Go Ahead and Tase Him, Bro

Did he deserve it, or was it excessive force? That's been the big question for the past 24 hours or so, with the explosion of the story of a kid running onto the field at Citizens Bank Park during Monday night's Phillies/Cardinals game and proceeding to be given a torso full of taser by the cops. Media outlets of all shapes, sizes, locations, affiliations, and genres have since run with this issue in one way or another. Naturally, it is our obligation to weigh in while this story is apparently such a hot-button issue (or at least before the news cycle renders it an afterthought, likely by week's end).

The jackass deserved it. I don't want to hear crying from him, from his friends, his mom, the ACLU, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or whoever the hell else has an opinion. I don't want to hear it. It is made abundantly clear from the time you're about 4 years old that you don't belong out on the field during a game, and if you're stupid enough to run out there, then you have it coming to you. Above all else, there is a practical issue here, a matter of safety. Players, coaches, and officials stand out on the field in front of thousands of (possibly inebriated) spectators. To say they're somewhat exposed and/or vulnerable is not a stretch. Don't believe me? In recent years there have been not one, but two incidents of fans leaving the stands and attacking on-field participants, not to mention the famous Rick Monday incident in 1976. I don't care if everyone says this 17-year-old douche in Philly last night was just a harmless class clown. I'm sure that's all he is. But there's no way of knowing that when he comes charging out of his seat and darting around the outfield, resisting the apprehension of the cops.

There's more to it than the "protect the players, coaches, and umps from lunatics" angle. What gets me so riled up when someone pulls a such a stunt is that they refuse to understand it's not about them. There were nearly 45,000 people in the stadium that night, and they paid to see a game between arguably the two best teams in the National League, not to see a skinny kid with a gigantic nose run around. Sure, we all laugh and cheer if we're at a game and an idiot runs onto the field, but at least with me I get enjoyment out of seeing the guy get caught. Just like the "Don't tase me, bro!" moron that gained national fame a few years ago, anyone who runs out onto the field like that is trying to make themselves the spectacle instead of just minding their business and being a spectator. You want to be a spectacle? Then make a nice catch of a foul ball, or something, anything else that doesn't interfere with the game.

So, until next time, don't cry police brutality on this one. It's not like this guy was an innocent bystander that got the voltage from some asshole cop on a power trip, nor did they keep tasing the kid until his heart stopped. Once he was down, that was the end of it. He made the decision to run out onto the field, so let the consequences be what they may.

MLB's Unbalanced Schedule: Just Add Water

To get NotAsGoodAsYouThink's attempt at a baseball preview going, we'll start with something that has been been irking me for a few years now. Major League Baseball instituted the unbalanced schedule in 2001 in an effort to make the long regular season more interesting by adding juice to its existing rivalries and maybe even creating some new ones along the way. For those who are unaware, the unbalanced schedule calls for each team to play about 17-19 games a year against each of the other teams in its division, which will take up about half of the team's 162 games. The rest of the schedule is made up of anywhere from 6-9 games against the rest of the teams in your league, plus between 15-18 interleague games. The heavy amount of intra-division games was supposed to intensify division races and rivalries through sheer volume and familiarity.

It's worked, but only to a point. Sure, baseball gets to showcase (read: TV revenue) a ton of Yankees-Red Sox, Phillies-Mets, Cubs-Cardinals, and Giants-Dodgers games for its fans' viewing pleasure. But there's an ugly other side to that coin, because for every extra marquee matchup the unbalanced schedule gives you, it gives you a Pirates-Reds, Padres-D'Backs, or Royals-Indians sack of garbage to go with it. Plus, fans can get a little tired of seeing the same teams over and again throughout the season - I bet most Phillies season ticket holders would gladly trade a series against the Nats for another more compelling series against someone like the Cardinals or Rockies. It would have been cool to see AL Cy Young winner Zack Greinke face the top lineup in his league last year, but we didn't get to, because the Royals only saw the Yankees for three games in early April and three games in late September, none of which were pitched by Greinke. Such is the drawback of the unbalanced schedule.

I will say the unbalanced schedule is a decent way to keep teams' levels of travel relatively lower, since everyone gets a few extra nearby series within their division versus an extra trip or two across multiple time zones. But even that notion is a bit overrated, since most divisions feature at least one long plane ride within themselves anyway (i.e. New York/Philly to Miami, Milwaukee to Houston, Seattle to Arlington, TX). Finally, the unbalanced schedule calls for the final 3 weeks or so of the regular season to be just about all intra-division games. This is cool at first glance because it guarantees late-season head to head matchups to decide division winners. But it also gives you a good number of games where a team in the hunt gets to match up with (and feast upon) a lowly team's minor league call-ups, which throws a just bit of a wrench into the integrity of the pennant race, yes?

To be honest, it was a welcome change from the way it was before - a bland, auto-fill spreadsheet of a schedule where every team played an equal amount of games (two home series, two road series) against all the other teams in its league. But the novelty has worn off, and now the inordinate amount of intra-division games has created rather unfair situations for teams that are in especially strong or weak divisions. For instance, Tampa Bay must play 36 total games against the Yankees and Red Sox this year; that's 22% of their schedule against two teams widely considered to be among the top 3 in baseball. Not only do they have to contend with the two giants for the division itself, but the Rays must also contend for the Wild Card against teams from the other AL divisions who play a considerably softer schedule. Now, before anyone starts making violin-music jokes, Tampa is a very good team in its own right, and many people are convinced they'd be a playoff shoo-in if they were housed in another division. Some have even gone so far as to propose radical realignment policies in order to counteract the pitfalls of the unbalanced schedule.

If you couldn't get through that realignment article without getting a headache, don't feel bad. It's definitely discussion worthy, but way too off-the-wall to happen. That's why I'm here with a simpler proposal - just water down the unbalanced schedule. Instead of playing 18 games a year against your division counterparts, make it 12-13 games a year. Eliminate one interleague series a year, namely the "rivalry" series (interleague matchups built into the schedule where certain pairs of teams meet for two series during interleague play). I've always viewed this extra interleague series as unnecessary and just an excuse to get Yankees-Mets and Angels-Dodgers for 6 games a year instead of 3. Disburse those 27 games or so that we've just freed up among the other teams in the same league, and all of a sudden you've got a schedule that still caters to the big rivalries but falls short of being disproportionate to the league as a whole. The fans and networks still get their share of headliner matchups, and no one can complain all that much about any team having a ridiculously easy or difficult schedule just because of what division they're in.

Anyone have Bud Selig's number?

Sh*t I Don't Understand: Extracurricular Activities

Spring is descending upon us. There are four college basketball teams left standing, and at the start of next week the sweet sound of "Play Ball!" will be heard for the first time since November 4. Springtime also brings about a period of time I like to call Application Season. Ambitious and eager high school seniors are nervously awaiting the big envelopes in the mail from colleges all around the country, while reality-bitten college seniors are attending career fairs and beefing up their resumés in hopes of getting a job that has anything to do with the stuff they've been studying for the past four years. Both groups have had hammered into their brains the importance of extracurricular activities and how they "make you stand out." In the last installment of this series for the time being, I'd like to take a look at just how hollow all this extracurricular activity BS really is.

I'll put out the caveat out there first - I know that there are plenty of people who did tons of extracurricular stuff in high school and college and actually cared about them/put a great deal of effort into them. Those aren't the people I'm talking about. I'm talking about the people who join a club just because it might look good on an application or resumé, as well as the people who actually evaluate said applications and fail to differentiate between the genuine and the bogus. Hell, we've all done it. I was in the French Club in high school, which entailed little more than signing my name on a piece of paper in French class and showing up to a 20-minute meeting 4 times a year, 3 of which I'd usually duck out of early to get to football practice or to the weight room.

That's part of my point. What does having an extracurricular activity on an application really constitute? It's impossible to tell from an evaluation standpoint. All colleges love seeing National Honor Society on applications, but all being in NHS in high school really meant was you got good (not necessarily great) grades, you were at least somewhat involved and didn't just go straight home after school every day, and you never showed up to school wasted and never got caught with weed in your car. For that you got a nice little yellow thingy to wear on your graduation gown and the right to slap a shiny "Member of National Honor Society" on your college applications. Riiiiight. I was in NHS for 3 years in high school and I think I've done more work cleaning my room than I ever did as part of that prestigious outfit. But yet, there it was in bold letters on all my applications back in the day.

What I hope is that college admissions offices and job recruiters understand is that not all activities are created equal. For instance, being on the bowling team in high school is not the same as playing a sport like football or wrestling. I shouldn't have to go further into that. In addition, some people turn themselves into flat-out hypocrites by their membership in certain clubs, like a few kids I knew who were in Students Against Drunk Driving (aka S.A.D.D.) in high school and ended up getting DUI's. I guess you weren't paying attention at those meetings, were you? But hey, maybe your days spent as a member of S.A.D.D. will score you some points with the DMV when you try to get your license back!

The extracurricular activity garbage is a flaw of a system where a large number of candidates must be considered in a small amount of time. It's impossible to personally get to know everyone who is applying to your school or your company, so you have to take as many things into consideration as you can, especially when the top factors (GPA, test scores, prior work experience, etc.) are a wash. But it doesn't sit well to think that a group of decision makers are sitting at a table somewhere saying, "OK, we're down to two candidates for this position. Applicant A and Applicant B have similar grades and numbers, but Applicant B helped start up the Scott Baio Fan Club at his college! That's got to make him a better employee than the other guy. I think we have our winner right there, our work here is done! Who's got the first round at Happy Hour?"

But I guess that's the world we live in. I pledged with a guy who treated our fraternity as just another resumé builder and pretty much disappeared once we got in. Sure, he got himself into medical school, but to me that's not worth everyone disliking you and your name being a punchline for years, even after college is over. It's a blatant insult to all the people who bust their ass in earnest to be a part of something that's going to have value for a long time. In a perfect world, there would be a way to sniff out the mere "just a name on a list" people so they could get a big F-you from prospective employers and colleges. After all, who is bound to be more of an asset to a company or a school - a person who stays on the right track and gives full effort to the things he sets his mind to, or a system-manipulating weasel who uses his peers as stepping stones? Call me idealistic but I'd rather be genuine and give my best effort at a few things than go half-ass at a bunch of activities just so I can litter my application with papier-mâché.

Analogy of the Week (Month?)

So I talked way too big a game before when I somewhat promised weekly installments of new analogies, but, in going with the old "Quality over Quantity" defense, I'm going to amend the series to "Analogy of the Month." Today we branch out into a topic rarely explored here to this point - pets. (Because you don't want to read yet ANOTHER baseball post by Lou before the season even starts, right? Don't worry, there's plenty of those in queue...)

To me, there is no debate when it comes to dogs vs. cats. There's only one ultimate pet, and that is Man's Best Friend. Of course I have my biases - I come from a family of bulldog lovers and in my lifetime have had 5 similar to that handsome gentleman you see up there. I also developed a cat allergy around age 6, so any affinity I had for the felines was thrown out the window back when I was playing with WWF action figures 6 hours a day.

But there's little dispute that a dog is a loyal companion who is happy to have you just as you are. Yes, it requires a good deal of time and effort in order to train and care for a dog, in most cases much less than would be necessary to have a cat. A dog, however, is appreciative of every nugget of food you give him, every scratch on the back and rub behind the ears. A dog's world is totally at peace once you walk through that door. Dogs take joy in the simplest of things - chewing a bone, being able to carry his leash on the final stretch of a walk, or having a nice snack of freshly fallen snow.

Cats, on the other hand? Well, I just don't buy the appeal. Most cats I've encountered are odd, aloof, unappreciative, and tough to win over. They creep around the house all day finding odd nooks and crannies to stow themselves into, and their idea of fun involves scratching posts and backyard birds. Affection toward their master is not their boat - cats have more of a "what have you done for me lately?" attitude than a New York Post sports writer.

Which brings me to the analogy - having a cat is like having a bad boss or a bad significant other. Think about it. A cat is never around when you actually want to find it or need it for something, but they're always up in your face when you just want to relax and mind your own business. And when a cat does happen to be in a jovial and giving mood, its idea of a "gift" is not exactly what you or I would have in mind. "Here, owner, you are such a good owner, I thought I'd reward you with this dead rodent I dragged in from the yard!" Doesn't the "thanks, but seriously, no thanks" nature of such a gift remind anyone of a Jelly-of-the-Month-Club Christmas bonus, even a little bit? And last but not least, just like a bad boss or bad significant other, cats leave a nice pile of shit for you to pick up on a regular basis.

I know this was a pretty big generalization, but it at least makes some sense. Obviously cats are great pets for people who have that certain taste in pets, otherwise there wouldn't be millions of them around. And cats are much more practical than dogs are for those who don't have the time or aren't home enough to properly care for a dog. But if all variables are equal, one would have a hard time convincing me that a cat would be a better pet than a dog. I'm sure there are plenty of awesome cats out there that I'd enjoy having around, but that's part of my point - the "good" cats are often the ones with more of a dog-like demeanor. The point of committing time, effort, and money into raising a pet is the enjoyment you ultimately get out of it, and call me closed minded, but I'm taking this over this 8 days a week.