Game 1

There was no pressure on the Phillies going into the World Series.  The Fightin’s won the World Series last year and Philadelphia is still enjoying that orgasm.  Repeating as champions would be like morning sex for a city that doesn’t expect to win every year and is happy when they do.

No, all the pressure was on the Yankees even before Game 1 started.  They’re married to a cranky elementary schoolteacher that hasn’t put out since 2000.  New York spends every morning like Kevin Spacey in the shower in American Beauty, closing their eyes and imaging what it will be like when they finally get a little postseason nookie.

This year, it even seems like the pressure is off Alex Rodriguez’s shoulders.  Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira both had MVP years and Yankees fans talk about them as much as A-Rod.  The third baseman’s heroics in the Division and League Championship Series also seem to have placated Yankees fans for at least this October.

Besides, when Cliff Lee pitches as he did last night, it’s unjust to blame anyone.

This Yankees team has excited fans like none has since 2004 and people are calling it their favorite since the Gang of 25 finished up in 2000.  The 2005-2008 Yankees teams grew stale as Joe Torre wore out his welcome, all the while suffering from Carl Pavano syndrome.  But with Joe Girardi getting his sea legs in his sophomore voyage and Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett making courageous debuts in pinstripes, the team that threw pies at one another after walkoffs suddenly became the city’s darlings.  Unexpected.

For some reason, it feels like there’s some magic with this year’s team, a joie de vivre that they’ve never exhibited.  Even a bit of irreverence.  But now they’re in a hole, having lost the first game at home but worse, losing one of Sabathia’s starts that they’d booked as two, maybe three guaranteed wins in the series.  Now, AJ Burnett, who gave up six runs in his ALCS start in Anaheim, takes the mound with the new Yankee Stadium breathing down his neck and the Legends Club staring indifferently into their Blue Label.  “God help us if we lose both at home.”  “Is this a blended or a single malt?”

The Phillies, meanwhile, cruised.  They put pressure on Sabathia, making him throw 113 pitches and loading the bases in the first inning.  Chase Utley, who has received zero attention in the buildup with Lee and Ryan Howard stealing the spotlight, hit two solo home runs.  He got a little of that short-porch love in the third inning and hit a no-doubter in the sixth.  Lee, insolent, Hollywooded a fly ball and no-look-snagged a chopper behind his back while slicing through the Yankees with LASIK-precision.

Jimmy Rollins told Jay Leno that the Phillies would win it in five games, six if they were being friendly.  Not the words of a player afraid to lose . . . because he won last year.

The Yankees still have an immense lineup.  But just as the Bombers needed to win every one of Sabathia’s starts, the Phillies needed to win every one of Lee’s starts.  They just happened to get the first one.

Things get uncertain when Pedro Martinez takes the mound to an inevitable chorus of jeers and pressure on Thursday; Cole Hamels has not been his postseason-MVP self this year.  The Yankees are a very good team.  But people might be ignoring just how good the Phillies are.  Only two of ESPN’s 23 expert analysts picked the Phillies, despite Philadelphia arguably having advantages at every lineup position but shortstop and third base.

And they’re playing with no pressure.  Philadelphia is still going to throw a warm arm around the Phillies even if they lose.  New York is going to steal the covers and send the Yankees to the couch if they come home empty handed.

But then you realize there are no losers in this World Series, because there are Mets fans.

October Rodriguez

I was having trouble putting any thoughts on paper about the baseball playoffs, but Alex Rodriguez wrote the words for me.

It’s October and though I’ve taken interest in English football, it only takes one sniff of postseason baseball to bring me back to where I should be. The world’s game, for all its merits, concludes inconclusively every season as leagues determine champions by the number of points you accrue over a season. It all ends anticlimactically with one team higher on the table than the rest. Give ‘em the Barclays trophy, tie some Carlsberg ribbons around the handles, fire off some streamers, and that’s after a 1-1 tie.

Not baseball. In October the air gets crisp, crowds layer up, and every high-five stings a little longer as autumn greets the playoffs. October baseball is a tunnel, with eight teams sprinting for light until ultimately only one survives the attrition.

Cities put pressure on its players in the postseason, and no city has put more pressure on any player this decade than New York has Alex Rodriguez. The Yankees, with their three new mercenaries (Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia, and AJ Burnett) razed the toughest division in baseball to enter October as favorites, and in 2009 boast a camaraderie that the team hasn’t oozed in years.

Alex Rodriguez finally cured his media-and-fan diagnosed postseason anemia, driving in two runs in the first game and hitting an heroic two-run, game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of game two – the kind of hit that instantly bronzes itself in the hippocampus of millions. “He’s great when you’re up by eight, but garbage in the playoffs,” said petulant Yankees fans, who vilified the game’s best player for years but now slap him on the back and buy him a beer after just hitting one ball 400 feet.

No other sport decides its champion in a playoffs sized so proportionally small as baseball’s, where you need to win 11 after playing 162. The game’s objective pragmatists bellow at the arbitrary results that come from a “small sample size” of playoffs games, and indeed this should render the criticism of players like Rodriguez moot. He’d only had 94 playoff at-bats with the Yankees coming into this season.

But it doesn’t, and baseball’s playoffs are better for it. The playoffs bring pressure. They bring blown calls, walkoffs and errors that linger for years and most of all, the playoffs bring transformative moments.

Alex Rodriguez knew how baseless the cries of his playoff inability were from critics and fans who demanded even more courage.

More than anyone, Rodriguez would always be the one to silence his critics with a storybook moment of his own.

An American Watching Football

At Anomaly, I continue to spend a lot of my time thinking about English football while working alongside Umbro on their branding efforts. This has caused the game to seep into my sporting commitments (of which, as you know, are many, even if they are mostly critical and observational in nature, not physical).

I won’t attempt to explain why Americans react differently to football. Though it is a sentiment that is slowly changing, our country still maintains majority indifference toward the game. The answer is rooted in manifold cultural reasons: religion, class, race, even politics are the stories of European Football. It is scripted like our sports are not: the former President of Italy owns AC Milan; Real Madrid buys players with government loans that carry absurdly low interest rates; the Old Firm is a centuries-old religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants.

Yankees-Red Sox, this is not.

I’ve noticed that, while I can check baseball news five or six times per day, I check football news less often. Baseball, with its litany of measureable statistics, always has a story: a slump, a bounceback season, how two players in a trade have performed.

Football, on the other hand, in many ways lacks that. Because football has so many fewer statistics, stories draw more from the romantic side of the game, with more heroic and tragic story arcs and quotations that drip with emotion.

A baseball news story can be supported with statements like:

“Obama, 6-2 with a 3.61 ERA over his last ten starts since coming over from the White Sox, has led the Nationals to wins in three straight starts. He has been excellent, striking out eight at home against Pittsburgh and going seven strong innings in a 4-2 win versus Colorado. Moreover, he’s only allowed four home runs in that span and maintained a 60% groundball ratio.”

I can read that sentence and form a fairly clear picture of what just happened and how that player performed. Contrast this with football journalism, which, absent of so many statistics, reads more like:

“Kennedy, the midfielder, displayed terrific form in United’s cup tie away to City. His presence disrupted the opposition’s defense and made up for his ineffectiveness in a 1-1 tie last week at home to Rovers.

‘I thought the player looked good,’ said the boss Benitez. ‘I did not think he played well two weeks ago, but he has been very fit in practice and he demonstrated that tenacity today.’

Kennedy, the Northern Ireland international, has generally disappointed since arriving on loan, but has pledged his commitment to the club and insisted his play will improve. “I have been training hard, I want to succeed with United.”

Coaches – the undeniable focus of every team that lacks a marquee player – often level trenchant postgame comments, criticizing referees, questioning motives, complaining, insulting other coaches. “‘City don’t even come into the equation. They are a small club with a small mentality. All they can talk about is us,” said Sir Alex Ferguson, the most famous coach in football, boss at Manchester United.

It is a color that American sports lack – it feels more like literature or a motion picture than the games we watch, which are a series of logistic chunks that we absorb, analyze, and digest to understand the next.

It explains why so many people watch football in bars – because it has to be watched. Matches can’t be understood if you don’t watch them, because you can’t repaint them like you can with football.

So I guess that explains why I look forward to Saturday mornings even more now.

The 2010 (and beyond) Mets

News reports today say that Johan Santana is going to need elbow surgery.

I have no doubt about it: now I’m really going to become a Mets fan.

I wanted to be a Mets fan when I moved to New York, and certainly carried an affinity for them as one of my close friends is among their most zealous devotees.

But it was no fun rooting for this team when they had a bunch of overpaid, aging but still talented veterans; a profligate general manager who blew his boss’s money; an owner who lost hundreds of millions in Bernie Madoff’s fraud; the game’s best pitcher; a $900 million spit-shined clean stadium in Queens; and they did it all on the world’s biggest stage every night.

Going into next season, the Mets will be classed in the weaker half of the National League. The Mets have one of the best star cores in baseball: Johan Santana, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Jose Reyes. That group of four players, absent of twenty-one others on a Major League roster, should make the Mets automatic playoff contenders in any division.  Each player was arguably the best in baseball at his position … two years ago.

All four will face serious health questions; neither took the disabled list with rashes, pneumonia, or fractured metatarsals. The list reads grim: David Wright’s post-concussion syndrome, Jose Reyes’ hamstring (remember, he’s a base stealer); Carlos Beltran’s knee (keep in mind, he covers more ground than any center fielder in baseball), and Johan Santana’s elbow (well, I don’t have to explain that one). Wright will probably finish this season with ten or fewer home runs. Santana has posted his highest WHIP since 2002. Reyes and Beltran hardly registered enough time to judge their seasons.

Teams like the Giants, Marlins, even Pirates and Padres have supporting guys that you could guess to take leaps or certainly improve on their performance next year as they gain experience. The Mets surrounded their stars with Tim Redding, Gary Sheffield, Brian Schneider, Fernando Tatis, Luis Castillo, Francisco Rodriguez and Carlos Delgado. Granted, there was hope for Delgado this season…then he, at 37 the oldest of the Mets regulars this year, got hurt.  Shock.

And then there was K-Rod, stranded on an island in Flushing.

Among no young talent and five All-Stars coming back hurt, the Mets also only have two players on Baseball America’s midseason Top 50 prospects list, both in the lumped 25-50 grouping. There’s no player like Andy LaRoche or Dan Bard or Dexter Fowler or Mat Latos who could breakout next year, no Tommy Hanson or Gordon Beckham who scares you with his potential.

To just heap it on: the Mets hosted the season’s most comically surreal press conference when general manager Omar Minaya not only fired assistant general manager Tony Bernazard for removing his shirt and challenging his Double-A team to a fight, but squarely blamed the scandal on a covetous New York Daily News beat writer who wanted a job with the Mets.

This is typically when someone writes, “But the Mets enter 2010 with high hopes for…” but no one can complete that ellipsis.

Still, after living in New York for two years, I was surprised at how much I just didn’t care about the Mets. I could draw some labored allegory about how I was baptized near baseball’s pulpit in Boston, and how these two teams both endured such curious periods of despair, but I think deep down, I just never thought that I’d fall in love with another team. Even Mets fans shared enmity toward the Yankees couldn’t draw me in.

Maybe it felt like I was just picking up a team that was finishing that sob story, and maybe I never thought I’d consider another team given my devotion to the Red Sox.

The Financial Times recently published an excerpt of Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s “‘Why England Lose: And Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained’” and in it, they call on scientific research and anecdotal evidence that contends that fan support can change over time for various reasons, illustrated through shifts in English Premier League fandom, which could be considered the most committed sect of sport’s supporters.

And come to think of it, we often hear of our fathers who “started off as New York Giants fans but have rooted for the Mets for the last thirty years” or similar baseball diaspora who believed in a new team after relocation.

Maybe it will take these hopeless Mets to finally draw my interest, because at this point, the Mets are a blank white board and it will be a new story to watch them develop from the ground up.

2009 All-Star Game

I had the privilege of going to the All-Star Game last weekend.

As my excitement built for the trip during the week prior, I looked forward to watching some baseball in St. Louis. Over the last two years, as I’ve moved away from Boston, I’ve watched the sport just a little less without the draw of the Red Sox at 7 pm every night. That always provided me with a natural cool-down state coming home from work or class. I’ve also gone to fewer games — maybe three a season versus eight or nine. On that merit alone, for just getting to watch baseball, it was going to be a great weekend.

But I’d forgotten that Cardinals supporters brand themselves as “the best fans in baseball.” Red Sox fans obviously take umbrage with that claim; we think there is no more devout follower in any sport, but that should have sparked something for me. St. Louis is the city that deems itself baseball’s heaven, with Busch Stadium its cathedral, the Cardinals ministers of its faith, and the congregation, thousands, were vocal in the streets this weekend.

Downtown St. Louis is marked by a number of federal buildings, mid-height skyscrapers, and public spaces parks and spaces. There are dozens of old buildings that have been renovated into residential lofts; many had vacancies and some were abandoned construction projects. The chief cultural entity downtown is Busch Stadium, and the city’s nightlife revolves around the park. I’d imagine in the offseason, downtown St. Louis is less attractive.

With the game in town, there was a palpable vivacity on the streets. Red washed over everything, the most primary of the colors that would illustrate the weekend. I expected the weekend to be exceedingly corporate or filled with out-of-town mercenaries like me, boasting about our team selections (Papelbon, Youkilis, Bay, Wakefield) and sporting the home colors. Instead, Cardinals fans took the weekend as their chance to go on display. They were everywhere, proud of their city hosting the game and had been waiting for months to party. The Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game were at least 75% attended by Cardinals fans.

This means more to some than others, but you could stop anyone on the street and start a conversation about baseball, and your complement in the conversation would gleefully engage you in dialogue, telling stories and listening attentively to yours. Everyone preached the same religion when the All-Stars were in town.

Wearing Red Sox shirts the whole weekend, I was naturally stopped by many Cardinals fans who felt like they needed to have a word with me on a few topics, now. In case you hadn’t heard: fans around baseball aren’t wholly fond of Red Sox fans. Sox fans maintain a heightened combination of brashness and arrogance that plays just fine against similar alpha fans (Yankees), but not around fans in the midwest, who take the game at a slightly slower pace. There were many comments about 2004, though they all just conceded that series to Boston anyway for performance and historical reasons. Throughout the weekend, I was easy fun for a lot of curious midwesterners who only know Sox fans from what they see on ESPN.

Cardinals fans repeatedly called themselves the best “baseball” fans in the country, and here, they might have a case. I heard what sounded like very knowledgeable Cardinals fans talking about other teams and current news, and all of this was coated with far less acrimony than Sox fans, who strike me as more impatient and a little bit more drunk. Just being around these fans made the game better, and every Red Sox fan should see games in St. Louis, because once they know you’re a real fan, they become your best friend.

The game on Tuesday ended up as somewhat like background noise to the conversations we were having with people in our section. Fans ended up buying US beers when we were getting ready to buy a round for them. The crowd was loud when big moments occurred and appreciated the competition on the field. I took business cards of people with whom I’ll share pictures, offered to help a Cardinals fan get tickets when he comes up to Fenway, and kicked my feet up on a beautiful summer night taking in a tradition I’d never before experienced.

The Gateway Arch lords over the St. Louis skyline. Looking anyway to the east places the arch above everything you see, and it’s a steady presence. It was a very American weekend. Ushers gave out American flags and children waved them during the Star Spangled Banner. Anheuser-Busch products were absolutely everywhere; I rarely went without a beer in my hand and all but three pitchers of the stuff were Bud.

The President threw out the first pitch, concluding the weekend’s theme of service, appearing in a video with the four other living Presidents to laud thirty citizens who devote their lives to improving their communities. I wondered whether Major League Baseball thought that up independently, or if Barack Obama called up Bud Selig and said, “hey, I’ll come down there and throw out the first pitch if you run an inspirational campaign about service for five days.” If so, quite a draw: the current President hadn’t thrown out the first pitch since Gerald Ford. Obama came out wearing a White Sox jacket, eliciting boos from the crowd (though probably from many who were reacting more to the President, not his team).

We finished the weekend off by taking a cab a few miles out of downtown and eating at Pappy’s Smokehouse, recently named best barbecue in St. Louis. Pappy’s ribs were probably the best I’ve ever tasted, with what seemed like a crusted pepper glaze on the top. Pappy sat down and chatted with us, said he’d just been in New York and grilled 9,000 rack of ribs in the recent downtown BBQ competition. I asked him if I’d have to wait in the growing order line to purchase a t-shirt. “Not if you’re talking to Pappy.” He brought back my t-shirt and though stuffed, I needed to get myself to stand up up so we could catch our flight. Instead, I enjoyed sitting, sated after one of the best weekends of my life.

Quoth the Maverick, Nevermore

After governing for just north of two and a half years, Sarah Palin resigned as chief of Alaska this weekend. Her resignation was notable for myriad reasons, but the most interesting one is the incoherent, unintelligible, irresponsibly loquacious speech that she delivered announcing that she was stepping down. It is a text thick with attacks on the media, exclamation points about reform in Alaska, and rebukes on anyone who dared criticize Palin’s ethics, management skills or governing practices.

When analyzing her speech, the most alarming position Palin takes is that her resignation is yet another example of how she swims against the current, refusing to buckle under the crushing weight of “politics as usual,” instead blasting through that smothersome ceiling by resigning as governor so that she can work tirelessly for Alaskans elsewhere.

Elsewhere, other than as the state’s governor? If this is a woman who seeks the Presidency, that same media that vociferously attacked her during and after she emerged with John McCain is going to have a field day with this. This should not surprise Palin, but inevitably it will. She can save some time and prepare now for the questions she’ll face when she announces her run for President.

“Governor Palin, you famously resigned from office, citing the ability to move Alaska forward from a position in the private sector. Why, now, have you decided that public office is once more the most efficient means of assisting our citizens?”

I can’t understand how a politician gunning for the Presidency can strategize this as a move in the right direction.

The most alarming commentary in her speech was her remark about lame duck governors, as if during her weekly session her local Wasilla psychic, Palin saw the future, and it didn’t augur re-election. Palin was very much eligible for re-election in 2010, which would have concluded two years before any run for the Presidency. Perhaps she resigned because there were very real concerns, such as the ability to run a gubernatorial campaign in 2010 followed months later by exploratory work and subsequent Presidential campaigning in 2011. Plenty valid, that.

Or, perhaps, she just didn’t think she’d win re-election. That sounds slightly less likely, but would explain Palin’s comments about lame duck governors. She goes on to say

And so as I thought about this announcement that I wouldn’t run for re-election and what it means for Alaska, I thought about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks… travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade – as so many politicians do. And then I thought – that’s what’s wrong – many just accept that lame duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck, and “milk it”. I’m not putting Alaska through that – I promised efficiencies and effectiveness! That’s not how I am wired. I am not wired to operate under the same old “politics as usual.”

So concerned was Sarah Palin that she would become lackadaisical and apathetic during her last year as governor, she just decided to give up.

Give that girl my vote.

Washington Bureau

“They” are the Washington Nationals, after losing a 13-11 calamity in Philadelphia tonight, leaving them 4-14 to begin this baseball season

“They have a lot of pieces that have to be put back together.  They’ve got to develop pitching, they’ve got to change the culture.  The culture is really important.  They were left with a mess. ” – Peter Gammons, Baseball Tonight, April 27

The mess was the work of Jim Bowden.  Gammons threw a few token laudable players in the middle of those slices, but the Washington Nationals have a tall, tall road to climb.  It should make them one of the more interesting baseball teams to follow over the next three years.

Jim Bowden was a Major League Baseball general manager for 16 years and was always been considered one of the worst executives in the game.  As much as I understand baseball, I’ve never understood how Jim Bowden kept a job.

His teams were never competitive: he took only one team to the playoffs, the 1995 Cincinnati Reds (Barry Larkin, MVP).  He made a series of roster moves that were widely criticized and left his teams in prolonged impotency.  These would take a while to break down, but in his day, Bowden made 168 trades and make the playoffs once.  Yet he continued to be employed, year after year.

Perhaps you tolerate someone at your job that you just don’t think contributes.  My roommate occasionally works with someone in IT that he thinks is absolutely incompetent and can’t work a computer.  But you let it slide, the guy is nice enough, he probably lives with his cousin.

But that person is probably not a public figure, like the general manager of a baseball team.

No, his wikipedia entry also has this gem: “Bowden has been involved in several controversies,” and goes on to duly list.  There’s really no reason to paraphrase, it’s worth taking the whole thing.

• In 1993, he fired Reds manager and former star player Tony Pérez after just 44 games. Coming on the heels of racially charged comments by Reds owner Marge Schott, the firing prompted criticism of Bowden and the team for treating Pérez, one of the league’s few minority managers, unfairly.
• In 1998, he traded All-Star reliever and Cincinnati native Jeff Shaw to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Shaw claimed at the time that Bowden had agreed not to trade him as part of a contract that involved Shaw taking less money from the Reds than he could have gotten elsewhere. “We had a handshake deal that he wasn’t going to trade me,” Shaw said. “Three months later, he traded me. … If I had been in the room with him, I would have killed him.”
• In 2000, Reds coach Ron Oester reportedly was offered the job of manager by Bowden, but that when Oester didn’t accept immediately, Bowden offered the job to Bob Boone without contacting Oester.
• In 2003, he was fired as general manager of the Reds following comments comparing the MLB players union to the terrorist organization al Qaeda. Commenting on the possibility of a strike by the players, he said, “If they (the players) do walk out … I encourage all of them, “Make sure it’s Sept. 11th. Be symbolic about it. Let [union head] Donald Fehr drive the plane right into the building, if that’s what they want him to do,’” Bowden later apologized for the remarks.
• On April 17, 2006, Bowden was arrested for drunk driving in Miami, Florida.
• As the GM of the Nationals, he made a deal with the Reds in mid-season 2006 involving Gary Majewski, who received a cortisone shot shortly before the trade. In May 2007 the Reds filed a grievance claiming they didn’t know they were getting damaged goods. However, after an indepth and time-consuming investigation, MLB cleared Bowden and the Nationals.
• As of February 23, 2009 Bowden is being investigated by the FBI for skimming signing bonus money from Latin American baseball players. He resigned from the Nationals on 1 March 2009.

As a baseball nut, Jim Bowden’s employment record means I have a chance.  Is it any surprise that they were left with a mess?

The measly old Nationals, Gammons continues, are changing their culture this season.  Mike Rizzo is the new GM.  They’ve demoted Lastings Milledge, they’ve sat down and lectured Elijah Dukes and given him a kind of ultimatum, saying “we might trade you, we might send you down, we can lose with you or without you,”, and they’ve emphasized character within the team.

I normally wonkishly attack baseball through the metric lens, but I think this is the best move forward.  When you have no talent, you have no risk, and the Washington Nationals have no talent.  They have some great players (Ryan Zimmerman, Adam Dunn, Dukes) and have brought up a pitching prospect (Jordan Zimmermann) that scouts and analytic-types are high on, but there’s nothing in Triple-A, nothing in the middle infield.  So when you can’t statisically go up, you can only go up in spirit.

We’re watching this unfold, and in June, the story will alter its course.  The Nationals will pick first in the 2009 draft, where they are eligible to select, and play host to, the lore of Stephen Strasburg.

(For the lesser wonks, clarity: in baseball, unlike basketball, but ever-so-slightly similar to football, teams do not always draft the “best player available.”  This is because draftees join up with agents and survey the competition, demanding what they consider to be appropriate signing bonuses, deterring teams from drafting players that they can’t afford to sign.  The best amateur players often fall to the late teens and twenties in the baseball draft until a well-capitalized team (Red Sox, Yankees, Tigers) drafts them and meets their bonus demands.)

Strasburg is represented by Scott Boras, the most successful baseball agent of all time.  Boras has done more to change baseball in the last decade than anyone else.  And according to Peter Gammons, Strasburg is reportedly asking for record $50 million over six years.  This will put Washington in a serious economic conundrum.  They are a smaller-market team, and spending was down throughout baseball this offseason.

All signs point to Washington still drafting and signing Strasburg, and you have to hope they swallow the cost and take the plunge.  Strasburg is arguably the most hyped right-handed pitching prospect to hit the draft; Buster Olney reports a scout calling him “the best I’ve ever seen.”

The worst team in baseball is about to inherit one of the best pitching prospects in the history of baseball, who throws 102, who could be in the majors this very year, who is going in the 23rd round of fantasy drafts this year, ahead of top-10 guys like Madison Bumgarner and Travis Snider.  He is the savior.  He is better than any pitcher this scout has ever seen.

The only thing that keeps Nationals’ fans short-breathed is Olney’s follow-up question:

“Better than Mark Prior?”

Football

I owe this blog (and its three readers, perhaps there’s one with a surname not “Chaparian”) a recap of the last four months of my working life, from when I started at Anomaly in December to the completion of a beautiful, inspiring ad campaign for Umbro on March 28th, but that will come later. I started working at Anomaly with zero interest in football  (ne soccer from my youth league disinterest) but knew I’d have to love it, on my own accord or not, to contribute to the Umbro team.

There was no strong-arming needed; I gradually became more interested in the game as I read more about it, watched more football, and spent time with colleagues who breathe football like I breathe baseball. I can identify a few reasons why it grew on me:

- The Premier League is one of the most competitive, engrossing, and textured leagues in sports, with teams playing for various goals, and others fighting for survival. It has four historically dominant teams (Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool), a number of talented squads just below that, and a spate of teams at the bottom of the table (this season: West Brom, Newcastle, Middlesborough) fighting just to stay in the Premier League and not be demoted to the Championship (the second-level field). This is a new and unique storyline for me to follow. The Boston Red Sox never have to worry about being demoted out of Major League Baseball if they have a bad season, and they’re also not playing for various league trophies or international tournament births while trying to win the World Series.

- I root for Liverpool, a team that happens to be having a fantastic season, has produced two classic 4-4 draws in the last week (one a heroic Champions League performance at Chelsea) and has traditions and spirited fans that strike similar to the Red Sox. Consider the congruous singing: Liverpool fans wailing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” before every match, and Red Sox fans singing Neil Diamond before the bottom of the eighth inning at Fenway Park. But I root for Liverpool because I lived with an English roommate my sophomore year of college, and he was a Liverpool fan.  That was the year that Liverpool completed a historic comeback in the 2005 Champions League final against A.C. Milan; that same school year, my boys came back from a 3-0 hole in the ALCS versus the Yankees.  Each was unfathomable (but the Red Sox comeback has to be considered the most unbelievable comeback in sports).

- The level of play in the Premier League is incredible. It’s hard not to be awed by good football, and plus, football players are admirable for their agility, endurance, and scene-stealing acting when trying to burn seconds of stoppage time.

- Being around colleagues and watching them love football. Two colleagues in particular, Johnny and Magnus, teach me new, but different, things about the game every time I watch it: Johnny more of the human element of the game, fans, stories, fables, and Magnus a more strategic approach, enduring my questions about the business of the game and league. I must be a nuisance.

- How can I not root for Shrewsbury Town in League Two?

It just so turns out that I’ve taken a liking to football that I know will outlive my (hopefully long) life at Anomaly. In fact, I actually stopped on an MLS broadcast on ESPN tonight and remembered that there’s pro football in the United States.

But apparently, I’m not alone. A lot of people are stopping and noticing. To wit:

- The New York Red Bulls are completing work on the $200 million Red Bull Arena in Harrison, NJ.  Teams in Dallas, Chicago, Denver, Toronto and Salt Lake have built new football-specific stadiums in the last five years, and new fields in Philadelphia and Kansas city are expected shortly.  Some of these stadiums come with dozens of youth/community football fields to spur the game’s growth.

- The MLS has a clear goal: they’re not trying to convert other sports fans to football fans, they’re trying to convince the already existing football fans to become MLS fans.  There are millions of entrenched football fans to target, and the MLS is happy to spend to get them: two more expansion teams, consideration of more international players, and a savvy web presence.

- The sport seems to be growing on Americans.  Seattle introduced a new team this season and sold every one of the 22,000 season ticket packages it marketed.

The recession noticeably impacted baseball this year, as the free agency period was easily the most thrifty in years, but surprisingly, the MLS  thinks the time is right to keep building and spending.  Yes: baseball is tightening the reins, but soccer is making it rain.

It’s surprising that more Americans don’t take to this sport, but I think the primary reason is the track young athletes take.  In Europe, the best young football players, in their early to mid teens, are poached by football clubs and built to become the next Wayne Rooney.  In the United States, there’s still no such path for a young soccer star; the most lucrative offer for a young athlete is a college scholarship, and that comes through football, baseball and basketball.  The NCAA is, no doubt, an elephant’s leg on the game’s trachea.

But if the competition in Europe (and in England) continues its renaissance; if more and more supermoguls buy Premier League teams and spend spend spend to bring in players, build a fanbase, and vacuum more revenue; if the MLS continues its expansion, building modest, but beautiful stadiums with youth pitches; it’s entirely possible that the world’s game could ourtank a more American sport in ten years.

Monday’s Weather

I’m in Shrewsbury, partially because on Monday I’m going to Opening Day at Fenway Park.

At least, I hope I’m going on Monday.  Storms are looming and threatening the Red Sox and Rays from playing.  The weather, though, has yielded one of the most interesting things I’ve read in a while: the in-depth discussion of Monday’s weather forecast on Sons of Sam Horn.

90%

A conversation that I had with my good friend Wabi tonight.

Wabi: Wells Fargo also didn’t want TARP, and again was told to take it.  Goldman Sachs wanted it, but had they known the restrictions that came with it, they could’ve raised private capital, like they did from Warren Buffet.  And US Bancorp has always been considered a pretty healthy bank, and Bank of America was healthy before it bought Merrill Lynch.  Nevermind the fact that even if you are healthy, if your competitors are getting injections of capital from the government, you are basically in a position where you have to take them or place yourself at a disadvantage.

Dan: Just like baseball and steroids.