I'll File This Under "Not At All Surprising."

The New York Post apparently has video of Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal gleefully participating in cockfights in the Dominican Republic, the most recent example of professional athletes love of 1) gambling, 2) animal cruelty, 3) getting caught participating in one or both of these things.

Also interesting, the article says: "The event shown in the video takes place in the Coliseo de Gallos - Rooster Coliseum - in Santo Domingo, the country's biggest cockfighting venue."

Is that like "Kitchen Stadium" on Iron Chef? Do they really need that? Apparently the bloodsport is so popular in the DR that the crowds were starting to overwhelm the previous largest cockfighting venue, known as "the cardboard box behind a strip bar."

The article also states that Martinez and Marichal pitted their trained fighting birds against one another (Marichal won, for those of you who are as grimly curious as I am).

It is legal there, so it's not like either of these guys are going to take any litigious flack for this, but my question is this: If guys like Pedro, Vick and Marichal are participating in this, definitely for gambling purposes, what's our estimate for the total number of players across all major sports and *shudder* NASCAR that push the envelope because of their crazy competitive desire?

We've watched steroids get out of hand because players are so crazy for competition that they'll even try and chemically alter the playing field within their sport, and I defintely think there's something to the "Jordan played baseball because he was secretly suspended" theory, I just want to know whether you guys think stuff like gambling and participating in the fighting and killing of [dogs, roosters, hookers in Jell-o, beta fish, etc.] is the exception or the rule?

Vegas Conspiracy

From Mike:

I believe Tom Brady's boot and ankle injury is a hoax. Brady is not hurt, but has been paid by Las Vegas, to wear this boot to raise questions about his health. Vegas and the odds makers want to stay away from the largest line in SB History and do not want everyone and their mother to take the Pats to cover.

Thus Brady is wearing the boot and not practicing when the media covers practice...the longer this farce continues, the more the line continues to drop, the more Vegas relaxes.

Did you really think Vegas is going to take a bath on the largest sports event in the world? It is a shame to what extent money influences American sports and an even bigger shame that Brady and Belichick would buy into it.

The PATS will cover, will go undefeated, but at a lesser line causing all those NYG supporters to lose money and like Jerry Seinfeld, Vegas will continue to break even.

Thoughts?

Pitcher of Record

Baseball is the most intricate and detail oriented sport in America (Cricket has it beat, but I am not worried about sticky wickets). It is that detail that makes it great, and frustrating. Its detail is one of the reasons the modern fan does not appreciate baseball because they are either too stupid or too impatient to understand the nuances. However there are some rules that make absolutely no sense, and were obviously made in the 1800’s. The rule that bothers me the most is the rule behind the pitcher of record.

In order to earn a win as a starter you must go 5 innings. If you go under that you do not qualify, regardless of the score. You can lose if you go under 5, but not win. By itself that rule does not seem intimidating, or complicated, or jaded or whatever you want to call it. The problem arises when it comes time to decide who does actually win.

The part of the rule that gets me is if a starting pitcher leaves a game with his team winning before he pitches 5 innings, he is still ineligible for the win, even if the score does not change. In that situation, it is up to the discretion of the official scorekeeper to declare the pitcher of record. Therefore the official scorekeeper decides which relief pitcher did the most to contribute to the win, and that pitcher gets the win. But the starting pitcher cannot get the win. So as long as the score never ties and the lead never changes, the official scorekeeper decides the winner.

So here is my problem, didn’t the starting pitcher contribute the most to the win? Didn’t he do enough for his team to win? Shouldn’t that be the measure of who gets the win? In the logic of the rule some guy who comes in with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th and gets 1 out can get the win for only facing 1 batter, but the starter who went 4 2/3rds innings and only let up 1 run can’t get the win. Also by that logic, every subsequent pitcher can give up 2 or more runs, thus giving up more runs than the starter, but as long as the lead does not change the official scorekeeper still must chose someone to get the win, and it can’t be the starter.

The starter can leave a game with the score 2-1 in the 5th with a blister, and by the end of the game the score is 25-17 he still can’t get the win. He could have the least earned runs, most innings pitched and most strikeouts of entire staff for the night, and still not win. I think that is a travesty of the rule system.

This is obviously an archaic rule hearkening back to the days before regular relief appearances and fragile starters. For Cy Young to not go 5 innings he either had to give up like 20 runs or get shot by Ty Cobb. Back then I understand the rule. But today it makes no sense. So shouldn’t we change the rule?

I have 2 possible solutions. First we can change the rule to read that a starting pitcher can only win if he leaves the game with his team ahead (pending runners and earned runs factored in), but there is no minimum. Or, we change the ‘win’ stat to reflect who earned the win, the starter win (SW) or the relief win (RW). For example if a starter goes only 3 innings, but his team never trails and wins the game he can earn a SW. But if a reliever comes in and cleans up the mess he earns a RP. This would fix the problem and add a new stat for fantasy junkies and Elias to track.

At the end of the day this situation only happens a handful of times a season, but with fantasy championships and players’ salaries tied to these stats, every win counts. Just think, if they kept those stats maybe ‘The Loogy’ would have won.

This is my baseball post.

1) Michael, we need some background on Dusty. Give us some perspective. I want to know what it's like to have this toothpick-chewer planting his butt on the home bench.

2) An interesting note about Hank and Hal Steinbrenner that I was thinking about this afternoon. Steinbrenner's daughter recently got divorced. That in itself is not that big a deal, except for the fact that her husband used to be an heir-apparent to a president of baseball operations-type position.
It's possible and even likely they'd been having marrital trouble for some time. Do we think the Boss hung in the saddle longer than he wanted to because he didn't want to risk turning over any portion of control to a man who he feared wouldn't be in his family permanently?

If that's the case, could we find quantifiable evidence that this "Carlo" Steinbrenner's marital habits were actually in some way affecting the performance of the team, by making George hold on even when his heart wasn't in it?

It's an interesting thing to think about. Did a bad marriage sink the Yanks for the better part of this decade?