I did an interview with Matt Himelfarb at Mets Today earlier this week. He asked me about my job, how I got it, and a lot about writing in general. Check it out.
I very much enjoyed doing the interview, but it felt a little strange to talk about my own writing and I struggled (perhaps in vain) to avoid sounding pretentious.
Anyway, a brief rant on the topic of writing — and not in response to anything specific. Just in general:
It bothers me that so many people seem to dedicate their time to exposing bad writing on the Internet. I hate that.
First off, though I recognize the importance of — and do my best to employ — decent grammar and compelling structure, I don’t see the point in getting all broken up if someone manages to get a message across without following some preconceived formula for “good writing.” Language is a fluid thing anyway.
Second, who the hell do you think you are? If you’re so certain you know what constitutes good writing, go produce some. Otherwise, read what you like and avoid what you don’t, just like everyone else does.
UPDATE: To clarify, I have no beef with exposing and arguing against illogical or silly points made by other writers. I do way too much of that to complain about it. What bothers me is people getting all high-and-mighty about the craft itself.
OK, looks like this deal is done, and also spun and analyzed in every which way. But for posterity, here’s some more:
The Phillies get Roy Oswalt and $11 million toward his salary. The Astros get J.A. (sometimes Jay) Happ and prospects Anthony Gose and Jonathan Villar. I’ll ignore for now that the Astros turned around and dealt Gose to the Blue Jays. I’m not really concerned with the Astros’ haul so much as with how the deal benefits the Phillies, since that more directly affects the Mets.
Oswalt is a better pitcher than Happ and so the Phillies are undoubtedly upgraded in the short term. And Oswalt will still be good next year. Though he has shown some signs of age, he has been among the better or best pitchers in the National League since he debuted in 2001 and has remained mostly healthy. He is a safe bet to be a productive member of a now extremely strong Phillies rotation in 2011.
Happ appears to have been a bit lucky to have so much success at the Major League level, but I think he’s gotten a bit of a rough shake from some analysts. Yes, he has far outperformed his FIP, tERA and xFIP in the bigs. But he did strike out more than a batter an inning (albeit while perpetually old for his level) in the Minors. If I had to guess, I’d assume his peripherals improve a bit with more experience, mitigating to some extent his regression. That’s if he can stay healthy, which is no sure thing.
All I know about the prospects is that both are very far off from the bigs and neither has done much so far in the Minors. Keith Law ranked Gose the Phillies’ fourth-best prospect before the season.
Everyone keeps calling the deal a massive win for the Phillies and it’s hard to argue that. But the bright side I’ll point out is this one: Though the Phillies will wind up paying below market value for Oswalt next season, they’re now on the hook for $143.728 million in 2011, according to Cots MLB Contracts.
I have no idea what the Phillies’ phinances are like, but that’s more than they’ve ever spent in a season before. They’re not set lose a whole lot of contributors — Jayson Werth is the only impending free agent that stands out — but they’ll have to fill out their roster somehow. And as Twitterer Chris Guzy points out, they’ve been trading a lot of prospects lately.
Maybe I’m desperate to find the bright side in this deal for Mets fans, but that money thing — I think that’s important. I write about sustainability for the Mets all the time, and unless the Phillies secretly have unlimited funds, the principles should be no different in the City of Brotherly Intentional Vomiting. They’ve got a whole lot of money committed to players on the long side of 30 and they’ve been very liberal about parting with prospects. They’ll likely still be good next year, but it’s not really a recipe for longterm success.
During last Sunday’s game in Los Angeles, minutes after R.A. Dickey howled at Jerry Manuel about the decision to remove him because of an upper leg injury, the pitcher and manager happened to see one another in the men’s room of the visitors’ clubhouse at Dodger Stadium…
They emerged from that conversation with enhanced trust and mutual respect.
I really shouldn’t alienate users of the SNY.tv blog network, but click over to ZagsBlog to read one of the most obscene overblowings of all time. I’m sorry, sir: Did you just compare Leprechauns to AIDS?
Apropos of nothing other than the discussion of fast-food burgers in the comments section of the last post:
On Grand Ave. in Baldwin, not far from where I grew up, there are a McDonald’s and Burger King about a half mile from each other.
A few years back, my buddy Mike and a couple of his friends had a clever idea.
They went to Burger King and bought a Whopper. One of them stuffed the Whopper in his jacket pocket and they went to McDonald’s and ordered, among other things, a Big Mac.
They sat down in the dining area with their food, then Mike returned to the counter with his Big Mac box and asked to see the manager.
“Ahh, yeah… I ordered a Big Mac, but I got a Whopper,” he said, opening the box to reveal the Whopper he had stuffed inside, complete with — naturally — various ingredients that do not match those served at McDonald’s.
Here’s where it gets awesome:
The manager didn’t doubt him in the slightest. He just picked up the box, walked back into the kitchen, and without any irony shouted, “Who’s makin’ Whoppers back here?”
Cerrone posted a link to my bit about dangling Perpetual Pedro from yesterday, and it seems like some of his commenters misunderstood the point I was trying to make there. So I want to revisit that in case I didn’t make it clear enough.
Here’s what commenter SwannaintSeaver wrote:
Thanks Ted, you’ve confirmed the point that anyone with web development savvy and an opinion can publish a Blog that will be find its way into the mass media. Write off the season, huh? I guess you’re another person who is in love with a “home grown infield”, and thinks that Cliff Lee is coming to Flushing.
I am glad to not be around when you wake up from your pipe dreams. I am a Mets fan since I was six years old (1969), and I have seen your kind. You will try to find positives in anything (like Lenny Randle playing second base, Donn Hahn playing center field, or even John Pacella as a starting pitcher). Sure, let’s dump all of our productive pieces while we are at it, we are a “small market team” after all.
Congratulations, you are batting 1.000 in my book. I don’t agree with you on anything.
Here’s my response:
I’m pretty sure you’re misreading or misunderstanding the post. I never said the Mets should write off the season. I’m saying that fans, analysts, and sometimes teams themselves tend to take the mentality of “buyer or seller” as though it’s some sort of black-and-white thing. It’s not.
I’m saying that if you can get a disproportionate return on a largely replaceable commodity, you should take it regardless of where you are in the standings. That’s very different from writing off the season.
Does that make sense at all? I tried to hammer out a solid food metaphor with TedQuarters resident maverick economist and former roommate Ted Burke, but we just wound up talking about ice cream and trying to pigeonhole this situation into convoluted scenarios about running ice-cream shops in heat waves.
The point is, Pedro Feliciano will not make or break the Mets’ season. He’s a good lefty specialist and, in fact, one of my favorite Mets. He’s also a free agent after the season. And the Mets have two other lefty pitchers already in their bullpen and one in Triple-A who appears adequate. The Mets have a large supply of something that is reportedly in great demand.
If Scott Downs’ trade value is even in the same stratosphere as the Blue Jays’ supposed asking price, some team is going to pay way too much for Scott Downs. The Mets should get in on that action. Not because they are sellers, because they are a baseball team, and one in a particularly good position to shoulder the short-term hit. If they can spin a third of a season of Feliciano into a cost-controlled future contributor, it’s a no-brainer.
Something about the Mets’ neat 4-0 victory this afternoon and the Fort Knox Five’s Insight got me thinking about at-bat music again.
It’s a topic I’ve touched on many times before and one I’ve been meaning to explore at greater lengths for a while.
I spoke to the guys who run the Citi Field p.a. a while back for the Baseball Show. They told me that their only qualification is that the section of the song be PG. Players can choose any section of a song — not just the intro, as I assumed earlier. Generally the player gets 10-15 seconds.
But what makes for good at-bat music? Well, a couple of things:
– Distinctive: This is most important, I think. A player’s at-bat music should be something that becomes inextricably linked with the player, and so it helps for the snippet to be memorable. When you hear that one specific horn riff from the David y Abraham song, you know that means Carlos Beltran’s coming up.
Generally, I think it’s best to choose a song people aren’t overwhelmingly familiar with. The backstory to Ike Davis’ choice of “Start Me Up” is a decent one and I don’t begrudge him the choice, but that’s such typical stadium fare that it’s almost hard to figure if Davis is coming up or if they’re just pumping Jock Jams for the hell of it.
There are exceptions, of course. The opening riff to Voodoo Chile worked great for Mike Piazza, and Rod Barajas’ use of Low Rider and California Love remains the most valuable thing about the Mets’ injured catcher. But none of those songs is standard for sports venues, so they can all be tied to the player by the fan.
In other words, familiarity isn’t necessarily advantageous. Distinctiveness is.
– Straightforward: As a relief pitcher, I would definitely, definitely pick something offbeat to get into my opponents’ heads. As a hitter, though, you don’t have that type of time. Ten seconds of some weird tune might raise a pitcher’s eyebrow, but it’s hardly going to get into his head. Just go for something good to get the fans into it. This is not the time for mindgames.
– Instrumental: Some guys go with songs with words, and for some guys that works. Wouldn’t be my choice. Then people get caught up in trying to figure out what you’re saying with the lyrics you’ve chosen. Make a statement with the music.
Incidentally, Mike Jacobs was using Eminem’s “We Made You” this season, and the first thing you heard whenever Jacobs walked to the plate was, “Jessica Simpson — sing the chorus!” That’s pitiful. You, Major League baseball player, want the first thing anyone to associate you with to be Jessica Simpson, and not because you’re dating her? I know Jessica Simpson didn’t even actually sing the chorus on that song, but that’s immaterial. Another wild swing-and-miss by Jacobs.
– With horns: Again, more of a personal thing. But horn sections make most things more awesome, and they provide a particular variety of fanfare for at-bat music. Trumpet your plate appearance with trumpet. And trombones and saxophones, too.
– With vibraslap: Thaat one’s almost certainly just me. The vibraslap is the percussion instrument that goes, “byoyoyoyoyoing!” or something like that. It’s a hilarious noise and one I’ve always thought should get more airtime blasting through the PA systems of 50,000-seat stadiums. You may recognize the vibraslap from Nuthin’ But a G Thang or any number of songs by the band CAKE.
Anyway, I’m pretty certain my at-bat music starts at the 1:27 mark in this Ozomatli song:
I guess one thing that’s important to note is that in my at-bat music fantasy I’m an amazing hitter. So, you know, late in some game — one the manager mercifully gave me off because I’ve been carrying the team for so long — they call on me to pinch hit and then “bum bum chickachicka bum bum chickachicka…”
The Phillies get Roy Oswalt and $11 million toward his salary. The Astros get J.A. (sometimes Jay) Happ and prospects Anthony Gose and Jonathan Villar. I’ll ignore for now that the Astros turned around and dealt Gose to the Blue Jays. I’m not really concerned with the Astros’ haul so much as with how the deal benefits the Phillies, since that more directly affects the Mets.
Here’s what commenter SwannaintSeaver wrote:
Tedquarters 