It’s another long Saturday night in the office. Random observations, etc. …
Two posts down is a reprint of a column I did for the Sunday News’ Living section about my kid and his interest in politics and him so looking forward to voting in the primary. Which reminds me: When we actually did walk down the street to vote, a man and woman passed us going the other way, the woman pushing a baby carriage and the man muttering in disgust about liberals “who’re gonna vote for Obama because they feel guilty.”
We were that obvious?
The National League seems to have caught up with the American for the first time in, what, two decades? The extent to which that’s been true, at least through the season’s first two months and at least in terms of which league has better young players, is reflected in the VORP ratings at Baseball Prospectus.
In addition to driving head-in-the-sand sportswriters nuts, VORP is a complex rating of total player performance. It’s cumulative, not per-game or per-at bat or per anything else.
Anyway, of the top 30 in the majors in VORP as of May 30, just seven, and just one of the top 10, are from the AL. Obviously injuries to guys like A-Rod are a factor, but still. And many of the surprise names near the top, like the Pirates’ Nate McLouth, Cardinals’ Ryan Ludwick, Marlins’ Hanley Ramirez and Braves’ Brian McCann, are NL guys closer to the beginning of their careers than the end.
The top five, just FYI: Lance Berkman, Chipper, Pujols, Chase Utley and Dan Uggla. …
On “The Low Post” a couple weeks back, I picked the Spurs and Pistons to meet in the NBA Finals, so you’ll want to hang on every word of this, but I just can’t see the Lakers losing a series right now.
What’s weird about this is that a year ago, it was a foregone conclusion that Kobe was demanding to be traded (he’s acknowledged that, actually) and that deal was apparently about to happen, probably with the Chicago Bulls. The Lakers wanted Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah, but Kobe apparently would have used his no-trade clause to nix that deal, since without those guys the Bulls would have a worse shot to win than the Lakers.
So the negotiations dragged into November, with the season about to start, before the whole thing fell apart. All the uncertainty and turmoil evidently played a role in ruining the Bulls’ season, but, uh, hasn’t seemed to bother the Lakers much. …
Speaking of the NBA, how did it get so far ahead of every other American sport in terms of the quality of broadcasting? Jeff Van Gundy is the latest emerging star, but there’s Charles/Kenny/Ernie in the studio, the legendary duo of Marv Albert and Hubie Brown…
I realize this is entirely subjective, but what’s interesting is to me, almost nobody working the NBA really sucks, certainly not Dick Vitale-level sucking. Mike Wilbon, Tim Legler, Reggie Miller, Greg Anthony, Doug Collins…. seriously, which one of those guys don’t you prefer to Sterling Sharpe or Dan Marino, Emmitt Smith, or ESPN’s confederacy of baseball dunces?
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Whoa- caught up in journalism there for a few hours. Cole Hamels is getting lit up by the Fish. Just wanted to pop in and point out that Hamels had two starts where he threw, I believe, a combined 237 pitches, and he’s gotten racked twice since. …
