Cup of Coffee

June 21, 2012: Crunch Time

123 Comments

Now's about the time each year that I say "Uh-oh, only single digit days until The Milkmaid's birthday and I don't know what to get her."

Um...what should I get her?

123 thoughts on “June 21, 2012: Crunch Time”

  1. Hooray, I'm not the only one. I'm not at single digit days yet, but I only have one month left.

    2. Mrs. A and I stopped getting presents for each other a few years ago. We generally go out to dinner someplace, but that's about it.

        1. It's been said before, but it bears repeating: all I want is the big piece of chicken.

          1. Since I was about 16, I've been telling my family I didn't want anything for either Christmas or my birthday. This year, my gift was the entry fee to my triathlon. I'm perfectly fine getting nothing, but my mom insisted I get something, so this was a nice middle ground.

      2. Buying something for your spouse seems silly because you share the same funds. I think there are three exceptions:

        1)It's something they keep saying they want but don't get motivation to get it (though I rarely wait for birthday for that)
        2)It's something you both can enjoy
        3)You actually make something for them, which I try to do the most often. I've made crosswords, cryptograms, wordfinds, friendship bracelets, poems, etc.

  2. You're probably a bit too late to use my last idea: I got EAR a new baby for her last birthday.

    1. Just let'em go at it until one guy can't get up anymore, problem solved. Isn't that what boxing fans want anyway?

    2. Setting aside controversies for a moment, boxing scores seem completely fabricated. I understand that most bouts which would become lopsided get settled by KO, but no one ever seems to win by more than 2-3% when it goes to a decision.

        1. From what I've seen, judges basically score as such:

          1)One boxer seemed better that round 10-9
          2)One boxer seemed better and also knocked the guy down 10-8
          3)One boxer seemed better and knocked the guy down twice 10-7
          4)One boxer creamed the other guy, but he got knocked down once and other didn't 9-9

        2. What does the score mean? I guess I thought the scores had something to do with punches, but are they just arbitrary points? I guess in that case it would make a lot more sense. They are just using a silly scale, and if 10-9 and 10-8 are the only scores which are used in practice, they could just use 2-1 and 2-0 to score the rounds. For the review scores that would mean instead of 118-110, 117-111, 117-111, 116-112 and 115-113, the scores would be 22-14, 21-15, 21-15, 20-16, and 19-17. That looks a lot more reasonable to me in that 22-14 looks like a beatdown but 118-110 seems close.

          1. That's correct. Using a 10 point scale is arbitrary because a round would never be scored 10-3 or 7-2, or whatever.

            Olympic boxing is scored differently and seemingly more objectively.

            1. Another example of a historical system that sticks around even if it doesn't make much sense, I suppose. Soccer should take note and give each team one point for each minute they are able to make it through the game. Is a 90-90 draw more marketable than a 0-0 draw?

              1. Since the product is soccer, marketing doesn't make a difference. In most of the world it is absentmindedly praised, and in the U.S. it is absentmindedly ignored. So you know... whatever.

                1. It is increasingly not ignored in the US, though. Last night I attended a mid-week MLS match with no special significance (not a rival, no marquee players on the visiting team, not an opener, not at the end of the season with a playoff spot on the line, no fireworks, not a double-header with another game), and there were 46,000 in attendance with me and one of the goals made #2 on SportsCenter's Top 10.

                  1. Soccer is gaining popularity? I feel like I've heard this before.

                    Like, for my entire life.

                    2. I wouldn't consider myself a fan, but I do enjoy being whipped into a nationalistic fervor. And I played some growing up and I think that is the case for more and more people. That and demographic changes = soccer is gaining popularity, for reals.

                    3. And it has been gaining in popularity for your whole life? I don't see how anyone could argue against the position that soccer has been gaining in popularity in the US. MLS is healthy and expanding, World Cup ratings continue to increase, more kids are playing it. Just because it hasn't magically become the most popular sport in the US doesn't mean that it isn't growing. The whole idea that soccer will never be popular in the US is tiresome.

                    4. My argument isn't that it isn't gaining in popularity. My argument is "meh." Like Strat, I enjoy a good nationalistic fervor from time to time and played some growing up. But ultimately, soccer isn't anything special. It isn't the most popular sport in the US. It's not the 5th most popular sport. It isn't ever going to be. And it doesn't deserve to be.

                    5. And it doesn't deserve to be.

                      Ugly American Alert!!!

                      I laughed at this, because I assumed it to be hyperbole.

                      It wasn't that long ago (less than a century) that boxing and horse racing were the most popular spectator sports in the US, and the NFL was a backwater.

                    6. But ultimately, soccer isn't anything special.

                      One could argue the same thing about any sport. Baseball's nothing special. Football's nothing special. I don't see MLS (a roughly 15-year-old league) passing up leagues that have been around for 50+ years any time soon, but I see no reason that it won't eventually be at least as popular as hockey in the US.

                    7. Yes, it was hyperbole. And I was thinking about boxing specifically.

                      I think it's a distant 3rd to baseball and football (which is a distant second to baseball), and on par with basketball and hockey. So I'll back off my comment somewhat. I just get irritated when the fact that something is gaining in popularity is cited as evidence of quality. NASCAR and Justin Beiber are awfully popular too. (Note, I realize that's not quite what ubelman did here, but it was close enough that it got on that nerve).

                    8. At no point did anyone here point to popularity as proof of quality. It's nowhere close to what ubes said, nor would he engage in such a lazy argument.

                    9. I see no reason that it won't eventually be at least as popular as hockey in the US

                      Is that praise or condemnation?

                    10. I just get irritated when the fact that something is gaining in popularity is cited as evidence of quality.

                      What would it even mean for a sport to be of high quality? Such a discussion would be masturbatory at best. I was simply pointing out that soccer is not "absentmindedly ignored" in the US.

                      Is that praise or condemnation?

                      The NHL had about 21M attendance for '10-'11. An NHL season is longer than a soccer season, so figure that equivalent interest in a domestic soccer league would translate to about 10M in attendance. (Fewer games, but also larger capacity in general.) 10M fans per year would essentially make it the 4th-most attended soccer league in the world and the 9th-most attended domestic sports league in the world. Personally, I don't think that NHL-level popularity is anything to scoff at.

                    11. The EPL and Champions League TV numbers in the US are going up.

                      MLS not so much on the TV side, but most teams are able to get fairly good attendance, and some like Portland and Seattle are going pretty nuts.

                    12. National TV for MLS has not been going up, but I would guess that local TV ratings have been going up, which are likely just as--if not more--important to the revenue picture. Not long ago, MLS had to pay to get their games on national TV, and now they have a deal in place that makes them money. Progress. LA just got a 10-year, $55M local TV deal. Small beans compared to the biggest leagues in the US, but huge progress compared to ten years ago.

                    13. Soccer boosters have been their own worst enemy in the past claiming that soccer will become the most popular sport in the U.S. It has a long ways to go, and others above make some good points regarding this fact.

                      On the anecdote vein, my soon-to-be 17 year-old is paying a lot more attention to Euro2012 than the Stanley Cup Finals or NBA finals (basically none of the later). He has two soccer jerseys (Netherlands-Wesley Sneijder, Barca-Messi) v. no NBA/NFL/NHL/MLB Jersey (he does have Twins t-shirt) and he doesn't even play soccer at an organized level. One of the most popular video games his friends play besides Modern Warfare is not Madden, not MLB the Show, not NBA whatever, but FIFA 2012. I would also say that he is not an outlier in any of these things but pretty typical for a high school boy living in Minneapolis in 2012.

                      So will Soccer overtake the NFL or MLB in the national conscience anytime soon? No. But definitely the future is bright.

                    14. I think part of the "been hearing it my whole life" deal is that soccer has been repeatedly touted as the Next Big Thing. That was true going back to the days of the NASL and the MISL. Another part of it is that some soccer supporters have come across as if they believed Americans had some sort of character flaw because we do not properly appreciate the sport.

                      I don't know that soccer has been gaining in popularity my whole life (of course, I'm older than pretty much everyone here), but it definitely seems to be gain in popularity now. Which is fine. I don't know that I'll ever be interested in it, and I doubt it'll ever be number one here, but it seems to finding it's niche, and more power to it.

                    15. There are definitely obnoxious soccer fans out there, which is a phenomenon that you get with just about every sport, where there are some fans who believe their favorite sport is one best sport and all who disagree are hopelessly lost. I think what makes soccer stand out in this regard is that in the past it has largely been a theoretical exercise in the US. No one enjoys a sport because someone told them about it, they enjoy it because they've either played it or seen it played.

                      I think that having a local team to go see in person and cheer for makes a big difference, and now that MLS is getting established and expanding, there are more opportunities for people to go see a game for themselves, rather than hearing about how there's this really cool sport which exists and other people think highly of. (I also think it's a lot more fun to go see in person than it is to watch on television.) And playing it at some point in your life can also make a huge difference. I doubt I'd be much of a baseball fan if I'd never played it growing up as a kid. There's a chance, but I'm skeptical.

                    16. It's also entirely possible that I would enjoy soccer if I could watch a few games with someone who understood what was going on and could explain it to me. Right now, it looks to me like a bunch of guys running aimlessly up and down a field. I know that's not what it is, but that's what it looks like because I don't understand it.

                      It's also possible that it's a different game live than on TV. I never liked hockey until I spent a few years in the Sioux City area and watched some games in person. In person, I could see how the teams were trying to set things up and could enjoy the game a lot more. Maybe that would apply to soccer, too.

                    1. A bit of an outlier, sure, but there are plenty of other good signs to point to. This was just a convenient personal example to use since it happened last night and I was there. For a different example, how about Real Salt Lake drawing 17K fans for a 3rd-round US Open Cup game played on a Tuesday?

                  3. Latino population trends might also affect how this sport fares in the US. I remember seeing a trend saying they might go from ~17% to a third of the population in 2050.

              2. I've got a bad scoring example in soccer, although on a much smaller scale.

                My daughter's team went 2-0-1 in their bracket but the team that went 2-1 advanced to the championship. The difference in scoring? The other team shutout the bad team 11-0 while my daughter's team ONLY won 9-2 against that team. Screwy system that encourages blowouts of bad teams more than a headtohead vvictory-

                1. That's the tournament's problem more than the sport's. For example, the first tiebreaker in the Euro group stages is head-to-head results, then it's goal differential against common opponents.

                  1. Definitely. I wasn't blaming the sport. In fact, the scoring system probably works well most of the time. This was just an example of it not working.

          2. The winner of the round gets 10 points, always. It's called something like "Ten Point Must Scale". You win a round by landing more punches. In theory, you could land just 1 more punch than a guy and win a round by 10-9.

  4. How to dethrone the King of Savers...amend the rulebook!

    "People like me will never be taken as credible," Smith* says, adding, "When you've got overwhelming numbers that are so compelling**, can't you at least look at them? And the answer is no. … It is such mindless herd mentality. Because Tony La Russa is a genius, everyone follows."

    *Project Retrosheet founder Dave Smith

    **"...teams historically have won 85.7 percent of games they led by one run after eight innings, 93.7 percent of games they led by two runs and 97.5 percent of games they led by three."

    1. He rails against managers being affected by a stat and then explains how to change the rule to affect how managers manage. Huh? Maybe we should get managers that don't manage for a stat. Actually, I like the Twins' setup. They have their veteran "closer" for the ninth and that frees up their two best relievers for the situations earlier in the game that need it most. Also, how often do relievers inherit runners in games the team wins nowadays? Most of the time, if a starting pitcher is pitching effectively enough for the team to lead in the late innings, he gets taken out after his pitch count gets too high, usually after seven innings, then a setup man gets the eighth and the closer the ninth. Manager often will bring in relievers mid-inning in the seventh or eighth for matchups, but it may not necessarily be dictated by how many runners are on base, just the fact that the manager doesn't trust the current reliever to face someone he doesn't have the platoon advantage against in a high-leverage situation.

      1. Except for the part how they dramatically overpaid their "closer" instead of allowing him to walk, picking up the draft pick, and signing a comparably talented reliever for half the price.

        1. Well, nothing's perfect. I meant how the roster is being used not how it was constructed.

    2. I question his conclusion at least somewhat. Consider:

      1) Hitters have better and better outcomes each next time they face a pitcher throughout a game.

      2) Some pitchers have one or two good pitches and are therefore more suited to relief work.

      3) Most save situation are high leverage situations and even under the claim that ace relievers aren't being used most effectively, they almost universally have the highest leverage index scores for their team.

      4) At least in theory, teams have pinch hitters available on the bench and are more apt to use them in the 9th than any other inning, so ideally in the 9th inning you'd like to use a pitcher who doesn't have a big platoon split.

      I think the save rule is annoying, sure, but I don't find it to be an indictment against current relief strategy that teams today are just as good at protecting a one- or two- or three-run lead as teams historically. Hitters today are better than hitters in the past and without some data on modern-day teams with latter-day bullpen strategy, it's really hard to say that teams are acting sub-optimally. It could be the case that employing latter-day strategy would lead to more blown three-run leads.

      If anything, I think the biggest problem with modern bullpens is that there are too many pitchers throwing too few innings against mainly left- or right-handed hitters, to the point where teams basically have no hitters available on the bench to take advantage of a pitcher who has extreme platoon splits.

  5. Did we discuss this yesterday? Minnesota's own Leroy Nieman dead at 91. Maybe not the most "important" artist in Minnesota history, but certainly the most famous and richest.

    something was seriously wrong in the head with that guy. Married to the same woman since 1957, active with charities, never in trouble with the law or drugs. What kind of artist did he think he was???

    2. Neiman worked in oil, enamel, watercolor, pencil drawings, pastels, serigraphy and some lithographs and etching.

      Seems like it would have been easier to list the media he didn't work with. Or not.

    2. My esteemed old law firm may or may not have sent a C&D letter on behalf of pork producers to a group touting unicorn as the "other white meat" as part of an April Fool's Day prank a few years back.

    1. groundford • 2 hours 21 minutes ago

      Honor there present and leave it go at that.

        1. At least I understood "trader to are team" when I saw it. I had to read groundford's comment twice before I could even put together what it meant.

    2. ...and catcher Michael McKenry said he enjoyed talking with Mazeroski on the bench because the Hall of Fame second baseman was also under six-feet tall when he played.

      What, he's grown a few inches since then??

    2. I see the problem. He clearly did not make a football move after gaining possession.

        1. I believe this must be retaliation for our former werewolf rivalry. I may demand satisfaction!

    3. I wish that would have been called against the Sox. Imagine the sound of Hawk Harrelson's head blowing up, broadcast for all to hear.

    4. Maybe the umpires secretly want replay, so they're going to make as many ridiculous calls as they can to force it on baseball.

  9. Sad news guys, doing research on Harrelson (how to spell his name), I came across this fun page with clips from the "Absolutely Boo!" rant.
    The sad part? They transcribed it as "Absolutely Brutal!" and I can hear it.

    If you'll excuse me, I've heard there's a group of children at the library that haven't heard the truth about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and where babies actually come from.

    2. Similar to Drew Magary's investigation into Karl Welzein, I am going to pretend this does not exist.

    4. Wait... what truth about Santa Clause, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy? Is there some secret thing about them I don't know? Does this have to do with those nasty rumors that they don't exist?

      1. They want you to suspect they don't exist: it's much worse than that.

        I wrote out the truth, but just deleted it. You don't want to know.

          1. While the Sandusky thing came out before he died, there are bigger crimes, bigger secrets that JoePa took to the grave.

  10. I feel the need to share my deep and abiding love for my spouse here.

    Yesterday, she called Ma Bell to complain that our Uverse triple play bill had been jacked up recently, and threaten to dump the service entirely. After fighting her way through the initial responder, who merely wanted to upsell us to a bigger, more expensive plan, she had a lovely conversation with the second-level responder. This responder "negotiated" with us a package that expanded our Uverse to the 200-channel deal at a price that was within a dollar or two of what we had been paying for the 100-channel deal BEFORE the price increases.

    SWEET!

    Mrs. S is the greatest wife I have ever or will ever have.

    1. Mrs. S is the greatest wife I have ever or will ever have.

      Show her that comment and there may be an opportunity for you to judge her against another one.

      1. Heh.

        That's a long-standing joak line. She occasionally responds in kind regarding "first husbands". It works better for me than, perhaps, it would for you. 😉

        1. We do that same gag. When the Milkmaid gets on my case about something, I promise I won't constantly make the mistake with my second wife.

  11. Holy Crap. A guy just got 175 points in the first half of Fast Money on "Family Feud". Let's see if his brother can come through. I imagine a lot of repeats.

    2. I remember when Ray Combs was doing the show. He had a hilarious moment when the first person actually got 200. They hushed the crowd, had the second person come in, and he gave them five ridiculous questions. I think one of them was "Tell me a number between 1 and 3." One may have been something like "What's your favorite color?" or something. He was an amazing host.

        1. That's still hilarious. For those who can't watch it, the questions Combs asks the second person are:

          1)There were three stooges. Name Curly's wife.
          2)What was the name of Little Orphan Annie's dog.
          3)Pick a number between 3 and 5.
          4)Name something you do when you're angry.
          5)Who's your favorite game show host?

      2. No ballpark with open cesspools for urinals deserves to be considered "beloved". Also, Miller Park? Seriously?

              1. Ah, but I live in Omaha now. Although most of my fondest memories of my years in LaCrosse have a charming beer odor to them.

                  1. Stop it. You guys are f*cking killing me here...I can't stop laughing stifling my laughter. My stomach hurts and my face is probably turning red.
                    stops. takes a breath. rereads...

                    beer-and-underbelly-sweat odor

                    awesome

                    It's located in Wisconsin. Can that even be avoided? Aw, snap! Rowsdower, defend yourself!

                    I had this picture in my head of you saying that and I could not contain myself. Had to get up and find some water.

    3. Now Miller Park is up 61-39 v. Camden. Serious vote stuffing going on in Milwaukee.

        1. Never doubt a [Wisconsin team] fan's ability to stuff these things. My Packers-loving friend who has zero interesting in dance watched every episode of Dancing with the Stars this season because of Donald Driver. He voted progressively more and more. The last couple rounds he and his wife voted 60+ times each for Driver. I was speechless.

          1. I commented on all the DWS post on facebook and was savaged by the packer crowd.

      3. I may have voted for Miller Park in this last round just to help it make a mockery of the 4ltr voting process.

  13. Two items related to the recent copyright discussion.

    1 - Bob Lefsetz's new post on the music industry. I have very few must-read writers online: Sepinwall for TV and Posnanski for sports. And Lefsetz for music. Very opinionated, very savvy.

    http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2012/06/20/universalemi/

    2 - Speaking of Sepinwall, here is his bit on the best press release ever (CBS in response to the ruling on ABC's "Big Brother" clone).

    http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/outstanding-achievement-in-fake-press-releases-cbs-announces-dancing-on-the-stars

  14. Czech checked on the pitch. Cristiano Ronaldo takes Portugal into the semi's.

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