a word on method

Somethings are obvious; others are not. Obvious - my intention to write about the facts of music is loose; not obvious - my commitment to the experience of music doesn't ignore the facts.

That is to say, the point is not to not tell The Music Story, but to tell my music story; and those two can overlap - the storyline and my music storyline. And why? If only because the experience of music art anything is not universal; why hide that by trying to convey meaning through facts. No band or piece of music value can be defined by the facts of its creation or the notes that are played. Or properly said not even by the music itself as a fact. Only the experience of the music, and those facts, can lead to meaning in the space between me and them, it and us. So by trying to draw out the framework of what is important in my experience in the music hopefully shines some light on why I like the music, the logic/non-logic that gives any thing value and meaning. MORE IMPORTANTLY I'm not trying to convince you of why something is great, I'm trying to show the where's and with-alls of IT when IT shows ITself - which takes WORK WORK WORK & SWEAT SWEAT SWEAT. I'm not trying to build the canon or share the perceived wealth of musico knowledge, but trying to tap a toe into meaning (for ME).

Oh oh oh, so it is that I avoid editing and facts and dates and rigor (and mp3's and such). What value does rigor have in this little blog pond?

TWO NOTES:

THE DIAMONDBACKS still get no love. I can't wait till they make it to the NLCS w/o the requisite superstar to profile and weigh as the ONE and TBS and FOX and everyone else remains confused about what to do with this team. Up one game and everyone still says the Cubbies are gonna win it. Does no one remember when Doug Davis used to be good? No not on the Brewers, but more recently when he threw 9 Quality Starts in a row this spring and has as just one less quality start then Ted Lilly this year. Now you can quibble over Micah Owings v. Livan Hernandez but today's game has to be a toss-up on the starters. And the Cubs bullpen? Marmol had a great year, but as someone who had him on his fantasy baseball team, I know full well that he hasn't gotten better as the year moved on, but worse. A young guy who probably has never pitched this much in a year = 2 runs in the 7th. I'll take the Dbacks last three plus Juan Cruz over whoever the Cubs wanna throw. And the offense last night demonstrated how they can make enough runs to win. It is not a MYSTERY how the Dbacks won 90 games this year, this is a young Talented team that is only going to get better.

Currently the Rockies are killing the Phils in Game 2. NLCS Rockies v Diamondbacks anyone?

I AM CONTEMPLATING the big dig; the big purge. Cut out the fat and leave the meat of my record collection. The only hope would be to document it, if I do.

What time is it? NATION TIME!

Sure sure, this wasn't supposed to be a baseball thing... but I've always liked Milton Bradley. He seems like an appropriately angry guy who doesn't take people being dicks. He over-reacted and consequently got injured, but I do not doubt that what the umpire said was out of line. Is it unbelievable that umpires are racist, or that Jeff Kent & Billy Beane are assholes? Kent's proved it again this year and all reports that Beane is a cult-of-me kind of guy who didn't even produce a winner this year (and puts boring, if productive, baseball teams on the field).

That is to say, Bradley calling bullshit means it's NATION TIME. (that what the umpire, ie the Man, said doesn't matter, but that he was asserting his Man-ness to Bradley's Object-ness calls for a reaction. In the clips, you definitely see the moment when Bradley, and the first base coach, hit pause and say WTF, that's fucked up.)

Appropriately (or not) I've been musing about writing something on Joe McPhee's Nation Time. At the junction of New Black Music and Black Power (although I'm never quite sure how deep the connection is between free jazz as the black avant garde goes. for most of the free jazz artists - pharaoh sanders, don cherry, art ensemble, albert ayler - the connection is explicit and clear. for others it's not so clear - see ornette coleman (this is Our music does not = this Black music. see Charlie Haden) and cecil taylor (and maybe athony braxton). if anything this may have to do with the various perceptions said artists were trying to convey less than about the actual music. Though Ayler and Sanders and others did try to make the explicit connection between Now Popular Black Music and the avant garde of Jazz. Bring the Mountain to the People.) Bundle Joe McPhee in with Ayler in that, at least in this session, this free jazz + funk. No it's not as funky as James Brown, the free jazz element makes it a little too cluttered to make the funk POP. (The tension-connection between new expression and clutter (and virtuosity), not a necessity, but commonly the case.) But the foundation is there. Maybe it's giving to much, rhythmic rigidity, to push the jazz beyond, but it does have power. And anger!

And why shouldn't Joe McPhee and company not be angry? Why shouldn't Milton Bradley not be angry? The world (and America) is still fucked up in a lot of ways. (At least this time the rabble-blog seems to be leaning against the Umpire) I do think Milton Bradley is a good baseball player and probably a good guy, he's not tied to any off-field anger issues/foibles compared to a lot of baseball players. The man just leaves it all on the field and doesn't take shit. Maybe he won't succeed as much as others with similar skills, but fuck it, at least he's righteous.

Bonds retires and other thoughts thoughts thoughts

An era is over... Bonds will not be a Giant next year

One thing I haven't understood in my time in SF is the seemingly unconditional love that Giants fans give Barry Bonds. Having been to a fair number of Giants games in that time it is pretty often that you see Barry not running full out for a ball and standing with his arms crossed in the outfield. I do think he is unfairly pilloried for the steroid thing and maybe he isn't actually an Asshole, but for he definitely comes off as one. Oh well.

Speaking of cheating in pro sports and steroids, I have two reactions. 1) Sports writers/journalists are idiots. Watch any episode of PTI or Around the Horn on ESPN or read any how-could-they-do-this sports column and it is amazing how stupid these people sound. Why do athletes cheat? Why are they held up as icons of virtue? Why does this even matter? Sports writers only sound reasonably intelligent when they talk about what they now and that is sports performance. Talk about strategy or winning or in game action, do not talk to me about morals and right/wrong or american values or what's good for the country/kids/whoever.

2) Ho-Hum. Why is it surprising that sports figures cheat at all? or CEO's? or Cops? or Politicians? or Teachers? Bill Belecheck is filming the Jets offensive signs? Why isn't every team doing that? Football/baseball players are taking undetectable performance enhancing drugs? Why aren't all athletes doing it? Maybe I'm just jaded by my experience in High School baseball where we had plays in our playbooks that involved some form of cheating and almost everyone on the team was trying out creatine to add body/muscle mass. I don't think we ever actually cheated, but we did push the limit. And we won. We were the best team that North High had ever produced. If any athlete is not pushing the limit to get any and every advantage over their opponent their not trying hard enough. And you had the millions of dollars that hang in the balance - who wouldn't cheat?

More than anything though is that even if baseball players are taking PED's it has very little effect on my enjoyment of the game. I still enjoy watching the game and following the results. Maybe that's not a particularly nuanced view of sports, but it works for me.

let's go D'backs, LETS GO

Has the baseball fan world become so enamored with sabr-metrics and pythagorean records that we can't notice a team that is 19 games over .500? Why is that the Diamondbacks still get no respect after proving over the course of 140 games that they are a good team, if not the best in the National League West, at least as deserving as the other four contenders to that title?

I appreciate that Runs Allowed v. Runs Scored is a reasonable way to judge the "actual" quality of a team, but why grossly favor that over other metrics or frankly the only metric that "actually" counts, Wins and Losses?

For the none baseball fans, the story is like this. The Arizona Diamondbacks are currently leading the National League West by 3.5 games over the Padres (and more over the Dodgers & Rockies) with the second best record in the National League, 83-64. The Diamondbacks have scored 643 runs this year and allowed 666 runs. The current state of baseball and fandom (post-Moneyball) insists and quantifying teams "real" record by the method of a formula similar to Pythagoras famous one, such that teams that have been outscored have an expected record that is below .500. All-in-all a valuable tool to judge whether a team is underplaying it's skill, is unlucky or inversely a team is overplaying its skills or is overly lucky. One example being the Cubs over the first couple months of the season in that they were outscoring their opponents generally, but not specifically and had a losing record despite an expected winning record. Later in the season they turned it around and are now battling for a playoff spot.

The opposite example should be the Diamondbacks or so Stat Folks would tell you. Near the middle of the season the D'backs were 48-43 but were outscored by 25 runs ERGO they should move back to the mean and start losing over the course of the season. Damn D'backs didn't comply and now they have a winning record and are in the driver's seat for a playoff spot.

Two big problems with this sort of analysis:

One - one of the biggest fallacies (in my mind) is Regression towards the Mean. Maybe I'm just revealing my ignorance of mathematics/statistics but why should a team (or a coin flip) (with a history or not) be automatically as unlucky in the future as it was lucky in the past? That is to say, if I flip a coin 25 times and get 25 heads, the likelihood that I will flip a head on the next toss is 50% and the next one and next one, etc. If I want to predict what the outcome (or total) over the next 75 tosses will be I should guess 50% of those tosses for a total that is still +25 heads.

So to relate this to the D'backs, who were lucky over the first half of the season, why should they then be unlucky over the second half of the season? If they have an equal number of runs scored and runs allowed over the second half (which they do) shouldn't they be as likely to outperform that as they are to under-perform that over the rest of the season?

So the Diamondbacks, who have a POSITIVE run differential over the second half are still being burdened with the negative run differential from the first half and are quoted as being overly lucky and over performing their "actual" quality for having a winning record in the second half and overall.

Which leads nicely into point number 2.

Shouldn't the D'backs success reveal, not confirm, the foolishness of putting to much faith in statistics? So the D'backs have outperformed their run differential, obviously they are still doing something right because they've still been winning. They have an extremely good record in one-run games (another classic luck team stat but maybe also revealing of the D'backs strong and wisely used bullpen (three of their relievers are in the top 25 of WXRL - a reliever stat quantifying success in pivotal game moments)), they have two of the longest winning streaks of the season (8 a piece), they've gotten better as the season has gone on (not surprising given the number of 25 or younger players on their team), and they WIN WIN WIN! What I'm not saying is throw out the metric, what I am saying is treat the metric appropriately and be happy with what you got - A WINNING BASEBALL TEAM!

Which leads to my bigger point, why does no one seem to care? Baseball writers are still choosing the Padres to win the division, no one is seeming to write up glowing reviews of Bob Melvin the manager or Brandon Webb the star or any number of reasons why this team is one of the best stories of the year. (blame "boring" players, blame playing in AZ, blame "expected" record, blame whatever) - but right now this is a good team that is going to the playoffs. And will be a good team for the next couple of years as the develop one of the strongest cores of young talent. Josh Byrnes (GM) is doing something right, let's get on this bandwagon and root root root.

Let's go D'backs. LET'S GO!