This Is Getting Ridiculous

OK, so it's Monday evening. I turn on the television machine to see if there is anything that will serve as appropriate background noise while I go about my tasks.

I scroll down the programming guide and the listing for the MLB Network informs me that the Brewers/Mariners game is on. Now, the game was played that afternoon (I know because I saw the final score on the Yahoo MLB page), but who cares? It's baseball, and I'll watch it.  God knows I've watched older games.

So I turn my DirecTV crank to channel 213 and get ready for some baseball.  Alas, it was not to be.

Instead of a pleasurable, meaningless spring training game, I saw nothing but a blank screen -- and an on-screen message telling me that "This program is blacked out in your area."

Really, Major League Baseball?  As if the blackout restrictiosn aren't goofy enough -- now you're blacking out Brewers games that have already been played?

Perhaps Baron Budhausen is scared that we'll all stay home and watch the tape delayed game instead of hitching a lift from this guy for the roadie to Arizona:

Time to Dust Off an Old Story

Of course Cardinal Fan is going to forgive Mark McGwire.  No surprise there.

But, as always seems to be the case when the media discusses McGwire, Sosa, steroids, et al, they bury the lede. According to the AP's Jim Salter:

It was a season [1998] that many said helped baseball finally recover from the damage caused by the 1994 labor dispute that forced cancellation of the World Series. Congress honored McGwire and Sosa. Interstate 70 through St. Louis was dubbed "Mark McGwire Highway."

Even then, there were whispers. McGwire admitted in 1998 that he used androstenedione, an over-the-counter muscle enhancer banned by the NFL, IOC and others. But it was his evasive testimony at the congressional hearing four years ago that seemed to sour many Cardinals fans. One of his questioners at the hearing, Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo. and from St. Louis, said McGwire's name should be stripped from the highway signs.

The implication being that we all "knew" what was going on in '98. But all we got were whispers -- whispers that were whispered very softly so as not to offend anyone or cause people to think that Big Mac's heroic home run chase was anything short of heroic. Whispers no one took seriously until big scary Bonds tarnished the home run record.
 
We wrote about this years ago. And it seems like every so often I have to dust off that old chestnut and re-run it.
 
We may have "known" way back then that Mac and Sammy and others were 'roided up. Do we have the right to claim the moral high ground if we didn't say anything in real time?
 
One more note:  A few members of the media have said that the reason they could not say anything in real time is because they had no solid proof for their assertions.
 
Take a cursory glance at the number of trumped-up charges and flat-out lies about the Clintons and Al Gore  that the media gleefully distributed in the late '90s without a second thought about things like fact-checking. And then wonder why they were so squeamish about telling tales about steroids in baseball.

The Unbearable Faultiness of Memory

In the midst of an article about Cub GM Jim Hendry's off-season moves, the Tribune's Fred Mitchell dropped this nugget of joy in out of the blue, and appropos of nothing that came before or after it:

The Cubs were favored to win their division last season, yet they had to scramble to overtake the upstart Milwaukee Brewers to make the postseason.

They were? I don't remember that. I remember a lot of smack about how they spent "$300 million" during the winter and still sucked.

But, as I always say, never rely on your memory. Let's fire up the Way-Back Machine and see who the favorites to win the NL Central last year were.

First up is the Wall Street Journal, if only because they still have a link up. The WSJ asked ten writers for their picks to win the divisions and wild cards.

Of those ten guys, three went for the Cardinals, three went for the Reds. Only two went for the Cubs -- Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus (who said he had "no faith" in three of his picks, then names the AL Central, AL West, and NL Central specifically as divisions too close to call -- hardly a ringing endorsement of the Cubs) and Dave Studeman of the Hardball Times (who makes a joke about how he'll "look like a genius for picking the Cubs" -- again, hardly a ringing endorsement).

Brandon Stroud of The Dugout picks the Cubs to win the wild card, and go on to the World Series. But that's not the same as being favored to win the division, is it?

Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News picked the Cubs to finish second.

Athlon Sports' Baseball Annual pegged the Cubs fourth.

ESPN's Dan Patrick predicted the Brewers would win the Central.

Four out of thirteen writers at Baseball Prospectus listed the Cubs as their faves to take the flag. The opinions on the NL Central were so split that was enough to make my heroes concensus favorites (by a small margin) to win the crown.

Baseball Weekly's season preview listed the Cubs third.

And what of Mitchell's own publication? How did they view the Cubs' chances in 2007?

Unfortunately, the Trib's Opening Day special section only lists their "experts" top picks, not the complete divisional standings from each. Here's the run-down:

Mike Downey -- Milwaukee
Mark Gonzales -- Saint Louis
Big Mouth Morrissey -- Saint Louis
Dr. Phil -- Milwaukee
Sully -- Milwaukee
Dave van Dyck -- Chicago

From my brief survey of 2007 guesswork yields a grand total of seven examples of the Cubs being the favorites. Out of a possible thirty-four. Actually, it's six, because I'm counting BP's Joe Sheehan twice.

So fewer then twenty percent of the crystal-ball gazers pick the Cubs to take the NL Central. It doesn't matter. Nine months later, Fred Mitchell waves his magic wand and turns that into a ringing endorsement of Sweet Lou's squad -- and jiminy jillikers, how could they have almost pissed away the division to the Brewers like that?

This is how scripts get started. In Mitchell's mind, he probably does feel he Cubs were a solid favorite to win the division (although I can't be sure, since I'm not a mind reader). After all, they spent all that money!

So he types his script, cleverly slips it into his column about Hendry, and it passes into the record. Unknowing readers will plunk down their seventy-five cents for the paper, nod sagely to themselves, and say, "Why yes -- the Cubs were favored to win the division last year. Everybody knows it."

Technically, I guess, some people favored the Cubs. So Mitchell is technically correct (which is the best kind of correct). But if you believe that he intended to say that only some people (rather than the vast majority) of prognosticators favored the Cubs, then you probably believe a "simple" plus-minus system is a good analytical tool.

Human memory is extraordinarily faulty, especially on matters dear to our hearts. Mitchell wants us to believe his claim, but the real-time record of those predictions shows that the Cubs were, at best, a prohibitive favorite. Just another example of the difference between knowledge and bullshit.

Of course, this is by no means a comprehensive survey of 2007 pre-season predictions. But I'd be willing to bet that I spent more time looking things up than Mitchell did.

More Triumphs from the House of Ideas

It's been an amazing week at the Tower...

Dave van Dyck grudgingly admitted that, well, maybe those computer geeks at Baseball Prospectus weren't too far off the mark when its computer predicted the White Sox would be (to put it charitably) not good this year.

Of course, van Dyck completely disappears his own hysterical reaction to the prediction, which his eds waved into print back in March. Fortunately the good folks at Fire Joe Morgan did a bang-up job mocking it in real time, so I don't have to dig it up.

Van Dyck outdoes himself with this piece on how the Chicago ballparks are holding up after this week's deluge of rain. And wouldn't you know it? In discussing what kind of shape Wrigley Field is in, van Dyck goes to the head groundskeeper at U.S. Cellular Field!

Will the field be safe and dry for Tuesday's big game against the Brewers? You won't have any idea after reading van Dyck's story. He spends nine words talking about what's going on right now at Wrigley. And then he spends 400 more talking about what the White Sox' guy is going to do this off season to improve the draining system.

Granted, the Cubs' groundskeeper is probably a little busy right now. But it would have been nice for van Dyck to spare a sentence or two about how the field is holding up.

Finally, Dr. Phil takes a look around and notices that that Chris Young guy the White Sox traded away for whatever's left of Javier Vazquez might have come in handy this year. You'd think a guy who wailed and gnashed his teeth over the short-sighted dumping of guys like Corey Patterson, Ricky Nolasco, Todd Wellemeyer, and Jon Leicester (you know, guys you can build a franchise around) would have noticed that Young is an OK player before now. You'd be wrong, though.

I mean, if you read nothing but Dr. Phil this year, you'd have no idea that this guy was having a pretty good year. If a guy hitting .358 travels under the good doctor's radar, I guess it's no surprise that a .235 hitter wouldn't make the grade...

Cut His Mike

For some reason, the Trib's Fred Mitchell thinks we care what Milo Hamilton has to say about the TV broadcasters' call of Barry Bonds' record-setting home run.

Just in case you do care, you won't be surprised to hear that he doesn't think much of them:

I don't think the call[s] [of Bonds' homer Tuesday] night will last 33 years.

Just to put Hamilton in perspective: Steve Stone thought he was a pompous blowhard. And Stone should know.

On another announcing front, you may recall last week that Vin Scully was all worried about the "awkwardness" of calling Barry Bonds' 756th.

Earlier today, another Vin Scully moment popped unbidden into my mind. Today, Scully, of course, is disturbed by the spectre of steroids. Was he disturbed by the "awkwardness" back when Big Mac and Sammy were "saving" the game back in 1998?

Let's go to the archives and find out! This is courtesy of Baseball Weekly's Bob Nightengale (12 August 1998):

[B]ut before baseball gets completely giddy, there is a possible glitch to all of this madness.

What happens if two players, such as McGwire and Griffey, break Maris’ record? What if there’s a third, such as Sosa? How about a fourth or fifth, if Greg Vaughn and Vinny Castilla get hot?

Just what happens then?

“I don’t care who breaks it,” Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully says, “as long as only one person breaks it.

“It would taint the record if more than one person breaks it.”

I've no wise or pithy summary for that. Compare and contrast, I guess...

Has It Been That Long?

Sully has a pretty decent piece on the summer of 1977 in Chicago. For a brief moment that July, both the Cubs and White Sox were in first place, and life was all sunshine and lollipops.

Soon after, unfortunately, Bruce Sutter suffered the first of many injuries do to overwork, and the White Sox couldn't hit enough to make up for their porous defense.

Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted.

Happy Sandberg Day!

Twenty-three years ago today, Willie McGee hit for the cycle against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

Unfortunately for Willie, his feat is nearly forgotten. That game is more famous for Ryne Sandberg's game-tying home runs in the ninth and tenth innings.

I didn't see the game, either in person or on TV. I was out and about that day, but I caught the last few innings on the radio. It was the first time that season that I started to believe that we really could win the division.

Fortunately for all us Cub Fans, this game is included in this DVD set. I'll be enjoying it again this weekend...

Guess Who’s Smart Again?

Set the Way-Back Machine for 2 October 2006. Here’s what Dr. Phil had to say the day Andy MacPhail resigned his gig as Cubs team president:

A club president impacts an organization two ways – by setting agendas and by hiring the personnel to carry them out.

[Cubs interim President John] McDonough is inheriting his biggest hire, as he does not appear inclined to abandon general manager Jim Hendry…That leaves the agenda, and McDonough again appears to be holding the current course – fix everything overnight, win tomorrow, if not sooner…

McDonough could be the person [to lead the team to the World Series]. But on Sunday, I didn’t hear him say anything MacPhail hasn’t said for the last twelve years.

And here’s Dr. Phil today, talking about MacPhail taking on the president’s job for the Baltimore Orioles:

You can argue that MacPhail—or MacFail, in the vernacular of Murphy's Bleachers—didn't fight hard enough for his budget, believing you can win without squeezing the profit margin. His resignation last September led to general manager Jim Hendry having access to new depths of the company vault.

But MacPhail kept both his bosses and his front-office staff happy, which is never happy. If Mark Prior and Kerry Wood had been healthy, he could have stuck around Wrigley Field forever—or at least until he succeeded Bud Selig as commissioner…

Instead of having hands-on control of the Cubs, he hired guys like Ed Lynch and Hendry to do the dirty work. But it was MacPhail who made the biggest decisions—the Sammy Sosa decisions, in particular—and set the organizational philosophy. It's amazing that his emphasis of player development and scouting didn't pay more dividends.

MacPhail knew what to do. It just didn't work out.

To sum up – Dr. Phil chided McDonough in October for holding the “win now” agenda that MacPhail set (the “current course,” as he puts it).

Today, Dr Phil is “amazed” that MacPhail’s “organizational philosophy” (the one about “fixing everything overnight”) “just didn’t work out.”

The lesson to be learned: players, managers, executives are idiots when they’re with the Cubs. As soon as they leave the team, they get smart again.