Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Meet the Sisyphean Mets

Game 162, 2008
Marlins 4
Mets 2



Game 162, 2007
Marlins 8
Mets 1




It came down to the last day of the season.
The Mets lost.
It came down to the last day of the season.
Again.
The Mets lost.
Again.

I was absolutely deadened by the loss to the Marlins on Sunday afternoon. As lifeless as the expression on Michael Cera's face when he delivers a punch line. I crawled under the heavy made-for-winter comforter on my bed (the one that my girlfriend absolutely hates all summer long) year-round and laid there, in and out of fevered sleep as the closing ceremonies at Shea Stadium took place on SNY. I was exhausted. I was a little sweaty. I was a little drunk. I'd been at Shea the day before. I'd watched Saturday's Cubs/Brewers game in a bar in midtown after emerging from Penn Station. I'd even gotten up at 6:45 a.m. to run a 5K race on Sunday morning for charity. Mostly because I thought the karmic boost might help the Mets. It didn't. The Mets lost. On the last day of the season. To the Marlins. Again.

Much ink has been spilt about the game. About the obviousness of the bullpen imploding. About the ways in which this group is flawed. About the ways in which it should be altered. It's all true. I'll no doubt chime in with my thoughts on how to shake up and/or break up this club. But I'm not entirely ready to talk about baseball moves. About option years. And free agent signings. Not yet. Before we can talk hot stove we need to talk about Greek mythology. First we need to talk about Sisyphus and his boulder.

Sisyphus was the son of Aeolus, the king of Thessaly. He was cunning and ambitious, filled with confidence and an absence of respect for the gods. He was credited as the founder of Corinth, a city-state on the narrow stretch of land connecting the Greek mainland with the Peloponnese. He had it all. His piece of Corinthian real estate pushed many a traveler past his door. Sisyphus famously murdered and took advantage of those on the road or upon the sea. He was deceitful and violent when it came to gaining wealth and protecting it. Among the many crimes committed by Sisyphus was revealing a secret of Zeus. Not surprisingly the secret had to do with some illicit loving.

Zeus, seeking recompense, sent Hades, lord of the Underworld, to take Sisyphus in chains to the kingdom of the dead. Upon arriving at Sisyphus's place, Hades was tricked by his should-be captive into trying on the very chains he brought with him. The clever Sisyphus feigned such interest in the workings of the binding instruments that his would-be captor actually demonstrated how they worked. On himself. With near-Olympic quickness, Sisyphus locked the cuffs and left the god in the coat closet for a time. And, just like in a certain Family Guy episode, the finality of death was stopped while Hades was imprisoned. During this interlude, the ever-plotting Sisyphus told is wife that upon his death she must not bury him. She probably didn't know what he was talking about but probably also hated the guy so she did as he asked. It was surely less hassle for her not to have a funeral. Especially for such a jerk. Eventually, Hades was loosed. Sisyphus died and was brought the Underworld.

Upon arriving in the underworld, our wily protagonist had one final trick up his robe. Remember, there were no sleeves to hide tricks in back then. Anyway, he lamented to Persephone, the wife of Hades and queen of the underworld, how unfortunate it was that his own beloved wife had never performed the traditional funerary rights over his corpse. It was a sob story of the highest caliber. And, like her gullible beau, Persephone fell for it. She permitted Sisyphus to return to the land of the living to see that his wife burried his body properly. Of course, Sisyphus had no interest in being properly sent off to death. He was back on the mortal coil to party it up while he could. And, boy did he ever. Some of the stuff he pulled would have made Zeus blush. And, that guy impregnated people while impersonating livestock. Eventually, though, Sisyphus was dragged back down to Hades. Needless to say, the Greek gods were less than pleased with him. He was sentenced to eternal frustration and hard labor. He was given a mammoth boulder and forced to push it to the zenith of a mountain. The trick was that every time he about to reach the peak the boulder would roll right back down to the bottom. Sisyphus had no option but to start over each time. Forever. Each day, year and season was the same. Sisyphus would push that boulder up the mountainside only to be thwarted at the last moment.

Sort of like the Mets these days. After the second consecutive year of missing out on the playoffs on the campaign's final day, it is clear these are the Sisyphean Mets. The ballclub and its fans have been fated to relive the same painful ending over and over. In each of the past three seasons we've almost rolled the boulder to the top of the mountain. Only to see it roll back down at the penultimate moment. It is the same thing. Over and over. And, these have been potentially the first few years of forever. Forever ever.

In the second-to-last game of the 2007 the Mets received a dominant (near no-hitter by John Maine) pitching performance and survived to fight on the final day. On the morning of the final game it felt like the momentum had finally turned. It felt like the team would get the boulder to the summit. But they didn't. They lost to the Marlins. And the boulder rolled down as the other team (the Phillies) won. In the second-to-last game of the 2008 season the Mets received a dominant (three-hit complete game by Johan Santana) pitching performance and survived to fight another day. On the morning of the final game it felt like the momentum had finally turned. It felt like the team would get the boulder to the summit. But they didn't. They lost to the Marlins. And the boulder rolled down as the other team (the Brewers) won.

To take this a step further (and at this point, why not?), almost every single game that the Mets play at this point is a Sisyphean challenge: The Mets score in the early innings to move the boulder up the mountain only to see the bullpen surrender the lead late in the game, sending the burden crashing back down the incline. That's a happened a few times.

The real question is not whether or not the club should fire GM Omar Minaya (YES!), rather the most important question to ask is what was the Mets trespass that angered the baseball gods so much? Perhaps it was the hubris engendered by the magazine covers that Minaya and his multicultural clubhouse garnered in the first years of his reign. Perhaps it was Minaya's vanity and his positioning of himself as some sort of bilingual revolutionary. Perhaps it was the team's confidence going into the 2007 season. They carried themselves as if they had already won the World Series from the first day of Spring Training. Whereas all they had really done was lose in the second round of the 2006 playoffs. Perhaps this is punishment for the disgraceful way in which former manager Willie Randolph was fired in the dead of night in Anaheim. Or, could the way in which the Mets brass used their late-night axe in hopes of deceiving the newspapermen back in New York be what has brought this blight upon us? Maybe angering the back-pagesters by trying to circumvent, even if just for 24 hours, their platform is the modern-day equivalent of tricking Hades and chaining him up in the closet.

Whatever the particular demerit that brought this punishment upon the organization, it must be noted that there is some blame to be laid on the shoulders of all us Mets fans for the club's Sisyphean fate. The blame must partly carried on our shoulders because we've failed to notice Sisyphus's boulder all these years. We failed to notice the boulder until it was too late, even though the engine of our punishment was in Flushing long before the 2008 denouement. And long before the 2007 collapse. It was there all along. Since the inception of the franchise it has been lying in wait for its fated work in the final days of Shea Stadium. It's been counting the days until it would roll back upon us. And, we cheered it. And, we loved it. Not seeing this damning boulder for what it was. You could say the boulder was our mascot. Because it was. The Sisyphean boulder has been with us all along. It's been atop the neck of Mr. Met. We are truly doomed.

The Last Win at Shea Stadium

Images from My Last Trip to Shea Stadium & Johan Santana's Saturday "Season-Saving" Gem

The second to last game at Shea Stadium was scheduled for this past Saturday. But everyone there and at home knew it would ultimately be the last one that mattered if things didn't break right for the home team. The sky was overcast. The parking lot was filled with enough nervous energy to put a blind date at ease. And, it was a blind date of sorts. It was the first time that we Mets fans would see the 2008 club in a do-or-die situation. It was the first time that we would really get to see Johan Santana. We had heard he was great. All of our friends had told us so. The greatest, in fact, they said. We had heard about this calm. His cool. His smile. His great sense of humor. We had heard so many great things about this guy. And, Saturday was the time when we would meet him at Shea for a few hours to find out what he was really about.

The tepid-temp'd air was soupy with the mist of 2007 tears, the evidence of a Nor'easter that wasn't quite, and a the perspiration of a 2008 Division-turned-Wild Card race. It was damp but electric at Shea in the minutes before the first pitch, which was delayed slightly due to the weather. There was no place I would rather have been. And, even better, it was far clearer than the day itself that there was no place that Santana would rather have been either.

He was the Alpha dog. He was the Omega dog. He was everything you hope for when you pay an athlete in surplus of a hundred million dollars. Santana had pitched on Tuesday night and thrown a career-high 125 pitches in a complete game victory over the Cubs to make today possible. Yet he came out as fresh and aggressive as if it were Opening Day. He dominated. He pulled the string on anxious Florida Marlins hitters with the sly wink/nod braggadocio of a three-card monte dealer outside of the Hollis subway station. He moved the ball around the strike zone with the precision of a conductor at Carnegie Hall. He was brilliant.

On his not-so-broad shoulders, the Metropolitans were carried to the final day of the regular season (where they would lose). He went the distance, though, on Saturday. Never wavering. Never coming close to surrendering the ball, even in the ninth when he allowed (and I purposefully say "allowed" rather than "surrendered") the tying runs to reach base in the final frame. The Mets bullpen saw it's first action that afternoon just then, but Santana quickly rendered such action moot when he retired the final batter of the game. It was a complete-game, three-hit shutout. Johan struck out nine. And the Mets lived to fight another day.

Of course, everything that happened the following day stripped this performance of implication. But it didn't take away its meaning. At least not for those of us who were lucky enough to be there. In fact, the impotence of the season's final day only casts such a gem from Santana in harsher relief. It only highlights how crucial his nine-inning effort was. His was the last win at Shea Stadium. It was my last trip to Shea Stadium. My last memories of Shea will be good ones even if these images can't help but take on melancholy undertones given what we happened the next day.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Oakley Would Start Johan On Saturday

Mets Manager Manuel Must Santana On Short Rest

The Mets enter play on Friday night in a flat-footed tie with the Milwaukee Brewers for the National League Wild Card playoff berth (which goes to the best team in the NL that does not win their division) and a game back of the NL East rival Phillies. The Brewers are playing the Chicago Cubs this weekend while, the Phils are fighting the lowly Nats and the Metsies are taking on the ballclub from Florida that witnessed the 2007 death throes.

No matter what happens in tonight's game between the Mets and Marlins at Shea, Jerry Manuel must start ace pitcher Johan Santana on short rest in the game on Saturday. He has to. It's a must. This is a dealbreaker for me with Manuel. If he throws out one of the no-name, never-was or not-yet starters that has spot-started for the club this season then he is most definitely not a gangster, as he professes to be. And, I wouldn't want him to be my club's skipper next season.

The Must-Start Johan Scenarios
If the Mets lose and the Brewers both win then you HAVE to throw Santana because if you wait until he is fully rested you might end up with a gem on Sunday that means absolutely nothing. If the Mets wake up trailing the Brewers on Saturday morning then that game IS the season. It is the game that keeps them alive to fight on Sunday. If Brandon Knight or Nelson Figueroa gets bombed in that spot then yours truly could start in the regular-season finale.

If the Mets lose and the Brewers lose then you also HAVE to send Johan to the hill on Saturday because you must make an effort to grab the Wild Card lead going into the season's final day. They can't let the Brewers be the ones to break the tie (with a Saturday win and Mets loss) because that put's Johan in a spot where all he can do is force a playoff game on Monday with a win of his own on Sunday. You need to be aggressive and throw your ace on the day you can win the Wild Card rather than on the day when the best you can do force a tie. If the Mets and Brewers both lose tonight then you can't start a wish-and-prayer guy tomorrow and squander a chance to be in the driver's seat when everyone puts on their Sunday finest for the last regular season game at Shea.

The Mostly-Must-Start Johan Scenario
If the Mets win and the Brewers (and Phillies) lose then you really, really should start Johan to try to take control going into Sunday. You want to put the pressure on the other two clubs. You want to try to lock up the Wild Card on Saturday so that we can all enjoy the festivities scheduled for Sunday.


Jerry Manuel famously announced the press corps and the Metropolitans that he was a "gangster" shortly after taking over the managerial reins from the gracelessly deposed Willie Randolph. Well, if Jerry is really a gangster than now is the time to show it. Gangsters don't wait and hope and pamper and let something they covet come to them. Gangsters go out and take what they want. In other words, gangsters start Johan Santana on Saturday. No matter what. Because gangsters want to be in the playoffs and are smart enough to know that Johan is the only guy who can take the race. Well, him and CC Sabathia.

And, this is why Charles Oakley would start Johan on Saturday.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

A Brief History of the Point Spread

And WWOD?'s NFL Week 1 Picks Against the Spread

Yeah, there is fantasy football. And the Suicide Pool. There is even the newfangled Fantasy League Suicide Pool. But when you're going to talk about football-related wagering you've got to follow the words of Vizini. You've got to "go back to the beginning." Or at least back to the most important thing. And, that means wagering against the point spread.

Right up through the early 1940s, however, there was no point spread in American gambling. There were odds. That's it. You could get 5-to-1 odds that the Cubs were going to beat the Yankees in the 1932 World Series (I made up those odds but you get it) but that was as sophisticated as things got. In other words, you could only bet on the final win/lost result of a game or a series of games (like the World Series). When making such wagers it didn't make a difference if a game was decided by one point or by a 100 points. If you picked the winner then you won and if you backed the loser then you lost.

That is until a history student from the University of Chicago came along and changed everything. After earning his Master's Degree from the prestigious Midwestern institution of higher learning, Charles K. McNeill went on to teach math at the Riverdale County School in Connecticut. He briefly taught John F. Kennedy in this capacity. McNeil would also hold down a day job as a securities analyst before turning his time and his mind toward gambling. Supposedly, McNeil was raking the cash in on the straight winner/loser wagers at such a brisk clip that no established book makers would take a bet from him. So, like any industrious compulsive gambler he started his own gambling interest and totally revolutionized the sporting life in the process. He pioneered the point spread and nothing would ever be the same.

The point spread, of course, is the estimated difference (the estimating is done in Vegas) between the scores of the two teams competing in a particular football game. For example, the New York Bretts are favored over the Miami Penningphins by 3 points. The "point spread" is 3 points. Knowing this information a prospective sport has the choice of either betting on the Jets to win by MORE than three or betting on the Dolphins to lose by LESS than three, or to win the game outright. If you were to bet on the underdog Dolphins and "take the points" then you would win your wager provided the the Dolphins' point total at the end of the game plus three points is greater than whatever the Jets manage to put up on the score board. Got it? Good. Oh, and if the Jets were to win by exactly three points (which mean the folks in Vegas did a darn good job) then everyone keeps there money. It's called a "push" and no cash changes hands.

Without further adieu, the WWOD? Week 1 Picks:
1. Arizona (-2.5) over San Francisco
If I were a serious enough gambler to have a system then such a system would probably have a rule that prohibited betting on any team quarterbacked by Kurt Warner. But, since I don't have a system I'm taking Warner and his stud receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin to beat the Niners and the newbie P.T. Barnum O'Sullivan by a touchdown or more.

2. Cincinnati (-2) over Baltimore.
Starting at QB for the Baltimore Ravens is Joe Flacco, who has started just two seasons at the University of Delaware. His big college wins came against the Northern Iowa Panthers and the Southern Illinois Salukis. And those were upset wins. Say what you will about Sincinnati but they are not ECAC teams. I'm committed to betting against Flacco until he proves that a bad idea. Or, at least, until the point spread reaches a touchdown.
NOTE: By this same logic I should be betting against Matt Ryan and the Falcons until they prove they can beat a team or a spread. However, I can't bring myself to bet against Matty Ice.

3. Jacksonville (-3) over Tennessee
Jacksonville looked legit last year in almost knocking of the Patriots in the playoffs. I would think there season-ending loss has them hungry for more and ready to start this season quick. On the other hand, I think the Titans were likely satisfied with just having reached the playoffs last season and could have been a mbit more complacent over the offseason. Moreover, I think David Gerrard and Vince Young are going in opposite directions. The Jacksonville signal-caller was third in the league last year in QB rating with an 18/3 TD/INT split while Young was 26th in QB rating with a 9/17 ratio.

4. New York Jetropolitans (-3) over Miami Penningphins
Although I'm absolutely terrified of Chad Pennington this morning I have to play the unemotional numbers here. If things go to form the Favred-Up Jets should be able to stay ahead by more than a field goal against the team that went 1-15 last season. Right?

Bonus Prop Bet of the Week:
Jerricho Cotchery Receptions OVER 5.5
Although I do think that most prop bets are just ways of handing over money to your bookmaker I do also think that if you take a good look at the weekly props you can find one that is worth a fiver. This week's pick is Cotchery making at least 6 receptions in his first game with Brett Favre.

We'll see how these picks turn out and if I win more than I lose then this will become a weekly feature for the duration of the NFL season.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

He's In. And You're Not.

Patrick Aloysius Ewing Enters the Hall of Fame

Thursday, September 4, 2008

The Fantasy League Suicide Pool

There are moments in a man's life, or at least so we all hope, when a truth so bright and crystalline enters your mind with such force that you can hardly wait to share it with the world. Einstein had his theory of relativity. Draco had his concept of law and punishment. Mary Ellis-Bunim and Jonathan Murry had The Real World. Moments ago I had my own eureka moment. I invented (at least I think I did, although it's very possible someone else beat me to it) the Fantasy League Suicide Pool.

The concept is simple. Just like most brilliant inventions. Like the paper clip. Or the grenade. Once you and your cohorts have held your fantasy football draft you then take your competition to the next level. You gamble on your gambling. You combine the two most social non-substance (and, yes, chicken wings are a substance) abuses associated with the NFL. You combine fantasy football with the suicide pool. Which, like peanut butter and chocolate, taste great together.

Each member of your fantasy league chooses a single fantasy team from the league each week to win its head-to-head matchup, just the same way standard suicide pools ask entrants to choose an NFL team each week that will win its game. Everyone in the fantasy league throws in another agreed upon amount of money on top of, but separate from, the initial fee that everyone paid to enter. You stay alive in the Fantasy League Suicide Pool as long as your fantasy-team picks continue to win. The monies are paid to the fellow (or lady) who stays alive the longest.

Not only does this strengthen the bond between fantasy leaguers and their league but it also gives them a reason to get to know their opponents teams as well. This is ideal for the person who can't give away cash fast enough this time of year and who needs just one more stimulant as they watch Kurt Warner and P.T. Barnum O'Sullivan battle it out late on a Sunday afternoon.

Now, go. Go out and spread the gospel of the Fantasy League Suicide Pool. Every non-anonymous, non-public fantasy football league out there (in other words, the real ones) can have this up and running by the start of Week 2. Which is plenty of time considering that there are necessarily fewer teams in most fantasy leagues than there are in the National Football League.

This numbers difference brings us to the sole way in which the Fantasy Football Suicide Pool could divert from the Real Football Suicide Pool that we all know and love. Since there are 10 or 12 teams in most fantasy football leagues you either have to allow for the possibility to select a team twice (but only after you've gone through the entire league once already), award each entrant a bye week (or two) that can be used at their own discretion during the season to avoid picking a team twice, or you calculate the relevant numbers (how many teams in your fantasy league and how many weeks of playoffs in your league) to arrange it so that there are no byes or duplicate picks needed.

For example, if you have a 12-team fantasy football league and that league holds playoffs in Weeks 15 and 16 then you could start your Fantasy League Suicide Pool in Week 3 and nobody would have to use a team more than once to reach the end of your fantasy-football regular season. Got it? Good. Of course, the odds are that all this number crunching will not be needed as more than one person probably won't still be alive in the pool come Week 13.

Now, if someone has already thought of this then good for them. I'm jealous that they've been doing this for years and I'm a little annoyed that they didn't tell the rest of us. If you are one of those early adapters out there who had already heard of something like this then please do drop a line and let us all know if there are any unforeseen pitfalls to this seemingly wonderful concept.

In the meantime, enjoy. You're welcome.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Stephen A. Smith, Race and the Access to Fantasy Football

In a recent ESPN The Magazine article, replete with his usual bluster, misdirected and missing-the-point hostility and supreme self-righteousness, everyone's favorite television/radio/print "personality" Stephen A. Smith declared "to hell with fantasy. I'm about what's real." He would go on to label those who do participate in fantasy sports as "nerds desperately in need of more sociable leisure-time activities" while maintaining that "black folks" generally have better things to do such as attending "a family barbecue or hanging out with friends." The great irony (or tragedy) of Smith's story is that when offered a relevant assignment about race by his boss - Smith tells the reader he was asked to find out why most fantasy sports enthusiasts are white - he retreats to stereotypes and my-way-is-better-than-yours defense mechanisms rather than digging deeper into the issues screaming for attention just below the surface.

The first two points he makes are that 1) white people who play fantasy football are nerds with nothing better to do and 2) that minority groups have better things to do. And, to be honest, if Smith would have been a little less arrogant about making these assertions and worded them in a more thoughtful manner then I might not have thought either of them was ridiculous at first blush. First of all, I love playing fantasy sports but I'm not going to take too much of a stand against someone saying I'm a "nerd" when it comes to sports. And, secondly, if Stephen A. would have said that minority communities, due to their externally enforced insularity over preceding generations (or some other such reasoning that permitted for the existence of white people BBQs), were later to come to fantasy sports than the big mass of status-quo whites then I wouldn't have challenged him on it.

Those statements would have been plausible and certainly would have made sense as the opener to the sort of story that his boss at The Magazine was looking for. Smith could've opened with the joke (at my expense) and then given his pre-research answer to the question being posed before really digging into the issues to see what he could find out. Of course, that wasn't what Smith was doing. In fact, he was never going any deeper or thinking any further than his first two statements, even when everything he learned was begging him to. He was never getting past his personal feeling about himself and fantasy sports: It was for dorky white people and he was a cool black guy. And, never the two shall meet. This being the way things were, Smith saw no need to take his boss's question about the racial disparity seriously. After all, he didn't want to play anyway.

Even after an associate professor at Ole Miss, whom Smith refers to as "the CEO of Fantasy Sports Research Specialists," tells him that "that people who have well-paying jobs with fast Internet connections are more likely to play fantasy sports" Smith doesn't take his article any deeper - carrying the 1 - to see the posited positive correlation between white-collar jobs and white-faced fantasy sports players. I mean, for crying out loud (which is what made Smith famous), the Ole Miss professor that Smith interviews even uses the phrase "white workplace" to describe the environment where fantasy sports are prevalent. Shouldn't a writer purportedly interested in race ask why it is, in fact, a "white workplace" in the first place and what is keeping it that way? Shouldn't he use this discussion as an entry point to a discussion about the lack of access that African Americans in this country still have to high-paying employment and the aforementioned "white workplace"? Isn't that phrase the sort of thing that a journalist would seize on after it is uttered in an interview? Couldn't Smith use this revelation of difference to also talk about the way that a lack of high-speed Internet access can be a detriment to a child's education in this era as well as be an inhibitor of fantasy football participation? Shouldn't he do anything other than making an unoriginal joke (I mean a lot of people have already called fantasy sports players nerds before) when given a potentially serious/controversial assignment by his boss?

Unfortunately, Smith doesn't waste a sentence pondering racial inequity or the de facto segregation of the American work force. Nor does he talk about the varying degrees of access to high-speed Internet and all that comes along with it. Nope. He briefly notes that expanding access to the interwebs could eventually diminish the racial disparity pertaining specifically to the fantasy sports world. He doesn't say why access is growing or how it is growing, he just says "as the web grows" and then tries to squeeze in one more one-liner directed at his boss before signing off.

Although it is not literally every American's constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness and a fantasy football league title a case could be made that the two things are inextricably and economically linked. Yeah, it might be a stretch but it would have been a lot more meaningful and interesting if Smith would have said that instead of choosing to say nothing at all.

Monday, September 1, 2008