IS ERIN ANDREWS A PED?

As in pedophile, NO, NO. Unless you're counting some interviews at the Little League World Series. Those youngsters clearly looked uncomfortable and somewhat confused by their feelings towards the lovely Erin. Sort of like when someone puts ICYHOT in your jockstrap. Or even better, she makes them feel kinda funny, like when they used to climb the rope in gym class. (Gratuitous Movie Reference: From what Movie? Aswer below)

However, at the NCAA level, she seems to be eliciting heightened levels of performance enhancement among collegiate level athletes just by virtue of her mere presence and somewhat tactile interviewing techniques.

This story, from the blog "Awful Announcing", documents a couple of examples recently where clearly Ms. Andrews had effect on collegiate athletes that are normally associated with PED use.

Not that there's anything wrong with that....Let's face it, I would worry more about the student-athlete who performed better after being interviewed by Jay Bilas or Digger Phelps than Erin Andrews, but that's just how I roll, homey.

I hear that if you drool when she sticks that phallic symbol of a microphone in front of you, that she openly questions your sexuality behind the scenes with her fellow announcers, producers and technicians. So there is a little stress on the youngsters, a perverse sort of reverse-Pavlovian phenomena on display, if you will. ESPN, you are cruel, sadistic bastards.
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http://awfulannouncing.blogspot.com/2008/01/erin-andrews-is-fueling-college.html

First it was Pat White getting a hug and a peck on the check, now it's MSU Guard Drew Nietzel who is benefiting from the Erin Andrews "touch". The Senior guard got to talk with Ms. Andrews for 15 minutes or so before the Spartans game last Tuesday against Ohio State. And while Drew says the talk "helped" him, it also made his teammates very jealous....

Neitzel, however, talked to Andrews for about 15 minutes during the pre-game shoot-around and all he did is score eight of MSU's first nine points (Naymick opened the game by making one of two foul shots) on 3-for-5 shooting including two 3-pointers, get a rebound and a steal for a quick triple-single.

"All the other guys were kind of jealous," Neitzel said. "I was pretty pumped up after talking to her. She gave me that little boost that I needed, I guess."

A "little boost" huh? Riiiight. Seriously though, if I was a College Coach I would hire Erin Andrews to give speeches to certain players before big games. She could make a fortune giving mini pep talks.
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Maybe Congress has to get involved before this corrupting influence on our nations youth continues to ply its trade through the entire NCAA? Who will protect the children?

Note - Perhaps the WWLIS simply needs to put a little dose of salt-peter in the drinking fountains around Bristol, CT. Maybe if they had, Harold Reynolds would still be on Baseball Tonight and the human tragedy wrought by the Salisbury cell phone could have been avoided.

ANSWER TO GRATUITOUS MOVIE REFERENCE: Wayne's World - Garth Algar: That is a babe. She makes me feel kinda funny, like when we used to climb the rope in gym class.

LLWS and Pitch Counts: Some Questions??

Really, I hate always coming off like an old-man on the porch shooing kids off the front yard, but it's hard for me to watch the Little League World Series with this issue as a major backdrop. And Erin Andrews sniffing an overly ripe parent in the right-field bleachers, while interesting, doesn't make for entertaining television.

It's the new Pitch Count Rule and it's effect on arm injuries juxtaposed with how the new rule effects the viewing product. Early returns are the effect is somewhat akin to peeing in your gas tank. Watching the aluminum bat swing mechanics (close to horrible) that produce 245 foot home runs just tosses me into a twisted rage. Anyway, here it goes.

FROM THE ST.PETE. TIMES: Little League pitchers: How young is too young?

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/08/01/Sports/Little_League_pitcher.shtml

Little League and the University of North Carolina are in the second year of a five-year study that examines the effect of breaking pitches. Eaton said developing ulnar collateral ligaments typically can withstand about 35 pounds of pressure and throwing a fastball "with a goodly amount of speed" exerts around 65 pounds of pressure. Eaton said twisting the elbow to throw a curveball weakens the muscles' stability that surround the UCL.


Little League recommends pitchers under the age of 14 not throw breaking balls, but that advice has fallen mostly on deaf ears. At the Section 7, 9-10 All-Star tournament last month, breaking balls weren't an uncommon sight.

"I watched a 9-year-old kid throw two curveballs for every five pitches," Southwest coach Ron Rhoads said. "Then I look in the dugout and see the (opposing) coach is calling them. Absolutely crazy."

This goes back to my rant about the answer rarely comes from the source of the problem. Rarely, if ever.

All of the following questions (derived just from watching a couple of un-watchable games) have the potential to pollute the numbers obtained from the "pitch-count during games only" survey. I wonder how each of these conditions are accounted for in the survey. In reality, most of them are beyond the control of the researchers.

Unless, you survey the parents/coaches and they are willing to verbally account for every pitch or throw their child/player makes in "chasing the dream", I'm not sure you have the proper environment to make reasonable conclusions regardless of what the data shows.

And not many parents/coaches are going to openly admit to the lengths they go to in order to get the perceived "exposure" their child/player needs to succeed. Most are borderline delusional or incompetent in these matters. Notice I'm not sure where you can separate the parents and coaches complicity, and in some cases, parent and coach are one and the same. Anyway, the answers would get massaged in order to avoid the perception that they are knowingly putting their child at additional risk of injury.

MY QUESTIONS:

SIDE GAMES OR THROWING:
1) The announcers talked about some of the side games between the teams in the tournament that were played in between the "regular" games where the pitches were being counted. Presumably there are pitches thrown during these games that don't count against the total. If coaches are involved, the top pitchers are likely throwing, hey you might face these teams down the road, you need to establish dominance and all.

PITCHING COACHES AND THROWING DURING TRAINING:
2) Players from one team mentioned how all the pitchers had "personal pitching coaches" who work on their mechanics. You have to throw to work on your mechanics and some of the tosses are under stress and duress levels comparable to games.

TRAVEL TEAMS/MULTIPLE TEAMS AND YEAR ROUND THROWING:
3) Much was made last year of one of the teams participation in travel baseball. The cameras actually showed the Mom of one of the prominent pitchers, in the stands, keeping score, and wearing the pullover of the TRAVEL TEAM. How are these pitches accounted for in the pitch count survey.

KIDS WHO PLAY MULTIPLE SPORTS:
4) This year, one the teams feature stories revolved around the fact that their football team was waiting for most of the members of the baseball teams season to conclude so they could get some of their players back on the field. I actually think this is a positive. But I wonder if the researchers are accounting for the multi-sport athlete vs. the specialist athlete. Are they parsing the data to account for these sub-groups? It would be interesting to see how the data fell among these two groups.

TV INFLUENCE ON THE RULE:
5) Gary Thorne was quick to bemoan the constant pitching changes extending the time of the games. The pitching changes are an unintended change to the game resulting from the rule. The other one is the prevalence of 10-run rule games resulting from the 7th or 8th pitcher on the roster pitching so coaches can navigate the #1 and# 2 pitchers through the constraints of the pitch count rules. How much of an influence will TV have on further changes to the rule, the result of the apparent changes
in the quality of the product as a made for TV event?

I hate to always sound like a skeptic, but until they can bring all these factors under the umbrella of the research, I'm not sure the results of the study will have much value in stemming the rising tide of arm injuries among youth baseball pitchers.

And I worry that the result will be unduly influenced by how the future product is received by Big Daddy Warbucks (ESPN) and his bag of corporate sponsors. Stay tuned.

2006 Little League World Series Final

Darn rain delay to start, which means 30 or so minutes before we get to hear the first 46 foot to 60 foot MPH conversion. Great drinking game to play if your scoring at home...or even if you're all by yourself.

Brent, Joe Morgan and Orel Hershiser, who gets to pull the trigger first on the reaction time equivalent conversion? My money is on Orel, ex-pitcher, more animated of the two. Brent should just tee it up and let the HOF'ers knock it out.

Erin Andrews is down squeegeing the field. Good for her, at least she's not hawking mobile ESPN phones in the stands. This rain delay is probably the worst thing that could have happened from a ratings standpoint, short of letting the Taiwanese back into the competition.

We're switching off to yesterday's Georgia-Oregon matchup. Beautiful.

One thing I still haven't figured out:
1) If the outfield fences had to be moved out from 205 feet to 225 feet because of the recent HR barrage, why doesn't LL make a similar adjustment to the infield dimensions as well as the mound dimensions. Changing the eligibility cutoff to allow some 13 1/4 year old kids to compete has obviously allowed bigger, stronger kids to take aim at the fences and wreak havoc with the scores. Shouldn't the pitchers also be moved further back, if only in the interest of safety?
Seems like a common sense move if you asked me. I know, nobody asked.

{Fade to Black - Game postponed until Monday 8 PM}

{Uh-oh game moved to 5 PM due to rain}

This is going to hurt ratings as most of the country is either at work or in rush hour traffic, but as I'm sure Erin Andrews would point out, if we all just had a ESPN Mobile phone we could keep updated. Our bad.

Great game, pitchers duel so far through two innings.

Japans big bats reach King Kong Carter who is just throwing bullets. Yada gets a hit and advances to second on an infield tapper. A seeing eye bouncer up the middle knocks him in.

Joe Morgan mentions that the infield is hard due to the rain, that seems strange, you would think it would soften the field a bit, but whatever.

Japan up 1-0 after 2 and a half innings.

Carter reaches out an laces a single to lead off the third. Sometimes he seems like he tries to do too much, but he's a man among boys in this tournament. One of the few that can harm Go Matsumoto, the Japanese pitcher. Erin Andrews interviews Josh Lesters dad, the scout in the stands, right before his son laces a hit to advance Carter. Carter however races through the stop sign at third base and is thrown out on a great throw by the center fielder. Great block at home plate by the catcher.

Cody Walker the proceeds to go oppo-field line drive home run to make it 2-1 Georgia after three innings. Geogia's 1-2-3 and certainly the cleanup hitter can reach the Japanese pitcher so they are looking good so far.

Carter seems to have more life on his pitches that the Japanese pitcher at this point.

Good point brought up how the Japanese team carries the fourteen player maximum roster while Georgia is at 12, only playing eleven was mentioned, I assume due to injury. This is one point that doesn't get mentioned from the booth much when hey highlight the "must-play" rule.

The "must-play" rule from a coaches standpoint, would be name the "must only carry twelve man roster" rule, which costs two kids per league across the country an opportunity to participate in a tournament at all. This is entirely due to coaches fear that the fourteenth man is significantly lesser player than the twelth player, plus all that messy, confusing administrative stuff, having to get fourteen players in and all.

Kudos to the Japanese team for giving maximum opportunities to the maximum number of kids. I haven't heard one analyst yet complement any team that does this, yet they seem to be required to genuflect at the greatness of the "must-play" rule without examining this underside to the issue.

Anyway, back to the game. Georgia 2-1 bottom of the fourth. Lead off strikeout and ground out to first to start it off. Georgia putting the sticks to the ball a bit. A long fly ball to left field ends the inning. That would have been a home-run last year, I feel compelled to report. This year, it just ends the inning.

Georgia 2-1 after four innings. Still not sure if I like the Georgia coach a lot. He can't be the most popular guy on the grove. He argues what he sees as a HBP, a sleeve knicker at best. Asks umpire for help and the first base ump when asks if he saw anything, says "not in this lifetime". Funny. I'm sure he meant, he's not getting that call in this lifetime. Good job, blue.

Carter strikes out the leadof hitter in the fifth, not even close. Second hitter is a strike out, these are the last of the subs to bat, as the announcer are pointing out. Tough to hit this guy off the bench cold. Yada hitting with two outs. Carter toys with him to end the inning. And I think throws in a Destrade-like pose to rub it in.

Not highlighted by the announcer of course, but noticeable. They won't highlight bad sportsmanship, even when their mikes or cameras pick it up, as we've seen throughout the tournament. Not saying they have to but boy the live mikes are probably a bad idea. Or a great idea if used properly.

Georgia 2-1 after four and a half innings. And Carter is feeling it. If they get a tack on run here it's over, even this one run lead seems large.

Matsumoto strikes out the leadoff hitter for nine K's on the day. A solid but unspectacular effort at this level. Nice play by the third baseman to dive for a popup and retire the second hitter. Carter's not going to see a fastball here , oops 2-1 FB outside corner, then he curves him for a flyout to CF to end the inning. Good sequence.

Georgia 2-1 after five innings. Three outs away for Georgia and Carter is dealing. Gotta like there chances right now. The kid has to be feeling it, but these are the toughest three outs to get. In a way, sometimes kids all of a sudden realize where they are and what's at stake. Sometimes they squeeze the ball a little too tight. If he can relax and throw however, it should be over fairly quick. Plus, he's in good shape in that Yada made the last out, even though he's a lefty bat, he's one of the few capable of hitting this guy on this day.

Well, Carter walks the lead off guy and later hits another, but maintains his poise and more importantly his velocity to shut down the Japanese team. Noticeable was the shots of the Japanese kids crying even before the final third out was recorded. The runner on first had tears flowing and he was carrying the potential winning run. It shows that both physically and emotionally these kids are not miniature adults. Sometimes, with all the hoopla and web gems, I think it becomes all too easy to lose sight of this fact. My wife even mentioned how she doesn't like how they seem to highlight this "thrill of victory and agony of defeat" angle.

For all the highlighting of the "new pitch counts limit as the solution to the arm injuries epidemic" I can't help but think that maybe, just maybe what we really need is a "televised games count limit". Little League and Travel ball snipe that one or the other is the problem when in reality both are. Little League with it's money grabbing and travel ball with it's year round approach. The race for "exposure" has led to events like the Almonte incident which only exposed the kid, the family and maybe the league as a fraud.

My enduring memory of this LLWS is the interview with the mom from Illinois keeping score while her son pitched, dutifully keeping his pitch count with a coaches clicker, but what asn't really highlighted was that she was wearing her son's travel team pullover, not his Little League's. Little League used to not allow players in the tournament to play in other leagues, and I know they'll cite a lawsuit for access as the reason for breaking down that law, but this is why both are guilty.

Everyone fighting for more and more glory and exposure and dollars at the expense of the kids.

You have to wonder when there will be a backlash against this type of borderline child abuse. Or , if that is too strong a term, at least child neglect. It just doesn't seem as if the best interest of the kids are paramount anymore when youth sports rises to this level. I hate to sound old-fashioned, but it used to be kids were happy to be their city's champion. Now we have to have national champions and world champions and Top ten lists for 10 yr. old players. And the tournaments have to be extended down to the T-Ball level for crying out loud.

It borders on insanity. If something is good, it doesn't always translate that more and more of that something is better. We have to find a balance point somewhere. I just hope it doesn't take something foolish or tragic happening before we decide to truly confront the issue.