Men

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=== 35,000 People Not In On the Joke, Dept. ===

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As a True Believer in the values of the Founding Fathers, I'm not quick to hand the government control over the personal choices of individuals.  However, there is a point at which choice crosses the line.  Society doesn't permit ritual duels on a reality show - sign a contract, both agree to a life-or-death manhunt, survivor gets five million.  We think that Mojician will confirm that if two men voluntarily enter into a duel, the survivor is chargeable with first-degree murder.

It's hard for some young folks to get ahold of the idea that you can be committed to a cause (e.g. the government is there to punish evil, not to parent the citizens) while still applying those principles in nuanced ways.  My takeaway from Matt's post was that --- > he believes that the NFL is over the line as it pertains to the damage in inflicts on its players.  Sure, some things are over the line.  I don't believe that riding a motorcycle without a helmet is even close to that line, but I believe that ritual duels are, and it's possible that the NFL is.  

I always wonder about intent-to-injure ... a Saints defender trying to take out a QB's ACL ... and whether it should be charged as a crime off-field.  Wonder whether Mojician would go for a law that allowed prosecution for this specific behavior.

Mojiician - if you just joined us, he's a trial lawyer - with a sparkling post on the subject.  Kibitzing in italics...

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Matty sez, compassionately and logically,

I've been looking at the data regarding our national obsession (baseball is our pastime...football is something else, considering it occurs only weekly and generally involves only 5 total hours of time per week...yet we Americans give it far more money than we give to baseball). This isn't meant to tick people off...just to start a dialogue...I'm becoming very concerned that what we do with American Football is the moral equivalent of ritual sacrifice.

Did you folks know that the oldest man alive today to have ever played at least 4 years of NFL football is 73?

Did you know that football stars who have died in the last ten years have been giving their brains over to medical science for study because, even as they go mad from dementia and and neurological diseases that are fast on the rise in the game's M.A.S.H. unit, they know that football caused their impending deaths? And did you know that those autopsies have unveiled scorched brains riddled with lesions and clear signs of severe internal bleeding long forgotten?

Would you sit comfortably on your couch and watch the NFL if you could see the blood pouring into their brains?

The average life expectancy of four-year NFL veterans is 54.6 years if you look at players who hit their prime in the 60s and 70s, and today's game has a much steeper injury rate, is filled with bigger players and there are five times as many concussion reports and other catastrophic back, neck and head injuries. In the average season post 1995, there've been roughly 82 catastrophic neurological injuries in football each year - that's almost three per team. Per year! And that's just spinal column, neck and head injuries that merited at least 8 weeks on the IL...it's HUNDREDS...PER YEAR...for other skeletal and connective tissue injuries with life-long repercussions such as chronic arthritis, brittle bone disease and joint death.

I think football is no better than the Roman Colosseum or the Aztec's virgin sacrifice...I used to find it fun...but I can't bring myself to even watch - not until they do something about the body count and the human misery they're inflicting on the world. This message coming to you from a man who has always voted republican and thinks liberal attempts to make things like air shows and hand guns illegal are insulting and beneath our collective dignity. Football can seem very heroic, but they used to sing songs about toreadors and further back, it was gladiators...and most of us have moved on and recognized how barbaric and morally depraved such things were. When will we take a harder look at football?

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=== Roundtable, Dept. ===

Did you folks know that the oldest man alive today to have ever played at least 4 years of NFL football is 73?

Did not know.  Amazing.*  *A little too amazing!, LOL - see MoDawg's comment below.

The average life expectancy of four-year NFL veterans is 54.6 years if you look at players who hit their prime in the 60s and 70s

That one's even more amazing.

Daniel Amen, the guy I listen to on brain research, is also campaigning against football in its present form; he's putting the info out there that EVERY hit to the head, including with high-tech helmets, causes alarming brain damage.  Before even commenting on Matt's position, we'd better be fully aware of the extent of the brain damage being inflicted every weekend.  It is far beyond what most would imagine.  The effect on lives is tragic.

One* difference between football and Aztecs throwing maidens into volcanoes is that the maidens weren't paid and didn't have the option to do something else.  :- )  "Murder" implies a certain lack of volunteerism on the part of the victim....

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Q.  How much extra time does Hisashi Iwakuma use to prepare himself for a pitch?

A.  He uses 3.3 seconds per pitch more than does the average MLB pitcher.  The average is 22.0.  Iwakuma's average is, you guessed it, 25.3.

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Q.  Do any other pitchers have "pace" that is slower than average?

A.  Have you augured Dr. D's mood yet?  That will happen when our #2 starter wins us our 8th in a row, holding the game to 1-1 late innings, and all they can blinkin' talk about is that he should pitch faster.  No, I take that back, not all they could talk about.  There was one comment, as they cut to commercial, along the lines of, "with five in the books, Iwakuma ... working a ... shutout?"  

Bah humbug.  Yes, the most deliberate pitchers in baseball, over the last few years, have been Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Jeremy Hellickson, Hiroki Kuroda, CC Sabathia, Shaun Marcum and now Yu Darvish and Hisashi Iwakuma.  All take 23-27 seconds per pitch.

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Q.  At 3.3 seconds extra per pitch, that's how much extra time in a game?

A.  It's 330 seconds extra per 100 pitches, that being 5.5 minutes extra to throw 100 pitches.  Wait a minute, though:  those are good pitchers on that list, meaning effective pitchers, meaning less success by the batters.  These deliberate, and excellent, starters allow fewer baserunners per 3-out inning; more time per AB, but fewer AB's per inning.  

The game is closer to finished after 100 pitches thrown by Hiroki Kuroda than it is after 100 pitches by Hector Noesi.  So you'll be able to escape the waking nightmare that is a baseball park a few minutes sooner, with Sabathia and Iwakuma pitching, because there are mercifully fewer at-bats and therefore mercifully less baseball.

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Okay, Kevin Millwood is not actually Tim Hudson 2009 or Derek Lowe 2010.  You're not going to give him that contract.  But, for the past 30 days (and indeed for this entire season), there's been no functional difference there.  You could fit the past 30 days of Millwood's performances onto the back of a Hudson or Lowe baseball card and wouldn't notice anything awry.  To put it another way:  if the Mariners had given Hudson or Lowe a contract, and received from Hudson or Lowe what Millwood has given them, they'd have had no complaints.

So, LrKrBoi29, note carefully that SSI ain't calling Blake Beavan the 21st-century answer to Catfish Hunter.  We're saying -- and we're right -- that for the last 30 days, they've received an impersonation.

So off we go.  Here's why we threw down the comps we did.

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=== Walter Johnson, SP1 ===

You can do this one as well as we, or James, could.  Pick your own name.  The 2012 Seattle Mariners go down the stretch with a 1988-Hershiser-class horse to carry them.

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=== David Cone or Kevin Appier, SP2 ===

The last 30 days, six starts, Hisashi Iwakuma has fanned 8.8 men and walked 2.6, with an average HR rate.

He does it with a stinging little 90-93 fastball and a game-breaking offspeed pitch, the shuuto.  Also David Cone, the older version, fanned 8 men and walked 3-4 with a 90-93 fastball, and power slider.