Every year some guy puts out a report about how expensive it is for a family of four to attend a Major League Baseball game. Every year sportswriters uncritically accept that data as "proof" that the average cost of taking a family to a game is (in 2011) almost $200 (it's $197.35). Cue hysteria, wailing about how the game is out of reach for American Families, etc., etc.

The whole survey is really dumb (as I've said before). The $200 cost includes not just four tickets, but also two beers, two soft drinks, four hot dogs, two hats (?), two programs (!!), and parking. Obviously, except for the tickets, all those can be discarded if one wants to take one's family to a game without breaking the bank. (Seriously, who buys two hats every time they go to a game?) The survey further inflates the cost of a game by not listing the the cheapest tickets. Instead, the price of tickets means:

"Average ticket price represents a weighted average of season ticket prices for general seating categories, determined by factoring the tickets in each price range as a percentage of the total number of seats in each venue."

Huh? That's ridiculous. If you're taking your family to a game on a budget, you get the cheapest seats. You don't take your family to a weighted average of season ticket prices.

The reality is that it's much, much less expensive to go to a game. I'm still waiting to read an article pointing that out.

Orrin Hatch

I'm looking forward to the followup article on the Senator's thoughts on whether BYU deserves to go to play for the national championship after Saturday's game.

There's a general ridiculousness with this kind of article. After three weeks of games, there are lots and lots of undefeated teams. Plenty of teams *could* run the table, but not many of them will, and not many will be close.

I was also entertained by the last bit, about a possible matchup of two undefeated teams (BYU-Utah) at the end of the season. That sure would be exciting. But BYU wasn't the only Mountain West team to sink it's national championship chances last week.

Right, Senator?

More Mariano

Great story in the New York Times (although it's curious they don't mention Alexander Karelin...they must not be up on this blog).

I don't see any mention of his most devastating outing. Three (!) innings. I distinctly remember that he was the last guy in the Yankee pen, and if Aaron Boone doesn't hit that homer, the Sox were going to win that game. Or maybe he would have pitched forever that night, because he's Mariano Rivera.



As a sidenote, Tim Salmon. Haven't thought of him for a while.

Randy Johnson

I've long been a fan of the guy.

I'm also a fan of Bill James, of course, although I find this Joe Posnanski fellow rather annoying. But here Posnanski is right on. Maybe the lesson is that he should always use Bill James as a resource. Bill James cannot help but be interesting.

I especially love this point, about Johnson's peak to Sandy Koufax's peak:

Koufax from 1963 to 1966 famously went 97-27 (.782 winning percentage) with a 1.86 ERA (a 172 ERA+ -- meaning his ERA was 72 percent better than the average pitcher of his time) and he averaged 307 strikeouts per year.

Johnson from 1995 to 2002 went 143-44 (.765 winning percentage) with a 2.61 ERA (a 177 ERA+ -- meaning his ERA was 77 percent better than the average pitcher of his time) and he averaged 302 strikeouts per year (despite missing most of the 1996 season).


In an otherwise great column, though, it's a shame that the leave out one of Randy Johnson's absolute career highlights.

Yeeech

I've bashed Dan Wetzel before, but now I think he has his place in the sportswriting firmament. He should be an old time investigative reporter.

I felt slimy just for reading this. It's all the worst parts of big time college sports.

I have no idea if Kevin Love is any good (and I can't make myself care), but he comes across as a decent guy trying to navigate a crowd of complete blood-suckers and bottom-feeders.


(Dan, seriously, stick with reporting. This is great stuff. Shine some sunlight into this dark corner. You are a terrible columnist, but a great reporter.)

Bravo for Bowls!

Finally there's a college football column I can agree with. He's too professional to say that Wetzel's an idiot (but I know he's thinking it). His bigger point is maybe the best argument of all for the bowls:

Bowls are fun.

It's not complicated. They're fun. A bowl game is fun to go, fun to be a fan at the game, fun to watch on TV. I can't wait tomorrow to roll out of bed and catch Michigan in th--wha? Wait, you're joking, right? Seriously? No, that's can't be correct. Really? Whew. That blows.

It's that time of the year again

Earlier I criticized Yahoo Sports columnist Dan Wetzel for blasting the BCS without proposing an alternative.

In fairness, he's now proposed something. Unfortunately, his proposed playoff is flat out impossible. It has zero possibility of being implemented.

Sixteen teams, four rounds of games. No chance. Why? Let us count the ways:

-The last two teams would play 17 games. There's no way college teams could play that many games.

-When would they schedule the games? College students have exams in December, to which he says: "college athletics has never allowed academics to stand in its way before." Actually, yes it has. That's one reason teams don't play in December.

-College presidents don't want a playoff. To which he says "Presidents are notoriously weak-spined and revenue desperate. Pressure and cash can change opinions in a hurry. They follow the herd." Really? If they're weak spined, why haven't they caved and had a playoff already?


A sixteen team playoff might be possible if we could redo everything about college football, i.e. create a different sport. I consider that unlikely, though, and there's absolutely no chance that this idea has any possibility of ever happening.

Dan Wetzel

As sportswriters go, I think Dan Wetzel is unusually bad, which is saying something. His most recent column exemplifies why.

He complains about the Big 12's selection method for choosing which team to put in its championship game. Three teams have one loss: Texas beat Oklahoma, which beat Texas Tech, which beat Texas. The conference decides who goes to the championship game by virtue of which team is ranker more highly.

Wetzel says this is bad, "jokes" about whether a team's color scheme should come into play (HA! good one!), and includes the following paragraph:

Maybe Texas should hire Barack Obama’s advisor David Axelrod for the rest of the season because it might be in trouble due to a scheduling quirk. Next week Oklahoma will have another big nationally televised opportunity to impress voters against highly ranked Oklahoma State. The Longhorns, meanwhile, seem like the team everyone forgot.

What does this mean? I have no idea. (Axelrod? Scheduling quirk? Wha?)

But what he never bothers doing is making any kind of suggestion about what they should do about it. If it's so bad, one would think he would have a better idea.

As for me, I think it seems pretty reasonable. Years ago the Big 10 would only let one team go to a bowl game and if two teams were tied, the athletic directors would vote to determine who went to the Rose Bowl. The Big 12 could have their athletic directors vote, but that's obviously prone to politicing as well. So all in all, seems to me that using a poll is as good a method as any other.

Idiotic Sportswriting

Exhibit A.

This column is so stupid, it's difficult to know where to start. So in no particular order:

NL MVP
How on earth can Manny Ramirez and CC Sabathia be the TOP TWO choices for MVP in the National League? Sabathia was terrific, but he played in 17 total games. Brandon Webb had twice as many starts, and twice as many wins. How can Webb not be more valuable to his team?

The Manny selection is even worse. He was great, but he played in 53 games for the Dodgers--less than a third of the season! He cannot possibly be as valuable as someone who played the entire year.

Most ridiculously, the obvious winner, Pujols, is fifth (fifth!) on his ballot. Pujols had a far more dominant offensive year than Howard, even if Howard's (less important) homer and RBI numbers were better. Pujols also is a fantastic defensive player. Howard is not.

	OBP	Slugging	HR	RBI
Pujols	.462	.653	37	116
Howard	.339	.542	48	146

NL Cy Young
The foolishness continues. It's easy to plug Sabathia's numbers into yesterday's chart, although we have to add innings to the mix because a pitcher who pitches a lot of innings is significantly more valuable to his team than one who doesn't.

	Record	ERA	Strikeouts	Innings
Webb	22-7	3.30	183	226.2
Lincecum	18-5	2.62	265	227
Santana	16-7	2.53	206	234.1
Sabathia	11-2	1.65	128	130

Sabathia had a great half season, but you don't win the pennant with half seasons. Anyone who votes for him over the other three should forfeit the right to vote for future awards.

More College Football

The column I mentioned on Thursday looks a little more silly today. Georgia and Florida join USC as one loss teams. Note that this will soon lead to a variety of columns saying that "The BCS got lucky" because all these teams lost.

No. It isn't luck. It's very rare for more than two teams from power conferences to go undefeated. It happened once since the old conference tie-ins were eliminated: in 2004 (USC, Oklahoma, Auburn). While possible, it's unlikely that more than two teams will go undefeated this year, at least more than two teams from power conferences. It's certainly premature to start complaining about it.

USC Out

And sometimes criticizing sportswriters works out perfectly.

Of the six contributors to the premature BCS bashing, five assumed that USC would go undefeated (kudos to David Fox, who pointed out that USC loses a conference game or two every year).


As a sidenote, Oregon State? Huh? They were clobberedby Penn State three weeks ago.

Dumb Sportswriting of the Day

Writing about college football is easy. Whenever you need a quick story, just bring up the BCS and complain about it.

But this is a good one. It's September and they are already hyping the possibility of too many undefeated teams! Guys, can we at least wait until conference play starts?

Lincecum, Cain

The Chronicle is apparently reading this blog.

As I mentioned before, Eddie, I do think he should go 200 innings this year. But not many more.

Incidentally, he didn't make the cover of Sports Illustrated, but Matt Cain is having a pretty good year too. Although he's 7-9 at the moment, his ERA is 3.60 (with a win tonight). He's a few months younger than Lincecum, and he's thrown 155 innings this year. He has more experience--he threw 190 two years ago and 200 last year. I worry that the damage has already been done. Those 190 innings were at age 21, the 200 at age 22. That's earlier than almost everyone on my earlier list.

The Giants have the potential for a great young staff. Even Zito sometimes remembers how to pitch. There's no reason to put them at risk by pushing them much above 200 innings this year.

Brandon Jennings

Who?

I read about Brandon Jennings recently. He's a high school kid who, instead of playing one year at Arizona, is going to play in Europe

Sportswriters reactions ranged from glee because the NCAA is somehow going down (huh?) to announcements from Lute Olson that he'll no longer sign players who will say for just one year (riiiiiight).

I think it's good and I read exactly one column that started to touch on why. I follow neither high school basketball nor the Italian pro league. I have no idea whether this will be good for Jennings or not.

But it seems to me that the NBA shouldn't be unhappy. Part of the whole point of preventing kids from going pro right after high school was to try to ensure that they were more developed and well rounded both on and off the court. I'm sure that Jennings would grow as a person and as a player at Arizona, but nowhere near how he'll do at, uhhh, Pallacanestro Virtus Roma. I say good for him. I expect he'll learn quite a bit and he'll be a better player if and when he enters the NBA draft next year.

What's the problem?

Clemens!

The Clemens hearings were today, at least the first round. Tom Verducci has a great summary.

At this point, I don't think *anyone* is believable. It's clear that McNamee should never be trusted. I'm sure some of the things he's saying are the truth. But he's now changing his story too many times for me to keep track.

Clemens is also entirely unbelievable. He keeps changing his story, and he never managed to describe why McNamee would lie about what happened.

I think part of the problem is that professional athletes aren't used to having anyone actually pay attention to what they say. They are asked dumb questions ("What does this game mean for you?") their whole life, they give the same stock answers ("We're taking things one game at a time") and then repeat. Their job isn't to be honest, it's to perform on the field. They are used to lying, both the big lies and the small ones. Normally, they are the ones who choose what questions to answer and which sportswriters to ignore. Here, the dynamic is reversed. Congress chooses the questions, but they have to come up with something for every one of them.

Outside the bubble, where people actually pay attention to their every word, and where their questioners have the power, they stumble. They're not used to this.



Not surprisingly, these hearings give sportswriters the opportunity to look ridiculous. Jason Stark:

What I'll be looking for -- what you should be looking for -- is who squirms, who stammers, who hedges. Look for body language. Look for who can't recall what.

Hey Jayson, do you by any chance remember the last round of congressional hearings? Do you remember if there was a player who had the whole 'convincing body language' thing down? Remember how that turned out? Maybe don't trust the body language quite to much.

College football playoff

Every year sportswriters uncritically dust off last year's column blasting the BCS, how it's so incredibly confusing (it uses computers!), and insisting that a playoff is the only "fair" way to decide the national champion, and that we "need" a playoff.

As I noted last year, the first, and maybe most obvious, problem with a playoff is figuring out how many teams to invite.

This year's chart is interesting. I said last year that undefeated teams from major conferences indisputably deserve to play for the national title. No such teams exist this year, so major conference champions with only one loss indisputably deserve a shot. As it happens, Ohio State is the only such team. The next group is big, because one must include so many two loss teams. I suppose Hawaii ought to be in the list, barely, because they're undefeated, even if they didn't play anybody. Kansas narrowly made the cut because they're a one loss team from a power conference, even if they missed most of the good teams in the Big 12. I left West Virginia out, but barely:


So if one is going to have a "fair" playoff this year, one needs to invite nine teams.

Of all the reasons against a playoff, I think this is the best one. How many teams? It's easy to criticize, but criticism implies there's a better solution out there. If there is, I haven't seen it.

C.C. Sabathia

Sabathia won the Cy Young, followed by Beckett, Lackey, and Carmona. I'm happy the Baseball Writers' Association of America are finally listening to me. Sign me up!

Sabathia deserved it.

However, I couldn't help but note the following, from ESPN.com:

The 6-foot-7, 290-pound left-hander is the first black pitcher to win a Cy Young Award since Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets in 1985 -- and the first in the AL since Oakland's Vida Blue in 1971.

This is a shocking statistic.

It would be more shocking if it were true (or relevant!). The last several Cy Young award winners in the American League are:

2007: Sabathia
2006: Johan Santana
2005: Bartolo Colon
2004: Santana
2003: Roy Halladay
2002: Barry Zito
2001: Roger Clemens (undeserved)
2000: Pedro Martinez
1999: Martinez

So out of the last nine Cy Young winners in the American League, three are white. I recognize that whoever wrote the article apparently believes that baseball players fall into one of the following four categories: black, white, Hispanic, asian (a new innovation). But still. Even the US Census recognizes that "Hispanic" is a cultural term. If one insisted on classifying them based on their ultimate ancestry, Martinez, Sabathia, Colon and Santana are more "from" Africa than anywhere else.

Bonds

Surely Bonds will hit homer 756* this week when the Giants are at home.

There have been a bunch of articles talking about how black fans (74%) are more likely than white fans (28%) to be rooting for Bonds to break the record. (Whew! Good thing there isn't anyone else in America besides black people and white people!)

I say that's nothing. They should check the disparity between Giants fans and everyone else. Giants fans love the guy; I bet 90% are rooting for him to break the record.

Glavine

Tom Glavine won his 300th game yesterday, prompting a rash of (easy to write) articles about how he'll be the last 300 game winner.

Sportswriters love an easy story, especially one that someone else has already written. It's also a safe article to write, because no one's going to remember it by the time the next pitcher wins 300. Randy Johnson, stuck at 284, is looking like a more and more unlikely candidate for 300, and as I mentioned in May, no one else is close.

So the next 300 game winner isn't going to happen for a while. It could be Tim Hudson, Roy Oswalt (if he gets on a team that figures out how to score), or one of the others, but we've got a few years.

I'm sure that similar articles have been written before. The list of 300 game winners contains some gaps. I bet that plenty of people decided that Nolan Ryan would be the last such pitcher in 1990. Although six guys (Gaylord Perry, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver Phil Niekro, Don Sutton, and Ryan) made it withing 8 years, no one else was on the horizon. At the end of the 1990 season, Clemens had just 116 wins.

Before Gaylor Perry it had been 20 years since Early Wynn won 300. I'm sure there were articles by lazy sportswriters in 1963 too saying that he was the last. I don't think we'll be waiting another 20 years; I think it'll happen sometime in 2021.

Tim Wakefield

I like Tim Wakefield.

But he can't buy any luck. Since the start of the 2006 season, he's 17-20. In his 20 losses, the Sox have scored 19 runs. (That's presumably the number when he's pitching, sportswriters are apparently too lazy to figure out the total runs they've scored in his losses, which is 44. Forty four runs in twenty games is pretty crappy!)

His ERA's up to 4.69, which isn't great, but it's not too bad for a #4 starter. This outing will put him at 119 innings, which is 14th in the American League, terrific for a #4 starter.

I hate to jinx his streak, but he also has a decision in every start this year. That's just odd.