Just Do It

The Sound of Fenway
(to the tune of ‘My Favorite Things’)

We give no trade clauses with free agent signing,
The World Series trophy is ours no more whining,
Bullpen with Foulke, no fear of late innings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

On base percentage to fill Bill James’ doodles,
we won’t have our hitters with bats like wet noodles
Four pitches per at bat no more first pitch swings
These are a few of my favorite things.

Damon with power and stolen base dashes,
Manny and Ortiz with their homerun smashes,
No more ‘1918’ heard in Florida springs,
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the Sox lose, when the scribe stings,
when I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
and then I don't feel so bad.

Pitchers with cornrows and batters with whiskers,
Fenway Park ushers who now have to frisk us,
Admission price has become cheap for kings,
these are a few of my favorite things.

Even more seating and luxury boxes,
Signage and scoreboards and aisles filled with hawkers.
Cold beer and hot dogs with buffalo wings,
these are a few of my favorite things.

Schilling addresses and Francona pep talks,
Lineups with power but also that take walks,
Hot stove league winters that melt into springs,
these are a few of my favorite things.

When the Yanks win, when Roseanne sings,
when I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember 2004,
and then I don't feel so bad.

- Ron Sen, Boston Dirt Dogs

Quote Machine

Professional athletes tend to be long on clichés and short on candor. So, in the Christmas spirit, and with the Red Sox free agents rich, departed, or both, inspired by ‘Liar, Liar’ I’ll offer up some quotes as Christmas gifts. As they say, ‘there is nothing cheaper than free advice.”

For Pedro Martinez: “I’m a legend and my career is extended in the NL. I wasn’t going to settle for a dime less than I could get. I’m happy that I took the money. People take the job that offers the most money every day. Be happy for me.”

For Derek Lowe (see Pedro Martinez): “Hey, I won three big ones in the post-season. I’m going to take the most money, whoever offers it. Pay ‘The Man.”

For Curt Schilling: “I’m friggin’ Diogenes with the lamp. I guess I won’t be hearing any of that 1-B stuff anymore, right?”

For Keith Foulke: “When are the Bruins going to start playing again?”

For Bronson Arroyo: “So I had a bad hair year. I hope it’s not ‘hair today, gone tomorrow.”

For Tim Wakefield (smiling): “I knew that if we won the series they’d name a town after me.”

For John Halama: “It’s going to be great to be going back to Tropicana Park as the opposition for a change.”

For Free Agent Signee (fill in the blank here): “Not only am I excited to play in America’s Most Beloved Ballpark, I am very excited about the generosity of the team in paying me a king’s ransom.”

For Jason Varitek (after being named Captain): “Scott, that wasn’t in the contract!”

For Doug Mirabelli: “You mean there’s a chance that Wakefield won’t be pitching every fifth day? Yippee!”

For David Ortiz: “Do I take steroids? Look at this body.”

For Doug Mientkiewiecz: “If they trade Millar, I’ll change my name legally to ‘Minky’, honest.”

For Mark Bellhorn: “I keep telling Theo that I’ve got the highest Win Shares to salary ratio on the planet, except for maybe Rich Harden. Paging Bill James.”

For Edgar Renteria: “What a country!”

For Bill Mueller: “Are you kidding me? They better trade Kevin or we’re over the two Miller limit.”

For Kevin Youkilis: “I don’t feel like a Greek God.”

For Manny Ramirez: “Compared to Mike Greenwell, I look like Paul Blair in the outfield. Ask Miguel Cairo if he’s finished the home run trot, yet?”

For Johnny Damon: “Cutoff man? What cutoff man? No cutoff, man.”

For Jay Payton: “It figures they get me after they get rid of my buddy, Nomar.”

For Trot Nixon: “Do I like to hit lefthanders? I just sent Javier Vazquez a Christmas present for keeping RJ in the National League.”

For Scott Boras (laughing hysterically): “Who’s the fairest of them all? Oh you are indeed, Scott. Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching!”

For Tito Francona: “Any chance for a renegotiation, Theo?”

For Bill James: “You can’t tell everything about the player by his numbers, for example, his eye color.”

For Larry Lucchino: “George Steinbrenner can kiss my…”

For Theo Epstein: “About that left nut thing…”

For gazillionaire John Henry: “I hope this is the beginning of a trend.”

…and to all a good night…Happy Holidays! -- Ron Sen, Boston Dirt Dogs

Power Play?

The departure of Pedro Martinez has empowered the common man. Teachers, nurses, engineers, dockworkers, chefs, and sports journalists understand they deserve the love and the respect of their employers. I work in a hospital. Today, a nurse, I’ll call him ‘Mark Tinnes’ listed the demands that he will present to his boss, the hospital CEO, on Monday. I encouraged him to go for it.

Mark explained that his ability is State of the Art. He is simply the best. Recently he won the Hospital Employee of the Month. Proof enough. Accordingly, he expects the highest compensation of any nurse in the hospital. To Mark, pay for performance is not discretionary, it shows the hospital respects and values him as a person not just an employee. Mark gets hungry like everyone else. He needs meal money, at least $76.50 a day to get decent food around here. Mark also needs transportation to the hospital. He’s willing to accept a car allowance and gasoline money. Paragon of virtue aptly describes him.

Working conditions must improve. As the consummate professional, Mark expressed a willingness to work every fourth day. He knows that some practitioners of the craft only have to work every fifth, but he’s always about effort. He’s willing to show up every day during the flu season. Sure, often he’s only at his best through the sixth or seventh hour of work, but he says that’s better than most of his peers.

He can’t accept ‘floating’ to other units in the hospital. Were he to accept this, he requires a suite where he could be comfortable. He won’t work ‘off’ shifts either. That would compromise his performance. In fact, the concept of shifts is an anathema. No one can expect a professional to come at a certain time and stay until a certain time. If you want excellence, understand it comes at a price.

Nursing places a lot of demands on an individual. You can’t expect Mark to work every other weekend and every other holiday. He also expects a four-month off-season to help him recover from the grind of medicine. If he needs a vacation, he may need an extra day at the beginning and the end. His commute is pretty long.

Mark won’t be precepting any junior employees, either. They have to learn it the hard way just like he did.

Mark enjoys excellent health. He absolutely refuses to consent to any employment physicals, drug testing, or especially an MRI. He won’t be poked and prodded like a piece of meat. Of course, he understands that he’ll be receiving constant performance evaluation from his supervisors and patients. But he also knows that his union assures guaranteed pay, regardless of whether his performance declines or if he becomes sick or injured.

Mark knows that ownership, especially the CEO, care deeply about him. He has no problem with them. He has concerns, however, that middle management, like his nursing supervisor, are solely puppets of the organization. They have an agenda to bring key players like Mark down. Mark won’t have any part of that interference with his professionalism.

Mark’s business is with the patients and the doctors. He can’t be talking with the patients’ families or friends either. That’s understood in the new contract terms.

I thanked Mark for his insight into the problems he faces daily. He told me he felt pretty confident that with the nursing shortage that the CEO would be receptive. After all it’s about life and death.

What’s the phone number for the AMA office anyway?

-- Ron Sen, Boston Dirt Dogs

Why?

In a moment the ashes are made, but the forest is a long time growing
-Seneca

Steven Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, tells us ‘the hardest thing to do in life is to understand how someone else thinks.” While we reflect on the barbs of rejection tossed our way by Pedro Martinez, maybe we can learn something from the experience.

Studies pioneered by Kahnemann and Tversky examined how people make decisions concerning risk and loss. They showed that people focus on anchors (a dependence on current conditions) and loss aversion (avoiding the pain of loss). We know the power of herd behavior and know the importance of conditioning (learned experience on behavior). Be patient, this is the foundation.

I recall an interview with the late Sonny Bono (the singer, not the U2 guy) who had an oversized refrigerator stuffed with food at all times. He remembered his childhood poverty and how often he was hungry, and needed the security of his refrigerator. Although a beautiful country with friendly people, the Dominican Republic has widespread poverty. A bus tour reveals neighborhoods with tiny homes of corrugated tin with holes cut out for windows and doors. Iron bars on windows and doors protect many properties with valuables. The security industry has a prominent face on the island. I don’t suggest that the Dominicans aren’t honest, rather that the temptations of poverty and the need to survive are great for their poorest citizens.

We focus on our anchors, the Red Sox, World Series Champions, and frown at the loss of a high-maintenance but extremely talented pitcher, Pedro. Professional baseball owners and general managers exhibit herd behavior, overpaying for past performance, to secure players’ future performance. This often results in ‘the winner’s curse’ also known as buyers’ remorse.

What does Pedro Martinez focus on? I can only speculate that growing up with very little, overcoming an astronomically high pyramid to achieve professional baseball success, and performing at a high level for years created a man of immense pride and extreme ego. This allows him to demand and receive special treatment, vacations and perks not available to his teammates. Curt Schilling mentioned the pressures of providing for an extended family. Although Pedro probably feels powerful and entitled to every last dollar, simultaneously he walks in the dark shadows of insecurity concerning fragile health and performance. “I just tip my hat and call the Yankees, my daddy.”

Moving to New York potentially accomplishes a lot for Pedro. First, he gets the maximum guaranteed money, security beyond our wildest dreams. People in many professions make that choice every day. Second, he returns to the National League, absent the DH and generally accepted as offensively inferior to the AL. Third, he escapes the frequent confrontation with his master, the Yankees.

What does he lose by going to New York? Realistically, although he will have pressure to perform for the dollars, Pedro isn’t likely to single-handedly turn around the mediocrity there. He will certainly generate some additional interest (fannies in the seats) and the Mets can probably space out his starts to capitalize on that and get him the extra rest that improves his performance. He may not win as often as he did in Boston, but he has not only the statistics, the Cy Young Awards, and the championship ring to validate his greatness.

Can we really get inside another man’s head? Maybe not. Pedro’s needs belong to Pedro. “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.”

We’re from Mi$$ouri

12.14.04: Sports fans love to play the games on paper. Because ‘hope springs eternal’ simulation games like Strat-o-matic, Diamond Mind, and APBA give fans a way to play the game during the off-season, too.

Baseball’s Hot Stove League is entirely different than any other sport, because even casual fans believe we have the insight and experience to identify winners from losers. Who can compare the special teams of Kansas City and the Rams or wants to talk about Len Dawson versus Roman Gabriel? We sit around and debate the value of D-Lowe and Matt Clement although very few of us have any rational basis to compare them or what they can do for the Sox.

As the Winter Meetings (does it feel like winter in Anaheim?) are winding down, it looks as though the Mets showed Pedro the money, Randy may be headed to the Yankees, and the Red Sox account is flush thanks to the savings. Visions of sugarplums dance in Scott Boras’ head.

During the past season, after acquiring front and back end pitching, Sox GM Theo Epstein identified a ‘fatal flaw’ in his construction of the team, mediocre defense. He corrected it through the acquisition of Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewiecz (I before E, times number three) along with Dave (the Stolen Base) Roberts. The rest is history.

An unchallenged adage in sports and games is the importance of ‘strength up the middle’. Whether it’s football, basketball, checkers, chess, or baseball strong positions emanate from the center. Not coincidentally, Red Sox nation figuratively sits on tenterhooks (anybody seen a tenterhook?) wondering how the Sox intend to secure the catching, shortstop, and the rotation.

It appears that the Red Sox have determined the best way to remain competitive is by trying to keep an element of fiscal discipline (no snickering please) by seeking pitchers likely to average over one win share per million dollars spent over the length of the contract.

Win Shares is the title of one of Bill James’ books analyzing player performance. They are easily calculated by anyone with an IQ over 180 or a mainframe computer. For simplicity sake, we can think of All-Star performance at about 20 and 30 or above is terrific. In the ‘steroid aided’ category, Gary Sheffield led the AL in 2004 with 31 and Barry Bonds led the NL with an astronomical 53. In the ‘not currently known to be steroid aided’ A-Rod, Matsui, and Tejada all had 30 and Albert Pujols had 40 followed by Scott Rolen with 38. The results can be found here.

Last year David Wells had 10 Win Shares for the Padres and John Halama had 6 for Tampa Bay. Pedro Martinez was second among Sox hurlers (17) after Schilling’s 22, Keith Foulke had 15, Bronson Arroyo had 11, Tim Wakefield had 8, and Derek Lowe had 6. A few other pitchers with 6 included Kyle Lohse, Jamie Moyer, and Ryan Franklin. One would presume that Borassian pleas for ten million dollars annually for any of these gentlemen would raise suspicion of one’s sanity.

GMs play the game on paper, too. We can be sure that the Red Sox have some method to quantify the ‘contribution margin’ of their prospective free agents, not only in absolute numbers, but also in trends, and in dollar figures. An owner who became wealthy analyzing trends and is among the 400 richest people on the planet can’t afford to be too sentimental. Matt Clement had 11 win shares, compared with D-Lowe’s 6, but D-Lowe gets a ring, for coming through when it counted. Many of us are counting on Theo Epstein to do the right thing.  -- Ron Sen, Boston Dirt Dogs

Cheating: Our National Pastime

12.04.04: I had some nicks and some aches. I used the clear and the cream. The only problem was that bacitracin and generic Ben-Gay didn’t make me bigger, stronger, faster, or younger.

Sports fans express outrage that sports celebrities (let’s omit the heroes for now) use performance-enhancing drugs to set records. Sure the commercial reminds us that ‘chicks dig the long ball’, but in an era of sport salaries that Middle Eastern princes only dream about, can we be shocked let alone surprised?

At least for today, we are sanctimonious about revelations that home run king Barry Bonds ‘juiced’ or that ‘hated’ Yankees Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi had corked forearms. The Yankees talk about voiding Giambi’s contract, but never complained while the ‘BALCO Bomber’ launched two dingers in ALCS Game 7 to bring them to the 2003 World Series. Would Giants fans pack SBC Park absent Bonds’ booming bat and pursuit of Aaron’s record?

Cheating has become not only the national but the international pastime. Voter fraud was legendary in Chicago. Have we forgotten our two most recent presidential elections, stained by efforts to suppress voting or vote counting by supporters of both candidates? Has the Ukranian election debacle gone unnoticed? With the resurrection of stock prices, the Enrons, Worldcoms, Adelphias and so many more are just memories? Bringing Down the House chronicled the successful efforts of the MIT blackback team to exploit inefficiencies in Vegas gambling, ripping off millions from the casinos. The Eternal Dig, formerly known as the Big Dig, may ultimately become the Damp Dig, thanks to contracting corner cutting.

Everyone knows you need an attorney to protect you from other attorneys. A lawyer told me his prominent adversary would do anything to win, suggesting to his clients to report facts that didn’t exist to support his cases. The Candy Mossler trial of 1964 was to the sixties what the Simpson trial was to the nineties.

Sports cheating didn’t suddenly appear on the scene. The Chicago ‘Black Sox’ scandal of 1919 involved a World Series fix. Everybody knows about ‘sports mechanics’, those guys who fix boxing matches and basketball games. We still recall the Boston College point shaving scandal. Should we omit Albert Belle’s corked bat, and be amused at Gaylord Perry loading up the baseball. My college coach in the seventies taught first basemen to interfere subtly with runners rounding first base. Many people feel the Cleveland Indians used cameras illegally to try to steal pitches.

Can we reminisce about Olympic judges collaborating to deliver skating titles to their favorites? Before Tanya Harding was a video star and professional boxer, she solicited the ‘hit’ on Nancy Kerrigan. Golfers are rumored to use drugs, beta-blockers, to suppress the yips while reducing hand tremor.

What about the agents, professional negotiators and attorneys? How many ‘bluff’, fabricating terms of contract length and dollars in order to get general managers to ‘show me the money?’ When does negotiation become lying, cheating, or fraud?

Politicians write the book on cheating. The slogan for the governorship of Maryland, the state that brought us Marvin Mandel and Spiro Agnew was ‘forty thousand dollars and all you could steal.’ Meanwhile on Capitol Hill our legislators craft changes rules to allow leadership to remain in place even if they are indicted. Senator John McCain threatens to impose legislation forcing drug testing on Major League Baseball. The Senator, admittedly an American icon and hero, was a wild man in his Naval Academy youth, and classmate Admiral John Poindexter was convicted of five felony charges only to have them overturned based on immunity claims.

So far no Red Sox have been implicated in the doping scandal. Will Sox fans be so vindictive if our heroes come under the mass spectrometer? So for all the harrumphs and ‘I told you sos’ going on today, I’ll take a pass and consider it business as usual. Tomorrow will be another day and the cheating will go on.

-- Ron Sen, Boston Dirt Dogs

An Open Letter to Curt Schilling

12.04.04: Curt, I praise your support of and care for Jason. I would be honored to have a friend like you.

However, in my opinion, your statement on steroid testing under whelmed me.

You were quoted on BDD as saying "As a player I will side with the union on any program that supports a more stringent policy, but at the same time is done within the framework of our constitutional rights. I don't want someone knocking on my door Christmas morning asking me to pee in a cup, but I am all for something stricter, something that will assure the players we are all on a level playing field, and the fans that the game they are watching is pure on the field and off."

Well Curt, that just does NOT cut it with me. Fehr and the union have proved incapable of policing their members. Actually, I believe the union appears to be unwilling to police its members. So to say "I will side with the union" infers to me that you will continue to support the inaction of your union on this very important issue. In my view, it is time for strong-willed people with the "integrity" of the game in the balance to stand up and take control of a union that has done everything in its considerable power to avoid this issue.

While you may be totally with in your "rights" to ensure that a strong and fair drug testing program is put in place, However, to say that "within the framework of our constitutional rights" seems more than a little "over the top" to me.

Further to say "I don't want someone knocking on my door Christmas morning asking me to pee in a cup," is not worthy of you under the current circumstances. Does the program with the minor league players demand that?

It is time to stand up, make a difference and make sure that your union SOLVES THIS PROBLEM.

Thank you for hearing me out. My continued prayers are with you for a full and speedy recovery.

Sincerely,
Matt Livingston
Red Sox Nation

Liberating a Nation

10.26.04: (Hello, My husband is a HUGE Sox fan, currently stationed in Central Baghdad, Iraq. So of course the year we're going to win it all, he isn't home to enjoy it. I sat down this morning to email him, to let him know why this was the year the Sox were going to win it all. For real. My letter to him ended up being more a of a summary of the season, a story of 25 men. Now that I have it, I'm not sure what to do with it. Hopefully you'll find the time to read it, and offer any suggestions. Thanks in advance.)