Posted by Ben K. on Friday, February 06, 2004
From Worst to....Worst
As we all know by now, Ivan Rodriguez, the team MVP of the 2003 World Series Champion Florida Marlins, signed a four-year, $40 million contract on Monday with the Detroit Tigers. Pudge gave up the chance to make around $16 million for two years in Florida to play with a team that lost 119 games last season, a total of 225 games over the last two years, and a three-year total of 321 losses, three short of the 87-year-old American League record held by the Philadelphia Athletics.
In the face of unprecedented losing, Pudge, of course, had all the right things to say about the signing and his new team. As MLB.com reported, Rodriguez said, "Believe it or not, when I was a kid, this was one of my favorite teams. I watched Detroit a lot on TV and have all those memories of a winning team all those years. I'm very happy to be part of this organization." It's a mystery to me how Pudge, who grew up in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, almost 2500 miles away from Detroit was able to watch the Tigers on TV. Also, in examining Detroit's team history, I see four years during Pudge's life where they could be considered competitive. So I don't know what winning Tigers teams Rodriguez watched on TV, but that's not my point today.
Instead, I'm more concerned with another one of Pudge's quotes. In the same MLB.com article, he said, "This team to me is not a losing team. Any team can have a bad year. This team did and it's already behind them." But did the Tigers really simply have a bad year last year as their new All Star catcher so succinctly put it? Let's take a closer look.
The Tigers finished last season with a 43-119 record, setting a new American League record for most losses in a single season. This dubious achievement left them with a .265 winning percentage. They finished 47 games behind the AL Central-leading Minnesota Twins and 58 games worse than the best team in the majors last year. As a team, they hit just .240 with a .300 OBP and a .375 slugging percentage. They scored only 591 runs--less than 4 runs per game.
While the Texas Rangers' pitching staff was actually a little worse than that of the Tigers', Mike Maroth and company weren't exactly setting any records. Well, actually, Maroth himself did when, on September 5, he became the first pitcher since 1980 to lose 20 games in a single season. He would finish with 21 losses. Overall, the team finished with a 5.30 ERA. They managed three complete games and held their opponents scoreless only five times the entire season. The staff struck out a Major League-low 764 hitters while racking up a team WHIP of a stunning 1.51.
Pudge, I hate to break it to you, but this team did more than just have an unlucky bad year. The 2003 Tigers were one of the worst teams in the history of the game. Only two teams have lost more games then they did, and their level of ineptitude hadn't been reached since 1962. Despite Pudge's predictions that this team won't be a losing team in 2004, it's tough to argue otherwise. Bad breaks don't account for the horrible nature of the Tigers last year.
So the Tigers were bad. In another interview, Pudge even acknowledge this. "I know they had a bad season last year, but I think this is going to be a completely different season," he said. But is it really? Will the Tigers led by Ivan Rodriguez go from worst ever to first in the league next season? For a hint on the future of the Tigers, let's take a look at all of the teams in Major History that have lost more than 110 games.
I'm going to make this nice and easy. The following table will break down the teams that have been notoriously bad. It will have the team's record in the year they lost more than 110 games, the team's record the following season, the place in which the team finished that next season, and the number of games by which the team improved. Let's do it in order of teams that lost the most games. Also, as a note, I'm going to look at teams considered in the modern era of baseball. That is, only teams after 1903 are on this list.
The future for the Tigers does not look too good from what we see in this table. First, let's look at the bad news. The 1962 Mets are the only team on this list to lose more games than the Tigers. In 1963, they improved by only 10 games and are the only team on the list in consecutive seasons. In 1964, they lost 109, narrowly avoiding the list. It would be the only time they would so between 1962 and 1965. The 1939 Phillies are clearly the team on the list that improved the least. By losing 109 games the next season, they too avoided consecutive years on the list. Those Phillies, however, lost 100 games or more for five seasons in a row. They are the only team to achieve this dubious feat. The Tigers have lost more than 100 for only two seasons in a row.
Now for the relatively good news: The Tigers have to get better. On average, teams with over 110 losses improve by 16.5 games the next season. That would put the Tigers at around 59-103 for the 2004 campaign. Additionally, no teams have done worse in the season after losing over 110 games. So I think it's safe to say that Pudge's Tigers won't be any worse this season than the Pudge-less Tigers were in 2003. What it does mean however is that the Tigers will have lost 328 games in three seasons, thus setting a new record for most losses in three consecutive seasons. And to think Pudge could have stayed in Florida, defending a World Championship and not a loss record.
Is it really realistic though to assume that the Tigers will improve only by those projected 16 games? No and yes. no, because the Tigers' offense is radically better for next season. Rondell White, Fernando Viña, Pudge, and Carlos Guillen are all significant upgrades over last year's no-name offense. While Pudge's 23 win shares were the most he's had in four years, it's safe to say that he'll be better than Brandon Inge was behind the plate in Comerica last year. I don't think Pudge will reach 23 again, but he'll make a difference, as will the rest of the Tigers' additions. But the pitching has not improved. Detroit's pitching staff was not fooling anyone last year, and they won't be fooling anyone this year even with the help of Ivan Rodriguez.
In the end, I predict 95 losses from the Tigers. This would represent an improvement of 24 games over 2003, which is no small feat. But it's not really the "completely different season" that Pudge predicted. It's still a season of disappointment for the players and the fans, and it's most definitely a season at the very bottom of the mediocre AL Central.
Finally, Pudge also claimed that we, the fans, would see the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs "very soon." But unless the Tigers upgrade their pitching staff, those 96 losses may be the high-water mark for the Pudge era. Rodriguez will only get older, and the Tigers don't have much in the way of pitching prospects. I highly doubt, Pudge, the Detroit Tiger, will see a return to the October glory he enjoyed with the Marlins.
### So what do you think? We want to know. | | E-mail us ###
As we all know by now, Ivan Rodriguez, the team MVP of the 2003 World Series Champion Florida Marlins, signed a four-year, $40 million contract on Monday with the Detroit Tigers. Pudge gave up the chance to make around $16 million for two years in Florida to play with a team that lost 119 games last season, a total of 225 games over the last two years, and a three-year total of 321 losses, three short of the 87-year-old American League record held by the Philadelphia Athletics.
In the face of unprecedented losing, Pudge, of course, had all the right things to say about the signing and his new team. As MLB.com reported, Rodriguez said, "Believe it or not, when I was a kid, this was one of my favorite teams. I watched Detroit a lot on TV and have all those memories of a winning team all those years. I'm very happy to be part of this organization." It's a mystery to me how Pudge, who grew up in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, almost 2500 miles away from Detroit was able to watch the Tigers on TV. Also, in examining Detroit's team history, I see four years during Pudge's life where they could be considered competitive. So I don't know what winning Tigers teams Rodriguez watched on TV, but that's not my point today.
Instead, I'm more concerned with another one of Pudge's quotes. In the same MLB.com article, he said, "This team to me is not a losing team. Any team can have a bad year. This team did and it's already behind them." But did the Tigers really simply have a bad year last year as their new All Star catcher so succinctly put it? Let's take a closer look.
The Tigers finished last season with a 43-119 record, setting a new American League record for most losses in a single season. This dubious achievement left them with a .265 winning percentage. They finished 47 games behind the AL Central-leading Minnesota Twins and 58 games worse than the best team in the majors last year. As a team, they hit just .240 with a .300 OBP and a .375 slugging percentage. They scored only 591 runs--less than 4 runs per game.
While the Texas Rangers' pitching staff was actually a little worse than that of the Tigers', Mike Maroth and company weren't exactly setting any records. Well, actually, Maroth himself did when, on September 5, he became the first pitcher since 1980 to lose 20 games in a single season. He would finish with 21 losses. Overall, the team finished with a 5.30 ERA. They managed three complete games and held their opponents scoreless only five times the entire season. The staff struck out a Major League-low 764 hitters while racking up a team WHIP of a stunning 1.51.
Pudge, I hate to break it to you, but this team did more than just have an unlucky bad year. The 2003 Tigers were one of the worst teams in the history of the game. Only two teams have lost more games then they did, and their level of ineptitude hadn't been reached since 1962. Despite Pudge's predictions that this team won't be a losing team in 2004, it's tough to argue otherwise. Bad breaks don't account for the horrible nature of the Tigers last year.
So the Tigers were bad. In another interview, Pudge even acknowledge this. "I know they had a bad season last year, but I think this is going to be a completely different season," he said. But is it really? Will the Tigers led by Ivan Rodriguez go from worst ever to first in the league next season? For a hint on the future of the Tigers, let's take a look at all of the teams in Major History that have lost more than 110 games.
I'm going to make this nice and easy. The following table will break down the teams that have been notoriously bad. It will have the team's record in the year they lost more than 110 games, the team's record the following season, the place in which the team finished that next season, and the number of games by which the team improved. Let's do it in order of teams that lost the most games. Also, as a note, I'm going to look at teams considered in the modern era of baseball. That is, only teams after 1903 are on this list.
| Record | Next Season | Standings | Games Improved | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 Mets | 40-120 | 51-111 | Last Place | +10 |
| 2003 Tigers | 43-119 | NA | NA | NA |
| 1916 Athletics | 36-117 | 55-98 | Last Place | +20 |
| 1935 Braves | 38-115 | 71-83 | 6th (out of 8) | +32.5 |
| 1904 Senators | 38-113 | 64-87 | 7th (out of 8) | +26 |
| 1952 Pirates | 42-112 | 50-104 | Last Place | +8 |
| 1965 Mets | 50-112 | 66-95 | 9th (out of 10) | +16.5 |
| 1932 Red Sox | 43-111 | 63-86 | 7th (out of 8) | +22.5 |
| 1939 St. Louis Browns | 43-111 | 67-87 | 6th (out of 8) | +24 |
| 1941 Phillies | 43-111 | 42-109 | Last place | +0.5 |
| 1963 Mets | 51-111 | 53-109 | Last place | +2 |
The future for the Tigers does not look too good from what we see in this table. First, let's look at the bad news. The 1962 Mets are the only team on this list to lose more games than the Tigers. In 1963, they improved by only 10 games and are the only team on the list in consecutive seasons. In 1964, they lost 109, narrowly avoiding the list. It would be the only time they would so between 1962 and 1965. The 1939 Phillies are clearly the team on the list that improved the least. By losing 109 games the next season, they too avoided consecutive years on the list. Those Phillies, however, lost 100 games or more for five seasons in a row. They are the only team to achieve this dubious feat. The Tigers have lost more than 100 for only two seasons in a row.
Now for the relatively good news: The Tigers have to get better. On average, teams with over 110 losses improve by 16.5 games the next season. That would put the Tigers at around 59-103 for the 2004 campaign. Additionally, no teams have done worse in the season after losing over 110 games. So I think it's safe to say that Pudge's Tigers won't be any worse this season than the Pudge-less Tigers were in 2003. What it does mean however is that the Tigers will have lost 328 games in three seasons, thus setting a new record for most losses in three consecutive seasons. And to think Pudge could have stayed in Florida, defending a World Championship and not a loss record.
Is it really realistic though to assume that the Tigers will improve only by those projected 16 games? No and yes. no, because the Tigers' offense is radically better for next season. Rondell White, Fernando Viña, Pudge, and Carlos Guillen are all significant upgrades over last year's no-name offense. While Pudge's 23 win shares were the most he's had in four years, it's safe to say that he'll be better than Brandon Inge was behind the plate in Comerica last year. I don't think Pudge will reach 23 again, but he'll make a difference, as will the rest of the Tigers' additions. But the pitching has not improved. Detroit's pitching staff was not fooling anyone last year, and they won't be fooling anyone this year even with the help of Ivan Rodriguez.
In the end, I predict 95 losses from the Tigers. This would represent an improvement of 24 games over 2003, which is no small feat. But it's not really the "completely different season" that Pudge predicted. It's still a season of disappointment for the players and the fans, and it's most definitely a season at the very bottom of the mediocre AL Central.
Finally, Pudge also claimed that we, the fans, would see the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs "very soon." But unless the Tigers upgrade their pitching staff, those 96 losses may be the high-water mark for the Pudge era. Rodriguez will only get older, and the Tigers don't have much in the way of pitching prospects. I highly doubt, Pudge, the Detroit Tiger, will see a return to the October glory he enjoyed with the Marlins.
### So what do you think? We want to know. | | E-mail us ###
Posted by Ben K. on Monday, February 02, 2004
A Baseball Fan's View of Levitra
Many of you might load this page today, look at it, and say, "Why is Ben posting? Is he kidnapping all of the Red Sox fans?" I just want to allay your fears. I haven't kidnapped anyone. Mike is deservedly celebrating the Patriots' Super Bowl victory over the Carolina Panthers. Since the rest of my colleagues are all New Englanders, I volunteered to fill in for today. Mike will post on Tuesday.
That being said, I want to congratulate the Patriots on their victory. I've been rooting for them to win this year. Some of you might say that's sacrilegious. As a die-hard Yankee fan, can I really root for a team from New England to win in any sport? As long as the Red Sox continue to lose, I'll gladly root for the other teams in New England. Considering how much more I care about baseball than anything else, if the sports gods reward New England with football championships instead of baseball championships for the rest of my life, that's ok with me.
Alright, now that I've pissed off half of my readers, I'm going to get into the subject of my post. Since Ivan Rodriguez has, as of 11:22 pm on Sunday night, yet to sign with the Detroit Tigers, I'll save my analysis of the Tigers' situation until my next post. Now, I would like to analyze a few of the non-sports related aspects of the Super Bowl and close with my thoughts on the competition between baseball and football perpetrated so tastelessly, tactlessly, and falsely by Mike Ditka and Levitra tonight.
I would first like to award Worst Super Bowl Pun to the AP story I linked to in the first paragraph of this post. Saying "Houston, we have a champion" is about the worst way ever to start a story. I consider myself a journalist. As I've alluded to in other posts, I'm the editor in chief of my college newspaper. I've been a reporter for almost seven full years now, and as I apply for summer internships at various papers around the country, I like to think that I know a little something about the art of journalism. Granted, the Associated Press is a bit different than the personal reporting that I do, but still. If I were to see an article with a lead like that, I would stop reading, send it back to the writer, and tell him or her to come up with something just a little bit better. That phrase is one of the most clichéd phrases in our culture. Since Apollo 13 came out in 1995, it's been killed. While it won't be the last we here of that pun, it should be buried for ever.
Now, what good would a post on different aspects of the Super Bowl be without some mention of the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake incident? Justin sang, "I'll get you naked by the end of this song." And you know what? He wasn't kidding. I personally thought that added some excitement to one of the worst Super Bowl halftime shows of all time. I was watching the game on a projector screen in a room packed with other college students, and the reaction was priceless: dead silence in the room. Then, applause. Of course, college student, football fans couldn't have asked for more: nudity and football. Everyone else anywhere with decent taste--and even many college students too--were rightfully appalled.
Seriously, that's gotta be one of the greatest flashes in football history. While hi-res pictures do appear to show Janet wearing a pastie (I swear, mom, I didn't look at them. Um, someone else..yeah, someone else told me about that), CBS was rightfully appalled. Even better, though, for those of us who hate MTV was the NFL's reaction. In this article highlighting CBS' apology, NFL Executive Vice President Joe Brown issued the understatement of the night when he said, "It's unlikely that MTV will produce another Super Bowl halftime." Yeah, Joe, good call on that one. While Matt Drudge is reporting that CBS knew about it beforehand, I believe it was a major publicity stunt on MTV's part. And it worked. The controversy will focus on MTV for days, and for a few seconds, millions and millions of viewers got a clear glimpse of Janet Jackson's right breast. MTV completely hoodwinked CBS, and that's all there is to it. Like most things in our pop culture, it was tasteless to the max but extremely effective.
Now, I would like to turn to the commercials. Best Way to Get Out a Message goes to TheTruth.org's commercial showing the Shards O' Glass company. That commercial was so devastatingly effective in reaching the people with whom I was watching the game, and I think that's the point. For those of you who missed it, it was basically a company saying why they sell ice pops with shards of glass in them and how they know how dangerous they are for you. It was meant to mock the tobacco industry, and it certainly accomplished that. The best part is that if click right here, you can even visit and explore the Web site that's flashed in the commercial. ShardsOGlass.com is indeed a real site. As someone vehemently opposed to smoking, I approve.
Next, Most Worthless Commercial. That Budweiser one with the referee being yelled at. Way to set women back 50 years. That's it. Horrendously tasteless. Or as Dave would say, flagrantly tasteless.
And finally, for some baseball. In what I think was one of the most offensive commercials, Mike Ditka was advertising Levitra as a drug for men who like football. Like football, it will give you that rush. In fact, Ditka even went so far as to say that baseball needs Levitra because it would give the game a rush. Ditka's argument was that in baseball, there's too much waiting and sitting around. The pitcher takes too long; the batter takes too long; there's too much strategizing, illustrated nicely by a pitching coach slooooowly placing a call to the bullpen. Football, on the other hand, is, unlike Ditka, erect...I mean, football supposedly is full of life and energy. Because the game is constantly on the move and everyone's getting tackled, it's much more fast-paced than football.
I hate to break it to Mr. Ditka, but the only game that comes close to what he was describing is hockey. Football's just as bad as baseball when it comes to delaying the game. Take tonight for example. A 60-minute game took over four hours to play. For those of you are mathematically-challenged, that's 240 minutes or 180 minutes of sitting around and waiting for things to happen. I saw tonight a game where the game clock routinely hit 1 or 0 before a snap. I saw the clock run for 7 seconds at a time before stopping. I saw a quarterback routinely conferring with his coach through a headset, with his team through huddles, and even more with his team through audible signals as they adjusted to the defense. To me, this sounds a lot like baseball but with more ridiculous testosterone and without some of the more subtle points.
I don't intend to start a fight over the merits of baseball vs. the merits of football. Both have good poitns and bad points, and I enjoy watching football games, although not as much as I enjoy baseball games. If you, dear reader, want to do start that fight, check out our brand new forums. What I would like to say is that Ditka and Levitra completely dissed our National Pastimee. They insulted the manliness of all of the fans of baseball worldwide with their 60-second diatribe about why baseball needs Levitra. Meanwhile, Ditka criticized baseball for all of the things wrong with football!
Let's see. Lots of time standing around waiting for a play to happen, check. Lots of boring line changes and coaches' decisions, check. Brief spurts of action followed by lots of time standing around, check. More commercial time than anyone knows what to do with, check. Furthermore, in 2002, the average length of a baseball game was 2 hours and 52 minutes. The NFL is barely matching this, and they certainly aren't setting any time-of-game records during the Super Bowl.
To me, it seems ridiculous that Levitra and Ditka felt it necessary to blatantly attack baseball and its fans. Most football fans attend baseball games during the summer, and many baseball fans with a limited interest in football were watching the Super Bowl. I should know because I was one of them. I think this clearly goes under theheadlinee of "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it at all."
That's all. Football is as guilty of all of things Ditka said about baseball. In my opinion, baseball is more subtle than football as well. A well-executed hit-and-run or suicide squeeze is more excited than a touchdown run or field goal attempt any day. I know my fellow posters are more sympathetic to football than I am, but I just wanted to defend baseball. I do like watching football and playing it, but it didn't deserve that bashing tonight. And it's important to remember that those $2.3 million commercials reach a wide audience of very gullible Americans (as those SUV ads illustrated).
Alright, I'm signing off now. I know this wasn't a post much in the line of what we've done so far, but I think it's nice to vary things up every now and then. This was a mighty slow weekend for baseball, but by the end of this week, we'll have some things to discuss. I predict that the Yankees will land a third baseman, Greg Maddux will land a real potential suitor, and the Tigers will land an All Star catcher. And to whet your baseball appetite, I'll preview my next post. I'm going to write about improvements witnessed in really bad teams and what the Tigers prospects are for the 2004 season. So enjoy your Monday, if that's possible. And I'll catch you on Friday.
### So what do you think? We want to know. | | E-mail us ###
Many of you might load this page today, look at it, and say, "Why is Ben posting? Is he kidnapping all of the Red Sox fans?" I just want to allay your fears. I haven't kidnapped anyone. Mike is deservedly celebrating the Patriots' Super Bowl victory over the Carolina Panthers. Since the rest of my colleagues are all New Englanders, I volunteered to fill in for today. Mike will post on Tuesday.
That being said, I want to congratulate the Patriots on their victory. I've been rooting for them to win this year. Some of you might say that's sacrilegious. As a die-hard Yankee fan, can I really root for a team from New England to win in any sport? As long as the Red Sox continue to lose, I'll gladly root for the other teams in New England. Considering how much more I care about baseball than anything else, if the sports gods reward New England with football championships instead of baseball championships for the rest of my life, that's ok with me.
Alright, now that I've pissed off half of my readers, I'm going to get into the subject of my post. Since Ivan Rodriguez has, as of 11:22 pm on Sunday night, yet to sign with the Detroit Tigers, I'll save my analysis of the Tigers' situation until my next post. Now, I would like to analyze a few of the non-sports related aspects of the Super Bowl and close with my thoughts on the competition between baseball and football perpetrated so tastelessly, tactlessly, and falsely by Mike Ditka and Levitra tonight.
I would first like to award Worst Super Bowl Pun to the AP story I linked to in the first paragraph of this post. Saying "Houston, we have a champion" is about the worst way ever to start a story. I consider myself a journalist. As I've alluded to in other posts, I'm the editor in chief of my college newspaper. I've been a reporter for almost seven full years now, and as I apply for summer internships at various papers around the country, I like to think that I know a little something about the art of journalism. Granted, the Associated Press is a bit different than the personal reporting that I do, but still. If I were to see an article with a lead like that, I would stop reading, send it back to the writer, and tell him or her to come up with something just a little bit better. That phrase is one of the most clichéd phrases in our culture. Since Apollo 13 came out in 1995, it's been killed. While it won't be the last we here of that pun, it should be buried for ever.
Now, what good would a post on different aspects of the Super Bowl be without some mention of the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake incident? Justin sang, "I'll get you naked by the end of this song." And you know what? He wasn't kidding. I personally thought that added some excitement to one of the worst Super Bowl halftime shows of all time. I was watching the game on a projector screen in a room packed with other college students, and the reaction was priceless: dead silence in the room. Then, applause. Of course, college student, football fans couldn't have asked for more: nudity and football. Everyone else anywhere with decent taste--and even many college students too--were rightfully appalled.
Seriously, that's gotta be one of the greatest flashes in football history. While hi-res pictures do appear to show Janet wearing a pastie (I swear, mom, I didn't look at them. Um, someone else..yeah, someone else told me about that), CBS was rightfully appalled. Even better, though, for those of us who hate MTV was the NFL's reaction. In this article highlighting CBS' apology, NFL Executive Vice President Joe Brown issued the understatement of the night when he said, "It's unlikely that MTV will produce another Super Bowl halftime." Yeah, Joe, good call on that one. While Matt Drudge is reporting that CBS knew about it beforehand, I believe it was a major publicity stunt on MTV's part. And it worked. The controversy will focus on MTV for days, and for a few seconds, millions and millions of viewers got a clear glimpse of Janet Jackson's right breast. MTV completely hoodwinked CBS, and that's all there is to it. Like most things in our pop culture, it was tasteless to the max but extremely effective.
Now, I would like to turn to the commercials. Best Way to Get Out a Message goes to TheTruth.org's commercial showing the Shards O' Glass company. That commercial was so devastatingly effective in reaching the people with whom I was watching the game, and I think that's the point. For those of you who missed it, it was basically a company saying why they sell ice pops with shards of glass in them and how they know how dangerous they are for you. It was meant to mock the tobacco industry, and it certainly accomplished that. The best part is that if click right here, you can even visit and explore the Web site that's flashed in the commercial. ShardsOGlass.com is indeed a real site. As someone vehemently opposed to smoking, I approve.
Next, Most Worthless Commercial. That Budweiser one with the referee being yelled at. Way to set women back 50 years. That's it. Horrendously tasteless. Or as Dave would say, flagrantly tasteless.
And finally, for some baseball. In what I think was one of the most offensive commercials, Mike Ditka was advertising Levitra as a drug for men who like football. Like football, it will give you that rush. In fact, Ditka even went so far as to say that baseball needs Levitra because it would give the game a rush. Ditka's argument was that in baseball, there's too much waiting and sitting around. The pitcher takes too long; the batter takes too long; there's too much strategizing, illustrated nicely by a pitching coach slooooowly placing a call to the bullpen. Football, on the other hand, is, unlike Ditka, erect...I mean, football supposedly is full of life and energy. Because the game is constantly on the move and everyone's getting tackled, it's much more fast-paced than football.
I hate to break it to Mr. Ditka, but the only game that comes close to what he was describing is hockey. Football's just as bad as baseball when it comes to delaying the game. Take tonight for example. A 60-minute game took over four hours to play. For those of you are mathematically-challenged, that's 240 minutes or 180 minutes of sitting around and waiting for things to happen. I saw tonight a game where the game clock routinely hit 1 or 0 before a snap. I saw the clock run for 7 seconds at a time before stopping. I saw a quarterback routinely conferring with his coach through a headset, with his team through huddles, and even more with his team through audible signals as they adjusted to the defense. To me, this sounds a lot like baseball but with more ridiculous testosterone and without some of the more subtle points.
I don't intend to start a fight over the merits of baseball vs. the merits of football. Both have good poitns and bad points, and I enjoy watching football games, although not as much as I enjoy baseball games. If you, dear reader, want to do start that fight, check out our brand new forums. What I would like to say is that Ditka and Levitra completely dissed our National Pastimee. They insulted the manliness of all of the fans of baseball worldwide with their 60-second diatribe about why baseball needs Levitra. Meanwhile, Ditka criticized baseball for all of the things wrong with football!
Let's see. Lots of time standing around waiting for a play to happen, check. Lots of boring line changes and coaches' decisions, check. Brief spurts of action followed by lots of time standing around, check. More commercial time than anyone knows what to do with, check. Furthermore, in 2002, the average length of a baseball game was 2 hours and 52 minutes. The NFL is barely matching this, and they certainly aren't setting any time-of-game records during the Super Bowl.
To me, it seems ridiculous that Levitra and Ditka felt it necessary to blatantly attack baseball and its fans. Most football fans attend baseball games during the summer, and many baseball fans with a limited interest in football were watching the Super Bowl. I should know because I was one of them. I think this clearly goes under theheadlinee of "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it at all."
That's all. Football is as guilty of all of things Ditka said about baseball. In my opinion, baseball is more subtle than football as well. A well-executed hit-and-run or suicide squeeze is more excited than a touchdown run or field goal attempt any day. I know my fellow posters are more sympathetic to football than I am, but I just wanted to defend baseball. I do like watching football and playing it, but it didn't deserve that bashing tonight. And it's important to remember that those $2.3 million commercials reach a wide audience of very gullible Americans (as those SUV ads illustrated).
Alright, I'm signing off now. I know this wasn't a post much in the line of what we've done so far, but I think it's nice to vary things up every now and then. This was a mighty slow weekend for baseball, but by the end of this week, we'll have some things to discuss. I predict that the Yankees will land a third baseman, Greg Maddux will land a real potential suitor, and the Tigers will land an All Star catcher. And to whet your baseball appetite, I'll preview my next post. I'm going to write about improvements witnessed in really bad teams and what the Tigers prospects are for the 2004 season. So enjoy your Monday, if that's possible. And I'll catch you on Friday.
### So what do you think? We want to know. | | E-mail us ###