I’ve become a huge Zack Greinke fan this season for several reasons. 1) I lucked into him late in my fantasy draft, and he’s carried my crappy team, at least as much as a pitcher can. 2) I read Joe Posnanski’s profile of him from the beginning of the season, and if that doesn’t make you fall in love with the guy, I don’t know what will. (Besides his charming blue eyes.) I recommend you read it, if you have not. Greinke’s career arc just makes you want to root for him. 3) He’s been filthy this year on the mound for a weak Royals team: 2.06 ERA, 1.066 WHIP, 224 Ks. He deserves the Cy Young, even if he doesn’t end up getting it.

But then I ran across this quote today, and I think it trumps all my previous reasons for appreciating Greinke:

“I’d say the average person wouldn’t eat a Chipotle burrito and still do his running, full speed, like me. That’s why they call me special.”

Good. God. Yes. I’ve ingested many calories from the deliciousness of a Chipotle burrito, and after, I still do my blogging at like, half-speed. This man gets me.

HT: SB Nation

“Michael Jordan, baseball player,” is an idea that will never, ever make sense. You’ve had over 15 years to stew on it, but whenever you’re reminded that the greatest basketball player of all time ditched the sport in favor of a game that could not possibly be more different, you still laugh about it. I realize that “Isn’t it WEIRD that Michael Jordan played baseball?” is a pretty worn-out trope, but video of Jordan playing baseball is relatively rare.  Which is why this recently-uploaded video is such a treasure. Skip to about 5:50 to see him smack an RBI double at Wrigley Field against Dave Otto, who had a 3.80 ERA for the Cubs that year.

Not only is he playing baseball, he’s playing on the major-league White Sox against the Cubs (albeit in an exhibition game). He’s in the lineup with guys like Frank Thomas and Robin Ventura (the graphic at 4:10 is just surreal). And amazingly, he goes 2-for-5 with two RBI, the second of which tied the score. For the longest time, all I remembered about Jordan’s baseball career is that he played in the minors, bought his team a bus, hit .202, and quit. I didn’t remember him actually doing anything on the diamond.

Flip Saunders has an offense. He has a new team. He would like his new team to absorb his new offense. But rather than attempt to reach his young, cool, hip players through the power of paper and pencil — or, heck, even whiteboard and erasable marker — Flip has decided to speak on their terms. He’s given each Washington Wizard their own iPod touch full of images of his offense to study. Somewhere, Steve Jobs is smiling down. Feel your reborn sense of wonder, oh earthlings!

“You can listen to your music and look at the plays,” Jamison said. “They got video of each play.  We all know how technology runs this world, so why not incorporate it with what you do for basketball?”

You can listen to music AND observe images at the same time. GET OUT! I’m being glib, but this is actually pretty cool. From Bullets Forever:

How does it work?  Each player’s iTouch is coded for themselves, meaning they are the only ones who can sign in to access the plays.  The team will upload diagrams and videos that the players are expected to watch.  Some of the files are picture files diagramming the plays, while others are video files that actually show the plays in action.  The players will be asked to have their iTouch on them at all times — Jamison was wearing his around his neck.

See? That’s actually pretty cool. Told you so.

Hey, remember when it used to be kind of lame to own an iPhone? Like, right when it came out? I used to feel self-conscious about mine on the El; I’d read it but also sort of pretend it wasn’t there, like a pimple. I’m not that guy, everyone! Don’t look at me! And now even Antawn Jameson has come around. The times, they are a changin’.

Lost Time Is Not Found Again is what the MPS blog crew has been reading today. Maybe.

+ Who doesn’t love anti-Brett Favre shirts? {The Angry T.}

+ Junior Seau getting owned by a bull. {With Leather.}

+ Evaluating April 2009 MLB predictions. {Vegas Watch.}

+ Twelve of the best pole-vaulting fails. Could watch these all day. {Epic Carnival.}

+ Non-sports: Why three young journalists joined the Texas Tribune. {Romenesko.} The staircase bookcase. {Apartment Therapy.}

Quotable:

“The NFL seems to be on the defensive here. Why, I don’t know. It’s not like no one knows that football is a violent game that can have some unpleasant consequences. I think everyone knows and accepts that. It’s not like a cigarette company, where they’re accused of trying to trick the public. No one’s accusing the NFL of whacking players in the head with ball-peen hammers as they sleep.

No one’s accusing them of anything, really, other than being exactly what they are: proprietors of a sometimes-violent game. Instead of denying and refuting, I wish they’d get out ahead of the issue, believe the research that’s in front of them, and put their energies towards finding ways to help make the effects less devestating.

Pretending that the sport isn’t violent, and that it’s a perfectly safe and wonderful activity for the human brain doesn’t help anyone.” – MJD

The NHL is holding “#NHLPick15,” a Twitter-based contest in which fans are to predict the winners of all 15 games on Sunday. The winner gets two tickets to wherever, and ten other contestants get access to NHL GameCenter Live, which is probably some sort of computer thing. These sorts of contests are always complemented by a tiresome, superfluous set of official rules that nobody ever bothers to read; they just sort of fade into the background. Well, the official rules of this contest are literally in the background. As in, the NHL just decided to condense the rules into an unreadable image and slap it on the background of its Twitter page.

The idea, I guess, is for the fastidious contest participant to shove his or her screen into a Microfiche machine and ensure that he or she understands the NHL’s limits of liability. As of this writing, five of the NHL’s 14 most recent tweets link to the official rules, turning this entire enterprise into even more of a buzzkill.

The simple math — not accounting for favorites, underdogs, home-ice advantage, etc. — is that the chance of correctly picking the winners of all 15 games is about 0.003%, or three in 100,000. And even if you win, the uphill climb isn’t over. From the official rules:

Keep reading →

Because this is just silly:

2. Somebody has gotten to Cutler, in a good way, and he seemingly has listened. Maybe the four-interception game in the opener at Green Bay was exactly the thing he and the Bears needed, if something so strange can be said.

The Bears, who treat information as if it were gold bullion, won’t say who said what to whom or, for that matter, whether anything was said at all. In other words, stop asking. But Cutler apparently learned from the Packers debacle. Look at his numbers. In the last two games, he has completed 48 of 65 passes (73.8 percent) for 483 yards and five touchdowns. He has thrown one interception.

Morrissey is referring to a column he wrote after the Bears’s Week 1 loss to the Packers, in which he recounted Jim Mora and Mike Martz’s ridiculous assertions that Jay Cutler was embarrassing his team and his coach by not being more animated at his press conference. Cutler was merely giving the same canned answers most athletes recite after losses (and wins, for that matter), but that didn’t stop Morrissey from taking Mora and Martz’s sentiments and using them as an excuse to push the notion that Jay Cutler was a terror inside the Bears, a one-person team torpedo, a sociopathic personality who cared solely about himself. In reality, Cutler had a really bad first game and didn’t feel like talking about it. In Rick Morrissey’s world, he was tearing the Bears apart from the inside-out.

Keep reading →

As previously blockquoted on this blog, Michael Jordan decided not to make the trip to Copenhagen to back Chicago’s Olympic bid. Oh well. Barack Obama will be there Friday, as will Oprah. That’s quite the duo, rivaled in persuasiveness only by Jeremy Grey and John Beckwith. (Did I just drop an out-of-date and weak “Wedding Crashers” reference? I did.)

One former star athlete that did make the trip to Copenhagen? Pele. At first glance, you would think Rio only brought Pele around to combat the one-namedness of Oprah, but this is not true. In fact, Pele just loves his country of Brazil so damn much, he told reporters this yesterday, in response to questions about Jordan not making the trip:

“It is important to participate when your country needs you,” Pele said at a Rio press conference Wednesday morning.

“If I have to die for my country, I would die for my country,” Pele said. “If I have to die for my sport, I would die for my sport. I feel very happy if I can help my country.”

SNAP. Is Pele trying to tell us Jordan doesn’t love America? Or is he simply being classy and answering the question in regards to his own self, thereby not taking a direct swipe at Jordan, as the Trib post indicates?

It’s a bit of both. Therefore, I suggest both parties settle this quarrel on the basketball court. You may say Jordan has the clear advantage, but what if I told no hands were allowed?