The Most Annoying Phrases In Sports

Welcome to Part 1 of a (hopefully) ongoing series, in which I write about the often-used sports terms that make me the angriest, thus making me even angrier. It's not the healthiest practice, blood pressure-wise, but away I go:

-"Running the point." This term bothers me because it involves inventing an object that doesn't exist. Just because you are a point guard doesn't mean that there needs to be something called "the point." We don't feel the need to say that quarterbacks are "running the quarter," do we? Sure, we do refer to slot receivers as being "in the slot" or second basemen as being "at second," but those are actual, physically defined locations on the field. "The point" is...wherever the point guard goes, I guess? That's too nebulous for me, and it's much more accurate to say that the point is nowhere. Let's leave it that way, shall we?

-"Pitching and defense wins baseball games." You can't do this. There are, arguably, two really important aspects of baseball (pitching and hitting), and two less important ones (defense and baserunning). The implication of this term is that pitching and defense are more important than hitting, but that's a senseless comparison; you're pitting two dimensions of baseball against one. Sure, pitching does seem to have a slight edge over hitting as the single most important facet of the game, but it seems very possible that hitting and baserunning combined are more important than pitching alone. Or that pitching and baserunning are more important than hitting. In fact, why drag defense into it at all? If your argument is that great pitching beats great hitting, it almost weakens it when you make it seem as though you have to throw something else in there to make it hold up. Hey, did you know that Barry Bonds and Rafael Belliard combined have more career home runs than Albert Pujols?

While I do die a little inside whenever I hear phrases such as these, they pale in comparison to what I am dubbing the 2008 Meaningless Sports Phrase Of The Year:

-"Dink and dunk." If 2007 was the year of "it is what it is," 2008 is the year of dink and dunk. I'm not sure what it is that caused this phrase to explode in popularity. Maybe it's the fact that 2007's two best quarterbacks are either sidelined or less effective in '08, making short passes a more popular strategy. Maybe it's the fact that Chad Pennington became semirelevant when he switched teams this offseason. Regardless, "dink and dunk" is here, and it's not going away.

So, what makes "dink and dunk" so infuriating? Two things. First: it's meaningless. Sure, I'll get your point if you use it in a sentence, but the words themselves are completely arbitrary. Do short passes make a "dink" sound when they fall into the hands of running backs/slot receivers? It seems unlikely.

Secondly, there is an even shorter and easier term for the same thing that is NOT meaningless: "short passes." It's kind of beautiful in its simplicity, isn't it? So why do we need a nonsense term for the same thing? We don't. If nothing else comes of this Poop on Boozer post (and I firmly believe that will be the case), I'm hoping for a yearlong moratorium on "dink and dunk."

turkey day sports digest

thanksgiving football: pretty boring. okay, i didn't expect any better when i saw that the lions and the hawks would be taking the field. but 25+ point spreads... really? does anyone else have more fun watching tony romo grimace? personally, i'd rather just see him sing journey with mr. belding.

your college basketball player to watch is greg monroe. the georgetown freshman is one of the most impressive big men i've seen in a while, and it's not just because he is a human highlight reel. for one thing, he plays great defense. not only is he a beast around the glass; his hands are also active at the top of the key, and he's a danger to strip the ball from any opponent. then, he's always ready to spark a fast break - or to fill the lane and finish himself. and it's a pleasure to watch a big man who can actually make free throws. the big east is as tough as any division in college basketball, and monroe is going to have to be a key piece of the puzzle if the hoyas are going to make a run at the title - or even just the top four spots.

iverson misses practice... again. but i don't see what the big deal is. i mean, we're talking about practice!?

happy thanksgiving, all.

because this never happens...

"hey, did you catch venkataraman's last no-hitter?"

yeah, something's wrong with that picture.

indians aren't too notorious for their baseball skills - cliff lee aside. (har har har, i'm here all week.) the subcontinent is much more cricket-crazy than homer-hungry, preferring to play for five days straight in the sun rather than wuss out after five rain-filled innings.

all that side, two indian pitchers made history today when they dotted the i's and crossed the t's with the pittsburgh pirates, becoming the first indian athletes to sign professional baseball contracts.

it gets better. they were apparently noticed because of a publicity stunt, a "million dollar arm" contest run by jeff bernstein, a promoter more famously known for being barry lamar bonds' marketing agent.

(side note: bonds gets three counts thrown out, but he's still on the hook for 10 others, with a trial pending in march. yawn?)

no word, though, on whether this signing will prove to be any more than a marketing gimmick for south asia. is espn-star trying to line up some new television deals with major league baseball out there? will sportscenter asia finally stop showing bowling and pool highlights?

only time will tell. in the meantime, the pirates organization should get ready for a serious dose of aloo gobi.

Bud Wiser?

It was difficult to get excited about the 2008 World Series rain delay issue. It was the controversy that wasn't: everybody talked about it as though it were a polarizing issue, but ultimately, no one really seemed to think that it was handled the wrong way (except, of course, for Scott Eyre).

And now, as perhaps the final chapter in this anticlimactic non-saga, we have this:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/baseball/mlb/11/20/playoffs.shortened.ap/index.html

Again, this is probably the only system that would really work, and it's great that MLB finally has something officially codified (and a little appalling that they didn't before). Still, it's going to be pretty awkward when Fox has to pre-empt a night of primetime TV to present the last two innings of an 11-1 blowout. What if the home team were losing? Would the stadium even be full? How sad would it be to watch a postseason baseball game in a non-full stadium? Would Joe Buck's underenthused monotone finally be appropriate for the situation? Only time will tell...

Poop On Boozer Out-Of-Touch Masshole Update

The Bruins are good?

Re: 2008 mlb awards... meh?

As a follow-up to K.L.'s post on this year's MLB awards, I wanted to add that I found this year's AL MVP vote particularly interesting. Not that Dustin Pedroia didn't have a great year, but it's hard, at first glance, to see what would cause you to pick him over the guy who stands ten feet away from him in the field, Kevin Youkilis.

From a hitting perspective, it's almost no contest. Look up the stats--Youk had a better, albeit somehow less memorable, year at the plate. There's probably something to be said for the fact that Pedroia's production was better compared to the average second baseman's than Youk's was for first base, which is much more of a traditional power spot. Indeed, Pedroia boasts a better WARP for the year (if you're into that kind of thing), which is probably for that very reason. But as someone who's inclined to think that a hit is a hit and a home run is a home run, I don't care very much about where on the diamond those hits come from. If a backup catcher has a tremendous year for a backup catcher, we don't hand them the MVP for that accomplishment.

So, if Youkilis (and maybe even Carlos Quentin) had a better year at the plate than Pedroia, then what was it that tipped things in Pedroia's favor? Was it defense? It only takes a few games watching Pedroia to see that he is a superb defender, but there's no way he's significantly better than Youkilis, he of the Gold Glove and record errorless streak. There has to be some reason that Pedroia beat out Youkilis and others for the MVP, but I just don't see how defense can be it.

Maybe it goes back to what I mentioned earlier--Pedroia is somehow a more memorable player than Youkilis. He swings his bat like a medieval battleaxe and makes ridiculous diving stops to save no-hitters. Youkilis, on the other hand, is a decidedly unsexy bearded bald man who excels with appropriately unsexy stats like pitches per plate appearance. Youkilis is an extremely valuable player, but Pedroia just plays more like an MVP.

Or maybe it's something as simple as this: Pedroia has 726 plate appearances last year, compared to 621 for Youkilis and just 569 for Carlos Quentin. Youkilis may have had the edge in rate-based stats like OBP, slugging, etc., but Pedroia kept his rates up over the course of many more games. To win the AL MVP award, the first thing you have to do is show up.

2008 mlb awards... meh?

and as of today, we have them all, the winners of major league baseball's awards for 2008.

yawn.

there could have been no better cap to this season's completely boring award-winners than dustin pedroia taking home the AL MVP today. don't get me wrong - the guy works hard, he represents for short people like me, and he helped the red sox a ton this season. but really, an MVP with just 17 home runs?

or how about albert pujols, taking home best-man honors for the fourth-place cardinals? now, i've never been a fan of the your-team-has-to-make-the-playoffs-for-you-to-win ideology, but this is a little ridiculous. think about how many MVP awards a-rod could have racked up with the rangers if he had been held to the same standards as pujols was this year.

checking out the cy young, we have winners from two teams that were absolutely horrible this year. again, i'm a huge tim lincecum homer, and cliff lee was probably the best pitcher in baseball this year. but did anyone get excited about these picks except giants and indians fans?

you can make the argument that lou piniella and geovany soto are great feel-good stories for the cubs, but i'm not buying it. if it weren't for the fact that joe maddon has those sweet glasses and that evan longoria is one consonant away from being really hot, this award season would be a total bust.

wake me up when november ends.

140 CC's of Recklessness

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3703112

It's tempting to call this the most predictable move of the young baseball offseason, and there's certainly a lot of truth to that. But this baseball analyst thinks (hopes?) that there's still a lot that can be learned from this. Namely, that Hank Steinbrenner will follow in the wayward footsteps of his father.

See, the decline of the Yankees dynasty was marked by a practice of finding the best-performing free agent from the past season and making him an offer he couldn't refuse. It's a strategy that will net you some good players, to be sure, but there are two problems with it. For one, it's awfully inelegant; if you're a baseball GM, you're supposed to be able to predict who will perform above their market value next year, not look at a list of free agents from last year and go, "Look! He had the lowest ERA!" But more importantly than that, you end up dishing out long-term contracts to players who may just have had their peak year.

This Sabathia offer, in my opinion, is in keeping with that errant Steinbrenner tradition. Obviously, going after C.C. isn't an inherently bad idea--he's still a tremendous pitcher. But six years is a long time, $140 million is a lot of money, and there's also this:

C.C. SABATHIA'S 2008 ERA, BY LEAGUE

NL: 1.65

AL: 3.83

Something tells me that if you bring C.C. back to the land of designated hitters, you're not going to get that gaudy 1-something ERA you think you're paying top dollar for. But hey--he had the lowest ERA! Let's see if we can break the $200 million mark!

sunday night sports digest

that dirk is such a maverick! this one reaches back a few weeks, but it's worth pointing out for those of you who missed it back then. ever imagine what it would be like to have sarah palin as president? let's just say that nowitzki has a prominent role in the oval office. click on the picture frame behind palin's desk...

dangerous waters. we're just a few weeks into the NHL season, and san jose is running away with the pacific division. i should be excited, no? well, given the sharks' recent run as regular-season dominators and postseason underwhelmers, even an 80-win season wouldn't be enough assurance come springtime. one thing's for sure: todd mclellan is not coaching like a rookie.

unbeaten, but still boring. after sneaking past the bears on the road, the titans are 9-0, more than halfway to a perfect regular season. but there isn't a hint of the drama that surrounded the pats as they made their run last year. why? because tennessee just isn't that good. kerry collins at QB and a running game that produced just 20 net yards against chicago? let's just say the titans' destiny isn't exactly etched into stone quite yet.

psu really smells like poo, poo, poo. as if penn state didn't already have things hard enough playing in the unimpressive big ten, they went and crapped the bed against iowa to thoroughly eliminate any chance of making the bcs championship game. (note to self: i should probably avoid making absolute statements this year when it comes to college football. oh well.) so can we expect bama-red raiders come january? eh... not so fast. each will have a pretty significant hurdle in its championship game, and alabama didn't exactly look stellar against LSU. teams that have faded from the national spotlight (USC, anyone?) may still have a shot at getting back into the big game.

JJ is within reach. after grabbing the pole in phoenix, jimmie johnson is poised to take his third straight sprint cup title. what are you doing reading this?! flip over to ABC to check out the action! and no, you don't have to live south of the mason-dixon line to appreciate JJ's talent.

Fall Classic

A while ago, I wrote a post comparing all of the presidential candidates to NFL athletes. In the wake of Barack Obama's historic win, the last thing I want to do is trivialize his accomplishment, but as I watched history in the making on Tuesday night, the sports-politics connection occurred to me again.

I'm certainly not the first to suggest that there are various ways in which sports and politics are similar, but what I noticed on Tuesday night was slightly different--not just that sports and politics can be related, but as a fan experience, they're almost indistinguishable. From a fan perspective, the difference between the two isn't qualitative, it's quantitative--watching politics involves the same processes as watching sports, just on a much larger and more important scale.

This all became clear to me on Tuesday night. I rushed home at around 7 and immediately turned on the TV so I wouldn't miss any of the preliminary action, just as I had recently done throughout the MLB playoffs. As tense as can be, I sat exclusively on the front third of my seat, something I hadn't done while watching TV since the Rays won Game 7. I kept no fewer than eight tabs open as I watched, refreshing various electoral maps and political blogs anxiously. A few weeks earlier, I had done the exact same thing with Matt Garza's pitch count.

Despite being so excruciatingly nervous (or perhaps because of it), I was still able to laugh at CNN's ridiculous practice of beaming their reporters into their studio via hologram. As I enjoyed the unintentional comic relief, I recalled a similar moment from years before, when FOX would interrupt Sox-Yankees to have Scooter the Talking Baseball explain to us what a curveball was. Political coverage can be as intense as sports coverage, but it can also be just as over-the-top ridiculous.

Finally, there was the way the night ended. For the 65 million-plus who voted for Barack Obama (or, alternatively, for those who voted for Bush in 2004), watching your guy win felt not too far removed from seeing your team win the Super Bowl. For me, there were the celebratory text messages to friends, the traditional phone calls to my entire family in which I can't say anything coherent, followed by news footage of late-night rallies and partying in the streets. The stakes may have been higher, but it was the same exact process from every championship my teams ever won.

As I said before, it's important to remember that politics, especially when it involves such a huge racial milestone, matters more than sports ever will. Looking back, that makes the fact that I compared Barack Obama to Adrian Peterson seem a little ridiculous. On Tuesday night, it felt a lot more like I was watching Jackie Robinson.

now that's something to celebrate

october 30th might as well be a national holiday in east timor. that is the day that FIFA's lowest-ranked nation clinched its first-ever point by tying cambodia, 2-2.

okay, so east timor has only been a country for six years. but its first non-loss... ever? that's pretty miserable, even for a nation so economically ravaged.

but hey, when you're at the bottom, even a tie is a reason to celebrate. winning isn't everything, right? just ask caltech.

(on a side note: two soccer posts in one day? poop on boozer is finally finding its niche.)

espn360.com: trying to take it to the next level?

cynopsis digital reported yesterday that espn360.com had reached an agreement with IMG Sports Media to stream australia's hyundai a-league - 84 regular-season matches and up to six playoff matches, including the "grand final."

now, i know you all are thinking the same thing i did when i first read this: what the hell is the hyundai a-league? and how the hell did a crappy car company like hyundai manage to gather enough cash to sponsor something?

well, if the word "matches" wasn't a good enough hint, the a-league is australia's premier league - soccer, to most of you reading, or football, to the real sports fans out there. i can't say that i've heard of too many of the "star players" that ball under the hyundai logo, but this league is apparently up and coming according to wikipedia, with the 2008-09 season to feature a seven-team youth league and an eight-team women's league (very creatively named the w-league).

here's hoping this experiment goes a little bit better than the wusa. or the wnba, for that matter.