Michael Vick T-Shirts. hehe
You do not want to get on the wrong side of Peta.
And The Sports Hernia has a great part called FU Corner geared towards certain athletes, very funny.
What structure is needed where a ref can't effect the outcome of the game down the stretch? The structure where he is not on the floor? I understand he is trying to get at a greater theme, but it sounds like he is just trying to get his name in the news.
Love Schill.
On "Costas Now", ya know as opposed to "Costas at a time other than the present"...
"If someone wrote that stuff about me and I didn't sue their [butt] off, am I not admitting that there's some legitimacy to it?"
About Palmeiro- "The year he tested positive, nothing he did that year should count, which I think would take away 3,000 hits for him."
"If I wrote a book about Bob Costas and in that book I wrote about Bob Costas' girlfriend being on the road, and Bob Costas giving that girlfriend card show money and I outlined your daily steroid regimen, I've got to believe your first line of defense is to sue my [butt] off."
Read the whole ESPN.COM article.
On another note, I love Bob Costas, he is an absolutely fantastic baseball announcer, its ashame NBC only has skiing on, oh yeah, and the NHL.
Also, check out Schilling's Blog, 38pitches.com, always a good read.
Ok, this isn't totally sports related, but it involves beer and women, so its close. The busted game is the best. Let me know if you can beat them.
Milwaukee's Best Light
Well it was only a matter of time before people started posting specific games. What I don't get is that a lot of these calls are other officials, so he is implying other officials bet on the game as well. I'm not so sure about that, that is saying a lot, and no one else has been accused.
And the reply...
The guy at the end of the video egging on the baby is absolutely hilarious.
What I want to know, is who films their baby crying?
*I recommend reading the Citizen's Bank Park article first, because it better explains the research.
The gist of my study was that I used Google Earth to measure the distances from home plate to the wall, down the lines and in center field. I made sure Google Earth was correct by measuring the distance from home to the pitchers mound, home to first, and the football field at Lincoln Financial Field. All of those distances were within a foot, so the program is calibrated quite well. I also used some geometry to make sure the distances weren't meant to be to the top of the fence- which I discovered only adds a few inches.
I decided to do this for some other major parks around the league, and what I found is quite interesting.
Yankee Stadium:
Measurements
Left Field- 318 Feet
Center Field- 408 Feet
Right Field- 314 Feet
My Findings
Left Field -308 Feet
Center Field- 404 Feet
Right Field- 308 Feet
(I placed pins to see where the wall is in the right field corner, because the shadow makes it hard to judge)
And just to once again make sure the measurement is correct, here is the distance from home to the pitchers mound. Exactly 60 feet.
Fenway Park:
Measurements
Left Field- 310
Right Field- 302
My Findings
Left Field- 305 Feet
Right Field- 300 Feet
Wrigley Field:
Measurements
Left Field- 355 Feet
Center Field- 400 Feet
My Findings
Left Field- 355 Feet
Center Field- 400 Feet
US Cellular Field:
Measurements
Left Field- 330 Feet
Right Field- 335 Feet
My Findings
Left Field- 326 Feet
Right Field- 334 Feet
Minute Maid Park:
Measurements
Left Field- 315 Feet
Center Field- 435 Feet
My Findings
Left Field- 316 Feet
Center Field- 439 Feet
Now here is where it gets interesting...
Dodger Stadium:
Measurements
Left Field- 330 Feet
Right Field- 330 Feet
My Findings
Left Field- 325 Feet
* After looking at this, I compared it to a picture of the new layout, and it appears as if my marker is in the right place, notice how the foul pole is placed just inside where the fence makes a sharp turn and directly in line with the straight edge of the grass. I also zoomed in on the marker HERE and HERE to make sure of proper positioning. So it appears as if the fence is off by 5 feet, but here is where it gets really weird.
Right Field- 332 Feet
* How is it possible that what is seemingly a perfect arc, can have such a discrepancy in measurements, when my marker is placed as accurately as it can be. I even measured the distance to where first base would be, to make sure the angle in that direction wasn't effecting the distance, but it appears as if that distance is correct.
I'm stumped on this one, but it appears as if the dimensions are slightly off in either direction.
So what does all this mean?
Well, it appears as if some stadiums are grossly short in their official measurements of the walls. Yankee Stadium is off by 10 feet in left field, that is a lot. Fenway Park, which has the most famous left field in baseball, is off by 5 feet. Ironically, Wrigley Field, the oldest ballpark, has the most correct measurements along with Minute Maid Park (which actually underestimated center field, although that hill may play games with the distances). Now, this may or may not have an impact on the distances to the power alleys, but their is really no way to measure that, because the arc could make up for the short lines and because its hard to pinpoint where the exact measurement should be.
Is it a conspiracy theory? No. In cases like Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, the measurements have been off for years and there is no sense in correcting them. Imagine if the Yankees came out and said, "Actually it is only 308 feet to the left field foul pole, we just realized it after 20 years since the walls were redone." Totally unnecessary. In the case of the Phillies, I think they screwed up to begin with and then, being the secretive organization that they are, they didn't want to admit their mistake. In either case, you wonder what impact some of these distances have had on home runs. If the fence at Yankee Stadium was really 318 feet, how much lower might hone run totals be? We will never know.
A few feet may not seem like a lot, but in a game of inches, it can make all the difference.
Interesting article on livescience.com on how baseball players pick up the ball and track it.
And Science of Baseball has an interesting game to see if you could actually hit a fastball. My best time is .20 seconds. It looks like you need to be in the .2-.3 range to hit the ball. How is your time?
Swing early just for kicks and see what happens.
More baseball goodness.
Since today we are talking a lot about not the game, here is some more relevant "Oh My God America Sucks News" (that was my sarcasm font, nothing wrong with this one). Barry Bonds' ex mistress poses for Playboy. Can you even be an "ex mistress", doesn't mistress imply that you are not really official anyways? Oh well, shes still nude.
I have no problem with this, but we will now hear a year's worth of gambling related controversy. What will come first, the hour-long ESPN special "Blown Calls" or Chris Hansen catching Dick Bavetta with his pants down checking lines on Brandonlang.com?
On a day when one of football's star players is ordered to stay away from his team, an NBA referee is about to turn himself in to the FBI, and the commissioner of baseball refuses to show up to see the breaking of sport's most sacred record, we have have to ask ourselves: what the hell has happened?
Now, I'm not one of these people to say "Oh, athletes are nothing but rich, egotistical, bad examples for our children" or "Oh my god, Americans lack morals because there is so much sex, drugs, and violence in our culture", because, truthfully, other countries are much worse. On a recent trip to Munich I walked down a street lined with strip clubs that have posters of naked women on the OUTSIDE of the building. In Italy, after midnight, the local cable channel displayed live sex chats with women stripping based on the um, feedback of their callers. So I will not sit here and say "America is so awful", because its not, Europe is much worse. That being said, our culture's most important distraction, sports, has become the very thing it tries too distract us from.
Suddenly, the view of Barry Bond's alleged use of steroids as a despicable act takes a backseat to smashing a dog on the pavement. Needling up, to keep up with the Jones', pales in comparison to intentionally calling fouls to drive up the score. In any case, the three major sports all have a serious PR problem right now.
Vick, has the most serious of allegations. Dog fighting is one thing, but the fact that he would execute dogs that would not win him fights, is absolutely cruel and disturbing. Drowning, electrocution, and blunt force violence were his methods of making roster cuts. Makes the red tag Jake Taylor received in "Major League" seem pretty kind, right? Vick has been ordered away from Falcons camp, and the team will await more details before they inevitably will release him. What a nice story.
Tim Donaghy, the ref who bet on the NBA, is from my town and graduated Villanova University, my alma mater. Awesome. Glad he did Villanova proud...
That being said, I think the long-term impact of this is being overstated. Columnists and talking heads, including my favorite, Bill Simmons, have insinuated that this will have far reaching effects. That, every time we see a bad call in any sport, we will think the ref is gambling, or that the sacred trust of sports has been broken. Also being championed is this idea, that officials will be forever doubted.
To those who believe this, let me ask you something.
Every time a second baseman boots a ball, do you think he is throwing the game?
Every time a player hits a home run do we question if his bat is corked, or if he is on steroids?
No. In fact, with baseball, the steroid controversy had the opposite effect. We now assume that a player is not cheating since there was so much attention paid to it. We assume there is no way he would still have the balls to cheat.
The same thing will happen with gambling. Right now, it is the hot topic, and we will send out a lynch mob that will undoubtedly find more gambling in other sports. In a year from now, the topic will be so overblown and focused on, that any athlete, coach, official, or bat boy will be afraid to fill out their brackets, let alone bet on their sport. That is not to down play what Donaghy did, its terrible and makes you wonder how many games he affected, but it won't have the far reaching effects that many are predicting. He commited a criminal act, he didn't just do something that affected a recreational event like sports, he went out of his way to partner with the mob, bet, and blow calls - a lot of them. This is the exception, rather than the norm. Is it in the realm of possibility that this has happened before, or will happen again? Yes. But to think that aligning one's self with organzied crime, betting on, and throwing games in front of a national audience will become a common occurence, is a radical idea. And the argument that the referees aren't paid enough? Please. They make between 200k-300k a year and have the summers off. Using that logic, 95% of the population would be breaking the law to supplement their salary.
It ashame, this blog was founded on the principle of lauding and lampooning the elements around the game, but now we are talking about drugs, violence, and gambling. Hopefully this will blow over soon and maybe we can just get back to the game?
I am going down to Citizens Bank Park tonight and I am just looking forward to seeing Cole Hamels pitch.
In case you haven't noticed, the layout of Not The Game has changed. We switched to a blogspot server in order to better update our site, and provide a "comments" forum for our readers. We also now have RSS feeds and our stories can be read through Google, Yahoo, Bloglines etc.
Some of the old posts no longer have links, this is do to the transfer of stories from one page to another. If there are any popular links you would like to see, please e-mail me kyle@notthegame.com