Apparently this is still an issue.

Paul Hamm won the individual all-around gold in Athens fair and square.

If anything, we should have been up in arms about Paul winning the silver in the high bar event final and Aleksei Nemov with his six release moves not even medalling* -- or what about Dimosthenes Tambakos and his step on the dismount taking the rings gold over Jordan Jovtchev and his higher-in-difficulty and perfectly clean routine**? Both of those events had me seething.

However, there are still people out there on the Internet who think Paul is selfish and arrogant for keeping the gold.

I'm writing this entry to make a point: uninformed individuals feed the fire of controversy. They cost people money and reputation.

If you don't remember the event (or don't follow men's gymnastics as well as I do), I'll briefly re-hash it for you.

1. Paul Hamm led the individual all-around (an individual competition consisting of six events [for men]: floor exercise, rings, pommel horse, vault, parallel bars, and high bar) after three rotations. In his fourth rotation he competed on the vault and crashed, scoring a 9.1something. This is terrible. He dropped to 12th.
2. He scored a 9.837 on parallel bars and other gymnasts ahead of him started to suck. Yang Wei fell on high bar. Ioan Suciu messed up on parallel bars as did his fellow countryman, Marian Dragulescu. American Brett McClure got the shaft on rings (another controversy not pursued***).
3. In the last rotation and as the last gymnast of the competition, Paul scored another 9.837 and won gold. (Incidentally, he thought better than a 9.825 would just give him bronze.)
4. The NBC coverage showed Yang Tae-Young crouched with his hands over his head.
5. Sometime later after the contest South Korea files a protest. First misstep: this protest, unless against the integrity of the judging (see: 2002 pairs competition in Salt Lake), should not have been heard. The protest was (as you may remember) about the SV (start value) of Yang Tae-Young's parallel bars routine. He competed on p-bars in the fifth rotation. There was an entire rotation to file the protest before the competition ended.
6. The tape of the p-bars routine was reviewed. Second misstep: video replay was NOT allowed in gymnastics competition (like it isn't in swimming). In stupidly reviewing the tape, they find that Y T-Y's routine was indeed a 10.0 SV, not 9.9 as he was given. (SVs refer to the maximum score a gymnast can earn based on what elements they have in their routine; their deductions are taken from that score.)
7. Everyone freaks out.
8. Paul is interviewed, says he won't give up the medal.
9. FIG says he should give it up.
10. USAG throws a fit.
11. IOC stays out of it.
12. Nothing is solved.
13. But then, the key to the puzzle finds its way to the coffee table. Miles Avery, Olympic coach and Paul's coach at OSU, says that while reviewing the tape of Y T-Y's p-bars routine he finds that there is a hold not deducted for. There are a certain number of holds allowed in one routine and Y T-Y had one more than allowed. The deduction is two-tenths.

Let's break this down.
Say the judges (illegally) give Y T-Y his 10.0 start value. He wins the competition, right? Wrong. In giving him the 10.0 SV they've used the video, so they take off .2 for the hold. He's right back where he started, not winning the gold medal. Then, you have to give EVERYONE the same treatment, reviewing their routines and correcting the scores. Wow, that's dumb. So no one did it.

Results remained the same, Paul has his gold, South Korea is pissed (until Ahn beats Ohno one and a half years later in Turin), and people (Americans!), because they don't bother to get all the facts (Miles Avery's right: when reviewing the tape you can see the extra hold) they make the wrong decision.



*I was terrified this would become bigger than the IAA deal. But noooo, no one cares about Aleksei Nemov and his amazing show of class in shushing the booing crowd as Paul stepped to the podium. Aleksei should have won. Paul shouldn't have silvered. Yann Cucherat wasn't that good. The only real problem was that no one (with the clear exception of Aleksei) was outstanding.

**Bulgaria, whom Jordan represents, actually filed a protest. It was denied. That event was a crock. Jordan was far and away the superior gymnast in that competition. Even my dad thinks so and he knows nothing about the intricacies of scoring. "But he didn't stick his landing!" Exactly. They didn't even take off for the step. Just because he's Greek.

***Same thing happened to McClure that happened to Yang Tae-Young. His SV was about three-tenths lower than it should have been. Did America file a protest after the contest? Nope.

And now it actually makes sense

McCarver's comment about breathing easy actually has relevance, now that it's the Rockies playing the Red Sox, with at minimum two games to be played a mile high.

The team breathing easiest? That would be Colorado. I'd like to see Ortiz leg out a sure double in that altitude. Actually, I'd like to see Ortiz do anything in a National League park. Who sits?

Tim McCarver and El Gyro

"The team that breathes the easiest wins."

...I didn't even come here to try to comment on that winner, but instead McCarver's insistence that the gyroball is a "glorified screwball*." I've heard this both times Matsuzaka has pitched in this series and both times I've said to the TV, "No. It is not a glorified screwball*. It is a slider that doesn't break."

I was intending to supply an article which contains quotes from the only pitcher who ADMITS to throwing a gyroball, C.J. Wilson, but the article has "expired" and so no quotes. However, I've watched a documentary on the gyroball and the guys who know what they're talking about (meaning NOT Tim McCarver) say it's a slider that doesn't break. Incidentally, that's what C.J. Wilson, a guy who knows what he's talking about because he throws the pitch and ADMITS TO IT (unlike Matsuzaka), says.

NOT A GLORIFIED SCREWBALL* but a SLIDER THAT DOESN'T BREAK (thus, a fastball that looks like a slider).



*from wikipedia, "A screwball is a baseball pitch that is thrown so as to break in the opposite direction of a slider." Gyroballs don't break, they just look like they're going to. See, that makes so much more sense.

Joe Buck

"They called it ... tendinitis ... but really, they just wanted to shut him down for the season."

Really? Maybe he actually had tendinitis. Common baseball injury. Legit. If it's just tendinitis, it resolves itself in about two weeks.

But nah. Probably just wanted to shut him down (could have just ... not started him, if that were the case).

...Or not?

I think Tim McCarver made up a word earlier in this broadcast. I may have misheard, but I think it's more likely that he invented a word.

Braves GM steps down

John Schuerholz is stepping down, Assistant GM Frank Wren will take his place. Apparently Wren is terrible. I'm not going to complain.

League Championship Series (pl)!

Cleveland! Boston! Arizona! Colorado! Cities and States! Rookies and Veterans! National League style and American League style (whatever that means)! Moneyball and ... Luck?


Yes!

Baseball!

Red Sox beat the shift

Two days late, but I gotta say, that Red Sox-Angels game had me laughing. Let's play Youkilis to the opposite field, that makes sense because Lackey's pitching him away because his last at-bat was a home run. Then, let's have Lackey hang a breaking ball and pull it for a double. That's comedy. More comedic is playing Ortiz to pull ... and he hits an opposite field double.

Oh, that and Lackey just not pitching as well as everyone says he should. Who didn't see that coming?

The Red Sox with their "wait around for a home run" and the Angels with their "small ball" approach ... warms my heart to see the home runs come through over the basestealers. Those thieves!

--

Oh! Jason Kendall on the post-season roster is amazing.

Don't you mean...nevermind.

TBS guy, right before the Phillies-Rockies game began:

"The importance of the Phillies winning this game cannot be understated."

I am too stunned to properly form words

I've got Ninja Warrior on G4 playing as I read this Braves book, and this yelling in Japanese is all that's keeping me sane. "When we come back, a model and a transsexual will walk into Ninja Warrior."

Yes. That's how bad this is.

I've come to the conclusion that Shanks is misunderstanding the Moneyball approach, as he refers to it. He says it's about taking college players over high school players, on-base percentage over makeup, and apparently not taking the best player available (like the Braves).

One of my favorite (I might be a masochist) parts:

Author Preface:
...Then I heard about a book by Michael Lewis called Moneyball. It focused on the Oakland A's and their reliance on computer technology in shaping its major league roster and its farm system. Several people in the Braves' organization warned me not to read it. "It'll get your blood boiling," they warned. "They just do things differently than we do." I resisted for awhile, but then went ahead and read the book.

The differences outlined in the book were amazing. As someone who had watched a minor league system spit out players using on philosophy, it was incredible to read about a wholly different methodology. Some may say I'm being closed-minded, but the brash disregard for scouting in its truest sense as portrayed in Moneyball was just as insulting to me as it was to so many scouts around the game. As it was explained in the book, the A's, and the 'moneyballers,' apparently care more about on-base percentage than the makeup of a player, and even though I knew the Braves paid attention to OBP, it wasn't the telling factor in choosing a draft pick or a possible left fielder. The philosophical differences were staggering.

This is where I stop to laugh, then re-read to make sure I wasn't missing a key word like, say, "NOT!" or "PSYCH!"

...nope. He's still serious.

Because it's been difficult for me to get my mind around the fact that Shanks read Moneyball and failed to pick up on the fact that makeup is VERY important to the A's organization, I'll quote an extensive passage from The Book Itself, illustrating this fact.

Lark is a high school pitcher with a blazing fastball. He's a favorite of one of the older scouts, who introduces him in a language only faintly resembling English. "Good body, big arm. Good fastball, playable slider, so-so change," he says. "A little funk on the backside but nothing you can't clean up. I saw him good one day and not so good another."

"Any risk he'll go to college?" asks Erik.

"He's not a student type," says the older scout. "I'm not sure he's even signed with a college."

"So is this guy a rockhead?" asks Pitter (Chris Pittaro)....

"Ah," says the older scout, thinking about how to address the question. It's possible for a baseball player to be too stupid for the job. It's also possible for him to be too smart. "He may be too smart," is a phrase that will recur several times over the next week,

"He's a confident kid. But--"

"But," says Erik.

"There might be some, uh, family issues here," says the old scout. "I heard the dad had spent some time in prison. Porno or something."

"Can he bring it?" someone finally asks. The air clears.

"I can see this guy in somebody's pen throwing aspirin tablets someday," says the older scout. "They guy has a cannon." ... This old scout likes high school kids and refuses to apologize for that fact,

"I'm worried about the makeup," says someone.

"What does his profile say?" asks someone else.

A young man sits quietly off to one side at the room's lone desktop computer. He punches a few keys. He's looking for Lark's results on the psychological test given by Major League Baseball to all prospects.

"Not good," he says, at length. "Competitive drive: one out of ten. Leadership: one out of ten. Conscientiousness: one out of ten." He keeps reading down the list, but no matter what the category the kid's score is always the same.

"Shit," Bogie finally says, "does he even have a two in anything?" Bogie is the oldest scout. In 1972, scouting for the Houston Astros, Bogie administered what he believes to have been the first ever baseball psychological test, to a pitcher names Dick Ruthven. (He passed.)

"Bad makeup," says someone and no one disagrees.

It goes on like that for awhile, saying that "bad makeup is a death sentence" and so on and so forth. What was it again that Shanks wrote?

Oh yeah.

"As it was explained in the book, the A's, and the 'moneyballers,' apparently care more about on-base percentage than the makeup of a player..."

I beg to differ, Bill.

On another point, something about the A's only drafting college players, Shanks' attempt to prove this philosophy wrong -- even though it ... I dunno ... doesn't actually exist?! -- made me laugh out loud.

The inconsistencies in the Moneyball book make Gillick question its relevance. Gillick points out that while Lewis takes great pleasure in mocking someone in Beane's draft room known as 'the fat scout,' he fails to mention that the same scout, John Poloni, scounted and signed one of Oakland's best players for the first half of the decade, right-hander Tim Hudson. And with all the college talk, it's also conveniently omitted that Eric Chavez, Oakland's best player, was a first round pick out of high school.

Couple things.
1. We can't allege that Lewis took "great pleasure" in mocking John Poloni for his weight.
2. I don't know if convenience is why Chavvy's signing is omitted. Maybe it's ... irrelevance? Billy Beane didn't become the GM until 1997. Eric Chavez was drafted and signed in 1996. [I should note that Beane was indeed in the organization's front office at this point and no doubt part of the decision, but he was not the decision-maker.]
3. I'm also entertained by the fact that Shanks writes "the Moneyball book."