Category Archives: Sports

Baseball

Bud Selig, Twit

budselig2.jpgHonestly, I think MLB’s revised Twitter policy has been blown way out of proportion. I believe this so strenuously I’ve been trying to browbeat any writer who reported the story to change their tune. I even offered a free group interview with MLB Network star Mitch Williams, but no one has taken the bait yet.

The new policy is basically this: MLB.com beat writers can only tweet about baseball. They can only use 127 characters instead of 140, because all their tweets have to end with #sexybudselig. At least until I overtake Justin Bieber as a trending topic, or figure out who Justin Bieber is.

The reason for this policy is quite simple: I don’t want our beat writers using up precious MLBAM resources on non-baseball-related tweets. Especially after our staff went through the enormous trouble of setting up Twitter accounts for all these people. That takes over 17 hours per account! At least that’s the time I was billed for by our freelance IT staff. Why, that’s almost as long as they tell me it takes to perform a Google search!

Penalties for violation of this policy will be firm but fair. Any beat writer who tweets about a sandwich, salad, or any other food item will be suspended for three games. Because neither I nor anyone else could possible give less of a shit about your lunch.

Anyone who tweets about the latest Lost episode will be suspended for 50 games, because I’m Tivo’ing the whole season so I can watch it in one long chunk one it’s over. Don’t think I won’t do it, either. I came down on Manny Ramirez like a ton of bricks when he tweeted about the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy.

However, I will show leniency to any beat writer who can help me do a podcast. Does anyone know how to set that up? Because I think the world is finally ready to hear my thoughts on Battlestar Galactica.

Football

The Great You-Know-What Hope

The image below is a screengrab I took from Yahoo! Sports’ front page yesterday. Peep the caption below Toby Gerhart’s pic and see how long it takes you to get to a needle-pulled-across-the-record moment.

gerhart.jpgNo, it’s not the word “evaluator”. No, it’s not the words “downgrade” or “legitimate”. It’s those last two words. You know, the ones that have caused a lot of trouble in this country during its entire existence.

The article this links to, penned by Michael Silver, is slightly more provocative, as you might be able to tell from the title “Race Factors into Evaluation of Gerhart”. And if that didn’t clue you in, the teasers seen in this screengrab I took later the same day would surely clue you in.

The thrust of the article: Gerhart (fresh out of Stanford) is a very good running back who could go to some lucky team in the first round of the NFL draft–if only he were black! Instead, he can only dream of the tarnished glory of being a second-round pick at best. Curse this pasty visage!

To be fair, Silver does not arrive at this conclusion out of thin air. He has quotes from an anonymous scout who reached the same conclusion, and Gerhart shares his experience during a team interview that indicated race was a factor in their thought process. And he is far from the only writer to pen an article on this subject. A quick Google search reveals tons of articles about Gerhart The White Running Back.

Regardless, to say a white guy faces prejudice of any kind while also saying that black guys get all the breaks is, at best, touchy, and worst, foolishly ignorant of what consitutes prejudice. Gerhart isn’t exactly being kept down by the lack of color of his skin. He finished second in Heisman voting this past year. He is highly regarded by many talent evaluators. (There are also some who question his ability to play as well in the NFL as he did in college, for reasons that have nothing to do with a lack of melanin.)

The question is not “Will he get picked at all?”, but “Will he get picked in the first round?” Basically, it’s a question of whether he gets ridiculous first round money or slightly less ridiculous second/third round money.

Is there a perception that white guys can’t be running backs in the NFL? Yes. That’s a stereotype, but it’s not prejudice. Stereotyping is when you say something dumb and racist. Prejudice is when you won’t let certain people move into your neighborhood. Words can be hurtful, but they don’t compare to someone not allowing you basic human rights.

Gerhart will get a chance with some team. He’ll get a very good chance, in fact, because he will likely be a high-round draft pick, which means both big bucks and high expectations. He won’t have to play in a separate, all-white league. He won’t have to move to another country where he can freely ply his trade as a running back. If he takes the field for an NFL team, he won’t have garbage thrown at him and receive death threats against his family.

And if he fails? It will be because he just wasn’t good enough, not because there was a vast conspiracy keeping him down. Oh, and he’ll have a degree from Stanford to fall back on, which, last time I checked, was kind of a big deal.

Don’t worry, sportswriters. No matter what happens with Gerhart, I think white guys will make it through okay.

Baseball

Next Up on The FAN: Questions of Great Thelogical Import

In the wake of another disappointing weekend for the Mets (during which they could conceivably have swept the Cardinals but only managed one win, and that one a 20-inning purgatorial nightmare), the WFAN airwaves were rife with distraught fans declaring their disgust. But while most callers employed the harshest language radio would allow, one Mike Francesa listener had loftier thoughts on her mind.

Yes, you heard right. Kathy thinks the Mets need Jesus. And not Jesus as in “Jesus Christ, can’t this team do anything right?!” No, she seems to honestly believe the Mets, as a team, need to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Why? “That team is horrible!” Because as we all know, only righteous, pious teams win championships. Just look at the Mets’ last World Series-winning team. The 1986 Mets were a collection of clean-living souls who only played baseball in between their seminary studies and mission trips to Guatemala.

Let’s give Kathy the benefit of the doubt. It’s possible she was being hyperbolic or facetious, or perhaps she’s really young and has no context on which to draw (ie, the hundreds of championship teams whose off-the-field behavior indicated they had very little use for religion). Or maybe she was actually being sincere and thinks born again-ing your team will lead to success on the field. She’s entitled to that opinion (just as I am entitled to skewer it). Regardless, Francesa’s response was more wackadoo than the question.

Granted, this is a touchy subject. If you’re behind the mic, you don’t want be overly dismissive and offend anyone, but you also don’t want to open the floodgates to start a religious discussion on a sports talk show. Basically, you want this line of inquiry to disappear ASAP. If this was me, I’d be tempted to say, “Why should Jesus give a shit about a sports team?” But the safer response would be, “I’m not touching this with a ten foot pole.”

Francesa, who has a few decades’ worth of experience on the radio, clearly wants to go this route. But in so doing, he lets loose a brief, bizarre critique of this woman’s statement. To wit: Why would Jesus choose the Mets over somebody else?

That’s a fair assessment, Mike. Clearly the heavens have not turned their attention the Mets, unless it’s some malevolent trickster god like Loki.