Nerds on Sports

Sports fandom is filled with hatred. If you love a team enough, you hate that team’s rival. Really, truly hate. Irrationally hate. Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins fans hate each other and have for a long while. Ohio State and Michigan fans hate each other because of how intertwined their storied histories are. India and Pakistan cricket fans hated each other… due mainly to decades of horrific war. Such is the way of sport, really. We give ourselves so willingly and so fully to our club that anything that attemps to defame or diminish it becomes the target of our burning rage.

I consider this a price. Fandom isn’t free. You need to invest a lot in it - money, time, love, and hate. Only when you are fully invested in this way can you truly experience the impossible highs and devastating lows that sport was created to evoke. I do my best to keep this in mind when I discuss my intense hatred of Carl Pavano.

Carl Pavano, the Yankees’ 4 year, $40 million dollar mistake, just pitched in (and won) his first Major League game in over a year. And I couldn’t be more disgusted. I hate Pavano. I hate him as much as I hate Manny Ramirez. I hate his attitude (poor), his health (awful), and what he represents (the blind spending of the early 2000s Yankees). He is a great weight hanging around the neck of the organization - a reminder to the owners and the fans that mistakes like him have given us nearly a decade without a championship. I wish I could direct some of this hatred outward, away from my Yankees, but I can’t. Everything that is wrong with how that team did business is encapsulated in one man, fairly or unfairly.

In my mind, Carl Pavano has been worse for the Yankees playoff chances than any other player on any other team. Accordingly, I have a Pavano Grudge. And I know I’m not the only one.

If there can be a lesson taken out of this, I suppose it would be that it is alright to hate something in sports. We’re all imperfect humans, and our body gives off a lot of hate. So we might as well direct it at something harmless, like a wretched, consistently injured jerk. Like Carl Pavano.

In the sports world, a week is a very long time. Last Monday, I was chatting about the National League All Stars and wondering how bad they’d be slaughtered at Yankee Stadium.  A week later, I find myself with memories of a grueling fifteen inning duel and three straight Bomber wins in the Bronx since.  Jason Taylor is now a Washington Redskin (or maybe a Washington Hotskin, am I right ladies?).  Padraig Harrington got some golf hardware with Tiger away.  And the Celtics finally signed some of their free agents.

The summer, particularly around the All Star Break, always seemed to be a quiet time in years past. It hasn’t been the case this year, at least by my estimation. Whether I’m just paying more attention or there are just more positive (or at least, not overtly negative) storylines, I cannot say. But the summer has been a busy time and I wager it will continue to be until the fall throws us all back into entire weekends of football.

I’ve always found it interesting that in our regular lives, we look forward to the summer, but in our sports fandom lives, we spend the summer looking forward to other things. Baseball’s impossibly long regular season plods on, suggesting that one day there will be a postseason to cheer through. Football training camps are just starting up, and the prognosticators begin their yearly ritual of prognostication. Basketball owners are offering up franchise-changing (or crippling) contracts to gear up for next year. College teams are sending coaches all over the country to recruit massive offensive linemen from towns you’ve never heard of. Despite all of this, precious little in actual “sporting” gets done. So while you’re sitting on the beach you’ve been anticipating sitting on for six months, you’re really just anticipating what will be going on with your teams six months from now.

Such is the nature of the American sports fan. We’re a nation of speculators and calculators. We spew unending strings of trash about our best friends’ keeper strategy in fantasy hockey, despite the fact that there no ice in the Boston Garden yet. I think many of us love the time between seasons just as much as the seasons themselves. It’s a time when Donovan McNabb is still healthy, your team is undefeated and every trade management has made was a good one.

So here we sit during these summer weeks, enjoying the warm weather but always quietly looking forward to the cold breezes of the seasons to come.

In last week’s Business Day one column, I did you all the great service of introducing some of the lesser known American League All Stars to the blog reading public.  And this week, as promised, I’ll do the same with the National League.  Apparently, AAAA Baseball has stars too!

We’re all fairly familiar with the suddenly ageless Chipper Jones and ocassionally creepy looking Alfonso Soriano, but there are quite a few players that are separated from the public by a thirty foot high wall of apathy.  Let’s take a look at a few.

-Astros first baseman Lance Berkman coined his own nickname: The Big Puma.  This replaced his old nickname, which was Fat Elvis.

-Marlins shortstop Hanley Ramirez is, according to his own website, “an incredible father,” has Denzel Washington as his favorite actor and a Lamborghini Murcielago as his fifth favorite car.  Really, just fifth?

-If you want to get to Ashland, Kentucky, you may need to drive on Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon Webb.  Or, more specifically, a highway named in his honor.

-Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun is involved with Affliction Clothing, a fashion designer out of California that apparently outfits the scariest and deadliest looking men on Earth.  Not tough enough?  Well, he’s also called the Hebrew Hammer by at least one guy.

-Other Brewers outfield Corey Hart is apparently quite an accomplished singer in his spare time, releasing the famous pop hit “Sunglasses at Night” back in the 1980s.  He’s sinced toured the world and… wait… different Corey Hart?  Hmmm.  Well this is awkward.

-Ok, I’ll get it right this time.  Dodgers catcher Brian Wilson was widely regarded as the creative force behind the Beach Boys and… SON OF A… sorry.

Happy All Starring, everybody!

Greetings everyone. I would first like to thank Serpico for holding down the fort while the rest of the Nerds on Sports team had seemingly gone AWOL. Reasons for our absence range from life-altering personal developments to just being a bum. Which of those apply to which writer is an exercise left to a reader, though amusing guesses are encouraged.

Anyway, I finally have a sports post to blog about, and its not an even a rant about my fantasy baseball team, which would appeal to no one. Instead, I have a story about the Lowell Spinners game I attended last Saturday. Now minor league baseball has some inherent virtues, like the simple pleasure of watching a baseball game for cheap, and starting players with an average of less than 100, but I’m not going to dwell on such things. Instead, I’m going to talk about the game Pass the Cup, which was played by Willis, Serpico, and I. The premise of the game, for those of you too lazy to click on the link, is that during the game, a cup is passed between players during the game, and depending on the outcome of the AB, players have to put money in or take money out (in our case, in the form of quarters), and pass the cup on or keep holding onto it. Much like fantasy baseball, it makes you have more of a vested interested in the game and causes you to at times cheer against the home team. But unlike fantasy baseball, where you might be interested in only a few players, pass the cup makes you more interested in every single AB, regardless of who it is, and regardless of who is holding the cup. During the game I was losing a lot of money, mostly due to that pesky mounders rule, but I was able to walk away with the whole pot with a game-ending double play. My copious winnings all went toward the exciting purchase of laundry.

Having gone through the game once, we are already seeking to tweak the rules. Willis has already proposed increasing the amount of money taken out for base hits, which would likely work out well given how large our pot grew. I also believe that additional rules could be added/changed, including:

• Reach on Error: money in cup stays the same, but pass the cup in the opposite direction
• Walk in a run: collect $0.50
• Inside the Park Home Run: collect the cup + $1 from each player
• Last out of game (No hitter): collect the cup + $2 from each player
• CALLING THE PLAY: Before the ball is put into play, if the cup holder can correctly guess what the player AB will do (fly out, ground out, strike out, BB, single, double, triple, home run), s/he can decide whom to give the cup to (and can hold onto it if they wish).

Any other suggestions? Should some element of those weird audience participation games that take place between innings be added? Place a comment and let us know!

There’s a term I use when discussing baseball called The Fantasy Fandom Factor.  The basic premise is that there is a multi-tiered hierarchy of Major League ballplayers: (1) The Guys You Know and Love Because They’re On Your Team, (2) The Guys You Know and Perhaps Love Because They’re Really Good, and (3) The Guys You Know Merely Because You Play Fantasy Baseball.  As recently as fifteen years ago (before fantasy took over the national consciousness), even diehard MLB fans had no idea who anyone outside of the top players were outside of their home team’s division.  But now, these diehards have a vested interest in knowing who everyone is; it helps them win their fantasy leagues and garner the nerd-cred that comes with it.

Unfortunately, this gives rise to a new problem.  Fans know who these Category Three players are, but only insofar as their names, teams and stats.  They don’t know who they really are, deep down, below their slugging percentage.  Are they nice folks?  Do they have kids?  Where are they from?  Have they nailed Madonna?  As I was perusing the MLB All Star Game rosters, I realized there are a lot of Category Three folks that got the nod this year.  And since I’m in the business of helping you, the readers, I’m going to give you all a crash course on the roster so you can adequately wow your friends at your rockin’ All Star Game party.  We’ll start with the American League Roster, and maybe if you’re lucky I’ll do the NL next week.

AL Roster - Category 1 and 2:  Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Kevin Youkilis (being called the Greek God of Walks in a major book will bump you from a 3 to a 1), Manny Ramirez, Ichiro Suzuki, David Ortiz, Mariano Rivera, Scott Kazmir, Grady Sizemore, J.D. Drew (no one forgets a battery storm).

Category 3 Player Fun Facts:

-Angels Pitcher Ervin Santana was originally named Johan Santana, but changed his name when the other Johan Santana started demolishing baseball with the most unfair change-up in history.  He changed his name to Ervin because it sounded cool to him.

-Diminutive Red Sox Second Baseman Dustin Pedroia can be an emergency catcher in the case of some gruesome Jason Varitek-Kevin Cash collision during warm-up laps.

-Rangers Second Baseman Ian Kinsler, like Pedroia, went to Arizona State for a little while.  When not crisping in the sun, he enjoys a spirited round of golf.  Which involves more crisping in the sun.  In related news, someone should buy him sunscreen.

-Royals Pitcher Joakim Soria has the greatest active baseball nickname: The Mexicutioner.  Unfortunately, only the 20 people that live in Kansas City know it.

-Rangers Centerfielder Josh Hamilton battled drugs and alcohol for years before willing himself to go clean.  Even now, he is racked by dreadful dreams or his dark time.  When not clobbering baseballs, he goes on the road as a public speaker.

-Rays Catcher Dioner Navarro, who I’m making a pitch to be called The Venezuelmageddonator, is one of the best young catchers in the game.  That’s some feat, considering that fate has been absurdly cruel to his family this decade.

Go, baseball fans.  Armed with this knowledge, please look at these players are more than simply on-base machines for your fantasy team.  They are your All Stars, so enjoy them for who they are and what they do!

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 »

As of right NOW, the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles are tied for first place in the AL East, percentage points ahead of the Boston Red Sox and a game and a half clear of the New York Yankees.

They will start a three game series tomorrow, the winner of which will almost assuredly lead the AL East alone at the beginning of May.

Time for ESPN to start giving us all that goddamn Rays-Orioles coverage we’re so used to seeing. Really gents, overkill methinks.

I decided to find all the spare electronic parts that I could find around my apartment and build a baseball projections robot. Some of the things I found include: an alarm clock, TI-83, a broken toaster, a VCR, an Apple IIe, a PlayStation, a watch with a calculator on it, and a car phone (with carrying case). Armed with my trusty soldering iron and a wondering imagination, I put together ProjectoTron 3000.

Last night, I put in all the current MLB statistics that were available at the time (stats through 4/2/08) and let it start calculating. I went to work in the morning and it was still calculating. Finally when I got home this evening I was able to see it starting to spit out some odd projections for the season. There are a few that I think I should share with you.

First there is JI Read more »