The Kid: Hall of Famer

Ken Griffey Jr. was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week. Few athletes in my lifetime have captured the collective imagination and adoration of the nation’s sports-loving youth like Ken Griffey, Jr. did in the 1990s. It’s not hard to understand why: Griffey was cool as hell.

It was that swing.

It was the defense. Look at this GD catch.

It was the backwards hat at the Home Run Derby (and did I mention that swing?). 

It was the awesome commercials:

Like I said, he was cool as hell. Griffey had perhaps the best first 10 years of any MLB player of all time – as good as Willie Mays. And then…he started to get older. He started to get hurt. There was no late-career surge like many of his contemporaries enjoyed. But he still ended up with 630 home runs, and by all accounts was able to do so naturally. For this, Griffey was rewarded with admission to the Hall of Fame, in his first year on the ballot, with the highest vote percentage of all-time – Griffey appeared on 437 of 440 ballots – 99.3%. Griffey making the Hall of Fame makes me feel old, but also happy. In honor of The Kid, here are the two best Griffey-related articles I read this week. The first is a very personal story by a sportswriter about how Griffey helped the writer, and his family, when they needed it most. The second is a statistical look at Griffey’s amazing career. Enjoy. -TOB

Source: “A Different Kind of Ken Griffey Jr. Story“, C. Trent Rosecrans, Cincinnati.com (01/06/2016); “Griffey In His Prime Was the Second Coming of Willie Mays“, Neil Paine, FiveThirtyEight (01/06/2016)

Why Daily Fantasy Sites Need You to Lose

Jay Caspian Kang, formerly of Grantland, does a great deep dive into Daily Fantasy Sports, from its origins, arising out of the ashes of the now-illegal online poker industry, to its current predicament, facing legal death. Kang outlines the biggest problem with the industry – DFS are completely unfair to small-time players, who serve as virtual ATMs for the sharks. Kang expertly breaks down the key conflict for the DFS sites: The DFS sites are competing for users. To attract users, they must set big jackpots with small entry fees. If you, as a user, can pay $20 to enter a game for $1,000,000 – that sounds great. If a competing DFS site has a similar game for $20 but the jackpot is $2,000,000 – that sounds even better. To be able to pay these jackpots off low entry fees, the DFS sites need users – lots of them. But instead of needing 100,000 users to pay a $2,000,000 jackpot (not to mention prizes for runners-up), the DFS site can accomplish this much easier by not limiting how many entries each player can submit. One player submitting 100 entries gets the DFS company into the black much quicker. So the DFS sites come to rely on these sharks who enter lots of games – so dependent that they have begun changing rules to appease them (as casinos do for whales). Do the sharks want to be able to use third-party software to play hundreds or thousands of entries a night? Sure. Do the whales want to use scripts to allow them to make roster changes to all those hundreds and thousands of entries quickly, just before the deadline to set rosters? Have at it. Because if you don’t let them, they’ll take their money to a competitor who surely will. As Daily Fantasy commentator  Gabe Harber says in the article:

“I believe the major sites are fully aware of these competitive issues, yet they continue to do nothing about them because of the high amount of rake the power users are bringing in for them. As long as they can spend advertising money to bring fresh meat to the table, the power users will eat up the new players extremely fast by using their competitive advantages. No one is saying that better players should not win money off worse players, but it should not be at this rate and it should not be with misleading advertisements that prey on consumer confidence. Everyone does not have an equal chance, and everyone is not playing on the same field.”

There were a few moments back in September, during the deluge of DFS advertising at the start of the NFL season, where I kicked around the idea of trying it out. I’m quite glad I did not. -TOB

Source: “How the Daily Fantasy Sports Industry Turns Fans Into Suckers”, Jay Caspian Kang, New York Times (01/06/2016)

Credit Card Saves Dabo’s Day

Solid feel good story leading into the college football national title game. Clemson Head Coach, Dabo Swinney was a redshirt freshman receiver at Alabama in 1989 (Clemson’s opponent next week). He was late on rent and on tuition, and he was out of options until he went sifting through pizza coupons in the mail. He found a small miracle, with interest of course, that might have changed the course of his life forever. – PAL

Source: “Two Checks, One Path Altered: How A Timely Discover Card Envelope Changed Dabo Swinney’s Life”, Andy Staples, Campus Rush (01/05/2016)

TOB: Dabo Swinney has been on the national scene for nearly a decade now, and his name still makes me laugh. This story finally gave me the motivation to find answers to questions I have: Is Dabo his real name? If so, what the hell? If not, what is his name? And what the hell does Dabo mean? So I checked. Wikipedia shows that his real name is William Christopher Swinney and does give the story behind “Dabo”: “He was nicknamed Dabo as an infant by his parents when his then-18-month-old brother would try to enunciate “that boy” when referring to Swinney.” Da bo! Well, if that’s just not the cutest damn thing ever. Also, watch the man dance.

Dan Haren: Straight Talk

One of the funnier things to read is when former athletes reveal secrets about what went on behind the scenes – something fans never get to see. Recently-retired Dan Haren provided just such an inside view this week, with a series of tweets about what life is sometimes like as an MLB pitcher. The highlights:

Also, solid twitter handle, Danny. -TOB

Source: “Dan Haren Opens Up About Pitching, Bowel Movements, and All Those Dingers“, Samer Kalaf, Deadspin (01/04/2016)

PAL: I didn’t know wine makes it harder to go #2. A lot of great tweets from Haren in here. My favorite: 

https://twitter.com/ithrow88/status/684074173161803776

Story Update: Short-Shorts Trickling…Down.

Back in November, we brought you a story about LeBron James’ transition to shorter shorts than have been worn in the NBA in about 20 years. I wondered how long it would take short-shorts to take hold. Well, it didn’t take long. This week, this photo popped up in my Twitter timeline:

On the left is Ira Lee, a Top-50 ranked high school basketball player for the Class of 2017. And look at those shorts! Those are a few inches above the knee, and that’s with a downward-looking camera angle. The trend has been set. And as I said in November, 1-2-3’s own Phil Lang was ahead of the curve:

.

-TOB

PAL: Let’s be clear – I’m wearing a climbing harness in the picture above, which causes the shorts to ride higher. I’m not walking around in shorts 12 inches above the knee, folks.

Video of the Week:

PAL Song of the Week: Rakim – “It’s Been A Long Time”

Tap for a playlist featuring all of our weekly picks.

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Merry Christmas, everyone!

After the Lights Go Out

If you’ve never read the book Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger’s 1990 book on the Permian High School (Odessa, TX) football team’s 1989 season, you really should. The book, of course, spawned a movie and a television show. But the book is fascinating in the way Bissinger was able to embed himself into the high school football crazed small town of Odessa, TX and chronicle the town, the players and the coaches and how the performance of a high school football team so affects an entire community. If you have read it, you probably remember Brian Chavez. Chavez was one of the stars of the team and the book – an extremely bright, very talented kid who wanted nothing more than to get out of Odessa. Chavez worked hard on the field – he was the first Mexican-American team captain in Permian History – and in the classroom – he earned himself admission from Harvard. Interestingly, the kid who worked so hard to get out of Odessa found himself back there. After graduating cum laude from Harvard and earning a law degree from Texas Tech University, Chavez returned to Odessa to practice law. He led an upstanding life – until one night five years ago when he didn’t. This story chronicles Chavez’ rise, fall, and rehabilitation. If you’re a fan of the book, you will want to read this. But the most interesting passage comes when discussing the high school football worship in Odessa. Chavez makes a point that I had never considered:

No matter what the rest of the world thinks about misplaced priorities or lack of perspective, Chavez, at 45, still believes in the Permian way. It turns out the guy so admired a quarter century ago for not putting all his eggs in football’s basket sees nothing tragic in those who do.

“What made the Permian program, what’s so great about it, is that in Odessa, as a third grader you idolized the Permian middle linebacker or safety or receiver. That’s who you wanted to be,” he says. “And that’s a goal you can actually attain! How great is that? A goal you have in life is actually attainable! All you have to do is you just keep playing with your buddies and your friends and you actually attain your goals! In Odessa, you can do that! But, you grow up somewhere else, wanting to be Troy Aikman? You’re never going to be Troy Aikman.”

You know, it’s not a bad point. -TOB

Source: “How the Hero of Friday Night Lights Won and Lost His Good Name”, David McKenna, Deadspin (12/18/2015)

UPDATE: Tom Brady, Still a Bimbo (Again)

In our weeks of January 26, 2015 and September 7, 2015 digests, we brought you stories of Tom Brady and how those stories made us think Tom is a total bimbo. Well, here’s another. Sorry, I can’t get enough of this stuff. -TOB

Source: “Tom Brady Is a Hilarious Moron”, Drew Magary, Deadspin (12/18/2015)

Bryant Gumbel Making Bryant Gumbel Look Like Wayne Brady on Chappelle’s Show

This wide-ranging interview with Bryant Gumbel is what happens when a really smart guy, with some years on this planet, and a ton of job security, just decides he does not give one crap about speaking his mind. It’s fantastic. Gumbel speaks on the NFL’s lies and hypocrisy, calls Donald Trump a “shithead”, and non-payment of college athletes. It’s well worth your time. -TOB

Source: “Bryant Gumbel: ESPN, CBS Gave ‘Big Wet Kiss’ to NFL”, Robert Silverman, The Daily Beast (12/20/2015)

PAL Song of the Week: Special TOB Edition: All the Beatles songs, ever, which just got released yesterday on Spotify. But especially Day in the Life, Rocky Raccoon, and Yellow Submarine. Enjoy the Holidays, everyone!

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Christmas is awesome. First of all, you get to spend time with people you love. Secondly, you can get drunk and no one can say anything. Third, you give presents. What’s better than giving presents? And fourth, getting presents. So, four things. Not bad for one day. It’s really the greatest day off all time.

The Only F-Word That Matters (Warning, explicit language below)

“You’re a mother——- faggot. … You’re a f—— faggot, Billy.“

By multiple accounts, this is what Sacramento Kings guard Rajon Rondo said to NBA Referee Billy Kennedy. 11 days following his ejection of Rondo, Kennedy came out as gay. What follows is my hunch – again, my gut feeling –  but I would put money on the following:

• I think there’s a good chance the inner circle of the NBA players, coaches, and referees knew of Kennedy’s sexual orientation. There are 64 NBA referees, and they work in groups of 3 on the court. Kennedy’s been a ref for a long 18 years, working alongside many of these folks for quite a long time.
• Reading what Rondo said, I don’t think these were just frustrated vulgarities; these were personal statements directed knowingly at Kennedy.
• There is a connection between this story and Kennedy deciding to come out. Whether or not it was his way of turning this situation into a positive, I don’t know, but I do believe Rondo’s actions influenced Kennedy’s decision to come out, and that sucks. While I’m sure it’s more common than should be the case, a person’s decisions as to when and how to come out should be on his/her terms. Rajon effin’ Rondo shouldn’t play any part in that decision – that’s for sure.

If my gut feeling is correct, then a 1 game suspension is crap. In a televised game, on the NBA stage, a player attacked someone using slurs in front of a crowd and a television audience. Replace “faggot” with most other slurs, and we’re not talking about a one-game suspension. Donald Sterling had to hand over ownership of his team for making racially insensitive remarks to a mistress. Rondo directs homophobic slurs at an official on the court before a crowd and a television audience, and he’s suspended for 1 game. Come on. – PAL

Source: “Rajon Rondo allegedly berated a gay referee, and the punishment feels too soft”, Clinton Yates, The Washington Post (12/14/2015)

TOB: I don’t disagree with anything you said, but I will point out that Rondo was not mic’d up and no one in the television audience heard what he said at the time. In fact, no one seemed to know what he said until 11 days later when they announced the suspension. At that point, someone in the NBA offices leaked the information, which then caused everyone to turn to the videotape to try to confirm what Rondo said by reading his lips.

Now, this doesn’t at all absolve what Rondo said: it was hurtful and hateful. But I don’t think he truly outed Kennedy. NBA players say things to referees during games all the time that we can’t hear, even when we sit close to the court. Rondo probably expected, as many players do, that no one but those directly around him would hear what he said. And if Kennedy’s sexual preference was an open secret in the NBA, as you surmise and I agree, then I don’t think Rondo had any intention or even any real blame in outing Kennedy publicly. He figured anyone wuo heard it already knew. If the league office had not leaked what he said, which I can’t recall them ever doing, then we aren’t having this discussion. I want to reiterate: that does not absolve Rondo of what he said. It was terrible, and as a Kings fan, it was embarrassing and just one more reason being a Kings fan is the absolute worst.

An All Too Familiar Scene

On a lighter note, this is great. A’s pitcher Sean Doolittle dragged his girlfriend to the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night, and the two of them chronicled the events in a series of amusing tweets. Here are my two favorites:

https://twitter.com/EireannDolan/status/677629950694981633/photo/1?ref_src=twsrctfw

Source: “Sean Dolittle Dragged His Girlfriend to Star Wars“, Barry Petchesky, Deadspin (12/18/2015)

Audio Recording of Dr. James A. Naismith on Inventing Basketball

The University of Kansas recently released an audio recording James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, appearing on a New York radio show in 1939, about 10 months before his death. It is the only known audio recording of Dr. Naismith. As a 1939 radio interview, it is everything you’d hope for.

http://exhibits.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/show/naismith150/collections/radio-interview

The host has an almost comically classic radio voice. Even better, Dr. Naismith sounds like a caricature of an old man in the 1930s. On top of  that, it is fascinating to hear Naismith discuss the game he invented nearly 50 years prior (and what a disaster the first attempt was), and marvel at the heights it had reached by 1939. Imagine if he could see the game today. -TOB

Source: “Radio Interview, 1939”, University of Kansas, Released (12/15/2015)

PAL: So…who wrote Dr. Naismith’s script for this? Kidding aside, I love the fact that basketball was invented out of what sounds like a PE teacher thinking, “What the hell am I going to do with these knuckleheads today?”

Can You Blame Them?

Bo Ryan, head basketball coach at Wisconsin, retired right before the start of Big 10 conference play after back-to-back Final Four appearances. For lack of a better term, “tenured” coaches have been doing this a bit more often as of late, most recently Steve Spurrier at South Carolina. Jim Calhoun bounced 6 weeks before the start of the season at UConn, as well. One possible factor for these abrupt retirements: leverage. By checking out in the middle of the season, the coach gives his top assistant coach an opportunity to earn the job as the replacement. Although Wisconsin is likely a top-15 job in college basketball, it’s not going to hire from the outside in the middle of the season:

“Everybody knows, it’s no secret. Every head coach would like their top assistant to be the head coach,” Ryan said. “I wanted to give Coach Gard plenty of time to get the guys ready and to get them into the position where, as a head coach, he has a chance, as every former head coach for their top assistant says, ‘to take a run at the job’. That’s the way this business is, and we accept it.”

I understand. Gard’s been with Ryan forever, and Ryan wants to give his guy a chance. It’s absolutely worth noting that Gard’s father was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in November. It seems likely that Ryan held the spot until Gard was ready.

Here’s the thing: The next head coach at Wisconsin is not Bo Ryan’s call. Hiring coaches is the job of the Athletic Director and the university. If Ryan retires at the end of last year, the school has time to put together a wish list. Interview outside candidates. With a mid-season retirement, the school has to – you know – worry about the next game and the immediate season. I get it – and I think I’m fine with it – but it’s a bit overstepping on Ryan’s part. – PAL

Source: “Ryan didn’t quit on Wisconsin; the timing of retirement was calculated”, Rob Dauster, NBCsports.com (12/16/2015)

TOB: When Mike Montgomery began coaching at Cal, I was very excited. He’s a great coach who always gets the most out of his players. He had the most success at Cal as any basketball coach in decades. But he brought his son, John, along as an assistant coach. From early on, there were many rumblings that Mike was only planning to coach a few years and wanted Cal to hire Mike as his successor. I have to say, I would have been pissed. And if I was a Wisconsin fan right now, I’d be pissed. As a basketball coach, you have a job – to coach the team as well as you can. You should not be able to shape the program for years to come. In the law, there’s a concept called the Dead Hand – when you die, you are not allowed to control your assets beyond a certain time. The same should be true of college coaches.

Mom Knows Best

This is short, but funny. A UMass basketball player had been playing poorly – so his mom turned off his cell phone service. In his very next game, he went off for 40 points. Good job, Mom. -TOB

Source: “What Motivated UMass Guard Trey Davis to Score 40 Points Wendesday?: ‘My Mom Turned Off My Phone’”, Daniel Malone, MassLive (12/16/2015)

PAL: Imagine his numbers if she cut his WiFi…

Video of the Week

Mom with great hairdo takes a half court shot for her daughter’s tuition, thinks she misses it, somehow makes it on the bounce, goes wild.

PAL Song of the Week: Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly  – “Peace On Earth/Drummer Boy”

Check out our entire playlist here. Not as good as Monica Lang’s breakfast rolls, but – hey – it’s not bad either.

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Geeze, I think the Royals fans were excited about winning the World Series.

The Making of a Rivalry

Hey, alright! The NBA is back! I love to play basketball, but in the last couple of years I’ve entered a phase of life where I need a reason to watch the NBA. Watching a random game on a Wednesday just to see John Wall is not enough for me. But a rivalry? A real rivalry? Where the players legit dislike each other? That is something I can get into. Enter: Warriors/Clippers, which has turned into an extremely heated rivalry over the last three years. In this article, one of my favorite NBA writers, former Kings beat writer Sam Amick, details the origins and key moments that gave rise to this rivalry. He peppers the article with videos, gifs, and quotes. Highly entertaining. If you missed it, Steph Curry did Steph Curry things and the Warriors beat the Clippers Wednesday, as they do. -TOB

Source: “Warriors vs. Clippers, Three Years of a Heated Rivalry“, Sam Amick, USA Today (11/04/2015)

NFL Referees Are Not Unbiased. Shocking.

I have often thought about how ridiculous the football ritual of measuring for a first down is. Consider this: At the end of each play, a referee who is approximately 30 yards from the play attempts to determine where the ball was located when a player is touched down. It is a rough estimate, at best. But when the ball is too close to the first down marker to eyeball, from the same distance, whether the first down has been achieved, we march out the first down sticks and measure it to the centimeter. Isn’t that odd? You’re empirically measuring something that was subjectively marked. This article tackles a different but related subject: How accurate is a referee’s ball placement? The stats show: not very. Take a look at this graph, which shows the frequency of a ball being placed at each yard line:

The 20-yard line is an anomaly because of touchbacks after punts/kickoffs. But notice the other, smaller peaks – those all occur on each 5-yard line marker. Why are referees more likely to place a ball at each 5-yard marker? Because that is where the line is painted across the field. It’s pretty fascinating, and the entire article is worth reading. Shoutout to 1-2-3 reader/my brother Pat for passing this article along.  -TOB

Source: “Are NFL Officials Biased With Their Ball Placement“, Joey Faulkner, gutterstats (11/03/2015)

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Kids Grow Up to Play Football

Below is a sad interview with former NFL player Kyle Turley, where he talks about years of contemplating suicide as a result of the long-term use of medications he needed in order to play football.

I of course could not help think of my son. On Saturday, we were in Berkeley at a new taqueria (seriously, go to Sinaloa) before the Cal/USC game and we talked to two middle-aged guys who were there. One of them mentioned his son plays football for a local high school and that his son wants to join the Marines, but they are concerned the Marines won’t take him because of shoulder injuries he’s suffered playing football. In the next breath, he looked at my son, who is a thick little dude, and said, “He’s gonna be a linebacker.” I laughed and agreed, because I didn’t want to offend the guy. But I could not believe that he had just told me his son might not be able to do what he wants to do because of football, and it doesn’t even appear to give him pause that maybe his son shouldn’t have played. I don’t know where the future of football will go, but I just cannot stand the thought of anyone I love playing this violent game. -TOB
Source: “Kyle Turley Speaks About the Benefits of Medical Cannabis“, Highly Questionable (11/05/2015)

Video of the Week

The 1985 Buffalo Sabres made an anti-drug music video and it is everything you hope it would be. There’s a lot of great flow, bad moustaches, and some of the worst dancing you’ve ever seen. Be fair to yourself and watch.

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-Eli Cash