Hard on James

Wait, hold on a second. You mean to tell me that an athlete left a winning team that he was a big part of to go earn about 4 million dollars more for a cellar dweller? I don’t know if you can see it, but I am doing the E-Trade Baby shocked face right about now.

The Oklahoma City Thunder did not want to pay Harden a max deal and they traded him when they learned they could get something of value back. That is the business of sports at its finest.

And there is nothing wrong with trading one asset for whatever reason in sports, especially when you get a proven scorer like Kevin Martin in return. The Thunder didn’t make a bad trade because nobody lost in this deal.

Okay, so you trade the reigning sixth man of the year for Martin who can score 20 points per night. Other than age (Harden is 23, Martin is 29) and salary (Martin is making 11.52 million a year and Harden, pre-max deal, is making 4.065 million a year) you don’t lose much of anything on the court in the trade.  

Considering that Harden and Martin both averaged about 17 a game last season, you get the same scoring off the bench. Harden and Martin both average 6.3 rebounds a game over their careers and both men also get two assists per game. Harden is a better defender than Martin, yet considering how he couldn’t stop whoever he was guarding in the finals a year ago his defensive value takes a hit.

Considering Harden and Martin cancel each other out, the Thunder won the rest of the deal big time. OKC shrewdly picked up first round draft pick and human rubber band Jeremy Lamb, two first round draft picks, and a second round pick while giving up two nobodies named Cole Aldrich and Lazar Hayward.

So a fan favorite took more money to play for a team that blew itself up this off-season, it happens all the time. Of course the Thunder made this deal because of money. OKC decided that rather than paying the luxury tax, the “small market” Thunder decided to trade Harden and break up their core three players.

The Thunder are just like the Broncos of Boise State. For some reason, everyone in the area thinks that they have the small market team mentality that is a perennial power in the sport. Newsflash that is a load of crap considering that the Thunder brought in an average of 18 thousand fans a night last season, the fact that they have the second best player in the NBA, and the fact they have made the postseason for the past three seasons. The Thunder are a league powerhouse who just happens to be located in between tumbleweeds rolling in two different directions.

Harden got his money and the Thunder made their team better. Everybody wins in this trade, so that crap about Harden taking less money to be loyal to the team can just go by the wayside with the rest of the Houston Rockets.

Cruz Control

A flurry of fists from the featherweight struck forceful blows.

The punches thrown by Orlando Cruz hit home against a greater foe than his most recent opponent Jorge Pasos. Cruz’s win struck several well placed blows for openly gay athletes in every sport.

After a statement he released earlier this October, Cruz was acknowledged as the first openly gay fighter in the history of U.S. boxing. A sport where people beat the tar out of each other for a living now is the proving grounds for a man who must battle against homosexual stereotypes in addition to other boxers.

For one night, Cruz bore the weight of a movement on his slender frame. For better or worse the ongoing battle for gay acceptance was in Cruz’s corner throughout the bout. Yet if you paid to watch his bout with Jorge Pasos, the weight of any expectations failed to slow him down.

The number four featherweight boxer hammered Pasos all evening long. Even though Cruz did not secure knockout number ten in his career, he did manage a victory by unanimous decision. Yet the most telling moment came after the fight in the post fight comments form Cruz’s opponent.

Pasos said through a translator that he tried his best but the better boxer won. There was no anti-gay slurs, no bigotry, just the mutual respect of one athlete to another.

The way it should be, but unfortunately the culture of sports is not this way.

There are very few athletes who even bother to speak out against homosexual bashing. Fewer of these athletes admit to being gay themselves. And an even smaller number of these athletes come out while they are still playing.

Cruz could have taken the route of other athletes who faced his struggle and waited until his career was over before coming out. Former NBA player John Amaechi did not admit to his sexual orientation until 2007; a good three years after he played his last game for the New York Knicks. And nobody would have blamed Cruz for waiting.

The world of professional sports is not exactly a safe haven for openly gay athletes. Amaechi, one of the biggest spokesman for gay athletes, stated in a 2002 interview that “(the fact that) there's no openly gay players is no real surprise. It would be like an alien dropping down from space. There'd be fear, then panic: they just wouldn't know how to handle it.”

But Cruz knew how to handle it. He decided to tape up his hands, weigh in, and go toe to toe against the prejudice. Words can do a great deal, yet action is the catalyst of change. Cruz coming out while still fighting garners more respect than admitting it after the fact.

Even if someone were ignorant enough to call Cruz a maricon (the Spanish word for faggot), they would not be able to diminish his accomplishments. Not to mention Cruz could most likely knock out John Doe the bigot.

But for one night, Cruz showed everyone who paid to watch his bout a glimpse of what sports is all about. A performance based on one fighter landing more punches against his opponent rather than being defined by race, gender, or sexual orientation.

There is still a ways to go before Cruz’s fight becomes the norm, yet thanks to him, we are closer to making that dream a reality.

By the Way, Cano Played Worse.

          It is easy to pick on the guy whose contract is more astronomical than Felix Baumgartner. There are plenty of people who will single him out because he will be on a Cooperstown ballot as soon as he is done playing. When he is out of a game, playing poorly, and saying “call me maybe” to some female spectators, he gets dumped on; as he should.

            However, while everyone took time out of their busy schedule to bury Alex Rodriguez, they seemed to forget that there was a certain left handed second baseman that played worse. That is right, Robinson Cano had a far worse postseason than A-Rod did, yet you probably didn’t hear about it.

            While A-Rod was struggling mightily against the Baltimore Orioles, Cano couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat. A Rod’s batting average was .125 against the dirty birds of Maryland, Cano hit a pathetic .091. Neither man hit a home run this postseason. Against the Tigers of Detroit, A-Rod hit .111, Cano hit .056, yet media outlets across the boroughs seemed more interested in the fact A-Rod can get a girl’s number than the overall struggle of the entire team.

            And no, the argument that A-Rod is a first ballot hall of famer (if your stance on steroid users is to let them in) does not make Cano’s struggles in the postseason irrelevant. Between the two men, one has a career postseason batting average of .263 and the other man is hitting a meager .222. The higher number belongs to Rodriguez, yet because Cano has been somehow exonerated from struggling in the playoffs, A-Rod gets all the heat.

            Now that the damage has been done and the Bronx Bombers have been swept out of Comerica Park, the media haymakers are being thrown. Ian O’ Connor is saying blow it up. Jim Caple is saying get rid of A-Rod and everyone else seemingly over the age of 30. Brian Cashman is now dealing with swirling rumors that A-Rod could be going to Miami.

            Yet Cano’s struggles are the buried lead. The best player in terms of talent level and production on the most famous team in professional sports has a historically awful postseason, and the only criticism is a caption saying he went 1-18 in the ALCS.

            Cano is lucky to have a guy like A-Rod taking all the heat for him, because Cano sucks in the postseason. Remember in 2009 when A-Rod had that great postseason and the Yanks won it all? Fun fact about the Yankees second baseman that year, he hit .167 in the 09 ALDS, .261 in that ALCS, and .136 in that World Series. Also in the 09, postseason Cano had a total of 6 RBIs and 9 strikeouts. But they won, so his struggles didn’t matter.

            Once A-Rod is gone, Cano’s poor play in the postseason will not be ignored. The best player on the Yankees will actually have to own up to going 1-18 against hot starting pitching rather than hiding behind the “infidelities” of an aging icon.

            Cano got lucky he didn’t get reamed the way A-Rod did. But if his horrid postseason play continues, his luck will eventually run out. 

I Was Wrong About

            With every right there is a wrong, and many of these wrongs come from pundits across all four major sports. I am about to do something exceedingly rare in the internet age, I am going to write about the instances in which I was wrong.

Why am I taking time out of my day to admit to the things I got wrong you ask? Well it is because nobody is perfect and there are plenty of instances that I just missed completely. Also I am underneath the weight of a Kaaba (that giant cube in the heart of Mecca, Saudi Arabia for those of you who don’t know) sized writers block and this is a stopgap until I think of something better. There have been plenty of things for sure, yet I am going to make sure that everyone knows that it is quite possible to be a journalist, and still be wrong about your particular opinions.

I am lacking an award show theme idea for this one, so I’ll just say it on a scale of one to ten; one being I got an outcome of a game wrong and ten being Paul Ryan and Joe Biden incorrect when it comes to major political facts.

            This first one comes from a while ago. Remember when everybody wrote off Dwyane Wade after he tanked and pouted against the Indiana Pacers? Well, unfortunately I was part of the Wade-is-washed-up-bandwagon.

“The spark that drives Wade’s game appears to have burned out. The quickness that was synonymous with Wade’s cuts to the basket has slowed to the pace of a slug shooting jumpers. Wade has gone from a fiery competitor to a sour shooter looking for a foul call after every shot he takes..”

            Well, that bandwagon immediately steered into a puddle of kerosene and was lit on fire by the fan base of South Beach. Wade and the Heatles rolled on to the NBA Finals and right through the Oklahoma City Thunder. Wade’s final stat line from the Finals read a little something like this: 22.6 points per game, six rebounds per game, and five assists per game.

           

            Fortunately LeBron James dominance throughout the playoffs prevented this from being a seven or higher on the wrong scale. Few had a more dominant postseason than LeBron’s 2012 run, and it was because of his dominance that served as a moderate ointment for the burn Wade gave me.

            Still Wade and the Heat singed me pretty badly. Thanks to LeBron’s incredible postseason I don’t have to go to the burn ward, but it is still bad.

            I give my wrongness regarding Wade’s effectiveness a….

            6 out of 10: Getting a giant sunburn on the back of your neck because you saw the sun behind one cloud and thought ‘oh, it’s not going to be that bright out today, so I don’t need sunscreen.’

            Next up we have The Trade Deadline/Archer Award Show. This was easily one of my worst columns of the year for two reasons.

1: The fact that I pre-determined the fate of one team in the most unpredictable sport in the history of human kind. Seriously, this is the last time I write a ‘winners and losers after the MLB trade deadline’ piece. The rest of the regular season is too long for me, or anyone else, to be right about everything over a long period of time.

2: I couldn’t use any of the best quotes from Archer for obvious reasons to anyone who has ever watched the show. Unfortunately I had to settle for the Donnie Wahlberg level quotes from Archer because all of the Marky-Mark quality quotes are too offensive. Naturally Archer is my favorite animated show for these very reasons but I digress.

            Anyway here is the biggest thing I got wrong.

                                                                                               

            “By landing (Ryan) Dempster, the Rangers reminded the American League that teams still have to go through Texas to get to the World Series.”

            If I could get my hands on the delorean that only lets me go back and alter sports related predictions go back and change three events in the past I would..

• Kill Hitler because that is always the first rule of any form of time travel.
• Make sure my much younger self stayed up all night on October 27, 2004.
• And tell myself in July that the Texas Rangers were going to loose the AL West on the last day of the season, and then get bounced in the inaugural American League one game playoff; so for the love of all that is holy don’t write a column about it.

    Sadly the Delorean is in the shop so I have to live with being wrong about the Texas Rangers. Seriously, I did not think that the team with the second best batting average in the AL, a pretty good rotation, and that much postseason experience could lose to an Oakland A’s team made up mostly of unwanted Boston Red Sox who banded together for a great season.

    Also, I didn’t know that Skoal had the ability to create a Dallas sized riff, but again I digress.

    Still, I am going to give myself a bit of a break on this one. The Rangers went to the past two World Series, it was only a matter of time before someone else came and took their AL title away from them. I just did not expect it to happen in the way that it did. Oh and Dempster being a bust in the deal didn’t exactly help me.

     I give my wrongness on this one…..

     5 out of 10: Waking up early only slightly hung over from an above average night of drinking the previous evening. You know that you shouldn’t have had that much to drink, but you stopped before getting morning sickness. I could have said that the L.A. Dodgers got the better of the Beckett-Crawford-Gonzalez deal.

    I can actually make a solid segue here. The Rangers lost to the Baltimore Orioles in the wild card game (sadly which is another point I have to get to), and I effectively ended the AL manager of the year race in September.

   “The AL manager of the year race is over. Buck Showalter has guided his Orioles to meaningful September baseball for the first time in 15 years….”

    Pretty much the only portion of that statement that you need to read is the first eight words. This was when the Orioles were tailgating the Yankees division lead for the entire month. Unfortunately I made an enormous gaffe that would make Rombama  look good.

    In that column, I didn’t even mention the job done by Bob Melvin of the California Fighting Adjectives…err…I mean the Oakland Athletics.

    Seriously, I Bill Bucknered that one. Not only did the A’s win a division, but they even had a more improbable run than the fighting Showalters. The A’s had a season team batting average of .238 compared to Baltimore’s .247. The A’s were sixth in the AL in home runs when Baltimore was second, and they had a better team ERA than Baltimore did.

   Now both teams are still in the playoffs for the time being and the harshness on this one comes from calling the manager of the year race over in September with an entire pennant race still to play. It is not that Showalter is undeserving, but I didn’t even mention Melvin once in the column, so I should take a well deserved beating on that one.

    I give my wrongness for calling the AL manager of the year race over in September….

    9 out of 10: You forget to study for a major exam and you try to cheat off of the person sitting next to you; even though you know they aren’t as smart as you. However, not only are all of their answers wrong on the exam, but you get caught cheating. You fail the class and you are put on quadruple secret probation. And you try to lessen the already bad situation by making a light hearted joke at the expense of the Dean’s maternal figure during the meeting that decides your fate.

Sidebar: This will go down to an 7 out of 10 if the O’s advance to the next round and Oakland doesn’t.

    Let us turn our attention back to the O’s beating Texas in the first wild card game of the postseason. The one game playoff was supposed to make the baseball playoffs more drama packed and they succeeded like the Real Housewives of wherever succeed in fabricating drama.

    If you want to know more about why this great idea was ruined. Read this.

   The system was fine, it just became indefensible after one horrid call. I give my wrongness about the One-game-playoff….

   3 out of 10: You are walking around a big city late at night and your friend is going to make out with some dude selling Marijuana Lollipops; leaving you to wonder how you got yourself in this situation in the first place. This situation is very bad, but it was not your fault. Still, you should have accounted for something like Marijuana Lollipop man happening.

   Speaking of officials, I did not write a column about this because of time constraints. Although this one is going to be particularly hard to admit.

    I thought….I thought that the Replacement Refs weren’t going to be that bad.

    I knew that the NFL was being arrogant and stupid by not paying the real officials, yet I felt that the “experience” of the replacements were solid enough to tie us over. I also expected the NFL to hold out on paying the real refs for as long as possible because people were still going to watch the games regardless.

    Then the regular season started. Games became un-watch able and both players and coaches were blatantly ignoring the refs. Then of course the “interdown” happened on Monday Night Football.

    It was the second biggest swelling of sports related hatred from fans that has happened in recent memory; trailing only Jerry Sandusky for the top spot. 70,000 phone calls were made to Roger Goodell’s office by everyone. A senator from Wisconsin put Goodell’s number on the internet. The refs became an internet meme. And most surprisingly, a casino in Vegas gave everyone who bet on the Packers their money back after that game.

    I give my wrongness on the replacement refs…

    15 out of 10: Sounding like Skip Bayless animatedly defending one of the following organizations: The KKK, people who believe the Holocaust never happened, any Neo-Nazi organization, and anybody who defends what Jerry Sandusky did.

    There it is, my politician like gaffes in writing. I may not always get it right, but hopefully I will get it wrong a lot less in the future. 

Kill the Umpire

            

           The introduction of the one game playoff to Major League Baseball was supposed to infuse drama into a bland playoff structure. This change had the potential to add another angle to the umpteenth number of  dimensions that exist in baseball to date. The one game playoff was supposed to enhance the integrity of competition.

            Instead, the illustrious career of Chipper Jones ended in an explosion of profanities and hurricane of empty aluminum cans. Replacement official….correction left field umpire Sam Holbrook single-handedly killed the Braves season with one of the worst calls in recent memory.

            In the eighth inning, a popup by Andrelton Simmons listed lazily to left field and dropped between two Cardinals. Yet Holbrook ruled that the play was a product of the infield fly rule and Simmons was out.

            Again, an umpire whose job it is to patrol the outfield called the infield fly rule when the ball was at least 50 feet from the dirt.

            Thanks to Holbrook, defending this one-game-winner-goes-to-play-Washington scenario is virtually indefensible. The one game playoff now looks like a moronic idea right up there with calling the 2002 All-Star Game a tie and canceling the 1994 World Series. There was a fair amount of criticism of the one game playoff entering the day, yet this horrid call ending a team’s season will ignite the fiery anger of social media users.

            Holbrook will now go down in umpire infamy reserved for Jim Joyce, Tim McClelland, and Don Denkinger. Although Holbrook did not take away a perfect game, forget the rules of safe and out in the middle of a game, or rob a team of a World Series title, he ended a team’s pursuit of the Commissioner’s Trophy. Holbrook can’t show his face in Georgia after this game, and it was his own doing.

            Nobody should be more upset about this call than Chipper Jones. There could not have been a worse ending for one of the classiest Atlanta Braves in recent memory. This may have been Jones’ last postseason regardless of the outcome, yet the Hall Of Fame career of Larry should not have ended as a result of a politician-like gaffe from Holbrook.

Sure Jones got an infield hit in his final at-bat as a Brave, yet that was rendered useless thanks to a ground out by Dan Uggla to cement the tragedy.

Normally the prevailing argument can be made that the Braves had other chances to win the game. Yes the call incorrectly produced a second out in the eighth inning, yet the Braves could have gotten three runs in four outs. After all, it is baseball, crazier things have happened in the postseason.

Not this time. Atlanta got shafted by whatever unpleasantly large object you choose to picture. Baseball is a game where momentum overrides stardom in the postseason, and Holbrook gutted the Braves run like a baby pig before a roast.

Jones did not deserve to have his career end this way. The Braves fans did not deserve to have their season end this way. And the team certainly did not deserve to lose this way.

But this is baseball, and anything can happen. Including NFL replacement refs wearing MLB umpire clothes and ruining what could have been a fantastic idea for everyone. 

Triple Threat

The Season closes with a crown replacing the Detroit tigers hat worn by Miguel Cabrera.

Cabrera conquered three kingdoms throughout the regular season. He seized territories in the realms of batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. The almighty Triple Crown sits upon the head of a Tiger.

By no means was Cabrera’s conquest flashy, and he almost got caught. The Tiger went 0-2 in the game and was taken out in the fourth inning of the final regular season game of 2012.

Factor in Curtis Granderson of the Yankees hitting two home runs on the season’s last day and a Shakespearean tragedy was almost upon us. Still, Granderson, Josh Hamilton, and the rest of baseball fell flat in their storming of Cabrera’s statistical fortress. 

This new king of baseball’s iron throne is not the first Tiger to reach statistical nirvana. Ty Cobb accomplished the feat back in 1909. You know, a year removed from the Chicago Cubs winning their only World Series for the century.

There were only ten other men in American League history who ravaged the landscape of baseball like Alexander the Great. The most recent man was Carl Yastrzemski, in 1967. And even though Cabrera did not channel his inner Mickey Mantle and go 5-5 in his last game of the year, he didn’t have to. Cabrera has achieved statistical dominance that Musial, Aaron, Bonds, Clemente, and Kaline never did in a single season.

Any claim that Cabrera backed into baseball immortality is laughable. Cabrera had eleven more runs batted in than Hamilton, a batting average four points higher than super-rookie Mike Trout, and more homers than anyone else in baseball.

Also let us not forget to thank the foot soldiers who helped their king achieve glory. No one man can conquer a castle and since Cabrera did not hit 139 solo home runs, some credit has to be given to his teammates for getting on base for him to knock home.

This crowning achievement has effectively ended the best hitter in the game debate that took up the better part of the season. The tiger has power to all fields the trout can’t match. Sure, Trout’s speed and ability to steal more bases than the hamburglar steals burgers keep the best overall player debate going. However, the most dangerous weapon in baseball is the 33 ounce timber on Cabrera’s shoulder.

Not to mention Cabrera’s conquest and great pitching down the stretch by Detroit has the Tigers in the playoffs. No wildcard game birth, but rather AL Central Champions. Trout will be gone fishing this October.

Greatness is given not earned. In the 2012 season, Cabrera seized statistical awards, immortality, and a playoff birth in one campaign. And whatever happens in October and November, Cabrera will be remembered for the realms he conquered even if he does not win the biggest prize of all.