New York

Q.  Which version of Iwakuma was that, getting beaten by the Yankees?

A.  The second version.  Or the 2 1/2 version.  As we recall, there have been three iterations of Mr. WBC:

1. The spring training version with a short fastball and a nibble-and-pick game, the one who had MLB hitters standing on the plate and swinging from the back leg. 
2. The sharper version, with a 90 fastball he'd use inside and up in the zone, the one who is demonstrably an MLB middle-of-the-rotation starter. The Shaun Marcum comp.
3. The elite version, the one with a 82 MPH "change-slider" who dominates.  The James Shields comp.

Against the Yankees, I didn't feel the arm action was as snappy on the slider -- in fact the fastball velo was down, too, and it seemed that his arm was fatigued from the 13 K's or something.  But the slider was good, all his pitches were good, and he needed about 47 unlucky breaks to give up three earned runs.  Jason Vargas has done worse.

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Q.  Bad breaks, like what.

Q.  Does Dr. D like, or dislike, Ichiro on a personal level?

A.  He's one of my five favorite people-players of all time.  In many respects he, more than any baseball player I've seen, has upheld the human morals, ethics, and principles that a baseball organization should stand for.

He's kind of a Mr. Spock of baseball.  Mr. Spock would have approved of Ichiro's tenure in Seattle.  What's not to like about polite, dignified, restrained, considered professionalism?

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Q.  Does SSI believe that it's a coincidence that, the very instant that Ichiro left the Mariners, they started playing joyfully, exuberantly and successfully?

A.  Like Commissioner Gordon told Tim Drake.  You're a detective now, son.  You don't believe in coincidences any more.

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Q.  Supposing for a second that Ichiro's departure was a load off of the young Mariners' shoulders.  Why would that be?

A.  Dr. D, in real life, once joined a military / commercial organization as a consultant, and was given a few privileges and perks that did not apply to the people around him.  Several of the senior employees read this as "refusing to play by the same rules everybody else did" and bitterly resented it.  Despite Dr. D's charming personality, critical contributions, and general ability to cause axe heads to float on water, the entire organization fell apart over the ensuing, nonsensical, feud.  Budgets and schedules were missed, managers were fired, and general upheaval was beyond belief.

Dr. D doubts seriously that major league clubhouses are immune to these syndromes.  Ichiro was playing by his own rules, receiving illogical and extreme privileges, and stepping on others' toes in a context that did in fact make others' jobs much more difficult.  More difficult?  Ichiro's privileges made it impossible for others to attempt to do their jobs in some cases.

.............

You have the fact that Ichiro was 10-15 years older than everybody else.  That he was a Hall of Famer.  That he outworked other people. That his disdain for others' foibles would have been palpable.  For some people, it had to have been kind of like having a disgusted batting coach sitting four feet away at all times.

..............

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=== And Now a Word From Our Sponsors, Dept. ===

Last weekend, the Klat team hooked up with a posse of supachill New York web moguls.  Straight out of The Social Network, man - these guys got places to be and people to meet.  They were packing 16-megapixel Windows Phone cams, their million-hits-a-month website, a down-to-earth attitude and they axed us if we felt like introducing them to the ballpark.  Well, I guess so.  We can move back our Blake Beavan writeup by another day or two.

The Roosevelts dot com is a sort of Esquire meets GQ meets Sports Illustrated meets the 21st century, it's way visual and graphical, it's got seriously awesome people running it, and it's one of my new fave sites.  They axed for a Safeco Art Theory piece, which see later in the week.  Included will be discussions of the five most seminal works of art at Safeco.  Needed were a supplementary five artworks discussed on SSI, so ... please don your spectacles and 12" cigarette holders.  Time for some culture, you mooks.

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=== Children's Hospital Wishing Well ===

Want 8,000 words' - that is, 15-20 SSI posts' - worth of lively sports info-tainment?  Not a single one of which glorifies Hector Noesi's elite stuff and 1.9 gopher rate?

Hruby Tuesday has an op-ed on sports fixing.  He had me at Elliot Kalb.  Kalb (1) wrote one of the most important books on sports fixing, and (2) met blogger Hruby wearing a polo shirt with a Super Bowl XL logo on it.  Heh!

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In the 8,000-odd words of the blog post, Hruby must run through 50 different alleged sports fixes, including --- > the 1985 NBA lotto that sent Patrick Ewing to New York ... Michael Jordan's thinly-veiled exile from the NBA ... the 2002 NBA Western Conference Game 6 in which the Lakers shot 27 free throws in the fourth quarter to "beat" the Kings ... Michael Phelps' eighth gold medal.  

Hruby gives 6% as the number of NCAA games that currently involve point shaving on any given weekend.  That is, 6% of all games involving a heavy favorite.  I wonder if there's an easy gambling system for betting dogs in +15 point spreads?  6% of games is plenty of leverage to work with.