Jesus Plays Sports: New York Times Strikes Out

I've already voiced my displeasure with the New York Times for their over-coverage of Ashley Alexandra Dupre. They made an anonymous woman into a minor celebrity, somewhat against her will (although I'm sure she'll profit down the road in some way), and turned what was a governor's scandal into a promotional vehicle for a prostitute. But I recently was made aware of more poor coverage from the New York Times. It is disappointing, because I used to be a voracious reader of the NYT; but I can't put up with UnCerebral Bias.

Warning: the following material contains Christian bias! I always try to be clear when my demographic details or core beliefs may shade my coverage of a story. I of course have done my best to look at the story fairly, but if you object to this perspective, this is your signal to quietly X this blog post and go elsewhere. On the other hand, it's Good Friday, so you should be able to tolerate it today (if ever), right?

Murray Chass tries his best to portray "Faith Nights" in baseball as an underhanded evangelism tool. He uses the provocative title that "Is a Night Devoted to Faith Really About the Money?", and I'm sure he was hoping to find a right-wing, crazy-Christian plot to save the dirty souls of baseball fans across America. But his story fails to answer his own question! There are no surprise testimonies, no hawking of literature in the stands, and no compulsory attendance. John Smoltz doesn't pause before pitching the top of the 5th to announce "I still am going to pitch, but first, let me give you my Christian testimony for an hour and ask you to repent!". The T-shirt guns don't send "Jesus-Wis-Er" knock-off shirts into the stands, and the cheerleaders and ball girls aren't replaced by nuns. Despite the absence of a smoking gun piece of evidence, Chass slurs Faith Nights with weak analogies and high-minded quotes about separating church and baseball. It's a shame the Times let him use them as a platform.

I've been to one of those Faith Nights before. You wait 30 minutes after the game is done for it to start. Trust me, no one is still there who doesn't want to be there, unless perhaps someone is so drunk that they're still sleeping it off in their seats 30 minutes after the game. I would cheerfully submit that even Murray might concede that a "Faith Night" might do such a degenerate some good.

Perhaps I haven't proved my point well enough. Let's take a quote from the end of the article:

Why should teams be in the business of promoting any particular religion?
Some clubs, like the Mets, hold heritage nights: black history, Latino, Irish, Jewish, Polish. But those are ethnic celebrations, not religion based.
“It’s just a way for a team to reach people in another way,” High said, meaning a different way of luring fans.
The idea has caught on in baseball because clubs want to sell tickets. That’s why Major League Baseball will never halt faith nights. Anything for a few dollars more. But it has no place in baseball. Baseball crowds are made up of people of all faiths and no faith. No segment should be singled out.

Do you see how he contradicts himself? First, he disproves his own title, by saying that MLB IS in it only for the money. Second, he makes an argument that no segment should be singled out...while admitting that there are plenty of promotions to target ethnicities (and gender). How are those not exclusionary? Would Mr. Chass be brave enough to show some consistency, and object to Hispanic Night, Family Night, or Pride Night? How non-hispanic, single, or non-homosexual people might feel singled out or ignored on such nights? No, of course not, because that would sound like bigotry. Hmm...so why didn't this piece sound like bigotry to the Times' editors? Consistent standards is all I ask for, seriously. (That's why I'm not sure I agree completely with the Mark Cuban boycottsuggested by esteemed colleague Jordi Scrubbings; at least Mark is being consistent, although he is acting unfairly in my opinion).

If fans were subjected to a bait-and-switch; if they were showing up to what they thought were a baseball game, only to be held hostage to listen to a sermon--I would object. True belief can't grow from coercion. But Faith Nights are labeled as such, and no faith content is occurring during the games itself. If some fans are so threatened by Faith Nights, then they can avoid that 1 out of 81 games, right?

Bloggolalia: Covering the Bob Costas Comments

I'm feeling under the weather today, so I'll try to be brief for once. By now, you've surely read about the Bob Costas statements. What dismays me about Bob Costas' comments is that all the people who should have paid him no mind were offended. It reminds me of school, where the teacher will admonish the class for not studying and doing poorly on the test...and the only people who are offended or react are the kids who got A's! They're not the ones who should take offense. This topic has come up several times in the sports bloggosphere, and there's a depressing sameness about it all:

1. Mainstream columnist takes aim at the bloggosphere, but fails to separate the portion of Internet sports talk that really is ignorant, offensive, and lowers the level of discourse from the Internet bloggers/commenters who do high-class work.
2. Blogger who has standards and writes well takes offense and e-mails the mainstream columnist.
3. They get into a fight or argument, and both sides look worse off afterward. (And why do bloggers post the e-mails afterward? Yeah, yeah, you raised your "blog cred" by fighting with a member of the MSM, and the e-mails prove it. I'm not impressed.)

Can we please, please stop repeating this dumb cycle? Here are some ideas:
1. Some bloggers need to stop being so humble. Bloggers can't say "aww shucks, I'm just a guy writing about sports and hoping people like it" anymore. First, that statement makes you no different then, say, the Internet commenter who viciously and without proof slurs his team's starting center on a forumboard. Second, if it was really that easy, why can't any old blogger get 20,000+ hits a month? Bill Simmons' comment about not needing to have locker room coverage to be relevant and that only paying attention to games matters was a huge mistake. If that's really true, Bill Simmons is easily replacable by any of my readers, and they can earn his money.

2. Bloggers need to crack down on what they can control. For example, although it's rare, I appreciate that Deadspin will ban a commenter on occasion. (Rob wrote a nice essay confirming that some of what Bob said is relevant, check it out.) Don't tolerate hateful, dishonest people on your site as contributors, commenters, or even on your blog roll. Make it clear that you have no wish or desire to be coupled with such sites or people. I don't remember taking an oath to defend all bloggers regardless of quality--do you?! It hurts our reputation when we make it easy for the mainstream media to lump us into one nebulous category of "Internet sports people." Let's make it clear that there's a difference.

Now, of course, there's limits to what you can do. I'm not recommending visiting the worst forumboards, comment sections, and blogs and flaming everyone in sight because they don't share your membership to Mensa, your enlightened thoughts, or what not. But do what you have the right to do already. If enough of us do this, we can change the public perception about sports fans on the Internet.

3. Take the good parts out of criticism, and use it to make your blog/comments better. Bloggers who refuse to acknowledge that criticism has any veracity come off as thin-skinned and arrogant, just as the MSM does when they do the same. Bob Costas made a great point when he said the following:

My commentary was aimed solely at a portion of Internet sports discourse, an unfortunately large portion, that consists of nothing more than potshots, ad hominem arguments, ignorance and invective. No one who is familiar with the general tone of public discourse, whether it be sports, politics, whatever, can honestly deny that much. It comes from that direction.

Do I agree with everything else he said? No. But this part is definitely correct, and pretending that the Internet is filled with polite, classy sports fans is impossible.

Artist of the Week: American Sign Language Videos

I wanted to feature some categories of videos I enjoy watching on Youtube. One recent addition is American (or any language, really) Sign Language. I love the liveliness in their face as they talk. The face can now be entirely used for emotion and communication, because the mouth no longer is speaking. And because I am no longer using my ears to hear their voice, I can understand more by watching their face. You may not be able to watch the entire video without being bored, but you will be surprised at how long these people will hold your attention. Check out DeafVideo.tv for even more videos.

American female does ASL version of the Three Little Pigs:


A young man from Samoa, now in the US, introduces himself to the world. There's something strangely haunting about this video, due to the poor lighting. As I watched it, it felt as if I was watching the last man on earth, quietly making a record for historical purposes. He also has a passionate video encouraging young people to vote that you should check out at his account.

Canadian art student talks about criticism in the arts. I strongly urge you to click on the video and read the transcript; she makes intelligent points. Or, watch a much shorter video that shows the beauty of Canada in winter from her view;

NBA Monday: Team Performances after the Trading Deadline

UPDATE: Please see new information at the bottom of this post.

How have teams that made a deal soon before or on the trading deadline been performing since that date? After all, one would think that a few teams would show instantaneous improvement after acquiring such good players for so little. It's only been about 10-12 games since the deadline, but that should be enough to show improvement, right?

Let's compare team records before and after the Trading Deadline of February 22nd. To adjust records for when the acquired players had actually arrived, I'll be using games from February 24th until today. I labeled the results as being mixed if the winning percentage before 2/24 was within 5% of the winning percentage after 2/24.

Lakers acquire Pau Gasol:
Memphis Grizzlies:
Record before February 24th: 14-41
Record on/after February 24th: 1-9
Improvement? NO

LA Lakers:
Record before February 24th: 38-17
Record on/after February 24th: 7-4
Improvement? MIXED (69% Win vs. 64% Win)

Heat acquire Shawn Marion, Suns acquire Shaquille O'Neal:
Miami Heat:
Record before February 24th: 9-45
Record on/after February 24th: 2-9
Improvement? MIXED (17% Win vs. 18% Win)

Phoenix Suns:
Record before February 24th: 38-17
Record on/after February 24th: 6-5
Improvement? NO

Nets acquire Devin Harris, Mavericks acquire Jason Kidd:
New Jersey Nets:
Record before February 24th: 25-31
Record on/after February 24th: 3-7
Improvement? NO (45% Win vs. 30% Win)

Dallas Mavericks:
Record before February 24th: 36-19
Record on/after February 24th: 8-4
Improvement? MIXED (65% Win vs. 67% Win)

Cavs acquire Ben Wallace from Bulls, Wally Szerbiak from Sonics, Bulls acquire Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden from Cavs:
Cleveland Cavaliers:
Record before February 24th: 31-24
Record on/after February 24th: 7-5
Improvement? MIXED (67% Win vs. 65% Win)

Chicago Bulls:
Record before February 24th: 22-32
Record on/after February 24th: 4-7
Improvement? MIXED (41% Win vs. 36% Win)

Seattle Supersonics:
Record before February 24th: 15-39
Record on/after February 24th: 1-12
Improvement? NO

Spurs acquire Kurt Thomas from Sonics:
San Antonio Spurs:
Record before February 24th: 37-17
Record on/after February 24th: 7-5
Improvement? NO

Seattle Supersonics:
Record before February 24th: 15-39
Record on/after February 24th: 1-12
Improvement? NO

The results? 5 teams showed mixed improvement since 2/24, and 5 teams showed a definite slump in record since 2/24. The best improvement in record was the 2% increase in winning percentage from the Dallas Mavericks. The results indicate that teams should be careful of expecting instant improvement from deadline deals, as it is clearly not happening. Even the Lakers, Spurs, and Mavericks, who were definitely perceived as having won their deals in the short-term, have not shown clear improvement. And in the ultra-competitive West, where seeding is everything, making any deal at all near the deadline may be a huge mistake. Those teams fighting for play-off seeding will now have to play excellent basketball over the remaining 15 games or so just to break even on the deal. Sure, trades may be worthwhile for play-off matchups; but trades hurt your seeding for those match-ups.

UPDATE: I decided to update the post with the details of what I said in the comments, so I don't get the same comments over and over again from readers invited to "feel free to poke holes" in my argument. The Lakers fans have been at their passionate best to ask me to consider the wonders of Pau, and run the numbers for 10 games immediately after the trade was consummated, rather than after the trading deadline. I defend my original choice of using the same timeline for all teams. The reasons were so that I could be absolutely sure that all traded players were now on their new teams, and (ironically enough) to defend myself against charges of having picked favorable timelines. But since the Pau trade happened 3 weeks before the deadline, the Lakers fans have a fair point in asking for a new timeline. I re-ran the numbers based on 10 games after the trade.

The Lakers went 9-1 during the 10 games in which Pau played for the Lakers immediately after the trade. (For the record, during that streak they only beat (and played) two teams with winning records: Phoenix on the night they debuted Shaq, and Orlando. But, the games were mostly on the road.) Thus, the Laker record definitely shows strong improvement immediately after trading for Pau Gasol. That means that 1 of the 10 teams I surveyed, the team (Lakers) that supposedly ripped off the other trading partner the most (Grizzlies), was the only one that showed improvement. Does that invalidate my main result, which was "The results indicate that teams should be careful of expecting instant improvement from deadline deals, as it is clearly not happening"? I think not. I'll take 9 out of 10 odds of success any day of the week. But the Lakers fans made a good point that deserved to be heard, and so I updated this post. Whatever this blog's many, many faults are, I hope intentionally suppressing the truth will never be one of them.

And for the record, commenter Boney jokingly asked me to run the Pistons numbers after acquiring Juan Dixon. It's 40-15 without him, 8-3 with him, for identical 73% Win percentages. Believe it or not, I think that acquiring Juan Dixon was a great move to bolster a traditionally thin Pistons backcourt. He's been giving them 10 mpg and shooting at a 47.2% clip from the field. If he can play well enough to stay in the shortened play-off rotation, maybe Chauncey, Tay, and Rip won't be as tired in the play-offs this year. It is my opinion that this is an overlooked reason why the Pistons fell to the Cavs last year.

Is Will Leitch leaving Deadspin.com? Updated Answer: No.

See UPDATE at the bottom of this post.

Hidden in AJ Daulerio and Bill Conlin's excellent column about the Phillies was this gem:

"A.J. Daulerio will be the senior writer at Deadspin starting March 31."

The only commenter who noticed this sentence was Ian of Sox and Dawgs, and thus I want to credit him for helping bring it to my attention.

While it's unclear what changes this will mean for Will Leitch, it's clear that Will will be less involved in Deadspin.com after 3/31. The quote refers to AJ as "the" senior writer, after all. As to what this will mean for Deadspin.com's future...it's hard to say. I would just comment that like Favre, Will will be leaving at or near the top of his game instead of being pushed out. That makes me happy, for his sake, even though fans of the site may be temporarily upset or annoyed.

UPDATE: I spoke to Will Leitch to see if I could update this speculative column either way with some facts. Turns out, Will will remain at the site in the same role, and a new role of "senior writer" is being created for AJ. I'm still impressed at how much content Will and Rick were able to publish for just two people, but another columnist or two will help them out quite a bit, I'm sure. So instead of switching out one name for another, Deadspin will have at least 3 full-time writers, which should help them remain at/near the top of the sports blog landscape.

SmartSports 3/13/08

As always, please do send me links to smart stories in sports news, and comment/e-mail if you like this feature. I always have a lot of ideas in my head, so I could kill this idea and move to something else if my readers aren't too excited about this. (That's code for "I'm lazy and really, really bad at hyperlinking, so let me have an excuse to quit!").

Mainstream:
This article in the OC Register spoke about how NFL players are getting business training from some of the nation's top schools.

Continuing the coincidental business theme for the week, see a discussion on how newspapers lost the web war. It's a very relevant topic for bloggers, and the article is written for the average person. Try it out.

Finally, check out this WSJ video on the pressures of recruiting.


Blogstream:
D-Wil is the first blogger I've seen to make the connection between Arlen Specter, Comcast campaign donations, and Arlen's one-man assault on the NFL for various and sundry crimes. I've never cared for Arlen ever since his rudeness to Anita Hill. To hear he's attacking the NFL because Comcast (who is legendary for their poor customer service) paid him makes sense to me. And D-Wil's account is supported by some links in the comments that you should also check out.

At first, I thought I had written the best review of God Save the Fan so far. Then, I read the Deadspin Book Club's entry and bumped myself down to second. It's a bad week for the ol' ego (and a good week for common sense), as at best my review of GSTF is third. Look at this review from Noel Murray of the Onion!
I have to excerpt some of the better quotes for you to prove its insight:

As a blog, Deadspin sometimes betrays its own principles by treating sports so flippantly that the site's writers are the ones taking the fun out of sports. But as a book, God Save the Fan is smart, funny, and largely consistent in its philosophy.

See, there is a difference! I'm not crazy for noticing it in my review!
and later on:

If there's a major lapse in God Save the Fan's worldview, it's that Leitch romanticizes "the fan" too much. He conveniently forgets--probably because Deadspin comments are moderated--that fans too often ruin sports by behaving like louts and bigots.

Although I sometimes disagree with the tone or style of Deadspin commentland, I quickly realized the intelligence of a majority of the commenters. That's not par for the sporting course.

Tech Tool: Congoo is yet another news aggregation site among the hundreds that already cover the web. But the reason I like it is the way it groups the top news stories of the day. If there's a big sports story out there, I don't want to read just one paper's take on what happened; I like getting a menu. In its design, Congoo is almost like a Google News/CNN mash-up, showing all the top stories but allowing you to see multiple sources for each story. I found out that there had been some interesting developments in the Sean Taylor murder case by perusing the sports section of Congoo.

Flawed Logic:
Like I said, I'm leaving the bloggers alone for a little while, but had to speak out on another topic. Outside the realm of sports, but I was displeased to see the New York Times linking to the Myspace of Eliot Spitzer's call girl friend. The logic used to defend such actions insults my intelligence. Just because I make a Myspace page doesn't mean I'm inviting the whole world in to berate me. I'm saddened to see all the mean comments left on her site (although others tried to help her by telling to get a lawyer, make the page private, and otherwise defend herself). Now this girl has to deal with thousands of ignorant strangers rushing to call her "whore" while pretending that their pejoratives indicate a courageous act.

Although I think that prostitution is an inappropriate career, I also strongly disagree with the blanket condemnation of every prostitute as being less than human. The New York Times Metro people will win Pulitzers by dragging every piece of newsworthiness out of this girl's sad life, leaving her in a heap with her life even more messed up than before. But they won't care; they'll be off to the next story! Yeah for journalism! Which leads to a possible Bloggolalia topic; is it right to use Myspace/Facebook/Webshots to gain info on athletes? I certainly have used those tools in the past. But I'm starting to wonder about the ethics of such actions, and if there is such a thing as a "right to privacy."

Question for Debate: Is Oscar De La Hoya the most well-rounded athlete of all time? The evidence is the boxing titles to prove his athletic exploits, the Latin Grammy to prove his musical abilities, and the millions of dollars in promotion of sports events and his part ownership in MLS to prove his business savvy. The MLS acquisition sounds dumb at first, but suppose soccer one day becomes a major sport in the US. Then the investment will at least double in value.

EDIT: I owe Michael David Smith a link, as that's where the MLS info comes from. The "Is Oscar the most well-rounded?" idea is 100% mine, but I still owe the hard-working MDS a link for providing the inspiration. Thanks to Matthew for reminding me of that. All of you, feel free to jog my memory if you think I miss an attribution; I want to write this site the right and fair way.

NBA Mondays: The Barkley Video

Bryan and I dissected our feelings on the Barkley video where he criticizes Christians over at prayersforblowouts.com. As I usually do on here when I employ demographic bias, I'm warning? notifying? you that we're both Christians and thus our commentary will be biased in that way.

My suspense-filled move to another site will not happen this week. KSK rejected my idea for a storyline around "Eddie the Happy Referee's Neighborhood." Apparently they don't have an opening for NFL fiction aimed at children--who knew?! Sigh. Don't they know how long it took me to photoshop black stripes onto the white T-shirt for the illustrations?! Heartless, I tell you, heartless.

Hmm, drag out the suspense for the one reader that cares (thanks, Google Search Robot!) or stop stringing my readers along? Let's just say that the move is currently cryogenically frozen, but could begin wiggling again in the near future. It's alive! Besides, it's fun pretending (?!) to be a pathetic blogger attempting to leech on to various web-sites and being rejected. Whose site should I hypothetically attempt to latch on to next?

Eh, I may give myself the week off from blogging. But if any video can buy your temporary forgiveness (or sharpen your thankfulness for my absence, whichever), this NBA video can. It's Reggie Miller, Chuck Person, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and many more on NBA "Freedom of Speech"--also known as trash talking. Anyone know where the original is from?



UPDATE: The Money Shot gives the Miami Heat a well-deserved tongue lashing(obscene language warning).