mondrian’s neon fantod

There’s this thing, see. It’s called Newsvine. It’s a site on the internet where people can interact all 21st Century-style with “the news.” You can write your own stories. You can “seed” links to stories at existing websites (mainstream, not-so-mainstream, blogosphere, you name it). You can comment on the stories of others and get comments on your own stuff. Eventually they’re supposed to be implementing an ad program and possibly paying their contributors (a little) via those revenues, even.

So, courtesy of Patita (courtesy of someone else) I wound up with an invite and signed up. I’m experimenting with it but it seems at least a little bit cool. And it’s more what I want out of the “writing for the internet” thing, in general, than blogging. “How so?” you ask. Well, it gives me an outlet that other people are using, too, so it’s not so incumbent upon me to produce daily content to keep people coming back. There’s always new stuff to read over there and I’m not the one who had to make it. It’s perfect for my lazy ways!

Anyway, you should check it out just to see what all the noise is about. And if the concept of it intrigues you, let me know and I’ll drop an invite on you.

Oh, and in case you care to read what I’m writing over there, check the Newsvine Content page of this here blog thing, over there (→) in the sidebar. That page holds a little hunk o’ javascript that Newsvine provides its authors that essentially syndicates their headlines. So do the click thing and see what you can see from me.

Unfortunately I don’t have a link for this, but a while back I read an article somewhere on this crazy internet thing (ESPN page 2, I think) where someone was waxing rhapsodically about how some baseball teams can be summed up in a single word, or at least concept. The Mets and miracles. The Yankees and money/power. The Dodgers and Vin Scully. And so on. Anyway, the author never got around to talking about either of our little teams from Texas, so I was left to ponder that on my own. What I came up with for the Astros was that they seemed to me to be about loyalty. At least that’s the way they seem to me when it comes to how they’ve stuck with two key players throughout the last 15 or so years. I’m referring, of course, to Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell.

Back in the middle of the 2004 season a bunch of writers took it upon themselves to declare that Craig Biggio was through and that the Astros should just dump him and use his salary for something else, like younger players. I weighed in on that back then and though I certainly don’t think my few little words, unread by so many, had any effect on the Astros’ decision to stick with Biggio. The good news, though, is that they did and that he wound up being just a little bit important to their wildly successful 2005 season. So that’s one for the history books.

Just like a good (and loyal) Astros doggie I’m back to write in defense of the other pillar of the Houston, Jeff Bagwell, who is recovering from shoulder surgery and may or may not be able to play full-time all season long. Well, it seems that the front office may or may not have asked/hinted/pushed him to retire. Or at least to declare himself unable to play in 2006 so that they can collect on the insurance policy that covers most of his (admittedly large) salary for the upcoming season.

Now, I understand the business side of this just fine. The Astros would rather have $15.6 million to spend on other things than be out $17 million on a player who quite possibly won’t be an everyday producer for the team. I really do understand that. And as a fan of the team I’d certainly like to see them be able to compete again this year, and that kind of money can make a big difference in how a season goes. That said, I also understand that Bagwell has done just a whole heck of a lot for this team and deserves better than to be treated this way.

It seems to me that if the Astros really feel that they need to be rid of Bagwell, they should trade him and eat whatever part of his salary they have to rather than simply try to bully him into (effectively) killing his career. At least let him go to the AL and get some more swings in as a DH (that other Texas team up the road that’s hard after the Rocket might be interested – they certainly did well by picking up a certain Astros castoff a while back). For cryin’ out loud, Bagwell is only 51 home runs away from the magical #500. Let the man play. If not in Houston, then at least somewhere.

In the end, though, I’m basically begging Drayton McLane to act like the good, far-thinking owner of the Astros that he has been (at least in relation to Biggio and Bagwell) in recent memory and do whatever can be done to keep Jeff in a Houston uniform. If the money’s that goddamned important then maybe both sides could sit down, re-negotiate and come to some kind of agreement that would work to everyone’s benefit. It’s certainly an achievable goal. Just like Bagwell hitting #500 at Minute Maid and being voted into Cooperstown as the other guy who spent his entire career with the Astros.

Oh, and let me be clear (and make a nice, meaningless threat while I’m at it)… if the Astros insist on treating Bagwell like just another disposable part, I will be done with the team. I will turn in my hat and walk away from being an Astros fan for good. I can’t support the team if they turn out not to be who I think they are.

The Astros! The Angels! The Cardinals! The White Sox! It’s going to be the best postseason ever!

No, seriously. There’ll be no overwrought, over-hyped, overly-annoying New York vs. Boston drama. No A-rod, no Papi. No Sheffield, no Manny. No constant droning about Bucky Dent or the Curse of the Bambino. No announcers going on and on about “the idiots” or “the boss” or whatever. And no teams that are only here because they had the bucks to buy their way in. All that stuff is so 2004 (and before).

So keep your 86 years. Keep your 26-going-on-27 championships. This year, there’s an entirely different set of numbers that matter.

The Numbers In Question
This year we get to see four teams that really play baseball, rather than sitting around waiting for the longball. They bunt. They steal. And they’ve got some serious pitching, defense and baserunning skills & speed. And that, my friends, is a good thing. A good thing for you, me and everyone. Let’s take a look…

Pitching
These four teams ranked #1 or #2 in team ERA in their respective leagues: St. Louis was #1 in the NL at 3.49; Houston was #2 at 3.51; Chicago was tied for #1 in the AL at 3.61; and the Angels were #2 at 3.68. Each one of these teams has at least one Cy Young candidate on their pitching staff, too – Roger Clemens for the Astros (some might argue for Andy Pettitte, too); Chris Carpenter for the Cardinals; Bartolo Colón for the Angels; Mark Buehrle and Jon Garland for the White Sox. Yowza!

Defense
These four teams ranked #1 or #2 in fielding in their respective leagues: In the NL, the Astros were tied for #1 with a Fielding Percent of .985 while the Cardinals ranked a close second at .984; in the AL the White Sox and the Angels were tied at #2 with .985 each. You don’t get numbers like that without key defensive players like Houston’s prime Rookie of the Year candidate, center fielder Willy Taveras (.991 Fielding Percent), St. Louis’ center fielder Jim Edmonds (.994), Angels’ first baseman Darin Erstad (.997) and Chicago’s first baseman Paul Konerko (.996). Get ready to watch these teams flash some leather, folks.

Baserunning & Speed
These four teams also know how to run the bases & swipe a bag when needed. Of the four, only St. Louis posted fewer than 115 stolen bases for the season, and the Angels and White Sox came in with 161 and 137 respectively, thanks largely to Anaheim’s major league-leading Chone Figgins (62) and Chicago’s MLB #3, Scott Podsednik (59). Add to that some of the highest singles totals in the majors (Taveras at 152, the Cardinals’ Eckstien at 144, Figgins at 143), you got some speedy little dudes running their legs off. And that can mean a world of difference on the basepaths.

But baseball is about more than the numbers, of course. And no other time of the year is that truer than the postseason. So, without further ado we’ll move along to the human interest side of this fabulous new NY- and Boston-free world we find ourselves in and introduce to you…

The Characters

The Houston Astros
This is a team that’s never won a World Series. Heck, they’ve never even been to the World Series, and prior to this time last year, the closest they’d been is where the Yankees and Red Sox are right now. The Astros are team with two of the all-time greats of modern baseball – Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell – who pretty much are only missing a World Series victory from their fantastic careers. Both are likely bound for Cooperstown, but it would be so much better if they had that ring on their hands, too. Throw in hometown boys Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte toeing the rubber for the glory of Space City and yet another unlikely Wild Card season and you’ve got the makings of a bestseller.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Goofy name aside, this is a team you have to love. Sure, the Anaheim Angels (as they were known back then) won it all in 2002, but since then they’ve added some important members to the team who’ve never had the pleasure of an October crown – specifically, of course, I mean the magnificent Vladimir Guererro, who spent all those lost years (’96-’03) in poor, benighted Montréal. How wonderful it would be for him, and all the others, including Chone Figgins (who I think is the real AL MVP this year) and young Ervin Santana (the rookie pitcher who was the unquestioned hero of Game 5 of the ALDS), to win it this year, after fighting so hard to send the Yankees home nice and early.

The St. Louis Cardinals
For the past two years (at least) the St. Louis Cardinals have the best team in the big leagues. And they even went to the Series last year, though the lost badly. They’re managed by one of the most successful managers in all of baseball, Tony La Russa and are the second most World Series winning team in history. As if that weren’t enough, the Cardinals have one of the very few “once-in-a-lifetime” players of our times – first baseman and likely MVP Albert Pujols. And now they may get a chance to redeem themselves for their tragic performance in last year’s Series. It’s also a chance for La Russa to join only the legendary Sparky Anderson as managers who have lead their teams to a World Series championship in both the National League and the American League. Finally, a World Series victory would be the way to end the long and storied history of Busch Stadium, which will close its gates once and for all when the last Cardinals’ game of 2005 is played.

The Chicago White Sox
Ah, the Chicago White Sox. They haven’t won the World Series in 88 long years. They’re a team that many feel are still paying for the sins of their fathers – the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, who threw the World Series and brought shame to baseball for the first (but sadly not last) time. When you look at it, the 2005 White Sox are, frankly, a team seeking nothing less than redemption. And leading them ever onward is the one and only Ozzie Guillen, the mad iconoclast who isn’t afraid to speak his mind.

And that’s just a quick look at the cast. There are so many more people involved with these teams, from the front office to the bullpen catchers, from the ghosts of the past to the fans of the future. And, after all, baseball has always been about humanity.

Conclusion
So cheer up, Beaneaters and Bombers. Take some solace from the fact that you get to sit back and watch a couple of Championship series that should feature terrifically exciting pitching, defense, baserunning. Oh, and far more human interest than you might be used to from your steroid-fueled sluggers and your mythical curse. Or, if that doesn’t console you, at least know that by being the hell off of the October stage you’ve made it possible for the rest of the country to enjoy the postseason for a change.

Now, if only we can get rid of McCarver, Buck and Scooter the brushback pitch. Oh well, just wait til next year!

Dub. It’s reggae, but it’s more than that. It’s the grandaddy of remix & DJ culture. It’s the source of a lot of what The Clash wound up pursuing musically. It’s a damn good listen, too.

at the royal rack
Other than the dub influences on The Clash, I probably first heard “real” dub at the Royal Rack Club in back dear old Dallas. I don’t recall just who turned us on to the place, but I do know it was in 1989 – my senior year of high school. The Rack was* a pool hall run by (if I remember correctly) a couple of brothers who had immigrated to the US from the Ivory Coast**. It was a fantastic pool hall, really. They had at least a dozen tables and you paid by the hour, not by the game. Oh, and once upon a time they might have served me a drink when I was under age. But only once and only because I had a pretty good fake ID.

The Royal Rack played nothing but reggae (mostly dub) on their sound system. They even had live reggae bands, mostly roots and rocksteady, up on a little stage in the corner, on the weekends. So there I was, 18 and itching to escape Dallas, but stuck waiting my way through the last chunk of high school. And suddenly here was a place that was more than a little bit different from what I knew of my hometown. And they played this music that was really, really great. I’d like to think that I would have gotten more into reggae & dub at that point, but soon enough I was outta there and on my way to Austin, where blues & (proto) alt.country (we called it cowpunk) were king.

But still, the music left its mark on me. I was open to the possibilities. It would just take 12 years before Jah smiled upon me again…

grand theft auto
I was reintroduced to/reminded of dub in 2001 via the reggae station in Grand Theft Auto III, K-JAH. I settled on that station almost immediately and seldom changed it, because the music really seemed to fit the edginess and brooding feeling the game engendered in me. Almost by accident I was flipping though the game’s manual and came across the tiny little text near the end that identified the various sources for the music used by the different stations in the game. It was there that I discovered K-JAH was comprised entirely of tracks from The Scientist’s seminal dub album Scientist Rids The World Of The Curse Of Evil Vampires. So within a day or so I headed down to ye olde independent record store and searched for said album. I suppose it’s an advantage of living in Austin that I found Vampires easily. Anyway, I went home, slapped it on, and haven’t looked back.

more dub than you can shake a mixing board at
Of course, there’s more to dub than the one album by The Scientist. Anything by King Tubby, The Scientist’s mentor, is good for a listen. King Jammy, arch-rival of The Scientist, is also certainly worth checking out. There’s also Lee “Scratch” Perry, Keith Hudson, Ranking Dread and the Ja-Man All Stars. There are dub versions of “normal” reggae albums by folks like Black Uhuru (Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? Natty Dreadlocks!). Hell, there’s even a dub version of/tribute to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon. And the good news is that much of this stuff has made it to CD, so even those of you who aren’t inclined to hunt down rare vinyl imports can still partake of the dubby goodness. And once you start digging, you’ll find even more dub for your ears and soul.

a note on dub, electronica and the remix culture
Dub is, essentially, remixing. And as such, it is the grandfather of today’s electronica/remix culture. So if you’re all about DJs, cutting edge bangara/hard bop mashup mix tapes and the latest word from Remix magazine then you owe it to yourself to listen to some dub an’ know your ‘istry, mon.

where to learn more
Pay a visit to dub.com and poke around to hear something you’ve probably never heard before. You can also just run down to your local record store and start hunting for any of the artists I’ve mentioned above. Or you can fire up that old copy of GTA3 and slide on over to K-JAH to hear Horace “The Pacifist” Walsh spinning some Scientist for your overly-violent yet amazingly fun amusement. Finally, a good sampling of classic dub can be found on the Trojan Records Dub Box Set

* or perhaps still is. I can’t quite tell from the web if it remains open, but it sure looked closed the last time I drove by, back in June ’04. Good lord, has it been that long since I’ve visited D?

** it might not have been the Ivory Coast. It might have been Nigeria. Or somewhere else. I really don’t recall. I blame the Mamba.

This is old. It’s here to fill space. Kinda like Dick Cheney.

So, Bill James has a thing called the Defensive Spectrum. In short, it looks like this:

[ - - 1B - LF - RF - 3B - CF - 2B - SS - C - - ]

with the basic premise that positions at the right end of the spectrum are more difficult than the positions at the left end of the spectrum. Players can generally move from right to left along the specturm successfully during their careers.

There are essentially two “laws” of the Defensive Spectrum, which amount to:

1. True shortage of talent almost never occurs at the left end of the defensive spectrum.
2. Rightward shifts along the defensive spectrum almost never work.

Now, there are a couple of fantasy baseball concerns that can be addressed with this stuff^*. The first is that maybe this explains why there are so many power hitters at first base and in the outfield and yet so few ass-kicking middle infielders and catchers. But perhaps the more important consideration is that maybe this theory can help you pick your players based on where they are in their careers vs. where they are in the spectrum. And for that, we finally get to my dear friend and personal Elvis₂, Craig Biggio.

Craig began his career way back in 1988, as a catcher – the hardest position in baseball, at least according to the Defensive Spectrum. Comrade Biggio excelled behind the dish, where he was an All-Star in ’91. Then, in 1992, he moved to second base (a couple of positions to the left) where he was a gold glove winner and an All-Star from 1994-1997. Moves to the left appear to work, indeed.

In 2003 the Astros signed Jeff Kent to play 2B, and Biggio moved down the Defensive Spectrum again, to center field. Then, with the Astros’ (temporary) acquisition of Carlos Beltran on 2004 Biggio moved even further to the left (literally and figuratively) to play left field. Neither of these moves lead to the type of success Biggio experienced in his first leftward shift, but then again they took place 15 and 16 years into his career. A renaissance was probably unlikely regardless of position change.

But now, in the post-Beltran era, Biggio is being called upon to move back to the right, to play center field again. Heck, there’s even been some chatter about him returning to second base now that Kent is also gone. And this is when the laws of the Defensive Spectrum start sounding the klaxons. “Rightward shifts along the defensive spectrum almost never work!” we are told. The numbers support this theory, at least in Bill James’ experience (and who has more experience, anyway?). It’s worth noting, though, that the line is “almost never work.” Only time will tell if Biggio follows the generalization posited by James.

So what does this mean for you, the saber-headed number-crunching fantasy manager? Well, it could mean that you don’t want to draft Craig Biggio. It could also mean that a whole bunch of people will think along these lines and won’t draft the elder Killer B, leaving you to snag him as a sleeper later in the draft. But does it tell us that Biggio is a bad draft choice, period? Some folks would probably say yes. But I say no, it’s not definitive. However, this is a good example of things to think about when evaluating players for your draft. Are they moving positions this year? And if so, does James’ 2nd Law of Defensive Spectronomics (my phrase, forgive me) have good or bad things to say about the move?

^* FYI – all this Bill James stuff is pulled from the Bill James Primer found at The Baseball Archive. There’s more there, too, if this kind of Sabermetrics stuff interests you.

(this is way old. late August, 2004 old. it’s here to test out posting. and to make me feel bad so I’ll write something new.)

Over the past couple of days several sportswriters have been taking great glee in predicting that the bruised and broken Astros are going to cut Hall-of-Fame-bound Craig Biggio at the end of this year to save some money in the name of rebuilding the team. And while it’s certainly true that Biggio has a $3M one-year extension that Astros management can buy their way out of for only $1M, thereby saving $2M and freeing up space for a “younger, healthier” player, I don’t think they should do it.

Let’s think about this for a minute. Right now Biggio leads his team with 141 hits, 35 doubles and 77 runs. He’s second on the team with a .287 avg and 19 homers. Now maybe the fact that some of those numbers shouldn’t rank so highly for a major league team that’s loaded with players that should be doing much better than they are takes a little shine off of Biggio’s season. But not really, if you think about it. After all, the man is also 1st among leadoff men in homers in the majors. And 2nd in doubles, too. Be honest with yourself – that’s just not weak. Especially for an 18 year veteran who is also the most HBP guy in all of baseball.

With all that said, I’m not advocating keeping him out on the field every night when someone younger could be in there, working their way up to an epic hall-of-fame career. Nope, instead I think they should keep the option on him for next year, pull him back to a secondary role on the field and – wait for it – make a player-manager out of him.

Yes, I said make a player-manager out of him. Who’s been around this team longer? Who knows the ins and outs of the core players and their personalities? Who has contributed more to the Astros over the last 18 damn years? And how frigging cool would it be to have a really great player-manager in the mold of Lou Boudreau, Rogers Hornsby or Frank Robinson calling the shots in Houston? Now that would be yet another thing to set the mighty Astros apart from their distinguished competition. My heart swells with the thought of it. I mean, it’s classic baseball at its finest.

It’s safe to say that the manager spot in Houston is going to be one of the things that gets shaken up in the off season. I mean no disrespect to Scrap Iron here – he’s been an admirable fill in for that guy who got canned – but Garner really is just a fill in, I’m afraid. So why not give the role to a battle-tested and highly-respected player? A guy that all those young bucks who Houston needs to bring up and groom into the World Series winners we want them to be can look up to. Hell, Biggio is someone they’ve all probably been looking up to for a big chunk of their lives anyway.

The man has lead his team from the field for years now. Don’t waste that – let him lead from the field and the dugout for a while. It’s decent. It’s respectful. Everyone wins. And if he can pull a few decent playing years as player-manager, Biggio might well wind up breaking 3,000 hits. And watching that run might even draw some more fans out to the park…

So rather than dishonor one of the greatest Astros of all time by cutting him loose a year early just to save a little cash, I really think the Astros could do a hell of a lot worse than take my crazy advice. Or, at the very least let’s keep the Astros’ honor intact and let #7 keep his place for that last year, okay Gerry? Okay, Drayton? After all, the numbers show he’s still a great player and it would be a shame to alienate his loyalists when that one year probably won’t make that big a difference.