The JLE, Part II: the stupid Mariners

The badness: The M’s finished at 61-101, the first team with a $100M+ payroll to lose 100 games. The one time we wanted them to lose, which was at the end of the season to secure the #1 draft pick, they won three in a row to “edge out” Washington.
However, I don’t feel (fully) responsible for this one. The Mariners’ badness is the fault of Bill Bavasi, the General Manager who spent a ton on such questionable acquisitions as Richie Sexson, Jarrod Washburn, Jose Vidro and Carlos Silva. Sexson’s batting average became fixed to a promotion at Norm’s Ale House in Fremont, in which they matched the price of a beer to it (e.g. .172 average = $1.72 Buds, baby!). Washburn is vastly overpaid and mediocre, and sadly was not traded away last season when the M’s might have had the chance. Vidro made a bid at being the worst designated hitter in history… really. Silva reported gained at least 30 pounds during the 2008 season, and has three years left in his contract, during which we can only pray he eats himself out of a job.
Bavasi used the worst reasoning in signing players: rewarding players for past successes, when it should have been obvious that they were about to enter a down slope in their careers. The team actually competed for the division title well into the 2007 season, but it was something of an illusion… the team’s Pythagorean record was far below its actual record, indicating the M’s were actually getting a lot of lucky breaks, as opposed to actually being that talented. Unfortunately, Bavasi was convinced the team was one good pitcher away from the playoffs, and traded away good prospects for starter Erik Bedard, who, as it turns out, is made from papier-mache. Thus, not only is the team awful, its prospects of getting better anytime soon flew out the window under Bavasi.

The James angle: I’ve been following the M’s for a long time, and this is obviously not their first awful season in history. What stings about this one is the amount of money spent, and the likelihood that, with a gutted farm system, they will be bad for years to come. It’s worth noting that I received a Kenji Johjima jersey as a gift after admiring his toughness and clutch offense in 2006. In 2008, Johjima became something of a reviled figure after signing a huge contract extension at the relatively old age (for a catcher) of 31. Sure enough, in 2008 his average fell off a cliff (.227), and Washburn implied in an interview that the language barrier (Johjima is Japanese) was a factor in the team’s bad pitching performances.

The silver lining: Bavasi’s gone, hallelujah. His replacement as GM, Jack Zduriencik, actually seems to know something about other modern mathematical tools for evaluating players. He’s made moves to improve the outfield defense, which should at least make our crappy pitchers look somewhat better on paper. The team isn’t likely to finish about .500 in 2009, but at least they seem to be in more capable hands.

The JLE, Part I: How I Killed the SuperSonics

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here today to announce a great scientific breakthrough in the field of logic. I have singlehandedly proven that, despite what Wikipedia may think, correlation does indeed equal causation.

For you see, I have long argued that my presence and rooting interest in a city's professional sports scene tends to inevitably doom it to the melancholy of prolonged failure. But, only now, in the year 2008, with my presence in Seattle clinging to the local sports teams like the slow onset of radiation sickness in a nuclear test zone, has the James Losing Effect been NOTICEABLE FROM SPACE.

OK, so I don't really believe in the JLE. But after 2008, a year in which improbably bad things befell the SuperSonics, Mariners and Seahawks, I sometimes wonder if the city will ever recover.

Part the Ist: the SuperSonics Oklahoma City Thunder!

The badness: Predictably, the team moved to Oklahoma City after being sold by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to an ownership group entirely from Oklahoma City. Predictably to everyone except Howard Schultz, supposedly. Schultz sold the team because KeyArena, opened in 1996 to the team's specifications, was no longer profitable (although his ownership group sold the team for $70 million more than they paid for it). An unfavorable lease and too few luxury suites apparently made it hard for a mid-market team with mediocre players to turn a profit. Truthfully, the team's attendance never recovered after the lockout of 1999; without much success on the court since then, the fans never really came all the way back.

The James angle: I used to love following the Sonics. When they were really good in the early '90s, on some game nights I would head to the local sports bar in Jacksonville, drink Cokes, play pinball, and watch the Sonics games via satellite late into the night. I had a Gary Payton poster on my bedroom wall. I still wear a ratty, garish, green-and-yellow puffy Sonics jacket that I got via a cereal box offer. (It's very old, but very warm.)

But I fell out of love with the NBA over the years, primarily because the kind of arena the Sonics wanted to build makes for a terrible place for the average fan (like myself) to watch a basketball game. Ticket prices more than doubled when the Atlanta Hawks moved from the Omni to Phillips Arena; ditto for the Washington Wizards. In both arenas, the upper deck was placed much further away from the action, meaning that a more expensive ticket bought a seat with a less-than-awesome view. These palaces are built for the corporate write-off dollar, and not for the casual fan looking for a cheap night out and a couple hours of entertainment.

When I interviewed at Microsoft, the night I was scheduled to return there was a Sonics preseason game at KeyArena. I bought a cheap ticket in the upper deck and was amazed at how close to the action I was compared to Washington and Atlanta. They had dug underground from the floor of the old Coliseum to fit in more lower level seats; the result was that those seats started right on the edge of the court and went straight up, unlike the massive new buildings which were more spread out to accomodate a larger hockey rink and several tiers of luxury suites. Plus, the tickets were still affordable; there were lots of seats available at $10 and $22, a much lower price point than at the big luxury arenas.

After I picked out an apartment that happened to be near KeyArena, I bought a Sonics hoodie sweatshirt to celebrate. I spent a couple of days cleaning the old apartment in Virginia, wearing that sweatshirt to keep me motivated. After finally finishing the cleaning job the day before my final flight back to Seattle, I checked into my hotel room and settled into a hot bath with the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. This was the same infamous issue of SI in which it was revealed that the Sonics were pressing the city for a new arena; in the article, Seattle City Council member Nick Licata was quoted as saying the Sonics provided "close to zero" cultural value to the city. Thus, a few days before I moved to within a few minutes of the Key, the ball was set rolling on the Sonics' relocation. (Remember, correlation equals causation.) Team owner Howard Schultz soon threatened to move or sell the team absent a deal with the city for a luxury arena; he made good on his promise later in 2006, and in 2008 the new owners moved the team to OKC after 41 seasons in Seattle.

Granted, the lease was part of the team's problem; they definitely had a negative cash flow problem after the lockout. More money went to the city via proceeds from luxury boxes and parking than in most other NBA cities, in an effort to pay off the renovation price tag; this cost the team some revenue, and the city repeatedly refused to renegotiate. But still, an owner that cared about the city could have worked to keep the team here. That just wasn't in the cards.

The sadness: As I said, I've fallen out of love with the NBA over the years, so this move isn't as sad to me as seeing the Mariners or Seahawks leave would be. It's kind of infuriating than an arena built to team specifications and praised by NBA commish David Stern in 1996 is, a scant 10-12 years later, deemed inadequate. Worst of all, I won't be able to take Alex to a game, which I would have liked. I'm sure we'll still make to plenty of baseball and football games, and we've even been to WNBA Storm games. But not having the Sonics nearby is kind of sad.

The silver lining: If you like Schadenfreude, there's plenty to go around here. The OKC owners can only be described as -- and I say this with as much net neutrality as I can -- a bunch of country-fried retarded idiot morons. Aubrey McClendon, one of the team's owners, flat-out admitted to the OKC Journal Record that the ownership group had no intention of keeping the Sonics in Seattle. This earned him a $250,000 fine from the league. That's a quarter-mil that Aubrey might like to have back right now; he was forced to sell almost all his stock in his company Chesapeake Energy recently, a move that cost him an estimated $1.92 billion. Yes, that's BILLION.

Plus, prior to the Sonics and Seattle agreeing to terminate the KeyArena lease, the city's lawsuit against the team yielded some delightful evidence. As part of the discovery phase, an e-mail from lead OKC stupidhead Clay Bennet to NBA commish David Stern revealed some amazing, previously unknown facts.

(Read the e-mail here as a PDF first.)

First of all, one thing I've learned is that CEO-types are so busy that they don't even have time to hit the Shift key. David Stern's reply looks like a 13-year-old girl's text message. "okc has ur team now, lol!" I believe Steve Ballmer follows the same style when he writes his own e-mails, so this is definitely a trend, or at least a hidden key to business success.

Secondly, if you closely read Bennett's message to Stern, you'll notice how much is resembles FELLATIO IN E-MAIL FORM. I had no idea that grown men talked to each other this way, let alone super-rich fat-cats who fly around together in private jets.

"You are among a very few, notwithstanding our relative brief actual physical time together that have significantly affected my life. I view you as a role model as an extraordinarily gifted executive, a deep and compassionate thinker, and a person with a rare and unique charisma that brings out the best in everyone you touch. You are just one of my favorite people on earth and I so cherish our relationship Sonics business aside." --Clay Bennett in an e-mail to David Stern

I don't know about you, but I just threw up in my mouth A LOT.

Who talks like this? I mean, I know it's BS, and that Clay is just trying to butter up David so his team doesn't get fined any worse. But, wow.

Just... wow.

Thirdly, the team is still awful, despite having moved further away from me. Tonight, the Oklahoma City Thunder blew a 21-point lead to lose to the Memphis Grizzlies, sending their record to 2-21. That's two wins, 21 losses. With 59 games to go, their season is effectively over. The record for fewest number of wins by a team in an NBA season is 9; the Thunder are on pace to win only 7, although with the young talent they have I don't expect them to break that record. Still... I can't help but enjoy every single defeat. This has been far more entertaining to follow than any Sonics season in the past 10 years.

Lastly, and most importantly... this whole idea just isn't going to work. It's a stupid, stupid idea. The team just moved from the 14th-largest media market to the 45th. The NBA already has several small- and mid-market teams that are supposedly having trouble keeping up financially with the rest of the league, or even maintaining profitability. Teams in Sacramento, Memphis, Charlotte, and even successful San Antonio are complaining that reduced corporate support coupled with their smaller TV and radio contracts make it difficult for them to compete with the likes of New York, Boston and L.A.

And it's just going to get worse in this economic climate. The Oklahoma City arena is called the Ford Center; guess who just went to Congress asking for a huge bailout? (Maybe they can rename it the Betty Ford Center.) McClendon's Chesapeake Energy is another big sponsor and ticket customer of the team; it has recently lost a lot of valuation and profitability. Companies will be less likely and less able to take on large amounts of debt in this economy. They'll have to keep more cash on hand, which means fewer expenditures on things like sports tickets and luxury suites for employees and clients. They'll have to cut back on sponsorships, advertising, and naming rights deals.

The sliding economy has already resulted in the shutdown of the Houston Comets (four-time WNBA champs) and New Orleans VooDoo of the Arena Football League, and the AFL's entire 2009 season is apparently in jeoporady as the league faces financial difficulties. Struggling franchises in the NBA and the NHL are sure to be next. After the initial fan buzz wears off in OKC (which, judging by their record, could be sooner than expected), the Thunder could very well be in a world of pain.

Frankly, I can't wait.

Stay tuned for more tales of sporting woe!