Well, to my surprise, the Diamondbacks took an early lead in the season as far as drawing my attention goes. Curiously, it was watching Javier Vazquez get pounded on their opening day, that contributed toward this. It reminded me of the miserable early-season Expos' outings from 2004. Masochistic tendencies, or what?

Friday night's game was also depressing. Brandon Lyon came in, got two strikes on three batters in succession, and managed to give up a double that drove in a run, a single to drive in another run, and then a home run to Jose Valentin to hand the game to a rival for my affections, the Dodgers. I'll be writing some commentaries about the different teams in due course, but one has to say that the Diamondbacks' bullpen has not performed well.

However, the Diamondbacks have one of my favourite players, Craig Counsell. I also have absolutely no negative feelings about the franchise (which is not true of the Dodgers or the Marlins), and in fact a certain sympathy, if only because their habit of signing expensive veterans finds no fans among the Numbers People at Baseball Prospectus. This, however, does not strike me as a good reason to adopt them. So I still hesitate.

9 April 2005
Old Master Back at Work

It was in the is wise: I came late to sabermetrics, not finding my first Baseball Abstract until the 1987 edition. However, I rapidly acquired the Bill James Historical Abstract, and followed that with the 1988 Abstract. But that was the last Bill James produced. However, he sold the name to Brock Hanke, who brought out, rather late in the UK, a 1989 Abstract. Fortunately, I happened to be in the bookstore while their handful of copies were still in stock, and picked one up. In 1990, Bill James came out with his Baseball Book, while Hanke (et al., and he was from the start an et al.) changed his book's name to The Baseball Sabermetric.

Right from the start, Hanke collaborated with a previously unknown (to me) writer named Don Malcolm. I kind of liked Malcolm's style from the start. At the time, British television frequently showed at unsociable hours an American program called Dream On, which included clips from the 'classic old days' of American television (in black and white). Dream On was aimed at people a little older than me, but Don Malcolm made plenty of references to film and television content I knew in the same sort of style.

His lively style appealed to me straight away, and right through the Baseball Sabermetrics I bought (the first three, 1990-92), Malcolm's chapters were the ones I turned to first. When the Internet and late-night broadcasts on BritainÕs Channel 5 made baseball accessible to me once again starting in the late 1990s, I found Malcolm was leading the onslaught against what he had christened 'neo-sabermetrics'. In his mind, it clearly wasn't as good as as original sabermetrics. Mainly, he meant Baseball Prospectus. Lots of people didn't like the fact that Malcolm seemed to regard Prospectus with a sense of 'sour grapes'. And Malcolm was always eager to taunt them (and still is).

Anyway, follow the link above because Malcolm, after about a year's absence, has returned. He's always got something interesting to say. He joins the roster of my favourite sites in the right-hand column. His current blog entry is a preview of the 2005 Yankees, and he explains why a lot of those forecasting a return to 100 wins by them may be right: Pavano, Wright and Randy Johnson improve their piching by a heap of runs.

5 April 2005
Opening Day

Opening Day was actually on Sunday night, with the game between the Red Sox and the Yankees. However, as exciting as the series can be, I find little to enjoy in those clashes between AmericaÕs favourite rivals. I find them equivalent to the later Star Wars films: A lot of good production values; but ultimately empty affairs, not worth my time.

So for me, Opening Day came on Monday, with the Detroit and Arizona games. I tuned in to the Arizona game - via mlb.tv - and was, to say the least, a little disappointed. I was hoping for a contest, but instead I saw the Diamondbacks overwhelmed by the Cubs. I felt sorry throughout for Diamondbacks fans, seeing as I am apparently some kind of hoo-doo for teams. (Fiorentina, the Montreal Expos, and I also followed the 2003 Tigers with a morbid fascination.)
1 April 2005
A Peter's Ransom

Major League Baseball once again raised some serious questions about why on earth they extended the incumbent commissioner's contract. He has lost them money in his slow handling of the removal of the Expos from Montreal. He has looked bad on two occasions at important Congressional hearings. And now he has handed a big ransom to one of the owners, who handed over part of a television market on which he had no claim by MLB rules, but only on the principle that he was exploiting it first.

I refer, of course, to the deal agreed with Baltimore OriolesÕ owner Peter Angelos. I kind of respect Angelos. He refused to use replacement players, he's a tough lawyer, and now he's got something for surrendering rights that he didn't properly own. The Orioles had simply squatted on a claim that properly belonged to Major League Baseball. Instead of running the claim-jumper off the land, the Commissioner paid him a lot of money to go away. Would that I were so shrewd.

There's also some question of who might be alienated by this. The television deal excludes Comcast SportsNet, which is quietly becoming a very important part of the way MLB does business. Comcast currently carries Orioles games, but won't come 2007.

The article also notes that nine groups have lodged deposits with MLB, the first step on the road to owning the Nationals. The nine must be vetted by MLB before one of them can be chosen to join the club. I'm sure some of the vetting will exclude anyone who might be unhappy with the fact that the majority of their television network will be owned by a rival team.

Once again, the Expos' miserable post-Bronfman history is subject to a quick-fix solution that stores up a lot of problems for the future. Thankfully, I no longer have to follow this franchise. I can turn my back on it with a clear conscience.

Los Angeles Calling

My quest for a new team to follow took a funny turn, when the Dodgers popped back on the list. I love Los Angeles as a place, and I also love its sometimes squalid history. Miami also has an appeal in part based on personal acquaintance. Arizona? Well, I'm sure it's a nice place, but I've never been there.

So now it's a three-way fight for my loyalty, between the Dodgers, the Marlins, and the Diamondbacks. With Opening Day just around the corner, I have to decide which one to follow on one of the best days of the year.
19 March 2005

A double-header today, as two events occur this week that move me to comment.

Thanks to a nasty virus, I found myself home on Thursday and therefore able to watch the Steroid Hearings from the U.S. Congress. To be honest, I'd not given steroid use in baseball much thought, being one of a group of apathetic fans whose numbers are apparently quite small. However, the hearings changed my attitude considerably, which is probably a vindication for those who wanted them held.

The hearings were shown on C-Span, the American public service cable channel, and also on the Interactive Baseball Network. (For some reason, the broadcast of the latter got difficult to watch as soon as the Commissioner began to be questioned by Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican. The stream kept breaking down. I only insert that for the record, one can draw one's only conclusions.)

The hearings convinced me that Something Must Be Done. The Commissioner, of whom I am no friend, insisted that any deal had to be arranged with the Players' Association. The Players' Association tried to avoid the issue, for various reasons connected with privacy and hostility toward a management that has not made any secret about its desire to pay the players less, and which has used every weapon in its arsenal to make the players look bad because a minority of them earn an awful lot of money. This is where poor labour relations will get you, and those poor labour relations can be laid squarely at the doors of the owners, who are trying to recover some of the ground they started losing a very long time ago.

So What Is to Be Done? The Congresspeople made some serious errors in their questioning, being politicians, and largely apparently unprepared. Most significantly, several seemed to find it difficult to separate the criminal matter of steroid abuse from the administrative discipline by an employer. It is not MLB's job to send people to jail. However, MLB can elect to impose a punishment for breaking steroid laws or, indeed, any law. (I'd like to see serious action taken against drunk or dangerous driving.) MLB has negotiated with the Players' Association a five-stage disciplinary procedure that has drawn a lot of mockery. Only on the fourth offense is a player banned for as long as a month. Nothing is mentioned in the press release announcing the policy of any records accomplished prior to a positive test.

The key point, as far as the fan is concerned, is that using illegal PED (Perfomance Enhancing Drugs) is cheating. Cheaters must have their victories taken away to preserve the integritry of any sporting contest. Unfortunately, a lot of effectively racist people use the whole steroids-in-baseball issue as a way to get at Barry Bonds, now approaching the white Babe Ruth's home run record. U.S. Senator Jim Bunning certainly was implying something about some ballplayer, although he named no names. Whatever system is adopted really needs some way of indicating that records may have been tainted by cheating, but leave it open for people to make their own conclusions about their validity. The notorious * against Roger Maris's 61 home runs may not have ever really existed, but future records that have been accumulated by users of illegal PED should have something like that appended.

Atlanta Braves: Boston is the closest major-league city to me now, and the Braves are the only National League
 team associated with Boston. They are also one of the oldest, just right for traditionalists like me.
Chicago Cubs: Closest to where my brother and mother are living now.
Florida Marlins: Close to some in-laws, and still connected to the Expos by means of Loria's Canadian partners. 
Los Angeles Dodgers: Los Angeles is the only city in the United States I'd go to live by choice.
New York Mets: The closest National League team to me here in London.