Nerds on Sports

Here are the exciting storylines I get to deal with as a Yankees fan this spring:

-Andy Pettitte looked decent in his Spring Training Debut, despite having to fly back and forth to Washington, DC for steroid and HGH investigation related issues.

-Lying blowhard Hank Steinbrenner descended further into self-parody after being forcibly inducted into Red Sox Nation by Boston owner John Henry.

-A bizarre cult has developed around Joba Chamberlain, a pitcher with 24 innings of professional experience.

-Yankees fans are beginning to realize how close we actually came to losing Robinson Cano and sweating at night thinking about it.

-Fans are expecting Michelle Damon to be more productive than Johnny Damon in 2008.

So this is what I’m dealing with.  Let’s Go Yanks.

There is so much fun stuff out there that I’m going to try to blogroll every Sunday some of what I have been reading during the week. (Feel free to email me things I should be reading — The internets are a big place and I do need guidance.) This week I have some broken keepers, baseball prognostications, RedSox Pictorials, a Philly Prank [umm... that doesn't look right... what do you call someone on the Phillies? (other than terrible)], and more.

• NBC has the options on a sports reality show. Doesn’t that sound cool? And, Hey, The winners could go to the Olympics! But wait, It’s curling. [TheStar.com]
• Some goalkeepers are falling apart while not goalkeeping: Michael Rensing of Bayern Munich hurt himself tying his shoes, and Dida of Milan hurt himself going from sitting on the bench to the locker room. [The Offside]
• I’ve requested entry into the fantasy leagues of the Babes who Love Baseball, because losing to my friends in one league and losing to the people I work with in a second league wasn’t enough. I now want to lose to strange bloggers I don’t even know. [Babes Love Baseball]
• Last year is was Jimmy Rollins. This year it’s Carlos Beltran. Some people just love to make crazy predictions for the Mets winning the season. [We Should Be GMs] [ESPN] [Babes Love Baseball]
• Jacoby Ellsbury has a pictorial and article in the new issue of Men’s Vogue. Our little rookie is growing up fast, and I bet the jerseys with his name on them are selling out fast now too. [Center Field]
• Read more »

So Today is my birthday, but instead of asking for gifts, I am going to give one away. I am ordering a copy of Baseball Prospectus’s new Guide to the 2008 Baseball Season for myself, but I thought I could share the nerdiness. I’m also going to give away a copy of the book. Hopefully next week at this time, I will declare a winner.

Now, don’t worry, I’m not setting up some crazy contest. It will be a random drawing of everyone who comments on this post and answers my question. Right or wrong doesn’t matter (actually, I prefer wrong).

The Question:
Roger Clemens, like Barry Bonds, is too trusting of creepy looking trainers (have you seen the guy, he looks like a human/rat hybrid). So I say he didn’t know he was being injected in the buttocks with steroids. What did Roger think was in the needle?

More than once in the last few months I’ve heard someone ask, “What business does Congress have investigating steroid and HGH use in Major League Baseball?” And while I agree that it’s stupid, and a waste of time (and possibly wrong), there is precedent.

Not everyone knows that Major League Baseball has a special exemption to the Sherman Antitrust Act, the 1890 law that governs how inter-state businesses may conduct themselves without being prosecuted as monopolies. MLB is a monopoly. They have wielded that power explicitly in the past, most famously to prevent players from separating themselves from teams and to prevent teams from moving to different cities.

There’s no actual law on the books that says, “Major League Baseball is exempt from antitrust regulations,” but there’s the next best thing: eighty years of court precedent. In 1922, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the majority opinion on Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore vs. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, saying that the “interstate commerce clause” didn’t technically govern interstate travel to play away games. The exemption was upheld in 1953 (Toolson v. New York Yankees), when the Supreme Court said that “Congress had no intention of including the business of baseball within the scope of the federal antitrust laws.”

So Major League Baseball lives in a special legal pocket. Is that the only thing getting Congress’ attention?

Not quite. Almost all MLB teams and stadiums reap the rewards of sweetheart deals with local politicians. The New York Yankees have been deducting five million dollars a year from their taxes since 2001. Tampa Bay’s no longer getting a sixty million dollar sales tax refund on their new stadium, but they’re still hoping the state of Florida will sell them the new land at a discount. Breaks like these always come in the name of “creating jobs” (out of what? fairy dust and wishes?) or “revitalizing” a particular neighborhood.

All politics is local, as Tip O’Neill famously observed, and he was Speaker of the House. A member of Congress answers to their constituents. They answer to the local party machine: the neighborhood wards that run their campaign ads and put up their posters. So the state of Arizona’s investment in the Diamondbacks gives John McCain an interest, justified or not, in how MLB conducts its affairs.

Finally, recall that the President becomes the de facto pace-setter of the party he represents. Recall also that the Republicans controlled Congress for years, even if they’re no longer the majority, so they have most of the plum committee seats. And above all else, recall that the current President is the former owner of the Texas Rangers. If that doesn’t tell you enough about Congress’s interest in baseball, then go back to reading the funny pages.

So almost 2 weeks ago I retreated to my cave of depression and solitude after some certain footballing events. But the time and reflecting have pulled me out of hiding and back here to blabbering on about nothing. Aren’t you glad?

So to get you back in the mood for my posts, I’m going to start you off with some hot ladies. First off the Indy Car hottie and Go Daddy front woman — Danica Patrick. She’s what Sports Illustrated is using to rationalize the “sports” in the Swimsuit Edition this year. Check out the full spread and the interview with Dan Patrick (Yes, it’s hilarious that they have similar names — I can’t read the article without laughing. I also can’t stop the sarcasm.) Also, what’s with the granny panties in picture 33? Since this is swimsuit edition time, for more hotness check out the athlete’s wives section or the bodypainting section. Also you can read the interviews with each model so you can decide which ones are bitches.

After the hot women I want to mention some nerdy news. EA Games has extended their license with the NFL. So I guess they hope Madden stays alive for 5 more years and they don’t have to make many innovations. Don’t you love the “free market?” EA is a bitch.

I hear Uno (aka Ch. K-Run’s Park Me In First) the beagle was named Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show Tuesday night over some champion poodle bitches. First beagle to ever win the award at Westminster. One thing to note is that even though Snoopy is a beagle, he doesn’t look anything a beagle. This probably explains Snoopy’s lack of a Best in Show award (or even a Best in Class award). Actually Snoopy is nothing like a beagle. Uno walks on four legs and doesn’t fly around on his house. Uno doesn’t type notes on a typewriter — he uses his laptop. He looks so cute when he’s working and wearing glasses.

Oh and one more thing: pitchers and catchers (no, it’s not gay) have reported to spring training and Josh Beckett is fat.

Since I’m a no-good, unimaginative hack, I am going to take the same questions Serpico answered, and answer them myself. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this. But before I get into the letters, I have to get something off of my chest.

The New York Football Giants are a terrible football team. Ever since Serpico was a wee lad, the giants have been terrible. Remember in 1995 when the Patriots were terrible. They were a 6-10 team, but the Giants were worse — 5-11. Or how about 1997 when both the Patriots and the Giants won their respective divisions. The Giants were worse due to losing in the wild card round.

All I’m saying is that Serpico doesn’t like terrible teams — He actually stopped caring about baseball when the Yankees didn’t have the best record in baseball this year. How can I prove it? He had to email me on the deadline to fix his fantasy baseball lineup for a playoffs week. So I have an answer for Serpico: Follow the Patriots. You are a fair weather fan and we all know it. Just find the biggest band wagon, grab your instrument, and hop on.

Now for the actual questions. Read more »

The furor over steroids in professional baseball continues to rise. Roger Clemens categorically denied his steroid usage in a 60 Minutes interview. A fan is suing the New York Yankees, claiming that Yankee players’ reported use of steroids is akin to “consumer fraud.” And the hearings on Capitol Hill continue.

Regarding steroids, I agree with the Boston Metro’s Sarah Green: the competitive advantage conveyed by steroids is so profound that making them legal would be the same as making them mandatory. If you played “clean” in a steroid-happy league, you could not compete. And given the wreckage that anabolic steroids level on the human body, this would destroy the sport of American baseball.

But what about HGH?

HGH, or human growth hormone, is the output of the human body’s pituitary gland. Your body produces it naturally. Your body also produces less of it as you grow older. Some studies suggest that dosing HGH once you’re past your forties may combat the aging process.

The Mayo Clinic advises that HGH increases muscle mass and reduces body fat, but doesn’t necessarily translate into increased strength.

CNN reports that some doctors campaign against HGH usage, citing research that links growth hormone in mice to increases in cancer. But those results have not been documented in humans yet.

Of course, as with any popular scientific breakthrough, a number of scams have arisen to profit off the name. You’ll find websites touting HGH in pill and cream form, despite the fact that it’s only effective when injected. And HGH is still not completely legal - doctors have had their licenses stripped for not running thorough diagnostics before prescribing the hormone.

Read through all the conflicting reports, though, and one conclusion stands out: the downsides of HGH are not as bad, and definitely not as well-proven, as the downsides of steroids. Using steroids is a stupid and destructive way to ruin your body in the name of a paycheck. But HGH is not the same kind of monster.

I’d like to believe that Major League Baseball and their Congressional overlords can separate the hype from the facts. Human Growth Hormone clearly isn’t the same kind of poison that anabolic steroids are. We hope that, if MLB wants to ban HGH, they’ll do so only after the hormone’s effects have been better documented.

We hope, anyway.

It’s a quiet evening around the Nerds on Sports offices. Most of us have gone home for the holiday season. The Dolphins’ climb out of the winless basement goes unheralded. SportsCenter plays to an empty break room. Even Tom Gorzelanny can pass through the halls unmocked.

In lieu of original content, I link you to two interesting sports-related posts I read from sources I don’t expect sports from.

First, re: the Patriots’ streak, here’s Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings:

Idiot sports radio personalities - and I apologize for the redundancy - constantly ring variations on The Patriots realize that the real prize isn’t going undefeated, it’s winning the Super Bowl. Nonsense. Somebody wins the Super Bowl every year. The NFL has had 41 of the things and they don’t look like they’re going to stop staging them any time soon. There are plenty of Super Bowl champions. There’s only one post-merger, undefeated champion. Why pass up a chance to make history?

What I suspect and hope is that the Patriot organization thinks the same way. The core members - Kraft; Belichick; Brady; Vrabel et al - have already won a bunch of Super Bowls. They haven’t matched the most annoying achievement in modern NFL history. (In fact, by going 19-0 they’d exceed it.) Don Shula ran his mouth worse than Steeler safety Anthony Smith - you have to figure a vindictive bastard like Belichick will want to rub his nose in it.

An interesting thought. Which would you like more - a fourth Super Bowl ring or to have your name mentioned every time someone brings up the word “undefeated season”?

I think winning the Super Bowl says more about a team’s ability to perform - as it’s the best of the AFC against the best of the NFC - but going 16-0 says more about your endurance. Sure, you can’t win the Super Bowl by beating the Jets twice, Buffalo twice and (going out on a limb here) Miami twice, but sixteen games should be a sufficient sample size for any statistician.
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