Adopt a Prospect 3.4: Why I Like JT Chargois More than A-Rod

More interesting that Target Field

It has not been an easy last two weeks for our Adopted Prospect: Mr. Jon Tiberius Chargois (okay it's Jon Thomas...but give me some nerd slack). He had his worst outing of the year giving up 6 earned runs on three walks and three hits, and the breezy dominance that made Chargois a Florida State League All-Star seems like a distant memory compared to his current form.


And yet, this weekend, as the Twins got snake bitten (again) by the Yankees and their complicated, record-book busting (again) DH Alex Rodriguez, I found myself eagerly turning away from the superlative performances of A-Rod at Target Field, to the minor league box scores for word of Chargois.


It may seem like a silly comparison: Alex Rodriguez, love him or hate him, will go down in the annals of baseball history; JT Chargois will be in this odd little corner of cyber space...but probably, not much else. And while the part of me that loves athletic excellence is inclined to see the very best players do their very best work, a much larger part of me wants to cheer for Chargois much MUCH more than A-Rod.

The reasons I care more about a AA reliever than the fourth most prestigious home run hitter in baseball doesn't depend on the history of a rivalry, or the fact that one is paid by Minnesota billionaires and the other is paid by New York billionaires. It comes back to the fact that Sports is the rare entertainment that demands honesty.

Other entertainments live on the other side of truth. Movies and books are fictional. Music and even visual arts (painting and sculpture) are as much about what people (and record companies) know will sell, rather than purely what people have lived or feel.

But sports demands honesty. Do your best, play fair, and may the best team win. Do that, and we'll root, root, root for the rest of our lives.

Therein lies the problem. A-Rod is fundamentally dishonest: he didn't trust his best to be good enough, he didn't play fairly with those who stayed clean, and he tried to rig the game so his team would be better than the best.

No question, A-Rod is entertaining, powerful and impressive (even more so on PEDs). But that was a fiction. He insisted he was legitimate twice, once while using and once after getting caught in two more moments of dishonesty. If he was a pro-wrestler, or doing some crazy in-depth performance art it could be strangely intriguing, but instead it's just fake, false and infuriating to watch.

That's why I like a middling AA prospect and can't stand one of the best power-hitters in over a century of baseball. Because JT Chargois is not perfect and makes no pretenses about it. His scuffles at AA are part of the game, an honest failure, just as his run of scoreless innings from April to June was an honest success.

I don't like Alex Rodriguez. I don't wish him ill. I don't hope he suffers. I just wish he were more like JT Chargois.

A-Rod's Latest Venture

Last Week, NPRs Comedy/News/Quiz show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" offered this final question: "Now that he's banned from baseball for a year, what will Alex Rodriguez do next?" While I am by no means a PJ O'Rourke, Luke Burbank or Faith Sailey, this is my answer:

Twi-Night

Volume 1 of "The Magical Game Saga" by Alex Rodriguez 

author of Out of The Ballpark

***

The following galley excerpt reflects the tone of Alex's authorial voice as he goes where pretty much every celebrity goes during their down time these days--into the highly lucrative world of fantasy/paranomal romance/adventure

***

Jessica's chest heaved as she beheld the gleaming, muscular chestnut bodies of the mighty stallions standing before her. Because, chicks dig horses...d'uh.

But these were no normal horses, they were stronger, more powerful and more exquisite than any horse breed Jessica had seen before. And atop each beautiful equine frame was the rippling muscles of a finely defined torso, with human arms and a human face. Because, chicks dig dudes more than horses...double d'uh.

Anyway, Jessica Cameron's eyes beheld these centaurs as they played the greatest, sexiest game ever: Baseball. And they played it, majestically, marvelously, with a grace and flair that had never been seen by human eyes before. And her eyes landed on one centaur in particular, that incredibly handsome boy next door, Alex. The one whose very presence in the hallways made the girls swoon, and Cameron Kate in particular go all weak in the knees.

He turned and saw her. Kate's heart skipped a beat. She turned to run back through the forest, terrified that they would charge her, threaten her, banish her from their beautiful presence forever. But as she ran through the stand of trees she heard the swift clatter of hooves behind her. Without daring to look back, she plunged ahead, until a scattering of leaves on the forest floor made her stop short to see that Alex had out run her...because he had the legs and strength of a horse...so he was like, super fast and stuff.

"You shouldn't have come," Alex said.

"I'm sorry," Kate Torrie muttered, "I just wanted--"

"It's okay, I'm glad you did," Alex told her, "we need your help."

"What?" She asked, her eyes glowing up at him, revering his muscles and beauty like the man-horse-god he truly was.

"Our way of life is threatened, Torrie Fill-in-blank-with-Current-Girlfriends-Name-Here. We Centaurs are a noble race. All we want to do is show humanity the full limits of their potential. We survive and thrive on a special delicacy of the forests, known as the Gummi Bears."

"Gummi Bears?"

"Bouncing here and there, and everywhere. Yes. They are the Gummi Bears. But the wicked troll king of our forest, named Se-lug, has banned all mystical creatures from eating Gummies, even though we totally didn't eat them, but if we did they only helped us reach our best, and who is he to judge anyway, he made millions of dollars off us before, but I don't care, I'm totally above it all, so, whatever you know."

"Totally," she said.

They were in love.

***Twi-Night will--God willing-never be available ever***

Alex Rodriguez: Baseball's A-Hole Boyfriend

Is that a match or a cup of tea?
(sportspickle.com)

I've always been a bit of a softie when it comes to athletes in trouble. I rooted for Nick Blackburn and Tsuyoshi Nishioka to make a comeback when they were as unpopular as they could possibly be, I defended Joe Mauer through the public vitriol that surrounded his last two underwhelming seasons (I even still like Johan Santana despite his recent troubles). It took me a long time to even acknowledge that favorite players from my youth (like Mark McGwire) could be cheating, and once they were I found ways to appreciate their performances despite it all.


So I may seem an unlikely person to say this, but: I want Alex Rodriguez to lose every-damn-thing he has.

Ideally this would be Pete Rose territory. Done for life, reduced to lurking on the fringes of the game, a cautionary tale for all the players who follow.

The 300 Million? I want it given back to the Rangers and Yankees for gross misappropriation--after all somebody who breaks rules has fundamentally stolen from their employer. (Holy cow, I can't believe I want the Yankees to get money back...)

The 3 MVPs? Take them back, mark them void, send him on an apology tour to the homes or clubhouses of every player he cheated his way past in the record books, every player he pushed to join him in using, every player he blocked from a major league debut and the pride of that achievement.

The pull he had over the media (from self-aggrandizing interviews to popcorn-feeding-gate) for the better part of a decade? Ask the media to announce his ban and then refuse him any chance to explain himself. Shut his ass out and give him a national cold shoulder. (Should be particularly painful for a man so insecure and self-obsessed as Rodriguez).

I feel gross even posting this
(totalprosports.com)

Why am I picking on A-Rod? Why berate him, while acknowledging that I can see a case for Bonds, Sosa, McGwire and Clemens in the hall of fame? Why dream up punishments that are totally unfeasible particularly when there's no chance to enact them? Why vent some spleen all over his head while ignoring the frustrations of players on the team I actually care about?

To be honest, I'm not totally sure. Anger doesn't help anything: what's done is done and shouting about it doesn't change what happened.

The depths of his cheating are no worse and no better than those of Bonds et. al. Bud Selig's not about to satisfy my personal whims. And what befalls a delusional multi-millionaire has little effect on other things I worry about (my family, my friends and Oswaldo Arcia's maturation at the plate).

I think ultimately the reason I'm so mad about A-Rod is because I feel personally defrauded.

Like I said, I'm a softie. So when he admitted to using before, I was let down but encouraged by the thought that he would admit a mistake and let us all start fresh. I didn't really want him to break any records, but if he could just move on with some dignity and class, I would appreciate the chance to beat him fairly and squarely.

I wasn't driving the "Forgive and Forget" bandwagon, but I was all for sweeping the ugly incident under the rug and moving on with life. I wasn't going to attend games with chants or sneers or crude signage, I was just going to shake my head and applaud when a Twins pitcher made him look silly.

A-Rod with his one true love
(rollingout.com)

But I was lied to. We were all lied to. Asked to believe that he was more than he is, that he means more than he does, to give him a measure of courtesy that he certainly doesn't feel that average people are entitled to ("I'm going to keep lying to you, you just pretend like you don't mind it")

Alex Rodriguez is baseball's A-hole boyfriend. He cheated on us...twice. He stole our money and spent it on his own obscene comfort.

This isn't Nick Blackburn and Tsuyoshi Nishioka hurting a team by playing poorly; this isn't Joe Mauer or Johan Santana cashing a large paycheck while hurt; this isn't a player who tried and failed despite their best efforts to play well or stay healthy.

This is a player who knowingly and willfully misled a large group of fans, executives and teammates for his own gain....twice. This is a player who knew what he was doing was against the rules and proceeded to do it anyway...twice. This is a person who hurt those who watch, those who play, those who earn their living from a game he supposedly "loves", and who expects us all to let him do it.

Alex Rodriguez is baseball's a-hole boyfriend. Using us, abusing us, insisting that he'll change and that he should be trusted in spite of a god awful track record. I can forgive those who make an effort. I can forgive those who have bad luck. I can forgive those who make a mistake...even if it takes them way too long to admit it.

But I refuse to tolerate, defend or ignore reprehensible behavior. Anger doesn't change that behavior...but it is an honest reaction to it.

Hmmm...honesty....something our a-hole boyfriend might want to try.

The Nobel Prize, Steroids and You

In what will come as no surprise to anyone who reads my writing regularly, I don't like math. I much prefer words (hence the whole teaching English and writing-a-tonnage-of-words-for-my-own-amusement-thing), but I know that math has a valuable place in the world.

That's why I read London based magazine The Economist (well, that and the snarky captions & covers). In the most recent issue, one of the magazine's Science and Technology writers explained how mathematics can solve the primary dilemma that athletes, governing bodies and fans face when they face steroid use.

Using the game theory branch of mathematics, the writer explains how and why using steroids to cheat can seem to be the only rational behavior for athletes, especially those involved in direct competition with other individuals (like the recently implicated sprinters Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell). While baseball, as a team game, is a slightly different scenario, many of the same principles hold, so consider how game theory explains the use of steroids in baseball through the following goofy teacher analogy (again, I teach English not Math, so bear with me...and if you are a math/economics person please tell me to pull down this post so I can make it actually accurate).

Say you have two players getting together for a little driveway home run derby. Let's call them "Bryan Raun" and "Moe Jauer". They'll be competing against each other and have the option to either cheat or play fairly. That means that there are four possible outcomes depending on what each player decides to do. (Symbolized in the box below by "C"s for Cheat and "F"s for Fair).

The Game Board

If the player's only goal is to win, and if cheating helps them to do so (say, by making their muscles big and avoiding injuries through some magical injection or something) , it quickly becomes clear what they should do to maximize their chance to win: Cheat. If Moe cheats, he can win or have an even shot at winning. If he plays fairly he can lose or have an even shot at winning. Only 1 of the 4 outcomes (25%) can have playing fairly end with a chance to win, but 2 of the 4 outcomes (50%) can have cheating end with a chance to win. It's simple probability: Cheat.

Option 1: The Merits of Cheating

But let's say the game isn't played just between "Bryan" and "Moe". Let's say that Bryan's crazy Uncle Bud watches them to make sure that the game is played fairly (like most used car salesmen, Uncle Bud's ethical like that). Now Uncle Bud decides that he'll watch them play and if he catches either Moe or Bryan cheating they'll automatically lose. Suddenly the strategy of the game changes, and playing fair gives you a 50% probability of getting a chance to win, while cheating only gets you a 25% chance (i.e. if Moe and Ryan both cheat, but only Ryan gets caught, then Moe wins)

Option 2: Fair Play

That might be the best way to play the game, if like Uncle Bud, all you care about is ethics. But let's pretend that Uncle Bud likes money (I know, I know...odd for a Used Car Salesman), so Uncle Bud decides to let other people watch Bryan and Moe play for a nominal fee. We can also pretend that Uncle Bud invites Mike to sell lemonade at the game and promises both the fans and Mike that the game will be really entertaining, exciting and EXTREMELY competitive. (As an added bonus, whoever wins the most might earn a little more money from fans and could be hired by Mike to tell everyone how great that Lemonade is.)

Now "Moe" and "Bryan" have even more incentive to win first and foremost, and Uncle Bud has an incentive slightly greater than fairness: he wants excitement, competition and success. So Moe and Bryan have to do some quick thinking. Does the desire to win and make money trump the desire for fairness?

Many people immersed in Game Theory have argued that the most logical decision would be to think: "I can gain so much by cheating [winning, money, more money], and Uncle Bud can gain so much by not catching me [money, more money, lots of more money] that it makes sense to cheat if I can". But there's still a few people, like, say, Moe, who would illogically decide: "you know, um...I think the risks of getting caught [losing, losing money] outweigh the benefits, so I'll play it fairly." This way only one person (Bryan) wins...right up until the moment they get caught.

Option 3: Split decision

Now the first two scenarios (everybody cheats/everybody plays fair) hit the famous Nash Equilibrium (famous in part because it helped its namesake, John Nash Jr., win the nobel prize and famous in part because it was explained using pretty girls in a Russell Crowe movie). This the point at which both people playing the game have maximized the benefit to themselves. The third and final scenario (one person cheats, the other doesn't) doesn't help either player as one will likely lose the game and money for a while, until the other player gets caught and loses everything.

Now baseball is not a two person game between "Moe" and "Bryan", and there's no amount of data that cheating automatically leads to winning or success. But, hopefully that rudimentary use of Game Theory not only explains why cheaters cheat, and why testing matters, but helps us to look at the issue that really matters.

If winning is everything

The bigger issue to me is not in understanding how or why "Moe" and "Bryan" do what they do, but in how Uncle Bud, Mike's Lemonade, and all those fans react to both cheating and playing fairly. The Nash Equilibrium could be reached if we each agree that the only thing that matters is winning. Moe and Bryan want to win so they cheat. Uncle Bud wants to make more money than the game of HORSE and the flag football game down the street, so he wants winners too. Mike's Lemonade wants champions to talk about the drink, thereby selling more lemonade, so it too wants winners. And if fans care first and foremost about beating the other guy, well...then it's all about winning...and it's all about cheating.

If fairness is everything

But, and this is a huge BUT, if we decide that it's not only in our individual interest, but it's also in our collective interest to support a fair system, then we can still reach that Nash Equilibrium. Player's might individually want to keep their jobs and avoid long term suspensions. Owners might...okay...definitely will want more money from customers and partners who trust them and longer commitments from players who won't get suspended. Companies want to support the kinds of players and sports that people love. And customers want to feel respected by owners and companies as well as having players to admire on the road to success. Most importantly EVERYONE (players, owners, companies and customers) has a collective interest in keeping the game interesting and free of embarrassing scandal. That's where we can agree that fairness trumps winning, and that's the other option for equilibrium.

Again, I know that the world of baseball is likely too big to get everyone in agreement about anything (hell, the DH debate is still a thing), but there's room for things to change, and most importantly there's room for fans to take action. Companies have already turned their back on Ryan Braun, and there's almost a unanimous boycott in place around Alex Rodriguez. Owners are leery of touching admitted users with a ten-foot pole and, increasingly, baseball players themselves are turning on those who use (As suggested by the Buster Olney story that "a pitcher drilled a hitter in a game this season, and when...he returned to the dugout, [he] explained...that he had plunked the guy because he’s a juicer -- a cheater, a PED user. The teammates who heard him understood.")

Maybe we need a town hall meeting, maybe we need a vote from the fans, maybe we need a cathartic set of admissions and tears and pleas and angry denouncements and effigies and Oprah-orchestrated-hugs, but we need an agreement about what our goals are if we want to reach anything close to equilibrium. We don't all have to agree, we can't possibly all agree...but the closer we get to agreement the better for the game, the better for the fans and the better for everyone except the cheaters.

Thank for enduring this installment of an English teacher tries his hand at Math, we now return you to your summer vacation.

Where's your Best Selling Philosophy NOW, PUNK?!?!?!?

I admit, I've got a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the A's. Being a baseball fan in the early part of this millennium you couldn't stop hearing about the baseball genius of the Bay Area, and how he was taking a plucky bunch of unwanted players and turning them into a winning force! There were almost monthly magazine profiles, there was a best selling book, there was a cult following around the executives (?!) who built the team, and then there was that team itself, the only team that plays in gold and green, bringing long hair and surprising swagger to the role of scruffy underdog .

Only problem was, I (like most of the people who read this blog) was a fan of that other scruffy underdog filled with a plucky bunch of unwanted players who turned themselves into a winning force. Only we did it with out the magazine profiles, best sellers, cult followers and long hair. We did it with old fashioned, boring, fundamental baseball. Catch the ball, take the extra base when you can, scratch out any hit available to you and don't swing for the fences, pick up your teammates.

So it was with a pang of jealousy that I watched the A's get the credit while the Twins toiled in anonymity. I know that the "Moneyball" concept was more about making an intelligent investment in underutilized resources than any one man; but I felt like "mastermind" GM Billy Beane developed a bit of an ego around all this adulation, as though he personally had somehow made baseball a better game and deserved all the credit for crunching the stats, turning a beautifully complex game into an inevitable end of a mathematical equation.* (And never mind the fact that it was up to the players {several of whom have been linked to steroids} who were doing the actual work, and winning the actual games.)

Yet here we are, a decade later, and while the Twins are poised to make their 6th post season trip in 10 years the A's have slowly slipped into irrelevance, buried alive under lofty expectations and an inability to keep up with shifts in the market. But hey, Brad Pitt's going to play Billy Beane in a movie...so I guess that's as good as being competitive, right?

I know I shouldn't gloat, I should hope that more talented players bring a storied franchise back into relevance and offer some entertainment to those loyal few who keep turning up in Oakland (especially for the upcoming series with Chicago...the A's definitely deserve to win that series), but if from time to time my jealousy and stubbornness gets in the way, I hope you A's fans/players/executives forgive me...I'm clearly not as smart as Billy Beane, so what do I know?

Oh yeah, I know that we won yesterday.

The Rube

P.s. I'm also not as smart as my father, who, on labor day made the following prediction: "The sox have run out of magic and will go 2-9 over their next 11 games." I laughed, surely a team who had just finished winning 7 straight wouldn't do that poorly against the Tigers, the Royals and us?...Tigers record over their last 11 games: 2-9. Maybe Brad Pitt should play my dad in a movie? Or at least, Clooney...yeah...Clooney's got the right salt and pepper hair thing.

P.p.s.*If I'm wrong and Beane is a genuine sweetheart of a guy, I'm sorry. It just doesn't come across in the press.

Pretty good night...

Gotta admit, any night spent with a pennant race is a fun night, but last night, after hours of thesis work, that game was particularly enjoyable. Managing to mute Hawk Harrelson was fun; calling my parents and hearing their play-by-play several seconds ahead of the MLB.tv feed was even more fun and over the course of the night I learned several things about my parents:

1. My dad (NA) and I are pretty comfortable swearing in the middle of a play (Beckham's dropped force out), but not at all in casual conversation. (I might be a masters candidate, but that doesn't mean he can't give me a whupping if he so chooses.)
2. My mom (The Knitting Queen) roots according to her moral compass, as is evidenced by her "c'mon Jesse strike out Ramirez and sit all these Chicagoans down. CHEATERS NEVER PROSPER!!!!"
3. NA's love of Yoga-based serenity still allows him to laugh at the karmic retribution of Rios dropping Span's double.
4. The Knitting Queen is quite techno-savvy (she even learned how to follow a certain Tweeter whose re-emergence from her bat-cave bring much happiness to our souls!)

But despite all this joy, and the win I want to again remind everyone that IT'S NOT OVER YET! so cool your jets ESPN, Star Trib, Chicago Tribune, and all manner of other punditry. As our man Denard said: "We still have business to finish." What is that business Denard? "we've got to hopefully...kill their dreams"

If anyone can kill dreams, I'd put money on Denard, skulking in the shadows of White Sock minds, pouncing while the White Sox are happily asleep, dreaming of Bud Light with Lime waterfalls, and new disgusting ways to grow facial hair. Once inside these dreams, Denard will triumph...for he is our ninja:

Something bigger than ourselves...

Last night (after the game) I was out having a scotch and chatting with my friend Nick. Nick can't stand sports, any sport, all sports; and when I explained to Nick that I had happily stayed up to around Midnight four nights in a row to watch (or at least listen to) Twins games he seemed stunned. Why would an intellectual (read: NERD) like me spend so much time emotionally consumed with something out of his control?

I explained thusly: We all like a good epic: whether it be Harry Potter or Titanic; Ben-Hur or a Dickensian serial novel; a 3 hour + Elizabethan tragedy or The Illiad. Homer and Virgil's heroic warriors became demi-gods in the eyes of their audience, and those heroic archetypes endured through literature up through the present day. But for some people, it's more meaningful to have a demi-god you can see and hear and touch. And that's what sports offer us: an epic story (162 games) filled with heroes (your local team) and villains (Cou*Yankees*gh!) who are immediate and tangible.

Today's heroes can seem every bit as epic as those from antiquity; but they are far more realistic in stature...at least, they are on the baseball diamond. Only the tall seem to survive in basketball, only the massively muscled survive in football; in baseball both the tall (Mauer) and the short (Punto); the skinny (Neshek) and the not so skinny (Mijares) can be a child's idol.

And that's where Jim Thome comes in. At about 6'3", 240 lbs he's big, but not superhumanly large, and he's been about that big for the past decade. He seems like your average guy, trim in his youth, growing into his full frame and developing a bit of a paunch as he approaches the big 4-0. Jim Thome is just like us...only a little bit more.

And so yesterday, listening on the radio as Jim Thome smashed two more home runs in his epic career, I smiled and cheered. I wanted the good guy to triumph. I wanted a pretty average-looking Joe to come out on top in the end (ahead of those lesser demi-gods who sought to be more like the gods than the mortals, and turned to syringes to help that quest). I want to believe that someone like me, who puts in the effort can reach a higher plateau.

I watch baseball to connect with something bigger than myself: something epic, something majestic, something deeper than the every day world of facts and figures and long-forgotten theses. Baseball is not the most important thing in the world, or in my life; but it's my favorite story, and I'm glad I get to see part of Jim Thome's story, and to cheer him on as he goes.

Heartbroken...kinda

Earlier this week Mark McGwire tearfully announced that he had indeed used steroids throughout his career, finally confirming what many have long suspected. I, Scruffy, was rather non-plussed, I remember the summer of '98, and how much I enjoyed the home run chase. (Though I was, admittedly a Sosa-man.) However, my love of the game came not from the chase alone, but from watching Ken Burns' epic documentary with my brother, playing "home-run-derby" in the driveway of our home, rereading "The Boys of Summer" and just generally reveling in the awesomeness of sport.

As cool as it was to watch those dingers fly, I tired of it quickly, and turned my attention thereafter to teams...first the Mets (since they were in contention) and then, back to the Twins when I moved to Minnesota. I learned to love the hard-nosed scrappy play--free from those titanic blasts, but full of the grit, determination and pluck which appeals to anyone who roots for underdogs. As more was said about steroids I cared less and less about homeruns and the men who hit them--I had Torii, I had Johan, I had Joe and Justin and Cuddy...what did I care what happened to Barry, Mark and Sammy?

So McGwire admitted it...and? I still love baseball, and I always will regardless of anything stated in an embarrassed press release by an erstwhile "hero" of the game. But I'm not alone in this, so what does Stinky think? Well...why don't we ask her? Stinky?

(Stinky takes over): True, I wasn't really shocked when McGwire admitted to using steroids. It's like Joan Rivers admitting she's had plastic surgery. But, it did make me sad. It made me sad for the players who never used steroids, who might have gotten more recognition had it not been for guys like McGwire, and for great players like Joe Mauer, who will now have to feel like their sudden ability to hit for power will put their honesty and integrity into question. And it also made me feel a little sad for McGwire himself, who honestly didn't seem to realize that what he'd done was cheating.

Back to Scruffy.

In a fit of late night awesomeness, Stinky and I have been enjoying some popcorn, humming some Sondheim and some hulu when we came across the following clip from our oft quoted (and occasionally plagiarized) friend Stephen Colbert. (We edited it to the germane part)

And just when you'd given up on the sport of Baseball altogether, you remember this guy. Honus Wagner: Professional Badass. Everyone knows it...even Stephen Colbert. It shall go down in the annals of history.

G'night everyone.

P.S. Dear Joe Mauer, since I gave you a shoutout can you give me a contract extension in return? Please...? We're waiting.