Soapbox: Pujols, Cardinals’ Negotiations Forcing Closer Reading

This is a guest post by Nick from Pitchers Hit Eighth. Check out more of his work at www.pitchershiteighth.com or twitter.com/PitchersHit8th

Writing a St. Louis Cardinals blog means that unfortunately, I am acutely tuned in to the Albert Pujols contract negotiations.  It’s not unfortunate because of the potential to lose perhaps the greatest player of our era from my hometown team, but rather because of the way the negotiations are being carried out between team and player – in as complete a silence as seems possible in today’s media landscape.  Thus the resulting media coverage, particularly national media outlets and writers, becomes an amalgamation of anonymous sources, “understanding” of situations, repeating statements of the obvious, and perhaps most disturbingly – writing that purposely leaves the reader’s imagination or assumptions to run amok.  If you don’t believe me, check out the daily compilations of Pujols stuff that we’ve been accumulating at Pitchers Hit Eighth.

The national media in particular has really been scrambling, and it’s gotten worse in recent weeks.  After all, this is THE story of the MajorREAD MORE

The Redefinition of Perfect

Max is never going to pitch a perfect game.

We learned that yesterday, along with about six billion other things that come with the knowledge that your son has a blood disorder. Max has hemophilia, which is an issue with how his blood clots. In short, it doesn’t — or at least not enough to actually stop any serious bleeding he may have. There’s amazing science going on in our bodies, and thankfully for us, we live within a half hour of one of the best children’s hospitals in the world. It shouldn’t have taken nine months to figure out that Max has hemophilia and it certainly shouldn’t have taken as many issues (we’ll get to that) to figure out that something wasn’t right.

Alas, nine months, four days and about 15 hours after our son was born, we found out he’s not perfect. Max has, as we commonly say to explain maladies, “something wrong with him.”

Your Baby Is Always The Perfect Baby

It’s hard to learn your kid isn’t perfect. Max isn’t perfect. And yes, I understand how obnoxiousREAD MORE

Soapbox: Major League Baseball & Instant Replay, Upon Further Review

[Ed Note: Dash Treyhorn was a regular contributor at The Fightins (RIP). Follow him on Twitter]

Imagine, for a moment, that it’s the final weekend of the baseball season, and two teams atop the same division, both with the same record, are playing for one final playoff spot. It’s late in the game, and the game is knotted at four runs apiece. In the bottom of the ninth, with the go-ahead runner on second, the batter smashes a double that stays just fair down the third base line, which easily scores the runner from second to win the game, and the division, on the final game of the season.

Or did it?

What if the third base umpire made the wrong call and instead ruled it a foul ball, sending the only-moments-earlier-hero back to the box? What if he strikes out, and the visiting team goes on to win it in the tenth inning? What if?

Of course, what I described didn’t actually happen. At least, not in that context. In August, the Florida Marlins were the victim ofREAD MORE

If Jim Harbaugh Becomes NFL’s Richest Coach, Should Current Coaches Hold Out For More?

[If you are a regular to the show, you've certainly heard Nick make reference to "our buddy Mike McKeeman" and the wonderful, if somewhat out-of-left-field ideas he has over email. This is one of those ideas. The words below are his.]

I want to see an NFL coach holdout. I complain all the time about petulant wide receivers who whine that they’ve outplayed the contract extension they signed just two years ago and threaten to sit out training camp and the regular season. But I would love it if an NFL coach decided to take this tact against an owner. I just want to see what would happen.

Could it happen next year? Rumors have Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh signing a deal with the Miami Dolphins, or two or three other teams, that would make him the NFL’s highest paid coach. Harbaugh has been extremely successful at Stanford, taking over a team that went 1-11 the year before his arrival and leading them to an Orange Bowl victory and a Top 5 ranking four years later.READ MORE

Why Do We Vote In Hall of Famers, Anyway? A Rant.

I’m going to make this quick, mostly because I’m already so annoyed about reading Hall of Fame stories that I feel bad adding one more to the pile. Also because, well, I’m starting this at 1:27 and it’s going to lose some cache in about 30 minutes when we can spend all night debating who did or did not get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Here’s my only point in this rant: Bert Blyleven? That’s what we’ve become? We’ve become a nation that debates Bert Blyleven so hotly that we end up hating other members of the media who disagree with our thoughts? Even Jeff Bagwell and the did-he-or-didn’t-he steroid era guys spark so much pundit fodder that it has to make the average baseball fans sick and, frankly, start to hate the sport a little.

Well, I take that back; the debate certainly won’t make anyone hate the sport, but it could make you detest the off-season and it certainly makes you despise some of those sanctimonious jerks who cover the game…especially the ones whoREAD MORE

Stop Making Sense: Baseball Advanced Stats Thru The iTunes Catalog Of Stars

For the past couple days, I’ve been involved in an argument discussion about stats in the context of awards. Drew Silva of NBC has taken the position that any writer should have to take a test proving he has a grasp on the advanced statistics. I won’t bore you with the details of the discussion – you can find it on Twitter – but it reminded me of iTunes.

Like many, I’m a bit OCD about rating my music. My library is maybe half rated and while the other half bugs me with its incompleteness, it would take … 19 days to listen to half of it. (38 days of music? That seems excessive.) The thing that helps me is that the ratings themselves aren’t that helpful.

For a time, I unlocked the ‘secret’ feature that allowed 1/2 star ratings. In the end, having those available just complicated things. What’s the difference between a 3 star song and a 4 star song? Adding a half in just didn’t add much information.

One of the things I’ve been doing is going backREAD MORE

Can People Please Stop Being Racist Jerks? Cowardly Sonsabitches.

This is news nobody wants to report, but for the second time in about ten days, a mural of Omri Casspi was vandalized in Sacramento. From Fanhouse:

Sacramento authorities are looking for witnesses and information after a midtown mural in Sacramento of Omri Casspi was defaced by a swastika for the second time in a week. Casspi is the only Israeli player in the NBA.

The timing of the hate crimes is most likely not an accident. The mural has been defaced with swastikas around two of the holiest Jewish holidays. Last week was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year; while this week is Yom Kippur, the holiest of holidays and a day of atonement, where fasting begins at sundown for a full day.

The Anti-Defamation League is on the case, offering up a reward of $1,000 for information leading to the capture of these schmucks. Seriously, what kind of person does this? Well, there are likely two scenarios. First, it’s a group of cowardly racists who live in Sacramento and think instilling fear into a subset of their communityREAD MORE

Villanova For Big East Football? Yeah, They Totally Asked The Wrong Philly School

The Philadelphia Daily News broke the news today that Villanova has been asked to join the Big East in football. They are, per the report, pondering the decision.

This made sense years ago. When the Big East got rid of Temple and started looking around the entire Eastern Seaboard for new teams to join the league — and replace the departing Virginia Tech, Miami and Boston College — they should have stayed in house and forced Villanova to join football or get out.

Yes, if this off-season has taught us anything it’s that some major conferences have long been too concerned with making all their schools happy. The Big East invited Connecticut and Villanova into the league for football back in the late 90s and when one said yes and the other said no, it should have been the beginning of the end for Nova in the Big East. Remember, Villanova has a good basketball history, but was far from the powerhouse they’ve become under Jay Wright when that offer was proposed. They had good teams in theREAD MORE

What Were They Thinking: Joe Theismann, Dan Hampton Edition

Who says sports media news never happens on a weekend? Whomever said news doesn’t break on weekends has never worked a weekend. And on the Labor Day holiday, we received two pieces of sports media news that will take us through the week.

First, NFL Network announced that it was bringing former ESPN NFL analyst Joe Theismann into its Thursday Night Football booth, teaming up with Bob Papa and Matt Millen. This is a very strange move. To begin with, there was no clamoring for anyone to join Papa and Millen. While Papa is a very competent play-by-play man, Matt Millen’s analysis was less than stellar, however, there were some sports media critics who praised his work. I felt his stints last season on college football on ESPN/ABC and Thursday Night Football were not up to par with his work with Fox and Westwood One Radio, prior to his disastrous stint as Detroit Lions General Manager.

For three years, Theismann was a man without a microphone. Removed from Monday Night Football by ESPN after the 2006 season, TheismannREAD MORE

Will Carroll: In Which I Fix College Football (And Kill off the NCAA)

I hate cupcakes. Both kinds.

Call me crazy, but I just don’t have a sweet tooth and hate foods that make me want more. I have enough of an issue with temptation as it is. It’s worse with the cupcakes that college football trots out in September. Samford? Stony Brook? Florida something or other? Every direction but good?

For college football, I’ve tried to ignore it as best I can for the last decade. A&M hired an idiot, while Texas has put together a dominating decade challenged only by … well, not much other than Oklahoma occasionally, and that pro team in L.A. Nick Saban has proved that a program can come back from being Franchioned, but  today, I come to bury college football and raise it up, better. The king is dead; long live the king.

Let’s start by killing off the one thing that we don’t need at all: the NCAA. That body has long outlived its purpose and its usefulness. Let’s go ahead and kill off the major conferences as well. They can stick aroundREAD MORE