Oh, well. Cleveland pounded that Yankees last night. The Yankees will now win the next three games.
I think one could probably do well by asking me what team I want to win any game in any sport, and betting on the other one.
Disclaimer: Don’t take any betting advice from me.
If you’re like me (That is, a rational human being not raised in New York), you hate the New York Yankees. You’re probably jealous of the cretins who actually root for them because they’ve averaged a World Series win every 4 years or so since 1900. It’s nice to root for a winner.
Anyway, tonight, you can safely root for the Yankees. Since 2000, which is as far as I’ve gone back, the Yankees are 0-3 in three game playoff series when they win the first game, and 4-0 when they lose.
In contrast, in all other three game playoff series, the team that wins game one is 16-5 in winning the series.
So, for you Phillies, Angels, and Cubs fans – you’ve got a tough road ahead of you. But for you Indians fans, volunteer to pitch tonight to ensure a Yankees series loss. The rest of the country will thank you for it.
Savage insisted that dealing Frye and shuffling the quarterback deck was not a knee-jerk reaction.”We really haven’t changed our plans. We’ve adjusted,” he said. “We had two tracks. One track had Charlie and Derek over here, and one track had Brady over here. We’ve still got one quarterback on that track.
“We’ve got a guy (Anderson) who has started some games, whose got a big arm and who has shown some potential. We’ve got a future franchise quarterback (Quinn). We’ve got the veteran mentor (Dorsey) and we’ve got a sixth-round pick for another guy. I think we’ve maximized what we had on board here at that position.”
He went on to say, “Trading him at halftime, now that would have been knee-jerk”.
Okay, I understand that the Browns have quarterback problems. That should come as news to no one. But in what universe is announcing a starter, letting him play for less than two quarters, and then trading him, NOT knee-jerk? The article mentions that this is the first time since the league merger in 1970 (And probably before that, but it doesn’t actually say) that a quarterback has started week 1 and been traded before week 2.
I would fire the guy who named Frye the starter. If he was so wrong about Frye as the starter, maybe football is not his game. Romeo Crennel, have you updated your resume?
Do you have a favorite sports team? Have they spent the last five years or so kicking you in the teeth and expecting you to like it? If so, you might be an Orioles fan. Ever since Cal Ripken saved baseball after the strike, it’s been nothing but a string of bad moves. I had thought earlier in the season that bringing in Aubrey Huff was the worst thing they’d done, but that’s because Jaret Wright has spent so little time in uniform that I forgot about him.
So, the Orioles gave up a promising young pitcher who is now working in the Yankees minor leagues. What did we get in return? We got a guy with one good season (15-8, 3.28, 159 K’s in 2004), only 60 career wins, and a history of injury problems.
Not only that, but we took an aging, overrated starter off the Yankee payroll, and replaced him with a young reliever. It’s like Angelos is a Yankee fan.
And what have we gotten out of Wright? Three starts. Twelve hits, nine walks, and eight earned runs in 10 innings while losing all three games. Wright should be ashamed of himself. There’s not a human being on earth who couldn’t lose all three of his or her starts this season. He should return his paychecks.
What’s especially discouraging is the Orioles have been showing some heart lately. I watched the game the other night when Bedard and Dice-K battled for seven, then the Red Sox went up 5-1, then the Orioles actually came back and won. They came back again against the Sox last night, and they’ve tied it late against the Yankees tonight (Game’s still going, tied 6-6 in the ninth. Although Bradford may be blowing it as we speak, hitting Cabrera in the middle of the back then giving up a double. Shoot. I didn’t even finish typing that sentence before Jeter knocked in the winning run. Still, they put up a fight.).
In conclusion, Peter Angelos is a jerk.
I’m making some progress with my baseball game. I’ve switched from Gedit to Anjuta, which I’m pretty happy with so far. Very lightweight, easy to use.
I’m fooling with pointers now, and remembering that I never really understood them when I was doing C++ before. So I’m figuring it out now. Slowly. I knew there was a reason I liked Java.
Anyway, it’s been going reasonably well. I need to get over a little hump in general C++ knowledge, and then I should start making better progress.
The Soul of Baseball: First Base: Albert Pujols
For instance, a scout friend of mine called a couple of days ago and said that Manny Ramirez is an “underrated defensive outfielder.” Now, first of all, this may be true, in that MannyBeingManny is rated as “Putrid” defensively, and he’s actually “Rancid,” and “Rancid” is better than “Putrid,” so that would make him underrated.
I have to admit that anyone making fun of Manny Ramirez playing the outfield is likely to get on my good side, like people making fun of Condi Rice or Nickelback. But this is funny, and it gets better from the quote above.
If you need any sort of running gear, go to Fleet Feet. However, unless you really have to (And I know I linked to it), don’t go to their website. It resized my browser window, which is absolutely unacceptable.
However, the service at the store is fantastic. At the end of May I bought a new pair of running shoes. I’ve since put probably 40 miles on them. There is now a hole worn in the heel on the inside of the left shoe. This seems a little ridiculous.
So, I went to Fleet Feet, where they promptly exchanged the pair of shoes for a new one. I hope it was just a defective pair, because I really like the shoes. And I have weird, skinny, flat, bony feet. It’s really hard to find shoes that fit me.
Anyway, I have been very happy with my experience at Fleet Feet. I’ll definitely go back next time I need something. Just hopefully not for these shoes again.
What the heck is going on with cycling? They can’t go a month without someone getting caught doping. I can’t believe the positive feeling about cycling in the US generated by Lance Armstrong is going to last much longer, especially with the controversy surrounding him.
I’m in favor of not only a one strike rule, meaning you get caught doping once and you get a lifetime ban, but also a one year team ban. If your teammate gets caught, your team sits out a year. Edited to add: Looks like they did kick out the first guy’s teammates, as well. That should do wonders for team unity. Maybe next time they’ll do a better job of policing themselves. Or maybe they’re all on drugs. I’m guessing the latter.
Maybe they should implement that in all pro sports. Mandatory regular tests and lifetime bans should go a long way towards getting rid of the performance enhancing drugs.
It gets pretty tiring. And it’s not just the drugs. We have Michael Vick leading a pack of guys who just can’t be satisfied by adoring fans and millions of dollars and feel the need to break all sorts of laws. We have the gambling, point-shaving basketball ref, and if you’ve ever watched a basketball game and think this guy is the only one, you’re crazy. The NBA has been a little too quick and to insistent in stressing that he was just one “criminal”. And we have Bonds on the doorstep of asterisking himself past Hank Aaron and into first place on the all-time home run list, at least until A-Rod passes him. If we lived in a truly just world, he’d get indicted this week and end up going to jail before he can break the record.
Anyway, none of this means I’m not eagerly awaiting the beginning of football season, and constantly dreaming that someone in the Orioles organization will finally wake up and trade the entire team except for Brian Roberts and Erik Bedard, rebuild with prospects, and be the 2006 Tigers of 2012.
Uni Watch » Pete, Julie, and Linc
It’s safe to say that I spend more time creating uniforms for MVP 2005 than I do actually playing it.
If you aren’t reading UniWatch, you should be.
This particular post is by a reader who painstakingly recreates all sorts of historical baseball uniforms for MVP 2005, a really nice baseball video game.
I’ve never been that interested in uniforms, but I have definitely spent unreasonable amounts of time on introducing realism to video games and whatnot, so I can identify his obsession. It started with Tomy Pocket Baseball, a little handheld game. I had a league that went on for about ten seasons (A good chunk of my childhood). I still have all the stats, and periodically I get nostalgic for the game, and I’m tempted to go find it and play another season. I used to spend hours in my room with that game. And it was really more the stats that drew me in than the game.
Then there was penny soccer, invented by a friend. I played at his house for a while, then created my own league. There weren’t so many stats to go along with that, but we did NCAA football-style rankings, which was fun. I always loved watching the unranked no-name upset the undefeated powerhouse.
I wonder what the wife would say if I pulled out the old Tomy Pocket Baseball. She’d probably prefer it to me playing on the computer, but not to me cleaning the house or something.
Sabermetric Research: The large supply of tall people
But there’s a short supply of humans who are in the right tail of any and every normal distribution. Again, why should height be different? I see three ways height is different, and both of them work against Berri’s argument.
I’ve been reading the above blog ever since I came across it on the Numbers Guy blog at the WSJ. This morning, I realized why I like it so much. This guy takes two things I love, justice and files . . . I mean, statistics and complaining, and sticks them together. He reads something, like a person blaming the competitive imbalance in basketball on the small supply of tall people, and he not only says, “Hey, you’re wrong” (Which I love to do), but then he goes on to give statistical analysis on WHY (Which I would do if I were a little more educated and motivated).
His analysis is pretty accessible, and it’s usually (Almost always, I guess) sports-related.
Anyway, I recommend the blog. If you’ve ever listened to an argument and thought, “Hey, you’re wrong, but I can’t show you why”, you’ll enjoy reading.