Don't bother giving baseball a purity test

Further to the point made four months ago that baseball's shame over steroids "will serve to liberate it from the conceit ... that baseball is the best game of all because of its record book."

Bill Simmons has drawn a lot of eyeballs with a column attempting to define what was the purest era in baseball from a statistical and competitive viewpoint. He settled on 1988-92, a era of modest offence (someone could win the batting title hitting .313, or win the home run crown with 36, as Fred McGriff did for the 1989 Blue Jays), which "now seems Jonas-level pure, after the fact. Cocaine had become passé, and the number of suspicious statistical guys -- we could create the word "'roidy" here, just for kicks -- was a handful, at best. Er, worst. They clearly didn't damage the game any more than the spitballers, scuffers and corked-bat guys of earlier eras."

Craig Calcaterra, the ShysterBaller, weighed in:

"(Simmons) may be right, even if the definition of 'pure' is a bit unclear and maybe not that useful. What is useful, however, is Simmons' highlighting the fact that, at just about every single point in baseball history, there was something, be it drugs, or rules, or racist policies or whatever, that altered the statistical and competitive landscape. Some of them -- and I'm thinking segregation here -- were borne of even more malice than the cheating of the steroids era.

"Simmons' observation puts lie to the notion, so popular in recent years, that the steroids era's greatest evil was that it somehow sullied a heretofore pure record book. There was nothing pure about it, and certainly nothing consistent about it. Lefty Grove would have been a Hall of Famer whenever he played, but there's no escaping the fact that a lot of the guys he got out wouldn't have been able to sniff the big leagues if black players had been allowed in the game. Bob Gibson would likewise be celebrated, but his 1.12 ERA in 1968 would never have happened if he was pitching from a modern mound in a modern retro-park. We talk about baseball's wonderful continuity all of the time, but things have changed in radical ways over the years, and no one has ever presented any evidence to convince me that steroids impacted things any more radically than did high pitchers' mounds, huge strike zones, segregation and dead balls." (Emphasis mine.)

It is gratifying to see that meme filter up to someone who deservedly has a larger platform. The point is the obvious. The game was never perfect, and it's good to rid yourself of the idea that baseball was once this perfect, incorruptible game or that it was better when you were younger. It's a mental construct which seems to come up a lot in hockey, too. People believe the NHL was somehow better when 57-point teams could almost make it to the conference final, as the Maple Leafs almost did in 1986.

Here's what this site said in February, when the excrement hit the aerofoil device over Alex Rodriguez:

"Rodriguez breaking the home run record... good thing: Contary to what you might have heard, Rodriguez has not destroyed the game's history. His shame will serve to liberate it from the conceit, kept up by self-appointed gatekeepers such as Bob Costas, that baseball is the best game of all because of its record book.

"Those of you who have also watched all 18½ hours of Ken Burns' Baseball, six times over in the past 15 years might remember this part. At one point, Costas says the grand old game stands alone since you can rhyme off numbers such as 56, 755, 4,256, .406 and everyone will get the reference. In other sports it is, "How many yards did Jim Brown have when Walter Payton passed him? How points did Wilt Chamberlain have when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar passed him to become the all-time leading scorer in the NBA?"

"Statistics are a good backup for confirming what you saw or filling in what you missed. It's mostly a reflection of the competition player faced, the conditions (i.e., segregation, scouting, home ballpark), the way the game was played at the time and whether he was fortunate enough to enjoy a long career. Everything needs to be put into context, not just the Steroid Era.

"The failure to understand is this is why Dick Allen, who played in the low-scoring 1960s and early '70s, is not in the Hall of Fame ... Oh, and remember, anyone who played before the game was fully integrated, their numbers are a bit suspect too."

It cannot be stressed enough that this is not an attempt to usurp credit. That's a bit like the end of the Family Guy "Blue Harvest" episode

Chris: "Didn't Robot Chicken already do this three months ago?"
Peter: "I wouldn't worry about it, Chris. I don't think people are even aware of that show's existence."

Related:
Baseball has never been pure (Craig Calcaterra, Circling The Bases)

Top 5: Where playoff blunders happen; Courtney Lee has company

The Orlando Magic's Courtney Lee has a place in hoops infamy, regardless of how people hair-split over his missed layup at the end of regulation in Game 2 of the NBA Finals last night.



People remember a blunder (if that's even what this was, it was a tough shot), since it's only human nature to seize upon the times when the gifted goofed up royally. It's more immediate and obvious than a true blunder, like Michael Jordan using the No. 3 pick in 2006 on Adam Morrison, who's now spot-welded to the Lakers' bench, or the entire history of the Los Angeles Clippers franchise.

If you're really generous, one view is that the Magic drew up a brilliant play and suffered the equivalent of a hockey player hitting the goal post or a football wide receiver the ball jarred out by a huge hit just before catching a touchdown pass. Lee was a right-handed player on the left side of the basket, but an NBA player is supposed to make those. Either way, Lee has plenty of company when it comes to roundball ruefulness:

Air Johnson (first round, 1981)

Magic Johnson led the Lakers to championships in two of his first three seasons, 1980 and '82. In between, there was a major bump in the road in 1981 when the Lakers lost to a 40-42 Houston team in the first round. The capper in the decisive Game 3 (the first round was best-of-3 at that time) was Johnson shooting an air ball with 10 seconds left and the Lakers down by one point.



That clip is worth watching just for the music, which is straight out of a Dirk Diggler movie.

Derek Harper's rookie mistake (Second round, 1984)

The Dallas Mavericks had a flair for the farcical long before Mark Cuban made his first million; hell, why do you think picked that team to buy? Derek Harper played 16 seasons in the league as a crafty point guard. However, in Game 4 vs. the Magic Johnson-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Lakers in 1984, the score was tied in the closing seconds when the rookie Harper got the ball. Instead of working for a game-winning shot, Harper dribbled in place, believing the Mavs were ahead instead of tied. The Lakers, much as they did on Sunday, controlled the overtime and went on to win, taking a two-game lead in the series (3-1 in that case), and wrapped the series up two nights later.

Harper is one of one two players to notch 15,000 points, 6,000 assists and 1,800 steals. The other? Isiah Thomas. Now you know the rest of the story.

Joe Crawford's no-call (Western Conference final, 2008)

Everyone realized San Antonio's Brent Barry was fouled by Derek Fisher on a last-second play, except for the officials. Granted, it was the Spurs who got hosed, so no one outside Texas minded.



Josh Howard loses his brain (NBA Finals, 2006)

One comes not to bury Josh Howard, but to praise him. You remember the situation. The Mavericks were up by a point in the closing seconds of overtime in Game 5, series tied 2-2. Stopping the Miami Heat would gie Dallas two chances to close out the series on home court. Dwyane Wade, the eventual Finals MVP, was fouled with 1.9 seconds left. The strategy was obvious. Take a timeout after Wade's second free throw, so the Mavs could inbound at half court. Instead, Howard called time after the first freebie, forcing the Mavs to go the length of the court after Wade put Miami ahead 101-100. A desperation shot failed

The rub is the game is remembered for the mental mistake by Howard, who had put up 25 points and 10 rebounds. It's forgotten, probably by everyone other than Cuban, Bill Simmons and Henry Abbott, that Game 5 was marked and marred more by the officials, whose whistle-happiness led to the Heat going to the line 49 times, 25 by Wade alone. Howard's teammates Devin Harris and Dirk Nowitzki shot a combined 10-for-31, and of course, there's the whole question of why the Mavericks were down to one timeout.

Perhaps Howard was showing solidarity with the kneejerkers who hate the rule that gives teams the option of inbounding from midcourt after a timeout. No true hoops fans mind this, of course, since having a more confined space to run a last-second play tests a team's creativity much better than someone heaving a 75-foot no-hoper of a pass that works once (Christian Laettner, Duke, 1991), maybe twice (Bryce Drew, Valparaiso, 1998) in a lifetime.

Nick Anderson bricks it (NBA Finals, 1995)

No one ever said life was fair. Anderson ought to be remembered for more than four missed free throws. He was Orlando's first draft choice and played longer for the franchise than any member of the 1989-90 expansion team. He also came up with a huge steal on some guy named Michael Jordan which led to the winning basket in the opener of the Eastern Conference final. However, there is no getting past that the Magic had a three-point lead against the defending champion Houston Rockets in Game 1 of the Finals and Anderson bricked four free throws in a row, at home no less.

Houston, which was the heavy favourite (just like the Lakers), swept the series. Anderson, adding to the pathos, went from being a mediocre 70% free-throw shooter to being able to make less than half. Since he now works in Orlando's front office, he's constantly reminded of it, but it was little to do with the Magic's current situation.

"People are bringing it up and they want it to happen to the Magic now. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't turn back the hands of time. People make it out to be the series. We had three other games. This year's team has nothing to do with what happened 14 years ago. You can't put the two together."

Alas, they will.

At least Courtney Lee handled it like a champ.



As a bonus, Can't Stop The Bleeding (thanks for the link) came through with a reminder of another moment of playoff infamy: The New York Knicks' Charles Smith getting stuffed four times in the final seconds of a game against the Bulls in the 1993 Eastern Conference final.

Bill James, Moneyball now ruining the NBA, too

No one wants to piggyback on Michael Lewis' brilliance. However, when he turns his attention to pro basketball, using Houston Rockets shutdown defender Shane Battier as a vessel, people should have all their facets turned on.

"Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots."

It's not rocket science, but it's something fans really should start weaving into their understanding of sports. The Rockets, under 30-something GM Daryl Morey, a Bill James devotee, the Rockets have a vice-president whose title includes "basketball analytics." It's good, lengthy read, but if you have time on a light sports weekend, give it look-see.

There's a ton in there, including a passage about some subtle cheating by Alex Rodriguez which actually has nothing to with steroids, just how good Steve Nash was in his MVP seasons (take that, Bill Simmons) and why the San Antonio Spurs guard, Manu Ginóbili, is a such a tough matchup. Manu is a freak with "no imbalance whatsoever in his game — there is no one way to play him that is better than another." Free free to wonders if Manu's game was influenced at all by him growing up in a soccer country, Argentina; here one thinks of Paul Shirley joking that Nash was in more in tune with the patterns of flow and movement because he grew up around soccer.

It doesn't mean the Rockets are going to eight-peat as NBA champions. The NBA is where injuries happen, players banking in off-balance three-pointers happens and other teams having Kobe Bryant happens. It is something to have in your understanding as sports fans.

When (Rockets owner Leslie) Alexander, a Wall Street investor, bought the Rockets in 1993, the notion that basketball was awaiting some statistical reformation hadn’t occurred to anyone. At the time, Daryl Morey was at Northwestern University, trying to figure out how to get a job in professional sports and thinking about applying to business schools. He was tall and had played high-school basketball, but otherwise he gave off a quizzical, geeky aura. 'A lot of people who are into the new try to hide it,' he says. 'With me there was no point.' In the third grade he stumbled upon the work of the baseball writer Bill James — the figure most responsible for the current upheaval in professional sports — and decided that what he really wanted to do with his life was put Jamesian principles into practice."

For lack of a better word, it's nice to read something in a sports section which at least increases understanding or spurs some thoughts.

It also validates having Shane Battier on one's fantasy team last season. It didn't necessarily mean that Good Enough 4 Odessa won more games, but it's clearer now that the league was at fault for valuing the stats which are accumulated selfishly. So there.

(As an aside, a few years back in my capacity at the Simcoe Reformer, I wrote a feature on a young woman from the area, Becky Gallant, who played basketball for Brock University. She'd been an intern with with the Raptors and had seen how the video guys cut up game tape; the biggest takeaway for her had been seeing how well a NBA player can pass. She mentioned Nash, who was on his way to his second MVP, but also mentioned Manu Ginóbili. It seemed odd since he doesn't play the point and has never averaged more than 4.5 assists per game, but it makes more sense today.)

Related:
The No-Stats All-Star (Michael Lewis, The New York Times magazine)