62 Home Runs? Meh

Posted by sparty99

Aaron Judge just finished a season for the ages. He came 4 hits shy of the Triple Crown and will almost certainly win the American League MVP award, deservedly so, as he practically single-handedly carried a New York Yankees team that cratered in the second half of the season to the division title.

But since he didn’t win the Triple Crown, his amazing season will be boiled down to the fact that he hit 62 home runs, breaking the Yankees and American League records.

That achievement is largely meaningless.

Wait, what?

Yes, 62 home runs is amazing. There have only been 6 seasons (by 3 players) where someone hit more than those 62 dingers. But based on the media coverage, you would think he’s personally saved baseball by erasing the tainted marks of the steroid era and establishing the “real” home run record.

It’s absurd.

I could find you any number of articles and videos of otherwise intelligent journalists and talking heads arguing that Judge has now set the “real” record. Roger Maris Jr. famously proclaimed Judge to be the real record holder, as if his familial link to the guy who held the record for 37 years makes him the arbiter of baseball’s single-season home run champion, and not someone who just realized he’s lost any reason to be invited to games for free as the representative of his father’s achievement. But it was really one column that made my blood boil and inspired me to sit down and put together this post.

On Tuesday, before Judge had hit his 62nd homer, Eric Blum of Deadspin wrote a column discussing what a disappointment it would be if Judge couldn’t hit the momentous home run, and proclaimed that should he finish the job it would be the “biggest single achievement in baseball in two decades”. A great achievement? Yes. The “biggest single achievement in baseball in two decades”? Not so fast my friend.

History Lesson Part 1

Babe Ruth set the single-season home run record 3 consecutive years from 1919-1921 before setting the seemingly insurmountable record of 60 in 1927. That record stood for 34 years until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961. His record somehow lasted longer than Ruth’s, until Mark McGwire (70) and Sammy Sosa (66) broke it 37 years later in 1998. McGwire would add a season of 65 homers in 1999, and Sosa would hit 63 in 1999 and 64 in 2001 before Barry Bonds came along and hit 73 in 2001 to establish the current Major League record, which has now stood for 21 years.

By the way, how much did it have to suck for Sosa to have a four season stretch where he hit 66, 63, 50, and 64 home runs, and aside from a 45-minute span where he beat McGwire to 66 home runs in ’98, he never held the home run record?

Defending the Triple Crown

Hitting 60 home runs is hard – it’s only happened nine times in the history of baseball. Hell, hitting 50 home runs has only happened 47 times, so I’m not diminishing what Judge has done this season. But almost as rare as the 60 home run season is the batting Triple Crown, which has happened 12 times since baseball recognized RBI in 1920, and the most recent winner broke the longest Triple Crown drought in the game’s history – longer than any gap between home run records being established.

So it should come as no great surprise that a blog that makes no effort to hide its obvious Detroit bias would dedicate a post to defending Miguel Cabrera’s 2012 American League Triple Crown as the “biggest single achievement in baseball in two decades”.

(In actuality, I’m going to argue that his 2013 follow-up season was the more impressive feat.)

Cabrera became the first player in 45 years to win the Triple Crown in 2012, finishing with a .330 average, 44 home runs, and 139 RBI. What people who are not obsessive fans of the Detroit Tigers may not realize is that his 2013 season was perhaps more impressive.

History Lesson Part 2

There have been 12 Triple Crowns in the American and National Leagues since 1920 (a significant starting point since it heralded the end of the dead ball era and the official creation of the run batted in). There were 5 Triple Crown seasons in the AL, NL, and the old American Association prior to 1920, as well as 10 Triple Crown winners in the Negro Leagues. Of those 27 seasons, only one man – Josh Gibson in 1936 and 1937 – won the Triple Crown in back-to-back seasons.

(Because of the shorter seasons in the “official” Negro Leagues and the pre-1901 Major Leagues, and the deadened ball that required a significantly different style of play prior to 1920, I am not considering these 15 seasons on par with the AL/NL achievements and thus not including any analysis here. If you don’t like that…well, you do the work.)

Of those 12 AL/NL Triple Crown Seasons, 9 were followed up by seasons where the winner finished in the top 10 in the 3 categories the next season, and 10 were preceded by such seasons. To determine how close someone came to repeating as Triple Crown champion, I added their finish in the respective statistical categories to come up with a “Triple Crown rank”. For example, someone who finished first in average, second in home runs, and third in RBI would have a Triple Crown rank of 6. The lower the number the better, with a Triple Crown winner having a rank of 3.

The closest anyone has come to winning back-to-back Crowns was Jimmie Foxx in 1932 and 1933. Foxx missed out on the Triple Crown in 1932 by 2 hits, losing the batting title to Dale Alexander by just over 3 points while leading the league in homers and RBI, before winning the Crown in 1933. Worth noting is that Foxx played all 154 games in 1932, while Alexander missed 30 games and had 248 fewer plate appearances than Foxx did. Kinda feels like the real Jimmy Dugan got the shaft.

Rogers Hornsby led in average and RBI in 1921, but missed out on back-to-back Crowns by 2 home runs, which preceded him achieving the feat in 1922. But in both the Foxx and Hornsby cases, the near-miss on the Triple Crown preceded them finishing the job the following season.

Among players looking to repeat as Triple Crown champion, prior to 2012, only 3 seasons saw someone register a Triple Crown rank of 10 or lower:

In 1948, Ted Williams won the batting title, and finished 14 HR and 28 RBI behind the champions. Not particularly close.
Frank Robinson followed up his 1967 Triple Crown by finishing second in average (5 hits shy), fourth in homers (14 HR behind), and third in RBI (27 RBI short) in 1968. Again, not a significant threat to go back-to-back.
Williams should be considered the closest to repeating as Triple Crown champion, as he followed up his first Crown in 1942 by finishing second in each category, 6 hits, 6 home runs, and 4 RBI behind the champions. There’s a caveat to that though: Williams’s follow-up season came in 1946, as he spent 1943-45 serving in World War II.

Back to Miggy

After Cabrera won the first Triple Crown in 45 years in 2012, he arguably had a better season in 2013. He hit the same number of home runs, had 2 fewer RBI, and improving his slash line from .330/.393/.606/.999 to .348/.442/.636/1.078. He repeated as batting champion, and finished second in homers and RBI. But his chase to repeat could have ended much differently.

On August 26 of that season, Cabrera trailed Chris Davis by 3 home runs, 46 to 43, and had 130 RBI to Davis’s 118. A repeat Triple Crown was within reach. But a nagging injury that required surgery following the season led to him hitting only 1 more home run and tallying just 7 RBI over the last 31 games of the season (6 of which Cabrera missed entirely). Miggy would miss fall 9 short of the home run title and lose the RBI title on the last day of the season, but his Triple Crown rank of 5 would be the lowest of any player looking to repeat the feat.

The Elephant in the Room

Back to the home run hitters. Obviously, I’m somewhat intentionally leaving out the significant fact that the three players who hit more home runs than Judge are all tainted by the steroids scandal of the late-’90s and early-2000s. I’m not naïve enough to pretend it didn’t happen or that they didn’t cheat. To do so would be idiotic.

But the fact is that the usage of steroids – while certainly illegal when Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire were playing – wasn’t tested for, and in fact was tacitly endorsed by Major League Baseball itself. MLB needed a draw to bring fans back to the game after the owner-forced players’ strike in 1994-95 wiped out the World Series, and a chase for the most hallowed record in sports was just the thing for people to fall in love with baseball again. Baseball was all too happy to embrace McGwire and Sosa in 1998, with the public vilifying a member of the press who pointed out that McGwire had a substance that is now banned (but was legal then) in his locker for all to see. It was only after steroids became a great public scourge that MLB would throw all the drug cheats under the bus, making no mention of the incalculable sum of money the owners (and players, to be fair) pocketed off all those home runs.

So the simple fact is, those homers happened. They happened against pitchers who were using steroids. Baseball has never made any effort to vacate the numbers from the steroid era. There are no asterisks. McGwire broke Maris’s record by launching 70 balls into the stands in 1998, and then Bonds one-upped him with 73 homers three years later. There’s no denying that those home runs happened. The purist can sit there and bloviate about how they don’t recognize the steroid cheats, but as long as I can go to Baseball Reference and see that Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001 and 762 for his career, those are the records.

(And don’t talk to me about the purity of the other records. Babe Ruth’s only at bats against black players were in exhibitions and Roger Maris was a lefty hitting to a right field fence that was 296 feet from home plate.)

Is 62 That Hard?

Now that I’ve so eloquently and obviously explained why Bonds is clearly the all-time home run champion, it’s time to go back and look at how impressive Judge’s achievement was this season, and whether it truly is the “biggest single achievement in baseball in two decades”.

Since Bonds hit 73 in 2001, guys like Giancarlo Stanton, Ryan Howard, Pete Alonso, Jim Thome, Andruw Jones, and Prince Fielder have all hit 50 or more home runs in a season. Judge himself did it in his rookie year, setting the rookie record (which Alonso would beat 2 years later). None of these guys have ever been accused of any kind of steroid link.

But wait, these guys hit 50, right? 50 is not 60 (that’s your math lesson for the day). No, it’s not, but let’s look at Giancarlo Stanton’s 2017 season. Stanton hit 59 home runs, 31 of them at home in a park that was less homer friendly compared to a neutral park. Judge this season hit 30 of his 62 at Yankee Stadium, which saw home runs hit at a pace just above league average. If you were to normalize them to a league average park, Judge could be expected to hit roughly the same number of home runs, but Stanton would pick up about 6 more home runs, so 62 was not out of the question.

Let’s go back to the McGwire and Sosa in 1998. Much like Maris did in 1961, McGwire and Sosa had their magical 1998 seasons in an expansion year. When expansion happens, there’s an influx of pitchers of lesser quality who would otherwise not be in the Majors; pitchers who otherwise wouldn’t be in the Majors result in more offense, and thus more home runs. McGwire broke Maris’s record by 9 home runs, adding 14.75% to the record. By contrast, Maris broke Ruth’s record by 1 home run, and that’s with an additional 8 games on the schedule (resulting in an asterisk actually being added to Maris’s record, albeit by a crony of Ruth’s who was bitter that the Babe’s record was broken). Were steroids a contributing factor to the number of home runs McGwire and Sosa hit? Undoubtedly. Is it as significant a factor as the reduction in quality pitching that came about because of expansion? I’m not so sure, so again, even if McGwire and Sosa were clean, 62 home runs was definitely in play.

Barry Bonds is tougher to defend. Bonds is arguably one of the greatest hitters that ever lived, but his peak came right at the height of his steroid use. Still, it’s well established that Bonds began using steroids in response to seeing McGwire and Sosa – 2 players he (justifiably) viewed as inferior to him – getting all the attention for breaking the home run record. It’s not unreasonable to think, even in a clean game, Bonds focuses his efforts toward home runs instead of being an all-around hitter, and makes a run at whatever the record stood at after 1998.

Simply put, even with no steroid taint on the guys ahead of Judge, I think it’s still highly likely that someone – if not multiple people – would have broken Maris’s home run record in the now 61 years since he set the record.

The Rarity of the Triple Crown

OK, but even allowing for assumptions that some players would have hit 62 home runs anyway, or would’ve done it in a different park, that’s still only 5-7 players who would have hit 62 home runs since Maris.

True, but since World War II, only 5 guys have completed the Triple Crown (Ted Williams in ’47, Mickey Mantle in ’56, Frank Robinson in ’66, Carl Yastrzemski in ’67, and Miguel Cabrera in 2012). While Ruth’s record stood for 34 years and Maris’s for 37, there was a 45 year gap between Yastrzemski and Cabrera, and no one has completed the Triple Crown in the National League in 85 years.

There have been close calls in that time. Jim Rice finished 3rd in batting average while winning the home run and RBI titles in 1978. Gary Sheffield made a run in 1992, but finished 2 home runs and 9 RBI short. Vlad Guerrero Jr. made a run in 2021 before falling short in average and RBI. Paul Goldschmidt and Judge led all three categories at points throughout the 2022 season, with Judge only losing his lead in average in the final week of the season.

But this just proves how difficult it is to pull off the feat, and what makes Cabrera pulling it off in 2012 (and almost doing it again in 2013) so impressive. When something’s only happened once in the last 55 years, I’m giving it my vote as the “biggest single achievement in baseball in two decades”. And I’d say that even if Judge had finished the job this year (twice in 55 years makes it only marginally less impressive) or if someone other than a Tiger had pulled it off in 2012.

So Why the Hype for 62?

Look, I’m not downplaying what Judge did this season. Hitting 62 home runs is not an insignificant achievement, and doing it while also almost pulling off the Triple Crown, on top of carrying your team over the finish line to the playoffs, makes it all the more impressive.

But his chase for 62 was not worthy of the press coverage it received. Once Judge got to 60, ESPN started to cut in to regular programming for every one of Judge’s at-bats, acting as though Judge setting the Yankee and American League records were worthy of such treatment. Would you expect this much coverage for someone setting the AFC single-season rushing record?

(Yes, I realize the baseball leagues have historically been more distinctly separate than the conferences from the other leagues have been, but we’re well past the point where an American League record had any great significance.)

ESPN, Fox, and Major League Baseball made untold millions covering and promoting the home run chase in 1998, and Bonds’s subsequent chases in 2001 and 2007. Then they made untold millions more covering the fallout from the steroids era (less so for MLB in this case). Now they’re making untold millions more acting like 1998 never happened, allowing their talking heads to feed the phony 24-hour sports news cycle by screaming like lunatics about what the “real” home run record is. It’s bullshit.

It’s pretty simple. Judge hit 62. Sosa hit 63, 64, and 66. McGwire hit 65 and 70. Bonds hit 73. Those balls aren’t coming out of the seats because you want to punish the players but not the league. Someone wants to pay $2 million for the Judge ball? Fine. I say they’re idiots.

And what Miguel Cabrera did was more impressive than all of them.

Michael Jordan is a Whiny Bitch

Posted by sparty99

Like seemingly every other sports fan in America, I spent the last five Sundays watching the ESPN’s epic 10-part Michael Jordan infomercial, The Last Dance. And while we may not have any more episodes to keep us entertained tonight, I’m here to offer you some biased analysis of the man, the myth, the legend. And after 10 hours of Jordan love, there are two inescapable truths to be gleaned from the doc:

1) Michael Jordan is probably the greatest basketball player who ever lived.

2) Michael Jordan is a whiny little bitch.

A Disclaimer

It needs to be stated here that I first started watching basketball during the Bad Boys era of the Detroit Pistons, and we hated Jordan and the Bulls more than perhaps anyone in sports until Patrick Roy and Matt Millen entered our collective hive mind. With the exception of a brief interlude that I’ll discuss momentarily, that hatred has not gone away, so it’s important for you to read this post with that information in mind.

Now, when I was 14 or 15, I told my dad I hated Michael Jordan. My dad had grown up outside of Chicago and harbored loyalties to that city’s teams, but with the exception of a soft spot for the ‘85 Bears, his loyalties had not passed down to me, largely because he had moved back to Illinois while I grew up in Michigan. We weren’t watching sports together, so my loyalties tended toward the local Detroit teams. Well, and the 49ers, but that’s a story for another day.

Anyway, I told my dad I hated Jordan. I was a shitty 14- or 15-year-old, and my dad and I weren’t getting along particularly well, and my dad told me that telling someone you hate their team or their favorite player might be a way of telling them you don’t like them. I didn’t think it was fair for a couple of reasons – one, he’d never mentioned any particular affinity for the Bulls or Jordan (unlike his beloved Bears) and two, it didn’t show any particular respect for the rivalry that existed between my team and his.

Still, it made me think, and when I saw how happy my dad was when John Paxson hit the game-winner against Phoenix in ‘93, I found myself thinking, ok, I can do this. The Pistons’ mini-dynasty was done and I had a penchant for being a fair-weather fan, so why not hitch my wagon to my dad’s team? I was never much of a Jordan guy even when I wanted to see the Bulls win – I was more of a Scottie Pippen guy and Dennis Rodman was an obvious choice when he joined the team – so I didn’t feel much when he “retired” in ‘93.

I don’t remember when or why I stopped pulling for the Bulls. I remember having no particular rooting interest during the ‘97 or ‘98 Finals, and only followed the NBA in passing until the Pistons re-emerged in the early-2000’s. But it felt like the mini-loyalty to the Bulls should be pointed out to my faithful readers. Both of you.

On to The Last Dance.

As everyone knows by now, ESPN managed to secure the rights to a 10-part documentary that looked back on Jordan’s career and the Bulls dynasty. Of course, in order to secure Jordan’s involvement in the project, they had to offer him final approval. Saying this was an objective look at the man is like saying Michael Moore is fair to the Republican Party. Michael Jordan is a bully, he’s got a chip on his shoulder that dwarfs the Rock of Gibraltar, and a 10-part documentary where he gives is sign-off was not going to treat his adversaries in a flattering light. I’m here to offer an opposing view.

Because whining about shit years after it’s happened is something a bitch does.

I know, I’ve done it.

Let’s see if we can look at a few examples.

The Pistons Walkoff

In the documentary, Jordan was kind enough to say that he wouldn’t have made it to the summit without the Pistons. It was their toughness and tenacity that inspired Jordan and his teammates to get in the weight room and dish it out as much as they took it. Of course, no one remembers that.

No, they remember the Pistons walking off the court without shaking the Bulls’ hands as the clock ticked to zero in the ’91 Eastern Conference Finals.

Oh, they’ll tell you the Celtics did the same thing to the Pistons in ’88. They’ll do that so they can show how magnanimous Jordan and the Bulls were in shaking the Pistons hands in defeat when the Pistons had knocked them out the previous three seasons. Because Jordan’s nothing if not a good sport. I mean, nothing screams good sportsmanship like shitting all over the guys you defeated 30 years prior.

You know what they didn’t show you? They didn’t show you Jordan and Phil Jackson declaring – before that series was over – that the Pistons were undeserving champions, that they were bad for basketball, and that the sport would be better off when they were gone. No, you can’t show that, because it doesn’t help the argument that they were being disrespected when that disrespect is completely justified. It’s worth pointing out that this nuance was included in the 30 for 30 episode that ESPN aired on the Bad Boys. Funny how that gets left on the cutting room floor when Jordan’s got final cut.

Considering the Bad Boys’ reputation, Jordan can consider himself lucky they just walked off the court. They should’ve smacked him in the mouth.

Blackballing Isiah

There’s some controversy over what initiated Jordan’s animosity toward Isiah Thomas. To the producer’s credit – and by extension Jordan’s since he had final approval – they let Isiah say his piece about his relationship with Jordan. There’s not much point arguing over who says what – Jordan believes that Isiah and a couple of other veterans froze him out at the 1985 NBA All-Star game. What Isiah says is largely irrelevant – it’s not going to change Jordan’s mind. The walkoff in ’91 didn’t help.

So what did Jordan do? Nothing, if you ask Jordan. If you use basic common sense Jordan had Isiah left off the greatest basketball team in history, one that would’ve had extra meaning to Isiah.

When USA Basketball announced that NBA players would be playing in the 1992 Olympics, it was only a question of who would be on the Dream Team. Obviously, the first call was to Jordan. Jordan asked who was playing, and was told, “The guy you’re asking about [Isiah] isn’t playing.” Of course he’s not. If Jordan says, “If so-and-so is playing, I’m not,” so-and-so isn’t playing. You don’t select anyone over Michael Jordan in 1992. So for him to suggest this was anyone’s call but his is nonsense.

Oh, sure, everyone involved in that team is tripping all over themselves these days to say they didn’t want Isiah on the team. David Robinson said he wasn’t welcome because of his connection to the Bad Boys, which makes sense for about 2 seconds until you realize that the team was put together by the GM of that Pistons team and coached by the Pistons’ head coach. Magic Johnson was icing Isiah out because he believed Isiah was questioning the circumstances that found Magic contracting HIV, a belief that Magic apologized for when he was selling a book years later. Karl Malone had bad blood with Isiah and had no problem saying he didn’t want Isiah on the team. Karl Malone is the same guy who impregnated a 13-year-old when he was in college and said he didn’t want to be on the same court as Magic after he was diagnosed, but Isiah’s a bad dude.

Really?

There’s one other possible explanation. Isiah Thomas was the president of the NBA Players’ Association, an elected position that would seem to require a certain amount of likability in order to hold. During his tenure, he looked out for the rank-and-file players at the expense of the superstars. The superstars and their agents didn’t like that, so, led by Jordan’s agent, they had Isiah voted out and looked out for their own interests from that point on.

The same superstars who made up the Dream Team.

But yeah, Jordan had nothing to do with it.

Isiah said that he’s been in business settings with Jordan, had dinner with him, and figured all the water was under the bridge. Hell, in 2003, when Jordan was named as a reserve in his final All-Star Game, Isiah pushed Vince Carter to sacrifice his starting spot so the league could celebrate Jordan, a story that was not included in the documentary, naturally. And Jordan sums up his relationship with Isiah by saying, “There’s no way you can convince me he wasn’t an asshole.”

You know what makes the blackballing of Isiah Thomas even worse? Isiah was named to the 1980 Olympic team, but didn’t get the chance to play because the U.S. boycotted the Moscow Olympics. He was ineligible in ’84 (when Jordan won a gold medal) and ’88. He was a long shot for ’96, where his replacement, John Stockton, won a gold. The 1992 Olympics were Isiah’s only chance to play for his country.

Jordan didn’t care.

Update, May 26, 2020: ESPN published a story showing that Jordan had in fact told Rod Thorn, a member of the USA Basketball selection committee in 1992, that if Isiah was on the Dream Team that Jordan wouldn’t play. Thorn said that the head coach of the Dream Team didn’t want Isiah on the team, so it wouldn’t be an issue. Curiously, the head coach of the Dream Team was Chuck Daly, who coached Isiah in Detroit, and there was no apparent animosity between Daly and Isiah.

It’s interesting that ESPN would correct the issue after the fact, but had no issue with the clear and blatant lie being allowed in the documentary.

“Retirement”

Jordan stunned the sports world in October 1993 when he walked away from the Bulls and “retired”. There are three possible explanations for this:

1) He was exhausted from the grind of three straight championship runs.

2) He was distraught over the murder of his father a few months prior.

3) His “retirement” was a quasi-suspension for the massive gambling debts Jordan had racked up.

To their credit, the producers addressed the suspension theory with the two people who mattered, Jordan and then-NBA commissioner David Stern. Of course, leaving it out would be like doing a documentary on the JFK assassination and not mentioning Sam Giancana. Obviously, both Jordan and Stern denied the allegations, so let’s take them at their word.

The murdered father theory would seem to make sense. But in the documentary, Jordan admitted that the night the Bulls clinched the 1993 title – two months before his father was murdered – Jordan and his father suspected he was done. He had accomplished what he wanted, he had gotten the 3-peat that Magic and Larry Bird had never pulled off, he was done.

Then why’d he come back?

Look, it’s probably not appropriate for me to discuss someone’s exhaustion or mental health. Thing is, I’m writing 3600 words on how much of a bitch Michael Jordan is, so I’m not exactly a model of propriety.

With that disclaimer out of the way, the standard set by Jordan has been applied to LeBron James basically since he was in high school. Those are impossible expectations to meet, yet LeBron’s largely met them. In my introduction I said Jordan was probably the best player of all time – LeBron is the only reason to say “probably”.

Why am I bringing up LeBron? Through his age 29 season, LeBron James had played 1000 games across the regular season and the playoffs. Jordan had played 879 games in the regular season, playoffs, and college. LeBron had 3 more seasons of the NBA grind (and the 82 games as opposed to roughly 35 in college). He’d played 47 more playoff games than Jordan had at the same age; even if you include Jordan’s NCAA tournament games, LeBron had still played 37 more “high stress” games at the same age as Jordan had. He’d been to the Finals 4 times and won 2 titles (to Jordan’s 3/3). And you never heard a word about LeBron walking away for exhaustion.

And people call LeBron soft.

One of the overarching themes of The Last Dance was that Jordan and his teammates couldn’t understand how Jerry Krause, the Bulls’ GM, could tear down the team after the 1998 season. Of course, that’s not exactly what happened. Krause announced before the season started that Phil Jackson wouldn’t return, even if the team went 82-0. It was a questionable decision, but he hadn’t made any decisions or pronouncements about the makeup of the team. Jordan immediately announced that he wouldn’t be playing for anyone but Jackson, and thus it was Krause’s fault he wouldn’t be coming back.

It’s never explained why it was ok for Jordan to decide when a team’s run ends but not the guy who has to rebuild the team after all the championship pieces are gone. So what led him to walk away in ’93? Was it exhaustion? A suspension? Overwhelming grief over the loss of his father? An overwhelming desire to ride the bus through the minor leagues? Whatever it is, LeBron’s taken more shit for compiling a mega-team than Jordan did for walking away from his team.

1994 Eastern Conference Semifinals

The producers of the series spent a decent amount of time on the 1994 Eastern Conference semifinals. Trouble is, the focused on the wrong game.

In Game 3 of that series against the Knicks, Phil Jackson drew up a final shot for Toni Kukoč. This pissed off Scottie Pippen – who’d had an MVP-caliber season – who wanted the shot and refused to enter the game. The doc spent a fair amount of time on this, with Pippen curiously admitting he regretted the decision but would do it the same if he had to do it again.

Wait, what?

Anyway, Kukoč would hit the shot to get the Bulls back in the series, they won Game 4 to even it up, and had the lead in the closing seconds of Game 5 when the refs made an atrocious call that allowed the Knicks to take the lead in both the game and the series. Pippen was called for a foul on Hubert Davis with 2.1 seconds left, a foul that one of the officials later admitted was terrible. Davis hit the free throws, the Knicks took the game and went up 3-2. They would take the series in 7 and eventually lose the NBA Finals to the Rockets in 7 games.

That call didn’t make it into the show. Why not?

Look, I’m not that smart, so I can’t take credit for this analysis – I believe I found it on CBS Sports, but couldn’t locate the article to share. Of course, a skeptic would say this is me shifting blame for a stupid take, so you’ll just have to take me at my word.

Say the refs don’t blow the call and the Bulls are able to close out the game to go up 3-2. They’re now hosting Game 6 with a chance to win the series. Let’s assume that reality holds and they win that game to win the series in 6. They would’ve then faced the Indiana Pacers with home court advantage in the conference finals. The Bulls went 4-1 against the Pacers in the ’93-94 season, so let’s assume that they continue their dominance against Indiana and advance to the NBA Finals.

It’s difficult to assume that the Bulls would’ve won that series against Houston, but we’re assuming that they would’ve won a series against a Knicks team that, in reality, were up 3-2 on the Rockets and took the Finals to 7 games. Hakeem Olajuwon was having an MVP-caliber season, and Patrick Ewing matched up better against Hakeem than anyone on the Bulls, but the idea they they could’ve beaten the Rockets and taken their fourth straight NBA title – without Jordan – isn’t ridiculous.

(I’ll add the obvious caveat that there’s no guarantee that the Bulls win Game 6 or Game 7 if they’re up 3-2. Maybe the Knicks play with more urgency and are able to take Game 6, maybe the Bulls win the series but the Pacers pull an upset and go to the Finals, where the Rockets make mince-meat of them. But with what we know, it’s safe to say that if they get the call in Game 5 there’s a damn good chance they go to the Finals.)

So why didn’t they leave the blown call in the story?

Because it’s Jordan’s story.

Jordan had no issue shitting on Pippen throughout The Last Dance. He expressed skepticism about the migraine that hobbled Pippen during Game 7 of the 1990 Eastern Conference finals. He had no problem calling out Pippen for the selfish decision to pull himself out of the game when Jackson ran the play to Kukoč. He whined about the back spasms that limited Pippen in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals and compared his inability to play hurt to Jordan’s “Flu Game” in 1997. To Jordan, Pippen was a sidekick, nothing else.

If Pippen is able to take a Bulls team that Jordan walked out on to the NBA Finals and potentially win the title, in a season in which Pippen finished 3rd in the MVP voting, that diminishes Jordan’s view that he is the team. Jordan’s spot in history was already well-established, but you have to think his importance to the team takes a hit if they can be a legitimate championship contender without him.

In Jordan’s eyes the Bulls were a plucky upstart who managed to survive the loss of his services and make it to the second round of the playoffs. In reality they were a 3-seed with an MVP contender who got screwed out of a chance to play for the title.

Jerry Krause

I realize this post has run very long, but you can’t talk about The Last Dance without discussing Jordan’s relationship with Jerry Krause. Krause is an unsympathetic character – his decision to not renew the contract of a man who’d coached the team to 6 of the last 8 NBA titles was curious, to say the least. But he never made any decision on the composition of the team until Jordan “officially” declared he wouldn’t be returning when Jackson wasn’t retained. The 1998-99 Bulls were not the same as the 1993-94 Bulls. Everyone was 5 years older (duh…math), a new crop of talent was coming into the league, and it wasn’t a safe bet that the Bulls would be the favorites even if Jordan returned. With Jordan retiring again – seemingly for good this time – it was as good a time as any to tear the team down and begin the rebuild. It’s probably not what I would’ve done – flags fly forever, so I’d hold off on the rebuild until someone took us out – but the strategy wasn’t crazy.

Jordan has no problem expressing his disdain for Krause throughout the series. Jordan hated Krause so much that he made sure to point out that he didn’t invite Krause to his Hall of Fame induction…during his speech. Krause’s insistence that organizations win championships was ludicrous to a guy who made sure everyone knew that “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘Team’, but there is in ‘Win’.”

Here’s the thing though: Krause wasn’t wrong. Jordan without Pippen was an elite talent on a mediocre team. He never dragged bad teams beyond what they should’ve been capable of, like LeBron James did with the ’07 Cavaliers, or Allen Iverson with the ’00 76ers. In the 3 seasons before Pippen entered the league, Jordan’s teams went 108-138 (87-95 in games he played), and lost in the first round of the playoffs all three years, winning a total of 1 playoff game.

And of course, it was Jordan who told Krause to draft Pippen, right? Or maybe it was Pippen – an unheralded prospect out of an NAIA school – who refused to sign with the SuperSonics and demanded he be traded so he could play with Michael Jordan. No, that was Krause.

Krause drafted Pippen, Horace Grant, and B.J. Armstrong. He traded for Bill Cartwright. He hired Tex Winter, who installed the triangle offense, then replaced Doug Collins with Phil Jackson. He signed Toni Kukoč and traded for Dennis Rodman. Ask Jordan how many championships he’d have if Krause hadn’t made those moves. Hell, ask Jordan what it takes to win a championship as an owner or GM. Charles Barkley called out Jordan for his ineptitude at running a team, and Jordan hasn’t spoken to his former best friend since.

To close, I come back to the Bad Boys Pistons. Their GM, Jack McCloskey – the same guy who was tasked with building the Dream Team – was known as “Trader Jack”, and did the same thing Krause did with the Bulls, building his team from a laughingstock to repeat champions. When the Pistons were awarded the trophy, the players had McCloskey front and center to celebrate with them; Krause was nowhere to be found when the Bulls celebrated. To Jordan (and, to be fair, the rest of the Bulls of that era), Krause was the short fat kid that they let tag along on their ride.

Look, obviously I don’t like Michael Jordan, but to deny his talent is ridiculous. I’m prepared to be called out for my bias, but the simple fact is, if you’re building a team composed of players in their prime to play one game to save your life, and your first pick isn’t Michael Jordan, you’re clearly suicidal. A friend – who, it should be noted, is perhaps the biggest fan of Detroit sports I’ve ever met and hates Jordan almost as much as I do – maintains that his significance in American sports can only be rivaled by Babe Ruth; I don’t completely agree, but the comparison isn’t crazy. His career merits a documentary, maybe even a 10-part documentary series that saves America from the nightmarish hell that is 74 days (and counting) without sports.

But Michael Jordan is not a good guy. ESPN and the basketball-loving public can slobber all over him and declare that he just behaved that way because he was so competitive, that he never asked anything of anyone that he wouldn’t do himself. But in my eyes, he’s what’s wrong with America today. Hard work can get you far in this country, but ultimately you’re probably not going to reach the pinnacle if you don’t hitch your wagon to someone who is going to stomp people into the ground if that’s what it takes to get there. And not only are those people going to ground people into dust on their way to the top, they’re going to make sure to remember every slight and make sure to play the “Woe is me” card to alter the narrative.

And I’m calling bullshit.

So Your Bracket’s Busted…

Posted by sparty99

2018 final four It’s that time of year again, when almost everyone’s dreams of winning their bracket is over and for the vast majority of the population their teams have been eliminated from the tournament. So naturally, every sports media organization insists on putting together a “who should you root for” article for those of us who are dealing with the dual heartbreak of your school’s season ending and your bracket being busted.

Because I’m a sheep, I’m doing the same thing.

Mind you, I don’t care who you pull for. There are crazy people in this world who can justify wanting to see Duke cut down the nets at the end of the season. But for some insane reason, several weeks ago I figured that my beloved Michigan State team was such a lock for the Final Four that I decided to buy tickets and go visit a buddy to watch my team win the national title in Texas.

So now I’m required to find a new set of teams to root for. With such unlikable teams as Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, and Syracuse left in the bracket and more than a few Cinderellas with intriguing backstories, picking a new team shouldn’t be all that hard, right?

Oh, if only. This year’s Sweet 16 seems to be populated by the unlikable blue bloods and the generic Cinderellas. There’s not a Florida Gulf Coast or Butler left in the bunch. So this could be a bit more challenging than it would seem at first.

South Region

#9 Kansas State: Not a particularly unlikable team, but they did knock out the Cinderella of all Cinderellas – the only 16th seed to ever beat a 1-seed – in UMBC in one of the most unwatchable games you’ll ever see. Also, I once hung out with a group of Kansas State fans who insisted that ESPN hated their basketball team, when in reality Kansas State’s basketball team is rarely relevant enough for ESPN to have an opinion on. (Now, if you want to see how ESPN truly hates a team, just look at how they’ve tried to tie MSU’s basketball team to the disgusting Larry Nassar scandal.)

#5 Kentucky: After the tournament selection show, Kentucky coach John Calipari screamed to the high heavens that his team got screwed in their seeding, and even complained that several of his players didn’t know where Boise was (hmm, seems like a problem with the education of your players). And then, because karma exists, Kentucky could go to the Final Four this year without playing a team seeded higher than 7th (or, if the Basketball Gods have a sense of humor, no team seeded higher than 9th). On that basis alone we should pray for an upset to knock these guys out. Complicating matters, however, is that in my company pool I have Kentucky winning it all. Thankfully, the prize is only a $20 gift card, and I’m not so cheap as to root for Kentucky over a matter of $20.

#11 Loyola-Chicago: Our first true Cinderella. Loyola’s a fun team with a couple of exciting buzzer beaters to advance, a cute fan in 98-year-old team chaplain Sister Jean, and I didn’t have to suffer through sitting next to an obnoxious Loyola fan cheering every made basket at the bar as a friend of mine did this week. But Loyola’s a Catholic school that recently responded to a comedian bringing up the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal during his set by cutting his mic, which offends my delicate agnostic sensibilities. Not as simple a choice as one would think.

#7 Nevada: They defeated Cincinnati – always an unlikable school – with an epic comeback and have no glaring or particularly offensive flaws. Plus their coach dropped a ton of expletives on live TV while celebrating their first round win, and that appeals to my life-long potty mouth tendencies.

The choice: Nevada

West Region

#9 Florida State: The Seminoles are a generally unlikable school, although that can typically be attributed to their football team and their decades of recruiting morally questionable characters. But if the Seminoles can somehow pull off a miracle and win the whole thing my pool is won by my friend’s 5-year-old daughter, which would seem oddly fitting this season.

#4 Gonzaga: Ordinarily I wouldn’t begrudge a team for screwing up my bracket, but Gonzaga cost me some cash last year with a fairly significant bed-shitting in the national championship game. Plus Gonzaga has joined Kansas and Michigan State as schools who are going to screw up my bracket every year, no matter where I pick them to win or lose.

#3 Michigan: I just can’t. Sure, a chunk of my friends would be happy and I don’t hate Michigan nearly as much as I should, but I just cannot maintain my Spartan credentials and pull for Michigan to win the title. It’s already painful enough listening to the Wal-Mart Wolverines brag about how they’ve beaten us 3 straight times. Having to watch them cut down the nets would just be unbearable.

#7 Texas A&M: Aside from their consistency in being a highly regarded team in football every year that ultimately disappoints, there’s nothing particularly offensive about this team. Plus, they knocked out North Carolina, who offended me with their ridiculous seeding.

The choice: Texas A&M

East Region

#1 Villanova: Another team that’s not particularly offensive. They are from Philly though, and they’ve already gotten enough this year.

#5 West Virginia: Coached by Bob Huggins. ‘Nuff said.

#3 Texas Tech: It’s hard for me to pull for any team that once employed Bob Knight. That said, the father-in-law of the buddy who’s going to the games with me went to Texas Tech, so I may wind up pulling for them through osmosis.

#2 Purdue: The highest remaining Big 10 team and the only team left in the field that MSU defeated this year. This one seems easy.

The choice: Purdue

Midwest Region

#1 Kansas: An annoying program, if moderately successful. Did you know that for all their history, legendary alums, and the fact that they literally invented the game, they only have 3 national titles? And one of those came as a 6-seed and another came because Memphis couldn’t hit free throws? They’re the Cincinnati Reds of NCAA basketball.

#5 Clemson: Not gonna lie, in a region with Kansas, Syracuse, and Duke, the 4th team is going to be the pick by default.

#11 Syracuse: If it weren’t for one man, Jim Boeheim would be the most annoying coach in America. I’ve said that for years, and it has nothing to do with the fact that they used their bullshit scheme to beat my alma mater.

#2 Duke: The only coach more annoying that Boeheim. Coach K’s Boeheim with a bag man, enough talent to actually win without resorting to gimmick schemes, and Grayson Allen. If the fate of humanity rested on Duke winning a game, I’d say my prayers and hope the afterlife is worth it. That said, I did hedge my bets and have a bracket with Duke winning that still has the potential to put me in the money, so if they win it all it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

The choice: Clemson

So there you have it folks. As a miserable son of a bitch who truly believes his school’s season was derailed by bullshit accusations levied by a lazy news organization trying to stir up controversy for the sake of ratings, the only way my cold dead heart will be happy is if we get a Final Four of Nevada, Texas A&M, Purdue, and Clemson.

So let me be the first to congratulate Kentucky, Michigan, Villanova, and Duke for their regional titles.

See you in Texas!

Blame Dick Vitale

Posted by sparty99

We’re in the middle of summer right now, with MLB’s Home Run Derby currently airing on ESPN, so naturally we’re going to focus on a truly timely matter.

Dick Vitale and the election of Donald Trump.

dick_vitale The Detroit Sports Czar is a huge fan of “what ifs”, so imagine my surprise when, during a conversation with a friend a few weeks back, I discovered it wasn’t that hard to draw a line between an ill-fated trade entered into by Dick Vitale and the election of our current president. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well follow along.

Bob McAdoo

The tale actually starts with John Y. Brown, who overruled Red Auerbach and dealt 3 first round draft picks to the Knicks for Bob McAdoo, supposedly because his wife was a fan of McAdoo when he played in New York (to be fair, his wife was a sportscaster, so this isn’t quite as ridiculous as it sounds). Auerbach was rumored to be so livid that he almost followed McAdoo to New York, but he stuck it out to rebuild the Celtics while Brown was run out of town to become the governor of Kentucky.

Which brings us to M.L. Carr and Dick Vitale.

Detroit Pistons

After playing in Europe and the ABA until the league folded, M.L. Carr played for the Pistons until becoming a free agent after the 1979 season. Auerbach scooped him up, which required the Celtics to offer compensation to the Pistons. McAdoo was miserable and injury-prone during his half season in Boston and Auerbach never wanted him in the first place, so he offered him to the Pistons and their head coach, Dick Vitale. Vitale was ecstatic, but as a negotiator he was Donald Trump to Auerbach’s Vladimir Putin, and so he gladly handed over the Pistons 2 first round draft picks in the 1980 draft. Trouble was the Pistons sucked, one of those draft picks turned out to be the first overall pick, and Vitale was long gone by the time the draft rolled around.

This is where the tale starts to turn.

1980 NBA Draft

Let’s not fool ourselves, Red Auerbach was a basketball genius. He built 16 NBA championship teams, so to say he wouldn’t have been able to do it again without swindling the Pistons is likely nonsense. But for the sake of our “what if”, lets just pretend this draft swung the balance of power in the East. Because in the 1980 draft, Auerbach took the Pistons’ 2 draft picks – again, including the #1 pick – and traded them to the Golden State Warriors for Robert Parish and the draft pick that would eventually become Kevin McHale. And I think we can all agree that building the Celtics dynasty of the 1980s is substantially more difficult without McHale and Parish.

Here’s where our little thought experiment requires a bit of a stretch.

Gerald Henderson Trade

Now, what takes this trade off the basketball court and down the line to the Oval Office was the Celtics drafting – and subsequent death – of Len Bias. And without the trade of Gerald Henderson to the Celtics, the Celtics don’t have the #2 pick that allows them to draft Bias. While Henderson was with the Celtics in 1979, without his contributions to 2 championship teams, including a pivotal steal and layup that allowed the Celtics to steal a game against a superior Lakers team in a series they won in 7 games in 1984, it is unlikely he would’ve demanded the trade that found the Celtics holding the #2 draft pick in 1986.

We’ve now established that there is no Celtics dynasty in the 1980s, which means the 1986 Celtics aren’t one of the greatest teams ever. They also don’t hold the #2 draft pick that will allow them to draft a player many expected would challenge Michael Jordan as the best player in the 1980s.

Now we start to get serious.

Death of Len Bias

As mentioned earlier, many expected Len Bias to be one of the best players in the NBA from the minute he was drafted. That doesn’t change because he gets drafted by the SuperSonics instead of the Celtics. Unfortunately, what also likely doesn’t change was the fact that he overdoses two days after the draft. What does change is the political circumstances of his death. If Bias is drafted by Seattle instead of the reigning NBA champions, he’s just another #2 draft pick, a sad footnote mentioned alongside such immortals as Sam Bowie, Hasheem Thabeet, Darko Milicic, and Steve Stipanovich (obligatory mention of such NBA immortals as Isiah Thomas, Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning, etc.). More importantly, his new fan base is not located in the Congressional district of a Speaker of the House who is trying to keep control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986

Shortly after Bias’s death, it was widely reported that he had overdosed on crack. It wasn’t true, but that didn’t stop the story from spreading; Jesse Jackson even lamented the scourge of crack at Bias’s funeral. Crack was becoming an epidemic in the inner cities, and Bias’s death was the final straw that saw Congress – and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill out of Massachusetts – implement a law that required mandatory minimums that were harshly skewed against crack “dealers”. The law required mandatory sentencing of 5 years in prison for 5 grams of crack, but 500 grams of powder cocaine. The mandatory minimum rules decimated the black inner cities and helped contribute to the 1992 L.A. Riots, which did nothing to help the image of minorities by White America.

“Super-predators”

At a 1996 campaign speech in New Hampshire – one of the whitest states in the nation – Hillary Clinton referred to young black male criminals as “super-predators” and said that they needed to be “brought to heel”. Clinton was defending her husband’s crime bill, which was designed to curb street crime in the black community. Unfortunately, analysts have now determined that the bill was a major factor in the Era of Mass Incarceration, and Bill Clinton’s defense of both the crime bill and his wife’s super-predator comment during the 2016 campaign did not help the issue. The super-predators comment was not as significant to her campaign problems as her email server was, but to say it didn’t help is an understatement.

2016 Election

Finally, we come to the 2016 election, which found a well-established racist running against the woman who uttered the super-predators comment 20 yeas before. And how did the black community respond? They stayed home. While Barack Obama’s inclusion in the 2012 election helped the black voter turnout rate reach an all-time high that year, the fact remains that 765,000 fewer black voters showed up at the polls in 2016. Considering 88% of blacks voted for Clinton in 2016, and the election swung on roughly 80,000 votes in 3 swing states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan with their significant black populations, it’s not difficult to pin the election result on the decreased voter turnout in the black community.

So there you have it folks. John Y. Brown overrules the greatest executive in NBA history to acquire Bob McAdoo. Red Auerbach suckers Dick Vitale out of the #1 draft pick, which Auerbach then flips for 2 future Hall of Famers. Those 2 Hall of Famers contribute to the Celtics dynasty of the 1980s. Auerbach flips Gerald Henderson for the SuperSonics’ 1986 first round draft pick, which they use on Len Bias. Bias overdoses on cocaine two days after the Celtics draft him. Boston’s Congressman overreacts and helps push through anti-drug legislation that dis-proportionally punishes the black community. Hillary Clinton refers to the victims of that legislation as super-predators, which the community never forgets. And then the black community stays home on Election Day 2016, allowing Donald Trump to eke out a narrow victory.

There are any number of people to blame (or thank, depending on your point of view) for the presidency of Donald Trump. I’m blaming Dick Vitale.

Fixing Major League Baseball

Posted by sparty99

We’re a week into the Major League Baseball season (at least we are when I started writing this, with my writing prowess it could be the All-Star break before this actually gets published), and it’s time to revisit one of my favorite pieces of this blog – fixing something that really isn’t broken.

Baseball’s a phenomenal sport, and reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated. It will never overtake the NFL – well, at least not until someone dies on the gridiron and the masses flee in droves – but it’s also never going to lose its ground to the NBA or NHL. That said, there are still some relatively simple fixes that will make a great game even greater. Without further ado:

Expansion/Contraction

A fair number of my suggestions will require an even number of teams in each League, so we should address the expansion/contraction of teams first. My personal opinion is that there are 2 too many teams in baseball, and the stadium situations in Oakland and Tampa Bay prove that out. If it were up to me, we’d contract the 2 teams that have never been to the World Series – the Seattle Mariners and the Washington Nationals – and move the Rays and A’s to those respective cities for the sake of franchise continuity (I’m a history geek like that).

But since we know that, barring a catastrophic financial situation – like, say, the bursting of the television rights fee bubble – no professional league is going to contract its teams, so let’s add teams in Montreal and Charlotte or Portland and call it good.

On Field Improvements

Universal Designated Hitter

Major League Baseball is the only sport on the planet (i.e., in the U.S., which is all that matters, amirite?) where half the league plays by one set of rules and the other half plays by another. With year-round interleague play (we’ll get to that in a minute), that means a team built to play with the designated hitter may have to play a season-ending series with the playoffs on the line with their DH on the bench. And anyone who’s ever seen Justin Verlander swing a bat knows that you’d much rather have Victor Martinez batting in a big situation.

So we’re changing the rules and either eliminating the DH or making it universal. And while we can all marvel at Madison Bumgarner’s home run hitting ability, we tend to ignore the fact that he’s a career .186 hitter, and he’s the best hitting pitcher. The simple fact is that watching a pitcher swing the bat is generally boring and painful (Bartolo Colon notwithstanding), and it leads to ridiculous managerial decisions where a guy throwing a shutout is pulled for a pinch hitter after 73 pitches because the offense can’t put up any runs. No, it’s time for the NL’s antiquated rules to go by the wayside and MLB to adopt the DH permanently. The fans will love it, the players will love it (more money for aging veterans to finish out their careers), and the owners…well, screw the owners.

Pitch Clock

I’ll get push back here – and I know this because I got plenty of push back from a buddy of mine when we were discussing it on Opening Day – but for a league that’s attempting to cut the length of their games so Millennials with attention spans measuring in nanoseconds can stay engaged, the pitch clock makes too much sense not to happen.

You can’t implement the pitch clock with men on base, because there are too many variables with that baserunner to force the pitcher to stick to a clock without disrupting his rhythm or making a stupid mistake. But when there’s no one on base, there’s no reason a pitcher (or a batter) needs more than 20 seconds to make the next pitch. Start the clock when the catcher receives the pitch, and if the umpire determines that the batter or pitcher is stalling, they’re punished with a ball or a strike against them.

Automated Balls/Strikes

In 2017, when anyone with a smartphone has access to PitchFX that shows exactly where every ball crosses the plate, there’s absolutely no reason for a human being to call balls and strikes. Talk to me all you want about the human element, but I don’t want the game determined because some umpire didn’t see where the ball went across the plate. The “human element” applies to the players; fair or not, the officiating of a game needs to be as close to perfect as possible.

With so few baseball calls being truly subjective – especially now that they’ve gotten rid of the neighborhood play on double plays – I’d argue that all officiating could be automated, but let’s start with baby steps.

Overhaul Instant Replay

Aside from Screech on Saved by the Bell, there’s not a person on Earth who has ever watched a game because of who’s officiating that game. And yet we give the teams challenges to question when an umpire might have made an incorrect call, instead of insisting that the calls just be right. So we’re going to remove the challenge system and put a fifth (or, in the case of postseason play, seventh) umpire in the broadcast booth, and if an umpire screws up, that extra umpire is going to correct him. We’re not going to continue to allow the umpires’ egos to determine whether or not a game gets called correctly.

Drastically Reduce Ejections

Some ejections are deserved – I’m looking at you Bryce Harper. But in a lot of cases a batter will question a call just a little bit more emphatically than the umpire likes (although not at all egregiously), and he’s gone. The problem is that it drastically reduces the flexibility of the manager, and if someone like Miguel Cabrera gets ejected and has to be replaced by Andrew Romine, the strategy for the remainder of the game is changed immensely. So unless someone is risking physical harm to another player or an umpire, or truly making an ass out of himself, we’re going to keep the Umpshow to a minimum.

Scheduling

154-Game Schedule

The owners will never go for it. The players will love it. Eliminate 8 games from the season to return to what was standard prior to expansion in 1961. If you want to placate the owners, increase the cost of everything by 5%. Well, everything except my beer.

Eliminate Interleague Play

Interleague play is over. It’s played out. It was never particularly interesting to start, and it ruined the truly novel approach that only MLB had – namely, that the two teams that met in the World Series had not met in the regular season. MLB loved the “natural” rivalries in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Florida, and a few other places, but they didn’t account for truly dreadful games like Padres-Mariners. And because the interleague games all took place on designated summer weekends when the weather was nice and the rivalry games were naturally more appealing to the local fans, MLB could proclaim that interleague games were more popular than your average American League or National League games. It’s worth pointing out that since they’ve gone to year-round interleague play, we haven’t seen proclamations about the popularity of the games, likely because that April Marlins-Orioles game is dragging down the average.

Balanced Schedule

With 16 teams in each league, a 154-game schedule, and the elimination of interleague play, you can play 10 games against each team with 4 games left over. The remaining 4 games can be rotated among the teams on an annual basis, or you could add a series based upon where the teams finished the previous season (for example, the best team plays the second best team, third place plays fourth place, etc.). Either way, it’s better than 19 Royals-White Sox games a year.

Holiday Doubleheaders

There are 5 “major” holidays throughout the baseball season: Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. We’ll throw out Mother’s Day and Father’s Day since those are Sundays by rule and thus travel days. But every team is required to play doubleheaders on 2 of the remaining 3 holidays – one at home, and one on the road. If that holiday falls on a Sunday, the doubleheader will revert to the previous Saturday. The players hate doubleheaders, but we’ve just cut 8 games out of the schedule, so they’ll get used to it.

Beginning/End of Season

Every season begins on the first Monday in April. If you want to cater to ESPN and have them air a Sunday night game the night before, fine. But this year there were 3 Sunday games to start the season, and that’s just insane. One’s enough as a showcase for the game.

And since we’ve cut 8 games, plus 2 additional days of game play via the new doubleheader rule, there’s no excuse to be playing games in November.

Playoff Scheduling

Major League Baseball has deduced that playing 4 straight Division Series games on a Thursday will garner more television viewers than running 2 games simultaneously. This seems dubious to me, but I’ve tended to default to the position of, “Someone smarter than me is making that determination.” I mean, they have to be, right?

Still, it sucks for the fans with tickets. Because the playoff schedule isn’t set until a day or two before the games start, you could wind up buying a ticket to a noon playoff game that you can’t use because you can’t get off work. So either show the fans that there truly are more viewers for a Thursday noon game than there are for 2 games airing simultaneously, or cut out the weekday afternoon games.

Also, while I understand that games involving teams from New York and Chicago are going to garner more viewers than Oakland or Tampa Bay games will, it’s kind of crappy when all of the Oakland League Championship Series games get relegated to the 4pm games. So alternate the LCS games so that both teams get prime time treatment.

Playoff Determinations

Realignment

In 2015, the three best teams in all of baseball all played in the National League Central. The St. Louis Cardinals won the division with 100 wins, while the Cubs (97 wins) and Pirates (98) were subjected to a 1-game playoff to determine who moved on. The Pirates and Cubs were punished because they were geographically close to the Cardinals. And just to add insult to injury, because the team with the best regular season record automatically plays the winner of the Wild Card game in the Division Series, the Cardinals were punished by having to play the a 97-win team instead of the 92-win Dodgers or 90-win Mets. This is asinine. The best teams should be rewarded for having a superior regular season. So we’re eliminating divisions. Two Leagues, 16 teams each, with a balanced schedule.

Oh, and the Brewers and Astros are going back where they belong.

Playoff Seeding

Playoff seeding is simple: the top 5 teams in each League make the playoffs. The top 3 teams get a bye to the Division Series while the 4th and 5th place teams play the Wild Card game to move on. There’s no reason to reward a team for being located in a geographically advantageous location.

Conclusion

I’ll admit that a lot of these rule changes seek to fix some of the quirks that make baseball “great”. Fans love to see pitchers hit dingers and the Wild Card situation I discussed isn’t particularly common. But the Giants can still refuse the DH to let Bumgarner hit (which they’ve already done in interleague games), and no one’s going to weep because we close a loophole to give an advantage to a better team.

And I’m not going to stop watching because these rule changes aren’t made (because, let’s face it, most of them won’t be), but we could definitely make the game better.