Steroid use distinguishes itself from other forms of cheating in baseball, in that it has attracted significantly more attention from both the public and the baseball establishment; as far as I know there has never been a senate committee to investigate ball tampering. It can be argued, of course, that steroid use is more widespread and has had a more significant effect than other forms of cheating—this is clearly supported by the surge in power numbers that began in the late ‘90s and tapered off in the wake of testing. However, part of the reason that steroid use is so widely condemned and has attracted so much interest has to be because people consider tampering with a baseball and tampering with a human body to be infringements of a different order.
The human body was created in god’s image, and to modify it or alter it, to attempt to improve on the divine design, is a significant act of hubris. This same line of thinking is responsible for much of the historical prejudice against medicine, and while few people formulate their thoughts in exactly that way, it is a recognizable component in the reaction against steroids. It is interesting to point out that different alterations on player’s ‘god given’ bodies have almost certainly had a more pervasive effect on the sport than performance enhancing drugs. If the ‘pure’ game of baseball is played by players whose bodies have been completely unmodified, than Tommy John did far more to contaminate the integrity of the sport than Barry Bonds ever could. It is good that Pedro has already put together a Hall of Fame career, because if the medical science were even five years behind what it is now, his career would probably be over; Babe Ruth might have been half a dozen cortisone shots away from eight hundred home runs.
Of course, medical advancements theoretically only restore what had previously existed, at best returning a player to a previous condition, whereas steroids are supposed to improve upon what was already there. Still, if one accepts the premise that players were only meant to be so strong, it is hard to argue that certain players weren’t meant to succumb to career ending injuries.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Steroids, part I
This is the first part of an extended meditation on the use of performance enhancing drugs:
The “opinions and controversy” section of Bob Feller’s wikipedia article reveals two interesting facts about its subject: firstly, that Feller, like Billy Wagner, admits that cheating has been present through out baseball’s history, and himself admits to throwing spiters and scuffing the ball in certain critical situations, and secondly, that Feller is a vocal critic of Barry Bonds and has adamantly stated that he thinks that no steroid cheats should be allowed into the Hall of Fame(of which Feller is the second senior living member), particularly Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa.
This is, exactly, the problem with people who condemn steroid users for tampering with the integrity of the game: those in the best position to judge, frequently suggest that there was little integrity in the first place. In fact, scuffing a ball was in some ways a more deliberate and dishonest form of cheating, since it was deliberately breaking the clearly stated rules of the game (rules which came into effect after a tampered pitch killed the only person to die playing a professional game of baseball), and MLB’s anti-steroid policies are relatively new, nebulous and evolving. Yet to demand the exclusion of Whity Ford or Bob Feller from the Hall of Fame seems completely unreasonable, and to accept that the mass of ball players experience the fan’s reverence for the game, and are unwilling to look for any edge they can find to advance their careers and earn their livelihood, seems like unreasonable optimism.
Before this goes any further, I would like to state that ‘Sam’s Mets Blog’ is against steroid use, and feels that MLB should take whatever measures are necessary to eliminate, or failing that severely limit, its impact on the game of baseball. The reasons for this are that steroid use is insanely bad for you and if it is present it creates a compulsion for certain players to use, in order to compete against other users. Players should not be in a situation where they stand to gain a significant immediate advantage by sacrificing their long term health, or where doing so seems like the only way to obtain or extend a career playing against other players who had already made that choice. Furthermore, watching steroid users is not more rewarding or enjoyable for a serious fan, and the ‘power game’ that steroid use seems to enable is not the most interesting form of baseball—if steroid use is largely present, it creates a situation where players are poisoning themselves to provide an un enjoyable game, which doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interests.
However, it is important to understand that the basis for objecting to steroid use more than other forms of cheating is medical and not moral, and that the idea that steroids have contaminated a previously existing integrity is somewhat specious. The integrity was probably not there in the first place; and then again, the idea of a profound honesty, in a game, that in the real politic of people's lives decides and means nothing, is a little bit of an odd one, particularly when people seem more interested in this integrity, of a thing that barely exists, than they are in certain other institutions with a seemingly more immediate effect on their lives.
The “opinions and controversy” section of Bob Feller’s wikipedia article reveals two interesting facts about its subject: firstly, that Feller, like Billy Wagner, admits that cheating has been present through out baseball’s history, and himself admits to throwing spiters and scuffing the ball in certain critical situations, and secondly, that Feller is a vocal critic of Barry Bonds and has adamantly stated that he thinks that no steroid cheats should be allowed into the Hall of Fame(of which Feller is the second senior living member), particularly Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa.
This is, exactly, the problem with people who condemn steroid users for tampering with the integrity of the game: those in the best position to judge, frequently suggest that there was little integrity in the first place. In fact, scuffing a ball was in some ways a more deliberate and dishonest form of cheating, since it was deliberately breaking the clearly stated rules of the game (rules which came into effect after a tampered pitch killed the only person to die playing a professional game of baseball), and MLB’s anti-steroid policies are relatively new, nebulous and evolving. Yet to demand the exclusion of Whity Ford or Bob Feller from the Hall of Fame seems completely unreasonable, and to accept that the mass of ball players experience the fan’s reverence for the game, and are unwilling to look for any edge they can find to advance their careers and earn their livelihood, seems like unreasonable optimism.
Before this goes any further, I would like to state that ‘Sam’s Mets Blog’ is against steroid use, and feels that MLB should take whatever measures are necessary to eliminate, or failing that severely limit, its impact on the game of baseball. The reasons for this are that steroid use is insanely bad for you and if it is present it creates a compulsion for certain players to use, in order to compete against other users. Players should not be in a situation where they stand to gain a significant immediate advantage by sacrificing their long term health, or where doing so seems like the only way to obtain or extend a career playing against other players who had already made that choice. Furthermore, watching steroid users is not more rewarding or enjoyable for a serious fan, and the ‘power game’ that steroid use seems to enable is not the most interesting form of baseball—if steroid use is largely present, it creates a situation where players are poisoning themselves to provide an un enjoyable game, which doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interests.
However, it is important to understand that the basis for objecting to steroid use more than other forms of cheating is medical and not moral, and that the idea that steroids have contaminated a previously existing integrity is somewhat specious. The integrity was probably not there in the first place; and then again, the idea of a profound honesty, in a game, that in the real politic of people's lives decides and means nothing, is a little bit of an odd one, particularly when people seem more interested in this integrity, of a thing that barely exists, than they are in certain other institutions with a seemingly more immediate effect on their lives.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Unreasonable Speculation:
So, if the Mets make the post-season, and if everyone is healthy, the Mets will face a minor dilemma: they will have five starting pitchers when they will only use a four man rotation. So, of the five, Martinez, Glavine, El Duque Maine and Perez, one of them needs to be moved to the bullpen—any Met-ologist will point out that this was done to Sid Fernandez on the 1986 Championship Team. It is unthinkable, for reasons of ego and star power, that Glavine or Martinez would pitch in relief. In the most recent Mets Mailbag, someone asks if El Duque’s nearly legendary relief outing for the White Sox in the 2005 ALDS would make him a leading candidate for the bullpen assignment; the mailbag’s emphatic answer was no, which was kind of too bad since the first draft of this post was mainly about how the Mets should not let the 2005 ALDS tempt them into using El Duque in relief.(the White Sox put him in the ‘pen because he had an awful end of the season and they thought they had better options for starters, which is not the case of 2007 Mets) This narrows the field down to Maine and Perez.
For a lay person the question of weather Maine or Perez should work in relief is fascinating, since there is no real information of any sort to go on. In terms of success rate, they are very evenly matched: Maine’s performances tend to stick closer to some sort of mean, whereas Perez’ vary more sharply and he is more prone to both excellence and miserable failure. They have similar, brief, histories in the post season: both were very adequate in the games that they pitched for the Mets last year.
Eeven less concrete than their numbers, is the fan’s perception of a difference between the two in temperament, particularly in what is perceived as their mental/emotional state when they end up in trouble. Maine, apparently, is prone to lapses of concentration; he occasionally misplaces his pitches and gets ‘hurt by the longball.’ Perez, on the other hand, is liable to ‘get rattled’ when things don’t go his way: when balls get misplayed in the outfield or when he disagrees with the umpire about balls and strikes. Once one of these minor setbacks occurs, Perez is prone to losing his composure, and his command, and issuing walks until his composure returns or he gets taken out of the game. The generalization is that Maine hurts himself by not reacting enough to the game, the opposite of Perez, who makes trouble for himself by being too emotionally involved.
Of course, the Mets Mailbag precedes its response with the customary hedge, saying that it is far too early too discuss these things and that no one knows who will be healthy and what the situation will be if and when the time comes to make these decisions, but then says this: “I wouldn't use Perez in relief. He's too erratic for the role,” and goes on to speculate that Maine might be a serviceable short reliever, based largely on his dominance early in games—this is in fact a very good point, and Maine’s first trips through the lineup have been extremely dominant all season, and there is some kind of logic to thinking that he could repeat this dominance in relief outings.
In my expert opinion, though, the South Paw from South of the Border might have a little bit of a better psychological make-up for a relief pitcher. It is frequently said of Perez that he “wants the ball” in big games, that he wants to be out on the mound when the season is on the line. He is an adrenaline pitcher, and a component of his wildness is a taste for danger; there is something about him that reminds one of Billy Wagner, who is capable of protecting a lead of exactly 1.5 runs. The theory about Perez, that his emotional involvement in the game leads him to fall apart, works both ways: it has been known to lead him to excellence as well. The Met’s best bet might very well be to run him out in relief and hope for the best.
UPDATE: Mets fans are dopes.
For a lay person the question of weather Maine or Perez should work in relief is fascinating, since there is no real information of any sort to go on. In terms of success rate, they are very evenly matched: Maine’s performances tend to stick closer to some sort of mean, whereas Perez’ vary more sharply and he is more prone to both excellence and miserable failure. They have similar, brief, histories in the post season: both were very adequate in the games that they pitched for the Mets last year.
Eeven less concrete than their numbers, is the fan’s perception of a difference between the two in temperament, particularly in what is perceived as their mental/emotional state when they end up in trouble. Maine, apparently, is prone to lapses of concentration; he occasionally misplaces his pitches and gets ‘hurt by the longball.’ Perez, on the other hand, is liable to ‘get rattled’ when things don’t go his way: when balls get misplayed in the outfield or when he disagrees with the umpire about balls and strikes. Once one of these minor setbacks occurs, Perez is prone to losing his composure, and his command, and issuing walks until his composure returns or he gets taken out of the game. The generalization is that Maine hurts himself by not reacting enough to the game, the opposite of Perez, who makes trouble for himself by being too emotionally involved.
Of course, the Mets Mailbag precedes its response with the customary hedge, saying that it is far too early too discuss these things and that no one knows who will be healthy and what the situation will be if and when the time comes to make these decisions, but then says this: “I wouldn't use Perez in relief. He's too erratic for the role,” and goes on to speculate that Maine might be a serviceable short reliever, based largely on his dominance early in games—this is in fact a very good point, and Maine’s first trips through the lineup have been extremely dominant all season, and there is some kind of logic to thinking that he could repeat this dominance in relief outings.
In my expert opinion, though, the South Paw from South of the Border might have a little bit of a better psychological make-up for a relief pitcher. It is frequently said of Perez that he “wants the ball” in big games, that he wants to be out on the mound when the season is on the line. He is an adrenaline pitcher, and a component of his wildness is a taste for danger; there is something about him that reminds one of Billy Wagner, who is capable of protecting a lead of exactly 1.5 runs. The theory about Perez, that his emotional involvement in the game leads him to fall apart, works both ways: it has been known to lead him to excellence as well. The Met’s best bet might very well be to run him out in relief and hope for the best.
UPDATE: Mets fans are dopes.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
David Wright Martini
In a Virginia Tech mason jar filled with ice, combine equal parts Vitaminwater (of a flavor/color of your choice) and Gray Goose Vodka. Stir. Garnish with Big League Chew; drink while watching SportsCenter.
David Wright or Wrong
Narrowly edging out competition like imdb.com, wikipeda.com, and sexxxvixionsofnorway.no, Davidwrightorwrong.com is now officially the coolest site on the World Wide Web. The site is a promotion put out by Vitaminwater that asks fairly whimsical trivia questions about David (would he rather be a) a member of the goonies, b) a passenger on the Millennium Falcon, or c) an intern for Indiana Jones), and then provides commentary on the answers in the form of up-beat video clips of the star. Disappointment does set in eventually when the supply of questions runs out after four or five, and returning to the site does not yield a fresh supply of questions but only the ones that you have already answered. Compensating for this deficiency is a store locator that will direct you to the nearest Duane Read based on your zip-code.
David Wright has been drinking Vitaminwater since the minors and endorsing it for almost as long as he has been in the majors; when he was given a large contract by the Mets last year, he invested a significant portion of his new wealth in the company. I always found this odd, since the only other celebrity endorser of Vitaminwater that I could think of was 50 Cent; I used to wonder if they ever ran into each other at corporate events, and if it was awkward if they did. At first, I thought that this was just another manifestation of the generally superior marketing strategy employed by Vitaminwater—by having such disparate endorsers, they manage to effectively double the appeal of their brand.
After a little contemplation, it dawned on me that there is basically nothing odd or anachronistic about a potential social interaction between David Wright and 50 Cent. The former is an ultra-clean cut, patriotic and upstanding young baseball player and the latter is a rapper whose reputation is based almost entirely on the fact that he got shot a whole bunch of times while selling crack; you could say that they represent the two poles of the American pop-cultural soul. My impression, however, is that both of them represent their pole, not out of ideological convictions, but out of something closer to accident. Their affiliations, David as the poster boy of the establishment, Fifty as the angry voice of the criminal ghetto, are at the end of the day aesthetic, not political, choices; as aesthetic choices there would be little animosity in either of them for someone who chose differently. If either of them embraces any politics at all, it is not any politics in the traditional sense, a politics based on race, or class, or ideology, but rather an almost completely un-ideological politics of success.
Fifty is from New York, so the chances are about even that he is a Mets fan—approximately the same as the chances that multiple Fifty Cent songs are among the most commonly listened to tracks on David’s iPod (or were until Fifty started to become unpopular recently); if they ever do meet, at Vitaminwater’s Christmas party, I’m sure that they have lots of things to talk about: expensive things to do with your car, the best ways to dodge the tax-bite on a two million dollar bonus, and how the refreshing properties of Vitaminwater allows them to handle the demands of their respective, vigorous, careers.
David Wright has been drinking Vitaminwater since the minors and endorsing it for almost as long as he has been in the majors; when he was given a large contract by the Mets last year, he invested a significant portion of his new wealth in the company. I always found this odd, since the only other celebrity endorser of Vitaminwater that I could think of was 50 Cent; I used to wonder if they ever ran into each other at corporate events, and if it was awkward if they did. At first, I thought that this was just another manifestation of the generally superior marketing strategy employed by Vitaminwater—by having such disparate endorsers, they manage to effectively double the appeal of their brand.
After a little contemplation, it dawned on me that there is basically nothing odd or anachronistic about a potential social interaction between David Wright and 50 Cent. The former is an ultra-clean cut, patriotic and upstanding young baseball player and the latter is a rapper whose reputation is based almost entirely on the fact that he got shot a whole bunch of times while selling crack; you could say that they represent the two poles of the American pop-cultural soul. My impression, however, is that both of them represent their pole, not out of ideological convictions, but out of something closer to accident. Their affiliations, David as the poster boy of the establishment, Fifty as the angry voice of the criminal ghetto, are at the end of the day aesthetic, not political, choices; as aesthetic choices there would be little animosity in either of them for someone who chose differently. If either of them embraces any politics at all, it is not any politics in the traditional sense, a politics based on race, or class, or ideology, but rather an almost completely un-ideological politics of success.
Fifty is from New York, so the chances are about even that he is a Mets fan—approximately the same as the chances that multiple Fifty Cent songs are among the most commonly listened to tracks on David’s iPod (or were until Fifty started to become unpopular recently); if they ever do meet, at Vitaminwater’s Christmas party, I’m sure that they have lots of things to talk about: expensive things to do with your car, the best ways to dodge the tax-bite on a two million dollar bonus, and how the refreshing properties of Vitaminwater allows them to handle the demands of their respective, vigorous, careers.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Pedro Returns
Somehow, I managed not to be distracted by the team’s sweep of the Braves, and kept myself focused on the one event of true importance looming in the Met-a-verse: the imminent return of the Pedro. Monday will mark the end of instability in the Mets rotation; it will be the end of overusing the bull-pen; also, it will be the end of any shortcomings of younger players due to a lack of proven, veteran leadership-- for on Monday, Pedro Martinez will re-join the Mets. More than the incidental sweep of the once rival Braves, the second coming of Pedro should silence any doubts about the team raised by the disastrous series in Philadelphia. When examining the Mets chances in the NL East, relative to the Philies, there is only one truly important question: which team has Pedro Martinez?... sorry Philly.
Times like this allow you to appreciate what a truly valuable player El Duque is: a more durable pitcher would have probably been available to make his start, causing a minor logjam in the rotation; fortunately, El Duque was ready to save the already overtaxed decision-making-ability of the management, and helpfully developed a minor injury.
As for how the actual second coming of Pedro goes, if the results of this first start are somewhat inconclusive, well, you heard it here first. Look to see ‘flashes of the old Pedro’ mixed in with periods of being completely hittable. In fact, I would not be surprised if this flashes/hittable dichotomy remains a feature of all of Martinez’ future starts—leaving Met fans anxious come the post-season, should the team make it, but with the tantalizing possibility represented in these flashes still dangled in front of them. As for today, I think that Willie Randolph’s best bet is to go with his defensive outfield, and count on Met’s pitchers ability to induce batters to fly out to a diving Endy Chavez.
Times like this allow you to appreciate what a truly valuable player El Duque is: a more durable pitcher would have probably been available to make his start, causing a minor logjam in the rotation; fortunately, El Duque was ready to save the already overtaxed decision-making-ability of the management, and helpfully developed a minor injury.
As for how the actual second coming of Pedro goes, if the results of this first start are somewhat inconclusive, well, you heard it here first. Look to see ‘flashes of the old Pedro’ mixed in with periods of being completely hittable. In fact, I would not be surprised if this flashes/hittable dichotomy remains a feature of all of Martinez’ future starts—leaving Met fans anxious come the post-season, should the team make it, but with the tantalizing possibility represented in these flashes still dangled in front of them. As for today, I think that Willie Randolph’s best bet is to go with his defensive outfield, and count on Met’s pitchers ability to induce batters to fly out to a diving Endy Chavez.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tom Glavine Wins 300
I know this happened a while ago, but it was fun, wasn’t it? Much more fun than losing two in a row to the Phillies. So take your mind off the current struggles and indulge in a little bit of recent nostalgia:
Suk 11, an iconic back-packer hostel. The only space available was in a dorm room. The place is as eclectic as you’d expect, winding rooms, plaster walls covered with graffiti, sporadic and ornate patches of wood, of which the management was viciously proud. Frequent, adamant and angry signs warned against writing on the wood, as well as smoking in the rooms, and sex tourism. “Honnymon, ‘97”, “Love u ladyboy, you changed my life, see you soon.”
The night before, Javid and I had gone looking for a jazz bar, and ended up in an odd pocket of Suckumvit rd, that was filled with Japanese bars and restaurants. In one of these, where we had stopped for beer, one of the Thai bargirls and I had ended up pawing each other across the language barrier; the management seemed to have resolved that I was going to take her to a short time hotel, but a connection got missed and Javid and I ended up staggering back to the hostel in a hostile and directionless argument.
Back in Suk 11, I bitterly repented not having gone with my new friend: not so much for carnal reasons as because every minute in the short-time hotel would have been a minute not spent in the oppressive stuffy, dormitory, surrounded international snores and a lack of air.
At some point mine host, who had gone out for food after we had both apologized for various behaviors, returned to the hostel. “Dude, I think I just fell in love with a girl,” he told me. I congratulated him and returned to my thankless parody of sleep.
Thus it was with no great difficulty that I roused myself at seven thirty in the morning. Suk 11 has accepted modernity readily, in an almost curt, simplistic way. Putting a 10bhat coin in a box (approximately 33 cents), will get you fifteen minutes of internet. The office where I had checked my computer was closed, so I went to a station of computers on the second floor and watched a couple innings on game day: I didn’t much care for the political overtones of waking up an international hostile with a baseball game.
The office opened at eight. I went out for bottles of green tea and a further supply of ten bhat coins. When I returned to the hostel, I gave myself a neat scare by telling the management that the stripe on my computer bag was red, instead of orange.
The lobby in Suk 11 opens directly onto the street; there is no outside wall, but only a railing and a barrier of plants. There are two tables, one by the opening to the outside, and one further in. In back of the second table there was a low table on which was laid out a spread of bread, jams and fruit. Coffee and tea were also available. I set myself up on the table closest to the outside, where an older, white bearded American was smoking Thai Marlboro Lights, and working on a Chinese imitation lap top. We discussed our computers for few moments: he was impressed by my “real IBM.”
For the next two hours, I resembled a member of some obscure religious sect, in one of those ecstatic states that suggest both piety and mental illness. The two obstacles to my devotions were that the signal through Gameday Audio would frequently stop for periods for ‘buffering’ and sometimes go out altogether, and secondly that the speakers on my computer were nearly inaudible in the lobby that began to fill with international tourists and jazz music on a sound system. To remedy the latter, a Thai girl offered me headphones, but these just made the increasingly common periods of no sound at all far more frustrating, and I quickly returned them to her, and resumed sitting with my head cocked over my computer, rocking with frustration and excitement as I caught snatches of what seemed, increasingly, to be an excellent and historical game. I wish that I could say that I never offered my own commentary in an unhinged mutter or quietly applauded at certain intervals.
Ever since the sail-boat, people have been fond of thinking that various innovations have the effect of shrinking the world, that the increased connectivity somehow makes the world smaller. For me, this idea died that morning in Suk 11. Not many years ago at all, it would have been impossible for me to in anyway at all follow this game in real time; now I was listening to the same words, the same voice of Howie Rose who was being listened to in cars all over the tri-state area, in homes through out New York and New Jersey, on the boom-box in my parent’s house that had been taken out of my sister’s room after she went to college. But Howie Rose heard in Thailand is very little like Howie Rose heard in the states, a baseball game in the lobby of Suk 11, is not the same as a baseball game in America. Gameday Audio has not had the effect of shrinking the world at all: rather it calls into being an infinity of Howie Rose doppelgangers—which expands the world, rather than shrinks it—and indeed serves to remind us that different shades of Howie Rose are heard by different listeners at different exits on the turnpike.
And, indeed, without the increased connectivity of the web, the French tourists sitting on my left, and the Thai’s working in the lobby would have never seen the specter of the baseball acolyte—a vision that must have somehow expanded their world view, if not for any particular purpose.
The signal went out for the last time as Billy Wagner was pitching to the third batter in the ninth, and before long the final zero appeared in the line score: perhaps this was for the best, since while I had wanted to hear the final moments of the historic win announced, I was also afraid that if I had done so I would have wept.
Suk 11, an iconic back-packer hostel. The only space available was in a dorm room. The place is as eclectic as you’d expect, winding rooms, plaster walls covered with graffiti, sporadic and ornate patches of wood, of which the management was viciously proud. Frequent, adamant and angry signs warned against writing on the wood, as well as smoking in the rooms, and sex tourism. “Honnymon, ‘97”, “Love u ladyboy, you changed my life, see you soon.”
The night before, Javid and I had gone looking for a jazz bar, and ended up in an odd pocket of Suckumvit rd, that was filled with Japanese bars and restaurants. In one of these, where we had stopped for beer, one of the Thai bargirls and I had ended up pawing each other across the language barrier; the management seemed to have resolved that I was going to take her to a short time hotel, but a connection got missed and Javid and I ended up staggering back to the hostel in a hostile and directionless argument.
Back in Suk 11, I bitterly repented not having gone with my new friend: not so much for carnal reasons as because every minute in the short-time hotel would have been a minute not spent in the oppressive stuffy, dormitory, surrounded international snores and a lack of air.
At some point mine host, who had gone out for food after we had both apologized for various behaviors, returned to the hostel. “Dude, I think I just fell in love with a girl,” he told me. I congratulated him and returned to my thankless parody of sleep.
Thus it was with no great difficulty that I roused myself at seven thirty in the morning. Suk 11 has accepted modernity readily, in an almost curt, simplistic way. Putting a 10bhat coin in a box (approximately 33 cents), will get you fifteen minutes of internet. The office where I had checked my computer was closed, so I went to a station of computers on the second floor and watched a couple innings on game day: I didn’t much care for the political overtones of waking up an international hostile with a baseball game.
The office opened at eight. I went out for bottles of green tea and a further supply of ten bhat coins. When I returned to the hostel, I gave myself a neat scare by telling the management that the stripe on my computer bag was red, instead of orange.
The lobby in Suk 11 opens directly onto the street; there is no outside wall, but only a railing and a barrier of plants. There are two tables, one by the opening to the outside, and one further in. In back of the second table there was a low table on which was laid out a spread of bread, jams and fruit. Coffee and tea were also available. I set myself up on the table closest to the outside, where an older, white bearded American was smoking Thai Marlboro Lights, and working on a Chinese imitation lap top. We discussed our computers for few moments: he was impressed by my “real IBM.”
For the next two hours, I resembled a member of some obscure religious sect, in one of those ecstatic states that suggest both piety and mental illness. The two obstacles to my devotions were that the signal through Gameday Audio would frequently stop for periods for ‘buffering’ and sometimes go out altogether, and secondly that the speakers on my computer were nearly inaudible in the lobby that began to fill with international tourists and jazz music on a sound system. To remedy the latter, a Thai girl offered me headphones, but these just made the increasingly common periods of no sound at all far more frustrating, and I quickly returned them to her, and resumed sitting with my head cocked over my computer, rocking with frustration and excitement as I caught snatches of what seemed, increasingly, to be an excellent and historical game. I wish that I could say that I never offered my own commentary in an unhinged mutter or quietly applauded at certain intervals.
Ever since the sail-boat, people have been fond of thinking that various innovations have the effect of shrinking the world, that the increased connectivity somehow makes the world smaller. For me, this idea died that morning in Suk 11. Not many years ago at all, it would have been impossible for me to in anyway at all follow this game in real time; now I was listening to the same words, the same voice of Howie Rose who was being listened to in cars all over the tri-state area, in homes through out New York and New Jersey, on the boom-box in my parent’s house that had been taken out of my sister’s room after she went to college. But Howie Rose heard in Thailand is very little like Howie Rose heard in the states, a baseball game in the lobby of Suk 11, is not the same as a baseball game in America. Gameday Audio has not had the effect of shrinking the world at all: rather it calls into being an infinity of Howie Rose doppelgangers—which expands the world, rather than shrinks it—and indeed serves to remind us that different shades of Howie Rose are heard by different listeners at different exits on the turnpike.
And, indeed, without the increased connectivity of the web, the French tourists sitting on my left, and the Thai’s working in the lobby would have never seen the specter of the baseball acolyte—a vision that must have somehow expanded their world view, if not for any particular purpose.
The signal went out for the last time as Billy Wagner was pitching to the third batter in the ninth, and before long the final zero appeared in the line score: perhaps this was for the best, since while I had wanted to hear the final moments of the historic win announced, I was also afraid that if I had done so I would have wept.
Friday, August 3, 2007
"The Battery"
So, Sam's Mets blog is taking a temporary break for the reason that I am en-route, right now, to Thailand, where I will be in uncertian conntact with both the internet and baseball for the next three weeks. I am writing right now in an airport in Japan that might or might not be in Tokyo (I'm embressed to ask).
Anyway, on the flight over I was lucky enough to catch a "The Battery" which is a heart-warming Japanese picture about middle school baseball players. The main character is an anti-social pitcher, who throws ridiculous heat. (makes Billy Wagner look like Tom Glavine) His two related problems are that his little brother is sickly and gets all of his mother's attention, and that he throws so hard that no middle schooler can catch him. (I would say that a seconday problem of his is that he dosn't have a breaking pitch, but more on that latter)
The main development in the movie is his relationship to a catcher, one of his few contemporaries that can occasionaly handel his stuff. The stongest thing about the movie is the extent to which the pitcher really is just an anti-social, silent jerk. He never says anything, or shows any respect to anyone, or does anything that doesn't relate to his pitching dominence. At the end of the moive, it turns out that his pitching is actually a sensative respons to his brother's illnesses-- but this is very unconvincing, and cements the movie's status as feel good crap.
The high point of the movie is five miniutes into the film when he asks his grandfather, a past player and coach to teach him his curve ball. It is the first time that he has said anything. The grandfather is played by awsome Bunto Shugwada (sp?) who plays everyone's grandfather in Japansese movies these days-- in the '70s he played Yakuzas. The grandfather replies, "no... you're not ready yet."It has a very nice martial arts feel to it-- unfortunatly this exchange lead to me to hope that the high-point of the movie would be the guy learning a breaking pitch (hopefully in a sweet montage), and that never happens. In fact, although the fact that he has no breaking stuff is alluded to once again, it never really comes up as an issue. And, if you are a middle schooler, pitching to midddle schoolers, throwing heat, I guess you really don't need a slider.
The other problem with the the film, from a baseball perspective, is that no refrence is EVER made to the offense of the team that he plays for. Apparently, in Japanese middle school baseball if you get a certain number of Ks per nine innings, it dosn't matter if you never score runs.
From a social point of view, another problem is that the arc of the movie involves every male member of the family, comming to terms with how much they love baseball, and don't care about the mother, or what she thinks or feels. The sickly younger brother starts pitching at the end, the borw-beaten father joines his companie's team, and the grandfather gets invigorated watching the "hero's" games. The last shot of the film is mom washing three different jersies.
While the move was feel-good crap, and hostile to wommen, the main character, for most of the movie is really interesting. He is handsome, and his stuff is just feroicus. But at the end of the day, the guy really is a distant, self absorbed prick, and the portrait is compelling. A second best moment in the film comes when he is talking to his catcher about his problems (which are that he throws so hard that no one can always catch him); at the end of the speach, which is by far the most that he has said in the entrie movie, the catcher tells him to just shut-up and throw.
Anyhow, the blog will be back fulltime, somtime around August 26-7ish. I'm not absolutley ruleing out posting anything while in Thailand-- particularly, I think that this thing might be worth checking after Glavine's next couple of starts.
The media options on All-Nipon air-ways are seriously sweet, although the food was dubius and I don't think they served hard alcohol. On the otherhand, the flight attendents looked as if they had been hired in a country that dosn't really go for discrimination lawsuites.
Anyway, on the flight over I was lucky enough to catch a "The Battery" which is a heart-warming Japanese picture about middle school baseball players. The main character is an anti-social pitcher, who throws ridiculous heat. (makes Billy Wagner look like Tom Glavine) His two related problems are that his little brother is sickly and gets all of his mother's attention, and that he throws so hard that no middle schooler can catch him. (I would say that a seconday problem of his is that he dosn't have a breaking pitch, but more on that latter)
The main development in the movie is his relationship to a catcher, one of his few contemporaries that can occasionaly handel his stuff. The stongest thing about the movie is the extent to which the pitcher really is just an anti-social, silent jerk. He never says anything, or shows any respect to anyone, or does anything that doesn't relate to his pitching dominence. At the end of the moive, it turns out that his pitching is actually a sensative respons to his brother's illnesses-- but this is very unconvincing, and cements the movie's status as feel good crap.
The high point of the movie is five miniutes into the film when he asks his grandfather, a past player and coach to teach him his curve ball. It is the first time that he has said anything. The grandfather is played by awsome Bunto Shugwada (sp?) who plays everyone's grandfather in Japansese movies these days-- in the '70s he played Yakuzas. The grandfather replies, "no... you're not ready yet."It has a very nice martial arts feel to it-- unfortunatly this exchange lead to me to hope that the high-point of the movie would be the guy learning a breaking pitch (hopefully in a sweet montage), and that never happens. In fact, although the fact that he has no breaking stuff is alluded to once again, it never really comes up as an issue. And, if you are a middle schooler, pitching to midddle schoolers, throwing heat, I guess you really don't need a slider.
The other problem with the the film, from a baseball perspective, is that no refrence is EVER made to the offense of the team that he plays for. Apparently, in Japanese middle school baseball if you get a certain number of Ks per nine innings, it dosn't matter if you never score runs.
From a social point of view, another problem is that the arc of the movie involves every male member of the family, comming to terms with how much they love baseball, and don't care about the mother, or what she thinks or feels. The sickly younger brother starts pitching at the end, the borw-beaten father joines his companie's team, and the grandfather gets invigorated watching the "hero's" games. The last shot of the film is mom washing three different jersies.
While the move was feel-good crap, and hostile to wommen, the main character, for most of the movie is really interesting. He is handsome, and his stuff is just feroicus. But at the end of the day, the guy really is a distant, self absorbed prick, and the portrait is compelling. A second best moment in the film comes when he is talking to his catcher about his problems (which are that he throws so hard that no one can always catch him); at the end of the speach, which is by far the most that he has said in the entrie movie, the catcher tells him to just shut-up and throw.
Anyhow, the blog will be back fulltime, somtime around August 26-7ish. I'm not absolutley ruleing out posting anything while in Thailand-- particularly, I think that this thing might be worth checking after Glavine's next couple of starts.
The media options on All-Nipon air-ways are seriously sweet, although the food was dubius and I don't think they served hard alcohol. On the otherhand, the flight attendents looked as if they had been hired in a country that dosn't really go for discrimination lawsuites.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Commissioner is a Son of a Bitch
The first Commissioner of Baseball, or any other sport, was Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. His name was the only good thing about him-- actually a possible second good thing about him was the fact that he eventually died, paving the way for the integration of baseball. As a federal judge, Landis jailed Wobblies, including Big Bill Haywood; he also managed to get Jack Johnson, an amazingly successful boxer and the first super-star black athlete, banned from boxing and sent to jail on a Man Act conviction for mailing his white girl-friend a railway ticket—these sterling credentials inspired the team owners of major league baseball to offer him a job cleaning up baseball in the wake of the Black Sox Scandal. Landis was only interested in accepting the gig if he was given sole authority over all aspects of organized baseball. The owners couldn’t see how they would make money selling tickets to games that were widely known to be fixed, so they agreed to Landis’ demands and the office of Commissioner of Baseball was formed.
Due to his racism, and the fact that anyone who jailed Big Bill Haywood is an official enemy of Sam’s Mets Blog, Landis goes down as a particularly offensive commissioner. However, the Commissioner is almost by necessity a son of a bitch. Chosen by the owners, they are charged with keeping the fans, players, owners, advertisers and broadcasters working together in something that does not deteriorate into chaos or harm the bottom line. The commissioner is a little man who sits behind a desk and pushes pencils; he is charged with making sure the athletes—the big, the strong, the fast, the wild and the stupid—follow the rules. It is our love of athletes that draws us to sport, and the little man behind the desk pushing them around becomes a son of a bitch by necessity.
Current baseball Bud Sielig actually did something that I approve of this week by deciding to follow Bonds until he hits his record breaking home run. I’m not that big of a Bonds fan, and am not untroubled by his legacy, but it’s the damn home run record and Seilig’s the damn commissioner, so the guy might as well be there. It took Sielig long enough to decide to go, that his uncertainty about it allowed him to accuse Bonds implicitly, without actually coming out and making an accusation: exactly the sort of miserable, gutless behavior that is pretty much required of any commissioner. I hope that Bonds goes into a vicious slump that coincides with a hellish heat waive and that Bonds and Seilig both spend all of August sweating in ballparks and accomplishing nothing.
Anyway, it’s Basketball Commissioner David Stern who is really pissing me off this week. Recently it was revealed that one of the officials, Tim Donaghy, was a compulsive gambler, with mob connections, who had been betting on games that he officiated and making calls to alter them. I spent most of the winter listening to NBA fans crying about how poorly officiated the games were and how disgustingly little the league was doing about it. I was never really sure if they had a point, but they did. As Basketbawful (a good read and an inspiration to start this blog) points out, this proves that the officiating in the league in general is so god damn bad that a cheating, gambling, psychopath can fit right in with all the other crummy officiating: the NBA never found out about the guy, until the FBI filled them in. What makes this completely frustrating is that the David Stern regime has routinely sided with officials against players. It is important to understand that in basketball this has an overtone that is not quite present in other sports: an integral part of the spectacle of the NBA game is watching the large black men at the mercy of the calls and whistles of the officials, who tend to be shorter and whiter than the players that they adjudicate.
In an insultingly irrelevant press conference, Stern, however, admits no responsibility for any of this, and acknowledges no larger crisis in the league’s officiating. Instead, he wastes everyone’s time by describing the (obviously completely worthless) methods that they had in place to ensure that the thing that had already happened wouldn’t happen.
COMMISSIONISTIC FOOTNOTE: For the first years of his job, Sielig was the acting Commissioner and not the official one, which meant that the position was technically vacant. The owner of the Texas Rangers, a one George W. Bush, spent a fair amount of time angling for the job. The corollary to this little factoid seems to be the old ‘what if Hitler had been a successful painter? Would he have just done that with his life, and never been a dictator?’ question, which was the very debate that inspired a high school history teacher of mine to curtly tell the class that hypothetical history was a waste of everyone’s time. But would a country that at least felt like a democracy and wasn’t involved in pointless, murderous wars be worth living in if baseball had been reduced to a miserable, totalitarian travesty? Would I be willing to make that trade-off? Yes, yes I would.
Due to his racism, and the fact that anyone who jailed Big Bill Haywood is an official enemy of Sam’s Mets Blog, Landis goes down as a particularly offensive commissioner. However, the Commissioner is almost by necessity a son of a bitch. Chosen by the owners, they are charged with keeping the fans, players, owners, advertisers and broadcasters working together in something that does not deteriorate into chaos or harm the bottom line. The commissioner is a little man who sits behind a desk and pushes pencils; he is charged with making sure the athletes—the big, the strong, the fast, the wild and the stupid—follow the rules. It is our love of athletes that draws us to sport, and the little man behind the desk pushing them around becomes a son of a bitch by necessity.
Current baseball Bud Sielig actually did something that I approve of this week by deciding to follow Bonds until he hits his record breaking home run. I’m not that big of a Bonds fan, and am not untroubled by his legacy, but it’s the damn home run record and Seilig’s the damn commissioner, so the guy might as well be there. It took Sielig long enough to decide to go, that his uncertainty about it allowed him to accuse Bonds implicitly, without actually coming out and making an accusation: exactly the sort of miserable, gutless behavior that is pretty much required of any commissioner. I hope that Bonds goes into a vicious slump that coincides with a hellish heat waive and that Bonds and Seilig both spend all of August sweating in ballparks and accomplishing nothing.
Anyway, it’s Basketball Commissioner David Stern who is really pissing me off this week. Recently it was revealed that one of the officials, Tim Donaghy, was a compulsive gambler, with mob connections, who had been betting on games that he officiated and making calls to alter them. I spent most of the winter listening to NBA fans crying about how poorly officiated the games were and how disgustingly little the league was doing about it. I was never really sure if they had a point, but they did. As Basketbawful (a good read and an inspiration to start this blog) points out, this proves that the officiating in the league in general is so god damn bad that a cheating, gambling, psychopath can fit right in with all the other crummy officiating: the NBA never found out about the guy, until the FBI filled them in. What makes this completely frustrating is that the David Stern regime has routinely sided with officials against players. It is important to understand that in basketball this has an overtone that is not quite present in other sports: an integral part of the spectacle of the NBA game is watching the large black men at the mercy of the calls and whistles of the officials, who tend to be shorter and whiter than the players that they adjudicate.
In an insultingly irrelevant press conference, Stern, however, admits no responsibility for any of this, and acknowledges no larger crisis in the league’s officiating. Instead, he wastes everyone’s time by describing the (obviously completely worthless) methods that they had in place to ensure that the thing that had already happened wouldn’t happen.
COMMISSIONISTIC FOOTNOTE: For the first years of his job, Sielig was the acting Commissioner and not the official one, which meant that the position was technically vacant. The owner of the Texas Rangers, a one George W. Bush, spent a fair amount of time angling for the job. The corollary to this little factoid seems to be the old ‘what if Hitler had been a successful painter? Would he have just done that with his life, and never been a dictator?’ question, which was the very debate that inspired a high school history teacher of mine to curtly tell the class that hypothetical history was a waste of everyone’s time. But would a country that at least felt like a democracy and wasn’t involved in pointless, murderous wars be worth living in if baseball had been reduced to a miserable, totalitarian travesty? Would I be willing to make that trade-off? Yes, yes I would.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Comrade Met-thusala Will be Pursuing New and Exciting Opportunities...in Siberia
So Julio Franco has been designated for assignment, which means that if no one claims him off of waivers (and I don’t know what that means) or trades for him, in 10 days he will be a free agent, which, almost certainly, means the end of his Mets career.
I meant to introduce this as a running gag much earlier in the blog, but last year, mainly in the lead up to the post-season as pitcher after pitcher went down with injury and Mets.com remained cheerfully optimistic about the situation and refused to contemplate the team’s impending doom, my Dad and I started to joke about the similarities between the Mets’ website and the Soviet Newspaper, Pravda, and eventually started referring to Comrade-Coach Willie Randolph (whose assurances were treated, by mets.com, as essentially the equivalent of wins). One of my plans for when I am finally shit out of ideas for posts was to cut and paste a mets.com bit into Word and then use the Find-and-Replace feature to change “runs” for “tractors,” “player” for “worker” or “comrade,” and “the Atlanta Braves” for “decadent Western capitalist bourgeoisie pigs.”
Anyhow, during the past year or so, in which I have (embarrassingly) read virtually every piece to appear on Mets-Pravda, none of them have seemed quite so Pravda-ish as the announcement of Franco’s designation for assignment. It perfectly evokes the feeling of being written by a harassed, low-level functionary whose only purpose in life is to flatter half a dozen sprawling, petty, and incompetent bureaucracies, all of which have the power to ship the writer off to Siberia for life, if they feel that his reportage does not do justice to their heroic endeavors on behalf of the people.
According to Mets-Pravda, Comrade Franco had, in fact, formed the resolution to leave the club, even before the members of the Politburo, in their wisdom, decided that they were better off without his services. Franco, apparently, thinks that his goal of playing until he is fifty (a little over thirteen months from now) would be best served by going somewhere where he could play more often. The Mets, apparently, felt that their goal of winning a championship would be best served by having a pinch hitter who could, you know, hit.
Indeed, Franco has, apparently, been feeling that he has been receiving inadequate playing time since last year, and it was only perseverance and optimism that kept him around Flushing for this long.
The Mets were motivated in their decision to release Franco by a desire to keep Sandy Alomar around, who is a spring chicken at a mere 41. Alomar frees up Ramon Castro to pinch hit; with a 3rd catcher they don’t have to worry about Lo Duca having to leave the game (due to injury or ejection—neither unlikely) after Castro has been used and handing the catcher’s mitt over to a guy with a god-damn knee brace. But they were also wanted to have his “leadership” around.
But according to Mets-Pravda, wasn’t Franco coming through with leadership by the tractor-load? And what 48-year old ball player would think that he could get more playing time on a baseball team other than the one unhinged enough to sign him in the first place? Was Franco’s deranged desire for more chances to ground weakly to second turning him into a team cancer? Was he the one tampering with their mojo and leading to a break down in team-chemistry?
An alternative theory, which touches on an issue that various people on the internet had picked up on before Franco was even released, is that there is a slight conflict inherent in having Franco as a player, and Ricky Henderson as a coach. Franco and Henderson are contemporaries and Henderson has been adamant that he can still play—once MLB was done with him he knocked around in semi-pro and independent baseball, and re-stated his desire to play recently, in response to the Yankee signing of Roger Clemens. Franco on the field would have been a constant provocation to Ricky, and probably Franco’s release was necessary, just so that Willie Randolph wouldn’t have to listen to his hitting-coach constantly asking to pinch-hit: “hey Willie, those guy’s can’t hit as good as Ricky. Why don’t you let Ricky hit? Ricky might even steal a base.”
GAME IN PROGRESS NOTE: It’s official: when I grow up I want to be El Duque. After walking the pitcher, with two outs, to load the bases, and giving up two runs as a consequence, what does he do in his at bar in the next inning? Singles, and then steals freaking second, the second or third steal of his entire American career. That guy is the man… either that or Ricky’s tutelage is already paying off.
I meant to introduce this as a running gag much earlier in the blog, but last year, mainly in the lead up to the post-season as pitcher after pitcher went down with injury and Mets.com remained cheerfully optimistic about the situation and refused to contemplate the team’s impending doom, my Dad and I started to joke about the similarities between the Mets’ website and the Soviet Newspaper, Pravda, and eventually started referring to Comrade-Coach Willie Randolph (whose assurances were treated, by mets.com, as essentially the equivalent of wins). One of my plans for when I am finally shit out of ideas for posts was to cut and paste a mets.com bit into Word and then use the Find-and-Replace feature to change “runs” for “tractors,” “player” for “worker” or “comrade,” and “the Atlanta Braves” for “decadent Western capitalist bourgeoisie pigs.”
Anyhow, during the past year or so, in which I have (embarrassingly) read virtually every piece to appear on Mets-Pravda, none of them have seemed quite so Pravda-ish as the announcement of Franco’s designation for assignment. It perfectly evokes the feeling of being written by a harassed, low-level functionary whose only purpose in life is to flatter half a dozen sprawling, petty, and incompetent bureaucracies, all of which have the power to ship the writer off to Siberia for life, if they feel that his reportage does not do justice to their heroic endeavors on behalf of the people.
According to Mets-Pravda, Comrade Franco had, in fact, formed the resolution to leave the club, even before the members of the Politburo, in their wisdom, decided that they were better off without his services. Franco, apparently, thinks that his goal of playing until he is fifty (a little over thirteen months from now) would be best served by going somewhere where he could play more often. The Mets, apparently, felt that their goal of winning a championship would be best served by having a pinch hitter who could, you know, hit.
Indeed, Franco has, apparently, been feeling that he has been receiving inadequate playing time since last year, and it was only perseverance and optimism that kept him around Flushing for this long.
The Mets were motivated in their decision to release Franco by a desire to keep Sandy Alomar around, who is a spring chicken at a mere 41. Alomar frees up Ramon Castro to pinch hit; with a 3rd catcher they don’t have to worry about Lo Duca having to leave the game (due to injury or ejection—neither unlikely) after Castro has been used and handing the catcher’s mitt over to a guy with a god-damn knee brace. But they were also wanted to have his “leadership” around.
But according to Mets-Pravda, wasn’t Franco coming through with leadership by the tractor-load? And what 48-year old ball player would think that he could get more playing time on a baseball team other than the one unhinged enough to sign him in the first place? Was Franco’s deranged desire for more chances to ground weakly to second turning him into a team cancer? Was he the one tampering with their mojo and leading to a break down in team-chemistry?
An alternative theory, which touches on an issue that various people on the internet had picked up on before Franco was even released, is that there is a slight conflict inherent in having Franco as a player, and Ricky Henderson as a coach. Franco and Henderson are contemporaries and Henderson has been adamant that he can still play—once MLB was done with him he knocked around in semi-pro and independent baseball, and re-stated his desire to play recently, in response to the Yankee signing of Roger Clemens. Franco on the field would have been a constant provocation to Ricky, and probably Franco’s release was necessary, just so that Willie Randolph wouldn’t have to listen to his hitting-coach constantly asking to pinch-hit: “hey Willie, those guy’s can’t hit as good as Ricky. Why don’t you let Ricky hit? Ricky might even steal a base.”
GAME IN PROGRESS NOTE: It’s official: when I grow up I want to be El Duque. After walking the pitcher, with two outs, to load the bases, and giving up two runs as a consequence, what does he do in his at bar in the next inning? Singles, and then steals freaking second, the second or third steal of his entire American career. That guy is the man… either that or Ricky’s tutelage is already paying off.
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