Justice

I've come across Richard Justice a few time at The Sporting News and his columns are usually garbage. This one is particularly awful.

Almost any logical person would conclude that baseball decided it wanted nothing more to do with Barry Lamar Bonds. Is this the Son of Collusion? Does Bonds have a case?

A Bonds / collusion article. The originality of this concept has almost sent me into a diabetic coma.

If a dozen baseball owners gathered in a room, you could not get them to agree on anything.

Oh so it's an anti-collusion arguement. Pray tell...

these baseball men all agreed that Barry Bonds wasn't for them.

So they did agree even though they can't agree on anything. Starting to lose the plot here a little bit.

Could Bonds have helped them win a championship? Sure he could have. They wouldn't even argue that point.

Something else they agree on?

The Tampa Bay Rays, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, Arizona Diamondbacks and other teams have had a desperate need for offense at various times.

Instead of taking a low-risk chance on the best offensive player of the last 50 years, these teams gave up young talent to get players not nearly as good as Bonds.
Right so there must be collusion. I mean why would all these GM's ignore Bonds otherwise?

No reason was ever given. At least no good reason was given. There was a pattern to the snubs.
Team A would lose an offensive player or have a glaring offensive weakness. Bonds's name would be floated one day, shot down the next.

Making a pretty compelling agruement now.

Why would this be? Is it because Barry Bonds is a jerk? Is it something more than that?

Barry Bonds is a jerk. He jerked 756 Home Runs out of ballparks in his career. He is 3rd all time in career OPS+ behind Ruth and Ted Williams.

Ty Cobb once strangled the wife of black groundsman because he wasn't happy with the state of the field. He also once went into the stands and beat up a diasbled fan who had been heckling him. He continued to play baseball for a long time because he was fucking awesome.

So in summary yes I would say it is something more than being a jerk that is preventing Bonds from playing baseball.

Bud Selig is the best commissioner baseball has ever had. By miles. He's been the key for the game's amazing growth.

In case you weren't familiar with Mr. Justice and his writings let me fill you in. Richard Justice worships the very ground that Bud Selig walks on. If it were up to Richard Justice then Bud Selig would be president of the Universe.

Selig presided over the cancelled World Series of 1994, he reinstated George Steinbrenner after he had paid someone off to get dirt on one of his players to avoid giving $300k to charity, he screwed the Expos out of exsistence and he has rested a large part of the destination of the World Series on an exhibition game. Also he will only allow owners who are his cronies and persists with the ridiculous slotting system for draft picks which has killed the farm systems of small market teams. Oh yes also: STEROIDS

If Selig is the best commisioner then it most certainly isn't by far and is only because of the dross that went before him.

It's hard to believe that Selig would have telephoned teams to urge them not to sign Bonds

Read this as: It's hard for me to believe that the great Bud Selig would have telephoned teams to urge them not to sign Bonds

The reality is likely much more subtle. Teams know how baseball management feels about Bonds and about the steroid era and the desire to get beyond the Mitchell Report.

So maybe all the owners have colluded against Bonds but don't worry Bud it's not your fault (again).
This article is all over the place. No evidence or conclusions, just generalised pointless drivel. Lazy and ill-informed and disappointing.

Piers Morgan is a ...

Link

Football is back:

Sorry, Arsene, but you can't win title with these kids

You may or may not guess my opinion of the author of this article at some point during my analysis of it.

My name is Piers.

Twat

I'm an Arsenal season-ticket holder and I'm officially depressed.

Twat

What the hell is happening to my club?

It is supported by a twating twat for starters.
Also not much is happening as Arsenal are pretty much at the same level they have been for the last 7 or 8 years give or take the odd perfect storm of players coming good together at the right time.

I watched us struggling to beat the staggeringly ordinary FC Twente on Wednesday night and felt so frustrated I nearly switched over to Big Brother. (Only nearly, mind. We'd have to be losing 39-0 for me to do that, and even then I'd need to be manacled to a chair with my eyes stapled to the screen.)

Piers hates Big Brother! He’s one of us! Actually if we give it a few weeks of low web traffic for Morgan’s column don’t be surprised if he completely changes his mind and decides he loves BB after all as long as it keeps him in a job.

But even that performance was preferable to the dismally pedestrian effort against West Bromwich yesterday. I watched it alone in a Paris pub and felt more inspired by the women's Olympic superheavyweight weightlifting competition on another TV (I've always been strangely attracted to girls who can clean and jerk 186 kilos).

Not bad enough though to turn over to Britain’s Got Talent?

Arsene knows,they say, but not this time: Arsenal's lack of signings will condemn us to another potless season It seems almost impossible to believe this is the same Arsenal who went an entire Premiership unbeaten in 2004. I remember that achievement rather well, because it came the day after I was fired as editor of the Mirror.

Why was that again Piers? Publishing lies I believe?

At half-time in that historic game against Leicester, we were losing 1-0, the away fans began serenading us with chants of 'Invincibles - my a***' and my phone pulsated with gleeful texts of the 'When it rains, it pours' variety.

What kind of insufferable twat would you have to be for people to send you those kind of messages at half time… oh.

Three weeks previously, I'd enjoyed an even more unforgettable experience when we won the League at White Hart Lane. Me and my dad were guests of Sir Alan Sugar, who did a runner at the end faster than Wayne Rooney with a Big Mac voucher. By 8pm, the Spurs boardroom was empty, apart from us.

Rooney + Big Mac = comedy gold

Arsenal have won precisely nothing since then. Not even a Carling bloody Cup.

No?

for the first time since Wenger took over, I have absolutely no expectation that we will win anything. We didn't last year, and since then we've lost Alexander Hleb (our best technical player), Mathieu Flamini (who ran our midfield) and Gilberto Silva (who ran it when Flamini wasn't playing).

Nasri has already scored half the amount of goals that Hleb got last year (2). Also didn’t Cesc Fabregas run the midfield last season? Also fucking Gilberto Silva ran the midfield? Ran it where? Into the middle of nowhere?

In their places we've signed Samir Nasri (who's good but will take a season to adapt), Aaron Ramsey (just 16 League matches ever) and some injury-prone bloke from Werder Bremen that nobody's ever heard of. Eduardo and Tomas Rosicky are still crocked, Abou Diaby's out for a month, Cesc Fabregas's hamstring is playing up and Robin van Persie's only ever three games away from doing his leg in again. So our squad's got weaker, while Chelsea, United and Liverpool have got stronger.

Ok Flamini is yet to be replaced but Nasri > Hleb and Ramsey > Gilberto Silva. And the transfer window isn’t shut yet.

And as Jose Mourinho rightly says (not a phrase I ever thought I'd write), we're just too young. The 17-man Invincibles squad had a combined age of 480. The 17 equivalent players in this season's Arsenal squad - excluding Rosicky and Eduardo - have a combined age of just 389.

Yes Champion’s League, UEFA Cup and 2 x Premier League winner Jose Mourinho is pretty much always wrong isn’t he?
The 17 equivalent players excluding these 2 who I’ve randomly decided shouldn’t be included is compelling evidence. The 2004 squad included Keown, Cygan, Lehmann and Ray Parlour. Bar Lehmann all old players who were not that important really.

That's a difference of 91 years. Now, I'm all for a bit of youth, but this is ridiculous. At the risk of sounding Hansen-esque, you can't beat billionairefinanced, money's-no-object clubs with kids, however talented they are. Arsenal will doubtless delight and dazzle again this season, in the scintillating attacking style that Wenger loves so much.

You can’t just say that. Where is your frame of reference to prove that this even matters. Lazy, lazy sweeping generalisation and poor journalism.

Oh, and while you're at it, Arsene, buy Usain Bolt and stick him on the wing. At least, unlike Theo Walcott, he knows where's he going.

Twat.

Peter Gammons on baseball

Read this

Again not a critical post but something which needed to be said:
Peter Gammons wrote a beautiful piece over at espn.com. He is one of the shining examples of the blog as an art form.

I promise to hate more once the Premier League season starts and evryone fawns over Frank Lampard.

A non-critical post

This isn't really in the general spirit of this blog but...

Hat tip to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal for producing the best tennis match of a generation at Wimbledon yesterday. Let's hope for many more meetings between the two.

End of the Motson Era?

So, the time has come at last.


My favourite Motson moments from Euro 2008?

In one of the Holland games we got this classic:

Robben sets up RVP and Motty states 'A goal made in Chelsea and finished by Arsenal'
Arjen Robben of Real Madrid may not agree with that, especially as he has been there for the entirety of the 2007/08 season.

And

'If you're coming in late, let me refresh your memories'
Which is exactly the kind of garbage he talks on a regular basis

Also props to his awful co-commentator Mark Lawrenson for this one in the final:

‘That's a contradiction in terms an angry Lehman’

Well no actually that is the opposite of what it is.
This statement hurt my head so much I was forced to look up tautology via google

Anyway back to Motty:

"I am coming to the end of my career, I know that," said Motson.

Maybe he’s had so much horrible ‘fan’ mail that he has realised his time is up. Didn’t send any of by the way, honest.

Motson will continue to commentate on Match of the Day and Radio 5 Live

I KNEW it was too good to be true. He isn’t going anywhere. What are the odds the BBC still wheel him out for EVERY big game from now until the end of time?

In total, Motson has covered six World Cup finals as well as his 34 FA Cup finals (29 finals and five replays), and more than 200 England matches.

Those years of aural abuse have taken there toll on me. I am now medically almost 90% deaf to all sports commentary.

Still, outbursts like "it's Arsenal 0, Everton 1, and the longer it stays like that, the more you've got to fancy Everton," and "for those of you watching in black and white, Spurs are in the all yellow strip," added to Motson's charm rather than detracted from it.

BBC Sport propaganda departments says: all the utter nonsense he has come out with over the years only makes him more beloved.
I say: good riddance and take your verbal diarrhoea with you.

That was underlined in 2004, when he was named the Royal Television Society's Sports Commentator of the Year, receiving the same honour from Four Four Two in 2005 and from The Variety Club in 2006.

In an unrelated story the 1997 Academy Award for best picture goes to Titanic and not LA Confidential.

"Younger reporters and commentators depend on club websites and the like," he said. "I'm of an older generation. I haven't changed my system since 1971 and I couldn't adjust now - I'm too old.

Didn’t you just know that Motty hated the internet. It ruined his enjoyment of statistics. Now everyone has access to them and he can’t make them up on the spot anymore without being called on it.



Look I don't hate John Motson (though that may be difficult to believe) but his commentary has ruined my enjoyment of BBC football for too long now. I am glad he is taking some sort of semi-retirement so that I can enjoy listening to Jonathan Pearce and the likes from now on.


As a final comment on this let's go back to my previous post where Motson predict Huntelaar for top scorer:
Jan Klaas Huntelaar
Games started in Euro 2008 = 1
Goals scored = 1

Jumped before you're pushed?

Can it be true?

Almost as unthinkable as a big tournament without England is one without John Motson, but the BBC’s voice of football is considering hanging up his sheepskin jacket before the next World Cup finals.

Unthinkable? Un-fucking-thinkable? Un-motherfucking-thinkable?

My god we'd actually be able to watch a BBC game without continually suppressing the urge to throttle someone/anyone.

Proof that Motson can divorce patriotism from pleasure comes in his choice of favourite tournament: Euro 2000

Thank God he can do that, although I have always been more concerned with his inability to string a sentence together, or keep a coherent thought process without wandering off into a statistical cul-de-sac, or his laughing off mic at appalling Lawro 'jokes', or randomly and infuriatingly raising the tone or volume of his voice when saying a players name when nothing is actually happening, or stating the obvious over and over again.

“Klaus-Jan Huntelaar of Holland is my own favourite for the golden boot. He’s scored so many goals in the Dutch league and I think he’s capable of doing it in a tournament.”

Can you say Miroslav Klose?

Huntelaar = good player. His chances of golden boot would be hampered by the fact he didn't start the last 3 qualifiers or the final 2 warm up games for Euro 2008. And now van Persie is fit as well, and they may not even get out of the group phase. Nice call though Motty.


But I digress. We may be about to be relieved of the great burden of listening to Motty every time an interesting game is on the BBC. It's just a shame he won't take Mark Lawrenson with him.

More Lampard Loving

More ridiculous Frank Lampard snobbery here.

What is it about Frank Lampard? How come he is the one who gets booed at England matches when he is no more of an over-paid waste of space than the rest of them?

Well I beg to differ. To start with he wastes much less space due to the fact he can usually be found wandering around the half way line or occassional popping up in and around the area looking for a deflection. And he is more overpaid than most I would think.

Yet here is Jose Mourinho - who describes him as the finest player he has worked with - keen to make Lampard his first Inter Milan signing. So he must have something.

Don't remember Jose ever saying that. If he did then he is wrong if you consider these guys.

Oh yes also Mourinho 'worked with' Ronaldo (the fat one), Rivaldo, Figo and Stoitchkov at Barcelona. For the record they have between them 5 FIFA World Player of the Year awards and 5 Ballon d'Or awards.

Still, Lampard did score 4 against Derby this year didn't he?

But still we continue to mock and sneer. It can't be anything to do with the fact he is the only footballer in the Premiership with a GCSE in Latin, can it?

This I find the most insulting tool of the sportswriter.
They think they are better than us poor poor proles.
They think we are envious of Frank Lampard because he is middle class.

Is it not simple to grasp that non-Chelsea fans only care about what he has done for England recently (ie less than nothing) and don't really care who he is?
Also I quite like the idea that Jim White has researched the GCSE results (or equivalent) of every footballler in the country before coming up with this shit.

Really people ought to re-connect with reality before they go out and write articles like this.