fling93 loves fishies

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Introduction to Champ Car Racing

For those of you in the San Jose area, you might have noticed all these flags announcing the San Jose Grand Prix which happens this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (July 29-31) in downtown San Jose. At the last blogger meetup, I asked if anybody was going, and just got laughter in response. I’m not sure exactly why, but I assume partly because it will be a tremendous inconvenience for locals when there’s a ton of tourists in town, and also because auto-racing conjures up images of NASCAR and rednecks.

Let me clear up that misconception and hopefully provide a good primer to Champ Car and auto-racing in general.

An Olympic Rant

Well, I haven’t been watching the Olympics at all. I’m not even sure if they’re still going or not, that’s how much I haven’t been paying attention. With my luck (and my tendency to procrastinate), they’re long since over, and this rant’s way too late to stop anybody from watching them (not that any of you should ever listen to me tell you what to do anyway), but I want to get it off my chest now. I can always link to this every four years anyway.

And unlike my other so-called rant, this will actually be a real rant, and just so that you can tell, I will use the f-word very frequently. So if that offends you — well, duh! That’s the whole point! That’s why they call it a rant and not a frickin’ lullaby.

Lefties in Baseball

A while back, I saw Baseball Tonight comparing the best baseball players of all time, and it ended up being Alex Rodriguez (ARod) over Barry Bonds, which wasn’t surprising. Barry’s recent steroid controversies notwithstanding, ARod can field the hardest position to fill at shortstop, increasing his value.1 Even though the Yankees have him at 3rd base, it’s still harder to play 3rd than left field.

In addition, Barry isn’t a particularly good fielder. There was a time when he was, but he just doesn’t get to the same balls he used to, and his arm is simply terrible. However, Harold Reynolds didn’t cite this as the reason ARod was the better player. Instead, he said Barry was left-handed, which meant he was limited as to which positions he could play, whereas ARod could theoretically play anywhere.

Although I’ve watched baseball for quite a while, this was news to me. Why were lefties limited? My curiosity was piqued, and so I looked it up. And since there’s probably a lot of casual baseball fans out there who aren’t familiar with the whole lefty-righty issue in baseball, I decided to compile everything I found with everything I already knew into one nifty package.

Went to a Giants Game

Well, I went to my first Giants game of the season last Saturday against the Marlins. No regrets on not renewing our season tix. Seems like all the reasons I named are still valid. But I certainly missed going to the games, to our seats. Even if they were pretty high up, they were still in the infield in section 310, with a good view of the game and real convenient access to the escalator and the restrooms. Plus it was cool to pretend like we owned the place, going around wearing the 2002 World Series lanyards with our pretty tickets with the player pictures on them (gawd, I can be such an elitist).

And we had worked out a great setup, with a neat stadium bag that fits over the seat to become a seat cushion. And in it, we’d bring munchies, drinks, a portable radio to listen to the broadcast (much improved with Dave Fleming instead of Joe Angel), and most importantly, my clipboard with my scorecards and printouts of the rosters. Yes, I love scoring the games. I’ll get into more details on scoring and scorecards in a later post. One of the nice benefits is that I get a much more complete picture of the game than you can see in a boxscore. And this game was a pretty exciting one.

Schmidt had a rocky start, giving up two runs in the first inning, one on a passed ball by Pierzynski, another on a RBI ground-rule double by stud third baseman (and so far the most productive member of my fantasy baseball team — which incidentally has improved a bit up to 5th place), Mike Lowell, which of course, I had mixed feelings about (I kinda hate how fantasy sports really screw with your allegiances). I thought it was going to be another long day, but Schmidt settled down after that, shutting the Marlins down for the next three innings.

My Fantasy Baseball Team

Well, spring is here, and that means baseball. We didn’t renew our Giants season tix (of course, I didn’t know that SBC Park would have free Wi-Fi this year), so I’ll have some more free time. Of course, I expected to spend most of it blogging, but my lil brother talked me into joining a Fantasy Baseball League with him and some of his friends and coworkers.

For those unfamiliar, fantasy sports are games played where a bunch of sports geeks act like owners/GMs and pick (in a mock draft) different professional players to be on their “team.” How well the fantasy owner does in the game is then determined by the real-world stats of their team’s players. Sometimes the teams face-off against each other, and the fantasy league maintains won-loss records of each owner (head-to-head). Sometimes the fantasy league just totals up the stats for each fantasy team in several categories and awards points based on how high you’re ranked in each category (Rotisserie).

I’d participated in a head-to-head Fantasy Football League several years back for a couple of years, and while it was fine, I kinda lost interest in it after one season where I devoted a ton of time researching before the draft, all to no avail. One team drafted poorly and had to scramble to pick up an free QB after the season started — Kurt Warner. The team went on to win it all. Lucky bastard.

But I figured I’d try my hand at baseball, at least to see how I’d do against my brother, a big Yankees fan (I was a Mets fan, and am now a Giants fan). He set it up on Yahoo! as Rotisserie-style scoring, where you get points based on rankings in several offensive and defensive statistical categories, like HR, RBI, K, etc. The first place team in a category gets 10 points, 2nd place gets 9, etc., and the winner is the team with the highest points from the all the totaled categories. So it rewards balanced teams (having a ton of homers more than the 2nd place team doesn’t help).

Formula One, Melbourne

Thought I’d point out that the 2004 season of Formula One racing kicked off on Saturday in Melbourne, Australia. Thank god I have my TiVo set to autorecord my wishlist of “Formula One” under the “Sports/Auto” category, or else I’d have missed it, since there is practically zero media coverage of Formula One in the U.S.

Which is partially why I’m bothering to write this. I know most of you probably don’t care, but there is also a lack of bloggers (especially American bloggers) writing about Formula One, so I figured I’d help fill the void.

Evil Empire and the Economics of Baseball

Well, the Yankees obtaining Alex Rodriguez has all the fans (especially Red Sox fans) in a snit. It’s refreshing to hear a voice of reason, and I couldn’t say it any better than my favorite sports columnist, Ken Rosenthal, of the Sporting News (the magazine isn’t what it used to be, but Rosenthal still churns out quality content), who says, Ahem! The Yankees are not evil:

Imagine, if MLB had adopted a fairer system that based revenue-sharing contributions on potential and not actual revenue, the Yankees still would pay more because they play in a large market. But they wouldn’t be punished for making extra money. Nor would other high-revenue teams.

“The Yankees generate more revenue than the Mets, but (Mets owner Fred) Wilpon shouldn’t be paying less to the system than Steinbrenner; then you’re penalizing Steinbrenner for being good,” says Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor and author of the book May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy. “You want to reward owners for being good. Otherwise, they have no incentive.”

Emphasis mine. Hey, I’m a Mets fan (well, the Giants are now my team, but I still root for the Mets when they aren’t playing us), and I have to say he makes sense. Look at what happens with the perverse incentives we have now:

Not Renewing Giants Season Tix

Well, I was hoping to write this Friday or Saturday, but I play in a 9 Ball pool league in the APA, specifically the South Bay APA Leagues, and my team made it to the Tri Annual Tournament, which we played all day on Saturday — and won! Not much help from me, since I lost my match, but I at least closed the gap a little at the end, and those points did matter since our team ended up winning that round 51-49.

Also, my copy of iLife ‘04 came in on Friday, and I’ve been playing around with GarageBand. I actually have a bit of a musical background on several instruments, so I’ve been meaning to try my hand at songwriting for some time, but never got around to it. I’m sure I’ll eventually need to upgrade to something like Cubase, but for now I just needed a kick start. I’ll be sure to post some of my stuff here for your amusement.

But the real reason for this post is that individual tickets for the San Francisco Giants’ 2004 season go on sale today at 11 AM PST, which can be purchased from the Giants website here, at Tickets.com outlets, Giants Dugout Stores (except the one at Pac Bell… er… SBC Park), or at today’s KNBR/Giants Winter Fanfest, also at 11 AM at Pier 48 (in San Francisco, of course). I went to it last year, and it was pretty cool, but I think I’ll be too busy playing with GarageBand today. Besides, I already bought my tix for the 2004 season a couple of days ago because I’m an Xtreme Rewards member.

Of course, last year we were season ticket holders (up in View Reserved section 310, row 13 — still a great view, though), but we didn’t renew this year. Oh, I’m still a Giants fan (hey, I’m posting this, aren’t I?), and will still go to about ten games this year, but there were a couple of reasons we decided not to renew. And let me explain why…

An Unforgettable Super Bowl XXXVIII

I think that Super Bowl commercial from H & R Block with the Willie Nelson advice doll was a lot like the Super Bowl itself. It started out boring enough, but had an ending that made it special (if you missed the ad, you can watch it here. You had to have seen last year’s ALCS between the Yankees and Red Sox to get the last reference, but it’s hilarious).

And I have my usual rambling reactions. I’ll try to organize them as best I can…

NFL Conference Championships

Well, I know I didn’t watch any regular season NFL games this year, but here’s my take on the two Conference Championship games anyway. And let me tell you, it’s pretty darn cool to be surfing the web while watching the game on TiVo, so I can look up the stats and rosters.

"The Play" Redux

I haven’t been watching much football this year. Partially because the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants are both out of it. Partially because blogging (both reading and writing) is taking up more of my time. Partially because sports don’t seem to matter as much to me as they used to (boredom has rarely been a problem for me, and lately, watching sports irks me somewhat since I feel I should be doing something more useful with my time).

But mostly because I hate what the salary cap has done to the sport. Classic example of everything that is wrong with Socialism. If you look at the final playoff teams the past few years, they’ve all been crappy teams. Yes, even when my NY Giants made the Superbowl against the Ravens. I’ll still probably watch a few of the playoff games (at least the Superbowl, for the commercials), but I generally find it more enjoyable to (badly) play Madden on the PS2 than to watch two crappy teams make a mockery of the game. Just like last year’s Niners-Giants joke of a first-round playoff matchup that featured a lot of botched defense and ended on a botched field goal and a botched call.

But I kinda wish I’d seen that New Orleans-Jacksonville game this past weekend, if only for nostalgia’s sake. I’m sure most of you’ve already heard all this by now, but just in case you haven’t, let me do a recap.

2003 NL Manager of the Year: McKeon

Well, the 2003 Manager of the Year awards were announced today, and Jack McKeon won in the NL (Tony Pena in the AL). He was followed by Dusty Baker, Bobby Cox, and finally Felipe Alou. I know many Giants fans may feel shocked and/or disappointed by Alou in fourth place. Personally, this was pretty much in line with what I expected, and indeed, I think it's pretty fair.

The difference between Baker and Alou

I wrote this the day after the San Francisco Giants lost to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLDS, and, in case you thought the whole "Alou communication" issue was manufactured by the media, I posted an earlier version of this on the SF Giants forum on October 4th, long before the players like Schmidt, Snow, and Cruz complained to the media about Alou's communication skills. When they did, I considered it confirmation of my theory. Here's my updated version:

The Giants lost a golden chance. But it won't be the last chance they get, especially if they can learn from this. The last thing I want the team to do is to take the wrong lesson and get rid of guys like Nathan and Snow and Cruz. Because what went wrong is a little more complicated than that.

Now, Felipe Alou and Dusty Baker are both very good managers with different strengths and weaknesses. At the risk of oversimplifying, Felipe is better at game-time strategies, and Dusty is better at getting the most out of his players. I don't know of a single manager out there who is as good as Felipe at his strength while also as good as Dusty at his. Maybe Joe Torre, but he's had much better options to work with (and didn't fare so well when he didn't), and doesn't need to do much game-time strategizing in the AL, so that's not a fair comparison. But the difficulty in managing is in making decisions to balance these two things, because sometimes they conflict.