TV review: Jessica Jones

There are no more “broadcasters” of television anymore; we are in the era of narrowcasters.  Networks, cable channels, even merchandise retailers now produce shows not so much for quality but for branding purposes; you want GOOD shows, but you want to find a distinct voice so viewers know what to expect before they watch something new.

Netflix succeeded previously with its adaptation of Marvel’s Daredevil, so it goes back to the well with another Marvel property, the less-well known Jessica Jones.  Despite the similarities, Jessica Jones has subtle differences that, after four episodes, have me thinking it is actually superior to the critically praised Daredevil.  Daredevil, after all, is in the vein of traditional costumed superheroes, while Jessica Jones’ protagonist doesn’t wear a cape and the show doesn’t clearly elaborate on what her powers actually are.

Jones, played by Krysten Ritter, appears to be a typical hard-bitten private eye working out of a dilapidated office (she threw her last client through the window in her door) in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York.  But then she serves process on a low-life by picking up the rear of his sports car so he can’t drive away, then threatens him with her “laser eyes.”  This being the Marvel universe, it should not be surprising that Jones has abilities that exceed those of mortal men, but the fact that her abilities are not announced by a letter on her chest is novel.

I mean it as a high compliment when I say that after four episodes I am unsure where the series is going.  There is an over-arching plot about a super-villain (played with oily charm by former Doctor Who David Tenant, largely off screen through four episodes) who has the ability to make people obey his will simply by asking them to.  Because of Jessica Jones’ strength, he can’t get too close to her, and because of his ability to manipulate people she can’t get too close to him.  So the two circle around each other warily, at a distance, each prodding the other in order to find a weakness.

The characters in Jessica’s orbit include a best friend (Rachel Taylor) with some history that is causing her to learn Krav Maga and barricade her apartment, a local bartender (Mike Colter) who is not only a hunk who gives Jessica free booze (one hopes her super powers extend to her liver because she drinks a lot), and a high-powered lawyer (Carrie-Anne Moss) who gives Jessica detective work and is going through a messy same-sex divorce.  They provide a context for the character of Jessica Jones, giving the abrasive Jones people to interact with instead of being a lone wolf. This helps to define her character and provides the audience some understanding as to why people continue to associate with her even though her people skills are not as developed as her strength.

Why do I say I like Jessica Jones more than Daredevil?  I find David Tenant’s casual sadism a lot scarier than Vincent D’Onofrio’s scenery chewing.  As much as I respect the fight choreography in Daredevil, I like the non-choreography I’ve seen so far on Jessica Jones; when she hits someone, they simply go down, which makes sense.  Jessica seems to be a more grounded character for a more grounded universe, one where a lawyer who shows up to work with bruises and a split lip couldn’t just chalk it up to clumsiness; face it, all of Matt Murdoch’s friends are enablers, while no one gives Jessica Jones a break over anything.  I especially like the way they are taking their time, doling out Jessica’s back story with the villain (named Killgrave, the most comic book thing about the show) in drips and drabs.  Four episodes in and I am still unclear as to the extent of her powers.  I particularly like a shot in one episode where Jessica is spying on someone from a perch wedged between two buildings several stories up, somewhere only a person with superpowers could get to; it implies what her powers are without providing any information on their limits.

Ritter is well-suited to the role of a hard-boiled PI with issues.  After notable roles in Breaking Bad and Don’t Trust the B___ in Apartment 23, Ritter certainly has the gravitas and the command to anchor a series where she is front and center in virtually every scene.  One might wish her dialog was a bit sharper, a la Veronica Mars or Buffy, but again this is set in a more realistic universe than the typical comic book (excuse me, graphic novel) portrayal, so the show can get away with her earthier comebacks.

Jessica Jones is probably an example of a show better suited for release on Netflix rather than on network TV.  Marvel’s Agents of Shield survives on network TV, but is an “episode of the week” series with overarching themes, whereas Jessica Jones is essentially a 13 hour miniseries.  It is interesting to speculate whether Jessica Jones could be episodic, but with Marvel it is all about the crossovers and the tie-ins (the “Battle of New York” that happened in The Avengers gets name checked in some side plots). Also, the language and sexual situations portrayed would probably not get past broadcast standards.

Jessica Jones is an evocative depiction of post-traumatic stress disorder, true evil introduced to a world that only thinks it knows what evil means, and one person not using mundane abilities instead of superpowers in order to make things better.  The one thing that could make it better?  If Jessica knocked some sense into that Daredevil guy; he needs to be taken down a couple of pegs.

Why did Tomorrowland flop?

I recently re-watched the movie Tomorrowland on DVD.  I was glad to revisit the film as my theater experience was less than optimal; the film had left theaters so quickly that I was only able to see it on the big screen at a “$4 anytime” second run theater, with a somewhat anemic light bulb in the projector and parent-free urchins running up and down the aisle.

I enjoyed the movie-going experience none the less, and my impression of the film was only elevated by seeing it under more technologically conducive circumstances.  The film boasts true imagination in writing and directing, a typically insouciant performance by George Clooney, and an uplifting message at the end.  Something for the whole family.

It bombed.  It opened with a ho-hum $40.7 million over Memorial Day weekend, and then took a precipitous 58% nosedive the next weekend.   It finished with an impressive sounding but disappointing $93 million domestic gross, $209 million worldwide.  For something with a $190 million budget, that's called underperforming.

But why?  The film was not an assault on anyone’s intelligence, like John Carter.  The film was not a retread of tired sci-fi ideas, like Jupiter Ascending.  The film did not have amateurish special effects like, oh let’s say 47 Ronin (I actually thought 47 Ronin was okay, but I have no desire to defend it).

I have faced this question with other films.  Mystery Men, a big-budget special effects laden comedy with Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, and William H. Macy was also, to my mind, an inexplicable flop.  Sometimes I understand when a film might resonate with me more than the general audience, or have an approach to humor that may be idiosyncratic, but Mystery Men had a smart script and a great cast (Hank Azaria, Greg Kinnear, Wes Studi, Geoffrey Rush, Lena Olin and Claire Forlani).

I don’t have an answer for Mystery Men, but I have one for Tomorrowland.  The film itself explains why it failed (spoilers ahead!).  In the final denouement, the “bad guy” (played with typical bluster by perpetual Emmy loser Hugh Laurie) makes a speech about why the world is about to end.  In that speech, he points out that, as another great wordsmith Yogi Berra might have said, the future ain’t what it used to be.  In the 1950’s and early 60’s people believed the future would be full of gleaming towers, noiseless monorails, and jetpacks. 

So why are we now beset with innumerable films and TV shows featuring a bleak, dystopian future (an episode of the Simpsons actually catalogged all the recent films, TV shows and plays set in dystopian futures)?  As the bad guy in Tomorrowland sums up, “[People] dwell on this terrible future and you resign yourselves to it for one reason, because that future doesn't ask anything of you today.”

My theory as to why Tomorrowland failed?  It hit too close to home.  It was an optimistic message about hope and saving humanity, but all that optimism was based on one thing: people giving a crap.  The analysis is right, people do find dystopian futures enjoyable because it absolves us from getting off our couches, putting down our iPhones, and doing something.  People reject a film about optimism because if we accepted it, then we’d have to do something about it, and in an era of “too much TV” that’s the last thing anyone wants to do.

So, congratulations, Tomorrowland!  You turned out to be too prescient for your own good.  Next time Brad Bird directs a film, it will be about young teenagers in a dystopian future, where they participate in some kind of bizarre competition for survival.

Hey, that sounds like a script idea.  Let me call my agent and see if it’s been done before.

What to make of the MVP vote

Well, the AL and NL MVPs have been announced, and there were no surprises.  But the results in both races raise some interesting questions about what voters look for in an MVP.

I usually mock the “unwritten rules” of baseball; I want someone to show me just where these unwritten rules can be found, and what is the process for changing them?  But there is one I wholeheartedly buy into—the MVP should be from a playoff team.  Back when one team from each league went to the “post season” (then known solely as the World Series), you could make a claim that a player who took his team close to the Promised Land deserved consideration.  But now that five teams from each league make the post season, it is hard to argue that someone from the sixth best team or worse is that valuable.  It goes back to the famous Branch Rickey line when he was GM for the hapless Pirates in the early 50’s and Ralph Kiner threatened to hold out; Rickey allegedly said, “Ralph, we came in last place with you, we’ll come in last place without you.”  A player is only valuable to a team if they get to play more games because of him.

In the American League, the choice game down to post-season participant Josh Donaldson, and Mike Trout of the loser Angels.  Here, the old guard prevailed, with Donaldson getting the nod despite having a slightly lower WAR (9.4 for Trout to 8.8 for Donaldson).  Of course, it should be noted that unlike stats like batting average, RBI and slugging percentage, WAR is not an exact measurement.  Some of the defensive data still has a little wiggle room, and a difference of 0.6 WAR may be illusory.  But there is little doubt that probably the main distinction was that Donaldson’s team won and Trout’s team didn’t.

Trout’s supporters always tout the fact that he has had the highest WAR in the AL each of the past four years.  I hope we never get to the point where the MVP will be awarded solely by comparing WAR; that will take all the fun out of debating the results.

The situation in the NL was a little different, as the top three vote getters, Bryce Harper, Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto, all played for non-playoff teams (Goldschmidt and Votto’s teams were sub-.500).  The 4^th and 5^th vote getters were the closest playoff players got, with the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo and the Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen.  However, Harper’s season was so epic, that giving him the MVP for a non-playoff performance was an inevitability.  Every dissection of Harper’s 2015 stats that I’ve seen (WAR almost 10, OPS of 1.109, OPS+ of 195) drew comparisons to Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds.  With no position player on a playoff team posting anything close, I don’t think this is a repudiation of the preference for players from playoff teams, but an acknowledgement of a truly historic season.

There was an interesting by-product of the NL vote that bears mention.  I was somewhat surprised that Mets spark plug Yoenis Cespedes finished 13^th in the voting.  I expected him to finish much higher, with some votes in the top five and ending up in the top ten.  But he received no vote higher than two 6^th place votes; tellingly perhaps, neither of the New York journalists with a vote put him on their ballots.

Before Cespedes joined the Mets, they were last in the league in offense; after he joined, they were much better and went from being .500 to upsetting the Nationals for the NL East title.  The difference is clear: before Cespedes, average team; with Cespedes, World Series contender.

I think the failure of Cespedes to garner much MVP support is a question of marginal analysis vs. total analysis.  Voters could say that Cespedes contributed ZERO to the Mets from April through July because he was playing for Detroit at the time.  Since he only contributed for two months, his total contribution was small.

People with economics training look at marginal analysis, where you look at the change engendered by a new element, and Cespedes’ marginal contribution transformed the Mets into a playoff team.  I admit that the logical extension of this would be to say that if a team was playing for a playoff spot in the final game of the season, and they scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth when their weakest hitter walked with the bases loaded, then that hitter is the season MVP.  But this is hardly a reductio ad absurdum; Cespedes did more in two months to help the Mets into the playoffs than any other Mets player did through the entire season.

This is a year where there shouldn’t be any angst over the MVP winners, unlike seasons when the Trout vs. Cabrera debate over new metrics vs. slash stats created a generational war over the meaning of statistics.  Trout’s backers really shouldn’t begrudge Donaldson winning despite a slightly lower WAR, and Harper’s season was one for the ages.  The interesting thing to ponder now is how many more times Trout and Harper will be mentioned in MVP debates in the future.

Greg Hardy: A Defense

Greg Hardy: A Defense

In my eternal quest to always at least try to defend the indefensible, I am going to try and offer some arguments that counter the drumbeat from the talking heads on ESPN that Dallas Cowboy defensive player Greg Hardy should either be suspended for a very long time or banished from the league.  The reason for the strum und drag is the release of photos that document the nature of the injuries inflicted on his then-girlfriend.

I suppose the most obvious defense is the same one I offered for Ray Rice, whose punishment was extended after video was released of him clocking his then-girlfriend; he was duly punished, and the release of photographic evidence of what he did changes nothing.  All the photos do is inflame the emotional reaction of virtually all who see them, but they don’t by themselves provide an additional basis for doling out further punishment.

As if further punishment was possible.  Hardy was on the Commissioner’s “exempt list” (the football equivalent of Animal House’s “double secret probation”) all of last season.  Those who claim that is a paid vacation overlook the fact that, to an athlete, losing a season in your physical prime is an irreversible loss.  To you or me a year off with pay would be great, but to an athlete with maybe a ten-year window on his career, it isn’t so sweet a deal.

The Commissioner attempted to suspend him for ten games, but since the Commissioner’s judiciary system is so messed up an arbitrator held that a four game suspension was the maximum allowed.  You can be angry at the Player’s Union for doing their job and appealing, or at the arbitrator for his decision (based on the Commissioner’s past decisions), but that’s not on Greg Hardy.

It’s hardly fair to condemn the NFL’s justice system when the government’s system has been even weaker.  Hardy was found guilty of domestic violence by a judge, asked for a jury trial, then apparently reached a cash settlement with the victim and the charges were dropped.  This past week the court officially “expunged” his record, meaning that as far as the US legal system is concerned, Hardy never did anything wrong.

Reportedly when Hardy was arrested the complainant said, “Nothing’s going to happen to him.”  The complainant subsequently refused to cooperate with prosecutors, making her statement a self-fulfilling prophecy and not a cynical yet accurate condemnation of the legal system.  The ex-girlfriend was supposedly compensated for her refusal to cooperate, which sounds like the old joke that ends “We’ve established what you are, now we’re negotiating price.”  Hopefully she was well compensated. 

Lastly, just who appointed the NFL as the arbiters of morality and decency?  To all those who say that Greg Hardy should be stripped of his livelihood because of these accusations (that have now been expunged by a court), since when did purity of character become a prerequisite for participation in a game?  Ty Cobb once beat a handicapped man senseless; should he have been banned from baseball?  Lots of professional athletes have treated women poorly in ways that did not rise to abuse; abandonment, infidelity, non-support.  Should every man who ever mistreated a woman be banned from earning a living for life?  If you do a job and you do it well, why should you be disqualified from doing so because of a character flaw that does not affect your job performance (and probably enhances it)?

Greg Hardy deserves to earn a living.  Everyone deserves to earn a living.  Just as child molesters shouldn't work around children, Hardy should probably find a job where he doesn't have any female co-workers.  Hey, last time I checked the NFL wasn't co-ed!  What better workplace for him than one that excludes women.

None of this is to minimize the significance of Greg Hardy’s actions or his complete lack of contrition afterwards.  He has dutifully tweeted out vague denials about being sorry about mistakes in the past, all the while making comments about Tom Brady’s wife and saying he was coming out “guns blazing” (one allegation was that he threw his then-girlfriend on to a futon covered with semi-automatic weapons).  He is a despicable human being, and calling him a human being is giving him the benefit of the doubt.

But he is a very good football player, and as such he will be very well paid as he helps the Cowboys not make the playoffs again this year.  Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner, complimented Greg Hardy as a “passionate” team leader after he physically assaulted an assistant coach during a game.  Maybe this is one reason why the Dallas Cowboys haven’t been a threat to win anything for more than twenty years.

My Two Cents on the Best of James Bond

With the 24^th James Bond movie, Spectre, about to come out, the media has been full of features where people name “The Best” this and “The Worst” that.  Never wanting to hold on to two cents when I can throw it, here are my picks.

Best Bond: Right out of the shoot I am going to make the most controversial, hate-mail inspiring choice that can be made: Pierce Brosnan. For those who rank Brosnan as one of the worst Bonds, let me say that he did have the worst material to work with.  Roger Moore was easily the worst Bond (mainly because, at 41, he was too old when he started and he stayed on until he was well past qualified for AARP), but his tenure produced a couple of gems, such as For Your Eyes Only and the popular The Spy Who Loved Me.  Brosnan’s best turn was probably Tomorrow Never Dies, which was buoyed by the presence of Michele Yeoh as the most self-reliant “Bond Girl” ever and Jonathan Pryce as a Rupert Murdoch clone ready to nuke the world to sell newspapers; good, but hardly top ten.  But I think Brosnan best exemplified both sides of Bond: the handsome, seductive ladies’ man, and the gritty paid killer.  Connery always struck me as looking like a truck driver (Ian Fleming’s opinion was similar), Dalton was too humorless, Moore too effete (he admitted he looked silly throwing a punch), Lazenby was too insubstantial, and Craig is . . . too dour.  It’s a shame that Brosnan never had any A material to work with, but just had to make do with the remnants of Moore’s cartoonish stint.

Best Villian: I suppose for the series you’d have to go with Ernst Stavros Blofeld, best portrayed by Donald Pleasance in You Only Live Twice.  But his presence is weakened by lesser actors in the role (Telly Savalas, Charles Grey) and in the end he is just a Dr. Evil prototype.  I am tempted to go off book and choose Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga from Man With the Golden Gun, but that is more for the performance than the character.  Let’s go old school and say Auric Goldfinger, who has a cool name, a cool henchman, and a truly lunatic scheme: he doesn’t want to start a nuclear war or anything so prosaic, he just wants his gold to be worth more money.  An Honorable Mention to Robert Davi’s Sanchez in License to Kill as another more grounded, but still scary, bad guy.

Best Henchman: I won’t make waves here and pick the only henchman who came back for more, Jaws played by Richard Kiel in Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. The performance could have been one-note, but Kiel somehow conveyed Jaws’ humanity under his imposing visage and metal teeth.  And let’s face it, he was the one foe Bond never did defeat.

Best “Bond Woman”: They broke the mold when they cast Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in the first Bond film, Dr. No.  Jaw-droppingly gorgeous, fierce, yet vulnerable.  Later Bond love interests might have been better actors (most were worse), but none had the impact of Andress rising out of the surf in that bikini. My personal favorite was probably the least conventional “Bond Woman,” Michele Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies.  She showed less skin and had less, um, physical contact with Bond during the film, but she was his equal as a spy and was sexier dressed up than many Bond Girls were half naked.

Best theme song: Nobody Does it Better from The Spy Who Loved Me by Carly Simon.  This has become the unofficial theme song for the entire Bond series.  A lot of other theme songs are excellent, but this is the only one that distinguishes itself and comments on Bond himself, not the movie at hand.  Honorable mentions to Goldfinger, Live and Let Die, View to a Kill, and You Know My Name from Casino Royale.

Five Best Bond films: 5) Man with the Golden Gun.  Stay with me on this—I know this is usually considered one of the worst Bond films, but consider: it had not one but two great Bond Women, Britt Ekland and Maud Adams; it had a great actor playing the Sacramange, Christopher Lee (who would have made a great Bond in 1960); it had a great henchman in Herve Villechaize’s Nick Nack; and it had a signature Bond stunt, the car that rotated 360 degrees as it jumped over a river. That’s enough to make me forget the two 12 year old girls beating up an entire dojo, the return of Clifton James’ cracker southern sheriff, and a plot about the energy crisis that sounds so 1974.

4) You Only Live Twice. Script by Roald Dahl, the best writer in the Bond series until Paul Haggis contributed to the second Casino Royale.  The aerial battle with Little Nellie.  The fight onboard the tanker at the Kobe docks.  The assault on Blofeld's encampment in the volcano. Donald Pleasance as Blofeld, in all his cat-stroking glory.  Yes, disguising Sean Connery as a Japanese fisherman was silly, but again you have to give a little.

3) Casino Royale. You don’t realize how much the Bond franchise orbited around mediocrity through the Lazenby, Moore and Brosnan years until Daniel Craig came in and the franchised was re-energized.  The opening action sequence is both brilliantly staged and acts as a metaphor for the new James Bond; his quarry nimbly leaps and hops through windows while Bond bulldozes through walls.  He is not a scalpel, he is a blunt instrument who will win at all costs.

2) From Russia With Love. Whatever inabilities Danielle Bianchi had as an actress were more than made up for by her looks, as she stands out among Bond Girls even among the likes of Halle Berry, Teri Hatcher and Eva Green.  Rosa Kleb and Red Grant were worthy adversaries for James Bond and the film had a real world verisimilitude absent until Casino Royale.

1) Goldfinger.  A perfect analogy: Goldfinger is to From Russia With Love as Fast and Furious 7 is to the original Fast and Furious; the prior film was a quasi-realistic look at a small part of the world, while the latter is a globe-hopping extravaganza that swings for the fences and connects.  Goldfinger’s mad scheme to irradiate the world’s gold supply is more believable than the more elaborate plots to rule the world, and throw in characters liked Odd Job and Pussy Galore (“I must be dreaming.”) and you have the blueprint for the Bond franchise that was never quite equaled.

Worst Bond film: Die Another Day.  Invisible cars?  Wind surfing on icebergs?  Brosnan starting to look like Roger Moore at the end of his reign?  Just stop already.

Worst theme song: Die Another Day by Madonna.  Wow, nothing else is even close.

Worst Villain: Michael Lonsdale as Hugo Drax in Moonraker.  Completely lifeless and lacking menace.

Single Worst Performance in any Bond Film: Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough.  Denise Richards can be a good actress, in something trashy like Wild Things or campy like Starship Troopers, but she cannot pull off playing a nuclear physicist no matter how many pairs of glasses she puts on.

Most overrated Bond Film: The Spy Who Loved Me.  The first two Roger Moore vehicles, Live and Let Die and Man With The Golden Gun, were both box office disappointments, threatening to kill the franchise. So producer Cubby Broccoli went all in and made Moore’s third film, The Spy Who Loved Me, the biggest, most expensive Bond film yet.  It worked.  Why, I don’t know.  Yes, there is the exhilarating opening sequence (the theater audience I was with broke into applause when Bond survived skiing off a cliff), and the Carly Simon theme song, and the addition of Jaws to the Bond oeuvre.  But the film has a lackluster villain with a silly plan for world domination, and a blah Bond Woman in his supposed Soviet counterpart played by Ringo Starr’s wife Barbara Bach.  For Your Eyes Only and Man With the Golden Gun are both far superior; I’d even rank this below Octopussy.

Harbaugh leaves, 49ers suck; coincidence?

Football is the most synergistic of sports.  If a player excels at baseball or basketball, that will probably come out no matter what team they are on.  But if a football player is drafted onto the wrong team, or plays for a coach whose system is not simpatico with his skill set, then more often than not the player looks bad, not the situation (if Tom Brady were drafted by any other coach than Bill Belichick, right now he’d be the proud owner of a discount carpet store in San Mateo, California and only get to see Giselle Bundchen in his wife Judy’s Victoria’s Secret catalog).  In baseball they have metrics that can compensate for a hitter playing in a pitcher’s ballpark, but there is no such adjustment for football. 

Under Coach Jim Harbaugh quarterback Colin Kaepernick, a second round draft pick out of obscure University of Nevada Reno, rose to prominence, ousted overall number one draft pick Alex Smith for the starting job, and took the 49ers to a Super Bowl.  Flushed with success after years of sub-mediocrity, the owners of the Niners decided that Harbaugh wasn’t good enough, that they could do better with Jim Tomsula, and so ushered Harbaugh out the door.  49er ownership said that Tomsula was another Steve Kerr, someone who could take the 49ers from the unacceptable record of 8-8 and win a championship in his first year as coach. 

Fast forward to November 2015.  The Niners are 2-6, in last place in the NFC West.  They are the laughing stock of the league, one of the few teams that have no chance of even hoping for a wildcard spot in the playoffs.  The 49er brain trust has looked around and decided that the problem wasn’t that they hired a completely incompetent coach, but All-pro tight end Vernon Davis, whom they shipped to Denver in exchange for magic beans (a 6^th round draft pick in 2016 and 2017), and Colin Kaepernick, whom they benched in favor of Blaine Gabbert.

Yes, THE Blaine Gabbert who has the lowest QBR, 22.6, of any quarterback of the past ten years with more than 1,000 snaps.  The Blaine Gabbert who has a lifetime record of 5-22 and hasn’t won a game since 2012.  Meanwhile, one QB rating metric rates Kaepernick as having a higher Total QBR rating (47.6) than Cam Newton (46.9), whom no one is considering benching.  The only thing Blaine Gabbert gives the 49ers is the best shot at getting the number one draft pick in the 2016 draft.

If Jim Tomsula thinks Blaine Gabbert gives the Niners a better chance of winning than Colin Kaepernick, then he is even more incompetent than I thought.  Maybe Kaepernick can’t be as successful in Tomsula’s offensive scheme as he was in Jim Harbaugh’s, but his accomplishments over the past few season’s dwarf those of Blaine Gabbert.

Gabbert inherits the same sloppy offensive line that allowed super-mobile Kaepernick to be sacked 18 times, plus the depleted running back corps (bring on the Hayne plane!), plus the loss of Vernon Davis.  He takes over against an Atlanta Falcons team that is somewhat porous but in the top half of the NFL in fewest points per game allowed.  It’s a home game, but that won’t be much help if Gabbert struggles and the crowd starts calling for Kaepernick.

Frankly, almost nothing could make me happier than if at every remaining SF home game this season the crowd would start chanting Harbaugh’s name when the Niner struggled.  One reporter referred to Harbaugh as “he who must not be named” in 49er HQ, so having a stadium full of 49er faithful chanting the name of the coach at Michigan would send the ownership a message they needed to hear.

This is about ownership that thinks it is bigger than the team.  It is about ownership that says they want to win, but then fires the guy most responsible for the team’s success and replace him with a ham sandwich (excuse me, defensive line coach).  It is about a coach handed a team that went to the NFC conference championship game in three of the past four years and turning them into a 2-6 team looking for a new quarterback, possibly with next year’s first pick in the NFL draft.

The 49ers were irrelevant before Jim Harbaugh, and they are now irrelevant after Jim Harbaugh.  Is this what the fans thought they were getting when all those tax dollars were spent on building their shiny new stadium?

Harvey the goat

If I was the editor of a New York tabloid sports page today, the headline would be “Harvey’s Ego Costs Mets World Series.”

Maybe that’s unfair.  Maybe it wasn’t exactly ego.  Maybe it was adrenaline.  Or hubris.  Or a well-intentioned desire to help his teammates.  Whatever it was, it was stupid and now the season is over for the Mets.

Some have defended the decision to leave Matt Harvey in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the World Series, but by any logical, rational calculus, the move was wrong.  It’s wrong to say it cost the Mets the series, because at 3-1 down and the Series heading back to Kansas City, even if they had won their odds of winning were not good.  But what it cost the Mets was the chance to get the Series back into the hands of Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard.

What I am saying is unfair, to the extent that in the situation the Mets found themselves in of course Matt Harvey, the player, is going to want to stay in the game.  I seem to recall a story about an NBA player who received a concussion and was blind and insisted he could still play.  But it was up to manager Terry Collins to be the rational adult and tell him no.  Collins made the decision to pull Harvey, but then relented when Harvey said there was “no way” he was coming out.  In 1986 John MacNamara left veteran Bill Buckner on the field in the ninth inning, using his heart not his head, and it cost the Red Sox the Series.  Another Red Sox manager, Grady Little, inexplicably left Pedro Martinez for an inning too long of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS and the result was a catastrophe.

But it is much more fun to blame Harvey.

There was no upside to leaving Harvey in.  The Mets’ closer did not need a day off.  The psychological bump would have been dissipated by a day off and the next two games being in Kansas City.  Would Matt Harvey leave as a free agent when he got the chance because he wasn’t allowed to finish the game?  Doubtful.

The downside was a tired Harvey (who had thrown only one complete game in his entire career) blowing a slim two run lead that the closer would have been more likely to preserve.  The downside was Harvey, who had been on a notorious innings limit all season, re-injuring his arm.  No upside; huge downside.  Easy decision.

This sort of ties into a theme I kept hearing over and over from the Fox announcers that was patently hogwash.  They kept saying, “This Royals team finds a way to win.”  That’s like anthropomorphizing a fight between a mongoose and a cobra by saying the mongoose was looking for an opening.  Teams are a collection of human beings, they no more think collectively than animals following centuries of instinct plan battle tactics.  The Royals do not “find a way to win” they simply win, and the fact that they do it in a variety of ways is meaningless.

But the thing is we like the narrative.  We accept the narrative. We like the idea of a team forming a single brain and coming up with a plan for scoring more runs, when in fact all they are doing is scoring more runs because they get hits.  Teams do not “find a way to win.”  They win or they lose.

The narrative Matt Harvey wanted to believe in was the savior, the heroic athlete overcoming fatigue and physical strain and being triumphant.  It’s a nice narrative.  Sometimes it works (Jack Morris in the 1991 World Series, pitching a 10 inning shutout).  Sometimes it doesn’t (see Pedro Martinez in the 2003 ALCS, referenced above).  But people believe in the narrative and believe it is fate, and therefore it is okay to make an irrational decision.  Because, you know, fate!

Manager Terry Collins should have told Matt Harvey thanks for the last eight innings, but you are done for the season.  Unfortunately 40,000 fans were chanting Harvey’s name, and Collins listened to them instead of his brain.  40,000 people are not smarter than one man with years of experience.  But he listened to them and became as dumb as them.

Of course, Mets closer Jeurys Familia DID blow the one run lead in the ninth, so there is no guarantee bringing him to start the ninth would have sealed the deal.  But it was the smart thing to do.

The Mets always have the Cubs’ ancient motto: wait ‘til next year.