It begins

Gilbert Arenas has a blog. My girlfriend has a blog. Some 70 year old exsportswriter told me he was starting a blog. Why not me? So thus begins my musings that will mostly focus on sports and video games, maybe I'll stray into movies, television, and the occasional bargain, but I always have take on all things sports.

Daisuke Matsuzaka made his first start that mattered yesterday. He's pitched professionally in Japan, but who cares? That's like a guy from MLS going to English Premier League. He pitched in the World Baseball Classic, but I don't know a single person that watched it, or could tell you who won the damn thing. He looked great, 7 innings, 1.0 WHIP, 1 ER, 10 Ks, without the benefit of the veteran calls he'll earn over time. If I were a gambler I would have put some money down on the game. The Japanese guys tend to start off great and teeter off to good, since it takes a while for scouts to get a book on a guy. Some fantasy previews labeled him as overrated going into the season, but most fantasy heads are complete imbeciles. Otherwise they'd be commentating on sports, and not fantasy sports.

Billy Gillispie is now the coach of the University of Kentucky. I spent some time in Lexington last year and had breakfast at a Cracker Barrel. As I walked through the seating area, I noticed that every conversation in the room was centered around Kentucky basketball. This one piece of work said "I think Tubby should just play the walk ons." That's of the charts stupid. That's like Lewis Black give you an aneurysm stoopid. I believe Gustave Flaubert said "You are not entitled to your own opinion. You are only entitled to your own entitled to your own informed opinion."

What I'm getting at is that they love their Wildcat basketball in Lexington. A lot. Like way more than they love the Redskins in Washington. Or the Cardinals in St. Louis. Or the Red Sox in Boston. But in all of these places, do they really have unrealistic expectations? They didn't technically run Tubby Smith out of town. And if I'm reading this wrong, and he was going to get the boot, what's so bad about that? It had gotten so a Sweet 16 was a good year for Kentucky, I think it's a high enough calibur of a program to expect Sweet 16s. No one can really expect Final Fours every year though. But it's a great job - compare it to coaching football at Notre Dame or managing the Yankees.

Certain coaching jobs are high pressure because of expectations, and others because of the scrutiny they entail. But the scrutiny comes with the territory of a job where you can win every year. The expecations are too high if you really do have to win it all every year. Like the Yankees haven't won it all since 2000. Cry me a river! There are 30 MLB teams. So if it were equitable, teams would win every 30 years. Of course, MLB is far from equitable. In fact, of any statistic derived off the field, is anything more closely correlated in sports the payroll to wins for MLB teams. Still when you get to the postseason it's pretty much a crapshoot. Certain teams are supposedly built for the postseason, but they really don't fit a mold. And if they did, there are plenty of teams that looked like they had the goods that haven't even won a series in recent years (particularly the Randy Johnson Mariners). I qualify it with "in recent years" because since postseason expansion, it's harder to advance. But the Yankees make the postseason every year, for whatever reason they don't advance, as Torre is on the chopping block. Now that's a high pressure job.