Oscar Gamble Society

I had long believed it was the New York Post by a wide margin over anemic competition.  The Times’ sports section is literate, but is in the harness of Pinch Sulzberger’s social agenda, viewing sports through the lens of racial and gender grievances. Mike Lupica renders the Daily News unreadable. The Wall Street Journal’s sports coverage is excellent as far as it goes, which is only a couple articles per week. But there’s a new sheriff in town:

The New York Sun

They sometimes feature pieces by the Baseball Prospectus crew, such as today’s article on why teams should take the trainer’s role more seriously. Their dedicated baseball writer is Tim Marchman, who focuses on the Yankees and Mets but also writes insightful articles on broader topics, such as this one on the success of Japanese relievers in the US. Well-written, thought-provoking sports writing on a daily basis. Check it out.

Is the current plan to only play Bonds at home games?  I realize the Giants are done, and they basically have a team that may not win the International League this year when Bonds is not in the lineup, but when was the last time a healthy Bonds didn’t start 3 straight games?  Usually, I would be OK with that, but the Giants are playing the Cubs right now, so I am interested.

 I also have tickets this weekend, and wouldn’t mind seeing him in person.

Yeah, I didn’t know such a thing existed either. Come to find out, there’s an International Federation of American Football, and this year they held the third quadrennial World Cup tournament in Japan, which actually won the first two (Evidently this was the first time the US participated).  The quality of play is - well, put it this way: the MVP of the title game was  Kyle Kasperbauer, late of the University of Nebraska - Omaha and 164th pick in the NFL draft. And while the Kasperbauer-led Americans needed overtime to eek out a 23-20 win over Japan, the team was undefeated and squeaked by South Korea 77-0.

Michael Vick was indicted today on charges related to a dogfighting ring too grisly for me to even describe. While people who are kind to animals may still be evil or deranged (Hitler did love dogs), anyone who could countenance the activities described in the indictment is clearly a menace to society. It isn’t a coincidence that torturing and killing animals is one of the commonalities between otherwise disparate serial killers. Of course Vick deserves a fair trial, in the same way that Saddam Hussein did - guilt isn’t really in doubt, but it is appropriate to get a sense of the full measure of the man’s depravity before meting out justice. Vick only faces a maximum of six years in prison, but with luck he will wind up in the company of some dog-loving members of the Aryan Brotherhood with more of an eye-for-an-eye approach to things.

A day after Sunday’s race at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, three drivers for Chip Ganassi - Reed Sorenson, David Stremme, and Juan Pablo Montoya - went to the Cubs game and led the crowd through Take Me Out to the Ball Game. They remembered the words and led the singing, and even remembered that they were at Wrigley Field. This is in marked contrast with the Prince of Darkness Jeff Gordon, who in 2005 told the fans how happy he was to be at Wrigley Stadium before forgetting the words to the song and being booed out of town.

* It is now official that Budweiser will NOT be Junior’s sponsor next year when he moves to the Hendricks team. The speculation that seems most informed is that Pepsi will be Earnhardt’s primary sponsor, both because they will contribute more money than Anheuser - Busch (reportedly in the $25-$30 million range) and because it will allow Earnhardt to be marketed to children in a way he couldn’t as the representative of a brewery. This should drive his fans even more berserk, as not only is he joining Jeff Gordon’s team, he is adopting Gordon’s sponsor (Gordon having driven with a Pepsi scheme a couple times per year).

* With the departure of Dale Jr., DEI has acted with impressive speed to prepare for a future without the sport’s most popular driver. First they merged their engine operation with Richard Childress Racing, to achieve some of the economies of scale available to the largest teams. Now a full-blown merger with Ginn Racing appears imminent. The biggest problem posed by such a merger - a combined total of six teams, versus the NASCAR limit of four per owner - looks like it’s getting resolved very quickly. The team just canned veteran driver Sterling Marlin (who has one of the best accents in the sport; he sounds like a real-life version of Boomhauer from King of the Hill) and appears poised to do the same to Joe Nemechek. While the merger is easily caricatured as two drunks holding each other up, it potentially positions DEI to emerge as a power in NASCAR. The combined entity would boast Martin Truex Jr., who has really come into his own this year, Mark Martin on a part-time basis, Regan Smith who has been a promising rookie under Martin’s tutelage, and Paul Menard unless DEI decides that Kyle Busch’s talent is worth the drama he seems to create.

UPDATE:

Well it is now official that Joe Nemechek has also been let go by Ginn Racing, and interestingly, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Busch driver, Aric Almirola, will move to Ginn and split time with Mark Martin in the 01 car sponsored by the Army. It will be interesting to see how much Almirola’s decision to leave Gibbs was affected by the debacle in Milwaukee (Almirola qualified for the pole, and when scheduled driver Denny Hamlin was late to the track, Almirola started the race and led for most of it before being called in for a pit stop to put Hamlin in the car, despite Almirola’s excellent performance and the fact that the stop cost the car more than a lap on the track).

I just caught HBO’s 2-hour Ken Burns-style documentary on the Brooklyn Dodgers, and recommend it to anyone with the time to watch it. The film skips rapidly through the early years of the team’s history to focus on the decade between the debut of Jackie Robinson and the team’s departure for Los Angeles. Fun fact: the name “Dodgers” was an abbreviation of the term “Trolley Dodgers,” owing to the need for Brooklynites to do just that when walking in the streets. The movie includes commentary and reminiscences from surviving players (Duke Snider, Carl Erskine) as well as the widows of Gil Hodges and Jackie Robinson, and some writers and broadcasters who grew up in Brooklyn during the period.

A charming anecdote came from former Branch Rickey underling Buzzy Bavasi: during 1946 Rickey sent him to Montreal to double check that there was nothing in Robinson’s past that could embarrass the team. Bavasi went up and sat behind the players’ wives in the stands. Jackie Robinson’s wife was the center of attention and Bavasi was so taken by the poise with which she acquitted herself that he reported back, “Mr. Rickey, if Jackie is good enough for Rachel Robinson then he’s good enough for the Dodgers.”

Also interesting is the focus on the lengthy power struggle between Walter O’Malley, seeking the city’s assistance in building a replacement for Ebbets Field by the LIRR terminus in Brooklyn, and Robert Moses, who insisted that O’Malley would have a new stadium in Flushing, Queens or none at all. In the end, obviously, O’Malley got an offer he couldn’t refuse from Los Angeles, and Moses ultimately got a team to play in Flushing. Adding a final insult to injury, after forcing Brooklyn fans to endure 65 years of futility and heartbreak before finally beating the Yankees in the 1955 World Series, the Dodgers brought the World Series championship to LA after just two seasons.

http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-spsheff0714,0,3077023.story?coll=ny-main-bigpix

Offered without comment

So on my way home from work on Monday, I heard Dave Campbell interview Hunter during the HR Derby.  Campbell asked him about the lack of blacks in MLB.  Instead of pulling a Sheffield, he blames the black players themselves, and offers two theories:

1. The lack of education about the history of the game, “So many of our young black blayers don’t know who Josh Gibson, Satchel Page or even Hank Aaron are. And that’s our (meaning black players) fault”
2. “The marketing of MLB pales in comparison to NFL and NBA, and we (meaning black players) don’t do a good enough job talking the game up, either”

How refreshing to see Hunter actually hold his race as a whole at least partly responsible.  Now, comment #2 could also be seen as a swipe against MLB itself, but given the context of his statements, I didn’t get the impression he meant it that way; he was genuinely saying that he and his fellow black players are to blame as much as anyone else.

I’m sure Sheffield would tell Hunter to STFU, or something equally as classy….

… the 2003-2004 offseason had gone differently and the Red Sox had moved Nomah and Manny for ARod and Magglio, as was very close to being the case?  Tough to say what woulda happened in 2004 (or 2005 and 2006, for that matter).  But looking at 2007, at this point ARod and Magglio are the top two AL MVP candidates - while Manny is either primed for a second-half surge or starting a career decline, and Nomah has clearly (and sadly) declined.

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