This Ryan Braun story has now officially ticked me off

I like Bonnie Bernstein, and I always have, but seeing her Facebook post about Ryan Braun's appeal made me want to pull my hair out.

After writing that Braun has always been a good player, so unless he was using steroids from the beginning, he hasn't needed to enhance his performance, she added this: 

"I tend to be a big picture person, and while I don't know Braun personally, everyone I've spoken with who knows him or covers him senses he's a high character guy. He's no dummy , either. With the exception of one 'B' in advanced-placement chemistry, he pulled straight A's in high school. Despite being a blue chip baseball prospect, he chose to attend the University of Miami on an academic, not athletic, scholarship."

Not long after that, I turn on MLB Network to hear Bob Costas, the arbiter of all morality in baseball, talk about how he has heard about Braun being an impressive, intelligent guy.

To which I ask:

What in the orange bloody hell does being a nice, smart or otherwise impressive guy have to do with taking steroids? Or do only jerks do it?

Ever since the Braun story first broke, there has been a concerted interest on the part of some people in the media for Braun to be cleared because he's popular. (For the record, I have nothing against Braun, not like I have against David Ortiz, who also tested positive but has gotten away with it because people like him.)

I've already made the Nyjer Morgan reference, since he's a teammate of Braun's who is wildly unpopular, but old Tony Plush may not be big enough potatoes. Since the University of Miami came up, let's talk about a guy who could have gone there, but didn't, but their baseball field is actually named after him.

Yup, that guy. I believe he wrote a nice check to the university, and they named the field after him as thanks.

Take everything Ryan Braun, his lawyer, his PR guy or anyone else attached to him has said, and attach Alex Rodriguez to it.

He'd be laughed at and ridiculed, and you and I both know it.

The greatest event almost no one saw live

I caught this from Richard Deitsch today.

Yo, America, this happened 32 years ago today: http://bit.ly/yk867m #miracleonice

Indeed it did.



I was 7, so I didn't watch the game, and to this day, I don't think I've ever watched the whole game from beginning to end. What I remember is hearing that our hockey team was playing this team from the "Soviet Union" (or it could have been "Russia"), and they were really good so we weren't supposed to beat them. I learned about the result the next morning when I got up to go to school.

(In a similar note from that same year, when someone told me Ted Kennedy had beaten Jimmy Carter, I thought it meant Carter wasn't going to be president anymore. I didn't know anything about primaries ... I was 7!)

But as this Bleacher Report article points out, unless you were actually in the building, you didn't see it when it happened, since the game was on tape delay. (Having grown up a few hours south of Lake Placid, I've been in the building since then, on one of my three trips there, and the town is one of my favorite places.)

I'm just old enough to remember the days when Olympic coverage was a few hours at night, a late-night show and thinking it was awesome that they were on all day on the weekends. Now, of course, between cable (which I grew up without) and the Internet, it's hard to avoid knowing what happened without trying really hard.

And to make all the people happy who have been complaining about tape delays, you'll be able to see everything live this year.

But since I work, I'll still probably wait for the primetime coverage, and if something like this happens, I'll still jump around my living room, even if it has been in the can for hours.

Making the fan experience work for everyone

Because the start of spring training is one of the best times of the year, I'll even watch Red Sox spring training coverage, so I was checking it out on NESN when I saw something so amazing on the crawl, I had to look it up to see if it was true.

So I checked, and it was. The following is from the Red Sox website, promoting its SRO Pax plan.

"SRO Pax are back for the 2012 season. Create your own unique two-game package, including some of the most highly sought after games of the season.
Beyond just the best access to concessions and restrooms, standing room only tickets provide a unique way to experience all that Fenway Park has to offer at an affordable price."

There are two observations I want to make really quickly about this:

1. Yes, SRO still stands for standing-room-only, which means if you buy these tickets, you're going to be on your feet all night.
2. A quick check of the prices showed that the "affordable price" ranges from $20 to $30. My wife and I have seen multiple major league games for that price (although granted, not in Boston or New York) ... and they even let us sit.

But read it again -- "Beyond just the best access to concessions and restrooms..." In other words, the Red Sox are promoting standing-room-only tickets based on the ease of getting food and drink and going to the bathroom! (Actually, they could call it the "Josh Beckett clubhouse plan.")

However, when I was wondering if this was the most awesomely terrible or terribly awesome promotional material I had ever seen, a thought struck me.

Last year, after my wife and I attended Futures at Fenway (which for all my joking about the Red Sox, is a pretty great thing they do and I wish more teams would), I decided I was going to write a book called "Sit The @#%! Down" as a guide to fans who arrive late, leave early and spend the entire time in between getting up to run to the concession stands, the bathroom, the souvenir shop and God knows where else instead of watching the game, meaning they're either standing in front of people or shuffling past them all game long.

So ... how about those fans get the SRO tickets, since getting food and going to the bathroom is more important than the game for them, anyway, and the seats can be saved for people who want to actually use them for watching the game.

Everybody wins!

Two pitchers, two things I wonder

The pitcher: Tim Wakefield
What I wonder: Why aren't there more of him?

We all know the Tim Wakefield story: minor-league first baseman who can't hit, manager suggests he start throwing a knuckleball, it carries him to the majors, great start with Pittsburgh, flames out, hooks on with the Red Sox, becomes a mainstay before retiring earlier this week. (And as I explained to Extra Pine Tar on Twitter, he's a good enough guy that he's the Red Sox player I hated the least ... and that's a compliment.)

I don't understand why more teams don't try to develop knuckleball pitchers. All over the minor leagues, there are pitchers (and position players, like Wakefield was) who aren't going anywhere. They're basically there so the actual prospects have someone to play with. They're either going to quit or be released. Why not take a bunch of them and try to teach them the knuckleball?

Teaching and throwing the knuckleball isn't easy, and for most of them, it probably won't work. But if it works with one guy, maybe the big club gets something out of a guy it was never going to get anything out of, and a player who was destined for the 9-to-5 world gets a shot at the big leagues. And there's no risk involved at all.

The pitcher: A.J. Burnett
What I wonder: Will he ever figure it out?

Barring a failed physical or Bud Selig mucking it up, A.J. Burnett is about to become an ex-Yankee, one of the team's three big free-agent signings of 2009 traded for ... basically to not be on the Yankees anymore.

Great stuff, but wild. It has been the bane of pitchers since there have been pitchers ... especially young pitchers.

But A.J. Burnett is no young pitcher. He's 35 years old, a multimillionaire who's now on his fourth team. And for all that stuff, he's 121-111 with a 4.10 career ERA, because he has always been wild. I'm no expert on pitching mechanics, but it has always seemed to me that there are so many spinning, moving parts in his motion that if any of them are off, he can't find the plate.

What's worse is that he can be utterly dominant for three or four innings, and then it all goes away in a flurry of walks, wild pitches and home runs. There are meltdowns, and then there are A.J. Burnett meltdowns.

Maybe it will all come together in Pittsburgh. Maybe it'll be his reunion with Rod Barajas. Maybe Clint Hurdle's style will work for him. Maybe Ray Searage will pick the lock. Maybe pitching in the National League with less pressure will work out for him.

Maybe, maybe, maybe ... but maybe not.