Michael Schumacher driving for Benetton in Monaco for the 1992 edition of the most famous of F1 races. He would finish 4th that day in his F1 debut on the claustrophobic street circuit. The 7-times World Driver’s Champion has had a mixed but mostly good record on the storied streets of the Principality since then, winning 5 times and failing to finish on another 5 occasions – Photo: Iwao, 1992. Iwao is not affiliated with Longworth72. Image cropped by Longworth72.
I believe that the smartest folk are those that know just how smart they are not. As Harry Callahan once said:
‘A man’s got to know his limitations.’
Which may seem a little glass half empty, a little negative. It’s not meant to be – We all of us should be able to celebrate what we do know, our core strengths – What Harry Callahan is telling us punks is that we should also be able to know when we’re treading into territory that is not really our forte, particularly when there is someone waiting in the wings to handle it like a pro.
Take baseball for instance – A pop fly goes up right between you in left field and Jenny in right field. You can both make the catch because both of you are well positioned. Jenny however is a much better catch than you – For you it’s a nerve-wracking lottery while for her it’s like shelling peas. Some folks will tell you that the courageous thing to do is to call for the catch anyway, to not shirk the challenge. Others though will remind you that for the team it’s best to call yourself out and let Jenny do what she does best. The former is brave but reckless while the latter is knowing your limitations – It’s the smart play.
I’m well aware of my limitations at catching pop flies.
Sometimes though as a sports fan it’s easy to get caught up in the action as an armchair critic. You can watch play develop and convince yourself that you would have seen that error coming, would have worked out the correct angle to approach that problem.
I find myself doing that with the 3 teams I follow, the Boston Red Sox, Fremantle Dockers and Liverpool FC. I’ve watched them a fair bit, even played the same sports, so from time to time I fancy myself as a bit of an amateur expert.
There was a great example this morning. The Red Sox were trailing the Rays 1-2, bottom of the 9th at Fenway. Daniel Nava had worked a lead-off walk off of 6 pitches from Rays closer Fernando Rodney. Next up to the plate is Kelly Shoppach. The former Rays catcher had a double off his last hit and is in reasonable form.
Bobby V pulls him, pinch-hitting with Nick Punto.
Punto is at .135 off of his 37 at bats for the season. He reeks of bad form and is pretty much the last person I’d have stuck in there. I’m a little surprised – Maybe Shoppach is injured. He must be, I think – Why else would you send in Punto?
The Punto who can’t hit right now.
The same Punto who sac bunts, advancing Nava to 2nd on the 1st out.
And this is where it begins to make some sense – Because the nominal next on deck is Marlon Byrd. Byrd has a better batting average than Punto but I figure the margin is pretty thin (It’s not, Byrd is hitting at .273 but is well down on slugging) – You wouldn’t be relying on Marlon to bat you out of a hole. To be honest I’m not entirely sure that I want centre fielding Marlon underneath that example pop fly I talked about earlier either but that’s a whole other matter – Mostly because at this juncture the Sox are in a hole that only a big bat can get them out of.
So Bobby V pulls Byrd, pinch-hitting with Jarrod Saltalamacchia.
Salty is hitting at .268, by far the best of the bats left on the bench. His OPS is at .853, significantly above Byrd’s (.620) thanks in no small part to the 7 home runs he’s smacked (Byrd has just 1).
He’s also a catcher.
So what Bobby V has done is sacrifice the fragile Punto on a runner advancing bunt while switching over his catchers (to the better slugger) and he’s done that while avoiding having to rely on Byrd (who isn’t much of a slugger). It’s still a gamble, a long-shot even, but the odds have shifted a little more back towards Boston, not just on the next play, but for the 1s to come – Say for instance Salty, doubles in Nava – Well, then they have a tie and Salty is available to catch off of whoever is next on the mound, while Punto can give you options as a utility – You won’t be relying on his hitting for another 7 at bats so you’ve added some strength there.
Which you don’t need because Jarrod Saltalamacchia takes an 0 and 1 pitch from Rodney and places the ball a couple of rows back behind the bullpen in centre.
And then the plan makes perfect sense because the Sox walk off with a 3-2 win.
I would not have gone that way. I would have just looked at Shoppach vs Punto and gone with the bat on form. I probably would have taken out Byrd but I don’t know that Saltalamacchia would have been the guy – He’d never hit a walk-off home run in his career to date.
I think I might have learned a little more about 1 of my limitations.
There are a couple of key sporting contests left in the day – In a little under an hour the Dockers take on the Eagles in the 35th Western Derby (Pronounce Dur-bee, with the ‘dur’ bit as in the ‘tur’ in turn). The Dockers (10th, 5 and 3) are the underdogs against a West Coast outfit (2nd, 7 and 1). Later on this evening Mark Webber will start from the front of the grid in the 70th running of the Monaco GP, the most prestigious and storied of the F1 races. Webber wasn’t the fastest qualifier – That honour fell to the 43 year old Michael Schumacher who pipped Webber with the last run of the day. Sadly for the German driving legend he has a 5-place penalty in play from the last round and so he will start from 6th.
I hope to be watching these events but I reckon I’ll view them with a little more balance and introspection now.
A man does have to know his limitations.
Soup of This Day #183: How Many Notes In A Saxophone
Called cantaloupes by some, we call them rockmelons in Australia. Whatever you call them a good slice served with prosciutto is brilliant. Actually they’re pretty bloody good by themselves too. Unlike watermelon – Photo: Toby Hudson, 2009. Toby Hudson is not affiliated with Longworth72. Image cropped by Longworth72.
Lately I’ve been having dizzy spells. This is not a metaphor – I’ve just been having to concentrate very hard to maintain my equilibrium.
And I’ve been having anxiety attacks, which is a bit worrying.
That may sound a little ironic – Me being worried about anxiety attacks. The thing is though, and look away now if you’re a trained mental health professional, I classify anxiety attacks as me being worried with no good reason to be worried. For instance, being anxious because my foot had turned into a watermelon would not really be an anxiety attack – It would be bit scary and bloody weird and therefore a fair bit of anxiety could be reasonably expected.
Also I don’t like watermelon.
If however I’m anxious because I think my foot might spontaneously turn into a watermelon for no apparent reason then that’s an anxiety attack – My foot just planted there, not even looking like it’s about to turn into a watermelon, is not a bit scary or bloody weird at all.
To be clear – I have no expectation around the sudden conversion of my foot to a watermelon – I was just using it as a hypothetical example. My foot is fine. Which is nice because I really don’t like watermelon. Contrary to the popular slogan, I believe cantaloupe is the money melon.
Concerned about this (The dizziness plus the anxiety attacks – Not the melons) I went to see a doctor today. While sitting in the waiting room my wife handed me a magazine. It was a Time Magazine and she got bored with it because Time is about current events and this edition was mostly around how the Bush presidency was winding down.
To be fair it was the 2nd Bush so it wasn’t as outdated as it could have been and also my wife may have been put off a bit by her husband reading over her shoulder.
Figuring that a nearly 5 year old Time was still worth a look I flicked through it, with 3 elements catching my eye. The 1st was about how Rudy Giuliani was taking a run at the Presidency. The 2nd was about how Benazir Bhutto might face fall-out from breaking with Pervez Musharraf. The 3rd was some guy commenting about how, that even though he’d given up smoking, women still find a guy who does light up to be cool and sexy.
In case anyone has missed the last 5 years and was wondering how that all played out:
Badly, really badly and… Let’s face it, that smoking guy was a @#$% back then and he possibly still is now. In case he’s reading this and hasn’t been brought around to the bald truth about cigarettes – Women don’t find it cool and sexy when you smoke – I asked 1, who happens to be the coolest and sexiest in the world, and she said a. Smoking isn’t attractive and b. Why are you reading over my shoulder?
All of this got me thinking about hindsight. See, this magazine was issued in June of 2007 – The Red Sox would go on to win the World Series in 2007. Could you tell at that point in 2007 that the Sox were on their way? And if so could you apply the formula to 2012?
There’d be a nice synergy if I matched this up with the date of that magazine but I think that it was the 12th of June and that’s still some weeks away so instead let’s compare the Red Sox world on the 22rd of May, 2007 and 2012:
In 2007: The Red Sox were at Yankee Stadium as Tito Francona battled wits with Joe Torre. Julien Tavarez took the mound for the Good while Mike Mussina was on for the Evil. Happily it was to be a day that Good would triumph, with Julio Lugo (1), Kevin Youkilis (1), David Ortiz (1), Manny Ramirez (3) and Mike Lowell (1) batting in runs. In response the Yankees could muster RBIs from just Derek Jeter (1) and Jorge Posada (1) as they went down 7-2.
The win solidified a great start to the 2007 season for the Boston outfit – They ended the day at 31 and 14, 1st in the AL East. The Yankees by contrast were at 20 and 24, 2nd in the AL East but a whopping 10.5 games out of 1st.
The Sox would go on to record a 96 and 66 record, edging the Yankees by 2 for the Division title. At the end of those 162 outings the collective Sox ERA ranked 1st in the American League (AL), with 3.87, conceding 657 runs (4.06 per game). On offence they ranked 3rd, notching up 867 runs (5.35 per game).
As a footnote, the Baltimore Orioles finished the season in 4th in the AL East with a 69 and 93 record. I’m referencing the O’s because…
In 2012: The Red Sox were at Camden Yards for a May 22nd date with the Birds. In the Manager’s duds were Bobby Valentine for Boston and Buck Showalter for Baltimore. Feliz Doubront had the start for the Stockings while Brian Matusz responded for the Birds. Sadly it was to be a day that Birds would triumph, with Wilson Betemit (2) and Steven Tolleson (2) batting in runs. In response the Sox could muster just an RBI from Kevin Youkilis.
The loss solidified a pretty ordinary start to the 2012 season for the Boston outfit – They ended the day at 21 and 22, 5th and last, in the AL East. The Orioles by contrast are at 28 and 16, 1st in the AL East and a fair old margin of 6.5 games clear of Boston.
At the end of 43 games the collective Sox ERA is ranked 13th in the AL, with 4.63, conceding 214 runs (4.98 per game). On offence they rank 2nd, notching up 230 runs (5.35 per game).
Keen eyes will spot that the runs scored per outing are identical. The ERAs are not – In 2012 the ERA is 0.76 greater. It’s a small sample size for sure, but taken with a game by game breakdown and the 2012 Red Sox clearly have a pitching issue that they need to fix to go the distance. The good news is though that if they do get the stuff coming off the mound right then they are in with a real shot.
Oh and Kevin Youkilis is somehow a key factor.
Meanwhile the doc did a whole battery of tests and couldn’t pinpoint a problem beyond I’m tired and run-down. He did say that he figured that whatever the issue is it is probably fairly benign. Nonetheless I got sent for some blood tests and I booked myself in for some counselling to handle the anxiety stuff.
Which is going to be useful.
Since we were on a medical roll we followed my visit to the doc with 1 for my wife. This time it was the obstetrician – We’ve made it to 36 weeks and we’re getting ready for the arrival of a new package of wonderful chaos.
That concept really does make me dizzy and anxious but I wouldn’t miss it for the World Series.
Soup of This Day #182: The Spicks And The Specks
This isn’t the start of a battle with a despotic galactic empire – It’s astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile firing a laser at the centre of our galaxy so as to create an artificial star. They can then use this ‘reference’ star to correct for the atmospheric disturbances that make natural stars twinkle. It’s brilliant but not really sexy – Photo: Yuri Beletsky, European Space Agency (ESA), 2009. Neither Yuri Beletsky or ESA are affiliated with Longworth72. Image cropped by Longworth72.
Maths and I aren’t friends. Which was a problem for me because I chose to study physics at uni and it turns out that maths and physics are sleeping together.
In formless flannel nightgowns. There’s nothing sexy about maths or physics.
There is a great, probably apocryphal, story about the scientist who was the 1st to work out that atmospheric conditions mess with the light that comes from stars. He was lying on the grass 1 evening with his girlfriend, the both of them looking up at the wondrous night sky.
‘Look at those beautiful stars twinkling,’ the girl said, in reverent tones.
‘Yes,’ said the scientist,’and I’m the only 1 who knows why they twinkle.’
If this story is true, I’m hoping that she rolled over, punched him and then loudly announced that she was off to have glorious sex with someone a little more in tune with the here and now. Like a sports jock for instance.
Anyway I didn’t do that well at maths at uni. It’s not that I don’t do everyday math – I’m quite good at that. In the case of uni I was very good at it – As in:
If Fred has $15:75 and a middy of beer (250ml) costs $2.50 how much change will Fred have left to put towards his bus fare home?
6 glasses of draught plus 1 zone of public transport, just in case you were wondering.
In hindsight, this kind of example might provide some insight into why I didn’t do so well at the more formal side of maths at uni. Which is a shame because I quite like numbers. You can’t really be into sport without at least having a basic appreciation of them. Sport is, at it’s most simple, just a competition to get better numbers – You want more goals than the other folk, more points, more runs, more distance, more speed – All of it comes down to more of something qualitative and that kind of equation can best be expressed in numbers.
In homage then to the role of the humble number in sport this post is devoted to a study of them. Bear in mind that it’s more the ‘how many beers?’ kind of study than say the ‘supercomputer’ type of work you’ll find in a university. That’s not to say that the university stuff isn’t extremely valuable – It is and if you’re engaged in it then please stop reading this blog – Get back to solving the really important stuff right away.
So to begin and where else should we start than with the number 1. It’s an uncomplicated number is 1, uncluttered by divisors yet part of every other integer in the business. 1 is the leadoff in a baseball lineup for instance. 1 goes out to bat with no runners on.
And if 1′s name is Mike Avilés it smacks lead-off home runs on 2 consecutive nights against the Phillies. This generates a whole other series of numbers – Avilés is the 1st Sox player to hit consecutive leadoff home runs since May 30, 1913 when future Hall-of-Famer (1971) Harry Bartholomew Hooper achieved the feat in a double-header against the Washington Senators (Who became the Minnesota Twins in 1960). That was a just shy of 99 years ago. Hooper incidentally still holds the Red Sox record for triples (130) and steals (300).
The Red Sox won just 1 of those games against the Senators, losing the 1st 3-4 but snagging the 2nd 1-0 as Hooper’s lead-off homer made the difference. Back in 2012 and neither of Avilés long blasts tipped the numerical balance but in both games the Sox beat the Phillies (7-5 and 5-1) so it would be churlish not to say that those runs played a big part. They helped the Sox to win the 3-game interleague series and brought to an end the Phillies’ 6-game winning streak and 3-series winning streak as the Boston outfit triumphed 2-1. The Sox are now 20 and 21, just a win away from parity, .500.
In Game 2 of the series Avilés was joined by 3 other players in hitting shots over the fence. Big Papi was no surprise – He nailed a 2-run blast to centre. The other 2 were a little unusual – Not in that they scored but more in that they both scored in the same game. Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Will Middlebrooks have a combined 26 letters in their surnames. According to a tweet from ESPN’s Steve Berthiaume that’s the longest combined surname character total for 2 players who have hit home runs in the same game in MLB history.
Nice work Steve – Give that man a beer I say.
Over in football and on Saturday night just past there were 3 games of significant import.
Heart of Midlothian FC played Edinburgh rivals Hibernian FC in the Scottish Cup Final for the 1st time since 1896. Hearts had won that day, triumphing 3-1 in what has so far been the only Scottish Cup Final to be played outside of Glasgow. Hibs went on to win the 1902 Cup Final but haven’t won 1 since. Hearts by contrast have won 6 since 1896, including their 5-1 victory on Saturday. The Jambos had led 2-1 at the break before Hibs had a man sent off while conceding a penalty early in the 2nd half. Down 3-1 and with just 10 men left on the pitch the result was a foregone conclusion. That’s now 8 wins in Scottish Cup Finals in total for Hearts (6 losses) and 10 losses for Hibs (Just 2 wins).
I think the numbers are on the side of Hearts there.
West Ham had a tighter contest against Blackpool with the 2 locked at 1-1 until just before the end of normal time in their Championship Play-off Final at Wembley. The game is known as the richest in club football because of the way promotion to the English Premier League from the Championship (2nd-tier) is handled. The 1st 2 clubs in the Championship are automatically promoted. The next 4 clubs in the Championship play off, 1st in a 2-legged semi-final, and then the 2 winning clubs play in a single game. That 1 game provides entry to the EPL, which some accountant somewhere has worked out is worth a lot of money. Therefore it is considered to be the richest club game in the world.
Which meant that the Hammers 2nd goal, scored on the cusp of full-time by Carlton Cole, is surely the most important number of the football financial year.
Chelsea’s fans will dispute that. They finished regulation time and extra time of the Champions League (CL) Final locked with Bayern Munich at 1-1. This was a prodigious feat given that the game was coincidentally held in Bayern’s home, Allianz Arena, and that the German giants had largely dominated the 120 minutes of open play. In spite of that the game went to penalties and even though Bayern took an early 2-0 lead, the Londoners fought back to have the scores at 3-3 with just 1 kick to come, that of Chelsea’s Ivorian striker Didier Drogba. On his boot rested Chelsea’s 1st ever European Cup/CL title while on Bayern’s Manuel Neuer’s gloves rested the chance to keep the Munich side in with a shot of their 5th.
Drogba and Chelsea won. Another 4 of those and they’ll draw level with Liverpool FC.
Which is more than you can say for the Dockers, who played Hawthorn down at Tasmania’s Aurora Stadium, on the same Saturday. Freo got pummelled, eventually losing by 56 points. That result dropped them to 8th and into a dogfight for a coveted finals spot. Damningly, their percentage is 102.55%, meaning that they have barely scored more points than they have conceded (643 vs 627). This doesn’t raise hopes that they’ve got the fire-power to out-score the rest of their 2012 season opponents. This is a rather immediate problem this Sunday coming up as they play local rivals West Coast in the 35th Western Derby. Apart from heading the historical tally by 20 wins to 14, West Coast has scored 903 points so far this year as opposed to Freo’s 643.
Freo will have some time to think about those numbers on the trip home. It’s 445km from Launceston in Tasmania to Melbourne on the Australian mainland. And then it’s 2701km from Melbourne to Perth.
I thought I’d finish up with a bit of physics. I may have unfairly maligned the noble discipline earlier and I figured I could make up for it by demonstrating that it can indeed be the sexy science.
With some help from Wikipedia I’m going to explain why stars twinkle:
‘It is clearly established that almost all scintillation effects are caused by anomalous refraction caused by small-scale fluctuations in air density usually related to temperature gradients. Normal wind motion transporting such fluctuations across the observer’s line of sight produces the irregular changes in intensity characteristic of scintillation.’
So now you know. Promise me you’ll use this information for good and not in an attempt to get to 4th base.
Soup of This Day #181: It’s My Birthday Too, Yeah
181 Soups in 366 days (There was a February 29th this year) – Longworth72 is hitting at .495, although some of them are bloop singles – Photo: Ed g2s, 2005. Ed g2s is not affiliated with Longworth72. Image cropped by Longworth72.
When I was 18 I knew everything. I looked back to when I’d turned 17 and thought, ‘Geez, I was naive – How’d I survive? It’s a good thing I’ve worked out women now.’
But then…
When I was 19 I figured I knew everything. I looked back to when I’d turned 18 and thought, ‘Man, what a dunce – Can’t believe I got through life like that! Thankfully though I think I have women sorted out now.’
Although…
When I was 20 I calculated that I knew everything. I looked back to when I’d turned 19 and thought, ‘Sheesh, that me was a newb – Lucky I learned on the job. As for women – I’m glad I’ve got them sussed out now.’
And so on…
When I was 25 I had noticed a pattern had developed. I thought nothing much of it. Mostly because I knew everything and I surely wasn’t going to need to learn more.
Plus, I had women down pat.
When I was 30 I recognized that every year I learned something and developed as a human being. This was at once both depressing and exhilarating. It’s a downer because you know that in 12 months time you’re going to have to give a wry shrug of the shoulders and admit that you were wrong on some stuff. It’s an upper because you know that in 12 months time you’re going to have a keener insight into what it means to live in this world.
But not women. They’re a mystery. And in 1 case a particularly sexy 1 too.
Apart from understanding her and her sisterhood in general though I’m really making giant steps each year.
This might all sound a bit sentimental but I’m writing about it because tomorrow this blog celebrates it’s 1st birthday. That’s right, the very 1st Soup of This Day took shape a year ago tomorrow and to mark the occasion I thought I’d do a comparison between then and now, primarily across the 3 teams most beloved by this blog’s author, starting with the Fremantle Football Club, who ply their trade in the Australian Football League (AFL).
The Dockers had a successful May 21, 2011 – They beat Port Adelaide by 52 points to move to 5 and 3 in a season when most tipped them to finish on the edge of the top 4. The reality was harsher – Freo would win only 4 of their remaining 14 matches to finish in 11th, 3 wins from a finals place.
This year, and yesterday the Dockers were on the other end of a 50-point hiding, going down by 56 points to Hawthorn in Tasmania. This leaves the Dockers at 5 and 3 again, although most judges have a pretty low level of expectation from here, not because of last year but because the Dockers haven’t won with conviction – Their percentage is 102.55, the lowest of any in the top 8 and it’s hard to see them matching it with the contenders in the competition.
Which is pretty much how I see the Boston Red Sox. This time last year and it was a vastly different kettle of fish though. The Sox started their 2011 campaign in horror fashion, going 2 and 10 before rebounding sharply. By the time May 21st came around they were demolishing the hapless Cubs in interleague play 15-5 on their way to a 24 and 20 record. From there they built arguably the best run of form in the Majors.
Until September. But let’s not talk about that any more.
This year and the Sox again started out like a novice stilt-walker – They limped to 4 and 10 before making .500 at 10 and 10, nosediving to 12 and 19 and then recovering to a rough semblance of parity once more. This morning they edged the Phillies 7-5 in an interleague match-up and that result sees them at 19 and 21. Last year the expectations were huge – They were anointed as the greatest ever before opening day and even though that was a sardonic pronouncement by an enemy the sentiment seemed to stick with the faithful.
This year expectations are much lower. The pitching that failed so dramatically late last year is still suspect and 2012′s outcomes seem to be hanging on future trades.
Liverpool FC’s next season awaits some staff turnover as well. In fact the club needs to fill the position that most would argue defines the club – That of the manager. This time last year and club legend Kenny Dalglish was riding a wave of popular support. He’d given the fans back some of the hope that had been lost over the previous 12 months, particularly the previous 6 months under Roy Hodgson. Still they were finishing outside of the European places, well off the pace for a European place.
This year and the season is done earlier – Liverpool have finished in 8th, a dark season barely illuminated by a League Cup triumph. That latter piece of 2nd-tier silverware, the 1st trophy to grace Anfield in 6 years, was never going to be enough and so Dalglish is gone and we await his successor.
It certainly won’t be Roy Hodgson again – He’s just been appointed as the new England boss. Football – It’s a funny old game.
In fact that is something all 3 clubs share – Not Roy Hodgson – It’s more that none of them have the same coach/manager that they had when this blog started. Mark Harvey was given the boot by Fremantle in September of last year. Terry Francona lasted just a month later at the Red Sox. Kenny Dalglish held on until 2012 but like the other 2 his fate was sealed at the sorry end of the regular season.
A year is a long time in sport. Actually it’s a bloody long time – Take this weekend for instance in the AFL:
It’s Round 8 of the 2012 competition and by now, a 3rd of the way in, the wheat should have been sorted out from the chaff – The Premiership contenders should have shown at least something and the top 4 would be expected to be acting like they’re genuine.
Not so much of any of that.
Friday night saw last year’s Grand Finalists square off for the right to return to the 8. That’s right, powerhouses Geelong and Collingwood are scrapping just to be in the 8 a little over 7 months after they were scrapping for the Premiership Cup. Collingwood won this time and scooted up to level on points with the leading trio of teams. Reigning Premiers Geelong meanwhile slipped down to 10th.
Saturday lunchtime and pre-season favourites Hawthorn made their move, squashing the disappointing Fremantle Dockers in Tasmania and steaming up the ladder from 9th to 5th, just 1 win off top spot. Which a couple of hours later was assumed by Sydney who absolutely belted Melbourne and thus took the ladder lead off West Coast based on percentage…
Which they had a couple of hours to enjoy before Essendon edged out a tenacious Richmond to slip 1 win clear from the pack. The Bombers got a bit longer than the Swans at the head of the table…
Before Adelaide stunned contenders Carlton in Melbourne by a whopping 69 points, enabling them to overtake Essendon on percentage. The South Australians though had but a few hours to sit the throne…
Because the West Coast Eagles, the leaders before the weekend kicked off, worked home against the Saints to take back the prime slot by a couple of percentage points. The margin is so tight that had the Eagles not booted 3 goals in the last term they’d be 2nd.
And that was just across a couple of days. Can’t wait to see what will happen in the remaining 5 months of the comp.
But don’t worry – I’ve got it all worked out – I’m pretty sure I know everything about everything.
Except women – What’s up with them then?
A John Deere 8110 tractor with a chisel plough – For when the Earth is patient but an ox won’t get you to market on time – Photo: Jesster79, 2004. Jesster79 is not affiliated with Longworth72. Image cropped by Longworth72.
Tonight’s post is based around the wisdom of Australian Football League (AFL) coach Mick Malthouse, but in spite of that, mostly it relates to baseball.
Let me start by admitting that I’m automatically biased against Mick, even if it turns out that he’s a lovely bloke outside of football.
See, from 1990 until 1999 he was the coach of the West Coast Eagles. The Eagles are 1 of 2 Western Australian teams in the AFL. The other is the Fremantle Dockers of which I am a committed supporter. Freo are the working class battlers, whereas the Eagles are the rich, Chardonnay-set with a sense of entitlement.
When Freo wins the Dockers fans are ecstatic, mostly because deep down we’re always expecting that the lads will @#$% it all up somehow – When the West Coasters win their fans just seem to have expected it. There’s a sense of shock, a trembling of the wine glasses even, when they don’t make the finals.
But then Mick stepped it up a notch by moving to Collingwood, coaching them from 2000 until 2011. The Magpies are the New York Yankees or the Manchester United of the AFL. They are cashed up and possessed of a belief that the universe revolves around them. Consequently they are intensely disliked by pretty much everybody outside of themselves. Mick took this bunch of unloveable thugs and dragged them into 4 Grand Finals of which they won 1.
You can add that Premiership to the 2 he won with West Coast across 3 Grand Finals. So clearly Michael Malthouse knows his stuff and as such, even with the dislike, I tend to listen when he talks.
1 time I watched him talking on a football panel show. I can’t remember the season but Collingwood were out of contention and so Mick was talking in his usual brusque way about how other teams were performing. He was asked about 1 team in particular – The interviewer suggested that the team had ‘overachieved’. I can’t quote Malthouse’s reply word for word – I just don’t recall it that well. What I can do is rehash the spirit of the answer:
Mick’s response was a blunt denial that a team, any team, could overachieve. His theses was that what you’re actually saying when you use that term is that the team has done better than you thought they might – In other words they have exceeded your expectations. They haven’t overachieved though – They have in fact just achieved. The implication from Malthouse was that this level of achievement was not a surprise – They were who he thought they were, to paraphrase a line from Dennis Green.
If you follow Mick’s logic through then it’s also incorrect to suggest that a team might underachieve. And this is where we get to baseball. Specifically the interleague series that kicked off this morning with the Red Sox at the Phillies.
The Phillies should be contenders in 2012. They cruised to a 102 and 60 record last year, the best in the Majors, largely off the back of a stellar rotation. That pitching roster had a collective ERA of 3.02, ranking them 1st in the National League. For 2012 they have improved their staff on the mound – Keeping Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee in the starting rotation and adding Joe Blanton and Vance Worley. It’s hard to see much getting scored off that lineup.
But baseball is about offence as well as defence – You have to score runs too. In 2011 the Phillies managed 713 of them, good for just 7th in the NL. When it came to the playoffs they were bundled out 3-2 in the Divisionals by wild cards and eventual World Series Champions, St Louis. The Cards for the record were ranked 8th on ERA (3.74) but 1st on offence (762 runs).
So the logical step across the break would be to add some power off the bat?
No. The Phillies stayed solid across the team, adding only Jonathan Papelbon from the Red Sox as a big money acquisition.
Jonathan Papelbon, the closer.
That’s ‘closer’ as in pitcher who comes in to save the game in the 9th and therefore will most likely not bat, even in the NL.
That seems a strange area to strengthen in and so far this season it’s understandably seen no real improvement to the offence – They’ve notched 165 runs, ranking them at 6th in the NL. Worryingly their pitching is ranked 9th with an ERA of 3.55. That last will come down but in the meantime the Phillies went into this 3-game series with the Sox at 20 and 19, last in the NL East.
Underachieving? Nope – Pretty much achieving.
The Boston Red Sox occupy a similar place in the standings – They went in to this series also in last place in their Division, holding an 18 and 20 record. There though the comparison ends – The Red Sox don’t have a problem with the batting:
In 2011 they smoked their way to 875 runs, ranking them 1st in the American League. They were in fact ranked 1st on hits, doubles, OPS and SLG. This year they are at it again, albeit at a slightly lesser pace – 1st in doubles. 2nd in runs (209), hits and SLG. 3rd in OPS.
Pitching is another story. As in a horror story.
In 2011 the Red Sox were ranked 9th in the AL for ERA with a collective 4.20. They famously missed out on a wild card shot on the last day of the season, finishing up with a disappointing 90 and 72 record.
It’s not hard to join up the dots there is it?
This term the dots join up for an even uglier picture. Their collective ERA is 4.68, good for 13th in the AL rankings.
There are only 14 teams in the AL.
Underachieving? Nope – Achieving at pretty much the right level for a team that did not a lot to strengthen a suspect pitching rotation bar selling off the closer to the Phillies (Admittedly akin to selling ice to the eskimos so a fair feat of salesmanship) and adding a flotilla of maybe-they-will-be-Cinderella punts on the cheap.
So for this morning’s game I was expecting a tight contest with the Phillies just shading the Sox via superior pitching.
And that was what happened.
Cole Hamels was ok. He gave up a couple of home runs but both were solo shots so the damage was limited. Daniel Bard for the Sox though was wild – His line showed 49 balls out of 94 pitches across 5 innings. He gave up 5 runs off just 3 hits and hit 2 batters.
Just in case that last stat offends Phillies fans can I point out that the ball caroomed off the 2nd hit batter and split open Sox catcher, Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s ear, taking him out of the game and off to hospital. Ty Wigginton, the Phillies bat in the middle of that sandwich was ok.
Karma has done her work there then.
In the end the Phillies got home 6-4. Result achieved.
I’m going to end this post as it started, via the wisdom of Mick Malthouse. Mick is a thinker – Not afraid to go outside the box now and then in search of an edge.
I’ve always thought of him as a serious Yogi Berra, capable of weird stuff but without the sense of humour. This last bit from him sums that up nicely – At a post-game press conference for the Eagles he gave an answer to a question that nobody seems to remember any more. That lack of recall is probably because the answer makes little sense to anyone apart from a student of Confucious:
‘The ox is slow but the earth is patient.’
Yes Mick, and the ox is achieving.
Faced with having to take a taxi across town to save the world the Green Lantern chose to walk – Photo: Joseph Plotz, 2009. Joseph Plotz is not affiliated with Longworth72. Image cropped by Longworth72.
When I was younger I was fairly across the whole superhero thing. My favourite was the Green Lantern. He had everything – Could do anything and could not be defeated.
Except by the colour yellow.
Which is a pretty big chink in the ol’ superhero armour. Particularly if the armour is made of gold. Gold being a variant of yellow.
Come to think of it, there’s a bit of yellow in a lot of stuff. Cheese is often yellow. Lemons are yellow. I’m guessing that the Green Lantern would wig out if ever a dinner party host unveiled a lemon cheesecake for afters.
‘Listen pal,’ you’d hear him say, ‘you reckon you’ve got problems being lactose intolerant? That cheesecake could take over the world and I’d be powerless to prevent it.’
That cheesecake though is just the tip of a giant yellow iceberg (Don’t drink the melt from that). You get yellow in sunsets. In fact, you get yellow in pretty much all of the light from the Sun. Even the colour green itself, so beloved by the Green Lantern, can be made by mixing blue and wait for it… yellow.
I’m now older and I think that the Green Lantern’s powers are not for me. I’m looking for something a little more pragmatic.
And I need something a little more realistic, more obtainable. It’s unlikely a dying alien will bequeath me a power ring.
Nope. I’m going to need to gain my superpower via conventional means – I’m going to need to have been born with it.
Given that, I’ve spent some time reflecting upon me, working to tease out what my superpower is. And after a great deal of introspection I’ve come up with superhuman talent that is perhaps a touch ironic…
Yep, it turns out that my special superpower is the ability to be very self-reflective. Granted, as a superpower it’s not going to be much use in the short term if say, I’m engaged in a battle with a supervillain like Sinestro. My powers of self-reflection in truth only have an immediate impact on me. In the long run though my mental health will surely outstrip his – That dude is heading for a breakdown and he can’t see it coming.
This superpower isn’t just for combating intergalactic evil – It’s also very useful as a sports fan.
See, it allows me to view my teams a little more objectively. To steal a riff from Seinfeld, I’m not a face painter – I’m the guy who thinks about being a face painter but who ultimately recognizes that it will have minimal impact upon the actual sport being played. Also I have a substantial beard – It’s bad enough that I get food stuck in that, getting paint in there would be ugly. Overall I think I’ll just skip the application of pigment to my facial region and stick to more conventional supporting attire, like replica shirts or hats.
I’m a rational sports fan.
That’s right – I suffer from chronic depression and all of the really crap stuff that goes with that, like anxiety and hypochondria – Yet I’m able to engage with my sporting teams in a reasonable level way.
Oh, I still rant.
Many’s the time my wife has threatened to nick off with the remote if I don’t stop haranguing the TV because the Fremantle Dockers have… well… done pretty much anything.
What I don’t do is carry the feeling over after the game – What the Fremantle Dockers do on the field of play is not going to fix my depression and I know that. Similarly the Red Sox collapse of September was just a little bit horrible but when compared to having the black dog hounding me it was a pretty small drop in the ocean. Liverpool losing the FA Cup Final a few weeks back sucked but had they won would it have covered off our dog dying? Not likely. Sport isn’t a crutch I’m going to turn to.
Which is a good thing of late because my teams have been playing like @#$%. Chief amongst them has been Liverpool FC.
The Reds have just finished off their worst season in the English Premier League (EPL) since it’s inception in 1992. After 38 games they had slumped into the mid-table obscurity of 8th, a place below their financially crippled neighbours Everton. In the process they won just 6 games at Anfield out of 19 attempts. Their winning percentage in total was just 36.84%, their lowest since 1953/54, just a year after England last had a king.
That though is just statistical candy in the harsh present of the EPL. Far more substantive are the following numbers: Liverpool finished on 52 points, a whopping 37 adrift of the champions, Manchester City. If you lower the bar somewhat to just Champions League (CL) qualification (Top 4) then the Reds were still 17 points adrift. That’s 6 wins from making it into the lucrative CL and 13 wins from winning the only prize that matters to Liverpool’s legions of fans. Damningly, if you flip the bar upside down then the Merseysiders were just 16 points plus goal difference from relegation.
Some face painters will point to the League Cup win, Liverpool’s 1st piece of silverware for 6 years, as a sign that it’s not all gloom at Anfield. Sadly they are not possessed of my superpower and I suspect their face paint is yellow. As the New York Times points out, with perspective enhanced by the gulf of the Atlantic, the League Cup is 2nd-tier. Liverpool have spent an estimated £120 million under the tenure of manager Kenny Dalglish since January of 2011 – That’s 1st-tier spending for a single 2nd-tier trophy – That’s the kind of calculation that just yesterday cost Dalglish his job.
Liverpool’s managing director Ian Ayre summed up the situation succinctly when he was asked if Liverpool winning the FA Cup Final would have saved Dalglish in the eyes of owners, John W. Henry, et al of Fenway Sports Group (FSG):
‘It was a very simple decision based on results and based on whether you believe that that’s going to change. Thirty-seven points off the winners, 17 points off fourth place and 14 losses. That was the measurement on which the owners made their decision. And they made their decision without using advisors.
“The Carling Cup [League Cup] and the FA Cup don’t generate the revenue and the success that is needed to keep investing. If you want to be successful, you have got to keep investing. People don’t want to hear that football is a business. They want to see us put lots and lots of money into the football team and win lots of trophies and games. But you have got to have both. You have got to have continued progress in the league. If you don’t do well in the league and you don’t get into the Champions League, you are writing cheques from your own pocket, aren’t you? That is not a sustainable way going forward.’
And it isn’t.
See for modern football clubs their weakness is not like for the Green Lantern – It’s not the colour yellow. In fact it’s not so much a colour as a concept – See, the big weakness for a modern football club is debt. You don’t have to look back far into EPL history to find examples of the damage that can be wreaked by debt. For that, there is Yorkshire’s Leeds United AFC.
Leeds are 1 of the most supported clubs in the UK. From 1964 until 1974 they were English football royalty – Twice winning the top tier and 5 times finishing as runner-up. In 1992 they won the last Division 1 title before it became the EPL and across the turn of the millennium were 1 of England’s powerhouse teams, memorably reaching the CL semis in 2001, partly off the back of a serious spending spree.
Their EPL form though dropped off and they failed narrowly to qualify for the 2002 CL. From there they imploded – Without the CL’s attendant income they were forced into selling off any player with a heartbeat and they were relegated in 2004. In 2007, with a League-imposed points deduction for financial mismanagement Leeds were relegated again, this time entering the 3rd-tier of English football for the 1st time in their 88 year existence. They’re now back in the 2nd-tier but they are a shadow of the once-great club that set the gold standard in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The influx of big money and the associated debt have been an imposed evil for football clubs. The good news for Liverpool is that I have a way forward that won’t involve a Leeds-type collapse…
See, I know who to call to deal with evil…
‘In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil’s might,
Beware my power, Green Lantern’s light!’
The Maine Monster at Hadlock Field, home of the Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. From 1994 until 2002 the Sea Dogs were an affiliate of the Florida Marlins. 1 of their 2002 ‘graduates’ was then-Marlins pitcher Josh Beckett. He’s now, like the Sea Dogs, with the Red Sox – Photo: Dudesleeper, 2007. Dudesleeper is not affiliated with Longworth72. Image cropped by Longworth72.
Sometimes I ask myself why I’m getting out of bed in the morning. It’s a rhetorical question but I feel compelled to ask it, mostly on cold weekday mornings.
It’s a comfortable bed you see.
Usually I stumble out of bed, sort of an upwards fall. This is sometimes prompted by a kick in the old wedding tackle from The Noah who has wiggled and squirmed his growing frame into the space between a pregnant Mum and a sleepy Dad, often with a book or many. Currently The Cat in the Hat Comes Back is in vogue.
People in sport, the very top end of sport, probably need a little more than. Actually the last thing they need is a kick in the privates. Partly because it hurts but mostly because they have to get out of bed and then they have to go and do serious stuff like swim laps.
Lots of laps. Kilometres of them.
Or they have to run a long way, eat some scientifically formulated slurry for breakfast and then run some more. And all for a fleeting shot at glory.
Mhairi Spence has that dream for the 2012 London Olympics. She is a British competitor in the modern pentathlon, an event that comprises fencing, swimming, horse-riding, running and shooting.
So Mhairi has to swim those kilometres, run a long way, eat the science mush and then run some more. Then she needs to wave a sword around, sit on a horse while it runs and then shoot stuff while trying not to throw up her nutritionally optimised food from all of the running involved in getting there.
Sounds easy.
It’s probably not though and Mhairi must have done a lot of it because, as of the weekend just past, she is the World Champion at it.
That’s just a step along the way for her though. She has bigger dreams.
Her globe-defying success has earned her a shot at the Olympics. For most that noble dream would be the ultimate motivation to get out of bed to train. Mhairi though has to train at 5 things so she needs a little more.
She needs a puppy called Donald.
If she medals at the Olympics Mhairi is going to get a puppy called Donald. Donald is at present just a concept-dog. Mhairi hasn’t actually met a dog called Donald. She just wants 1 and she will call him Donald.
‘I dream of Donald… I’m sure he dreams of me’
Ok.
I know that Donald is more of a dream than a reality at this point but I’m feeling a little sorry for him right now. We just lost a dog. He had won his place in our family via a back scratch and a throw of a tennis ball. And from that simple criteria we had 9 years of canine friendship and he got owners who got him.
Donald’s chance at that happy outcome is dependant upon Mhairi winning a place on the Olympic podium. Which is a lot more complex than throwing a tennis ball.
Best of luck Donald.
That may sound like I’m mocking Mhairi but I’m not meaning to – I have a lot of respect for her and I’ll be barracking for her in August – She sounds like a hell of a competitor and since she’s in the modern pentathlon I’m a-guessin’ that she isn’t in it for the money.
Josh Beckett pitches for the Boston Red Sox. He reckons he has it tough too. And maybe he does – I have no idea if he swims, runs, rides a horse, fences or shoots each day. I do know that a baseball season is pretty gruelling, with 162 games compressed into 6 months.
That means a game most days. Or as Josh recently put it – They only get 18 off days a year.
Which isn’t quite accurate. What Josh meant was that they get 18 off days across the season. Even so that’s a busy schedule and half of it involves travel away from home. To be honest I couldn’t handle that – I get homesick.
The flipside of all of this is that Josh Beckett gets paid handsomely. And when I say handsomely I mean George Clooney handsome as opposed to Rob Schneider handsome.
Apparently George is something.
Sorry Rob.
Currently Josh pulls down $17 million a year and is in year 2 of a 4 year stretch. Prior to that deal he’d notched up 4 years with the Sox at $10 million per year. That’s a lot of money but in the MLB market Josh has been worth it. He’s an ace who was the 2003 World Series MVP as his Marlins outfit earned the title. Switching to Boston in 2006 he played a key role in their 2007 World Series triumph, snagging 20 wins across that year.
For all that, recent evaluations might be a bit lower – His 2010 involved a back injury and a 6 and 6 record. 2011 was better, with a 13 and 7 compilation, but in September, with a momentous team implosion underway, Josh was tagged for 2 critical late-season losses to Baltimore.
He was also tagged with eating fried chicken and drinking beer in the clubhouse during games he wasn’t pitching in.
This year he’s apparently off the chicken and beer but his record has been patchy – His line reads 3 and 4 with an ERA of 4.97 from 7 starts. He’s missed a spot in the rotation once – Handing over to Aaron Cook for a May 5 match-up with Beckett’s recent-hoodoo Baltimore. Cook, in for Josh thanks to a lat strain for the ace, was belted around by the O’s for 7 runs in 2.2 innings. It’s a shame that Beckett was missing because there’s no way he’d have gone for those numbers. That though is a moot point – Josh had a lat strain and he needed to get on top of that by playing golf on his off day.
Yeah, I said golf.
2 days before Cook subbed in for the ace who had developed a lat strain while hurling in a 1-4 loss to the White Sox, the ace spent a team off-day out on the links.
Which would have been ok except that in his next start he got shelled for 7 runs off of 2.1 innings. It turns out that Josh Beckett can go for the same numbers as Aaron Cook after all.
7 runs in 2.1 innings.
At Fenway.
In a 3-8 loss to Cleveland.
For whom former Sox legend Derek Lowe got the win.
The comparison with the 39 year old Lowe was pointed. The pitcher who won all 3 deciding post-season games in 2004 for the Sox managed 6 innings for 2 runs this night against the Sox. The Sox badly needed some of Lowe’s quality – That was their 8th loss in a 9 game stretch. Maybe it took all of those factors but Josh Beckett was booed off the mound while Bobby Valentine was cheered as he came out to hook him.
For mine, that’s a bit harsh, particularly in hindsight. Beckett did bounce back next start with a 7-innings, 4 hit gem in a 5-0 win over Seattle. That result capped a 5-win streak that has seen the Red Sox climb back to within a shout of .500. That effort at least has Josh back, if only partially, in the Fenway faithful’s good books.
To complete the transformation and make the 32 year old Josh Beckett a hero at Fenway once more the next step is surprisingly easy. It does not involve golf. It does not involve fried chicken, beer or even scientifically formulated mush.
It just needs a puppy named Donald*. He’s dreaming of you winning another ring Josh – Count on it.
And now, it’s been a long day – I’m off to bed.
*Not the same puppy as the 1 that Mhairi Spence is dreaming of. It’s a different Donald.
