Victory!

I participate in what is best termed a “reality fantasy” baseball league. It is not run on a website — rather it is run offline with spreadsheets for team rosters and an engine that simulates games. It is the closest approximate to being a general manager I have found, even moreso than video games. You compete with other actual players who GM their own teams and must build and compete with a team much like you would in real life with trades (which can take weeks to consummate), free agency, the draft, waivers, finances, the whole nine yards. It isn’t an easy league, which is filled with many qualified people, a large part of which have a (significant) role in some capacity in baseball.

I took my team over in June of 2009 and while there was plenty of promise in it, I overtook a pretty significant overhaul of the team to put it in better shape for the future, both financially and in talent. We stumbled to a poor finish the rest of the way in 2009, and 2010 was a battle to stay above .500 but we made major moves for the future. It arrived a year early in 2011 — we were expecting one more year before a serious push — but once we saw how well the team was, we had to throw our support behind it. That led to trading for Zack Greinke at the trade deadline, dealing away Brett Jackson and Zack Wheeler for the honor. We made several other deals as well, one which traded away Mariano Rivera, others to fortify bench depth, and so on.

Somehow, we won 98 games and held the best record in the league for a long time before slipping in September when it seemed as if every single player on our team was injured. But we were able to weather the loss and advance through the postseason. Despite not being able to pitch Greinke in October due to his poor postseason in real life, we advanced to the World Series on the strength of Clayton Kershaw, Johnny Cueto and Gio Gonzalez in the rotation. We lost Gonzalez for the World Series, but somehow improbably won the World Series in Game 7 thanks to Kershaw, Cueto and a major boost from Felipe Paulino, who made two clutch starts in the World Series after not participating in any earlier round. Carlos Quentin was the hero in Game 7 with two homers. We have some work to do to repeat next season, but with Brett Lawrie, Brandon Belt and Mike Minor all expected to ascend to key roles, we are in good shape.

Here’s the roster of the World Champion Defenestrations of Prague:

League: Jackie Robinson
Division: Willie Mays
Team: Defenestrations of Prague
League Type: National
Owner: Brunell/Rathman

non-DH Starting Lineup
CF Bourn,Michael
1B Helton,Todd
RF Ethier,Andre
LF Quentin,Carlos
3B Jones,Chipper
CA Hundley,Nick
2B Hill,Aaron
SS Escobar,Alcides
(DH in AL parks: Giambi,Jason)

Substitutes
1 Giambi,Jason
2 Saltalamacchia,Jarrod
3 Weeks,Jemile
4 Jones,Andruw
5 Izturis,Maicer
6 Maier,Mitch

  Starting Pitchers
1 Kershaw,Clayton
2 Cueto,Johnny
3 Gonzalez, Gio
4 Greinke,Zack
5 Stauffer,Tim

Relief Pitchers
1 Venters,Johnny
2 Janssen,Casey
3 Collins,Tim
3 Parnell,Bobby
4 Sherrill,George
5 Wade,Cory
6/spot starter Paulino,Felipe

Unassigned  Players (bold — received major-league playing time)
1 Abad,Fernando 
2 Arias,Alberto
3 Barmes,Clint  
4 Barnes,Scott
5 Belt,Brandon
6 Blackburn,Nick
7 Buckel,Cody
8 Burke,Kyler
9 Castro,Simon
10 Ceciliani,Darrell
11 Chacin,Jhoulys    
12 Cooper,David
13 Davidson,Matthew
14 Davis,Kentrail
15 Flaherty,Ryan
16 Fryer,Eric           
17 Gearrin,Cory     
18 Gindl,Caleb
20 Greene,Tyler     
21 Gutierrez,Juan
22 Hamilton,Billy
23 Hawkins,Christopher
24 Hawksworth,Blake  
25 Lawrie,Brett
26 Lindsey,Taylor
27 Mather,Joe
28 Matz,Steven
29 Mcgehee,Casey      
30 Minor,Mike     
31 Morris,Akeel
32 Navarro,Raul
33 Nick,David
34 Nieuwenhuis,Kirk
35 Olmos,Edgar
36 Outman,Josh     
37 Palma,Alexy
38 Parra,Manny
39 Pena,Wily Mo M  
40 Petersen,Bryan
41 Pie,Felix 
42 Pounders,Brooks
43 Raga,Argenis
44 Russell,Adam
45 Sanabia,Alejandro
46 Santana,Domingo
47 Smith,Blake
48 Snyder,Chris
49 Spilborghs,Ryan
50 Stewart,Zachary
51 Stoffel,Jason
52 Swanner,William
53 Teaford,Everett
54 Torreyes,Ronald
55 Uribe,Juan    

Ruminating on the Celtics

I was lucky enough to attend the Celtics/Lakers game last Thursday, February 10 and witness Ray Allen breaking the all time three-point record previously held by Reggie Miller.

While the game was ultimately lost behind Kobe Bryant sinking ridiculous shots in the fourth quarter, it was still a special time to be a Celtics fan in attendance. The crowd was extremely raucous — as loud as it could get, which is all the more impressive given I was also at Game 4 of the NBA Finals between L.A. and Boston in early 2010. The highlight of that game was Nate Robinson and “Big Baby” Glen Davis becoming “Shrek and Donkey.” Baby slobbered his way toward 18 points and Robinson was all too happy to jump on Davis’ back.

When Allen broke the record, there was a sustained standing ovation that just showed even after one ring and one Eastern Conference championship in three years, Celtic fans are hungry for more and have fallen in such deep love with this team, it’s irrelevant that the group has only been together going on four years now. After years of pain with the C’s becoming irrelevant, the Pats an afterthought and the Red Sox breaking hearts, the Celtics were the last to join the reversal of fortunes the other two Boston teams experienced. (And throw in the Bruins, too, who have been among the best NHL teams of the last few seasons.)

As mentioned, however, the Lakers downed the Celtics and did so by a score of 92-86. Those that bet on Boston winning given the NBA spread of -3 1/2 points given to the home team, however, came away with no cash. Boston simply fell apart late and ran out of gas much like they did during the pivotal Game 7 of the Finals in 2010. But unlike last year, when the lack of depth caught up to the C’s, it’s hard to fault Boston for falling apart at the seams with Delonte West, Shaquille O’Neal, Jermaine Davis and Semir Erden all out and Kendrick Perkins still relatively new to the season.

When Boston is healthy, they can hang with the best of them. In speaking to people who have followed the team as far back as the 1960s, the general consensus is this is the best club they have seen since the glory days of the 80s. That’s rather impressive, given the 2008 Celtics won a title behind the same core five… and now those players are years older. That just goes to show you how important the bench is, and while Shaq isn’t the Shaq of old and still refuses to scale back his stupid fouls, he greatly impacts a game while Erden is making remarkable strides despite having to learn the NBA game, English language and American culture all at once.

A re-match with the Lakers in the Finals would be positively electric. Both the Celtics and Lakers have won one Finals series apiece against each other, so you could consider this the rubber match. But there’s more at stake: the Lakers would be seeking a threepeat while Boston will try to even up the total number of rings each respective team has won in the last few years, although Boston still has an overall lead of 17 rings to LA’s 16, but if you don’t count the rings from Minnesota and the BAA (and you could make a case for that), the Lakers “only” have 11 rings.

Obviously, as a Celtics fan, you can guess what I’m hoping happens. Yep, I want a re-match with L.A., only this time Boston coming out on top. But first, the Lakers have to get to the FInals, which will be more difficult. Yes, Boston will have to carve through the Bulls, Magic and Heat but the Lakers don’t have as good a club (at least, not as of this writing, but that could change).

Go Green!

File cabinet or luggage?

For a while now I have been meaning to get a filing cabinet for my new apartment. I suppose it’s not new anymore given I moved in in August, but whatever.

Through my work for Fire Brand, I’ve been afforded the opportunity to review anything from CSN Stores, and it just so happens that they sell filing cabinets!

However, a recent trip to Orlando, Fla. caused me to reconsider and perhaps go after luggage sets instead. I don’t have any suitcases of my own and stole my girlfriend’s suitcase but she doesn’t have a large suitcase. That wasn’t a concern because I was only packing for four days, but if I ever go on a serious vacation, I’ll need to find a bigger suitcase. Given CSN Stores has Luggage.com, the fit is there.

However, I’ve decided to stick with a filing cabinet because I will get more day-to-day use out of it. Once the filing cabinet is put in place and things are filed, I’m pretty certain that’s the last thing the apartment needs to be fully complete!

The end of the Most Valuable Network, MVN.com

It is with regret that I’m writing to announce that I have made the decision to close down MVN.

There are many factors that led to this decision, and thusly I will not attempt to work through all the factors and the various happenings that led to this decision. I will, instead, simply cite that the biggest motivating factor was (what else?) finances.

MVN is backed by family money. In better economic times, our investment on this end was not significant. However, the downturn of the economy has hurt us. Online ad revenue dropped at a time we were pushing to make MVN a bigger and better destination. While we were fortunate to have the resources to exist to date, we’ve arrived at the situation where further investment can no longer be justified.

From a personal standpoint, I have worked full-time pro bono for MVN for the six years of existence. Given my current position in life, this was an arrangement that could not last. I did not see potential for future earning at MVN in a time frame that would have been acceptable — or even doable — to my personal welfare.

For the past three weeks, I have been working on getting all MVN blogs a future home. I am pleased to announce that many of the blogs were found homes, either at Bloguin or Real Clear Sports. Several blogs have made the decision to either shut down themselves or go independent. In the coming days, we will be providing you a full list of where the new homes of the blogs will be.

Over the next few weeks, the writing platform at MVN will be dismantled entirely. This means that any mvn.com inbound links to archives will not work. We will provide full archives to the blogs in question for them to import to their new homes. Before January is out, the only MVN page that will exist is the front page at MVN.com, which will continue to look as it does today.

Eventually, we plan on selling the domain. At that point, unfortunately, all traces of what MVN once was will have vanished.

What will survive are the blogs, and I hope that you will continue reading them. We are immensely proud of the blogs and writers that came through MVN. A lot of influential writers got their start or their big jump on these pages. We’re honored that we could provide that opportunity for them and hope that they look back on their tenure at MVN with fondness.

I know that I can say with utter certainty that I poured my heart and soul into MVN, at the expense of personal advancement. My life for six years was building up MVN and the blogs to the point where everyone could succeed. My goal this entire time has not been about personal success. It’s been about making everyone around me successful. I have found that if you do that, you will become successful yourself — and in better ways than if you had focused on yourself from the start.

While I would love to give thanks to many people in this space, I’m afraid this note would reach Moby Dick-ian levels in an attempt not to leave anyone out, so I will simply say: You know who you are, and I hope you know the amount of gratitude I feel for you.

On December 31, 2003, I was in my senior year of high school. I was still reeling from the Red Sox losing to the Aaron Boone-led Yankees two short months earlier… and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to make my voice known. I started a Red Sox blog, Fire Brand of the American League. A friend joined me, starting a Pirates blog. A light bulb went off over our heads, and here we are six years later.

If I had to choose a lasting legacy for MVN, it would be as early adopter of new media, to the point where MVN was a great influence in bringing sports blogs to the national mainstream of consciousness. When it got started, blogs weren’t even at the stage where it could be looked on with scorn by mainstream media. Heck, most of our early recruiting efforts came from message boards, because there weren’t enough blogs to find. (To be clear, I’m not citing MVN as the reason why sports blogs are popular — that would have happened regardless.) MVN was able to recognize early on the power of blogs, and what a network of blogs could do. Of course, to this day there are numerous sports blog networks. I remember when there was just one.

I’ll let our history and influence — whatever you think it is — speak for itself.

I’m just proud I got the opportunity to lead MVN and work with many wonderful people.

Sincerely,

Evan Brunell
Co-founder, Owner, President of Most Valuable Network, LLC

Dexter Season 4: Amazing.

I’m a major, major Dexter fan and consider the show my favorite (although Rescue Me is not far behind).

I like to read recaps of Dexter and get takes from other people on the show. One disturbing trend I’ve found is that this season has been getting tepid reviews. No longer is every recap site crowing about Dexter. Now it alternates between recaps that love the show and recaps that poke at it.

I completely understand where the naysayers are coming from when they say Dexter kind of lost its way midseason, which has never happened before. But the beginning of the season and the last two episodes leading into the final two episodes have been nothing short of amazing.

To be honest, even the episodes I concede as “weak” were rather strong in hindsight, as they laid the groundwork for many of the feelings/emotions/happenings of the current slate of episodes.

I’ve heard slams that Dexter (the character) shouldn’t be made more humane, but I don’t buy it. The critics are saying that they’re trying to make Dexter more mainstream so they don’t keep getting criticized for making the protagonist of the show a clearly evil serial killer who lives by a code that makes him endearing. Part of this season is showing the overall growth of Dexter, and that he’s not, perhaps, the cold-blooded killer that made him fascinating to watch in Seasons 1 and 2.

We saw part of that evolvement last season with Miguel Prado. That season had some pacing issues, but I think that it worked great. The season and its pacing issues took on the personality of Miguel Prado — the charismatic, quick-to-anger antagonist of the season that really made the Miami heat bubble out of the screen.

This year has been cold, calculating, dark, slowly plotted — a lot like the antagonist of this season, the Trinity Killer.

The office romance this season got off to a terrible start, I will admit that. I completely disliked the storyline. What’s won me over is the clear love of the two — it’s believable, and I’m invested in their well-being now. While I think their storyline is completely superfluous and pointless, the acting and interaction of the two has made me invested.

While the soft underbelly of the season is probably going to undermine it when stacked next to Seasons 1, 2 and 3, I still find Dexter incredibly engaging and must-see TV. While I harbor no ill will against the critics who have slid away from Dexter (such as Alan Sepinwall) and respect their decisions, I feel as if they’re making the wrong choice and looking at this season the wrong way.