Nerds on Sports

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!

We all have that one cousin.  We talk about him on the carride to the family reunion, wondering if he’s going to insult your grandmother or puke in your aunt’s bathroom or say something unbelievably racist at a restaurant.  Any day that he behaves himself is a little victory and every so often, he’ll string enough good days together that you think he grew out of it.  But then he’ll barrel through a ten year old nephew during the family wiffleball game and you realize that he’s not going to change.

The city of Boston has a cousin like that too.  And his name is Manny Ramirez.  Sure, it’s better to have a self-absorbed idiot in the family than, say, a criminal.  But it’s just rough to have to keep rationalizing away his actions.  The most recent was a physical altercation with the team’s traveling secretary.  Allow me to sum up what happened: Manny asked for a high number of tickets (16) on the day of the game, and the traveling secretary said it might not be possible.  An argument started and the poor employee was shoved to the ground.  One closed door apology later and all is forgiven.  It is, of course, important to note that a similar player-on-office staff fracas happened resulted in a player being fired a week earlier.  Granted, that was a general manager that Shawn Chacon shoved instead of a humble traveling secretary, but violence in the workplace is still violence in the workplace.  Well, at least on paper.

This incident just reminds us that Cousin Manny can do whatever he wants to do while part of the family.  A few weeks earlier, he took a swing at Youkilis.  That’s two acts of physical aggression in the month of June.  And each is just washed away.  Washed away like every other bafflingly moronic thing that he’s done for the past ten years.  It’s not going to stop.  Fans and faithful have been aware of this for as long as he’s been in Boston.  But with violence in the equation now, it is very unfortunate that even that doesn’t give anyone pause.

If this was any other player on the Red Sox, he’d be suspended.  But it’s Cousin Manny.  And Cousin Manny can do whatever he wants, making a generally proud and decent organization a pack of hyprocrites.  But they’re not thinking too much about that, I suppose.  They’re probably too busy prying Manny’s butt out of the punch bowl again.

Since Dick Bavetta led Los Angeles to victory with a dozen assists (and a couple of gritty rebounds), there will be a Game Six in Boston on Tuesday.  This Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals will wear on for at least one more game.  And I need to make my hopes for it known.  This isn’t an entry so much as a plea to the Gods of Sport.  And to them, I pray today:

Gods of Sport, please allow Kevin Garnett to hang 25 points (including eight in the final four minutes) and 15 rebounds on the Lakers, thus removing his “wilts under pressure” stigma.

Gods of Sport, please empower the Celtics fans to come up with more hurtful and offensive chants to direct at Kobe Bryant.

Gods of Sport, please sooth and refresh the various ailing joints of Kendrick Perkins, Rajon Rondo and Paul Pierce, that they may do your will.

Gods of Sport, please give Pau Gasol the grains and wild greens he needs to survive.

Gods of Sport, please inspire the New Kids on the Block to hold a free concert on the Boston Common if the Celtics win.

Gods of Sport, please let Boston finish this.

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 »

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.

Last week, Tim Duncan was duly saluted by Business Day One for his stunning contributions to both sports history and nerd culture.  For this week’s salute, we look to the baseball diamond, where a geek has been outthinking hitters for eighteen years.  Michael Cole Mussina, we salute you.  And here’s why.

To be a pitcher that throws into one’s late thirties, you need to be smart.  You must adjust your repertoire over time as your velocity decreases, and change your approach against batters that have seen you dozens of times.  To be a competant starter for two decades takes fortitude and substantial wits.  Mike Mussina has both, and has enough of both that he has some to spare.  The Moose (a nerdy nickname if I’ve ever heard one) loves crossword puzzles.  He doesn’t just love them, but he’s excellent at them, as evidenced by his appearance in the documentary Wordplay.  That’s right, he’s so into crossword puzzles that he jumped at the change to be a part of a documentary about crossword puzzles.

His intelligence manifested itself early, in his hometown of Montoursville, Pennsylvania.  He was nearly the valedictorian of his high school, which was no small feat considering he was also spending countless hours becomming as good a pitcher as he could be.  He plowed through Stanford in three years and came out with an economics degree and gaudy enough college numbers to spark interest from the Baltimore Orioles.

A crossword enthusiast with a Stanford degree and over 250 career wins in the AL East definitely has the credentials for a Nerds In Sports Salute, but Moose decided to put one last bit of icing on the cake.

Apparently, when he checks into hotels, he uses the pseudonym of Simon Phoenix.

That’s right, Demoliton Man’s Simon Phoenix.

Mike Mussina, on behalf of Nerds on Sports and the San Angeles Police Department, we salute you.

We here at Nerds On Sports never promised unbiased reporting, eye opening analysis or proper grammar. But one line we insist on holding is that of unabashed nerdery. We are nerds, we love being nerds, and we appreciate when other nerds call us nerds. A true nerd goes about their nerdy business with either pride of gleeful indifference to judgement, and such dedication to happiness is a marvel to behold.

On the playgrounds of their youth, such nerds had to deal with the barbs and taunts of others, and it took great strength of character to keep on rolling the dice and reading the fantasy novels that made them happy. As these nerds grow up, they can either enter into an environment that supports such nerdery (like, say, a college full of geeky suburban kids) or hinders it (like, for instance, the U.S. Marine Corps or the National Hockey League). For those gamers, comic book buffs and ham radio enthusiasts that are fighting the good fight in inhospitable climates, we here at Nerds On Sports would like to salute you. As such, I am hereby instituting a new award in Business Day One. To honor men and women that practice their geeky trade in the field of professional athletes, I will be handing out the coveted Nerds On Sports Salute To Nerds In Sports. It is important to note that there is no trophy. It is an actual salute. So if you’re named, please feel free to stop by my apartment when you’re in Boston so I can salute you.

The first recipient of the NOS Salute To NIS should be no surprise to those that follow both sports and the Renaissance Faire circuit. With his dedication to both great on-court body position and eating turkey legs off the bone, I am proud to now salute San Antonio Spurs center Tim Duncan. Read more »