Early Christmas?

It is difficult to explain how excited I am about this years Pistons. All year the team has appeared reinvigorated and excited to be playing basketball. After the letdowns of a Spurs series we let slip away, the Miami series that I can't talk about to this day, and the almost expected letdown of the Cleveland series last year it is safe to say that I was over this team. Hell, I was so frustrated with the way that the games were being called(see Wade and James getting foul calls every time they were defended) that I was pretty much disinterested with basketball as a sport.

We all witnessed what was almost the death of professional basketball. While the talking heads would have you believe that the rise of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade were rescuing basketball from the clutches of grind-line-team-oriented-defensive-slow basketball, which had risen to success thanks to teams like the Spurs and the Carlisle and Brown-era Pistons, what was inadvertantly happening was that the game was moving toward an unwatchable and sloppy form. The game was being reduced to having one big star on the court, having him drive at the rim, have somebody breathe on him resulting in a foul and free-throws.

I understand the strategy in this form. It makes sense to use this advantage if it is available to you. If I was coach of the Cavs, I would call every play like this "get the ball to LeBron, and LeBron you charge at the rim and get the foul." However, this is disgusting to watch. I can't deal with it as a fan of the game. Luckily, I don't have to.

Thanks to the Pistons and Celtics the East has a legitimate rivalry that has transcended the ugliness of the Cavs and Heat, led by their respective mega-stars. Both teams, Pistons and Celtics, are playing inspired basketball right now. Each of these teams is not only playing at a superior level to everyone else in basketball, but they are having fun doing it.

I will continue this later but i am going to go eat tacos now! tacos are good!

Mitchell report

So my question is this: Who cares?

Apparently a lot of people do. It's like all of those idiots who read people magazine to find out which celebrities eat too many cheeseburgers.

This report exists only to smear the names of players for shock value. We all know that lots of people were using steroids in baseball. None of them were breaking the rules. This takes the focus away from MLB and the players union who are responsible for the rampant use of performance enhancers. The league should have banned the substances, and the union should have let them enforce their rules.

Now, players lying to grand juries and to congressman under oath are separate issues that have nothing to do with baseball. McGwire, Bonds, Clemens and everyone else should be allowed to keep their records without asterisks, and should be allowed the opportunity to get into the hall of fame.

Baseball has already made changes to their rules and are enforcing them, so what else do you expect to happen from this? No legal ramifications will happen, you can't punish players for breaking rules that didn't exist at the time, and anything that can be done to fix the game has already been suggested and changes have been implemented.



So we've learned some names and some rumors, great. Maybe we can find out who's having plastic surgery and dating Lindsay Lohan.

Man

i particularly like how he makes jermaine o'neal look like a little girl at about 1:29

Listen

Fanfarlo is the newest inoffensive pop band from England. 'Talking Backwards' is their second EP(following 'You are one of the few outsiders who really understands us'). While there is nothing great about this music, there is nothing bad about it either. These are the songs that we all hoped Coldplay would have written after their promising first album. The songs are sweet and jangly, and the lead vocalist has a great voice. (they list vocals as being done by like 4 people so I am not sure exactly who the main dude is).

The truth is I really like this kind of music during the holidays. It is hopeful, warm, and lovely. I got both EPs off of emusic (cause i don't mind paying a little for my jams) but I am sure they are available all over the internet.

future

Today is a momentous day for any sports fan in the Detroit area. In the early evening yesterday, the Detroit Tigers made a blockbuster eight-man trade which resulted in the team adding the best young hitter in the game not named Pujols, and a former all-star pitcher who could prove to be the most solid 4th or 5th starter in baseball. Perhaps, most amazing about this trade, is that it was accomplished without sacrificing a single player who was going to be on the roster next season. Granted, we gave up a great deal of talent in terms of prospects, but this is not such a bad thing (more on this later).

While this trade is exciting in terms of potential runs scored and games won, it is equally exciting in how it effects the national perception of the Detroit/Michigan/Midwest sports market. Namely, that sports exist in places other than the two coasts. According to ESPN, sports teams are only of interest on the East and West coast. Detroit, the scrappy, tough, sentimental underdog has just willed itself into the spotlight through determination and sacrifice. That is exciting. We did something so bold and successful that it was the equivalent of grabbing ESPN by the throat and screaming LOOK AT ME!

PS - Screw the Knicks! They are the 12th best team in the east with no shot at the post-season, they are totally irrelevant. Yet, somehow, every single time I turn on the freaking tv I hear about the Knicks. Even Bill Simmons, who I read religiously, has tried to make a similar point this month, in doing so, however, he has simply made them a page 1 feature in the magazine and on the website. Let's deal with Knicks and Knicks fans by ignoring them.



Anyway, sorry about the tangent, on to what really matters!




The tigers are going to have the best line-up in baseball next year. Miguel Cabrera has had over .900 OPS for the last three years running and he is only 24. I don’t care how fat the guy is, he can hit the freaking cover off of the ball. Baseball has a history of fat, successful players. Babe Ruth, Kirby Puckett, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Tony Gwynn just to name a few. Now that he is in the AL, he could even wind up being a DH if he can’t control his weight. Defense is an overrated ability in baseball anyway. There is an extremely long essay about the importance of defense to the success of a team in the book “Baseball Between the Numbers” which I highly recommend. It isn’t that defense doesn’t matter at all, it certainly does, but it just seems like lately due to the home-run driven nature of the game today there have been a bunch of reactionary small-ball, defense-first morons who seem to have forgotten that 9 runs beats 8 runs every time. (I would like to make a very important side note. I am not talking about defense in terms of pitching, only fielding. There is no substitute for great pitching, I am only talking about the fact that the 5 errors more that Cabrera will make versus a gold glove 3rd baseman don’t effect the success of a team as much as the 50 more runs he is going to create with his bat for that team)





Dontrelle Willis is an intriguing character as well. Yes, he has pitched like crap the last couple of years. However, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that he is going to do well for our team. First, he is a young player who seems to play with a lot of emotion. I imagine it was extremely difficult for him to pitch as the ace for a really bad team last year, that didn’t want to do anything but trade him. I know that if I were in the same situation I would have also pitched poorly, as I would have been very frustrated with my situation. Also, he was probably consistently overmatched by having to pitch number one in the rotation.


On our team he will probably pitch fourth or fifth. Which gives hitters an extremely tough time given how different all of our pitchers are. For example, imagine you were playing a five game series against the tigers (this is imaginary). Day 1, you are trying to hit a guy throwing 97 mph from the right side(Verlander). You spend all day trying to catch up to that fastball and getting your timing down and getting used to his arm angle and approach. Day 2, now you are facing a guy throwing from the left who is just tossing you junk. (Rogers) You are out in front of everything and you cannot pick-up what the ball is going to do at all, and again totally different arm angle. Day three, now you are facing a guy with a hard, hard, hard slider coming at you from the other side of the plate. (Bonderman) You are breaking your bat every time as the pitcher is coming right in on your hands with heat. Day 4, once you finally were able to pick up that slider, now you are facing a lefty again, he is throwing you junk again. You are out in front of every pitch and you can’t pick-up what it is doing (Robertson). Day 5, once you finally got used to the lefty throwing you junk, now you get another lefty but he is bringing it. (Willis). (thanks to Chris B for discussing this scenario with me)

All I am really saying is this: we are going undefeated.