(I'm lying in back, smoking a delicious cigarette, staring at the freckled back of that 3-run homer against Baltimore.)
Could Johnny end up wearing our cap to Cooperstown?
(Three-Run Homer, baby, you were magnificent last night. Are you sleeping?)
Of course, we'd have to resign him. And he'll want a three-year deal. Which is crazy. Nobody will give him a three-year deal. He's too old for a three-year deal. At his age --
(Oh, my goodness, Three-Run Homer, you're not tired at all. Are those your toes, digging in at my home plate?)
It's be foolish to resign Johnny Damon. He's...
(Oh, yesssssss, Three-Run Homer, I do like that...)
... He's a gamer, dammot! He's great fit in New York! HE'S A GREAT PLAYER!
(Ooooooh, higher, yes, swinnnnnnnnnnnnnngbattah...)
RESIGN JOHNNY DAMON. AND FOR GODSAKES, LET'S GIVE HIM A RING.
No No No... he's practically a DH at this point in his career, and his legs are going to fail soon, plus we've got A-Jax tearing it up at AAA. Next years outfield = Melky/Gardner in left, Jackson in center, and Swisher in right. That's cheap and effective. No more spending big money on aging corner outfielders, especially ones who can't throw.
ReplyDeleteHe has a ring with red "B" on it. Johnny's best years are behind him.
ReplyDeleteBrian,
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you've had the chance to read Nassim Taleb's eye-opener, The Black Swan. His general theme is that Gaussian probability is flawed. The distribution of of so called "outliers" in a dynamic system (he focuses on financial markets) is not as remote as traditional statistical theory tells us.
According to Taleb, a "Black Swan" is a completely unexpected event
that humans try to explain (rationalize) after the fact by a series of logical and, in his mind, statistical fallacies. Taleb favors the idea of scalable probability based on fractal mathematics, i.e., large
deviations from the "mean" are certainly more rare, yet they occur
much more frequently than the bell curve dictates.
So since baseball is a dynamic system (insofar as there are a massive amount of things that can happen with every pitch and in every game) this brings to mind a huge number of "black swans", like Brady Anderson hitting 50 HRs in 1996 and Shawn Chacon's pitching performance in 2005...or Johnny Damon tearing it up this year.
The point is: The so called "Taleb" or "fat tail" distribution might be a better fit that the SABR/Bill James normalized bell curve assumptions to describe baseball outcomes.
I'm sure everyone saw his comments about how great it is to be a Yankee as opposed to on the red sox because the yankees take care of their veterans but the red sox just trash their heroes when they get older. You know he's thinking about his contract next year.
ReplyDeleteBut hey he's the one carrying the team offensively right now. I think it's amazing that even John Sterling noticed it and when Damon came to bat before that 3 run homer, Sterling was speaking openly about how Damon keeps getting big hits almost as if expecting Damon to do something big.
Hey Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThat's the same kind of stuff that you spilled to Serena Roberts so she could take down A-Rod. Don't think we didn't notice the subtle connection -- bringing up Brady Anderson, who has been dogged by 'roid rumors, and Johnny Damon in the same sentence.
We know the way you work. Next post you'll be talking about how Damon has a hot wife -- just like Jose Canseco and Roger Clemens!Yes, we've seen your ways, Anonymous. You're always the one trashing the Yankees in the media or in books. Just look up any salacious accusation against the Yankees, and it always comes back to you -- Anonymous.
Loose lips sink ships, Anonymous, and you've trying to put a bigger hole in the Yankee ship (built by the Steinbrenners, of course) than the iceberg did to the Titanic. Go back to your ghostwriter, Selena, and work on your next book.
B3
Funny Bern, but Anderson's drop off in the PED festival years of '97 through '00 is evidence that he was not on the sauce...he would have no incentive just to try it for one year and then get off of it, because it was so rampant at the time.
ReplyDeleteYou can make the argument that PED themselves was a black swan, but I'm not implicating either Anderson or Johnny.
I am however jealous of Anderson getting tennis player Amanda Coetzer, who was a hot little sparkplug in her day.