Moneyball review

This is an "oddball" movie (no pun intended) in that it is based on a true story. However, because Billy Beane has created much of his own legend, it might even be hard to know what is true. It's hard to know how much to commit to when watching it. One of the last scenes in the movie has Beane being offered a ridiculous amount of money from the Boston Red Sox owner John Henry to be the new GM. He turned it down. That much is true. The irony in Boston is that the Kraft family and John Henry's group used this philosophy to build championship teams. The Red Sox later hired Bill James, the father of Sabermetrics, as a consultant and built a championship team.

Yesterday, Bill Belichek and Tom Brady just surpassed Shula and Moreno as the winningest coach-QB combo in history. That's a little of what Moneyball is about. A team has less to do with individual players and coaches as wins. You get wins from runs (or points in football) -- or keeping points from happening.

I know almost nothing about the fine details of football, but I saw in 2001 why the Patriots could beat supposedly better teams on the way to a Superbowl. Montana had Jerry Rice. Manning had Marvin Harrison. Yes, Brady went to the Superbowl throwing most of his passes to Troy Brown. Troy Brown? Bill Belichick was 42-58 as a head coach before Brady. On paper it makes no sense. The reason why they won in 2001/2002 is that they eeked out enough extra points from their special teams to win those games. But "on paper" those are the type of statistics that don't usually show up. A lot has to do with the combination of statistics with certain players on the field (and coaches) rather than individual statistics. Most of the time, the best coach is simply the guy who sticks to the winning formula long enough.

What Billy Beane did with baseball was to ignore all the usual statistics. He popularized the idea of OPS (the first time I saw that I said, What the heck is that?) -- on base plus slugging percentage. He realized that in a 162 game season, it matters more how a whole team plays rather than three or four superstars. He would substitute the average OPS of three players over a whole season to replace the OPS of one superstar. He would trade players who were popular with the fans who had high numbers in every category, but who did not walk a lot. He taught that outs were bad, steals were bad, sacrifices of any type (because they resulted in outs) were bad. He cut across the grain of a century of conventional wisdom. He took a bottom tier team to the post season and broke a record with 20 consecutive wins in 2002.

This is also exactly the reason the Red Sox and Patriots won five World Championships in the last ten years. Neither team has ever been the best team on paper (with the exception of the 2007 Pats of course) for the past ten years, but the experts often look at the wrong statistics.

What's so great about baseball? A 5-4-3 Triple Play.

In all of Red Sox history spanning over 100 years, this was the first "round the horn triple play" ever turned by the club. In the 20th century, only 60 of this variety - third to second to first - have been completed. It is considered one of the most difficult feats in major league sports.

In a previous post, I wrote that the "straight steal of home," which was accomplished by Jacoby Ellsbury in 2009 against the Yankees, was one of the rarest feats in baseball, but it turns out that the round the horn triple play is even more rare.

Seven World Championships in 10 years!

Bruins 2011


Celtics 2008


Red Sox 2007


Patriots 2005


Red Sox 2004


Patriots 2004


Patriots 2002

Now what this means is that there is still time for EIGHT Championship teams in a decade.

Red Sox 2011?

Here's an amazing thought. In 2001, no Boston sports team had won a championship since the 1986 Celtics -- a 15 year drought!

In 2001, the Pats had never won a championship, the Celtics hadn't won since 1986, the Bruins since 1972 and the Red Sox since 1918.

Now the Patriots are the team with the longest drought. They haven't won a championship in six years. Amazing! It's changed the psyche of the Boston sports fan.

Patriots - Dolphins DirecTV commercial

I laugh every time I see this. This pretty much nails New England sports fans. Someone on YouTube pointed out that this couldn't work with the Jets because there would be vandalism charges and jail time.

Manny's Redemption?

Manny Ramirez returned to Fenway Park for the first time in almost two years this past weekend. He received a mixed reaction by Boston fans who clearly have mixed feelings about Manny Being Manny. I was surprised to see that he returned to more boos than cheers. I say it's time to forgive Manny and receive him as one of the four great Hall of Fame left fielders that include Williams, Yaz and Rice who have played at Fenway.

The following appeared today in the Boston Globe:

Ramirez told Red Sox Spanish Beisbol Network play-by-play announcer Uri Berenguer Saturday that he regretted his transgressions in Boston. “There’s no reason I should have behaved that way in Boston,’’ Ramirez told Berenguer in a 45-minute private conversation in Spanish.

Berenguer said that Ramirez no longer speaks of retirement, and said that the length of his career will be determined by a higher power. Berenguer said Ramirez has found God, reads the Bible on a daily basis, and quoted scriptures constantly during their conversation.

Ramirez went 5 for 12 in the series, including two hits in each of the last two games, with a home run and a stolen base.

It's fun to be a Boston sports fan in May!

Up until last week, I was bemused by the fact that I could watch the Bruins in playoff hockey, the Celtics in playoff basketball and the Red Sox by flipping back and forth between channels during commercials. Or I'd go to a sports restaurant and watch all three at once.

What other city has that?

In case you are wondering: None. That's who. Only in Boston.

It's fun to be a fan in the Golden Era of Boston Sports!

And maddening ...

The Bruins

First, a word about the "great collapse." No one expected the Bruins to go anywhere this year. So when they knocked off the Sabres and went up by three games to none while the eighth seeded Canadiens were waiting in the wings, everyone began expecting the Stanley Cup to come back to Boston for the first time in almost 38 years. I distinctly remember the morning at the bus stop in 1972 when every kid in Framingham wore a Bruins cap and talked about Bobby Orr's and tried to act out his game winning goal flying through the air.

But 2010 was not to be. It was the fourth greatest collapse in postseason history by any professional team. To put it in perspective, this playoff run was made by a woefully inconsistent, streaky team that got as far as they did because they played as well as they could in three playoff series, but then lost four in a row just like they did many times in the regular season. It is maddening, but perfectly believable. On the bright side, they'll be back in the playoffs next year and the year after.

As Forrest Gump would say: "And that's all I have to say about that!"

Celtics

Ten down, six more wins to go!

In a recent blog post, I asked, Can the Celtics flip the switch?  I argued that they could still beat any team any time they are all healthy. They can go in a moment from being a sometimes-good-sometimes-mediocre team that blows big leads late in games, to being the Celtics that have won 17 World Championships.

In the postseason, they've become the creaky old veteran team that makes every young NBA star look bad. What is beautiful about this Celtics team is that they are so old school. They play team basketball. They have the "Big Four" in Allen, Garnett, Pierce, Rondo and the deepest supporting cast. Every other team they have faced has one superstar that they can neutralize. They made the best player in the NBA, Lebron "King" James, look so awful he actually quit trying in game six of the quarter finals. They are in the process of making Dwight "Superman" Howard look even worse. Then they can beat you offensively with four different players -- one per quarter.

I'll go further out on a limb with a prediction. The Celtics are going to sweep the Magic by taking the next two games in Boston and arrive with fresh legs to play over-rated west coast team. They are now 62.5 percent of the way to their 18th banner. Then they have Rajon Rondo coming on strong. The Celtics will be playoff bound for years to come.

Red Sox

As Mark Twain would say, "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
40 games into the season, the Sox have won 20 games and lost 20 games.

"Everyone knows that the season is ovah!"

Right?

Not so fast. What has done in the Red Sox so far is inconsistent pitching and numerous games lost by one or two runs. The prognosis at the beginning of the year was that they had the best pitching staff in baseball -- a fearsome starting line-up with three aces and three more quality starters. They had Gold Gloves in half their defensive positions. On paper, they were supposed to be the best defensive team in recent history. The big concern was an aging offense in Ortiz, Varitek, and Lowell with too few younger sluggers in the starting line-up.

Ironically, the pitching and defense has been bumpy to say the least. But this will right itself. Still people are saying that this team is too far behind to gain any ground on the Rays and the Yankees, who have played stellar baseball in the first month and a half.

But hold the phone!

As of today these are the offensive statistics for the Red Sox:

First in the Majors in Runs Scored (210)
First in the Majors in Hits (378)
Second in the Majors in Home Runs (55)
Second in the Majors in Total Bases (636)
Third in the Majors in Slugging Percentage (.454 SLG)
Third in the Majors in On Base plus Slugging (.804 OPS)

This is without two of the key members of their starting line-up, Mike Cameron and Jacoby Ellsbury, who have been out for almost all of the season so far, but will both be back by next week. When the starting pitching clicks into place, the Red Sox will go on a tear that could last most of the season. Six games behind in the Wild Card standings is nothing at this point in the season. I won't guarantee they will win the division. But I predict the Red Sox will be in first place either in the division or the Wild Card at some point before September.

Let me pick a random date: How about July 23rd? That's day I have right field box seats at Fenway Park. It will be vs. the Detroit Tigers -- Johnny Damon's triumphant return from disgrace -- the first player since Babe Ruth to win World Series rings with New York and Boston! That is a good omen if there ever was one. I'll write a blog entry on July 24th and report on where they are at in the standings.

Patriots

Hey, it's May! If you are thinking about football already you are not from Boston.

The Big Bad Bruins are back!

The Bruins and the Flyers are facing each other in the playoffs for the first time since 1978!

If you lived in New England in the 1970s, you know the Bruins' archrivals were the Canadiens and the Flyers. Montreal were the skaters and Boston and Philly were the fighters. Bruins and Canadiens fans were known for their knowledge of the game and Flyers fans were not. They used to boo the Canadian national anthem in Philadelphia. Boston radio sportscaster, Johnny Most, used to say, "They hate us because they have to live there and we don't."

Most also once said on the air, "Mrs. Abdul-Jabbah, Ya son is a cowahd!" If you don't know who Johnny Most was, you still might know his famous holler during the 1965 Celtics championship game, "Havlicek stole the ball!"

But I digress.

The point is that the Bruins met the Flyers in the playoffs four times from 1974 to 1978 and split the series match-ups 2-2.

I was at game one of the Stanley Cup semi-finals in 1978 with my friend Doug. We were high school sophomores and had to get the "T" from Riverside to North Station. My mother gave us season ticket seats that strangely no one at her work place wanted. We sat in the loges, two rows of balcony seats that hung out over the ice. (This is where Red Auerbach used to sit during Celtics games.) Less than a minute into the game, all the Bruins and Flyers players' gloves were on the ice and they were going at it. I remember my friend screaming, "This is EXCELLENT!" Yes, it was playoff hockey in the Boston Garden. This was the Boston team most likely to go all the way in 1978.

The only downside was that game one went into overtime and we ran the risk of missing the last train back to Riverside if we missed it. We hadn't left the building when the Bruins scored a goal in the first few minutes of overtime to win it. I remember Doug jumping up and down in the "tunnel" as we heard it on the transistor radio I was carrying as we also heard the crowd erupt inside. The Bruins won the series 4-3 and went on to lose in the Stanley Cup finals.

This year, the first game of the Bruins-Flyers series was won by the Bruins once again in the first few minutes of overtime. It was deja vu all over again. I was watching the game and got up for a second and missed it. That's what makes hockey "the fastest game on ice." If you blink for a micro-second, you can miss the outcome of the game.

The real irony though is that if you asked Boston fans a few weeks ago which team had the best chance of next winning a world championship, they would have been divided between the other three teams. Right now, it's the Bruins who look the best.

Below: Bruins players attack a harrassing fan in Philadelphia in the 1970s.