Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Drew Bledsoe's middle name is McQueen. How did I not know that? I hope it is because his parents were big Steve McQueen fans and not because of a family name thing... Jeff Passan points out that Josh Hamilton is ranked 121st out of 151 players who qualify with his anemic .686 OPS and he still has 4-years and almost $100 million left on his contract. I wonder if Nick Cafardo still thinks the Red Sox should have signed Hamilton... I went to a gang rumble and a Chuckie Cheese birthday party broke out... I was only kidding a while back when I said A-Rod is acting this way because he's building the groundwork for an insanity defense but now I'm not so sure it's a joke... Very cool - guy bikes to all 30 MLB parks for charity... Do gangs even have rumbles anymore? Is that like a 1950's thing and it is all drive-by's now?... I'm not offended by the Washington Redskins name but I hope the people who are also demand that the NAACP change the name of their organization... Interesting update on what Daniel Radcliffe has been up to...

Johnny Damon - Hall of Famer?

Amid his Sunday Baseball Notes - Nick Carfardo offers this throw away line, "Johnny Damon is getting more and more support for Hall of Fame consideration."

Really? Is Carfardo serious? Or is he just giving Damon a nod while protecting himself by saying "consideration" instead of "support" because Johnny Damon is clearly not a Hall of Fame player. Damon is not in the top 50 for any offensive category and is well-known as a noodle-arm on defense. Jim Edmonds has a much better claim. Dwight Evans had a much better claim.

Combining Johnny Damon and Hall of Fame in the same sentence is perhaps the silliest thing I've seem Carfardo commit to print. I like reading Nick but come on. If Carfardo needed to boost his word count he could used Mad Libs to come up with a more coherent sentence.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

When Manny Ramirez comes back from his suspension - I hope he hears the "cheater, cheater, hormone eater" chant every time he comes to bat. That chant is the best... Did you know that Tris Speaker actually had more triples in his career (222) than strikeouts (220)?.... Two blondes walk into a bank - you think one of them would have seen it... Today the Boston Globe's Nick Carfardo had this throw-away line, "Evan Longoria is turning into Mike Schmidt before our eyes." Umm - no. After his first 145 games (at age 23) - Schmidt had just 19 HR and a sub .200 batting average. After 152 games into his career - the 23-year old Longoria already has 38 HR (basically double Schmidt's output) while hitting at a .292 clip. Longoria is actually off to a much better start of career than Schmidt... Did you know that no player has ever reached 3,000 hits during his tenure with the Yankees? Gerhig, Ruth, Mantle, Dimaggio, or Mattingly never reached 3,000 for the Pinstripes. Derek Jeter is at 2569 for the Yankees but will his contract situation keep him from 3,000?... Johnny Damon hit his 9th HR of the season today for the Yankees. As I've mentioned before - it is very important for the Yankees to re-sign Damon. The fact that 7 of the 9 HR have been hit in the new Yankee Stadium underlines how important he can be to that club in that park... The Boston Trifecta - YES!!!!

Baseball and Divorce

Interesting tidbit from Nick Carfardo's Baseball Notes column today:

Dr. Howard Markman, University of Denver. He did a study on divorce rates in cities after they acquired baseball franchises. In 1990, Denver's divorce rate stood at 6 per 1,000. Seven years after the Rockies played their first game, the divorce rate had declined 20 percent to 4.2 per 1,000. The overall US divorce rate dropped only 15 percent. Markman found a 30 percent decline in divorces in Phoenix, a 30 percent drop in Miami, and a 17 percent drop in Tampa Bay after teams in those cities were born.

I have to watch baseball honey. It's for the marriage!

African Americans in Baseball

OK it is once again time for my pet peeve - the Boston Globe's penchant for talking about the lack of African Americans in baseball. Today the subject made up a large portion of Nick Carfardo's "Notes" column under the guise of "The diversity count".

The University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports will likely release its annual racial and gender report later this month, telling us how Major League Baseball graded in diversity issues in 2008. The institute's report last year showed that African-Americans constituted 8.2 percent of major league rosters in 2007 - a 20-year low and a growing concern for MLB.

Carfardo then goes on to list by team the number of African Americans on the team rosters for this season. The punch line of course is that the Red Sox have none. African American's make up roughly 12 percent of the population - so on the surface the difference between 8 percent and 12 percent would seem to indicate a problem but the numbers are completely skewered.

The census numbers would count both Manny Ramirez (a US citizen) and Coco Crisp (a natural born citizen) the same and classify both as African Americans. People who do these baseball surveys though would count them differently - Crisp as an African American and Manny as a Dominican. That's the real reason there is a difference between the 12 percent population number and the 8 percent "diversity" number.

The Red Sox are a very diverse team - 32% of the team would be classified as other than white by the census. The "white" population of the US is 74%. See how numbers can be skewered?

Hey - gay and lesbians make up 4 percent of the population but I can't think of any openly gay baseball players. Maybe that Globe can make that their next crusade. I mean the study Carfardo used was a racial and gender report. Does the Globe not count gays as people? Why does the Globe hate gay people?

Just kidding - a report on gays in baseball would be just as asinine. Teams like the Red Sox put the roster together with the eye toward which players give them the best chance to win. Not based upon the color of their skin. No wonder the Globe is going out of business.

Very Interesting Tom Glavine Stat

A WOW! stat from today's baseball notes column by the Boston Globe's Nick Carfardo:

From the Bill Chuck files: "If Tom Glavine's career is over, he'll end his final season with a 2-4 record and a 5.54 ERA. In his first season in 1987, Glavine was 2-4, 5.54. Not much improvement in 21 years."

Heh heh.

Curt Schilling Wins 2008 Cy Young Award

Nick Carfardo has the break-down on Curt Schilling's contract. It's an $8 million base plus a lot of incentives. One of the incentives is very interesting. Schilling gets a cool $1 million if he receives just a single 1st, 2nd or 3rd place vote for the 2008 AL Cy Young Award.

Think about that for a minute.

You know that if Curt has an even half-decent year that some sportswriter will think to himself, "Sure I'll vote for Schilling. Why not? It's not my money - the Red Sox are rich anyway. Maybe I can get a story out of this? Maybe Curt will use that money to buy himself a new car and hey if he wants to give me his old car - hey who does that hurt?"

You KNOW that there are sportswriters thinking along those very lines. They would never voice those views though because in their eyes they are the bastions of truth, justice and the journalistic way. But we all know the thought will cross their mind and lodge there like half a ham sandwich in Michael Moore's colon.

Now think of this - what if a bunch of writers all had the same thought? They all think to themselves, "I'll give Curt my 3rd place vote and I'll call him to let him know. When he gets his money I'm sure he'll remember who made it possible." What if the race for AL Cy Young is very close like its expected to be this year or like the 1998 NL Cy Young race? A guy like Schilling could come out of nowhere to win the award. Seriously - if there are a bunch of good candidates (like this year with Beckett, Sabathia, Carmona and Lackey and reliever JJ Putz) then a wildcard gathering lots of 3rd place votes could realistically take home the award.

You may think, "Oh the baseball writers would never do something like that. They hold their votes as almost sacred." Just remember - these are the same guys who two years ago gave 2 Hall of fame votes to Greg freakin' Jefferies, 5 votes to Ozzie Guillen and another 5 votes to Hal "76 career HR" Morris. What were you thinking about their votes being sacred to them?

Then you factor in that the baseball writers' ballots are not public. Still think that they won't sink to the levels described?

All I know is that the next time I go to Las Vegas - I'm going to scour the sports books to find a joint that is taking action of the 2008 AL Cy Young Award and I'll bet the maximum on Curt Schilling to show.