Wasn't Reading

Larry from the Yankeeist continued his Yankee blogger interview series yesterday with Steve from Was Watching and I'm again going to link to it. Unlike the other times though, I've got a few comments to make about this one.

As always Larry did an excellent job with his interview. He made attempted to address the things that really separate Was Watching from other Yankees blogs - the persistent pessimism towards the team and the anti-Brian Cashman bias - which many interviewers might have avoided. What I want to comment on are some of the ridiculous generalizations, comical inaccuracies and hypocritical things that the interviewee says.

Observe:

We live in a microwave society now where people want things short and quick. And, personally, I cannot stand bloggers who prattle on with 1,000 word entries. Hence why WasWatching.com is "laconic commentary from a Yankeeland zealot." Further, I'm pretty sure that studies have shown* that people who read things on the internet will not read things that take them more than a few minutes to scan through, etc.

*Studies conducted at the Was Watching Institute of Laconic Zealotry. Sample Size of (n=1).

This post is 900 words. One hundred and twenty six of them were written by Steve Lombardi, the other 674 were copied and pasted from an article by Nick Carfado. Apparently Steve thinks people will read a long post only if you quote a gigantic amount of it from another writer.

And of course the notion that people won't read 1,000 words articles on the internet is ridiculous. This post from Mike at River Ave. Blues is over 1400 words long, features only one short quote (and the rest original material) and has 186 comments on it. And ohbytheway, have you ever heard of a guy named Joe Posnanski?

People, whether they are reading on the internet or anywhere else, like things that are interesting, regardless of their length. There might be diminishing returns after a certain length but the cutoff point certainly isn't 1,000 words.

Back to point, I suspect that someday, maybe soon, we'll look at blogging as some trendy thing that was hot around 2007 and then went the way of the mood ring and the pet rock about eight years later.

Mark it down on your calendars, folks. In 2015, blogs will be like Pogs! Nevermind the fact that the two things he listed came and went because they were devoid of intrinsic value. Fairly quickly, even the dumbest people figured out that a pet rock was just a rock and a mood ring didn't actually indicate their mood. Blogs may evolve into something different eventually, but being able to provide a stream of content on a website which you can update continuously isn't a fad, it's an advance in technology.

At this time, I'm still mulling some changes to the future format of WasWatching.com -- and I may elect to have some additional writers added to the blog (to join my voice). But, I'm not certain, at all, that I will go this way. I still find myself going back to the question of: "Did Leonardo da Vinci [sic] have some others help him paint the Sistine Chapel?"

But on the contrary, look at how many people Abraham Lincoln brought in to help him write the Constitution!

Baseball Think Factory is a daily stop -- and a great source of information -- although many of the commenters there, in my opinion, are veiled ivory tower elitists who like to come across as tough guys by taking shots at others.

It's called Baseball Think Factory, it would be a pretty bad site if there were just a bunch of anti-intellectual dummies talking about how much they agreed with every Ken Rosenthal rumor or Wallace Matthews article. And don't worry, aside from what he just said about the people at BBTF, Steve never takes shots at anyone else:

On the whole, Brian Cashman took a team that was a three-peat World Champion and turned them into a team that would finish first and then lose in the LDS…and then into a team that would no longer finish first but would win a Wildcard (and lose in the LDS)…and then into a team that would not make the post-season at all. Notice the trend here?

In addition, there’s a long list of moves made by Brian Cashman that suggest he’s clueless when it comes to evaluating talent...

Listen, Steve's been in this game a lot longer than I have and I respect that, but he's like the grouchiest newspaper columnist on Earth stranded on a blogger's website. I tried reading WW regularly a while back but I frequent enough baseball sites that I don't need another one that's content with linking to stories I've already read and surrounding a 500 word blockquote with a paragraph and a half of "analysis". I'll take the one that "prattles on" for 1000 words at a time and includes some "original thought" and "research", thank you very much.

An Athlete's Memoir David Foster Wallace Might Have Enjoyed

One of the most insightful things I've ever read about sports was written by someone who was never thought of as a "sports writer". It was tucked away behind wandering but focused first-person accounts of the Maine Lobster Festival and Adult Video News Awards, an in-depth look at conservative talk radio through host John Zeigler, a short essay about experiencing 9/11 from woman's living room in Bloomington, Illinois and six other works of varying lengths on a variety of other topics.

Like many pseudo-intellectual non-English majors, my first foray into the work of David Foster Wallace was through Consider the Lobster. Had it not been bundled with those nine other essays, I don't know if I ever would have discovered How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart. The piece was originally published as a book review on August 30th, 1992 in the Philadelphia Inquirer (when I was 8 years old), so I certainly wasn't in position to catch it when it originally appeared in print. I'm not a huge tennis fan and Tracy Austin reached the apex of her game years before I was born so it wasn't the type of subject matter I was likely to seek out after the fact. But when I did stumble upon it 16 years after it was written, it still resonated.

So how did Tracy Austin break David Foster Wallace's heart and why did I find it so interesting?

Austin did her part failing miserably to deliver on the promises made by her autobiography Beyond Center Court: My Story. "The inspirational story of Tracy Austin's long struggle to find a life beyond championship tennis", a note by the publisher on the inside of the glossy cover flap claimed. Wallace was a big fan of Austin, and although he followed her meteoric rise through from child tennis prodigy to U.S. Open champion and was an admitted sucker for sports memoirs, he was left dumbfounded by the emptiness of her supposedly candid book. "The book is inanimate because it communicates no real feeling and so gives us no sense of a conscious person", Wallace explains.

The reason I was captivated by Wallace's reaction was that he not only exposed the comical superficiality of the writing by Austin and her co-author Christine Brennan (and there are few things I enjoy more than making fun of bad writing), but he also found much deeper and broadly applicable meaning through its vapidity.

After reciting some of the more obviously vacant quotes from the "as told to" autobiography, DFW offers a theory as to why this genre is so popular and alluring despite the fact that they are "almost uniformly poor as books":

[Note: In lieu of blockquotes, I've embedded clips from the audio version of the essay.

No text version exists online and it's a whole lot easier than transcribing them.]

Wallace then goes on to recount the reasons that Austin's life had an almost classically tragic story arc but note that almost none of what was truly fascinating about her career was ever adequately described in the book. Austin chose to craft her life story to fit the conventions of the stereotypical rise to glory/fall from grace fairy tale to such an extent that at times it ceased to be believable.

She never addresses the fact that her compulsive work ethic and tireless effort caused her body to slowly atrophy through injuries like hamstring and hip flexors pulls and tendinitis. Austin mentions that her career was finally undone when the car she was a passenger in was blindsided on the JFK parkway literally on the way to the US Open in 1989, but instead of explaining how agonizing or iniquitous it was for her freakish natural athletic ability to be effaced by a freak accident, simply says, "I quickly accepted that there was nothing I could do about it."

In a final flourish, Wallace tries to explain why athletes can seemingly never describe what it's like to be a physical genius. He attempts to rectify how it is possible for one to excel against the highest level of competition under immense pressure but never sufficiently convey it to anyone else:

Wallace is essenitally referring to the psychological concept of flow, which explains that to be fully immersed in any sort of task - "in the zone", to invoke a trite cliche - necessitates a singular focus. And as he points out, it's not specific to Austin, but relevant for any athletic pursuit. I've heard that over-thinking is the greatest enemy of an athlete in competition by broadcasters and writers alike, but never deconstructed with such effortless eloquence.

The reason that I bring up a work that's so old it was published on a day when Sam Militello started for the Yankees, is because of the recent release of an autobiography by an different tennis player. This athlete, partially because of a domineering parental presence - just like Tracy Austin - turned pro before he was able to drive. He too ascended through the professional ranks with incredible speed en route to two US Open titles but hit a wall at an age when he should have been entering his prime.

However, for all the similarities between the backgrounds and careers of Andre Agassi and Tracy Austin, their books couldn't be any different. While Austin declares that her mother "did not force her into tennis" at age three (as if she could remember either way), Agassi admits that his father used chase him around the house with a racket to take any trophy that Agassi received for something less than winning (e.g. sportsmanship) and smash it to pieces. Both hustled adults in matches when they were only children, but only Agassi admits being complicit in the scheme. As opposed to Austin, who flatly denied knowledge of match tanking or drug usage despite both being rampant during her time as a top pro, Agassi candidly admits that he partook in both activities.

We can question the motivations of Agassi and even assume that the reason he was so frank in Open lies somewhere between the narcissistic desire to tell his story in the most public of forums and achieve the goal of selling as many books - and therefore making as much money - as possible. But those were the ostensible goals of Austin, too. The difference is that Agassi delivered on the promise of a tell-all memoir. He truly pulled back the curtain and told the audience things that they never would have known had he not chose to reveal them.

Unfortunately, if you are familiar with David Foster Wallace, you know that he'll never read Agassi's book because he took his own life a little over a year ago. He battled with depression for his entire adult life and, in the process of trying to ween himself of the anti-depressant that enabled him not just to function but to pen brilliant works like Infinite Jest, hanged himself in his California home while his wife was out running some errands.

The most probable reason Wallace read all of those sports memoirs and why he said - however playfully - that Tracy Austin "broke his heart" with hers, was that he deeply wanted to go inside of the mind of a great athlete. It showed up in some of his other work, particularly the profile of Roger Federer he wrote for the New York Times. One of the main story lines in Infinite Jest revolves around the tennis-playing Hal Incandenza and there was even a character reminiscent of a young Tracy Austin. Like many of us, Wallace was a good but not great athlete in his youth and I think he desperately wanted just once, for someone who ascended to the very top to reveal what it was - what powerful mental process - that made them so magnificent.

But as he came to realize in reading Beyond Center Court, that kind of athletic genius could never be revealed in a book. Those innate gifts can't be put into words. In Open, Agassi offers the opposite. Instead of trying to explain what made him so great, he exposes the interior struggles that made him human. That is something that has always been able to be conveyed by prose, but the desire to do so for someone who has achieved unquestioned success is rare indeed.

Today In Headlines That Shouldn't Need To Be Written

Why Last Night’s Loss Doesn’t Necessarily Mean This Is 2004 All Over Again

Jon DeLessio over at The Sports Section at New York Magazine would like to talk you down from a metaphorical ledge. His hostage negotiation tactics include A) comparing 2009 A-Rod to 2004 David Ortiz, B) saying that the homefield advantage is somehow better this time although both teams went (57-24) at home, and C) pointing out that CC Sabathia would start a Game 7 should it be necessary. Guess which one of these is a valid point. If you said C, congratulations, you may be a rational person!

The problem is that the people who are standing on said ledge are not going to be talked down from it.

If you've given up on this series after one loss, you're a special kind of pathetic. That's the kind of fatalism reserved for Red Sox, Cubs and Mets fans.

Here are some reasons that this year, even if the worst case scenario comes to fruition, isn't 2004:

1. The deficit wasn't 3-0
2. These aren't the Red Sox
3. This isn't 5 years ago
4. There are 5 players out of 50 that the two playoff rosters have in common - six if you count Johnny Damon, which I don't

So no, Wallace Matthews. This wouldn't be worse than 2004, you moron.

Just as a blowout victory in Game 4 didn't predict success in last night's game, one tough loss doesn't mean the Yanks are going to drop the last two. Relax everyone, it's still match point and we've got the next two serves.

Remember when everyone was in agreement that this was going to be a great series? Well, in a great series, there are going to be triumphs and tragedies. Glorious victories and heartbreaking losses. Let's try not to lose our minds so badly in the latter that we can't enjoy the former.

It's Friday night. Blow off some steam. I might be witnessing some amateur pugilism. Some of you are probably planning to get extremely drunk. Others may be doing slightly more respectable activities like going out to dinner and seeing a movie. Do your respective things and let's meet back here sometime tomorrow afternoon.

The Wonderful Waivering Wallace Matthews

Now here's a refreshing voice of reason who would like to set Wallace Matthews straight after he stated without qualifiers that unlike A-Rod, Andy Pettitte and others, Derek Jeter has "resisted the temptation" to use performance enchancing drugs and "did things the right way":

Still, I realize that while it would be disrespectful, and perhaps irresponsible, not to take Jeter at his word about his own steroid history, I have come to know that to accept the word of any ballplayer on this particular subject these days is to invite humiliation.

>8

I mean, minus a paper cup, a test strip and a private room, how can any of us know for sure when a ballplayer, even one as honorable as Jeter appears to be, is telling the truth.

>8

It's a shame that a player like Jeter has to be asked whether his career has been helped by steroids.

It's a bigger shame that even after his denial, we still can't be sure he is telling the truth.

That voice? Wallace Matthews himself, on February 19th, 2009.

Either Matthews arranged for the private room/paper cup scenario or for some unknown reason only six and a half months later, we CAN be sure Jeter's telling the truth...

The Deification Of Derek Jeter

Good morning, Fackers. It was a pretty decent weekend for the Yankees, after they left Toronto at least. Being one-hit by Roy Halladay was rather frustrating and getting blown out on Sunday was brutal in a very different, protracted sort of a way. Even the game that they won at the Rogers Centre was painful to watch, a nine inning, 6-4 game that somehow took 3:52 to complete.

Yesterday redeemed the weekend as we were treated to a great pitcher's duel in the first game and an offensive explosion in the second with the Yanks winning both. I had wondered about the decision to throw both Burnett and Sabathia in a double header as it figures to get one of them out of their typical rest pattern for their next start, but I think we'll all take the two wins now and worry about that later.

Increasingly, the topic of conversation turned towards Derek Jeter as the weekend pressed on. He picked up 5 hits on Saturday and Sunday and looked to chip away at Gehrig's record during the twin bill on Monday. The YES Network even put together an intro that played before each of the games of the doubleheader about his pursuit of the All-Time Yankee hits record saying he is "Forever identified as a champion; a hallmark of Yankee greatness" and has "the consistency of a metronome". They also set a new record for most presumptuous text poll ever during the night game which asked fans if they would rather witness Jeter's 3,000th hit, final game, number retiring or Hall of Fame induction. But Jeter went 0-8 so the quest will have to wait.

Look, every Yankee fan loves Derek Jeter, my generation especially. He came up when I was 11 years old, won the Rookie of the Year when I was 12 making him the perfect sports idol for kids around my age. When we're old and gray, we're going to still remember Jeter fondly because he'll be inexorably tied to our youth.

Maybe it's the contrarian in me, but I have trouble liking things that seemingly everyone else does. If you are a hardcore Yankees fan and someone asks you who your favorite player is, chances are, you'll at least try not to say Derek Jeter. Because he's everyone's favorite player. It's too obvious.

Even dummies like Wallace Matthews can appreciate what Jeter has done. What Matthews can't do, however, is write an even-handed column using "facts" or "relevant statistics" to explain how great Jeter is:

And yet, Jeter - unlike teammates Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi and Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, not to mention probably hundreds of others throughout both leagues - resisted the temptation to take advantage of what was encouraged by the Players Association and tacitly approved by Major League Baseball.

That took more strength than any of the juice monsters could ever imagine, or ever hope to muster up.

He never tried to be more than what he was, a contact hitter with an inside-out swing who was as happy to dunk one just over the head of the second baseman. He kept score not by the number of tainted home runs he could hit . . . but by the number of rings he could collect.

He's got the rings, four of them, and he's got the money. But most of all, he has his self-respect and the knowledge that his accomplishments are not beholden to an unscrupulous chemist, a rogue doctor, a failed police officer turned "personal trainer'' or some sleazy gym rat disguised as a clubhouse toadie.

Aside from being wrought with weak clichés and and the same bullshit every boring writer has always said re: Jeter's intangible winnerificness, it's incredibly unequivocal. You'd think that after so many players seemingly above speculation like Andy Pettitte, Rafael Palmero, Manny Ramirez and if you'll recall, A-Rod at one point, have been exposed for using steroids, Matthews might want to steer clear of unilaterally proclaiming his cleanliness. But Matthews thinks he can do that, because Jeter is just different.

Again maybe it's because I'm wired to go against the grain, but I don't like the milestone chases. The flashbulbs going off when he's still 3 hits away from Gehrig's mark don't make sense to me. I'm not a fan of the love Derek Jeter gets for being Derek Jeter®. I enjoy watching him more when the attention subsides and we don't have to incessantly talk about how great he is. Because talking about how much you're enjoying something makes it less enjoyable.

846 Words Too Many

This article by Wallace Matthews of Newsday was published on Saturday but for some reason it didn't show up in my Google Reader until this morning. I wish it never had. 

Why he thought it was necessary to spend 850 words wandering around the topic of poor attendance at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field is beyond me to begin with. To make matters worse, it's not like he gets right to the heart of the matter. He tiptoes around anything that could be considered "topical" or "relevant" like he's slowdancing with his mother and instead churns out paragraphs like the one below. 

So far, the Yankees are averaging 44,636 in their new crib, the Mets 38,806. If baseball is so popular in this town and Yankees and Mets games truly are must-see events, as both clubs insisted throughout the offseason, why aren't there 10,000 people milling around outside their ballparks every game night, trying to buy up every last ticket in the house, and the rest going home empty-handed and disappointed?

Well, since you asked... Ticket. Prices. TICKET PRICES. The price of admission, the cost of entry, door fees, gate charges. Call it whatever you want. Incredibly, Matthews does not mention pricing once in his column. Prices were set it a totally different economic climate that the one that exists now and since some of the seats were already sold, it's tough to go back and change them.

One of the reasons, of course, is simple and self-evident. It's the economy, stupid. 

Hmm... does that phrase sound familiar? I'm guessing that Jason's recent national exposure and resulting media tour had a little something to do with that, although Matthews would certainly never admit it. Those four words sum it up pretty nicely, though. So that's the end of the article, right...?

But in a metropolitan area that certainly has more than 83,442 people - the combined average attendance at both parks - wealthy enough to buy their way into these exclusive clubs dressed as ballparks, there has to be something more to it.

It's not the same 83,442 people showing up at the parks every night, you dummy. 

Does there have to be more to it? I'm pretty sure those last two points - ticket prices and the economy - pretty much cover it. But, okay, let's humor him. Tell us, Wallace. What is this incredible insight you have into the matter? What could be this mysterious X-factor keeping fans from coming to the park? It's not going to be some meaningless cliche, is it?

It just might be that the remarkably deep-pocketed, thick-skinned and resilient sports fans of this town finally have reached their limit.

Deep-pocketed? Remember eight seconds ago, when you said it was "about the economy, stupid"? Not every sports fan is deep-pocketed, especially not at the moment. And what does being "thick-skinned" or "resilient" have to do with attending a sporting event?

It never has been easy to be a fan, especially around here, where aside from the Yankees' transcendent five-year run in the late 1990s and the occasional Giants Super Bowl appearance, our teams have never given much return for what always has been a hefty investment.

You know, aside from 1971-1977, Led Zeppelin wasn't that great of a band, anyway. The Yankees made the playoffs for 13 straight fucking years and appeared in six World Series you ungrateful prick. It's been insanely easy to be a fan around here.

The Giants have won three Super Bowls in the last 23 seasons. Given that there are 32 teams in the salary-capped NFL, that's pretty amazing. The Mets had some bad stretches, but made a good run in the late 90's, have been competitive for the past four seasons and project to be good for quite a while. 

And what the fuck do you want from your "investment"? No one is making you buy tickets to the game. When I head up to the Stadium, I don't need a promise that the team is going to win a championship that year. I go because it's a fun time, the team is competitive and I enjoy watching sporting events in the venues in which they are played.

It's simply no longer worth it, no matter how good the team is or how deeply ingrained in your DNA the ritual of going to the ballpark on a summer night really is.

Attention baseball fans: Don't bother going to games anymore. Yankees vs. Red Sox battling for first place on a Friday night? Nope. Wallace Matthews says it's not worth it.

He ends the column with not one, but two one-sentence paragraphs. 

Even in a city this big, sooner or later, you run out of suckers.

Then the only suckers left are the teams themselves, and the people who run them.

Wallace Matthews might be a total fucking moron, but at least he's not a sucker!

A Simple "Yes" Would Have Done

From Wallace Matthews of Newsday: 

When I asked Yankees vice president Randy Levine if this meant the team had misjudged the market, he [said] "For a very small number of seats, in this economy [...] I guess it was a mistake.''

Reason #446,785 why I hate you, Randy Levine. You are that guy. The one who will never admit when he's wrong. 

It's not even entriely your fault. The economy went south between the time you set the prices and the when the time came to sell the tickets. Not too many people saw that coming. 

"A very small number of seats?" Okay, maybe in relation to the capacity of the Stadium, but they represent a huge chunk of the revenue. For one $2650 Legends ticket (there are 122 total), you could buy 189 bleacher seats or 120 in the Grandstand. There are 1200 seats priced over $325 and the prices of about 600 of them have been effectively cut in half. Those seats were what the entire "Robin Hood" pricing model of the New Stadium was built around. That's not a "very small" loss in revenue. 

A fun little aside... Here's a nice fabrication that I turned up in the ESPN article linked above, dated March 21st, 2008:

The New York Yankees will charge $500 to $2,500 for seats near home plate in the first five-to-eight rows of their new ballpark. They already have commitments from ticket-buyers for all 122 of the front-row seats.

Oh, did they? Then we must have varying definitions of the word "commitment", because those are the seats that they are now halving prices on and giving away to those who already purchased at full price.

Randy, you fucked up. We all see the empty seats. It's not up for debate. Are you 7 years old? Stop acting like you didn't break the window, we saw you and Lon Trost throwing the ball as hard as you possibly could on the front lawn. Would it kill you to just admit that things didn't go according to plan?