What’s next for Matt Williams and Tiger Woods?: David A. Arnott and Ben Valentine talk about the Washington Nationals hiring an admitted PED user to be the team’s manager, and about the world’s top golfer’s split with EA Sports.



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Matt Wiliams admitted in 2007 that he’d used PEDs to recover from an injury, saying that he quit because he didn’t like how the drugs made him feel.

For the most part, Williams isn’t remembered as a PED user. The manager who hired him as a coach, Kirk Gibson, appears to have completely overlooked that part of Williams’s history.

David’s earlier post about Tiger Woods’ split from Electronic Arts also included a plea for someone to create a fictional. sports video game universe.

Yahoo posted a column speculating how EA might focus its golf video game from here on out.

The Creamy Middles Podcast is a weekly discussion attacking the belly issues of sports — ideas that go beyond wins and losses. Jay Cowit usually produces it, though David may occasionally step in. Music is either royalty-free, by J. Cowit and the Ruthless Orchestra, or 29 Sunset. Subscribe in iTunes or in another podcatcher with this RSS feed.

Vestigials: Upon reports that Major League Baseball is considering a ban on home-plate collisions, Jay Cowit and David A. Arnott talk about that and other elements of major American sports that we could do without.



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Buster Olney reported on MLB’s discussions about catcher safety.

Here’s the list of teams that have played in the World Series.

Deadspin’s post on hockey fighting showed that the practice is probably on its way out, anyway, partly because it doesn’t do much of anything for the teams that do it.

When Kermit Washington punched Rudy Tomjanovich during an NBA game, it nearly resulted in an on-court death, and is a moment now seen as a turning point in the league’s evolution away from on-court fighting.

Last December, Greg Schiano explained his idea for how to eliminate kickoffs in the NFL.

While the appendix is widely considered a vestigial organ, it turns out that in some specific circumstances, it can still perform important functions.

Music by J Cowit and the Ruthless Orchestra.

The Creamy Middles Podcast is a weekly discussion attacking the belly issues of sports -- ideas that go beyond wins and losses. Jay Cowit usually produces it, though David may occasionally step in. Music is either royalty-free, by J. Cowit and the Ruthless Orchestra, or 29 Sunset. Subscribe in iTunes or in another podcatcher with this RSS feed.

R****ins, Miley Cyrus, Closer Entrance Music: Jay Cowit and David A. Arnott talk about an NFL team’s damaged brand, if Miley Cyrus is building a sustainable personal brand, and how they wish Major League Baseball closers would take a few chances with their personal branding.

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Here’s the Cleveland Scene article about Chief Wahoo mentioned during the team branding conversation.

Check out some of the songs mentioned during the discussion about closers’ entrance music.

[spotify id="spotify:user:1215842974:playlist:6fGUMrC6Bfo2Va4VZHADLw" width="500" height="380" /]

The Creamy Middles Podcast is a weekly discussion attacking the belly issues of sports -- ideas that go beyond wins and losses. Jay Cowit usually produces it, though David may occasionally step in. Music is either royalty-free, by J. Cowit and the Ruthless Orchestra, or 29 Sunset. Subscribe in iTunes or in another podcatcher with this RSS feed.

The problem with our outrage at PED use is that we often arrive at it after conflating a value proposition with a moral one. It is easy for White Upper Middle Class America to regard cheating at baseball as a significant character flaw, because WUMC America is Baseball’s America, and in Baseball’s America, the outcomes of games and seasons and careers are things that we worry about. Countries like the Dominican Republic do not have a national pastime, because most of the people who live in them are so busy with the requirements of living that they do not have time for amusement, recreation, entertainment, fun. Or, at least, not enough time to afford any amount of worry or angst about them.

David Murphy, of the Philadelphia Daily News, brings it hard concerning others’ “outrage” over Major League Baseball players’ PED use. Dave Zirin also had a good post on the matter, attacking it from a similar angle.