I'm very pleased that this show was picked up for 2 more seasons. Season 3 was better than season 2, it was less rushed and less forced. And now, think of the drama available now that loyalties have been split.

Bonus Linkb: Here's the Friday Night Lights creator, Peter Berg, on the BS Report with Bill Simmons.

What is it, Malcolm Gladwell Week on Unlikely Words? Bill Simmons just put up a 3 part email discussion (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), check it out if you want to say goodbye to your morning. Not sure if this is a resurrection of the Curious Guy feature Simmons used to do a couple years ago, but if you want to say goodbye to tomorrow as well, here are the other Curious Guy discussions.

NBA Commissioner David Stern and Bill Simmons

Bill Simmons and Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban

Curt Schilling and Bill Simmons

Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman Part 1 and Part 2

Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons Part 1 and Part 2

Bill Simmons and the Screenwriters of 'Rounders, Brian Koppelman and David Levien and Part 2

The OC Creator Josh Schwartz and Bill Simmons

Also in the Bill Simmons Mailbag I mentioned yesterday, a Bettors Explanation of the economic crisis. By accident.

You just reminded me of something: There should be a section on eBay that allows the auctioning of enticing future bets. For instance, a few weeks before the NBA season, I placed $300 on 15-to-1 odds that Cleveland would win the 2009 NBA title. Those odds have dropped to 2-to-1. Not that I would (after all, Cleveland is going to win the 2009 NBA title), but shouldn't I have the option to sell that $300 ticket on eBay? What if someone bid $1,200 on it (which would be a smart move because, again, Cleveland is going to win the NBA title) and I was guaranteed a $900 return on my investment? Should I take the money? This would be a fun Web site, you have to admit. And if eBay can't do it, then why couldn't the casinos themselves build a Web site that allows people to sell future tickets and get a second cut on the action? It all makes too much sense.

And then he gets called on it in part 2 of the mailbag.

Q: Just got done reading Part 1 of your mailbag. While your idea of auctioning off Vegas bets sounds like a great idea, do you realize that you just suggested the same scenario that ruined the mortgage industry and the entire economy?
-- Tom, Pittsburgh

SG: Time for the greatest three-word comeback of all-time when you don't have a comeback ... yeah, but still!

Some basketball fans will argue that shooting 33% from behind the 3-point line is the equivalent to shooting 50% in front of it. Bill Simmons gets this question in his latest mailbag and chides the questioner for being stupid.

Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing the series of maintaining blogs for some of the authors I enjoy (Michael Lewis and Part 1 of Chuck Klosterman) because they won't maintain them themselves, here's another round of Chuck Klosterman on the internet.

Chuck Klosterman's favorable and effusive review of Benji Hughes' A Love Extreme:

Even after nearly three decades of MTV, we still tend to see musicians with our ears, which (I can only assume) is what the musicians would want.

Last week, Klosterman was on The BS Report with Bill Simmons (who calls Klosterman 'Close-terman' can we figure out if that's how it's supposed to be pronounced?) for 2 sessions. In the first they discussed the merits of pro sports (Simmons) vs college sports (Klosterman) and the second where they discussed newspapers, popularity and tenure.

Klosterman echoed David Carr's thoughts that newspapers should have been charging on the web since the beginning and colluding to do so now is one way to save them. He also pointed out Simmons' hypocrisy in criticizing sports columnists who have been where they are for ages. Simmons suggested that a lot of the best younger writers were leaving newspapers to go to the tubes, while Klosterman suggested that these guys might not be the best because internet is a popularity contest, judged by how much attention you can draw to yourself as opposed to how good you are.

Most interesting to me was a point Klosterman made a couple times that popularity begets popularity and the bigger websites are only going to keep getting bigger (though, wee Unlikely Words will soldier on!).

Lastly, spoke at the Highline Ballroom last night with all-girl Mötley Crüe cover band, Girls Girls Girls. I'll assume the evening went well and post a review if I see one.

I'm not sure the timeline is correct, but Bill Simmons is comparing the rise of Podcasts to the fall of newspapers. Satellite radio and podcasts already seem the same to me, except you have to pay for satellite radio (hardware and subscription) and podcasts are free.

Bill Simmons: ...I love doing the podcasts and feel like I'm on the ground floor of a medium that is really starting to take off. It's like radio on demand and I think it's going to kill satellite radio in 2 years. I really do. It's also a huge threat to real radio in my opinion, especially when people can get internet in their cars and can just cue podcasts up within 3 clicks. It's astonishing to me that nobody has written a long piece about podcasts yet. This is EXACTLY the same as what happened with sportswriting in the late-90s where nobody was taking the internet seriously and suddenly within 7 years there were a million sports blogs, mainstream sites were crushing newspapers and newspapers were hemorrhaging money. We are headed that way with podcasts. I just think radio is going to become much more niche-oriented over these next 10 years... people don't see it yet. Christian Slater in "Pump Up The Volume" is going to look like a genius.

I try to listen to This American Life, but I usually need a long car ride for it. But I listen to every episode of SModcast and The BS Report. Smodcast, with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, is hilarious and might be the only media I find myself laughing out loud to when I'm alone. The unifying theory of Smodcast and the BS Report are famous people hanging out with their friends talking about movies and sports.

Hey look, Scott Raab in Esquire and Bill Simmons in ESPN the Magazine write the exact same article about Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky's newest, The Wrestler: "Rourke is a jerk and he's playing himself as washed up and talent wasted". Simmons did spice it up a little at the end by telling wrestling when they can have him back as a fan.

When it institutes a pension plan for retired wrestlers, when there's an off-season that mirrors those of the major sports so bodies can recover, when it cracks down on all enhancers, when someone explains to me why I shouldn't care that so many ghosts showed up for my private screening.

Late last week, Bill Simmons put out another mailbag. One of the questions got him to riff on the best sports journalism he's ever read. I thought it would be a neat post to find all of those articles online (since everything is online these days). I spent about an hour and a half finding most of the articles, except for a few which were more tricky. Imagine my disappointment and frustration this morning when I saw (via kottke, obviously) that The Millions had done it faster, and, well, better. They found two I couldn't, but didn't link to the abstracts of the New Yorker articles. I should also mention how great the SI Vault is. They've taken 54 years of articles and put them online. For free. Any other magazine that's been publishing that long and does not have their archives online is living in the past.

Here's what I found, click over to The Millions to see what books they're in. (Note also, I starred the links that The Millions found that I couldn't, just to show how much more bad ass they are than me).

"Federer as Religious Experience" (Roger Federer) and "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm for Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" (Michael Joyce) - David Foster Wallace (Plus "Consider the Lobster" as mentioned by the reader in the mailbag.


"Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" (Ted Williams) - John Updike

(Abstract only) "Down the Drain" (Steve Blass) - Roger Angell (Not sure if this is the 'Gone for Good' mentioned in Simmons' post, but both are about Steve Blass.) Still looking for full text.

"What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?" (Ted Williams) - Richard Ben Cramer*

"Lawdy, Lawdy, He's Great" (Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali) - Mark Kram

"The Silent Season of a Hero" (Joe Dimaggio) - Gay Talese*

"Ego" (Muhammad Ali) - Norman Mailer. From March, 1971 Life Magazine. Still looking for full text.

"Pure Heart" (Secretariat) - William Nack

"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" (The Kentucky Derby) - Hunter S. Thompson

"Medora Goes to the Game" (Going to a ballgame with daughter) - George Plimpton

"Agincourt and After" (Look back at 1975 baseball season) - Roger Angell. Still looking for full text.

"Distance" (Bob Gibson) - Roger Angell. Still looking for full text.

"Magic Act" (Magic Johnson) - Charlie Pierce. From GQ, still looking for full text.

"Holy Ground" (Agusta National) - Wright Thompson

"Center Court" - (Wimbeldon) - John McPhee. Still searching for full text.

"Raised By Women To Conquer Men" (Jimmy Connors) - Frank DeFord

"The Loser" (Floyd Patterson) - Gay Talese

"A Voice Crying In The Wildernesst" (Rick Barry) - Tony Kornheiser

"Jordan’s Moment" (Michael Jordan) - David Halberstam. The Millions linked to a different piece, but I think this is it.

"The Mourning Anchor" (Bryant Gumble) - Rick Reilly

"Ali and His Entourage" (Muhammad Ali) - Gary Smith

"As Time Runs Out" (Jim Valvano) - Gary Smith

And here's my favorite: "A Name on the Wall" (Bob Kalsu) - William Knack

Anybody else have any nominations?

I bet you didn't know that/

Chiefs fans want you to know Sammy Morris blocked Bernard Pollard into Tom Brady's knee, even if the replays don't back this up even remotely. Whatever. But after watching the play another 75 times, it dawned on me that Sammy was more to blame than Pollard for the 2008 Patriots season going down the tubes. Sammy, why are you going low on Bernard Pollard like he's a 345-pound defensive lineman? And if you want to go even further, if Kevin Faulk hadn't decided to get high at a Lil' Wayne concert, he wouldn't have been suspended for Week 1, he would been playing that down, he would have pancaked Pollard, and my man Brady would still be playing now. Did you ever think Lil' Wayne would be directly involved in the murder of a Patriots season? My head hurts.

Top 1:
Ugh. Nice start, Pedroia.

Yoooooooooooooooooooooouk! Momentum? Is this it?

Guess not. Thanks, Papi.

"Keys to the game for the Red Sox: it's win or see you in Fort Myers. That's their spring training facility." Don't explain your "jokes," McCarver.

McCarver's unhappy that no one's going to throw at Manny for admiring his homer. I kinda want to see him throw his hands in the air on second base right now, as he's just tied Pete Rose's LCS hitting streak. Anyone want to mention that? Tim? Joe? No? Ok, that's cool.

Oh. My. God. I kind of want to die now. Was Manny running slow? Or was that just a good throw? Not an auspicious start. Somehow it doesn't feel like we're up 1-0.

Bottom 1:
Casey Blake is considerably more entertaining reading the lineup than Kielty was. Nicknames! G-Size! Scroobs! T-Pronk!

This double by G-Size does not bode well. Three guys run for the ball, no one catches it, and one of them kicks it into foul territory. Oh, good, and a base hit for Scroobs.

Double-play! But the game is tied. Seems like a good trade at this point, especially if Beckett's going to give up another hit. Oh, look at that.

Strikes out Garko to end the inning. Nice! Now, if only Fox would stop playing the theme to the damn Drew Carey show.

I have some questions about the Taco Bell Nachos Bel Grande commercial. Presumably the younger brother was visiting the older brother at the latter's home; doesn't it seem unlikely that little brother wouldn't have ever met his brother's girlfriend? And if he had never met the girlfriend, mightn't she take some notice of the newcomer when she brought the dog in? I'm having trouble with the whole scene. Kinda want nachos now, though.

Top 2:
OK, Bobby Kielty. Your job here is to be better than J. D. Drew. Can you do it? No. You can't. (In fairness, the ball looked inside to me, too.)

This would be a good time for Coco to come up big. Come up big, Coco!

God damn you, Coco. Aaaaand a pop-up from Lugo. 6-9 are really just not showing up for this series, are they.

Oh! Hi, Dane Cook! I tell ya, I can't wait for the second October this year—oh. Just the one?

Bottom 2:
I'm amused that Joe Buck described Gutierrez's flailing hack at a 3-1 pitch well out of the strike zone as, "Chased it a bit."

Top 3:
Rachel's calling a lead-off double for Pedroia. I like that kind of optimism. According to Ken Rosenthal, Pedroia has defiantly claimed that he's "swinging the bat good." It's "well," Dustin. You've been swinging the bat "well." Which you haven't.

You know what, I apologize, Dustin. Nice single. Of course, Youkilis hits into a double play. I think the Fox producers lost track of how many outs there were, and started playing the "end of inning" music. Ha.

Big Papi walks, and here comes Manny. What the hell happened on that one? Ortiz scored, but did that ball go out? McCarver is in disbelief, and confused about physics—but no, that ball was gone. This call by the umpires is bullshit. I don't understand why McCarver and Bank are focusing on the carom. The ball was over the yellow line. In fairness, McCarver is right that Manny needs to run out of the box on hits like this. Shameful base-running in an elimination game.

Lowell strikes out, and that's all we get.

Bottom 3:
OK, we're back. It's possible that I was wrong about Manny's ball being out of the ballpark.

Strikeout, and a nice play by Pedroia for an exciting 4-3. Beckett's fifth K, and Boston's still up 2-1.

Top 4:
Two on with nobody out! True, Coco and Lugo are not the two guys we want coming up right now, but I still don't like Coco bunting here. Why give up the out? Also, he seems to suck at it. If Tito doesn't replace Coco with Ellsbury before the end of this game, I'll whine about it. Right here. On this very blog. Just you wait.

Julio, you're killing me.

Bottom 4:
That was quick. Nice!


Top 5:
Two quick outs from Pedroia and Youk, and then Papi singles to the opposite field, which I love. Then bases loaded, and nuffink. Which I don't love, so much.

Bottom 5:
Tim McCarver: baseball player, sportscaster, rock and roll aficionado. Shut up, McCarver. And sit down, Kenny Lofton. Don't start nothin'.

Oh, look, it's the Bad News Bears in the infield! Why the hell was Lugo even going for that ball?

Ah, just put your trust in Beckett. Strike three, Scroobs.

Top 6:
You know, I love "Sounds of the Game" and I really enjoyed Gary Cederstrom's brawl-avoidance. "Josh, not a word. Not a word, dude." I think it's awesome Cederstrom calls Beckett "dude."

Oh, were Varitek, Crisp, and Lugo batting?

Bottom 6:
What is there to say? Beckett is undisputedly the man.


Top 7:
The montage starting this inning was unnecessarily treacly, I think. Pedroia's gapper, however, works for me. 2B!

Yoooouk!!!111! Gotta love a run-scoring triple that knocks out Sebathia. Well done, Sweatiest Man In Baseball.

Hey, you know what? I am officially sick of the Miller High Life commercials.

Ortizzle with a sac fly RBI! I'm staring to unclench a little about this game.

Bottom 7:
Holy crap, with one out in the seventh, Beckett just threw his 86th pitch. That's... not a lot of pitches. Of course, on the 87th, Lofton reaches on an E1.

Called third strike! My favorite way to end an inning. (I guess.)

Top 8:
Welcome to the game, J. D. Drew! A lead off walk is not the worst you could do. (By the way, Fox, I wouldn't mind a camera permanently focused on the Red Sox bullpen. The Lester/Delcarmen drum corp is cracking me up.)

Wow. E1, everybody' s safe! And then a bunt for a base hit by Lugo loads the bases! This is shaping up to be the kind of exciting inning where the Red Sox catch a couple of breaks and then piss it all away.

Hey, a passed ball! 5-1! And a walk to re-load the bases for Youk! Look at how excited I am! Count the exclamation marks!

Mastny walks in a run, and now the bases are loaded for Big Papi. This is starting to feel awesome. Eh, RBI sac fly. Kinda disappointed, actually.

OK, so here's a question. If Beckett comes out for the 8th at 96 pitches with a 5+ run lead, is that a pretty clear sign that Tito's lost faith in the bullpen? Also, McCarver seems to think that "mantra" means "philosophy." (Beckett won't come back on short rest to pitch game 7 because that's not Boston's "mantra.")

Bottom 8:
OK, Beckett does start the 8th, but Jeemer and the Bot are warming. Let's hope Francona's got his walking shoes on if things start to get hairy. Rachel and I agree, however, that taking him out and keeping his arm available for emergency relief in Game 7, would have been the better call.

Hey, that worked out!

Top 9:
Bill Simmons neatly summed up J. D. Drew's schtick of getting a nice looking base-hit when it doesn't matter, such as, for instance, leading off the ninth when you're leading by 6.

Bottom 9:
First and third, but I'm not worried.

Rock. Beckett + Papelbon = bring on game 6.