WSJ: George Steinbrenner, The Yankee Capitalist.

Allen Barra weighs in on Big Stein. I like Barra, even if he seems to have a bias for the Yankees and the Crimson Tide. He is underrated by the blogosphere. For instance, Football Outsiders didn't acknowledge his work with George Ignatin on football stats. At least this was the case last time I checked a couple of years back. I apologize if this has been rectified.

Bill Veeck, the legendary Chicago White Sox owner and showman, who also was no gentleman, saw a kindred spirit in Steinbrenner. "I like George," he once told me for a story I was writing for the Journal. "He breaks all the unwritten rules."

I plan on expanding on this and other thoughts later tonite.

Chris Brown's Library

I always like it when Chris over at Smart Football makes posts like this.

Sports Stats Sites: A Quick Compendium

Baseball
1. Baseball Reference
2. Retrosheet
3. Fangraphs
4. Baseball Prospectus

Basketball
1. Basketball Reference
2. College Basketball Reference
3. Basketball Prospectus

Football
1. Pro Football Reference
2. Football Outsiders

Hockey
1. Hockey Reference
2. Puck Prospectus


I think those are the major non-mediaconglomerate stat sites. Am I missing anything?

Never Saw Them Play

Every Day Should Be Saturday makes Deadspin look like the Dick Cavett show, but I have them in my Reader. Their latest post admonishes poll voters to get a DVR and watch all the games. This might be more important for voters for individual awards like the Outland Trophy. Football stats might not mean much on the individual level, but when it comes to ranking teams, can't you just use Sagarin Ratings or something similar as a guide? It might not be useful the first couple of weeks, but after enough iterations, you should be able to get a pretty clear picture of how to rank the various teams. BTW, what do D-II and D-III voters do? What about the NAIA?

WSJ: Innovative NFL Coach Favored Air Attack

Don Coryell's offensive-minded approach helped spark a passing revolution in professional football.

Mr. Coryell, who died Thursday at age 85, was the designer of the "Air Coryell" offense for the National Football League's San Diego Chargers. His teams never made it to the Super Bowl—a fact that may have kept Mr. Coryell out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame—but they exemplified a wide-open style of offense that fans loved.

"He helped give the game the entertainment value that it has today," said Kellen Winslow, a Charger tight end who played for Mr. Coryell. "Before that, the NFL was three yards and a cloud of dust."

I like the running game, but I did prefer Air Coryell to Bill Walsh's version of the West Coast Offense. Any pigskin experts here know what his legacy is? Do any teams still throw long as much as the Chargers did?

Hartford Courant: Suspect In Jasper Howard Slaying Faces New Charges

NBC Connecticut link. I plan on aggregating these as stories are posted.

Heisman Pundit

Stumbled across this site thanks to Senator Blutarsky. There series on program and talent rankings intrigues me. It reminds me a little of the work that Chris Jaffe has done on evaluating baseball managers. Could we evaluate college football coaches on how well or poorly they convert bluechip recruits into NFL performers? I don't think that's the only mission of coaches, but let's be honest. These teams are part of the de facto NFL farm system.

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.

16 Years Ago Today

The low-speed O.J. Simpson chase took place 16 years ago today. I was at work, so I didn't catch it on TV, but I saw the ESPN documentary last nite. I've dabbled in writing about sports and crime before . I'm thinking about doing it more often. There's the murder of Jasper Howard. There are also a few other high profile incidents that I'd like to discuss in the near future. Be patient, though. This requires a little more thought and legwork than my regular stuff.

Anyways, it's a big sports day. Game Seven and I unfortunately have an early dentist appointment tommorrow.

Mini Book Review: The Catch

Crossposted from Residual Prolixity:

The Catch was disappointing. I was hoping that it would go into more about how San Francisco overtook the Cowboys as an NFC power. The book does touch on that, but it could have gone into more depth.

Sure, they mentioned the West Coast Offense, but the author didn't explain how the rule changes a few years earlier made it feasible. Or how those changes may have spelled the death of Dallas's Flex Defense.

FWIW, two parts of Landry's offense live on: the multiple formations and the shotgun. IIRC, no one else was really using those tools at the time. But I don't think the writer touched on that at all. Xes and Os may scare some folks off, but I'd like to read about them; as long as there are accessible enough for me, a layman, to understand.

These Are Their Stories

Saw this article on Law and Order over the weekend. I like how it compares L&O to a classic detective story whereas other cop shows like Homicide or NYPD Blue were more hard-boiled. Interestingly, they are both part of the Tommy Westphall Universe thanks to Detective Munch. But real life links interest me more. Through Fred Thompson, L&O (sounds like a railroad, doesn't it?) can connect the US Senate to Jason Sehorn or longtime umpire George Moriarty or the metal-rap group Body Count. But I haven't figured out a satisfying round trip yet. Ham sandwich to the best one in the comments section.

The Other USC

I started following this blog because Chris at Smart Football kept linking and mentioning it. The fact that the writer's nom de blog is Senator Blutarsky and that he has a cool pic of James Brown and (I believe) Vince Dooley sealed the deal. Anyways, he links to a preview that names the University of South Carolina as a darkhorse candidate for the 2010 national championship. Guess who beat them in a bowl game last year? That's right! UConn.

My First Baseball Piece

I think that this links to my piece on Mike Morgan. If not, run it through archive.org and see if it comes up. I used up a lot of my creative capital on that one and it was a while before I wrote something that I thought approached it in quality. I even ripped myself off once and wrote about George Blanda. I submitted that piece to Football Outsiders, but they rejected it. It was disappointing, but life goes on...

EDIT - I believe Devin McC commented on the Mike Morgan thread.

Carpetbaggers

New York UFL Team Moves To Hartford.

This will make up for Brooklyn stealing the Dark Blues way back in 1877. An 0-6 team. But the roster may be different. Jason Page said a lot of UFL players moved up to the NFL last year including J.P. Losman and Garrett Hartley.

Did anyone here catch a UFL game last year? I caught a bit of one on VS, but I forget if the style of play was more run-oriented or pass-oriented . I imagine it they passed a lot, but that's just the nature of football today.

Monday Morning Shortstop

Comment of the week, from Nick:

Jon,
(Disclaimer: I made a comment along these lines Friday, but it's never appeared on your blog. Don't know what happened.) Anyway:
Bo Jackson would be a good Maranvillian. Some of the stuff he did was breathtaking. A homer I saw him hit off Oswaldo Peraza in 1988 is probably somewhere around Saturn by now.

Inspired choice. Bo knew strikeouts, he knew home runs, and he knew stolen bases. In 1989, he led the league with the highest Power/Speed number. A look at the yearly leaders shows some other guys mentioned here: Reggie Jackson, Mark Reynolds, Jackie Robinson, and Larry Walker to name a few. Versatility isn't just for Meryl Streep. It may also be a good quality for Maranvillains, now that I think about it. How was he as a fielder? I seem to recall him as aggressive, but most of his career coincided with my Army days and I didn't follow baseball much those years. It was hard to without a TV back then.

There was some sporting event last nite, and Brian Burke commented on the ballsiness of one coach.

A call for scoresheets.

Dave Allen has an idea for a new boxscore. To tie these last two together, Bill James had an idea in one of his Baseball Abstracts that involved a scoresheet style boxscore. I liked that and thought it was the most concise way to tell the story of a game.

One of my friends calls Joe Mauer a baseball robot, but this is a nice story about him; if you get ESPN Insider. If not, it's in the latest "The Mag."

This makes me feel old

Today’s Hartford Courant said that Tebucky Jones Jr. signed a letter of intent to attend UConn. I didn’t know Jones was old enough to have a son that old.

Tommy Brookshier, 78

Tom Brookshier succumbed to cancer at the age of 78 last Friday. He was a Philadelphia Eagle way back in the '50s and '60s, but I remember him as a color guy on TV. CBS teamed him up with Pat Summerall. I first became conscious of football around the time of the Pisarcik Fumble. I got some Sports Illustrated book about football by Bud Wilkinson for Christmas around that time and Brookshier and Summerall seemed to cover a lot of the games I watched in those days. They were the number one team for CBS. (I still remember the pregame with a young Brent Musberger, Irv Cross, and Jimmy the Greek.) My dad was a Giants fan and I became one, so we watched their games. Plus, the Cowboys seemed to be on quite often back then.

Brookshier probably wasn't that much older than I am now when I used to watch those games.

Monday Morning Shortstop

Comment of the week:

With regard to the Rabbit Maranville All-Stars and the lack of a catcher and second baseman, Nick said:

I dunno, maybe Jackie Robinson at 2B, although he played first in '47. For catcher, maybe Johnny Bench.

I like Robinson. Stealing home during the World Series? That's the type of thing I'm looking for.

A new bio of Willie Mays is coming out. A ham sandwich for the first person who can tell me who the Mets traded for him. (Don't look it up.)

Brian Burke asks if Kurt Warner is a Hall of Famer. He shows some of his advanced stats but admits that that's only part of the picture.

I celebrated SABR Day Saturday at a breakfast with some other Nutmeggers. One was a prof at Turk Wendell’s alma mater. Says that when Turk’s meal plan money ran out, he would hunt birds with rocks and eat them. Another once went to a Negro League game. Saw the Indianapolis Clowns. Goose Tatum played first.

This and That (Ctd)

To continue my thought from yesterday, I think that I enjoy sports more when they are not just a clash of two opponents, but a clash of competing philosophies. As my friend, the Sheriff, said four years ago, "Certainly, that’s something else the NCAA has over the NFL. The varied offenses provide a lot of entertainment. There’s so little difference in the pro game that a game between two random teams carries a lot less interest to me."

I guess that's why baseball during the 1980s might have been better than it has been through most of it's history; what with The Saint Louis Cardinals practicing Whiteyball versus Harvey's Wallbangers in the'82 World Series.