It’s a working Father’s Day for me this year, so I am passing along this Father’s Day post from a couple of years ago on a very special father. Here’s hoping that all fathers out there in the blogosphere have a joyous and fulfilling Father’s Day.
My sense is that former U.S. Open champ and NBC golf color commentator Johnny Miller is not going to be joining B.J. Lisko of the Salem News for cocktails any time soon after this broadside prompted by a U.S. Open press conference earlier this week:
The kingpin jackass of all golf media had his own press conference. Yes, Johnny Miller himself took the stage and squawked and squawked and squawked. Miller is perhaps the most pompous, self-righteous, arrogant man to ever have played the game. And to top it off, aside from the miracle tournament he had at Oakmont Country Club back in 1973, his golfing career certainly didnít amount to anything epic. So now what does Johnny do? He squawks. Just like the rest of them. Only Johnny is on NBC Sports so we get the distinct pleasure of listening to him on an almost weekly basis.
Well, according to Johnny not only did he ìusher in Tiger and Phil,î but he also played ìtee to green, under pressure, the best round of golf heís ever seen.î
ìIím not trying to pat myself on the back,î he said. Yes, Johnny. Thatís exactly what youíre doing. And it didnít stop.
For over a half hour he yammered on about how great he was and how great and difficult the course that he won on was. ìThis is the finest golf course in the world,î he said.
Then Johnny went on to say that ìwhen you make a championship ridiculous, you can get ridiculous winners. You can get winners that will never win again, just happened to have a hot week putting or a good bounce here and there. We are trying to identify the A-plus player, not the only guy to survive that can hardly make a cut on the Tour.î
Okay then Johnny, I thought to myself. If weíre trying to find the ìA-plus player,î then why is every professional predicting perhaps the most ridiculous scores in the history of a major championship? Why did Tiger Woods say the funest hole on the course is ìthe 19th?î
So I asked him, ìIf Oakmont is as ridiculous as all the players are saying it is, and itís setting up like the winner is going to be a lot more lucky than good, does that change your opinion of the course?î
Well, this of course threw Johnny for a loop as he backtracked into saying how great the USGA was and that the USGA wouldnít let a tournament get so out of hand. Well, they already have. Numerous times. Some players wonít even try to qualify for the U.S. Open, and if they already did, wonít play in it. Why is that? Because the best ball striker, the best player on the course, likely doesnít win these tournaments. Good shots are not rewarded, and the scores go so high it becomes miserable for those in attendance. Iím not saying the U.S. Open shouldnít be hard. It should. But walking around the course, my feet completely obscured by the rough just off the fairway, running my hand over undulating fairways cut as low as the greens on most public courses, this thing is going to be ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the questions the press will be asking all weekend. But no where near as ridiculous as Johnny Millerís fantastic insight on what every player needs to do, even though he canít do it himself.
One of my sons and I had a good laugh together watching this David Letterman interview of Robin Williams from a couple of years ago, so I am passing it along for you to enjoy at your leisure. Who other than Williams could, in the course of a 15-minute interview, generate laughs on subjects as diverse as the U.S. legal system, jury duty, golf announcers, linguistics, family therapy, acting with his daughter, welding, baseball, Barry Bonds, and Christopher Reeve? The first excerpt of the interview is below and the three other excerpts from the interview are after the hyperlinked break below:
Mark Steyn — who has done a wonderful job blogging the Conrad Black trial — reports that the case will go to the jury next week after the defense rested this week with Black electing not to testify.
The Black’s defense team strategy in holding Black off the witness stand is risky. As Martha Stewart and Jamie Olis learned the hard way, jurors in white collar criminal cases expect to hear the defendants explain why the government’s charges are not true. When the jurors do not hear from the defendant, no jury instruction will ever remove the seeds of doubt from the jurors’ minds that the defendant is trying to hide something. Granted, as Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay experienced, testifying in one’s own defense certainly does not assure a successful defense. Likewise, the courtroom dynamics of each trial are different, so those in play in the Black trial courtroom may favor Black staying off the stand. But as the late Edward Bennett Williams used to advise his white collar criminal clients, “If you elect not to testify, then you better bring your toothbrush with you to the courthouse.” Inasmuch as the government’s case in the Black trial appears to be extraordinarily weak, here’s hoping that the Black defense team’s decision to keep Black off the stand does not come back to haunt them.
Following on earlier posts here and here on how the U.S. anti-obesity industry often misrepresents the nature and extent of the health problems related to widespread obesity in American society, Laura Vanderkam reviews NY Times nutrition columnist Gina Kolata’s new book, Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss–and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007) in which Kolata challenges the conventional wisdom that an obese person’s capacity to lose weight and maintain that reduced weight is merely a question of an individual’s willpower.
Despite Kolata’s book and a growing body of research that questions the anti-obesity crusade, investing in anti-obesity appears to be a potentially lucrative investment opportunity. A case in point is this Merrill Lynch research report on how best to invest in “the emerging obesity epidemic.” Table 5 presents “stocks that represent the ML Obesity Theme” which, by the way, includes Whole Foods and Wild Oats Markets.
“The developed world is getting older and fatter,” writes ML analyst Jose Rasco. “People are increasingly eating more proteins and processed foods, leading more sedentary lives and gaining weight.” Inasmuch as ML projects that the number of obese people worldwide will increase to 700 million in 2015 from 400 million in 2005, there’s money to be made in those companies that are fighting obesity or, as ML might say, “why not monetize a trend of more fat people?”
Earlier posts here, here and here addressed NBC’s To Catch a Predator series in which a television crew cooperates with police and a vigilante justice group to create child predator crimes. Then, the television crew follows the police as they apprehend the suspects, which NBC then broadcasts for all to see in a sort of modern witch hunt. On Tuesday night, a local Dallas news program aired the report below about how the show operates, including the tragic case of Louis Conradt, Jr. It does not paint a pretty picture:
The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s dubious regulation of intercollegiate athletics has been a frequent topic on this blog, but I must admit that this absurd example of overwrought regulatory control from last weekend’s NCAA Super-Regional baseball series surprised even me:
Everybody can watch a game on TV and put their musings online. But don’t try blogging from a press box at an NCAA championship.
After the NCAA tossed Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett for doing just that at an NCAA baseball tournament game Sunday ó actually revoking his media credential during a Louisville-Oklahoma State super regional game ó it said Monday that it was just protecting its rights.
Like rights to live game radio or TV coverage, suggests NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson, live coverage online is a longstanding “protected right” that is bought and sold. Blogging reporters can report about things such as game “atmosphere,” he says in an e-mail, but “any reference to game action” could cost them their credentials.
Christianson says those online “rights” were packaged into media deals with CBS and ESPN ó which aired the game. Monday, ESPN spokesman Dave Nagle said “our rights are the live TV rights. We didn’t ask them (to take the reporter’s credential.) And they didn’t ask us.”
A similar incident occurred at the Rice-Texas A&M Super-Regional in Houston.
Howard Wasserman analyzes the speech restriction issues, while Rich Karcher reviews it from an intellectual property standpoint. And the NY Times is reporting today that the Courier-Journal is weighing whether to mount a legal challenge to the NCAA’s action on First Amendment grounds.
What on earth are these NCAA-types thinking?
By the way, not everyone is pleased with the way in which Rice won the Houston Super-Regional.
Following up on a post on this blog from a couple of weeks ago, the WSJ’s ($) Paul Davies and David Reilly report on how the shadow of former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis is hovering over the pending criminal proceedings against 16 former KPMG LLP executives in New York. Larry Ribstein and Peter Lattman comment on the issues confronting the former executives in attempting to obtain a fair trial after the prosecution browbeat KPMG to stop paying for their defense.
As I’ve noted before, we are still too close in time to the barbaric treatment of Olis to be able to comprehend the full implications of that case. How many innocent business executives pled guilty to crimes that they did not commit out of fear of an Olis-like sentence? I suspect more than a few.
In driving back to the office today, I was listening to Charlie Pallilo — who, like me, analyzes baseball using mostly objective criteria — and reminded me of a point that I meant to make in my most recent periodic review of the Stros season — that is, subjective perceptions about baseball are usually quite inaccurate (a point noted in this post from the midway point of the 2006 season).
A case in point this season is Stros LF Carlos Lee. The consensus among most of the media that covers the Stros is that Lee is having a great season and that 1B Lance Berkman is having a lousy season. Well, that latter part of that statement is certainly correct — Berkman, by his lofty standards (career 357 RCAA/.414 OBA/.556 SLG/.971 OPS), is having a bad season (2007 stats: 4 RCAA/.383/.381/.765).
However, the reality is that Lee has not been any more productive than Berkman. Going into last night’s game with the A’s, Lee has generated exactly the same number of runs as Berkman (i.e., 4) over what an average National League hitter would have created for the Stros using the same number of outs as Lee has used. Lee’s key stat line (4/.340/.496/.836) is a bit better than Berkman’s this season, but not all that great by league leader standards. Moreover, Lee’s high number of RBI’s (52) is largely the result of where he hits in the order, not any great hitting performance. Lee’s hitting is largely undermined by the fact that he leads the league in grounding into double plays (14) and his low walk rate (18, compared with Berkman’s 46).
As noted earlier here, Lee’s career numbers (82/.344/515/.859) are nowhere near as good as Berkman’s and really not all that much better than 3B Morgan Ensberg, who is mostly riding the bench these days. Even Luke Scott, who has a 3 RCAA for the season, is about as productive as Lee, while Mark Loretta — who most folks believe has been much more productive than Scott this seaon — has actually been slightly less productive (2 RCAA) than Scott. Meanwhile, Biggio — who has been one of the least productive hitters in the National League from June 12, 2006 through June 12, 2007 (-31 RCAA!) continues to leadoff regularly.
The point of all this is that baseball is not rocket science, but many folks still make it more complicated than it is. Over a long season, a club’s best hitters based on career performance are generally going to produce the most runs for the team. The Stros need to play Berkman, Lee, Ensberg, Scott, and Hunter Pence regularly, fill in the other spots with the most productive players available and and then let the chips fall where they may. It’s highly improbable that the Stros will score more runs taking any other approach.