MLB: Screw Dodger Fans, and NL players come to think of it

Riddle me this, Riddler: Why is ALCS game 1, which features two East Coast teams, starting at 8:37 Eastern time, while NLCS game 2, which includes a West Coast team, starting at 4:22? MLB seems to be saying Tough Crap to Dodger faithful who hold regular jobs and won't get to watch Big Blue's game, which should conclude by 4:30 West Coast time.

I'm sure some TV executive made this choice, thinking the Red Sox garner a wider viewing audience, but I doubt that's true in SoCal, the second largest TV market in the country, when the Dodgers are playing.

This bizarre scheduling choice also screams F-YOU to the NL players, who concluded a game at 11 Eastern and now have to play on short rest. The AL players were off last night and could start an early game with no problem.

Shea It Ain't So

Rally Cap made a road trip to scenic Flushing, NY last night to catch the Amazin's and the Cubbies, and more importantly to say goodbye to Shea. A remarkable walk-off ending gave the Mets an improbable come-from-behind win over mostly second-team Cubs. It made for a memorable way to say goodbye to one of the first "modern" multipurpose sports stadiums. It was this writer's first and last visit to Shea and I am so glad I made the effort. Next up are Wrigley and Fenway, but that will have to wait til next season.

The photo is Shea as it looked when it opened in 1964. There's a great history of Shea posted on the Mets web site that I urge you to read. Great stuff for any sports (not just baseball) fan, especially trivia nuts. (1975 - Giants, Jets, Yankees and Mets all share Shea while Yankee Stadium is renovated. It's the only time four pro sports teams have shared one venue in the same season.)

If you want a piece of history you can buy pairs of seats for $869, with all the profits going to charity. The one thing you can't buy is Shea's home plate. That's already accounted for.

Ryan Howard: Not Even a Whiff of MVP

There's been a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks about Ryan Howard as a legit MVP candidate in the NL. It would be much more appropriate to vote him MLK: Most Likely to Strikeout. With six games left he's on a pace to best his own 199 single-season mark (set last year) by 2, breaking the magical 200-K barrier.

While fanning doesn't automatically discount him from MVP contention, look at the full scope of his offensive output compared to his 2006 MVP-winning campaign. At this point he's played 156 games compared to 159 played in the full 2006 season, but the numbers are not even in the same ballpark (pun intended):

AVG: .313 to .247
SLG: .659 to .533
OBP: .425 to .336

Huge dropoffs in each category. Now look at walks: 108 to 79. What happened to those 29 additional walks? That's right. They became wiffs. Ryan had just (just?) 181 strikeouts in 2006 compared to 194 this year - in three fewer games.

So this clearly isn't a hitch in his swing or anything else physical. This is a simple matter of impatience, perhaps born of huge success early on in his career. (I'd like to find some way to blame this on Pat Burrell batting behind Howard, but that's not the case.)

The remarkable thing about Howard's wiffing is the career pace. If he plays out the six remaining games this year and his numbers remain constant, Howard should have 680 K in 553 games between 2005 - 2008. (He only played 19 games in 2004 so we're omitting it.) That works out to be 1.23 K per game.

The all-time MLB leader for strikeouts is Reggie Jackson with 2597 K in 2820 games. That averages out to 0.920 K per game. In fact, only two of the top five players in the category have averages over 1.0 per game (#3 Jim Thome, 1.01 and #5 Jose Canseco, 1.03).

Look at it another way: Jackson averaged one K every 3.798 at bats, while Howard averages one every 2.995 at bat. At his current pace, Howard will eclipse Jackson's mark in 2,111 games, an astonishing 700 games less!

So should Howard be a candidate for MVP? No, but not because of his wiffs. In 1961 Roger Maris won the award with his then-record 61 HRs and the lowest average ever for an MVP, just .269. His OPB was .372. But his numbers are 22 and 36 points higher in each category than Howard's current stats. Oh, and Maris fanned just 67 times.

Three Fingers, a Thumb and a Gesture

The Cubs just recalled catcher Koyie Hill from Triple-A Iowa just a little more than 10 months after Hill chopped off three fingers and the thumb on his right hand with a table saw. The right-handed Hill had all the digits surgically reattached and this year was hitting .275 with 17 home runs and 64 RBI in 113 games for Iowa.

“I had to learn how to give high fives all over again. Everything is different,” Hill told AP writer Rick Gano.

Which got us thinking, if Hill is to regain full form, he may want to seek out new teammate Kerry Wood (above), who's always willing to share a few -- um -- pointers. Should Kerry be busy, here's our list of others who may lend a hand:

Chub Feeney – in a legendary 1988 flip, the San Diego Padres general manager shot the bird at Pad’s faithful on Fan Appreciation Day. The finger got Feeney the thumb.

John Rocker – well, who can count the stadiums this hothead saluted

Billy Martin – the Yankee great may have occasionally flipped the bird in a drunken rage, but we doubt he would have remembered. He surely would remember this: while managing the Tigers in 1972, he was photographed for a Topps baseball card with his left middle finger purposely extended downward.

In other sports, NFL linebacker Bryan Cox (Jets, Dolphins and Bears), drew eight league fines in a six-year period, including one for walking out of the tunnel with both middle fingers pointed skyward.

Also ambidextrous, former Atlanta Falcon Michael Vick flipped the bird to fans at the Georgia Dome. Vick was fined $10,000 ($5,000 for each hand) and the gesture failed to catch on as the Falcons’ version of the Tomahawk Chop.

Allen Iverson didn’t need to practice flipping off a crowd in 2003, he did it plenty. He also took a $10k hit.

Ron Artest, known for “personally interacting” with Detroit fans, has also been fined for saluting fans from afar.

Keyshawn Johnson – see John Rocker.

Colin Montgomerie and Sergio Garcia have both “addressed” PGA fans after addressing the ball during tournament play.

Mike Ditka, as head coach of the Saints and the Bears, repeatedly flipped the bird to fans. In fact, you can buy a framed photo of him, walking off Solider Field in his Bears sweater, offering the single-digit salute.

Finally, in the “They Deserved it Category” -- Wyoming Cowboys football coach Joe Glenn in 2007 flipped off the entire Utah Utes team and coaching staff after the Utes tried an onside kick while ahead by 43 points.

Can't buy me love (or can you?)

Baseball, more than other major pro sports, is filled with whiney ownership complaining about small market revenues and an inability to compete. And yet almost every year one (or more) team(s) blows the market/payroll/revenue theory all to hell either by losing with a big payroll or winning with a small one. (It's one of the reasons that I personally don't think fans should ever finance stadiums with taxes, but that's a whole other blog.)

The Florida Marlins disproved the complaint twice, with World Series wins in 1999 and 2003. The second championship cost the club just $48.75 million. More recently, the Rockies made it to last year's World Series on just $54.4 million.

And, as is the case in so many years, the Yankees this year are one of the teams proving the converse, that payroll doesn't equal championships. The team hasn't won a World Series since its payroll topped $100 million. Does its $209 million payroll for 2008 mean that the club is two times less likely to win it all?

This year the team with the largest payroll increase over last year: Detroit, giving them the league's third highest payroll. Silly Tigers, 64-67 isn't getting it done when it's costing you $137.7 million. Two other teams clearly overpaying for wins – Atlanta and Seattle.

This year's payroll surprise winners are the Tampa Bay Rays ($43.8 million) and the Minnesota Twins ($56.9 million) – although the Twins aren't really much of a surprise because they seem to compete most seasons. They're just 1 game behind – but $62 million ahead of – the White Sox. The Marlins, sporting the league's lowest payroll, are competing in the NL East, yet the team salary is less than half that of the Rays, MLB's second lowest payroll.

Here are the total payroll figures for all 30 MLB teams for 2008 (as reported by USAToday).

Team	Total payroll
New York Yankees	$ 209,081,577
New York Mets	$ 137,793,376
Detroit Tigers	$ 137,685,196
Boston Red Sox	$ 133,390,035
Chicago White Sox	$ 121,189,332
Los Angeles Angels	$ 119,216,333
Los Angeles Dodgers	$ 118,588,536
Chicago Cubs	$ 118,345,833
Seattle Mariners	$ 117,666,482
Atlanta Braves	$ 102,365,683
St. Louis Cardinals	$ 99,624,449
Philadelphia Phillies	$ 98,269,880
Toronto Blue Jays	$ 97,793,900
Houston Astros	$ 88,930,414
Milwaukee Brewers	$ 80,937,499
Cleveland Indians	$ 78,970,066
San Francisco Giants	$ 76,594,500
Cincinnati Reds	$ 74,117,695
San Diego Padres	$ 73,677,616
Colorado Rockies	$ 68,655,500
Texas Rangers	$ 67,712,326
Baltimore Orioles	$ 67,196,246
Arizona Diamondbacks	$ 66,202,712
Kansas City Royals	$ 58,245,500
Minnesota Twins	$ 56,932,766
Washington Nationals	$ 54,961,000
Pittsburgh Pirates	$ 48,689,783
Oakland Athletics	$ 47,967,126
Tampa Bay Rays	$ 43,820,597
Florida Marlins	$ 21,811,500

Spending the night at the park

Rally Cap spent Sunday night at the local ball park -- Citizen's Bank Park in Philadelphia -- watching the Dodgers and Phils go at it. Phillies needed a win to move with 1/2 game of the division leading Mets. At the moment, it's 2-2 in th 11th with Victorino on second and none out.

Tickets to the game came courtesy of a friend of Rally Cap -- MOD. Any time you give RC a free ticket, you're a friend. But MOD and his beautuful bride, are long time friends who came up with a late afternoon offer that could not be refused. So thanks! It's always good to see everyone. The game is a bonus.

Update 12:20 am: Feliz - yeah, who? -- smacks a three run home run to win it in the 11th. Phils win 5-2 and Feliz has 4 RBIs for the night. Go figure!

4h 45m will fall

As was widely reported, MLB and the umpire's union reached an agreement Tuesday that will add video replay to MLB games. Thank goodness, because I wasn't sure that 2h 50m – the average time of a nine-inning game this season according to Elias Sports Bureau – was quite long enough. Yes, despite the much ballyhooed "focus" on game pacing that was talked about endlessly during this year's preseason, games are down a grand total of [drumroll] one minute from last year [rimshot].

OOOoooooOOOOooo, I can't wait for replay in the postseason; a nine-inning game last year averaged 3h 26m. Imagine us East Coasters showing up to our day jobs on the morning after a playoff game now that umpires will have to leave the field to go to the video.

The rub in all this is that video replay, while it does get a certain number of calls corrected, has not been proven to alter the outcome of games, at least based on the NFL model. In fact, just the opposite is true. Even with replay, outcomes continue to effected by officiating at about the same rate as it was before replay because not all plays are reviewable.

Maybe more importantly, adding video review will most assuredly eliminate some manager-umpire "discussions," such as Lou Pinella's dialog with Mark Wegner (above). This, many times, is the only highlight from MLB games. (The always make it onto SportsCenter, don't they?)

Play the game and let the game be played. You do it right and the umps won't matter at all.

BTW, 4h 45m? That's the longest 9-inning regular season game on record, Aug. 18, 2006. The Yankees beat the Red Sox, 14-11.

Why Wear a Rally Cap?

Because in sports, hope springs eternal.

Because sport gives every person, regardless of shape, size, income or actual hand-eye coordination, proof positive that they could have hit that cutter, scored from the 1, or drained that three.

Sport confirms upon every fan the firm knowledge that, despite a complete lack of experience, insight, planning or preparation, they could have drafted better, called the right pass play, pulled the goalie at the right time, or chosen a pinch hitter that would actually hit.

Most importantly, the Rally Cap empowers every fan with the right to ridicule rival teams and players, regardless of game results, current standings, or droughts between championships.

So go ahead, flip your cap inside out, turn it around, and tell that guy he's a bum.