Can somebody please tell me what these two were doing at Wrigley Field last night?

June 26th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

On the right: I have an opinion on sports that is both manly and ill-considered. I played sports. Ergo: I know sports.

On the left: I am an erudite little guy who mines self-flagellation for humor. I occasionally say smart things. My SportsCenter broadcasts always somehow take on the air of assassination coverage.

Together: We were born to host a hit syndicated morning radio show. Also: to throw the first pitch at Wrigley! Huh?

Listen, Cubs marketing people. I know. I feel your pain. You’ve got 81 home games this year, and Ernie Banks can’t throw out the first pitch at all of them. You improvise. You find celebrities. Etc. It can’t be easy.

But how much sense does it make to have ESPN talk-show personalities be the center of your promotional package? For the Cubs, it’s just sort of stupid. For ESPN, it seems like the kind of too-tight business relationship they’re often criticized for maintaining. In the broadest possible sense of the term, Mike and Mike are journalists. Singing the seventh inning stretch and screaming “let’s get some runs” is like the least journalisty thing you could do. Besides, like, being Jayson Blair. That might be worse.

Charlie Weis is desperate for your love

June 26th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Aw, poor Charlie Weis. Who knew that behaving like a jerk and being bad at your job would turn a few people off?

“The biggest problem I have,” Weis says, “is people who don’t know me, who have never spoken to me, think I’m an a[ss]hole.”

So Weis is out to set the record straight. He’s not, in fact, an asshole. He just plays one at press conferences.

What he doesn’t seem to understand is that Notre Dame people don’t care if you’re a total jerkoff, so long as you win. Win, and feel free to cavort with underage college girls. (Not Notre Dame girls. St. Mary’s. Duh.) Feel free to fill The Grotto with Pabst Blue Ribbon and suckle till you pass out in front of Knott dorm. Deliver a 12-1 season and a BCS win and enjoy the heroin afterwards; no one cares! Notre Dame’s good again! Wooooo! Yeah, Charlie!

The best thing Weis can do for his “public image” is to not suck at being a football coach. Anything else, and you’re just overthinking things.

{Via.}

Namaste, Fresno State

June 26th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

I saw not a single pitch of your improbable — hell, impossible — College World Series win. I was at Wrigley Field, extending my undefeated record at the park this summer (I’m 13-0, and I’m not afraid to jinx it.) But it’s probably important to, at the very least, recognize greatness when you see it. Sporting Blog has the photo:

That’s truly impressive skulletdom. When I look back on the 2008 Fresno State bulldogs — and I won’t, ever — I’ll remember the skullet. Also: How much you guys saw fit to scream and pump your fist. Seriously, that was some impressive bro-screaming. I haven’t seen that much testosterone on display since Tiger Woods compensated for an entire generation of fat schlubby golfers.

More The Big Lead-related nonsense

June 23rd, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Most of the few hundred people reading this right now don’t give a fuck, but whatever, it still irks me, and it’s (50 percent) my site, so I’m going forward. TBL, in his response to Leitch’s scathingly accurate criticism of his comments in the L.A. Times this weekend, linked back to this post a couple of months ago. Back then, I wrote:

A larger point here, at the risk of looking like a dumbass in six months, is that as blogs further professionalize and gain legitimacy, bloggers should expect parallel increases in criticism and credibility. If you’re going to take the game to Yahoo!, AOL, ESPN, and everywhere else — if you want to be at the Super Bowl — you have to play by the rules. To do anything less risks losing everything before really gaining anything. (Which is not to say that blogs have to break news, just that if you fancy yourself a newsman and not just a commentator, you’ve got to get it right, and you’ve got to be transparent.)

Despite McIntyre’s either/or posturing after his link, I stand by that. What I meant to get across at the time was that if TBL was going to present himself as more than an outlet for opinion, if he was going to make himself seem like this tip-collecting omnipotent news-breaker, he had to get things right. All of us do, should we choose that route. That’s the only obligation. I think most reasonable bloggers would have agreed with that far before Buzz Bissinger acted like a jackass on subscription television.

Will’s point is that your blog can be whatever you and your readers want it to be, and that you shouldn’t change for Buzz Bissinger’s sake. My point is that if you want yourself to be a newsbreaker, you have to be right. These are not mutually exclusive distinctions. The rest of us didn’t need BuzzBiss to tell us to “clean up our acts.” We were doing just fine well before that.

Don Imus totally learned his lesson that first time

June 23rd, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Don Imus is getting really consistent with this whole racism thing. It’s like any time anything sports related crosses his desk, he says something vaguely bigoted. The latest comes from Politico, via Chris.

During the show, conversation turned to a story about how suspended Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones now wants to drop his well-known nickname. In the course of the segment, Imus is told that Jones has “been arrested six times since being drafted by Tennessee in 2005.”

Imus asks: “What color is he?”

“He’s African-Ameri10n,” the host is informed by one of his on-air sidekicks.

“Well, there you go,” Imus said. “Now we know.”

I suppose there is some wiggle room for “now we know” — maybe he just really wanted to know what race this delightful-sounding Adam Jones was! — but, actually, no. No there isn’t. Dude’s still a racist, and he still sounds like a train wreck.Three cheers for unlearned lessons!

Self-definition and the L.A. Times

June 23rd, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Update: Shanoff sums up my thoughts in the most succinct way possible. Leitch does so more eloquently.

Sigh. Problems with this story: One, it doesn’t mention Awful Announcing, which seems like a crime. Two: It doesn’t even attempt make any sense of the very mainstream nature of FanHouse, Y!SB, and The Sporting Blog, which you have to talk about if you have any interest in the maturation of sports blogs. Three: Mister I is not “edgy” or “outsider,” which they’d be the first to tell you. Four: I don’t know too many other bloggers that share these views. Yet there they are, in the L.A. Times, meant to represent us all:

“The initial reaction was ‘Buzz is a lunatic,’ ” McIntyre said. “After that, people calmed down, listened to what he said and thought, ‘You know, maybe we should clean up our act a little bit.’ “

Who did this? If you’re a blogger, and you genuinely believe anything Bissinger said was constructive or thoughtful, you just haven’t been paying attention. And if you need Buzz Bissinger to tell you something’s wrong, you’re not a very good blogger.

“What’s the shelf-life for a website that only has women in bikinis?” McIntyre asked. “Eventually, there needs to be substance to back up the fluff.”

But what if it’s all fluff? A few all-fluff blogs seem to be doing very well. And reasonable people could assert that 90% of everything sports-related is, by nature, fluff. A greater sin than fluff is unoriginality, redundancy, and inanity.

This is why the sports blogosphere will miss Will Leitch. When he defined “us,” at least he was somewhat accurate.

Negligible emo-pop invades Wrigley Field

June 23rd, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

The White Sox and their fans weren’t the only sketchy things invading Wrigley Field this weekend — White Sox joke! oh snap! — Fall Out boy frontman and ubiquitous CTA billboard-dweller Pete Wentz was there, too. He threw out the first pitch and sang the seventh-inning stretch and was in general kind of annoying:

That video didn’t have Wentz’s best moment. In the bottom of the seventh, Jason Marquis reached base on a weak single, only to slightly turn toward second base and be tagged out by A.J. Pierzynski. Wentz’s confused questioning of Bob Brenly was classic: “What, so can he like not even turn that little bit? Really?” Because OMG, sports are so not scene. Know the rules? Whatever dude.

OMG CUBS-SOX OMG

June 20th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

It’s probably because I’m a dirty (now flooded) Iowa native that I don’t have much appreciation for Cubs-White Sox. I mean, I get that the series itself is kind of a big deal — anytime regionally relevant opponents square off, rivalry ensues — but excuse me for not thinking it’s the biggest deal in the world. Everyone else, apparently, disagrees:

The Chicago Tribune would like to ask the important question of our day: Why are baseball fans/Chicagoans/fat people so fat? Hey, look at that fat guy! Also: Is this the golden age of Chicago sports? (No.) Are you ready to rumble in a needlessly violent fashion at Wrigley Field? (Yes!) Did you need a reminder that the first game starts in like three hours, even though, you know, everyone is talking about it? Here’s this handy countdown that you really shouldn’t need if you have ever cared about baseball ever in your life! WOOOOO!

Of course, the Sun-Times is on the story too:

Do you dream, Chicago fans? Do you love? Do you go to bed at night, still stinking of the day’s toil, hoping for a future brighter than the present? Are you going to vote for Barack Obama? Then this baseball series is for you! Maybe some dude will punch some other dude, or something.

Of course, I kid. I’m actually pretty happy with all this coverage, because baseball is fun, I enjoy it immensely, and Sox-Cubs feels like an event to be witnessed. Those are always worth the pixels. It is unfortunate, though, in the midst of all this harmless fun and sheer joy, that the Sun-Times still lets Jay Mariotti write things like this. I think Kenny Williams is kind of a nitwit, too, but it seems impossible to me that Mariotti can get away with writing that it’s “low” for Williams to bring up the Cubs’ 100-year title drought. It’s not like Mariotti, you know, brings that up whenever possible. And yet, there it is:

How weird is that? How low is that, bringing up the 100-year plague? And how hypocritical is that, given his role in the ongoing civic grudge? For years, Williams has positioned himself as an executive who encourages Sox fans to hate the Cubs and, thus, has contributed mightily to dividing the city. Now, he chides Cubs fans because they “refused to enjoy” the World Series title won by the Sox in 2005? He wants Sox fans to resent the Cubs and Cubs fans to respect the Sox? And I thought Ozzie Guillen made no sense.

Sigh. This is going to be a circus.

Update: ESPN’s on the bandwagon now too, though I give them credit for leading with a particularly funny D.J. Gallo how-to for soulless bandwagon jumpers. Yay national attention. Yay.

It’s looking more and more like Derrick Rose

June 19th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

I think, for a while now, most people have assumed the Bulls’ No. 1 overall pick would be Derrick Rose. Ever since I was verbally rebuked by two friends for writing that Michael Beasley made more sense for the Bulls, I’ve gone with the Rose flow. To help the process, I’ve watched numerous Rose highlight films, including the above, which I hope is among John Paxson’s bookmarks. When you have the chance to add that to your team, don’t overthink. Just do it. As they say.

Anyway, the pick has remained a secret, until now. Sort of. Rose and his brother may or may not have just tipped the Bulls’ hand:

But as Rose concluded his two-day visit with the Bulls Thursday at the Berto Center, the point guard sounded unsure if he even had a workout scheduled with the Miami Heat, owners of the second pick in the June 26 NBA draft.

“I don’t think so,” Rose said. “I think I have to ask [agent] B.J. [Armstrong] or someone about it. But all I know now is that I’m here.”

Rose’s older brother and confidante, Reggie, went even stronger, saying Rose won’t visit Miami because “this is our last stop.”

It seems difficult to believe the Heat would pick Rose, even as trade bait, without working him out, so perhaps everyone knows what the Bulls are going to do. If that something is pick Derrick Rose, count me in.