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Set It, Forget It, Win

In week 16 of the 2011 NFL season, Tony Romo made me very, very angry. Irrationally angry for a player who was neither on my favorite team or playing against them.

He was the starting quarterback on my fantasy team, and with us locked in a tight semifinal playoff matchup, I needed big points from him. Instead he threw two passes for zero yards, hurt his hand and sat out the rest of the game.

I’d like to thank Matthew Berry for reminding me of this episode not once but twice in his book “Fantasy Life.” It’s an interesting read that tracks his own career path through the world of fantasy sports, dropping in all kinds of stories about league traditions, crazy drafts, and yes, players that have broken all of our hearts.

Berry describes a particular miracle team that makes it to their league championship, only to be undone by the Romo bomb. I had to stop reading as this flashed into my memory:

Granted, I probably would have lost the semifinal anyway, but my team was so demoralized we slipped up in the third place game the following week. I vowed never to have Romo on my team again…and then ended up with him again last year. The result?

No dramatic injury this time, but we took the same path to another fourth place finish. This year I absolutely promise Romo will be nowhere near my team.

What I like about Berry’s book is that he shares the absolutely bonkers stuff that will likely never happen in my leagues — like one guy having to do his draft while working at Red Robin, while dressed as the mascot. But it also features so many examples of things that made me just nod along knowing I’ve been there.

He talks about the frustrating ways in which people lose, like going against someone who “leaves three injured players in his lineup and still wins.”

I’m including that example purely for my brother Pat, who nearly a year later is still harboring major resentment against my second cousin Allison for our family league.

Pat had the best team in the regular season and faced Allison in the semifinals of the playoffs. She made zero changes to her lineup all year, even when a bunch of her players were injured, and started 0-6 before rallying to win 11 games in a row. That included demolishing Pat in their playoff game and defeating the second-best regular season team for the title.

I sincerely hope she wins again this year (unless I do, of course).

August 31, 2013 books family Uncategorized
Glove You Very Much

If you’re already thinking about what to get me for Christmas, I suggest you start saving your pennies. Before December 25, you are going to need $348. For this:

That would be a baseball glove made of Coach leather. It comes in a variety of colors, but naturally I want the blue one. If you want to go all-out, get me the bat, wallet, baseball paperweight and leather-wrapped radio, which as a package will run you a mere $1160.

I first read about this in a Bloomberg article, which says that Coach is seeking to expand its revenue by making a push to bring in more money from men’s products. The idea is not that lots of men are going to by baseball gloves, but that the gloves will say, “HEY GUYS WE MAKE STUFF FOR YOU TOO!”

I appreciate that strategy, but it’s going to take a lot more than appealing to my love of baseball to get me to spend $498 on a jacket. I’m slightly more frugal than that.

And come to think of it, I already have a baseball glove that can handle any ball thrown my way:

I’ve had this glove since I believe roughly age 14. Note the one set of strings I left untied. There’s a matching set on the opposite side next to the thumb. The purpose, of course, was that between pitches I could twist the glove back and forth, letting the strings slap against the rest of the glove like the little drum in Karate Kid.

I wanted to include my first baseball glove in this post, but sadly a quick search in my parents’ basement the other day turned up nothing. I’m sure it’s down there though, so some day we will be reunited and I can share all of its glory.

And since this is about baseball, I’ll share a picture from a trip to Nationals Park earlier this week. My mom and I went early for the game and took in batting practice. I took my glove and a camera long, and went home with some decent shots but sadly no BP homers:

August 10, 2013 baseball Uncategorized
Chasing Olga

When something starts to lose its appeal, it’s only natural as human beings to seek out a way to make it more interesting. When I got to the point of being very over an online dating site, I used the waning weeks of my subscription to get intentionally catfished.

For those unfamiliar with the term, I engaged with accounts that were clearly people lying about who they were in order to get something. Tipoffs included using Demi Lovato in their profile pictures, accounts that would pop up for just a few hours day after day using the same picture, or profiles that asked the guy to email them at a Yahoo address instead of through the dating site itself.

It took a while to get one of them to bite. I tried using the same strategy I’ve used before when replying to those Nigerian scams, which is to attempt to sound not so smart [I swear I blogged about this but for the life of me can’t find it]. In this case, I added in an extra level of basically saying, “OMG IF SOMEONE AS PRETTY AS YOU TALKED TO ME THAT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE!!” (Slightly different words of course, and without the caps.)

Finally, on May 27, I received a reply from Olga. I want to put “Olga” in quotes, but I also don’t want to do that for the whole post, so let’s just assume the Olga part is the one thing that was true.

I’ve seen the movie “Catfish,” and most of the episodes of the resulting show on MTV. I know how these conversations go, and how to use certain tools to clearly see someone is lying. I also have some common sense. For instance, Olga mentioned many times in the 27 emails she sent me over the course of a month that she went to the library to talk to me. She supposedly lives in Kansk, Russia, a town of about 100,000 people that must have the most amazing library system hours on the planet since she sent the majority of her messages between 11 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. local time.

In those emails she goes on and on in awful English about herself, and sometimes would ask questions about me. I rarely answered her questions, and even then only briefly (and obviously made up), but she never seemed to care.

What did she care about? When I didn’t respond the next day. Each time I did that — sometimes intentionally — she got progressively angrier. The first time was on May 29:

A few days later, things were okay again. She told me on May 31 how she left home to go to “institute” where she lived in a hostel, five girls to a room. At night they would stay up talking about their dreams for the future. It was there she learned how to make many meals. She assured me she is a great cook.

I did not respond to that email the first day. That made Olga less than pleased with me:

After leaving the institute she got a job teaching art to kids. At least I think that’s what she tried to say. She admitted on June 2 that although she learned English in school, “it is not so good and sometimes I not understand all that you write.” She went on to ask that I not take offense if because of that she does not answer my questions. Olga has some great diversionary tactics, including laying the groundwork for questions I haven’t even asked her yet. We’ll get there in a minute, hang tight.

She mentioned a few times how her parents live very close by, in the next town over, but then later gave the names of both where she and they live. They turn out to be almost two hours apart (according to Google Maps). Oh and for the record, her dad is named Sergei and her mom is Svetlana.

On June 6, she sent me an excited email saying she had been to the hairdresser where she got her hair cut very short. She had sent me many pictures before, ones that all seemed like someone trying too hard to look “natural.” In all of them she had longer hair, like this:

Along with her haircut tale, she sent me this:

I would believe either this actually was a short cut, or just that the angle obscures the rest of her longer hair behind her. Two days later she told me how she hung out with her girlfriends and how they all loved her new hair so much! She sent me a picture from the wonderful day they had in the sun:

My, what fast-growing hair you have, Olga! I didn’t ask her about it. After all, this message also included such nice things about me:

“Fred [from my alter-ego email address I use for any service that I think will send me annoying emails], with each letter you become to me more and more interesting. Already it seems to me, that at us it is a lot of general. I impatience wait for your letter because they to me I cheer up.”

It is at this point she seems to be trying to move past the nothing I have revealed to her, so that she can get to the point of whatever she’s going to get out of me. I was more than happy to try to find out what she was going to ask me, which I assumed was going to be for money.

The next day she set up a scenario that I thought was going in that direction. She told me that out of nowhere, her boss at her art teaching job called her into his office. She said he touched her inappropriately, she slapped him in the face, and ran off, never to return to that job. I played very sympathetic, trying to get her to feel like I would do anything for her — like send her a bunch of money to help her out now that she was unemployed. We were getting somewhere.

Sort of. June 11, she abandoned the money route and really drove home how amazing I am. “Mum asked me on you, I told all,” she said. The next day she “washed and went to walk on street. There very beautiful nature. I went and thought of how it would be fine to go now with you for a hand!”

How fine indeed, Olga. I told her how I would love that as well, if only she could tell me how we could spend time together like that. This is where she should ask me to wire her cash for a plane ticket. She did not. Instead she sent me another boring email, to which I didn’t respond. By this point you should know how she took that:

That’s right, anger! How did I react to this? Let’s see if she can get angrier! I went three more days without responding, then sent her fewer words than are in this paragraph. She responded with some serious escalation of our then three-week correspondence:

“I ask be not silent, speak with me, in fact I cannot live without you! I beg and I ask only about one do not leave me and my love, I ask love me in fact I love you all heart. I cannot eat and sleep I cannot do it while this pain inside of me! I am afraid that this string will break also I for what not leaving and I shall not leave you my love! I love you and only you my love forever!”

I mean, I know I’m awesome and all, but women in the United States certainly aren’t that smitten so quickly. Maybe I need to move to Russia. I decided to really press the issue at this point, because it felt like we were just going to go through the same patterns over and over. On the show “Catfish,” one of the big things that the fake people refuse to do is video chat with their supposed loves. I casually asked Olga if she had Skype. She didn’t appreciate that:

The next day, June 21, I asked her again. She flipped out:

“I to you have told that I can not speak with you on skype or make to you video! You Understand?”

Oh, I understand. But wait, she then immediately changes tone, talking two sentences later about how she had a dream we went to the movies together:

“When the comedy has ended, we left cinema happy and happy. You have told, that spend me. When we reached the house we did not wish to be separated. We stood about my door both talked. Also have not noticed, how became close one to another and we have kissed. OUR FIRST KISS WAS FINE!!!!!! IT WAS FINE!!!!!!”

Wow, 12 exclamation points? I am a hell of an imaginary kisser. Especially so soon after getting the “You Understand?” treatment. At this point, I was feeling pretty hopeful that I was close to finding out what she wanted. I was hoping it would be something outrageous, but I was willing to accept some boring request for money.

I was busy for a few days, and forgot to respond to her message. So on June 24, she sent me this:

Olga was sad, but not really in a way she hadn’t been when I didn’t respond before. I didn’t immediately respond that day either, leaving her to send me a message on the 25th:

That’s not an error on my part. That is, word for word, the exact same message sent two days in a row. It is also where our correspondence comes to a close. When I did respond, she didn’t reply. I sent her I think two more messages trying to get her back talking to me, but to no avail. Olga has moved on to the next mark.

So that brings us to the last piece of this story. I used Google’s reverse image search function to see if any of her pictures showed up in other places on the Internet. They do. Plenty of them. There’s a European Facebook-like site called VK.com. I found at least five accounts that use her pictures, all with different names, and most with few friends.

But there’s one with 3,600 followers, and it also has photos that don’t appear on the other accounts and never showed up in Fred’s inbox. There are comments from this person on her page and others. It seems like the most likely actual owner. Meet Marta Goy:

I sent Marta a message today trying to touch base and see if I could verify she’s the one in the pictures. No response yet. I’ll let you know if I end up talking to her.

A little more research also turned up other people who had contact with Olga. This post, on a message board for people who unfortunately weren’t intentionally talking to people like Olga, describes a similar arc, including the flighty behavior when asked for actual proof that she was actually who she said. This guy apparently got her to respond again for a while and seems like they had arranged for her to visit, but it never happened.

The moral of the stories of course is that red flags are red flags, and it’s always more fun to be on the side of screwing with them and not the other way around.

August 4, 2013 Uncategorized
A Dog Named Señor

After spending two months reading one book, which at 780 pages wasn’t even my longest of the year, I was definitely in the mood for one I could rip through pretty quickly.

Enter my old friend, John Steinbeck. Yes, he has a few giant novels, but his bibliography also includes a whole set of shorter books. I picked up a new stack of them just before my local Barnes & Noble closed, and this time went with “Tortilla Flat.”

I like reading Steinbeck in the summer because the natural imagery in his writing just makes me think of warm winds blowing through the trees. Of course his stories take place in northern California, so the warmth is relative, but just go with it.

What I enjoy about the shorter books is that they feel like dropping in on a very small slice of whichever town he’s featuring. If the stories were doled in small parts in a local newspaper, I would follow along for years.

This book is about a guy named Danny, who is kind of a deadbeat until he inherits a pair of houses. He agrees to let a few of his friends live in one of them, until they kindly (accidentally) burn it down. The rest of the story follows him letting those guys live with him, along with several other friends who move in and create a host of drama.

After the fire, Danny’s friends approach him, and he unleashes an absolutely wonderful array of insults I hope to incorporate into my own life:

“‘Dogs of dogs,’ Danny called them, and ‘Thieves of decent folks’ other house,’ and ‘Spawn of cuttlefish.’ He named their mothers cows and fathers ancient sheep.'”

I mean, when someone calls you “spawn of cuttlefish” what kind of comeback can you possibly have? (This cuttlefish website has the f word in its url, but is amazing.)

Beyond insults, Steinbeck also includes a fantastic name for a dog. One of the characters is a simple guy who for a while sleeps in a chicken coop with his five dogs. Danny and friends eventually convince him to join them in the house as part of a scheme to get his extensive savings, and he moves in with Fluff, Rudolph, Enrique, Pajarito and Señor Alec Thompson in tow.

As someone who would readily name a cat Captain Awesome, I’m always a fan of non-standard pet names, particularly ones that involve some sort of rank or honorific. It’s not quite Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, but I fully enjoyed every time Señor Alec Thompson got a mention.

August 3, 2013 books Uncategorized
Always Walk-Offs in the Banana Stand

I looked down from section 205 at Nationals Park with “Zimmerman” and the number 11 on my back. In my pocket, there was a ticket card with “Seat 11” stamped on the front.

The Nationals had already lost one game Friday in a season that has not come close to matching expectations after last year’s playoff run. In seemingly every situation in which the Nats of then got a clutch hit, this group has found a way to squander opportunities.

This night, however, Ryan Zimmerman walked to the plate in a tie game with one out in the ninth inning My family — who had seen two of his seven career walk-off home runs — talked about it happening again in that hopefully predictive way sports fans do.

Mets pitcher LaTroy Hawkins threw three balls. Then a called strike. Then a fastball that Zimmerman slammed into the seats in right-center field. The home run horn sounded and his teammates gathered at home plate ready to celebrate their second walk-off home run win in as many days. As Zimmerman crossed the plate, teammate Ian Desmond added something I’ve never seen by giving the whole group a Gatorade shower (great view of it at 1:05).

It’s no secret the Nats need a lot more of these moments, and quickly, if they are going to make it back to the playoffs. For one night, at least, things were back to normal.

One other fun thing from the game came when they put the list of group outings and celebrations up on the scoreboard. As part of our ticket plan, we get one free message, which last year we used to wish my new nephew happy birthday.

This time, with no babies arriving this week, we went for something far more hilarious. It’s possible there were only four Arrested Development fans in the stadium paying attention at that moment, but I think they had to enjoy the joke:

We were originally thinking of several options, including something involving the banana stand, but what’s better than an obscure pop culture reference?

July 27, 2013 baseball television Uncategorized
Fun and Not-So-Fun at ESPN

“Nobody really wanted to deal with the idea that they were going to be paying for a product that had been free.”

That sentence could fit in any modern story about newspapers that put up pay walls as they address they key funding issues facing media organizations today. Instead, it’s about a cable company that in the 1980s began asking cable systems to pay for the right to carry its programming.

That company? ESPN. The result was a dual stream of revenue — subscriber fees + ad money — that allowed the network to grow into the behemoth of the sports world it is today.

The quote is from Roger Werner, ESPN’s COO in the 1980s. It’s from “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN” by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. They use what can only be described as a crap ton of interviews with the founders, executives, anchors, reporters, agents and competitors to trace the company’s 30-year history from its inception as a muddy field in Connecticut to a sprawling digital empire.

The format at first annoyed me, since it is basically relies on chunks of direct quotes one after another with very little narration in between. I found it disjointing and difficult to get in a flow of reading, but eventually that waned as I had to do less and less work remembering who some of the non-talent people were. I read a similar “from-the beginning” story about CNN a number of years ago, and it’s interesting to see how far each has been able to come from very, very humble beginnings.

There are some fascinating anecdotes about what’s going on behind the scenes. One of my favorites involves when Monday Night Football moved from it’s longtime home at ABC over to ESPN. The interviews tell the story of ESPN wanting to keep Al Michaels as the play-by-play guy, but he ended up leaving to do Sunday Night Football on NBC. It seemed like a simple move at the time, but negotiations to get him out of his ESPN contract brought in Disney company executives who made a list of things they wanted in return from NBC Universal. One of those items was the rights to a cartoon rabbit. I can only hope my career involves a deal like that.

In talking about the future of how we get ESPN content and experience sports media, Disney CEO Bob Iger says, “ESPN has deals with several leagues that call for content distribution on platforms that have yet to be invented.” I would love to hear how the negotiation for that part of the contract happens. Does ESPN have the rights for NFL games projected on the moon? Baseball broadcasts that resonate in your brain through Wi-Fi? NASCAR races you watch in your dreams?

One other thing I thought was interesting is the way in which no matter what technology we have, fans will always have the same irrational reaction to people talking about their teams. Hockey analyst Bill Clement shares in the book that no matter what city they were in, inevitably fans would criticize him saying he was favoring the other team:

“But I would get it from both sides,” he said. “If I was doing the Rangers-Flyers series, I would be accused by Rangers fans of favoring the Flyers and I would be accused by Flyers fans of favoring the Rangers.”

I see this play out on a weekly basis now with ESPN baseball analyst Buster Olney. He appears on their Sunday Night Baseball broadcast, and on Twitter faces a barrage of comments every time he says something about one of the teams that somehow makes him some kind of superfan of that squad who is hell-bent on destroying the other team. At least he has the sense of humor to retweet these people so the world can see how in five minutes he can be criticized of having that favoritism for both sides at the same time.

Interesting book for those who want to know about the ESPN empire — good, bad and ugly — and get some insight inside the Bristol universe.

July 20, 2013 books Uncategorized
I Was Saying Boourns

Ian Desmond is one of my favorite Nationals players.

If I made that statement to my 2010-11 self, I would probably get laughter in return. Back then, I couldn’t imagine Desmond as a part of a winning Nats team. I said all the time that he had to go. REALLY had to go.

But the past two seasons he has been nothing short of great, catapulting into the upper echelon of Major League shortstops and winning the hearts of baseball fans in Washington. After missing out in the final fan voting for the All-Star Game, he captured that change on Twitter, showing just how aware athletes can be of their relationship with fans.

Our fan-player relationship has come a long way over the last few years. I really appreciate you guys going all out for me. Thank You
— Ian Desmond (@IanDesmond20) July 11, 2013

He’s one of those guys you know every baseball fan would love if he were on their team. He plays hard all the time, really cares about doing things the right way and does great things off the field. His team photo for this season features not short of an epic mustache. Oh and this week he shaved his goatee during the game.

So, 2010-11 Chris, I wish you had more foresight and could have been in on the Ian Desmond ground floor, but I’m glad we’re all where we are now. It’s a far better place.

July 12, 2013 baseball Uncategorized
Petition In The USA

A person with the initials E.D. from Redford, MI needs your help.

They think we can do better with our choice of national anthem, replacing “The Star Spangled Banner,” with Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The U.S.A.” According to their petition to the White House, the change “is what is best for this country.”

Obviously this is a silly idea, and I very much like our current anthem situation. But I also support the success of this petition, and you should too.

President Obama began this program to hear ideas from the American people, promising that if a particular petition got enough signatures, someone from his administration would give a formal response.

The best example of this so far is the petition for the U.S. government to build an actual Death Star. Mr. Obama’s chief science adviser wrote a very entertaining response that mixed Star Wars references with actual space program information. There was also the petition to take the petitions seriously. Many of the others that have met the threshold are regular policy issues that don’t lend themselves to much fun.

That’s where this Miley petition comes in. If 100,000 people sign it by August 1, we get to see what the White House says. Perhaps more interestingly, we could see who gets the assignment of penning the response. Is there a young, eager staffer who knows all the words and can make puns? Do they go with someone who could be Miley’s grandfather/mother and would lambaste the disrespectful youth of America?

The only way we find out is if enough people get involved. Remember, we’re not actually changing the song, just getting a response, so there’s really no downside. As I’m writing this, there are 843 signatures, leaving a paltry 99,157 to go.

If everyone who reads this blog signs we’ll be practically there, but maybe tell one or two friends just to be sure. And don’t forget to put your dreams in your cardigan before you leave the house.

July 11, 2013 Uncategorized
Walk It Up Up Up

The world is changing.

For years, Major League Baseball players have been selecting the songs that play when they walk up to the plate. They often reflect his personality or include a tongue-in-cheek nod to something about him, like Jayson Werth‘s choice of “Werewolves of London.”

On Friday though, I heard a song I was not ready to experience in that context. The speakers at Nationals Park boomed Bryce Harper’s name, then music from Miley Cyrus. Someone on Twitter pointed out that Harper used a Justin Bieber song earlier this season, so this shouldn’t be a shocking development. And given that he’s also about a month older than Miley, it makes sense that he would have songs from a different generation of artists than say Adam LaRoche.

Still, it caught me off guard, which brings up something I think would be a genius move for a hitter. Pitchers are so used to hearing certain songs that it becomes just like listening to a favorite radio station that has a certain playlist day after day. But what if a batter dropped something truly off the wall and broke the pitcher’s concentration just a bit. Wouldn’t that be an advantage?

Imagine you’re on the mound, you’re psyched up to throw to Harper, and all of a sudden this song starts blaring:

How could that not break your concentration? If Harper picked it, he would know it was coming, and would have the focus edge. Plus, since he’s someone who changes up his music all the time, the pitchers could never guess what he’s bringing next.

The first player to use the My Little Pony song as their walk-up music gets my eternal praise. Unless of course they play for the Phillies. I can’t support that.

July 7, 2013 baseball Uncategorized
Will The Last N64 Baseball Player Turn The Lights Out?

It seems like at this point in the human experience there’s nothing a quick Google search can’t answer.

But every once in a while, you have a question nobody has tackled on the Internet. Usually there’s a good reason for that, as in the case of a question my brother and I had: How many players from the Nintendo 64 game Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. are still playing today?

Well, world, I hereby present to you the answer: 14. Somehow half of them at one point played for the New York Yankees. Also, six of them play first base. Here’s the full list:

-Alex Rodriguez
-Derek Jeter
-Jason Giambi
-David Ortiz
-Todd Helton
-Mark Kotsay
-Paul Konerko
-Raul Ibanez
-Bartolo Colon
-Darren Oliver
-Andy Pettite
-Jamey Wright
-Latroy Hawkins
-Mariano Rivera

I made a spreadsheet to figure this out, and while it took far longer than I care to admit, it does give me an easy way to slice up some data about the roughly 800 Major League players. The “average” player on this list last played in 2003 for either the Expos or the Cardinals.

The team most often the last stop for a player was the Boston Red Sox, which had a whopping 40 compared to the average of 26. Players were least likely to end their careers playing for the Twins or Marlins, with 14 each.

How did those teams perform? The seven teams with the most such players finished Nos. 3, 8, 2, 8, 12, 20, and 1 in terms of regular season winning percentage between 1998-2012. The bottom seven teams finished at Nos. 17, 26, 18, 6, 10, 13 and 22. Of course there’s no way I would call this a causal link.

Here’s a chart showing those two data sets plotted together. Across the bottom you see the teams ranked by their cumulative regular season records for those 15 years. The blue lines show the number of last-stop players each team has had during that time.

(Click for a larger image)

Having a lot or a few of these last-stop players doesn’t seem to make a difference at all when it comes to winning championships, though. Nine different franchises have won the World Series in this era. Their ranks among the most last-stop players: 1, 4, 7, 14, 15, 23, 24, 28, 30.

But that’s not to say there’s nothing to learn here. I see a case for a moderate approach that can lead to the ultimate success. If you look at the Giants and Cardinals, they’re in the middle in terms of being a last stop, at Nos. 14 and 15, and at the same time rank fourth and sixth in regular season wins. Most importantly, they have combined to win four World Series titles since 1998.

I think we already knew this, but doing what they do seems like a good path to success. Now there’s narrow data from a 1998 video game to further make that case (again while ignoring a million other factors).

I’ll keep track of the list going forward, and will note when we get to the last player. Any bets on which guy it will be? Should he win a prize or something?

(Shout out to baseball-reference.com for making it super easy to look up each player’s bio in a simple, clean format.)

June 16, 2013 baseball nerdness Uncategorized video games