Tourney Time

We're not big basketball fans here at Fack Youk, but it's hard to ignore the magnetism of the NCAA Tournament. If nothing else, it's a good excuse to waste time at work during the early games and fill out a bracket (strictly for bragging rights of course). It's nice to have something in the sporting landscape to waste our time until baseball starts, as the remainder of the tournament will carry us clear through to Opening Day.

We're smack in the middle of two of the best days of the sporting year, with sixteen more games on tap for today and tonight. D.J. Mitchell's Clemson faces Chad Jenning's Missouri at 2:35, Mark Teixeira's Georgia Tech has prospect Neil Medchill's Oklahoma State at 7:15, and Nick Swisher's Ohio St. tips off against UC Santa Barbara at 9:35. And of course Big Willie Style's beloved "Sycasuse" plays Vermont at 9:30.

Not wanting to expose how little we know about college hoops, Jay and I decided against having a public pool here. But we are both in a pool with some friends of mine, and we both had a rough first day. I went a measley 9 for 16 yesterday, good for a three way tie for fourth place, while Jay (and his aptly-named 'Aggressively Mediocre' bracket) hit just .500, is in last place, and lost one of his Final Four teams when Georgetown spit the bit last night. I narrowly avoided the same fate when 'Nova pulled it out against the Robert Morris School of Cosmetology and Hair Dressing.

How about the rest of you Fackers out there? Anyone go perfect yesterday? Anyone's bracket completely busted already? Did anyone else spell "Syracuse" incorrectly?

Meanwhile, at 5 PM tonight a tournament in which I am far more interested will continue, as the Hockey East semi-finals take place at Boston's TD Bank Garden. In the early game, two seed BC will take on eight seed Vermont. The Catamounts upset number one seed New Hampshire in a best of three series last weekend. Last month, Vermont dismissed second leading scoring Justin Milo, who happens to be a 2009 Yankee draft pick and turned in a decent season at Staten Island last summer. In the nightcap three seed BU will take on four seed Maine. You all know who I'll be pulling for in the first game. A meteor could drop on center ice in the second game for all I care; I can't decide which of those teams I like less.

Whichever your sport, enjoy the games.

Pondering What Might Have Been

Last week, the media and the blogosphere dedicated a lot of time to marking the twenty year anniversary of Pete Rose agreeing to a lifetime ban from baseball in the face of overwhelming evidence that he gambled on the game and gambled on his own team. ESPN showed an Outside the Lines piece that actually managed to humanize the insufferable Joe Morgan, who was literally moved to tears over his frustration with the arrogance and stubbornness his friend and former teammate has carried himself with in these last two decades.

This post isn't intended to wade into the quagmire that is the Rose debate. Rather, it's to point out that yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of the death of former Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, the other principal character in the Greek tragedy that is the Rose banishment. The anniversary of the death of Rose's baseball career passed with much fanfare. The anniversary of the death of Giamatti passed with nary a whisper.

Baseball lends itself to stories and fables and legends and hyperbole. That's the way it's always worked, particularly with the media. As such, the legend goes that the toll of the Dowd Report and the Rose ban killed Giamatti just eight days after the suspension was announced. The truth of the matter is Giamatti was overweight, smoked heavily, and suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. I'm sure the stress of the summer of 1989 weighed heavily upon Giamatti, but it certainly wasn't the only cause of his tragic and untimely death.

Last night, as I drove past the sign for the Giamatti Little League Center on my way to my hockey game, I thought about what might have been had Giamatti not died less than a year into his tenure as Commissioner. Several others have had similar thoughts of late. Rose and his camp insist that Giamatti would have granted Rose reinstatement over time. Fay Vincent, who served as Giamatti's Deputy Commissioner and played a major role in the Rose investigation, insists that never would have happened.

In February, following the Alex Rodriguez steroid admission, Yale Magazine ran a piece from Giamatti friend and former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. It implied that Giamatti was planning to tackle drug testing head on after the Rose situation was settled, and suggested that perhaps the PED scandal of the last twenty years could have been avoided had Giamatti been successful. And maybe Giamatti would have made an impact. He had the backing of the owners. He had taken a hard line against a union before in his days as Yale President. He had gained a reputation as a disciplinarian in his time as National League President, handing down heavy suspensions to Rose for an ump bump and Dodgers reliever (and former Yankee) Jay Howell for applying pine tar to a ball during the NLCS. But we'll never know if Giamatti would have taken on drug testing nor how successful he would have been.

As for me, I wonder how other things would have played out had Giamatti lived to serve a full term. Would Fay Vincent still have been named his successor? If so, would he have been as overmatched in that role had he been able to spend more than just a few months working in Major League Baseball first? Would the owners still have forced him out? Could the Bud Selig era have been avoided? How about the 1994 strike? The Wild Card and divisional realignment? Would the ridiculous All-Star Game/homefield advantage policy still be in place? Would baseball have expanded twice more? Would contraction have even been discussed? Would the Nationals still be in Montreal? Would the Giants or White Sox have moved to St. Petersburg after all? Would revenue sharing have been put in place sooner? Would it not have been put in place at all?

Recent Yankee history might have been much different as well. In February 1990, Fay Vincent handed George Steinbrenner a lifetime ban for his hiring of gambler Howard Spira to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield and his foundation. The ban was lifted three years later, after Vincent had been forced out of office and Steinbrenner friend Bud Selig was the acting Commissioner. Would Giamatti have handed down the same sentence? If so would he have reinstated Steinbrenner at any point?

It's all useless conjecture, but it's also intriguing to wonder what might have been. While Rose, Vincent, and Thornburgh all knew Giamatti to some extent, none of them can truly know what he would have done had he served longer as Commissioner, and neither do I. What we do know is that Bart Giamatti died too soon, and it was baseball's loss. It's unfortunate that the baseball media didn't see fit to remember that yesterday.

NCAA Tournament, Drankin', and Gamblin'

Today I took a personal day to watch the NCAA. There will be drinking, gambling on bodog, tv watching, and grilling. I will be updating this post throughout the day (or until I can't see the keyboard anymore) so stay tuned. Lets Go CUSE!!!!!

(42' Plasma, laptop w/ gambling capabilites, first beer of the day at 12:10)

2:10 PM - Take that Stephen A. Austin!
2:11 PM - Gus Johnson is the greatest announcer ever.

Betting Recommendations:
[Ed Note: Fack Youk in no way condones the degeneracy associated with gambling. All recommendations are for entertainment purposes only. If you think you have a problem, please call your local gambling addiction hotline...or don't, because we really don't care.]

1st Half - 2PM Games
Cornell vs. Missouri Over 67½
Temple +3

2nd Half - Noon Games
Cuse and SFA under 70
Marquette -2 and Tenn/OSU under 82.5 parlayed

1st Half - Noon games
Tenn giving -1
Cuse and SFA under 61
Kansas giving 5.5 and Marquette giving 3.5 parlayed

5/2

Pretty busy today, so here's another quickie:

Via LoHud, TheSpread.com released the odds of all 30 MLB teams winning the World Series:

Arizona Diamondbacks 30/1
Atlanta Braves 35/1
Baltimore Orioles 150/1
Boston Red Sox 15/2
Chicago Cubs 7/1
Chicago White Sox 25/1
Cincinnati Reds 50/1
Cleveland Indians 25/1
Colorado Rockies 60/1
Detroit Tigers 20/1
Florida Marlins 40/1
Houston Astros 40/1
Kansas City Royals 150/1
Los Angeles Angels 11/1
Los Angeles Dodgers 17/1
Milwaukee Brewers 35/1
Minnesota Twins 25/1
New York Mets 7/1
New York Yankees 5/2
Oakland Athletics 55/1
Philadelphia Phillies 11/1
Pittsburgh Pirates 200/1
San Diego Padres 200/1
San Francisco Giants 40/1
Seattle Mariners 100/1
St Louis Cardinals 30/1
Tampa Bay Rays 12/1
Texas Rangers 60/1
Toronto Blue Jays 60/1
Washington Nationals 150/1

If you have $50, are you putting it on the Yanks to win $125 or the Sawx to win $375?

(Tigers to win $1000, White Sox to win $1250, Diamondbacks to win $1500, Pirates/Padres to win $10,000? )