Author Archives: Ted Berg

Understanding Kobayashi’s arrest

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It’s about 100 degrees outside and hotter in my home office — the AC doesn’t quite make it in here. I’ve got a day off from work, so in lieu of any worthwhile or well thought-out posts, please accept this series of links about Japanese competitive-eating champion Takeru Kobayashi.

First, on the nature of his dispute with Major League Eating. Turns out Kobayashi didn’t want to sign a contract that prevented him from eating competitions in Japan or in endorsements in the U.S.

That’s cool, and makes a lot of sense. I figured he was holding out for more money, which would be ridiculous since he already gets all those free hot dogs. But dude’s got to make a living, and he’s an entertainer and all.

Second, on his special “extraordinary ability” visa. The Japanese Kobayashi applied for and received a special U.S. visa given to only those with extraordinary ability evidenced by “sustained national or international acclaim.” The Major League Eating people had previously sponsored his visas, allowing the organization to keep him under its greasy thumb.

Next, a recap of yesterday’s event, which Joey Chestnut won with a disappointing total of 54 hot dogs. Chestnut admitted he would have eaten more with better competition, but there is no better competition. Without Kobayashi pushing him, Chestnut can just breeze to victory.

Then, of course, Kobayashi’s arrival and arrest, on video:

And finally, just for kicks, an article I wrote recapping 2008’s version of the event, which I really liked at the time but think seems a little ridiculous now, but which says everything I think I ever want to say about competitive eating.

Wing theory

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I don’t know what’s up with all the non-Taco Bell-related food posts lately, but the lengthy and active discussion about Buffalo wings in the comments section the other day and an email exchange with commenter Josh got me thinking.

For the purpose of this conversation, put aside the delicious-sounding non-Buffalo style wings that Catsmeat mentioned in that thread. I have no doubt that the Green Monster wings are amazing, but they’re not Buffalo wings. I trust there are no arguments about that. This post is about classic Buffalo wings.

What are the best Buffalo wings you’ve ever had?

Can you name a place that consistently serves Buffalo wings better than every other place does? I bet you can’t. There are a lot of places that serve awesome wings, no doubt, but few that serve wings above and beyond the high standard we (justifiably) set for Buffalo wings.

Buffalo-wing sauce should be made from a combination of Frank’s Red Hot sauce and butter. Some people claim it should include celery salt and/or lemon pepper, but in any case, there’s so little variation in the recipe that there is a ceiling on how good Buffalo wings can be.

Once you go far beyond those limited components, they won’t taste like Buffalo wings anymore. We expect them to taste a certain way, and when they do, they’re awesome. But you can’t have more Buffaloy Buffalo wings or anything like that. It’s two ingredients. Just don’t mess ’em up.

Plenty of places do, of course. You can likely name a restaurant or bar that serves bad or sub-par wings. Wings can be stale, too spicy, inadequately sauced or made with sauce from the wrong ingredients. That’s bad.

But as long as a place is using Frank’s and butter, the awesomeness of the wing comes down to a number of fickle variables — the quality and freshness of the chicken, who’s preparing the wings, and how long it has been since they’ve been prepared.

So my theory — and I haven’t thoroughly worked it out yet — says that there is no one place that serves the best Buffalo wings in the world. There are many places that, at any given moment, could be serving the best Buffalo wings in the world, but only because those places make wings the right way, a relatively simple procedure.

In the thread, Sherm and others suggested that wings upstate are better than wings in the Metro area. And I don’t doubt that wings upstate tend to be better than wings around these parts.

But I bet that distinction lies solely in the choice of ingredients — upstate wing retailers are more likely to use the correct, original recipe, whereas Metro-area wing purveyors might be more likely to use more cost-efficient hot sauce or try to gild the lily in some stupid, big-city way.

Which is why, as Josh pointed out via email, there really are no destination wings. Sure, you can travel 500 miles to eat good Buffalo wings, and if they’re made correctly they’ll be completely amazing. But that’s just the nature of Buffalo wings. They won’t be appreciably or consistently better than some Buffalo wing you can find closer to your home. You just need to find the place that does it right.

Papelbon fails and we all get tacos

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Huge hat tip to Ted Burke for pointing me to this clip. When the Rockies score seven or more runs, Denver-area Taco Bells sell four tacos for $1 with the purchase of a small drink.

So in this video, Jason Giambi not only wins the game in walk-off fashion for the Rockies, he also defeats the intolerable Jonathan Papelbon and secures discounted tacos for everyone in the Denver area. Straight heroism.

Plus, look at the score box graphic around the 22-second mark. Dancing tacos. That’s awesome.

What’s baseball?

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All the walk-off losses on the road is indicative of an eighth-inning guy. That’s where an eighth-inning guy pitches. It’s basically that simple. If that eighth-inning guy is the guy, he pitches the tie game on the road. At home, the closer pitches the tie game because you get a chance to bat. That’s just the way that works. I mean, that’s baseball.

– Jerry Manuel.

OK. Exhale.

That’s baseball?

The Mets’ absurd and quixotic quest for this elusive “eighth-inning guy” has crippled them all year. It forced Jenrry Mejia into the big leagues before he was ready, Fernando Nieve into an ungodly amount of work, and now Pedro Feliciano and Elmer Dessens into situations they should never face.

That’s not baseball. Not good baseball, at least.

Look: Some teams have an eighth-inning guy. If you have two awesome relievers, great, make one the closer and one the eighth-inning guy. Shorten the games. And yeah, you might be better served using one of them in higher-leverage spots in the sixth or seventh when the starter tires and there are men on base, but whatever. The eighth inning and ninth inning of close games are pretty big spots. By all means, use your two best relievers there.

But if you don’t have some distinct second-best reliever, or hell, even a second decidedly good reliever, holy crap, don’t force it. There’s no need at all to anoint someone “eighth-inning guy” if he’s not cut out for it.

Pedro Feliciano is a valuable bullpen arm who can pitch nearly every day and retire tough lefties with unbelievable reliability. I am a fan of Pedro Feliciano. He is very good at his job.

But he is not capable of reliably getting right-handers out, nor has he ever been. He should absolutely not be facing right-handed hitters with the game on the line.

And look, before you ask: I’m not even certain what I would’ve done there. Presumably Bobby Parnell was unavailable after pitching in three of the last four games, clearly next in line for the Nieve treatment. And Jerry’s not getting much help from the front-office, with his team already man-down and carrying three catchers and a crappy bullpen.

But if K-Rod needs work badly enough to come in with the Mets down one run in the eighth inning Tuesday, why is he not allowed to pitch with a tie game on the line on Thursday? Hell, he was warming up. Is it — heaven forbid! — that a save situation might arise without K-Rod available to nail it down? Because, you know, managing to a pointless stat, that’s baseball.

Also a big part of baseball: Throwing your entire bullpen under the bus when you’ve mismanaged it all season. The Mets aren’t suffering walk-off losses on the road because they need an eighth-inning guy, they’re suffering walk-off losses on the road because they think they need an eighth-inning guy.

Sagiv at Fire Jerry Manuel covered last night’s game with his unique brand of vitriol. Check it out (language furiously unsafe for work).

Something about a Ruben that’s not a sandwich

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Tejada had a 10-game hitting streak, but his biggest contribution was on the defensive end. The folks at Baseball Info Solutions tell us Tejada had 19 balls hit to him in double play situations at second base this month.

He turned 12 of them into twin killings, a conversion rate of 63 percent. That’s a significant improvement over Castillo’s 47 percent conversion rate (the major league average for a second baseman is 52 percent).

– Mark Simon, ESPN.com.

Simon uses one stat to quantify something that’s pretty clear to every metric and eyeball in the world: Ruben Tejada is a better defender than Luis Castillo. Castillo’s certainly got experience on the 20-year-old, but Tejada appears able to mitigate his lack of familiarity with the position with his impressive range and excellent instincts.

Thus far, Tejada has not embarrassed himself with the bat, either — no small feat for a player his age in the Major Leagues. It’s still a tiny sample, but Tejada’s .269/.329/.328 line is not terribly far off the league-average .264/.333/.386 mark.

Whether Tejada can keep that up remains to be seen, though it’s not as if his Major League offensive performance is a massive improvement over his respectable Minor League history. But he appears to rely on slapping the ball to the opposite field, so it’ll be interesting to see if the league adjusts to him with a little more exposure.

If he can maintain this performance, though, he should remain starting at second base even if and when Castillo returns. Though Castillo is likely to improve upon his meager offensive line this season and be a better hitter than the rookie, Tejada’s defense makes up for the difference in production.

Castillo has not yet started a rehab assignment and is apparently recovering slowly — in that he can ever truly “recover” — from his injury, so this could be immaterial.

But if it does happen — assuming Jose Reyes’ injury is as minor as the Mets are making it out to be — how will the team handle it if Castillo returns and Tejada is still playing this well? It sets up a fascinating test for a front-office on a recent run of reasonable decision-making. Castillo will have less than $9 million owed to him over the remainder of his contract. Is that little enough for the Mets to stomach cutting him free, eating the sunk cost?

But wait! Castillo is a switch-hitter and a better offensive player and baserunner than Alex Cora. Cora is on the team because he can back up Jose Reyes at shortstop, but Tejada could just as easily slide over when Reyes needs a rest and fill that position more aptly than Cora, with Castillo replacing Tejada at second.

So if Castillo returns and Tejada still appears a better bet to be playing second base everyday, Cora should be the odd man out. But can the Mets cut Mr. Vesting Option himself, the catalyst of all clubhouse chemistry?

I’m guessing no. But they’ve been surprising me since the day Mike Jacobs got cut.

Sandwich named for LeBron James probably not even good

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One of the ways you know you’ve really “made it” in life is when you have a sandwich named after you. There’s the Stephen Strasburger, the Scott Baio and all the wonderful celebrity-themed encased meats available at Hot Doug’s, just to name a few. There is truly no greater honor than having your own sandwich, and that is something we should all be so lucky to experience.

So, it should come as no surprise that LeBron James(notes) has a sandwich named after him. He’s hugely famous, he’s marketable and the world could always use another delicious sandwich. Well, the Carnegie Deli — one of New York’s legendary sandwich shops — made the “LeBron MVP,” a five pound hunk of turkey, pastrami, corned beef, brisket, cheese, lettuce and tomato on rye that goes for $19.95.

– Trey Kirby, Ball Don’t Lie.

Don’t insult me, Carnegie Deli. Here on SandwichQuarters.net we know better than to be impressed by sandwiches notable only for their ridiculous size. And this is pretty ridiculous:

Look: I get the appeal of the famous old-timey New York deli. I’ve been to Carnegie and Katz’s and they made for enjoyable outings. But they’re selling the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone needs to come clean: the sandwiches aren’t that good.

I hate to admit that there’s such a thing as “too much meat,” but in some contexts, it happens. Just piling tons and tons of meat on a sandwich does not make it a good one. Remember what I said yesterday? It’s about proportions. Does anyone want just a mouthful of undressed, uncheesed, unbreaded sliced corned beef?

Well, yes, but it’s not as good as the perfect bite of some combination of meats, cheeses, vegetables, dressings and bread that make for a truly great sandwich. If LeBron James is a man of distinguishing sandwich taste, that monstrosity will do nothing to woo him.

Shame on us?

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The Knicks, who just threw away two whole seasons in an effort to sign LeBron James and still don’t know if they can, should be ashamed of themselves. The NBA, which has engineered a free-agency system that allows and often encourages teams to do otherwise unconscionable things like tank entire seasons, should be ashamed of itself. The players, who have all been groomed to believe these max contracts are their birthright, should be ashamed of themselves, but that’s clearly not about to happen.

But we, the sporting public, should be the most ashamed. Because what we have allowed this league and these players to do to us is thoroughly shameful….

These players wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire. You’re the fool and they’re all playing you for it. Can you imagine if you found out the CEOs of three different high-profile banks got together in secret  with a mortgage calculator to discuss which one of them was going to buy your mortgage loan? Or if the presidents of three different Ivy League colleges got together to decide which of them was going to accept your application and which one was going to accept your neighbor’s?

Well, you’d think it was an outrage. The people who hold all the power hanging out together, lighting up cigars and laughing about how great it was all going to turn out for all of them no matter what happens, no matter whose feelings get crushed in the process.

– Dan Graziano, SNY.tv.

Graz’s scathing teardown of the NBA free agency system is definitely worth a read.  I don’t know that I’m as worked up as he is over the current nonsense since, to me, the fault lies wholly on the league for creating this situation. The players and teams are doing their best to take advantage of it, as they should be expected to. But it’s a stupid system regardless, one that appears in need of an overhaul. I’m not saying I know how to fix it, but I’m certain it’s broke.