On baseball

   I would like to take a moment to talk about baseball. (So I will, thank you for being here.)

Baseball, in my mind, is a sport that you follow. It is not like football (American or English) where you have to watch each game to understand how you team is doing. It's not like basketball where you can dissect a few play to show where your team is weak.  If basketball, football(s), and hockey are the sports version of reality TV,  Baseball is a soap opera.

   Part of this is the sheer volume of baseball that takes place every year and the consistency with which it occurs. The MLB season is 162 games to the NBA's 82  and the NFL's 16. Baseball games typically take around three hours of real time compared to the two hours taken by basketball and soccer games. Football games often take three hours but there is only sixty minutes of playing time in each game. Football and soccer are played mostly once a week while basketball and hockey are played every four or five days. Baseball teams play nearly every day for almost half the year. Because they play so consistently and so often, the more important baseball story lines tend to be of the course of several games rather than during the process of a single game.

   Baseball is also a slow game. It is the only north American sport I know of that is based on stations and not time. In baseball, everyone knows at any given time, what all the possible outcomes of a play are, and all the correct ways a team could plan for that play. Nearly everything has happened before and the game is a test of who can perform the correct task more consistently over 162 games and three best of seven series. But since no one can control what will happen when the ball hits the bat, it is like a chess match in which a three year old is allowed to move the pieces whenever they want. Individual baseball games are hard to predict and consistency over the course of the season becomes the most important measurement of a teams skill.

   Baseball is a sport that you follow. In the news paper the next day, in the box scores and the standings. Baseballs context is is made up of several games instead of a single game. This is why the last team stat in the Standings Column is each teams record over the last ten games. My Yankees successes or failures matter half as much without knowing whether they have recently  been better or worse than the Red Sox. April is the least important Month on the baseball calendar (despite being the opening of the regular season) because the context by which the year's will be judged has not yet been built. Whatever your feelings about sabermetrics vs the baseball narrative, there is no sport that  so aptly built to support the sports narrative the way that Baseball is. 

The Sun Never Sets on the Spurs Empire

The San Antonio Spurs have, with the impending introduction of LaMarcus Aldridge all but announced the twilight of Tim Duncan. For most teams with a declining, once in a generation, superstar this would be the part where the team has to pick up whatever is left and begin the long rebuilding process again. For the Spurs, however, they are gearing up to hand the keys to the dynasty over to the next generation who, in the care of Coach Popovich, will carry it on for the next five years.

Here is how it could work. This year the Spurs look poised to make a title run. Their projected starting line up for the upcoming season is Tony Parker at Point guard, Danny Green and Kawhi Leonard at the wings, and LaMarcus Aldridge and Tim Duncan as the Big men. Their Reserves will include Patty Mills and Ray McCallum at Point, Manu Ginobili at the wing and Boris Diaw, David West, and Matt Bonner and backup big men. This leaves the traditional San Antonio Big 3 in tact, showcases rising superstars Leonard and Aldridge, and keeps the familiar - championship winning - faces of Mills, Diaw, and Bonner as the supporting cast around around them. That is a very deep, very scary team. One that is reminiscent of  both their past championship teams and of last years championship winning Golden State team.

If the Spurs do in fact win a title, a big IF for any team, it could easily mark the end of the Duncan era. This week Duncan signed a new contract for two years with a player option for the second year. The indication is that the Spurs have (at least) two years left to win Duncan his 6th Title before he retires in full glory. The Spurs would then continue with Aldridge and Leonard leading the charge.
None of this is set in stone and two years in the NBA is an Eternity, (see Lin, Jeremy) but with Coach Pop, Leonard and Aldridge under contract till at least 2014, the Spurs Organization has set itself up to be a contender for the at least the next 4 years.