2 comments Phil Mushnick Is Tired of These Showboats and Knows David Cone Agrees With Him On This Even Though He Says He Doesn't

Phil Mushnick is the crankiest of cranky-pant sportswriters. He hates everything. Well, he doesn't hate how things used to be back when athletes didn't show off (you know, show off in a way like pointing to centerfield when he was predicting he would hit a home run), didn't say things for attention (you know, like predict a Super Bowl victory while lounging at the pool), and certainly weren't me-first athletes like today's athlete is. Phil Mushnick misses those days that most certainly never actually occurred. Now it's just athletes out for themselves and the media looking to pander to these athletes. This just infuriates Phil. Much like everything outside of the existence of oxygen infuriates Phil. Mushnick knows David Cone agrees about how showboating is ruining sports, despite Cone actually saying that he does not agree. It's just "The Man" forcing Cone to say these things and that's why he doesn't agree with Phil, not because he really doesn't agree the modern athlete is too much of a showboat. After all, sports ARE NOT intended to be entertainment, so Phil doesn't know where these athletes get off trying to be entertaining.

In the discourse of a week, how much of what we’re told to believe by experts is not even believed by the experts?

42.35%. That's how much we are told to believe on the air by experts is not actually believed by these experts. Well actually, these experts don't actually tell us to believe these things they don't believe, but they simply don't spend most of a game's broadcast ignoring the game in favor of railing against showboating in sports. Phil Mushnick takes this to mean these experts LOVE showboating, because they do their job, which is to call the game and not interject personal opinions on the downfall of sports civility into the broadcast at every possible chance. 

John Madden, off air, claimed to dislike all the chest-pounding and trash-talking. He said he didn’t like show-offs. Who does?

It depends on your definition of a "show-off." I'd also like to add that John Madden coached the Raiders back when they were the hard-hitting and personality-driven Raiders teams, so the fact he claims to not like trash-talking and chest-pounding is kind of ironic given the teams Madden coached. Jack Tatum fucking paralyzed Darryl Stingley during a preseason game. But again, let's forget all this and paint John Madden as a guy who prefers straight-laced players. I like myths. 

Yet on the air, over forced laughs, he said he loved the biggest all-about-me guys — Deion Sanders and Randy Moss, for two — as great entertainers.

Because that's what they are, entertainers. It's sports. Sports are supposed to be fun and entertaining, not boring. I realize the fact sports are supposed to be entertaining causes Phil Mushnick to stare disapprovingly over the top of his glasses and shake his head. 

Of course, Madden’s big-selling video games were — still are — loaded with excessively brutal images and showboating, a primary come-on as seen in commercials and on the packaging. Madden made an added fortune encouraging the young to believe what he doesn’t believe.

I'm pretty sure John Madden never came out on telecasts and said he loved showboating and how players talk trash all the time. Also, Madden wasn't deeply involved with the "Madden" football games to where he probably has a clue what sort of in-depth imagery the game is showing. And one more thing, it's a fucking video game. Brutal images and showboating? It's a video game that is supposed to be fun. Put the pitchforks back to wherever the hell you got them from.

Friday, the Yanks were down, 5-0, in the first, when Alex Rodriguez took an inside first pitch that was called a strike. On YES, Rodriguez was seen questioning the umpire. Also on YES, Paul O’Neill said this about that:

A-Rod was questioning the umpire? What a terrible display of showboating from A-Rod to question the umpire. No old-school baseball player would EVER question an umpire's decision-making ability. These young kids (A-Rod is 40 years old) just don't know the respect that previous generations who absolutely refused to question the umpire knew.

(Phil Mushnick goes outside to get his paper and shakes his fist at the neighborhood kids who once again are playing near the curb, which is where his flowers are planted. Such a "me-first" attitude on these kids. Back in Phil's day, kids would stay as far away from flowers as possible, but these days because of video games, kids think it's perfectly fine to stand in close proximity to flowers.)

“That’s the count I don’t think umpires understand. Strike one or ball one changes the whole at bat.”

OK, but what was O’Neill suggesting? Umps should call the first pitch differently from all others?

I think it is very clear what O'Neill was suggesting. He's suggesting that the umpires pay great attention to making sure the call on the first pitch is the correct one. O'Neill isn't suggesting the umps call the first pitch differently, but wants them to pay extra special attention to making sure the call is correct on the first pitch. It would be nice if the home plate umpire would pay special attention to every pitch, but O'Neill was simply observing the first pitch sets up how the rest of the at-bat may go. There is a reason pitching coaches love their pitchers to throw first pitch strikes. I understand though. I understand Phil's job is to bitch about sports and not actually understand the sport he is bitching about. 

Wouldn’t he prefer that umpires “understand” all pitches the same — as balls or strikes?

Yes, he would. He was simply observing the first pitch is very important because it decides the direction of an at-bat in some ways and an umpire needs to be sure he doesn't miss a call on the first pitch. That's all. 

In the fourth, the Jays’ Edwin Encarnacion homered to make it 8-1. Instead of quickly circling the bases, he took his time, extending his right arm as if a bird were perched on it. “Walk-the-parrot” is the latest in ESPN-rewarded check-me-out attention-grabs.

I remember the time (okay, I don't remember it, but I remember the story about it) Babe Ruth pointed to center field and predicted he would hit a home run in the World Series. ESPN wasn't around, so why did Ruth do this? Of course, this isn't showboating, it's just a fun story about a great baseball player. 

“Does that bother you, Coney?” O’Neill asked David Cone.

And it likely bothered O’Neill, or he wouldn’t have asked.

Or it didn't bother O'Neill as an ex-hitter and he wondered if an ex-pitcher was also not bothered by Encarnacion's "parrot" walk. Phil Mushnick just makes the assumption that O'Neill was bothered because he asked the question of whether someone else was bothered. This is a potentially incorrect assumption. Perhaps O'Neill just wanted the perspective of an ex-pitcher on Encarnacion's walk.

But Phil Mushnick doesn't think like this. He assumes a conclusion and then fits his argument to fit that conclusion, even if the conclusion takes more assumptions to fit into the argument. Obviously O'Neill was bothered because he asked the question, obviously David Cone is bothered because Phil Mushnick wants him to be bothered and obviously when Cone says he isn't bothered then he is simply kowtowing to the corporate gods who he owes his broadcasting career to. So David Cone's opinion isn't his real opinion and Phil Mushnick knows this because he wants Cone's real opinion to agree with what he's writing in this column. Because any fan of the Braves knows the corporate gods who hand out broadcasting jobs would not immediately fire announcers who appear stodgy and behind the times. Joe Simpson and Chip Caray are so modern and allow their thoughts to be determined by what is currently popular. Mushnick is working under the assumption YES doesn't want their announcers sounding behind the times, while anyone who watches a baseball game on television and hears the announcers talk know this isn't true.

What we know personally and professionally about Cone is he must hate it; hate it as a former pitcher, a dad, a sportsman and a right-headed human.

The opinion Cone espouses on television to thousands watching and listening must not be his real opinion because it's not what Phil Mushnick wants David Cone to believe. Cone's own opinion isn't his real opinion. "The Man" is just keeping Cone down and Mushnick knows this is true because he wants it to be true so his opinion on showboating can be held as the correct opinion and not the opinion of an old man who needlessly complains about entertainment being too entertaining. 

But he couldn’t or wouldn’t say it for fear of condemnation as out-of-touch with an anything-goes, bereft-of-sport sports world, so he took the modern media path and pandered to it, blessed wrong as right:

Because, again, baseball announcers are never saying anything that seems out-of-touch during a baseball broadcast. This never happens. I like how Phil creates his own reality where even those things that others say which may seem to disagree with a position Phil holds are not truly the opinion that person holds. It's all because "The Man" is going to keep them down and prevent any deviation from the modern media path. That's the only real explanation for why a person affiliated with sports would disagree with Phil's opinion. "The Man" is forcing them to hold an opinion they don't agree with. You know sort of the same thing, except using the opposing point of view, that Phil Mushnick does by insisting those who don't agree with him must really agree with him. He forces his opinion on others and won't allow anyone with a different opinion from him to hold that opinion.

“Nowadays, it’s a different game. Buck Showalter had an interesting comment about it: Modern ballplayers are responsible for this, about governing their play. If they’re OK with it, he’s OK with it. …

David Cone thinks baseball players should police themselves, which is definitely an old-school mentality. Perhaps "The Man" allows Cone to say some old-school things, but admitting he doesn't like showboating crosses the line. Or maybe, Phil Mushnick is wrong and David Cone's opinion really is his opinion. 

“Some of it has been good for the game. The old days of keeping your head down and not showing anyone up — that’s a thing of the past. And in some ways, that’s a good thing. You still want to respect the game, but there’s a fine line there and you know when you cross it.

Oh yeah, this is a totally modern point of view. Look at David Cone sticking hard to the party line. He's talking about respecting the game and there being a line you don't cross in terms of celebrating. It sounds pretty much like Cone believes the old-school way of players policing themselves and a player not celebrating too much, except that can't be true, because "The Man" has Cone under his thumb and is forcing Cone to not agree with Phil Mushnick on whether Edwin Encarnacion's "parrot" celebration is too much showboating. It's a huge conspiracy.

“If you hit a home run into the upper deck and you want to ‘walk the parrot,’ go ahead, walk the parrot. … It’s definitely a more lenient attitude toward the display of emotions, which for, the younger generation is a good thing.”

Against every wish Phil Mushnick has, times change. Players display more emotions this day in age than they used to (or maybe they do, I'm not even sure this is true), so David Cone has come to terms with this and realizes it's not bad for the game. Of course, Phil Mushnick secretly thinks David Cone is lying. Or does he? Now, showing thorough senility, Phil manages to argue with the opinion that he doesn't truly believe David Cone holds. So Phil thinks Cone doesn't like celebrations like "walk the parrot," but then argues with Cone over an opinion he doesn't believe Cone really holds. 

Really? Immodesty — often rehearsed and planned — is a good thing?

Cone didn't say anything about "immodesty" and therein lies the issue. Phil thinks it is immodest to celebrate a home run with a "walk the parrot" celebration, but Cone sees it as just a part of the game that is acceptable as long as the players find it acceptable. Phil can label this "immodesty," but that doesn't mean it's true. 

The most conspicuous rewards such “natural enthusiasm” reaps are brawls, personal fouls and striking home-run poses — posing doubles and into singles.

Well, there are no personal fouls in baseball. Even in basketball, personal fouls are a part of the game and not always as a result of a player showboating. Also, baseball brawls were around well before Edwin Encarnacion started strutting around the bases like a parrot. So what was the reason for baseball brawls back in the good old days when athletes were modest and never celebrated? You know, those days that never existed which Phil clings so tightly to. Brawls happened then, but supposedly players didn't showboat. I wonder how Phil explains this. 

Forgive me, but I don’t believe a word of what Cone or Showalter said; I believe that they believe that it stinks, that showboating has no tangible or next-generation upside, leaving our sports in further decay.

I don't need to forgive you for being senile and trying to force your point of view on others. I realize that you realize your argument sucks and so you need to make many assumptions in order to even churn out 250 words on a topic. Regardless of your opinion on showboating, pretending someone agrees with you because you so desperately want them to is pathetic. In fact, just assuming people agree with your opinion is immodest isn't it?

7 comments Advanced Statistics Loses Again to "Being There" To Watch a Player's Brilliance

Advanced statistics loses again unfortunately. Jerry Green show how advanced statistics can't measure things that aren't quantifiable like "being there" to see how great a player is. In your face statistics! You can't measure things that can't be quantified! Where is your statistical-based God now? Go cry in your mom's basement, losers!

I am always amused at articles that say, "Statistics can't measure the grace Player X played the game with" as if there is a way to measure these intangible things and it's only Sabermetrics or advanced statistics that come up short. Yes, those things that can't be quantified will nearly always remain non-quantified. Jerry Green can't measure the grace Clemente played the game with either, even if he saw Clemente play.

Jerry Green thinks Roberto Clemente is better than Willie Mays and somehow this has something to do with advanced statistics disagreeing with his premise. Also Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is prominently involved in Green's reasoning for why Clemente is better than Mays. Okay, then.

The greatest player in the history of Major League Baseball sat in the ramshackle shed of the visitors' clubhouse in venerable Crosley Field in Cincinnati. He fidgeted and twisted his neck and his shoulders, an athlete in perpetual motion. He was attended by a trainer who massaged his shoulders and an interpreter to translate back and forth between English and Spanish.

I did not know that David Eckstein spoke Spanish. You learn something new every day.

Roberto Clemente might not have been the perfect baseball player. But no other player in the game's 140 seasons has been closer to perfection.

140 seasons of baseball. It's the Twitter-versary for baseball, much to the chagrin of Jerry Green, the man who hates technology. 

Not Ty Cobb. Not Babe Ruth. Not Willie Mays. Not even Mike Trout, the Irreplaceable.

It is a personal opinion, arrived at belatedly, that Clemente was the baseball player nonpareil.

This is a personal opinion and isn't fact? In this article, Jerry Green will disagree with his own previous opinion on who the greatest baseball player of all-time was, so it's good to know Jerry recognizes his opinion is an opinion and not a fact, or else he would run the risk of playing loose with facts. We all know those who don't like advanced statistics would never play loose with facts or be blind to facts/realities in order to further their own agenda. 

It is an opinion that might be shared by only few other ancient souls captivated by sports.

Or Pittsburgh Pirates fans. Or people who really believe Clemente is one of the best baseball players of all-time. 

For sure, today's Internet blogging juveniles with their higher-brow obsession with metrics will launch darts at this premise.

I genuinely have no idea what Internet blogging juveniles have to do with whether Roberto Clemente is the greatest baseball player of all-time or not. I'm not sure Jerry Green knows either. He just knows that every single article he writes about baseball must contain one shot at Sabermetrics or advanced statistics. So apparently Jerry believe that Willie Mays is a Sabermetrics God and Roberto Clemente is the lowly, traditional statistics loser who just can't get a fair break from advanced statistics.

Of course, Clemente is 8th all-time in WAR, which just happens to be one of Green's favorite advanced statistics punching bag stats, but like I said, Jerry would never play loose with facts or be blind to reality. Jerry just doesn't care to do the required research. Why do work when you have an opinion? Clemente is 8th all-time in WAR, but Jerry Green has set up a reality where Internet blogging juveniles will launch darts at the premise Clemente is the greatest player in MLB history.

But they did not see Roberto Clemente play with grace and sharpened skills and with pride in his carriage.

No, "they" did not. That's why these metrics only have Clemente as #1 in baseball history in total zone runs for a right fielder. If they respected him more, perhaps he could be higher than that. But no, these same high-brow metrics only have Clemente as #2 all-time in total zone runs for all outfielders. What a bunch of disrespect from a group of people who never saw Clemente play one game in the majors. Because everyone who uses advanced statistics is young. This is a fact, so don't bother arguing with it.

Clemente's major problem -- yearning for acceptance and stature as a ballplayer -- was quite simple.

He played baseball in Pittsburgh.

What follows will show that playing in Pittsburgh wasn't the issue. It was that Clemente played in a time with other flashy athletes and he wasn't a flashy player. So playing in Pittsburgh wasn't the issue as much as the age in which Clemente played and how the media covered athletes at the time. But yeah, Pittsburgh was the entirety of the issue according to Jerry Green. Now Jerry Green will show this is not the entirety of the issue. 

He played in Pittsburgh in an era during which marvelous athletes were publicized and glorified. Television was in its adolescence, still a new medium. Print journalism dominated, and newspapers reached out to cover celebrated athletes.

Pittsburgh was the problem though. Not the media's fascination with "interesting" or flashy athletes. That wasn't part of the issue. 

Namath, Ali – they were the greatest and we the press (still a 1960s word) believed and said so.

They were extroverts and their images were splashed on the covers of national magazines as they were in the daily print press.

And then there was Roberto Clemente. The greatest of all baseball players.

Jerry Green wants everyone to know this is an opinion. Not a fact. Don't be confused and think Jerry Green's opinions are always facts. But he's right, so this opinion may as well be a fact, no matter what those high-brow, WAR-loving assholes who use advanced statistics tell you. 

He played in the same sports era as the wondrous Willie Mays. They were rivals on the field. But Willie had the luxury of playing in New York and then in San Francisco when the Giants moved to California. 

We all know athletes on the West Coast receive all the acclaim that athletes on the East Coast receive. That's why Paul Goldschmidt is widely thought among casual fans to be such a great hitter. 

Willie got the acclaim. We-the-press kowtowed to Willie.

And Roberto was locked in isolation.

Pittsburgh though. Playing in Pittsburgh was the problem. Not the media's coverage of Clemente. It's never the media's fault. 

"If I could sleep, I could hit .400," was one of Clemente's favorite sayings.

If a frog had wings, then it wouldn't bump it's ass on the ground. I can see why Clemente didn't get coverage like Ali and Namath did. He just seemed to lack the ability to be cocky or brag about himself. 

He talked about lacking the acclaim of other ballplayers. Mays, his contemporary and rival, in particular. He talked about his pains and aches and his prowess.

His envy of other ballplayers with more recognition was obvious. But also showing was dignity and charm and elegance and kindness.

This is true, but Jerry isn't doing a great job of proving it as true. 

"Nobody does anything better than me in baseball," was another of Clemente's noted quotes.

Elegance and charm. Dignity. Again, I can see why Clemente wasn't covered like Namath and Ali were covered. If he only had the faith in his own ability to the point of cockiness, then perhaps he could have caught the press's eye with a quote about how great he was. Unfortunately, Clemente wasn't capable of this type of thing. 

We'll never know how much more greatness Roberto Clemente had within him after the day he collected his 3,000th hit for the Pirates in the final game of the 1972 season. He was 38 and planned to continue playing.

If Clemente had just played for a few more years and not died then he could have been further disrespected by those who like new school metrics by ending his career as among the Top 5 players all-time in WAR. What disrespect these young kids give to Clemente. 

The well-known story defines Roberto Clemente. He died in the crash of a cargo plane carrying relief supplies from Puerto Rico to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

Those of us who then voted in the elections of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown quickly broke the five-year rule. We voted Roberto into the Hall of Fame in a special election.

I look for Hall of Fame members to disconnect the brakes on the car Jack Morris is driving in the hopes he drives off a cliff so that the groundswell of support and emotion for his career will allow them to break the five-year rule and vote him into the Hall of Fame immediately. They will do ANYTHING to get him in, even if they have to murder the one they love to do it. 

Mays hit more home runs during a longer career than Clemente. Clemente had a higher career batting average, .317 to Mays' .302.

Clemente hit 240 home runs in an 18 year career. Mays hit 660 home runs in a 22 year career. But yes, it was the "longer career" that caused Mays' home run stats to look so much better than Clemente's home run stats. Great comparison to even make it seem somewhat like Mays' longer career had something to do with his having 440 more home runs than Clemente. 

Each was an amazing five-tool player – the non-metric evaluation of baseball player's lasting worth. Clemente and Mays, along with Al Kaline, in those years of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1960s, could hit, hit for average, run, throw and field – the traditional five tools.

I like how Jerry differentiates between the "1960's" and the "early 1960's."

Three years ago, after watching rookie Mike Trout as he devastated the World Series-bound Tigers in three games in Anaheim, I invoked memories of Willie Mays. Trout is the rare five-tool player in today's baseball. Then I claimed that Mays was the greatest baseball player ever, and that Trout was the most accomplished player to enter the game in 40 years.

Upon further review, I dispute myself.

Roberto Clemente entered the game in 1955. Mike Trout entered the game in 2011. It's possible that Jerry's comment about Trout is correct. 

Clemente, without checking the updated sabermetrics, was the greatest. 

You are only making yourself sound ignorant and bitter writing things like this. 

He was a superior hitter to Mays, without the power. He had a stronger arm. They were equal as fielders.

But, can Clemente be a superior hitter "without the power"? Even adjusting for the four year difference in their careers and discounting the last four years of his career, Mays still would have had more home runs by a large margin, more RBI's by a large margin, while only have 74 fewer hits, and a batting average that was 0.15 lower than Clemente's batting average. I'm using traditional statistics, not updated Sabermetrics. Even using Jerry's own favored metrics, I'm not sure his conclusion Clemente was better is correct.  

Roberto did not have the glitz of Mays – nor of Trout, bolstered by his Los Angeles exposure.

We all know the exposure Mike Trout receives from playing on the West Coast for the Angels. 

Clemente had one flaw. He played in Pittsburgh.

Well, that and he wasn't covered by the media like other athletes during his time were covered. But mainly it was the whole Pittsburgh thing though, right? Maybe I'm being too high-brow for Jerry's tastes about all of this. 

4 comments Phil Mushnick Is Still Old and Really, Really Cranky

Phil Mushnick hates so many things it's not worth listing them all. He hates showy athletes, hates announcers for using words he hates, and felt after his son's death was the best time to take a shit on Adrian Peterson. His online column (Mushnick probably spends time being self-loathing about the fact he has to publish columns on the Internet) is basically just a list of things that make him so angry because they didn't used to be that way. In two articles today, it's hard to say exactly all of the things that Phil is railing against, but it's instant replay, the way headlines are written, people being mean to Curt Schilling, and Jon Stewart.

Here is his first article of screeds against random things that pop into his mind which piss him off. 

Well, it finally happened. Didn’t make much news or noise, but that figures given baseball’s new replay rules have been widely celebrated for “getting it right.”

I'm shocked the new replay rules don't work perfectly after one year. Usually rule changes in a professional sporting event immediately works effortlessly with no issues.

In the top of the fifth inning in Aug. 20’s White Sox-Angels, Chicago’s Jose Abreu, with runners on first and third, hit a shot down the line that third-base ump Dana DeMuth ruled foul. Play, naturally, immediately stopped.

But the White Sox challenged the call. And there it was: The ball appeared to have nicked the line. Fair ball! Now what?

The umpires decide what bases to award the White Sox. I get the snark about "getting it right" but Mushnick is essentially going to argue that the umpires using hypotheticals to award bases to players is not preferable to the call being absolutely wrong. I would disagree, but I also am not a cranky person who can't handle any sort of change.

The umps held a meeting, a caucus to negotiate a settlement. It ended only after they reached an agreement on a guess of what, among scores of things that could have happened, as to what might have next happened. They determined — guessed — that because the runner on first was going on the pitch, both runners should score, and Abreu should be awarded second, as if it were a ground-rule double, which it was not.

I disagree with the conclusion here. I think the runner on first should be awarded third base just as if it were a ground rule double, but otherwise I have no issue with instant replay working in this exact way. It's almost impossible to know what really would have happened, so there has to be some educated guessing involved, assuming the umpires have the directive from MLB to get the call right by using instant replay. There is no other way, outside of guessing, to determine what would have happened had the call been correct initially.

So, in the name of “getting it right,” a pile of things that never happened — all of them impossible to determine would have happened — were deemed to have not happened while other impossibilities to determine were deemed to have happened.

You mean sort of like how defensive pass interference is called in the NFL and the offensive team is given the ball at the spot of the foul when there is no evidence that if there were no defensive pass interference the offensive player would have caught the ball? Or evidence the offensive player would have caught the ball and run for a touchdown? There is also no evidence the offensive player would have caught the ball, fumbled and then the defensive player would have run it back for a touchdown had the pass interference not occurred? Sort of how the NFL just assumes the offensive player would have caught the ball, and rewards the offensive team accordingly, when defensive pass interference occurs? I'm sure Phil Mushnick has no issue with this rule because it's not new and scary.

The White Sox took a 6-1 lead based on nothing more conclusive than a bunch of maybes as they related to the offense, the defense, and where that ball might’ve wound up then how it might’ve been played — had it been played.

This is what has happened on ground rule doubles for a long, long time now. A runner gets stopped at third base (if he were on first base) based on an assumption of how the ball would have been played. The alternative is that the call is entirely wrong without instant replay and the White Sox will keep the lead they have, but not keep the chance to have the big lead they should have had. So get it wrong or guess in an attempt to get it right? 

Once that foul ball, via replay rule, was determined to have been fair, imaginary baseball — official fantasy league baseball — was invoked.

I wish fantasy sports didn't exist so sportswriters would stop referring to real baseball as "fantasy baseball" when something happens in the sport that they don't like. It's a lazy fallback joke and it's tiring. 

The mind wanders and wonders … Game 7 of the World Series, bottom of the ninth. A ball initially ruled foul is reviewed, reversed. The umps gather to try to figure it out, to try to figure what can’t possibly be determined, then rule on what would’ve or might’ve happened, though it didn’t.

So in criticizing a pile of things that never happened---all of them impossible to determine would have happened---Phil Mushnick uses a situation that has never happened and it is impossible at this point to determine would happen in the World Series?

(Phil Mushnick) "Stop using hypothetical actions by runners on-base to determine what the score in the game would be in a hypothetical situation had the call been made correctly. Now here is a hypothetical situation with hypothetical actions by the umpires that I will use to determine how the World Series would end..."

Is the World Series over? “Gee,” says the crew chief, “I guess so.”

Instant replay has ended an NFL game before when a call was upheld or overturned. It happened in the Packers-Seahawks game a few years ago. This may never happen in the World Series, but I like how Phil criticizes using hypotheticals in order to get a call on the field correct using instant replay by using his own hypothetical situation. 

One of my favorite parts of Super Bowls is the solemn chat with the losing coach just outside the locker room, usually his back to a cinderblock wall.
Inevitably, whether the score was 52-10 or 28-27, he is asked: “What would you have done differently?” Almost always, he answers he would do nothing differently, which, given that his team lost, makes no sense. He would do it all the same, again. And lose the same, again.

Not necessarily. It's possible the issue wasn't the play call, but the execution of the play call. So a coach could easily decide to call the same play again, but have his quarterback choose to throw to a different receiver, run with the football or throw the ball to the receiver in a different spot where the defender can't catch the ball. This is the difference in a results-oriented mindset and a more educated mindset. If I get in a car accident driving to the grocery store using a different route than I usually use to get to the grocery store, it doesn't mean I should never go the different route again because I will get in another accident. 

The Golf Channel becomes comical when it goes into Tiger Woods Scramble Mode. When Woods shot a first-round 64 two Thursdays ago, GC apparently canceled all staff vacations, on-air personnel instructed to hyperventilate.

For a person whose job it is to cover the media, Phil Mushnick has a shitty grasp on how ratings work. Tiger Woods is in contention, which means there is more interest in the golf tournament. The ratings reflect this, so naturally a network will cover the story that the people watching the tournament are interested in. 

CBS was no better. Though Woods last Sunday was in the next-to-the-last pairing — “penultimate pairing,” as per ESPN from the British Open — Woods was listed first among those in second place, two behind leader Jason Gore. But Tom Hoge, tied with Woods, played with Gore.

Again, ratings. It doesn't matter how the players are sorted, but CBS wanted any person flipping channels to see Tiger is high on the leaderboard. Phil Mushnick covers the media. Networks like ratings and Tiger brings in ratings. 

ESPN’s late Sunday crawl read, “Davis Love wins the Wyndham as Tiger falters.” Reader Rich Monahan: “As if one was the reason for the other!”

This is very Easterbrookian on the part of Rich Monahan. It's not at all how that sentence is structured, as if one was the reason for the other. If I write, "I wrote in my notebook as my sister tried to color in the lines of her coloring book," I'm not indicating one event has a correlation to the other or indicating any causation. I'm simply stating what I'm doing while my sister is doing something else.

Another example: "Phil Mushnick bitches about stupid shit in his column as really good writers are unemployed." Wait, maybe I'm implying there should be some causation there...

Carlos Gomez, as a Brewer and now with the Astros, has been a conspicuous showoff, a me-first fool well worth the Yankees’ collective disdain over the past week.

But Gomez, who claims his teammates love such behavior from him — he’s delusional if he believes that — should be asked this:

Phil Mushnick knows Carlos Gomez is delusional for thinking his teammates love his behavior, because Phil Mushnick has been in the Brewers' and Astros' locker room to know whether his teammates like him or not? Not at all. Mushnick is assuming Gomez is delusional based on his own beliefs and assumptions. Basically, Mushnick is determining what Gomez's teammates think---while ignoring it's impossible to determine what they think---when ignoring other possibilities and deeming them to not have happened.

Would you instruct the kids in your life to exploit baseball, a team game, to demonstrate their excessive self-regard, or would you urge them toward modesty? Is public immodesty the professional legacy you choose for yourself?

That's a great question to ask. Carlos Gomez clearly needs a moral compass like Phil Mushnick to help him raise his children in the proper way. That is what is so great about Phil Mushnick. He knows how everyone should behave and act at all times and believes himself to be the final arbiter on what is and is not proper behavior. He has that excessive self-regard and displays some public immodesty by telling others what the proper behavior in a given situation might be. 

Now Phil Mushnick uses history to determine that Curt Schilling should not have been punished for comparing extremist Muslims to Nazis. Of course, because outrage has to take a back seat to actually reading and understand what Schilling put on his Facebook page, Phil Mushnick is outraged at Schilling being punished.

Schilling deleted the Tweet and even apologized for it. So clearly he knew what he posted was going to be offensive to some and chose to delete it off his Facebook page entirely. There is a recent history of people being outraged just to be outraged, but Schilling knew he shouldn't have posted what he posted and deleted it accordingly. He made a mistake, owned up to it and then got punished. We all move on. BUT, Phil Mushnick is angry that ESPN blatantly read what Schilling posted and didn't take history into account. Sure, Phil spends many of his columns only reading the body language and actions of players (see: Carlos Gomez, above) and then judging them harshly on those actions without investigating the history or reason behind those actions, but it's different for him. Phil Mushnick can rush to a snap judgment and condemn a person accordingly, but everyone else should not do this.

ESPN last week suspended its lead baseball analyst, Curt Schilling, not for talking games to death, but for a social-media message equating Nazis with current, extremist Muslims.

The message was comparing extreme Muslims now to Nazis in 1940, prior to the United States entry into World War II. I could be way off, but the indication being that extreme Muslims could become a threat on-par with Nazis and that even non-extreme Muslims will eventually take up the point of view of extreme Muslims. Again, I could be looking into it too much, but the year 1940 seems to indicate to Americans (yes, there was fighting prior to the Americans entering the war) that extremist Muslims could eventually recruit non-extreme Muslims to their cause to the point there is another world war.

“Curt’s tweet was completely unacceptable, and in no way represents our company’s perspective. We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration.”

Completely unacceptable? Out of line with ESPN’s perspective?

Curt Schilling apologized for it. We live in an age where everyone is offended by everything. I recognize this. When Schilling apologizes for what he posted, it tells me that he recognizes the fallacy of posting this on his Facebook page. Remember, Schilling never apologized for his science v. God debate with Keith Law that got Law suspended. He isn't going to apologize just because he feels he hurt some feelings, so he must really think he was in the wrong. Maybe he just wanted to avoid a suspension, who knows? 

So, then what — very strongly, no less — is ESPN’s perspective?

To not compare extreme Muslims to pre-Americans-entering-World War II Nazis. That's their perspective. 

and “in no way represents our company’s perspective” was not only historically true, Schilling under-tweeted the truth. Islamists and Nazis were teammates!

Tens of thousands more eastern Muslims fought for Nazi Germany. Their mutual attraction was a shared desire to murder Jews.

So Phil Mushnick's reaction is to basically say, "Muslims have always been on the side of Nazis, so Curt Schilling should have lumped even more non-extremist Muslims in with Hitler and his political party."

Interesting.  

After the war, “rat lines” that provided escape and sanctuary to Nazi war criminals led to safekeeping in Islamic countries, especially Egypt and Syria. And little about radical Islam, as it today festers and explodes, has changed since the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century.

While this could possibly be true, there are radical sects of every religion that probably have gone unchanged for generations and every religion is responsible in some way for death and destruction. The Crusades weren't exactly a bloodless affair, but it doesn't mean the modern day conservative Christian is a danger to society. My point is Islam may have been historically tied to Nazi Germany, but this doesn't necessarily mean a baseball analyst should be posting brief tidbits that serve as a warning about the growth of radical Islam and comparing it to Nazi Germany in 1940. Maybe someone will read this sentence in 100 years and laugh at the naive American who was eventually wiped out by radical Islam...

So what Schilling tweeted was (a) true, (b) a vast understatement, and (c) intolerable to ESPN, so at odds with the company’s position that ESPN had no choice but to publicly censure and punish him.

It's not that the facts aren't necessarily true, though I have no evidence the facts are true, but it's the insinuation behind those facts that Schilling was seemingly making. There was an insinuation that non-extreme Muslims would eventually join the radical cause. Again, that's how I read it. 

Yet it rhymes with the media’s selective outrages and selectively quiet pandering. And pandering continues as the frightened media’s path-of-least-resistance substitute for hard, unfortunate truths.

Maybe, but I think Phil Mushnick is reading a bit too much into this. If I posted something on this blog that said (these are made up numbers),

"In 1933, African Americans made up 15% of the population of the United States population and violent crime was at it's lowest totals. Today, African Americans make up 45% of the United States population and violent crime is as high as it has been in the history of the United States."

If I wrote that, then I am only writing true things, but it doesn't mean that I'm not insinuating or encouraging my reader to make another assumption within the information I'm reporting. I wasn't offended by what was on Schilling's Facebook page, but combined with his argument with Keith Law, I can see why he was suspended. Naturally, Phil Mushnick is outraged.

Saturday night’s FOX 5 News sports report, anchored by Tina Cervasio of MSG renown, was an exercise in staggering group pandering. As her “amusing” kicker, she reported that Steve Smith, now a Ravens wide receiver, was ejected from that night’s preseason game. She didn’t say why he was tossed, but it was for fighting.

Usually if a football player is ejected from a game, it isn't for passing out flowers to his opponents. Even casual football fans know this. So there was obviously something that got Smith ejected and the reason can be explained, but it's a safe assumption he did something excessively violent or that wouldn't go over well in a normal work place. 

After his first-quarter ejection Saturday, Cervasio said Smith entered a suite to sit with his son, from where they tweeted a smiling “selfie,” along with his son’s happy message: “when ur dad gets ejected.” The kid added this was the first time he watched his father’s team play while seated with his father.

Isn’t that charming, family bonding predicated on Dad being thrown out of the game.

It is exciting and charming for a kid to watch a football game with his dad. Though I'm sure Phil Mushnick is very concerned about the example Steve Smith is setting for his son. Thank God that Mushnick is here to tell others how they should or should not parent. 

This brought approving, if not forced laughter from Cervasio and the pandering news folks also on the set. Anchor Antwan Lewis gave it final, full approval with, “That’s pretty cool.” Yeah, fabulous.

Don't be such a crab. Steve Smith by all appearances seems to be a really good father. Would it have been better if Smith got kicked out of the game and then didn't sit with his family? He's been kicked out of a preseason game (and may have been trying to get kicked out...I wouldn't put it past him), so why not sit with his family? Then his son took a picture of them watching the game together. This isn't a threat to humanity on-par to the Nazi-like rise of Islam.

Reader Wesley Drake, as likely did tens of thousands, thought the tear-filled Wilmer Flores “trade to Milwaukee” drama to be extra special, something that made all feel good for all the right reasons.

But then Drake, as did others, learned that Steiner Collectibles and Flores had joined to exploit the story for every tear-soaked dollar that suckers could spend. Flores autographed photos of him crying, Steiner peddled them.

He's making money off his own pain. That's absolutely something he is entitled to do. It could be tongue-in-cheek or it could be an easy way to make a dollar. What does it matter? Would it be better if Flores was not a part of these photos? Would his lack of participation in not autographing them be any less pathetic if someone else made money off the pain he was feeling at the time? 

“Now,” writes Drake, “I feel like an idiot.”

You bought an autographed picture of a man crying and then emailed Phil Mushnick about it. I would say the second part of that last sentence probably indicates you are self-aware enough to know it's not just a feeling. 

Was there no one with the Mets or perhaps Flores’s agent to discourage such a pathetic sell? Was there no one to tell Flores, perhaps naïve but not starving, that there are other, better ways to make an extra buck?

Again, why should he not make money off his own pain? It may be pathetic, but if there is a market for it, who cares? Plus, it's nice that Flores can autograph them and not take himself so seriously, even when photographed in a vulnerable moment like he was. 

Saturday, during the Red Sox-Mets game, one of the most trusted voices of New York sports, Howie Rose, retold the warm-the-cockles, trade-that-wasn’t story. He said that Flores, now a crowd favorite, “is very shy” and that “he was almost embarrassed” by all the attention. Hmmm.

Maybe “almost” covered it. He couldn’t have been that embarrassed.

He could have been that embarrassed and decided rather than continue to be embarrassed, fully knowing the pictures of him crying are not going away, why not embrace the embarrassment and participate? 

Et tu, Jon Stewart? If Stewart thought himself an idealist rather than an easy, cheesy populist, he blew it last week when he lent his presence to a WWE ringside skit.

My feelings about wrestling will always remain untold, because I don't want to tell others what to and not to like, but is Jon Stewart participating in a WWE skit really worth bitching about? I can't figure out how Jon Stewart being a part of a fake wrestling match could somehow be an indication there is no one left to corrupt and the sky of morality in sports is definitely falling. 

Perhaps he didn’t care that the McMahon family has for decades headed a drug-death mill for wrestlers, or that the McMahons’ form of entertaining kids is to have wrestlers point to their genitals while hollering, “Suck it!”

Yep, I'd say he probably didn't give a shit. It's fake and it's entertainment. What's the difference in Stewart participating in a WWE skit and acting in a movie where he plays a morally corrupt character? Either way, he is acting. Go find something else to be outraged about. 

But for 16 years, Stewart sat on a Comedy Central set and lampooned America’s biggest big shots for failure to choose right over wrong.

Participating in a WWE wrestling skit is "failing to choose right over wrong?" Really? Phil Mushnick needs to retire. For someone who doesn't like athletes who grandstand and have excessive self-regard, he does a hell of a lot of moral grandstanding and holds himself in high regard.

1 comments Murray Chass No Like the Twitter

I don't really have a baseball nemesis these days. It used to be Joe Morgan, but he was let go by ESPN a few years ago. Murray Chass has intermittently taken Morgan's place on this blog, but he can only temporarily take Morgan's place in my heart. I say "temporarily" because every once in a while Chass becomes my nemesis again. Usually when he goes on one of his "I want to appear to be an old man" rants about service-time, advanced statistics or any other topic that puts a fly in his morning oatmeal. Murray takes his anger out on Twitter in one of the latest columns on his non-blog. Twitter is the bane of his existence and is ruining sports reporting from his point of view. I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that Murray doesn't like Twitter and is coming off as out-of-touch about social media.

Earlier this week six baseball writers – active or once active – gathered for a farewell salute to one of the writers who is moving to Florida after a recent marriage.

Wait, a senior citizen is moving to Florida? You don't say...

As we sat on the patio recalling old writers and old times, an idea struck me. I thought of three questions to ask everyone:

1. Where are we?

2. Who are you all?

3. Where did I leave my car keys?

How many of us had ever tweeted?
 
How many had texted?
 
How many had taken selfies?

I think the answers to these three questions are already pretty obvious. Murray wouldn't write a column like this only to conclude,

"We all Tweet constantly, love texting and here is our latest selfie."

So yes, they all do not take part in any of these social media-related activities and are very proud to be stuck in a time when Tweeting, texting and taking a picture of yourself was not possible. By the way, there is a huge difference in the type of people who text and Tweet, as compared to those who take endless selfies. There's more vanity involved with the selfies that isn't necessarily present in the texting and Tweeting.

“How can I take selfies if I don’t have a cell phone?” the group’s eldest member asked.
You could use a thing called "a camera" to take a picture, which is a new-fangled invention that has been around for a couple of centuries now. Don't worry, cameras and pictures are old enough to where it's not scary new technology that you would take pride in not understanding. It's okay to use a camera and not feel like you are being too progressive with your choice in technology.

“You have a cell phone,” someone said.

Murray writes "someone" because he doesn't who said this. Just a voice out of nowhere. It was probably Fay Vincent. 

“But I don’t use it,” he retorted.

Whew, be sure to make that clear. Embrace your outward senior citizenry and never, ever fall victim to progressive tendencies. 

Neither had he tweeted nor texted. None of us had tweeted. One retired writer acknowledged having received and retrieved two text messages, “but I’ve never sent one,” he quickly added.

Those two text messages probably were:

"Found this phone and couldn't get signal to call. Your wife had an accident is headed to the hospital."

Then:

"Please answer, she is in grave condition and I can't get a signal to call out right now."

This retired writer got these texts, but the bitch is going to have to die without him around because HE DOESN'T MOTHERFUCKING TEXT. SHE KNOWS THIS!

Dinosaurs all, and all proud of it.

I've never understood the ability to be proud that you don't keep up with modern trends that those in your chosen profession keep up with. It's fine for the retired writers to fall behind, but if an active sportswriter isn't keeping up with current technology that helps him do his job better, then he has no business still being in that field. The world moves fast. If you aren't ready to move with it or at least attempt to do so, then you have to find something else to do. I can't use a typewriter at work just because I am proud to be a dinosaur and hate computers. 

We covered baseball in a different era when being a reporter meant doing something other than tapping out a sentence or two on a cell phone.

It also meant reporting on a story and being several hours behind when the story breaks. The sports world doesn't work this way now. It's not always about being first, but reporting on the story within minutes of the story being confirmed as true. The world changes. Murray has to accept this. 

This is the era of trades by Twitter. As one who reported baseball news the old-fashioned way, I am saddened that it has come to this. The new generation and generations to come will not experience the fun and satisfaction of being a reporter. 

Plenty of sportswriters still get the fun and satisfaction of being a reporter. This is where Murray being uninformed comes back to bite him in the ass. Twitter is just one part of the modern sportswriter's job. There is still reporting to be done and Murray has to understand that part of a sportwriter's job on Twitter is finding out news the old-fashioned way, and THEN Tweeting the information out. 

Being first with a tweet just won’t do it.

Again Murray, modern sportswriters have other jobs that involve reporting. They don't just Tweet nonsensical rumors all day. 

They call and will call themselves reporters, but they are and will really be tweeters. I doubt that I could find half a dozen tweeters who could do the job that the half dozen guys sitting on that patio did.

Well, considering those half dozen guys don't text or Tweet I'm wondering how they will even get the information required to break a story? Remember, anonymous sources and GM's text and Tweet these days. So to get information, reporters have to play the technology game. Those half dozen guys may be great at their if judged 20 years ago (though better than today's reporters?...there's no way of saying that in any accurate way), but they would be beaten to every scoop and every column would be written before the half dozen on the patio had fired up their Gateway computer. These half dozen guys on the patio couldn't do the job that the half dozen Tweeters do, because those on the patio refuse to use modern technology to do their job.

Reporting requires gathering pertinent information and using it to write a comprehensive story. It requires more than 140 characters.

Right, and modern reporters gather pertinent information and write a comprehensive story. One perusal of FoxSports.com shows that Ken Rosenthal Tweets, but then follows up his Tweets with a story on the subject matter.

This is part of the problem with Murray's anti-Twitter rant. He doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't care to know what he's talking about. He knows how it used to be and that was when sports reporting was the best. That's all he knows and all he wants to know.

When I was a reporter for the Associated Press decades ago, speed counted, but we couldn’t just be fast; we had to be right.

And 95% of the time the reporter is Tweeting out correct information. There are times when Tweets go out that end up being inaccurate. It happened in the newspaper industry too. Remember "Dewey Defeats Truman"? 

In the Twitter era, it seems as though it doesn’t matter if you’re right. Being first with a trade or a free-agent signing is what counts. If a reporter is first to report a trade but has it wrong, he can always delete the tweet or send another tweet, saying “oops.”

The reporter can send out a correction to this thousands of followers. This is as opposed to printing a retraction in the lower left hand corner of 6C where those who are looking for the retraction can see it? 

The error of tweeters’ ways is what prompted this column. A couple of days before the non-waiver trading deadline last week, tweeters reported a trade between the New York Mets and the Milwaukee Brewers. Outfielder Carlos Gomez had been traded to the New York Mets, the tweeting reporters announced, for disabled pitcher Zack Wheeler and infielder Wilmer Flores.

Apparently Zack Wheeler isn't just injured, he's "disabled." No wonder the Mets-Brewers trade didn't go through. The Brewers found out that Wheeler's last name is just a nickname given to him due to the fact he's in a wheelchair. 

The teams, though, had not announced the trade and never did. The Mets balked at taking Gomez, saying their doctors had found that he had a hip problem.

But this happened after all of the other parameters of the deal were agreed to and the only barrier was the health of the players in the trade. How often do players fail a physical and a trade doesn't go through? Not very often, so even a newspaper could have reported on the trade in order to meet the 11pm deadline for printing and then have to publish a retraction in the lower left hand corner of 6C two days later. 

The premature report affected Flores in an unusual way.

He became disabled like Zach Wheeler?

Because of social media, the false news spread quickly and widely. Flores learned about it during the Mets’ game with San Diego and at one point stood on the field at his shortstop position noticeably crying at the thought of leaving the Mets.

This is an outlying situation that hasn't happened often and doesn't happen often. It's the first time I can remember this type of thing happening, where a player in a trade was still on the field, found out he was being traded and then the trade fell through.

By reporting the trade prematurely, the tweeting press corps, in such a hurry to get the news out and be No. 1 with it, ignored a basic part of the trade, the last part: the requirement of the traded players to pass the medical test.

It wasn't ignored, it was widely assumed that the players involved with the trade who had no known injuries that were preventing them from playing baseball at the present time indeed had no known injuries.

"Hey look, Carlos Gomez doesn't appear to be hurt and got traded! I wonder if he is hurt? I better not report on this trade just in case of the 2% chance all of the outward signs he isn't injured aren't true."

Writing about the off-track Twitter reports, Ken Rosenthal said on FOXSports.com, “Not all reports included a reference to ‘pending medicals.’ Even the ones that did left the impression that the deal was fait accompli. Many followers interpreted the deal as done, if only because such deals almost always get done.”

This is very true. Rosenthal is correct here. 

I have long respected Rosenthal for his work, since before he began tweeting, but I disagree with him on two points. I wouldn’t call tweeters journalists, and there’s no need to provide minute-by-minute accounts because that’s when tweeters get in trouble.

Son of a bitch. Tweeters aren't journalists, but there are those who report on stories who also Tweet. This doesn't make them unless less of a journalist because they have a Twitter account. And yes, if nothing has changed then there is no need to provide updates. If something has changed, then an update would be needed. 

Trade talks and free-agent negotiations can change by the minute, and by the time a tweeter tweets a development he has learned, it can be three developments old.

It reminds me of Pete Rose’s free agency in 1978. In a matter of hours on the same day, from about late morning to late afternoon, Milton Richman of United Press International, a good baseball reporter, had Rose signing with three different teams, actually running three different stories on the UPI wire. The third was Philadelphia, which was the right one.

What a day that would have been had Twitter existed then. Richman would have had tweeters wearing out their thumbs.

In the modern day, Richman would have Tweeted three teams were in the running for Rose's services and then eventually broken the story on who Rose chose. That's how a story like this gets reported in the modern day. No specifics are given unless there are specifics to be given. Murray isn't even on Twitter, yet he acts like he knows ALL that happens on the social media platform. 

In January 2006 the Orioles reached agreement with Jeromy Burnitz on a two-year, $12 million deal, but the outfielder’s agent, Howard Simon, balked at language about a physical in a letter of agreement the club sent him.
The language, Simon said, gave the Orioles too much latitude for killing the deal after other teams interested in Burnitz had signed other players.

When he couldn’t negotiate a change in the language and before Burnitz took the obligatory physical, Simon rejected the Orioles’ deal and went elsewhere, gaining a one-year, $6.7 million contract with Pittsburgh, which included a mutual option for a second year that would raise the value of the contract to the same $12 million Burnitz would have had with Baltimore.

By the way, 2006 was the last year Burnitz played in the majors, so his option wasn't picked up for the 2007 season. So basically, Burnitz's agent may have cost him $5.3 million. Remember this when Murray is using contractual language about a physical as an example of how Peter Angelos is evil. I mean, Angelos is evil, but Simons balking at the language ended up meaning that Burnitz took a one year deal instead of a two year deal. 

In another episode about a year later the Orioles reached agreement with Aaron Sele on a three-year, $21 million contract. A physical preceded the announcement of the deal, and the Orioles’ doctors were concerned about the pitcher’s labrum. They said he had only 400 innings left in it, and Angelos wanted to reduce the contract to two years.

What? Angelos listened to the team doctors that got paid to evaluate players and give their opinion on that player's health? Why in the hell would he do that? Inconceivable. 

Was the concern legitimate, or was it Angelos’s way of reducing the value of the contract? 

Who knows? I'm kidding, of course. Murray Chass thinks he knows. Murray doesn't even use Twitter and knows all about it to the point that there is no doubt in his mind that someone who Tweets is not a reporter.

Whatever the owner’s reason, Sele signed instead with Seattle for two years and $15 million. In those two years, he posted records of 17-10 in 212 innings and 15-5 in 215 innings.

The Orioles doctor was wrong. This has never happened before. 

In six more major league seasons Sele never pitched as well as he did in those two seasons in Seattle, but contrary to the prognosis of the Orioles’ doctors, according to Angelos, that is, Sele pitched an additional 1,113 innings.

I don't know what this has to do with Tweeting and whether sportswriters jump the gun on trades that have happened when none of the players have taken their physical yet. It really has nothing to do with it of course and there isn't a listen to be learned other than, "Sometimes doctors are wrong and a trade isn't complete until all players take a physical."

If the players in a trade are not on the DL or aren't currently missing time due to injury, then the safe assumption would be they are all healthy. Obviously the Mets-Brewers trade was the outlier that started this screed against Twitter and any form of modern technology which Murray doesn't understand, doesn't care to understand, yet seems to believe he knows everything about how it's used by modern sportswriters. 

In an interview at the time of the Burnitz episode, Wren told me, “That’s how Peter plays general manager. He uses medical reasons to kill or change a deal if he doesn’t like it.”

When did this column go from a column about the evils of Twitter to the evils of Peter Angelos? This column on Murray's non-blog is like the delusional train-of-thought ramblings and observations a person might have on a given day while jumping from subject to subject. You know, the sort of thing you see on Twitter. 

2 comments Frank Deford Equates ERA to the Ten Commandments

I have covered Frank Deford's bizarre screeds on this blog before. He is one of the best sportswriters of all-time and he used to be very good at writing about sports. "Used to be" is the key phrase here, because Frank has lost his fastball. In fact, he's lost his slider, his changeup, and is basically just lofting the ball underhand to the plate at this point. Whether it's blaming statistics for the lack of character coaches, railing against Title IX, discussing steroids and the Hall of Fame, or being sad that kids don't mess around with cars anymore, Frank's writing has gone past "bitter sportswriter who doesn't like how sports have evolved" to "angry grandparent yelling at the television while everyone in the room deals with the awkwardness of the situation." Sometimes I'm not even sure Frank knows why he's mad. He just knows kids don't like tinkering around in a garage with a car anymore and that means something for NASCAR or advanced statistics are confusing and baseball isn't the national sport anymore, so these two things must be related in some way.

Now Frank has taken aim (again) at advanced statistics and again blames them for ruining baseball. In this article is some bizarre taunting of Jerry Dipoto and a mention of the Ten Commandments. Because, why not? Throw Frank Deford's name on something and his legend will bring some pageviews.

Whereas numbers have never been a significant adjunct to the other performing arts,

(Deep sigh) I don't know if I would consider baseball to be a performing art or not. I've never considered sports to be anything more than just sports.

they've been stitched into the very essence of sport. Not just the score, but how fast, how far, how good.

It's hard to keep score without numbers and it's hard to evaluate athletes without using statistics of some sort. But be sure to use the "right" statistics or otherwise baseball will be ruined forever.

And, of course, no sport is so identified with numbers as is our American baseball.

And that's great, but Frank Deford encourages the "right" numbers to be used. Numbers that he understands, aren't new and don't make him feel like he has lost touch with the sport he loves so much. If something threatens Frank Deford's understanding of a sport, then it is obviously a bad thing for that sport. 

But stats — which is a fairly new shortcut word, about as old as the Mets and Astros are —

Holy fucking hell for all that is good in life. The Mets and Astros organizations are 50 and 53 years old respectively. They, and therefore the word "stats" isn't either, are not new. This is probably part of the problem with Frank Deford's perspective on sports. He considers something 50-53 years old to be "fairly new." It's not. It may feel new to Frank Deford, but the word "stats" isn't new to baseball simply because he's old enough to remember when the word began to be used as a shortcut for "statistic."

have proliferated recently, not only in other sports, notably basketball, but to deeper and deeper levels of baseball enlightenment.

Which is not a bad thing. Teams are finding new and different ways to evaluate baseball players for their performance on the field. It may be hard for Frank to understand advanced statistics, but this does not mean advanced statistics are bad or ruining the game.

Today, traditional statistics like batting or earned run averages — righteous measures that were accepted as the athletic equivalent of the Ten Commandments 

Are still used? Haven't in any way stopped by used by Sabermetricians? Are being seen as interesting statistics, but statistics that only tell part of the story and MLB teams want a better and fuller picture?

And no, these traditional statistics like batting or earned run averages are not the athletic equivalent of the Ten Commandments. After all, compared to the Ten Commandments, batting or earned run averages are fairly new words that are used. They have only be used in baseball since the invention of the game in the mid-1800's. So obviously the relevance of batting average and ERA should be in question since they are fairly new.

— are made to seem quaint and primitive.

See, no. These numbers aren't made to seem quaint and primitive, but are made to be numbers that simply don't tell the whole story. There is this defensive attitude from old-school writers like Frank Deford about the use of advanced statistics. They want to make it seem like all older statistics are being wiped off the map entirely, when that isn't true. It's simply that these old statistics like batting or earned run average just don't tell the whole story. Why is more information a bad thing?

Baseball even has its own specific brand of analytics, which is known as sabermetrics.

(Bengoodfella clutches his pearls, turns off the "Diagnosis: Murder" re-run he was watching and then falls down in his sitting chair)

Baseball statistics were further glorified by Michael Lewis in his book Moneyball and then on film by the heartthrob Brad Pitt.

"Further glorified" by Michael Lewis. I can always tell when I am reading an article by an anti-advanced statistics writer, because there will be a mention of "Moneyball" and then a mention of the movie "Moneyball." Most of those who don't like advanced statistics base most of their knowledge of advanced statistics on the book and movie "Moneyball," even if they have never actually read the book or seen the movie. Sportswriters like Deford have a knowledge of advanced statistics and Sabermetrics that extend to, and not past, knowledge of the book and movie "Moneyball" existing.

The same people who have no interest in further knowledge past ERA and batting average also have no interest in further knowledge of Sabermetrics that extends past "Moneyball." So it makes sense on that level. It's like me saying I don't like organized religion because of the movie "The Exorcist."

Imagine on-base percentage being a thing of heartthrob.

Like much in the same way I can imagine batting average and viewing a player through the eyes of a scout being a thing of a tough guy like Clint Eastwood in the movie "The Trouble with the Curve"? Ah yes, a movie that also features Justin Timberlake as a baseball scout that is also fairly anti-advanced statistics. Being self-aware is not a thing of Frank Deford.

Moneyball posited the fancy that revolutionary statistical magic had sprung forth from the brain of the Oakland General Manager Billy Beane, like Athena emerging full-blown from Zeus' head.

Frank Deford allows his lack of knowledge freak flag fly. If Frank HAD read "Moneyball" then he would know Billy Beane gives Bill James credit for inspiring much of the "statistical magic" that came forth from him. I would really doubt Frank Deford has read "Moneyball" because that would require effort and he's not about to put effort into anything "fairly new" like stats.

Deford's lack of knowledge about advanced statistics is one of the many reasons I am glad modern sportswriting is the way it currently is. Writers like Murray Chass and Frank Deford could once posit an assumption on their readers in a column and not hear any negative feedback. They may get a few letters, but would shrug those off as just people who don't understand. Who needs those crazies? The fact people were reading what they wrote and they kept getting a paycheck for what they wrote obviously meant they were writing journalistic magic that sprung forth from their pen/typewriter. In the past, Deford could write something like this about "Moneyball" and not be called on it's fallacy. Now, not so much, and I think Deford (and others) resent this. They want to be able to make their point in the way they want to make their point, without being contradicted or their incorrect assumptions being pointed out.

In fact, other resourceful innovators had found original uses for stats all through diamond history.

Which "Moneyball," the book, acknowledges. Criticizing advanced statistics based on the movie "Moneyball" would be like criticizing General Eisenhower's war tactics during World War II based on what was seen in a certain movie. Hollywood makes shit up and leaves things out. It's entertainment, not fact.

But now there is an absolute sabermetric explosion.

There was a Sabermetric explosion a decade ago. Way to keep up.

Every team has employed nerds, 

I still love how the term "nerds" is used in this text. It's a form of journalistic bullying that I find to be juvenile and hilarious. It's an insult straight out of high school or middle school, but apparently a perfectly acceptable form of criticism when coming from a professional writer.

"Oh, you want to learn more about statistics and try to earn a living being smart? NERD! Being stupid and ignorant is cool. Now let me give you a swirlie, loser."

who are presumably tucked away in secret offices, with computers and green eyeshades, emerging only to hand over new numerical strategies.

This presumption based entirely on having absolutely no fucking clue what these people actually do, how they come by the information they come by and certainly no urge to try and gain a wider knowledge base on this topic. Obviously these are all positive attributes any company should want in an employee.

Any assumption made about what these "nerds" are doing is an assumption based on ignorance and not based on fact. Why is Frank Deford not afraid of presuming incorrectly? Only in writing about advanced statistics in baseball is an incorrect presumption and lack of knowledge considered to be a badge of honor that someone would proudly wear.

(Frank Deford) "I know nothing about the topic I'm discussing in this column and couldn't be prouder of this fact!"

(Editor) "You are getting a raise my good man. I don't know how the employee evaluation and compensation system works at our company and I don't care. I don't know anything about budgets or whether giving you a raise will result in layoffs. Who cares? You get a raise!"

(Frank Deford) "The fact you know nothing and stick to your presumptions about how this employee evaluation and compensation system should work tells me you are a fine man and very much stick to old-school principles. This is a credit to you that you don't seek out more information prior to giving me a raise."

(Editor) "I agree. In fact, I haven't read your columns in over a year. I know nothing but that you are an older writer and that must mean you are still good at what you do and no further information should be required for me to learn. In fact, I will seek no more information for fear of learning something that contradicts what I currently know."

This has resulted not only in the outward and visible sign of infielders being shifted all around the diamond like linebackers in football, but even in covert skulduggery, industrial espionage and power politics.

It's obviously the fault of those who use advanced statistics that the Cardinals hacked into the Astros' computers. If it weren't for advanced statistics and computers then there would be no computers for the Cardinals to hack into. Sabermetricians are eventually going to lead to the downfall of society as a whole. Obviously.

What kind of hack-ass shitty writer somehow manages to talk about advanced statistics and then write, "This has resulted in...covert skulduggery, industrial espionage...," as if in some way advanced statistics and not the actions of human beings (the human factor that the anti-stats crowd loves so much!) are the reason for the Cardinals hacking into the Astros' computers?

Last week the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim general manager up and quit in midseason — something that statistically just doesn't happen — 

Yes, because most of the time a General Manager is fired before resigning. I do like the "statistically happen" comment though, as if because Dipoto used advanced statistics he should be able to predict the future and prevent his own resignation.

because, it seems, his manager wouldn't apply enough of the new metrics that his computer minions were churning out.

The tension between Scioscia and Dipoto went slightly deeper than just that, but the basis of it was a different belief in how to deal with information and apply it on the field. This was an arranged marriage between Dipoto and Scioscia anyway, and statistically arranged marriages between a GM and a manager he didn't hire don't work out too well in the long-term. And simply because Scioscia won this power struggle doesn't mean his point of view about new metrics is the correct point of view. That's important to know. Scioscia won the power struggle because Arte Moreno prefers him to Dipoto.

But wait! Worse than this front-office insurrection, the federal government itself may well bring charges against one or more members of the St. Louis Cardinals staff, nabbed for hacking into the secret files of the Houston Astros. Hacking! Baseball! Like Russians and Chinese. Oh my.

And this has what to do with advanced statistics in any way? Advanced statistics or numbers had no impact on the Cardinals choosing to hack the Astros computer. The Cardinals may have been after information about trades and what the Astros thought about certain players, but if advanced statistics or WAR (the favorite advanced statistic for the anti-stats crowd to pick on because it's the easiest to spell) didn't exist then the Cardinals still would have hacked the Astros' files.

Why must Frank Deford forget about the human element in all of this? These are humans making decisions, not computers or robots who made the decision for the Cardinals. Fans of old-school statistics should never forget the human element of decision-making!

It makes deflating a few footballs look like child's play,

The Cardinals hacking the Astros also has as much to do with advanced statistics in baseball as deflating footballs does.

and it makes baseball the darkest statistical art, even more the place for sexy metrics.

Deford is working under the uninformed assumption that the use of advanced statistics is a dark art that takes place secretly in a basement or somewhere out of the view of the sun and prying eyes. Every MLB team has a person or two (perhaps even an entire department) who deal with statistics and how to use these statistics in the process of evaluating baseball players and improving a team's performance. It shows just how uninformed Deford is that he doesn't know the Sabermeteric explosion is over. Advanced stats are now a part of the game, but because he chooses to ignore those things he doesn't like and prefers to base his opinion on limited knowledge, he thinks advanced metrics are a "dark" part of baseball.

Deford was great at one time, but statistically, sportswriters tend to slow down over time. I think he's past that point now.

5 comments Philip Hersh Is Upset He Lost a Hall of Fame Vote for a Sport He Doesn't Cover

The baseball Hall of Fame has always done something very silly with their voting process. They allowed members of the 650 person voting committee who had not covered the sport of baseball for decades to continue to vote for the baseball Hall of Fame. Recently the Hall of Fame decided they were not allowing any voters who haven't actively covered the sport over the last 10 years to continue to have a Hall of Fame vote. I know it makes many members sad, but it's necessary. 650 voters is too many anyway, plus no matter how much the electorate states otherwise, it does not make sense for voters who don't actively cover the sport of baseball to get a Hall of Fame vote. Philip Hersh, who previously wanted a PED home run record to be erased so another PED-aided home run record could stand, is one of those voters who had their voting privilege revoked. Sure, Hersh covers the Olympics/International sports mostly and that's been his focus since 1987 (yes, 1987), but he misses his Hall of Fame vote. Now this means he can't use his own personal vendetta against PED users to keep them out of the Hall of Fame. Quite a sad day for him.

It seems that my time is up.

What? Philip Hersh is writing this column from the grave? Unbelievable. No wonder he lost his Hall of Fame vote. I don't think a deceased person should have a Hall of Fame vote, though I'm sure many like Hersh would disagree. 

As a Hall of Fame voter, that is.

Oh, nevermind. It appears Philip Hersh is in fact not dead. That's wonderful to know. Still, taking away the Hall of Fame vote from Hersh shouldn't be a big deal since the last time he actively covered the sport of baseball there was no Wild Card and several MLB teams didn't exist. Contrary to his wishes, things have changed since that time. 

Hall officials, who have ultimate authority over the selection rules, announced last week that anyone who has not covered the game actively for the last 10 years no longer would be eligible to vote.

What a crazy rule. Why would the Hall of Fame require writers who follow the sport of baseball closely to be those responsible for voting for the Hall of Fame? It's the Hall of Fame. The decisions are made easy once PED speculation, anecdotal evidence and long-held grudges are factored into the decision on which players receive votes and which don't vote. In fact, these writers probably don't even need to watch a baseball game to vote. I mean, Hersh watches AT LEAST 10 baseball games per year. Plus, he talks to a guy a lot who knows a ton about baseball. What else is there to know?

Of those members, 20 percent, or 130, no longer will be eligible, O'Connell said.

It's not a bad thing. Now there are only a little over 500 voters. Quite a large sample still. 

That group includes me, a lifetime honorary member.

Being a lifetime member of the baseball Hall of Fame voting committee is like having tenure at a university. It means you have been around long enough to get this honor, but it doesn't mean you are currently fit to do the job that caused you to once receive the honor. Be a lifetime member, but it doesn't mean your lifetime membership causes you to know enough about the sport to where you can vote for the Hall of Fame. 

That move will delight the anonymous Twitter trolls who have hectored me every year to give up my vote because they apparently are upset that I roundly dismiss the candidacies of players like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, whose use of PEDs was apparent, admitted or both.

I think the Twitter trolls are probably more upset that Philip Hersh takes such glee in not allowing these players to receive his vote AND he won't vote for a guy like Jeff Bagwell who hasn't admitted he used PED's and has never been suspected (with real evidence) to have used PED's. These "trolls" (which is a funny word since Hersh is the real "troll" for taking such glee in not voting for certain players) are probably upset that Hersh loves to be the judge, jury and executioner as it pertains to determining if a certain player used PED's, then withholds his vote accordingly. 

My only regret in losing the vote now is not having a further voice in shutting that crowd out of Cooperstown until their 15 years of eligibility is over.

See? Hersh calls those who heckle him for this attitude as being "trolls" while he believes himself to be fully correct in taking this position. He's the moral majority and can't be more proud of it. Anybody who opposes this point of view will be dismissed as a troll, while Hersh is offended at being dismissed as not having enough firsthand knowledge about baseball (due to not covering it on a full-time basis) to vote for the Hall of Fame. Of course, the fact he won't vote for Jeff Bagwell just proves his lack of firsthand knowledge about the sport, but that's just my opinion. 

One can only hope that 26 percent of the 520 or so remaining voters will continue to bar the door.

Or, you know, vote for these players based on their merits and not just rumors or speculation based on what these players are suspected of doing. Bagwell and Mike Piazza may have used steroids, but until there is evidence of this being the truth then it seems very presumptive and too "judge/jury/executioner"-like to deny them a vote based on speculation. 

Truth be told, excluding those who are not covering Major League Baseball on a regular basis seems a reasonable move, even if many of us in that category devoted considerable time and thought to the task.

"Truth be told, it makes a lot of sense to exclude me from voting because I have not devoted the time necessary to evaluate these players, but here is a vendetta I have against suspected PED users that is based entirely on speculation. Take me and my Hall of Fame votes from the past seriously."

That one can make a more knowledgeable decision while watching a player regularly affected my consideration of the late Mark Belanger, whom I covered for four years with the Baltimore Evening Sun.

Sportswriters who covered a certain player closely or often will naturally have a bias towards thinking that player is more qualified for the Hall of Fame. It's why I laugh at anecdotal evidence and other forms of nostalgia when advocating for a certain player to be in the Hall of Fame (coughs, Jack Morris). Of course I think Chipper Jones is one of the greatest hitters in MLB history. I have watched him play over a thousand games as a Braves fan. It doesn't mean he is one of the greatest hitters in MLB history. Of course a Cardinals beat writer will think much more highly of Yadier Molina, or think he is better than Johnny Bench. They watch him play everyday. This is why there are 500+ voters and those voters need to actually have covered the sport in the last decade. 

Yes, Belanger was a .228 career hitter. But he also was the best defensive shortstop I ever have seen (eight Gold Gloves, second all time in defensive wins above replacement), and he played during an era when teams valued shortstops for defense, not hitting.

Right, but that doesn't mean Belanger should be in the Hall of Fame. He never had an OPS+ of over 100 and his OPS never exceeded 0.696 over a full season. He wasn't just a bad hitter, he was a shockingly bad hitter to be considered for the Hall of Fame. The era he played in does not matter, because Belanger is not one of the greatest baseball players in the history of baseball. A little asterisk on his plaque with "*for his era because of defense and what-not" written should not apply.

Looking only at his numbers was uninformative but undoubtedly the reason Belanger got just 3.7 percent of the vote during his one year on the ballot.

Because he was a great defensive player, but a horrible offensive player. Much in the same way that Edgar Martinez does not get Philip Hersh's vote because he was a full-time DH and didn't play defense, Belanger barely played offense, so he should not be seriously considered for the Hall of Fame. If Belanger is considered by Hersh for the Hall of Fame then Martinez should absolutely be in the Hall of Fame and Martinez should absolutely receive Hersh's vote. To my knowledge, I can't find a time when Martinez did receive Hersh's vote. Apparently being a great defensive player and horrible offensive player is fine, but being a great offensive player and barely playing defense, is not okay with Hersh. 

That low total means even writers actively covering the game find it hard to assess players they see infrequently.

And in the end, those numbers speak for what kind of player Belanger was. Belanger's comparables on Baseball Reference are guys like Freddie Patek and Walt Weiss. It's easy to assess Belanger, no matter how great he was at defense, because he isn't one of the best baseball players of all-time based simply on defense. There are other facets that must be considered. Regardless of how much Hersh saw Belanger and was in awe of his ability, this doesn't mean he should be in the Hall of Fame. If so, Andruw Jones should be a shoo-in, right? He was a fantastic defensive center fielder and he could hit the baseball. This would go for any great defensive player who could hit the ball even at a below average clip.

To me, voting was a serious responsibility, 

Except for the whole "I refuse to vote for players that I independently choose to believe are PED users despite no evidence to support my contention" thing. 

often requiring double-digit hours of internal debate, statistical study and consultation with people whose knowledge of the game was peerless.

"Consultation with people whose knowledge of the game was peerless." If you have to consult with others often about which players should be in the Hall of Fame, then you should not have a vote. It's not a rule, but I think it should be one. And I really doubt Hersh's "statistical study" dealt with anything past batting average or wins.

And there is a delightful irony in my losing the chance to vote on who makes baseball's Valhalla.

The irony being everything you have written over the past few years about the Hall of Fame shows why you should not have a vote and you are a big reason the Hall probably decided to implement a rule stating a voter had to have covered the sport actively over the last 10 years? 

I am in the Hall, or at least something I wrote is, displayed for 20-odd years on the front wall of the "Scribes and Mikemen" exhibit. In a Tribune essay marking the resumption of play after a brief strike in 1985, I said, "Baseball is the only game you can see on the radio."

(Philip Hersh swings his dick around to show how important he is)

Yes, but did Hersh use caffeine or any other substance that helped him wake up or stay focused when writing this sentence? If so, he's a PED user. The caffeine affected his performance as a writer in a positive manner and this quote should be removed immediately from the Hall of Fame.

Every year, it seems, a friend visiting Cooperstown sends me a photo. Even if it is removed one day, having been included will always be, like the baseball of my essay, a dream that won't go away.

Well, good for you. Imagine if someone decided that your writing was too much like another sportswriter's writing and that you plagiarized many of the columns that you wrote. Imagine there is no evidence of this, but another writer at your paper was caught plagiarizing, and so you are lumped in with him/her, because it makes sense based on the fact you two were friends. Would that make you feel good or like your dream is being taken away simply out of spite based upon baseless accusations and non-evidentiary suspicions?   

0 comments Terence Moore Writes the Fluff Piece to End All Fluff Pieces About Bud Selig

Terence Moore writes for MLB.com. I always get a good laugh reading his columns, because at the very end of his columns there is this disclaimer:

Terence Moore is a columnist for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

What Terence writes is not subject to approval from MLB. Sure, he works for MLB.com, but MLB doesn't give a shit what he writes. He could do a ten-part expose on how Rob Manfred is a closeted bigot who molests children in his spare time. IT DOESN'T MATTER, RUN THE STORY! That's how the reader is supposed to see it. Yet over the past few years Terence, an avowed "traditionalist" who hates all changes in baseball post-Big Red Machine, has written about how much he loves the following: a pitch clock, the one game Wild Card playoff, the All-Star Game format, and has slobbered all over Bud Selig once before. Well, once is not enough. Terence Moore has written the all-time fluff piece on Bud Selig and it's embarrassing. These two should just get a room.

I've defended Selig a few times, because I think he's done some good for MLB, and he gets mocked too much. Considering how outright hated Roger Goodell and Gary Bettman have become, while David Stern always received way too much credit for being handed the Bird/Magic/Jordan/Shaq/Kobe/LeBron era of the NBA and not fucking it up, I think Selig did a decent as commissioner of MLB. Bud Selig isn't my idea of a good time, but I also think he wasn't one of the worst commissioners in sports either. He moved baseball forward, and as much as the Steroid Era leaves a stain on his legacy, he also responded to the Steroid Era with a strong drug policy. But still...this is just too much. Terence Moore, NOT AT THE BEHEST OF MLB OR BECAUSE HE WORKS FOR THEM, thinks Bud Selig is the greatest and he's not afraid to slobber embarrassingly over Selig while making an ass of himself.

When Bud Selig isn't walking around his longtime Milwaukee neighborhood, stretching his 80-year-old legs while listening through his headphones to any baseball news he can find, he is watching 15 games a day.

There is a lot to mock here. The presentation as Bud Selig as an everyman is, of course, funny. I imagine that Selig's neighborhood isn't just a regular old neighborhood like you and I live in, but one of those neighborhoods that is really a shelter for the super-wealthy with a gate of some sort that keeps the unwanteds out. Also, I like to imagine Selig is listening to a Sony Walkman that doesn't even have a tape player.

Oh, and one other thing. It's impossible for Selig to watch all 15 games in a day. I doubt he stays up until 1am every night to catch the games. Good try, but I'm not buying it.

"I'm at home, and I have a little clicker, and I have a satellite, and I go from game to game," 

"A clicker." He has "a clicker," which I imagine he bangs on the couch cushion when it won't go to the channel he wants to go to immediately.

And if Terence wasn't on-the-nose enough with his description of Selig as an everyman, he'll just go ahead and point out that this fluff piece is about Bud Selig as an everyman. Just in case it's not obvious to the reader, here is what Terence is trying to paint Selig as being,

said the Commissioner Emeritus of Baseball, sharing his routine as just another fan.

Just another fan. And remember, no one asked Terence to write this column. This was a tongue-bath that he is giving Selig on his own accord. How this makes it better, I am not sure.

Well, Selig isn't just any fan. He spent more than two decades as the Commissioner, and he is four months into a retirement that doesn't exist.

Walking around the neighborhood, watching baseball all day. That's not retirement? If walking around the neighborhood and watching sports all day isn't retirement, then I have to wonder what Terence believes retirement to be. What Selig is doing all day, isn't that retirement for most people?

That means Selig is far from your average guy dreaming of snagging a foul ball some day from the bleachers.

As always, it wouldn't be a Terence Moore column if he didn't submarine his own point along the way. Bud Selig is a regular guy except he isn't.

(Terence Moore a few paragraphs ago) "Bud Selig is just like a regular guy watching baseball all day."

(Terence Moore now) "Bud Selig is not the average guy because he's too important and really, really wealthy."

Selig is that guy in spirit, though.

Well, in spirit I am really nice guy who is super-athletic and I treat everyone as I would like to be treated. Unfortunately, what I am in spirit doesn't matter when I'm not athletic enough to play professional sports, I can be an asshole and I'm incredibly impatient with some people. See, what I am in spirit doesn't matter, because in reality I'm not what I am in spirit.

Selig said he has been known to get a little excited at times while studying this baseball moment or that one.

"Studying this baseball moment..." I tell you, it sounds really fucking exciting just to talk about. I love sitting in front of the television, studying baseball moments. This sounds like something a real fan of baseball would do.

"Hey want to come over and use 'the clicker' to study baseball moments? Bring the fat free milk jug too. You know what? Screw it, bring over the jug of whole milk. I'm getting a little excited. There are baseball moments happening."

"I don't shout much, but I do mumble," Selig said. "Believe me, I will do that.

I'm not sure mumbling counts as getting excited. People who mumble when they get excited generally tend to be vagrants or other individuals who are slowly losing their mind. But yes, I absolutely do believe Bud Selig will mumble when he gets excited. That, I do believe. 

Other than that, I may say on occasion, 'What the heck is going on here?' That's when things aren't going the way I like them to go."

When those baseball moments aren't going right, sometimes you just have to ask "What the heck is going on here?" I like how Terence believes he's painting Bud Selig in a positive light, but he's portraying him as the same weird, quiet guy who seems aloof from everything and everyone that he was stereotyped as commissioner.  

Selig was speaking about "things" on the diamond, not in his life. Especially not his baseball life, because that has been an intriguing story.

Because as much as Terence wants to paint Bud Selig as a regular guy, "things" away from the field have gone pretty well for Bud Selig. His dad owned a car leasing business and Bud made a few bucks off of that. But no, Bud Selig is just a regular fan of baseball, walking around the neighborhood and watching television all day. Just like you and I watch baseball all day, except Bud Selig is much wealthier, has "a clicker," is definitely not living a life of retirement, and used to the commissioner of baseball.

I witnessed many of the middle chapters of that story, and this was when I knew Selig before I formally knew him. If you lived in Milwaukee during the early 1970s when my family and I moved to town, everybody in Wisconsin knew Allan Huber "Bud" Selig. He was woven into the fabric of the state. He owned the Brewers, and he was on the board of directors of the Green Bay Packers. His roommate at the University of Wisconsin was Herb Kohl, who became a U.S. Senator and the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. Among Selig's best friends was Hank Aaron, which made sense.

And of course Terence Moore is writing this fluff piece on Selig because he grew up in Milwaukee. It's just like how Terence idolizes the Big Red Machine and so he writes 3-4 articles per year on them. 

Selig breathed all things Braves during their stay in his native Milwaukee from the early 1950s through the mid-1960s. When they left for Atlanta after the 1965 season, he got the White Sox to play games at old Milwaukee County Stadium

He eventually convinced baseball to allow the troubled Seattle Pilots franchise to become the Brewers before the 1970 season.

Bud Selig stole professional sports franchises from Seattle before it was cool to do so. He's ahead of his time in so many ways. 

I began knowing Selig for real during his journey from original owner of the Brewers to acting Commissioner in 1992 to full-time Commissioner from '98 through his retirement in January. Through it all, Selig never left Milwaukee as his primary residence.

That's so noble of him to include Milwaukee as his primary residence and not include any beach, vacation, or second homes as his primary residence. So even though Bud Selig may have multiple residences like any other baseball fan has, he is a man of the people, as seen by his keeping Milwaukee as his primary residence for tax purposes. I'm getting the warm and fuzzies now. 

Has Selig gone back to the future as Wisconsin's staunchest baseball fan?

"Well, that's the first thing people always ask me, and then they say, 'Now you can openly root for the Brewers,'" said Selig, with a sigh after a pause. "But I'm still careful that way."

Yes, be careful not to let anyone think the team that Selig grew up loving and used to own, like own in terms of him actually legally owning the franchise, would be the team he would cheer for when he's retired (I'm sorry, I meant "not really retired"). Can't have that. It's better to keep the people in the dark on Selig's rooting allegiances. 

Before long, he did something that his predecessors couldn't do, and that is, he got his fellow owners to come to a consensus on a slew of issues. He also was able to do the same with the Major League Baseball Players Association. Interleague Play. From two divisions to three, with Wild Cards in the playoffs. A replay system, and then an expanded replay system. The toughest drug-testing program in pro sports. A lasting peace between management and labor.

Outside of the one-game Wild Card, which I still hate, these is a nice list of Selig's accomplishments which have led to many baseball moments he can mutter under his breath about. 

"I am a fan, and I enjoy the game immensely," Selig said, adding that he was particularly fond of the retired Derek Jeter,

I mean, who doesn't love The Jeter? The answer? Minka Kelly. She is probably not a fan of The Jeter. And possibly Mariah Carey or Jessica Biel. Though no one can be sure since Derek Jeter still has their phones confiscated upon entrance to his home, so any complaints they had at the time about The Jeter will remain in those phones. 

and now they have what they call "The Selig Experience" at the same Miller Park that Selig built for the Brewers.

The "Experience" opened last week as a high-tech exhibit that uses multimedia to describe how Selig saved Major League Baseball in Wisconsin.

This doesn't sound self-serving at all. 

It features a 3D version of Selig in his old Milwaukee County Stadium office, and the highlights include Aaron slamming his National League pennant-clinching home run in 1957. 

A 3D version of Bud Selig. Screw muttering about baseball moments, I want to see a 3D Bud Selig for a real sense of excitement. 

"You know, it was just unbelievable when they opened 'The Selig Experience' last week, because sitting right next to me was Henry [Aaron], and right behind me was Robin Yount," Selig said, referring to two Baseball Hall of Famers with Milwaukee connections.

"I'm telling you. I wish you could have seen [Aaron's and Yount's] emotion while watching this thing. I do have a passion for baseball, and if you watch 'The Selig Experience,' I wouldn't have to tell you too much more."

"It's great to have these two great baseball players sitting there while they celebrate how I saved baseball in Milwaukee. What a great moment and everyone should celebrate how great I am."

Okay, it's not exactly what Selig means, but in a fluff piece about Bud Selig it's easy to mock how Selig seems to be celebrating himself just a little bit as well.

You ready for the money shot of slobbering that Terence will do over Bud Selig? It's basically a tongue-bath in written form. If "Open Arms" could be translated into sports talk, then sung by Terence Moore while on one knee as Bud Selig blushes and acts like he's embarrassed, then these last two sentences would be the equivalent of that song.

Actually, I've watched something better than "The Selig Experience" to see Selig's passion for baseball.

I've watched Selig.

Wow, that's an embarrassing way to end the column. I'm not sure I've ever read a person fawn over Bud Selig like this since the last time Terence Moore fawned over Selig. And in no way has Terence written such an embarrassingly devoted column because he works for MLB.com and cares to keep Selig's legacy in the forefront of people's minds. Not at all. 

Though I do have to ask the following question. Is Terence saying "The Selig Experience" isn't as good as sitting there on the couch, staring at Bud Selig, watching him mutter and bang "the clicker" on the couch in order to get it work? If so, that doesn't say a hell of a lot for "The Selig Experience."

The real "Selig Experience" would be watching a four hour baseball game and then having it end in a tie while everyone shrugs their shoulders and then walks home. Later, the decision will be made in order to prevent a tie from happening, as opposed to simply continuing to play baseball until one team wins, that there must be stakes tied to the game. Then World Series homefield advantage will be tied to this exhibition game, as if the real issue was that the stakes in the game weren't high enough and wasn't simply that the game ended in a tie. Knowing an exhibition game ended in a tie and figuring the best way to solve this problem was to raise the stakes and then tie these stakes from an exhibition game to the World Series, as opposed to simply making rules stating the exhibition game can't end in a tie...now that's the real "Selig Experience."