I’m of the theory that once a link to anything on the internet is sent to you more than twice, you will click on it, regardless of content or your interest. Perhaps it’s because you’re intrigued by what the kids are doing these days, or because looking just once will allow you to ignore all future links. Maybe you want to judge the people sending you the link, and your best bet is to complain loudly about the links they send you. Still, there’s almost no way you’re not clicking on that hyperlink the third time you see it.
Obviously, it’s almost always a mistake. There’s a reason you don’t click on the link the first or second time, and those reasons are made readily apparent the moment you change your mind. Among recent mistakes on my clicking finger’s part: the Susan Boyle video and some risqué Cassie pictures. The first phenomenon is, to me, beyond explication.
So here’s a rather homely British mum who has amazing pipes. Awesome. I’ve seen and heard at least a few performances equal to hers, but I admit she is a wonderful singer.* End of Story. No need to light the internets on fire with the video, at least as far as I am concerned. Apparently most people disagree. The real “story” here is her “overcoming” her “ugliness” to reverse the opinions of a society based on looks. Of course, this is only a “story” to a society that hasn’t actually had their opinions reversed, but likes to think it will still consider “ugly” people their equals. The Susan Boyle “story”** reeks of every terrible report on how racism is being overcome by “really industrious minorities who force the majority race to sit up and take notice.” Just as most of those stories contain implicit, if not explicit, racism, the Susan Boyle “story” is all about celebrating an “ugly” duckling, while reminding everyone that her achievement isn’t her voice, but rather defying fate and succeeding while unattractive. Somehow this is uplifting, instead of insulting.
The second linkstorm is far more obvious. Good-looking girl, naked. My real problem is not with the fact that I am apparently still a 13 year-old boy, looking for free pornography on the internet, but with the fact that I HAVE NO IDEA WHO CASSIE IS. If you are going to send me a link to celebrity nudes, I think one of the first two priorities is ensuring that the person is a celebrity. I don’t think I am particularly out of touch with pop culture, as I spend an inordinate amount of time on various gossip sites devoted to Hollywood and everything wrong with it. I have never scrolled across her name, and judging by her record sales, I’m not the only one. If you were going to list the most famous things Cassie has ever done, the list would currently look like this:
1.) Having Naked Pictures Distributed on the Internet
GIANT GAP
2.) Knowing Sean “Puffy”/ “Diddy”/ “Puff Daddy” / “Endless Combinations of the Previous” Combs
3t.) Everything Else She Has Ever Done
Forgive me if I’m not impressed that you found naked pictures of someone who knows the nerdiest rapper this side of Kanye West. STOP SENDING ME THE LINKS!
Still, sometimes the subtle prodding of the repetitive links is for the best. Last week, a couple of prominent baseball writers managed to simultaneously post the link to Google Book Search’s complete collection of Baseball Digest Magazine. Despite being extremely interested, I moved on to work I needed to complete and quickly lost track of the links. Luckily, the internet is an ambivalent, equal opportunity mistress, and worthwhile items and links are distributed as widely and persistently as the dregs of the tubes are. I saw the link for a third time in a SABR email chain, and finally had the time necessary to devote to such a spectacular gift.
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Baseball Digest is a weird magazine, basically a monthly archive of random pieces written by random authors, surrounded by random trivia, games, stats and correspondences. It lacks any real sort of cohesive idea, other than “here’s a periodical devoted solely to baseball.” Even the crossword puzzles are baseball-themed. At any one time, there are maybe two or three solid authors who can be expected to write for every issue, while most pieces come from outside newspapermen. Seemingly, the only constant features a reader could count on were the letters to the editor, “Warmup Tosses” by John Kuenster and “The Game I’ll Never Forget” section which had a ballplayer recount his most memorable game to any writer that could transcribe for the Digest. Every issue was a 20-car-pileup of old-school beliefs, middle-aged conservatism (I dare you to find an off-color joke in the entire archives) and the clearly child-like enthusiasm of every single contributor for the game the magazine detailed. I loved it.
My brother and I received a Baseball Digest subscription every Christmas as part of an ongoing gift that made my mother’s life easier. We overlooked her lack of donative imagination because the Digest was so highly valued. We fought over it when it came in the mail, a shrunken stack of paper barely larger than a postcard, and we held each other to an unspoken oath not to reveal the contents to the unlucky brother who got it second. After all, there but for the grace of the mailman went I.
Even the magazine’s failings contributed to the fun. Picking apart a Baseball Digest article is not a project in demand of great genius (the crosswords are infinitely more difficult), as one would expect given the articles’ BBRAA-dominated authorship and the fact that most pieces treat extremely large areas of baseball in 700-900 words or fewer. Well into the double-aughts , BD still dropped batting average like it was The Truth,*** and celebrated the grittiness of all-time scraptacular “athletes” Darin Erstad, Adam Kennedy and the pinnacle of scrap, David Eckstein.
This never angered me, nor torpedoed BD’s credibility. Rather, it served as a sounding board for how a large majority of baseball fans saw things, and gave me an opportunity to shape my own arguments in response. There is value there, and more than occasionally, a well-written article with a sound thesis slipped through the editorial cracks, surprising and enlightening me.
Going back now and reading some of the articles again, I am surprised by how seemingly fickle baseball can be. Originally trying to find what BD’s response was to The Strike,**** I came upon a curious piece in the October ’94 issue. Titled “’94 Astros Didn’t Magically Become Contenders in the N.L.,” the piece by Jerome Holtzman recounted how Houston’s team had grown slowly into a playoff contender, putting five players in the All-Star game in the Year of the Expos.
These two short pages, read fifteen years later, raise a stupefying number of questions, of which the following are only a sampling:
1.) What happened to Manager Terry Collins?
He managed the Astros from 1994-1996 and the Angels from 1997-1999, finishing: 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 4th. For his career, he was ten games over .500. Some brief research shows him going to the minors to coach after resigning from the Angels gig, then to Japan, where he hooked up with some one-named actress. No, it was not Cassie.
2.) Why did the lineup change on June 14th?
Prior to this date, Bagwell always hit cleanup with Biggio nearly always third. After this date, Bagwell always hit 3rd, Biggio mostly hit 1st or 2nd and Caminiti always hit cleanup. Obviously Caminiti had proven his worth by this point in the season, but to go from one extremely solid lineup (X-X-Biggio-Bags-X-Cam) straight to another (Biggio-X-Bags-Cam) without injury playing a part seems odd.
3.) How did the Astros not win ANYTHING during these years?
They had the best right side of the IF in the game, and rarely fielded a below-average position player (a rarity even today). Their bullpen was sharp at times, even if Hudek never became the star that Holtzman foresaw.
Short answer: Their starting pitching was completely and utterly average. It’s hard to win an impressive amount of games without at least one or two pitchers having good seasons. The BEST season during the ’94-’96 period for the Astros was likely Drabek’s ’94 (12-6, 2.84, 1.075, ERA+ 140) on a staff where no other starter posted an ERA+ over 91. The second best? Mike Hampton’s ’95 with a sparkling ERA+ 116. In 15 starting pitcher seasons, the range of ERA+ (not the greatest stat in the world, but telling enough for these purposes) looks like this:
ERA+ ; Number of Pitchers
120+ 1
110-120     2
100-110     2
90-100 2
80-90 ; ; 5
69-80   3
Eight seasons that were at least 20% worse than an average starter. Not good.
4.) Has any team, retrospectively, been saddled by more controversy, innuendo and tragedy than the ‘94 Astros?
Caminiti’s story is well-known, and ought to be well-remembered. Kile’s untimely death stopped short the career of a consensus good guy who had battled to become a successful pitcher not once (beating back some ugly years in HOU before 1997) but twice (overcoming the scars of Coors for the Cardinals). Partially due to Caminiti, and partially due to some unreal outliers, Luis Gonzalez and Bagwell have been painted with the ‘roiding brush. Mitch Williams saw his career fall completely apart for this team and Hudek never came close to approaching his rookie season except for 15 short games in 1997. Mike Hampton still can’t catch a break. The fact that Todd Jones might be the most recognizable, sustained pitching success from that Astros era is downright dispiriting.
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The article might be 1000 words, with lengthy quotes. Yet it still spurs discussion and thought fifteen years later. There are a nearly endless number of these pieces in the archives, saying as much about baseball and its never-ending interest as about Baseball Digest. I would suggest you go there, but instead, I will force you to by linking to the article three times in this sentence.
* Also, “I Dreamed a Dream” is one of my favorite songs from my favorite musical, so she certainly nailed the song choice, in Cowellian parlance.
** Yes, I am going to put “story” in quotation marks for the entirety of this paragraph, because IT IS NOT A STORY. Except, of course, in the way it was entirely created by the media. I am also putting quotes around “ugly,” because I don’t find her particularly unattractive. She’s an older British lady. Not sure the last time you were in the Isles, but there’s not exactly an abundance of hot matures hanging about.
*** Non-Paul Pierce version.
**** Zero. Nada. Lindsay Lohan’s Dress Size.***** They covered it not at all, just kept writing about baseball like nothing had happened.
***** OOOOOhhhhh….a Lindsay Lohan reference, how topical and germane!!!