Category: Sports

Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.

It ought to be a national holiday

Stan the Man is 90. He batted .331 lifetime.

After 22 years as a Cardinal, Stan Musial ranked at or near the top of baseball’s all-time lists in almost every batting category. The dead-armed Class C pitcher was transformed into a slugging outfielder who topped the .300 mark 17 times and won seven National League batting titles with his famed corkscrew stance and ringing line drives. A three-time MVP, he played in 24 All-Star games. He was nicknamed The Man by Dodgers fans for the havoc he wrought at Ebbets Field and was but one home run shy of capturing the National League Triple Crown in 1948.

Baseball Hall of Fame

Today is also the birthday

… of “That Girl” Marlo Thomas, now 73.

… of Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack, Jr. That’s Dr. John, in the right place, wrong time. He’s 70 today.

… of actress Juliet Mills. Hayley’s older sister and John’s older daughter is 69. Juliet Mills first appeared in a movie in 1942, when she played an infant.

… basketball hall-of-famer Earl Monroe. The Pearl is 66.

… of writer-director-actor Harold Ramis. He’s 66. Ramis co-wrote the screenplay and directed “Groundhog Day,” enough to make me a fan. He was the doctor in the film.

… of Goldie Hawn. Kate Hudson’s mom is 65.

… of the other Judy Garland daughter, Lorna Luft. She’s 58.

… of journalist and editor Tina Brown. She’s 57.

… of the not so desperate Nicollette Sheridan. She’s 47.

… of Björk. She’s 45.

… of football hall-of-famer Troy Aikman. He’s 44.

… of probable future baseball hall-of-famer Ken Griffey Jr. Junior is 41.

François-Marie Arouet was born in Paris on this date in 1694. We know him as Voltaire.

Who Let the Dogs Out?

Michael Vick threw for 333 yards and four TDs and ran for 80 yards and two more scores as the Eagles beat the Redskins 59-28 Monday night. It was 35-0 nine seconds into the second quarter.

And for you fantasy football fans, in my league Vick had a 61.1 point night.

Young and Dilfer also used the word artistry, and those who watched the game will understand. Vick had the athleticism and grace of a Michael Jordan or a  Roger Federer, part sport and part dance — one of the reasons we set aside time in our lives to watch these games.

The Fifth Down

“[It was as if Vick were playing a video game Monday night, controlling the defenders, making them run in slow motion as he blew past them for big gains and touchdowns.” Ashley Fox, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Best line proving you can be good and still be overrated

“Jeter committed six errors this season, his lowest total in 15 full seasons. But more advanced defensive measures showed his range to be well below average, as it has been nearly every season of his career.”

Jeter’s 5th Gold Glove an Error, Metric Says – NYTimes.com

One measure ranked Jeter 59th, i.e., last, among all Major League shortstops.

Update: Posnanski on Jeter. An excerpt:

The thing that annoys non-Yankees fans about Jeter, I think, has less to do with Jeter himself and more to do with the intense campaign to spin him into the perfect ballplayer. He is great enough as is. He’s been a terrific hitter — one of the three best, I think, to ever play shortstop — a durable player, a smart player, a leader, a good teammate, a credit to the game. He’s going to the Hall of Fame the first day he’s eligible, and I will be one of those people proudly voting for him.

Trouble is, when Jeter wins his fifth Gold Glove — like he did on Tuesday — even when the best statistical evidence suggests he has been a well-below average defender throughout his career, well, that’s the stuff that drives people nuts about Jeter.

Line of the day

“On the next play, [Kansas] gave the ball to Sims again, and this time he broke through the [Colorado] line, scored from 13 yards out. The Jayhawks were down 45-24. There was 11:05 left. They had their consolation touchdown. I turned off the radio.”

Joe Posnanski

But that was just the first of four Kansas TDs in six minutes. And then they got one more and won, 52-45.

Stuff

Roger Ebert on the hereafter.

Joe Posnanski on Pain and Injury in the NFL.

In the name of science, the columnist Steve Lopez smokes, giggles and drives. “But Trutanich and many cops believe that if Proposition 19 passes next month and marijuana is as legal as potato chips and nearly as cheap, more new users will be driving under the influence, so the experiment would be worthwhile.”

Juanita Jean has a Regular Ole Friday Toon, today featuring the women in Clarence Thomas’s life.

And I’ve never been a fan, but at some level you gotta love Shaq.

Will it be two?

Only three major league franchises (of 30) have never been to a World Series. One of them, the Texas Rangers play the Yankees tonight in the first game of the American League Championship Series. Can the Rangers take the ALCS and advance to their first World Series?

Washington Senators/Texas Rangers (50 seasons)

Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals (42 seasons)

Seattle (Washington) Mariners (34 seasons)

What is it with franchises associated with Washington anyway?

Thirty-Two Great Calls

Joe Posnanski lists his Thirty-Two Great Calls (with video and transcripts).

So that’s one problem — is the CALL great or is the MOMENT great? And does it even matter?

Another difficulty is figuring out what makes a great call: Is it the announcer finding the perfect words to define the moment? Is it the musical blending of words and crowd noise, like Vin Scully’s call of The Catch? Is it a vivid description of what’s happening, so vivid that you can see it on radio, feel the wind blowing on television? Is it a great catch phrase — “How about that?” or “Going, going gone” or “Oh, my!”

Or is it simply brilliant emotion put to words? One of the most famous calls in sports history wasn’t even made by an announcer — it was an unknown fan screaming over announcer Bud Palmer, “Look at Mills! Look at Mills!” as Billy Mills raced to the finish line in the 10,000-meter race at the 1964 Olympics. Do I include that on my list? You’ll have to wait and see.

Idle thought

Crash Davis was wrong. Strikeouts are neither boring, nor fascist. They’re vital.

“[E]xtensive research…shows that the vast majority of pitchers wind up giving up hits on about 30 percent of balls in play over the course of their careers.”

Tim Lincecum

I did a little algebra. For the sake of discussion assume nine innings with no walks or home runs.

First case. No strike outs. 38 balls put into play. 27 outs. But 11 hits (38 X .3). Eleven hits is a lot of hits. Has to be more than one hit in some inning(s). That probably means runs scored.

But say you strike out 10. Then only 34 hitters come up. 10 strike outs. 17 fielding outs. 7 get hits (24 X .3). Seven hits are fewer than one an inning. The seven could be all in one inning, but the chances of runs scoring with 7 hits are considerably less than runs scoring with 11 hits.

Just an idle thought and a little math and not well argued. But Crash Davis was wrong.

Halladay and Lincecum

Game Score is a statistic developed by Bill James. It is one way of measuring a pitcher’s performance in any one game. 50 is about average and 100 or greater is extremely rare.

— Start with 50 points.

— Add a point for each out, and two more for each inning completed after Inning 4.

— Add one point for each strikeout.

— Take away two points for each hit, 4 points for each earned run, 2 points for each unearned run and 1 point for each walk.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It really is an elegant little formula.

Roy Halladay’s no-hitter Wednesday scored 94 (the same as Don Larsen’s no-hitter in the 1956 World Series).

And guess what? Last night’s little gem by San Francisco’s Tim Lincecum scored 96, the fourth best postseason pitching performance (according to Game Score) in baseball history.

Joe Posnanski has all the details.

Two personal observations. Watching Tim Lincecum pitch may be my current favorite thing in all of sports. Reading Joe Posnanski’s baseball writing is near the top, too. I think I’ve learned more about baseball from Poz in the past two months than I have since I stopped reading Bill James 20 years ago.

Bats blog agrees. A little background excerpt:

Although most fans have been led to believe that good pitchers can “induce” weak contact and generate easily fieldable balls, while bad ones will surrender a parade of blistering line drives, extensive research into the subject shows that the vast majority of pitchers wind up giving up hits on about 30 percent of balls in play over the course of their careers.

As a result, the only ways for most pitchers to reduce the number of hits they allow are to avoid surrendering home runs and to get more strikeouts, so batters never put the ball in play to begin with. This is why the list of pitchers who have whiffed 15 batters in a game over the last decade is so much more impressive than the list of pitchers who have thrown no-hitters in that timespan.

Best baseball line of the day, so far

“And still, major league hitters come up, they swing at his cutter, the ball breaks in two inches more than they expected, they break their bat. In Las Vegas, I’ve seen David Copperfield make a car appear out of thin air, and I’ve seen Lance Burton duel someone in a costume who turns out to be Lance Burton. I’m sure I could watch those tricks 50 times and never figure out how they are done. I’m sure I could watch those tricks 100 times and never figure out how they’re done.

“But Mariano Rivera has pitched 1,150 innings in the big leagues. He has pitched another 135 or so postseason innings. He has faced almost 900 different big league hitters. And this same trick, precisely this same trick, works almost every time.”

Joe Posnanski