Damn it. I hate taint.

Source: The Week

I was always angry that steroids tainted the competition of Major League Baseball to some unknown degree (I would definitely be less angry if the level of impact were known exactly), but it was always indirect for me--no important Red Sox player had ever been implicated (I say important because we did have the occasional visiting scumbag like José Canseco). Now steroids have tainted one of my favorite memories to some unknown degree as well, and there is nothing ever to be done about it. For the sake of both the quality of baseball and your (Katie and Chris, the only non-Boston baseball fans I know of who read this blog) own enjoyment of the experience, I hope that by the time the Cubs and the Cardinals next win there is a meaningful drug testing system in place.

It's Snowing in St. Louis

Hell, however, has not frozen over.

ADHD and Sports

I've kind of always wondered if there was a problem with ADHD drugs being abused in sports. Personally, I'm always afraid to play hockey if I've taken my medicine because it can really increase your heart rate, but apparently it can be quite helpful to athletes.

Although this guy drags out his argument longer than he needs to and presents it as if he's a genius who amazingly pierced through the information to find the truth, the article is nonetheless interesting.

Basically, in baseball a ban on stimulants led to a three-year increase in players with medical exemptions for Ritalin, Adderall, and similar drugs from 28 to 106, or 8% of players (nat'l averages are 3-5% for children and 1-3.5% for adults).

Although it's not my favorite it's the best I could find: here's an online ADHD test. Unfortunately it doesn't take the common step of splitting the questions into sort of a "mental and physical" dichotemy, but overall it's not bad.

Does race really matter?

For a lot of this campaign, I've been worried - sort of closet-worried, actually, because I feel weird talking about it - about the Bradley effect - basically the idea that lots of white people are closet-racists and, when they get the polling booth, will flash back to 9/11, see how much the name on their ballot resembles "Osama," and vote McCain. Or just decide they can't handle a black president.

But this NYTimes article - which, fair warning, rambles a bit - tells me the issue of race is both more complex and less worrisome than I thought. It's a good read.

P.S. Now that the Cubs have choked, I'm even more neurotically worried about Obama, despite the polls. I really thought that this was the year for both of them.

I have to root for the Red Sox?!

As the 2008 MLB regular season winds down, we can start to see what the playoff picture will look like.

Boston is a good team - probably better than the Rays - but they appear headed for defeat in the division race. My basic model shows the following:

Red Sox
94 wins - 3%
95 wins - 36%
96 wins - 53%
97 wins - 9%

Rays
96 wins - 3%
97 wins - 39%
98 wins - 51%
99 wins - 7%

This gives Tampa Bay a 95% chance at a clean win in the division. This would set up a 2/3 matchup of Boston at LAA and a 1/4 Minnesota/Chicago White Sox at Tampa.

The Angels will be tough for Boston because they have such a strong pitching staff, but I think the Sox can prevail. To a lesser extent I'd say the same thing about Tampa Bay, but I think that, especially with the second round being a seven-game series in the ALCS, it is Los Angeles that is Boston's larger roadblock to the World Series.

In the National League things are less clear, but I am relatively confident that the NLCS will feature the Chicago Cubs taking down the winner of the NL East (New York/Philadelphia).

So I predict that it will most likely be the Red Sox and the Cubs in the World Series.

This makes things horrible for a Cardinals fan. Although the ecstasy from Tom Brady's knee is still brightening each and every day for me, I can't help but continue to hate Boston and all its teams. Except the Bruins. You can have them.

But this pales in comparison to my hatred for Chicago and its sports teams. The Cardinals-Cubs have the most underrated rivarly in sports, and the Cardinals have something special at stake this year. No team in North American professional sports can boast that their rival has failed to win a championship in more than a century. With the Cubs celebrating the centennial of their 1908 World Series this year, we in St. Louis ask them to hold off for just one more year, so that we can talk the best trash in all of sports.

So, even though the Cubs haven't won a World Series in the same time that the Cardinals were able to win 10 (although the Sox total of 2 in the same span - since 1926 - isn't anything to get excited about), they do present a huge challenge this year. Their run differential is the best in baseball, and their pitching staff is solid, headed by Carlos Zambrano, who recently threw a no-hitter (nevermind that he gave up a grand slam to the Cardinals in his first inning of work following the no-no). All-in-all, if it comes down to Sox-Cubs, I'd put 60% odds on the Cubs, but I'll root as hard as I can for the Sox anyway.