Monday Medley

What we read while–BOO!

• A great World Series concluded Friday night. As usual, the great series caused a lot of debate. Jonah Keri listed the 21 craziest things about Game 5 (only one of which was Bullpengate). That game alone was so fraught that Will Leitch needed an extra day to get over it. Of course, things got better for him in Game 6, with the Cardinals TWICE pulling off shocking comebacks, leading Tim McCarver of all people to come up with the call of the postseason. Plenty of writers tried to put the game into perspective, but perhaps Roger Angell’s scorecard sums it up best. Of course, St. Louis ended up coming out on top, and Keri tried to determine if the Cardinals were the most unlikely champion ever. Meanwhile, Joe Poz called all this back in August…

• Where did the seven-game series come from, anyway?

• In non-World Series news, Aaron Sorkin is writing a Steve Jobs biopic (“You know what’s cooler than an iPod? An iPod Nano!”), but has everyone forgotten his true masterpiece, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip?

• This satire of The Mentalist is funny even if you’ve never seen a second of the show.

• Matt Taibbi continued his coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, while also exposing Rick Perry’s ignoble reign in Texas.

• Don’t read this if you enjoy seafood.

 

Talkin’ Baseball: The World Series

Cardinals vs. Rangers

Well, just like Tim and John S always predicted (don’t bother looking it up), the 2011 season comes down to the Rangers and Cardinals. Will Tony La Russa prove his genius? Will a starting pitcher reach the seventh inning? Will Joe Buck emote? All that and predictions are discussed….

John S: Man, can you believe Jonathan Lucroy didn’t win NLCS MVP?! And can you believe someone almost as unlikely–David Freese–DID? You know, I usually hate the discussions that media outlets have every year that the Yankees/Phillies/Red Sox miss the World Series, where they make jokes about how angry FOX must be. But this World Series DOES seem conspicuously lacking in star power. At least last year the Rangers had Cliff Lee–the closest this year’s team has to such a star is Josh Hamilton, who had a disappointing season. The Cardinals, of course, have Albert Pujols, but after him their biggest star is Tony La Russa, who seems to wear out his welcome more and more every year. But while my instinct is to say that these two teams are mediocre, the evidence doesn’t really support me. The Rangers were better this year than they were in 2010, and even the Cards won 90 games, which is more the 2006 championship team won. Perhaps I should be more excited for this World Series… Am I off base about the lack of compelling personalities in this matchup?

TIM: No, I cannot believe Jonathan Lucroy didn’t win NLCS MVP. His .294 average in the six games was bested by only four Brewers, and like the four best Brewers in Randy Wolf, Jerry Hairston, Yuniesky Betancourt, and Ryan Braun. It was practically half of what Freese hit! I hate these traditionalist writers who always vote for the guy with the ..500+ average on the winning team.

The Captain and the Art of Mythmaking

The Captain

 

“The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” —JFK

 

As Derek Jeter is poised to make history this weekend, his career is in a very unusual place. On the one hand, he is standing on the cusp of history, poised to become the first Yankee to reach 3,000 hits. On the other hand, he is following up 2010, the worst season of his career, with an even worse year. The Yankees played their best stretch of baseball with him on the DL, leading some to wonder if the team is better off without him. And he remains under contract through at least 2013.

So why release a biography of Jeter now, at such an uncertain crossroads in his career? Writing a biography of Jeter that culminates in the 2009 season—squeezing his dreadful ’10 and his contentious contract negotiations this off-season into the epilogue—is like writing a biography of Julius Caesar that ends on March 14^th.

Ian O’Connor’s new book, The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter, is bound to be incomplete. So why did he write it? It seems clear that the primary motive O’Connor had for writing this book was not to bring new light to Jeter’s career, but to enhance the myths already surrounding it. The Captain is, above all else, an exercise in mythmaking.

Monday Medley

What we read while deciding not to publish our own story about not having sex with Christine O’Donnell…

Vodpod videos no longer available.

• As New York baseball fans, we were stunned and saddened by the news of the passing of legendary scorekeeper Bill Shannon. Tim, who was fortunate enough to meet Bill, wrote a brief tribute on his Tumblr. The best tribute, not surprisingly, came from MLB.com’s Marty Noble, with others pouring in from fellow scorer Billy Altman, Wallace Matthews, Ed Coleman, and Tom Boorstein.

• As for some other sports links, David Schoenfield tries to answer who the best postseason pitcher in MLB history is (hint: it wasn’t Cliff Lee even before Game 1). In direct contrast to what Tim McCarver said during Saturday night’s Game 3, here’s statistical backing for using a three-man rotation in the playoffs. And in other counterintuitive statistical analysis, Peter Keating argues that it is possible to give 110 percent.

• Speaking of statistical analysis, the Mets hired sabermetrics-advocate Sandy Alderson as their new General Manager this week. Here is an extensive (and excellent) interview of Alderson back when he was CEO of the Padres. Rumor has it that he’s going to bring along Paul DePodesta to the front office, who was prominent in Moneyball (a book we’ve invoked a few times so far), and has his own blog.

• With Conan O’Brien’s new TBS show just a week away, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Bill Carter’s book about January’s Tonight Show fallout. As usual, Jay Leno and NBC do not come off well. Also from Vanity Fair, a profile of the real Sean Parker, a/k/a Justin Timberlake’s character in The Social Network.

• In the spirit of Halloween, Tim and Josh posted about the best candies. New York City candy shops have some interesting selections. This is a good time to link to Candy Blog, which, you know, is a blog about candy.

• Some pseudo-sociology about the rise and fall of the modern hipster.

• John S wasn’t the only one to take on Malcolm Gladwell’s social media bashing. The Hairpin did it this week, from the perspective of Gladwell.

• We don’t usually link to college newspapers/magazines that we may or may not have used to write for, but Kevin Lincoln’s feature on Mike Posner and what Lincoln calls “the college-white-boy rap phenomenon” in Duke’s Towerview is worth the read.

• We don’t think it should be too hard to interest you in the best cover versions of ’90s TV theme songs. If nothing else, this just made us appreciate the Duck Tales theme all the more.

• We’re against negative campaign ads — unless they reference Billy Madison.

• Speaking of campaigns, here are some of the signs from this weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear.