Blogrolling is an insult to capitalism

Far be it for me to tell Yankee Fan how to spend his money... but, um, good grief. On some level, I'm just in awe of how the team sucks the dollars away from its fan base; it's breathtaking how well they do this.

Are you in the market for a new business card? Let Chicago's history of remarkably stupid criminals be your guide. There's some real creativity here.

MLJ is having issues with the MLB rule book and AJ Pyrzinski. Two great annoyances that annoy together!

Joe Newman is perhaps my most obscure musical hero, and in a better world, he'd be taught in schools. Wildly unpopular proprietors need to stick together.

205 Drop: Top 10 moves to increase MLB attendance

Today's snarky list is here. Today's overly long rumination on today's list is below. Who said that we're a wildly unpopular sports blog due to our basic contempt for humanity? At least, who said that out loud?

Today, I'd like to say a word in defense of light crowds at the old ball yard. When I was a partial year season ticket holder for the A's during the stint in NoCal, I took the Shooter Child (now the Shooter Eldest) to about 20 games a year, and in that mix along with the de rigeur fireworks shows were a fairly strong number of mid-week night games where the crowds were fairly, shall we say, intimate. We preferred them, on many levels, to the games where Yankee Fan and Red Sox Fan invaded the park by the thousands to tell us how much of a craphole it was. (Thanks! We hadn't noticed!)

Part of that was simply wanting to avoid Yankee Fan and Red Sox Fan -- honestly, you people are worse on the road than you are at home -- but mostly, it was because baseball without a crushing crowd has its own charms. You can get to a bathroom or concession stand without a major commitment, for one. You don't have to step over people to tend to the needs of your small child, for another. If the person near you has to provide an R-rated soundtrack to the game, you can also just plain move. It's all to the good.

There's also just a more relaxed air to the whole thing. Baseball, on some very basic level, should just not be taken all that seriously. It's the same game that you see played by children without adult supervision, after all, and even if it doesn't have that whole Air of The Drama when the crowds are small, it's still a pretty good game, especially in person. You can relax watching it. Maybe help a kid with the coloring. Savor the taste of that only good at the yard hot dog, because it's only at the yard that you're actually not multi-tasking and grinding on so many fronts that you can, you know, actually taste it.

So to all of the teams that are taking it on the chin at the turnstile, I wish you nothing but continued challenges. And to the rest of us who just love the game, rather than all of the things that you have to put up with around the game... well, good seats available. And maybe, just maybe, not enough security people around to give a damn when we take that mid-game free seat upgrade.

The Lemur Loves Me

Sorry I made you break up, Ms. Sage Steele. (About 40 seconds from the end, for the impatient.) And thanks so much for mentioning us on SportsCenter this morning. That's nice. Especially after all the nice things we've said about you over the years!

Top 10 Post Peak Oil MLB Changes

I was perusing the Old Gray Lady last week, as one is won't to do while it still exists, and the story was of an environmentalist movement that talks about transitioning after Peak Oil. This mostly dystopian concept holds that oil is running out, alternative fuels and technology won't be enough to compensate, and the future is going to be a lot less fun when it comes to, you know, travel and shipping and a million thins we more or less take for granted. It's all kinds of cheery, really.)

So the idea is to start working out now how we'd all manage in such a world. Sure, you can plant crops to help raise your own food, but how do you get your excess to market to trade for gingham and the like? And so on. If you are the kind of guy who likes to work out doomsday scenarios and overplan for an unsatisfying future in which you have no real control - in other words, if you are just about every Eagle Fan I've ever met, and we are really not that unique -- well, have at it, really.

So, with that in mind, the following list of ways MLB could change to lower their carbon footprint.

10. Club cars. Calling to mind the old school millionaire rail cars of a century ago, this is where traveling teams ditch their private jets for their own railroad car. Considering the delays and misery that is every airport, I suspect this is a change that many players would actively encourage, especially if more high speed rail came into play. Besides, don't you want to see those MLB+ team trains steaming past you while you wait for your own podunk regional line?

9. More day games. Whether or not it actually makes sense on an ecological scale is debatable -- after all, tens of thousands of people sharing one light has to be better than them all being in their homes, right? -- but since you can sell 'em this way, that's what you'll get.

8. Enforced divisions. Those cross-country trips to play the least meaningful games on the schedule, just so your fans have the opportunity to see every other team in the league... Well, that's what satellites are for, right? And from there, we get...

7. Separate leagues. Pacific, Atlantic, North and South, with travel miles taking priority over tradition. On the plus side, you'll have much better shot at seeing your team on the road. Take the train with them!

6. Overfishing in regional markets. It's not exactly news that if a town is big enough to support an MLB+ franchise, it's probably big enough to support two... or, in the case of New York with its huddled masses, four or five. Brooklyn and Long Island get teams first, one in each league, maybe as moves from Florida and Tampa, just to keep the air miles down. Philly adds an AL team, Boston an NL market. And so on. If you think the Lemur overcovers teams from this region now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

5. Longer homestands and road trips. Again from a pure carbon standpoint, it's very wasteful to have so many back and forth trips, when you could simply keep teams on the road longer and set up the schedule to be more conducive to lowered traveling costs. Especially for teams visiting the other coast, you could easily see a month-long trip to knock it all out at once, rather than make 3-4 trips during the year.

4. Regional drafts. If regional rivalries get more important, than so do regional players, and it makes sense to encourage such things by skewing homegrown talent to stay with teams close to where they developed. I actually think this is the better way to go on many levels, especially if you want to try to make college baseball more interesting for things other than waiting to see if someone dies from a batted ball off an aluminum bat. (And speaking of such things, let's make sure those things are made from recycled metal, of course.)

3. Fewer rain outs. This isn't to mean that there will be less rain; hell, if the environment goes to to dystopia, there will be more. But if you go to more day games, there's just more chance to get a game in, since you can wait out the weather and get it in at night. Remember as well that if the make up game, especially for teams from the other coast, are harder to achieve, there's also just more incentive to get the game done that day. (For that matter, you can also count on more partial games; as is, there are relatively few games each year called and logged in the books before the full nine is played.)

2. Less money. It's just a simple fact that we can dress up if we like, but will still be with us: there is a bubble that needs correcting here, and that bubble is the amount of money involved in the games. If everyone involved is spending less (and, sigh, probably having less), that means there have to be less money from advertising sponsorships, and ticket prices eventually falling, because the market will eventually correct itself. You will, eventually, pay less for your ticket; you also probably aren't going to be too happy about it. (Oh, and this will also really hit all of those teams that have to suddenly live with less Yankee and Red Sox games on the schedule, and higher travel costs.)

1. No more outsourcing. Short and sweet: enjoy those players from overseas, folks, especially from markets like Japan that can put up a fight for them. When the travel costs to bring them in get nasty, you'll just see less of them.

205 Drop: Top 10 things Yankee Fan does not want to hear right now

The 205 link today is a nice thing about being an A's Fan (yes, there are nice things) is that when the Yankees *or* the Red Sox lose, you're happy.

The down side is that happiness is somewhat tempered by the fact that the other is usually winning when that happens.

But hey, take what you can, right?

The High Cost Of Respect

And the week had been going so well for Eagle Fan. We got to delight in what seems like the exceptionally reasonable purchase of one of the best offensive tackles in the game, as the team picked up Jason Peters from the Bills. And then, what do my forehead-smacked eyes do discover, but #2 CB Sheldon Brown giving voice to his considerable lack of respect for the team not being too interested in renegotiating his deal, which has four years left on it at what might be below current market value.

A few points here.

1) I'm almost *always* in favor of the player making more money. He's the guy who, you know, has to hit people for a living, and if he's not happy and plays badly, my football season is ruined. The Eagles have also been under the cap since there was a cap, really, so it's not like I'm even going to dork out and worry about their contract situation. From a macroeconomic view, the player having the money is better; they employ more people buying more fool things.

And even I don't want to see Brown get paid a lot more.

You have two choices as an NFL player when you are young and the team values your services. The first is to take the lock low pot and sign the extension. The second is to roll the dice and wait until you are a free agent. Every player gets this decision, assuming they are good. Brown took the first route, and now he wants this second.

The Eagles, sensibly, haven't shown a whole lot of interest in changing the terms of the deal, seeing how Brown is under contract until the Obama '12 campaign. Brown calls this "a total lack of respect."

Um, no, not really, Sheldon. It's the house having made the right call, and the cards falling the way they thought they would. Your role is to play well for the length of that deal, then get wildly overpaid by some dumb-ass AFC team for the last big payday of your life, when you are 34 and wind up playing for about half of the deal (but all of the signing bonus) before flushing out of the league. This is how it goes here. After the Brian Dawkins Experience, this should seem obvious to anyone, really.

2) If you are going to pule for big money, you really need to make more big plays.

Last year, Brown had one bad game. You might remember it; it was the NFC Championship Game. Until Larry Fitzgerald tore him a career-defining hole, Brown had been damn near pristine for 2008... and yet, as an Eagles Fan, I never *really* knew, emotionally, that he was having a great year.

Why? Because the man has gut-wrenchingly bad hands. And at age 30, that isn't going to change.

Coverage? He's also there. Tackling? Sure, solid, doesn't go for stupid kill shots, and did give Reggie Bush the ride of his life in that playoff loss a few years ago. Run support? Yes, he's not a Deion Sanders-esque coward.

But when it comes to making the couple of plays a year that help to clear the psychic slate of what a cornerback is -- i.e., a damage control manager in a zero-fail, no-win situation -- you have to get a couple back. Maybe you don't have to go all Ed Reed-ish and score more than you give up, but a touchdown or two every few years, especially when it comes in a big spot against a hated opponent (see the Lito Sheppard resume against Dallas, for instance) means a lot. If nothing else, you need to get a runback every once in a while.

In 112 career games, Brown has 14 interceptions, with 2 touchdowns. The last of those came in 2006. In the past two years, he's had four picks for 26 yards in returns, with only one of those picks coming last year. So he doesn't get a lot of picks, and when he does get them, he goes to ground.

Asante Samuel, by comparison, has 10 picks and two scores in the past two years. And that's with being the #1 CB, which is to say, getting much fewer opportunities for picks. And that's why Samuel makes ferocious bank, and no Eagle Fan has any kind of problem with that.

There's a reason for this, and that is...

3) Sheldon Brown has tragically awful hands.

Not to the point where he can't be a very good starting corner -- he is. Not to the point where he can't get paid -- he has, and could be again.

But to the point where a team is not, and should not, break the rules and the bank to make him happy.

However, and this is really crappy part of it...

4) Once a football player has gone public about being unhappy, especially in Philadelphia, he's more or less done. Especially when the team takes the time to smack him down in public, as the Eagles PR department did today.

In the current NFL, you need at least three very good corners to match up. When the Eagles signed Samuel a year ago, there was no reason why Sheppard had to go, but he was unhappy, and soon was supplanted by Joselio Hanson, who no one ever thought had more talent. But motivation is a powerful thing, and Sheppard is now a Jet. (Speaking of which, I bet Lito bounces back this year. He's young enough, has the pedigree, and will be in the clear #2 slot opposite Darrelle Revis. Jet Fan will need him to if they are going to have any chance to slow down the Patriots. But I digress.)

By popping off in public, Brown has probably forced the Eagles hand, and has in all likelihood made the team push a corner decision into their high pick consideration. Which they were probably going to do anyway, seeing how Brown is 30, but how the team also really needs a running back and a top-drawer wideout and a two-way tight end and a half dozen other things, really...

Well, no one needed this, really. Oh, and one final thing... given the state of the economy and the relative replaceability of what Brown does -- stop big plays, not make them -- there's no real guarantee that he'd get his big payday somewhere else, either.

Seeing as he's now, you know, something of a character risk, given that he took one deal, but now wants another...

Where Amazing Salary Dumps Happen

Today in San Antonio, the Rockets took out the Spurs. That would be remarkable enough, really, given that this is the time of the year that the Spurs historically put the throttle down and get into disturbingly efficient killing mode, especially against a Rockets team that doesn't have Tracy McGrady (naturally) and traded away its starting point guard (Rafer Alston).

But hey, Yao Ming can do some things, right? And so can Testy, since he's still in that first year good guy stage. But, um, no. The fingerprints on this loss were entirely those of Luis Scola, who had 19 points, 17 boards, 4 assists, 3 steals and was the high man in plus/minus at +14, the highest on his team. Rockets 87, Spurs 85.

So who is Luis Scola? An Argentine power forward who the Spurs drafted in 2002. He never played a minute for that club, in part due to difficulty getting him away from his club team, and in part because, well, the Spurs have little need for a power forward given the presence of Tim Duncan. In 2007, San Antonio essentially gave Scola away to the Rockets along with big stiff Jackie Butler for cash, a second round pick, and a tax deduction named Vassilis Spanoulis. Scola finished third in the rookie of the year voting last year, and he's giving them 12.6 points, 8.7 boards, and shooting 53% from the field -- all of them up from his good rookie year.

This is, in all likelihood, Scola's ceiling; he's 28, after all, and while he knows what he's doing on the floor, he's certainly not a lockdown defensive player. But it's interesting, on some level, just how convoluted the salary cap makes the NBA. Here the Spurs had to more or less move an asset for very little to an arch-rival, just to make sure that they didn't go over the cap, or create a logjam at a position where they already had a star.

The closest corollary I can think of here is Raheem Brock having a career in Indianapolis for the Colts, after the Eagles drafted the Temple product in the seventh round, then overspent on signing their rookies and had to give him up. Baseball teams sell off assets all the time, of course, but rarely this blatant, and usually not in ways that could cause them a head to head loss that matters.

And, of course, Scola's also not likely to do this again in the playoffs, so on some level, you have to wonder how much it matters. But right now, with the Rockets ahead of the Spurs in the hyper-tight West, the answer is: a lot. And in a way that no other league does...



(And here's the YouTube link of the clinching plays, brought to you by commenter John over at Mundo Albiceleste. For more on the game, go check his site out.)