BigFlax.com Blog

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

2011-10-15T13:08:00.002-05:00

Jaime Garcia was pulled in the fifth inning last night, which marked the fifth consecutive game - all of them in the NLCS - in which the St. Louis starter did not pitch more than five innings (and only in Game Three, when Chris Carpenter went five exactly, did they even hit that mark). As a result, the talking heads have been abuzz about the fact that no team has ever won a postseason series when its starters have failed to pitch more than five innings in any of the first five games.

#1: This isn't too surprising, since in MOST cases this would indicate that the starters were getting absolutely shelled.

#2: It's not like this happens very often.

With the exception of their six-spot that chased Garcia in the fifth inning of Game One, the Brewers haven't scored more than two runs in any inning in the series, and in Games Two through Five they've topped out at four runs. The ERA for the Cardinals' starters is not good, mostly because they aren't pitching a lot of innings, but check it out:

Cardinals starters: 22.1 IP, 15 ER, 6.04 ERA

Brewers starters: 27.2 IP, 19 ER, 6.18 ERA

And that's with Randy Wolf allowing just 2 ER in 7 IP in the Game Four win. The other four games, Zack Greinke (x2), Shaun Marcum and Yovani Gallardo have combined to go 20.2 innings (barely over five a game) and allow 17 earned runs for a combined ERA of 7.40.

So why are the Cardinals winning? Because neither team's starters are pitching well, but the Cardinals' are pitching slightly better, in spite of LaRussa's quick hook. Really, this is a total non-story, and if Carpenter gets one more out in Game Three there isn't even anything to talk about.

And, of course, because St. Louis' bullpen has thrown 21.1 IP in this series and allowed four earned runs, whereas Milwaukee's bullpen has thrown 15.1 IP and allowed 9 ER. 1.69 bullpen ERA vs. 5.28 bullpen ERA... hmm. I wonder how they're doing it?

The irony is that St. Louis' bullpen was not very good this year. Really, St. Louis didn't pitch that well in general, finishing 8th in the NL in ERA - there's a reason they were the NL's highest-scoring team and yet barely snuck into the playoffs. But just ask the 2005 White Sox how scalding-hot pitching (even if it is mostly your relievers in this case) can carry you in October.

By the way, the last team to have its starters go five innings or less in each of the first five games of a series? The 1984 Padres, in the World Series against Detroit, which they lost in five games. The five starters (Ed Whitson, Tim Lollar, Eric Show, and Mark Thurmond twice) went a COMBINED 10.1 innings in the series, with Whitson (in Game Two - which San Diego still won) and Thurmond (in Game Five) both getting yanked in the first inning, Lollar failing to make it out of the second in Game Three and Show getting pulled in the third in Game Four. Only Thurmond's Game One start saw a starter complete the fifth. The combined ERA for those four starters over five games? 13.94. St. Louis' starters are doing just a LITTLE better this series.

Curse of the whoever this douchebag is

2011-09-29T19:51:00.005-05:00

Before I launch into this, I should probably state for the record: I don't hate the Red Sox. In fact, under the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I dare say I rather like the Red Sox, at least when they're not playing a team I particularly want to win (a rather short list). With that said, the way the media focuses on them (and the Yankees), and the way their fans have gone, in less than a decade, from cartoonishly depressed by their failures to cartoonishly arrogant about their successes is kind of annoying.

Don't agree? Well, in the interest of hilarious hindsight, let's take a look at this now extremely awesome article posted on NESN.com in January. It's so over the top that, knowing what we know now about how the season went, it almost reads like sarcasm.

The Red Sox have won 100 or more games three times in their 110-year existence.

They will make it four in 2011. But this team has the potential to accomplish something even bigger than winning 100 games.

The Red Sox won 90 games. And I don't think the "bigger" thing this guy was talking about was the biggest September collapse in Major League Baseball history.

The last time the Red Sox reached the 100-win mark was 1946, when they went 104-50-2 and lost the World Series to the Cardinals in seven games.

Prior to that, the Red Sox posted 101 wins in 1915 and 105 in 1912. Both seasons ended with World Series titles.

Will the duck boats be rolling through the streets of Boston again next fall?

That depends. The Bruins' parade wasn't postponed six months, right? No? Then no.

Bookmakers like the Red Sox’ chances. Current odds put them at 9-2 to win the 2011 World Series. Only the Phillies, at 7-2, are bigger favorites, with the Yankees not far behind at 5-1 shots.

As usual, the bookmakers just made a lot of money on people who thought the Red Sox were going to win the World Series.

Championships, of course, aren’t won in January. But championship teams are built during the offseason, and Theo Epstein has put together a roster that would make Branch Rickey proud.

It took an awfully long time before the Red Sox put together a team about which you could say that. (Zing! Tom Yawkey doesn't care about black people.)

Look at the starting lineup.

Jacoby Ellsbury, CF
Dustin Pedroia, 2B
Carl Crawford, LF
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Kevin Youkilis, 3B
David Ortiz, DH
J.D. Drew, RF
Jarrod Saltalamacchia, C
Marco Scutaro/Jed Lowrie, SS

The Red Sox offense was actually pretty potent - amazingly, considering how things finished, it was the highest-scoring in baseball, with 875 runs.

Speed. Power. Plate discipline. This lineup has it all. Good luck finding a hole from 1 to 7. Saltalamacchia is a bit of a wild card, but the 25-year-old could be ready for a breakout season. And whoever is the starting shortstop -- Scutaro or Lowrie -- gives the Red Sox one of the toughest No. 9 hitters in the game.

Holes in the lineup? Well, Carl Crawford and his .289 OBP say hi. Drew only played 81 games and did not hit well when he did play. "Wild card" Saltalamacchia broke out to the tune of .235/.288/.450. Lowrie OBP'ed .303. Still, the Red Sox as a team led the league in OBP and slugging and were second in batting average.

Besides a potent offensive attack, the Red Sox will boast airtight defense, perhaps the best of any team in baseball.

Quantifying defense is always tricky, but the Red Sox were 12th in the AL in errors. Baseball-Reference has them basically average in terms of fielding runs saved, owed mostly to the right side of their infield. But sure, whatever.

Turn to the bench, and manager Terry Francona has plenty of options.

Mike Cameron, OF
Darnell McDonald, OF
Marco Scutaro/Jed Lowrie, INF
Jason Varitek, C

Cameron played 33 games for Boston this year and didn't hit a lick; he was traded to the Marlins in July for basically nothing. McDonald was a 32-year-old journeyman with a career .314 OBP; in 79 games his OBP was .303. Lowrie, more often the backup shortstop/infielder, also posted a .303 OBP. Varitek only played 68 games and had an OBP of .300.

Youth, experience and versatility will ride the pine like lions waiting to hunt. Depth won’t be a problem, especially with players like Ryan Kalish, Lars Anderson and Josh Reddick on the farm.

Depth was a problem. That .349 team OBP owed mostly to four guys: Gonzalez, Pedroia, Ortiz and Ellsbury, who were the top four on the team in both OBP and plate appearances, and handily so. The bench by and large did not hit. Reddick played in 87 games with a .327 OBP. Anderson got five September PAs. Kalish missed most of the season and never reached the bigs.

Now, you might say, "How was this guy supposed to know about injuries and that all these guys wouldn't really hit?" He wasn't, I guess, but that's kind of the point. You don't really know what's going to happen, which is why you should write columns that say things like "the Red Sox are favorites to win their division" and not "the Red Sox are going to be the greatest team in the history of ever."

In 2010, the Red Sox scored 818 runs (second-most in the majors), or 5.1 per game. They hit 211 home runs (second in MLB) and posted a .790 OPS (tops in MLB). The offense, with even more weapons now, could demolish those numbers.

And, in fact, the offense scored 875 runs - 5.4 per game - and put up an .810 OPS. They did hit 203 home runs, slightly fewer, but banged 352 doubles, tops in the league. So what was the problem?

Yet one run is all it might take to win a game on some days with the starting staff the Red Sox have assembled.

Whoopsie. The team ERA of 4.20 was ninth in the AL.

Jon Lester, LHP
Josh Beckett, RHP
John Lackey, RHP
Clay Buchholz, RHP
Daisuke Matsuzaka, RHP

Lester is a Cy Young winner waiting to happen. Beckett will notch more than six victories. Lackey should be better equipped to avoid the one-bad-inning syndrome. Buchholz has become a force. And Dice-K might be the best No. 5 starter ever. The Japanese right-hander is the only pitcher in the rotation who’s never been an All-Star, but this could be the year he ends that streak.

Lester had a good year but nowhere near Cy Young status, and he was lousy in September. Beckett did notch more than six wins (his 2010 total) and led the starters in ERA and WHIP, but he also fell apart down the stretch. Lackey was horrendous all year, throwing 160 innings with a 6.41 ERA. "Force" Clay Buchholz was good but made just fourteen starts. And Matsuzaka threw just 37.1 innings of 5.30 ERA ball before hitting the DL in mid-May.

Every Red Sox starting pitcher has something to prove. While the Phillies might be the popular choice as the best rotation in baseball, don’t be surprised if people are singing a different tune come October.

Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee are both Cy Young candidates in the NL. Josh Beckett's 2.89 ERA would be fourth-best in the Phillies' rotation. But hey, who's counting?

When Red Sox starters have to hand the ball to the bullpen this season, Boston fans won’t have to have to cover their eyes and pray. The weak link in 2010 could be one of the best relief corps in the business.

Papelbon and Bard had pretty good years overall, and Alfredo Aceves emerged as a reliable long man. The rest of the pen was pretty much cover-your-eyes awful.

Tim Wakefield, RHP
Scott Atchison/Matt Albers, RHP
Hideki Okajima, LHP
Dan Wheeler, RHP
Bobby Jenks, RHP
Daniel Bard, RHP
Jonathan Papelbon, RHP

Okajima is the only known left-handed quantity. But youngster Felix Doubront has talent and should see some action. Rich Hill, Lenny DiNardo and Andrew Miller also could contribute.

Okajima threw 8.1 innings before being demoted to Pawtucket; he never returned. Doubront saw 10.1 innings of action with a 6.10 ERA. Hill pitched 8 innings before getting hurt. DiNardo never threw a pitch for Boston. Miller made 17 appearances, of which 12 were starts; his ERA for the year was 5.54.

The right-handers in the mix all bring experience and different styles to the fire. Need long relief? Call on Wakefield to disrupt hitters’ timing. Need a middle-inning specialist to get key outs? Wheeler knows how to do the job, and Atchison proved serviceable last season. Albers could be a diamond in the rough. Want heat? Jenks and Bard throw seeds. Want to turn out the lights? Papelbon is pitching for a contract, so trust he will be ready to show he’s far from washed up. Reliability and consistency -- foreign concepts to Boston’s bullpen last season -- will be common words associated with this group.

Wakefield mostly started, and mostly wasn't very good, with an ERA over 5. Wheeler and Atchison were usable but unspectacular. "Diamond in the rough" Albers had a 4.73 ERA in 56 appearances. Jenks threw just 15.2 innings - with a 2.234 WHIP! - before vanishing from the face of the earth.

Every day should feel like Christmas for Curt Young, the new Red Sox pitching coach. The former A’s pitching coach didn’t have anything close to the horses he has now, and Oakland’s staff posted a 3.56 ERA last season, the best in the American League and fourth-best in the majors. Imagine what he can do with a Grade A collection of arms.

Oakland's pitchers also get to pitch half their games in the Coliseum, one of the friendliest parks for pitchers in all of baseball.

The Red Sox were slated to win about 95 games last year. They won 89 despite injuries to Pedroia (a former MVP) and Youkilis (a possible future MVP). Add them back, along with the new players and a healthy Ellsbury, and 100 wins doesn’t just appear plausible. It seems downright inevitable.

Youkilis missed more than 40 games, getting only 82 more plate appearances than in 2010. Also, possible future MVP? Settle down. Youkilis is already 32 and his third-place finish in 2008 seems a long time ago.

So does a date with history.

The 2001 Mariners won 116 regular-season games to set the American League record for most wins in a single season and tie the 1906 Cubs for the major league record (though the North Siders accomplished the feat in 152 games). Both those teams failed to win the World Series. The Cubs lost to the White Sox in six games in the Fall Classic. The Mariners didn’t even make it that far, falling to the Yankees in five games in the ALCS.

The Red Sox have no intention of suffering a similar fate. The way they are constructed, they could surpass the 116-win mark, but nothing less than a World Series title will make Boston happy.

"They could surpass the 116-win mark?" Come ON, man. You can't say stuff like that. 116 wins is no one's birthright. You know what the '01 Mariners' expected record was, based on their run differential? 109-53. They still needed seven wins' worth of luck. And they outscored their opponents by 300 runs. 117 wins would require a ridiculous amount of luck. And you would need to add 28 wins over last year to get there. That is REALLY hard to do.

The 2011 Red Sox possess all the pieces to have a season for the ages. If everything falls into place and the breaks go their way, they could do more than set records and become champions. They could do more than take their place on Immortality Peak and end up being mentioned in the same sentence as legendary clubs of the past: the 1929 A’s, the epic Yankees teams of the ‘30s, the 1970 Orioles, the 1976 Reds.

Honestly, when you read this, doesn't it seem like it was written by a Yankees fan as a jinx? How did this slip through? Who thought posting this was a good idea?

The 2011 Red Sox could accomplish a feat that has never been done. They could unseat the 1927 Yankees as the greatest major league team of all time.

Well, they did accomplish a feat that had never been done. Looks like the '27 Yankees don't have much to worry about, though.

That would be something to celebrate.

For the Rays.

MVP = Moronic Verducci Position

2011-09-27T12:29:00.003-05:00

Some years there's a slam-dunk MVP vote. But whenever there isn't, and especially when there's a guy having a great season on a not-so-great team, we have to deal with it. The eternal conflict. "Should you only be the MVP if your team makes the playoffs?" The answer, of course, is no. And the history of baseball will bear that out. Albert Pujols won the MVP on a fourth-place team in 2008. The 2003 Rangers finished twenty games under .500, dead last in the AL West, but Alex Rodriguez was the MVP. And so on. Perhaps in really close cases you can make an argument for team quality as a tiebreaker... but I wouldn't. You try to find who had the best season. Period.

Unless you're Tom Verducci.

Here's his ballot as of now:

1. Jacoby Ellsbury, Boston*
2. Miguel Cabrera, Detroit
3. Justin Verlander, Detroit
4. Jose Bautista, Toronto
5. Curtis Granderson, New York
6. Dustin Pedroia, Boston
7. Robinson Cano, New York
8. Adrian Gonzalez, Boston
9. Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay
10. Josh Hamilton, Texas

Okay, not bad. I don't know about Bautista being fourth, but hey. Ellsbury has a really good case to be MVP. But... wait a second. What's that asterisk?

Yes, there is an asterisk next to Ellsbury. This vote is not final. If Boston does not make the postseason, there is no sense in handing the MVP to a someone on the team that just staged the greatest September choke in the history of the sport. It would be like handing out Best Actor or Actress awards to anyone in Gigli.

Um...

God. Where to begin.

Okay, let's start here. Tom: you realize that a baseball team has 25 players on it, right? (In fact, in September it can have even more than that!) And you realize that Ellsbury is one dude. It is very difficult to will a team to victory all by yourself in baseball. And it is ESPECIALLY hard to do that when your pitching staff's ERA in September is 5.85!!! How much of that is Jacoby Ellsbury's fault, exactly? In 25 games in September, Ellsbury is hitting .373/.417/.682. In 120 plate appearances, he has 11 doubles, 7 home runs, and (if you like that sort of thing) 19 RBI. Even though he hits leadoff!

The best part is this: Verducci is basically saying that if Ellsbury goes 0-for-10 with seven strikeouts and falls down twice in the outfield in the next two games, but the Red Sox win them both and make the playoffs, he will vote for Ellsbury. But if Ellsbury goes 10-for-10 with five homers and robs two more over the wall, and the pitching sucks again and the Red Sox lose? Bum. Not the MVP.

The same thing happened in 2007. David Wright had a hot September - .352/.432/.602. In August he was even hotter, including a .516 on-base. But of course the 2007 Mets were choking dogs, blowing a seven-game lead with 17 games to play. This certainly was not Wright's fault, but nevertheless it was laid at his feet in the voting, where he finished a distant fourth. The winner was Jimmy Rollins, who won despite having distinctly inferior stats to Wright. But of course, his team caught Wright's, so even though Rollins put up a pretty meek .333 OBP in September, he was the MVP.

Now, this isn't fair to guys like Cabrera and Bautista, who both have great stat lines and would be perfectly good winners (Bautista more so, since his numbers are better and also he doesn't play first and do it not that well). But if you think Ellsbury is the MVP on September 27, then he's the MVP on September 29. Otherwise, what you're saying is you're basing the entire decision on two games, or a big 1.2% of the season.

But let's see if Tom can defend his position.

Sorry, Jacoby, but four of the 14 teams in your league make the playoffs. Only one AL player since the expanded format began in 1995 won the MVP for a non-playoff team (an enhanced Alex Rodriguez in 2003). Ellsbury can take home every Player of the Year Award that's out there, but this is Major League Baseball. The greatest value possible -- the reason these players play the game -- is to be a winner, and there are too many great candidates from too many available playoff spots.

No, I didn't think so. First of all, what voters have done in the past should not provide a bright-line directive for future ballots. Second of all, THERE ARE 25 GUYS, MORE IN FACT, ON EACH TEAM. Over the course of a season - since last time I checked this was not the MVPOCTIS (Most Valuable Player on a Contending Team in September) Award - Ellsbury has done as much to help his team win as anyone in the league. That you think this should be tossed out because of two games if the rest of his team does not live up to his performance is embarrassing. If Boston's pitching continues to get shelled, there is virtually nothing Ellsbury can do to singlehandedly save Boston's season. That is just not how baseball works.

That said, Ellsbury has been so phenomenal that Bautista could hit 10 more home runs and Ellsbury still would have more total bases than the Toronto outfielder. (All stats entering this week.) I'm okay with either Verlander or Cabrera taking the MVP if Boston completes its all-time collapse. Cabrera has reached base more times than anybody in the league, plays every day, leads all of MLB in batting with runners in scoring position, will win the batting title with an average near .340 and has the best adjusted OPS by anyone other than Bautista.

That's right. Ellsbury has been phenomenal. How phenomenal? So phenomenal he can't be MVP if his team's pitchers suck! That's how phenomenal. Fuck yeah.

(This graf tells you a lot about Verducci's thinking, or lack of it, by the way. Yes, Ellsbury has 359 TB to Bautista's 310. He also has 650 at-bats to Bautista's 506, in part because he hits leadoff but mostly because Bautista has walked 79 more times than Ellsbury. 310+79 = 30 more bases for Bautista. Oops. Total bases ignore walks and therefore don't mean a whole lot. Unsurprisingly, Bautista has 70 points of OBP on Ellsbury, along with 61 points of slugging. Now, Ellsbury plays center and does so pretty well, which makes his offense harder to replace than Bautista's. By that standard, if you want to say Ellsbury is more valuable, it's hard to argue. But the reason why is not his total bases. I'm not even going to touch Verducci citing Cabrera's average with RISP.)

Okay, how about Tom's NL MVP ballot?

1. Ryan Braun, Milwaukee
2. Matt Kemp, Los Angeles
3. Prince Fielder, Milwaukee
4. Albert Pujols, St. Louis
5. Justin Upton, Arizona
6. Lance Berkman, St. Louis
7. Joey Votto, Cincinnati
8. Troy Tulowitzki, Colorado
9. Roy Halladay, Philadelphia
10. Shane Victorino, Philadelphia

Braun has had a great year. But he plays left, and not that well. Truthfully neither he nor Kemp is a great outfielder, but Kemp plays center, a much harder position at which to replace offense. With the two having fairly similar offensive lines, I would have broken the tie in Kemp's favor, for that reason.

See you if you can guess why Tom Verducci went the other way.

Kemp has put up a monster season with MVP numbers, leading the league in WAR, runs, total bases, home runs and RBIs. But his team, the Dodgers, didn't play a meaningful game for the last two-thirds of the season. Los Angeles was nine games out by the middle of June.

You hear that, Matt Kemp? Your team was bad! Therefore your numbers do not count. Never mind that you played all sorts of games against contending teams that certainly would not want you to do well against them and still did well against them. Never mind that you spent the season hitting in front of guys like Juan Uribe and Juan Rivera while Braun had the .400-OBPing Prince Fielder behind him. Never mind that you play in the NL West, maybe the toughest hitters' division in baseball, while Braun got to feast on a lousy NL Central. The team around you wasn't that good, so your season was irrelevant.

And this business that Kemp had no help in the lineup? Baloney. Kemp batted with 87 more runners on base than did Braun. Kemp had 24 more plate appearances with runners in scoring position -- and Braun was the better hitter in those spots (.347-.327). The seasons of Kemp and Braun are too close not to give it to the guy who delivered the most value in terms of context.

Dude, what are you TALKING about? Who cares about average, first? Kemp had a better OBP with runners in scoring position and with men on. See if you can guess why! That's right, it's my second point: PRINCE FUCKING FIELDER. When Kemp came up with men in scoring position, he could be walked - as he was 35 times out of 195 PAs - because pitchers were happy to take their chances with Juan Uribe, Juan Rivera, or the pu-pu platter of garbage hitting behind Kemp all year. 24 of those walks were intentional. You know how many times Ryan Braun was intentionally walked with RISP? TWO. You know why? BECAUSE THE GUY BEHIND HIM HAD A .400 OBP AND ONCE HIT 50 HOMERS IN A SEASON.

Ryan Braun had IMMENSE protection every time he came to the plate. Not once this year did Ron Roenicke fill out a lineup card that had anyone other than Prince Fielder hitting behind Ryan Braun. You know how many different guys have hit behind Kemp? TEN. Here's the list: James Loney, Marcus Thames, Juan Uribe, Jerry Sands, Jay Gibbons, Rod Barajas, Casey Blake, Juan Rivera, Aaron Miles, and Andre Ethier. Fielder has 35 home runs; this entire crew has 61, and the high man is Barajas (with 16), who served as Kemp's lineup protection all of once. Aaron Miles and his career 75 OPS+ hit behind Kemp more times than Barajas did. No one (except maybe in the late innings with a LOOGY waiting) was lining up to walk Braun so they could pitch to Fielder. Kemp could be walked with minimal fear. And Verducci's own rankings bear this out. The Brewers had a great season but they didn't win 115 games. You've got Braun and Fielder ranked 1 and 3. If Fielder is that good, can you really turn around and say Braun didn't have the help everyone thinks he did? No. He did have that help.

Again, Braun had a great year. But Kemp had as good or better a year, at a more premium defensive position, in a harder division in which to hit, AND he didn't get to play fully 44 of his games against the Astros, Cubs and Pirates, on whom Braun unsurprisingly feasted. Here's Braun's line against the Cardinals, by comparison: .225/.267/.366. So against the ONE OTHER DECENT TEAM IN HIS DIVISION, Braun absolutely gagged. It's a small sample size, of course, and you can only play the teams on the schedule. But if this is about "winning" and "coming up big for the team in big spots" - well, Braun really dogged it against Milwaukee's top contender.

Kemp, by comparison, destroyed divisional rivals. He hit .359/.446/.672 against the Giants, a team whose staff averaged this line against: .232/.309/.347. He hit .318/.408/.485 against the Padres, who play in the hitting-unfriendliest park in baseball and whose staff averaged .245/.313/.375 against.

In fact, how about this: against teams with a .500 record or better, Kemp hit .323/.390/.588. (He hit .324/.406/.580 - pretty much the same, if slightly better as you'd expect - against teams below .500.) Braun hit .337/.399/.643 against sub-.500 teams and .328/.395/.529 against those over .500. Also comparable numbers, but that's a pretty big dip in slugging. Anyway, the general point is that Kemp, no matter what you think about his team's quality, did not shrink from good teams, which to me is the only adequate notion of "pressure." Verducci suggests that because the Dodgers were nine games out by the middle of June, that presumably means their players no longer cared about the season. Uh, nine games out in the middle of June? We've just seen the Red Sox blow a nine-game lead over the course of SEPTEMBER. If "pressure" is real at all, I would think there'd be just as much on a team at the far fringes of contention to try to drag itself back into the race as on a team that's led its division for the better part of three months and watched its rivals disappear in the rear-view mirror.

Ryan Braun wouldn't be a travesty of an MVP vote. And neither would Miguel Cabrera, though there are many better choices. But the issue is how Verducci defends his votes, and what that says about how he understands baseball. And what it says is: he doesn't understand it nearly as well as he thinks he does.

The star system

2011-06-30T17:17:00.009-05:00

Today on Grantland, Bill Simmons' increasingly insufferable vanity project, Simmons himself posted an article about leading men in Hollywood. Simmons clearly has interest in a lot of things that aren't sports - he's taken plenty of heat over the years for the extent to which pop culture pervades his sports writing - and the formation of Grantland was no doubt at least partly intended to give him even freer rein to write about the topics he finds interesting. And what he found interesting today was a bunch of stuff about how Ryan Reynolds isn't a leading man and how he thinks there are 24 male movie stars currently in Hollywood. Too bad a lot of what he wrote was completely ridiculous.

Simmons' pitch begins this way: Hollywood "make[s] too many movies and do[es]n't have nearly enough stars." This leads him to the following:

That's how we arrived to a point in which the following two facts are indisputable.

Fact: People believe Will Smith is the world's biggest movie star (even though he doesn't make great movies).

Fact: People believe Ryan Reynolds is a movie star (even though he isn't).

Uh, okay. Isn't "movie star" kind of a subjective term? Isn't it determined by the audience to a large extent? Thus, if "people believe" that Ryan Reynolds is a movie star... doesn't that kind of make Ryan Reynolds a movie star?

Out of curiosity, what does Bill Simmons think makes someone a movie star? Good question, because he barely explains it. He spends most of the first part of the column talking about what actors aren't movie stars. The only time he even begins to explain is after giving his list of 24 guys he thinks are movie stars. Here it is: "All of them can open any movie in their wheelhouse that's half-decent; if it's a well-reviewed movie, even better."

That's it. Never mind the huge definition issue inside this definition (what exactly constitutes a given actor's "wheelhouse" and who determines that? And how much money qualifies as "opening" a movie?). What it basically boils down to is that Bill Simmons thinks that the following 24 guys are movie stars based on this loose definition.

"Smith and Leo; Depp and Cruise; Clooney, Damon and Pitt; Downey and Bale; Hanks and Denzel; Stiller and Sandler; Crowe and Bridges; Carell, Rogen, Ferrell and Galifianakis; Wahlberg and Affleck; Gyllenhall (it kills me to put him on here, but there's just no way to avoid it); Justin Timberlake (who became a movie star simply by being so famous that he brainwashed us); and amazingly, Kevin James."

The best part of this list is how quickly he goes away from his own definition and just picks guys he likes. Let's go through point-by-point.

1. Will Smith

Well, no argument here. He's been the lead or co-lead in sixteen movies since 1995 - only two (Ali and The Legend of Bagger Vance) failed to hit nine figures worldwide. Of the other fourteen, half topped $350 million worldwide. He hasn't starred in a film since 2008, but then he has been kind of busy engineering successful careers for his children. He's obviously a huge star.

2. Leonardo DiCaprio

DiCaprio has been the lead in ten films since 2000. Only half made $100 million domestically, but only Revolutionary Road had a particularly bad showing (making only half its budget back domestically) and it barely ever topped 1,000 screens. But he headlined Inception, a massive hit (though Christopher Nolan's name probably added value too), and of course there was Titanic, even if it made him as much or more than the reverse. It's also gotten hard to separate DiCaprio from Martin Scorsese - who gets more credit for the success of Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and Shutter Island? - but you could make a similar case for Jimmy Stewart and Hitchcock in the 1950s and no one would say Stewart wasn't a star. DiCaprio's a star.

3. Johnny Depp

Prior to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Depp might have been more of a "people think he's a movie star" type (though again, doesn't that just mean he is?). Everyone knew who he was, but he didn't necessarily make a lot of big movies, appearing in weird bombs like Don Juan DeMarco, Nick of Time and The Astronaut's Wife. Sleepy Hollow was the only hit of his career - and then the first Pirates film made $300 million domestically. The question, though, is how much of Depp's movie stardom depends on him being Jack Sparrow specifically. For an answer, check out The Tourist, which only made $67 million in the US (though it went over $275 million overseas, a strong performance). You can't say this film wasn't in Depp's wheelhouse - it's (based on the trailer) an action film with some comedy and romance in which Depp gets to play a semi-bumbling hero. You could apply the exact same description to the Pirates films, couldn't you? (Okay, The Tourist isn't supposed to be very good, but since when does that stop people from seeing movies?) Depp's only other big hits in the post-Pirates world have been Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (movies based on established properties tend to do pretty well), Alice in Wonderland (which rather shockingly made over a billion dollars worldwide - but Depp isn't the lead, anyway) and Rango (kids' movies make money almost without exception).

So to what extent is Depp a movie star? Without Jack Sparrow I think it's pretty easy to argue he's just a solid B-list guy, since you'd think an A-lister could have opened The Tourist with $20 million on a December weekend, which Depp failed to do. On the other hand, is he the only one who could have made Jack Sparrow what he was? And if so, doesn't that make him an A-lister anyway since without him POTC could have just been another Cutthroat Island? I honestly don't know. I could listen to arguments either way. But let's leave him on the star list for now.

4. Tom Cruise

More of a slam dunk than Depp, certainly. For nearly two decades, Cruise has been arguably the biggest sure thing in Hollywood - he virtually guarantees $100 million domestically, the classic barometer of success. Here's his major-part resume from December 1992 until 2006, with domestic gross in the millions in parentheses: A Few Good Men (141), The Firm (158), Interview with the Vampire (105), Mission: Impossible (180), Jerry Maguire (153), Eyes Wide Shut (55), Magnolia (22), Mission: Impossible 2 (215), Vanilla Sky (100), Minority Report (132), The Last Samurai (111), Collateral (100), War of the Worlds (234), Mission: Impossible 3 (133). That's quite the streak of moneymakers, with only a slow-moving Kubrick dirge and a P.T. Anderson film in which Cruise was only an ensemble member anyway breaking it. The irony of Cruise's winning streak is that it actually disproves Simmons' star definition to some extent, or at least alters it. Interview with the Vampire, for instance, was completely out of Cruise's wheelhouse. Anne Rice herself was legendarily furious with the casting (though she did apparently recant after seeing the film). Likewise, Collateral is far from the typical Cruise role. Yet both those films still made over $100 million domestically! Cruise was such a big star he really could open anything - even Eyes Wide Shut opened at #1 with over $21 million until the moviegoing public realized even Tom Cruise couldn't make them sit through a two and a half hour rumination on fidelity. Cruise's last couple films (Valkyrie and Knight & Day) have not bombed but have not been giant hits, although Cruise's oddball public persona of the last few years may not have helped. Assuming Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol returns him to 100+ heights, it will be safe to say he's still a pretty big star.

5. George Clooney

And now we're already drifting pretty heavily into "I call BS" territory. George Clooney is absolutely the kind of guy who just seems like a movie star. People like him. But can he open any movie as long as it's not a total reach? The answer, looking over his history, is pretty clearly "no." To be fair, Clooney does not appear in a lot of films destined to be massive crowd-pleasers, and when he has - the Ocean's Eleven movies, in particular - he's done well. But aside from those films, The Perfect Storm, and the execrable Batman and Robin, Clooney has never starred in a film that made $100 million domestically or even had a $20 million opening weekend (both of which I think are pretty good "success" barometers for a film, along the lines of Simmons' "Let's get tickets, so-and-so's in town" test for what makes someone a first-ballot Hall of Famer - if you're hitting those numbers, people came to see you). Michael Clayton, a critically acclaimed movie that certainly fell within Clooney's wheelhouse, opened in over 2,500 theaters on October 12, 2007. It made just over $10 million, good for fourth behind Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, The Game Plan, and We Own the Night. I mean, really? George Clooney, huge movie star, can't even outgross We Own the Night, which opened in fewer theaters? Okay, it starred Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, not some bunch of nobodies, and it probably seemed more exciting than the story of a corporate lawyer. But then again, Tom Cruise took The Firm and made $158 million. Up in the Air was another Clooney movie that had critical acclaim - when it went wide to almost 1,900 theaters on Christmas Day 2009, it finished sixth with just over $11 million. I should note that given their budgets, both films were moderately successful. But unless he's robbing casinos, George Clooney does not seem to be a huge movie star. People are not amped to see him doing any old thing. And yet he pretty clearly is a huge movie star... right? Simmons' theory is beginning to show some serious cracks already.

6. Matt Damon

Damon has a stronger case than Clooney, although even he does not really live up to Simmons' definition. Can he open any movie in his wheelhouse? To answer, let me direct you to Green Zone, a Jason Bourne-like thriller set in Iraq. It opened in March 2010 in more than 3,000 theaters... finished second in its first week and was out of the top ten after just three. It grossed only $35 million domestically on a budget of $100 million. This despite having the star of the Bourne films and the director of two of them!

Now, I would say Matt Damon is obviously a movie star. But the point here is that Simmons' primary criterion is pretty much useless. A star will open any movie in their wheelhouse? Oh, it has to be half-decent. Well, Green Zone was 53% among the top critics at Rotten Tomatoes - rotten, but not by a whole lot, with more positive reviews than negative reviews. Yet Damon couldn't even will it to half its budget! What kind of movie star is that?

I might go so far as to argue that there are basically three movie stars of the last 20 years - Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, and Will Smith - and then there's everyone else. At least, if you want to use Simmons' definition, which basically does not allow for a single misstep.

7. Brad Pitt

Pitt actually has by far the best case of his Ocean's co-stars. In addition to those films, Pitt has delivered either a $20 million opening weekend, $100 million domestically, or $300 million worldwide - or some combination of the three - on the following films since 1995: Seven, The Mexican, Spy Game, Troy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Inglourious Basterds, and Megamind (though this last was animated). For God's sake, Troy made $500 million worldwide, and that movie isn't even that great or particularly noteworthy! He had a $20 million opening weekend with Spy Game and The Mexican! Dude's a movie star.

8. Robert Downey, Jr.

At this point we have to stop and ask - what degree of longevity is necessary to make someone a movie star? Downey has successfully opened just four films as the primary lead - Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Sherlock Holmes, and Due Date - all of which came out in 2008 or later. As one of the three leads in Zodiac - a David Fincher movie widely acclaimed to be excellent - he saw it make less worldwide than it cost to produce. He was co-lead with Jamie Foxx in The Soloist, which bombed in spite of a fresh score from RT's top critics. And it seems ridiculous to suggest that the "wheelhouse" of Robert Downey, Jr. of all people is "action star," so there's really no reason The Soloist shouldn't have been successful, right? Yet it opened in fourth place on a thoroughly mediocre weekend in April won handily by Obsessed, a terrible movie without a big star. I don't think Downey's done enough yet for stardom by Simmons' definition, especially since two of his four successes were superhero movies, which typically do well. Yes, he added value, but he wasn't the sole reason they opened big.

9. Christian Bale

Another tricky one. Bale, as the star of Christopher Nolan's Batman films, obviously has two titanic successes to his name. But is that Bale? Or is it Batman? Or is it Nolan, for that matter? And Bale's only two other major successes are Terminator Salvation - in which he plays a character who already appeared in at least two other movies - and Public Enemies, in which he was co-lead with Johnny Depp (and even then, it was only a moderate success domestically, though it did open with $25 million). So is Bale really a huge star? Or is he a good actor who has managed to land some choice roles in films that probably would have done pretty well regardless? The only mild success (at best) of films like 3:10 to Yuma and The Prestige proves that Bale is, at the very least, nowhere near the Cruise or even Pitt level.

10. Tom Hanks

Back to an actual star. Hanks had a Cruise-like run in his heyday - between 1992 and 2002 he was good for nine figures domestically every time he played the lead or close to it: A League of Their Own (107), Sleepless in Seattle (126), Philadelphia (77), Forrest Gump (329), Apollo 13 (172), Toy Story (191), Saving Private Ryan (216), You've Got Mail (115), Toy Story 2 (245), The Green Mile (136), Cast Away (233), Road to Perdition (104), Catch Me If You Can (164). Like Cruise, he was able to drag Road to Perdition to $100 million despite being cast dramatically against type, and his only sub-$100 million performance was in Philadelphia... for which he won Best Actor. (So you know, not too bad.) Even Hanks has proven unable to drag every single movie to massive success - Charlie Wilson's War was good and also starred Julia Roberts, but was not a hit. But The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons were both big hits, as was Toy Story 3. Hanks is clearly one of our few nearly bulletproof stars and belongs on the top tier.

11. Denzel Washington

Since 2000, Washington has nearly always been good for $20 million or more on the opening weekend, though his films rarely rack up huge domestic grosses in total (only Remember the Titans and American Gangster crossed $100 million in the US). Star, although probably half a step down from Cruise, Hanks and Smith.

12-13. Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler

Since The Wedding Singer came out in 1998, Sandler has been good for either a $20 million+ opening or $100 million+ domestically with few exceptions, and most of those fall into the category of "outside the wheelhouse" - Punch Drunk Love, Spanglish, Reign Over Me - with the only exception being Little Nicky. Still, nine of his twelve starring roles since 2003 have made over $100 million. Obvious star, especially since he's a guy who is always clearly the principal draw in his films. Stiller isn't quite the slam dunk, but since Meet the Parents came out in October of 2000, he's done 17 movies where he was either the lead, played a major character who was featured in all the ads (such as in Dodgeball) or was a leading voice (the Madagascar films). Of those 17, nine grossed $100 million or more domestically and three of the remaining eight at least had $20 million or more opening weekends. He does have a couple wheelhouse bombs - both Duplex and Envy bombed in wide release - but you can easily argue that's the fault of the films for being awful. On the other hand, Sandler did huge business with widely panned movies like Grown Ups. So I'm willing to call Stiller a star, but he's at least half a step down from Sandler.

14. Russell Crowe

Crowe is definitely a guy everyone thinks of as a star. But if we're thinking of stars as guys who can reliably open decent movies... I'm sorry, he's just not. Not the average moviegoer. His only big hits are the following: Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, American Gangster, and Robin Hood. Those are the only ones to cross $100 million domestically. Master and Commander opened with over $25 million and made it to $93 million domestically, but that's the only other one. His post-Gladiator disappointments include Proof of Life, Cinderella Man, A Good Year, 3:10 to Yuma, Body of Lies, State of Play, and The Next Three Days. All opened in at least 2,000 theaters; only two of them finished top two their first weekend. And this is in spite of the fact that I don't think any of them was reviewed particularly poorly. But what this tells me is that Russell Crowe has been in a few movies people wanted to see - not that people inherently want to see movies that star Russell Crowe. Under Simmons' definition he's out.

15. Jeff Bridges

I was a bit surprised to see Bridges on the list at all. He can be the top-billed guy in a movie - but honestly, I'd be worried about its prospects unless it has a lot else going for it. I love Bridges, but he's not that kind of guy. And the stats back it up. True Grit was a hit - but it also had Matt Damon and the Coen Brothers' name attached to it, in addition to being a remake of a known film. Tron: Legacy was a hit, but it was a sequel and he was only the co-lead. And beyond that... point me out another hit. Iron Man and Seabiscuit are basically the only two, and he wasn't the lead in either. He starred in plenty of films in the 1990s, but (a) that's more than a decade ago and (b) none of those were big successes anyway. Hey, remember White Squall? How about Arlington Road? Bridges can be the lead in a movie, but only if you value critical recognition over the big bucks. He cannot open your movie by himself, not without something else working in the movie's favor.

16-19. Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis

What a bizarre hodgepodge for Simmons to group together. Yes, they're all comedians, but wow. I'll give you a hint: at least half of them don't belong here.

Let's tackle Carell first. His filmography is pretty short, but he's shown an ability to open a film and make a good deal of money - Dinner for Schmucks, Despicable Me, Date Night, Get Smart, Horton Hears a Who, Evan Almighty and The 40-Year-Old Virgin all had big openings, and most of them crossed $100 million. His one real misstep was the non-wheelhouse Dan in Real Life; even Evan Almighty, derided as an incredible bomb, still made $100 million (it's just that its budget, for some reason, was $175 million). You may not want Carell to carry your hugely expensive effects-laden movie, but he can carry your average comedy.

Ferrell is pretty reliable for a solid opening, though this doesn't always translate into huge grosses. Aside from Land of the Lost, Curious George and Semi-Pro, everything in his wheelhouse has opened well, even forgettable mediocrities like Kicking and Screaming and Bewitched.

I'm not sure what to make of Rogen. If you just look at the numbers, it's pretty impressive, at least until you realize that he's only been the lead in a few films. Those films: Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Observe and Report, The Green Hornet, and Paul. He was also co-lead in Funny People, but Sandler's clearly the top star draw there. So of the other six... well, three opened well and three didn't. Paul was decently reviewed but basically tanked; Zack and Miri had Kevin Smith's name behind it as well as decent reviews but didn't do much (though the name probably didn't help). At any rate I think we'd have to say that the jury is still out on Rogen at best. Simmons mentions in the article that it's possible to be a movie star right now even if you're not one in a few years, but Rogen's last lead role tanked, so let's hold off.

Finally there's Galifianakis, the most egregious inclusion of the entire list, IMO. The problem? HE ISN'T A LEADING MAN!!!! I mean, you have to be kidding. He's clearly on here because Simmons thinks he was the best part of The Hangover films and then he also had Due Date - but he isn't the star of any of those. He's the comic relief. Downey is the star of Due Date - you can't possibly give two people credit for opening the same comedy - and Galifianakis is at best #2 in the Hangovers and probably #3. He's a superstar who guarantees a good opening weekend? Uh, I don't fucking think so. As soon as I saw that I started questioning the entire column, which I had been blithely reading up to that point.

20. Mark Wahlberg

This is just not correct. Wahlberg has had some successes, but his record is littered with "didn't quite get there" movies. The Lovely Bones, Max Payne, We Own the Night, Shooter, Invincible - none were terrible bombs, but none was a huge hit. Planet of the Apes was a success; Rock Star bombed. He's a guy like Crowe - we tend to think of him as a star, and certainly he gets cast in lead roles all the time. But is he a STAR in the sense that his presence in your film guarantees a big gross or even a big opening? Not really, no.

21. Ben Affleck

Even at the peak of Affleck's powers - whenever exactly that was - this really wasn't true. And again, he's a guy we think of as a star, he's well-known, all that - but his presence in your film does not guarantee big bucks. Between 2003 and 2004 he was in four straight bombs - and maybe that's the fault of the movies for being terrible, but you're never going to see Tom Cruise appearing in four straight bombs. And The Town is the first movie Affleck's carried to a big opening since Daredevil, way back in 2003 - if you even want to give him credit for that, since that was around the peak of the Marvel craze's first wave. This is straight-up Boston bias on Simmons' part, if you ask me.

22. Jake Gyllenhaal

Simmons says there was "no way to avoid" putting him on the list. Well, yeah, there kind of was, seeing as how Gyllenhaal has really opened only three movies in his entire career - The Day After Tomorrow (co-lead, more about Emmerich's CGI disasters), Jarhead, and Prince of Persia. Source Code was not a big hit. Love and Other Drugs went nowhere in the US. Brothers and Rendition didn't do much. Zodiac, as said before, was not a big hit, despite good reviews and TWO of Simmons' stars! If that's not damning I don't know what is. Anyway, Gyllenhaal is the "starry" type. Maybe he can open the right movie, but he cannot open any movie that fits him.

23. Justin Timberlake

Another ridiculous inclusion. Simmons states that Timberlake "became a movie star simply by being so famous that he brainwashed us." Yeah, except he's not a movie star. I mean, he's a STAR, and he APPEARS in movies. But I don't think that's what we were looking for. Timberlake's only major roles to date have been the following: The Love Guru (flop), The Social Network, Yogi Bear, and Bad Teacher. The last three all either opened well or got to $100 million. But he isn't the lead in any of them! You couldn't possibly argue that Timberlake was the one who successfully opened The Social Network. If Friends with Benefits, his first true starring role, is a big hit, get back to me.

24. Kevin James

I don't buy it. James has had some success, but he has precisely ONE hit to his own name: Paul Blart: Mall Cop. His other successes (Hitch, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Grown Ups) all feature either Smith or Sandler, and The Dilemma was not a big hit. Zookeeper will probably do well because it's a movie pitched in the general direction of children released during the summer, but how much credit do you want to give James for that? Again, I would want to see more before I would elevate him to a list of gigantic movie stars.

The best part is at the end when Simmons lists some people who he likes but aren't movie stars. The list includes Jeremy Renner (who in God's name was arguing him as a movie star? Again, obvious The Town bias), Josh Brolin (similar profile to Bridges, really, just absent starring in Tron), James Franco (was the #2 guy in three Spider-Man movies, but again, no, I don't think anyone was really arguing for this), Jesse Eisenberg (has successfully opened three movies if you include the animated Rio, meaning he has at least as much business on this list as does Timberlake) and Ryan Reynolds, the guy who inspired the column in the first place, and with whom I'll end.

Simmons argues that Reynolds is not a movie star, and that therefore Green Lantern was doomed to fail. I would argue, instead, that Green Lantern was doomed to fail because it's a piece of shit, as seen by its 17% rating from the top critics at Rotten Tomatoes. It's possible that some of this can be laid at Reynolds' feet, but I doubt all of it can. Consider that two Fantastic Four movies did big business even though their biggest male star was Michael Chiklis. Superhero movies don't have to have big stars in them, because the characters themselves, coming in with some history behind them, are what intrigues audiences. People snickered when Jake Gyllenhaal was cast as the Prince of Persia - but the movie made money because people wanted to see a Prince of Persia movie. I think what it comes down to in this case is that the Green Lantern movie was particularly poorly done, and maybe that Green Lantern himself just isn't that interesting a character to people. I don't think it's that people were just rejecting Ryan Reynolds as a superhero. They were rejecting the movie.

Really, Simmons contradicts himself at almost every turn. He says that Tobey Maguire isn't a movie star because people won't go out of their way to see a film he's in unless it has Spider-Man in the title... then includes guys like Johnny Depp - no guarantee of anything unless he's Jack Sparrow - and George Clooney, who pretty much can't open a movie if he's not Danny Ocean. So what was the point, exactly? Jamie Foxx isn't a movie star because he's just a famous person who acts and sings... oh, like Justin Timberlake? And so forth.

In the second half of the column he talks about William Goldman's point that Smith is actually our only movie star because all of his movies make money. I would still add Cruise and Hanks - and you can't really argue that they don't count anymore when Smith himself hasn't put out a movie in three years - with a couple others (Washington, maybe Depp and DiCaprio, Pitt, and then Sandler) a rung down the ladder. Aside from that I think I'd pass on calling the rest stars. Or, at least, if you're going to call them stars there are others you probably have to include. Look at Vince Vaughn's history - he's a bigger star than a number of guys on the Simmons list. Liam Neeson's last three years are surely at least the equal of someone like Affleck or Gyllenhaal. And while I think his movies tend to make money in spite of and not because of him, Sam Worthington's essentially three-film career - Avatar, Terminator Salvation and Clash of the Titans - has been jaw-droppingly lucrative. At the very least, he belongs on the list before someone like Timberlake or Galifianakis, who don't even star in the films they're in, does.

Okay, I think that's plenty. Let this be a lesson to Bill Simmons: you can't just post a bunch of subjective crap about movie stars on the internet without some random guy spending hours writing a post that no one will ever read all of to take you to task.

Decisions, decisions

2011-05-20T21:56:00.003-05:00

An interactive post! Kinda. It's not like I won't be the one making the decision, but I'm curious what everyone thinks. So, I have this free Southwest flight. It actually doesn't expire until December, but between my honeymoon in August and (assuming it happens) the marathon in December, I can't imagine I'll be leaving the state. I decided it probably made the most sense to use it in July - fairly slow at work, my adviser is away so the lab is closed, and it could be kind of a pre-marriage "last hurrah," with the caveat that there would be nothing of the sort that "last hurrah" might typically be seen to imply.

Option 1: Go to see Manchester City in Los Angeles.

Man City - my English soccer team of choice if you don't know - is coming to North America for a couple exhibition matches this summer. On July 24, they play the LA Galaxy in Carson (just outside LA).

Pros: Although we do plan to go to the UK on our honeymoon, it's generally not easy for me to see Man City play (and they probably won't be playing while we're there anyway), so this is a good opportunity to do so. Also, LA has a good enough public transportation system that I can probably get away without renting a car. And of the options on this list it's probably the one that I'm least put out by having to do it alone.

Cons: I already saw Man City play two exhibition games in New Jersey last year - and they barely showed up for either one, sending a largely bench/reserve team devoid of stars and scoring just once. So not only is this not a new experience but it's entirely possible I could be disappointed again, especially with the team's top talent needing to rest up for the Champions League. Plus I'd have to buy tickets on StubHub which means they won't be cheap.

Option 2: Fly to Kansas City; visit Kansas and Missouri state capitols.

There are a few potential options for a dual capitol visit, since if I'm going to make a specific trip (and by myself, at that) it'd be nice to knock out two at once.

Pros: Kansas City is about an hour east of Topeka and about two and a half west-northwest of Jefferson City, pretty convenient to two capitals (only a few major cities are so close to two; see also below). The Kansas and Missouri capitols both look pretty interesting. Plus I'd be adding a new state in Kansas.

Cons: Mid-July in that area will likely be excruciatingly hot and humid. Two and a half hours each way to Jefferson City is a lot considering I'd be doing it alone and I'm guessing it's not that exciting a drive.

Option 3: Fly to Portland; visit Oregon and Washington state capitols.

Pros: Portland may be even more conveniently located than Kansas City, just an hour north of Salem and two hours south of Olympia (and that drive is probably a lot prettier). Portland itself wouldn't be a bad place to spend a day either. And considering how much flights to Portland cost - it's one of Southwest's most expensive routes, unsurprisingly - using the free one on it, assuming I can, would be to my advantage. Plus Oregon would also add a new state.

Cons: Nothing as obvious as Kansas City's, but the same general concerns about doing that much driving and capitol-visiting alone apply.

Option 4: Fly to Denver; visit Colorado and Wyoming state capitols.

Pros: The best part about this one is that the hub city is one of the capitals, meaning the only drive to be concerned about is the one to Cheyenne, less than two hours north of Denver. Wyoming would also be a new state to add.

Cons: Unlike the two previous sets of capitols, both the Colorado and Wyoming capitols are closed on weekends. Because of work, it would be best if at least one of the days I was gone were a weekend.

Option 5: Fly to a single capital which Southwest flies into - Little Rock, Sacramento, Indianapolis, Jackson, St. Paul, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Austin, or Salt Lake City.

Pros: This would obviate the need to do much driving, and I could still knock off a capitol, and in a couple cases add a new state.

Cons: If I'm going to go out of my way to make a capitol trip by myself, only doing one seems kind of silly.

Option 6: Fly to a Southwest city within a couple hours' drive of a single capital - Birmingham, Panama City Beach, Louisville, New Orleans, Detroit, Omaha, Albuquerque, Greenville-Spartanburg/Charleston, or Seattle.

Pros: Knock off a capitol, and in several cases add a new state.

Cons: Pretty much the same as above except add in that I would still need to do at least some measure of driving, up to 4-4.5 hours round-trip in some cases.

That's pretty much all I've come up with, in large part because options like "try to visit someone" seem kind of pointless when I'm only going to have a couple days to play with. So, although I can't imagine anyone actually read this whole thing, any thoughts?

The ten most incredible runs in NCAA tournament history

2011-03-27T23:39:00.004-05:00

A quick caveat: this will only include runs made since the field expanded to 64 in 1985, meaning that NC State's 1983 run, impressive though it was, will not show up. Sorry.

10. 1997 Arizona Wildcats

Arizona was a mere #4 seed in the Southeast region, which is why they're only tenth on this list even though they ran to the national championship. But they did have to beat three number one seeds to win the title, the first time that had ever happened. After knocking off Kansas in the Sweet 16, Arizona still had to get by scrappy underdog Providence, the #10 seed, who had taken down #2 Duke in the second round. It took overtime, but Arizona made the Final Four. They proceeded to beat North Carolina (who had future NBA stars Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison), the #1 seed from the East, and finally defending champions Kentucky, again in overtime.

9. 2008 Davidson Wildcats

Led by Stephen Curry, #10 seed Davidson fell just short of the Final Four, but still had a captivating run. Paired against Cinderella stalwart Gonzaga in the first round, Davidson took them down behind Curry's 40 points, then upset #2 seed Georgetown 74-70. In the Sweet 16, facing #3 Wisconsin and their fearsome defense, Curry scored 33 points as Davidson won easily, 73-56. Only #1 Kansas could stop the Wildcats, winning 59-57. Curry scored another 25 points but was successfully double-teamed in the final seconds as the Jayhawks forced him to pass rather than having a decent look at a possible game-winning three-pointer that would have made Davidson the only #10 seed ever to crack the Final Four.

8. 1987 Providence Friars

Providence seemed to have lucked out early in the 1987 tournament - after defeating #11 UAB in the first round, they needed overtime to knock out #14 Austin Peay, which had bounced #3 Illinois in the first round. Providence proved they were better than lucky, however, by toppling #2 Alabama 103-82 in the Sweet 16 and then knocking off top seed Georgetown 88-73 in the Southeast regional final. Georgetown had beaten the Friars 84-66 in the Big East Tournament semifinals just two weeks earlier. Providence's run ended at the hands of yet another Big East team in the national semis as Syracuse defeated them for the third team that year, 77-63.

7. 2000 Wisconsin Badgers

The Badgers weren't the only longshot in the 2000 Final Four. Top seed Michigan State was joined by #5 Florida - which needed a buzzer-beater to escape its opening round game against Butler - along with #8 seeds Wisconsin and North Carolina. But it was Wisconsin who really captured everyone's attention thanks to their smothering defense. After an opening-round win against Fresno State, the Badgers shocked #1 seed Arizona 66-59 in the second round, then stymied #4 LSU 61-48 before facing off against conference rival Purdue, the #6 seed, in the West regional final. Though they had gone just 8-8 in the Big Ten, Wisconsin was 2-1 against Purdue before the tournament, including a win in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals fifteen days earlier. They won again, 64-60, to earn a Final Four date with Michigan State, which had beaten them twice in the regular season and a third time in the Big Ten Tournament semis. Though Wisconsin's defense held the eventual champs to just 19 first-half points and 35% shooting for the game, the Spartans prevailed 53-41 as Wisconsin's own offensive issues came back to haunt them.

6. 1986 LSU Tigers

LSU needed double overtime just to upset #6 Purdue in their first round game, but they promptly ran to the Final Four by knocking out the top three seeds in the regional. The Tigers had been ranked 14th in preseason polls, but went just 9-9 in the SEC and entered the tournament as the #11 seed in the Southeast. They knocked off #3 Memphis State 83-81 in the second round (Memphis had been to the Final Four the previous year), then took out #2 Georgia Tech 70-64, and finally bumped off top seed Kentucky - which had beaten the Tigers three times already that season - by a slim 59-57 margin. Eventual champions Louisville ended LSU's giant-killing run with an 88-77 win in the national semis.

5. 1999 Gonzaga Bulldogs

In many ways LSU's run was more impressive than Gonzaga's. Heck, the Bulldogs were only a #10 seed, and they didn't even make the Final Four! But LSU plays in the SEC, after all. Gonzaga comes out of the unheralded (especially at the time) West Coast Conference, a conference only known previously for producing the 1990 Loyola Marymount team that might have cracked a slightly longer version of this list. But Gonzaga really kicked off the last decade-plus of mid-major darlings with their 1999 run that included a first round defeat of #7 Minnesota, a second round shock of #2 Stanford, and a 73-72 nail-biter over #6 Florida before finally falling to eventual champion #1 UConn in the regional final. Amazingly, despite their reputation as a Cinderella and despite their eventual rise as high as a #2 seed (in the 2004 tournament), Gonzaga has never again made it as far as the Elite Eight.

4. 2010 Butler Bulldogs

This would be higher except Butler was a #5 seed in the 2010 tournament - and if you can get a seed that high out of a mid-major conference, it usually means you were pretty good. Butler, in fact, was 28-4 entering the tournament and had gone undefeated in the Horizon League, with key out-of-conference wins over a ranked Ohio State team and Xavier. Even the most optimistic fans could not have expected what happened, though. After a commanding win over #12 UTEP in the first round, Butler slipped past #13 Murray State by just two points. In the Sweet 16, they jumped to a ten-point halftime lead on #1 seed Syracuse before giving it all back and then some in the second half. The Orange went up 54-50 with 5:28 to play on a Kris Joseph dunk... and then, right at the point when Cinderella has blown its lead and folds, Butler went on an 11-0 run over the next 4:54 to seal an eventual 63-59 win. Butler took a seven-point halftime lead on #2 Kansas State in the regional final en route to a 63-56 win, and then held off Michigan State, another #5 seed, 52-50 in the national semis to score a title game meeting with big bad #1 seed Duke. Playing in its home city of Indianapolis, the Bulldogs fought hard but eventually lost 61-59 when Gordon Hayward's half-court heave at the buzzer glanced off the backboard and rim, depriving us all of what would have been probably the greatest moment in NCAA Tournament history.

3. 2006 George Mason Patriots

If Gonzaga started the mid-major party of the last decade-plus, it was George Mason who finally accepted the invitation to crash into the Final Four. The Patriots tied for first during the regular season in the Colonial Athletic Association, but crashed out in the conference tournament semifinals and lost one of their best players to suspension (for punching an opponent in the junk) in the process. Entering the tournament as the East's #11 seed, Mason was an afterthought - at least until they knocked out #6 Michigan State and #3 North Carolina, both Final Four teams from the previous year, in the first two rounds. After taking out #7 Wichita State in an all-mid-major Sweet 16 affair, the Patriots took on top seed Connecticut, a talented team with a tendency to sleepwalk through long periods of big games, which had nearly cost them in an overtime win over #5 Washington in the Sweet 16. The Huskies led by nine at halftime after a 15-5 run over the final three minutes of the first half, but Mason crawled back to take the lead with 11:12 to go and neither team led by more than four afterwards. The Patriots were up 74-70 with 23 seconds to go, but UConn once again managed to force overtime on a Denham Brown layup at the buzzer. Unfazed, Mason went up 85-80 with 41 seconds left in overtime and hung on for the 86-84 win when Brown missed a three at the buzzer, completing a miracle run that saw defeats of three of the previous six national champions. The eventual champion Florida Gators ended Mason's Cinderella dream in the national semis; it would take Butler four years later to make the next step for mid-majors.

2. 2011 VCU Rams

The question is, can VCU (or, for that matter, this year's Butler team) win it all and take that final step? If this were last year, VCU's five wins would already have them in the title game; of course, if this were last year, VCU wouldn't even have made the field. Regardless of what they've achieved, the Rams were a curious at-large selection at best - they finished fourth in the CAA, behind a Hofstra team that ended up in the CBI Tournament, and although they took third place in the NIT Season Tip-Off with a win over UCLA, there wasn't much on their resume to suggest they belonged in the field over, say, a Colorado team that had beaten Kansas State three times. But there VCU was in the opening round game against USC for the right to be the Southwest Region's #11 seed. The Rams won that one, then faced #6 Georgetown... and shot the Hoyas out of the building, burying 12 three-pointers and never trailing after the 7:47 mark of the first half. They then did much the same to #3 Purdue, never trailing after the 5:54 mark of the first half. They had more trouble with #10 Florida State, going to overtime after failing to score in the final 3:14 of regulation, and needed a layup with six seconds left to pull out the 72-71 win. But just when you thought their magic had run out, they jumped out to a first-half lead of as much as 18 points on top seed Kansas and never trailed after the 14:02 mark of the first half en route to a stunning 71-61 win. My future brother-in-law, a Duke fan, commented that Butler would be going back to the title game after hearing that VCU had advanced. Um, haven't we learned better than to write VCU off by now?

1. 1985 Villanova Wildcats

They're not a mid-major, and so they could be passed by VCU should the Rams somehow win it all. But Villanova's run from the #8 seed to the 1985 national championship is surely the most incredible in the 64-team era. The Wildcats squeaked by #9 Dayton by just two points in the first round, then toppled #1 Michigan by four and #5 Maryland by three before shocking #2 North Carolina 56-44 to advance to the Final Four. Playing the only non-Big East Final Four team in Memphis, Villanova won 52-45 to set up a meeting with #1 Georgetown, the defending national champions and a team that had beaten Villanova twice during the regular season. This time, the Wildcats nearly threw a perfect game - they shot 22-of-28 from the floor and were 22-of-27 from the free throw line - and they needed every last one of those shots in a 66-64 win that saw Georgetown make 29-of-53 field goals but get to the line a mere eight times, making just six. Whether Villanova could have made a run like this with a shot clock (this was the last tournament without one) might be questionable, since it was their ability to wait for the perfect shot that enabled them to beat the Hoyas, but hey, they didn't have to. Until another team seeded this low wins it all, Villanova will own the most incredible run in the history of the 64 (or more)-team tournament.

List service

2011-03-27T01:11:00.009-05:00

It's been a while - I think nearly two years - since the last installment of "The List." So here's an updated one!

Holdovers

Amy Adams

Not going anywhere anytime soon. Still works regularly, still gorgeous. Does it disappoint me a little that red is not her real hair color? Yes. But I'm pretty sure I'll deal.

Freida Pinto

Actually, one thing that kind of works against Amy Adams in the long term is that I've found my taste leaning a bit more toward what one might call "exotic"-looking women lately. (Which is really to say, non-white. Of course anyone who knows me might take issue with the idea of "lately" given that my dating history is populated entirely by Asian girls, but I'm referring here to the women who catch my eye in the mass media, not always easy considering how many of those are white.) Freida Pinto is actually a holdover since I saw Slumdog Millionaire a couple years ago, but it's not like she's gotten any less hot. She seems to be working pretty steadily at the moment, with a couple big-budget releases on her list for 2011, so, score.

Newcomers

Danielle Fishel

Sort of unfortunate timing, as Danielle was the host of The Dish, a cousin of The Soup which aired on the Style Network and which was just canceled last week. Her presence on this list is owed as much to her humor, as exhibited on the show, as to her looks, but both are high-quality. And it's not just that she's attractive - her body type is probably one of the closest to Alma's in all of show business, and she owns it. That's something I can really get behind... er, appreciate.

Nasim Pedrad

Nasim sort of combines some of the major appeal of Freida Pinto and Danielle Fishel - she's funny, plus she's somewhat exotic-looking and is, for lack of a better word, pretty stacked. Also like Danielle Fishel until a week ago, she shows up on my TV at least once a week, making it a lot easier to maintain an infatuation.

Carling Coffing

At once a conventional and unconventional choice. Carling was the winner of a recent season of Big Break on the Golf Channel, so she's got some talent (Paula Creamer's inclusion in past iterations of the list being proof that that interests me), but she's still a pretty left-field and obscure choice for this list. It's easy to see why she makes it, though, with her classic girl-next-door type of hotness. The best Big Break episode was the one where she won a challenge early and therefore was able to spend much of the rest of the episode lounging around in a bikini. Pretty sure we both won that challenge, Carling.

Cardiac Arrest 'Cats

2011-03-24T01:11:00.003-05:00

You know what this was, really? It was the 2010 Outback Bowl with Auburn all over again. All the elements were there. Northwestern goes down early, then rallies, then looks to be down a disappointingly large amount with not much time left only to close fast and tie things at the end. And then came the punch to the gut, followed by a miracle reprieve... only to be followed by the actual loss.

Really, considering how poorly they shot the ball - particularly from three, where they were a gapingly bad 10-of-39 - it's amazing Northwestern was in this game at the end. But there they were, having just tied the score on a John Shurna layup - one of his few positive contributions to the game, frankly, and actually it was a goaltending call - with 4.2 seconds to go. It wasn't a lot of time, but it was enough for Washington State to race upcourt. The man with the ball - possibly Reggie Moore, though I don't remember now - raced into the lane. Either Shurna or Marcotullio managed to get in front of him just enough to force a pass underneath. It was kind of a wild pass, but as Drew Crawford lunged for it, he smashed into Abe Lodwick with 0.2 seconds on the clock. The officials called a foul.

I should say I'm not a huge fan of the foul call. It's hardly the worst call I'll ever see, but Crawford was clearly going for the ball and it wasn't a perfect pass that by all rights belonged to Lodwick. On the other hand, if Crawford just stops, there's no way Lodwick has enough time to corral the ball and put up a shot. At any rate, the foul was called, the officials huddled to see how much time was left, put 0.2 seconds back up, and Lodwick stepped to the line with the score tied at 64.

And he missed both.

This, of course, was the miracle reprieve. Crawford's foul was Demos hitting the upright, and Lodwick missing both shots was the roughing the kicker penalty. Unfortunately, the 'Cats didn't even get as close this time as their football counterparts did. While Markshausen was stopped just two yards short of the end zone to end the Outback, the Wildcats went down with a whimper in the overtime, perhaps as exhausted physically as I felt watching them. They went five minutes of overtime with just a single made basket, going just 1-for-10 from the field, and though they were tied at 66 as late as with 1:10 to go, they never really seemed in danger of winning. Washington State wasn't much better, but they were able to get three free throws, and that was enough to hold on. If just one of the 29 threes that Northwestern missed had fallen in regulation, they would have won.

Still, you have to be proud of the 'Cats. For one thing, they got farther than they ever have in the postseason. They went toe-to-toe with an arguably better team in a tough road environment and outworked them - even though Northwestern is a terrible rebounding team, they actually outrebounded Washington State, 34-33, and they had to in order to compensate for all the three-pointers they were bricking. They were 14-of-25 inside the arc, mostly on easy layups, and Carmody seemed frustrated at times by how often the players were willing to settle for difficult three-point looks when they were having so much success inside. On the other hand, Washington State played a pretty decent defensive game and did a good job not allowing too many looks like that.

The 'Cats showed heart. They were down as many as 14 in the first half, 31-17 with 4:22 left in the opening period. Then they went on a 14-7 run to close the half and opened the second with a 7-0 run to tie it and even had the lead a few times, though never by more than two and not later than the six-minute mark of the second half. You can't really argue that they were ever in a position to win the game - only once in the last two minutes of either the second half or OT did they have a shot in the air that would have given them a lead, Shurna's missed three with 33 seconds left and Washington State up 63-62. But they played until the end. Usually when Northwestern shoots their threes that badly they lose badly. This time, at least, they were in it until the horn sounded.

That's the life of a Northwestern sports fan these days - some highs, but ultimately a series of near misses in the big spots. Then again, considering where the football program was 30 years ago, and where the basketball program was even just a decade ago, I guess I'll take it. Sigh. Go 'Cats.

Back in Bracket

2011-03-14T22:02:00.005-05:00

I haven't watched much college basketball this year, although naturally I found myself utterly addicted to it during Tournament Week. Now it's time for the NCAA Tournament and of course I don't have the greatest sense for who's going to win. So get ready for a long post wherein I talk myself through all the regions. It's probably going to be utterly uninformative to anyone else (though I will be pulling info from elsewhere), but I only get to do this once a year, so whatever.

East Region

1) Ohio State vs. 16) Texas-San Antonio or Alabama State

8) George Mason vs. 9) Villanova

5) West Virginia vs. 12) Alabama-Birmingham or Clemson

4) Kentucky vs. 13) Princeton

6) Xavier vs. 11) Marquette

3) Syracuse vs. 14) Indiana State

7) Washington vs. 10) Georgia

2) North Carolina vs. 15) Long Island

Ohio State is the number one overall seed, which is funny if you saw Northwestern come within one basket of beating them on two separate occasions. They destroyed small-conference opposition this year, including a few teams in the field (Oakland, Morehead State and UNC-Asheville), so clearly the first round will pose no threat. But can they make it all the way to Houston? Their biggest threats are clearly UNC, Syracuse and Kentucky - I know the Big East is deep, but West Virginia as a 5 seed with 11 losses? Also, they lost to Minnesota. OSU-UK is the most likely matchup in the Sweet 16 and it could be a very interesting game between two teams with freshman stars. North Carolina also has freshman stars, which raises the question: could Syracuse's experience be a valuable asset in this region? Maybe, but first they would have to get past a similarly experienced Xavier squad that came within a double-overtime game of the Elite Eight last year. (Assuming Xavier can beat Marquette, of course. But Marquette is a 14-loss team. 14! I don't care what conference they play in, that's a lot.)

My picks:

First Round

Ohio State over UTSA/ASU

George Mason over Villanova

'Nova has lost seven of their last nine coming in, and the two wins were narrow escapes against Seton Hall and DePaul, not exactly the class of the Big East.

West Virginia over Clemson/UAB

It's weird this year because 11 and 12 seeds win first round games all the time, yet we won't know who two of them are until the night before the real games - it's a little harder to pick with that in mind, but I think WVU will probably beat either team here.

Kentucky over Princeton

Xavier over Marquette

Syracuse over Indiana State

Washington over Georgia

North Carolina over LIU

Second Round

Ohio State over George Mason

Kentucky over West Virginia

UK's top three scorers are all freshmen, which has to scare you a little, but they were super young last year too and still went to the Elite 8 - though they did lose to West Virginia once there... meh, I'm sticking with the team that didn't lose to Minnesota.

Xavier over Syracuse

Pickin' the upset here! Syracuse has made the Sweet 16 the last two years, but Xavier's made it the last three and they always seem to make a run. I think Syracuse is a bit overrated - Seton Hall, a bad team, mopped the floor with them in the Carrier Dome in January. They enter on a mild hot streak, but so does Xavier.

Washington over North Carolina

What??? Well, did you know that UNC also lost to Minnesota? Plus their best player is a freshman and their point guard is a freshman. Dangerous. UW's best three players are a junior and two seniors, plus they can score a lot of points. I do worry a little about their size against Zeller and Henson, but if they can make it into a shootout I like their chances.

Sweet 16

Ohio State over Kentucky

OSU's best player is a freshman, but with Diebler, Buford and Lighty they've got plenty of experience. Kentucky may have the size to slow down Sullinger, but OSU's more experienced guards should be able to get it done.

Xavier over Washington

When in doubt, take the team with the best player. I give Tu Holloway the nod over Isaiah Thomas.

Elite 8

Ohio State over Xavier

I like this to be a closer game than most would expect, but I can't make myself pick Xavier into the Final Four. OSU has big guards and even though Xavier has some size at the forward position and might actually be able to neutralize Sullinger if only through sheer volume, I don't know how Lyons and Holloway are going to guard Diebler and Buford and their several-inch height advantages.

One thoroughly incorrect bracket down, three to go.

West Region

1) Duke vs. 16) Hampton

8) Michigan vs. 9) Tennessee

5) Arizona vs. 12) Memphis

4) Texas vs. 13) Oakland

6) Cincinnati vs. 11) Missouri

3) Connecticut vs. 14) Bucknell

7) Temple vs. 10) Penn State

2) San Diego State vs. 15) Northern Colorado

Kind of a weird region. As the last #1 seed, Duke has to travel a long way from home for the regional in Anaheim - advantage Arizona (if they get past Memphis and Texas) and San Diego State (if they make it to the Elite Eight). I'm sure San Diego State is a good team, but did you notice that they haven't really played anyone this year? They made their bones on a win over Gonzaga in November; Gonzaga was ranked #12 then, but now they're an 11 seed. BYU took them out twice and had to lose a key forward before SDSU could beat them. I don't know. They don't have the hardest road here and they're much closer to home than Temple, Penn State, UConn and Cincy... but can a team that has never won a tournament game suddenly coast into the Elite Eight? Meanwhile on the other side, if Duke can get past the Sweet 16 matchup with either (presumably) Arizona or Texas, they're primed for another Final Four run. Ugh.

My picks:

First Round

Duke over Hampton

Tennessee over Michigan

27 combined losses between UT and UM, so hold your nose for this one. I picked Michigan elsewhere before actually doing any research, but their entire reputation seems based on taking Kansas to overtime. (They also lost to Minnesota at home and got blown out at Indiana.) Tennessee actually beat some quality teams, including #1 seed Pitt. They also look to be more experienced.

Arizona over Memphis

Texas over Oakland

Oakland's best player, Keith Benson, is a 6-11 senior center who goes for 18 and 10 a game. Oakland is also, get this, second in the country in scoring, 14th in rebounding, 17th in assists, and second in field goal percentage. Texas is an even better rebounding team, however, and they play in a real conference. The one thing to watch here is if Texas can guard Benson - the obvious assignment looks to be Tristan Thompson, a freshman who gives up three inches to Benson. If Benson can go for 25 and 10, and gets the appropriate help, Oakland could spring the upset. But I won't pick against a team that beat Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse.

Missouri over Cincinnati

Neither team had much in the way of marquee wins. Cincy got shellacked by Notre Dame in the Big East Tournament, and their best players just don't seem to be that great if you just look at the numbers. Missouri is a high-scoring team that should be able to hit free throws if it jumps out to a lead.

Connecticut over Bucknell

Bucknell, as a school, has upset experience (stunning Kansas from the same seed line in 2005), but this is the first tourney trip for everyone on the current squad. Though UConn may be a little tired from their five-day run through the Big East Tournament, and though they were really inconsistent over the last month and a half, it's hard to see how they lose this one.

Temple over Penn State

San Diego State over Northern Colorado

Second Round

Duke over Tennessee

Texas over Arizona

The game is in Tulsa, meaning Texas is likely to have a pretty sizable advantage in terms of fans.

Connecticut over Missouri

This one is slightly dangerous, because if Connecticut is tired from their Big East run, an up-and-down team like Missouri could be tricky for them. On the other hand, if Missouri doesn't play the greatest defense, Kemba Walker could eat them alive. And this is a UConn team that won at Texas this year, something Mizzou sure couldn't do. UConn will also have the fan advantage in Washington DC.

San Diego State over Temple

Sweet 16

Duke over Texas

This Duke team has been vulnerable on the road, losing at Florida State and Virginia Tech and getting blown out at St. John's - but while Anaheim is closer to Austin than to Durham, this isn't really "the road." I don't think Texas can match Duke's size and experience, sadly.

San Diego State over Connecticut

Another tough call, but SDSU has shown it can win against a team with a big scorer and maybe not enough extra help (BYU in the MWC final) and at this point UConn might just have asked Walker to do too much for too many games in too few days. Plus SDSU is in their backyard and UConn is three thousand miles away.

Elite 8

San Diego State over Duke

Man... am I really going to pick this? I guess I am. Call it wishful thinking if you must - SDSU has a lot of big bodies (although in a one-to-one matchup scenario they tend to give up an inch or two to Duke in most cases) and they'll be close to home, which routinely pans out as a major advantage in the tournament. Duke's road woes could catch up with them here, and given their injury issues I wouldn't put it past them to be additionally banged up by this point. My one big worry is that SDSU is not a great foul-shooting team.

Southwest Region

1) Kansas vs. 16) Boston University

8) UNLV vs. 9) Illinois

5) Vanderbilt vs. 12) Richmond

4) Louisville vs. 13) Morehead State

6) Georgetown vs. 11) USC or Virginia Commonwealth

3) Purdue vs. 14) St. Peter's

7) Texas A&M vs. 10) Florida State

2) Notre Dame vs. 15) Akron

Weird region, because I don't trust most of the high seeds any farther than I can throw them. To me it would be a massive upset if Kansas didn't coast out of this thing; I just don't buy Notre Dame at all (they lost to Northwestern just last year, and that was a team that still had Luke Harangody!), and none of Purdue, Louisville, Vandy or Georgetown excites me. I mean, I'm looking at Purdue in the Elite 8 right now. Really?

My picks:

First Round

Kansas over Boston University

UNLV over Illinois

Richmond over Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt stubbed its toe as a high seed in their last two appearances (2008 and 2010), and Richmond is a senior-heavy team that actually beat Purdue this year (though they also lost to a bad Georgia Tech team).

Louisville over Morehead State

Georgetown over USC/VCU

Hard to know what to do here, but by all accounts VCU is a team that has no business in the field at all, and while USC had some marquee wins (Arizona, at Washington, at Tennessee) and also a key close loss (by two at Kansas), they also had 14 losses, several of them awful (they lost to Rider by 20 points at home [!!!] as well as at a terrible TCU team). Georgetown is stumbling into the tournament having lost four straight, but I still think they can get by either of the potential 11 seeds, at least.

Purdue over St. Peter's

Texas A&M over Florida State

Notre Dame over Akron

Second Round

Kansas over UNLV

Louisville over Richmond

Purdue over Georgetown

Notre Dame over Texas A&M

Sweet 16

Kansas over Louisville

Purdue over Notre Dame

Elite 8

Kansas over Purdue

Not much to say there. I guess you could say this is the bracket I feel the surest about, which probably means USC will make the Sweet 16 and Notre Dame will get to the Final Four.

Southeast Region

1) Pittsburgh vs. 16) UNC-Asheville or Arkansas-Little Rock

8) Butler vs. 9) Old Dominion

5) Kansas State vs. 12) Utah State

4) Wisconsin vs. 13) Belmont

6) St. John's vs. 11) Gonzaga

3) BYU vs. 14) Wofford

7) UCLA vs. 10) Michigan State

2) Florida vs. 15) UC-Santa Barbara

This region, I think - and Seth Davis, for one, seems to agree - could break down like the 1998 Midwest Region. If you'll recall, that one featured top seed Kansas going out to #8 Rhode Island in Round Two; #12 Florida State and #13 Valparaiso both winning, and Valpo subsequently reaching the Sweet 16; and #3 Stanford finally emerging to make the Final Four. (I didn't trust most of the top seeds and so went with #5 TCU to make it out, to my later chagrin.) Now look at this one. You have Pitt as the one seed - good team, but are they great? Florida seems like a weak 2. It's hard to know what to expect out of BYU, and Wisconsin, Kansas State and St. John's all look like potential upsets, drawing three of the best mid-majors in the whole field.

My picks:

First Round

Pittsburgh over UNCA/UALR

Old Dominion over Butler

Of course Butler came up just short in the finals last year, but Gordon Hayward is gone. These teams have a common non-conference opponent: Xavier, who beat Butler but lost to ODU.

Kansas State over Utah State

Belmont over Wisconsin

Wisconsin has routinely underperformed its seed line, dropping to teams seeded at least five lines lower in 2007, 2008 and 2010. Belmont, meanwhile, is a high-scoring team that hits its shots, and if they can get out to a lead, Wisconsin's big advantages - clock management and hitting free throws - will be thoroughly negated. This was probably the one upset in the whole bracket that really jumped out at me, especially after Wisconsin scored just 33 points in the Big Ten semifinal against Penn State. Utah State definitely has a good chance of taking out KSU as well, but I was reluctant to pick the 12 and 13 here.

Gonzaga over St. John's

St. John's made its name this year as a giant-killer, with wins over Duke, Pitt, Notre Dame and UConn. They also lost to Fordham, St. Bonaventure and Seton Hall and will be playing without D.J. Kennedy, one of their top three guys. Gonzaga underachieved this year but they've won nine straight and have been here before.

BYU over Wofford

Michigan State over UCLA

Florida over UCSB

Second Round

Pittsburgh over Old Dominion

Kansas State over Belmont

I find Belmont intriguing, but Kansas State was in the Elite 8 just last year and still has the best players from that team. You don't see 13 seeds winning multiple games, even if Belmont has an argument for being underseeded.

BYU over Gonzaga

I'm not sure how BYU will handle 7-foot Gonzaga center Robert Sacre, but I think Fredette's scoring and a favorable crowd in Denver can get BYU to the Sweet 16.

Florida over Michigan State

Florida has some losses that really give one pause - Central Florida, home to Jacksonville and South Carolina - but Michigan State was so inconsistent this year it's a minor miracle they made it this far.

Sweet 16

Pittsburgh over Kansas State

Looks real good on paper, a battle between two experienced teams. Pitt looks like they have a little more talent, though KSU might have the best player. Nod to Pitt.

BYU over Florida

BYU beat Florida last year behind 37 points from Fredette, so why not again this year? The game is much closer to Florida, but Fredette hasn't shown a tendency to wilt on the road.

Elite 8

Pittsburgh over BYU

Fredette alone couldn't carry BYU past Kansas State in the second round last year, and I don't see him doing it here, but with no Brandon Davies, the Elite 8 would be a nice run.

So that's the four regions. How about the Final Four?

Final Four

Ohio State over San Diego State

The shooting touch of OSU's guards should carry the day here.

Kansas over Pittsburgh

Just don't see Pitt having an answer for the Morrises inside.

National Championship

Ohio State over Kansas

A tantalizing final, even if it is the top two seeds. How will Sullinger and the Morrises play each other? Can Kansas' guards keep up with the hot shooting of Ohio State's? In the end I think it's Buford and Diebler who win it for Ohio State, 76-72.

My fellow nerds and I will retire to the nerdery with our calculators

2011-02-18T20:00:00.003-06:00

Earlier today, I saw the following piece of trivia on ESPN.com's mobile site: "Derrick Rose is the first Chicago Bulls player to score 40 points in a game against the Spurs since Michael Jordan."

My first thought was: not bad.

My second thought was: how many Bulls players have scored 40 points in a game since Jordan left at all?

As it turns out, not very many. The Bulls, from the start of the 1998-99 season until now, have had just ten regular season games in which one of their players has scored 40 points. Rose's is one; Jalen Rose, Elton Brand and Luol Deng had one each; Jamal Crawford had two; and Ben Gordon had four. That's the entire list. Ten games, six guys. So it seemed like the fact that Rose was the first Bull to score 40 on the Spurs since Jordan wasn't too surprising given that very few Bulls since Jordan had scored 40 on anybody. (To put it another way, in Jordan's final 1997-98 season alone, he scored 40 points or more twelve times, plus twice more in the playoffs. Even adding the playoffs to every 1998-99 to 2010-11 Bull only gets them to eleven.) I posted as much on Facebook.

But then I started to wonder if that was unfair in a way, because 40 points is a pretty rare mark to hit unless you're a really elite scorer. In other words, it seemed fairly likely that most teams' records over the last thirteen seasons wouldn't look that much different from the Bulls', especially for teams that rarely had elite scorers and didn't spend the entire thirteen seasons or close to it with playoff caliber teams (as the Bulls were pretty lousy for almost half that span).

And so, thanks to the Basketball-Reference play index, I came up with the following numbers:

Most 40-point games: Lakers, 129

Not terribly surprising - 106 of those games belong to Kobe Bryant, and he also owns the highest-scoring single game in that span, with the infamous 81-point game.

Second-most 40-point games: 76ers, 70

All 70 belong to Allen Iverson. The 76ers have the second-most 40-point games total but are also the only team with just one player to score 40 in a game for them during the span.

Other teams with more than 40: Cavaliers 49, Wizards 43

42 of Cleveland's 49 belong to LeBron James, unsurprisingly. Gilbert Arenas leads the Wizards with 28, but 8 of the 43 are Michael Jordan - meaning that he almost had as many 40-point games as anyone who played for the Bulls even though he was at the end of his career and kind of washed up.

Mean 40-point games: 26.4
Median 40-point games: 20

129 is sort of an extreme outlier, so I also did the median, which gives you a more realistic number. In other words, the Bulls had half as many 40-point games as an "average" franchise during this span.

Teams with fewer 40-point games than the Bulls: Pacers (9), Jazz (9), Grizzlies (7), Bobcats (6), Clippers (5)

The Bobcats haven't existed the whole time, so it's a little unfair to them. The Clippers' number of five is even more pathetic when you consider that Blake Griffin has two of them just this year - and no one else has more than one. So in a 12-season span, there were just three Clippers games in which someone on their team scored 40 points. That is awful.

Most different players to score 40: Warriors, 10

Not really surprising when you think about the Warriors' style of play. The Warriors also had the most total 40-point games (29) for a team that didn't have any one player reach double figures (Monta Ellis had the most with seven).

Players to lead more than one team in 40-point games: Tracy McGrady (30 for Orlando, 15 for Houston) and Vince Carter (17 for New Jersey, 14 for Toronto)

McGrady had a 62-point game with the Magic, the highest single-game output during the period of anyone not named Kobe.

Is this the kind of thing that's only interesting to me and Joe Posnanski? Probably. But I'm posting it anyway, because what else am I going to do with it?

Here are the stats for every team, since I already bothered to look them up.

Team / 40 pt Games / Different players to score 40 / Player with most / Player with highest scoring game

Lakers / 129 / 4 / Bryant, 106 / Bryant, 81
76ers / 70 / 1 / Iverson, 70 / Iverson, 60
Cavaliers / 49 / 5 / James, 42 / James, 56
Wizards / 43 / 7 / Arenas, 28 / Arenas, 60
Thunder / 36 / 6 / Durant, 17 / R. Allen, 54
Heat / 36 / 4 / Wade, 31 / Wade, 55
Nuggets / 34 / 6 / Anthony, 19 / Iverson, 51
Magic / 34 / 4 / McGrady, 30 / McGrady, 62
Suns / 30 / 9 / Stoudemire, 15 / Delk, 53
Warriors / 29 / 10 / Ellis, 7 / Jamison, 51
Nets / 27 / 5 / Carter, 17 / Carter, 51
Rockets / 25 / 7 / McGrady, 15 / McGrady, 48
Raptors / 25 / 4 / Carter, 14 / Carter, 51
Knicks / 24 / 8 / Marbury, 5 / Houston, 53
Celtics / 21 / 2 / Pierce, 19 / Pierce, 50
Bucks / 19 / 6 / Redd, 11 / Redd, 57
Pistons / 19 / 4 / Stackhouse, 10 / Stackhouse, 57
Mavericks / 19 / 4 / Nowitzki, 16 / Nowitzki, 53
Kings / 16 / 4 / Kevin Martin, 6 / Webber, 51
Blazers / 13 / 7 / Roy, 4 / D. Stoudamire, 54
Hornets / 13 / 4 / Paul and West, 5 / Mashburn, 50
Spurs / 13 / 3 / Ginobili, 6 / Parker, 55
T-Wolves / 11 / 7 / Garnett, 4 / Garnett, 47
Hawks / 11 / 4 / J. Johnson, 6 / Abdur-Rahim, 50
Bulls / 10 / 6 / Gordon, 4 / Crawford, 50
Pacers / 9 / 5 / Granger, 4 / J. O'Neal, 55
Jazz / 9 / 5 / K. Malone, 3 / Millsap, 46
Grizzlies / 7 / 5 / Gasol and M. Miller, 2 / M. Miller, 45
Bobcats / 6 / 3 / G. Wallace, 4 / S. Jackson, 43
Clippers / 5 / 4 / Griffin, 2 / Griffin, 47

Ranking the state capitols so far

2011-01-21T18:27:00.004-06:00

I've checked 16 capitol buildings off the list since officially starting the project on August 27, 2009 - add to that Madison, where I'll be on Monday, and that's 17, or a third of the total, in 17 months. At that rate I'd be done by late 2013, although of course there's pretty much no way I'll keep up that pace - I hit eight capitals in two weeks this past summer, and nothing like that will be, or really even could be, repeated.

Nevertheless, we're off to a blazing start and one that at least puts me substantially ahead of the game even as the pace inevitably slows from one a month. But being at a third of the contiguous 48 got me to thinking about how I'd rank the various buildings in terms of their structural appeal. So, below, the rankings of the first 16 capitol buildings, a list that will be updated as new buildings are visited. This first time only, I'm going to start at the bottom and work my way forward; future updates to the list will probably be done starting at #1.

16. Dover, DE
I feel bad for not liking Dover, maybe because it seems kind of cliché. But there's no real way of getting around this one. It looks uninteresting on the outside - it wouldn't be out of place on a college campus. It isn't much more interesting on the inside - it doesn't have a true dome, and so it doesn't have anything on the interior but a flat skylight and no rotunda to speak of. The legislative chambers are fine but certainly nothing spectacular.

15. Carson City, NV
Not too far ahead of Dover, really, though at least it has a bit more history on its side. Drew already compared the building to a college admissions office when I first posted the photos last year. The first floor interior is maybe a little classier than Dover; the legislative rooms are probably more boring (and also now unoccupied). Ultimately I find the exterior a bit more appealing, and that accounts for most of the difference here.

14. Raleigh, NC
The first two visited for the project (Raleigh and Carson City) turn out to be two of the most boring so far. Perhaps not coincidentally, Raleigh also only holds the governor's office, with the state assembly having moved elsewhere. The exterior looks like a bank; the (former) legislative chambers are pretty blah; the dome is at least a dome, but really not much to speak of. It's not Raleigh's fault that 1840 was a less exciting architectural time than, say, 1880, but I have to call them like I see them.

13. Phoenix, AZ
For a structure built in 1901, the Phoenix capitol (which no longer houses any branch of government) is surprisingly not ostentatious, but between the desert climate and the fact that Arizona was not yet a state and wouldn't be for 11 more years, maybe it isn't so shocking after all. I like the building, and the copper dome is great, but it's pretty functional inside and outside, with the dome being the only signature feature - and while it's an attractive dome, there are many more impressive.

12. Concord, NH
Nice on the outside, but in kind of a quaint way - it lacks the oomph of many of the buildings we'll get to later. The Senate chamber is subdued; the House chamber looks like a college lecture hall. The interior architecture doesn't seem to have a single guiding principle and certainly is not built around a rotunda like in the most visually arresting capitols.

11. Annapolis, MD
This hurts, because I love the history of Annapolis and the state house in particular - but this isn't about history. The building is very appealing in its own way, but it lacks an imposing presence. More damningly, it's kind of a frankenbuilding - the line between the original building and the 1905 annex is pretty noticeable, and it seems pretty clear that the state would have happily knocked down the original if not for its grand historical value. The 1905 chambers are nice but not incredibly distinctive.

10. Trenton, NJ
Proving I'm not a homer. The exterior is nice enough (it seems to owe some inspiration to the French), but the dome is so hard to see from ground level in most places that it almost feels like an afterthought. The rotunda is fine but kind of meek. The chambers are okay but lack a real kick. This, like Annapolis, is a building that was first built in the late 18th century and then added onto rather than being replaced in the early 20th, and I think hurts it - most of the best ones coming up were built in the late 19th century to replace another building. Again, history is nice, but if we're just talking architecture, frankenbuildings are not the way to go.

9. Boise, ID
Great dome, reminiscent of a smaller version of the U.S. Capitol, and the interior is nice enough with lots of marble, but there isn't a lot going on - there's kind of a sterile feel compared to most of the others of this style, possibly because the building is a few decades newer. The legislative chambers are pretty straightforward and unadorned.

8. Providence, RI
Also bears some resemblance to the U.S. Capitol. Very similar to Boise in a lot of ways - I give it the nod for a couple reasons. One, even though the interior has a grand staircase in the middle, which cuts into the rotunda, there's a more open feel to that center section, and the interior of the dome is prettier and more complex than Boise's. Two, while the legislative chambers here are similarly just fine, there's the addition of the state reception room, a nice room and unlike any Boise has.

7. Richmond, VA
I was always tempted to put this one lower because it lacks a dome, but from the exterior it's still a pretty imposing structure, clearly a worthy house of government, and there's still a nice (if small) interior dome above the rotunda. Bonus points to Richmond also for doing a better job of integration with its older and modern portions, preserving the history of the original building nicely while not making the interior into a mess.

6. Boston, MA
Boston also comes in two parts, and it's also pretty noticeable because of the wide gap in style, but the more modern section is so nice that I can overlook it. Boston's dome is simple and attractive with its coating of gold leaf; the interior features many appealing spaces like the Hall of Flags with its stained glass skylight, the main staircase, the Senate reception room and the current House chamber.

5. Hartford, CT
The Eastlake/Victorian building would look good from the outside even without the mammoth golden dome, but the dome is great and really pops, making the structure jump out from hundreds of yards away. The interior is very appealing, though I might quibble that the rotunda is kind of small. The legislative chambers are nice spaces with lots of light; the atria have nice skylights, even if they were covered up when we were there.

4. Harrisburg, PA
The dome, with its distinct green terra cotta tiles, is a good start, although the remainder of the building's exterior isn't as distinctive as maybe it could be. The legislative chambers are both extremely fancy with their stained glass, huge paintings, and several-ton chandeliers. The Supreme Court room has a wonderful stained glass interior dome/skylight. The rotunda has a great view of the dome interior and an impressive central staircase. The governor's reception room is a great space. The new wing, built in the 1980s, doesn't add much, but it doesn't subtract as much as you'd think, either, especially since it wasn't just welded right to the back like most of the other buildings with more modern wings.

3. Albany, NY
Albany is an insanely impressive building, but a few things held it back from the top of this list. For one thing, it doesn't have a dome. It's a great building even from the outside, but something about it just doesn't scream "capitol." The Million Dollar Staircase is an incredible work of art; the House chamber is an amazing space; the Senate staircase has an awesome rose window; the Senate reception area is great and the Senate chamber, though we couldn't enter, looked darn good as well. But somehow the whole feels like slightly less than the sum of its parts - as awesome as everything is, there's a vague lack of cohesion about the place, with the time it took to build - more than three decades - quite probably contributing to that feeling. Also, the interior is labyrinthine and often feels more like some sort of museum than a seat of government. I can't argue with the appeal of the architecture, but I can argue with (a) how it hangs together and (b) its appropriateness for its purpose. I love this building, but with an overly complex interior plan I find myself ranking it just behind two buildings that are similarly attractive but a lot less difficult to navigate.

2. Springfield, IL
The tallest state house not built as a skyscraper, Springfield's capitol building is definitely an impressive structure on the outside. It has a great dome, but the interior of the dome is even nicer, with carved scenes of state history running around it and what looks like stained glass at the top. It's probably my favorite interior dome, which helps its position here. The legislative chambers aren't as impressive as Harrisburg's, but they're nice.

1. Des Moines, IA
I thought about this one for a while, but ultimately it has to be Des Moines, even if the weather sucked when I was there. From the outside it's a great building - the one golden dome is set off by four complementary domes, and the whole looks like a tsar's winter palace or something. The dome interior isn't Springfield's, but it's very nice; there's a great grand staircase with artwork all around it. The painting on the walls (often looking like wallpaper, but it's not) and the floor tile are terrific. There are multiple nice skylights - nothing to the level of the Harrisburg Supreme Court skylight, but plenty good. The state law library is a fantastic room with its great spiral staircases, balconies and stained-glass skylight. And the legislative chambers, while perhaps not as ornate as Harrisburg, have great ceilings and a lot of character. All told, this will be a tough one to top.

(If you want to see pictures of a lot of the architecture mentioned here, you can check out my albums on Facebook. Or Google would probably work just fine.)

Airports again

2011-01-16T11:26:00.002-06:00

Travels with Alma in December and January have yielded a total of eight new airports for me in the space of a month, taking my total from 45 (33 D, 12 I) when last I updated on 1/25/10 to 54 (42 D, 12 I) today (as I also added a new one in the summer). New airports in bold in the list below, with some explanation/discussion.

Domestic
ALB - Albany, NY
ATL - Atlanta, GA
AUS - Austin, TX
BOI - Boise, ID. Alma's ninth interview of the season, and sixth road interview, was in Boise.
BOS - Boston, MA
CLE - Cleveland, OH
CLT - Charlotte, NC
CMH - Columbus, OH
CVG - Cincinnati, OH
DCA - Washington National, DC
DEN - Denver, CO
DFW - Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
DSM - Des Moines, IA. Alma's eighth interview of the season, and fifth road interview, was in Des Moines. DSM came in the middle of a full week on the road and was surrounded by layover airports I'd been to before - we flew in from DFW and out to DEN.
EWR - Newark, NJ
GSO - Greensboro, NC. This one came back in December; Alma's first interview was up by Roanoke, VA, but it was cheaper to fly into GSO and drive the two-plus hours up to Roanoke than it was to fly into ROA. The airport technically knows itself as Piedmont Triad International Airport (I love that name), serving the triad of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point, and it often refers to itself as PTI, which I think is just kind of confusing. Airports shouldn't be able to call themselves by three-letter names that aren't their IATA codes, don't you think? The PTI code appears to be assigned to Port Douglas, Australia, a small airfield in northern Queensland, so there's not much risk of confusion, but still.
IAD - Washington Dulles, DC
IAH - Houston, TX
ISP - Islip/Long Island, NY. Alma's fifth interview, and second road interview, was on Long Island.
JFK - New York JFK, NY
LAS - Las Vegas, NV. We had a few layovers during the Dec/Jan travel, but the only one that added a new airport to my list was the return from Boise to Chicago. I wasn't a big fan of Las Vegas - it does have Carvel, but it was crowded, noisy, seemed dated, and was large without having a lot of benefit to that size (our longest in-airport walk of the trip came between terminals here). Maybe I would have written that off if I liked gambling, but I don't.
LAX - Los Angeles, CA
LGA - New York LaGuardia, NY. The only new one of the past year that didn't come from Alma's interview trips, we flew in here in July for the week in New Jersey to see Man City play, among other things. My mom seemed surprised that LGA was a new airport for me, and perhaps it wasn't, but if I ever went through it before it would have been at a very young age and I certainly didn't remember.
MDW - Chicago Midway, IL
MKE - Milwaukee, WI. Mom was also surprised that I'd never used this one, but I'm pretty sure that was the case. We flew out of here in December to go to GSO because it was literally hundreds of dollars cheaper to drive to Milwaukee, fly back to ORD, and then fly from there to GSO than it was to just go to ORD and fly right to GSO. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how this makes sense - presumably United figures that most people who need to go ORD-GSO will simply suck it up and pay the 700 bucks, having no real option because most would not bother to drive all the way to MKE. But it still seems really strange to me. The one nice thing is that this enabled me to go on what I'm pretty sure was the shortest flight of my life, as MKE-ORD is less than 20 minutes from takeoff to landing.
MOB - Mobile, AL
MSP - Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
MSY - New Orleans, LA
OAK - Oakland, CA
ORD - Chicago O'Hare, IL
ONT - Ontario, CA. We flew in here for Alma's seventh interview, and fourth road interview.
PHL - Philadelphia, PA
PHX - Phoenix, AZ
PIT - Pittsburgh, PA. We flew in here for Alma's sixth interview, and third road interview. The Pittsburgh airport is amazingly huge for the volume of passengers it actually serves; it has so much land area that ORD and ATL, the two biggest airports in the country and world by volume, could both fit inside its borders. Yet it seemed pretty empty when we were there, probably because it has way more space than it needs for the people who use it.
RDU - Raleigh/Durham, NC
RIC - Richmond, VA
RNO - Reno, NV
SAN - San Diego, CA
SAT - San Antonio, TX
SEA - Seattle/Tacoma, WA
SFO - San Francisco, CA
SJC - San Jose, CA
SLC - Salt Lake City, UT

International
AKL - Auckland, New Zealand
BNE - Brisbane, Australia
CCS - Caracas, Venezuela
CPT - Cape Town, South Africa
JNB - Johannesburg, South Africa
LGW - London Gatwick, UK
LHR - London Heathrow, UK
MNL - Manila, Philippines
NRT - Tokyo Narita, Japan
SID - Sal Island, Cape Verde
SYD - Sydney, Australia
TBH - Tablas, Romblon, Philippines

My slightly weird Long Island rental car experience

2011-01-05T16:09:00.003-06:00

Alma and I went to Long Island this week for one of her interviews. Our flight was a late departure, scheduled to get into Islip at 10:50 pm. Since the standard rental brands (like Avis and Hertz) that were located at the airport closed at 11 pm, I had to take a flyer on "E-Z Rent-a-Car," an off-brand and off-terminal company which had the virtue of remaining open until midnight. But then it turned out that the flight was delayed almost an hour and we didn't get to Islip until 11:45. Panicking slightly, I pulled out my phone as soon as we landed and called the number I had for them, hoping to confirm that they would stay open just long enough for me to get a car.

Guy: "Hello?"
Me: "Hi, um, is this E-Z Rent-a-Car?"
Guy: "Yeah, yeah, sure."

He told me to take the shuttle bus to the Holiday Inn and met us in the parking lot with the car a few minutes past midnight, inviting us to put our bags in the trunk before we went inside to the office to do the paperwork. (My immediate thought, which I brushed aside as paranoid nonsense: "His accomplice will come and drive the car away while we're inside!" Alma later told me she had thought the exact same thing.)

The "office" turned out to be a glorified closet off a small corridor just behind and to the right of the Holiday Inn's front desk. The door had a piece of paper taped to it with "E-Z Rent-a-Car" printed on it. The office contained a desk with two chairs in front of it (and one behind it), with a laptop on the desk and a printer on the back shelf. After taking my license and credit card and slowly entering the information by hand into a laptop, the guy spent several minutes trying to print a receipt, but never got the printer working. Eventually he slowly copied all the information from the screen onto a form, by hand, and gave me a copy. He said he would probably run the credit card "tomorrow." When I asked where to drop the car off on Wednesday, he told me I could bring it to a nearby gas station, and the guy there would give us a ride back to the airport. Which is, in fact, what ended up happening Wednesday morning.

All this was vaguely weird and makes for kind of a funny story, but I have to say that it was really no better or worse than any rental car experience I've had, all things considered. I had a car, it was fairly cheap, I got a ride back to the airport... and hey, if we had been talking about a national brand, instead of an obvious off-brand franchise, would the guy have waited after midnight for us? Maybe not.

The Amazing Rays

2010-10-10T15:34:00.003-05:00

You might not know it, but the Rays and Rangers are making history with their first-round series, one which hopefully leaves the winner with Yankee-killing momentum. How so, you ask?

There have been 96 best-of-five series in baseball history prior to this year, between the League Championship Series from 1969 to 1984, the 1981 Division Series, and the modern Division Series from 1995 until 2009. Of those 96, only 26 - 27% - went the full five games. And of those 26, ten - 38% - saw one team go down 2-0, then rally back to force a fifth game. They were:

1972 ALCS: Oakland 3, Detroit 2
1981 NLDS: LA Dodgers 3, Houston 2
1981 NLDS: Montreal 3, Philadelphia 2
1981 ALDS: NY Yankees 3, Milwaukee 2
1982 ALCS: Milwaukee 3, California 2
1984 NLCS: San Diego 3, Chicago Cubs 2
1995 ALDS: Seattle 3, NY Yankees 2
1999 ALDS: Boston 3, Cleveland 2
2001 ALDS: NY Yankees 3, Oakland 2
2003 ALDS: Boston 3, Oakland 2

A couple of interesting things here. First, in not all of these cases did the team rallying to force a fifth game win the series. The '81 Brewers and Phillies, along with the '72 Tigers, were able to force a fifth game but still lost the series. The other seven, however, all won three straight. That bodes well for the Rays, who evened up their series 2-2 with their second win in Texas today. History gives them a 70% chance of winning on that alone.

Consider this, though: prior to 1998, best-of-five series formats went 2-3, with the team having home field getting the last three games. So seven of the ten series above were played like that, and of those seven, four involved the home team winning all five games - i.e. the winning team going down 2-0 but then winning three straight at home (the '81 Dodgers, '82 Brewers, '84 Padres and '95 Mariners). So in some respects we can't really judge based on these, because series are now played 2-2-1.

And that is really where we get into history. Prior to now, only two teams ever opened a five-game series with two road wins, then lost the next two games at home. They were the '01 A's and the '81 Yankees.

The '81 Yankees won the first two games of their series in Milwaukee, then had three straight at home in which to clinch it - they dropped the first two, but won Game Five.

The '01 A's won the first two games of their series in New York, but after dropping Games Three and Four in Oakland, they had to go back to New York for Game Five... which they lost.

In other words, there has never been a five-game series in which the road team won all five games. The only analogous series to what the Rays/Rangers have done is the '01 ALDS, and if that "pattern" holds, the Rays will win Game Five. If the Rangers win, not only will they be the first team to win a five-game series in which the road team won every game, but they will be just the third team (after the '72 A's and '81 Expos) to take a 2-0 lead in a five-game series, blow the lead, but then win the fifth game on the road to take the series anyway (and just the fourth team to come back to win after letting the series go from 2-0 to 2-2).

So things would seem to look pretty good for the Rays (except for the part where they have to face Cliff Lee in Game Five). One other thing to consider, though. Out of the 26 series that went to five games, however they got there, the deciding Game Five has been won by the home team 14 times and the road team 12 times (including five of the last six). So overall, the chances of the home team winning Game Five are 54% - not much better than even.

Joshymandias, king of kings

2010-08-17T18:21:00.005-05:00

You all remember Josh Hamilton. Inspiring comeback story, baseball talent, winner of the 2008 Home Run Derby (no?). Well, here's something you may not know: he's now the best player in baseball. I know, I know - usually it takes more than 1.5 good seasons to get you this title. Don't tell that to Tom Verducci.

Just another night in the life of the best player in baseball went something like this, at least as far as last Friday the 13th:

• Smash four hits all over the park: a single to left, a 440-foot bomb to center, a single and double to right.

• Score from third base on a pop fly to deep shortstop/short left.

• Score from second base on a ground ball to second.

• Make a diving catch on the warning track and a leaping catch against the centerfield wall.

• Cause the third-base coach to halt a runner from scoring from second on an otherwise routine run-scoring single to centerfield.

Verducci's breathless bullet points, not to mention the use of "just another night," suggest that Hamilton does this literally every day. Is Hamilton having a great season? Yes. Is this ridiculous cherry-picking? Also yes. Why, just six days earlier, he went 0-for-4 with a strikeout!

The "score from second base on a ground ball to second" piece is a tad disingenuous; while it was heads-up baserunning on Hamilton's part, it's not like he turned into the Flash - there were two outs, he was moving with the pitch, the ball was a fairly slow roller up the middle which the second baseman tried to throw to first off-balance. Hamilton is hardly the only guy in baseball who could have scored there. His "diving catch on the warning track" also wasn't; Hamilton caught the ball on the run (a good but not insane play) and then fell forward and slid onto the warning track. If you have to embellish what he's doing, was it as great as you want to claim?

• Crush the postgame spread.

Fortunately we determine the best player in baseball by how many cold cuts they can consume in one sitting.

• Throw around hundreds of pounds of iron in a postgame weightlifting session.

• Gulp down a 2,000-plus-calorie protein shake, made with real cream, on the car ride home.

Oh my God... REAL CREAM??? Move over, Albert Pujols! (For the record, this was the point at which Verducci completely lost me. Real cream? Who the fuck cares?)

• Sit down for a full home-cooked meal by his wife. (Yes, for those of you scoring at home, that's the equivalent of three full meals just between the last out and bedtime.)

And for those of you who don't care - i.e. everyone - you might realize how irrelevant this is to the story. I guess maybe it's an attempt to add "color," but Josh Hamilton's eating habits are really just wholly immaterial to the case for why he might or might not be the best player in baseball.

The legend of Josh Hamilton, Texas Ranger, is growing on a nightly basis. There is nobody like him in baseball, and possibly nobody this good, this big, this fast and this unique -- a 6'4", 235-pound sledgehammer of a hitter who can run balls down in center field and fly around the bases and hit for such a high average -- since Mickey Mantle in his prime.

He's really good. He's also 29, injury-prone, and in the middle of only his second good season. Last year his OBP was .315. And if he can fly around the bases, why does he only have eight steals?

Hamilton leads the league in batting (.362), slugging (.634), hits (161) and total bases (282). The rest of the league is playing for second place in the MVP race. He has no contemporaries, especially when you consider that the Rangers, somewhat against their better judgment, have started him 26 times in center field.

Miguel Cabrera is 19 points ahead of Hamilton in OBP and dead-even in slugging. Hamilton leads in VORP because he plays in the outfield and he does play for a better team, which means he probably has an edge in the MVP race. But this isn't that open and shut, Jizzy McFawnalot. His UZR - and just because he has played in center doesn't change the fact that he mostly plays in left, typically viewed as the easiest OF defensive spot - is 5.8, which is positive but hardly superlative. Also, UZR is typically considered to be a stat where you have to look at a three-year span to get anything of value out of it, and in 2008 - when he played mostly in center - Hamilton was a total butcher.

So, he's good, okay? And this year he's having a pretty awesome season. But I think maybe he needs to show he can produce consistently before we anoint him the best player in baseball.

How rare is that kind of skill set? The last three players to have batted .360 and slugged .600 while playing that much center field are none other than Mantle in 1957, Stan Musial in 1948 and Joe DiMaggio in 1939.

Now, are there any more questions about who is the best player in baseball this year?

Sigh. To be fair, Verducci does qualify it with "this year," although his glistening prose throughout the rest of the article doesn't really suggest that he's limiting the title to nothing but the here and now. You can't just hand out a title like "best player in baseball." The yearly title is the MVP; the other is a more honorary title which, right now, clearly belongs to Albert Pujols. (Who, by the way, just hit 30 home runs for the tenth straight season, aka every single one of his career.)

"He's certainly in the discussion," Texas GM John Daniels said. "You rarely see a guy perform at this level for this length of time."

Uh, what length of time? Okay, yes, since June 1 he's been thoroughly ridiculous: .454/.482/.815 in June, .418/.468/.704 in July, .362/.455/.617 in August so far. I don't know that we've seen months like that since Barry Bonds' heyday in the first half of the 2000s (lest we forget, Bonds' line in 2004 was .362/.609/.812 - and that's for the whole season, not two months). With numbers like that, this probably isn't your run of the mill hot streak. But it's still just two-plus months.

In 65 games since June 1, just when the Texas heat is supposed to wilt players, Hamilton has hit .423. He also sets himself apart from other great sluggers because he is one of the game's best base runners and can play Gold Glove-caliber defense in the middle of the field. He has made 14 of his past 24 starts in center field.

Hamilton is listed by Baseball Reference as being one run above average as a baserunner. Baseball Prospectus lists his EqBRR as 2.1, 48th in the majors. He has 8 steals, as mentioned. He's fine. I think "one of the game's best base runners" may be pushing it. And if he were really a Gold Glover in center, why does he not start there every night? If it's because he would get hurt... well, I'm sorry, but you can't tell me a guy is the best at a position he typically can't play because of injury concerns.

Baseball doesn't have official player rankings as does golf and tennis, though its No. 1 player typically has caused little debate -- from Ken Griffey Jr. to Barry Bonds to Alex Rodriguez to Albert Pujols. Pujols' consistency is remarkable, especially measured against Hamilton's career. Hamilton is 29 and only 16 months older than Pujols, but has yet to play 100 games in back-to-back seasons -- minors or majors. But in the snapshot of today's game, based on skill set and production right now, Hamilton is the new BPB -- Best Player in Baseball. At the end of the year he could wind up with the batting title, MVP, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove and All-Star Game election, all for a first-place team.

He means 16 months younger than Pujols. At any rate, this is what I'm getting at - the "snapshot" issue. You can't award the best player in baseball "title" based on a snapshot of 2/3 of a season! (Pujols, by the way, is having his typically ridiculous year, in a manner so consistent that we don't even seem to give him credit anymore. Oh, .315/.409/.586 with 30 homers by mid-August? Yawn.)

As for the rest of it, Hamilton will probably win the batting title barring a total collapse, but so what? It will take some doing for him to finish first in OBP, a more meaningful stat. I doubt he will win a Gold Glove since he mostly plays left; All-Star Game election and Silver Slugger are meaningless. MVP would be nice for him, but it's also pretty meaningless.

Ironically, I suspect that the very reason why Hamilton gets slobbered over so heavily by guys like Verducci is precisely because he hasn't really done it before. The guy is 29 and is playing just his second full season, and putting up great stats. But rather than assume this could be some sort of fluke season, Verducci falls all over himself to talk about how the guy has just become the best player in baseball. Let me throw another age 29 season at you:

Player X, 2005: .335/.418/.662, 46 HR, led league in hits, 2B, BA, SLG, OPS/OPS+ and TB

As you can probably guess if you're a Cubs fan, those numbers belong to Derrek Lee. Yes, Lee is a first baseman, but he's an excellent defender there and he was only a couple runs worse on the basepaths than Hamilton has been this year. Now, while people certainly talked about how good the season was, you didn't see anyone suggesting that Lee was turning into the best player in baseball. In part this was because of Albert Pujols (whose season was about as good overall) and in part it was because this was Lee's seventh full season in the bigs. Anyone who'd been paying attention knew that it was unlikely that he was quite this good. (And, as it turned out, he wasn't, though injuries did him no favors.) But with Hamilton, he's a relative blank slate. When he tears it up for two months, that becomes the story of the man. We don't have five or six years of data we can throw out to show that he's clearly playing well above his typical level. He has no "typical level" yet. So hey, for all we know, this is his typical level! Next year he'll hit 75 home runs and reach base seven times out of ten!

The game last Friday against Boston belongs in a time capsule, so that when somebody who never saw him play wonders what Hamilton could do on a baseball field, just that one game will suffice.

Oh, Jesus Christ. He's not Willie Mays, Tom. Josh Hamilton is going to need to have a lot more games just like that one before it will even occur to historians to wonder what he could do on a baseball field.

"There aren't many days when Josh goes 0-for-4," Daniels said, "but if it does happen there are so many other ways he can help us win a game. Josh can influence the outcome of a game with his bat and glove.

In fact, there have been fifteen such days this year. Sure, that's not many, I guess. It's five fewer than Pujols has. It's also five more than Cabrera has. Whatever. Also, if you go 0-for-4 and don't reach base, I don't know if there are "so many other ways" you can help your team win a game, particularly if you are the everyday left fielder.

"And when he goes from first to third, he's able to turn it on with his head up and without breaking stride and can see the ball or the coach. I was fortunate to see Larry Walker one year in Colorado. He runs the bases like that. He runs with his head up at full speed. He accelerates to full speed quickly, cuts the bases perfectly, and all the while his eyes are where they're supposed to be."

To the tune of one or two runs above an average player whose eyes are flying all over the place.

Walker and Bonds are the only outfielders in the past 50 years to hit .360 with 30 homers -- measurements within Hamilton's grasp. The men to do it before them were Mantle, Musial, DiMaggio and Ted Williams.

Walker played at Coors Field. Bonds was on the juice. So really, Josh Hamilton is the greatest player of this generation! Let's just come out and say it.

Also, Bonds and Walker did it twice each. So did Williams. Mantle, DiMaggio and Musial all had at least one other .350/30 season. Can we stop pretending that Hamilton is in the same class as those guys because he's having a big year?

Hamilton is nothing more than a breathtaking comet for the moment. He has no real career to speak of and no certainty to his future. He threw away his early years in baseball because of drug addiction, endured an alcohol-related relapse last year, and his years trying to remain clean have been marred by injuries. He has played fewer major league games than Billy Butler, the 24-year-old Kansas City first baseman.

And yet... he is the best player in baseball, a title he took over from Kevin Maas.

New Rangers owner Chuck Greenberg would love to lock up Hamilton this winter to a contract extension that buys out at least one year of free agency. (Hamilton is under Texas' control for two more arbitration-eligible seasons.) But what kind of length could be guaranteed when his body of work, however great, is so checkered? His value is complicated, too, by the oddity of not earning free agent rights until he is 31 years old. Remember, age matters in baseball now. There is not one player today in his age 36 season or older who is healthy and has an OPS better than .800.

Ladies and gentlemen, the BEST PLAYER IN BASEBALL! He has a "checkered body of work" and it's doubtful he can sustain his production for five more years! Would you ever see a paragraph like this written about Albert Pujols? No, you would not.

Just for argument's sake, you could draw a faint comparison to Kevin Youkilis, another rare late bloomer, who signed his extension with the Red Sox in 2009 at age 29 -- Hamilton's age now -- and with two arbitration years remaining and coming off a year in which he finished third in MVP voting. He signed for $41.125 million over four years. Here's how Youkilis' numbers then match up with those of Hamilton now:

Kevin Youkilis vs. Josh Hamilton
Player Age G HR RBI AVG/OBP/SLG OPS
Youkilis 29 553 66 314 .289/.385/.472 .857
Hamilton 29 447 87 311 .310/.370/.541 .911

Hamilton will have bigger numbers and more awards on which to bargain. He will lack the bigger body of work. The Rangers briefly discussed a contract extension with Hamilton in spring training of 2009, shortly after Youkilis signed, but the club hit a financial downward spiral that eventually led to bankruptcy and Hamilton played only 89 games while spending two stints on the disabled list. Both developments put extension talks off to the side.

Those numbers aren't that different, by the way. They also mask the fact that while Hamilton had more eye-popping stats, Youkilis was far more consistent.

In the meantime, the Rangers will do the best they can to keep Hamilton healthy, which is why they need center fielder Julio Borbon to hit. If Borbon doesn't hit, the Rangers have to play Hamilton more in center field than they would like, with David Murphy in left field and Nelson Cruz, when he recovers from a hamstring strain, in right field. They also need to give Hamilton a few more days at DH while resting Guerrero.

Am I the only one confused by the seeming idea that the Rangers aren't sure how to handle the playing time of the best player in baseball? Shouldn't "not being made of porcelain" be a valuable quality for such a player as well?

"It's hard to take Josh out of the lineup," Daniels said.

Yes, I imagine that would be true if he were the best player in baseball. Or even if he were pretty good.

Who knows how long Hamilton can keep up this pace? He already has dealt with tendinitis in his right knee this month. But for now, the sight of a guy built like an NFL strong safety crashing into walls, blasting long home runs, flying around the bases, and chasing a batting title with a 22-point lead on Miguel Cabrera is something to behold. There is nothing like it in baseball.

As Winston Wolf would say, let's not start sucking each other's dicks just yet. Hamilton is having a great season. But is there really nothing like it in baseball? He's a good outfielder (this year) and a good baserunner but he isn't the second coming of Willie Mays and Rickey Henderson rolled into one. The fact that he's "built like an NFL strong safety" is irrelevant. Joe Mauer had an offensive season not unlike Hamilton's last year, from the more valuable catching position. Joey Votto is tearing it up this year (albeit from first base). Both of those guys are multiple years younger than Hamilton. Hanley Ramirez has 30-homer power, 50-steal speed, and has won a batting title by hitting over .340, plus he's three years younger than Hamilton and plays shortstop (albeit not well). Carlos Gonzalez is 24 years old, has played the outfield better than Hamilton over the past three years, has a better EqBRR, and is hitting .321 with 25 homers this season. But I guess he doesn't look like Troy Polamalu, so therefore he sucks.

Josh Hamilton is having a great year. But can we please rein it in? Let's at least see him stay healthy enough to do it a second time before we anoint him the greatest talent in a sport that's clearly full of equally good players right now.

(One other thing I should probably mention: Hamilton plays in Texas, where the ball flies out of the yard, especially during the hot summers. Of his 26 homers, 18 have come at home. His road OPS is a pedestrian .887; at home, it's 1.196. His home BABIP is .424, for crying out loud. For that matter, his overall BABIP is .398, aka exceptionally lucky. Pujols', by comparison, is .301 or almost exactly league average. Ted Williams' career BABIP was .328, so you can't possibly claim that Hamilton is just that good. It's a FLUKE, people.)

Capital ideas

2010-07-29T22:33:00.008-05:00

I don't know if you've been keeping up with The Capitol Dome Project - I'd be kind of shocked if you were, especially since the three people who would read this and might care have probably already seen most of the pictures on Facebook - but we're up to six and we're still a month shy of one year, with a number of additional capitals looming on the horizon (as I'm looking to hit at least eight and possibly as many as ten during a two and a half week visit to the Northeast at the end of August). Being a massive dork, I'm of course already quite excited about getting nearly a third of the way through the list, and it's gotten me thinking seriously about the best way to get to each capital. It's listmaking time!

Alabama
Southwest, my airline of choice these days (in spite of their relatively insufferable open seating policy), has nonstop flights from Chicago to Birmingham. From there it's about 90 miles south on I-65 to Montgomery.

Alaska
This will be one of the toughest ones, as I'm sure you could guess. There's really only one way to get into Juneau, and that's by air - and there aren't exactly direct flights from Chicago. Orbitz says that Alaska Airlines will fly you there with just a single stop in Anchorage, which isn't bad (and all on Boeing 737s, assuaging my fear of having to take a prop plane into Juneau itself). Of course, that'll run you like 800 bucks.

Arizona
Done. (Southwest flies directly into Phoenix.)

Arkansas
Southwest has nonstop flights from Chicago to Little Rock.

California
Most Southwest flights to Sacramento seem to require a stopover, but they still get you there quickly enough.

Colorado
Southwest has a lot of nonstop flights from Chicago to Denver.

Connecticut
Finally we get to one that isn't just planes. Flying to Hartford is an option - Southwest has nonstops - but this one is likely to be visited on my trip east. The only real question is whether it's going to be feasible to visit it on the way from DC to Boston - something like a seven-hour drive in the best-case scenario. Hartford is in the latter half of the drive, meaning we'd have to leave DC pretty early in the morning, perhaps 8 am, to get there at a reasonable time to tour the capitol (and even then, that leaves very little time to see/do anything else; I don't know about most people who do this sort of thing but I find it a little lame to just be in and out, although that is what happened with Trenton for the most part). The other option is to get to Boston first and then go back to Hartford (an 80-mile drive or so) on one of the days up there. This seems sort of ridiculous since we have to drive through Hartford to get to Boston... but I don't know what to tell you.

Delaware
Not only can you really not fly to Dover, it's not even that easy to drive there - the capital is located in the middle of a state that only has interstate highways in its northernmost piece. Fortunately, Dover is a quick 100-mile drive from DC (mostly on US 301). I expect this will get a visit in August.

Florida
Tallahassee is surprisingly hard to get to, but you do have to consider its driving distance from Florida's four main cities - 164 miles from Jacksonville, 243 miles from Tampa, 260 miles from Orlando, and 480 miles from Miami. Southwest does fly to Jacksonville, but 164 miles is a lot when you've already had to fly in somewhere (though not a deal-breaker), and they just added service to Panama City. Google Maps lists the drive from ECP to Tallahassee as a "mere" 128 miles.

Georgia
Flying right into Atlanta is the obvious way to go given the size of Atlanta's airport, though unfortunately Southwest does not fly there. Pretty much everyone else does, of course.

Hawaii
Obviously flying into Honolulu is the only choice. It's cheaper than flying to Juneau, at least. This will likely be one of the last ones I reach unless we decide to go to Hawaii on our honeymoon.

Idaho
Southwest flies into Boise, though not nonstop from Chicago.

Illinois
Done. (I-55 south is the only reasonable course of action from Chicago.)

Indiana
While Southwest does fly to Indianapolis - and for just 59 bucks one way! - it's ridiculous for me to fly into a city that I can drive to in under four hours, especially given the additional cost of either car rental or cabs. Most of the drive is a straight shot down I-65, which is pretty simple.

Iowa
A bit of a challenge. Driving seems obvious, but Des Moines is somewhere between five and six hours away by car, right on the edge of what I would consider acceptable for a single road trip. You can fly there... on a commuter jet... for 300 bucks. I think I'll drive, thanks, but ironically, given the length of the trip and the general lack of other things to do there (no offense, Des Moines), this will probably not get checked off the list anytime soon even though it's just one state over.

Kansas
Topeka is a little more than an hour west of Kansas City on I-70, and Southwest flies nonstop to Kansas City for dirt cheap.

Kentucky
According to Google Maps, it's actually only 8 miles further from Chicago to Frankfort than from Chicago to Des Moines. However, it's extremely easy and inexpensive to fly into Louisville, and a quick hour-long drive east on (mostly) I-64 from Louisville to Frankfort.

Louisiana
Southwest flies nonstop to New Orleans, and it's about 90 minutes west on I-10 from there to Baton Rouge.

Maine
Another one that is a little trickier than it might sound. I'm hoping to make the drive up while based in the Boston area during my August trip, but at more than three hours each way, we'll have to see if it can be squeezed in. Should I need to do it later, Southwest does fly nonstop to Manchester, NH, but it's still more than two and a half hours from there.

Maryland
The easiest one left and my vote for "capital I'm most likely to visit next." It's less than an hour from my parents' house in the DC suburbs to Annapolis, and I'm sure I'll make the trip while I'm out there in August.

Massachusetts
The second easiest one left as I'm all but certain to be in the Boston area on the same trip. Southwest also now flies into Logan should I somehow miss it.

Michigan
Lansing is about four hours from Chicago east on I-94 and then north on I-69. That's probably over the limit of what could reasonably be done in one day. (My mom and I made it to Springfield - almost 3.5 hours away - and back in one day, but it was a long day.) Which isn't to say that's a real problem - anything drivable that can be done in two days should really be fine.

Minnesota
While a fairly straight shot on I-90 and I-94, St. Paul is just too far at 7.5 hours for me to consider driving it these days. Fortunately, Southwest flies there cheaply and often.

Mississippi
Surprisingly, or not, Southwest flies nonstop to Jackson.

Missouri
Another one that's a little harder than you might think. Southwest flies into both Kansas City and St. Louis, but Jefferson City is in the middle of the state, nearly equidistant from the two. St. Louis is about 30 miles closer, leaving a drive of about 2.5 hours, mostly on I-70. It's a little silly because were I going to St. Louis itself I would drive 99 times out of 100, but the extra 2.5 hours makes it too much for a single road trip.

Montana
When I was drawing up the preliminary version of this list, this was the first one that stopped me cold. Hard as Alaska is, at least you can fly right into Juneau on a Boeing 737. But Helena? Well, you can fly in directly (from Denver) on a Canadair jet (for 500+ bucks). The flight plan is a bit less complicated (though no less expensive) if you fly into Missoula, but that leaves a two-hour drive to Helena. The closest other "major" Montana city to Helena is Butte, a mere 75 minutes down I-15, but you're still flying a regional jet in there and it's still nearly 400 bucks. Best bet is probably going to be (eventually) to bite the bullet and just fly in directly. This will almost assuredly be one of the last five.

Nebraska
Much easier. Southwest nonstop to Omaha, then about an hour west on I-80 to Lincoln.

Nevada
Done. (Southwest into Reno, then south to Carson City on US 395. Just make sure it's not icy.)

New Hampshire
I'll probably make it up to Concord from the Boston area in August (about 90 minutes, mostly on I-93), but should I somehow not, it's Southwest to Manchester and then about a 30-minute drive up I-93 to Concord.

New Jersey
Done. (I drove down from near NYC on I-287 and US 206, but Southwest flies into Philly and it's less than an hour from there to Trenton on I-95.)

New Mexico
Surprisingly simple. Southwest flies into Albuquerque (even a couple of nonstops), and from there it's a little over an hour north on I-25 to Santa Fe.

New York
Southwest does fly direct to Albany, but I'm anticipating fitting this in on the trip east in August. On I-90 it should be three hours or less from the Boston area.

North Carolina
Done. (Southwest flies nonstop to Raleigh-Durham.)

North Dakota
Along with its southern cousin, easily one of the hardest. Bismarck is a tiny capital in the middle of a wide state with the only "major" cities on the edges. Say you take a regional jet to Fargo - even with a straight shot down I-94 ahead of you, it's still three and a half hours to Bismarck. Amazingly, United Express actually offers nonstop regional jet service from O'Hare to Bismarck, though like most flights of that nature it'll cost you an arm and a leg. The other option, of course, is a serious road trip, but I do mean serious - Bismarck is 835 miles from Chicago, twice as far as St. Paul, meaning you're looking at well over a day of solid driving (nearly all of it on I-94) just to get there. If I somehow had some time off - maybe a free summer month during grad school? - a long road trip would be an option, but for the most part it's just not happening. Along with South Dakota, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii, I'm guessing you're looking at the last five (barring some serendipitous reason for me to be in any of them).

Ohio
Southwest flies nonstop to Columbus cheaply and often.

Oklahoma
Southwest flies to Oklahoma City, although not nonstop from Chicago.

Oregon
Southwest has few nonstops to Portland, and by their standards, getting there from Chicago ain't cheap. But they do go there. Once in Portland, it's a quick jaunt south on I-5 to Salem, less than 50 miles away.

Pennsylvania
One option is to fly into Philadelphia and head about two hours west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. However, I'm hoping this will be one of the capitals I visit in August. It's only about two and a quarter hours from DC heading north (mostly on I-83, once you pick it up north of Baltimore). The other option would be hitting it on the way down from upstate New York, via I-81.

Rhode Island
Southwest flies directly into Providence, but I'm anticipating this will be an easy one to hit while I'm in the Boston area; it's only about an hour south on I-95.

South Carolina
Another one that's a little harder than it seems, mostly due to its general lack of major cities. Columbia has its own airport, but as with other smaller cities, it's regional jet service and you're going to pay out the nose. The cheaper option (at least from a flight standpoint) is to fly into Charlotte - Southwest doesn't go there, but most airlines do. From there it's about two hours south on I-77 to Columbia.

South Dakota
Pretty much the same deal as North Dakota, and possibly worse. You want to try and road-trip it to Pierre? 13.5 hours, nearly all of it on I-90 west from Chicago. You want to fly? Enjoy flying in from Minneapolis on a prop plane. Alternately, you can fly into Rapid City or Sioux Falls, but it's still a three-hour drive from the former and four hours from the latter. The good news, since there has to be some, is that by regional jet standards it's both fairly easy and comparatively inexpensive to get from Chicago to Rapid City (nonstop and for under 300 bucks). Still, this is sure to be one of the last few.

Tennessee
Southwest flies nonstop to Nashville from Chicago.

Texas
Southwest has nonstop flights to Austin from Chicago.

Utah
Southwest has nonstop flights to Salt Lake City from Chicago.

Vermont
Another one that's a little harder than it might seem. There's really only one good way into Montpelier from the Boston area - I-89 (mostly), and that still takes almost 3.5 hours. I-89 is also pretty much the only good way out, meaning it's nearly impossible to hit Montpelier on the way to somewhere else. Should I miss it on my August trip due to that, there is regional jet service into Burlington, 45 minutes northwest of Montpelier on I-89, but if it comes to that you're likely looking at one of the last dozen or so.

Virginia
Done. (We flew into Richmond on US Air, because we had to. You can also do what my mom did and drive two hours and change from DC on I-95 south. If you're looking to do this yourself, Southwest flies into DC and Norfolk, both around a two-hour drive from Richmond.)

Washington
Southwest flies into SeaTac, although from Chicago it's one of their most expensive flights. From there it's an hour and change south on I-5 to Olympia.

West Virginia
Also one of the most difficult states east of the Mississippi. As with Maine and South Carolina, matters are complicated by the lack of any big city. There's regional jet service to Charleston, but the usual caveats apply. Driving from another large city is no easier, however. From DC it's six hours or so due to the Appalachians necessitating a wide route on either the north or south if you hope to stick to the interstates. (270 N, 70 W, 68 W and 79 S on the northern route, or 66 W, 81 S, and 64 W on the southern route.) Other major cities are slight improvements but hardly ideal - it's four hours from Pittsburgh or three hours or so from Columbus. Both of them are easily and cheaply reachable via Southwest, but even three hours is pushing it for me when it comes after a flight. Nevertheless, the Columbus idea sounds like the safest bet. It's also a safe bet that this is one of the last ten or so.

Wisconsin
After the various northeastern states, this is the most likely next one unless school-related travels take me to another. It's a simple three-hour drive to Madison up I-90, closer to Chicago than Springfield even is.

Wyoming
Actually easier than you'd think, owing to Cheyenne's location in the far southeastern corner of its state. It's less than a two-hour drive from Denver, itself (as noted earlier) easily reachable via Southwest. Regional jet service to Cheyenne exists, but at less than two hours from Denver, why bother?

Six down, 44 to go. Ten more puts me at about a third; 19 more is halfway. Here's my guess (not in chronological order) at the likeliest next nineteen:

Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Georgia
Indiana
Iowa
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
New Hampshire
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Vermont
Wisconsin

Some of these are slam dunks. Some are just total guesses. Whatever.

The worst rhymes in music

2010-05-06T17:20:00.004-05:00

For some reason, I found myself singing the chorus of Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" today - I think the elevator was showing the top songs in adult contemporary. Anyway, it made me think of just how rancid a rhyme that song's chorus turns on. "Hey, soul sister / Ain't that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo / The way you move ain't fair, you know." Mr. Mister? Really? Tell you what - if that's the best you can do for rhyming "sister," maybe don't call your song "Hey, Soul Sister."

But is that the worst rhyme ever? Probably not. Below, some others that came right to mind:

The Beatles, "Rocky Raccoon"

As you know, I love the Beatles more than I have or will love the music of any other band. And Paul is almost certainly my favorite Beatle. But what was he thinking with this one?

"His rival, it seems / Had broken his dreams / By stealing the girl of his fancy / Her name was McGill / And she called herself Lil / But everyone knew her as Nancy"

Drives me up the fucking wall. Come on. How far can you possibly go for a rhyme? Weren't there like 85 other ways to describe that the girl was the object of Rocky's affection? You had to go with the one that was nearly impossible to rhyme?

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Into the Great Wide Open"

"The paper said Ed always played from the heart / He got an agent and a roadie named Bart"

*facepalm*

LFO, "Summer Girls"

I'm almost not sure whether to count this one because I'm not convinced that a lot of these rhymes were supposed to be good. Also, many of them are not even actual rhymes.

"New Kids on the Block had a bunch of hits / Chinese food makes me sick"

"Fell deep in love but now we ain't speakin' / Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton"

What? Also, not actual rhymes, aside from the vowels, which is lazy as all hell.

I'm sure, however, that there are many other examples of awful rhymes. What's your pick for the worst rhyme you've heard in a song?

Let's give 'em nothing to talk about

2010-03-15T22:53:00.003-05:00

I'm starting to wonder about ESPN. I mean, when you're the sports leader, you find yourself breaking most of the news there is to break. But what if there isn't much news to break? You wouldn't... make something up, would you?

Oh. You might.

I'm not necessarily saying ESPN fabricated this story out of whole cloth. But it's attributed only to anonymous sources and everyone even tangentially involved has denied it to the hilt. Regardless, I think there's one major thing we need to get clear here.

If the discussions only took place within the Phillies organization, this is not news.

Let's think about this for a second.

1. If the Phillies didn't propose the trade to the Cardinals, who fucking cares? The idea that one team might have said "Hey, do you think we could trade for player X?" is not news at all. This probably happens every day in every organization.

2. Presumably this is supposed to be news because Ryan Howard is also a star player. But the very fact that the Phillies were supposedly proposing to trade him for Pujols should tip you off to something. And that is... of COURSE the Phillies would trade Ryan Howard for Albert Pujols. They'd be crazy not to.

I mean, no offense to Ryan Howard, but he's not Albert Pujols. Here are Ryan Howard's 162-game averages for his career:

.279/.376/.586, 142 OPS+, 49 HR, 142 RBI, 348 TB, 90 BB, 194 K

Very good player. Sure, he's worse than useless against left-handed pitching (.226/.310/.444), but he sure creams everyone else. He can play on my team any day.*

*Except days when the opposing pitcher is left-handed.

Then, of course, there's Albert Pujols' 162-game averages:

.334/.427/.628, 172 OPS+, 42 HR, 129 RBI, 374 TB, 94 BB, 66 K

Um. Do you see what I'm talking about here? Howard gives up 55 points of BA to Pujols, 51 points of OBP, and even 42 points of slugging in spite of the fact that he is basically only known for being a monster slugger. He does have an edge in homers, yet Pujols still easily outdistances him in total bases, and Pujols walks more while also striking out one-third as much. And of course, Pujols' OPS+ is 30 points higher, meaning he's 30% better than Howard by that measure.

More advanced statistics just make this more of a blowout. Pujols' career EqA is .347; Howard's is .313. Howard has just one season over 5 wins above replacement (6.7 in his MVP year of 2006); Pujols has two above ten and only one under 8 in nine seasons (6.1 in 2002). Sure, Howard's only played four full seasons... but he's also two months older than Pujols. Pujols is 20-30 runs better than Howard in the field. Et cetera.

I say all this not to denigrate Howard, but rather to point out how good Pujols is. If you just take his stats against right-handed pitching - which, to be fair, still is most of the league - Howard is a beast. And yet Pujols' numbers against everyone are still much better. He's the best player in baseball virtually beyond a shadow of a doubt.

So the real question is... why wouldn't the Phillies want to trade for him? OF COURSE THEY WOULD! Anyone would. There are maybe 2-3 position players in the entire game I can imagine not being traded for Albert Pujols if the Cardinals called and said, "Hey, we're trading Pujols, can we have so-and-so in exchange?" One is Joe Mauer. Another is Derek Jeter, although given his age I think the Yankees would think long and hard about this one. (And frankly I think most Yankees fans would bite the bullet and do it, in spite of the fact that they worship the ground on which Jeter walks.) Anyone else? The only reason you wouldn't do that trade is if you couldn't afford Pujols. Take money out of the equation and basically everyone would do it. And they should. Pujols is the best player in the game and a first-ballot Hall of Famer unless he gets hit by a bus tomorrow. The only thing that's even a possible negative is if somehow he's a couple years older than he says he is - but even then you're still getting at least four or five more really good years out of him if you get him right now.

In other words, you do the Howard-Pujols deal 100 times out of 100. And that's why this isn't news. Because the deal is such an obvious slam dunk for the Phillies that there is no way the Cardinals would ever do it. And unless there's some chance of that, there's no reason to report what otherwise amounts to idle chatter.

Explain to me what the Cardinals would gain from this trade. So, they're going to trade one of the best players in history, and the face of their franchise, for one other guy, who:

(a) plays the same position, but less well;
(b) is older;
(c) makes seven million dollars more the next two seasons;
(d) is 30% less offensively valuable;
(e) is FROM ST. LOUIS OMG OMG OMG

I mean, that's the only reason this fake, non-news story has even the slightest bit of traction, right? Because Howard is from St. Louis and therefore if the Cardinals somehow felt obliged to trade Pujols (God only knows why they would, but sure), they could still sell tickets with a local superstar.

Read part (c) again, though. Howard makes $19 million this year and $20 million the next. Pujols makes $16m this year and has a club option for $16m in 2011. Howard, who we've is established is much less good than Pujols, is also MORE EXPENSIVE. I mean, my God. In what universe does this trade make sense for the Cardinals? This is like hearing that the Cubs were talking about trading Alfonso Soriano for Joe Mauer.

There's certainly been speculation that the Cardinals won't be able to afford Pujols' contract demands come 2012. But that's 2012. If you're the Cardinals, and you're the best team in your division and one of the best in your league, you're not looking for ways to dump your best player before you have to. There's really no point in trying to trade Pujols, in my opinion. Sure, if you can't afford him after 2011 and he walks you get nothing... but without him you are not as good. You aren't getting equivalent value for him; it's impossible. You might as well take two shots at the World Series, make your best offer, and wish him well if he leaves. And more to the point, if the reason you're trading him is money, trading him for a guy who makes more than he does is FUCKING INSANE.

Yet here's ESPN, milking this story, even though at this point the only thing in the story is everyone on the Cardinals and Phillies telling any reporter who asks that they're completely deranged for asking. Honestly, ESPN, aren't there any real stories you have to talk about? I'd prefer a fantasy preview to this nonsensical garbage.

Diplomatic immunity

2010-03-14T12:47:00.002-05:00

I often start posts of this variety by saying something like, "One thing I've been doing a lot recently..." And in fact I was about to do just that until I thought about it and realized how completely inaccurate that would be in the case of Diplomacy. I mean, relative to the rest of my life? Sure, I've been playing Diplomacy a lot recently. But I played it for the first time last April and for, I believe, just the fourth time last night. So, does once every three months count as "a lot"? Probably not.

However, this is more due to the difficulty in rounding up at least five people for a game on anything approaching a regular basis than due to a lack of desire in playing more regularly on the part of some of the principals, myself included. I would very easily play at least once a month - while Diplomacy, like other games of its general ilk, can suck away an entire day quite speedily (Wikipedia lists its playing time as "4-12 hours"), I really find myself enjoying it, and I really have no other social outlet that involves an actual group of people.

The basic principle behind Diplomacy, for those of you who might be unfamiliar, is that you are tasked with playing as one of seven primary powers in 1901 Europe - England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey. The aim of the game is to control supply centers - each nation starts with three (except Russia, which due to its size starts with four), and there are various unaffiliated areas on the board which can be controlled (Iberia, Scandinavia and the Balkans in particular) to add supply centers and therefore be able to build more armies. The ultimate aim of the game is to control 18 supply centers (half of the 34 total, plus one).

The reason the game is called Diplomacy is that between each round, you have to negotiate with the other players in (usually) private, one-on-one meetings. If you're England, for example, and you need to commit the majority of your resources to invading Scandinavia, you're probably going to have to negotiate with France not to invade your territory while you're busy moving most of your pieces out of it. You can use these meetings to divvy up neutral territory and thus avoid (for a time) conflict, you can partner with another nation against a common enemy, etc. The trick, of course, is that all of these negotiations are made with the tacit understanding that alliances can be and are broken at any time, sometimes with no warning. Really, the trick of the game is doing the best balancing act between getting people to think you're cooperating while actually not cooperating that much.

It's not everyone's cup of tea, I suppose. But for those who it is, I did look online today and there are quite a few sites that feature online versions of the game, which sounds great - a single game could be sustained until an actual end this way (as it stands we've never played in person to an actual 18-depot winner). I guess I'd put the pros and cons pretty much thusly:

PROS: Should be fairly easy to get a full seven-player game together; no need to spend an entire day playing when you can just do the kind of e-mail/Facebook checking you'd already be doing and only occasionally have to log onto the site to submit orders; the style of the game means that general gameplay would change very little in online form.

CONS: Possibly the most fun point of any game is during the period where everyone reads out their orders for that turn, and this is also the part that would be pretty much entirely lost in online form.

The point is, I'm up for some online Diplomacy. Anyone else?

Commented out

2010-01-27T12:12:00.002-06:00

Haloscan - the service I had used for the comments since the blog's inception in 2005 - is apparently about to be no more. Therefore, I edited the template so that it's now using Blogger's comment form. Unfortunately, this means that every comment in the history of the blog just went down the hatch. This probably isn't that big of a deal - it had already happened at least once, a few years ago - but just FYI.

Capitol steps

2010-01-26T16:40:00.002-06:00

First of all, happy birthday to my dad.

The Capitol Dome Project is still in its infancy, but with three capitols down, I think we're seriously on the road to doing this, however long it might take. Nevertheless, I've added a link to the top right of the blog, just below another project that will eventually get done, My Year of Bonds, which is pretty much named ironically at this point.

For no real reason, here's a compilation of my relationship to the 50 capitals: those visited for the project, those I've been to (including drive-throughs or very minimal stays), those I haven't been to but whose states I've visited, and those whose states have eluded me thus far. To some respect this might give you a slight idea of how long it might take me to get to some of these capitals barring an extremely concerted effort (it'll probably take that for a few of them anyway, of course).

FINISHED FOR PROJECT
Carson City, NV
Raleigh, NC
Richmond, VA

BEEN TO/THROUGH CITY
Phoenix, AZ
Denver, CO (brief overnight stay related to air travel)
Hartford, CT (drive-through only)
Atlanta, GA
Springfield, IL (drive-through only)
Indianapolis, IN (drive-through only)
Des Moines, IA (drive-through only)
Boston, MA
Lansing, MI
Saint Paul, MN (drive-through only)
Trenton, NJ
Albany, NY (use of airport, only as young child)
Columbus, OH (drive-through only)
Providence, RI (possibly drive-through only, only as young child)
Nashville, TN (drive-through only)
Austin, TX
Salt Lake City, UT (use of airport only)
Madison, WI

BEEN TO STATE, BUT NOT CITY
Montgomery, AL
Sacramento, CA
Dover, DE
Frankfort, KY
Baton Rouge, LA
Annapolis, MD
Jackson, MS
Jefferson City, MO
Concord, NH
Harrisburg, PA
Montpelier, VT
Olympia, WA
Charleston, WV

NEVER BEEN TO STATE
Juneau, AK
Little Rock, AR
Tallahassee, FL
Honolulu, HI
Boise, ID
Topeka, KS
Augusta, ME
Helena, MT
Lincoln, NE
Santa Fe, NM
Bismarck, ND
Oklahoma City, OK
Salem, OR
Columbia, SC
Pierre, SD
Cheyenne, WY

Airport update

2010-01-25T19:02:00.004-06:00

Because I feel like keeping track somewhere, here's the updated list of airports I've been to, which expanded by a few in the past year, as I last updated this on 1/9/09. As before, comments only on the additions. We go from 40 - 28 domestic, 12 international - to 45, 33 domestic and 12 international.

Domestic
ALB - Albany, NY
ATL - Atlanta, GA
AUS - Austin, TX
BOS - Boston, MA
CLE - Cleveland, OH
CLT - Charlotte, NC
CMH - Columbus, OH

CVG - Cincinnati, OH. Technically this is "Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky," and I think the CVG refers to Covington, KY - but the metro area served is that of Cincinnati, and it's the only major airport there, so that's how I'll refer to it. We flew in here for one of Alma's interviews.
DCA - Washington National, DC
DEN - Denver, CO
DFW - Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
EWR - Newark, NJ
IAD - Washington Dulles, DC
IAH - Houston, TX
JFK - New York JFK, NY
LAX - Los Angeles, CA
MDW - Chicago Midway, IL
MOB - Mobile, AL
MSP - Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
MSY - New Orleans, LA
OAK - Oakland, CA
ORD - Chicago O'Hare, IL
PHL - Philadelphia, PA
PHX - Phoenix, AZ

RDU - Raleigh/Durham, NC. We actually first went here last summer to visit Alma's sister, and did so again this month.

RIC - Richmond, VA. Alma's final interview was in Richmond.

RNO - Reno, NV. Alma's fourth interview was in Reno.
SAN - San Diego, CA
SAT - San Antonio, TX

SEA - Seattle/Tacoma, WA. Flew in here for my Seattle business trip last August.
SFO - San Francisco, CA
SJC - San Jose, CA
SLC - Salt Lake City, UT

International
AKL - Auckland, New Zealand
BNE - Brisbane, Australia
CCS - Caracas, Venezuela
CPT - Cape Town, South Africa
JNB - Johannesburg, South Africa
LGW - London Gatwick, UK
LHR - London Heathrow, UK
MNL - Manila, Philippines
NRT - Tokyo Narita, Japan
SID - Sal Island, Cape Verde
SYD - Sydney, Australia
TBH - Tablas, Romblon, Philippines

We were actually in seven different airports (and all four time zones) in a five-day span at one point in January - between the 19th and the 23rd, we were in Midway, Phoenix (twice), Reno, Charlotte, Richmond, JFK and O'Hare. But of course only two of those were new.

A note about home runs allowed

2010-01-05T07:32:00.004-06:00

Since Jon Heyman loves to talk about them as regards Bert Blyleven. Blyleven does have two of the three biggest HR allowed seasons in history:

1. Bert Blyleven, 1986 - 50
2. Jose Lima, 2000 - 48
3t. Bert Blyleven, 1987 - 46
3t. Robin Roberts, 1956 - 46

But:

Blyleven, 1986: 17-14, 4.01 ERA (107 ERA+)
Blyleven, 1987: 15-12, 4.01 ERA (115 ERA+)
Roberts, 1956: 19-18, 4.45 ERA (84 ERA+)
Lima, 2000: 7-16, 6.65 ERA (75 ERA+)

Lima and Roberts both led the league in ER allowed. Blyleven did not, either year.

So what do home runs allowed really mean? I'll tell you: longevity. Here's the top 21 (there was a tie for 20th) in baseball history:

1. Robin Roberts, 505
2. Jamie Moyer, 491
3. Fergie Jenkins, 484
4. Phil Niekro, 482
5. Don Sutton, 472
6. Frank Tanana, 448
7. Warren Spahn, 434
8. Bert Blyleven, 430
9. Steve Carlton, 414
10. Randy Johnson, 411
11. David Wells, 407
12. Gaylord Perry, 399
13. Jim Kaat, 395
14. Jack Morris, 389
15. Charlie Hough, 383
16. Tom Seaver, 380
17. Mike Mussina, 376
18. Catfish Hunter, 374
18. Tim Wakefield, 374
20. Jim Bunning, 372
20. Dennis Martinez, 372

So, of those 21, ten are in the Hall of Fame. Johnson is a slam-dunk first-ballot. Mussina could very well make it.

Not in the Hall: Moyer, Tanana, Blyleven, Wells, Kaat, Morris, Hough, Wakefield, Martinez. Of those guys, only Morris and Wakefield did not pitch in more than 20 big league seasons (Wakefield might yet).

And then there's this: how do they rank in terms of HR/9? Baseball-reference only does it to one decimal place, but:

1t. Moyer, Wakefield, Wells - 1.1
4t. Hunter, Jenkins, Roberts, Tanana - 1.0
8t. Bunning, Hough, Johnson, Morris, Mussina - 0.9
13t. Blyleven, Kaat, Martinez, Niekro, Sutton - 0.8
18t. Carlton, Perry, Seaver, Spahn - 0.7

So while he ranks eighth in total home runs allowed, Blyleven only gave up 0.8 per 9, which compares favorably with Hall of Famer, and total home runs allowed career leader, Robin Roberts.

For that matter, Roberts never led the league in ERA, and he twice led in losses, and three times in earned runs and homers allowed. He doesn't have 300 wins. His winning percentage and ERA+ are comparable to Blyleven's (slightly higher WP, few points lower in ERA+). I'm not saying we should set the Hall's standards by its weakest member, but...

The point is, Jon Heyman needs to find a new stat. This one is clearly worthless. But then, he'd know that, if he knew anything.

Maybe you should just stop talking

2010-01-04T21:05:00.004-06:00

Did Jon Heyman stop with what he put on Twitter? Of course not!

"I consider impact more than stats. I like dominance over durability. I prefer players who were great at some point to the ones who were merely very good for a very long time. And I do recall it's called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Numbers."

Oh, God. This old chestnut. So are you going to vote for Jose Canseco? Did you vote for Darryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden? Both had short bursts of excellence and certainly were very famous.

"The reason I haven't yet voted for Raines is that while he was a star in Montreal, he was merely a good player for the bulk of the rest his career, spent mainly with the White Sox and Yankees. Raines' offensive career is a little like Mattingly's in that he was exceptional for about a half-dozen years but far less than that for several more. But while Mattingly (who I didn't vote for the first seven years he was on the ballot) was greater in his great years, Raines did have many more seasons of solid performance, and I'm starting to lean in his direction."

Remember, again, that this is the same Jon Heyman who bragged about how consistent he was for continuing not to vote for Bert Blyleven. Raines' career OBP was .385 - only three points behind Tony Gwynn, who was a shoo-in because he had 3,000 hits. Also, don't compare latter-day Raines to latter-day Mattingly. After 1989 - a season in which he turned just 28 years old - Mattingly was basically league-average, aside from an Indian summer in 1993 and 1994. But he was retired by age 35. Raines put up a .306/.401/.480 line at age 33 for the '93 White Sox - a better line than anything Mattingly put up after 1987. In other words, 33-year-old Tim Raines (and, for that matter, 35-, 36-, and 37-year-old Tim Raines) was better than Don Mattingly at any age after 26. I know you just said you prefer dominance over durability... but how dominant was Mattingly, even? In 1985, when he won the MVP, he wasn't even the best player on his own team (Rickey Henderson). He had three great years, was very good for three more, and then was pretty much average until an early retirement. Fine, he had injuries. But let's not pretend he's Hall-worthy. And why did it take you seven years to vote for him anyway?

"My contention regarding Blyleven is that almost no one viewed him as a Hall of Famer during his playing career, and that is borne out by the 17 percent of the vote he received in his first year of eligibility in 1998, followed by 14 percent the next year."

Um...

Uh...

Why the FUCK does that matter? Who cares how people viewed Blyleven during his playing career? Until he clawed his way to 300 games, were people constantly talking about how Don Sutton was a Hall of Fame shoo-in? How about Goose Gossage and Bruce Sutter? People assumed Mark McGwire was a slam-dunk first-ballot guy in 1999... granted, there are some extenuating circumstances there. But still, who CARES? The whole argument for Blyleven is that he was undervalued while he was playing. Our minds are made up now because people 20 years ago might have been looking at the wrong things?

(Also, was Jack Morris looked at as a Hall of Famer during his playing career? I have my doubts about this.)

Jack Morris' first two years of eligibility: 22.2%, 19.6%. Sure, they're better than Blyleven's numbers, but they're still nowhere near Hall of Fame numbers. Clearly people did not think Jack Morris was a Hall of Famer while he was playing, by Jon Heyman's logic.

Oh, I forgot. When a stat shames Blyleven, he mentions it. And when a stat pumps up Morris, he mentions it. But aside from that, he "doesn't look only at stats."

FUCK YOU.

"I look at numbers, too, and while my numbers may be slightly more simplistic than WHIP, WAR or VORP, I think they tell a story of a pitcher who was extremely good, consistent and durable but not quite Cooperstown-worthy. Blyleven was dominant in a lot of at-bats (thus, the 3,701 strikeouts) and even a lot of games (60 shutouts). But he was never dominant for a decade, a half decade or even a full season."

I look at numbers too! By the way, you know Jon Heyman's dumb when he cites WHIP as a complex stat. WHIP = walks + hits per inning pitched. Oh no! For fuck's sake, Heyman, that's not even as complicated as ERA.

So Heyman's argument is that Blyleven was "never dominant for a decade, a half-decade or even a full season." Well, I can cite some pretty dominant full seasons, I think:

1973: 20-17, 2.52, 25 CG, 9 SHO, 158 ERA+ (led league), at age 22
1984: 19-7, 2.87, 12 CG, 4 SHO, 144 ERA+
1989: 17-5, 2.73, 8 CG, 5 SHO (led league), 140 ERA+, at age 38

Or how about this? Between 1971 and 1978 - more than a half-decade - Blyleven's ERA was above 3.00 just once (and that was 3.03). He had 38 shutouts (ten more than Morris' entire career) and led the league in K/BB twice (another extremely complicated stat).

On the other hand there's Jack Morris. He never had an ERA under 3.00. Not ONCE. This great pitcher, who Jon Heyman is implicitly defining as dominant, not once had an entire season where he shut opponents down to the tune of under three earned runs per nine. His best ERA+, to take yearly context out of it, was 133. Blyleven had nine sub-3.00 ERA years and six years better than 133 ERA+.

So WHAT MAKES MORRIS DOMINANT? Because you SAY he was? That's not good enough, Jon. You can talk all you want about people trying to reconstruct Blyleven's career from a stat sheet... but I trust that stat sheet more than I trust your memory.

Look at Blyleven's 1973 season. The guy is 22 years old. His ERA is 2.52, second to Cy Young winner Jim Palmer's 2.40 but ahead of Palmer by two points in ERA+, 158 to 156. (Also, Palmer's team won 97 games; Blyleven's 81.) Blyleven finishes first in shutouts, second in WHIP, first in K/BB, second in BB/9, third in K/9, second in total Ks, fourth in innings, third in complete games, and - hilariously given what Heyman tried to hang him with last time - fourth in fewest HR/9. He also finishes top ten in starts, H/9, and wins, with 20. Oh, and losses, with 17. Because the 1973 Minnesota Twins did not score for him. He got 4.18 runs of support. Jim Palmer got half a run more per game.

I mean... that's a pretty dominant season. Sure, 20-17 doesn't jump out at you, but Nolan Ryan went 21-16 that year. Does Jack Morris have even one season that compares to just that one year of Blyleven's?

Answer: no, he doesn't. For starters, Morris never finished in the top four in ERA, let alone second. He certainly never led the league in ERA+; only four times was he even top ten and only once top five. (Blyleven: 12 top tens, 7 top fives.) He had two top fives in WHIP; never finished above fourth. He did lead the league in shutouts once, in 1986. So let's compare Blyleven's 1973 to Morris' 1986:

Blyleven 1973: 20-17 (4.18 RS), 2.52, 158 ERA+, 1.117 WHIP, 258 K, 25 CG, 9 SHO, 325 IP
Morris 1986: 21-8 (5.46 RS), 3.27, 127 ERA+, 1.165 WHIP, 223 K, 15 CG, 6 SHO, 267 IP

So, aside from the losses... where is Morris winning here? (Note: he started five fewer games and had twice as many no-decision starts as '73 Bert.) He has a slight edge in K/9, I guess. Blyleven trashes him in ERA/ERA+ despite throwing 58 additional innings, and Morris only won one more game in spite of his sizable edge in run support.

I mean, here's how snakebit Blyleven was when it came to that. In 1976 his ERA was 2.87; ERA+ of 125, not among his very best years but better than all but three of Morris'. And what was his record? 13-16! Because his shitty teams - he was traded midseason - averaged, get this, 2.66 runs of support for him. 2.66! Morris' lowest full season RS number was 3.54, close to a full run higher, and that was only once, for the 103-loss '89 Tigers, the only bad team he really played on. And he went 6-14. Aside from that year, his lowest full season RS was 4.17, more than 1.5 runs above what Blyleven got in 1976.

In other words... WINS ARE SITUATIONAL. And if you throw out wins... Blyleven looks pretty dominant for a while there! Whereas Morris never does.

"Only four times in 22 seasons did he receive Cy Young votes (he was third twice, fourth and seventh once), only twice did he make the All-Star team and only twice did he win more than 17 games. I tend not to vote for players who I see as great compilers rather than great players, which is why I don't see Lee Smith or Baines as Hall of Famers, either. Baines and Blyleven compiled similarly in some key areas, with Blyleven finishing with four percent short of 300 victories at 287, and Baines four percent short of 3,000 hits with 2,866. And actually, a case could be made that Baines had more greatness, as he made six All-Star teams, three times the number of Blyleven."

Ugh. Who cares about this shit? Number of All-Star teams made does not equal greatness. Blyleven didn't make a lot of All-Star teams because he was toiling away on lousy teams and didn't have the star power of someone like a Nolan Ryan, even though aside from a ding on the strikeouts there's a large chunk of their careers that compares pretty favorably. And Baines is a bad comparison if you look at more than one stat. Only once was he even top ten in OBP; he was only top ten in batting average three times and never top five; he led in slugging one year but never again was even top ten. Blyleven's three league-leading shutout years and his one ERA+ year alone are more impressive than that.

Also, way to imply that you still believe that 300 wins and 3,000 hits are absolute sacrosanct numbers - make it and you're in, fall slightly short and fuck you. Because that's how we judge greatness: arbitrary round cutoffs.

"Some will say that Blyleven's career was equal to Hall of Famer Don Sutton's but I say it is just short of Sutton's. They both had big totals in other categories but Sutton wound up with 37 more victories, going over the magic 300 mark by 24."

"I say it is just short of Sutton's! Because of one number."

Blyleven career ERA+: 118
Sutton career ERA+: 108

Blyleven 162-game average record: 14-12
Sutton 162-game average record: 14-11

To be fair, Sutton's two or three best years top any of Blyleven's. But he was a real feast or famine guy. He had below-average ERA+ in 1978 and 1979, then suddenly ripped off a 160 in 1980, with a sub-1.00 WHIP. In 1970 he was pretty awful but managed to win 15 games for a second-place Dodger team; two years later his ERA was two full runs lower. I mean, what the fuck? Blyleven had longer strings of very good years than Sutton, who could never seem to put together more than three. There's also this, since Heyman talks about Blyleven being a compiler and implies that Sutton's 324 wins made him a better pitcher:

Wins after age 40
Blyleven: 8
Sutton: 44

So in other words, if Bert Blyleven and Don Sutton both drop dead on their 40th birthdays, Blyleven has 279 wins and Sutton has 280. The ERA+ difference would still be around what it is now. Does this change your answer? They're nearly the same pitcher at this point, except that most of Blyleven's non-win-total numbers are better. I mean, good for Sutton that he managed to be above-average in ERA+ as a 41-year-old, the year he got his 300th win. But let's not pretend he wasn't a compiler. And in 71 more starts, he still had two fewer shutouts for his career than Blyleven.

"Many stat people suggest wins are not important in evaluating careers. But until wins don't decide who's in the playoffs and who's out, who makes the World Series and who doesn't, I will continue to view them as important. A pitcher's goal for each game is to win the game, not to strikeout the most batters. And until that changes, I will count wins and losses. I also believe the truly great pitchers pitched to the scoreboard with the real goal in mind."

Oh, no.

Wins are a TEAM accomplishment, Jon! If a pitcher throws a one-hitter, but that one hit is a solo home run and his team gets shut out, is he a piece of shit because he didn't win the game? No! He's probably a great pitcher on a terrible team! And who was even talking about strikeouts? If you want to throw those out, can we drag Nolan Ryan into this? His winning percentage was even lower than Blyleven's (and so was his ERA+). And talk about compiling... dude won his 300th game at age 43! Throw that asshole out of the Hall of Fame!

Oh, wait. You'd never advocate for that, because Nolan Ryan won 300 games. Even though his 162-game average was a 14-13 record (Blyleven: 14-12).

Also, as I already said, Joe Sheehan disproved the pitching to the score bullshit. Just because you believe it doesn't make it true, you idiot. And really, let's say it is true - it still just verifies the idea that Jack Morris' teams scored a lot more runs than Bert Blyleven's teams. And the one year that Jack Morris was on a really shitty team that never scored runs for him, he went 6-14. Because he couldn't "pitch to the score," because that's a fucking myth. If it was true, surely 34-year-old Tigers ace Jack Morris could have pitched to the score by becoming dominant like 1972 Steve Carlton. Oh wait! He didn't! His ERA was 4.86 and he only won six games! Because pitching to the score is a fucking MYTH.

"Some will say Blyleven was handicapped by playing for a string of horrific teams. But his many teams combined for a record of slightly over .500. For the most part, they were mediocre. While his career mark of 287-250 is clearly better than his teams' overall record, it isn't that much better."

Covered this last time. It was about as much better as Morris' was over his teams' win percentage. Seriously, do you even look at this shit?

Again, I know it seems like I'm picking on Morris. But the whole point is that Heyman is sure Morris belongs in, and equally sure that Blyleven belongs out. And yet his reasons are AWFUL.

"Clearly, I don't grade on stats alone, but it is interesting to note that while Blyleven never led the league in wins or ERA he did lead the league in losses, earned runs allowed and home runs allowed. (He did lead once in strikeouts.)"

And this again. Jack Morris: never led the league in ERA. Also led in losses and ER allowed. Gave up more homers per 162 games than Blyleven over their careers. You are a fucking moron who knows nothing about anything.

Why is Jon Heyman allowed to write about baseball when he is willfully ignorant?

I can't believe we have to keep doing this

2010-01-01T10:42:00.004-06:00

Jon Heyman is apparently quite good at getting news just before it breaks in the world of baseball. This is impressive since he clearly knows nothing whatsoever about baseball.

Heyman tweeted his Hall of Fame ballot. Here it is:

Roberto Alomar
Andre Dawson
Barry Larkin
Dave Parker
Jack Morris
Don Mattingly

Let's start with the picks that are fine. Alomar is a worthy Hall choice. Larkin strikes me as a little more borderline, but I think you can make a pretty strong case for him.

Then there are the more borderline picks: Dawson, Parker and Mattingly. Dawson probably has the strongest case of the three - he hit more than 400 home runs and was a good outfielder when healthy. His OBP stinks (.323 career, which is outside the top one thousand in baseball history), but his OPS+ was still 119, which isn't terrible. Joe Cronin's in the Hall with a 119 OPS+. Whatever.

Parker has always struck me as a weird case. From 1975-1979 he was one of the best hitters in the game, and won the MVP in 1978. He also helped lead the "We are Family" Pirates to the World Series the next year. Then he had a few lost years thanks to injuries and drugs. Then he had one more great season at age 34 in 1985... and then kind of hung around until 1991. Basically, he had six great years and 13 years in which he was, at best, good. In some of them he was basically league-average. But his career OBP was .339 and OPS+ 121, both better than Dawson, and he's maybe even more of a "what could have been" guy than Dawson. His 1978 MVP was better than any of Dawson's seasons, including 1987. I think it's weird to induct a guy based on missed potential - why not Darryl Strawberry, then? - but if Dawson is a borderline candidate, Parker has to be considered just as highly. (Of course, I wouldn't put either of them in. But I'm trying to give Heyman the benefit of the doubt here.)

Don Mattingly is a classic example of just looking at peak value (and also being swayed by hype). Mattingly's first six full seasons are, indeed, great. But he pretty much falls off a cliff at age 29 and was done at 34. The key argument for someone like Mattingly is the fact that Ralph Kiner is in the Hall, but Kiner at least was punching up multiple 1.000-OPS seasons at his peak. Mattingly didn't do that, and he played a power position. I also think his election would be a triumph of New York hype. If you had a pretty good fielding first baseman with only decent power (20 HR/162 g) and only six really good years under his belt, and he played in Kansas City or something, would he have lasted more than a year on the ballot? Yankees fans love Mattingly - no Yankee who didn't win a World Series has ever been loved more by them - and the corresponding exposure has led to the memory of Mattingly as being better for longer than he was. The guy was basically washed up by 1990. Heyman should know this, given that he was a beat writer in New York for most of Mattingly's career... but then that pretty much explains his inclusion, doesn't it?

Whatever. Mattingly's not a HOFer and fortunately he still has pretty low vote totals. I can at least understand voting for a guy based on a pretty strong peak.

Then, of course, there's Jack Morris.

So, right after posting his ballot, Heyman adds this (possibly in response to other Twitter posts wondering where Bert Blyleven is):

"regarding bert, 86% voted "no'' his 2nd yr. unlike others, i'm consistent. he never led league in wins, ERA but led in HRs, earned runs, Ls"

Do we really have to keep doing this?

Let's take these down one at a time.

1. So 86% of the BBWAA voted no on Blyleven in his second year - of course it's really more accurate to say that only 14% did vote for him. Why does that matter? Heyman voted for Mattingly, and 80% of the BBWAA voted no on Mattingly in his second year. Also, a few tweets after bragging about how consistent he is for refusing to vote for Blyleven, he states that he isn't voting for Tim Raines right now, but might in the future after reevaluating his career. Jon Heyman: consistently inconsistent.

2. Okay, Blyleven never led the league in wins or ERA. He was, however, top five in ERA seven times. And look at something like 1979 - that was one of the better teams that Blyleven pitched for (the Pirates won 98 games) - and yet even though he started 37 games, Blyleven was just 12-5. Why? Well, it helps when you have ten no-decisions in games where you gave up two earned runs or fewer. I don't know, is that Blyleven's fault?

3. Heyman brings up that Blyleven had years in which he led the league in homers allowed, earned runs allowed, and losses. These are all true statements - in 1986 and 1987 Blyleven gave up a combined 96 home runs for the Twins, then in 1988 cut back to 21 homers but gave up 125 earned runs and lost 17 games. That 1988 season was pretty bad, but when you look at '86 and '87 you have to consider that Blyleven was better than league average in ERA both years. He had a 4.01 ERA both times, not great but good enough for ERA+ of 107 and 115. (Both, amusingly, are better than Morris' career ERA+ of 105.)

While we're on the subject, Morris also once led the league in earned runs - in fact, with the exact same number, 125, two years after Blyleven did it. He also lost 18 games that year, more than Blyleven lost in his league-leading '88 season. Also, in 1986, Morris allowed 40 home runs - not as many as Blyleven's 50, but good enough for second-most in the AL! That was one of Morris' best years (21-8, 3.27), which just proves that HR allowed really isn't a meaningful number when stripped of all context.

Oh, and Heyman's big thing that he holds over Blyleven - never leading the league in wins or ERA? Well, Morris never led in ERA either. And only twice was he top five, next to Blyleven's seven. And I don't want to hear that bullshit about Morris pitching to the score, since it was disproven by Joe Sheehan years ago. Morris did lead the league in wins twice. Once was in 1981 - a strike year, when he led with 14 - and the other was in 1992, when he went 21-6 with a 4.04 ERA. His run support that year? 5.56. He won four games in which he gave up 5 runs or more; if the team doesn't score for him in two of those and he doesn't win 20 games, are we even having this conversation? Jimmy Key had a better ERA for the Blue Jays but somehow went 13-13, while Juan Guzman was probably their best pitcher, going 16-5, 2.64. Though I will grant that Morris's 60 additional innings made him a pretty good guy to have.

So far it's pretty clear that much of what Heyman holds over Blyleven can be held almost equally well over Morris. Let's see what else he's got.

"i dont mean to pick on blyleven, but his teams werent as bad as folks claim. they were a bit over .500 (& only a touch worse than him by %)."

Heyman might be right that Blyleven's teams weren't as bad as often cited. He did pitch for two WS winners. Blyleven's teams won 90 games five times; Morris' six. But Morris also pitched for below-.500 teams far less often - Blyleven did it ten times, Morris just three. And between 1978 and 1988 - an eleven-year stretch that encompasses the majority of Morris' career and pretty much his entire peak - Morris didn't pitch for a sub-.500 team even once. Between 1974 and 1984, the years in which Blyleven was the same ages as Morris during his stretch, Blyleven pitched for five winning teams and five losing teams. Also:

Blyleven's teams: .502
Blyleven: .534

Morris' teams: .539
Morris: .577

Difference between Blyleven and his teams: .032
Difference between Morris and his teams: .038

Pretty negligible. Over a 162-game season, Blyleven's teams go from 81-game winners - .500 - to 86 or 87 game winners if he pitches every game (if we buy into the idea that these percentages are meaningful). Morris' teams start at 87 and go to 93. Basically both guys add between five and six wins. The only real difference is the baseline. Next!

"i guess im going on more than stats since i saw both guys' entire careers. morris was ace of 3 WS winners"

It kills me that this canard comes up every single time Morris' candidacy is discussed. "He was the ace of three World Series winners!" Never mind that this is demonstrably untrue, unless you're using "ace" as a completely subjective, nebulous term that really doesn't mean anything.

Let me just talk about the "I'm going on more than stats since I saw both guys' entire careers" thing for a minute. According to Wikipedia, Jon Heyman grew up in New York. He graduated college in 1983. This put him in prime position to witness, as a professional journalist, the majority of Morris' career - but he'd already missed more than half of Blyleven's, and since Blyleven was pitching in Minnesota, Texas and Pittsburgh in the 70s, I really doubt Heyman saw him pitch very often... which means that the only thing he's probably really going by is stories he heard from guys who did see Blyleven and/or box scores, or as they might be called, "stats." For that matter, Heyman spent the entire period between 1983 and 1999 writing for Newsday. How often was he ever seeing Blyleven or Morris pitch live? The four times a year they started against the Yankees? What a load of crap.

Back to the "ace of three World Series winners" bullshit. So, Morris pitched for three teams that won a title: the 1984 Tigers, 1991 Twins and 1992 Blue Jays. But let me ask you a question: how does one define "ace"? Is it "best pitcher during the regular season?" "Best pitcher during the postseason?" "Guy who everyone believes to be an ace even if his stats don't bear it out so much?" If it's the latter, that's such a ridiculous dodge that I don't even want to address it. So, is it the former? If so, I will go on record as saying that it's very easy to argue whether Morris was the best pitcher on any of those three teams. But let's say - since Morris backers love to talk about the postseason - that it's his postseason performances that really made him the ace.

1984 World Series: 2-0, 2 CG, 2.00 ERA
1991 World Series: 2-0, 1 CG, 1.17 ERA
1992 World Series: 0-2, 8.44 ERA

*record scratch sound effect*

Whaaaa?

Let's get this straight once and for all. Jack Morris was, by no objective measure, the ace of three WS teams. If you want to say his regular seasons made him the ace, I would argue he was not the ace of any of those teams - Dan Petry was better in 1984, Kevin Tapani and Scott Erickson were better in 1991, and I could easily argue that Key and Guzman were both better in 1992 although Morris' innings make more of a difference that year. If you want to say his postseasons made him the ace, that's fine and I would agree he was the ace of two teams, but the 1992 Blue Jays lost two games in the World Series and Jack Morris was the losing pitcher in both of them. Also, his ERA was fucking 8.44.

And if Morris was so acey and it was so obvious to people who watched him play during his career like Jon Heyman... why did Morris never win a Cy Young? Why did he never come particularly close? If you want to hammer on Blyleven for things he didn't do, this seems like a pretty glaring omission from Morris' CV. He was the ace on three World Series teams and yet never cracked the top two in the Cy voting? In 1984 he was seventh, behind two of his own teammates (Petry and winner Willie Hernandez). In 1991 he was fourth, two spots behind Erickson. He was the only Jay getting votes in 1992, but he was fifth, not close to winning. So I repeat: the ace of three World Series teams was not considered the best pitcher on two of those teams by Cy Young voters.

Lest you think I'm ignoring Blyleven's similar lack of Cy credentials, he also had just two top-three Cy finishes, Morris had one more top-five finish and three more overall appearances on the ballot. On the other hand, at least Blyleven was always the top vote-getter on his own team. I also think it says something that three of Blyleven's four appearances on the ballot came when he was playing for teams that were .500 or worse. None of Morris' seven appearances were for sub-.500 teams and four were for playoff teams. What does this mean? Well, this is just an opinion, but I think it's a lot easier to get on a Cy Young ballot when you have a good season for a playoff team than when you have a very good season for a non-playoff team, and particularly one that isn't even very good. In 1984, Blyleven went 19-7, 2.87 for an Indians team that was 75-87 and finished sixth in the AL East. Morris went 19-11, 3.60 for a Tigers team that won 104 games. Blyleven was third in the voting, Morris seventh. Frankly, considering it was 1984 I'm a little amazed the voters got that one right.

"@petzrawr its not just that i saw them. i covered them. i saw morris be the ace of great teams. he made major impact. bert is very close tho"

This is a delightful pander since I think it's pretty clear he doesn't think Blyleven is really that close. We've already discussed how Morris was not "the ace of great teams" by objective measurement, but again with "I covered them." Hey, great. You missed half of Blyleven's career. Does that seem fair? This is like if you became a reporter in 2000, and then refused to vote for Ken Griffey Jr. because "I covered him - he wasn't a bad hitter but he was always injured and wasn't great in the field." I'm not saying that Blyleven gets a pass on the part of his career that Heyman did see, but he's ignoring an awful lot.

And again, what impact did Morris make that Blyleven didn't, or couldn't have if placed on the same great teams? The '84 Tigers didn't win 104 games because of Morris. And when it comes to being an "ace" and having a "major impact" on your teams, is there a better measurement than (1) ERA - if you're not giving up runs, you're helping your team win; (2) complete games, and (3) shutouts? Forget wins; they're situational. You can get a win if you pitch five innings and give up 10 runs so long as your team scored 11 while you were out there. The lower your ERA, the more likely that your team will win every time you go out there.

Blyleven ERA: 3.31
Morris ERA: 3.90

So on average, every time Jack Morris took the hill, his team would have to score 0.6 more runs to win the game than if they had started Blyleven. Jake Westbrook's career ERA is closer to Morris' than Morris' is to Blyleven's.

How about this: the complete-game shutout is the only way that you, as a pitcher, have almost total control over whether or not your team wins a game. Forget ERA, right? Runs allowed, who cares. You could have a few bad games and that sucker shoots right up. Morris was dominant because he could shut you down.

Blyleven complete games: 242
Morris complete games: 175

Blyleven shutouts: 60
Morris shutouts: 28

Oops. But Morris once led the league in shutouts! I'm sure Blyleven just compiled... oh, no, he did that three times.

"@DashTreyhorn i believe he was chosen to start game 1. his stats may not hold up as "best.'' but managwes consistently gave him ball game 1"

[Sic] there. So, in fact, Heyman's entire rationale for Morris being the "ace" is that he started game one in the playoffs. Not that he was the best starter... just that, for whatever reason, he always started game one. I guess that's nice, but what does it prove? Heyman's clearly an old-school guy who likes to believe that what's truly noteworthy about a pitcher is what his manager thought of him. Sure, Morris was clearly the third-best starter on the '91 Twins, but hey - Tom Kelly thought he should start Game One of the playoffs! It could be because he thought of Morris as his ace. It could also be because Morris started game 158, Tapani started game 159 and Erickson started game 161 - in other words, it was Morris' turn in the rotation. The same could be said in 1992, when Juan Guzman pitched closer to the end of the season than Morris. (Key was even fresher but he barely pitched in the ALCS - then he went 2-0 in the World Series while Morris went 0-2.) I'm not surprised Morris was picked in '84 because Dan Petry was only 25 and didn't quite have Morris' track record... but again, Petry pitched closer to the end of the season than did Morris! Heyman's argument rests on nothing more than how the rotation happened to line up? Good God. (I guess it was late in the year and you could argue that the rotation was being purposefully lined up to get Morris a Game One start; I'd have to do a lot more research to try and see which it was. Still, Morris was the most veteran of the good pitchers on his teams. It doesn't surprise me that a manager would want the most senior good guy to lead off a series. It doesn't mean that Morris himself was possessed of endemic pitching qualities that made managers choose him. It means he was in situations where he was a senior guy and baseball men like veterans. These are not HOF credentials.)

"@andytworischuk i dont believe i said "stats shouldn't be used.'' ive said i dont go by stats alone."

Come on, Jon. You don't go by stats at all! What does Morris have over Blyleven aside from winning percentage, which I've already pretty much disproved? Even the stats that you used to try to bury Blyleven simply don't hold up. Earned runs? Sure, he had one really bad year where he led the league - but so did Morris, and Blyleven's career ERA is markedly lower. Home runs? Again, a couple bad years there - but here's a fun fact for you:

Home runs allowed, 162-game average
Morris: 25
Blyleven: 21

Losses? Both averaged 12 per 162 games. What does Morris have that Blyleven doesn't? Postseason performance? Because that's an old canard too:

Blyleven postseason: 5-1, 2.47 in five series
Morris postseason: 7-4, 3.80 in seven series

I'm really supposed to believe that even though every available statistic says that Blyleven was not just better than Morris but often significantly better, I should just think that Morris was better because he was in the right place at the right time to start a few Game Ones? Who CARES?????

Last point, because this is rapidly turning into a dissertation: Heyman's entire argument seems to boil down to this: "Yes, the stats say Blyleven was better, but that's not what I remember." Here's the problem, Jon: human memory is notoriously fallible. They've done whole studies about this. There's something called "flashbulb memory," which refers to memories that stick in the mind very clearly because of their connection to traumatic events, like a car accident or something more global like the Challenger disaster or 9/11. But here's the thing: it turns out that flashbulb memories, while they are more vivid than regular memories, aren't necessarily more reliable. People interviewed within 24 or 48 hours of the Challenger explosion gave one account of what happened that day, and then a completely different one when asked again five years later - except that they still thought the memory was vivid and accurate, even though it wasn't. It was also discovered that things like television coverage often caused other information that they didn't originally have to bleed over into the memory, making them think they'd experienced these other things at the time, even though they hadn't.

What does this have to do with Jon Heyman? Well, what he's basically saying is, "I was there and I saw Morris be dominant." But did he? The stats - an objective record of the games played - certainly don't suggest dominance on Morris' part. They suggest a very good pitcher with a handful of great seasons and a few big playoff moments. Of course, Blyleven's stats suggest the exact same thing and they're better across the board, so you can't very well point to that and use it to say why Morris should be in and Blyleven shouldn't. So that leaves "personal experience." You can't just go by the stats! I was there and my memory tells me Morris was dominant!

Except that Jon Heyman's memory is almost certainly not more reliable, or less prone to alteration, than the average person's. What is the one thing that everyone knows about Jack Morris? He had clutch postseason performances. He was a big-game pitcher. Like Game 5 of the 1992 World Series, when Morris took the mound and clinched the title for the Blue Jays... oh, no. What actually happened was he gave up five runs in the top of the fifth with the game tied at two, including a two-out grand slam to Lonnie Smith of all people, and the Blue Jays had to go back to Atlanta, where they won Game 6.

That's not entirely fair, of course, but it proves my point. Jon Heyman remembers Jack Morris as a big-game pitcher for the same reason most people do: Game 7, 1991 World Series. And sure, that was a really great game. But it was one game. That's not enough, yet it's clearly coloring memories because it's not like Morris did that every time out. In the 1991 ALCS, Morris was pulled in the sixth inning of Game One because he had just let the Blue Jays close the gap from 5-1 to 5-4. (He was just pitching to the score, right?) The bullpen shut the Jays down and Morris got the win (yet another reason why wins are kinda bullshit). He's allowed bad games, but let's not pretend he was never anything but lights-out in the postseason. Heyman's memory is being affected by all the coverage that game continues to get to this day. But because people really can't be aware that their memory is altered like that, he continues to insist that he was there and he saw it happen. Even though, apart from a relatively small number of games, he probably didn't. (And of course Heyman is unlikely to remember games he saw in which Morris pitched poorly, so that just leaves memory of the "dominant pitcher" that Morris certainly could be at his very best. But so could Blyleven. Just because Heyman doesn't remember seeing it does not mean it didn't happen. That's why we have statistics, because it's impossible for one dude to remember everything that happened in one game, let alone hundreds of them.)

Really, if Jack Morris ever does get elected, he owes it all to Kirby Puckett. Why? Because without Puckett's home run to win Game Six, Morris doesn't get that chance at Game 7. And then his postseason resume goes from 7-4, 3.80 to 6-4, 4.26, and no one remembers that indelible moment which subsequently affects all their memories of Morris' talent, and we're not even having this conversation.

I don't mean to kill Morris here. It's not like he was a bad pitcher. But his ERA+ was 105. He was not a dominant starter any more than Blyleven just because he did it for a few more winning teams. Maybe you still want to argue that he's a Hall of Famer, and that's fine. But if you're going to put him in, how you can suggest that Blyleven belongs out when you have four more spots on your ballot into which you could put him... I just can't understand that.

Albums of the Decade, #10-1

2009-12-31T12:00:00.013-06:00

#10

The Long Winters, When I Pretend to Fall (2003)

I believe I mentioned my affinity for albums that take several different styles and meld them into a seamless whole. When I Pretend to Fall is one such, blending basic indie rock with folkier sounds, the "traditional" sound of "Bride and Bridle" (which always reminds me of songs like "Gallows Pole"), an acoustic number ("It'll Be a Breeze") and more piano-driven tracks like "Nora," which defy obvious categorization. The album is astonishingly good - in spite of its tangential connection to one-hit wonder Harvey Danger, it never drew much notice - and has multiple songs that could and/or should have been big pop hits, such as "The Sound of Coming Down," "Blue Diamonds" and "Prom Night at Hater High," to name just three. Every track is outstanding front to back; there are few albums on which I'm unsure of my favorite track, but my answer for this one probably changes every time I hear it. Unsurprisingly, the band hasn't been able to duplicate When I Pretend to Fall; the only successive LP, 2006's Putting the Days to Bed, was good but not great.

Sufjan Stevens, Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State (2003)

Sufjan Stevens basically came out of nowhere with 2003's Michigan album - prior to that, his only records were A Sun Came and Enjoy Your Rabbit, two rather strange concept albums. Michigan, of course, is itself basically a concept album, but one that, like his later Illinois, holds together on every level - tonally, conceptually, emotionally. "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" is the track everyone knows now (thanks to its use on The O.C. of all places), but the album is full of moments like that - on "Romulus," "Sleeping Bear, Sault Ste Marie," "Vito's Ordination Song," and everything else. Stevens' first great album is at once an ode and an elegy to his home state, and it is constantly moving, gorgeous and haunting.

Snow Patrol, Final Straw (2004)

Snow Patrol's first two albums aren't bad, but they gave very little hint of the explosion that was to come, starting with their best album, Final Straw. Along with much of the best of British pop/rock from the last two decades, Final Straw finds Snow Patrol taking small-scale, emotional human issues and blowing them out into virtual arena rock. "How to Be Dead" is about a couple's fight, while "Grazed Knees" finds the band exploring the aftermath of another such confrontation. The singer in "Chocolate" is confessing to infidelity, while "Spitting Games" is about an unrequited schoolyard crush. "Run," my favorite track on the album, is a song sung from one parting lover to another. Much rock music is about such relatively mundane topics, of course, but it's the way the band brings them to you that makes all the difference. Snow Patrol's songs on Final Straw are fabulous and lush, with compulsively singable choruses and the elevation of their everyday topics into full-throated anthems. And at quieter moments, the emotion is in full swing on tracks like "Same." The best art, to me, encourages identification, and even if you can't relate to every single topic on Final Straw, the connection is always there.

The Decemberists, The Crane Wife (2006)

Categorizing the Decemberists is a bit of a challenge. Are they "art rock," or just archaic? Or are they just eclectic? Frontman Colin Meloy brings together folk, rock and pop, along with something of an old-time sensibility, and his masterwork is The Crane Wife, a quasi-concept album based around an old Japanese folk tale. The album's opener, "The Crane Wife 3," is actually the third part of the story as the name suggests, but it's the best track on the album and not 11 minutes long like "The Crane Wife 1 & 2," which can actually be found near the album's back. The order isn't the issue - it's Meloy's haunting lyrics and melodies, which are sublime. The rest of the album is just as good, sometimes pairing upbeat music with downbeat lyrics, such as the Romeo and Juliet-like story in "O Valencia!" A song like "Shankill Butchers" is deliciously menacing, and the album's closer, "Sons and Daughters," is a delightful bit of folk-pop. The album marked the Decemberists' jump to a major label, and with their beautiful story-songs, they certainly made the most of it.

The New Pornographers, Challengers (2007)

Deciding on my favorite New Pornographers album seemed tough at first, but ultimately it wasn't that close. The first four tracks of this album - "My Rights Versus Yours," "All the Old Showstoppers," the title track, and Dan Bejar's "Myriad Harbour" - are right there with any four-song stretch of the decade, particularly when it comes to kicking off an album. Things stay just as good, with tracks like "Failsafe," "Unguided," "Go Places," the delicate, moving "Adventures in Solitude" and Bejar's "Hey Jude"-like closer "The Spirit of Giving." Even as they expand and diversify, the New Pornographers are losing none of their ability to produce killer records. Four years after Electric Version, the sound is almost totally different, but the album is even better. The emotional connections have grown stronger - "Challengers" is probably their best song ever on that front - and Neko Case is even better used on songs like that one and "Go Places" than she has been belting out songs like "Letter from an Occupant." We can only hope that the upward trend continues on the expected 2010 album.

The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow (2003)

Fortunately for the Shins, the hype from "New Slang" didn't hit critical mass until the release of Garden State in 2004, and by that point they'd already put out their second album. Who knows whether it would have mattered, of course, since it's hard to imagine an album this good being thrown off by accident. At just under 34 minutes, it kind of has to be perfect - fortunately, it is. I don't even know how to explain this album if you haven't heard it - just know that there isn't a second that's out of place. It can go from mellower tracks like "Kissing the Lipless" and "Saint Simon" to more rocking tracks like "So Says I" and "Fighting in a Sack" without missing a beat, and the two best tracks might be the slower "Young Pilgrims" and "Pink Bullets." It's hard for me to imagine you disliking this album if you liked any of the other albums in the top 20, so if you haven't heard it... get on it.

The Essex Green, Cannibal Sea (2006)

The Essex Green might have the lowest name recognition of any artist on this list, but it didn't stop them coming up with one of the best albums. Singers Sasha Bell and Chris Ziter pretty much alternate tracks, but the sound hangs completely together, jangling pop in the style of the late 60s and early 70s. "Uniform" and "Elsinore" are my favorite tracks, but the whole thing is a lush mixture of gorgeous vocals and perfectly compact melodies. I could listen to this album over and over again. That the band isn't more famous - and that they seem to be on hiatus and could possibly never produce a follow-up - is more than a little disappointing. In fact, they're so dang non-famous I can't even find a suitable video to put here... so, Google them, I guess. Dammit.

Okkervil River, Black Sheep Boy (2005)

This album just continues to grow on me. No one ever accused Will Sheff of not liking to put together concept albums, but this is certainly his masterpiece of the form. The album opens with a cover of an older folk song that shares its title, but it immediately spins much deeper. The raw, dark emotions are rarely far from the surface - "For Real," the album's first original song, contains lines like "I really miss what really did exist when I held your throat so tight," while "Black" finds the singer urging a female friend (their exact relationship is unclear) to "wreck his [her ex-boyfriend or -husband's] life the way that he wrecked yours." The emotions aren't all so dark - on "A King and A Queen," Sheff's character pines for a woman he knows he can't have, but still pledges to "lie by your side for sublime centuries, until we crumble to dust when we're crushed by a single sunbeam." Morbid, perhaps, but delicately sung and touching nonetheless. The album's best song is the epic "So Come Back, I Am Waiting," which takes the themes from the rest of the album and runs them together, as the album's title character informs the object of his affection that he is "calmly waiting to make you my lamb." The album's thematic success, its emotion, its blending of rather poetic lyrics with outstanding music, all mark it as easily one of the very best of the decade, if not of all time.

Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism (2003)

This one also gets my vote as favorite album cover of the decade. We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes is a good album, but there wasn't a lot of warning that Death Cab were going to put out an album like this in 2003. (By the way, check out the dates on the rest of the top ten. 2003 was a pretty good year in music, right?) Yet the album bounces from one indie classic to another, all centered around the titanic eight-minute title track. As with Final Straw, Transatlanticism harnesses basic emotions and mundane moments and, yoking them to perfect melodies, turns them loose. "Passenger Seat" is about someone being driven home, for crying out loud, yet it's one of the most beautiful songs of this or any decade. The acid of "The Sound of Settling" and "Tiny Vessels" is contrasted by the hurt of "Title and Registration" and "A Lack of Color." And on tracks like "The New Year" and "We Looked Like Giants," Death Cab shows they can bust out the rock whenever they feel like it. Swap out the slightly weak "Death of an Interior Decorator" and this could have been #1. It's the perfect mix of music and meaning.

Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (2005)

The very definition of a concept album, Sufjan Stevens' Illinois hangs together far better than it has any right to - which is to say, perfectly. A collage of songs with both very direct and very indirect connections to the titular state, Illinois is a combination of ambitious folk-pop, stories and character sketches that nod at the best of Ben Folds and other artists for whom such lyrics are the bread and butter, and an overarching theme that at once makes no sense and all the sense in the world. A nearly seven-minute Vince Guaraldi sound-alike about the Columbian Exposition and a visitation from the ghost of Carl Sandburg fits perfectly next to an instrumental piece about the Black Hawk War, or a song about being stung by a wasp along the Mississippi River, or a quiet, haunting six-minute acoustic track about a girlfriend dying of bone cancer. Stevens' work can be challenging at times, but he has an ear for melody and a knack for lyrical composition, and if you're willing to take the risk of joining him on the journey, you may just find that, somehow, no one ever covered the state better. Maybe the lack of a serious follow-up is owed to the near-impossibility of topping this album - since 2005, Stevens has released only The Avalanche - basically just an appendix to Illinois - an album of Christmas songs and, just this year, the instrumental work The BQE. While it's clear by now that he never was actually going to make an album for all 50 states, considering how good the two he made were, we can at least hope that he takes another crack at it. But I can understand why he might not want to. Albums like Illinois only come around... oh, maybe once a decade.

Albums of the Decade, #20-11

2009-12-29T20:05:00.013-06:00

#20
Brendan Benson, Lapalco (2002)

A wall-to-wall outstanding slice of pop rock. There's pretty much nothing I don't enjoy about this album - the melodies are fabulous, and Benson seems to inject a lot of himself into the record. The keyboards are particularly well-used, with a driving piano on the opening track, "Tiny Spark," and the fuzzy keys on the closer, "Jetlag." Why isn't this higher? I think it's full of grade-A tracks, but so are all the albums at this point, and only a couple tracks nudge past the rest to me. To use a baseball metaphor, every track is a double with two or three triples. But to get into the top ten, you need more homers. Nevertheless, I would recommend this album highly to any indie pop/rock fan.

#19
Spoon, Gimme Fiction (2005)

An awesome, moody rock album with gritty guitars and often mysterious lyrics. I don't think it would have been out of place in the early 70s scene. Britt Daniel's voice is just strained enough to sell the darkness in each track. My personal favorite from the album is "They Never Got You," but "I Turn My Camera On" is the track most people will have heard, and with good reason.

#18
Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

Bizarrely, I didn't really discover this album until just this year even though it pretty much dragged Wilco into the mainstream. I've got no real excuse except that until 2006 or so I was regularly behind the curve on music like this and I guess it took some time to work my way backwards. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" alone makes the album; it's an absolutely monster opener, and not in the anthemic sense, but just in the way it builds and builds, and somehow manages to make what at first seems like a droning opening into a perfect coalescence of instruments just before Jeff Tweedy starts singing. "Jesus, Etc." and "Poor Places" also stand out to me, but the album is stunningly consistent. iTunes lists Wilco as country, but just listen to the record - they can't be pigeonholed that easily (and under no circumstance would I call them country, anyway). I have a real appreciation for a band that can pull out several different sounds on one album and have the whole thing hang together - see also Sgt. Pepper's and Physical Graffiti in particular. And yes, I just compared this album to those. Had I found it sooner, it might have had time to move higher than #18...

#17
Jack's Mannequin, Everything in Transit (2005)

Andrew McMahon is almost exactly my age (five days younger), which might have something to do with my affinity for his work. I haven't had many life experiences like the ones he relates on Everything in Transit, but his two albums as Jack's Mannequin have both been extremely personal, and that sense of twentysomething anguish can still really resonate when you're the same age. Plus, the guy just writes great melodies. How many bands could take a song about a mixtape good enough to "burn a hole in anyone" and make it anything other than completely ridiculous? It's a goofy premise, yet "The Mixed Tape" has me going every time. "Into the Airwaves," the album's closer, is brilliant. There are a few self-indulgent moments on the record, in particular the spoken-word portion on "I'm Ready," but overall it's a great collection of music and lyrics that really bring home a moment in time.

#16
The Killers, Hot Fuss (2004)

I probably like the Killers' last two albums more than most people who aren't 16 years old, but the one that everyone liked is still the best overall. I admit I think the second half is a little weaker, but you can't deny that first half - five straight techno-pop grand slams. "Change Your Mind" is a grand slam too and "On Top" another home run, but the remaining four songs are not nearly as strong, a main reason why this didn't crack the top ten. "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" and "Mr. Brightside" back to back, though, are about as good a one-two punch as any band ever opened their career with.

#15
A.C. Newman, The Slow Wonder (2004)

For anyone who was wondering just who was most responsible for the success of the New Pornographers, Carl Newman's first solo album answered the question and then some. Brilliant front to back, the album hits epic indie rock highs with "On the Table," "Secretarial" and "The Town Halo." After this album came out I concluded that Newman simply could do no wrong; his next solo album, 2009's Get Guilty, unfortunately couldn't live up to that kind of expectation (which is why it's not on this list, though it's still a good album). Fortunately, later New Pornographers work still could.

#14
The Shins, Wincing the Night Away (2007)

Following up a masterwork (spoiler!) is always difficult, and it took the Shins more than three full years to put out a sequel to 2003's Chutes Too Narrow. In spite of a sound that might have seemed dangerously broadened on first listen, Wincing very nearly matched its predecessor with a rollicking opening and track after track of winning melodies, whether disarmingly sunny ("Phantom Limb," "Turn On Me"), more obviously dark ("Sea Legs"), or just curious ("Red Rabbits"). It's hard to live up to perfection, which might explain why it's now been very nearly three years since Wincing's release and we're once again stuck waiting for the next album.

#13
The New Pornographers, Electric Version (2003)

The title is absolutely accurate, because the driving force behind this album is track after track of ringing melodies pounding out of electric guitars. There's nothing close to an acoustic number, or anything like that. The similarity of the overall sound really helps blend Dan Bejar's songs into the whole, perhaps more so than on any other NPs record, too. Oddly, even though you could argue that the sound is almost too consistent, that never becomes a problem for me. The different arrangements spread out just enough to keep massively entertaining tracks like "From Blown Speakers," "It's Only Divine Right," "Miss Teen Wordpower," "The Laws Have Changed," "All For Swinging You Around" and "Ballad of a Comeback Kid" from really sounding anything alike, in spite of the consistent aesthetic (which no other NPs record matches).

#12
Sufjan Stevens, The Avalanche (2006)

It's really saying something when you can release a collection of "outtakes and extras" and market that as a whole new album when you've only got four albums to your credit (and really only one or two that most people have heard of). It's saying even more when that album is nearly as good as the one that spun it off. The unified tone that makes Michigan and Illinois so brilliant (spoiler!) is missing on The Avalanche, but it's about the only thing lacking amid delicate folk-pop tunes like "Pittsfield," slightly more rock-leaning songs like the title track, "Springfield" and "No Man's Land," and Stevens' typical instrumental collages like "Kaskaskia River" and "For Clyde Tombaugh." In spite of the less cohesive progression from start to finish, and not one but three alternate versions of "Chicago," The Avalanche proved both that Illinois could easily have been a double album and that Stevens' leavings were just about as good as anyone else's best work.

#11
Ben Folds, Rockin' the Suburbs (2001)

We might all have been better off had the Five not broken up - their first two albums are likely both in my 90s top ten - but with solo albums like this, who was complaining? If anything, Folds' piano was cut even further loose. Just watch him go on tracks like "Zak and Sara" and "The Ascent of Stan," to say nothing of the solo on "Fired," one of my favorite solos on any instrument in any song in history. What's more, we basically got a whole album full of vintage Folds character sketches, in particular "Fred Jones Part 2," one of his most moving songs. "Still Fighting It" is also brilliant and "The Luckiest," while perhaps a little sappy, became a go-to wedding song for a reason. Folds' ability to create genuine emotion in even small sketches has always been nearly unparalleled - look at "Eddie Walker," which sounds half-finished and is still somehow perfect - but here he almost outdoes himself. In this world, the title song is actually kind of out of place, but it's still incredibly fun and perhaps a needed break from the heaviness of songs like "Carrying Cathy." (Whatever and Ever Amen followed "Brick" with "Song for the Dumped," after all.)

Coming before the end of the year: the top ten!

Albums of the Decade, #30-21

2009-12-20T23:39:00.012-06:00

#30
Ben Lee, Awake is the New Sleep (2005)

Ben Lee is so earnest a songwriter that at times it becomes insufferable, but Awake is the New Sleep captures him at his most perfectly balanced. The acoustic guitar-driven pop is at its peak on "Whatever It Is," "Ache for You" and "Into the Dark," but the whole album really walks the tightrope perfectly. It's easy for a twentysomething guy with a guitar writing songs about relationships and the meaning of life to sound like a total douche, but Lee's largely peppy tunes hold everything together even when the lyrics get a little iffy. (The same can't be said of Ripe, the follow-up album, which has some good songs but too often gets bogged down in its own self-importance.)

#29
The Killers, Day and Age (2008)

A lot of the focus when this album came out went to the song "Human," which had odd lyrics and seemed too dance-ready for fans who came in more on Sam's Town. Of course, this ignored the fact that "Losing Touch" and "Spaceman," the songs on either side of "Human," are two of the most fun and infectious songs the Killers have released to date. Aside from the fairly weak "Joy Ride," the whole album is pretty strong, though it never returns to "Spaceman"-level heights after the third track. For all the crap they take, the Killers just keep proving that they know how to put out solid albums and how to knock at least a couple tracks per record completely out of the park.

#28
Okkervil River, The Stage Names (2007)

By this point, no one should be surprised to see a concept album from Okkervil River, whose frontman Will Sheff seems to take real delight in tying things together. What's amazing is that The Stage Names works as well as it does, given how headlong it dives into the world of pop culture in a way their previous album (stay tuned) had not. Consider "Plus Ones" in particular, which references a good nine other songs in its lyrics, a tactic I usually can't stand, or "A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene," which actually describes scenes from real TV shows over which other Okkervil River songs were played. The music holds everything together, as well as a strong vein of emotion which Sheff mines to particularly strong effect in "Savannah Smiles" and "John Allyn Smith Sails." Few bands would be able to write a first-person song from the perspective of a poet who killed himself in 1972, much less make it deeply moving by weaving it together with "Sloop John B" - but here's the proof that Okkervil River can.

#27
Steve Burns, Songs for Dustmites (2003)

I feel bad for Steve Burns. By all rights, Songs for Dustmites should have made him a rock star; instead, few people could forget that he was "the Blue's Clues guy" and this album was never given the attention it deserved. By no means is it perfect - the production is conspicuously low-budget, and Burns' vocal talents might best be described as "capable." Still, these things don't take away from the fact that this is a great set of songs, led off by probably the best track, "Mighty Little Man." "Troposphere" and the sort-of title track, "A Song for Dustmites" are both pretty epic tunes as well, and the rest of the album is solid throughout. There's no real reason this album shouldn't have found its way onto the shelves of indie rock fans everywhere.

#26
Doves, Some Cities (2005)

The Last Broadcast is also a good album, and it's just off the bottom of this list, but the Doves album that really jumped out at me was Some Cities. The ringing guitar kicking off the title track immediately signals that this is something worth paying attention to, and the second track, "Black and White Town," continues the feeling. Much of the rest of the album is considerably moodier, on tracks like "Snowden," "The Storm" and "Someday Soon," but the whole thing still has a consistent feel, which can be attributed to a great set of tunes and the vocals of Jimi Goodwin, which pull various styles of song together. If there were any justice in the world, these guys would be as big as Radiohead.

#25
Something Corporate, Leaving Through the Window (2002)

It's a testament to how eclectic my taste is that I can follow up Doves with Something Corporate, an emo-rock band fronted by a then-20-year-old. But Andrew McMahon can really write a tune, especially one driven by a piano, which I always appreciate. For so young a band, there are surprisingly few spots on Leaving Through the Window where the age really shows - I wouldn't have put "Punk Rock Princess" as track two, "Drunk Girl" is clumsy and "iF yoU C Jordan" is just kind of petty, albeit still fun to sing along to. But the album has 14 tracks, and nearly all of the rest range from good to brilliant. "I Woke Up in a Car" may call to mind a particular age range, but it's singularly evocative, and "The Astronaut" should have been a monster rock hit. "Cavanaugh Park" and "Globes and Maps" are both great piano ballads. It may be an album that absolutely reminds me of college, but who says that's always a bad thing?

#24
Mates of State, Re-arrange Us (2008)

There aren't that many songs I feel like I could listen to on a loop almost indefinitely, but "My Only Offer," track three on Re-arrange Us, is one such. I'm not sure how long it would take me to get sick of it, but I bet it would be at least ten times through, which for a single song is probably ridiculous. It's that good. The whole album is a thoroughly effective piece with the voices of husband and wife Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner mixing perfectly with the indie-pop musical style. They've got some perfect tunes in here - "Get Better," the aforementioned "My Only Offer," "Blue and Gold Print" - and do a fabulous job of taking at times melancholy lyrics and pairing them with music in such a way that you simply can't help but sing along.

#23
Ben Folds, Songs for Silverman (2005)

"Landed" might very well be Ben Folds' best song, at least as a solo artist, but it's still just one piece of the puzzle on Songs for Silverman, a fairly melancholy album that contains virtually none of Folds' trademark humor. What it does have are a lot of great piano-driven songs, including "Late," a touchingly small-time farewell to Elliott Smith. It does lack a lot of booming highs, but I have to admit to a bias when I say that for me, good Ben Folds songs stand alongside very good to great songs by a lot of other artists. I love piano-heavy rock and I love Folds' flair for the everyday, which stands out in excellent tracks like "Bastard" and "You to Thank," along with those already mentioned.

#22
Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs (2008)

After the dreary nature of Plans, Death Cab sort of bridges the gap between that darkness and their earlier work (often still dark, but more entertainingly so) with Narrow Stairs. "Bixby Canyon Bridge," which opens the album, is plenty dark in its lyrical content, but the music isn't as much of a downer; track three, "No Sunlight," is pretty conspicuous in the contradiction between the lyrics and tune, which is curiously peppy. The album's best track, "Cath...", is about a woman giving up and marrying a guy she doesn't particularly love, but it absolutely rocks the place out. Ultimately, that's the best of Death Cab - regardless of what they're singing about, they're perfectly capable of giving you an impeccably crafted rock song with a chorus you're ready to belt out at a stoplight.

#21 The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema (2005)

For the most part, the New Pornographers just keep getting better. I do tend to think of Twin Cinema as a tiny step back, though really it was more of a lateral move. The hits here are just as strong as those on any NPs album - "Use It" is a masterpiece, and songs like "Sing Me Spanish Techno," the title track, and "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras" are great pop-rock tracks that stand with the best work the group has done. But similarly to Mass Romantic, something about the second half of Twin Cinema leaves me sort of cold. These aren't bad songs at all - in fact they're very good songs - but I just don't have the same connection to them that I do to most of the album's first half, or to the entirety of other NPs albums which will show up later. It's a very subjective opinion and I can't really defend it from a musical standpoint, but few things are as hard to quantify as exactly why a given song makes me feel a certain way. People can talk about various aspects of music all the way, but few forms of art are quite this personal. The New Pornographers are probably one of my five favorite bands, maybe of all time, but not all their work moves me the same way. Still, it says something that even an album whose entire second half "leaves me sort of cold" can find its way to just outside the top 20.

Albums of the Decade, #40-31

2009-12-19T15:24:00.012-06:00

Onward!

#40
Coldplay, X&Y (2005)

I imagine there might be some disputing this one, especially when I tell you it's the only Coldplay album on the list. Most people would rank A Rush of Blood to the Head or Parachutes first, and even Viva La Vida is more widely loved. But X&Y is where I really came in on Coldplay, and I had a very similar moment to the one I described for Turn on the Bright Lights when I first heard "Square One" on the Borders headphones as I decided to see what the Coldplay thing was all about. And frankly I'll put this album up against all their others in terms of number of straight awesome songs - "Square One," "Fix You," "Talk," "Speed of Sound," "A Message"... really, the only ones I wouldn't go out of my way to defend are "What If," "White Shadows" and the title track, and it's not like those are terrible songs. It's probably the most consistent Coldplay album and I enjoy rocking along to it.

#39
Destroyer, Destroyer's Rubies (2006)

In his role as one contributor to the New Pornographers, Dan Bejar has always been fairly well integrated into the group's sound. Put him on his own, however, and there's a bit more of an edge to his music which really stands apart (by comparison, Carl Newman's solo albums might as well be New Pornographers albums). The high points of Destroyer's Rubies are the epic, nine-and-a-half-minute quasi-title track "Rubies" and "3000 Flowers," a song from the middle of the album which never meanders (as some of Bejar's tracks will do) and has a killer drive and riff. But the whole album has a great, consistent tone that makes it feel like a strange modern art project (what with Bejar's odd, beat-poetic, almost stream-of-consciousness lyrics) with music so solid it always keeps me coming back. It's the happy contradiction of Bejar; no matter how weird and rambling his lyrics might get, the rock is never any less solid for it.

#38
Idlewild, The Remote Part (2002)

Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble has a bit of a lofty goal for his lyrics, which I think he thinks are more poetic than they are. Frankly, it's a little hard to otherwise explain the presence of Scottish national poet Edwin Morgan on the closing track of The Remote Part. The band's lyrics are pop-rock solid if hardly profound, but they're all that's needed to carry the music, which is really what carries the album to its heights. The Remote Part alternates almost perfectly between heavy rockers like "You Held the World in Your Arms" and "Stay the Same" and milder, often more enjoyable tunes like "Tell Me Ten Words" (probably the album's best song) and "Live in a Hiding Place." But even if it's not quite as fun when the band gets louder, and even if Woomble's lyrics aren't quite as deep as he thinks, it's a great sing-along album that doesn't let up from start to finish. It deserved more attention than it got, at least in the States.

#37
Snow Patrol, Eyes Open (2006)

Not to spoil anything, but Snow Patrol quickly became one of my favorite active bands in 2005 when I first heard Final Straw, which is coming up later. In 2006, they released Eyes Open, and while it's not as strong as its predecessor, it's a really fun album. I remember hearing "Hands Open" for the first time and being underwhelmed, but it really grew on me - and how many bands getting top 40 radio airplay would have had the balls to name-check Sufjan Stevens? Meanwhile, "You're All I Have" and "Chasing Cars" are both great hit-style songs, even if the latter got overplayed eventually. Sadly, the second half of the album just isn't quite there; while "Open Your Eyes" is absolutely epic and sounds like Joshua Tree-era U2, the three-song group of "Make This Go On Forever," "Set the Fire to the Third Bar," and, in particular, "Headlights on Dark Roads" leave me pretty cold. Still, the first half of the album is extremely strong and "Open Your Eyes" is a welcome redemption for anyone making it that far.

#36
Embrace, Out of Nothing (2004)

Another British band that barely found its way to the States at all, Embrace might have avoided notice altogether if not for the fact that "Gravity," the second track from Out of Nothing, was written by Coldplay's Chris Martin. It's a bit unfair, since Out of Nothing is a great modern rock album and "Gravity" is hardly its best track, an honor that goes either to "Ashes," "Someday," or "Spell It Out." Good luck digging any of those up on YouTube, of course. Embrace's follow-up album wasn't even released in the United States, so this is the only one of theirs I know, but it's pretty strong front to back (although the last two tracks are significantly more disposable). Why isn't it higher? Because while it goes down smooth, it's ultimately pretty conventional stuff and only a few tracks are really killers. I hope what follows can beat that standard.

#35
Guster, Keep It Together (2003)

I had hoped to include Lost and Gone Forever, still Guster's best album, but it turned out to be 1999. So we'll have to settle for Keep It Together, the nevertheless enjoyable follow-up. Was it worth a four-year wait? That might be debatable. Guster exchanged the bongos for regular drums and altered their sound for this album, and while that didn't stop them for turning out one catchy pop song after another, it might prove a disappointment to long-time fans from the days of "Mona Lisa" and "Great Escape." But it's still a good listen, with standout tracks including "Amsterdam," "Homecoming King," "Come Downstairs and Say Hello," and "I Hope Tomorrow is Like Today." There are no bad tracks, though "Red Oyster Cult" is questionable, and the consistency is there. The high points just aren't numerous enough to push it any higher.

#34
The Killers, Sam's Town (2006)

"When You Were Young" is an absolutely titanic rock song (even if it takes them a damn minute and a half to get to the song in the video; see below), and if all of "Sam's Town" could have approached that standard, we might be talking top five. But like many others down here, it's a strong, solid album with three or four high points, not enough to push it further. "Why Do I Keep Counting?" and "Read My Mind" both reach the heights, but the rest of the album is merely very good.

#33
Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)

No band's 2000s oeuvre was harder to appraise than Fountains of Wayne. I love their albums, but they can be wildly inconsistent, perhaps no more so than Welcome Interstate Managers, which contains some of the band's absolute best songs, but also goofy stuff like "Halley's Waitress." "Stacy's Mom" is a full-on masterpiece of comedically-inclined power pop, and everyone's heard that, but "Mexican Wine" and "Bright Future in Sales" aren't far behind. Even deep tracks like "Bought for a Song" can bring the power. But, not to sound like a broken record here, the highs soar and the rest of the album pretty much just chugs along. Traffic and Weather, FOW's 2007 follow-up, is much more consistent but doesn't hit the same highs. It would have been in the 51-55 range, probably.

(By the way, be sure to turn the volume down before playing this video if you do, because it's a lot higher than others. Blame it on EMI, who doesn't seem to want this video embedded and forced me to do some digging.)

#32
The New Pornographers, Mass Romantic (2000)

General rule: New Pornographers albums are awesome. Mass Romantic, however, is not as awesome as most. The hits are absolutely there - the title track, "The Fake Headlines," "Jackie," "Letter from an Occupant" - but - again - the rest of the album does not rise to the same heights. In fact, almost the entire second half of Mass Romantic is comparatively uninteresting to me - I'm not saying I don't like it, but if I only had 20 more minutes in which to listen to music I would skip to another CD after "Letter from an Occupant" ended. But these guys were just getting warmed up.

#31
Death Cab for Cutie, Plans (2005)

Give Death Cab for Cutie credit - they really had some balls for releasing arguably their least commercial record ever right after signing to a major label. With that said, Plans spends a little too much time being miserable and depressing for my liking, even by Death Cab standards. "Marching Bands of Manhattan" kicks things off in fine fashion, but it's all downhill after "Soul Meets Body," with the exception of the stellar "Crooked Teeth," feeling completely out of place between "Someday You Will Be Loved" and the supremely depressing "What Sarah Said." This isn't to say it's a bad album by any stretch. "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," however morbid, is a wonderful song, and really, aside from "What Sarah Said," Death Cab manages to inject a lot of life into even the darkest material. In fact, that ability might sum up their entire career, but it's never more true than on Plans, the kind of album that might have been a complete disaster in other hands but still managed to go platinum under Death Cab's capable musicianship.

All right, 20 down, 30 to go! Come on back soon, if you care.

Albums of the Decade, #50-41

2009-12-14T21:48:00.017-06:00

It's kind of amazing to think we're at the end of a decade. (No points for commenting either (a) that we're always at the end of a decade or (b) that "the real decade ends next year!") When the 2000s started I was a senior in high school; now I'm less than six months away from getting my second bachelor's degree, I'm engaged to the love of my life, I'm almost completely bald... you know. Stuff happened.

One thing that happened much more in the 2000s than at any point prior was that I got into actual contemporary music, rather than listening to mostly classic rock supplemented with Blink 182. While the Beatles are and always will be my favorite band, there was a good deal of music in the 2000s that actually could compete with them for my affections, at least on a per-album basis. And there was a lot of other good stuff too. So without further ado, I'm going to be counting down my 50 favorite albums of 2000-2009.

#50
The All-American Rejects, Move Along (2005)

The start of a big countdown might not be the best place to mention this, but here goes: I'm not an extremely discerning music fan. I mean, I am, but ultimately if something sounds good to my ears I don't really care how many other people are listening to it. The music on this list mostly falls into three categories: reasonably obscure indie stuff; indie or indie-like stuff that ended up rather well-known; and stuff that would be considered "popular." The All-American Rejects certainly fall into the third category, probably more than any other band on this list with maybe one or two exceptions. But this is a difficult album to deny - "Dirty Little Secret" and "Move Along," the two big standout tracks, are both big, bop-along anthems, and if the other tracks rarely hit similar highs, they're certainly appealing enough. It's not a completely vanilla album either - "Night Drive" has a great pulsing percussion part that recalls a drum line, while "Can't Take It" is based around a string section. It's mainstream pop rock (with a bit of an emo cast), but it's about as good as albums of that sort get.

#49
Pete Yorn, musicforthemorningafter (2001)

The first half of Yorn's breakthrough album is such a string of hits that this album could easily have placed much higher - "Life On A Chain," "Strange Condition," "Just Another," "Black," "Lose You," and "For Nancy" are all great songs. The second half of the album can't say the same - aside from "Sleep Better" and the hidden track "Girl Like You," I can take or leave most of it. It's not like it's terrible, but compared to the compelling nature of the first six tracks it feels disposable. (Even "Sleep Better" is somewhat forgettable outside of the chorus.) The album earns a place on the list legitimately, but a full album of songs like the first six - or, heck, if they'd been spaced more evenly! - could have been top 30.

#48
Jet, Get Born (2003)

Jet got a lot of credit at the time for having a "throwback" sound, as if they were the only band that sounded like a 70s rock outfit. But you don't have to pretend that Jet were inventive to rock out to songs like "Are You Gonna Be My Girl," "Rollover D.J." and "Cold Hard Bitch." Between the hits, Jet alternated between songs that sounded basically the same as the hits ("Get What You Need," "Get Me Outta Here," "Take It or Leave It") and songs that played like power ballads when alternated with the anthemic rock of the hits ("Move On," "Radio Song," "Timothy"). It's all good stuff, although it's weird that Jet didn't seem to know what kind of band they actually wanted to be, and after rocking out to a song like "Cold Hard Bitch," do you need a bring-down mellow groove like "Come Around Again" or do you want more rock?

#47
Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (2008)

An album that basically defines "stripped-down," Justin Vernon famously holed up in a Wisconsin cabin for three months and emerged with For Emma, Forever Ago, which is pretty much nothing but a falsetto-pitched Vernon and a guitar, plus some production. It sounds like an album born out of solitude, and it's exactly the kind of album I'd want to take with me if I decided to become a recluse. Many of my favorite albums evoke certain times and/or places, and this is one such. Why, then, is it not higher? Evocative though it is, it's not an album on which a lot of songs stand out, at least not to me - aside from the astonishing closer "Re: Stacks," things run together a bit, and with the falsetto it's hard to pick out a lot of the lyrics. These are not fatal flaws - obviously I really like all the albums on this list - but I didn't feel like I could rank it much higher as a result.

#46
Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit (2006)

I had heard some of their earlier stuff and not really cared much for it, but I think this album was recommended to me by eMusic, and I liked it. It's shiny, jangling pop, although at times it can also get a bit funky. "The Blues Are Still Blue" is the standout for me, with "Sukie in the Graveyard" not far behind, but the whole thing is a day-brightener, with entertainingly quirky story-lyrics, ringing guitars, and the kind of harmonies and call-and-response vocals that suggest everyone's having a good time.

#45
Ben Folds, Way to Normal (2008)

Even a bad Ben Folds album is better than most, in my opinion, but this was certainly not a great Ben Folds album. (Those are to come.) The best of Way to Normal can stand with most of Folds' other work, but its worst plumbs a low for probably my favorite contemporary artist. Folds shows he can still turn out entertaining piano rock on tracks like "Hiroshima," "Dr. Yang" and "Brainwascht," and does his trademark slow jams with "Cologne" and "Kylie from Connecticut." But there's a very bitter streak lingering pretty close to the surface in a lot of the songs, and while Folds has implied that the album was not significantly affected by his divorce from Frally Hynes, it's hard to fully buy that. Attempts at social commentary like "The Frown Song" and "Free Coffee" also fall rather flat. Like some of the other albums down here, the highs more than make up for the lows, but one is left with a sense of what might have been had the whole album matched the aching tenderness of "Cologne" in its quality level.

#44
The Reindeer Section, Son of Evil Reindeer (2002)

Give Gary Lightbody credit - he had a side project going before Snow Patrol had even really hit it big. Son of Evil Reindeer was actually the second Reindeer Section album (following 2001's Y'All Get Scared Now, Ya Hear!) and it combined even more musicians than the first. It's odd to think that something like two dozen Scottish musicians are involved when listening to Son of Evil Reindeer, because it's not exactly some big, bombastic thing like the Polyphonic Spree. It's not even as loud as Snow Patrol; rather, it's mostly a lot of fairly soft, quiet songs along the lines of "Budapest" and "I'll Be Here When You Wake." But when you get an album of pleasant, sweet-sounding songs, who really cares how they got made?

#43
Five for Fighting, America Town (2000)

This album nearly defined my freshman year of college, receiving heavy rotation, and we got to feel like we were on the cutting edge; then "Superman" turned into an enormous hit and suddenly the magic was gone. I don't consider myself one of those guys who gets upset at bands that "sell out," but I saw Five for Fighting live when they (well, he) opened for Vertical Horizon, for crying out loud. (By the way: Vertical Horizon put on a surprisingly kick-ass show.) America Town isn't some indie masterpiece, but it's a very strong album of piano-driven pop rock, with plenty of good tunes besides the hits (the title track still resides on a mix CD I use as wake-up alarm music). Unfortunately, fame gave us The Battle for Everything, which contains a song called "Angels and Girlfriends," which is exactly as bad as it sounds like it would be. I lost interest at that point, but America Town remains a great album.

#42
Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights (2002)

Another album which might be higher if it weren't something of a soundscape for me. I can't tell you much about this album's lyrics because what I tend to hear is the music, but lest you think that's not an endorsement, I still remember being in Borders and playing the first track, "Untitled," in the headphones - when the drums kicked in at 40 seconds, I was already thinking, "I'm buying this album." You've gotta be good to be that immediate.

#41
Green Day, American Idiot (2004)

Aside from maybe The Killers, it doesn't get more mainstream on this list than Green Day, but there's a good reason. After having been ingrained in the public consciousness with 1994's Dookie, Green Day spent almost a decade doing not much else; aside from "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" off 1997's Nimrod, little notice was taken of them, and 2000's Warning suggested at things to come with songs like "Minority" but was mostly ignored amid a wave of newer pop-punk bands. It took American Idiot to blast Green Day back to the forefront, and it did so deservingly. Released less than two months before the 2004 elections, American Idiot was a ballsy concept album, a screed against government, right-wing politics, religion and much more that became perhaps the first pop-punk record in history to actually deserve the word "punk." And it rocks, too.

That's the first ten. It only gets better from here. And this will actually be finished before the end of the year (I promise).

Variations on a meme by Haydn

2009-11-09T23:17:00.004-06:00

Some sort of meme going on. Alma passed it to me. It involves getting five words that remind the meme-giver of you, upon which you have to expand.

1. Tomatoes

I like that this reminds Alma of me, given that it's a well-known fact that I hate tomatoes. Well, to be clear, I hate unadorned tomatoes - I can't abide by the taste, and I find the skin and seeds pretty gross. In general I'm rarely a huge fan of things that try to mix sweet and savory, and the basic taste of a tomato steps too far into "sweet" territory without going far enough to just be a fruit. And the basic taste frankly makes me ill. Now, you puree the crap out of it, throw in some spices and pour it over pasta (or onto a pizza, or whatever), and I'm there. But pull it off the vine and I'm walking in the other direction.

2. New Jersey

Earlier in our relationship, Alma caught me "woo"-ing a few times when New Jersey was mentioned on television, and started prodding me to do so whenever it came up and I didn't say anything. I always viewed Chicago as a home away from home when I was growing up and certainly rushed back here when I got the chance, but I'm missing New Jersey more than I probably expected I would. It's made worse by the fact that I have no reason to go back anymore, given that I no longer have family there, and so that mild longing has been allowed to fester; I haven't set foot in the state since 2004. It's to the point where I've been strongly considering going to my 10th high school reunion - which I'm assuming will be sometime next year - just to give me a reason to have some Toro Loco salsa and a Millburn Deli sandwich, and drive down Scotland Road again.

3. Geography

It's kinda my thing. I don't really have much explanation for this one - for whatever reason, I was fascinated by globes and maps as a kid, reading the world atlas and various Hagstrom street maps of local New Jersey counties compulsively. (I have such fond memories of those Hagstrom street atlases of the late 80s that a few years ago I found some on eBay and considered going after them until I realized that would be completely insane.) I still know all the world capitals even though I haven't studied in years. (For that matter, I really never studied - at some point in grade school I just realized I had absorbed them by sheer osmosis, and then I periodically tested myself, looking up any I couldn't recall. I still recall the woman at my Irish homestay eyeing me suspiciously when she "caught" us in her library - because I wanted to find an encyclopedia to look up the capital of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which I had realized I couldn't remember at the time. Kingstown, btw. I think that's the last time I even forgot one, and that was the summer of 1996.) I can be distracted by a book of maps for hours at a time. I like thinking about traveling to new places almost as much as actually being in those places, because the on-paper aspect of geography is so enticing to me. I realized on my walk yesterday that I even love just seeing street signs at intersections, because I like making the connections in my head. Yes, it's weird. On the other hand, Alma has to love this, because she is not good with directions and now she never has to worry about it.

4. Lift

AKA the greatest soda in existence. My obsession began in New Zealand in the summer of 2000; I'm a huge lemonade fan, but I don't think I'd ever had a sparkling lemon soda at that point, or at least not a mass-market one. (San Pellegrino Limonata - which I probably hadn't had at that point anyway - is good but frankly a little too strong for regular consumption.) I drank a lot of it on that trip (and its Pepsi counterpart Solo), but back in the US... nothing. For years it was my holy grail. Sunkist Lemonade was the only thing that came close and it only seemed to be sold in Minnesota for three months a year. Alma once got me a couple cans of Lift via a friend of hers who knew of an Australian import store near her hometown in Arkansas, and that was a big thrill, but getting them regularly was impossible. Jewel for a while had Club Lemon in a British import section, but that seems to have gone by the wayside and it's not the same as Lift anyway. Suddenly, around six months ago, I wandered into a Jewel in Lincoln Square and... Sunkist Lemonade. All of a sudden it's gone national, or at least it's fully penetrated the Chicago area. But it's not quite the same - Sunkist has caffeine and so isn't an all-hours drink, and anyway I'm not 17 anymore and trying to drink little to no pop. But the legend of Lift lives on, and if I ever get back to New Zealand like I want to, I'm sure I'll have a few cans for old times' sake.

5. Neuropsychology

As of right now, I'm thinking this is my future career. I hadn't necessarily conceived it from the start, but one of my reasons for getting into psychology in the first place was my interest in knowing why people think and behave how they do, and it's only a short step from there to the root cause (or at least a primary root cause): activity in the brain. Many of the deficits are frankly just immensely compelling, although it's not like all neuro patients are going to have aphasia or anterograde amnesia or Capgras delusion. But the connections in the brain are mysterious and fascinating - it's said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the ocean floor, but we might know more about either of those than we do concretely about how the brain works, thanks to plasticity, tangled cortical networks, and hundreds of millions of neurons that don't behave identically for any two people. It's not a puzzle any one person can solve in a lifetime, but I'm willing to take the tiniest crack at trying.

So that's me, or a few things anyway. If you want five nouns that remind me of you, post in the comments. Alternately, don't.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

2009-10-27T00:20:00.005-05:00

In 2007, the Indians won 96 games. In the ALCS, they were up three games to one, looking like a decent bet to win their first World Series in almost sixty years.

We know what happened next. The Red Sox won the next three games, 7-1, 12-2 and 11-2, the biggest rebound thumping since the Braves turned around a 3-1 deficit against the Cardinals in the '96 NLCS with wins of 14-0, 3-1, and 15-0. And it was the Red Sox who went on to the Series, which they won in four straight.

It got worse from there for Cleveland. The next year there were big expectations. But Travis Hafner vanished, Fausto Carmona forgot how to pitch, and while Cliff Lee won the Cy Young with a ridiculous 22-3 season, it wasn't enough. The Indians finished 81-81 and that's only with a strong August in which they reeled off ten straight wins at one point; in early July they were as many as 16 games under .500 and almost as many games out of first in a Central division that was eventually won by a thoroughly mediocre White Sox team. And on July 7, they traded star pitcher (and reigning AL Cy Young) but free agent-to-be C.C. Sabathia to the Brewers for minor-league pieces.

Expectations weren't crazily high for 2009, but they did exist - more than one expert picked Cleveland to rebound and win a wide-open AL Central. They didn't. Instead, they one-upped their mediocre 2008 campaign. Fausto Carmona pitched even worse, somehow. Expensive free agent signing Kerry Wood only saved 20 games. Cleveland finished 65-97, tied with the Royals for last (though the Indians could be said to have stayed ahead on run differential). The team was further dismantled. Offseason trade acquisition Mark DeRosa was shipped to St. Louis in late June, and Victor Martinez went to Boston at the trade deadline. On the same day, reigning Cy Young winner Cliff Lee was dealt to Philadelphia for yet more pieces to be used for a theoretical rebuild.

Now, you're an Indians fan. Your team just traded the reigning AL Cy Young in consecutive seasons. Your new manager was recently fired by the worst franchise in baseball. And on Wednesday night, the two Cy Young pitchers who were together on your team as recently as July 6, 2008 will both take the mound for Game One of the World Series, another World Series that your team won't win, just like every other one since 1948. Don't get me wrong, as a Cubs fan I can only have so much sympathy, but... damn, it must suck to be an Indians fan today.

I can't believe you don't know who Bob Avellino is

2009-09-28T22:17:00.002-05:00

Classic Dad moment at dinner tonight. The MNF game runs a stat about the undrafted quarterbacks with the highest winning percentages, two of whom, Tony Romo and Jake Delhomme, were playing in the game. I didn't see the stat, so Dad asks, who's #2?

Me: Boy, I don't know. Is he an active player?

Dad: No.

Me: Hmm. I need another hint. Where did he go to college?

Dad: UCLA, I think.

Me: UCLA... boy, I should really know this, then!

Mom: When did he play?

Dad: Oh, like in the 90s, mostly.

Me: So he must have been one of the guys right before McNown... I'm just drawing a blank here. At the risk of totally giving it away, what team did he play for primarily?

Dad: The Redskins.

Me: The Redskins? Well, it wasn't Shuler or Frerotte... Mark Rypien?

Dad: Nope.

Me: Boy, I give up.

Dad: Okay, ready?

Me: I'm sure I'll kick myself. Go ahead.

Dad: Jay Fiedler!

Me: ...Jay Fiedler played primarily for the Dolphins, in the 2000s, and went to Dartmouth. But otherwise, great hints! I can't believe I didn't figure it out!

It turns out he was thinking of Jay Schroeder, who did play for the Redskins (although he spent more years with the Raiders) and did go to UCLA, and the peak of his career straddled 1990. And, weirdly enough, his career winning percentage as a QB was almost identical to Fiedler's (.616 to Fiedler's .617). He was, however, drafted.

The whole thing reminded me very much of another classic family story from the late 90s, alluded to in the title of the post. We were out in Pennsylvania and passed a store called Avellino's, which I think sold tires or some such thing. As we pass it, my dad jokes, "Hey, is that owned by Bob Avellino?"

Mom: Who's Bob Avellino?

Dad: You don't know who Bob Avellino is? You're kidding me! I can't believe you don't know who Bob Avellino is!

Mom: So, who is he?

Dad: The Bears' quarterback in the 70s!

Mom: You mean Bob Avellini?

Dad: ...yes.

There's no place like dome

2009-08-30T21:57:00.005-05:00

One of the most famous family stories from my childhood involves the time when - aged 10 or 11 - I took a large stack of notebook paper and wrote on the first page, "To Walk with Jackals: Part One of an Epic Trilogy." I probably don't need to tell you that no more of the book ever got written. At age 12, I kept a scrapbook on our trip to the UK; at one point, I made a cover page for a mystery story of some sort, and even got onto the first real page - at which point the story literally terminates in the middle of the first sentence, never to continue.

This is something of a roundabout way of noting that the ideas I have to do things don't always match up with my capacity or desire to see them through. So maybe what follows is going to end up being completely irrelevant; certainly "My Year of Bonds" is dragging along like crazy, although I'm sure I'll manage to finish it eventually, if not within a single year. But I'm going to write about it anyway.

In addition to being something that may not ever get completed, The Capitol Dome Project is something that may well only be interesting to me. Alma, predictably, was not overly enthused, though she did humor me on the inaugural entry. Drew could only offer that it was not the dorkiest idea I've ever had. Alma's sister and brother-in-law suggested it could be interesting, although they were probably just being polite. My mom seemed to find it interesting, but then it's a lot of her dorkyribonucleic acid that I've got running around my body in the first place.

The Capitol Dome Project is, I guess, pretty self-explanatory. Basically, the goal is to visit all 50 US state capitals. And, in particular, the goal is to get a picture of myself standing in front of the capitol buildings, with the domes (or whatever, since there might be a handful that don't have domes per se) visible next to/behind me.

It's a project that could well take a very long time. Even if I averaged five a year - one every 2.5 months, which really sounds like a lot, especially once the few fairly close ones are finished - that's a decade. Ten years from now I'll be 37, and while I'll still be me and therefore surely not above completing a ridiculous project like this, who knows what might happen between now and then, really.

The "good news" is that by my calculation, 19 of the 49 remaining capitals are within six hours' drive - i.e. a weekend trip at worst - of a place I might have other reason to be for something more than just "vacation" (Chicago, DC, Boston). A further 18 are within four hours' drive of a major city that might be interesting enough on its own to justify a trip. The final 12 will probably require a special trip, and as such will probably include the last few to get done. (Naturally, only two of these are east of the Mississippi.)

I guess we'll see what we see, but since I already wanted to visit all the states in the union at some point, I certainly would like to be able to complete this project. The first entry - a tad repetitive if you've been keeping tabs on my Facebook photo albums - is here. Next update to come who knows when.

Seattle, walkin'-a-ton

2009-08-19T11:33:00.001-05:00

A walk I took before work this morning:

08/19/2009 Seattle Waterfront
Find more Walks in Seattle, Washington

Pictures from the walk will be up on Facebook tonight.

Morning star

2009-08-18T09:00:00.008-05:00

I am pretty much a night owl by nature. When I was a baby, I would sleep from midnight to noon, then stay up from noon to midnight. At Northwestern, I was known for my late hours, often ridiculous even by collegiate standards, and my oft-quoted-by-Drew commentary on once needing to get up pretty early to catch a plane: "I should probably just stay up all night."

With that said, I really enjoy being up early in the mornings. I'm here in Seattle, as most of you are probably already aware. Since we came in on business, I figured that I wouldn't have a ton of time to do a lot of touristy stuff, since we'll likely be working 9-5 or 9-6 every day. (Granted, that still allows for 2-3 hours before sundown, and last night the sun didn't completely sink behind the Pacific until after I fell asleep, which was around 8:45 local time. But still.) However, I've been getting up earlier at home, and 5:30 Central, which is about when I've been waking, is 3:30 Pacific.

Well, I didn't get up at 3:30 today. But after a long day of travel and work, that would have been crazy. I woke up at 4:15 Central on Monday so I could get down to Midway for an 8:30 flight (which ended up having its boarding delayed by almost 90 minutes), and as usual didn't sleep on the flight. By mid-evening Seattle time, after a few hours of work, I was pretty wiped out. I was in bed by 8:15 or so, and though I didn't fall asleep right away, by around 8:45 I was gone.

A strange dream in which I was being chased down a dark hallway by a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Cheryl Ford (better known as Karl Malone's illegitimate daughter by non-WNBA fans, by which I mean everyone) woke me up this morning at three minutes to five, just before my first alarm was set to go off. I had plenty of time to take a shower and be out the door by six.

The upshot is I was able to walk to Pike Place Market, take some photos of the waterfront and a snow-capped Mt. Rainier (lurking in the background and not terribly prominent in the photos as it fades into the sky), get a cappuccino from the first Starbucks, buy Alma a present, and walk back to the hotel... and even after writing this entire blog post it's only ten minutes past seven, leaving nearly an hour and a half before I'm scheduled to meet the other two people on the trip to walk over to the office. Being up early and doing things in that time makes me feel productive in a way that really nothing else can. I don't know if I'm the kind of person who can really be "early to bed and early to rise" every day, but darn if it isn't fun right now.

Oh, and pictures on Facebook, if that might interest you.

The old man and the Cink

2009-07-19T23:06:00.004-05:00

Somewhere, there is a parallel universe in which everything happens exactly as it would in a Hollywood film. In that universe, Tom Watson stood over an eight-foot putt on the 72nd green at Turnberry on Sunday, took a deep breath, and calmly sank it. The crowd went nuts; Watson raised his arms in triumph. He had completed one of the great individual sporting accomplishments of all time, smashing the old record for oldest man to win a golf major, defeating a passel of men half his age and then some.

Unfortunately, we live in our universe, and in our universe Hollywood endings are as likely not to happen. Our Tom Watson stood over an eight-foot putt on the 72nd green, but he missed it badly, fell into a playoff, and simply ran out of gas, losing the four-hole playoff by a full six shots.

To Stewart Cink's credit, he understands that he was never the story and won't be going forward. Maybe that's unfair to him - he did what he had to do - but it's a fact. Cink is by all accounts a good guy, maybe one of the best on tour, but there isn't a person outside his family who was rooting for him in the playoff. Tom Watson was supposed to be the story - for the whole weekend, he had been the story, and all he had to do was make a putt he'd probably made thousands of times. Maybe he was worn out. (Senior tournaments are three rounds; Watson probably hadn't played competitive golf on four consecutive days since 2006, when he last made a major cut.) Maybe the pressure got to him. (He has eight majors, but the last came in 1983 - I wasn't even one year old yet.) Really, it doesn't matter at this point, does it? We were all rooting as hard as we could, and Watson was doing what he could, but it just wasn't enough.

But in twenty years, this is what we'll remember - Watson, nearly 60, chasing history, defying his age for almost the entire tournament. Moments like this are why we watch sports - amazing performances that glue us to the television, afraid to miss a minute. It was a galvanizing performance by Watson - everyone was abuzz, talking to each other about a tournament in which the leaders tee off at 9 am on the east coast and finish by 1 pm, a tournament that had lost the sport's supposed meal ticket in Tiger Woods, cut before the weekend. Instead, one of the sport's all time greats filled the void, and then some.

Ultimately, the finish was a letdown. But it doesn't totally diminish what Watson had done to that point. Our memories will be of his long putts, his conservative but effective tactics, and his lead at the 18th. We all thought he was going to do it... and in some ways, it doesn't totally matter that he didn't. The sadness will fade, but the good memories will remain. And when it comes to sports, maybe that's all we really need.

(Weather) Odds and (Chicago Card) Ends

2009-07-13T23:28:00.002-05:00

The weather has been really weird this summer. Aside from a stretch of about one week, it's been cold - it got disgustingly hot for a few days, at which point I finally got around to putting my air conditioning unit in, and then it immediately cooled off and has barely cracked 80 at any point since. Mother Nature, you're hilarious. Seriously, I know it's night, but it's barely above 60 right now. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess - not having to run A/C means I don't have to pay any additional utilities, and having it be 75 and mild every day is pretty enjoyable. But it's just weird. I mean, it's mid-July! 75 isn't summer in Chicago, it's summer in London.

In more annoying news, the CTA sent me a note a few weeks ago saying my Chicago Card would soon expire. I went online to renew it and did what they told me to do, but a much later expiration date was listed, and sure enough, the next day I got an e-mail saying I had been erroneously mailed the letter saying my card would expire. I went on about my business until today, when I was unable to get into the el in the morning because... my card was listed as expired.

I called the CTA and they weren't terribly helpful, saying that a number of people were having the issue and that the powers-that-be weren't sure which course of action to take. Their only solution for now is explaining the situation to the workers at every single station (and/or bus drivers) and hoping they buy it and let me in for free. 1-for-1 so far (since I wasn't sure what was going on, I paid the cash fare this morning), but that's really not much of a solution, right? What if I'm in a hurry because the train is arriving? Trying to explain the situation to someone who may or may not have been briefed on it and may or may not believe me if they weren't is probably not something that can happen in ten seconds. And of course I take the Purple Line, which only runs once every 15 minutes at most times. They'd better resolve this problem soon.

The post with the Midas touch

2009-07-09T00:21:00.001-05:00

My Year of Bonds: Vol. 3 is finally here, and it's for Goldfinger. Hopefully the lag between this and Thunderball will be less than six months, lest this turn into My Decade of Bonds.

O, hi (o)

2009-06-15T19:45:00.004-05:00

Back from Ohio. We drove out for Alma's niece's christening. It's not that terrible a drive to the Cleveland area, about six hours each way. Not too much to say about it, I guess. It was a nice ceremony and I liked getting a little break from routine (too much routine being the main reason so little has appeared here recently). It's a strange feeling to take a trip like that, though - I feel like I've been gone for a week, in part because each travel day really feels like two days.

We did get one pretty good story out of this, though. There was a bunch of stuff in the car when we drove out on Friday because Alma's parents sent a number of things with us (as they were flying out the next day), and when I went to carry several of them inside, I accidentally left my keys on the seat... and then closed the door. It's hard to lock the keys in my car because you can't push the driver's door lock down when it's open, but I closed and locked it first, and then still had my keys in my hand when I went to get stuff out of the back. Ugh. Pretty sure that's the first time I ever locked my keys in the car; at least it certainly was the first time I locked them in the Civic.

The upshot is that I was this close to letting my AAA membership lapse a few weeks ago, and now I've used it twice in less than a month (first when a tire blew out on the highway, and then with the keys). But the best part of this story is coming. So I call AAA at 8:30 and they say they're going to send someone over. It gets to be close to 10:00 and suddenly my phone lets me know that a call has gone straight to voicemail. When I check it, it's the dispatcher saying that the truck is looking for me. Argh. I run downstairs and call them back, and the dispatcher asks if I see the truck. I don't, so he checks with the garage and then comes back to me.

Dispatcher: "Can you check and see if your door is unlocked?"
Me: [checking] "No, still locked."
Dispatcher: "Okay, let me check with the garage again."
[thirty seconds later]
Dispatcher: "Are you parked by the pool?"
Me: "No."
Dispatcher: "...okay, we'll have him come back by."

So... they unlocked someone else's car door and then just left? Awesome.

The 40-year-old version

2009-05-06T22:21:00.005-05:00

Recently I put a photo of myself up on howoldareyou.net, to see what I'd get. Because I was looking for as recent a picture as I could find, I used this one from the Philippines:

Sure, it's probably not the greatest photo ever taken of me. The results so far have rated me as looking like I'm 40, though, which really bothered me at first.

But then I was looking in the mirror and thought that if I saw myself walking down the street, maybe I would think I was 40. (Although I am notoriously bad at guessing ages.) And then I thought some more about it: I turn 27 this year (!) and have a history of people thinking I look ten years older than I am. 37 and 40, obviously, aren't too far apart.

And then I kind of annoyed myself by thinking that I will turn 40 in August of 2022, which is only a little over 13 years away. Which is a lot, sure, but 13 years ago I was about to start high school, and high school does not seem like it was that long ago (at least in some ways).

Anyway. I do wonder - if I had used this picture, would they still have said 40?

Enough with this "a triple shy of the cycle" nonsense

2009-04-29T09:49:00.004-05:00

Last night, Carlos Zambrano "nearly" became the first pitcher to hit for the cycle, smacking a single, double and home run against the Diamondbacks. After the home run, his last hit, the AZ announcers noted that he was "a triple shy of the cycle." I am so sick of announcers saying that someone was a triple shy of the cycle. I guess it's okay during the game when he could still get it (although I think it should have been clear that Z was not coming up again), but referencing it in game stories is functionally nonsense. Let me lay some numbers on you really quick:

So, since the start of the 2000 season there have been, very roughly, around 400,000 games played by major league players. In those games:

A player has hit for the cycle - at least one each of a single, double, triple and home run in the same game - 41 times. Pretty rare occurrence. Amazingly, there have already been three (Orlando Hudson for the Dodgers, Ian Kinsler for Texas, and Jason Kubel for the Twins, who capped his with a grand slam) in the 2009 season.

70 times a player has recorded a double, triple and home run but failed to get a single, making this nearly as rare an occurrence as actually hitting for the cycle. It has yet to happen in 2009.

217 times a player has hit a single, triple and homer but failed to get the double for the cycle. It's three times more likely than missing just the single and more than five times as likely as completing the cycle, but it's still pretty rare. It also hasn't happened yet in 2009.

504 times a player has fallen a homer shy of the cycle, including four times in 2009.

So, how many times has a player "fallen a triple shy of the cycle"?

2,540.

Two thousand, five hundred and forty! Just since the year 2000! Including, by the way, 37 times already in 2009, including twice by Mark DeRosa alone. To give you some impression of how many times that is, there have been just 1,178 ten-strikeout games by pitchers since the start of the 2000 season, including 15 so far in 2009. Not that ten strikeouts is an easy thing to do, but if you're watching a game, it's more than twice as likely that one of the hitters will fall "a triple shy of the cycle" than that one of the starters will strike out ten guys. (Zambrano had only three Ks last night.)

So, with that in mind, is there any chance we can stop making a deal out of a guy going "a triple shy of the cycle"? The triple is the hard part. Getting the rest? Turns out it's not so hard. It happens hundreds of times per year. Enough.

300?

2009-04-22T20:48:00.003-05:00

The last post got me thinking. What is it going to take for someone to win 300 games again? And is anyone even within reasonable range?

First, let's look at some recent 300-game winners and their career arcs:

Greg Maddux
355 wins
75 wins through age 25 season
165 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .610

Roger Clemens
354 wins
78 wins through age 25 season
163 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .658

Tom Glavine
305 wins
53 wins through age 25 season
139 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .600

Randy Johnson
296 wins
10 wins through age 25 season
81 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .646

Of these four (Johnson will hit 300 this year barring something unforeseen, so I include him), Johnson clearly has the oddest career track, as he was a very late starter whose three best seasons came well after age 30 - in fact, Johnson's biggest win year and best ERA year were the same year, 2002, in which he went 24-5 and 2.32 in his age 38 season, which is virtually unprecedented. (Post-1900, no one else has ever won that many games in a season at that age or older. Reducing the age to 35 gives you just eight more guys, and only one beyond the deadball era - Steve Carlton, 24-9 at age 35 for the 1980 Phillies.)

Take note of where the first three guys were through their age 30 seasons, though. Maddux and Clemens were both more than halfway to 300; Glavine was a little behind but not crazily far off. Other 300-game winners in the past half-century (bear in mind there have only been nine) have done similarly:

Carlton: 148 wins through age 30 season
Seaver: 168 wins through age 30 season
Sutton: 155 wins through age 30 season
Ryan: 141 wins through age 30 season

Others have done it more like Johnson, by starting slowly and then hanging around forever:

Perry: 95 wins through age 30 season, pitched until age 44
Niekro: 54 wins through age 30 season, pitched until age 48

But everyone who's won 300 games has hung around forever, regardless of whether they were halfway there at 30 or not. Of the nine, only Seaver retired before his age 42 season, and he did it at 41. If you're going to win 300 games, you're probably going to do it at age 40 or so, so you'd better have both the drive and the stuff to pitch that long.

Obviously, then, predicting the next 300-game winner is no easy feat, since we can't say who's going to hang around until age 42 or so. One thing we can say, however, is that you really need to be close to halfway there by age 30. Yes, Maddux and Clemens won more games after 30 than before - enabling them to get to 350 - but Maddux is Maddux and we know now that Clemens had some assistance. Even Nolan Ryan, who pitched until age 46 to pick up his 324 wins, was nearly halfway to 300 by 30.

So, is anyone close, or might anyone be close? Perhaps the two most reasonable active candidates are Tim Hudson - 146 wins at age 33 - and Roy Halladay, who has 134 wins at age 32. Roy Oswalt, with 129 wins at 31, is also right there. However, these guys are all older than 30, and none is at 150, and Hudson is currently on the shelf and may not get there this season. (Halladay has a reasonable chance; Oswalt most likely won't.)

Let's look at Halladay as an example. Over the past seven seasons he's been one of the best pitchers in baseball. But at age 30 he had just 111 wins, meaning that if he pitched until 42 he would need 189 wins in 12 seasons, or nearly 16 wins per. Let's say he wins another 20 games this year, finishing his age 32 season with 151 wins. That still means he needs 15 wins a year for the next decade - probably about as long as he could pitch - just to get right onto the nose of 300 (and obviously, any setback makes it that much harder). To put himself in real position, Halladay needs to rip off a string of 20-win seasons in the next couple of years while he's still in his relative prime. But bear in mind that most pitchers don't just tear off a series of career-best years once they get towards the mid-30s. Doc's average is 17-8 per 162 games, and while 20 wins this year and 17 wins a year for the next decade would get him to 300, that average is likely to drop the older he gets.

Oswalt would seem to be in better position; through his age 30 season, he had 129 wins, 18 ahead of Halladay at the same age. Assuming 13 more seasons for Oswalt, he would need just over 13 wins per. Oswalt has only one season so far in which he hasn't passed that marker. But it's more likely that Oswalt will need 15 wins a year for the next ten years, and then he can bleed out the last 21 wins over two or three final seasons in his 40s. And can he win 15 games a year every year even as he ages?

The thing to consider is that Maddux (and to a lesser extent Clemens) have kind of spoiled us, because they came around right at the same time. The fact is that 300 game winners are extremely rare. Again, even counting Johnson, only ten guys whose careers started after 1960 have done it, and Glavine and Johnson barely got there. Yet Maddux and Clemens both reached 350. But you can't necessarily expect everyone to follow their career path. The most winning pitchers of the past 15 years or so tend to fall into one of three arcs, none of which match Maddux and Clemens' "lots of wins early, lots of wins late" track:

1. Slow start, pick up in their 30s, never really threaten 300 seriously.
Kenny Rogers (219 wins, 70 by age 30) and Curt Schilling (216 wins, 69 by age 30) are the poster boys.

2. Okay start, okay at age 30, can't quite get there for whatever reason.
Pedro is the #1 guy for this since he actually was halfway to 300 by age 30, with 152 wins. But he's won just 17 games in the last three seasons, beset by injuries, and without a job at age 37, stuck on 214 wins, he clearly has no hope in spite of one of the best winning percentages in history. John Smoltz had 129 wins by age 30 and played for a team that won a lot, but he had to convert to a closer due to injuries and has just 210 wins at age 42. Mike Mussina was just three wins behind Glavine through their age 30 seasons, but Moose couldn't pick up the pace like Glavine did, and retired after last season with 270 wins.

3. Jamie Moyer.
Moyer will almost certainly win his 250th career game in the next month or two. He's also 46 and has won more than 200 games after his age 30 season. Weirdo.

It's more likely that most guys currently active will fit one of those tracks (probably 1 or 2). A fast starter like Felix Hernandez (41 wins at age 23) could easily fall into #2; someone like Derek Lowe (127 wins at age 36, but seems like he's at his best now and could pitch into his mid 40s) could be a #1.

So will anyone do it? Well, I think anyone who's going to do it has to have at least 140 wins by the end of their age 30 season. You're still a long shot at that point - you have to pitch well, on teams that aren't terrible, until you're 41-42 - but at least it's vaguely within reach. (Glavine, as we saw, just barely got to 300 with 139 wins by age 30, but he also spent most of his 30s pitching for Braves teams that won 90-100 games every dang year.) Who fits this bill?

Well, no one currently at age 30 or older fits the bill. Buehrle is actually the closest. If he wins 18 games this year - possible if not extremely likely - he'd have 140 at the end of his age 30 season, putting him ahead of Glavine's pace. But he'd still have to pitch as long as Glavine did, and likely play for a lot of winning teams, to get there. He's a longshot.

Johan Santana may be the game's best pitcher, but he needs 21 wins this year just to get to 130 by the end of his age 30 season. I might buy him for 250, but 300 seems too far away.

C.C. Sabathia is frequently mentioned. At the end of his age 27 season he already had 117 wins, meaning that even an extremely conservative 11 per year would give him 150 on the nose by the end of his age 30 season. Given Sabathia's body, though, does anyone think he can pitch effectively until age 42? Pitching for the Yankees might boost his win total in the short-term, but he's going to have to really rack up the wins in NYC to compensate for what will probably be a shorter career.

Carlos Zambrano? It's not quite as ridiculous as it sounds. Z had 96 wins coming into this season, but he still has three full years before the end of his age 30 season. 15 wins per (not a giant stretch) would put him at 141, again ahead of Glavine's pace. But can Carlos pitch effectively until he's 42, or even 38? Can he keep winning 15 games a season if the Cubs of 2012 and beyond start to fall apart around him?

Beyond that you have a lot of guys who, with their current totals, might be candidates for 200 or even 250, but almost certainly won't sniff 300. Typical of this group is someone like Jake Peavy, who had 86 wins at the end of his age 27 season. That doesn't put him too far behind Zambrano, but since Zambrano himself is obviously a longshot, Peavy and guys like him must be considered even more so.

Really, you have to look at guys now in their early 20s to even start thinking about it. Take Chad Billingsley, for instance. At the end of his age 23 season he already had 35 major league wins, and he's added three just in the first three weeks this year. By the end of his age 25 season he could be in the high 60s or low 70s in wins (Glavine had 53 at the same age), and by age 30, if he wins 15 games a year, he'd be pushing 150. The issue, of course, is projecting anything on a guy this young. At the end of his age 25 season, Doc Gooden had 119 major league wins, putting him more than 40 ahead of Clemens at the same age. But at the end of his age 30 season, Gooden had added just 38 wins to that total (Clemens won 85 in the same span), and ultimately he didn't even get to 200 for his career, finishing with 194. Obviously there were some extenuating circumstances in Doc's case that probably won't repeat these days, but the point is that you can't really assume that a 24-year-old kid is going to be able to win 15 games a year for the next decade and a half. And so, ultimately, trying to project which guys are likely to win 300 games is pretty fruitless. No one's likely to do it, so we might as well enjoy the ride if anyone can manage to make it.

No.

2009-04-22T18:22:00.006-05:00

In Rob Neyer's mailbag today, someone wrote in to ask why Mark Buehrle was never in the "what active pitcher could possibly win 300 games" discussion:

Just a quick question -- why is it that, when discussing who may end up winning 300 games, no one mentions Mark Buehrle, ever? For comparison's sake, he ended his Age 29 season with 122 wins, 13 more than Johan Santana at the same age. And assuming he wins more than nine games this year, he'll have more wins than Oswalt at the same age as well as Halladay at a year older. He's no lock, obviously, but wouldn't you be looking for guys who've won a lot of games, haven't had any injury history (he's thrown 200+ innings and made 30 or more starts all eight years as a starter), and don't rely on velocity?

If there's a reason he gets left out, I'd love to hear it, but the only one I can think of is "He's on the White Sox." I'm sure you weren't going for a complete analysis of pitchers with a chance at 300, but I've seen similar articles and he's never mentioned.

I love it. Even when it has nothing to do with the Cubs, the Sox fan's inferiority complex runs rampant.

I assume that Santana, Halladay and Oswalt were mentioned on whatever list of Neyer's this guy is referring to, because I can't recall having heard them in any such discussions. In fact, about the only guy I've heard consistently mentioned as a real possibility is C.C. Sabathia, who has six fewer wins than Buehrle but is a year-plus younger. (Sabathia is also a lefty.) Another "maybe" guy is Felix Hernandez, who through last year's age 22 season had 39 wins (Buehrle, by comparison, had 20 wins at the end of the same season).

But let's forget about everyone else for now. The real question here is, is there any reason to think that Mark Buehrle has a chance at winning 300 games? Neyer says no, though he oddly resorts mostly to "he's never finished higher than 5th in the Cy Young voting" and "his ERA+ is only 122," neither of which strikes me as a great reason. That said, he's obviously right: Mark Buehrle has no real chance at winning 300 games.

Including his two wins this year, Buehrle has 124 career wins, which ranks him first among all pitchers age 30 or younger (he is 30, of course). Johan Santana, who is just ten days older than Buehrle, has only 111 career wins.

The question is, does raw win total really tell us all that much? The obvious answer is "no." Basic stats will tell you that Buehrle is as much of a longshot to get near 300 as any of his contemporaries. Here:

Wins: 124
Wins needed for 300: 176
% of starts won, career: 46%
Starts needed to win 176 games at that win rate: 383
Seasons of 34 starts needed to make 383 starts: 11.3

So, the first thing Buehrle has to do in order to win 300 games is make another 380 starts or so, and that's assuming no significant fluctuation in the rate at which he records a win in games he starts. (Sure, it could go up. But 46% is already pretty high - as a comparison, Pedro Martinez's career percentage of starts won is 53.5%. Pedro's W/L percentage is also nearly 100 points higher than Buehrle's, it should be mentioned. Even Greg Maddux's career percentage of starts won was only 48%, and he won 355 games. Maddux had 150 wins at the end of his age 29 season, 28 more than Buehrle, and in the next decade he won 168 more. Raise your hand if you think Mark Buehrle is going to win almost 17 games a year for the next ten years. Did you know he's only won more than 16 games once in his entire career? Put your hand down.)

It's also assuming that Buehrle is healthy enough to make 380 more starts. 11.3 seasons takes him over the age of 40, and while it's certainly not impossible to think that Buehrle - especially since he's a lefty - could still be pitching at that age, it's a very, very rare player who manages to avoid the DL for virtually his entire career.

Buehrle's 162-game average to this point in his career is 15 wins. Which is certainly very good. But to win 300, he needs to do that again this season, and then for each of the next 11. And his career trend isn't necessarily on the up. He's started well enough this year, and he won 15 last year, but in 2007 he won just 10, and 12 in 2006. So over the last three years he's averaged 12 wins a year. An average of 12 wins a year going forward puts him at 300 nearly 15 seasons from now, and it's not very likely that Buehrle will pitch until 44 or 45, right?

300 wins is twenty 15-win seasons. Buehrle has just five in his career, and even winning 15 games a year for the next ten years (at which point he'd be 40) won't get him to 300. And where's the evidence that he can win 15 games a year consistently, let alone every year for the next decade?

Buehrle is a very good pitcher who should win 200 games easily, and might even chase 250 if he doesn't lose too much of his effectiveness over the next decade. In the modern age, that's an impressive total. I wonder if we'll see another 300-game winner again, frankly. But I feel pretty confident in saying that if we do see one, Mark Buehrle ain't gonna be it.

Tears of the Sunkist

2009-04-15T03:12:00.002-05:00

My love affair with Sunkist Lemonade has hit a snag.

Let me start at the beginning. You will probably recall how I fell head over heels for Lift during my trip to New Zealand and Australia in 2000. Sunkist Lemonade is the only true American counterpart to Lift I've ever seen, but finding it in the US has proven nearly impossible over the years. Only once did I ever see it "in the wild," at a gas station in Wisconsin (but one had exploded and all the cans were sticky, so I didn't get any); the rest I've had only because Drew brought it back from Minnesota. Until this past weekend, when I quite by chance discovered they now stock Sunkist Lemonade at at least one Jewel in Chicago. Ridiculously excited, I bought two fridge packs (about all I could carry at the time or I might well have gotten more). Yes, I've been drinking basically no soda lately, but I figured I could make a minor exception.

Tonight I had a late dinner (9:15ish) and had a can with it. Then, because I was really enjoying it, I had a second can a little later, maybe around 10 or 10:30. Then I went to bed about 12:30 and couldn't fall asleep, which seemed odd because when I left work at 7 pm, I was so tired my eyes were starting to water.

And then I remembered - Sunkist Lemonade, just like regular Sunkist Orange, contains caffeine. A quick check of the can confirmed this. And now it's 3:15 in the morning, I have to get up in (ideally) less than five hours, and I have yet to be able to fall asleep.

Bear in mind not only that I wouldn't have had Sunkist Lemonade so late in the day if I'd remembered it contained caffeine, but until Sunday when I bought the soda and drank three cans in one three-hour span (yes, I know), I had had nothing containing caffeine, to my knowledge, in months. No wonder my stomach acid seemed worse today.

Anyway, this blows. I'll finish the cans I have - which is like 18 more - and then I may have to swear off my favorite soda of all-time. Yes, it will be better for me, but it will also be less fun.