Conference Realignment

I expand on my thoughts from yesterday and Howard Megdal (future GM of the Mets) chimes in as well. I really enjoy writing for the Perpetual Post. I find that it challenges me and I hope my writing becomes stronger for it. Plus, I learned how much Dan Szymborski likes cheese.

Here's How to Fix College Football

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on college conference realignment. Right now the Great Realignment of 2010 is more of a whimper than a bang. The way folks were talking, it sounded like changes would've been more radical. Then again, the Pac 16 would have still been more Pacific than the Pacific Coast League.

I don't know about relegation, but there are some big conference/small conference alliances that might make sense. For instance, the MAC could partner with the Big 10 and if the Akron Zips are MAC champs, they could supplant Northwestern in the bigger conference.

Then again, the Pac 16 would have still been more Pacific than the Pacific Coast League. But we care more about college sports than minor league sports. Why? For some, it's the biggest game in town. This is true for places like Nebraska and Alabama. Others went to these sports powers or are affiliated with them somehow. For some, jhaving the last name O'xxx ties them to Notre Dame. But for someone like me, who lives in the middle of the Bowash megalopolis, it's the diversity of offensive and defensive philosophies. These guys aren't as good as the pros, but they play a different game. In football it could be the flexbone or spread. In hoops it could be the 2-3. Anyways, that's one aspect that makes me overlook the corruption in the college sports world; not that the pros are much better.

I'll have more thoughts on this elsewhere tonite.

Shrek and Donkey

When I first started this blog, I toyed with the idea of calling it What's Pastime Is Prologue and comparing a story in the headlines to one from the past. Some folks have done this with Stephen Strasburg and we are now acquainting ourselves with or reaquaintanting ourselves with Karl Spooner.

In Boston last Thursday, the Celtics beat the Lakers in Game Four of the NBA Finals thanks, in large part, to the efforts off the bench by Glen Davis and Nate Robinson. A fat guy and a short guy beat L. A.. It's almost inspirational. I was racking my brain to find a similar situation from the sports pages of the past. The one I thought of was the 1978 World Series, where Bucky Dent* and Brian Doyle led the New York Yankees in hitting when THEY beat L. A.. Dent was a regular, but he was expected to contribute more with the glove than the bat. Doyle was only playing because Willie Randolph went down with an injury at the end of the season. Doyle and Dent. Davis and Robinson. Are there any similarly odd couples that slipped my mind?

*It's much less painful to mention Dent than it was a few years ago.

Twilight of The Huskies

I appear in a Perpetual Post piece about UConn's men's hoops along with Howard Megdal. We also discussed the team (and college sports in general) on the radio along with Jason Clinkscales.

Manila Men Can't Jump

Speaking of Snipes....

One of my early posts here was about sports and ethnicity. I was discussing the Irish and baseball 130 years ago. Around that time I talked a bit on this site about my admiration for the hoops blog Free Darko. Here's a post there that I missed on basketball in the Philippines. I'm more than three months late on this one, but I wanted to pass it on. Enjoy.

More ramblings at Seamheads

I figure anyone who reads this blog with interest knows about my Seamheads pieces, but here's a link to the latest, Justin Case.

Just When I Thought That It Was Safe To Go To Work

Sean Forman and company added college hoops stats.

Monday Morning Shortstop

Comment of the week comes from digamma who discusses what happens when you bring at risk kids to an athletic event.

My old girlfriend once took a bunch of troubled kids from this craphole to see Woodsville host Tilton in high school basketball. A fight ensued, and it ended with the dramatic scene of her escorting the group out past bleachers full of people all screaming at them.

It's Winter Olympic time and has been for over a week. I've been catching bits and pieces of the games, but not much. Mainly I've been watching curling because it happens to be on when I get home from my day job. I suppose I could watch some stuff online, but I have yet to think of a computer as a substitute for a TV. I won't click on a YouTube video longer than 2:00. By the way, get off of my lawn.

Anyways, Joe Posnanski has a curiously short post about Miracle on Ice. That was 30 years ago? Back then, 30 years earlier was the Truman Administration.

Some Sabermetrics 101 stuff, if you are interested and do not know much about wOBA.

The main thing you missed this weekend that I didn't miss was the Smoky Joe Wood Chapter of SABR's winter meeting.

Larry Levine discusses what it was like growing up a Giants fan in the Bronx during the '40s and having to deal with Yankee and Dodger fans. This made 1951 feel that much sweeter for him (it also cancels out my feelings of impending old age after reminiscing about the Miracle On Ice.) This presentation sort of reminded me of Fever Pitch (the book, not the movie) and was probably the highlight of the afternoon. It was also early on in the meeting.




Joe Runde made a presentation of various tabletop baseball simulations like APBA and Strat-O-Matic. I should do a presentation someday on Earl Weaver Baseball.

I Went To A FIght And A Basketball Game Broke Out

This happened near me last week.

Police said some players started the fight allegedly after a player who didn't play in the game shoved an opponent while the teams shook hands. A police officer assigned to the game broke up that fight but then had to radio for backup when more fights broke out and parents spilled from the bleachers, police said. The officer then saw one parent attack another and then more parents joined the fray.

This wasn't in the inner city. These teams were from the suburbs and, frankly, not good. Sherman Cain of the subscription-only Journal Inquirer had this to say.

Sgt. Daniel Casale of the Enfield police department said that “The heckling started before the game was actually over.’’

Heckling? One team entered the game with a 3-12 record. The other entered the game with a 1-14 record. With those kinds of records, everybody needs to just shut up and play, or shut up and sit on your hands if you don’t know how to root properly at a high school event.

I attended a couple of high school basketball games this year and would guess this is an aberration. The crowds seemed pretty well behaved.

Interesting Discussion on Pro vs College Hoops

It's on this page. Start at post #7626. I make an appearance under the pseudonym Gary Geiger Counter.

This and That

1. Some more thoughts on Wilt 1962:

It's the kind of book that I like; a microhistory of one particular event. I've read a couple of books like that on the Colts-Giants game (Gino Marchetti was there AND at this game, So were some other Colts, They played a warmup game against the Eagles before the main event.), Don Larsen's perfect game, and Dan Okrent's Nine Innings. The book reminded me that the game took place in Hershey, Penn.; not Philly or any other big city. It also had a lot of info about the games' other participants. It sort of game me a taste of what times were like 15 years before I started following sports. Today, there'd be a bunch of YouTube clips of the game. Then, there was one photographer and no media other than those that followed the Warriors. In any event, they moved to the West Coast the next year.

2. Bethlehem Shoals moved from TSN to Fanhouse (He still blogs at Free Darko) and recently wrote about stardom. How do you define it? I'd like to see someone tackle that for baseball. Maybe I will some day. But I still want to discuss the basketball labor struggles and haven't made much progress. BTW, Shoals alludes to those here.

3. I read a couple of chapters of the Brian Billick book. He shows an awareness of the football blogosphere. Too, the added variety in the NFL since my childhood is sets, not plays; at least according to that book. Some say that most teams run the same few plays. I didn't play fantasy football this year and the Giants didn't have a good season. Without those two incentives to watch, I thought college football was more interesting. This is the reverse of how I felt about the two popular forms of basketball a couple of years ago. (I have notes on this somewhere. I just can't find them at the moment.)

Tim Lemke On Sports Books

Greg Franklin mentioned this post over at Baseball Think Factory. (Discussion)

I just finished reading Wilt 1962 by Gary Pomerantz. (That website really complements the book.) Lemke would probably classify it as a Feinstein-esque Book. I'm a sucker for these microhistory books. Anyways, Pomerantz mentioned something in the acknowledgements that may or may not stick with me. I've been kind of down on oral history because it has been demonstrated that peoples' memory can be pretty hazy most of the time. However, he found it useful providing you use multiple sources. That wasn't especially profound, but it hadn't occurred to me recently.

The Spirit of '76 Part I: Rudy LaRusso

(This is will be an ongoing look at the history of the NBA Players Association.)

Before there was Curt Flood, there was Rudy LaRusso. I mentioned him earlier this month in a piece that I found on my hard drive. Rudy was a tough forward; half-Italian, half-Jewish who hailed from Brooklyn and went to James Madison High. From there he went to Dartmouth before being drafted by the then Minneapolis Lakers. Red Auerbach had territorial rights to him, but passed. He was an All-Star, a Don Rickles fan (according to one news story), and must've been something of an enforcer. In my research on him, I found a number of boxscores that said "Fouled Out - LaRusso."

In January of 1967, LaRusso was part of a three way trade that would send him to Detroit. But he refused to go to the Pistons and retired. He had established himself in the Los Angeles area and had a day job as a stockbroker in Beverly Hills with McDonnell and Company. The league suspended him. LaRusso's attorney filed an anti-trust suit and sought compensation for the balance of his contract plus any future basketball income. But the forward and the NBA never went to trial.

1967 was also the year that the American Basketball Association started. One of the franchises would be the Oakland Oaks (Pat Boone would be a part owner.) They hired Bruce Hale as head coach. Hale's son-in-law was Rick Barry. Barry would jump across the Bay from from the San Francisco Warriors to the new team (more on that in a future edition of this series.) The NBA was also expanding that year and SF also lost Warrior-poet Tom Meschery. They needed a forward. So head coach Bill Sharman talked ownership into trying to see if LaRusso would be interested in going north. The 6-9 Ivy Leaguer said that he'd "rather pursue a career than a lawsuit" and SF purchased his rights from Detroit.

Leonard Koppett and David Halberstam have written about different events involving the NBAPA, but I didn't see anything by them about LaRusso. So I worry that I may be overstating the significance of him here. But two years later, there were a number of baseball players who were traded that balked at the deals; Donn Clendenon, Hawk Harrelson, and, ultimately, Curt Flood. Were they inspired by LaRusso?

Liberated Fandom

I'm still having trouble trying to liberate myself from rooting for particular laundry. If I don't have a rooting interest for a particular team in a game, I'm still not likely to watch it. But that John Wall kid is fun to watch when he's on.

Wilt VW Ad

Reading About Baseball With Bethlehem Shoals

Shoals is on of the guys from the Darko Liberation Front. In this interview, almost two years old, he extols the virtues of Ritter and Honig's The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. I've never read this book. Bill James pans it, but I should give it a shot. I've enjoyed other stuff by the two authors; especially The Glory of Their Times. Shoals goes on about the sections devoted to Pete Reiser and Herb Score. This might partially explain the Free Darko philosophy.

Greatest Current Name In Sports

Could it be Pawel Kielbasa? I dig how was born in and plays in Chicago.

The Book of Basketball is...

...is like the New Bill James Historical Abstract if Bill James was into basketball and pop culture and a little more Bones McCoy than Spock.

That was my take on it. Kevin Pelton goes into a little more depth.

One section that Simmons wrote was about a wine cellar list, where he picks certain vintage of players for a game where the earth's survival hinges on the outcome. I think it would be neat to spitball a similar baseball team. Who'd get picked first? '23 Ruth? '09 Honus Wagner? Or are has the game changed too much since then?

It was just an exhibiton game

You figure that, as a UConn fan, I would have laughed at Syracuse losing to LeMoyne last night. I'm really not one to gloat to begin with and it was an exhibition, by Jove. Now this was an upset!