from webwallpapers.net

by Eno Sarris //

It looks like Carmelo Anthony is not long for the Denver Nuggets. He rejected their extension offer and now it looks like the team may be shopping him.

This is an interesting situation from a cultural standpoint as well. Does it have a correlation to something we experience in our own work lives?

I recently was the editor for Kumon Publishing, and though we didn’t have long-term contracts, there was a sense, common to companies with Japanese roots, that we were all in it for the long haul. Since I bought in, and was optimistic about my future, I also held the long-term view as my own. Unfortunately, life and family pulled me west and away from that job – and it was time for me to give notice.

Because I rooted for the company and wanted the transition to go as smoothly as possible, I identified a successor and gave six weeks of notice. Six weeks is a long time. The transition went well, and my successor is ably steering the ship currently, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t awkward moments in those six weeks.

What happened? Well, the minute it becomes clear that a teammate is not in it for the long haul, and doesn’t share the same ultimate goals, the team suffers. It’s long been shown what a strong, unified vision can do for a corporation, and that’s the same for any team. You all want to be in the same boat. In those six weeks, it was clear I was no longer in the same boat, even if I was as affable and helpful as I had always been. Even if there weren’t any ‘incidents’ it was strange for all of us to have a teammate that wasn’t going to be there in the future.

So we return to Anthony. By rejecting the extension, he has signaled his ‘notice.’ He has said that he no longer shares the long-term goals with this teammates and that his personal train is headed to another destination. His ‘six-week notice’ came a year before he is no longer under contract with the team, but the rules of the NBA collective bargaining agreement have set the team moving. If he’s not foundational member of the team, he must go now, or the team will get nothing in return for their superstar, like the Raptors did with Chris Bosh.

Many pundits expect Anthony to move to New York after some comments at his wedding made by Chris Paul concerning building a new ‘big three’ in that city. Certainly, he would enjoy playing alongside Amar’e Stoudemire and in an offensive system similar to the one that has allowed him personal success in Denver.

But it’s interesting how long notices change things. In both cases, informing the organizations of the intention to leave gave the team a chance to adapt. Though I can’t speak for Anthony, it seems that even the men giving notice in these situations probably would agree that they wish only the best for their former employers. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have given so much notice. They would have just avoided the awkwardness, played out the string, and left their employers hanging at the end.

by Brendan Johnston //

Last week, Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves tore his ACL making a play at third against the Houston Astros. The injury has ended his season. Jones, who is thirty-eight years old, had been considering retirement at the end of this season, and now it appears that his career might be over in a way he never intended or expected. That “might” is an important word. Jones has had surgery to repair the knee, and it is possible he could be ready for Opening Day 2011. This, as many things often do, made me think about the X-Men.

One of the most prolific and well-respected comic book writers of the last century is a man named Chris Claremont. Claremont wrote Marvel Comics’s X-Men characters for over fifteen years penning such iconic storylines as “Days of Future Past” and “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” With his help, the X-Men rose from a fairly unpopular book to (at one point) the bestselling comic book in the world. Elements of Claremont’s work were used in various installments of the X-Men movie franchise. (Claremont also co-wrote three novels with George Lucas continuing the story of the movie Willow. Seriously.)

Claremont still writes for Marvel, working on out-of-continuity X-Men titles. His work isn’t what it used to be… actually, scratch that. His work is exactly what it used to be. That’s the problem. Comics have changed since Claremont’s heyday, and Claremont’s style really hasn’t. But he keeps coming back to the X-Men, because he loves it, and Marvel keeps bringing him back, because he wrote the Dark Phoenix Saga and you don’t slam the door on the guy who wrote the Dark Phoenix Saga. But with every subpar issue of Exiles or X-Men Forever that read like they were written when I was ten, the man’s former brilliance shines a little less.

This is what I thought about when I heard about Chipper Jones blowing out his knee and maybe-maybe-not retiring. I hope he gets well, but I hope he doesn’t come back, and not just because my girlfriend Courtney is a Mets fan. This may sound harsh, but for his own good, I hope he never laces up his spikes again.

Jones is a six-time All-Star. He’s won an MVP award, a batting title, and a World Series. He’s hit 436 home runs, which is 37^th all-time, and 3^rd all-time for a switch-hitter. He has nearly 2,500 hits and has driven in nearly 1,500 runs. His career batting average is just over .300. He’s been a Brave his entire career. He will probably be elected to the Hall of Fame.

But if he comes back next year, it would be to a Braves team helmed by someone who is not Bobby Cox, the only manager for whom Jones has ever played. The Braves have still not found a replacement for Cox (or at least they haven’t announced one), but whoever it is, the Braves will be different for it. The team Jones left behind in Houston is not the one he’ll come back to should he decide to return. The team will have changed, and except for being a little slower, Jones will have not.

The Braves would take him back. You don’t slam the door on the guy who hit three-hundred for you for fifteen years (especially when you still owe him twenty-six million guaranteed dollars). If they didn’t, someone else would, but can you really imagine Chipper Jones as a Marlin or a Padre or, God help us, a Pirate? Can you really imagine him taking his bum knee to the AL and DHing somewhere?

Jones shouldn’t come back. It’s a shame that he got hurt and his final season got cut short, but he went down making a play, helping the Braves on their road to the postseason. He didn’t have to be benched after going 0-for-50, or nodding off in the clubhouse, or becoming a liability on defense. He had to be helped off the field, but he shouldn’t have to limp to the end of his career.

Brendan Johnston thinks the ideal scenario would be to just give Chipper Jones the manager’s job, but that’s unlikely. You can follow Brendan at twitter.com/Brendan42

Photo: djh57@wikimedia

This Friday, we are pleased to feature Rob Iracane, a lifelong Yankees fan, who writes with regularity at Walkoff Walk. You can follow Rob at twitter.com/iracane or follow him to the Turkish restaurant for kababs at least once a week.

Yesterday, longtime Braves third baseman Chipper Jones, a former MVP and many-time All Star, was declared out for the season by both his employer and an army of amateur analysts across America. Torn ACL you say? Well from the expertise of yours truly who once knew a guy whose sister tore her ACL playing beer pong, I can assure you that 38-year-old Chipper Jones’ career is over! That’s a long recovery!

But ignoring the medical ignorance of us lay folk, the fact remains that Chipper Jones, who was considering retiring after 2010 anyway, may never play in the MLB again. Immediately, Chipper’s name was on every baseball fan’s lips while his stats and accomplishments started running through their heads. Where does Chipper Jones stand in the ranks of all-time third basemen? Is Chipper Jones among the greatest hitters of his generation? And most importantly, would Chipper Jones be elected to the Hall of Fame?

Perhaps there exists an inherent part of the human psyche that wants to sort everything into neat little boxes. We are sometimes not as complex of a creature as we think we are; most of the time we just want to put things in order, or in categories. With baseball players, we do something even simpler, something quite binary: is Player X in the Hall of Fame or is Player X not in the Hall of Fame?

So whenever a player announces his retirement, whether it is forced like that of Barry Bonds or voluntary like that of Mike Mussina, we fans-as-analysts hurry up the evaluation of a player’s career, mix in a little bit of fact and a whole dose of myth, and render our opinion. Of course, the question has moved on from the binary “is he or isn’t he?” to a grey area of “will he be first ballot or will some self-righteous voters punish the guy for playing in the wrong era or which cap will he wear if he’s elected, etc etc etc.”

I’m guilty of asking these questions, too, and even lowering myself to make cheap redneck jokes while asking, but gosh, can’t we just let the guy figure this whole thing out before we eulogize his career? He’s 38, which is old, but he’s not forty-eight, or fifty-eight. Chipper Jones could still stage an impressive comeback and put off retirement one more year.

But remember, another power-hitting National League third baseman with knee problems was never the same after age 38 and retired before he hit 40. Still, Mike Schmidt made the Hall of Fame easily in the first year of eligibility. Chances are, the same will happen for Chipper Jones, but let’s just not speculate on that quite yet. There will be more than enough time to sort Chipper and his contemporaries in little boxes.

by Eno Sarris //

Anyone who has had a chocolate truffle knows the beauty of small sample sizes.

On the other hand, anyone who plays fantasy baseball knows the horror of small sample sizes. Every hot start does not equal a lasting star for our fantasy lineups. We just have to find a way to bridge the two, and enjoy small bursts of wonder when we can.

Take tonight, for example. Super prospect Jeremy Hellickson is starting for the Tampa Bay Rays, and fantasy baseball managers are snapping him up for their teams. It doesn’t matter that Hellickson’s major league career to date – seven innings of two-run ball – is just about the smallest sample size you could base your decision upon.

While it’s a little nerve-wracking to have to make decisions on incomplete information, we can also take a different tack with this if we leave fantasy baseball behind a little bit. A clean slate is an amazing thing. A clean slate allows us a canvas upon which we can project all our hopes and dreams.

Rays fans will feel this beauty almost immediately. “Helloween” starts now, with dreams of Greg Maddux-like control, booming fastballs and bending curveballs. There are no bad games on the back of this baseball card. It’s all pomp and dominance right now.

Of course, as the sample size gets larger, we may notice that the fastball is not as dominating in the major leagues as it was in the minor leagues. Or that the slightly creeping flyball percentage might lead to plenty of home runs in the future. Maybe even his slightly small frame (6’1″, 185 pounds) will lead to injuries.

And as all this sample size leads to better decision-making processes for fantasy baseball players, it takes the shine off of all that promise for the Rays fans.

It’s all part of the beautiful interplay between being a real-life baseball fan as well as a fantasy baseball player. Ultimately, the happiest people that fall under both categories will find a way to be here now. They can enjoy the beauty of promise and small sample sizes now, and keep the skeptical eye and the larger sample size for decisions later.

by Brendan Johnston //

On Wednesday, three years to the day after hitting his 500^th home run, Alex Rodriguez connected on a 2-0 pitch from Toronto Blue Jays starter Shaun Marcum and drove it over the center field wall at Yankee Stadium, ending a twelve game streak without a home run, breaking an 0-for-17 skid, and becoming the seventh player to reach 600 home runs for his career. The Yankees went on to win, 5-1.

Over the next twenty four hours or so, members of the sports media wrote articles and commented on television and radio programs that the milestone home run was not as impressive or inspiring an event as it should have been given A-Rod’s admission of three years of steroid use while playing for the Texas Rangers. ESPN radio hosts Mike Greenberg & Mike Golic even went so far as to add up A-Rod’s Texas home run total Texas (156) and subtract it from his recognized career total to suggest that, from a certain point of view, A-Rod only has 444 career home runs.

Sound familiar?

But, to quote another infamous steroid abuser who may never make it to the Hall of Fame, I’m not here to talk about the past. After A-Rod hit #600 and the less-than-laudatory coverage started, I found myself wondering if the six hundred home run milestone would ever again be an untainted accomplishment. There are only two active players even remotely within sight of it. Those players are:

-       Manny Ramirez of the Los Angeles Dodgers: The Spicoli of baseball, 13^th on the all-time home run list, is currently on the DL for a calf strain and holding at 554 career home runs. He was suspended for fifty games in 2009 when he tested positive for a drug that is used to mask evidence of steroids. He has hit eight home runs this year.

-       Jim Thome of the Minnesota Twins: Tenth on the all-time list at 578 home runs and counting, Thome has never been linked to steroids in his nineteen seasons. He will celebrate his fortieth birthday at the end of this month, and is only signed with Minnesota, the only non-New-York-based sports team for which I actively root, for one year. So far this season he has hit thirteen home runs.

So right now the closest candidates to reach the 600 home run mark are a polarizing goofball who (probably) took steroids, and an aging but clean slugger who may not even be playing next year. Thome has said he doesn’t plan to retire and that he would like to hit 600 home runs and win a World Series. Both goals, if Minnesota gets its act together and wins the AL Central, are within reach.

Personally, I hope Thome sticks around and pulls it off. These days he seems like the Captain America of baseball, a figure who embodies some old-fashioned ideals and values in a largely cynical modern world- apparently he has used his MLB salary to put a dozen nieces and nephews through college- and who also hits things very, very hard. Of course, I’m just now realizing that all of Captain America’s abilities are the result of a highly advanced chemical treatment, so maybe this isn’t really the best parallel to draw.

ANYWAY, Thome only needs 22 home runs to become the eighth player to hit 600. It’s a tall order for someone his age whose contract future is still undecided. But aside from presumably ensuring him a place in the Hall of Fame, it would give baseball fans something to root for next season, a story to follow that wouldn’t have the word “steroids” dragging it down. Hopefully Thome decides to come back, and hopefully someone decides to sign him. Baseball could use it.

So here’s to you, James Howard Thome. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Woo woo woo.

Brendan Johnston would like to see Thome go back to Cleveland to hit 600 and retire alongside such other Indian greats as Ricky Vaughn and Wille Mays Hayes. You can follow him at twitter.com/Brendan42.

This week, Joe Pawlikowski visits us at the Playing Field. Joe regularly rocks River Avenue Blues – on all things Yankee – and FanGraphs – on all things baseball, statistical and technological.

Fuckin’ Maiden, man! I must have heard that very phrase uttered by a hundred different stoned or drunk metal heads as I approached Madison Square Garden. It was a little jolting. A decade ago this wouldn’t have been the case. Back then I would have been among the drunk and stoned Iron Maiden worshippers. I would have been an experienced concert-goer. Instead I was just a dude in a ratty Metallica shirt who felt out of his element. I hadn’t been to a concert in two years.

A sense of self-loathing followed. There was a period of about 10 years, from when I first picked up a guitar at age 13 to the time when my latest band stopped playing at 23, where music trumped everything. If my friends and I weren’t turning our amps to 11 and jamming in basements, we were headbanging and moshing at the Birch Hill Night Club. We’d cut class and drive into the city to see a show if it was even remote interest. Everything, from the people I hung out with to the social events I attended to the girls I dated, revolved around music.

Yet, by the time that last band broke up my singular focus on music had faded considerably. Another art* had taken precedence in my consciousness: baseball. At some point towards the end of college I found a website called The Hardball Times. Baseball had always been a strong interest of mine. My family had just one TV growing up, and since Dad was boss we watched about 150 Yankees games a year. The 1996 World Series ranked among my favorite high school memories, and it happened in October of my freshman year. But it had never quite been to the level of obsession.

* And if you don’t think that baseball is an art and that ballplayers aren’t artists, well, we can have that discussion at another time. But know now that you’re wrong.

At 23 that changed. I read sites like THT and The Baseball Analysts. I started my own Yanks blog that got dozens of visitors a month. But, most importantly to our story, I stopped going to metal shows — or shows of any type, really. In those days when I had any money I’d drop it on a ticket to the Stadium and make the long trek from Morristown, NJ, to the Bronx. Even after I got a real job I didn’t use my extra disposable income on shows. Instead I went to more Yankees games. Since my job was further east I moved in that direction, closer to Yankee Stadium. When I got a job that allowed me to live anywhere, I chose a spot about 20 minutes from the Stadium.

When I walked into the Garden for the Maiden show, the memories flooded back in. This was my scene. I’d seen all of these guys at smaller shows, I thought. And it was great to be back. The whole affair was quite insane. Maiden played maybe five classics out of a 15-song set. They didn’t even play their most popular song, “The Trooper.” But that didn’t dampen anyone’s mood. In fact, it livened mine. It made me realize that I’d been missing the concert experience, an essential step in discovering new music.

This concert came at the perfect time, on the first day of the All-Star break. It meant no BlackBerry checking, no worrying about the Yankees losing. I was free to fully enjoy the concert without my mind being anywhere else. Before the show was even over I felt an intense longing to do this more often; to attend more concerts and find music I haven’t yet heard. But because of baseball’s intense, everyday schedule, it has become much more difficult to balance concert-going and baseball watching. That I get paid, even a minuscule amount, to watch and write about baseball makes it even tougher.

Selfishly, I thought that metal bands should refrain from touring during the summer, saving their acts for the dormant winter months. Sure, there’s basketball, hockey, and football, but 1) none of those sports measures up to baseball, and 2) they have much less rigorous schedules. Then, trying to rationalize my own selfishness, I thought that maybe it would open new opportunities. If metal bands toured only when baseball was in its off-season, maybe more baseball fans would be drawn to metal. And maybe, because the bands were off during the summer, more metal fans would be drawn to baseball.

Selfishness and rationalizing are two traits of an immature mind. Unsurprisingly, the height of my metal fandom came at a time at the peak and tapering of my adolescence. Metal bands tour during the winter only? Hell yeah, screams 18-year-old Joe. Of course, 28-year-old Joe understands the preposterousness of the notion. He just let nostalgia get the best of him. (And should really go to more metal shows.)

by Eno Sarris // 

Once you start playing fantasy baseball, a certain part of your heart shrivels and dies away.

Opponents of the game focus on one aspect of this metamorphosis: you lose the ability to root completely for your team and nothing but your team. You’ll find yourself twisting your mind into knots while thinking up a scenario where your starting pitcher has a good game pitching against your team, but your team wins, and it’s all on the back of two solo home runs from your fantasy player. A friend, Nick Lotito, coined the phrase “Rotizophrenia” to describe this phenomenon.

But if you remember back to your days of youth, you might remember more unqualified moments of extreme fandom. Screaming at the television. Holding on hard to the incredible belief that Rey Ordonez was the best shortstop in New York. Nights spent restless and awake debating the hit-and-run that ran your team out of the game.

It’s not all bad, though. Consider the case of Jeff Francouer, the always-smiling sometimes-right-fielder for the New York Mets. Back in the day, you might have loved his rocket arm and his easy demeanor and forgiven his huge strike zone and mediocre power. You would have rooted for him because he was your team. Period.

Being a fantasy sports fan, you have analytical tools available to you that would point out, quite easily, that he’s just not that good. Trying to put him on your fantasy team would really hammer home the point. He’d sink your batting average without providing any real discernible fantasy skill. And somehow, this fantasy game would make you more aware of actual real-life truths.

The other day I might have taken this cold-heartedness a little too far. Carlos Santana, a promising young catcher for the Cleveland Indians, was involved in an ugly play at the plate that looked like it would end his season. The prognosis is not as terrible now, but the first – and rightful – emotion is one of horror. “Knees aren’t supposed to bend like that.” However, being a fantasy fan first, and an avid twitterer second, we have a record of what I said first:

Oh crap. Got Santana on some teams. One keeper. Crap. Hope he’s okay.

Probably not one of my finer moments. I checked myself, and two, long, soul-less minutes later, I did come up with this to assuage my guilt:

Young catcher like that, knee injury. damn. sucks.

Yeah. That’s the best I could do. And another two minutes later, it was back to fantasy sports. Because they gobble up young catchers and spit them out like sunflower seeds.

I am a cold hearted snake (but I play by the rules). Hopefully I can blame fantasy sports.

by Eno Sarris //

Ever since I’ve moved to California, there’s been something missing.

I didn’t notice it really until a good friend and Mets fan visited, but the ‘We’re all screwed together” was out of my life once I left the good city of New York. The feeling has its ups and downs.

It’s not without its benefits. The minute we could find a moment without our significant others, we immediately launched into a full Mets physical. What’s most wrong with the team – the refusal to pay over slot for draftees, or the lack of an overall plan? Which player did we hate the most – Luis Castillo or Alex Cora? Who was most at fault – Omar Minaya, Jerry Manuel, or fired minor league director Tony Bernazard?

The feeling has its moments. It was a gush of discussion even.

Of course, the negatives are obvious. The energy in the discussion lags after a little bit – there’s just too much to get your minds around in one conversation, it seems. Dot-dot-dots start to litter the landscape at the end of each statement, like they could get picked up in just another string of the argument, but each idea is less and less likely to be taken to their final resting period. It can get too depressing.

Because it’s been a long time, and the Mets have been that bad. There are so many different ways to be bad, and the Mets seem to have done most of them. Sell too many prospects for poorly performing veterans? Yup. Refuse to devote the proper resources to the minor leagues? Check. Over-reliance on aged players in role spots that should go to young guys just coming up? Oh, yes. Signing veterans to contracts so long that a major injury and a lost year or two is a virtual certainty? Uh-huh.

So at first the two Mets fans have a lot to talk about. But then it becomes clear that nothing they will do will make it right.

Then we get the final stage of Mets fan camaraderie: the shrugged shoulders, the What Can You Do expression, the clap of condolence on an upper back, a fist bump of solidarity. Perhaps even a moment of vitriol – “At least we’re not frontrunning Yankee fans, eh? We’ll have our day. And it will be grand.”

Oh it will be. Even for two Mets fans in California.

by Brendan Johnston //

A while back, I wrote a novella about a fictional baseball team based in Detroit. Shortly after finishing it, I was kind of bored one weekend so I fired up my Playstation, popped in MLB 10: The Show, and created twenty-five players based on the team in my story. I put them on the Tigers and started playing a season mode. I, clearly, am a huge dork.

Anyway, I was on vacation last week, and I somewhat randomly decided that rather than play the next game on the schedule, I would just set the computer to play against itself, and watch my imaginary Tigers take on digital representations of the actual Seattle Mariners. I expected to become bored quickly and either shut the game off or pick up the controller and take over, but that didn’t happen. In fact, I was pretty well entertained the entire time, and due to the lack of commercials and annoying announcers, found it to be a more pleasant viewing experience than most actual baseball games I watch. (For the record, my Tigers lost 8-7 in extra innings.)

As I watched the game, at some points actually applauding the performances of players who don’t really exist, I found myself wondering about the possibilities of simulated sporting events. Whenever sports is shown in movies or television shows about the future, it’s usually either

• A.)   extremely violent, like rollerball in the movies of the same name;
• B.)   completely ridiculous, like blernsball in Futurama;
• C.)   entirely made up, like the sport Pyramid in Battlestar Galactica; or
• D.)   all of the above, like the Internet controlled pay-per-view bloodsport depicted in the movie Gamer.

But while mass entertainment (which professional sports is a form of) has indeed become progressively more violent and ridiculous over the years, something else it has become is more fake. The highest grossing film of 2009 was James Cameron’s Avatar, in which real actors, and Sam Worthington, had their performances digitally drawn over to make them look like eleven foot tall blue cat-people. Not only did Avatar make a metric ton of cash, it was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, competing against another sci-fi movie, District 9, which itself featured a cast comprised almost entirely of digitally rendered bug-men. Both films lost at least in part because of the Academy’s long-held bias against movies with awesome mech-suit fight scenes in the third act.

We’ve got fake actors and fake scenery and we’ve had them for years, and they just keep getting more realistic. Are fake athletes and fake games really beyond the realm of possibility? Some would argue yes, because sports are as much about athletic competition and accomplishment as they are about entertaining fans, at least in theory. But both the NBA and the NFL are heading into the final years of their collective bargaining agreements. It is possible, if an agreement is not reached between team owners and players unions, that professional football and basketball will not be played in 2011-2012. What if this happens? What if it not only happens, but goes on for more than one year? At what point would the audience demand for televised sports become so great that some enterprising TV network would start airing fake events? It might take a while, but fans would eventually start to believe that fake sports is better than no sports at all.

In fact, it may even be preferable. A digitally rendered slugger can’t be accused of taking steroids. A computerized cornerback can’t hold out for more money. A line of code can’t take its talents to South Beach. It’s possible to fake everything people love about sports while eliminating everything they hate.

Of course, that would mean the end of sports talk radio, so it’s probably not a very good idea after all.

Brendan Johnston wants to thank Vincent Cocozza for his help with this piece. You can follow Brendan at twitter.com/Brendan42.

Photo from Bluenatic.com

Masochism manifests itself in a variety of well-documented ways.  At the risk of stealing the innocence of any readers out there who are completely in the dark about this pattern of bizarre behavior, I’ll abstain from providing any of the traditional examples, and instead focus on an avenue that I don’t think has really ever been recognized.  Those who know me might have guessed where I’m going with this (and also those who read the title of this… weirdos), but for those who haven’t witnessed my daily, Mets-fueled immolation, I’m talking about baseball.

Now, I sincerely doubt that there are many baseball fans who derive true sexual pleasure from watching their team lose, the point I’m trying to make is that of all the “major” sports, being a die-hard baseball fan is by far the most painful (though I’m willing to make a temporary exception for any Cleveland basketball fan).

The worst NBA team of all time lost 73 games in a season, though generally the worst teams have loss totals in the 60s.  Obviously, no NFL team can lose more than 16 games.  The worst NHL team of all time lost 71, but in the last seven seasons no team lost more than 48.  The best baseball team of the last century lost 46 games.  In 2009, the Minnesota Twins made the playoffs and lost 76 games.

In case it’s not jumping off the screen to you, a playoff team had more losses than the worst teams in the history of the NHL and NBA.  The World Series winning Yankees lost 59 games, while the NL pennant winning Phillies lost 69 regular season games.  I’d talk about how many games the 2008 World Series champion won, however we all know that that season will be expunged from the record books in a few short years as the United States realizes that they much prefer having Philadelphia remain the most pathetic city in the country and strip them of their title.  Not that Philadelphia still isn’t the modern day Sodom/Gomorrah, but still, screw them.

Anyway, the point I’m making here is that in baseball, most playoff teams are destined to lose around 70 games. Teams that win 100 games, essentially guaranteeing that they’re the best team in all of baseball, still lose 62 games!  That means that, as a die-hard fan, there are at least 62 days during the year when you’re going to be pissed off as a result of your favorite sports team, despite the fact that they’re a powerhouse.  At least 62 times a year, you’re going to waste anywhere from two to five hours for no reason and eventually yell, “Fuck.”

Being a diehard baseball fan is like having a friend who calls you up several times a week and guilt trips you into coming over to his bro-castle and watch Dane Cook marathons.  Or waiting in a crowded doctor’s office for hours to get your prostate examined twelve times a month.  Or hanging out at a high school cafeteria listening to the latest in “cool kid” gossip and finding out that that heartless bitch Christine totally has an eating disorder and has been cheating on Reggie with Mark, just because summer is coming up and he has an awesome shore house, even though Mark doesn’t even start on varsity, and then waiting in the “hot lunch” line only to find out that they’re out of god damn tater tots and all that’s left is hotdogs and you hate hotdogs, and then you realize you totally forgot that you have a calculus midterm 7^th period and you’re so going to fail!

…

Some of you may retort by saying that baseball teams also win a lot more games than in other sports, to which I respond by saying, “shut up.”  Everyone knows the thrill of winning a regular season game generally pales in comparison to the bitter taste of defeat.  Many of the wins are fraught with enough nail-biting tension that you’re more relieved to have won than happy.  Not to mention that regular season success is essentially meaningless in light of the playoffs.  So essentially, baseball’s regular season is a six month, 162 game death march, designed to destroy the souls and sanity of all who have the audacity to try and enjoy watching their favorite team play a game.

Where do I sign up!?