A Special Night

To say that this post has been a long time coming is an understatement. It concerns one of the few bright spots that occurred during the final month of last season for the Red Sox.

Every year, I try to purchase some Red Sox tickets for a game on or close to my birthday. This season was no different and it led to me purchasing tickets to see the Red Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays a couple of days after my birthday. My wife was still recovering from her spinal fusion surgery, so she wouldn’t be joining us at the game. I picked my daughter up and we made our way into historic Fenway Park.

Normally, I’m the type of fan who gets to the park right when the gates open and stays until the last pitch is thrown, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case for this particular game with my daughter in tow. We got to the park about 30 minutes before the game began, grabbed food and settled into our seats. This game would be Tim Wakefield’s eighth attempt at his 200th win and early on it looked like it would go the same way that the previous seven attempts had. The Red Sox gave Wakefield two leads that he quickly gave away by serving up long balls.

At the end of the fourth inning (and back-to-back homers by Ellsbury and Pedroia), we made our way out to Yawkey Way. For the past few years, the Sox have started blocking off the road during games making it only accessible for ticket holders. There are food vendors, musicians and other performers to be found out there before the game begins and during games it’s a nice place to go if you want to get away from the crowd. Yawkey Way is also where the Red Sox were setting up Wally’s World, some fun things for younger kids to do if they get a little bored during the game. I’d rather have my daughter miss a couple of innings and see the ballpark as a fun place than get bored and dread a trip to Fenway.

This trip would leave us a little disappointed though. It seems like the team stopped setting up Wally’s World once the school year started back up figuring that there would be fewer kids at night games. They still had the fast pitch set up and it was free for kids, so I watched my daughter do that a few times. I think he top speed was 24 mph which seemed pretty good for a 5 year old with horrible mechanics.

Other than sharing my love of baseball with my daughter, I’ve also been introducing her to some of my other hobbies. The hobby that she’s taken the greatest interest in is collecting pressed pennies. They have one machine in Fenway and I hadn’t pressed any pennies there since they updated the designs. I had a bunch of change left over from our penny pressing adventure two days earlier so we each got to press a complete set of four for our collections.

The scan isn’t all that great, but the four pennies are: 2007 World Series Champions, I Believe in Magic, Red Sox Nation and Go Wally! The Green Monster.

While we were pressing our pennies, we kept track of the game on a nearby monitor. Hi-5s were exchanged when Pedroia hit his second dinger of the game, this time a three-run shot. We got a celebratory ice cream in a helmet and returned to our seats to eat it. We rose to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and that was just about all that my daughter had left in the tank. When the 7th inning ended, it was already 9:30 pm and it takes about an hour to get home from Fenway. We made our way home and ended up missing the seven-run 8th inning, but it was fine with me. Beating the crowds on the subway ensured that we got seats which was important because my daughter fell asleep halfway home.

Ten years ago, I never would have thought that missing two innings of a game, including one where seven runs were scored, would be a perfect day at Fenway, but when you factor in the time I spent with my daughter it was just that. We’ll stick with minor league games for the majority of baseball games that she goes to, but I want to make sure that she experiences Fenway Park as she grows up. Sure, her favorite thing about the park right now is that Wally lives there, but it gets her into the park and someday she might want to go for the baseball itself.

Quick little addendum to this story: Thanks to a co-worker, I was able to go to the game the next day as well. It was a day game and I was already leaving work early for a doctor appointment. I got to see the pre-game festivities for Wakefield. I also had the opportunity to see history made for the second day in a row, but Daniel Bard blew that. If he hadn’t blown the lead and Papelbon had gotten the save, I would have seen him become the first player to get 30+ saves in their first six seasons. He did achieve that milestone, but not on that afternoon. Bard’s September meltdown was one of the biggest reasons that the Sox fared as poorly as they did to finish the season. It was probably that month that led to the Sox dealing for a new closer to replace Papelbon rather than handing the job to Bard. Whether he’s still the set-up guy or moves into the starting rotation remains to be seen.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I found it interesting that Fuji’s latest post talks about a favorite player leaving their team. Granted, his situation involves a trade, but whether by trade or free agency, it always sucks when one of your favorite players leaves your favorite team. This time there’s even more time to fret because the impending lockout could keep free agents from signing with new teams for a long time to come. Given how numerous and severe the current problems with the NBA are, I wouldn’t be surprised if we lost a whole season to the lockout.

The free agent thing I went through just two years ago. Glen Davis was a free agent after a great showing in the playoffs, tested the free agent waters, didn’t get a single offer and re-signed with the Celtics. This year, Davis started the season as a strong contended for the 6th Man Award, but as the season wore on he slowly disappeared, took fewer charges and had a much smaller impact on games when he came off of the bench. He was all but nonexistent in the playoffs and talked about not being mentally strong while Doc Rivers talked about Davis getting more selfish and not playing “his game.” It makes you think that Big Baby won’t be wearing Celtic Green the next time an NBA Season tips off unless they can get him for a huge discount. I don’t see that happening with plenty of teams out there having both salary cap room and the need for role players.

If Davis were to leave the Celtics, I’m not sure if I would continue collecting him or not. I’d have to say that his poor play late last season made him a lot less fun to watch. That was the main thing that drew me to him as a player. David would check into a game, take a charge, hit a big basket or two and bring some energy into the game. Once he started doing nothing but shoot jumpers at a below average rate, he wasn’t any fun to watch. He’s got to be that guy who cuts to the basket, rolls off of picks and fights for those tough rebounds.

If the Celtics were to let Davis walk, I would love to see Danny Ainge do whatever he could to bring Ryan Gomes back to Boston. Gomes is a player who I collected while he was here, but stopped collecting once he was traded away. Gomes is the veteran, mature version of Big Baby. He can score, but doesn’t look for his shot. He gets his points within the flow of the game. He’s got basketball smarts, always seems to be around the ball and is the type of player that you need coming off of the bench on championship teams.

Best case scenario would see Ainge bring back a different former Celtic, Al Jefferson. The Celtics don’t currently have a center, have a bunch of expiring contracts and need another star to play with Rondo once Pierce, Allen and Garnett decide to hang it up. Big Al would be the perfect choice. I wouldn’t mind shipping Garnett out to Utah in order to bring Jefferson back. I don’t think that a deal such as that one is very likely though.

Big Baby or no Big Baby in Boston what I really want is basketball in Boston. It would be a shame if a season were to be lost, but unlike the NFL where owners are trying to make sure that they get more money from a league that’s flourishing, NBA owners are trying to make changes to keep their franchises from losing money. It doesn’t look good for the NBA at the moment.

 

Technorati Tags: Glen Davis,Boston Celtics,lockout

It’s All About 18

Before I start talking about the Celtics heading into their playoff run Sunday evening, let me clear up a couple of things. This season didn’t go into the tank when the Celtics traded away Kendrick Perkins. Also, the Celtics collapse against the Lakers in Game 7 last year had a heck of a lot more to do with the offense completely getting shut down by the Lakers’ defense than Perk not being there and Pau Gasol getting a ridiculous number of offensive rebounds.

Let me start with last year first. Game 7 mirrored a lot of other Celtics games form that season. The Celtics would jump out to an early lead, would change the way that they were running their offense, let the other team back in and then lose the game in the 4th quarter. This happened many times during the regular season with Perkins on the lineup.

One of the big stories behind this game that never gets mention is the bench play. Doc Rivers gave 21 minutes to Big Baby, but only 10 minutes combined to Scalabrine, Tony Allen and Nate Robinson. The older Celtics team was tired in the 4th quarter and it showed. Pierce played all but 2 minutes of the game, Allen and Rondo both played 45 and KG played 38. The Lakers got some nice play from Odom who had to step in and play 35 minutes in Bynum’s place and 13 solid minutes from Farmar which let Derek Fisher rest.

You can’t score just 17 points in two consecutive quarters and expect to win the game. It was amazing that the Celtics went into the start of the 4th quarter with a lead. The Perk-less Celtics held the Lakers to just 14, 20 and 19 points in the first three quarters, but supposedly the defense was an issue. While it was the 4th quarter where the Lakers eventually took the lead, this game was lost by the Celtics in the 2nd and 3rd quarters when they couldn’t figure out how to score. Ray Allen and Paul Pierce were huge disappointments in game 7. Ron Artest got into Pierce’s head big time.

If this season’s swoon has anything to do with trading away Kendrick Perkins, it has more to do with the team’s mood than the loss of Perk’s talent. The team played just fine at the start of the season without 43. So, what’s the real issue. I hate to bring it up again, but this team is just old and it does come into play. The team’s winning percentage went down every month of the season. It’s plain and simple. This season held a bunch of additional 4th quarter collapses just like last season’s final game.

I do think that there was a misstep in the trades that Danny Ainge made at the trade deadline though. I think that Danny should have kept Semi Erden and Luke Harangody on the roster. Both were playing well and knew the Celtics system. The players that the Celtics got to replace them on the roster are not as good and the picks that the Celtics got for these players weren’t all that great. Then again, Erden was battling injury problems of his own. The Celtics traded their second round draft pick for a new second round draft pick.

Doc Rivers was smart and rested the Big 4 for the final two games of the season. They then had three days of practice to figure out their playoff rotation and getting the new players familiar with the offense. Hopefully the C’s can sweep the Knicks and earn themselves a little more rest before facing the Heat and Bulls further along in the playoffs.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one that remembers how frequently Perk got called for moving screens. This is his 8th season in the league and he still doesn’t know how to set a pick properly. Maybe I’m the only one who remember how frustrating it was to watch Perk bring the ball down every time he caught it before going up for a shot giving the defense plenty of time to react. Maybe I’m the only one who cringed every time that Perk wasn’t ready for a Rondo pass and saw it bounce off of his chest or hands.

Perk had raw talent, but he really should have gone to college. A college coach would have tried to break his bad habits. Perk was solid, but he wasn’t a great scorer, rebounder or shot blocker. He was looking for far too much money for a player of his abilities and forced the Celtics to either trade him or watch him walk and get nothing in return. There’s still a chance that the Celtics end up without much of anything if Jeff Green decides that he doesn’t like Boston and doesn’t want to re-sign with the team, but hopefully that’s not the case. Green can step right up into a starting role once one of the new Big Three decides to call it quits.

As for this season, I’ve got high hopes. The Bulls are going to be tough to beat, but the Celtics should be able to make it to them in the Eastern Conference Finals. Once there, it’ll be a matchup of youth versus experience, but right now I’m not sure if anyone can beat Derrick Rose.

Interesting bit of trivia: On draft day in 2007, the Boston Celtics traded Green, Delonte West and Wally Szczerbiak to the Seattle Supersonics for Ray Allen and Glen Davis. Currently, every player involved in this deal with the exception of Wally are on the Celtics roster.

 

Technorati Tags: Boston Celtics,Kendrick Perkins

Heat woke a sleeping giant (baby?)

I called it in my last post about the Celtics/Heat series.  Quentin Richardson woke a sleeping giant and the Celtics responded big time.  Ray Allen had a huge game and Glen “Big Baby” Davis was awesome given an opportunity to start (just like he did last year around this time).  Rondo played phenomenal defense and never let the Heat get their offense started.  Big defensive efforts were also turned in by Kendrick Perkins, Big Baby and Tony Allen.

Unless the Celtics get bored in the next couple of games, like they have at times during the regular season, I don’t see the Heat winning a single game in this series.  I feel badly for Dwyane Wade because he’s getting almost no help from his teammates.  The defensive pressure is causing him to have to isolate every time he touches the ball and there’s no way that they can win that way.

He made an appearance at the Garden and now he’s making an appearance in my blog as well.  The official mascot of Celtics blowouts: Gino!

Technorati Tags: Boston Celtics

What’s up with the Red Sox?

It’s only two weeks into the season and all of the worst fears of Red Sox Nation have come true.  The supposedly weak offense has actually been worse than the experts predicted and the pitching, which was supposed to be Boston’s biggest strength, hasn’t yet performed like they are expected to.  The other place where the Red Sox were supposed to be strong, but have shown weakness, is defensively.  What makes it worse is the fact that these defensive mishaps have been committed by the new guys brought in to shore up the defense.  Their weaker offense might be acceptable if they were turning in web gems night after night, but at this early stage in the season, this has yet to be the case.

While Marco Scutaro has been one of the few bright spots in the offense early in the season, he has also been the worst offender on the defensive side of things.  These have been really bad errors on easy chances leading to multiple unearned runs that led directly to losses.  I’m sure this will change as the season progresses, but right now it has some fans wishing that Jed Lowrie could do more than tie his shoe without ending up on the DL.

Speaking of costly errors leading to multiple runs and a loss, next up is Mike Cameron.  Sox fans knew going into this season that Cameron would hit some bombs and for every one that he hit, he’d strike out 6 or 7 times.  So far this season, Cameron has whiffed 8 times without going yard.  He displaced fan favorite Jacoby Ellsbury in center because of his reputation for superior defense, but that wasn’t the case in Clay Buchholz’s last start.  Cameron had an easy fly ball clank off of his glove in the first inning that led to four unearned runs and a tough luck loss for Buchholz who pitched well after that inning.

One signing that I questioned the moment it was made was that of Bill Hall.  He was a monumental bust in Milwaukee and I didn’t see what he could add to the Red Sox roster.  So far, Hall has added more errors than hits.  He’s got one hit in eleven at-bats, but has committed an error at short and an error in the outfield.  Hopefully the Red Sox get healthy and need to fill up Hall’s roster spot with someone else.

Jeremy Hermida is showing signs of improvement.  After tonight, he’s hitting .257 with an error, but he’s hit three home runs and driven in 9.  In the long run, I do think this will end up being a good signing. 

Right now, the “pitching and run prevention” team make-up that was sold to Sox fans during the offseason isn’t panning out.  Lester is notorious for his slow stars and his performance should improve once the calendar page turns.  Dice-K is on a rehab assignment in Pawtucket and will most likely take Wakefield’s spot in the rotation.  I expect him to look a lot more like the Dice-K of 2008 than the Dice-K of 2009 since he’ll finally be healthy again and hopefully he’s done with pitching in the World Baseball Classic.

Things will turn around for the Sox and there’s no way that they’ll continue to lose 60% of their games, but it looks like the only way that the Sox will make the playoffs is if they end up with a rotation that contains two 20-game winners and two 15-game winners.  No matter how well the pitching is, that’s not going to happen without major improvement from the offense.

Technorati Tags: Red Sox

J.D. Drew

Unlike most of Red Sox Nation, I was a fan of the J.D. Drew signing when it happened and am still a fan of it today.  I can understand Sox fans getting annoyed with the fact that Drew tends to be a little injury prone, but I can’t understand fans getting so upset about his salary and an incorrect perception that he’s not playing well enough to warrant that salary.

I was happy to see an article in the Valentine’s Day edition of the Boston Globe explaining “Why the critics of J.D. Drew may be off-base” written by my current favorite Sox writer over at the Globe, Amalie Benjamin.  She’s a breath of fresh air from the gloom and doom, muckraker Dan Shaughnessy.

Benjamin uses data from fangraphs.com to show Drew’s “worth” compared to his salary and then she compares it to other outfielders who signed multiyear deals after the 2006 season.  I’ll list the data first and then see if you can guess who is who.

Value: $15.4M
Salary: $25.5M
Difference: -$10.1M

Value: -$5.2M
Salary: $26.2M
Difference: -$31.4M

Value: $33.4M
Salary: $41M
Difference: -$7.6M

Value: $45.4M
Salary: $42M
Difference: +$3.4M

Value: $40M
Salary: $43M
Difference: -$3M

The players are Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Lee, Gary Matthews Jr., Juan Pierre and J.D. Drew.  Can you match the players with their numbers?

Of those players, only J.D. Drew has a value higher than the salary he was paid.  You can find his numbers 4th on that list.  The only other decent signing on that list is Carlos Lee who has produced $40M of value while being paid $43M.  When you take into consideration that this takes into account a 2007 season where Drew was absolutely terrible until hitting a grand slam in Game 6 of the ALCS, it makes his 2008 and 2009 seasons look even better.  Would Sox fans have preferred that the team sign Alfonso Soriano (3rd on the list), Juan Pierre (1st on the list) or the absolutely terrible Matthews (2nd on the list)?  According to this rating system, Matthews owes money to the Angels.

There are plenty of numbers to back up why fans are wrong about Drew.  Benjamin states that only 10 players had an OPS of .900 or greater in 2008 and 2009: Pujols, Manny, A-Rod, Berkman, Teixeira, Youk, Hanley Ramirez, Holliday, Chase Utley and Drew.  Fans love Youk and his serial killer look because he’s “intense.”  Fans loved weak hitting, slow moving Trot Nixon because he was a “Dirt Dog” and dove after those balls he was too slow to get to.  Fans haven’t taken to Drew because he is quiet and reserved.  They say he doesn’t put effort into the game, but many of those fans were alright with Manny not running out ground balls and pop-ups.

Benjamin also states that in the three years that Drew has been in Boston there have been only three players with a better on-base percentage than Drew’s .390 and they are Manny (.412), Holliday (.403) and Ordonez (.397).  Adam Dunn has also gotten on base at a .390 clip over that span.

Critics always point at Drew’s low RBI and HR totals while ignoring his high run total and the number of times he gets on base.  Fans will continue to call him “Nancy” and unfairly criticize him.  I’ll continue to root for him knowing what he brings to the team.  He’ll never get credit for playing in 2007 when all he probably wanted to do was spend time with a sick child.  Now it has come out that he was battling a sore shoulder in 2009 which was his best season in Boston.  He’s the best defensive right fielder that the Sox have had since Dewey who was the best ever.  He’s never going to be the guy that carries the team on a daily basis, but he’s the type of player that you need on a winning team.  His contributions are going to be especially important this season on a team that is a little bit weaker on offense than normal.  He has to get on base for those rare occasions when Mike Cameron closes his eyes and makes solid contact with the ball.  I think it happens 20 or so times a season.  2010 would be a nice time for fans to accept Drew because they’re going to have enough to complain about with Cameron and Beltre hitting around .260 and not getting on base much more often than that.  As the Amalie Benjamin article showed, things could be a heck of a lot worse.

Technorati Tags: Boston Red Sox,J.D. Drew

Real bowling

There’s many things to love about living in Massachusetts.  Even with the early exit of the Red Sox in this year’s playoffs, we’re still got 3 Super Bowl trophies, 2 World Series trophies and 1 NBA Championship Trophy this decade (and are the early favorite for the 2009-10 Championship if everyone stays healthy).  I’m going to stray from the more mainstream sports in this post on focus on a regional sport that most of you probably have never seen before and that is Candlepin bowling.

Candlepin bowling is a variation of bowling that is played primarily in the Canadian Maritime provinces, Maine, Massachusetts and in New Hampshire.  As you can see from the picture to the left, the ball is a lot smaller to the one used in ten pin bowling.  Candlepin balls have a diameter of 4½” and don’t need holes since you can easily hold one in your hand.  A frame in candlepin bowling consists of three balls instead of the two that are used in ten pin.  Another big difference is that downed pins (referred to as “wood”) are not cleared off of the alley between shots as they are in ten pin.  This can be both a good and bad thing.  Sometimes a piece of wood can assist you in making a difficult shot or can make an easy shot even easier by increasing your target, but they can also act as a road block shooting off in one direction while the ball flies off in other leaving the pin still standing.

Candlepin bowling is a lot more challenging than ten pin bowling.  While perfect games in ten pin bowling are frequent it has never been done in candlepin bowling.  The highest sanctioned score in a candlepin string is 245.  Throw a ball right down the middle of the lane in candlepin bowling and you’re very likely only going to take out the middle two pins.  Throw that same ball so that it hits between the head pins and a neighboring pin and you’re likely to get a good pinfall.  It can be frustrating, but the added challenge brings added fun.

I’ve been bowling since I was a kid and in bowling leagues almost as long.  Now that I’ve been doing it all of my life, I wouldn’t ever want to live somewhere that doesn’t have candlepin bowling.  If this has caught your attention and you’d like to find out a little more about candlepin bowling you can check out this link to the International Candlepin Bowling Association or check out this YouTube video of one of the best televised performances ever.  There are a ton of YouTube video out there of candlepin bowling from nearly impossible shots to breaking pins.

Technorati Tags: candlepin bowling

Juicing the Fun Out of the Game

You may have noticed a lack of updates on the site ever since the “story” broke regarding David Ortiz’s alleged steroid use.  The reaction that I saw everywhere after the story broke was disgusting.  It seems like a lot of people were chomping at the bit to take shots at the Boston Red Sox and their most popular player.  Now the World Series victories are supposedly tainted and of course all of the critics knew all along that Ortiz had to have been using steroids.  The only problem is that nothing about Ortiz’s past screamed steroids unless you’ve got your witch hunt blinders on.

The first piece of evidence that people always point to is Ortiz’s stats with the Twins.  They cite the low home run totals, but for some reason never mention the injuries or low number of games played.  Ortiz’s 16.8 AB/HR in 2001 is very respectable.  To put it into perspective, this year Jason Bay’s AB/HR is 15.60, Justin Morneau is 15,75 Ian Kinsler is 16.08 and Ryan Braun is 17.42.  Albert Pujols leads the league with 10.84.

The only numbers that jump out at you are 2005 and 2006.  Ortiz led the American League in 2006 (Ryan Howard just edged him with 10.017) and that tied for the 26th best of all time with Kevin Mitchell’s 1994 season.  Bagwell had a season at 10.256, Frank Thomas had a season at 10.500 and Ken Griffey Jr had a season at 10.825 and they are all players considered to be clean.  I don’t see how these numbers implicate Ortiz.

A lot of people like to think that Ortiz came out of nowhere, but that’s not the case.  Ortiz hit 31 HR in 1997 for three teams between high A, AA and AAA before getting a cup of coffee with the Twins at the end of the season.  He hit 30 HR in 1999 in AAA after a rough start to his major league career.  He was a player that I always picked up as a sleeper in my fantasy leagues so it was frustrated along with the Twins when Ortiz succumbed to injuries and couldn’t translate his minor league success to the big league level.  Ortiz was a solid fielder, but never spectacular (and much better than he ever gets credit for).  When Doug Mientkiewicz showed up with a slick glove and lofty batting average, it led to the Twins deciding to let Ortiz walk.

The biggest factor in the jump in Ortiz’s statistics once coming to Boston was health.  Until the 2008 season, Ortiz was able to remain relatively healthy which he was never able to do in Minnesota.  He fractured his wrist in 2001 which cut short what probably would have been his breakthrough season.  2002 saw Ortiz plagued by knee problems which led to him getting the knee scoped.  Ortiz did what everyone expected him to do when healthy until injuries sidelined him again in 2008.

The other huge factor in Ortiz’s improvement was the help of hitting coach Ron “Papa Jack” Jackson.  Ortiz sang his praises highly and he seemed to straighten out the problems that Ortiz was having by getting him to open up his stance allowing him to get his bat on more pitches and use more of the field.  Ortiz got off to a slow start at the beginning of the 2007 season which was the first after the Red Sox let Papa Jack go.  Reportedly, he made a couple of phone calls to Jackson and found out what he was doing wrong.  He went on to have the highest batting average of his career that season.

Many people pointed to Ortiz’s slow start in 2009 and said that it must be due to Ortiz coming off of steroids.  Of course there’s no way that the injury could be a factor.  Some local pundits said that it looked like Ortiz was having trouble seeing the ball especially since he was swinging late on a lot of pitches.  Whether the new eye drops he started using were the reason or not, Ortiz caught fire after that.  His average is still pretty low, but since June 6th he’s leading the American League in home runs with 19 and as you can see from the chart above, his AB/HR is right where it usually is.

Ortiz maintained his innocence all along, but few believed him.  He held a press conference where the Major League Baseball Players Association stated that he was on the list, but didn’t test positive for steroids.  They haven’t spoken up on behalf of any other player.  It was interesting to hear Peter Gammons touch on this because after hearing all of the details released by the MLBPA about that list, he believes that there’s only around 60 – 70 different names on the list which tested positive for steroids.  Gammons also believe that Ortiz hasn’t ever taken steroids.  That hasn’t kept large numbers of people from continuing to insist that Ortiz took steroids.

What bothers me is that you won’t see one retraction.  For some reason, people would rather believe two “anonymous lawyers” who are breaking the law for a pay day over a ballplayer who hasn’t done anything to cause people not to believe him.  I guess it’s not suspect that the only names leaked this time were a couple of Red Sox by a New York newspaper about a week before a huge Red Sox/Yankees series.

If you don’t believe Ortiz then you can’t believe any player.  Whether it be Pujols, Griffey Jr, Vlad Guerrero or Frank Thomas.  There’s no way that anyone that’s clean is outhitting all of these players who have supposedly taken steroids.  With the Players Union not allowing blood tests for HGH, anyone could take it without fear of being caught.

I never understood the fun in tearing down other teams and/or players.  Hearing “Yankees suck” chants at Red Sox games, Celtics games and concerts makes me cringe.  It makes fans sound petty and sad.  If a team with 26 championships sucks then I wish the Sox would suck a little more.

Nothing good can come of outing these players from the 2003 tests.  If the Players Union allowed for HGH testing and we could definitely know who was clean, I’d be of the mindset that the list should be released, but since we don’t know if people who aren’t on the list are actually clean then there’s no use.  The list definitely shouldn’t be leaked a name at a time and Bud Selig should be doing all that he can to prosecute those two lawyers which leaked these latest two names to the full extent of the law.

Major League Baseball just gave Topps an exclusive license to produce baseball cards citing a need to bring kids back into the hobby as a reason for doing so.  Making kids suffer through their favorite players being called cheats and liars could alienate the kids that are already interested.  I know it has affected my enjoyment of the game and I’m 33 years old.  I can only imagine how little kids have reacted.  I feel badly for young fans of Ortiz, A-Rod, etc. who have to see their heroes torn down by a bunch of adults under the pretense of “the sanctity of the game.”  I don’t even want to imagine how badly I would have taken it if Dwight Evans had been labeled a cheater when I was a kid.

Who knows how fans will look back upon this era in ten, twenty or even fifty years from now.  Right now, it seems like too many fans are of the mindset that every player has used PEDs at some point in their career and don’t believe any of the denials.  There have to be some players out there not using due to the health risks or other reasons and that mindset isn’t fair to them.  A lot of players used before it was against the rules.  Are their accomplishments tainted?  It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.  I have a feeling that baseball’s already hurting reputation isn’t going to get any better.

Technorati Tags: David Ortiz,steroids

Don’t Count Them Out Yet

When it was announced that Kevin Garnett would not be able to play in this year’s NBA Playoffs, most immediately dismissed the Celtics’ chances of repeating as Champions.  While the road will be a lot tougher without Garnett, especially with improved Cleveland and LA teams, I wouldn’t completely count out the C’s for two reasons.

While Rajon Rondo played solidly in last year’s playoffs, he took a back seat to the New Big Three.  Most of the offense ran through those three with Rondo just dribbling the ball up the court.  In last year’s playoffs Rondo averaged 10.2 PPG, 6.6 APG and 4.1 RPG with only 1.81 Turnovers per game.  Rondo has always been a great ball handler.  Rondo’s shooting percentages last year were .407 FG%, .250 3P% and .691 FT%.  It got to the point where Rondo was not on the floor late in games because his low free throw percentage was a liability.

This year, Kevin Garnett is out and the Celtics need other players to step up.  Rajon Rondo has certainly done that and then some through three playoff games.  He’s averaging close to a triple double while frustrating the other team on defense (4 steals per game so far this playoffs).  Currently in the Bulls series, Rondo is averaging 22.7 PPG, 9.7 APG and 10.7 RPG.  His turnovers per game are up to 2.0, but that is still an astounding number and due to the fact that Rondo is handling the ball a whole lot more.  His shooting numbers so far are .500 FG%, .500 3P% and .750 FT%.

Once considered a liability when it came to outside shooting, Rondo has hit some big three pointers in the series.  He can drive on most point guards in the league and his floor awareness is amazing.  He was overshadowed by Rose for one game, but has been the more consistent producer.

Another Celtic who has stepped up is the player that is replacing Garnett in the lineup, Glen Davis.  “Big Baby” was improving steadily as the season progressed, but it wasn’t until Garnett went down and Baby’s minutes increased that he really began to shine.

Deceptively quick for his size, Davis has a knack for getting his shot off in the post against taller players.  He also spent a lot of time on what is now a very consistent jump shot.  Davis is third on the team in scoring with 19.3 PPG in the playoffs, but the most important thing that he has brought to the team is an increased defensive presence.  Davis had 6 steals in Game 3 against the Bulls and his 6 blocks for the series are tied for the team lead.  His 9 Offensive Rebounds have also been a big reason that the Celtics have been able to turn this series around.

Through three games Davis’ numbers are 19.3 PPG, 2.7 APG and 7 RPG.  That doesn't even compare to his numbers last year of 2.3 PPG, .4 APG and 1.5 RPG.  Of course, Davis was only playing 8.1 Minutes per game last year in the playoffs while this year he’s leading the team in minutes played with 40 MPG.  If he can keep up this level of play, the impact of losing Garnett won’t be as great as many thought.  The biggest impact is that Davis is no longer available to come off of the bench, but that’s why he’s playing 40 minutes a game.

Last year, the Celtics were expected to win it all.  Even though many of the “experts” were picking the Lakers to win it all, you had a feeling that you couldn’t deny three veterans who hadn’t yet achieved that ultimate goal.  This year, the team has a lot to prove and I’m going to enjoy watching them do it.

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