Bloomberg Launches Baseball Software

What's a logical new venue for Bloomberg LP, and it's massive expertise in manipulating and analyzing financial data? Well, how about baseball? Kinda makes a weird sort of sense, if you think about it.

Couching baseball in the language of Wall Street is an easy leap. [Bloomberg president Daniel] Doctoroff, during an interview in Bloomberg’s Manhattan headquarters last week, said, “If you think of players as securities and teams as portfolios, then our infrastructure for managing information about securities and portfolios could be adapted to sports.”

Full details at the NY Times. This is interesting--is there enough of a market for Bloomberg to make money here? And, dear god, how do I get to play with it?

Ten Years Ago Today

Ten years ago today: Kerry Wood strikes out 20 Houston Astros. A month later, I was interviewing him for SI for Kids.

Baseball Turns Back on Broadcast

Somehow I had missed that the St. Louis Cardinals had left KMOX, where they had been broadcast since the dawn of time. The Wall Street Journal examines the growing trend:

Few stations have ever been more closely identified with a team than KMOX was with the Cardinals. For more than half a century, "the mighty MOX" beamed Cardinal baseball throughout the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Bible Belt, creating deep and long-lasting loyalties. Before the major leagues expanded into Texas, Colorado, Georgia and California, the Cardinals were the "home" team in those states -- and it was KMOX that made them so.

But after losing money on a five-year deal that expired in 2005, KMOX offered a lower guarantee in renewal negotiations. KTRS, seeking to boost ratings in a market dominated by KMOX, wowed the Cardinals by offering the team a 50% ownership stake in the station.

The Journal points out that the rise of satellite radio offering out of market games and the MLB.com packages of radio broadcasts are causing teams to rethink their radio deals. It's logical, of course, but sad.

My grandfather was a Cardinals fan growing up in Ohio, and KMOX was why. Those old clear-channel AM stations carrying ballgames seem to be withering away, although we still have the Giants on KNBR out here in San Francisco.

Are Steroids Still a Problem?

Jeff Pearlman, writing over at Slate, takes sportswriters to task for not asking harder questions of baseball players, especially as it concerns ongoing steroid use:

Is Pujols abusing steroids or human growth hormones? I don't know. But what's alarming in this era of deceit is that nobody seems interested in finding out. A little more than one year removed from congressional hearings that produced the most humiliating images in the game's history, baseball writers have a duty to second-guess everything. Instead, everyone is taking Pujols' test results at face value. Have we forgotten that Barry Bonds has never failed one of Major League Baseball's drug tests?

In Sports Illustrated's baseball preview issue, Tom Verducci, who has done great work exposing the proliferation of steroids in baseball, credulously praised the likes of Pujols and Twins catcher Joe Mauer. Verducci exclaimed that baseball is now "a young man's game, belonging to new stars who, certified by the sport's tougher drug policy, have replaced their juiced-up, broken-down elders who aged so ungracefully. It's baseball as it ought to be. A fresh start." In other words: Masking agents? What masking agents?

I worked with Jeff at Sports Illustrated back in the day, he's a guy who busts his ass for a story. But there's something about the scolding tone of this Slate piece that strikes me as the worst kind of sanctimony, especially given the fact that Jeff failed, just like all our colleagues, to do this tough reporting in the past.

The situation in baseball now as it pertains to steroids has reached the level of the classic "When did you stop beating your wife?" question. Pearlman slams sportswriters for not asking players if they're juicing; I'd prefer that there be some reason to ask the question beyond a general suspicion of all players before you ask it.

I agree with Jeff that over the course of years, sportswriters ignored many, many signs that some of the game's biggest stars were using performance-enhancing drugs. But I don't know that going on a witch hunt now is really the remedy for that shortcoming.

Goodbye Bill King

God, this is a shock. Bill King, the voice of the Oakland A's, has passed away due to complications from hip surgery. King was one of the greats. Few broadcasters can work different sports effectively -- they're just so different to call. But King was not only the A's lead radio announcer for 25 years, he was also the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raiders play by play guy for 20 years each.

There will never, ever, be another one like him. His intellectual reach, and his stunning vocabulary, his distain for fools and love of the games he called made him unique. For anyone who cherishes the art of calling a game, I hope you heard Bill at least once.

UPDATE, 10/19/05: KNBR has a nice tribute package with lots of audio available online.

News From Here and There

Japan's owners aren't happy about the plan to hold the first baseball World Cup in the United States next year. In fact, they don't want MLB in charge of the event at all. There's still been no date announced for a World Cup; things are looking less and less likely.

In other news, there's a great story over at OJR about ESPN.com. It's required reading for anyone interested in the process and business of online sports.

On the Air Tonight

Hey, if you're in the Bay Area, try and check me out on the radio! I'll be on KALW, 91.7 FM, from 7:30-8:30 tonight. I'm on a panel discussing the possible Baseball World Cup, and the internationalization of the game. Try and catch it!

Been a While, but More BALCO

Sorry for the layoff--been cranked at work, and over at all-baseball.com. Come check it out, if you haven't been. Anyway, this story on ESPN is going to rock the baseball world. Seem that the player's union rolled over and gave the Feds the results of all the steroid testing done last year.

If I'm a player, I'm out of my mind over this, even if I'm clean. My freaking union gives the government results of what are supposed to be anonymous tests? Holy crap, that's bad. First of all, why were those results still around, if the tests were to just be for statistics, and secondly, why the hell didn't the union fight it?

Baseball and Union move Closer on World Cup

This in from Tokyo: the player's union's #2 guy, Gene Orza, is talking like the union will be willing to submit to more rigorous drug testing, perhaps paving the way for a Baseball World Cup. It's important to note that submitting to tougher testing in a World Cup wouldn't change baseball's current testing policies and procedures during the regular MLB season.

This Might Be the Most Boring Thing Ever Put Online

Yes, you can watch a fantasy draft, live, on a webcast.

Pete Rose to be Inducted into Hall of Fame

Too bad it's professional wrestling.

Thinner Giambi Denies Steroid Use

Get ready to read a few dozen versions of this story during spring training. Apparently, Jason Giambi looks thinner this year, and that leads, inevitably to questions about steroids.

How to Market Baseball

It's no secret that Major League Baseball has a marketing problem. Last year, a group of reporters was talking to A's manager Ken Macha, who was discussing the exciting games that the A's had been in recently. "What are you doing now, Mach? Marketing the game?" asked one of the writer.

"Somebody has to," I said under my breath, which managed to crack up the assembled scribes, as well as Macha.

Anyway, a good story on ESPN by a marketing executive on how MLB could do a better job selling the sport. I'm on board with everything here, especially the notion that Bud Selig has got to go. He does come across, as the story says, as a "scold," and that's no good for the game's image.

Baseball and BALCO

I'm not sure the point that Murray Chass is making in today's New York Times. In his column, he argues that Major League Baseball and the player's union should fight a federal subpoena issued by the BALCO grand jury that seeks to get the results of baseball's steroid testing last year. He also seems to argue that some players should just come out and admit their steroid use. And, he implies that Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa are on steroids. This issue is one that produces a ton of fuzzy thinking and writing, but I'd like to think the Times and Chass could do better. There's no reason that the MLB testing results shouldn't be fair game for subpoena, except to save baseball from embarrassment. To argue anything else is to apologize for baseball's ongoing drug problem, and I don't think anyone want to be doing that.

Murray Chass on a Baseball World Cup

Over at the New York Times, their longtime national baseball writer Murray Chass weighs in on the possibility of a Baseball World Cup, basically arguing that if Major League Baseball can't reach an agreement with the international federation, they should run a World Cup on their own:

Drug testing, as dictated by the sanctimonious satraps of the sports and drug worlds, is not the ultimate element that rules athletes. Just because it's done for the Olympics doesn't mean it has to be done for everything and everyone else.

As the players union points out, its members have rights, too. If they want to negotiate away their rights, that's their right. They did that to some extent in the 2002 labor negotiations with management.

The self-appointed, self-important observers who have criticized the baseball drug-testing agreement have a right to their opinion, but that's all it is, an opinion. They cannot dictate to baseball or its players the kind of drug testing they should employ.

I'm not sure that I buy Murray's argument here. I'm no fan of the world of international sports federations, with their petty despots ruling from on high. But I do think there's value in integrating MLB into an international framework, and not coming off like the high-handed ruler dictating to peons.

Paul DePodesta on the A's

Oakland assistant GM Paul DePodesta outlines how he thinks, and how he and the A's challenged traditional thinking in baseball, at the Credit Suisse First Boston Thought Leader Forum.

Baseball World Cup and Drug Testing

One of the first posts on this blog was about the rumors of a Baseball World Cup that was being planned for March 2005. Now, that story has collided with another story I've been following here -- the ongoing efforts of the World Anti-Doping Agency to get all Olympic sports onboard with their testing guidelines. Baseball, internationally, has signed on with WADA. But the Major Leagues have their own drug testing policies, which don't sync with WADA's.

Which leads to this: A possible Baseball World Cup could be scuttled if Major League Baseball won't do more stringent drug testing. Specifically, Cuba will not participate in such a tournament without IBAF, the international baseball federation, sanction. Japan has also indicated that it would prefer the tournament to take place under the IBAF, and not MLB.

Of course, MLB could just run a tournament on their own, without teams from Japan or Cuba, but that would be a damn shame. It would also be a shame not to have a Baseball World Cup at all, since such an event would be a huge boost for the game internationally, not to mention a ton of fun to watch.

Given the player's union's stance on drug testing (they don't want it), this could be a hell of a fight.

Pudge is a Tiger Now

You're Ivan Rodriguez, and you've just come off a postseason where is seemed no one could get you out. Everytime your team needed a big hit, you were there to deliver it. You were voted the MVP of the National League Championship Series. What's your reward? You're going to play in Detroit in 2004, for a team that lost 119 games last year. Congrats!

The Tigers are paying $40 million for four years, with some options and buyouts included. The question for me here isn't whether or not that's overpaying, but why Rodriguez would take such a deal in a place like Detroit.

Maybe I'm suffering from a surfeit of idealism, but I would like to think that if I was a professional athlete, I would make choices based on competition and not finance. Sure, Detroit offered him the most money, but at what cost? What's more important: getting your $10 mil a year, or having any shot at winning?

I don't say this to castigate Rodriguez, but just to wonder about the decision process these guys go through.

Thinking about Frank McCourt

With the sale of the Dodgers to Frank McCourt, check out what Jon has to say over at Dodger Thoughts, especially this take on McCourt.

Captain, My Captain

The Texas Rangers have reached out to Alex Rodriguez, after a winter filled with trade talks, and discussion of A-Rod's strained relationship with Texas manager Buck Showalter. In fact, at a press conference yesterday, Showalter named Rodriguez the captain of the Rangers. Having a formal captain of a baseball team isn't something that's ingrained into the sport, like it is in hockey. In the hockey world, wearing a C on your sweater is a hell of an honor, and carries with it some formal responsibilities, such as dealing with officials in games, as well as some informal one. Captains are expected to be team leaders, and deal with on- and off-ice issues, as well as talking with the media as sort of a team spokesman.

In baseball, most teams don't have captains, per se. Every team has a leader, a personality that dominates the clubhouse and gives the team a public face. But to call a player a captain, that's something else. The Yankees have done it for years, only tapping a player they deem worthy. Right now, it's A-Rod's buddy Derek Jeter.

So, what does it mean that Rodriguez is now the captain of the Rangers? Frankly, not much. He was already the key man there, and will be for the duration of his time there. He'll likely be there after Showalter is long gone.

It's a nice honor, and feeds into Rodriguez's sense of history, but in the final analysis, it seems like a move to heal hurt feelings more than anything else.