TV Review--Crisis on Infinite Earths, Parts 1, 2, 3

First, a disclaimer; I am unfamiliar with the comic book (excuse me, graphic novel) that is the basis for the CW crossover event, Crisis on Infinite Earths.  I have read the works of several commentators who do know the origin material, and it seems to be a mixed blessing—they praise what was adapted well, but grouse about small changes that probably arose because an actor was unavailable or the schedule didn’t allow for it.  So, I am coming to this fresh.

The CW has a mixed history with these crossover events.  The first (Invasion!) was frankly only so-so.  Each episode clearly showed the differences in writing staffs and production design of the participating shows, so it felt like a game of Telephone where one show produced an hour and then handed it off to the next show, which took the narrative in a slightly different direction.  It lacked a cohesive structure.  The second, Crisis on Earth X, is just about the best thing I’ve seen on TV in the decade of the 2010’s.  It was not four individual episodes but a 4-hour miniseries that wove the elements of the participating shows together wonderfully.  Last year’s Elseworlds was hit and miss, mostly miss.  It started with an inexplicable body swap between Oliver Queen and Barry Allen (really, a guy is given a book that allows him to change reality and he decided to do a Freaky Friday on Green Arrow and The Flash?), but then seemed to morph into an excuse for running up a trial balloon for Batwoman.  That said, it was very funny when Supergirl looked her up and down and said, “Boy, you do have a lot of tattoos.  Sorry; x-ray vision.” 

Crisis on Infinite Earths starts of more or less in media res, with an antimatter wave wiping out the Earth where Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl) helped (sort of) Batman defeat the Joker, and another Earth where Robin (Burt Ward, looking like someone who ATE Burt Ward) was another Batman’s loyal sidekick.  But nothing to worry about, as there are Infinite Earths and infinity minus two is still, well, infinity.  But we eventually get the exposition that the antimatter wave will wipe out all matter in all of the multiverses unless it can be stopped by various characters who are in TV shows on the CW network.

The production values are great, and the inside jokes are uniformly amusing.  Just trying to keep track of all the DC cameos is a chore; not only do they actually play a scene from the 1990 version of The Flash, but they even work in a cameo from Ashley Scott from the little remembered WB series Birds of Prey.  I was also surprised to see an appearance by Tom Ellis from the Fox/Netflix series Lucifer, even though they apparently filmed the scene in front of a fire door somewhere on the studio lot.

While the cameos are fun, they do lead to questions better left unasked.  Why do all the Supermans (Supermen?) look different?  Why does one look like Ray Palmer?  And where is the Superman from Lois and Clark, played by Dean Cain (the producers must have his contact info as he plays Supergirl’s adopted father)?

I do get the feeling that I am missing out not knowing the source material.  A big deal is made about (SPOILER!!!) the death of Oliver Queen, but I’m thinking that since there are infinite Oliver Queens on infinite Earths, it’s no big deal as there must be lots more Oliver Queens out there.  But it is a big deal for reasons possibly explained in the graphic novel but somewhat vague here.

The exposition, frankly, consists of a LOT of hand waving to justify the action sequences.  Black Lighting shows up so he can shoot lightning bolts at the big machine generating the antimatter wave, but why that needed to be done isn’t quite explained.  There are SO many Earths, and SO many universes, that it is impossible to keep track of them all.  And when the Monitor locates the seven “Paragons” needed to stop the Crisis, six of them just happen to be (once again) characters on DC programs.

The most surprising thing about the acting is Ruby Rose, who rarely gets to emote on Batwoman.  Here she is given some emotional heavy lifting and pulls it off flawlessly, and at the same time establishes some on screen chemistry with Melissa Benoist of Supergirl (I am going to assume that this will remain platonic, because I don’t think even DC wants to go there). 

I don’t know if the decision to broadcast the last two episodes in January is based on having to do more filming in the intervening weeks, or just a tactic for pumping up the January ratings.  Given the magnitude of a cliffhanger the third episode left on, with all of the universes wiped out and everyone in every universe dead except for six Paragons and Lex Luthor (don’t ask), the four-week hiatus will either create a huge buzz for the remaining two episodes or cause a huge yawn when the show returns.

It looks like the CW is pulling out all the stops as this will likely be the final crossover event of the Arrowverse, given that Arrow is coming to an end.  But the Super-producer Greg Berlanti is running about 18 shows by now, and as long as the same man is pulling the strings, anything is possible.  With two episodes left to go it is too early to make a final judgement, but at this point it appears that they have tried to go too big and have relied on the spectacle alone to make the project worth doing. 

But, frankly, that is exactly the attitude that rescued Legends of Tomorrow from a mundane first season and propelled them into a third season that ended with the universe being saved by a giant Furby.  Going too big is infinitely more interesting than staying to small.

It's About Time: Marvin Miller is in the Hall of Fame

Pop quiz—who are the most significant, ground-breaking, important people in the history of baseball?  A good place to start at number one would be Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier and opened up America’s Game to all of Americans (and Puerto Rican shortstops).  Next might be Babe Ruth, who more or less singlehandedly brought baseball’s popularity back after the Black Sox scandal threatened to undermine the popularity of baseball as a professional sport.

Who would you name next?  Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who brought integrity (and racism) back to the sport?  Mark McGwire, who became the poster boy for the steroid’s era?  Bill James, who revolutionized statistical analysis and made sports heroes out of stat nerds?

The answer is Marvin Miller, who was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week.  When Miller took over as the head of the Players’ Association in 1962, the game was in the hands of the Lords of the Realm, the old guard owners who thought they not only owned the teams, but they owned the players.  Players were, collectively, undereducated good old boys who were happy to be paid a pittance for playing a game they loved.  Most baseball players had bought the company line that the owners were wise men who had the best interest of the players at heart and would look out for the players’ best interests.  At a congressional hearing in the 1950’s the president of the Players’ Association said that players had it so good they couldn’t think of anything to ask for in negotiations.

Marvin Miller was a professional labor organizer who knew an exploited work force when he saw one.  Ballplayers generated millions of dollars of revenue but were lucky to be paid a few hundred dollars a year (most players, even stars, had to have jobs during the off-season to make ends meet).  Most egregiously (and this will come as a shock to those of you under 40), players were bound to play for one team for their entire careers; the only option Willie Mays had to playing for the Giants was to not be a ballplayer.  If Mays didn’t like what the Giants wanted to pay him, he couldn’t offer his services to the Dodgers, but he could try his hand at selling cars.  Owners had all the power.

This power was encapsulated in a clause in the standard union contract called the Reserve Clause, which “reserved” the talent of a ballplayer to the team that owned his contract and forbade the player from working for any other professional baseball team.  The player could play without a contract for one year under the terms of his last contract, but at the end of the year he was still bound by the Reserve Clause.  Miller saw an opening when the owner of the Oakland A’s, Charlie O. Finley, breached his contract with pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter by failing to buy him an annuity insurance contract (ironically, Finley had made his fortune selling insurance).  Miller took Finley to arbitration, and the arbitrator ruled that because the contract was breached Hunter was free to sign with any team who wanted to pay him.  The Yankees signed him for $3.5 million over 5 years, with a $1 million signing bonus.  Suddenly the owners’ claims that players were worth only a few thousand dollars a year seemed implausible.

Miller persuaded two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, to play without a contract for one year, then challenge the Reserve Clause in arbitration.  The players won, and suddenly players could potentially offer their services to any team that wanted to pay them.

Miller realized that all the players becoming free agents at the same time would flood the market, so he offered the owners a magnanimous “deal”—teams could keep players for 3-4 years before the players became free agents, but players in those first few years could arbitrate any pay dispute.  What Miller knew, but the owners didn’t, was that arbitrators would determine what was fair pay by looking at the pay rate of free agents, essentially paying them as much as free agents.  Players who had been making tens of thousands of dollars were making millions of dollars within a few years.

The owners tried to defeat Miller in negotiations and lawsuits over and over, but Miller outfoxed them every time.  By the time he left as executive Director of the Players’ Association, he had cemented his status as the most successful labor organizer in history; during his time average player salary rose 1,610%, from $19,000 to $326,000.  Needless to say, salaries have continued to rise; On December 9, 2019, Stephen Strasburg signed a seven-year, $245 million contract (Strasburg will make more per inning than the average player made in 1962 for the season, adjusted for inflation).  Giving a player nearly a quarter of a billion dollars almost makes the player richer than the owners.

The only way the owners could get back at Miller was to deny him entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame, something he always took in stride by saying the Hall belonged to the owners anyway, so he didn’t mind not being in.  He was denied entry seven times from 2003 through 2018 (missing by one vote in 2011), but in 2019 he was voted in.

Unfortunately, Miller passed away in 2012, but I imagine he is somewhere chortling with joy at having beaten the baseball owners one final time.   Certainly no one in the past 50 years has had a greater impact on the sport of baseball than the man who freed the slaves from bondage so they could collect their million-dollar contracts and endorsement deals.

There are those who would argue that what Miller did was not necessarily a good thing, but no one can deny he has reformed baseball more than Barry Bonds.

Sue the refs!

Here in America, we are entitled to a lot of things.  Freedom of speech, the right to bear arms (no matter how many school children get blown away), and the ability to complain there’s nothing to watch on TV no matter how many cable channels and streaming services we pay for.

But you know what we are not entitled to?  Error-free officiating in any sport.  I mention this only because there have been threats of lawsuits over the latest example of officiating malfeasance, namely the waiving off a basket by James Harden despite visual proof that the ball, in fact, did go through the basket after Mr. Harden dunked the ball.

The mistake is somewhat understandable due to some weird physics where the basketball, after going through the basket, somehow got pushed back up through the basket by the net, making it appear to the naked eye to be a miss.  However, if you watch on instant replay it is immediately obvious that the ball went far enough through the hoop to be called a basket.  Under NBA rules, the net cannot act as a sixth man on defense.

Compounding the error is the fact that, even though Rocket’s coach Mike D’Antoni immediately complained about the call, the referees determined that he did not say the exact words, “I am challenging this on replay,” within 30 seconds and therefore no replay was available, even though challenging calls with replay has been a thing for some time and clearly D’Antoni had expressed dissatisfaction with the call.

The Rockets' position, now that the world has seen the replay and conceded that an error was made, is that either a) they should be given the win even though they lost the game in double overtime, or b) at the least they should replay the game since the point of the error, with a little over seven and a half minutes left in the fourth period.  Naturally, fans have threatened lawsuits.

New Orleans fans sued after NFL refs blew an obvious pass interference call in last year’s playoffs, a call so egregiously wrong the league instituted a challenge system for non-calls (a system, it should be said, that has resulted in almost no reversed calls because the referee’s union apparently refuses to allow their brethren look bad by actually reversing a call). The United States being a litigious society, there are lawsuits after every serious example of referee or umpire incompetence.

The problem is this—no major (or minor) sports league in America has ever made a legally binding promise that all officiating shall be 100% error free.  It never happened.  Naturally leagues have an incentive to make officiating as accurate as possible, but no one has ever GUARANTEED such a result.  The leagues owe you, the fans, nothing.  They owe the teams in the league nothing.  Maybe they owe a duty of due process, that they will scrutinize officiating for instances of cheating, favoritism, or blatant incompetence (like a referee who thinks it is perfectly legal for Lebron James to stop dribbling and then start again).  But no one guarantees 100% accuracy.

Which is reasonable, first of all because it is an impossible standard to meet.  Even with replay the result of some plays are inherently inscrutable.  Who at the bottom of a dogpile actually recovered a fumble?  Did a player leaping over a fence catch the ball or pick it up off the ground?  Photographic evidence will never be conclusive in all instances.

Secondly, there are policy reasons to make 100% accuracy a secondary consideration.  Maybe it would be nice to know who recovered a fumble, but you can’t stop the game and have lawyers for each team depose all the players on a dogpile.  You can require the pivot man on a double play to touch second base, but doing so puts the fielder and the base runner at risk, hence the existence of “the neighborhood play” where his foot merely has to be in the vicinity of the base.  Accuracy is an important factor, but it isn’t the only thing to consider.

So, Saints fans, you got hosed; sorry.  Rockets fans, oops but refs are only human, and as the saying goes, to err is human. 

And for those of you advocating for robot umps, even they can make mistakes; after all, they are programmed by humans.

Load management is a load of something

A few weeks ago, someone on one of the ESPN talking head shows asked whether the Golden State Warriors should consider tanking after receiving the news that their main star, Stephen Curry, would be out of commission for nearly three months.  One wag replied that there was no need for them to tank, they were going to be awful and would lose a lot of games without trying to tank.

This is why I am not THAT concerned with the idea of teams tanking in order to gain a higher draft position; teams that engage in tanking are just accelerating that natural order of things.  The truth is that tanking usually takes place in the front offices of teams, trading away assets in exchange for future draft picks or other bags of magic beans.  The players that are playing the games are not tanking but trying as hard as possible to win; they have just had one hand tied behind their back by management.

What I think is a bigger problem than tanking is what in the NBA is called “load management.”  Several other talking heads on ESPN have opined, in predicting the eventual identity of the Western Conference representative in the NBA Finals next year, that either the LA Lakers or the LA Clippers are the most likely candidates, but that neither would end up as the top seed in the playoffs.  That is, the best teams in the conference would deliberately lose games and end up with a lower seed in the playoffs, all in the name of assuring that their star players were healthy for the playoff run.

Load management is not a bad team trying to be worse; it is a good (or great) team trying to be mediocre for the sake of an advantage.  Speculating that the Nuggets or the Jazz will capture the top seed in the NBA West only to subsequently lose to the Clippers or the Lakers in the Conference Finals because the team from Los Angeles will do a better job of keeping either Lebron James or Kawhi Leonard injury-free over the course of an 82-game season is fundamentally an affront to the playoff structure.

Tanking means that teams that would normally lose 50 games in a season will lose 55 or 60 and then get a top 5 pick in the draft.  The marginal impact on the team’s fans is relatively small and ultimately rewarded (possibly) with the foundation of future success.  Load management means that players paid many tens of millions of dollars will not be displaying their skills to fans who have paid large amounts of money to see just that.  It is gaming a system that in which gaining home-court advantage in a seven-game series is inadequate compensation for achieving a higher seed.

As I have said before, the only way to stop tanking is to remove the incentive by making the draft order dependent on a lottery and not the number of games lost.  Of course, that also makes it more difficult for poor teams to get better because they don’t have access to better draft picks.

Similarly, the way to reduce (suppress) load management would be to give higher seeds a nearly insurmountable advantage in the playoffs, which would then require every team to work as hard as possible to win as many games as possible.  Having four home games instead of three in a round of the playoffs is hardly enough incentive to have Lebron James play in 70 games instead of 60 during the regular season.

But if the higher seeds had insurmountable advantages, what would be the point of having playoffs?  Baseball achieved a neat trick of letting wild cards into their playoffs but giving them a slight disadvantage in them having to use their best pitcher in the play-in game rather than the first game of the first series.  The only thumb on the scale basketball has is home court advantage and giving the higher seed more than 4 home games in a seven-game series is so excessive lower seeds would probably decide to tank rather than be an 8 seed.

I see tanking as a self-correcting problem, at least if the team that tanks is reasonably competent and drafts well.  If they aren’t competent, then they aren’t really tanking they are just perpetual losers. 

Load management is not a self-correcting problem and resting heathy players during the season just because you don’t mind getting a lower seed robs fans of the ability to see great players and skews the competitive balance.  Teams should work as hard as possible to be the one seed because being a three seed would significantly lower their chances of making the Finals. 

My favorite Damon Runyon quote is, “Remember, the race is not always to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that’s the way to bet.”  But when it comes to the NBA, it may be better to bet on a team that loses more games in the regular season.

Is Dave Roberts the worst manager in post season history?

Is Dave Roberts the worst manager in post-season history?

The answer to the headline is yes, Dave Roberts is the worst manager in baseball post-season history.  I’m not even sure who is in second place.  He over-managed the Dodgers in the 2017 World Series and lost a winnable series.  In 2018 he pulled starter Rich Hill even though he was throwing a one-hitter after 6 innings.  And now in 2019 he blows Game 5 of the NLDS by leaving in Clayton Kershaw despite having a rested bullpen who had been effective all year.

I think there are two reasons for the decision to leave Kershaw in the game.  The first is the idea that he burnishes his reputation as a manager by making unconventional moves.  Anyone can go to the 8^th inning specialist in the 8^th inning of a baseball game, but only an innovative manager would leave in a starter, even if he has declining skills and has been used as a starter recently. 

Secondly, I think he was hoping to create a narrative that would burnish Kershaw’s Hall of Fame credentials.  Kershaw gets called “The greatest pitcher of his generation” a lot, but his post-season record is 9-11 with a 4.43 ERA.  Roberts wanted to give Kershaw the same chance that the San Francisco Giants gave Madison Bumgardner in 2014 when he came in to relieve on short rest to clinch the Giants’ victory.

But there are a couple of differences.  One, MadBum was 24 at the time, not 31.  Kershaw has been seen as in decline, and while still effective he isn’t usually mentioned in the Cy Young debate.  Maybe at one time he was “lights out” but not anymore.  Also, as a starter, in 2019 Kershaw’s ERA in his first inning was 5.97, so he was used to getting off to a slow start.  As a starter that’s forgivable if you subsequently get on track; as a reliever, having a bad first inning is disastrous.  Relievers have to come into a game and hit the ground running; this is another reason why Kershaw is not a reliever.

Second, the Dodgers had better options.  The 2014 Giants didn’t have a strong bullpen, but the 2019 Dodgers did.  It wasn’t great, but it was good.  But instead of going to Kenley Jansen or Pedro Baez or Joe Kelly in the 8^th, they went with Kershaw.   I call that a vote of no confidence in the bullpen.

I think the experience with Bumgardner in 2014 started an unfortunate trend.  The next year Matt Harvey of the Mets insisted on pitching in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the World Series even though he had never thrown a complete game in his life, and he promptly blew the game and the Royals won the title.  Then you have the Dodgers not using their bullpen properly in 2017 and 2018.  I suspect something happened in 2016 but I am too lazy to look it up.

Bottom line—World series managers, please stop looking for excuses to use starters as relievers on short rest.  Once in a while it works, but that’s not the way to bet.  Before the series began, the Dodgers had a 62% of winning; after using Clayton Kershaw in relief, the chances were zero.

In Defense of the Wild Card Play-In Game

One of the things I find frustrating about baseball in the modern era (I am not sure what I mean by that; post-steroid, pre-robot umpire?) is the unmooring of a concept that I understood intuitively even before I took a single course in statistics—that over a 162 game season, crap evens out.  A bad bounce on a ground ball, an unfortunate gust of wind propelling a fly ball into the stands, an ump having a bad day behind the plate, could all influence the outcome of a single game, but over the course of a season the breaks will even out and the better team will win more games.

One aspect of this unmooring is the replay rule, which demands that EVERY play be examined in super-slo-mo to assure that the ball was caught by the first baseman a full one-thousandths of a second before the batter’s foot hit first base.  Yes, egregious calls need to be corrected, if possible (assuming there can be a consensus on the definition of “egregious”) but unlike football, a missed play here or there won’t necessarily determine whether a team’s season is considered a success or a failure.

There are policy reasons for imprecision.  The “neighborhood” play at second was conceded for decades, because not caring that the pivot man in a double play touched second base while he had the ball was more important that fielders’ risking knee damage from a hard slide, or runners being beaned by thrown balls that travel exactly down the baseline to first base instead of from an angle outside the basepath.  But now if a shortstop is a fraction of an inch off the base when making the pivot, the other team will challenge the call and demand that someone ion New York City review it.

More recently, I have become annoyed with well-meaning commentators grousing about the one-game playoff between wild card teams in each league.  For example, on this FiveThirtyEight podcast the moderator says a one-game play-in game wasn’t fair and they should play a seven game series.

The World Series already threatens to extend into the first days of November; a seven game wild card series would guarantee a World Series starting in November and ending after the Ides of November.  That sounds iffy for a sport where, unlike the Super Bowl, the location of the finals can’t be determined in advance; given that the Twins play in an outdoor stadium IN MINNESOTA this seems insane.

The thing is this—the purpose of the wild card play-in game is NOT to decide which team is the better one.  They just finished playing 162 games and the team hosting the play-in game had some advantage over the other one that justified giving them home field advantage.  Playing one game is unlikely to better make this determination.  The A’s had a one-game lead over the Rays after 162 games, so they host; even if they lose the play-in game, they would have the same record but the A’s won the season series over the Rays, so they still could be considered the better team.

No, the purpose of the wild card play in game is to disadvantage wild card teams in the next round of the playoffs.  Presumably the teams in the wild card play-in game will start their ace, making him unavailable for the first two or three games of the Division Series.  The wild card winner will send their #2 starter against the division winner’s #1 starters, and their #3 starter against the other team’s #2. 

When the wild card was implemented it seemed like a good idea (and it was), until wild card teams started winning the World Series.   In the NFL, wild card teams have the disadvantage of no home field advantage, but in baseball if you split the first two games suddenly the home field advantage shifts, and now three of the remaining five games are played at the wild card team’s park.  Something was needed to subtly give the division winner a slight edge over a team that merely came in second (or even possibly third).

So don’t gripe about the Nationals getting lucky because a rookie outfielder botched a routine ground ball to right field.  Maybe the Brewers could have won a seven-game series, but they should have gotten the opportunity to play in one by winning their division. 

A Modest Proposal: Eliminate Offensive Holding

   

A new NFL season is upon us, and already football fans are up in arms.  Of course, fans are always up in arms over something.  At the end of last season, everyone was mad that referees did NOT call pass interference on a play between the New Orleans Saints and the Los Angeles Rams that resulted in the Rams going to the Super Bowl.  This season fans are upset that the referees ARE calling holding penalties.

Of course, the old axiom has been that “holding could be called on every play.”  Apparently, this season the referees are taking it literally.  Over the first two weeks, holding calls were up 66% over the same period last season.  How serious is the problem?  Tom Brady tweeted he was going to stop watching the Jaguars/Panthers game n Thursday night because of all the holding calls (and not because the teams were lousy).

I have a modest proposal that the National Football League should consider implementing immediately: legalize holding.  Okay, maybe have some rules for extreme cases where the offensive lineman holds on to the defensive player’s windpipe, but otherwise wipe the penalty for offensive holding off the books.

First of all, if indeed holding takes place on every play, then it is the established norm.  If everybody does it, then why is it wrong?  Also, as many minorities could attest to, when something is on the books as illegal but done anyway, it gives law enforcement (referees) the ability to selectively enforce the rule.  Everyone on the highway may be going 70, but the African American going 57 gets a ticket.  Everyone commits holding, but if the Saints are driving for a winning score against the Rams, blow the whistle and move them back 10 yards.

Secondly, the biggest emphasis in refereeing has been the importance of protecting the quarterback.  Plays are blown dead once the QB is “in the grasp.”  Roughing the passer is called when a defensive player looks fiercely at Tom Brady.  If protecting the passer is Job One, then why handicap the offensive line by saying they can’t use their hands like bloody soccer players?

Thirdly, the rule is asymmetrical.  Why can defensive players use their hands but not offensive players?  Maybe this made sense at the dawn of football, but things have changed.  Defensive linemen are bigger, faster, and stronger than ever.  Apparently, things have swung so far in the defense’s favor that, as I said, the offense has to commit holding on every play.  So let’s level the playing field and let the O-Line grab a little jersey.

Lastly, everyone is now concerned with player safety.  Isn’t letting the offensive linemen garb the pass rushers with their hands safer than having desperate linemen try to stop pass rushers about to get by them with low blocks or blocks in the back?  I don’t think allowing offensive linemen to hold defensive players would increase the risk of injury, and it might decrease it.

Frankly, this move is so obvious I can’t believe the NFL hasn’t considered it.  If everyone complains about the rule being enforced, then don’t jut stop enforcing it but eliminate it from the rule book.  Let the Patriots’ front five protect Tom Brady by holding the linemen who might injure him if they got past the line!  I’m sure Tom Brady (the man who was suspended four games for cheating) wouldn’t want his linemen to break the rules.

Brandon Routh to bid adieu to Legends

So it’s come to this—I am sad Brandon Routh is leaving one of my favorite TV shows.

I’ve hated Brandon Routh as an actor for a long time.  I thought he was monumentally wooden in the lame movie Superman Returns.  Compared to fellow unknown actor Christopher Reeve he was a stuffed Superman costume without any indication of humor or wit, taking his role sincerely when playing Superman obviously has to be done with an undercurrent of skepticism.  Anyone who doesn’t see the absurdity of an alien with God-like powers zipping around in blue tights should not be allowed anywhere near said blue tights.  Incredibly, he won a Saturn Award as best actor for the role, so obviously my opinion was not unanimous.

He then doubled down on his badness by taking a recurring role on the television show Chuck, playing a rival for the title character’s affection for the lovely and lethal CIA agent Sarah Walker.  I am NOT one of the fans who simply objected to him because he was an impediment to the long-awaited Chuck/Sarah hookup; I understand the desire of the show runners to create dramatic tension by placing a roadblock in the way of Chuck and Sarah’s inevitable coupling.  I objected to the fact that he was so uncharismatic that one wasn’t certain exactly WHY Sarah would be interested in him over adorkable super-nerd Chuck.  He was blandly handsome in a Ken doll sort of way, but again appeared to project no personality or chemistry with his fellow actors (again, inexplicably, IMDB says he won something called an IGN Summer Movie Award as “Best Villain” for his work).

I probably expected Brandon Routh to go the way of most pretty-boy wanna-be actors who disappear after a stint on Baywatch or something similar.  My expectations were thwarted when Routh turned in an amusing supporting performance in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, one of my favorite films of this century.  He steered into his lack of charisma, playing a lunkheaded bassist who was the current squeeze of the woman who had dumped the title hero, Scott Pilgrim.  His character punched a diminutive Asian girl so hard that he knocked the highlights from her hair (really), and then nearly killed the Scott Pilgrim using his mystical “vegan powers.”  Of course he was ultimately defeated by the title character, but for the first time in my life I thought that Brandon Routh didn’t suck.

Full reformation of my opinion of Brandon Routh occurred when he joined DC’s Legends of Tomorrow as Ray Palmer, aka The Atom, a role he originated on Arrow (a show I started watching but abandoned when I decided Steven Amell was indistinguishable from a block of wood).  The show’s first season was an unmitigated disaster, but I stuck with it in part because of Routh’s feckless appeal as a billionaire genius with a suit that allowed him to shrink in size and who had the outlook of a Boy Scout on strong anti-depressants.   The show did a brilliant job of course correcting, dropping the Hawk-people (what were they thinking?) and a dull as dishwater villain named “Vandal Savage” (again, what were they thinking?) but keeping Routh along with Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Victor Garber, Franz Drameh, and several other parts that worked.

The show added new characters that meshed with the recurring ones MUCH better than in the first season, and the character of Ray Palmer became a reliable beacon of unbridled optimism as well as geeky uber-inventions and corny humor.  At some point around the start of the show’s third season I realized that I no longer hated Brandon Routh.

Legends of Tomorrow took a major risk in its fourth season by introducing a new character: Nora Darhk, who was the evil daughter of super-villain Damien Darhk.  The risky part was twofold: a) she became a love interest for Ray Palmer, and b) she was played by Courtney Ford, Brandon Routh’s wife.  Real-life couples notoriously never have the on-screen chemistry that they have in real life (anyone remember Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut?), so the casting was a major gamble.

It was a gamble that paid off (Legends of Tomorrow takes more high-stakes risks than any other show on television, and it wins an astounding percentage of them).  The slowly-evolving relationship added depth to the character of Ray Palmer, and once they finally got together (aided by a magic McGuffin) there was a suitable amount of on-screen sizzle.

So it is with unexpected sadness that I hear the news that Routh and Ford will be leaving Legends of Tomorrow in its 5^th season.   I don’t think this will necessarily mean an end to the show; the program has been a master class on juggling cast members in ways that only a time-travelling science fiction show could do.  Also, Routh will definitely not be permanently gone, as word has it he will put on the blue leotards again to play alternate universe Superman in the annual DC Crossover Event.

I can’t say that I am looking forward to his next endeavor; I think the role of Ray Palmer was just so in his wheelhouse that not even Routh could screw it up.  Being on a show with brilliant writing can make any actor appear good.  But Brandon Routh has redeemed himself in my eyes, so I will not avoid his next TV series just because of his presence.

Business models in the new economy

Way back when, maybe 10-15 years ago, I saw a book in a bookstore [millennials, you may be confused by that term; look it up] that was a collection of all the hair-brained schemes concocted to make millions of dollars when the Internet became a thing.  You know, a business with the domain name “Spatulas.com” that was going to become everybody’s one-stop shopping choice for utensils designed to turn food over.  At the beginning of the Internet age, it was believed that slapping a “dot com” at the end of anything was the path to riches.

We are now in the next phase of business evolution, the “gig” economy and its offshoot of streaming services that allow access to a book, movie, or video game without the need to “own” it.  A book titled The End of Ownership by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz offered one theory for the rise of “sharing” apps like Uber and Lyft, which allow people to essentially share someone’s car, and Netflix, which allows people to share movies and TV shows.  Because Millennials are less well off than previous generations of young people, with lower starting salaries, less job security, and more college debt, they seek out ways to acquire what they need or want without having to pay the full price of ownership.  These businesses were theoretically fiscally sound because they were based on the fact that young people were less wealthy than previous generations (the fact that Uber continues to hemorrhage billions of dollars since their IPO make this theory a little suspect in reality).

Recently I saw an ad on TV for Taco Bell that included the fact that you could get Taco Bell delivered to you through Doordash, and if you mentioned the ad the first delivery charge was waived (or something like that; I wasn’t fully attentive).  It took a while to sink in, but after a while I asked myself, “Is this actually a viable business model?”  Can you actually make a profit delivering Taco Bell orders to peoples’ homes?

I was immediately skeptical.  Okay, you can do Doordash with restaurants other than Taco Bell, but let’s focus on that.  A typical Taco Bell order for two people would total, what, $10?  $15 tops, if you really had the munchies.  But instead of getting into your car and going to Taco Bell, you are going to hire someone who own a car (and makes car payments on it, as well as insurance and maintenance), ask him or her to drive to Taco Bell (burning gas), pick up your $12.50 order, then burn more gas driving to your house, drop off the goodies, and then go home (or to their next delivery assignment).  Let’s say the entire process takes 30 minutes (that seems too short, but this would only work in a fairly dense urban environment).  How much would that driver charge you to make it worth his or her while (of course a major issue is whether the driver has to be paid minimum wage as an employee, or can be exploited as an “independent contractor”)?  The delivery charge would have to be more than the food, more if you tip the driver (assuming Doordash isn't stealing the tip). 

Okay, maybe you couldn’t cover your costs by charging enough for each order, but it’s like the old joke: there are lots of people who want to order from Taco Bell, so what you lose on each transaction you make up for in volume.  Obviously that isn’t a viable business model, unless you could cut costs by saying your employees are not employees and are therefore not entitled to minimum wage, workers compensation coverage, or any benefits.  But what is the quality of the work force you could hire willing to work for peanuts plus tips (again, unless the company steals them)?  If the business isn’t covering the driver’s insurance as a business expense that means the driver’s personal insurance would assume the risk, which would raise their rates tremendously.

The bottom line is this: unlike Uber, Lyft, and streaming services like Netflix, this is a business model based on affluence.  You are hiring a driver to go to Taco Bell and pick up an order for you because you are too lazy to go in your own car.  The delivery charge HAS to exceed the cost of you going to Taco Bell.  That means you have money to burn and want to burn it by having someone else go through the Taco Bell drive-through lane. 

Full disclosure: I am not a business genius.  I do not live in a huge mansion with a croquet lawn and kidney-shaped pool.  I am not the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation.  So take it with a grain of salt when I say that I don’t see how Doordash can be profitable.  The whole point of drive-throughs like Taco Bell is that people drive there and get food; if you can afford to hire someone to pick up Taco Bell food, you can afford to eat somewhere nicer than Taco Bell.

Unless you waste your money hiring someone to pick up your Taco Bell order and bring it to you.

What about pay equity for the WNBA?

Where’s your pay equity now?

This week the WNBA decided to suspend one of its stars, Brittney Griner, for three games follow a brawl between her and another player that resulted in the other player running away from Griner while players and officials restrained her.  The three-game suspension is about 8.8% of the 34-game WNBA season, so Griner will forfeit 8.8% of her pay.  Before you get too upset, we’re only talking about a little over $10,000.

That’s right, one of the biggest superstars in the history of the WNBA makes the maximum allowable pay level of $115,000.  For some comparison, there are journeyman benchwarmers in the NBA pulling down more than $10 million a year for multiple years.  An NBA player making $10 million a year makes more PER GAME than Griner makes for an entire season.

Griner’s initial response was to say that she was constantly being physically abused by other players, and if the league wouldn’t let her defend herself, then $115,000 wasn’t enough to pay for the privilege of playing in the WNBA Griner told ESPN she still felt that way after learning the length of the suspension).  Another superstar, Diana Tirausi, skipped playing in the WNBA in 2015 to play for more money in Russia.

I’ve always been unsure how the WNBA continues to exist.  I understand it is subsided by the NBA (to the tune of $10 million a year in the mid-2000s), and that many fans praise it for having a style of play that is more elegant than the NBA while still being physical.  Yet the league averages about 6,800 fans per game, which is about 40% of the average NBA attendance of 18,000.  According to the Wikipedia entry on the WNBA, ratings for WNBA games draw fewer viewers than college games.

Sports is a bottom line business, and the NBA pays its stars up to $40 million a year while WNBA players are capped at an amount that a good accountant could pull down.  If the WNBA product is so good, why aren’t more people willing to pay for tickets, or advertisers pay more for ad time during televised games?  It’s nice that women basketball players have a place to play after college, but if their skills are so in demand, why don’t they make more money (especially since overseas leagues are able to pay a lot more)?

This is particularly resonant now following the controversy over equal pay for the women’s national soccer team.  I have said it before and I’ll say it again, women soccer player’s shouldn’t make as much as men; they should make more.  The women’s team has won four World Cups (and never finished lower than third) and four Olympic Gold Medals since 1991, while the men last won in . . . let me check . . . that would be NEVER.  The men’s team was eliminated from even qualifying for the 2018 World Cup because they were beaten by that mighty soccer giant, Trinidad and Tobago.  It’s hard to imagine the US Mens Soccer Team beating a team from a soccer powerhouse like Germany, Spain, France or England when they can’t beat a small Caribbean island with a population roughly equal to that of Dallas, Texas.

The debate over soccer pay equity has devolved into splitting hairs over exactly how much players on each team receive; meanwhile male NBA players are making over 100 times more than WNBA players yet no one seems to be concerned about “pay equity.”  Yes, attendance and viewership numbers are less than those of the NBA, but they aren’t 100 times lower.

If Brittney Griner follows through on her threat and leaves the WNBA, it will lead to a great deal of soul searching by the league and its fans.  Can the WNBA survive with an economic system that pays their superstars so little?  Can they raise enough revenue to pay their players enough to keep them from going to leagues in other countries that can pay more?  If Griner leaves, will other stars follow her lead?

Griner’s fight and subsequent suspension might prove to be an expensive one for the WNBA.

the baseball trade deadline and reality

I hate this time of year, and I mean the baseball trading deadline.  The reason I hate it is that talking heads on ESPN and n local stations all start talking about how this team or that team is “in the hunt” for a playoff berth, and therefore they should be trading away prospects for that elusive “final piece” that will get them to the post-season and ultimately the World Series.  I hate this because for most teams it is nonsense.

It is nonsense when you look at a team like the San Francisco Giants, currently two games above .500 thanks to a hot streak of going 11-2 during the month of July.  Suddenly, ideas about trading Madison Bumgardner for prospects seems sacrilegious because now the World Series is within reach.

First of all, flip the script and say the Giants started the season 11-2 and are now losing games that make them two games over .500.  Now the glass is half empty, their record is plummeting, and it is time to trade assets.  The record is the same, just the timing of the winning streak has changed.  Streaks are flukey things, and over the course of a 162 game season decisions should not be made because of a hot month that just happens to occur before the trade deadline.  Besides, the hot streak is now over and the reality of the team's prospects are normalizing.

Secondly, approximately 100 games into a season is a pretty good sample size (better than 13 games), and if you are around .500 after 100 games you have to ask yourself, as Dirty Harry said, “Do I feel lucky?”  If you are at .500 after 100 games but your ace starter has been out for two months, or last year’s MVP is coming off an injury, then your second half may look better than your first half.  But otherwise, if you are at .500 after 100 games, then you are likely to finish around .500 after 162.  It doesn’t matter if you are only two games out of the wild card after 100 games; the team (or teams) that is ahead of you are probably better, and are likely to win more games than you. 

The basic argument is, “We’re only two games out of the wild card, but if we trade prospects for a starter, we can make the wild card and then. if we get lucky, we can win the World Series.”  For the record, “If we get lucky” is NOT a plan that will succeed very often.  This advice is as self-evident as the line from Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” (By the way, Dean Wormer is the bad guy in that film, but this is sound advice, plus he managed to get a hot number like Mrs. Wormer to marry him, so maybe he had some hidden depths to him).

Five Thirty Eight identifies the Giants as a team that should be selling at the trade deadline.  They have a less than 1% chance of making it to the World Series based in existing talent, and they are low on prospects.  The reason they are low on prospects, again according to Five Thirty Eight, is that they tried to extend their dynasty past its sell-by date.  After falling to the Cubs in the 2016 postseason, they essentially believed in the numerology that they would make the post-season in even numbered years and traded for or signed aging veterans to make another run in 2018.  This depleted their prospects and drained their bank account, so they were unable to acquire good players, leading to an historically bad season in 2018.

The recent hot streak in July should be seen as luck, not skill.  Bumgardner should be traded to a team looking for a post-season stud and willing to pay.  Of course the last time a team acquired a Giant post-season hero for playoff glory was when the Red Sox got Pablo “Kung Fu Panda” Sandoval as a free agent based on his post-season numbers, not his regular season performance.  Sandoval showed up overweight, got injured, and never became a post-season legend to succeed David Ortiz.

So, all of you baseball teams only a few games out of the wild card hunt, learn a lesson; don’t think a .500 record can be turned into a World Series run by acquiring one or two pieces at the trade deadline.  Trades at the trade deadline that helped teams win a World Series usually made a great team even better, they didn’t make a mediocre team great. 

I was right about Netflix

When you make projections and predictions, in is a rare occurrence when you are rewarded with instant gratification; you predict something will happen “someday” or “eventually” and then within a week it happens.  Predicting the ice caps will melt by 2075 is one thing, but to have the water lapping at your ankles in 2019 is something else.

A while ago I predicted doom and gloom for Netflix, thinking that in a few years, when the streaming market shook out and they had serious competition, they might be in trouble.  But this week Netflix released its latest subscriber data and, as the kids say, “Boom goes the dynamite!”

Netflix reported a loss of subscribers, its first loss in seven years.  The result?  Netflix lost $17 billion in one day.  Now, the good news for Netflix is that it was so rich it could lose $17 billion.  My total assets are slightly less than $17 billion, so I never have to worry about losing that much, even if I misplace my coin purse.  But still, that’s gotta hurt.

The explanation for why the prospect of competition would hurt Netflix now is the economic concept that predictable future events will manifest their impact immediately in any rational marketplace; this is known as the Efficient Market Hypothesis.  If I am an investor, and I know that at some time in the future Netflix will have to compete with the Disney+ streaming service, the Warner’s HBO MAX service, NBC’s streaming service, CBS All Access, and so on, then there is no reason to wait for these entities to come into being before dumping my stock.  If I dump it NOW, there is no risk of mis-timing the market and being caught in a sell-off.

Netflix’s problem is two-fold.  Competition will drive down the price they can charge for their streaming service, while at the same time content providers pulling their content from Netflix drives down the demand for their product.  Friends, The Office, and the Marvel properties were reasons to subscribe to Netflix; with those on other platforms, not so much.

As I said before, Netflix is sort of a legal Ponzi scheme.  They assume future increases in their subscriber base, and then borrow against the assumed future revenue to finance the creation of Netflix Original content.  This system works great, at least until the last Bushman in the Kalahari Desert subscribes and no further growth is possible.  This is why Netflix’s stock price is susceptible to downturns when there is a report that subscriber growth has slowed (much less dropped). 

I’m no expert, but I’m not sure I see a way out for Netflix.  Unless the streaming market gets oversaturated by breaking up into too small bits (when other streaming services fail because they have too small of a market share) and then re-coalesces with Netflix able to re-acquire titles due to their excess capacity.  Netflix is banking on the high quality of their original content, instead of content bought from others, but in my opinion Netflix original content has been spotty at best.

Of course there is Stranger Things, but as good as it is the franchise is showing signs of wear after the third installment (don’t get me wrong, I loved Stranger Things 3, just not as much as I loved 1 or 2).  They had good luck with the Marvel-based original content (although, again, these properties aged fast), but Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Iron Fist were canceled and won’t be back unless it is on Disney+.  I know people who like some of their imported series, but none has appealed to me.  Arrested Development was run into the ground by going back to the well once (maybe twice) too often.  Dead to Me is a critical success, but as much as I love Christina Applegate you can’t base a network on 13-episode seasons of sitcoms (about a woman searching for the killer of her dead husband) starring Ms. Applegate.

Yes, Netflix was second among networks with Emmy nominations with 117, but that says more about the fractured nature of network television than the quality of Netflix’s product.  Netflix Originals, as a producer, only got 13 nominations, mostly for GLOW (5 nominations) and the departing A Series of Unfortunate Events (3 nominations). 

This is all conforming to how economic forces work in a marketplace.  Netflix had vision to see the opportunities in the streaming market, and gets content providers to let them distribute streaming content for a modest payment.  When companies see how much profit Netflix makes, they decide that maybe they could make more money by distributing it themselves instead of leasing it to Netflix.  A bunch of companies enter the market, many find the technical requirements to challenging, and maybe, eventually, Netflix can make a comeback.  But that’s probably years away.

In the meantime, dump your Netflix stock and start boning up on the terms of service for CBS All Access, Disney+, NBC Streaming, HBO MAX, and all the other new market entrants, not to mention already established streamers like Hulu and Amazon Prime.  It’s going to be a bloodbath out there in the streaming market.

Don't measure GOATs by counting stats

Wimbledon was a disappointment for those hoping for clarification that Roger Federer and Serena Williams are, in fact, the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) when it comes to singles tennis.  Federer lost two match points on his serve and eventually succumbed to Novak Djokovic, who didn’t win a single set but won three tie-breakers.  Serena “cruised” through her draw (more about that later) but lost in the Final to Simona Halep, thus losing another opportunity to tie Margaret Court at 24 majors.

There are many, many ways to determine who is the GOAT, but using a counting stat like most majors won is not a good one.  Players play in different eras, against different opponents, using different equipment and strategies, and a simple one-to-one comparison of most majors won is pointless.

So, is Margaret Court better than Serena because she leads in majors won 24-23?  Hardly.  Court played at a time when tennis players outside of Australia rarely made the trek Down Under to play in the Aussie Open.  11 of her 24 major wins were in the Aussie Open, defeating other Aussie players like Jan Lehane, Kerry Melville Reid, and Yvonne Goolagong in the finals.  Serena is playing in a much more competitive environment, so saying Court is better by 24-23 is not really relevant.

Of course, Serena is considered better than Steffi Graf because she has 23 majors to Graf’s 22, but that’s not really relevant either.  Graf won her 22 majors by age 30, while Serena took until she was 35.  That means Serena had 20 more bites at the apple before she caught up with Steffi.  And you can’t blame injuries; Serena missed 9 majors between the year she first won one and when she won her 22nd, but Steffi missed 10.  Throw in the fact that Steffi completed a “Golden Slam” in 1988, winning the Grand Slam plus an Olympic Gold Medal (Serena has to be content with a “Serena Slam” by winning 4 majors in a row in 2014-15) and I could make a case for Steffi being the GOAT despite being a mere one major behind Serena.  I also think Graf beat better players when she won; Serena got to the final at Wimbledon despite not meeting a player ranked above 15 in the prelims.  Steffi usually faced more serious opposition in her quarters and semis.

On the men’s side, Federer is in first place 20-18 over Nadal and 20-16 over Djokovic.  But Nadal could pass him simply by winning the next three French Opens, and Djokovic, at 32, could have as many as 20 more opportunities to get an additional 5 major wins (and he’s won 4 of the past 5 majors, missing only the French Open which Nadal owns).  Federer could win more majors, but at 38 years old his window is closing, despite just missing a victory at Wimbledon against Djokovic.

Frankly, I will continue to consider Federer as the men’s GOAT, even if his total number of majors gets surpassed.  Maybe if Djokovic passed him by 4 or 5 I’d have to reconsider, but if Joker ends with 22 and Federer 20, I’m still voting for Fed.  He’s nearly 6 years older than Djokovic yet had two match points against Joker at Wimbledon; let’s see how Djokovic’s game is when he is 38.  Federer had to battle a younger Nadal for much of his career as well as a much younger Djokovic, while few of the players younger than Joker are much of a threat.

My favorite cautionary tale of counting stats is Rafael Palmiero, who had 3,000 hits and 500 home runs and was considered a lock for the Hall of Fame until he failed a drug test after wagging his finger at Congress.  He is now off the ballot and will only make the Hall if voted in by the Veteran’s Committee (probably likely given how nutty they have been in the past), but my point is even if you take away the failed drug test, what did he ever DO to get into the Hall?  He ran up some impressive counting stats, but that only proves he had a long, injury-free career during a period of high offense and played in parks that also favored offense.  He never led the league in any major statistical category (I think he led in doubles once), he never led his team deep into the playoffs, he never did well when he got to the playoffs, and in a 19 year career he started one All-Star game as a DH.  He belongs in the Hall of Pretty Good, but not the Hall of Fame.

So, put not your faith in counting stats when choosing a GOAT.  Jim Brown may not own the record for most yards gained, but he is still the best running back of all time.  Tiger Woods probably won’t catch Jack Nicklaus’ record for majors, but he was more dominant when he was at his peak.  

Counting stats can measure linear feats, but greatness is rarely measured linearly.

Jessica Jones Season 3--A Review (spoilers, I guess)

Marvel’s Jessica Jones, season 3—a review (spoilers)

The final episode of season three of Jessica Jones on Netflix presumably marks the ending of the Great Marvel on Netflix Streaming TV experiment.  The process included the three seasons of Jessica Jones and Daredevil, plus the two seasons of Luke Cage and Iron Fist (The Punisher was also involved but I never watched it).  The results were vaguely disappointing, but not as disappointing as the series all being cancelled not for poor ratings, but because the corporate overlords at Disney that now owns Marvel don’t want their product on a network owned by someone else, even if they have no plans to show them on their streaming service.  That said, I actually liked the Daredevil/Jessica Jones/Luke Cage/Iron Fish mashup The Defenders a lot.  Just saying.

Season one of Jessica Jones was a thrill, even if there were some flaws in the overall structure.  Season two was largely seen as a disappointment, one that featured Krysten Ritter’s excellent work as the deeply flawed hero Jessica Jones but struggled to find anything worthy for her to use her superpowers on.  Season 3 is an improvement, but not as successful as season one.  If I were to indict season three for one thing, it would be its insistence on maintaining a season-long arc format while producing what turns out to be 13 individually produced episodes with no attempt at continuity whatsoever.

I could give half dozen examples of plot points emphasized in early episodes that are subsequently forgotten, but I’ll just give one minor one.  In the second episode, Jessica is recovering from an attack at the end of the first episode and is told by her doctor that her spleen has been removed (the title of the episode in “AKA I Have No Spleen,” so this is not exactly a spoiler).  She is told that this will have a significant impact on her life, and that she’ll need to be on an anti-biotic regimen for the rest of her life.  She subsequently collapses from the injury later in that episode, but she never has any ill effects in any subsequent episode.  Is one of her superpowers growing a new spleen?  Or did the writers just forget she was injured?  I don’t want every episode to come to a halt and have Jessica say, “Oh wait, I have to take my antibiotics,” but would it kill her to every so often roll her eyes, pop a pill, and wash it down with a slug of bourbon?

You can’t treat a 13-episode show order like a game of Telephone where one person starts a message and each subsequent writer is free to make changes before passing it on to the next writer.  Several times Jessica is shown carefully preserving evidence that is never brought up again; given that she is supposedly battling a genius serial killer who never leaves behind any evidence, you’d think some of this would find its way to the police.

Which brings me to the second problem with Jessica Jones Season Three, the Big Bad.  Jessica spends much of the season trying to get the goods on the sort of villain who only exists in fiction, the hyper-intelligent sociopath who has the excess time on his hands to commit murders so carefully planned that the police don’t even know he exists.  We are told repeatedly that the killer is a genius, but this is an example of writers telling, not showing.  He does absolutely nothing that indicates he’s of even average intelligence, yet he has five or six advanced degrees in disparate fields like law, engineering, and chemistry.  His job?  He’s a wrestling coach!  Yes, a man smart enough to earn multiple advance degrees works as a wrestling coach (which hardly explains how he can afford an apartment in New York City, but that’s a TV trope for another day).  He is so stupid that he challenges Jessica Jones, whom he knows is superpowered, to a wrestling match, somehow thinking that his training will allow him to defeat an opponent who can pick him up with one hand.

The season also suffers from an excess of Trish Walker (Rachel Taylor), one of the most annoying characters ever to grace a TV screen.  Jessica’s adopted sister is constantly coming up with simplistic, ill-thought out plans, and when Jessica points out their inadequacy Trish's inevitable response is that Jessica never believed in her.  Two of the 13 episodes are “Trish-centric,” and she is perpetually inserting herself into Jessica’s investigations in the other 11.

The plus side?  There is, as always, Krysten Ritter’s performance as Jessica Jones.  Other actresses might lobby to make Jessica more attractive, more feminine, or more likable, but Ritter embraces the concept of Jessica Jones that she doesn’t care what she looks like or what anybody else thinks of her.  Carrie-Anne Moss is back as Jeri Hogarth, the hot shot lawyer who was Jessica’s boss and is now an adversary.  Moss also embraces the negative aspects of her character, someone whose efforts to control everything around her inevitably blow up in her face.  The show makes good use of minor characters to make this fictional world feel lived in, but at the cost of making it less tidy than good fiction should be.

It is a shame that this is the end of the line for Jessica Jones, unless she somehow makes a comeback in a couple of years on Disney+ streaming.  But maybe three seasons is enough?  In the modern television landscape, shows either run forever (Survivor, Law & Order SVU) or go away after a couple of seasons, at most.  All of the Marvel properties at Netflix started off good (except Iron Fist) and then were unable to re-find that magic. 

Season Three of Jessica Jones is worth a look, especially if you don’t find Trish that annoying (really?) and you didn’t want to pull the plug after Season Two.  As I understand it, word that the series was finished came down during production, so the producers were able to fashion what they knew would be a series finale.  My only question is, did they go back and consult the previous episodes before making up the grand finale?

Optimism is a bad way to go

One of the more amusing (or disturbing, depending on your perspective) images on ESPN several weeks ago was cell phone footage of one of their New York based personalities going ballistic when he learned that the New York Knicks did not get the first pick in the draft, thus losing out on drafting future superstar Zion Williamson.  What were the odds that the Knicks, who had the worst record in the NBA last season, wouldn’t get the first pick?  Astronomical, right?

Well, we know the answer: 86%.  Because of the bizarre use of ping pong balls to determine draft order instead of teams’ records, the team with the worst record does not get the first choice in the draft; in fact, it is unlikely that they get the first pick.  This supposedly deters teams from tanking in order to improve their draft chances (the efficacy of this tactic is certainly debatable).  Knick fans were sure that they would get the first pick in the draft.  But in reality, the chances that the Knicks would get the first pick were only 14%.

Move ahead to the NBA finals, a battle between Goliath Golden State Warriors and Lilliputian Toronto Raptors.  Warriors’ superstar Kevin Durant had been out for a month with a lower leg injury, but with the series in the Raptors’ favor by 3-1, Durant was ready to come back and lead Golden State to another title.  The medical staff of the Warriors said that Durant re-injuring his leg was “impossible.”

Those medical personnel might want to buy some lottery tickets, as the impossible happened and Durant tore his Achilles tendon.  This not only took him out for the rest of the season, but also for most, if not all, of next season.

What were the odds of such a disaster?  Unlike the ping pong balls, we can’t put an exact number of the probability, but judging from the medical staff’s prognosis the answer should be “very small.”  I would argue that despite the medical staff’s assurances, the chances of an Achilles injury would never be zero for a basketball player playing in an NBA game.

In both instances, something perceived to be an unlikely event by fans turned out to be a very, very likely event in retrospect.  Both the Knicks and the Warriors fell victim to an age-old curse that befalls of fans of a professional sports team; they were far too optimistic about something that was actually very unlikely, or very likely to occur.

The old adage is that in spring training every baseball fan thinks his or her team will make it to the World Series, no matter how bad they were the season before.  That journeyman pitcher you acquired as a “player to be named later” will win 20 games; that kid shortstop who’s been bouncing between AA and AAA for 10 years will be Rookie of the Year; that manager with the lifetime sub-.500 record will turn into George S. Patton overnight.  

I seem to recall Bill James writing in the late 80’s about how fans think a single player will improve a team’s win total by 10 or 12 (or more) when in fact a superstar barely moves the needle more than a couple of wins.  In his best seasons Mike Trout (who has been so consistently phenomenal that we have stopped talking about how he is the greatest player of all time) is worth maybe 10 wins to the Angels, but no one else is even close to that.

In sports, all fans are optimists.  I heard one wag on ESPN say that if Lebron James hadn’t gotten hurt, the Lakers would have made the playoffs as an eight seed, beaten the Warriors in the first round, and then gone on to the NBA finals.  Way to bootstrap a team that lost 55% of their games during the regular season and that hasn’t been to the playoffs in six years.

People say I am a pessimist, but I am a realist.  Not that I resist the pessimist imprimatur.  Studies have shown that pessimists are more well-adjusted, cope with loss better, have a more realistic assessment of their circumstances, and are overall better at dealing with reality than optimists.  Pessimists are better at preparing for stressful events because they anticipate everything that might go wrong.

What could go wrong?  Your best player could blow out his Achilles in an important game.  Your team might lose a lottery it had a 14% chance of winning.  You might not pay off your debts by buying a lottery ticket. 

My favorite sports quote is attributed to Damon Runyon, who said, “Remember my son, the race is not always to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that the way to bet.” 

There is a reason why Han Solo never wants to know the odds; they’re always right.