Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Quick Hits
- I attended the Cubs/Brewers game last night much thanks to Brandon and his blue wristband baller tickets that he got in the drawing in March. We sat in the Upper Deck directly to the left of the Press Box which was a new perspective for me. I've probably watched 15 games from the Wrigley 500 Level in my life, but always flared out along the sidelines toward the foul poles. I enjoyed this new vantage, mainly because no seat at the Friendly Confines provides the same experience as another. Every chair in that building has it's own tread in your mind, every section has it's own personality. That being said, the surroundings of "Section 517, Row 7, Seat 4" were...... rowdy.
- This statistic is courtesy of Bleed Cubbie Blue: "Over at Baseball Prospectus on Monday evening, Nate Silver, perhaps presciently, noted that Milwaukee had, through Sunday, blown 13 leads of three runs or more (and nine of those from July 28 through August 26)."
- My favorite thing about keeping score during a game is what you ultimately do with the scorecard. I've only kept 2 scorecards in my life: The first Interleague game played at Wrigley against the Brewers and Carlos Zambrano's complete game, five hit, ten strikeout effort against the Astros on 8/17/03. The rest of them I usually just leave it there, finished or otherwise. I sometimes stop after the 7th or 8th inning and redirect my attention towards cheering, usually by then we're into the bullpen and you run out of space after four pitchers. Though sometimes, after a deluge of runs by the other team in the 5th or 6th inning causing us to fall woefully behind, I'll dramatically tear up my scorecard and throw up my hands in utter futility. You never know.
-USA Basketball is extremely entertaining right now. I highly recommend it.
- I've heard Yi Jianlian's name mangled numerous times by three different Chicago sportstalk radio personalities this morning after news of him signing with the Bucks hit the wire. This was usually followed by laughter and a snarky "whatever". Seriously, it takes 30 seconds to look up the pronunciation on this guy (EE jee-AHN-lee-AHN). If you're not going to do that, don't basically mock him for having a name that is difficult for you to verbalize. And for the record, it's pronounced Don-ah-FEE you lace-curtained half-an-Englishman.
- Lance Briggs, don’t sweat it. I careen my $350,000 cars off the side of the Edens at 3:15am and leave the scene of the crash all the time. The good news is, we can rebuild KITT. The bad news is, you are not Pauly Shore and this isn’t a Ja Rule video. You cannot do “whatever you want”.
- This statistic is courtesy of Bleed Cubbie Blue: "Over at Baseball Prospectus on Monday evening, Nate Silver, perhaps presciently, noted that Milwaukee had, through Sunday, blown 13 leads of three runs or more (and nine of those from July 28 through August 26)."
- My favorite thing about keeping score during a game is what you ultimately do with the scorecard. I've only kept 2 scorecards in my life: The first Interleague game played at Wrigley against the Brewers and Carlos Zambrano's complete game, five hit, ten strikeout effort against the Astros on 8/17/03. The rest of them I usually just leave it there, finished or otherwise. I sometimes stop after the 7th or 8th inning and redirect my attention towards cheering, usually by then we're into the bullpen and you run out of space after four pitchers. Though sometimes, after a deluge of runs by the other team in the 5th or 6th inning causing us to fall woefully behind, I'll dramatically tear up my scorecard and throw up my hands in utter futility. You never know.
-USA Basketball is extremely entertaining right now. I highly recommend it.
- I've heard Yi Jianlian's name mangled numerous times by three different Chicago sportstalk radio personalities this morning after news of him signing with the Bucks hit the wire. This was usually followed by laughter and a snarky "whatever". Seriously, it takes 30 seconds to look up the pronunciation on this guy (EE jee-AHN-lee-AHN). If you're not going to do that, don't basically mock him for having a name that is difficult for you to verbalize. And for the record, it's pronounced Don-ah-FEE you lace-curtained half-an-Englishman.
- Lance Briggs, don’t sweat it. I careen my $350,000 cars off the side of the Edens at 3:15am and leave the scene of the crash all the time. The good news is, we can rebuild KITT. The bad news is, you are not Pauly Shore and this isn’t a Ja Rule video. You cannot do “whatever you want”.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
A draft day in the life of Max Cohen (of Pi fame)
Max spends his early hours haunted by the possibility of the perfect draft. He stays tucked away, hunched over his computer, Euclid, in his dimly lit apartment on the edge of Chinatown. Grafting number systems, creating new running back prediction software, looking for a ghost in the machine. This is his draft day:
7:45 AM
Sitting in a nearby park on a bench surrounded by a swirl of delicate garbage. Max is furiously typing away on his laptop looking for sleeper ratios while calculating his opponents drafting tendencies on a round-by-round basis. His cell phone rings the MNF theme as he fishes it out of his pocket, eyes never leaving the computer screen.
His mentor, Sol, is on the line,
"The draft is at 5 o'clock today, you must learn to calm the mind and relax. It's been a month, Max, you haven't taken a single break!" Sol is earnest and loving with his plea.
"But I'm SO CLOSE," Max emotes after a thoughtful pause.
10:00 AM
Millie, Harriet and Blanche are jostled during their daily mid-morning stroll around the block when they see Max feverishly tearing through a full-to-the-brim trashcan on the corner of Essex and Grand. He's screaming obscenities and muttering something about the Larry Johnson Matrix.
Suddenly, his body becomes rigid with self awareness as he acknowledges the old women and their palpable disgust. Max attempts to disarm this situation but, due to his lack of human social contact, comes off more of a wandering vagrant than before:
"I just threw out something and I didn't realize that I needed it. It's just a printout," he explains calmly. Then, correctly sensing that he is getting no sympathy, barks at the old women, "I LOST MY DATA!"
1:30 PM
Max is on the roof, surrounded by binders of depth charts and 3rd down efficiency statistics, rocking back and forth. He takes a mental inventory to himself as the wind plays with his already mad genius hair:
“Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results...”
4:30 PM (30 minutes before the draft)
The ending of a phone conversation between Max and Sol:
Max: "...So, MAYBE, even though we're not sophisticated enough to be AWARE OF IT, there is an underlying order...a pattern, beneath every 'Go' game. Maybe that pattern is like the pattern in the stockmarket, like in NFL Football. The two sixteen number."
Sol: "That is INSANITY, Max!"
Max: "OR MAYBE IT'S GENIUS! I have to get that number!"
***CLICK***
6:54PM (moments after the final pick)
Max walks outside and is immediately mobbed by a group of well wishers and admirers. They want to congratulate him on the perfect fantasy draft and buy him a beer. They want to talk to him about how he got such great value even after the 13th round. They yearn to know the secrets so that they might win their own fantasy leagues.
Max cuts through the crowd, yelling with a fiery purpose, "Damn it already! Stop following me. I'm not interested in your money. I'm searching for a way to understand our world. I'm searching for perfection. I don't deal with mediocre materialistic people like you!"
7:45 AM
Sitting in a nearby park on a bench surrounded by a swirl of delicate garbage. Max is furiously typing away on his laptop looking for sleeper ratios while calculating his opponents drafting tendencies on a round-by-round basis. His cell phone rings the MNF theme as he fishes it out of his pocket, eyes never leaving the computer screen.
His mentor, Sol, is on the line,
"The draft is at 5 o'clock today, you must learn to calm the mind and relax. It's been a month, Max, you haven't taken a single break!" Sol is earnest and loving with his plea.
"But I'm SO CLOSE," Max emotes after a thoughtful pause.
10:00 AM
Millie, Harriet and Blanche are jostled during their daily mid-morning stroll around the block when they see Max feverishly tearing through a full-to-the-brim trashcan on the corner of Essex and Grand. He's screaming obscenities and muttering something about the Larry Johnson Matrix.
Suddenly, his body becomes rigid with self awareness as he acknowledges the old women and their palpable disgust. Max attempts to disarm this situation but, due to his lack of human social contact, comes off more of a wandering vagrant than before:
"I just threw out something and I didn't realize that I needed it. It's just a printout," he explains calmly. Then, correctly sensing that he is getting no sympathy, barks at the old women, "I LOST MY DATA!"
1:30 PM
Max is on the roof, surrounded by binders of depth charts and 3rd down efficiency statistics, rocking back and forth. He takes a mental inventory to himself as the wind plays with his already mad genius hair:
“Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results...”
4:30 PM (30 minutes before the draft)
The ending of a phone conversation between Max and Sol:
Max: "...So, MAYBE, even though we're not sophisticated enough to be AWARE OF IT, there is an underlying order...a pattern, beneath every 'Go' game. Maybe that pattern is like the pattern in the stockmarket, like in NFL Football. The two sixteen number."
Sol: "That is INSANITY, Max!"
Max: "OR MAYBE IT'S GENIUS! I have to get that number!"
***CLICK***
6:54PM (moments after the final pick)
Max walks outside and is immediately mobbed by a group of well wishers and admirers. They want to congratulate him on the perfect fantasy draft and buy him a beer. They want to talk to him about how he got such great value even after the 13th round. They yearn to know the secrets so that they might win their own fantasy leagues.
Max cuts through the crowd, yelling with a fiery purpose, "Damn it already! Stop following me. I'm not interested in your money. I'm searching for a way to understand our world. I'm searching for perfection. I don't deal with mediocre materialistic people like you!"
Monday, August 13, 2007
MLB and NFL collide
My favorite part about mid-August is the striking dissemblance between pennant race baseball and preseason football. I've spent the last 4 ½ months completely absorbed in the MLB landscape (with minor hiccups being the Bulls playoff run, Shark Week and the twelve hours I boycotted the Cubs after they fell to 22-31 on June 2nd) to the point where I'm lost without at least 10 minutes of boxscore perusal a day. My brain is all queued up with baseball knowledge just waiting for the appropriate conversation "in" so I can release my thoughts on topics such as why Sweet Lou left Clifford Floyd in to bat with RISP during the late innings of a recent game against a lefty pitcher with nobody warming up in the pen, then subbed Matt Murton in defensively for Floyd the very next inning anyway. Cliff has an .285 OBP against lefties over the last 3 years compared to Matty’s robust .404 OBP (not to mention a .916 OPS) against southpaws. I usually bring these thoughts up in front of attractive women who I've just met, so as to remove even the infinitesimal chance of me seeing them naked.
At this point, the crack of the bat is therapeutic with every shot in the gap representing a step closer (possibly) to playoff greatness. The psychology of an early advantage is now recognized and acknowledged with the proper perspective, aided by a vast catalogue of data on how each team augments, keeps or (in the Brewers case) painfully forfeits a lead. For every fan who still has a team in the ring with a punchers chance, September baseball looms large...
...But wait. Madden 08 is hitting stores tomorrow... and... brace yourself... they've tweaked it slightly and made some minor changes... which appear to... IMPROVE ON LAST YEAR'S VERSION!?!?! Wait a second, is that... is that John Facenda I hear in the distance? Holy crap, the NFL preseason is here! Please excuse my sloppy laughter, I'm eternally giddy right now at the possibilities. This is all too much for me right now... Is it O.K. if I break down in tears when those NFC Champion Bears take the field? Now you're telling me there's more? Fantasy football drafts for the next three weekends? Fine, I'm doing a manual shutdown of my brain. I can't juggle my love for NL Central drama with the NFC Norris reset to all square. It's like simultaneously starting your favorite book while watching the final thirty minutes of your favorite movie (only for some reason you have selective amnesia and you aren’t aware of the greatness of either yet).
On second thought, what the hell:
The Cubbies bats have recently become ice cold (with the exceptions of Jacque Jones, Jason Kendall, Matt Murton and Mark DeRosa) and key injuries (Soriano and Ramirez) are slowing the offensive surge that was the cornerstone of the successful two previous months. Our starters have a combined 5.86 ERA for the month of August and our "closer" has given up 5 ER in his last 6 IP. All this being said, I'm not worried. We're only a 1 ½ behind the first place Brewers despite playing hapless baseball the last 10 days. Baseball is cyclical, after all, and for that reason I see both teams (the Brewers and Cubs) priming themselves for a furious finish. Shitty baseball happens. The character of a strong team endures.
The Bears look (on paper) like a much improved offensive team. Greg Olson will be a top flight tight end for the next ten years. Benson is a strong, tough-nosed runner with depth behind him (Adrian Peterson and Garrett Wolfe, trust me on this one) and a chip on his shoulder. Muhsin Mohammed, Bernard Berrian, Mark Bradley and Rasheed Davis make up a receiving crops that had the lowest percentage of dropped passes in the entire NFL last year. An experienced O-line that has played together for a few seasons, anchored by 5-time Pro Bowl Center Olin Kreutz. For good measure, we'll have Devin Hester running around causing havoc... and we have a quarterback as well... a couple of them, I think. Mix that in with another stingy defense and even with a tough schedule I could see another January game in Soldier Field this year.
At this point, I’m exceedingly optimistic. I'm just waiting for Ben to rain on my parade with his "Prince Fielder/Brett Favre underdogs of greatness" rant in which he bashes Chicago sports fans for being self-important on a level that rivals Bostonians in their obnoxiousness. But because I shudder at the thought of Chris Farley being compared to Jimmy Fallon on any level, I'm going to move on. It only seems logical that with the sports world at the apex of events right now that I'm venturing east this Friday for a long weekend in Hoboken with my esteemed colleague, Benny C. The roughly 57 hours I'll be there will be spent having multiple sessions of Madden 2008, EPL games with Irish breakfasts, Father/Son-like Folgers moments "having a catch", a fantasy football draft and, of course, NHL 94 on Genesis. If Ben still has a girlfriend after she witnesses this condensed version of "UVA Ben and AK" replete with malt liquor and bum wine, then she gets my complete and encompassing respect and blessing.
92 hours and counting...
At this point, the crack of the bat is therapeutic with every shot in the gap representing a step closer (possibly) to playoff greatness. The psychology of an early advantage is now recognized and acknowledged with the proper perspective, aided by a vast catalogue of data on how each team augments, keeps or (in the Brewers case) painfully forfeits a lead. For every fan who still has a team in the ring with a punchers chance, September baseball looms large...
...But wait. Madden 08 is hitting stores tomorrow... and... brace yourself... they've tweaked it slightly and made some minor changes... which appear to... IMPROVE ON LAST YEAR'S VERSION!?!?! Wait a second, is that... is that John Facenda I hear in the distance? Holy crap, the NFL preseason is here! Please excuse my sloppy laughter, I'm eternally giddy right now at the possibilities. This is all too much for me right now... Is it O.K. if I break down in tears when those NFC Champion Bears take the field? Now you're telling me there's more? Fantasy football drafts for the next three weekends? Fine, I'm doing a manual shutdown of my brain. I can't juggle my love for NL Central drama with the NFC Norris reset to all square. It's like simultaneously starting your favorite book while watching the final thirty minutes of your favorite movie (only for some reason you have selective amnesia and you aren’t aware of the greatness of either yet).
On second thought, what the hell:
The Cubbies bats have recently become ice cold (with the exceptions of Jacque Jones, Jason Kendall, Matt Murton and Mark DeRosa) and key injuries (Soriano and Ramirez) are slowing the offensive surge that was the cornerstone of the successful two previous months. Our starters have a combined 5.86 ERA for the month of August and our "closer" has given up 5 ER in his last 6 IP. All this being said, I'm not worried. We're only a 1 ½ behind the first place Brewers despite playing hapless baseball the last 10 days. Baseball is cyclical, after all, and for that reason I see both teams (the Brewers and Cubs) priming themselves for a furious finish. Shitty baseball happens. The character of a strong team endures.
The Bears look (on paper) like a much improved offensive team. Greg Olson will be a top flight tight end for the next ten years. Benson is a strong, tough-nosed runner with depth behind him (Adrian Peterson and Garrett Wolfe, trust me on this one) and a chip on his shoulder. Muhsin Mohammed, Bernard Berrian, Mark Bradley and Rasheed Davis make up a receiving crops that had the lowest percentage of dropped passes in the entire NFL last year. An experienced O-line that has played together for a few seasons, anchored by 5-time Pro Bowl Center Olin Kreutz. For good measure, we'll have Devin Hester running around causing havoc... and we have a quarterback as well... a couple of them, I think. Mix that in with another stingy defense and even with a tough schedule I could see another January game in Soldier Field this year.
At this point, I’m exceedingly optimistic. I'm just waiting for Ben to rain on my parade with his "Prince Fielder/Brett Favre underdogs of greatness" rant in which he bashes Chicago sports fans for being self-important on a level that rivals Bostonians in their obnoxiousness. But because I shudder at the thought of Chris Farley being compared to Jimmy Fallon on any level, I'm going to move on. It only seems logical that with the sports world at the apex of events right now that I'm venturing east this Friday for a long weekend in Hoboken with my esteemed colleague, Benny C. The roughly 57 hours I'll be there will be spent having multiple sessions of Madden 2008, EPL games with Irish breakfasts, Father/Son-like Folgers moments "having a catch", a fantasy football draft and, of course, NHL 94 on Genesis. If Ben still has a girlfriend after she witnesses this condensed version of "UVA Ben and AK" replete with malt liquor and bum wine, then she gets my complete and encompassing respect and blessing.
92 hours and counting...
Monday, August 6, 2007
The Wilds of Montana
I'm all packed and leaving in a couple minutes for the annual King family trip to Montana. I plan on fishing, drinking, playing horseshoes, playing cribbage, teaching my 4-year-old nephew how to effectively utilize a swim move and shooting hoops with TK... all of which will be nicely broken up by frequent catnaps. I'm also going to a Missoula Osprey game (single A ball) so I'm sure I'll have some impressions to share on that. I'm bringing two books as well, one about Charles Darwin and the other about Philosophy and Baseball. I'll be back on Sunday, but I'm going to have a lot of downtime to write and reflect. I'm not entirely sure, but my drunk fingers will most likely find the keyboard in the tiny hours of the night for some broad, splashy piece about the cosmos... and sports... somehow.
Mahalo.
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