How To Fix The Home Run Derby, By Me

Here's how you fix the Home Run Derby:

1. You hire some game designers to fix the rules. Not television guys, not ad execs, not front office guys. Game designers. Because it's a game.

Scenes from the AAA All-Star Game

And to close the book on the All-Star festivities in Durham, some moments from the game:

Pregame Warmups for the International League

Our All-Star Game

Odds are, I will never take my dad to a World Series game. Odds are, we'll never get to spring training, or to a World Series, either. Our lives just don't stack up that way.

But tonight, we went to the AAA All-Star Game, held in the cozy confines of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park because, hey, when an All-Star Game comes along, you ask yourself, "when am I going to get another chance?" (We missed the NHL All-Star Game a couple of years ago because I was on the road for work, and, well, there are a lot of things to love about living the RTP area, but an overabundance of event-level professional sporting events is not one of them.)

Scenes From A (Minor League) Home Run Derby

No snark today, just images from last night's AAA All-Star Home Run Derby. I took my Dad, we had a good time, and once the softball players were done parking shots on the roof of the building you see next to the sign in the first pic, we settled in for the main event.

And the dog act that came with it.

The children, unleashed in the outfield to shag flies

Ten Things To Be Thankful For From the LeBron James Media Frenzy

1. Endless mockery of the post-Decision letter Cavs owner Dan Gilbert put up on the team's website and which only got taken down during the wooing of LeBron. It's not the mockery that's so delicious, it's the fact that with all the insanity on display in that letter, the internet chose to focus on the fact that it was in Comic Sans. 
2. The media frenzy around LeBron James temporarily shut down the media frenzy around Johnny Manziel. To be spared endless moralizing by middle-aged men about what a fabulously rich 22 year old should be doing on his summer vacation is, in a word, priceless.

Oops

Today's post was going to be about the media frenzy surrounding the whole "LeBron hasn't told us where he's going" thing. It was very clever and you would have enjoyed it immensely, had King James not completely screwed us by making up his mind. 

Which, of course, I will take as another sign from the universe that I'm supposed to loathe him unreservedly. Or something.

Oh well.

Takeaways: Germany vs Brazil

Here are, in no particular order, the things we learned from Germany's 7-1 shellacking of Brazil in the World Cup semis:

Great Moments In Sports Talk Radio, Morning LeBron Frenzy Edition

Two bits of LeBron-related brilliance from sports talk radio this morning, because everyone's suddenly A)an expert B)offering financial advice and C)feeding the rumor mill just to keep that log rolling. To wit: 

From the Dan Patrick Show, discussing how disappointing it is that LeBron (the best basketball player on the planet) feels slighted because he's never been the highest paid guy on his own team:

"He was the second-highest paid guy on the team, but that's just because of the way they paid out the money."

Well, yes, that's how hit tends to work.

and from Mike and Mike, discussing the rumors of LeBron returning to Cleveland and how disappointed/angry fans will be if it doesn't happen:

"They should blame you and me. Or the media."

Last I checked, "guys with morning radio show" were, in fact, part of the media. 

Keep the hits coming, people. Keep them coming.

All Star Time

The nice thing about the MLB All Star Game is that despite all the silliness that has been heaped upon it over the years - wacky selection processes and vague intimations of making it "matter" and a home run derby with rules so borked I could design better ones in my sleep [note: I am a professional game designer. This is not an idle boast. MLB, talk to me] - people still care about it.

The terrible thing about the MBL All Star Game is, of course, that people care so very much about it even when deep down in their bones, they know they shouldn't. Which is why every year, when the rosters are announced, we get the following like clockwork:

Justice, Soccer Style

Does anyone else think the best possible punishment for the Colombian player who hacksawed Neymar's back in yesterday's game would be to lock him in a room with Luis Suarez, one knife, and one fork?

Or is that just me.

Time-Is-Moneyball

There is a certain rhythm to a baseball season. It starts off in a mad rush, with small hot streaks by bad teams and unknown players exciting all sorts of cloud cuckoo-land extrapolation. (See: This April's Miami Marlins, and everyone who thought they'd win 100 games based on their first week).  Then it settles into the process of shaking itself out, as good teams separate from bad, and injuries knock off contenders without depth. Flashes in the pan fade out until everyone's got a pretty good idea of whether they're contenders or pretenders, and then the trade talk starts. This tends to be a ton of nothing until July, at which point trade talk starts bubbling up ahead of the July 31st deadline. 

It is, as they say, the way things done. Teams will wait until the last minute to be sure to extract the best possible deal for the pieces they're attempting to move, which means that acquiring teams get that much less of their new players, which in turn makes them that much less interested in surrendering quality for them, which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing, and, well, oy.

Baseball Second Half Predictions

While we haven't quite reached the All Star Game, we have hit the midway point on the baseball season in terms of games played. It's the time of year when contenders separate themselves - slightly - from the rest of the pack, when teams decide whether to trade or go for it, and flash-in-the-pan first half phenoms get weeded out as real stars emerge. It's also the part of the season where the guys on Baseball Tonight go completely incoherent, largely because they're still trying to wrap their heads around Tim Kurkjian's performance in the Sausage Race in Milwaukee.

That being said, with a half-season under our belts, we feel confident in posting some predictions for the second half. Gaze into the crystal ball with us and see that:

And We're Out

You don't win at the World Cup by being 31st out of 32 teams in time of possession.
You don't win by getting outshot by roughly 20. You don't win by being unable to keep the bal out of your end, and you don't win by scoring 5 goals in 4 games. Even when your keeper stands on his head and does everything but polymorph himself into an Ancient Red Dragon to keep the ball out of the goal, that's just stuff you can't overcome.

And yet.

Kidd, No Play

The thing that you have to understand is that Jason Kidd is very, very good at getting things to go his way.

He's outmaneuvered multiple coaches, both in college and in the pros (see also: Frank, Lawrence). He fell into a head coaching gig with an owner willing to pay luxury tax and a pile of experienced vets gunning for one more ring. He juked past multiple mistakes - Sodagate, anyone - that would have gotten anyone else laughed out of the league, and he's made run-ins with domestic abuse and DUI largely vanish from the conversation.

So when people make fun of Kidd for demanding total control of the Nets, then using the refusal to springboard his way to Milwaukee, I'm disinclined to agree.

The Post That Will Make American Soccer Fans Mad

Friends of mine in Paris, one of whom is an officially certified soccer aficionado, have decided that they are all in on the USMNT. They're impressed with the level of teamwork and hard work, and think the Yanks have a genuine chance against Belgium.

Which, I must admit, is pretty cool. And it's also cool that the US managed to escape from THE GROUP OF DEATH (add reverb as needed) and reach the knockout round, which, I'm told, comes before the round where they dump green slime on you and then the round with the showcase showdown. I have nothing but admiration for the way in which a team that was told point-blank it was outmanned and outgunned took care of business, and it's nice to see them finally break whatever hex Ghana has cast over them for the last few World Cups.

Feeling a Draft

Going into yesterday's draft the Sixers had 7 picks, including the #3 and #10 selections in the first round. They'd been deliberately terrible this past season, to the point where one of their 2 first-round picks in the last draft spent the entire year out with an injury he'd suffered /before/ the draft, in order to get a high pick in this year's loaded offering so they could get good this year. And with all that in place, they picked:

• Injured guy with high ceiling who's going to be out all year
• Croatian guy with high ceiling who's going to be playing in Turkey for the next N years, where 1 < n < 3
• Crazy athletic guy from Clemson who can't shoot
• Crazy athletic guy from Syracuse who can't shoot
• Two Serbian dudes (one of whom has crazy athleticism) who - stop me if you've heard this - can't shoot.
• And a wing player from Tennessee who can't shoot.

Now, I love Sixers GM Sam Hinkie. I think he has giant swinging cojones of brass so mighty they have orbiting moons. He is going full-on Houston Astros here, tearing a mediocre franchise down to the concrete slab in order to build something with long-term potential. 

So I can applaud picking Joel Embiid at #3. If he's healthy - and that's the big if - he's probably the best player in the draft, and potentially a superstar. Alternately, he's Sam Bowie, but if the alternative is permanent mediocrity, might as well swing for the fences (and annoy the hell out of the pundits while you're at it). 

But man, this is a big leap of faith - for the fans,for ownership, and for the few building blocks like Michael Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel who are already in place. To keep all of those parties on board and committed through another year of trainwreck while waiting for the cavalry to arrive en masse, it's going to be work.

And maybe next year they'll draft immediate help, and Embiid will be healthy and ready to contribute, and Saric will get out of his contract in Turkey, and Dangubic and Micic will show up, too. Maybe some of those non-shooters will learn how to shoot. It's a nice dream to hang onto, and at this point, that's all drafts are - dreams.

Things We Know, NBA Draft Edition

Here is what we know about the NBA draft:

1. The Cleveland Cavaliers are definitely taking Jabari Parker first overall, because they want to lure LeBron James back to Cleveland and they whiffed on last year's #1, so they're going for the "sure thing".

The FIFA World Cup Blog Post, Sponsored By the FIFA World Cup (Not Actually Sponsored By FIFA)

This may or may not be FIFA HQ

Is anyone else creeped out by the robotic mention of the World Cup as "the 2014 FIFA World Cup" by all the announcers, commercials by official sponsors, etc? I mean, yes, FIFA puts it on (and as John Oliver notes, absorbs money like Galactus chowing down on a habitable planet in the process), and yes, it is technically the FIFA World Cup, but the creepy Heisenbergian insistence on saying FIFA's name every time it gets mentioned is starting to wig me out. Imagine if the announcers had to say "The NFL Super Bowl" or "The MLB World Series" or "the PGA's Masters Where We're All Just Kind of Hoping Tiger Finally Gets Off The Schneid One Of These Days".

Book Review - Stars and Strikes

For the readers out there, my review of Dan Epstein's rollicking tome of baseball in 1976 - complete with Joe Torre sucker-punching Lynn McGlothen, bat-throwing, bird-flipping, shorts-wearing, brawling and a million other memories from the good ol' days - is now live over at Sleeping Hedgehog. 

Check out the review. Then check out the book. It's a good 'un. 

Great Moments In Radio Tags, NBA Draft Division

"The NBA Draft is on Thursday. Every discussion could make or break your team."

Err, no. The thing the discussions are about, like if the Sixers should decide to trade all their picks for Kevin Love, who promptly has a myocardial infarction while eating his first cheesesteak at Jim's and is out for the year, after which he leaves in free agency? That could make or break the team. The discussions on ESPN? Not so much.

But thanks for asking.

LeBron's Decision Is Wrong (Whatever It Is)

Here is the one thing we know for certain about LeBron James' next move: it will be savaged.

• If he elects to stay in Miami and gun for another championship, he'll be pilloried for staying with a past-its-prime core and taking the easy way out.
• If he elects to opt out, stay in Miami for less money in order to facilitate the acquisition of more talent so that he can take another run or three at a championship, he's buying his rings and how dare the players manipulate the system to have a better chance to win.
• If he opts out of his contract, as is his right (see, it's right there in the contract) and goes to LA, then he's just a publicity hound.

Great Moments In Sports Talk Radio: Playbookgateghazi

Last night, on the Sedano and Stink show on ESPN radio, co-host Jorge Sedano asked a question: Why do we make such a big deal out of this stuff?

The stuff he was referring to was NFL-related, namely the "revelation" from new Browns coach and former Jets assistant Mike Pettine that his former boss, Jets coach and professional loose cannon Rex Ryan, had put his team at a disadvantage by handing a copy of the defensive playbook to Alabama coach Nick Saban. Saban, according to the narrative, then turned around and gave the book to his good buddy, Wesleyan alum Bill Belichick, which led to Patriots QB Tom Brady good-naturedly taunting Jets folk at Wes Welker's wedding that he had access to the Jets' playbook. Pettine told this story to make himself look good, Ryan responded by saying that Pettine's a self-serving jackass, and the whole thing has simmered along nicely as a cross between a telenovela and two third graders having a recess slap fight.

Tony Gwynn, RIP

Right about now, you're probably reading a lot about the late Tony Gwynn.

You're reading personal reminiscences of what it was like to talk with Mr. Gwynn, who by all accounts was an exceedingly kind gentleman who was always generous with his time. You're reading machine-gun fire bursts of stats - .344 career BA with the bases loaded, never struck out against Greg Maddux, 15 All Star teams - to demonstrate his greatness, because ever first-ballot Hall of Famers who get 97.5% of the vote going in get second guessed in this day and age. You're hearing how Gwynn basically invented the use of video to help hitters analyze their swings. You're getting links to clips of him talking with Ted Williams.

None of which you will get here.

Springer Spranger Sproinger

Earlier this year, the Houston Astros were pilloried for keeping uber-talented uber-prospect George Springer down in AAA while their outfield was patrolled by a bunch of guys the Toledo Mud Hens had said. "enh, no thanks" to. This was, of course, in order to manipulate Springer's service time past the fuzzy "super two" deadline, making sure that the team got an extra season of control before he could head off into free agency. For all the team's floppy denials, it was pretty obvious that they were willing to let their major league outfield rot in order to ensure that Springer, once up, would be patrolling it for as long as possible, to the point where it looked like they tried to leverage the kid with a "sign this contract that buys out some of your arbitration/free agency years or you're going to stay in the minors with your little dog too" deal. 

Springer didn't sign, as the contract was a bad deal for him. He stayed in the minors. And the commentators howled.

They Put A What Where?

Via Screamer, there's word that the pitch at the World Cup stadium in Manaus, Brazil, is in bad shape ahead of Saturday's first game.

Which, of course, once again raises the question "They put a World Cup stadium in Manaus?"

Reasons To Hate Every Team In The World Cup

Generally, it's easy to figure out who to root for in the World Cup (Note: all right-thinking humans should be rooting for a meteor to hit Sepp Blatter). You default to the country you're from if they're playing, and if they're not, you either go for cool jerseys or someone your native land hasn't been at war with too recently. Alternately, if you're a wacky hipster type intent on letting the world know you know SO much about soccer despite  being American and it being one of those weird "sportsball" things, you pick Ecuador or Belgium. (Alternately-alternately, if you're a front-runner, you pick Brazil or Spain, and everyone who knows you secretly thinks you're a jerk.)

Harder, however, is figuring out which team to hate. There are 32, after all, and at least one of them's got to play the heel. Whether it's through blatant match fixing, blatant jerkwad play on the pitch, or just having weird nicknames, there's always a team that will set someone off. Here, then is a way to make up your mind - a list of reasons to hate every team in the Cup.

You're welcome.

Balls of Brass Bonanza

As per Field of Schemes, the city of Hartford, Connecticut (or at least its mayor) is prepping to spend something like $60M to lure a AA minor league baseball team to town. So far, so meh, right? I mean, Hartford couldn't hang on to the Whalers, but that was a long time ago, and besides, the Hartford Civic Center was a slightly worse place to see a hockey game than the Wesleyan student gym (trust me, I've been to both, and only one had a faint residual smell of elephant), but hey, a minor league baseball team? Why the heck not?

Well, the big reason is that the team they're going after currently resides in the far-away land of New Britain, Connecticut.

Philling Out

This is why the New York Knicks can't have nice things.

Which is not to say having Derek Fisher as your coach isn't a nice thing. We honestly have no idea if having Derek Fisher as your coach is a nice thing or not, because Derek Fisher has never been a coach before, just the same what Phil Jackson has never been a front office executive and grand poobah before. It is entirely possible that either or both of those moves could work out fabulously. 

If Supervillains Owned Sports Teams...

Over at Sports On Earth, the estimable Mike Tanier did a piece this week on what would happen if various superheroes (and Richie Rich, the miserable little son of a gun) were somehow motivated to purchase sports teams. Tanier, whose writing on the NFL has a rare combination of wit, grace and insight, clearly knows and loves comics, and he managed to work a Fin Fang Foom reference into the article, so, nothing to complain about here.

But.

Let’s think for a minute about what we know about sports owners. Do guys like Zygi Wilf really qualify as superheroes, or are they on the opposite side of that equation? Is sticking a city on the hook for $2B for a new stadium the work of a selfless hero, or a masterful manipulator? In short, aren’t an awful lot of team owners really much more like supervillains? And if that’s the case, which villains would potentially invest in sports teams?

Conscious Uncoupling of the Five Rings

In the end, the thing escaped Game of Thrones character Vladimir Putin might be best remembered for is killing the Winter Olympics. In the wake of the Sochi games, which cost a staggering $51B dollars to put on, competitors for for future hosting opportunities are looking at the bottom line and saying "ennnh, maybe we'll make a run at the World Cup of Roller Derby instead." And without a steady line of sites lined up to wine, dine, and *cough cough line the pockets of cough cough Salt Lake City cough cough* work with the IOC, the Winter Olympics could run out of places to play sooner rather than later.

(Alternately, climate change could take care of that, too - the last few games have featured embarrassing shortages of things like "snow".)

Draft Night For Baseball

I'm not normally a draftnik kind of guy. I think the fact that Mel Kiper Jr. has made a career out of being a "draft guru" is a sign that our civilization is doomed. I think middle-aged men making a bunch of athletic 22 year olds stand around in their skivvies while their measurables get read out is deeply creepy. I think the fact that we have turned roll calls and glorified bingo (in the case of the NBA lottery) into television "events" is a sad, sad thing, especially in a world where your average Community episode had more crew members than viewers.

That being said, I watched a good chunk of the MLB first year player draft tonight. The telecast was largely crisp, the analysis of the players was largely free of Harold Reynolds, and the pace was good - four minutes or so between first round picks, one minute per pick thereafter. Once the first round ended and Bud Selig stepped away from the mike, teams started sending up former players to announce their picks, leading to some great intentional comedy - cue the mighty Ferguson Jenkins of the Cubs - and some great unintentional comedy as well. 

Your Morning Linkage

Because Mike Tanier finds the intersection of sports nerd and comics nerd and nails it.

Because I Want Soccer Fans To Hate Me

My rooting interests in the World Cup are a lot like my rooting interests in the NCAA tournament, whereby family rooting interests aside (my 11 year old nephew is a stone Duke fan, and so it is unseemly for Uncle Rich to be doing cartwheels when Mercer knocks them off), I root for the weird schools. 

Days of Future Passed Balls

"Caught with the help of Mikael Franco"

One of the great things about watching minor league baseball is that it sometimes gives you a glimpse of the future. You get to see rising stars perfect their craft up close and personal. Over the years, going to Durham Bulls and Carolina Mudcats games has offered looks at David Price, Will Myers, Desmond Jennings, Francisco Lindor, Yonder Alonso, BJ Upton and many more.

One of the terrible things about minor league baseball is that it sometimes gives you a glimpse of the future, and the future looks like the Sentinel-infested hellscape of the latest X-Men movie.

Ballmer Baller

The best thing possible happened for the NBA Thursday*. former Microsoft CEO and billionaire Steve Ballmer apparently won the bidding for the Los Angeles Clippers, which the league wishes extracted from the palsied, racist claw of owner Donald Sterling, with an all-cash offer of roughly $2B dollars. Sterling, who has the chutzpah to demand the league pay his capital gains tax on an investment that went from $13M to $2B, makes out like a bandit, in that he will still clear somewhere north of a billion dollars when this is all over.

For the Clippers. The team that could not live without Michael Olowokandi. Let that sink in for a minute.

Fiscal Responsibility, Cobb County Style

Never let it be said that baseball let the other sports push it around when it came time to grab the stupid share of the headlines.

At a moment when the season is in full swing, when a guy has hit 16 home runs in a month for the first place Toronto Blue Jays (think about that for a minute), when we've got tight races and rising stars like George Springer and the ever-entertaining Yasiel Puig show is on every night, the Atlanta Braves have to go and jam their spikes in their collective mouth.
Mind you, you can't really blame them. The prospect of getting a couple of hundred million dollars in public money for a poorly thought out stadium to be planted at one of the worst intersections for traffic in the United States where the Braves' financial obligations are, if you read the fine print, kind of more of a suggestion, well, that would make anyone giddy.

Feeling Minnesota

In the other football news last Tuesday, the NFL awarded the 2018 Super Bowl to Minnesota. Apparently the stiffest competition came from Indianapolis, which meant that the owner who got four felony charges knocked down to two misdemeanors got beat out by the one who's already had a judge call him a racketeer.

On Personal Responsibility, the NFL, and Getting Screwed Over

In the wake of the announcement of the lawsuit against the NFL, it's become popular for ESPN's in-house ex-player contingent to dismiss the suit's claimants as, essentially, whiny babies. The meme, stated memorably by Mark Schlereth, is that a player should take responsibility for what was done to him while he played, and by suing, these guys are trying to have their cake and eat it, too.

Great Moments In Mood-Swinging Sports Journalism

And this is why I love NBA journalism:

Before game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals:

"The Pacers are terrible. They're going to get run right out of the gym. I don't know why the Heat even have to bother playing the games. Also, Pacers coach Frank Voepel is a dummy, and Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is a genius."

Your Handy Dandy Guide to Donald Sterling's First Amendment Rights

And here's a reminder for all you budding constitutional law scholars out there:

Donald Sterling's banishment from the NBA is not a First Amendment issue. Mr. Sterling is not being prosecuted by any government agency for his words, as ill-chosen, hateful, embarrassing or stupid as they might have been. He is free to say as many dumb-ass racist things as he'd like, without fear that they will land him in jail. Ergo, his First Amendment rights are not being infringed.

It's Schafer Time. Or Maybe Not.

Sometimes, the funny stuff that happens in baseball never makes SportsCenter.
Take, for example, the sad case of Braves reserve outfielder Jordan Schafer. A former top prospect who blazed his way out of the Braves organization (and yes, that means exactly what you think it means) before returning as a surprisingly useful spare part last year, Mr. Schafer is not entirely happy with his role.

On Michael Sam and Toughness

The word we hear used more often than nearly other when talking about the NFL is "toughness". Coaches want players with toughness. Announcers love guys who show toughness, because "tough" players do things like break tackles, and that can be shown again and again in slo-mo to fill air time. Analysts praise guys for their toughness, because it's a great way to say a nice thing about a guy even if there is nothing else to say. Fans fall in love with players because of their toughness, because, hey, it's easier to imagine yourself as the not-as-talented-guy-who-nevertheless-gives-his-all-and-somehow-makes-the-team than as guy-with-star-level-talent-you-demonstrably-don't have.

11 Things We Learned From The NFL Draft

We won't know who "won" or "lost" the NFL draft for years. It kind of takes that long for players to develop, or not. We can, however, take certain things away that are strictly a result of the data provided by the draft, and that on-field production (or the eventual lack thereof) will have nothing to do with. 

To wit:

It Was A Really Thick Sandwich

Baseball injuries are the best.

Case in point: Matt Cain, starting pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, just got himself put on the disabled list as a result of a - and I am not making this up - sandwich-related accident. Apparently Mr. Cain was making himself a snack in the clubhouse before his start and decided to go all Top Chef on that sucker, because he sliced a finger open trying to cut it into "fancy little triangles".

NBA First Round Surprises

Do you remember when the 1st round of the NBA playoffs were all about the upsets? When Indiana was about to go down to Atlanta because they hadn't played well since trading for Evan Turner, and Oklahoma City was about to get knocked out by Memphis, and #1 overall seed San Antonio was on the ropes against 8 seed Dallas, and those veteran Nets everyone was supposed to be afraid of were getting pushed around by the Raptors? Remember how commentators were stone-facedly telling us that 3 of the 4 serious contenders for the title were likely to go down in that first round (which, incidentally, lasted longer than a Phillip Glass improv session, and probably contributed to the favorites' comebacks by allowing the more veteran teams to rest and recover).

Yeah. About that.

Never mind.

Feeling the Draft

This year, in an attempt to tear American families apart, the NFL pushed its annual player draft back two weeks to Mother's Day weekend. The logic, apparently, was that two more weeks of buildup to the draft would be two more weeks of people talking about football and doing mock drafts (replacing two weeks after the draft with everyone talking football and doing draft report cards, equally erroneous).  So far, the only apparent difference is that roughly 5% of the on-air time that used to be spent wondering if Jacksonville was going to take a left tackle you'd never heard of with their first pick is now spent wondering about the wisdom of that additional two week buffer.

So in order to relieve you of what must be the unbearable tension of waiting for the NFL draft - which, it must be said, is a glorified roll call that now extends over 3 days - here is the official Sportsthodoxy guide to what's about to happen:

Minus Several Million For Good Thinking

I remember going to a Carolina Mudcats game back in the day when Michael Pineda hit triple digits on the Five County Stadium radar gun. His first warmup pitch - he was with the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx in those days - hit the catcher's mitt with a sound like shotgun being fired. People stopped what they were doing, all around that chatty, friendly little ballpark. People turned. People listened as much as they watched. And the numbers from the radar gun showed 100, 102, 99, 100, 101.

The Mudcats, who were not what you'd call an offensive juggernaut at the best of times during that 2010 season, were helpless. And I walked away from that game thinking I'd seen a future star.

Facts In The Case Concerning D. Sterling

So.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, staring down the barrel of a playoff boycott, pulled the trigger on Clippers owner and inveterate dirtbag of long standing Donald Sterling. Eager to lap the punishment MLB laid on Marge Schott back in the day, Silver has fined Sterling $2.5M (pocket change to a guy worth 1.9 billion or so), suspended him permanently, and announced plans to force Sterling to sell the team. It's clear, it's clean, and it's a win for those of us who prefer our sports without overt and gnarly racism of the sort Sterling has been spouting for years. Never mind that, as Dave D'Alessandro pointed out, Sterling is hardly the only charmer among NBA owners, or that the NBA has for years been aware of exactly what sort of creature Sterling is and chose to hold its collective nose and do business with him as part of the cartel anyway. Bomani Jones has already laid down the best word on that subject.

Baseball-English Translation Guide, Part 2

• "He just doesn't know how to win" - his team didn't score any runs while he was pitching.
• "What's important is that everyone in the bullpen knows their role" - the closer is simultaneously the most expensive and the worst pitcher out there, but even he can generally get three outs without melting down too often.
• "He's hitting the ball hard but right at people" - Other teams have scouting reports and position their fielders accordingly.
• "He's much less effective working from the stretch" - because that's what he does when there are runners on, as opposed to when the bases are empty
• "RBIs are much more important than getting on base" - The commentator has not yet figured out that the runs that get batted in are the result of someone getting on base.
• "Guys who take a lot of walks clog the bases" - Because aesthetically speaking, the clean, empty expanse of a base with no one on it is much more pleasing
• "He really wanted that pitch" - Because it was a foot and a half outside
• "The batter wants to know where that pitch was" - Because it wasn't over the plate
• "Should be an easy play for the left fielder" - But won't be, because this guy takes worse routes to the ball than Ponce De Leon
• "Struggling to find himself at the plate" - The Pointer Sisters have had a hit more recently than this guy
• "Still has to earn back the fans' trust" - this guy got caught using PEDs and everyone outside his team's home town hates him. The hometown fans, on the other hand, think he's the greatest thing since microbrews at ballparks, at least as long as he keeps producing. If he's ever traded or signs elsewhere as a free agent, his former hometown fans will suddenly decide en masse that he's a bum, while the new hometown fans will embrace him. 
• "He's a different hitter on the road" - And by different, we mean "worse"

Who The Good Guys Are

Once upon a time, everybody hated Bryce Harper. They hated him because he was cocky and arrogant and disrespectful (or possibly a 17 year old kid who had been told most of his life he was a transcendent talent and who was under an intense media spotlight from the age when it became possible for him to grow hair in awkward places).

This lasted for a while, until suddenly an idiot political columnist had a new idea: Bryce Harper, who didn't do underaged drinking and who went all-out on every play, even when that meant crashing into walls, was no longer Everything Wrong With Baseball.

Baseball to English Translation Guide, Part 1

Now that baseball season is underway, we here at Sportsthodoxy felt it would be a public service to translate some of the more obscure phrases in Baseballese into English for our readers. For example:

• "This team's got great chemistry" - Nobody's punched anyone over what music gets played in the locker room. Yet.

Must-Read x3

Here are three excellent pieces of long-form sportswriting that you should read.

• This one, over at SBNation, explores the world of an SEC football "bagman", who slips kids and families cash in exchange for results on the field. 
• This one, from Deadspin, is written by a man who used to manage boxers - and fix matches.
• This one, at ESPN, talks about what Yasiel Puig went through - and is still going through - in order to get to the US to play baseball. 

They are all sobering reminders that the machinery of big-time sports is lubricated, not just in sweat, but in money and blood, and that the blood can be shed unwillingly. Never mind stadium shenanigans or any of the other stuff we usually yell about here; all three of these are about what it takes to keep our sports entertainment flowing. 

Enjoy the reads. 

Under Mis-Standings

You want to know why not a ton of people get that into hockey's regular season? It's because you look at the standings and the NHL looks like a second grade spelling be where everyone's rewarded for participation.

Rauuuuuul

Raul Ibanez has 2000 more hits than you do.

Shark, Tanked

So it's Jeff Samardzija's turn to be That Guy.

You know That Guy. The pitcher who does a good job every time out there, but whose team suddenly decides that baseball bats are leading cause of deforestation and refuses to hit? The guy who can't buy a win for love or money, no matter how well he pitches? The guy who, for whatever reason, will have ten thousand fantasy baseball owners shaking their tiny fists, and tiny-minded commentators saying gravely "well, he just doesn't know how to win."
This year, the Shark has pitched 3 times. He has an ERA of 1.29. Last night, he went seven, allowing one run on six hits with no walks. He left with a 2 run lead, which the bullpen promptly coughed up. 

One Thumb Ligament Equals Two Feet

Everybody repeat it with me: headfirst slides into first base are dumb.

The latest casualty? Josh Hamilton, who ripped up his thumb's internal workings and will be out a couple of months as a result. This is not a new thing for Hamilton, who is making something of a second career out of doing dumb things early in the season that get him hurt, but it's a bad thing for the Angels, who were enjoying his small sample size return to form in hopes that he'd help them return to relevance.

Instead, this.

Why UMass Was Rooting For a Meteor

There was one thing guaranteed in last night's UConn-Kentucky championship game: UMass fans were going to feel screwed regardless. 

Why?

The Wisdom of the Aged, Fantasy Baseball Edition

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2014 Jim Vatcher Memorial League participants.
Not pictured: The guy smart enough not to show up for the game

As noted in this space last year, I play fantasy baseball. More specifically, I've been playing fantasy baseball with largely the same unlikely bunch of guys for a very long time; to wit, we just had our 24th annual draft.

In other words, I have coworkers younger than my fantasy baseball league. Which is exactly the sort of thing you say around the table at your 24th annual draft if you want everyone there to suddenly feel very old. 

Opening Night at the DBAP

"You know, we could stay on this mound and not have to go back to Gwinnett"

Last year, opening night at the Rogers Centre for the Blue Jays. This year, opening night at the refurbished Durham Bulls Athletic Park for the Bulls and Gwinnett Braves. Oddly enough, the number of passed balls was roughly the same, even without R.A. Dickey on the mound; Christian Bethancourt did a passable impression of J.P. Arencibia, which had him chasing baseballs all night.

Great Moments In Sports Talk Radio: 76ers Division

Overheard on ESPN radio yesterday: a debate over whether the Philadelphia 76ers, as currently constituted, could beat any of the Final Four teams in this year's NCAA tournament. And this was an actual debate.

Fun Times in DC

When Terrell Owens signed with the Dallas Cowboys, I was walking through DFW Airport. The TV monitors all over the terminal announced the news, and the locals went crazy, and I stood there quietly by the Dickey's BBQ Pit, giggling, because as an Eagles fan, I knew exactly what sort of three -trombone-down-a-blind-alley pileup that was likely to turn into. 

Now, a few years on. History repeats itself. Another mercurial ex-Eagles receiver, DeSean Jackson, has signed with a division rival. And again, the instinct is to giggle.

April Fools

We were going to do an elaborate April Fool's Day post, but then yesterday:

• Cliff Lee gave up 8 runs and still got the win.
• The Brewers switched closers during the first game of the season
• Don Baylor got seriously injured catching the ceremonial first pitch at last night's Mariners-Angels game
• The two time defending AL West champion A's lost their 10th straight opener
• Billy Hamilton got the golden sombrero
• Cubs-Pirates was scoreless until the 10th inning
• Ryan Braun got a standing ovation from Milwaukee fans
• Red Sox reporters - well, Dan Shaughnessy - panicked.

And really, there's nothing we can come up with to top any of that.

Things We Think We Think About the 2014 Baseball Season

"I'm trying to warn you about Seattle's roster construction, kid."

With Opening Day upon us (not counting proto-opening day, which happened in Australia and which we can only imagine looked like one long Outback Steakhouse commercial up to the moment when Yasiel Puig jumps into a pool to celebrate a victory and gets bitten by a blue-ringed octopus), it is generally time for baseball writers - and, more importantly, writers who know nothing about baseball but feel compelled to comment and/or vote for the Hall of Fame - to unlimber their trusty typewriters and write lengthy pieces previewing the season. We're talking predictions, scouting reports on every team, you name it, all at great length and all likely to be rendered irrelevant by the next injury report.

Seriously. Clayton Kershaw signs gazillion dollar contract, gets hurt. Who saw that coming?
But here at Sportsthodoxy, we're not going to do that. Instead, we're going to tell you what we think will be interesting. Because, frankly, that other stuff is way too much work, and we're much more into the sorts of opinions you develop over a Foothills IPA sitting in the seventh row at a Durham Bulls game.

That being said, we think:

• That it's going to be Tampa Bay and the Dodgers in the World Series, largely because Detroit seems intent on shooting itself in the foot and there's no way those guys in Boston pull off two in a row. We'd say it would be the Nationals in the NL, except we can't see anyone or anything associated with our nation's capital actually doing anything.

D-Jax Gone

We are never going to know all of the reasoning behind why the Eagles released wide receiver DeSean Jackson. On the surface, it seems like a really dumb move. Jackson was signed for three more years, he was in the prime of his career, and he'd just put up stellar numbers in new coach Chip Kelly's offense.

Kelly's offense is predicated on doing things really fast. Jackson is, for the record, really, really fast.

DAYTON DAYTON DAYTON DAYTON DAYTON!

My initial instinct was just to write DAYTON DAYTON DAYTON DAYTON about five hundred times, claim I'd hit word count, and hit publish.

But that would be wrong. Or at least, a little eerily reminiscent of The Shining.
So, let us take a moment, and some verbs, to consider the University of Dayton, which has advanced to the Elite 8 when nobody thought they'd be in the Big Dance to begin with.

DAYTON DAYTON DAYTON DAYTON ahem. Excuse me.

Abreu Into the Sunset

In about ten years, assuming that NASA study is incorrect and society hasn't collapsed into a Mad Max-style hellscape, we'll be talking about Bobby Abreu the way baseball statheads now talk about Tim Raines or Bobby Grich or Dewey Evans. He'll be the guy whose numbers don't scream "HALL OF FAME" at first look, but when you look at them more closely, you start realizing how good he was, and for how long.

And then you realize that there's no way in hell he's getting into Cooperstown, and you write angry tweets or something with the hashtag #Abreu4TheHall, which make you feel better but don't get him any closer to upstate New York.

But I digress.

O-and-Seventy-Six-er

I suppose I should wait to write this until after the 76ers have tied the record for longest losing streak in NBA history - and rest assured, they will. 30th in points allowed, 20th in points scored, bereft of the vast majority of experienced players they started the season with, they're simply awful.

8 Things We Will See Moving Into The Sweet 16

• There are 2 AAC teams still alive in the tournament: UConn and Louisville. There is one ACC team: Virginia. Look for ACC fans to start pre-emptively claiming Louisville as one of their own, even though the Cardinals don't jump conferences until next year.
• Roughly 98% of the locals grousing about how all of the NC Triangle teams have been bounced from the tournament will mention Duke and Carolina. Some will mention NC State. Almost none will mention North Carolina Central, which, at 28-6, had the best record of any of the bunch.

Random NCAA Tournament Thoughts So Far...

A few stray observations from the tournament so far...

• A 5 seed is code for "you were in the Top 10 earlier in the year but you're playing like crap now".

Does This Spring Training Storyline Matter, Round 2

Storyline: Manny Ramirez wants to play again.
Does It Matter?: No
Why?:Because there are a ton of aging DH types floating around AAA who'll give you more production than Manny at this point without the injury risk or the media circus. Dan Johnson, I'm looking at you.

Does This Spring Training Storyline Matter, Round 1

And it's time to play every baseball fan's fifth-favorite spring training related game (behind Will This Guy Help My Fantasy Team?, Is The Rookie I Never Heard Of Hitting .545 This Spring For Real, Oh Crap What's A-Rod Going To Say Next? and Whatever Happened To Jayson Stark's Epic 'Stache?), Does This Spring Training Storyline Actually Matter? Let's begin!

Storyline: The Braves Just Signed Ervin Santana
Does It Matter?: Yes
Why?: Because three-fifths of the Braves' proposed starting rotation came down with injuries this spring, and it's kind of hard to compete with a two man rotation. With two of their top five starters hoping to get a group rate discount on Tommy John surgery, the Braves went out and got the best pitcher left on the market because otherwise this season - which is one of the last seasons in which guys like Heyward, Simmons, and Freeman will be dirt-cheap - would have gone down the toilet. For the rest of us, it means we can stop hearing "Is the compensation pick hurting Santana's chance of signing?" The answer was, and always will be, yes.

Your Handy-Dandy SECOND Guide to NCAA Tournament Jargon

Last year, we published a guide to NCAA tournament jargon. As part of our ongoing outreach effort to educate, illuminate, and pre-write blog posts for GDC week, we are proud to present a further translation guide of bracketologist-to-English:

"A team no high seed wants to face" - A tournament team from a small (read: one-bid) conference that can play defense, shoot threes, and keep from turning the ball over. Teams like this have a habit of getting hot just often enough to send Kansas home in the first round once every five years; as such, this has become shorthand for "team that has a slim chance of pulling an upset so please watch the first-round games from Dayton". No team with this designation has ever gotten higher than a 13 seed.

Things We Learned About the ACC During The Conference Tournament

Incontrovertible truths demonstrated on the hardwood of Greensboro:

The way to beat NC State is to beat holy hell out of T.J. Warren. If Warren and someone else are scoring, the Pack is damn hard to beat. If Warren alone is scoring, they're in the game. If he's not scoring and nobody else is, they're done.  Duke understood this, which is why Warren was eating hardwood for most of today's semifinal. And nobody else really stepped up to make them pay for it.

Guest Post: How To Win A Large Portion Of A Billion Dollars

Every so often we turn the mike over to someone else, in part because we welcome other perspectives and ideas, and in part because anything anybody else writes is word count that we don't have to generate.

In that vein, we're pleased to welcome a contribution from game designer Rob Newns, who offers an interesting take on Warren Buffet's offer to pay a billion dollars to anyone getting a perfect bracket in this year's NCAA tournament. 

Helmetful of Hollow

That's how it ends for Steve Smith in Carolina.

With rumors the Panthers were trying to trade him, then with speculation, then with an unceremonious release. After that, the spin and the damage control, as GM Dave Gettleman said lots of nice things about the guy he'd just axed while tactfully not alluding to declining production, a mercurial personality, a complicated injury history, a large paycheck and worries that Smith took up too much of the locker room oxygen that's needed for the care and feeding of Cam Newton. Smith, for his part, hinted that he would have been happy to take a reduced role, said nice things about the team, showed himself off for new teams and only sideswiped Gettleman a few times in various interviews. The media, dutifully, lapped it all up as the outrage - how could they release STEVE SMITH - built in Charlotte. The tributes to his character and leadership, his production and his dedication to the team and area, all of them flowed freely. References to the multiple teammates he cold-cocked? Not so much.

On Getting Overexcited About NFL Free Agency

Here's the sad truth:

For all the frenzy surrounding it, there's very little your favorite NFL team can do in free agency to make any kind of difference. This is because free agency, as the NFL defines it, stinks. And by "stinks", I mean that it is so heavily slanted toward preserving the sanctity of owners' pocketbooks (and protecting them from their uncontrollable urge to spend like a drunken grandmother at Filene's the night before Hanukkah) that it does very little for either the players or the teams that it's supposed to benefit.

On The Exit Of The Turtle

For the past few weeks, you could hear it building.

All the ACC folk, cheerfully circling Sunday's Virginia-Maryland tilt at the end of the ACC regular season. Anticipating with pleasure the thought of a resurgent Virginia taking Maryland to task for the grievous sin of leaving the conference. Hoping out loud that the Terps' last regular season game would be a whupping of epic proportions, with league champion Virginia standing in for Duke and Carolina to do the honors. That Maryland would be ushered out of the league it was abandoning with an epic loss.

Heart to Heart

In the NHL preseason, Rich Peverly of the Dallas Stars underwent a procedure to address an irregular heartbeat.  Medical professionals monitored his health throughout the season.  It wasn't enough.  Less than a minute after finishing a shift 6 minutes into tonight's game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, he collapsed on the Stars' bench, and the ensuing emergency and concern caused the game to be called (it's postponed until an as yet unscheduled time).  For the record, he is alive and as well as can be expected in this situation.  When he came to and was able to talk to Stars' coach Lindy Ruff, he asked about the progress of the game.  You can't say for sure that there was no damage, but it's a good sign, I think.

Short term, this game was postponed, and Dallas' game tomorrow against St. Louis may also be postponed.  I'm not sure about tomorrow, but today, anyone suggesting any other course of action is wrong.  This impacts fans, and the teams, but those things are manageable.

The medium term repercussions are obvious.  Peverly will be out for some time to recover and determine his future with regards to hockey.  He's not a prolific scorer, but he has 30 points in the season, that's important.  Dallas' players will have to manage their emotional state, after experiencing an event like this.  Game schedules will have to be rearranged.

Long term, the NHL and the organizations involved in this come out smelling like roses.  He survived, with most if not all of his faculties intact.  His wife was present at the arena or at least able to get to the hospital with him.  The management of this medical emergency couldn't have been better, and the NHL is acknowledging the concern of the fans, both for Peverly as a person and for the more business oriented side of things.  I reserve judgement on how they will handle the people who came to see a game and only got just over 6 minutes of hockey.  But I think they'll do the right thing, for once.

Phil-Jax and the Terrible, Horrible No Good Owner

As of the writing of this post, Phil Jackson has not yet accepted an offered post with the New York Knickerbockers basketball organization.

To this dawdling, which we can assume is due to A)Phil's desire to join the Lakers instead B)Phil's reluctance to work for megalomaniacal meatball-faced wannabe bluesman James Dolan and C)the fact that the Knicks are an endless train wreck that, due to cap considerations, will continue to unfold in slow motion for the next several years, we can only say: please, Phil, take the job.

Book Review: The Stark Truth

When I was growing up in Philadelphia, Jayson Stark was my favorite sportswriter, and not just because he got Dallas Green to famously wear a shirt that read "#$%@ YOU JAYSON" on it to a post game presser. He was funny and he was quick and he had a seemingly magical talent for pulling out rare and wacky tidbits from baseball action that made you realize exactly how weird and unique and wonderful the Mickey Morandini unassisted triple play (or whatever other moment you choose) actually was. 

Dr. Frank Jobe, RIP

"An army travels on its stomach" is a pithy way of saying that logistics are important. The visible part of any enterprise is supported by a much larger structure of people doing incredibly vital jobs, without which the shiny stuff never happens. Watch a movie's credits; the drivers and key grips and effects artists outnumber the "stars" by a couple of orders of magnitude, and without their efforts, the damn thing just doesn't happen. 

And the same goes for sports teams. There's an entire structure underpinning the nine guys standing on a baseball diamond at any given moment. There's coaches, and clubhouse staff and grounds crew and traveling secretaries and bus drivers and ticket takers and a million other folks.

Ian Kinsler's Heel Turn

There's an important lesson for Ian Kinsler in all this:

Don't act like a complete jackass unless the local media really, really loves you.

Bruce Deserves Better

Follow me! Follow me to the Arena Football League!

All the jokes that need to be made about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' new uniforms have already been made.

Alarm clock numbers? Olbermann got it.

On Being a Derek Jeter Hater

Here's the thing about hating Derek Jeter:

People who love Derek Jeter - and I mean the ones who really, really love Derek Jeter - are like the people who get fired up every year around Thanksgiving about the perceived "War on Christmas". Never mind that If you look around, 90% of all stores are thoroughly bedecked in tinsel, that the Christmas carol-only radio stations have gone on the air, that damn near everything after the Detroit Lions give their annual feeble Thanksgiving effort is solid Christmas for a solid month. The folks who are convinced there's a War on Christmas will dig up the fact that someone in South Podunk, North Dakota said "Happy Holidays" to a Salvation Army Santa and use that as evidence that everyone in the world is conspiring to totally Grinch up the holiday. 
The Jeterphiles are like that. No matter how much praise gets heaped on The Captain, it's never enough. And anything that isn't pure, unadulterated praise is by necessity deepest, foulest vitriol. "WHY DO YOU HATE EVERYTHING THAT IS GOOD AND TRUE IN BASEBALL?" they howl.
And the answer is, we don't. We hate you.

On Why The Draft Wheel Is A Very Bad Idea

As we thunder down the homestretch of the NBA season, the grim specter of "tanking" has rarely been more visible. The Philadelphia 76ers, who traded away pretty much every veteran with a pulse for spare parts and 2nd round draft picks (and then released or bought out those spare parts) have lost roughly 57 games in a row and are so bad that they're literally falling down on the court. They are doing this - the trading, not the falling down - in the interest of getting their hands on as many ping pong balls in the draft lottery as possible, in hopes of adding a superstar through the draft to match with this year's haul of Michael Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel.

Bold Prediction: In 3 Years, Johnny Manziel Will Probably Be A Biped

Heard on the radio today: an earnest call-in discussion over what Johnny Manziel is going to turn into over the next three years. Sadly, none of the callers went with my guesses, which went A)a pumpkin B)a giant crime-fighting robot from the planet Cybertron or C)The Yellow King, and instead they droned on about how they knew Manziel had "it" on one hand, and how he was going to flame out immediately on the other.

The Boeheim Freakout, Reconsidered

One of the more interesting tropes I've come across recently is the notion that Jim Boeheim's freakout against Duke was a result of him being unable to handle the unfamiliar pressure of Cameron Indoor Stadium. Presumably it was this, and not an iffy blocking call, that caused Boeheim to go completely monkey @#$#nuts all over the refs while performing a half-Magic Mike.

To which, after due consideration, I can only say "nope".

By God Spring Training By God

So.
Spring training games have started. Baseball is officially, finally a thing.

And this happens:

10 Things We Learned About Hockey At Sochi

1. Going into the Olympics, people figured the US men's team was maybe the 3rd-4th best, with a puncher's chance of bringing home gold. Halfway through, after the US beat up on the international hockey equivalent of Louisiana-Monroe and got a lucky break against Russia, they were the favorite for gold. They ran into some teams that could play defense and ended up 4th, which is pretty much A)the story of U of Miami's football season and B)what we all expected in the first place. And yet, somehow this has become a tremendous disappointment. Perspective. It ain't what it used to be.

Baseball and True Detective: A Theory

As of this writing, the internet is cheerfully chewing on its own innards trying to anticipate the twists and turns of the last two episodes of True Detective. We here at Sportsthodoxy are big fans of the show, and as at least one of us is professionally dipped into conspiracy theory on a regular basis (and another is actually in politics), we thought it appropriate to unveil our own take on things.

Your Handy-Dandy Guide To The New Rules About Blocking The Plate In Baseball

Because we need more of this...

Why Is Everyone Mad?
Baseball, in conjunction with the players' union, has taken the unprecedented step of writing new rules that suggest umpires enforce the existing rules to prevent players from suddenly turning a play at the plate into the Seven Nations Rugby Championship. Old-school purists have decided that this means that they are wussifying the game, because there is no play more worth cherishing in baseball history than the All-Star Game collision where Pete Rose ruined Ray Fosse's career.

On Distractions

We're going to take the low hanging fruit  here, but someone's got to do it.

In the short span of time since University of Missouri defensive end Michael Sam announced that he was gay, we've had the following NFL-related reports of, shall we say, socially unacceptable behavior.

Whose House? Arne Duncan's House

If you are a national sports talk radio host and you are filling a segment - or multiple segments - with an extended kvetch over how the "celebrities" at the NBA All Star Weekend Celebrity Basketball Game aren't big enough celebrities for you to truly appreciate the event, your employers (who are in the entertainment business and thus presumably know something about how this whole celebrity thing works) may want to take a second look at your qualifications.

On Basketball as a Winter Olympics Sport

To all the columnists suggesting that basketball be moved to the Winter Olympics because it's a "winter sport", we humbly respond with:

You're wrong. 

Proposed New Olympic Events

Because what Sochi really needs is more unsolicited advice...

Jeter Announces Retirement

We were going to say something about this earlier, but we missed it, probably because it went to our left.

#rimshot

Rebuilding the Cleveland Way

Cleveland Browns Front Office Org Chart

Here is the normal process for cleaning out a front office and hiring a coach in the NFL:

1. Fire everyone in the front office. If there are people in place you want to keep, don't fire them.
2. Hire the people you want for the available spots.
3. Once your front office is in place and set up to go forward, proceed with hiring a coach. This ensures that the coach you eventually hire is the guy your GM wants to be coaching the team, and whom presumably he can work with.
4. Do football-type things.

Sam's Club

There will be roughly ninety zillion gallons of pixel juice spilled over the next few days over the fact that former Missouri defensive end Michael Sam has come out as gay in advance of the NFL draft. 

No Smart Puns

If you are a grown man whose greatest joy in life is paying huge amounts of money for the privilege of taunting 20 year olds you don't know, then there is probably something wrong with you.

No, Marcus Smart shouldn't have shoved the so-called Texas Tech "Superfan" (and "Superfan" is awfully close to "SuperFund", but that's neither here nor there) when the guy said whatever he said to Smart at the end of the Oklahoma State - Texas Tech game. Smart will almost certainly be suspended, as well he should be - the line between performers and spectators is one that should remain inviolate.

The Whos Are Playing Where?

The Dread Dormammu Commands You To Get A Smoothie!

The name of an athletic team is intended to inspire. It is supposed to be an aspirational name, a name that can be chanted by throngs of devoted fans. It is supposed to be an aggressive name, a name that supporters will want to wear on their replica jerseys and t-shirts and hoodies and jackets, that they'll want to slap bumper stickers and tiny flags of on their cars. Think Lions, think Tigers, think Bears and Broncos and Seahawks and Predators. It is supposed to be, in a word, awesome.