#51 kickin it corporate

Best guitar ever?

Best guitar ever.

Still the one

With all the talk about K-Rod's race to the all-time single season saves record, and with the Yankees (ahem) struggles this season*, it's been pretty easy to overlook the season that Mo Rivera's having.
44.1 IP, 26 H, 6 R, 2 HR, 4 BB, 53 K, 1.22 ERA, 0.68 WHIP, .169 BAA.
That is straight-up absurd. To put it another way, every single one of those numbers is on pace for the best mark of his career. His greatest-reliever-of-all-time career. Even though I doubt he can keep this up, it's still nice to take a moment and realize that we're watching a man ply his trade better than anyone else has, ever.



*Not really struggling

Massholes on Parade: Not a monopoly

Yankee fans can be every bit as racist and myopic as our neighbors to the north!

Look, I love Paul O'Neill. He embodies much of my image of the late 90's team that forever will be the best sports experience of my life. It was when I recaptured my love of sports, forged my identity as an adult, and first got some. It was also when I rediscovered my connection with New York, a town I had left in 1992 as a sullen youth of 14, and was deeply conflicted by, but ultimately grew to love. During that time, Paul O'Neill was hailed as a classic "grinder", and definitely wouldn't be as famous had he played anywhere else, but still, he was a hell of a player. Not HOF worthy, but really good. And yes, I fully understand why fans of other teams hated his guts, but as a Yankee fan, his antics and fury were goddamn entertaining.

All of that said, the fans yelling racist shit at LaTroy Hawkins for having the gall to wear #21 in homage to Roberto Clemente can die in a fucking fire. And Paul ain't exactly helping: “What can I say? The fans have always been unbelievable to me there. I don’t really know how to explain it. It makes you feel good that the fans still think of you as wearing that number.” O'Neill regularly appears as a booth guy on YES broadcasts of games. I really, really hope he takes a moment to tell his fans to STFU, even if it's too late.

Offseason Strategy: Yankees: Skiing Edition

Guess who likes twinks?

"Meanwhile, Hughes has his locker moved. It was Mike Mussina’s idea. He wanted Hughes on one side and Ian Kennedy on the other so he talk to the kids all spring."

Reference here.

Offseason Strategy: Yankees

I thought I'd start a little project, of briefly discussing what I would seek to do, were I the GM of a team during this offseason. Hopefully, y'all will follow suit and we can cover as many of the teams as possible.

I'll start, naturally, with the Yankees.

WHAT I WOULD DO:

1) Don't Panic
Whoops, really too late for that. Chalk up the Torre and ARod debacles to panic. That said, they got Girardi, who would have been my #1 non-Torre choice, by FAR. You'll see with the rest of this post, Don't Panic will emerge as a recurrent theme. The bottom line is that their farm system has begun producing for the first time in a decade, and that's awesome.

2) Reverse your stance on ARod, privately, and extend him the olive branch that is a $325M contract. I don't give a shit about postseason samples, he's still the best player in the game, and shows exactly 0 signs of regression. Hell, offer him the SS job, and move Jeet to 3B, if that'd make him happy. I fully realize of course that this has 0 chance of happening, cause Hank Steinbrenner would look like a complete tool if he allowed this.

3) Failing ARod, don't overpay for Miguel Cabrera. Yes, he's an absurdly good hitter, and yes, he's still young and relatively affordable (for now). That said, he's putting on weight like a freshman brah, and I don't like the double whammy of having to trade away young talent and sign him to a long term deal. Without a long term deal, he's not worth the talent they'd have to give up, and I don't think he's a sure thing to live up to that contract. At the same time, although Wilson Betemit is pretty pathetic as your everyday 3B, the yankees honestly don't need offense from that position. They can, and should, seek better short-term options elsewhere (see below), and wait on filling this hole long-term until they figure out their long-term solutions at CF and 1B.

4) Let Melky play CF every day. Toss Damon into the DH/IB/reserve OF hopper, hope he catches fire early, and trade his ass for 50 cents on the dollar. Damon = Sunk Cost.

5) Pick up the 16M option on Abreu. Done and done.

6) Platoon Shelley Duncan at 1B with Giambi. Duncan cannot hit righties. Giambi can't hit lefties. Put Giambi on a goddamn aerobics regimen, and install a v-chip in his head that shocks him whenever he tries to pull the ball. Get him back to hitting gap doubles the other way and he's still a valuable hitter. Dougie Malphabet can get spot starts, and be a defensive replacement.

7) Insert Joba and Hughes into rotation. Wait. Profit. Give them time to struggle. While growing pains can be expected of both of them, which might even (gasp!) lead to missing the playoffs, in the long run, both have the makeup to be starters, and very good ones, for a long time.

8) If you must make a trade involving one of the kids, trade either IPK or Cano. While I love Cano, I'm still unconvinced he's going to be a superstar, and his value may never be higher than it is now. I think IPK is a 4th starter for a contender at best, and while that's pretty great, if you can get major value for him from some very stupid GM, I think you make the deal.

9) Offer Lowell a 2 year deal that is 25% larger than whatever another team is offering him per year. It looks like he's staying with the Sox though, oh well.

10) Hiroki Kuroda: DO NOT WANT. I read the words, "12-8 with a 3.56 earned run average for the Carp last season. He led Japan's Central League with a 1.85 earned run average in 2006 and has 74 complete games in 244 career starts" and I get very very fearful for this guy's long-term potential. Oh, by the way, he's 33.

Fan Geneology, Dipshits, and Bandwagoneers

Just read Shanoff's good piece on his becoming a Gators fan through courting his wife, and it got me thinking about all kinds of stuff. He presents a couple ideas:

1) Actively becoming a fan of a given team is different (and he implies better) than passively doing so.

Active meaning that as an adult, you survey all the teams, and pick one that suits your personal values. By this logic, Winslow would be the biggest Calgary fan in the world. For example, sabermetrician-in-training Jesse Willard might decide that no matter how much he's been through with the M's over the year, he's goddamn sick of watching Sexson strike out, and hop over to the A's, or the Sox, or any other more sabermetrically-driven team. And while it's shitting on his childhood, it does represent mature moral thinking.

Passive meaning that if you're a Sox fan who grew up in New England, you never really had a choice, and your allegiance to Red Sox Nation is an accident of birth. Much like surviving the Holocaust. Hey-O!

Likewise, if you root for your Dad's team, it was a result of that, and while it may have made for great bonding experiences, again, you never really chose that team on its merits alone.

Finally, if you root for your alma mater, its cause by chance you went there, and you could just as easily have wound up somewhere else.

I like how he breaks down the major reasons people choose their fan loyalties. That said, he missed at least one - choosing a team cause it has one or more players that you like, and may have come to like through mature reasoning. So while rooting for the Bulls cause they had Jordan is maybe bandwagoneering, rooting for Jordan cause he was the best, most competitive, and hardest working man in the business isn't. And thus, the argument can be made that rooting for the Bulls wasn't simple bandwagoneering, but rather a reflection of your personal values.
In addition, I really think that he sells short the notion of loyalty to your alma mater. For most people, the college sports fan experience is the closest you'll ever get to the game, and that, coupled with the timing of college in most folks' emotional and moral development makes for a powerful force, that goes WAY beyond where you happened to get accepted.

2) Judging each other's reasoning behind their fan loyalties is gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

I agree for the most part with this point, but do think that being judgemental is understandable, given the deep sense of ownership fans have over their team. Someone hopping aboard the ship for a reason other than yours is threatening.

Sooo....
Let's apply his framework and analyze one man's fan loyalties, and see if it helps figure out: 1) why I root for the teams I do; and 2) whether I am indeed a pussy.

NBA - Knicks: Applying the Jordan reasoning above, that "the argument can be made that rooting for the Bulls wasn't simple bandwagoneering, but rather a reflection of your personal values", we can see that, in rooting for the 1990s Knicks, I valued cheap shot thugs (Oakley, my all-time favorite player), uppity little bitches (John Starks), whiny self-important fans (Spike Lee), and nothing less than the destruction of watchable basketball (Riley/Van Gundy). Yikes. I have some serious negative Karma for this one. At the same time, my allegiance was definitely rooted in sense of place - the Knicks are so central to New York city, and Madison Square Garden is a physical representation of their centrality to NYC, and of NYC's centrality in the world. As a kid from the burbs, traveling into the city was fascinating, magical, and, yes, a bit threatening, in a very good way. Everything was writ large, everything giant, and entering Madison Square to watch giants do battle will always be my primary memory of youth spent in the city - whether those giants were on skates, in the ring, or on the court.

MLB - Yankees: This one fits pretty clearly into the category of geography, and was facilitated by their history of winning. Two of my first words apparently were "Reggie Jackson", which, as with the Oakman above, doesn't really speak well for my personal values. But rather than have my fan loyalty buttressed by constant winning, the way that the younger generation of Yankees fans have, my youth was marked by perennial second place, perennial hope, perennial expectation (yes, reinforced by the tales of their past glory), and perennial disappointment. I waited my whole childhood to see Donnie Baseball in the playoffs, enduring countless preening asshat Mets fans along the way, and by the time he got there, in 1995, he was a shell of his former self: broken, hobbled, yet still magnificent, even in defeat (fuck you Edgar). Which leads us to...

NFL - Broncos: This one began because I really, really like Ed McCaffery, and John Elway. I liked McCaffery for his toughness, and lack of ego, and I suppose I liked Elway for three reasons: 1) Like Donnie Baseball, he had never won the big one; 2) he was an awesome videogame QB, and cause the Broncs never won the super bowl, you could take them and not be called a pussy; and 3) his awesome horse face. The more I watched them, the more I also fell in love with Elam and young Ian Gold. I'll be the first to point out that I never would have come to adopt them were it not for the influences of friends (namely, Andrew and Lawler). Those frienships made watching football fun for the first time in my life, having spent my childhood HATING weekend TV cause all there was was stupid football. Having fun is a powerful motivator. I kept watching, and found more in the team to like. Of course, then they won two superbowls, which was fucking awesome, and while it forever brands me a bandwagoneer due to the timing of the thing, I really do think that I would have stuck with them regardless.

NHL - Rangers: Two words: Mark Messier. Two more: Brian Leetch.

NCAA BBall - Duke: I have no excuse, and it haunts me. If you'll excuse me, I have to go cut myself. "I focus on the pain/The only thing that's real/The needle tears a hold/The old familiar sting". (slightly NSFW).

Side note - I find myself being drawn into fan-in-lawship, as the fiance is a fierce Eagles and Phillies fan. I justify this consciously by saying that they are NFC and NL teams, so don't directly conflict with my primary teams. Aside from loving my mate, and wanting to see her happy, I think these emerging loyalties are due to loving Citizen's Bank Ballpark, and loving the parking lot tailgate scene at Eagles games. I wonder how this will evolve.

Predictions

Sox in 5 (lose the Daisuke game and one crazy 13-12 type game)
Yanks in 4 (lose to Fausto, ARod series MVP)
Phillies in 5 (Mesa blows one game, starter blows another, Hamels pitches a gem this afternoon while I get toasted at Ludwig's)
Cubs in 4 (lose to Webb)

Lolpats?

in an attempt to defray the utter lollification of this site, and still get my lolfix, i've set this up. I'll save only the best for posting to this forum, shunting the rest over there. Enjoy!

Lolsox pt. II

Pop Quiz

Q1: What is 1,056 dicks?

Q2: What is 1.5 games?



A1: A lot of dicks

A2: Two more blown saves by the God of Fuck.

Beep! Perfect score. Gold star.