With everyone focused on Tim Donaghy’s allegations of fixed playoff games, I thought it might be good to look at something related to the Finals that did not involve officiating. So here it is. The Lakers ugly win in Game 3 of the Finals prevented a Celtics’ sweep of the series. Why is that self-evident statement of any interest?
The Lakers have been swept from the NBA Finals more than any other team in the NBA. It happened to them while they were still in Minnesota (against the Celtics) and it happened to them against the Sixers and the Pistons in the 80s. It won’t happen this year.
Left-handed pitchers have careers of unusual longevity in MLB. Many continue to get slots on rosters as situational relief pitchers long beyond their abilities to go out there and pitch three consecutive innings. But the results of the 2008 season so far might give GMs around baseball some pause. Barry Zito’s plummeting effectiveness married with his long and expensive contract portend an albatross around the neck of the Giants’ ownership for more than a few years now. Last year, Zito’s ERA was 4.35; that’s not good although it isn’t horrible either; last year his WHIP was 1.35, which is not good but not horrible. However, in 2008, Barry Zito’s ERA is 5.83 and his WHIP is 1.87; both of those numbers are horrible. And Barry Zito is still a young left-handed pitcher.
However, Barry Zito may get a reprieve from the scorn of the fans if the career of Dontrelle Willis continues to plummet earthward. Willis is still a youngster and has just found himself optioned to Class A baseball. That is where kids just out of high school and college reside as those guys try to start a career that will hopefully end in the major leagues. The odds are at least 100-1 against them. Dontrelle Willis is there because the Detroit Tigers want to see if he can get any of those guys out because he surely did not do that in Detroit.
Last year, Willis pitched for a miserable Marlins team so one might overlook his 10-15 record. Nevertheless, in 2007, Willis’ ERA was 5.17 and his WHIP was 1.60. Those numbers are bad and they have nothing at all to do with the less than full competence of the team around him. Detroit gave him a contract extension worth about $30M and Willis has been just awful this year. His ERA is an astronomical 10.32; his WHIP is 2.47. In his last start in Detroit, he walked eight batters in less than two innings. There are pitching machines that can equal or beat those numbers.
These two cases should be a caution signal for baseball GMs as they think they are falling in love with a left-handed pitcher. Might it be time to re-examine some baseball dogma about the value of left-handed pitchers?
Recently, Roger Clemens amended the charges in the defamation suit he filed against his former trainer/needler, Brian McNamee. The additional charge claims the “intentional infliction of emotional distress” by McNamee against Clemens caused by McNamee’s assertion that Roger Clemens took performance-enhancing drugs. Time for the usual disclaimer here; I am not a lawyer so all I can do is comment on this in terms that I – and hopefully most everyone else – can understand.
A charge of “intentional infliction of emotional distress” – dare I give it the acronym IIED to save keystrokes – means that the defendant (McNamee) intentionally and purposefully engaged in an activity (accusing Clemens of using performance-enhancing drugs) which results in emotional pain and suffering on the part of the defendant (Clemens). Now I presume that courts have some threshold of “distress production” here lest everyone who has ever been called a “bodily orifice that rhymes with glass bowl” might sue under this umbrella. I refereed basketball for 37 years; if that were the case, I could have about 10,000 lawsuits meandering their way through the legal system at this moment.
Actually, if Roger Clemens wants to charge anyone – other than himself of course – with IIED, he might think about filing suit against the folks who advised him to demand a Congressional appearance and to refuse to talk to the Mitchell Commission prior to the issuance of the Mitchell Report. The problem with that is he would be filing suit against his own lawyer. That could get sticky.
Terrell Owens is now on the NFL’s list of players who may receive additional drug testing scrutiny. Let me be clear; Owens did not fail a drug test; there is no indication that he has ever failed a drug test. He finds himself on the list because he missed a scheduled drug test. The explanation given is that he never got messages left for him on his phone or his cell phone. Missing a drug test automatically puts one on the list for “enhanced testing.”
This “failure of communication devices” leads to some interesting scenarios to ponder:
Terrell Owens just signed a new contract extension with the Cowboys wherein he received something on the order of $13M guaranteed. When his agent or Jerry Jones needed to get in touch with him to arrange to sign that deal, TO’s phone seemed to work perfectly. So, should the NFL drug testers have asked Jerry Jones to contact TO and notify him of his test date and time? After all, Jones’ calls seem to get through and/or his messages seem to receive attention.
Terrell Owens may need to think about changing his cell phone plan. If he really never got a notice that there was a message for him to respond to, then he had better have a different service provider pretty quickly. Now that he is on the “enhanced testing list”, a missed drug test will cost him an automatic four-game suspension – - and the loss of four game checks at his new augmented salary level. He is now subject to 24 random drug tests throughout the calendar year. If he does not get the message again, the league office might want to start leaving messages that begin with, “Can you hear me now?”
Finally, here is an observation from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:
“Michael Vick has been ordered to pay more than $2.4 million to a Canadian bank for defaulting on a loan. Damn. And just when things were going so well for him!”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…