Postgame Spread: Optimism and opening day

Monday, March 26, 2007

You know how everyone loves to wax poetic about opening day, and how every fan is equal and optimistic, and every team has a clean slate?

Well...

Fuck opening day.

Ok, maybe not, but double fuck PavaNO.

Labels: baseball

13 Comments:

Hilarious. I can't believe Mussina isn't the opening day starter, what a joke. I mean, sure, it's not that important, but there's one guy on that team who's really earned it, and it's not Wang and his 3 K/9. I think Wang was a great pickup and a useful player, but come one. His injury should be irrelevant. Mussina is still the ace of that staff and he will be until Hughes wrests the title from him, or the Yankees sign Santana, or whatever.

By Jesse, at 10:08 AM
mussina = ass pirate

By K1, at 7:14 PM
Did you guys see the thing on Deadspin today that references an old Gammons blind item, one in which we're led to believe that Mussina is a big racist. Apparently Gammons said it w/o making it known, followed by Neyer doing the rest of the work to extrapolate Mussina. Summarized here. How's that line up with him being the closeted Yankee? I'll say this... if he's a gay racist, I want to write his memoir.

By Jeff, at 9:13 PM
The Gammons column in question is here. And here's the text of the story, which is no longer on robneyer.com but was reposted to the old SoSH (a few posts down).

Basically, Robbo took the words of Gammo (sophisticated top pitcher from world-renowned university) and came up with only one successful pitcher who graduated from a top school: Mussina. It wasn't exhaustive research, but at the same time if someone says the words "brainiac pitcher" to you, you think of two people: Maddux and Mussina. And only one of them went to college. QED.

And just to expand on Kelvin's analysis, he's also the logical choice to be the target of this here blind item. East Coast team... not a superstar but a well-known media figure... Out located in New York... Moose wouldn't sign anywhere besides the East Coast... it's gotta be Mussina.

So there you have it... he's a gay racist. That guy's gonna make a second fortune on his book.

Also of note is that in a Googlefight, "gay Yankee" beats "racist Yankee" by a country mile.

By Jeff, at 9:43 PM
Didn't this same racist brag about his no-trade clause to NY? Mussina sure jumped at the chance pretty quick when he got it. Also, how many universities might Gammons consider top? I'm unconvinced. And don't you figure probably 2/3 of white baseball players are pretty racist? I know the baseball team at my highschool had some guys on it that could probably hang with Rocker or whoever else.

Anyway, Mussina may be very racist or very gay or both. None of that would surprise me very much. And unless there's some seriously weird clubhouse shit going on, I can't see a good reason to make anyone else the opening day starter.

By Jesse, at 11:49 PM
I personally think that bragging bit was hyperbole. You know, like a joke. Not sincere. Remember when Kerry Collins made that hilarious joke about the N-word? Kinda like that, except more snobby.

As for the top-university stuff, two things:

1) Gammons cut his teeth in Boston, Massachusetts. The Athens of America. He knows what a good school looks like. He must have driven past, like, twelve of them on his way to the Globe offices every morning.

2) For him to describe the anonymous person as a sophisticated top pitcher from a well-known school is to basically out the person as Mussina without saying it. If he meant anyone else, then he had to be using Mussina as a smokescreen, because that really doesn't describe anyone else. Does that make any sense?

By Jeff, at 12:07 AM
can we get back to hating on PavaNO yet?

and what sort of smokescreen can i throw up to "out" Pavano as eater of bagfuls of monkeydong?

By Alex, at 8:54 AM
Done and done:

But not all players enjoy licking the chocolate directly out of the dirty balloon knot. According to an anonymous NL Central manager, a well-known pitcher with a predisposition towards ass injuries, one who was once a high-profile free agent signing for an American League team whose name rhymes with "Jew pork crankies," has been seen at a prominent male strip club eating out of a mysterious, pungent bag marked only with a drawing of a monkey performing an act of autoeroticism. Employees of the club insist that food looked like Vienna sausages, but darker, with traces of what appeared to be fur.

The manager, who asked that he not be named out of fear that his trademark dark sunglasses would be taken away by "Mrs. LaRussa" might say, also claimed that the player in question had eaten "the most poutine I've ever seen in one sitting. It was disgusting. I'll never eat another french fry as long as I live." Poutine is an anti-delicacy found only in Quebec.

By Jeff, at 10:13 AM
...who asked that he not be named out of fear that his trademark dark sunglasses would be taken away by "Mrs. LaRussa,"...

Fixed. Doh.

By Jeff, at 10:15 AM
Yes Pavano sucks. I hate to think how much better the Yankees might have been for the past few years if it weren't for those contracts to Pavano and Wright. Hoo-boy! Thank god for those guys. And for Clemens tanking in the playoffs all those times. I can't tell you how surprised I've been that he's been able to pitch so well in Houston. But either way, I'm pretty scared of what we all may be facing in '08 with so many shitty players off your hands.

Jeff, I hear what you're saying, and readily acknowledge that I haven't the slightest clue how many pitchers in baseball went to college, or good ones, so I'm not really arguing with you. However, I would like to throw out that US News & World Report's top 25 universities list, as just one example not anything definitive obviously, includes the following schools:

12. Washington University (StL)

That's tied with Cornell and above Northwestern, Brown, Hopkins, and Rice... all of which I think fit the profile of schools he could be talking about.

18. Vanderbilt
18. Emory

Above Georgetown and Notre Dame, which I think are bubble schools for me with regard to what some commentator (though not necessarily Gammons) could be talking about with that kind of language.

24. UVA
24. UMich

With schools like UNC, USC, and a ton of others just missing the list. Re-reading the quote, I'm pretty confident we can ditch the UVA and UM, along with everyone after. But while I'm sure Gammons knows what good universities are, it's hard for me feel that confident we're talking about Stanford level. Maybe it couldn't refer to anyone else, though, I really don't know.

I'm also interested in what exactly "similar" comments are. Here's the Gammons quote:

"One of the game's best pitchers, a sophisticated, intellectual graduate of one of the world's finest universities, has splattered teammates with similar comments and boasts that he will never play without a no-trade clause to the two New York teams."

I'm not really trying to defend whoever is being quoted here (and if you say it's definitely Mussina after considering the above, then I'm on board and I'll shut up). But it's really not clear to me what exactly we're talking about. I can't remember what exactly Rocker said. Little help?

By Jesse, at 4:17 PM
Washington U-STL is a good school. You lose calling them out.

The point is that Gammons' "anonymous" description fits Mussina's profile to a T even before looking at US News. Look at it this way. Imagine that Gammons ran a blind item quoting an "anonymous nude ballplayer on the Padres" or something. Despite the fact that baseball players are probably disrobed in locker rooms more than they're dressed, how could Gammons be referring to anyone other than the Brothers Giles? Describing the informant at ALL is meant to make us guess, either correctly or otherwise.

Now, there's one and only one person whose persona fits that description: Mussina. So even going there with the "sophisticated, intellectual graduate" thing couldn't have been designed to do anything BUT make us think of Mussina.

Here's another test. Name one other player off the top of your head who fits that description. That "college boy" stuff is firmly entrenched in Mussina's public identity; it's common knowledge. Just name another pitcher who is similarly well-known for his education. Hell, it doesn't even have to be in the date range of the blind item. You can't.

Anyway, you won't get any argument from me that "similar statements" is way too broad. That could be anything from Carl Everett saying gays and dinosaurs don't exist, to Kerry Collins' incisive racial humor, to actual Rocker idiocy. Gammons' point (that Rocker wasn't acting alone) stands, but the item itself isn't much more than a smear against Mussina without details.

By Jeff, at 5:27 PM
Well, I said I'd agree and I do. The reason your test doesn't work for me, though, is that I had no idea where Mussina went to school, nor am I sure where any other baseball player went to college. I hope that clears up my confusion on the subject.

By Jesse, at 6:49 PM
Also, I wasn't Wash U was a bad school, just that it isn't as highly regarded as its company. If anything pointing out its location was complimentary, and the point was that there are a lot more schools that might be considered among the world's finest than it might initially appear. That's all.

By Jesse, at 5:08 PM