Measurable

For the past five days, the coverage has been breathless. The dissection of the minute differences between various players' performances at things that actually have nothing to do with their chosen profession has been deadly serious and painfully intense. Every utterance by every coach, every player, every agent has been taken apart, overanalyzed, and then overanalyzed again.

But.

Dear baseball:

I write this to you from a place of love.

But.

You need to hire some goddamned game designers.

Like, now.

Lies, Damned Lies, No Statistics

Certain headlines repeat themselves year after year at spring training. Some are harmless. Some are true. And some are unmitigated hooey. For example:

1. "Team X spent $400M this offseason!" - No they didn't. They may have signed contracts for $400M, spread out over however many years, but that's not the same thing as saying they plunked down a half billion dollars all in one spot. Throw in the interesting tax ramifications of player salaries (thanks for nothing, Bill Veeck), money that's coming off the books at the same time those contracts are going on, and various and sundry other factors, and the actual dollar amounts teams are "spending" at any given time is slightly less jaw-dropping - or sensational.

Chewing On Feinstein Is Pointless

The baseball interwebs are on fire these days because legendary sportswriter John Feinstein, whose shtick is largely focused around the genteel gloss applied to certain aspects of sports, said something dumb about sabermetrics. 

Hot Takes On Stuff I Missed Dealing With Real Life

Each of these probably should have gotten its own post, but it's been busy around here. So in the meantime, here's some hot takes that have been left out to cool:

On Watching Super Bowls 49 and 50

Normally at this time of year the blog would be chock full of content, with comparison-contrast pieces on the relative awfulness of Carolina's nickel back versus the karmic weirdness of Evan Mathis playing for a Super Bowl title after getting run out of Philly, or whatever. 

But.

Your Handy-Dandy Super Bowl 50 Translation Guide:

Sometimes, athletes, coaches and reporters at the Super Bowl say what they mean. This has happened as recently as Max McGee admitting he was hung over after Super Bowl I. Since then, the game has hidden behind an endless curtain of genteel weaselspeak. But that's OK, we're here to clear it up for you:

Mom and Sports: A Lesson

You may have noticed a dearth of content around these parts lately. That can be attributed to the final decline and passing of my mother, Irene, who left us on January 23rd after a 15+ year battle with cancer in which she repeatedly gave as good as she got.

In her honor, then, here's a story about Mom, and sports, and a few other things. Mom wasn't much of a sports fan - there was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan in there somewhere, but in her later years she was mainly just irritated at how much money was getting chewed up by the sports-industrial complex.  But every so often she dipped into sports and surprised me. For example: