Recently by Bob

The baseball historian in me would have liked to have seen John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine all enter the Hall of Fame together in the same class. This would most likely have been the case if Smoltz hadn't attempted to give it one more try when he pitched for the Red Sox this year. Maddux retired last year, Glavine was released before he ever pitched an inning this year, so both are eligible to be inducted in 2014. Now Smoltz has to wait another year, assuming he doesn't pitch again next year.

Maybe some baseball writers will not vote for Maddux and Glavine on the first ballot with the intent to vote for them on the second ballot along with Smoltz.

Anyone who thinks that Pedro Martinez is going to make any meaningful contribution to the Phillies did not watch him pitch with the Mets the last two seasons.

In yesterday's Yankee game, Derek Jeter was called out on an attempted steal of third base on a play where the replay showed that Jeter avoided the tag at third. But in my opinion, the umpire made the correct call. The throw beat Jeter to the bag, and the third baseman applied a tag on Jeter. The tag missed Jeter only because Jeter held his left hand and arm back as he slid head first into third base, where his body moved forward right into the tag but his hand and arm never got tagged.

I have to admit that despite in the past having expressed a lack of enthusiasm about the NHL, I found this year's hockey playoffs the most interesting in a decade. I was never a huge hockey fan, but throughout the 1990s, I followed hockey consistently, and would usually make time to watch big games. But my interest faded around the turn of the century and then the strike/lockout of 2004/2005 really ended any interest I had in hockey. That lack of interest lasted four years, until this post-season. I think I watched more hockey in the past two months then I have the last six years. The matchups of Crosby vs. Ovechkin and then the Penguins run culminating in a game 7 victory in the finals made for compelling viewing. Will I be watching regular season hockey this October? No. But if the young stars of the sport continue to create good post-season matchups, I'll be watching next spring.

Major League Baseball is soon going to come to a point where each team will schedule two pitchers to pitch in a game. With starting pitchers going fewer and fewer innings, the game is headed to a point where teams will need one pitcher to pitch the first four innings and a second pitcher to pitch the next four innings, leaving the remaining inning for a closer or one of the two pitchers if they are pitching well. The pitchers for a Mets game may be announced as Johan Santana and Tim Redding. Santana will pitch innings 1-4 (maybe 5) and Redding pitches the next 4 innings. Bullpens will still be needed to close games and in case one of the two pitchers can't even get through 4 innings.

The roster issues will work themselves out, either by expanding or simply rotating the second pitchers to the minors on the days they are not pitching (they wouldn't actually go to the minors, it would just be a technicality to fit 5 extra pitchers on the rosters).

There are numerous reasons why this type of 10 man rotation seems more and more like a real possibility, and I neither attempt to list or explain the reasons here. Rather I simply mean to observe and speculate about the direction the game of baseball is headed.

In case you missed it, Spike Lee was seen courtside at game 1 of the NBA Western Conference Finals rooting for the Lakers and cheering for Kobe Bryant. Yes, I've heard that Spike has made some sort of documentary about Kobe, but this still seems like a big slap in the face to Knicks fans. What could be worse for New York sports fans? I just hope that we never see Rudy Giuliani in the front row of Fenway Park cheering for Big Papi to hit more than one home run every two months.

On both Saturday and Sunday night’s editions of Baseball Tonight, they had a segment where the analysts were asked who they thought the next 300 game winner might be after Randy Johnson most likely gets 2 more wins this season. Everyone said that no current players will get 300 wins. I think they overlooked someone: C.C. Sabathia. The key is that Sabathia is only 28 years old. He has 120 wins right now, which means he needs 180 more. If he pitches until he is 40 years old, that’s 15 wins a season for the next 12 years. Sure that’s a tall order, but he has the best chance of anyone pitching right now. Signing a big contract with the Yankees won’t hurt him getting run support, which goes a long way towards earning the W.

While the key to getting 300 wins is what you do after the age of 36, out of all of today’s active players, C.C. Sabathia has the best chance of anyone.

Not Ronaldo who contributed to 2 World Cup wins for Brazil, but rather Cristiano Ronaldo from Portugal, who plays for Manchester United. If you haven’t been paying attention to European soccer over the past two years, you’ve missed some brilliant performances from Cristiano Ronaldo. While he did get off to a slow start this season amidst rumors of his displeasure at United and his desire for a move to Real Madrid, Ronaldo returned to form and has only gotten better as the season progressed. That progression was capped off by tonight’s performance in a 3-1 victory over Arsenal that saw United advance to the Champions League final. Ronaldo was all over the pitch and always in the center of the action in addition to scoring on a rocket of a free kick.

If you haven’t had the chance to see Ronaldo yet, set your DVR to ESPN on May 27 for the final of what has become one of the world’s best sporting events, the Champions League.

It can't be left unsaid that two members of the baseball team that plays in Washington had the word "Natinals" written across their chest on their jerseys. This leaves the door open for so many easy comments at the Nats that I'll just let this one speak for itself.

A few comments on some recent news regarding the Mets and the Yankees:

I still can't figure out why the sale of Bernie Madoff's Mets tickets on ebay was such a big news story. Big sporting events sell for top dollar on ebay all the time, yet for some reason because Madoff was forced to sell his tickets, it's big news.

Now that one week of the 2009 Major League Baseball season is under wraps, let's play a little fact or fiction:

The Tampa Bay Rays will make the playoffs in 2009: Fiction.
One piece of fiction about the 2008 Rays was that none of their players had career years. Are you kidding me? Just look at their pitching staff: Grant Balfour, J.P. Howell, Matt Garza, Andy Sonnanstine, and James Shields all had career years last year, so if even a couple of them fall back to earth in 2009 it will mean that the Rays won't make the playoffs. Add to the fact that the competition in the AL East is better in 2009 than it was in 2008, and you've got the Rays being left out when October comes around.

A few quick thoughts on the conclusion of the World Baseball Classic:

• How long will it be before Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish is going to be pitching for a team in the United States?


• Here's a good way to sum up the problem with the team that the United States put together for the WBC: Ted Lilly was the number three starter on the team. If Ted Lilly pitched for the New York Yankees, he wouldn't even be the third best American starting pitcher, never mind in all of baseball. The U.S. can't compete with the rest of the world unless we have our best players on the field.


• Even if the WBC never achieves the recognition that World Cup soccer or Olympic Basketball has, the WBC is still an enjoyable exhibition that I hope sticks around every four years as planned.

A few quick thoughts before the tournament starts:

Usually the team that most people think didn't deserve an at-large bid to be in the tourney ends up winning their first round game. As such, look for Arizona to beat Utah, which also would be a classic 12-5 upset.

As the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament begins, this simple question needs to be asked: what are the highest seeded teams in this year's field? The answer is Louisville, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Connecticut: the teams seeded number one. The teams seeded number 16 are the lowest seeds in the tournament. This may seem as obvious to you as it does to me, but some people, such as tonight's PTI guest Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl, seem to be confused by this. Just because the number 16 itself is mathematically greater than the number 1 does not mean that a 16 seeded team is higher than a team seeded number 1.

Manny Ramirez and Angel Presinal have nothing to do with one another except the fact that I want to comment on two recent Major League Baseball topics in one post.

Angel Presinal is the trainer who has worked with Alex Rodriguez and numerous other Major League ballplayers. After seeing the Sunday March 1, 2009 edition of Outside the Lines on ESPN, I have one question regarding Presinal being banned from clubhouses by Major League Baseball: aren't all personal trainers banned from Major League clubhouses? I couldn't find a definitive answer to that question, but I seem to recall hearing about trainers who were not employed by teams being banned by MLB in regards to Jason Giambi a few years ago. The media insinuates that just because Alex Rodriguez used steroids and worked out with Presinal that therefore all players who work out with Presinal use steroids.

Regarding Manny Ramirez rejecting the Los Angeles Dodgers latest contract offer, the reason for the rejection has nothing to do with his agent Scott Boras playing hardball to get more money. Instead, the reason for the rejection simply has to do with the fact that Manny just doesn't want to go to spring training. Look for Manny to accept the Dodgers offer after he is done playing in the World Baseball Classic.

A warning to the organizers of the World Baseball Classic: if you allow Major League teams to prevent players from competing in the WBC, then the event will be doomed to failure. This comes about from a recent news story that the Tampa Bay Rays are preventing Scott Kazmir from pitching in the WBC. Kazmir wanted to pitch but the team won't let him, citing "concerns about his health and workload." While these are valid concerns, every single team could cite these same concerns about every single player. If this attitude is allowed to prevail, the WBC will turn into an Olympic style competition where minor leaguers play to determine the best national team in the world. The WBC's best hope for success is in drawing fan interest to see the top players in the world play for their home countries, not in seeing the second best players. If Scott Kazmir is one of those players, he should be allowed to pitch no matter what the Rays think.

Can we put to bed this notion that the Super Bowl is usually a boring blowout that doesn’t live up to the hype? I can understand how that attitude came about, when from 1984 to 1995 there were numerous lopsided games. That was 25 to 14 years ago. Since then there have been plenty of close, competitive games that have come down to the wire that should have ended the perception that the game is anti-climactic. The New England Patriots won three Super Bowls in four years by three points each time. Then they lost last year’s Super Bowl to the New York Giants by three points. It’s time to stop expecting the Super Bowl to be dull and to start looking forward to the kind of excitement that this year’s game provided.

Several times in the past three days I have heard something approximating the following said on ESPN: “I don’t think that Duke is the best basketball team in the country but they deserve to be ranked number one.”

I don’t understand this reasoning. In my book, the only reason a team deserves to be ranked number one is if they are the best team, otherwise what is the purpose of the rankings? The statement from above alludes to the fact that the rankings may simply be some way to break ties among power conference teams with the fewest number of losses. Duke, UCONN, Pitt, Oklahoma, and Wake Forest all only have one loss but pollsters think Duke is the best team out of those five. Is North Carolina with two losses better than all five of those other teams? If so, then they would be deserving of the number one ranking.

What has been the NFL team with the worst regular season record to host a conference championship game? I don’t know the answer for certain, but I have a good guess: this season’s Arizona Cardinals with a regular season record of 9-7.

I usually go to the sports book at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas one Sunday a year during NFL football season. I make sure to arrive before 10am local time before the first game of the day starts. On a recent trip, I arrived shortly after 9am and was amazed to find that there was hardly an empty seat in the place.

My first thought as to why it was so busy was that there must have been an NFL game that had started earlier than scheduled. My second thought was that I had incorrectly set my watch to the local time in Vegas and that the games had started already. Neither of those thoughts were correct.

Another effect of the unfairness of NFL divisions and playoff eligibility, which I wrote about yesterday, is to expose the double standard that the sports media applies to the NFL as opposed to other sports.

College football uses a system that is broken to determine its national champion. The entire sports media gets all up in arms every year at this time to go out if their way to tell the public just how messed up the system is. But not a single critical word is uttered in the national media regarding how unfair the NFL divisional format is. In fact, on today’s episode of The Sports Reporters, Howard Bryant’s parting shot was an attempt to justify the NFL’s misguided playoff eligibility. After stating in an earlier segment that “a monkey playing cymbals can make the playoffs in the NFL once every five years. The rules are set up to do this,” Bryant argued that the 11-5 Patriots had no right to complain about not making the playoffs because they had a weak schedule and had only defeated one playoff team. Hello Mr. Bryant, the 8-8 Chargers beat zero playoff teams during the regular season!

This just goes to show that while members of the media are quick to ridicule various aspects of sports, the NFL is treated as some sort of sacred cow that gets a free pass from the media. Steroids in baseball? Outrage is cried by the media. Players are stained for life by the media. Steroids in the NFL? The media reports it then ignores it. When is the media going to wake up from its love affair with the NFL to see that it has just as many flaws as other sports.

This weekend’s NFL Wild Card playoff games feature something interesting about the matchups: all four home teams are underdogs. This means that most people think that all four of the Wild Card teams are better than the division winners they are playing. This situation is further proof that the existence of divisions are unnecessary and counterintuitive to the goals of a playoff. The goal of a playoff is to pit the top teams against each other to determine who is the champion of the season. So explain to me why the 8-8 San Diego Chargers deserve to compete for the championship while the 11-5 New England Patriots aren’t good enough to compete for the Super Bowl? The Patriots, Jets, Cowboys, and Buccaneers each have records better than the Chargers this season. The Broncos, Texans, Redskins, and Saints all have the same record as the Chargers this season. That puts the Chargers somewhere between the 16th and 20th team ranked by regular season record. By regular season record, the Patriots rank tied for 7th.

I’m not a Patriots fan, so I’m not arguing that “my team was robbed.” I’m a sports fan arguing for fairness when it comes to determining eligibility for the postseason. The existence of divisions makes the playing field unequal when it is possible to have an 8-8 team in the playoffs and an 11-5 team not in the playoffs.

The recent big name free agents that the New York Yankees have signed may at first seem like a huge increase in payroll. But what I have not seen mentioned or analyzed is the fact that the Yankees are really just replacing big contracts of outgoing free agents rather than adding significantly to their payroll.

I realize that the title of this website is not “Penn references on PTI,” but I can’t refrain from pointing out yet another one. Tonight’s episode featured a segment about Brandon Jennings, a basketball player who decided to play professionally in Europe rather than attend college in the United States. Tony Kornheiser noted that Jennings is behind other guards on the depth chart, including former University of Pennsylvania player Ibby Jaaber. A quick search on Wikipedia reveals that former Penn star Jerome Allen also once played for the team that Jaaber currently plays for, Lottomatica Roma in Italy.

Where was "the greatest clutch hitter of all time" when the Red Sox needed him the most this year? David Ortiz hit a paltry .186 and had an OPS of .676 this post-season. In 2002 Ortiz hit .276 with zero home runs and an OPS of .655 in the post-season. In 2003 Ortiz hit .191 with an OPS of .645 in the post-season. How are any of those numbers "clutch?"

On the Monday October 13, 2008 edition of Pardon The Interruption (PTI), host Tony Kornheiser wore a University of Pennsylvania baseball cap during the entire show. Kornheiser's son, Michael, is a student at Penn and competes on the school's golf team.

No matter how many little two second “snippets” of banter between the hosts that they add during commercials of Pardon The Interruption (PTI), I am still going to skip over the commercials (and the snippets) when I watch the show on my DVR.

On last night’s edition of Baseball Tonight, Buster Olney and Eduardo Perez both hit the nail on the head as to why the Tampa Bay Rays struggle to attract fans to attend their home games despite the team being in first place. Buster Olney summed it up by saying that playing four good months of baseball does not make up for ten bad years.

I enjoy watching the annual Major League Baseball Home Run Derby the night before the All-Star Game, but there are two things that usually come up regarding the players who compete in it that I am tired of hearing about. First is that competing in the derby ruins a player’s swing. Professional golfers need to be able to hit a driver and a 9 iron and that’s much more of a dramatic difference in a golfer’s swing than one night of a baseball player aiming for the fences. The second thing I am tired of hearing about is that the winner of the derby is jinxed and will not have good power numbers for the remainder of the season. Players get hot, players get cold. It has absolutely nothing to do with winning the home run derby.

The above headline comes from an article in Monday’s Baltimore Sun which highlights the Baltimore Orioles current promotion for today’s game against the Texas Rangers. "If the Orioles defeat the Rangers Sunday, the ‘We Win, You Win’ promotion will reward fans with a complimentary ticket in the same seating category to any future non-prime game." The reason for this promotion is because the O’s have a record of 1 win and 12 losses this season on Sundays. But I wonder if the promotion would draw more fans if instead of rewarding the fans for a win if it served as sort of a money back guarantee, meaning if the O’s lose then each fan in attendance would get to go to another game as sort of a refund for having to suffer yet another loss.

On Pardon The Interruption, what seems to be an annual vacation during the month of July for hosts Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon appears to have begun this week, starting today June 30. While there is no official word that the two regular hosts usually take most of the month of July off, I’d be surprised to see them together again for another four or five weeks. I hope that Bob Ryan can continue to fill in and that they don’t have to resort to using Patrick McEnroe like they did last year.

In case you hadn't noticed, the Cincinnati Reds called up top prospect Jay Bruce from the minor leagues last Tuesday. In the 7 days he's been in the big leagues, Bruce has only gone 15 for 25 with three homers, seven RBIs, and six walks. That gives him a batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage of .577/.667/1.038. That's a slugging percentage of 1.038, not an OPS. That gives him an OPS of 1.705. All that adds up to one of the best debut weeks that I have ever seen in Major League Baseball.

I may be a week late with this, but I can’t just dismiss the disparity among the regular season records of the teams in this year’s NBA playoffs. The NBA playoffs are a 16 team tournament to decide the championship. Teams play 82 games in the regular season to determine which 16 teams get the chance to compete for the championship. This year, the NBA has determined that the Atlanta Hawks, with a record of 37-45, have earned the right to compete for the championship while the Golden State Warriors, with a record of 48-34, did not win enough games to compete for the championship.

In my recent Major League Baseball preview of the National League Central division, my only comment regarding the Pittsburgh Pirates was the following:

"Do they still play baseball in Pittsburgh?"

Wrapping up my Major League Baseball season preview by division, here are the AL East teams listed in order of predicted finish. While I admit it is not easy for me to be objective about the AL East, I’ll give it my best shot.

Boston Red Sox. It pains me to say so, but the Red Sox have done everything right over the past four plus years to build a championship contending team. It pains me so much to say that previous sentence that I can’t say any more about this team.

Continuing my Major League Baseball season preview by division, here are the AL Central teams listed in order of predicted finish.

Detroit Tigers. Let’s get this out of the way first. The Detroit Tigers are not going to score 1,000 run this season. Every year during the pre-season, baseball writers, analysts, and fans anoint a team as being the one that will score 1,000 runs during the upcoming season. The Yankee teams of recent years have been perennial favorites to score 1,000 runs. But guess what? Even in these days of record breaking individual offensive production, only one team in the past 57 years has scored 1,000 runs: the 1999 Cleveland Indians. And while the 2008 Tigers are good enough to win their division, they won’t be scoring 1,000 runs this year.

Continuing my Major League Baseball season preview by division, here are the AL West teams listed in order of predicted finish.

Seattle Mariners. Despite being the Arizona Diamondbacks of the American League in 2007 (having given up more runs than they scored), the Mariners look like a real contender in the division. Yes, their lineup is aging, but the pitching is solid, with the addition of Eric Bedard being just what they need to compliment Felix Hernandez and a good bullpen.

Continuing my Major League Baseball season preview by division, here are the NL West teams listed in order of predicted finish.

Arizona Diamondbacks. As usual, the NL West looks to be a very tight race, with any of four teams being able to win the division. You would expect that a team which significantly outperformed their Pythagorean record last year to have a fall back the following year, but the Diamondbacks went out and improved. Dan Haren gives this team two Cy Young contenders, along with Brandon Webb. Chris Young and Stephen Drew are a year older and now should be able to provide some much needed spark in a lineup that was lacking in runs last year.

We are living in a golden age of baseball writing, as evidenced by all of the enjoyable, thought-provoking and engaging content being written about all aspects of the game in many different media (books, newspapers, and the internet). The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2008 is yet another example of this high quality writing in what is already a crowded market for baseball books.

Continuing my Major League Baseball season preview by division, here are the NL Central teams listed in order of predicted finish.

Chicago Cubs. Kosuke Fukudome will round out this team quite nicely. The pitching staff is nothing special but is deep enough and good enough to lead the Cubs to the division title.

Part one of my Major League Baseball season preview by division begins with the NL East. Teams are listed in order of predicted finish.

New York Mets. The Mets have a lot of question marks for a team predicted to win their division. Can you really expect to get much production out of Pedro Martinez and El Duque in the starting rotation? Can Oliver Perez and John Maine have the consistency they’ve lacked in the past? Besides Billy Wagner, who is going to solidify the bullpen? Does their high priced, aging lineup have enough left in the tank? David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Johan Santana are bona fide stars, but the Mets are going to need production from other guys as well. The one thing the Mets have going for them is that the NL East is a relatively weak division.

I didn’t watch all of the congressional hearing yesterday involving Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee, but I saw the nearly half-hour of highlights on SportsCenter. The biggest thing that now strikes me is the fact that it might be possible that both men are telling the truth as they believe it. I don’t necessarily believe that, but I have to admit it is a possibility. Clemens admits that McNamee injected him on multiple occasions. The disagreement is about what the substances in those injections were. McNamee says it was HGH and winstrol, Clemens says it was B12 and lidocaine.

With lots of sports recent sports topics to cover, here are some quick thoughts from the New York perspective.

The New York NBC TV affiliate (WNBC 4) has shown a clip or soundbite of a Giants player interview every single day since the end of the conference championship games a week and a half ago during the local news. I don't know if NBC gets exclusive access to the players or if the team gives special treatment to the local media. But what it amounts to is media day every day. The blurbs shown on the local news do not seem to be old or stale, and are presented as either the same day or previous day's comments (in the case of the morning news). This morning, one clip was a reporter asking "Jeff Feagles, how does it feel to have stepped off the plane in Arizona knowing that you are going to your first Super Bowl in your 20 year career?" So what purpose does today's Media Day serve when the media seems to have daily access to these players? One indication that Media Day servers no purpose at all is that the majority of news coverage that results from Media Day is not about the players but rather about the media itself, with today's most notable story coming out of Media Day being a wedding proposal to Tom Brady.

Is anyone else tired of seeing that robot that Fox puts in the corner of the screen throughout their entire football coverage each Sunday? Well if you aren’t tired of seeing that robot, he can now be yours for only $19.95 from Foamheads!

You (almost) heard it hear first: Joe Gibbs resigned this morning as head coach of the Redskins. I'll leave it to the locals to heap the praise upon him, but for me I'll just say that a record of 31-36 in his second stint as head coach doesn't exactly impress me. Three Super Bowl victories in his first stint does impress me.

OK, which one of you guys sent the email to PTI today saying that Joe Gibbs should be coach of the year in the NFL? I don't buy the argument that the expectations going into the season were low for the Redskins. Playing in what is clearly the weaker conference, with a coach who is already in the hall of fame and an owner willing to spend tons of money on players, the Skins should be competitive every single year. Yet all they could muster this season was a 9-7 record. The Cleveland Browns finished the year with a better record than the Skins but are not even in the playoffs. Being the coach of the 13th best team in the NFL doesn't qualify you for coach of the year.

Now that the New England Patriots have gone 16-0, why do we even need to have a playoff this season in the NFL? The Pats have already proven beyond any doubt that they are the best team in the NFL this season, and they have even proven it to people such as myself who don’t even like them as a team. During the regular season the Pats have beaten the best team in the NFC (Cowboys) and all three of the other division winners in the AFC (Colts, Steelers, and Chargers). So what purpose does even playing the playoff games serve?

These players that Oakland got from the Diamondback in exchange for Dan Haren had better be some good prospects. Otherwise, why trade away the AL All-Star game starter when he still has three years left on his contract for an average of less than $5.5 million a year? If this was Haren’s last year under contract and would be a free agent in 2008, then I could understand the trade. But Haren won’t be a free agent until 2010 so why wouldn’t Billy Beane keep him for two more years?

To the fans: just because the mainstream media chose to ignore the allegations against Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte does not mean it is surprising that they were named in the Mitchell Report. Clemens and Pettitte were named by Jason Grimsley in a federal investigation according to an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on September 30, 2006. I’d cite the article, but the LA Times has archived it to their paid/subscription section.

I rather disagree with the media and the Falcons reaction to Bobby Petrino resigning as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons yesterday. We live in a free country. One of our rights is the ability to make a decision about our employment.

Is there anything that the sports media makes a bigger fuss over nothing about than a guarantee of victory from a player? Is it really so bold for a player to say that he thinks his team will win a game? If the players don't have the confidence and belief in their mind that they can win a game then they have already lost. So why does the media make such a big deal about it when a player expresses this confidence publicly? Does the other team really believe that it is disrespectful to think that their opponents believe they will win, or does the media simply want them to believe that in order to drum up a story for the pre-game coverage?