Basketball, the international sport, then and now

One of my favorite parts of writing Dear Sports Fan is reading other great writers cover sports in a way that’s accessible and compelling for the whole spectrum from super-fans to lay people. Here are selections from some of the articles this week that inspired me. This week I decided to focus on articles about basketball to celebrate the start of the National Basketball Association’s season this Tuesday, October 28. The biggest story of the offseason was the return of Lebron James from the Miami Heat, where he won two championships, to the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he started his career and near where he grew up. The first of our three articles takes a look at the maturation of LeBron James as a player. The second and third articles explores the international side of basketball. Besides soccer, basketball may be the most international sport around. There have been great players from all around the world for decades but they didn’t always have the opportunity or ability to play in the NBA. Oscar Schmidt, the subject of the first article, is widely thought to be the best basketball player never to play in the NBA. His dream was to play for Brazil’s national team, which he did to great effect. The second article is an illuminating comparison of the efforts to recruit Arvydis Sabonis in the eighties and his son Domas, today.

All The King’s Men: LeBron takes his team-building talents to Cleveland

by Lee Jenkins for Sports Illustrated

When the Cavs trailed by two points late in Game 1 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals, against the Pistons, James drove left on small forward Tayshaun Prince, but Richard Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace rushed over to help. James passed to forward Donyell Marshall, stationed in his beloved right corner. “I missed, we lost, and everybody asked him why he gave it up,” recalls Marshall, now an assistant coach at Rider. “But what I remember was the next day at practice when we went over late-game situations. We ran the same play, and LeBron passed it to me in the corner again. I knocked it down, and he jumped on me like we’d won.”

The Cavs will follow him, but not because of his posture or his pep talks. “Let me tell you what he’ll do,” Boozer says. “He’ll get a tape of each of [his teammates]. He’ll go home and watch each one for half an hour. He’s very smart about all this, so it won’t take him long. He’ll figure out some things he can do to get them going on the court.” They’ll follow him because he provides what everyone in the NBA wants, a little space and a clean look.

The Holy Hand of Brazil

by Amos Barshad for Grantland

At halftime, Brazil was down 68-54. So in the third quarter, Schmidt came out firing. Meanwhile, de Souza was leading the mind games. “I told [the Americans], ‘Hey, I’m an old man, I can’t guard you,’” he explained at the time. Adds Schmidt now, “We said [to the Americans], ‘Shoot now! Everybody looking at you. Shoot now!’” On the other end, Schmidt took his own advice: He splashed his way to 35 second-half points, 46 overall, and Brazil came back to win 120-115. It was the first time U.S. men’s basketball had ever been beaten at home. There were plenty of opportunities for Schmidt’s trademark double-fist-pump exultation. But the image that lingers is him on the floor, overcome, weeping with joy.

That it’s impossible to know his NBA ceiling is the point of this legend. Because now, unperturbed by pesky facts, we can just imagine the fireworks. Oscar Schmidt was the band you loved fiercely and could never convince anyone else was the greatest thing on earth. Oscar Schmidt was indie rock.

Jay Triano, now an assistant coach with the Portland Trail Blazers, remembers running into Schmidt at the 2002 World Championship, back in Indiana. In front of the assembled young guns, many who’d never heard the name “Oscar Schmidt,” Triano challenged Mão Santa to show off the goods. “I said to him, ‘Can you still shoot?’” Triano remembers. “He said, ‘Of course!’ And he stood at the top of the key, in his suit and shirt and dress shoes. No warm-up. I gave him the ball and he made 10 in a row, and he walked out of the gym. The players stood there with their mouths open.”

The Old College Try

By Luke Winn for Sports Illustrated

Brown had no connections to the Soviet sporting apparat, nor had he ever spoken to Sabonis. (The coach was occasionally spelling Sabonis’s first name “Arvadis” and referring to him as Latvian rather than Lithuanian.) It was public record that Brown had told his Tigers, “The hell with the Communists!” before a 1977 exhibition against the Soviet national team. He had only four months to get Sabonis to America and cleared by the NCAA. It looked like the most geopolitically improbable recruitment of all time. When people asked Brown what he thought his odds were, he put them at 50-50.

Lloyd made two more trips to Spain, and he persuaded Tuti and Domas to take an official visit to Spokane in ­August 2013. A few other schools got involved in the recruitment, but by then the brothers had a strong rapport with the chipper Zags assistant who showed up everywhere in the same slip-on blue Converse, and who kept in touch with them on the mobile-messaging service WhatsApp—to an extent: They told him they “didn’t need the constant [fawning]” that American recruits expect, so daily texts weren’t necessary. Before they set foot in the States for any visits, the brothers told Lloyd that if Domas came to college, they were 99% sure it would be Gonzaga.

NFL Week 8 Good Cop, Bad Cop Precaps

The NFL season has started but how do you know which games to watch and which to skip? Ask our favorite police duo with their good cop, bad cop precaps of all the Week 7 matchups in the National Football League this weekend. To see which games will be televised in your area, check out 506sports.com’s essential NFL maps. If you’re worried about watching too much football or if you’re negotiating for a little break during the weekend, read our weekly feature, Do Not Watch This Game.

Week 8

Sunday, October 26, at 9:30 a.m. ET

Detroit Lions at Atlanta Falcons (In London)

Good cop: What better way to start your Sunday morning than to cook some pancakes and bacon and sit down in front of the television to watch some football! The only thing that could make this better is if Prince were cooking!

Bad cop: I live on the West Coast.

Sunday, October 26, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Buffalo Bills at New York Jets

Good cop: I’m excited to see the Jets newest wide receiver, Percy Harvin, who they acquired in a trade with the Seattle Seahawks!

Bad cop: I’m excited to see Geno Smith and Kyle Orton play quarterback… not.

Baltimore Ravens at Cincinnati Bengals

Good cop: This is an important game for the standings in the rough and tumble AFC North division where every team has at least three wins!

Bad cop: Interesting division. Lots of good teams, no great teams. I’d rather watch great games.

Seattle Seahawks at Carolina Panthers

Good cop: I want to see if the defending champs can get up off the floor after two straight losses!

Bad cop: So far this year Carolina has played like they are the floor.

Chicago Bears at New England Patriots

Good cop: This is a must-win game for the Bears! After last week’s locker room explosion following their loss to Miami, they’re going to either be supremely focused and motivated or a complete mess!

Bad cop: I’m going with complete mess.

Houston Texans at Tennessee Titans

Good cop: This is a game with real historical interest! The Tennessee Titans used to be the Houston Oilers before they moved to Tennessee! Now the Texans have taken over and they’re out to get the Titans!

Bad cop: I’m sorry, did you say “hysterical interest?” That’s the only type of interest in this game that I can imagine.

Miami Dolphins at Jacksonville Jaguars

Good cop: The Dolphins are rounding into shape and the Jaguars just won a game! Plus, it’s a battle for supremacy in Florida!

Bad cop: The Good cop doth protest too much, methinks.

Minnesota Vikings at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Good cop: Believe it or not, the Buccaneers still have a shot at the playoffs, even at 1-5!

Bad cop: That’s supposed to be an advertisement? This team’s division is so bad that even though they are obviously the worst, they could still make the playoffs?

St. Louis Rams at Kansas City Chiefs

Good cop: Hot off big wins against some of the best teams in football, one of these two teams will keep it going on Sunday!

Bad cop: Does it matter? The Chiefs are stuck behind the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos in their division and the Rams are stuck behind the Arizona Cardinals, Seattle Seahawks, and San Francisco 49ers in theirs.

SUNDAY, October 26, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

Philadelphia Eagles at Arizona Cardinals

Good cop: What a great game! Two offensively gifted teams and coaches! Two exciting defenses! Only one team can win!

Bad cop: I love it when you repeat simple rules like “only one team can win” as a way to convince me that a game is interesting. How about, “the ground cannot cause a fumble” or “only one offensive player may be in motion before a snap!!” 

Oakland Raiders at Cleveland Browns

Good cop: The Cleveland Browns gave the Jacksonville Jaguars their first win of the season last week! If they give the Raiders their first win this week, some people, most notably quarterback Brian Hoyer, will lose their jobs!

Bad cop: Hooray for people losing their jobs.

Indianapolis Colts at Pittsburgh Steelers

Good cop: Colts quarterback Andrew Luck may have the skills but Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has the championship rings! Two of them!

Bad cop: Has been vs. will be. Shoot, Andrew Luck is more of an is than a will be these days.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Green Bay Packers at New Orleans Saints

Good cop: Aaron Rodgers vs. Drew Brees! Cheese curds vs. jambalaya! 

Bad cop: Can I have all the food and none of the football?

MONDAY, October 27, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Washington Redskins at Dallas Cowboys

Good cop: The Washington Redskins are giving Colt McCoy a chance at quarterback just in time for the Texas legend to make a triumphant return to his home state!

Bad cop: You do know that McCoy is playing because the first stringer is hurt and the second stringer is awful, right? Do not watch this game.

What is El Clasico?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is El Clasico? It seems like it’s a big deal!

Thanks,
Evan

 

Dear Evan,

You’re 100% right. El Clasico is a big deal. It’s an extremely big deal.

El Clasico is the name given to any game between Real Madrid Club de Futbol and Barcelona Futbol Club. It’s an explosive mix of regional and cultural rivalry and shockingly talented soccer players that gets ignited a few times a year. To give a sense of the proportions of the game, the March 2014 edition of El Clasico was viewed by an international television audience of 400 million. That’s more than twice the international audience for the Super Bowl, which, just a month before, drew a paltry 167 million viewers. The best players in El Clasico are predictably the best players in the world. According to The Guardian, “for the last 18 years, every winner of the Fifa World Player award, now merged with the Ballon d’Or, has played for Madrid or Barcelona at some stage of their career.” The whole thing, incredible players, gobs of money, tons of viewers around the world, is driven by an intense conflict within Spain that is viewed through a lens of Madrid against Barcelona and specifically, Real Madrid vs. Barcelona.

So, what is the rivalry all about? Barcelona is the center of Catalonian culture. The Catalan are an autonomous community within Spain. Catalan people can trace their culture’s history back to at least the 10th century. They speak a different language from the rest of Spain and close to half in the region would like to secede from Spain all together. When the fascist Francisco Franco came to power in 1939, squeezing the Catalonian culture out of existence was one of his priorities. He banned use of the Catalan language as well as any kind of cultural or political expression of Catalan culture. By no means were the people of Madrid all fascists or supporters of Franco but, Franco was a supporter of Madrid and of Real Madrid specifically. He even went so far as to meddle in which team got to sign the legendary Argentinian player Alfredo di Stefano. Madrid was the center of what Franco thought of as the standard Spanish language and culture, Castillian. Because of this association and history, Barcelona has always seen Madrid as the enemy, and visa-versa, if to a lesser extent. In World Soccer Talk’s article on El Clasico, they express the current situation like this:

Today, Real Madrid, in their all-white uniform, still represents a pure and united Spain. In contrast, FC Barcelona proudly bestows the Catalan flag (the only flag one sees in Catalonia) on their jerseys as a memorial of their continuous struggle for an independent state.

Sometimes, to really understand something like this, you’ve got to go full-on scholarly. Here’s a passage from Duke University’s excellent resource on El Clasico:

Rivalry, which is more than the sum of one team’s players versus another’s, serves to pit one codified regional social identity against another. If there are any tensions between the peoples represented, then the match becomes “ritual sublimation of war, eleven men in shorts are the sword of the neighborhood, the city or the nation.”[vii] And there are plenty of tensions between Barcelona and Madrid, none of which fail to be manifested in their epic rivalry. As Guilianotti explains “the football dyad at club level… [becomes] an exterior site in which ethno-nationalist tensions are symbolized and expressed.” Barcelona, synonymous with Catalonian nationalism, “displays a richer luster in confrontations with Real Madrid (the team of Castile and Franco).”[viii] Notions of Barcelona’s resistance to Castilian authority as well as General Franco are fundamental aspects of their abhorrence of Madrid:

“Twice Castile tried to subjugate the city (and the region), dismantling its institutions and outlawing its language, Catalan. The last attempt, by Franco, ended with his death in 1975.”[ix]

Tensions between the Spanish state, seated in Madrid, Castilian in language and origin, and the desires of many Catalonians for self-governance remain hotly debated political issues, a veritable powder-keg waiting to be ignited upon the soccer pitch.

This year’s game will be played on Saturday, October 25, at noon ET on beIN SPORTS. The headliners for Real Madrid are best player in the world candidate 1A, Cristiano Ronaldo, Columbian break-out star from the World Cup, James Rodriguez, and German Toni Kroos, who many said was the best player for the German team that won the World Cup. Barcelona will roll out a lineup featuring best player in the world candidate 1B, Lionel Messi, Brazilian wunderkind, Neymar, as well as Barcelona legends Xavi and Iniesta. Just to add a little spice to an already eye-popping mix, Uruguayan striker/cannibal Luis Suarez will be eligible to play in his first game since the World Cup biting incident. If you decide to watch, you’ll be joining almost half a billion of your fellow humans in doing so.

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer

What different kinds of pitchers are there in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What different kinds of pitchers are there in baseball? It seems like a very specialized position. I keep hearing people label pitchers in all sorts of different ways, “junk pitchers, submariners, middle relievers,” but I don’t know what all the terms mean. Can you help?

Thanks,
Jan

 

Dear Jan,

There are a lot of different ways to describe a pitcher. “Junk pitcher, submariner, and middle reliever” are not only three different descriptions but they each describe a different class of description. “Junk pitcher” refers to the kinds of pitches a pitcher throws, “submariner” describes a pitcher’s throwing motion, and “middle reliever” describes when, during a game, a pitcher plays. One of the cool things about baseball is that none of this is rule based. All pitchers are the same according to baseball rules. It’s convention that defines how pitchers are classified. Let’s run through each category and look at the common descriptions and meanings together.

Pitchers classified by the pitches they throw

  • Junk pitchers – Junk pitchers specialize in throwing slower (relatively slower — they might still throw up to 85 miles per hour) pitches that fool a batter by curving down or sliding sideways as they approach the base.
  • Knuckleballers – A knuckleballer is an extreme version of a junk pitcher. These pitchers basically only throw one type of pitch — the knuckleball — which flies in such a tortured way that it’s often hard for the catcher to even catch it, much less a batter hit it. Because the pitch is thrown so slowly, these pitchers can have very long careers.
  • Power pitchers – Also called fireballers or flamethrowers, these guys throw extremely hard. Nowadays, a good power pitcher can throw in the upper 90s or even 100 miles per hour. Their pitches may not move as much in the air but it’s extremely hard for batters to “catch up to them” before they’re in the catchers mitt.

Pitchers classified by throwing motion

  • Sidewinders – Sidewinders throw the ball with a motion a little like a normal frisbee throw. Their arms stay around shoulder or chest level throughout their delivery. These pitchers are rare in American baseball but oddly common in Japanese baseball.
  • Submariners – Submariners are a rare breed of pitcher that throws the ball with a motion that brings their hand almost down to the ground before releasing the ball. It’s a crazy looking thing but it’s often very effective, partially because throwing the ball this way makes it move in unusual ways as it approaches the plate.
  • Normal pitchers – The vast majority of pitchers in Major League Baseball throw with the same overhand motion that most of us were taught to throw with as kids. They just do it with so much velocity that, if you watch them in slow motion, it looks like they’re going to rip their arms off their body from the strength of their throwing motion.

Pitchers classified by when they pitch

  • Starters – Starters are expected to pitch for the first six innings of the game. They will often throw close to a hundred pitches before wearing down enough to be taken out of the game. Starters pitch only once every five days. That’s how harsh this job is on their bodies.
  • Middle Relievers – Middle relievers take over for a starting pitcher who needs to be substituted before the eight inning. They’re the least valued members of the pitching staff but also often the most versatile.
  • Closers – These pitchers come in to “close out” a game in the ninth inning when their team is ahead. They are specialists and most throw relatively few types of pitches. Often they are fireballers but once in a while, a very effective junk pitcher can excel in this role.
  • Set–up men – Set-up men are a relatively new innovation. They’re specialists who come in just for the eight inning to “set-up” the closer. Think of them as the second best closer on the team. The Kansas City Royals have made a splash in the 2014 season by using two set-up men, one for the seventh inning and one for the eight. They may have just created the position of the set-up set-up man.

Pitchers classified by how they try to get batters out

  • Ground ball pitchers – Ground ball pitchers aim to get batters to hit their pitches but to do it only under circumstances that the pitcher controls. Through placement, speed, and spin, the pitcher serves up only pitches that he thinks will result in an easily fielded ground ball.
  • Fly ball pitchers – A fly ball pitcher, like a ground ball pitcher, pitches “to contact.” They don’t try to avoid having the batter hit the ball, they just manipulate the situation so that when a batter does get a hit, it flies harmlessly up in the air.
  • Strike out pitchers – Strike out pitchers don’t want anything to do with the batter hitting the ball. They would much rather strike the batter out through deception or brute force or a mixture of the two than have them hit the ball into play.

These aren’t the only ways to describe a pitcher (he’s a bum/ace) but they are some of the most common ones. See if you can use one or more of these descriptions the next time you watch a baseball game.

Happy watching,
Ezra Fischer

Sports Forecast for Friday, October 24

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:

In today’s segment, I covered:

  • an early tennis match between Simona Halep and Ana Ivanovic on ESPN3 starting at 7:45
  • a relatively uninteresting Major League Soccer game between the Houston Dynamo and Chicago Fire on NBCSN at 8 p.m
  • three college football games between the South Florida Bulls and the Cincinnati Bearcats on ESPN2 at 7 p.m, BYU and Boise State on ESPN at 9 p.m., and Oregon and California on Fox Sports 1 at 10 p.m.
  • a hockey matchup of hungry teams between the Edmonton Oilers and Carolina Hurricanes on regional cable at 9:30 p.m.
  • finally, there’s Game Three of the World Series between the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants at 8 p.m. on Fox

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Music by Jesse Fischer.

Friday, October 24

  1. Anything you can do…: The San Diego Chargers are a really good football team. Nothing about losing 35-32 to the Denver Broncos last night makes me think differently and that’s what’s so remarkable about the Denver Broncos right now. They look like they are playing football on another level. Everyone else is playing checkers while they’re playing chess. Everyone else is strolling around while they’re racewalking. It’s pretty impressive.
    Line: The Denver Broncos are just playing on a whole nother level right now.
  2. Fallen Giant: The Boston Bruins have struggled to start the season. They lost last night, 3-2 to the New York Islanders, to fall to 4-5 on the year but the bigger loss was that of their 6’9″ captain, Zdeno Chara. Chara damaged some ligaments in his knee (no more specific information is available) and is said to be out for 4-6 weeks.
    Line: A slow start is not all that worrying but losing Chara for any sustained time is.
  3. Huskies put up a fight: The college football game between the 1-5 Connecticut Huskies and the 5-1 East Carolina Pirates was not expected to be close. Vegas had the Pirates as a 28 point favorite. The Connecticut Huskies looked ready to upset their opponents when they scored 14 points in the third quarter to tie the game. The East Carolina Pirates fought back in the fourth quarter and scored the final 10 points of the game to win 31 to 21.
    Line: Connecticut made it closer than people though but in the end, the Pirates’ class showed.

Do Not Watch This Game 10.25.14 Weekend Edition

For sports fans, the weekend is a cornucopia of wonderful games to watch. This is particularly true in the fall with its traditional pattern of College Football on Saturday and NFL Football on Sunday and Monday. As the parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend of a sports fan, this can be a challenge. It must be true that some games are more important to watch than others but it’s hard to know which is which. As a sports fan, the power of habit and hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars get in the way of remembering to take a break from sports and do something with your parent, child, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, husband, wife, roommate, or best friend. To aid all of us in this, and just because it’s fun, I’m going to write a weekly post highlighting a single game that is ideal for skipping. Use this to help tell yourself or someone else: “Do not watch this game!”

Monday, 8:30 p.m. ET, NFL Football, Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Redskins. It’s on ESPN but do not watch this game!

This is the perfect weekend to take Monday off. For the first time ever, this Sunday’s slate of football games is going to start at 9:30 a.m. ET. That’s right! The game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Detroit Lions is one of three this year in London and as part of its ongoing experiment in England, the NFL decided to start the game at a more normal football time. By football, I mean both soccer and American football. This will put the game up directly against English Premier League soccer games and in an early afternoon slot more familiar to football in the United States. The upshot of this is that, if you’re living with a die-hard football fan, Sunday could be a real marathon of football.

The easiest thing to do would be to advise against watching the Sunday night game. That game looks to be an entertaining one between the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints. I wouldn’t suggest skipping it, particularly if you enjoy making themed food according to the teams involved. Mmmm cheese curds and gumbo! Plus, Game Five of the World Series is on Sunday night. No, instead, I say just roll with the punches on Sunday and then plan a sports-free day on Monday.

The Monday Night game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins is probably going to be pretty dull anyhow. Dallas is playing better than it’s played in years and Washington is a complete mess. The Redskins are going to be starting their third quarterback of the year on Monday and they just lost one of their top three defensive players for the year with a torn pectoral muscle. Dallas is favored by ten points, the most points of any team this weekend. The opening paragraphs of the ESPN preview of the game even struggle to create any drama:

The Dallas Cowboys are rolling to a degree that is even surprising owner Jerry Jones thanks to the productivity of DeMarco Murray and Tony Romo.

Their next opponent, the Washington Redskins, isn’t even sure who will start at quarterback.

If ESPN, the network covering the game, can’t muster up any more enthusiasm, you shouldn’t bother watching. This game is going to look like a bad Godzilla film if instead of destroying Japanese towns, Godzilla had declared himself eligible for the NFL draft, had been selected by the Cowboys, and then dismantled the Redskins on national television.

Alternate: If you or the sports fan in your life is a fan of one of these two teams, then this isn’t a good game to skip. Instead, skip the CBS early game at 1:00 on Sunday afternoon between the Seattle Seahawks and the Carolina Panthers. Both these teams were great last year. This year they’re just fine and that’s just going to be a let down.

Why do baseball managers use so many pitchers?

Dear Sports Fan,

I was watching the World Series last night and the San Francisco Giants used so many pitchers in that one inning. I didn’t know they were allowed to do that? What were they thinking? It obviously didn’t work.

Just wondering,
Garrett

Dear Garrett,

You’re right that the San Francisco Giants use of relief pitchers in the bottom of the sixth inning was unusual. They tied the record for most pitchers used in a single inning at five. That’s an unusual number of pitchers but what they did was not illegal and their reasons for doing it were pretty normal as well. Like you said, it didn’t work — the Kansas City Royals scored as many runs in that inning (five) as the Giants used pitchers.

Baseball teams in the post-season are allowed to have 25 players on their roster. There aren’t any rules about how many of these can be pitchers. In fact, the Kansas City Royals chose to carry one fewer pitcher than the San Francisco Giants for this World Series. The Giants have 12, the Royals 11. Of those pitchers, each team has four that are expected to start the up to seven games in the series. That leaves eight pitchers for the Giants and seven for the Royals. Each team has a designated closer who pitches the ninth inning if their team has the lead. The remaining six or seven pitchers are miscellaneous relief pitchers that their managers can choose to use however and whenever they want in a game. The Royals manager, Ned Yost has chosen to use two of his relief pitchers, Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis almost exclusively for the seventh and eighth innings, but all of this, even the starter/closer/relief pitcher distinctions are just tactics, not rules. The only real rule regarding pitching substitutions is that once a pitcher starts pitching to a batter, he’s got to finish that batter unless he gets hurt.

So, fine, teams have a lot of pitchers and they can pretty much use them however they want. Why would the Giants manager, Bruce Bochy, want to use so many of them in the sixth inning last night? Aside from the first pitcher, each of the next four was determined in part by a simple concept: “when a pitcher and a hitter pitch or bat with the same hand, the pitcher typically has the advantage.” Let’s see how it played out:

Pitcher 1: To start the inning, he went with the starting pitcher, Jake Peavy. Peavy had pitched well in the game up to that point, letting up only 2 runs, and had only thrown 57 pitches. Starting pitchers can usually throw close to a hundred pitches before really breaking down, so, although he’s doubtless being second-guessed today, I don’t see anything controversial about starting the inning with Peavy. That said, Peavy did not start the inning well. He let up a single and then walked the next batter to put two men on base.

Pitcher 2: Seeing that Peavy was in trouble, Bochy decided to take him out of the game and put in a relief pitcher. The next batter up was Billy Butler. Butler is right-handed and hits much better against left-handed pitchers or southpaws than he does against righties. In terms of batting average, a flawed but well-known statistic, he goes from being a .321 hitter against lefties to a .255 hitter when facing a righty. So, Bochy brought in right-handed pitcher, Jean Machi. Butler outfoxed him and hit a single to the outfield which allowed the two men on base to score.

Pitcher 3: The next batter up was Alex Gordon, who bats lefty. Again, Bochy chose to change pitchers because of handedness, so he brought in Javier Lopez, a lefty. This time it works — Lopez gets Gordon to hit a fly ball to the outfield for an out. No runners advance.

Pitcher 4: Next up for the Royals was their catcher, Salvador Perez, who is… you guessed it, a righty! Off Bochy goes again to the mound to remove his pitcher. This time he brings in Hunter Strickland, who is, you guessed it again, a righty. Things go really off the rails for Strickland. He gives up a double to Perez and then a home run to Omar Infante. Why did he get to face two batters? Because Infante, like Perez, and Strickland for that matter, are both righties.

Pitcher 5: Up comes Mike Moustakas, a lefty, and off goes Strickland to be replaced by Jeremy Affeldt who throws with his left. Moustakas singles. The next batter is Alcides Escobar. He bats righty, but Bochy, perhaps thinking he’s made enough of a mess of things, doesn’t bother replacing Affeldt with a righty. It works out for them when Escobar hits into a double play to end the inning.

So, there you go — most of the mysterious comings and goings of the Giants pitchers last night can be attributed to the simple desire of the Giants manager to have right-handed pitchers face right-handed batters and left-handed pitchers face left-handed batters.

Thanks for the question, enjoy the rest of the World Series,
Ezra Fischer

 

Sports Forecast for Thursday, October 23

I’m trying something brand new today. A four minute audio preview of today’s biggest sporting events.

It’s my first time doing this, so please let me know what you think! Is this good for sports fans? For non-sports fans? What would make it better for each audience? What was confusing? What was clarified? When might you listen to something like this during the day? Why?

In today’s segment, I covered a couple of choice soccer games from the Europa Cup, all the games in the National Hockey League, the two college football games of note today, and the Thursday Night National Football League game.

Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:

You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link.

Theme music by Jesse Fischer.

Thursday, October 23

  1. Royals win to tie World Series at 1-1: That’s right, the Royals answered everyone’s questions about how they were going to react to losing their first game of the playoffs by exploding in the sixth inning to shift game two of the World Series from a 2-2 tie to a 7-2 blow-out. The Giants did tie a World Series record but it’s not a particularly good one — they used five pitchers in that one inning. None were all that successful.
    Line: Looks like we’ve got a real, competitive series going on!
    What’s Next: Game Three is at 8 p.m. ET, Friday, October 24, on Fox.
  2. National Hockey League honors Canada: The NHL reacted to yesterday’s shootings in Ottawa by postponing the game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Ottawa Senators that was supposed to take place in Ottawa last night. In Pittsburgh, the Penguins showed their sympathy and support by lighting the ice like a Canadian flag. The fans sang along to Oh Canada as if it was their own anthem.  In Edmonton, it is the fans anthem.
  3. Losing but still laughing: Rex Ryan, the coach of the not-very-good New York Jets crashed a press conference call and nominally posed as a reporter while asking a question to a player from the opposing team in this weekend’s upcoming matchup. Ryan is always good for a chuckle. When being interviewed for the Jets coaching job, he took a road trip with the team’s general manager who said he knew Ryan was the right man for the job when, after spilling a giant limeade on his lap, he shouted, “On no! The dress sweats!”
    What’s Next: The Jets play the Buffalo Bills Sunday, October 26, at 1 p.m. ET on CBS