Snow, a Sister, and Sports Writers By Zach

So I'm currently stuck in the Tufts University Library in Somerville, MA. I'm here to visit my sister for the weekend, which entails roughing it in the 'burbs and sleeping on the floor of her tiny dorm room. Oh well, such is brotherly love. It's currently snowing outside, which isn't so troublesome here but will be a major pain in the ass if it's also happening in New York.

Snow in New York City is one of God's primary revenges against urbanites: within 15 minutes of hitting the ground, it can be classified as toxic waste. Furthermore, because all of Manhattan is covered in tall buildings, the mounds of snow that occur when the streets are shoveled take weeks to disappear. Brown, freezing water shrouds most street corners, forcing the average pedestrian to work on their long-jumping skills.

That wasn't really supposed to be the main thrust of this post, just sort of where I went. You see, my sister is working for about 25 more minutes here at the library, and since I've already visited Deadspin about 17 times in the last hour, hoping for another post, I'm kind of out of options. All this time in front of a computer did allow me to sift through a few things I hadn't yet seen online, and talk about a few things I wanted to get off my chest.

In reading through some of the more recent posts on Fire Joe Morgan, I've been amused at the amount of idiotic venom directed at Bonds by "prominent" online writers (and I didn't even mention Satan). I have a couple of thoughts. The first is that attacking Bonds is the journalistic equivilent to taking candy from a baby: it's easy, no one wants to see it happen, and only Mr. Burns would do it. The second is that it really, really, really makes me want to see Bonds break Hank Aaron's record. I've long been sick of the "athlete as hero" myth. So what if Bonds is a selfish, arrogant jerk? So are many other people I've met. Just because he makes a lot of money, he's supposed to become a better person? People who expect perfection from public figures are fools.

But what this really speaks to is something that I greatly fear about myself. Presumably, at some point in their lives, people like Satan actually loved sports. It's why they followed it, and it's why they started writing about it. Yet somewhere along the line, sports became a job, and all the joy disappeared.

Earlier this week, I finished reading an advance copy of Will Blythe's new book: To Hate Like This is to Be Happy Forever. It's a great book, which comes out next week (working at a radio station has a few perks, I guess), but I loved it at least in part because Blythe, like myself, grapples with the issue of whether a writer, a journalist, can both cover sports and remain a fan. He seperates his persona into two parts, "the journalist," who can bring himself to interview J.J. Redick and not taunt him about his poetry, and "the beast," who reddens at the mere sight of Mike Krzyzewski, even if it's just on TV.

I know full well what Blythe is talking about. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a passionate sports fan, and while I rarely weep when my teams lose anymore (a routine practice for me as a child), all anyone has to do to get me to cring is mention Dikembe Mutumbo, or Arthur Rhodes, or Rip Hamilton, or Kevin Curtis. I love sports, but most of all I love being a fan. While I want to write about sports, I never want to lose my fandom. That's the reason why I (and I'd suspect most of his fans) like Bill Simmons so much. His knowledge may be questionable, his columns may be laced with the same 80s references over and over again, but he's also the only writer on ESPN.com who never has his fan credentials questioned.

With college graduation a few months away and the great unknown that entails, I suppose I've been in a contemplative mood lately. Factor in spending time on a real college campus, snow, reading Tom Robbins, and a couple of hours in an unfamiliar library, and you get the above. Now, it's time to go sledding.

Garden Dreams By Zach

Since I’m free of the burden of being a Knick fan, I can approach the Steve Francis trade from a position of detached interest. The foremost thought in my mind is that under a different coach, New York could be at the very least a fun team to watch. With Marbury, Francis, Crawford, Robinson, and Richardson, they’ve got a lot of athletic guards who can push the tempo. If Larry Brown would turn them loose to attack and play an up-temp, 1980s style of ball, I have a feeling Knick fans would be more pleased.

Picture scores regularly in the 120s. Well, that’s the case now, but at least the Knicks would also be putting up a lot of points. Much like the Phoenix Suns revitalized fast-break basketball last season, the Knicks could further the revolution. It would be fitting, considering how much damage the Blue and Orange did to basketball under Jeff Van Gundy.

Sadly, Brown is the exact wrong coach for this team. He’ll insist on defensive output from a group of scorers, and he’ll restrict their creativity and freedom on offense. Clearly, as he’s aged, Brown has forgotten where he got his start as a coach: the free-wheeling ABA. Maybe he can crank up the WayBack Machine, pull his old outfits out of the closet, and let out the reins.

Clearly, Isiah Thomas is a terrible GM, perhaps the worst in NBA history. But under a different coach, this team could at least be fun. Sadly, like most recent Knick teams, they’ll merely end up pathetic.

Sonics Acquire Earl Watson:

This one is for my father. He loved Earl after the Sonics drafted him, was upset when he signed with Memphis, and never stopped hoping he’d return. The money is high, but then again the Sonics desperately needed a back-up point guard who could do things Luke Ridnour can’t, like play defense. Potapenko and Evans were non-factors anyhow, so it’s not as if the team lost talent.

But if this team has a future, it’s with the Chris Wilcox trade. I’ve yet to see him play, but so far he’s looked very good in his limited outings with the Supes. If he can give them an athletic, talented 4, they’ll be in good shape next year…if they resign him, of course.

Just Another Sad Isiah Blasting Column By Blogger

You should read the posts below on the Steve Francis trade before you read this one...

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Done? Okay.

It's an awful trade. Penny was probably most valuable to the team as an expiring contract, and even if they'd traded him straight up for Francis, the Knicks would have lost because Stevie is signed for another three years at big money. Ariza was just saliva in the Knicks fan's other eye.

Some folks over at Knickerblogger have been trying to rationalize the trade by saying that the cap doesn't really mean much to the Knicks. The fact of the matter, though, is that, as a general principle, keeping costs down allows flexibility, both in the amount of money the team can give to premium players and in the team's ability to trade problem players. Under NBA rules, that flexibility is more important than it is in MLB and the NFL.

We can look to recent sports history to see where this story will end. For a while, the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons signed every big name, big money, star they could in spite of what the football talent evaluators said, and the team sucked. The Baltimore Orioles did the same in baseball, and the team didn't quite suck in the early part of this decade, but they had no chance. Hell, let's look at what the Knicks have done post-Ewing: ouch. Spending money judiciously is the only way to win, whether you have a lot to spend or only a little. Even the Lakers, a big market team, made sure not to overpay for complementary players to Shaq and Kobe.

So, what does all of this mean? It means that Zeke just screwed up the Knicks' first step towards financial responsibility by trading Penny's large expiring contract. From a talent standpoint, he traded a useful frontcourt player with a future in the league for a shoot first point guard whose spiritual brother was already starting for the team, meaning Francis, somehow, is redundant.

In the NBA, you can't win a championship with players who make far more than they're worth. It simply isn't possible with only fifteen players on the roster. Look at Allan Houston. Look at Kevin Garnett (he of the $25 million salary). Rasheed Wallace made more than he was worth in the Pistons' championship season, but he was a midseason pickup, and his performance wasn't worth that much less than his salary. According to his BasketballReference page, he and the Pistons agreed to bring that number down so that's it's more in line with his value. The Knicks seem to be operating in an alternate universe in which the fans want to see stars who made their names elsewhere, when in reality the fans want to see a winning team, no matter who's on the floor. Hell, everyone knows that New Yorkers love guys in every sport who come to the city and grow up as players there.

So. Blow it up. Start anew. I'm not a Knicks fan, but I'm legitimately worried about the well-being of some of my friends. Right now, I think it's time NBA fans of thirty other teams put animosity aside and lend our collective shoulder for our New York brethren to cry upon. (Nets fans are allowed to laugh and point.)

The Worldwide Leader in Crap By Zach

So yesterday was a bad, bad day for ESPN.com. They debuted a pair of features which, to put it kindly, blew. The first was their much-ballyhooed "NBA Trade Machine." With the NBA trade deadline fast approaching, the concept was to allow all those armchair GMs a chance to test out their most ridiculous trade proposals. Which seems like a fine idea, until you realize that anyone with half a brain could have found the same function on RealGM.com three years ago. I'm not sure whether ESPN licensed the technology, or just ripped them off. But either way, the only people this helps are idiots who think that ESPN.com is the end-all, be-all of sports websites (when clearly, if there is such a site, it's Sportszilla). And those people shouldn't be proposing NBA trades anyhow.

The other thing that bothered me was their "annual" World's Hottest Female Athlete poll. First of all, the last few years it was an NCAA Tournament-style bracket, with different catagories and seeding and everything. This year? Just 10 choices. And boy, what a crappy set of choices. The only two good looking women in the group were Tanith Belbin and Maria Sharapova. Natalie Gulbis is also pretty good looking, but they picked a hideous main picture of her to use, which was also the case for a few other women.

Leaving aside the matter of whether or not this sort of shameless objectification of women is ok (and it is), my beef with ESPN.com is: where are the hot women? Where's Sue Bird, or Paula Creamer (yes, she's legal)? No Serena Williams? I guess they were trying to highlight Winter Olympians, but someone aught to clue the editorial staff in: you can't tell if a woman is hot when she's snowboarding...something about 10 pounds of baggy clothing designed to keep her warm gets in the way.

Yes, Tuesday, February 21 wasn't the best day for ESPN.com. Of course, that's always the case when they give Satan his own column.

At the Center of Our Beseeching Screaming By Blogger

Today, February 20, 2006, was a perfect day for baseball in the San Francisco Bay Area. The temperature was in the fifties, but the sky was clear, thanks to the light breeze, and the sunlight was particularly sharp, as it always seems to be through crisp air.

I had to take the family car to a shop for some glass work this morning, and the insurance company had arranged for me to bring it to a place on 4th Street, down near the water. I dropped off the car, then walked several blocks to the ballpark, where I got a cup of mocha in a nearby shop and sat to read David Halberstam's Summer of '49.

***

I'm about halfway through the book -- I've just passed Halberstam's explanation of how Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio's hitting approaches differed, Chapter 9 -- and it's getting to me. I feel the knot in my stomach that only forms when something touches my core, when something important happens in my life.

I knew Williams's story, the difficult childhood in San Diego, the struggles with the press, the singular drive to be the best hitter ever. But coming through Halberstam, I'm hit with Williams's individuality, in the sense that he was a boy, then a man, who breathed, loved his mother, suffered a traumatic childhood, made friends, rubbed veterans the wrong way, was stung by criticism, and after becoming the most feared hitter of his day took batting practice for hours, all the while muttering aloud, "I am Ted F###ing Williams, the best f###ing hitter in baseball."

I'm shocked that no one has made a movie about him, or (as far as I know) worked him into a major work of literature as a central figure. Did Roy Hobbs wear number nine in the movie version of The Natural as a nod to Williams? Perhaps. Frank Deford attributes to Bobby Knight the famous quote that Williams was the world's best at three things: hitting a baseball, fly fishing, and flying a fighter plane. Isn't that a concise symbolic description of what so many American men have wanted to be for the past century? Where are the countless literary examinations of why Williams was ostracized? Yes, he spit in the direction of reporters. Yes, he refused to tip his hat to the home crowd after home runs. And hundreds of ballplayers insisted their late night carousing go unacknowledged. Joe DiMaggio became the idol of the generation, and he was worthy of that stature, but my throat tightens when I read of Williams being denigrated and abused because he wasn't Joltin' Joe, because he neither kissed asses nor kept his mouth shut, in spite of everything else there was to love about him. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing. Where have you gone, Ted Williams? He's either taking batting practice, or fishing. If you ask him about either, he'll tell you what he knows.

I suppose I can sum up my feelings about Williams with a personal list. There are only four baseball players whose jerseys I would wear in public and feel absolutely at ease with the association: Matt Williams (Giants), Will Clark (Giants), Roberto Clemente, and Ted Williams.

***

About half an hour before I had to get the car, I walked to the Safeway on King Street, a block away from the ballpark, and bought lunch. There are tables on the wide sidewalk outside, so I sat in the sun, munching lettuce, carrots, chicken, and egg lightly doused in ranch. Half a block away, between me and the ballpark, a little girl, perhaps seven years old, took a running start and then leaped into her father's arms, and he swung her around and around and the two of them laughed and laughed before he put her down and they skipped into a bookstore.

I looked at the ballpark's facade, taking in the brick, the clock tower, the green light standards. The ballpark is never really dormant. It hosts the odd soccer game, football game, or rock concert... But everyone knows it's a baseball park. After all, Willie, Willie, and Juan permanently oversee the grounds, and Barry will eventually take his spot on the corner of 2nd and King, by the left field gate.

I can see myself years from now passing that statue, telling my children, "Barry Bonds was the greatest hitter I ever saw." They might then ask, "What kind of man was he?" and I'm not sure what I will say.