The baseball season has officially begun, and now that we dwell in a place where there is cable, we can watch (in Dave's case) or vaguely be aware of while doing other stuff (in my case) the baseball postseason in all its glorious merchandisable glory. I have not paid attention to baseball at all this year, so I'm anticipating my preseason picks for both the National League and the American League will be hilarious in retrospect. Mmm, retrospect.
My preseason picks:
NL
East: NY Mets
Central: Chicago Cubs
West: Arizona Diamondbacks
Wild card: Atlanta Braves
AL
East: NY Yankees
Central: Minnesota Twins
West: Oakland A's
Wild card: Chicago White Sox
Actual standings at the end of the 2009 regular season:
NL
East: Philadelphia Phillies (Mets finished 4th)
Central: St. Louis Cardinals (Cubs finished 2nd)
West: LA Dodgers (Diamondbacks finished dead last in the West)
Wild card: Colorado Rockies
AL
East: NY Yankees (why does being right about this make me feel glum?)
Central: Minnesota Twins (good hunch on my part there)
West: LA Angels (Oakland finished dead last in the West)
Wild card: Boston Red Sox
I have learned a few things from this exercise. I will list them in a random order!
#12. I know absolutely nothing about the Western divisions in baseball. Worse than nothing. In fact, there is only one way to make use of my opinions on these divisions. Take my opinions, write down the opposite of each, then go to your local sports betting facility and place wagers for MLB games based on the things you have written down. You might end up with cab fare home for your troubles!
A(2)(192-j). Each season, I get one shockingly correct hunch. However, it is always surrounded by abysmally incorrect hunches. I could attribute this either to random chance, with which it is logically consistent, or to the time-traveling machinations of mischievous fairies.
Stupid fairies. Er, y'know--the wingy, shiny, time-traveling, wish-granting kind. Stupid them.
#771. Picking the Yankees is apparently the smart move again. Man, I liked it better when they stank on ice. Although now, if they lose in the first round, it will be to the ChiSox's arch rival, the Twins. So I suppose that's a no-win situation for a sports-bigamizing Chicagoan like me. (*looks up at TV* Wait, why are we watching this game?)
ZZ9(pl)Za. The Cubs are always good on paper. On paper is where they have home field advantage. Everywhere else, they are like the pitching staff of a team visiting Mile-High Stadium, home of the Rockies, before the humidor was installed which counteracts some of the extra sproing given to the leathery spheres by the high altitude. In other words, grimly brave but ultimately ineffectual.
#1. If I am going to have interesting things to say about baseball, it would help to actually follow it.
Showing posts with label football fridays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label football fridays. Show all posts
Futility Friday vol. 5: This post is not about sports
Job search update.
I've now taken 3 civil service exams, and gotten As on them. Next week I shall go back to the Thompson Center and take more. I've also started applying for things online again, partially filled out (but did not hand in) applications for local Starbucks' and greasy spoon, and today completely overhauled my resume. It is now much more detailed and hopefully enticing to recruiters. Intellectually I think I should be fuming, as Local H put it:
"you wanna jerk me around
with my resume around my neck?"
However, I know it's largely my own hole that I dug, by spending all those months in what was, but did not always feel like, a depressive funk. Hedonism in the microcosm can mask big-picture problems. I think the decision to get therapy, on the one hand, and the decision to get medicated on the other, were a my way of giving myself a wake-up call.
When the shrink gave me my meds she said the standard warning: short-term studies have found that all antidepressants may increase the risk of suicide. And I said, ah yes, I've read about these studies. (Looked around on Curator's blog for a bit, but couldn't find the link I was thinking of. If I come across it later I'll update the post!) Essentially, sometimes a person has been so depressed for so long that they are committed to the idea of killing themselves, but are so paralyzed by their depression that they can't summon up the will to act on their intent. So such a person gets meds, feels the temporary relief of their lethargy, and finds themselves finally able to do it. It's a sad thought, wondering how many people in that situation might have experienced even greater relief, changed their minds, and decided to go on living, if they'd waited awhile longer.
I was really glad I'd had occasion to remember the idea, however. Maybe it's placebo effect, maybe my system's just really sensitive to new chemicals--I'm not sure. Maybe it was the phone conversation I had with my landlord on Tuesday. In any event, three things have been happening over the past couple of days:
1. My stomach is all acid-refluxy like it hasn't been since high school. (A side effect of which I was advised.)
2. Falling asleep is noticeably less easy. (Another expected side effect.)
3. I feel completely terrified about my job and money situation. Filled with panic. Like I haven't been since high school.
Then, instead of going into the old panic feedback loop--panicking about panicking about panicking--I remembered the above sad factoid. And I thought, "Aha! This is the feeling the depression was preventing me from feeling!" Knowing what it was did not automatically make it fixed, of course.
But it did give me a starting point from which to figure out what I could do about it. Panic does two things: it revs up and it paralyzes. The useful and the destructive aspects of fear, both at the same time. Way I see it, the important thing is to find some way to deal with the emotional paralysis so that all that spicy fear energy can be put to use.
To the extent I'm able to accomplish this, every time I start to worry, I do something. Something constructive. If I do enough of those things, not only will it get easier to make the response into a habit, it might eventually resolve some of the problems that are making me scared in the first place.
Now here are a couple of fun quotes!
' Roose still tries to pray every day. He says the act of prayer changes him, referring to the writings of Christian author Oswald Chambers."He said that it's not so much that prayer changes things as that prayer changes me — and then I change things[.]" '
--Undercover at an Evangelical University, an interview with author Kevin Roose (thanks to kisekileia for the link!)
' Even a slight ability to change oneself is more valuable than any power over the external universe. '
--Liber MMM, Peter Carroll
(And a postscript. Thanks to a very cool friend of Paula's who's a whiz at tinkering with computers, I has the laptop back. Though he recommended some steps to get the keyboard back to 100%, I haven't yet taken them. All this to say, this entire post was written without functioning "n" or "b" keys. Instead, I copied "nb", and whenever I need one of those two letters, I hit ctrl-v and erase the one I'm not using. I'm not sure why I felt the need to explain this to you; it was kind of a dumb thing to do. Especially since Dave's computer, right over there, has a fully functioning keyboard. And "n" is the second most common letter in the English language. I have my suspicions. Stupid bad habits.)
I've now taken 3 civil service exams, and gotten As on them. Next week I shall go back to the Thompson Center and take more. I've also started applying for things online again, partially filled out (but did not hand in) applications for local Starbucks' and greasy spoon, and today completely overhauled my resume. It is now much more detailed and hopefully enticing to recruiters. Intellectually I think I should be fuming, as Local H put it:
"you wanna jerk me around
with my resume around my neck?"
However, I know it's largely my own hole that I dug, by spending all those months in what was, but did not always feel like, a depressive funk. Hedonism in the microcosm can mask big-picture problems. I think the decision to get therapy, on the one hand, and the decision to get medicated on the other, were a my way of giving myself a wake-up call.
When the shrink gave me my meds she said the standard warning: short-term studies have found that all antidepressants may increase the risk of suicide. And I said, ah yes, I've read about these studies. (Looked around on Curator's blog for a bit, but couldn't find the link I was thinking of. If I come across it later I'll update the post!) Essentially, sometimes a person has been so depressed for so long that they are committed to the idea of killing themselves, but are so paralyzed by their depression that they can't summon up the will to act on their intent. So such a person gets meds, feels the temporary relief of their lethargy, and finds themselves finally able to do it. It's a sad thought, wondering how many people in that situation might have experienced even greater relief, changed their minds, and decided to go on living, if they'd waited awhile longer.
I was really glad I'd had occasion to remember the idea, however. Maybe it's placebo effect, maybe my system's just really sensitive to new chemicals--I'm not sure. Maybe it was the phone conversation I had with my landlord on Tuesday. In any event, three things have been happening over the past couple of days:
1. My stomach is all acid-refluxy like it hasn't been since high school. (A side effect of which I was advised.)
2. Falling asleep is noticeably less easy. (Another expected side effect.)
3. I feel completely terrified about my job and money situation. Filled with panic. Like I haven't been since high school.
Then, instead of going into the old panic feedback loop--panicking about panicking about panicking--I remembered the above sad factoid. And I thought, "Aha! This is the feeling the depression was preventing me from feeling!" Knowing what it was did not automatically make it fixed, of course.
But it did give me a starting point from which to figure out what I could do about it. Panic does two things: it revs up and it paralyzes. The useful and the destructive aspects of fear, both at the same time. Way I see it, the important thing is to find some way to deal with the emotional paralysis so that all that spicy fear energy can be put to use.
To the extent I'm able to accomplish this, every time I start to worry, I do something. Something constructive. If I do enough of those things, not only will it get easier to make the response into a habit, it might eventually resolve some of the problems that are making me scared in the first place.
Now here are a couple of fun quotes!
' Roose still tries to pray every day. He says the act of prayer changes him, referring to the writings of Christian author Oswald Chambers."He said that it's not so much that prayer changes things as that prayer changes me — and then I change things[.]" '
--Undercover at an Evangelical University, an interview with author Kevin Roose (thanks to kisekileia for the link!)
' Even a slight ability to change oneself is more valuable than any power over the external universe. '
--Liber MMM, Peter Carroll
(And a postscript. Thanks to a very cool friend of Paula's who's a whiz at tinkering with computers, I has the laptop back. Though he recommended some steps to get the keyboard back to 100%, I haven't yet taken them. All this to say, this entire post was written without functioning "n" or "b" keys. Instead, I copied "nb", and whenever I need one of those two letters, I hit ctrl-v and erase the one I'm not using. I'm not sure why I felt the need to explain this to you; it was kind of a dumb thing to do. Especially since Dave's computer, right over there, has a fully functioning keyboard. And "n" is the second most common letter in the English language. I have my suspicions. Stupid bad habits.)
Futility Friday vol. 3: Cool League season preview!
Okay. Last week's post ended up being both super long and super late. I will try for less length on this one, and to finish it before midnight. Instead of separating out my comments into what I know personally versus what I glean from other sources, I will give each team only one combined paragraph. Thereby appearing to be better informed than I actually am, and also making my predictions slightly less cumbersome to read!
Not that I'm worried about losing my readership--y'all read this because you know me, not because I'm gonna win a Pulitzer. Or a Howitzer. Or a Bloggie Award, if there is such a thing. Now there's an idea which has surely been had before! Although my mental picture of the award ceremony for a "Bloggie Award" involves a whole lotta sweatpants. And many bottles of Yoohoo which are tragically spilled in ineffectual fistfights between ideologically opposed pundits with very little upper body strength.
But anyway. If I'm going to name post topics after days, I should at least post them on the days after which they are named! For, uh...consistency. Yeah.
We have already determined through entirely arbitrary and highly inaccurate means that the White Sox are going to the World Series from the AL. Amber agrees with me. Dave is the dissenting vote, saying the Yankees will, in fact, overcome the sluggishness and lack of winning which has plagued them all millennium, and represent the Lame League in the World Series.
However! The White Sox and/or Yankees will need to have a Cool League team by whom to be defeated. When the World Series finally rolls around, and it comes time for one team to become the proud owners of the triangular piece of cloth. (Otherwise known as the pennant. Sure, there's also a trophy and other swag. But since we're not going to make like the Aztecs and slaughter the losing team to appease bloodthirsty bird-gods, does it ultimately matter what symbolic prize the winners get, beyond the fact of winning?)
So tonight I will take a look at what I know about the teams in the Cool League. Because I believe this league, also known as the National League, is inherently better, my findings will determine who will be the ultimate champion of all the baseball men in America. And Canada. Who among these brave, brave men, who in no way risk being slaughtered, will be able to go home for the winter and rest on their laurels and their millions, rich in the knowledge that their teams has earned the right to own a triangular piece of cloth?
Cool League: Second Fiddlers' Division (NL East)
New York Mets:
This team has the "privilege" of playing second fiddle to the Yankees in the city of New York. They also have the distinct advantage of Johan Santana, one of the few legitimate ace starting pitchers in the game. The rest of their rotation is guys who have good stats, even though I don't recognize anybody except Livan Hernandez, possibly their weakest link. Speaks well for them. They gained pitching strength for the end of the game as well, by acquiring both Francisco Rodriguez and J. J. Putz in the offseason. Lack of reliable closers messed them up big time last year, so getting those guys was a really smart move. They've got talent all around the infield, plus heavy hitter Carlos Beltran in the outfield.
Long story short, they're gonna win the division. Yay Mets!
Philadelphia Phillies:
Another one of those team names that annoys me because it seems unimaginative. As far as I am concerned, they play second fiddle to the cheesesteak sandwich which is also known by the name of their presumably fair city. I've never been there; it could be a very unfair city. Or even an unsightly one! But I know the Phillies franchise as one which perenially underachieves--they always seem to contend, but they rarely make it out of the regular season. The pitcher who was supposed to be at the top of their rotation, Cole Hamels, seems likely to miss the beginning of the season due to "elbow tightness." (In sports, "tightness" is code for what us normal people would call "excruciating pain.") The thing is, the Phillies won the World Series last year. They're bringing back essentially the same team. When I look at their depth chart, I see a lot of good, good hitters and a respectable bullpen. But their rotation that looks to me like it's going to be mediocre. Elbow tightness isn't something that just goes away once the season starts, so I'm skeptical about Cole Hamels' health. Jamie Moyer isn't getting any younger--he's going to turn 47 this November. (Also, he looks like the guy who played Frank Burns on MASH. Not relevant, but funny.) Chan Ho Park hasn't been good for a few years. It's an old bit of conventional wisdom that good pitching wins in the playoffs--but I'm not convinced the Phillies' pitching will be good enough to even get to the playoffs this year.
The Phillies will finish third.
Washington Nationals:
The Nationals must live with the shame of playing second fiddle to the Montreal Expos. Which used to be their name when they played in Canada, had virtually no fans, and never won. They were bad last year, and the year before that. They will be bad again. Let us move on.
The Nationals will finish fifth, that is, last. No one will be surprised.
Florida Marlins:
The Marlins play second fiddle either to the Tampa Bay Rays, the stronger Floridian baseball team, or the Miami Dolphins, the football team with whom they must share a stadium. (A sitcom in which a dolphin and a marlin were Odd Couple style roommates would be pretty neat, though. Unless it ended in some sort of pointy-faced fish vs highly intelligent sea mammal fight to the death. Which it almost certainly would.) The team has a couple excellent hitters in Hanley Ramirez and Dan Uggla. But large portions of their team's talent are young, relatively inexperienced guys they smuggl--I mean, traded for out of the Tigers' farm system. I know Dave likes the Marlins, but I don't think they're going to be able to get it together this year.
Somebody has to finish fourth. I think it will be the Marlins. Sorry, pointy-face fishes.
Atlanta Braves:
They are second fiddle to the Cleveland Indians, as the baseball team whose name is second most insulting to the people from whom my ancestors, among others, stole this lovely continent. But I'm hard pressed to draw conclusions about them based on their roster. Every good thing seems to be followed by a question. Their pitching includes Derek Lowe, who is awesome, and Javier Vasquez, who is good. But Tom Glavine isn't the Tom Glavine of yesteryear, Tim Hudson is out for many months, I don't know Jurrgens, and I don't know what to expect from Kawakami. Guys who come over to MLB from the Japanese major leagues are sometimes awesome and other times flame out, irrespective of how good they were in Japan. They have some really good hitters like Chipper Jones and Brian McCann, but they also have some rookies who may or may not turn out well.
So I'm gonna split the difference and say they will take second in the division. But they'll get the wild card. The west is weak, and would-be contenders in the central will be too busy losing to one another to have the best record among non-division-winners.
Cool League: Endless Frustrating Parity Division (NL Central)
Pittsburgh Pirates:
The Pirates are not part of the parity. In the division where everyone is equal, but some teams are more equal than others, the Pirates are the least equal of all. They have been bad for awhile now. They made no changes from last year's roster, and they didn't do a lot of winning last year. Move along folks, nothin' to see here.
The Pirates will finish sixth. Also known as last. Which is proof positive that at least one player on every other team in the division is a ninja. (I suspect the Brewers' ninja is Craig Counsell. Yes, even though he never studied at the Tommy John Dojo.)
Houston Astros:
I apparently forgot the Astros existed and didn't write them into the original post. I had to come back and edit to put them in. It's not fair of me, because they have some talented guys hitting and pitching for them. Roy Oswalt might still count as an ace pitcher, Wandy Rodriguez's stats are good, and I've enjoyed Mike Hampton's ups and downs ever since he pitched for the pre-humidor Rockies. (The official humidor in which the Rockies' baseballs are kept helps compensate for the thin mountain air. That way, their hitters don't have grossly inflated numbers and their pitchers don't go slowly mad with frustration and lose their edge, as I suspect Hampton did.) They've still got Lance Berkman, Kaz Matsui, and Miguel Tejada, all of whom are forces to be reckoned with when it's their turn to swing the carefully shaped stick.
Still, they're gonna finish third. Parity bites.
Cincinnati Reds:
For myself, I looked at the Reds' roster and said "meh." But Dave thinks this team is on the right track and is thinking about picking them for the playoffs. He says the main reason their top starter, Aaron Harang, had such a bad year last year is that Dusty Baker deployed his arm in unwise ways and threw him off his game. Having watched Baker nearly destroy many a good arm during his time as manager of the Cubs, I am willing to accept this idea. In a five-team division, the frustrating parity begins with the Reds.
I'm gonna say they'll finish third. Why not?
Milwaukee Brewers:
They almost made the playoffs last year, but they lost ace pitcher C.C. Sabathia and really good pitcher Ben Sheets. Gallardo is too young to know whether he'll be an instant classic or struggle growing into his talent, and he's the only guy in their rotation who has a chance of being as good as the two they lost. In a division this close, that'll cost them a lot of wins down the stretch. They have a mix of guys I recognize as good hitters and guys I don't recognize at all.
So I don't feel too bad about predicting the Brewers finish fifth.
St. Louis Cardinals:
I think Chris Carpenter, a pitcher who was one of the best in the National League, is going to be healthy this year. So what if star hitter Troy Glaus will be recovering from shoulder surgery for the first month or so (or so!). Point is, this is a team with enough talent that they will clearly be doing some winning. But I think there's enough question marks and problems that they still won't do the most winning.
So the Cardinals will finish second.
Chicago Cubs:
The Cubs have a wonderful team this year. Big Z at the top of the rotation will be his usual awesome self. Dempster, Lilly, Harden and Marshall are all guys who have earned my respect as pretty reliable starters who occasionally display great stuff. Geovany Soto is a very good hitter and really knows what he's doing behind the plate. Having to crouch all day and wear a big heavy catcher's mask apparently doesn't bother him at all. And I like everybody in the infield--especially if Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee finally manage a year where they both stay healthy the whole time. Theriot and Fontenot, whom henceforth I will call the Silent T Brothers, are good to have on the team even if they don't hit for a lot of home runs. And the least hard-hitting guy in the outfield, Kosuke Fukudome, is the one whose name and jersey number I have printed on a non-major-league authorized knockoff t-shirt. The thing that scares me most about this year's Cubs is that I cannot for the life of me figure out how they are going to lose this time.
They're gonna have to put together a massive collapse in the playoffs again, like they did last year. Because they're going to win the division.
Cool League: California + 2 Division (NL West)
San Diego Padres:
The Padres repeatedly attempted to trade ace pitcher Jake Peavy over the offseason. He was at various times rumored to be headed to half the teams in the major leagues. Those deals all fell through at the last minute, however, because the Padres were unable to get an entire major league baseball team in exchange for him. Instead, they are stuck with the guys they already had. One or two of whom I recognize as having been solidly mediocre players a couple years ago.
So they will lose. Fifth of five. Also fifth of five if you want to rank them among the five teams located in California.
Colorado Rockies:
I was all ready to write the Rockies off, but then I started waving my mouse around on their depth chart and looking at the stats that popped up. They're actually not that bad. Ever since MLB used the wonders of modern technology to compensate for the fact that they play in an open-air stadium a mile above sea level, the Rockies have had a ghost of a chance. They even made the playoffs a couple years ago. The bottom of their starting rotation isn't that strong, but they have two good starters at the top and some decent hitting.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the Rockies finish second.
San Francisco Giants:
Two of the most basic things a baseball team needs in order to win games are guys who can pitch and guys who can hit. Usually you'll see a team focus on getting good hitters, settle for mediocre pitchers, and then wonder why they lost a bunch of games 5-3 after going ahead in the first few innings. However, this year's Giants have done the opposite of that. I look through their position players and only see four or five names I even recognize--and none of them are especially great at hitting home runs. Their rotation is very good, possibly the best in the division. Lincecum had an outstanding year last year. Cain's stats are strong. Randy Johnson is a freak of nature (in the best possible sense) and his pitching arm should never be underestimated, no matter how old he gets. You never know if Barry Zito is going to be Ted Lilly (reliable but not awe-inspiring) or Jose Mesa (flashy but not reliable) in a given year, but he's holding down rotation spot #4. Their #5 guy is not great but not terrible either. But even if everything breaks right for the Giants' pitchers this year, they're going to end up losing a lot of games 0-1 or 1-2.
They will finish fourth. Let that be a lesson to...someone.
Arizona Diamondbacks:
See, the Diamondbacks are a classic example of a good team name. They're named after an animal which is beautiful but menacing, is native to the region in which they play, and lends itself well to cartoonification. Plus you could totally picture a rattlesnake killing, say, a pirate or a swordfish. Or even a giant, if it was fast enough not to get trampled. Also, they have all the things necessary to a good team. None of their hitters are really super-outstanding by themselves--but they have a roster full of guys who can hit between 15 and 25 home runs a year, and a lot of them are young and might happen to have a breakout season. Their rotation is topped off with Webb, Haren and Garland, all of whom rock at throwing the circular object in a speedy and accurate fashion.
They might not make it far into the postseason, but they will get there. Diamondbacks win.
Los Angeles Dodgers:
Apparently, television talking heads have been saying "d0dgers R teh w1n!" and "NL West ish 4 Dodgers w00t!" ever since they signed Manny Ramirez. Now, Manny is kind of a freak of nature in a good way too. He can use the carefully shaped stick to hit the spherical object very, very hard, many times. However, he has this tendency to speak and behave and make important decisions in a manner that suggests he only cares about two things. 1. Hitting the spherical object with the stick. 2. Feeling comfortable and appreciated and adored whenever he is not doing so. When he feels that the second thing is being denied to him, he will reduce the amount of effort and attention he gives to every other aspect of the game except hitting. To the point where Boston got rid of him just to be rid of an unhappy Manny. But, c'mon. He is one guy. As the baseball world learned from Barry Bonds, if there is really only one serious power threat in a lineup, opposing teams will throw him an intentional walk just to keep him from launching the round object into space. So what? Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp are going to hit like crazy to make up for the unimpressiveness of the entire infield? Chad Billingsley and Hiroki Kuroda have pretty good starting pitcher stats, but they're no Brandon Webb and Dan Haren.
They're gonna take third place in the NL West. They will fight hard for second, but the Rockies will just want it more.
To recap.
NL
East: NY Mets.
Central: Chicago Cubs.
West: Arizona Diamondbacks
Wild card: Atlanta Braves
Cubs beat the Mets. Diamondbacks beat the Braves.
Cubs lose to the Diamondbacks in the championships.
AL (from previous post):
East winners: New York Yankees. Although if it turns out to be the Rays, I will be neither disapointed nor shocked.
Central winners: Minnesota Twins. Don't know why.
West winners: Oakland A's.
Wild card: Chicago White Sox.
In the first round of the playoffs, the White Sox will beat the A's, while the Ra--I mean, Yankees, will beat the Twins.
The Yankees will then lose to the White Sox, sending at least one Chicago team to the World Series. Hooray!
Wait a minute.
If the World Series is the White Sox versus the Diamondback, the White Sox have got to win. They're too awesome to lose, and the Diamondbacks' hitters aren't quite as good, although they both have really good pitching.
So I will directly contradict what I said at the beginning of this post. The White Sox beat the DBacks, and become proud owners of the triangular piece of cloth plus assorted swag. And no one will be killed!
Not that I'm worried about losing my readership--y'all read this because you know me, not because I'm gonna win a Pulitzer. Or a Howitzer. Or a Bloggie Award, if there is such a thing. Now there's an idea which has surely been had before! Although my mental picture of the award ceremony for a "Bloggie Award" involves a whole lotta sweatpants. And many bottles of Yoohoo which are tragically spilled in ineffectual fistfights between ideologically opposed pundits with very little upper body strength.
But anyway. If I'm going to name post topics after days, I should at least post them on the days after which they are named! For, uh...consistency. Yeah.
We have already determined through entirely arbitrary and highly inaccurate means that the White Sox are going to the World Series from the AL. Amber agrees with me. Dave is the dissenting vote, saying the Yankees will, in fact, overcome the sluggishness and lack of winning which has plagued them all millennium, and represent the Lame League in the World Series.
However! The White Sox and/or Yankees will need to have a Cool League team by whom to be defeated. When the World Series finally rolls around, and it comes time for one team to become the proud owners of the triangular piece of cloth. (Otherwise known as the pennant. Sure, there's also a trophy and other swag. But since we're not going to make like the Aztecs and slaughter the losing team to appease bloodthirsty bird-gods, does it ultimately matter what symbolic prize the winners get, beyond the fact of winning?)
So tonight I will take a look at what I know about the teams in the Cool League. Because I believe this league, also known as the National League, is inherently better, my findings will determine who will be the ultimate champion of all the baseball men in America. And Canada. Who among these brave, brave men, who in no way risk being slaughtered, will be able to go home for the winter and rest on their laurels and their millions, rich in the knowledge that their teams has earned the right to own a triangular piece of cloth?
Cool League: Second Fiddlers' Division (NL East)
New York Mets:
This team has the "privilege" of playing second fiddle to the Yankees in the city of New York. They also have the distinct advantage of Johan Santana, one of the few legitimate ace starting pitchers in the game. The rest of their rotation is guys who have good stats, even though I don't recognize anybody except Livan Hernandez, possibly their weakest link. Speaks well for them. They gained pitching strength for the end of the game as well, by acquiring both Francisco Rodriguez and J. J. Putz in the offseason. Lack of reliable closers messed them up big time last year, so getting those guys was a really smart move. They've got talent all around the infield, plus heavy hitter Carlos Beltran in the outfield.
Long story short, they're gonna win the division. Yay Mets!
Philadelphia Phillies:
Another one of those team names that annoys me because it seems unimaginative. As far as I am concerned, they play second fiddle to the cheesesteak sandwich which is also known by the name of their presumably fair city. I've never been there; it could be a very unfair city. Or even an unsightly one! But I know the Phillies franchise as one which perenially underachieves--they always seem to contend, but they rarely make it out of the regular season. The pitcher who was supposed to be at the top of their rotation, Cole Hamels, seems likely to miss the beginning of the season due to "elbow tightness." (In sports, "tightness" is code for what us normal people would call "excruciating pain.") The thing is, the Phillies won the World Series last year. They're bringing back essentially the same team. When I look at their depth chart, I see a lot of good, good hitters and a respectable bullpen. But their rotation that looks to me like it's going to be mediocre. Elbow tightness isn't something that just goes away once the season starts, so I'm skeptical about Cole Hamels' health. Jamie Moyer isn't getting any younger--he's going to turn 47 this November. (Also, he looks like the guy who played Frank Burns on MASH. Not relevant, but funny.) Chan Ho Park hasn't been good for a few years. It's an old bit of conventional wisdom that good pitching wins in the playoffs--but I'm not convinced the Phillies' pitching will be good enough to even get to the playoffs this year.
The Phillies will finish third.
Washington Nationals:
The Nationals must live with the shame of playing second fiddle to the Montreal Expos. Which used to be their name when they played in Canada, had virtually no fans, and never won. They were bad last year, and the year before that. They will be bad again. Let us move on.
The Nationals will finish fifth, that is, last. No one will be surprised.
Florida Marlins:
The Marlins play second fiddle either to the Tampa Bay Rays, the stronger Floridian baseball team, or the Miami Dolphins, the football team with whom they must share a stadium. (A sitcom in which a dolphin and a marlin were Odd Couple style roommates would be pretty neat, though. Unless it ended in some sort of pointy-faced fish vs highly intelligent sea mammal fight to the death. Which it almost certainly would.) The team has a couple excellent hitters in Hanley Ramirez and Dan Uggla. But large portions of their team's talent are young, relatively inexperienced guys they smuggl--I mean, traded for out of the Tigers' farm system. I know Dave likes the Marlins, but I don't think they're going to be able to get it together this year.
Somebody has to finish fourth. I think it will be the Marlins. Sorry, pointy-face fishes.
Atlanta Braves:
They are second fiddle to the Cleveland Indians, as the baseball team whose name is second most insulting to the people from whom my ancestors, among others, stole this lovely continent. But I'm hard pressed to draw conclusions about them based on their roster. Every good thing seems to be followed by a question. Their pitching includes Derek Lowe, who is awesome, and Javier Vasquez, who is good. But Tom Glavine isn't the Tom Glavine of yesteryear, Tim Hudson is out for many months, I don't know Jurrgens, and I don't know what to expect from Kawakami. Guys who come over to MLB from the Japanese major leagues are sometimes awesome and other times flame out, irrespective of how good they were in Japan. They have some really good hitters like Chipper Jones and Brian McCann, but they also have some rookies who may or may not turn out well.
So I'm gonna split the difference and say they will take second in the division. But they'll get the wild card. The west is weak, and would-be contenders in the central will be too busy losing to one another to have the best record among non-division-winners.
Cool League: Endless Frustrating Parity Division (NL Central)
Pittsburgh Pirates:
The Pirates are not part of the parity. In the division where everyone is equal, but some teams are more equal than others, the Pirates are the least equal of all. They have been bad for awhile now. They made no changes from last year's roster, and they didn't do a lot of winning last year. Move along folks, nothin' to see here.
The Pirates will finish sixth. Also known as last. Which is proof positive that at least one player on every other team in the division is a ninja. (I suspect the Brewers' ninja is Craig Counsell. Yes, even though he never studied at the Tommy John Dojo.)
Houston Astros:
I apparently forgot the Astros existed and didn't write them into the original post. I had to come back and edit to put them in. It's not fair of me, because they have some talented guys hitting and pitching for them. Roy Oswalt might still count as an ace pitcher, Wandy Rodriguez's stats are good, and I've enjoyed Mike Hampton's ups and downs ever since he pitched for the pre-humidor Rockies. (The official humidor in which the Rockies' baseballs are kept helps compensate for the thin mountain air. That way, their hitters don't have grossly inflated numbers and their pitchers don't go slowly mad with frustration and lose their edge, as I suspect Hampton did.) They've still got Lance Berkman, Kaz Matsui, and Miguel Tejada, all of whom are forces to be reckoned with when it's their turn to swing the carefully shaped stick.
Still, they're gonna finish third. Parity bites.
Cincinnati Reds:
For myself, I looked at the Reds' roster and said "meh." But Dave thinks this team is on the right track and is thinking about picking them for the playoffs. He says the main reason their top starter, Aaron Harang, had such a bad year last year is that Dusty Baker deployed his arm in unwise ways and threw him off his game. Having watched Baker nearly destroy many a good arm during his time as manager of the Cubs, I am willing to accept this idea. In a five-team division, the frustrating parity begins with the Reds.
I'm gonna say they'll finish third. Why not?
Milwaukee Brewers:
They almost made the playoffs last year, but they lost ace pitcher C.C. Sabathia and really good pitcher Ben Sheets. Gallardo is too young to know whether he'll be an instant classic or struggle growing into his talent, and he's the only guy in their rotation who has a chance of being as good as the two they lost. In a division this close, that'll cost them a lot of wins down the stretch. They have a mix of guys I recognize as good hitters and guys I don't recognize at all.
So I don't feel too bad about predicting the Brewers finish fifth.
St. Louis Cardinals:
I think Chris Carpenter, a pitcher who was one of the best in the National League, is going to be healthy this year. So what if star hitter Troy Glaus will be recovering from shoulder surgery for the first month or so (or so!). Point is, this is a team with enough talent that they will clearly be doing some winning. But I think there's enough question marks and problems that they still won't do the most winning.
So the Cardinals will finish second.
Chicago Cubs:
The Cubs have a wonderful team this year. Big Z at the top of the rotation will be his usual awesome self. Dempster, Lilly, Harden and Marshall are all guys who have earned my respect as pretty reliable starters who occasionally display great stuff. Geovany Soto is a very good hitter and really knows what he's doing behind the plate. Having to crouch all day and wear a big heavy catcher's mask apparently doesn't bother him at all. And I like everybody in the infield--especially if Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee finally manage a year where they both stay healthy the whole time. Theriot and Fontenot, whom henceforth I will call the Silent T Brothers, are good to have on the team even if they don't hit for a lot of home runs. And the least hard-hitting guy in the outfield, Kosuke Fukudome, is the one whose name and jersey number I have printed on a non-major-league authorized knockoff t-shirt. The thing that scares me most about this year's Cubs is that I cannot for the life of me figure out how they are going to lose this time.
They're gonna have to put together a massive collapse in the playoffs again, like they did last year. Because they're going to win the division.
Cool League: California + 2 Division (NL West)
San Diego Padres:
The Padres repeatedly attempted to trade ace pitcher Jake Peavy over the offseason. He was at various times rumored to be headed to half the teams in the major leagues. Those deals all fell through at the last minute, however, because the Padres were unable to get an entire major league baseball team in exchange for him. Instead, they are stuck with the guys they already had. One or two of whom I recognize as having been solidly mediocre players a couple years ago.
So they will lose. Fifth of five. Also fifth of five if you want to rank them among the five teams located in California.
Colorado Rockies:
I was all ready to write the Rockies off, but then I started waving my mouse around on their depth chart and looking at the stats that popped up. They're actually not that bad. Ever since MLB used the wonders of modern technology to compensate for the fact that they play in an open-air stadium a mile above sea level, the Rockies have had a ghost of a chance. They even made the playoffs a couple years ago. The bottom of their starting rotation isn't that strong, but they have two good starters at the top and some decent hitting.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the Rockies finish second.
San Francisco Giants:
Two of the most basic things a baseball team needs in order to win games are guys who can pitch and guys who can hit. Usually you'll see a team focus on getting good hitters, settle for mediocre pitchers, and then wonder why they lost a bunch of games 5-3 after going ahead in the first few innings. However, this year's Giants have done the opposite of that. I look through their position players and only see four or five names I even recognize--and none of them are especially great at hitting home runs. Their rotation is very good, possibly the best in the division. Lincecum had an outstanding year last year. Cain's stats are strong. Randy Johnson is a freak of nature (in the best possible sense) and his pitching arm should never be underestimated, no matter how old he gets. You never know if Barry Zito is going to be Ted Lilly (reliable but not awe-inspiring) or Jose Mesa (flashy but not reliable) in a given year, but he's holding down rotation spot #4. Their #5 guy is not great but not terrible either. But even if everything breaks right for the Giants' pitchers this year, they're going to end up losing a lot of games 0-1 or 1-2.
They will finish fourth. Let that be a lesson to...someone.
Arizona Diamondbacks:
See, the Diamondbacks are a classic example of a good team name. They're named after an animal which is beautiful but menacing, is native to the region in which they play, and lends itself well to cartoonification. Plus you could totally picture a rattlesnake killing, say, a pirate or a swordfish. Or even a giant, if it was fast enough not to get trampled. Also, they have all the things necessary to a good team. None of their hitters are really super-outstanding by themselves--but they have a roster full of guys who can hit between 15 and 25 home runs a year, and a lot of them are young and might happen to have a breakout season. Their rotation is topped off with Webb, Haren and Garland, all of whom rock at throwing the circular object in a speedy and accurate fashion.
They might not make it far into the postseason, but they will get there. Diamondbacks win.
Los Angeles Dodgers:
Apparently, television talking heads have been saying "d0dgers R teh w1n!" and "NL West ish 4 Dodgers w00t!" ever since they signed Manny Ramirez. Now, Manny is kind of a freak of nature in a good way too. He can use the carefully shaped stick to hit the spherical object very, very hard, many times. However, he has this tendency to speak and behave and make important decisions in a manner that suggests he only cares about two things. 1. Hitting the spherical object with the stick. 2. Feeling comfortable and appreciated and adored whenever he is not doing so. When he feels that the second thing is being denied to him, he will reduce the amount of effort and attention he gives to every other aspect of the game except hitting. To the point where Boston got rid of him just to be rid of an unhappy Manny. But, c'mon. He is one guy. As the baseball world learned from Barry Bonds, if there is really only one serious power threat in a lineup, opposing teams will throw him an intentional walk just to keep him from launching the round object into space. So what? Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp are going to hit like crazy to make up for the unimpressiveness of the entire infield? Chad Billingsley and Hiroki Kuroda have pretty good starting pitcher stats, but they're no Brandon Webb and Dan Haren.
They're gonna take third place in the NL West. They will fight hard for second, but the Rockies will just want it more.
To recap.
NL
East: NY Mets.
Central: Chicago Cubs.
West: Arizona Diamondbacks
Wild card: Atlanta Braves
Cubs beat the Mets. Diamondbacks beat the Braves.
Cubs lose to the Diamondbacks in the championships.
AL (from previous post):
East winners: New York Yankees. Although if it turns out to be the Rays, I will be neither disapointed nor shocked.
Central winners: Minnesota Twins. Don't know why.
West winners: Oakland A's.
Wild card: Chicago White Sox.
In the first round of the playoffs, the White Sox will beat the A's, while the Ra--I mean, Yankees, will beat the Twins.
The Yankees will then lose to the White Sox, sending at least one Chicago team to the World Series. Hooray!
Wait a minute.
If the World Series is the White Sox versus the Diamondback, the White Sox have got to win. They're too awesome to lose, and the Diamondbacks' hitters aren't quite as good, although they both have really good pitching.
So I will directly contradict what I said at the beginning of this post. The White Sox beat the DBacks, and become proud owners of the triangular piece of cloth plus assorted swag. And no one will be killed!
Futility Friday vol. 2: Lame League season preview!
Lame League: Belligerent Snobs Division (AL East)
Baltimore Orioles:
This team has a long history of drafting talented young players, keeping them for a couple of years, then trading them away in order to obtain aging veterans whose ligaments promptly give out, causing them to perform their jobs poorly. I cannot name a single player on this team out of my own memory. Which is usually a bad sign, considering that most of the players I can remember (except for a handful of Cubs, former Cubs, and the inimitable Peter Bergeron, formerly of the former Montreal Expos, now the Washington Nationals) are players who are very good indeed.
Dave says: A couple years ago the Orioles hired a general manager (Andy McPhail, formerly of the Cubs) who started phasing out the ligament-less veterans and getting in some young, fresh talent. Unfortunately this means they are now a team composed primarily of young, fresh mea--er, talent, in what is widely considered to be the most challenging division in all of baseball. As Dave put it, "No one is predicting they'll finish in anything other than last place." Even though they now have at least one talented young outfielder, plus a prospect who plays catcher and is considered the number one prospect in the game. So heck, who am I to disagree with everybody? Especially when everybody agrees with my existing prejudices?
But no! I have to be original and different! I shall throw my ducks with reckless abandon!
The Orioles will finish fourth. Out of five.
Toronto Bluejays:
I don't care about the Bluejays! Not in the slightest! They are less bad than the Orioles, but not by much. They play in Canada, which has no significance except in so far as I can make jokes about it. I recall that David Wells played for them for a brief period, during which time he grew fat and dissatisfied because they were a team without much hope of making it to the playoffs. He was later excited when he learned he would be traded to the White Sox, and even said "Yo!" I was pretty sure he still pitched for the Yankees. But apparently, he was recently forced to retire when no team would sign him. Even though he had to give up beer because of the gout! Which gives me a mental picture of him sitting in an easy chair beside a highway, holding up a placard which reads "Will Pitch In Major League Rotation For Whiskey And/Or Opportunities To Engage In Fisticuffs." That is all.
"They had the best pitching in baseball last year, believe it or not." But a couple of their best pitchers are out for either the whole year or most of it due to injuries, and they had a very quiet offseason. In other words, they lost something of value (the baseball-playing abilities of the injured pitchers) without finding something of value with which to replace it.
Therefore they shall lose.
The Bluejays will finish fifth, in other words, last.
Tampa Bay Rays:
The Rays prospered last year, possibly because they changed their name from "Devil Rays" to "Rays". Or, less superstitiously, because the Yankees were just getting older and more expensive, the Red Sox somehow lost or traded away a couple superstars without being able to replace them, and the Rays themselves had a bunch of talented young-ish players who all simultaneously figured out how to hit and/or throw.
Dave says: "That's pretty accurate." Hooray! Also they made it to the World Series last year, even if they didn't win. Which oddly I didn't remember at all, even though I watched it. I still can't name any players on this team off the top of my head. Hmm.
But I think these guys are riding high on the River Euphrates. They have had a taste of success, or at least less failure, and will want very much to have even less failure than that. And because they are young and need less banned substances to cope with the physical stresses of a 162-game season, they will again display athletic goodness in the long haul.
I boldly predict that the Rays will finish second. Ha.
Boston Red Sox:
One of the two big-name franchises that inspired me to give the Belligerent Snobs division its fake name, the Boston Red Sox broke their less-than-a-century-long streak of failing to win the World Series in this millennium. Leaving the Cubs' monumentally long non-winning streak the unquestioned champion of fail! They no longer have the hard-hitting but also possibly insane Manny Ramirez. He was unhappy and hence unreliable for them last year. If a guy getting paid multiple millions every year to play baseball occasionally puts his glove on his head or sits around on the grass watching the dandelions grow rather than attempting to field his defensive position, this can be bad for a team. On the other hand, Manny swings a carefully shaped wooden stick like few other men alive. He is very, very good at making the vaguely spherical object move long distances, despite his crazy hair. And I'm pretty sure the Red Sox have lost other good players to free angency or something, and some of their guys who helped win them the championship are possibly older and less efficient.
Dave says: The Red Sox added a couple of of very good pitchers who are also at high risk for injuries. Namely John Smoltz, who is excellent but old, and Brad Penny, who missed a chunk of last season with an injury. The outfielder they got from the Dodgers to replace Manny, one Jason Bay, is quite good. But they aren't sure who will be their catcher, and even though they are rich enough to spend twelve million on a long shot--namely, the two pitchers mentioned above--they are way less improved over the offseason than they could have been.
So the Red Sox will finish third. Take that, Bill Simmons. Even though you are a famous sports pundit who will never, ever read this, and hence cannot possibly be affronted by it.
New York Yankees:
See, the Yankees are, like, this thing. People use them as a handy metaphor for other areas of endeavor in which a single group is unreasonably dominant in a particular field of competition, through some combination of wealth, mind control, an immense groundswell of bandwagony popular support, and pure, unmitigated evil. (Unless the person making the metaphor is a fan of the Yankees, in which case they are code for awesome.) They pay too much for aging veterans, refuse to trade any of their oft-overrated prospects for less than one and a half times market value, and sneakily keep for themselves those prospects who turn out to be both talented and susceptible to mind control. Also they got C.C. Sabathia, who is at the moment one of the best pitchers in baseball. I choose not to discuss the alleged existence, actions and/or injuries of Alex Rodriguez.
Dave says: "Keep in mind that this perception of the Yankees is steeped in irony, because they haven't won a World Series since 2000." Good point. Alas, here my prejudice against the Yankees has impeded my own ability to recognize irony! For shame! But still. They always seem to generate a burst of winning in the final weeks of the regular season. Even if said winning doesn't enable them to win the World Series, the mind control still seems to enable them to get close enough to smell it almost every year.
So the Yankees will win the division.
Lame League: Belligerent Underachievers Division (AL Central)
Kansas City Royals:
For many, many years, the Royals were just plain awful. They were practically not a major league franchise. Kansas is a state whose fan base cares more about college football and, uh, magical tornados that whisk unsuspecting young women away to Oz than they are likely to ever care about baseball. However, I'm pretty sure that recently they've gotten either new ownership or new management or both, and they are slowly assembling a group of young players who are all learning together how not to lose quite so much. The problem is, if I pick the Royals to finish anything but last, that means I think that either the Twins, White Sox, Tigers or Indians are worse than the Royals. Which seems, as Vizzini would say, "Inconceivable!"
Dave says: They got a new GM, but have the same ownership group. And although they traded for good position players, in doing so they gave up a couple of their more reliable setup men. So they have a more good hitters. Woo, hoo. They also gave up good pitchers who pitch for short periods in the late innings, whose job it is to preserve leads or prevent blowouts. What good are a couple more runs in, say, the third or fifth inning, if the other team scores a couple more runs in the seventh or ninth?
So my opinion is unchanged: The Royals will finish last. They grow stronger, but they are not a Jedi yet.
Cleveland Indians:
I don't know much about the Indians. Truly, I don't. I think of them as playing a very competent third fiddle to the White Sox and Twins, occasionally being elbowed out of the way by the strangely competent Tigers. It is a tight division, and though it seems the Indians always threaten, they rarely carry out their threats.
Internet says (Dave is watching the conclusion to a very good MASH, and I don't want to make him pause it!): The Indians are, as I suspected, in a pretty uneasy spot. They added a couple guys and their hitters will probably do well, but their rotation is full of question marks. I put a lot of value on a team having a reliable starting rotation. Since, y'know, your pitcher needs to prevent the other team from scoring too many runs, or else all the good hitting in the world won't help you win.
So the Indians will finish fourth.
Detroit Tigers:
When I first started to be really aware that baseball existed, around the turn of the millennium, the Tigers were almost as terrible as the Royals and frequently fought with them for the losing bracket at the end of the regular season. However, they did make the playoffs a couple years ago and were not awful even last year. So they're not exactly basement bums anymore, even though I don't think anyone expects them to set the world on fire. Or put it out, if it were already on fire, thereby becoming heroes.
Dave says: "Yeah, they're pretty much a middle-of-the-road team. They had some significant injuries and some underperforming pitchers last year, which is probably why they didn't make the playoffs. But [referring to what I said above] I don't think I'd change anything about that."
The Tigers will finish third.
Minnesota Twins:
The Twins are tricky for me. I think I know some things about them, but most of the information in my brain is a couple years old. I know they no longer have Johan Santana, a pitcher who was their ace but now plays in New York. They no longer have star outfielder Torii Hunter and his magnetic glove of awesomeness--I think he's somewhere on the west coast. I'm frankly not sure whom they do have. And although I don't believe they made the playoffs last year, in my mind they and the White Sox are rivals and the two best teams in the division, so I have to assume they'll do well.
Dave says: "The Twins are coming back as basically the same team. They tied for the division lead last year with the White Sox. They played a one-game playoff for the tiebreaker, and they lost that game. Also they're getting Francisco Liriano back, who was out most of last year." I glean from this that Liriano is a starting pitcher who is good enough that his presence is expected to improve the team. (And I was close to right about the former Twins I could remember: Hunter plays for the Angels, and Santana now pitches for the Mets.)
Y'know what, I originally wanted to pick the White Sox to win the division. Because they are quite good. They've been the better-playing Chicago team for years now, they won the World Series in 05, and I really rather like them and want to see them do well.
But instead I am going to pick the Twins to win the division. I don't know why. But they will do it.
Chicago White Sox:
As you may have notced above, I do remember a few things about the White Sox. They're good, they're winners, they have determination and a positive attitude, regular human beings can occasionally afford tickets to their games, and they have a number of talented players. Like, uh...Mark Buehrle. (An excellent pitcher, who once used the tarp covering the field as a Slip'n'Slide during a rain delay!) And Jermaine Dye. (He is good at hitting. Also Dye is an easy name to remember.) And I think they got some good guys over the offseason, but I don't remember whom.
Dave says: Their pitching rotation is set up to do well with a method that's worked for them before. They have Mark Buehrle, John Denks and Gavin Floyd, who are all good and presumably healthy, and Jose Contreras, who is not as young but got back into shape in the offseason and should play well. Then they have a bunch of rookie pitching prospects who can compete for the #5 spot, so hopefully one of them will work out. They have a couple of other rookies in their batting lineup; Dave is optimistic about one and pessimistic about the other. But even if neither of them works out, the rest of their team is pretty solid.
So. For absolutely no reason at all I say they will still not win the division. But they will make the playoffs anyway because they'll get the AL wild card.
Lame League: Half-California Division (AL West)
Texas Rangers:
The first thing I always remember about the Texas Rangers is that they have good hitting and unreliable pitching. Good with the carefully shaped wooden sticks, not so great with the spherical objects. The funny thing is that this seems to keep being accurate, year after year, even when the team is composed of completely different players. And you'd think at some point, somebody in charge of hiring baseball men to represent their franchise would lean back in their chairs and say, "Why don't we make it our priority to obtain some fellows who really know how to throw the spherical object in a swift and accurate manner?" But instead, they repeatedly spend all their money on guys who can swing the carefully shaped stick with style, aplomb, and a very loud "thwack!" and then settle for mediocrity in the spherical-object-throwing department. And then scratch their close-cropped Texan skulls and wonder why they haven't managed to defeat the competition and bring home the triangular piece of cloth! Argh!
Dave says: Sadly, my rant is pretty accurate. "Last year, they pretty much had the worst pitching in all of baseball, and most of the guys they're bringing back this year are going to be the same guys." Furthermore, their club president is a man named Nolan Ryan, whose name you may recognize. He is one of the legendarily good pitchers of the Times Of Old, But Not So Old That They Are All Deceased. He was heard this offseason saying something to the effect that young pitchers these days get "mollycoddled", and that the club should demand they always pitch a full nine innings whenever it's their turn. Presumably, regardless of pitch count. Under ordinary circumstances, a team will take the starting pitcher out of a game if he throws more than 100 pitches, to prevent injuries. For young pitchers the number is sometimes even lower, say, eighty pitches, because they have not yet developed the stamina required to throw 100 pitches once every five days for the length of a 162-game regular season.
I predict the Rangers will finish last in a four-team division. Perhaps that will learn them to be less curmudgeonly and to spend more money on men who are paid to throw things.
Seattle Mariners:
I don't know too much about the Mariners. I know Ichiro Suzuki, a Japanese player so famous he actually goes by his first name, plays for them. The way that man swings a carefully-shaped wooden stick is a joy to behold. He has a small frame, but the precision and controlled force of his swing seems to place the entire weight of his body behind the exact spot on the wooden stick where it connects with the spherical object. Like a small but very tightly coiled spring with a little boxing glove on the end of it that punches you in the face and knocks you down. Yes, even if you are very large. However, the rest of the team does not really stick in my memory. They always play hard, but even in the notoriously weak Half-California division they rarely advance into the playoffs.
Dave says: "They're largely a question mark to me too." The team has a new GM, who traded for a whole mess of players during the offseason. The Mariners are trying to reinvent themselves, and while they expect it to be a long-term process, nobody really knows what this year's team is going to look like. However, I think the feeling of new and different times afoot will juvenate this franchise. (Not rejuvenate. That would require them to have been sprightly and motivated at some previous time. Yes, I know, juvenate by itself isn't a word. Don't worry, I won't try to use it next time we play Scrabble.)
The Mariners will still finish third, though. Maybe they'll win the division next year.
Oakland Athletics:
Another team regarding which I am ill-informed. Their GM, Billy Beane, is known for being the first baseball decision-maker to make use of the ideas in the book Moneyball. This is a famous-within-baseball book which made a statistic popular, namely OPS. That's right, statistics can be popular! OPS adds together a player's on-base percentage--how frequently he gets to go step on the white squares after batting--to his slugging percentage--how many of those white squares he gets to step on. This is a way to measure how likely a player is to be able to score a run that takes walks into account. Other statistics didn't give people a way to mathematically describe how useful it is when a guy can get to go stand on the white square without having had to use his carefully shaped stick at all. As for who actually plays for the A's or what they've been doing lately, I have no idea.
Dave says: Moneyball was really more about taking advantage of the gap between the statistical measurements on which others rely and the realities those measurements describe. OPS was just the first case in point. People relied too much on stats that didn't measure the actual value of a walk, so Beane focused on getting cheap hitters who drew a lot of walks. But whatever the underestimation of the day is, you can always hire good players for less, as long as those players are good at the things no one else values properly. These days, his focus is more on how the defensive abilities of players are underrated. He can get affordable players who may not have a lot of stick-swinging prowess. But when they're on the grass and/or dirt, they can usually catch the spherical objects hit into play by their opponents, and prevent said opponents from running all the way around the big white square and thereby scoring. The A's starting pitching is a little sketchy, but they have good defenders, traded for or signed a couple guys who can hit for power, and have good late-inning pitchers as well.
The A's will win. Why not? All they have to do is win more games than the Angels, Mariners and Rangers. It can't be that hard.
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim:
They won the World Series in 2002, which I chiefly remember because their mascot was a ten-second clip of a cute monkey jumping up and down, clapping its hands, and going "eek!" Also, they have the most annoying team name in baseball. If the Cubs played in, say, Des Plaines, would we call them the Chicago Cubs of Des Plaines? No! We would call them either the Chicago Cubs or the Des Plaines Cubs. And besides, as we all know, in Spanish Los Angeles means Angels, so naming their team that is about the least imaginative possible thing they could have done. Like, we don't have the New York Yorkies, the Atlanta Atlanteans, the Chicago Chicagoans or the Tampa Ta...well, you get the idea. Lame name. They've still played reasonably well--for an AL West team!--over the past couple years.
Dave says: They've still got Vlad Guerrero and they added Bobby Abreu. They've got a couple homegrown young infielders, like Brandon Wood and Chone Figgins. They're down two pitchers because they lost John Garland (who I keep forgetting is no longer a White Sock) and Francisco Rodriguez (also known as K-Rod because he striKes guys out) to free agency.
Sounds to me like the A's have gotten a little better and the Angels have gotten a little less good.
The Angels will finish in second place. Ha, ha.
So, to recap:
East winners: New York Yankees. Although if it turns out to be the Rays, I will be neither disapointed nor shocked.
Central winners: Minnesota Twins. Don't know why.
West winners: Oakland A's.
Wild card: Chicago White Sox.
In the first round of the playoffs, the White Sox will beat the A's, while the Ra--I mean, Yankees, will beat the Twins.
The Yankees will then lose to the White Sox, sending at least one Chicago team to the World Series. Hooray!
Now quick, somebody gather up a bunch of ducks and balloons and a monkey, so we can have other predictions on record here that will prove to be even more accurate!
Baltimore Orioles:
This team has a long history of drafting talented young players, keeping them for a couple of years, then trading them away in order to obtain aging veterans whose ligaments promptly give out, causing them to perform their jobs poorly. I cannot name a single player on this team out of my own memory. Which is usually a bad sign, considering that most of the players I can remember (except for a handful of Cubs, former Cubs, and the inimitable Peter Bergeron, formerly of the former Montreal Expos, now the Washington Nationals) are players who are very good indeed.
Dave says: A couple years ago the Orioles hired a general manager (Andy McPhail, formerly of the Cubs) who started phasing out the ligament-less veterans and getting in some young, fresh talent. Unfortunately this means they are now a team composed primarily of young, fresh mea--er, talent, in what is widely considered to be the most challenging division in all of baseball. As Dave put it, "No one is predicting they'll finish in anything other than last place." Even though they now have at least one talented young outfielder, plus a prospect who plays catcher and is considered the number one prospect in the game. So heck, who am I to disagree with everybody? Especially when everybody agrees with my existing prejudices?
But no! I have to be original and different! I shall throw my ducks with reckless abandon!
The Orioles will finish fourth. Out of five.
Toronto Bluejays:
I don't care about the Bluejays! Not in the slightest! They are less bad than the Orioles, but not by much. They play in Canada, which has no significance except in so far as I can make jokes about it. I recall that David Wells played for them for a brief period, during which time he grew fat and dissatisfied because they were a team without much hope of making it to the playoffs. He was later excited when he learned he would be traded to the White Sox, and even said "Yo!" I was pretty sure he still pitched for the Yankees. But apparently, he was recently forced to retire when no team would sign him. Even though he had to give up beer because of the gout! Which gives me a mental picture of him sitting in an easy chair beside a highway, holding up a placard which reads "Will Pitch In Major League Rotation For Whiskey And/Or Opportunities To Engage In Fisticuffs." That is all.
"They had the best pitching in baseball last year, believe it or not." But a couple of their best pitchers are out for either the whole year or most of it due to injuries, and they had a very quiet offseason. In other words, they lost something of value (the baseball-playing abilities of the injured pitchers) without finding something of value with which to replace it.
Therefore they shall lose.
The Bluejays will finish fifth, in other words, last.
Tampa Bay Rays:
The Rays prospered last year, possibly because they changed their name from "Devil Rays" to "Rays". Or, less superstitiously, because the Yankees were just getting older and more expensive, the Red Sox somehow lost or traded away a couple superstars without being able to replace them, and the Rays themselves had a bunch of talented young-ish players who all simultaneously figured out how to hit and/or throw.
Dave says: "That's pretty accurate." Hooray! Also they made it to the World Series last year, even if they didn't win. Which oddly I didn't remember at all, even though I watched it. I still can't name any players on this team off the top of my head. Hmm.
But I think these guys are riding high on the River Euphrates. They have had a taste of success, or at least less failure, and will want very much to have even less failure than that. And because they are young and need less banned substances to cope with the physical stresses of a 162-game season, they will again display athletic goodness in the long haul.
I boldly predict that the Rays will finish second. Ha.
Boston Red Sox:
One of the two big-name franchises that inspired me to give the Belligerent Snobs division its fake name, the Boston Red Sox broke their less-than-a-century-long streak of failing to win the World Series in this millennium. Leaving the Cubs' monumentally long non-winning streak the unquestioned champion of fail! They no longer have the hard-hitting but also possibly insane Manny Ramirez. He was unhappy and hence unreliable for them last year. If a guy getting paid multiple millions every year to play baseball occasionally puts his glove on his head or sits around on the grass watching the dandelions grow rather than attempting to field his defensive position, this can be bad for a team. On the other hand, Manny swings a carefully shaped wooden stick like few other men alive. He is very, very good at making the vaguely spherical object move long distances, despite his crazy hair. And I'm pretty sure the Red Sox have lost other good players to free angency or something, and some of their guys who helped win them the championship are possibly older and less efficient.
Dave says: The Red Sox added a couple of of very good pitchers who are also at high risk for injuries. Namely John Smoltz, who is excellent but old, and Brad Penny, who missed a chunk of last season with an injury. The outfielder they got from the Dodgers to replace Manny, one Jason Bay, is quite good. But they aren't sure who will be their catcher, and even though they are rich enough to spend twelve million on a long shot--namely, the two pitchers mentioned above--they are way less improved over the offseason than they could have been.
So the Red Sox will finish third. Take that, Bill Simmons. Even though you are a famous sports pundit who will never, ever read this, and hence cannot possibly be affronted by it.
New York Yankees:
See, the Yankees are, like, this thing. People use them as a handy metaphor for other areas of endeavor in which a single group is unreasonably dominant in a particular field of competition, through some combination of wealth, mind control, an immense groundswell of bandwagony popular support, and pure, unmitigated evil. (Unless the person making the metaphor is a fan of the Yankees, in which case they are code for awesome.) They pay too much for aging veterans, refuse to trade any of their oft-overrated prospects for less than one and a half times market value, and sneakily keep for themselves those prospects who turn out to be both talented and susceptible to mind control. Also they got C.C. Sabathia, who is at the moment one of the best pitchers in baseball. I choose not to discuss the alleged existence, actions and/or injuries of Alex Rodriguez.
Dave says: "Keep in mind that this perception of the Yankees is steeped in irony, because they haven't won a World Series since 2000." Good point. Alas, here my prejudice against the Yankees has impeded my own ability to recognize irony! For shame! But still. They always seem to generate a burst of winning in the final weeks of the regular season. Even if said winning doesn't enable them to win the World Series, the mind control still seems to enable them to get close enough to smell it almost every year.
So the Yankees will win the division.
Lame League: Belligerent Underachievers Division (AL Central)
Kansas City Royals:
For many, many years, the Royals were just plain awful. They were practically not a major league franchise. Kansas is a state whose fan base cares more about college football and, uh, magical tornados that whisk unsuspecting young women away to Oz than they are likely to ever care about baseball. However, I'm pretty sure that recently they've gotten either new ownership or new management or both, and they are slowly assembling a group of young players who are all learning together how not to lose quite so much. The problem is, if I pick the Royals to finish anything but last, that means I think that either the Twins, White Sox, Tigers or Indians are worse than the Royals. Which seems, as Vizzini would say, "Inconceivable!"
Dave says: They got a new GM, but have the same ownership group. And although they traded for good position players, in doing so they gave up a couple of their more reliable setup men. So they have a more good hitters. Woo, hoo. They also gave up good pitchers who pitch for short periods in the late innings, whose job it is to preserve leads or prevent blowouts. What good are a couple more runs in, say, the third or fifth inning, if the other team scores a couple more runs in the seventh or ninth?
So my opinion is unchanged: The Royals will finish last. They grow stronger, but they are not a Jedi yet.
Cleveland Indians:
I don't know much about the Indians. Truly, I don't. I think of them as playing a very competent third fiddle to the White Sox and Twins, occasionally being elbowed out of the way by the strangely competent Tigers. It is a tight division, and though it seems the Indians always threaten, they rarely carry out their threats.
Internet says (Dave is watching the conclusion to a very good MASH, and I don't want to make him pause it!): The Indians are, as I suspected, in a pretty uneasy spot. They added a couple guys and their hitters will probably do well, but their rotation is full of question marks. I put a lot of value on a team having a reliable starting rotation. Since, y'know, your pitcher needs to prevent the other team from scoring too many runs, or else all the good hitting in the world won't help you win.
So the Indians will finish fourth.
Detroit Tigers:
When I first started to be really aware that baseball existed, around the turn of the millennium, the Tigers were almost as terrible as the Royals and frequently fought with them for the losing bracket at the end of the regular season. However, they did make the playoffs a couple years ago and were not awful even last year. So they're not exactly basement bums anymore, even though I don't think anyone expects them to set the world on fire. Or put it out, if it were already on fire, thereby becoming heroes.
Dave says: "Yeah, they're pretty much a middle-of-the-road team. They had some significant injuries and some underperforming pitchers last year, which is probably why they didn't make the playoffs. But [referring to what I said above] I don't think I'd change anything about that."
The Tigers will finish third.
Minnesota Twins:
The Twins are tricky for me. I think I know some things about them, but most of the information in my brain is a couple years old. I know they no longer have Johan Santana, a pitcher who was their ace but now plays in New York. They no longer have star outfielder Torii Hunter and his magnetic glove of awesomeness--I think he's somewhere on the west coast. I'm frankly not sure whom they do have. And although I don't believe they made the playoffs last year, in my mind they and the White Sox are rivals and the two best teams in the division, so I have to assume they'll do well.
Dave says: "The Twins are coming back as basically the same team. They tied for the division lead last year with the White Sox. They played a one-game playoff for the tiebreaker, and they lost that game. Also they're getting Francisco Liriano back, who was out most of last year." I glean from this that Liriano is a starting pitcher who is good enough that his presence is expected to improve the team. (And I was close to right about the former Twins I could remember: Hunter plays for the Angels, and Santana now pitches for the Mets.)
Y'know what, I originally wanted to pick the White Sox to win the division. Because they are quite good. They've been the better-playing Chicago team for years now, they won the World Series in 05, and I really rather like them and want to see them do well.
But instead I am going to pick the Twins to win the division. I don't know why. But they will do it.
Chicago White Sox:
As you may have notced above, I do remember a few things about the White Sox. They're good, they're winners, they have determination and a positive attitude, regular human beings can occasionally afford tickets to their games, and they have a number of talented players. Like, uh...Mark Buehrle. (An excellent pitcher, who once used the tarp covering the field as a Slip'n'Slide during a rain delay!) And Jermaine Dye. (He is good at hitting. Also Dye is an easy name to remember.) And I think they got some good guys over the offseason, but I don't remember whom.
Dave says: Their pitching rotation is set up to do well with a method that's worked for them before. They have Mark Buehrle, John Denks and Gavin Floyd, who are all good and presumably healthy, and Jose Contreras, who is not as young but got back into shape in the offseason and should play well. Then they have a bunch of rookie pitching prospects who can compete for the #5 spot, so hopefully one of them will work out. They have a couple of other rookies in their batting lineup; Dave is optimistic about one and pessimistic about the other. But even if neither of them works out, the rest of their team is pretty solid.
So. For absolutely no reason at all I say they will still not win the division. But they will make the playoffs anyway because they'll get the AL wild card.
Lame League: Half-California Division (AL West)
Texas Rangers:
The first thing I always remember about the Texas Rangers is that they have good hitting and unreliable pitching. Good with the carefully shaped wooden sticks, not so great with the spherical objects. The funny thing is that this seems to keep being accurate, year after year, even when the team is composed of completely different players. And you'd think at some point, somebody in charge of hiring baseball men to represent their franchise would lean back in their chairs and say, "Why don't we make it our priority to obtain some fellows who really know how to throw the spherical object in a swift and accurate manner?" But instead, they repeatedly spend all their money on guys who can swing the carefully shaped stick with style, aplomb, and a very loud "thwack!" and then settle for mediocrity in the spherical-object-throwing department. And then scratch their close-cropped Texan skulls and wonder why they haven't managed to defeat the competition and bring home the triangular piece of cloth! Argh!
Dave says: Sadly, my rant is pretty accurate. "Last year, they pretty much had the worst pitching in all of baseball, and most of the guys they're bringing back this year are going to be the same guys." Furthermore, their club president is a man named Nolan Ryan, whose name you may recognize. He is one of the legendarily good pitchers of the Times Of Old, But Not So Old That They Are All Deceased. He was heard this offseason saying something to the effect that young pitchers these days get "mollycoddled", and that the club should demand they always pitch a full nine innings whenever it's their turn. Presumably, regardless of pitch count. Under ordinary circumstances, a team will take the starting pitcher out of a game if he throws more than 100 pitches, to prevent injuries. For young pitchers the number is sometimes even lower, say, eighty pitches, because they have not yet developed the stamina required to throw 100 pitches once every five days for the length of a 162-game regular season.
I predict the Rangers will finish last in a four-team division. Perhaps that will learn them to be less curmudgeonly and to spend more money on men who are paid to throw things.
Seattle Mariners:
I don't know too much about the Mariners. I know Ichiro Suzuki, a Japanese player so famous he actually goes by his first name, plays for them. The way that man swings a carefully-shaped wooden stick is a joy to behold. He has a small frame, but the precision and controlled force of his swing seems to place the entire weight of his body behind the exact spot on the wooden stick where it connects with the spherical object. Like a small but very tightly coiled spring with a little boxing glove on the end of it that punches you in the face and knocks you down. Yes, even if you are very large. However, the rest of the team does not really stick in my memory. They always play hard, but even in the notoriously weak Half-California division they rarely advance into the playoffs.
Dave says: "They're largely a question mark to me too." The team has a new GM, who traded for a whole mess of players during the offseason. The Mariners are trying to reinvent themselves, and while they expect it to be a long-term process, nobody really knows what this year's team is going to look like. However, I think the feeling of new and different times afoot will juvenate this franchise. (Not rejuvenate. That would require them to have been sprightly and motivated at some previous time. Yes, I know, juvenate by itself isn't a word. Don't worry, I won't try to use it next time we play Scrabble.)
The Mariners will still finish third, though. Maybe they'll win the division next year.
Oakland Athletics:
Another team regarding which I am ill-informed. Their GM, Billy Beane, is known for being the first baseball decision-maker to make use of the ideas in the book Moneyball. This is a famous-within-baseball book which made a statistic popular, namely OPS. That's right, statistics can be popular! OPS adds together a player's on-base percentage--how frequently he gets to go step on the white squares after batting--to his slugging percentage--how many of those white squares he gets to step on. This is a way to measure how likely a player is to be able to score a run that takes walks into account. Other statistics didn't give people a way to mathematically describe how useful it is when a guy can get to go stand on the white square without having had to use his carefully shaped stick at all. As for who actually plays for the A's or what they've been doing lately, I have no idea.
Dave says: Moneyball was really more about taking advantage of the gap between the statistical measurements on which others rely and the realities those measurements describe. OPS was just the first case in point. People relied too much on stats that didn't measure the actual value of a walk, so Beane focused on getting cheap hitters who drew a lot of walks. But whatever the underestimation of the day is, you can always hire good players for less, as long as those players are good at the things no one else values properly. These days, his focus is more on how the defensive abilities of players are underrated. He can get affordable players who may not have a lot of stick-swinging prowess. But when they're on the grass and/or dirt, they can usually catch the spherical objects hit into play by their opponents, and prevent said opponents from running all the way around the big white square and thereby scoring. The A's starting pitching is a little sketchy, but they have good defenders, traded for or signed a couple guys who can hit for power, and have good late-inning pitchers as well.
The A's will win. Why not? All they have to do is win more games than the Angels, Mariners and Rangers. It can't be that hard.
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim:
They won the World Series in 2002, which I chiefly remember because their mascot was a ten-second clip of a cute monkey jumping up and down, clapping its hands, and going "eek!" Also, they have the most annoying team name in baseball. If the Cubs played in, say, Des Plaines, would we call them the Chicago Cubs of Des Plaines? No! We would call them either the Chicago Cubs or the Des Plaines Cubs. And besides, as we all know, in Spanish Los Angeles means Angels, so naming their team that is about the least imaginative possible thing they could have done. Like, we don't have the New York Yorkies, the Atlanta Atlanteans, the Chicago Chicagoans or the Tampa Ta...well, you get the idea. Lame name. They've still played reasonably well--for an AL West team!--over the past couple years.
Dave says: They've still got Vlad Guerrero and they added Bobby Abreu. They've got a couple homegrown young infielders, like Brandon Wood and Chone Figgins. They're down two pitchers because they lost John Garland (who I keep forgetting is no longer a White Sock) and Francisco Rodriguez (also known as K-Rod because he striKes guys out) to free agency.
Sounds to me like the A's have gotten a little better and the Angels have gotten a little less good.
The Angels will finish in second place. Ha, ha.
So, to recap:
East winners: New York Yankees. Although if it turns out to be the Rays, I will be neither disapointed nor shocked.
Central winners: Minnesota Twins. Don't know why.
West winners: Oakland A's.
Wild card: Chicago White Sox.
In the first round of the playoffs, the White Sox will beat the A's, while the Ra--I mean, Yankees, will beat the Twins.
The Yankees will then lose to the White Sox, sending at least one Chicago team to the World Series. Hooray!
Now quick, somebody gather up a bunch of ducks and balloons and a monkey, so we can have other predictions on record here that will prove to be even more accurate!
Futility Friday vol. 1: Introduction to the introduction to the baseball season!
A day late and a dollop short it may be, but this week shall not pass without me posting a Futility Friday. Even if I have to backdate the posting to 11:59pm Friday in a sneaky and possibly disreputable manner. Which I will, because in real life the week will end in less than an hour. But shh! Don't tell anybody.
Pretty much every year since we started going out, Dave has encouraged, nay, egged me to prepare a set of baseball preseason predictions. At first I did so mostly for the same reason I prepared my own bracket for this year's college basketball thingy, the famed March Madness. Namely, because it had about as much predictive value as having a monkey throw ducks at balloons (and nothing is as it seems!). And it's always funny to see the predictions of learned, passionate fans be far outpaced by the accuracy of a monkey throwing ducks at balloons. Or the equivalent thereof.
This year, alas, I have reached an uncomfortable level of informed-itude. I can no longer number myself among the blissfully ignorant, yet I am by all measures neither learned nor passionate when it comes to baseball. This year it was my own idea to post my preseason predictions. I've been talking about it for weeks. Even found myself setting aside a moment here and there to dither. Dither! (Though not, of course, to do any kind of organized research beforehand.) Clearly, I consider baseball to be some sort of deal, even if not the enormously big deal it is to many people.
For the first time, I found myself annoyed by the continuing state of my ignorance about baseball. I reached into my brain to see if I had retained useful information of any predictive value whatsoever. Instead there was a mass of fuzziness punctuated by the occasional arm or leg movement, a joke here and there based on the length or alternative translation of a player's name, or a years-old vague notion of who was best at a particular thing during a rare five-minute period in which I gave a crap. Now, most things to which I have paid attention over the years have way more anchor points in my memory by which I can occasionally dredge them up. Things like quotations, stories, or abstract ideas that interact in cool ways with emotional states. But in terms of practical matters my memory is a Rube Goldberg apparatus composed of scrap metal, twine and duct tape and assembled by drunken underpants gnomes in the dark. Clearly, my brain considers baseball to be some sort of practical matter, at least in this regard. This is insufficient and frustrating.
So I used a very cool map posted on this website (yes, I know, it's otherwise written in Chinese so I don't know whom to credit) to develop a map of my own. A map which, once I buy a USB cable for my printer, I will print out and put up on the wall as a memory aid. In the meantime, here it is:
The blue circles indicate teams in the National League, the league which is cool enough to require its pitchers to step up to the plate and bat when their team is on offense. Some pitchers are rather good at this, such as the Cubs' ace Carlos Zambrano. The American League, whose teams are circled in red, takes the more lame position that the pitcher's place in the batting lineup should be filled by a specialized player known as the designated hitter. This fellow's only job is to bat in the pitcher's place, and occasionally run the bases if he happens to hit the ball into play as something other than a home run.
(You see, I already care enough about baseball to be biased on this issue.)
Each league is divided into three divisions: east, central, and west, as indicated on the map. This much, at least, I know without having to look it up! But now that I have made a note of the actual names of the leagues and their divisions, I will proceed to call them by names I make up. And predict what the teams will do, in a manner slightly less accurate than if I had gotten a monkey to throw ducks at balloons for me. First, I will summarize what I know about each team. Then I will ask Dave and/or the internet for help and clarification. Then I will predict who will win. At the end of the upcoming season, I can revisit these posts and marinate in my glorious incorrectitude!
(three hours later)
This is a lot of work! I hadn't really thought through just how many teams there are, and how much work it was going to be writing a couple of paragraphs about each of them. So I will be posting up one league tomorrow, when I finish it. (I got about halfway through before I got sleepy.) And the next one will go up...as soon as I finish it.
Pretty much every year since we started going out, Dave has encouraged, nay, egged me to prepare a set of baseball preseason predictions. At first I did so mostly for the same reason I prepared my own bracket for this year's college basketball thingy, the famed March Madness. Namely, because it had about as much predictive value as having a monkey throw ducks at balloons (and nothing is as it seems!). And it's always funny to see the predictions of learned, passionate fans be far outpaced by the accuracy of a monkey throwing ducks at balloons. Or the equivalent thereof.
This year, alas, I have reached an uncomfortable level of informed-itude. I can no longer number myself among the blissfully ignorant, yet I am by all measures neither learned nor passionate when it comes to baseball. This year it was my own idea to post my preseason predictions. I've been talking about it for weeks. Even found myself setting aside a moment here and there to dither. Dither! (Though not, of course, to do any kind of organized research beforehand.) Clearly, I consider baseball to be some sort of deal, even if not the enormously big deal it is to many people.
For the first time, I found myself annoyed by the continuing state of my ignorance about baseball. I reached into my brain to see if I had retained useful information of any predictive value whatsoever. Instead there was a mass of fuzziness punctuated by the occasional arm or leg movement, a joke here and there based on the length or alternative translation of a player's name, or a years-old vague notion of who was best at a particular thing during a rare five-minute period in which I gave a crap. Now, most things to which I have paid attention over the years have way more anchor points in my memory by which I can occasionally dredge them up. Things like quotations, stories, or abstract ideas that interact in cool ways with emotional states. But in terms of practical matters my memory is a Rube Goldberg apparatus composed of scrap metal, twine and duct tape and assembled by drunken underpants gnomes in the dark. Clearly, my brain considers baseball to be some sort of practical matter, at least in this regard. This is insufficient and frustrating.
So I used a very cool map posted on this website (yes, I know, it's otherwise written in Chinese so I don't know whom to credit) to develop a map of my own. A map which, once I buy a USB cable for my printer, I will print out and put up on the wall as a memory aid. In the meantime, here it is:
The blue circles indicate teams in the National League, the league which is cool enough to require its pitchers to step up to the plate and bat when their team is on offense. Some pitchers are rather good at this, such as the Cubs' ace Carlos Zambrano. The American League, whose teams are circled in red, takes the more lame position that the pitcher's place in the batting lineup should be filled by a specialized player known as the designated hitter. This fellow's only job is to bat in the pitcher's place, and occasionally run the bases if he happens to hit the ball into play as something other than a home run.
(You see, I already care enough about baseball to be biased on this issue.)
Each league is divided into three divisions: east, central, and west, as indicated on the map. This much, at least, I know without having to look it up! But now that I have made a note of the actual names of the leagues and their divisions, I will proceed to call them by names I make up. And predict what the teams will do, in a manner slightly less accurate than if I had gotten a monkey to throw ducks at balloons for me. First, I will summarize what I know about each team. Then I will ask Dave and/or the internet for help and clarification. Then I will predict who will win. At the end of the upcoming season, I can revisit these posts and marinate in my glorious incorrectitude!
(three hours later)
This is a lot of work! I hadn't really thought through just how many teams there are, and how much work it was going to be writing a couple of paragraphs about each of them. So I will be posting up one league tomorrow, when I finish it. (I got about halfway through before I got sleepy.) And the next one will go up...as soon as I finish it.
Football Friday vol. 4: Of towels and men
It's time for the last Football Friday of the year, before it becomes Futility Friday in honor of my beloved Cubs and their glorious 101-year streak of irrational optimism in the face of inevitable doom. I do not say this doom has been inevitable because of a hokey, made-up curse that sells a lot of t-shirts and glossy-paged coffee table books. Rather, because of the entirely human ability to come right up to the edge of a difficult feat, stand at the brink of a greatness to which one has dedicated talent and training and sweat and tears and millions of dollars, and then say to oneself, Wait a minute. I can't really be doing this, can I? Why me? What makes me so special, so gifted, so lucky, so different, when all the great-hearted, talented folks who came before me have failed?
But there will be plenty of time for that later. My prediction, if by some odd coincidence one of my non-Dave readers is interested in it, is down below the image.
Tonight I will be talking about football. In football the opportunity for a man to second-guess himself seems usually to be obliterated by the split-second reaction times necessary to play the game without getting horribly mangled by the big, strong men who are paid to hurtle towards him with the sole object of slamming him into the ground. Even those whose job it is to slam others into the ground are in constant jeopardy of themselves being thus slammed, in order to prevent them from accomplishing same. But football is a sport beloved both for its (carefully controlled, but still impressive) violence and for its statistical unpredictability.
Very, very few statistics in the game of football have any meaning, even in the broad sense in which any statistic can be said to have meaning. It's a point that's been done to death, and I've typed out four or five similies to express it just now and erased them, because none could add any new insight to that bald statement. Statistics describe generalities. Sporting events are celebrations of the particular. The man who's spent all year on the sidelines but comes off the bench in the big game because the star player got his ankle crushed in a freak accident, and carries his team to glory. The man whose name has been on every sportscaster's lips for days, whose ridiculously expensive replica jerseys adorn the backs of thousands, who inexplicably forgets where he is for a crucial split second and loses a game that everyone had thought was a foregone conclusion. It is precisely this that excites hope and fear in the heart of the true sports fan, because the fan can see in the game the mirror of real life. We may understand the rules, calculate the odds, plan as best we can for every eventuality we can imagine, but in any particular case, when it's your ass on the line, success or failure may have nothing to do with your knowledge or your talent or your plans. Shit just happens.
Let it be said again that I'm not a true sports fan. I respect those who are; I think it can be a psychologically healthy outlet for a human being's need to belong, to fully invest passion and identity in a group and a cause. Healthy, because it's less susceptible than a lot of groups and causes to being twisted into an instrument of oppression and hate. Because no matter how much a person wants to weep or break things when their team suffers a heart-wrenching defeat, at the end of the day it's only a game. But that part of being human is something I'm frankly afraid of--afraid to do, afraid I'm not quite as able to do as other human beings. To the extent I've got it in me, I'm going to spend it on my family, or on things I can participate in personally. I don't have enough identity to spare to give all that much to a sports team.
(Yet another reason the Cubs are the perfect match for me. And the extent to which a lot of Cubs fans are like me is, to my eye, a big part of what's wrong with the Cubs, as an organization and a cause. But I'm getting off topic again.)
I predict that the Steelers will win, but will not cover the point spread.
In terms of strict football, Dave has described to me the matchup of these two teams as an example of the irresistible force meets the immovable object. The Steelers are the immovable object. Their defense has led the NFL is a couple of meaningful stats across the course of the season. The Cardinals are the irresistible force. They have a couple of receivers whose ability to dodge the knocking-down guys and lay hands on the ellipsoidal object are truly astounding, and a quarterback who excels in arranging his team's players on the field in a manner that allows said receivers to lay hands on said object with impressive frequency. So the second thing is the part of my prediction I'm most sure about. Whether I'm wrong and the Cardinals win, or I'm right and the Steelers win, neither will do so by 7 or more points.
But I'm putting my metaphorical money (not even my imaginary money! that's for next year!) on the Pittsburgh Steelers. I do not back this prediction up with any reasons, statistics, or facts. That would be useless and a distraction from what I consider to be the real story surrounding this game. It involves towels.
The late, great Douglas Adams has said the one should never hitchhike the galaxy without a towel. Towels can be used to baffle certain predators, to provide a handy resting place when sunning on psychotropic alien beaches, and, in a dire emergency, to dry oneself off after bathing. But for the Pittsburgh Steelers, it is a symbol of their identities as member of the Steelers franchise and supporters of their quest for victory in the game of football. This is more than is usually demanded of a towel, true enough. But since it is an emblematic towel, a spiritual towel, and more importantly, an officially licensed souvenir towel with many thousands of copies sold throughout the land, it seems to be up to the challenge.
Recently the mayor of Phoenix and an officially licensed mascot of the Arizona Cardinals demonstrated their disrespect for said towel in front of cameras and a crowd. This reportedly infuriated the Arizona Cardinals. Who, being professionals themselves, understand something fundamental about the game of football: success and failure have as much to do with emotional and mental state as they have to do with talent and skill. The men who play in the NFL are all of them near the top of all the statistical bell curves that measure strength, agility, and the particular kinds of intelligence necessary to process the tactical data of football plays in real-time and react to them appropriately. What sets one team apart from another in any particular instance, what enables one group of incredibly gifted and highly trained athletes to overcome another at the game for which they have sacrificed their adult lives, often comes down to the attitude each team carries with it onto the field.
And the "desecration" of their symbolic towel gives the Steelers a huge spiritual advantage. They are now able, thanks to the magic of caring, to take on the role of righteous victims. Their honor has been insulted, and with true hidalgo vigor they will tilt at the windmills of injustice until they have won the true heart of honey-voiced Dulcinea.
(Wait, that's Don Quixote. My big sister, whose taste in books is excellent, found a site where you can get the full text for free and emailed me the first chapter. I haven't been reading much of late, not since I finished that cool book about Amish people she lent me, but for my next reading fix I think I'll definitely go for the Don.)
There are a few psychological transformations a person can undergo which allow them to commit all the resources of their personality towards the accomplishment of a single goal. Each comes at a terrible price in terms of personality construction--consider a person who undergoes a transformation in the service of an unjust cause, or as a result of some desperate self-delusion. I'm not at the point in my study of personalities where I can list them or give tutorials; perhaps the information is already out there, and I just haven't pieced it all together yet. Heck, maybe there's twenty-two of them and I've been staring the codex in the face for years.
However, as I said earlier, football is one outlet for the human capacity to undergo such transformations that is less likely than most to result in horrible tragedy and death. So I don't have any ethical problem with it, myself. But the Cardinals understand the reaction this act will elicit in their opponents, and if they contemplate the event with some chagrin, it is understandable. By making fun of a magic towel, the mayor of Phoenix has symbolically challenged not only the Steelers' skill at football, but their strength of character, their manhood, their very right to exist on the face of this universe.
So that's why I think the Steelers will win.
We are all set for Super Bowl Sunday. We don't have the money to get Metra tickets to go out and spend it at Dave's mom's place, so we're going to stay at home. I will make burgers, me and Dave each have a tube of Pringles, and our cable bill is not yet sufficiently overdue that we have to worry about missing the game due to lack of payment. For a rarity, I, the nerdy chick who is maniacally determined not to care about football, am actually looking forward to a football game. Wonders never cease.
But there will be plenty of time for that later. My prediction, if by some odd coincidence one of my non-Dave readers is interested in it, is down below the image.
Tonight I will be talking about football. In football the opportunity for a man to second-guess himself seems usually to be obliterated by the split-second reaction times necessary to play the game without getting horribly mangled by the big, strong men who are paid to hurtle towards him with the sole object of slamming him into the ground. Even those whose job it is to slam others into the ground are in constant jeopardy of themselves being thus slammed, in order to prevent them from accomplishing same. But football is a sport beloved both for its (carefully controlled, but still impressive) violence and for its statistical unpredictability.
Very, very few statistics in the game of football have any meaning, even in the broad sense in which any statistic can be said to have meaning. It's a point that's been done to death, and I've typed out four or five similies to express it just now and erased them, because none could add any new insight to that bald statement. Statistics describe generalities. Sporting events are celebrations of the particular. The man who's spent all year on the sidelines but comes off the bench in the big game because the star player got his ankle crushed in a freak accident, and carries his team to glory. The man whose name has been on every sportscaster's lips for days, whose ridiculously expensive replica jerseys adorn the backs of thousands, who inexplicably forgets where he is for a crucial split second and loses a game that everyone had thought was a foregone conclusion. It is precisely this that excites hope and fear in the heart of the true sports fan, because the fan can see in the game the mirror of real life. We may understand the rules, calculate the odds, plan as best we can for every eventuality we can imagine, but in any particular case, when it's your ass on the line, success or failure may have nothing to do with your knowledge or your talent or your plans. Shit just happens.
Let it be said again that I'm not a true sports fan. I respect those who are; I think it can be a psychologically healthy outlet for a human being's need to belong, to fully invest passion and identity in a group and a cause. Healthy, because it's less susceptible than a lot of groups and causes to being twisted into an instrument of oppression and hate. Because no matter how much a person wants to weep or break things when their team suffers a heart-wrenching defeat, at the end of the day it's only a game. But that part of being human is something I'm frankly afraid of--afraid to do, afraid I'm not quite as able to do as other human beings. To the extent I've got it in me, I'm going to spend it on my family, or on things I can participate in personally. I don't have enough identity to spare to give all that much to a sports team.
(Yet another reason the Cubs are the perfect match for me. And the extent to which a lot of Cubs fans are like me is, to my eye, a big part of what's wrong with the Cubs, as an organization and a cause. But I'm getting off topic again.)
I predict that the Steelers will win, but will not cover the point spread.
In terms of strict football, Dave has described to me the matchup of these two teams as an example of the irresistible force meets the immovable object. The Steelers are the immovable object. Their defense has led the NFL is a couple of meaningful stats across the course of the season. The Cardinals are the irresistible force. They have a couple of receivers whose ability to dodge the knocking-down guys and lay hands on the ellipsoidal object are truly astounding, and a quarterback who excels in arranging his team's players on the field in a manner that allows said receivers to lay hands on said object with impressive frequency. So the second thing is the part of my prediction I'm most sure about. Whether I'm wrong and the Cardinals win, or I'm right and the Steelers win, neither will do so by 7 or more points.
But I'm putting my metaphorical money (not even my imaginary money! that's for next year!) on the Pittsburgh Steelers. I do not back this prediction up with any reasons, statistics, or facts. That would be useless and a distraction from what I consider to be the real story surrounding this game. It involves towels.
The late, great Douglas Adams has said the one should never hitchhike the galaxy without a towel. Towels can be used to baffle certain predators, to provide a handy resting place when sunning on psychotropic alien beaches, and, in a dire emergency, to dry oneself off after bathing. But for the Pittsburgh Steelers, it is a symbol of their identities as member of the Steelers franchise and supporters of their quest for victory in the game of football. This is more than is usually demanded of a towel, true enough. But since it is an emblematic towel, a spiritual towel, and more importantly, an officially licensed souvenir towel with many thousands of copies sold throughout the land, it seems to be up to the challenge.
Recently the mayor of Phoenix and an officially licensed mascot of the Arizona Cardinals demonstrated their disrespect for said towel in front of cameras and a crowd. This reportedly infuriated the Arizona Cardinals. Who, being professionals themselves, understand something fundamental about the game of football: success and failure have as much to do with emotional and mental state as they have to do with talent and skill. The men who play in the NFL are all of them near the top of all the statistical bell curves that measure strength, agility, and the particular kinds of intelligence necessary to process the tactical data of football plays in real-time and react to them appropriately. What sets one team apart from another in any particular instance, what enables one group of incredibly gifted and highly trained athletes to overcome another at the game for which they have sacrificed their adult lives, often comes down to the attitude each team carries with it onto the field.
And the "desecration" of their symbolic towel gives the Steelers a huge spiritual advantage. They are now able, thanks to the magic of caring, to take on the role of righteous victims. Their honor has been insulted, and with true hidalgo vigor they will tilt at the windmills of injustice until they have won the true heart of honey-voiced Dulcinea.
(Wait, that's Don Quixote. My big sister, whose taste in books is excellent, found a site where you can get the full text for free and emailed me the first chapter. I haven't been reading much of late, not since I finished that cool book about Amish people she lent me, but for my next reading fix I think I'll definitely go for the Don.)
There are a few psychological transformations a person can undergo which allow them to commit all the resources of their personality towards the accomplishment of a single goal. Each comes at a terrible price in terms of personality construction--consider a person who undergoes a transformation in the service of an unjust cause, or as a result of some desperate self-delusion. I'm not at the point in my study of personalities where I can list them or give tutorials; perhaps the information is already out there, and I just haven't pieced it all together yet. Heck, maybe there's twenty-two of them and I've been staring the codex in the face for years.
However, as I said earlier, football is one outlet for the human capacity to undergo such transformations that is less likely than most to result in horrible tragedy and death. So I don't have any ethical problem with it, myself. But the Cardinals understand the reaction this act will elicit in their opponents, and if they contemplate the event with some chagrin, it is understandable. By making fun of a magic towel, the mayor of Phoenix has symbolically challenged not only the Steelers' skill at football, but their strength of character, their manhood, their very right to exist on the face of this universe.
So that's why I think the Steelers will win.
We are all set for Super Bowl Sunday. We don't have the money to get Metra tickets to go out and spend it at Dave's mom's place, so we're going to stay at home. I will make burgers, me and Dave each have a tube of Pringles, and our cable bill is not yet sufficiently overdue that we have to worry about missing the game due to lack of payment. For a rarity, I, the nerdy chick who is maniacally determined not to care about football, am actually looking forward to a football game. Wonders never cease.
Football Friday vol. 3: Dogs and children
In the first Football Fridays, I mentioned that it's a rare thing for people or animals to be killed as a result of anything having to do with football. There was new news this week about one of the more famous exceptions to this: superstar quarterback Michael Vick. Vick was convicted a couple years ago of having run a dogfighting ring for several years, after having lied to both NFL and law enforcement officials about being involved with it. (I won't go into a long diatribe against dogfighting, but it is a despicable practice that has results like this.) He is about to finish up an 18-month stint in prison during what would have been the prime years of his career in the NFL, and his return to the football field is eagerly anticipated by many people who love to see football played well.
The more recent controversy involves PETA's reaction to the possibility of Vick's return. PETA had approached the athlete about the possibility of doing a public service announcement about how dogfighting in particular, and cruelty to animals in general, are wrong and not something people should do. Vick and/or his representatives were interested in having PETA's support for his return to football, and the public service announcement seemed like a good trade for that support. However, PETA first wanted Vick to submit to a psychiatric evaluation which included a brain scan. He was unwilling to do this, and PETA withdrew their request for him to appear in a PSA.
After digging around through various articles, trying to make some sense of why this all was such a big deal, I found a really good discussion on this podcast from the Michael Irvin show. The first few minutes are mostly Irvin's co-host sputtering with outrage at PETA's presumption--what Alan Alda referred to, in his latest book, as "doing a Thomashevsky." The actual informative discussion starts at about 7:35. Basically, PETA was worried about the possibility that Vick perhaps doesn't regret anything, isn't sorry, and might possibly (though hopefully
not) get caught dogfighting again in the future. If he recorded a public service announcement that said "Don't get involved in dogfighting, kids at home!" and then went out and did it again, the effect on the kids at home would be the complete opposite of what it was supposed to have been.Now at first, the shock and dismay of football partisans I've read, watched and listened to on the subject confused me. Why was everyone getting so huffy and worked up about this? "He's been punished enough, leave him alone!" "Why is PETA beating a dead horse like this?" "You can't go after him forever because he made one mistake!" Sure, athletes who commit crimes routinely walk, get reduced sentences, have their reputations smoothed over afterwards by a sympathetic media. Characterizing several years of running a brutally violent gambling ring as "one mistake" is part and parcel of the same bias. The bias that, for example, kept Randy Moss out of jail after he drove (relatively slowly) into a traffic cop, and kept going for a couple blocks with her on the hood of his car. While smoking a blunt.
But then it occurred to me:
Football fans are upset because they feel they've been punished enough.
Vick's potential on the football field (so I am told) is truly awe-inspiring--and the fact that he was imprisoned for committing crimes deprived the football-watching public of access to his talents. Getting angry at the athlete for committing the crimes that got him sent to jail would be a big, whopping load of cognitive dissonance. If you idolize him for his talent, you can't hate him for choosing to act in a despicable way off the field. This is another example of how "love the sinner, hate the sin" is not usually something people can do in practice, which Worlds & Time discussed eloquently a week or so ago. So instead of getting angry with the beloved-because-talented athlete, they get angry with the people who persist in pointing out his non-football related flaws.
Yesterday Dave mentioned to me something he saw on ESPN's bottom line: that some of the dogs Vick had involved in the fighting were his own family's pets. I wasn't able to find any articles that mentioned this tibit, so I don't know where the information came from. But it got me to thinking about the sometimes enormous disconnect between the celebrity as object and the celebrity as human being. How are we supposed to wrap our minds around this?
Celebrities as objects serve an important function in society. They give us templates for behavior
and appearance. They give us ways to discuss aspects of being human without having to refer to any of the individual human beings actually participating in the discussion. This week's episode of The Office, for example, had almost the entire cast of characters involved in an episode-long debate over the question: Is Hilary Swank hot or not? I loved the entire side of the episode centered on this debate, because it ran through all the stages that any argument will go through, online or in person. From people taking the results too personally, to people disagreeing on defining the original terms of the debate ("Would I make out with her?" is not the same question as "Is she hot?"), to people getting frustrated in the middle and declaring that "no one ever changes their mind, we all just get more firmly entrenched in the views we already had."At what point, as individuals who want to be socially responsible, do we have to separate the object from the person? When do we have to tear our minds away from Vick's incredible potential awesomeness on the football field and start thinking about him as a human being? An untouchable sports idol who indulges in dogfighting can feel, in your mind, like a light and not very serious thing when weighed against the great emotional force of a lifetime commitment to football fandom. You want to forget about it, to avoid the cognitive dissonance between the object you love and the person whose actions you can't condone. So you focus only on the object. But moved outside of that context, a real human being who would take his family pet and make it fight other dogs to the death--or, if it didn't die in the ring, electrocute or drown it for the audience's viewing pleasure--gets put way, way down on my shit list.
To provide some perspective, here's a Bill Simmons article about his family dog which recently died. That's what I would consider a normal American view on how one should think and feel about domesticated dogs. The "object" version of every public figure in America feels this way about dogs. TV shows, movies and most media-based role models try to teach the children of America to feel this way about dogs. This is admirable.
In the first Football Fridays, me and Dave both ended up changing our perspectives on the Titans. This happened because the real life person Jeff Fisher, their coach, is an unabashed supporter of Mercy Ministries, an organization that pretends to offer psychiatric care and professional counseling to young women but actually has untrained Bible students lead them in prayer and give them exorcisms. The undeniably talented Michael Vick actually mutilated dogs. Not in the facetious way, where you say to your friend, "oh, so-and-so's a bad guy; he like, kicks puppies." No. Actually did it. Actually mutilated dogs and killed them. For fun and profit. And is not sorry.
So the only reason I can think of that people would still defend him with such vehemence, still want to root for him, still have this entirely positive view of him, is that they have completely objectified him. There is no concept of a real human being attached to the words Michael Vick in these football partisans' minds. There is only the legend, the skill at football, the jersey, the name.
To me that is just as sad, just as stupid and ridiculous as objectifying nude models and porn stars. Yes, objectifying men and women who can or will do awe-inspiring things can make us feel good. No, I don't have a problem with the objectification process itself. It can serve useful functions--whether in social life, as in the debate mentioned above, or in personal life, as a way of more clearly visualizing an ideal of beauty or swiftness or joy. But when we cannot separate the ideal from the idol, the person from the thing that person represents, then the results can only be bad. Whether it's sexually harassing a waitress 'cause she's got a huge rack, or looking the other way when a famous guy hurts puppies.
Football Friday vol. 2 (belated)
I'm backdating this to Friday, but I'm actually writing it on Sunday. Since I haven't posted otherwise since Tuesday, though, I don't think it makes much of a difference.
On today's games me and Dave were even: he had the Steelers over the Ravens, and I had the Cardinals over the Eagles. I think I might be developing a mild affiliation for the Ravens, but we'll see how it goes. Even as a lifetime northside Chicagoan, my Cubs fandom is little better than halfhearted. I don't think I'm cut out to be a true fan of any team. Probably a personality construction thing. But it's further evidence for the hypothesis that prior knowledge about the teams playing in a particular matchup does not correlate, or may even be negatively correlated, with the ability to correctly pick the winner when two teams play.
I had a great idea for something me and Dave could do next football season, so I'm posting it up now so I don't forget. (Before Football Friday becomes Futility Friday for the baseball season and I use my text space to talk about the Cubs, and futile but desirable pursuits in general.) A fantasy gambling game!
Here's how it would work. We'd each start out the football season with, say, ten thousand imaginary dollars. Each week we'd be required to bet at least one thousand of those dollars on the outcomes of that week's games. The bets can be distributed among the teams playing in any way we choose. Imaginary winnings and losses would be determined by the appropriate Las Vegas gambling information, though I still haven't figured out whether fantasy gambling bets would have to take the points spread into account. The last player to lose all their imaginary money would be the winner. Unless by some bizarre coincidence more than one person were to end up with more than nothing, in which case the player with the highest total would be the winner.
It would be cool to have more than two people in on this game, but we'll see what happens when next year's football season starts. As it always does, just as the baseball playoffs are heating up and getting really interesting. Football will slime its hideously overmerchandised way back onto the airwaves and suck up all the attention and facetime that should rightly belong to the glory that it October baseball. With all of its hideous merchandising.
Dog, I hope America's influential and powerful people figure out how to get their domestic companies back on track, producing something other than "financial services" and entertainment. At least I live in Chicago. A city of lawyers, accountants, and corporate headquarters is not likely to stop needing upbeat, intelligent clerical workers with most of a bachelor's degree any time soon. As long as I don't have any major medical issues that need addressing and have no plans to try to get into real estate now that the market has crashed and burned, I should be able to sit here on my cheap DSL connection and wait out the economic crisis with good cheer.
Er, and go Ravens. Bears suck worse than the Cubs, even though they've both been rather good lately and I love those chokey blue bastards. Who may soon be in the market for Jake Peavy! I can't wait to see what'll happen to him if they trade for him. (Key words may include: ligament, elbow and freak meteor shower.)
On today's games me and Dave were even: he had the Steelers over the Ravens, and I had the Cardinals over the Eagles. I think I might be developing a mild affiliation for the Ravens, but we'll see how it goes. Even as a lifetime northside Chicagoan, my Cubs fandom is little better than halfhearted. I don't think I'm cut out to be a true fan of any team. Probably a personality construction thing. But it's further evidence for the hypothesis that prior knowledge about the teams playing in a particular matchup does not correlate, or may even be negatively correlated, with the ability to correctly pick the winner when two teams play.
I had a great idea for something me and Dave could do next football season, so I'm posting it up now so I don't forget. (Before Football Friday becomes Futility Friday for the baseball season and I use my text space to talk about the Cubs, and futile but desirable pursuits in general.) A fantasy gambling game!
Here's how it would work. We'd each start out the football season with, say, ten thousand imaginary dollars. Each week we'd be required to bet at least one thousand of those dollars on the outcomes of that week's games. The bets can be distributed among the teams playing in any way we choose. Imaginary winnings and losses would be determined by the appropriate Las Vegas gambling information, though I still haven't figured out whether fantasy gambling bets would have to take the points spread into account. The last player to lose all their imaginary money would be the winner. Unless by some bizarre coincidence more than one person were to end up with more than nothing, in which case the player with the highest total would be the winner.
It would be cool to have more than two people in on this game, but we'll see what happens when next year's football season starts. As it always does, just as the baseball playoffs are heating up and getting really interesting. Football will slime its hideously overmerchandised way back onto the airwaves and suck up all the attention and facetime that should rightly belong to the glory that it October baseball. With all of its hideous merchandising.
Dog, I hope America's influential and powerful people figure out how to get their domestic companies back on track, producing something other than "financial services" and entertainment. At least I live in Chicago. A city of lawyers, accountants, and corporate headquarters is not likely to stop needing upbeat, intelligent clerical workers with most of a bachelor's degree any time soon. As long as I don't have any major medical issues that need addressing and have no plans to try to get into real estate now that the market has crashed and burned, I should be able to sit here on my cheap DSL connection and wait out the economic crisis with good cheer.
Er, and go Ravens. Bears suck worse than the Cubs, even though they've both been rather good lately and I love those chokey blue bastards. Who may soon be in the market for Jake Peavy! I can't wait to see what'll happen to him if they trade for him. (Key words may include: ligament, elbow and freak meteor shower.)
Football Friday
I never thought this day would come.
When I started basing my post topics on days of the week, I'd mentally made a note that "Fiction Fridays" was going to happen. One of these weeks, I told myself, I'd finally nut up and write a short story or a scene from the novel I keep imagining in my brain. However, more urgent, pressing matters have forced my hand. And I have only one person to blame:
Nancy Alcorn.
That's right. That little nugget of YouTube's electronic gold is Nancy Alcorn and Mercy Ministries' football playoff special. In case you are at work, pressed for time, or on a slow connection, I will hit some of the highlights from the clip.
Item the first. Nancy is an enormous Tennessee Titans fan. At first I thought this was ironic, since the Titans are Dave's favorite team and have been since he was a young boy and saw them do great things as the Houston Oilers. So I called him over from watching the Twilight Zone so he could share my incredulity.
Item the second. Mercy Ministries has a "Titan Day", where everybody gets to wear Titans stuff and perhaps celebrate in some fashion. There is, however, one person who is allowed to wear another team's jersey: Mandy Pryce, their fitness director, whose brother Trevor Pryce is a defensive tackle for the Ravens. (Later on in the video, Nancy mentions a couple of times how good Mandy looks in her purple Ravens gear, which had me cocking my eyebrow and cracking lesbian innuendo jokes at Dave. Then again, we see innuendo everywhere, so it might just be the eye of the beholder.)
Item the third. At about 1:56, Nancy mentions that Titans coach Jeff Fisher writes Mercy Ministries a check for $10,000 every time the Titans win a game. Dave said, "All right, I'm not gonna wait, it's time to find a new team." He went and got a pad of paper. "Can you find me a random number generator?" I did, and we got to generatin'.
Starting from a list of teams in some order he came up with:
1 in 32:
9- steelers
7- texans
The Steelers he deemed an unfit choice, as they are hot right now and it would be a bandwagony thing to do. And as anyone who's played Mafia on a message board knows, bandwagoning is the surest way to ruin one's credibility as a group member. Same in sports fandom as it is in Mafia. The Texans were a respectable choice, and after some waffling, he decided to stick with that result. Darlin', I salute you.
But watching that video filled my head with a number of thoughts.
The most inane was definitely this: I'm no longer on the front page of Followers. It's most likely due to new people signing up to follow Nancy's blog. Though I couldn't help but feel some imaginary pride at the thought that maybe I'd gotten moved off the front page for being a critic instead of a supporter. Eye of the beholder, eh?
Another thought was less silly. Mercy doesn't have a "football day", where people at differing levels of recovery, who are struggling with different issues, can each support their own teams. If they did it that way, girls at different stages of recovery who were struggling with different things could have something personal to talk about other than their problems. It could be an opportunity for a girl who might see herself in terms of a mental illness, a victimization, an addiction, to have another aspect of her personality validated by the group.
Instead, it is an opportunity for everyone to root for Nancy's team. Sports fandom exists today as an avenue of social bonding. It's about as morally neutral as you can get, suitable for all ages, and except for a few rare cases, unlikely to lead to laws being broken or people or animals getting killed. So there is no rational reason why Nancy would need to use her fiat powers to force everyone in the facility to root for her team, and her team alone. The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that it is a means by which to exert emotional dominance. And such, for a person who craves emotional dominance, is never to be passed up. Even if the subject matter is not controversial, even if refraining would have overall benefits for the group.
And for dog's sake, look at how she phrases the thing. The last time the Titans and Ravens played, the Ravens won. They did so (according to Nancy: I didn't watch the game) because Mandy's brother blocked a punt near the end of the game which would have put the Titans over the top. Thus depriving Nancy of the ten grand Jeff Fisher would have given to her. Presumably, on Fisher's part, this is a superstitious way of thanking God for his team's success: "Thanks, God, for making sure we all did our jobs better than the other guys today. Here's a little something. Keep up the good work." But Nancy--only, I swear, half joking!--tsks at Mandy because Trevor hasn't sent Nancy $10,000 of his money to make up for depriving Nancy's favorite team of the win. She even encourages viewers to write Trevor and guilt him into sending her the money.
Leaving aside the icky extortiony overtones, it's very, very likely that Trevor Pryce prays to God and/or is a Christian. A significant proportion of NFL players talk the Christian talk as easily as they rattle off sports cliches, and it's equally difficult to tell who is sincere and to what degree. I recall a recent sideline interview where a player was asked, "What do you credit with your, and your team's, outstanding success today?" and he replied, "Well, obviously prayer." Such senitments are sufficiently common that neither the player nor the reporter anyone else saw anything the least bit unusual about it.
My feelings are best expressed here with a Simpsons quote:
Lisa (as Joan of Arc): God, you told me to lead the French to victory!
Groundskeeper Willie (as Oliver Cromwell): Hey, ya two-timin' spot of light! Ya tol' me ta lead tha English ta victory!
I think sometimes people find it difficult to separate, in their own minds, two very different ideas of God.
There is the God who chooses sides in every conflict and announces his will as the result of armed struggle. That idea fought at the side of crusaders, conquistadors, and colonialists. Its use for football is considerably less harmful, but it is a viciously toxic things to be waving around at the mentally ill or unstable. Or anybody else for that matter. People like Cromwell and Joan all down through the ages, and a lot of people even today, took that idea to its logical conclusion over and over and over again. It leads to violent subjugation, dammit. It is an evil idea.
Then there is the God who looks only upon the heart, loves all people with equal divine desperation. The idea of a God who was willing to cram himself into a sack of meat and get jeered and ostracized and hideously mutilated and killed just to prove to his wonderful, agony-laden, thick-headed darlings that he really does understand. That idea of God can be a really wonderful idea. Belief in it can do amazing things to a person. "Oh! I've done horrible things, but I don't have to be defined by them; I can change. God says so. God could take revenge on me for doing horrible things, and he totally could have, but took it out on himself instead because he doesn't want to lose me. I must be worth saving, so I'm going to try and be a better person!"
It is emotionally lazy as hell to mix the two. The bad idea somehow always seems to win out, like dandelions (pretty and allegedly edible as they are) shoving the green grass out of a lawn. It is shoddy, poser-ass personality construction and I do not condone it. But everyone who freaking does it seems to get away with it.
And now one of THEM found a way to besmirch football, which was already besmirched for various reasons, and I barely liked anyway!
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