Sport
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Everything posted by Sport
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Never read it. I think I just mean in conversation. It's like "OKAY. GATHER ROUND. ALLOW ME TO A PAINT A PICTURE AS I PUT YOU IN MY EYES AND EARS WHILE I SPIN THIS YARN. So I"m on USS Constitution and I see this guy..." I know a godawful storyteller who does this and it drives me up a wall. The staff was/is arguing that if they were purchased by one of these vultures and simply left alone to their Deadspin devices they would make money for their owners and every move that Univision and the new vultures have made in the pursuit of larger profits has been almost universally counterproductive towards that end. And now their moves have stuck G/O Media with a damaged brand, probably broken beyond repair.
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I think this hits why I liked Deadspin all this time. Sports are great, but many of the characters and the owners are huge f****** a*****s and there's a lot of internal conflict you have to put up with just because you like baseball or hockey or football, even. Lots of other sports fans are stupider than s*** and for a while it was like "I like this too. Does that mean I'm stupid?" It's okay to enjoy them, but also don't be a wanker dork and carry on about enjoying them, The Ringer. They also always recognized the inherent irrationality in supporting a specific team of professional mercenaries who aren't from that city while also fully embracing the rationality of ":censored: you if you're a [blank] fan". Is there another site like Deadspin that I can visit? I always feel like I find out about these websites 16 months after everyone else does and it's almost exclusively from here or when they get dropped into conversation by someone as if they're some world famous conglomerate that I should already know about. People Be Like, "So I was reading Metchell Jurgenson, who I normally can't stand, on BEANSPILLER and he made a good point blah blahblah". No I haven't heard of Beanspiller or whatever! EDIT: I'm surprised one of the blogs in the Gawker family was not called Beanspiller. That was a good made up name by me.
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I feel like that self-mythologizing only started when they started to fight against the owners. Before that it was just Deadspin and they did Deadspin things. I like Deadspin, I don't like Barstool, and I like when people call out The Ringer for being so in their own ass. If they all find another place to congregate I'll read them there. Speaking of those MTV shows about MTV (and speaking of the mid-aughts), I used to watch all of those shows and I hated how they chose to have the subjects tell stories in the present tense. Actually, I think I just hate it when people tell stories in the present tense. I find it irritating and presumptuous as if they're saying, "let me, the grand storyteller, set the scene for my amazing story". Those shows were all like "So I'm running backstage trying to get Snoop Dog his chalice or else we can't do the big chalice joke and I trip into this table of hot dogs and" ugh. Write it in a :censored:ing book, Bill. Jeez louise. He's not even a great conversationalist or interviewer nor does he have a voice that's pleasant to listen to. When he started to get "aggressively 50" as they said on the latest episode of the Deadcast is when he lost me. I'm not a basketball fan and I read 2/3 of the Book of Basketball (I read it all the way through, I just skipped the pyramid stuff because it was boring and overly statty. I don't care how he ranks the 20 best basketball players ever). I might have picked up the update, I won't listen to the Podcast version. It bothered me more than it should've that a really entertaining World Series Game 7 was happening and he was ferociously tweeting about an October regular season Celtics game as if that's the only thing going on. We're allowed to have our own interests, but if you're going to call yourself "Sports Guy" you should watch the sports. If the Red Sox were in it he'd would've watched it.
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Right. When you have a billion dollars you can easily get someone else to give you another billion dollars. That's not the problem. The problem is they want to reap the rewards without paying for it, which is another way they became billionaires in the first place. Also stadiums don't need to cost a billion dollars. Baseball stadium design should be moving more where MLS is now. If you're in a climate like Oakland's you don't need a retractable roof like the Rangers or like you would in Vegas and you don't need 65,000 seats. I'd love to see a major league team take a minor league style design and really trick it out with about 32,000 super intimate seats.
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Other than "they don't want to pay for it themselves" why can't the A's just build the new stadium in the parking lot while they play the next two years at the Coliseum?
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Gladwell's ignoring a key detail in order to defend Paterno (Penn State Jopologists do this too) - They all mistake (or willfully misconstrue) the McQueary report as the first time Paterno had heard of an incident like this and he was too old and simple to do anything about it and also he did all he could. He's saying that Paterno was a football obsessive for 50 years before McQueary came to him in 2002 and it's unreasonable to expect him to know how to handle that properly. In that story it's fair to say that Paterno did everything right. EXCEPT that's not how it happened, Malcolm! Paterno knew about Sandusky as far back as the late 1970's, he forced the guy into early retirement, for crying out loud!. Despite this he still let him coach with the team for another two decades and continued to allow Sandusky to bring kids to the facility. When Mike McQueary came to him that was not the first time JoePa had encountered Sandusky being Sandusky with a kid. He had more than MANY opportunities to get Sandusky away from Penn State football and never did. I thought his Eugenics Basketball team thing was the lowest point he could go on that podcast.
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He's still on it and I've been skipping them more and more. He needs people in his orbit to check him and I don't think he has that. Maybe Russillo. Everyone else is over-laughing at his jokes, not correcting him when he mispronounces words and names (which happens OFTEN), and nobody tells him to STFU about the Patriots. Other reasons I'm out on Ringer podcasts - I find their new editor in chief, Mallory Rubin, completely unlistenable, Chris Ryan needs to stop yelling, Shea Serrano needs to get a personality besides "I love terrible action movies isn't that funny how much I love them?", and I'd like to dangle Nephew Kyle off a balcony. Never heard someone trying so hard while failing so hard to sound cool.
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I have neither the love for Gary Thorne nor the disdain for Doc Emrick that other people seem to have, but I would like more Gary Thorne and less Doc Emrick, if that makes sense. Pierre is awful and needs to go altogether. Get rid of Roenick and Milbury while they're at it.
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I have read all 32 of those every year and enjoyed most of them. Hell, I've appeared in the comments in a couple of Bengals editions (under a pseudonym. I'm not tryna have people know I spent time coming up with a snarky complaint about the Cincinnati Bengals and then emailed it to a guy.), but I think it's jumped the shark. Get this, every NFL team has racist fans! Every NFL owner is a psychotically greedy idiot! The game experience is full of drunk monsters! I think Magary needs to outsource it to some other writers or kill it. How many years can he find a new angle to dump on Cincinnati? Our signature food is bad? Well, sir, I disagree!
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This is why I've kind of stopped listening to their podcasts. Simmons said something on a Rewatchables episode that I was listening to recently that was nowhere near the neighborhood of funny, I don't think he even intended it to be a joke, and it caused uproarious Def Comedy Jam levels of laughter from the other 3 Ringer employees. It was weird. I think it's just a reflex at this point - Bill says something, anything, and their Pavlovian response is to guffaw like they're listening to a comedian do bits from his act on the Bob & Tom show. Also, I'm sure Shea Serrano is a swell guy with good intentions who does good charity work and has the right political mindset, but his Ringer mascot act where the entire bit is how much he likes stupid action movies is really thin at this point. If his name is on a pod I skip it.
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In the case of the A's or other franchises who've relocated, yeah trace that lineage all the way back, baby. The Sacramento Kings are the Rochester Royals. Cool with me. On the other side, if you're the hornets-Pelicans-Bobcats, go f*** yourselves you revisionist pricks. Preemptive f*** you for when they inevitably reappropriate the Thunder's Sonics records to the new expansion Seattle Sonics. But the Browns, though, the Browns are different. I think the fact that they all agreed to shelving the franchise/start a new one in Baltimore in 1996 is everything. If the Sonics had done that when the team moved to OKC I'd say the same thing about them too. It's a shame they didn't. My point since I've been old enough to ponder on this is I don't see how the Browns' historical record was altered or changed, though. There's the way people want it to have been handled - the usual way, and then there's the way it was handled, but because it unfolded in real-time and not as some after the fact 1999 erasing, that's not altering the historical record, that's just the historical record. Let's look at the two ways they could've handled this - How is this report of the history: "In 1996 Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore where they became the Baltimore Browns. In 1999 an expansion franchise returned NFL football to Cleveland and they are called the Cleveland Nutsacks." any more valid or right or correct a history than something like, "In 1996 Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore where they became the Baltimore Browns until threatened litigation forced the league to reconsider their approach to the relocation. All interested parties agreed that the Browns franchise would stay in Cleveland, dormant until a new group could put the team back on the field in a new stadium. Modell agreed to take over a new franchise in Baltimore comprised mostly of former Browns players and staffers. He called this franchise the Baltimore Ravens"?
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Yes. Nobody said it was an ideal situation for them. With the situation they were in, however, it was the best outcome they could've hoped for. Better than waiting for a crappy relocated franchise with no connection to their previous franchise (Winnipeg) or never getting another one ever again (Harftord), though. Players, coaches, staffers, even owners do not a franchise make. They change franchises all the time. If, hypothetically, a plane crash, heaven forbid, wiped out an entire team and the franchise took a few years off to recuperate, complete with an expansion draft, that would still be the same franchise, would it not? Same thing with the Browns franchise except replace plane crash with ahole owner.
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RE: The Browns Deal and the reason I've never had a problem with it - The Ravens never played a single game under the lineage of the Browns. It was understood by everyone that mattered that the franchise in Baltimore was a new line and it was understood how records were to be kept from that point forward. Art Modell agreed to forfeit his franchise in order to take over a new one, the Browns players' contracts were shifted to a different franchise the same way they would be in a trade, and the Browns franchise was put on hold until the time when a new group could get the franchise back on the field. That's exactly what happened and that's exactly as it was recorded. That is the official record. They didn't "leave their history in Cleveland" so much as the franchise stayed in Cleveland and took a break while a new one started in Baltimore. Clean. No lie ever took place, no historical revisionism ever took place. There's no "pretending" the Ravens aren't the Browns because the Ravens aren't and have never been the Browns. Their origin is rooted with the Cleveland Browns, yes, but that's where the connection ends. Really the argument is based on precedent. The only reason the Cleveland deal rankles people is because it wasn't the usual procedure, but because everything was so cleanly spelled out, agreed upon, and took place in real-time, it's not any less "real" or valid a history. But even if everyone wants to go back after the fact and pull a Bobcats-Hornets-Pelicans, which will happen whenever the Seattle Sonics are returned to the NBA, what does it even matter? People in Charlotte care more about the Charlotte Hornets history than do New Orleans Pelicans fans. It's fine to me if they want to bundle all of that into their current Bobcats franchise. It doesn't hurt anything or anyone. Why do people in Arizona care about Dale Hawerchuk? Why do people in Winnipeg have to think about Laine breaking Ilya Kovalchuk's Thrashers records and how is that a better system? Even if some post-move revisionism with the Browns had taken place - It's just sports. None of this is real. Isn't it right that people in Cleveland get to cheer for the same team as their parents/grandparents? Wouldn't it feel weird and sad that Jim Brown and all those Browns would be tied to some purple bird team in Baltimore? Wouldn't Baltimore rather still have the same franchise tied to the Johnny Unitas Colts if they had a choice? Just write down what happened and call it a day.
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I can't remember where I saw this so it could be way off and take this as you will, but I read somewhere about a study they did that I think was about Chicago Fire and I think they said that for every mile you're outside the central point of a city you cost yourself 500 would-be attenders per game. If true, and that rings sound to me, imagine the stadium is on the other side of a huge bridge, surrounded by water, has no public transportation access, and also it sucks. I spontaneously go to Reds games all the time. So do lots of other people. Such an outing is basically impossible for a lot of folks in the Tampa Bay metro. Imagine you're a parent who works downtown and gets some free tickets to that night's Rays game. You're going to leave your office at 5, you drove to work because it's Tampa and you have to drive so you drive your car to your home in some northern burb, sit in rush hour traffic, pick up your kids, drive to the stadium because there's no public transportation so you have to drive. Now you're going back through rush hour the other way, through the city, across a bridge, etc. You're looking at 90 minutes from your desk to your house and to the front gate, if you're lucky. Good luck even seeing the first pitch. Most people would just politely decline the tickets and watch the game from the comfort of their couch. Their problem is bad location made worse by the stadium not being a desirable place to visit. End of story.
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As long as those former kids now adult Tampa residents have to go to the crappy Stadium in St Pete it doesn't matter. It's not a fair test. Everyone in Tampa younger than 30 is a Lightning fan? What's the difference between them and the Rays? The Lightning play in a nice and accessible building. I don't know why people want so badly to prove the "wait for the kids to grow into ticket buying adults" wrong. So many people my age were kids around the same time the Devil Rays started as when the Columbus Blue Jackets started. We're now buying tickets and the team's healthier than ever. Anytime that's brought up around here, posters, usually from larger, more established sports markets feel the need to declare it fallacious. In the right conditions it makes a lot of sense. Tampa's baseball fans haven't been given the right conditions. Why isn't Miami working? I don't know. Miami is Miami. That's one of the most different places on Earth. I don't know if you can apply any rules to how things work elsewhere to how things work in Miami.
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I'm sure this was already said so I'll just join whoever already said it - Tampa's baseball problems are the result of one thing and one thing only - bad stadium in a bad location. Period. I don't know why this is so routinely dismissed as just one small factor. It's THE factor. It's not because of "too many transplants", not "too many Yankees fans", not "it's where spring training is", not "people there don't like baseball". It's the stadium and the stadium location. The Rays TV ratings are strong, there's support for a local team, it's just there aren't a lot of people who want to drive 2 hours round trip to see weeknight baseball game in an awful environment. I can only speak to my own experience, but I live 10 minutes away Great American Ballpark, which is an awesome ballpark, and I go to games all the time because it's close and easy and a pleasant experience. I'd go to significantly fewer games if the stadium was a lifeless shell an hour away in Sparta, KY (chosen because it's 1 hour away not counting rush hour traffic and I'd have to cross a bridge). Put a good stadium on the Tampa side and all their problems would go away. I'd love to see another major league team come back to Montreal, but not in a half-step hybrid dual-citizenship way. This is clearly a ploy to figure out a stadium in a more reachable and centralized place for the core of the fanbase.
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This is similar to how the Marlins have never lost a playoff series. I realized this 5 or 6 years ago and it's a fun thing to say when the team is on a losing streak. Like they lose again and you go to anybody and nobody in particular, "you know the Reds are on a 9 game winning streak in the World Series?".
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Those three people don't have any chemistry with each other and I don't think any one of them is particularly good on their own. Matt Vasgersian has always sounded to me like a person doing an impression of a baseball announcer, ARod is way better at a desk in a studio than he is in a booth watching a game live, and Mendoza is still trying too hard to prove she belongs. I don't get the feeling she's comfortable on-air. I don't know what you do about Sunday Night Baseball. it's supposed to be like the baseball version of Sunday night football, the week's showcase game, but you can't plan ahead of time to get the best pitching matchup in that game, which means if like the Dodgers are playing the Mets you're less likely to see Kershaw vs Syndergaard/deGrom than you are some other random starter. Maybe make it like a baseball talk show where you have rotating guests to chat about the game as it's happening with one regular host? Like NBA on TNT, but it's during the game. I don't know if there's former baseball players who could pull that off. Probably not.
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https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-night-the-lights-went-out-1834298070 Drew Magary's account of what happened to him. Absolutely terrifying stuff.
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I've decided this confirms what I've always suspected about Dave Lozo - he doesn't actually like hockey. I can't say Ryan Lambert is any better, though. I just want Marek vs. Wyshinski back. 31 Thoughts, the Marek and Elliot Friedman podcast is good, but I don't like it as much as Marek and Wyshinski. I tried, but The Puck Podcast didn't do it for me. Two randos in LA talking about their cats and then going through the week's games team-by-team for 3 hours? No thanks. I have had a sub to The Athletic for a while now since all the good Columbus Dispatch writers went there, plus Rosecrans on the Cincinnati Reds and it's been worth it. I read it every day.
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A hockey podcast that isn't poisoned by Dave Lozo, who for some reason, is a co-host on every single hockey podcast. I'll have to give it a shot.
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I wouldn't call it a stunt food, but I ate poutine in GABP's Machine Room restaurant* and it was great and the next year it was gone because I'm probably the only person who ever ordered it. *The Machine Room is rad because anyone can enter regardless of where their seats are. They used to have waiters and you could sit there the entire game. My go-to move used to be to buy the cheapest bleacher tickets and then show up early and hog a table with field views at the Machine Room, which is kind of a dick move, but I was 24. Now it's less of restaurant and more of a fancy concession stand with tables and stuff.
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They have to work in those conditions and live in constant fear that their site will vanish at any moment. No wonder they're all so angry and everything on the site sounds like it was written by the same person - they're all on top of each other! I worked at a desk like that for six months and I came home exhausted every day because I was forced into constant socialization and eye contact for ten hours a day. I also didn't get anything done because it was loud and distracting as hell. I'll take my cube in Cincinnati all day every day. Not to get braggadocios, but it's about the size of two of those desks. RE: The Pardon My Take guys, while not as bad as the rest of Barstool, are problematic because they've become the friendly goofy face that acts as the gateway drug to Portnoy's bulls***. But they also have a huge audience and I don't begrudge Charlotte Wilder for having them on her web show. I think maybe if you're a woman trying to work in sports media the best play might be to cozy up to the PMT guys and get on their good side. Capital J Journalist Rachel Nichols doesn't seem to mind them. My biggest issue with the story is not that it's sponsored content. I'm not even certain that it is SponCon (which is a really annoying portmanteau. It sounds like a terrible convention. Just take a second and type out both words, people.). I think Wilder was probably like "hey can I go do my foodie thing with one of those weird ballpark foods?" and the editor was like "yeah go for it, you're our biggest star right now for some reason!". My biggest issue with the article is that it's hack AF. The local news does a story on the crazy new ballparks foods every spring, people tweet out the crazy new ballparks foods every spring. You know why the ballparks all have chefs make crazy new foods you wouldn't expect to see at a ballpark every year? Because the local news does a story on the crazy new ballparks foods every spring, and people tweet out the crazy new ballparks foods every spring. And every year I skip over them because I know I'm never gonna go to the Reds club section and spend $20 on a gourmet cheeseburger that has a full wedge salad under a red bun. https://www.wcpo.com/entertainment/local-a-e/great-american-ball-parks-new-food-options-are-reds-hot#id9
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https://deadspin.com/the-one-ingredient-missing-from-this-disgusting-hot-dog-1833438926 Two things. First of all, calm down, Deadspin. This article is more self-indulgent than the article it's about. But Second of all, I don't care about the hot dog or Wilder's puff piece about the hot dog, and I don't care about Deadspin trashing Charlotte Wilder because I actually kind of agree with them when it comes to her - I must admit I find her sweaty and not a particularly deft writer and can't believe she landed a job with SI. Her article about the Patriots Super Bowl win read like a 2 am last minute paper for a freshman writing class. I don't understand her appeal, but Deadspin is far too cynical and nobody should spend too much time there, and they are being ultra grouchy here. I'm mostly posting this because it reminded me of something I noticed a while ago and it's growing and I hate it - It's this brand of online writing and podcasting where in substitution of having an actual personality, the entire schtick, the joke, is that you treat very trivial matters as if they're very important, like the breadth of how much you love a stupid thing is the joke. "I LOVE bad action movies, I wept during the latest Fast and the Furious movie, I waited in line for 3 days for John Wick 2 isnt that hilarious????" No. Don't misunderstand, it's not "never talk about trivial things" it's more like please stop acting like it's so WACKY that you went to Arizona to write about a hot dog and if you are gonna do that please write some jokes into the article. This is essentially The Ringer's entire bit. In conclusion, calm down, Deadspin, you're not in a position to have a moral high ground, but also let's find some new angles besides "isn't it so funny how much we like this very dumb thing?".
