4/15

It's a strange thing, how well we remember some of the worst moments of our lives. Of course, some of the best moments are lumped in there as well - for every person that remembers exactly where they were when JFK was shot, there's another that knows exactly what they were doing when Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the Moon. But it's the moments of tragedy that quite often rise to the forefront of our memory.

Fear and Awe in Phoenix

I went to the USA-Mexico WBC game last week, and while it was a rough day for the boys in the red, white and blue, it was decidedly fun for the overwhelmingly pro-Mexico crowd that was packed into Chase Field. The din as the final out grew closer pitch-by-pitch was ear-splitting from my vantage point five rows from the very top of the stadium, and that was with maybe 25,000 people left (almost all of whom were rooting for the baseball incarnation of El Tri). You'd have thought Mexico had just won a gold medal when Jimmy Rollins bounced out to first to end it. But that's all beside the point.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing - Giancarlo Stanton. The man is 6'5", 245 pounds. Absolute freak of a human specimen. I foolishly and a bit absentmindedly showed up to the stadium about an hour before the first pitch, and so was disappointed to have missed Team USA's batting practice - more specifically, Stanton's batting practice. This is because what The Player Formerly Known as Mike Stanton can do to a baseball is absolutely terrifying.

MJ and Baseball, or How Hitting .202 is Considered a Success and Double-A is Better Than Triple-A

I happened to flip on First Take the other morning. It's a real rarity these days for me to "embrace debate," but I was feeling particularly bored with the eleventh Lakers story of the previous 15 minutes on SportsCenter, or at least it seemed like it had been that many (side note: Jay Pharoah as Stephen A. talking about the Lakers on SNL was magnificent). Anyways, Skip and Stephen A. (and Steelers receiver Antonio Brown, wearing a bow tie and what looked like a classy straw hat) were dealing with the question "Jordan v. LeBron: Who's a better athlete?" For my money, it's LeBron, simply because he's a 6'8", 260-lb. manimal who can run the floor like a point guard - but as I'm not getting paid to disagree with somebody on national TV, what does my opinion matter? Skip took MJ, Stephen A. took King James, I forget who Brown took because I was too busy laughing at his ridiculous outfit, and the yelling commenced.

Then Skip veered off into a potentially interesting line of thought, but ruined it by saying two things in defense of his argument that immediately sounded completely ludicrous to me.

The Inevitable Te'o Post

I know what you're thinking. This is going to be about Manti Te'o and the strange, strange saga of Lennay Kekua, catfishing, black boxes and OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP.

Seriously, at this point, I really don't care about Manti anymore. I don't care if he made up his girlfriend. I don't care if he made up his girlfriend to hide the fact that he's gay (which is an absolutely ridiculous notion - but while I'm on the subject, I was thinking. If that does somehow turn out to be true, I heard people saying that he would be a hero to homosexuals everywhere for being the first active athlete to come out. Call me crazy - and also straight, because I'm coming at this with an outside point of view - but I'd think that if that were the case, he'd be a pariah among the gay community for going to such ludicrous lengths to keep his sexuality a secret. But I digress). I don't care if Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was the mastermind behind the whole thing and Manti was just an incredibly naive dude who was willing to have a yearlong relationship with a girl he'd never even seen over a video chat, let along met in person. About the only reason I care about Manti at the moment is because this was hilarious (at the 2:10 mark). Also this. And the Weekend Update joke that when Lance Armstrong finally admitted to doping, he disappointed the only person who had believed otherwise...Manti Te'o. So let's just leave all that behind, and agree on the following point - no matter what actually happened, Manti doesn't come out of this untainted by a long shot. Because everyone thinks he's either the most naive, gullible person ever, or he's a lying scumbag.

The Harder They Fall

I woke up this morning intending to finally put some thoughts down about Te'o (not the ones you might expect, however), and I still intend to in the near future. But the conference championships today caused me to think about a couple things, and I wanted to address them before I forgot some of the nuances rolling around in my head. Strike while the iron's hot, right?

Rediscovery

"The reason I haven't written much of worth for many years is because I want to write it all, and write it perfectly, when I do."

The above quote, from the blog of a former co-worker, really sums up - more or less - why I've had such a hard time keeping this blog continuous through the years. I want so badly for everything I write to be of the highest caliber that I feel obligated to spend as much time as possible on each post, crafting it to be as good on the screen as it was in my mind. That, or I want to make sure that the idea itself is fully formed in my mind, so that I don't go back in days to come and think "I really should've tackled X, Y and Z in that post." Not coincidentally, these two things lead to a fair bit of stasis on here save for when the muse moves me to write without any further hesitation or perusal on a topic.  This is one of those times.

Fun With Statistics: MVP Edition

I really didn't want to weigh in on this whole Cabrera vs. Trout thing (my two cents, for the record: Trout should've won, but Cabrera had a fantastic year and I in no way take the MVP away from him. It's also silly this has devolved into new school/old school when you don't need sabermetrics to know that Trout positively impacted the game in far more ways than did Cabrera) - but reading some of the reactions from the pro-Cabrera writers forced my hand. Specifically, one Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. This is to take nothing away from Verducci. He's a great baseball writer. Unfortunately, in the service of writing a good story, sometimes important facts/numbers/statistics get kicked to the curb. Case in point: the following passage from that article. Italics are my own contribution, had I been allowed to edit it.