Boston Globe: Pink hats drive some fans batty

Your daily dose of sport sociology. Is it RSN civil war, or just SDCN bullying?

If local sports blogs, fan sites, and talk radio are any indication, the sniping is approaching fever pitch, now that the Sox have two recent Series wins to their credit. Message boards at local sites like Barstool Sports fill up with vitriolic comments - most of which are unfit for publication - on both sides of the issue whenever pink hats are mentioned. And now, even new Celtics fans are dubbed “pink hats.”

“I believe this is the year that Red Sox fans - the pink-hats and the die-hards, who have been eyeing each other suspiciously for five years now - finally have it out with each other,” Randolph native Eric Gillin recently wrote on the national sports blog Deadspin. “This is the season where what it really means to be a Red Sox fan finally bubbles to the surface.” [...]

Maggie Magner, a lifelong Red Sox fan, started the web site GirlSoxNation.com specifically to quash the notion that women can’t be both sports-savvy and feminine.

“We were tired of all these stat-wielding bullies saying real fans don’t wear pink. Who decides what a real fan is anyway?” Magner asked. “Women represent half of the ballpark attendance today and are buying more merchandise every year.”

Salon: Kaufman: Bissinger contrite, but still bashing blogs

Can I have a toto-abrasive lens-cleaning cloth with those Buzzinger misreading glasses. Thank you.

Bissinger really needs to shut up, or at least change the subject. Every time he opens his mouth, he sounds more idiotic.

..."The younger generation likes the snarky tone,” Reilly quotes Bissinger saying. “They like the gossip, they like the juice. I don’t think they really appreciate good writing and reporting, and those, to me, are precious arts.”

Right, Buzz. Young people, they don’t appreciate nothing. Five thousand years of Western civilization, people revering good writing and not caring about gossip, and it all suddenly stops with the generation right after yours. What a tough break, you still needing to make a living and all, with your good writing and stuff.

Then Bissinger goes from get-off-my-lawn crotchetiness to dangerous whack-jobbery. “They cover themselves under the mantle of the First Amendment,” he says about bloggers who supposedly “proudly parade around saying, ‘We don’t need no stinking credibility or stinking information.’” Then: “But if John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had any idea what the First Amendment would have wrought, they would have canceled it.”

If that isn’t dumber than anything any blogger’s ever written, I’ll eat Buzz’s reading glasses. The ones he used when he read “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” the best-selling book of 1972 and 1973, back when people cared about writing.

Sun-Times gives Mariotti 3 more years

Why couldn’t they have given him 15 to life?  I’m sure Kenny Williams would…

AP expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations

In the name of “defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt” the Associated Press is now selling “quotation licenses” that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that “fair use”—the right to copy without permission—means “Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.").

It gets better! If you pay to quote the AP, but you offend the AP in so doing, the AP “reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher’s reputation.”

Scott Kazmir Brings the Heat (YouTubage)

The Rays are not just a machine powered by cheap, young talent on the field… this promo suggests their marketing department is chock full o’ interns.

Also, points for me for not making any number of juvenile jokes at the content and imagery in this ad.

Hat tip to With Leather

Deadspin: Leitch: A Note From Your Editor

Black tabled? Will Leitch moving on...sorta.

We started this site on September 8, 2005, with a simple headline: “Welcome to Deadspin. We Come With a Pure Heart and Mirthful Disposition.” We think that’s still pretty much true; we try to keep our disposition mirthful at all times. But sometimes that’s more difficult to do than others; this is one of those times.

It is with heavy heart — yet mirthful disposition! — that we announce that our time as Deadspin editor is about to draw to a close. After almost three years of plugging away around here, we are leaving as editor of Deadspin on Friday, June 27. We have accepted a job as a contributing editor for New York magazine. We’re excited about it, but, obviously, this has been our baby and our life every day for three years — which is about four decades in blog time — and we’re too emotional about the whole thing to get into much more detail about how we feel about the whole matter.

We’ll still be writing for the site, even after we’re not the editor anymore, so you’re not gonna get rid of us that easily. (We kind of love it here; we have nothing but manhugs and fistpounds for the Gawker crew, and vice versa.) We’ll go into the details more over the next few weeks, but we’ll just leave you today with a simple quote of “It’s probably time,” and then try not to dribble tears on our keyboard.

Thanks to The Best Neil.

ShysterBall: Calcaterra: Hell in a Handbasket, I Tells Ya!

first of all colin farrell is on great actor look at phone booth and tigerland and the recruit with al pacino.

I normally don’t simply point and laugh around here, but I may have found the worst sports article ever written. A sampling:

A fairly new Internet sensation called “blogs” now dominate the hyperlinks on our search engines and have completely changed journalism as we know it. Now, the Average Joe who probably only watches games from his or her couch and has probably never had a credential to be inside a locker room or press conference is giving strong opinions, badmouthing coaches and dissing players for the entire world to read . . .

. . . Something needs to be done about how today’s athletes are being paid because it can turn really ugly. In Major League Baseball, a sport with no salary cap, bidding wars are causing inflated contracts for players who don’t deserve them. Don’t get me wrong, Alex Rodriguez will probably go down as the greatest player of all time when his career is finished. But does anybody on this planet really deserve to be paid $28 million a year? Yes, one person does: The one who cures cancer . . .

Sure, we’ve all read stuff that looks like this, but here’s the kicker: it’s written by a 22 year-old guy who, appearance-wise, is walking the fine line between hipster and #########. Either way, I’m having a hard time figuring out why he’s writing in the voice of a 79 year-old man. Maybe his publication provides a clue: “Senior Times Magazine,” which bills itself as “your guide to active retirement in northern Florida.” Is he assuming the old man voice because he thinks that’s what his readers want, or is this some elaborate parody?

Top 100 Most Valuable Sports Blogs

How much is your sports blog worth? Did it make the top 100? Read this to find out.

I am basing the valuations off DN Scoop, a website that values websites based on links, PR, traffic rank, and other factors. The general valuation for a website on sale is 10-20 times monthly earnings. That can vary based on domain name, branding exposure, etc, but the valuations should be somewhat accurate.

The site only works for entire domains, so blogs hosted on another domain like the Fanhouse won’t qualify. The reason is, this program will look into all links going to the entire AOL domain, not just the sports blog.

Here are the top 100:....

44.) 38 Pitches - $134,724…

72.) Baseball Think Factory - $84,061

Ouch!

The Starting Five Interviews Buzz Bissinger

Schwinnless streak continues as Little Bizz Bussinger loses paper route.

MT: I couldn’t wait for the paper to hit the door on a Saturday or Sunday morning so I could see if Reggie Jackson or Mike Schmidt hit a homer the night before. Now you can go on the Web and quickly find that information. Newspapers are becoming the dinosaur.

Buzz: They are for the very reason you cite. You don’t need to pick up the paper to see if Reggie hit a homer. You can go on Fox Sports or ESPN and get more information than you ever need to know–not only about the home run but any instant statistic. Newspapers are looking for ways to change and there are papers that are still doing it brilliantly such as the New York Times–both in print and the online side. People call it the Big Grey Lady but it’s been at the forefront of switching to a more Web-based content while also keeping intact standards of reporting and good writing. They are at the cutting edge but their revenue continues to drop–as has every paper’s. That is what scares me.

I was just in Minneapolis recently. I don’t want to be accused of being a blogger in terms of rumors but there is a rumor that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune may go bankrupt. I can’t imagine a paper going bankrupt. It’s really scary out there. I guess what’s really scary is what is going to replace it? Is Deadspin going to replace it? Is that where we are going to get our information? Is it going to come from someone who doesn’t know reporting but may watch the game on TV but is more interested in cracking silly one liners giving his own spin of events–which is not reporting?

There’s no substitute for reporting. There just isn’t. It’s one of the most beautiful things in the world when it’s done right. It seems like we want that less and less.

Thanks to Can’t Stop the Bleeding for the home delivery…

WSJ: Fantasy Sports Adds Baseball HQ To Web Holdings

Fantasy Sports Ventures Inc., a fast-growing fantasy sports company, acquired Baseball HQ, a leading Web site for statistical analysis, the companies said.

Valued in the “low seven figures,” according to a person familiar with the situation, the deal is the latest step by the New York Internet media company toward its goal of becoming a one-stop shopping center for marketers looking to connect to the estimated 15 million fantasy-sports players in the U.S.

I’ve long been curious about just how valuable some of these types of sites are or could be.  Mark down on data point.

The Big Lead: An Interview with Buzz Bissinger

It takes a really big #### to admit when he’s almost wrong…

Q: The internet is agog over the HBO special. When you walked off the stage, did you have any idea of how big of a deal this would become? Did your cell phone blow up, and your inbox get clogged? And what was the overall reaction from friends and colleagues you spoke with? And what’s your reaction to the masses who think that you and Costas - longtime friends - were in cahoots against Will Leitch?

The initial reaction was quite positive, more than quite positive from those I immediately spoke to–fellow panelists and members of HBO with the exception of Costas (Bob was friendly but muted in his response to my performance. He is one of the most thoughtful people I know and I think he was mulling that I had gone way too far.) What I began to realize by the next afternoon is this: What the fellow panelists thought (at least the ones I spoke with) were not remotely a representative group. When I came home from New York, my wife simply told me that I had been over the top and undignified. Then I started reading emails sent to me. The majority were predictably vindictive — ########, ###########, #########, windbag, ugly, stupid, etc. But what struck me far more is that many of the emails were smart, not laced with personal invective, and made cogent points about sports blogs and the Internet. It was also abundantly clear that I had disappointed people who had been fans of my work. That hurt terribly. They were also right.

Thanks to Dodger Thoughts.

FOX Sports: Whitlock: Buzz off base vs. blogger at media town hall

Hackney Alert! Whitlock and Bissinger share cab!

Ninety minutes before Bissinger’s eruption, we shared a car service from our hotel to the Equitable Center Theater where Bob Costas’ live town hall meeting on the changing landscape of sports media would take place. It was my first in-person meeting with Bissinger ("Friday Night Lights"), and I found him bright, intense, straightforward and likable.

He told me on the ride over that he hated blogs. I told him that blogs weren’t going anywhere and we might as well learn to live with them and enjoy them.

On camera, Bissinger told Leitch that he was “full of sh**” and that deadspin was contributing to the dumbing down of America. Bissinger cussed, berated and railed against a mostly imaginary enemy. More than anything, Bissinger betrayed his own immense intelligence and surrendered the moral high ground to someone who couldn’t find it with a map, compass and Mother Teresa serving as a guide.

His points were lost in all the sound and fury signifying good TV.

He turned Leitch into a martyr, a role he plays well. I scan deadspin two or three times a week. It is not representative of all (or even most) blogs. Romenesko, thebiglead, profootballtalk, joeposnanski, thestartingfive.wordpress, joesportsfan and AOL’s fanhouse are just a few of the blogs less dedicated to humiliation and self-book-promotion than deadspin.

FJM: A Few Words on “The Internet”

And Will Leitch’s take on the Costas/Bissinger disaster....

For what I hope is the last time, but is clearly not: the level of discourse on Athletics Nation, and Baseball Prospectus, and SoSH, and Joe Posnanski’s blog, is every bit as high (if not higher) than what you can read in the best newspapers in the country. Bissinger’s hare-brained attempt to prove Leitch an uneducated oaf by asking whether he had read any W.C. Heinz (which failed miserably when Leitch had, in fact, read some W. C. Heinz) was a perfect example of the old guard’s attitude toward the new guard: you little shits don’t get it. You don’t know how to write. You have no gratitude or appreciation for those who came before you. So: #### you. (P.S. I have never really read your blog.) (P.P.S. #### you, though, anyway.)

There are sports bloggers (and message-board posters) who write very well, in my opinion. There are those who love Ring Lardner and David Halberstam and Robert Creamer and Roger Angell. They try to write well, and entertain, and contribute to the universe of sports reporting. Please read them, Buzz. If you find nothing of interest, you can swear all you want. (For the record, FJM is extremely pro-swearing. We just feel you should be funny while doing it.)

If there is anything tangible and helpful to take away from Mr. Bissinger’s performance—and it takes a good deal of chaff-sorting to get anywhere near this little nugget—I think it’s this: a lot of the discourse and sub-discourse (commenting) on the internet is, in fact, pretty shitty. This is not news, though, really. A lot of newspaper writing and editorial writing and every kind of writing is shitty. It’s just not as immediate and anonymous and easily-accessed as Internet writing is. Thus, the net has this reputation, now, as being a nihilistic and thoughtless meetingplace for people to spew venom. Partially deserved, partially not, whatever—point is, the part that is deserved can be altered. We can all probably do a little better in this realm, by making sure that whatever we write has an actual point, and some thought behind it. So, there’s that.

Okay. I guess that’s it. As the kids would say: [/serious and unfunny discussion of Internet journalism standards]. Coming soon: more swearing!

Sports media will be analyzed on HBO’s “Costas Now”

The sports media will take center stage on a special live, 90-minute edition of “Costas Now” at 10 p.m. Tuesday on HBO. There will be five segments on the show, and it will be conducted in a town-hall setting.

“On [Tuesday], we’re going to take stock of the sports media landscape,”HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg said. “We look forward to a comprehensive and opinionated evening of discussion.”

Segment One: Sports Talk Radio. Video package interviews: Chicago radio host Mike North, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti and WFAN radio hosts Mike and the Mad Dog. Live Panel: N.Y. Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, best selling author and radio host Mitch Albom and WFAN radio host Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo.

Segment Two: The Internet and Impact of Bloggers. Video package interviews: deadspin.com editor Will Leitch, TV writer and media critic Michael Schur and Washington Post columnist and PTI host Michael Wilbon. Live panel: Pulitzer Prize winning author Buzz Bissinger, Will Leitch and Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards.

Segment Six: Eight town drugdrunks (including Glocko the Swill) will discuss how embarrassing it is for a grown man to be caught carrying a Mickey Mantle baseball card while receiving full depantsiation rights in a hobo alleyway.

CStB: Raissman : Wilpon TV Is Leaning On MetsBlog

Jeesh, for a station that shows “Scream Benigno Scream” at least three times a day...you’d think they wouldn’t care about this stuff.

Prior to the start of the season, Matthew Cerrone joined forces with the Mets and SportsNet New York in a deal to have MetsBlog.com appear on SNY’s Web site. This was followed by a lot of yap-flapping out of Metsville (and MetsBlog) about MetsBlog being able to continue doing its thing.

On Thursday, MetsBlog posted a YouTube video of Joe Smith going mouth-to-mouth (”You ain’t s— … I’m in the big leagues you idiot”) with Cubs fans. Spies say when a Mets official was made aware of the video’s presence, he had it immediately pulled off MetsBlog.

For MetsBlog, and its fans, that’s called livin’ in a corporate world.

If SNY is hellbent ridding itself of any questionable associations, where’s the censors for Chris Cotter’s haircut?

Gordon Edes to Yahoo!

Multiple sources have confirmed to Scott’s Shots that Boston Globe writer, Gordon Edes, has agreed “in principle” to a job with Yahoo! Sports as a national baseball writer. Edes, according to sources, is committed to going to Yahoo!, but was still hoping to be part of the buyout offer at the Globe that recently lured Jackie MacMullan off the masthead.

The specifics of how Edes will leave - either through the buyout or simply by switching teams - are still being ironed out, according to sources.

...Either way, the Edes departure will be yet another crippling blow for Joe Sullivan’s thinning sports desk and will continue to give the Boston Herald a leg up in Sox coverage with the talented, experienced three-headed monster of Rob Bradford, Michael Silverman and Jeff Horrigan now going up against the 17 Percenter’s still-developing Amalie Benjamin and long-timer Nick Cafardo. Up-and-comer Julian Benbow has been “pitching in” on Sox coverage, especially on the Web, so we’d expect to see Benbow get more reps if Edes follows through on his Globe G’Bye.

Thanks to the inky-fingers of ShysterBall.

NYT: Arango: Tension over Sports Blogging (RR)

There’s an idea for a turn-back-the-clock weekend: New York to St. Louis by train, complete with stewed wordsmiths.

Perhaps the beginning of the end for cozy relations between ballplayers and writers can be traced to June 8, 1934, when 19 players for the Cincinnati Reds flew to Chicago to play three games against the Cubs.

It was not until 12 years later that air travel became the norm in baseball — when the Yankees chartered a DC-4, nicknamed the Yankee Mainliner, for the 1946 season. In the ensuing years, two rapidly improving technologies — air travel and television — ensured the end of the era of long bonding hours of drinking, gambling and carousing among reporters and players.

“Since we stopped riding the trains with baseball teams there has been tension between the media and sports,” said [Mike Fannin, the president of the Associated Press Sports Editors]. New issues have flared intermittently over the last decade as the Internet has become more sophisticated.

The Baseball Analysts: Lederer: Q&A: Rob Neyer - The Big Book of Baseball Legends

Hassock tripping fun with Rob and Ritchie (if Buddy and Pickles Sorrell wander into the interview...I’m outta here!).

Rich: The Big Book of Baseball Legends is your sixth book in nine years. You have become almost as prolific in writing books as The Beatles were in producing records during the 1960s. I’ve got all of The Beatles CDs and all of your books. Both are important parts of my music and baseball libraries. The good news is that we don’t have to worry about Rob Neyer breaking up. Or do we?

Rob: I’m absolutely sure that’s the first time my name has ever been mentioned in the same breath with the Beatles, and for that I can only thank you, kind sir. And no, I’m not breaking up. But I am taking a break from book-writing until I have an idea that really excites me. Because at the moment I don’t have one.

Rich: In the Foreword, Bill James tells a story about a scene in a movie he recalls as Shattered Glass wherein a young reporter rises to the top of his profession in short order by “just making #### up.” As it turns out, the scene is actually from Absence of Malice as you so delicately noted upon a bit of research. How perfect was that for the Foreword in a book called Big Book of Baseball Legends?

Rob: Pretty perfect. Somebody else mentioned that in a review, and assumed that I had fact-checked that story and tossed in the correction as a friendly rebuke to Bill, but he actually fact-checked himself and added that coda, which I really enjoyed.

Cohn vs. Cohn: firejoemorgan.com part 2

Deadlier than the Jean Harlow-Paul Bern Limpage War!...It’s the FJM-Cohn War!

Just yesterday, a firejoemorgan reader called Iggy a “quasi-literate college student.” Really? Many of the firejoemorgan people are quasi-literate or maybe even sub-literate, but Iggy certainly held his own with Junior (Alan Yang) who got this whole thing started and who writes for TV shows. In fact, Iggy wrote better than Junior, whose humor missed the mark most of the time. If you don’t believe me, read their entries side by side.

Other objections from firejoemorgan readers amused me. Some wondered how I have the “stones” to criticize a well-known writer like Junior. My apologies to Junior, but I never heard of him. And, frankly, I wonder how he had the stones to criticize me.

We e-mailed Junior our blogs which rebutted his blogs, and he replied with polite emails. He was not defensive as many of his readers are. I’m from Brooklyn and the worst thing we used to say about someone was, “He can dish it out but he can’t take it.” Junior certainly can dish it out, and I assume he can take it. At least, I hope he can. I appreciate that.

I don’t feel the same about some of his readers. They seem to think Iggy and I had no right to reply - that we should be passive and meekly accept whatever Junior wrote. Somehow we weren’t allowed to criticize Junior. That’s quite an interesting system, although it seems one-sided and unfair to me.

Timmermann: MLB.tv, I can’t say I wasn’t warned (updated with less interesting information!)

I want my Bob Tv!

UPDATE: I called MLB.com today and became a former MLB.tv subscriber. Back to the world of Extra Innings. Television as seen on television! What a concept!

UPDATE 2: MLB.com’s email support says that “Bob Timmerman” has a different e-mail address than what I gave them and I can’t have my account cancelled. And people wonder why I tell people to spell my name correctly. Also, MLB.com’s Mosaic support team will be glad to help you if you send them a DXDIAG report or a NetStat report. Because that’s something that I’ve always expected to do to get my computer to work.

Despite all this, I could watch NCAA Tournament games on CBS Sportsline with no problems. And I didn’t even get charged for that.

Why didn’t I just sign up to get beaten up by Bud Selig and Bob Bowman with a sack of door knobs instead?

UPDATE 3: The door knob beatings commence. MLB.com won’t even display a login screen for my Gameday audio, which I still pay for. I was told it was a website issue. But I was also advised to make sure I have Silverlight installed. That apparently will make the door knob beating more enjoyable.

Seamheads: DiFilippo: The Worst of Baseball Prospectus

BPro has struck out on three of their last five annuals! ... They haven’t hit the ball out of the infield!… They had a terrible spring training!… TAKE THEM OUT OF THE GAME!...Steamedpunk ramblings from DiFilippo.

Jim Baker, the author, wrote about how Brantley made a point of talking about how Edwin Encarnacion is “not clutch.” Encarnacion, of course, followed with a three-run homer to win the game.

Baker proposed calling this kind of thing, “Pulling a Brantley.” Wrote Baker, “We’ve all written or said things that very soon thereafter were followed by results directly opposed to our confident assurances. What sets Brantley apart, though, is the timely and dramatic fashion in which fate skewered him; that and the fact that he did it in the YouTube age. Oh, and the fact that he was so adamant about his position, almost to the point of zealotry.”

That last sentence, to be fair, sounds a lot like the authors from Baseball Prospectus. Baker’s article also fails to note that Brantley carried himself with class after he was proven wrong, yelling out to fellow announcer Thom Brenneman, “You called it! I stand corrected, my friend!”

So just for fun (and fairness), let’s look at some predictions by the BP writers in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 annuals, the kind which didn’t exactly turn out to be right with time. Before we go on, two things:

1. I am not advocating that we call this “Pulling a BP.”

2. I am not saying I would have known that these assessments were wrong at the time, or that the BP authors should have known. If you look at as many players as they do, you’re going to have some clunkers just by the law of averages. I love their stuff. I’m just pointing out that they were wrong — as they did with Brantley.

MLB: Rise of Internet forces ballplayers to guard private lives

Hey, if you want a safe haven from the evils of the Internet...just go hide out in the WFAN studios!

Cell phones. Camera phones. Digital cameras and recorders. Ubiquitous Internet blogs. YouTube and the like. All of them all-too-frequently at the ready to document and display every unflattering photo and verbal slip-up. The Digital Age, which allows people worldwide to stay so connected with one another, is creating a disturbing disconnect between athletes and their fans.

In short, the fairly new wave of technology is prompting players to reconsider how they interact with the public at large.

“Oh, yeah, it better. It better for everybody,” Cardinals pitcher Jason Isringhausen said. “You never know what’s going on out there. You’ve got to watch yourself. There’s a lot of people that want to bring you down, that’s for sure. There’s a lot of jealous people out there, people who will do anything to bring you down.”

..."You can be in a club, and a woman comes up and says she wants to have her picture taken with you,” said Angels outfielder Garret Anderson. “Twenty minutes later, it’s on the Internet somewhere, and you might have a lot of explaining to do.”

The Other Fifteen: Wyers: Buster and I

Judge, dread, rock Olney steady!

Bob, Chicago: Soriano had the third best OPS+ on the team. How can you say he can’t bat anywhere from 3-6?

Buster Olney: Bob: This is a classic example of the whole scouting vs. numbers thing I just mentioned. The numbers say one thing, but if you’ve been around Soriano and watched his hitting with RISP, he just is not good in big spots, against good pitchers; he just destroys rallies…

And then, about face! It’s not his strikeouts, its his personality!

Here’s the thing: we keep score with numbers! If it’s about winning and losing, then the numbers are what matters. You want to end the game with more of the right numbers than the other team.

I really hate criticizing Olney for analysis because I don’t think it’s central to who and what Olney is. But… Olney is bad at analysis. As a clearinghouse for information and sourcing he’s good, but he’s no Robothal.

nydailynews.com: Runoff to determine Mets’ new 8th inning song

The organization received 5 million votes on its Web site after inviting fans to choose from among 10 selections to potentially replace Sweet Caroline. An issue arose, however, when FARK.com readers bombarded the Mets with gag votes for a write-in candidate: Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.

The Astley tune actually won.

Rather than commit to that as the new eighth-inning tune since it probably doesn’t reflect the fan base’s wishes, the Mets will play the top six selections once apiece during the first six games of their home stand. The one that draws the largest crowd response will stick.

Seattle Times: Mariners’ Ichiro wants to make the play, not look good doing it

Not only can he (allegedly) hit home runs at will, he can (really) dive for fly balls and crash into walls at will. Nate Silver and Prospectus pop up to postulate their perception of Ichiro’s perpetually pedestrian PECOTA—.304/.346/.437 for 2008.

“There’s not a lot of players with the same hitting approach as Ichiro in the post-World War II era,” Silver said in a phone interview. “You have to almost go back to Ty Cobb, literally. Maybe you can look at Tony Gwynn, but that’s one comparison out of many. It’s Cobb, Max Carey — guys you see in Cooperstown. We miss low on him almost every year.”

Silver’s assessment of Ichiro’s place in the baseball hierarchy is based on looking at his total game.

“I wouldn’t call him a superstar-level talent with the bat,” he said. “But when you consider defense and baserunning, plus the fact he plays 162 games — an underrated ability — the combined package makes him a very valuable player.

“With the bat alone, there’s probably 30 or 40 players in the majors with more production on a per-at-bat basis. But when everything is taken into account, he can legitimately be tabbed a superstar.”

Fast Company: Leitch: MLB’s Digital Dominance

“As the world scrambles to master online video, crusty old baseball already has it figured out.”...except when I lost my picture last year during the final week. (grrrrrrr)

For decades, the prevailing wisdom has been that professional baseball is behind the times. Its ownership rejects new voices like Mark Cuban. The game doesn’t have the electric action of, say, curling. Like newspapers in a digital age, baseball is a relic that can’t distract the kids from Facebook and Wii, no matter how many players pump human growth hormone.

And yet, step inside the offices of MLB Advanced Media, the digital arm of Major League Baseball, and the first thing you notice is not a beaming photo of 74-year-old commissioner Bud Selig, or black-and-whites of Joe DiMaggio. Next to a row of cubicles full of people writing code sits what appears to be a complete television studio, in which, on this day, former player Billy Sample is discussing baseball’s hot stove league with an eager young interviewer named Casey Stern. The program is “Bottom Line,” and it is streamed live across the planet on BaseballChannel.tv, a 24-hour video news outlet on MLB.com. It’s the middle of January, the season won’t start for months, but here, in a lofty space in a former biscuit factory on the west side of Manhattan, people are busy slinging out more live Internet video than any other Web site on earth—12,000-plus events last year—and getting customers to pay for it, handsomely.

The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort: Brattain: Blogged down…

David Samson and now Bob Costas! Who’s next on Brattain’s short list?!.....Prince Randian? Shojobin? Blag Dahlia?

While it’s nice that Bob Costas clarified his remarks regarding the blogosphere, I’m not quite willing to let it go just yet.

The thing is, the so-called ‘lack of accountability’ that Costas and others lament about … well, quite frankly that is one subject they definitely do not hold the high ground on. The relationship between the mainstream media and professional sports has become so incestuous that it makes it easy to believe that the only accountability many journalists feel is toward their corporate overlords.

...Bloggers have no corporate masters nor are they beholden to special interests.

It was outsiders like Neil deMause, Doug Pappas, Maury Brown, Howard Bloom etc. that got the word out that the public was being ripped off. It was outsiders like former pitcher Jim Bouton that exposed baseball’s first illegal drug scandal. The media finally covered the game’s performance-enhancing drug problem after others made it impossible to ignore any longer. In each of these cases, the media were either ignorant or complicit. In reality, they were accountable--not to the truth or to the public but to special interests or their own (interests).

ESPN.com: New-and-improved SportsCenter throws Ombudsman curveball

The most impressive showing by an ombusdman since Ombuds Wellington sentenced Mueller to personality death ... by forcing him to watch 10 days’ worth of Who’s Now.

I recently noticed something I am hesitant to write about for fear of jinxing it. SportsCenter has changed.

While on vacation last month, I recorded 10 day’s worth of 9 a.m. SportsCenters, beginning Feb. 15, so I could catch up on the sports news upon my return. I approached the task of review reluctantly, regarding it as punishment for taking time off. Once I plunged in, though, I was amazed to find myself enjoying hour after hour of SportsCenter.

They were not crisp, clean half-hours, but far more often than not, they were crisp, clean hours dominated by highlights and news, with remarkably few gimmicks, sponsored segments, cross-promotions or padding of any kind.

Plus, bonus baseball content! Steve Phillips admits to pushing amphetamines; gets telepathically scanned and brainwiped. 

NY Times: Dusting Off the Archive for the Web (RR)

Say hello to the greatest vault since Bob Richards’ gold-medal performance at the ‘56 Melbourne Olympics!

Sports Illustrated, which faces fierce daily, even hourly, competition with ESPN, Yahoo Sports and others, has something its main rivals do not: a 53-year trove of articles and photos, most of it from an era when the magazine dominated the field of long-form sports writing and color sports photography.

On Thursday, the magazine will introduce the Vault, a free site within SI.com that contains all the words Sports Illustrated has ever published and many of the images, along with video and other material, in a searchable database.

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The Vault’s search engine lets a reader search by athlete, coach, team, sport, decade and year. Want to see every Sports Illustrated cover with Magic Johnson, or all the articles that mentioned him in 1986? Easy.

The site also allows a reader to see high-resolution images of old issues of the magazine as it appeared in physical form, including ads, using a mouse to “turn” pages. Jeff Price, president of SI Digital, said, “We’re confident that there’s nothing else like this.”

Boston Globe: Edes: Still batting around those ‘Abstract’ ideas

You are currently viewing the tour of Bill James Online...the Bill James Gold Mine 2008 and other neat stuff.

The title of the first essay in James’s new book is “I Dunno.” He agrees that is a reasonable way to describe his approach.

“All research,” he says, “begins with ignorance. The ability to focus on what it is that you do not know is critical to doing research. I’m absolutely convinced that none of us understands the world.

“I’m not a person that the world irritates, to quote Bill Buckley, but you turn on the radio and in any debate, you’ve got people who are convinced they know. Liberals, conservatives, Christians, Muslims, people who think Terry Francona is a genius, those that think he’s an idiot. They’re all convinced they’ve got this figured out.

“None of them has it figured out. We do not understand the world; the world is billions of times more complicated than our minds.

“You can make a useful contribution to a discussion if you can figure out specifically what it is you don’t understand and try to work on it. If you try to start from the other end - ‘I’ve got the world figured out and I’m going to explain it to everybody’ - maybe there are a lot of people who succeed in doing that, but it doesn’t work for me.”