Related?

Rumors abound that Rays pitcher David Price is the long last brother of the Geico caveman...



Two for the Price of one?

You be the judge.

The Knicks

An email we received in the office from the Clarion Content's Sports Editor...

Reviewing the LeBron decision and the changing NBA landscape, with a fellow aficionado last night.

We agree on two things, the balance of power hasn't shifted, and LeBron's staying in Cleveland. (I think for a shorter than the max contract~3 years.)

He is a Seattle guy with family in Oklahoma, may be the least pissed off Sonics fan I know. We both liked the way KD handled his business today. I'd lay odds that he wins more titles than LeBron.

Close to the end of our exchange, texted my friend this question: "Knicks; tragedy or farce?"

His reply, "Farce."

My new unavoidable query, "When rooting for a farce, is the joke inherently on you?"

We have yet to reply to him.

Cosas Raras

King Felix Hernandez, who was robbed of the Cy Young last year, became the first pitcher to shutout the Yankees at the new Yankee Stadium last night, leading the Seattle Mariners to a 7-0 win. The Mariners King Felix and Cliff Lee pitched back-to-back complete games against the Yankees.

Talk about cosas raras, rare things, the Yankees haven't had back-to-back complete games thrown against them at home since 1991, when Jim Abbott and Mark Langston of the then California Angels managed the feat.

We haven't seen much of the Mariners this year, but it does not compute. How can they be this bad?

College Football Consolidation

The BCS was always BS...

Talk of the consolidation of college football's major conferences has been all the rage this week. Today it looks as if it is becoming official, with University of Colorado's announcement that it is joining the PAC-10 and the University of Nebraska announcement that it is bolting the Big 12 for the Big 10. This will very quickly make the Big 12 no mas, as most of the remaining teams will seize the opportunity to make the PAC-10 a sixteen team league.

As wily observers know this is all about the haves and have-nots amongst the college football power players. The expansion of PAC-10 to a sixteen team league will be followed in short order by the Big-10 and SEC expanding to sixteen team leagues. The ACC will also be reluctantly forced to do so to ally with the college football superpowers. This will allow these four conferences to sideline the NCAA, as well as the BCS and have their own college football playoff. It is all about the dead presidents and there is no reason for the college football programs with the juice to split the Division I-A college football revenue pie one-hundred and eleven ways when they can reduce that split to sixty-four.

There is an interesting analysis about how this came about by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports here. However that is looking backward, the Clarion Content is more fascinated by how things will turn out going forward. Our prediction is it will not be long before the Big East is a basketball only league again. Villanova, St. John's and Georgetown will not mind. The question is what happens to the storied and not so storied programs from the current BCS conferences that end up on the outside looking in at the money. Our speculation on the schools that might end up on that list would include Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and UConn. These schools along with the already jilted: Utah, Utah State, Boise State and Fresno States of the world may be made enough to actually get congressional action this time.

Have the college football commissioners warned the university presidents that their radical schemes for the future might bring about anti-trust lawsuits and Department of Justice maneuvering. President Obama signaled way back in the election campaign that he was pro-college football playoff, but by any means necessary?

The Clarion Content is pro-college football playoff too, but it is easy to feel genuine concern that money has distorted the system so badly that these schools are losing track of their education mission to their student bodies and their duty to the college athlete. And maybe this was already so under the corrupt and co-opted NCAA, but will this consolidation make it any better? Quien sabe?

Durkheimian Ritual

A typical celebratory mob forming

The California Angels have ripped a page straight out of the French social anthropologist Émile Durkheim's proverbial manual on the power of collective ritual. Last week the Angels were celebrating a walk-off home run in what has become the style. They were pounding the home run hitting teammate on the noggin, shoulders, and upper body, in a veritable mosh pit around home plate. Star first baseman Kendry Morales slipped and broke his leg during the collective celebration ritual of an exciting win.

A funny thing happened after that, despite Morales leading the team in home runs, runs batted in and average before getting hurt, the Angels increased their offensive production. They have won seven of eight while scoring an average of 7.25 runs per game. This is well up from their heretofore paltry, for the American League, 4.35 runs per game. They have slugged thirteen homers in those eight contests and are hitting .303 as a team since Morales got hurt.

It says here that, this is a classic case of the power of ritual to collectively raise the abilities of all members who participate. [Belief helps.] The California Angels as a team joined in a celebratory dance in which Morales was severely, if accidentally, injured. The team likely felt a collective guilt for this injury. In the video replays it is quite difficult to assess blame for the injury individually. These players participated in the ritual that created a problem for their teammate and theoretically their team. They could not undo what was done to their teammate, but they could channel their collective psyche and its powerful response (exponentially powerful as Durkheim would tell it by the relative unanimity of emotional experience).

They did so on the field, tearing the cover off the ball, like a team possessed by a spirit. Who would have thunk a French social anthropologist could have told you so?

Perfection

A hero to tell the kiddies about, Armando Galarraga...

At the Clarion Content we ask the Sports Editor not to get too philosophical, but sometimes it is inevitable. Sports are a microcosm of society and they are part of the arena in which we address, debate and come to understand important moral dilemmas for stakes lower than life and death.

Last night was such an example, Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from pitching a perfect game. The centerfielder Austin Jackson had just made a dandy defensive play, retiring the leadoff hitter in the ninth with a superb running catch almost at the wall, to preserve the perfect game. One out later a routine groundball to the firstbaseman, who fired to Galarraga covering. Ball game! Perfection! First time ever three perfect games had been thrown in one season, or so we might have thought.

Unfortunately, the first base umpire, Jim Joyce blew the call. He ruled the runner safe, when instant replay clearly showed that Galarraga nipped him at the bag. Perhaps, Joyce was fooled by a slight bobble on the catch muffling the usual thwack into the glove. No matter, the reality is simply that he made a mistake.

And this is where the philosophy comes in, the Clarion Content holds that, as we understand the nature of things, there can be a maximum of one perfection in the Universe. Joyce did nothing wrong. (Morally, accidents are not wrongs.) He showed that he was human like we all are. Publicly, in a society with omnipresent 24/7 media coverage. Galarraga handled the situation so graciously after the game, accepting Joyce's apology with class and dignity. He could not have handled the situation better. He had achieved baseball immortality either way: a perfect game or the most widely footnoted non-perfect game this side of Harvey Haddix's twelve miraculous innings. He said someday he would show his son a tape of the game and be just as proud.

This was what the experts like to call "teachable moment." Nobody is perfect, we all err, and to admit your wrongs (like umpire Joyce did immediately after seeing the replay) and forgive (like Tigers' pitcher Andres a Galarraga) is what makes us the best we can be. The best we can be is human beings as fallible. It is a terminal condition we all share. None of us perfect. None of us as immortal. At our highest heights, and this was certainly the biggest moment of Galarraga's career, the best we can be is humble and gracious.

Sabermetric Karma

The baseball deities have clearly had enough of the sabermetric hoo-haa. (Ask the Boston Red Sox.) They have unleashed the full power of their anger and retribution on the Kansas City Royals pitcher Zack Greinke. Last year Greinke set a new low: the fewest decisions ever won by a Cy Young award winner. Greinke was a mere 16-8, albeit with a lousy Kansas City Royals team. Morons, like ESPN's Keith Law, lauded his performance and defended his Cy Young with ridiculous statements like "Wins don't matter anymore." It is rocket scientists like this who are keeping Jack Morris out of the Hall of Fame.

Grenike fed right into the phenomenon telling reporters his favorite statistic. "That's pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP (fielding independent pitching) as low as possible."

Hey, genius, we have an idea, how about you try to win the flipping game? Nobody gives a rat's ass what your FIP is when you lose!!!

The baseball gods heard our howls and cries. They are visiting choice retribution on Greinke this season. He has a swell 1 win and 6 losses. But don't worry Royals fans, we bet, his FIP is great. Come see him lose 3-2 when the team is are twenty-five games back in mid-August.

Nice work, Zack. All the baseball writers who voted for Greinke over King Felix for Cy Young last year, fifty lashes with a wet noodle!

One timeout, not called

The Boston Celtics had finished choking the life out of LeBron's Cleveland Cavaliers. They cost Coach Mike Brown his job. They were slicing through the Orlando Magic like a hot knife through butter, heading towards an epic showdown with Lakers in the Finals. In all probability that showdown is still going to happen, but last night Celtics Coach Doc Rivers through a wrench in the works.

The Celtics were leading 3-0, seeking the sweep, in Game 5, having not played their best for the first time in the series, they were rallying. They had come back from seven points down in the last two minutes. They had the ball for the last shot in the game, a chance to put the final dagger in the Magic's season. Doc's old guys had expended a lot of energy. They needed one more bucket to end it. Doc chose not to call timeout, not to give his guys a blow, not to draw up a play. Doc knows how great Paul Pierce is, he knows Pierce can usually get his shot at the end of the game. Doc knows Pierce has ice water in his veins. It is hard to criticize Doc, but... this time, the Celtics (Pierce included) looked a little winded.

One timeout and one bucket and Celtics could have been watching film and resting up for the Lakers. Instead, no timeout, no bucket, and a tired, older team goes on to lose in overtime. Now the Celtics have to travel to Orlando, and if they cannot win another one on the road, (theoretically difficult) they will have to play a Game 6. With an older team, to whom health and rest is so important, that one bad coaching decision could be tremendously magnified. The Lakers and Celtics appear evenly matched, if the Celtics are not fatigued or banged up. Can they take out Orlando on the road in Game 5 and get the rest they so desperately need? It would have been easier just to call timeout, let Pierce, Garnett, et al. get a breather and hit that shot at the end of Game 4. Done and done. As it was without a timeout, they were unable to even get a shot off.

Baseball, an every day game

Baseball is an every day game. One has to see it every day, day after day to admire it at its deepest level. It is a narrative, as each game it tells a story unto itself. A weekend of games is a series. A season full of games tells the story of a Summer and a year. As once upon a time in Brooklyn, and to this day in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Queens, the story of a franchise tells part of the story of a place.

But it to appreciate the baseball narrative, the long story, the slowly woven tapestry that it is, one must begin with the day to day and the realization that each and every day at the ballpark offers the opportunity for something entirely new and unseen. And so it was Wednesday in the Major Leagues. Fans at one game saw something that no one had witnessed during an MLB game in fifty-five years. Those at another game saw a scoring oddity that the Clarion Content's sports editor, before that evening, for all of his advanced years and hours whiled away watching baseball, could not ever recall seeing.

First, the event last seen performed in the same game in 1955, done then by one Ted Kazanski of the Philadelphia Phillies: hit an inside the park home run and participate in a triple play defensively. Mr. Kazanski once renown as "the Phillies $100,000 bonus shortstop," has been joined in the annuals by New York Mets centerfielder Angel Pagan. Whom Wednesday night in St. Louis, hit his inside the park home-run in the top of the fourth inning to give the Mets a 1-0 lead. Then in the bottom of the fifth, Pagan participated in a bizarre triple play in which he caught a sinking linedrive in center, and runners on both first and second base were doubled-off thinking that Pagan had trapped the ball. Replays showed that it was indeed a sweet catch. The wild play would have been scored 8-2-6-3, centerfielder to catcher to shortstop to first. Now you don't see that often, let alone by a guy who hit an inside-the-parker in the same game.

The second anecdote from Wednesday night also revolves around a bizarre scoring oddity in a game between the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays. It was first pointed out by ESPN's announcer for the game, the venerable Chris Berman. It was so rare that we had to tweet about it. The Rays had achieved 1st and 3rd with two out, five batters had been to the plate, but nary an official at-bat had been recorded by those scoring the game. Come again? In the top of the Tampa Bay third inning this sequence of plate appearances led to the rare five guys up in a row without recording at at-bat: former Durham Bull, Reid Brignac led off with a walk, Jason Bartlett bunted, sacrificing Brignac to second, Yankees pitcher A.J. Burnett hit Carl Crawford with a pitch, then walked Ben Zobrist to load the bases, the Rays clean-up hitter, all-star third-baseman, Evan Longoria hit a sacrifice fly and bam! Five up, two down, one in and no ABs. Sure hadn't seen that one before...

And so it goes at the old ballpark, where every day holds the promise of something new, something not seen in fifty years. Father's will be telling sons what they saw on the baseball diamond Wednesday into the distant future. Each day's game writes its own story, which is why baseball lives on in the cultural memory of our unfurling American tapestry.

Suns show D'Antoni's flaws

The further that the Phoenix Suns advance in the playoffs the more New York Knicks fans realize they were sold a bill of goods. The Suns are advancing because they got rid of wildly overrated Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni. The Suns are doing just what D'Antoni teams did not do. They are playing a deep rotation and hard-nosed defense.

The stubborn, short-sighted D'Antoni refused to play more than seven or eight guys a game when he coached the Suns to various playoff failures. He did the same thing last year in New York, when he banished the dynamic Nate Robinson to the bench. Robinson sat for fifteen plus games. Rookie Tony Douglas was also stuck on the end of the bench, as D'Antoni continued to force the limited Chris Duhon down Knicks fans gullet.

The Suns are playing tough defense, something they were never able to do under D'Antoni. The consensus used to be that Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire were soft defensive players. Turns out they just needed a better coach. Alvin Gentry has the whole Suns squad hustling on defense. D'Antoni's disdain for the defensive end of the floor was symbolized by the soft as tissue paper Italian jeans model he and Donnie Walsh drafted in the first round. The Knicks, like D'Antoni's Suns, play defense like Loyola Marymount used to, not at all. No matter how fun to watch this run and gun style is, it is a sure recipe for playoff failure.

If the Knicks are unable to get LeBron this off-season, another dark decade looms ahead. D'Antoni's philosophy is bankrupt, great for the regular season, useless in the playoffs. Los Suns terrific run this postseason underlines that reality.