Snubs and Tokens: Honestly, Evan Meek Isn't Going To Make Pittsburgh Fan Care

As the MLB All-Star rosters are announced, it's time for the annual smoke screeen that is the All Star Snub. Right up there with flag burning and gay marriage on the list of things that people like to argue about that has no real impact on their lives, the Snub Talk this year seems to be circling around the NL's leader in OPS (Cincy's Joey Votto, who is much more deserving this time around than Ryan Howard, like Howard wasn't going to go with his manager doing the selection), New York's Mike Pelfrey (who the hell cares, he's a mid-rotation guy who has just had a hot half), and I'd find a third guy for this list, but I just dozed off while writing it.

The Snub is crack for Blogfrica, since it involves everything that generates cheap comment heat: no real watching of games, pointless punditry that helps to fuel your homer and/or roto guy need to root for such things, and the inevitable second-tier honor of being named to the game in 2-5 days, when the "winner" decides that he'd rather avoid the plane trip. Because the real honor is being named, not playing.

But thats not what I'm going to go into right now. Instead, I'd like to talk about the requirement that each team have a representative.

For years, I've gone against this, under the theory that MLB+ fans have more than enough to satisfy them, and the occasional nice moment -- Oakland's Justin Duchscherer a couple of years ago being the one that's stuck in my mind, seeing how I'm an A's fan -- was worth it. But, well, then there's Ty Wigginton this year, and Omar Infante (Omar Infante?), and they aren't even all that bad as these things go... with the historical record of Cesar Izturis, Mark Redmond and Mike Williams... and, well, enough.

Since we can't have relegation, the incredibly sensible practice of English Premier League teams where the worst team moves down into the minor leagues, and the best teams in the minor leagues move up, and we've got at least a half dozen teams per year that are DOA on Opening Day from an inability or outright refusal to spend cash...

And since fans in those markets are increasingly tuning out, with perpetually depressed attendance numbers that quite effectively predict which teams are trying and which ones are not...

Well, honestly. Assuming there are any Pittsburgh fans left, how pumped are they to see their single good set-up guy (Evan Meek) going to the game, when it more or less says that your team is too dumb to use their best reliever in the closing role, having paid out for journeyman Octavio Dotel? At least Nationals fan has their closer, Matt Capps, as their token rep. Is Cleveland Fan really ready to get off LeBron Suicide Watch because Fausto Carmona has been Not Terrible this year?

Top 10 Worst Attended Teams, and their Division Rank and Games Back

Cleveland (5th, 12)
Florida (4th, 9.5)
Oakland (3rd, 8)
Toronto (4th, 10)
Pittsburgh (6th, 16.5)
Kansas City (4th, 8.5)
Tampa Bay (3rd, 2)
Cincinatti (1st)
Baltimore (5th, 25.5)
San Diego (1st)

Well, seven of those ten teams are borderline unwatchable, and fans aren't stupid, particularly in tough economic times. People have more options now, and if the team isn't really going to try, why pay to watch it?

This is the point in the proceedings where we need to discuss Stephen Strasburg. After a month of outstanding stuff and a team that doesn't score for him, the most hyped guy ever is 2-2, with a 2.45 ERA, a 1.06 WHIP, and 53 strikeouts in 36 innings. In a particularly overwrought piece of writing for the Lemur, Jim Caple pitched his desire for the ASB to be a Career Apperciation Day for guys like the retired Ken Griffey, the ancient Jamie Moyer and Chipper Jones, the feel-good temporary happiness of RA Dickey or the fielding savant work of Franklin Gutierrez as preferable to a Strasburg appearance.

Which just goes to show that Jim Caple is either doing the purposefully stupid contrarian thing that the Lemur requires as part of that whole unfornunate Disney/Satan contract... or he's just Real Damned Dumb.

Look, there's no guarantees in this world. Strasburg could go all Mark Prior on us. Joel Zumaya might never pitch again. The history books are littered with electric arms that weren't around for very long. Right now, Strasburg is the most entertaining pitcher on the planet. The All-Star Game is meant to be entertaining, and if the Nationals' wunderkind is in it, it just got a lot more entertaining. I love me some Jamie Moyer, but if he goes to this thing and gets lit up, it'd just be sad on every level. And watching feeble old hitters get blown away is also, well, sad.

Almost as sad as the idea that MLB- talent that's freely available in your mixed league waiver wire, like Wigginton and Meek and Carmona and another six guys that will be named as injury replacements next week, belong in the same game as the top talent, or that the minus markets care when a token goes to the game.

They don't care about the All-Star Game. They don't much care about the regular season games anymore, either. Let's stop the pretending, and just have a good fake game instead.

The FTT Movie Review: Sugar

As part of my continuing effort to fill the bloghole during the Dead Time, I spun this disc. Algenis Perez Soto plays Miguel "Sugar" Santos, a young Dominican minor league pitcher, and his efforts to adjust to life in America. You get a real sense of the challenges facing people like this, especially with the language issues.

The film has a host of small scenes that work really well. A waitress in spring training in Arizona teaches him about eggs, and it's just touching, really. He impresses in spring training, and gets sent to Bridgeton, Iowa, and you really get the unreality of the First World when compared to the DR. Watching him walk through a hotel, then a game room, than a neon bowling alley and bar situation... it's like watching a visitor from another planet. I won't get too far into the specifics of what happens, but you really get the pressure that's felt on these guys, and how any downturn, injury or insecurity is heightened, and how it's only a game might be the biggest lie ever told.

Soto is especially good in the role, with a reasonable pitching motion and arm action; there's nothing fake about his mechanics, and his ability to emote without dialogue is first rate. The directing is strong, too, with nice touches of when Santos enters a newer or larger arena, or being perplexed by the sudden immersion into Bible Belt prostlyetizing, or being utterly alone in a brawl. It's definitely worth your time and the rental.

Air Dry, or Why Soccer is Working

I've been cheating you people by giving you just the stuff you like (aka, the snarky lists), and not enough veggies (aka, the esoteric "think" pieces that make you read too many words for relatively simple concepts). So sit back and eat some greens. I'm going deep.

About six weeks ago, my dryer stopped working properly. It still spun, but didn't turn off, and soon afterwards, the heating element failed. So I got it fixed, but in the meantime, there's laundry to deal with, and that's something I take care of in my house, mostly to avoid household tasks that I'd rather not do. And I'm OCDish, and we're a family of four, so I'm not letting it slide. So I went out and grabbed a dryer rack on the off chance that the repair wouldn't happen quickly, and I'd still have the chance to get a load or two done. I also, well, just wanted to see what like might be like without a dryer.

The dryer got fixed, then stopped working again a week later. Which made me hate getting it fixed in the first place, but I'm testing your patience as is, so let's get back on track. For the past month, all of the laundry has been air dried. It's also been hot, sticky and miserable, and we've been running the air conditioners... and yet, my utility bill wasn't as bad as feared. Because I'm not using the dryer. And not missing it. If I kick the appliance to the curb, I create more room in the space, too, and could finish my 0.1 man space toilet into an actual functioning bathroom, as part of my continuing dream to make my house worth what I paid for it.

Moving away from the dryer isn't a panacea. It takes more time, both in setting things up and needing to come back later. Fabric softeners don't really do the same job if you like your towels fluffy. But I really think I'm done with the dryer for the previously stated reasons, along with the sense that it's just a better thing to do for my energy bill and the environment.

Oddly, it reminds me a lot of watching the World Cup.

The rest of the world, of course, generally hangs clothes on a line. It's cheaper, keeps your clothes longer, and hey, it's not like they've got the same space for dryers that we do, or the same consistent source of electricity. And if they had grown up with a dryer, maybe they'd keep using it. Or maybe not.

When you watch European football without growing up with it, you give up a lot of the things that you have come to expect from sports. A strong interest in the success or failure of individual teams -- quick, give me three reasons why you'd favor Brazil over the Netherlands, or vice versa. A lack of knowledge about the star players, their various peccadilloes, or the usual track record of knowing who hates who and why. And the real kicker of why Americans don't quite cotton to this game -- an utter absence of bone-crunching hits and violence.

But the actual game? That's pretty good, really.

Last Friday at the Day Job, there wasn't that much going on. We closed up two hours early, I had stayed up late the night before to do some deadline work, and I was more or less as weak as a kitten from two days of a stomach bug. I was there to do QA and make sure we hit quotas, which is to say, I was about two-thirds there.

Which meant that, well, I was twice as committed as the rest of the place. A Friday before a three-day weekend is always a license to flake at any start-up; when you up the ante by making it a summer three-day weekend, then go even further by pushing it with picture-postcard weather, you could pretty much walk through the place with tassels on your teats without anyone caring very much. (Note: This is theoretical. As far as you know.)

So I did something that I've never done before. I watched a sporting event at my desk. It was Netherlands-Brazil.

If the only World Cup that you've watched in this tournament are the U.S., you really haven't seen an offense yet. Brazil and Holland's were so good, they could just stand still and wait for the defense to move, then blow past them. You also haven't seen players that seemingly can score from any spot 45 yards and in to the goal, or passing attacks that can produce a dangerous chance seconds after a seemingly innocent midfield turnover. It's pretty awesome, really.

People who talk about what needs to happen for the U.S. to really care about this game are kind of missing the point. It's not just that a long World Cup run would make us all excited. It's also that we just need to play the game differently. American football used to be a poor also-ran in the list of sports. We cared more about baseball, boxing and wrestling even. If we watched the game, we only did so for college teams, as the pro gram was considered a snooze. Only the advent of television, and the visual intensity of the Johnny Unitas air game, kicked things up a notch.

If the US team played like the Brazilians or, much more realistically, the Dutch or Germans, we'd care about this game. We'd watch them in non-World Cup events. If players who have the imagination and dexterity of Argentina's Lionel Messi or Brazil's Kaka were named Smith and Jones and had a healthy disdain for each other when they weren't playing for the flag, we'd want to see who was better in their club games. We just would. Maybe never to the level of NFL/NBA/MLB, but to the point of tennis majors or Tiger-Mickelson.

(And yes, Soccer Nerd, I know that Messi didn't really have the best World Cup. I could still see the quality when I saw him play.)

Unfortunately, there really are only a handful of people in the world with the Messi/Kaka skill set and level, and we might never have a guy like that in our laundry. The economics of the game aren't likely to change so much that the next Allen Iverson is going to want to play soccer instead of something more lucrative.

But then again... consider this. The demographics of the country are getting more brown by the day. We haven't really seen a land rush of Hispanic talent into the NFL, and there's only so much baseball that they can play, especially if they don't have a plus arm. It's not beyond the realm of possibility.

And in the meantime, there's always the World Cup, a game that isn't choked to death by ads and timeouts, and doesn't require you to think about salary caps, fantasy sports, free agency or anything else beyond the moment. And which has gotten a lot more of my TV time in the past month than, say, baseball.

Even if I didn't grow up with it, or have to live with the fact that if I watch this, I might be doing something they do somewhere else...

Top 10 World Cup Round of Eight Talking Points

10)We can only see the dream All-Guay matchup in the Final

9) Many second and third generation natives of Argentina aren't going to feel too bad if Germany wins their matchup

8) Dozens and dozens of Americans will be rooting for Uruguay to extract vengeance on... Ghana, right, it's Ghana

7) The Netherlands will be trying to pull off a huge upset against Brazil, despite their opponents having an overwhelming number of Brazilians

6) In four games so far, Paraguay has only given up one goal, which means that they might be the most boring side left in the tournament

5) Due to the youth of their roster, Germany is actually considered lovable, plucky and underdoggish, which might be the biggest underdog moment of the tournament, really

4) Since Spain-Germany or Spain-Argentina would both be great games to watch, it's a cinch that Paraguay will move on

3) Everyone involved in the semifinal game pitting the Brazil/Netherlands winner against Uruguay/Ghana will pretend that the two best teams are involved

2) Had the U.S. gone two games further, they would have totally made everyone feel patriotic for the July 4th holiday weekend, which would have just been, well, weird

1) ESPN is really, really hoping that you are still watching, but knows that you aren't

Top 10 takeaways from Day 1 of NBA Free Agency

10) The T-Wolves signed Darko Milicic for 4 years and $20 million as part of their ongoing effort to trigger Armageddon

9) Boston got Doc Rivers for another year of coaching, just because when the chips are down, Rivers really hates the idea of spending time with his family

8) Rudy Gay signed a five-year deal with the Grizzlies, which means he might be around longer than the franchise

7) The Bucks signed Drew Gooden to a 5-year, $32 million deal, which just goes to show that guys who have been with six (!) organizations in the last three years are worth real coin

6) Cleveland announced that Byron Scott has accepted the head coaching job, and that Scott had changed his children's names from Thomas, LonDen and DaRon to James, BronLe and DaBron

5) Richard Jefferson surprisingly opted out of the $15 million last year of contract with the Spurs, because he's convinced that he can make similar money without having to work past early April

4) The Hawks locked up guard Joe Johnson to a maximum 6-year contract, because you need to commit yourself to a wing player that "led" his team to a complete playoff collapse, alienated the fan base and will be 34 when this deal is done

3) Rumors persisted that James would name his new team on July 4, just to give everyone a reason to take the day off and celebrate

2) Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Carlos Boozer and twenty other guys tried to convince themselves that being FAs at the same time as James was a good move

1) James held Cleveland, New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Bristol hostage