Quick World Series Beard-Off, Now!

I was just going to post closeups of all the ill beards in this World Series but then I got a lil brazy. And if players are gonna keep it au currant with fashionable beards that would blend right in on Bedford Ave, why aren't they going back to 80's skinny baseball pants?

old man gray beard

dirty sexy crazy love 'stache

coming up small gettin overpaid by the yanks beard

ill chin strap beard

ace beard

Shook Santa Claus Beard

Boring Beard

Adrian Beltre Game 5 Homer aka Somewhere in those Three and a Half Hours is a Great Two Hour Baseball Game

Suck for Luck Bowl

The Dolphins and Colts could each easily reach 0-16, leading to the inevitable conclusion of Roger Goodell, sitting somewhere in the Hamptons flipping a coin with Jim Irsay's mug on both sides. Just like how the Spurs landed Tim "Big Fundamentals" Duncan in the one year The Admiral sat out.

More fun idea, the Dolphs and Colts play a 17th game of the season for the first draft pick, maybe in Palo Alto with Andrew Luck nervously stroking his beard from a luxury box filled with concord grapes and ipads. Dolphs part-owner Marc Antony can do the halftime show on mute. If the Colts win, Peyton Manning can go to the Raiders to replace Carson Palmer, who in turn can return to what he does best; namely drinking lite beers and trolling the L.A. Coliseum parking lot for USC froshes (born in 1993 b-t-dubbs).

It would do quintuple the ratings of the World Series.

Why Watch the World Series?

Is a sport still major if no one watches it?

Why Ratings are Relevant:

Ratings for the just-concluded ALCS (4.4) and NLCS (2.9) were abysmal. Sunday's dreary Vikings-Bears match-up on Sunday Night Football drew a 6.6. The pre-game drew a 5.3. Forget football, the NBA Eastern Conference Final this past Spring between the Heat and the Bulls averaged a 6.2  The ALCS and NLCS numbers are even behind the Stanley Cup Finals. The numbers are trending down toward MLS Cup levels.  

It's not about small-market versus big-market. After all, last year's World Series between the fifth-largest market, Dallas, and the sixth-largest market, San Francisco, tied for the lowest rated Series ever. 

Now, in our modern sports culture, plenty of people absorb and follow sports without ever watching a minute of actual game action, which speaks to just how sick a hobby following sports is. (Imagine meeting a metalhead who says "Me? Oh no, I don't pump Maiden, I just read Metal Circus." or a cinephile who says, "Oh, I never go to the movies but I play box office fantasy and read Entertainment Weekly and Sight and Sound.")  But tv ratings are important because it means the vast majority of people do not want to see baseball actually being played. And while I don't suggest that baseball will disappear, it can continue to become more irrelevant in this country.

How much less fun would baseball be to follow without being able to share it with our fellow fans? How many of us are planning to get together to watch the World Series together? Compare that amount with the throngs filling the bars on Saturdays and Sundays (including those arising very early on those mornings to watch soccer). And if fewer people watch will fewer people in this country play? Where would the game be today without the 30% of players that come from abroad? 

High Attendance is a False Sign of Life:

Major League Baseball argues, through attendance figures, that the sport's never been healthier. 

Attendance is a terrible way to track baseball's health. People will always want to sit outside on a sunny day to inhale hot dogs and guzzle beers. The very existence of the minor leagues is a testament to the appeal of getting drunk under the sun. No one filling the Brooklyn Cyclones' ballpark is there for the baseball, well, except for the solo Bellevue escapees with yellow AM/FM walkmen, enormous 1980s eyeglasses, and greasy WFAN giveaway sweatshirts. All the new ballparks, for all their talk of optimum viewing angles are really designed to maximize our consumption while limiting our viewing of the game. "Listen, I'm gonna go grab some garlic fries, a donutburger, I'll be back in five innings."  Fuck you, Feed Me. 

Think of the way bars have evolved. When I was coming up in the booze game there were many old-man bars. Dark places where you could while away the daylight in boozy silence. Now, every bar has to have amusements, shuffleboard, fusball, trivia, beer pong for chrissakes. Even the old-man bars now have to have flatscreen tvs wallpapering the joint. You can't look deeply into the bottom of your pint without being distracted by the roast highlights on the eigth showing of SportsCenter. Shea was beautiful because there was little to do but watch the game. That era has passed, and it's largely for the sport's betterment because teams would be bankrupt if, like football, it had to rely on tv money. 

TV money is king, and without decent tv numbers we can genuinely be concerned about the long term health of the big leagues. Look at college sports, where perfectly healthy basketball leagues like the ACC and the Big East are being dominated by their football teams because despite the crappiness of the football in those two conferences, the football money dwarfs the basketball bucks. 

The Playoffs Insult Common Sense and Two Solutions:

So why watch this year's World Series on TV? There are two compelling reasons not to, one is the game's length the other is the format. A lot of attention in recent years has been on the late start time, so baseball moved first pitch up to 8:05. It doesn't matter when it starts, it matters when it ends. A friend of mine has a great quote, "basketball is about tempo while baseball is about tension." But there needs to be a baseline rhythm to the game, a rhythm that is sorely lacking in today's game. The biggest difference between watching a game today and one from 20 or 30 years ago is the stepping-out-of-the-box after every pitch.

This is easily solved by limiting the pitcher to one time off the rubber during an at-bat and limiting the batter to one time-out during an at-bat. Or leaving the matter entirely up to the umpire who would only be allowed to grant the batter a time-out after a brushback or near-beaning. This one rule change could shave 30-40 minutes from the game without changing how the game is played. This rule change will never happen, however, because it is to the owners' advantage to have long games because it means more time for the home fans to eat hot dogs. Short cheese, it's always the short cheese over long. 

The second problem is the postseason format. Baseball, for decades, had the most meritorious postseason format. Win your league, and advance directly to the World Series. Then in 1969 we got a League Championship Series and divisional play in 1995. 

The small divisions mean most fans don't follow teams in other divisions which means come playoff-time few teams have national followings. Moreover, the structure is fundamentally unfair in that an AL West team must only beat out three teams for a playoff spot while an AL Central team must beat out five. Worst of all, in many seasons, a non-playoff team finishes with a better record than a playoff team which happens to win a weak division. 

2008 is one example of many, the Mets, Marlins, Astros and Cardinals all finished with records as good or better than the N.L. West Champion L.A. Dodgers. Toronto would be a contender in almost any other division or in a bigger division format that awarded playoff berths on wins. Baseball once rewarded teams based on wins, now it rewards them based on geography. 

So if the postseason is not a meritocracy baseball may as well make arbitrary changes to force excitement. Changing every series to 5-on-5 would reward flukier teams (so what? The wild-card Cards, who finished six games behind the Rangers were rewarded with home-field) but it would make each game super-tense and would greatly increase the chance of a do-or-die Game 5. 

The two most popular postseason tournaments in American sports are the NFL playoffs and March Madness, which are both single-elimination. The last World Series Game 7 was in 2002. Baseball can't afford to have long gaps between Game 7s. Look at how Horse Racing has suffered in its Triple Crown drought. Plus, making each round best-of-5 could help competitive imbalance by making it easier for cheaper teams to compete. Teams like the Yankees and Red Sox have extraordinary depth. But in a best-of-5 system, teams could get by with less. 

Would it mean that the best team would not advance? Without a doubt, but that's the system we have now anyway. 

Are these ideas extreme? I don't think so. But in an era of ratings that approach hockey levels, the status quo is simply not good enough. 

Tha U

i fucking hate college football. only in america do we have to have these discussions about sports. and these fucking middle-aged white sports media people all outraged, like the morning host here in l.a., espn's colin cowherd. blaming the kids. for what? doing what anyone else in their shoes woulda done? oh, but that's right, in the white sports, like baseball, hockey, tennis and golf you can go pro outta high school, or before high school for tennis, and get paid, and party. Because that's what young entertainers do, party. Or do these middle-aged white sports-media figures not think that their favorite musicians partied; bruce springsteen, the stones etc. They'll pump Billy Joel at home and won't begrudge him the money or the partying or the d.u.i.'s. But black athletes? Getting paid?? Partying??? Making Reggie Bush give his Heisman back? Shove it up your ass.
And why is the NCAA penalty always on the future kids who had nothing to do with anything? Because the NCAA isn't interested in justice. It's a fucking pony show.
Simple solution without blowing up the rule book and without paying players. If a school fucks up, no bowl ban, no loss of scholarships, they keep playing, and every dime the school earns from its football games and its bowl games goes to other schools to pay for scholarships. Isn't the NCAA better off, morally and financially, if Ohio State, USC, and tha U play their games, stay in the spotlight, and earn money that goes to needy kids around the country?

Clever

via uniwatch

Mike "Big Fucking Pelf" Pelfrey Has Been Pitching, Poorly, for the New York Mets Since 2006

Career

49

50

4.35

459

1.44

Career

49

50

4.35

459

1.44

I realize Pelf had little to do with the outcome of this one, but still.

An Important Met Memorandum from the Desk of Fred Coupon: Jason "Baynilla" Bay Easily Trumps Bobby "I'll Show You the Bronx" Bonilla as the Worst Mets Free-Agent Signing of All Time

It's not even close really. Bobby Bo, for all his off-the-field crap, wasn't that terrible. Of course, if the Mets hadn't signed Bonilla, they coulda maybe been in the market for Barry Bonds, but whatevs. Keep a keen eye on tonight's Met broadcast to see Freddy Coups waving the awesome sign above in the stands.

Who Was The Shittiest Mets Closer of Them All?

I was always a little partial cuz of our shared name.

What if we implanted the desire to blow a close game....in his dreams???

I didn't make this one, but I found and decided I couldn't do better for a Braden Looper image. He's Peter Criss by the way. And by the way, time may have forgotten that double blown save against Pittsburgh, but I haven't.

quick quiz, a picture of a random Met fan from the upper deck or Met closer and son of Sanitation Worker John Franco?

misunderstood, but not by Paul O'Neill.

UGGGGHHHHH Make it Stop; Derek Jeter Reaches 3,000 Hits, Wade Boggs is like "bro, call me when you crush 64 beers on a cross-country flight"

what, were Bishop Desmond Tutu, Pope Benedict XVI, President Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama, Bruce Springsteen, Saint Paul O'Neill, Jay-Z, United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, Ed Koch, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not available? Such disrespect!

Das Racist: Biased Umpires Don't Call Strikes Strikes

Freakonomics dudes posit that umpires are hate-hate-hatin. 

Baseball can easily solve this problem by replacing the home plate umpire with dogs with bees in their mouths that shoot tiny lasers that form a strike zone for each batter.

Is it worth 75 cents to see Mike Pelfrey Take the Mound For the Mets at Dodger Stadium?

Well, 70 cents, or could splurge on an 88 cent seat. No thanks. 

Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid and Iman Shumpert: Is it bad when your team's draft pick shares the first name with one of the world's most beautiful supermodels?

I don't have an answer, but at least Iman Shumpert is a fun name to say.

Well, thanks for all the memories, "Teflon" Donnie Walsh. What a legacy, what a rebuilding job. By this time next year, with no draft pick in 2012 thanks to the brilliant Tracy McGrady trade, Carmelo's gonna be looking around at Amare limping around on gimpy needs, Iman Shumpert, Landry "Furds" Fields and start begging for a trade to Brooklyn.

I made this two years ago, everyone pictured is still involved with their respective team, and each team is still mediocre. Co-inky-dink?

Lou Gehrig Teaches Us How To Take A Fucking Load Off After a Ballgame

via Uniwatch and the Life Magazine archives

I Used to Get It In Ohio: Jim Tressel Photoshop Up at Cleveland Frowns

Good pieces by Frowns here and at Cleveland Scene on how wack the Jim Tressel sitch is. Up above is the photoshop that ran, below is an attempt I made at making an "invisible" like on filmwise, which is really, really, really hard. Cap's off to the dudes who make those things.

The Superiority of the Soccer System of Promotion and Relegation over our Fixed Franchise System

Column I have up at a site devoted to England's lower leagues about how the league system of promotion and relegation found abroad is more democratic than what we have in place here where franchises can move on a whim. Long story short, if we had the system in place here that's in place in most of the world, the Brooklyn Dodgers would still be in Brooklyn.

The New York Mets 2011 Season Marketing Slogan: So After the Laughter I Guess Comes the Tearz

The Mets put out a bummer of a survey last week.
Followed by an even sadder commercial. The rap response: After the laughter, comes tearz. The rock response: Sad But True.

Happy Thanksgiving New York Sports Fans! (Who aren't fans of the Yankees)

Gobble-Gobble, Knick, Ranger, Met and Islander fans. No hope, no future.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Competitive Imbalance (Part I)

Baseball is like the anti-John Gotti, every charge sticks. Steroids? With baseball it became a congressional shitshow with ballplayers called forward to testify and out themselves in a witch hunt worthy of McCarthy. With football, no one questions how linemen have nearly doubled in size from prior generations while running and moving faster. Star NFL players get busted, serve a 4-game suspension and no one bats an eye.
And then with competitive imbalance, with baseball it's a CRISIS!!

No doubt, the lack of a salary cap allows those clubs with money to spend a decided advantage, a point Cannatar already examined in detail. But is it a crisis? And since when are small markets a protected class? Why is it worth more, or more attractive,if one of the 8 small-market hopeless teams in baseball wins rather than a big market team that wins once every 50 years?

Of course, it's worth pointing out again that baseball has more teams in big markets than the other sports. And let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees. When we talk about low World Series ratings we are not talking about people turned off from the sport because of imbalance. Has a salary cap made the NBA and the NHL explode in popularity or challenge the NFL? No.

And while the NBA has imbalance for different reasons (one star can carry a team to success), it's still worth pointing out just how hopeless it is for so many teams.

In MLB, only two teams have never appeared in a World Series, Seattle and Montreal/Washington.
In the NBA, here is the list of cities which have never appeared in the Finals:
Toronto
Charlotte
Denver
Oklahoma City (won in Seattle)
Los Angeles Clippers
New Orleans
Memphis
Atlanta (won in St. Louis)
Sacramento (won in Rochester)

To this list we can add teams that have never won, New Jersey, Orlando, Phoenix, Utah, Cleveland, Indiana and Dallas. That's more than half the league.

Put simply, the NBA offers the least hope of a championship to its fans. Sure, maybe it's not from payroll disparity (even though San Antonio is the only small market team to win a ring since the 70s), but the point remains that little hope exists for the majority of NBA teams. But again, which sport has the "CRISIS?"

Any Muther-Fuckin Squadron But The Muther-Fuckin' Yankees; Also, is John Tesh the Devil?; and Fran Healy is a Singer

 Peeping the Rangers croooz past the Rays makes me wonder if the Yanks lucked, as usual, by finishing second in the A.L. East. Instead of facing the Rangers and Cliff Lee and Vlad in a short series, they face the short-handed Twinkies who they own more than the Miz owns me in sticks. -le sigh-.
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This panel is from Marvel: Mythos, a boring retelling of the Ghost Rider origin which is nonetheless beautifully painted/drawn by Paolo Rivera. This is from the scene where Johnny Blaze meets the devil to bargain for his soul. But is it The Devil------or John Tesh???(cue Triumph pronouncing "Teshie.")

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Apparantly, Fran Healy not only admirably hosts the Halls of Fame on MSG, but he is also a Britpop singer and former frontman for the band Travis. And bringing it full circle, Fran Healy the singer looks like Andy.