So why was Jason Collins a big deal when Brittney Griner wasn't?

There has already been a lot said and written about the news of Jason Collins' coming out yesterday (I recommend Adrian Wojnarowski's and Jeff Jacobs' pieces), so I'll just say these two things.

1. Bravo.

2. While I couldn't disagree with their views more, I want to know about the Tim Brandos, the Chris Broussards and all the others who hide behind anonymity on message boards and comment threads not just so we know how they think, but also as a reminder that for all the support Collins is receiving, what he did is not easy.

But I actually want to write about something that cropped up as I was reading about Collins, perhaps best-stated by Alysa Auriemma (yes, daughter of Geno, but her stuff is worth a read no matter who her father is).

@allyauriemma On one hand I am so thrilled for Jason Collins. But it makes me look at the dozens of lesbian athletes I know with a heavy heart.

@allyauriemma Because they were there first. And nobody gave a s--t. But not in the 'yay gay is cool!' sort of way. In the 'women don't count' way.

I think there are a couple reasons for this, why Jason Collins is on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week and Brittney Griner made news, but not nearly as much, in the almost off-hand way she recently came out as a lesbian.

First, there are all the qualifiers in describing what Collins did, that he is the first active male athlete in a major U.S. professional team sport to come out as gay. In other words, he's "the first athlete with teammates to worry about who's supposed to be tough in a sport that American fans really care about and wants to keep playing it" to come out.

There's no sport in America, men's or women's, that approaches Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL in popularity. It's the same reason why Collins is on the SI cover and Robbie Rogers wasn't, even though Rogers is also American.

But I also think a woman athlete coming out isn't as big a deal is because any announcement largely falls on two groups of people, who for vastly different reasons, don't have their views affected.

For one group, it just confirms their biases that all women athletes are gay, anyway, especially the more "masculine" ones (read: muscles, short hair, deep voice or a combination of the three). They're probably not fans, anyway, so what do they care other than a chance to make a couple more jokes? After all, plenty of these people think Griner might be a man.

For the other group, they're fans of women's sports, have already factored in that some of the players they're watching are gay ... and just don't give a damn. Brittney Griner's gay? Whatever. Look at the way she blocks shots and dunks. Megan Rapinoe's gay? Who cares? Did you see that goal on the corner kick against Canada?


So while I understand the people who question why a male athlete coming out is a bigger deal than a female, I'm hoping that someday they're both ho-hum.

Sports on vacation

WELCOME, N.C. -- While Mrs. Last Honest and I were on vacation in the Carolinas last week, I was chatting with the woman behind the desk at the Richard Childress Racing Museum as she was ringing up my purchases, a Dale Earnhardt shirt and two Kevin Harvick die-casts, one of which was autographed, for $20 each ... score!

During our conversation, she mentioned there were people who complained about the $12 admission price.

This isn't the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but it was probably the dumbest thing I heard that day. If you go to the museum, among the things you will see are:

* both of RCR's Daytona 500-winning cars.

* Harvick's car that won in Atlanta three races after Earnhardt died in 2001.

* video of the end of all three of those races, as well as others.

* all of Earnhardt's special paint schemes for the Winston all-star race.

* the car Harvick won his first Busch (now Nationwide) series title with, including the tires he destroyed doing his post-race burnout.

* cars from Childress' racing career.

* other memorabilia from Childress' career.

* a representation of Earnhardt's old shop, which is where the museum is located.

And once you're done with that, you can visit the new shop around the back, where you can watch crew members work on the current cars.

All in all, it's a bargain at twice the price.

What Dale Earnhardt fan wouldn't pay $12 just to see this?

 * * * * *

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Any guess what this is?

Yes, someone use to drive this.

It's the remnants of this, Geoff Bodine's truck crash in 2000, which he somehow survived. 

What's left of Bodine's truck is part of the "WRECKS!" display at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The whole museum provides an impressive history of NASCAR, but the temporary display from some of the sport's most-spectacular crashes, along with a video that plays along with the exhibit, is guaranteed to get your attention. It's a wonder the drivers survived all of them.

If you look carefully, you can see where Mike Harmon was sitting when this happened ...

* * * * *

FORT MILL, S.C. -- Last year, Freddy Garcia was pitching in Yankee Stadium.

Last week, he was pitching in front of a crowd generously listed as 1,377 for the Norfolk Tides against a Charlotte Knights team that not only doesn't play in its home city, until BB&T Ballpark opens next year, doesn't even play in its home state.  

When plans to meet with a college friend of mine fell through, Mrs. Last Honest suggested taking the short trip across the South Carolina border to the game. It was actually a pretty depressing scene, between the tiny crowd and the home team getting blown out. In about the third inning, a bunch of people who I believe had been tailgating came and sat behind us, and while they were pretty obnoxious, they and the guy in our section who randomly yelled "baseball" in a Southern drawl that made it sound like "base-bawl" provided most of the entertainment.

But we got front-row seats behind home plate for $15, and it was neat to see Garcia pitch. At this stage of his career, he pretty much throws slop, and when it's not working, he can get pounded. (I certainly saw enough of that with the Yankees.) But when it does work, he knows what he's doing out there, and can get major league hitters out.

I'm surprised he's not a fifth starter or long reliever for some big league club, and I have a feeling he will be soon.

Don't worry, Freddy. It shouldn't be much longer now.

* * * * *

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Ever since baseball became part of my life, I have always hated rain. 

When I was a kid, rain meant I couldn't play. As an adult, rain means I can't watch. At least when I'm home, if it's raining on the game I want to watch, I can watch another one or something else. But when I'm at the ballpark, all rain does is make me mad.

So after a week of mostly perfect weather, of course it rained the night I wanted to see the Yankees' Class A Charleston RiverDogs take on the West Virginia Power. It started raining when we got the ballpark, and it rained at the 7:05 start time, and it rained, and it rained a little more. And given that the forecast for later in the night called for more rain, I wasn't feeling encouraged.

You never want to see this at the ballpark.

But then it stopped raining. The grounds crew took the tarp off, and they started playing baseball.

And Mrs. Last Honest and I never went to our seats.

During the rain delay, we, like a lot of other fans, hung out upstairs by the picnic tables where it was dry. After the game started, I went to check on our seats, but no amount of paper towels could dry them off, so we stayed where we were. The nice thing about Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park ("The Joe" for short) is that it's small enough so that sitting by the picnic tables isn't too far away.

Not a bad view, and it was dry.

The night didn't start well, but other than Charleston losing, it wound up not being too bad.

Thoughts of Boston ... a week later

There's a woman who works in my office a couple days a week when it's more convenient for her than working in her own office. She has a desk that she uses, and we like having her around.

So it was a little odd when I heard her sounding a bit harried on the phone last Monday, to the point where she seemed pretty upset. At the same time, I happened to be checking out Twitter when I saw the headline ...

... There had been explosions at the Boston Marathon.

* * * * *

Not to get all Kevin Bacon, but as much as the Boston Marathon is obviously both a Boston event (they even hold it as part of a local holiday, Patriots' Day) and now one of the world's major marathons, it's a local event in almost all of the cities and towns in Massachusetts because most everyone is within a few degrees of someone who runs it. The closest I ever came was the year a co-worker of mine ran. It's also the only year I've followed the marathon all that closely, because I wanted to see how she was doing.

There was the woman running to raise money for the local hospital where she had surgery the year before, and the cop who ran in support of a local cancer patient.

And there was my sometime office-mate, whose sister's boyfriend was running.

Those were the people, and their families, and their friends, and their co-workers, who the bombers were after. They weren't just attacking the marathon; they were attacking us.

The explosions not only killed three and injured scores of others (a MIT police officer was also killed in a shootout with the suspects), but they frightened everyone and set off a series of frantic phone calls and text messages all across the state. All the people I've mentioned and their families were OK; obviously, many people were not.

And not only does almost everyone in Massachusetts have some connection to the marathon, lots of people know someone in or near Boston. It would have never occurred to me that anyone would have thought Mrs. Last Honest or I were in danger, since my office is 15 to 20 miles away, and my wife's work, which is near the marathon route, was closed for the holiday. (Side note: I won't be giving her grief about Patriots' Day for a while.)

But when I got home, there were messages on my Facebook page from a couple of my high school friends asking if we were OK, so I not only assured them that we were fine, I posted a general message saying we were fine.

But again, too many people didn't get to say that.

* * * * *

I'm not sure if there are two major American cities (I said major, so sit down Tuscaloosa and Auburn, AL) as defined by a sporting rivalry as much as New York and Boston, especially on the Boston end. Maybe Manchester and Liverpool, Madrid and Barcelona or another soccer rivalry elsewhere in the world can make that claim, but I don't know if it exists here.

So that's why, even though all the expressions of support after the bombing were heartfelt and sincere, I think they meant a bit extra coming from New York, because it was the home of the Yankees reaching out to the home of the Red Sox.

And then the Yankees decided to play "Sweet Caroline." As far as audible tributes from one city to another, one fanbase to another goes, it was hard to top.


As a Yankees fan who lives near Boston, I could hardly have been prouder of my team.

* * * * *

I'm not a big fan of Rene Rancourt, the Boston Bruins' national anthem singer. His enthusiasm and love for what he does is unmatched, but I just don't think he's that good a singer.

However, when I tuned in to the first Bruins game after the bombing, I figured Rancourt would deliver a stemwinder of a national anthem and pump his fist about 16 times, and I'd be OK with that. If ever a situation called for it, it was this one.

What he did though, was so much cooler. And he got how important it was.

* * * * *

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Concord, NC, where my wife and I are on vacation. (In another side note, we were in San Diego when Whitey Bulger was captured and in Asheville, NC, when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested for his alleged role in the marathon bombing. If authorities are looking to make an arrest in the Gardner Museum heist, Mrs. Last Honest and I have a hankering to go to London.)

So I missed David Ortiz's speech at Fenway.

I am not ... let me repeat, AM NOT ... a David Ortiz fan. But his speech? Perfect, f-bomb and all.

* * * * *

I think that people who write and talk about sports tend to give them too much credit. The Saints winning the Super Bowl didn't fix New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Yankees going to the World Series didn't heal all of the pain after 9/11, and the Tigers weren't going to save Detroit during the auto crisis.

And there's no number of "Sweet Caroline" or national anthem singalongs or anything else at a sporting event that will heal the wounded bodies or souls in Boston, although I would love to see some type of event where the runner who didn't get to finish the marathon could cross the finish line.

But do sports help in some way? Maybe because it happened so close to where I live, I've realized more than ever that they can.

Fans get angry ... that's what they do

I'll give Seth Davis this much ... he called it.

"I wonder which call is going to be cited by fans of the losing team as the reason they lost. Whatever it is will be the worst call ever."

That Twitter message came during the middle of last night's Final Four game between Syracuse and Michigan, and sure enough, we Syracuse fans came out of the game howling about the officials, in particular the fourth foul against Michael Carter-Williams with 1:40 left, in which he got pushed to the ground (he fouled out with 1:14 remaining), and the charge against Brandon Triche with 19.5 seconds left (his fifth foul) in which the defender slid under Triche while he was in the air.

Needless to say, Davis crowed after the game ended.

"Told you the losing team's fans would have a call to blame. So much easier than admitting you got outplayed."

Not blaming refs, even as he admits they're terrible, is kind of a thing for Davis. Since there are a couple things he seems not to understand, I, as a service, will enlighten him. (My good friend Cy Nical weighs in with the theory that Davis may not understand because his alma mater, Duke, seems to get all the calls that other teams' fans howl about, but I will not stoop to that level.)

The first is that a team can play badly enough to lose on the merits, and still be screwed by the refs. Had the game turned out the exact same way without the bad calls, Orange fans would have had plenty to be upset about: falling down by double digits and never being able to come all the way back, Carter-Williams' poor game (two points on 1-6 shooting, two assists and five turnovers), James Southerland's five points, including 1-5 from three-point range; Syracuse's 2-3 zone not being as effective against Michigan as it had earlier in the tournament.

But to deny the calls had an impact, especially when Syracuse had to rely on Trevor Cooney to handle the ball on its most-important possession of the year because the starting backcourt was fouled out, is folly. When my new best friend fortyfourist and I tried to make this point to Davis, he didn't have anything to say.

The second thing Davis seems not to understand is that fans are ALWAYS going to scream about bad calls, especially when they have the added advantage of being right.

As stated above, teams that lose, like Syracuse did last night, generally lose for any number of reasons, but officials are always going to take a rap if there are any controversial calls. It has always happened. It will always happen.

* * * * *

So that was how yesterday ended. It started with this delightful bit of nonsense from Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe, bemoaning the fact that Blue Jays fans John Farrell Friday night when the Red Sox played in Toronto for the first time since Farrell left the Jays (with a year left on his contract) to take over the Red Sox.

"Jays fans are mad. They feel betrayed.
When will sports fans understand that people come and people go? People go for the money, for a better situation, for a better life for them and their families.
Farrell simply did what any Canadian or American would do — he sought to improve his life."

Yes, when will sports fans learn, like the ones in Boston who booed Johnny Damon for years because he went to the Yankees, or the ones in Boston who booed Ray Allen when he returned with the Miami Heat this season? Surely Cafardo remembers that, right? Has he ever taken Boston fans to task for that? If he has, I'd love to see it, and I would stand corrected. (I asked him about Damon on Twitter yesterday; like Davis, he didn't respond.)

Cafardo is right when he says people change jobs to improve their lives, and in a perfect world, fans would not be angry if a player leaves because they're seeking better situations for themselves. In a perfect world, it would also be possible to go to an Italian restaurant and have the wait staff keep bringing me plates of spaghetti until I got tired of eating it and never getting fat; that's not going to happen either.

If a player (or manager) leaves, fans are usually going to boo. Red Sox fans booed Damon. Celtics fans booed Allen. Cleveland fans boo LeBron James (and they get to, everyone else needs to shut their pie holes about him going to the Heat). Texas fans booed Josh Hamilton the other day. And fans will never see the hypocrisy of booing someone who leaves (particularly as a free agent, but demanding to be traded also applies), but cheering someone who left his fans to play in their city.

It's not right, but I understand.

But maybe Cafardo doesn't think anyone who goes to Boston should be booed, because it's the center of the sporting universe and all.

Don't just use stats for their own sake

When I was a freshman in college, I had a friend who was on some kind of philosophy kick or something (maybe it was a class she was taking), so she used to walk around and ask in a joking, whiny voice, "What does it meeeeeaaannnn?"

As part of my job involves trying to make things relevant for people, I ask myself and the people who work for me that a lot. In honor of her last name, I call it "Sullivan's Question." In my business, if you can't make something meaningful for people, you're wasting your time.

I got thinking about Sullivan's Question outside of work recently when I came across Jay Jaffe's Sports Illustrated blog about sabermetrics starting to make their way into baseball broadcasts (he likes the idea), which linked to a New York Times article on the same subject.

I will never buy into sabermetrics completely, but I also don't want to be so closed-minded that I can't see where they may have value. I think MLB Network's new show "MLB Now" could be a really good show it it features smart conversation between a true believer in sabermetrics in Brian Kenny and Harold Reynolds, who's more of a skeptic, so I hope it isn't just a forum for them to automatically disagree all the time.

But both the Jaffe post and the Times piece point out what will be the major issue with bringing advanced stats into the booth.

"Now, as the two (Robert Ford and Steve Sparks) settle into the Astros’ broadcast booth, they and their colleagues across the country face a balancing act. How much do listeners want to know about these advanced numbers? How much is informative? And how much would prompt the audience, a group that spans all generations, to tune out?
Listeners and announcers alike say that striking the right balance will be a challenge."

The challenge of that balance is going to be making those statistics meaningful to people, to answer Sullivan's Question, and not just spouting off numbers for the sake of it and hoping people figure it out. (I have a term for that, too, the "Graveyard of Numbers.")

Some are easy. WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) and OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging) are simple addition. I happen to think they can be superfluous in that people can figure out if a pitcher doesn't allow a lot of baserunners, a batter gets on base a lot and/or tends to do a lot of damage without them, but I don't find them offensive and they can perhaps be helpful.

However, those stats are easy for fans to grasp because they're simple math. What about the harder ones? Even though I can't think of them by name off the top of my head, I believe there are several stats intending to strip out luck and ballpark factors and quality of the team someone plays for; can those be implemented in a way that intelligently spells out for fans something they may already know instinctively if the math behind them is complicated?

Or what about something like WAR (Wins Above Replacement), the formula to which I find incomprehensible? In the future, will it be enough to just cite someone's WAR and people understand what that means, or will the math involved be its undoing?

My first instinct was to say no, that Mike Trout's 10 WAR last year, which from what I've read is sensational, could be meaningless to fans because they wouldn't be able to understand where those numbers came from.

But then I thought about it some more, and realized there are numbers in life that are relevant and meaningful to people who aren't familiar with the statistical methods used to acquire them. For example, how many people who don't know the science of television ratings or political polling read the numbers and think "Wow, Show X is really popular" or "Gee, Candidate Y looks like he's going to win"?

So it's possible, over time, for fans to become as comfortable with advanced statistics on the TV or radio as we are with terms like batting average that we've used forever and know what they "mean" (this point provided by Poopsie, my ambassador to analytics, with whom I am chatting on Facebook as I write this), but at least for the time being, it's probably going to take a skilled practitioner to answer Sullivan's Question and give them meaning.

I think we can all agree that John Sterling, quoted in the Times piece as avoiding advanced numbers, is NOT that guy.

I will close with a brilliant example that Poopsie just gave me.

"I would LOVE for a ground ball base hit to roll into left field, and then the announcers be able to call up video of that shortstop giving up ground ball hit after ground ball hit all in that same location.
The announcer could say 'According to data complied by Baseball Info Solutions, this guy only fields 30 percent of grounders hit 7 feet to his left, a league average SS gets them 60 percent of the time.'"

Now that would work.