Major League Baseball: The Dinosaur leading a technological Revolution

As I write this, I am sitting on the terrace of my "Boatel" in Prague watching the Astros get slaughtered by a very bad Pittsburgh Pirates team. Watching the Astros makes me want to tie a weight to my legs and throw myself of the railing of my "Boatel" and into whatever Prague river this monstrosity is situated on. The more I watch, the more I think Uncle Dr. needs to politely ask Cecil to take over the job as manager of the Astros' AAA club, the Round Rock Express and proceed to fill the job with someone, anyone else. But its probably too soon for expressing such thoughts, and furthermore, I knew this was coming. Good baseball teams simply do not lose 19 consecutive games, pre-season or not, ever. Losing, like smoking, is a habit and the Astros are smoking three packs a day at the moment.

Rather than focus on the awful baseball team we all follow (at least for the moment, Uncle D.....fooooor theee moment) I want to dwell on the fact that I am watching this god awful baseball game....in Prague (which is not in the United States...). How? MLB.tv. The other day, I forked over 100 bucks to subscribe. I've only had access for three days, but you can already count me as a satisfied customer. I don't want to gush too much, but for once, Major League Baseball is actually ahead of the curve. I can watch not one, not two, not three, but up to four live games simultaneously on one screen. Granted, watching four games at once can induce motion sickness....but still!!!! Four games. I can pause live games. I can watch any game from any date anytime. I can select 30 players I want to follow and MLB.tv will update me when they are at bat so that I can switch to the game and watch the at bat. Did I mention I can watch any and every regular season baseball game anytime, anywhere if I have a decent Internet connection. I can watch the Astros in freaking Prague! The best feature of all, though, may well be that every time I watch the opposition stomp the Astros lifeless, I can switch on another game and remember what good baseball looks like. If you are a baseball fan, buy this. Do it now. Lets be honest, a season of watching only the Astros will make you hate baseball forever. Like I said, this is only for you if you reaaallly like baseball, but if you do, buy it. Buy it now, for the sake of your sanity.

Not Quite Friday Night Lights...

I'm in the process of training for the Zurich Marathon, so this past Friday I made my way out for a 70 minute training run at around 6pm. As I ran along my normal route in the park, I noticed the stadium lights on one of the park's main "football" (soccer) fields illuminating the field with little dots in motion on it. This isn't out of the ordinary; most nights there is a soccer or rugby game being played. I presumed that this particular evening was no different.
As I continued along the path, though, I started to hear something that peaked my interest in the action on the field. I was still too far away from the field to be able to see what was going on, but that didn't matter, the popping and the grunting told me everything I needed to know. I was still over a mile from the field, but the cracking noises were the unmistakable sound of collision.....I knew without a doubt that on the field in front of me, I was going to find a host of Swiss boys playing the American variety of football on this Friday night in Geneva.
When I reached the field, I jogged off the trail over to the rugby/soccer field where about sixty boys dressed in poorly fitting pads were warming up in a very strange way and asked the coach in my best French what time the game started. He said I had forty minutes so I continued my run and figured I would stop and watch a bit at the end of my run. I finished my brutal training and made my way back over to the field to watch what I assumed would be a very amusing half hour or so of football.
Like I'd imagine all football fanatics from Texas would be, I was naturally incredulous of the idea of a bunch of soft Swiss kids speaking French playing the only remaining sport that is truly American.
My skepticism proved well founded. They played without kickoffs. Most of the players were, there is no nice way to put this, goofily formed. There were short fat kids, tall lanky kids. One team's offensive line was formed of what I can't help but concluding were the smallest, most unathletic members of the team.
On defense, one team lined up with two defensive lineman, two linebackers, four corners, and three safeties. The first play from scrimmage, the miniscule, not that fast, not that strong, not that athletic running back for the other team slashed through a ten yard wide hole, into the secondary where I'm pretty sure each and every one of the team's seven defensive backs failed to successfully bring the running back down.
The running back ran (very slowly) sixty five yards before he tripped over his own feet at the three yard line, stumbled forward, and finally fell into the end zone.
On the extra point, the one thing I presumed they would be good at since the best athletes in Europe almost all play football (soccer), the long snapper overshot the holder by about five yards. The kicker picked up the ball, ran around like a chicken with his head cut off, and then fell to the ground in order to avoid the unruly mob of misshapen softies that would have surely done him in.
There was no kickoff. They just gave the other team the ball somewhere between the 27 and 35 yard lines (I couldn't really tell, and it was never the same in the half hour that I watched).
Given just how poorly the white teams seven defensive back scheme had fared, I figured their offense would be just as horrible and would send me home quite quickly, laughing at myself for even bothering to waste my time watching. But then something happened.
After two poorly designed run plays had yielded a total of about one yard, the white team came to the line in the shotgun. The quarterback stood about 6'2 and probably weighed 180 lbs, was clearly the most athletic person on the field. Although he was wearing shoulder pads that were about 19 sizes to large, he managed to look like a football player. I'd noticed this before he took the snap, rolled to his right, stepped up and threw an absolutely gorgeous fly route that hit his receiver perfectly in stride at the opponent’s ten yard line for an easy score. The ball travelled sixty yards in the air. My jaw dropped to the floor.
I stayed around for another hour. The quality of the football was beyond awful. I was simply there to watch #10 on the White Team. His footwork was abdominal; his decision making was also pretty awful. But the kid was big, fast, strong, and my God did he have an arm.
I'm going to go back next Friday at 5 and watch a little more, but it got me to thinking. The NFL is not going to go global. Despite the Friday night game in Geneva, I have seen little sign that anyone in Europe gives a damn about professional football. But just because there aren’t any pro teams does not mean that there won't be talented football players. If we hypothetically assume that a city like Geneva has three different youth football leagues (by youth I mean high school) with five teams a piece, and you spread that same amount across Europe, there is talent that is going unfound and undeveloped.
A number of MLB team's have started baseball development academies in Latin America. Along with growing the game internationally and giving talented kids a chance to at least temporarily escape the harshness of the local conditions and thrive in an instructional environment where they learn from the best teachers in the business, the academies also serve to identify and develop talent. If it serves a good cause, grows the game, aaand could yield prospects that might help down the road, why on earth would a team not want to start one (or more) international academies.
NFL franchises should be copying this model. Because there is no minor league system in the NFL, it's less likely that a prospect developed by an individual franchise's academy will end up with the team down the road, but it's possible. All I know is that I found out that believe it or not, some people do like football over here and while most of the kids suck, I found at least one kid with NFL caliber arm strength (I'm not kidding, in my three years of regularly making it out to Texans training camp, I've never seen a Texans quarterback with the arm strength to flick the ball 60 yards with as little effort as that little Swiss dude). Every other professional league is reaping the benefits of globalization. Why not the NFL? It's time.

What I would say

The following is the transcript of Houston 3rd baseman Jeb Golinkin's statement regarding his use of steroids:

"I used steroids because I saw what they were doing for the guys who were using them. There is enormous pressure put on us as athletes by virtually everyone involved in the game of baseball to produce at a high level and there are tremendous incentives to do everything you can to please those pressuring you. Hitting another ten home runs is a big deal in this game and there are big rewards for doing it. Put simply, I took steroids because at the time, the rewards for taking the substances outweighed the risks involved with using. Did I know it was wrong? Yes. But an extra ten million dollars a year along with all of the adoration that comes with being a superstar makes you rethink whatever moral objections you may have to taking steroids in one hell of a hurry.

I used steroids, and I got caught. I accept full responsibility for my actions. It was my fault and only my fault and I am personally prepared to deal with the consequences of my actions. I'm not answering any questions about who else was involved or where I got them or any of that other bullshit. I made my decision on my own. As far as details, I can tell you that I used from 2001-2003. I used x, y, and z. I took x so that I would recover from my workouts faster. The faster you recover, the faster you can get back to the gym and lift again. I took y to make the muscle that x allowed me put on look good. In other words, y made sure that I would look like a Greek God when I took my shirt off and not some neanderthal. And I took z to limit the side effects of taking x and y. In particular, I was looking to not grow tits and keep my nuts from shrinking too much.

I discontinued my drug use at the end of the 2003 season not because I saw the light and came to the realization that what I was doing was morally wrong but because, and only because Major League Baseball implemented a viable steroid testing policy starting in the 2004 season.

I realize now that what I have done has stained my career and has hurt the sport. I am truly sorry for all of those things. But I am also not going to sit up here and act like I'd be telling you this if I hadn't gotten caught. I, like everyone else who used, made a decision that involved taking a calculated risk. At the time, it seemed like a pretty easy decision. In retrospect, knowing what I know now, which is that the sport would actually wake up and that I eventually might get caught, I would have to think a little more about it.

In particular, I would like to sincerely apologize to the guys that were clean. Each and every one of them felt the same pressure to use I did. Each and every one of them saw the benefits and had to compete against guys that were taking advantage of those benefits. Some of them never cracked the bigs because they didn't use. Some of them only played 4 years in the Majors when they would've played 9. Some still put up great numbers and continued to make all start teams. My decision and the decisions of others like me have called the legitimacy of every accomplishment of every baseball player of this era into question. Lance Berkman's numbers will be subjected to the same skepticism by members of forthcoming generations as my own, and that is truly unfair. Thus I would like to take this opportunity to truly and sincerely apologize to Puma, and every ballplayer like him. Let me reiterate, I'm not going to tell you anything about who was involved. This was my decision and I personally got caught and thus I personally will deal with the consequences. I'm not outing anyone else. Period.

As for going forward, I think that if you look at my numbers since I stopped using, you'll realize that I'm still a pretty damn good ballplayer and if you don't believe me, I'll show you again this season. I care about the game, I care about my teammates, and most of all I care about winning. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the batting cage."

I think the guys in the black jerseys won....

When we launched the new (and oh so fabulous) 1560thegame.com, I was supposed to begin writing my blog directly on the website. That was the idea at least.

We tried, we failed, and now I crawl back to blogspot like an old man who still buys cds because he can't figure out the Ipod his kid gave him two Christmases ago.

Since you haven't heard from me in a while, I won't discuss the Rockets on this particular post. If I did, you'd probably find my criticisms unreasonably harsh, and you'd probably be right. But you can all relate to the frustration of watching the Rockets stumble through games and blow fourth quarter leads. It pisses you off, right? Well then imagine how pissed off you'd be if you were in Europe and were following the game at 4 am instead of sleeping. That's me. Just keep that in mind.

I'd imagine that most of you thoroughly enjoyed this years Super Bowl. So did I, however I will say that the game is considerably less interesting at 4 am than it would have been at 10 pm. I'm in Geneva (which is in Switzerland....). Here in Europe, the majority of the populous doesn't give a damn about [American] football. But I did manage to find an English pub (Mr. Pickwick's) willing to stay open all night and make money on the "stupid Americans."

I showed up at the bar at around 11:30 pm our time (4 30 pm) and was pleased to find a rather well lubricated crowd of American folks happily drinking overpriced pints of beer and generally reveling the fact that everyone around them didn't secretly (or in the case of the French, not always so secretly) resent their nationality. Personally, I was simply pleased to be in the company of people that spoke English. Anyway, I got a beer and successfully managed to get downstairs without being hit by an errant dart thrown by some drunk wearing a Jeff George Washington Redskins jersey and I found a seat next to some British guy (side note, upon my asking him if he liked American football, he responded in a perfectly awesome British accent "I like beer and American women"...love the Brits).

After spending roughly 10 minutes simply being fascinated by the completely random group of people gathered together for the mother of all American sporting events, I turned my attention to the television...where the "Sky Sports" pregame show was playing out in front of me. It was at this point when I realized it was going to be a long night. Sky's analysts included some guy that might have played football at one point in his life who sort of looked liked James Brown, some guy that allegedly once played quarterback for the Washington Redskins (the key word being "allegedly" and rounding out the all star team, some British guy. After seeing this all star crew, my British friend turned to me and asked (referring to the former Redskin quarterback) "who the hell is that bloke, I've never heard of him." Yep And when I asked who the British guy was, he responded "he covers Rugby normally."

Right before kickoff, Sky explained that we would be able to select our announcers. We could have the Michaels/Madden team, or two British guys that neither I, nor my British friends had ever heard of. I never thought I'd say this, but thank God we got Michaels and Madden. I thought things might look up from there and I might be able to salvage a normal Super Bowl experience out of the evening but it was simply not meant to be. Sky couldn't fill the copious amounts of advertising time and as a result, while everyone in the states watched really expensive commercials, I had to listen to some British guy who covers Rugby, some guy that might have played for the Redskins, and some James Brown wannabe talk about football.

At 3am some relatively attractive Irish lady bought me a drink.

At 3 15, pretty much everyone left.

At 4 am, I started playing darts to stay awake.

At roughly 5am, Santonio Holmes caught a pass. Because of this catch, the game ended, and I got to go home and go to bed.

No wonder no one in Europe follows the NFL.

On Killer Instinct

The Texans played well enough to win today. For the first time this season, the offense looked competent, and at times even downright good. After looking like a middle school quarterback for the first two weeks, Matt Schaub played as if he belonged with the big kids. Unlike the first two weeks, Schaub made good decisions with the football. That said, he didn't get too cautious, taking several calculated shots down the field and the result was that the Texans hit on a couple of big plays. Schaub also showed me some moxy that I frankly didn't know he had when he led an effective two minute drill that set up a Chris Brown field goal with 6 seconds remaining to force overtime. Schaub's performance today should, at least for the moment, silence any critics (myself having been one of them) who wondered (with good reason) whether Schaub has the "right stuff" to start in the National Football League.
A look at the Texans defensive performance against the Jags leaves fans with far less to be happy about. The Texans clearly have some personnel issues on the defensive side of the ball that are going to need to be addressed in the upcoming off-seasons, but I don't think it was the defenses' lack of talent that doomed the Texans to failure today. Yes, they were awful. But if you go back and you look at the game, you realize that there was a point when the defense could have won the game. That point, of course, came around the two minute mark with the Texans up four points. Jacksonville had driven the ball into the red zone, but the Texans defense stepped up and forced 4th and nine...stop the Jags and the Texans win.
This is of course all very obvious to anyone who watched, coached, or played in the game. But that's the thing, as the players for both teams approached the line on that 4th down, they knew that the game was on the line. Every single Texan on the field knew that if they could get a stop, they would seal the victory. It was a chance to win the game, right then and there.
In the NFL, the really good teams to give second chances. When they smell blood, they go in for the kill. The Texans had a chance to bury the dagger and end the game, and they couldn't do it. That it was 4th and nine makes it all the more painful...but I would make the same point if it had been 4th and three. Good teams get that stop on fourth down and end the game, right then and there.
So yes, the Texans did send the game to overtime and lose then. But the Texans didn't lose the game in OT, they lost it on 4th and nine. The Texans have enough talented players to be a fairly good team, but they lack killer instinct. In the NFL, you have to bury the dagger the first chance you get because more often than not, if you give your opponent a second chance, they will burn you. FINISH.

Advice for Gary Kubiak: Prepare for worst, hope for best

Yesterday afternoon, electricity returned to the Golinkin household for the first time since Ike so rudely turned out our (and the rest of the cities) lights. Unfortunately, my family was driving back from Austin when it happened and thus they were not able to reconfigure my Slingbox so that I could watch yesterday's ridiculous debacle live on my computer. I was pretty pissed about it yesterday before the game, but now I wonder if God was simply trying to spare me the stress that actually seeing yesterdays performance would have inevitably caused me to feel.
Since I followed the game via NFL.com's game-tracker, I obviously can't really speak too authoritatively on the subject of just how shitty they actually were, but from the looks of it, Matt Schaub and the offense pretty much blew. Anyone who has followed the NFL even casually for any period of time knows that you can't win games if you don't score touchdowns. The Houston Texans are a franchise plagued by this inability. They have been since the damn franchise came back to H-Town in '02. Chris Brown is a fantastic kicker and I know this because we use him so god-damn much. But yesterday....ohhhhhh yesterday, the Texans set a new standard of incompetence when it comes to "not being able to put the ball in the hole." 1 touchdown in six trips to the red zone. Are you fu---ing kidding me. And even worse, only twelve bloody points. Not to tell you what you already know, but 12 points (including a touchdown and a missed extra point) in six trips means that not only did the Texans not score touchdowns (which is what good teams do)....they only scored on 3/6 possessions. Every team will occasionally turn it over deep in a drive...but 3/6. Someone should lose their job.
As I said, I didn't actually get to watch the game, so its pretty hard for me to judge just how bad they were....but from looking at yesterday's offensive statistices, it's hard for me to imagine that Matt Schaub played anything less than appallingly. I know that some balls that should have been brought in were dropped and I know that at least one of those drops took points on the board, but I'm sorry, if a team goes to the red zone six different times and only gets 12 points out of it, the boatload of responsibility has to go to the guy under center. I like Matt Schaub. I think he can play in this league. But I am going to go ahead and echo the sentiment that Richard Justice expressed in his column in this morning's Houston Chronicle which is essentially that its time for Gary Kubiak to take a good long look at his quarterbacks and consider the possibility that Sage Rosenfels gives the Texans a better chance to win.
Don't misinterpret what I am saying. I am not saying that Matt Schaub should not start next week's game. I think he should, but his leash should be next to non-existent. If Schaub doesn't play a good first quarter next week, I think its time to try something new. In preparation for the possibility that, Sage should be taking forty percent of the snaps with the first team. If Matt steps up and plays well next week, then Sage can return to his backup role and return to taking limited reps with the big boys, but Coach Kubiak needs to prepare two quarterbacks to play this week, not one.
I recognize that upping Sage's reps in practice this week will cause all of the confusion and speculation among the players and media that traditionally accompanies quarterback controversies in the league, but at least for a week, it's the right thing to do. What theoretically is supposed to separate Schaub from Sage is Schaub's ability to make good decisions with the football. That means getting the ball out quickly so as to avoid sacks and not turning it over. On the other hand, the rational for not starting Sage is that even though he has a big arm and throws a lot of touchdowns, Rosenfels takes a lot of sacks and turns the ball over too much. But if Schaub isn't protecting the football, then Sage is clearly the better option at the position. If both of their quarterbacks turn the ball over, the Texans might as well play Sage, who will create some big plays to go along with the boneheaded ones. Right now, the Texans are just getting the boneheaded ones.
So its time to up Sage's reps. If Schaub leads the Texans down the field and looks like he's in command early, then you leave him in. If he has a solid game, then you re-anoint him "the starter." But in the mean time, its high time the Texans start preparing Sage Rosenfels to be this teams starting quarterback.

I hate hurricane reporters

The few of you that read my blog regularly (God bless all of you, even the ones that send the hate mail) know that I am a student at Colgate University and that as a result, I spend 3/4 of the year in Hamilton, New York. I will be the first to tell you that I love Colgate and getting to go here is the biggest privilege in the world. But three days ago, I experienced for the first time I felt like I was away from home at a time when I needed to be there. As most of you know (since you lived it), Houston took it on the chin early this morning as Hurricane Ike came roaring through the city. Most of you won't read this for a couple of days, or weeks, because most of the fourth largest city in America will be without power for a while. The first paragraph of this story reads like a Rick Reilly sympathy piece...you know, one of those sort of feel good, sort of compassionate articles following a disaster about the resilience of the place or people immediately affected by the disaster, but I can't write that story...not about this...I'm from Houston....
My Mom called me on Thursday and left a message on my voicemail. It was clearly not a call just to chat. And she didn't say it, but on some level you could hear in her voice that she was scared, and she was calling trying to figure out why I hadn't called...the unspoken message was "aren't you scared for us?" When I called back, I sort of snapped. She told me that they weren't going to have power for two weeks (as it turns out, she may have been right) and blah blah blah blah blah. And I was an asshole. I told her to stop being hysterical...that they weren't victims yet. I was essentially a real asshole at a time when she clearly was afraid. I've been trying to figure out why I reacted that way, and I think I now have put my finger on it. You see, I'm from Houston. I've spent my whole life there. I've gone through all the Houston bs...the sports teams that break your heart, the crappy weather, the fatness, the smog, the damn traffic, and the yearly tropical storm/ hurricane. I evacuated during Rita (ok...so I didn't exactly evacuate. I more refused to change my plan to go to Austin City Limits and so my buddy and I drove to Austin with all the people that evacuated...but it still took like 15 hours so I like to think that I evacuated), and I still remember staying up through the night with the ridiculous "WaterVac"vacuuming up the water outside of my father's home office during Tropical Storm Allison so the office wouldn't flood. Basically, my whole life, what Houston has gone through, I have gone through with it. But this week, for the first time, I wasn't there for my city. As my city was poised to stare down a monster called Ike, I was sitting comfortably in New York reading about the storm on "the Drudge Report" and watching CNN reporters in red panchos stand in front of 45 south signs and talk about the status of my city. I was an outsider.

I am not naive enough to believe that my being in Houston would alleviate any of the pain that mother nature inflicted on my city this morning. But I can tell you why I snapped at my Mom...because I didn't like watching CNN to get news about the place I lived in. It sounds ridiculous to say that I feel helpless here, but that's the case. My family is terribly lucky in that our house was not seriously damaged by the storm, but I know a lot of people who were not so lucky. If I were in Houston, I would be able to do more than just say sorry, that sucks. I would be able to pick up the glass from the windows blown out by the storm and pick up all of the trash in the streets. Nothing that significant, but I swear to you, its different when your there. When the storm hits when you are there, you are a part of a community. When you are way far away, you can only watch some jackass CNN reporter wearing a red pancho talk about your community like they are actually a part of it, and I can't tell you how frustrating that is.

Shit got real this week on the home front, and I'm not there to play a role in bringing the city back to it's feet. So all I can do at the moment is send my thoughts and my prayers to my fellow Houstonians. Our city is great, you are the reason it is great. We will not be off our feet for long. Go Astros, Go Texans, Go Houston. I'll be watching from afar.

PS-I know you don't have power so you can't really see all of this, but if you were to have tuned into CNN last night, you would have seem some dumbass in a Red Pancho reporting live from the Hurricane in Houston. Literally, they go live to these reporters, who inevitably report that "it is very windy." Can't we figure that out without having someone there. Is in not ludicrous for them to stand out there only so that they can tell us that it is "windy." I find this to be very upsetting and if you happen to read this soon and you happen to see a moron in front of a videocamera wearing a CNN pancho, I would owe you a debt of gratitude if you would punch them in the face for me.

Nervous as hell...and loving it

It is now the eve of the Texans regular season opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and I couldn't be more petrified. I fully recognize that it is a little unreasonable to be nervous about a team's first game when you are not a member of the team or that team's coaching staff/ front office (ie when you are not a person that has played any significant role in how the team will perform tomorrow) but I can't help it. Before big games, I simply get nervous. When the Astros have big games, I spend totally ludicrous amounts of time worrying about the game. Same with the Rockets. This has always been the case with those two particular franchises. However, tonight is the first time I have ever been nervous about the Texans, and I think it sort of marks a watershed moment for the franchise because I think it's indicative of something larger, and more important. I think the fact that I am nervous is a sign that the Texans are actually relevant and important for the first time in franchise history.
It's not just about me. I am not dumb enough to think that the fact that I am nervous about tomorrows game is "the sign" that the Texans are for real. But I do think that the fact that I (a well informed and serious fan) am nervous about tomorrows game probably means that many of you feel the same way for the first time. And this really is significant because even the most unreasonable fan doesn't get worried about things that he has no expectations for. Nerves are a product of hopes, and more importantly, expectations. I have always hoped that the Texans would be good, but I have never expected anything but mediocrity from them, and as a result, I never worried about games. I just watched and hoped that they would win. Don't get me wrong, I wanted them to win, badly, and I regularly flipped when they failed. But in my heart of hearts, I never expected them to be good. I never got nervous because I always expected them to fail.
That I'm nervous means something significant. It means that in my heart of hearts, I don't just hope the Texans will succeed. It means that on some level, I expect them to. My nerves are a sign that I am afraid they will disappoint me. I am afraid that tomorrow, and this season, that the Texans will break my heart. In a twisted sort of way, this is a wonderful thing because it really does mean that for the first time, the Texans are relevant and real. Cheering for a team that you don't expect anything from isn't really cheering at all because it doesn't involve full emotional attachment. What separates that bandwagon jumpers to the real fans is that real fans are fully invested...if their team wins, they get the glory, but if their team loses, they feel the pain. Until now, cheering for the Texans has been like cheering for the underdog of a game you have no interest in. When that team wins, you are happy for like half an hour, and when they lose you simply shrug it off since you never really cared about them in the first place. For the first time, the Texans can hurt me. And I love it.

Communism on the Little League Field

We are raging a generation of what I am sure will be absolute and total wimps. I was calmly going through the mornings stories this morning before heading off to partake in roughly nine hours of mind numbing leadership training when I came across a story about how a Little League in New Haven, Conn. had decided to disband one of it's teams because it has a 9 year old boy named Jericho Scott. Apparently Jericho isn't just any nine year old....he is a nine year old pitching phenom. He throws the ball a whopping 40 mph (are we really gunning the fastballs of 9 year olds these days??? Has it really come to that?) which is apparently too fast for the parents of the little boys on the teams he pitches against. You see, Jericho strikes out their children and as a result, their children don't feel wonderful about themselves.
I've given you some background, but I realized that the more I recap from the story, the more ticked off I get and frankly, it's too damn early for me to be pissed off so I'm going to give you the quick version. Some nine year old throws hard and strikes everyone out, so the Little League of New Haven made the executive decision to ban his team from allowing him to pitch. The Coach (probably some random Dad) thankfully had the good sense to blow this edict off and sent the fireball throwing toddler out to the mound for a game last week. When the opposing team took the field and saw who was pitching, they actually forfeited the game before it even started.
There are so many things racing through my head and so many curse words that I would like to scream at the parents and Coaches of the Youth Baseball League of New Haven, and I almost don't even know where to begin. I guess the first thing I should do is clarify for those that might think that I misread the story (or are hoping that I misread the story) that these parents and coaches do not claim that the lad is too old (ala Danny Almonte) or that he can't control his heat (ie they don't think he's going to hurt one of their kids), they just think he is too good. And so they made a rule saying he can't pitch. This rule is actually frightening. We are actually going to punish a kid for being too good? This is like communism on the Little League Field. He's too good, the other kids need to catch up, maybe if we sit him for a couple of years things will be fair again. Has it really come to this? What sort of message are you sending this young man...."don't be too good, or we will publicly humiliate you and shut down the entire league because you want to pitch. All of your friends will hate you because they won't be able to play as long as you play. We are going to shut down the Little League and it's going to be all your fault." If this kid quits baseball tomorrow, I wouldn't blame him.
But as bad as this rule is by itself, I am almost more horrified by the coaches and parents who forfeited their game last week when they saw the kid was pitching. I wasn't there, but a conversation had to take place where the coaches of the team explained to their players that they wouldn't be playing. I wasn't there, but I can imagine the conversation now. "Alright boys, we are going to pack up our shit and storm off the field. You see, they are pitching that little dude over there, and he is waaaay better than any of you. In fact, he is so much better than you that none of you even have a chance. He is going to get all of you out and as a result, we aren't even going to try. We are going to cut our losses." When the going get tough, the pussies get going (into their cars and back home). I'm only 20 years old and it seems to be a bit early to be petrified about the next generation, but with morons like these parents bringing up the kids...I think it might be time to worry....

Metaphorically Getting Screwed with our Pants On

Going to a sports game is a rip-off. It just is. The unfortunate reality of modern professional sport is that across the board, Joe Six Pack is being priced out of the market and this sucks for a number of reasons, almost all of which are obvious to anyone with a brain. But this isn’t changing. For better or for worse (fine, for worse), professional sports is big business and more and more owners see their teams as a way to make money instead of a fun way to spend their money. It sucks, but it is. Beer isn’t going to get any cheaper (which really, really sucks) and Drayton McClain is not going to stop trying to cut costs by firing scouts and opting not to sign a year’s worth of draft picks (if I could punch the cheap son of a bitch…). I have accepted these things to be the difficult to swallow but unchangeable “way it is.” But I’ve got to ask, if owners are going to so blatantly screw us 99% of the time, could they kindly be a bit less blatant about metaphorically screwing us with our pants on.

It’s hard to imagine anything more ridiculous and insulting than requiring fans to pay a fee just so that they can have the opportunity to purchase season tickets every year. To a certain degree, Houston’s decision to require ticket holders to purchase a PSL is understandable. As an expansion franchise, the team had no previous season ticket holders, and market demand for the tickets was so great that people were falling all over one another to get onto the season ticket waiting list. By charging a rather ridiculous sum for the rights to the season tickets, the Texans effectively weeded out any fans not committed to retaining their tickets long term (the PSL is non-refundable. So if you pay the PSL and after two years, you decide not to re-up your tickets, you lose that PSL money). But the people in Dallas and New York should be ashamed of themselves.

The Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants are both set to move into new stadiums next season, and both are forcing any and all season ticket holders to buy the PSL. This is outlandish for any number of reasons. First of all, the price of the PSLs in both cities is pretty insulting. If you want to reserve a seat in the new Giants stadium, it will cost you in the neighborhood of $100,000. But here’s what is even more deplorable, this fee also applies to current season ticket holders. There are fans in both cities that have been spending their hard earned dollars on Season tickets for years. Some families have passed these tickets on from generation to generation but suddenly; they are going to be forced to give the tickets up because they can’t afford to pay for the damn PSL. So Joe in Dallas has been a Cowboys fan his whole life, and his family has had four season tickets on the 30 for the past 20 years. Despite the fact that the price of his tickets goes up every year, Joe has scrounged to find the money because he loves the Cowboys. After this season, Joe is going to get a letter in the mail from the Cowboys and it is going to thank him for all of the years he has been a loyal supporter and season ticket holder, and then remind him that if he wants to be able to keep buying his seats (which he’s had for twenty years), he will need to make out a check for $400,000.

I don’t know how Joe feels about this, but I want to say something for him and for all NFL fans everywhere: Go f--- yourself, (insert name of owner here).

Why watch the Olympics?

Want to know why I'm looking forward to the Olympics? Because China desperately wants things to go well sooo badly, but they will inevitably turn into the biggest fiasco of the last 30 years. Lets go through the list of things that have already gone wrong before the games have even started.

• After spending an unfathomable sum to produce the most extravagant and showy Opening Ceremonies ever, some South Korean news station managed to tape an entire dress rehearsal of the event and leaked it onto the Internet. This is pretty funny because China manages to keep it's entire population cut off from any information that paints the government in a negative light. They are the masters of deception and censorship, yet they couldn't ensure that their opening ceremonies didn't get taped by a local news cameraman.
• After promising everyone involved that the Chinese government would not interfere with the international press or their coverage of the event, reporters who arrived in Beijing found that they couldn't access most of the Internet. Oh, and the Chinese also informed NBC, which payed an ungodly sum for the right to cover the games, that they would be limiting the amount of hours NBC will be able to show live. Oh, and they wouldn't release the menus, and getting visas proved to be pretty tough....So reporters are definitely going to write nice things about the Chinese government
• The Chinese government tried to mask the visually unappealing parts of Beijing (ie those communities ravaged by poverty) by putting giant billboards in front of them...the press noticed...
  
• The torch relay was interrupted by massive protests in Tibet...which turned into riots. Needless to say, the torch relay ceased to be the story after people started looting.
• The athletes apparently were not joking about the masks. Athletes showed up in Beijing yesterday wearing black surgeons masks so they wouldn't have to breathe the "toxic" air. I'm sure the Chinese are going to be pumped about athletes running races in those bad boys so that the only thing anyone watching thinks about is how "toxic" China is
• On a more positive note: China's going to allow protests, except not really since you have to have a permit and you can only protest in a ten yard box located six hundred miles from any press

If these sorts of stories are any indication of things to come, you should tune in. You see, old habits die hard. That's why even though the Chinese are playing nice and allowing protest (sort of) and are resisting their desire to censor media coverage of the Games (sort of), I predict that we are going to see the Chinese government as it truly is at some point. I imagine the scenario playing out something like this: NBC will be doing one of it's live news broadcasts from Beijing and during the broadcast, some protester will get past security and run behind news anchor Brian Williams and hold up a sign that says something like "Free Tibet." The Chinese security officials at the scene will panic and their training will take over. The guards will tackle the protester and beat him senseless with Brian Williams and the entire NBC audience watching in horror. Then, those of us viewing at home will see the screen go black. Five minutes later, an NBC executive will come on air and announce that the Chinese government has confiscated all of NBC's video cameras and equipment, and that the government has arrested Brian Williams.
While it might not play out exactly this way, something entertaining is going to happen. This is why I will sit through all of the boring hours of coverage of obscure sports. Eventually, this thing is going to turn into a circus, baby! So come on China, we all know you don't give a damn about human rights or the West's perception of your government, so let your true colors shine. Let the games begin!

Ron Ron comes to H-Town

During his rookie season in Chicago, Ron Artest applied for a job at Circuit City so that he could get the employee discount. He once went to Pacers practice wearing a bathrobe. At the beginning of the 2004-05 season, Artest was suspended for three games for asking Rick Carlisle for 30 days off because he was "tired from promoting his R&B album." In 2003, he got three games for destroying a tv camera during a game at Madison Garden. The same year, he got four more games for getting into it with Pat Riley during a game against the Heat. In November of 2004, Artest pretty much started the "Malice at the Palace." The Comish suspended Artest for 73 games for that little hiccup. Last year, the League suspended Artest for the first 7 games of the season for his "legal problems" (a California judge sentenced him to 20 days in jail for domestic violence). And Artest has also been known to commit a flagrant foul from time to time.

Ok so he's had a few off the court problems....But before you judge Artest, you should know that after the 2005-2006 NBA season offered Artest offered to forge a salary in 06-07 if the Kings would use the money to renew then King's coach Rick Adelman contract with the team. Artest also made the same offer that same season to try and convince the Kings to resign his friend Bonzi Wells (I know what your thinking now. "wait, he and Bonzi are boys? Your talking about the same Bonzi that is a notorious underachiever/partyer/ waste of talent....ummm..." I had the exact same thought). So we know that he's generous. And he also....ok fine so the only thing that makes you feel positive about his character was offer to donate his salary for a year to two different people.

But in spite of all of this, Rockets fans should be extremely happy with this trade. In return for a marquee talent, the Rockets essentially gave up an old guy (Bobby Jackson), the 28th pick in this past draft (Daunte Greene), next years first round pick (which will be in the 20's assuming that the team will be at least as good as last year's squad), and around one million dollars cash. I like Daunte Greene, and he might turn out to be a good player in the league somewhere down the road. That said, even if Greene does end up as a solid player that sticks in the league, he is at least two or three years away from being ready to contribute. While there are certainly examples of players selected outside of the top 20 in the draft that became good players (see Manu, Tony Parker, Sam Cassell, Michael Finley), more often than not these players don't contribute in any substantive way. If you look at it from purely a basketball perspective, the bottom line on this trade is that the Rockets gave up very little to get an elite NBA player like Artest.
And make no mistake about it, when he isn't suspended or serving 20 days for domestic violence Ron Artest is an elite player. No matter what you think of Ron Artest the person, Ron Artest can play him some basketball. To say that Artest is a defensive stopper is to dramatically understate just how good he is: by the end of the game, whoever Ron Artest is guarding wants to cry. The 2004 NBA defensive player of the year suffocates whoever has the misfortune of drawing him as a matchup. If you don't believe me, go ask Kobe Bryant. At 6'7'', 248 lbs, Artest is big enough to shut down the best power forwards in the league, and he guards 2's and 3's at least as well, if not better. Artest also has the ability to score the ball and rebound. Last year he averaged more than 20 ppg for the Kings and he has averaged more than 15 points a game for his career.
Sure, this could blow up. Artest might commit a violent crime or start a brawl. And even if he doesn't do that, I can virtually guarantee you that he will say something stupid about one of his teammates or coaches after a loss or a bad game on several occasions this season. But ultimately, this is a deal you had to make. Ron Artest makes the Rockets a bona-fide title contender. While there is legitimate concern that there won't be enough shots for Yao, Tracy, and Ron, the Rockets now have three dynamic scorers. This means that if Yao or Tracy goes down, the Rockets don't immediatly become one dimensional. If he needs to, Artest can take over a game and he's as tough as nails. Despite what the 22 game winning streak suggests, Yao's injury reduced the Rocket's margin for error to virtually nothing. If everyone wasn't firing on all cylinders, the team was screwed. Now, if Yao or Tracy goes down again (and one of them will), the team will have two scorers that can create their own points. What all of this basically means is that on nights when the jumpshots are not falling, the Rocket's will still be able to score points because of the ability of Yao, Tracy, and Artest to create points on their own.
On the defensive end, the addition of Artest makes the already potent Rockets defense that much better. If the Rockets need a stop late in a game, Adelman will send out Mcgrady, Artest, Battier, Chuck Hayes, and Joey Dorsey. If you score on this lineup, you will have earned it. Before the summer league squad headed to Vegas, I talked to Joey Dorsey for a while and during our conversation he told me that "ain't nobody going to be messing with the Yao man this year." With Artest, you get another guy who isn't afraid to go toe to toe with anyone (fan or player) who crosses him. with the likes of Artest and Dorsey around, the Rockets will quickly cease to be the soft, unphysical team that we have grown so accustomed to seeing over the past few seasons.
Worst case scenario is that Artest beats up a fan, and from my perspective that isn't so bad. The last time a Rocket player beat up a fan, it was Vernon Maxwell and the Rockets won a title. Whatever happens, it sure is going to be interesting.

Yet Another Reason to Dislike Women's Athletics

I hate women's sports with an unbridled passion that is hard for me to describe in words. Maybe it is sexism, however I think it's more likely that this hatred derives from a strong averson to things that are extremely boring.
However, as with all things, there are exceptions to my "I hate women's athletics" rule. For example, I enjoy watching Maria Sharipova because she happens to be really attractive (for those of you who are foaming at the mouth because my last comment was "sexually degrading to women" I would ask that you get a sense of humor and then think about whether or not Maria wants me to react just in the way I described above....see SI swimsuit edition with her in it/ look at what she's wearing the next time she plays a match). But seriously, I find many female Olympic sports to be legitimately entertaining (both summer and winter) and I have always enjoyed watching women's tennis (with the volume off so that their shrieks don't send me over the edge) and in particular, women's golf. The woman on the tennis and golf tours have serious game and it's fun as hell to watch them play. I will still watch Annika Sorenstam play when I come across her on television, and while I find Serena Williams to be unbelievably annoying, I will watch any match between the Williams sisters. Before last week, I would have also said that I found Michelle Wie's game to be pretty intriguing.
I'm a golf person so you don't have to explain to me that Michelle hasn't done jack sh-- to deserve any of our attention on a regular basis, but the girl's potential is quite astounding. She literally bombs it like any one of the guys, and that greatly adds to her appeal. And while I thought it was a bit ridiculous for Michelle Wie to try to play PGA Tour events when she hadn't yet dominated (or even won) on the LPGA Tour and I had a bit of a problem with these tour events giving her sponsors exemptions, I was willing to wave off my reservations because Annika's trip to Colonial had gone so well a couple of years back and Wie seemed like she might turn into the real deal down the line. So until last week I didn't hate Michell Wie.
But now I do. Before last weeks little scorecard mishap, Wie had been terrible for two years. Riddled by a number of wrist injuries, Wie quite simply has been very bad for quite a while. And all the more irritating is that today when I looked at her oh so crappy record I realized that all of the crappy results that she has been posting have been in events which she didn't qualify for, but instead received sponsors exemptions into. Wie has done nothing to earn sponsors exemptions and by continually seeking them out and accepting them, she robs a deserving player of a spot in the tournament. But whatever, I can deal with that. And then of course last week Wie somehow forgot to sign her scorecard while in the scoring area (as a competitive golfer, I just want to emphasize the word somehow because it is truly an astoundingly amateurish error) after a very solid second round and she was disqualified after her third round (the error, made on day two, was discovered mid-round and officials decided to let her finish her round so she could possibly explain herself). Wie was playing her best golf in a while before making this humiliating error.
But we all make mistakes, and Wie sort of got her game together....maybe she would use this as a lesson and respond by resolving to grow up and act like the professional that Nike pays her like she is. But then, four days after her disqualification, Wie and her people announced that she would be accept a sponsors exemption to the b-list PGA tour event of the week, the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open. Are you freaking kidding? How can her parents, or her advisers, or whoever is responsible for advising this dumbass not pull her aside and scream at her "Michelle you've been shooting in the 80's semi-regularly on the LPGA tour for almost a year and a half, and last week you finally showed signs of getting your act together only to make a mistake that is rarely made in the 9-11 year old age bracket of a junior golf tournament. You cannot go play this event. you will look like a fool....you will miss the cut (she has all 8 times she's tried to PGA Tour) or worse yet, you could pass out from heat exhaustion and have to be carried off the course on a stretcher like you had to be when you tried this nonsense in 2006. I will not allow you to go play this tournament." How does someone not tell her this? Doesn't anyone care about this girl?
Watching Michelle Wie for the past three years has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I will watch this weekend (actually, just Thursday and Friday since she won't make it to the weekend) but for all of the wrong reasons: I will be watching to see her fall flat on her face, and she will. Annika Sorenstam made a sexist like me think it was pretty badass that the girls could play with the boys and hold their own. Michelle Wie is single handedly undoing all of the good that Annika did. If Michelle was smart, she would ask one of the girls on the LPGA tour that is for real (and there are a number of them) to go play in her place, for the good of women's sports. It would save her a lot of humiliation, and seeing a girl with some game out there (as I said, there are like six that could hold their own at this event...Wie just ain't one of them) would remind a schmuck like me that the girls can play ball too.

Cheering for Ted Thompson

When the hell did the text message become a legitimate form of communication? I'm not saying that I don't text all the time, it's a very useful tool to avoid actual conversations, however I was still under the impression that text messaging was still firmly entrenched (along with instant messaging) in the catagory of illegitimate ways to communicate certain "important" or "serious" things. What I mean is that on the off chance that I was in a position to ask a girl on a date, it would be pathetic for me to do so via text message. Similarly, if I had a girlfriend (I know, a laughably impossible hypothetical but play along) I would not break up with her over a text message. If my friend died, I would not send his Mother a "Andrew's dead, sorry for your loss" text. Even as a member of a generation that will do anything to avoid actually having to speak to a person on the phone or even worse, in person, I know that there are certain things you just have to do either over the phone or in person.

The reports of Brett Favre's "comeback" are completely destroying my assumptions about the text message. What the hell am I talking about? If you have kept up with the story (and if you watch Sportscenter these days, it would be hard not to keep up with it since it seems to be their lead every other bloody night) you know that almost all of the stories are based on a text message in some substantive way.

When the story first broke, every member of the Favre family (ok, I don't know that for a fact. He's from Mississippi so he could have like twelve brothers and sisters, but alot of members of the family) went on every talk show that would have them on (so basically all of them) to talk about whether they thought their brother (or cousin, or nephew, grandson, friend from preschool, guy they once met at the deli in Wichita, etc) would come back to play again or not. Seriously, it seemed like everyone Brett Favre has any connection to ("One time I parked next to him at Wal-Mart, and he said hello...and from that experience I feel confident in saying that I am confident that he will be wearing a Packer uniform come September") commented about whether Favre would play. The only person that we did not hear from seemed to be Favre himself. But after giving his family a chance to be famous for about nine hours and feel wanted, Favre finally broke the silence...well sort of. He sent a text message to some newspaper in Wisconsin that apparently simply called all of the "comeback" speculation "rumors."

That he sent a text message to a newspaper outlet as a means of "commenting" on a story is strange enough, but what's even stranger is that the paper reported Favre's "comment" (a short text message that called the speculation a "rumor") and every media outlet in the country immediately picked the story up. Sportscenter led with the story. Maybe it's just me being resistant to new technology, but I don't think that's likely since I communicate via text message as much as possible. Regardless, I am of the opinion that newspapers should not be reporting five word text messages as news. How does the paper in fact know that Brett's brother or Mother isn't sending the message? And even if he did send it, why the hell won't he just comment for real. It's an outrage. Ok, it's not an outrage, but there isn't a lot to write about this week. But this story gets better.

Thompson apparently responded to But this interminable story took one more fun turn a few days later when the media caught wind of a "conversation" that Ted Thompson and Brett Favre had via text. The report goes that Favre contacted Thompson claiming that the two needed to talk. Here's where the story getsFavre's request with a text that simply said the two would have to talk later because Thompson was "on vacation." This story almost makes me want to reverse my previous position and instead encourage the reporting of texts in the news. Try and wrap your mind around this: rather than call his general manager to tell him that he was kidding all of last season and in the press conference when he tearfully announced his retirement, Favre shoots his general manager a text simply stating that we need to talk. If that doesn't boggle your mind, Thompson's response will. Fully understanding that "we need to talk" really means "we need to talk because I pretty much changed my mind and I am about to give you the impossible decision of telling me, Brett Favre....the Brett Favre, that I cannot come back and play for my team and in doing so making yourself enemy number one of everyone who loves me (and trust me when I tell you that everyone loves me) or taking me back and by doing so forcing you to totally retool the roster you built assuming you could spend the $16 million that you now owe me on other players.

So, Ted gets this message, and as I said, he's no idiot so he knows what it means...and how does he respond? Thompson texts #4 back, informing the legend that he is "on vacation" and that the two will have to "talk later." I would pay all of the money in my wallet right now (six one dollar bills) if I could see a video of Favre's reaction upon receiving this text message. I think it's safe to assume that Brett has probably enjoyed pretty much whatever luxuries that the franchise could possibly afford him, one of them probably being that when he talks the execs drop everything they are doing and listen. But Ted, it appears, finally had enough of Favre's bs and so he just basically told the franchise to take a number and wait in line. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but I am cheering for Ted Thompson because he just told the needy, whiny girlfriend to shove it, andI am of the opinion that men should always cheer for other men who have the courage to do such things. I don't know what happens next, but since all professionalism has apparently been thrown out the window by both parties and now anything can be done by text, I hope that the next Favre story we get is that Thompson sent Favre a polite text informing the veteran that after deliberating, the Packers are "going 2 move on." Go Ted Thompson.

The Dog Days of Summer

On April 19, 2008 the Cleveland Cavs defeated the Washington Wizards 93-86 in the opening game of the 2008 NBA playoffs. On June 17th, the Boston Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 131-92 to win the NBA title and end the 2008 playoffs. You can do the math, but basically the NBA playoffs lasted two months. Two freaking months.
Needless to say, that the playoffs took two months is ridiculous. I could say a lot about how frustrating I find this but for purposes of brevity I will simply stop my rant here and move to the main point of the story, which is maybe, just maybe, this isn't such a bad thing...?
Seriously, consider the possibility that rather than being a massive tool of the television networks (who dictate how the playoff games are scheduled), David Stern is actually something like a sports charity worker who scheduled the games with the interests of the average sports fan in mind....Ok so it's not likely, but bare with me for a second while I try and explain why the absurd length of NBA's post-season might not be such a bad thing after all.
You see, every year the end of the NBA finals marks the coming of the dog days of summer, where all the media has to talk about is baseball (which is my favorite sport) and training camp football. That's it. Because of this, every big time sports radio or television personality goes on vacation and ESPN starts showing a massive amount of what can only be referred to as low cost, time filling garbage.
Take ESPN. Not that you listen to ESPN radio (you instead listen to 1560 the Game) but if you did, you would know that Mike and Mike have gone on vacation leaving listeners the less than envious task of listening to Eric Kuselias and Osi Umenyiora talk about how Osi feels disrespected by the Giants being a candidate for the "biggest upset" ESPY because as he sees it "we weren't an underdog....Plexico said we were going to win." This provides a perfect segway into "the ESPY's" and "My Wish." Sportscenter will be devoting a totally absurd amount of time to debates about their meaningless totally made up ESPY awards. Just be thankful Samuel L. Jackson won't be hosting them this year (we've got Justin Timberlake instead) so that viewers will be spared him barking at you during commercial breaks.
As bad as the ESPY's are, "My Wish" is infinitely worse. Because they don't have enough sports to talk about, ESPN takes the liberty of "granting young sick children their dreams." While this is good, ESPN is essentially using the kids for cheap programming that they can use to fill time. What exactly are the athletes supposed to say when ESPN comes to them and tells them that they have a dying child who's one and only dream is to meet them. If ESPN were setting these kids up with their favorite athletes because they wanted to grant a dream to a child, that would be great, but they are doing it so that they can film it and turn it into a very crappy human interest story. ESPN: stop with the crappy programming, do your job and talk about sports. Grant dreams off camera, but viewers don't watch sports center to see this crap. I am not anti-charity, I am however against using very sick kids and turning them into human interest stories to fill time. Stop it.
Next time you tune in to sportcenter and see a round table debate being moderated by some guy from ESPN News, or you turn on PTI to see that Jay Mariatti and whoever else they could find is hosting, or are trying to see the highlights from last nights Astros game before you head off to work and instead find a "My Wish" story, you might consider writing David Stern and asking him to make the playoffs even longer.
In other news, various sources are reporting the Harold Reynolds will be making his triumphant return to the broadcasting industry on TBS' "All Star Selection Show." Thank God. I knew that Harold could overcome whatever "sexual misconduct" got him booted from Baseball Tonight. Harold was great on Baseball Tonight and the show has gotten significantly worse since his departure. I will happily watch any baseball broadcast (sans Little League World Series...a little much) that features his commentary.

Should Astros fans be cheering for losses?

The Astros just took 2/3 from both the Rays and the Red Sox, bringing the Astros overall record to 39-43. If the Astros play above average baseball for the next two weeks, they very well could get their record to the .500 mark. If you are an Astros fan, you should think long and hard about whether or not this is a good thing or not.
If you wonder if I'm suggesting whether or not you should be cheering against your home town team, my response is that I will leave that for you to decide. But what I am saying is that I think that there might be good reasons to cheer against your home town club for the next two or three weeks.
In making this case, I operate under several key assumptions. First, no matter what happens for the remainder of the season, the Astros will not win the World Series. It would take a miracle for the Astros to win the Wild Card, and even if they did, I can fathom almost no possible scenario where the Astros beat teams like the Phillies or Cubs, much less the Red Sox, Rays, White Sox, or Yankees in the playoffs. It just isn't going to happen. The Astros don't have the arms to compete with those teams, and in the post season, pitching is what wins games. If you need evidence that pitching is what counts, remember that the Astros' '04 and '05 playoff runs were fueled by phenomenal pitching staffs and also remember that the '05 run occurred in spite of a generally anemic offense. Don't let the Astros recent success against the Red Sox and Rays fool you, both of those pitching staffs win out 90% of the time in a seven game playoff series against the Astros.
My second key assumption is an offshoot of the first: not only will the Astros not win the World Series, but the chances that they will make the playoffs are slim to none. Currently, the Astros trail the first place Cubs by 10 full games, and trail the Cardinals and Brewers by 7.5 and 5.5 games respectively. The Astros have almost no chance of catching the Cubs, and their catching the Cards and Brewers seem comparably slim. I also see the Mets, Marlins, and Braves all playing better baseball in the second half of the season so even if the Cards and Brewers were to faulter, it is likely that the Astros would face competition from one of, if not all of those teams for the Wild Card.
All of this information is relevant because if the Astros are still within double digits of the Wild Card at about the two week mark after the All Star break, there is no way that the Astros trade off any assets and start building for the future. Drayton has seen his team get hot in the second half too many times, and he is a bit too nieve to consider selling Roy or Jose Valverde with a team "in the race" (although 7 1/2 games hardly strikes me as in the thick of the race). Drayton very may well be right that the Astros could make some sort of run, but any sort of run will likely fall short of the needed number to win the Wild Card. More likely is the Astros end the year around .500.
Frankly, if we are going to finish at .500 with the players we have, I would assume see if we can land some prospects in return for Valverde (or if we get a fantastic offer, even Oswalt)and infuse the organization with some young hotshots so that the team might be a good team in two years. Seriously, if given the choice between being an around .500 team for the next three years or finishing 20 games under .500 for this and next season but then being a legitimate contender for the NL central the five years after that (which is what could happen if the Astros landed a couple of stud prospects in return for Valverde or Oswalt), which would you choose?
I'm not saying that you should cheer against the Astros to have a bad three week so that they start to build for next year, that's your decision. But whether it's in the Astros' long term best interest to be crappy for the next three weeks is a question worth thinking about.

All Publicity is Good Publicity? Not so much.

Grow Up, Ed

For Houston writers everywhere, Christmas came early this week. Shawn Chacon gave us a little gift when he threw little Ed Wade to the ground after Wade demanded that Chacon join him in Cecil Cooper’s office. Obviously, Chacon is a moron and an enormous waste of talent. I could have told you that before this incident as Chacon has always been known as an underachieving head case. But there is a more troubling aspect of this story that has been underreported by the local press (although the national press has picked it up) is Ed Wade’s role in the malay. Look, no one is excusing Chacon here, but the general manager of a major league baseball club actually got into a fight with a player. Wade admits that he “lost his temper” which I suppose is fine, we all make mistakes. But consider that during this exchange, the two men (tiny Ed Wade and not so tiny Shawn Chacon) stood chest to chest, clearly indicating that something was about to go down. Regardless of how hot the situation was, someone please explain to me how the hell Ed Wade doesn’t have the good sense to get the hell out of there and figure out what to do. If the fact that fighting one of your own players embarrasses both the individual (Wade) and the franchise (the Astros) were not reason enough to back down, one would think that Wade would have backed down so that he wouldn’t get his ass kicked. But neither of these reasons compelled Wade to withdraw himself from the situation, the two men ended up rolling around on the floor, and now the Astros are at the center of a national media circus for all the wrong reasons.

The Astros were right to cut Chacon, but there should be consequences for Wade as well. I don’t know what they should be, but Wade acted like a fool by not being the mature one (which is his job) and as a result the franchise has been made the laughing stock of baseball. Grow up, Ed.

Rockets

If you look at the history of the NBA draft, you quickly realize that the success rate for draft picks, even at the very top of the draft, is remarkably low. As a result, it would be a mistake to get overly excited about the Rockets’ selection of Dante Greene and Joey Dorsey. I personally doubt that Dante Greene will ever turn into much of a player, but I suppose I could be wrong and given where the Rockets selected him I feel like they got pretty good value since you really won’t find many guys with as much potential as Greene that late in the draft. Along the same lines, I was very pleased to see the Rockets pick up Dorsey, particularly at 33. Dorsey is undersized (only 6’7’’) but the kid is beast on the defensive end. At today’s press conference, Dorsey (who is pretty damn funny) likened himself as “Ray Lewis with a basketball.” I like where his head is at so long as he never finds himself arraigned on first degree murder charges. Even if Dorsey ends up being below average (although if he tries I think he should be a decent role player in the league for a while), his presence should bring an end to people messing with Yao. Ain’t nobody going to mess with Joey.

All of that said, if you are going to take anything away from last nights draft, it should be that the Rockets have themselves a quality general manager in Daryl Moray. Moray turned the 25^th pick overall (Nicolas Batum of France) into Greene (who they wanted), Dorsey, and Memphis’ 09 second round pick. I was at Toyota Center for his press Conferences on draft night and yesterday afternoon and when he speaks it’s very clear who the smartest guy in the room is: him. The Rockets have a bright future as a franchise if Les will let him do his thing.

June 20, 2008: Break It Down, Uncle Drayton

At the beginning of the season, I wrote that I didn’t think that the Astros would be a very good ballclub. I was hardly the only one making this prediction. Houston’s expectations were decidedly low for this ballclub at the beginning of the season, and the Astros sub-par play in the first month of the season seemed to confirm that these expectations were well founded.

But then the Astros went on a tear and actually ran their record all the way to eight games over the .500 mark at one point. At one point (and it really wasn’t that long ago) the ‘Stros were within two games of the first place Chicago Cubs. Somewhere along the way, the Houston media and Astro fans started to believe that we were wrong and now that the team has lost 15-18 and finds itself in dead last in the NL Central (12 games back of the Cubs) people who at the beginning of the year expected incompetence now seem shocked and I don’t understand why.

Granted, this particular stretch of losses has been especially awful, even for the Astros, but during the winning streak did we all not expect the Astros to come back to earth? If not, we certainly should have. To use the words of the great Denny Green, the Astros “are what we thought they were.” The Astros success was a statistical anomaly which, over a long period of time, naturally corrected itself. The Astros are an average, about .500 ballclub and by the end of the season, I suspect that is exactly where they will find themselves.

Now that the Astros deficit in the Central has reached double digits, I think it’s time for the decision makers within the Astros organization (so general manager Ed Wade and Uncle Drayton) to take a good hard look at the product they are putting on the field. An objective look at the organization will reveal a terribly depleted farm system along with a baseball squad with no pitching. Brandon Backe might be a great guy, but he is not a very good pitcher, and the rest of the staff with the case of Wandy and Roy is made up of pretty mediocre arms as well. The pitching problem isn’t going away. Wandy will probably be around for the long haul, but Roy is probably either going to retire or go to another team when his contract expires in two years and the rest of the pitchers are either too old or too crappy to be around in the future. Making this problem more frightening is that the Astros have no viable pitching prospects at any level of their minor league system. None. Not even one.

These problems are fairly easy to diagnose, but curing them will be far more difficult. The fans will urge Drayton to spend more money on free agents, particularly arms, but he should resist this urge. The free agent pitching market these days is full of overpriced average pitchers and not a lot of good deals. Teams generally don’t let their aces get away, and on the rare occasion that an ace actually does become available, the Yankees or Red Sox snatch them up. Creating a solid pitching staff must be done from the ground up. To create a good, championship caliber pitching staff (and that should be the goal) the Astros need to stock the minor leagues with quality young arms and they need to develop them. Since the Astros have drafted horribly, this won’t be easy. But the organization needs to start repeating the minor league system right now, and that means putting Roy Oswalt on the trading block. If the Astros play it right, I truly believe that Roy O, even pitching as poorly as he has this season, commands a king’s ransom of prospects. Valverede might also command a few solid prospects if the market is right. If the right offers present themselves, the Astros must pull the trigger and sell, even if the product suffers in the short term. The time has come to break it down. It will be painful because doing so will mean that the Astros won’t be very good for a while, but frankly, the goal should not to be to make the playoffs but to win championships. Through free agency, the ‘Stros might be able to put some band-aids on these problems and put a decent product on the field for the next couple of seasons but as a fan, I would far rather suffer a few bad seasons to create a real, viable contender than continue going down this road of mediocrity. Break it down and rebuild it, Uncle Drayton.