The Elevator Fart

I don't know who Murphy was. I'm guessing Murphy was Irish, and that he messed up quite a bit. This is not unheard of. Hell, hundreds of thousands of us got wiped out by a damn potato. The Irish have a knack for haplessness. Murphy was so prolific at screwing up that there's even a damn law named after him. Whatever bad can happen will happen, or so Mr. Murphy would apparently have us believe. But without knowing more about this legendary Murphy, I'm just about done giving him credit for such a wide-spread commonly observed rule of law; and for that matter I take pity on the poor sap. Let's say it's well-deserved. I think he's dealt with enough infamy for several lifetimes. I mean, c'mon, it's not like he invented Pepsi Clear.

Let's look at life's unfortunate certainties in a different way. Say you're getting in the elevator at work, going down. Say you've had a little too much coffee. Say your office is on the 6th floor. Let's say the door shuts and you can't help yourself. You let one rip. I mean from deep within. The elevator now smells like a bus stop in Bakersfield. You KNOW, as sure as I burn easily, that the elevator is going to make at least one, if not two, stops on the way down. Doesn't matter what time of day, be it 6 am or 9 pm, it's gonna happen. (At that point, you can only hope that there's more than one person who gets on, otherwise you just gotta laugh and own it.)

So let's give Murphy his long overdue Irish wake, and drink to his everlasting peace. Let us instead recognize the Elevator Fart Phenomenon, or E.F.P. Consider the implications:

Say you have a team penciled in to win the entire NCAA men's tourney. Say they're playing an upstart mid-major in the second round. Now let's say they're in a close game, be they up, down, or tied, with under 5 minutes to go. The E.F.P. dictates this team will lose, and your brackets shot. Yip, you've just been Farouhkmanesh'd.

Say your college football team is licking its wounds from an embarrassing Rose Bowl performance. Say it boasts a projected returning roster of 25-30 players who saw significant playing and starting time in a surprisingly successful inaugural season for a brand new head coach. You guessed it, the E.F.P. dictates that within three and a half calendar months, your starting quarterback and Heisman hopeful will be dismissed from the team for stealing mac books and guitars from a frat house and lying about it, your starting tailback will plead guilty to a domestic violence charge and face a game suspension, 6 other players will face varying criminal charges and be kicked off the team, and your A.D. will up and quit, refocusing the eye of Sauron squarely on the athletic program after the rest of the country had finally stopped paying attention.

Now then, let's say your NBA team has a history of missing the big draft pick. Specifically, it has a history of making the logical selection and drafting promising, productive 7 foot centers that show grace and agility for their size rather than an athletic swingman because the team already boasts an athletic swingman. The E.F.P. DEMANDS that the forsaken swingman turns out to be a transcendent talent while the center suffers a list of maladies, freak accidents, and set backs that would make Sophocles blush.

Fans of the Cubs, Indians, Eagles, Browns, Bills, Vikings, Cavs, and countless other teams knowthe stench of the E.F.P. We've all gotten on that elevator on the 6th floor. We'd like to think that just once, just this one time, when we accidentally let'er rip, that no one will be calling the elevator on the way down. But hey, what can we do? It's the law...

I'm sick, and the NBA is a Calipari enabler.

I hate few things in life. Generally speaking, I'm pretty ok with a lot of stuff. I hate being sick though. Hate it. I also hate raw tomatoes. Just fyi. I also don't like being told what I should like. I tend to slightly hate defensive linemen. Oh, and of course, I hate John Calipari. The NBA, in trying to, I guess, promote the college experience and force kids to get an "education," has paved the way to John Calipari's meteoric resurgence as a college coach. In the current NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement, which may soon go the way of the Dodo, NBA Commissioner David Stern swung his prodigious wang around and trout-slapped the NBA Players' Union, forcing them to agree to a one-year rule for NBA Draft eligibility. In doing so, the NBA has unintentionally not only made college basketball lamer, but it has exposed the college game and high school game to the most unnerving and unscrupulous coaching figure since Coach Jack Reilly and those ruthless Hawks.

John Calipari first garnered attention for "guiding" the UMass Minutemen of Lou Roe, Marcus Camby, et al to the top of the rankings back in the mid '90s. It was cute then. A mid-major, sticking it to the Kentuckys of the college basketball world, getting Amherst some national hoops attention. It got Calipari so much cred that he was signed away to a lucrative deal with the New Jersey Nets. We quickly found out two things however. First, the UMass bball program was dirtier than a North Portland prostitute. Second, John Calipari sucked when everyone else was spending the same amount of money on players as his team was. Missed that competitive advantage, didn'tcha goomba?

Calipari was an afterthought. He was doneski. With the stink of UMass on him, as well the general stink of the Garden State, no major program would take a crack at Calipari. So where did he go? Well, if you're up on your John Grisham reading, it should come as no surprise that a morally compromised Italian gentleman made his way to Memphis. What happened next was not all that different from what happened before. John Calipari took a small program, in a midmajor conference, to unprecedented heights. There were some differences, of course. Memphis already had a huge arena, and a local groundswell of hoops talent, previously producing such specimens as Penny Hardaway. And a HUGE difference for Calipari this time around had to do with David Stern's half-cocked attempt at "protecting the NBA" and maybe "protecting teenaged basketball players."

Starting with Kevin Garnett in 1996, there had been a spate of high school players making the jump from senior prom to NBA benches. Some players, like Garnett and Kobe Bryant, were game changers; young, gifted, driven men with the desire and focus to make immediate impacts in a league with the best basketball players in the world in their late 20s and early 30s. But for the occasional watershed players like Kobe, KG, T Mac, and Le Bron, and before them Moses Malone and Daryl Dawkins, there were unfortunate results such as these. And those are just some examples. During the onslaught of high school draftees, teams were taking a stab at young men who in several instances were not in any way prepared for the NBA lifestyle, pressure, and finances. Every team would, because you didn't want to be the team that passed up on someone who would some day be great. This became especially true once rookie salary caps were installed and the NBDL became serviceable. A lot of these young men, particularly those who retained agents thereby losing their NCAA eligibility, and who didn't get drafted in the first round, thus missing out on a guaranteed contract, found themselves disillusioned, out of the league, and out of any chance at a college hoops dream.

Coupled with this was David Stern's desire to sterilize the NBA public image. Concerned that "people" (in other words white consumers) were associating pro basketball with a thug mentality and lifestyle, Stern has instituted such things as dress codes league-wide, and not coincidentally, he forced the aforementioned rule whereby high school players have to wait a year before declaring for the Draft. Oh sure, Stern dressed it up by saying that young men should see if college is right for them, and that so many young men just aren't mature enough or ready for the rigors of professional sports, but don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, Dave. It was all an attempt to repair the NBA's deteriorating PR status in suburban USA. The logic being that if the NBA can siphon young (typically black) men off to college for even a year, and ward them off, maybe it can dodge the occasional disastrous bullet.

What it does of course is further make a mockery of the institution of college basketball. And it opens the door for dirty shyster coaches like John Calipari who just "happen" to always find themselves associated with dirty recruiting dealings. Here Coach Cal was, new job at Memphis, with the ability to recruit young men specifically with the slogan of "just come for one year, we'll showcase you, and then you can leave college." (You'd think that'd be enough of a sell for Calipari, but he apparently still needed to do other nefarious stuff to get Derrick Rose into Memphis.) One by one, the best of the best out of high school have gone one and done in college basketball, essentially invalidating whatever the one year rule was supposed to accomplish, rendering a stint in college as nothing more than the Quantum Leap waiting room, wherein these players who would have gone in the first round in the NBA just kind of mess around for a year, watch life progress from a far, maybe go to class occasionally (maybe, if the TAs are hot enough), and then as soon as they can, declare for the draft and drop out of college.

Not only does this seem completely pointless, but it can also strip a team's coffers bare. There are some programs that will reload day after day after day, and won't be affected by a player leaving early, but then every now and then, you have a season like the Pac 10 has had this year. UCLA has lost so many players after a year to the NBA the past couple years that it is just pathetic this year. As UCLA basketball goes, so goes the conference. The Pac 10 is, in one word, nauseating. Also, do coaches want to commit resources to recruiting a star for what will be just one season? As a coach, can you effectively construct and prepare a program knowing you may only have a cornerstone for one season? How will that affect the chemistry with OTHER players? While some may argue that the NBA has done college basketball a solid by forcing the nation's top talent to play collegiate for a year, it's actually cheapened the product and made D1 revenue sports even more shallow and profit-driven than they already were.

And again, as I've noted, it pisses me off that it makes John Calipari's life that much easier. He has parlayed his dirty Memphis stint (their final four trip has been stripped from the history books due to NCAA infractions) into a lucrative deal at Kentucky. Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans, John Wall...Calipari isn't a coach so much as he is an NBA middle man. I don't know if he receives any sort of commission from the Nets for his development of Wall, or if the Maloofs lined his pockets for keeping Evans warm for a semester, but he really ought to explore his options.

So let's cut the crap. Stop lying. Let adults play pro ball. No more charade Commissioner Stern. Don't feign concern for guys you don't know. Force teams to do the same evaluation of young players they would do normally. Let them bare the risk for not seeing the immaturity of draft picks. Brandon Jennings has already demonstrated how stupid this rule is by playing pro ball in Europe for a year after high school, effectively accomplishing an end-run and getting paid. Hold John Calipari accountable, force him to actually recruit college players rather than mercenaries who don't give two shits about the fact they're playing college ball for 4 months. And send me some damn chicken noodle soup. And maybe some more OJ. Thanks. I have to go blow my nose now.

NFL Free Agency: Initial Thoughts…

My first thought is a gripe, and it stems from what I can only describe as a lack of perspective and/or economic knowledge by sports analysts, pontificators, and douche-nozzles in general. It all comes down to one word, O-V-E-R-P-A-I-D.

If I hear one more asshole writer, blogger, or talking head say that the Bears, Lions, Giants, or anyone else “overpaid” for a free agent, I am going to break another keyboard, preferably on their face, but on my ugly old IKEA desk if need be. Hey morons, the whole concept of free-agency in the NFL for the last 15 years has been to “overpay for players”, or in non-dipshit words, “get the player you wanted.”

In a free-market system, the price paid for a good is usually defined by a combination of its scarcity and number of uses. * A mean guy that is over 6’, weighs over 250 lbs, runs forty yards in less than 4.5 seconds, and hates red jerseys is both scarce AND has a number of uses less than two. Also, before some weenie cursed by political correctness makes a comment, the ‘good’ I am referring to is a player’s performance, not the player, jackass. Conversely, a fat, stupid white guy with questionable sexual preferences can be both a comic-store clerk and a United States Senator, thus not being scarce AND having a multiple number of uses, especially in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass-Prison.**

With the free market in mind, let us now examine some of the 2010 NFL signings:

Let’s see, the miserable Detroit Lions are said to have overpaid for an oft-injured wide receiver (Nate “McBurly” Burleson) and an over-the-hill defensive end (Kyle Vanden Bosch). Hmmm, could it be that maybe you have to pay someone more to come live and work for the WORST FUCKING NFL TEAM IN THE WORST FUCKING CITY IN THE UNITED STATES? Holy shit, it’s no wonder you “analysts” get paid so much, you’re all geniuses! (Genii for those who believe in granting wishes, or is that Djinn?***).

Please imagine the late Chris Farley saying, “Da Bears!”, then fist-pounding out his own heart attack (if only Dick Cheney knew that trick). That was an awesome skit, but not as awesome as the stupidity of sports pundits. The Bears, reeling from some disappointing seasons, decided to get back to football Chicago-style, i.e. aggressive defense and a strong running game. Therefore, they “overpaid” for Chester Taylor and Julius Peppers. Is there a NFL franchise that isn’t interested in a talented running back with a shockingly low amount of carries and a defensive end with tons of talent and a below average motor? The answer is “Nope!”… unless you are a talentless piece of shit with a microphone in front of you and a logo behind you.

Now for the “My dick is going to fall off because of surprise and not chronic masturbation rant”…

The Baltimore Ravens just got Anquan Boldin and a 5^th round pick for a 3^rd and 4^th round pick. I don’t get it. All of my above arguments about a capitalist-based system just got flushed down my old-school porcelain over stamped-steel sink. Were there no other teams involved in this little merry-go-round whatsoever? Seriously, no team in the entire NFL spectrum offered a 2’nd rounder for a legitimate #1 WR? I have to believe that there were at least some mild shenanigans at play here. I fully understand that the gangsters in Baltimore pull in more weigh money than the ones in Arizona, after all, the rock gets $5 per kibble while the AZ mo’fo’s have to spend months planning the next Ciudad Juarez style kidnapping for a couple G’s. But holy fuck, no one else could give greater than a third and fourth rounder? I call bullshit, and I am sure an inside deal relationship will be announced soon. Regardless, have a happy off-season and talk to you later…

*- If you haven’t already, please read Basic Economics by the baddest-ass of all economically-inclined badasses, Thomas Sowell. An additional side-note, in 1492, God asked Sowell what was needed for a truly self-sufficient society, and Sowell told God “Hot chicks, sports where you can score on defense, and a surprising number of Chinese-food / Fried Chicken combo restaurants.” BAM!, America was discovered the next day.

**-Watch the movie Office Space. Brad Pitt just did and knows he made a big mistake.

***-Watch the movie Wishmaster: 2, or stab yourself in the left thigh, same diff.

Federer v Bonds. Unleash the Madness!

I thought I'd introduce our new poster Tim the Enchanter with a little back and forth between us. Enjoy!

Dominant
Main Entry: 1dom·i·nant
Pronunciation: \-nənt\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin dominant-, dominans, present participle of dominari
Date: circa 1532
1 a : commanding, controlling, or prevailing over all others b : very important, powerful, or successful.

See, dominant is easy to define. Basically, to be dominant is to be better than others. To be the most dominant is to be better than anyone else. Simple to explain!

So tonight, we debate a very simple idea: who was more dominant? Barry Bonds, or Roger Federor? It may be a bit hard to nail this down, since Bonds played a team sport and was dependant on a dozen or more other guys each night, whereas Federor played a sports that only rich, white kids get to play. I digress... At any rate, what we’re here to determine tonight is who was the more dominant (in their sport) of the two?

The case for Bonds is simple. He’s the founding, and only, member of the 500-500 club (homers and stolen bases). Nobody else is even in the 400-400 club. He holds the homerun record. He's the only player of our lifetime in the top ten all time in on base percentage. He won 8 gold gloves (yes, they’re somewhat political, but that does remind us that he was great at all things). He has the third highest OPS+ in baseball history (much more telling than simple OPS because it accounts for eras). If you want just single season greatness, he has the three highest single season OPS+ in recorded history. I’m leaving out a ton of statistic here (walks, intentional walks, WAR, win shares). And the fact is, I can ignore that and still argue the case with one statistic: Barry Bonds, media pariah who was snubbed not once, but twice, in the MVP voting (1991, 2000), still won 7. 7 MVP awards. Nobody else has ever won more than 3. Ever.

Barry Bonds is not just the greatest baseball player of our times, and the most dominant of his era, but he is on the short list for greatest ever.

Tim responds
Why is Federer better than Bonds?

First of all, the nature of the sport. Gold gloves and all-star games are political, as are, to a large degree MVP awards, unless you think Derek Jeter is really that good. Yes, Bonds got a ton of acclaim from people who love baseball to death or have at least heard of him over the estimated 1200 men in the pros named “Rodriguez,” and he certainly got pitched around a lot. But was Bonds really that great within his own sport, or just a huge name who never won a championship and benefited from playing against the hilarious “pitching” of the NL west for his entire career? It’s easy to look awesome when the San Diego Padres are issuing walks to you every at bat, but how did he do against the cream of the crop? Baseball isn’t a sport where dregs can win at any given moment, like MMA or football. Baseball’s a sport with punching bags, true mediocrity, cheap owners and politics, and there’s a huge difference between facing Randy Johnson for a couple of seasons versus playing, year in and year out, in a division like the AL East. I will be the first to admit that I’m not one of those people who live and die baseball statistics, but to me I’ve never been sure why OBS, FP, BA, slugging percentage, BOB, WAR, KOK, OB-GYN are used by aficionados to argue endlessly about things, but as far as I know, none of them take divisional talent into account. So Barry’s statistics against the powerhouse rotations of the Colorado Rockies, the Padres and a Dodgers team with fewer playoff wins in a generation than the expansion Tampa Bay Rays are being compared with hitters who go against the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays? That sounds fair. And I’m sure that for those who love VORP, it’s a completely perfect measure of how dominant a player is, which is why every signing in baseball has worked out since its invention. But at the end of the day, to us bemused outsiders, no one asks the big questions about baseball - like why a 50-year old man is essentially guessing whether a pitch goes over the plate in 1/100th of a second with tens of millions of dollars riding on the line. To us, we see these debates as being as relevant as arguing over whether DeGaulle or LeClerc were greater French leaders and citing individual monetary decisions without taking a step back and asking, wait, French leaders?
Finally, there’s the issue of steroids. Sure, a lot of people did them. But not everyone did them, and moreover, “Game of Shadows” proved that Bonds was doing things that no one else had even heard of in quantities that would cause grave concern in cattle. To say “everyone is doing it” isn’t quite as ludicrous as claiming that the everyone was cheating like the Patriots in the NFL, but it still makes the assumption that all of the scrub pitchers that Bonds shelled to define his career had access to the same cutting-edge blood enhancers, masking agents, hormones, diuretics and God knows what else he shot into his ass or gulped down over his career.
Which brings us to his “dominance” counterpart, Roger Federer. Leaving aside the fact that none of his associates are in jail for perjury or obstruction of justice, Federer’s run is far more remarkable given the nature of his sport. Baseball doesn’t put anywhere near the wear and tear on your body that tennis does and most players’ careers are correspondingly over by 30. And even given the normal greater longevity of baseball players, with the crap he has put into his system, Bonds’ numbers are skewed relative to many of those players in the past like Hank Aaron who might also figure into the discussion. Federer, on the other hand, is playing with the same limitations that others in his sport have faced since its inception, and is perhaps worse off given how many more tournaments are played on hard courts how. To put this into perspective, his chief rival, Rafael Nadal, blew out his own body at the age of 25 trying to surpass Federer. Get that? A guy who is six four, 215 lbs and ran a 4.6 forty once as part of an ESPN challenge had his career ended at 25 because the sport took too much out of his body. Contrast that with David Ortiz, who is a serious danger not to make it to first unless he hits a pitch all the way to the wall.
That brings me to another point. Contrary to your assertion, baseball actually draws from a much more limited talent pool. Tennis champions have come from all over the world; with great athletes often getting full rides from patrons to get a chance to compete regardless of their social background. In contrast, baseball players only face opposition from three Asian countries and a third of South America. Bonds himself comes from a far more privileged background than Federer. He grew up in San Carlos, California, a wealthy San Francisco suburb that at the time was over 80% white and had the third highest income of any township in California; with Willie Mays as his godfather and Bobby Bonds as his dad, his family was loaded and connected. Federer, in contrast, was the son of a traveling pharmaceutical salesman and a South African immigrant who grew up in a little tourist-oriented town on the French border.
And he’s gone on to have far greater success at the top levels of his sport than Bonds did at his. He has the most Grand Slam event wins (there are four per year) at 16 and a record 22 appearances, tied the record for consecutive Wimbledon wins. He beats everyone, not just the scrubs – he beat the second best player ever, Sampras, head to head on Sampras’ best surface, beat the fifth best player ever, Agassi, on Agassi’s best surface, and has better than a 2-1 win ratio head to head against every other player past or present on the circuit except the aforementioned Nadal, and he leads Nadal on both hard and grass court surfaces. It is only because Federer has faced Nadal eleven times on clay, Nadal’s best surface and Federer’s worst, that he even has a losing record. It says a lot that Nadal isn’t good enough to get through tournaments that aren’t on his best surface, but Federer can routinely meet him on HIS worst. And that’s another point- Federer shattered the previous record by making the final four in twenty-three straight Grand Slam events, showing consistency across all surfaces, not just in his own ballpark (hint hint). He is the all time leader in Masters Series wins, second in overall Year-End final championships, the all time leader in money won adjusted for inflation, has an Olympic gold medal, and set the all time records both for time spent as the world’s number 1 player (237 weeks) and the winning percentage across all tournaments for a career after the first Grand Slam win (94.3%). No article sums it up better than this one. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/tennis/07/05/federer.by.the.numbers/index.html
And perhaps the best tribute is that paid by the others in the sport. Every player who has ever been ranked number 1 for a span of more than a year has gone on the record as saying he is the best player ever in tennis. Can we say the same about Bonds?

Chris responds

You argue that Bonds didn’t play the best competition, but other than beating an almost washed Sampras, who has Federer played in his career? Who’s his Aggasi? Nadal? The guy who has owned him? And for the record, there’s plenty of pitching in the NL west. Randy Johnson won 4 straight cy youngs there (and Schilling was his buddy). Gagne set a closer mark there. Peavy won a cy young there with SD. I’ll grant the Rockies, but the NL west is underrated, especially in Bonds’ era. The Diamondbacks ended the Yankees dynasty don’t forget.

You argue steroids (even though baseball is a sport with a tradition of cheating. The shot heard around the world? Yeah, the Giants were stealing signs that year…), and then point to Federer’s longetivity. How he’s able to keep going in a sport that nobody else can endure for so long. Ummmm, never mind…

You argue that Federer had more success than Bonds did, but this simply demonstrates your inability to grasp the team concept. If anything, Bonds was a victim of his talent. He made good hitters out of such luminaries as Andy Van Slyke, Bobby Bonilla, Jeff Kent (check his pre-Bonds numbers), JT Snow, and Rich Aurillia. The best pitchers he ever played with were named (in order) Drabek, Nenn, Schmidt. He never played for a truly great team, yet his team made the playoffs countless times and was a game 6 collapse away from winning it all.

See, at the end of the day, Federer is probably the best player there is in tennis. But the argument is there for Nadal in his era. For whatever excuse you want to make for Federer, Nadal has owned him and thus left open the argument. There is no such argument against Bonds. The old timey numbers favor him (homeruns, MVPs, gold gloves) and the newfangled stat-geek numbers love him even more (this graph shows that he was the best by far in the 90’s and the first half of 2000’s, and this graph shows that he was probably the second most valuable player of all time, and could have been the first except for a couple of injuries in 1999 and 2005). And if you want to compare individual awards, then fine. Federer has the most Grand Slams of all time (by 2) in an era when tennis is at it’s weakest, while Bonds won 4 more MVPs than anyone ever. From a press that hates him.

You wrote that Federer’s best achievement is that everyone says he’s the best. Well, everyone likes him. What’s bigger, making people who like you laud you, or making people who hate you laud you? The people who published this and wrote this made him the best player in the league more than double the times anyone else had. Other tennis players respect Federer because they like him. People respect Bonds because they have to. He gave them no other choice.

Tim responds

Okay, in order of your points. How did Bonds do against Randy Johnson? Curt Schilling? A single closer in Gagne in a couple of seasons? Until you have numbers on how Bonds fared against top opposition, merely stating that he faced them doesn’t tell the story any more than saying that the NL west is underrated makes it so. Moreover, those guys were only in the division for a couple of years out of Bonds’ fourteen year tenure with the Giants. That merely furthers my argument that he beat up on most teams’ number three or four guys to make his legend.

I have no idea what your rebuttal to the steroids point means or is trying to say. Yes, baseball has a tradition of cheating. You didn’t address my assertion/point that Bonds cheated more and better. And what was your point about longevity in tennis? I’ll clarify – my point is that tennis careers, even of the best players, are at most around ten to 12 years, and have always been that way. Bonds was hardly an aberration based on his contemporaries by playing for 19 years, but he would have been VERY abnormal in the past. So any records he has in comparison to the past aren’t as relevant as Federer’s records – Bonds had a third again as long as his all-time rivals to hit those marks. And steroids.

And the playoffs mark isn’t that relevant. A team from the NL west has to go to the playoffs every year, and I’ve been over how mediocre the West has been in both the regular season (mediocrity that was confirmed by the division’s poor record in the playoffs. It’s no AL east, or for that matter NL Central). Even worse, the Giants only made the playoffs four times during the fourteen years of the Bonds era, winning a grand total of two games except for that one run. In fact, they won more playoff games in the previous fourteen years. The team, it seemed, was the same both before and after Bonds. That hardly sounds like he made players better.
Federer, on the other hand, has made tennis better, and that’s given that, despite your assertion, he has faced exceptional competition. Andy Roddick has the two fastest tennis serves ever recorded, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. According to available ATP numbers, faults are down, unforced errors are down and average serving speed is up since Federer started winning and, in fact, are better than in other eras of tennis for which relevant stats were recorded. The numbers would suggest (again, not prove, but strongly suggest) that, despite your assertion that tennis is “weak”, it is actually full of better players than it has ever had. It just happens to have the best player it has ever had at the top. It isn’t his fault that he has destroyed potential rivals in a way that Borg was unable to destroy McEnroe or Connors, or Sampras was unable to do to Agassi.

On Nadal versus Federer – again, without numbers on Bonds versus the rare time he faced a good pitcher, we don’t really know if he DIDN’T have a Nadal who caused him trouble. But I tried to explain it as best I could earlier – Nadal’s record against Federer is skewed because they met half the time on clay, the surface Nadal played on from the age of six. That’s like Bonds going up against Randy Johnson every time starting off with a strike and a seven run deficit to try and make up. On other surfaces, Federer wins head to head. Nadal isn’t good enough to make it through tournaments without a different surface backing him up; Federer is.
In fact, Nadal’s almost certain demise as a player is the best tribute to Federer available. I’m not sure how much you know about tennis, but clay slows the ball down dramatically, and in order to play the incredibly mobile defense he was used to against Federer on faster surfaces Nadal pushed his body farther than it could go. In chasing down every ball he could instead of just conceding points, he won the so-called “Greatest Match Ever Played” at Wimbledon in 2008 and outlasted Federer in the Australian Open in January of 2009, but during that time and the proceeding three years he compressed the cartilage in his knee to the point where he missed almost a year of his career, and he is only 23. To recap: Federer’s greatest rival during his run of dominance changed his style to beat Federer for a fifteen months span and in doing so did irreparable damage to his own body and career in the process. Did Randy Johnson ever do anything like that to cope with Bonds?

The arguments against Bonds for the greatest baseball player of the last two decades are few. Love him or hate him, he was a central figure, and had a period of extraordinary performance not matched by another position player for such a long period of time (although the reasons for that longevity are debatable). But is he the most dominant ATHLETE over the last two decades? He won a number of NATIONAL LEAGUE MVPs. The National League, not baseball overall, and the National League has lost World Series by a 2-1 ratio during that time and lost in badly in interleague play, the only other way of measuring which league is better. Sure, diehards will bitch about designated hitter rules affecting NL clubs, but those same journalists who voted Bonds the best player in the National League, as well as league insiders, really aren’t that charged up about the National League on the whole (see here and here for two brief examples). Given the apparent paucity of the NL and the length of his career, the MVP argument weakens. It is, after all, a ceremonial award, not a head to head metric (Nobel Peace Prize, anyone?) and as for the whole THEY HAD TO RESPECT HIM argument making the accomplishment more meaningful, well, I don’t know about that. The MVP is decided by two or three randomly selected union writers in each MLB city, and I don’t know that the BBWA members in Kansas City really had that much personal antipathy towards Bonds. They had heard he was a jerk from other writers, but their job wasn’t to vote for the guy they would most like to hang out with. Their job was to pick the most valuable player in the National League, and when the numbers showed he was the biggest fish in a small pond, my guess is they disinterestedly cast their vote.
To be the most dominant athlete of the last 20 years, Bonds would have to not be up against the greatest player ever in another sport, because, frankly, Bonds isn’t considered the best player ever in his sport. He’s in the discussion, sure, and a lot of people seem to feel that he is top 5 and certainly top 10, but again, part of that comes from career totals that were enhanced by sticking around longer. DiMaggio and Williams went to war. Mantle and Ruth didn’t have steroids or any sort of knowledge of modern training techniques. Gehrig died. Heck, the only other superstar to really have Bonds’ longevity was Hank Aaron, and he came darn close to Bonds in a number of areas despite playing without performance enhancers and with death threats from the Ku Kux Klan. If Bonds was up against the third or fourth best tennis player ever, then yeah, maybe he might be the most dominant athlete in the last 20 years. But Federer is, based on every conceivable number and metric, the greatest player in the history of tennis. And he’s only in the middle of his career.

Chris responds

See, and that’s the problem. You just don’t get it. Baseball is as healthy as it’s ever been, and yet Bonds put up numbers only rivaled by men from decades ago. His WAR numbers from the 90’s, when he was described as “anorexic”, top anything Pujols has ever done. Without steroids, he dominated other abusers. With steroids, he put up numbers nobody has ever done. Nobody has even come close. In every aspect of the game, in total play, Bonds was the best that has ever been since the game integrated. Also, Bonds dominated a sport that matters. He was better than everybody at a time when baseball had more talent than it’s ever had. I've given you two chances and you haven't even tried to mention someone who was a better player than Bonds. That's true dominance. When you are the best in the game, and nobody can even question it. And that's what Bonds was for more than a decade.

The fucking BEST.

And that’s the opposite of Federer. You can point to serve speeds, and whatnot, but that’s simply a product of better athletic training across the board (and that you’d reference Roddick is pretty sad). I played division 3 football with guys who had better 40 times than Jerry Rice. That doesn’t mean we were better. Federer dominates at a time when there just aren’t any good tennis players. I can name more Kansas City Royals than I can male tennis players, and I don’t follow the Royals. Sadly, the truth is, tennis is dying. Check the ratings. 5.71 million people watched Federer win Wimbledon last year (and that was the highest in a decade!). The Spurs-Pistons finals in 2005 was said to be a ratings disaster, but every single game beat that by a million or more people. The lowest total was game 2, which had 6.9 million viewers. Tennis is irrelevant. So it’s only fitting that as it sputters out for a few more decades that someone would emerge to dominate the sport when nobody cares. He’s only as dominate as the guy who always wins pickup basketball down at the YMCA.

I think I erred in picking this topic. Next time, let’s do something truly comparable. Roger Federer versus Diana Taurasi.

You see, at the end of the day, I'm not sure Federer is the best. Maybe he's just lucky that Nadal is injury prone and snakebit on grass. I know that, when they do play, Nadal is the best between them. And that's not dominance. Is Federer the most accomplished tennis player in history? Sure, you bet he is! Is he the greatest? How can he be, when another player owns him so badly?

Federer is great. Federer is accomplished.

Barry Bonds was dominant.

Life Immitates Kevin Smith

Art reflects life. And life reflects art. And sports reflect both, or neither. Something like that. I can never quite remember.

I had a chance to watch the Lions play a football game this year in person. They played the Ravens in Baltimore. It was pretty abysmal. I mean, the Lions suck. Calvin Johnson couldn’t even come up with his garbage time TD reception, instead dropping (another) pass in the end zone. The final score was something like 1,492-3 (look it up if you don’t believe me, I dare you!). And yet, for a fleeting moment, there was a bright spot for the Lions.

Kevin Smith was amazing. He juked. He exploded into “holes” created by his “linemen”. Late in the third quarter he even caught a pass across the middle and started to make something out of it. And then sports reflected art. Or life. Something like that…

ACLs are an amazing thing. This tiny little strip of organic mass is all that separates the fastest, strongest, and most amazing of us from quivering masses of flesh unable to do the smallest task. It’s quite obvious that ancient Greeks really didn’t know what the hell they were talking about in human anatomy, or it would have been Achilles’ ACL. Then again, that doesn’t sound very poetic, so I’ll grant them artistic license on the matter. The point being that everyone likes to complain about video games where the villain has one specific spot you should hit him, yet God beat them to the punch on this thousands of years ago (art imitating life?).

So when this human gazelle, who had astonished us all day by gaining positive yards while wearing a blue lion on his helmet, was finally tackled on this play, none of us thought anything of it. But then he stayed down. And then they showed the replay. And his knee did the hokey-pokey all on it’s own, and everyone knew. As the training staff ran onto the field, sports imitated life.

See, the thing about life is that it’s short. On a cosmic level, human being have a very short lifespan. There are trees that are older than many people in America think the universe is. I'm not kidding. The current average life span is 67.2 years. Turtles outlive us, though we do get to be prettier than them for part of our lives.

And that’s the tragedy in this. Kevin Smith is young. He was 5 days away from turning 23 when this happened. And he will never be the same. Sure, he’ll “heal” at some point (hopefully), but he’ll never be what he was. Nobody ever comes back fully from an injury like this. Hell, even QBs are sidetracked from what they were by this injury (see: Brady, Tom; Palmer, Carson), and all they have to do is stand there and throw. The idea that Smith will ever cut like he did; move like he did? That’s a pipedream.

And that’s life. We age. We get older. We lose what we were. And ultimately we’re shuffled off this mortal coil. Kevin will play again, but he won’t be the same. He’ll be older, he’ll be slower, and eventually he’ll be replaced and out of the league. It’s quite the metaphor for what will happen to us all some day. And just as in life, it won’t really be his choice; the choice will be made for him. Even the player who retires doesn’t fully choose to walk away; they simply recognize that they can no longer play. Nobody retires when they’re an all-pro (except pot-heads and Lions running backs, which is quite ironic!).

Ultimately, that was what struck me as Kevin was carted off the field, towel over his head. It was a bitter reminder of how fragile, and ultimately passing, the greater picture is. The very next play, the Lions had someone else ready to fill his spot. The gears of the NFL must march on. It must, for sports is simply a metaphor for life. One minute Kevin Smith was here, the next he was gone. And without a hiccup, football continued.

Someday life will do the same.

Of Whom Does Bob Costas Have Naked Pictures?

I opted to err on the side of caution with my title and not end it with a preposition, as our administrator has full editorial privileges.

But like I was saying, how the holy hell is Bob Costas on every God-forsaken thing NBC does? Listen, I know times are tight, and NBC went into the Winter Olympics roughly $35 million lighter in the pocket thanks to some rather asinine late night TV decisions, but come ON. DOES BOB COSTAS HAVE TO RUB HIS STINK ON EVERYTHING?! For the last two decades, that little chicken hawk has lorded over absolutely everything NBC Sports has done, from the NBA, to the Icecapades. About the only thing he hasn't defiled is that baffling contract NBC has with Notre Dame. (thank Touchdown Jesus for that.) During this olympiad, he even managed to make a Colbert interview fall flat. At that point you're just trying to suck.

Bob Costas is that breed of television "journalist" who's never understood that less is more, and that if you don't have anything endearing or worthwhile to add to an image that the vast majority of television viewers can already SEE (apologies blind people who are somehow reading this), then you should shut your dwarf yapper and let the scene play out. Hey, here's an idea Bob, why not interrupt the 8 hour delayed coverage of the Men's Downhill Flugelhorn to talk about how your hairpiece has magically turned the color of the beer bottle I just emptied? Even though you're 60?

Listen, the Winter Olympics are interesting only to a small minority of the world's nations. And in one of those nations, the US, it's honestly important only to a small percentage of the population. Oh yes, of course, we'll all watch every now and then, because it's on, and we only have to hear about the Nordic Combined once every four years, but really, it is the red-headed step-sibling to the Summer Games. Let's be real. And people in their $5 million 600 square foot condos in Aspen can boo-hiss all they want, but it's true.

So now comes Bobby Costas trying to forcibly inject what is by all accounts just NBC's desperate wish to fill a four-year gap until the Summer Games with schmultzy, irrelevant, fake, canned drivel. If NOTHING else, please, please, just let viewers marvel at the scenery, dude. That's the ONE thing the Winter Games have, is the chance to watch a lot of these events outside, in the elements, on HD. You'd deprive us even of that? Just so you can dominate airspace? His segments take "hokey" to new astronomical heights. His attempts to sound informed and informative ring completely hollow and essentially waste an unfamiliar viewer's time.

And the WORST OF ALL was NBC forcing the venerable Al Michaels to not only have to cover the Closing Ceremonies, but to do it with Bob Costas. The best thing going on NBC Sports, Mr. "Do You Believe in Miracles?!" was stuck in a booth with Rumplestiltskin while Canada embarrassed itself on a worldwide stage with what looked like someone trying to make fun of Canada. (I give Michael J. Fox his due. The guy is a trooper, and is not letting Parkinson's win without a fight.) Really kids? Giant inflatable moose, beavers, and mounties? In the words of Niedermeier, "you're a god-damned disgrace!!!" It seriously looked like Trey Parker and Matt Stone had a hand in all that, and I would have been convinced if William Shatner came out with a frightening flappy head and beady eyes.

Ultimately, the best show of the Olympic Games was of course the Mens' hockey tournament, and the gold medal showdown between the US and Canada. It made for great television, and mercifully, Costas was only remotely involved. Bummer to see Crosby go bottom shelf on Ryan Miller, who made me like goalies even more, but if the canucks hadn't won the game, we might have had this on our hands...

So Bob, I'm not saying you have to quit and go live on a mountain by yourself and stop bothering people. I don't have that kind of power. But could you just maybe pick something obscure and go with that? NBC has enough problems. As do I. And in two years, there will be Olympic games I actually care about. Don't take them from me. I'm begging you. There? Ok? Are you happy? STOP TALKING ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME! AND WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?!

You Either Die A Hero, Or Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain

Let’s get one thing clear. I hate the Patriots. I hate them with venom and anger. I hate their prima donna QB who left his pregnant girlfriend. I hate their asshole coach who shames players into playing/practicing with concussions (Ted Johnson). I hate their asshole coach who cheated on his wife. I hate their asshole coach who cheated and filmed teams' practices (all the same guy!). I hate Rodney Harrison, though I like him as a commentator…

The point is, I fucking hate the patriots.

Which is sad. Because, for one gleaming moment, even though I did not realize it at the time, they were all that was right about football.

See, the thing about sports is that really they’re simply a replacement for war (though a very ineffective one). As we all know, the first Olympics were held in an effort to replace war altogether (epic fail?). In war, you take to the field with your teammates, and in sports you do the same. Hell, in some cultures the losers even got killed, much like war (though I am far too lazy to look up which ones). My point is that, sports are their most refined when they are most like war. Also, individual sports are bullshit.

And that is why football is the greatest sport. It is the only sport where it NEVER comes down to one man. A baseball game will often times come down to a pitcher versus a hitter (ask Joe Carter and Mitch Williams if you do not believe me). Soccer often times ends in a shootout, which is simply ten one-on-one encounters. And ask any Dallas Mavericks fan if basketball can be reduced to the play of one man (and for the record, Dirk had a game against the Spurs that season where he made 3 baskets and scored 27 points, so Mavs fans can shut the hell up).

Football is a completely different animal. The great touchdown pass requires good blocking of at least 5 men (or it would be a sack), a good throw (no receiver can catch a ball 8 feet over their heads, unless it is Calvin Johnson in the fourth quarter of a 42-6 game), and a receiver to catch the ball (poor Jackie Smith). A winning field goal requires 8 blockers, a snapper, a holder, and the kicker (who gets all the credit, but all the blame, so that is fair). Even a great defensive play requires multiple players since the greatest coverage in the world is useless if everyone else blows their assignment. Not to mention that at least 30 players will have an impact for each team during any given game. Football is the ultimate team sport.

Which brings me back to the Patriots. See, growing up the super bowl had a tradition. Before the game, each team would introduce the starters from their offense or defense (usually the offense, though I think some teams did the D) one at a time. This always happened. Then, Super bowl 36 rolled around. The Rams, the prohibitive favorite, had their offense introduced first. Then, it was the Patriots turn (and I think had they gone with tradition, they might have introduced their D). And where I expected names, there was simply fireworks and a team running onto the field. I was stunned. Everyone was. What just happened? Was that a glitch? Did the Fox botch the introductions? Did they come out as a team? Huh…

You know the rest. The Patriots won. Somehow, someway the scrappy underdog came out victorious. It was such a monumental moment that since that time, every team has come out as a team. In this way, the Patriots really changed football for the better.

Which brings us to the second moment.

The next year the Patriots went 9-7 and lost the division (and a playoff birth) via tiebreaker. And this is where their destiny was forever altered. If they had self-destructed after this, gone 8-8 the next year, they would have been remembered as the scrappy hero. The team that united for one run and achieved the impossible dream. The team that should not have won, but did anyways. How very Major League of them…

Instead, you know the history. They gelled after going 2-2 to start the 2003 season, won 18 straight(21 including playoffs), and 2 more super bowls. Coaches got high paying gigs (Charlie Weiss is the most comical of all these), Brady became famous, and Rodney Harrison was convicted of murder. The scrappy underdog became the villain. It didn’t help that their coach was a huge douchebag all along (though I’d bet a lot of NFL coaches are). Eventually they traded for malcontent Randy Moss and, surprise surprise, he fit right in. The Patriots become the villain of the NFL, with most fans reveling in their defeats, first to the colts and then to the Eli Manning-led Giants (when the Pats were 18-0!). A team once the laughingstock of the AFC east was now the big, bad juggernaut whose defeats were to be relished.

And yet, for all the ill that became of the patriots, there will always be that moment. The moment when a team with a sixth-round quarterback refused to revel in glory, and instead reveled in team. The moment when 53 men combined to achieve victory against insurmountable odds. The moment when team beat hype. It sounds like a cliché from a movie. Honestly, it should have been.

I wish the Patriots had died the hero.

Conversations with a Lawyer

Conversation #1: Rendered speechless by Lawyerly Hypocrisy.

While waiting for the super bowl to start, where I won a double or nothing (I was the nothing) $398 bet with a fellow Half-Ear commentator...

Myself: Well, he is going to be in prison for the next two years...

Angry Former ACLU and current Douchebag Lawyer: Who?

Myself: Plaxico Burress.

Angry Former ACLU and current Douchebag Lawyer: Why?

Fellow H-E Commentator: Because he got caught in New York with a gun, where they have crazy gun laws.

Angry Former ACLU and current Douchebag Lawyer: But, I mean, I really like strict gun laws, but that seems like too much to me.

Myself: (No words came to mind, so I just snickered, smacked my forehead and walked outside with my beer).