Category: Sports

Buck Showalter ended Derek Jeter’s career

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Derek Jeter plays his last home game Thursday night, with his first major league manager, Buck Showalter, in the opposing dugout. Plenty of people will point out that Showalter was Jeter’s first big league manager back in 1995, but few appreciate how Showalter has helped run Jeter out of The Show.

Showalter took over the Orioles in 2010. After a down year in 2011, the 2012 Orioles gave the Yankees a run for their money in the final month of 2012. It took New York until the final game of the season to clinch the division. Joe Girardi had to pencil Jeter into the lineup every day, despite the fact that he was dealing with a bone bruise in his ankle. The Orioles pushed the Yankees for 162 games, then pushed them again in a thrilling, five-game ALDS.

It took New York167 games to finally get past Baltimore. In Game 168, Jeter’s ankle famously gave out:

[Yankees GM Brian] Cashman said that himself, Girardi, [trainer Steve] Donahue and Jeter’s former manager, Joe Torre, as well as Reggie Jackson and Tino Martinez were all in the room when Jeter heard he was done for the playoffs.

” ‘It’s something you can’t play through.’ That’s something Doc had to emphasize, because Derek is as tough as they come,” Cashman said.

(Sidebar: It took six people – including two Hall of Famers – plus a doctor, to tell Derek Jeter: “No, sorry, Derek, after getting dragged off the field in Game 1 because your leg snapped, you will not play in Game 2.”)

After a season of rehab and re-injuries, Jeter announced his retirement after one more season. It was bound to happen eventually, but the lengthy effort to get back on the field let him know it was time to go.

This year Orioles are going to have no worse than the second-best record in the American League, and can boast three straight winning seasons.

Those are the Orioles, by the way. That may not seem so odd now, but the team hadn’t posted a winning record since the days of Cal Ripken and Armando Benitez. Their last postseason team had a rotation fronted by Mike Mussina and Jimmy Key (before and after the Yankees had them, respectively) and also had Scott Kamieniecki as another starter. Don’t remember Scott Kamieniecki? Neither does anyone else. Camden Yards was perennially a second home field for Red Sox and Yankees fans, and the Orioles were usually kind enough hosts not to put up too much of a fight. They were a lost franchise stuck in a loop of mediocrity like Sidney Ponson at a buffet an hour after the lunch rush.

Then came Buck Showalter, who scuffled with Tony LaRussa in his first year as Yankee Manager and hasn’t lost his fighting spirit yet.  In inspiring that in his new team, he pushed his old team (and his old player) more than they had been pushed in some time.

In 1995, Showalter wrote out the first major league lineup card that included Derek Jeter’s name (a year earlier than the Yankees expected thanks to a rash of middle infield injuries). Twenty seasons later, Showalter had a big hand in hastening Jeter’s retirement.

[Washington’s NFL team]’s name will definitely change

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

This promo for South Park’s 18th season – really? 18? – debuted yesterday during the Eagles/Redskins game:

Twenty years ago, calls for the Redskins to change their name could have been dismissed as a fringe cause for politically correctness. Slowly, those calls have echoed by more mainstream liberals who previously might have cared as much or who might dismissed questions about a sports team as unimportant.

But losing South Park? That’s a good sign that the momentum for a name change has spilled over from a left-wing niche issue and into the mainstream. Dan Snyder may not like it (or may intend to use it as a bargaining chip in negotiations for a newer new stadium), but the Redskins team name probably has less than a decade left.

Is a cold-weather Super Bowl the worst thing ever?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

You’d think so, if you listen to sports media.  ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski hates it (and did even before it was cool), ESPN radio hosts like Colin Cowherd have weighed in against it as well.  Fox’s Terry Bradshaw isn’t a fan, either.

Why are the protests against a cold-weather Super Bowl so loud?  Despite what they may say about the weather affecting the game itself or the fans at MetLife Stadium, these folks have a personal reason: They’re covering the game, and spending a week in New Jersey in the winter sucks.  Of course they want the Super Bowl in a warm weather city; spending a week in Miami in January and getting paid for it is good work if you can get it.

But the audience that has made the Super Bowl a cultural event – and not just a game – is the Super Bowl Party audience, the people who treat the game as a reason to gorge on buffalo wings with friends while discussing the commercials.  The weather wouldn’t matter beyond possibly making the game entertaining.  The NFL knows where it’s bread is buttered.

Incidentally, Hampton Stevens of the Atlantic thinks it’s a great idea, evoking memories of the “Ice Bowl.”  Stevens probably won’t be at the game.

The weather media says it’s probably going to be nasty out there.

Peer Pressure and Hall Of Fame Voting

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

ESPN’s Jayson Stark struggled with his Hall of Fame ballot this year.  You can see why if you look at the official ballot – there are an awful lot of good players on there, so picking only 10 must have been tough to begin with.  And then there’s this dilemma which Stark faced:

I tried ranking them … But the more I considered voting according to any top-10 list I could come up with, the more I felt that many of those votes were going to be “wasted,” on players who couldn’t possibly get elected.

When a friend asked me to share my picks on Facebook, I never thought to include Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens.  Mike Piazza was a tentative addition.  Unlike the Rafeal Palmeiros and Sammy Sosas of the world, there seems to be general consensus that these three would have been Hall of Famers with or without the steroid use they have been accused of.  Stark is right though – voting for Clemens or Bonds is a wasted vote, because there is no prayer that either gets the 75% needed for induction.  

I wonder how that will affect the other candidacies.  Individual voters may not believe the performance-enhancing drug rumors around Piazza and Jeff Bagwell, but do they have confidence other voters are buying them?  With so  many deserving names on the ballot, why cast your lot for someone more likely to hover around 60% when someone like Jack Morris may be just a few votes away from baseball immortality?

For what it’s worth, my ballot would have been Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Craig Biggio, Piazza, Morris, Frank Thomas, Bagwell, Edgar “The Antichrist” Martinez (grudgingly), Don Mattingly, and Alan Trammell.  (I don’t actually have a ballot, so it’s worth nothing.)  Mike Mussina, Moises Alou, and Tim Raines also deserve election, but should have some years of eligibility left.  

How MLB Started ARod’s Punishment Early

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

America has had more than a week to digest Alex Rodriguez’s 211-game suspension by Major League Baseball.   ARod’s legal team has rattled their sabers a little more, suggesting legal appeals to the suspension on top of the current Player’s Association appeal already underway.

Leading up to the suspension, the chattering class of the sports journalism wondered if Rodriguez would face a lifetime ban, effective immediately, under the “Best Interests of Baseball” power that has allowed previous commissioners to ban the likes of Pete Rose and the Black Sox of 1919.  But for MLB, putting Rodriguez on the field might be the best option.

Unlike the other players suspended for cheating, who are taking their lumps immediately, Rodriguez will run out each night in front of tens of thousands of fans.  Many of them may be buying tickets solely to boo him.  He’ll get no break at The Stadium, where the fans would give him guff even when he didn’t have the stench of cheating wafting off of him.  For the next month and a half before the Yankees’ lost 2013 season mercifully ends, Rodriguez will be front and center.  Discussions about him will not be abstract, conducted through attorneys and spokespersons.

Since the suspension for Rodriguez is so much more severe than any of the other players, that type of debate would certainly benefit him, if only marginally.  Fans might lose their edge if the question becomes how long ARod should be suspended, rather than whether he should sit out.  Public anger against cheaters can only subside if the matter drags into next March with public enemy number one out of the public eye.

Instead, ARod will get an earful.

By creating a situation where Rodriguez is constantly in the public eye, MLB gets to watch its verdict vindicated in the court of public opinion.  When the jeers rain down on ARod, MLB will let the fans be the messengers to other players.  Public opinion will become clear to those who would be outspoken about the outsized suspension, as well as to players who are candidates to get caught in the next giant steroids scandal (like David Ortiz).

MLB will, naturally, be helped by Rodriguez’s apparent combination of narcissism and a complete and utter lack of self awareness.

 

Let’s Make a Deal: MLB Edition

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If Ryan Braun dominated the sports headlines on Tuesday morning, Alex Rodriguez dominated the sub-headlines.  News of Braun’s plea bargained 65-game suspension for using performance enhancing drugs was followed near-universally with the question, “Now, what about ARod?”

It’s a relevant question: Not only is Rodriguez one of the most famous and hated players in any sport, but like Braun he’s a repeat visitor to the PED circus.  But just because it’s a relevant question doesn’t mean it’s the best one.

Soon after Braun’s suspension news broke, Buster Olney was on the phone with the broadcast team calling Monday night’s ESPN telecast of the Yankees and Rangers.  Olney offered this insight: while Rodriguez is the biggest name on the docket, the player most likely to pursue a deal with MLB is Texas’s Nelson Cruz.  As a free agent after this year, Cruz is best served serving his suspension now and entering the open market as an available yet questionable talent.  If he waits, and the suspension gets handed down over the winter or next spring, Cruz might find it hard to sign if teams are unsure of his availability.

The astute Olney cut through the flash and the clutter to identify the real story – and good for him.  Now, back to the coverage of the royal baby.

 

 

Overreacting to Jason Collins

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you follow sports this week – in particular the NBA – you may have heard in passing that Jason Collins came out.

In the current cultural environment, Collins’s admission is big but not Earth-shattering.  There haven’t been any active openly gay athletes before – and there might not be now, since Collins is a free agent – but most people probably assumed the operative word there was “openly.”  (To hear the enlightened, cosmopolitan Bostonians tell it, the Yankees have fielded a team of 25 fornicating homosexuals each year since 1946.  So brave.)

Now begins the overreaction.

From the right, Peter Roff imagines a double standard, opining that Tim Tebow was punished because of his overt Christian faith, while Collins’s sexual preference is lauded by the media.

Said Roff: “When he arrived at the Meadowlands he was treated more like a circus freak than the guy who helped Denver make the playoffs the previous year and might just be the thing to get the Jets offense in line.”

It’s true, and it’s because Tebow is a circus freak.  Denver’s push to the second round of the 2011 playoffs had as much to do with luck as anything else.  At this point in his career, Tebow can’t throw the ball with enough strength and accuracy to be a viable NFL quarterback, which is why he spent all his time on the bench last year.

(Heck, Ray Lewis talks about God all the time, and the media overlooks a lot of negatives about him.  Two in particular come to mind.)

On the other side – and even worse – is MoveOn.org, which is apparently still around.  The erstwhile leading organization of the American left is demanding a suspension of ESPN’s Chris Broussard over his reaction to Collins’s announcement.  (Well, at least they are demanding it as much as one can demand anything with an online petition.)

MoveOn either didn’t listen to or didn’t care what Broussard actually said.  The short version: Broussard doesn’t condone sex outside of traditional marriage, doesn’t live his life that way, but doesn’t judge others who do.  It’s a calm, reasoned explanation that could be a good start to civil discourse.

Or, it could be a flash point for some bottom feeding organization to glom onto a much-discussed topic, bump up their search results, raise some money, and be marginally relevant.

Mel Kiper for Pandora?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Contextual advertising is a good thing.  The NFL Draft is the biggest sports story going on, so the ads Pandora placed on ESPN encouraging husbands to “pick the right gift” is pretty clever.  (And let’s be honest – this is definitely about targeting a guy buying for his wife or baby mama and staying out of the dog house.  There’s nothing wrong with that.)

But the image of Mel Kiper peeking from the bottom?  That’s unnecessary… and maybe a little creepy.

Kiper Ad

The Rutgers Mess: 1,000 words x 24 frames per second

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Rutgers fired their abusive basketball coach for, as Deadspin notes, being a public embarrassment rather than a private one.

The cynics are right on this one: there’s no doubt that Mike Rice’s firing came only because the video of him verbally and physically intimidating his players was on ESPN.  But that does up the ante for the scandal.  Describing what Rice did to his players might be damning, but having a clickable, watchable, shareable video takes it to another level.

Any players Rice would have recruited in the future would have seen that video, and it would have been the first question any parent asked during those all-important living room conversations with a prospective coach.  Rutgers is already in a tough media market, would Rice have managed to be a darling of WFAN?

As another Rutgers alum knows well, video tells a story like no other medium can.  In this case, it blew up what Rutgers had clearly hoped would be a private affair.

Storming the Hall

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Major League Baseball linked to this article from its Twitter feed today.  It’s an impassioned case for Fernando Valenzuela to make the Hall of Fame.

What a joke, right?  No rational fan who looks at the stats could possibly think that, right?

Luckily, the author talks more about Fernandomania, and what he meant to the LA Dodgers of the 1980s.  “I won’t write about all of his statistics,” says Sarah Morris, “because they don’t tell the story.”

A few weeks ago, Major League Baseball announced a null class for 2013 induction.  Jack Morris and his splitter sat on the outside.  Advanced stats show that Morris didn’t have the best statistical career of any pitcher, and others in his era outperformed him over the long haul.  Morris’s candidacy comes down to pitching his team to a couple of titles and a 10-inning, 1-0 shutout in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.

What is the Hall of Fame, though?

If it’s just about stats, there’s no need for voting.  A computer could crunch the numbers and, five years after a player’s career is over, either place him in or out based on statistics measured against his peers and those already in the Hall.  Heck, if it was all about stats, you wouldn’t even have to play the games, would you?  You could have a computer pick the champion.  Hey, it works for college football.

Halls of Fame are supposed to be museums to their respective sports, and baseball’s hall is the most revered.  All-time players are shut out if they carry the stench of cheating or gambling.  Players enshrined in a Hall of Fame should be excellent, but even more importantly they should be significant.

Bernie Williams was, by most statistical measures, a more prolific player than Don Mattingly, but was named on fewer ballots.  Most likely, the voters recognized Mattingly for being the face of the New York Yankees through a lean decade.  Williams, always a class act, was tempermentally similar to Mattingly in many ways, played a tougher position, and exceeded his production – but was never the rock the franchise was built around.   That counts for something, and it should.

As former Yankees broadcaster Jim Kaat said, “It’s a Hall of Fame, not a Hall of Achievement.”  Reggie Jackson hit 563 home runs, but there are only three that fans think of instantly when they see his spot on the wall.  Three thousand hits is nice and everything, but the hushed reverence you hear around Roberto Clemente’s plaque recalls his selfless end.

There are simply no sabermetrics for fame; the Hall is subjective, as it should be.  Remember, this isn’t anything serious.  It’s literally just a game.

Should Mattingly be a Hall of Famer?  That answer probably depends on how old you were when he was in his prime, and what team you rooted for – and its the same way with Morris’s take on Fernando Valenzuela.

Except Morris is completely wrong because the Dodgers suck.