Morning Link Dump - 03/21/11
Obligatory Sports Babe
This morning we'll go with Kate Upton, who actually has nothing to do with sports, except that she showed up in this year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, and a lot of people, like The Last Angry Fan, noticed she looked like this. So... that's about as sports-related as we need.
Quote of the Day
"It won't be long before we get the first wave of nonsense from stat-crazed dunces claiming there's nothing to be learned from a batting average, won-loss record or RBI total. Listen, just go back to bed, OK? Strip down to those fourth-day undies, head downstairs (to "your mother's basement and your mother's computer," as Chipper Jones so aptly describes it) and churn out some more crap. For more than a century, .220 meant something. So did .278, .301, .350, an 18-4 record, or 118 RBIs. Now it all means nothing because a bunch of nonathletes are trying to reinvent the game?" - Bruce Jenkins of the San Francisco Chronicle, proving that he is, in fact, an idiot.
Advance Stats FTW!
"You're a Chicago Cubs fan. Or a Mariners fan, a Mets fan, a Marlins fan, whatever — you have a favorite baseball team whose fortunes keep you up at night. And that team loses, a lot. But now, sitting next to your team's manager, a scruffy baseball lifer, in the dugout is not just another scruffy baseball lifer, spitting tobacco. Instead, by his side is a guy with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, a beautiful mind who can calculate complex probabilities, in real time, in his head. He can tell you the odds of so-and-so throwing such-and-such a pitch to so-and-so on such-and-such a count," says an article from TIME magazine.
"Sure, he looks funny in a baseball uniform. But have you seen the guts of graying baseball managers and coaches spilling over those needless belts? This stats coach, or whatever you want to call him, is a resource, to be trusted by the manager when he should play the percentages, or ignored if he decides to just go with his (ample) gut.
"If such a stats head were at the service of your manager, wouldn't your team be better off? Could it possibly hurt to try him out?
"On March 4 and 5 in Boston, hundreds of the most gifted minds in sports gathered at the 5th Annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, an event that has grown in such importance that, yes, it's now 'presented by ESPN.' Dubbed 'Dorkapalooza' by ESPN columnist Bill Simmons, the conference is one part wonkfest, in which research papers with titles like 'Optimizing an NBA Team's Approach to Free Agency Using a Multiple-Choice Knapsack Model' are presented, and another part powwow. The geeks who used to work on Wall Street and other quantitative fields have gained enormous clout in the front offices of pro sports teams. And their power will only grow."
Is The Old Firm Good For Scottish Soccer?
"Hampden Park is hailed as the spiritual home of Scottish soccer, the place where some say modern soccer was truly born, the place where legends such as Pele and Diego Maradona admitted to being astonished by the famous “Hampden Roar,” but this historic stadium in Glasgow’s south side could now be just as conclusively defined as a soothing buffer zone in one of sport’s fiercest rivalries," says a report from the New York Times.
"After the fury and indignation of the previous showdowns between the Old Firm rivals Celtic and Rangers, Hampden Park’s calming influence as the site of Sunday’s League Cup final quieted the seething feud which has characterized the rivalry of late. Scotland’s shame of three weeks ago — a bare-knuckle fight of a game that featured 3 red cards, 13 yellows and 34 fan arrests — was replaced by a captivating showpiece fitting for such an occasion. (The strict warnings issued to the players by the police and even the Catholic church probably didn’t hurt either.)
"The Croatian striker Nikica Jelavic scored an extra-time winner to give Rangers a 2-1 victory, and a refreshing abnormality — relative tranquility — was the order of the day. That allowed the quality of the play to take precedence over the off-the-field matters that have threatened to undermine the sport in Scotland.
"Familiarity often breeds apathy, but when it comes to Rangers and Celtic, no such indifference exists. This will be the 26th consecutive season that either Rangers or Celtic will win the league title. Blanket news media coverage and intense scrutiny of their meetings (Sunday’s was their sixth this season) hint at no such waning of interest."
Jon "Bones" Jones, Crimefighter
"Eat your heart out Bob Reilly. Mixed martial arts is a lot more than a money grab viewed by savage fans; it can be a real life saver. Today in the streets of Paterson, N.J., Jon Jones and his trainers applied their gym techniques when they spotted a robber, chased him down and subdued him Saturday afternoon," writes Cagewriter.
"Jones, who is fighting Saturday evening in Newark for the UFC light heavyweight title, was on his way to meditate in front of a waterfall in northern New Jersey. Jones, along with Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, spotted the suspect breaking into a car and stealing some objects. According to the account given to Yahoo!'s Kevin Iole by Jackson, the group shouted at the robber and he took off.
"Jones, Jackson and Winkeljohn pursued him on foot. The robber eventually fell and Jones, the youngest of the group at 23, caught up to the robber and tripped him to the ground again. Jackson said that Jones 'foot swept' the suspect."
Quote of the Day II
"I never stop being amazed by how much people who hate stats because they're flawed' quote so much more obviously flawed stats." - Joe Posnanski, in an article responding to the Bruce Jenkins quote linked earlier.
Quickly
With Leather shows us what a $68,000 foosball table looks like.
Fark notices a Tiger Woods-related Peanuts comic that
Off The Post explains why Mario Balotelli is misunderstood.
Luke O'Brien of Deadspin explains what it's like for a writer to have a PR person pitch him his own story.
I couldn't bear to make this its own post, because I don't doubt some of the people in these clips got pretty fucked up, but here, from Devour, is some footage of crazy old-timey race car crashes.
Pythagoras In Boots
Because I can, here I'm going to post a rather interesting profile of Dutch soccer legend Johan Cryuff by way of Who Ate All The Pies. Click the link for part two.
