Nerds on Sports

I walked from Roberto Clemente Field to Central Square yesterday at around 5 o’clock.  Thousands in red were leaving the city, taking Comm. Ave, Mass. Ave, Storrow or the Red Line.  Thousands in green were entering the city, taking Mem. Drive, Cambridge Street or the B, C, and D Lines.  The day shift was done and the night shift was beginning.  Not a bad day to be wandering the town after a kickball game.

Anyway, I’ve decided to help all of the Suddenly Celtics or Look At Them Lakers fans with today’s post.  Many of you, particularly those wearing the fresh-off-the-hanger Kevin Garnett jersies, have not been following the sport of basketball long enough to be able to offer pointed commentary during the Finals.  Do not worry, friends, because thanks to the power of the pun, you can save face in front of more die-hard fans.  Whenever a player does something well, just look up his name on the handy chart below and say the phrase next to it!

If You’re A Celtics Fan
Ray Allen - “His shooting hand is so hot they should call him ‘Heat Ray.’”
P.J. Brown - “What can ‘Brown’ do for us?  Give us quality minutes off the bench!”
Kevin Garnett - “He’s certainly a KG (cagey, nyuk nyuk nyuk) guy on defense.”
Eddie House - “He’s a brick, bah na na na, Eddie House!”
Kendrick Perkins - “I took this job for the Perk-ins!”
Paul Pierce - “He knows how to Pierce the opponent’s zone defense!”
James Posey - “Posey’s really come into bloom in the second half.”
Leon Powe - “You’ve just been ‘Powe’ned!”
Rajon Rondo - “In life, you’re either a Rondo or a Rondon’t.”

If You’re A Lakers Fan
Kobe Bryant - “Beefy!”
Jordan Farmar - “If he penetrates off the dribble, he’ll really go Far…mar.”
Derek Fisher - “Truly, he is the Fisher King.”
Pau Gasol - “He’s no Pau man’s Gasol!”
Chris Mihm - “Mihm’s the word!”
Lamar Odom - “He’s Def and Odom!”
Vladimir Radmanovic - (if you have a friend named ‘Vic) “Vladimir is Rad, man.  Oh, Vic, can you pass the chips?”
Ronnie Turiaf - “No wonder he runs so fast.  He’s playing on Turiaf.”
Sasha Vujacic - “That play was cic.”
Luke Walton - “What cool hands on that Luke!”
 

Feels dirty, right?  Well, bandwagoners, you should feel dirty!

A friend of mine bought a special package of tickets for this basketball season - games 2 and 7 of any Celtics playoff series. So far, it’s worked out remarkably well for him.

I was watching the final game of the Detroit/Boston series with him at a bar on Friday and the subject came up, as these things sometimes do. “It must be tough,” I said. “You want the Celtics to win, but you wouldn’t mind if it goes seven games.”

“Actually, I want it to go to seven games,” my friend said. Before my jaw could properly gape, he added, “I would then sell my two tickets for ten thousand dollars.”

I can’t fault his math. If anything, $10,000 for two tickets to game 7 of the first Celtics title shot in twenty years falls on the conservative side. But is this the behavior of a true fan?

On the one hand, you’ve got the die-hards who’d insist on being there, in the sweat and din and stink of it, screaming themselves hoarse at the Garden as Paul Pierce bricked yet another layup. Having been to a few dire close games on the college level, I can only imagine how much the intensity ratchets up on the pro level. That’s a game to make sure you hit.

On the other hand, you could only share that experience with, at most, one other person and a row full of strangers. Choosing the friend you take could spark any number of bitter rivalries. How about this: take the $10,000 you get for your Game 7 tickets, spend $500 on a keg and catering, and invite 20 of your friends over to watch the game. I guarantee you’d have a good time.

I put it to you, Nerds on Sports Readers: if you had 2 tickets to the game of the decade, would you give them up for $10,000? How about $50,000? $200,000? A cool $1,000,000? What’s the price of your fandom?

The pundits weigh in, as they always do.  But I don’t trust pundits.  They said the Celtics would lose to the Pistons in six, and we proven wrong as Boston battled to a series win in six.  Pundits say all kinds of things, and we believe them despite the fact that their credentials involve a degree in journalism and watching slightly more basketball than the average diehard.

Well, screw them.  Screw them, and to heck with us for trusting their opinion.  Forty-something white men don’t know jack about what’s going to happen on the hardwood this week.  The game has too many moving parts and relies too much on questionable foul calls and suddenly hot shooting hands to be predicted with any sort of certainty.  I’ve never heard of a sports bookie quitting the business because his customers got it right too many times.

So, as an alternative to these men masquerading as fortune-tellers, I have devised a different way to predict what will happen in the NBA Finals.  The difference, however, between me and the gurus is that I am not going to try and convince you that my logic makes any sense.  I used five Celtics/Lakers prediction methodologies to determine how this thing would end.  Let’s jump in, shall we? 

A Coin Flip - Celtics are heads, as they are from Boston, the education capital of the world.  Lakers are tails, since California looks like a well-sculpted butt. 

Result: Tails, Lakers 

A Game Of Smash Brothers: Brawl - I played as the Celtics (Marth, a heady defensive minded player), and set the computer to Lakers (Fox on Very Hard, a shoot-first guy with a lot of range). 

Result: Marth, Celtics 

Last Thing On The Plate - I ate a cobb salad for dinner yesterday, and decided that if the last thing on my plate was a Celtic-green piece of lettuce, then Boston gets a point.  If it was anything else, Lakers. 

Result: Chunk of bacon, Lakers 

Ashmont/Braintree - I either take an Ashmont Train or a Braintree Train to work in the morning.  Ashmont was Lakers, Braintree was Celtics. 

Result: “This is a Braintree Train.  Braintree.  Please stand clear of the doors.  They will be closing,” Celtics 

A Tradition of Baseball Success - I was unsure of who had a better record, the Los Angeles Dodgers or the Boston Red Sox.  What?  It’s the NL West.  Who cares?  So I looked it up. 

Result: Red Sox (apparently the Dodges are under .500, who knew?), Celtics 

After tabulating the scores, it looks like 3 out of the 5 measures I used came up for the Celtics.  How about that?  Looks like another championship is coming to Boston.  To see how many games it’ll take for the East squad to beat the West squad, I used the “Random” Function in Microsoft Excel. 

=RANDBETWEEN(4,7) 

Result: 7, Celtics in 7
 

Looks to be an exciting series!  Place your bets, everyone.

Until this weekend, I’ve never seen a minor league baseball game.  It was one of those things I felt bad about as a fan of the sport, but not bad enough to remedy the situation.  I compared it to a movie buff that just never got around to watching the Manchurian Candidate or the third Godfather film.  Unfortunate, but assuredly not inexcusable.  Still, with spring slowly taking on the shape of summer, it was time to get sent down to AAA.

McCoy Stadium, home of the Pawtucket Red Sox, was built in a quirky little town in New England.  Pawtucket sits in the northeast corner of Rhode Island, but might as well be in the middle of the country.  It’s a town with one big factory, a diner, and an old mill, all easily accessible off I-95, which splits it down the middle.  In other words, the Perfect Place for a minor league stadium.  I drove down, parked for $2 in a lot a block away, and followed the crowd into the park.

There was one main concourse at McCoy, which stretched from first base line to third base line.  While the legends of $1 hot dogs and nearly free sodas at minor league ballparks were grossly exaggerated, the prices at the concession stands were still reasonable.  Six bucks for a personal pepperoni pizza, four for fried dough and another four for ice cream in PawSox batting helmet dish.  Not a bad investment at all.

Aside from the abundance of decently priced food, the thing that struck me immediately was the sheer volume of children there.  Bringing an entire little league team to Fenway or Yankee Stadium would break the bank.  But at $6 a ticket, the place was teeming with kids.  The impact of a much higher percentage of pre-teens in the stands to the fan experience is dramatic.  There’s less average sports knowledge in the stands, so questions bounce around with regularity.  Nearly everyone has a glove.  Though there isn’t as much emotional investment in the game, there’s just as much cheering per capita, since children like the yell loudly in a consequence-free environment. Read more »

Why don’t we rank the best NBA Finals?

You can’t walk a straight line in bookstores without stumbling over some Greatest Super Bowls tome or The Fall Classic: We Remember solemnly poking out from the shelves. The NBA’s championship is far more suspect, the nature of the game makes seven taut games nearly impossible. Stars, or even simply good players, on a championship team account for 20+% of a team’s output on the court. Losing that for one game mostly ensures defeat. Home court is also advantageous for an NBA team in the playoffs more than hockey (where just playing seems to be the important thing), football (no home advantage in a Super Bowl), or even baseball (pitching matchups dictate advantages). Look at the New Orleans - San Antonio series, with seven grueling games providing a dinghy’s worth of highlights. Every other game was a blowout, double digit homecourt slapping, while only Game Seven met its classic billing, where a road team actually won a close game. Jannero Pargo missed a 3 pointer to tie the game up with two minutes left, Tony Parker glided over a Tim Duncan screen and stroked a j, and that was the whole piñata. The final result exists like some propaganda; the Spurs only won because someone told you they did. Who are you to remember any of it? Read more »

It is my solemn promise to never miss a Business Day One post.  I hold this vow so sacred that I will write an entry even after the internet loses the original one that I put three hours into writing.  Such is the indomitable nature of my will.

So here is a post of rage, of frustration and of hate.  A list of everything in sports that I cannot stand.  That makes me question why I even follow the exploits of men playing a game.  Come, hate with me.

The Business Day One List of Things I Hate About Sports:

-Players Thanking God – God doesn’t care about you, or how crisp your cutback move was on that fourth and short at the goal line.  God didn’t give you extra quicks, nor did he somehow divinely smite your opponents, causing them to misjudge the snap count.  It was you, Bible Thumping Fullback.  Not God.  Just you.  You were in the gym, not God.  God, or any other power you believe in, has no interest in the game you play.  And if He does, He’s no more interested in you than He is in your opponent.  You’re the one that wins and loses, not God.

-The Coach “Losing His Touch” – Coaches don’t somehow forget how to coach between one season and the next.  It is the job of the sports commentator, however, to write garbage like that to sell papers and get traffic to their website.  Sure, over decades, if a coach doesn’t change, then the game passes him by.  But in the offseason?  No.  That’s now how the human mind works.

-The Fan That Screams At A Player – Do not boo a player on your team, and do not ask “how can you miss that shot?”  Not ever.  You can’t dribble, balding guy with the Garnett jersey.  You can’t throw a tight spiral, Packers hat wearer.  You can’t get slam-tackled by a linebacker and then get to your feet, shake off a car accident’s worth of trauma and get back in the huddle.  You can’t, fans.  You can’t do that, nor can you understand how difficult it is to do.  Sure, they get paid millions.  But they get paid millions because one time out of three, they can put a ball in play off one of the 200 best pitchers in the world.  They get paid millions because they can hit a jumper with a hand in their face in front of twenty thousand people at the buzzer.  They get paid millions because they can do what you, your friends or anyone you have ever met in your life cannot do.  So don’t boo your own, people.  And don’t sit on your couch and say “even I could’ve gotten a yard there.”  You clearly have no idea.

-Screaming Children At The Ballpark – You spent $200 per seat for the game, dude.  Spend an extra $50 and get a babysitter.  I mean, please.  Please, you jerk.  Don’t bother everyone in the section.

-The Sports Website Post Upload System With Technical Difficulties – Thank you for ruining my day.

Hi folks, I’m on the road, a day removed from taking in a Safeco Field and soaking in the sites and sounds of Seattle. Despite the fact that I have no internet access, I am still honoring my solemn duty to provide you all with your weekly helping of Business Day One.  In previous weeks, I have handed out my Salute to Nerds In Sports to the very deserving Tim Duncan and Mike Mussina.

But this week, I’m honoring a story, told nearly a decade ago, about what may likely be the single greatest nerdy sports event in history. Doug Glanville, a nerd, homered twice in one game off of fellow nerd Curt Schilling.  His reason was revenge.  Sweet, brilliant revenge. So enjoy it, world.  And salute the redemption of Bingbong!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to eat five pounds of smoked salmon.

The New York Times recent came up with a flowchart based on being exposed to Dungeons and Dragons at an early age. There are 2 reasons I am posting this here.

The first is that Fantasy Baseball is listed as one of the nerdy things that comes about from being exposed to Dungeons and Dragons. So the New York Times is saying that if you play fantasy baseball then you are a nerd. Don’t try to disagree, you know the Gray Lady cannot do wrong.

The second reason for this post is because I have to… The chart has blogging about the chart as something that a nerd like myself would do, and who am I to stand in the way?

[Full Chart]