Beaneball

With the A's currently tied with the Yankees in the American League standings (and thus for the wild card), I wondered about the tie-breaker scenarios. Apparently, the season series between the two teams would be the first tie-breaker. Unfortunately for the A's, they lost five out of six to New York earlier this season. They've got three games left against them, starting on September 2nd, but even with a sweep, they can't take the season series. In some sense, then, the Yankees have a one-game lead on the A's, because the A's have to actually beat the Yankees to get to the playoffs, while New York just has to tie. The situation is a tiny bit better, but not much, if the Yankees push ahead of the Red Sox and put Boston into a race with the A's, because, while Boston won four out of six against Oakland earlier in the season, the A's have a four-game series in Fenway in a few weeks. If the A's swept that series, they'd win the season series. If they won the series 3-1, they'd tie the season series. Any other outcome means they lose the season series and find themselves in the same position as they're in against the Yankees. Unfortunately, I really don't think the A's will pull out a four-game sweep of Boston at Fenway. Boston's been slipping a little bit in recent weeks, alternative poor pitching with poor hitting and occasionally putting both together, but it's not like they've been like Oakland circa May. Besides, they haven't suddenly become a mediocre team. They're still very tough and that date in Fenway certainly looms ominously. Of course, none of this matters if the A's can regain the lead in the West and hold onto it. After last night's events, when the A's blew out Baltimore while Tampa smacked Anaheim, the A's are just 1/2 a game back of the Angels.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 11:25 | |

This started off as a comment over at Chris Lehmann's site, but it grew so long that I decided to bring it here and trackback it instead. It's in response to this post, where he talks about a CBA team that's hired Dave Bliss, the former coach at Baylor who told his players to lie to investigators of the death of one of his players. The key phrase in Lehmann's post, the one I'm really responding to, is, "Sports can be embody the best of who and what we are... and sadly, too often it embodies the worst." This is one of those places where professional sports crosses that line between "sport" and "business," where "business" really means "make money at any cost to ethics or downfall of society." Bliss coaching this team doesn't do anything to the actual sport of basketball, thankfully, because those kids at Rucker are going to play their hearts out whether he's coaching or not. That is the nice thing about professional sports, in some sense: no matter what awful things they do, they can't touch the sport that's at the heart of how they make their money. Now matter how crummy the experience is at your average major league baseball stadium these days ("Clap now, mindless drones!"), the game, the sport itself, remains pure and unchanged at the center. In that sense, then, I don't think that this actually is an example of sport's embodiment of the negative aspects of our culture, but rather the commercial world's doing so. Enron and WorldCom also reflect poorly on us, and I think the Dakota Wizards, in this situation, fall more into their category than that of, say, the power of the Little League World Series to introduce a bunch of kids from Louisiana to a little place called Guam. This doesn't mean that Lehmann's statement is wrong, of course. Sports certainly can reflect negative aspects of our society: ultra-competitiveness, for example. You play sports to win, usually, and too often people forget that you live life to do more than just beat other people. That said, I think it's helpful to remember that professional sports leagues and teams exist to make money. That sounds obvious, but too often (and I'm not accusing Lehmann of this, I want to note, because he's quite notably not hysterical in his writing in general) people decry something or other that a league is doing as the downfall of that sport. "They're ruining the game!" they cry on their national sports networks. No, they're not. Maybe they're ruining their league, though that depends on whether people will still pay to see it. Whether baseball's performance-enhancing drug policy is effective or not (for example), the game itself, the sport of baseball invented in mysterious circumstances who-knows-how-long-ago, is not ruined.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 02:03 | |

Ok, I can declare an end to the boycott now. The A's have won their last two, against the Tigers and Orioles, and now lead 8-0 in the third inning against Baltimore. Joe Kennedy has apparently been tabbed to start in Rich Harden's place. This, I think, is exactly why the A's wanted to acquire him. He has some talent, and can be an asset out of the bullpen, but he's also a starting pitcher. He can make that spot start that they need from him, and, if they can get him straightened out to their satisfaction, could be in line for a starter's job next year. How's law school, you ask? Going swimmingly. I'm scared out of my mind for Monday. So, exactly what I expected.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 18:39 | |

Via Offwing Opinion, here's a brilliant idea to "help out" T.O. in his quest for less hunger for his family.

Posted by jason in Football at 20:07 | |

Every LLWS team has to have a weird kid. The last player to introduce himself on the Mexican team lists as his favorite player Johnny Bench. Johnny Bench! Awesome! You've got to like kids whose favorite players retired before they were even born.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 19:00 | |

What's up with the little kid on the Guam LLWS team whose favorite player is John Hattig, Jr.? Ok, so after looking it up, I'm a little embarassed, because it turns out Hattig is from Guam, so it makes sense. On the other hand, none of the rest of the kids had any problem rooting for guys like Manny Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano like kids anywhere else in the world.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 18:42 | |

History is made! Jeff Francoeur walks! Of course, as predicted, it's an intentional pass. Mom and Dad appear to be cracking up in the stands.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 23:29 | |

ESPN just showed a little clip of the Little League World Series, specifically the kid from Southern California who struck out eighteen batters (remember, that's in a 6-inning game, so that's all the outs possible). First, I don't buy that kid's age, whatever he's claiming it is. How old is he allowed to be? 12? 13? He looks like he's 15 or 16. Really, he looks like the kids I was teaching last year, and those are freshmen and sophomores in high school (and not normal ones, either: I had plenty of kids who'd been held back a year or three). Second, can we please officially declare the straight-brim-of-the-baseball-cap thing over? I've said it before and I'll say it until it goes away: I guess it looks fine when you're just walking around. When it's what you're wearing on the baseball field, it looks awful. Especially on these little white boys in the LLWS. You know those commercials where major league players teach little kids the various skills of the game, and it always ends in hilarity? They should have one where someone, preferably one of those "filthy hat" players like Steve Kline, teaches kids how to prepare their hats for a game.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 22:32 | |

I'm boycotting the A's. They let the Royals break their streak. They lost a series to the same Royals in Oakland. Ugh. On to the Braves, then. John Schuerholz was in the booth with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan tonight and Morgan asked for a reason why the Braves have won 13 division titles in a row and only one World Series. Schuerholz responded, "In the playoffs, you have to have health and luck." Particularly with the word "luck," is this new? Of course not. Is it nice to hear such a Beane-like statement out of a guy who'll never be confused with a so-called "Moneyball" GM? Absolutely. Next step? Convincing Joe Morgan, who didn't sound like he especially liked the answer.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 21:59 | |

The new Bitty you see in the sidebar takes the Google News RSS feed for the search term "Oakland A's" and displays all the recent news it can find on the team. It's already paid dividends by showing me the story that Adam Johnson was signed by the A's out of Southern California's Golden Baseball League (the same one Rickey Henderson is playing in and, if I'm remembering correctly, the same team as well) and sent to Sacramento. Johnson's pitched in nine major league games, all with Minnesota, and hasn't really fared that well (ERA over 10, lots of homers and walks, few strikeouts), but his minor league career showed that he might have some talent (0.68 HR/9, 8.17 K/9, if a few too many walks), and he's still just 26. Besides, he must have been showing something to catch the A's attention in San Diego.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's, The Blog at 17:48 | |

There's some weird stuff going on in the Yankees-White Sox game. First, Orlando Hernandez popped Alex Rodriguez with a pitch early in the game, resulting in a warning to both benches and a pissed-off A-Rod. A-Rod got his aggression out later by ripping a double to score two Yankee runs. A-Rod clapped his hands aggressively when he got to second base, apparently in the direction of Hernandez, but it's unclear. Then, El Duque got called for a balk that moved Rodriguez to third base, though it's unclear to me why it was called. It was one of those instances where he technically broke a rule despite his obvious lack of intention to mis-lead the baserunner, which is why the balk rule exists in the first place. Finally, Rodriguez was picked off of third by AJ Pierzynski, though, from my view, no tag was actually applied by Joe Crede at third base. Pierzynski, in his delight, dropped a couple of obvious f-bombs, and appeared to be dangerously close to actually aiming them at Rodriguez. There's a reason no one likes the guy, I guess, and it'll be interesting to see what happens in A-Rod's next at-bat. UPDATE: Robinson Cano just took a pitch on the shin from Duque, but it was clear there was no intent. It was a breaking pitch that Hernandez just lost track of and it hit him only a few inches off the ground. It's nice to see that hitting a guy after warnings isn't an automatic ejection, the way it seemingly used to be. UPDATE 2: The oddness continues and El Duque continues to have conflict with the umpires. On a ground ball to first, Geoff Blum tossed to Duque running toward the bag. Hernandez's gait was off, though, so he was set to go straight over the bag, never stepping on it. Duque's a good athlete, though, so he did what any good wide receiver does when trying to stay in-bound while making a catch: he dragged his back foot over the top of the bag while his front foot stepped over it. The back foot quite clearly hit the bag and should have resulted in an out, but the umpire completely missed it and ruled that Hernandez never touched the bag. Duque was charged with an error, his second of the game. This is significant because Hernandez, as the announcers have pointed out, has not been charged with an error in six years. Hernandez's first error wasn't really his fault, either. He grabbed a comebacker with a runner on first, wheeled and threw to second, only to find out that his middle infielders weren't sure who was supposed to be covering. Both of them made tentative stabs at the ball, but were clearly wary of colliding with each other and ruining the play for the other one. Thus the ball went into center field and Duque's errorless streak ended. UPDATE 3: Don't ask me why, but the local Channel 7 news was on TV, and the usual lame-ass sports person blamed the first Hernandez error (on the play at second base) on Duque, snidely remarking, "Maybe you should throw it harder next time." I guess I should expect nothing less in New York.

Posted by jason in Oakland A's at 16:01 | |

Susan Slusser does a nice job responding to my point from yesterday in writing about Jay Payton in today's SF Chronicle. She talks about he worked hard at his studies in high school, finishing top four in his class, and in college and how he worked very hard to come back from multiple elbow surgeries before his career even really got started. In other words, no, Jay Payton isn't just coasting along on some natural athletic ability. Also, as an aside, Payton actually has the same first two names as me: Jason Lee. Who knew?

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 06:25 | |

I want to watch the Mets game tonight. Unfortunately, that means I have to sit through the pre-game show, because I've got nothing better to do. That also means I have to deal with fun things like this: according to the graphic that's up on FSNY right this moment (I've got it paused on my DVR to make sure I'm not missing something), from July 3 to July 5, the Washington Nationals won 12 straight one-run games. That's right, in a span of three days, they won 12 straight one-run games. A typo's a typo, but the guy at the desk whose job it is to read this stuff to us just said, with no hesitation, exactly what it said on the screen. I guess it's some kind of skill to be that oblivious.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 00:10 | |

Heard on the Braves-Dodgers telecast on TBS tonight: "You want your signs to be hard enough that the smartest players on the other team can't pick them up, but easy enough that your dumbest players can get them." I should just leave that without comment and let us enjoy it, but there's a whole topic here of intelligence in professional baseball players, and how "smart" is, I think, mis-applied too often, reflecting more of a style of play than actual intellectual ability. I have no idea of Randy Johnson's intellect, but no one's ever going to think he's brilliant because he's huge, he throws really hard, and he's got redneck hair. On the other side of things, we'll assume forevermore that Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine are reading Dostoevsky and physics textbooks on their team flights because their fastballs don't top ninety and they're smallish (as athletes go, at least), unimposing, white guys. Perhaps the most important point here is the racial one. When was the last time a black or Latino player was described as smart? There's still the perspective in American sports culture, though it's much more under the radar than it was twenty years ago, that non-white players (in any sport) are there purely because of athletic ability, while white players are a more varied group: you get some big-time athletes, but you also get the "scrappers" and the "gamers" and the "guys who know how to play the game" and the "smart players." This works in, as I said, any sport. Shaquille O'Neal, you'll recall, just finished his MBA a few months ago. But does anyone describe him as a "smart" player? I realize there's some difference between outside-the-game smarts and game smarts, but I don't think non-white players get credit for either kind of intelligence.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 02:25 | |

As other people have mentioned, and I've been late in piling on, the Law Firm's been cancelled, which is of course the reason why I didn't post a review of episode three last Friday. I could watch the remaining episodes on Bravo, but it's not worth the effort to set up the TIVO, then watch them, etc. etc. I know, that makes me sound lazy, but I'd actually really not been looking forward to it as much as I thought I was, or as much as I wanted to be. Back to Law and Order, I guess, if I want solidly entertaining legal media.

Posted by jason in Television at 19:04 | |