Centennial for 2012.
This year started out more serious for this particular blog. Eventually I started a second site, The Observatory, and my brain couldn't lay off.
I even started another six more blogs on top of these two, and have recently been struggling to keep up with the often posts.
The weather is nice, breezy and cool, sun shining all day after 10. My ass groove in the couch has become rather pronounced, but that's to be expected.
Since my femur broke, I've had only two dreams out of all of them that acknowledged the break, and one happened last night. In both, I could walk, and was happy to be recovering nicely. Mostly, the dreams make no reference to the leg.
Some of January's posts form this year are some of my favorites of all time. Go figure.
Thanks for keeping up with this site of you do.
Another wasteful post...love it!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
RIP Sally Ride
Apparently we hardly knew thee, Sally.
Ms. Sally Ride was the first American women in space, and at 32, was also the youngest American ever in space. She, while holding degrees in physics and astrophysics from Stanford, answered an ad in the newspaper from NASA, to become an astronaut.
She was a trailblazing women in the space industry, and an inspiration for the ladies everywhere. She rode on the Challenger and later sat on the investigating panel looking into the Challenger accident. She was also the only person to be on both the investigative teams studying both the Challenger and the Columbia disaster in 2003.
She switched from physics to engineering and developed one of the mechanical arms that the shuttles used in their central bays to unload payloads.
That's really just too little information to celebrate a lady I looked up to when I was young and still had plans to be an astronaut. One of the things that bothered a segment of society that would have liked to have been able to have discussed and celebrated specifically was that Dr. Ride was lesbian, and after her divorce she lived with her partner for 27 years.
That information was not made public until the second to last paragraph in her official obituary. She obviously valued privacy more than being a hero to the GLBT segment, which was her prerogative. Besides, what does it matter anyway?
Ride, Sally, Ride!
You'll be missed.
Ms. Sally Ride was the first American women in space, and at 32, was also the youngest American ever in space. She, while holding degrees in physics and astrophysics from Stanford, answered an ad in the newspaper from NASA, to become an astronaut.
She was a trailblazing women in the space industry, and an inspiration for the ladies everywhere. She rode on the Challenger and later sat on the investigating panel looking into the Challenger accident. She was also the only person to be on both the investigative teams studying both the Challenger and the Columbia disaster in 2003.
She switched from physics to engineering and developed one of the mechanical arms that the shuttles used in their central bays to unload payloads.
That's really just too little information to celebrate a lady I looked up to when I was young and still had plans to be an astronaut. One of the things that bothered a segment of society that would have liked to have been able to have discussed and celebrated specifically was that Dr. Ride was lesbian, and after her divorce she lived with her partner for 27 years.
That information was not made public until the second to last paragraph in her official obituary. She obviously valued privacy more than being a hero to the GLBT segment, which was her prerogative. Besides, what does it matter anyway?
Ride, Sally, Ride!
You'll be missed.
A Note for My Dad
The last four posts have been about sports, as this one will be as well. Actually, this is a specific post about baseball's pitchers. Actually, this discussion is ripped straight from Bill James' ideas about what makes the best pitcher ever.
This is inspired my my dad's comment to the last post about the best pitchers ever, and he named some of the greats. In truth, he named the six I'm going to go over in a bit of detail.
A few preliminaries on Bill James and his methods. He's developed a system that gives shares of a teams wins to players depending on how they performed during the season. The way it works: each win is worth 3 Win Shares, and after the season they can be dispersed. One beautiful thing is that it doesn't tell us all sorts of new things. According to the system Babe Ruth is still the best right fielder, Willie Mays get's the nod over Cobb, and Williams gets the slight nod over Stan the Man. It mostly conforms to our already mostly agreed upon beliefs about players.
It can, though, give some insight to certain things. Through the studies that James' has conducted, and the tweaks that take into account league averages, park effects, and eras in which folks played, what you get is a more objective view of a player's worth to their team in the context of the league.
How else can Honus Wagner's league-leading 109 RBI from 1908 seem more amazing than Juan Gonzales' league leading 157 RBI from 1998? In 1908 runs per game were almost half of what they were ninety years later, and equivalently Juan Gonzales would have needed almost 200 RBI to have had an equal impact on the game he played.
In any case, Win Shares nearly match the number of Wins for pitchers, which is what you want with this kind of system, and the best pitchers according to the Abstract are determined from a three-pronged approach:
Walter Johnson vs Lefty Grove; Walter Johnson vs Cy Young; and Walter Johnson vs Pete Alexander and everybody else.
Lefty Grove had the highest Win Shares per inning rate for all non-relief pitchers (modern relief pitchers have the highest impact on a the won'loss record, which can inflate their overall value)(tell that to a team that blows 20 saves a year (the difference between 77-85 and going home early and 97-65 and the playoffs)). Lefty pitched phenomenally well in a big hitting era and in a hitter's park, and besides Pedro Martinez in mid-career, he outshines everybody. The next closest pitcher is Walter, who is closer to the next ten guys than he is to Lefty. The difference is about 8%, which Bill James deems significant enough to rate Grove ahead, if another factor is ignored. That other factor?
Innings. Walter had over 5900 to Lefty's over 3900. Walter had 50% more innings in his career than Grove, and that's just too much to ignore. Walter pitched more effectively for longer than most everybody else. Edge: Walter Johnson.
That same argument, but in reverse, goes for Johnson and Cy Young. Young pitched more innings, but Johnson had a higher per-inning rate. When Cy Young started pitching, he stood fifty feet away and started more than fifty games a season. You almost have to devalue his stats a little. Even so, the differences aren't as stark as they were with Johnson and Grove.
And so the list gets built like this:
1) Walter Johnson; 1907-1927;
2) Lefty Grove; 1925-1941;
3) Pete Alexander; 1912-1930;
4) Cy Young; 1890-1911;
5) Warren Spahn; 1942-1965;
6) Tom Seaver; 1967-1986...
Of the the five guys in front of Tom Seaver, we have four guys who pitched before WWII, and three of them had their best years before WWI, and one guy who pitched during and directly after WWII. Also, five of Seaver's contemporaries (Carlton, Sutton, Ryan, Phil Niekro, Gaylord Perry) had more wins than he did, but none with a winning percentage close to Seaver's.
Two other contemporaries (Jim Palmer and Juan Marichal) had better winning percentages, but had less wins and played for far better teams than Tom Seaver played on.
So...
These kinds of discussions are one of the fun bonuses of baseball and stats. Right?
This is inspired my my dad's comment to the last post about the best pitchers ever, and he named some of the greats. In truth, he named the six I'm going to go over in a bit of detail.
A few preliminaries on Bill James and his methods. He's developed a system that gives shares of a teams wins to players depending on how they performed during the season. The way it works: each win is worth 3 Win Shares, and after the season they can be dispersed. One beautiful thing is that it doesn't tell us all sorts of new things. According to the system Babe Ruth is still the best right fielder, Willie Mays get's the nod over Cobb, and Williams gets the slight nod over Stan the Man. It mostly conforms to our already mostly agreed upon beliefs about players.
It can, though, give some insight to certain things. Through the studies that James' has conducted, and the tweaks that take into account league averages, park effects, and eras in which folks played, what you get is a more objective view of a player's worth to their team in the context of the league.
How else can Honus Wagner's league-leading 109 RBI from 1908 seem more amazing than Juan Gonzales' league leading 157 RBI from 1998? In 1908 runs per game were almost half of what they were ninety years later, and equivalently Juan Gonzales would have needed almost 200 RBI to have had an equal impact on the game he played.
In any case, Win Shares nearly match the number of Wins for pitchers, which is what you want with this kind of system, and the best pitchers according to the Abstract are determined from a three-pronged approach:
Walter Johnson vs Lefty Grove; Walter Johnson vs Cy Young; and Walter Johnson vs Pete Alexander and everybody else.
Lefty Grove had the highest Win Shares per inning rate for all non-relief pitchers (modern relief pitchers have the highest impact on a the won'loss record, which can inflate their overall value)(tell that to a team that blows 20 saves a year (the difference between 77-85 and going home early and 97-65 and the playoffs)). Lefty pitched phenomenally well in a big hitting era and in a hitter's park, and besides Pedro Martinez in mid-career, he outshines everybody. The next closest pitcher is Walter, who is closer to the next ten guys than he is to Lefty. The difference is about 8%, which Bill James deems significant enough to rate Grove ahead, if another factor is ignored. That other factor?
Innings. Walter had over 5900 to Lefty's over 3900. Walter had 50% more innings in his career than Grove, and that's just too much to ignore. Walter pitched more effectively for longer than most everybody else. Edge: Walter Johnson.
That same argument, but in reverse, goes for Johnson and Cy Young. Young pitched more innings, but Johnson had a higher per-inning rate. When Cy Young started pitching, he stood fifty feet away and started more than fifty games a season. You almost have to devalue his stats a little. Even so, the differences aren't as stark as they were with Johnson and Grove.
And so the list gets built like this:
1) Walter Johnson; 1907-1927;
2) Lefty Grove; 1925-1941;
3) Pete Alexander; 1912-1930;
4) Cy Young; 1890-1911;
5) Warren Spahn; 1942-1965;
6) Tom Seaver; 1967-1986...
Of the the five guys in front of Tom Seaver, we have four guys who pitched before WWII, and three of them had their best years before WWI, and one guy who pitched during and directly after WWII. Also, five of Seaver's contemporaries (Carlton, Sutton, Ryan, Phil Niekro, Gaylord Perry) had more wins than he did, but none with a winning percentage close to Seaver's.
Two other contemporaries (Jim Palmer and Juan Marichal) had better winning percentages, but had less wins and played for far better teams than Tom Seaver played on.
So...
These kinds of discussions are one of the fun bonuses of baseball and stats. Right?
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Note for Ryan
I know it may seem like I've been lagging here, and to some degree I have. I've been working on a few update posts over on the Observatory about the leg situation, I'm just not ready to post them yet.
I have another post I've been working on here too, a post about truth and the world, among other things.
But here, as a (not so) quick interlude, I have a post that's tailor made for my good friend Ryan, and my mom, and my dad as well, if he's taking a look. It's about baseball.
This has been an extremely exciting year for baseball, for me anyway, and not just because the Yankees are kicking everybody's ass. (They lost to Ryan's A's tonight, which is cool for the A's.) There are a number a teams that are coming up (Nationals, Pirates, Dodgers, White Sox, Orioles) and a whole slew of young kids, the proverbial changing of the guard in terms of star power. Now, Joey Votto is too old for the list that will follow, but his presence on the Reds is pretty clutch. A-Rod and Jeter are getting old, and it's about time for a new wave of talent to come through and get everybody excited again for baseball.
Okay. So the criteria I'm looking at is historical eras and how they shaped up with awesome players and they're being 25 years-old or under.
This is a pretty good year for elite talent performing well at 25 or under.
2012
Mike Trout; Angels, on pace for both MVP and Rookie of the Year;
Bryce Harper; Nationals, 19 year-old All-Star kid lighting it up in DC;
Giancarlo Stanton; superstar in the making in Miami;
Chris Sale; lefty pitcher striking out everybody on the White Sox;
Andrew McCutchen; MVP candidate in Pittsburgh, making them relevant again;
Jason Heyward; slugger in Atlanta, potential like crazy;
Steven Strasburg; best pitcher on the potent nationals team, and just turned 24;
Clayton Kershaw; reining Cy Young Award winner, incredible pitcher for the Dodgers;
(Yoenis Cespedes; slugging Cubano with the A's who hit a homer tonight against the Yanks.)[My bad; Cespedes is 26 and technically too old for this list. He is, though, an exciting rookie to keep an eye on, fueling the A's recent stretch of 11-2 ball, becoming the hottest team in the game in July. Cespedes has hit .424 over the stretch.]
I'm telling you, this is an exciting year if you care.
So how do some of our other eras look? Next is:
1984
Tony Gwynn; Hall of Famer;
Cal Ripken Jr; Hall of Famer;
Ryne Sandberg; Hall of Famer;
Kirby Puckett; Hall of Famer;
Tim Raines; should be in the Hall of Fame;
Dwight Gooden; elite talent at 19 years old, fast life in NY eventually helped lead to his non-HoF status.
In 1984, all those guys were 25 or under. Pretty good year.
1984 seemed more fondly remembered than this next year (save for Fred McGriff)(and Larkin).
1987
Barry Bonds; likely Hall of Famer, even though, well, DRUGS;
Barry Larkin; Hall of Famer;
Roger Clemens; like Bonds, likely Hall of Famer, but, eh, DRUGS;
Mark McGwire; highest percentage of value based on home run, and, eh, DRUGS;
Fred McGriff; why isn't he in the Hall?
1974
Gary Carter; Hall of Famer;
Jim Rice; Hall of Famer;
Mike Schmidt; Hall of Famer;
Dave Winfield; Hall of Famer;
George Brett; Hall of Famer;
Robin Yount; Hall of Famer;
Bert Blylevin; Hall of Famer;
Goose Gossage; Hall of Famer.
1969
Young baseball players...
I will be returning to the regularly scheduled topics in short order...
I have another post I've been working on here too, a post about truth and the world, among other things.
But here, as a (not so) quick interlude, I have a post that's tailor made for my good friend Ryan, and my mom, and my dad as well, if he's taking a look. It's about baseball.
This has been an extremely exciting year for baseball, for me anyway, and not just because the Yankees are kicking everybody's ass. (They lost to Ryan's A's tonight, which is cool for the A's.) There are a number a teams that are coming up (Nationals, Pirates, Dodgers, White Sox, Orioles) and a whole slew of young kids, the proverbial changing of the guard in terms of star power. Now, Joey Votto is too old for the list that will follow, but his presence on the Reds is pretty clutch. A-Rod and Jeter are getting old, and it's about time for a new wave of talent to come through and get everybody excited again for baseball.
Okay. So the criteria I'm looking at is historical eras and how they shaped up with awesome players and they're being 25 years-old or under.
This is a pretty good year for elite talent performing well at 25 or under.
2012
Mike Trout; Angels, on pace for both MVP and Rookie of the Year;
Bryce Harper; Nationals, 19 year-old All-Star kid lighting it up in DC;
Giancarlo Stanton; superstar in the making in Miami;
Chris Sale; lefty pitcher striking out everybody on the White Sox;
Andrew McCutchen; MVP candidate in Pittsburgh, making them relevant again;
Jason Heyward; slugger in Atlanta, potential like crazy;
Steven Strasburg; best pitcher on the potent nationals team, and just turned 24;
Clayton Kershaw; reining Cy Young Award winner, incredible pitcher for the Dodgers;
(Yoenis Cespedes; slugging Cubano with the A's who hit a homer tonight against the Yanks.)[My bad; Cespedes is 26 and technically too old for this list. He is, though, an exciting rookie to keep an eye on, fueling the A's recent stretch of 11-2 ball, becoming the hottest team in the game in July. Cespedes has hit .424 over the stretch.]
I'm telling you, this is an exciting year if you care.
So how do some of our other eras look? Next is:
1984
Tony Gwynn; Hall of Famer;
Cal Ripken Jr; Hall of Famer;
Ryne Sandberg; Hall of Famer;
Kirby Puckett; Hall of Famer;
Tim Raines; should be in the Hall of Fame;
Dwight Gooden; elite talent at 19 years old, fast life in NY eventually helped lead to his non-HoF status.
In 1984, all those guys were 25 or under. Pretty good year.
1984 seemed more fondly remembered than this next year (save for Fred McGriff)(and Larkin).
1987
Barry Bonds; likely Hall of Famer, even though, well, DRUGS;
Barry Larkin; Hall of Famer;
Roger Clemens; like Bonds, likely Hall of Famer, but, eh, DRUGS;
Mark McGwire; highest percentage of value based on home run, and, eh, DRUGS;
Fred McGriff; why isn't he in the Hall?
1974
Gary Carter; Hall of Famer;
Jim Rice; Hall of Famer;
Mike Schmidt; Hall of Famer;
Dave Winfield; Hall of Famer;
George Brett; Hall of Famer;
Robin Yount; Hall of Famer;
Bert Blylevin; Hall of Famer;
Goose Gossage; Hall of Famer.
I just cut and paste all of those "; Hall of Famer;" parts, and it was great. That was a wave of young talent coming through, kinda like this year. Now don't get me wrong; I'm not claiming that the nine guys listed above from 2012 are all future Hall of Famers, but it is a slew of great talent this summer.
1969
Tom Seaver; a rookie in '67, Seaver went on to be maybe the best pitcher in the game's history, HoF;
Johnny Bench; also rookie in '67, probably the second-best catcher ever, HoF;
Reggie Jackson; also rookie in '67, electric and outspoken slugger, HoF;
Rod Carew; damn good year for rookies, 1967, early incarnation of Ichiro, slap hitter, HoF;
Jim Palmer; HoF;
Don Sutton; HoF;
Catfish Hunter; HoF;
Nolan Ryan;HoF;
Steve Carlton; HoF.
Those last five guys are all pitchers, and, with the changing of the rules in favor of pitchers, it makes sense that some of the games most dominant pitchers during the modern era were young guns during this time. 1967 was a good year for rookies, for sure.
For folks who have a keen memory, I once wrote a post about the best pitcher ever. I did, though, just claim that Tom Seaver could make a case for "best pitcher ever". The game was significantly different before and after WWII, let alone a fifty year stretch spanning WWII, and Seaver's accomplishments, in the modern game, in terms of the new stats Win Shares and WAR (Wins Above Replacement; how much better a player would do against a replacement player), and the shifting of the game towards the hitters, the modern pitchers should get more respect. I'm talking to you Greg Maddux, and you Randy Johnson, and before we knew all about the drugs, Mr. Clemens, you were in this discussion as well. And fucking Pedro. How did little Pedro Martinez, 5'10", 168 lbs,dominate the game in the middle of the Steroid Era? Guy throws a 1.74 ERA in 2000. How is that possible? In any case Seaver, looking though the lens of the modern game, could be the best.
Now we get to the creamy filling. This next year is probably the highest stocked year of mind-blowingly crazy young 25-and-under kids ever in the game.
1955
Hank Aaron;
Willie Mays;
Mickey Mantle;
Roberto Clemente;
Ernie Banks;
Al Kaline;
Eddie Mathews;
Harmon Killebrew;
Frank Robinson.
The big guns. I don't want to sully the list with a lot of jabbering. The Hammer. The Mick. Mr. Cub. Bobby Clemente. The Say Hey Kid. All of these guys are Hall of Famers.
The next year on this list is a little further away:
1939
Ted Williams;
Joe DiMaggio;
Bob Feller.
Like the last list, pretty goddamned good. All Hall of Famers, all young phenoms that lived up to the hype, and all rather iconic players.
(I pretty much lifted this list from Jonah Keri (I think), a writer for Grantland, among other things?)
Young baseball players...
I will be returning to the regularly scheduled topics in short order...
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Sports and Names Thought Exercise
I was thinking the other day about names of athletes that truly convey their sport and their region, or are so perfect that it defies the best writers or creative types to come up with it themselves. I don't know why this kind of thing gets my old noggin fired up.
It started with a quarterback, a kid from Texas who was the QB for the University of Texas Longhorns, the Austin-based institution. His name: Colt McCoy.
"Colt McCoy" isn't made up, and is the absolute perfect name for a Texas quarterback. The kid isn't quite making it in the NFL, and may have lost his starting job in Cleveland, but the name is classic.
The next such athlete is an Olympic legend, a sprinter from the hotbed of track and field sprinting. They day that this country's Olympic qualifiers are usually better than the Olympics themselves, and given how many gold medals this country won the previous go around in sprinting (seven), that claim makes sense. The country: Jamaica. The person: Usain Bolt.
Isn't "Usain Bolt" just the best damn name for a sprinter from Jamaica? If you don't believe me, go find a Jamaican and strike up a conversation with them, then, once you become kinda friendly, ask them to go ahead and speak like they would with their next door neighbor, and marvel at the thought that technically this person is still speaking English. Real Jamaicans are barely understandable as it is, and Usain sounds like either a condition or a threat when they say it, but, in either case, it sounds super cool.
My whole theory, if I could say I had one, is that these names may be available in other sports, but I'm having a hard time necessarily coming up with them.
There is a kid playing today that seems to strike me having one of these kinds of names, and he's a young slugger, and to me that makes sense with his name. He plays for the Angels out here. His name: Mark Trumbo.
I don't know why, but there's something about "Trumbo" that to me says "baseball thumper". Maybe it's because of the "um" in the middle there, and it's easy to like names that use an "r" to affect the vowel form. I think that's been proven, but don't quote me on that.
Not that anyone cares, but I'll be revisiting this asinine topic as I find other names, or after asking other people and collecting suggestions.
It started with a quarterback, a kid from Texas who was the QB for the University of Texas Longhorns, the Austin-based institution. His name: Colt McCoy.
"Colt McCoy" isn't made up, and is the absolute perfect name for a Texas quarterback. The kid isn't quite making it in the NFL, and may have lost his starting job in Cleveland, but the name is classic.
The next such athlete is an Olympic legend, a sprinter from the hotbed of track and field sprinting. They day that this country's Olympic qualifiers are usually better than the Olympics themselves, and given how many gold medals this country won the previous go around in sprinting (seven), that claim makes sense. The country: Jamaica. The person: Usain Bolt.
Isn't "Usain Bolt" just the best damn name for a sprinter from Jamaica? If you don't believe me, go find a Jamaican and strike up a conversation with them, then, once you become kinda friendly, ask them to go ahead and speak like they would with their next door neighbor, and marvel at the thought that technically this person is still speaking English. Real Jamaicans are barely understandable as it is, and Usain sounds like either a condition or a threat when they say it, but, in either case, it sounds super cool.
My whole theory, if I could say I had one, is that these names may be available in other sports, but I'm having a hard time necessarily coming up with them.
There is a kid playing today that seems to strike me having one of these kinds of names, and he's a young slugger, and to me that makes sense with his name. He plays for the Angels out here. His name: Mark Trumbo.
I don't know why, but there's something about "Trumbo" that to me says "baseball thumper". Maybe it's because of the "um" in the middle there, and it's easy to like names that use an "r" to affect the vowel form. I think that's been proven, but don't quote me on that.
Not that anyone cares, but I'll be revisiting this asinine topic as I find other names, or after asking other people and collecting suggestions.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Atheism and Baseball
One of the original American League baseball teams, the Washington Senators, were one of the teams to move west, in 1960. They moved to Minnesota and became the Minnesota Twins. The Twins cap sports an interlocking "T" and "C", signifying the "Twin Cities" of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
There was about a decade where the Twins didn't wear that interlocking "TC" cap, but instead wore an "M" for "Minnesota". This, once you know some of the region's history, angered the people in St. Paul.
Minneapolis and St. Paul had been a hotbed for minor league baseball for years, like many cities around this country. Minneapolis had the Millers and St. Paul had the Saints, and they were fiercely independent and had a rowdy rivalry. When the major league team adopted the "M" caps, the folks in St. Paul were upset, claiming it was another example of Minneapolis trying to exert their dominance over St. Paul.
Eventually they switched back to the "TC", and people don't really care so much, maybe. But, there is a minor league team playing in St. Paul, calling themselves the Saints, but they play in the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball, a minor league in the old-fashioned sense, in that they're not slaves of the major leagues--they have no connection to big-league teams. They also have mascots like the T-Bones, Lemurs, and Air Hogs.
In any case, on August 10th of this year, by way of a joint sponsorship from the Minnesota Atheists and the American Atheists, a promotion will be turning the "St. Paul Saints" into the "Mr. Paul 'Aints". Seriously.
At the stadium they're planning on covering the "S" in all instances of the name "Saints" all around the stadium; they'll have tables with scientific literature about molecular structure and evolution; and after the game they'll enjoy some good old-fashioned engineering of gunpowder--fireworks.
Nobody's quite sure how the reaction will be. I'd rock a "Mr. Paul 'Aints" shirt.
There was about a decade where the Twins didn't wear that interlocking "TC" cap, but instead wore an "M" for "Minnesota". This, once you know some of the region's history, angered the people in St. Paul.
Minneapolis and St. Paul had been a hotbed for minor league baseball for years, like many cities around this country. Minneapolis had the Millers and St. Paul had the Saints, and they were fiercely independent and had a rowdy rivalry. When the major league team adopted the "M" caps, the folks in St. Paul were upset, claiming it was another example of Minneapolis trying to exert their dominance over St. Paul.
Eventually they switched back to the "TC", and people don't really care so much, maybe. But, there is a minor league team playing in St. Paul, calling themselves the Saints, but they play in the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball, a minor league in the old-fashioned sense, in that they're not slaves of the major leagues--they have no connection to big-league teams. They also have mascots like the T-Bones, Lemurs, and Air Hogs.
In any case, on August 10th of this year, by way of a joint sponsorship from the Minnesota Atheists and the American Atheists, a promotion will be turning the "St. Paul Saints" into the "Mr. Paul 'Aints". Seriously.
At the stadium they're planning on covering the "S" in all instances of the name "Saints" all around the stadium; they'll have tables with scientific literature about molecular structure and evolution; and after the game they'll enjoy some good old-fashioned engineering of gunpowder--fireworks.
Nobody's quite sure how the reaction will be. I'd rock a "Mr. Paul 'Aints" shirt.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Past Catches Up with Lance
For while now it's been one of the highest forms of American-secular blasphemy to disparage our very own cancer surviving, Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong. Seven consecutive wins! Against the most doped field of athletes ever! How amazing!
Throughout the years I've been reading bits and pieces about professional cycling. One of the earliest things I remember was about how other cyclists disliked Lance Armstrong. In pro cycling, a sport that doesn't really move the meter in States, until the Tour de France (and maybe a little bit out here with the Tour of California), there are many races during the season. There are races in Switzerland, in Denmark, in Italy, in Germany, Spain, and even here, Stateside. The crown jewel is the Tour de France.
The article stated that many riders resented Lance because he never bothered with any other race. They bitched that if you focused and trained for just a single race every year, that you should be winning it, and his victories were proof of their conjecture.
Of course that was before it came out that pro cycling was one of the most completely dope-fueled sports in the history of competitive athletic ventures, with a likely higher percentage of users than even baseball in the late '90s. Seriously, it threatened the very fabric of the sport. That's pretty well documented.
Years later I was reading an article about designer steroids and how they were never detected early on, but later, after testing got better, it would be possible to detect the new steroids in urine samples. Whenever they got new tests, they would go into their vault, as it were, and test some of the old urine samples, just to calibrate the test. Occasionally when athletes would supply a urine sample that tested clean, it would get kept to be used as a control for future test calibrations.
Only a few times trying to calibrate the new steroid test for EPO, one of BALCO's finest designer steroids, the testing agency started to come up with dirty urine. Some of these "clean" samples weren't clean at all. Well, shit. Of course there're no names on the samples, only numbers, and, it turns out, some of the numbers corresponded to Lance Armstrong.
Uh-oh.
Things start to make sense while other things start to sound incredulous. I'm fairly skeptical...and let me say this out loud just so we both know what your're asking of me (us): You're asking me to believe that one cyclist could so handily dominate a sport that has been shown to be absolutely rife with steroid use and doping, but did it clean?
How do you explain the failed test?
Now, this is one of the things Armstrong is suing the USADA (US Anti-Doping Association), that his rights were violated when they tested his old "clean" samples. I'd be pissed too if I'd come up clean, only to have it retested years later with a new test showing off which designer steroid I took.
They were not out to get Lance Armstrong. The guy was a fucking national hero, and in Texas he's an institution, especially when Bush was in office and the winner of the Tour de France get's their country's flag to fly from the major scene of the final festivities, and lance would always have them fly the Texan flag.
They were checking a new test with some old samples for calibration purposes.
I haven't been following so closely lately, and I'm not very sure how much evidence the USADA has amounted in their case to ban Lance for life, and strip his seven Tour de France titles. Does that sound like they're just messing around with hearsay?
The other day a judge threw his first complaint against the USADA out, telling him to stop grandstanding and be clear about what the complaint and lawsuit is about. He resubmitted the next day, and we see his talk about his violated rights.
Three men who were close to the US Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams Lance raced with over the years have all been banned for life. That was the outcome for a trainer and two doctors that made sense from the evidence the USADA had. That doesn't sound good for Lance.
One of the doctors, an Italian named Ferrari, had been banned for life in his native Italy in 2002, right during his tenure with Lance. How come we never heard about that, eh?
Well, then we get to this strange conclusion: If everyone is on steroids, then isn't it a level playing field? Shouldn't we still revere Lance Armstrong as being the doped up top-banana in the world of doped up two-wheelers?
Throughout the years I've been reading bits and pieces about professional cycling. One of the earliest things I remember was about how other cyclists disliked Lance Armstrong. In pro cycling, a sport that doesn't really move the meter in States, until the Tour de France (and maybe a little bit out here with the Tour of California), there are many races during the season. There are races in Switzerland, in Denmark, in Italy, in Germany, Spain, and even here, Stateside. The crown jewel is the Tour de France.
The article stated that many riders resented Lance because he never bothered with any other race. They bitched that if you focused and trained for just a single race every year, that you should be winning it, and his victories were proof of their conjecture.
Of course that was before it came out that pro cycling was one of the most completely dope-fueled sports in the history of competitive athletic ventures, with a likely higher percentage of users than even baseball in the late '90s. Seriously, it threatened the very fabric of the sport. That's pretty well documented.
Years later I was reading an article about designer steroids and how they were never detected early on, but later, after testing got better, it would be possible to detect the new steroids in urine samples. Whenever they got new tests, they would go into their vault, as it were, and test some of the old urine samples, just to calibrate the test. Occasionally when athletes would supply a urine sample that tested clean, it would get kept to be used as a control for future test calibrations.
Only a few times trying to calibrate the new steroid test for EPO, one of BALCO's finest designer steroids, the testing agency started to come up with dirty urine. Some of these "clean" samples weren't clean at all. Well, shit. Of course there're no names on the samples, only numbers, and, it turns out, some of the numbers corresponded to Lance Armstrong.
Uh-oh.
Things start to make sense while other things start to sound incredulous. I'm fairly skeptical...and let me say this out loud just so we both know what your're asking of me (us): You're asking me to believe that one cyclist could so handily dominate a sport that has been shown to be absolutely rife with steroid use and doping, but did it clean?
How do you explain the failed test?
Now, this is one of the things Armstrong is suing the USADA (US Anti-Doping Association), that his rights were violated when they tested his old "clean" samples. I'd be pissed too if I'd come up clean, only to have it retested years later with a new test showing off which designer steroid I took.
They were not out to get Lance Armstrong. The guy was a fucking national hero, and in Texas he's an institution, especially when Bush was in office and the winner of the Tour de France get's their country's flag to fly from the major scene of the final festivities, and lance would always have them fly the Texan flag.
They were checking a new test with some old samples for calibration purposes.
I haven't been following so closely lately, and I'm not very sure how much evidence the USADA has amounted in their case to ban Lance for life, and strip his seven Tour de France titles. Does that sound like they're just messing around with hearsay?
The other day a judge threw his first complaint against the USADA out, telling him to stop grandstanding and be clear about what the complaint and lawsuit is about. He resubmitted the next day, and we see his talk about his violated rights.
Three men who were close to the US Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams Lance raced with over the years have all been banned for life. That was the outcome for a trainer and two doctors that made sense from the evidence the USADA had. That doesn't sound good for Lance.
One of the doctors, an Italian named Ferrari, had been banned for life in his native Italy in 2002, right during his tenure with Lance. How come we never heard about that, eh?
Well, then we get to this strange conclusion: If everyone is on steroids, then isn't it a level playing field? Shouldn't we still revere Lance Armstrong as being the doped up top-banana in the world of doped up two-wheelers?
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