Trout, Miggy and the MVP

I have to say that, personally, I have come to enjoy the “Trouble With The Curve” grumpiness about advanced statistics that is re-emerging because of the MVP tug-of-WAR between Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera and the Angels’ Mike Trout. I came across several stories making the case that Cabrera should be the MVP, because (a) you would have to be insane to NOT give the Triple Crown winner the MVP, (b) the Tigers look to be going to the postseason when the Angels do not and, (c) the arguments for Trout are so often built around an evil statistic, WAR, that you can’t even calculate without a physics degree and help from the guy in “A Beautiful Mind.”

I’ve already written that I think it does a great disservice to Mike Trout’s MVP case to pin it on advanced statistics. His case as the league’s most valuable player is as old-school as Jim Leyland’s mustache. His case is that he’s having a great offensive season in different ways from Cabrera (he leads the league in runs and stolen bases, and his on-base percentage and OPS+ is actually HIGHER than Cabrera’s), and he’s a much better defender and base runner. His case is that when you take into account the whole ballplayer, he’s more valuable than Cabrera, Triple Crown or not.

The Meaning Of Tiger (June 2008)

I wrote a little something about Tiger Woods from here at the Ryder Cup, and I referenced this piece that I wrote back in 2008. I realize that my archives are not available on the Internet at the moment. Working on it. But in the meantime, I’ll repost “The Meaning Of Tiger,” which was written just after Tiger Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open. As you probably know, life has changed considerably for him, and he has not won a major since.

* * *

Sure, I’m fascinated by Tiger Woods. I’m fascinated by him because I cannot figure him out. I have no idea what drives him, what inspires him, what makes him laugh (other than a misplayed chip bouncing into the hole). I don’t know if he’s happy living the most luxurious and public life imaginable, or if happiness is beside the point. I don’t know if he plays otherworldly golf because it’s pivotal to his existence, or because it gives him a high he cannot get anywhere else, or because that golf has won him a billion dollars and the hearts of men on Wall Street and a Swedish supermodel, or if he’s inescapably bound to the dreams of his father and a poster of Jack Nicklaus that he had on his wall as a child.

Swimmingly

Our oldest daughter Elizabeth swims. By this, I mean, she is on a swim team. She shocked the heck out of all of us a few months ago when she announced that she wanted to be on a swim team. Elizabeth had never shown any desire whatsoever to watch sports or play sports or even be around sports.* Whenever I tell people that, they invariably say the same thing: “Oh, well she’s still young, that could change when she gets older. When I was young, I didn’t like baseball at all, but now …” I suppose anything’s possible, but I’m not sure I’ve explained it well enough. Elizabeth actively, passionately, enthusiastically does not like sports. Put it this way: When we go as a family to baseball games, the most important thing we must remember to bring is not a glove or a hat or sunscreen or a blanket but a book for Elizabeth to read. She might last a few innings at the game if she has a book with her. If not, well, no.

*Except NASCAR, which fascinates her.

Couples and the Hall of Fame

Here’s another opportunity to talk about what being elected to a Hall of Fame really means. Fred Couples was just elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame. Inside the golf community, this seems to have set off some disgruntlement, largely because there are many in that community who believe that Couples is actually one of the great underachievers in golf history. This may be true, by the way. But the question remains: Is that the point?

Before getting to what I think is interesting about any of this, let’s go into the numbers. Fred Couples won one major championship -- the 1992 Masters. That tournament has special meaning for me because it was the first Masters I ever covered (as columnist for The Augusta Chronicle). It was also the first golf tournament I had ever covered. It was also the first time I had been on a golf course for four straight days. So everything about that tournament was, for me, big and exciting and full of color and life. That was the tournament, you might remember, where Couples hit his tee-shot at No. 12 short, and it started to roll back into the water but, for some reason, stopped. Couples chipped up, made his par and beat Raymond Floyd by two shots -- two shots he very well might have lost had the ball rolled into the water.

Stuff On Earth

OK, looks like we’ve got this blog integrated now with Sports On Earth. So, we should be off and running again. Coming up (I think): Something on Fred Couples and the Hall of Fame; my daughter the swimmer; the worst award-winners ever, the best board games ever* and the new Snuggie.

*If you have any thoughts on what should be on the worst board games or worst award winners lists, as always, Brilliant Readers suggestions are duly considered.

in the meantime, on Sports on Earth:

-- RIP Steve Sabol, the storyteller, the filmmaker and the man.

-- We’ve started a new feature, Today at the Pennant Races, where we catch you up on the action the night before and write about whatever happens to come to mind.

Wednesday: Man, Miggy Cabrera can hit.

Tuesday: The comeback of Adam Dunn and the artistry of Cliff Lee.

Monday: An appreciation of Matt Wieters and a pretty unbelievable Molina stat.

-- Bill James is back in the loop with the Red Sox. I think it’s a good sign.

-- This Orioles team might not play baseball The Oriole Way, but it’s good to have Baltimore back.

Sports Somewhere On Earth

Still figuring things out a bit as far as what things will go here on the blog and what stuff will go on Sports On Earth.

In the meantime, a few things I’ve written lately:

-- A bit of nostalgia about Electronic Football (not Electric Football) and the pain we used to feel back in the old days when the stopwatch at 60 Minutes started to click: Old Man Nostalgia.

-- The life and times and disappointment of Art Modell.

-- The agony of being the fifth-ranked men’s tennis player in the age of the Big Four. You can read that here and you can read Tom Tango’s brilliant rejoinder here.

-- With Rory ascending and Tiger searching for his youth, it’s a great time to be a golf fan.

Lots and lots of stuff in the hopper; like I say I’m still working out what will go here and what will go there, but I will definitely do better about letting you know what’s going up.

Mac and Braves Journal

I did not know Mac Thomason, the man behind the essential baseball blog Braves Journal. I did not even know him the way I know so many through the Internet, my e-migos, the people I brush against in emails bursts and Twitter directs and exchanged links. As far as I know, I never exchanged an email with Mac Thomason. All I did was read him from time to time.

We used to live in a world where, if you were this sort of person (and I was), you could let the static-suffused voices of baseball play-by-play announcers pull you out of your own humdrum childhood and into another life. You could sit in a car in your driveway -- an antenna rising from the hood like a conductor’s baton -- and turn the dial slowly, let Bob Prince take you to Pittsburgh, hear Ernie Harwell tell you the comical names of the people catching foul balls in the stands of Detroit, let Jack Buck pull you into downtown St. Louis, catch Herb Score saying improbably that once more in Cleveland it was a beautiful day for baseball. In another part of the country you could hear Vin Scully, the master, tell you a story, or Dave Niehaus shout that baseballs in Seattle were flying away.

You can still do this sort of thing, of course, in fact you can do it more effectively than ever -- you don’t even need an old Chevy Nova. The radio voices from all over the country come across your iDevice, your Sirius radio, your computer, your phone, and those voices aren’t covered in static, and they don’t fade away when the wind changes course. This is better, no question.

And, maybe, at the same time, it’s also less of an adventure. And I think the point for us car-parked radio explorers was the adventure.