When the Tigers completed their sweep of the Yankees in the Bronx last week, it completed a 12-5 stretch that made Detroit's 2-10 start seem like nothing but an injury-plagued fluke. Since then, the Tigers have gone 1-6 against the Twins and Red Sox, throwing things into doubt once again. Since leaving New York, the Tigers have scored just 3.14 runs per game, with 10 of the 22 runs they've scored over that stretch coming in their lone win on Wednesday. In the other six games, they've averaged just two runs per game.

Much like the Indians, who reacted to an offense not living up to expectations by punting a veteran platoon outfielder in favor of a rookie and dropping their aging DH to sixth in the order, the Tigers have responded to their own offense's underperformance by releasing Jacque Jones, calling up 23-year-old lefty-hitting rookie outfielder Matthew Joyce (.299/.367/.536 with five homers at triple-A Toledo before his promotion), and dropping Gary Sheffield (.202/.366/.315 thus far) to sixth in the order (though, curiously, they've also made Sheffield their left fielder).

It won't do them any good. Even if the Tigers got their offense up to last year's level, it wouldn't be enough to out-slug the performance of their pitching staff, which is allowing 5.53 runs per game, the second highest mark in the majors. Taking the season as a whole, the Tigers have actually had the third-best offense in the AL, but they've still been outscored by 27 runs.

Of course, in three games last week, the Tigers outscored the Yankees 20-10. The Yanks will face the same three Tiger starters this weekend in Detroit that they faced last year in the Bronx. What's different is who the Tigers will face, starting with Kei Igawa tonight and Darrell Rasner tomorrow.

Assuming Ian Kennedy's second triple-A start goes even half as well as his first, Kennedy will likely return to reclaim one of those two rotation spots when his subsequent turn comes due. That means Igawa and Rasner are competing to be the man who occupies Phil Hughes' spot in the rotation until Hughes is able to return from his fractured rib. Rasner already has the lead in that race as he was sharp in his season debut against the Mariners last Sunday.

In parts of four seasons now, Rasner has never posted a major league ERA worse than league average and has a solid 4.01 mark (110 ERA+) in 58 1/3 career innings along with a respectable 1.23 WHIP and 2:1 K/BB ratio.

Igawa's another story entirely. In 67 2/3 innings last year, Igawa posted a 6.25 ERA (72 ERA+), 1.67 WHIP, and a limp 1.43 K/BB while allowing a Farnsworthy two homers per nine innings. Worse yet, there were no encouraging streaks during his season. Igawa posted a 7.63 ERA in six outings (five starts plus his six innings of relief following Jeff Karstens' broken leg) before being demoted in early May. After working with organizational pitching guru Nardi Contreras, Igawa returned to the major league rotation in late June and put up a 5.97 ERA over six more starts. After being banished to the minors a second time he reappeared at the end of September to pitch 5 1/3 scoreless innings, but walked five against just two strikeouts along the way.

Here are Igawa's triple-A rates from amid those ugly major league stints along with his triple-A line thus far this year:

2007: 3.69 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 9.35 K/9, 1.98 BB/9, 4.73 K/BB, 1.32 HR/9
2008: 3.86 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 9.08 K/9, 2.72 BB/9, 3.33 K/BB, 0.68 HR/9

Igawa's triple-A homers are down, but his walks are up. Otherwise, there's very little meaningful change between those two lines, and thus, it would seem, very little reason to expect Igawa's major league performance to differ from what he did last year. To lower expectations even further, Igawa gave up eight runs and walked six in his last 12 innings for Scranton. Igawa is a Three True Outcome pitcher in that he clutters his pitching line with walks, homers, and strikeouts. The heavily right-handed Tigers, whom the left-handed Igawa did not face last year, tend to do those things a lot as well.

Come back Ian Kennedy, all is forgiven!

Continue reading...

In case you might have missed it, during a recent downturn some White Sox player(s) took slump busting to a different level. They put a couple of blow-up dolls in their visiting clubhouse in Toronto. Well, it was no big deal to the beat writers from Chicago, as they realize that it was a pretty harmless joke. I mean as long as Bobby Jenks didn't jump on one, who was it going to hurt?

Well, it was newsworthy to the Toronto media and then became an issue for the Chicago Sun-Times. If you don't live in the Windy City, you are probably unaware of the bad blood between the paper and the Sox. Most of this stems from douchebag columnist Jay Mariotti. Mariotti is a person so vile that even Will Leitch and Buzz Bissinger could agree that he's a hack. Now I appreciate edgy writers who are willing to be contrarians, as I think it helps push the dialogue on issues in a different way. This is rarely what Mariotti does,though, as his general stance in putting together his column is who can I slam for the day, if they deserve it or not.

Mariotti seems to have a specific vendetta against all things owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, with the White Sox his favorite targets. Considering that Ozzie Guillen is the manager, this is a pretty easy mark, as Guillen is always offering up something to comment on. Most of the writers in Chicago realize that Ozzie is a fountain of copy. They also realize that he is a fun-loving guy, who grew up in a locker room, not an Ivy-League, human sensitivity lab. I would agree that Guillen crosses the line of good taste sometimes, but in a world where corporate interests generally determine that all public comment must be sanitized, it's refreshing to my ears to hear a guy who is willing to not just tip-toe up to the edge, but leap over it at times.

Located in Mariotti's latest commentary on Guillen included this comment. (I won't even link this garbage, as if you want to find it, go ahead and do it on your own time.)

I'm just wondering how he's still employed. If this was bad standup comedy, I'd understand why a trashy nightclub might hire him to humor drunks for $5.50 an hour.

Just another hack effort by Mariotti, throwing my profession under the CTA. I'm not about to claim that what I do for a living is on the level of being a doctor in a Children's Hospital, but I do know my trashy comedy leaves people with a lot better feeling than the one they get after finishing a Mariotti column---you know, having the need to scrub themselves down like a rookie porn star after doing her first scene with Ron Jeremy.

Even the worst standup comics, who as a group I generally don't defend, at least have to do one thing that Mariotti never does. They have to face their audience. This is the beef that many of his critics, and fellow journalists hate the most about the guy. Mariotti spends most of his time hidden away in his dirt-filled coffin, sticking his fangs in whatever victim he can suck the most blood out of---only leaving his lair occasionally to convalesce with the other vampires which appear on ESPN's Around the Horn.

The one up-shot that has happened from the dreaded blow-up doll event is that others in the media have put it in perspective. It has even created a fun little newspaper war of words, as some on the Tribune staff have called out the Sun-Times for their hypocrisy. My favorite was written by the Trib's Mike Downey. This is the beginning of his column.

• Naked Dancers: Peep Show, $20 for 1/2 Hour"

• X-Treme Body Massages with 'Hotties' "

• Hot, Wild, Fun—Blonde or Brunette?"

— Ads that ran in Wednesday's sports section of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Awwww, isn't it sweet of the Sun-Times to go to bat against Ozzie Guillen's bad language and the sexism of the White Sox?

It reminds me a little of the glory days when the greatest newspaper columnist I ever read, Mike Royko, would rail against the Trib and then the Sun-Times (after he switched sides). Newspapers are in a tough business climate. The best way they can stay relevant is to mix the hard news reporting that is so vital to our Republic, with opinion writers who are willing to push their readers with edgy content. It is a fine-line that the best columnists are able to deliver.

The buffoonish work of Mariotti might sell some papers, but I think hurts the paper's credibility with their readers. The bigger problem is Mariotti-types create dissension among his fellow employees, bringing a bad working atmosphere. While Mariotti's merits can be debated, he would seem to be a clubhouse cancer on the level of a Terrell Owens. It is a wicked irony that Mariotti is the newspaper writer version of the athletes he most attacks from his ivory tower.

Is it just me that sees the problem with Mariotti ripping the White Sox for creating some comedic relief from installing a couple blow-up dolls? Think about it. Mariotti and blow-up dolls have so much in common. The 2 biggest similarities they have are that they are  substitutes for the real thing and they both are filled with hot air.

Has anyone else noticed how this downturn has manifested itself? Allow me to illustrate:

WAS GM 1 - Loss
WAS GM 2 - Win
WAS GM 3 - Loss
MIL GM 1 - Loss
MIL GM 2 - Win
MIL GM 3 - Loss
STL GM 1 - Loss
STL GM 2 - Win
STL GM 3 - Loss
CIN GM 1 - Loss
CIN GM 2 - Win
CIN GM 3 - Loss

That's right, folks, the Cubs are currently in a pattern where they infallibly win the middle game in a series, while equally infallibly dropping the other two. The good news is, they don't get swept. The bad news is, if you win at a .333 clip long enough, the good news becomes moot.

Obviously, nothing good can happen relative to the season as a whole until they break that pattern. Naturally, they have to try doing that today against the best team in the Majors. Of course, if they can manage such a trick - in a positive way, I mean, realizing that getting broomified would also count as pattern alteration - it would, at least seemingly, have a lot more meaning than doing so in, say, the coming Pirates series. That said, remember that the sweep of the Mets was supposed to prove something, and this stretch of horror is what immediately followed.

Really, all I want are some wins, and some good play to build on. My schedule's clear. What say we do it now?

Today is the 92nd anniversary of the walkingest game in major league history. At Shibe Park, the Tigers and Athletics got together for a game where pitches missed the strike zone at a record rate. Just how many walks were there in the game? You'll have to read after the jump.

Continue reading...

                                                          Golf Road
                                                       Chapter Three
                                             (continued from Brad Ausmus)

There wasn’t a lot to do in my town. You waited for winter to end. When spring came you walked half a mile down Route 14 to the general store to buy a couple packs of baseball cards. A few days later you did it again. The years went by. I stopped buying baseball cards. Instead, I extended my walk just beyond the general store, to the road that branched off Route 14 and led up out of the valley. My brother had showed me what to do. You stand there and when a car comes along you stick out your thumb. Maybe they stop, probably not. Very few cars come along.

                                                       * * *

In 2003, I found myself getting excited when the Red Sox picked up Byung-Hyun Kim. He’d authored two horrific collapses in the 2001 World Series. Few if any players had ever failed as spectacularly or as publicly as he had. In the moments after that double-collapse, he’d seemed broken, a ghost of a man. But the following year he’d bounced back to save 36 games, with 92 strikeouts in 84 innings. And he was still only 24. Most of all, he still threw a hundred miles an hour. I tried to ignore the image of the ghost of a man and focused on imagining Byung-Hyun Kim to be exactly what my favorite team had always lacked. In this life you learn to gnaw on the spent, faintly narcotic cud of hope. Sometimes it numbs the pain of waiting.

                                                       * * *

Once, while I waited for a ride up out of my town, a pickup truck turned off of Route 14 and zoomed past my upraised thumb.

“Get a car!” the driver yelled. As the pickup disappeared the horn sounded. Like the General Lee, it had been rigged to play Dixie.

I’ve never really put that moment behind me.

                                                       * * *

Kim had switched to the starting rotation at the beginning of 2003 with Arizona, and for his first month with the Red Sox he remained a starter, but in July he moved into the closer’s role, which had been Boston’s biggest weakness that year. In fact, it had been Boston’s biggest weakness for most of their existence, ineptitude in that area a perfect Schiraldi-faced symbol of their long history of repeatedly getting close to winning it all only to blow it at the end. In half a season as the closer, Kim saved 16 games, but he started looking shaky near the end of the season. His shoulder was bothering him, but his inability to get the ball over the plate seemed to the fans, and to his manager (who started yanking him at the first sign of trouble), to be signs of cowardice, the pressure of the looming postseason causing him to wilt. In his one brief appearance in the playoffs, at a game in Oakland, his ineffectiveness contributed to a Red Sox loss. The next game, back in Boston, the fans showed their disappointment during pregame introductions. It wasn’t fair, but it seemed to the fans that a guy who could throw harder than all but a few human beings who ever lived didn’t have the stomach to throw strikes. So the boos rained down on the 24-year-old far from his home. What would you have done in that moment if you were him?

                                                       * * *

I wait on Golf Road, holding the damaged nest of baseball cards against to my chest. Minutes ago what was trash is now the newest addition to my most prized possession. Cars fly by. There’s always a small part of me braced for one of the drivers to yell something at me, to mock me for being carless. For once I don’t care. I found a bunch of ripped baseball cards. I feel rich. I feel lucky. If anybody said anything I’d just laugh. But the problem is that on Golf Road nobody says anything. The sound of traffic is like the roar of some foreign tongue you'll never be able to learn. Even so, the message is clear: You don't belong. You’ll never belong.

(to be continued)

Had an interesting experience at the ballpark today--it felt more like watching a game in Little League instead of Major League Baseball. Not because the play was bad, but because I happened to sit next to the aunt of Orioles' starting pitcher Jeremy Guthrie. That's her boy right here:

Guthrie's aunt was one of those kindly old ladies who loves you no matter what, and everything you do is great, because you're trying your best. Her cheering, complete with anachronistic shouts of "Yay!" and "Yahoo!" and "Hooray!", was so charmingly optimistic--"C'mon Jer, you can do it, I know you can!", I began to fall under her spell. After about three or four innings, I had somehow come to believe that the worst possible outcome of this game would not be a loss for either team, but that Jeremy Guthrie might somehow end up with his feelings hurt.

So when Kurt Suzuki blasted this two-run homer, I didn't really have the heart to cheer very much:

Poor Jer. He must have felt so bad. Guthrie was on the hook for the loss until Andrew Brown entered the game in the eighth inning, and proceeded to give up twenty-nine consecutive grounders in the hole between Daric Barton and Mark Ellis. I'm sure Andrew Brown felt bad about turning a two-run lead into a 5-4 deficit, and perhaps even worse when walking off the mound to a round of boos. Aunt Guthrie was appalled. "That's just terrible, booing a player like that. I'm sure he was doing his best."

Brown got off the hook for the loss in the bottom of the eighth, when the A's tied the score, thanks to a brilliant takeout slide by Jack Hannahan. Frank Thomas was pinch-hitting with the bases loaded and one out, and hit a slow grounder to short. Most batters would beat out the relay throw, but Thomas is so slow, there was a high risk of an inning-ending double play. But Hannahan just obliterated Brian Roberts, who had no chance at making a throw to first to double up Thomas. It reminded me of the collision between Randy Johnson's fastball and the dove. Roberts simply disappeared, so much so that I don't even have a photo of it. One of the best slides I've ever seen, and the game-tying run scored.

So the game went into extra innings, which is a happy result, because nobody can feel too bad about losing in extra innings, right? You both tried your best, and played well, and somebody had to get lucky and win. In this case, it was Mark Ellis who got lucky and won, with a home run that just barely glanced off the foul pole.

Yay! And now, the A's are once again tied for the best record in the American League. The fellows on this A's team are really good boys, they really are. Hooray for them! Yippee!

After I returned home from the game last night, I was all worked up to write an angry post about the cheap owners, the terrible starters, and the possibility of a 100-loss season. I even wrote the first paragraph, which I won't repeat here. But then I thought better of it. I thought that (if you'll excuse me) if my bad attitude was starting to wear thin even on me, it might be old news to readers as well. So I figured I'd sleep on it and see where things stood in the morning. (Sadly, with the major league schedule now completed for the evening, the record incontrovertibly shows the Rockies tied for the worst record in major league baseball. But we're trying to be uplifting here!)

So instead of writing a vitriolic "Cardinals 6, Rockies 5" blog entry, I went to finish all of the chores I had put aside to go to the baseball game. I cleaned the cat bin. I emptied the dishwasher. I did the laundry (including the Curt Flood jersey I wore to the game in protest). Then I decided to have a glass of lemonade, listen to Wilco's exemplary Sky Blue Sky, and finish this weighty history of the Ottoman Empire I've been trudging through for the past few weeks.

While I was stirring the frozen lemonade concentrate into a pitcher of water, I noticed that the back of the new shelf I bought to house my ever-expanding record collection, which perches on the kitchen counter due to single-bedroom space requirements, looked kind of bare and unpleasant. I thought it might be nice to brighten it up with some magazine clippings, and the first thing my eye caught over across in the stack on the far side of the counter was the monthly Rockies magazine.

The magazine also doubles as the program they sell at games, so there's always full-page pictures of everybody notable on the roster. Jeff Francis and Troy Tulowitzki have been on my fridge for a while. (I must digress to note that the issue in question, May 2008, has Manny Corpas, the "Eye of the Storm," on the cover, and also introduces a "Tulo and Nix" feature that I suppose will not be appearing again for some time.) Who's the next guy that leaps to mind that I need represented on the back of one of my shelves? Why, Todd Helton of course.

And then I began to think about Todd, as I looked for scissors and tape. How much have I written about Todd Helton this season? Not a whole lot. I gave credit to Garrett Atkins and Matt Holliday for doing their thing in the midst of all the anarchy, but I took Helton for granted. That's unforgivable. Todd Helton is the whole reason I live in Colorado in the first place. That's overstating things slightly, but I never would have moved to a region without a baseball team I could feel comfortable rooting for. And although the Rockies were pretty crummy from 1996-2004, I had always admired Helton as a great hitting, fielding, and throwing first baseman. He was a complete player at a position that began to see a preponderance of Mo Vaughn types during this era. So I figured even if Colorado was bad for many years, I would always have Helton's play to admire. That was good enough for me. I bought a Rockies cap, a purple #17 jersey, and I packed my bags.

(I also have, as a relic of a similar process, a #54 Houston Astros Brad Lidge jersey. It didn't work out so well in Houston, for myself or Lidge. Maybe I'll tell the story of my #10 Shingo Takatsu White Sox jersey another time.)

Coming back to my kitchen, and my lemonade, and my action photo clipped of that perfectly level swing at its very completion, I've decided to give the Rockies a break this year. They're horrible, and venal mistakes were made on the part of the management team that caused this to be so. But they gave me and a lot of other people a ton of joy last year. Yeah, by the end of the year Coors Field is going to be as empty as it was at the end of the game last night, after Mark Redman got lit up for five runs and three innings and a nice blast of cold rain fell through the middle innings. But it was never about full stadiums or winning teams for me, and I don't see why a little taste of success one year should change that.

It's a shame and a missed opportunity for the Rockies that they weren't able to follow up on their 2007 breakthrough with another contending season. That makes me sad because I want my team to win and the sharp dropoff in season ticket sales for '09 (after this year's surge and, accordingly, price hike) will hurt their chances to do so; but the fact remains that I like it in Colorado, I like Coors Field, and I plan to be here for a while. I'm stuck with the Rockies and the Rockies are stuck with me.

All right, I still have some bullets from the game to get through:

• Hand it to the torturous Rockies offense to finally hit a groove in the ninth inning and ruin the one thing that was going to save my miserable night, the extremely rare experience of seeing a complete game thrown at Coors Field. Braden Looper wasn't dominant in the least, giving up ten hits and striking out only one, but he didn't walk anybody. His ball-strike ratio: 38-76. You hear that, Ubaldo? You hear that, Franklin? You hear that, Francis Channel?
• Speaking of #26, the reason I quite pointedly did not include Jeff Francis with Aaron Cook when I excepted Cook from the Rockies' "Festival of Crap" rotation I wrote about earlier is because Francis is not doing what he needs to do to go deeper into games. Even though he's put up some nice starts his last few times out, the Channel is still throwing too many pitches and walking too many. He's getting to the 100-pitch mark in the fifth or sixth and if he's going to be an ace (and the Rockies need him to be, with Cook's defense-dependency) he needs to throw first-pitch strikes and force opposing hitters to get aggressive early in the count. That's not really a note from last night's game but Francis does pitch tomorrow.
• Cardinals rookie outfielder Brian Barton looks a lot like Eddie Steeples, aka Darnell from "My Name Is Earl." His nickname should be "Crab Man," if it isn't already.
• Willy Taveras got an RBI groundout in the third, his fourth. The Rockies rank 29th in RBI from the leadoff spot this season. Anemic Minnesota is last. And Colorado plays half their games at Coors Field!
• Chris Iannetta's introduction music is "I Can't Dance," by one of my favorite bands (really, I'm not being sarcastic), Genesis. The music nerd slash baseball fan in me hopes that Iannetta is a fellow true believer and I'll run into him at a record store one day while I'm searching for a replacement for my slightly scratched copy of Trespass and we'll become fast friends due to our shared love of Tony Banks' synthesizer mastery and Phil Collins' inventive drumming. In the offseason we'll hang out in my apartment listening to Abacab and hopefully he'll be able to use his fame and influence to get "Turn It On Again" into a Guitar Hero game already. The realist in me, however, thinks that it is far more likely that Iannetta is just a really terrible dancer and his teammates thought it would be funny.
• I thought it was a great confidence boost for Manny Corpas when Clint Hurdle deliberately sent him in to pitch with Albert Pujols, who had a relatively quiet night (1 for 5 with a double), coming up. Corpas struck him out and completed a scoreless inning. Hurdle erred, though, by doubling down and leaving the dethroned closer in to pitch another inning. Rick Ankiel hit a titanic home run that ended up being the difference in the game. However, the loss shouldn't hang on Corpas's shoulders -- he has enough of those. This one belongs to Mark Redman.
• Finally: Ankiel's throw to catch Omar Quintanilla attempting to stretch a double into a triple (with two outs, even -- go say hello to the pine, meat) from the very deepest recesses of Coors Field's altitude-adjusted outfield was the single best I have ever seen. I still can't believe how perfect it was. It looked as if he was still pitching and just flipping the ball to third for a force-out -- not the motion of the throw, but the path of the ball. Generally when you whip the ball it goes on a line, but this had a lazy arc like Ankiel could have, if necessary, thrown it harder still. Crazy. It was like the YouTube thing with Kobe Bryant jumping over the car, only I actually saw it happen. The friendly Cardinals fan who was sitting next to me and I were trying to think of another current player who could have made the same peg and the only names we could think of were Vladimir Guerrero and Jeff Francouer. But I don't know if even those guys could have done what Ankiel did. Oh, and he also doubled off Willy Taveras -- who can run a bit -- when Taveras tried to advance to third in the first. That one was routine by comparison, but it would have taken Willy, Ankiel's Colorado counterpart in center, two cut-off men.

The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change.
—FDR

I finally watched Bob Costas's recorded live HBO special on the state of sports today as part of his semi-regular "Costas Now" sports talk series. The ninety-minute special consisted of five segments on different topics each with a Costas-intoned intro and a three-person panel interviewed by the host. Of the five topics, I found the one on the Internet mist intriguing.

Coincidentally, I finished Cormac McCarthy's latest master opus, The Road, this weekend as well. One was about two individuals trying to subsist in a world that had long since died, and the other was a novel by Cormac McCarthy.

Costas impaneled DeadSpin founder Will Leitch, Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger, and Browns receiver Braylon Edwards for the discussion on the Internet. The topic was poorly framed from the get-go and quickly devolved into Costas and Bissinger tag-teaming Leitch while Costas from time to time extended a hand to the reticent Edwards to get his licks in.

The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.
—Marshall McLuhan

Costas introduced the special with the words, "It used to be that this was how we followed sports," accompanied with a shot of Dandy Don Meredith on an outmoded TV and a few old covers of SI from its glory days. "Today, for many sports fans, this is how you do it," Costas continued as a disembodied laboriously typed "www.espn.com". As if the often openly inebriated Meredith and the monopolistic pre-Sport SI are the ideal exemplars of sports journalism, and as if anyone who typically uses the web would waste their time typing in a URL they frequent instead of just selecting a favorite. It is a minor point but it gets to the level of experience the people framing the piece actually have with the Internet.

Next, they cut to Michael Wilbon who asks, "Bloggers? What are their credentials? Where do their opinions come from, just sitting on the couch?" This is from one of the blowhards that host the execrable Pardon the Interruption, a near self parody of sports talk with two hosts attempting to shout the other down while spewing highly inaccurate, knee-jerk reactions to topics: sports talk reduced to entertaining pap for the masses.

They leave it to two usually controversial athletes to be the voice of reason: Curt Schilling ("There's a huge disconnect between the reporter and the player they are covering.") and Sir Charles Barkley ("It's become like gotcha—they want confrontation."). Disembodied Costas ends the intro with, "It is for better or for worse an entirely different sports media landscape," by which, the viewer soon finds out, he means worse.

After a segment on sports talk in which the person with the pro position, Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, states without any real challenge, "Do I go crazy on the negative? I'm not stupid. I go crazy on the negative sometimes," Disembodied Costas turns to what he calls, "The wild west of the internet, the Blogosphere."

Leitch accurately states, "If you are really waiting to read the game story in the newspaper to find out what happened in the Cardinals game last night, you're probably over fifty," even though this delineation is used continually against him in the panel segment. Mike Scherr of Fire Joe Morgan finishes the segment intro ideally with, "The more transparent the world is, the better off we are. It's the basis of like democracy." Costas then smarms, "And who's gonna take a position against democracy, right?" We learn quickly that he will.

Costas goes quickly to the offensive, "Sure, it's 100% right when you say you don't need credentials in journalism to say the Indians should pull Carmona in the eighth [actually, Scherr said it but to Costas they and everything they represent is part and parcel the same]. But these are not the reasonable criticisms of the worst of the sports Blogosphere. The reasonable criticism is of the tone of the gratuitous potshots and mean spirited abuse. That's the reasonable criticism." Costas gets ready to rumble.

While Leitch is responding with a reasonable comment on how people differ online as opposed to face-to-face, but before he can continue, Bissinger figuratively tags Costas and begins his pummeling, "I have to interject because I feel very strongly about this. I think you are full of [beep]…Because I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty. They are dedicated to journalistic dishonesty. They are dedicated to speed. I am over fifty." After some disjointed challenge/allusion to legendary sports writer W.C. Heinz, Bissinger pulls out a file and reads some comments from one of the DeadSpin writers, "I can't tell if this guy's name is Balls Deep or Big Daddy Drew Balls." After he is told it is Big Daddy, Bissinger continues seemingly forgetting he is a man well over fifty who refers to himself as Buzz, "Big Daddy. OK, so Balls Deep. I will read a bit. Here's, here's, here's, here's insight in blogging because it really p*sses the S out of me…Seriously, because it is the complete dumbing down of our society, the complete dumbing down."

After reading some inane comment about notoriously overweight pitcher Rich Garces and his breasts, which Bissinger peppers with exclamatory and often blue commentary, he demands, "How can you be proud of that stuff?" This is followed up Costas (virtual tag again) reading reader comments on Leitch's blog and demanding an explanation as to their base content. This is not that dissimilar to asking an author to defend comments written on his work in an annotated edition or, even more to the point, on notes scribbled in the margin in a library edition.

Costas then riles Bissinger up again by quoting the dire fate of newspapers. Bissinger bites: "Yeah, of course, and maybe that's why I am so heated and angry because this guy [gesticulating toward Leitch], whether we like it or not, is the future. I'm not the future. [And the future] is going yo be glib. It is going, generally, to be profane [this from the man with the four-letter intro]. It is going to be quick. It's often going to be inaccurate."

Tag back to Costas: "That is a generalization. It has a lot of truth to it [which is?], but it is not all."

Bissinger, tag again, "It is a generalization and there are some good blogs out there [a statement repeated often throughout but never backed up with actual names], but I think they are very few and far between [also, not backed up]. I think the quality of the writing generally in blogs is despicable and, I say this as a writer who has spent forty years of my life trying to perfect my craft."

Finally, during the summation, Bissinger takes one last potshot, which is quick (by which I assume he means facile), glib, and profane, all the things he accuses blogging, and I quote it with all its excesses here: "You are sort of a Jimmy Olsen on Percocet. I mean, you are sort of. It's sort of strikes me that you say you don't want to be in the press box because the press box will get in the way. Actually, the reason there is a press box is because you have a certain vantage point of the game. And what it seems to me you are saying is, 'I don't want facts to. I don't want facts to inhibit me, facts to get in my way. So I am going to sit in my little room, and I'm, I, I, I, I'm gonna give this nebulous fan's voice', and I just don't know where you are coming from [so true]. I think you are perpetuating the future, and I think the future is in the hands of guys like you is really going to dumb us down to a degree that I don't know if we can recover from."

Aside from improper uses of "perpetuating" and "really", ending on a dangling participle, and generally speaking like he claims a blogger writes—I guess they give Pulitzers to anybody nowadays—, Bissinger gets to the core of the issue. The established media do not understand how a point of view that is not gleaned from the same privileged point of view as theirs could have merit. How can it not be better to be in the press box? How can it not be better to be in close contact with the players? He needs a validation of his worldview, a worldview that is rapidly disappearing from the landscape of sports reporting.

They are disappearing so rapidly that most of the major sports publications have long since recognized this and feature blogs via their online doppelgangers, even the New York Times, the bastion of journalistic integrity that the interviewees were repeatedly championing. The doom-and-gloom future to which Bissinger incessantly refers is not just here, it has been here for some time, and the world seems to be surviving.

The seasons change their manners, as the year Had found some months asleep and leapt them over.
—William "Author" Shakespeare, Henry IV

It all reminds my of my old Sociology professor and the man who coined the term WASP (and champion of the excellent though now-defunct Pennsylvania Book Center), E. Digby Baltzell, who foresaw how an aristocratic caste can hold down the elite in his seminal analysis, "The Protestant Establishment". Baltzell was speaking of politics but it still holds true in culture of sports media.

Baltzell's central thesis is that no state (or here, industry) "can long endure without both the liberal democratic and the authoritative aristocratic processes." By democracy, Batltzell means the "process which assures that men of ability and ambition, regardless of background, are allowed to rise into the elite." By aristocracy, he refers to an upper-class community who "are born to positions of high prestige and assured dignity because their ancestors [or antecedents] have been leaders" and that they "are carriers of a set of traditional values which command authority because they represent the aspirations of the elite and the rest of the population."

The aristocracy in sports journalism is clearly the print media, mainly the newspapers. They seem themselves as the representing the traditional journalistic ideals. If sports media purport to be democratic in Baltzell's sense, then the best writers from each discipline—print, broadcasting, internet, etc.—would be allowed to rise into the sports media elite.

Baltzell goes on to say that the leaders will form an establishment, which is ideally "traditional and authoritative and not (italics his) coercive and authoritarian," that the establishment "must be constantly rejuvenated by new members of the elite" or it will instead become an impermeable caste. A caste for Baltzell "protects is privileges and prestige but does not continue (1) to contribute leadership or (2) to assimilate new elite members, primarily because of their…origins." That is, they now longer "stoop to conquer". Once the establishment becomes a caste, "the traditional authority of an establishment is in grave danger of disintegrating."

If this does not describe the current state of sports media, I will eat John Wetteland's salt-encrusted hat. The print media have now become the upper class caste that look down on other media types and refuse to allow them entrance into their inner circles, to the Hall of Fame and award voting, and to their executive washrooms (though did you notice Bill Conlin's personal hygiene? Eek!).

Today's journalism is obsessed with the kinds of things that tend to preoccupy thirteen-year-old boys: sports, sex, crime, and narcissism.... Moreover, if today's journalism has a driving principle, that principle centers on an obsession with hypocrisy…[R]eporters frame their stories by saying implicitly, "These people aren't what they say they are. Look, they lied to you." Although there is a cultural role for balloon deflators, journalism has brought this characteristic attitude of the early adolescent to the adult world and elevated it to the status of cultural religion.
—Steven Stark. "Where the Boys Are," Atlantic Monthly, September 1994.

Baltzell sees the Great Depression as the result of the aristocratic caste being out of touch with the needs of the country. "It is no wonder that a majority of American intellectuals felt that perhaps some kind of eternal justice had been done when the unquestioned rule of the country club-business establishment came to an end as of the stock market crash of 1929…wrote Edmund Wilson, 'One couldn't help being exhilarated at the sudden unexpected collapse of that stupid gigantic fraud. It gave us a new sense of freedom; and it gave us a new sense of power.'"

Repeatedly, Costas and the rest turned to the golden age of sports reporting, an era in which reporters created the visions of many a fan, who was not lucky enough to be at the ballpark. Those were halcyon days, but they ended with the advent of sports on TV. By the early Nineties, sports reporting was an intractable morass of traditional game reporting and rudimental analysis conducted largely as it had been for decades. Meanwhile more substantive analysis was being done by a new sabermetrically-minded generation of analysts led by Bill James. At the same time, the mania that is fantasy—baseball, football, etc.—was just taking root.

Fans were looking for new ways to analyze the game, and the traditional outlets were not supplying them. Their greatest concession was perhaps the full page of baseball coverage in the Sunday paper, something that Peter Gammons helped to popularize, that and maybe displaying a fuller list of league leaders in Sunday editions. Until fairly recently newspapers failed to include more than basic game stats in box scores, no season averages or cumulatives.

So while the print sports media were still the standard-bearers from a great tradition, they failed to incorporate new ideas and new ways of reporting to meet fans' needs. They were ready to be toppled just as the internet took hold.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1908.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.
—Harold, Jan. 25, 1990

This isn't the Ohio State School of Journalism, this is the big time. — Reporter nonpareil Les Nessman on "WKRP in Cincinnati"

Baltzell concludes, "What is honored in a land is usually cultivated there. The traditional standards…are in danger of losing authority largely because the American upper class, whose…members may still be deferred to and envied because of their privileged status, is no longer honored in the land. For its standards of admission have gradually come to demand the dishonorable treatment of far too many distinguished Americans for it to continue, as a class, to fill its traditional function as moral leadership."

The more that the old-school newspaper journalists try to point to their past and their traditions, the less impact they will have. And while their inner circle may still sneer at the internet, their publishers have embraced it.

Though I cannot locate the quote, Baltzell would often advise that one can see that the establishment is losing its power when it had to exert it. A class in power has the luxury of not typically having to use its power. What can be said of Costas and Bissinger's bullying of Leitch other than it was the last dying spasms of the traditional sports media exerting its power over an upstart. The last bit of power they can muster is as a moral high road based on its past to bring the youngsters to heel.

As their numbers dwindle so shall their power. They remind me of those stories of Japanese soldiers who disconnected from their units supposedly continued to fight World War II.

Baltzell ends by saying that this struggle cannot end unless "a minority of established leaders, with the authority to fill the moral vacuum that now engulfs us all, steps forward above the conforming crowd and, like Moses in ancient Egypt, shows us the way." This could be done by letting experienced bloggers into the inner sanctum of the journalistic elite, i.e., the Hall of Fame and award voting. Whatever happens, I take it that Costas and Bissinger will not be leading that charge.

Diamondbacks pitching prospect Max Scherzer made his major league debut last night, relieving in the third inning of Arizona's 6-4 loss to the Astros. He retired all 13 batters to face him, seven by strikeout.

Going back to 1956, Scherzer's debut outing is the longest without allowing a baserunner. Here is the list of those retiring at least seven batters:

Our ISP had scheduled us for another upgrade in the 7pm hour on Friday, which would have been in the middle of either or both of the Yankee-Red Sox game and/or the Dodgers-Padres game.

I managed to talk them out of that idea, and they have offered to do it tonight instead. So sometime tonight, not sure exactly when, we will be down for between one and fifteen minutes.

Update: This is complete.