Fantasy Baseball Early Season Nightmares, 2011 edition

Everyone has 'em. Here's mine:

Carl Crawford used to CRUSH the Red Sox

...apparently nothing has changed.

At least for now.

When Crawford signed with the Sox, I thought that the value of keeping him from facing us 18 times a year was good for at least $50 million. Keeping him from the Yankees was worth another $50 million. So really, the Sox were paying a little over $50 million for what he actually did on the field. Over 7 years, that's a little over $7 million per year for a solid defensive LF with great speed and a little bit of pop in the bat. Hey, we'll take it.

So far, CC's not been what we're looking for. It's clear from watching Sox games and what we read in the local fishwrap that the dude is pressing. Pressing wicked hard. The whole team's plate discipline has gone to nothing short of pure shit. What to do? Relax. Everyone. Relax. Let the game come to you. Don't worry about contracts, the fans, or that iffy lobster roll sticking around after lunch. Chil-lax, dudes.

Fresh-Squeezed Opening Day in Texas

Like every other Red Sox fan, I eagerly anticipated yesterday's Opening Day tilt down in Texas. Our first look at A-Gone and Carl Crawford couldn't come soon enough as we all wanted to see if this team was as good in real life as it sounded on paper..because, as Kenny Mayne from ESPN used to tell us, "games aren't played on paper...they're played inside TV sets." Lucky for me there's a TV in my office so I caught the first few innings at work before heading home. Right from the top, I could tell this would be a grinder. Why? One reason and one reason only: Home plate umpire Tim McClellan.

Now, before you dismiss this as just another rant from just another entitled Masshole Red Sox fan, hear me out: McClellan didn't cost the Sox the game yesterday. He squeezed EVERYBODY. Jon Lester clearly didn't have his best stuff, and I'm not blaming his performance on the strike zone. However, losing 3 inches on each side of the plate clearly didn't help. Lester was pissed at McClellan in the SECOND INNING because his strike zone was smaller than a 1st-grader's attention span. C. J. Wilson wasn't too pleased from the looks of it, either. He clearly didn't get a couple of calls in the first inning, and it cost him. So I have to ask: What's the point?

Listen up, Bud Selig. It's the first of April. Teams just spent 6 weeks in Florida and this is their first game in more normal game and perhaps climate conditions. Everyone's still a little rusty. Why subject them to 4 hours of torture that a thimble-sized strike zone creates? We all know that the size of the zone has an inverse relation to the pace of the game. A tight zone disrupts game flow, causes fielders to doze and results in these 4-hour AL-East style suck-a-thons full of sloppy fielding, 10-8 scores and multiple innings by the 10th, 11th and 12th pitchers on each squad. You could just about golf a full 18 holes in 4 hours. Who the hell wants to watch a baseball game that long, that sloppily-played, and in most cases, under less-than-ideal weather conditions?

The fans sure don't. Again, it's the FIRST OF APRIL. Most casual fans forget about baseball after the first NFL regular-season kickoff unless their teams are in a pennant race. It's been a good six months since they've given two shits about baseball. Tim McClellan and his anorexic strike zone sure aren't helping. There's the Final Four still going on. Both the NHL and NBA are in their stretch runs. While yocu're at it, NASCAR is a month into it season. Like no other time of the year, baseball really needs to scratch and claw for its viewing audience in early April. Keeping game pace and flow is critical to engaging the fans. So how do we fix it?

The Solution

Here's what we do, Mr. Selig. Look down the roster of every umpire and go through whatever statistical sources (such as BaseballProspectus.com) to evaluate the OBP for every MLB home plate umpire. The information's there. For the first two weeks of the season, make sure that the 10% of umps with the highest "called OBP" are allowed nowhere near home plate. I'm actually being borderline charitable here. If there wasn't that pesky little nuisance known as "collective bargaining," I'd say fire the fuckers outright, but I guess that wouldn't play too well with the National Labor Relations Board. Perhaps in the umpires' next contract negotiation MLB can work in some performance clauses to rid the game of those that continue to slow the pace of the game, making it next-nigh unwatchable. Mr. McClellan and his grandstanding ilk are literally killing baseball, and they must be stopped. In April. NOW.

10+ Covers That Don't Suck

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery. If we're lucky, the imitation is just as good or even better than the original. Look at a band such as the Grateful Dead...how many tunes did they play live that weren't their own? I vividly recall the band opening up the second set in Chicago (1994) with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which was a very cool surprise.

Anyway, here are a few covers that definitely earn their keep, with original artists in parentheses. While these come to mind relatively quickly, but this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list nor is it in any order whatsoever:

1. You Really Got Me, Van Halen (The Kinks). OK, how many of you kids were in middle school and played the crap out of Van Halen's first album either on vinyl or cassette so much the inferior media of the day eventually degraded into nothing? Yup, me too. Right after Eddie's classic guitar solo "Eruption" was the charged remake of a Kinks classic.
2. Friend of the Devil, Lyle Lovett (Grateful Dead). Deadicated was probably the first of the odd "tribute album" wave back in the mid-1990s and was recorded with proceeds to benefit the rainforests or something like that, a cause to which the Dead expended great efforts. Lovett's soulful country voice is a perfect match here.
3. Pretty Woman, Van Halen. (Roy Orbison). Admit it...you like this much better than Roy's original. Especially with the "Intruder" lead-in on Diver Down, which is over half cover tunes. Probably the first Van Halen tune that got widespread airplay in my little corner of Central New York in the early 1980s.
4. Gimme Some Lovin', Grateful Dead - Pittsburgh '89 (Spencer Davis Group, featuring Steve Winwood). Brent Mydland and his angst-ridden voice delivered some gems for the Dead back in his day, but this one slowly emerging out of Space is probably my favorite. Mickey and Bill's thundering drums introduce that signature wail of Brent's keyboards...and it is ON.
5. Dead Souls, Nine Inch Nails (Joy Division). From The Crow soundtrack. I heard this long before I heard the Joy Division original. OK, yeah, it's not the best thing Trent ever churned out (I enjoyed Burn from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack much more), but anything involving Nine Inch Nails and Joy Division belongs on this silly list of mine just because, dammit. Honestly, I liked NIN's version of Adam Ant's Physical (Track #98 on the Broken EP) a lot more.
6. Ain't Too Proud to Beg, The Rolling Stones (Temptations). Not the first nor the last time the Stones piggybacked off the Motown sound. This Temptations remake immediately precedes the title track on It's Only Rock 'n' Roll. Now Mick's voice sounds downright silly on occasion, but it works here with the piano and Keith's crooning bluesy guitar.
7. Never Let Me Down Again, Smashing Pumpkins (Depeche Mode). This cut led off the mid-1990s DM tribute disc Ultra. I heard it first on the radio while driving...probably on WHFS while driving on the Beltway and was a little confused, 'cause it sure as hell sounded like Billy Corgan was singing a DM tune. Indeed he was. It took a while to finally track this down in a pre-amazon.com era. Clearly the class of the disc, the Pumpkins sound is nice and trippy.
8. All Along the Watchtower, Grateful Dead-Buffalo '89 (Bob Dylan). Deep, DEEP into the second set of my first (of only four total, unfortunately) Dead show in the rain...uh, at least I think it was raining. Yeah...rain...that's it. Whatever the weather was, they nailed this one.
9. My Way, Sid Vicious (pretty sure you know damn well who did the original). Just kidding, but this disembodied, frantic mosh pit version of a classic was a fitting ending to the Good Fellas' portrayal of the spiraling load of shit that Henry Hill's life ultimately became.
10. Kerosene, Lowest of the Low (Bad Religion). The last track on the studio mini accompanying the live CD Nothing Short of a Bullet. I'm not sure if I've ever actually heard the original, but this rocks, so there ya have it. Big ups to Ron Hawkins, Stephen Stanley and the rest of the Low (didya hear? They're touring again: http://www.lowestofthelow.com/).
11. Bertha, Los Lobos (Grateful Dead). Another track from Deadicated. Really, they should have stopped tribute CDs right here. Actually, they should have wrapped up this one before its last track (see below). Los Lobos' Mexibilly sound fits like a glove for one of my Dead favorites (and the opener to the aforementioned Buffalo '89 show).
12. Overkill, Lazlo Bane (Men at Work). Just awesome. No, seriously. This is probably my favorite cover of all time. Much heavier than the irreverent poppy original. Goes at a more deliberate pace than the Men at Work version (tough not to - someone was definitely double-parked when they were laying that track down). Starts off quietly and slowly, then works its way up to a crescendo with a big-ass grungy edge...with Colin Hay topping off the last stanza. Excellent video, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqOU7r4hdmw

And now let's recognize a few tunes that should never been messed with (especially in this fashion) to begin with:

• It's My Life, Gwen Stefani (Talk Talk). Admittedly, I'm not a fan of her high-pitched, incessantly-droning voice, especially when I heard "Just a Girl" about 90 times a day when it first came out. This didn't help - the tune plays directly to her weaknesses and is annoying as hell. Seriously, why did this ever happen?
• Ripple, Jane's Addiction (Grateful Dead). The first time through this disc I was intrigued to see what Perry Farrell and the crew would do with this on the last track of the CD. Needless to say, I was quickly disappointed. This was a mess. Farrell's voice doesn't belong within 1,000 miles of this tune, and the instruments were a disjointed mess.
• Sweet Child of Mine, the woman in the Black-Eyed Peas at this year's Super Bowl halftime show (Guns 'n' Roses). Slash should have stayed home. This reached untraversed proportions of suckdom, even for the annual over-produced mega-letdown know as the Super Bowl halftime show.
• Anything on Covering the Bases by Bronson Arroyo. Maybe Theo traded Bronson away for the human window fan that was Wily Mo Pena 'cause he was sick of listening to the kid consistently butcher Stone Temple Pilots riffs in the clubhouse. That would be enough reason for me.
  

Music to children's ears

Over the past couple of years we've introduced our son (now 5) to quite a bit of music. Grateful Dead, Lowest of the Low (Ron Hawkins, Stephen Stanley and their various projects as well), 1980s new wave...even some classic R&B and Funk courtesy of Sirius/XM "The Groove." Music has definitely created a stronger bond between me and my son, and I'm sure the Beautiful Bride would say the same thing (even though we have failed to convince her of the worthiness of Dead tunes, as in "C'mon, Mom...the Grateful Dead are AWESOME!"). Please, please, PLEASE don't forget to introduce your children to as much music as you can...stuff you and yours enjoy, stuff you grew up with...even what your parents liked! My mom played flute professionally back in the day, so I also have a moderate affinity towards classical music. Its calming powers (at least Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, for starters) are very underrated! Even some New Age selections do the trick as well. Hey, if what they play on XM Spa can make the trek on the upper bounds of the New Jersey Turnpike a mellow experience, I'm sold...

Clinton 2.0 d. Dukakis 2.0, 52-47

What an amazing development this past Tuesday night in our quirky little corner of the United States I sometimes refer to as the Commune of Taxachusetts.


The similarities are quite striking: In this corner, we have an almost-by-default Democratic nominee who fritters away a double-digit lead in the general election with an almost endless string of campaign gaffes. The result: A convincing defeat.

Dukakis 1.0

During the 1988 Presidential campaign, if memory serves me right (yes, I am a big fan of the original Iron Chef...but this was the first Presidential campaign I actually voted in, so my recollection may be a little hazy) Michael Dukakis didn't seem to have a huge battle in the primary. I heard Dukakis was running, heard he was nominated and didn't really hear about much else. The general election was a different story. Per my recollection, he had to fight off Willie Horton, pictures of him in a tank, and his own proclamation that Midwestern farmers should start growing Belgian endive. All the while, people were alleging that his wife Kitty wasn't exactly the most mentally stable individual on the earth (I by no means condone such muckraking, whether true or false…but I’m pretty sure it didn’t help). He exposed his stilted personality to anyone that would listen to him, while Republican nominee George Bush remained relatively in the background and watch his opponent implode.

Dukakis 2.0: Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley

Fast-forward to 2009: Martha Coakley cruises through the primary relatively unscathed. In the final primary debate, her three male opponents bludgeon each other to death, but don't want to appear that they're attacking the female candidate, so she stays calm, cool and collected, waltzing through the rubble to capture the nomination and an initial 30-point lead in the early polls. This lack of battle testing would prove to be fatal to her candidacy when mixed with the stagnant cocktail of entitlement and hubris.

After all, this was Ted Kennedy's seat in the Senate for almost half a century. OF COURSE the Democratic nominee was going to win. Before the primary, the SEIU radio spots read, "Tuesday's the Democratic primary, in which you'll elect the next Senator." As she took the latter part of December off from the campaign trail, her opponent worked feverishly to build his base and tap in to the over 50% of the registered Massachusetts electorate that is "unenrolled." She returned in January to see her opponent shaking hands around Fenway Park, to which she responded something to the effect of, "Well, what am I supposed to do? Stand out THERE in the COLD and SHAKE HANDS WITH PEOPLE?!"

Yes, Martha...that's EXACTLY what you're supposed to do.

She then made one giant leap towards alienation of Red Sox Nation-kind by calling Curt Schilling "another Yankee fan." But not before she proclaimed in the final TV debate that the "terrorists and Taliban in Afghanistan...they're gone." Around the time of that debate, the 30-point lead was down to the single digits. By the time she proclaimed Schill, he of the Bloody Sock, the newest member of the Evil Empire, she was in a statistical dead heat.

On the Sunday before Martin Luther King’s birthday, Coakley tapped the star power of an incumbent President Obama for an emergency relief junket sans necktie to save her and the 60th vote for a teetering health care reform package. All this scurrying about occurred in the Coakley camp while the real relief mission continued in Haiti, with Bill Clinton at the helm...only days after Clinton also interrupted his mission in order to be Shippin’ Up to Boston to save Coakley's hide.

Coakley’s final attempts to rub elbows with the public failed to shed her rigid veneer. TV reports of her weekend visit to the Eire Pub in Dorchester showed her gingerly sipping on a Sam Adams. Anyone want to chime in on whether she finished it or not? One customer refused to shake her hand as she introduced herself. I'm not saying he represented the entire crowd, but it's not often that you see such gaffes in "reading the room" for a Democrat candidate in a Democrat town actually reported. She greeted commuters at North Station Tuesday morning, only a day after her opponent greeted Bruins fans in the same location. To me, her gestures rung hollow as a last-ditch effort to show her human side. Clearly she was in trouble.

Her Tuesday evening ended a little early when, around 9 PM, she called her opponent to concede the election. Her "drinking buddy" at the Eire, Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray, explained to the disappointed crowd at Coakley headquarters and to the nation watching on TV that Coakley "was smart and understood that it wasn't about a single issue..." once again, taking the tried-and-true tack of essentially calling opposing voters stupid. Thus ends Coakley's 2010 Senate campaign, much as Dukakis' 1988 Presidential campaign ended...in the L column.


And in THIS corner, we have a little-known public servant emerging from the shadows to take on the incumbent party with a well-executed campaign and unassuming, unpretentious hard work to wring out a solid victory over an opponent that, while vulnerable, held distinct advantages in campaign infrastructure and finance.

Clinton 1.0

Now let's recall Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign. When I first heard that he could emerge from a a stacked & not-quite packed Democratic primary field, my first questions were "Who?" "Arkansas?" "You kiddin' me?" Then he went to work. He worked, he worked and he worked some more. Clinton hustled to meet and greet any voter within eye or earshot and posted a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary. He kept the momentum going through his nomination and the general campaign...a campaign that bore one of my favorite political quips ever...by independent candidate Ross Perot (not-so-verbatim, but close enough for government work): "Now we have Bill Clinton here, who's the Governor of Arkansas and says he wants to run the country. Well, folks, that's like me saying I have a corner store and wanna run Wal-Mart."

Not even the ranking of Clinton's Arkansas in the high 40s and maybe even 50 proper for education on his watch, nor claims of infidelity from Gennifer Flowers (and the resulting notoriety of Stuttering John from Howard Stern show fame), slowed him down. Nor did his wife Hillary, who rubbed some the wrong way because she "could've stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but...wanted to have a career." Even questionable business deals in Arkansas, which eventually landed at least a couple of Clinton associates in the pokey, didn't stop the momentum. Bill Clinton kept working...and working. As a final gift, Clinton's opponent, incumbent President George Bush, showed up in a supermarket about a week before the election and marveled at this newfangled invention of the grocery scanner...which had been around for quite some time by then...revealing to the world what they already thought: This bloke has no clue what goes on in a supermarket. But Clinton still kept working. By early November his voice was tired, scratchy and horse. However, he'd have the rest of November, all of December and part of January to recover, for he was the President-elect.

Clinton 2.0: Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown

Pretty much the first thing I knew about Scott Brown was that he was the husband of Gail Huff, the reporter on WCVB Channel 5 in Boston's "EyeOpener," its morning news program. Gail would show up in a blizzard on Route 128, in the pouring rain by the MassPike after a toll hike or in subzero temperatures in the winter at Fenway Park while construction crews built seats atop the Green Monster...always appropriately dressed for the occasion...at 5 in the blessed AM. Now that’s dedication. Gail’s husband Scott was a Republican State Senator, which made him quite an exception in the Democratic-controlled politics of the "Commune." Admittedly, I didn't hear much about his political career at all, as the Republican Party is such a super-minority in Massachusetts government that its voice is essentially stifled and coverage is limited in the various mainstream news outlets. We were happy to hear of the success that Scott and Gail's daughter Ayla had as a contestant on "American Idol." That was pretty much it.

As the candidates from each party assembled after Ted Kennedy's death, there were rumblings that Curt Schilling himself may consider a run for the seat. These were quickly squashed by Schill himself, and Scott Brown threw his hat into the ring. More of a product of his family, he admittedly had the most name recognition of any of the Republican candidates, but in Massachusetts, that and $2.50 gets you a venti bold at Starbucks and not much else. He nabbed over 80 percent of the vote in a barely-contested primary but quickly realized that he was down 30 points against the Democratic machine with little chance to win a seat that had been held by the Kennedy family for over 50 years.

So he went to work.

Brown tirelessly worked to meet as many voters as he could. His campaign went viral in the social networking media of Facebook, Twitter and Google. Before we heard the ubiquitous "this isn't the Kennedy seat, this isn't the Democrat seat, it's the people's seat" during his final debate, we read it on Twitter. Campaign ads showed him in Southie meeting people along East Broadway, driving his ubiquitous truck and even in his own kitchen. What he lacked in star power he made up in sincerity and the sole focus on the issues concerning all citizens of Massachusetts and the nation. He was one of us: “I’m Scott Brown. I’m from Wrentham, I drive a truck and I need your vote.”

His last major campaign rally on the Sunday before the election was a People's Rally in Worcester, which drew a grassroots crowd of about 2,000 in Mechanics Hall (with an overflow crowd of several hundred next door) and working-class local celebrities such as Lenny Clarke, Fred Smerlas, Steve DeOssie, Curt Schilling, Doug Flutie and John Ratzenberger of "Cheers" fame. This outpouring of genuine support created yet another favorable juxtaposition against the flat-lining Coakley campaign and Obama trotting in from the bullpen. Really, the only barely-noticeable slip-up I caught at that People's Rally was his mention that he "was probably only three years old" when Woodstock happened (actually, he would have been closer to ten). No worries, since the only thing the crowd remembered about Ratzenberger's Woodstock discussion was that he suggested any monument to the event consist of a "National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie." Flutie, an undersized Boston College quarterback that defeated the juggernaut University of Miami with his Hail Mary pass, spoke. Schilling, who had a tendon stapled in place when he mowed down the Yankees in Game Six, introduced the candidate. Brown continued to hammer away at his opponent on the issues, noting that “our tax dollars should be spent for the weapons to stop terrorists…not for the lawyers to defend them.”

On Monday's holiday, he shook hands with fans before an afternoon Bruins tilt. This was probably the highlight of any goings-on at "the Gahden" that day for many, as the Bruins were crushed by Ottawa, 5-1. Lucky for Brown, the lackluster effort by the B's wasn't contagious; he was going to play "a full sixty minutes of hockey" and work straight through to the finish.

Brown woke up on Election Day in unfamiliar territory for a Massachusetts Republican. He had the endorsement of the Boston Herald, the State Police, and the Cambridge policeman's union...the same union that listed his opponent's husband as a member. Better yet, he had a slight, albeit within the margin of error, lead in the polls. The day started with snow, which turned to a light frigid rain. After many in the media wondered how the weather would affect turnout, Brown voters came out in full force. In cities and towns carried by Scott Brown, 58 percent of registered voters showed up at the polls, while only 49 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the localities carried by Coakley. Boston residents voted at only a 43 percent clip...even after Obama was brought in to "gin up" the electorate. Springfield and Lawrence, two other cities decidedly in the Coakley camp, had even worse turnout at 32 and 28 percent, respectively. The voter turnout on each side fell in lockstep with each candidate's perceived level of effort. Brown carried the unenrolled vote at around a 2-to-1 clip. 1 in 5 registered DEMOCRATS crossed the aisle to vote for Brown. By late Tuesday evening, FoxNews was rejoicing and MSNBC was whimpering...Scott Brown had pulled off the unthinkable with a nearly-flawless campaign, and had captured the special election to fill the United States Senate seat...The People's Seat...of Massachusetts. The crowd at Park Plaza responded to Ayla Brown's news of her dad's victory with a resounding "Gas up the truck!!!"


The conventional wisdom states that "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Martha Coakley and Scott Brown have most likely witnessed hundreds of campaigns during their political careers and taken valuable lessons from each of them. That Coakley unwittingly emulated Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign, while Brown utilized the lessons of Bill Clinton's infinitely-more-successful 1992 Presidential campaign, is just about all anyone needs to know about the 2010 special election in Massachusetts. It's the kind of lopsided matchup you would set up in Madden football for kicks, and it played out just as you would expect it. The difference is that at the start of the game, nobody expected it.

All I wanted was some real financial news...

If you, in your hearings, have to ask, "what is proprietary trading," then it's a safe bet that you were not the most appropriate nominee to something called "The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission." I'll leave it at that.