The Nightly Note: America's Finest Moment

If you're an American who has, through decades of under promoted and unexciting women's sports, become complacent about women's sports in general, you could be forgiven for missing yesterday's World Cup match between the United States and their arch-rival Brazil. After all when the biggest thing going in women's professional athletics is the WNBA, well, it's just hard to get too worked up. Add in the fact that futbol (or as we say it in this country, soccer) just isn't very popular in the States, and it's a perfect storm of American disinterest.

But if you're into watching top flight competition, on the grandest of a sports stages, then you should've been watching the women's World Cup. The US women's squad not only has a history of success (unlike the men) they're a perennial favorite, and for the casual fan the difference between the men's and women's games is hardly noticeable.

We're Growing, and I Think That's Really Cool

You hear me talk a lot about the growth going on here at Central in Focus in my Nightly Notes. I talk about it a lot because I find it fun and interesting. And because knowing I'm writing stuff people actually want to read strikes me as both amazing and harrowing at the same time. I mean seriously, there have got to have been 20,000 other pages you would've rather viewed, right?

So I decided to make up some charts to let you know where were at. Because while other sites consider their data to be valuable information for use in generating ad revenue, I'm making a grand total of zero dollars and zero cents on this venture. Which means the data is worth exactly that much too.

Besides, blogs are never really just about the writers, they're about the community. As much as I enjoy putting my thoughts, ideas, and opinions out there, I like hearing back from you too. Hopefully you get something out of reading my work, and hopefully you fill my desperate need for virtual companionship by commenting. How else am I supposed to have outside contact with the world while living in my mothers basement after all?

The Nightly Note

It's an exciting time of year. "Real" baseball starts tomorrow, the weather is warming up, and the site is coming along nicely. Personally I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of all this. Yeah, my writing still sucks and it will continue to do so for some time to come. But I can sense progress. Whereas just a few months I was still struggling with the concept of writing a post a day, I'm now able to write four or five pretty comfortably and still be done in time to put my kid down for her afternoon nap.

Some of that is because I've simply gotten more comfortable with the teams. It really is amazing how much you don't know when you start blogging/writing about any given subject. You might think you know more than anyone else about something - and heck, maybe you really do - but the more you invest yourself into any given subject, you always find you know a lot less than you might've thought. In two days I'll celebrate my one year anniversary here at Central in Focus and I can honestly say that back then, I had no freakin' clue what I was talking about. Truth is, I probably still don't, but let's bypass that part of this one-sided conversation.

The Nightly Note

This is probably a bad idea, one of my audiences is Cleveland after all. But you know what, I don't understand the LeBron James hate. I get where it stems from - the guy made one of the most bone headed attempts at self promotion in recent memory. Though it begs the question, does it really deserve the level of consternation it's received?

Our society has an incredibly forgiving nature toward celebrities in general. I mean, this might be the only place in the world where you can buy a briefcase of blow, drop a couple hundred thousand dollars on hookers, then talk about your desire to start a porn family - and actually become a bigger sensation than when you were just the worlds best compensation TV star. We do realize that behavior like that should be consternation worthy... right?

The Nightly Note

Along the great linear scale of catastrophe, a nuclear meltdown ranks pretty high on the list of terrible calamities. Of course, where one nuclear meltdown is bad, four is well, worse. By a lot. I'm not going to try and say exactly how much worse - four times perhaps. In truth it doesn't really matter much because trying to determine the scale of damage with nuclear meltdowns is a fools errand. There are only varying degrees of really, really bad.

For the people of Japan who've survived so much already, the prospect of adding yet another massive calamity to their already decimated lives must seem both cruel or passe all at once. "Four nuclear meltdowns? Sure why the heck not. I mean, we haven't had a life altering disaster in almost fifteen minutes."

I don't mean to make light of anything that's occurred over there of course. But at some point you simply run out of reasonable methods for expressing regret and sorrow.

The Nightly Note

First of all, I'd like to begin by apologizing for the lack of a Nightly Note as of late. Try as I might, I've been quite unable to come up with topics I thought were worthy enough for what this little space of the internet has become. I know the original idea was simply to create somewhere that I could dump my thoughts - be it on writing, life... whatever. But somehow I feel as though it's transformed itself into a space for meaningful discussions of life's vagaries as seen through my eyes.

It was with that in mind that I've spent the better part of the last week staring blankly at my computer screen into the wee hours of the morning, hoping that inspiration would strike. Of course it did not. Instead I recently found inspiration where I so often do: in the front seat of my car with the hum of the road drowning out the noise of my day to day.

A Few Thoughts on Scouting Reports and Sabermetrics

If you've visited this site at all over the past month or so, odds are you've come here to view a scouting report. Of my ten most popular posts (by page hits) this year, seven have been a scouting report of one player or another. Clearly they're a big draw. Whether you're a regular reader of CiF (thank you) or have stumbled in here because you found your players scouting report via a Google search or followed a link from another site, you're still here because you hope to find information that can further your understanding of one player or another.

The ugly truth however is that no matter how good of a scout someone is, no matter how large the viewing sample size, projecting players using just your eyes is really, really tough. This is pretty obvious of course, and in all likelihood you've heard it before. Yet fans as well as teams place enormous amounts of responsibility - tens of millions of dollars worth on an annual basis - on the subjective observations of scouts. It's an incredible leap of faith when you think of it in that way.

The Nightly Note

I haven't done one of these in a few days. That's partly due to a lack of anything substantive to write about. Partly because I've just felt... off. You'll probably notice that beyond not having a Nightly Note these past few days, I just haven't written that much at all. In most jobs when you're not getting your work done, we call it laziness, or ineffectiveness. I think I feel that way. I want to label myself as being lazy, but I don't really think that's the case. I just, "haven't had it."

I know that right now I have a lot of balls in the air and like anyone trying to balance a multitude of work needs with a home life, it's not easy. Believe it or not, a simple little site like this one takes an incredible amount of work. For each of the Prospect Profiles I provide I'm studying tons of film, consulting with players and scout, and taking incessant notes. Sometimes I have more information at hand to work with, sometimes I have less and need to do more digging.

And some days I just don't have that "it." That desire to really dig hard, to really bust my hump and put out tons of high quality content. I always want to of course, I love it. But sometimes you just don't have your "A game."

The Nightly Note

I'm getting pretty excited. The greatest undertaking of my young writing career has been to write Prospect Profiles on the Top-10 players from each AL Central team. Fifty profiles in total. Some of you who read this blog know precisely how difficult that can be. It's an incredibly heavy burden. If you assume that each is at least 500 words you're talking about 25,000 words in total. That's not an impossible amount, but it's a lot.

The Nightly Note

When I told my fiance what my intended subject was for this evening, she scoffed at me. "I'm going to write about redemption," I told her.

"Of course you are," she snickered.

Redemption. It's the story of the guilty mans life. An overarching concept that drives and motivates. Guilt, disappointment, regret: the feelings of the affliction.

These are feelings, and emotions that we don't like to experience. We avoid them at all costs. That of course, is a good thing. The motivation to avoid having to deal with the agonizing reality of those emotions can be phenomenally beneficial. So in order to avoid them, we attempt to do good. 

The Nightly Note

One of the great challenges we face in life, is trying to fit in with the rest of society. While I think we typically associate this painful experience with our adolescence, it's as true for adults as it is for teens and pre-teens. The only real difference is that as adults, were more accustomed to it. It becomes a game we've learned to play, instead of the one we're playing awkwardly for the first time.

In that sense, fitting in isn't unlike the sports we play, repetition simply makes something difficult more routine.

Don't think you try hard to fit into your world? Think about it for a minute. From the clothes you wear to the style of your hair, the places you shop at and dine, or the car you choose to drive - you're likely putting out a well rehearsed image of who you are. For the most part, that image will be at least a loose reflection of how you were raised and will blend perfectly into whatever environ you've chosen to immerse yourself. You won't find many wall street businessman in their board rooms in board shorts with pink hair. You won't find many country folks pulling into a rural bar in their BMW 5-series while wearing a three piece suit.

It just doesn't fit.

The Nightly Note

Moral Compass. It's a phrase we hear fairly frequently and it's an interesting subject.

As a child growing up my favorite book was Damien, by Hermann Hesse. Hesse for those of you who don't know is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of early 20th century literately classics such as Siddhartha, and Steppenwolf.

While Damien didn't get the critical acclaim that was bestowed upon some of Hesse's better known works, it's an incredible novel and absolutely perfect for the young adolescent male trying to find his way through the world he is being so rudely introduced to.

The Nightly Note

You're driving down the interstate and all of a sudden traffic grinds to a halt. Around the curve ahead of you the lights from emergency vehicles shines through and reflects off the glass of the line of cars ahead of you. Slowly you begin to inch forward and eventually come up on the terrible sight. Guard rails are smashed in and deep black skid marks line the pavement. It's a massive six car pile up. Glass is strewn everywhere, pieces of plastic that were once bumpers are scattered about, some disturbingly far away from the scene of the actual accident. Somehow an entire door lies almost 75 yards away. And then there are the cars themselves. Heaping burned-out piles of wreckage with their metal frames contorted into nearly unrecognizable forms. It looks more like a 5000lb bomb has obliterated the vehicles than anything else.

The Nightly Note

This evening my fiance and I took our daughter out to a wonderful little play area near where we live. The cost of admission was reasonable - six dollars I think - and our child loved it. She got to run around playing with the other kids, jumping in the inflatable bouncer-thing, climbing and sliding. All the while you could hear the yells and shrieks of happy kids. I of course did little, opting to try and sit back and let my daughter pursue this new world on her own. It's not that I didn't care, but I felt it important for her to wander off on her own a bit, to build the confidence that she could indeed play by herself without the constant need to have the security of mom or dad at arms length.

The Nightly Note(s)

Part One

So I was driving home from the gym this evening when it occurred to me that I'm a really boring writer. Ok, maybe it didn't just occur to me, it's actually something that I've known and written about quite recently. Still, it's become a predominant and unshakable theme in my thoughts about writing.

"I'm a bad writer." 

The Nightly Note

Whenever I engage in a topical conversation or debate, one thing I considered important, vital, essential, is that you provide intelligent rationale and support your assertions with data when possible. I believe that to do anything less dilutes your credibility, be it as a writer, a politician, student, or employee.

In doing so you're giving others the opportunity to cross check your work. It's easy to make a claim:

"Player x is better than player B..."
"Franklin Roosevelt saved America from the great depression..."
"My plan will significantly reduced the costs to the taxpayer..."

The Nightly Note

Talk about a disappointing day of writing. When I discussed writing being a journey yesterday, days like today are part of that journey. You can set out with noblest of intentions - to be productive and produce thought provoking content, to follow up on all your outstanding obligations - and then for various reasons, fail miserably. In that same piece, I noted that real life can be like baseball in the sense that improving your game means acknowledging your flaws. Well, it also means you're going to have games where you go 1-5 with a bloop single and leave 6 runners in scoring position.

Today was kind of like that for me.

Tip-toeing Into A Flavorful World And Grading My Own Writing

Talk about a busy day, I managed to crank out 6 posts yesterday and by my own estimation, they didn't completely suck. Writing has been a journey for me, and as either of my frequent readers might tell you, I'm not all that good at it. I frequently read through my posts and cringe at some of the sentences I put together, or the occasional spelling blunder or typo - and let's not even get into my grammar. Simply put, I'm just not that talented as a writer, and for those of you who are kind enough to read my work once and come back for more, thank you so much for dutifully suffering my inadequacies.

But in real life, as in baseball, the most important part of improving is acknowledging those flaws in the first place. Then working diligently on improving them. If I were to grade my writing abilities on the 20-80 scale they might read something like this;