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.