The Most Pointless Post in HoGstory Grows Wheels, Becomes a Story, Except for Not Really

On Tuesday, I had this bug, an itch to write a post about Kansas City Royals shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt, and how meaningless his home runs in 2010 have been. So I did. When I started looking into the thing, I expected to see losses in most, if not all, of the 10 games this season in which Betancourt had homered. In the end, I was a little surprised that Kansas City has actually won four of the contests in which he'd gone yard. But, it didn't bother me. And I kind of forgot about the thing for a minute.

And then, in the fifth inning of that evening's contest, Betancourt came up to the plate against Cleveland's Jeanmar Gomez, who, at the time, was 2-0 in his career. And I'll be damned if he didn't hit a solo shot out of the park to tie the game at one.

I thought two things: 1) A 1-1 game. Anything can happen. Naturally I want the Royals to win, but it would be a little ironic if Betancourt homered in this game and then the Royals won. Not a lot ironic. Just a little. And then, two innings later, noted terrible baseball player Wilson Betemit came up to the plate and put a solo shot over the fence as well, giving the Royals the one-run edge that they'd hold onto for the win. I tweeted about it, decided I'd take interest in his at-bats the next evening, and went to bed.

So Wednesday rolled around, and it's game two of three against the Tribe. By the time I tuned in, I'd kind of forgotten about the previous day's small slice of irony. And then the sixth inning came around, Yuni came up to the plate, and cracked another solo homer. And this got my eye, especially considering that the Royals went on to win 9-7. Betancourt, by the way, went 2-4 with three RsBI in the contest, pulling the Royals to an even 6-6 in games in which he hits a jack. This also put him into the team lead for round-trippers on the season, at least for guys still on the roster. (Editor's Note: Jose Guillen left town with 16 under his belt.)

For the final game of the series against the Indians on Thursday, the Royals took a 3-0 lead, then squandered everything under the sun, losing 7-3, and Betancourt went 0-4, so, ha-ha. That was fun while it lasted.

Friday night, the White Sox were in town, and the game got postponed due to some serious rain, and some wicked-crazy lightning, which meant a double-header for Saturday. In some kind of FOXSports broadcasting conundrum, the first contest was a 6:10 Central pitch, and the Royals found themselves down 5-1 in the seventh. Guess who comes to plate with every bag occupied? Yup. The Kansas City Royals shortstop, who, I think, surprised everyone by clubbing a grand slam, his third of the year, no less. And if that wasn't enough, he hit a walk-off single in the 11th for the game-winning RBI.

My interest was again piqued. Betancourt had gone 3-5 with 5 RsBI. The second contest got underway a few minutes after 10:00 p.m., and it too went into extra innings. In this tilt, our hero of the week went a mere 1-4, but he did have an RBI, and it just so happened to be a game-tier in the bottom of the ninth. Alas, Chicago went on to win by a run in the 10th, but Yuniesky Betancourt had the Twittersphere buzzing.

And in the finale of this series, today, Betancourt was again held hitless, but it should be noted that, Betemit, in his continuing fit of terribleness, homered again today, as well as in the first of the two contests yesterday. And, strangely, this game also went to extra innings.

I suspect that Yuni will revert to sub-mediocrity in the week ahead as the Royals will face Detroit and Cleveland again, both series on the road. The coincidence of examining Betancourt blasts in comparison with Royals wins, proved to be a fascinating exercise, and Kansas City is now a cool 7-6 in games in which there's a Yunibomb sighting. And no, silly, I don't mean Ted Kaczynski. But like I said, folks were a-buzzin' about this overpaid shortstop Dayton Moore acquired from Seattle last season, if only for a few days. Hey, even the big guns had stuff to say today.

(photo courtesy of John Sleezer of The Kansas City Star)
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A Saturday Studmuffins/Fatlock Follies Sandwich; or A Token Response to "The Explanation"

Conflicted is the word to start this post. Conflicted is how I feel regarding Jason Whitlock leaving The Kansas City Star after some 16 years of sports-column contributions. Conflicted is how I feel about the upcoming Kansas City Chiefs football season that will, for the first time in my adult life, lack a Monday morning Whitlock take on Sunday's Chiefs performance. Conflict has been a notion that, in some form or another, has shadowed Whitlock's places of employment since the sporting world, and its publications, took note of who this writer is and how he carries himself. And his Star denouement has been ensconced by -- you guessed it -- conflict.

Whitlock's last column to appear in the Star was published almost three months ago. Four days ago, the Star ran this bit saying the newspaper and the columnist was "leaving the paper to pursue other interests." Earlier in the week, Whitlock, via his Twitter page, announced to the world that he would be appearing on KCSP 610 AM yesterday to proffer what he dubbed The Explanation.

If you're not interested in listening to the podcast (Editor's Note: One friend called it "radio gold" and mentioned that the interview was temporarily cut off "after he said (the) Star editor got drunk in River Market and was kissing on another male employee's neck in front of staff." Naturally, these portions are not in the podcast), hosted by What's Wrong with Ding Dong, Kansas City SB Nation put together a handy summary of the broadcast, and before we go any further, it's worth noting that Whitlock has been given a healthy raise as a FOXSports columnist.

But back to this notion of conflict. Big Matt from Arrowhead Addict touches on a small segment of what I'm saying regarding the columnist/persona paradox that is Jason Whitlock. And I say paradox because Whitlock's role in the sports world has never, in my observations, been single-fold. What I mean by that is this: If you're a columnist, being paid for your printed words and opinions of the sports world, then those words should do your talking for you. When you become a persona, be it attached or removed from your paid-for services, you begin, in varying degrees to dilute the product of your craft. That is, when you, as an artist, forge a relationship with your audience, you are, in my estimation, permanently challenged to uphold a multitude of expectations.

Your fans want the product delivered with consistency and greatness, and to quote the old Speed Stick commercials, "anything less would be uncivilized." With zero interest in bashing -- in at least this very moment -- either Whitlock the journalist or Whitlock the person, I'll go out on a limb and say that, often, he fell short in both criteria. Now, before you send smoke signals out to the lynch mob, understand that I, on many, many occasions, have had tremendous respect and admiration for the work that Whitlock has done and the message(s) he has attempted to convey.

My family has subsribed to the Star for as long as I can remember, and I have had my own subscription since the week I moved back to town 10 years ago. I have, on exactly zero occasions, looked forward to a piece of the paper with more fervor than Whitlock's Monday morning Chiefs column. This, of course, has come with heavy doses of conflict for me the subscriber, reader, and admirer of great writing. I make no secrets of my admiration for former Star sports columnist Joe Posnanski. For the duration in which Pos' and Whit' both penned sports for the Star, the former was always my favorite. He finds the hook in a story and threads it effortlessly into the gills of the reader, and for that, he will always be one of my literary heroes. He also, were it by design or not, assumed the role of the good guy in the Posnanski/Whitlock good guy/bad guy dichotomy. In movies, stories, and even on the TVs, I always root for the good guy. It's just how I'm wired.

My issue with Posnanski, though, was that he seldom covered the Chiefs. That was Whitlock's bag, and that's what I wanted in my paper. So I read him.

As a sports fan, and more specifically, a sports fan in a town where the professional baseball and football teams appear, over periods of time, destined to achieve new and inventive plateaus of terrible, a fan such as myself does not, for the most part, take well to criticisms of the organizations. At least I didn't used to. More plainly, the feeling was always a mix of "It's easy to be an armchair GM/You're not playing/Give them a break -- They're trying/Quit being Mr. Negative." So my appreciation for Whitlock's angles, for some time, was under-developed to say the least.

As his interesting relationship with former Chiefs GM Carl Peterson became something of a soap-opera affair, I began to appreciate it more, and when Peterson hired Herman Edwards, I began to grasp the reality that embodied the idea of the game having passed by Carl Peterson. With nary a slice of ironicality, I began to understand and appreciate the watchdog type of job that Whitlock does, and had been doing all along.

Perhaps at the height of my recognition for his work covering my favorite football club, Mr. Whitlock branched out from the Star and was hired for other endeavors. Having already tried the SportsTalkRadios (fail), he took a post as a Page 2 columnist for ESPN.com (fired), which may or may not have been handcuffed to his, for lack of a better word, removal from ESPN's "The Sports Reporter," and then he signed on with FOXSports. I don't include those parentheticals because I want to highlight shortcomings, but it's important to note that, from an outsider's perspective, beefs appeared to have been brewing in each of those sports kitchens. It's also important to identify that some of these beefs appear to have been for good reason, be they motivated by self-interest, a national sense of civic duty, or a combination of the two.

I commend him for, regardless of intention, marketing himself well enough to have the multiple outlets and to of course, get paid. This era of outsourcing and raises, however, seems to have gone hand in hand with ego inflation and the spawning of this persona that I mentioned.

Which brings us back to conflict. Jason Whitlock used to irritate the hell out of me because he would, so it seemed, always play the race card. For example, he, back in the day, would say things, and I paraphrase, like: Jacksonville Jaguars Head Coach Jack Del Rio makes it a point to have African-Americans as his second- and third-string quarterbacks because it's imperative that the racist fans of Jacksonville must support Byron Leftwich. If they're not going to support him because he's black, they need to know that those that come in to replace him due to injury, will be black as well, so get used to it.

I don't know if this was true. I mean, David Garrard and Quinn Gray are black. This I know. There's a significant part of me, though, that doubts that those two guys were acquired by the franchise, perhaps even over more qualified quarterbacks, solely for support clauses for Byron Leftwich. It's also hard for me to imagine that the Jacksonville Jaguar fan base that has become a poster child for atrocious attendance, even with a white quarterback backing up a black one, can be pegged in their majority as bigot fans. I just didn't see the point in that then, or even more recently when Whitlock posited that (Note: I believe this was in a 05/01/08 FOXSports column regarding Ben Roethlisberger, but his archives don't date back far enough.) that a guy like Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger would've been crucified for the (initial) rape allegations against him were he black.

More recent still is his latest FOXSports column regarding Minnesota Vikings QB Brett Favre, wherein Whitlock dismisses the notion that Old No. 4 would be under heavier scrutiny were he African-American. Quoth Whitlock: "...the felonious charge of a racial double standard as it relates to the future Hall of Famer was unworthy of my court. I dismissed the case.

That was my mindset two years ago. Things have changed."

Here's where things get a little tricky. We expect those whom we respect to evolve, to maybe have a change of opinion over time. With Whitlock, though, it's like he's completing changing hands every three to five years. Ten years ago, black athletes, in Whitlock's book, couldn't catch a break: There were double standards everywhere. Five years ago, he was knee-deep in his anti-bojangling campaign, wherein he was calling out guys like Scoop Jackson for supporting, in some sense, that there are/were not enough positive black, male role models for the youth of today to admire. The hip-hop culture, as I'm certain he's referenced it on numerous occasions, that embodies today's youth only sees adult black males in the NBA, the NFL, and in rap-music videos.

This, I was on board with. This, I felt, wrong or right as my intuition might've been, was a platform in which he had the most potential. For a guy that reaches as wide an audience as he does, he could really pull some strings, or at least get the wheels of cognition spinning for this effort, if, and that's a big if, this was something he was passionate about. Now, today, I'm not certain what he's passionate about, and I find myself thinking with some frequency that he's not certain either. Thus the motif of conflict.

In comes the notion of ego. I used to be a leading complainer in the argument for less of Whitlock's ego in his column. The presence of it, I felt, could only be identified as wasted column-inch space. For example, he'd start off a column about a road Chiefs game by mentioning that he was seated in the press box. Or, in his column about the NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas a couple years ago -- the one in which the infamous Adam Jones make-it-rain weekend happened -- he started off the column, I think, saying something to the effect of his courtside presence. Or more generally speaking, the many KC Star columns over the years in which he simply wrote about himself using an obviously phony visit to he shrink as the vehicle that drives the column, stopping by several sports-story-idea rest stops along the way.

The former situations were insults to the readers' intelligence in that he's stating the already-known, or to paint it in a less-attractive light, pimping himself. The latter always said two things to me: 1) I have only a smattering of ideas for a column today, so this is what you get, and 2) frankly, I like writing about myself.

So, conflict. Who is Jason Whitlock, I find myself asking after all these years. In the excerpts made available in that podcast, he frequently references "those that know me" as the ones certified to stake a claim against his body of work, or pass judgment on whether or not what he's doing has merit, value, and substance. My guess -- and I of course could be way, way off -- is that not that many people do actually know him. And this is why I think it's tricky, in a role like his, to develop, and even push, a persona because it's going to, whether you like it or not, clash with the product that has gotten you credit, respect, and notoriety since entering the world of sports journalism.

I won't claim to know Whitlock. I've certainly never met him, and I definitely haven't read everything the guy's ever published. I still think that the article he wrote for (or published in, however you want to say it) Playboy is the best piece of journalism he's ever produced. I very much looked forward to the issue coming out because I had a hunch it would be top notch, and hey -- free excuse to buy a copy of Playboy...jackpot! Just before it came out, however, he wrote a column in the Star about the issue coming out, and, surprise, the controversy surrounding it. I wrote about it here, and one reader even created a fake Jason Whitlock profile name so that s/he could comment. Basically, though, that column said this: I'm taking this opportunity to write my column about me writing a magazine article.

Then the issue came out, and without going back to read my actual work, I think I did a fairly decent job summarizing it. I do recall three things standing way out with that piece though: 1) It was well-approached, well-researched, crisp, lucid, and well-written; 2) The controversy associated with the headline the magazine gave the piece -- "The Black KKK" -- was largely, if not entirely diminished by the incredible content of the article itself and; 3) This should be this guy's niche. He should be doing investigative, literary journalism on a full-time basis.

I still feel that way about his abilities, talents, and potential for outreach, but that's one person's opinion, and it likely means squat to anyone that reads this. In "The Explanation," Whitlock talks about sports being the concept that brings people together, and he also talks about many of his critics wanting to be him. I won't argue with the first part of that. That's a huge portion of the beauty of sports: By its own existence, it creates a bond, even with rivals and enemies. There's also merit to the latter part, in that, sure -- professionally speaking, I would love to have or have had any of his written-word journalism positions. And of course I would happily accept the compensation package attached to them.

But to say that, outright, people want to actually be him, is another ball of wax too sticky for me to adhere. I don't want to be Jason Whitlock for the same reasons of theme I've been attempting to decode: conflict. Right now, in my adult life, I have zero audience, and zero responsibility for thought conveyance. I don't have a channel for streaming, a frequency for broadcasting, or column inches to fill. And I'm conflicted enough as it is just trying to lead my ordinary, run-of-the-mill routine. Should I skip today's workout? Did I tell the wife I love her enough times this week? Is one more beer too many?

Hell, it's a struggle day in and day out to just attempt to balance happiness, responsibility, and sanity. If I had a massive national presence added to the mix, I'm not certain that I would successfully balance my craft and keep my persona at bay. There's no way I could develop a platform loaded with observation, opinion, and criticism and, in addition, manage those two key elements of consistency and greatness. I mean, I'd certainly try, but how would I react to my critics? Would I have as many as I would fans? Would I really be that different of a personality than the one I've invented for Jason Whitlock?

Difficult to say.

What I do know is this: If there's one blessing about Kansas City, it's that its newspaper, for many years, has hired and retained some talented writers, many of whom have gone on to bigger positions with bigger publications in bigger cities, all of which I imagine are totems of success. In the sports department alone I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head: Jeff Passan, Liz Merrill, Mechelle Voepel, Jason King, Ivan Carter, Posnanski, and now Whitlock. All of their contributions to my paper have been excellent, and obviously, none have had more controversy than Mr. Whitlock's.

And that's really, to me, what "The Explanation" is about. For Whitlock it was, like it often is, about self-promotion and self-preservation. The Star, apparently unbeknownst to him, ran that Whitlock's-leaving piece without informing him, so he's entitled to address his audience of a decade and-a-half however he sees fit. FOXSports.com certainly isn't the place to do it, and for someone that calls himself Big Sexy, a couple of tweets certainly weren't going to suffice. But at the end of the day, this LeBron James-modeled bit of satirically titled seriousness wasn't about the Star's editor(s) consuming intoxicants, or kissing in public, and it really wasn't about those editors not seeing eye to eye with his vision for his role in the paper, either.

It was a sendoff. It was the epilogue in a chaptered story. It was, the final frontier of the Whitlock era in Kansas City sports writing. It was a reminder of the fact that, conflict and controversy aside, this town has been graced with some excellent sports columns in the last 16 years. It'll be interesting to see how the Star, struggling financially along with all of its industry counterparts fills this large void. Will another young Sam Mellinger step into the vacated columnist shoes? Will the Star, now free of payroll obligations to Whitlock, rest its accounting heads with more ease each night? We, the readers and subscribers will have to wait and see.

One thing's for certain: My Monday morning routine is going to need some serious adjustment. Read more

The Most Pointless Post in HoGstory

In a sense, this post is all about love. I love the fact that typing the letter 'y' into my Google search bar immediately brings up Yuniesky Betancourt's Baseball Reference page. From there, the love is like a chain letter. It simply explodes into sub-categories of love and runs like hot lava down the side of the imploding Mordor. The second recipient of this love is the simple, and widely shared, I think, love I have for Baseball Reference. I love it so much, in fact, that, were I sitting at the cafeteria table in my fourth-grade lunchroom, and a girl heard me say that, and promptly responded, "So, why don't you marry it?", I would tell her that I would if I could.

I love the fact that being a fan of a terrible baseball team will lead one down the most peculiar of paths, just as the Kansas City Royals have done to me in this very moment. I love the fact that, thanks to the Twitters, I had the opportunity to ask Joe Posnanski in person if the off-season acquisition of Jason Kendall was worse than the previous year's signing of Yuniesky Betancourt. Part of me wanted him to confirm that yes, it was, but I was pleasantly delighted that he put me back on track -- at least then -- by saying, "No. Nothing is worse than the Yuni signing."

Given Kendall's play this season, along with the play of both Miguel Olivo and John Buck, I'm again on the fence about who the worse Royal is, but we'll just say, for the sake of having a side, that it's Yuni. Now, if you throw out sides, I've closely watched the play of both this season, and their performances have been nothing shy of terrible.

In sum, Jason Kendall has not hit one home run or one triple, and his veteran leadership regarding leading the pitching staff has been about as visible as the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge. And, he has been, for most of the season, on pace to break the most-games-caught-by-starting-catchers record that dates back to the middle part of last century.

In sum, I have not seen Betancourt field one grounder to his left side all season. Last week against the Yankees, he got to one hit by Derek Jeter. The moment I saw the ball make contact with his glove, I had one of those love-to-hate moments, where I almost leaped out of my seat out of sheer confusion. It was an emotional crossroads wherein in one fleeting flash of a second I wondered if Yuni was suddenly taking a step in the direction of becoming a better fielder, which, in theory, makes my team better. The other side of that flash, however, was something along the lines of Don't start fielding better now; the season's almost over, and that puts us one step closer to the end of your tenure in Kansas City. There is, strangely, a third angle to that play and that is that it's important, for the sake of our opinions, that Betancourt's resume of miserable defensive baseball continue to give us good material or else we second-guess ourselves.

But there, right in the heart of that dilemna, the most perfect thing in the world happened: Yuniesky Betancourt booted the ball, and somebody not named Scott Podsednik had to be there to back it up. Ironically, Ryan Lefebvre noted that, had Betancourt fielded that ball, Jeter would likely have been safe anyway, thanks to his still-existing speed.

As it goes with fans' perspectives of everyday players, the love is a two-tiered platform, and my sick affinity for watching Betancourt field poorly immediately transitioned to my passion for watching his undying trend for less-than-good plate appearances. And this is where the thing gets even murkier. If there's one thing my wife -- who I love dearly -- and I have shared more than any other aspect of Royals baseball this season, it's her love-based hopes and desires to get me to stop talking trash on Yuni when he comes to the plate. She has even gone so far as to call me a hater, which, ironically, occurred when I dissed Yuni coming to bat with the bases loaded and he smacked a grand slam. Even more ironical, that shot put Betancourt just past Jeter for career grand slams, which was also a fact shared by Lefebvre.

I love the fact that I was wrong in that situation because, hey -- grand slams are an awesome rarity, and that one put the Royals ahead. I do not, however, love the fact that the jaded side of me, immediately after my elation dissipated, thought that, because it was a Betancourt bomb, the Royals would likely lose the game. Which they did.

So that got me to thinking: Have all of Betancourt's 2010 homers come in losing efforts? Surely, they have, I thought. And this is why I'm writing this today, and I love to admit, at least in this instance, that I was wrong. Why do I love to admit that? Simple: a) It gave me something to look up, and something to write about, and b) It gave me an excuse to go to Yuni's Baseball Reference page, which I've already noted that I love, but it is on that page that one of my favorite sentences ever typed exists, and that is this: "According to one scout, well respected by the sponsor of this page, Yuniesky Betancourt is a serious dark horse in the American League MVP race."

I remember when my pal Old No. 7 had the idea to sponsor former Royal Kyle Farnsworth's page, which we did. I don't recall the precise details regarding page-sponsorship options, but I know we did it for a year, and that it wasn't that expensive, and that it was, if only to us, absolutely hysterical. That year has since lapsed, and insert token line about the economy/us not renewing. As of today, the page remains unsponsored, which triggers my inner civic duty to take up sponsorship again, but as I mentioned, I do love my wife, and I also like staying out of the proverbial doghouse. Also, sadly, The Professor is no longer a Royal.

My point, though, is that I'm led, based on our own experience, to believe that the anonymous sponsor that coughed up the cash for Yuni's page, typed that quote at some point this season. Which, naturally, I love. Betancourt, because I know you're dying to know, is hitting .266/.288/.411 this year. There are two angles to this and they are these: 1) I would love to slug .411 in the Bigs, but I am not, as they say, big-league material, and as a whole, those are not good numbers, and 2) Those numbers are not representative of a career-high stat that Betancourt has achieved this season, and that is the long ball.

Among the many reasons for having the professed love for Baseball Reference are the many options available to the end user. Today's example (Editor's Note: Do not for one minute think that there will be a new example tomorrow, or...ever.) is the home run log, which I accessed, along with the game log, for the purposes of examining whether or not I was right in supposing that all of Betancourt's homers this year came in losing efforts. We'll get to those results in just a moment, but in the meantime, there are a few YuniJack facts I'd like to point out:

1) Yuniesky Betancourt has gone yard off of a few pretty good pitchers.
2) That list includes, but is not limited to: Joe Blanton, the Weaver brothers, Boof Bonser, Johan Santana, John Danks, Jon Lester, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kenny Rogers, Tim Wakefield, Doug Fister (Fister!), Francisco Liriano, and Josh Beckett.
3) Betancourt has, for three consecutive seasons now, hit a homer off of Mark Buehrle.
4) Spanning his career, Yuni has homered 41 times, in 13 different parks, and off of 35 different pitchers.
5) His 10 bombs through 108 games in 2010 are the most he's ever hit in one season.

So finally, we get to his long-ball efforts this year, and now that we know how many he has, we'll examine the final score of the games in which he's put one out of the park:

1) April 5: an 8-4 loss in which he homered off of Justin Verlander
2) April 16: a 10-3 loss in which he homered off of Scott Baker
3) May 14: a 6-1 win in which he homered off of Mark Buehrle
4) May 28: a 12-5 win in which he homered off of Tim Wakefield
5) June 11: a 6-5 win in which he homered off of Bronson Arroyo
6) July 17: a 6-2 loss in which he homered off of Jeff Marquez
7) July 17: a 5-2 win in which he homered off of Trevor Cahill
8) August 4: a 4-3 loss in which he homered off of Craig Breslow
9) August 9: a 6-4 loss in which he homered off of Ervin Santana
10) August 11: a 2-1 loss in which he homered off of Jered Weaver

Do the simple math and you'll see that the Royals are 4-6 in games in which one Yuniesky Betancourt hits a round-tripper. Now, what does it mean? Not a gosh-durned thing. I'm 100 per cent certain that you could compile very similar stats using any other Royal that's hit at least 10 homers this year. And for the record, that list includes Billy Butler, who has 11, and the-now-San Francisco-Giant Jose Guillen, who had 16 at the time of his departure.

It was, nonetheless, a fun thing to look up, and really, now -- who doesn't love fun things? Read more

The HoG25: The 25 Best Writers of the Past 25 Years (Part II)

We're back again, and in case you're new to the House, this HoG25 thing we've been doing for the past few months has included NFL quarterbacks, American cinema, baseball hitters, readin' books, starting pitchers, television shows, and wide receivers.

And in case you missed the first chunk of this segment, you can find it here. Anyway, today's segment is the Top 10, but in this particular instance, it's not synonymous with the best 10.

Keep that in mind, and enjoy.

10: Andrew Sullivan

Old No. 7: Gay. Catholic. Conservative. HIV-positive. These seemingly incongruous labels all describe Andrew Sullivan, a British citizen who blogs almost exclusively about American politics on his must-read Daily Dish.

That "conservative" portion of Sullivan's resume is pretty nebulous, as he supports many positions that have been associated with the far left such as gay marriage and climate change regulation. He also championed the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, preferring Obama's leadership style to the scattershot maverickiness of John McCain.

I often agree with Sullivan, yet nearly as often I'm at odds with the positions he takes. He generates a lot of heat for moving around on issues, but I see that as a sign of an open mind. I personally reevaluate my opinions on many topics all the time -- I once felt Josh McDaniels was a moron, now he's a genius. Trey Hillman, the exact opposite.

But the reason I read Sullivan is not his political slant, it's his mastery of crafting an argument in the English language. After a long career in magazines and books, Sullivan started the Dish back when no one knew what a blog was. He grinds out dozens of posts a day, and they are almost universally lucid and compelling. He gets the immediate-reaction facet of the medium, but he also has a reporter's eye for factuality and supporting data. And when he decides to break out with a long-form essay instead of a quick paragraph post, it's always worth your time.

By the way, of you're ever glancing at Sullivan's work on the Atlantic site, please take a few minutes to also check out Ta-Nehisi Coates. Simply one of the most talented up-and-coming writers around, just don't hold the fact that he's a Cowboys fan from Baltimore against him.

9: Sanyika Shakur

Cecil: Sanyika Shakur, nee Kody Scott, aka Monster, was/is a member of the Eight-Trey Gangster Crips of South Central Los Angeles. He has, to the best of my knowledge, only written two books: one a work of fiction creatively titled T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E., the other his autobiography, Monster. I have no idea if his novel is worth the time it would take to read and have no desire to find out -- but he isn't on this list because of it. Nope, he's here because Monster, a book he wrote whilst incarcerated at lovely California penal institutions San Quentin and (shudder) Pelican Bay, is an absolute literary elbow to the throat.

It's not an easy read. He describes how, as a 6th grader, he dropped out of school to become a full-time gangbanger, how he nearly stomped a man to death as a 13 year-old. How he committed murder upon murder in the name of defending a few blocks of southern Los Angeles real estate from...well, from other kids like himself. The parts that take place in prison are enough to make any wannabe suburbanite criminal put on a tie and go straight to church. But through it all, his voice resonates. Largely self-taught, Shakur writes with force and confidence, even when his subject matter makes your skin crawl; his is a perspective that journalists simply cannot achieve.

Monster is powerful, illuminating and, ultimately, tragic--even his ultimate conversion to Islam and (supposed) renunciation of gang life weren't enough to change his fate. He's currently serving time under California's Three Strikes law, for robbing an acquaintance in 2007 after he was released from prison, and will probably never be a free man again. While he may not be a worthy human being, he remains a hell of a writer.

8: Russell Banks

Bankmeister: I don’t really have much to say about Russell Banks aside from this: He may be the best working/living fiction writer in America. While he has published a ton of work, I’ll point to three works in our window. They are these: Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, and The Darling. In our HoG books installment, I believe I said that Cormac McCarthy was, as far as fiction is concerned, the most important writer of the 20th century. It is impossible to compare the 21st, young as it is, with the one it succeeded. And it would be irrelevant to do so anyway. As far as fiction is concerned though, I put Banks high up there, close to McCarthy for what he’s doing literarily.

He has, in my opinion, the seldom-achieved ability to hit both the traditional fiction-reading market, and, for lack of better words, the wifey, book-club reading market. And that’s important. Mind you, it’s not important in terms of the market itself, the notion of being a successful publishing author, but it’s important because it means you’re doing really well at your trade.

The reason that Banks is, for now, able to achieve this is two-fold: On the one hand, he’s gifted. On the other hand, he has centered his strategy and philosophy on the notion of a stool. That’s right: a stool. The old-fashioned wobbly wooden kind. The kind that is a metaphor for his type of story. And that metaphor is this: Every good story is like an old wooden stool, standing firmly on three legs, telling, basically, one main story, and two back stories. It doesn’t matter which story you like the best. Chances are you’ll like the main story as it’ll get most of the novel’s pages. But these three stories, legs if you will, all come together at the seat, the platform, and they are bound by the most important, least visible element to any good story: theme.

I don’t include Russell in here because you’ve read him, or because you’ve heard of him, but because you will. He’s that good.

7: Bill James

Old No. 7: I said all I needed to say about James when I nominated his book for a spot in the HoG25. I think he's just the frog's pajamas, obviously. What I still can't get my head around is the idea that some so-called baseball "purists" continue to hold out against advances in sabermetrics. You usually see this in fat middle-aged baseball writers, but occasionally an everyday fan will jump on a soapbox and attempt to beat up the disciples of Bill James.

My father-in-law is a retired school principal who now does consulting work in education. A huge part of his current gig is working with schools who use data collected from standardized tests and No Child Left Behind policies. He's always harping on administrators and teachers who insist on doing things the way they did 40 years ago, with no new methods, no accountability and no path to measurable improvement.

We watched a lot of baseball and drank a lot of beer this summer, and in the course of pursuing these fine hobbies he started a rant about how no one can execute a sacrifice bunt anymore. I pointed out that a sacrifice is almost always a bad play, that it's rarely advantageous to give away your most precious commodity (one of your 27 outs) for a marginal increase in your chance to score a run. He continued on, saying that this kind of thinking was killing baseball. That we worry too much about the stats and the percentages and exploiting matchups and that the random beauty of baseball is in danger of being lost.

I wholeheartedly disagreed, and I told him as much. No amount of number-crunching can replace the sights and smells of a ballpark. When I watch Albert Pujols swing a bat or Tim Lincecum deliver a pitch or Ichiro field his position, the last thing I'm thinking about is the probability of certain outcomes. I'm in awe of their abilities and of the perfection of the game itself. Statistical analysis brings me more understanding of and appreciation for the game, not less. Aside from the Devil's bargain we're forced to make in playing fantasy sports (occasionally rooting for a player who's facing your favorite team), Rotisserie baseball also heightens my fandom. And reading the work of James, Rob Neyer, Nate Silver, Jonah Keri, Tom Tango, Joe Posnanski and others brings me to an entirely different level of connection to the sport.

That's when I brought up my father-in-law's own work in education, how he's attempting to get school districts to move into the 21st century by using data to improve the performance of students. Actively opposing sabermetrics and openly dismissing those who attempt to research the game is the exact same thing as resisting education reform. It's also akin to holding on to creationism in the face of the evidence of evolution. Resisting civil rights because they disrupt "tradition." Ignoring advances such as cell phones, DVRs, vaccines, and Internet pornography because change is frightening.

I've had a further conversation with my father-in-law about the expansion of instant replay in baseball, which he tentatively supports. The technology is there, he says, to make the game better, why not use it? He's making my point for me, you see.

I love sabermetrics, yet I don't spend my evenings poring over spreadsheets and inventing new algorithms about baserunning efficiency. I let Bill James and his progeny do that work, and then I read it and enjoy baseball more.

6: Anthony Lane

Cecil: Anthony Lane has been writing movie reviews for the New Yorker since '93, a job he shares with the easily dismissable David Denby (who is such a sap that he managed to be victimized by a Nigerian confidence scam; who wants to read a review by a guy who honestly believed that the Right Honorable David M. Ngidabala was really planning to wire him 150 million dollars once he found refuge in Switzerland?). Lane is anything but easily dismissable. Oh no. He's the critical equivalent of Bolo Leung.

You know Bolo Leung. He was the villain in Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon," not to mention about 50 B-level kung fu flicks, and played the indestructible badass Chong Li in "Bloodsport" alongside a pre-lame Jean-Claude Van Damme. Bolo Leung is an actor, but he is also a guy that, even at age 71, can rip your skull out from inside your face. I mean, I would rather run into any group of MS 13 members (link here) in a dark alley than have to hold a brief, friendly conversation with Bolo Leung. I may get stabbed in the one situation, but I would at least hopefully keep control of my bowels; whereas the very sight of Mr. Leung would cause my drawers to quickly fill with warm brown terror.

Anthony Lane brings that kind of heat. He's so good, so cutting, so funny and so effortlessly better than basically everyone else in the world who does his job (admittedly, I have a soft spot for Mr. Ebert) that reading him is almost intimidating. I can't make a multi-level pun that seamlessly weaves together Sunset Boulevard, Tom Waits and an orange Tastee-Freez, nor can I hold fire on my lede for five graphs without pissing off the reader, nor am I British. Anthony Lane, man, he's got it all.

5: Jay Glazer

Bankmeister: This is my crapshoot of the round, my roll of the dice. I don’t intend to dazzle you with words or include a bullet-point list of things Jay Glazer has done as a writer. Conversely, I don’t even know what they are. My point in taking Glazer is this: change.

What does that mean? It means that, back in the hallowed halls of print journalism, when you and your father and his father awoke to the newspaper in the driveway for you news, and that was really the only way of getting it, being a beat writer had a different meaning. That is, if you scooped the story, and your story made the edition, your job as a reporter, and yes, a writer, was a successful one. You’re sitting here reading the House of Georges right now, which, I’m guessing, means that you don’t take the local paper. I do. I know Old No. 7 does, and Cecil at least used to.

Truth of the matter is that you don’t come to the House of Georges for scoops and breaking news. You come here for wise-crackery, perhaps to peep a photo, or on the rarest of circumstances, maybe to learn something. And I’m here, writing this specific entry to learn you this: Jay Glazer, is the man, when it comes to getting and delivering today’s scoop, regardless of the means in which he does it. Now, maybe a lot of the scoops he gets are delivered to the masses via his Twitter page. I mean, I’m sure that folks follow him on Twitter, get his tweets, and then go to his page on FOX, which, if you click to follow and see, is full of breaking news. Maybe you don’t like that page. Maybe you want it delivered quicker, swifter, and more concisely. You can go to his scoop page, if you please.

Whatever you do, do not turn into his television program, or watch clips of it on the InterWebs. It’s terrible.

That’s okay, though. We’re not here to criticize the man for being a goofy television figure. We’re actually not even here to examine his participles, and measure his literal cadence. We’re here to acknowledge the guy for one thing: access. He is, above and beyond, the leading sportswriter with access baggage in this country, and it is he, above all, that brings us the NFL news that we so ravenously desire.

Stupid pick? Maybe you think so. I disagree, and remind you, that a significant portion of the NFL news you’ve heard was made possible by the investigative writing and reporting of no one other than Jay Glazer himself.

4: Malcolm Gladwell

Old No. 7: I have seriously struggled with this entry on Malcolm Gladwell. In fact, I've missed my deadline for submission by almost a week, and the Administrator is threatening to pull my tickets to the Broncos game at Arrowhead. Because I value nothing more than watching bad football with fat people, here it is.

My main hangup here is the widespread scorn faced by Gladwell the author. I have no doubt that much of this stems from his success -- many of the writers who go after Gladwell or his readers have published books themselves yet have sold far fewer copies. But is there something more substantive to this strain of thought, beyond mere jealousy? Am I, as someone who religiously reads Malcolm Gladwell, the victim of a hoax?

If you have the time, read this. It pretty much covers all the bases of Gladwell criticism but is thorough and fair instead of nasty. And, again if you have the time, read Gladwell. Most of his articles from The New Yorker are online, and his first couple books are available in paperback for a pittance.

Gladwell's writing makes me happy, and the more I examine this happiness I've realized that it's because it makes me feel smart. I have no idea if I am truly smarter having read what he's written, or if I've simply been duped by a master of manipulation. But at the end of the day, who cares? Good music is good music, and good food is good food, because it makes us happy.

3: John McPhee

Cecil: There are plenty of inimitable practitioners of that inimitable practice known as Literary Journalism: Tom Wolfe, Paul Theroux and Gay Talese, for instance. Even early, pre-dissolution Hunter Thompson. Excellent craftsmen, all. But for my money -- which, admittedly, is made of wood and carved in the shape of a pendulous tit -- the best among 'em is John McPhee.

Now, I know the "within the last 25 years" conceit behind these here lists of ours unfortunately disqualifies some of his best work, particularly the sprawling and spectacular Coming Into the Country, a first-person account of the Alaskan frontier circa the mid-1970s that introduced America at large to Sarah Palin's political hero, Alaskan separatist Joe Vogler, who would a few years later die in what the New York Times described as a "plastic explosives sale gone bad." (You know, as opposed to all the ones that end with beers and backslaps.) It also forces me to expunge The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (experimental aeronautics), A Sense of Where You Are (basketball, Bill Bradley) and Oranges (oranges) from my case, here. But it's a measure of McPhee's greatness that, even leaving aside such efforts, he's still a lock for this list.

Try on Assembling California, for instance, one of his many books dealing with the practical and human impact of geology, or The Founding Fish, an historical look at the importance of shad to early Americans. Peruse "In Search of Marvin Gardens," originally published as a long-form piece for the New Yorker, a brilliant piece of writing that I'm simply not qualified to describe in anything other than the most basic terms: it's about both the game of Monopoly and the game's actual, physical representations in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

McPhee is not a showman like Thompson or a personality like Wolfe. He's not flashy, he doesn't become the story, his subjects are rarely the raw material of history. What he is, though, is the greatest living nonfiction writer in America.

2: Joe Posnanski

Bankmeister: Most any angle I take writing about the writer that Joe Posnanski is will fail in some sense. So take what you are about to read with a grain of salt. Joe Posnanski is the best working writer in America. I’ve had the luxury of reading him for over a decade, and his work has educated me, inspired me, and humbled me on every occasion in which I have encountered it. Posnanski has been a large reason why I was drawn back into baseball. He’s refueled my tank on many needed occasions when my hope for success with the Kansas City Royals has coasted on less than fumes.

He has immersed himself with personalities like Priest Holmes, George Brett, and the late Buck O’Neill, and done so in a fashion that leaves me with but one word: perfect.



He has embraced, or so it would seem the technologies of the modern writing world, and taken to Tweeting and blogging. He has continued to write about the sports nature of his native city of Cleveland, while living in Kansas City, which I admire. He has covered the Olympics, graciously accepted a well-deserved position as a senior writer with Sports Illustrated, while vowing to still write occasionally for The Kansas City Star, which I also admire.

He has won countless awards for his craft, and through it all, he has remained, or so it would seem to an outsider, a heck of a human being, father, and husband. He, as a figure, is my lone duplicate from our books entry, and I have zero shame in admitting that. Posnanski has, for whatever morsel it might be worth, has existed as a modicum of aspiration in this sense:

When a young person says they want to be a doctor, a lawyer, an athlete, a cop, a teacher, what have you, the formula for achievement is tangible. It’s laid out, drawn up, and gridded like a map. When someone says, however, I want to be a writer, the next piece of conversation is either non-verbal, like a shrug, or silent, like a still prairie night. As if the listener doesn’t have the heart to say, “I’m sorry to hear you say that. Good luck.” Joe Posnanski and his career are the qualifier that eliminate awkwardness from that conversation, for the speaker can simply point to his body of work and say, “Like that.”

1: Michael Lewis

Old No. 7: I get really bummed out every time I see the trailer for "The Blind Side." It's based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis, but apparently the folks that made the movie decided to target it to my wife. Sure enough, when she saw the trailer she got a little teary-eyed and said she wanted to see it, because she loves Sandra Bullock movies where everyone speaks in cliches.

Problem is, The Blind Side is not really about Leigh Anne Tuohy, the real-life person played by Bullock. And it's not really even about Michael Oher, the first-round draft pick of the Baltimore Ravens, although he serves as the book's center of gravity. Fundamentally, The Blind Side is about the evolution of the left tackle position in football -- how the quarterback became the sport's most important player, which then made the guy who rushes the quarterback the next desired commodity, which then made the guy who protects the quarterback...you get the idea.

Lewis is at his best in breaking down complex subjects -- pass protection schemes, MLB scouting, software development, financial derivatives -- and allowing his readers to engage with the people that inhabit those worlds. I guess that's how Hollywood was able to build a movie around Leigh Anne Tuohy. Even though she was a secondary player in Lewis' book, she was fully developed and fed the underlying narrative.

One of these days Joe Morgan is going to accidentally read a Michael Lewis book or magazine article and thoroughly enjoy it. And all levels of ironicality will have to be recalibrated.

There you go, faithful readers. Another one down. If you must the first installment of this piece, find it here.
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Wednesday Whatnot: Random Link Dump

Don't ask. I don't know.

Chris over at Arrowhead Pride got engaged a while back, the result of which was handing the site reins over to his brother. Then he got married, the result of which was him dropping his first-post-of-the-day time back by three hours. The lesson: Getting married, while it may produce long-lasting love and happiness cough, wheeze, totally fucks with your blog. Anyway, the time-strapped former hub of AP shared this post with us. It's a nice find, and, well, it gives us yet another reason to thank Herm for a job well done in Kansas City.

Big Daddy Drew over at Kissing Suzy Kolber has apparently read Jon Krakauer's new book on Pat Tillman. Then he had some stuff to say about it. If you're the United States Army, this is not Men's Wearhouse material. I guarantee it.

As J. Kenneth K. over at Bronco Talk puts it, Denver fans might want to track down the homeslice behind this operation.

The Big Lead does not agree with Joe Posnanski's assertion that Albert Pujols is one of the greatest hitters of all time.

More no-huddle from the Chiefs? Kent Babb of The Kansas City Star thinks so.

Got Broncos-Chargers questions? Ask away. Actually, don't waste your time. Instead, head over to Awful Announcing and peep this shit: Rod Smith=good nosticator de prog, not too shabby at RickeySpeak, either.

That'll be the only time the Donkeys links out-appear those of the Chefs. Make it end now. I'm talking to you, Marm'.
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Wednesday Whatnot: The Great Debate

About four months ago, the House of Georges celebrated two years of existence. It was no big deal. We didn't send out invites, hire a clown, or bake any cakes. The date was more so a note upon which the three of us -- aptly named the Iron Triangle -- could sit back and think, Have we really been cranking out these posts for 24 months? The ones we stress and argue over? The ones hardly anyone reads? Yes, indeed, we had. A funny thing happened a few months in, however, and I'd like to share it with you now. Right here. Today. It can be summed up in one succinct word: obsession.

What I mean is, I really, really liked what we were doing. I loved posting. I pored with hunger pangs of verbiage over every word my colleagues wrote. I digressed, frantically trying to devour every word published on the blogosphere. I petitioned other established bloggers for link exchanges. I fumbled hopelessly with teaching myself codes and HTML. I procrastinated on every graduate-school assignment I had. I barely saw my fiancee, and I neglected my then senior citizen dog. I wanted to expand, build a network of blogs, and my first idea...

...had something to do with Andy Dufresne from "The Shawshank Redemption." It had quite a bit to do with dedication, and a lot to do with Pete Rose. I called it Letters to Bud. Dufresne wanted a library for the prison in the movie. He wrote to politicians once a week for some two to five years until they just quit ignoring him, and they unloaded money for building and books for shelving upon him, and the Shawshank Library was a dream no more.

I wanted the lifetime ban from baseball cast upon Rose -- to which he agreed -- by Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti lifted. Let's just say I got my signals a little crossed. For starters, I dove into this vanity side project thinking of it as a team effort. I made phone calls. I sent e-mails. I texted. I thought we were in like the proverbial, only when I pronounced that we were "going streaking" straight to the 31st floor of Park Avenue in New York, I looked behind me and I was the only naked dude inquiring about KFC's hours of operation. The other miswiring was that I incorrectly remembered that Dufresne wrote a letter a day to see his goal through. Mind you, I not only posted these letters on the aforelinked GoreNets, I actually printed a hard copy, signed it with my real name, stamped an envelope, and sent those little scrolls to my pen pal Bud.

And mind you, I got married, moved into a new house, and honeymooned a mere two months prior. Weird thing is, the wife was on board with the thing. My in-laws were like, "Go, son. You write your letters." Or something. People started asking me when I'd get to work what today's letter was about. And the thing took off. I had a head of steam about me with the gig. Cecil said I was nuts but to go for it. Old No. 7 envisioned Selig interns and a famous press conference, all resulting in a House of Georges hookers-and-cocaine party. So I ran with it. For 44 days.

I truly was in over my head thinking that I could keep it and the House of Georges contributions rolling, and work, and sleep, and be a husband. And drink heavily. I was drinking fairly heavily then, so the ol' early-bird-knocks-out-the-posts mantra, uh, didn't exist. It was fun, though. I don't regret it one bit. If I can say two things about it, they are that I tried, and I was sincere. But then I started getting into the Dowd report. I was researching old USA Today articles. I was purchasing literature on the guy. My wife was still on board, but she didn't care for the fact that I was basically filling the trash can with toner cartridges like boogers into a morning Kleenex, and them things ain't cheap. I hit a point where I was studying too much to have time to post, and the wheels came off.

Since then, Rose's name has come up inside the House of Georges a time or two. I stumble across something, I'll link to it, or write about it. My feelings about the ban haven't changed, and to be honest, it kind of took me by surprise the other day when I discovered that the 20-year anniversary of the ban was approaching. I couldn't believe it. I thought, What if I'd kept the Letters to Bud going out? Would it have made a difference? And then some chatter arose about the whole deal. Hank Aaron came out and endorsed Rose. Folks scooted to the edge of their seats. Bloggers came out of their moms' basements (in their underwear) to see if there was anything in the papers. The SportsTalk Radios buzzed. Finally, Selig came out of his wormhole like the cops at a high school party:

"Go on home, you damn kids," nobody quoted him saying. "Take your damn Hamm's and your hip-hop with you, and stay the hell offa my lawn."

And things fizzled.

I was informed this morning, however, about this blog, which I've never read before today, and about this post, which Craig Calcaterra wrote on Monday. It's sort of about Mike Schmidt coming out and saying, in not so many words, that "20 years is enough punishment. Let's lift the ban." But mostly about the author of the post disagreeing with that sentiment by saying, "The headline to Schmidt's piece asks if 20 years is enough. My answer: no, not really."

Now mind you, I'd never read this Calcaterra cat prior to today, and mind you, I never will again. For my money, he's a gosh-darned buffoon. The post, however, was heavily commented upon, and so today, he offered this post, which revisits his post from two days ago, and offers new(ish) insight, provided by none other than our own Old No. 7. In a nutshell, Seven, in his assessment of our recent Hitters feature, took, as he is prone to do, every opportunity to belittle Rose, and make him look like a child molester. Kinda. Calcaterra, buffoon that he is, loved it, and linked to our feature. Picture, if you will, buck-toothed Mike Shanhan, on the sidelines, proclaiming to a horse-faced John Elway, "I'm so proud of you." Oh glorious day.

So if my colleage and his new best pal are the Dark Side in the battle of the Rose Force, I've got myself and my homey Joe Posnanski bringing up Team Good. Some excerpts from the piece:

"Here it is, 20 years after he agreed to a lifetime suspension for gambling on baseball (and, he would finally admit, his own team), and the debate about him is as raw as it ever was. Screaming. Insults. Good journalists such as ESPN's Buster Olney will call Rose 'nothing less than a lowlife,' and excellent writers such as Fox's Mark Kriegel will call him a 'skell' -- which seems awfully harsh. It isn't like Rose mugged people. As far as I know, he hasn't killed anybody or kidnapped anybody or betrayed his nation or bilked senior citizens out of their social security. He bet on his team. He lied about it."

"While writing my book The Machine about the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, excerpted in this week's Sports Illustrated, I was astonished that virtually every player on that team shared a story about the time that Rose said a few kind words when they were in a slump, or the time Rose picked up their check when they weren't making any money, or the time Rose invited them to his house for dinner. Will McEnaney remembers Rose giving him shoes. Gary Nolan remembers Rose believing in him when he was hurting. Joe Morgan remembers Rose pushing him and inspiring him into becoming the Hall of Fame player he became. Ken Griffey remembers Rose being a guy who treated him with respect from the start."

"So how do we get beyond all that and discuss one of the most talked about baseball questions of the last two decades: Should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame? I think the question needs the word 'should,' not 'will,' in it, because honestly I don't think he will get in. For Rose to get inducted into the Hall of Fame, two basic things would have to happen:...One, he would need to be reinstated somehow...Two -- even if he WAS reinstated, he would need 75 percent approval from either the Baseball Writers Association of America or the Veteran's Committee (made up of living Hall of Famers)."

From here Posnanski cites but a few of the hundreds of things that have been said against Rose, reasons for keeping the ban in place, reasons for making sure that you, the American public, the lover of baseball, the model of good-versus-evil for any and all children to learn from, understand that Rose committed baseball's cardinal sin.

"And so it goes ... this has been repeated so many times that people have simply come to accept it as undeniable fact. Betting on baseball is the cardinal sin.

Only ... it isn't. Or anyway, nobody REALLY BELIEVES what Pete Rose did is baseball's cardinal sin. If we are using 'cardinal sin' to mean the worst possible thing a baseball player can do or, to be more precise, 'the sin that condemns a person's soul to eternal Hell,' well, I can think of about 200 things you can do on a baseball field worse than gamble on a game."

"But the real point is this: Even under the gambling umbrella, what Pete Rose did is not even CLOSE to baseball's cardinal sin. I would think that taking a large sum of money from gamblers and then purposely playing lousy enough that your team will lose the World Series, yes, THAT might be called baseball's cardinal sin. Nobody suggests Pete Rose did that. Betting on your team to lose and then going 0-for-5 in a playoff game and committing an error with the winning run on third, yes, THAT might be baseball's cardinal sin. Nobody suggests Pete Rose did that either. Purposely performing poorly on the field during a regular season game in order to cash in on bets, yes, even that might be baseball's cardinal sin. Nobody suggest Pete Rose did that either.

Seems to me the cardinal sin would be to AFFECT THE OUTCOME OF GAMES in order to profit on it -- either by gambling yourself or taking money from gamblers.

What Pete Rose DID do -- or at least what we KNOW he did -- is bet on the Cincinnati Reds to win while he was manager of the team. Did he do more? Maybe. But this is what we know and the Dowd Report is clear in saying "No evidence was discovered that Rose bet against the Cincinnati Reds." In 20 years of digging and pinching you would think that if Rose indeed bet against the Reds at any point it would have come out. All you can know is what you know. I think it's probably fair to say that Rose bet on his team to win."

He mentions a series of polls that were up on his blog a few months ago, results from which he deduces that "many of us are good at being against the CONCEPT of gambling on baseball, but not so sure of ourselves when it comes to the particulars."

And finally:

"And there's something about forgiveness in here too. One thing you hear people say is that Pete Rose hasn't EARNED our forgiveness. It's hard to argue the point. Over the last 20 years, he has been brash and dishonest and indiscreet and arrogant. But there's something else. Pete Rose made a lot of people happy playing baseball. He inspired a lot of people to try harder. He cracked more hits than anyone who ever played the game. And anyway, I didn't think forgiveness was supposed to be earned. I thought forgiveness was supposed to be given. I thought that was the whole point."

I'm not about to get on a number-14 soap box here. I've done that once before. I was up there for 44 days, and I, too, think about the notion of foregiveness.
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Friday Morning Fracas: Makin' Posts Outta Nothin' At All

Stuff and junk, after the jump.

The Denver Broncos are close to getting a five-year deal signed with first-round pick Knowshon Moreno. And in Kansas City, it appears that the Chiefs are also close to a five-year deal with fifth overall pick Tyson Jackson.

Speaking of Denver, 13,000 strong booed the Broncos last night, leading head Denver idiots Kyle Orton and Josh McDaniels to say things like, "We have good fans," and "I've been around for a while," respectively. Really, Kyle? Really Josh? Did you guys know they just found the Loch Ness monster, too?

Royals fans: If you can't imagine things being worse than this season, then do not click here to read about what's going on down on the farm. Consider yourselves warned.

If you haven't read this headline about nasty ol' Pig Slapi, peep it. It's a good one.

I mentioned yesterday that there was day baseball on the MLB.TVs. Apparently, there's plenty more of that to come. Hip, hip, hooray! for day baseball.

I remember being stoked when it was announced that the Chiefs would be on HBO's "Hard Knocks." Of course, an unnamed colleague of mine promptly rained on my parade by mentioning that every team that'd been on it immediately had a terrible season, which panned out for them, as well as the previously featured Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens. But...what happens if you put an already shitty team on the program? Like the Cincinnati Bengals? Do they make a Super Bowl run? We shall see.

If you haven't checked in with ol' JoePos recently, he's doing a Yuni watch, and pimping his new book pretty hard core:




Speaking of Joe, put this in your pipe and smoke it.

Oh, boy. We're in for a doozy of a weekend.

And, a giant Gemma Atkinson bikini collection.

Happy Friday, people.
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Historically Speaking: Seen Yer Rye Tir

Every once in a while, the news moves me. On most of those occasions, that news is coming from the sports section of a newspaper or a Web site. I woke this morning, and before I'd had my first sip of coffee, felt the peculiar mix of multi-faceted tears well in my eyes. And that came from reading Joe Posnanski's column in The Kansas City Star. Funny thing is, I'm typically so devoid of regular news consumption, that I can't compare the feeling to, well, anything. It's an odd situation, in that there won't be a massive hole, per se, but I don't know that tomorrow, or any day hereafter, I'll ever open the paper again in the same way.

But let's not get too sappy. There's more boring stuff to read, post-jump.

* We go back to 1921 and celebrate a marriage of Steak and Cheese to Pedophiles-- I mean pierogies, as the first play-by-play broadcast of a baseball game was done. Harold Arlin had the honors in calling the Philly-Pittsburgh contest.

* In 1955 on this day, White Sox Manager Marty Marion gave second baseman Nellie Fox the day off after 274 straight starts. Following his brief respite, Fox would start another 798 consecutive games.

* Today in 1967, professional football in America saw a first as the Denver Broncos beat the Detroit Lions 13-7, marking the first American Football League victory over an NFL team.

* The year was 1979 when MLB's Hall of Fame opened the doors to three new inductees: Hack Wilson, Warren Giles, and a fellow by the name of Willie Mays.

* Twenty-nine years ago today New York Met Doug Flynn tied an MLB record as he cracked three triples in one game.

And your Sports Illustrated quote of the day came from the mouth of...



...former Cleveland Browns offensive tackle Doug Dieken who, in 1984, was asked how he imagines he'll be remembered post-retirement. His response: "Holding...No.73."
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Friday Morning Fracas: Obligatory Aspen Tasting

A couple of weeks ago, when the House of Georges staff got together for our quarterly semi-bi-annual staff meeting, we of course chatted about sports and the Internets. The pieced-together conversations would be of little-to-no interest to our readers, but, below the jump, there are a few nuggets worth probing. Or maybe not. Decide for yourselves.

Blogs with Balls happened. I dig the concept, and imagine that we will one day sell enough t-shirts make enough money on our own to afford attendance to such a function. And if we can't, screw it. Apparently, the dude that runs Hugging Harold Reynolds met Harold Reynolds at the event, who referred to the blogger as "the hugging guy."

Drew Magary, co-founder of Kissing Suzy Kolber, Editor-At-Large for Deadspin, and occasional Penthouse feature writer, puts together some good words with admirable frequency. In case you missed it, his debut column in Penthouse was in March, the follow-up in April, and now, the June edition. Three things should be noted: 1) the Penthouse links are SFW; 2) I've never been able to find the May column; and 3) the latest feature, while instilling a few chuckles was, a tad disappointing, which perhaps answers number two.

Last but not least, if you're a fan of Joe Posnanski, visit his blog, and while you're there, pre-order his new book, which may or may not make a great Father's Day gift.

I reckon that's enough Aspen tasting. I've gotta go wash off my tongue.
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Saturday Studmuffins: JoePos

I think this is only the second time we've tossed an SS up on the podium that's not an athlete, which, as a newspaper kind of guy, makes me wonder: Would the game be that entertaining if you couldn't read about it in the next morning's edition? Writers like Joe Posnanski make the answer to that question seem like a definite "no." And for the record, if you aren't familiar with this literal word machine who kicks out the language jams for The Kansas City Star, Sports Illustrated, in book form, and online, well, you should forget about it now, or move to Winnipeg and devote all of your waking hours to catching up on this guy's archives. Hell, I sometimes struggle (Editor's Note: Point in case?) to craft the opening graf to a post, but let's stay on the track, the brief track that you can catch after the jump.

Alright, look: If you're not checking in on Pos' blog on at least a weekly basis, you're doing yourself a disservice. Really, pretty much everything over there is fantastic, but if you have a short attention span and don't like clicking your mouse, here's a quick top five.

Number Five: My favorite JoeWord

The Gloaden Rule:
1. Use Ross Gload correctly, he will help your team win games.
2. Use Ross Gload incorrectly, he will get you fired.

Number Four: A Fascinating Quick Read on Carlos Beltran

Number Three: This isn't really from the site, but you can pre-order a copy of his latest book, The Machine (slated for an August release), here. The book, by the by, is about the 1975 Reds. Those guys weren't bad.

Number Two: This one's kind of a two-fer. Over on the SIs, Pos' and Bill James are toying with the idea of doing a weekly exchange. They gave it a whirl here, and their conversation is about Randy Johnson and 300-game winners. A must read. And if you like it, here's an awesome way of thinking about 300-game winners.

Number One: Anyone that posts a YouTube ciip that pokes fun of their own hometown to their blog is alright by me. I think I've seen this before, but I might've stumbled across it during a Grey Goose and meth bender. Hard to tell.



That's today's SS.
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Tuesday Tidbits: It Has Now Officially, Gotten Stanky Out There

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for the first time since 1993, a member of the Kansas City Royals has graced the cover of Cecil's most favoritest magazine, Sports Illustrated.

First heard the news last night from JoePos' blog. It was confirmed this morning, and now, you can read the article.

Not sure how I feel about the exposure, or the possible pressure it may but on the youngster that dons Michael Jordan's jersey number, but gee whiz, this Posnanski dude can write.
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Saturday Studmuffins: ESPN's Bill Simmons

Old No. 7 tipped me off to the wisely weirdish thoughts of Bill Simmons. Apparently, the Sports Guy hadn't "emptied his mailbag" yet this calendar year. When he did, there were a few doozies in it. Okay, one. Pick up what I'm puttin' down after the jump.

The topic to which I refer came via this post, and I while I don't aim to take it as Gospel, I do accept it, in that it's teeming with positivism, something we haven't had as a theme for Kansas City pro sports for far too long. And yes, Rustoleum, Kansas City has pro sports. I know you're reading and were dying to make that comment. Eat shit, you smashed sack of assholes.

Back to Mr. Simmons:

"By the way, listen to Monday's B.S. Report if you want to hear me make the case for the 2009 Chiefs as a phenomenal bet at 100-to-1 to win the Super Bowl, thanks to my theory that the success of one team can become a sports colonic for that city's fans, turn them from "glass half-empty" to "glass half-full" and ignite every other team in the city. I see the Royals kicking off things by becoming this year's 2008 Rays, followed by an NBA team moving to K.C. in June or July. Then in September, with the pennant race heating up and K.C. fans already delirious, the Chiefs will charge out of the gate with four straight wins … although there's a sobering moment when Joe Posnanski's head tragically explodes as he's crafting a column trying to put everything in perspective. Just be prepared. Wait, you don't believe me?"

Jackpot. Count it.
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