Rotoman

Yahoo! Sports – MLB – Beil’s Spiel: Button-pusher

More spiel, this time with comments from readers of Tuesday’s column. What he gets right this time, though he doesn’t say it, is the press’s complicity in the whole thing. If these ballplayers have been doing illegal and anticompetitive things for 15 years, as Jose Canseco contends, and such behavior is judged such an outrage, where were these writers?

Apart from quoting the dubious Canseco and the even more dubious Caminiti when they spouted, the press did little or nothing to advance the story. But let some accusations fall into their laps and the rabid anti-steroid watchdogs get ballistic, trashing MLB and the Union and the players but somehow overlooking their own role. There’s plenty of attitude around, all that’s lacking is hard evidence.

In contrast, today’s story about Arnold Schwarznegger and his own steroid use seems pretty rational.

New York Mets : The Official Site

Mets season tickets go on sale tomorrow morning and the team for some reason sent me some schedules and their flyer with ticket info. $2,976 gets you the same great seat for all 81 home games in the Outer Field Boxes, Outer Loge Boxes, or the Mezzanine, as well the right to buy playoff tickets, seating assignment priority if a new stadium is built, an option to buy a prepaid parking pass ($810), and a “Mets-styled Notepad Portfolio” and a 2005 Mets Media Guide. You can also buy a Diamond Club membership for $250, which maybe gets you into the ballpark restaurant. I know the one time I went to the Diamond Club I had to wear a hideous green polyester sport coat over my Clash t-shirt. Whatever.

Of more baseball interest, however, are the pictures on the front of the flyer: a grinning Willie Randolf is sitting in the center, with Pedro over his right shoulder and Carlos Beltran over his left, and in action vignettes in front of him are David Wright and Jose Reyes. Inside there are pictures of Kris Benson, Wright again, Pedro again, and Mr. Met.

Who’s missing? Mike Piazza. No one really expects him to bounce back, at least not all the way, but doesn’t this seem a a little fast to write him off the team? Or is this a more subtle sign about his future status? I’m bumping Jason Phillips’ price a buck.

Yahoo! Sports – MLB – No apology

Regardless of what things Larry Beil has said about steroids, the public’s ability to process their effect, the players’ reliance on them, and the industry’s ambivalence about them, he ends this story with a Barry Bonds quote that is sums it all up perfectly well.

I am personally shocked that he seems to be surprised that Barry is out there selling: himself and the game. Doesn’t he know that the guy Barry is selling is him?

ESPN.com: Page 2 : Death in the afternoon

Hunter Thompson is dead. I bet you weren’t expecting that. But I found this column from his tenure at ESPN.com, it appears to be his last for them, and it got me to thinking.

HS Thompson wrote his best stuff for Rolling Stone in the early 70s. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail rise above everything else he did because he was still energetically figuring out the form. He did some fine writing after that (and before it, too. Hells Angels is an excellent book.), but far too often post-F&L the schtick won out over the content. You always had to wonder what was real, what was not.

In those great books it didn’t matter. Ever after, it did.

I think I’ve known more people who knew Hunter Thompson (ate with him, argued with him, had sex with him, shot guns with him) than any other person I never met. One of those was John Walsh, who was Thompson’s editor at Rolling Stone in the glory days, who ran Inside Sports when it published Dan Okrent’s first story about the Rotisserie League, who introduced me to Bill James, and who invited me into my first fantasy baseball league back in 1982. John is also the guy who created SportsCenter.

I’ve been reading plenty cockeyed encomiums about Thompson the past two days and there’s no way I can comment on HS the man, but as a writer he should be revered and yet not overestimated. He was a late bloomer, a guy who struggled writing professionally until he had his brilliant idea, and there is no doubt that its very brilliance consumed him. But the generosity of his spirit can even be found in much of the lesser and later works, the energy of his outrage should be an inspiration for anyone forever, and at the end of the day, and this is his, as a man he should be admired for the legions who mourn him. What better tribute is there than that?

[A day after writing the original I made some edits to better clarify what I meant.]

Needles and Pens – The sportswriter’s obsession with steroid scandals. By Charles P. Pierce

The Canseco book review led me to this old story (Nov. 19, 2003) that does an excellent job of putting the anti-steroid hysteria in perspective. I think I must have linked to it then, but it’s worth revisiting.

The Juice and I – Jose Canseco and steroids, a love story. By Bryan Curtis

I wasn’t really interested in Canseco’s book, because I doubted its contents would reveal the veracity of his claims. But this review makes it sound like fun, and not negligible.

Major League Baseball News: MLB.com names preliiminary list of 2005 fantasy game licensees

More licenses for MLBAM fantasy sports. Conspicuous among the absenses are CDM, All Star Stats and USA Stats, but more licenses are expected to be granted. My editor at mlb.com tells me that when the dust settles this won’t seem nearly as disruptive as it did at first.

I wonder how many of those providers licensed for their own games, and how many bought into the 10-percent referral deal? As best I can tell The Fantasy Jungle buys it’s stat services from CDM. Does its license with MLBAM mean it is changing game runner? As more info comes available I’ll keep posting it.

Mario Mendoza League Rules

There are many interesting fantasy baseball games out there that don’t hew to the usual rules. This one attempts to track actual run producing and prevention on fantasy teams by using sabremetric principles, and shapes its keeper and waiver rules along the lines of the actual ML rules.

Baseball Prospectus | Articles | Fantasy Firefight

More information about the MLBAM fantasy baseball licensing program, with an emphasis on the intellectual property issues. It would have been nice to get an idea from Bill Meyers at USA Stats and Rick Wolf at All Star Stats what they intend to do. It also isn’t clear what the FSPA (the trade organization of fantasy sports) is thinking.

It seems to me that for MLBAM to license the player’s likenesses and team logos makes sense. They own that stuff and if they want to make an additional buck off it they’re entitled to. But if the stats are in the public domain, as everyone seems to agree, it’s hard to see how they can prevent stat services from doing their jobs. It’s easy, however, to see how they might try.

Patton and Co. Profiles

Alex Patton did lots of work this year compiling prospect notes for the magazine (The Fantasy Baseball Guide 2005, on sale now!). I was supposed to pay back with lots of player comments at PattonAndCo.com. I’ve chimed in when appropriate, but the generally excellent discussions there (organized by player) make it easy to say, “somebody else said what I would say.”

What I can say without equivocation is there is no better place to get some real collective analysis of a player’s chances this year. You’ll have to decide on March 1 if it’s worth the price, but consider that you also get Patton’s draft software and you may find it very cheap–all things considered.

Many do.