(no subject)
Since this season is unfolding slowly and gingerly, like the flower of a century plant [Hey look, it's the weekend already and the Mets are 2-1! Two and one!!], I'll take some time to address my hastily-made predictions from a few days ago. A tacit policy of FenSheaParkway is never to issue retractions to a post, (second-guess, mock or slander, yes, but never retract), I am occasionally called upon to defend some of my crazier assertions. I'm compelled, even obligated to do so once again, especially after a firestorm of controversy erupted over my 2008 preview.
I admit that I still had NCAA basketball on the brain when I filled out my end-of-season standings and went a little crazy with the "upsets", which are hard enough to come by when 40 minutes of activity can make one happen. 162 game seasons are supposed to provide enough data to squash all but the most likely of scenarios.
[John Madden is often quoted as saying that you're exactly as good as your record. If Madden truly uttered this suprisingly coherent piece of wisdom, it was obviously before he became inexplicably fascinated with describing the meaning of the word 'confluence' to Al Michaels everytime they step inside Pittsburgh city limits. The statement might seem misleading on its face, since there are always compromising factors that lead a team to finish away from where it was 'supposed' to. But that's the genius of Madden's obviousness; good luck and bad luck may happen to you in unequal amounts, but you're supposed to minimize the effect of that luck by not being retarded when making personnel decisions. Take the Michael Vick case: At first, it looks like it was a colossal case of totally unpredictable bad luck that no one could have prepared for. Okay. But a team that had a clue about how to win football games might not have given away their competent backup quarterback for no good reason either, leaving themselves vulnerable to having to hire Joey Harrington. By simply resisting retardation, the Falcons might have won 7 games last year, which could have happened with Vick QBing the team anyway. Bad luck, yes, but worse management.]
A long, un-Baseball-related anecdote normally wouldn't be tolerated here, but I think it shows the determinism of looking at the final standings in any sport. And in Baseball, April's wacky prediction can become September's accepted wisdom, and only because you've been given so much time to let it sink in. So insane "upsets" don't have to be inherently contrarian, you just have to have some slight reason to think that they're possible.
In a year with no superpowers beyond the obvious ones, youth and energy may carry the day. Well, carry it out of the basement at least. So I have a lot of faith in the Rays, Pirates and Washpo's. Peskiness isn't usually the way to win a marathon, but there will be a lot of teams bunched up together for a large part of this season. Late in the season, those teams are usually called "pesky" because they're out of the race. But when their fresh legs are beating the preseason favorites this year, they'll still be in contention and may have to be called something else. Umm, probably "scrappy", if sportswriting traditions remain unchanged. But by that time, they won't look like dogs anymore because we'll have had to get used to them being in the thick of the standings.
So my predictions hinge entirely on the suspicion that there will be long, arduous races in half of the divisions this year. Just as arbitrary as any other guess, I suppose, but not entirely unimaginable after all. After the fact, that is.
I admit that I still had NCAA basketball on the brain when I filled out my end-of-season standings and went a little crazy with the "upsets", which are hard enough to come by when 40 minutes of activity can make one happen. 162 game seasons are supposed to provide enough data to squash all but the most likely of scenarios.
[John Madden is often quoted as saying that you're exactly as good as your record. If Madden truly uttered this suprisingly coherent piece of wisdom, it was obviously before he became inexplicably fascinated with describing the meaning of the word 'confluence' to Al Michaels everytime they step inside Pittsburgh city limits. The statement might seem misleading on its face, since there are always compromising factors that lead a team to finish away from where it was 'supposed' to. But that's the genius of Madden's obviousness; good luck and bad luck may happen to you in unequal amounts, but you're supposed to minimize the effect of that luck by not being retarded when making personnel decisions. Take the Michael Vick case: At first, it looks like it was a colossal case of totally unpredictable bad luck that no one could have prepared for. Okay. But a team that had a clue about how to win football games might not have given away their competent backup quarterback for no good reason either, leaving themselves vulnerable to having to hire Joey Harrington. By simply resisting retardation, the Falcons might have won 7 games last year, which could have happened with Vick QBing the team anyway. Bad luck, yes, but worse management.]
A long, un-Baseball-related anecdote normally wouldn't be tolerated here, but I think it shows the determinism of looking at the final standings in any sport. And in Baseball, April's wacky prediction can become September's accepted wisdom, and only because you've been given so much time to let it sink in. So insane "upsets" don't have to be inherently contrarian, you just have to have some slight reason to think that they're possible.
In a year with no superpowers beyond the obvious ones, youth and energy may carry the day. Well, carry it out of the basement at least. So I have a lot of faith in the Rays, Pirates and Washpo's. Peskiness isn't usually the way to win a marathon, but there will be a lot of teams bunched up together for a large part of this season. Late in the season, those teams are usually called "pesky" because they're out of the race. But when their fresh legs are beating the preseason favorites this year, they'll still be in contention and may have to be called something else. Umm, probably "scrappy", if sportswriting traditions remain unchanged. But by that time, they won't look like dogs anymore because we'll have had to get used to them being in the thick of the standings.
So my predictions hinge entirely on the suspicion that there will be long, arduous races in half of the divisions this year. Just as arbitrary as any other guess, I suppose, but not entirely unimaginable after all. After the fact, that is.