Category: Sports

The Next Knuckler

by A.J. Coltrane

This looks like a fun watch:

On Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET “The Next Knuckler” will premier on MLB Network. The MLB Productions reality series will show just how difficult it is for even the best athletes to learn the knuckleball. Wakefield will teach the pitch to a group of former NCAA quarterbacks who will compete for an invitation to spring training with the Arizona Diamondbacks It’s an eclectic group: Doug Flutie (Boston College), John David Booty (USC), former major league infielder Josh Booty (LSU), David Greene (Georgia) and Ryan Perrilloux (LSU and Jacksonville State).

I’ll be recording that for sure.

I’m a little surprised that teams don’t run mass tryouts for knuckleball pitchers. What’s the worst thing that happens? A pitching coach and a couple of interns are out an afternoon? It seems like a really low-risk high-reward proposition. Heck, I’d go try out, and my arm makes weird noises when I try to throw overhand at this point!

Maybe that’s why teams don’t do it…hmmm.

The Rock, Milk and Super Bowl Ads

By Blaidd Drwg

I really stopped caring about the commercials in the Super Bowl years ago when most of them just generally started to suck. Companies then got smart and started releasing their Super Bowl ads before the game on the web to generate buzz by putting them online. Last year, it was the Darth Vader Volkswagen commercial that drew the most attention. I watched it and thought it was one of the greatest commercials ever. I then saw it when it aired and I was confused – it really wasn’t as good as I remembered it being. I decided to do a bit of research and found that the version posted online was over a minute long and it got edited down to fit in a 30 second spot. It may not seem like a big deal, but could you imagine trying to watch a 2 hour version of any of the Lord of the Rings movies if they had to cut out half of the film.

Flash forward to this year. I thought that the milk commercial starring The Rock was brilliant and I essentially laughed out loud most of the time. It got very little reaction from the crowd watching it, and once again, I knew why – the online version was 1 minute long, but they edited it down to a 30 second spot. What was lost was the long shots of The Rock stopping at each disaster and deciding he didn’t have time to deal with it. Here is the version of the ad that aired during the game:

Here is the full version of the ad:

I will leave it up to you to decide, but I really think this is on par with the VW Vader Commercial.

What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

By Blaidd Drwg

I am not sure that any player has had a stranger off-season than Sandy Rosario. Rosario is a 27 year old right hander who pitched for the Marlins last season. In his MLB career, he sports a spectacular 15.26 ERA in 7.2 innings, giving up 13 runs on 22 hits (in his defense, his minor league numbers are much better looking). Nothing spectacular and he is probably a back of the bullpen guy if he ever pulls it together.

Since no one actually cares what Sandy Rosario looks like, I give you an image of a sleeping puppy.
Since no one actually cares what Sandy Rosario looks like, I give you an image of a sleeping puppy.

His odd off-season began in October when he was released by the Marlins. Here is how the rest of it goes:

October 17th – Signed by the Red Sox
November 28th – Traded from the Red Sox to the A’s for a PTBNL
December 10th – Released by the A’s and signed by the Red Sox
December 12th – Released by the Red Sox and signed by the Cubs
December 21st – Released by the Cubs and signed by the Giants

Ok, the guy has managed to be on the roster for 5 different teams (and the Red Sox twice) since the season ended. What the heck is wrong with this guy if teams keep picking him up and then dropping him a couple days later? It also appears that he and Eli Whiteside are having a competition to see who can get released more times this off-season.

The US Provisional Roster for the WBC

By Blaidd Drwg

I like the idea of the World Baseball Classic, but I really can’t get into it. Because it is held during spring training and there are limits on the pitchers, it seems like it is watching either a spring training game or an all-star game.

Historically, the US team has really not taken the tournament seriously, and has sported a less than stellar 7-7 record in the previous two events. This is partially because the managers have treated this like an all-star game and felt the need to get everyone in the game rather than trying to win. The rosters were announced recently and a good number of big names, especially on the US side (Trout, Posey and Verlander, just to name a few), have opted not to participate.
Right now, this is the projected US lineup:

RF Ben Zobrist
C Joe Mauer
LF Ryan Braun
DH Giancarlo Stanton
3B David Wright
1B Mark Teixeira
CF Adam Jones
SS Jimmy Rollins
2B Brandon Phillips

That is pretty good, but not as good as it could be. The pitching staff is a little suspect though:

Starter: RA Dickey, Kris Medlen, Ryan Vogelsong and Derek Holland.
Bullpen: Jeremy Affeldt, Mitchell Boggs, Steve Cishek, Tim Collins, Luke Gregerson, Craig Kimbrel, Chris Perez, Glen Perkins and Vinnie Pestano.

The bench however is soft:
Jonathan Lucroy, J.P. Arencibia, Shane Victorino and Willie Bloomquist.

The US is having such a hard time convincing players to participate that they didn’t fill one spot on the roster AND needed to get Willie Bloomquist to fill the super-utility role. That is never a good sign.

The Mariners are sending 9 players to the tournament – mostly minor leaguers. There are 3 of concern – Felix Hernandez (for injury concerns), Michael Saunders and Alex Liddi. To me, the move does not make sense for Saunders and Liddi – the Mariners have an extremely crowded roster since they have more players than positions in the OF, 1B and DH slots. Liddi is 24 and should have a legitimate shot at making the big club and I fully believe that this is the put-up or shut-up season for Saunders after his up and down season last year. By neither of these guys being in camp with the Mariners, it just means that there is an opportunity for someone else to step up and take a roster spot away from them. I understand all of the country pride and everything, but since neither of these guys is guaranteed a job with the big club this year, it might be in their best interest to skip the tournament and play with the team in AZ.

And In News That Surprises No One

By Blaidd Drwg

Lance Armstrong is manning up and admitting that he used steroids, Oprah Winfrey confirmed. This is just the first step in Armstrong getting his lifetime ban from cycling reduced and he is finally being honest about what everyone knew when the rumors started – he cheated to win the Tour de France 7 times. So they both can become relevant again, it appears that we get 2 – 90 minute shows listening to Lance say how sorry he was. Who really cares?

In other “No Shit, Really?” news, the earth will be conducting an interview on “The Daily Show” confirming that, yes, it will continue to orbit the sun and reveal the details of its scandalous relationship with the moon.

A Bad Day for Baseball

By Blaidd Drwg

In the last 24 hours, we have seen the passing of 2 baseball Hall of Famers – Earl Weaver at age 82 and Stan Musial at age 92. The two could have not been more opposite – Weaver the firebrand manager of the Orioles through the 70’s and early 80’s known for his short temper with umpires and his love of the 3 run home run and Musial, one of the greatest hitters to play the game known as the consummate gentleman, Two more links to a bygone era in baseball are no longer with us, but hopefully their memories will continue to live on in the stories that are shared about encounters with greatness.

Brazil Preparing For World Cup

by A.J. Coltrane

From Sports Illustrated:

Prostitutes in one of Brazil’s biggest cities are beginning to sign up for free English classes ahead of this year’s Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup.

Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes in the city of Belo Horizonte, said Tuesday that 20 have already signed up for the courses and she expects at least 300 of the group’s 4,000 members to follow suit. The association is organizing the classes and seeking volunteer teachers.

…and the part that I found amusing:

“I don’t think we will have problems persuading English teachers to provide services for free,” she said. “We already have several volunteer psychologists and doctors helping us.”

How about that?! I guess you could say that English speaking soccer fans will be in good hands during the World Cup!

Justin Upton and His No-Trade Clause

By Blaidd Drwg

I honestly believe the Mariners are trying to get better, just not trying as hard as they should. Once again they don’t do anything in the free agent market (although I still think they are going to ultimately sign Michael Bourn to a Chone Figgins like contract and get Chone Figgins like production) and their big trade this off-season was Jason Vargas for Kendrys Morales, which succeeded in making the logjam at C-1B-DH even worse.

I read recently that they made a pitch for the D’Backs Justin Upton. They supposedly offered a “substantial package” to the Diamondbacks (I am guessing at least one of Paxton-Walker-Hultzen and probably Nick Franklin and some other prospects) for the 25 year old OF, who is under contract until the end of 2015 at an average salary of $13 million per season, but the trade was rejected by Upton, who currently has a no-trade clause to 4 teams – Seattle, Toronto, Boston and Chicago Cubs.

Ok, I can understand the not wanting to be traded to Seattle or Toronto, but Boston and Chicago? Two of the biggest markets in sports and two of the better hitting stadiums in the league – I would think that he would jump at the opportunity, but I guess not.

Meanwhile, we will just have to sit in Safeco field enjoying Jason Bay and Raul Ibanez do their best to show us how not to play left field.

FIFA, the MLS and Popularity

By Blaidd Drwg with AJ Coltrane

Recently, MLS president Don Garber responded to FIFA president Sepp Baltter’s criticism of the MLS. Basically, Blatter was critical of the MLS for not promoting soccer enough in the US. I can understand where the comments come from – the United States is a rich market that FIFA would love to get millions of dollars in revenue from and it hasn’t been able to since soccer is arguably the 5th most popular professional sport here, behind football, basketball, baseball and hockey.

While I am no fan of Blatter, he has a point. A few reasons why:

  • The U.S. initially dropped the ball on getting a league going – it took 2 years after the 1994 World Cup for the MLS to start play and they lost any momentum that might have been gained to increase popularity. The US has a large immigrant population that is a ready base for soccer fandom, and by waiting, these people went right back to watching the club teams from their respective countries and didn’t give the MLS much thought on its inception.

 

  • The league did very little to bring in names that most Americans recognized, even from their own national team. Most of the players from that 1994 World Cup team went back to Europe to play club soccer, leaving the league essentially with secondary national team players and college kids. Couple that with a strict salary cap and this contributed to some pretty lousy soccer.

 

  • There is no relegation system. The league won’t improve if there is no incentive to get better. You drop the bottom two teams every year and bring up the top 2 from the 1st Division and you will improve the league in a hurry.

Garber points to the league’s success based with the following:

The league has set attendance records in the past six years, as the average has increased from 15,504 in 2006 to 17,872 in 2011 and a record 18,807 in 2012.

That is a 21% increasing in attendance. Sound good, huh? Well, it is technically true, but not quite the way that Garber wants it to be. Between 2006 and 2008, the league’s average attendance increased from 15,504 to 16,460, or about 6%. Nothing spectacular, but not horrible either, about 2% annually. Then, in 2009, the league opened up an outpost in Seattle. With the Sounders drawing 30,000+ a game, the league attendance jumped 14% between 2009 and 20012. If you take the Sounders out of the equation, league attendance between 2008 and 2012 jumped just 6%. That is incredibly slow annualized growth for the league (around 1.5%) when you take out the rabid Sounders fans.

The other comment I took issue with that Garber made:

“If he were to come to a game — whether it be in Seattle, Portland, Toronto, LA, Philadelphia, New York or any of our MLS markets — I think he would be very pleasantly surprised to see the passion that exists in our fan base and the high level of soccer IQ that exists in our fan base,” Garber told mlssoccer.com.

The passion is a bit overstated. Yes, Seattle has turned out to be a fantastic soccer market and there are plenty of people here who are causal fans. The same situation exists to an extent in Vancouver and Portland. Outside of that, unless you are actually attending games in many of the other markets, the fan base is almost non-existent. I can tell you from the time that I have spent in NY, Boston, LA, SF and Toronto, soccer is an afterthought in those cities. Heck, in Boston, I would be willing to bet that MLS soccer ranks below college sports in terms of popularity. So, Mr. Garber, if you want to impress FIFA, take them to a game in Seattle. If you want them to think they are right about their comments, take them to a game anywhere else.

Coltrane, the Sounders supporter he is, has a different take on this:

My take on it is that the FIFA president was talking out of his ass. I feel that the MLS commissioner has a much better grasp of his marketplace than the FIFA president does. If I were the MLS commissioner, I would have been “surprised” too. Soccer growth in the US is not going to happen overnight, or even over the 20ish years that the MLS has had so far. Establishing the sport will take another generation or two — when I was growing up all the dads/coaches would just roll the ball out there because none of them had played. It’s now getting to the point where dads who played are bringing sons to games to share the game they love (and coaching the kids) – just like baseball or some of the other “established” sports. I got the feeling from the FIFA president quote that he felt that his “beautiful game” was just going to roll into the US and take over the sporting landscape, and he was shocked that it hasn’t happened yet, which is ridiculous.