Sports Media Review

USA Basketball

I’ve been meaning to comment on Michael Sokolove’s recent essay on USA basketball. Titled “One Team, Indivisible?”, Sokolove’s August 20 article in the Times’ Sunday magazine continues the long-standing plaint about the decline of USA basketball, and argues that that decline is, in fact, a larger story about declining national character.

I have taken issue with Sokolove’s arguments about the decline of basketball in America before (http://journals.aol.com/sportsmediaguy/SportsMediaReview/entries/2006/05/26/the-nba-and-fundamentals/103).

He’s so hung up, in my view, on a set of putative character flaws attributable to today’s undisciplined, unmanageable player that he’s unable to process facts that might contradict his outlook.

So it is with USA basketball’s efforts to recapture its place at the top of the hoops world.

Sokolove recounts the “dysfunctional mess” that was the 2004 Olympic team (hard to argue with that) and says that the core problem is clear:

“our best male athletes have regressed as team players – as teammates. A couple of decades of free agency and lavish salaries freed players from the grips of owners but also unbound them from one another. When you play primarily  for yourself, and when your most important relationships are with your agent and your shoe company rep, the concept of playing for your country is pretty abstract.”

Sokolove also says that Team USA shares this sense of decline:

“the new approach of USA basketball acknowledges that the ethos drilled into previous generations of American players – pass to a teammate who has a better shot, move without the ball – must be taught remedially.”

It’s a compelling story – of greed and selfishness trumping sacrifice and togetherness. It’s a favorite variant on the larger theme of sport as metaphor for cultural decline.

And it squares poorly with the facts of the matter when it comes to USA basketball over the past twenty years.

In 1988, a team of US college players managed only a bronze medal at the Seoul Olympics. Coach John Thompson diagnosed that team’s problem succinctly at the time: the jump-shooter in the United States had “gone the way of the Buffalo.” It’s not clear that the decline of jump-shooting is itself a sign of cultural decline – jump-shooting is, in some ways, the most selfish, least patient, offensive act in basketball. In any event, it was becoming clear by 1988 that countries like the Soviet Union, with deep pools of mature talent could now beat the US collegians.

That fact, combined with David Stern’s global vision and the erosion of the final vestiges of amateurism from the Olympic games begat the Dream Team. Sokolove praises the 1992 team as a “seamless mesh of skill, creativity, improvisation and intuitive teamwork.” But, everything Sokolove says about free agency, agents and shoe reps was true of the 1992 team. In fact, you could fairly argue that the 1992 invented the modern era of money, shoe rep and endorsement-driven basketball – the team’s star, Michael Jordan being the most obvious example.

Neither that fact, nor the 1992 team’s notoriously boorish behavior on and off the court that year (OK, Charles Barkley’s notoriously boorish behavior) was irrelevant in the face of one overwhelming truth: the talent on the 1992 squad was vastly superior to that of any other country in the world at that time. A unique set of circumstances, including the incredible convergence of Magic, Michael and Larry in a single basketball cohort, plus the novelty of the 1992 team, which ensured that everyone who could would go play, produced the impossible combination of talent on that squad.

But, the subsequent lackluster play of US Olympic teams, including the 2004 group, owes less to the cultural decline that Sokolove insists upon, and more to rather mundane realities. Many of the top stars have declined to play in the past few cycles. Sokolove argues here that playing for country is pretty abstract, but it’s no more so than it was for the 1992 players. As noted above, it was surely the novelty of that team that made it appealing, more than some patriotic duty motivated by a presumptively different set of values that pushed the dream-teamers to play in Barcelona. Furthermore, if cultural decline is responsible for our recent poor showings, it ought to follow that even a fully-loaded squad with Garnett, Shaq, Kobe, and Kidd would not have won in 2004. As I have said before – I think you have to be blind or hopelessly biased to make that argument.

Finally, even looking at the box scores in 2004 suggests that what Thompson worried about in 1988 was true in 2004: the team just couldn’t shoot.

In the preliminary round loss to Puerto Rico that laid bare the team’s flaws, USA shot less than forty percent. But, even in that game, the USA had the same number of assists as the Puerto Ricans, despite converting fewer field goals. USA had four more turnovers (22 to 18) – not a significant difference and not nearly enough to account for a 19-point loss. The Americans also killed the Puerto Ricans on the boards. When you’re not trying to denigrate a team’s character, rebounding is normally understood to be one of the surest signs of it – a measure of a player (and team’s) willingness to get down and “dirty” to do the ‘blue-collar” work that isn’t glamorous but helps a team win.

Furthermore, while Sokolove decries the “shoot—first” point guards Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury, one of the noteworthy facts of the 2004 Olympics was how little Marbury shot in certain games – in the loss to Puerto Rico, for example, he shot just five times. But that fact, again, squares poorly with the satisfying narrative of selfishness and decline.

Puerto Rico didn’t necessarily play more selfless ball, and they were not much more careful with the rock than were the Americans. They did one thing demonstrably better – nail their outside shots. Call that what you want – an obvious sign of superior character it ain’t.

In the loss to Lithuania, the Americans had 11 assists against 13 turnovers – not an inspiring total. But, the victorious, presumably more selfless Lithuanians – they had seven assists and 20 turnovers. That is not a profile of a team playing in perfect seamless harmony with one another. That is consistent with a team on which every player, big men included, is willing to foist up jump shots, enough of which went in to ensure victory.

The loss to the Argentinians in the medal round was a clear instance of a team playing superior all around ball, at the end of two weeks in which endless bickering and terrible roster management by Larry Brown, plus the team’s inability to throw a jump-shot in the ocean, took its toll.

But, if the flaws in USA basketball are so deeply rooted in a flawed culture, it begs the question: how could things get turned around so quickly? Sokolove wants to credit, in advance, the approach of USA basketball with, in effect, treating the players like children as the only way to whip them into shape. But, of course, those children have to agree to the more rigorous, three-year commitment to which they are now subject, and Sokolove’s account is unable to explain why this evermore selfish, greedy, money-driven generation of players – headlined by LeBron, ‘Melo and Wade – has proven so willing to make the commitment. As an aside, had Brown actually let those three play real minutes in 2004, he might have gotten a different outcome.

It’s also ironic that Sokolove would regard it as a concession to this larger fall from grace that USA basketball would actually have to take seriously its competition. The fact that the team has to work and plan in order to be successful, as opposed to merely showing up and asserting its physical superiority is, weirdly, taken as a sign of a declining work ethic and a sure sign of cultural decline when it should be an illustration of a team and country that recognizes that, contrary to its dream team past, rolling the balls out and letting ‘em play is no longer good enough.

There are lots of reasons to worry about the country’s future. But, the willingness of the 2006-2008 version of USA basketball, including superstars like the aforementioned triumvirate, to make the effort necessary to match-up with a planet whose basketball prowess has improved dramatically since 1992,  isn’t one of them. Unless you’re determined to see it that way.

Starbury One

Sunday Morning's Outside the Lines profiled Stephon Marbury's new business venture, the Starbury One. It's a high-top basketball shoe that is selling for the bargain basement price of $14.98. Host Bob Ley, in profiling the shoe, acknowledged that this was a bold business venture in a market where star-endorsed shoes sell for ten times that amount and more. And, tellingly, Ley reported that every one of the big shoemakers - Nike, Reebok, Adidas - refused to comment for the show (actually, the latter two just didn't bother to return OTL's phone calls).

Marbury himself was very clear about why he was doing this: "I know what's it's like for a mom and dad to have to worry about what everything costs, to not be able to pay for things like this." Marbury noted that he himself grew up in such circumstances and also that $200 was a month's worth of groceries.

Over and over again on the show Marbury said there was no difference in the quality of his shoe and the big-money basketball shoes and has said that he plans to wear the Starbury One this season. The show also repeatedly explored the question - without ever answering it - of why the big-money shoes cost so much. It's clear that marketing and advertising are the major determinants of the "price point" of those shoes, but Ley never broke down exactly how the costs were allocated. It is clear that Marbury is cutting costs partly by eschewing the typical big-money ad blitz with celebrity endorsement that normally accompanies the roll out of a new shoe. The Starbury One is being sold by a Steve and Barry's - a national discount chain with 130 outlets and there will be no on-air promotion, according to the show (other than Marbury's own appearances - he told Regis and Kelly about the shoe in an early August appearance on their show).

Several times during the reporting segment of the shoe (capably handled by Marh Schwartz) Marbury himself was asked why his shoe was so much cheaper, and how the other shoes could be so expensive. Marbury's matter-of-fact response: you have to ask them. But, the implication was clear enough - there is no good reason for the shoe prices to be so high - other than the obvious - it's what the market will bear, and if the market in question needs to be either a better-off buying public, or a less well-off public that will buy the shoes and make them a source of conflict and contention, well so be it.

The panel following the report, which included ScoopJackson and Sacramento Kings' guard Kevin Martin, questioned whether the Starbury One would be of quite the quality and "comfort" of LeBron's shoe, or some of the other big-name sneakers. And, Ley repeatedly raised the question of whether there was something nefarious in Marbury's business strategy - was he merely trying to revive his tattered image?

If that's the best you got, it's probably best to give it a rest. When Steve of Steve and Barry was asked how much it cost to make a shoe, he answered, "less than 14.98." The fact that the big sneaker companies are charging what they are, and that a new competitor is charging so much less puts the lie to the notion that price is a purely objective "point" - not subject to social judgments and priorities. If this is the way that Marbury intends to restore his image - it's a pretty good one for a pro athlete, wouldn't you say? The show suggested that Marbury was doing this partly because none of the big shoemakers is especially interested in hiring him to endorse their products. Maybe so. But, it seems clear enough that if Marbury merely wanted to undercut the competition, he could have found a price well above 14.98 that would have done the trick.

Marbury is certainly after something beyond money here, which is befitting his wealthy station, but highly unusual nevertheless for a person in his position.

This should be a bigger story than it is. And, it's precisely the kind of political statement that athletes like Marbury can make - walking around with a swoosh on your cap needn't be the only message you want to send to the world about what your values are.

Super Bowl Team Uses Steroids - Yawn

The Charlotte Observer’s Charles Chandler wrote a devastating expose this Sunday (http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/sports/football/nfl/carolina_panthers/15371194.htm) about steroid use among several members of the 2004 Carolina Panthers’ team that came within a hair of winning the Super Bowl. Because of a case involving Dr. James Shortt, who was recently sentenced to a year in prison for illegally prescribing steroids and HGH to some of those players, court documents have revealed in unprecedented detail the kinds of usage involved.

In the opening paragraphs, Chandler writes:

“Medical records made public in court documents reveal that players were given multiple refillable steroid prescriptions and that some suffered unwanted, appearance-altering symptoms, prompting more prescriptions.

The medical records also raise questions that undercut the National Football League's claim that its steroids testing program is the best in pro sports.

"Several of them were using disturbing, particularly alarmingly high amounts with high dosages for long durations -- some in combinations," said steroids expert Dr. Gary Wadler, who reviewed the medical records and prepared a report for the U.S. Attorney's Office. "This wasn't just a passing flirtation with these prohibited substances…

Three of the five starting offensive linemen from the Panthers' February 2004 Super Bowl team -- guard Kevin Donnalley, center Jeff Mitchell and tackle Todd Steussie -- were in the report. Another member of that team, practice squad lineman Louis Williams, former Carolina tight end Wesley Walls and former University of South Carolina and NFL defensive lineman Henry Taylor were the other players.”

Dan Patrick said on his show yesterday that if this were a baseball story, it would be a major national story and lead off sports center. I’ve harped on this before, but it’s reaching the point of absurdity that the NFL continues to get the pass that it does on the issue of performance-enhancing drugs. Patrick recounted that long-time NFL writer Chris Mortensen recently called the NFL’s drug testing policy the best in sports. It’s becoming increasingly evident that this is untrue, but it’s worth contemplating whether one could even imagine a baseball beat writer sayingsuch complimentary things about baseball. Could you imagine the scandal that would ensue if court documents revealed that three starters on a recent World Series team had been involved in an intensive illegal drug regimen before and during that World Series?

The contemporary culture of sports commentary insists that the NFL is the nearly perfectly run business, with money flowing freely to wealthy owners, regardless of their personal incompetence and players knowing their proper place and (mostly) willingly sacrificing life and limb for the greater glory of the NFL. In this atmosphere, and aside from criticisms of player transgressions (see: Terrell Owens), nary a critical word is to be uttered about the greatness that is the NFL. As I commented last week, this is one reason why Bryant Gumbel’s recent remarks stirred up such a ruckus.

But, if scribes and commentators insist that cheating is tainting sports to an unprecedented degree, it’s hard to view their complaints as credible until they get serious about football’s obvious problems. The football commentariat’s collective failure to do so calls into question whatever pretenses they have to be objective journalists, as opposed to propagandists.

It also affirms my refusal to take on the T.O. “story.” To paraphrase Churchill (sort of) – never before have so many said so much about so little.

 

On a Leash

Bryant Gumbel’s remark at the close of his show ‘Real Sports,’ last week, has generated a good deal of discussion. Gumbel sneered:

"Before he cleans out his office…Have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw's leash. By making the docile head of the players union his personal pet, your predecessor has kept the peace without giving players the kind of guarantees other pros take for granted. Try to make sure no one competent ever replaces Upshaw on your watch."

I think it’s fair to say that the sports commentariat is not generally sympathetic to professional sports unions. The most obvious reason for this is that players make so much money and the insistent cant about players’ excessive salaries and greed has been one of the three or four central themes of sports commentary over the past two decades. Consequently, the very idea that millionaire athletes need, or deserve, an advocate seems absurd on its face. This is a change, no doubt. America was once a densely unionized country, with more than a third of its non-government workforce belonging to unions into the 1960s. That figure has been steadily declining for forty years, and stands at little more than 10% today. De-industrialization, and the rise of the service sector, not to mention a quite clear and deliberate attack on unionization have been primarily responsible for that change. Had there been sports unions of any consequence in 1965, my guess is that there would have been somewhat more sympathy for them then, from both the average fan and the-then often blue collar reporters (my, how that’s changed) who covered the games.

In any event, Gumbel’s remark seems to have touched a nerve for a number of reasons. One is the racially sensitive nature of the remark – the idea of a white overlord/master keeping a Black man on a leash has, to put it mildly, explosive connotations, even in 21st century America. Two, Football is King, and the merest suggestion that the NFL might have problems, or might have achieved its success on the strength of a woefully one-sided set of labor relations is just not what football’s very loud supporters necessarily want to hear. Three, Gumbel has stirred the pot before, including with his widely-attacked comments this year about the “boring” lily-white (and not as in snow) nature of the Winter Olympics. And, four, becauseGumbel is supposed to be the play-by-play announcer for eight games this coming season on the NFL Network, the league-run 24-hour a day football channel.

Outgoing commissioner Paul Tagliabue took immediate offense:

"I think the thing Bryant Gumbel said about Gene Upshaw and the owners is as uninformed as anything I've ever heard in a long, long time and quite inexcusable, because they are subjects about which he should be better informed."

Tagliabue also warned that Gumbel’s job with NFL Network may need to be reconsidered:

"Having looked at how other people have had buyer's remorse when they took positions, I guess [it] suggests to me maybe he's having remorse…You call into his question his desire to do the job and to do it in the way the NFL would expect it to be done."

Despite Tagliabue’s protestations, The New York Daily News’ Bob Raissman (http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/444483p-374331c.html), who wrote about Gumbel’s remarks immediately after they first aired, suggested that while Tagliabue might not appreciate Gumbel’s sentiments, NFL Network chief Steve Bornstein might feel differently:

“And while Gumbel's HBO commentary may not sit well with some NFL powers that be, it had to make Bornstein smile. His network is not only in a desperate battle for recognition, but a high-stakes war with cable operators such as Time Warner and Cablevision that have refused to carry NFLN.”

In fact, Raissman pointed, Bornstein had said back in April, when Gumbel was first hired, that Gumbel would not be expected to be a traditional voice or to use a staid, traditional approach in covering the NFL.

In less widely publicized comments made on the same show, Gumbel, in fact, attacked the league more generally in his advice to new commissioner Roger Goodell:

"Making the NFL fit Dick Cheney's demeanor can't serve you well in the long run…Yeah, football is a business, but it's also a game. Legislating individuality out of the NFL may have been Paul's thing, but it need not be yours."

And, in an apparently unintended embodiment of Gumbel’s criticism’s of the players union, NFL Players Association President Troy Vincent criticized Gumbel for “inappropriate” and “irresponsible” remarks:

“"He's entitled to speak his mind . . . and he felt that was his forum to do so…But I just thought the timing of things, there's too many good things going on -- we just announced a new commissioner -- in our sport to have these kind of blemishes."

But, while most of the coverage has focused on the war of words between Gumbel and Tagliabue, yesterday’s “Morning Mojo” - a morning drive time talk show on sports radio 620 in Durham- used the controversy to explore the actual substance of Gumbel’s remarks and did so in a way that was, for sports radio, a surprisingly sympathetic discussion of the situation of professional football players. Joe Ovious gave Gumbel credit for having “some fortitude, some sack” for attacking the one-sided nature of labor relations in the NFL. Co-host Morgan Patrick chimed in that “everyone knows there’s no protection” for the players, due to the lack of guaranteed contracts, and that teams treat players as if “they’re pieces of meat…a team discards you onto the trash heap.”

As the Morning Mojo crew noted, the football union was, for all intents and purposes, broken after the ill-fated 1987 strike that ended when the owners used replacement players for three games and several high-profile players then crossed the picket line to play.

It is generally true that the balance between owners and players unions is inherently tilted for one simple reason – you can be a billionaire owner for decades, but the window for playing at athletic peak is much smaller.

And, this truth is far starker for football players than for any other sport, where the average career is somewhere in the neighborhood of three years and has been shrinking steadily since the 1970 merger.

But, the bigger problem for the union and for the sports’ collective conscience, if you will, is the toll that playing football takes on the human body. Several studies have found a shocking increase in mortality for ex-football players compared to the population as a whole. For example, a 1994 study by the National Institute for Occupational and Safety Hazard found that ex-NFL lineman had a 52% greater likelihood of mortality than the population as a whole, with most of the increased risk due to cardio-vascular illness (and, unsurprisingly, the incidence was higher for Black than White players).

Furthermore, as Gregory Moore (http://www.blackathlete.net/artman/publish/article_01876.shtml)detailed recently over at blackathlete.net, the union has done a horrendous job of looking after its retired veterans, 325 of whom receive a monthly payment of $150 or less and have recently been further shortchanged by an arcane rules change involving withdrawing money against social security, a change that many of the ex-players didn’t understand and to which Upshaw has been notoriously unsympathetic. But, this isn’t merely an intra-player squabble. It’s part of a larger pattern: playing in the NFL destroys bodies, causing early mortality, chronic arthritis and a (dramatically shortened) lifetime of pain and discomfort.

A USA Today study in 2002 (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-01-31-football-medicine.htm), looked at the state of sports medicine in pro football.Among its notable nuggets:

“If you asked 200 former NFL players about their health 20 years after their retirement, every one likely would report "crippling" arthritis in some joints from those injuries, estimates former Seattle Seahawks team physician Pierce Scranton Jr. Even without the traumatic injuries caused by 250-pound men plowing into each other at speeds approaching 25 mph, the simple wear and tear of the game ruins the players' joints, he says. And two years ago, a survey of 1,090 former NFL players found that 60% had suffered at least one concussion. Those men reported more problems with memory, concentration and headaches than other players.”

And, as Moore points out, some more recent, and more well-heeled ex-NFL Players have decried the treatment of the older players and the failure of the union to adequately advocate for them:

“Former All Pro defensive lineman and current Fox Sports analyst Howie Long said in a recent interview for the Charlotte Observer, "When I went to the Hall of Fame in 2000 and was inducted, it was a travesty the kind of carnage I saw out of these guys who were in their 50s and 60s, who had defined and in many ways laid the foundation for the NFL being what it is today.

Joe Montana was quoted as saying, "The NFL is the worst represented league, on the players' side, in pro sports"”

An in-depth study of NFL injury reports over several years was carried out by the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribunereview/news/specialreports/specialnfl/s_291033.html

) in 2005, demonstrating the special dangers facing pro football players compared with other professional athletes. And, counting on the league, in the absence of a strong, countervailing force, like a union, to make the game safer, might be tilting at windmills:

“…critics contend the NFL makes too many reforms reactively Despite years of warnings about the risk of heat stroke at summer training camps, the NFL didn't institute leaguewide dehydration guidelines until after the Minnesota Vikings All-Pro tackle died from thirst.

Rather than make reforms after a tragedy, players want the clubs to take a more comprehensive look at injury stats, basing future rules changes on the latest science. They say they're counting on the NFL and its owners to "do the right thing."

"Football is a team sport. Players often assume the team will do the right thing for them. That's something they learned at the college level. You're part of the team, and the college and the coaches and everyone else will be there for you. And then you get to the professional level and they have to learn about the way things are really done there," said Trace Armstrong, an All-Pro defensive end for the Bears, Raiders and Dolphins who went on to lead the players union before retiring last year.

He's slowly recovering from 15 years of ruptured tendons, bashed ribs, torn knees and a bad shoulder. But he realizes the scars of the game will travel with him for the rest of his life, and he can count them, sort of, on his fingers. His hands are so mangled "only one of my fingers works the way God intended them to."

George Will once joked that when it came to baseball, he was a full proponent of Marx’ Labor theory of value – that is, he argued, the players were entirely responsible for the creation of wealth generated by baseball and should be compensated accordingly. This is certainly as true for football, with the added proviso that the game devastates many of its participants long after they retire. The unmistakable beneficiaries are the owners. But, though many players make tremendous salaries, many more don’t, and the failure of the union to make sure that those individuals are reasonably well-taken care upon retirement is a signal failing.

There is no major sport in which the players sacrifice so much for the entertainment benefit of the fans and for the obscene material benefit of the owners.

Both the NFL’s bottom line and its integrity would benefit from keeping Gumbel’s voice on-air at NFL Network. As for the NFL players union, to paraphrase Gandhi, I think it would be a good idea.

 

Unintended Consequences

Interesting throw-away note in the New York Times today. Tom Jolly, Times sports editor, gave the following answer to a question by a reader about why the Times gives short shrift to hockey coverage (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/media/asktheeditors.html?8dpc):

“Our approach is to cover the teams that have the biggest following, and that generally includes the Rangers, especially when they are playing well. But while the lockout may have helped solve the NHL's financial problems, it had the unintended result of showing that hockey's following is significantly behind that of football, baseball and basketball.”

I recently linked to a long article by ESPN.com’s Gary Gillette (http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/columns/story?columnist=gillette_gary&id=2537972), in which he dismantled Commissioner Bud’s claims about baseball’s unprecedented recent success by showing how significantly it lags football in popularity. Gillette’s right about Bud’s nominal claim – whether it’s TV ratings or public opinion surveys, it’s clear that baseball’s losing market share, not only to football, but to basketball as well. And, baseball can’t hold a candle to football in terms of overall revenue, especially with respect to the two sports’ national TV deals. But, Gillette missed a more fundamental truth – Bud doesn’t care. As Gillette pointed out, baseball’s revenues increased by over a billion dollars in just the past three years, to over $5 billion. No sports commissioner could ever say: “I don’t care whether we lose fan interest, especially among the less well-heeled would-be customers. All I care about is that we make more money.” But, the truth is that they don’t care about overall fan interest – they care about revenue. In this sense, though Bud can't say it, he's right - the game's never been better off.

Mike and the Mad Dog have been arguing with David Stern for years now about the new NBA TV arrangements, which have moved more and more games off the networks, and onto cable and the less-widely available NBA TV and Mike and Chris can’t understand why the NBA would engage in such fan-unfriendly behavior. But, it’s really quite simple: for Stern, the goal is more revenue. If the model for doing that is less access, but more money, that’s a more-than-acceptable trade-off.

My guess is that Bettman was fully cognizant of the possibility that hockey’s fundamentally weak support would be exposed by a long lockout. So, I am not sure that such a revelation could be regarded as an “unintended result.” The deal Bettman got ensured owner profitability. If the price of doing so was losing fans and some coverage, there’s no doubt that, for Bettman and the owners, that was a price worth paying.

Tid Bits

1) Is it me, or has ESPN become so over-the-top, hyperbolic, and hype-infested, that they are bordering on insufferable? I haven’t watched much of Sports Center lately – mostly because I prefer the relatively tame, play-it-straight ESPNews. After tuning into sports center over the past couple of days, now I know why.

There’s Stuart Scott, seemingly more full of himself and his cleverness by the day, telling us about a “sick” “crazy good” nine yard run by Reggie Bush in a pre-season game – that’s right – Scott is trotting out the full adjectival repertoire to tell us about a nine-yard preseason run. There’s ESPN, never able to find an adequate line between being a news organization and a promotional machine – telling us that the Saints-Cowboys’ preseason Monday night match-up – which they, of course, are broadcasting - is a “big game.</> And, in the endless, over-the-top paeans to Tiger Woods, there’s ESPN ignoring what’s most interesting and compelling about its own graphics. After Tiger’s win at the PGA championship on Sunday, ESPN posted a graphic comparing Tiger’s first forty majors to Nicklaus’ first forty. Let me say up front that I am a) not a golfing enthusiast but b) excited by the historic dimensions of Tiger’s greatness. In other words, I like it when he wins. Furthermore, in whatever debate remains about Tiger vs. Jack, I have, as a friend likes to say, no dog in this hunt.

But, what the graphic showed was something so utterly astounding to me that I could not believe that no one commented on it – not on ESPNews, or Sportscenter. It compared the number of first, second and third place finishes of the two men and showed that Tiger has, of course, won 12 majors through his first forty starts, a remarkable total, and four better than Jack through forty tournaments. But, while the ESPN guys were blabbering on and on about the incomparable Tiger, I stared at the graphic in disbelief – under Nicklaus – 8 first place finishes, 9 second place finishes and 23 third place finishes. That’s right – in Jack’s first forty major tournaments, over the course of a decade, he finished in the top three EVERY SINGLE TIME. (Tiger placed in the top-3 31 or 32 times – I can’tremember now). The problem for me here is that ESPN is so stuck on its preferred narratives – and, for the moment, one of those is of the surpassing greatness of Tiger – so much so that ESPN can’t, apparently, think or analyze beyond that narrative,even when a non-Tiger achievement of astounding proportions is staring its talking heads right in the face.

2) I had the pleasure (not) of hearing John Rocker on the radio yesterday. His interlocutor, 850 the Buzz’s Chris Clark asked him about the Yankees-Red Sox series and Rocker noted how the Yankees’ starters were getting deeper into games, thus taxing their bullpens less (true in general this weekend), and noted that Yankee starter Cory Lidle went deeper yesterday than Boston’s David Wells. Except, of course, that he didn’t. Lidle pitched six innings – Wells pitched into the 8th. Naturally, Clark didn’t call Rocker on this – nothing should get in the way of a good, seamless, narrative, of course. In fact, Yankee starters left the game before their Bosox counterpart in each of the final three games of the series.

Rocker also treated his audience to some of his larger views of the world – he’s selling t-shirts saying “Speak English” – by way of promoting his own special brand of tolerance.

In that spirit, I close with a Talmudic saying – courtesy of the great Red Sox website, Sons of Sam Horn:

“We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

Planet WFAN

Mike and the Dog have the day off, so the great Joe Beningo and the not-great Evan Roberts are filling in. One of the interesting dynamics of a New York station, especially the FAN, is that it’s not a given that the sports talk guys are Yankee fans. Beningo, in fact, hates the Yankees and is inconsolable when he feels an opponent has laid down for them.

So, today, he’s beside himself about what a “disgrace” the Red Sox have been, especially their pitchers and he and Roberts have simply been killing the Red Sox.

They’ve had a bad weekend, so there’s not much to say about the general point. But, in classic sports radio, over-the-top hyperbole, Beningo and Roberts keep outdoing themselves, and they’ve only been on the air for twenty minutes.

Among the Red Sox they’re attacking is Jonathan Papelbon. Beningo said that the dominant young closer would back in the minors next year and Beningo and Roberts both agree that he totally choked, with Roberts describing him as “not exactly throwing strikes.”

Roberts also said about Beckett: “go back to Florida, where the games don’t mean anything”

It’s bizarre to listen to two guys who are this far out of touch with reality.

Let’s briefly review:

1 - Papelbon pitched two innings last night. He came into the game in the top of the eighth with the bases loaded and no one out and, facing Giambi, Arod, Cano, and Posada, allowed only a sac fly. In two innings, he walked one and struck out five. Papelbon threw 42 pitches, 28 for strikes, an excellent ratio. On what planet does that not constitute “throwing strikes?”

2 - As for Beckett – does pitching a complete game shutout to clinch the 2003 World Series not qualify as pitching in a meaningful game?

Yeesh, this is atrocious stuff, even by sports radio’s standards.

Red Sox on a Yo-Yo

I am not at my own computer right now, and will give this more attention later, but I am struck by the schizophrenic reaction of much of the media, Boston and otherwise, to the Red Sox recent struggles. As of July 4, lots of commentators, including the very knowledgeable Adam Gold and his Baseball America pals here in the triangle were calling the Sox the best team in baseball. I personally regarded that as silly - the team's flaws, especially in its rotation and middle relief were obvious then. And, while Varitek's injury was clearly a blow, there's no way that his absence alone accounts for the 2-run difference in the team's ERA since Varitek  went out - this was a thin, top-heavy pitching staff to begin with, and the dog days have been unkind to it. But, now, the team is being fitted for a coffin, and that strikes me as premature as well. And, even if it's true that the Sox don't end up winning the division or making the post-season this year, it is not true - as Jeff Brantley outrageously suggested on Baseball Tonight last night, that if the Sox don't win the next two games of their five-game series with the Yankees, "they have no chance of making the playoffs."

Dan Shaughnessy argues in the Boston Globe this morning that the Theo honeymoon is over, but it's not clear to me that Theo ever thought of this team as THE team. He must have been shocked that his young closer could be THIS good this quickly, he surely had to have questions about Schilling's health, and Theo's job one has always been to re-build the farm system and put the team on a permanently competitive footing for the long-term. The 2004 championship has certainly bought him time to do that, and even if the WEEI talk guys are screaming their heads off, I don't see Theo deviating from his plan. Shaughnessy suggested that Theo might be headed for a  fate similar to Lou Gorman and Dan Duquette - that is simply preposterous.

There's also been a lot comparison made between the so-called Boston Massacre of 1978 and this series, and it's unsurprising that people are raising that (I remember the 4-game blitz in 1978 well). But, the comparison obscures as much as it illuminates and the fact that it's being invoked now says a lot about how this Red Sox team is being mischaracterized.

When the Yankees stormed into Fenway in September 1978 for a pivotal four-game showdown, they had already erased ten games of a seemingly insurmountable 14-game deficit. And, in out-scoring the Sox 42-9 in that four game series, the Yankess not only erased the last four games of that 14 game lead, they simply demolished the Sox from the very opening batter of the first game until the final out of the fourth game. In games 1 and 2, the Yankees won 15-3, and 13-2 respectively. And, keep in mind, this was 1978 - when scoring double digits in a game wasn't a weekly occurrence for a team, the way it is now. That was an entirely different offensive era. This is from memory, but my recollection is that Yankee lead-off hitter Mickey Rivers had his third plate appearance in each of the first two games, before Boston's number nine hitter had come to bat even once. In other words, the Yankees jumped all over the Sox from the outset. In game 2 of this weekend's series, the Yankees were trailing as late as the seventh inning. In the 1978 series, the Sox never led at any point in any game and even the final game, a 7-4 Yankee victory, was not as close as the score, as the Yankees rapped out 17 hits and the Sox scored some meaningless runs late.

Game 3 of the 1978 series was perhaps the key game. The Yankees were sending Ron Guidry to the hill. Guidry, of course, was in the midst of his historic 25-3 season, but in those days, Fenway was an absolute death trap for lefthanders. In fact, when Guidry took the mound that Saturday afternoon, the Red Sox had not been shut out at home by lefty in four years. Guidry dominated the Sox that afternoon, winning 7-0 and insuring that the weekend would be a debacle for the Sox even if they won the final game.

The 1978 Sox, though few people recall, mounted their own late season comeback that year - winning their final nine games to erase a 3.5 game deficit in the standings to the Yanks to force the fateful one-game playoff.

But, the 1978 Red Sox were the last hurrah of the Rice-Lynn-Fisk-Yaz Bosox, a team that had advanced as far as the 1975 world series and also won more than 95 games each in 1977 and 1978. That group would never again challenge for a division title or a shot at the World Series. Consequently, both the thoroughgoing nature of the rout in 1978 and its place in that era of Sox history, make it far more consequential than what has gone on so far this weekend for the Sox.

The current Sox are, as everyone now knows, short on pitching. But, they were never built for this season in particular. There is a long-term plan in place, most of the key guys are locked upfor at least two more seasons, with lots of young arms in the pipeline, a World Series title already under the belts of the core group (Ortiz-Manny-Tek-Schilling), and a division lead that was never more than four games.

The way in which Boston's strengths were exaggerated earlier this season (, to give one example, Beckett's beeen terrible since May - but his good won-lost record had people mis-stating his actual performance) has led to an over-reaction to their current struggles.
Even when the Sox had a three-game lead, the Yankees, despite all their flaws and pitching shortcomings and Bubba Crosbys, had the same run-differential as the Sox (and a better expected won-loss record). That's a pretty good indicator of a team's underlying performance level, and it was, and is, plain to see that this is not a great Yankee team.

More than any other sport, baseball is about the long march. The insistence with which baseball scribes ignore that and continue to read larger truths into two-day or two-week, or even two-month performances continues to be one of the wonders of commentary on our national pastime. At both their highs and lows, the Sox are a case study in that this year. And, if the 1978 season is an indication of anything, it's that a team is more than capable of rebounding from even the most serious whuppings, even when there are only three weeks, not seven, left in a season.

More Fact Checking

OK, I know this will get annoying if I do it too often, but I can't resist taking a little shot at Buck Martinez. I watched a couple of innings of the Yankees-Orioles game on Fox Sports Net, which carries O's games. Buck Martinez is an occasional commentator for them. When Bobby Abreu stepped to the plate last night in the sixth inning, Martinez lauded  Abreu's ability to do "different things" to help his team win games. Buck noted his excellent plate discipline, his ability to lay down the sacrifice bunt and pointed out that while Abreu doesn't steal a lot of bases, he steals them late in games, in the eighth and ninth innings, when it matters.

Buck's got the plate discipline part right, of course. But, Abreu's sacrifice bunt Monday night, to which Buck referred, was Abreu's first since 1998.  How could something Abreu didn't do for eight years be chalked up as an "ability" that he regularly brings to bear on his team's fortunes.

Many commentators, and I consider Martinez one of the more egregious in this regard, do little more than string together mindless platitudes during the course of a game. Buck likes the idea of a player who does different things, he likes Abreu (so do I), so he simply marries the two together without any idea whether the idea of the player he likes and the actuality of the player he likes bear any relationship to one another.

So, with that in mind - do you think I bought for a second that Buck had any clue what he was talking about when he asserted that Abreu does most of his stolen base damage late? Heck no. So - you guessed it - I looked at the distribution of Abreu's stolen bases this year.

First of all, Bobby's stolen 25. That's a lot, contrary to Buck's assertion. Second of all, guess how many of those 25 Abreu's stolen after the sixth inning this year? How about four. And, two of Abreu's four caught stealing have come after the sixth inning. In other words, Abreu is 21 and 2 from innings 1-6, and 4 and 2 from the seventh inning on. Does this sound like someone who does most of his base-stealing late?

It's all too-common that our so-called expert commentators throw out mindless tripe like this. And, while the particular examples may seem trivial, they suggest that these guys are often watching games in their own heads, and not what's in front of them on the field.

What can I say - It's a pet peeve.

He Had a Bad Day

Courtesy of Fire Joe Morgan, we have a clip from Michael Kay (link at bottom), Yankee play-by-play guy who doubles as sports radio host on 1050 AM in New York. The subject that day (August 5): a caller telling Kay that he violated baseball etiquette by describing Chen Mien Wang as pitching a perfect game, thus “jinxing” Wang.

To say that this got Kay riled up would be a significant understatement. Here’s part of what Kay said in response to the caller telling him he shouldn’t use the phrase “perfect game” during a perfect game:

“Why? Because it’s baseball etiquette? But, why? It used to be etiquette to have black people as slaves? That’s why they had Nazi Germany. Why did they march people into ovens? Oh, I followed orders? But, why? Because they told me to? Mind-boggling? Do you know how cretinous you sound when you think a broadcaster can influence a game, how stupid you sound, how infantile…I have never been more angry?”

Kay is generally a pretty mild-mannered guy as an announcer. But, there’s something about the sports radio medium that brings out the angriest in people. Who knew that Kay was standing up to the dark forces of conformism in such a resolute way by refusing to give in to baseball superstitions?

http://firejoemorgan.blogspot.com/2006/08/idea-that-announcer-can-jinx-perfect.html