Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Reverse-Jinxing the Mets

Back in January of 2012, I wrote a piece called "Reverse Jinxing the Giants".  My beloved G-Men were about to face the Niners in the NFC Championship game, and after a brief discussion of sports superstition, I laid out all the reasons the Niners would win.

I'm not sure what I was hoping to accomplish, exactly.  Did I think the Football Gods were a slow-witted bunch, easily duped?  Perhaps.  The ancient Greek Gods  were constantly being tricked - by mortals, by each other, by various and assorted supernatural beings.  But the Greek Gods were a vain and horny pantheon, and nobody is more easily punk'd than a randy narcissist.

Would the Football Gods be fooled by my obvious ploy?  Perhaps.  Football players aren't exactly the intellectual giants of our age.  I mean, we all went to high school, right?  So yeah, maybe their Gods are as dim-witted as the college linebacker who needs freshman nerds to do their remedial reading homework.

But more likely, I was emotionally preparing myself for defeat.  I wanted to get back to the Super Bowl so badly. Either the Ravens or Patriots would be the opponent, and I wanted the chance to avenge the 2000 loss to Ray Lewis, or shut up all the Patriots fans who thought 2007 was a helmet fluke.  Either way, it worked, and to this day all you have to do is whisper the name "Eli" into the ear of a Patriots fan, and he'll go into an apoplectic fit.  (Try it.  It's awesome.)

Anyway, now it's the New York Mets who - like those 2011 Giants - have defied all the pre-season prognosticators, and made it all the way to the Fall Classic.  And I want it badly.

But, I'm pretty darn sure Baseball Gods are not easily duped.  Baseball is the sport of the poet and the intellectual.  Baseball, by American standards, is our ancient sport - not some newcomer like basketball and football.  Baseball is not played by freakish physical mutants - again, I'm looking at you, Hoops and Pigskin.  It is a game to be taken in slowly, to be savored, to be appreciated, to be studied.  Baseball is eternal.

As Terrence Mann says in Field of Dreams:

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again. Oh...people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”

Clearly, I am not fooling the Baseball Gods.

But - Gods demand sacrifice and tribute and humility.

So, as a public service, I present to you all the reasons the New York Mets have absolutely no chance to beat the Kansas City Royals in the 2015 World Series.

Ah, screw it:  here, read Ben Lindbergh's piece...


Let's Go Mets!




Related Content:  The Winter Classic

Monday, May 11, 2015

A Gate Worthy of Its Name

Shady Brady Sacrifices the GOAT

For 40 years, lazy journalists have tacked the suffix -gate onto every scandal imaginable.

Travelgate.  Irangate.  Spygate.  The ever popular Nipplegate (or if you prefer, Wardrobe Malfunctiongate).  Gate scandals have gone global, in Argentina, Korea, and Germany.

My personal favorite is Gategate, a mini-contretemps in England involving an actual gate.

But very few of these Scandalgates resemble the original Watergate scandal in any meaningful way. Until now.  Deflategate is a delicious scandal*, not just because it rhymes but because in significant ways it follows the story line of the original Watergate scandal.

* full disclosure: it's also delicious because I enjoy watching Tom Brady and the Patriots suffer.  I'm a Giants fan, and the two Giants-Pats Super Bowls, well, I don't want to say those days were happier than my Wedding Day and the birth of my kids, but well...and also, in the great Manning vs. Brady debate, I'm a Manning partisan.  When the cameras showed a shades-inside Brady sauntering into the Mayweather-Pacquiao flight, fresh from his private jet from Kentucky Derby, I muttered at the TV, "Take off the sunglasses inside, you insufferable douc-"...Okay, it's possible I'm not totally objective on this story.

Here's how Deflategate is like Watergate:

The Cheating was Unnecessary
When the scandal first broke in January, Patriots fans rushed to Facebook and Twitter to say, "It's irrelevant - the Patriots beat the Colts 45-7!"  Wrong answer.  What's irrelevant is the score.  Cheating is cheating, and whether or not you needed to is irrelevant.

Take, for example, oh I don't know, the original Watergate scandal.  A group of low-level guys loosely affiliated with the Nixon campaign broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in June 1972.  5 months later, Nixon won in a massive landslide reelection - 49 states to 1!  He put a bigger whooping on George McGovern than the Pats put on the Colts.

I don't recall any of the Nixon Administration figures, grilled before the Senate, saying "Hey, it doesn't matter what happened - we won 49 states to 1, baby!"


The Cover-up was Worse - and Clumsier - than the Crime
Richard Nixon may not have invented 'the cover-up was worse than the crime', but he elevated it to an art form.

Tom Brady is no Richard Nixon.  And unlike Tricky Dick, Shady Brady seems to have been in on this plan from the beginning.

But still, there are intriguing  Watergate parallels.  The missing texts are the missing tapes.  The cover up included easily proven falsehoods like Brady claiming not to even know the equipment guy's name.  And of course, there were the constant protestations of innocence even as investigators were finding more and more evidence.


It's All About the Legacy

Richard Nixon's reputation was pretty darn good before it all unraveled.  His trip to China earlier in 1972 was a huge foreign policy achievement. He was on the verge of ending the Vietnam war.   And was popular enough to win reelection on a scale no Bush, Clinton, or Obama could even imagine.

Then came Watergate, resignation, disgrace.  

Tom Brady won't - and shouldn't - be forced to end his career like Richard Nixon.  But in the end, what matters most about this scandal is that it tarnishes his legacy.

Tom Brady is in the GOAT* conversation.  GOAT conversations aren't decided by blue-ribbon panels or by the leagues .  They're not decided by sportswriters or broadcasters - though they play a role.  They are not decided by stats geeks or league historians.  There's no vote.

*  Greatest of All Time

They are decided, if at all, by consensus.  We, the Collective Sports Fan, talk.  And we argue and we compare stats and titles.  And we call sports radio.  And sometimes, sometimes, we reach a consensus.

Wayne Gretzky.  Michael Jordan.  Jack Nicklaus.  John Wooden.  There is consensus that these are the GOATS in their field (though Bird and Magic and Tiger have their supporters.  The Great One and The Wizard of Westwood stand alone).

When Tom Brady won his 4th Super Bowl, he took a long stride towards winning the NFL GOAT award.  No player in history had combined Rings and Stats like Brady.  It was going to be difficult for Peyton Manning fans to argue the guy with one ring (and all the passing records) was the GOAT. It was going to be hard for Joe Montana fans to argue the guy with 15,000 fewer yards and 150 fewer TDs (and the same amount of rings) was the GOAT.

Tom Brady had laid claim to arguably the greatest sports laurel available to the American athlete - the greatest football player ever.

And now?  Well, everybody from New England will still vote for him.  And there will be pockets of Brady supporters everywhere.

But the consensus is lost.  With every pound per square inch the Patriots' equipment managers released from those balls, they released a bit of Tom Brady's claim to be the Greatest of All Time.


Bonus Material

The break-in guys in Watergate were the plumbers; and the deflaters did their work in the bathroom.

Ryan Grigson is Deep Throat.*

*  this is one of the interesting story lines that hasn't gotten enough attention.  Colts GM Ryan Grigson sent an email to the NFL before the game, alerting them to the possibility of deflated footballs.  Presumably this means this wasn't the first time Tom Shady sent his equipment boys into the bathroom to sit on footballs.  

Will Roger Goodell play the role of Gerald Ford, and pardon Tom Brady?

Update:  Apparently Not!  4 games, a million bucks, and 2 draft picks is no Ford pardon.

And finally, is Bill Simmons departure from ESPN the week of the Wells report a coincidence? Surely not...

This is just too much fun.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to crank-calling my Patriots fans friends.  When they answer I just go "ppppppppppppsssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhtttttttttt."