Game 2, vague realtime observations

It's hard to overstate just how emphatically stupid the YES Network intros are to these early Yankees games. Michael Kay remains an unbelievable and ridiculous shill (which is expected) but his lapsing into the pseudo-Victorian cultural arrogance of Oriental quaintitude is a new abomination even for him. Frankly, after all of 5 minutes, even I'm forced to concede that anyone who's not a Yankee fan would have a real case for justifiable homicide were they to pull an Elvis and cap the TV. The arrogance of the presentation and the molasses flood of cliche "whatitmeanstobeaYankee"isms is just unbearable. Michael Kay calls this game- the SECOND GAME OF THE SEASON- a "must win". I don't know what to say to that. I mean, at this rate even I'll hate the Yankees by the sixth or so.

That out of the way, my unbelievably messed up system has me woken up again in time for Yankees baseball live from Japan, so- thoughts!

- Lineup switch for this game involves Tony Clark starting at first base for the Yanks while Jason Giambi DHs, to which I gotta say- get well, Travis Lee. Soon.

- Hideki Matsui, early in the year obviously, seems to have a somewhat different swing this year. Last year he was swinging level for most of the season and consequently hitting a ton of grounders, but he's got a definite uppercut to his motion now, and is getting it in the air early. Whether this means anything at all depends on whether he keeps doing it. It's probably a good thing.

- Bad defense and astroturf is a fugly combination. Travis Lee, get well soon.

- I can't believe Tampa Bay has the early lead. Nice piece of running by Carl Crawford, though.

- By the time you read this, Tony Clark may have managed to get his bat through the zone.

- The YESsirs have repeated the same line about "hitting ninth is the same as a second leadoff man in the AL!" for two games in a row now, so I suppose we know what the party line is on the Kenny Lofton situation. Frankly, my entire thought process about Kenny Lofton at this point of the year is that he really ought to demand his mustache back from Gary Sheffield, now.

- With 2 on and A Rod up in the third...there's a "let's go Yankees!" chant in the Tokyo Dome. Very peculiar.

- Watching Jason Giambi get doubled off of second on a line out to left, with no one out, is just the sort of brain-dead play that drives a fan, a manager, an owner, anyone completely nuts.

- Tony Clark hits a home run to put the Yanks up 3-1. Travis Lee, take it easy. Get you some more ice? Take your time with rehab...(yes, I do now feel dumb.)

- Game three of the Yanks' season is next Tuesday. This is so odd.

- The Lofton rundown/Jeter nearly nailed at first sequence is the second really atrocious baserunning play of the game for the Yanks. These are really the things there's not much excuse for.

- Yep, definite uppercut to Matsui's swing. That thing looked like it came out of a field ordinance mortar. The crowd goes batshit, and you have to be happy for the guy.

- Hey, a Damian Moss sighting. Remember when he was a "prospect" with the Braves, and had that one good season with mediocre peripherals? The Braves are true masters at swindling the fuck-you out of opposing teams with pitching "prospects" who end up turning into, well, Damian Moss. Moss hits Jason Giambi with his first pitch. And so it goes....

- Awesome sequence. Michael Kay says "Moss won't make friends with Lou Pinella this way", the camera cuts to the bench, and there's Lou with the game 157, "does this shit ever end?" look on his face, giving a vague head-shake of disgust. Absolutely beautiful.

- And Jorge Posada puts one out, as the Bronx Bombers keep living up to that nickname with all but one run this game coming on homers. Damian Moss is getting shipped home third-class in a packing crate, at this rate. 8-1.

- Now pitching in the 6th for the Rays is Jorge Sosa, who I'm pretty sure was Tony Montana's supplier.

- Kay, on an overlay of Japanese players in the NL: "obviously you know them all, you've seen them play, and we have yet to see Kazuo Matsui". This is a man who talks for a living.

- Jorge obliterates another one, giving him a two homer, six RBI line. 11-1, and this is pretty much the Yankees you expect to see.

- 12-1 off a Jeter single with the bases loaded. You can see the potential here for the Yankee offensive juggernaut.

- Completely off-topic: Shane Mosely's hired Joe Goossen as his new trainer, which is a great move for him. Goossen was the trainer in charge of the amazing Diego Corrales reclamation project which saw the tall lightweight avenge his loss to Joel Casamayor recently, by completely altering his fighting style and reemphasizing strategy and boxing ability. Given how overmatched, unprepared and one-dimensional Shane looked last time out vs. Winky Wright, it's almost a perfect pick for him, if he's willing to let Goossen do for him what he did for the smaller man. If nothing else, it again makes you consider Shane to be a fighter with a real future to him, as opposed to the prevailing sense, after the Wright fight, of a guy whose best days were rapidly receding into the past.

- Enrique Wilson is 2-4 in this game. Love that Devil Ray pitching. Speaking of which, it's a John Halama sighting! I'd forgotten he was with them. He defines the phrase "perfectly competent left arm" who can swing to the rotation in an emergency. Nice guy to have around, although him being in this game now is going to help contribute to a really ridiculous box score. Lou knows he doesn't have another game for a while so he's throwing his entire bullpen out there, probably partly to get a look at them, partly to get some work in, and partly to stop this from getting really embarrassing.

- Robert Fick is pinch-hitting. As is customary when he's sighted, I feel compelled to point out again that Fick is a little punk asshole for the forearm shot he threw at Eric Karros in the playoffs last year. Getting him out is Flash Gordon, whose stuff looks pretty good at the moment. It had better be, with Paul Quantrill a bit banged up and Steve Karsay an eternal question mark. Aside- doesn't the name "Paul Quantrill" sound like it ought to belong to a Texas lawman in the 1870's?

- Mariano Rivera pitches the 9th in a 12-1 game. I guess he needs the work.

- And Mo closes it out nicely. Can't be thrilled with a split against the D Rays in these two games, but hey- a 12-1 win is a nice cap to things. This team's going to hit a bazillion home runs this year, man. Next game's Tuesday, April 6.

Off-topic again: tonight is the final Ranger home game of the season. I've been prevented by illness from doing the giant painted bedsheet thing I had in mind, but I fully anticipate getting in some nice, refreshing "Fire Sather/Retire Messier" chants. It's been an ugly year on the ice, and I'm happy to see it come to a close. But, if we can just get that retirement/firing pairing, I'll be able to be honestly excited for next year, whenever that is. We'll see.

Baseball Prospectus provides the following epicly stupid quote:

"We've said from the beginning when we traded Richie (Sexson), we're trading home runs for doubles and the ability to manufacture runs... Doubles are almost better. I mean, home runs are great, but when you've got guys who smack those doubles, you're in good shape, you've got a lot of guys in scoring position."
--Ned Yost, Brewers manager (Madison Capital Times)

I realize he's playing Gary St. Jean here and being asked to front for the Seligs and their payroll-vacating ways, but c'mon. It's not even a good spin-doctoring.

Tangentially speaking of which, NBA Insider at ESPN today has a really nice interview/article on Gary St. Jean and the Warriors. In the first ever substantive post at this blog I mocked St. Jean pretty badly for the Van Exel/Jamison trade, and I suppose in light of what this piece says about the situation in the Golden State management hierarchy, it was a somewhat unfair attack. Without going into too much detail, Chad Ford in this article describes hearing from multiple sources that the Warriors' owner, Chris Cohan, is in active control of the franchise, and "the worst owner in the league". In a league also containing Donald Sterling, that's saying something. So, apologies of a sort to St Jean, and a lesson to be recalled about the murkiness and opacity of management structures.

8-3 Devil Rays here in the 7th. The pitching just...well...sucks for the Yanks at the moment. Felix Heredia has these games, sometimes, where everything he throws is straight and centered and it's like Tee ball for opposing hitters. The beauty of being a Yankee fan is you know your team can, at any moment, put up a 10 run inning though.

Gotta say though- the Devil Rays are such a fun team to watch, it's hard to hate them even when they're rocking your side.

More quick baseball thoughts-

- Alex Rodriguez looks a tad tentative, but it's really exciting to have him on the home nine. He'll have no problems whatsoever at third, even if he really ought to still be at short.

- A 3-4-5 combo of A Rod/Giambi/Sheffield is exactly as comically, ludicrously impressive in practice as it is in theory. Even as a Yankee fan, I'm a tad embarrassed.

- Gary Sheffield is wearing the silliest mustache I've seen in a long time. He's also got two singles on an infield slow roller, and a check swing dunker into right field that looked more like he was trying to avoid being skulled by the pitch than an attempt to hit the ball. It's a queer game.

- Victor Zambrano, pitching for the D Rays, looks like he needs a hug. The Rays in total though, remain a really, really great underdog team. They're scrappy, young, they play hard, and they have just enough talent to hang around in most games. They're a couple years away from average, most likely, but they're fun to watch even now. Jose Cruz, Aubry Huff, Rocco Baldelli, Carl Crawford perhaps this year- there's talent here.

- Y'know, I had forgotten just how amazingly bad Michael Kay really is. A shrill shill with a mannered style amounting to a collection of verbal tics, he's often factually wrong (the part about the Tokyo Dome being single-use was sadly amusing) and always difficult to bear. Joe Girardi and Ken Singleton have been perfectly fine, though.

- For all the wailing (some from me) about how he's supposedly shrunk this season...Jason Giambi doesn't look much different. Hits about the same too, with a 2 run homer to his credit so far.

- Mike Mussina looks really, really mediocre today. I doubt it means anything, but he's getting bounced around by the Rays pretty good here in the 6th.

Let's go Yanks!

As a general rule, I don't really get sappy about my sports- the poetry of the game isn't what draws me in the main, though I'm certainly aware of it. But at the moment (albeit by complete accident and illness in conjunction) I find myself awake at 5 AM, and instead of going back to bed like any normal person would, I'm going to stay up and watch the first baseball game of the season, live from Japan, as the New York Yankees take on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. I wouldn't want to take up any space here saying something cliched and said better elsewhere about the sense of rebirth and new promise in opening day in spring...but as cliched as that is, and as little as I usually buy into sports on that level, sometimes it just gets me. I'm gonna go get myself some frozen yoghurt and bask in the glow of A Rod taking grounders at the hot corner, now...go Yanks!

I missed baseball.

Chris Webber "disappointed" and "shocked" by negative Kings fans

Y'know Chris, I'm pretty sure Kings fans are disappointed themselves at having a federal crook and drug offender with the emotional maturity of an 8 year old and a predisposition towards vocal malingering as the front man for their franchise, as well.

I suppose I should also mention that my loquacity today is likely to comprise the majority of my contribution this week- there may be some soccer thoughts later today and some whatsis later this week, but I'm still a bit sick and have a busy week. We shall see. MLB predictions and the zombie franchise thing are still in production.

By any case, I'm sure anyone who's got an interest in NYC has seen the plans for the Jets' new West Side stadium by now. I'm hardly qualified to look into the underlying economics of the deal as regards the financial future of the city, and I gladly leave such figurings to those with an expertise in the relevant areas.I would ocntribute this salient thought though- have you BEEN to that part of Manhattan lately? It's a fucking urban wasteland of abaondoned warehouses, broken windows, and meat-packing industrial plants. If anyone tries to seel you a line of blarkey about the impact on local residents, you have, on my authority, the right to tell them to push off. Traffic concerns are vaguely legitimate in connection with the plan, but any worries along the lines of eminant domain or living conditions as exists with the theoretical Nets land-grab in Brooklyn are pure BS dreamed up by overactive city councilmen/women. It's a farce, really- next to the waterfront, the far west side by the WS highway might be the most underdeveloped part of the city, in close competition with chunks of Harlem. I have no real regard for football and no opinion on the general wisdom of the plan in total, but any objections based on "community" of the west side are largely spurious, I can tell you that.

I would go beyond that, in fact, to say that the NIMBY virus has taken entirely too firm a hold of the New York political scene. That's not really news, of course; the "community" activists in this city are legion and well-known, even if "community" largely means radical leftist at this point in time. What they stand for at this point is mostly a combination of obstructivism stemming from a communistic viewpoint a minimum of 15 years past its expiration date, and a vision of humanity as a Balkanized collection of ethnic enclaves in perpetual conflict with each other. I'm out of time to write this morning, but more late on this theme.

LeBron James is an NBA player

In case anyone missed it, LeBron James put up 41 and 13 assists in the midst of a playoff drive, which clearly proves he should be playing for no money for Duke right now, because they have a lot to teach him about basketball and life. Right? Or is this particular idea under the third shell, I always get it mixed up....

Corrosive sarcasm aside, as always, the point is this: there are three greater classes of players in basketball, domestically: those who can succeed (defined, for the moment, in terms of personal economic remuneration) in the NBA drafted from high school, those who require some time in a minor league to prove their abillity, and those who will never be able to go pro in a meaningful fashion. For the third class college ball is a wonderful experience, and for the first, the draft is a reality. The second are able to use college ball as it stands. My issue is with the notion that college ball should substitute for a real minior league system on the basis of some nebulous, unproveable ideal of the student athlete, and with the notion that people who are able to become millionaries through the draft somehow owe society a multi-year period of indentured servitude on the basis of the notion that they "improve their skills" or "become better citizens" or whatever the excuse of the moment is for that route. People capable of becoming millionaires through the draft have every right to do so; if college is such a wonderful experience, they can have it after their playing careers, during the summer, or they can make the decision themselves to play for a pittance at risk of injury during a college career without the dreadful moralizing of a bunch of fat folks in their 50's.

And let's be brutally honest for one second: the major reason this is made such a business of in the NBA is racism, pure and simple. There's other factors at work of course, and legitimate issues with the NBA's draft structure, but that is the base of the objection in many cases. No one brings this up for baseball (a sport percieved as "white") or hockey (the same), because the issue for many people is that of young black men with cornrows and tattoos making millions of dollars. No one says a word when Darko Milicic- barely 18- is drafted, nor will they say anything when Ivan Chiraev- an 18 year old Canadian-Russian- is, despite his egotistic pronunciations that "the NBA needs Ivan Chiraev". It's not about attitude. These people will, however, have suddenly loquacious dispositions when the player in question is LeBron James, or Kevin Garnett, or whomsoever the latest high school draftee from America with dark skin is.

I don't propose to cast a blind eye on the many issues- and they are immense- with the NBA's draft structure, and I will write something as we approach draft day about the flaws and issues with such. But neither do I propose to deal with many of the comments against the NBA's drafting of 18 year olds so long as the issue is confinined, in those arguments, to native-born black Americans. If the drafting of LeBron is "wrong", than the drafting of Darko, or Peja Samardziski, or whoever else must be equally as wrong, unless the argument is to fall apart on the most obvious of moral grounds. The number of mainstream pundits I have seen maintain that position (or even acknowledge that Darko is but 18!) is nonexistant. If anyone has seen one, please, there's a comments link below, and I need new reading material.

Let this, however, not be construed as anything written against the proponants of college basketball. There's a fine debate to be had over which is superior, the college or pro game, a debate which has nothing to do with the moral judgement of whether it's "right" for a LeBron James to be in the NBA at age 19. I'm not even remotely a fan of the college game, personally; nevertheless, even if the NBA were to put in the minor league system I'd advocate, I could see the importance, utillity, and beauty of retaining the college game. My issue is purely with the idea that the college game is a moral or systematic necessity to success in life or at the professional level, and the underlying attitudes which lead to the assertion of that idea in some cases.

Boxing thoughts- vaguely sequential

A few thoughts on tonight's two fights-

First, from the top, it should be mentioned that when Emmanuel Steward speaks, I listen. It's a joy to have him on commentary, for his unsurpassed knowledge and ability to communicate it to the audience. He's the best current boxing commentator around, a half-notch above Max Kellerman.

It should not be forgotten that Monte Barrett, when he wants to be, is really an excellent fighter- not world-class, but at the level just below that, a solid fringe contender type. He's rarely in his career been able to take best advantage of his skills due to limited drive and motivation, but tonight, in the early going, he looks the best I've ever seen him- sharp, decisive, motivated, and with a plan. His jab is sharp and an effective set-up weapon, and it's allowing him to get off first in the early going. He's also putting more on his punches than he has in any other fight of his I've seen.

By the fourth round, Guinn looks intensely flustered. Barrett's outboxing him with much superior footwork, Guinn's abandoned his jab, and as Steward says appears to be trying to take Barrett out with one punch. Barrett has a chin weak enough that it might work, but it doesn't say much for Guinn's ability to adjust to an opponent. He's getting beaten to the punch consistently, and he's simply not throwing enough to win rounds to, most likely, to get a knockout unless he lands a counter perfectly. It should be mentioned that Barrett's not been hurt much in his career, as well; knocked down frequently, but rarely truly hurt.

By the end of the sixth, it's pretty clear that while the fight is hardly one-sided, the advantage clearly lies with Barrett and his much superior jab. As Steward has mentioned, Barrett's balance appears much, much improved (he's also in amazing physical condition, better even than usual for a man who's a superb physical specimen) which most likely will help him avoid the flash knockdowns that have plagued his career, and has clearly improved the jab. Guinn is hurt badly to begin the seventh, and, despite bad defense, manages to survive largely based on Barrett's wild swinging past the mark. It's easily the worst Guinn's ever been tagged in his career. Guinn finishes the round strong, with a pointless Ali shuffle and some nice power shots, but by now if he takes a decision, it's a questionable one at best.

The eighth is a pointless round, except for Larry Merchant remarking after it that he has the fight even. I can't say I'd agree, although Barrett has taken just enough rounds off to make that not a criminal way of viewing the fight. Lederman's card has Barrett up by 77-75 at this point, which seems better to me, although it should be said- judging scorecards without doing one yourself is an exercise in self-embarrassment. A fight may be fairly even by the 10 point must system, when it appears to the casual eye as if one man is dominant- it's not uncommon.

With a minute left in the 9th, Merchant brings up Joe Mesi. Like Steward says, and Lampley agrees with, I would say that the Barrett here tonight is almost a different fighter than the one Joe Mesi fought. His technique is better, his footwork is superior, chin stronger (probably from improved balance) and his jab is in a different world. Barrett tonight looks like the fighter he really always should have been, whereas the one Mesi fought looked like the one turned into cat food by Wladimir Klitschko some years back. Steward says that this Barrett would have knocked out Joe Mesi; I entirely concur. Mesi's standard diving lead jab-things are simply a slower, lazier version of the same offense that Barrett is countering and foiling from Guinn tonight, and if Barrett can hurt Guinn, who was tested by Dokiwari, than he ought to be able to smash Mesi's cruiserweight level chin- and, in fact, he did score a knockdown despite his own slothful condition in that fight.

Lederman's final card: 97-93 Barrett, which seems totally legit to me. The judges are all over 70 years of age, one of them in his first notable fight- and he's from Arkansas, where Guinn is from, and where this fight is being held.

Barrett wins in a split decision. He won the fight, and deserved the decision, but that it had to be split is a joke. Needless to say, the judge scoring it for Guinn ought to be suspended and investigated, and also needless to say, he won't be. The up and downside of boxing, all at once.

Thoughts on Guinn- this loss doesn't derail his career so much as it boosts Barrett's, but it does prove that he needs substantially better training in future on how to get his offense off vs. a smaller heavyweight with excellent technique, as well as some basic lessons on how to adjust to an opponent in the ring. Guinn still has excellent technique, solid power, and fine heart; what he needs now is experience, improved ring generalship, and to stay the hell away from guys with giant jabs and a significant height advantage over him. It looked like Barrett was swinging hammers down at his head all night long with that jab. Guinn will be back, and unlike Mesi, this fight says much more about what he has to learn still than it does about the limits of his ability. The heavyweight division remains a giant collection of "hmm...what's next?".

During the "Ask Harold" segment, Lederman advocates again for a pension plan for boxers. It can't be stressed enough how important an idea that is, and kudos to him for mentioning it. Every bit of publicity helps.

Next up is Jermain Taylor, the top young middleweight prospect in the game today. He's got a wonderful mixture of solid power and excellent technique, but even more than Guinn, he's yet to fight anyone able to put his obvious gifts to the test. Alex Bunema's an ok fighter, from what I've heard, though I've never seen him; he's also, according to Lampley (who has no reason to dissemble) a blown up Jr. Middleweight who's giving up 4 inches of height and 2 of reach. He's got a win over JC Candelo on his record, which is impressive especially since Candelo is a long, rangey fighter who looks, in the ring, as though he could be a middleweight himself. That's not likely to help him all that much vs. Taylor, but at any rate, it does make him something of a step-up in quality for the Arkansas fighter. We shall see if the upset bug is catching.

Bunema's visibly smaller in the ring, as the fight begins, and Taylor continues to distress me with his "Angry R. Kelley" impersonation. The first round's entirely a jabbing contest, notable mostly for Bunema not using the typical African peek-a-boo style, and instead utilizing some nice body movement on defense. He's clearly talented. In the second, Taylor throws his ridiculous jab like a spear at Bunema's head, and Steward compares it to Larry Holmes'. Can't get much higher praise than that. His counterpunching is also excellent, and he appears to just be better than Bunema, only marginally due to the height and reach difference. The jab Taylor used in that round is one of the best I've ever seen.

After the third, this fight looks like a matter of time, and/or a completely one sided decision, if Taylor's content to jab the night away. The most notable thing about Taylor here is his absolute calm and composure in the ring, a real technician's sense of ease with his craft. It's probably, next to the jab, the most impressive thing about him.

After six, the most impressive thing about Alex Bunema is his chin. He's a beaten man, insofar as there's no way for him to win this fight; but he's not acting or fighting like that, and it's easy to find a large measure of respect for the way he's comporting himself here. I write that, and then Taylor destroys him to begin the seventh, with two knockdowns and out within the first 45 seconds. Oops.

Taylor looked brilliant tonight. His punching was deadly, powerful, and accurate; his ring generalship, superior; his heart, in rising to the insults from Bunema, impressive. He fought with a controlled aggression and a coiled violence that marks many of the top fighters in their early years, and this fight- against the best opposition of his career- did nothing but brighten his prospects. He's still a ways off from being ready for Bernard Hopkins (if a fighter can ever be ready for Bernard Hopkins), but this fight was another solid step down that road, and an excellent feather in his cap. It's worth noting as well that Taylor comes off extremely well in interviews- a smart, respectful, and respectable young family man at the age of 25, giving respectful shout outs to his wife and his opponent. Chances look good he'll be a true shining star for boxing, in years to come.

All in all, an excellent night of boxing. Jermain Taylor's a call-your-friends-to-watch-this-guy young star and a fun guy to root for, and the heavyweight division continues to be a thick stew of inexplicabillity, parity, and open-ended questions. After the hegemony of Lennox Lewis in recent years, that's actually a nice change. If you can catch a replay of this, it's worth it; if not, make sure you catch the next Jermain Taylor fight!

Next meaningful boxing: April 3rd, as Kelson Pinto and Rickey Hatton square off with Sharmba Mitchell vs. Some Guy on the undercard, followed by April 10, when Wladimir Klitschko returns to HBO. Wlad's a bit marked up after Corrie Sanders knocked his head into the third row a few fights back, so this fight vs. Lamon Brewster will be, if anything, a way to gage his comeback.

With one quip, Stephen Valiquette justifies his roster spot:

"When we came in here and looked at Philadelphia's lineup, I felt like I was looking at [video game] NHL '92,"

That really summs up the Flyers, no? A whole bunch of big names who were probably a cut better as players, back then- and a lot healthier. I realize I've not written much about the Rangers since the great sell-off, because...well, bar Glen Sather being shipped back to Edmonton in a packing crate, third class, I think I've pretty much got all I'm likely to get in way of the Rangers resembling, this year anyway, the team they ought to be and the path they ought to be following. It's true, they're not any good at the moment, but then they were hardly much better when they were a more recognizable boxscore, either. Most likely, they'll continue to be a one man army- Jagr against the world- for the last few games of this season, and then it's anyone's guess what next year will look like. But contrary to the aspersions thrown down at Rangers fans from the owner's box, I should think this period is likely to prove that the average fan is closer to my estimation- desperate for a little bit of real hope, and a sense that the team itself has some understanding of how to put together a winner in the NHL context. Now, obviously to really prove that they'd need a nice large packing crate, but in the absence of that a few weeks and months spent developing the younger players will do, thanks.

For what it's worth, the blogger spellcheck offers "satire" as the first replacement for "Sather". I'm amused, anyway.

Prospect boxing tonight

Alex Bunema vs. Jermain Taylor, and Dominick Guinn vs. Monte Barrett, tonight, 10:00 PM ET, HBO. Should be a nice step up in class for Taylor and Guinn in some respects, and certainly a chances for them to show their wares to a larger audience. Both are likely future world belt-holders, and might be true division champs as well, though it's still too early to forcast them exactly. I know nothing in particular of Bunema and so can't really forcast that fight (other than to say if Taylor's management thought him any kind of threat, this fight would not have been made), but I fully expect Guinn to wear down Barrett without too much trouble. Guinn doesn't have obliterating power, so it's likely Barrett will hang around and gain the confidence to make it superficially respectable (as often happens with Barrett), but the end result won't be particularly close, and Guinn might score a late knockout. Unlike Joe Mesi, Barrett's last opponant, I don't expect Guinn to be in any meaningful trouble at any point.

Over/under on total rounds telecast: 10.

ESPMTV?

From ESPN.com's page three "10 questions with DMX":

"10. Are you into sports at all because a lot of teams used "Up in Here" to pump themselves up before games.

[Answer]No, not at all. "

Doesn't that just say it all about how ESPN's gotten, of late? You might have thought "Playmakers" would have taught them something....

The only good thing from Eric Lindros' Ranger stint

Unexpected fun

Recently, and oddly, I've found myself listening to a bunch of Mike&Mike in the morning. Sports radio, especially locally, tends to be an ungodly swamp of hidebound, cliche-ridden, screaming idiocy, where the veracity of a point is established by how far, and at what volume, a commentator can hurl feces. It's not pretty. These guys, however, while they're not part of the statistical revolution in sports by any means, are capable of carrying on an intelligent discussion at a normal volume where they- you'll never believe this- actually rationally exchange and discuss views, and actually think about what other people say. Throw in that they're funny, and it's really about as close as you can come to a civilized experience in front of sports radio. Recommended.

"Oops"

Carmelo Anthony refuses to play

This flew under the radar over the weekend, apparently. College sure taught him a maturity in handling his role that a high-schooler could never have, right? Him and Jay "Knieval" Williams, too. Competing for a national championship sure taught him how to play in the playoff-race clutch, right? It's all about a college experience teaching these young men how to be more mature, well-rounded people, isn't it?

Corrosive sarcasm aside, it's another data point in favor of the argument that fetishization of a college experience in general ought to reside next to "veteran experience" and "good clubhouse/locker room presence" in the Big Book Of Overvalued Sports Cliches. Plus, it thankfully costs Anthony any chance he had at an undeserved ROtY based on his adorable, tasty college-ness, I think. If only we could next convince dilettante, smarmy assholes that results in the first 50 games of a career don't mean that much and teach them about the concept of development curve, we might really get somewhere.


Naaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

From the front page of ESPN's MLB Insider:

"J.D. Drew has impressed his Atlanta teammates with a .727 average in his first 11 Grapefruit League at-bats. The 28-year-old, acquired from St. Louis in a five-player trade in December, just looks like a ballplayer. "

Wow, just...wow. Usually they're a lot better then that. The article itself says the same things, so it's not even the fault of Mr. Headline Writer. I'll just say sample size, and looks don't hit, and we'll move on.

MSG reports that the Houston Rockets have signed Charles Oakley to a 10 day contract. No word on whether he'll have to reimburse them for the voodoo preists required to get him moving again.

*Sigh*

2-1 Rangers, now. Mike Dunham's got to go. He's not even a shadow of a husk of a shell of what he was in the first half of the season, and in this environment with Sather et al. still around, I don't see him getting much better. For his good and the team's, if he can be moved before the next NHL season kicks off, it's probably a good idea.

That's the stuff

9 minutes into tonight's game, the NY Rangers lead the Caps 2-0, the second goal scored by Fedor Tyutin coming off a nice pair of passes by the new Jagr-Lundmark-Hlavac line. That's a beautiful thing to be able to type, and it's nice to really enjoy the Rangers for once.

Upcoming soonish: a big MLB season preview/predictions thing-y.

Words of wisdom from Ken Dryden

Excellent Jim Kelley column on Ken Dryden's view of the physical nature of today's NHL

Man, it's nice when events pretty much stack up right behind your assertions:

More steroid talk

Notice Johnny Damon on union-busting, and Curt Schilling on the lack of trust between owners and players.

Bud Selig lives up to the Zumsteg Line/Griffey back in Seattle?

Bud Selig threatens to use the "best interests of the game" clause to enforce tougher steroid testing?

"Reading someone when they make such an obviously dumb statement is like watching them drive a stake into the ground and pound a sign that says "my knowledge stops here" into the stake."- Derek Zumsteg

If Selig thinks he can get this one past a grievance from the Union, past the court of public opinion, and past the obvious smell-test revelation that it's about union-busting and not about steroid-testing, then he's a bigger...actually, scratch that, he's actually just about as big a goober as we've all thought he was all along. Given that the new test policy which was collectively bargained for hasn't even had one season yet in practice to test its efficacy, it's obvious Selig, if he actually tries this (and this leak is clearly a trial balloon) will face rediculously difficult task of convincing whatever the relevant governing authority for this is that he had no other choice. Furthermore, he makes it all too plain that his real motive here is to seize on the various and sundry media reports of factionalism in the union over the steroids issues in an effort to disrupt the union and possibly break it, or at the very least shift the burden of public odium onto Donald Fehr&co. It's a logical move in a sort of painfully obvious way, at least in the short term. In the long term, it's another of the two-left-feet moves from the owners' side which contributes to every labor negotiation in baseball resembling a PRIDE fight.

In other baseball news:

Ken Griffey Jr. back to Seattle rumors live

If they can actually get Griffey for $5-6 million a year, at a cost of only Randy Winn, then it's not a bad idea, I think. When healthy, Griffey is still a pretty good player- .247/.370/.566 line last year in 166 at bats. His defense is a bag of "eh" these days, he remains intensely injury prone, and his contract runs way too long; but the Ancient Mariners might only be a few extra stanzas away from vague contention this year, and if they manage to get lucky with Griffey- well, you never know. At any rate, with two of their best players past 40 (Moyer, Martinez) and several others in decline (Olerud, possibly Ibanez, just about the entire bench, maybe Ichiro) the Mariners are pretty much a win now team- so it may be worth the risk to them of Griffey being a lead weight in 3 years if they have a great shot to win it all this year, especially since reaquiring him may help ameliorate some of the PR hit they've taken from Bavasi's really, really iffy first winter as GM. It is true they have a host of young pitching talent and a few solid positional prospects in the system, so they're not likely to completely fall apart once the older guys depart; but at the same time, the switchover to those younger players ought also to help defray the impact of Griffey on the bottom line on the last couple years of his deal.

Bottom line is it's probably not the best deal the M's could make with the spare cash they have around post-Sasaki, but it wouldn't be horrendously foolish by a long shot. Sadly, that's kind of an upgrade for them on most of their moves, this offseason.

A Rangers Highlight

I forgot to mention this previously, but on Monday night newly acquired 22 year old Ranger Josef Balej scored his first NHL goal in a 3-1 loss to the Devils, providing the first tangible results of the rebuilding project- if thats what this is. It was a nice, athletic goal which showed off Balej's eye for the net, and if he can do that consistantly, he'll be great fun to watch and root for. I'd love, and prefer for both their sakes, to see him on a line with Jamie Lundmark. They would have potential to be a very high scoring combo, especially if they could find a consistant chemistry with Jagr or Hlavac, and both of them will need linemates who aid their strengths. At this point, playing whoever comes up from Hartford with the corpse of Mark Messier isn't doing any good other than to feed Messier's desperate need for relevance.

"Steroids rotted my mind"

Boxer claims steroids destroyed his legs

And the hysteria over these substances gets ratcheted up another notch. To be momentarily political about it, a situation like this causes even a pretty darn liberal guy like myself to wonder what happened to the notion of personal responsibility for the choices a person makes. I think, even by the standards of when this individual's career occurred, use of steroids would constitute what would be considered in a sporting, if not a strictly legal sense, cheating. That being the case, for him to show up now and rave about the ills of steroids is more than faintly hypocritical and beside the point, not to mention simplistic. Staying in the political vein for a moment, the dragging out of people with large, visible physical infirmities which may or may not have some theoretical link to steroids, and who are likely to be theatrical witnesses, further suggests that what this subcommittee is about is the same thing President Bush was at least partially about when he mentioned steroid abuse in the SOTU address- political points. Being politicians, that's no more or less than most people expect of them, but it doesn't mean their glorified campaign events deserve any of our attention or media time above, beyond, or instead of a substantive discussion of the real issues related to the use and abuse of steroids. For that, sites like baseballprimer.com are usually at least a somewhat better choice. There's probably a point here, once again, about the state of the discourse in mainstream media in general, and the sports media in particular.

Let's also take note of this bizarre assertion: "These owners of these professional teams, they don't want [players] to know the truth"

I have no idea how a man whose experience in sports was as an individual athlete in a sport with no overarching governmental body thinks he can be so sure of this. I do know that the level of paranoia that's built up in labor-ownership relations in the sporting world, as exemplified by this quote, continues to poison the wells and prevent mutually intelligible discourse on a way to deal with the issue of steroid abuse.

This ESPN article, it should also be noted, doesn't tell you much about who Bob Hazleton is, and how he came to be as damaged as he is. Here's a more in-depth look: Washington Times article.

I don't see any reason to presume that the amount and degree of willful and ignorant self-destruction described in that article has much, if anything, to do with the complicated steroid use programs engaged in by a few athletes today. Is it likely those athletes are damaging themselves as well? Yes. And there ought to be serious repercussions to steroid abuse in order to create an environment where players won't feel pressured to use, but to reiterate the point- picking the worst possible example, exacerbated by specific factors peculiar to his case, and touting that as the norm is an abuse of information. Even if you happen to believe that steroids are the omnipresent evil some people characterize them as, it behooves you to make that argument in very exact, restrained language, because the sorts of publicity stunts and abuse of language this situation exemplifies just makes it easier for people who don't see steroids as much of an issue to make their own case and refute yours.

Fight thoughts

I had planned to give my larger thoughts on the Mosely/Wright fight here, but...it occurs to me there's not a huge amount to say. Mosely looked somewhat off his game, it was true; he wasn't moving effectively, and was having trouble setting up his offense, losing his body work on Wright's elbows and not finding a way past Wright's jab. But it was really Winky's night, and the fight- outside of the 5th, 6th, and 12 when Wright drifted away from his jab and gameplan- was pretty one-sided. Wright was clearly the naturally larger man, and wasn't bothered by Mosely's power in the least. His defense was simple but effective all night, and his jab totally threw Mosely, allowing him to negate most of his opponant's best offense and in turn set up his own hard lefts. If there's a lesson here to take away, other than that Winky Wright is a really good fighter (and, I have to believe, a better one than the version who lost to Fernando Vargas some years ago) it's simply that for a fighter to move up from Lightweight to Jr. Middle over the course of his career, and still fight at a world-class level, is incredibly difficult. I think we've seen the best Shane Mosely has to offer, and ultimately, I think this fight showed he's not capable of fighting consistantly at 154 pounds (it was his second real fight at the weight, discounting the no-contest against Raul Marquez). His previous major fight at this weight came against Oscar De La Hoya, another near-great or great fighter who began his career at 133, and who Mosely had also fought at 147. Fighting against men with a similar frame as his, I think even the past-his-peak Mosely is a threat against anyone; fighting at 154, I think he's simply too small, and not powerful enough to make up for the noticeable reduction in his quickness and mobillity in the ring since his days at 135 or 147. If he wants to keep going at 154, I'm not sure if he's a real threat to the top guys anymore. It's kinda sad; he was my favorite fighter for a long while. Bottom line is, however, still credit to Winky Wright for fighting an excellent, skilled, smart fight.

Two associated points as well- this really, really doesn't bode well for De La Hoya in his upcoming fight with Bernard Hopkins, presuming that comes through as expected. It is, strategically, a no-lose for Oscar- is he loses he got beat by a middleweight, if he wins, he's a near-legend. In the actual conduct of the fight though, I think chances are unless Nard gets suddenly old in the ring, he beats Oscar up pretty badly, though. We'll see. In some respects also- mostly frame and smarts- Wright reminds me of Hopkins; and if the seems-likely Trinidad/Wright fight comes off at some time soon (even is Shane gets a rematch, I'm not sure what he could do differently) I think there's a chance that Wright might be able to do to Trinidad what Hopkins did. The key to that will be the jab, again, and the abillity to control distance and effectively smother Trinidad's advances. It'd be an interesting fight.

Quick Wrestlmania thoughts- best show they've had in a while I thought, a great deal of fun to watch. I was proud of New York for the massive turn on Brock and Goldberg, and that ended up being the bizarro-highlight of the evening for me. Main event was predictable outside of the finish but excellent, the Angle-Guerrero match was fine and fun, if not anything memorable, and there wasn't anything meant (vaguely) for adults that I didn't enjoy. Great credit to HHH for going out tapping.

Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero as the champions is very surreal, though. In a good way.

FRAUD

I'm housesitting tonight and thus unable to do a live card or full thoughts (those come Monday night), but it must be said- Joe Mesi is a fraud on the boxing public. Fighting a debillitated, blown-up cruiserweight who had no energy from the second round on, he was unable to get a knockout, and in fact got dropped three times- THREE TIMES! He's the white Michael Grant, and this was his Golata fight. His power is overrated, his chin is terrible, his skills and athleticism average at best. Any serious heavyweight knocks his block off his shoulders and into the third row. Credit should be given here to Vassilly Jirov, who nearly won against, and knocked down thrice, a man with a 15 pound weight advantage on him, and an even larger natural size advantage. But even once that credit's given, Mesi comes away from this plainly embarrased and exposed, and all his whining about not being as experienced as his opponant doesn't hide that- especially coming from a man with 29 pro fights, who's run from competition at every turn.

Possible omen for the main event- Mosely looks, physically, like shit. Much less muscular, and puffy in the face. In potentially related news, guess who's an ex-BALCO customer?

Fitting Tribute

Grizzlies pay tribute to victims of Spanish terrorist bombing

This is one of those times when sports shine for their value as a thread in the social fabric. It's a principal we recognize often on the small scale- high school athletes are less likely to be in trouble (though that's correlative as much as causative)- but do not often consider on the larger scale, outside of the Olympics. The terrorists- be they ETA, or Al Qaeda, or someone else- are fundamentally concerned with dividing people from each other, across national or religious or ethnic lines. Sports, insofar as they are manifested in competitive national and international leagues, are agents of the opposite principal- integration of people regardless of their culture, ethnicity, or national origin.

Take a look at the starting 5 of the Grizzlies last night:

James Posey is a black man from Cleveland, Ohio.
Paul Gasol is a white man from Barcelona, Spain.
Iavokos "Jake" Tsakalidis is a white Georgian (in the Caucases) of Greek extraction.
Jason Williams is a white man from West Virginia.
Bonzi Wells is a black man from Muncie, Indiana.

Those five men would seem, on the face of things to have little in common; they share among the five of them no common bonds of race, or ethnic origin, or language, or country. What they do share is, simply, their dedication to their chosen profession and art- basketball. They're pretty good at it, too; a 41-24 record is impressive, and good enough to make the playoffs. Evidently, sharing little of those qualities at times considered so important hasn't precluded them from working together as a team, nor from achieving great things as a unit. It's best not to belabor the point past what it will bear- no doubt these five most likely aren't going out on Saturday for drinks together, or having barbeques together in the offseason. But when they take the court together, they offer a simple and forceful rebuke to those who seek to divide, in the person of the idea that who we choose to be and how we choose to live matters more than the things the seperate us.

It's fashionable to use Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End Of History" as something of a punchline now, in light of the emergeance into popular recognition of anti-modernist terrorist movements and the discontent they so brutally represent with the modern world. In my view however, his ideas have, if anything, a greater poignancy and relevance how then they did when he first formulated them and wrote them down. Now, however, they represent a moral calling moreso then a dry analysis- a statement of the essential validity and moral worth of the idea of Western Liberal Democracy, and the notion that an individual man or woman is free to define him-or-her-self in the world by their deeds, choices, and actions rather then by the circumstances of their birth or culture.

In some small way, I like to think that everytime James Posey feeds Pau Gasol in the paint for that little turn around jumper he likes, it represents an implicit argument for, and celebration of, that idea. The Grizzlies wore black armbands last night, but even after those come off they're a walking, dunking refutation of the ideas that led to the bombing in Spain.

Wow

That's among the worst articles I've ever, ever skimmed over. It's not even worth refuting or yelling at like Lupica is. It's either a subtle parody, or completely loopy.

In addition this morning:

Bertuzzi suspended through season and playoffs, status for next year undetermined. Canucks fined $250,000.

The minimum acceptable, I'd say. He'll be lucky if he doesn't get prosecuted. He might win an Oscar though

It's election year again?

Here's a spectacularly bad quote:

"The union's wrong, here," said Biden, D-Del. "Baseball is the national pastime, but it's the repository of the values of this country.


"There's something simply un-American about this. This is about values, about culture, it's about who we define ourselves to be."

If we ever hit a day in this country where we define our national values by the drug-testing regimines in place in professional baseball, then it's time to do some serious national soul-searching about what it really is that we ought to value. The only thing which isn't intellectually vapid about this quote is that it illustrates, once again, the burden of history which baseball has to carry- the way it's romanticized and its past sterilized, and thus required to meet a greater standard in the public eye than other sports. No one says rampant marijuana abuse in the NBA is un-American; no one says the tittie-baring roid-monkey freak show of the NFL is un-American; and no ones says that Todd Bertuzzi trying to cripple Steve Moore is un-American. So why is baseball's testing program asked in public to carry that burden by a senator? Baseball's romanticization unfortunately gives license to grandstand to a lot of people out for nothing more than an excuse to strike an electorially fetching pose.

John McCain, great man that he is, also in the same report issued this mind-numbingly stupid quote:

"As your athletes get bigger and stronger, the credibility of your product in the eyes of the public gets weaker."

Has he never heard of the advances in weight-training, nutrition, and general athletic upkeep over the past 20 years or so? The reason baseball players are bigger and stronger now is because they're more dedicated to their craft today then they ever have been before, on average, partly because their pay allows and demands that the majority of them be so. 20 years ago, weight training was a rarity; these days guys are drinking creatine shakes in between superset lifts in the weight rooms at the ballpark! Of course that's going to have not just an impact, but the VAST majority of the impact. Players today are visably larger then they were 20 years ago; but the anonymous testing for performance enhancers last season reported that only 5-7% of players may have been taking them (bviously an arguable conclusion, but a useful ballpark figure). Assuming a cause and effect relationship between weight gain and steroids over the whole population of players is, simply, silly.

Bottom line is, baseball does have a real steroids issue; so does football, so does boxing, so may hockey at some point. The only reason the NBA doesn't is because the body type necessitated by basketball (tall, thin dudes) isn't best achieved through steroids, which in fact may slow a player down and reduce his lateral quickness, to no useful effect in a game that, ultimately, doesn't prioritize strength. All of these sports have to deal with the issue, and all could stand to improve their measures. The creation of a designer steroid like THG which was unsuspected and untestable until recently suggests again that anyone who thinks the NFL system is foolproof, or even all that much better than the MLB system, is in denial or fooling themselves. The fact of the matter is, right now, pro sports as a whole doesn't really have an answer for a lot of the issues raised by performance enhancer use and abuse. But those answers aren't going to be found because a couple of half-informed busybody senators with no knowledge of the particulars of the case decide to go off half-cocked and demonize one testing regimine.

Ranger Death Spiral Update Update/Thugishness

Longer thoughts still to come sometime later, but the Rangers also, shockingly, moved Martin Rucinsky to the Canucks in exchange for R. J. Umburger and Martin "I'm not Sylvain" Grenier. Grenier is nobody at all, and I know nothing of Umburger. Is it bad that I was more excited about this deal when it had ANOTHER second round draft pick in it, at one point?

The Rangers are well and truly burnt down, now. It's up to Sather to rebuild them literally from the ground up, with the giant stash of draft picks he's picked up, and a few prospects. I still think he should be fired, but assuming he won't be, this is his last real chance to save his rep and get this team back on a productive path Here's hoping.

Unfortunately, that's not even close to the biggest news in hockey today. That "honor" has to go to the shameful, disgusting assault perpetrated by Todd Bertuzzi on Steve Moore last night, sucker punching him from behind and driving his head into the ice, then pummling him when he was down and unconscious. Moore is in the hospital right now, having surgery on his neck to deal with cracked vertebrae. Bertuzzi, at an absolute minimum, should be suspended without pay for the rest of this season and the entire playoffs, and if he ends up being criminally prosecuted for his actions, I wouldn't argue with that. There's no excuse within the realm of sports for intentionally, in a premeditated manner (Brad May had a bounty on Moore's head, and Bertuzzi was quoted as saying Moore wouldn't be on the Ave's roster in March, following his hit on Markus Naslund several weeks back) injuring an opposing player in a manner that might have killed him.

Think about that for a second. Todd Bertuzzi might have killed Steve Moore, intentionally. Might have paralyzed him. Right now, Steve Moore is lying in a hospital bed in Vancouver with tubes coming out of him and a broken neck, waking up from surgery, concussed and nauseous, and probably soon to be wondering if his career is over. Because Todd Bertuzzi decided to try and injure him. Until and if he ever proves otherwise, Todd Bertuzzi is a worthless fucking piece of shit.

No matter what happens in the course of sports, I will never say that about a player due to his actions in the context of a game. It's sure as hell not my place to judge a player on account of his skills, talent, or even effort in most cases. I'm not a player and at best a marginal athlete, so I respect the difficulty of rendering judgment about something that's really not a thing I have much experience in. In any case, I try not to make that my focus in my enjoyment of sports and the attention I pay to various parts of the business (I love the area of team design and system much more). But what Bertuzzi did is so far beyond the confines of the game, or an appropriate play within it, that to even try and render judgment about it as a hockey play seems willfully myopic. What Bertuzzi did is disgusting and shameful as the act of a human being, and if anything it's made WORSE by having happened during a game, because as participants in an athletic contest, both Bertuzzi and Moore undertook to compete physically under certain rules and restrictions, and implicit within that agreement is the idea of having some respect for the physical welfare of an opponent. There's no excuse for what Bertuzzi did, and no matter how many times he has his GM, coach, and fellow players lie in the media for him (and there's no reason to assume they're doing anything but) there's no hiding it. The assault he perpetrated is the most shameful thing I've seen in sports for a long, long time.

EDIT: Wow

That's from the Vancouver Canucks website's "Ask A Player" section, with Todd Bertuzzi. Read the last question.

Ranger Death Spiral Update

Mike Green to the Rangers from FLA on waivers.

Greg De Vries from the Rangers to Ottawa (!!!) for Alexandre Giroux, Karel Rachunek.

Rangers pick up Sandy McCarthy on waivers.

Obviously, more to come as we head down the home stretch of the trade deadline. I'll have more thoughts once this is all settled (and probably once Rucinsky joins the exodus), plus a general reaction to deadline day in the NHL. As of right now, this looks like a great day for the 'Lanche, and an interesting one, at the very least, for the Rangers.

Great Sports Quotes

"There's still a lot of Lima Time. There's still a lot of Lima Time left."- Dodgers pitcher Jose Lima

Hang time, maybe.

Ranger Death Spiral Update Update

Barnaby trade terms

Ranger Death Spiral Update

TSN is reporting that Matthew Barnaby has been traded to the Avalanche, recompense not yet reported.

So far, that brings the running talley of Rangers traded this season to: Malakhov, Barnaby, Markkanen, Nedved, Kovalev, Simon, and Leetch. The deadline is tomorrow, with Rucinsky, Dunham, Poti, De Vries, Mironov and possibly Lindros all still in play as trade targets. I can't say I recall a single year in any sport for any team I follow that's had this much roster turnover, with the possible- and weird- exception of this year's Knicks. It's rent-don't-buy in New York this year, especially if you factor in the Yankees.

As always, I support rebuilding for the Rangers, even if some of these trades don't work out all that well.

Programming note- this Saturday, Ronald "Winky" Wright will be fighting Shane Mosely on HBO, with a dreadful undercard of Joe "Fraud" Mesi vs. Vassilly "I'm Really A Cruiserweight" Jirov. The card starts at 9:30, but if you miss the opener, you're not missing much, other than the overmarketing of Mesi. When he fights someone who's not gruesomely mediocre I'll care. And Monte Barret does NOT count, not when he fought scared for half the fight, knocked Mesi down, and almost won. Until proven otherwise, Mesi is a Michael Grant wannabe.

More O/E

Forgot to mention due to social agenda, but I managed to catch the Diego Corrales vs. Joel Casamayor fight on Saturday. I was very, very impressed with Corrales and surprised he only took a split decision victory. His redicovery of effective, controlled aggression, his jab, and improved footwork and defense (he was slipping punches beautifully) make him quite possibly the best fighter in his division, and a clear threat to anyone close to his weight. His chin's still an issue and always will be (Casamayor floored him again in this fight) but with his improved style, it's one that can be hidden much, much more effectively.

On the undercard, the Lazariffic Mark "2 Sharp" Johnson scored another solid KO win. After prison time, a pair of losses to Rafael Marquez, and moving far past the usual peak age for a fighter in his weight range (he's 32) he appears to be back as a real player and top fighter in his division. An impressive, impressive comeback.

In other news....

Messier refuses trade/Jagr says rebuilding impossible in New York

I love Jagr, he's performed great since he got traded here. What exactly he thinks he knows about the mental state of New York fans though, I'm not sure. Nor am I sure how he thinks he's learned this. More than likely, he's just repeating the same ol', same ol' things that a lot of people have heard and take as gospel, absent any proof. Mostly, I'd like him to stop saying that stuff before someone else who has no idea decides it's true as well. We want rebuilding, and have for years.

As for Messier- 5 to 10 years from now, he'll be probably the most revered figure in the history of the franchise, for his key role in bringing us the 1994 Stanley Cup. I'll certainly always have a great deal of respect in my heart for him, on that basis. But for that to happen, he's going to have to actually GO AWAY. What's happening now, as it always does in situations where a great player comes to the end of a long, long run with a franchise he has great ties to, is that the list of negatives he brings to the table have begun to outstrip the list of positive. Virtually everyone following the Rangers in recent years has said the same thing- his death grip on the franchise and excessive ice time have both retarded the growth of some younger players, and helped to prevent the desperately needed rebuilding that's finally, perhaps, beginning now. Now, we find out that Messier will refuse a trade under all circumstances. Fine. I respect his right, after all this time and at his age, to not want to be uprooted and shuffled off to Detroit or wherever. But if he's not willing to help the team that way, then I see no reason for the Rangers to keep him around as a charity case any longer, because they don't have the heart/guts/gumption to tell him the team has to move on, past 1994 and the club's counterproductive Edmonton fetish. He ought to retire, since he will play for only one club by choice, and that club he can offer nothing to. Absent the willingness to do so, he ought to be forcibly retired by the club, starting now. Any ice time given to Mark Messier is wasted, from here on out, and any decisions he's allowed to influence or dictate are mistakes on the part of the club. I'll cheer my heart out for him when they retire his jersey for all the great things he's done for this franchise and its fans; but if he wants to do one last great service for it and us, he can go now with some dignity intact, off a great last All-Star year. If he doesn't, the choice should be taken out of his hands. It's time, before this gets any uglier.

Odds'n'Ends/Ranger Death Spiral Update

ESPN headline: "Not only is Albert Pujols not only relentless in pursuit of greatness, but he also embraces being a role model."

Not only that, but...yeah.

Anyway....

Damon Stoudamire takes a drug test

The ongoing fascination with making sportswriters the Dixie cup-wielding guardians of pseudopublic, pseudomorality baffles me. And why it's not enough to let Stoudamire and Bonds and etc. be dealt with by the drug-testing programs of their individual sports along with the laws governing the nation is beyond my ken. Allowing sportswriters to pretend to an exalted moral plain does no one any good, and knowing that D-Stoud hasn't had a joint in a month does me, Average Sports Fan, no good. Especially in areas unrelated to performance enhancers, this is just a buff-my-byline piece.

Gary Sheffield injures hand

The upside of being a Yankees fan, revealed here- I don't care. Why should I? Short of a plane crash, nothing's going to stop the Yanks being a contender.

Grant Hill has trouble with ankle

Like you, I'm shocked. It's a sad, sad story about Grant Hill; and it's a hard-hearted or insensitive person who doesn't have some idea of why he keeps trying to come back. But that said, after four surgeries and all the missed time, aren't we pretty much at the point where he should bag it? I'm not sure what he can really hope to accomplish now.

A new entry in the annals of bizarre sports injurys

Rangers trade Vladimir Malakhov to the Flyers

More stuff comes back. Is it going to pan out? I dunno. I can't claim any knowledge to speak of of hockey prospects, and this gives me little info. It's one more piece of the old Rangers sold off though, so I have minimal worries about this ending badly. His two goals recently notwithstanding, my bet's on Barnaby being next, before tomorrow's deadline. I'll miss him, I suppose. Malakhov, less so.

Ranger Death Spiral Update

7-4 loss to the Penguins this evening. Yep. I'm more or less out of bile.

Yankee Roster Update

El Duque's back.

Not surprising. Steinbrenner loves to bring guys back (see Wells, David), and it's not a bad price really. The Yanks have enough health concerns in their rotation that having an option like Hernandez- cheap and acquired for no talent in the offseason- makes a lot of sense and saves them from making some sort of stupid trade if Kevin Brown's back or Jon Leiber's arm don't make it out of May. Yanks have, really, two sure things in their rotation- Mussina and Vasquez. The rest of the front five is going to be throwing various options at the wall, and seeing what sticks- which puts a premium on having more options to try. It's hard to really say how this affects the 25 man, since Hernandez is a month away, minimum, from pitching again.

And the demolition goes on....

Simon traded to Flames

Bunch of stuff comes back the other way, most of which will never amount to anything. A lot of those players are, basically, lottery tickets on skates- longshots with potential upside. Jamie McLennon I don't get in the slightest, unless the idea is to have him back up Dunham, and condemn LaBarbera and eventually Blackburn to even more time in the minors, along with the other young goalie just acquired. A move to make a move, really.

Standing rumor is Rucinsky to Dallas, BTW. Barnaby's probably gone soon, as well.

It's Done!

In medium-depth study of the development of NBA big men drafted out of high school, available here.

I was hoping originally to serialize it and post it in parts since it's sorta long, and I was hoping to get a few day's posts out of that much work! Blogger hates the tables in it though, so it's all in one lump-sum above, on the main site. Any questions, complaints, comments, or notation of obvious flaws in methodology can go in the comments link below, or in an email. By all means, please rip the sucker apart.

In related news, here's a story/puff piece about the next major entry into the data pool I've been looking at, a kid named Dwight Howard out of Atlanta. He's a 6'11, 250 lb. forward projected to go either first or second in the draft, likely depending on who gets the #1 pick overall. If Orlando gets it, they'll take Emeka Okafor; if Atlanta gets it, they're all over this kid. More analysis on that to come, of course, when we get closer to draft time, and I begin hyping Pavel Podkolzine out of all reasonable measure.

Read this blog, get a free New York Ranger

Three Rangers trades made recently, of which only one is really meaningful:

1. Petr Nedved and Jussi Markkanen to Edmonton

2. Alexei Kovalev to Montreal

3. Brian Leetch to Toronto

Kovalev, Markkanen, and Nedved were traded for almost nothing, in total; second round draft picks, marginal almost-prospects, a lot of Some Guys. Kovalev was really no loss; he'd been playing as bad as a player of his talent level could possibly play of late, and chances are there was no way he was ever going to be able to turn it around in New York. Nothing much gained, but nothing much lost. The Nedved trade is largely pointless- they acquired "youth" in the person of a 26 year old journeyman goalie and an ex-8th round draft pick, giving up a guy who, for all the booing, wasn't that bad- and the only consistent netminder on the club, at the moment. If you've ever seen the movie "The Mummy", where Bennie says to Rick "you just got promoted", well, right about now someone's saying that to Jason LaBarbera. In the same vaguely defeatist, timorous tones.

The Leetch trade is the real news here. I will freely admit I know dick-all about Kondratiev and Immonen, but I am assured by people who do that both are very good prospects. They had better be, to give up a Leetch, who's been the face of the club for the majority of his playing career. The additional draft picks, as well, I think ultimately make this a fair and logical deal for the Rangers, and as much as it pains me to say so- Leetch is my favorite player ever, and one of three who made me a hockey fan, the only one of those still active- it was probably the right move to make, trading him, with this as the haul. The Rangers needed a rebuild in the worst possible way, have needed it since 4 or 5 or 6 major prospects-for-big names trades ago, and if they can really follow through with this and rebuild with these younger players, then I am, in all possible ways, for it. I'm very sad to see Leetch go, but if he had to, Toronto's a great place for him- he'll have a chance at the Cup, and get to play on a stage big enough to remind people of just what a great player he's been. Best of luck Brian, I'll be rooting for you.

The Rangers, meanwhile, regroup for next year with a veteran core of Jagr, Holik, Dunham, Messier possibly, DeVries, Kasperitis, Poti, Simon, Malakhov, Lindros, and Barnaby. Complimenting them will be the two prospects from the Leetch deal, possibly a first round acquisition if one develops quickly, Jamie Lundmark, Fedor Tyutin, Jason laBarbera and Josef Balej, with an outside shot of Dan Blackburn contributing to the big club at some point. Some of those veteran guys may yet be traded- Dunham, Simon, and Barnaby the most likely- so it's not a set roster until after the trading deadline- if then. On paper, that has a chance, albeit a slim one, to be a playoff team with some solid young players to develop. A lot depends on how some guys progress, and who ends up coaching this team. If it's Sather again, or one of his patented vanilla drones from the Ron Low mold, then we're in a lot of trouble.

Bottom line is, I want to believe this is a step in the right direction. We'll see.

Steroids

Feds told Bonds, Giambi, Sheffield, Velarde, Benard used steroids acquired from BALCO

And the shit's gonna hit the fan now. It's on the front page of ESPN.com, additionally.

Right now, this is an assertion and a data point, and nothing more at the moment; but it seems pretty clear now that there's no chance in hell this story is going away. Most likely, by the time this all gets settled, it's going to be a massive, massive scandal for baseball and a somewhat lesser one for the media darling NFL. Even if no one gets dragged away, the whole league is pretty much officially Kobe'd, in the sense of having to play out the season under a dark cloud of legal suspicion.

Frankly, at the end of the day, I don't really give all that much of a darn about the issue of steroids, mostly because I don't think it's a cut and dried, yes-or-no, this chemical good/that chemical bad drug war-thought type of situation. But when we're talking anabolics, HGH, and various other agents known to cause major health risks to their users/abusers, then that becomes a giant issue for the sport on two counts. First, the pressure to use because of real or perceived performance enhancement effects will drive some players to put themselves in unnecessary risk because of a prevalent drug culture, which is a side effect I think we can all agree on as being morally objectionable. Players should have the right to compete on a reasonably level playing field, without pressure to take on a risk to their health from a source wholly outside the actual conduct of the game. Second, for those out there who do care to approach the steroid issue from a moralistic standpoint (and they are in the majority, and not necessarily wrong), this is going to hang like a noxious cloud over the sport, driving away fans at a time when baseball- in the grip of ongoing labor strife, with a perceived competitive balance problem- can least afford it.

Bottom line is, those in charge of baseball (and that is where the hammer will come down- football gets a free pass, and basketball and hockey are not sports where steroid use would be very useful) are going to have to take radical, proactive, and aggressive steps both to ameliorate the negative PR they'll be facing, and to rectify the issues at hand within the sport related to the testing regimen. I'm not sure they're up to it, but here's hoping. If they fail, this has every chance of making the Black Sox scandal look small-time.

Oops

Looks like news item write-up turned into small essay. Give it another day.

Headline: "Ford upset with Iverson"

Also:

"Canute angry at tide"

"Samarkand kinda peeved with the Mongols"

"Aristede a bit bothered with gun-toting rebels"

"Jesus not thrilled with Romans"

Chris Ford has an almost non-existant shelf life with that team anyway, really. Iverson is a unique talent, and Ford is a rent-a-hack at this point; no bets on who wins a power struggle, if it even comes to that. That news item's more a joke excuse though. Coming tomorrow, one that I'll bet you haven't heard of, but one which could shake up the balance of power in the NBA's eastern conference in the next few years.

"More Fun In The New Lupica"

"There you go. Guys who use muscle juice to hit the ball harder or throw it faster, they're not the bad guys. No, apparently the bad guys are hysterical members of the media."

- Mike Lupica, 2/29/04, New York Daily News

One of Brendan's Laws of Sportswriter Evaluation: if they ever use the phrase "the bad guy" to describe anything other than the current opponant of the hometown team, they had better be quoting "Scarface", or there's a minimum 72% chance that they're a jackass- professionally speaking. It'd be pretty easy to slow-roast the rest of Lupica's column, but fish in a barrel and all that. The part I find mystifying is, in a world of such excellent coverage of sports in various media and locations, why anyone would read a Lupica most of the time? Once in a while he really nails an issue well, but to find that instance, you have to wade through things like this column, or his two-year obsessive quest to get Jim Fassel fired, or the basic issue of his incredibly (predictably) twitchy and ostentatious prose. So who reads this guy? More importantly, how is it that the Daily News knows that anyone reads him, anyway? Do they get letters? Poll subscribers? I seriously am wondering- partly because I "suspect" (which is to say, I'm near-sure), in most cases, that the reason a lot of sportswriters still have jobs has a lot more to do with seniority, institutional inertia, and a well-entrenched system of mutual buttkissing than it does with anything related to serving the readership. Old news, of course, but worth keeping in mind.

Three more gratuitous cheap shots, because it's fun:

"And the refs should have put the ball back into the hands of Anthony's team.

Period.

That's the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law.

But David Stern's league never gets that right."

Line breaks in the original, big

Shock.

See, it adds drama and

Weight

To your words when you format like that. And about the actual points: A) had the refs done that the Lakers would have rightfully complained about the refs inventing rules, and B) my momma always told me, never say "never" or "always" unless I was sure, and I meant it.

"This is what always happens when somebody like Serena Williams forgets what her day job is.

Maybe someday, when she's at the other end of the line the way Monica Seles is, she'll want to have back some of the months she gave away in her prime."

Or maybe she won't, because she has a different set of values and priorities from you? I have no idea what the interest is in trying to live an athlete's life for him or her. Serena Willimans likes to do things other than play tennis, so sometimes she does other things than play tennis. I'm not sure why she needs Uncle Mike to lecture her in the press about that.

"Memo to everybody in the media, in the papers and on the radio, now willing to dispense urine-testing cups to ballplayers the way people dispense cups of water to runners in the Marathon:

Rick Reilly already did it, and much better, in Sports Illustrated, with Sammy Sosa."

Ambushing a guy who's never been proven to be doing anything, in a language that's not his native one, in direct opposition to the policy he's requested stenuously to uphold by his union, in an insulting manner, is a bullshit cheap-shot low-class no-talent hack move, and so it shouldn't surprise you to see Reilly's name here. What he did was nothing but a gotcha-journalism publicity stunt designed to make headlines and get his name in the paper, because he wants to be bigger than the story himself. He knew Sosa wouldn't agree for all the above reasons, no matter how much he says he thought Sammy might do it. If he were a thinking man, and not a sportswriter, heck if he were a sports JOURNALIST and not a sportswriter, he might have been able to understand that fighting steroid use in the sporting world has everything to do with a systematic approach, and nothing to do with ambushing people while waving a dixie cup. If Rick Reilly or Mike Lupica want Sammy Sosa to piss in a glass to prove he's not on steroids, then I'd like them to do likewise so we can analyze the evidence and then hopefully know what it is, exactly, that prompts grown men to write things like this.