"Buster" Is Spanish for "Glaring Inconsistencies"

Today's Buster Olney chat is a work of art. Well, to be more specific, it's a pile of shit. With apologies to the guys at FJM, who do a phenomenal job deconstructing Joe Morgan's weekly chats, I'd like to point out a couple of delightful items in Buster's chat. Before we get to the glaring inconsistencies, let's point to an excellent usage of a made-up word:

George Sherrill (Baltimore?): Hey Buster, where am I going to be August 1st? What should my O's expect in return?

Buster Olney: George: If I had to guess today (and that's all it is -- a guesstimate based on current conditions).

1. Milwaukee
2. Angels

Or 3. Orioles -- Baltimore just doesn't get an acceptable offer. But my guess is that the O's will deal him, because his value will never be higher than it is right now, and while Sherrill is pitching well and is a great, great story, nobody is going to forget that it wasn't long ago that he was an independent league pitcher; he does not have the pedigree of King Felix, as he would be the first to tell you.

Now, as any quasi-intelligent person would tell you, "guesstimate" is a word only an ignoramus would use. Whoever made it up thought she was being cute by combining the words "guess" and "estimate" into one super-word, but since an estimate is, by definition, a guess, there really is absolutely no difference between a "guesstimate" and a regular old "estimate". What makes this usage particularly delightful is that Olney is misusing the word even further by using it to refer to something that's not even an estimate. The only reasonable explanation is that Olney figured that since the words "guesstimate" and "estimate" are synonymous, then, by golly, so are "guesstimate" and "guess".

Eric (Appleton, WI): What are your current predictions on the playoff picture?

Buster Olney: Eric: They were so bad at the beginning of the season that anything I say now will have less than zero credibility, but hey, take them for what they're worth: Mets, Cubs, Brewers, D-Backs in the NL, Red Sox, Rays, White Sox and Angels in the AL.

I will give Buster credit for acknowledging that his preseason predictions were terrible, since some forecasters will just change their "predictions" every week based simply on what happened over the last week and make no reference to their earlier predictions (unless, of course, they happened to be correct). However, this blog is not about giving credit. Instead, I will just point out these aren't really "predictions", inasmuch as all of the teams he named are currently in playoff position. (Yes, I realize that the Dodgers are tied with Arizona and the Phillies with the Mets.) Now, remember these predictions.

Seymour, Brooklyn: Some of you "experts" never learn not to give up on the Yankees in the second half...

Buster Olney: Seymour: I picked them to win the division, so I'd hardly qualify as someone who has given up on them.

But, Buster, you picked them in your preseason predictions, which you yourself admitted were useless. And earlier in this chat, you picked the Red Sox and Rays to make the playoffs out of the AL East. In other words, you predicted the Yankees to succeed earlier in the season, then, asked to update your predictions, you predicted that the Yankees would not succeed. That, my friend, is the very definition of somebody who has given up on them.

This is What Happens When We Skip a Paragraph from Gammons' Column

We end up missing gems like this:

Two months ago, a general manager said we are watching the unfurling of two dramas we have never before seen in our lifetime, and may never see again.

I will bet you ten dollars that the general manager in question did not use the phrase "watching the unfurling of two dramas". I've alluded to this earlier, but I'm honestly curious how many quotes Gammons either rephrases or makes up entirely.

One is Rick Ankiel, who has played less than two years as a position player and is so good a center fielder and everyday player that he certainly could have been here for the All-Star Game, what with 20 homers, 50 RBIs, an .880 OPS and the defensive show he has put on in center field.

"One" what "is Rick Ankiel"? One drama? But Rick Ankiel isn't a drama. He had a drama, perhaps. But a person cannot simply be a drama. Unless you're Peter Gammons. Also, nice use of the horrible awkward and unnecessary phrase, "what with 20 homers..."

To overcome his pitching nightmare of the 2000 playoffs, then after six years to become a hitter, and then overcome a blown-out knee …

"To overcome"..."To become"..."Overcome" [cue Sesame Street music] Which of these things is not like the others?

… few players are better inspiration for the capacity to never back down or give up.

I swear, I copied and pasted this directly. Peter Gammons actually believes that a person can inspire a capacity. I...have no words.

Josh Hamilton Makes Grumpy Old Man Marginally Less Grumpy

I haven't posted here in a while, but I just reached a point that I reach every year at this time. It occurs about five minutes into the All-Star Game, when I suddenly remember that the All-Star Game is boring. And every year, I wonder how I forgot this.

But you know who isn't bored by the All-Star game and related festivities? Peter Gammons. In fact, they inspire him to bring his claptrap to a whole new level of inanity.

As you know if you read this blog, Peter Gammons is REALLY angry about the steroid scandal. Like, super duper PO'ed. It's not clear, though, whether he's angry about the fact that players actually took steroids, or that everyone found out, or, as we have theorized, that he didn't break the story himself years ago. His latest article only confuses the issue further.

Hamilton an inspiration in so many ways

That's Peter's headline. If you expect Peter to detail many different ways that Josh Hamilton is an inspiration, then, well, you haven't read much Peter Gammons.

One of the best things about baseball is that someone else comes along and
recreates being the hero.

This is actually a difficult article to pick apart, only because it is SO bad, SO far from being written in readable English (even for Gammons), that it's hard to pick out specific problems. Take this first sentence. "Someone else" besides whom? And what does "recreates being the hero" mean? I don't even know how to correct this phrase. It just isn't English. How do you recreate the state of being something? I know, only from reading the rest of the article, that what Gammons is trying to say here is that every so often, a new person comes along and saves the sport in a new way, or from a new problem, or something. This, to Peter, is "one of the best things about baseball." Makes me wonder if Peter really likes baseball all that much.

By the way, if Joe Buck calls that dark, dank, 1970s monstrosity that is Yankee Stadium a "jewel" one more time, I am pressing "mute."

Out of the embers of the Black Sox scandal came Babe Ruth. As a nation regrouped
between World War II and the Korean War, Jackie Robinson bravely changed the
face of sports and American society.

The metaphor in the first sentence is not that bad, by Gammons standards. But I included it because it highlights how little sense the second sentence makes. How did the nation regroup between World War II and the Korean War? Did the nation actually regroup from the Korean War in advance, before it even happened? Now, we can't really expect a sports writer like Gammons to be an astute scholar of U.S. history, but then why doesn't he just shut up about it? Because he's an arrogant old man that wins Peabodys, gosh darn it.

After the strike that canceled the 1994 World Series and led to the coldest
winter, along came Cal Ripken, the dignity and might of the Joe Torre/Derek
Jeter/Mariano Rivera Yankees, and then the summer of '98 with Mark McGwire and
Sammy Sosa. And when that entire era went to black and the waste depository of
the BALCO and aging clinics, Jose Canseco and gopher slimeballs reached the desk
of George Mitchell and millions wondered if they could ever trust the sport
again.

Okay, the metaphors are starting to get crappier with "the coldest winter." But we're still doing okay. Then... uh oh. The entire era "went to black." We've heard this phrase before -- it usually means, like when your TV goes black, that everything has become still and quiet. Is that what happened in baseball when the steroid scandal broke? Isn't it the exact opposite of what happened?

Next comes the dangling phrase "the waste depository of the BALCO and aging clinics." Where does this fit in the sentence? It's completely out of place. If we read it literally (always dangerous with Gammons), then Gammons is saying that the "era went to the waste depository of BALCO." That of course makes zero sense. But I have no alternatives. I'm lost. Adrift. Confused and sad. I need a hero to recreate stuff and cheer me up.

But let's forget about putting it all together. Let's just take this phrase and look at it by itself, as it dangles in the void, to see if it at least makes sense internally...
the waste depository of the BALCO and aging clinics ...
One sec... okay, no surprise, it doesn't. What is a "waste depository"? It sounds like what they would call a "dump" on a distant planet in a bad Star Trek episode. And the "waste depository of the BALCO and aging clinics"? What is an "aging clinic"? And is BALCO a clinic? Or is it called "the BALCO"? And do these clinics have waste depositories? Is that where they threw out the used needles? Okay, I have to move on, my brain hurts.

Why "reached the desk"? Just another bizarre metaphor choice. Awkward, awkward, awkward.

Finally, let's take the "substance" of this paragraph as a whole. Did you notice that Gammons has cited known steroid users Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa as "heroes" while, in the same breath, citing the Mitchell Report as a bleak crisis? How can he, and his editors (if they exist), miss the rank absurdity of this? This paragraph is only NOT contradictory if, as Joist and I have theorized, Gammons is not mad at actual steroid use at all, but at the people who broke the story (surprisingly, Gammons leaves his oft-uses slander "sewer rats" out of this particular article). Now, it all suddenly makes sense -- McGuire was a hero, because when asked by U.S. Congressmen whether he ever used steroids, he pled the fifth and kept his mouth shut. Mark McGuire, on the other hand, belongs in the "waste depository," because he ratted everyone out. Peter Gammons = Jimmy Conway from Goodfellas.

(Another quick note from the All-Star Game -- Yogi Berra just called Joe Buck "Jack." Buck looked a little flustered for a second, but didn't correct him. I don't mention this mockingly, it was actually kind of sweet.)

Every revelation about Roger Clemens' past and every "collusion" noise that
comes out of some parrot's beak has emphasized the need to move forward.

The metaphors are entering surrealist territory (did you notice I used a metaphor to describe the metaphors? good boy). Parrot's beak? I... don't even know what to say.

Also, Peter Gammons again uses language that conveys the exact opposite of what he wants to say. The claims of "collusion" don't "emphasize" the need to move forward; they do the exact opposite, according to Gammons! What Gammons means to say, of course, is that the prevalence of the Clemens and collusion stuff necessitates moving forward. We just want Gammons to say what he means, and to say it clearly. Is that too much to ask? ...Don't answer that.

That is why no team has signed Barry Bonds, who can still impact any
lineup -- owners and general managers understandably don't want to talk about
the past. They want to try to move on into an era with drug testing, in whatever
form the morphed sport takes.

What does it mean to say that drug testing will take whatever form the sport takes? How can drug testing and the sport take the same form? These are trick questions. That's not really what Gammons is saying at all. He just misplaced a modifying phrase.

By now, Hamilton's story of overcoming demons is two blocks from Hollywood. Oh,
it's easy to give it a Nancy Reagan "he made a choice" and so on and so on and
so on and so on, but the fact is that millions of people in this country get
addicted to drugs and ruin their lives.

Oh no, more metaphors. "Too blocks from Hollywood"? I have no flipping clue what that means. The next sentence is just flabbergasting. Why does he say "Nancy Reagan"? Is this a reference to something the first lady said in 1982 that I don't know about? And why does Gammons say "and so on" four times? Why oh why oh why oh why? Isn't that annoying?

Finally, how does the "fact" that millions get addicted to drugs make it less their fault? I'm not making the argument that it is their fault; unlike Gammons, I don't use my sports-themed blog to make hackneyed political points. But Gammons' opposition in this sentence makes no sense.

After that, the article starts talking about Hamilton's addiction and his efforts to help others, and that stuff is too serious to mock. Besides, that part is not as badly written, perhaps because Gammons is putting aside his tortured attempts at wit and satire to talk about something serious.

But then he gets back into Grump Mode and rambles back into incoherence:

Baseball is not about corporate boxes and extracting licensing pennies from poor
kids or taxpayer dollars donated to construct ballparks to help billionaires
make millions. It is about Babe Ruth changing the sports culture, Jackie
Robinson changing America and Cal Ripken changing lives.

Here Gammons also slips back into one of his annoying habits -- saying "it" is "about" stuff. Just vague, lousy writing.

And how on God's green earth is baseball "extracting licensing pennies from poor kids"? Don't they extract licensing fees from companies wanting to make money off of baseball's intellectual property? Where do the poor kids fit in? If people who run merchandizing companies can be referred to as "poor kids," than society has come very far indeed.

And I'll grant, arguendo, that Cal Ripken's streak was an impressive accomplishment, even though I never found it particularly exciting. But how did Cal Ripken showing up to a lot of games in a row change people's lives??? That is some wacky hyperbole.

Finally, that sentence is just grammatically a complete mess. But I'm getting tired, so I won't get into the details of that. Let's just finish this up...

Baseball has always been able to turn the page because of someone and
something always grew up out of the rubble, and Josh Hamilton began the process
of turning the page on Monday night.

This is one of those times where I wonder if Gammons isn't just getting a little senile and if perhaps we should just let him be. He clearly just lost track of this sentence in the middle. He wrote "because of someone," then forgot about the "of" and wrote, effectively, "because of something always grew up." This is also one of those times where Gammons just needed an editor to give it one lousy proofread.

Okay, let's skip to the last sentence:

We are reminded that baseball can help us remember what we stand for, not against, what we believe, not what we fear, and that while we learn from the past, what we all want is to open the door to the future.

And we come back to my original comment, that this article is so bad that there's nothing to correct. This sentence is just totally incoherent. It just contains a lot of cliches thrown together in one mess of a sentence. And lord knows what it all has to do with Josh Hamilton.

Okay, the All-Star game just got less boring again. Some jerk from the Team That Just Won't Go Away just tied the game up for the AL...

Maybe We Need To Start an "Edit Buster Olney" Blog

Today, my question isn't, "How stupid is Buster Olney?" but rather, "Which of these two headlines is dumber?"

7/7/08, the day after C.C. Sabathia was traded to the Brewers:

Count on Sabathia having an impact in the NL

7/8/08, the same day Rich Harden was traded to the Cubs:

Don't expect Cubs to answer CC trade

The first headline is the baseball equivalent of, "Count on the sun to rise tomorrow". The second is not only untrue, but was proven to be false less than 24 hours after the column was posted. I leave it to you to decide.

What Is This "Rulebook" Of Which You Speak?

From Buster Olney's blog, about an umpire who got nailed twice by foul tips in a game yesterday:

But he was OK to travel Wednesday evening; his crew's next series will be in Chicago this weekend. One of the medical personnel whom Welke spoke with mentioned to him that he seemed to be seeing more direct shots back into the umpire's mask in recent years, and Welke has a theory about that: As umpires have worked to adhere to the ball-strike standards imposed by the QuesTec technology, they have had to stand taller behind the catcher.

"You have to get as high as you can to see the ball on the outside," said Welke. The veteran umpire repeated that he was fine, though. "It's just part of the job," he said.

This is what makes me hate umpires (and, to a lesser extent, Buster Olney). Everybody together now: the strike zone is clearly defined in the rulebook, which predates Questec by, what, 120 years? The reason Questec was instituted was that umpires were notoriously creating their own strike zones - calling strikes on pitches a foot off the corner, calling belt-high pitches balls because they're "high", etc. Also, the strike zones varied widely from ump to ump; some were known as "pitchers' umps" because they'd extend the corners, and some had infamously tight strike zones that obviously favored the hitters.

(By the way, an increasingly frustrating subplot to this phenomenon was the blithe acceptance of it by announcers. "Oh, tonight's umpire has a very wide strike zone, so the hitters will really have to bear down and be prepared to swing at those outside pitches!" "Well, this umpire really hasn't been calling that pitch, but at least he's consistent." etc.)

Anyway, along came Questec with the desired result of - get ready - a uniform strike zone! Wow, what a novel concept! Of course, umpires and pitchers were both pissed about it; umpires because they actually had enforceable standards to which they now had to adhere (as opposed to freely interpreting the rulebook to fit what they personally feel should be a strike), and pitchers because the umps' subjective interpretations generally favored them.

This piece, however, takes the prize for "most moronic case against Questec." Welke is apparently blaming QuesTec for making him get into proper position to call the outside pitches. What was he doing before QuesTec, reclining in a lawn chair and guessing wildly where the ball was? "Well, fuck positioning myself to get a call right, I might get hit by a line drive!" Yes, obviously, some risk is involved in standing about 65 feet from a guy throwing 95 mph, but I'm pretty sure he knew about the risk when he signed up to be a professional umpire. In fact, he even acknowledges that he's aware of the risk, when he bravely admits, "It's just part of the job."

As stupid as Welke comes off in this, though, Olney's words might be even dumber. Let's reprise them:

As umpires have worked to adhere to the ball-strike standards imposed by the QuesTec technology, they have had to stand taller behind the catcher.

The key word there is, of course, "imposed". Again, QuesTec did not "impose" ball-strike standards; those have been around as long as baseball itself. It helped "enforce" the standards, or perhaps "strengthen" them. It's one thing for an umpire who, rightly or wrongly, feels like his authority is being challenged and his physical safety compromised by machines. It's quite another for a writer, with no vested interest whatsoever, to imply that MLB caused more umpire injuries by imposing "new" standards.