Manny Being Manny

Major League Baseball today, suspended it's biggest star to date under it's new drug policy, as Manny Ramirez- possibly the most dangerous right handed hitter in the history of baseball was suspended for 50 games due to testing positive for performance enhancing drugs.
A few interesting points in this matter:

1. Manny allegedly tested positive for a Sexual Enhancing PED, which only goes to grow the 'Manny being Manny" legend. Seriously, if there was a draft to pick one star who would test positive for PED's but it not being steroids but a Super Edition Version of Viagra, wouldn't Manny be the consensus #1 overall pick?(keep in mind, some authorities say the Sexual enhancer actual aids in keeping testosterone at high levels after a steroid cycle. Personally, the Manny being Manny story is much funnier).
2. You think maybe Joe Torre is such a players coach because he turns a blind eye to certain player "activities" and just manages egos? Now, I love Torre as a Manager, but look at his track record. Yes, Giambi, Sheffield, Arod, etc were all users prior to joining the Yanks, but maybe, just maybe Torre looked the other way when the acquisitions were being contemplated?
3. We will now see why Manny is the Most Valuable asset in any lineup. When he left Boston, Big Papi was transformed from the Most Feared left handed hitter in baseball to the hitter Steinbrenner passed on after he left the Twins, and he turned a Dodger lineup that was average at best to the #1 hitting lineup in the NL this year. Say what you want about Manny, but the guy hits like no one else

Tiger Schulmann's Lyman Good wins First Round matchup at Bellator Week 2

Wilson Reis and Lyman Good enter tourneys at Bellator Week 2

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TSMMA, Sensei Lyman Good, won his Bellator debut with a convincing 2nd round submission of Hector Urbina.
With the win, Good now enters the semi finals in the 170 pound welterweight tourney.

Ball Hype's NBA MVP- Bloggers Choice

Ball Hype has recently put together a collaborative piece by some known (and not so known) Bloggers, including The People's Champ. Click here to read the whole article, an interesting read by all accounts.
Here is TPC's part in the article:


MVP is always a subjective award although it shouldn't be. It's about the player who is most valuable to his squad. A team with 31 wins doesn't have an MVP because chances are they would suck almost as much without him. Here is my criteria:
1- He must play for a winning team.
2- He must make his teammates better—that can be by a number of factors, whether he gets them better looks due to his passing, gets them more fast break and transition hoops because of his defense and/or rebounding, or teams need to gear up to stop him that they need to double and triple him which causes more foul trouble, easier looks, etc etc.
3- He can not have a severe deficiency in his game. It's why Dwight Howard and his putrid FT% keeps him off this list.

MVP: Lebron James-Cleveland Cavaliers
The stats tell one story. Leads his team in points, assists, rebounds, blocks and steals. His squad tells an even more telling story. They have the best record in the East and besides Mo Williams who was a nice player in Milwaukee before turning All Star this year with Lebron, the Cavs would be fighting for lottery position without The King.

Runner Up: Dwyane Wade-Miami Heat
Leads the league in scoring. Leads his team in assists and steals. Who does he play with? Jermaine "washed up" O'Neal? Udonis Haslem? Meanwhile Wade has these guys fighting for the 5th position in the East. With Wade missing 31 games last season and injured for muchof the 51 he player, they finished with 16 wins.

Second Runner Up: Chris Paul-New Orleans Hornets
He scores (22+PPG), he leads the league in assists at close to 11 a game and is also the games best defender at the point guard position, averaging almost 3 swipes a game. He shoots over 50% from the field and is leading his team to another 50+ winning season despite his second best player (David West) missing a lot of time due to injury and his Center being non existent this year (Tyson Chandler). CP3 is the man.

*Unsung MVP-Brandon Roy-Portland Trail Blazers
When talking about the best guards in the game, invariably the first names that get brought up are Wade, Paul, Kobe and Nash. Rarely do you hear Roy’s name being brought up with them although you can make a very good case he's right up there with them all. He is the leader of a 44-27 team. He leads them in scoring, assists and steals and is as cool as cat as there is. He shoots 83% from the line and is a great clutch performer. He shoots 90% from the line in clutch situations and turns it over only 2.6 times per 48 clutch minutes (Kobe is at 3.0, LeBron is at 5.1 and Wade is at 4.2). He is the guy you want with the ball in his hands with the game on the line.

Bench Clearing Brawl at HS Hockey Game- TPC Advises on the Issue

MoChassid recently wrote an article on a local High School Semi Final Hockey game between HAFTR and Maagen David, where with 90 seconds left, trailing 2-0, one of the players on Maagen David made an aggressive hit on one of the HAFTR players and a bench clearing brawl, including SOME PARENTS, took place.
Keep in mind, this is a no hitting league and a player that is involved in a fight in any shape or form is automatically suspended for at least the next game.

Here's the problem. The next game in this case is the Championship Game. It is also the last game of many of the players, the High School Seniors. The question is what does the league do and more importantly what do the respective schools do.

In my response to MoC, I wrote:

The problem here is HAFTR was not the instigator, so no matter how wrong it was to retaliate, they are basically being penalized for being the victim of a team taking a cheap shot when the game was decided.
The bigger issue here is the fact that parents were involved. I don't know about the situation, but if your facts are correct, the bigger chinuch issue is what do we do with the parents. It's one thing for kids to get out of control in an emotional, physical game such as hockey (being a former HS player nothing is more important in a kids life than winning that Championship and emotions do take over-rightfully or wrongfully).
What is the parents excuse and what price do they pay? What lessons are they teaching their kids?

There is more to the question and comment.

First off, assuming the league takes a hard line and suspends the players involved and basically giving the Championship to DRS (they won their other Semi Final Game). DRS gets screwed by not being given the chance to win it on the "ice". HAFTR gets screwed because they were just retaliating (albeit wrongfully) to a cheap shot to one of their players (no matter how wrong it is, there is still some good here in the standing up for your teammate). Maagen David gets off scott free because being on the losing end they have no game to be suspended for. This leads to my main point and because I was personally involved in a similar situation 20 somewhat years ago, I know exactly the psyche of Maagen David (no lose situation, frustration, etc). In my opinion, First thinsg first. I would let HAFTR play DRS at full strength. I would then have the school meet out a punishment for each of the players involved. The punishment would coincide with the more important problem here, the parents who actually got involved. We'll get back to the punishment in a minute.

Watching my son and nephew in various Little League and other competitive sporting events, I noticed a major trend that needs to be dealt with in a major way. This is nothing new to most who watch the news, but I can tell you the source. I see parents getting way to involved in the kids events, to the point where parents on opposing squads are viciously arguing with each other (sometimes these guys are good friends, neighbors and sit next to each other in shul on Shabbos). You get a lot of language from the parents that would in no way, shape or form be tolerated from their kids. These parents, most of whom I know from High School and College were generally NOT the guys that were "players" but rather mediocre athletes at best and are now living their "fantasies" through their kids. The guys I competed against (and sometimes still do) generally want their kids to learn the game, play to the best of their abilities and just enjoy the sport. They don't need to have their kids being pressured to win at all costs for them. I see this as a huge problem amongst the kids being put in pressure situations where they might be just 6-8 years old and the main objective is for them to learn a sport and it's virtues rather than complete some dream a father wasn't able to achieve on his own. This usually leads to the kid hating the sport, the father, etc. This also leads to what happened between HAFTR and Maagen David.

The parents involved in this brawl must pay a lot more than the kids, who are basically, as I wrote earlier, acting out on emotion in possibly their last ever High School game in a very emotional and physical game. While I agree it is wrong, it is to an extent understandable. The parents have no excuses.

Back to the punishment. I would suspend the players involved for the first 3 games of next season for HAFTR and 5 for Maagen David for being the instigator.
For the remainder of the school year, ALL the Seniors, their parents and the parents and kids of all the remainder involved (i.e. if a sophomore was involved in the brawl, he and his parents or if some parent was involved and his kid wasn't or wasn't even on the team, he and his kid) would enter into an after school counseling/ learning program twice a week for the remainder of the school year. There would be no excuse of "I have to work and I can't make it" or "I have no one to watch the kids" etc. If this is the case the school would provide the babysitter. The program could start at an hour late enough to give the parents ample time to get home, or even do it on a Sunday night. This way all three will make a major sacrifice and need to be held accountable for their actions.

The Greatest Defensive Players- By Position in Baseball History

TPC is currently competing in Sports2Debate's first ever Blog Madness Tournament, and has been matched up against My Sports Rumors in the opening round of the North Region.

Here is the first question. TPC urges his fans to vote early and often!

-Name your All-Defense Team, using every player in the history of MLB.

-One player at every position listed below.

-Back up your statements with facts. Refute your opponents points.

-C: 1B: 2B: SS: 3B: OF(3): P(3):

The Peoples Champ has been known to be offensive at time (or if I was Canadian Oh-fensive), so we now we go the way of defense, and as TPC will tell you- Defense Wins Championships- and therefore, the Greatest Defensive Team in History will have it's share of rings.

First and foremost, if you want a great defensive team, you need to limit the amount of hard hit balls at you, so on the mound we will have the Greatest Pitcher of the Modern Era- the one with the lowest career WHIP (1.0512), which is Pedro Martinez. When he was in his prime his WHIP was always an unearthly Sub 1.00, which means he doesn't get hit. It's a lot easier to play D when the ball isn't getting hit hard at you. I'm a Yankee fan, and nothing makes me hurt more than putting a Red Sox on this list, but Pedro was the best I ever saw.

In dealing with the rest of the squad, we will take into account a few things:
The players range (as defined by his range versus his peers, gold gloves (although subjective), using The People's Eye- you don't need to have statistical proof that Ozzie Smith was a genius, and general stuff I like to throw in). We also take into account the player must have played 1000 games minimum to define a decent work.

Anyone who has watched baseball knows Keith Hernandez with his two World Series rings and record 12 Gold Glove Awards at 1b is the best player at that position. When you take into account putouts per game (a very telling stat for 1b) Hernandez is one of the tops in the modern era and factoring in range and fielding percentage he has no peers.

At 2b we have Bill Mazeroski and Ryne Sandberg. Statistically, no one else is in the game. Mazeroski had a range factor of 123 to Sandberg's 122. Joe Morgan, Frank White and Roberto Alomar, all of whom are generally considered as some of the best defensive 2b in history have range factor between 105-110. (Range Factor - the number of (Putouts + Assists) per game (or 9 innings played). Sandberg gets the nod because he has the highest fielding percentage in history at the position at .989 (Mazeroski is at .983). He gets to the most balls and he catches the most by percentage? Uh-huh, that's the guy I want. Sandberg also has 9 Gold Gloves to Mazeroski's 8.

At SS I will not insult any one's intelligence with statistical proof that Ozzie Smith is the greatest of all time at his position. Anyone who has ever seen him play knows this 100%. Bill James once told Peter Gammons Ozzie saved his team over 100 runs per season. That's the difference between a 3.50 and a 4.30 ERA for a pitcher. WOW.

I love Greg Nettles. I loved how he single handedly saved the 1978 World Series with his glove. I also loved the way Buddy Bell and Mike Schmidt played the position. All great 3b. However, Brooks Robinson, who not coincidentally has the All time Fielding percentage mark at 3b (.971 compared to Bells .964, Nettles .961 and Schmidt's .965) with good range, great arm, etc etc. Brooks is your man. Brooks also owns 13 Gold Gloves, the most by any 3b.

To round up the infield, our Catcher is the hardest position to "prove" who was the best defensively. Some think it was Pudge- no one threw out runners at a higher clip, some say it was Bench who had good throwing percentages and better passed ball and wild pitch numbers than Pudge, and some say it was a guy like Brad Ausmus, who statistically is as good all around as anyone who ever played the game. However, Catcher is also a position of Generalship (did i just make that word up) and I'll go with Yogi Berra who was one of the all time greats in preventing wild pitches and passed balls, and he also has 14 pennant winning flags to prove it.

In Center Field, as much as I would like to put Joe D or The Mick or even Willie Mays on this list, Richie Ashburn was the statistically best CF'er of them. First off, the most important stat for a CF'er is the range factor, in other words, how many extra balls do they get to than the average guy at that position. Ashburn has the top Range Factor in Major League history of any outfielder at 147. To put that in perspective, Gary Maddox was 2nd on the list at 140 and Mays was at 136, while Ashburn had a better Fielding Percentage than Mays and was even with Maddox at .983. No one else is even in the statistical discussion. Ashburn also had the best "arm" amongst the group throwing out an average of 16% more players than the average OF'er while Mays was at 5%. Kirby Puckett had an astonishing 48% better mark, but he got to 20% less balls with a worse fielding percentage, so he isn't in the discussion.

The corner OF'ers we have to adjust the stats for, being range is important but an arm is more important because of the amount of run prevention a good arm accounts for. It's why I would take Jesse Barfield and Roberto Clemente (moving Robbie over to left) as my two corner Of'ers. First Barfield. He had the best arm in Major League Baseball history, throwing out more than twice the amount of runners than the average ML Of'er (his number is actually 202). He had a good fielding percentage and decent range to boot. Clemente had slightly better range and the second best arm of all time, throwing out 78% more runners than average. To put these numbers in perspective, Bonds, some considered an all time great fielding Left Fielder prior to his "alleged" steroid issue, had slightly better range and Fielding Percentage numbers, but through 2005 (his numbers since have decreased dramatically) he threw out 35% more runners on average. Basically, Barfield and Clemente prevented a ton of singles turning into doubles, guys going first to third or scoring from 2B on a single, and they have done it while playing RF, the most taxing in terms of throwing runners out..

Well, there you have the greatest fielding team in history according to The People's Champ.

(statistics were mostly taken from http://baseball-stats-online.com- a truly great site).