facebook made me do it.

I’m actually about a week behind the facebook “25 things about yourself” meme, but thought I’d give it a go anyway.

1.  I bite my nails, but wish I wouldn’t.  I do it mainly when I’m nervous or bored.

2.  I am jealous of those with access to excellent public transit systems, specifically like those you would find in Europe.  I completely understand that America in general (and the midwest particularly) is too spread out for that to work on a large scale, but I still like elaborate railway systems.

3.  I also wish I had an iPhone or an iPod Touch, but I am aware that that’s silly and I don’t really need one.  Still, they’re impressive, and it’s good for me to show restraint.

4.  I like when numbers and graphs tell you things.

5.  I love to read, and don’t do it nearly enough.  I probably say “someday, I’ll read all the books I’ve ever wanted to,” once a week.

6.  I’m pretty adaptable.  That’s one of the things I’ve learned during the moving my family’s gone through over recent years – I can get along pretty well in many scenarios.

7.  I can be pretty calculating, especially when it comes to risk/reward sorts of situations.  This may be why I’m not very fond of roller coasters and why you’ll never find me skydiving, but why I’m eager to try new things where the positive potential benefits outweigh the negative side effects – for example, trying new foods/going new places, etc.

8.  I like coffee a lot.  I have for most of my life (literally – ask my parents), and recently I’ve been enjoying it more – and more frequently – than ever.

9.  My brother, Wyatt, is 4 years younger than me, and at least a couple inches taller than me.  He’s also one of my very best friends, and maybe the funniest person I know.

10.  With respect to music, I tend to enjoy the experience of an album more than a song.  That is to say, a great album says more about the actual talent and skill of its artists than does one good song.  Of course, songs are easier to digest individually, so there’s a place for just falling in love with a song, too. [#10 probably makes no sense, sorry readers]

11. I don’t mind dressing up.  I’d even say that I like it.

12.  …however, I would probably rather just wear jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt most of the time, unless, of course, it’s warm, in which case I would like to be by a body of water in a swim suit.

13.  I’m fed up with shallow thinking, especially by people who are spending their days, weeks, months, and years learning to think about things more deeply – specifically, college students.  Our actions, the actions of others, books, movies, tv shows, music…all sorts of things have meaning besides what they might seem to say on the surface – everyone who’s been through a high school English class knows this.  Going to college is supposed to teach you to think about such things, and it bothers me greatly that many of my fellow students take the time to think about what a thing really means, and what it tells us about the ideas and worldviews of the people who made it.  (I mean to flesh this out into it’s own post sometime)

14.  I don’t really like movies that much, unless they’re either
A.  very inventively entertaining, or
B.  thought provoking.

They just seem like a waste of time to me.  I’m trying to get past this somewhat, as Amanda loves movies, and loves when I watch them with her .

15.  I’m not really “into” that many tv shows.

16.  I like sports quite a bit, for a variety of reasons.  I like baseball for its order and strategy – it is “The Thinking Man’s Game” for a reason (and I am amused by the idea of baseball as a metaphor for American life).  I like basketball because among sports, it is the closest thing to an art form of improvisation and virtuosity, like music or dance – all teams and players have unique styles.  I like football because of it’s combination of brute force, speed, and strategy, and because it has both variety and structure in abundance.  I am also intrigued by soccer, rugby, and various other sports that are popular throughout the rest of the world, but it takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to follow them from where I sit.

17.  Amanda recently got me some wonderful Moleskine notebooks, and they’re quite wonderful – I forget already how I lived without them.  I carry them with me everywhere, jotting down things to tell her the next time we talk, things to blog about, books I want to read, to do lists, notes from chapel, etc.  So basically, all the things that I used to put on disparate pieces of paper and then lose are now confined to two pocket notebooks.  I don’t know why I didn’t do that sooner.

18.  I think I have one phone number memorized, and it’s my own (this doesn’t count phone number of houses at which we no longer live).

19.  I am bored of the labels that we put on people, but also guilty of doing some labeling, probably.

20.  I don’t like winter.  Sometimes I say this and people say, “how would you appreciate the other seasons if you lived somewhere that was not bitter cold for 3 months a year?”  HAHA.  Trust me, I won’t forget what winter’s like, and I won’t miss it.

21.  I am curious to find out what sorts of things will confuse me when I’m old – specifically, technologically.  What will I be afraid of, or speak of with disdain despite not even understanding it?  (I’m thinking specifically of the way some older adults speak of blogs, or iPhones, or webcams, or facebook).

22.  Being a PA has been one of the more rewarding things I’ve done in recent memory.  I’ve learned a lot about myself, and hopefully been good at my job.  The most rewarding thing, though, has been the staff I’ve gotten to work with – the other PAs and the Residence Life staff.

23.  I’ve been dating Amanda for 13 months and one week now, and couldn’t be happier about it.  I could go on, but if you want to talk to me about this, let’s talk in person .

24.  I like shoes a lot.  I try not to buy them too much, because they’re expensive, but if they weren’t, I would have a lot of shoes.

25.  Finally, what I almost always have in my pockets:

a pen
a tube of chap stick (this one is a MUST for me – my lips get chapped quite easily)
my keys
my phone
my wallet
two moleskine notebooks

Filed under: MLB, Music, baseball, college, family, friends , 25 things, Amanda, college, facebook, family, friends, Music, shoes, spring 2009

Thursday 16 August 2007 Post 2

I intend for this to be brief, as it’s unrelated to my NBA column from earlier, and it’s a sort of rant.  I’ll probably write extensively sometime about Bud Selig, but now I just want to point out one spot (admittedly somewhat minor) where I think he could make a tweak to the business side of baseball for the betterment of the game.

In the MLB Draft, you are not allowed to trade draft picks.  There is not really any good reason for it, it’s just “the way it’s always been done.”  The problem is that baseball doesn’t have a salary cap, and thus teams are unbalanced economically.  The way that many of the “poorer” teams overcome this is by doing the little things better:  they trade players reaching free agency for minor leaguers and/or cheaper players, they scout and draft as well as possible, and other such tactics.  The most economical way to build a team is with players from your own farm system.  You basically control their contracts for their first 6 years in the big leagues, after which they can become free agents.  Because of the economic health of baseball, even average free agents can get 8 figures in the open market (for example, Juan Pierre, who doesn’t walk, hit for power, or play great defense got a 4 year, $44 million deal, if I recall correctly).  Well, in the amateur draft, even the top picks do not get much more than $6-$10 million.  How much they get depends on a few things:  the likelihood that they’ll go to college rather than sign, the negotiating skill of their agent, their actual talent, and the organization with which they are dealing.  Occasionally, though, one of the best talents in the draft falls because no one wants to pay him what he is worth or will demand.  This year, for instance, high school pitcher Rick Porcello was considered one of the top five or ten players in the draft, but lasted until late in the first round because no one on the board until the Detroit Tigers had the, um, intestinal fortitude to take him and try to sign him.  They did eventually sign him as the deadline to do so approached, for just over $7 million over the next four years, by which time he must make the majors, as it is a major league contract (I won’t go into any more details).  Now, let’s assume that Porcello does not make any great strides forward between now and the time when he reaches the majors sometime in the next two to four years.  He’ll probably be a solid 3rd starter, and, if he takes a step up, maybe a 2nd starter, or potentially an ace.  Getting even a 3rd starter for $7 million, even for one year, is a pretty good deal.  For example, the Cubs signed a couple of free agent pitchers this offseason, Ted Lilly and Jason Marquis.  Lilly is in that 2nd-3rd starter range, and he’s making about $40 million over then next four years.  That’s roughly what all free agents of his type get.  Marquis is a 5th starter, I guess, although he’s not a particularly good one (or a bad one, either, to be fair).  Are the Cubs overpaying for Marquis?  Yes, but is that about what pitchers of his caliber get on the open market?  yes again.  So you can see why it’s good business to sign and develop your own player.

Now, let’s say Porcello has a 50/50 chance of making the majors (his chances are actually significantly greater than that, which will even more greatly illustrate my point).  If the Tigers get two shots at drafting a player like Porcello, and do it both times, and both times give the player a little over $7 million, and Player A makes it but Player B doesn’t, they will have spent a little under $15 million over $4 years, plus a little more for the remainder of his arbitration years (the years before a player is a free agent), they will have spent, what, $25 million for a player who is worth $40 million on the open market?  How is that bad business, or bad for the state of the game?!!?  But the MLB front office, according to multiple sources (here’s one, and I recently read an article on baseballprospectus.com that pretty much said that the commissioner’s office gets pretty peeved if you pay more than they recommend for a draft pick, but I can’t find the article now), detests it, says it’s bad for the game, and tries to discourage teams from paying above slot for their draft picks (where “slot” is the amount recommended by MLB for teams to pay based on the point in the draft where the player was drafted, without regard to actual value of the pick, the player, or, well, anything).

It’s not Detroit’s fault that other teams don’t take the same approach they do.  For instance, The Kansas City Royals would do better to throw a few million dollars at a draft pick than, say, a relatively weak hitting first baseman who does not fill a need for now or the future, nor move them any closer to contention, like Doug “Eye Chart” Mientkiewicz.  But Bud Selig wants to keep teams from doing this.  Instead of just making the slot recommendations and getting flustered about Dave Dombrowski for doing what’s best for his team, he actually has valid choices.  One is, as I pointed out earlier, to allow the trading of draft picks.  This would allow the top players to go at the top of the draft.  For example, the Tigers obviously thought Porcello was very good, but Dombrowski, their general manager, said he never thought he’d fall to their pick.  If they could trade draft picks, either the Tigers, or another team willing to pay Porcello (say, for example, the Yankees) could have traded another asset (another draft pick, a minor leaguer, or maybe even cash) to get a top ten pick, and they wouldn’t have had to wait and hope Porcello falls.  In this way, the best players go first, and teams who don’t want to pay big money for draft picks don’t have to just take weaker players–they can trade the pick for a cheap prospect who’s already given everyone an idea of what kind of player he can be based on his minor league performance.

The other options are less exciting:  MLB could do away with the draft altogether, in which case the talent would be even more unbalanced, because all amateurs would be free agents.  Not only would the richest teams be able to pay the most for them, but players would want to play with the most competitive teams.  Would any top prospect sign with the Royals, Nationals, Marlins, or Devil Rays?  Unlikely.  And the final option is to make the slot payment mandatory.  Also a bad idea, as that basically undercuts the amateur players’ earning abilities

So please, MLB, allow the trading of draft picks, and quit getting all worked up about paying over slot.  It’s best for baseball, and you are baseball.

Filed under: MLB, baseball