I Scored!

June 8, 2000

I love Pedro games. I know. I’m not even close to being alone in this one. But, there’s a little bit of excitement in me every time I look at a scorecard and see his name on it. I know automatically that this game is going to be something special.

Of course it was.

The best part is, it wasn’t even anything extraordinary as far as Pedro games go. Take a look at his line. Eight innings. Of course. Zero runs, as expected. Another ten strikeout game. Boring! But, that was Pedro Martinez.

Since the Sox won the games, there must have been some runs scored. And, there were. Just enough. Plus, you’ll see that the first one wasn’t until the seventh inning. Pedro kept the Indians off the board when he really needed to. After all, the Sox were facing Bartolo Colon that day. Throwing up goose eggs was essential.

The hero of the game? Easily Carl Everett. His solo shot in the seventh was all the runs the Sox would need. For good measure, he scored another run the following inning. We’ll forgive the two strikeouts. Remember, it was Colon on the mound.

The goat? I hate to do it, but it has to be Nomar. 0-4 from your #3 hitter is not what you’re looking for.

But, thanks to Pedro, that didn’t matter. The Sox scored all the runs they would need, and Pedro showed why he was destined to be in the Hall of Fame.

Just like he did every game.

And the scorecard shows how it happened.

The Balls were Never at 12.5 PSI. Why Did the Wells Report Ignore its Own Findings?

First, I know. This isn’t a Red Sox related post. But, I assume that most of my readers also follow the Patriots. Besides, if David Ortiz and John Farrell can comment on things, why can’t I?

Let’s start off like this is an opening statement, which it is. Let me lay out a story for you, and then show you where that can be backed up.

Walt Anderson never set the balls to 12.5 psi. No, I don’t think he acted in some super-secret plan to catch the Pats. I just think that halftime of the AFC Championship game is the first time that the NFL really cared about the psi in the footballs. They certainly didn’t seem to care when the Colts alerted them to their concerns. They definitely never cared before that. So, Walt Anderson didn’t really care when the balls were a bit low. 12.25. Even 12.0. It just wasn’t worth the time to go inflate them again. Besides, Brady told him he liked the balls as low as he can get them. So, he won’t mind if they’re only 12.0 psi. Then, when everything went crazy at halftime, he had to tell everyone that they were at 12.5 psi. Otherwise, his job and the credibility of the NFL would be at stake.

Why don’t I think the NFL cared about the psi? Well, first because they did nothing with the Colts letter. They didn’t set up a sting, apparently. They just let things go. They simply told Anderson to be more aware about the psi, since there was the complaint. Anderson himself said he didn’t even really listen to the instructions. Since he knew he would be testing the balls, he was just going to go on doing what he always did. Then there are the gauges. Walt Anderson supplied his own gauges. Two of them. They were all beat up, bent, and broken. But, he used those to test the inflation. One of them was actually reading the wrong psi. He didn’t know. If he knew, he would have known which gauge he used, because he would have to know what he was reading. He didn’t. So, they were beaten, busted, and not calibrated! These are the gauges that the NFL used to ensure the integrity of the game that they suddenly care so much about. Ones that weren’t even reading the correct values. Then, he didn’t record the values. Then, when he lost track of the footballs before game time, he didn’t care. He found them, and just put them into play. No retesting. No using the back-up balls. Simply a “Whatever, The balls are here, let’s go.” The NFL didn’t care. It was only when the Colts complained during the game that a bunch of people on their own decided to test the balls. It never occurred to them that the cold weather would make those test invalid since all the balls would test low. They never thought about it before. Never cared.

Which is why, I assume, that the story was leaked to Bob Kravitz saying that an investigation was underway. Looking at the timeline, when he tweeted out that “scoop” there was no formal investigation. Even if you use the time of the tweet as after the game instead of during the second half as the Wells report states. (Wait, a mistake in the report?) So, the investigation started only after the public thought there was an investigation.

But, Anderson said they were at 12.5 psi. Why shouldn’t we just trust him?

Lots of reasons. Lots and lots of reasons.

First, the Wells report actually proved only two things. Only two things in the report were backed up by actual honest to goodness evidence. Everything else in the report is open to interpretation. One, the Colts tampered with game footballs when they stuck a needle into a Patriots ball after it had been marked by the official. Second, Walt Anderson doesn’t know what he’s talking about. When the process of bringing the balls to the field came up, he stated that the balls would never go to the field without an escort from an official. However eyewitness accounts and video evidence showed that this was not true. Yup. The only time video evidence contradicted a story, and it contradicted Anderson.

What else make Anderson look less than trustworthy? He admitted that he may have let one of the kicking balls into the game without checking the psi on it. Said right in the report. It’s possible that a ball went to the field for use without him checking and marking it first. So, possible for a kicking ball…why not possible for a game ball?

The next reason is my favorite. At halftime, the balls were tested and the reading recorded. There were several people in the room, including two NFL officials. When the Patriots game balls were found to be under 12.5 psi, they inflated them. One official was told to inflate the balls to 13 psi. The second one was told to check that the pressure was at the proper level. Then, after the game the balls were tested. But the Wells Report ignores these test results. Why? Because of uncertainty as to what the psi of the balls was at the start of the half. Yup. One official inflates, the second official checks with at least one witness, while the league is checking the inflation levels of footballs…and the Wells Report admits that it can’t be sure what the psi of the balls was at halftime. So, two officials and a witness are inconclusive. One official is rock solid undisputable evidence. Huh?

So, it looks pretty clear to me that it is highly likely that the balls were never at 12.5 psi. In fact, it’s the only explanation that actually fits within all the evidence that the Wells Report collected.

Now that I’ve shown you the conclusion that the Wells Report should have come to, at the risk of making this post longer than the report itself, let me explain why the report should not have come to the conclusions it did.

Most obvious, this was not an impartial investigation. Sure lots of people are calling it a witch hunt. And, unlike Goodell, I’m not going to put a lot of weight in the mumblings. But, I will put weight to the fact that the Wells Report itself calls it a witch hunt. When they hired Exponent, they told them that there was no reason to suspect that the Colts balls were tampered with. They made no such statement regarding the Patriots balls. So, they started the scientific research into whether the balls had been tampered with by assuming that the Patriots balls had been tampered with. Not quite so independent. That would have been bad enough. They went further. Exponent then went on to use the Colts balls as the control set for the experiment. What did that mean? It means that the way they decided if an experiment was valid was to set it to the Colts measurements. So, take the wet ball experiment. They needed to simulate rain inside a lab. How do you do that? Put it in the shower? Soak it in a tub? They settled on spraying the balls every 15 minutes, and then toweling them off. Why did they decide this? Because that gave them results that matched the Cots, and not the Patriots. They specifically looked for a simulation that wouldn’t match the Patriots results. Then, they had the gall to point this out as evidence! After running the tests, the Colts balls fell within the expected rage, while the Patriots balls did not. Of course not! The entire test was literally created so that this would be the case. They didn’t take a “control” simulation and see how it applied to each set of balls. They altered the control to get the result they wanted. Said so right in the report. Several times.

That would almost (A very long shot almost) be OK if each set of balls was exposed to the same elements during the game. But, as the tests showed, one of the HUGE factors in determining pressure loss during the half was how wet the balls got. The experiment assumed that the Pats balls were as wet as the Colts balls. So, when they skewed the experiment to the Colts, they pretended that the Pats should have come along for the ride. But, that wouldn’t be the case if the Pats spent more time with their balls in the cold rain. I’m trying to remember…which team spent more time on offense during the first half? So, even if we pretend that skewing an experiment to match one set of data is ok, they still shouldn’t have concluded what they concluded because the variables weren’t the same. Which, of course, is exactly what Exponent said. They couldn’t conclude that any tampering had even take place.

That’s before the report went around equating signing an autograph with giving a bribe, or twisting the meaning of random text messages to suit their needs.

So, the Wells Report decided that Brady probably knew about a probable tampering that science couldn’t confirm actually happened.

The fact that the Patriots and Brady were punished because of that should absolutely terrify every player, coach, owner, or anyone else in the NFL. If that’s all it takes to ruin you, it could happen to any of them.

After all Eli Manning, there’s as much evidence in the report that you knew about a plan to deflate footballs as there is that Tom Brady did.

Apparently it was Nieves

Remember when I asked who was calling the shots on the Red Sox? John Farrell said on the radio that the Sox needed to change their approach. Then, they had a special meeting with the pitchers and catchers to discuss that very thing. I wondered who the hold-up was. If Farrell wanted to make a change, why didn’t he just tell the pitchers to throw inside more? Or tell the catchers to call more inside pitches? Who needed convincing?

Was it Nieves?

Now I sometimes think that a coach/manager gets too much blame when things are going wrong. The last place finish in 2012 was much much much more to do with the talent level left on that team the second half of the year than anything Bobby Valentine could mismanage. I also hate the idea that a coach should be fired to light a fire under the players, or any other cliché you prefer.

But, if they’re not following the game plan, and not getting results, that seems like a pretty reasonable reason to make a change. Grady Little didn’t listen to the advice of the numbers people. He bucked organizational philosophy. And, he didn’t win. So, it’s a reasonable time to make a change.

Is this what happened with Nieves? Was he resisting Farrell’s preferred approach?

Because, say what you want about the quality of the pitching staff, they did all have proven records. You can say they were proven to be #3 starters, but they were there. But, this year every single one of them is pitching terribly. I asked before, did everyone forget how to pitch all at once? Or, was it the approach.

Now, I have no idea what Nieves is doing differently than he was in, say, 2013 when the Sox won the World Series. Maybe Lester, Lackey, and Peavy didn’t need a pitching coach? I don’t know why Clay Buchholz was the best pitcher in baseball the first half season under Nieves, and the worst pitcher the next year.

But, whatever it is, its sounds like more than just picking a fall guy. It doesn’t look like they’re just making a statement to the team. When you consider past conversations and events, it looks like there’s something there. Something that wasn’t working.

Maybe now it’s fixed.

Cinco de Mayo, and Alex Rodriguez

Today is seems that people everywhere are celebrating Cinco de Mayo. This is the holiday that, of course, celebrates the Mexican army’s victory over the mighty French forces in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. More than any tactical advantage, the victory gave a morale boost to the Mexican Army. So, it is celebrated to this day.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia at least (so it must be true), Cinco de Mayo isn’t such a big deal in Mexico. It’s almost to the point of being ignored. Sure, it’s officially observed, but there isn’t quite the fanfare that people might expect there to be.

Doesn’t that seem weird? America makes a much bigger deal out of a Mexican holiday than Mexico does. Some of that might be Mexican-Americans taking hold of an excuse to celebrate their homeland. Some of it might be beer companies and Mexican restaurants taking hold of an excuse to sell alcohol. But, whatever the reasons people come up with, it seems a little disjointed to celebrate someone else’s holiday more than they do.

Which brings us to Alex Rodriguez.

As you may have heard, or as some people tell it might not have heard, ARod hit his 660^th home run at Fenway Friday night, tying Willie Mays. There was speculation entering the weekend as to how the Red Sox would celebrate the home run if it came during the series. When it did, the Red Sox made the logical choice to celebrate it with…crickets. (Actually, they celebrated it by doing nothing. But, how awesome would it have been if after the home run they actually played crickets chirping over the loudspeaker.)

Some people were surprised, and even angered by this. They couldn’t imagine that the Red Sox didn’t make a big deal about it. About a visiting player. Tying someone for fourth.

What makes this even weirder is the Yankees themselves. They aren’t celebrating it. In fact, they made a point of saying it wasn’t a moment to celebrate so that they don’t have to pay ARod his bonus money. So, his own team is going out of their way to say it’s not a big deal, but the Red Sox are supposed to set off fireworks?

Like Cinco de Mayo?

Now, I can understand some of the con fusion. Remember when Derek Jeter tied and passed Lou Gehrig on the all-time hits list? He was treated like a conquering hero when he moved into, like, 50^th all-time in hits. But, at least that was setting a team  record. Sure it was a team record lower than the team records for the Padres…and Reds…and Red Sox…and Royals…and Brewers. But, at least it was a team record. No, it didn’t deserve to lead SportsCenter…but it was a record. ARod didn’t set a team record. He’s still a couple handfuls away from Babe Ruth for that honor. He tied someone for fourth place. It’s not even like Willie Mays ever held the record. I could maybe see celebrating a former record holder. But, Mays isn’t one of those. So, why on earth would there be any sort of celebration from an opposing team? Every player who ever hits a home run ties someone on the career list. Are they supposed to celebrate those too? Are teams supposed to celebrate all accomplishments of other players? Even if the player’s own team doesn’t think it’s all that important?

Like Cinco de Mayo.

From the Pedro Binder

2000 UD All UD Team

All-star teams can be interesting animals. Take a look at some past rosters. Every team has a bunch of players that probably have no business being called All-stars. By the same token, every year plenty of players are left off the team that fully deserved to be there. So, what’s a card company to do?

If you want to get more cards of star players into your set, the easiest way is to just make an extra card of all the all-stars each year. But, then you’re going to make a card for a lot of players you don’t want a card of, and miss a lot of players that you do. How do you fix it? Just make your own team.

The “All UD” team. Whatever that means. I assume it means, “We wanted to make more cards of all these players, but couldn’t think of anything catchier to call them, like ‘Fireballers’ ‘Super Sluggers’.” So, the UD team was born. Sorry, the “All-UD” team. So, if an “All-Star” team gets its name because the players a “all” “stars” wouldn’t that mean this team us made up of players who are “UD”? Huh.

Moving past all that, this is a nice card. Amazingly, I don’t find all the crazy graphics all that distracting. The positions on the right would suggest that the All UD team consists of a player from every position, and Pedro is the pitcher for the team. I’d have to look to see if that’s the case, or if there were several pitchers that year who were UDs. The little foil box that is around Pedro is a little odd…sort of like looking through a camera, but the set has nothing to do with a camera. Maybe if the team was the “All In Focus” team that would make more sense. I do like the bold blue background on the card. It makes Pedro’s white uniform really pop. Maybe that’s why all the foil garbage is OK. Pedro still manages to rise above it all and become the main element of the card. It still makes the player the most important thing you’re looking at. Which is important, because Pedro is absolutely a true star of the game.

And, apparently, a true UD.