To me, that settles the issue. Last week I visited Marvin at his Upper East Side apartment. He had two things he wanted to tell me. The first – and this was the last time I would see him smile – was that Sandy Koufax had just called to thank him for everything he had done for baseball. Koufax, who retired the year Marvin was made executive director of the union, never benefitted from free agency. Marvin laughed, “Sandy’s always been a class act – but can you imagine Sandy Koufax as a free agent?”
He also proudly related a story about Alex Rodriguez. Several years ago A-Rod and his then-wife stopped to say hello to Marvin and Terry (who passed away in 2009) at an awards ceremony. The man who didn’t play his first major league game until twelve years after Miller retired, knew enough to tell his wife, “This is the man to thank for our vacation home.”
If I ever see Alex Rodriguez again, I’m going to thank him for saying that. If I ever meet Reggie Jackson again, I’m going to tell him what I think of him, too.
Oh, yes, one more thing Marvin told me: “If they vote me in after I’m gone, please let everyone know it is against my wishes and tell them if I was alive I would turn it down.”
Okay, Major League Baseball, you’ve been warned.
Allen Barra's next book is "Mickey and Willie -- The Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age," from Crown.
The facts and whispers on PEDs
Hall of Fame ballot: The facts and whispers on PEDs
Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2012/11/28/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-roger-clemens-barry-bonds/1731833/
Baseball's Hall of Fame released its 2013 ballot Wednesday
Several players directly or indirectly tied to steroid use appear for the first time
Players have 15 years to earn election to the Hall
November 28. 2012 - It will be known, immediately and for the foreseeable future, as the Baseball Hall of Fame's Doping Class.
Wednesday, the Hall released its 2013 ballot that will be sent to 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, who must decide how best to handle a long list of players tied directly, indirectly or circumstantially to performance-enhancing drugs.
Indeed, the debate will not die once balloting results are released Jan. 9.
And the support each player receives likely won't remain static, either. A player must be named on 75% of ballots to earn induction to the Hall, but just 5% to remain on the ballot, for up to 15 years. Over that course of time, the voting pool will change, as could the attitude of the electorate. New information may emerge about candidates that could steer voters in a new direction.
But what do we know now, about both the ballot newcomers and the holdovers?
It's up to each voter to decide whether to ignore the cloud of PED use, or punish a candidate for his doping, suspected or otherwise. We're not here today to cast judgment on the proper route.
Rather, here's a user's guide to the users, suspected and otherwise, that voters will be basing their ballots upon.
Keep it close at hand. Some debates may not go away for the next 15 years.
No-doubters
Rafael Palmeiro: Tested positive for Stanolozol in 2005, the first whale nailed by baseball's drug-testing program. His 3,020 career hits and 569 home runs would make him a Hall lock; instead, his positive test -- and sanctimonious denials of PED use in a 2005 congressional hearing -- reduced him to vote totals of 11% and 12.6% his first two years on the ballot.
Mark McGwire: His nebulous testimony about steroid use in the same hearing that set Palmeiro up for his fall from grace all but discounted his 583 career home runs. McGwire peaked at 23.7% of the vote in 2010. Coming clean did not help his cause, either. After admitting in January 2010 he took steroids and growth hormone in his career, McGwire's total dipped to 19% each of the next two years.
Legally ensnared
Barry Bonds: Bonds dodged a perjury conviction in a federal trial related to his testimony in the BALCO doping scandal but was convicted of obstruction of justice, a conviction that is still under appeal. However, the crux of that trial was based on whether he "knowingly" took steroids. Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, was jailed on numerous occasions for refusing to testify against Bonds. The book Game of Shadows breaks down in excruciating detail the arc of Bonds' alleged used, which it claims began after the 1998 season. Those details have not been credibly disputed. For what it's worth, Bonds had a near-Hall of Fame career (411 home runs, 445 steals, a .996 OPS) from 1986-98, years in which he was ostensibly clean. By the time his 22-year career wrapped up in 2007, he had a record 762 home runs and a 1.051 OPS.
Roger Clemens: The biggest name ensnared in baseball's 2007 Mitchell Report on PED use, Clemens will learn this year if his successful fight to avoid federal perjury charges -- and his seven Cy Young Awards -- resonate with voters more than allegations from his former trainer that he took steroids and growth hormone between the years of 1998-2001. Clemens won 354 games over his career, including 213 wins and four Cy Young Awards before he supposedly started using PEDs. But voters must weigh whether the allegations leveled by Brian McNamee -- at least partially corroborated by former teammate Andy Pettitte -- resonate more than Clemens' June 2012 acquittal on six charges of lying to Congress and obstruction. Clemens sued McNamee for defamation in 2008, a suit eventually dismissed by a series of federal judges. McNamee's defamation suit against Clemens, filed in 2009, is still winding through the legal process in New York.
Circumstantially linked
Sammy Sosa: McGwire was admittedly doped up when he slugged a then-record 70 home runs in 1998. The only player who could keep pace with him? Sosa, who finished with 66. Seven years later, they both testified before Congress about PED use. While Sosa came out a bit better than McGwire, his suddenly faulty English and statement that he had not "broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic," where steroids can be legally purchased, did not help his cause. Sosa's statement that he "never took performance-enhancing drugs" was investigated by a House committee in 2010 after a New York Times report said he was among a group of players who tested positive for steroids in 2003 survey testing. But the House panel did not recommend the Department of Justice investigate Sosa, perhaps in part because of a five-year statute of limitations on such investigations.
Nothing but whispers
Jeff Bagwell: There has been no evidence that Bagwell used PEDs during a career in which he hit 449 home runs, had a .297 batting average, won an MVP award and finished in the top three two other times, all easily Hall credentials. In fact, his career Wins Above Replacement (WAR) put him in elite, sure-fire Hall territory. But his bulky physique and the large disconnect between his minor-league and major league production (he hit six home runs in 731 minor-league at-bats) have tailed him. Bagwell received 42% and 56% of the vote his first two years on the ballot, and barring any PED evidence emerging, figures to eventually win election. But in a 2010 interview with ESPN.com, Bagwell seemed to sense that he might be a victim of his era when it came to Hall of Fame voting. "I know a lot of people are saying, 'His body got bigger.'" Bagwell said then. "Well, if you're eating 30 pounds of meat every single day and you're working out and bench pressing, you're going to get bigger. You can go to every single trainer and they'll say, 'He was the first here and last to leave, and that dude worked his ass off.'"
Mike Piazza: Like Bagwell, Piazza had famously modest amateur credentials -- he was drafted in the 62nd round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988. Then, he developed into arguably the greatest-hitting catcher of all time as baseball's steroid era blossomed. That's put him in the crosshairs of suspicion, though he has publicly denied using PEDs. One on-the-record assertion that Piazza doped came in Jeff Pearlman's 2009 book on Clemens, The Rocket Who Fell To Earth. Reggie Jefferson, a major league first baseman/outfielder from 1991-99, said Piazza's use was widely assumed by his peers. "He's a guy who did it, and everybody knows it,"Jefferson said. "It's amazing how all these names, like Roger Clemens, are brought up, yet Mike Piazza goes untouched."
Hall ballot deep in big league accomplishments
First-timers Bonds, Clemens, Biggio, Sosa, Piazza there to challenge closing-in Morris
Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com | 11/28/12
http://mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121124&content_id=40406376
The newly released 2013 National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is rich in numbers and deep in talent:
• Barry Bonds, the all-time home run leader with 762.
• Roger Clemens, a storied right-hander with 354 wins.
• Craig Biggio, a second baseman with 3,060 hits.
• Sammy Sosa, the only slugger to bash more than 60 homers in three different seasons and who totaled 609.
• Mike Piazza, who hit 396 of his 427 homers as a catcher -- the most of any player at that position in Major League history.
• Curt Schilling, winner of 216 regular-season games and 11 more in the postseason.
• Jack Morris, a starter who so dominated the American League during one decade that he's now on the cusp of immortality in his 14th try.
The ballot that members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America will contemplate during the month of December, though, is not simply about career numbers. This year's voting -- with the addition of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa in particular -- brings further attention to baseball's era played under the cloud of performance-enhancement questions.
"It's going to be a very interesting ballot and I know the writers are going to have some tough decisions to make," said Morris, who finished with 66.7 percent of the vote in the last balloting "Unfortunately, they are going to have to be the moral police and I don't think a lot of them want to be. Hopefully it will work out the right way and it will be the right thing when it's all said and done."
As all Baseball Hall of Fame votes are conducted, a candidate needs to be named on at least 75 percent of the ballots to be elected. BBWAA members with 10 consecutive years or more of covering the sport are eligible to vote and they can name as many as 10 players on their ballots. The results of the voting will be announced on Jan. 9. MLB.com will air a live simulcast of MLB Network coverage of the announcement.
Those elected, if any, will be inducted into the Hall during the annual ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y., on July 28. They will be joined posthumously on that day by anyone selected by the pre-integration Veterans Committee. The winners of the Ford C. Frick Award for meritorious contributions to baseball announcing and the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for excellence in baseball writing will be honored on July 27 at Doubleday Field.
Anyone named by the Veterans Committee -- plus the two award winners -- will be announced at the Winter Meetings, to be held in Nashville, Tenn., from Dec. 3-6.
Morris, who had 254 career wins during his 18-year career -- an American League-best 162 of them during the 1980s -- tops a list of returnees that includes, among others, Jeff Bagwell, Lee Smith, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell and Edgar Martinez.
Morris is hoping that his 14th year on the ballot will be the charm. He fell 48 votes shy of election for the Class of 2012, in which Reds shortstop Barry Larkin was the only player elected by the BBWAA. In recent votes, Burt Blyleven was elected to the Hall in his 14th year, Jim Rice in his 15th year and Bruce Sutter in his 13th.
All of this is setting an optimistic course for Morris.
"That's the beauty of the waiting process; the fact that there is time," Morris said. "If it was one vote and you're gone, there would be a lot more guys in or a lot more out. I've always said this: the guys who are in, they deserve to be in. There may be a few guys who aren't in who deserve to be in. There's never going to be a perfect system. You can't really change it to make it perfect."
Among the first-timers, Biggio would seem to be on a clear course toward a plaque because 3,000 hits is almost a certain ticket to the hallowed Hall. Of the 26 other retired players who amassed 3,000 or more hits, only two are not in the Hall and both have extenuating circumstances. One is Rafael Palmiero, who finished with 3,020 hits and 569 homers but garnered 12.6 percent in his second year on the ballot after being suspended for a positive steroid test in 2005, his last season in the Major Leagues. The other is Pete Rose, the all-time leader with 4,256 hits who is banned from baseball because of gambling and is not eligible to be included on Hall of Fame ballots.
Biggio played 20 seasons, all for the Astros. He batted .281 as a catcher, outfielder and second baseman; he played 1,989 of his 2,780 games at second base.
"It would be a very, very rewarding feeling if it was to happen," said Biggio, who has been a high school coach and a special assistant to the general manager for the Astros since his retirement in 2007. "I'll just cross my fingers and hopefully next year, come Jan. 9, I'll get a phone call."
Bonds played 22 seasons for the Pirates and Giants and holds the all-time records for homers in a career and a single season (73), plus walks (2,558) and intentional walks (688). By even the metrics of today, Bonds is third in overall WAR (Wins Above Replacement) behind Babe Ruth and Cy Young, third in offensive WAR, sixth with a .444 on-base percentage, sixth with a .607 slugging percentage and fourth with a 1.051 OPS, which combines on-base and slugging percentages. He won the National League MVP seven times, three times before 1998, the demarcation line for when many believe the so-called streoids era began.
"I gave to that game," Bonds said recently. "I know how many games I played, how many years I put in, how many hours I put in, how much time I've worked, how hard I've worked and I am never, never, ever going to justify that part of my life. And it was a great part of my life. ... "
"This is an exceptional group of players," he said. "... We're always going to respect each other as athletes."
Clemens, who pitched for the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and Astros during a 24-year career, is ninth in career victories, one shy of Gregg Maddux, the top winning pitcher in their era with 355. He is third with 4,672 strikeouts behind Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. His career WAR ranks eighth for all players and third among pitchers behind Young and Walter Johnson, the pitchers with the most wins in history. Clemens was the AL MVP and won the Cy Young in 1986 for the Red Sox. He captured the Cy Young Award seven times, six of them in the AL, four of them prior to 1998.
Sosa hit 66 homers for the Cubs in 1998, the year of the feverish home run race with Mark McGwire to break Roger Maris' record of 61, set in 1961. McGwire finished with 70, a record that was broken three years later by Bonds. During that '98 season, Sosa led the National League with 158 RBIs and was named the NL's MVP. His home run hitting didn't end there. Sosa hit 63 in 1999, 64 in 2001 and led the league with 50 in 2000 and 49 in 2002. During that five-year period from 1998-2002, Sosa hit 292 homers.
Piazza ranks fifth offensively among the top nine catchers, six of them Hall of Famers. He hit .308 and was a 12-time All-Star, winning Rookie of the Year honors with the Dodgers in 1993. He was MVP of the 1996 All-Star Game in Philadelphia.
Schilling and Randy Johnson were the co-MVPs of the 2001 World Series as their D-backs defeated the Yankees in seven games. Schilling's regular-season record of 216-146 with a 3.46 ERA is not particularly Hall-worthy, but his 11-2 record and 2.23 ERA in 19 postseason starts for the Phillies, D-backs and Red Sox certainly stand out.
Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.07 ERA in seven World Series starts, also winning it all with Boston in 2004 and '07. In 2004, he created postseason lore by pitching against the Yankees with such a serious foot injury that blood soaked his baseball sock.
Baseball Hall of Fame ballot 2013
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa debut
11-28-12
http://aol.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2012-11-28/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-2013-barry-bonds-roger-clemens-sammy-sosa-ped-eligi
The Baseball Writers’ Association has unveiled its 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, which, as expected, is full of controversial first-time candidates.
Among the first-timers with proven or suspected ties to performance-enhancing drugs are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa. All have put up Hall-worthy numbers (Bonds is the all-time home run king; Clemens ranks third all time in strikeouts and ninth all time in wins; and Sosa is eighth all time in homers), but the steroids stigma hangs over them.
The ball now is in the hands of the more than 600 voters, who thus far have shown no willingness to give PED-tainted candidates anywhere close to the 75 percent of the vote required for induction. Mark McGwire’s best showing came in 2010 when he got 23.7 percent of the vote.
More details about the 2013 ballot:
The 24 newcomers
Sandy Alomar Jr., Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Roger Clemens, Jeff Conine, Steve Finley, Julio Franco, Shawn Green, Roberto Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Kenny Lofton, Jose Mesa, Mike Piazza, Reggie Sanders, Curt Schilling, Aaron Sele, Sammy Sosa, Mike Stanton, Todd Walker, David Wells, Rondell White, Woody Williams.
The 13 returning candidates
Jack Morris (14th time eligible, named on 66.7 percent of ballots last year); Jeff Bagwell (3rd, 56.0 percent); Lee Smith (11th, 50.6 percent); Tim Raines (6th, 48.7 percent); Alan Trammell (12th, 36.8 percent); Edgar Martinez (4th, 36.5 percent); Fred McGriff (4th, 23.9 percent); Larry Walker (3rd, 22.9 percent); Mark McGwire (7th, 19.5 percent); Don Mattingly (13th, 17.8 percent); Dale Murphy (15th, 14.5 percent); Rafael Palmeiro (3rd, 12.6 percent); Bernie Williams (2nd, 9.6 percent)
The process
The results of the vote will be announced Jan. 9, with the Hall of Fame induction ceremony set for July 28 in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Every Team in Baseball Should Use DH
Why Every Team in Baseball Should Use Designated Hitters
MLB is the only major sports league where different teams have different rules. Time for a change.
Jake Simpson
JUN 25 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/06/why-every-team-in-baseball-should-use-designated-hitters/258938/
Interleague play as we know it came to an end in the Major League Baseball on Sunday night when the Yankees beat the Mets, 6-5, in the rubber game of their latest Subway Series. As was the case in previous years, baseball set aside a roughly six-week block for matchups between American League and National League teams, so the only times players from each league will face other again this season are the All-Star Game and the World Series.
But next year, interleague play will be coming to you daily. The Houston Astros are set to move from the NL Central to the AL West, evening out the leagues for the first time since 1997. Unlike the setup in the early 1990s, however, there will be an odd number of teams in each league (15). That will lead to a wildly different schedule with at least one interleague series at all times. It's not inconceivable that a team could alternate between interleague and intra-league games on a weekly basis for much for the season.
With that in mind, it's time to end a baseball anachronism: pitchers hitting in one league but not the other. The new schedule means baseball just can't have it both ways anymore.
A quick historical review: Both leagues required the pitcher to hit until eccentric Oakland Athletics' owner Charlie Finley convinced the other American League owners to adopt the designated hitter rule in 1973. The National League stayed true to baseball purism and refused to adopt the DH, creating an odd dichotomy with no true parallel in the sports world. No other major sports league has such a significant rule disparity within its ranks, and all other American sports leagues have the same rules for every team.
The rule difference was fine when AL and NL teams only played each other in the World Series. It was inconvenient but acceptable when the two leagues only matched up in designated interleague blocks. But when interleague play happening all season long, the continuous switching between DH and no DH will have an adverse effect on teams from both leagues. National League teams with short benches will have to decide if they need to carry an extra hitter for their trips to American League parks (in interleague play, the rules are based on which team is at home). AL clubs would have to rethink the importance of their DH, who would regularly be relegated to a pinch-hitter role for whole series at a time.
The issue is not that the leagues would be playing each other constantly—as of now, each team is expected to play 18 to 20 interleague games in 2013. The issue is that the games would be spread out over an entire season, forcing each team to change its strategy (and its lineup) multiple times a month. It may not be earth-shattering, but even if it's just a major inconvenience, why not avoid the problem entirely? What, exactly, is the rationale for keeping the rules different in each league?
I say bring the NL into the 21st century, put the DH in both leagues and let pitchers go back to spitting sunflower seeds on the bench when their team is up at bat. The designated hitter has increased the number of players in the AL (because really, who wants to see their team carry an extra middle reliever rather than a power hitter off the bench as its 25th man?). It leads to more offense, which is what the casual baseball wants to see—remember, chicks dig the longball. And it allows aging hitters or poor fielders to keep a place in the game.
The DH gave us David Ortiz and Edgar Martinez. It extended the careers of Vladimir Guerrero, Eddie Murray, and Frank Thomas. It's allowing current AL batting leader Paul Konerko to play every day, even when he needs a break from playing first base. And it will very likely extend the careers of Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter by a couple years each. Other than the downfall of "playing baseball the right way," why wouldn't we want to see NL hitters have the same advantage? Now that interleague play will be a season-long constant instead of a month-long novelty, let's bring the oldest two-party system in sports a step closer to playing like one league, rather than two.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Follow the Urine!
Ryan Braun Makes a Kind of HistoryDave Zirin on February 24, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/blog/166441/follow-urine-ryan-braun-makes-kind-history
Something historic happened this week in the world of sports and, for once, I'm not talking about Jeremy Lin. Milwaukee Brewers slugger, and reigning National League Most Valuable Player Ryan Braun, appealed and beat a looming 50 game suspension for failing a steroid test. This marks the first time in history that a baseball player has successfully challenged a steroid-related penalty.
"I am very pleased and relieved by today's decision," Braun said in a statement. "It is the first step in restoring my good name and reputation. We were able to get through this because I am innocent and the truth is on our side…..We provided complete cooperation throughout, despite the highly unusual circumstances. I have been an open book, willing to share details from every aspect of my life as part of this investigation, because I have nothing to hide. I have passed over 25 drug tests in my career, including at least three in the past year.
Braun beat the suspension because of a bizarre set of circumstances surrounding his drug test that seems like the plot of an awful movie that could be called “Brotherhood of the Traveling Urine Sample." As ESPN reported, “... the collector, after getting Braun's sample, was supposed to take the sample to a FedEx Office for shipping. But the source said the collector thought the FedEx Office was closed because it was late on a Saturday and felt the sample wouldn't get shipped until Monday. As has occurred in some other instances, the collector took the sample home and kept it in a cool place, in his basement at his residence in Wisconsin.”
Yes, the reigning National League MVP and arguably the highest profile player to ever test positive for steroids, had his good name destroyed and it was all based around a piss test left in a cold, Wisconsin basement. As Barry Petchesky of Deadspin wrote, “If the procedure is so f--ked up that some dude can keep a jar of Ryan Braun's pee in his fridge over the weekend, then maybe Major League Baseball should worry less about Ryan Braun's appeal and more about a chain of custody that relies on a courier knowing the hours of his local Kinkos.”
The response to Braun's acquittal by Major League Baseball and their testers, the US Anti-Doping Agency, has been nothing short of spiteful. MLB’s official comment was, "While we have always respected that process, Major League Baseball vehemently disagrees with the decision.” Behind the scenes, they have been described as “enraged” with the arbitrator’s decision.
The USADA CEO Travis Tygert said, "It's frankly unreal. And it's a kick in the gut to clean athletes... To have this sort of technicality of all technicalities let a player off ... it's just a sad day for all the clean players and those that abide by the rules within professional baseball.”
It’s not just Major League Baseball and their professional urine brigade that's up in arms. Reporters like Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News have made clear that, aqcuittal or not, Ryan Braun has not cleared his name. “Understand something: The overturning of Braun’s 50-game suspension doesn’t mean Braun is clean, no matter what he says or how many times he says it or what he expects reasonable people to believe. He wasn’t exonerated. He was acquitted. There’s a difference."
But as Sports Illustrated’s Joe Sheehan also wrote, quite logically, “This, by the way, is how it's supposed to work. If the penalty is 50 games and millions of $, the process better be PRISTINE.”
The remarkable lack of grace being shown by Major League Baseball is stunning. It’s understandable why the USADA is upset. Their entire for-profit business model is built around finding and rooting out the players who, as Tygert said, aren’t “clean.” Imagine if police officers were only paid per-arrest and you get a picture of why the USADA already is viewed with suspicion by players and the union.
Baseball executives are sour they didn’t get to lower the hammer and are saying that Braun was only found not guilty because of a “technicality.” But as Gabe Feldman from the Tulane Sports Law Center wrote, “Chain of custody a ‘technicality’? It's critical to fair drug policy, and is mentioned 33 times in the MLB drug policy.”
Major League Baseball is more upset because they need scalps to justify to congress, sportswriters, and the minority of fans that care, that they are serious about cleaning up the game and drug testing isn’t mere window dressing. As the baseball writers dean, Peter Gammons wrote, after Braun had already been convicted in the press, “ ….what the Braun test result tells is that the Commissioner's Office and the players don't care if it's the MVP or a 4A utility infielder, they want a level playing field. Thus, in a sense, this speaks for the sincerity of the program, that it doesn't protect the faces of the sport or anyone's favorites, that Ryan Braun gets no different treatment than some kid in the Dominican Summer League."
Very noble. Yet amidst all the steroid hysteria, is a person, Ryan Braun, who actually has rights. In baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s worldview, that means he has the right to shoot himself up with painkillers, chew tobacco, and drink himself blind, but no right to use even prescribed steroids. If that’s the kind of world the union wants to collectively bargain, then that’s their choice. It’s a choice with which I disagree. This is just the cultural sanctioning of a war on drugs mentality that’s been great for the prison industry, but awful for the rest of us. I can certainly understand why players want the right to not feel like they need to take steroids to compete with the guy in the next locker. But Braun also has the right to not have his urine stored in a basement. He has the right to not have had the test results revealed before his appeal. He has the right to some dignity through this process. We don’t know at end whether Ryan Braun is “dirty.” But we know that baseball and their drug testing system has deep flaws which should be seen as intolerable not just to Ryan Braun and Major League players, but to all of us.
Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/166441/follow-urine-ryan-braun-makes-kind-history
Something historic happened this week in the world of sports and, for once, I'm not talking about Jeremy Lin. Milwaukee Brewers slugger, and reigning National League Most Valuable Player Ryan Braun, appealed and beat a looming 50 game suspension for failing a steroid test. This marks the first time in history that a baseball player has successfully challenged a steroid-related penalty.
"I am very pleased and relieved by today's decision," Braun said in a statement. "It is the first step in restoring my good name and reputation. We were able to get through this because I am innocent and the truth is on our side…..We provided complete cooperation throughout, despite the highly unusual circumstances. I have been an open book, willing to share details from every aspect of my life as part of this investigation, because I have nothing to hide. I have passed over 25 drug tests in my career, including at least three in the past year.
Braun beat the suspension because of a bizarre set of circumstances surrounding his drug test that seems like the plot of an awful movie that could be called “Brotherhood of the Traveling Urine Sample." As ESPN reported, “... the collector, after getting Braun's sample, was supposed to take the sample to a FedEx Office for shipping. But the source said the collector thought the FedEx Office was closed because it was late on a Saturday and felt the sample wouldn't get shipped until Monday. As has occurred in some other instances, the collector took the sample home and kept it in a cool place, in his basement at his residence in Wisconsin.”
Yes, the reigning National League MVP and arguably the highest profile player to ever test positive for steroids, had his good name destroyed and it was all based around a piss test left in a cold, Wisconsin basement. As Barry Petchesky of Deadspin wrote, “If the procedure is so f--ked up that some dude can keep a jar of Ryan Braun's pee in his fridge over the weekend, then maybe Major League Baseball should worry less about Ryan Braun's appeal and more about a chain of custody that relies on a courier knowing the hours of his local Kinkos.”
The response to Braun's acquittal by Major League Baseball and their testers, the US Anti-Doping Agency, has been nothing short of spiteful. MLB’s official comment was, "While we have always respected that process, Major League Baseball vehemently disagrees with the decision.” Behind the scenes, they have been described as “enraged” with the arbitrator’s decision.
The USADA CEO Travis Tygert said, "It's frankly unreal. And it's a kick in the gut to clean athletes... To have this sort of technicality of all technicalities let a player off ... it's just a sad day for all the clean players and those that abide by the rules within professional baseball.”
It’s not just Major League Baseball and their professional urine brigade that's up in arms. Reporters like Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News have made clear that, aqcuittal or not, Ryan Braun has not cleared his name. “Understand something: The overturning of Braun’s 50-game suspension doesn’t mean Braun is clean, no matter what he says or how many times he says it or what he expects reasonable people to believe. He wasn’t exonerated. He was acquitted. There’s a difference."
But as Sports Illustrated’s Joe Sheehan also wrote, quite logically, “This, by the way, is how it's supposed to work. If the penalty is 50 games and millions of $, the process better be PRISTINE.”
The remarkable lack of grace being shown by Major League Baseball is stunning. It’s understandable why the USADA is upset. Their entire for-profit business model is built around finding and rooting out the players who, as Tygert said, aren’t “clean.” Imagine if police officers were only paid per-arrest and you get a picture of why the USADA already is viewed with suspicion by players and the union.
Baseball executives are sour they didn’t get to lower the hammer and are saying that Braun was only found not guilty because of a “technicality.” But as Gabe Feldman from the Tulane Sports Law Center wrote, “Chain of custody a ‘technicality’? It's critical to fair drug policy, and is mentioned 33 times in the MLB drug policy.”
Major League Baseball is more upset because they need scalps to justify to congress, sportswriters, and the minority of fans that care, that they are serious about cleaning up the game and drug testing isn’t mere window dressing. As the baseball writers dean, Peter Gammons wrote, after Braun had already been convicted in the press, “ ….what the Braun test result tells is that the Commissioner's Office and the players don't care if it's the MVP or a 4A utility infielder, they want a level playing field. Thus, in a sense, this speaks for the sincerity of the program, that it doesn't protect the faces of the sport or anyone's favorites, that Ryan Braun gets no different treatment than some kid in the Dominican Summer League."
Very noble. Yet amidst all the steroid hysteria, is a person, Ryan Braun, who actually has rights. In baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s worldview, that means he has the right to shoot himself up with painkillers, chew tobacco, and drink himself blind, but no right to use even prescribed steroids. If that’s the kind of world the union wants to collectively bargain, then that’s their choice. It’s a choice with which I disagree. This is just the cultural sanctioning of a war on drugs mentality that’s been great for the prison industry, but awful for the rest of us. I can certainly understand why players want the right to not feel like they need to take steroids to compete with the guy in the next locker. But Braun also has the right to not have his urine stored in a basement. He has the right to not have had the test results revealed before his appeal. He has the right to some dignity through this process. We don’t know at end whether Ryan Braun is “dirty.” But we know that baseball and their drug testing system has deep flaws which should be seen as intolerable not just to Ryan Braun and Major League players, but to all of us.
Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Baseball Economics Expert Billy Beane: The Man Behind Moneyball
Simon Kuper
Monday 09/26/2011
http://www.maxim.com/amg/SPORTS/Articles/Baseball+Economics+Expert+Billy+Beane:+The+Man+Behind+Moneyball
Share What’s life like today for Billy Beane, the man who revolutionized baseball as a GM in the ’90s? For one thing, he’s adjusting to being portrayed by Brad Pitt in the film version of Moneyball. For another, he’s quietly overhauling the world’s most popular sport. Soccer, get ready to be Beane'd!
At ?rst you think it’s the junk room, a cellar where they dump old, broken things. But gradually it dawns on you: This really is the Oakland A’s clubhouse. Billy Beane, the A’s general manager, is sprawled on a battered sofa, his giant feet on the grubby beige carpet. The Oakland Coliseum has barely changed since 1981, when my dad drove me, a rabid 11-year-old A’s fan, up from Palo Alto to see the A’s beat the Red Sox 4-3 on a Dwayne Murphy homer. It must now be the most dilapidated stadium in the major leagues.
In this very room not long ago, Beane and Brad Pitt sat eating takeout pizza from Zachary’s in Berkeley. Pitt was hanging around, preparing to play Beane in the movie Moneyball, and as the GM explains, “He’s not the kind of guy who can just walk down to the local restaurant.” Pitt also sneaked a visit to Beane’s house, in the hills near Oakland. “I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Beane says, “but my wife and the nanny seemed to think it was. They were up at ?ve in the morning getting ready, which is the ?rst time my wife’s got up at ?ve in the morning.”
Beane spends a lot of time sitting in this room watching European soccer on the big television. While he watches, the A’s players watch him. Beane remembers sitting on his battered sofa last year when Arjen Robben of Bayerne Munich volleyed in the shot that knocked Manchester United out of the Champions League. Beane, nearly 50 now, jumped into the air and whooped. An A’s player looked up and laughed. What an absurd sight. You didn’t often see Beane whooping when his own team won a ball game.
“Just watch that goal,” Beane instructed the player, and because Beane is the boss and 6'4" and still sports the Charles Atlas physique that once lured half the baseball and football scouts in the U.S. to his parents’ house in San Diego, the A’s player watched the replay. And the second replay. Finally he got it: That skinny, bald little European was as great an athlete as the A’s player himself. “Wow,” said the A’s player, though maybe he said it only to please the boss.
Like millions of other Americans, Beane has come to follow soccer with the almost unhealthy fervor of a convert.
“I watch as many of the games as I can,” he admits. “I’m a bit of a junkie.”
And he’s also a soccer revolutionary. Five thousand miles from Europe, almost unseen by the media, Beane in?uences the thinking of soccer powerhouses like Chelsea and Manchester City. He regards Arsenal’s French manager, Arsène Wenger, as a soul mate, and you could even call him the brains behind Liverpool, the English club Red Sox owner John Henry bought last fall. Beane and his followers are now changing soccer—just as he previously changed baseball.
Sometime in late 2009, Beane and I began phoning and e-mailing each other to chat about soccer. I ?rst met him in real life in October 2010, and he turned out to be an unusual mix: an amiable Californian with big eyes behind his round glasses, and at the same time a bone-hard American businessman. I found the contact enjoyable, but also surreal. I had trouble seeing Beane as an actual person. Like millions of others, I already knew him from Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball, about the remaking of the Oakland A’s a decade ago. To me Beane was a great literary character, like Winston Smith or Holden Caul?eld.
We know most of his story from the book: The son of a naval of?cer grows up to be a brilliant teenage athlete, courted by major-league baseball clubs and elite college football programs. In the junk room this morning, I ask whether he ever played soccer.
“Not once,” says Beane.
Did he never even kick a ball?
“We had a hybrid game at junior high we called speedball, which would disgust anybody from outside the United States. You could actually catch the ball in the air and throw it. I did have a Pelé poster on my wall from the Cosmos. Most Americans in the ’70s knew Pelé. They weren’t quite sure what he did, but they knew of him.”
In the classic high school divide, Beane was both jock and nerd. His parents, who had married young and never had a shot at college, wanted Billy to use his brain. “Our family wasn’t particularly well-off,” says Beane. “Really, the reason my dad introduced me to sports was the ability to acquire a college scholarship. It was a way to pay for college.”
That’s why in 1980 the Beane family was excited when Stanford tried to recruit him as a quarterback. Beane likes to joke that if he’d accepted the scholarship, you’d never have heard of the guy who was then Stanford’s quarterback, John Elway. Anyway, Beane turned down Stanford. The New York Mets were offering him $125,000 to play baseball, and the middle-
class military kid felt he ought to take the money. Beane missed out on college.
“I don’t look at it as a regret now,” he says. “I’d say missed opportunity is probably a better way to put it. The people you’re going to school with, what you’re exposed to in future world leaders, senators—I missed that opportunity, and I don’t think you can really put a price tag on that. But it was a great life lesson.” Beane has tried never again to make a decision based on money alone.
Beane began playing in the minors, but from the beginning he had inklings of having chosen the wrong profession. He recalls: “I wanted to be the guy running the club. And as I’ve gotten older, I wanted to be the guy running the business, because it’s such an important part of sports now.”
Beane never became the great player the scouts had seen in him. “As a baseball failure—” I begin my question.
Beane pulls a pained face: “Can we… do we have another…? Is there a synonym that we can use? How about ‘my relative success’?”
He did, after all, make the major leagues. In 1990 he was a 27-year-old outfielder with the Oakland A’s. That was when he walked into the A’s front of?ce and said he wanted to quit playing and become an advance scout. As Lewis notes in Moneyball, nobody ever quits the bigs
at age 27 to become a scout. But Beane wanted to be the guy running the show.
Naturally, he treated his new career as a kind of further education—graduate school, if you like, at the University of Billy Beane. The great thing was that baseball at the time had recently acquired its very own revolutionary intellectual movement: sabermetrics. The story of Moneyball is how Beane became general manager of the A’s and reformed the club along sabermetric lines. “We just stole these ideas from people smarter than ourselves,” he says now, then corrects himself: “Stole, that’s the wrong word.”
Beane hired smart young statisticians, like 24-year-old Harvard grad Paul DePodesta. Their job was to ?nd undervalued players, and to further Billy Beane’s education at the same time.
As Moneyball records, stats worked for the A’s. Whereas other clubs did things because they’d always done them that way, the A’s came up with new ways of running a baseball club. Whereas other clubs tried to recruit living Greek statues like the 18-year-old Billy Beane, the A’s were quite happy to sign fat players. “Big-boned is the term we prefer to use,” chuckles Beane. Always they were trying to ?nd players who had been undervalued by other clubs.
Other people began to notice. In 2002 John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, tried to lure Beane to Boston. He offered him a minimum of $12.5 million over ?ve years, more than a GM in baseball had ever been paid. Beane ?rst said yes, but then he said no. He wasn’t going to make a decision based on money again. Instead, Henry hired a 28-year-old Yale graduate named Theo Epstein.
The A’s punched above their weight for years. The team won the American League West four times between 2000 and 2006. With a bit more luck they might have made it to a World Series.
And there the story might have ended, with Beane a minor celebrity at a small club, but for the fact that he had met a clever guy who lived down the road from the Oakland Coliseum: Michael Lewis.
The University of Billy Beane is always on the lookout for visiting professors. Lewis, the master of business books, was the perfect candidate for a man who had educated himself largely from business books. “I consider him both a friend and an incredibly stimulating person to be around,” says Beane. Partly for that reason, and partly because Beane is a canny businessman who knows the value of publicity, he let Lewis hang around for a year. In 2003 Lewis published Moneyball. Suddenly everyone in baseball knew what Beane and his fat A’s had been doing.
More and more clubs began to copy them. Baseball, says Beane now, “has turned into more of a science—I think more of a science than even people will publicize.” But Moneyball’s in?uence goes even further: It changed other sports, too. In 2004 an NBA team hired a full-time statistician for the first time. Now they all have statisticians. And from there the revolution spread across the Atlantic to sports like rugby, cricket, and even soccer.
The conquest of baseball by Moneyball methods was formally sealed in 2004, when the Red Sox of John Henry and Theo Epstein won the club’s ?rst World Series since 1918. In 2007 they won another. In a way these were triumphs for Beane, but they weren’t visible triumphs.
Once almost everyone in baseball went Moneyball, the A’s lost their advantage.
It’s surely no coincidence that, as the A’s have tailed off somewhat, Beane has developed an obsession with soccer.
It began when Beane’s wife had a birthday. Like most men, Beane couldn’t think of a present. He panicked. Luckily, he says, “I had a cheap ?ight to London. So I said, ‘Hey, honey, we’re going to London for your birthday.’?”
“I didn’t go over anticipating falling in love with soccer,” he claims now. But, inevitably, he did treat the trip as a sort of seminar in English culture. Every morning in London he’d study the British newspapers. He noticed that they barely ran a word about the NFL or baseball. Instead, they went on about soccer all the time. On romantic strolls with his wife, Beane noticed that in front of almost every pub was a chalkboard with the times of that day’s televised soccer matches. From the A’s junk room he recalls, “I’m a big college football fan here, and it was very similar to how college football is in the South, where you have this passion and you have a large number of massive fans in this small area.”
Back home in California, Beane started studying for his major in soccer. “I literally have read every piece of literature I could ?nd on it,” he says.
But Beane is a jock as well as a nerd, and the other thing that drew him to soccer was the athleticism of the players. It turned out they weren’t little wimps at all. Watching them, Beane saw that “these are the exact same guys who are playing our sports. They just chose this sport. Had they grown up in the States, they would be playing at the highest level at whatever sport they did.” For instance, when other Americans ask him what Barcelona star Lionel Messi is like, Beane will say, “Well, just imagine if you had Barry Sanders—who’s one of the greatest running backs in the history of the NFL—his quickness and his ability to change direction, with the vision of Steve Nash on a basketball court. That’s Lionel Messi.”
Just around the time Beane became interested in soccer, something fortuitous happened: People in soccer became interested in him. Beane got friendly with soccer execs like Arsenal’s Damien Comolli, Bolton Wanderers’ Mike Forde, and a German expat in California named Jürgen Klinsmann. When the legendary striker later became manager of the German national team, he hired more sports scientists than anyone in soccer had ever seen and guided Germany to a surprising third place at the 2006 World Cup. Afterward Klinsmann joined German super-team Bayern Munich and sent Beane a Bayern shirt with billy beane on the back. Beane liked the shirt but admits he is too self-conscious to wear it into the local Starbucks. (In July Klinsmann was named manager of the U.S. national team.)
Beane had become a soccer junkie. However, he still spent his days surrounded by baseball junkies, paid to think and talk about baseball. That couldn’t last. The University of Billy Beane needed a small soccer faculty. One day when the A’s were looking for a new young statistician, Beane interviewed an MIT economics graduate named Farhan Zaidi.
At this point in the conversation, Beane summons Farhan, a cheery, small, round guy with a sense of humor. He’s the kind of person you’d expect to meet late one night after a gig at a bar in a college town, not in a professional sports club. At MIT he specialized in behavioral economics. (“Like that’s real useful,” teases Beane.) But when Farhan came for his job interview, Beane quizzed him on one topic: Oasis, the favorite band of both men. When it then transpired that Farhan was a soccer junkie, too, he was hired. “I tried to direct the conversation in each of those directions,” Farhan admits now.
Farhan had been to the World Cups in 1998 and 2002. When World Cup 2006 in Germany came around, they both reasoned that they really ought to go, even if it happened to fall in the middle of the baseball season. Together with A’s owner Lew Wolff, they played hooky and ?ew over. “We were just like college kids with backpacks, shorts, going to every match we could,” Beane recalls.
After that World Cup, whenever the A’s players teased Beane about soccer, he’d tell them, “The rest of the world can’t be wrong.” The main thing that had struck him in Germany was the emotion of the fans. You didn’t see that so much in American sports. He drew two conclusions: Where there’s emotion, there’s money to be made. And where there’s emotion, people are probably making emotional decisions.
Rational Moneyball thinking might have a place in soccer too.
In 2005 Beane’s best friend in soccer, Damien Comolli, became technical director of Totenham Hotspurr (a.k.a. Spurs) and did his best to turn them into a sort of London version of the A’s. Comolli used the new data becoming available (on numbers of tackles, miles run, shots on target, shots stopped, and so on) to value soccer players.
In 2007 Comolli paid $14 million to bring an unknown 17-year-old left-back named Gareth Bale to the team. It seemed an absurd sum. Bale came from little Southampton and had played
only a couple of internationals for not-very-fashionable Wales. But on the phone to Oakland, Comolli would talk about him with great excitement.
A couple of summers ago, when Spurs visited California, Beane got to see Bale up close. He recognized the type at once: “An 18-, 19-year-old kid, broad-shouldered, lean.” Bale was fast, athletic, and strong—a most unusual combination. Beane says, “If he were in the States, he would never have touched a soccer ball. He’d be playing wide receiver for the New York Jets, he’d be playing center ?eld for a major-league baseball team, or he’d be a shooting guard for an NBA team.” The great athletes, whatever their sports, are each other’s brothers. By the time Bale was 20, it was clear he was a sort of superman.
In October 2010 the news had broken that John Henry, the Red Sox owner, was in England.
He’d flown over to buy Liverpool, one of England’s blue-chip soccer clubs. Beane was enthused by the impending deal. Henry had perfected Moneyball at the Red Sox. Imagine, mused Beane, if he could do something similar in soccer. Beane says, “John understands numbers, and in sports it’s about numbers. John is a very rational person.”
“He tried to hire you,” I say.
“Well, that’s the irrational part of him,” said Beane.
A few weeks after Henry’s purchase, French papers reported that Comolli would leave his then-club, St-Etienne, and predicted that he’d join Liverpool. So it proved. It was clear where John Henry had been getting his advice on potential soccer hires. Henry was indeed planning
a “Moneyball of soccer,” hampered only by his near-total ignorance of the sport.
It must have been useful to ask Mr. Moneyball himself for the right direction.
A lot of calls now ping back and forth between Liverpool and Oakland. In the A’s junk room, Beane says, “Damien, you can call him anytime. He’s up all the time. I’ll e-mail him, and it will be two in the morning there, and he’ll be up and he’ll say, ‘Hey, I’m up watching the A’s game,’ because he watches a lot of A’s games on the computer. The guy never sleeps.” It seems that Beane has become an unpaid consultant to Liverpool’s Moneyball project.
At the end of the interview in the junk room, I give Beane an old baseball card of himself to sign. billy beane: out?eld, it says. It’s from 1987, when he was back in the majors with the Minnesota Twins. The season before, according to the card, he’d batted .213.
Beane takes the card from me and studies it. “I think this is at the old Cleveland Stadium,” he says, even though about the only thing you can see behind the young Beane in the picture is a batting cage. “You know, you take these when you’re 22, and you don’t think you’re going to be immortalized for the rest of your life, and you sure wish you’d shaved that day.” I realize then how much of his life he’s spent being seen through a slightly distorted medium: through baseball cards, through that Greek statue of a body, through Michael Lewis, and now through Brad Pitt.
Beane goes off with the A’s stadium manager to ?nd a sandwich. Then he comes back, and he and Farhan sprawl on the battered sofas and talk soccer, baseball, data, and irrationality off-the-record for half the afternoon.
Ted Williams .406 Season Turns 70
Ted Williams had MLB's last .400 batting average in 1941, and here are some tidbits about it noted by the NYT:
The steadiness of Williams’s season is best, and most appropriately, borne out in numbers.
¶ Begin with these: 185 hits, 147 walks, 27 strikeouts and a .553 on-base percentage in 606 plate appearances.
¶ After missing most of April with a broken bone in his right foot, Williams hit .436 in May.
¶ From May 17 to 30, he hit .536.
¶ During his 56-game hitting streak, DiMaggio batted .408. During the same stretch of games, Williams hit .412.
¶ Williams started a 23-game hitting streak, the longest of his career, on May 15, the same day DiMaggio began his streak. During his hitting streak, Williams batted .489.
¶ Williams hit .470 against the Yankees, who won the American League pennant by 17 games behind a pitching staff that yielded the fewest runs and hits.
¶ He was hitless in only 22 of the 143 games he played.
¶ His longest hitless stretch was seven at-bats.
¶ He had just three infield hits.
¶ His slugging percentage was .735. Until Mark McGwire in 1998, only five players in either league had recorded a higher single-season mark.
¶ Sacrifice flies were counted as at-bats. Under today’s rules, Williams might have hit .411 to .419, based on accounts of games that season.
In an essay within the 1994 book “Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures,” the Harvard paleontologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould called Williams’s 1941 season “the greatest achievement in 20th-century hitting” and “a lesson to all who value the best in human possibility.”
Ted Williams’s .406 Is More Than a Number
BILL PENNINGTON
September 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/sports/baseball/ted-williamss-406-average-is-more-than-a-number.html
The steadiness of Williams’s season is best, and most appropriately, borne out in numbers.
¶ Begin with these: 185 hits, 147 walks, 27 strikeouts and a .553 on-base percentage in 606 plate appearances.
¶ After missing most of April with a broken bone in his right foot, Williams hit .436 in May.
¶ From May 17 to 30, he hit .536.
¶ During his 56-game hitting streak, DiMaggio batted .408. During the same stretch of games, Williams hit .412.
¶ Williams started a 23-game hitting streak, the longest of his career, on May 15, the same day DiMaggio began his streak. During his hitting streak, Williams batted .489.
¶ Williams hit .470 against the Yankees, who won the American League pennant by 17 games behind a pitching staff that yielded the fewest runs and hits.
¶ He was hitless in only 22 of the 143 games he played.
¶ His longest hitless stretch was seven at-bats.
¶ He had just three infield hits.
¶ His slugging percentage was .735. Until Mark McGwire in 1998, only five players in either league had recorded a higher single-season mark.
¶ Sacrifice flies were counted as at-bats. Under today’s rules, Williams might have hit .411 to .419, based on accounts of games that season.
In an essay within the 1994 book “Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures,” the Harvard paleontologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould called Williams’s 1941 season “the greatest achievement in 20th-century hitting” and “a lesson to all who value the best in human possibility.”
Ted Williams’s .406 Is More Than a Number
BILL PENNINGTON
September 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/sports/baseball/ted-williamss-406-average-is-more-than-a-number.html
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Konformist Book Club: The 300 Club
Robalini's Note: With Tim Wakefield having just reached 200 wins and Justin Verlander flirting with the possibility of 30 wins this year with a great playoff run, now is a good time to check out a book on the evolution (and possible extinction) of the 300-game winner...
The 300 Club: Have We Seen the Last of Baseball's 300-Game Winners?
Dan Schlossberg (Author), Wayne Hagin (Author)
List Price: $24.95
Price: $18.02 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $6.93 (28%)
Since the beginning of Major League Baseball in 1876, only two dozen pitchers have won 300 games. And because of new philosophies about pitch counts, the role of relief pitchers, shrinking strike zones, and five-man rotations, there's a good chance that the 300 Club has admitted its last member.
In The 300 Club - Last of a Breed - author Dan Schlossberg chronicles the most exclusive fraternity in baseball. Beginning with Cy Young and Walter Johnson, the only two players to win more than 400 games, the book reviews the careers of all 24 pitchers in the club. Exclusive interviews with 10 living 300-game winners, including Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, and Greg Maddux, form the heart of the book. Johnson was the last pitcher to join the club, winning his 300th during the 2009 baseball season.
The book also investigates the very real possibility that no pitcher will win 300 games again. Changes in relief pitching, salaries, starting rotations, and injuries are conspiring to keep the 300 Club "closed." Sprinkled with rare photos from the archives of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, this book explains how this unusual collection of 24 men managed to win so many games, and why other standouts, such as Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale, and Sandy Koufax, fell short of the magic number.
The 300 Club is about "the last of a breed," but the book is the first of its kind - a fast-paced and thorough exploration of the best pitchers the game has ever seen.
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Ascend Books (May 15, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0984113037
ISBN-13: 978-0984113033
URL: http://www.amazon.com/300-Club-Baseballs-300-Game-Winners/dp/0984113037/thekonformist
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Robalini's MLB Realignment Plan
Robert Sterling
Konformist.com
8-17-11
There's been a lot of talk of realignment in Major League Baseball, and not all of it is good. The simplest talk is to move one team from the National League and put it in the AL, so both leagues have 15 team. This looks like a done deal, with either the Houston Astros or Arizona Diamondbacks moving to the American League West (with the Astros moving to the NL West if it's the D-Backs so there's 6 five team divisions.) Though the Texas Rangers want it to be the Astros to have an interstate division rivalry, the Astros are balking at the idea, so I'm betting on Arizona. Either way, this would be a pretty harmless move, with the biggest change in having interleague play all year round.
A more radical option would be to have two 15-team leagues, but have no divisions. Then, the top four teams (or five, with the final two teams in each league playing a one game playoff) making it to the postseason. This plan is a step entirely in the wrong direction, essentially killing off the excitement of the pennant race.
This is the elephant in the room few are acknowledging: having a wild card in baseball's postseason has been a failure as an experiment for MLB. The one thing the wild card allowed was for Boston and New York meet in the postseason, and their epic 2004 series is probably baseball's most shining moment over the last decade. But no matter how enjoyable that series was (at least for non-Yankee fans) it in no way makes up for the loss of excitement in pennant races. For the most part since the wild card was introduced in 1995, many exciting potential pennant races (especially between the Yankees and the Red Sox) have been nullified since both teams were headed to the postseason either way. The move to add a second wild card in each league that will have a playoff with the first is merely a bandaid, an attempt to add some benefit in winning the division that isn't there.
The answer to the problem isn't to add wild cards, but rather to create four divisions in each league. You still would have eight teams in the postseason, but they would all have to win their division or go home. This creates eight pennant races each season, with the likelihood of more than a couple being rather close.
To create eight divisions, ideally you need four teams in each division, which would require two expansion teams. Here's how I look at the expansion city options, while adding two teams to the mix:
* This is the easy one, moving the Oakland Athletics to San Jose, something which appears likely to eventually happen anyway, whenever the San Francisco 49ers get a stadium built at Great America in Santa Clara. Oakland is just not a major league city anymore, and San Jose being the heart of the Silicon Valley makes it a marketing winner.
* The Tampa Bay Rays, like Oakland, just can't hold its own as a baseball market. It has more to do with the location of its stadium than anything else, but when an organization puts together such a good team and attendance still flounders, it is clear that a city isn't ready for primetime.
This leaves openings for three more teams. Here's my picks:
* Portland. The US city with the largest independent metropolitan area without a MLB team. Has a long history of minor league baseball, and would be a perfect Pacific Northwest rival to both Seattle and San Jose.
* Las Vegas. I don't say this just to be a home town booster. Vegas is one of the biggest metro areas without a baseball team, and even with the economic downturn, all the other options lack the style and flash of Sin City. No ballplayer will complain about visiting here. Also, a team called the Area 51s would be an awesome addition to the MLB.
* Charlotte. If you use the combined statistical area, it's actually an even bigger metro area than Portland. Further, there is room for baseball to grow in the Southeast, and the hi-tech area of North Carolina is a logical pick.
Here's my view of the other options, and why they wouldn't work:
* Montreal: Yes, it's a bigger metro than any US city without a baseball team. But it's had a team already and failed. Let somebody else have a try.
* San Juan or Mexico: With the world economic crisis, it just is too risky to have any team in Mexico. Maybe someday, but not now. Likewise, though Puerto Rico would have huge attendance, there are big economic issues there, and players would balk at the extra travel distance.
* Sacramento, Orlando, or Virginia: The problem with all these areas is there already are teams in the same state or metro region. Sacramento has the Athletics & Giants, Orlando has Miami and (for now, at least) Tampa Bay and Virginia has the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles.
* New Jersey or Brooklyn: New Jersey or Brooklyn (or anywhere in Metro NY) would be a perfect place for another baseball team. But the Yankees would block any such move. End of story.
* San Antonio, Indiana, Oklahoma City, Nashville & New Orleans: San Antonio's only strike is that it too is in a state with two teams, who don't want competition for TV deals. Otherwise it would be a perfect fit. Indiana and Oklahoma City are on the cusp, but Charlotte has better arguments than they do. Nashville is not quite on the MLB level yet, and New Orleans is still recovering from Katrina. In any case, all these teams are good options after Charlotte for a team in the southern region.
That said, here's how the divisions would like in my plan:
NL
North
Chicago
Cincinnati
Milwaukee
St. Louis
South
Atlanta
Charlotte
Houston
Miami
West
Colorado
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
East
New York
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Washington
AL
North
Chicago
Cleveland
Detroit
Minnesota
South
Arizona
Kansas City
Las Vegas
Texas
West
Los Angeles
Portland
San Jose
Seattle
East
Baltimore
Boston
New York
Toronto
The main problem with this plan is that Baltimore & Toronto are still stuck in the same division as the two-headed beast of the Yankees-Red Sox. But it seems whoever shares a division with Boston or New York would be left with the short end of the stick. I think the best plan is to keep division races as regional affairs, but to have schedule based on team salary. Each league would have teams put into four groups each season based on their total salary, and their schedule would be weighed towards their salary level and not by division. I believe that would be a more effective way to balance team salaries than a cap.
Of course, the other complaint of this plan is that it forces Boston and New York to both compete for the same postseason opening, and would sometimes mean the team with the second best record in the league would be out of the postseason. But I consider this a virtue. For example, right now the Yankees and Red Sox are separated by a mere half game in the standings. Without a wild card, the battle to win the division would be a major story, but instead there is little attention to it. It's better to have a system that creates more excitement than one that rewards a very good team that didn't close the deal.
For more info on expansion team options:
Ranking the Top 10 Markets for Relocation or Expansion
Maury Brown
Tuesday, 05 August 2008
http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2387:ranking-the-top-10-markets-for-relocation-or-expansion&catid=26:editorials&Itemid=39
Re-Ranking the Top 10 Markets for Relocation or Expansion
Joe Tetreault
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
http://bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4700:re-ranking-the-top-10-markets-for-relocation-or-expansion&catid=83:joe-tetreault-article-archive&Itemid=192
Metropolitian population statistics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Combined_Statistical_Areas
Konformist.com
8-17-11
There's been a lot of talk of realignment in Major League Baseball, and not all of it is good. The simplest talk is to move one team from the National League and put it in the AL, so both leagues have 15 team. This looks like a done deal, with either the Houston Astros or Arizona Diamondbacks moving to the American League West (with the Astros moving to the NL West if it's the D-Backs so there's 6 five team divisions.) Though the Texas Rangers want it to be the Astros to have an interstate division rivalry, the Astros are balking at the idea, so I'm betting on Arizona. Either way, this would be a pretty harmless move, with the biggest change in having interleague play all year round.
A more radical option would be to have two 15-team leagues, but have no divisions. Then, the top four teams (or five, with the final two teams in each league playing a one game playoff) making it to the postseason. This plan is a step entirely in the wrong direction, essentially killing off the excitement of the pennant race.
This is the elephant in the room few are acknowledging: having a wild card in baseball's postseason has been a failure as an experiment for MLB. The one thing the wild card allowed was for Boston and New York meet in the postseason, and their epic 2004 series is probably baseball's most shining moment over the last decade. But no matter how enjoyable that series was (at least for non-Yankee fans) it in no way makes up for the loss of excitement in pennant races. For the most part since the wild card was introduced in 1995, many exciting potential pennant races (especially between the Yankees and the Red Sox) have been nullified since both teams were headed to the postseason either way. The move to add a second wild card in each league that will have a playoff with the first is merely a bandaid, an attempt to add some benefit in winning the division that isn't there.
The answer to the problem isn't to add wild cards, but rather to create four divisions in each league. You still would have eight teams in the postseason, but they would all have to win their division or go home. This creates eight pennant races each season, with the likelihood of more than a couple being rather close.
To create eight divisions, ideally you need four teams in each division, which would require two expansion teams. Here's how I look at the expansion city options, while adding two teams to the mix:
* This is the easy one, moving the Oakland Athletics to San Jose, something which appears likely to eventually happen anyway, whenever the San Francisco 49ers get a stadium built at Great America in Santa Clara. Oakland is just not a major league city anymore, and San Jose being the heart of the Silicon Valley makes it a marketing winner.
* The Tampa Bay Rays, like Oakland, just can't hold its own as a baseball market. It has more to do with the location of its stadium than anything else, but when an organization puts together such a good team and attendance still flounders, it is clear that a city isn't ready for primetime.
This leaves openings for three more teams. Here's my picks:
* Portland. The US city with the largest independent metropolitan area without a MLB team. Has a long history of minor league baseball, and would be a perfect Pacific Northwest rival to both Seattle and San Jose.
* Las Vegas. I don't say this just to be a home town booster. Vegas is one of the biggest metro areas without a baseball team, and even with the economic downturn, all the other options lack the style and flash of Sin City. No ballplayer will complain about visiting here. Also, a team called the Area 51s would be an awesome addition to the MLB.
* Charlotte. If you use the combined statistical area, it's actually an even bigger metro area than Portland. Further, there is room for baseball to grow in the Southeast, and the hi-tech area of North Carolina is a logical pick.
Here's my view of the other options, and why they wouldn't work:
* Montreal: Yes, it's a bigger metro than any US city without a baseball team. But it's had a team already and failed. Let somebody else have a try.
* San Juan or Mexico: With the world economic crisis, it just is too risky to have any team in Mexico. Maybe someday, but not now. Likewise, though Puerto Rico would have huge attendance, there are big economic issues there, and players would balk at the extra travel distance.
* Sacramento, Orlando, or Virginia: The problem with all these areas is there already are teams in the same state or metro region. Sacramento has the Athletics & Giants, Orlando has Miami and (for now, at least) Tampa Bay and Virginia has the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles.
* New Jersey or Brooklyn: New Jersey or Brooklyn (or anywhere in Metro NY) would be a perfect place for another baseball team. But the Yankees would block any such move. End of story.
* San Antonio, Indiana, Oklahoma City, Nashville & New Orleans: San Antonio's only strike is that it too is in a state with two teams, who don't want competition for TV deals. Otherwise it would be a perfect fit. Indiana and Oklahoma City are on the cusp, but Charlotte has better arguments than they do. Nashville is not quite on the MLB level yet, and New Orleans is still recovering from Katrina. In any case, all these teams are good options after Charlotte for a team in the southern region.
That said, here's how the divisions would like in my plan:
NL
North
Chicago
Cincinnati
Milwaukee
St. Louis
South
Atlanta
Charlotte
Houston
Miami
West
Colorado
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
East
New York
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Washington
AL
North
Chicago
Cleveland
Detroit
Minnesota
South
Arizona
Kansas City
Las Vegas
Texas
West
Los Angeles
Portland
San Jose
Seattle
East
Baltimore
Boston
New York
Toronto
The main problem with this plan is that Baltimore & Toronto are still stuck in the same division as the two-headed beast of the Yankees-Red Sox. But it seems whoever shares a division with Boston or New York would be left with the short end of the stick. I think the best plan is to keep division races as regional affairs, but to have schedule based on team salary. Each league would have teams put into four groups each season based on their total salary, and their schedule would be weighed towards their salary level and not by division. I believe that would be a more effective way to balance team salaries than a cap.
Of course, the other complaint of this plan is that it forces Boston and New York to both compete for the same postseason opening, and would sometimes mean the team with the second best record in the league would be out of the postseason. But I consider this a virtue. For example, right now the Yankees and Red Sox are separated by a mere half game in the standings. Without a wild card, the battle to win the division would be a major story, but instead there is little attention to it. It's better to have a system that creates more excitement than one that rewards a very good team that didn't close the deal.
For more info on expansion team options:
Ranking the Top 10 Markets for Relocation or Expansion
Maury Brown
Tuesday, 05 August 2008
http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2387:ranking-the-top-10-markets-for-relocation-or-expansion&catid=26:editorials&Itemid=39
Re-Ranking the Top 10 Markets for Relocation or Expansion
Joe Tetreault
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
http://bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4700:re-ranking-the-top-10-markets-for-relocation-or-expansion&catid=83:joe-tetreault-article-archive&Itemid=192
Metropolitian population statistics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Combined_Statistical_Areas
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Why I'm Boycotting Tuesday's Arizona All-Star Game
Dave Zirin
http://bit.ly/pgr27z
Over the last year, civil rights organizations, politicians, sportswriters and baseball players have asked Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to move Tuesday's 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona. He chose not to listen and now I choose not to watch. If I lived within a day's travel of Arizona, I'd be choosing to protest at the stadium gates. Ever since Arizona passed its darkly punitive racial profiling law SB 1070, thousands of people have pleaded with Selig to do the right thing and move the game. Baseball is 27.7% Latino. It's a sport dependent on Latin American talent from the baseball academies of the Dominican Republic to today's biggest stars, Albert Pujols and Adrian Gonzalez. Even more, Major League Baseball has prided itself – and marketed itself - on historically being more than just a game. Bud Selig, in particular, is a man, who publicly venerates the game's civil rights tradition. Jackie Robinson's number is retired and visible in every park and the great Roberto Clemente in death has become a true baseball saint. But Selig's inaction makes his tributes to the past look as hollow as Sammy Sosa's old bat.
Selig clearly loves the symbolism of civil rights more than the sacrifice. The presence of the game will mean a financial windfall for the state as well as for Arizona Diamondback owner Ken Kendrick. Kendrick is a first-tier right wing money bundler who has let the state politicians behind SB 1070 use his owner’s box for fundraisers. The game will also mean a national spotlight for the vile Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County, our 21st century Bull Conner. Arpaio has been threatening to bring down his pink-clad chain gang to clean up outside the stadium.
Selig is not the only one backing down from the moment. The Major League Players Association issued a very strong statement last year against SB 1070 and hinted that a boycott might be in the cards, saying they would “consider additional measures to protect the interests of our members.” Earlier this week, after months of silence, Executive Director Michael Weiner, said “SB 1070 is not in effect and key portions of the law have been judged unlawful by the federal courts. Under all the circumstances, we have not asked players to refrain from participating in any All-Star activities.” To say SB 1070 “is not in effect” is sophistry. Only a section of SB 1070 has been judged unlawful: the extension of police powers to demand papers without cause. Other aspects are now on the books including stiffer penalties for “illegals” and giving citizens the right to sue any city that sets up safe havens for immigrants. In addition, State Governor Jan Brewer is currently appealing the pruning of SB 1070 directly to the US Supreme Court. Also, the law has spawned copycat legislation is states around the country. My own discussions with Arizona activists tells me that racial profiling has been rampant since the law passed, with Latinos, legal and illegal, in fear to call the police or the fire department, or even attend church. Even if you agree with the Michael Weiner, as he writes, that immigration matters “will not be resolved at Chase Field, nor on any baseball diamond” the MLBPA is being remarkably cavalier about its responsibility to “protect its members.”
As for the players, a massive number are bowing out of this year’s game. Is this because of SB 1070? We don’t know, but either way a weakened product will be on display Tuesday night. If the spotlight shifts to anyone on the field, it will be centered on Boston’s All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez who changed his position a year ago that he wouldn’t play if the game were in Arizona. There is a movement to have players like Gonzalez, sympathetic to the cause, to wear a ribbon or make some kind of statement. We will see if Adrian Gonzalez takes advantage of the spotlight.
But in the end, responsibility for this debacle rests with Selig. NFL owners, who no one would confuse with the NAACP, threatened to pull the 1993 Super Bowl out of Arizona if the state continued to refuse to recognize Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. The Now 20 years later, baseball’s commissioner does nothing. Yes, Bud Selig would undoubtedly have received an avalanche of criticism it he had moved the game. That’s what it means to actually sacrifice something for the sake of the civil rights he claims to hold so dear. Instead, his legacy will bear another blot, joining the steroid boom, the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, and the gouging of state economies with tax-payer funded stadiums. Now Bud Selig can always be remembered as the Seinfeld of sports commissioners: the man who did nothing; the man who, with the game on the line, kept his bat on his shoulder and took a called third strike.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
http://bit.ly/pgr27z
Over the last year, civil rights organizations, politicians, sportswriters and baseball players have asked Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to move Tuesday's 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona. He chose not to listen and now I choose not to watch. If I lived within a day's travel of Arizona, I'd be choosing to protest at the stadium gates. Ever since Arizona passed its darkly punitive racial profiling law SB 1070, thousands of people have pleaded with Selig to do the right thing and move the game. Baseball is 27.7% Latino. It's a sport dependent on Latin American talent from the baseball academies of the Dominican Republic to today's biggest stars, Albert Pujols and Adrian Gonzalez. Even more, Major League Baseball has prided itself – and marketed itself - on historically being more than just a game. Bud Selig, in particular, is a man, who publicly venerates the game's civil rights tradition. Jackie Robinson's number is retired and visible in every park and the great Roberto Clemente in death has become a true baseball saint. But Selig's inaction makes his tributes to the past look as hollow as Sammy Sosa's old bat.
Selig clearly loves the symbolism of civil rights more than the sacrifice. The presence of the game will mean a financial windfall for the state as well as for Arizona Diamondback owner Ken Kendrick. Kendrick is a first-tier right wing money bundler who has let the state politicians behind SB 1070 use his owner’s box for fundraisers. The game will also mean a national spotlight for the vile Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County, our 21st century Bull Conner. Arpaio has been threatening to bring down his pink-clad chain gang to clean up outside the stadium.
Selig is not the only one backing down from the moment. The Major League Players Association issued a very strong statement last year against SB 1070 and hinted that a boycott might be in the cards, saying they would “consider additional measures to protect the interests of our members.” Earlier this week, after months of silence, Executive Director Michael Weiner, said “SB 1070 is not in effect and key portions of the law have been judged unlawful by the federal courts. Under all the circumstances, we have not asked players to refrain from participating in any All-Star activities.” To say SB 1070 “is not in effect” is sophistry. Only a section of SB 1070 has been judged unlawful: the extension of police powers to demand papers without cause. Other aspects are now on the books including stiffer penalties for “illegals” and giving citizens the right to sue any city that sets up safe havens for immigrants. In addition, State Governor Jan Brewer is currently appealing the pruning of SB 1070 directly to the US Supreme Court. Also, the law has spawned copycat legislation is states around the country. My own discussions with Arizona activists tells me that racial profiling has been rampant since the law passed, with Latinos, legal and illegal, in fear to call the police or the fire department, or even attend church. Even if you agree with the Michael Weiner, as he writes, that immigration matters “will not be resolved at Chase Field, nor on any baseball diamond” the MLBPA is being remarkably cavalier about its responsibility to “protect its members.”
As for the players, a massive number are bowing out of this year’s game. Is this because of SB 1070? We don’t know, but either way a weakened product will be on display Tuesday night. If the spotlight shifts to anyone on the field, it will be centered on Boston’s All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez who changed his position a year ago that he wouldn’t play if the game were in Arizona. There is a movement to have players like Gonzalez, sympathetic to the cause, to wear a ribbon or make some kind of statement. We will see if Adrian Gonzalez takes advantage of the spotlight.
But in the end, responsibility for this debacle rests with Selig. NFL owners, who no one would confuse with the NAACP, threatened to pull the 1993 Super Bowl out of Arizona if the state continued to refuse to recognize Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. The Now 20 years later, baseball’s commissioner does nothing. Yes, Bud Selig would undoubtedly have received an avalanche of criticism it he had moved the game. That’s what it means to actually sacrifice something for the sake of the civil rights he claims to hold so dear. Instead, his legacy will bear another blot, joining the steroid boom, the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, and the gouging of state economies with tax-payer funded stadiums. Now Bud Selig can always be remembered as the Seinfeld of sports commissioners: the man who did nothing; the man who, with the game on the line, kept his bat on his shoulder and took a called third strike.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Robalini's Final Baseball All-Star Picks
First Base
AL - Adrian Gonzalez, Boston
NL - Prince Fielder, Milwaukee
Second Base
AL - Robinson Cano, New York
NL - Brandon Phillips, Cincinnati
Shortstop
AL - Derek Jeter, New York
NL - Jose Reyes, New York
Third Base
AL - Kevin Youkilis, Boston
NL - Chipper Jones, Atlanta
Catcher
AL - Alex Avila, Detroit
NL - Brian McCann, Atlanta
Designated Hitter
David Ortiz, Boston
Outfield
AL
Jose Bautista, Toronto
Curtis Granderson, New York
Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle
NL
Ryan Braun, Milwaukee
Carlos Beltran, New York
Matt Kemp, Los Angeles
AL - Adrian Gonzalez, Boston
NL - Prince Fielder, Milwaukee
Second Base
AL - Robinson Cano, New York
NL - Brandon Phillips, Cincinnati
Shortstop
AL - Derek Jeter, New York
NL - Jose Reyes, New York
Third Base
AL - Kevin Youkilis, Boston
NL - Chipper Jones, Atlanta
Catcher
AL - Alex Avila, Detroit
NL - Brian McCann, Atlanta
Designated Hitter
David Ortiz, Boston
Outfield
AL
Jose Bautista, Toronto
Curtis Granderson, New York
Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle
NL
Ryan Braun, Milwaukee
Carlos Beltran, New York
Matt Kemp, Los Angeles
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Carlos Santana is Booed
Santana is Booed for Using Baseball's Civil Rights Game to Speak Out for Civil Rights
E of S Nation - Please pass along the link!
In struggle and sports
Dave Zirin
http://bit.ly/iuVl66
Major League Baseball’s annual Civil Rights Game was poised to be a migraine-inducing exercise in Orwellian irony. Forget about the fact that Civil Rights was to be honored in Atlanta, where fans root for a team called the Braves and cheer in unison with the ubiquitous "tomahawk chop."
Forget about the fact that the Braves have been embroiled in controversy since pitching coach Roger McDowell aimed violent, homophobic threats at several fans. Forget that this is a team that has done events with Focus on the Family, an organization that is to Civil Rights what Newt Gingrich is to marital fidelity.
The reason Atlanta was such a brutally awkward setting for a Sunday Civil Rights setting, was because Friday saw the Governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, sign HR 87, a law that shreds the Civil Rights of the state’s Latino population. Modeled after Arizona’s horrific and unconstitutional SB 1070, HR 87 authorizes state and local police the federal powers to demand immigration papers from people they suspect to be undocumented. Those without papers on request will find themselves behind bars. Civil rights hero, Atlanta’s John Lewis has spoken out forcefully against the legislation saying “This is a recipe for discrimination. We’ve come too far to return to the dark past."
But there was Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, celebrating civil rights in the Georgia, and chortling excitedly about the 2011 All-Star game in Arizona. In the hands of Selig, irony becomes arsenic. Thank God that Commisioner Selig was stupid enough to choose the Civil Rights Game to honor, among others, the great musician Carlos Santana. Santana was supposed to be the Latino stand-in, a smiling symbol of baseball’s diversity. And maybe, he would even play a song!
But Bud picked the wrong Latino. Carlos Santana took the microphone and said that he was representing all immigrants. Then Santana added, "The people of Arizona, and the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves." In a perfect display of Gov. Nathan Deal’s Georgia, the cheers quickly turned to boos. Yes, Carlos Santana was booed on Civil Rights Day in Atlanta for talking about Civil Rights.
Then in the press box, Santana held an impromptu press conference where he let loose with an improvised speech to rival one of his virtuoso guitar solos. He said, "This law is not correct. It's a cruel law, actually, This is about fear. Stop shucking and jiving. People are afraid we're going to steal your job. No we aren't. You're not going to change sheets and clean toilets. I would invite all Latin people to do nothing for about two weeks so you can see who really, really is running the economy. Who cleans the sheets? Who cleans the toilets? Who babysits? I am here to give voice to the invisible."
He went on to say, "Most people at this point they are either afraid to really say what needs to be said, this is the United States the land of the free. If people want the immigration law to keep passing in every state then everybody should get out and just leave the American Indians here. This is about Civil Rights."
Where was Bud Selig during all this drama? It seems that Selig slunk out of a stadium backdoor in the 5th inning. If there is one thing Bud has become an expert at, it’s ducking his head when the issues of immigration, civil rights, and Major League Baseball collide. If Selig really gave a damn about Civil Rights, he would heed the words of Carlos Santana. He would move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona. He would recognize that the sport of Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente and Curt Flood has an obligation to stand for something more than just using their memory to cover up the injustices of the present. If Bud Selig cared about Civil Rights, he would above all else, have to develop something resembling a spine. But if Bud is altogether unfamiliar with the concept of courage, he received one hell of an object lesson from Carlos Santana.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
E of S Nation - Please pass along the link!
In struggle and sports
Dave Zirin
http://bit.ly/iuVl66
Major League Baseball’s annual Civil Rights Game was poised to be a migraine-inducing exercise in Orwellian irony. Forget about the fact that Civil Rights was to be honored in Atlanta, where fans root for a team called the Braves and cheer in unison with the ubiquitous "tomahawk chop."
Forget about the fact that the Braves have been embroiled in controversy since pitching coach Roger McDowell aimed violent, homophobic threats at several fans. Forget that this is a team that has done events with Focus on the Family, an organization that is to Civil Rights what Newt Gingrich is to marital fidelity.
The reason Atlanta was such a brutally awkward setting for a Sunday Civil Rights setting, was because Friday saw the Governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, sign HR 87, a law that shreds the Civil Rights of the state’s Latino population. Modeled after Arizona’s horrific and unconstitutional SB 1070, HR 87 authorizes state and local police the federal powers to demand immigration papers from people they suspect to be undocumented. Those without papers on request will find themselves behind bars. Civil rights hero, Atlanta’s John Lewis has spoken out forcefully against the legislation saying “This is a recipe for discrimination. We’ve come too far to return to the dark past."
But there was Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, celebrating civil rights in the Georgia, and chortling excitedly about the 2011 All-Star game in Arizona. In the hands of Selig, irony becomes arsenic. Thank God that Commisioner Selig was stupid enough to choose the Civil Rights Game to honor, among others, the great musician Carlos Santana. Santana was supposed to be the Latino stand-in, a smiling symbol of baseball’s diversity. And maybe, he would even play a song!
But Bud picked the wrong Latino. Carlos Santana took the microphone and said that he was representing all immigrants. Then Santana added, "The people of Arizona, and the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves." In a perfect display of Gov. Nathan Deal’s Georgia, the cheers quickly turned to boos. Yes, Carlos Santana was booed on Civil Rights Day in Atlanta for talking about Civil Rights.
Then in the press box, Santana held an impromptu press conference where he let loose with an improvised speech to rival one of his virtuoso guitar solos. He said, "This law is not correct. It's a cruel law, actually, This is about fear. Stop shucking and jiving. People are afraid we're going to steal your job. No we aren't. You're not going to change sheets and clean toilets. I would invite all Latin people to do nothing for about two weeks so you can see who really, really is running the economy. Who cleans the sheets? Who cleans the toilets? Who babysits? I am here to give voice to the invisible."
He went on to say, "Most people at this point they are either afraid to really say what needs to be said, this is the United States the land of the free. If people want the immigration law to keep passing in every state then everybody should get out and just leave the American Indians here. This is about Civil Rights."
Where was Bud Selig during all this drama? It seems that Selig slunk out of a stadium backdoor in the 5th inning. If there is one thing Bud has become an expert at, it’s ducking his head when the issues of immigration, civil rights, and Major League Baseball collide. If Selig really gave a damn about Civil Rights, he would heed the words of Carlos Santana. He would move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona. He would recognize that the sport of Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente and Curt Flood has an obligation to stand for something more than just using their memory to cover up the injustices of the present. If Bud Selig cared about Civil Rights, he would above all else, have to develop something resembling a spine. But if Bud is altogether unfamiliar with the concept of courage, he received one hell of an object lesson from Carlos Santana.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Baseball's blues: It's not just the Dodgers
Dave Zirin
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-zirin-dodgers-20110422,0,4297920.story
Three years ago, I spoke at Fremont High School in South-Central Los Angeles and asked a room of 50 teenagers how many of them had ever been inside Dodger Stadium. One intrepid student raised his hand. To understand why Major League Baseball had to seize the storied franchise this week, look no further than this moment. But it's a moment that could be replicated in cities across the country.
The league takeover of the Los Angeles Dodgers is more than just a comment on owner Frank McCourt's financial problems or the McCourt divorce drama. It's more than a black eye for the onetime franchise of Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax and Fernando Valenzuela. It's more than a comment on a club that from 1973 to 1986 led the major leagues in attendance every year except one. It is a commentary on the rotten economic state of Major League Baseball.
As has been widely reported, attendance is significantly down, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. For years, owning a baseball team was like having a license to print money. Public subsidies, luxury boxes and cable deals filled the coffers of owners. Ownership subsidized the lavish conspicuous consumption of Frank and Jamie McCourt. It also created enterprises that are overleveraged sinkholes dependent on tax dollars while pricing out working-class fans.
The evidence isn't pretty, and it goes well beyond Frank McCourt's needing a personal loan from Fox Broadcasting to make the team's payroll. Last year, the World Series-bound Texas Rangers were bought at a bankruptcy bidders' auction in the middle of the season. This season, the New York Mets — playing in the game's largest market — started the year as a husk of a franchise. The team allegedly had been used by owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz as a cash register to invest with disgraced financier Bernard Madoff. Now they're being sued for every cent they have by the trustee for Madoff's victims and are looking to unload a piece of the franchise.
These are the most dramatic examples of an industrywide squeeze as the old revenue streams, in these tight economic times, are running dry.
Two years ago, Michigan's then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm described automakers as "a healthcare provider that happened to make cars." For a generation now, baseball has been a highly leveraged real estate urban development plan in which men happen to play a game. Now, young fans are disconnected from the game, and a franchise such as the Dodgers, with all its history and dazzling brilliance, is in receivership. The L.A. Chamber of Commerce has worried that in a worst-case scenario, the team would leave Los Angeles. Although this might provoke cheers in Brooklyn, it would be a tragedy for the game.
MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and the league have no answers about the future of the Dodgers or even baseball in Los Angeles. They don't seem as if they have any long-term answers at all. This unprecedented, jarring response to simply seize the team can only be read as a panic move. Like someone who just throws out everything in the attic rather than sort through the debris, it reads like a reactive response to everything: the McCourt divorce, the inability of a league owner to meet his payroll, questions about security after the tragic near-fatal beating of a rival team's fan on opening day and the need to bring in showboating security specialist and former LAPD Chief William J. Bratton.
It's long been said — whether about steroids, realignment, the All-Star game — that Selig's nickname is "Mr. Reaction." This will do nothing to allay that criticism of his tenure.
The answer to the Dodgers' problems is a somewhat simple one, although enacting it flies in the face of the bylaws of Major League Baseball. The answer isn't found in the glittering Hollywood Hills but in the sparsely populated tundra of Green Bay, Wis. The NFL's Green Bay Packers offer an alluring alternative that couples winning with community connection. The Packers have no embarrassing owners like the McCourts. In fact, they have more than 112,000 owners.
The team is owned by the fans, the only publicly owned, not-for-profit major professional team in the United States. This has created a relationship between team and community unlike any in the NFL. Not only has home field been sold out for two decades, but during snowstorms, the team puts out calls for volunteers to help shovel and is never disappointed by the response.
Could this work in Los Angeles with the Dodgers? Would the fans pony up to make sure that the franchise doesn't leave the City of Angels? Would fan ownership also translate into a deeper connection between the city and the team?
Those are tantalizing questions. But without profound public and political pressure, it's doubtful that Angelenos will get the chance to find out. Considering the generations of civic love bestowed on this team, the people of Los Angeles certainly have a greater claim on the team than Major League Baseball. But then this is also a team founded on the original sin of the Chavez Ravine land grab. Maybe the chickens have just come home to roost.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-zirin-dodgers-20110422,0,4297920.story
Three years ago, I spoke at Fremont High School in South-Central Los Angeles and asked a room of 50 teenagers how many of them had ever been inside Dodger Stadium. One intrepid student raised his hand. To understand why Major League Baseball had to seize the storied franchise this week, look no further than this moment. But it's a moment that could be replicated in cities across the country.
The league takeover of the Los Angeles Dodgers is more than just a comment on owner Frank McCourt's financial problems or the McCourt divorce drama. It's more than a black eye for the onetime franchise of Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax and Fernando Valenzuela. It's more than a comment on a club that from 1973 to 1986 led the major leagues in attendance every year except one. It is a commentary on the rotten economic state of Major League Baseball.
As has been widely reported, attendance is significantly down, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. For years, owning a baseball team was like having a license to print money. Public subsidies, luxury boxes and cable deals filled the coffers of owners. Ownership subsidized the lavish conspicuous consumption of Frank and Jamie McCourt. It also created enterprises that are overleveraged sinkholes dependent on tax dollars while pricing out working-class fans.
The evidence isn't pretty, and it goes well beyond Frank McCourt's needing a personal loan from Fox Broadcasting to make the team's payroll. Last year, the World Series-bound Texas Rangers were bought at a bankruptcy bidders' auction in the middle of the season. This season, the New York Mets — playing in the game's largest market — started the year as a husk of a franchise. The team allegedly had been used by owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz as a cash register to invest with disgraced financier Bernard Madoff. Now they're being sued for every cent they have by the trustee for Madoff's victims and are looking to unload a piece of the franchise.
These are the most dramatic examples of an industrywide squeeze as the old revenue streams, in these tight economic times, are running dry.
Two years ago, Michigan's then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm described automakers as "a healthcare provider that happened to make cars." For a generation now, baseball has been a highly leveraged real estate urban development plan in which men happen to play a game. Now, young fans are disconnected from the game, and a franchise such as the Dodgers, with all its history and dazzling brilliance, is in receivership. The L.A. Chamber of Commerce has worried that in a worst-case scenario, the team would leave Los Angeles. Although this might provoke cheers in Brooklyn, it would be a tragedy for the game.
MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and the league have no answers about the future of the Dodgers or even baseball in Los Angeles. They don't seem as if they have any long-term answers at all. This unprecedented, jarring response to simply seize the team can only be read as a panic move. Like someone who just throws out everything in the attic rather than sort through the debris, it reads like a reactive response to everything: the McCourt divorce, the inability of a league owner to meet his payroll, questions about security after the tragic near-fatal beating of a rival team's fan on opening day and the need to bring in showboating security specialist and former LAPD Chief William J. Bratton.
It's long been said — whether about steroids, realignment, the All-Star game — that Selig's nickname is "Mr. Reaction." This will do nothing to allay that criticism of his tenure.
The answer to the Dodgers' problems is a somewhat simple one, although enacting it flies in the face of the bylaws of Major League Baseball. The answer isn't found in the glittering Hollywood Hills but in the sparsely populated tundra of Green Bay, Wis. The NFL's Green Bay Packers offer an alluring alternative that couples winning with community connection. The Packers have no embarrassing owners like the McCourts. In fact, they have more than 112,000 owners.
The team is owned by the fans, the only publicly owned, not-for-profit major professional team in the United States. This has created a relationship between team and community unlike any in the NFL. Not only has home field been sold out for two decades, but during snowstorms, the team puts out calls for volunteers to help shovel and is never disappointed by the response.
Could this work in Los Angeles with the Dodgers? Would the fans pony up to make sure that the franchise doesn't leave the City of Angels? Would fan ownership also translate into a deeper connection between the city and the team?
Those are tantalizing questions. But without profound public and political pressure, it's doubtful that Angelenos will get the chance to find out. Considering the generations of civic love bestowed on this team, the people of Los Angeles certainly have a greater claim on the team than Major League Baseball. But then this is also a team founded on the original sin of the Chavez Ravine land grab. Maybe the chickens have just come home to roost.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Major League Baseball All-Star Ballot
The MLB All-Star Game ballot is out, sponsored by Sprint. (Old-timers like myself still link it to Gilette.) Here's the URL:
http://www.mlb.com/mlb/events/all_star/y2011/ballot.jsp
FYI, here are my first picks, based on stats as of 4-25-11:
First Base
AL: Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers - .338, 5 HR, 15 RBI
NL: Prince Fielder, Milwaukee Brewers - .345, 3 HR, 22 RBI
Second Base
AL: Robinson Cano, New York Yankees - .304, 4 HR, 14 RBI
NL: Brandon Phillips, Cincinnati Reds - .364, 2 HR, 10 RBI
Shortstop
AL: Asdrubal Cabrera, Cleveland Indians - .253, 4 HR, 14 RBI
NL: Troy Tulowitzki, Colorado Rockies - .317, 7 HR, 16 RBI
Third Base
AL: Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees - .346, 5 HR, 17 RBI
NL: Chipper Jones, Atlanta Braves - .284, 2 HR, 16 RBI
Catcher
AL: Russell Martin, New York Yankees - .311, 6 HR, 16 RBI
NL: Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants - .280, 4 HR, 16 RBI
Designated Hitter
AL: Travis Hafner, Cleveland Indians - .348, 4 HR, 10 RBI
Outfielders
AL: Jose Bautista, Toronto Blue Jays - .364, 8 HR, 11 RBI
AL: Coco Crisp, Oakland Athletics - .281, 1 HR, 8 RBI
AL: Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners - .309, 0 HR, 9 RBI
NL: Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers - .378, 8 HR, 20 RBI
NL: Kosuke Fukudome, Chicago Cubs - .478, 0 HR, 2 RBI
NL: Matt Kemp, Los Angeles Dodgers - .396, 5 HR, 18 RBI
http://www.mlb.com/mlb/events/all_star/y2011/ballot.jsp
FYI, here are my first picks, based on stats as of 4-25-11:
First Base
AL: Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers - .338, 5 HR, 15 RBI
NL: Prince Fielder, Milwaukee Brewers - .345, 3 HR, 22 RBI
Second Base
AL: Robinson Cano, New York Yankees - .304, 4 HR, 14 RBI
NL: Brandon Phillips, Cincinnati Reds - .364, 2 HR, 10 RBI
Shortstop
AL: Asdrubal Cabrera, Cleveland Indians - .253, 4 HR, 14 RBI
NL: Troy Tulowitzki, Colorado Rockies - .317, 7 HR, 16 RBI
Third Base
AL: Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees - .346, 5 HR, 17 RBI
NL: Chipper Jones, Atlanta Braves - .284, 2 HR, 16 RBI
Catcher
AL: Russell Martin, New York Yankees - .311, 6 HR, 16 RBI
NL: Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants - .280, 4 HR, 16 RBI
Designated Hitter
AL: Travis Hafner, Cleveland Indians - .348, 4 HR, 10 RBI
Outfielders
AL: Jose Bautista, Toronto Blue Jays - .364, 8 HR, 11 RBI
AL: Coco Crisp, Oakland Athletics - .281, 1 HR, 8 RBI
AL: Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners - .309, 0 HR, 9 RBI
NL: Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers - .378, 8 HR, 20 RBI
NL: Kosuke Fukudome, Chicago Cubs - .478, 0 HR, 2 RBI
NL: Matt Kemp, Los Angeles Dodgers - .396, 5 HR, 18 RBI
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Classic Baseball Video: Dave Parker 1979 All-Star Game
http://mlb.mlb.com/media/player/mp_tpl_3_1.jsp?w_id=344784&w=/library/open/allstar/qa/79as_parker_carter_350.wmv&pid=false&cid=mlb&fid=350&v=2
A spectacular play in the 1979 All-Star Game in which Dave Parker, in deep right field, cannons a strike to Gary Carter to nail an ALer trying to score on a tag-up from third...
A spectacular play in the 1979 All-Star Game in which Dave Parker, in deep right field, cannons a strike to Gary Carter to nail an ALer trying to score on a tag-up from third...
Monday, March 14, 2011
Say it Loud on Opening Day
Baseball Must Move the All-Star Game from Arizona
Dave Zirin
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159060/say-it-loud-opening-day-baseball-must-move-all-star-game-arizona
At the risk of profound understatement, it’s been a difficult 2011 in the state of Arizona. Jared Loughner’s shooting spree that grievously injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six, including nine-year old Christina Green, was a national horror. The killings also focused global attention on Arizona’s toxic political culture. Gun-toting nativists, white supremacist state senators, anti-immigrant laws like the infamous SB 1070, and Gov. Jan Brewer spinning myths about “headless bodies” [1] on the Arizona/Mexico border, turned the state into a national punchline. After Loughner’s rampage, the punchline became a cautionary tale, and everyone from Gov. Brewer to Barack Obama called on the political fire breathers to give it a rest.
Unfortunately, Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce didn’t get the memo. Pearce, a man chummy with those who consider swastikas to be fashion accessories, returned this year with new legislation that would peel the paint off the Statue of Liberty. Pearce has proposed SB 1611 [2], which among other things would force schools to report students who cannot produce documents verifying their U.S. citizenship or legal residence. School adminstrators that refuse would be subject to prosecution. It's a law that would compel teachers and principals into becoming de facto INS agents. It's also a law that would be a brazen challenge to the US Constitution which protects the right of every child to attend a public school.
As Gabriel Chin, a University of Arizona Law professor said [3], "This is all aiming for Supreme Court test cases by doing something that is over the constitutional line. It's really alarming and astonishing that they would deliberately violate the Constitution in this way." Last Friday, there were walkouts at eight Phoenix area high schools, as students joined together to march on the state house and protest Pearce’s bill.
As the primordial ooze of Arizona’s politics comes to a boil yet again, the question must be posed anew to Major League Commissioner Bud Selig: Will the 2011 All-Star Game go ahead as planned in the state of Arizona? Will Selig ignore the latest from Russell Pearce, along with the thousands of petitioners, protesters, and players and reward a state with aspirations of apartheid with the Midsummer Classic?
By last year, Selig offered his position in a statement as bizarre as it was obtuse. Pressured for an answer, he said [4], “Apparently all the people around and in minority communities think we’re doing OK. That’s the issue, and that’s the answer. I told the clubs today: ‘Be proud of what we’ve done.’ They are. We should. And that’s our answer. We control our own fate, and we’ve done very well.” No one is quite sure what this means but the answer was still clear. Yes, as of last summer, he would be ignoring all concerns and the game would be played as planned in Arizona.
Selig chose to disregard the concerns of his own players, 27.7% of whom were born in Latin America, and the MLB Players’ Association. He wouldn’t comment on the fact that the biggest star in the game Albert Pujols, said of the recent Arizona legislation [5], "I'm opposed to it. How are you going to tell me that, me being Hispanic, if you stop me and I don't have my ID, you're going to arrest me? That can't be."
He didn’t care that 2010 All-Stars Adrian Gonzalez, Joakim Soria, Jose Valverde and Yvonni Gallardo have said that they wouldn’t play in the 2011 game if it goes ahead in Arizona as planned. [6] He shrugged his shoulders when World Series winning manager of the Chicago White Sox Ozzie Guillen, swore to uphold an All Star boycott. And Selig showed contempt for the thousands of petitioners, the fans who demonstrated in 20 major league cities last summer, and the former MLB executives all of whom have pleaded with him to “move the game.”
In 2011, since the horrific shootings, not to mention the latest legislation by Pearce, Selig hasn’t even deigned us with rambling incoherence. He’s been silent.
This has enraged those who built the protests last summer at the park. Enrique Morones, the former VP of Latino and Diversity marketing for the San Diego Padres and a protest organizer to move the game, said to me,
“As the temperature rises in Arizona and another nine-year-old girl is killed Christina Green, we remind Bud Selig that two years earlier a nine-year-old girl was murdered because of racial profiling, Brisenia Flores. She was murdered by Minuteman and Federation of American Immigration Reform activist Shawna Forde. Bud, once again we ask, move the game. How many deaths in Arizona do you need to be convinced that now is not the time or the place to have MLB All Star game in Arizona?"
Favianna Rodriguez, co-founder of the online advocacy group Presente.org [7] also spoke to this, saying to me, "The events in Arizona of recent months- the shooting in Tucson, the trial of Shawna Forde for the murder of 9 year-old Brisenia Flores, and the proposed legislation – are strong evidence for not having the 2011 All-Star Game in the dangerous and bigoted state of Arizona."
More and more people are saying that this cannot pass. Immigration activists around the country are planning in April to inaugurate the new season with Opening Day protests at parks across the country. I’ve spoken to those planning pickets, banner drops, and even more creative ways to welcome the National Pastime with a message to Bud Selig: "Will you or will you not move the damn game?" If he won’t answer the question, then clearly we’re not asking it loudly enough.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Links:
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/0904/Jan-Brewer-corrects-the-record-on-headless-bodies-in-the-desert
[2] http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-hispanic-republicans/2011/02/22/national-hispanic-group-slams-pearces-omnibus-sb-1611-and-democratic-legislator-sinema-protests-at-capitol-today-at-1130-am/
[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/04/arizona-students-stage-walkout_n_831659.html
[4] http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/37139256/ns/sports-baseball/
[5] http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2010/07/california-groups-pressure-bud-selig-to-move-2011-all-star-game/1
[6] http://oneroyalway.com/royals-blog/writers-broadcasters-personalities-websites/joakim-soria-support-boycott-of-2011-all-star-game-in-arizona/
[7] http://presente.org/
Dave Zirin
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159060/say-it-loud-opening-day-baseball-must-move-all-star-game-arizona
At the risk of profound understatement, it’s been a difficult 2011 in the state of Arizona. Jared Loughner’s shooting spree that grievously injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six, including nine-year old Christina Green, was a national horror. The killings also focused global attention on Arizona’s toxic political culture. Gun-toting nativists, white supremacist state senators, anti-immigrant laws like the infamous SB 1070, and Gov. Jan Brewer spinning myths about “headless bodies” [1] on the Arizona/Mexico border, turned the state into a national punchline. After Loughner’s rampage, the punchline became a cautionary tale, and everyone from Gov. Brewer to Barack Obama called on the political fire breathers to give it a rest.
Unfortunately, Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce didn’t get the memo. Pearce, a man chummy with those who consider swastikas to be fashion accessories, returned this year with new legislation that would peel the paint off the Statue of Liberty. Pearce has proposed SB 1611 [2], which among other things would force schools to report students who cannot produce documents verifying their U.S. citizenship or legal residence. School adminstrators that refuse would be subject to prosecution. It's a law that would compel teachers and principals into becoming de facto INS agents. It's also a law that would be a brazen challenge to the US Constitution which protects the right of every child to attend a public school.
As Gabriel Chin, a University of Arizona Law professor said [3], "This is all aiming for Supreme Court test cases by doing something that is over the constitutional line. It's really alarming and astonishing that they would deliberately violate the Constitution in this way." Last Friday, there were walkouts at eight Phoenix area high schools, as students joined together to march on the state house and protest Pearce’s bill.
As the primordial ooze of Arizona’s politics comes to a boil yet again, the question must be posed anew to Major League Commissioner Bud Selig: Will the 2011 All-Star Game go ahead as planned in the state of Arizona? Will Selig ignore the latest from Russell Pearce, along with the thousands of petitioners, protesters, and players and reward a state with aspirations of apartheid with the Midsummer Classic?
By last year, Selig offered his position in a statement as bizarre as it was obtuse. Pressured for an answer, he said [4], “Apparently all the people around and in minority communities think we’re doing OK. That’s the issue, and that’s the answer. I told the clubs today: ‘Be proud of what we’ve done.’ They are. We should. And that’s our answer. We control our own fate, and we’ve done very well.” No one is quite sure what this means but the answer was still clear. Yes, as of last summer, he would be ignoring all concerns and the game would be played as planned in Arizona.
Selig chose to disregard the concerns of his own players, 27.7% of whom were born in Latin America, and the MLB Players’ Association. He wouldn’t comment on the fact that the biggest star in the game Albert Pujols, said of the recent Arizona legislation [5], "I'm opposed to it. How are you going to tell me that, me being Hispanic, if you stop me and I don't have my ID, you're going to arrest me? That can't be."
He didn’t care that 2010 All-Stars Adrian Gonzalez, Joakim Soria, Jose Valverde and Yvonni Gallardo have said that they wouldn’t play in the 2011 game if it goes ahead in Arizona as planned. [6] He shrugged his shoulders when World Series winning manager of the Chicago White Sox Ozzie Guillen, swore to uphold an All Star boycott. And Selig showed contempt for the thousands of petitioners, the fans who demonstrated in 20 major league cities last summer, and the former MLB executives all of whom have pleaded with him to “move the game.”
In 2011, since the horrific shootings, not to mention the latest legislation by Pearce, Selig hasn’t even deigned us with rambling incoherence. He’s been silent.
This has enraged those who built the protests last summer at the park. Enrique Morones, the former VP of Latino and Diversity marketing for the San Diego Padres and a protest organizer to move the game, said to me,
“As the temperature rises in Arizona and another nine-year-old girl is killed Christina Green, we remind Bud Selig that two years earlier a nine-year-old girl was murdered because of racial profiling, Brisenia Flores. She was murdered by Minuteman and Federation of American Immigration Reform activist Shawna Forde. Bud, once again we ask, move the game. How many deaths in Arizona do you need to be convinced that now is not the time or the place to have MLB All Star game in Arizona?"
Favianna Rodriguez, co-founder of the online advocacy group Presente.org [7] also spoke to this, saying to me, "The events in Arizona of recent months- the shooting in Tucson, the trial of Shawna Forde for the murder of 9 year-old Brisenia Flores, and the proposed legislation – are strong evidence for not having the 2011 All-Star Game in the dangerous and bigoted state of Arizona."
More and more people are saying that this cannot pass. Immigration activists around the country are planning in April to inaugurate the new season with Opening Day protests at parks across the country. I’ve spoken to those planning pickets, banner drops, and even more creative ways to welcome the National Pastime with a message to Bud Selig: "Will you or will you not move the damn game?" If he won’t answer the question, then clearly we’re not asking it loudly enough.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Links:
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/0904/Jan-Brewer-corrects-the-record-on-headless-bodies-in-the-desert
[2] http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-hispanic-republicans/2011/02/22/national-hispanic-group-slams-pearces-omnibus-sb-1611-and-democratic-legislator-sinema-protests-at-capitol-today-at-1130-am/
[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/04/arizona-students-stage-walkout_n_831659.html
[4] http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/37139256/ns/sports-baseball/
[5] http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2010/07/california-groups-pressure-bud-selig-to-move-2011-all-star-game/1
[6] http://oneroyalway.com/royals-blog/writers-broadcasters-personalities-websites/joakim-soria-support-boycott-of-2011-all-star-game-in-arizona/
[7] http://presente.org/
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