With high school football starting tonight (or later this afternoon, in my personal case), Buzzfeed passes on truisms from the ultimate high school football coach, Dillon Panthers coach Eric Taylor from NBC-TV’s “Friday Night Lights”:
1. He taught us to keep our composure.
2. And the importance of being punctual.
3. He taught us responsibility.
5. He taught us character.
6. And how to earn people’s respect.
12. And to tell the people close to you that you’re proud of them.
16. And how to be champions.
17. But most importantly, he taught us these six words to live by…
Come to think of it, this doesn’t have to apply just to high school football. Or to high school.
The math keeps getting better for the Milwaukee Brewers.
After sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers in improbable and relentless fashion, the Brewers now have the best record in the National League at 70 wins and 55 losses, and lead the St. Louis Cardinals by three games in the National League Central.
The Brewers can go 18-19 down the stretch while the Cardinals would have to finish 22-17 just to force a tie for the division lead.
With fewer than 40 games to go, how likely is it that the Brewers make the playoffs? I compiled a handful of projections and put them in a table:
Click on the link, and you’ll get additional data, if that’s what you want to call this, about the Brewers’ chances beyond just getting into the playoffs as of earlier this week.
The more up to date data can be found at FanGraphs, and you get a different set of predictions there. Those projections have the Brewers and Cardinals tying for the NL Central title, with 88 wins each. The Brewers there, as of Wednesday, had a 52.8-percent chance of winning the NL Central, where the Cardinals had a 42.9 percent chance of winning the Central. That may seem like a lot, but it is actually the second closest projection (the closest is the AL Central).
One reason you probably shouldn’t buy this is that the Brewers and the Cardinals have seven games against each other in September. The Brewers are 5–7 against the Cardinals, and the Cardinals made trades to get better pitching (though that pitching hasn’t been better so far), and the Brewers haven’t. What would be worse, frankly, is for a repeat of 2011 — the Brewers get the wins over the Cardinals in the regular season, and then the Cardinals get the last laugh in the postseason.
The other is that this tries to predict based on past performance. If you believe the Brewers have been playing over their heads (suffice to say that no one was predicting the Brewers would be in first place in late August), regression to the mean predicts an ugly September, particularly given their schedule (harder than the Cardinals’ schedule) and their lack of big-game-experienced pitching.
Even if you buy this, you shouldn’t get your hopes up of a deep playoff run. The Brewers have just an 8.8-percent chance of getting to the World Series and a 2.8-percent chance of winning the World Series.
This Debbie Downer act of mine (but I am far from the only fan who feels this way) disgusts Gene Mueller:
The Brewers are atop the National League Central by three games as the new week begins, fresh off a sweep of the Los Angeles freakin’ Dodgers. It’s a lofty perch they’ve held since well-before you mailed in your income taxes. Think about that for a second, fans: a club given paltry-at-best chances of contending has been in first place for more than four months. …
But from Opening Day on, when the team’s early success was a pleasant surprise until these back-to-school-days of summer, there’s been an undercurrent flowing among fans, one that oozes doom and gloom, one that reeks of pending despair.
Jonathan Lucroy is an MVP candidate. Aramis Ramirez is strong and steady at third. Carlos Gomez is remains a beast. Ryan Braun fights gamely on even though he’s left with only one functioning opposable thumb. Starting pitching? No worries–beyond a pleasant surprise, in fact. So what’s not to love? Why are so many True Blue members of the Brew Crew so…blue?
They worry about Braun’s functionality. They fret about first base where Lyle Overbay isn’t the doubles machine we loved during his first tour of duty and where Mark Reynolds is prone to the whiff between prodigious homers. They don’t care to see Rickey Weeks sharing time with Scooter Gennett at second. They worry about Jean Segura’s slide at the plate, and Khris Davis’ issues in left field. And, they live in mortal fear about the bullpen.
Solid points, indeed, but enough to take the shine off what’s been a season for the ages so far?
A team is the sum of its parts and the bottom line for the Brewers so far is that it’s a club good enough to lead a division where no one’s caught fire. The Cards, Pirates and Reds haven’t gone on any daunting win streaks, but then again, Milwaukee hasn’t, either. The Brewers July swoon served to fortify the doubters, and the lack of a torrid streak keeps many wondering when the other shoe is going to drop.
St. Louis is always a threat, and the Redbirds are due to get some starting pitchers back in September, just in time for the kind of run many fear could undo the Brewers–there’s something about that red parakeet that strikes fear in the heart of even the most fervid Milwaukee seam head–while Pittsburgh and Cincinnati are contending despite injuries to key position players. It would be nice to see some of these clubs falter, but that hasn’t been the case.
The big worries for Brewers fans should be injury and the pop-gun offense: the team lacks depth among position players and losing a big bat could be a death knell. The attack? Milwaukee seems to score just enough to get by but too often goes into funks that leave its hitters estranged from home plate. It’s those kind of slumps that can be enough to thwart a late-season push during a critical series, or bounce a team from the playoffs in an early round.
The trade deadline came and went with GM Doug Melvin making a deal for another outfielder, Gold Glover Gerardo Parra. It wasn’t enough for some fans, but the asking price for other available talent seemed too high with more than a few clubs hot for Jimmy Nelson. Sometimes, the best trade is the one you DON’T make. That said, don’t think Melvin is done looking for help, as deals can still get done (once those involved clear waivers). He’s not the kind of guy to sit on his hands, especially when the club is this close to the playoffs.
Cheer up, Brewers Nation! This is the kind of season many dreamed of but few thought would happen. Not only is your team contending in a tough division, it’s leading the pack in late August. This could be a fantastic late summer that could segue into an exciting autumn. And, even if the worst happens, how can anyone say they’re disappointed by the kind of baseball we’ve been treated to in 2014 (factoring out a large hunk of July, of course)?
Well, for one thing, 88 projected wins isn’t that impressive, even if it’s second best in the National League. That right there probably tells you what you need to know, that the National League isn’t very good this year. The Cardinals’ odds of winning the World Series are 5.3 percent, which indirectly proves a point about the value of pitching in a short playoff series. And Melvin has nine days to get better pitching before the playoff roster deadline.
The National Football League season starts in four weeks.
That may not be as noticeable in the NFL’s lesser markets, as determined by success, or lack thereof, of their teams. The NFL has a rule that blacks out TV broadcasts if the game isn’t sold out within 72 hours of kickoff (or 48 hours if the NFL grants an extension, which it usually does when asked).
This is almost never an issue in Wisconsin, though it almost was last year when the Packers’ playoff game against San Francisco went deep into the week before it was sold out. Home NFL games — even playoff games such as the Ice Bowl — were always blacked out in home markets (in the Packers’ case, Green Bay and Milwaukee) until the early 1970s.
Federal Communications Commission commissioner Ajit Pai believes the blackout rule should be wiped out, and took the opportunity of an appearance in Buffalo to say so:
There’s no better place to discuss that topic than the City of No Illusions. This city has a rich sports tradition—the Bills, as you know, remain the only team ever to win four consecutive conference championships—and Buffalo is legendary for its loyal sports fans.
In some places, fair-weather fans find it easy to cheer for the home team. But Buffalonians don’t have that luxury. They’ve suffered their share of disappointments. As one local writer put it earlier this year, “If you are a sports fan in Buffalo, you know the words let-down, heartbreak and emptiness.” Brett Hull’s triple-overtime goal against the Sabres in Game 6 of the 1999 Stanley Cup. The Braves of the NBA leaving town in 1978 to become the Clippers. And, perhaps most painfully—wide right.
Unfortunately, the heartbreak isn’t even limited to the playing field. Over the last four seasons, nine Buffalo Bills home games have been blacked out in Western New York. And that’s where the FCC comes in.
Late last year, the FCC announced that it would consider eliminating its sports blackout rule. League blackout policies can prohibit local television broadcast stations from airing games. And if the local stations can’t broadcast it, the FCC’s blackout rule prohibits cable and satellite companies (within a local blackout zone) from carrying it. This hurts fans who can’t go to the game. …
In the wake of the FCC’s announcement last year, hundreds of people around the country have given us their opinions on whether the sports blackout rule is necessary today. … And one of the most persuasive proponents for getting rid of this rule has been Buffalo’s own Congressman Brian Higgins. …
To be sure, Congressman Higgins and I don’t agree on everything. He backs the Bills. I cheer for the Chiefs. He’s a Democrat. I’m a Republican. But there are at least three things that can unite Buffalo and Kansas City partisans and folks of all political stripes. First, there’s admiration for Marv Levy, who coached both of our teams with distinction. Second, it has been, is, and always should be the Buffalo Bills. And there’s also this: The time has come for the FCC to repeal its sports blackout rule.
Why do I say that? After carefully reviewing all of the arguments, I don’t believe the government should intervene in the marketplace and help sports leagues enforce their blackout policies. Our job is to serve the public interest, not the private interests of team owners.
During my time at the FCC, I have consistently stressed the need to get rid of unnecessary regulations—of rules that have outlived whatever usefulness they once might have had, of rules that keep hard-working American consumers out of the end zone. The sports blackout rule is just such a rule. …
Right now, the FCC is officially on the side of blackouts. We should be on the side of sports fans like Jon Neubauer, who told WIVB News 4 “I can’t make it to every single [Bills] game, [but] I’m still a huge fan.” I want the FCC to help fans like him watch the stars of tomorrow: the next Andre Reed, who was just inducted into the Hall of Fame (and who has stood up for Buffalo of late); the next Thurman Thomas, who made it to five straight Pro Bowls; and the next Jim Kelly, whose brave battle against cancer inspires us even more than all of his on-field heroics.
Admittedly, if the FCC’s job is not to stand up for the private interest of NFL team owners, it will be standing up for the private interest of Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN, which broadcast the games.
The NFL, meanwhile, isn’t taking this sitting down, reports The Hill:
Just in time for kickoff, the National Football League is pushing federal regulators to keep a rule on the books that forces cable and satellite companies to black out some games. …
The league argues the rule helps teams sell tickets and creates a compelling stadium atmosphere, allowing the NFL to keep games on free television.
League lobbyist Ken Edmonds and other officials met with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s legal adviser last Thursday “to emphasize that the FCC’s sports blackout rule remains necessary and in the public interest,” according to a filing made public this week.
NFL officials told the FCC that the league is working with teams “to make blackouts exceedingly rare” by letting them lower the bar of what counts as a sold-out game, and noted that attendance has increased and the number of blackouts “has dropped dramatically.”
Last year, for instance, just two of the NFL’s 256 regular season games were blacked out.
“Although the League has taken a variety of steps to accomplish that goal, the blackout rule has been a critical contributing factor to that success,” league lawyers wrote.
In recent weeks, the NFL has also sent thousands of letters to the FCC from football fans who want to keep the blackout rule alive. The league also set up a website this summer calling for fans to “protect football on free TV,” offering links to contact Congress and the FCC.
The battle is being waged over the airwaves, too.
[Lynn] Swann, the Hall of Fame wide receiver and former Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate, said in an interview with the NFL Network over the weekend that the rule “helps grow the game and helps maintain it.”
“We need to make sure to protect the game so the widest number of people possible can view it and keep it on free TV for those people who don’t buy cable packages,” said Swann. He has been taking his pitch to local sports reporters and editors across the country.
When the rules were first adopted in 1975, teams said they were necessary to ensure that fans kept attending games in person instead of just watching them on TV. The potential for games to be blacked out encouraged people to buy tickets, they say, and maintain the revenue stream.
But critics of the rules argue that times have changed. The blackout rule allows NFL teams to be immune from the normal pressures of a free market and disproportionally hurts teams in smaller cities, they say.
For now, it looks like the reformers may be winning out.
Last December, the FCC unanimously voted to move forward with a plan to end the decades-old rules.
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pushed strongly for the commission to finalize that process this summer.
So far, the FCC is still reviewing the arguments and has yet to place the item on its agenda.
In the meantime, officials at the commission have held several meetings with the Sports Fan Coalition, a group pushing to kill the blackout rule.
Even if the FCC did get rid of the rule, leagues like the NFL would still be able to negotiate individually with broadcasters, cable providers and satellite companies to black out some games.
One therefore wonders why the FCC is getting involved if the blackout rule could be negotiated between the NFL and its broadcasters anyway.
There is a big issue Pai could have brought up that is an even better rationale for eliminating the blackout rule. With exactly one exception (for instance, MetLife Stadium, home of the Giants and Jets), every stadium built since 1997 used at least some taxpayer funds, and most used a majority of taxpayer funds. (That includes Lambeau Field, the early 2000s renovations for which were paid for by a 0.5-percent Brown County sales tax.) Even the stadiums that didn’t use a majority of public funding for building construction certainly used public funds for infrastructure, including new roads to get to the stadium.
That doesn’t mean that taxpayers should get into NFL games for free. That does mean that taxpayers should at least be able to see what’s going on in the stadiums their tax money built, in this case by having home games on TV.
The Thursday trade-without-waivers deadline came and went with the Brewers making one acquisition — outfielder Gerardo Parra.
At least Parra is a left-handed hitter. He has six home runs, which is six more than outfielder Logan Schaefer, and two fewer than occasional lead-off hitter Scooter Gennett. But Parra (which must mean “left-handed” in Spanish, since former Brewer pitcher Manny Parra was also left-handed) is not a power hitter. He has never hit more than 10 home runs in a season, and to expect him to hit 10 to 15 home runs the rest of this season is unrealistic.
The Brewers did not improve themselves in their two biggest liabilities — left-handed power hitting and pitching. Nearly all of the Brewers’ notable hitters — center fielder Carlos Gomez, catcher Jonathan Lucroy, right fielder Ryan Braun, and third baseman Aramis Ramirez — are right-handed hitters. The Brewers platoon at first base, but the right-handed first baseman, Mark Reynolds (today’s answer to Dave Kingman) has 16 of the 20 home runs at first base. The leading left-handed power hitter is Gennett, with eight, eight more than outfielder Logan Schaefer, who was platooning in left field for a while. The Brewers also platoon at second base, which means Gennett gets the majority of the at-bats (most pitchers are right-handed, of course), but Gennett is probably not a power hitter in this or any future season.
The Brewers do not have en0ugh pitching. The Brewers have literally never had enough pitching. They do not have a number-one or even number-two starter on their staff. That includes supposed number-one starter Yovani Gallardo, who has not pitched any better than a number-three starter all season. The bigger pitching issue is late-inning relief, before closer Francisco Rodriguez (though Rodriguez has a few spectacular flameouts this season), and, again, the Brewers didn’t improve themselves there either.
My contention throughout this season is that the Brewers have been playing over their heads, and that rarely lasts for even an entire season. The Brewers’ worst stretch of the season was just before the All-Star break, when they shed their entire division lead, only to win the final game of the season and thus take a lead into the break. They still have that lead, but I think it’s highly likely that lead will disappear after their weekend in St. Louis, which starts tonight. The Cardinals picked up two pitchers this week, though neither, thankfully, was superstar lefty David Price, who went from Tampa Bay to Detroit.
Parra is a Gold Glove winner, but left field is probably the least important defensive position in the outfield. Parra isn’t going to replace Braun in right or Gomez in center, and left fielder Khris Davis has been hitting home runs in left, so it’s not clear why the Brewers got Parra at all. They needed bench help (one other player they never replaced after he left was utility player Jerry Hairston Jr., who they got during the 2011 season), but I’m not sure Parra’s that bench help either.
There were a couple of rumors, or more speculation than rumor, that the Brewers might be going after two supposedly available left-handed first basemen, Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard and Boston’s David Ortiz. (Ortiz started his professional career in Wisconsin, when the Timber Rattlers were a Mariners affiliate.) Neither is playing to their traditional standards. Both are up their in years. Both are on teams that apparently are shedding their older and more expensive players. Howard is due $70 million the next two seasons, but supposedly the Phillies were willing to pay “most” of that to a new team. Neither deal happened, and the waiver period’s end makes deals more difficult, though not impossible.
This should not necessarily be read as a call to replace general manager Doug Melvin. Given the Brewers’ limited resources, maybe this team is the best he can do this year. This year demonstrates, though, the downsides of building from within, in that it takes longer and the penalties for failure to develop players (for instance, left-handed power hitters) or injuries (relievers Tyler Thornburg and Jim Henderson) are harsher.
Brewers fans remember the playoff seasons — 1981, 1982, 2008 and 2011. They less remember the almost-seasons — 1979, 1983, 1987 (the Brewers managed to miss the playoffs despite their 13-0 start) and 1992. And this looks now like one of those seasons, not a playoff season.
Today in 1979, I believe I was back in Madison after nearly a month camping with my father, Boy Scouts and Scoutmaster in the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.
I know I did not watch the Yankees-Brewers game at Milwaukee County Stadium that night. The game was not on TV, because the Brewers didn’t televise home games, feeling it would hurt home attendance, until the Sportsvue subscription TV service debuted in 1984. (Sportsvue then died a year later, in large part because the Brewers chose the 1984 season to crater, just two years after their World Series season and the year after the Brewers contended almost all of the season.)
It’s too bad the Yankees-Brewers game wasn’t on TV, because, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Gary D’Amato, it had everything, including an epic brawl:
OK, old Brewers fans, how many Brewers do you recognize? For that matter, how many Yankees do you recognize?
The Yankees back then were…well, how to describe them? Think of the team you despise most and multiply it by 10.
“I think there’s always a dislike for the Yankees,” said Sal Bando, then the Brewers’ third baseman. “Being in your own division (the American League East), I think there’s a bigger dislike for them.”
Owner George Steinbrenner was the symbol of big-city, big-spending conceit. Irascible manager Billy Martin had a perpetual chip on his shoulder. Reggie Jackson was the self-proclaimed “straw that stirs the drink,” with a home-run swing to match his enormous ego.
“They had some characters, some crazy guys on that team,” [first baseman Cecil] Cooper said. “But they had an awesome team with guys like Bucky Dent, Willie Randolph, Thurman Munson, Reggie, (Mickey) Rivers, (Lou) Piniella.”
The Brewers were coming into their own. After eight consecutive losing seasons (nine counting the franchise’s one year in Seattle), they’d gone 93-69 in 1978 and were en route to winning 95 games in ’79.
Bando and Cooper had arrived in 1977 to join Robin Yount and Don Money. Paul Molitor, Jim Gantner and Charlie Moore were ascending young players. Gorman Thomas had found a home in center field.
“We were a good team,” Bando said. “Oh, yeah, there was no question about it.”
Left-hander Mike Caldwell started the series opener. He was a bit of a character himself, known for carrying an expensive valise, in which he stored one item: a bottle of ketchup.
A crafty veteran who mixed speeds well, Caldwell already was known as the “Yankee Killer,” having shut out New York three times the year before.
“The Yankees always ruled the roost,” Caldwell said. “But I pitched extremely well against them my whole career. They had a lot of left-handers and free swingers in their lineup.”
The Yankees scored a run in the first inning, but Cooper answered in the bottom half with a two-out solo shot off starter Ed Figueroa. The homer earned Cooper a brushback pitch from Figueroa in his next at-bat, in the third.
“Figueroa was a different kind of guy,” Cooper said.
To underscore the point, when approached in the locker room after the game, Figueroa denied not only brushing back Cooper, but his own identity. “I’m not Figueroa,” he said, dismissing reporters while blow-drying his hair.
Jackson led off in the top of the fourth and Caldwell’s first pitch was high and tight and delivered the appropriate message.
“Mike was a hard-nosed, mean, grumpy kind of guy,” Cooper said. “He always stood up for his teammates.”
Jackson said nothing and worked the count to 2-2. On the next pitch, Caldwell again came inside, this time with a rising fastball that buzzed Jackson’s chin, causing the Yankees slugger to topple over backward.
“I’ll tell you exactly what happened, and it is truthful,” Caldwell said. “I wanted to throw Reggie a fastball on the inside part of the plate because he had some holes in his swing there. I was trying to telegraph to him that I was going to throw a curve and the ball slipped ever so slightly on my fingertips and I threw a fastball that was inside and it rode up on him.
“It turned into what you would call a perfect knockdown pitch.”
Jackson got up and dusted himself off. Caldwell then threw a curve and Jackson hit a towering pop-up to Bando at third.
Craziness ensued.
Caldwell moved toward Bando and was pointing to the ball and yelling, “Third!” when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a bat coming at him. Jackson, trotting to first base, had expressed his displeasure with Caldwell’s pitch location by flipping his bat toward the mound.
“As I’m waiting for the ball, I hear the fans yelling,” Bando said. “That usually doesn’t happen with a pop-up, so I figured something was going on.”
An angry Caldwell picked up Jackson’s bat by the fat end and slammed it into the ground. Dissatisfied that it didn’t shatter, he took a step or two toward home with the intention of breaking it on the plate. Umpire John Shulock was already coming out to meet him.
“He said, ‘No, Mike, not here,’” Caldwell said.
By then, Bando had caught the ball, Jackson had rounded first and now, shedding his glasses and helmet, was rushing the mound as the dugouts emptied.
“He got his hands around my neck and if you’ve seen pictures of it, it looks like I got killed,” Caldwell said. “His momentum carried him over me and I wound up on top of him. My right arm was pinned under his neck. I had my left arm around the front of his neck and I think I tore two or three gold chains.
“Reggie said, ‘You threw at me!’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t throw at you.’ He said, ‘You swear to God? You swear to God?’ I said, ‘Hell, yeah, I swear to God.’”
It took 10 minutes to restore order but the only casualties were Shulock, who’d gotten in the way of a punch, and Brewers manager George Bamberger, who strained a calf muscle. Jackson was ejected but Caldwell was allowed to stay in the game, none the worse for wear other than a few scratches.
Martin declared that the Yankees were playing the game under protest, and when he returned to the dugout, he was pelted with a few objects and a fair amount of verbal abuse. He started climbing into the stands but was pulled back by players and security guards.
The game finally resumed and after the Yankees went ahead, 3-2, Money drove in a run and Cooper hit a two-out, two-run homer off Ron Davis in the seventh to put the Brewers back on top, 5-3.
Randolph answered in the eighth with a two-run shot off Caldwell to tie the score. Martin brought in the flame-throwing Gossage for the ninth and he quickly retired Molitor on a groundout and Money on a fly to center. Up came Cooper.
“Gossage was one of the toughest guys I ever faced,” Cooper said. “He was a big guy and he had that Fu Manchu mustache. He looked like he could take a big piece of steak and tear it in half.”
Gossage made Cooper look bad on a couple swings and ran the count to 1-2.
The next pitch, however, wound up in Brewers’ lore. Cooper turned on a fastball and the ball traced an arc in the night sky and disappeared over the right-field wall. Cooper hopped and skipped his way around the bases, the roar of “C-o-o-p!” ringing in his ears.
Bud Selig, then the Brewers’ owner and now the outgoing commissioner, called the fans’ reaction to Cooper’s game-winner the greatest he had ever seen at County Stadium.
D’Amato tells the rest of what happened in that series. (Hint: If you were a Brewers fan, you liked the other two games too.)
The 1979 season was the only year between 1976 and 1981 that the Yankees didn’t at least win the AL East. Much of the reason was the absence of Gossage, who three months earlier had broken his thumb when he fell in the Yankee Stadium shower during a fight with teammate Cliff Johnson.
Martin (whose stops as a player included, believe it or not, the Milwaukee Braves) was, well, indescribable. His record says he was one of baseball’s best managers. He had the ability to make bad teams at least competitive; until the Texas Rangers started resembling a baseball team in the 1990s, he was their manager during the Rangers’ best season, a surprise second-place finish. Martin also managed the 1969 Twins, 1972 Tigers and 1980 Athletics to division titles.
But Martin was born, or fated, or perhaps cursed, to be a Yankee. He got the Yankees to the 1976 World Series and won the 1977 World Series, despite, among other things, a televised argument in the Fenway Park dugout with the aforementioned straw who stirs the drink. He started the 1978 season as the Yankees manager before he resigned after his comments about Steinbrenner and Jackson. (Martin said the two deserved each other; “one’s a born liar and the other’s convicted.” The latter referred to Steinbrenner’s federal conviction for illegal, as in excessive, campaign contributions to the 1972 Richard Nixon presidential campaign; the former referred to, the most recent conflict between Martin and Jackson.)
Shortly after the resignation, Martin was introduced at a Yankees Old Timers Day, where the Yankees announced that Martin was going to be the Yankees’ manager in 1980, with manager Bob Lemon (who had just been hired after Steinbrenner tried to, believe it or don’t, trade Martin for Lemon) moving to a front-office position. Martin, however, replaced Lemon after the Yankees got off to a bad start in 1979, which is how Martin was in Milwaukee that night.
There was a permanent Yankee loss shortly after this. The Yankees were in Milwaukee on a road trip that ended in Chicago before the Yankees went back to New York. On a day off before the first game of their homestand, Munson, who had gone home to Ohio, decided to take his new jet out and practice takeoffs and landings. Munson’s plane crashed, and Munson died.
Martin — who, remember, was supposed to manage the Yankees in 1980, not 1979 — didn’t get to the 1980 season. He was fired after a fight in a Minneapolis hotel with a marshmallow salesman. Really. Martin returned to manage the Yankees in 1983 (the season with the infamous Pine Tar Game), 1985 (fired again after a late-season fight with pitcher Ed Whitson) and 1988 (canned again).
Martin’s career arc at any one stop was generally (1) get hired, (2) do surprisingly well with young players, (3) get in the playoffs, (4) burn out his young pitchers, then wear out his welcome with (5A) his players or (5B) management and (6) get fired. Martin was reportedly about to be hired by the Yankees again for the 1990 season, but he died in a car crash in late 1989.
I have a lifelong habit of looking for something and finding something else. Here are today’s examples.
Readers know that my favorite sports announcer of all time is Dick Enberg, formerly of NBC. Enberg is known more for NFL football and college basketball (with Al McGuire and Billy Packer) than baseball. But before going to NBC, Enberg was the California Angels’ announcer.
And on July 16, 1972, Enberg announced the Angels’ game in Milwaukee County Stadium. (Actually both games, because they played a doubleheader.)
Enberg also was the Angels’ announcer in 1975, which means he was at County Stadium for my first baseball game, a 7–5 Brewers win over the Angels and their starting pitcher, Nolan Ryan, who gave up a home run to Hank Aaron. Ryan was making his second start since no-hitting Baltimore 1–0 two weeks earlier.
The Brewers’ lineup included shortstop Robin Yount and center fielder Gorman Thomas, who were still with the Brewers when they played in the 1982 World Series.
(Enberg’s on-air partner during his later Angels days was Don Drysdale, who had one of the nicest on-air personas for one of the nastiest pitchers in the history of baseball. Enberg’s excellent autobiography, Oh My!, includes details of Drysdale and Brewers announcer Bob Uecker trying to drink Enberg under the table when the Brewers met the Angels. Oh My! also includes details of how Uecker would drive Drysdale nuts by deliberately messing up Drysdale’s house on visits.)
Enberg was never a regular baseball announcer for NBC, but did several playoff series (including, bizarrely, one game from both League Championship Series in 1977) …
Enberg also announced for the Brewers — well, sort of, in the movie “Mister 3000,” which inexplicably cast Enberg instead of Uecker as the Brewers’ announcer. (Enberg’s son, actor Alexander, told his father he made a better generic baseball announcer than Uecker.)
Back to 1975, the first of Aaron’s two seasons playing for the Brewers.
The announcers on this clip are Jim Irwin, better known as the announcer of the Packers, Bucks, and Badger football and basketball teams, along with Merle Harmon, the last announcer of the Milwaukee Braves and the first announcer of the Brewers. (Uecker joined the Brewers in 1971 after one season announcing for the Atlanta Braves.)
Irwin called a later Aaron home run with Gary Bender. Irwin and Bender (or was it Bender and Irwin?) teamed up for Packer and Badger football (alternating quarters of play-by-play) in the early ’70s, and the Brewers in the 1975 season. Irwin worked for WTMJ TV and radio, and Bender worked for WTMJ radio while the sports director for WKOW-TV in Madison, until he left Wisconsin for CBS. WTMJ-TV was the Brewers’ TV outlet for their first 11 seasons, and WTMJ radio has carried the Brewers all but two years of their existence. (Those also were the Brewers’ first two playoff seasons, for what it’s worth.)
Bender was the number-two baseball announcer for ABC after he moved there from CBS. Irwin, who counted as his broadcasting influences Harry Caray (who did both college football and the NBA in addition to baseball), substituted for Uecker after Uecker missed part of a season for health reasons in the late 1980s.
WTMJ-TV was the first commercial TV station in Wisconsin, and for many years had the only mobile production truck in the southern half of the state. As a result WTMJ’s truck could be found at, among other places, the WIAA state basketball tournaments at the UW Fieldhouse, even though WTMJ didn’t carry the state tournament after 1969. A decade before that, WTMJ’s equipment and employees shot the 1957 and 1958 World Series games at Milwaukee County Stadium for NBC.
The same year as the two Aaron home runs, Hammerin’ Hank was chosen for the 1975 All-Star Game …
For today’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game (weather permitting, as it only grudgingly did for last night’s Home Run Derby), one wonders how much retiring MLB commissioner Bud Selig paid the Washington Post’s Dave Sheinin to write this:
Bud Selig leaves a complex legacy
He finds himself thinking about history a lot these days, not so much the ancient minutiae he can famously recite from memory — the 1953 Milwaukee Braves starting lineup, for example, or the name of that one obscure pitcher who did that one amazing thing in that one game so many years ago — but History, writ large. His own history. Baseball history. American history. By this point, they’re all intertwined.
This is what happens when you’re about to turn 80, as Bud Selig will at the end of the month, and each week seems to bring the death of another good friend or colleague. It’s what happens when you are preparing to step down from the job you have held for 22 years, as Selig will Jan. 24, a job you have cherished and in many ways transformed. It’s what happens when you have held a lifelong obsession with history and now are confronted with it at every turn as the weeks tick down.
I learned about this because I got an email from Mueller Communications of Milwaukee, which intoned:
The attached piece by Dave Sheinin of the Washington Post not only describes the achievements that Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. “Bud” Selig has made, but delves into those qualities of leadership made him successful. I believe you will find it interesting reading.
This is why I have a, shall we say from the Post’s headline, “complex” relationship with the public relations world. PR professionals provide a valuable service for the news media by bringing to their attention their clients’ work when their clients’ work dovetails with the media’s needs.
This, however, is over the top. I am trained by experience, not education, in PR, but said experience teaches me that if a PR professional feels the need to hype his or her client — “achievements” and “qualities of leadership” that “made him successful” — I should become immediately suspicious. At least Mueller didn’t use the terms “buzz” or “hot,” which I loathe.
How about that complex legacy?
“If you look at this season, it’s almost a personification of his vision, with so many teams within striking distance,” says Bob Costas, a commentator for NBC and the MLB Network and the author of Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case for Baseball. “His mantra for 20 years has been ‘hope and faith for all.’ He’s come pretty close to accomplishing that.” …
His legacy is something Selig cares deeply about. Though he tosses off questions about it with a wave of the hand (“That’s up to the historians to decide,” he says), a man who gets a daily package of newspaper clips faxed from New York each morning — and who has been known to call the writers of negative stories to set them straight — doesn’t all of a sudden stop caring about the way in which history will view him, just as he is ready to depart.
Costas, interestingly, wrote in Fair Ball that he hated the wild-card. So instead of one wild card team, which is one too many, per league, now we have two. It’s not really an accomplishment to say that more teams are in the playoff chase when there are more playoff spots to chase.
Selig has only taken baby steps to actual competitive balance. The so-called luxury tax has not prevented the big-market franchises — the Dodgers ($235 million), Yankees ($203.8 million), Phillies ($180 million) and Red Sox ($162.8 million) — from outspending small-market franchises by an order of magnitude. If salaries were everything, the Yankees would win every World Series, so obviously they’re not, but consider who’s on first in each division and their payroll rankings:
National League Central: Milwaukee (until the second-half begins and their losing streak resumes), 16th.
NL East: Washington, ninth, and Atlanta, 14th.
NL West: Dodgers, number one.
NL wild card as of today (the other would be the NL East loser): San Francisco, seventh.
American League East: Baltimore, 15th.
AL Central: Detroit, fifth.
AL West: Oakland, 25th.
AL wild cards as of today: L.A. Angels, sixth, and Seattle, 18th.
At least baseball fans can chortle at the plight of the Dead Sox (fourth overall in payroll, last in the AL East), Rangers (eighth in payroll, last in the AL West) and Phillies (third in payroll, last in the NL East). Cubs fans are inexplicably going to Wrigley Field to watch a team with the 23rd highest payroll and the second-worst record in the NL (though their history shows they should be used to that). Imagine, however, being a fan of the Astros (lowest payroll, and dead last in the AL Central) or Diamondbacks (second lowest payroll, and in the basement by one-half game in the NL West), whose ownership appears to be not trying to win.
Comparing baseball and the National Football League is tricky, except that they are competing for your entertainment dollar. The NFL has never canceled its playoffs due to labor unrest; baseball did, in 1994. The numerous past examples of teams going from watching the playoffs to playing in the Super Bowl the next year shows that even fans of, say, the Cleveland Browns have some hope when the season begins. And yet, fans in some baseball markets know full well at the start of the season that their team will be out of the race by Memorial Day.
Sheinin reports that baseball shares $400 million in revenue now. That, however, is a pittance compared with what the NFL shares. If baseball was serious about revenue sharing, teams with huge broadcast contracts — all the big-market franchises — would be required to share all of those revenues with the smaller markets, because it takes two teams to play a baseball game.
This may be why Mueller Communications pushed this story:
He has been called a master politician himself, skilled both at whipping votes when there is the possibility of consensus and at applying the dark arts of politics when there is not. In Milwaukee, the city’s power brokers still speak in awe at how Selig pushed through the construction of Miller Park, mostly through public money, when both the mayor and (eventually) the governor were against it.
“He comes up, and he goes, ‘Goddamn it, governor, I’m sick and tired of all this horseshit!’ ” says Carl Mueller, a prominent Milwaukee public relations man and longtime Selig confidante who was involved in the effort to get Miller Park built, recalling a meeting in Gov. Tommy Thompson’s office. “ ‘I’m going down there, and we’re going to pass this bill. And I got one question: Are you with me or not?’ ”
The bill passed. “I wouldn’t want to cross him,” Mueller says of Selig. “Having him in your corner is worth a lot, and I think the owners understand that. I’ve never witnessed what happened to people who crossed him, but I don’t think you do it twice.”
Had that story gotten out during the Miller Park debate (and Thompson been a Democrat and Selig a Republican, instead of the other way around, this story would have gotten out), the Brewers would be the Charlotte Distillers or something else. It says more about Thompson than it does about Selig that Thompson didn’t tell Selig to go east on Interstate 94 and keep going until the water went over the top of his car. (Indeed, Thompson then pushed for the stadium bill by telling those outside Milwaukee to “stick it to Milwaukee.” And to be honest, the Miller Park roof remains probably the best $100 million portion of a building project in the history of this state, as I rediscovered upon a trip to Miller Park when it was 49 degrees in the parking lot.)
Sheinin concludes …
Baseball still has its problems. Oakland and Tampa Bay are stuck in bad stadiums. Washington and Baltimore are fighting over their cuts of a shared television network. Most vexing of all, the games themselves are too long, and thanks to the rise in strikeouts and the work-the-count approach of hitters, the ball is in play less than ever — not a great prescription for a sport struggling to keep the attention of the next generation of fans.
The Pete Rose issue still looms, too — the banished Hit King, 73 years old himself, withering on the vine, hoping for a reinstatement from his 1989 ban for gambling on baseball. If Selig is considering reinstating Rose on his way out — his own version of a presidential pardon — he isn’t saying, having stayed almost completely silent on the Rose matter.
… without one single word about the enormous problem of the game’s arrogant umpires, too many of whom think fans pay good money to see them instead of, you know, the players. Selig does deserve credit for bringing the umpires out of control of the individual leagues, but too many umpires who do not deserve to get major league paychecks are getting major league paychecks. Indeed, baseball arguably still has the worst officials of any of the professional sports.
I don’t believe in praising people for adequately performing their work when they are much, much more than adequately compensated for that work. The National Hockey League has grown tremendously under commissioner Gary Bettmann, and the National Basketball Association grew considerably under former commissioner David Stern. Former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle was the greatest commissioner in the history of professional sports, and the NFL grew from there under former commissioner Paul Tagliabue and current commissioner Roger Goodell. Compared to them, Selig did OK, and only OK.
On July 12, 1914, George Herman “Babe” Ruth played his first Major League baseball game.
Sports Illustrated points out 99 (because this was written last year) facts about Ruth, including …
9. The [International League’s Baltimore] Orioles sold Ruth to the Boston Red Sox on July 9, 1914 along with two other players as part of a fire sale by team owner Jack Dunn, who found himself in financial straits when the presence of a Baltimore franchise in the new Federal League obliterated the Orioles’ attendance. …
14. Ruth was a sidearming power pitcher who made 127 appearances on the mound before appearing at any other position in the field.
15. In Ken Burns’ documentary Baseball, noted journalist and author Dan Okrent said Ruth was “the best lefthanded pitcher of the 1910s, without question, in the American League.” Indeed, among AL lefties with at least 1,000 IP in the decade, Ruth had the lowest ERA (2.19) and highest winning percentage (.659) while ranking fourth in wins, tied for fourth in shutouts and ninth in strikeouts. …
18. In six seasons with Ruth, the Red Sox won three World Series titles. In 107 seasons without him they have won four [actually five, including 2013]. …
22. On June 23, 1917 at Fenway Park, Ruth was ejected by home plate umpire Brick Owens for arguing balls and strikes after walking the first batter of a game against the Senators. Ernie Shore replaced him. The baserunner, Senators second baseman Ray Morgan, was caught stealing, and Shore then retired all 26 men he faced in a 4-0 Red Sox win. Officially, Ruth is credited for participating in a combined no-hitter, but Shore is not credited with pitching a perfect game.
23. Ruth’s first major league home run came against the Yankees at the Polo Grounds on May 6, 1915. Exactly three years later, in the same ballpark, Ruth hit a home run in his first start at a position (1B) other than pitcher.
24. Soon after that first appearance as a position player, Ruth began to refuse to pitch, leading to tension with Red Sox manager Ed Barrow. In early July, Ruth attempted to leave the team and join a shipyard team in Chester, Pa., to avoid a fine from Barrow. Ruth quickly caved to the threat of legal action by Red Sox owner Harry Frazee and rejoined the Red Sox without playing for the shipyard team. …
26. Ruth is the only player since the turn of the 20th century to lead his league in Triple Crown categories as both a hitter and a pitcher and he did it in the span of three years.
27. Ruth held out in spring training in 1919, ultimately landing a three-year contract worth $10,000. He threatened a hold out again after the 1919 season, saying he was worth twice the salary he had agreed to before that season. Frazee, still in debt from his purchase of the Red Sox three years earlier, responded by selling Ruth to the Yankees on Jan. 3, 1920, for $100,000 and a $300,000 loan secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park. …
30. Ruth was one of 17 players Frazee traded or sold to the Yankees between December 1918 and July 1923, when he finally sold the team. On New York’s first World Series title team of 1923, half the regular players and six of the seven pitchers to throw more than a dozen innings were acquired from Frazee. …
43. The Yankees had never been to the World Series before acquiring Ruth from Boston, but they went to seven World Series in his 15 years with the team, winning four of them. Their first pennant came in 1921. Their first championship came in 1923 in the third of three consecutive World Series confrontations with John McGraw’s New York Giants. …
48. After losing a ball in the sun in the Polo Grounds’ leftfield on July 16, 1922, Ruth refused to ever play the sun field again, and he didn’t. His position thereafter was determined by the geographic orientation of the ballpark in which he was playing. For the rest of his career, Ruth played exclusively in rightfield at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, as well as in Washington and Cleveland [where right field was in the southwest corner of the diamond; home plate was in the northwest or west corner of the diamond, similar to both Milwaukee County Stadium and Miller Park] but exclusively in leftfield at the other AL cities (Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and St. Louis) [where home plate was in the southwest corner of the diamond]. …
81. Ruth retired as the career record-holder in home runs, RBIs, total bases, walks, strikeouts, on-base percentage and slugging percentage as well as the single-season record-holder in home runs, total bases, walks and slugging, and he was briefly the single-season record-holder in RBIs during his career. …
88. Ruth’s career OPS of 1.164 remains the record, as does his career OPS+ of 206. The latter stat adjusts OPS for a player’s home ballpark and compares it to his league with 100 being league average. Ruth’s career OPS+ is thus more than twice as good as an average mark. By way of comparison, the last player to have a single-season OPS or OPS+ higher than Ruth’s career was Barry Bonds in 2004.
My favorite basketball player of all time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, explains why soccer will never really score, so to speak, in the U.S.:
I’m reminded of the end of Man of La Mancha, when Don Quixote lies dying, but is suddenly inspired to rise once more and proclaim, “Onward to glory I go!” And then he drops dead. Soccer has been proclaiming this impending U.S. glory for years, and while there are signs of life in the body, the prognosis is not good.
Once the World Cup is over, soccer in the U.S. will return to its sick bed and dream of glory. This dire diagnosis probably seems crazy in the face of the current World Cup TV ratings success. Between Univision and ESPN, 25 million viewers tuned in to watch the U.S. play Portugal last Sunday. Compare that to 15.5 million viewers that the NBA finals averaged this year, or the 14.9 million averaged in last year’s baseball World Series. Worse, the NHL playoffs averaged only 5 million viewers. Only NFL football consistently beats soccer’s best rating.
The problem with those statistics is that it’s like using the ratings of bobsledding during the Winter Olympics to declare a new renaissance for bobsledding in America. The World Cup, like the Olympics, happens every four years, so the rarity factor alone will account for inflated ratings. For a more realistic view of its popularity as a professional sport, we need to look at how many people watch on a regular basis. Major League Soccer (MLS) averages a mere 174,000 viewers (compared to the NBA’s average of 2 million and NFL average of 17.6 million), while their equivalent to NBA Finals, the MLS Cup, averaged only 505,000 viewers.
The MLS points out that more people on average attend one of their games (18,807) than attend either NHL (17,455) or NBA (17,408) games. While that may be true, the reasons for that appear to be pretty simple: cheaper tickets and fewer teams playing fewer games. Add that to the fact that comparatively few people watch it on TV, and you have a sport that produces much less revenue than other major American sports. Like it or not, in the end that is the measure of a sport’s popularity.
The obvious question is why hasn’t soccer taken off in the U.S. as it has throughout most of the rest of the world? After all, youth soccer has exploded over the past few decades. In 1974, only 103,432 youth were registered players. In 2012, registered players amounted to over three million. In all, 13 million Americans play soccer (compared to 26.3 million who play basketball). When you look at those figures, you notice that twice as many people play basketball as play soccer, yet ten times as many people watch basketball on TV. This is important because the more people watching a sport translates into more people wanting to play that sport. That’s the money-making cycle. Watch. Play. Repeat.
Is there something fundamentally different about watching soccer that turns people away by the millions? Apparently so. For one thing, there’s a lot of movement but not much action. American audiences see people kicking the ball to a teammate, only to have it intercepted by the other team. A lot. To the average American used to the hustle of basketball, the clash of titans in football, the suspense of the curve ball in baseball, or the thrilling crack of the slapshot in hockey, the endless meandering back and forth across the soccer field looks less like strategy and more like random luck. It lacks drama. Of course, that’s not true at all, but that is certainly the perception.
Why aren’t those millions of youth soccer players since 1974 watching? Perhaps another perception is that it is a kid’s game. Kids get to run around, kick something, and generally wear themselves out to the gratitude of parents. Parents who dutifully and diligently attend their kids’ games don’t seem inclined to tune in to professionals on TV.
Soccer is counting on the growing U.S. Latino population to raise its popularity. Between 2002 and 2012, the Latino population increased from 13.3% of the U.S. population to 17%. I’m certain that will be a factor, but perhaps not a huge one — this line of thinking doesn’t account for children seeking more traditional American sports in order to assimilate. As many parents will attest, some children refuse to follow in their parents’ sweaty sneakers.
Finally, soccer doesn’t fully express the American ethos as powerfully as our other popular sports. We are a country of pioneers, explorers, and contrarians who only need someone to say it can’t be done to fire us up to prove otherwise. As a result, we like to see extraordinary effort rewarded. The low scoring in soccer frustrates this American impulse. We also celebrate rugged individualism, the democratic ideal that anybody from any background can become a sports hero. We like to see heroes rise, buoyed by their teammates, but still expressing their own supreme individual skills. Certainly soccer has its celebrated stars, from Pele to Beckham, but those skills seem muted on TV where we’re often looking at small figures on a large field and therefore these feats appear less impressive than they really are. In football, basketball, baseball, and hockey, team effort is rewarded with points and individual greatness is as instant and immediate as a one-handed snagged football pass, a three-pointer from the corner, stealing home base, or a snap-shot of the puck into the goal.
Clearly, there are many dedicated soccer fans in the U.S. They play the sport, they watch the sport, they love the sport. But that group, though slowly growing, is not nearly enough to overcome the traditional favorites. To do that, it’s not enough that you’re as good as one of the popular sports, you have to bring something better. More excitement. More skill. More entertainment. For most Americans, soccer just doesn’t do that.
Abdul-Jabbar’s last four sentences also sum up why baseball — for which today is a traditionally big day — has been passed up by basketball among Americans interested in pro sports. Basketball has action and scoring, because an NBA team has to score within 24 seconds (35 in college, and it probably should be 30) or risk losing possession. In contrast, baseball has been slowing down for decades — batters step out of the box to adjust their batting gloves and other uniform parts, pitchers think the way to beat batters is to lull them to sleep by slow play — and as far as fan interest goes, basketball appears to have passed baseball.
Hockey has also grown in interest, and that was predicted when high-definition TV started to become popular, allowing TV viewers to actually see the puck clearly. HDTV hasn’t seem to have helped soccer much, though, given that TV directors feel the need to show the entire width of the field, which means that, unlike hockey, which is played on a 200-foot-long rink, you have tiny players and a tinier ball on a 120-yard-long field. Abdul-Jabbar’s point about excitement, skill and entertainment is also proven by the existence of soccer’s offside rule, in which a one-on-one clash between would-be scorer and goalkeeper is banned by the rules.
I also think many Americans see soccer as a technologically backward sport. In every other timed sport in America, fans know exactly how much time is left in a period, down to tenths of a second in basketball and hockey. Soccer has 45-minute halves plus whatever the referee thinks is appropriate for “stoppage time” — balls kicked out of play, fouls, injuries or substitutions. (It would be interesting to watch the second half of the USA-Portugal match, in which Portugal scored to tie the match, and see whether there should have been as much time added to the half due to stoppages as the referee added.) Soccer has one referee for a 120-yard-long game, which seems an invitation for abuse by officials who have less-than-required integrity. (Either that, or there is so little action in soccer that more than one official is not needed.)
There are ways to fix many of these problems, but FIFA, the most arrogant sport governing organization in the world, refuses to change the game to try to increase its interest in the most important country in the world.
Abdul-Jabbar posted a link to his Time column on his Facebook page, and got hammered by people who disagree with him without having ability to explain why his points are wrong. The appeal to authority, or perhaps majority — it’s the world’s most popular sport! — is particularly annoying. Slavery is still in existence on much of the planet, and many cultures treat women like cattle, so let’s be just like them!
No, this is not about Gov. Scott Walker’s chances of being reelected in 2018.
The soccer World Cup ended, from the U.S. perspective, yesterday with Team USA’s 2–1 extra-time loss to Belgium.
Keith Olbermann was his usual snarky self on ESPN2 last night, but if you ignore the snarkiness, he makes some valid points about how to increase Americans’ interest in soccer. Click here for the video, but here is the outline:
Stop imitating the British and their incorrect grammar — for instance, “Belgium are,” which everyone knows should be either “Belgium is” or “the Belgians are.”
Find an American play-by-play voice, even though Brit Ian Darke does an excellent job:
Olbermann’s point is that soccer needs an American voice, as Vin Scully for baseball or Mike Emrick for hockey. He’s correct. The problem is that ESPN’s previous American soccer announcers, Dave O’Brien and Jack Edwards, were, in order, bland and not from soccer, and ridiculously jingoistic. (Anyone who has heard Edwards on Boston Bruins hockey can agree with the latter point.)
ESPN Radio’s announcer, JP Dellacamera, is great …
… but seems to not meet ESPN TV standards, or something.
“Lay off the elitism,” or “stop trying to build soccer by tearing down other sports.”
“Calm down,” which is based on a soccer referee’s tweet yesterday, “Soccer belongs to the world, and is not ours to do as we please.” A statement like that makes me want to never watch soccer again, at any level.
More U.S.-appropriate Major League Soccer team names, instead of names that are “embarrassingly derivative” of international club names, such as FC Dallas, D.C. United, Sporting Kansas City, Toronto FC, Chivas USA (which is based not in Chivas, but in Los Angeles) and Real Salt Lake. (Of course, that runs into the danger of nicknames that generate offense in our perpetually offended society — Redskins anyone? — though I’m a bit surprised there haven’t been protests against Chivas by the anti-alcohol crowd.)
“Stay away from FIFA,” the international soccer organization so corrupt that it “makes the IOC look like Doctors Without Borders.” (Lines like that are why Olbermann is in fact worth watching, maddening though he can be.) Olbermann suggests staging an American version of the World Cup here, which would generate an American Football League vs. National Football League rumble, which must have been fun to watch in the ’60s. Of course, the event that started soccer to becoming kinda-sorta popular in the U.S. was when the 1994 World Cup was held in the U.S., without requiring construction of new stadiums and stadium worker deaths, unlike Qatar now.
Olbermann quoted surveys of 12- to 17-year-old boys that suggest they prefer soccer to baseball, concluding, “What kids really love is soccer video games.” He suggests figuring out a way to tap into that, which I think is a task for a demographic younger than Olbermann’s, or mine.
One unfortunate thing about Tuesday’s loss is that it may well be the final World Cup match for Tim Howard, who might have been the only reason the U.S. was in the game. Howard made a World Cup-record 16 saves, and his work in goal prevented a bloodbath. Howard is 35, and it’s not clear that a goalkeeper pushing 40 is likely to be in the 2018 plans, though finding a goalie as good as Howard seems unlikely, at least today.
The loss suggests that the U.S. remains far, far away from being a World Cup contender. In hockey, teams occasionally decide to be hyperaggressive on offense, and leave their goalie to be essentially the entire defense. That’s how goalies sometimes accumulate a huge number of saves, and sometimes give up a lot of goals; it’s a tradeoff to try to generate more offense, and it’s certainly fun for fans to watch. That’s not what the U.S. did — their offense is anemic, and so they played a defensive style, and yet Howard was still required to singlehandedly save the American bacon for the 90 minutes of regulation.
So for one game, the Americans were bad on defense, and for the entire World Cup, they weren’t very good on offense. Yes, they scored five goals in four games, but that’s in a World Cup that had a record number of goals in group play, and goal number four came after the U.S. was in desperation mode.
So how does Team USA get better than this? Or is this the best that can be expected of Team USA?
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 