Jose Bautista vs. George Bell

In terms of power, the definitive Blue Jays' season belongs to George Bell.  In 1987 he led the league in RBI's and total bases and was named the American League MVP.  What's interesting about the 1987 MVP selection is that it's become a great example of how new statistical measures have changed the way we look at player value; Bell had 332 votes compared to Alan Trammal's 311, a pretty close race.  Side by side, the MVP outcome shows pretty clearly which feats were the most important at the time.  Bell had 47 HR's, 134 RBI's, and a 54 point advantage in slugging % (.605 vs. .551) compared to Trammell's 28 HR's and 105 RBI's.  Bell also hit .302 so yeah, great year for sure (all numbers are from Baseball-Reference.com).  Except that now things have changed; we value RBI's a lot less and are concerned more with the offensive performance relative to the player's position.  RBI's, of course, have lost panache because, and this is pretty intuitive, they really have more to do with how good your teammates are at getting on base.  So while Bell had a higher slugging %, Trammell had a higher on-base percentage (.402 vs. .352), drawing him almost even for OPS (.953 vs. 957).  Trammell did this as a shortstop; that's a fantastic season for a middle infielder.  Bell had a great year but played an easier defensive position (and played it a lot worse when you compared range factor), walked a lot less (39 vs. 60), didn't steal many bases (5 vs. 28) and had less hits overall (188 vs. 205).  All this stuff is summed up nicely in a stat called W.A.R.P., or Wins Above Replacement Player.  It basically looks at how many more wins a player contributes over the course of a season above what an average or Triple A player could contribute .  It's complicated but it concludes that Trammell contributed an 8.5 WARP (anything over 8 is considered an MVP season) while Bell put up a 5.0 (an All-Star season, but nothing to raise eyebrows over).  But what's done is done.

So George Bell's 1987 MVP may be in dispute, his team record for homeruns has not.  At least until Jose Bautista hits one more.  They're currently tied at 47 and with 16 games left in the season, Bautista has a pretty good shot to get to 50, let alone to the top of the team's homerun heap.  But, again, who's had a better season?  Comparing Bell and Bautista is actually a little easier considering they're both corner outfielders.  The games played won't quite line up, but here's the basic rundown so far:

Bautista:  145 games, 47 HRs, 134 hits, 32 2Bs, 111 RBIs, 8/10 SBs, 93 BB's, 106 K's, .262/.381/.613, .994 OPS, 165 OPS+, 313 total bases

Bell: 156 games, 47 HRs, 188 hits, 32 2Bs, 134 RBIs, 5/6 SBs, 39 BBs,  75 K's, .308/.352/.605, .957 OPS, 146 OPS+, 369 total bases.

So Bell had 54 more hits but Bautista had 54 more walks.  That doesn't quite even out obviously, since a hit can mean more than just one base, so close edge to Bell.  Way more RBI's for Bell but, again, this isn't really important unless you believe in magical powers, called "knacks," that turn themselves on in only the clutchiest, team-neediest situations.  "Knacks" for things don't exist when players have 600 plus at-bats; huge sample sizes are why baseball numbers are so statistically meaningful.  ANYWAY, Bautista does have way more strikeouts and while a popular opinion suggests strikeouts are no worse than any other type of put-out, I think that logically that's wrong.  At least if the ball is in play the possibility for a productive out exists.  Possibilities for errors, runners' advancing on a fielder's choice, that sort of thing.  Of course if the ball is in play then you can also have UN-productive outs, like double-plays.  So, I guess, um, shut up.  I don't like strikeouts.  ANYWAYS, Bautista's walks give him the advantage in on-base percentage and OPS, but Bell retains the advantage, at least at this point in the season, in total bases.  So far the best indicator is probably the difference in OPS+, which takes into account park factors and compares a player's numbers against the rest of the league's.  Bautista's had a much better year relative to his peer's than Bell, so offensively we award a split decision to Jose Bautista.

You've got to at least ask the question...

Damien Cox, a hockey "writer," voiced his, um, not quite opinion, not quite a question, not really any kind of reporting at all, about Jose Bautista's sudden power surge this year, complete with the requisite suspicion about PED's.  This wasn't in his column but his own blog.  The issue raised here and here has been about whether or not the lack reaction against his article, compared to Jerod Morris asking the same baseless questions (albeit in a much less accusatory, faux-noble and contemptible way) about Raul Ibanez last year, is a result of a double-standard between bloggers and mainstream writers.  Morris was raked over the coals for suggesting that, given the history of baseball stars and steroids, it was reasonable to be suspicious of any player who's had a dramatic performance jump.  Why hasn't the mainstream media attacked Cox the same way for the same kind of unfounded character assassination?  Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler went after him during, if I remember, the second game of the Jays-Yankees series but didn't mention him by name and didn't really drop the hammer.  Their criticism was mostly that he isn't around the team, hadn't seen how hard he worked, intangibles, blah blah, square jaw blah.  I'm here to fill in that criticism. 

My problem with the Cox article isn't that he thinks there's something funny about Jose Bautista's numbers this year.  I think every fan who's watched a game this year wonders how a guy with 100 career homeruns managed to hit 42 of them in two-thirds of a season.  It's not even the numbers; have you watched this guy hit baseballs this year?  It's like his bat is twice the width of a normal bat and he's hitting tennis balls filled with flying faerie juice.  His groundouts are hit harder than Ichiro's homeruns.  When he connects it sounds like missiles detonating against other missiles.  He's killing so many baseballs that Greenpeace activists throw buryric acid at him like he's a Japanese whaler.  Of COURSE one has to wonder why.  

Cox fails to understand that "just asking the question" is tantamount to an accusation, especially when you consider that Major League Baseball does indeed test for steroids.  There's no proof, no corroboration, not even an unnamed source he can point to as a catalyst for his article.  There's only a jump in numbers and, remarkable as Bautista's year as been relative to other seasons, a spike in numbers isn't remarkable in itself.  In fact, considering the rollercoaster Aaron Hill and Adam Lind's numbers are riding from last year to this year, we should be asking what performance-enhancing substance they were using last year.  Or, rather,  what performance-damaging substance they're using this year, depending on which season you think is the outlier.  Statistical abnormalities happen all the time.  To properly analyze stats, the analyst has to appropriately set the parameters of a player's sample size, otherwise, the comparisons are meaningless.  Cox, bless him, is a hockey writer and only knows about Stanley Cup rings, Heart, Soul, Grit, Toughness, Character and (as a Toronto newspaper writer) that fighting is bad.  It's common sense that the way you count and compare numbers is important, right?  When you look at the Raul Ibanez example this makes much more sense. 

This is terrific article on the Ibanez-Jerod Morris hulabaloo from last year.  Briefly, the story was that Raul Ibanez got off to an incredible start last year, hitting .329/.386/.676 with 19 homers and 54 RBI's in his first 55 games (all numbers from the linked article).  That's 55 HR's and 159 RBI's over 162 games.  In other words, preposterous numbers for a 37-year-old.  After some deliberation on the situation itself, Posnanski makes the astute point that the kind of stretch Ibanez started the season on was typical of many other hot streaks he'd had in his career.  He points out a number of other stretches of games where Ibanez got hot and put up similar numbers only to cool off later and revert to form.  These stretches, like any hot stretch for any player in any sport, seemed to come at random, either mid-season, playoffs, whenever.  Has Ibanez ever hit 55 HR's and drove in 159 runs in a season before?  No, but his career numbers suggest numerous occasions where he's been as good of a hitter.  The point is that when an analyst says a player's performance is outside their normal range of production, they have to be very careful that they know exactly how that past performance has been quantified.

Obviously, in the case of Jose Baustita, there is no 130 game stretch one can point to and see a similar display, therefore this season stands totally apart from the rest of his career.  TSN looks at outlier seasons here in an attempt to explain how Bautista's amazing season compares to other players whose careers had an unexpected jump.  There's lots of examples of players coming out of nowhere, having career years before disappearing due to injury or ineffectiveness.  That contextual lens makes more sense, doesn't it?  He's a guy who got into a good situation in Toronto, was given all the playing time he wanted, stayed healthy and kept getting pitches to hit because Vernon Wells started out strongly too.  Before long Bautista will be back platooning with some other average player and we'll all talk about his one amazing year.  Right?  Not steroids, just a fluke?

Or is it a fluke?  Carlos Pena is one of the top first basemen in the American League.  He's had seasons of 46, 31 and 39 HR's and is on pace for 34 this year.  He's won a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger, played in the All-Star game in 2009 and was in the MVP discussion in 2007 and 2008.  He came out of nowhere too; his breakout year was 2007 but he was drafted way back in 1998.  He only went to the Rays because Boston let him go as a free agent, as did the Yankees the off-season before that.  There's never been a hint of discussion about Pena and steroids.  Bautista could be another Pena, a star who comes out of nowhere and excels on a young team because he was given a chance to play every day.  It's not hard to see examples of players who've had seasons well outside their career averages, nor it is impossible to find players who've come from obscurity and turned into stars.  

I'm not stupid or naive, of course I wonder about Bautista's line drives that dent the centrefield restaurant, but nor am I a well-known sportswriter whose job it is to do some research.  Pena is a great story because he's the exception to the rule, as is Bautista and any other player who's toiled in the minors, been a free agent, been a Rule 5 or a waiver pick up only to find a home and have a great year or two.  The point is that there lots of examples of this kind of thing happening where steroids weren't an issue, yet Cox doesn't even mention an alternative.  Shouldn't he?  I guess he's not just curiously "asking the question" since to do so would suggest he's willing to look at any explanation, not just the one he's decided on.  His argument seems to be that because other players did steroids and baseball's rules allowed it, every player who's numbers go up dramatically is subject to pessimism and doubt.  Well, okay, that's actually reasonable.  We're all jaded and suspicious now.  Except that Major League Baseball does in fact test for steroids.  That's important isn't it?  Shouldn't Cox address that?  Well no because again, he's not actually accusing Bautista outright, he's just complaining about baseball's steroid history and tossing Bautista's name in the mud.  Let's see how it looks if I do something similar.  Ahem...

Don't blame me.  When it comes to Damien Cox, how is it exactly that one of his blog posts, normally ignored by everyone outside of Toronto, suddenly becomes one of most talk-about stories in Major League Baseball?  Chance?  New keyboard?  Diet (ahhh no, this is a sportswriter after all)?  New reading glasses?  Anyone familiar with the great Mitch Albom's brush with controversy should at least be willing to wonder about Cox's sudden transformation into the baseball writer king.

Shouldn't we at least be asking the question about whether or not Cox "borrowed" some ideas from someone else and "forgot" to credit them?  I mean, this recent blog post is pretty explosive, much more than his usual body of work, and plagiarism has happened before, not that Cox has ever been accused of this sort of thing but SHOULDN'T WE AT LEAST ASK??  Don't blame me, it's certainly not my fault that it's now up to Cox to defend himself against a totally baseless charge he did nothing to deserve.  I can't be held responsible for anything I write!  Why?  I'll tell you why?  BECAUSE SOME WRITERS SOMEWHERE HAVE PLAGIARIZED BEFORE!!!

Disclosure:  Cox Bloc did this same angle on Cox-as-a-plagiarizer.  I read it afterwards so I did NOT plagiarize, I'm just guilty of being less clever than I originally thought.  That was certainly bound to happen eventually though.  

Stupid Damien Cox.  Take some damn responsibility for your opinions, or do some research, or know something about steroid testing, or samples sizes, or innocent until proven guilty, or anything to do with being not just a reporter but, good God, the associate sports editor at a major newspaper. 

"Go Gay Go! SCORES!!!"

I was driving home from work today, as I often do, and was listening to an interesting conversation on the radio about gays in sports.  Mark Spector's recent column was the topic and Spector was on the show with TSN's Ryan Rishaug and Sportsnet's Jaime Thomas.  They were talking about how the pro sports world would react to whichever player was willing to come out and become the first openly gay active pro athlete in team sports.  There's been former athletes come out after their playing careers and several pro tennis players and golfers have come out (do your own research if you want to know who!) but so far nobody in any of the four major sports has been willing.

I say "willing" because, as was noted on the radio, the word "courage" would be somewhat disrespectful to players who aren't willing to make that public announcement.  It is their choice after all; it shouldn't come down to courage vs. cowardice dichotomy since it's hardly cowardly to want some privacy.  Yet it will be bold for someone to go public, that's a lot of attention on a personal subject and potentially a lot of backlash.  I suspect though that it won't be the kind of backlash we might think and that's what I want to eventually bring up. 

At the same time though, there's a pretty big benefit to being that first person.  Comparisons to Jackie Robinson will be made (and hopefully tempered heavily; there's sure to be some nastiness coming that player's way but it won't be as bad and there will also be a lot more support), there's TV appearances, certainly a book deal and maybe a movie.  I don't care if an athlete is gay or straight, they're all brands and you gotta cash in when you can!

There's two major challenges for an athlete in a team sport coming out.  First, obviously, is the degree to which they will be accepted by their teammates, opponents, fans and media.  I would think that teammates would be the group any athlete considering this announcement would be most concerned with.  They spend more time during the season with their teammates than with their family, after all.  It's not necessary that everyone be best friends of course, but a divided team will collapse at the first sign of hardship.  These are the truisms we've been taught by players and coaches so we'll just believe them and move on.  Imagine a team divided along lines substantially trickier than strategies and practice length and you can see how a player would hesitate at unleashing this kind of polarizing issue in their dressing room. 

That's where this debate becomes a little murkier and much more interesting.  Homosexuality in our society is a hot-button issue and gay marriage rights are the fault line of a major cultural identity crisis in the United States.  For a player contemplating this decision this kind of polarization is, seemingly, a major concern.  Is it though?  Here's a reasonable expectation for how each of the four above listed groups will react.

The media will be overwhelmingly supportive and congratulatory towards that player because, well, can you imagine what will happen if they are not?  Sure you'll get a few Rush Limbaughs who say exactly the wrong thing, there will be a few irrelevant preacher types who warn of the impending Apocalypse, but this will serve the player in the end because every else in the media will absolutely shit on their head.  Don't worry Mr. Gay Athlete, the media will be your loyal foot soldier because God help them or their editor if they are not. 

The fans will make jokes, be supportive, be spiteful, cheer loudly, boo when he (and this is a "he" we're talking about here, in no way are the same social issues present if Serena Williams says she's a lesbian) drops the ball or goes 0 for 5.  Fan will be incredibly supportive and caring, ignorant and horrible, distant and disinterested, and quickly distracted by the next game and a different channel.  The player will be pretty separated from all of that.  Players love the fans when they're cheering for them, are mildly annoyed or indifferent when they boo and are totally removed from any other opinion they might have.  Sure, that first game will garner them a pretty good cheer but after that fans will grow bored and will find something else to argue over.  It'll be a story that turns into a novelty and soon forgotten.

Opponents will be very interesting.  Which player is willing to be publicly flayed in the media and heavily fined over some comment meant only to get inside their opponent's head?  Apart from Sean Avery?  Think of the most famous attention whores in each sport.  Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco don't seem like they'd go that far, and besides that isn't about them so they won't care about it.  Fame sluts in the NBA only care about joining the Heat, baseball players don't often give those kinds of quotes, and even Avery or a Steve Ott might not push this one.  Hockey has its own set of accepted groups that are, apparently, considered fair game for discrimination: French Canadiens, Swedes, Russians, oh hell, all of Europe.  Homosexuality isn't the same and any trash talk in this direction would quickly go public and follow that linecrosser around for their whole career, like the Avery-Georges Laraque incident.  Leagues will come down hard on this kind of trash talking and it won't be worth it.

The most reactionary, backwards, ignorant comments, either from opponents or teammates, will come from league oddballs like... well, it's probably unfair to call players cavemen before they've done anything.  Carl Everett was a crazy, crazy man but he's retired now.  I really only wrote that sentence so I could link to those quotes.  Lots of people will agree with those comments but publicly only a minority will support anyone who comes out against homosexuals in sports and in society.  Maybe I'm being naive but I think that there's far more support for the first gay player than they think.  Those outlying voices will be written off and characterized as unfortunately relics of an era we soon hope to pass.

Here's where it's not so simple.  This player, wherever he is, will be a big, big deal when he comes out.  Interviews in every city, print and radio, for himself, his teammates, opponents, management, everyone. This will be a travelling circus long after the national interest has waned because each city will need to hear his story one more time.  Let's say then that the opposition this player faces from his own team isn't about his beliefs or his lifestyle but the distraction he'll cause for his team?  His teammates will all range in supportiveness but none will particularly enjoy the distraction after the novelty has worn off.  That's where the real centre of this debate lies to me because publicly the first gay athlete will be overwhelmingly hailed for his courage for paving the path for the future.  Again, maybe I'm naive, but I think it's a pretty clear path, media-wise, as long as the announcement isn't totally botched, like right before Game 7 or something.  It's the other public debate that will be misunderstood, miscontrued, poorly verballized and set up as a straw man:  Will it be okay to love the announcer but hate the announcement? 

Things that Are and Are Not okay with the NHL

Things that are Okay:

-15 year, front-loaded, cap-circumventing contracts that are unlikely to be fulfilled because both the player and the team are aware that the player is a butterfly goalie with groin muscles made out of gossamer and voodoo.

-12 year, front-loaded, cap-circumventing contracts that are unlikely to be fulfilled signed mere minutes after a player has declared themselves a free agent on July 1st.  Or by a Canadian on a Canadian team.

-8 year contracts to aging defensemen that is unlikely to be fulfilled by teams whose owner were prominent in Gary Bettman's hiring and supported him through the lockout.

-12 and 11 year contracts, front-loaded, cap-circumventing, signed by Detroit.  Detroit and player contracts are like a Roy Halladay fastball that paints the outside corner:  They both know what they're doing so they always get the call.

-13 year contracts signed by the league's most popular player.  There's no out-clause where he can bolt for the KHL, right?  Okay, yeah, then it's fine.

-Headshots, hits from behind, missed high-sticking penalties.

-Concussions.

-Bankruptcies.

-Labour disputes.

-Neutral zone traps.

-Bad attendance.

-Bad U.S. television numbers, unless absolute top-flight superstars are involved.

-Potential team owners who cobble together money from the sock drawers of magicians, couch cushions of used car salesmen and the power of Gary Bettman's prayers.


Things that are Not Okay:

-17 year contracts that is unlikely to be fulfilled IF the player is Russian, not North American or the Good Kind of Eastern European.

-Potential team owners who are Canadian and RICH AS FUCK.

-"Sloppy seconds."

-ESPN

-The 2007 Preakness Stakes.


So yeah, the Kovalchuk contract is a hilariously bad contract.  Here's the breakdown, courtesy of NJ.com:

2010-11: $6 million
2011-12: $6 million
2012-13: $11.5 million
2013-14: $11.5 million
2014-15: $11.5 million
2015-16: $11.5 million
2016-17: $11.5 million
2017-18: $10.5 million
2018-19: $8.5 million
2019-20: $6.5 million
2020-21: $3.5 Million
2021-22: $750,000
2022-23: $550,000
2023-24: $550,000
2024-25: $550,000
2025-26: $550,000
2026-27: $550,000

The total cap hit is $6 million.  Or "was."  It's ridiculous, right?  Look at the last 6 years!  It takes our beloved CBA that we lost a year of hockey for, chews it for a while, spits some of it out, stores the rest in its lip for years until it develops a Lou Brown voice:




 


THEN sprays it all over the front page of every hockey publication in North America!  A tragemedy!  Except that it's totally legal, totally compliant with the CBA and would probably win an appeal, even though the Devils have said that they won't appeal the ruling.  This is so stupid.  WHY DOES THE NHL DO THIS?!?!  I'M SO MAD I oh fuck it it's 30 degrees outside, who cares.  Enjoy your summer!

The Team That Everyone Hated

*I'm sorry if you read this after I published it but before I edited it.  That's the wrong order to do things in.  The amount of typos and spelling mistakes... just, sorry.

See those guys?  A busy week for the three worst people in the world.  They ruined the competitive playing field in the NBA, engaged in blatant collusion against the poor helpless owners, shamelessly flaunted the loyalties of their former and current cities, wreaked further havoc on the already-shaky sporting confidence of one of the world's great cities (over a sport they don't even like), grabbed the poor ugly kid/city who never gets the girl who tries oh so hard and punched it in the face on national TV, possibly ended the life of the NBA in one city but that doesn't matter because they set in motion a series of events that ENDS WITH CLEVELAND BURIED AND FORGOTTEN.

Oh it was quite a week.  If you can find any sports news website columnist, blogger, radio personality or Guy You Met Once At A Party who thinks that Lebron's bizarre ESPN primetime Hey, Go Fuck Yourself Cleveland! was in poor taste, congratulations, you've passed into a parallel universe!  Neato!  Bring me back some of the Oreos with the cookie part in the middle and a shopping cart with three wonky wheels!  Nobody likes it!  Anywhere!

But how could you not???  We were witness to something pretty special:  the culmination of all the world's sporting egos combining together to form Egonotron, the Most Powerful Ego, whose powers include 1) thinking it's okay to humiliate one of the saddest, most unlucky loser cities in North America, 2) hold a ONE HOUR ESPN SPECIAL to simply say "Next year I basket my ball in *blank*," and 3) not telling anyone in Cleveland (remember Cleveland?  That city near Akron where you're from?), either the fans or the team that hired, fired and signed whoever James wanted, what he was doing and made them find out on TV SEVEN DAYS after free agency started.  That sucks because there are, you know, other players out there that Cleveland might've wanted to sign if you didn't want to play there.  All of this, all this self-created hype and exposure, all this attention and the weird WWE-style intro:



All this so that the Greatest Basketball Player on Earth (except for all those guys with NBA Championships like Kobe, Tim Duncan, Dwayne Wade, Shaquille O'Neal) could live with this philosophy (from Joe Posnanski's always brilliant blog.  Why aren't you reading him right now?):

“We don’t have to have the pressure of going out, scoring 30 every night, or shooting a high percentage or logging long minutes and worrying about our team suffering because of that at times.”

In other words, ALL THIS NONSENSE was so that Lebron can do LESS on the court that he was before and accomplish MORE because basketball will be EASY NOW and make this whole ordeal easier without all that silly team-building.  No more 30 point games!  Won't it be better for the team now that I, Lebron James, one of the two best players in the game, am playing LESS?  Why aren't other athletes like Gretzky, Jordan or someone else with a championship, as giving as I?  Now, with Bosh and Wade and some part-time cap-friendly illegal Cubans in the lineup, James can simply stroll into his pre-ordained vestige as Basketball Demigod.  Won't it be so much easier now without all that work???  We might never see anything this ballsy again.  Haha!  Of course we will.  After all, Kevin Durant is due for free agency... wait!  What's this?  The youngest player to even win an NBA scoring title just re-signed in his own bland and unremarkable city?  Without ESPN there to lick his balls for a full hour?  Pussy. 

Public opinion seems split on whether or not it was okay for Lebron to leave Cleveland at all.  Public opinion, in this case, is being gauged by the two hours of sports radio I listened to on a road trip before I lost signal, or my brain shut off from lack of activity, whichever.  Some callers, and one host, thought he'd blown his chance at greatness not so much by leaving his hometown team that drafted him, no, that only cost him immortality, but by going to a team with another superstar and another very good star.  By giving his reason for leaving as needing to play with better players, he was basically admitting that he needed help, couldn't do it alone, and wasn't willing to stay and build a team around him like Jordan or Bryant.  I counter that with "So he treated a team sport like a team sport?  He didn't destroy and alienate everyone around him by insisting on doing things his way, maybe having some players traded because they were as good as him?  He's going to sacrifice some vague notion of personal glory in order to win championships?  What an ASS!!!!

Other callers, and the other host, seemed to think that it's fine for him to leave, Clevelanders are embarrassing themselves by showing how angry, sad and hurt they are and after all James did spent seven years there, re-signing once and giving the team every chance to build a championship around him.  He left because management couldn't find any complimentary talents to play with him, so he took charge of his own life and career and made the best move for himself and his family.  I'll counter that with BUT HE WON 60 GAMES TWICE!  If the Lakers or Heat had back to back 60 win season and didn't even make the finals, Kobe and Wade would be labelled chokers!  Why is it different with Lebron???

The lesson, of course, is that nobody's right about anything and everyone's an idiot.  Well, except for everyone who says the one hour on ESPN was stupid.  When they announced The Decision would air on ESPN, it was like when the Oilers traded away the 17th overall pick in the 2003 draft to New Jersey and the Devils took Zack Parise.  I was watching and knew it was stupid right away and it would only prove itself a stupider and stupider move the more time went by.  Same thing with The Decision, everyone knew it was preposterously arrogant, self-important, journalistic unethical and embarrassing the minute it was announced.  It got so much worse when it included, as a bonus, the crushed soul of an entire city which simply accelerated the rate at which this ridiculous experience has sickened our taste for the famous and powerful in sports.  Only when they actually act rich and powerful though; we're fine with with them when they act like cole miners, pulling out teeth and getting stitched up in hallways.  Athletes:  They're Not Really Like Us At All!

Perhaps the only thing more universally agreed-upon than the denouncing of ESPN's Big Stupid Mess, at least among fans, is how much everyone wants to see this team get its ass kicked.  Every caller I listened to giving their "opinion" on whether it was okay for Lebron to leave Cleveland either loudly cheered for or quietly conceded that they hoped the Heat lose out at some point this year, either suffering the embarrassment of not making the playoffs at all or the heartbreak of an overtime playoff loss.  I'm hoping for a Final where Kobe hits an impossible three-pointer to give the Lakers the lead with seconds left and for Lebron to miss the buzzer-beater while Wade and Bosh wave their arms and scream "I'M OPEN!!!"