Flipping Out

As of late, and it might be because there's no real news, the baseball world is concentrating a little too much on bat flips.  For those not familiar with bat flips:  when a batter has a big hit or a big home run in a crucial point of a game, they toss or flip the bat out of their hand instead of tossing it down to the ground.  It's a way of showing off basically.  This topic will split a room of baseball fans.  The question is:  why aren't batters suppose to do this?

The big argument against it is that it shows up the pitcher that they just got a big hit off of.  That it's disrespectful.  If that's the case, then why is it okay for a pitcher to show up the batter when he gets a strikeout?  Why is it okay for the pitcher to pound his glove or hop off the mound when he gets out of a bases loaded jam?  Doesn't that show up the batter?  There is no retaliation if a pitcher shows up a batter is there?  It's not like a batter can chuck his bat, helmet, or batting gloves at the pitcher.  But batter beware if you flip your bat after hitting a 435 foot home run to take the lead in a game.  The next pitch might find your rib cage.

It is not disrespectful to the pitcher.  These players are human, can't they show some emotion?  A little bat flip or bat toss isn't the end of the world.  If you think Jose Bautista or Bryce Harper doing a little bat flip is outrageous, search 'Korean baseball bat flip' on YouTube.  Let me tell you, these little bat flips will seem tame.  The big controversy last post season was Jose Bautista.  Everyone knows the bat flip.  But did they watch the game?  Did they see Texas take the lead in the top of the 7th?  Did they see the emotions start to amp up?  The reason for the bat flip was because the game was so tense and that home run gave the Blue Jays the lead again.  Emotion is allowed.  They are human.  But you had players coming out of the woodwork saying that Bautista was disrespectful and showed up the pitcher. He had been around for a long time and is a respected player in the game.  This was his first postseason series and you're telling me that Jose Bautista cannot show emotion at that point?  Now, if he does this every single time he hit a home run, you might have a bit of an argument.  But when he hits home runs, he puts his head down, runs the bases, and celebrates with his teammates.  There isn't jumping up and down in the batters box, there isn't any staring down the pitcher.  In my mind, He has earned the right to bat flip.  

In football, you see small celebrations all the time.  Probably twenty times a game you see a guy stand up and signal first down after a big play.  Is that showing up the defense?  Not really.  There are celebrations in the end zone after touchdowns.  The NFL has worked to curtail excessive celebrations with the entire team dancing for an extended period.  But it's fine if a player does a dance or spikes the ball.  In basketball you see players flex their muscles and let out screams after monster dunks.  You see them throw up three fingers when three pointer is scored?  Is that showing up the opponent?  Not if they flex their muscles and then turn around and go back to the game.  If they stand above them and stare them down, that's taunting and maybe a foul?  I'm not sure.  Everything seems to be a foul in basketball.  In hockey, there's small celebrations.  Nothing major unless the team wins a playoff series.  But you still see some celebratory jumping into the glass after a goal.  Or going down and touching the ice as they skate away.  That doesn't mean the player is going to get slashed or punched in the mouth the next time he is on the ice.  

It's funny to listen to older players talk about how there weren't any type of antics back in the day.  Oh really?  There's pictures and video of Mickey Mantle bat flipping after home runs.  Babe Ruth calling his shot isn't showing up the pitcher?  If that isn't showing up the pitcher, I don't know what is.  He was saying 'doesn't matter what you throw, it's leaving the park'.  Was there outrage when this happened?  Pete Rose ruined Roy Fosse's career in an All Star game by running him over to score a run.  Is that not disrespectful?  It was an exhibition game.  There is photographic evidence of Al Kaline doing bat flips.  Who cares?  We are all human, we are allowed to have emotions.  

I think that there is a fine line though.  If your team is down 8-1 in the 9th inning and you hit a solo home run and bat flip, that's neither the time nor the place.  If you stand in the batters box watching the ball sail over the fence for an extended period of time, that's showing up the other team.  Especially if it's a no doubter.  If it's close to the foul line, I understand that.  But more often than not, the players can tell if it's leaving the park.  There is a time and place for everything.  And knowing that is part of being a professional.  I think asking players to keep their emotions in check every single moment of every single game is asking a bit much.  

32>64

March Madness is here!  Fill out your bracket, research college basketball programs you have no idea where they're from!  Non-basketball fans head for the hills!  I don't get too excited about it because I am not big on basketball, but I do fill out a bracket every year.  Just because it's fun to do.  I've done it a few times for money, won once and lost another time.  Nothing major, I think I won thirty or forty dollars in the pool.  I watched close to no basketball this year, so it was fun to go just by the numbers.  I picked Kansas over Michigan State to win the tournament.  I usually do not do well in picking, but like I said, I do it for fun. 

It seems like each year when the bracket is announced, there's grumblings and rumblings about teams that didn't get in or teams that aren't seeded where they think they should be.  The teams that complain about not making it aren't even going to win a game in the tournament, so I have never really understood the anger.  I mean, the teams that don't make it would have a better shot in the NIT as opposed to the national tournament.  It's the whole big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big lake argument.  Which do you want to be?  And it's always teams that would be ranked 15 or 16 and wouldn't win a game anyway.  Would you rather win a game or two in a lower tournament or get blown out by one of the top teams in the country?  On national television.  It'd be an embarrassment.  In fact, the lowest seed to ever win the whole tournament was Villanova in 1985.  They were an eight seed.  Now, I know we all love it when a Cinderella team wins a game or two.  If anything, the team probably broke your bracket so you're hoping that they continue to win so it does the same to others.  And while it's awesome to see thirteen and twelve seed teams win, it's not good for the tournament.  The tournament needs to move from 64 teams down to 32.  And it would flourish. 

Think about the first round games each year.  You have blow out games.  The 1/16, the 2/15, and traditionally, the 3/14 games aren't even watchable because the lower seed teams are just lucky to be there.  More often than not, the game is over by half time.  I mean, who in their right minds think that Austin Peay has a shot against Kansas?  Or what are the chances that Holy Cross doesn't lose by fifteen points or more against Oregon?  The 7/10 and 8/9 games are always fun and great to watch because the teams are so evenly matched.  The games, as a whole, do not start to get good until the second round, and that's if the majority of the higher seeds move on to the next round.  If you shrank the tournament from 64 to 32, you would have more competitive games from start to finish.  The lowest seeded teams would be an eight seed. 

Look at the four eight seeds in the tournament this year:  Colorado, Saint Joe's, USC, and Texas Tech.  While they are not traditional basketball powerhouses, they are (Saint Joe's notwithstanding) big name schools.  And with big name schools comes larger viewing audiences.  And with larger viewing audiences comes more revenue.  So you have big name schools near the top of the tournament seeding, but outside of their fan base, who is going to watch a game that is over by halftime?  There are 32 college conferences and each team that wins their conference tournament, gets in to the national tournament.  If the idea was to have the top 32 teams in the country in the national tournament, you would have to do away with these automatic bids.  The runner up of the ACC or Big East tournament is more often than not better than, say, winner of the Patriot League.  If you went just with the automatic bids making it into the tournament, you still aren't making it more watchable.  You could have a team with a losing regular season record go on a hot streak and win a conference tournament and get in, but a team that lost eight games all season and lost a quarter final game would be out?  No, that wouldn't work. 

What they would have to do in order to make a 32 team national tournament work is to get rid of automatic conference tournament winning bids and go with overall record.  Just take the top 32 teams in the country based on record.  Regular season record.  You would have the best of the country playing.  The low seeded teams would have a legit shot at winning games and making deep runs into the tournament.  I think that the one major thing that the NCAA would have to take into consideration is scheduling.  Especially the non-conference scheduling.  Just like with college football, basketball teams schedule some easy games at the beginning of the season, it's almost like preseason for professional sports.  You know, if you have a Big 12 school schedule a few Pac 12 or Big East teams in the early part of the season, there's nothing wrong with that.  Those conferences are on the same level.  However, if they start scheduling the bottom feeders of the MEAC conference, then you have to take a look and put a stop to it.  I don't argue against big schools scheduling one or two games against in state smaller schools.  It helps out the smaller schools because of the money that is involved, just like in football.  But you can't pad your record, that's just not cool.

Will this ever happen?  Hell no.  Why not?  Because, despite the fact that half of the first weekend games are nearly unwatchable, they're still on television.  They are still people taking time off of work (seriously) to try and watch as much as possible.  So why mess with a good thing?  My argument is that it really isn't a good thing, because most games aren't interesting.  You may see that a really low seed has a shot near the end of a game and you might turn the channel to watch it, but you haven't been watching the whole game.  Because who thinks a fourteen seed is going to beat a three seed?  Delusional fans, that's who.    

Binge Worthy?

With the rise of streaming services, binge watching has become very popular.  And with Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu starting to put out original content, you no longer have to wait an entire week for the next episode.  You can watch an entirely new season in just a few days.  Past seasons are readily available and you can watch a favorite episode from the first season that was four years ago.  All at the touch of a few buttons.  And it's ruining how we watch everything.

We live in a need it now world.  We don't want to wait in line at the store, so we have self checkouts because everyone thinks they can do it themselves better than the cashier.  We have smart phones and can access the Internet, social media, and email any time we want instead of turning on the computer when you get home.  Hell, I even wrote part of this on my phone thanks to an app.  So once streaming services started producing their own content and releasing it all at once, there was no longer a seven day wait for the next episode.  Binge watching a new season became normal.  Sitting down over the course of a weekend to watch all the new episodes is now typical behavior.  I just don't see how people can do that.  I don't understand how they can keep focused for four or five hours at a time to watch a handful of episodes all at once.  To be honest, I have done this once.  When Netflix released 'Wet Hot American Summer:  First Day' we sat down and watched all the episodes.  It's a little different with thirty minute episodes, which is what it was.  And it was funny and you didn't really have to pay attention to small details or conversations.  Just recently, the new season of 'House of Cards' was released and people were on social media talking about the entire season just a few days after it came out.  Full disclosure:  I haven't watched any of that show, so I don't know how intense or detailed it is.  But still, that has to be tough.

There are shows that I want to watch over a two or three day span.  When 'Daredevil' comes out at the end of the month, I might be tempted.  I watched the first season an episode at a time over a few weeks time frame.  Holding onto the old ways of waiting I guess.  What I have found is that I'm good for two new episodes of dramas or shows that are an hour long.  I have trouble keeping focused after two new episodes.  I get thinking about stuff I could be doing other than watching a show.  Plus, it's going to be there the next day.  But again, with a thirty minute comedy, that's different.  Maybe because it is so short, you feel that it's only an hour if you watch two and you still have the drive to watch more.  Right now, I'm in the midst of the second season of 'Arrow'.  It's good, and as I watch the episodes, I want to watch more than two because character development and action sequences are starting to pick up.  But I've tried watching a third episode.  What ends up happening, if I can get through it, is that I forget what happened.  So I end up re-watching the episode.

There is also the fact that after watching television shows for so long the traditional way, you are use to waiting to see what happens.  You are use to having time to digest what has happened.  One of the drawbacks to binge watching is you don't get that downtime to think about what is happening to the characters or what might happen in the next episode.  You get that instant gratification, but the anticipation of the new episode is gone.  Watching shows like '24' and 'The Walking Dead' they leave you reeling with cliff hangers or character injury/death that you have to deal with for an entire week (or more) before you find out what happened.  I mean, how intense was it wondering what happened to Glenn for those two weeks Walking Dead fans?  How long did you mourn President David Palmer, Tony, and Michelle 24 fans?  It was great.  That is the allure of television.  The waiting and the anticipation of the next episode. 

Some years in the future, the not too distant future the way technology develops, we will look at waiting seven days for the next episode as just plain crazy.  Even now, it's starting to become a relic.  With on demand television, you can miss an episode or two and still catch up on it.  You can wait until the weekend and catch up on all the shows you would have to plan your evenings around.  Is it only a matter of time before cable and network channels stop broadcasting new episodes on a weekly basis?  At what point will we start to see whole seasons of sitcoms being released all at once?  It doesn't feel like it's that far away.  When that happens, that might just be the death of the television station.  Or at the very least, the death of the television station as we know it.  It will become something else.  Something new.  And what that is I am interested to see. 

Soccer Takeaway

I got up early this morning to watch a soccer game.  Like super early.  Well, kind of.  6:00 is early to get up and watch a game isn't it?  Over the past couple of years, I have started to take an interest in soccer.  The reason I was up so early is because the team that I have started to root for, Tottenham Hotspurs, was playing against their rivals, Arsenal.  The North London derby is their big rivalry game.  I don't know how I came to like them, I just watched a handful of games and liked the style of play and that's how it came to be.  Living here in the states, you just kind of pick a team and go for it I suppose.  As I was watching the game, I thought of a few things that would make the four major sports better here in the states.  

A running clock is a great thing.  You know that each half is going to be about forty five minutes.  I say about because there is always stoppage time, but it's only ever between one and five minutes.  Including half time, you know that the game will be over in two hours.  Now take a look at sports here in the states.  You have football games that go for three and a half hours.  Baseball is about three hours.  Same goes for hockey.  I'm not sure about basketball because I don't watch it.  I'll guess three hours again.  And with the exception of hockey, the pace of play is slow.  Hockey is always moving, and the rest of the sports have periods of slow to no action.  Obviously there is no clock in baseball, but they have been toying with a pitch clock as well as keeping batters in the batter's box to speed things along.  I love baseball, so I don't notice the slow pace, but apparently that is a common complaint.  The games are no longer than football games.  A running clock in the slower sports like football and basketball would be great.  I know that there are substitutions, but you can do that without stopping play.  Look at hockey.  Line changes happen on the fly and basketball could do that.  There's enough time in between plays in football where guys can run off the field.  Maybe at a certain point in the game, if the score differential is so large, you just don't stop the clock. 

A great example of a running clock scenario:  I just stopped on ESPN and West Virginia and Baylor are playing right now.  There's 1:06 left in the game, West Virginia is up by 12.  They have stopped play to review if the ball went out of bounds and who touched it last.  This game is already over.  Teams can't score twelve points in a minute.  Let the clock run, if a team is up by fifteen or more with five minutes left in the game.  Baylor is continually fouling West Virginia players so they have to shoot free throws and Baylor will get the ball back.  Another option is if a team is down by fifteen and continually fouls the other team to get the ball back, the team that is winning gets to keep the ball after shooting the free throws.  The game has now ended and that last 1:06 of play time lasted about six minutes.  It shouldn't take that long.  That is the glory of the running clock.  

Relegation is wonderful.  Instead of having every team at the same level, you have two leagues and two championships.  Although, would it be a good thing to be the best of the worse league?  I'm not sure, but at least you've won something?  You have division one which has the best teams and division two which has teams that are not as good.  At the end of each year, the worst teams from the top division are relegated to the lesser division and the best of the worst are transferred up.  Make sense?  That's the basic concept of it.  I think that one thing that it would help is teams wouldn't tank as often.  You see teams tanking to get higher draft picks, but if you are trying not to get relegated to the lower division, you would have something to play for.  The teams that are in the lower division would then get higher draft picks and could continue to develop their team and talent.  All the while, the top teams could continue to win and keep their fans happy.  Think about how boring it is to watch the best teams continue to beat up on the worst teams because they are in the same division.  Now, imagine if just the best of the best of your favorite sport played each other more each year.  The competition would be better.  The games would be more exciting.  It's not really fun to watch a weekend baseball series when a team playing for the playoffs goes up against a team that was out of contention at the end of July.  Relegation would make games more meaningful throughout the course of the season, not just once or twice because the team in second place comes into town against the top team and it's the last series of the regular season.  Professional athletes are egotistical, and I doubt anyone would want to be relegated to a lesser league.  

Those are just two thoughts I had while watching the game today.  It would add some intrigue to our favorite sports.  The sports that have hit a rut and from time to time, as much as we love them, can bore us.  I don't even watch basketball and even I know that the Golden State Warriors have a 98% chance of winning the NBA championship.  We all know that in the NFL, the Super Bowl is going to come down to about three or four teams.  Baseball is the same.  The Royals, the Nationals, the Giants are all safe bets when it comes to the World Series.  Hockey is a little bit more of a crap shoot, but you can't go wrong thinking the Blackhawks, Capitals, or Rangers have the best chance of winning the Stanley Cup.  I know that pace of play is a big topic among fans of sports right now, but one could make an argument that talent and competition are an even bigger topic that should be explored.  Another topic for another day is contracting teams to make the sport better.  But that's a whole other post. 

Reasons for Ratings

Comic book movies are all the rage right now.  After they worked out the kinks that were 'Daredevil', 'The Punisher', 'X3', and 'Spider Man 3', the movie studios got the right actors, the right directors, and the right screenplay writers.  The 'Avengers' universe has a film timeline that goes into 2020 I believe.  All the different movies will tie together.  It's a great way to get people into the movie theaters.  Even the 'X-Men' franchise is set up to go on for a while.  Which, to be honest, I'm more excited about than the other movies.  Mainly because it's not going to branch into a hundred other movie spin offs.  Then there's 'Deadpool'.  The actual comics are hilarious and graphic from what I'm told.  There is more swearing, more blood, and more well....everything.  It's everything that other comics aren't.  It's more adult.  And they made a movie recently.  And of course it's rated R because they wanted to be true to the comics.  And of course younger people wanted to see it because it's a comic book movie.  Even my eleven year old nephew said he wanted to see it.  We told my sister that it's an adult comic book movie.  Not that she wouldn't have checked it out before because she's insanely responsible when it comes to her kids.  

My wife and I went to see 'Deadpool'.  Ryan Reynolds is hilarious and is the perfect actor for the part.  One thing we were excited about was the fact that it was rated 'R' so we knew there wasn't going to be a bunch of annoying kids in the theater.  Well, you wouldn't think so because reasonable adults wouldn't bring their kids to see a movie that was made for adults.  And there weren't any kids in our particular theater.  There was a small group of teenagers that looked like they were in high school.  And they were all decked out in 'Deadpool' clothes so they knew what was going to be on screen.  It was funny.  There were just a ton of pop culture references.  He breaks the fourth wall which was amazing.  There was plenty of action.  And a set up for sequels!  

However, I have seen several posts on social media blasting parents that had brought younger (I'm talking eight to ten) kids to the movie and storming out.  They were expecting a typical comic book movie.  Some explosions, violence, or maybe the word damn or hell, maybe even shit.  I saw one, and I'm paraphrasing here, that said 'I wish I had known Deadpool was going to be an adult movie.  The theater should post something by the ticket counter!'  To which someone responded 'oh, you mean like the 'R' rating it has?'.  It was pretty funny.  

If, IF, you do decide to bring a teenager to this movie, be prepared to deal with, and maybe have to explain, the following:

• teabagging
• a montage of sex scenes spanning several holidays (seriously, it goes on for like five minutes)
• masturbation scenes
• strip clubs
• tons of swearing
• why he references the book 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' when he gets his hand cut off and blood splatters EVERYWHERE.  Actually, that could be a good jumping off point for you and your daughter(s) to have that talk....(sorry/not sorry)

and those are just the things that I remember seeing and thinking 'I wouldn't want my kid to see until they're in high school.'.  We were talking about it after we left the theater and were driving home, and thought that if you had a kid that was a sophomore or junior in high school, they could deal with everything that was in the movie.  Younger than that, and you are on that bad parenting fence where some would shame you for taking a kid to see it.  

But what do I know?  I don't have any kids.  Do whatever the fuck you want.  Scar your kids, I don't care.  But be ready to discuss things you might not be comfortable discussing at this particular time.  I mean, if I watch a movie with my parents and there's a sex scene, I still get uncomfortable.  And I'm in my mid-30s.  Imagine sitting next to your dad and there's like a five minute montage of all these different sex acts and positions.  Uncomfortable yet?