Catching up with a busy weekend

But first, more pics of Isiah Thomas in his new roll as Milton Waddams for the Knicks...


Stupid is as stupid does...

So, the Rocket is back in the news, this time for an alleged 10-year extramarital affair that started when he was 28 and the other woman was 15. Roger Clemens' attorney released a statement, not denying a relationship with the now washed up 32-year old country singer, but denying that the relationship was of a sexual nature.

Clemens might be telling the truth here, however, there are a number of things that just don't pass the smell test here.

I want to address some of those things.

First - I spent five years as a teacher at the high school level, and in the 22 years I have spent as a martial arts instructor, I have been friendly with a number of teenagers. I have mentored several of them, but have spent no time with any of them outside of a classroom setting (except in the very rare case in which I am friends with the child's parents - which has always been the case before I had the child as a student). I would not call any of them a sustained relationship over a ten year period, no matter what my age.

Second - What ended the "platonic" relationship after ten years? Sure, I have friends, going back to elementary school, whom I don't talk to or see as often as I once did. But I would not describe those relationships as ended at the time we stopped talking as often.

Some of those friends I talk to once a year, sometimes less, and see those people even less frequently, but they're still people I consider to have a relationship with. The relationship hasn't ended. Just changed.

As for women with which I had physical or romantic relationships - yeah, most of those had definitive endings complete with hostilities and cessation of interaction. Some I can pinpoint the dates on, if I really went back to think about it. None of those were platonic.

What I have to ask at this point, would any of this have hit had it not been for The Mitchell Report?

Two by Two

The Celtics stomped on the Atlanta Hawks in the first two games of the playoffs, winning by an average of 21 points in those two games. The Hawks have been slightly better than the Celtics for the last two in Atlanta, averaging a seven point margin in their wins.

I mention this for the following - the series returns to Boston for game five.

A basic fact about the two teams -

Through the season and including the playoffs, the Celtics are 37-6 at home and 31-12 away. Atlanta, is a respectable 27-16 at home. In 43 road games the Hawks have only won 12 - or to put it another way; Atlanta has won a little better than one in every four road games while the Celtics have lost a little less than once in every six games at the Garden.

Unless the Hawks can rise to the occasion and steal one in Boston, the best Atlanta will do is make a respectable showing by forcing the series to seven games. I just have a hard time seeing the Hawks taking one on the road.

Panic attack

The Sox have lost five in a row to slip into second place, mere percentage points behind the Rays and Orioles. The skid coincides with a flu that has run through the Sox clubhouse, forcing the team to start Jon Lester on three days rest (for everyone knocking him - yes it wasn't a great start, but he still gave the team an opportunity to win, giving up four earned in five innings - the same number of runs the team put up over the same number of innings). The bullpen screwed the pooch, and the offense went away.

A pretty good description of what has happened with the team during the skid.

In the next game, rookie Justin Masterson spun a six inning gem, giving up one run. The offense was decent, scoring five runs over the course of the game, but the bullpen gave up six over the final three innings.

Even Tim Wakefield qualified for a quality start, making it through six innings and giving up only three earned runs against the Rays, Clay Buchholz gave up two runs in eight, and Beckett only one earned in seven. Even when the Sox put runs on the board, the hitting failed in the clutch.

All that noted, it's way too early to panic. Sure, JD Drew has reverted to 2007 Drew, but he's not the only one to have disappeared at the plate. For the most part, David Ortiz hasn't shown up yet, and only Julio Lugo and Dustin Pedroia got hits in the Sunday night game that made the Rays' James Shields look like the second coming of Nolan Ryan. The night before only Drew, Coco Crisp, Jed Lowrie, and Jacoby Ellsbury hit the ball. This won't last.

It's the end of April. It is way too early to panic.

Draft gurus

Tomorrow is the NFL draft.

The pundits have been out in force, analyzing, dissecting, breaking down the top players - trying to find the sleepers, identify the busts, and anoint the next superstars without a single player having seen a single down in the NFL except on their television sets on Sunday.

It passed the stage of interesting a long time ago and now just resides in the land of tedium. Analysis for analysis' sake. Everyone has a different opinion, everyone identifies a different place where a team has needs, and everyone seems to feel they have the right remedy for what ails a given team.

Are there draft picks that are gimmes? Yeah, and there are those that are so glaringly wrong (Ted Ginn, Jr., anyone?) that one wonders how the GM and the scouts of those teams still have jobs going into the second day of the draft, and there are reaches. But let's face it, if these so-called draft experts were so good at what they do, they would be drawing their paychecks from the NFL and not some media outlet.

Mel Kiper, I'm looking at you.

I'm not saying what he does is easy. He compiles an immense amount of information and seems to be able to recall it without referencing notes. What I am saying is that he does not seem capable of doing the most difficult part of his job - which is to bring a certain gut instinct to his analysis...to separate certain facts and make accurate projections based on scheme and mental make-up.

For those of you who think otherwise, here is a list of some of Kiper's most memorable moments ganked from his bio on Wikipedia...

• Kiper also criticized the Colts selection of Marshall Faulk at #2 in 1994, saying that the team should have taken either Shuler or Trent Dilfer.^[5] Kiper attacked the selection of Faulk, stating, "That's why the Colts keep picking No. 2 every year." ^[6] Faulk became the 1994 Offensive Rookie of the Year.^[7] After a long career as one of the elite running backs NFL history, the general consensus is that Faulk will someday be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

• Kiper projected quarterback Jeff George of the University of Illinois as a mid-round pick, George selected as number 1 overall by the Indianapolis Colts. George's career was inconsistent and riddled with behavior-related problems. ^[8]

• Kiper projected Notre Dame quarterback Rick Mirer as the 30th pick; he was selected second overall by the Seattle Seahawks.^[9] Though he showed some early promise, Mirer failed to develop and was finally benched during his fourth season. He spent the remaining eight years of his career with six different teams as a journeyman backup. ^[10]

• Among his failures, Kiper thought that Heisman Trophy winner and University of Houston quarterback Andre Ware would be an excellent NFL quarterback and a great match for the Detroit Lions-- Ware's tenure in the NFL was brief and inconspicuous. Ware is considered among the biggest busts in draft history.^[11]

• In 1999, Kiper said that Oregon quarterback Akili Smith would be a great NFL player and would finally provide the Cincinnati Bengals with the passer they'd lacked since Boomer Esiason. Smith was selected ahead of Daunte Culpepper, Torry Holt, Edgerrin James, Champ Bailey, and Jevon Kearse, but he spent less than four abysmal seasons in Cincinnati, starting only 17 games. He has since struggled in several brief stops in the NFL, NFL Europe, and the CFL. It's notable that Kiper rated Smith higher than Donovan McNabb and Culpepper, despite the facts that Smith only had 11 starts at the college level and had performed poorly on the Wonderlic aptitude tests administered at the NFL Combine, both of which are traditionally seen as important indicators of a quarterback's readiness for the NFL. Smith's career was marred by inconsistency and failure to grasp the complexities of the Bengals' playbook, issues which appear to have been foreshadowed by his lack of experience and low scores.

• One of Kiper's most well known mistakes was when he stated that USC wide receiver Mike Williams would be the best player in his 2005 draft class, despite not having played football in over a year after being ruled ineligible by the NCAA. When ESPN analyst Merril Hoge disagreed, Kiper uttered the now infamous line, "I'll see you at his Hall of Fame induction." Williams has been a remarkable disappointment, playing very little and showing no signs of improvement with either of the two teams he's played for. As of October 31, 2007 he is already out of football after being waived by the Oakland Raiders. Further adding to the embarrassment for Kiper (and the Detroit Lions, who selected him 10th overall) is the fact that the next three players selected after Williams all became Pro-Bowlers within 2 years - the Cowboys' DeMarcus Ware, the Chargers' Shawn Merriman, and Saints offensive tackle Jamaal Brown.
  

• In the 1995 Draft, Kiper proclaimed UCLA wide receiver JJ Stokes a "sure-thing" who was destined to be a future All-Pro. On draft day, Kiper lambasted several teams, including the New York Jets, for passing on Stokes until he was selected 10th overall by the San Francisco 49ers. Stokes spent an undistinguished 8 years in San Francisco in the shadows of Jerry Rice and Terrell Owens, never making a single Pro Bowl or even surpassing 770 yards receiving. After the draft, the Jets signed Hofstra wide receiver Wayne Chrebet as an undrafted free agent. Chrebet became one of the Jets most popular players and surpassed Stokes in every major statistical category.

• In the same 1995 Draft, Kiper had rated BYU Quarterback John Walsh as a first round pick. Walsh declared for the draft after his Junior season and had an abysmal NFL combine where he ran a 5.3 forty yard dash and displayed a weak arm in workouts. Nonetheless, Kiper still rated Walsh as a late 1st/early 2nd round pick on the day of the draft and said he would be a perfect fit for a "West Coast Offense" team like the San Francisco 49ers because of his accuracy on short passes. Walsh slid all the way to the 7th round where he was finally taken by the Cincinnati Bengals. He never appeared in a single game for the quarterback needy Bengals and was out of football less than a year later.

• One example of Kiper getting a player correct in the 1995 draft was when he asserted that Notre Dame defensive back Bobby Taylor, a college free safety, would make an excellent cornerback in the NFL because of his ability to match up with larger wide receivers. Kiper had Taylor rated as one of his top 10 prospects in the draft, and though Taylor wasn't drafted until the 2nd round by the Philadelphia Eagles, he went on to have a long and distinguished career just as Kiper said he would.

• In 1998 Kiper said that Washington State Quarterback Ryan Leaf's "attitude" (which had rubbed teammates and coaches the wrong way in college) would be an asset in the NFL and give him a mental advantage over Peyton Manning. Kiper also said that Leaf had the better natural physical tools and would be a great quarterback, though he still rated Manning as the more polished and better overall prospect. Leaf was chosen second overall by the San Diego Chargers immediately after Manning. Leaf's career soon imploded, largely because of a confrontational attitude and poor practice habits that alienated teammates, coaches, and fans. He is now regarded as not only the worst bust in NFL draft history, but also possibly the biggest bust in all of professional sports.^[12] His story is viewed as a cautionary tale of what can happen when a team attempts to build around a player with raw talent but questionable attitude.

• Before the 2001 NFL season, Kiper predicted the New England Patriots to go 0-16 and have the 1st pick in the 2002 NFL Draft. Instead, the Patriots went 11-5 and went on to win Super Bowl XXXVI against the St. Louis Rams.^{[citation needed]}

By no means is Kiper alone in this, however, when so glaringly wrong on picks like Leaf, Akili Smith, and Ware...all of whom had serious detractors at the time of their respective drafts, one has to wonder how he retains his draft guru title with ESPN.

Political personal foul

There's always a lot of controversy regarding sports and politics. It's coming up a lot right now in relation to the Olympics.

There is a certain faction that feels that the Games should just be about the athletes, and that the Olympics is not the venue for politics and political protest.

Unfortunately, that should be the case in sports as a whole, but let's face it...politics and sport have always been intertwined, and not just in as much as the Kennedy family's joy in playing touch football on the East Lawn.

Whether meant to be or not, Jackie Robinson's rookie year in Major League Baseball was as much political statement as it was an opportunity for a talented ball-player.

In 1965 the American Football League pulled their All-Star Game out of New Orleans when the black players were treated poorly by local businesses, including the hotels in the Crescent City.

The NFL had to make decisions on whether to play their scheduled slate on Sundays based on national tragedies - the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They have made security decisions based on the invasion of Iraq in 1990. They have combined teams (The Eagles and Steelers in the 1940's) to keep the league playing games at a time of war.

All of these decisions were influenced by the politics of the times.

There was even, in the NFL, a controversy in hair in the late 1960's when Joe Namath came into the league. He represented young, rebellious America during a time of civil unrest in America, while Baltimore's Johnny Unitas represented the old guard.

But the Olympics are different.

The Olympics have always been political because governments have always been involved. Governments sponsor teams, they compete to host the event, and even when watched, it is about us against them. It's about which country can win the most. It is not about, what the Olympic Committee wants you to believe, some higher ideal of competition or cooperation.

The so-called Olympic ideal is a myth. It's not about a level playing field and the best athletes in the world. Were it about a higher ideal, no country would be awarded the games. We all engage in human rights violations - China (Tibet), the United States (Guantanamo Bay, and, historically, civil rights issues with just about every minority in this country...the most glaring in the last century being the last time we engaged in internment camps for the Japanese, not unlike Gitmo for the Muslims, during World War II), England (over the last 40 years in Northern Ireland), and the list goes on.

It has always been about politics, whether world, national, or individual.

Just a sampling of what the history of the Olympic games has indeed been in the regards to politics...

In 1916 the Olympics, to be held in Berlin, Germany, were canceled due to World War I. Twenty years later Berlin hosted the Olympics again, Adolf Hitler seeing the event as an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race...to further his political agenda in the world arena.

At Mexico City in 1968 two American sprinters were expelled from the games for, as the IOC stated, "The basic principle of the Olympic Games is that politics plays no part whatsoever in them. U.S. athletes violated this universally accepted principle . . . to advertise domestic political views." The two runners, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were expelled for demonstrating their support for the Civil Rights movement in the United States by giving the Black Power salute during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner at the time of the awards ceremony.

In 1972 there were the terrorist attacks in Munich, killing members of the Israeli team.

In 1980 the US boycotted the Moscow Olympics in reaction to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. More than 60 other countries followed suit.

In 1984 the Soviets boycotted the Los Angeles games, claiming that the US was politicizing the games, stirring up anti-Soviet propaganda and sentiment, and that the US was being cavalier in their attitudes towards providing adequate security for the Soviet athletes. In the US response to the Soviet accusations, the US spokesman took another opportunity to attack the Soviets for the invasion of Afghanistan. Practically all the Eastern Bloc countries followed suit.

There were other years that the Olympics were marred by some form of political statement, boycott, or other political issue affecting attendance or scheduling. This is just a sample, a notation that the idea that the two are separate or should be expected to be separate is ridiculous.

Should it be? Yes. The athletes who train their whole lives for these games should not have their opportunity destroyed by political issues, but don't expect it to ever be that way.

On a side note...

This is from New York Newsday about Isiah Thomas' new roll with the Kickerbockers...

Isiah no longer full-time. Walsh didn't say the reassigned Isiah Thomas was forbidden to have contact with the players next season, but it certainly sounded as if Thomas' new role involves being completely invisible. "He's not coming in every day like he used to," Walsh said, "but he is there as a resource for me."

Is it just me, or has Donnie Walsh turned Isiah Thomas into Milton Waddams from Office Space? It's just a matter of time before he's sitting at a desk in some broom closet in Madison Square Garden with a can of bug spray and his paychecks cut off.

Patriot Day reflections

I just want to acknowledge the Bruins who made a series out of what looked to be a brief post-season cameo. You guys have something to build on for next year. Good job guys. Next year get a little deeper into the playoffs. You have a lot to live up to in Boston with the way things have gone for everybody else.

Yo, Sox...way to smack the Rangers around. Always nice to see a big win on the annual morning game.

Finally, the marathon...

I ran in one in Maryland a couple of years ago. It is the only marathon I have participated, in spite of living for years on the Boston Marathon course (on the Fenway for two or three years, right off of Kenmore square, and in Cleveland Circle for another three).

My goal was to finish in four hours (I was a sprinter in high school, and distance running is still something of a foreign beast to me). I was on pace to meet my goal through 18 miles. The last eight miles took me an hour and fifty minutes. I hit the wall.

From what I understand, mile 18 is the typical place to hit the wall.

It is part of what makes Boston so difficult.

Heartbreak Hill starts in the course's 18th mile. It's a series of brutal and unforgiving hills, and what most who don't run in these things fail to understand, is that the downhills are just as hard on the body as the uphills. They take a toll on the knees, the uphills on the muscles, and by the end the body is...shall we say, unhappy.

It's why watching Uta Pippig smile and blow kisses through Kenmore Square blew my mind. More so once I ran in one of these events.

I always look up the results of the race. I don't know why, as I often don't know the names of the runners...at least anymore. I can only speculate that it's because the race is a war of attrition, and I want to acknowledge the accomplishments of those who fight to the end of Boston. It's an impressive feat.

Monday observations

After what has felt like a decade of futility at Madison Square Garden, Isiah Thomas got the heave-ho...sort of.

Thomas is a man of no authority now in the NBA.

After managing the Knicks past the point of irrelevance with horrendous coaching and personnel decisions, so far past the point of irrelevance that the team was so bad they were relevant only as a cautionary tale to the rest of the NBA, Thomas was finally axed as the coach of the Knicks. For some reason the team kept Thomas on the payroll.

I have a theory about that.

Thomas has (to call it single-handedly would absolve James Dolan of his culpability, and let's face it, Dolan has just been as culpable as Thomas) pretty well annihilated the New York basketball franchise, making it the laughingstock of professional sports. He is to the NBA what the Ragnarok is to Norse Mythology. He is the Destroyer, and he has done it to them both on and off the court.

As such, I think David Stern asked the Knicks to keep him on the payroll to keep him from doing this to any other franchise.

He currently has a position with no title, no one reports to him, and he apparently has no responsibilities in this position (as yet). Sounds like someone the NBA wants kept out of the way.

Like I said, just a theory. But I know if I'm Stern, I'm trying to keep him from doing this to any other franchise.

Props...

To Danica Patrick for putting to rest the comparisons to Anna Kournikova with an outright win in the 50th open-wheel race of her career. After taking the flag at the Japan 300, Patrick has become the first woman to win one of the major races in the sport's circuit. While not a fan of racing, I thought this deserved a mention.

To Vikings' defensive end Kenechi Udeze for the fact that his leukemia is in remission and that he has found a bone marrow donor in his fight against this form of cancer. Now let's hear some good news on Joe Andruzzi who is engaged in his own battle with cancer, having been diagnosed (according to a January update from Sports Illustrated) with Burkitt's Lymphoma. That particular form of lymphoma is rare, but aggressive wherein a cancerous mass can double in size in just 24 hours.

To Big Papi who seems to be working his way out of his slump. It's nothing short of amazing that the Red Sox have led the American League in run production (and are third overall) in spite of Ortiz's struggles at the plate. Currently, with Ortiz only barely within spitting distance of the Mendoza Line (.160, up from a low in the double digits), the team leads the AL in run production with 104 (as of Monday morning), RBI's with 99, slugging percentage at .446, and the majors in batting average at .295, and on base percentage at .367. What does this mean for the rest of the league when Ortiz really begins hitting?

The Magnificent Seven

I have to admit.

I thought they were done.

I thought the Bruins were cooked down three games to one to the Montreal Canadiens. I thought it was all over...that the Bruins would be the first pro team from Boston to fail to advance to its post-season championship game in a season that started in 2007.

The Sox won the World Series, the Pats lost the Super Bowl, the Celtics are the number one seed in the NBA, and the Bruins...well...the Bruins have managed to stay alive for one more night.

The playoff series with Montreal is all tied up, with the Bruins winning two in a row now...including a dramatic come from behind victory on Saturday.

The odds are against them. It is unlikely that the Bruins will win on Monday night to make it three in a row. Of course, Saturday's victory is exactly the sort of victory that can be a back-breaker. Like the Yankees against the Sox in 2004, New York had Boston's back's to the wall late in the game - they had the opportunity to put the series away. The Yanks just weren't the same team after coughing up that ninth inning lead in the game that would have sealed their trip to the 2004 Series against the Cardinals.

Monday we find out if the Canadiens can recover from coughing up a 3-1 series lead, or if the Bruins can rise to the occasion and seal the deal against the team that has been the albatross around their neck for as long as I can remember.

RIP Mr. Marzano

I have a strange connection to former Sox catcher John Marzano.

As I'm sure most of my readers heard about Marzano's passing on Saturday - the former Sox back-up catcher found in his home, dead of an apparent heart attack at age 45.

Marzano was a South Philly guy in every sense of the word. He was born there, grew up there, and died there. Even when he was with the Sox he maintained a home in the old neighborhood.

How and why do I know this?

Because the neighborhood is deeply embedded in my family history.

My mother's family came here from Italy. More accurately, my grandfather, as a child, arrived in America from the province of Abruzzi with his family and settled in Philadelphia. His father opened a grocery that was passed to him and his brothers, at which time it came to be known as Ricci Bros (pronounced Ritchie). The small neighborhood store was in the family until it was sold by my mothers cousin just a few years ago.

Ricci Bros. became quite well known across the city, and was for some time the place to get a hoagie before going to the Vet for a game. Marzano was a regular.

When home on off days from the Sox he used to stop in the store and talk to my great Uncle Sal. This happened, according to Sal with a certain amount of regularity.

At the time, I lived in Boston.

Whenever we would have big family gatherings Sal, by that time the family elder, would always engage me in the following conversation, "you like the Red Sox, right? Their back-up catcher...um Johnny, you know Johnny?"

"Marzano?"

"Yeah. You know, he's from South Philly. He grew up near the store. He still comes in whenever he's in town. Gives me his tickets to the game. I keep telling him I can't use 'em. You live up there, right? Next time he comes in, I'll make sure to mail them to you."

Sal never remembered to mail the tickets, but I always thought it was cool that there was this weird family connection to the Sox.

Sal passed away not too long ago. I know this would have saddened him. He always described "Johnny" as a "good kid from the neighborhood," and was always happy that he made it to the bigs.

Sleep well big guy, enjoy that eternal pick-up game with Ted Williams.

Ephemera...

My wife is having a slow day at work, so she's come up with a couple of the following...well, sports oddities and/or random bits of trivia...

The following was ganked from Wikipedia...

Kurt Russell is an FAA licensed private pilot holding single/multi-engine and instrument ratings. He is a New England Patriots football fan, attending Super Bowl XLII and sitting in a skybox with Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots team.

I suppose this means we can forgive him Tango & Cash for this.

Coach abuse

The official scoring was a 9-0 loss for Kawamoto Technical High School in Japan, but reality was far different. According to this Reuters report, the Kawamoto coach threw in the towel with one out in the bottom of the second inning with only one out while trailing 66-0.

You read that right. 66-0.

He was worried about the health of his pitcher who had already thrown roughly 250 pitches. His statement - "At that pace the pitcher would have thrown around 500 pitches in four innings. ..There was a danger he could get injured."

Nice to see he was so concerned.

Two things to consider here...

One - why didn't the coach bring in a reliever...particularly if he was so concerned.

Two - the kid gave up 26 runs in the first. In the second he gave up 40, and got only one out. He thinks if he left this kid in that he would only have thrown 500 pitches? Was he relying on the opponents tiring out? Assuming for 250 in only an inning and a third, the kid was actually on a pace to throw 940 pitches over five innings.

And for anyone wondering - that's an ERA of 446.62.

The return of my obscure statistic...

Through the first one-tenth of the Red Sox 2008 season, David "Big Papi" Ortiz has been a virtual black hole in the line-up. He has barely hit, and when he has there has been little to no power.

Last year as Julio Lugo had a season that was a complete statistical anomaly, scoring and driving in a fair number of runs in spite of struggling at the plate through most of the season, I chose to look at batter production from a different angle. My thought, presented in a blog post at the end of last June, went as follows...

In light of Baseball's predilection towards the mathematic, production is gaged often in arcane ways - Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP), On Base Percentage combined with Slugging Percentage (OPS).

I present another way. Something a little less arcane, and maybe a little more accurate in regards to a player's production - Runs Scored and Runs Batted In Per Game, or as I call it; RSBIG. Yes, it does cause for a "production overlap," but it also gives a sense of how much of the scoring the player has been involved in.

While I don't think it's going to reflect well on Big Papi through the end of the Yankees series like it did for Lugo last year, I find it a curious stat and it tells me who manages to cross the plate, or help others cross the plate the most.

All players below have played a minimum of ten games...

1. JD Drew - 1.85
2. M. Ramirez - 1.82
3. K. Youkilis - 1.56
4. S. Casey - 1.00
5. J. Ellsbury - 0.93
6. D. Pedroia - 0.76
7. D. Ortiz - 0.75
8. J. Varitek - 0.63
9. C. Crisp - 0.54
10. J. Lugo - 0.44

Take what you will from this. I just feel it's an interesting way to look at offensive production.

They might draw their paychecks from Indians ownership

But the Red Sox own the Cleveland bullpen right now.

Of the eleven runs that the Sox scored off of Cleveland in the recent two game set, eight came against the Tribe's bullpen and all of them earned in only five-and-two thirds innings.

Life on the reservation is brutal right now - particularly if you're a starting pitcher. Jake Westbrook and Paul Byrd, the Indians' starters in the two games against Boston, combined for 12 and-a-third innings pitched, three total runs and one earned run in the two games. By contrast, Tim Wakefield and Jon Lester combined for ten-and-a-third, and six earned in the match-up (of course four-and-a-third and four earned came out of Lester's sub-par start).

Boston's bullpen, on the other hand, racked up seven-and-two-thirds innings with only one earned run.

That translates to a 12.70 ERA for the Cleveland pen, and a 1.17 ERA for the Boston pen.

If this keeps up, it's going to be a very long and frustrating season for the Indians' starting rotation.

Scheduling Conflict...

The NFL released their 2008 schedule.

Dave over at the The Coffin Corner talks a bit about the relative apparent ease of the Patriots' schedule in relation to the rest of the NFL. There is a key term in the second paragraph of his post -

...the Patriots have the easiest schedule based on paper. Their opponents' win percentage in 2007 was .387. The Pats are the only team that have a number below .400. Their 2007 opponents won only 99 games. The Pats are the only team that have a number in that category under 100.

"On paper."

That's a really important term in sports.

"On paper," the Detroit Tigers are supposed to have the best lineup in Major League Baseball this season. Currently the team is batting .250. That's good for 22nd in out of all 30 teams, behind such powerhouses as Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City.

"On paper," the 2001 Rams were a more talented team than the 2001 Patriots. We all know how that ended.

"On paper," the Patriots' 2008 schedule includes only four teams from 2007 that made the playoffs. Remove the Steelers, Colts, Seahawks, and Chargers from that equation and the remaining nine teams that the Patriots face have a combined winning percentage 0f .299. Six of the teams won five games or fewer in 2007.

What does this really mean as to the ease of the Pats' schedule? Absolutely jack.

In 2006, the Cleveland Browns went 4-12. Last season they won ten games. Tampa Bay was 4-12 in '06, then won nine and went to the playoffs last year.

Turn-arounds in the NFL have been fast and hard over the last (roughly) decade. The Patriots themselves jumped from 5-11 in 2000 to 11-5 in 2001. If any one of these teams play their cards right, they can experience similar single season improvement and become contenders.

Which is exactly why strength of schedule based on the previous season means...well...jack.

Tuesday morning observations

New game against the Indians...same result

Great win by the Red Sox on Monday night. It was nice to see the Olde Towne Team dig themselves out of a 4-1 hole.

Once again there was some good, bad, and some ugly in the outing.

Jon Lester cruised through the first three innings without giving up a hit, and then struggled in the fourth and fifth innings en route to giving up four runs in four and a third.

David Ortiz continued to struggle at the plate, yet went 2-5. In the process he managed to raise his batting average roughly 30 points to finish the game hitting .104. His hits weren't pretty, but both took advantage of the "Ortiz Shift," poking the ball to left both times. The second hit would have been an out had the Indians played Ortiz straight up rather than with the shift.

With the Red Sox having fought back for the tie in the ninth, Manny Ramirez had a shot best described by the following line from Bull Durham - Man that ball got outta here in a hurry. I mean anything travels that far oughta have a damn stewardess on it, don't you think?

The Ramirez shot came off of already beleaguered Indians closer Joe Borowski who blew his second save of the season last night. Borowksi's season line - 2 saves, 2 blown saves, 2 losses, no wins. Right now the Cleveland closer accounts for 25 percent of the Indians' losses.

Concrete...

Athletes are a superstitious bunch.

When I ran track in high school I wore the same sweats to every meet and had a green bandanna that I would tie around my left ankle during warm-ups. By spring track of my senior year, after three full spring seasons and two winter seasons, I was tying a torn and frayed piece of green cloth around that ankle before warming up.

For me it was less a superstition thing than the creation of a routine that would allow me to focus on the races in front of me. But plenty of players believe they play well because they eat eggs the night before a game, or because they tug on their batting gloves thirteen times between every pitch of an at bat, or because they wear the same underwear every game.

So a construction worker buried a David Ortiz jersey in the concrete of the new Yankee Stadium.

It bothered Hank Steinbrenner enough that he had the concrete torn up in the effort to find and dispose of the jersey. And they're threatening legal action against the worker.

That's insane on both counts.

Let's face a couple of basic facts regarding this -

The jersey was not visible, nor did it have any impact on the structural integrity of the stadium. As such, what Steinbrenner did was nothing more than optional. I know that if I'm a judge in this case, I'm throwing it out of my court. I would have the same reaction were this the Red Sox victimized in building a new stadium. It's ludicrous and I can't believe that the Yankees' general counsel doesn't realize this.

On that same note - the Yankees have publicly stated that they might pursue criminal charges. A spokesman for a local precinct in the Bronx have publicly stated that they're not really sure that there's anything criminal that the guy did.

I have a hard time figuring it out myself. It doesn't qualify as vandalism as nothing is visible. Maybe misdemeanor criminal mischief which qualifies for a fine and the judge saying, "don't do it again." That's about it.

Shameless self-promotion

While majoring in writing at Emerson College in Boston, I used to make extra money on the side by doing design work. I designed for BosDeli's (Beacon Street) original ownership, and had a regular gig with the gargoyles shop on Newbury (among other gigs). I used to compete in the Boston Comic News' annual cartoonist search.

Since I have kept an off and on side gig designing tattoo flash under the industry pen name Rabbit Skull.

Some of you may have noticed a new banner to the right that reads "MY THREADLESS DESIGNS." Threadless is an on-line t-shirt store, and I have a design right now pending the first round of approval.

Once it passes through their internal process, it goes to a public vote.

I can use as much support as possible. Keep visiting the link below, as my design, should it pass internally, will go to the public vote in the next four to six days.

Thanks for your support.

Weekend discoveries

Things I learned this past weekend...

One - It's early yet, but the Yankees pitching looks about how I expected - not much beyond Chien-Ming Wang. Phil Hughes was battered for six earned runs in two innings and Mike Mussina's outing doesn't even qualify as a quality start (defined as six innings completed with no more then three earned runs allowed), completing five and two-thirds while giving up four earned runs.

The irony of the weekend is that the Red Sox turned in two quality starts for the weekend series, but won only one of them - Josh Beckett's start on Saturday night.

Two - The Yankees' issues go far beyond starting pitching.

I know the Sox have more speed on the base paths than they used to, but when has anyone ever heard of the Red Sox stealing six bases? SIX?! Ten, fifteen years ago that would have been the team's total for the first two months of the season, and they did it in one game.

If the Yankees don't shore up the catching, the team could be cooked early.

Three - Boy...the Detroit Tigers are a special sort of bad right now. With the second worst batting average (.235), and the worst ERA (5.94), Detroit has put together a grand total of two wins through the first 12 games. The next worst team, the Washington Nationals, has still managed at least four wins.

Considering no team that has started 0-7 in the history of baseball (the Tigers started 0-7) has even made the post-season, it might just be time to start thinking about next year in Mo-Town.

Four - I'm always trying to introduce my daughter to women's sports and female athletes in an effort to give her healthy female roll models in athletics to look up to. To that end I watched yesterday's broadcast of one of the big gymnastics tournaments.

We had the opportunity to be introduced to Nastia Liukin, a 19-year old Olympic hopeful.

Liukin might be the most impressive gymnast I have seen since Mary-Lou Retton. If she doesn't garner multiple gold in the games in Beijing, I'll be shocked.

Five - I often forget about athletes that aren't involved in what we consider sports. My wife sent me this youtube video of The Great Chinese State Circus. This might be some of the most incredible athletic stunts I've ever seen performed...

Language Lessons

What's in a word?

There are a lot of phrases common to sports analysis...

They choked.

It was a lot closer than the score indicated.

It wasn't as close as the final score.

"X" didn't win the game, "Y" lost it.

They gave the game away.

This is just a small cross section of some of the statements commonly made. But how much is just the idea that people are justifying the way a game was played? Sure, there are cosmetic points scored in garbage time, but some of those "not as close" sort of statements come from someplace else.

Do we make these comments sometimes to demean a team?

People talk about the Patriots losing the Super Bowl this year as one of the biggest choke jobs in the history of professional sports. But by saying the Patriots choked, aren't we then also saying that the Giants got lucky that the Pats didn't bring their A-game? I, for one, watched what I thought was great execution by the Giants of a game-plan that was perfectly designed.

Did the Oilers choke in Buffalo those many years ago, or is that just a way of minimizing the Bills' accomplishments that year?

Language can be a powerful thing, and the statements are direct and have a specific meaning, but what can be implied by a given statement? Sure, teams will win in butt-ugly fashion from time to time, but does that actually make a win any less a win? It still counts in the win column - and as Bill Parcells used to say, "You are what your record is." It doesn't matter if the wins were ugly - it's not how you got there, it's the fact that you got there.

Choke jobs exist in professional sports.

It's a fact.

But at what point does the failure of one party to perform become their own responsibility versus the opponents' rising to the occasion?

In 1986 Calvin Schiraldi blew a lead in game six with the Red Sox up three games to two over the Mets long before Bill Buckner let an errant ground ball go through his legs in a tie ball game. Somehow Buckner became the goat when Schiraldi deserved the blame.

Watching the game, you could see it in his eyes - Schiraldi choked. He didn't have the balls to shut the door with the biggest game of his career on the line.

I don't mean to take anything away from the Mets who fought back with consecutive singles to tie the game up, but I firmly believe that if the Sox had someone on the mound like the Mets' Roger McDowell or Jesse Orosco on the mound, then the team would have won in 1986 and no one would ever have talked about the Buckner gaffe because it would never have happened.

Take the Yankees post-season fiasco of 2004. Yes, it is possibly the biggest choke job in the history of baseball. No team in the post-season had ever been up 3-0 in the ninth and failed to seal the deal. No team has ever let an opponent win four straight after being up 3-0.

Does that take away from what the Red Sox did? No. They came back against a pitcher who was widely believed to be the best closer in baseball en route to their first World Series title since Babe Ruth was on the team. Of course, the flip side of that is that the Red Sox owned Mariano Rivera that season, and for much of the time since.

In the end, the media has a job that it doesn't always do very well - and that's to balance what we write with making sure that credit is still given where it is due.

And sometimes that's as difficult a job when it comes to working language as any other job out there.

Back in the Fens

Of the 15 years I lived in Boston, three were in the shadow of Fenway Park. I could hear the crowds from my apartment.

I lived there during the team's dark days of the early 1990's. The Billy Hatcher years.

I was a solid four blocks from the stadium and could still hear the crowds in spite of the fact the Sox were fielding sub-standard teams.

Today the World Champion Red Sox started their opening homestand against the Tigers with a 3-4 record - good enough for last place and 2.5 games behind the AL East leading Blue Jays. The Tigers themselves, expected to take the Central by most pundits, have started the season off with a big, fat Oh-fer. After six games the Tigers entered the Fenway opening with a big Donut in the win column.

By the end of the game the Sox had worked their way back to .500 while Detroit remained a big Oh-fer in the win column. Considering that only two teams in the history of baseball have even made the post-season after starting the season 0-6, and none have made a dent in the World Series, Detroit fans should be gearing up for a season of disappointment.

For Sox fans the first eight games has been a mixed bag.

The first four against the Athletics were filled with promise as the team went 3-1. When they got smoked in the next three by a Blue Jays team that was significantly better than the Athletics, the hope was that the team was just jet lagged from their trip to Japan. With the Dice-man on the mound the Sox bounced back to win 5-0.

While Matsuzaka's pitching performance was encouraging as he shut down what should be a potent Detroit line-up for six and two-thirds, there were other places that were either cause for concern, or that presented questions that won't be answered for sometime.

For the first eight games Big Papi has been David Outiz. Is something wrong with the hitter who for a two season stretch was the best clutch hitter in the game? Or has he just been affected more by the travel than the other players on the team? Right now the Sox clean-up hitter is batting an anemic .103. Currently Ortiz is batting 147 points lower than Coco Crisp.

The Sox leading hitter is JD Drew, currently batting .368.

Scott Boras would have Sox fans believe that this is Drew and what we saw last season was the aberration, that the guy who knocked in 100 for the Dodgers just before joining the Sox is the real Drew.

The real Drew is what we saw last season. He batted .270, only 15 points below his career average, but was right in the wheelhouse with run production, batting in 64 (career average of 57), and scoring 84 runs against his career average of 69. Expect a drop off.

The question now becomes, which team should we expect today? The one that shut down the Tigers, or the one shut down by the Jays?

True Crime, NFL style

The NFL draft is around the corner.

That means a lot of things for NFL teams. Once it just meant identifying the best player available in the draft. Now, with free-agency, it's about the best player available at a position of need...accounting for the potential future player passing a background check - the impact of living in the information age, and one of the costs of the growth of the sport.

As the sport has grown its fan-base, and tightened its grip on the hearts of the hardcore fans, the NFL owners have found significant profits to be made with the casual fan. In order to keep those dollars flowing, the days of the outlaw football player have become numbered.

It used to be that talent trumped all.

There has been a shift.

Talent might keep a player on a roster in spite of criminal behavior, but with the likelihood of suspension and the loss of a significant player with no cap relief, teams have begun to weigh the merits of whether or not that talent is worth the trouble.

The Cincinnati Bengals, once thought to be a talented team on the rise, now a cautionary tale about what could happen to a team should it ignore those character issues, just parted ways with chronically troubled wide-out Chris Henry. With both Henry and former college teammate and NFL bad boy Adam "Pacman" Jones in the news recently, I decided to do some research into the criminal behavior of NFL players.

Approximately one year ago there was a fascinating article in the San Diego Union-Tribune regarding the subject, providing some telling numbers.

From 2000 to 2007 there were 308 incidents in which active NFL players had run-ins with the law, approximately 40 percent of the violations were committed by 50 players with multiple offenses and two teams stood out with as having the most multiple offenders - the Vikings (pleasure boat, anyone?), and the aforementioned Bengals.

It notes that defensive back and wide receiver accounted for 130 of the incidents while offensive line and quarterback only 41.

This jives with an anecdotal review I did of a random sampling of 64 players who have been arrested since 2000. The breakdown of what I found just based on 64 players identified in random Internet searches was that 18 defensive backs, 11 wide receivers, 10 defensive linemen, 8 linebackers, 7 offensive linemen, 5 running backs, 2 quarterbacks, and one kicker were represented in the random sampling.

Twenty-nine of 64 players were either wide-outs or defensive backs, or 45 percent of the offenders...anecdotally speaking, that is. Going by the SD-Trib's numbers based on the number of offenses rather than the number of players at the position, the numbers remain fairly even with receivers and DB's accounting for 42.2 percent of the offenses.

Interestingly, the NFL has averaged overall about one offense per 45 players per year - well below the national average for the general population. This fact is highly touted by the NFL when defending criminal activity in the league.

While it is something to be proud of considering the NBA has been unable to make the same claim, it also must be noted that the NFL population is a population sans poverty - the highest crime demographic in the United States.

One of the interviewees for the article noted that he believed that many of the offenses occur because so many athletes are held above personal accountability and thus feel they are above the law. While I believe there is some truth to this statement, I also think that it vastly simplifies a much more complex issue.

Yes, the players in the NFL make obscene salaries. Even those making the minimum for a year are still making well over six years worth of the highest salary I have ever made. That doesn't mean that poverty doesn't play a part. People like Mike Vick, Chris Henry, and Pacman Jones all come from high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. This is not an excuse for their behavior, just a search for a deeper reason why someone smart enough to remember a phone-book sized play-book would be dumb enough to repeatedly do the same stupid thing, whether illegally fighting dogs or assaulting people at strip clubs.

The question that I did not address when looking at the list I compiled was filial finances while growing up. However, it is easy to note that a number of the players who have been arrested - Vick, Jones, Henry, Rae Carruth, Ray Lewis, and Sean Taylor among them - came from among what would be considered the disenfranchised.

What the numbers do present, however, is another question. Assuming for an average of five wide receivers and eight defensive backs per 53-man NFL roster: how is it that 24.5 percent of the players in the NFL account for almost half of the league's criminal activity? What is it about those positions that is the problem? For that I have no answer.

Wrapping up the weekend...

The Red Sox finished up an absolutely brutal road trip in brutal fashion. After a solid showing, taking three of four from the Athletics, the Sox got their hats handed to them by the Blue Jays, getting swept in a three game set at the Rogers Center in Toronto.

In dropping their first three of the 2008 season to Toronto, there was little good that the Sox did. In three games the Sox had nearly half as many errors as they did runs - four errors and nine total runs. The team batted .220 north of the border with the heart of the line-up - David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Mike Lowell - batting a combined .206 (7 for 34) with two RBI's. Pair that against the fact that the Jays scored 23 runs, with 22 earned, it becomes obvious that this was a whole team breakdown - the Sox sputtered on offense, defense, and with their pitching.

Hopefully it's just a case of jet lag from covering Japan, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Toronto in the last two weeks.

Hair today...

The NFL owners mulled over a proposition regarding penalties for hair that obscures the nameplates of player jerseys. I don't care one way or the other that a player wants to grow his hair long - he just needs to understand that if the locks are long, then they're fair game for tackling.

But beyond that, there has been rumbling from certain quarters that this idea might be racially motivated.

The irony, of course, is that the idea came from Chiefs coach Herm Edwards, an African-American.

The moral - before people begin yelling that this is just another case of the white aristocracy trying to keep the black man in his place, maybe, just maybe they should check the actual source.

I'm not saying that things don't happen for racist reasons. Things like that happen all the time, and vigilance is required. All I'm saying is that people need to make sure they know where an idea comes from before they begin claiming that it's another case of white ownership trying to control the black players.

Three down and Celtic Pride...

Celtic pride...there's a term I haven't heard in a while. But the team has earned it.

Maybe at not time more so than this weekend.

On Friday night the Celtics added to team legend by accomplishing the greatest single-season turn-around in the history of the NBA when they won their 61st game of the season. With six games still left on the schedule, the team has already won 37 more games than they did last season.

On Friday they did it without their new Big Three, without Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, or Kevin Garnett. What's more, it was never close.

The names leading the charge? A veritable "Who's that" of the NBA. With names like James Posey (19 points), Leon Powe (22 points, 9 rebounds, 2 steals), and Eddie House (16 points, 2 rebounds, 1 steal), the casual basketball fan is going to look at this line-up and wonder how this team destroyed a Charlotte team that features Emeka Okafor and Earl Boykins by 23 points.

And going into the season the weakness of this team, said analysts, would be the bench.

So much for conventional wisdom.

Thoughts and observations

Evidently in football terms it's five strikes and you're out.

The Bengals finally cut troubled wide receiver Chris Henry after what is really his sixth run-in with the law, fifth arrestable offense, since being drafted in 2005. That included four arrests in a twelve month period.

Henry, a player with an enormous amount of potential, has not been able to stay on the field in any of his three seasons due to legal and behavioral issues. In three seasons he has averaged 11.67 games per season, each year - playing in fewer and fewer games each progressive season, going from 14, to 13, and finally to eight games.

The latest charges, essentially assault, are added to a list that includes corruption of minors, DUI, concealed weapons, and possession of marijuana charges.

Bottom line, Henry is, for all intents, the offensive version of Pacman Jones without having shown quite the same talent level. Will he get another chance? Possibly, but it is likely that chance will be, like Pacman's, his last.

T.O. Redux

Over the years there has been a lot of defense of Chad Johnson's antics because he hasn't been the divisive force in the locker room that Terrell Owens has been. I've always felt they were closer in personality than most of the apologists did.

It could be seen at times on the sideline last year as the Bengals struggled, and Johnson, at times took shots at Carson Palmer during the post-game.

Now Johnson appears to be trying to engineer his exit from Cincinnati a-la TO from Philly.

For my money, I hope the loudmouth gets suspended. I'm sick of these spoiled players - wide-outs in particular - whining about the contract they signed and the situation they put themselves into.

This is a problem the NFL needs to address at some point.

The Pawtuckett Express...

Pitching insurance policy Bartolo Colon had a more than solid outing in Pawtucket facing one batter more than the minimum in a five inning start. He gave up only one hit.

With the Red Sox poised to activate Josh Beckett for a Sunday start, two things happen. The Sox once again have depth in the rotation with seven potential starters -

Beckett
Matsuzaka
Lester
Wakefield
Tavarez
Buchholz
Colon

I expect that Clay Buchholz will be the odd man out with Beckett about to be activated. That puts Buchholz on the Pawtucket express unless someone like David Aardsma has options left. Otherwise expect Buchholz to head to Rhode Island for more seasoning while Julian Tavarez takes the fifth spot in the rotation.

It would surprise me if the P.E. wasn't active early and often this season as Theo Epstein and Terry Francona work to get the right mix between the pen and the rotation.

Just a wild guess, but if Kyle Snyder doesn't work out his issues, I believe that we're looking at Snyder designated or released, Tavarez going back to the pen and a rotation from one to five of Beckett, Matsuzaka, Colon, Wakefield, and Lester by the end of May.

Puzzling Predictions...

Sports Illustrated and a number of other outlets have picked the Yankees to win the American League East this season.

After what the team did last season with a suspect pitching staff, I will not rule them out for post-season contention. However, I have to question the wisdom of picking a team to win whose best, most consistent pitcher, Andy Pettitte, against whom opponents batted over .280 for two consecutive years.

Their potential ace, Chien-Ming Wong, has put up back to back 19-win seasons, but has been plagued by inconsistency, getting smacked around at times by the better teams, or failing to come up big when needed. Number three starter Mike Mussina, once an innings eater and solid number two, has approached 200 innings only once in the last four seasons, had an ERA below 4.40 only once during that same span, and seen opponents bat below .276 only once in that span, with a high of .311 last year.

The other two pitchers are Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy who may or may not be ready for the glare of the bright lights of New York.

Even with the line-up the Yankees have, that's a lot to overcome.

East Coast Bias

There is, quite often, an accusation leveled at the national sports press of an East Coast bias in the corps' reporting.

There is probably some truth to favoritism of the East Coast teams, not because of proximity to the New York offices of Sports Illustrated, or the Connecticut offices of ESPN, but because the teams on top of the pile draw the most attention. East Coast teams in the major team sports, except for basketball, have won or represented more than half of all championship contenders for an extended period of time.

Starting from the low end of the totem pole, over the last 14 seasons in the NHL the East Coast has been represented in 12 of the 28 potential contestants for the Stanley Cup. Teams from states that abut the Atlantic (in the US) have represented six of the sport's winners. Those totals go up when eastern Canada is in the mix.

Since the Bills started their run of four straight appearances in the Super Bowl there have been 34 teams that have vied for the Lombardi trophy. Twenty teams from the states on the Eastern Seaboard have been among the 34 fighting to raise the silver trophy each January or February and nine of the winners have been from the East.

Since 1994 in Major League Baseball 14 of the 26 teams that have made it to the 13 World Series held over that span. Nine of the winners have been from the East.

Out of the 44 pro championships noted above, 24 have had a champion from the East - 54.5 percent of all the winners. Forty-six of the 88 contestants have come from the East accounting for 52.3 percent of the teams represented in the games. The teams have won at a rate of 52.2 percent.

In recent years divisions like the NFC West and the NL West have cycled into down periods, sometimes producing division champions that barely breaking a .500 winning percentage.

A simple rule in sports has always been that winning garners attention. The more you win, the more attention you get. It is why great players on bad teams have difficulties with Hall of Fame recognition.

There are players and teams off the East Coast deserving of attention, but until the winning percentage swings the other way, the focus is going to stay on the old powers like New York and Boston.

The quick and the dead...

There's a lot to be said about setting up a salary cap structure for Major League Baseball.

Even with one in football, there's a lot of dead money under the caps of a lot of teams. Sometimes it's because of players no longer on rosters, sometimes you can consider the money dead even with the player on the roster.

The San Francisco 49ers project to have $3.64 million in dead money under their cap next season.

Those are players no longer on their roster.

The Patriots will consistently put players on IR for the season, starting at the end of training camp. That's money that counts against their cap, not counted as dead, but it may as well be.

Then there are those players who just take up space on rosters. Usually they don't stick around
and the dead money hit on an NFL team is minimal.

Baseball is different.

In MLB there are players that just don't live up to their contract, sometimes receiving contracts they haven't earned. Other times demonstrating the requisite talent, however, fail to stay on the field due to injury issues or a lack of toughness.

JD Drew will come to the mind of Red Sox fans - a player who received a fat contract from the Sox who essentially were in a bidding war with themselves for his services.

While the owners need to be protected from themselves. Fans need to be protected from the owners. Teams like the Marlins should not be allowed to spend fewer dollars than they receive from their cut of the Yankees luxury tax.

Teams and fans of teams that aren't the Red Sox or Yankees whine about the spending of those teams, but the Orioles are carrying $11 million in dead money into this season over one player. Just before the season started, the team cut oft injured outfielder Jay Gibbons. While it's admirable that the team would cut its losses with a player that has a hard time staying on the field, it should be noted that they evidently feel they can eat an $11 million salary without a problem.

If that's the case, then why can't they spend in a way that keeps them in the neighborhood of their division rivals?

Honestly, other teams have proven it's not the spending itself, but how you spend.

That said - what about the ridiculousness that the Brewers engaged in during this off-season...

Gagne, baby Gagne...

After a season during which Eric Gagne, once the premier closer in the majors, blew a number of hold for the Red Sox down the stretch, the Milwaukee Brewers signed Gagne to a one-year $10 million contract. This signing happened before the Mitchell Report essentially said that his couple of years of domination came out of a syringe.

On opening day Gagne blew the save in a 3-0 game, getting smoked on a three run shot by a rookie. Gagne later got the win, but showed nothing to merit the Brewers' $10 million worth of faith in him.

If Gagne doesn't break, at the very least, the 20 save margin,or a combined 30 saves and holds, that's just more dead money on a major league roster.

The people that look at contracts like this and don't think it's time for a salary cap should go get professional help. Lord knows, if I'm a fan of a team like a Kansas City or a Milwaukee that decides to go out and make a big splash in free agency by signing someone like Gagne, and then hearing the party line that my team can't compete with the big-markets...well, I'm just gonna be really pissed.

A Raiders GM, A Lions GM, and a Knicks GM walk into a bar...

Once these people were at the top of their respective games.

Al Davis was Jerry Jones long before Jerry Jones was even a blip on the NFL radar. The maverick owner of the Raiders liked to cultivate his outsider's personae, often flipping a metaphorical finger at collectively bargained NFL deals.

The difference was that Davis was a football guy rather than a businessman like Jones.

He wasn't just any football guy, either. He was, once, highly respected both as a coach and a talent evaluator. After working his way up through the college ranks, he took over a Raiders franchise that had only nine wins in its first 42 games. That translates to a pitiful winning percentage of .214.

In Davis' first year at the helm the team went 10-4 and was unanimously voted AFL Coach of the Year for his efforts. In three seasons as a coach he put together a respectable 23-16-3 record, an increase of .333 over the team's previous winning percentage.

For roughly two decades (ending 1985), the Raiders, under Davis, won the division 13 times, and have for Championship rings (one AFL, three Super Bowls). Like him or hate him, he was once one of the foremost football minds in the NFL.

Matt Millen, picked in the second round of the 1980 draft by the aforementioned Davis, was among the best inside linebackers during a 12 year career in the 1980's and early '90's, mostly with the Oakland Raiders. He made the Pro-Bowl once (1988), was a two-time All-Pro('84, '85), and walked away from the game with four Super Bowl rings. Of the 180 games that he appeared in, he started 166. Not quite Hall of Fame, but it was good enough for people to remember who he was years after he retired.

From 1981 until his retirement in 1994, Isiah Thomas was one of the best point guards in the business. The leader of the Detroit Pistons, Thomas was as good as they come, being named one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history when the league celebrated its 50th anniversary.

The point guard was an integral piece to the puzzle in Detroit, making the All-Star Game 12 straight years while donning two championship rings and being named MVP of the Championship Series in 1990. Among his other honors is Olympic Gold and enshrinement in the NBA Hall of Fame.

Pundits speak of him as being part of a Golden Age of basketball, along with peers Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Larry Bird.

Now, all three of these people are both joke and punchline.

While Matt Millen might finally be showing some signs of growth as a general manager, a hint of learning, he now owns a record that no football insider believes will ever be approached - he has more seasons of double digit losses than any GM in the history of the sport.

The reason it's believed that Millen will always have that dubious honor? None of the insiders around the sport believe that anyone else can last this long without getting fired.

Since Millen's hiring, the Lions have compiled a 31-81 record, worst in the NFL. Last season was the team's best showing with him selecting the players and coaches. They won seven games. Previous to last season, his teams averaged a paltry four wins per season.

Since the Raiders loss in the 2002 Super Bowl to the Buccaneers, Davis has played musical coaches and made questionable player moves...at best.

The amazing thing about Davis' personnel moves is that they were questionable when he made them. With the exception of the acquisition of Randy Moss, there were virtually no moves that Davis made that weren't followed by the phrase, "what's he thinking, giving that guy that sort of contract?"

And he appears to have done it again, committing an obscene amount of money...the money you spend on difference makers, on middle of the road sort of talent - has beens and never will be's.

The result? Nineteen wins over the last five seasons. Less than four per season.

Thomas? Since coming to New York, he's been an absolute train wreck of an executive.

Twenty years after being presented the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award, Thomas was found guilty of sexual harassment, and did nothing to help his image with his testimony in the case, and subsequent comments to the press. During the course of the trial, it was also testified that Thomas made racist comments on more than one occasion in regards to white people.

He has finished with 42 or fewer wins in five of his six full seasons as a coach, and has put together a brutally bad Knicks team with the highest payroll in the NBA. That team has gone a combined 52-100, with only 19 of the wins coming this season. They are on a pace for 22 wins and 60 losses. Only Miami is on pace for fewer wins in the East.

If the entire NBA finishes on the current pace, that will be the highest payroll in the league with fourth worst record, and average of only 27.5 wins per season for Thomas as GM and coach.

While a joke, even a pitiful punchline to fans of other teams around the respective leagues, these guys have been nothing more than nightmares to fans of the Raiders, Lions, and Knicks.

The error cost them the game, and other observations

A [satellite] dish best served up cold...

This morning I woke up and turned on the television with the expectation that I would be getting the Red Sox season opener live from the Tokyo Dome on ESPN2. For those without DirecTV, that's channel 209 on my dial, direct from what my receiver calls satellite 2.

Rather than the game, I was receiving a message that I was not receiving signal from that particular satellite.

At first I thought the issue might have been my recent attempt to upgrade to HD and the replacement of my dish...that is until I began receiving a placard with the following message on all the affected channels...

"No need to call us. We are aware this TV station is temporarily unavailable. We'll have this channel back as soon as possible. Sorry for the interruption."

Based on that message I could only conclude that there has been some sort of technical glitch at DirecTV's end of things. With the satellite that carried Major League Baseball's inaugural game of the 2008 season. Someone somewhere screwed the pooch on this one.

The future is now

The opening day line-up for the Red Sox included four starters (not including the pitching) that were under the age of 30, three of which had a year or less service time at the major league level. Including the starter and relievers, the Sox had eight players that were either under the age of 30, or with a year or less service time appear in the game - Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Brandon Moss, Jacoby Ellsbury, Coco Crisp, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hideki Okajima, and Jonathan Papelbon.

While the speculation is that Crisp isn't long for the Red Sox, the tandem of Moss and Ellsbury could be a glimpse of the future of the Boston outfield.

For all the fanfare that has followed Ellsbury into the season after bursting on the scene with a memorable post-season, Moss was the hero in the opener. On a day when David Ortiz and Jason Varitek combined to go 0 for 8, and after the bullpen blew a one run lead, Moss led the way. Down to their final two outs, Moss launched a solo home-run to tie the game and send it into extra innings.

With JD Drew signed for the next couple of years, and Manny Ramirez's contract coming due, is it possible that the future of the outfield is Moss, Ellsbury, and Drew?

Guts and glory...

Okajima, the old-timer of the players entering only their second season (he's 32), struggled in the opener. The set-up man got the win while throwing 19 pitches, giving up no runs on no hits. However, he walked one and nine of his pitches were balls. Those 19 pitches garnered three outs and the win.

To put that into perspective, in last season's ALCS, Okajima had a 1 2/3 inning appearance, getting five outs on 18 pitches.

Bad pitchers give up the ghost when they don't have their A-game. Good pitchers find a way to win when they don't have their best stuff. Oki didn't have his best stuff, but still did his job.

That's the early season for you...still working out the kinks.

Land of the Rising Sun

It is a great public relations gimmick.

Send at least one of the league's premier teams from the previous season overseas, or to another country on the same continent to help cultivate the game in a country that's already baseball crazy.

It will be the fifth time since 1999 that Major League Baseball will start its season on foreign soil. In 1999 it was the the 1998 pennant winning Padres taking on the Rockies in Monterrey, Mexico. In 2000 the 1999 NL wild-card Mets, winners of 97 games, played the bottom of the NL Central barrel Cubs in Tokyo. Four years later, the capital of Nippon hosted the AL Champion Yankees against the bottom feeding Devil Rays. In 2001 it was the bottom scrubbing Rangers playing a Blue Jays team that missed the AL East title by a mere four and a half games.

This season it's the World Champion Red Sox opening against an Athletics squad that finished only a game out of last place in the AL West and 20 wins behind the Red Sox. Not exactly a marquee match-up.

But this is less about the match-up than about the impact of opening in a different country.

What does it really mean? Is it difficult for the team's involved to recover from the requisite travel? Or is the impact dependent on the team make-up, the manager, and any number of other factors? The numbers are less than telling.

The Yankees in 2004 got off to a horrible start, struggling in April and May, but recovered to win 101 games.

On the other hand are the 1999 Padres, just a season earlier with 98 wins and an appearance in the World Series, dropped to fourth place and 74 wins when starting the season in Mexico. Their opponents, the Rockies dropped from 77 to 72 wins.

In 2000 the Cubs slipped by two games from 67 to 65 wins, while the Mets still qualified for the wild card with 94 wins, down from their 1999 total of 97 after taking their first at-bats of the season in Tokyo. That same year the Rangers and Blue Jays won 71 and 83 games respectively. The following season, kicking off the season in (I know, technically American soil) Puerto Rico, those Rangers and Jays finished 2001 with 73 and 80 games respectively. An increase for the Rangers, but a drop-off for the Jays.

In 2004 the Yankees matched their previous season's win total, while the Rays increased their win total from 63 to 70 after starting it all in Tokyo.

Eight teams, a variety of results. Nothing telling. One team broke even. Two teams increased their win total by an average of 4.5 games, and five teams slipped a combined total of 37 games. Realistically, the Padres skew that number with a 24 game drop-off. Sixty-two-and-a-half percent of the teams experienced a drop in performance reflected in their win-loss record. The average drop, not including the Padres, is 3.25 games per team.

Assuming this is actually indicative of this season's performance, there's a 62.5 percent chance that the Sox will drop to 93 wins from last season's 96-win showing. Last year that would have put the team a game behind the Yankees in the final standings, and given the Red Sox the wild card.

What any statistician will tell you is that eight teams, eight results in over a century's worth of seasons is not a sampling that is indicative of anything.