Pretty Nice Xmas Gift for Yankee Fans

So this is what happens when the Yankees miss the playoffs. They've now added first baseman Mark Teixeira to their lineup for 8/$180. Quite a pickup for the Yankees, and Cashman deserves some credit for what he's pulled off this off-season. Teixeira projects to have a batting line of about .295/.390/.550, and he's a switch hitter still in his prime who is pretty much a lock to hit 30 HR's. By all accounts, he's a plus defender, although that is somewhat expendable at first base. But this solves a lot of questions for the Yankees and most certainly makes them the favorites in the AL East next season (and on paper, probably the best team in all of baseball). This will (rightly) raise a bunch of questions about the competitive balance in baseball, but you can't really fault the Yankees for spending the cash they're bringing in with their new money-making machine stadium. You can fault them a bit more for the way their fleecing NYC taxpayers for that stadium, but they're no worse (except the numbers are a bit bigger) in that regard than pretty much every other professional sports team.

So yeah, this signing worries me in terms of what it means to the Yankees on the field this season - but it just makes everyone else (i.e. the Rays) that much more of an underdog, and therefore that much more fun to cheer for (and the Yankees that much more fun to cheer against). And can you imagine if the Yanks miss the playoffs again, given what they've done this off-season?

From the Desk of Douglas Adams

"On [that] world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy?"

"I did," said Ford, "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in."

[via]

#16

The Canucks retired Trevor Linden's jersey last night (and beat the Oilers, too) in an emotional ceremony at GM Place. I remember him being drafted 20 years ago, and it's a little weird to have an NHL without him. Linden is regarded by pretty much everyone as a class act both on and off the ice: former head of the players association, lots of chairtable work, and he really cared about and loved the city Vancouver. The Canucks' all-time leader in games played, Linden was an integral part of the team for many, many years, taking them to within a whisper of the Stanley Cup in '94 against the hated Rangers (incidentally, he was also on the heartbreaking '98 Canadian Olympic team, one of the saddest sports memories I have... at least Linden was able to win a couple of Memorial Cups while in Junior hockey). Hats off to him for all he did for the organization and the city. I don't think he has a funny blog, though.

Bolt Considering Trying a Real Running Event

Having blown away the world in the 100m and 200m, Usain Bolt has expressed interest in moving up to the 400m. His body type is actually more typical of a 400m runner and he’s got the mechanics to probably do pretty well (he’s almost certainly a sub-45 second runner right now). But will a life-long short sprinter be able to do the training required to succeed (and for Bolt, success means setting a world record, or at least winning a world championship) in the grueling 400m? That, my friends, is question only a pole vaulter can answer.

Two Great Hockey Stories

Story #1: A Heartwarming Tale from a Frozen Land
The entire Blackhawks team forgoes a trip home around Thanksgiving while in the middle of a road trip, in order to go with their GM Dale Tallon to northern Ontario for the funeral of his father. Pretty nice show of solidarity by the only blue-collar professional athletes left, and they should be commended even more for their willingness to spend more time in Ontario (although at least they got out of Toronto).

Story #2: Living the “Rink of Dreams”
Due to an injury to Jose Theodore and transportation problems with a goalie being called up from the farm team, the Washington Capitals were left without a backup goalie at the start of their game against Ottawa. So they got web producer Brett Leonhardt to put on the pads, and he got to dress as the backup goalie for 1/3 of a game (the AHL goalie showed up halfway through the first period), taking warm-ups on the ice and everything. Is he the Moonlight Graham of hockey? “Now, if I’d only got to be a web producer for 10 minutes, that’d have been the real tragedy.”

Greatest Sports Blogger Ever? Greatest Sports Blogger Ever.

Imagine a guy who was probably the best basketball player on his high school team. Now, imagine he was recruited by Harvard, but that deal ends up falling through. So instead, he goes to a huge state school, starts off as the manager of the basketball team, and then ends up walking on to the team. So he’s on one of the best college basketball teams in the country (playing with 2 future first round NBA picks, who he also happened to play with on an AAU team), and spends the next 2+ years averaging about one minute per game. So, this guy might have a reason to fade into obscurity, maybe have a chip on his shoulder, or at the very least not be dealing well with going from being a top player to being a benchwarmer. And there are thousands of players just like him all over the country, every year. And a lot of them can’t stop telling you how great they were, or how they got screwed over, or complaining about their playing time.

But Mark Titus didn’t react like that at all. He and two of the other bench warmers start calling themselves “Club Trillion”, in reference to their boxscores for these games: 1 minute played, followed by a string of a bunch of zeros for points, rebounds, assists, turnovers, etc. [It reads like this: 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (depending on what stats are used).] Mark has a sports blog called Club Trillion, and he writes about what it’s like to be a minute-per-game guy on a top college basketball team. And he does it all with a self-deprecating sense of humor and great attitude. He’s my new favorite basketball player, and I wish Mark all the best in securing a trillion in lots of Ohio State games this year. I read the entire archive of the blog today, and it’s hilarious (he only started posting a couple of months ago, so there’s not much there). If he keeps it up, it might even fill (some of) the void left by Fire Joe Morgan’s departure.

A sampling:

We beat Butler yesterday in a squeaker that featured my former high school teammate Gordon Hayward putting points on our team's collective face. Brownsburg High School was easily the best represented high school in the game, as Gordon and I combined for 25 points, 7 rebounds, and 2 assists. Because I didn't even get in the game, Gordon shouldered most of the productivity, but I looked really good with the towel around my neck on the bench. Seriously. I looked REALLY good. Despite Gordon's best effort, in the end my good looks obviously weighed much more heavily in the outcome of the game than his 25 points, because my team came out victorious.
…
Butler is a team that understands a fundamental truth about every Caucasian basketball player--we love short shorts. You could be saying to yourself, "But Mark, I'm white and I like baggier shorts" to which I respond with "You are not only a liar, but a disgrace to Kurt Rambis." The length of shorts is serious business to me, which is why I had to untangle my jaw from my shorts when I saw how perfect Butler's were (Note: I would have picked my jaw up off the floor, but on its way down my jaw got entangled in my absurdly baggy shorts). They weren't quite as crotch-suffocating as the shorts from the '60s, but these bad boys gave me my first look at a basketball player's knees since I was in high school.

I actually think Mark Titus is a role model; a smart kid, a good writer, an athlete, and with a great perspective on life to boot. I also happen to think he’s funny as shit.

Let. Them. Fail.

The American Political Royal Family

Is it just me, or is there something mildy disturbing that people in a country founded in a rebellion against a monachary seem more than willing to put people into political office for no other apparent reason than they have a famous last name?

Burnett to Bronx

It is being reported that the Yankees have signed former Blue Jay AJ Burnett to a 5 year, $82.5 million contract. Marcel projects Burnett to be about +3.5 wins next season, which is worth slightly more than the $16.5 million the Yankees are paying him. Factor in regression as he ages over the next 5 years and the contract looks to be priced about right, and gives the Yankees another boost to their rotation. That rotation now has 3 definite pieces in place (Sabathia, Wang, Burnett), Joba Chamberlain most likely being a part, albeit with some innings limitations (unless they decide to put him in the bullpen, which would be a mistake). For the 5th spot, in-house options are Phil Hughes (has not thus far reached his potential despite high hopes coming into last season) and Andy Pettitte (currently negotiating with the club and has apparently rejected their initial offer of $10 million for a one year deal). Going onto the market, Derek Lowe and Ben Sheets are the main options available. Rather than signing one of these guys to a multi-year deal, it makes a lot more sense to give Pettitte what he wants for one year, and see how Hughes develops this year. Pettitte is probably only slightly less valuable, performance-wise, than Lowe or Sheets (and I think the groundball-inducing Lowe's potential value goes down with the questionable Yankee infield behind him), and can be had for a one-year deal rather than the riskier option of locking up one of them for a few years. And that dreamy stare comes for free!

More Winter Meeting Goodness

A bunch more action out of baseball's winter meetings today. The Mets, Mariners, and Indians made a massive deal involving 12 players, the biggest of note was reliever JJ Putz heading to the Mets. What a difference for the Mets for next year in terms of the 8th and 9th innings. Instead of relying on some combination of Heilman, Smith, Schoenweis, and other guys, now you've got Putz and Rodriguez. That's quite an upgrade, and probably worth a few wins for the Mets for 2009. If I have time I'll look at the numbers and see how it actually projects.

In in the AL East, baseball's best division just got better. The Rays management has pulled off another excellent move, picking up outfielder Matt Joyce from the Tigers for starter Edwin Jackson. So the Rays picked up a left fielder with a decent bat and a great glove (giving them probably the best defensive outfield in the league, with Crawford/Upton/Joyce), filling a hole they desperately needed to fill and with a young, low-cost player with a high upside. Joyce is probably a +2 wins player, and they had to give up a fifth starter who is probably worth half a win or so. The Rays had a glut of starters and needed to move someone in order to make room for David Price, so this move solves their rotation questions for next season, too. (Kazmir, Shields, Garza, Price, Sonnanstine - not bad!). The Rays front office continues to show why they are one of the best in the game. This is how you build a winning team for under $50 million.

My Rickshaw Ran Into a Cow, And Other Stories From the Indian Subcontinent

A report on my trip to India, for those interested in such things:

[I spent Nov. 20-Dec. 2 on a trip to India, mostly paid for by a generous donor to our school who is looking to expand our Asian Studies program beyond East Asia. The plan was for myself and two of my collegaues (Brad Nicholson and Alison Hogarth of the history department) to scout some potential sites for a student trip planned for June 2009 and visit some private schools in Delhi in hopes of establishing a sister-school/exchange relationship similar to the one we currently have with the EFZ School in Shanghai, China.]

We arrived in Delhi late at night and went straight to our hotel. But even at night, you could tell there was a lot of smoke in the air. And the chaos at the airport was everything you would expect from India. And the traffic was as mildly terrifying as you could hope for. Delhi is enormous, but is not full of tall buildings. It's really interesting how different my opinion of Delhi was over the first few days compared to the last few days (after returning from some smaller cities). Initially, I was surprised at how dirty it was - the air pollution was pretty high, although I don't know if it was any worse than Beijing. But the aspect that was surprising was the trash. There is garbage everywhere in India (especially in the smaller cities we were in). People seem uninterested in properly disposing of garbage, and at this point, why would they? Malcolm Gladwell's "broken windows" tipping point theory is playing out fairly well here, it would seem. So at first I thought Delhi was kind of run down...but then after seeing other places in India and returning to Delhi, it seemed like a thoroughly modern, cosmopolitan city!

Like seemingly every country outside of North America, the traffic was disorderly to the point of amusement (especially outside of Delhi). Part of the issue is you've got 5 or 6 different modes of transportation all sharing the road, and they're all moving at different speeds. Cycle-rickshaws, motorcycles, auto-rickshaws, cars, buses, (with people walking along the side of the road almost everywhere) and none of them are paying any attention to things like lane markers. Being a former British colony, they've got tons of traffic circles. And if you're like me, traffic circles aren't exactly a model of safe, efficient traffic movement, let alone when tiny auto-rickshaws are merging with big trucks and motorcycles are weaving in and out of every opening. But you get used to it, and after a few days I was pretty comfortable with it.

The two places we spent time outside of Delhi were Haridwar (in the foothills of the Himilayas, where the Ganges emerges from the mountains) and Varanasi (orginally called Banares). Both of these cities are important pilgrimage sites for Hindus, due to their location on the holy Ganges River.

In Haridwar, the whole Ganges experience is much smaller than in Varanasi, with people doing their bathing rituals during the day and an intimate Ganga Aarti ceremony at sundown. Due to the connections of one of the Indian-born parents of a student at our school, we got to spend an hour or two in an ashram here, too, which was quite interesting - and even got to sit down with the guru for a few minutes and talk about Barack Obama. (He brought it up, not us! He was very interested in our opinion of him and the challenges he faces going foward.)

Varanasi is pretty overwhelming, and is probably the most prototypical Indian place we visited (in my mind). This is the place for Hindus to visit, and many are cremated along the banks of the Ganges here. The riverbank is lined with dozens of ghats (bathing steps) where many Indians come to wash themselves in one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world. The Ganges experience is much more developed here, and very much geared towards tourists. We took a sunset boat tour on the river to check out one of the cremation ghats and watched with a bunch of other westerners as bodies were burned on the banks of the river. Truly a fascinating scene. The Ganga aarti ceremony in Varanasi is much more of a spectacle, more like the Vegas version of what happens in Haridwar. Varanasi is also (due to it being much more touristy) full of people trying to sell you things, be your "guide" to the next temple, or generally rip you off any way they can. (It was dealing with one of these touts that I had my "Fuck India" moment and needed a bit of a break. The fact that I was stressed out about being there in general at this time due to the terrorist attacks probably shortened my patience.)

So yeah, the terrorist attacks. We were on an overnight train between Haridwar and Varanasi when it happened, so didn't find out about it till about 20 hours after it occured (leading to some definite stresses being put on some of those back home who hadn't heard from us after news of the attacks went worldwide). The part of it that freaked me out the most was that we checked into the Taj Ganges in Varanasi... part of the same chain of hotels as the Taj Mahal in Mumbai that was targeted by the terrorists. If we had gone to Mumbai, we probably would have been staying in that hotel - and that thought definitely put me in an interesting psychological position. We decided to just continue on as is (although we talked about trying to get out of the country early), but it was on my mind quite a bit the rest of the trip. I carried my passport and cash with my all the time, and was keeping my eyes open for escape routes if I started to hear gunfire. Probably a completely irrational overreaction, but you can't help how your mind reacts to a situation like that when you're in a very foreign country.

There's really so much more I could write, about visiting mosques, a bunch of Hindu temples, the site of Buddha's first sermon, and tracking tigers in a National Park (we didn't find any, although we did see a leopard). But just like in China, one of my favorite activies was walking some narrow streets and seeing the markets in action. I would have loved to have tried more food from the little stalls in these places, but there are a lot of concerns about quality (I only had one fairly minor day of stomach problems, on our last day in the country). Something that always makes me laugh is the way people criticize western culture for being so "commercial". Every country I've ever been is incredibly commercial, and India is especially so. Maybe it's just that people are pretty commercial.

To sum up, I was pretty surprised at how poor India is, especially outside of Delhi. Some of the rural areas I saw from the train looked like they would be much more at home in sub-Saharan Africa than in one of the (supposedly) rising world powers. I guess I expected India to be like China, since we associate the two as the big growing world economies. But from my perspective, India is a long way behind China in terms of development. India is an incredibly fascinating country - but I wouldn't say I loved it. It's crowded and dirty. There isn't (at least where we were) a huge amount of natural scenic beauty (or, you can't see it because of the haze). On the other hand, the food was outstanding. Most of the people were great. And the whole place kind of got under your skin, and looking back I feel pretty nostalgic about it, for reasons I can't quite explain. It cetainly does overwhelm the senses. I think the terrorist attack kind of clouded my opinion of the whole country, because to a certain degree it made me just want to be home and safe. For this reason, this trip wasn't quite a "normal" visit to India. It's not an easy place to visit at the best of times. But it is truly one of the most genuinely interesting places I've ever been.

That's Quite a Substantial Cost of Living Allowance

Correction from the previous post: Sabathia's deal is worth more than $160 million (over 7 years). Which means the Yankees offered him $60 million more than the other offer on the table, which was the Brewers $100 million contract. That might seem like a pretty big premium to put up with the ridiculous New York sports media and deeply ingrained Yankees mythology....but having seen what that's like, I don't know if it's worth it. Especially considering the low marginal value of a dollar when you're making $20 million-plus per year. But I don't think the players union would have let him reject such a lucrative deal. Which raises all sorts of philosophical questions about how well unions represent the best interests of their members (and the question of competitive balance in baseball), but we'll leave those for another time.

Finally Something Interesting

So the Mets signed K-Rod (3 years, $37 million) to fill the role of closer for next season in the massive sucking sound that is their bullpen. I was all ready to go off about how they overpaid for him, but I am personally shocked that the deal is as reasonable as it is - I thought the vaunted "saves record" would earn a bigger premium. Perhaps GMs are wising up to the fact that saves aren't a very reliable metric for measuring performance.

And it is being reported that the Yankees have landed CC Sabathia for a great big 6 year, $140 million contract to go with his great big gut. They probably technically overpaid, but it's the Yankees - they can afford it and he is one of the top couple of pitchers in baseball (but my god, what is a beer going to cost in the new stadium!?!). They certainly want to avoid the so-called catastrophe of missing the playoffs again, and they definitely have holes to fill in the rotation with Mussina retiring and Pettitte unlikely to return. A rotation of Sabathia, Wang, Joba, Hughes + ________ (Pettitte? Burnett? Lowe?) is pretty strong. Watch out, Rays.

Have a Drink in the Name of Freedom

Happy Repeal Day! It has been 75 years since the end of the ill-advised adventure of prohibition, so use this opportunity to celebrate by getting drunk. Drug czar John Walters uses the day to inform us that the government is winning the war on those nasty intoxicants that remain illegal. Huh. Who knew? Maybe someday, if we just wish hard enough, we'll be celebrating the anniversary of the right to put whatever we want into our own bodies!

Jacob Sullum on Waters' statement:

"The good news in drug policy," Walters writes, "is that we know what works, and that is moral seriousness." Moral seriousness on this subject would require taking into account half a million nonviolent drug offenders behind bars, the victims of black market violence, avoidable deaths caused by the unreliable quality and unsanitary practices that prohibition fosters, the risk-premium subsidy to thugs and terrorists, the corruption of law enforcement officials, and the loss of civil liberties resulting from the drug war's perversion of the Constitution. Walters' claim to moral seriousness is therefore hard to take seriously. I'd settle for a little bit of intellectual seriousness from whomever Barack Obama chooses to succeed Walters, but it seems to be incompatible with the job.