No more Yankees

Attention networks: I shall no longer watch a baseball game on TV if the Yankees are playing. I am sick of Jeter and Rivera and A-Rod and Tiexeira and Pettite.
I don't care if Chen Ming Wong is struggling and getting pounded every night. I don't care if Joba Chamberlain is a starter or a reliever. I don't care who is playing in center field.
I am sick of seeing the Yankees play in meaningless games. I am sick of MLB Network cutting to Yankees games when the evil empire are ahead 12-2 just to we can see Philip Hughes walk somebody.
So, dear Mr. Nielsen, please sign me up to do your television ratings, because I'll put reruns of "The Gong Show" and Anna Nichole Smith's reality show ahead of any game involving the Yankees.

Jon - Kate = ?

After watching bits and pieces of the new season of "Jon and kate Plus Eight," I feel very little sympathy toward Kate.
There's something that really bothers me about someone who allows a film crew into her home to film the intimate details of her family life, but complains about how rotten the "paparazzi" are for taking pictures of her at the grocery store.
During this scene, by the way, her camera crew was taking footage of her entering, shopping at, and leaving the grocery store.
Fundamental lesson from TV: Ya don't want the vampire in your house, don't invite him in.
Lesson number two: Ya don't wanna be famous, don't sign up for your own reality TV show.

Eric Wedge is ...

I'd like to make a site that looks just like this one, except the cations would read, "Eric Wedge is still managing the Indians."

How much longer?

How much longer will I have to stay near the computer and check various sports Web sites until I see that Indians Manager Eric Wedge has finally been fired?

Perusing the Baseball Encyclopedia ...

... which I got a two-year-old version of for a mere $7 at Barnes and Noble, I found an interesting stat from the 1948 Indians.
That team's pitching was really, really good. The league average ERA was 4.72. Theirs was 3.22. Their nearest team, the Yankees, had an ERA of 3.75.
The team threw 26 shutouts. The nearest team to them, the Yankees again, threw 16.
They gave up 567 runs. The nearest team to them gave up 633.
Bob Lemon and Gene Bearden were among the top ten in just about every pitching category.
The team had six hall of famers, including Bob Feller and Satchel Paige, who was signed in the middle of the season.
With all the pitching, the team finished in a dead heat with Boston at the end of the year.
To get to that playoff game, the Indians fought all the way to the end with Boston and New York.
Down the stretch, Paige went 6-1. He pitched in 21 games, seven of them starts. Of his seven starts, he threw three complete games and two shutouts.
This wasn't even Paige in his prime. Baseball-Reference.com lists him as 41 that year. Nobody really knows his age. As I recall, even he and his mother never got the story straight.
Anyway, here's the point: Isn't Paige one of the greatest mid-season pick-ups ever? Because the standings were so tight, the team could easily have finished in second or third place by losing just one or two more games. Without Paige's contribution, who knows what would have happened?

(A side note: I'd highly recommend reading Paige's autobiography, "Maybe I'll Pitch Forever." It's one of the first baseball books I remember reading.)

This blog is G-Rated

Is this good or bad?

Maybe he woulda'

An e-mail from last week:
Something is upside down in baseball when Russell Branyan is batting second (and over .300), for the Mariners.
-- Jim

Here are his 2009 and career numbers as of today:
Team G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB K SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
2009 SEA 53 189 35 60 14 0 14 29 29 57 2 0 .317 .413 .614 1.026
Career 819 2189 318 520 110 7 147 349 310 854 13 4 .238 .335 .496 .831

I wonder, had Branyan been given a chance to play every day for a few years early in his career, if he would be the same kind of player as Adam Dunn -- able to hit 40 home runs and draw a good number of walks every year.

(Edited to add the following)
Dunn's career:
G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB K SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
Career 1191 4080 730 1010 209 8 295 717 847 1319 59 20 .248 .382 .520 .902

Dunn looks a little better, but he had the advantage of playing regularly from the start of his career. He also probably walks more than Branyan would have.

(Resume original post.)

Here is Branyan's list of most similar players, as calculated by similarity score from Baseball-Reference.com. You'll note that Dunn is not on the list.
Craig Wilson (914)
Bo Jackson (912)
Nick Swisher (911)
Ken Phelps (911)
Phil Plantier (909)
Willie Greene (908)
Don Lock (900)
Eric Anthony (897)
Morgan Ensberg (892)
Bubba Trammell (891)

For what its worth, here's Dunn's list:
Pat Burrell (892)
Gorman Thomas (876)
Hank Sauer (872)
Pete Incaviglia (869)
Kevin Mitchell (869)
Jesse Barfield (869)
Wally Post (868)
Gus Zernial (866)
Cliff Johnson (864)
J.D. Drew (856)

I bet those lists would have a lot more in common had Branyan been with an organization early in his career that was desperate for home runs.
I was surprised not to see Jack Cust in there somewhere. But, Cust got an opportunity to play every day for the past few years. Branyan has remained mostly a part-timer.
For fun, here's Cust's list. Still seems like the same general type of player. I am surprised that Branyan and Cust don't show up on each other's lists.
Jonny Gomes (954)
Sam Horn (952)
Jason Lane (944)
Jon Nunnally (942)
Melvin Nieves (939)
Marcus Thames (937)
Chris Duncan (934)
Mike Simms (934)
Brant Brown (932)
Chuck Essegian (932)

Serial cereal blogging

Star Trek cereal tastes like it was developed to feed Hortas.

Paul Rivoche's are is Spirit-ed

This came out Wednesday. You should buy this too, if only yo encourage Paul Rivoche to draw more comics.
Judging by what I have seen in the online previews at his site, DC should just hire him to draw "The Spirit" in perpetuity.
I'll bet the late Will Eisner smiles at every page.

Don't drive angry ... don't drive angry!

Do you think FX's network schedulers appreciate the irony when they show the movie "Groundhog Day" every day for what seems like a month?

Batman and Robin together again

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely may have done the best Superman book in years when they did "All Star Superman." It's Batman companion, "All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder," by Frank Miler and Jim Lee, well, wasn't the best Batman book in years.
(In fact, it was recently collected in a hardcover edition, leading me to wonder who would pay $25 for that? It's one of the few times I didn't think Frank Miller did not live up to his past accomplishments. Ignore the hyped advertising copy on that link. If you are really interested, wait for the paperback to show up at a used bookstore. You'll almost get what you pay for. Seriously, though, there were a few good moments in the book. But overall, it wasn't what I hoped for. It also failed repeatedly to ship on time and there were huge breaks between issues.)
So, Morison and Quitely have taken their chop on the Dynamic Duo, "Batman and Robin." That link also has a few gorgeous preview pages for you to look at.
I am going to buy it tomorrow.
If it's half as good as the Superman version, you probably should, too.

Whom the blog polls

I'd just like to note I got more votes than usual on this past week's polls. I still need more voters. Recruit for me, people, recruit!
Y'all were really rough on Jay Leno and Jon and Kate, dontcha think?
Well, maybe not so much Jon and Kate. But Leno doesn't deserve that kind of hostility. I mean, really, replaced by yet another "Law and Order?"

They keep bailing, but can they fix the hole in the bottom of the boat

Here's a story that describes the effects of the near demise of the auto industry. It gives you a sense of just how many people are affected as the big three, especially Chrysler and GM, have gone through their big contraction.
I don't want the government running big businesses more than anybody else. I have often joked that the government is incapable of many of the conspiracies some people level against it because it can't even correctly administer the military's student loan repayment program.
That said, a complete failure of one of the country's auto giants would affect far more than the people directly employed by the factories. I think this is instinctively comprehended by people in places like Ohio and Indiana, where so many other businesses depend on the auto industry not only to employ their people, but also to buy things from other factories, as they used to say, if Detroit sneezed Ohio caught a cold.
Here's where it gets even more complicated: There are suppliers to the "big three," and suppliers to the suppliers, and companies who make parts for the suppliers to the suppliers, and companies who make machines who make parts for the suppliers to the suppliers and ... I could go on, but you get the idea. I didn't even mention the dealerships scattered across the country, and the parts stores that sell parts to their service departments. Those examples stay within the auto businesses.
Dare I continue?
Then, you have the communities losing tax revenue and laying off employees. Then, United Ways and other charitable organizations lose contributions that allow them to help the people who lost their jobs. Eventually, even the United Way people lose their jobs because there's no money to pay them.
That's the sort of thing the story tells us about.
Should the government bail out private industry? I don't know. I hope the government bailouts can stave off the worst of the effects, and the taxpayers can recoup some of the money we have invested.
I think it's hard for an elected official to do nothing, even when many people say they want to let GM and Chrysler fail. That may be even worse then watching Congress negotiate a new contract with the UAW. (Now that I think of it, those hearings might be really fun!)
For many years, the corporations and their workers paid taxes to keep the government running. With this program, it's just the opposite.
I admire the leadership at Ford for finding a way to negotiate the tough times without begging for bailout money. I suspect it will probably emerge from this mess the strongest of the three companies, if only because they won't have to repay some eleventy-billion dollars in loans.
(Now that I have wasted all these words saying the same things as the story to which I linked said much more eloquently, go read it!)