November is here, which means that October has come to an end, and with it, the ocular invasion that is the NFL’s breast cancer awareness campaign. Last year, I asked whether, for the NFL, pink really meant green:
Dinner is a popular event at the Abbey, and after last episode’s three-course meal, it seems it’s supper time again.
This episode presents a baseball-themed inversion of a classic dinner trope, as there was no dinner guest to be found when the paternalistic Braves arrived in Queens this week to dine with the Mets:
As briefly mentioned at the end of the last post, ALDLAND will have a presence in Detroit this weekend, where the Tigers will host the Atlanta Braves for three games, beginning tonight.
After twenty games, the Tigers can’t seem to get themselves above .500, and the early ride has been bumpy.
Yesterday afternoon’s game was particularly rough. After allowing just one earned run, starter Justin Verlander left the game with a lead on the scoreboard and a sore throwing-hand thumb. Rookie reliever Bruce Rondon, making his first major-league appearance, promptly gave up that lead, and then the ball. Phil Coke entered and, through a series of walks of varying intentionalities, put Detroit behind. Darin Downs relieved Coke and immediately gave up a grand slam. The supposedly hard-hitting Tigers, who have a way of not scoring late, plated no runs from the fifth inning on through the tenth, when they lost.
As anyone reading Upton Abbey knows, the Braves are red-hot. The consensus best team in baseball, Atlanta is off to a 15-6 start, and they’re hitting home runs like crazy. I haven’t taken a close look at their runs/inning distribution, but it sure seems like they can hit for power both early and late. Keep reading…
Airships are away in the Detroit Tigers empire as I write. After a crash landing at the final destination of the team’s only West Coast trip, the Tigers limped back to the Motor City, and promptly (indeed, retroactively) placed Octavio Dotel, who has been pitching without a functioning elbow since Oakland, on the disabled list. In immediate need of bullpen reinforcements, GM Dave Dombrowski & Co., air traffic controller furloughs be damned, revved up the sky fleet. The first move was to bring the franchise’s top relief prospect, Bruce Rondon, in from Toledo, something that admittedly is unlikely to require the services of a jet airliner. But then! Wheels up! Jose Valverde is on a flight to Detroit RIGHT NOW! The town and team turned on the once-perfect (49-0!) reliever after a down year last season, but now, in their need, redemption? The front office is mum for now, but the implication from Valverde’s comments this evening is that, at the end of his short-term minor league contract, he will sign a one-year contract with the club in Detroit.
What does all of this mean for a should-be frontrunner floundering in third place in the weak AL Central with a .500 record? Even though it’s early, and fans of baseball teams that struggle early love to rail against “small sample sizes,” we can set aside results and other numbers and acknowledge that the bullpen was working way too hard this month, and two fresh, if unsteady, arms are sure to provide at least temporary relief for a staff that seems like it could use a collective deep breath. For Rondon, my hope is that he’s ready for the big leagues. For Valverde, I just hope he has enough left to allow the coaches to use him in a way that helps the team. That may be ending this jet-set flourish with something of a sigh, but let it be, in part, a sigh of relief as you remind yourself that at least it wasn’t Brennan Boesch’s birthday flight that landed at DTW this evening.
Keep reading to find out who else will be on a flight to Detroit this week…
Back in August, I noted the launch of what then appeared to be a new heavy hitter in the high-end online sportswriting market: Sports on Earth, helmed by the well-known (for varying reasons) Joe Posnanski. After working out expected opening-day kinks, the site was getting off the ground nicely, and SoE has found a good niche providing current, day-to-day content in digestible bites by good writers. With those good writers and the backing of USA Today and Major League Baseball, the site seemed to be in a good place.
After just five months, though, Posnanski left without explanation, which had the effects of calling the site’s future viability into question and bolstering Posnanski’s reputation as a drifter. (His immediate destination was not a mystery, though: he joined NBC Sports to “writ[e] long-form stories” and a weekly column on Fridays called “The Big Read,” which seems like a painfully obvious play on “The Big Lead,” a popular, all-purpose sports site USA Today– Posnanski’s most recent former employer– bought a year ago. Weird.)
SoE lumbered on through the winter without a formal leader, and, really, seemed no worse for the wear. Spring arrived last week, Easter is this weekend, and yesterday, former “contributing writer” Will Leitch issued this announcement:
I am pleased to announce that next month, I will be joining the staff of Sports On Earth full-time, as a lead writer for the site. I’ve been writing for the site part-time since it launched last fall, but now I’m going to be there every day. It’s going to be my home.
My columns up to this point have been mostly media columns, but this is a more expansive role: I’m basically gonna be writing about everything, traveling all over the place, serving as the face (or one of the faces, anyway) of the site. I will also be hosting a daily podcast and will occasionally contribute for MLB.com, and certain columns will also be running in USA Today. Basically: I’m gonna be all over the place there.
Will’s writing voice has some built-in modesty to it, but the circumstances (including the fact that he is leaving his full-time position at New York magazine) make it clear to me that he has claimed Posnanski’s vacant seat as the head and face of Sports on Earth.
I think this is great news. Leitch remains a fresh voice in the media and sports realm, and he combines that with the experience that comes from operating very successfully and with perspective online. Will seems to have retooled and stretched out a bit since leaving Deadspin, and I think we’re at the point where we’re all going to benefit from his taking an in-earnest plunge back into the sports world.
Leitch’s first day in his new role is April 15.
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Related
The Weekend Interview: Charlie Warzel
Previously
And then there were four: Joe Posnanski’s Sports on Earth joins the fray
LAS VEGAS — Jerry Tarkanian shifted in his easy chair to find a place it didn’t hurt so much. “My butt is sore,” he said. It’s what happens when you’re 82 years old and you fell four years ago. Back in the day, Jerry Tarkanian roared. On this day, his voice was a whisper, tiny and airy as a child’s.
“He’s worn out by physical therapy this morning,” his wife, Lois, said.
Maybe it’d be better to talk another day?
“No, no, he needs this,” she said.
In early April, for the first time, Tarkanian will be a finalist for election to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
A question to him: Would you like to be in?
His lips barely moved. “It’d be nice,” he said.
What would your players think?
Again, a faint breath of air. “They would like it.”
We should shout it out. Jerry Tarkanian belongs in every basketball Hall of Fame. He built teams at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas that were wonders of the craft. They were at once aggressive and careful, disciplined and relentless. To see UNLV leave Duke alongside the road in the 1990 NCAA championship game, 103-73, was to see basketball made beautiful. In 31 seasons at Long Beach, UNLV and at his alma mater, Fresno State, Tarkanian’s teams won 778 games. He took UNLV to the Final Four four times.
This is also worth a shout: Tark was right all along. He called the NCAA corrupt long before such thinking was fashionable. … Read More
(via Sports On Earth)
The best all-purpose defender in the NBA loves to talk trash. But Tony Allen keeps that in his own locker room. He says nothing to the man he’s guarding. Not a word, not whisper, nothing about someone’s momma or girlfriend or even what he thinks about their breath. And yes, Allen is usually close enough to tell if they need an Altoid.
“I save my oxygen,” he explains, “because I don’t want to waste any energy I could be using to play the game.”
You wait for him to flash an I’m-kidding smile or jab an elbow into your ribs. Nothing. He can be quite funny and quirky and always seems to be cutting someone up. But about defense? Serious as a stroke. … Read More
(via Sports on Earth)
First, here’s Sports On Earth’s Mike Tanier on Super Bowl Media Day:
The most notorious event of Super Bowl week: a Roman orgy in which the wine and debauchery have been replaced by banal quotes and poorly concealed hostility. Media Day is our industry’s excuse to stuff a tube down our own metaphorical esophagus and gorge ourselves like foie gras geese on a fatty slurry of pregame hype. The players trapped inside interview booths for hour-long interview marathons are ironically the only people in attendance not trying to draw attention to themselves. The whole event is televised, and sometimes open to the ticketed public, so fans can watch players go glassy eyed at inane questions while reporters jostle each other as if the person who gets 18 inches closer to Pernell McPhee wins an automatic Pulitzer.
Media Day, like many Super Bowl events, has acquired its own gravity and atmosphere, so sportswriting cutups like me are more likely to write about Media Day than to write reports based on the interviews we conduct during Media Day. You might think that this would be a good year to report on the phenomenon of reporting on the phenomenon of Media Day, which I am technically doing in this sentence, but in fact that became a common angle on Media Day about two years ago. At some point, you just stick phrases like “Delanie Walker spoke to a bikini model holding a disco ball dangling from a fishing pole Tuesday,” on a plate with some field greens, then move on to something else.
Tanier’s basic take on Media Day isn’t new or fresh– something he readily acknowledges– even if his way of presenting it was.
The question is, why do the same people who hate Super Bowl Media Day seem to absolutely love the cultural circus that is college football’s SEC Media Days?
This is an open thread.UPDATE: This no longer is an open thread.
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The NFL playoffs is down to its final four teams, and by Sunday night, we’ll know whether Baltimore or New England will be facing Atlanta or San Francisco in the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
These playoffs have been a Rusty’s Last Call ride for Ray Lewis, whose Ravens somewhat improbably have advanced to the AFC championship game. While their opponent, the Patriots, is a perennial postseason favorite, the Ravens (and not, any longer, the Seahawks) are the hot team of this postseason, and it’s becoming difficult to bet against them– ESPN certainly isn’t. Lewis’ last dance may come Saturday. If not, it will come on Super Bowl Sunday.
If it does, Lewis will share the setting sun’s spotlight with one other notable retiree. If the NFC championship game goes according to the seeding, it will be longtime Chief and current Falcon Tony Gonzalez. The tight end, probably best known for popularizing the crossbar dunk TD celebration, says he’s 95% certain he’ll retire after this season, and while his final act has received markedly less than the gyrating, bionic-armed one of Lewis, the attention he has received has taken care to note just how impressive of a career he’s had.
If the NFC championship game follows the hot hand, as it sure seems like it may, Lewis’ possibly outgoing opponent will one whose superstardom has long since burned low. Randy Moss’ days as the league’s most dominant wide receiver are long gone. His days as an albatross– i.e., his days in Oakland and Nashville– seem to be in the past as well. He’s retired once, and he’s rapidly approaching the end of his one-year contract with San Francisco. There hasn’t been any retirement discussion from Moss (this ambiguous retweet aside), or really much discussion of him in the media at all. Moss’ numbers are way down from his peak-production years, though they’re up over his recent disaster years. It’s tough to know whether the 49ers or Moss will want to sign a new contract for next year– he started only two games this year, the fewest of any season in his career– or if this is it. The only sure bet looks to be that, if this Sunday or Super Bowl Sunday really is Moss’ last game, he’ll treat it a little differently than Lewis will handle his.
Miguel Cabrera, the Detroit Tigers’ third baseman, enters tonight’s game against Kansas City, the last game of the baseball season, leading the American League in home runs, batting average, and RBI. The last time a player in either league finished the regular season with the lead in all three categories (i.e., won the triple crown) was 1967, forty-five years ago. This is a huge deal.
It’s a huge deal, and it’s failing to register a commensurate blip on the national media radar, and that’s a shame. This is not a Detroit-complex issue, a simple want of attention and validation (I’ve addressed that concept before), but if Cabrera was a member of the Yankees or Red Sox, to name two teams, Kansas City would be a media circus right now. The game would be on national radio and television broadcasts, and Sportscenter would have a running clock counting down the minutes until the first pitch.
There has been some national coverage this week, it’s true, and the national baseball writers, like Jonah Keri and Joe Posnanski, have been somewhat better about this than their broadcast counterparts, but come on. This is a readily understandable, offense-involving achievement that hasn’t happened in nearly a half-century, and it’s only happened about a dozen times ever. This should be receiving the Tebow treatment, the Brett Favre’s locker treatment, heck, even the Roger Clemens pitching a minor league baseball game treatment. The NFL draft gets more coverage than this story. And what coverage Cabrera’s story gets, as anyone who read the @ALDLANDia feed early this morning knows, is uninformed, manufactured, trite media banter.
Cabrera has been nothing but humble, deflecting, and team-oriented this entire season. He deserves the spotlight, but he’ll never ask for it. Even if he did, it’s too late now, the first pitch of the 162nd game moments away (it’ll be his 161st game of the season). He should be invited to the White House if he secures the triple crown tonight, but even those two are too busy.
ALDLAND 