Hate Mail

Oh, get out of there, cat

OKAY, so welcome to the first ever Hate Mail edition of In Play Lose. Feel free to submit any comments or questions that you have to inplaylose@gmail.com. The Lose has been, well, in need of a spark here, and I appreciate all of the comments and questions that I received.

But before we begin, we need to properly prepare:

That’s more like it. Alright, let’s do this.

- - -

Question about the Mazins, coming from Shitstain, N.J., which sounds like a beautiful place: 
OK...I have a question about those ’mazin lovable losers from Queens. At one point could the argument be made that a team with an extraordinarily high amount of injured pitchers (like all of them) could be blamed on the pitching coach/staff? It seems like every pitcher that gets near the rotting guts of Shea Stadium ends up on the shelf for extended periods of time. WTF?
– To Shea! To Shea!

Obviously, insanely bad injury luck happens sometimes. I certainly understand this season, as both of my teams were cursed. The Giants had every member of their opening day lineup, their #1 and #2 starters, their closer, and their two best prospects all land on the DL. The Mariners, meanwhile, used 61 players and used so many pitchers that their pitching coach couldn’t remember them all. These things happen sometimes, and often it translates to a lost season.

And the Mets injury woes this season were ridiculous. Christ, they had two guys get injured swinging a bat, one of whom blew out his shoulder and the other of which hit himself in the face with a batted ball. Those are the sort of freaky things which make you feel like you’re cursed. That said, this seems to happen far too often to the Mets, who seem like a walking MASH unit every season. And from the entire drama over Matt Harvey’s arm trouble a few years ago, to Noah Syndergaard refusing to take an MRI earlier in the season, the sense you get is that there is a lack of faith in the Mets training staff. When you have so many injuries every single year, you have to start looking at how you’re doing things related to training and injury prevention. When this stuff happens so regularly, it stops being random luck and starts being a damning indictment. I’ve mentioned this before in regards to the New Orleans Pelicans, who can’t stop getting guys hurt. It kills your organization after a while.

Here’s a question from Atlanta about the NCAA:
You don’t like the NCAA much. How would you reform it?

Pay the players. Plain and simple. The argument put forth is that if you do that, there would be some universities who could no longer afford their athletic programs. Okay, and the problem with that is what exactly? Pay the players. Hell, let the shoe companies and the boosters pay the players. Just stop it with this bogus nonsense about amateurism and that they are there to be student athletes. They aren’t. The football and basketball coach, in general, doesn’t give a shit about anyone who can’t help them win. Pay the players, declare them to be employees of the school’s marketing department or whatnot, but stop it with this bogus ideal of the student athlete which doesn’t exist and, quite honestly, has never existed.

And I say this as someone who grew up around a large university where major college athletics played a significant role in the culture of the school and the community. I have, in fact, seen the value of this, in that there are, in fact, quite a few kids who are afforded the chance to attend an outstanding university and receive a quality education and they go about making the most of that opportunity. I don’t have any issue with schools giving scholarships for athletes – they do it for musicians, they do it for dramatists, they do it for engineers, they do it for kids from all walks of life. But to make these kids indentured servants to the university is truly appalling.

And fire all the coaches, while we’re at it, particularly in college basketball. Fire them all. They aren’t educators, they aren’t teachers, they are control freaks who care about kids only so long as the kids are in their presence. “Four years pass and you’re gone, kid, so do as I say because I’m here forever.” Fire all of them.

The short answer is that I don’t think you can earnestly reform it without paying players. Until that happens, it’s garbage.

Someone doesn’t like my work:
LOL you suck at everything what have you ever done?

I scored 61 in a basketball game once. I once hit two home runs in an inning. (But the game got rained out, so the game didn’t count.) I was 57-not out when I played cricket. I had 35 saves in a soccer game, which was a state record, including taking one square in the face which left me with a black eye for the prom. I’ve had my moments here and there. But yeah, I suck. Who gives a shit? What did you ever do? Probably nothing. And one thing I don’t do is waste my time trolling people, because people I’ve known in my life who do that sort of thing are generally useless people with meaningless lives – people such as yourself, in fact. So get stuffed.

This is a good question from Sacramento, California:
How difficult has it been for you to adjust to writing about stuff (Warriors) that is good?

I look at the Golden State Warriors as being a transcendent sort of force which, when this run is over (and it will happen at some point) will have changed the sport of basketball. When that sort of thing occurs, you really should sit back and enjoy it. Having said that, of course, the Warriors blew a championship in 2016. They are human. Not writing about that at the time was a big whiff on my part – although, as it turned out, it merely set the stage for what we have now, since they went out and signed KD and now they are just ridiculous, and will be ridiculous for years to come.

This stuff is still, ultimately, fragile and fleeting. The Chicago Bulls were the greatest thing I’ve ever seen on a basketball court 20 years ago, and while you could, in the abstract, foresee a time without  Jordan and Pippen and whatnot, the idea that the Bulls would one day become one of the most hopeless and colossal messes in the NBA seemed unthinkable – and yet here we are in 2017 with a Bulls team that might not win 20 games. One of the reasons why I’ve sort of chosen to truly embrace the goodness that is the Golden State Warriors is because goddamn, this team was just godawful for the better part of 40 years. That’s some serious misery. As a resident of this community, I feel as if it would be emotionally and intellectually dishonest of me not to embrace that success. It does, in the end, help me to better understand failure. You need stuff that sucks to have stuff that’s cool, and vice versa.

General question from Victoria, B.C., O Canada!:
What sports don’t you like?

On principle, I can at least appreciate pretty much anything that’s done well. That doesn’t mean I like watching it, however. I only like watching golf to see people mess up and hit the ball into the trees or the lake. Tennis doesn’t do much for me, either. In general, I am opposed to any sport that has judges, since judges have proven, over time, to be biased and corruptible and, quite often, biased and corrupt. I work in auto racing, and while I love the machines and how they’ve come to be over time – which is fascinating and nutty and full of colorful characters with lunatic ideas – I find that the actual races don’t do much to hold my short attention span. Blood sports don’t interest me at all. Nothing annoys me more than having my social media timelines filled up with UFC. Blech.

But there’s lots of stuff I like. I love basketball and soccer the most. I always could watch football so long as I viewed the players as chess pieces, but when I actually think of them as human beings getting their brains scrambled, it doesn’t appeal to me much. I’ve sort of fallen out of love with hockey but could be persuaded to come back. Same with baseball – the “three true outcomes” style of play is boring to me, since seeing 4% of plays result in home runs instead of 3% doesn’t change the fact that 21% of the time guys strike out and 10% of the time they walk, which are the two dullest plays in the game. But the game is cyclical and will shift in time. I love rugby, I have spent a day downing a case of beer at a cricket match and seeing the appeal. The Olympics are amazing if you can ignore all of the political sideshows: I’ll watch a million hours of that every few years.

Sorry, Cleveland:
Please tell me the Browns have hope.

The Browns have hope.

I don’t actually believe that, but you wanted me to tell you that, so there you go.

Good timing for this question from Los Angeles about USA FC, who smacked down Panama 4:0 on Friday night:
You hated Klinsmann. Is this team any better?

Yes, it is. USA FC is actually now in a fascinating place, in my opinion, a place which it has never been in before, and a place in which literally no one involved – players, coaches, etc. – know what to do: that place being that literally every single time that USA FC lines up for a match against a CONCACAF opponent – and, to be honest, against quite a few nations from elsewhere on the earth as well – the U.S. has the best player on the pitch, because Christian Pulisic is the real deal. He is that good, and barring injury, he is going to be that good and even better for the next 10 years. I’ve read and heard a number of people who cover the German game speaking of how Borussia Dortmund staffers snickered about Barcelona spending €105 million on Ousmane Dembélé, because Barca was buying the wrong player. Pulisic’s potential is literally sky-is-the-limit type stuff. He’s the best player in this entire region and he’s 19 fricking years old.

And when you have the best player on the pitch in every single game, you have to coach and play appropriately. You have to line him up against the other team’s worst guy and let him turn the poor sod into BBQ chicken. You have to get him the ball all the time. You have to counter the inevitable physical play, because the guy will get all the attention and will be kicked and tripped constantly. (Which is what happened during that disastrous Costa Rica-Honduras two-step recently, where Pulisic had five guys around him kicking at him the whole time.) If that means you need a hard man and an enforcer out there, sobeit. If that means using him as a creative decoy sometimes, sobeit. (Which is how Argentina got the final of the last World Cup when Messi could barely move.) You have to think and play the game differently. It’s a nice problem to have.

Arena has no idea what to do in this case. The U.S. has always been tenacious, resourceful, and mentally tough – good traits, but those you need in lieu of talent. Now the U.S. has a wünderkind talent and how they figure out how to use him going forward will determine how good this team can be. It’s a star’s game, in the end, much like basketball. If you’ve got one guy who is that much better than everyone else, everything you do has to be based on him. This requires a total shift in American footballing mindset. It may take a while.

Klinsmann was well on his way to messing that up as well when he was fired, which I approved of. I’ve been, on balance, somewhat meh about USA FC – in part because I continue to be amazed at the fact that there are 300,000,000 people in this nation and yet we have 67-year-old DeMarcus Beasley playing left back – but I’m well over Klinsmann’s random back threes and blaming every single person in American soccer other than himself for his poor results. Qualifying through The Hex has been a mess, but in general, I think they’re going the right direction, albeit in fits and starts. I have no earthly idea who replaces Arena in a couple years, however.

Here’s a comment from a loyal reader in Cape Verde:
Hello I come from Cape Verde and my English is bad. I read your work in order to get better at it.

This is probably the greatest compliment that I have ever received. I would add, however, that the idea someone is using what I write to learn English is somewhat terrifying. I’m not sure that I can handle that responsibility. But thanks for reading. And as bad as you might think your English is, I can assure you that my Portuguese is far, far worse.

I got two emails from Africa on the same day:
I live in Niger. Why no more African football on the blog? More African football, please.

I’ve been disappointed with CAF qualifying for the World Cup. There have been some surprises – no Cameroon, Algeria, and likely no Ghana in the World Cup – and there has been, of course, the obligatory lunacy, but the quality of play has been wanting. I think there are more good teams in Africa but fewer great ones. It seems like they’re in sort of a transition phase at the moment, with stars aging out and younger talent not yet fully establishing itself.

And I’m a little bummed that two of my favorite teams – my beloved Blue Sharks and also Les Étalons from Burkina Faso – got stuck in the same qualifying group, and may both wind up getting screwed because of that South Africa-Senegal game having to be replayed. Still love the African game, but I don’t really feel like any of these teams are going to do very well in Russia next summer. The Super Eagles have been terrific in qualifying and the best of the bunch, but trouble always seems to find them come World Cup time.

Question from Spain, which is cool. Go España:
Basketball! Who will win the East this year?

The In Play Lose NBA Eastern Conference preview

Honestly, I don’t think it matters much, since the East is hot garbage. Either Cleveland or Boston. I’m not enamored with either at the moment.
 
Okay, this one is right up my alley:
What’s the worst loss you have ever personally suffered in a game?

I remember a 3rd grade basketball game where we lost 26:0 and I think I might – might – have been the only kid on the team who didn’t cry after the game. I was on the worst softball team in the history of the city of San Francisco, we were 0-10 and our closest game all season was 16:8 – a game in which we were down 16 runs going into the last inning and somehow scored eight to make the beer taste better afterwards. We lost a game 30:0 that season as well, if I remember correctly. My team getting no-hit in baseball was not cool. I gave up eight goals in a soccer game once. That wasn’t fun. What was even more annoying than that was twice losing 1:0 when we scored upon ourselves. I lost a scrabble game by 428 once, which seemed like a lot until my wife lost a game by 550. (And by scrabble schlub standards, we’re both pretty bad ass. Bad games happen sometimes.) The women’s basketball team I was coaching lost by 93, which made me mad because they ran the score up on us and I told the opposing coach after the game that if he’d done that cheapass cherry-picking shit in the U.S., some of his players would’ve wound up getting hurt. He didn’t care for that.

I can guess what state this question comes from:
How long are you going to be butthurt about Sonics moving to OKC?

How long are you going to be butthurt about the fact that Kevin Durant got a better job? Have fun this season watching two of the most self-absorbed players in the NBA drive Paul George all the way to Los Angeles.

On a related note, a comment from loyal reader Mr. Williams, of the law firm of Williams Morgan + Williams, in San Leandro, California:
Long live the SuperSonics! David Stern and Clay Bubba Whatever can rot in OKC. But don't forget Roger Goodell (spit!) and Über Liar Stan Kroenke. Ripping another team out of my hometown STL. Fuck them and Fuck the NFL! Long live the St. Louis Rams and The Greatest Show on Turf!! And the SuperSonics! Kevin Durant looks fantastic in a Dubs jersey, BTW.

I do revel in the irony that the NFL dangled the idea of moving franchises to L.A. for 20 years, using that in order to extort stadia in places like Minneapolis using public money, and then when they finally did move franchises to Los Angeles, they completely assed it up. After 20 years, L.A. cares less about random football teams and more about football teams that are actually run by someone who a) knows what they are doing; and b) isn’t a douchebag. Neither Kroenke nor Spanos fits either of those qualifications.

And one more along those lines from Tacoma, Washington:
When do you think Seattle gets an NBA team back.

Best guess would be X = Y + 2, where X = year Seattle has a team and Y = year Anthony Davis leaves the New Orleans Pelicans, at which point that franchise is as dead as a doornail.

My attempts to locate the source of this question have proven unsuccessful:
Why are you bad at scrabble?

Well, for starters, my world knowledge sucks. I rack manage pretty well, but my board vision isn’t terribly good. I tend to space out too much and let phonies go. I get wound up far too tightly before tournaments, to the point where I feel sick and get migraine headaches. I take tough losses so badly that it tends to adversely affect me for 2-3 games afterwards. Oh yeah, and my end game sucks, too. I win some games here and there because I am lucky, and because I’m usually playing against people who are completely deranged. Other than that, I’m awesome.

And then there’s this from Dublin:
Why didn’t you run away with one of the Irish girls? (A reference to this.)

I’ve been asking myself that question for 27 years now.

- - -

Thanks for the questions and the comments and we’ll do it again sometime in the future. I thought I’d close with some Tom Petty, who died at age 66 last week. A true working musician, a musician’s musician who was interested in craft above all else, didn’t give a shit what people thought, and who was truly among the great modern storytellers with his songs. I always admired his work, even if I didn’t always like it. But I usually did like it. I thought he was terrific.

Other Existential Setbacks

I’M GONNA kill the NCAA here after some more dust settles, because it’s a piece of shit and the exploding scandal in college basketball – which has seen indictments, arrests of assistant coaches and shoe company execs, and the firing of Hall of Fame Coach/Master Tactician and Motivator/All Around Sleazebag Rick Pitino at Louisville – looks as if it might have ramifications for years to come. We’ll deal with that soon as we have more time and the scandal further unfurls.

But let’s post something beautiful right now. We need more beauty in this life.

I’m in a literary mood today, and since I had college basketball on the brain, I thought I would pull out a college basketball poem, yes, poem, which is written in couplets, of course, because the 3-point shot hadn’t been invented in college basketball in the 1970s when it was penned. (Nowadays the stanzas would be tercets a third of the time.) This comes from a basketball anthology published in 1980 called Take it to the Hoop, which my dad gave to me in 1982 as a gift for my 13th birthday. It was my favorite book, a cherished book which was lost when a storage shed of mine got broken into. Getting another copy took forever, as the book went out of print years ago, and I finally got ahold of one last year in exchange for joining a library in Kansas and contributing to their fundraiser for building a new library, a cause which I wholeheartedly support.

I think about my dad a lot these days, because he has new challenges that we as a family will likely struggle to deal with and come to terms with. He introduced me to basketball: I went to my first game with in 1975, when I was six years old and Washington State defeated Jacksonville 82:77. (Go ahead and look it up. I told you that I remember everything.) But it was when he gave me this book about the game, and when I read this poem, that I realized I wanted to write, a realization of what would become a lifelong pursuit for which I’m grateful, even though I hate it a lot of the time.

And it’s a perfect poem for this blog, because the bad guys win in the end, and we’re left to learn to handle disappointment. Sounds almost perfect.

And the Long Beach State teams in the poem were coached by Jerry Tarkanian, whom I met once, as his daughter went to the same school as I and he came for a speaking engagement. He was always in the NCAA crosshairs for improprieties, and yet, in retrospect, and somewhat paradoxically, he was arguably the most honest coach the sport has ever seen, much more so than the sleazebags who are about to taken down by the feds.

-- -- --

The NCAA Mideast Regionals,
and Other Existential Setbacks

It was #1 ranked Indiana
against #2 ranked Marquette

and the announcer announced
that the Indiana coach Bobby Knight

had his office wall papered with uplifting slogans,
in particular one from general Patton

about having one goal and driving toward it
singlemindedly, and that people will try to stand between

you and your pinnacle, and the closer you come to it
the more furious shall be their resistance,

but in the hall of the Marquette coach, Al McGuire,
there are pictures of clowns

and he is reputed to have said,
“All of us in public life are clowns.”

I had also read an article about McGuire,
about how all his players are crazy about him

and how he’ll get pissed off and end up
wrestling with them on the locker room floor

and five minutes later all animosities are forgotten.
Once he told the reporters that one of his players

couldn’t throw the ball in Lake Michigan,
and the next day the player called his own press conference

and drove the press out to the lake
where he proceeded to toss a basketball

off the end of the pier. I also remembered
when he brought his team into the Long Beach Arena

back when he had our greatest team
and had never been beaten at home

and nobody in the top twenty (UCLA and USC most noticeably)
would schedule us even at their places

and no coach in his right mind
brought his kids to the Arena,

so naturally Long Beach beat Marquette
but it was a close game in which our guys

spent the whole night at the foul line,
and afterwards McGuire didn’t bitch

or temporize or alibi,
and so I now said,

“Right on, Al McGuire;
I hope you kick those goose-step Hoosiers’ asses,”

but he drew two technicals
and Marquette lost by nine big points.

– Gerald Locklin

Soundtrack for a Nervous Breakdown

TODAY we are going to talk about losing something entirely different, which is my mind.

People keep asking me why I haven’t been posting blogs, or writing novels, or writing articles that I’m proud of, or whatnot. What follows is why. When this occurs, me getting anything done is pretty difficult.

Every now and then, I make it a point to write down everything that is going through my head during the day. I’ve been doing this now for 11 years. I don’t do it all the time, just when I start to completely go off the rails. Usually, I just think my way through it, but sometimes, it needs to be written down. In an effort to maintain openness and honesty, I’m going to take this particular day, which was yesterday, and share it with you.

This is unedited, save for removing some names where appropriate to do so, and makes no real sense, but in total, it makes perfect sense. [NOTE: I did, however, clean up some of the grammar, because I found myself annoyed with how incoherent my incoherence was.] If there are references in here to things I have written about on this blog, I will provide a link to provide some context. Also, when I do this sort of thing, I’m usually listening to music, and doing things like singing the lyrics and responding to the songs, so where that occurs, I’m inserting the songs, which came from a playlist of several thousand songs that was set to random.

Happy reading. It wasn’t happy writing.

- - -

3:49 a.m.: I woke up KC because I thought she was choking. She said “huh?” She was fine.

3:57 a.m.: Probably best that I’m awake. The argument is always the worst part of that dream. I was just about to start the Q&A, I asked for questions and she stood up, like always. Oh here we go, yeah, flash that fucking gun and tell me how you’re going to shoot me already. But then she’s waving the gun around, debating who to shoot and here comes the argument. No, don’t shoot her, you idiot, shoot me instead. You don’t even know her, and I’ve not seen her in a decade anyway, so I don’t know what she’s doing here in the first place. Just shoot me and get it over with. Fucking get it over with already you psychopath.

4:08 a.m.: Might as well go to the office today. I can catch the early shuttle and be there faster.

4:10 a.m.: The early shuttle means getting somewhere I don’t want to be faster. It’s got to be the goin’ and not the gettin’ there that’s good. I’ll work from home. 51 pages by Friday? No chance. No problem. No just no and that’s my final answer.



4:12 a.m.: I needed some music. Something African and soulful. Fuck yeah Bombino, shred that fucker.

4:20 a.m.: The chiropractor crucified me on Monday. “Oh how are you feeling?” “Oh I’m fine thanks.” “You know your back is something of a mess again.” Just adjust the vertebrae and stop calling me on my bullshit.



4:35 a.m.: Latin trash. I need that. Oh that song feels good.

4:40 a.m.: He spelled art wrong. He spelled it aart. Jesus Bastard Christ. “Cars that doubl has works of aart.” He also wrote the word Prrnion in the same paragraph. What could that possibly mean? How do you have a fucking job? Jesus.



4:50 a.m.: Interesting random choice, iTunes. Grant Hart just died the other day. I always thought of Hüsker Dü as the soundtrack for a nervous breakdown.



5:07 a.m.: I need to buy their new record.

5:12 a.m.: There are no photos for this article. Why are there no photos? Oh, right, because he LIED AT THE FUCKING BUDGET MEETING. Goddamn it. I’m going to fucking fire him tomorrow. Jesus Fuck, am I the only person who is paid to give a shit?



5:22 a.m.: This song also came up yesterday when I was walking in the fog and it was threatening to swallow me whole. Do it, Karl, you bitch. “Old man yells at fog!”

5:28 a.m.: Laura asks me “why didn’t you say that?” I say that if I had, it would have ruined everything. There are things you say, things you don’t say, and things you can’t ever say which wind up leaving you inconsolable. All you are left to do is to imagine the consequences, imagine the worst case scenarios, but also dream about the beauty of what could have come to pass ...



5:31 a.m.: I can taste opportunity near ...

5:39 a.m.: I found a nice house. €300,000.

5:45 a.m.: I’ll go to the office today and sort this mess out.

5:48 a.m.: No, no I won’t.



5:50 a.m.: I’m a dark star.

6:05 a.m.: Kevin is funny. He said “you’re going to the office today,” like any day that I show up at Royal Ground at 6:00 a.m. I felt bad the other day when I walked past him on the street, carrying a cup of coffee from another café. I’m such a coffee slut.




6:24 a.m.: Was that really necessary?

6:36 a.m.: Laura asks me “what if you said it now?” and I said that it wouldn’t mean a thing because the biggest problem with remembering everything is that no one else does, and when you point out something that someone said on a Tuesday a whole bunch of years ago, their response is to say, “I don’t remember that,” and you take it personally, because you made a metaphor out of it when it was nothing but a random utterance, the words having come to explode with meaning in my mind because I make meaning out of everything. Blue is just a color, goddamn it. Linen is a fabric, coffee a way of life.



6:55 a.m.: bang bang bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang shoot me down bang bang bang bang

7:02 a.m.: Except the bullets don’t work any more, and neither do the drugs.



7:05 a.m.: Shit that’s loud. Who cares? I’m deaf anyway. I kill headsets faster than I kill brain cells with whiskey.

7:07 a.m.: The router conked out for the second time this morning and I thought about solving the problem of getting a new one by simply smashing that one to bits and necessitating its replacement, but if I’d done that, I would have mourned its loss.

7:11 a.m.: Fuck it I need to walk around the block and wage silent war against my right foot and ankle and knee and hip. All of this conspiratorial shit on the right side of my body needs to stop.

7:24 a.m.: Home of the motorloaf. What does that even mean?



7:35 a.m.: She brought flowers last night, flowers which were sitting in her lap before the shooting started and she ducked for cover. This sequence used to horrify me, before I realized that the aim is poor.

7:44 a.m.: I hate it when the walls start to move. Next thing I know, you’ll be sitting over there in the corner, asking me why it is I haven’t written to you in so long. My mind can make a mess out of an empty room. Shoulders hunch, neck contorts. I love that feeling of being able to differentiate every single vertebra in my neck by how much it hurts. Isn’t that just super. Get out of this fucking chair!

7:48 a.m.: That hurt.

7:56 a.m.: I get more things not accomplished before 9:00 a.m. than most people do all day. Fuck it, I’m going for another walk.

8:22 a.m.: Hmm, I appear to be having a crisis. It’s bad to go walking on a day like today, because there are always cars. There are always hills and always cars. This city was inherently a bad idea. And I hate that fucking building downtown that I can see from here. That’s the sort of arrogant building dictators build in places like Brazzaville and Azerbaijan. Salesforce can suck it.



But I have Norwegian technotrash so everything is okay.

8:30 a.m.: I just missed the last of the shuttles and I don’t give a fuck. I get more done at home than at the office anyway, and this way I won’t murder anyone.



8:43 a.m.: tell me now what I’m gonna do … all my desire to be with you … juste un peu d’amour … juste un peu d’amour … iTunes has decided to fuck with me today.

8:49 a.m.: I’m thinking about that burger again. Laura asked me about that burger, and I said I went to Burgermeister because I missed the train, and I ordered it with swiss cheese and jalapeños, no lettuce because lettuce is trash, with bacon and tomatoes and sautéed mushrooms and red onions – red fucking onions! My god they are so good, and when I quit smoking on the 2nd of October I’m going to eat so many fucking red onions and remember how good they taste just like the last time I actually quit smoking and stuck to it for any period of time. So I got extra red onions on that burger and smothered the fries with Tabasco and vinegar and smothered the burger with Worcs and with the green Tabasco, that jalapeño version, and it reminded me how good it was to be alive and actually make the choice to be alive – eat the damn burger because you know that you want to and stop not doing stuff like that – but that burger wasn’t made of gold dust or ferry dust, it was just a burger, which I said I wanted to eat and actually ate, and I also ordered a Trumer Pilsner which I wasn’t supposed to do, but the drugs don’t work anyway and who gives a fuck sometimes you need to break rules simply to break them and I reveled in the subversion.



8:55 a.m.: I would’ve shared my burger with you.



9:13 a.m.: I wish I could get high. The drugs don’t work.

9:19 a.m.: That was the worst sentence in the history of the English language or, at least, since the last time I read one of his articles.

9:28 a.m.: That other house I found was cheaper and had a better view of Mo’orea.

9:39 a.m.: I have a headache. It must be a Tuesday.

9:45 a.m.: The train has left the station without me.

9:49 a.m.: Seriously, if you’re going to shoot people in public like this, at least shoot someone that you have a connection to. Don’t shoot some random chick from a decade ago whom you’ve never met. And don’t argue with me about her relevance. You don’t know how unimportant she was to me and apparently neither do I. I don’t know what she’s doing here, either.



10:09 a.m.: Mo’orea ...

10:14 a.m.: Why was I fixating on a burger all day yesterday? A burger on Monday, the 18th of September is no different than on any other day. What a dumb fucking thing to daydream about, to talk about. Maybe it’s because I can remember every moment of it: the layout of the room, the color of the seat on the other side of the table, the red onions. Oh man, all of it mattered at the time. None of it matters. I can’t believe I subject Laura to this shit.



10:22 a.m.: I don’t know where I’m going from here. This ain’t my revolution. You know, I should probably put on some more upbeat music.



Better. I need to buy that record. I think I have 44 records I need to buy.

10:33 a.m.: Editing this article wasn’t happening so I decided to work on a blog. But which blog? I have 10 of them here, 10 frickin files dating back to July, none of which are close to being done. Jesus Fucking Piece of Shit Bastard Fuck. I should finish the Hate Mail, because at least that one will be funny. Fuck I need to read this article.

10:37 a.m.: “marqued contrast.” I swear I am going to murder you …



10:44 a.m.: I wish it was Excellent Birds.

10:56 a.m.: What what what? What? What? I hate phone calls because all it ever is is what what what? Splat I felt my eardrum explode again, it is 40° outside and 100° inside and there is blood, 7-year-old blood, but also there is slime and why am I so jumpy about this? Fuck, that was over 40 years ago and I dwell on the stupidest fucking things sometimes.



11:09 a.m.: Empathy not sympathy. Learn to listen, learn to love them in your own way, even if it is not the way you wish to love them.

11:13 a.m.: The Qail? What are we, in Monterey or Mecca?

11:17 a.m.: Laura says, “the biggest regret is the empathy you never gave.”

11:20 a.m.: “... more events were held then any were else on the plant.” The plant? ANY WERE ELSE ON THE PLANT? I swear, I am going to assassinate him in the office tomorrow.



11:25 a.m.: Moving this to the soundtrack for Within. Within … where is that fucking draft, even though I can recite it from memory. “Melanie stands amid the rampoles.” “Stories all have to start somewhere, even the stories, such as this one, which will end really badly.” WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING DRAFT? “Of course it will be a disaster.”

11:30 a.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.

11:45 a.m.: Thank god for some football. Football is a life saver sometimes. Never has that been said before about a 3rd round Carabao Cup match. Too bad Norwich are dross, but this team they’re playing, Brentford, are fuckall. Dross and fuckall. Amazing how I turn the Norwich game on and instantly become British again. We all had British accents by the time we left that island. that, and we were afraid to get in a car on the right side of the road.

11:55 a.m.: Goal Norwich, Vrančić with the penalty. I like typing Vrančić because it has cool hats on the C’s.

12:15 p.m.: Saved by the Brentford centre back, who blootered that penalty over the bar, over the stands, and somewhere into orbit. I pointed to the sky that one time, said “kick it up here” and the striker did just that. I’d already stopped two of his other penalties. Oh you fuckwit, I was so in your head. I stopped your ass so many times. I set a state record in that game, I had a black eye for the prom. Yeah so we lost but if we’d won, I wouldn’t have seemed so gallant and noble. Fuck I hadn’t thought of that game in 20 years. “Jerry’s ball! Jerry!” That was his name. Little prick. I punched him in the first game and the referee only gave me yellow, lecturing me about how just because Jerry was a piece of shit who just injured our fullback, it didn’t give me license to punch him. We turned it over in the midfield and there were eight of them in a row across the field coming at me and I felt like Custer, and Jerry was shouting “Jerry’s ball! Jerry!” and Windsor cleaned him out and should have been sent off for it but only got yellow, conceded the penalty and my oh my, did that ball ever fly fly away …

12:18 p.m.: But we lost, so who cares? But Jerry didn’t score. Winning the skirmish can be more important, so long as you don’t wind up getting killed during the war.

12:20 p.m.: Amazing how your present edits your past. In that memory, my 17-year-old self had a limp.

12:25 p.m.: Brentford are rubbish. I should go for a walk. No, don’t. Cars.

12:27 p.m.: A cheque for $3.82. Who sends a cheque for $3.82? I just ran through all of the scenarios, wondering how this amount came to be? Someone bought the book in a foreign country, ebooks perhaps? Several people somewhere on this planet want to read what I’ve written and let the stories become their own, let Inga and Mallory and Karen run rampant through their own imaginations instead of through mine, which is a good thing because those three are a handful. This should make me happy. Why doesn’t it? I can buy two cups of coffee from Kevin for that.

12:32 p.m.: Fuck the process.

12:40 p.m.: That last cigarette was godfuckingterrible but the next one will hopefully be better. The key to understanding the addiction of smoking is to know that it’s rooted in wishful thinking.

1:04 p.m.: Norwich is winning so easily that I’m bored.

1:08 p.m.: Process, patience, remember to breathe.

1:10 p.m.: I should probably do some actual work. I should probably also bash my skull with a cedar plank, since it would be less likely to make me scream.

1:18 p.m.: I’m supposed to write Nebraska. Is that right? I think it is. Mother fucking shit bitch. I only forget things which are meaningless to me in the bigger picture. That, and my keys.

1:20 p.m.: I’ll write that article after I go for a walk. Fog free, blue sky outside. I’ll walk and think about Nebraska. What the fuck do I write? Just use my time tested rules for both journalism and poetry: no mentioning 3:00 a.m., no using the words meat or pants, no more writing about Barcelona, bar fights in Brugge, or the jewelry mongers on the Ponte Vecchio, and slant rhyme whenever possible. And also make it swing, and taste good. I should be fine.



1:55 p.m.: It’s 834° outside and it feels almost sane.



2:13 p.m.: Can the dead really dance? I guess I’m about to find out. They certainly cannot shoot worth a goddamn.

2:15 p.m.: I should tell KC I need her to come home.

2:16 p.m.: But how to make all of it funny? Comedy = tragedy + time. Laura said, “the humor finds you. You even make jury duty funny. You can make anything funny, including this.” I say, “if I pull this off it will the best thing I ever do, but people will hate me for it,” and Laura says, “that would never have stopped you before.”

2:20 p.m.: I keep grabbing at my forehead.



2:31 p.m.: This song was banned in China. I should aspire to be banned from foreign nations, instead of being banned from grocery stores in Yelm. I should go back there, walk through the front door and just stand there, see if they remember me and throw me out. That would require me being memorable. I’d remember them, and I bet some of those dumb hillbillies are still working there 20 years onward, because what the fuck else do you do in Yelm and what is a Yelm in the first place?

2:33 p.m.: I did a lot of bad things. We all contribute to our own demise.

2:36 p.m.: Oh put the fucking gun away. Only cowards carry guns. That time you pulled the chef’s knife on me was much more effective, except that it was so dull it couldn’t cut butter, but I was high then and I acted like I was scared. No, I wasn’t high, because the drugs didn’t work then, either. Christ I must be a mess today if I’m thinking about chef’s knives and Yelms. I’d much rather be thinking about Mo’orea or burgers.

2:39 p.m.: That part of my body is not supposed to hurt. The others I can live with at this point. I’ll right this article later. And write it while I’m at it. And probably writhe. I need to move around.

2:46 p.m.: The poor guy’s life goal is to make it from one bus stop to the next so that he can sit down and remove his prosthetic leg. He has a black cowboy hat and doesn’t remember me whenever he sees me. He asked me for a cigarette, just like he always does. How can you not give the man a cigarette in that circumstance?

2:53 p.m.: I should probably eat something. I haven’t eaten since Sunday. I forgot. Pfft. Bull fucking shit I forgot. I never forget anything. When I forget something, it’s a deliberate act and conscious choice.



2:56 p.m.: You know, I should put on some happier music.



That’s better.

3:01 p.m.: She yelled at waiters. She also yelled at a bank clerk once. And she insulted my boss that one time as well. No, that was two times. “I hope you know you’re employing a thief.” “I hope you know I’m employing a thief who is married to a bitch.” Bless you Diss for the diss. She also yelled at a psychologist, who said, “you know, people don’t act this way.” Why is all of this so fresh all of a sudden? This is all old news. Who gives a shit when there is so goddamn much to fret about in the present?

3:03 p.m.: My hand has this slight quiver to it today.

3:05 p.m.: I have to get something done before SF95, even though I probably shouldn’t go to club because I can’t concentrate for more than 20 seconds on anything. I remember when I used scrabble to focus. Those were the days. Scrabble was more fun when I was simply bad at it, instead of being terrible like I am now.

3:15 p.m.: “One car that drew a lot of attention was 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2-2 Shooting Brake – another words a station wagon.” Another words? ANOTHER WORDS? FUCK YOU YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF SLIME.



3:19 p.m.: In Denmark, you can get sued for even thinking about this song.

3:22 p.m.: I say to Laura, “I wish I could have healthy addictions.” She says to me, “I’ve seen you with those before and it isn’t good.” I say, “they would be healthy if they weren’t so stupid.”



3:25 p.m.: It’s this weird sort of thing, in that you decide the time has come to touch that abyss, and it all comes at you so fast. It’s sort of beautiful and you cannot write it all down fast enough. You’re going 1000 mph and it’s like you’re watching a film of yourself in real time, in real motion, except that the reel is a little bit off and so, instead, you’re aware that you’re watching a film which is slightly, ever so slightly, different than reality even though it’s the exact same image. All of the details which are slightly off are what you then go back and write down.

3:28 p.m.: And it’s not an accident, either. It’s a decision. You say, “you know what? Fuck it. I’m going off that deep end and seeing where I come out,” and you touch that abyss, you touch that fire and it absolutely wrecks you. I’ve got no idea how anyone survives this. This is why she stands amid the rampoles – that row of dead trees charred and blackened after the wildfire has burned up the hillside. Feel the fire, feel it burning you alive and burning through the countryside. But I do think this explains my ability to wander amid the densest wettest fog along the Pacific Coast and western front in sandals and short pants and never feel cold. I’m burning up in here. In my ennui and angst, I went and did something stupid recently and jumped into that abyss once again. Now I’m on fire and I’ve got metaphors everywhere. Jesus, you imbecile, you know this never ends well. All in the interest of beauty. There is beauty in the breakdown.

3:30 p.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.

3:33 p.m.: Breathe. No, fuck that. Water.

3:37 p.m.: Fuck Nebraska. I’ll write that later. It is later. Goddamn.



3:39 p.m.: There are probably 10 songs on this laptop which I never skip through and this is one of them because it captures either my mood or the mood I want to have.

3:43 p.m.:
(This space has purposely been left blank.)





3:53 p.m.: I’m going to take as a sign and symbol and gospel that the random placement of a dice song followed by a song that mentions the Queen of Spades means that I should go back to writing the gambling book, because that’s how this stuff works. Symbols mean what you want them to mean and you wind up looking at disgusting sludge in the bottom of your teacup in search of meaning. I was reading that first draft of Queen of Diamonds again. It wasn’t bad except for the parts that sucked. Take out all the bad parts and the parts no one wants to read and it should be good. Carrie has potential to be an amazing character. All you need to write a novel is two years, a plot you know how ends, a great leading lady, a good therapist, and strong drink.

3:56 p.m.: Laura helps me piece together all of the stuff I tried to forget but never could which now comes back to me in bits and pieces and shards. There are compartments and there are categories – stuff to forget, stuff to remember every single detail right down to how much I tipped at the restaurant on the bill, and somewhere in between. It’s fun to shock her with being so calm about it all. “She said she’d put the cat to sleep. Meh, whatever,” or “We’d be driving down I-25 and she’d just let go of the steering wheel and let it veer nearly into the ditch. That was odd.” The stuff I want to forget gets in the way of the stuff I’ll never forget, like burgers on a Monday evening, which is all pointless anyway, since the other person doesn’t, or persons don’t, remember it. What do you do with a headful of useless crap? WHISKEY! THAT’S WHAT YOU DO!

3:59 p.m.: Whiskey of the Week. Whiskey of the day. Whiskey of the hour. In about 18 minutes or so, my back will stop hurting.



4:04 p.m.: That may be the most logical song I’ve heard all day.

4:15 p.m.: I hope KC comes home soon.

4:18 p.m.: I’m not usually this needy, or this angry. Or am I?

4:24 p.m.: If I do something great and it’s too late, and he doesn’t remember, then what was the point? Perhaps that’s where the urgency comes from, to make moments that feel like memories before memories are impossible for him to form.

4:27 p.m.: I should call.

4:30 p.m.: No, I should write Nebraska, because it was due a week ago, and if I’m going to maim and assassinate people at the office, I’ll have to also blame myself for missing the deadline. Fuck, I hate being management sometimes.

4:32 p.m.: My feet are on the floor, I had my eyes closed and I smiled. It was weird.

4:35 p.m.: KC’s coming home soon, right?

4:38 p.m.: “I’ve been doing a lot of reading about depression and trying to learn how to deal with people like you.” And I’ve learned ‘how to deal with’ people like you by dumping your ignorant ass.

4:41 p.m.: GET SOMETHING DONE GODDAMNIT ANYTHING!

5:36 p.m.: That there was some bad writing. But it is done and I managed to concentrate for long enough to vomit on a page. Sometimes, it is all that you can hope for.

5:38 p.m.: Laura reminds me that I always tell her that I remember to laugh because the joke is on them.



5:45 p.m.: What would I go back to?

5:50 p.m.: Okay, I figured it all out. The problem is that she’s like my ex-wife. I’ve been dwelling on this now for a little while. Yes, she’s like a psychopath with BPD, right down to the ability to masquerade as being empathic, or at least flip the switch here and there and fake it for the purposes of her profession. No, that’s not it. They can feel what you need so long as they’re the ones deciding to give it to you. It’s fake empathy, a power trip. These sorts of people are fucking toxic and fucking dangerous. Interacting with one of these type of people recently has reminded me of this fact and sent me down this fucking rathole, which is why I’m all screwed up in the head right now. You know that type of person when you see them. But … but … but … you can’t say that aloud. You can’t say that’s a psychopath and it will only end in tears. You can’t say he’s a narcissist and it will lead to disappointment. You can’t say these things even though you’re right. Who gives a fuck about being right? I’d rather be wrong for once. I’ve spent the past 16 years wishing I was wrong and lamenting that I’m not wrong about other people and politics and whatnot. Christ, I’m not even bright and I can see this. All of this stuff should be FUCKING OBVIOUS to anyone with an IQ higher than a mollusk.

5:55 p.m.: Fuck off and stay dead Tam, you fucking psychopath.



6:10 p.m.: KC is bringing me a sandwich. This day might not be a total loss.

- - -

As nervous breakdowns go, this one was slightly more awful than the norm, but nothing that I can’t get past.

So, take this day here, and do this every single day. Do this all day, every day, inside your head, while you’re multitasking and carrying on with the quotidian torpor and banality of evil that is day-to-day existence. Do this EVERY FUCKING DAY for the rest of your life, because if you don’t talk your way through it in your head, you’ll probably drop dead.

Welcome to my life. Sorry if I get a bit distracted.

And when some prick says something malignantly ignorant and stupid such as this, I get really annoyed.

And if you, my good reader, are someone who does suffer from a form of mental illness of some sort, get help. Seek help. And if you don’t suffer from that, and you know someone who does, practice empathy and not sympathy with them. Listen to them, learn from them, and love them in your own way.

And sometimes, all that you need is a really good sandwich:

KC knows what to say, even if it means saying nothing at all.

Mail Call

At least he didn’t miss the cutoff man

SO the dumpster fire that is my summer may actually be simmering down a little bit here, and I can get back into Lose with the appropriate amount of gusto. I don’t think I’ve said this often enough, but I greatly appreciate all of the readers out there. This blog is fun, first and foremost, and knowing so many of you enjoy it keeps me doing it.

Seeing as how we’re in a bit of a lull at the moment before the losing and the lunacy really takes hold full throttle in the fall, I thought that we would try something different here. I’d like to hear from you, the readers. What would you like to see this blog? Do you have any questions you’d like to ask? Would you like to commiserate because your team sucks? Drop me a line! You can email me at inplaylose@gmail.com, and when we get enough questions and comments gathered up, I’ll do a special Hate Mail edition of In Play Lose.

Something different, something fun. Let’s go for it. So send in your questions and comments. I look forward to hearing from you.

Busting a Move

There is no reason for this gif to be here. I just thought we needed a moose chasing a golfer in Sweden, because moose.

TODAY we’re going to talk about player movement. This is a good time of the year to do that, since we’re approaching the baseball trade deadline. It’s that time of year where bad teams trade good players, and good teams trade bad players in return for those good players.

Okay, well, maybe that’s not entirely true. The players being dealt back aren’t necessarily bad before they get dealt, but most of them will amount to nothing in the end. This is because the bad teams doing the trading of good players usually are bad teams because a) they have no real good eye for talent, and/or b) they have a coaching, development, and/or organizational system which sucks, meaning whatever talent they acquire will likely go to waste.

This is why, when you see some list of all of the great young talent the Chicago White Sox have acquired in the great purge that is their summer of 2017, you should take it with a grain of salt. The White Sox have done almost nothing right as an organization since they won the World Series in 2005, and have returned to the protoypical bad and boring state of irrelevancy which has generally plagued them for a century. The White Sox excel in producing players who are either mediocre or malcontents. How that is somehow going to magically change remains a mystery. As I’ve said before, if a management team runs your franchise into a ditch, it’s foolish to think they’ll be smart enough to get you out of it.

And teams have wised up and come to understand that you shouldn’t go overpaying at the trade deadline. There hasn’t been a truly wretched deadline deal in baseball for quite a while now. The days of the Heathcliff Slocumb deal have long since passed. And yes, realizing that yesterday was the 20th anniversary of that horrible trade by the Mariners “inspired” me to write this blog, so to speak. In terms of long-term damage to a franchise, I’d probably argue that the Mariners’ trade of Adam Jones for Erik Bédard was actually a worse trade, and that Shelby Miller stinker by the Snakes looks to have lasting power in the annals of deals gone awry, but both of those were offseason deals. In the context of the midseason trade deadline, the Slocumb deal is the (Fool’s) Gold Standard of awful. And the Red Sox made out like bandits in that Slocumb deal, but not even they have been immune to the horrible midsummer trade, which I’m reminded of watching TV here and seeing Jeff Bagwell inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The most common currency these days is pitching prospects, which are basically lottery tickets. Want a guy from a bad team? Give them 2-3 pitching prospects from the lower leagues, and if they balk at that price, then give them 2-3 more. Among the prospects the Giants just received for trading 3B Eduardo Nuñez to the Rex Sox was a 17-year-old presently pitching in the Dominican Summer League. As longshots go, they don’t get much longer than that. Failed African kleptocracies possess currency of greater value than young pitching prospects. There’s a reason for this, of course: pitchers are fragile and prone to breaking down. The likelihood that any of those lottery tickets will cash is slim to none.

And this has proven true with pitching prospects at all levels, regardless of prowess or pedigree. Even picking up seemingly can’t miss prospects can blow up spectacularly. In 2011, the Giants traded for Carlos Beltran from the Mets in an effort to boost their chances at defending their World Series title from the year before. (They failed.) Giants fans were decidedly unhappy about the price for a 3-month rental of Beltran: Zac Wheeler, the 6th overall pick in the draft and considered to be the #1 prospect in the Giants farm system at the time. In five seasons with the Mets, Wheeler has produced a total of 21 wins and has spent 2½ years on the DL with arm problems. Giants fans used to complain about that trade, since Beltran didn’t really do much in two months bayside while Wheeler had so much upside, but no one complains much now given the unfortunate trajectory of Wheeler’s career.

Then again, given the constant and perpetual spate of injuries which seems to ravage the Mets on a yearly basis, it’s quite right to question their training and medical staffs. Injuries can be one-off and bad luck, but runs of injuries throughout a club on a regular basis point to a certain level of organizational incompetence. (We can make light of this in the context of chronicling failure, but something as damaging as this story about the New Orleans Pelicans, from a human standpoint, is pretty alarming.) This goes to what I was saying before about bad organizations, insofar as that, one way or another, they go about making good players into bad ones over time. And make no mistake about it, the New York Mets have been a bad organization for years, one which has won in spite of itself of late. For perpetually bad teams, the buying and selling of talent usually proves to be the perpetuation of the same old mistakes.

The whole point of bad teams trading at the deadline, of course, is to dump salary and try to recoup anything for expiring contracts of players you have no intention of keeping. If you’re bad with those guys on your team, you can quite easily go on being bad without them. But as deadline buyers have smartened up over time, dealing guys away at the deadline has become less and less desirable. Not only are you still bad now, but you’re unlikely to get anything in return which will prevent you from being bad in the future. Your best chance to retool through the trade market actually comes in the offseason.

Then again, if you suck, you’ll probably screw up the offseason as well.

The baseball deadline nears just as the flurry of activity surrounding the free agency period in the NBA finally peters out. (Or so we thought, but more on that in a minute.) I continue to maintain that the Golden State Warriors have, in fact, broken the NBA, is as much as that the response from the other 29 teams to this dominant juggernaut seemingly having risen from straight out of the Pacific Ocean is to completely melt down and lose their collective minds. We’ve already killed the Kings and the Bulls for selling off their stars – Boogie Cousins and Jimmy Butler – for pennies on the dollar, but then the Indiana Pacers said “hold my beer” and one-upped them with one of the more mind-bogglingly bad trades I’ve seen of late, swapping their disgruntled star Paul George to OKC for a couple pairs of shoes. OKC can now pair PG13 with Russell Westbrook for a season in yet another attempt to remain relevant before George inevitably jets off to Los Angeles in free agency. The primary piece going back to Indiana is Victor Oladipo, who has now been traded twice in a year, and who the Zombies are happy to get off their books after inexplicably giving him an $84 million extension. Sam Presti didn’t get nearly enough shit for offering that awful contract up last season, nor does he get enough slag for some of his awful drafts in OKC in recent years, because Presti’s greatest strength over the years has been to figure out who the dumbest teams in the league are and trade with them.

Which is a description that fits Indiana well, at the moment. Presti must have known he should make a deal with Indiana GM Kevin Pritchard because it was Pritchard, as GM of the Portland Trail Blazers, who picked Greg Oden instead of Kevin Durant with the 1st pick in the 2007 draft, and that pick of Durant at #2 served Presti quite well over the years. Indiana apparently had a three-team deal worked out whereby they’d move George to Cleveland, the Cavs would trade Kevin Love to Denver, and the Pacers would get a bunch of promising stuff back from the Nuggets, but the proposed 3-team trade has a funny way of winding up being a no-team trade. For some reason, Indy pulled out of that deal – apparently neither the Cavs nor Nuggets quite know why – and then they scrambled around and cobbled together this dog of a deal with OKC. Oladipo is a decent player, but not great by any means, and now they are on the hook for $84 million of decent-but-not-great. The best, and also most cynical, reason that I figure this deal took place is that the Pacers thought they were going to stink regardless after trading PG13, so the best way to keep asses in seats at The Fieldhouse was to bring back a guy who played down the road at the University of Indiana. And I don’t think that aspect of this trade has been played up enough. Seriously, if this decent-but-not-great player owed $84 million hadn’t played at I.U., I think there is ZERO chance Pritchard trades for him. NBA fans, even in Indianapolis, are far savvier than that. It’s small-time thinking on the part of what’s become a small-time franchise.

But that brings up something which a lot of people forget, which is that these sorts of decisions by franchises aren’t always made for reasons pertaining to on-field performance. Quite often, other forces and factors come into play. Sales reasons, marketing reasons, or hell, maybe the guy is a pain in the ass and you just want him to go away. Those reasons aren’t necessarily any better or worse, in terms of making a deal, than reasons relating to on-field performance. I think playing on the Hoosiers sentiment with Oladipo in Indianapolis is stupid – I’d argue the best way to keep asses in seats is through winning basketball games – but you can understand that line of reasoning when it doesn’t appear that you’re going to be any good, anyway. One of the more amazing non-trades I can recall from my Seattle days came in the panic that followed the Sonics choking in the 1994 playoffs. Head Coach and Acting GM George Karl cobbled together a deal to trade Shawn Kemp and the #7 pick in that draft to the Bulls for Scottie Pippen, a deal which didn’t come to pass, in part, because Kemp was the Sonics most marketable star at the time, and it was reported that many season ticket holders and corporate sponsors made it be known to the business office that their support was being pulled if Kemp was dealt. In retrospect, of course, that deal would probably have been good for Seattle, but in retrospect, most everything about the RIP Sonics could have been done better.

And one of the reasons the Indiana Pacers dealt Paul George was because he’d told them, in no uncertain terms, that once his contract was up, he was leaving. The trade in professional sports is something of a strange relic from earlier times when the franchises had complete control over the players and could dictate the entire course of their careers. While clubs in baseball and the NBA and such will insist the trade is vital to their interests and the ability to do it is essential, the players haven’t nearly figured out the ways in which they can leverage the situation in their best interests. Because ultimately, trades don’t make much sense in the abstract – why should I be told that I have to now pick up and relocate to someplace else where I don’t necessarily want to be? It’s been reported that numerous possible trades of George were, in fact, scuttled by his agent catching wind of the possible deal, calling up the potential suitor, and saying “we’re not signing with you, so don’t bother.” And it surprises me that more guys don’t do this sort of thing. Obviously, role players and 25th men on the end of an MLB bench don’t have nearly the sort of leverage, but stars have the power to shape and control and chart their careers, often failing to realize just how much power they actually have.

And we should applaud players for taking control of careers, instead of taking the sides of ownership and management. Don’t buy into any argument a sports league puts forth about trying to promote competitive balance through salary caps, revenue sharing, luxury taxes and the like. That’s not about competitive balance. That’s about cost certainty, which is entirely different. Major League Baseball finally clamped down on one of baseball’s biggest freeloaders, the Oakland A’s, and told them to stop skimping on payroll and claiming to be broke while raking in the easy money provided by revenue sharing. MLB had to force the Florida Marlins to promise they’d spend revenue sharing money on players after they’d been found to be turning rather nice profits while fielding horrible teams with horribly low payrolls. In North American sports, there are few incentives to be good and plenty of incentives to be terrible. Hell, the Seattle Mariners are worth over $1 billion, even though they’ve never won anything, they’ve lived off of the aegis of the state of Washington, who built them Safeco Field, and they made it a point to actively fight and thwart Chris Hansen, the guy who wanted to buy the Sacramento Kings, when he wanted to build a new arena down the street from their ballpark. They’ve not been good neighbors, and they’ve not been any good. How much are they worth again? A billion dollars? As in billion with a B?

North American sports fans are strangely conditioned to take the sige of management when it comes to all labor-related issues. One of the reasons for this is that fans root for teams for decades, whereas players inevitably come and go. Fans have a sense of loyalty to their favorite teams, and they assume that players should as well. This is naive, it always has been, and always will be. We also buy into dumb narratives about players being selfish, not caring about the team, and not caring about winning. Bullshit. These are the most competitive people on the planet. They want to win no matter what jersey they put on – it’s just that quite a few of them would rather be wearing a different jersey, which I’m perfectly okay with. I personally don’t understand why more players don’t force trades out of bad situations, nor have their agents work behind the scenes to prevent them. Your career is not best served by being traded to the Phoenix Suns or the San Diego Padres. Well, obviously, in the short-term, the reason guys don’t force their way out of places is because they get killed in the press for it, but ultimately, players should have the power and the control over their careers. We’re fans, we’ll get over it and root for whomever dons the jersey next. (Well, maybe those hillbillies in OKC won’t get over Durant. Tough shit. I would love it if Russell Westbrook, when given the opportunity to sign the new übermax $200 million extension, decides not to sign it – and he has all the leverage, so he has no reason to do it right away – and sends that entire garbage franchise into such a panic that they’ll corkscrew themselves straight into the ground, which would be glorious. But I digress.)

And this brings us to Kyrie Irving, who ruined the summer vacation plans of a great many NBA beat writers when it became public knowledge that he’d asked for a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs have been in full-on meltdown mode ever since the NBA Finals ended. Cavs owner and junk mortgage king Comic Sans Dan Gilbert wouldn’t bring back GM David Griffin, one of whose main jobs in Cleveland involved keeping the peace. He then lowballed his first choice candidate for the job, Chauncey Billups, who turned it down. In the meantime, the Cavs whiffed on trading for either Paul George or Jimmy Butler, the sort of player they needed to add to compete with the Warriors, and no one who covers the NBA is able to deny the bevy of rumors of LeBron James leaving next summer to go to L.A. All of that probably has something to do with Kyrie’s thinking, not to mention the fact that he’s very likely sick of playing with LeBron and wants to be the #1 option on a team – which seems odd to me, in that he’s already somewhat of a #1 option in Cleveland, where he shoots more than anyone, and also seems somewhat delusional to me, seeing how whenever he truly has been the #1 option (i.e., without LeBron), the Cavs have been terrible. Be that as it may, I have no issues with Kyrie wanting to take control of his career and dictate its terms. In that sense, he’s learned from LeBron, who has spent his entire career maximizing his leverage and looking out for his own best interests.

Kyrie wants out of Cleveland and good on him for doing it. He’s something of a complex character, the value of whom is truly hard to discern. On the one hand, he’s an incredible scorer and one of the great shotmakers I’ve ever seen, a trick shot artist with the ball in his hand. On the other, he’s never shown himself to be very good running an offense, he’s not a great playmaker, he is truly one of the worst defenders I’ve ever seen, and I’m not sure he’s ever made a teammate better. Further still, it could be argued that with constant turbulence and instability in the franchise – so many coaches, so many GMs – and having had to play second fiddle to LeBron, he hasn’t truly developed all of his game. Further still, and this one is important, regardless of what the numbers tell you – and the numbers suggest to me that he might be overrated as a player – Kyrie Irving is a superstar. He hit the biggest shot in the history of the franchise, the championship-winning shot in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. He sells shoes, he’ll sell jerseys, and he’ll put asses in seats. And all of that stuff matters. In many ways, it matters even more than what he produces from a pure numbers standpoint. (Which could lead me into a long rant about how I hate all discussions about Halls of Fame in which statheads through numbers at me and disregard the narrative aspects of a player’s career, because Halls of Fame aren’t Halls of Stats, but I’ll get to that line of argument at another time.)

So congratulations, new Cavaliers GM Koby Altman, you now get to figure out how to trade Kyrie Irving and not get screwed over in the process. Have fun with that. Kyrie is only 25 years old, and has two years left on a contract that is, by NBA standards, incredibly team-friendly, as it was signed under the previous CBA. I mentioned previously that he was the Cavs’ best trade chip, precisely for those reasons. I also said they’d be insane to trade him, but everyone involved with the Cavs seems to be insane, so this is not as far off-script as you’d think.

And yeah, if you’re the Cavs, you really should try to trade him. You could be a dick about it and say, “you have two years left on your contract, so tough shit,” but that’s just asking for two years of distractions on a team that’s already rife with them. And you’re also better off if you make a good-faith effort to work out a deal with one of his preferred destinations – San Antonio, Minnesota, New York, Miami – because otherwise, Kyrie’s agent can say, “we ain’t resigning in two years” and likely scare off some suiters, or at least cause them to lower the asking prices. The players really do have more leverage than they realize in these situations. OKC didn’t care about trading for a year of Paul George’s services, because for them it’s a no-lose situation. If he walks, it’s a whole lot of open space on their books. If he stays, it’s a bonus. But most teams will not be willing to do something so ballsy, and be more inclined to play it safe.

Given the circumstances, this is a bad spot for Cleveland to be in. They need to stay relevant, in case LeBron wants to stay, because the only way LeBron will stay is if he thinks they can win. They also need to somehow get younger, because if LeBron leaves in 2018, he leaves behind a whole roster of guys well-suited to play with LeBron but not so good otherwise, all of them with contracts that make them extremely undesirable to anyone else. The chance for a bad outcome here is high, and so I thought I would cook up a few bad outcomes of my own for the fun of it …

Over on ESPN, they have a fun NBA Trade Machine which will allow to propose all sorts of trades and see if they meet the criteria established in the CBA. In the wrong hands, of course, such technology can be a dangerous thing. I decided to set out on a misguided quest to see if I could cook up the worst trades possible for Kyrie Irving, based upon the number of expected wins the trade will cost the Cavs. Behold some of my masterpieces, starting with the Knicks, who are one of the four teams Kyrie had on his wish list:

How’s that for a return? Only -11 wins for Cleveland though. Surely we can do better – or do worse, as it were, especially if we try to move some salary and trade some of the contracts the Cavs would be happy to get rid of.

Orlando has plenty of pieces with which to make an awful deal.

I don’t know if Sacramento would be willing to make this deal, since it would mark a radical departure from Vlade Divac’s usual philosophy, which is to amass as many basketball players from the Balkans as possible and grossly overpay all of them.

Here’s a 3-team deal with the Blazers and Bobcats Hornets. I didn’t have the heart to dump Evan Turner on the Cavs.

Here’s a bad trade with Detroit. You’ll notice some themes developing here, one of which is that a lot of the guys going back to Cleveland in these deals are guys who signed last summer, when NBA ownership got drunk on salary cap space and inked a bunch of not very good players to expensive contracts they now regret. The other theme you will notice is a lot of centers, which is a position no one cares about in the NBA anymore, anyway, and is a position laden these days with a general dearth of talent.

Atlanta has nothing good to offer, which is perfect for this exercise.

Okay, now this is more like it. Team up Kyrie with AD and Boogie in New Orleans in exchange for someone who is always hurt, two not very good centers, and some guy that I’ve never heard of. This is getting better and better.

In terms of number of Hollinger losses, this trade here of Kyrie to the Griz for the rotting corpse that is Chandler Parsons’ contract is the overall champ at -14. But this isn’t my favorite deal.

This is my favorite deal. I think this one is my Sistine Chapel.

And as dumb as those deals are, there have been deals in all sports in North America which were worse than those.

In the NBA, a superstar player rattling the sabres about wanting to be moved is a source of leaguewide upheaval. In soccer, it’s a day ending in Y. The biggest saga of the summer when it comes to superstars possibly changing teams is not Kyrie Irving leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers – but we’ll get to him in a minute – but the possibility of Neymar moving from F.C. Barcelona to Paris St. Germain at a price which is gobsmacking. The reports have suggested a transfer fee for the Brazilian in the realm of €250,000,000, which seems just preposterous, but everything about international transfers in soccer seems preposterous, and there is a good reason for that – most of the reporting turns out to be smoke, with very little fire behind it.

Transfers are a shady and shadowy business, and the international market is deliberately rife with gossip and innuendo. This is because clubs cannot directly speak to players who are under contract with other clubs. That’s against the rules. Transfers are the ultimate act of “have your people call my people.” Recruitment operations at club will employ fleets of middlemen whose job it is to go out and contact player’s agents and attempt to gauge interest in a player being willing to be moved – and the agents, of course, are perfectly happy to let it slip out that such-and-such a club would be interested in a player’s services if it results in said player getting a better contract out of the deal.

A result of the landmark Bosman ruling in 1995 has been that players have tremendous power when it comes to dictating where they play. When a player is out of contract, the club gets nothing if a player changes teams. As such, players hold the ultimate leverage: all it takes to squash a potential move is for an agent to tell a club there is zero chance in hell his client will sign a new contract, meaning the club has shelled out X amount of euros to acquire him and will wind up getting nothing in return. If you run a club, and you have a guy you want to keep, and he wants a new deal, his agent will go contacting middlemen working for other clubs, and then some strange transfer offer will materialize seemingly out of thin air from some other club saying “hey, we’ll give you X for such-and-such player,” at which point you have to go back to the agent, who will say “gosh, I have no idea why that club is so interested since my client loves playing for your club, and he would love to play for your club going forward for another €100,000 a week.” The only real leverage a club has is through playing time. If you want to get rid of someone, bench him and tell him he’s not in the future plans. Guys want to get paid, but guys also want to play football. If you tell him he’s not in the plans, he’ll want to go someplace else.

And when you’re a fan of a soccer club, you get used to it. My beloved Canaries of Norwich City make for a good reference point here. Norwich City are, for all intents and purposes, a Division 1.5 club. Every nation has in Europe has these sorts of clubs to one degree or another. The Canaries are one of the yo-yos, bouncing up and down between the EPL and the Championship on a regular basis. They’re a midsized club and, as such, they’re likely to look for younger talent at more reasonable prices and, at the first sign of trouble, they’re also likely to sell. When they were relegated from the EPL in 2016, I took stock of the roster and noted which guys were most likely to be sold to bigger clubs. Now, little more than a year later, the first five guys on that list of mine are all gone.

But this is how it goes. You accept it as part of the game and you move on. You’d love to keep your players for as long as possible, but if a bigger club comes calling and willing to buy, you’d be stupid to sell. Nobody in Leicester bitched too much when, the summer after winning the EPL title, the Foxes sold their best player, N’Golo Kanté, to Chelsea for £32 million. Kanté being sold to the Blues, a year after he arrived in Leicester, meant first and foremost that Kanté wanted to go to Chelsea. And why wouldn’t he want to go to Chelsea? He can make more money, first and foremost, and given Chelsea’s resources, he’s likely to win a lot more football games over the course of his career. Can you blame him?

Of course you can. Here in the states, we still have hillbillies decrying Kevin Durant’s lack of loyalty to an organization he had no choice in joining, and hooters who will burn LeBron’s jersey when he decides to take his talents to South Beach. That’s just dumb. If you’re going to root for the name on the front of the jersey, then root for the guys presently wearing those jerseys, instead of the guys who have moved on. Stop buying that stupid narrative about loyalty. There isn’t any loyalty the other way. Teams will dump players in a heartbeat if it serves their needs. Why do we, as fans, continue to grant license for ownership to do that, yet balk at the idea of players looking out for their own best interests?

Being a sports fan, ultimately, means allowing yourself to be conned into thinking that the ownership of your favorite club actually gives a shit about what you think. They want you to buy season tickets, of course, since that lump sum payment in the offseason is a nice influx of cash with which they frontload their budget. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that many of those either don’t care about winning, or are far too incompetent to go about doing it. I have never begrudged any player who wanted to leave a favorite team of mine. They move on, the club resets and you go from there. It’s fun to think about the mechanics of making trades, like I did with the trade machine earlier, but if your team sucks, a trade isn’t likely to make them all that much better by themselves. If your team sucks, the rot likely begins at the top with ownership and then filters down into management. About the only thing they aren’t willing to trade, unfortunately, is themselves.