Here’s the scenario. You’re a pro athlete. One day the coach calls you in and says “son, you’ve been traded to ___________.”

What the worst team you can fill in the blank with? Four leagues, and feel free to elaborate on why if you feel so led.

In thinking about this, a few things jumped to mind right off the bat, but then I stepped back to think more about it. Is this just about a team that I hate (NY Rangers)? Is this about a team that has been mismanaged horrifically but I like them (Knicks)? Is this about a team that consistently has good young talent but trades it away (Pittsburgh Pirates)? Is it about a mediocre team that seems to be around .500 but never inspires the city/fans and has little shot at going deep in the playoffs in the foreseeable future?

In making my decision, I took a combination of the above – since there are a few factors at play here: state of franchise now/last 5-10 years and potential for winning in the next 5 or so, fan base, ownership/mgmt, city life and other sports teams (would be a plus in GB, not so much somewhere else with no other teams) and a few “intangibles” based on nothing other than my own (relatively) uninformed opinions.

With that being said, here is what I came up with and why:

MLB: Kansas City Royals. Owner David Glass has run this franchise into the ground in the 11 years he has owned the team. Only one winning season in the past 15 years. Phenom Zach Greinke is sure to be the next star to leave – following Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon, David Cone, Mike Sweeney and Jermaine Dye (ok, so Cone was before Glass). The team ownership makes little effort in actually building a strategy for winning and keeping a core together – witness how the Marlins have done it more than once, for example. A depressing team which was once a proud franchise packed with all stars. While I’ve never been to Kansas City (and am sure I’d love the ribs), the only other sports team is the Chiefs which is a minus for me in terms of overall pro sports. And no hope for the future really either.

NFL: Jacksonville Jaguars. Not a horrible team by any stretch. But not a good team and not really an inspiring team either – not by a long shot. Buried in a division with Jeff Fisher’s Oilers Titans and Peyton Manning’s Colts, it is nearly impossible to make the playoffs consistently, if at all – at least not for a while. A few good seasons lately (2 playoff appearances since 2005 and one playoff win since 1999), but almost exactly a .500 record over the past 8 seasons, which won’t do much. No other sports teams in Jacksonville and a city that, while in “sunny” Florida, is fairly cold, pretty dreary and has little else going on. I once took a day trip (flight) to Jacksonville for a meeting, had lunch “downtown” and couldn’t get back to the airport soon enough. Nothing horrible, but very little redeeming – not for the team, not for the city, not for the future.

NBA:Memphis Grizzlies. I almost picked the Indiana Pacers or Toronto Raptors here, but Toronto breaks a few of my rules, given that the Maple Leafs and Blue Jays are in Toronto and it is a great city (from all I have been told). With Memphis, a city that I’ve never been to and probably is a fine city, there is no other sports, I am NOT a fan of NASCAR and the Grizzlies are woeful other than a 3 year stretch a few years ago but have won less than 25 games in 3 of the past 4 years. The potential to not suck is there with a couple of solid players (Gay, Randolph, Conley) so maybe things will turn around. And just in case they do, I’ll put the Pacers as my runner-up, who have been similarly horrific over the past 7 years, are in a city that fits a lot of the profile above (auto racing, other sports teams – except here it is all Colts who likely relegate the Pacers to minor league status nowadays, etc).

NHL: Columbus Blue Jackets. This was the toughest one. I thought Nashville initially, but they have been real good lately. Then I thought Calgary (because I’ve been there in the winter) but they’ve made the playoffs almost every season. And even my Islanders are in NY with a bit of promise, even though the history and ownership over the past 15 years make this ripe for a choice, so there is hope there. I picked Columbus because there is no tradition whatsoever and expansion/team movement has hurt hockey more than any other sport in my mind, because the little tradition they have since 2000 includes one playoff appearance and one .500 record, and because Ohio already has college football, college basketball, Cincinnati and Cleveland for other sports (even though there is no hockey in either city) and I’m not sure that Columbus, Ohio is a real “hot spot”.

So there you have it. Apologies to any residents of these cities that I pissed off – and that’s more because they have to deal with these shitty-ass franchises.

What are your thoughts?

And while Halladay may not quite be a slam dunk just based on his lifetime career totals, he is clearly one of most dominant pitchers of the past decade and should be mentioned in the same breath as Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez. His masterpiece last night and his perfect game earlier in the year serves to show the rest of America what those who were either hardcore fans, Blue Jay fans or American League East fans have known for a long time:

Roy Halladay is a special pitcher.

On Toronto – a team that was never all that good during his tenure, and having to play at least 2 teams every single year that won 90+ games for a very good percentage of his starts. His stats against the Yankees are even better than his stats against everyone else. He was an all star for the 7th time in 12 full seasons this year, will likely win his 2nd Cy Young Award this year to go with one 2nd place finish, one 3rd place finish and two 5th place finishes. He has 3 seasons of 20 wins or more. His 169 wins are twice as many as his losses (number one among active pitchers), he has a lifetime ERA of 3.32, pitching predominantly against the toughest division in baseball for the past decade. His WAR are first or 2nd in 8 years. His 58 complete games are first among active pitchers, and he has led the league 6 times (with one second place finish). And he is routinely amongst league leaders in innings pitched.

He can easily win 300 games with the way he pitches and his relative youth, which would be unheard of after the retirement of Johnson, Maddux and Glavine.

But just as important – he instantly gives his team an excellent chance to win every single time out in a way that few pitchers over the past 15 years have – even the ones with overpowering fastballs.

Maybe his numbers aren’t as gaudy as others on the ballot, but if his career ended this postseason, what is the argument against voting him into the Hall of Fame?

George Steinbrenner is dead.

Let me begin by saying that I’m a Red Sox fan and a lifelong Yankee-hater who loathed Steinbrenner from shortly after I first heard his name. Let me further note that for the better part of the last three decades I have argued, passionately and to anyone who’d listen, that there were precisely three things wrong with Major League Baseball: domes, turf and George Steinbrenner. He was, in a nutshell, the Donald Trump of the National Pastime, and anyone who knows me even a little bit realizes that I don’t mean that in a good way.

Much has been said about Darth George and the Evil Pinstriped Empire, and much more will be said before the week is out, as the first shots are fired in the war for the man’s eternal legacy. Some of it will be positive, perhaps even worshipful. Some of it … not so much.

Here’s how he’ll go down in my book:

• If you watched the way he treated his employees, you had to be convinced that he was the worst boss in the world. If you’ve had the misfortune of working for petty dictators in your life, it was hard not to make the connection and perhaps hate him by proxy for the misery you knew he was inflicting on people who were just trying to do a good job and get home to their families at the end of the day.
• His personal shortcomings went well beyond being an asshole boss, as this Dickipedia entry indicates.
• He was horrible for the game because of how he used his money to create such a drastic competitive imbalance. Having the highest payroll doesn’t guarantee you the Series, but there’s certainly a correlation between spending and winning. And it can’t be good for the game when a majority of the teams in the league begin play in April functionally out of contention.
• On the other hand, Steinbrenner was great for the game because every compelling drama needs a strong heel. It’s good for baseball when the Yankees are winning because they’re so polarizing. You love ‘em or you hate ‘em, and if you love ‘em or hate ‘em you’re more likely to tune in for an epic battle between Good and Evil. Perhaps moreso than any other narrative thread in American popular culture, the great American morality play that unfolds each October is most engaging when the Yankees are on stage.
• George was also good for the game because he helped the players get their fair share. We all like to rail about how appalling it is that athletes get paid such obscene sums of money to run around in the sunshine while teachers are lucky if they can make enough to pay the bills, and we’re justified in doing so. But that’s not the whole picture. See, before free agency, you still had all that money flowing into the sport – it just all collected in the pockets of the owners. And let’s be honest, nobody is going to the park or flipping on the TV to watch the owners. So it’s only fair that the players profited equitably from their efforts. Aside from Curt Flood, nobody did more to spark the transfer of wealth from owners to athletes than the Human ATM, George Steinbrenner.
• Finally, American pro sports is plagued with owners who aren’t really interested in winning. They’re looking to maximize profits, and since winning can be an expensive proposition, often the best way of doing that is to spend just enough so that your team is more interesting than whatever re-runs are on television that night. Want an example? Talk to fans of the Pirates, or the Clippers, or the Lions, or Royals. It’s not hard to find a take-the-money-and-run owner – in fact, if you find yourself at an annual owner’s meeting you won’t be able to swing a dead cat without hitting one. Steinbrenner, though, he was in it to win and the team’s fans knew it. In many ways, his feral commitment to reaching the mountaintop every damned year is what fans in every city in America wish they had. So if George was bad for baseball, he was also good for New York’s baseball fans. I rarely say things like “don’t hate the playa, hate the game,” but I will here.

In the final analysis, we want people to be easily categorized. We want to feel good or bad, and mostly, we want to be able to feel something simple and straightforward. But people are complex, even really rich and famous people, and Steinbrenner is no exception. Sometimes they’re great. Sometimes they’re bastards. And as I noted in a comment some time back on Bob Knight, sometimes the answer is “all of the above.” So it was with George Steinbrenner, a genuine son of a bitch who nonetheless got some things right in his eight decades among us.

RIP, you hateful Yankee bastard. Cooperstown awaits. So says this Red Sox fan.

Clearly, I take baseball quite seriously, which is why I hate interleague play.

By the time interleague play entered the lexicon of American baseball fans, I was into my teen years and had been playing Little League longer than the average Major League career. I wasn’t sure about the concept in the beginning, but I’ve come to despise the weeks of summer when my home team plays the other league.

I grew up in the Deep South, a place where there is only one baseball team: the Atlanta Braves. Consequently, I have no desire to which “regional rivalries” like Kansas City vs. St. Louis, the Angels and the Dodgers or the Subway Series in New York. I don’t particularly care about the only two other teams below the Mason-Dixon, which didn’t exist until after I had been a Braves fan for over a decade. Neither do I have any desire to watch other National League teams wasting their time against the American League. I have no interest in that league till the tail end of fail. Right now, I’m more concerned with my team’s route to the Fall Classic.

But the the biggest reason I despise interleague play is that fact, yes fact, that American League Baseball is not real baseball. That’s bound to start some fights here.

I’m what many refer to as a baseball purist, but one doesn’t have to be a purist to understand that the American League doesn’t play by the rules. All you must do is refer to Rule 1.01, the very first rule of baseball:

Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires.

An American League line-up, with the exception of games in which those teams are lucky enough to set foot on National League grass, consists of 10 players.

The designated hitter rule is an abomination. It’s poker with a fifth ace. It’s subbing a linebacker for the punter after the punt. It’s replacing Jake Gyllenhaal’s acting skills with Marlon Brando’s, but keeping the pretty face.

As long as interleague play exists, I will grudgingly watch my home team each game. I’ll watch as a bench warmer goes in at first or in left so the every day guy can DH. I’ll watch it, but I won’t be happy about it.
What am I talking about? No matter how much I hate the DH or despise interleague play, I’ll be ecstatic just to watch the greatest game on the planet– even if it’s the silly fake American League version.

Buying the hype continues for me to this day – drafting players like Chase Utley, Corey Hart, Andrew McCutchen, Tim Lincecum and Ike Davis in my rotisserie baseball keeper leagues while they were still in AA or AAA ball. And I really, really hope this Strasburg kid lives up to his potential – especially since baseball has done a piss poor job of promoting its young, exciting players and frankly, the game itself (thanks for nothing, Bud….)

That being said, reading this article that “makes the case” for Strasburg being an All-Star this season misses the mark in so many ways. Not that he hasn’t had three very solid starts – albeit against barely major league hitters on Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and a then-below .500 White Sox team (his next start will be against the Royals). But this piece of the argument is straight out of the “where have I heard this before?” book:

The only question on him now appears to be: Is he a once-in-a-lifetime pitcher, or a once-in-a-century pitcher?

Admittedly, the forces of stodginess will all be aligned against the appearance of Stephen Strasburg on an All-Star roster at this early date. There are always legions in favor of the baseball status quo. Let’s not do anything different, because, well, it might be too different. And in this case, even the Nationals probably wouldn’t want Strasburg pitching in a situation over which they had little or no control.

But, but, but Stephen Strasburg is a special case. The only negative result from putting him on the NL All-Star roster would probably be that some of the other All-Star pitchers, after seeing him work, would go back to their respective teams with inferiority complexes.

It isn’t about the “status quo” or not doing anything different – if it was, there wouldn’t be a Wild Card or intraleague play, and one Armando Galarraga would have a 28 out perfect game on record. In the case of Strasburg and this year’s All Star game, it is about whether he deserves to be there – plain and simple – not whether the hype mandates that he be there.

Let’s look back just a few short months – to one Jason Heyward of the Atlanta Braves. Chipper Jones comparing Heyward to former Tennessee Titans DE Jevon Kearse and Bobby Cox compared Heyward to Hank Aaron – before he saw one major league pitch that counted. And we can go back further and further – remember when JD Drew was compared to Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial before blowing off the Phillies when they drafted him? He’s still around and has had a pretty decent career – but come on – nothing near that hype. Of course, if you wanted a rookie NL pitcher on the All-Star squad that has deserved it from Day 1, look no further than Jaime Garcia on St. Louis, who only has 70Ks, a sub-2.00 ERA, 7 wins and a 1.21 WHIP through 14 starts.

The list goes on and on. Kerry Wood was compared to Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens. Mark Prior was even better and had the “perfect windup” so as to never get injured. Eric Davis had 2 of the more amazing seasons in 1986 and 1987 and was compared to Willie Mays before a number of average, injury riddled seasons and a bout with cancer (which was one of the best comeback stories) left his career as another “what could have been”. I won’t even get into Doc Gooden or Darryl Strawberry – 2 guys who had very good careers and accomplishments, but nothing near the lofty instant-Hall-of Fame hype that was heaped upon them those first few seasons.

If Strasburg is this good, lucky and healthy, he will have many All-Star games to come. Ditto for Heyward, and maybe even Florida’s Michael Stanton or the Mets’ Ike Davis. But right now, neither Strasburg nor Heyward are even the most deserving player on their own teams. Let’s watch these guys do their thing and maybe blaze their own paths. But there is only one Mantle, Aaron, Mays, Ryan and even Clemens. In the meantime, if baseball wanted to do something that was “for the good of its fans”, then maybe coming clean on PEDs and marketing the players who have already proved themselves as perennial All-Stars or future Hall of Famers would be a better idea.