Twitter Gone Wrong

For the second time this week, two celebrities whom I follow on Twitter have used the forum to engage in personal battles. Keith Olbermann was one, Patton Oswalt the other. Once upon a time I enjoyed Olbermann’s MSNBC Countdown but he’d long grown insufferable and it’s been years since I have watched the show (now on another network). Until last week his content was mostly about baseball and largely forgettable and I’d only continued to follow him because, frankly, I’d forgotten I was. Suddenly he was involved in a flame war with some guy over who-knows-what, and with the click of a mouse, Olbermann was deleted from my feed.

The Oswalt situation was similar and different. One is that Oswalt is an entertaining tweeter. Two was the very nature of the debate. In the Olbermann argument he was angry about something a reporter was writing about him. In the second case, a comedienne in Los Angeles by the name of Barbara Gray was a witness to Oswalt’s onstage behavior and was sufficiently perturbed to blog about it. Apparently Oswalt had dropped in to do a set in the upstairs area of a Chinese restaurant where he could work on some new material in front of a presumably tiny audience. A woman attending the show with a couple of friends took it upon herself to take some video of the performance. There is no dispute that Oswalt was bothered and that he asked her to stop shooting. There is also no dispute that as she was leaving and after she left he made disparaging remarks about her.

I follow enough comedy to know that Gray is little-known while Oswalt is a star on his way to becoming a superstar. I have little doubt Ms. Gray’s blog post was made to draw attention to herself. It probably wouldn’t have worked. She’s got shy of 2,500 followers on Twitter and likely only slightly more traffic on her blog than I do on mine. Except that Oswalt got wind of Gray’s post, and retweeted it to his Twitter audience of nearly 600,000 people.

Oswalt eventually took to defending himself in 560 characters or less, then today posted his own rebuttal blog entry. It’s clear why he gave Gray the attention she was craving, as he was looking for a reason to address the substantive issues presented by his run-in with the audience member such as the right not to have your intellectual property appropriated by third-parties, the importance of a comedian’s having an avenue to try out new material before it’s ready for prime-time, etc. I’m sure he was also pissed at the girl and Barbara Gray. As a layperson, it’s hard not to side with Oswalt. He’s capable of earning tens of thousands of dollars or more for a polished performance but is out there for free. There are good reasons for that, a couple of which I mentioned. Patton does a better job of explaining it in his post.

I recently bought the download of Louis C.K.’s performance in which he humorously – but seriously – asks the audience to just sit for an hour and enjoy the show, not to Tweet it or photograph or videotape it. Mostly they oblige, though of course there’s the typical idiot that shouts something about eight minutes in. C.K. quickly dispatches him. As the uninformed observer it seems that sometimes the audience feels it’s okay to inject themselves into a comedian’s performance. I remember it happening in Eddie Murphy’s 1983 standup film “Delirious”, and the only time I’ve ever seen a comedic performer in a live, intimate setting (Joe Rogan at The Comedy Store in early 2004) a couple of drunken girls got loud and out of line. Rogan destroyed them verbally, so efficiently and humorously that I would have thought the whole thing staged if I didn’t know better. I wasn’t at the Palace last week, so I can only draw conclusions based on what I have read – more specifically the parts I read on which Gray and Oswalt are in agreement. Camera video wasn’t as ubiquitous in 2004 as it is now, but to me it seems that shooting video – then having the temerity to tell the artist that he will want to see it – is just a techy way for the observer to try and make him or herself part of the show. Since they are decidedly NOT the show, I have little concern for the way in which the person who IS the show chooses to react. You started up with a professional comic: What did you think was going to happen? On the other hand, it’s hard not to see Patton as a bit of a bully, not towards the girl with the cameraphone so much as Barbara Gray. He’s a major star and she isn’t. Yes her post was very critical of him, but that goes with the territory when you’re a celebrity. People are going to take shots, even when it’s done passive-aggressively under the “I think he’s the best” guise. I certainly won’t stop listening to or watching him as even if everything Ms. Gray wrote is taken as fact, it doesn’t add up to a whole lot. Still, I believe there are good uses for Twitter and bad ones, and I think Oswalt could have made all of his points just as effectively with a blog post, or a sidenote to the audience before starting his “practice” acts. 140-character flame wars just aren’t very interesting, even if you’re as funny and talented as Patton Oswalt.

Choking And The Boston Red Sox

Choke is a term thrown around so casually in sports that the term has lost a great deal of its significance. Greg Norman pretty visibly choked in the final round of the 1996 Masters, as he hit a series of shots that were unbefitting one of the very best golfers in the world. Nick Anderson short-arming four free throws in the 1995 finals is another good example.

The Red Sox are not choking. They're running out a starting rotation befitting of a 100-loss team. Daiksuke Matsuzaka has been a bust, but save for his torn ulnar collteral ligament, would be a better choice than Kyle Weiland. Clay Buchholz, a very good starter, has been gone for a couple of months with a back ailment, forcing 45 year-old Tim Wakefield into the role of everyday starter when he has not pitched at a major-league level since 2009. John Lackey had a brutal year both personally and professionally and was busy posting a 6.40 ERA even when the Sox ran off 70 of 103 games in midseason. Kevin Youkilis has been injured and Jed Lowrie forced to take his place at third base; that's a pretty substantial dropoff. Jon Lester is pitching with an ailment the team refuses to disclose. In other words, the team that the Red Sox are running out this September is almost a totally different team than they had in June. If THIS iteration of the Sox played a 162 game schedule they'd do well to finish .500. While there may be some psychological component at work, isn't the more obvious explanation that on September 27th, 2011 the Red Sox are simply not very good?

Do Kid Gloves Work?

About a month ago I wrote an article on Stephen Strasburg. At the time he'd been placed on the disabled list because of a sore shoulder, and while the Nats tap-danced and said it was purely a precautionary measure, one couldn't help but wonder if Strasburg, like so many great pitching talents before him, was going to be derailed before he could even get started.

Earlier this week, Strasburg threw a pitch in a game after which he winced and instinctively grabbed his forearm. It did not look good, and as it turns out it was as bad as it looked. He is expected to have Tommy John surgery and will miss most or all of the 2011 season. Joe Posnanski wrote a post on his blog earlier this week covering a lot of ground I did in last month's post, making the point that healthy baseball pitchers are the exception and not the rule. Most great talents, Joe wrote, never even make it to the major leagues. Of those that do, most find their way to career-ending injuries before too long. Some - like Bret Saberhagen - do a little of both. Then there are the very few, the freaks of nature within the freaks-of-nature subset that comprises ALL major leaguers who pitch 15 or 20 years and stay healthy. Naturally these are the ones we all remember - the Ryans and Clemenses - because they aren't gone for us to forget, but the fact is as it it was 80 years ago: Pitching is dangerous business.

That notion has caused me to rethink my position on what teams ought to do with their talented young (or old) arms. Stephen Strasburg was handled as carefully as an athlete can be handled, every professional pitch being monitored (though it seems he was ridden rather hard at San Diego State) and a plan devised to protect his pitching health. It did not work. All of the methods teams have employed for about the last 25 years to preserve pitching arms - pitch counts, more days' rest, less innings per start - seem to have failed, and not just with Strasburg. Guys get hurt, seemingly as often as ever. If that's the case, and it seems it is, then why bother? Under the current collective bargaining agreement the Nats are only going to have Strasburg under cost control for six years, after which he'll become a free agent and sell himself to the highest bidder. At least one full year of that time is now going to be spent while he recovers from surgery. Instead of taking extra care, then, why not take LESS? Pitch your guys every 5th day (or fourth). Pitch them as often and long as they're effective. Chances are they're going to get hurt no matter what, so why not just wring them out like a wet sponge? A few will stay healthy. Some will re-sign as free agents. In the meantime, a team can maximize its return and maybe get 1500 good innings while the getting is good. It seems to me too often teams are trying to save these guys for tomorrow but tomorrow never comes.

The One Where The Pistons Hit Rock Bottom

Joe Dumars has become something of a whipping boy in Detroit, and I'm not sure that's fair. He took over a moribund franchise, won an NBA title in 2004, and got to game 7 of the finals the year after. They made it to the conference finals six straight season from 2003-2008. That's an awfully good run of success; about as good as one can reasonably hope for. I believe most of the criticism dates back to the 2003 draft when Dumars selected Darko Milicic with the second pick, passing on Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, and Dwayne Wade. Darko has been one of the great busts in NBA history, but if you actually followed the game seven years ago, you'd know that Milicic was pretty close to the consensus number two pick. The reports out of Europe were that he was a spectacular player, a rare breed of size and skill, that he was NBA-ready, and that he was just 18 years old and stood to get even better. There *were* a couple of teams that suggested they'd have taken Anthony if they had the Pistons' picks, but nobody - and I mean NOBODY had Bosh or Wade going anywhere other than where they did. Had Dumars taken one of them and let Darko slip by, he'd have been ridiculed by fans and opposing GMs alike.

Well, none of that worked out. Milicic just wasn't as good as advertised. First it was supposedly Larry Brown's reluctance to play rookies, then some other reason why he wasn't developing, and finally in his third season in Detroit nobody, including the Pistons's brass wanted to look at him anymore and he was shipped off to Orlando for Kelvin Cato and a draft pick. After making noise about wanting to return to Europe, the Minnesota Timberwolves this summer offered him $20 million over four years and he decided that America wasn't so bad after all. Milicic is still only 25 and does some things well - by NBA standards his contract amounts to a rounding error and I expect him to be a better player in the coming couple of seasons than Shaquille O'Neal, though that isn't saying much. Adding insult to injury, Carmelo Anthony turned out to be a star, Wade turned out to be the third best player in the game, and Bosh has been a perennial all-star. As my old friend Boomer Scott used to say, hindsight is 50-50.

It's hard to stay competitive year after year in the NBA, where the cap and draft work in the service of parity, and the Pistons have fallen on hard times the last two years. In 2010 they finished 27-55, and a quick perusal of the roster doesn't reveal an awful lot of talent. It appears as though it'll be a while before they're back in the Eastern Confrerence Finals. Which is why I shook my head tonight when I saw that the Pistons are close to signing Tracy McGrady. Once upon a time McGrady was one of the game's best and most complete players, leading the league in scoring in consecutive years while putting up outstanding rebounding and passing totals as well. Never the most durable of players, he began to break down physically around 2005 and has never been the same since. In 2009 he had microfracture surgery on his knee. The list of players who have had that surgery and come back close to 100 percent is one player long - Amare Stoudamire. Tracy McGrady is now 31 years old and his games played over the last four seasons are 71, 62, 35 and 24. He has not shot 40 percent from the field since the 2006-2007 season. In short, he is a washed-up basketball player. Perhaps on a contending team if McGrady were willing to play 15 or 20 minutes a game he might be able to help. The Pistons in 2010-2011 are not going to be that team. I understand a basketball team needs 12 men on the roster and that McGrady might come cheap, but it seems to me the job of a general manager is to construct a roster of players with a purpose - a long-term plan. The Pistons are a bad basketball team. Tracy McGrady isn't going to make them much better, certainly not good enough to qualify for the playoffs. By the time Detroit is a good team again, Tracy McGrady will be in a suit doing color commentary somewhere. His signing is proof that the Pistons are adrift - a rudderless ship. That, more than the Darko draft, is the most stinging criticism one can level at Joe Dumars.

On Delicate Machinery

Their reputation is better now, but growing up in the 70s the Jaguar was known for being a beautiful, if temperamental automobile. Very few people bought them because the word was it'd spend half the time in the repair shop. Jags are fairly reliable now, according to JD Power & Associates.

There are but a handful of men on the planet who can generate the force and arm speed necessary to propel a baseball with the speed, accuracy and movement necessary to induce the world's best hitters to make outs. Unfortunately, major league pitchers are a lot like old Jaguars; they're rare and exotic and spend most of their time out of service. Up until about 30 years ago pitching injuries were looked upon as a necessary cost of doing business - something beyond a team's control that just "happened". Around then, most teams began using five starting pitchers instead of four, and actually tracking and limiting the number of pitches thrown each start. The thinking, obviously, was that these precautions would reduce strain on the elbow and shoulder and correspondingly, injuries. The jury is still out, but the evidence that exists suggests that pitchers are any no less likely to get hurt than they were in 1980.

Stephen Strasburg is probably the biggest and best pitching prospect in baseball history. He throws near one hundred miles-per-hour with movement and command. His curveball is genuinely knee-buckling. His change-up is thrown with near-perfect deception and tails sharply down and away from left handed batters. In a way it's not fair to even categorize Strasburg as a prospect any longer. On June 8 he made his major league debut and only struck out 14 in seven innings - including the last seven he faced. Ten days later he was only slightly less overpowering, whiffing 10 in seven innings. As of Tuesday he'd made nine starts and not come close to being roughed up in any of them. He has pitched 54 innings this season and struck out 75 men. His ERA is 2.32. These numbers are fairly staggering. The hype that surrounded Strasburg was unlike anything I'd ever seen in baseball - a game where busts are routine - and yet he managed to do something I'd have thought impossible. His performance did not justify the hype - they exceeded it.

Tuesday, Strasburg was scheduled to pitch. Apparently, he felt stiffness and discomfort in his shoulder while warming up in the bullpen, and the team wisely scratched him. An MRI revealed no structural damage. Naturally, the Nationals are playing it pretty close to the vest. General manger Mike Rizzo said Strasburg should be fine with a few days' rest and anti-inflammatories. And maybe he will. Maybe Strasburg will go on to pitch 5000 major league innings, retire at 45, and be inducted into Cooperstown at 50. Still, you have to wonder. The stiffness and discomfort in Strasburg's shoulder came from *somewhere*, and it seems a reasonable guess it came from throwing baseballs. It also stands to reason that throwing more baseballs will cause more stiffness and discomfort - or worse. The Nationals have done everything they could to protect Stephen Strasburg, carefully monitoring his usage patterns, pitches thrown, days of rest, and total innings. What they could not, and cannot protect their prized pitcher from, is the vagaries of the human body. Every generation a handful of pitchers come along who defy the odds and avoid arm issues for their entire careers. Greg Maddux did it. Roger Clemens did too. Before them Nolan Ryan's elbow gave out only after 7 no-hitters, 5400 innings, and 27 major league-seasons. Roy Halladay has never had an serious arm problem. But, the overwhelming percentage of pitchers simply aren't constructed this way. Many of them suffer career-ending injuries in the minors before we've even heard of them. Of the ones that make it to the show, most of them find their way to the disabled list, then the operating table, then to oblivion. Mark Mulder did it. Mark Prior did it. The list is endless - literally endless. The fact is that Stephen Straburg is a physical marvel. The fact is also that he's barely fifty innings into his major league career and has had to be shut down with "shoulder stiffness", which is MLB-speak for "there's something wrong with this shoulder and we either don't know what it is or don't want to tell you." When Jaguar made cars that suffered from design and manufacturing defects, they made changes and improved the product. You can't do much with the human body; you've got what you've got. Hopefully Strasburg will get back out there; it's really something to watch him pitch. Still, there's no way to escape the feeling that like so many pitchers before him, he's going to be spending a lot of time in the shop.

End Of The Road

The Lance Armstrong story is, on one level an amazing one. An average tour rider through his early 20s, in 1996 Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer which had metastasized to his lungs, abdomen, and brain. Given only a 40 percent chance of survival, he underwent an aggressive and unusual form of treatment and by 1998 the cancer was in complete remission. Upon his return, Armstrong was a different rider; more powerful and with greater endurance that he had possessed before his illness. He won the Tour De France every year from 1999-2005. The story has served as the inspiration for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, whose most well-known element, Livestrong, has worked to empower and inspire cancer sufferers and their families as well as provide practical tools and information for those dealing with cancer. It seems the foundation has done some very good work, so let's try and keep the message separate from the messenger.

On another level, his story is incredible - not in the sense of amazing but in the sense of "not credible". Lance Armstrong won his titles in an unprecedented era of doping. He has adamantly denied ever having taken a performance enhancing substance. Nor has he tested positive. Yet, every single other top rider of his era has either admitted to or been found guilty of using everything from EPO - a chemical that helps reoxygenate the blood - to anabolic steroids. Accusations have been made against Armstrong from various sources, some less credible and some with no credibility at all, and nothing has stuck. You see, the entire sport of cycling has been so dirty for so long that there are no honest agents left. Lance Armstrong would have you believe that he was so much better than the rest of the field that he could play it straight and beat the cheats. I suppose that's possible. I suppose Barry Bonds was so much better than any other hitter who played the game of baseball that he didn't need to cheat either. Like Armstrong, accusations flew against Bonds for years. Like Bonds, the feds have chosen to get involved in investigating Armstrong. Whatever your opinion is of the feds, they are not ones to waste their time with meritless matters. They move slowly but with purpose. It will be interesting to see what they do over the coming months in this case.

I don't follow racing closely, but one can't help but know about Lance Armstrong. He is a celebrity as much as an athlete - more now that his career as a cyclist is drawing to a close. He dates A-list singers and actresses. He makes a personal fortune. Armstrong also comes off as smug and arrogant, and frankly someone I find hard to like or root for. Because he was stricken with a terrible disease over a decade ago it causes an uncomfortable feeling to be so harsh on him. Once you're past that, though, his story doesn't hold a thimbleful of water. I suspect Lance Armstrong has hustled the world into believing a lie. I suspect he is a very hard and tough man who would go a lot longer towards protecting his "reputation" than the average person. I also suspect that the feds have him dead-to-rights, and that he is heading down the road traveled by a whole lot of other sports "heroes" over the past decade. I'd say that I'd hate to see this happen to him, but that'd be a lie. I don't believe him, and I'm tired of having him shoved down my throat as the paragon of integrity. He bombed out of the Tour De France this year, finally succumbing to age in a sport not meant to be contested by 39 year-olds. Armstrong said he was riding in this year's event to raise awareness for his foundation. I don't believe that either; I think he was riding because he has a gigantic ego and an insatiable appetite for attention. In not too long, I suspect that his poor showing in France will be the least of his troubles.

Judgment

Michael Vick, like most players in the NFL, has a very uncertain future. He is thirty years old - not at all young for a professional football player. His skills have visibly eroded. By any measure, his career has been a disappointment; as a pro he was never able to meet the lofty expectations that had been projected for him. In all of these ways, Vick is completely unremarkable.

Of course, there's more to the story than that. Though Vick was expected to redefine the quarterback position in the NFL, that position seems recalcitrant towards redefinition. However athletic the game becomes, quarterbacks are still depended upon to make quick reads, throw the ball accurately through tiny gaps 100 or 120 feet downfield, and keep their head when all about them are losing theirs. Athleticism helps, to be sure, and once upon a time Vick had more of that than any athlete we'd ever seen in an NFL uniform. The potential seemed endless; in just his second season he took his Falcons team into Lambeau in January and dismantled the Packers. From there, though, his career went in fits and starts. He ran the ball more often and more effectively than any quaterback in the game's history, but completed only about 55 percent of his passes. He didn't throw for many touchdowns, and he was intercepted nearly as often. By 2006 it was clear he wasn't developing the way a lot of experts had projected, though he was still earning a fortune through his various endorsement deals.

Vick's world was torn asunder in the spring of 2007 by allegations that he'd bankrolled a dogfighting operation. By the end of the year he'd received a 23 month prison sentence, of which he served 21. He was dropped by every single one of his sponsors, as well as his employer. Upon his release a contrite Vick said all of the right things. Jeffrey Lurie and the Eagles took a chance in 2009 and were rewarded with 13 pass attempts, 6 completions, and a few rushing yards. While I'm no expert, he looked to me like he'd lost a step in his time away from the game, something he could ill afford to do. It reminded me a lot of Mike Tyson a little; except that it took me seven or eight years to accept that the menacing heavyweight of the 80s was gone forever - with Vick it only took half a season.

In late May, there was a birthday party for Vick at a Virginia nightclub. The details are unclear, but Quanis Phillips - one of Vick's friends and co-defendants in the dogfighting case - was shot. Depending on the news story you read, Vick was involved in an altercation prior to the shooting or he was not. In any case, the party was for Vick, and at some point he was in attendance. He is, at the very least, guilty of very poor judgment; even being in the same place as Phillips constitues a violation of his terms of probation. With the World Cup, LeBronGate, and the fact that Vick no longer has the star power to keep a story alive for very long, Vick has sort of been back page news.

I really felt that Vick had gotten his act turned around. He'd been doing a lot of charity work and there seemed a genuineness in his eyes. He appeared a man who had done wrong and learned from it, and that may even be the case, but when you're on probation after having served time for felonies, there isn't any room for missteps. The Eagles have denied it, but in not too long they'll release Vick. They'll let him go because he's found trouble again. They'll let him go because he's failed public relations risk. Mostly, though, they'll let him go because he's just not a very good football player. He is not likely ever to play in the NFL again. He's blown through his fortune on bad investments and legal fees. The guy had everything; it's tough to be sympathetic. And I'm not.