FJM has gone dark for the foreseeable future. Sorry folks. We may post once in a while, but it's pretty much over.
You can still e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach.
Several people have now written in to suggest that the reason Rick Reilly clumsily metaphor-ized "bad spending habits" with "the Taco Bell Chihuahua" is because of a massive Chihuahua-related conspiracy that reaches the upper levels of Disney HQ.
The theory goes: Disney has forced all of its employees to start casually mentioning Chihuahuas in their everyday conversations and scribblings, in order to try to fool people into believing that Chihuahuas are still a big deal, because of the other-worldly blunder they made (while clearly coked to the gills) in green-lighting this:
If this Disney movie is truly somehow influencing ESPN's most famous scribes to drop Chihuahuas into their articles, I have to tip my cap.
Also, I am going to see this movie five times in the theaters.
I caught this gem on 710 ESPN Radio this afternoon. Steve Phillips was talking about J.D. Drew's mindset at the plate. This may come as a giant surprise, but it was basically nonsense.
Paraphrasing, he was saying that hitters should be more aggressive with runners in scoring position. He called J. D. Drew "selfish" for taking walks with runners on. He added:
"Sometimes [Drew] and guys like Adam Dunn start their at bats [with runners in scoring postion] thinking to themselves 'Am I going to swing or take if the count gets to 3-2.'"
How this guy can know what J. D. and Adam are thinking at those exact moments is beyond me. Last time I checked, Swing or Take: A Collective Journal Of What We Were Thinking At The Beginning of ABs with RISP by J. D. Drew, Adam Dunn and Guys Like That isn't supposed to come out until August 21.
Maybe he got an advance copy or something? Weird.
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Unrelated side note: I've been watching a fair amount of SportsCenter / BBTN today, and every two minutes someone mentions that there are "seven teams going for a sweep in an interleague series!", as if this is some sort of big deal. There are fourteen interleague series this weekend. If every match were a coin-flip, wouldn't we expect exactly seven teams to be going for sweeps in the third game of a series?
One thing's for sure: that is the last time I watch ESPN!
Hey -- I have a question. SportsCenter is the show you watch to get highlights of sporting events, correct?
It's like "the news," but for sports. Where I can find news about what happened in sports.
I'm not wrong about this, right?
Except tonight -- and God knows how long this has been going on, and forgive me if I am late to this party -- there was a segment called The Bud Light FreezeFrame, wherein viewers were given the chance to vote on the "Image of the Week." And then Brian Kenny read -- aloud, so everyone could hear him; like, he didn't try to hide it at all -- various reader comments. One of them was in re: Williams hammering Rondo from Game 7 of the Hawks-Celtics series, and came from jpizzle39 (a commenter name so parodically parodic I couldn't beat it if I tried) and began "What a clothesline!"
I don't want to get all Bissingerian here, but do I need to be exposed to reader comments during SportsCenter?
No, I don't.
The Bud Light FreezeFrame. Every Wednesday on SportsCenter.
Thanks to those of you who pointed out that the foul was Game 7, not Game 4 (I think I was thinking "deciding game" or "4th win" or something). Also, I am aware that the Roman numeral sequence is not real or possible. I was trying to convey frustration with long number sequence. I should have made it longer. If I had written "Vol. MCMDVMXIIVMDCDMMMVVIIIII" everyone would have gotten it.
If we had a FJM Declaration of Purpose, it would be to point out that you can't just say things like this and get away with them:
(ESPN Sunday Night Baseball, Miller and Morgan, on the subject of the Tigers)
Miller: That's a tough way to go to Fenway: 0-6.
Morgan: Well, every day you lose, though, Jon, the percentage is in your favor. I know it sounds a little bizarre, but a team as good as this team, 0-5 you figure: the percentage is in their favor.
Theoretically, I suppose what he is saying is that the team is "due" to win a game. Sadly, the purpose of a baseball season is not to win one game, but rather to win enough games to make the playoffs. Thus, the only possible thing you can say about the Tigers starting 0-6 is: that is a terrible start.
(The FJM Declaration of Purpose would be a small, unassuming Word document written in Helvetica. There would be a lot of cursing in it. And 26 years from now, when alien archæologists find nothing on our decimated planet but this document, they will assume it was the basis for our societal norms and government, and a new society will arise, and no one will ever write anything stupid about GlormBall, which is their national pastime.)
Unrelated postscript: Homeplate ump Jeff Kellogg just took a fastball to the face because A.J. Pierzynski seemed to get crossed up and just missed it. So he takes a fastball to the face and goes down like a sack of potatoes, and Jon Miller says, as they prepare a replay, "He's wearing a microphone, let's go back and have a look...) And I think, "Don't play the dude's audio!!!" And then they roll the replay, and it -- incredibly predictably -- goes like this:
(smack)
Pierzynski: Oh -- my God. Kellogg: (on the ground) Fuck.
Come on ESPN. What word did you think was going to come out of a dude's mouth in that situation?
To those of you who wrote in about the idea of being "due" to win: fear not. I understand that this is not a thing that exists in the realm of mathematical probability, and twas not like endorsing the idea that if that's what Joe meant, that he would be right.
Been getting a lot of e-mails about it over the past couple of days. In fact, if you e-mailed us once to tell us to give it the ol' FJM treatment, and then again, like an hour later, when you realized that it's (we think) a piece of satire, you're not alone.
I'm not sure exactly what there is to say about it. But to answer some questions we've gotten:
No, we didn't write it. No, we don't know who did. Yes, we think it's meant to be a satirical anti-Moneyball piece, and therefore, ostensibly, a pro-Moneyball piece. But it's pretty hard to tell.
I like that if you Google "Art Garfamudis," one of the first things that comes up is an anagram search for "Art Garfamudis." Meaning, people are trying to find an anagram-clue in the pen name. (Of course! Radiums A. Graft.)
Well, I hope this has been as disappointing for all of you as it was for me. We'll try to get to that beautiful Plaschke/Pierre article but I'm not making any promises.
For a while now, ESPN has been trying to tap into some sort of long tail/Web 2.0/wikiality Internet community thing with ESPN Conversation (superscript Beta), a feature that allows readers to comment on certain ESPN news stories. What's the problem? There are many. The overall level of discourse in the comments is quite low. I'm assuming ESPN is perpetrating some sort of censorship, since they're a site run by The Man and can't allow delicate sensibilities to be offended. And to make matters worse, the Worldwide Leader has recently begun trumpeting ESPN Conversation (superscript Beta) with a rather large box on the ESPN frontpage wherein a Featured Comment, presumably one hand-picked from a pool of thousands for its originality, thoughtfulness, humor, and/or analytical value, proudly displays itself in 24-point sans-serif font.
The current Featured Comment reads, unabridged, as follows:
"Torre just turned down the Yankees' one-year deal. Holy cow!" --saltydog0007
This is taking up three square inches of my web life. This is Internet Three Point One Million. America, this is you (sung to the tune of America's Funniest Home Videos theme song).
I know it's hard to be thought-provoking in ten words or less. It's hard to be thorough. It's hard to say anything even remotely of interest. But surely there is a) one comment, or two, or even three, of more substance and sustenance than saltydog0007's "Holy cow!" and b) if, in fact, there is not, then perhaps ESPN should rethink dedicating valuable frontpage space to complete and utter non-ideas in gigantic fonts instead of, may I suggest, even more automatically-loading videos that I don't wish to watch.
Let's break it down. The first seven (or eight, if you count "one-year" as two words) words of saltydog0007's comment merely summarize a news story that already sits in the glorious Front and Center Top Story Box, adorned with the pithy headline "Joe Says No!" I've already read and enjoyed reading "Joe Says No!" I understand what it means and I appreciate the rhyme scheme and aforementioned pith of the headline. Then my eyes scan downwards and to the right, and there I find it -- another re-summary of this very same article, but this time more than twice as long and less than half as rhyme-y!
And then: "Holy cow"? "Holy cow"?! I will now list two-word phrases I would've rather read following the seven- (or eight-) word rehash of a news story that I've clearly already gotten wind of from further up on the very same page, and I will not stop until I get bored (not likely!).
I am putting this in the comments for officiality's sake: yes, I am aware that "Holy cow!" is a reference, but this does not redeem it for me. Thank you for reading.
Then you'll love ESPN's segment "Who's Now"! It's a sports segment about sports persons and it's on a sports network!
In this edition, ESPN, the Worldwide Leader in Sports, devotes several minutes of my time (yes: my time) to discussing, with Stuart Scott, Mike Greenberg, Adam Sandler, and Kevin James, which of Tom Brady and Maria Sharapova is more "now."
Scott: Lot of talent on their field, or court. And a lot of buzz, because, let's face it, everybody talks a lot about how hot these two are.
Greenberg: The one thing I was thinking going into this, if there's a toss-up, maybe you actually go to the sports. --
Off Camera Voice: (as if this is a shocking notion) Wow.
Greenberg: -- Who's actually the greater player. In my opinion, Brady is closer to being the best quarterback in football than Sharapova is to being the best tennis player in the world.
(There is a fraction of a second where everyone involved with this miserable tragedy seems to be thinking: Man. It is a little weird that this is the flagship program on the #1 sports network in the world, and this is a recurring segment with like tons of graphics and fan voting and stuff, and one of our regular anchor-types just suggested that maybe if we need a like tie-breaker issue to figure out which of these athletes wins this contest that we're having, we might actually examine their relative abilities in the sports which they play. Then, Stuart Scott says...)
Scott: If you guys were having a party, and you had to invite one of them -- it's a Hollywood party -- who do you invite? And then Adam Sandler makes jokes about hotness, Sharapova vs. Brady's girlfriends, and Sportscenter "rolls on."
I'll Watch "Dead Poets Society" on TCM; You'll Do Our Work For Us
Hooray! Gallimaufry time! What better way to start the week?
Plenty of action for the Sunday night game on ESPN. Reader Colleen starts us off:
According to Joe Morgan, Adam Kennedy has "always been a great offensive player."
He has a career OPS+ of 89.
So true. So simple. Reader Evan L. noticed the same thing, but pointed instead to AK's .261 career EQA.
Maybe Joe meant: relative to all other human beings, Adam Kennedy has always been a great offensive player? As you may know, I like to give Joe the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.
Okay! Over on TCM, Charlie Dalton just changed his name to Nuwanda. And back at the FJM inbox, a number of readers noticed Joe Morgan's total misread of an ump's call on a stolen base attempt. We'll go with David S.'s version of events because he seemslike a good dude:
rolen steals 2nd, called safe, morgan says "easily safe" when crowd boos. they go to the replay that shows rolen CLEARLY out, morgan again says "easily safe." then they freeze it with rolen being tagged while nowhere near the bag, and both announcers are dead silent until the next pitch.
A quick pause to remind our dear readers that Gallimaufry is brought to you each and every week by Bacon Salt. Bacon Salt: Tastes like bacon...and salt!
Reader Mike mustered enough strength to listen to the voice of Suzyn Waldman, and for that, we congratulate him with a post of his observation:
During last night's Yankees broadcast, Waldman and John Sterling were talking about the possibility of Luis Vizcaino notching the win in both ends of the doubleheader. Sterling quipped that he could be the modern-day Wilbur Wood. This was Waldman's reply: "For those who don't know, Wilbur Wood used to start, and win, both ends of a doubleheader. A lot."
Only twice did Wood start both ends of a doubleheader. Never did he win both ends. In fact, in his most famous double-dip appearance, he took the collar two losses on the same day against the Yankees.
I just found out that Suzyn Waldman is from Newton, Massachusetts. Weird, right?
Also, say what you will about Mr. Keating's teaching methods. This guy really inspires his students. Sometimes you just gotta say "fuck the heck," right?
On with the 'maufry! Bruce Torres writes FJM to say:
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Okay, Bruce! Good to know.
Reader Matthew K. writes for no reason other than to add to the ever-growing list of Eckstein nicknames:
David Husslehoff
Sure. Why not. Add it to the list. I'd go with "Hustlehoff," maybe, but...oh fuck -- I think Robert Sean Leonard's character is about to kill himself.
Reader Rick N. has an interesting thought on the ongoing "Who's Now?" situation:
dude, who's now would be brilliant if it were advertised as satire.
dude, maybe.
Actually, nothing blew my mind more about the whole "Who's Now" thing than the fact that Barry Bonds lost in the first round. I know it was up to the voters, and not ESPN itself, but seriously: every Bonds at bat is televised by ESPN. He dominates the front page of ESPN.com. Pedro Gomez pops up every fifteen minutes to tell me whether or not Bonds made a doody. He's about to break the all-time HR record -- and he's less "now" than Jeff Gordon? I don't get it.
And lastly, Lt. J.J. K. points us to this take on Joe Morgan's relation to the Sheffield/Torre/RealSports nonsense.
I'm not sure exactly what to make of it, but the author certainly doesn't like Joe Morgan. And I like that!
"O Captain My Captain!" You tell 'em, Ethan Hawke's character!
Some weird stuff Sunday morning on ESPN. Stephen A. Smith was inexplicably like lurking around the studio for both Sportscenter and BBTN. It was so weird that at the end of SC he like didn't even have a chair, and had to awkwardly stand nearby the anchor desk. Then at the end of BBTN Steve Phillips said goodbye on behalf of himself and Krukie, leading Smith to give him a look like "What the hell?" and then eventually Phillips included him. Odd all the way around.
On SC they did that mentally challenged "Who's Now?" thing and it was Vince Young vs. Maria Sharapova. I felt bad for everyone involved, as they tried to figure out if Vince Young's 6 wins as a rookie were more "now" than Sharapova's $20m in endorsements. One of the most pointless arguments I have ever been exposed to.
America's Sweetheart files this report via email:
I have an idea for what to do after "Who's Now?" is over. It's called "what time is it?" A panel of ESPN experts would sit around and argue about what time it was. They would never agree because the time would always be changing. People could vote on-line and the it would all depend on when they voted.
At the end you would have some idea of what time it was.
Finally, on BBTN, Phillips and Kruk debate the "Worst Franchise in Sports." Phillips chooses the Phillies because their next loss will be their 10,000th. This is problematic for several reasons: first, because that says as much about the longevity of the franchise (starting in 1890) as anything else. Second, the team is only 4 games out this year and has a lot of good players. Third, the team has been in the WS as recently as 1993. The Phils aren't close to being the worst franchise in baseball, much less all of pro sports.
Not to be outdone, Kruk chose the New Orleans Saints.
But if it's true, wow, what a fuck-up. Reader Rees writes: In the Hancock montage just shown on ESPN, narrated by Karl Ravech, the very first film of the montage is actually Brad Thompson not Hancock.
The front page of ESPN.com, at least right now, poses a terrible question: "So, how did Ryan Howard go from 151 Ks in 2003 to 58 HRs in 2006?"
The answer? By striking out even more. Howard struck out 181 times last year. And was awesome.
Strikeouts are not bad. One hundred and fifty one strikeouts are not bad. That same year (2003, in the minors), Howard also put up an OBP of 374 and slugged 514. He wasn't exactly crapping his pants at the plate.
Sky (The Roc, NY): Buster, I enjoy everything you write and listening to you on the radio. But I have to call your use of Howard's 2003 strikeout total as evidence of a hole in his swing and then neglecting to mention his 2006 strikeout total...
Buster Olney: Sky -- In two years, with the adjustments, he made in his swing, he went from a Class AA question mark to NL MVP, hitting .355 in the second half, with a .751 slugging percentage and a .509 OBP. If you want to shoot holes in that with his strikeout total, that's your call.
Now I'm really confused. He didn't answer the question, right? (Or the statement, or whatever.)
Hard to pin this whole thing on Buster. Who knows who writes those frontpage teasers?
I'm not a huge fan of making predictions about who's going to win a given series, or the whole postseason, or what have you. I very much enjoy talking about who has a better chance of winning, and for what reasons, et cetera. But I see little reason in saying anything like "I'm picking Twins in 6." I guess maybe it's fun? (Not a big fan of fun things.)
So generally speaking, I don't really care what people's predictions are.
And that, I kind of feel like, is worth pointing out.
I know what you're thinking: what are the chances that this could happen, assuming even that the ESPN analysts have monkey-throwing-raisins-at-a-dartboard level of guessing ability? And by "this," I mean 19 picks for World Series champs not even making the World Series.
Well, the chances that any given ("random") playoff team makes the World Series is 1 out of 4. In this case, 19 people missed what would have been a 1 out of 4 chance, if they had just simply "guessed" (at random). To measure the probability of this, we have to think in these terms: 19 people in a row "hit" a 3 out of 4 chance. What are the chances of that? .75^19 = .00423, or .42%
In other words, the anlaysts could have thrown all of their baseball knowledge out the third floor window of the Bristol megaplex, picked a random team to win the World Series...and there would have been less than a 1 in 200 chance that zero of their picks would get to the World Series. (Which, just to remind everyone, is exactly what happened.)
But wait! It gets better.
Looking further at these picks -- and I'm sure someone pointed this out before -- not one single person picked the Tigers to even get out of the ALDS. And only one person picked the Cards to beat the Padres in the NLDS.
Which means (stay with me) in the combined series of: Yanks / Tigers ALDS, Padres / Cards NLDS, ALCS, NLCS, and WS, the 19 ESPN experts went a total of 1 for 95. ONE FOR NINETY-FUCKING-FIVE.
If you let 10,000 teams of 19 monkeys randomly pick winners in those series, those monkey-picking-teams would average 30.9 out of 95. (.5 for 38 DS picks + .25 for 38 CS picks + .125 for 19 WS picks)
Congratulations to Enrique Rojas, the only person who picked either the World Series bound Tigers or Cardinals to win even one series. He also picked El Duque as the WS MVP in a victory over the Twins.
EDIT: I'd like to take a second to address two categories of e-mails I'm getting from a lot of readers.
Category 1 is best summed up by e-mailer CJ: "You're giving them too much credit. Each of nineteen guys failed to connect on TWO one in four chances. If everyone picked at random, the probability that any one guy would fail to pick either wold series team is (.75 * .75) = .5625. Raise that to the 19th power and you get 0.0000178, or 1 in 55933."
On its own, this is true. And "more" impressive. As for accusations that I was wrong, however (which were often made), I stand by my original numbers. I was looking at the chances of a different phenomenon. ("And by 'this,' I mean 19 picks for World Series champs not even making the World Series.")
So, dudes who wrote -- excellent point. The chances of going 0-38 in CS Champs picks are even more astronomically difficult than going 0-19 in WS Champs picks not even making the WS. But I was right also. Sweet.
On to Category 2 now, as written by the beautifully named Alessio, who is probably a dude but in my imagination is a gorgeous 23-year-old woman from like Monaco who loves baseball and statistical analysis. I quote him (her? please?) at length because it's easier than writing this all out myself:
I'm no statistician, but I think you made an analytical error in your post on "picks". The chances of what happened are not nearly as distant as you calculate. In fact, you're far more likely to get such results from intelligent decision makers than from random chance.
The fact that human beings are picking will tend to "bunch" the picks a lot more than random chance. For example, let's say the Yankees are better than the Tigers, and everybody recognizes that. Everybody will pick the Yankees, so the picks could rationally be 19-0 even though their actual chances of winning might be something like 55%. When the Tigers beat those odds, all of a sudden you have 19 wrong picks, although there's only one upset in the series.
Now, when you have three or four series upsets (nothing unusual there), all of a sudden you have a whole lot more than 19 wrong picks.
When you have a consensus on the various team strengths, combined with just a few upsets, you get the seemingly anomolous result of a bunch of prognosticators going 1-for-95. A random picking system would almost never be that bad; but on the other hand, it would almost always be around 50%. The humans could just as easily have been around 90% if those series had gone the other way. Alessio. My sweet, innocent Alessio. Alesssssio, my princess of Monaco... [daydreaming now: playing with Alessio's hair; engaging in conversation about VORP vs. WARP3 over mussels and wine...now realizing instead that Alessio is almost certainly a 45-year-old dude from Canton, Ohio or something, and on top of that, feeling the obligation to publicly apoligize to girlfriend about the whole Alessio-fantasy situation]...sorry, what now?
Oh, the numbers thing.
Yeah. Well, Alessio, you fat fucking ugly monster of a man, you make what I guess is a good point. I guess my response is: yes, of course. Of course humans will, over the long haul, be better than random-team generators at predicting who wins certain games / series / whatever. I realize why, especially in this case, the experts were especially bad at picking winners. Your point is spot on: a rational human being will pick the 55%-likely-to-win team, and, likewise, so will 19 rational humans. I'm just trying to put a scenario together that sort of points out the whole ridiculousness of "predictions" in general.
Listen: It's a cheat. I cheated. And that's the kind of thing you do when you run a blog devoted to making analysts look silly.
You take advantage of a combination of hindsight, upsets, and odd numbers, and use them in a way to make people silly. And you sort of hope, I guess, that people make their own conclusions about just how much these numbers actually mean.
To me, the overall point is not that we should let monkeys throw raisins at a dartboard instead of letting experts make their predictions. But rather, isn't it kind of silly / interesting / amusing that in this particular case, a team of monkeys would have been almost a sure bet against these so-called experts?
That's all. Interpret at your own risk.
Sorry / Thanks to Alessio, whose appearance and gender remain an absolute, delicious mystery to me.
"The NFL editors at ESPN.com also looked into their crystal ball and forecasted the over/under on every team's win total for the season ahead."
>>If you add up all of the predictions for regular season wins, the NFL editors at ESPN.com have predicted a season where all 32 teams go a combined 23 games over .500. This is impossible.
Thank you for a meaningless prediction, NFL editors at ESPN.com.
