• I grew a beard, then shaved it off, then grew it again, over and over and over again.
• I moved from my apartment in Cleveland Park to an apartment I’m sharing with my friend, Drew, in The Center of Cool DC (i.e., the 14th St. Corridor between Logan Circle and U St.).
• I obsessed over Foursquare and Twitter and Google Reader (and, related to these things, Fojol Brothers, ChurchKey, Google Wave, and Android). These obsessions have yet to wane, and indeed I have managed to infect many other people (but not enough!) with them.
• I went to Spain and ate all of that country’s pork and foie gras.
• I listened to the same music as ever–Daft Punk, Kanye West, Chromeo, Ratatat, the Old 97′s, Lily Allen, Lil Wayne, and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”–on a continuously rotating basis.
• I relished the most recent seasons of Lost and Mad Men, and have so far found the current season of Top Chef to be a very enjoyable return to form. Dollhouse was as good as it could possibly be, but that actually wasn’t very good at all–it was a fundamentally flawed show that richly deserves cancellation.
• The Redskins went 2-6 against the easiest first-half schedule in the history of the NFL, because the owner refuses to hire professionals to manage the team and let them make football decisions. But then they won one game, and now everyone loves them again!
• Obviously, I completely lost the habit of posting anything on my blog. This may be permanent, although I would like to get back to it (even though, as I may explain in a forthcoming blog post, Twitter + Google Reader have essentially replaced whatever meager benefits I used to get out of having a blog).

And… that’s all, folks. See you again in 2010!

Sorry if you’ve already seen this. I was delayed in posting it because I was watching the Redskins win an ugly one in Detroit. Go Skins.

First of all, let me just say that no matter how this season ends up, I am really enjoying the way this team plays under Jim Zorn. They dominate the line on offense, run right up the gut, and take their shots with deep passes and trick plays often enough to keep opposing defenses guessing. On the other side of the ball, they are playing confident, aggressive defense, making it very difficult for their opponents to put up points.

Here are some factors that I find to be very positive about the season so far:

• Clinton Portis (and the offensive line). Is Clinton Portis a new man? It’s hard to say. I think he’s been playing this well ever since Joe Gibbs arrived, but now he’s running behind an experienced, smart, enthusiastic (more on this below) offensive line, and his head coach is really calling on him to establish the parameters of the entire offense–run to set up the pass, run to set up the wacky gadget play, run to set up more damn running. From what little I understand about the NFL running back mindset, it seems like Portis is really responding to the confidence the team is showing in his abilities. It doesn’t hurt that his backups, Betts and Cartwright (and maybe, but probably not, Sean Alexander) beat the crap out of the other team when they get in the game. And he is great at picking up the blitz on passing plays. I love watching him lay out linebackers.

• Defense.What can I say? They’ve been pretty great. They came up huge in the Dallas and Philadelphia games, shutting down explosive offenses and really demoralizing those teams. The line is great against the run, and puts a decent amount of pressure on the quarterback

• ZORN. I wasn’t particularly happy to see Joe Gibbs go–he had a rough start, to say the least, but after a while his personnel and his game plans came around to something kind of like the Super-Bowl-winning teams he coached in my youth. Jim Zorn came in and did something very interesting: he didn’t mess with things too much. He took a hard-running, tough team, and stuck with its strengths. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t touch the defense, letting Blache take care of it. The results on that speak for themselves. And on offense, he’s interpolated his own playcalling preferences–quick passes aimed at creating yards-after-catch, and quirky gadget plays taking advantage of his personnel–with what the team has been doing well for a few years (running the ball down opponents’ throats). He hasn’t been perfect–his time management in the two-minute drill is still pretty questionable, for example–but for a guy in a head coaching position for the first time ever he’s done a great job.

• Attitude. This comes back to Zorn, too. For many years, basically since Gibbs left the first time, the Redskins have always seemed to be one bad break away from folding. They always seemed to lose the close games, and they got blown out far too often for my comfort. Much like the pre-2004 Red Sox, at critical inflection points they just seemed to fall to the occasion. Well, they haven’t come through every time this season (giving up the game-winning drive to the woeful Rams was pretty disappointing), but I no longer think failure is an inevitability. That comes down to a few things, including recent success in the regular and post-seasons, but more than anything I think this is the result of Zorn’s influence. He’s not a harsh taskmaster who comes down on anyone expressing themselves, nor a wise old man dropping science on kids he has nothing in common with. He’s a laid-back dude who had a pretty successful pro career, who’s managed to get the Redskins to focus and work hard without letting setbacks bother them too much. I can’t emphasize enough how different this team seems to respond to adversity from its predecessors. It’s really fun to watch.

• Fine. Cooley. He may be the most hyped player in Redskins history, but it’s true: Cooley is pretty great. He can contribute as a receiver, but I think his biggest contribution is with his blocking. Much like Portis, he really makes things happen for other players with his physical play away from the ball–something players like T.O. and Plaxico “gotta skip practice–my kid spilled his juice box!” Burress might want to learn from.

That said, I have some concerns:

• Jason Campbell. Now, let’s be clear. Jason Campbell is one of the biggest reasons we’re 5-2 right now. He has played very well, and has done quite a bit more than “manage the game”. But he’s had some luck along the way, too. He hasn’t had a turnover this year (at this time last year he had something like 48 interceptions and 62 fumbles), which is awesome, but that streak isn’t all about his decisionmaking and crisp spiral. At least two of his passes fell right through Cleveland defenders’ fingers yesterday, and those drops could have easily been interceptions. And there have been plenty of missed opportunities for opposing defenders in earlier games, too. That’s not to say that Campbell won’t continue to play great, but we can’t seriously expect him to finish the season with 20 touchdowns and no turnovers. And as close as Redskins games tend to be, it’s quite possible that one bad decision by Campbell (or a bad bounce off of a receiver’s hands) could decide a game or two.

• Defensive injuries and inexperience. How shaky is the secondary? Jason Taylor’s calf almost died. It looks like Springs is going to be a “maybe” for the rest of the season. Fred Smoot, while healthy, is about as reliable in coverage as John McCain’s economic policy. Leigh Torrence and Chris Horton are young, promising players, but they’re not ready to carry the defensive backfield. Carlos Rogers, Landry, McIntosh, the ageless London Fletcher, Marcus Washington, Demetric Evans and the entire defensive line have been awesome so far this year (and I don’t see any reason to think they can’t get even better as the season goes on), but the Rams demonstrated last week that the Redskins can give up big plays downfield. And for whatever reason, these plays have often been coming on last-minute drives–it seems like all a “prevent” defense ever does is prevent the quarterback from getting back out there to kneel and run the clock out. Also, it wouldn’t be too bad if these guys could mount a meaningful pass rush once in a while.

• Special teams. Suisham is as dependable a kicker as we’ve had in years. I have no complaints about him (yes, he missed a short one yesterday, but that happens every once in a while, and I thought the hold looked pretty bad). It remains to be seen whether our new punter, Plackemeier, will be a positive, but yesterday he at least broke even. Sadly, that was an improvement over Durant Brooks, who I think will be a very good punter eventually but who is not ready to contribute on game day just yet.

  But the punt returns have been borderline moribund so far. It’s been mostly Randel-El and Moss catching the ball, but considering how explosive they are on offense I think it must be about the blocking. Maybe this team isn’t emphasizing the punt return, but I think that it should be (especially since the defense is forcing so many punts). And although this may seem like a contradiction to that point, I don’t think we should have Randel-El or Moss returning punts, at least not on a regular basis. Why risk an injury to put a guy back there who’s averaging something like six yards per return? Let Thrash, Cartwright, or some other skilled but not critical player take on the role–at least until the other 10 guys on the field can open up some more holes in the coverage.

• The rookies on offense. Kelly, Thomas, and Davis are just not contributing yet. In fact, Thomas seems to be set on hindering the Redskins with untimely (and obvious) offensive pass interference penalties, most of which seem to be away from the play and several of which have resulted in failed third downs. This is not a big, big deal–rookies aren’t generally expected to come in and dominate, especially receivers, who tend to take a season or two to really come into their own. But I think the offense is one big playmaker away from being seriously dominant, and any of those three could have come in and been that difference-maker. The season’s not over yet, however, and I think that if Thomas can get his hands under control he may be able to make some plays and help score some points.

Although I wrote a lot about this team’s weaknesses, I think it’s safe to say that none of them are critical, and most of them are basically just speculative. It doesn’t appear that the Redskins are going to blow a lot of teams out, which makes for some tense moments, but so far they have come up big in most of those moments. They’re playing with confidence and they are well prepared, and they’re really fun to watch. I don’t think they’ll win the Super Bowl this year, but I do think they’re back to the Redskins team I watched growing up–a bunch of tough guys who nobody looks forward to facing, capable of winning every time they get on the field.

So what does this mean? It means I will enjoy watching the Redskins decimate the woeful Lions next weekend (in person!), and I think they’ll perform well enough the rest of the way to make the playoffs. Beyond that, who knows, but I’m looking forward to seeing it all unfold. (Just as long as they don’t revert to Norv form and play like crap when it really counts.)

The thing about sports is that it, well, tends to be an old-boys’ club. The sports world is full of sexist shit that pisses me off if I think about it too much (and, honestly, I’m not often prone to do that, because I don’t always want to be addressing Big Issues in the context of something I enjoy just for the hell of it, which I suppose is lazy of me). Commercials aired during sporting events or programs often are sexist. There are sexist athletes and sexist columnists, and I hate it all, but I try not to hold it against sports as a whole. That would be like being a Cubs fan, but hating the Cubs because of Cubs fans.

That said, there’s one place where the sports assholes come out in droves and it drives me batshit insane every freaking time I see it. It’s a land where you’ll see Asshole Stupidus in its natural environment, taking a gigantic dump on women and human decency.

It’s the land of the Deadspin commenters.

I was going to leave a comment there but figured I might as well put it here instead, since it’s important that many people in the world know how I feel about this issue.

Basically, I think DS has acquitted itself kind of poorly in defending itself in the comments of the post, but I guess that lack of rational thought is sort of the point of the irreverent misogyny.

I think the best criticisms of this post are the ones pointing out that Tracy is painting with a pretty broad brush. But those criticisms aren’t so great, either, because the fact is that the great majority of DS comments ARE offensive and stupid. So we’re not talking about a few bad apples spoiling it for everyone–we’re talking about a pernicious and overwhelming atmosphere that invites and encourages a race to the bottom.

Not to say that most Deadspin readers, or even most commenters, are offensive/stupid, but the atmosphere in the DS comment space is pretty pathetic most of the time. I like that kind of stuff when it’s well done (Kissing Suzy Kolber, literally the product of DS commenters, is at times pretty brilliant, for example), but there’s nothing less enjoyable than someone aiming for hilariously-rude and missing the mark (ahem, Carlos Mencia).

And it’s true that DS is no worse than many, if not most sports blogs (or, um, nearly all blogs), but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to make it better. I don’t know what it is about public fora, but any blog with a sizeable readership ends up with a crew of douchebag commenters trying to one-up each other in stupidity and offensiveness. It’s a complete waste of time, and I basically never bother reading the comments on hugely popular sites like Deadspin, Engadget, The Washington Post (yes, even old media suffers from this problem), etc.–sifting the wheat from the chaff is just not worth the energy.

So, given that reading comments is not compulsory, even if you do read the blog’s content, how important is it that Deadspin’s commenters come off, for the most part, as hateful assholes? Probably not all that important, really. But it is pretty pathetic, and gives ignorant old media types ammunition in their poorly-conceived arguments against the basic idea of “the blog”–the quality and content of blog comments end up getting attributed (unfairly) to the blog itself. So when Deadspin’s comments are stupid, it makes Deadspin itself look stupid. Which is unfortunate, because Deadspin’s actual tone and quality are pretty great.

Although of course there are plenty of exceptions to Tracy’s general argument, I don’t think there’s any question that Deadspin’s commenters are representative of a misogynistic streak that runs through sports culture. And having someone point that out (and actually be heard) can only be a good thing.

I really enjoyed this interview between Dan “DC Sports Bog” Steinberg and Chris “Chris Cooley’s Official Blog” Cooley. It made me feel a bit bad for Fabini. Also, when Cooley mentioned that his blog gets ten or fifteen thousand hits a day, it made me feel a bit bad for myself.

If you don’t have time for the whole thing, you can just catch the highlights at this page.

Now that I’m a month and a half away from graduating, I find myself unmotivated. It’s not that I don’t have much to do (quite the contrary, actually–I have a ton of work to get done), but I’ve been spending a lot of time screwing around on my computer–keeping up with my RSS feeds, playing solitaire, and, germane to this post, getting reacquainted with my old friend, Minesweeper.

Which is all a long way of saying, rather than write anything new today, I think I’ll just recycle that post. Enjoy this look back at July of 2005, and forgive my younger self’s ornate, doofy prose!

So the point is, I got pretty good at it*. Good enough to scare people who saw me playing, my stupid mousehand flying around clicking and clicking and clicking. Good enough to develop fairly complex analyses of the intricacies of the game. So here’s my intermediate strategy guide to Minesweeper:

First of all, you’re gonna have to stop using the ? mark. Disable it, it’s just wasted clicks. If you’re not sure, don’t mark it at all. Your time is better used elsewhere.

2008 edit: Something funny is that because I had to reupload all these images (and update the links in the html), it probably ended up taking me as long to do this as it would have to actually write something new. But the key thing is that I didn’t waste the time on my schoolwork.

That’s the end of our voyage into the deep past. Hope you enjoyed it.

I don’t know how big the overlap is between internet dorks and NCAA dorks, but I’m sure there are a few others out there. Also, while I was out of town I may have missed someone else’s post doing the same thing. If so, who cares. Join my bracket, too.

Here is the info you need to play (cut and pasted from the email I didn’t bother to send):

This message is from Jake who is challenging you to play Men’s Tournament Challenge on ESPN.com.

This game gives you the chance to win $10,000 by predicting the winner of the most games in the 63 game men’s college basketball tournament. A correct selection in the first round counts as 10 points, and in each succesive [sic, ESPN's fairly dumb error that spell check should have caught] round the point values are doubled. You can create up to ten entries, and best of all, it’s FREE to play.

Get in the action now:
http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/group?groupID=82612

Game Front:
http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage

Group: jake’s house of bracket
Password: internet

I’m pretty annoyed with Belichick for a) leaving the field before the final whistle and b) not making any good changes to the Patriots’ game plan at halftime (or earlier). You’ve got to hand it to Manning for the game-winning drive (never thought I’d write that sentence about Eli), and the Giants’ defensive line was truly awesome.

But all that being said, I don’t understand why the Pats didn’t transition to a quick-pass, screen-heavy, audible-filled offensive scheme as soon as it became clear that Brady wasn’t going to have the kind of time he’s had for most of the season.

Also, going for it on 4th and 13 was extremely stupid. I think there’s a good argument for punting in that situation, and an equally good argument for attempting a 49 yard field goal, but trying to convert the first down was arrogant and foolish. I said so at the time and now feel justified.

Essentially, it seems like the Patriots made a series of major strategic errors in advance of and during the game–errors that a relatively casual fan like myself identified as such at the time, not just in retrospect. It’s so uncharacteristic of the coaching staff that I find it difficult to believe that it happened.

At any rate, I think the Patriots deserved that outcome. They were extremely confident going into the game (as were most of the fans and pundits who opined on the likely outcome), and they failed to match the Giants in intensity or preparation. If you’re going to talk a big game (as both teams did, in their own ways), you’ve got to back it up. And the Pats definitely didn’t do that.

As a Redskins fan I hate the Giants, but you’ve got to hand it to them. The play that everyone’s talking about today (Manning fighting off a sure sack to throw a miracle completion to the team’s 4th or 5th receiver, to put the team in scoring range for the ultimate game-winner) is a microcosm of the season as a whole–improbable, clutch, and ugly. This was one of the most exciting Super Bowls ever, in terms of the play on the field and the teams’ respective stories. Congrats to everyone with the lack of character that being a Giants fan entails.

And get ready for even more Manning commercials. Ugh.

Money lines, complete with practically sarcastic note that none of this has been proved (or even hinted at by any direct evidence):

If the Patriots secretly taped the Rams’ walk-through, then stopped the red-zone plays the Rams showed in that walk-through, then won that Super Bowl by three points, then logic says New England materially benefited from cheating in the Super Bowl. If true, this would be the worst sports scandal since the Black Sox.

Let’s put that in capital letters: IF TRUE. We don’t yet know if the Super Bowl allegations are true. Then again, we are into only the second day of information going on the record and the league finally answering some questions about the subject.

PS: Do you think there’s any chance that the Pats will use this as anything but competitive fuel tomorrow? My prediction: New England 37, New York 20.

Will the Victoria’s commercial be TV-14? Earlier this season, TMQ noted that NBC’s Sunday night football wrap show is rated TV-14 — I wondered whether I should let my 12-year-old watch it. Reader Rebecca Seidel of Monroe, Conn., writes, “Tell Spenser he shouldn’t watch the commercials. While the NFL itself keeps programming clean, not all of its sponsors feel the same way. Based on the assumption that mostly adult males will be the ones watching football past nine on a school night, the ads tend to get a little racy.” On the East Coast, half the Super Bowl will occur past 9 p.m., the hour when networks start allowing racy ads. Risqué is fine for adults, but should it occur in the context of the one show per year that every little kid in America is allowed to stay up late to watch? We’ll see how the commercials stack up this year.

Okay, so here’s my question. WHO CARES? I know, I know. Lots of people care. But I think it’s ridiculous. So what if a bunch of pre-teens see cleavage? What’s the worst case scenario? Youngsters all over America start humping their couches? Do you think there’s any way to prevent, or even slow, adolescents’ discovery of the human body, in all its sinfulness?

Three years later, is there any reason to think that Janet Jackson’s ruthless baring of a nipple had any effect whatsoever on the millions of children who caught a glimpse? Aside from scandalizing a lot of adults who are just desperate for something to be shocked about, this “issue” is a complete joke. I’m sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to give a crap about sexually provocative images on television.

You want to know what this is about? This is about parents feeling uncomfortable sitting in the same room as their kids when this stuff is on. They don’t want to talk about sex with their kids. They think that keeping provocative images and other evidence that human beings have sex away will mean that children will never ask them about it or even, heaven forbid, just go out and do it.²

Suffice it to say, this perspective is incredibly stupid. Pretending a problem doesn’t exist is the surest way to exacerbate it. And taking superficial steps to keep a problem out of sight just means it’ll be that much more problematic down the road. And, of course, this would be an appropriate time to note that we as a country have bigger fish to fry than the possibility that our children might find out about mammaries.

Bring on the TV-14 ads. We can handle them.

¹ I don’t know what spurred this witch hunt, but Easterbrook is clearly on a mission. He “contributed” to this story about a long-departed Patriots employee who seems to be blackmailing the team with public statements indicating his willingness to reveal something or other he did when he worked for them. After a year of blind speculation based on how little we know about the situation, I don’t take him seriously anymore. But it’s getting really tiresome watching him go after the Patriots for doing what I have no doubt that every single team in the league is doing, in one way or another. I could go on, but I won’t–you get the point.

² By the way, I just want to make clear that I don’t think kids having sex is a huge problem. I think kids (and adults) having unprotected sex is a huge problem. So maybe instead of pretending sex doesn’t exist, is wrong, and must never happen, we ought to try something else. Like acknowledging it as a fact of life and doing our best to make sure that the consequences of youthful indiscretion aren’t so serious.

I was extremely hopeful about Joe Gibbs’s tenure when he returned to the team, and although it hasn’t been all rainbows and puppy dogs I have to say he did a pretty good job. They made the playoffs twice, and more importantly they have a stability and patience from the front office down that they hadn’t had since the last time Gibbs coached the team.

I think this is good for him and for the franchise. He gets to leave on a good note, and the team gets to move forward. I thought this post over at the Sports Bog said it pretty well–this was a reasonable decision made for the right reasons.

If they don’t promote defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, the Redskins are a bunch of dumb jerks–he’s done a great job, and it seems clear that he’s at least been implicitly promised the right to be Gibbs’s successor. That’s not to say that he’s guaranteed to be a great head coach (he was middle-of-the-road as the Bills head coach a few years back), but he definitely deserves the chance to prove himself in DC.

While we’re talking Redskins, let me just say that the Seahawks game was pretty disappointing. I thought they had a good chance of beating them and giving the Cowboys a good game this week, but I guess they had expended all the energy and planning and luck they had in the 4 weeks before the playoffs began. I can’t complain–they made the playoffs and had a chance to win, and that’s all I could hope for this year. They went through a lot of misfortune, on and off the field, and I think their season ended well.

Of course, it would be just like the Skins to lose against the Cowboys’ second stringers, but this feels different from the franchise’s annual collapse. And, truth be told, no matter how next week goes, you’ve got to be impressed with what they’ve done since Sean Taylor’s death. Just watching them actually step up in big games, play their best, and give themselves a shot at the postseason is enough to satisfy me this year.

Most promising is the fact that they’re doing this without a ton of contributors–Sean Taylor, of course, but also half of their offensive line, Carlos Rogers, Rocky McIntosh, Jason Campbell, and quite a few others. If they can maintain this year’s focus and intensity while plugging those big talents in next year, these guys have a shot at really making some noise. In the meantime, they’ve got as good a chance as they could ask for at getting into a playoff game against a beatable Seattle team.

All I have to say about this is, Arizona, stop stealing my ideas! Or at least give me credit when you implement them!

The Redskins started out the game with 10 players on the field–the missing safety was a powerful tribute to Sean Taylor’s untimely death last week. That was a great start to a game with a miserable finish.

First, let’s be fair: it looked like that kick would have been good from the original line of scrimmage. The Redskins would have probably lost the game anyway.

But to make that kind of mental error–calling two timeouts in a row (which is against the rules)–is completely ridiculous. And, in this particular situation, more or less unforgivable. This is the kind of mistake the Redskins have been making all season, sometimes in critical situations, and sometimes when it didn’t make much of a difference. Suffice it to say you won’t see Bill Belichick doing this stuff. There’s no question that the mistake was Joe Gibbs’s fault. But there’s plenty of blame for this loss to go around.

As far as I can tell from what I’ve been reading on the internet, the offensive line didn’t do a great job today. That doesn’t surprise me in the least, and I don’t blame the players for it. The coaching staff has been throwing inexperienced backups out there all season long. The frustrating thing about that, though, is it makes things impossible for everyone else on the field. Can’t pass-block, can’t run-block. QB doesn’t have time to find open receivers, running backs don’t have holes to run through.

So we can’t play offense and end up depending on our defense to bail us out. And, to be honest, they have been doing that all year long. They haven’t been invincible (they’re suffering from their own injury problem, encompassing just about their entire secondary), but they have been good in just about every game (except the New England contest, about which we need not speak). It sounds like they weren’t at their best today, but they certainly didn’t lose this game.

So far I’ve said it’s not the offense’s fault, and it’s not the defense’s fault. Just to be clear, it’s not the special teams’ fault, either.

Two people are responsible for this game and this season: Joe Gibbs and Dan Snyder.

First, the coach. Joe Gibbs has to retire. He has yet to demonstrate an iota of creativity or flexibility in his return to coaching. His reign has been typified by mental errors (by his players and by him) and come-from-ahead losses. He hasn’t adapted to the new league, trying instead to shoehorn his old strategies onto his new roster. He gives good press conference, but at this point all he ever gets to say is how proud he is of the effort his team has given in a tough loss. He’s still the coach for one reason: pride. I’m sympathetic–he’s got an incredible history with the franchise, and he won three championships before I hit high school, and no matter how this ends up he’ll still be one of the greatest coaches ever, in my opinion–but past glory has not prepared him for the current reality of the NFL. He and his ancient coaching staff are tarnishing their own legacy with every crushing disappointment.

As for Dan Snyder… For some reason, probably the fact that he actually seems to care about how the team does (rather than just how much money it makes), I like Snyder, but he needs to understand the difference between “hands-on owner” and “meddlesome despot”. He needs to hire someone who knows how to evaluate players and let that person handle the GM duties–identifying draft picks and preventing idiotic trades/free agent signings. And Snyder needs to have a quiet chat with Gibbs, advising him that it might be a good idea to step down to “spend more time with his family.”

Ugh. I hate myself for even writing this stuff, but things have gotten absurd. There’s no reason for the Redskins to be in this situation. They have a huge fanbase and an owner willing to spend whatever it takes to put a good team on the field. But Snyder’s enthusiasm and resources have blinded him (and us, to be honest) to the fact that the organization is pursuing success in a completely backwards way.

Almost every decision they’ve made in each offseason of the last decade has been gilding the lily–polishing the turd. They have been spending money for short term gains, trading picks for aging veterans, and ignoring the low-profile positions that make the biggest difference (the line). They need to start over by focusing on drafting smart, dumping old players before they get decrepit, emphasizing line play and intelligence over glamor positions and “potential”. And, oh yeah, hiring a coach who was born after the Great Depression.

Certainly it would be terribly easy to rush toward some sort of instant judgment based on what we think we all knew about Taylor and the sort of life he once, and for all we know, still led. But really, we know nothing at the moment, and until we do, “may he rest in peace” ought to be the operative phrase for this day.

Still, could anyone honestly say they never saw this coming? You’d have to be blind not to consider Taylor’s checkered past. It was only a few months after he was drafted, when we got something of an inkling of what sort of young man the Redskins were selecting out of the University of Miami with the fifth overall selection in 2004.

Thank you, Mr. Shapiro. Thank you very much.

On the one hand, this is a minor story. Taylor was one of many people killed by violence yesterday. He’s not even the first football player to be shot recently. It’s easy to argue that those of us who find something powerful in this story ought to be more affected by all the other tragedies in the world.

But of course, there are millions of people who feel like they knew Sean Taylor. And his story is a compelling one. In many ways it seemed like Taylor’s life was on the upswing–in his college years and his first few NFL years, he regularly got into trouble on and off the field. His obvious talent seemed likely to be forever subordinated to his impetuous immaturity, and there were stories describing his bad behavior coming out all the time. But in the last year those stories almost disappeared, replaced by the clichéd redemption stories we all love so much. Expect many more stories building Taylor up into a fine upstanding citizen now that he’s dead.

I certainly don’t have anything unique or interesting to say about this whole thing. I didn’t know Sean Taylor, I just watched him tackle people every Sunday, because I root for the shirt he wore while he did it. But he was 24 when he died, and that is extremely sad.

I bet Mike Wise wishes he could get this column back (the point of the column, published last night, is how Taylor nearly died in the attack, but didn’t). Things changed very quickly–it went from hopeless to hopeful and back again many times yesterday. I’m sure it’s frustrating to have to write something conclusive about a developing story, only to have it be obsolete before the sun comes up.

Anyway. To finish up with another clichéd observation, Taylor’s untimely death certainly does put a mediocre football season into perspective. But it’s only because people care so much about these silly games that they care so much about these senseless deaths.

We saw a lot of entertaining stuff (a huge number of fur coats, a couple of old high school friends, some very drunk old people, an awesome game of stump, and some guy falling face first into a pile of garbage. We spent most of the day hanging with Yale’s School of Forestry. They were lovable hippies and they were quite hospitable.

It was a fun trip, aside from the bus rides down and back. If you have a chance to see these two teams play each other, I highly encourage you to go (and when you get there, stay in the parking lot).

PS: Harvard beat Yale, winning the Ivy League championship. Congratulations, Crimson.

PPS: the Redskins just lost again. I didn’t think they had a chance of beating the Cowboys, but of course they managed to put themselves in position to win, only to squander it as usual. Jason Campbell is looking pretty good, at least. All we need now is some decent cornerbacks and wide receivers and a healthy safety corps. And an offensive line. Then we’ll be right back in this thing.

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that pitchers are like a different species from the rest of the players on a baseball team.

A little background for the baseball-illiterate:

I grew up watching the despicable Baltimore Orioles (and their American League opponents), so I’m used to teams playing with the designated hitter rule (in which a non-fielding player gets to hit in the pitcher’s spot, while the pitcher sips iced tea in the dugout). So while everyone else on the field gets a turn to hit, the pitcher never swings a bat. What I eventually learned was that on teams in the National League (the other half of Major League Baseball), there is no designated hitter. The pitcher actually has to try to hit, just like the rest of his teammates.

Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s move on to the fascinating commentary:

The interesting thing, to me, is that most pitchers are pretty bad at hitting. As a group, they hit .130. That would never fly from any other player on the team, but for pitchers it is tolerated. There are a bunch of reasons for this, including the fact that as far as I know they generally don’t really practice hitting. They focus on keeping their pitches sharp, possibly to the detriment of any nascent pitching ability. I don’t know why this is, though–why shouldn’t we expect our pitchers to be good at everything they do? I mean, this isn’t charity–they get paid quite a tidy sum to play this game, I think it’s reasonable to expect some degree of ability in all aspects of the game.

Now there are exceptions to this. Guys like Rich Ankiel (when he was a pitcher, not a steroid-abusing outfielder–long story), Mike Hampton, Dontrelle Willis, and others. Babe Ruth was an amazing pitcher before his metamorphosis into the most famous slugger in baseball history.

The really screwy thing about this is that pitchers usually become pitchers because they’re the best athletes on their teams. In little league, high school, and even college, a player will often play another position for most games, and take his turn on the mound once in a while. It’s only once they get to the major leagues that they start to seriously specialize–spending all their time throwing, or planning pitching strategy, or not lifting weights (to make sure they don’t screw up their throwing mechanics by bulking up or slimming down). And as this happens, they tend to lose the other aspects of their ability.

So here’s my question: why aren’t there any players in the majors who play the way they did in high school? I’m not saying a great pitcher ought to risk injury or fatigue by playing a regular position the rest of the time, nor am I saying that we should expect pitchers to be, as a group, good batters. I’m saying that there ought to be a nice job out there for a decent pitcher who’s a decent hitter.

Here’s my hypothetical:

Joe Rubberarm is not a power pitcher. He throws in the mid-80s, tops out with a low-90s fastball. Or maybe he’s a knuckleballer. Either way, arm fatigue isn’t a big problem for him. He’s not the best pitcher in the league–not even close. But he’s a reliable 4th or 5th starter, good enough to make a team on his pitching’s merits alone. But here’s the catch–he’s a very good position player. Again, maybe not the best hitter or fielder in the league, but an above average contributor. Basically, imagine 2004′s Trot Nixon plus 2004′s Tim Wakefield.

Now here’s how you use Joe Rubberarm if he’s on your National League team. You stick him in the pitching rotation as usual–he starts every 4th or 5th game, usually matched up against your opponent’s 4th or 5th starter. He bats for himself, hitting better than most pitchers. And for the rest of your team’s games he plays in the field, contributing that way as well. So instead of a mediocre pitcher you pay to pitch an adequate game once a week, you get a good position player who can pitch an adequate game once a week, and help the team the rest of the games as well.

So what you get from Joe Rubberarm is a player you needed anyway–a decent pitcher to round out your starters–plus another player you needed anyway (a good-hitting fielder). But the great thing (from the team’s perspective) is you only have to pay him once. You pay a premium, of course–maybe 50% more than he’d get for either one of those roles, but that still saves you 50% of a salary. Plus, now you’ve got an extra spot on your team–which is not such a big deal in the regular season, but might be a big deal in the playoffs, when teams always have trouble getting everyone they need on the roster. And this would make an especially appealing proposition in the National League, where pitchers have to hit anyway–if you’re going to have a mediocre pitcher on the mound, you would at least like him to not be a sucking chest wound at the plate. Even in the American League, this aspect would come into play every once in a while (in interleague play, or in the World Series).

The team saves money, improves the team’s offense, and gains flexibility. The player makes more money, improves his stats and marketability, and gets to hit (which would be a big plus for a guy who has the ability to contribute at the plate).

Now, there are problems here–the way the league works now, pitchers are trained just to pitch. There are worries about injury, about screwing up a pitcher’s mechanics, about mental distractions. It wouldn’t work with most pitchers, maybe. But why doesn’t a team give it a shot? Before his epic mental breakdown, Rich Ankiel would have been a great candidate for this theory–as a pitcher, he lost his marbles. He couldn’t handle the stress of being a team’s ace. So let him concentrate on being a position player (which he demonstrated this year that he could excel at), while pitching against your opponent’s worst starter. No pressure to throw a no-hitter, low expectations, and the opportunity to make up for your mistakes on the mound with timely hitting at the plate.

I’m telling you, this is an idea whose time has come. Some National League team with nothing to lose ought to give this a shot. Maybe one with a new park? ]]> http://www.en-dash.com/blog/2007/11/06/a-modest-proposal-for-our-national-pastime/feed/ 1 http://www.en-dash.com/blog/2007/11/04/looking-on-the-bright-side/ http://www.en-dash.com/blog/2007/11/04/looking-on-the-bright-side/#comments Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:28:14 +0000 JHW http://www.en-dash.com/blog/2007/11/04/looking-on-the-bright-side/ [...]]]> In terms of our record, losing 52-7 is no worse than losing 17-16.

In terms of our record, winning 23-20 in OT is just as good as winning 48-3.

Portis finished with almost 200 yards. Maybe our rushing game is finally coming together.

We’re 5-3. If we keep at this pace (and win most of our division match-ups), we’ll (probably) make the playoffs.

Rocky McIntosh had an awesome game, tackling guys all over the field (of course, this means that our front line and corners weren’t so awesome).

Gibbs made what proved to be a prescient decision when he opted to go for two in the 4th quarter.

We won, in a game that we had to have if we wanted a reasonable chance at making the postseason.

That’s about all the good news I can think of.