Blog blast past: Hats off to our Ruthless capacity to live a lie

In the wake of George Steinbrenner's death, here's a piece on the closure of Yankee Stadium in from Sept. 22, 2008.

You can't talk about Yankee Stadium. There isn't any such place.

Cranky-panted Seamhead objections notwithstanding, it is impossible to not be touched on some level by the closure of the Stadium. One would have to be a sad bastard to begrudge anyone who gave in to the faux gravitas on Sunday night in the Bronx.

Look at it this way. A lot of people never visited the Montreal Forum, or maybe only got to do it once or twice. They still felt a sense of loss March 12, 1996, the day after the Canadiens played there for the final time. It's part of the understanding that pro sports would not exist without the glow you get from our shared existence as fans. I'm talking about the vibe that means two people can make plans to meet up with two other people they barely know after a game and already have the basis for a conversation.

That might be part of where the feeling of loss with the closure of the Stadium comes from, the loss of a first-hand experience. Speaking as a history buff who had the foresight not to study history in university and lose the ability to enjoy it, history is best when it's scuffed like one of Whitey Ford's pitches. Think about all the kids who'll never have the chance to be introduced to that now -- although with what the Yankees charge for tickets, plenty were denied that already.

Moving out of Yankee Stadium is another step closer to having our shared experience come even more prefab, sanitized and franchised.For instance, Maury Brown at The Biz of Baseball noted that Yankee Stadium III will have "a martini bar and a steakhouse on the inside – a ruse designed to recall the historic memory of the past while tapping into the wallets of those that come to a new stadium, not just to watch a game, but to be serviced in grand style."

In other words, you get Phil from Marketing's undercooked and watered-down notion of the 1940s and '50s passed off as historically based. Sterling Cooper would be proud; people think they are getting something, even if it's actually about as true to that bygone era as a typical Mad Men episode. Like, come on. Who has a martini and a steak at a ballgame?

So much for that famous ad that starred Humphrey Bogart: A hot dog at the ballpark beats a steak at the Ritz. And, of course, any baseball fan you'd want to watch nine innings of baseball with with drinks beers, always in the plural.

Enough about that, though. All in all, the Stadium sendoff owed more to George Orwell than to George Herman Ruth. This goes way beyond the Yankees ignoring their dismal 1986-92 era by not even having the common courtesy to bring out Steve "Bye-Bye" Balboni to wave bye-bye.

(Balboni was a laughably limited part-time DH who played two seasons in pinstripes and almost hit his weight over that time. In fairness, he weighed 225.)

Roger Clemens? To borrow Yankee TV play-by-play man Michael Kay's home run call, "See ya!" The disgraced right-hander was misremembered in the official record, even though it was just last season that the Yankees wanted him so badly that he signed a pro-rated $28-million contract for one season.

Ex-manager Joe Torre, who's now with the L.A. Dodgers, was similarly "disappeared." Never mind that Torre guided the Yankees to four World Series titles or that the image of him sitting stoically in the dugout is burned into my brain, thanks to Fox's death-by-a-million-quick-cuts style of presenting playoff baseball.

Torre won more titles than Hall of Fame Yankees manager Miller Huggins, who only had 15 other teams to contend with, and more than Ralph Houk, whose stature was such that he could only be portrayed in 61* by the guy who played D-Day in Animal House. However, he was fired and he's headed to the playoffs while the Yankees are not.

All of it rang a bit hollow, right down to the what-keeps-this-guy-alive Bob Sheppard's recorded player introductions. The Yankees ownership is likely feeling no pain over leaving. They have been trying to escape from that place since about 1981, when Snake Plisskin was appointed to the board of directors.

Remember the racially loaded innuendos George Steinbrenner perpetrated in the early '90s about the Bronx being too scary for his season ticket holders? It was all part of grand scheme:

"In truth, this was a happy occasion for everyone but the fans, who will need mortgages to afford tickets next year. The Yanks will finally own their own ballpark, the players will finally move from the utility closet in the basement into a real clubhouse, and the ownership will pocket fistfuls of cash from 60 luxury boxes.
-- Wallace Matthews, amNY.com

Translation: It mean the Yankees, whom you need to have in the playoffs so you can hate something and know that you're alive, are turning into MLSE with foul lines. (The closure occurred on the same weekend the Tampa Bay Rays, with a payroll just $5 million higher than perpetually injured Yankees pitcher Carl Pavano's contract, wrapped up their first playoff berth. By the way, Rays owner Stuart Sternberg grew up as a Mets fan.

All the "85 years" talk reveals is our admirable, Costanza-like ability to live, like, 20 lies at the same time. It neatly ignores that, as ShysterBall said, "For the record, the last home run in Yankee Stadium was hit by backup catcher Duke Sims. It happened on September 30, 1973 against the Tigers. After that game, New York played for two years in Shea Stadium and then 33 years in one of those unfortunate 1970s-era ballparks that are now finally and mercifully gone."

Then's there the reality that the Yankees' deal with New York City for public assistance for Yankee Stadium III stinks to the point that even proud Republicans are calling the baseball team "taxpayer-leeching pimps." Republicans using that language? You'd swear a Democrat was about to get elected president.

There is all of that and more. It's not a Yankee-hating thing (eh, maybe a little). Maybe all of this speaks to the general shallowness of modern life.

In the absence of clarity, the best way to deal is to give priority to the mythology of Yankee Stadium has value, too.

For pity's sake, it was the only place that could be called the Stadium without anyone asking which stadium. When Crash Davis went off on his "one more dying quail" rant in Ron Shelton's Bull Durham, he talked about how one more hit per week was the difference between being in the bush leagues and being in Yankee Stadium.

It was about as close to something anyone can understand as you're going to get in a Hollywood sports film.

Sure, as far as ballparks appearing in movies go, Kevin Costner also played a character who felt compelled to drag a famous author to Fenway Park. John Hughes knew Ferris Bueller's day off would be incomplete without a trip to Wrigley Field. That is only from a fan perspective.

What Shelton, the ballplayer turned writer meant, was that Yankee Stadium was the proving ground for a player. The media has dumbed that down over the years, but it does not make it any less true.

Yankee Stadium was Oz-like -- a fantasy world full of odd creatures with names like Billy, Mickey, Whitey, Yogi, Reggie, Jet-ah and Mariano. On one night in 1996, thanks to Jeffrey Maier and an egregious case of craven home-team officiating, it was more like the shower room in Oz for the Baltimore Orioles. (Yeah, I went there.)

Whatever you think of the Yankees, there is a sense of loss when you know that here on out, Aura and Mystique are likely just the nom de peel of A-Rod's, um, casual acquaintances.

All of that is being left behind in the greater name of greed. Sports is big business, but it still sucks.

Blog blast past: But will the computer know what Stan the Man hit?

There is overlap between sports nuts and trivia nuts, so some of you lot probably heard about Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings challenging a computer.

The notion of a computer trying to buzz in and answer questions before Jennings has already been Gawkered — "But what if they only ask abstract, soul-searching questions?" Levity aside, there is a serious issue about how well the computer will handle any sports question.

The sports trivia nut is a breed apart from one of your church-picnic trivia buffs, but not a superior breed. It is a joy for them to meet up with one of the similarly afflicted who gets why your PIN for your bank card is 4256 or understands why Bob Costas once left a $3.31 tip when he ate at St. Louis restaurant owned by baseball legend Stan Musial.

However, the kicker is that it takes no ability or creativity to be sports trivia nut, just a real good memory. They can't forget this stuff even if they tried, so there is no pride in knowing it, and no desire to share that gift/curse with the world, since it is the only thing people will associate with you for the rest of your days (especially if you show up for an event that's for teams of four with only three people and still win going away, like someone associated with this site most definitely did not do at The Toucan in Kingston one night in late 2002).

This sense of shame can manifest itself in jealously lashing out at Ken Jennings, as it did back in the wild and nutty days of late 2004. Read on.

JENNINGS A GENIUS? ASK HIM A SPORTS QUESTION
(Simcoe Reformer, Dec. 3, 2004)

This soft-spoken software engineer pulled off one of the most overrated feats in recent memory.

Who is Ken Jennings?

As you probably heard, Jennings' record run of 74 days as Jeopardy! champion ended Tuesday. By all indications, Jennings captured the public imagination. Ratings for Jeopardy! were up. As the wins mounted, rumours and reports percolated across the Internet about when Jennings would be defeated. On Wednesday, Jennings was the top Hot Search on Netscape, a pretty impressive feat for someone who has never publicly exposed a nipple.

Yes, Kenny is a smart cookie, if not a smart dresser. Before he came along, who knew there were so many possible bland shirt-and-tie combos?

But as a 19th-century British prime minister — who was Benjamin Disraeli? — said, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

So what if Ken Jennings was on Jeopardy! for 74 days? Until recently, the show limited contestants to five appearances. Given the chance, wouldn't a few of those know-it-alls and lucky guessers have kept winning and winning?

Sure, he won $2.5 million. That's a lot of cabbage, even after the IRS takes its half out of the middle.

Of course, Jeopardy! doubled the dollar values for each question a while back. Does anyone claim Mike Weir is a better golfer than Jack Nicklaus since Weir is 15th on the PGA's all-time money list and Nicklaus isn't in the top 100?

The most damning indictment against Ken Jennings, though, is that he handled sports questions like a live cobra. Around Day 25 or 30, Alex Trebek lobbed up this softball: "This team won four consecutive Stanley Cups from 1980 to 1983."

You could hear crickets chirping as the contestants groped for an answer.

Jennings: "Who is New York?"

Trebek: "Be more specific."

Jennings: "The Rangers?"

If that's correct, what were the decades of "Nineteen-forty!" chants and the guy back in 1994 waving the "Now I can die in peace" sign about?

Thus the curtain was pulled back, revealing the wizard was just a man. Jennings had a lot going for him, namely his DSL-fast buzzer-thumb and producers who fed him cupcake contestants to keep the streak going. By Day 60, some of his opponents seemed straight from Saturday Night Live's Celebrity Jeopardy sketch.

He knew his potent potables, but on all things sporting, Jennings didn't know his elbow from second base. Put in a room full of sports nuts who can rhyme off Ernie Whitt's birthdate (June 13, 1952), jersey number (12), given name (Leo), the year he played in the All-Star Game (1985) and his career high in RBI (75), the dude would have been eaten alive.

Many of these same sports nuts can't pick their member of Parliament out of a police lineup, but that's neither here nor there.

Is Jennings the genius he was hyped up to be? No, he's just a guy who cashed in on his knack for buzzing in quickly on questions which aren't all that hard.

Those of us who are steeped in sports and other essentially unhistoric trivia — like knowing the same guy played the sportswriter in Slapshot and the diving coach in Back To School — knew it all along. (Who is M. Emmet Walsh?)

Collectively, we're on guard to keep the word "genius" from being abused. As ESPN's Joe Theismann once said, "The word genius isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."

The story behind Theismann's oft-quoted malaprop is the ex-Washington QB had a high school classmate named Norman Einstein.

If you actually knew that, chances are you might end up on Jeopardy! as the answer to this:

"Who needs to get a life?"

(Writing this today, mocking Ken Jennings' wardrobe would be out of bounds. Other than that, every single word stands.)



Related:
Jeopardy! Smackdown (The Atlantic)
A Computer That Answers Questions! What Will They Think of Next? (Gawker)

Trivial pursuits: On a Wednesday much like this one...

The best trivia questions are ones that, at least before baseball-reference.com, could not be looked up in a reference book.

Here's one: Thirty-nine years ago today, April 22, 1970, Tom Seaver had a record 19 strikeouts against the San Diego Padres, ending the game with 10 consecutive K's. Who was the last Padre to put the ball in play? (Blue Jays fans, you know this one.)

Answer: Cito Gaston. The future Blue Jays skipper was responsible for Seaver's second, sixth and 18th punchouts on that Wednesday afternoon at Shea Stadium. However, with one out in the sixth, Gaston managed to fly out to the immortal Art Shamsky in right field (hey, Shamsky was good enough to get a guest appearance on Everybody Loves Raymond once, uh, so I'm told).

Gaston, of course, had his best season that season for a 99-loss Padres team, hitting .318/.364/.543 with 29 homers for the San Diegans. Seaver had a terrible season (for him), finishing with a 2.82 ERA and only 283 strikeouts. Now you know the rest of the story.

The ATJs report: Seeing victory and the moral high geekhood

One of us is owner of the the all-time Toronto Blue Jays team — the ATJs — in the Seamheads.com Historical League (SHL). So how about those Blue Jays? At this writing, they are 56-49, clinging to a two-game division lead over the combined Arizona-Colorado D-Rocks .

Out of Left Field has a bone to pick with who's out in left field.

It veers dangerously close to that Warcraft episode of South Park, but it set the blood to boil to see "M. Teixeira, LF" appear in the boxscore of a recent 7-4 win over the Angels (Roy Halladay, FTW: Complete-game win and a two-run single which knocked Nolan Ryan out of the game). It just flies in the face of a personal geek code which puts a premium on verisimilitude in sports simulations, even if judging by the fact he's made eight errors in 28 games, Mark Teixeira probably has tried to catch a few flies with his face.

Truth be known, it's a huge dice-roll by Angels GM Chad Finn from Touching All The Bases to use Teixeira as a leftfielder. The current poster child for the armageddon has only played 25 major-league games in the outfield, all in 2003 when he was with a team not named the Angels. It gets another power bat in the lineup and this is a fun thing for a bunch of baseball obsessives, so fair play to Chad. The problems are all on this end.

It probably is classic projecting-all-over-the-place to have even picked up on something so picayune. The SHL uses only players' stats accumulated for that team, which means if you wanted to put Manny Ramirez on the Dodgers after he hit .396/.489/.743 for L.A. over the final third of the last season, go right ahead.

It's a similar story with Teixeira, who hit .358/.449/.632 (batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage) after the Angels brought him last season as a rental player (and never played him anywhere but first base, which is the only spot he'll play for the Yankees).

Some SHL owners will do that, and that's OK. For some, it all harkens back to the epitaph a friend unwittingly offered long ago, late on night over Madden: "Neate, you always try to play the game right." He was referring to actually punting when it was fourth down and forever, instead of having the quarterback scramble around behind the line of scrimmage and heave the ball downfield like Rex Grossman in his most fevered dream to get a miracle completion (to say nothing of people who would call fake field goals in every kicking situation).

As the years have rolled past like some sunny day, it's come to take the form of a left-handed compliment. Half the fun of getting into this was to go with the players who had lasting impact in Toronto, just like how the manager who got the Jays to the mountaintop, twice, Cito Gaston, could be loyal to his guys to a fault (see Joe Carter's 1997 batting splits).

Great hitters, but not out standing in their field!

The whole verisim-whatever thing was paramount in the construction of the All-Time Jays, for good or ill. Apparently, it is so be it, if it means having a team which played .500 ball since May 1 since someone had a Seamhead hang-up about running Dave Winfield out to right field every day, because he played only 26 games there while he was OPS-plusing 137 as the DH for the 1992 championship team. The same could go for having Paul Molitor, who played only 28 games as a first baseman across his three-year stint as the Jays' DH (OPS-plusing 138 in the 1993 and 143 in '94). Molitor might have been a better call at third base if not for a huge yes-but: He didn't play that position regularly for the Blue Jays.

What's it called if you cut corners and stop at nothing, by not staying true to your team's history? Uh, winning?

Believe it, all manner of history-affronting solutions have been contemplated as the Jays have eked their way through the past couple months like, well, a 32-year-old copy editor who shares a one-bedroom apartment. Third base, both corner outfield spots and the back end of the starting rotation have been troublesome. It still would have felt wrong to have Winfield or Molitor as an everyday position player.

On the mound, David Cone, based on his two partial seasons in Toronto (3.14 ERA over 183 1/3 innings during the '92 pennant drive and the turn-out-the-lights '95 season), might have bolstered a pitching staff whose ERA has ballooned to a garden variety 4.73, including 4.89 for the starters (both in the bottom third of the league).

Finn's gambit, though, has provided inspiration to call up 1980s-vintage first baseman Willie Upshaw, hitting .292/.354/.516 at Triple-A Las Vegas, so he can be about the sixth player to have a crack at holding down a semi-regular role in the outfield. Upshaw at least has a fielding rating in left field. His rating is 1. In the Out of the Park baseball simulation, by the way, the higher the number the better. Still, the other outfielders beyond Moseby and Devon White haven't been very good, producing McGlovin-esque stats:

• Joe Carter: .761 OPS
  
• Alex Rios: .684
  
• George Bell: .637
• Jesse Barfield: .580
• Vernon Wells: .561

In the infield, Orlando Hudson, who is blocked by Robbie Alomar at the only position he's ever known, second base, is also coming up. The O-Dog, who's hit .312/.363/.481 for the 51s, might end up becoming some kind of utilityman, filling at third base and shortstop, since Troy Glaus has been useless vs. righties and Tony Fernandez has started all 105 games.

The road ahead, the final 49 games, are going to be tough, most notably a fast-approaching four-game series against the Arizona/Colorado team. Ultimately, it still feels like the right choice to have not kept Molitor or Winfield, or do something crazy like With no DH, having Carlos Delgado and Freddie McGriff rotate between first and the outfield, like how Hall of Fame sluggers Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda did for the early-'60s San Francisco Giants. Do you remember Delgado's short-lived stint as an outfielder in 1994? (King Carlos is still second in the league with a 1.041 OPS).

It's just that using a player who was only with the team for a brief period isn't true to what it's like to follow a team down through the years. You want to take in their bad seasons, their struggles as a young player, the years after they peaked. Granted, that is pretty self-serving coming from someone who did take Roger Clemens, who only pitched in Toronto for two now-tainted seasons, but let's not go nuts. There's a division title at stake and he has proven to be the one sure thing in the starting rotation.

He must have been winded: Pitchers having to run the bases is the 11th-most hilarious aspect of National League baseball (Nos. 1-10 are all actual teams), so what happened to Jimmy Key in a recent 10-7 win over the Angels did not escape notice. With two out in the bottom of the third, Key came around to score for first base on a two-out double by Rios on a 3-2 pitch, putting the All-Time Jays up 7-0. The next inning, presumably still winded, he was touched up for six runs and was yanked before he could qualify for a win. B.J. Ryan picked him up with 3 1/3 innings scoreless relief.

Rance Mulliniks The Player also scored the first run of that game without the ball leaving the infield (walk, sac bunt, up to third on an infield out, wild pitch). Rance Mulliniks The Broadcaster then spent the next five innings talking about the need to manufacture runs.

That's about the low point: The absolute teeth-gnasher has to be a four-game sweep at the hands of Florida/Tampa Bay which included three losses in extra-innings, which must have had the Jays Talk knowitalls going on about the team's lack of heart and scrappy grit. A potential comeback win in the opener turned into an 11-9 loss when Conine ripped a three-run homer off Tom Henke in the bottom of the 10th. Two nights later, the Terminator couldn't hold a lead for Pat Hentgen, as Derrek Lee hit a tying, two-run homer, and then homered again in the 12th for a 5-3 win.

Conine also got another 10th-inning game-winning hit off Henke in a 3-2 win the next day. That was set up by a triple by Hanley Ramirez, whose RBI double in the eighth sent it to extras. (For some reason, Roger Clemens was allowed to start that inning even though he was at 119 pitches after seven innings.)

He just has it in for Hall of Fame closers: A three-game sweep of the Padres included Robbie Alomar hitting a game-winning homer off Goose Gossage. It actually came in the seventh inning, so Robbie probably didn't throw up his hands as he started toward first base like he did in October 1992 vs. Dennis Eckersley.

'Spos daze: The All-Time Jays are 0-6 vs. Montreal, the team mastermind by Jonah Keri. Despite all that help, nos amours are still second in the Expansion Two division.

Take that, Seaver: The Cincinnati version of Tom Seaver has been roughed up whenever he's faced "us." Delgado hit a pair of two-run homers off him in a 7-5 win July 28, but has gone yard only once since, which is kind of a drag.

What's coming up: A four-game series on the road against the Arizona-Colorado D-Rocks.

Zen Dayley...

From the department of god does not throw dice, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections come out within the same 24-hour span. They're both manna to nerdlingers everywhere.

The Beep's forecast for the Jays is an 81-81 record — not bad, but not good, and that presumes a full season of the services of right-handed pitcher Harry Leroy Halladay. The trade Doc speculation, since he is in the penultimate season of his contract, should be revving up sooner rather than later.

The Coles Notes on the PECOTA projections: The Jays are projected to be an also-ran in a division with the Red Sox (98-64), Yankees (97-65) and Tampa Bay Rays (92-70). Meantime, the Cleveland Indians, who are pegged to win the AL Central with 84 victories. It's a familar refrain by now, but it bears repeating, quote The Tao: "Our kingdom for a balanced schedule."

The Oakland Athletics (AL West champion) and Atlanta Braves (NL wild card) are the biggest surprise playoff entrants. Each of those teams, especially the A's, shed a lot of payroll in 2007-08 to get ready for this season.

This, that and the other:

• The blogeteriat has been having a giggle over former No. 1 overall choice Matt Bush, whom the Padres washed their hands of recently. Well, reports are that he has been picked up by the Jays. He had Tommy John surgery and missed all of last season. He's been arrested a couple times. In other words, it's no risk if he doesn't work out (via MLB Trade Rumors).
  
• Some are scoffing at the notion of baseball returning to the Olympics in 2016.
• Speaking of The Tao, yes, we should bury this ill-informed idea that Mark McGwire was a one-dimensional player. Someone on Prime Time Sports claimed Mark McGwire had a lousy on-base percentage. He on-based .394 lifetime.
  
• Retired MLBPA boss Marvin Miller was still right all along.
• Even President Barack Obama has to talk about That One:
  
  

The ATJs: A case of the 'Spos daze

One of us is owner of the the all-time Toronto Blue Jays team — the ATJs — in the Seamheads Historical League.

It figures the ATJs' first series loss would come courtesy of Jonah Keri's Montreal Expos.

Dropping the first two games of a three-game set at the Big O (a 17-1 curbstomping in the opener, followed by a 6-4 setback at the hands of Triple-A callup Charlie Lea hurts, man. The Expos have been just a memory for nearly five years, but it has not been forgotten that 'Spos fans never liked to admit anything about the Blue Jays is very good or useful. Toronto, after all, could never hold a candle to Montreal when it came to the finer things in life, no matter how many World Series titles or Canadian head offices of Fortune 500 companies it boasted. It sucks to see them gain imaginary bragging rights. These outrages will not be forgotten.

The Expos won the first all-Canadian interleague game. On June 30, 1997, the eve of Canada Day, Pedro Martínez, on his way to his first Cy Young, Award, beat Pat Hentgen, the Jays' first Cy Young winner, 2-1 in a tidy one hour and 57 minutes. (This is burned in memory since I was umping a ball game that night and had counted on getting home in time for the last couple of innings.) The Expos also won the final interleague game against the Jays, on the Fourth of July in a minor-league park in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The fact that Canadian Shawn Hill earned his first major-league W (to go with the one he now sports as a member of the Washington Nationals) provided the lone grace note.

Saying that it is just two games out of 154 is cold comfort. The ATJs are rolling otherwise, leading their division with a 23-12 record, good for a six-game lead over the D-Rox and the best record among the 12 expansion franchises.

Losing to the Expos sucked. The Jays have won 4-of-7 since the last update, scoring 48 runs in that stretch.

That day, he was Tom Terrible: Some of you might not know that the great Tom Seaver pitched for the Cincinnati Reds for a few seasons.

Cincinnati Tom could only get through three innings against the ATJs in a 15-3 shellacking on May 14. The starting corner infielders, Carlos Delgado and Troy Glaus, apparently begged out of starting against Seaver. In their stead, backup infielders Fred McGriff (3-for-5, three runs) and Rance Mulliniks (4-for-5, three runs) each got on base to start big rallies, a four-run second and a four-run fifth inning.

Grab some Bench: Right-hander Roy Halladay shaved his ERA down to 1.23 after pitching eight solid innings in a 4-1 win over the Reds on May 13. He struck out Johnny Bench, whom some consider the greatest catcher of all time, twice.

Clutchiness: Toronto's 9-2 record in one-run games does not include late-game breakthroughs they had in consecutive wins over the D-Rox on May 10-11, winning 15-8 (in 13 innings) and 7-3.

The lineup shuffle: The rule of thumb is you're supposed to stick with what works. Tony Fernandez, batting of the No. 9 spot, is on-basing .431 and is second on the team with 8.46 runs created per 27 outs. (Delgado leads at 9.31.) Fernandez has been more productive than leadoff man Lloyd Moseby (6.64 RC/27) and 2-hole hitter Robbie Alomar (5.22). Fernandez might rate some time in the 2-hole, much the same away that Cito Gaston flip-flopped Alomar and Paul Molitor in the lineup in 1993 depending whether the other team was starting a right- or left-handed pitcher.

Regardless, some changes might be coming. Cleanup man George Bell is racking up RBI (team-high 32 in 35 games), but his .245/.262/.396 rate stats are barely replacement-player level. Bell has come alive in the last week, so he stays put, for now. None of the other righty-hitting corner outfielders seem to offer much pop, so he's the best option.

Regrets, there a few: Not taking Dave Winfield based on his one season in Toronto in 1992 might have been a mistake, keeping in mind that the 40-year-old would have had to play the outfield every day. There's no need to double-check that Winfield only played the outfield 26 times during the regular season.

The not-as-cold corner: Third baseman Troy Glaus has hit safely in six consecutive games (big woop), including his first two homers. He's still hitting a tepider than tepid .196/.304/.278, which isn't cutting the mustard for a No. 6 hitter. He's lost at-bats to Mulliniks, who gets on base but offers no power.

The tall tactician: Jonah Keri has pulled out all the stops to keep his Expos around the .500 mark, going with a "seven-man rotation and a shuttle bus between Montreal and Ottawa," to cobble together a pitching staff.

How nuts is fretting over this? Well, not this nuts. (Tip of the cap to Baseball Over Here.)

Bills (and Bulls) in Toronto: Phil Lind just doesn't get it

Awful Announcing has provided the perfect illustration for how badly Rogers exec Phil Lind has misread the play with the Bills in Toronto.

(This has happened in Toronto before. When will people learn?)

This is not new news, but it's worth putting in front of people and juxtaposing it against what Lind, the vice-chairman at Rogers, told the National Post in the summer:

"Via television, the Bills series will re-introduce Toronto to American viewers as a tourist haven. We will beam our fair city and all its selling points into millions of American homes. Media outlets will do features, journalists will visit. This is the type of opportunity that simply does not come along very often. Those who oppose the Bills-in-Toronto initiative may have the best of intentions, but they are simply wrong."

Well, those orange areas are the parts of the United States that are getting Dolphins-Bills as their 4 p.m. game on CBS. The competition in that timeslot is the Dallas Cowboys-Pittsburgh Steelers game on FOX, which matches two teams which have national followings in America and beyond. Phil Lind's vision of Joe Six-Pack and Betty Housecoat calling travel agencies on Monday morning to inquire about hotel accomodations in Tor-on-to suddenly became much less vast.

To answer USA Today's question, it's not worth reopening the NFL-in-Canada debate. A regular-season game with two out-of-town teams on the fringe of the playoff race, with overpriced tickets, is not going to provide any answers, beyond what people want to believe. That said, when people spew straight-up bullflop about this boosting Toronto's tourism industry, someone has to point it out.

Could we settle this over a couple Wendy's Baconators?

It's ironic this is coming from a writer who has the same name as one of the McKenzie Brothers actors.

"Miami Dolphins vs. Buffalo Bills (-1) at Toronto: NFL officials immediately regret moving this game to Canada when the start is delayed while Rogers Centre officials scramble to locate a down marker that has a '4.' " Pick: Dolphins 24-20."
— David Thomas, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

It's a nice line. The real A-hole is anyone up here in America's Hat who responds seriously to a throwaway line in a NFL picks column.

It's amusing, though, to see a U.S. writer be unaware that three-down football was not a Canadian creation. The game that Walter Camp and all those cats developed back in the 1890s had three downs. The fourth down was added to increase offence, which was a slippery slope toward America's quick-fix, instant-gratification society.

One less down was something Canadians, in our what-are-you-gonna-do way, learned to live with, like dismal politicians, lengthy winters and CBC Television. It never seemed to be too big an issue, especially since it meant teams couldn't wait until it was third-and-11 before they actually tried something to move the ball downfield. It's like something Doug Flutie said once: If you have play that will work, why not use it on first down? Why wait? Average yards gained on first down means much more than third-down conversion rates, no matter what the cliche-mongering chair moisteners in the network broadcast booths say every Sunday.

Of course, the Law of Intended Consequences was by keeping the foot in football and having as much kicking as possible, that meant there could be a Grey Cup where Henry Burris could be MVP even though his team only scored one touchdown.

Coaches down south eventually started seeing the passing game through the eyes of love instead of the eyes of fear. It meant that American football evolved and for myriad reasons, became more fun to watch than the Canadian game.

It only took them several generations, and several times the investment in developing coaches, players, college and pro teams, but American eventually caught up.

Meantime, as any hardcore football nut up here can tell you, there are several levels of amateur football in Canada that do play with four downs. That being said, nice line, eh.

Buffalo Bulls, FTW

How about Turner Gill and those Buffalo Bulls? They blasted Ball State but good in the MAC championship game, 42-24. They're still going to the International Bowl, were, not to bury the lede, they might end up playing against Notre Dame. (Or not.)

Buffalo took control by returning two fumbles by Ball State's all-everything QB, Nate Davis, for touchdowns in the third quarter, including a 92-yard runback for the go-ahead points. Turner Gill will be at a BCS-conference school soon enough. Buffalo was plenty big time enough on Friday.

Another Buffalo football team Toronto can turn up its nose at...

Here's one for the too-funny-by-half files: The Buffalo Bulls are projected to play in the International Bowl at Rogers Centre next month.

This means Rogers will struggle to sell out the stadium for a another football game involving a Buffalo team with a fair-to-middling record.

The NFL Bills are 6-6 coming into Sunday's game vs. the Miami Dolphins. The Bulls, with ex-CFL QBs Turner Gill (pictured) and Danny Barrett as head coach and quarterbacks coach, respectively are 7-5, going in as heavy underdogs vs. Ball State in tonight's Mid-American Conference championship game. (Ball State is 12-0 and has an all-everything quarterback named Nate Davis, for anyone who hasn't watched proud alumnus David Letterman any time in the past few weeks, or read Jason Whitlock's epic takedown of the BCS and ESPN.)

This is going to come off shenanigans from a second guesser. Buffalo was on the shortlist of potential NCAA football teams for OOLF to clasp to its bosom (about that, seriously, Sager, join a gym). It was one hell of a post, but it just never progressed past the conceptual stage to the get-off-your-lazy-ass-and-write it stage. Part of the problem was the content had to wag the lede dog a bit. The first line was something like, "If this were written like a Lavalife ad, it would say, 'must be able to read Proust and a Tampa Two defence.' "

(To quote an older colleague: "Oh, you still don't think you're going to marry someone smarter than you, do you?")

It had got to the point where it seemed odd to have followed a brand of football for 20 years, getting caught up in the internecine hatred between rival teams, who's-No. 1 debates, Heisman hype, and BCS boondoggles without cheering for a specific team, or ever attending a game. Talk about geek love. But how could you have any moral high ground for razzing Notre Dame fans when you don't even have a team?

Plus, some big-time U.S. sportswriters -- Bill Simmons, Joe Posnanski -- during the past couple years have put out the call to readers to help them pick a soccer team to support. Poz, bless him, said for him it was about wanting to "feel international."

With all apologies to those better, more popular writers, how about actually being international? Supporting the Manchester I-Don't-Give-A-Craps or the London Not-A-Real-Sports does not make one any more worldly -- fact.

Clamouring to have a favourite college football team seemed a perfect protest of the weak. Everyone else wants feel international? I'll be parochial. This is the sporting analogue of Stewie Griffin hearing a banjo and exclaiming, "Mommy, I want a mullet."

Of course, this could never be as simple as picking one of the old-money powerhouses, or even an arriviste team such as Texas Tech. You can't pick a school such as Alabama or Southern California, not with what's known about the serfs of the turf.

A favourite college football team would have to represent a school with a modicum of academic integrity. That condition knocks off the whole Southeastern Conference except Vanderbilt. It would have to be a team which can compete for a championship of some kind on a regular basis. So much for Vanderbilt.

On and on it went over this season, following the "brain" schools every week to see how they fared. Northwestern is 9-3, but they're out for being in the Big Ten, which has ceased to be big or ten.

The same goes for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, who are in their first season with a new coaching staff, also held appeal (especially since the Vikings might end up being their co-tenants yet). Minnesota's coach, Tim Brewster, is also a big proponent of helping create opportunities for African-American coaches; he has more black assistant coaches than any other team in the country. Minnesota could also be struck for playing in a border state -- if Syracuse, Washington and Washington State's woes have taught us nothing, it's that the population demographics in the U.S. augur poorly for major-college teams in northern states.

The search went far and wide, even dipping down to the Football Championship Subdivision. How about Villanova, or Montana? A couple of Conference USA schools, Rice and Tulsa, which have Ottawa natives Tyler Holmes and Scott Mitchell as their starting left tackles, have also been on the radar screen. They both play wide-open football, are academically prestigious, but C-USA teams very rarely have their games beamed into Canada, which would make it tough, sorry, fellas.

Anyway, Buffalo had a lot of desirable qualities. As a MAC school, they'll never get anywhere near a BCS game. If this season's Ball State team can't, who can? That doesn't mean they're not worthy. Elliott Smith didn't need to have his songs on the Billboard Top 20, right?

The Bulls seemed like an appealing underdog team. Until last season, they had averaged about two wins a season since joining the NCAA's top division in 1999. As noted, their coach, Gill, used to play in the CFL. They even had a QB with two first names in senior Drew Willy.

Besides, if Toronto interests, or any interests, are going to steal Buffalo's NFL team, one should adopt the Bulls in solidarity with Western New York football fans. It's only right.

Anyway, to sum up, that post never got written, but all you are probably better off. Buffalo is also going to the International Bowl, and one wouldn't want to do it disservice by not promoting the hell out of it.

(Yours truly is spoken for in NCAA hoops but it was noted that the UB basketball team only lost by four against the No. 2 UConn Huskies last night. Carleton beat Buffalo by 10 back in August, by the way.)

Zen Dayley: A Toronto Top 40 you won't hear on Q107

They could have had Geddy Lee -- he's a Jays fan. They could have had The Tao of Stieb. They could have had Drunk Jays Fans. They could have got Mike Wilner, Mike Hogan, Mike Toth (gee, that's a lot of Mike manning the mics in the Toronto sports media). What about Jerry Howarth?

Long story short, a while ago Mike Lynch of Seamheads.com put out the word that they were looking for owners for Historical Simulation Baseball League. You pick a 40-man roster from everyone who has ever played for the franchise, using only their stats compiled for that franchise, and start the insanity. The pitcher Curt Schilling committed to run the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Bill James lined up to be owner of the Boston Red Sox. Roy Firestone from ESPN, a Baltimore guy, got the Orioles (apparently he's not even going to take any old St. Louis Browns). Joe Posnanski said he'd only do it if he could have his hometown Cleveland Indians and he got his hometown Cleveland Indians.

Jonah Keri of ESPN.com snapped up the Montreal Expos. New York Post lead sports columnist Mike Vaccaro has the Chicago White Sox. J.C. Bradbury of Sabernomics has the Braves. The Kansas City Star's Sam Mellinger has the Royals.

That is a regular Murderer's Row of media personalities and the hardest of the hardcore hardball enthusiasts. By now, you're probably wondering -- who h'own da Jays? Thanks for asking, Denis Lemieux from the 1977 film Slap Shot.

The owner of the Jays is ... me. (Can we get a shot of me? No, it would violate any number of public decency statutes. And it's owns. Owns.)

It turns out all those hundreds of hours from 1989-96 spent playing Earl Weaver Baseball on a Tandy computer might have had a practical purpose. (Looks like Mom and Dad were wrong.)

As noted, it's a 28-team league (the Rockies/Diamondbacks and Marlins/Rays have each been merged into single franchises). Please don't ask how it came to be me that balding fatass whose apparent claim to fame is being involved in a particularly lame lawsuit got the Jays.

What matters is that a 40-man roster has to selected. Players' performances derive only from the numbers they put up for the team. That means no sneaking Rickey Henderson or Phil Niekro on to the Jays roster based on a half-season or less with the team. Even Paul Molitor would be kind of dodgy, plus there's no DH in this league. Players' stats are also put in a historically neutral context. Suffice to say, Tony Batista's 41-homer season in 2000 doesn't look so good.

Suggestions are welcome, but here's a rough guesstimate of what the 40-man roster might look like:

Starting lineup

1. Lloyd Moseby, centre field
2. Robbie Alomar, second base
3. Carlos Delgado or Fred McGriff, first base
4. George Bell, left field
5. Jesse Barfield, right field
6. Kelly Gruber, third base
7. Ernie Whitt/Pat Borders, catcher
8. Pitcher's spot in the order
9. Tony Fernandez, shortstop

• Bench: Aaron Hill, Rance Mulliniks, Alex Rios, Vernon Wells
• Starting pitchers: Roger Clemens, Roy Halladay, Jimmy Key, Dave Stieb, Pat Hentgen, Doyle Alexander
• Bullpen: Tom Henke, Duane Ward, Paul Quantrill, B.J. Ryan, Scott Downs

The second XV

• Position players: Joe Carter, corner outfield; Darrin Fletcher, catcher; Damaso Garcia, second base; Alfredo Griffin, shortstop; Orlando Hudson, second base; Willie Upshaw, first base; Devon White, centrefield
• Starting pitchers: A.J. Burnett, John Cerutti, Jim Clancy, Juan Guzman, David Wells
• Relievers: Mark Eichhorn, Billy Koch, Mike Timlin,

It is a given that the Jays will be up against it when the face the Yankees, Red Sox or any of the charter American League franchises (A's, Orioles, White Sox, Indians, Tigers and Twins) who date back to 1901. At this moment, Joe Posnanski is taking suggestions from readers on whether he should have Tris Speaker or Larry Doby, two of the all-time greats, as his centrefielder, to say nothing of the young version of Kenny Lofton. He's got so many corner outfielders to pick from -- Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Rocky Colavito, et al. -- that he didn't even include Shoeless Joe Jackson among the possibilities.

(Yes, Shoeless Joe played in Clevetown. He played 674 games in Cleveland flannels -- and back then, the uniforms were flannel -- and 648 with the Chisox. He hit .408, .395 and .373 his first three full seasons and, get this, finished second in the batting race each of those three seasons.)

Outplaying the post-1961 franchises -- Angels, Rangers, Mariners, Royals -- seems to be a reasonable goal. The floor is open to suggestions for roster moves. I apologize for the navel-gazing, self-obsessed post, but this should be a lot of fun.

With fans and TV friends like these, there's no happy medium

Travis Snider's splendid home debut betrayed everything all that is soulless and wrong about the Rogers Blue Jays, their main TV carrier and Toronto's alleged sports fans.

It was twofold. Sportsnet, as Drunk Jays Fans pointed out, was doing an interview with an ex-Leafs hockey player and thus ignored the super-prospect's first at-bat. Secondly, the lack of a warm welcome when Snider came up was described as "shameful." (Miked Up.)

For a diehard fan, there's only so much you shrug off before you want to get your Billy Jack on: It's only a silly baseball team which hasn't been in the playoffs since I was in Grade 11, and I want you to know, that I try. When well-meaning family members and friends say that "it's only baseball" and tell me that I'm supposed to control my violent temper, and be passive and nonviolent, I try. I really try. Though when I see Travis Snider ... who is so special to us we (ought to) call him 'God's gift of sunshine' ... and I think of the number of years that he's going to have to carry in his memory ... the savagery of this idiotic moment of yours... I just go BERSERK!

No one's asking for the kind of saturation coverage TSN gives to hockey players who roughly the same age as the 20-year-old Snider. However, when the best homegrown hitting prospect the Jays have developed in relevant memory comes up to bat in his home stadium for the first time, pretty please with sugar on top and you can make this a Christmas and birthday present, focus on his at-bat. Don't talk over the play by doing an interview with ex-Leafs goalie Curtis Joseph, which is what happened.

Granted, the broadcasters might not have even noticed Snider was up to bat. As Mike Wilner pointed out on the radio and on his blog, he got roughly, oh, three-one thousandths of the reaction elicited when the "gameday crew" at the world's largest Rogers Video store brings out the T-shirt shooter. It was pathetic.

Perhaps the ignorance and indifference is no surprise, when you consider how little evident fanfare the Rogers-owned network dedicated to the up-and-coming star of the Rogers-owned baseball team.

As someone whom, admittedly, can zone out on baseball for hours on end, it's hard to get wrapped around what is so hard to understand. What are sports consumers in the Centre of the Universe apparently incapable of seeing with their own eyes?

Any 20-year-old who smokes a line-drive single off a 3-and-2 slider from Joe Nathan, Minnesota's lights-out closer, with two out in the ninth inning when it's his first week in the majors pretty much has the baseball world by the tail. Typically, in that situation, most hitters expect a fastball, and if they get anything else, they need a miracle in a worse way than Ricky did in that Trailer Park Boys episode when he couldn't smoke or swear in a courtroom. Experienced major-league hitters, including a few on the Jays, will swing and miss or produce a weak groundball out if Joe Nathan throws them a slider in that two-strike situation. (Not that anyone is naming names, Vernon Wells.)

That's what makes the indifference so galling, as Wilner articulated on air:

I have to say, (I'm) very disappointed in the crowd of 21 and a half thousand people that when Travis Snider came to the plate for his major-league at-bat at home -- nothing. Quiet, polite applause, no different than the applause for Lyle Overbay or Marco Scutaro ... you know what? And I mentioned to somebody before off the air and they said, 'That's what you get in this city. People just don't understand.' And I try my best not to give in to the people who say Toronto's not a baseball-savvy town and the fans don't understand baseball and you know, whatever. But that showed me something. And that was just terrible -- terrible! Everyone who was at the ballpark tonight should be ashamed of themselves for not giving Travis Snider a better welcome to the big leagues."

I can see where it's possible Wilner laid it on a bit thick. It was the Wednesday after Labour Day. The tourist crowd who make a point to come see a game or two each season are gone. Everyone there was probably on freebie tickets.

The newspaper reporters got it right and made Snider the focus of their game stories (although saying that Snider and John McDonald are in any kind of "similar situation" as hitters is more than a stretch. The only similarity between Snider and the .540-OPSin' McGlovin as hitters as that they each use a bat).

Ultimately, though, this is what you get in a market where how baseball is presented and absorbed is affected by Rogers' uninterested ownership (hat tip to Dan Rowe). When you have big corporations that don't care about the stuff they own, is it really any shocker people don't show any love to God's Gift of Sunshine?

Anywho, it's dumbfounding that Sportsnet couldn't save the softball questions for CuJo for the next half-inning. Meantime, for fans, start getting to know Travis Snider, AKA God's Gift of Sunshine. Not next summer, after he does a six-week or so turn at Syracuse Buffalo just to fine-tune his swing and cut down on his strikeouts, but now.

Going to a Jays game and not clueing in about Travis Snider is like going to a hockey game and not knowing it's played on ice. Sorry for the rant, but someone had to say it.

Zen Dayley: AL MVP — the Morneau you know, the less you understand

The first impulse is to write that Justin Morneau could win the American League MVP award twice when he shouldn't have won it once.

It figures this would only come up once Morneau was in cooldown mode, mired in a 4-for-30 skid (can you ever be mired in something good, like an unending string of 80-degree days, a packed social calendar and free greens fees?). One New York City writer earlier this week used the Twins' Canadian slugger and Chicago's Carlos Quentin as a wedge when he took an ax to some of the sportswriters' totems about MVP voting.

It's understandable why baseball writers often go for the great RBI man on a playoff team. As with all journalists, it's easier when someone provides a good thumbnail sketch. This guy drove in a lot of runs in the heat of a playoff race. No one else need apply, unless of course you're Jimmy Rollins in 2007 and your team's fence-buster, Ryan Howard, was MVP the previous season. You don't play a corner position? You had a lot to do with your team's RBI leader getting so many opportunities to drive in runners? Your skill set is more across-the-board rather than being concentrated in one area of the game, like RBI or saves? Thank you, come again.

The columnist's argument was that by that tried-and-true criteria, it can only be Morneau or Quentin. They're as close in RBI (94-92 for the pride of New Westminster) as their teams are in the AL Central (tied). Meantime, while this will come off like more Massholiography, the campaign is underway for the Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis. Youk ... Youk!!!

The hell of it all is that is that Youkilis, whom The Tao of Stieb contends might be the most "detestable player in baseball," has a case.

Massholiography (the combination of Masshole and hagiography) is new made-up word to describe the process whereby Boston fans embellish the contributions of any player who's white, hard-working (quote, unquote) and a relatively modest physical specimen. One of its synonyms is "Welkerification," was workshopped but was poorly received. David Ortiz is having an off-season, Manny Ramírez was traded and most Sox fans would prefer to deny that J.D. Drew carried them for a couple months this season, so it's gotta be Youk. Yoooouk!

Youkilis is third in the AL in OPS, although he benefits from righty-friendly Fenway Park, where he's about 100 points more productive than he is on the road. Morneau, in contrast, loses a few points on his numbers while playing in the Metrodome in Minnesota, which is playing as a pitcher-friendly park. It's hard to hit in a place that's danker than a failing tavern.

Youkilis (update: note that he wasn't in the lineup vs. Roy Halladay tonight?) ranks favourably in stathead metrics such as Adjusting Batting Runs and Offensive Winning Percentage. He's also got a bit of a halo effect that can be used to override the fact that he's not a big-time home-run hitter at a power position, first base, since he's an atypical first baseman. He won the Gold Glove last season and spells off Mike Lowell at third base when needed, so ipso facto, he doesn't need to have 40 homers and 135 RBI.

The odd part is, the longer he's been at first base, the more Youkilis has started to take on the characteristics of the position. He never reached double figures in home runs in the minors, but he has 22 already this season. He earns fewer bases on balls than he once did. The fielding stats say he's living off his reputation, although most baseball people won't give that a first glance, let alone a second.

The Morneau argument would probably claim that the runs he creates matter more since the Twins are an offensively-challenged team, lacking home-run clout (second-last in the league) and not loaded with pitching. It is true that his numbers come in a pitcher-friendly home stadium (about a run less per game is scored at the Metrodome than at Fenway, 8.94 to 9.95 through Friday) which shaves points off his averages. Overall, though, fewer runs are scored in Red Sox games than in Twins' games, although it's unclear how much this is dictated by each team's pitching and the quality of its opponents.

(The unbalanced schedule in baseball plays hell with park effects. It would really take someone such as Nate Silver or Voros McCracken to do the heavy lifting and factor in the strength of each team's pitching and its schedule.)

Youkilis' chances might seem dubious, especially since there probably is the same kind of resentment toward the Red Sox that there was toward the Yankees in the late '90s (Derek Jeter probably should have been MVP in 1999, but wasn't anywhere close in the voting). The upshot is, though, that if you set aside the crazy numbers Milton Bradley and Josh Hamilton are putting up in a hitters' haven in Texas (on average, more than 12 runs are scored in a Rangers home game), who is there, really?

It's looking quite likely this will be a split vote, where the MVP will be someone whom most of the sportswriters didn't think was the best player in the AL. It's a weird season, maybe weird enough that a closer such as Francisco Rodríguez could win (although closer should never, ever get MVP votes; it would be like the NFL giving the MVP award to a kick returner).

Ultimately, one could root for Morneau out of shallow, patriotic reasons as a more ego-flattering alternative to rooting against Kevin Youkilis out of shallow, Red Sox-resenting reasons. A whiff of Pukilis, or sniffing Morneau glories. Tough call.

Should-reads

• Yours truly has a piece up at Covers.com, which might become a semi-regular thing.
• John Brattain says the Jays could still make a playoff run, but picking up Richie Sexson to play first base vs. left-handers would be required.

Eighty-sixing Doc's Cy Young hopes

Vegas Watch has the Jays' Roy Halladay installed as the betting favourite for the American League Cy Young Award.

This begs the question whether the AL field is wide open enough that the sportswriters might have no choice but to vote for a pitcher whose great numbers aren't backed up by juicy won-loss record. Halladay's criminal lack of run support (but it's all gonna change, now that Cito Gaston and Gene Tenace are back!) has his record at just 8-6 entering his start tonight vs. Cincinnati. Guess how many starting pitchers have won the Cy Young Award without winning 20 games and/or at least two-thirds of their decisions?

One.

Nineteen eighty-six it was. That was a season of Mike Scott, his split-finger fastball and scuffing allegations that never really went away. He put up a 2.22 ERA, 306 strikeouts, and five shutouts, including the first pennant-clinching no-hitter in baseball history. Pitching in the Houston Astrodome helped, but he wasn't a creature of his environment.

WHIP wasn't in common use in 1986, at least not for any nine-year-old baseball nut in the vicinity of Bath, Ontario, but Scott's was 0.92. That is the lowest in a roughly 20-year span in between the hitting-starved strike season of 1972 and Greg Maddux's prime in the mid-'90s.

What's less remembered -- here comes the punchline -- is that Scott wasn't a runaway Cy Young Award winner. He only edged the better-known Fernando Valenzuela 98-88 in the voting, getting 15 of the 24 first-place votes. Valenzuela was 21-11, but with a 3.14 ERA pitching in Dodger Stadium.

Scott was 18-10. The Astros averaged 3.98 runs in his 37 starts and were held to three or less in 22 of his 37 starts. That's actually better than the 3.56 per start Halladay has received.

The real smoking gun, though, might be that the Cy Young voters (and it's important not to see them as a collective here) would prefer to vote for a pitcher who's a known quantity. No one wants to look back in 10 years and say, "We gave a Cy Young Award to Cliff Lee?"

They want to make sure it's not an anomaly -- Scott was just a couple years removed from being released by a last-place New York Mets team.

That might be what Doc has going for him. He's the one big-name pitcher in the AL who's having a good season, even if that slipped a certain idiot's mind yesterday. The Cy Young voters are finely starting to put less emphasis on wins. That said, there still hasn't been a winner who didn't have a gaudy record. Brandon Webb was 16-8 when he won in 2006, but keep in mind, he actually tied for the National League lead in wins.

Halladay should form a strong case, plus the AL field is lacking. Who else is there, unless L.A. Angels closer Francisco Rodríguez sets a save record? Johan Santana's jump to the other league has left the AL bereft of bankable pitching stars. It's just a matter of when for Félix Hernández and Scott Kazmir. As far as this season goes, King Felix is in the same boat as Halladay -- good numbers but a so-so record (6-5, 2.83).

Meantime, many of the league's winningest pitchers -- Cleveland's Lee, the Angels' Joe Saunders, Texas' Vicente Padilla -- would seem hard-pressed to keep up their current place. Lee and Saunders were each in Triple-A for part of last season. The same goes for Oakland's Justin Duscherer, a converted reliever who's put up a 1.99 ERA (he's one inning short of qualifying for the ERA lead).

Who knows, perhaps Doc might win by default -- with a 16-12 record.

(As for the latest between J.P. Ricciardi and Adam Dunn, who cares? Sue me for actually wanting to talk about baseball, not who didn't phone whom and who is or isn't lying, probably Ricciardi. It's a fun story, though.

Incidentally, the Vegas Watch post went up on the same day that someone's fingers got ahead of his brain and typed that Shaun Marcum was the Jays' best candidate for the All-Star Game. Who was that A-hole? It was this A-hole.)

Putting Donaghy into some sense of perspective

It's odd how Eight Men Out author Eliot Asinof died on the same day, Tuesday, that jailbird-to-be ex-NBA ref Tim Donaghy's charges of game-fixing gained greater public attention.

This was touched on briefly on Offsides yesterday, but there is a unique historical parallel between the Black Sox Scandal and the Donaghy firestorm. Each took place in an era that was marked by massive public corruption in American life. Bill James wrote once that the Black Sox foreshadowed the Teapot Dome scandal that took down a U.S. president a few years later; it was one among many "purgings and cleansings."

You could extrapolate that something very similar has gone in Sportsland, U.S.A., toward the tailend of Bush and Cheney's administration. It's one thing to pretty make up an election result and act like everything's normal, to rush into war under false pretenses for the benefit of Halliburton, to contract out that war to a private company or put a somewhat dim member of the horsey set in charge of federal disaster relief because he's Bush's buddy.

However, when the New England Patriots videotape their opponents' signals, or ballplayers take steroids so they can hit more home runs, or some people in the NBA cock up a few foul calls in order to win their bets and ensure the league of more revenue, well, that's just going too far.

(Something else that's weird is that, according to his Chicago Tribune obit, Asinof had finished a novel which will be published in September. Guess what real-life figure is fictionalized in the book? George W. Bush. You couldn't make that up.)

As for the refs doing business, this clip posted first at The World of Isaac should give everyone pause, to put it mildly.



(Excuse the total nerd moment, but this is annoying: Asinof's Chicago Tribune obit states he "spent nearly three years researching the book, including interviewing the two members of the team, Joe Jackson and Happy Felsch, who were still alive."

Anyone who read the W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe knows "Joe was the first of the Unlucky Eight to die." Four them, in fact, were still alive in the early 1960s when Asinof would have been researching the book. Swede Risberg, the shortstop, was the last one to go. You could look it up.)

Zen Dayley: The tendon sheath we all know and love

Roy Halladay against Joba Chamberlain tonight, what could be better... well, for starters, Alex Rios getting the ball in the air.

• The great power outage is making talk of a Triple Crown viable again, since the Astros' Lance Berkman and the Rangers' Josh Hamilton are already raising speculation.
  
  Conditions that cause fewer players to hit 50 homers, or drive in 140 runs means the Triple Crown has gone from next to impossible to the neighbourhood of impossible, if that makes any sense. Gary Sheffield (.330, 33 HR, 105 RBI) took the last serious run at the Triple Crown in 1992 in a scoring-starved setting of just 3.88 runs per game.
  
  The only other player who's even come close in the past 40 years was Dick Allen in 1972. Allen played in a league where the average team scored only 3.47 runs per game. Now you know why the DH was brought in the following season. Allen won the home run (37) and RBI (113) titles and led in batting average as late as Sept. 8, before finishing third at .308 in a league where only six players cracked the .300 mark.
  
  Of course, the last two Triple Crowns, Carl Yastrzemski's in 1967 and Frank Robinson's in 1966, came during what us statgeeks call baseball's second Dead Ball Era. Hell, going way back, when Ted Williams did it in 1942, scoring was down more than a half-run per game from the previous season (4.26, from 4.74), which stemmed from changes made to the wartime baseball.
  
  The analogy doesn't quite fit for the 1920s and '30s when Rogers Hornsby and Jimmie Foxx turned the trick in high-run environments. Then again, Babe Ruth never did it (one year he led in homers and RBI but hit "only" .393 and lost the batting title by eight points; the next year, he won his only batting title, but was second in RBI).
  
  Just for interest's sake, here's the run-scoring environment the seven most recent Triple Crown seasons were achieved in:
  
  

  Mickey Mantle, 1956: 4.66
  Joe Medwick, 1937: 4.51
  Ted Williams, 1942: 4.26
  Ted Williams (again), 1947: 4.14
  Chuck Klein, 1933: 3.97
  Frank Robby, '66: 3.89
  Yaz, '67: 3.70

  Far be it to point out that if the Triple Crown should really be leading the league in on-base percentage, homers and runs scored. Ruth did that seven times. Michael Jack Schmidt also did so in 1981, a strike season.
• David Ortiz's injury to his left wrist is not unlike "the one Curt Schilling had in his ankle in 2004." Hold off on bloody wristband jokes, since in all seriousness, ShysterBall notes it was the tendon sheath that reduced Nomar Garciaparra from a future Hall of Famer to the second-most famous athlete in his own home, and also scuppered the late Ken Caminiti's career, among other things.

• Rest assured that Jamie Campbell's "the Blue Jays ... are stealing bases and dropping bunts to get men across (and, my, isn’t it fun to watch)" iCab entry did raise some eyebrows.
  
  Watching at a team that's 12th in a 14-team league in doing the one thing you have to do to win a ballgame -- score some fruckin' runs -- is fun? It's fun only insofar as pacing nervously around your apartment during games in May wondering where the runs are going to come from and getting angry when a member of the best starting rotation the Jays have had in 15-plus years has the temerity to give up two runs in a game is fun? Granted, it does help fill in the evenings for a guy who, let's admit it, doesn't have anything else going on most nights.
  
  Come to think of it, it is kind of fun. Well-stated, Jamie Campbell.
  
  (Yes, folks, it's fruckin' ... not a F-bomb and not the overused frickin' ... spread the word.)
• Succeeding on exactly two-thirds of your stolen base tries is a net gain of nuthin'. The National Post has an article today on the Jays' base-stealing that doesn't mention that their success rate is 67%, third-worst in the entire major leagues. The other 13 teams in the AL have made it 74% of the time.
  
  The Jays have 38 steals and have been thrown out 19 times -- that's 19 runners taken off the bases and 19 outs, or zero net stolen bases. The Red Sox have 30 net steals (52 steals, 11 caught stealing), although almost all of that comes from Jacoby Ellsbury.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

ZEN DAYLEY: MT. VERNON HAS BEEN PRETTY DORMANT

• Vernon Wells was called out today by globesports.com's Jeff Blair, who clearly has been reading the tea leaves, so to speak, on the web.
  
  No one really wants to hear the equivocations. Wells received a huge contract for what he did in 2003 and 2006 and ipso facto, those seasons were the template for the years to come.
  
  Some players just don't handle the expectations that come with that big a salary well, or it means they put pressure on themselves. Look at what's happened to be Barry Zito, AKA, "pitching's answer to Chuck Knoblauch."
  
  Wells should probably hit fifth or sixth. The problem is, as The Tao acknowledged, is that the Jays are like the Leafs -- too afraid of the media and fan fallout to do what's best.
  
  Stick the $126-million-dollar man in the 5-hole. It's not our money.
  
  (The extremely helpful women at Babes Love Baseball have suggested some slump-busters for Barry Zito.)
• It would be nice to know how much income the Blue Jays get from suite sales at the Rogers Centre. Pete Toms is probably more versed in this topic, but that tends to be source of revenue that separates the middle-market teams such as the Jays from the super-profitable ones. The Minnesota Twins are apparently set to leap into a new income bracket from the suites in its new stadium.
  
  This sort of ties in with how Toronto could use a real ballpark and missed the boat in the '80s. The way the economy's going, don't count on it.
• Drunk Jays Fans did the heavy lifting to shut up the Reed Johnson lovers.
  
  Anyone who checks Johnson's splits (and take pity on those among us who feel compelled to look this stuff up) would clue in that he's been raking right-handed pitchers, which might not last (his batting average on balls in play is an unsustainable .368). He would only start against righties with the Jays as a last resort.
• Hardball Times ran down the worst No. 3 hitters of all time today. It's absolutely mind-bottling -- you know, where it feels like your mind is trapped in a bottle -- that much-maligned ex-Blue Jay Junior Felix was actually the No. 3 hitter for a major-league baseball team for an entire season. That's almost perverse.
  
  (Vernon Wells was in the running to be on the list of the most craptacular cleanup hitters until the Jays' recent lineup shuffle.)
• Occasionally something happens with a favourite team that is so stunning that you don't get around to even acknowledging it for several days. John Gibbons ordering an intentional walk on Friday to the Kansas City Royals' No. 9 hitter, Tony Peña Jr. (sub-subpar .365 OPS), to set up a lefty-lefty matchup against David DeJesus (.822 OPS), ranks right up there.
  
  Royals fans -- let them have their fun, they've had so little since October 1985 -- might still be laughing. Quoth Joe Posnanski: "I've never seen a more offensive walk. Never."
  
• Chris Stevenson had a positive report on the Rapidz press conference. Owner Rob Hall apparently responded to one of our threads farther down the page, if you care to scroll.
  
  Former Fenway Park folk hero, rotund reliever Rich (El Guapo) Garces, has re-signed with the Nashua Pride, by the way.
  
  (UPDATE: The UORB has some thoughts on the Rapidz transition that should be read for posterity's sake.)
• The latest from Lehigh Valley: The IronPigs are 3-22, and they face Jays suspect/prospect David Purcey tonight.

Much obliged to the Drunk Jays Fans for the link this morning. That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

UP AT 6: CAN'T SPELL 'PRO' WITHOUT HYPROCISY

Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein ...

• The apparent shrug over the Toronto Argonauts signing former Pro Bowl wide receiver David Boston, compared to what greeted Ricky Williams coming north in '06, says so much.
  
  Think about it. There was an outrage that the Argos signed Williams, who had flaked out on the Miami Dolphins and was an admitted pot smoker. He was also under NFL suspension, which Boston is not, fair enough. Some CFL loyalists acted like the Argos had signed the devil himself, even though it's hard to see how Williams could have been worse than Lawrence Phillips.
  
  Boston's dirty laundry includes more than a few roaches. He's failed a steroid test, entered a no-contest plea just last week to a charge of reckless driving and a domestic violence arrest last fall. (Boston's wife had objected to him leaving their one-month-old son unattended; an argument ensued.) He's not suspended by the league; Tampa Bay basically paid him off with an injury settlement last season.
  
  There would be no pro sports without badasses who would be in prison if not for their ability to perform a socially irrelevant act. However, it's odd that a drug cheat who has bullied women and put people at risk by driving when he wasn't in a the right state of mind to being arouses indifference, while the same people got their knickers in a knot over Ricky Williams.
• That being said, the Vikings really, really close to landing Jared Allen, says the Daily Norseman. Apparently his granddaddy talked some sense into him after his drunk-driving arrest last year. (Not completely, though: Allen wants to try MMA.)
• From the "Why everyone hates Duke University" files. Their baseball team fell behind in extra innings of a crucial game on Sunday. Suddenly, a school official emerged and stopped the game due to supposed lightning activity in the area, even though it wasn't even raining. No one put a tarp on the field; they just stalled and waited for rain so the game could be declared a tie. Now do you understand why college basketball fans hate the Blue Devils so, so much?
• Ottawa Fury striker Alex Valerio playing internationally for Portugal, rather than play international soccer for Canada, has stirred up quite a debate.
• Frequent commenter Tyler King is starting an online baseball sim league. There's already 12 owners for the inaugural season of the Ted Rogers Baseball League -- that's a lot of people who'll be looking up at the future champions, the Portland Ballsheviks, who will by flying a fictitious pennant at the fictitious Sagar-Sager Stadium.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

ZEN DAYLEY: THE REALIGNMENT JONES...

Tigers 8, Blue Jays 4 ... and then, depression set in.

• Seventeen games into the season is early to get desperate.
  
  The Jays have slipped below .500. The biorhythms have also been thrown off by daylight savings starting earlier, a 75-degree day in Ottawa in April and last but not least, all of the drinking alone before noon. What the hell, then? It's never too early to come up with a scheme where the Jays might actually see the playoffs again between now and the next appearance of Halley's Comet.*
  
  Someone out in baseball geek land suggested that the game would be better for it if teams were put into divisions according to market size. (Granted, how would you quantify that when the Red Sox play an interleague game in Miami and have more fans than the Marlins?) Meantime, Forbes published its annual Business of Baseball Report. You probably heard the Yankees are worth $1.3 billion US. The Jays are the 22nd-most valuable team in the majors, 10th of 14 in the American League.
  
  That would make the Jays a lower middle-class team in a division with Cleveland, Texas, Detroit and Baltimore. Or they would be the richest lower-class team with Minnesota, Oakland, Kansas City and Tampa Bay, depending on which division has four teams. They could win either of those divisions instead playing Sisyphus and rolling their boulder up the side of the Evil Empires.
  
  It's a nice fantasy, eh. Too bad it's about as likely as a guy who looks like Seth Rogen even getting into the same club as someone who looks like Katherine Heigl, let alone getting in her pants.
• Nothing beats a good swear-off.
• For what it's worth, the Jays are hitting .230/.346/.311 when leading off an inning. They've had exactly one hit from their first batter of the game. A huge evenout should come within the next week, probably (gut feeling) after the Tigers leave town.
  
• It's not you, Jamie Campbell, it's The Geek, who lives to pick the most picayune nits. The voice of the Blue Jays is sometimes the king of non-sequitur stats. That's where he'll cite something it will sound like he read it verbatim from the press notes without considering its relevance or context. (Hey, as long as you say it clearly, right?)
  
  For instance, last night Detroit's Todd Jones, a garden-variety closer if there ever was one, was warming up. Campbell pointed out that he has 304 saves, "just six away from tying Goose Gossage who's going into the Hall of Fame this year for 18th on the all-time list."
  
  Todd Jones being close to Goose Gossage in any career stat is more of a comment on how relief pitchers' roles have changed, not ability; he doesn't belong in a sentence with the Goose.
  
  Gossage -- you could look it up -- went two innings or more in 121 of his 310 saves. How many times in his career has Todd Jones gone two innings or more for a save? Seven -- and the last time was 11 years ago. The Geek cannot abide this, Jamie Campbell.
  
• Hardball Times has some analysis of Erik Bedard's hip inflammation that's a little troubling: "The chance that he might have an early onset of degenerative changes of the left hip is likely."

(* Which is in 2062 -- the things you remember from the Bath Public School public speaking finals from Grade 3, 22 years ago.)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.