The Baseball Writers Association of America are a bunch of morons


First off, let me congratulate Andre Dawson on his election to the Hall of Fame.  It is a much deserved honor, and I’m glad to see that the BBWAA got it right, eventually.

One of the great things about baseball is that you can look through a mountain of statistics and still have arguments about who the greatest players of all time are.   I can imagine that there are a few baseball writers out there who think “Sure, Dawson was really good, but this isn’t the ‘Hall of Really Good’.  I can think of several other players in his era who were better.”

As much as I believe that Andre Dawson belongs in the Hall of Fame, I could understand that there might be an argument on the issue.

Maybe some writers think that only players who are in the discussion of “Best Player of All Time” belong in the hall?

I’m going to pick a list off the top of my head of the “generally considered” best baseball players who ever lived.  I’m going to include 5 hitters and 5 pitchers.

For hitters, how about…

  • Ty Cobb
  • Babe Ruth
  • Hank Aaron
  • Ted Williams
  • Joe DiMaggio

I’d say that is a pretty good list of “Best Ever” candidates, wouldn’t you?  You have the former all-time hits leader, 2 former all-time home run leaders, the last man to hit .400, and a guy who hit in 56 straight games while winning a metric fuckton of World Series titles and was frequently introduced as “Baseball’s Greatest Living Player” (which is not even close to true at any given point in his life, see examples: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, etc) while banging Marilyn Monroe.

For pitchers?

  • Walter Johnson
  • Cy Young
  • Grover Cleveland Alexander
  • Christy Matthewson
  • Warren Spahn

I don’t think there is any argument on any of these players, do you?  In a game where 300 wins is considered “automatic”, we have a 400 game winner, a 500 game winner, and 3 350 game winners.  All won World Series titles.  4 of the 5 were named to baseball’s “All Century Team”.

What do all of these men have in common?  Not one of them was a unanimous choice for selection to the Hall of Fame.

Somewhere out there, there was a sportswriter who thought “You know?  Babe Ruth was pretty good, but I’m just not sure he’s Hall of Fame material.”

Somewhere out there, there was a sportswriter who looked at Cy Young and said “Sure, he won 511 games, and they named the award for best pitcher in the league after the guy, but I’m not quite sure he can cut it on my Hall of Fame ballot.”

I think I know why there was a sportswriter or two who looked at Hank Aaron and said “Yeah, he’s the all-time Home Run champ, but I ain’t voting for him for Cooperstown.” and I hope those people are rotting in a special place in hell.

And lest you think that it’s the “old fogeys” who had it wrong, let’s take a look at a few “no-brainers” from recent years.  Again, just picking 5 off the top of my head…

  • Cal Ripken Jr.
  • Rickey Henderson
  • Johnny Bench
  • Nolan Ryan
  • Ozzie Smith

Ok, we have “Mr. Ironman”, the all-time stolen base champ, the best catcher in the last 50 years, the all-time strikeouts leader, and the generally acknowledged best fielding shortstop of all time.  All were elected on the first ballot.  All received over 90% of the votes available… but not 100%.

In fact, there has not been one player in the history of baseball who was a unanimous selection for the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Really?  There’s not one guy out there who every voter could get behind?  Lou Gehrig?  Willie Mays?  Mickey Mantle?  Nobody?

What’s worse, is now some idiot is going to claim “tradition” when he refuses to vote for Randy Johnson, or Greg Maddux, or Pedro Martinez, or Ken Griffey Jr, or *Alex Rodriguez.  If Cy Young wasn’t unanimous, then how could Greg Maddux be voted in with 100% of the vote?  If Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron couldn’t draw every vote, how can you justify voting in Albert Pujols unanimously?

*A-Rod, with the steroid/HGH/PED thing might get a few nay-sayers who refuse to vote for anyone connected to that controversy, and I totally get that. I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.

But here is the final straw for me…

I’m going to show the statistics for two players…

Player A:

  • 15 year career
  • 224 HR
  • 1068 RBI
  • .317 AVG

Player B:

  • 18 year career
  • 219 HR
  • 1326 RBI
  • .303 AVG

Neither player has won an MVP.  Player A has never led his league in any of the above offensive categories.  Player B has led the league in RBI and batting average once. (same year… guy wins 2/3 of the Triple Crown and didn’t win the MVP that year.)

One of these players is generally considered by sports writers to be a “No brainer, sure fire, first ballot, no-doubt-about-it Hall of Famer”  the other was dropped from the ballot after only getting 4.3% of the vote in his first year of eligibility. (You have to get at least 5% to stay on the ballot from year to year.)

So which of these players is Derek Jeter and which one is Al Oliver?

(Answer:  Jeter is “Player A”)

After looking at all of the evidence, I am forced to conclude that sportswriters, particularly baseball writers, are a bunch of self-righteous, sanctimonious, self-important jerkoffs who let their own egos and sensibilities get in the way of any semblance of objectivity.

Cleansing the Palate


Too much serious stuff going on here, so I thought I’d post something that, frankly, I find hilarious.

Enjoy.

By the way, this clown (Benny Hinn), is the same Jesus-huckster who convinced Evander Holyfield to write a check for a quarter million bucks.  I guess it should be no surprise, given Holyfield’s masterful job at managing money, that Evander not only had his house foreclosed but is a deadbeat dad to boot.

P.T. Barnum was right…

I know what’s wrong with the Republican Party!


Michael Steele and Humpty Hump, Separated at Birth?

Seriously, has any political movement gone from “Majority Party” to “Clown Shoes” so quickly?

Here are some of the choicest tidbits from President Obama’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

  • Dick Cheney was supposed to be here, but he is very busy working on his memoirs, tentatively titled, ‘How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People.’”
  • On House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), whose apparent fake tan has long been the butt of jokes inside the Beltway,  “We have a lot in common: He is a person of color,” Obama joked. “Although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

But the line of the night had to be this gem from Wanda Sykes on Rush Limbaugh…

  • “I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight,”

The Republican Party has become a complete shambles.  When your party’s guiding lights are talk radio hosts, and some of your oldest and most established members are jumping ship to the other party, perhaps it is time to think about how disconnected you have become from “Mainstream America”.  Seriously, these clowns are seriously entertaining the notion of running Sarah Palin for President in 3 more years.  It might be more dignified, and certainly less expensive to just say “We give up” and let Obama have his second term without a fight.

As a parting shot, I’ll leave you with this little nugget to think about.  The same “Conservatives” who decry Obama’s spending bills and invoke the “holy name” of Ayn Rand when espousing their preferred economic philosophies are the same bozos who voted for Bush’s bailout bill back in December and managed to turn a budget surplus into record deficits in only a few short years.   Hypocrite much?

Monday Morning Rant


These are just things that popped up in my head over the weekend.  I may expand on some of these topics later, but right now I’m dealing with a fussy 6 week old girl and I’m heading to the office shortly.

  • Since when do Liberals have a monopoly on “Big Government”?  The last Liberal President ran a budget surplus.  The current Conservative President is running record deficits.  Liberals might be guilty of “tax and spend” on occasion, but that is preferable to “tax cut and spend”.  When the time comes, and we have to pay off this debt, it’s going to be ugly.
  • Candidates who deliberately misstate issues in order to score easy points with voters are one of the biggest problems we have in Government.  Jim Martin, the Democratic candidate for US Senate here in Georgia, is calling the Fair Tax “a 23% national sales tax” without mentioning that it completely eliminates Income Tax, Estate Tax, Capital Gains Tax, and half a dozen other taxes.  I voted Democrat in more than a few races this year, but this one ad was enough for me to vote for Saxby Chambliss, who sponsored the Fair Tax in the Senate.
  • Thanks to Barack Obama, I am now forced to root for the Phillies to win the World Series in 5 games.  He’s gonna get killed in the polls if he winds up pushing back the start of game 6 just so he can blanket the airwaves with a 30 minute speech.  Does he really think that voters in Pennsylvania and Florida (two states that are very much “in play” this year) are going to want to hear him talk instead of watching their teams in the Fall Classic?  I don’t care how important the election is to you, you have to understand the audience, and the audience just wants to watch the damn game.  Would it really have killed Obama to schedule his speech half an hour earlier or, even better, on the day before? (travel day for both teams)
  • Thank you, Penn State, for making sure that Ohio State will not be in the BCS Championship Game for the third year running.  If only you could do something about USC.
  • Please, mighty gods of college football, do something about Alabama and Georgia.  Maybe let Auburn bring back a half dozen NFL alumni for a game or two?
  • Wrath of the Lich King drops on November 13.  Don’t expect me to be social, coherent, or even willing to leave the house that weekend.  I’ll still be writing, but it will be for that other blog. (You know… the one I get paid to write?)

McCain/Failin’


I used to love watching The Big Show on ESPN with Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick.  I liked the slightly skewed perspective that they brought to sports reporting, and I think every SportsCenter anchor since has been a pale shadow of these two.

That said, I was nonplussed when Olbermann threw his hat into the ring of political commentary.  What does he know about politics?  He’s a jock.  Gravitas ain’t in his lexicon…

Oops.

I don’t agree with every position he takes, but there are times when he gets it spot on.

To wit:

Monday Night Football?


The next 3 weeks are the only time of the year when I’ll watch baseball over football, and even then… only on Monday night.  Seriously, does anyone outside of Minnesota or Louisiana care about Vikings vs Saints?

Not when the Red Sox are going for the jugular in game 4, they don’t.

It amused me to no end to hear the announcers try to work in the phrase “The ground cannot cause a fumble” on a rundown play in the 9th inning.  I know that football has passed our former national pastime in terms of popularity, but playoffs are playoffs.  The idea that someone might not be playing another game this season is even enough for me not to immediately hit the remote button when I accidentally come across a WNBA game. (I’d rather watch Nascar than “below the rim” hoops… and “Left Turning for Dollars” isn’t exactly burning up my Tivo, know what I’m saying?)

Oh, Justice is served


OJ Simpson… Guilty at last

13 years later, the freakshow is over.  OJ is going to jail, and unless I miss my guess, he’s not coming out unless it is in a coffin.  Unlike many folks, I do not take it as an article of faith that OJ killed his ex-wife and Ron Goldman.  My problem stems from the fact that this sellout has been acting like a jerk who got away with murder.  The confessional book “If I Did It“, “Juiced” and his attempts to “find the real killers” on nearly every golf course in the state of Florida scream of bad taste.  At least now, this jerk will not be in the public eye anymore.

Hope your knees are in good shape, Juice.  You’re going to be on them an awful lot.

Obligatory Sox Post


For those of you who know me, this is no shock.  For everyone else, here is a little obligatory biographical information.

I am a proud member of Red Sox Nation.

For me, the experience is a little personal.  After all, I’m not from Boston, had never been there until 3 years ago, and never even seen the Red Sox in person until my fanhood had been established.  Considering the fact that I live in Atlanta, which has a baseball team of it’s own last time I checked, there doesn’t appear to be a reason that I should be such a fan, right?

Not quite…

Back in 1996, I was a Braves season ticket holder.  I *liked* Boston but I wasn’t a die hard fan.  So there I am with tickets to the World Series against the Yankees.  I was fortunate enough to be at the clinching game 6 of the previous year’s World Series against the Indians, and was looking forward to game 4 when the Braves might be able to do it again against the Yankees.  It didn’t bother me that the Yanks took game 3 in Atlanta thus making it impossible for me to be part of another series clinching win.  But in game 4, I developed my first honest-to-god hatred in professional sports thanks to Jim-fucking-Leyritz.  The Spank-mes went on to win the Series that year, and started a run almost as good as the Braves’ streak of 14 straight post-season appearances. (sarcasm alert… 4 World Series vs 1 for the Braves… I don’t care how many times in a row you get a shot at it, you gotta win once in a while.)

So how does this make me a Sox fan?

Well, naturally, the Braves had fewer opportunities to exact revenge on the Spankees so I turned to their fiercest rivals, the Boston Red Sox.  I rooted for the Sox on general principle because they were the arch-enemy of the team I hated the most.  But I was not yet a hardcore Sox fan…

One day I was perusing some baseball trivia, and noticed that Roger Maris, of the Yankees, hit his record-breaking 61st home run against the Red Sox.   It was just another trivial indignity that the Yankees inflicted on their long-standing rivals, and not much of a big deal… Until I noticed the name of the pitcher that gave up the record breaking home run.

Surely the name is just a coincidence.  I mean, not every “Smith” is a close relative, right?  So I call my dad and ask “Hey pop, do you know anyone named Tracy Stallard from Coeburn Virginia?”  Dad responds “Well, I know that our entire family is from Coeburn, so at the very least he’s probably your cousin.”  A few digs worth of research later, and sure enough, Tracy is family.  In my most irrational, “only-a-sports-fan” method of justification, the Yankees made some history at my family’s expense!  They must pay!

By this time, I was following the Braves and the Sox with equal intensity.  The hometown team I had grown up watching and the team that was most likely to make the Yankees’ lives a living hell if anyone could do it.  What eventually caused my complete change from Braves fan to Red Sox fan was watching the Sox play.  Watching the fans who were tuned in to every pitch.  Talking to fans who remembered the starting outfielders from the 1978 team ( Lynn, Rice, and Dewey Evans.  Yaz split time with 1B) Compare and contrast with my fellow Braves season ticket holders, who were more likely than not to show up in the 4th inning and leave after the 7th while chatting on their cell phones the entire time.  Being a Sox fan was just more FUN than being a Braves fan.  Granted the Sox still had their share of misery to deal with.  2003 and Aaron-fucking-Boone was yet another Yankee-forged trauma to the psyche of every Red Sox fan, but at least you knew that next year you’d have another crack at those bastard Yankees.  Who were the Braves ever passionate about from a rivalry standpoint?  The Mets?  The Phillies?  The Marlins?  The Twins? (I gotta admit… 1991 still stings a bit)

So when 2004 hit and the Sox finally broke The Curse, I was just as happy as I was that night in October 1995 when I saw the Braves win their only World Series.  I was a little understated about it because I knew that there were a lot of bandwagoneers out there, and I’m not a big fan of the bandwagon types.  Over the last 4 years, it has been almost too easy to be a Sox fan, but dammit, I have a Yankee-hating pedigree that I’ll put up against anyone.  Bill Buckner didn’t scar my psyche, but I’ve seen my share of Sox heartbreaking moments.  In other words, I’ve earned it.  Maybe not as much as the guy who grew up at Fenway watching Ted Williams, but you can’t help who you want to cheer for.  You just follow your heart.

I’m not going to make any predictions about the Sox in this post-season.  I won’t jinx the Sox like that, but you gotta admit that any team down 0-2 to the Sox with Beckett on the mound for game three is facing some pretty long odds.

Al Davis is a f***ing jerk.


How’s THAT for an original thought, eh?

I don’t know Lane Kiffin.  I don’t know Al Davis.  In fact, I don’t have strong feelings of any kind about anyone connected to the Oakland Raiders at all.  I do know this much.

If you’re going to fire someone, have the decency to keep the sordid details out of the press.  Calling a press conference in order to provide lurid details as to why you fired your coach is the kind of move that only the lowest of bottom-feeding scumsuckers would ever contemplate.  As if the court of public opinion means anything when you have to prove to the league (if not the courts… stay tuned) that you “had cause” to fire a coach who won only 25% of the games that he has coached.

You needed a reason to fire Kiffin?  Really?!?  “Sucking” wasn’t good enough?

As for the “details” that Davis provided, only the most naive or gullible fan of professional football would be inclined to take Al Davis at his word.  The same Al Davis who extorted the fans of Oakland only to move the team to Los Angeles, whom he tried to extort again a few years later.  The same Al Davis who brought the concept of “Personal Seat Licenses” into the NFL?  The same Al Davis who made more money suing the NFL than he did from being part of it?

We’re supposed to believe him over a football coach who wanted nothing more than to finish the season or have the balance of his contact paid off despite knowing that he would be canned any day now?

If Roger Goodell can suspend players for bad behavior and unethical conduct, why can’t he get rid of an owner that has done more to embarass the NFL over the last 40 years than he has to encourage it’s growth?