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Distraction
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Wed, 2008-05-14 18:58.From last night's Spurs-Hornets game:
For those who might not get it, Eva Longoria is Tony Parker's wife.
The Chicken or the Egg
Submitted by Kyle Eliason on Tue, 2008-05-13 02:31.Vernon Wells (45 DXL)
The Jays keep taking hits in what was seen as a make-or-break season for this version of J.P. Ricciardi's plan. Instead, they're six games back and in last place, so losing Vernon Wells until the All-Star break isn't going to help them make up ground on the Yankees in the battle for fourth. Wells fractured a bone in his wrist, believed to be the scaphoid fx (not a hamate), on a diving catch. Wrist injuries tend to sap power and bat control, two things that Wells can't afford to lose. The Jays will shift Alex Rios over to center field in the interim, using newly-acquired Kevin Mench and Brad Wilkerson in right field. Wells' return should come without significant difficulty; with new technology, seeing him at the end of June isn't out of the question.
May 10: Wells will miss 6-8 weeks after breaking a bone in his left wrist on Friday, the Toronto Star reports.
Recommendation: Alex Rios will likely slide over to center field, while the newly-acquired Kevin Mench and Brad Wilkerson should see more playing time in right. Joe Inglett was recalled from Triple-A Syracuse to replace Wells on the roster.
Emphasis mine. I remembered the Yahoo! version while I was reading Baseball Prospectus tonight because I thought it was poorly phrased. If you're not an obsessed baseball fan like I am, you wouldn't know if just Mench or Mench and Wilkerson was/were newly-acquired. Could be coincidence, but the same confusing, hyphenated use of newly-aquired drums up suspicion.
What would be the ideal price?
Submitted by Kyle Eliason on Fri, 2008-05-02 23:00.
Everywhere I turn on the net—blogs, message boards, etc—sports fans are decrying increases in ticket prices and slamming franchises and leagues and owners because "real fans" can no longer afford to attend sporting events in person. Meanwhile, our population has grown, modern transportation continues to make it possible for fans to travel greater distances to attend events, and television, radio and their internet counterparts have provided sports fans with new methods of following their favorite sports from around the globe (depending on your level of interest in sports and your views on intellectual property, myp2p may be your favorite site on the internet). So while the number of sports teams and leagues have grown, that pace has nowhere near matched the increase in demand for tickets generated by the aforementioned factors.
I have no doubt that many passionate and dedicated fans are being priced out of attending as many games as they would like to, but one question that I never see asked is how their lot would be different if tickets were price controlled (and for the record we're now operating under the assumption that only lower-to-middle class fans can be "real fans").
Starting with an extreme example, if tickets were free, they would have to be rationed by some means other than price. Perhaps everyone that wanted to attend sporting events for a particular team or league would put their name on a waiting list and once they received their ration of tickets they would move to the bottom of the queue. But here, "real fans" probably wouldn't get to attend as many games as they would if there were a charge for tickets, because casual fans, having to invest nothing more than their time, would consume more tickets. Invariably, a black market of ticket scalping would emerge and the "real fans" would go right back to paying for tickets, since "real fans" would undoubtedly value the tickets more than other people.
There seems to be a pervasive assumption that there would be no increased competition for cheaper tickets. I'm preaching to the choir here, but I challenge anyone who self-identifies as a "real fan" to name me the price at which they, personally, could afford to attend more matches and would also be able to secure tickets against the increased demand that would come hand in hand with those lower prices. It is no doubt out there, but it is going to be hard for the average fan to identify and will vary from fan to fan depending on their disposable income, travel costs, and a variety of other factors.
Going further, let's speculate about a situation similar to rent control in New York City. What about cheap season tickets that could be renewed, indefinitely, at their original purchase price, even if adjusted for inflation. The decriers seem to be operating under some sports variant of Kip's Law, in that they assume they'd be the lucky few with season tickets priced way below demand that would rarely, if ever, be relinquished. Heaven help you if you fall in love with a franchise after all the renewable season tickets have been rationed by a means other than market price.
A good portion of this backlash is directed at the number of seats sold to companies, instead of directly to individuals. Soccer fans often raise this complaint with regards to the difference in crowds between professional club and national team competitions. The spectacle of the World Cup draws in a greater number of casual fans, aided by the number of tickets given out by large companies, which leads to a less boisterous crowd. What I find humorous is, if operating under the viewpoint of "real fans", the act of tickets being given out by corporations to casual fans actually demonstrates the problem caused by removing market forces from the pricing of tickets—with less of a sacrifice required to win tickets in competition with other fans, be they casual or "real", the casual fans end up with a greater share of the available tickets. And none of this touches on if self-identified "real fans" have more of a right to tickets than the casual fan.
I remember the Society of American Baseball Research conference I attended in the summer of 2005. One panel included members of the Toronto Blue Jays front office and they were kind enough to field questions from obsessed baseball fans on why they are bastardizing the game (namely the J-Force dance troop that performs on top of dugouts in between innings, something that could get those well meaning dancers shot at Fenway, Busch, or Yankee Stadium). One Jays official said that, unfortunately for "real fans", the focus is at the margins. The hardcore baseball fans show up for Blue Jays games because the team plays in the best league on Earth and the quality of play is the highest around. The Jays official said this group of "real fans" probably account for around 15,000 seats a game. The remaining seats get filled by bandwagon jumpers when the team is doing well and casual fans drawn in by promotions and other entertainment like the abomination against God that is the J-Force.
All of this could be chalked up to the evil influence of money in sports, but like anything in life there are tradeoffs. Without money, teams and leagues wouldn't attract the caliber of athletes they do. They'd leave for other teams, leagues or sports, and eventually sports altogether. That horrible corrupting money is the reason we now enjoy levels of competition unrivaled in history.
I recently watched a DVD of the original BBC broadcast of the 1961 FA Cup game won by Tottenham Hotspur, a team that won "the Double" that season (where a club soccer team wins both its league title and highest tournament cup). Compare that to the DVDs I own of today's Tottenham Hotspur beating Arsenal 5-1 in the decisive leg of the Carling Cup semifinal, and their following 2-1 victory over Chelsea in the final at Wembley. Tottenham are a mid-table Premier League side this season, and today's Carling Cup is considered the lowest of five potential trophies available to Premiere League clubs. Nonetheless, the 2008 Spurs would completely and utterly obliterate their 1961 counterparts, who were the finest club England had to offer in that day. This massive improvement in play is a result of all the money that has followed all the interest the sport has attracted. The difference in the speed of play between the two championship matches I own on DVD, separated by less than 50 years, is staggering.
As often happens with naive populist grumbling, the faults of the market are derided while at the same time the benefits are taken completely for granted. The fact that, despite all this complaining, the Premiership (as an example) is growing in popularity the world over speaks to the fact that the quality of competition is the absolute bottom line when it comes to our enjoyment of sports. Far and wide, there will be cries of outrage as the top leagues pull top players out of their native countries as these players go in search of more money and greater competition, but I for one welcome it. With modern media, attending a match live, while often an amazing experience, isn't the primary method of following sports. Sites like myp2p are the future. The real problem going forward will be time zone differences. How can we make it so fans from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and all parts in between can watch the same games live? In any case, I do not count myself among the ranks of the doomsayers. I think the future looks bright.
Too Beautiful To Live
Submitted by Brandon Berg on Sun, 2008-04-20 15:26.I just want to put in a quick plug for the immensely entertaining TBTL, a new apolitical talk radio show which is probably Too Beautiful To Live. It airs on Seattle's 710 KIRO from 19:00-22:00 (Pacific). For those outside of Seattle or unable to listen during those hours, the show's web site offers live streaming and MP3s of the ten most recent episodes.
The show consists of host Luke Burbank, producer Jennifer Andrews (formerly of Peter Weissbach's show on KVI, for readers who were in Seattle five years ago), and engineer Sean Trattori screwing around and saying whatever happens to pop into their heads, with occasional input from guests and the "tens" (of listeners).
TBTL makes liberal use of running gags, inside jokes, and drops (i.e. sound bites, which I would conservatively estimate account for about 103% of the show's air time--sometimes they play two simultaneously), which I suspect make it very much a love-it-or-hate-it thing.
Anyway, great show. Give it a listen, and if you love it remember that I told you. If you hate it, remember that this whole Verse thing was Jonathan's idea.
That Stevie Wonder is right on
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Fri, 2008-02-29 15:20.The wonders of Japanese culture never cease to amaze me.
Thugs Watch The Wire
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Thu, 2008-02-28 16:27.Don't read this unless you're caught up on this season's The Wire episodes.
Sudhir Venkatesh gets his hands dirty with some real-life thugs who watch The Wire.
Shine and I walked back into the apartment to watch episode 8. The rest of the crew was already assembled. Many had served up plates of catered food and were opening their fine domestic beers.
The viewing was uneventful until, “BANG!” Omar fell to his death. Kenard, the shortie from Michael’s street crew, had laid claim to the bounty.
The place went crazy. Omar is dead! Long live Omar! Kool-J threw a bag of pork rinds in the air, causing Shine to rebuke him with: “Hot sauce don’t come out of the carpets, boy!” Orlando woke from his semi-comatose state, crying, “No! No! They took my boy! First Butchie and now Omar!”
Tony-T was the most visibly shaken. “It can happen to any of us, just like that. You think you’re going out to buy some chicken and Pepsi, and the next thing, some kid wants to make a name for himself by taking you out.”
“We got to tell Flavor,” Shine said. “I know he’ll go nuts when he hears this.” Shine left the room to call Flavor on his cell phone. The rest of the Thugs began making side-bets.
“I say Michael kills Marlo,” Orlando said soberly. “That young [man] is going to take over.”
“Nope,” said Tony-T. “Avon. Avon, Avon, Avon. He’s got a deal with the Greeks, and they’ll take out Marlo. You watch: Avon is coming back! That’s my boy!”
Amidst the speculation and wagers, Shine returned. He had a fresh beer in his hand and he was shaking his head.
“Flavor’s in some real trouble now,” he said. “That boy should have laid low, and instead…”
“He went after Pootchie, didn’t he?” Kool-J yelled. (Everyone in the room evidently knew about Flavor’s troubles.) “Just say it! I’m right, ain’t I? Flavor went after Pootchie, didn’t he? I knew that son of a b—h couldn’t just hide out, keep quiet. That’s all he had to do! Jo-Jo was going to get arrested in a week — I told him that.”
Shine nodded and then explained: Flavor was so upset about the coup d’etat orchestrated by Jo-Jo that he decided to go after Jo-Jo’s girlfriend. But on the way to her place, he stopped off at a strip club, where he ran into some of Jo-Jo’s guys.
“They beat the s–t out of him, but that n—-r got away! I guess he left this trail of blood; he’s hurt pretty bad. But he’s in his car, still running.”
“I say Flavor goes after Jo-Jo,” Orlando said. “That [guy] can’t wait. Impatient m—-r f—-r.”
“No,” said Shine. “I think he’s shaken up. I think he’ll call his brother, Richie, stay at his place.”
“Hell no!” Tony-T yelped. “He’s going out like John Wayne. Guns firing.”
Stringer Bell, these guys aren't. Among the many not-believable characters in the series, Stringer Bell stood out. I always thought that someone as smart, calm, and far-thinking as him would not stay long in the Game. He'd realize that he'd have a much easier time making money by legal means with a fraction of the risk. But David Simon needed a diabolical "capitalist" genius criminal.
Super Bowl Thoughts
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Sun, 2008-02-03 23:37.* Is there an in-the-grasp rule in the NFL? Sure looked like Eli Manning was in the grasp on that crazy play at the end of the game.
* Speaking of that play, I think it will probably be replayed 30 years from now on ESPN8. It was an unbelievable play both from the QB and the WR on a drive where it counted the most.
* What's up with Belichick's short-sleeve sweatshirt? I've never seen such a thing. Don't the short sleeves defeat the whole purpose of the sweatshirt? It even had a hood.
* Best commercial was probably the pair of E*Trade commercials with the baby. The first one with the puking was all slapstick. The second one with the clown was cerebral.
* More fashion: what in the world is Keyshawn Johnson wearing on the ESPN set?
* The NFL now has two "faces of the NFL", not just one.
* WHERE'S TIKI? It's bad enough his team win the Super Bowl the year after he retired. But he went the extra mile and publicly criticized Manning and Coughlin at the beginning of the season. There are winners and there are talkers. Tiki turned out to be a talker, Manning and Coughlin winners. I think he'll have to publicly give credit to Manning and Coughlin to have any credibility remaining.
* I remember an interview with the Archie Manning sometime while Peyton was in college. They asked him about Peyton's little brother who hadn't yet started high school, and the elder Manning said something like, "Yeah, he shows promise, but I'm not going to push him into football. We'll see what happens." Archie Manning never played in a Super Bowl. Both his sons now have Super Bowl MVP trophies.
* Hey Tom Brady - chin up. Even on your worst day, it's still Christmas.
Gillespie & Welch: Right for the Most Part
Submitted by Kyle Eliason on Wed, 2008-01-23 04:16.Gillespie and Welch rightly take Congress to task for their hysterics over Major League Baseball's steroid use here. A couple things stood out as misleading, though (emphasis mine):
The uncomfortable truth is that illegally obtained muscle-rebuilding treatments exist on a continuum that includes laser eye surgery, Vitamin B-12 shots and Tommy John surgery (a procedure that grafts ligaments from knees or elsewhere onto a wrecked elbow, frequently giving pitchers more velocity than they had before). Sorting out the morality and legality of self-improvement has more to do with aesthetic revulsion and moral panic than with considered science or logic.
This makes it sound as if Tommy John surgery, named for the pitcher that first underwent the procedure invented by Dr. James Andrews, increases a pitcher's velocity? Kind of, in the sense that someone with a torn ligament in their elbow can't throw very hard at all. But pitchers don't throw harder than they did prior to injuring their elbow, rehab time after the surgery is 12 to 18 months, and players usually don't regain their pre-injury velocity until their second year of pitching after the injury, if ever. Dr. Andrews should be inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame, or at least given some award by Cooperstown and a plaque in some part of the museum, because the procedure has saved numerous careers and is responsible for tens-of-thousands of innings at the major league level. It has changed baseball, but Gillespie and Welch almost make it sound as if pitchers are moving ligaments around to give some more jump to their fastballs.
Another paragraph that caught my eye (emphasis mine):
But Congress no more established a Major League Baseball commissioner than the Blackhawks, a professional hockey team founded in 1926, ever held a seventh-inning stretch. In fact, when baseball owners appointed the racist judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis the league's first commissioner after the Chicago Black Sox game-throwing scandal, Congress tried to forcibly remove him from the federal bench. When Shays's wild pitches were pointed out to him, his response was to shrug like Hall of Fame pitcher and self-admitted cheater Gaylord Perry caught with Vaseline on the mound: "I could care less."
Norman Macht, a baseball historian held in high regard by many (his new biography on Connie Mack is 700 pages long and 20-some years in the making), had a presentation at last year's SABR Convention that convincingly aruged that baseball's color barrier was a product of the owners and not the commissioner (Landis). That Landis, while not taking any active steps to do away with the color barrier, wasn't opposed to integration. He knew that none of the current crop of owners would have it, and if none of the teams were willing to integrate, a decree from the office of the commissioner wouldn't have righted the wrong. It can be argued that such a stance is still racist and that by taking such a stance Landis is a racist himself, but it isn't as clear-cut as Gillespie and Welch make it seem.
Everything Gillespie and Welch say about congress is spot on. They just make a few errors on the ballfield. Particularly interesting is the way the anti-trust exemption Major League Baseball received has actually fowled things up. The exemption was incorrectly granted on the grounds that baseball doesn't transact business across state lines. It obviously does, especially now with online merchandise shops, national network broadcast contracts, satellite radio, cable and internet broadcast packages, etc. The problem with the anti-trust case against baseball is that the individual teams aren't seperate firms colluding, but a joint venture. The teams together sell the product of on-field competition. Two competing Subway franchises would like nothing more than to drive each other out of business and being the last franchise standing, reap all the sandwich sales, but this does not apply to baseball franchises just because they compete on the field. The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox don't want to drive each other out of business, as their rivalry is worth millions of dollars. They just want to win on the field, which esentially means they're both working together to give their customers the best possible product.
David Boaz' take at Cato here.
The Market Prevails Again!
Submitted by Kyle Eliason on Fri, 2008-01-18 07:11.Needs sound.
Mystery Woman
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Thu, 2008-01-17 23:27.Alright TV watchers, who is this woman? No googling allowed.
(Hint: The pictures are probably at least a decade old, though I'm not sure of their exact origin.)
The Scientists
Submitted by Kyle Eliason on Wed, 2008-01-16 04:04.Micha wrote the following about Samuel Konkin:
Darrington tells me [Konkin] had the charming weirdness of the modal libertarian, Rothbard's intended but misfired slur (embrace it, yo! modal+beltway unite!), up to and including endearing obsessions with science fiction, communal living, and funny neck jewelry.
Jumping into the New Libertarian Manefesto, Konkin himself writes:
Seeking an art form to express the horror potential of the State and extrapolate the many possibilities of liberty, Libertarianism found Science Fiction already in the field. (Page 7)
And:
The rest of this Libertarian society can be best pictured by imaginative science fiction authors with a good grounding in praxeology (Mises' term for the study of human action, especially, but not only, economics.)
Some hallmarks of this society - libertarian in theory and free-market in practice, called agorist, from the Greek agora, meaning "open marketplace" - are rapid innovations in science, technology, communication, transportation, production and distribution. (Page 14)
Which comes first, the free-market society or the rapid innovations in science and technology? Does the libertarian interest in science fiction reflect the former? Or, is it just more exciting to have the later quickly spawn the former within the timeline of a work of fiction (Mike the self-aware computer system in Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress), where technological progress leaves a coercive, regulatory system in its dust and remakes society despite its tantrums (like the RIAA feebly throwing sandbags at the tidal wave that is file sharing).
It comes as a mild surprise to me that, with this libertarian affinity (Konkin) or escapist distraction (Rothbard), however you want to look at it, there isn't more of a libertarian interest in the '90s Champaign-Urbana space rock band Hum. The band's lyrics are far too oblique to carry any discernable political message, but often reflect the beauty inherent in the kind of freedom that space travel (and other technological leaps) may provide.
The first verse and chorus from 'The Scientists' off Hum's incomparable Downward Is Heavenward:
Electrified and lit up by an outline of herself,
and smiling now as only she can be.
She said, "I made some new connections to astound them all,
in ways we've never dreamed about."
Her lovely hand is glowing from a light inside itself,
from soaking in the esters stacked for miles on a single shelf.
Holding my eyes still so she can see,
all the super-undercover custom hybrids got to me.It's too much, you're too late. I want to see it all again.
She says, "Keep this benzene ring around your finger,
and think of me when everything you wanted starts to end."
All the techno-geek libertarian stereotypes are there. There's the dominant female romantic interest that serves as savior for the dateless Ghertner crowd who would otherwise have to fight stacked odds for female attention in the male-dominated libertarian sphere (or engineering department). There's new technological progress. There's even an ubergeeky tip of the hat to Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz. And not that this song gives any indication, but the band found their drummer after hearing him play along to a few Rush tunes in a rehearsal space.
If Hum is where left-libertarianism leads you (star gazing lyrics over the drone of layered and effected guitar tracks), maybe it is worth checking out. If you aren't familiar with Hum, is it then safe to write you off as one of my cranky paleocon brethren? If you fall into the latter category, don't worry. They still host piano recitals with music from the Habsburg Empire at the Mises Institute.
Give It a Name
Submitted by Kyle Eliason on Mon, 2008-01-14 03:47.Jesse Walker has a review of Steve Earle's newest album Washington Square Serenade up at Reason Online that's worth a read. Walker brands Earle's new songs as folkery-fakery, a term which, best I could find, can be attributed to Dwight Macdonald who used it to define Pete Seeger in his essay Country Joe McDonald is a Better Kettle of Fish (available in this collection). I wasn't born until the 1980s and have always had a strong gag reflex to folk music due to the practice of well-off leftists faking populism by purposely slumming it, so maybe the term was once used by in-fighting members of the scene? I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during a folkie agruement in the Sixties about whether the bourgeois electric guitar was kosher or not. Never letting the American middle class have their due, the new bohemians (not, to my knowledge, of the Edie Brickell variety) now claim the garage band was a European invention, as if it wasn't the growing middle class in America buying both electric guitars and garages in the Fifties (or that the Pacific-Northwest garage scene, rockabilly and surf rock didn't predate the British Invasion). Back to the point, whatever the origin of folkery-fakery, I find it a very fitting and useful term.
Thomas Sowell Is No Capitalist
Submitted by Kyle Eliason on Thu, 2008-01-10 05:13.Thomas Sowell has penned a column on the need for professional athletes to model their behavior aound the fear children will take up fraud, dog fighting and the abuse of steroids, and in the latter case it's strange to see someone writing for Capitalism Magazine cast aside the principle of self-ownership (this is my first encounter with the online rag, so maybe the shock will quickly fade).
Sowell joins a long line of folks who overstate the potential harm to children caused by steroid use by professional athletes and couples it with with a complete lack of understanding that it is currently impossible to completely remove performance enhancing drugs from baseball. Let's start with the latter.
There is a huge difference in the minimum salaries paid to players in Triple-A (the highest of six levels of organized minor league baseball) and the Major Leagues. Triple-A players make a minimum of $25,800 and Major Leaguers a minimum of $380,000. If you're a fringe Major Leaguer making the equivalent of $12.40 an hour in Triple-A, there's a $354,200 annual reward to the risks that accompany steroid use. Maybe you get caught, face legal charges, hurt your reputation and get suspended from baseball (currently the first offense is a 50-game suspension), but maybe without steroids you never make it to the big leagues anyway. And from a health standpoint, shouldn't it be up to the individual what risks they'll take for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars?
Among established Major Leaguers, one group of players that has shown up in investigations and testing are players that suffered serious injuries. Major League contracts are guaranteed, but injured athletes still have strong incentives to recouperate as quickly as possible. And healthy Major Leaguers' careers can also benefit from steroid use, especially as players reach their mid-to-late thirties and forties. It seems highly unlikely that even impassioned pleas to "think about the children" are going to curb demand.
On the supply side of things, the scientists devising the testing are always reacting to the scientists developing the masking (you probably can't develop a test for a substance that doesn't exist just yet), so baseball will always be playing catch-up. There isn't even a test for Human Growth Hormone (HGH) yet. All of the players that baseball has caught through testing were either minor leaguers too poor to buy the newest performance enhancers or Major Leaguers too stupid to stop using the old stuff. The only players accused of HGH use have been mentioned in testimony or paper trails.
I fully support whatever penalties baseball wishes to impose upon steroid users. The sports sells the product of competition and if steroid use, made public, undermines that product in the eyes of the public and lowers the demand for it, baseball would be foolish not to take steps to prevent the practice.
What I don't support is Sowell's assertion that the children of America are going to start taking steroids in large numbers because some professional athletes have, or that what an athlete chooses to put into his own body is anyone else's business, particularly if the foundation of their criticism rests on a bed of failed parenting and a lack of property rights.
Sowell also recommends the implementation of asterisks, as if baseball went through no significant peroids of change (desegregation, night games, the screwball and the split-finger fastball*) prior to the recent surge in steroid use. Hell, there was a significant spike in homerun rates when MLB moved the manufacturing facilities for their baseballs from Hati to the Dominican Republic in 1987. The better machinery wound the balls much tighter and had to be corrected for 1988. Should anyone that hit a homerun in 1987 have an asterisk next to their name in the Baseball Encyclopedia?
*Check out Mike Scott's 1986 season, the year he was taught to throw the splitter by pitching coach Roger Craig. The splitter's emergence dates only as far back as the mid-seventies, with Hall of Fame closer Bruce Sutter being indentified as one of the first pitchers to feature the pitch.
What I've Learned
Submitted by Kyle Eliason on Tue, 2008-01-08 07:20.In response to Jonathan's Edge 2008 post:
After reading Taleb and observing Hanley Ramirez, I'm giving an equal amount of weight to subjective player analysis (scouting) so it's on par with objective performance analysis (sabermetrics) while at the same time reducing my opinion of both.
Ramirez compiled a very poor statistical record throughout his minor league career and when he was the main component of a package that the Marlins got in return for dealing Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell and Guillermo Mota to the Red Sox, I thought the Marlins got robbed. There was a small consensus of scouts that said Ramirez was bored in the minor leagues and would put his career into gear once he reached the majors. Ramirez went from a .720 OPS in his final year of Double-A, to skipping Triple-A, to posting a .889 OPS over the past two seasons in the Majors while playing his home games in a pitcher's park. He'll probably have to move from shortstop to a less challenging postion defensively sooner rather than later, but he's got the bat to weather such a change.
You put the "b" in "subtle"
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Mon, 2008-01-07 19:29.
The first episode of the last season of The Wire, "More with Less," aired last night. As usual, the first episode doesn't provide a lot of action as it's used to set up what comes later. The biggest addition to the storyline this season is the crew of the Baltimore Sun newspaper.
Every institution that's portrayed has someone principled to some degree.
Po-lice: McNulty, Freamon, Greggs, Colvin
Drug dealers: DeAngelo, Wallace, Cutty
Politicians: Carcetti (at least at the beginning, though no longer)
Young'uns: pretty much all of them, but especially Randy
School: Prez, Grace Sampson
Stevedores: Nick
Streets: Bubs, Omar
These people do their best to fight the system but ultimately can't stand up to the machine's inertia. Some merely battle fruitlessly; others become it's victims. Now that I'm watching the 5th season of this show, a few predictable ploys are apparent even this early in the season. The main theme is going to be irresponsibility in the media. The Sun's principled warrior is going to be desk editor Gus Haynes. He'll fight for truth and transparency against the corrupt out-of-touch higher-ups like execute editor James Whiting. His good minions will include Alma Gutierrez. Thorn-in-his-side minions will include Scott Templeton. In the end, as with all past seasons, Haynes will lose, and the people at the top will remain untouchable. There are no happy endings in David Simon's world.
Obviousness not really a criticism because it's hard to remain unpredictable after making fifty hours of television. After 13 seasons of Whedonism, I pretty much know what sorts of themes and archetypes to expect, yet I still find it entertaining. I'm gonna savor this last season of The Wire.