11 New Year's Wishes for Sports

The universe owes us one. We will have thrust upon us at the beginning of this year by a comatose American electorate a sociopathic, clinically narcissistic, utterly unqualified, willfully ignorant, despicable, lecherous, shallow, juvenile, jackass-in-chief.*

I hope that wasn't payback for the Cubs and Indians in a thrilling seven-game World Series. Assuming the former was the common people knowing what they want and getting it good and hard, and the latter just good luck, it's only fair that one of the following occur this year to improve the sports universe.

1. Put the N-Scam-A-A out of our misery -- its member institutions admit that they are, in

collusion with various television networks, in the for-profit sports entertainment business. They agree to treat revenue generating sports -- big time football and men's basketball -- as the business franchises they are, bidding for players with actual cash and offering everyone who wants one a scholarship to matriculate and graduate like regular students. They maintain the limits on practice time and provide time for all athletes to attend classes, but in every other way continue to treat them like the employees they are. This is the only formula that allows the member institutions to move forward without lying through their teeth every day about their athletic programs.

2. Slash the NHL and NBA playoffs in half -- so that the regular season actually matters. With only the eight best teams qualifying, most every game will count.

3. Enforce MLB's rules designed to move the game along and limit the number of pitching changes. Committee meetings are stultifying, even when they take place on the mound.

4. Have a foreign network provide the telecast of the next Olympics to the U.S. -- It's not all about us.

5. Limit the NCAA hoops tournament to a league's best teams -- No team that loses more games in its conference than it wins should be allowed in the tournament, period. We'd all much rather see a 25-4 squad that lost in the Southern Conference semi-finals make the tournament than a 16-12 powerhouse that finished 10th in the ACC. The latter did not have a successful season and the former did, and they should be likewise rewarded.

6. Begin every televised NFL game with a warning to fans: Though the officiating will not be perfect, it doesn't matter. Luck is 30% of the game. Don't sweat every call; don't worry about three inches that can't be discerned without super slow motion, stop action and three camera angles. Enjoy today's action by freakish athletes who are maiming and killing themselves for your entertainment.

7. Sometimes, tell replay to shut the @#$%&! up -- Baseball players who dive safely into a base but bounce over it while still being tagged shall be deemed safe. That's not what replay was for.

8. Eliminate crappy bowl games -- Division 1A college football post-season contests played in

Detroit, Birmingham or Charlotte, or featuring contestants with losing records in their conference, may not be called "bowls." Instead, each of these contests shall be called the "NIT," as in, the "Pinstripe NIT" and the "Armed Forces NIT" to distinguish it from a real bowl game. There shall be 12 bowl games, -- the Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton, Peach, Outback, Citrus, Sun, Alamo, Music City and Liberty -- pitting only ranked teams or league champions.

9. Remove the remaining dolts from baseball coverage -- Require everyone requesting a press credential to a Major League Baseball game to pass a test demonstrating that they understand why the old measurements no longer pass muster.

10. Screw the plane. Get into the end zone for a touchdown.

11. Admit it already: sports gambling is legal. They scroll stats under football games for fantasy league players and list point spreads in newspapers. Every office and bar advertises an NCAA tourney bracket. Forty-nine states participate in lottery operations. Your bookie is just a click away. So let's ditch the self-righteous hypocrisy and end the remaining prohibitions. Good idea? You bet.

* This blog remains non-partisan. This is not an endorsement of the other major party's nominee, who, though qualified and generally adult, was also a miserable candidate. Contrary to what the news media told you during its 25/8/366 coverage of the election, there were actually more than two candidates for president, one of them an actual Republican, all of whom more qualified, mature and dignified than the ultimate victor.

Ridiculous Things You Notice at a Braves Game

Hied ourselves to Atlanta for Braves-Marlins on Independence Day weekend. Jose Fernandez versus Lucas Harrel making his Braves debut. It was 9-1, just as you expected, except Fernandez was the smoked, not the smoker.

Baseball's a crazy game.

Some more oddness I observed:

• There are six or eight young women in every major American market who can list their summer job as "professional ballpark waver." At the Braves game we witnessed, these women walked onto the field for all the pre-game and between-inning promotions and did the following: smiled and waved to the crowd. Occasionally they held signs. So what are the qualifications for this position? How do they distinguish among the 200 pretty, young female applicants to determine which half-dozen would become professional wavers? Wrist pronation ability? 

• Organist Matt Kaminski, who plays the walk-up music for opposing players, is a comedic genius. He played "We're Off To See the Wizard" for Marcell Ozuna and "Jesus Is Just All Right With Me" for Christian Yelich. Matt, I want you to know that I got the jokes and was richly amused.

• I was shocked to see Jose Fernandez loaf on the basepaths after bunting early in the game. The Braves had trouble handling the ball and barely threw him out, so he would have been safe had he hustled. How does a manager allow that? I hoped he was nursing a leg injury, and the way he pitched, he might have been. More shocking: Ichiro jogged after a key base hit in the sixth inning. The runners moved up an extra base and Atlanta ended up scoring seven in the frame and breaking the game open. I would like to see a manager walk onto the field a la Bobby Cox and remove a player for lollygagging.

•  The umpires reviewed a close play at first early in the game. It took them several minutes to decide

whether the runner beat the throw. There should be a new rule: if they can't determine a call after three slow-motion replays it's too close to matter. Uphold the call and move on. As it was, after three minutes of review, it's very likely they got it wrong.

• There's nothing more annoying at an MLB game than the incessant, inane, commercial video chatter between innings at decibel levels designed to drown out passing aircraft. It nearly ruined my experience last year in Detroit and Cincinnati. In Atlanta, it was much more subdued. Note to league: can that crap.

• Based on one pinch hit at-bat, there is something wrong with Giancarlo Stanton. Dude fanned on three Little League swings. He looked like his own grandfather, not that I've ever seen the gentleman.

• At every home game, the Braves make a big show of replacing the number on the outfield wall

corresponding to how many MLB games are left at Turner Field. How tone deaf can you be? This is an abomination. The franchise is costing local residents something in the area of a billion dollars by ditching a perfectly fine 20-year-old stadium and conning a local suburb into building them a sparkling new many-hundred-million-dollar edifice. Hey Marietta: get a 50-year lease.

• Prior to the game, a local country act performed in the area of Turner that might be called the lobby or atrium. Wife and I stood 10 feet away and commented to each other on the fine craftsmanship. At one point I asked her, "why couldn't these two songs be hits on the country charts?" See, I'd never heard of John Berry before. Now I have. The songs were She's Taken A Shine and What's In It for Me, which reached #2 and #5 respectively on the country charts. Then Berry performed the national anthem on his guitar and slayed it.

• In days of yore, a kid went to a Major League game in the hopes of catching a foul ball. Today, kids dream of seeing themselves on the video board. So teams oblige by showing waving, screaming, shimmying, incredulous kids on the board every chance they get. This is a most bizarre phenomenon; don't these kids know what they look like? 

• The new video boards provide so much awesome information, like real time updates on out-of-town games and background on the batter and pitcher. I really appreciate that. But c'mon Braves, how about entering the 21st century and provide OBP and SLG. Sure, Ichiro is batting .340, woo-woo, but he hasn't worked a walk since the NBA playoffs started.

• Contrary to popular belief, there is no Augusta, GA. We stopped on the way home for a stroll on the River Walk along the Savannah River. Then we GPS'd downtown and it took us to -- nothing. We GPS'd City Hall and it's -- nowhere. We found a street that looked like it might bustle but it was two blocks long and ceased to exist if you turned any corner. This is a city of 200,000 residents. Not a single exit sign on the highway directs traffic "downtown." They did have a nice mall with a Whole Foods on the fringes of the "city" though. And a Moe's. Welcome to Moe's!

Joey Votto and the Idiocy of Umpires

With limited instant replay reviews, baseball now has a formula for overturning all kinds of missed umpire calls on the field. Managers can challenge whether fouls balls were called fair, runners were safe, catches were made, and fly balls cleared the fence.

Every case contains within it the implicit recognition that umpires make mistakes, and that getting the call correct is paramount.

Calls cannot be challenged that involve judgment, or that if overturned would cause havoc. For example, if a ball was originally ruled foul, there is no going back and re-running the play if the videotape reveals that it was actually fair (except in the case of a home run.)

There is one glaring and utterly indefensible exception: balls and strikes. The most common and impactful missed call of all is the ball-strike because it alters the tenor of games. Research shows that the strike zone has been expanding over the past few years -- mostly at the lower end -- and with it scoring has contracted. Batters must now defend a larger zone than ever, and must adjust their calculations depending on the whim and idiosyncrasies of the given arbiter on the given day.

What's more, the ball-strike call is not simply a judgment; it appears to be a personal statement. Some umpires are known to have low strike zones, others like the outside pitch, etc., as if strike zones are just a matter of style and preference.

All of which led to this recent outrage by umpire Tim Welke, who chafed at Joey Votto's constant chirping about ball-strike calls, refused to grant him time, and then ran Votto when he complained to his dugout. In fact, replays showed that Votto had reason to gripe about several strike calls that were clearly out of the zone. What made matters worse in this case is that Welke escalated the dispute with his unjustifiable refusal to allow Votto to take time and blow off steam.

All this could be cured with existing technology that can accurately pinpoint the swing-worthiness of every pitch. It is available to television broadcasts, so that everyone watching the game at home knows how embarrassingly often home plate umpires gack up the call, or has imposed his personal preferences over the rule book.

Calling pitches correctly is unfathomably difficult. The ball is small and the strike zone dependent on the size of the batter. Pitches are spinning, moving at 90 mph or more and changing planes often in two directions at once. Research by Scott Lindholm of SB Nation shows that umpires miss the pitch call about 15% of the time, or about 40 times per game. How is that acceptable?

It's long past time to replace umpire decisions with existing technology that that can accurately, definitively and instantaneously determine balls and strikes. It would eliminate the griping that led Joey Votto to request time, Tim Welke to pout and both of them to engage in juvenile pyrotechnics. Not to mention a wholly unwarranted two-game suspension for the Cincinnati star.
 

Soldiers of Serendipity

What do CC Sabathia's one-hitter and instant replay have in common? They're both controversial because people don't understand how incredibly important luck is in sports.

Sabathia's mates are miffed that the official scorer in last night's Brewers' game credited Andy Laroche with a hit when the pitcher muffed his swinging bunt. It turned out to be the Pirates' only hit of the game, denying the big righthander a no-hitter. Milwaukee management actually appealed the hit call to the MLB front office.

At the same time, MLB has instituted instant replay to help umpires determine whether balls hit out actually leave the ballpark in fair territory. Newfangled stadiums, with their outfield nooks and crannies, apparently hamper umpire calls.

It's hard to argue that umpires and official scorers shouldn't get calls right as often as possible. But am I the only one who notices that we agonize over calls in sports that are determined by the most granular margins when twists of fate affect every play.

There's the gust of wind that catches a long fly ball and drops it into an outfielder mitt. There's the double-play grounder that hits the rubber, bounces into right field and scores two runs. There's the 0-2 slider that fools the batter into flailing desperately -- and blooping a two-out, two-run double into right field. There's the bad-hop grounder, the swinging bunt, the Texas Leaguer, the broken bat, the rain, the slick field, the shadows, the gnats and a hundred other soldiers of serendipity that turn a 2-1 win into a 9-4 loss. That doesn't even account for the freak injuries and other cosmic anomalies that transform whole seasons.

It's easy to parse one play out of a game and blame it for ruining a no-hitter, but every no-hitter is a lucky five-hitter. Unless they strike out 27 batters, pitchers don't pitch no-hitters so much as put themselves in position to do so and reap the rewards when luck shines on them. Likewise, every game is a stew of skill, execution and chance, and if an ump happens to call a home run foul when it was actually two feet inside the fair pole, well, it's not like the hitter planned to hit it that way. He was just two feet lucky in the first place.