I Wasn't Going To Post About Peter King's Moronic, Sanctimonious Bullshit This Week, But Then I Saw This

Quote of the Week III

"You're good kids. Stay together. Trust each other and be good teammates to one another. I believe there is a championship in this room."

--Ernie Accorsi's prescient final words in his last address to the team as the Giants general manager last season. Those words come from Tom Callahan's revealing read, "The GM: The Inside Story of a Dream Job and the Nightmares That Go With It." Callahan e-mailed Friday to remind me of Accorsi's talk to his team, which I'd forgotten. But how valid it is this morning now that Accorsi's key draft gem, Eli Manning, has helped lead the G-Men to the Super Bowl. The Giants are young enough and good enough at enough important positions to continue challenging for championships.

The reason I despise Eli Manning has nothing to do with his struggles, or the fact that he plays for a New York team. The reason I despise him is because he is the whiniest little bitch on the face of the earth. After every unsuccessful passing play, the camera shows Manning performing some combination of pouting, throwing his hands in the air, and squinting like he can't figure out what's going on. He bitches at his receivers, or his running back, or his offensive line, or his coaches, or the referee.

The best example of his disagreeable nature, however, came way back on the day he was drafted. He actually had the gall to complain publicly about playing for the Chargers, who had the No. 1 overall pick and were planning on drafting him. He went so far as to insist that he wouldn't sign with them, thus forcing the Chargers to trade the No. 1 pick to the Giants so Manning could play for his team of choice. Needless to say, I delighted in the fact that Philip Rivers, whom the Chargers selected with the pick acquired from the Giants, became an above-average starting QB basically as soon as he started playing, while Manning, despite being handed the starting job much earlier than Rivers, was sucking it up for years and being carved up by the media in the very city in which he had insisted on playing.

What does all this have to do with Peter King's "Quote of the Week III"? Well, this little tidbit stood out to me:

But how valid it is this morning now that Accorsi's key draft gem, Eli Manning, has helped lead the G-Men to the Super Bowl.

Accorsi's "key draft gem" fell into his lap because the attention-whore refused to play in a beautiful city where everybody's more or less accepting of your performance. Accorsi's brilliant move was to think to himself, "Hmm, the consensus number 1 draft pick is begging to play for my team. Perhaps I should draft him."

I fucking hate Eli Manning.

Dumbass Game Show Contestants, Part 1

I beg forgiveness of those readers who came to this space expecting to see another slam of a stupid columnist of Peter, or perhaps Buster. I've elected to branch out a bit and blog about my other love besides sports: game shows.

First, a quick background. My love for game shows started at a very young age. My parents were too cheap for cable, and there weren't that many game shows on network TV back then: it was basically Family Feud, Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy. (I refuse to include the ! in Jeopardy; I see no reason for its inclusion. While game shows do put a hop in my step, I tend to find superfluous punctuation in show titles to be aggravating.) The Feud and Bob Barker were on weekday mornings, so I rarely got to see them. Your average kid would go out on snow days and build snowmen or get into snowball fights; I was parked in front of the tube, listening to Ray Combs crack wise and shouting out bids for the Showcase Showdown.

When we would visit my grandparents, who loved television far more than my parents and therefore had cable, it was game show heaven for me. Back then, there was a two- or three-hour block of game shows during the day on the USA Network. I don't recall exactly what they were - I recall Hollywood Squares, Scrabble, and Name That Tune, but there were definitely more.

Fast forward to about ten years ago, when we moved to Seattle and my parents, worried about subpar TV reception in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, did a 180 and purchased not just cable, but digital cable. Flipping through the channels, I stumbled across the Game Show Network, and that's when I knew that technology was unequivocally, undoubtedly a good thing. Since then, 95% of my non-sports TV watching has been the Game Show Network. When I got DVR in my apartment, I stockpiled over 50 episodes of Who Wants to be a Millionaire on the hard drive. Technology and game shows, coming together once again to make Joist a very happy TV watcher.

Anyway, from now on, I may use this space to showcase some of my favorite game show moments, specifically the ones that feature a contestant doing something particularly stupid. Our first entry comes to us from the game show Twenty-One, hosted by a wholly uncharismatic Maury Povich:

Maury: True or False: Before Mark McGwire broke the single-season home run record, it was held by Nolan Ryan.

Jason the Contestant: (Long pause) Um...I'm gonna say...false.

Maury: And you're correct. What took you so long? Nolan Ryan was a pitcher!

Jason: I know.

I'm sure you do.

Watch Out Buster, I'm Bored

Slow day at work, I resorted to reading a Buster Olney article. Now, I'm still bored, and I'm also 1.3% dumber than before. Bad choice.

Buster's "blog" (yes, ESPN.com's "blogs" require scare quotes, as they are "blogs" in name only) entry today proves that Peter Gammons is not the only writer ESPN.com does not edit. It also proves, once again, that Buster is a tool.

Because Santana is eligible for free agency after the 2008 season, neither the Red Sox nor the Yankees is willing to give up the boatload of young players that Smith really wanted for the two-time Cy Young Award winner, while paying Santana a $125-$150 million extension.

How good a writer do you have to be to know that it should be "are willing," not "is"? That shit only gets confusing when you have two singular alternatives that get lumped together in the writer's mind, leading to a mistake, or where one alternative is singular and the other is plural (and even a decent writer could, conceivably, forget the rule that the last one governs). But either "Red Sox" OR "Yankees" would be plural by itself (not "themselves" here, because I'm referring to the word, not the actual Yankees) -- so how could using both turn into a singular "is"? Would he EVER say "the Yankees is not willing"? Then why would he say "neither the Red Sox nor the Yankees is willing"? Okay, enough.

In fact, if you think of the game "Deal Or No Deal," any $750,000 deal is off the table, too. Smith only has what he regards as subpar offers on the table. We know this, because otherwise he would've pulled the trigger already...

WOW! Isn't it a good thing we have analysts like Buster to come up with such brilliant inferences. "If Smith had gotten an offer he wanted to take, he would have taken it." Again, WOW! My mind is completely blown. To smithereens, even. He goes on...

So if you are Smith, what do you do? Do you take a subpar deal? Or do you simply go to spring training and prepare to start the season with Santana?

Wait a second, Buster! All you showed was that Smith believed he was getting a "subpar" deal. Isn't the purpose of your article to provide your own opinion on what Smith should do? Instead, all you've done is assume Smith is right. So, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your answer to these questions is Santana "should" not be traded, which is of course only because he has not actually BEEN traded yet by the immaculate Smith...

If I was in Smith's shoes, I'd keep Santana. Because to trade him would be to forgo the opportunity to contend in 2008, when the Twins have a chance to be a good team, with Francisco Liriano returning, with Joe Nathan closing, with Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer and Delmon Young hitting in the middle of their lineup.

Oh, waddaya know, I was right. (As an aside, it should read "If I were in Smith's shoes..."). Of course, if Smith does end up trading Santana, it will be because he's determined that the offer was not "subpar," a determination that is automatically correct, and thus he would still not have done the wrong thing. What a luxury, nothing for the Twins can possibly go wrong here!

Now, on the other side is Buster's optimism about the Twins chances with Santana in 2008. I'm not a professional at statistical analysis -- this blog is primarily about bad writing -- but they're related, so let's do a little amateur, armchair analysis here. (It's also tremendously fun to trash the Twinkies.) Buster believes they will contend, listing 6 names, all of which he must believe belong to players who are good. But there are some serious question marks here.

Let's start with offense. Last year, the Twins scored 718 runs, "good" for 3rd to last in the American League. Their best hitter was Torii Hunter. He's now gone, replaced by Delmon Young, whom Buster mentions here. Young last year had a pathetic OBP of .316 and slugged only .408. He was a well-below-average player. Now, of course, Young has a lot of talent and promise, but how much of that crap have we seen evaporate, unrealized, into the ether? Especially when it has belonged to major nutjobs such as Young, who famously hurled a bat at an umpire in the minors. Yikes. He might still take a step forward in 2008, but it would have to be a giant step forward to replace Hunter (at least the 2007 version).

Yeah, Mauer is good, but last year he continued his habit of not playing very much, appearing in only 109 games and playing only decently in those games. If history is any guide, the disabled-ness will continue.

Morneau is good, Cuddyer is pretty good (although we'll see how much of a fluke his 2007 was), but the Twins have a knack of filling out the bottom -- and sometimes top! -- of their lineups with, not just average, but gawd-awful hitters. Punchless batters such as Luis Castillo, Jason Bartlett, and Jason Tyner were regular starters. Jeffrey frickin' Cirillo played the most games at designated hitter last year of any Twin. Duds such as Mike Redmond, Alexei Casilla, Luis Rodriguez, and Leeeeeeeew Ford all received significant playing time. And, saving the best for last, Nick Punto played one hundred and fifty games, and in those games batted .210, reached base 29.1% of the time, and slugged (gurgle, gag, gulp) .291.

Perhaps I have not been following the Twins closely enough this offseason, but I don't think they've done much else to make up for the loss of Hunter, much less improve their woeful run total from last year. Craig Monroe had an atrocious year last year, and although he was somewhat better previously and had a little pop, he rarely makes contact and almost never walks. It's not clear he will start anyway, since, in addition to Young and Cuddyer, they have Jason Kubel, who was actually not terrible last year (whereas Monroe was). The Twins also signed Adam Everett, who is a terrific fielder but cannot hit baseballs with significant effectiveness. If the signing enables them to move Punto out of the lineup (I guess by shifting Bartlett to third?), it might improve the team marginally, but nothing earth-shattering there.

Now -- pitching! Yes, Liriano is back. Probably. But, who is Liriano now? Nobody knows, and many believe he'll never be the same as he was when he came up. Which is sad, from a baseball fan's perspective, because he was flipping amazing. They had a league-average starter named Carlos Silva, now gone. Booooooooof Bonser and Matt Garza are "promising" and "talented" but, as noted above, who the heck knows, especially with pitchers. They have some other "promising" guy named Slowey, and of course their celebrated set-up man Pat Neshek. I admit, Pat Neshek is a ton of fun, but hitters started figuring him out in the 2nd half last season.

What does this all add up to? A possible wild card team... in the National League! (snap!) In the AL Central, it's a possible 3rd place finish. How much money is that worth in Let's Make a Deal, Buster?

If the Twins struggle early, Smith could dangle Santana again during the season -- and odds are he could get offers in quality to what he has now from the Yankees, Red Sox and Mets, and maybe even better, depending on the level of desperation of the teams involved.

I guess the word "similar" was accidentally deleted from here.

Santana has a full no-trade clause and there have been reports that he could reject any deal once the season starts, but executives involved in these conversations are not concerned with that. They believe it would be very hard for Santana to walk away from a trade if the Mets or Red Sox or Yankees offered him the record-setting contract, despite what he may feel now.

Why would it be hard for Santana to "walk away"? Couldn't he get even better offers at the end of the season, when he can get all the rich teams in on the bidding, not just the ones in position to make a deadline deal? Buster, like a lot of writers lately, fails to address this point.

The rest of the post, which is actually very long, has a lot of tidbits and links, as well as an admittedly interesting and helpful summary of the congressional hearings on 'roids, if you're not sick of that topic yet (I am). But as for the topic -- Santana -- where he sought out to add some analysis of his own, he ended up adding nothing. So again, I'm still bored.

More Gloom from Gammons

Peter Gammons has churned out some more pointless doom and gloom today on his ESPN "blog."

Before I get down to picking out some hilariously atrocious sentences, I want to address Peter's overall point here. Peter thinks the steroid "revelations" -- which actually "revealed" nothing new other than some particulars -- are as serious a problem for the game as the strike of 94-95, a strike that stopped baseball from being played completely, including one entire postseason. We, the fans, were rather pissed in 1994 because we ARE fans of baseball, and there was no baseball to watch. We could not experience all those emotional highs and lows of seeing if the (finally!) resurgent Tribe could stay in the wild card lead or patch up their bullpen enough to catch the White Sox, to pick an example at random (cough). The steroid abuse, on the other hand, primarily hurt the other players, not the fans -- it put the non-cheaters in the unfair position of either being at a competitive disadvantage or cheating themselves. It didn't disadvantage some teams at the expense of others. The main draw of sports is harmless competition, hoping "our" team beats the other team.

True, because taking steroids is unfair, it is wrong, and because it is wrong, doing so taints' the abuser's accomplishments. And yes, records are a big deal, especially in baseball. But even in baseball, they are essentially a sideshow. Right now, what every normal baseball fan cares about most is, who are we going to field next season? Do we have a shot at first place? Are our prospects going to pan out? NOT, will Prince Fielder's 60 home runs be "tainted"?

And to the extent these stats are important to fans, the solution is simple -- a testing program rigorous enough such that we can just presume from here on out that players aren't cheating, because it's no longer worth it for them. And it appears that is happening. The rest is just a matter for the history buffs who have to sort out all the records and boring Hall of Fame arguments (if you're getting particularly sick of this tedious topic lately, raise your hand!!). I'll go back to biting my nails over whether Fausto can get his sinker over the corner of the plate, whether Sizemore is going to catch up with that ball's trajectory in the outfield gap, and other such matters.

So why is Gammons so incredibly and wildly down on baseball lately, alternately demanding more info and calling informants "sewer rats"? I'm going to play armchair psychologist here: I think it's guilt. This is the kind of thing that journalists are supposed to expose, and even though there were sneaking suspicions, nobody bothered. And since Peter Gammons is, for some unknown reason, one of the premier journalists covering the game, he feels particularly bad about this. He's now channeling this emotion in various ways, sometimes in the form of anger directed at the people who exposed the players -- and in the process, exposed him -- and sometimes in the form of gloomy sadness over the State of the Game. He says this is what "fans of the game" are feeling, but he is really, diagnoses this armchair psychologist, "projecting."

Okay, onto the gibberish...

On a Caribbean beach, it is wonderful not to read or listen to lawyer-speak and lawyer-leak.

I have no clue what he's talking about, and I'm a lawyer. I don't think there's anything left to say about this sentence.

There are drawbacks, such as no Morning Joe or MLBTradeRumors.com on my BlackBerry, but until we know why there is any reason that Brian McNamee would possibly lie or why Roger Clemens would risk it all by testifying under oath and risk jail time, we need to do a little power-yoga breathing and relax.

First of all, shame on you, Gammons, for causing me to picture you in a bathing suit. Second, you are a very bad writer. "Why there is any reason" is redundant and confusing. "Why" already means "what reason." Why, in the name of George Will, would you not just write "why Brian McNamee would possibly lie or why Roger Clemens would risk it all"? It would be nicely parallel and it would fucking make sense! There is absolutely no possible linguistic or stylistic purpose for adding that extra phrase.

Then [in 1994-95], we had then-Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga destroying his franchise as he told fans that beer league veterans liked the game more than real players.

What does he mean when he says "we had" this? This is a lot like his habit of starting sentences with "it's all about..." Just vague and lazy.
Also, uh, what is he talking about? What is a beer league veteran? Who are the "real" players? What does this have to do with Huizenga trading off his expensive stars for prospects? And what does that have to do with steroids? As usual, a pervasive feeling of confusion is creeping over me as I read a Peter Gammons column.

Now, we have steroids as the story line for the 2008 season and the only subject of questions Brian Roberts and Eric Gagne will face.

This sentence is a great illustration of the substantive point I made above. Gammons is wrong. When/if Brian Roberts is traded to the Cubs, he will most certainly "face questions" about his feelings on his former and future organizations. He will also face questions on his possible steroids history, but these will be most relevant to Cubs fans in determining what his future performance will be now that he definitely won't be doing it (due to presumably more rigorous testing).

Bud Selig wishes he had better understood what was going on, and when he tried to purge himself with the Mitchell report, what he got from his esteemed friend was a document that not only would have been graded as incomplete, but left Selig bleeding.

This is confusing. What does he mean that the report "would have been graded incomplete"? Why the theoretical "would have"? Would have, if what? Who's grading it? Why was it incomplete?

There's also a serious sentence structure problem here -- at first it seems like Gammons is saying that the report "would have left Selig bleeding," but that makes even less sense than the first part of the sentence. After a couple re-readings, I figured out that "the report not only [blank], but also left Selig bleeding." But since the two parts are not in the same tense, the sentence is misleading.

But even after I sorted through the stuctural problems, I was still confused. Why is Selig left bleeding? Presumably this is a metaphor, but for what? The Report "wounded" Selig personally somehow? I don't recall reading that the Report blamed Selig in particular. Did it? Is this what Gammons is referring to? He doesn't tell us.

There are vast conspiracy theories -- the most ridiculous is that George Bush knew what was going on in Texas, when most people who knew Bush and Tom Schieffer when they owned the Rangers believe they were such rebels they would have released every player they thought was breaking the law. But the fact remains that there is no concrete proof of the underground allegations.

Maybe I'm not reading enough crazy baseball blogs, but I have only seen this George Bush "conspiracy theory" twice, and both times were in Peter Gammons' blog. If he thinks it (whatever the theory is, which is unclear) is so ridiculous, why does he keep repeating it? And once he says it's "ridiculous," why say "but the fact remains there is no concrete proof"? You just said it's ridiculous -- it's ridiculous, "but" it's not true? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??

Okay, deep breath (this post is particularly aggravating, even for Gammons). But one more thing -- how does releasing any steroid-using player make Bush and Schieffer "rebels"? I had to re-read the sentence because I thought I missed something "rebellious." But I think it's just another bizarre word choice by Gammons.

Human rights are important, but right now the restoration of faith in a badly tainted business is more important.

I have no idea why Gammons is even mentioning "human rights." I also have no idea why restoring faith in the game and "human rights" are mutually exclusive. In any case, the notion of "human rights" has several different definitions under various philosophical theories, but all such definitions would make it, without question, FAR more important than fixing steroids in baseball. And it's not close. Again, Gammons, what the fuck are you even talking about.

It's not solely Selig's responsibility; it's the responsibility of everyone making money in the business -- players, agents, owners, media outlets -- to take the public eye away from the tawdry, shabby lawyer talk and remind the public why some of us love to watch Jeter and Josh Beckett, Johan Santana and Pujols, Hanley Ramirez and Martin play.

Obviously, this is a typically clumsy, run-on sentence, but I wanted to draw particular attention to the phrase, "tawdry, shabby lawyer talk." Huh? What "lawyer talk" is he referring to? The Mitchell report? Unclear. Whatever the subject is, I am a lawyer, and say what you want about legalese, but it is quite the opposite of "tawdry" and "shabby." It is cold and technical, sometimes absurdly so.

Bottom line (we have a refrain here): Gammons, please, please, for the love of God, tell me, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

Gammons Makes Ass Out of Himself and Me

Apparently, Glavine and Maddux are good. The news about them is that there is no news about them. If you don't understand, Peter Gammons will, in his own form of broken, rambling English, explain:

At this point in sports history, we cannot assume anyone's innocence, but no one has ever tied Greg Maddux or Tom Glavine to any scandal involving steroids, HGH or anything else.

Note that Gammons says you "cannot assume" that Glavine and Maddux are innocent, but then writes an entire blog entry extolling their virtuous careers based entirely on the assumption that since their names have not yet surfaced in connection with steroids, they are innocent. Well, that and their terrific stats, but we all knew about the latter already.

Before they retire in the next year or two, if they remain unquestioned, then their first-ballot elections may produce a higher percentage than one can now imagine.

I just imagined really hard, and came up with 100 percent. I guess there must be a percentage higher than that.

Then, after talking about the impressive number of Wins the pair has compiled in the last several years, Gammons says:

Granted, Maddux and Glavine pitched for some very good teams, but Maddux has won four Cy Young Awards, with one second- and two third-place finishes. Glavine has two Cy Young Awards, one second-place finish and two thirds, and he closed out the 1995 World Series with a one-hitter.

This fallacy is not unique to Gammons, but what should come after the admission that the Wins were dependent on the quality of the rest of their teams is some evidence illustrating how they were good independent of their team quality or win totals. Instead, he cites their Cy Young results, which of course depend largely (and retardedly) on... Wins. It's like saying, "Santana wasn't the best pitcher in the AL last year -- he only had 15 wins! Granted, his team regularly featured Jason Bartlett and Nick Punto, but he also finished only 5th in the Cy Young voting!" Which of course was only because... aw, you get the idea.

There's also the small point that Clemens also pitched for some excellent teams in that span. I haven't checked who actually received more run support during that time, but I'm sure Gammons hasn't either. He doesn't even bother to re-read what he writes even once...

Cubs pitching coach Larry Rothschild maintains that Maddux may be the only pitcher who essentially invented two pitches -- the cutting fastball that rides either back over the inside corner to right-handed batters or over the outside backdoor corner to lefties -- as well as throwing the changeup inside, a practice that was taboo for generations.

Here once again Gammons gets lost in the middle of one his long-ass sentences. He names the first pitch -- the cutting fastball -- and then when he finally gets around to naming the second invented pitch, he leads off with a verb. If he, or some editor, had just re-read this thing once, he would have realized (maybe) that it should have read "as well as the inside changeup." Of course, perhaps he did realize this but then also realized he would have to change the wording of the subsequent phrase ("a practice..."), and said, eh, to hell with it.

Ask Derek Lowe or Chris Young or any young pitcher who'll listen, and they'll tell you how Maddux changed the way they watch games, study hitters and pitch.

Any pitcher who will listen? You mean listen to you ask the question? Or you mean any pitcher who will answer? Gammons, are players ignoring you when you ask them questions? There there. There there. Um, also, is Derek Lowe a "young pitcher"? I guess compared to Bob Feller.

This has been a trying time for those who care about the game. We don't know what's real and what isn't, who's lying and who's telling the truth, which rats are telling the truth they so long skirted.

Here he goes with the "rats" again! (At least this time they're not "sewer rats.") I think Gammons is in the Boston mob. Little known fact: Jack Nicholson based his character in the Departed on Peter Gammons.

We have judged players by their appearances, and in this time have watched Maddux and Glavine go from phenoms who threw in the 90s to guys who figured out somehow, some way to beat hitters while appearing like a couple of insurance salesmen playing golf at the country club.

Obviously you can't say "somehow to beat hitters," but still, if Gammons had just ended the sentence after "insurance salesmen," I would have been okay with this sentence. I get it, they look like a couple of nerds who somehow excel at sports. Well, Maddux does, anyway. But playing golf at the country club? Do they look rich too? How does that make their athletic success ironic? Gammons, you are a weird man.

So, on a Christmas when too many lights have burned out and too many stars and ornaments seem to have fallen from the trees,...

Was it an especially windy Christmas or something? ... ohhh, it's a metaphor. (Gag.)

...it seems like the right time to put the careers of a couple of 41-year-olds in perspective, and appreciate that if any two players embody the good old days, they are Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, Hall of Famers.

You know, so long as you do what I admitted you can't do at the top of the article, namely, assume they're innocent.

It Gets a Little Fuzzy After Twenty

Can Peter King count? You be the judge.

Here's something for you to consider, though, when thinking about how much I hate the Patriots: Five of my 22 all-pro starters were Patriots...

Now look back at his all-pro ballot and count how many players are listed. What's funny is that I was going to make a crack in yesterday's post that it's a good thing that King's not a head coach because his teams would get flagged for having twelve men on the field, since he voted for 12 all-pros each on offense and defense. Then I figured, nah, King knows more about this crap than I do; for all I know, the AP all-pros comprise twelve positions. But, as it turns out, even King thinks he only voted for 22 all-pros altogether. Good times!