Sports Journalism Tumblr: A Black self-insert character called Jabaal Abdul-Simmons

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Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

I'll always have some amount of respect for Jason Whitlock because in the interview with The Big Lead that led to his firing from ESPN he managed to take some unprovoked shots at both Scoop Jackson and Mike Lupica.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2010 00:09

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 12:35

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

morestuff posted:

Dunno, looks like something in April.

In other Deadspin news, Leitch contributed a really odd piece today about Tony LaRussa and Pujols attending a Glenn Beck rally.

It's just a really odd point to try and make. They work in professional sports, so they're completely oblivious to politics and major public figures?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was generally confused with Leitch's piece.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2010 06:34

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

BackInTheUSSR posted:

I have a writer submit this column for the UCF sports section a week or two ago. For backstory, the starting QB Rob Calabrese has lost the starter job in three straight years and Jeff Godfrey is a young highly touted freshman.

There is literally nothing similar about these two situations. Like, at all. They both play sports with a ball, and that's about it. Also they are nearly all white people, so there's that, as well.

College newspapers are absolutely wonderful places to go for horrible, godawful journalism.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2010 05:57

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Y'all missed the most bizarre thing from FJM day so far: http://deadspin.com/5644328/is-this-normal

It's about a Gregg Doyel article that references Joe Morgan and I'll just let you read it for yourself for the surprise twist about halfway through.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2010 21:18

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

kaworu posted:

Bear in mind that the "dark time" that Claudia is referring to is when Dan Shaughnessy's young daughter had cancer, and Ted Williams went out of his way to visit with her and call her on the phone and basically do what he could to help. Seriously. Ted Williams, of all people, did that for Shaughnessy's kid despite his hatred of sportswriters. And yet reading that recent column of Dan's, he makes no mention whatsoever of it. Perhaps it's because he has some respect for the privacy of his own family? Difficult to say.

I prefer to think of it as Dan Shaughnessy being a loving prick.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2010 15:17

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Just leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean back and :stare:

Colin Cowherd posted:

"Much like I called out Greg Oden, I'm gonna call out John Wall....Before the game started, he spent 34 seconds doing the Dougie. That tells me all I need to know about J-Wow. Then he opened his mouth later and confirmed it: not a sharp guy. All about him. In that line last night, that 29-point line, when he was out of control, he had 8 turnovers. By the way, Rajon Rondo had 17 assists last night, 0 turnovers. Rajon's got rings, Wall will never have one.

"Folks, when you rob a bank, it's not just the act of it, it's that you sat down for weeks and planned it. That tells me you're an idiot. The act is just the final icing on the cake. The cake is you sat down for weeks and planned it. I always give people credit just for getting a job. If you interview with 300 people and get the job, you beat 300 people out for a job, you've got to have some skill-set.

"Oh, I'm gonna get a lot of callers -- Colin, he's just having fun. What he did last night, Rondo never would, Isiah never would, J. Kidd never would, Stockton never would, Nash never would, Magic never would. Point guard is like the quarterback. it's an IQ-judgment position. The great ones are not about themselves. They're about the others. Leadership is IQ, it's not skills.

"J Wow's 37-second Yo dawg look at me I'm the man [dance], and his wild, out-of-control style, everybody else is buying his stock, and it told me all I need to know. He's gonna end up on the Iverson, Francis, Starbury [side]: great stats, nine All-Star teams, never play with good smart players and an elite head coach. He's gonna drive people nuts.

"It's not robbing the bank, it's that you planned it. It's not just doing the Doggie (sic) for 35 seconds, it's that you really thought before the game, this is gonna be super cool and people will like me. The wrong people. You all, go read the John Wall box score. Everybody's fascinated. ESPN SportsCenter will probably do like 9 minutes on it. I'll take the Rondo box score: 3 boards, 9 points, 17 assists, 4 steals, no turnovers....

"You could see it before the game started. Magic would never consider doing that. It's just who he is. And you think he's gonna change now that they gave him $75 million? Oh yeah, I'm sure he's gonna life change now. It's not robbing the bank, partner; it's that you planned it. It's not just the act, it's that you thought about it and thought it was a great idea....

"My daughter's 10. Ten years old. She knows the difference between right and wrong. My daughter knows what Randy Moss did is wrong. She's 10. The haves get it early, the have-nots never do. Look at me, I'm great, I'm unbelievable.

"You go look, we have a Hall of Fame point guard right now, his name is Rondo. Go look at his numbers....The best distributor in the league, and all we'll pay attention to is John Wall. Rondo is your superstar point guard, but we will spend hours on John Wall. I'd take Rondo in a heartbeat....When I see Wall dropping 29, you know what Wall's thinking tonight? Man, that dance was good, I might get 39 tonight. Great. Nine (sic) turnovers and 29 points. Welcome to the back of the class, get behind the Celtics, the Lakers and the Heat.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2010 22:27

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Groucho Marxist posted:

Pro click
http://harvardsportsanalysis.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/unnecessary-inference-and-undisputed-authorship-sports-articles/

pre:

Bill Simmons	Jason Whitlock	Rick Reilly
Boston	        Favre	        Anybody
Following	Elway	        Says
Movie	        Vs	        Tour
Everyone	Quaterback	Beer
Happens	        Journalist	He�d
Picks	        Brett	        Tattoo
Scene	        Tiger�s	        Mom
Suns	        Moss	        Somebody
Trade	        Media	        Buzz
Biggest	        Offseason	PGA

There is neither "Jeff" nor "George" under Whitlock's name, so the credibility of this article must immediately be called into question.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2010 18:08

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Tim Keown: STEP ON UP!

Tim Keown for ESPN.com posted:

Kobe Bryant's wrong 'Duty' message

Who thought it was a good idea for Kobe to shoot an assault weapon in that ad?

Todd Walker was working in the mortuary Monday, preparing the body of a 14-year-old boy, a kid he'd coached in youth football for five years, for a funeral later this week. Larry Malik Grayson was shot in the head two days after his last freshman football game at Berkeley (Calif.) High School.

It happened at a friend's house. Somehow a gun appeared and Malik died. The shooting may have been accidental. The details seem unimportant, but the senselessness isn't and neither is the frequency. Too many lives are being lost or changed because of guns. Too many kids -- good kids, kids who play football or baseball or basketball, kids who go to school and try to do right -- are dying on the streets of places like Berkeley and Oakland.

One of Walker's nephews, a 13-year-old, was shot in Oakland earlier this year when someone fired into his house. He survived, but is now blind. Walker prepared the body of another of his former Berkeley Junior Bears football players last month, a 15-year-old. There was a 13-year-old track star shot and killed as he just walked down the street less than a week before he was to start at Skyline High School.

Walker's heart breaks and his anger rises. As a youth football coach and funeral-home worker, he fights the gun culture and the death culture. He fights the pervasiveness that threatens to turn youth gun violence into just another annoyance of modern life, along the lines of a dropped phone call or a pothole. He tries to use sports to create a positive alternative.

And then last week, he went home and was watching a game when a new commercial for "Call of Duty: Black Ops" came on his television. Seen through Walker's eyes, the content was bad enough. A woman in high heels, a hotel concierge, a guy in a fast-food worker's outfit -- they're all shooting automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades in an urban warfare setting.

He was already disgusted, but about halfway through the spot, Walker did a double take: Wait! Wasn't that Kobe Bryant?

Seriously, is that really Kobe Bryant carrying an assault weapon with the word "MAMBA" on the barrel? Did Kobe Bryant, the highest-paid player in the NBA, take money not only to advertise a shooting game but actually shoot -- or simulate shooting -- an automatic weapon while doing it? None of his people, not his wife or his agent or someone in the NBA offices, advised him against this?

"I couldn't believe it was him," Walker says. "What's wrong with him?"

Walker
Tim Keown/ESPN.comTodd Walker uses his mortuary job to scare his youth football players straight. Kobe's presence in the ad isn't helping.

Walker gives funeral-home tours to every team he coaches. He tries to hammer home the reality of death by putting kids in cardboard cremation boxes. He shows them the tools he uses to drain bodily fluids and the chemicals he uses to prepare bodies. It probably wouldn't play in the suburbs, but Walker's trying to fight a culture that glamorizes death with tattoos, airbrushed T-shirts and roadside memorials. He's fighting a culture that has desensitized death to the point where fantasy has overtaken reality. In the process, the permanence of death -- "That person is gone," Walker tells the kids when he closes someone inside the box -- is often lost.

Those responses might be coping mechanisms or a natural defense against the reality of a situation that some deem hopeless, but Walker fights anyway. The glamorization troubles him. The lack of shock troubles him. He thinks people who don't value death are less likely to value life.

And then he sees Kobe shooting an assault weapon on TV, along with Jimmy Kimmel and those other "ordinary" people, including an overweight girl wearing glasses and a revenge-is-mine smile as she fires into a building. (She's apparently in the throes of a self-esteem bump, but it doesn't take much of a leap to see her as a geek settling things with a gun.) At the end of the spot, the tag line -- "There's a soldier in all of us" -- manages to diminish and trivialize the work of real soldiers while sending one of the most irresponsible messages in the history of advertising. (The ad campaign is everywhere, including on ESPN's family of networks and this website.)

"This is exactly what we're trying to fight," Walker says. "I'm looking at a 14-year-old boy right now who got shot in the head, and then I see Kobe get on TV looking like a damned fool, holding an assault weapon and wearing the same stuff the kids are wearing when they kill somebody. The look on his face -- all smiling and happy. This is the attitude we're trying to get away from. It's OK for him, though, because he's never had to worry about going home to the ghetto. That ain't his world."

The NBA has a dress code. Break it and get fined. The NBA has a code of conduct. Break it and get fined or suspended. The NBA made an example out of Gilbert Arenas when he brought a gun to work. Walker asks, "Where's the NBA on this one? What the hell is this guy doing? He needs to explain his reasons for that."

The Lakers, through their public relations people, say they haven't dealt with any backlash from the spot. "Not a Laker issue," says VP John Black, who referred me to Bryant's agents, who had no public comment.

[+] EnlargeBlack Ops
Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesOne of the attractions at a launch event for the game in north Las Vegas last week was an Airsoft SAW machine gun.

It's well known that Bryant is involved in military charities and feels a kinship with American soldiers. He reportedly trained with actual black ops soldiers to prepare for the commercial. At the game's launch, Bryant helped present a check for $1 million to the Call of Duty Endowment for returning soldiers.

Robert Kotick, the CEO of Activision, which makes "Call of Duty," considers his game a tribute to the military. It's a claim that's undercut by a commercial that makes its "heroes" appear to be regular people using their lunch break to take down a helicopter and fire a few rounds into a building.

For all his basketball talent, Kobe has always tried to develop the street cred that doesn't fit his background. Walker says, "If he's looking for street cred, he should do a commercial where he's throwing that assault weapon into an incinerator. We're trying to send a message that guns aren't the answer, and we've got an NBA player on television shooting that big-rear end gun with a stupid-rear end look on his face. We can't win."

Walker has an idea he knows will never happen. He wants to give Kobe the same tour he gives his young football players.

"I'd like him to come in here and see what I see," Walker says. "The bodies, the tools, the chemicals -- he needs to see it and smell it. He damned sure needs to see it."

Walker had to get off the phone. He had to go back to work. The Lakers come to Oakland to play the Warriors on Jan. 12.

The offer stands.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2010 02:06

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

So I guess that means Michael Wilbon will make living off his reputation officially a full-time job.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2010 22:57

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

morestuff posted:

This falls more on the editors than the writer, but good lord is the illustration paired with the latest Simmons column atrocious:

What's better is that they probably paid someone decent money to do two utterly awful caricatures.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2011 01:09

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Here's an article about noted rear end in a top hat A.J. Daulerio that makes him look like...well...an rear end in a top hat.

I'm just going to link it because it's long: click

There's some quotable stuff you can pick out of there. My two personal favorites: Will Leitch being so seemingly disgusted by what Daulerio's done with the site that that the two don't talk about Deadspin anymore, and the revelation that Daulerio kept a video of what might have been a rape on Deadspin for about a day.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2011 04:28

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

leokitty posted:

What the gently caress was the video in question

Perhaps Daulerio's darkest moment came last spring, when he posted a video of an obviously drunk college girl having sex in a bathroom stall at a sports bar in Bloomington, Indiana. At the time, he was thinking of it as part of a series on fans having sex in bathrooms. (In the fall of 2009, he'd posted a clip of a couple getting it on in a stall at the new Cowboys Stadium.) On May 11, a few days after the video went up, Daulerio received an e-mail from a woman imploring him to take it down. "I know the people in it and it is extreemly [sic] hurtful. please, this is completely unfair," she wrote. In separate responses, both Daulerio and Darbyshire, the Gawker lawyer, refused to comply. "Best advice I can give you right now: do not make a big deal out of this because, as you can tell, the footage is blurry and you are not identified by name," Daulerio wrote, assuming the e-mailer was the girl herself.

For the rest of the afternoon, Daulerio and the woman traded five e-mails. Finally, before handing the matter off to Darbyshire, Daulerio wrote, "It's not getting taken down. I've said that. And it's not a very serious matter. It is a dumb mistake you (or whomever) made while drunk in college. Happens to the best of us."

The next day, though, he and Darbyshire decided that removing the video was "the best course of action," Darbyshire says. But by then it had migrated to other sites. And a couple of days after that, Daulerio received a panicked call from the girl's father. "He had this basic breakdown on the phone," Daulerio recalled. "The guy is like, 'You gotta understand, I've just been dealing with watching my daughter get hosed in a pile of piss for the past two days.' "

Daulerio now says he wishes he hadn't run the video. "It wasn't funny," he says. "It was possibly rape. I was trying to kind of put it in that same category [as the Dallas video]. I didn't really look at the thing close enough to realize there's maybe something a little more sinister going on here and a little more disturbing."

# ¿ Jan 20, 2011 04:50

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

leokitty posted:

Christ. Well part of the problem is that Denton pays his writers a base salary + unique visitors/pageviews so it's how the employees make monies.

In exchange for betraying Jenn Sterger's trust and sending five-figures with of cash in an envelope to a random person for pictures of what may or may not have been Brett Favre's penis, he got a whopping bonus of less than five thousand dollars.

He really does this to be an rear end in a top hat. I love how he just casually talks about how he felt bad about that video because it was "possibly rape".

# ¿ Jan 20, 2011 04:55

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

stuart scott irl posted:

Hah, wait, so the WaPo partnership unceremoniously ended shortly after it began? Awesome.

So that lasted...two months?

# ¿ Jan 29, 2011 06:06

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Speaking of Deadspin...

Read this and tell me it's not the most ironic piece of journalism ever.

Barry Peteschky posted:

It's a trope by now to start some kind of off-the-field gossip when a team is underperforming. Villanova was upset in the NCAA Tournament, so Corey Fisher must have knocked up Scottie Reynolds' girlfriend. The Flyers hit a prolonged midseason slump, so Jeff Carter must have been boning Scott Hartnell's wife. LeBron James had a few bad games in the conference semis, so Delonte West must have been sleeping with Mama James.

Not content to let poor play be because of poor play ("we're better than this"), it's natural to spread rumors that something beyond the stadium is influencing matters. If you can bring vice into it, it'll spread faster.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2011 22:40

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

So more Deadspin chat: Is there any specific reason why they've written up two or three items this week talking about those four dudes who hadn't missed going to a Super Bowl in person like they were the worst humans on earth? I really, really did not understand that.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2011 04:35

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

stuart scott irl posted:

Daulerio is such a loving prick

Remember back to that GQ article I posted where he told a girl who possibly being raped in a video he put up for a day to just calm down and deal with the fact that she did something stupid.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2011 22:42

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

stuart scott irl posted:

Right, and that was demonstrably horrible and he is certainly a scumbag. What blows my mind about this one is how unbelievably banal and unremarkable the "scoop" is and he still acts like a total loving rear end in a top hat and gets all haughty about his "job"

And don't forget that time where he got so mad that an ESPN exec of all people didn't confirm for him that two other members of management were having an affair that he just decided to publish every rumor he had involving ESPN.

I don't know how he didn't get sued for that.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2011 00:19

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Billy Martin passing notes back and forth with his lover while managing games with the A's is a pretty funny story too.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2011 05:52

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

God it must be great to be Rick Reilly. poo poo out a column roughly half the length of anything any other ESPN writer comes up with once a week, act smug on camera once in a while, make five million dollars a year.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2011 07:40

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

stuart scott irl posted:

Hey look at this steaming pile of poo poo http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/1102/alex.rodriguez.worst.moments/content.1.html

For now I'm liking it just because there's the possibility that he hears about the article and blows the gently caress up like a giant baby just like he did when the cameras at the Super Bowl caught Cameron Diaz feeding him popcorn.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2011 22:51

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/telander/3807409-452/telander-brain-against-the-machines.html

Click the link to read a fascinating Rick Telander article that starts by talking about boxing and ends with a conflict between mankind and robots.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2011 01:21

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Simmons is annoying but there's at least some potential for that site to not suck.

You say this but just you watch as the first big feature on his new website is dedicated to David Kahn jokes.

Who was the Deadspin writer that Simmons hired?

# ¿ Feb 18, 2011 20:25

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Deathlove posted:

Katie Baker: http://deadspin.com/people/katiebakes/posts/

Good for her.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2011 20:30

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

morestuff posted:

ESPN has hired Dean Oliver, stat nerd, as their "director of production analysis". Interesting move.

What does "Director of Production Analysis" mean exactly? I read the article and was still left a little bit confused.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2011 00:00

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Politicalrancor posted:

My biggest fear is of being verbally bested by former Newark-ites.

Newark-ans?
Newark-ers?

Would 'fuckheads' work?

# ¿ Mar 4, 2011 07:33

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Deadspin is such a hard site to get a read of because for all the horrible poo poo they do they turn around and post heartwarming stuff like this and it makes you want to like them again.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2011 21:03

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

LARGE THE HEAD posted:

Rick Reilly's most recent written diarrhea is basically a hit piece on Jimmer Fredette for absolutely no reason other than that there's a chance his game doesn't translate to the NBA. It's like he tried this on Bleacher Report under an assumed name before bringing it to ESPN.

quote:

NEW ORLEANS -- So that's the end of Jimmermania. Saw it for myself. Caught the closing act. Not impressed.

Thanks to one of the worst performances of Jimmer Fredette's frabulous career -- and a set of teammates who looked like pizza delivery guys -- the BYU star took a hard fall in the Big Easy. BYU was bumped out of the Sweet Sixteen on Thursday, losing to Florida in a lopsided overtime, 83-74.

You can take off those "Romney-Fredette in 2012" T-shirts now.

Except for a stretch in the middle, when he was brilliant, Fredette was brutal.

Yes, he scored 32 points, but he took 29 shots to do it. He seemed to be wearing a blindfold from the 3-point arc -- 3-for-15. Plus, he committed six turnovers and wandered aimlessly through the lane on defense like Moses in the desert. I've seen dead people play better defense. At least they occasionally trip people.

If his last college game is what he's bringing to the NBA, then I'd say, in five years, he's got a really good chance to be your Provo area Isuzu dealer.

Great kid, though. Polite, smart (good chess player, whiz at Sudoku), studies his Bible in hotel rooms. Maybe that was the problem. Fredette and the largely Mormon BYU Nation should've never been made to come to New Orleans. You can sin just by osmosis here.

You should have seen some of them on Bourbon Street, the freshly scrubbed Cougars fans, horrified to find themselves among the window strippers, the hurricane chuggers and the bead catchers.

Then again, some of the comparisons BYU fans were making about The Jimmer this week made you think they deserved it.

"He's a little Maravich," a guy in a BYU shirt told me.

No! No, he isn't! He's not within a mile of Mardi Gras floats of Maravich. Maravich could get his shot off from the bottom of a swimming pool. He could get 40 in handcuffs. He averaged 44 points a game in college (to Fredette's 28 this season) and that's without the 3-point shot. With it, studies of his game film have shown, he would have averaged over 55.

"He's better than Danny Ainge was," a lady in a Cougars sweatshirt told me.

No! No, he isn't! Ainge was Danny Clutch (remember his Sweet 16 drive in 1981) Fredette didn't have a single game-winning shot all year. Against Florida, he didn't score a single point in the game's final eight minutes, or, for that matter, the first 13.

"I know from just watching him he's going to be a great NBA player," Thunder guard Russell Westbrook said.

No! No, he isn't!

Don't get me wrong. The Jimmer will make a modest living in the NBA. When he gets hot, he can drain them from the hotel coffee shop. He splits the double team as well as anybody in the league right now and he has a whole Santa bag of off-balance scoop shots with either hand. But until he shows more interest in defense than a blind man has in rainbows, he's going to spend most of his NBA life sitting on padded folding chairs.

To his credit, he'll have more help in the NBA than he had this season at BYU. His best rebounder, Brandon Davies, was thrown off the team for violating BYU's no-booze, no-sex, no-caffeine honor code, which meant it was pretty much Jimmer or nothing against the tall trees of Florida. He never came out once in the first 44 minutes and had to fire up shots through the tiniest cracks of light allowed to him by the Gators. He wore out. He fired up two 3s from at least six feet behind the arc in the overtime and missed them both, badly. Then again, he had a cut in his chin that looked like something George Foreman had left and his calf was killing him. But when his teammates really needed him, at the end of regulation, on defense, Jimmer really hit the dimmer.

Florida missed a trey with 24 seconds to go and Fredette's man, Erving Walker, who stands only 5-6, beat him to the long rebound. It wasn't hard. Fredette was nowhere to be found. I'm not even sure Fredette knew who his man was the entire night. Florida wound up with a reset and the last shot.

"If we'd have gotten it, we'd have had about eight seconds left differential," Fredette said. "I'd have had the ball in my hands at the end."

Note to Jimmer: To get the ball, one must occasionally check one's man and/or box said man out. One did neither.

"The weird thing is, [his defense] has gotten progressively worse over the year," says Fredette's own teammate, Nick Martineau. "From the start, he's never really been accountable to it, but it's just gotten looser as the year's gone on. But he can play defense. He really can. He'll definitely tighten it up for the NBA."

He'd better.

"I just want to take a couple weeks off and then start getting ready to try to make an NBA team," said the man who probably will be voted about five player of the year awards. "That's my dream, to make an NBA team."

Fine. That he can do. But you think this barely 6-2 kid with no speed and YMCA hops can be the next Maravich or Ainge or Westbrook?

Fredette about it.

Thanks Rick I'm going to have to actively root for Jimmer Fredette to become an NBA All-Star thanks to you.

And to think he gets paid five million dollars per year to crap out pieces like this.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2011 22:37

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Rick Reilly used to write really long feature pieces for Sports Illustrated that won him most of his Sportswriter of the Year awards, and then somewhere along the way he decided to use his reputation to give half a poo poo for most of his columns, recycle the rest, and here we are in 2011 and he's being paid five million dollars a year by ESPN to write columns where he claims that the possible NCAA player of the year could get beat down by guys in the YMCA and makes Mormon jokes.

Actually I kind of envy him.

Crazy Ted fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Mar 27, 2011

# ¿ Mar 27, 2011 23:04

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Want to see what passed for Sports-Illustrated-Level writing in 1957?

SURE YOU DO!

quote:

Fame Is For Winners
A PREJUDICED BASEBALL FAN ARGUES FOR RESTRICTING THE HALL OF FAME TO PLAYERS WHO WON AND LAYING TO REST THE COBB SYNDROME

James Murray

It is the considered opinion of most baseball fans that the greatest player who ever lived was either a) Ty Cobb or b) Babe Ruth. Right at the outset of this essay, I would like to lay the controversy at rest once and for all. The greatest player was Babe Ruth.

How can you be sure, you may ask. Was it because he hit more home runs? Could pitch, too? No. It was because he won. It's that simple.

In Ruth's 15 years with the New York Yankees, the team won seven pennants, four world championships. In Ruth's six seasons with the Boston Red Sox, the team won three pennants, three world championships. In short, Ruth was a winner.

In Ty Cobb's 22 years with Detroit, the Tigers won three pennants, no world championships. In Cobb's two years with Philadelphia, the Athletics won no championships. In short, Cobb was a loser.

It is not the purpose of this thesis to examine solely the relative merits of Babe Ruth vs. Ty Cobb. But it is my intention to claim that baseball's Hall of Fame and the honor rolls of the sport generally are barnacled with athletes who, like Cobb, were able to hang up an impressive number of personal achievements which, on the face of the record, meant little whatsoever to the teams they played for.

The object of baseball, after all, is to win the pennant and world championship. Cobb's record of three pennants in 24 seasons�all in the first five years of his baseball life�presupposes something was wrong with the great Cobb as a team player. It is not unreasonable to expect that, somewhere along the line, a lifetime batting average of .367 (highest in baseball), 12 batting championships, batting averages of over .400 three times and over .300 for 23 years, and the most total hits in history, 4,191, would translate themselves into a long succession of championships.

That they didn't argues that Cobb's admitted individual brilliance had a deleterious effect on the success of the team as a whole, a fact which teammates of his have privately confided in the past but never quite dared to say out loud.

As a matter of fact, the Cobb syndrome crops up throughout baseball history. Consider the modern case of Ted Williams. Williams is generally conceded to be the best hitter in baseball today. He has won four batting titles, four home run championships, has a lifetime average of .348. Yet, in 15 seasons with the Red Sox (two of them fractional, due to his Korean service as a Marine fighter pilot), his team has won exactly one pennant, no world championships.

It is interesting that in his only World Series�1946�Williams stubbornly played right into the hands of the opposition, the St. Louis Cardinals, who made a low bow to Ted's acknowledged prowess and fielded an overshifted defense which saw the left side of the infield practically undefended while the fielders were stacked like a picket fence on the right side. Williams insisted on trying to power the ball through this massed defense, even though he proved in the third game with a safe bunt down the third base line that he had a virtual sure base hit every time he pushed the ball toward the left side of the infield. He got exactly five hits, all singles, in the Series and was, as a result, about as much use to the Red Sox as a reserve outfielder named Tom McBride who was out of the league three years later.

It probably could be argued, on the basis of Williams' performance in the '46 series, that Ted was more interested in personal glory than in the Red Sox. It is noteworthy that many of Williams' other brilliant afternoons came in All-Star games, which are a kind of showcase for talent where the managers let the players swing from the heels and the hell with the game. The fans come to see stars, not victories, which makes this game more uniquely suited to Williams' frame of mind than is the pennant chase.

There have been other brilliant soloists. Paul Waner played in the big leagues 22 years and�save for 11 games with the 1951 Dodgers�played on precisely one pennant winner, the 1927 Pittsburgh Pirates, who lost the World Series in four fast games to the Yankees. Yet, Waner had a lifetime average of .333, batted .380 one year, .373 another, .370 in another. Those who watched him play had the distinct impression Waner got his three-and-a-fraction hits every 10 times at bat and was very little concerned over whether the team was winning or losing. He led the league in runs batted in only one year�the year the Pirates won the pennant. He led the league in batting three times�in two of which Pittsburgh did not even threaten.

It is possible there is something insidious about becoming a supreme virtuoso in baseball, that one's first individual championship chips away at the general team effort. It is extraordinary to note how many so-called superstars were able to lead their teams to pennants in the early days of their careers when they themselves were naive, earnest youngsters, and not public figures. ( Cobb's Tigers won the flag in his third year, 1907, when Ty was only 20 years old.) Once they get notorious, these celebrities seem to concentrate on their own careers, rather than the welfare of their team. It is possible, of course, that their success inspires jealousy and resentment on the part of their teammates and that this dissension rather than the player's disinterest untracks the team. It is also possible that the superstar anticipates this reaction and begins to think of himself as apart from his own common herd. The fact that he usually makes three or four times the salary of his nearest fellow player cannot be expected to smooth the situation.

How then do you explain the success of Babe Ruth who was all of these things�a superplayer, the most hysterically publicized man in the game and an employee whose salary occasionally topped that of the President of the U.S.? Well, as I see it, there were three factors: first was Ruth's personality itself�a lovable, clownish, uncomplicated juvenile who treated all the world, king or bootblack, with the same offhand heartiness�not, in short, a man to antagonize his fellow players or inspire jealousy or resentment in anyone. Can this be said of Cobb or Williams? Second, there was Manager Miller Huggins, a psychologist even if he didn't know it, and a mature, thoughtful individual who could channel Ruth's herculean talents to redound to the club's, as well as Ruth's, benefit. Third, there was Lou Gehrig.

It occurs to me that�just as there are ballplayers who succumb to the dread Cobb syndrome�there is the reverse side of the coin, ballplayers who never excited the wildest acclaim but who were congenital winners and whose talents were translated regularly and unobtrusively into pennants and championships. Lou Gehrig was unquestionably the key piston in the Yankee machinery. Ruth's eruptions of awful power would spurt the engine riotously along the track from time to time, but Gehrig's drive was relentless and unstoppable. He was always on hand to steady not only the great Ruth but the whole Yankee team. He was a perfect team man�a raucous, unafraid giant without guile, deceit or overleaping ambition. Gehrig was glad to be a Yankee, not glad to be just Gehrig. This is the man who batted .373, .374, .379, .363 and other prodigious percentages.

Gehrig was probably the greatest team player who ever lived. His mere presence was a comfort to the team, and it was undoubtedly Gehrig to whom Pitcher Red Ruffing referred when he said, "I feel like a guy with eight big brothers when I take the field with the Yankees." There is no evidence Cobb or Williams or Waner inspired the same unshakable confidence in their pitching staffs�or even their managers.

The Yankees, of course, have habitually been blessed with this kind of quietly capable team player, it may be the reason they insist on a certain code of behavior in their players. Certainly Joe DiMaggio was up to the Ruthian role he had to play, but he was primarily a team player, a superstar whose only enduring record book entry is for batting safely in 56 consecutive games. Not only that, but Team Players Gehrig and Bill Dickey were still on hand for the first part of his career. And the shortstop Phil Rizzuto was cast in the same mold for the last half.

The present-day Yankees have the brilliant Mickey Mantle. Personally, I would not put Mantle in the Gehrig or Dickey category. I doubt if he alone could lead the Yankees to a perennial world championship. The team player on New York today, it seems to me, is the catcher, Yogi Berra. Here is another athlete with no pretensions. His statistics will never skyrocket right off the pages of the baseball record book the way Cobb's, or Williams' will. But his World Series winners' shares may someday top everybody's.

And let us not forget the great George Sisler, who until his eyes began to go bad in 1923 was able to hoist the sickly St. Louis Browns into pennant contention in the American League. That alone should be example enough of the value of the team man.

The argument is raised that some players just find themselves on chronically inferior teams which keep on losing despite their best efforts. This has happened�but not as often as the fan thinks. As a matter of fact, if a superior player continues to play superior ball and does not let-discouragement or ennui set in, the chances are good that the franchise as a whole will begin to pick itself up and edge toward the pennant. Then, the addition of only one or two catalytic ballplayers, and suddenly there's a pennant.

This happened, I am positive, in the case of Detroit's Charley Gehringer. Gehringer's average (lifetime) is almost 50 points below Ty Cobb's. But Gehringer began to play second base for the Tigers toward the end of Cobb's career. He played steady, impeccable baseball�and the general level of excellence of baseball on the club started to rise as he reached full maturity. In 1933 the club bought a demonstrable winner�the Athletics' catcher, Mickey Cochrane�and made him player-manager. Immediately, everything fell into place, and Detroit went on to win two quick pennants and a world championship.

There have been other spectacular manifestations of the winning attitude. Frankie Frisch was second baseman on eight pennant winners. His teams won four of their World Series. Frisch was even manager of the 1934 Cardinals and, in the seventh game of their World Series with Detroit that year, it was Frisch who broke the back of his opponents. It was the third inning and the game was scoreless when the Cardinals loaded the bases, Manager Frisch at bat. He cleaned the bases with a double. The Cardinals swept on to a seven-run inning and the world championship.

The point is, an examination of Frisch's record might have told the baseball observer what to expect. Just as in the sixth game of last year's World Series when Jackie Robinson came to bat in the last of the 10th inning with the winning run on base, a study of the past should have tipped off the immediate future. Robinson brought it in with a screaming single to left. It is my belief that Robinson, next to Gehrig, was the greatest team player in baseball history. In his 10 years in the big leagues, his team won six pennants, finished second every other year but one. His team could not win its share of World Series; the Yankees, as it happened, had more team players than the Dodgers.

Cleveland, through the years, has had, it seems to me, more than its share of ballplayers of the Cobb persuasion. There were few stylists in baseball with the artistry of Earl Averill in the batter's box. In his prime he would seldom bat below .300 and his high mark was an eye-popping .378 on a team which had other sluggers like Joe Vosmik and Hal Trosky.

What it takes apparently is a special quality of caring which, it seemed to their fans, was the one quality the Cleveland Indians of the time lacked. The team on paper�which is to say on statistics�should have been winning its share of championships and giving the Yankees a mighty battle in other years.

It will be interesting to see what becomes not only of Mickey Mantle but of Willie Mays. What made Willie Mays a "live" candidate for the Hall of Fame before he had had much more than a turn or two around the circuit was the fact that he lifted the Giants�a mediocre team to say the most�right into two pennants. Mays can very easily start playing for Willie Mays Enterprises rather than for the New York Giants. It may become decidedly easier for Mays to lead the league in batting and base stealing and home runs than to lead New York to the pennant. It will be interesting to see.

In the case of Mantle, he may very well become a separate entity from the Yankees�say in the way Cobb became an entity almost away from team-play baseball altogether. But the pressure will not become telling until the demonstrated team player, Berra, has retired.

What it adds up to, it seems to me, is that there should be another dimension added to the measure of a baseball player. It is not enough to hail a man as a great athlete and in the next breath say "What a shame he couldn't play on a winner." A superplayer makes his team a winner�or should. Ted Williams had plenty of first-rate help on the Red Sox. He was a contemporary of Jimmy Foxx, Joe Cronin, Bobby Doerr and other outstanding hitters. But who can forget the spectacle of Ted Williams tossing his bat in the air in disgust last year because he was given a base on balls which merely won a game for the Red Sox but did nothing for Ted Williams?

The plain truth would seem to be that a prerequisite for admission into the Hall of Fame should be victory. After all, it's the object of the game of baseball. To make the Hall of Fame, a player should have demonstrated in himself the resources of victory at least once in a while and, if he has not, it should at least be admitted that he was in some ways not quite the extraordinary baseball player�whether for reasons of temperament, selfishness or indifference�that election to the Hall of Fame proclaims he is.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2011 02:20

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

BackInTheUSSR posted:

holy poo poo

It's so beautiful, isn't it?

# ¿ Apr 16, 2011 04:00

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Speaking of Grantland, A.J. Daulerio decided to write a huge pile of words about Grantland and negotiations with Tommy Craggs and then openly admitted at the end that the column he's just penned could put Craggs' potential contract with ESPN in Jeopardy.

Seriously: http://deadspin.com/#!5796720/an-exclusive-interview-with-tommy-craggs-about-the-bill-simmons-grantland-project

# ¿ Apr 29, 2011 05:24

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

MorningView posted:

That dude is such an unbelievable shithead. I wonder if Leitch ever feels bad about leaving him in charge and letting Deadspin go to poo poo.

IIRC in the GQ interview with Daulerio he admitted that Leitch doesn't like talking to him about Deadspin very much anymore.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2011 06:23

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Here is a link: click

In the link is a piece written by a basketball player. I will not tell you what is in the link. All I will tell you to do is read it all the way to the end.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2011 02:20

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

You know those times when a journalistic outfit has their priorities out of order? Enter the NCAA Football section of ESPN Insider...

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ¿ May 13, 2011 02:47

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

morestuff posted:

See item six. Can we please eliminate "nips" as a sports term if people aren't responsible enough to use it?

"Nip" is a slur on Japanese people and Choi is Korean. I think you're seeing something that isn't there.

# ¿ May 16, 2011 02:51

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Fag Boy Jim posted:

Does anyone under the age of 60 actually use that term legitimately

Y-Hat, but that's only for Boston Red Sox players.

# ¿ May 16, 2011 04:03

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Step forward Ray Ratto, a man who apparently takes NBA draft lotteries very seriously...

quote:

Kahn's non-cavalier attitude toward Cavs lotto win a shame

I do believe David Kahn was given to us heathens so that Mark Cuban would not become overtaxed as the NBA's designated semi-loopy contrarian.

In fact, as Cuban has become more serious and less maverick-ish (no pun intended), the job has stood vacant for too long. But from out of the north, under cover of "What the hell was that he said?" is the general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Tuesday, though, he was particularly gifted in the notice-me arts when he essentially declared the NBA Draft lottery a predetermined contest, a version of the cutest child competition.

Here's the fact. The Cleveland Cavaliers won the lottery (yippee for them), and the team's representative was owner Dan Gilbert's 14-year-old son Nick, who endures the tortures of neurofibromatosis. As the representative of the team for the lottery, he serves no function except as a seatwarmer, but it was a big deal for him, and he seemed to have a good time doing so.

But Kahn, either trying to cut his humor too fine or sounding like a guy who likes to be scorned by his fellows, offered a countervailing suggestion when the Cavs got the most blessed ping pong ball.

He was screwed by the very appearance of Nick Gilbert.

"This league has a habit, and I am just going to say habit, of producing some pretty incredible storylines," Kahn said. "Last year it was Abe Pollin's widow and this year it was a 14-year-old boy and the only thing we have in common is we have both been bar mitzvahed. We were done. I told Kevin: 'We're toast.' This is not happening for us and I was right."

"Kevin" was Utah Jazz general manager Kevin O'Connor, whose response is not recorded. Thankfully for him.

Kahn said he sized up the field when he, the Jazz and Cavs were the last three standing, and his inability to seem cuddly enough, bar mitzvah or no bar mitzvah.

And maybe that's how the lottery works now. Maybe that's why Roger Goodell got booed at his draft and David Stern didn't get booed at his -- children.

Well, that, and no live audience.

But we digress.

Kahn has managed, with the use of Nick Gilbert, to come off about as poorly as if he had been Jerry Lewis at the MD telethon and did 20 minutes of stand-up making fun of his kids.

There are (a) things that are funny in the hands of any-old-body, (b) things that are funny only in the hands of a skilled comedic practitioner, (c) things that are funny with the right audience, and (d) a few things that just aren't funny at all.

At best, Kahn was standing squarely in Column B, closer still to Column D. But funny for the general audience with Nick Gilbert as the mechanism of his words he was not.

Jobbed out of one pick in a draft most folks regard as a weak one, Kahn came off like someone who had been swindled out of Bill Russell, Michael Jordan and LeBron James by the presence of a child with the power to make ping pong balls dance to a tune only he can hear.

And even if Kahn is right and Nick Gilbert brought the lottery to his knees with a bow tie, Harry Potter glasses and a winning personality, then Nick Gilbert has powers one should not want to get crossways of and feel confident of the outcome.

I mean, if he can change the course of the NBA at 14, how would he work at 21? Or 30? The prudent course here would have been for Kahn to tip his hat at Nick Gilbert and say, "Good on you. Hope the night was all you'd hoped for." And then back away slowly.

Or he could have turned to Kevin O'Connor and said, "Next year, I'm going with the 11-year-old girl. If these are the rules, then I want to get on the right side of them."

Or he could have just said nothing except, "We wanted No. 2 all along. This couldn't have worked better for us if we'd picked the number ourselves." I mean, that's what they all do on draft night anyway, right?

So we'll leave with you with this. Don't bet on the Cavs trading the first pick. Even they don't want to mess with the power of Nick Gilbert.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for Comcast SportsNet Bay Area.com

# ¿ May 18, 2011 15:59

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Seriously today might be one of the most retarded days in sports journalism I've ever seen because the national media actually thinks that David Kahn was seriously alleging that David Stern rigs the lottery instead of just joking around with the Utah Jazz GM.

link

quote:

In just two years as general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves, David Kahn has continually followed up some baffling personnel decisions by making weird comments better-suited for online message boards than for press conferences. He continues to claim that Ricky Rubio is coming to the NBA any day now even when no such hard evidence exists, he praised archetypal bust Darko Milicic as "manna from heaven," and he welcomed Michael Beasley(notes) to Minnesota by saying his problems in Miami stemmed from smoking too much weed. At this point in his GM career, Kahn is not just someone who makes mistakes with the press -- he's reckless and doesn't think about potential consequences before he speaks.

But Kahn is a perfectionist, so it should come as no surprise that he followed up Tuesday night's NBA Draft Lottery with perhaps the most foolish comments of his professional life.

In case you missed it, the Wolves entered the lottery with a 25 percent chance at nabbing the top pick in the draft and came out of it with the second-overall pick. Given some previous cases of lottery bad luck -- like, say, last season's 12-win Nets ending up with the No. 3 pick -- the Wolves came out OK. The Cleveland Cavaliers, the team with the second-worst record in the league during the 2010-11 campaign, finished with the top pick, albeit by way of the pick they received in trade with the eighth-worst Los Angeles Clippers. It was a moment of great fortune for the Cavs and franchise representative Nick Gilbert, the 14-year-old son of owner Dan Gilbert who has had to deal with neurofibromatosis, a terrible nervous disorder that causes benign and malignant tumors to grow randomly in all parts of the body, for his entire life. It's a great story for a kid and franchise who can use some good luck.

Don't tell that to Kahn, though, because he hinted that he was the victim of underhanded dealings. From Brian Mahoney of the Associated Press:

"This league has a habit, and I am just going to say habit, of producing some pretty incredible story lines," Kahn said. "Last year it was Abe Pollin's widow and this year it was a 14-year-old boy and the only thing we have in common is we have both been bar mitzvahed. We were done. I told Kevin [O'Connor of Utah]: 'We're toast.' This is not happening for us and I was right."

Yeah, widows and sick kids get all the luck.

To Kahn's credit, he gave another post-lottery interview in which he seemed to suggest that ill fortune is sometimes the way of the world. But those comments don't change the fact that he also issued the quote above, which reads more like the paranoid fantasy of a bratty child than what you'd expect from a high-profile NBA executive whose team earned a pick generally in line with what the lottery odds suggested they would. Plus, the Wolves didn't even have the league's worst record last year; that would be the aforementioned Nets. If Kahn cares so much about wronged parties, shouldn't he be going to bat for Mikhail Prokhorov instead of complaining about his own rotten deal?

Kahn didn't explicitly say that he's the victim of a conspiracy, but the "and I am just going to say habit" portion of his quote suggests that he's dealing in euphemism to avoid a fine. Lottery conspiracy theories are nothing new -- some people still believe that David Stern dipped an envelope in tartar sauce in 1985 to ensure that the Knicks would win the right to select Patrick Ewing. But general managers typically have the good sense to shut their mouths and not complain in public in a manner typically associated with annoying fans who hide behind a cloak of Internet anonymity.

To make this story even sillier, Stern put in a good word with Wolves owner Glen Taylor to help his friend Kahn get the Wolves job in 2009. Why, exactly, would Stern change course and doom Kahn to the ignominy of picking second in the draft? Does he not want to make it appear like he plays favorites?

There are many bad general managers in the league, of which Kahn is arguably the worst on the merits, or lack thereof, of his personnel decisions. However, what makes him a truly odious figure is that he regularly acts with a level of arrogance that suggests he thinks he's entitled to success. Being an NBA general manager is a tough job that requires patience, hard work, and an ability to roll with several cases of bad luck. Sadly, after two years on the job, Kahn has proven that he doesn't have the temperament to succeed in the job. How much longer can Taylor and the Minnesota fanbase stand him?

This is all based off what he told one AP writer about a joke made with Utah general manager Kevin O'Connor.

I'd post three or four other stories but what the hell is the point

Crazy Ted fucked around with this message at 21:20 on May 18, 2011

# ¿ May 18, 2011 21:17

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 3, 2024 12:35

Crazy Ted: Jul 29, 2003

Scott Raab, a writer for Esquire, tries to pen a new nickname for Dirk Nowitzki.

http://twitter.com/#!/Scott_Raab/status/70760366099005440

Oops...

# ¿ May 19, 2011 17:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > Sports Journalism Tumblr: A Black self-insert character called Jabaal Abdul-Simmons

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