2006 In Review: David Arnott
Listed in: OtherThe 2006 calendar year is almost over, and, as is custom, many of us reflect on our exploits of the past twelve months. Sportszilla is no different, and so I'll be first to present reflections on a few of the pieces I enjoyed writing this past year. This isn't necessarily a "Best Of" list, but more a representative recap of what concerned me and what I tried to accomplish in this space in 2006. Organized by sport...
FOOTBALL
The Simplest Notation Possible
With this piece, I honestly thought I could change Aaron Schatz's mind and get him to alter the statistical language Football Outsiders uses. I still think my proposals make more sense and would cause more people to take to FO, but I also recognize that my suggestions came rather late in the game.
This Is Why We Play The Games
I posted this the night before Ben and I won our fantasy football league. I wanted to boast to our league about our fantasy football prowess in a humorous way, playing the disrespect card and so on, but I still take the league seriously enough that I didn't want to jinx anything, and self-referential stuff that nobody outside my group of friends understands makes for bad content, too. A fill-in-the-blank form letter was a nice solution to my desire to boast without actually doing it. Ben filled in the blanks for our specific team after we won.
BASEBALL
At The Center Of Our Beseeching Screaming
Writers write what happens. In this case, the introduction to my piece is true; I was out running errands and knew I'd have some time to kill, so I brought along a Halberstam book, when I started thinking about Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, steroids, and baseball. Instead of wrestling the piece into a box, I tried to embrace baseball's romance and the emotional messiness of the situation in conveying my take.
Why We Cheer Bonds (And Why You Shouldn't Ridicule Us For It)
On the other hand, sometimes, attacking a subject from a rhetorically detached position is the most effective way to make a point. I knew if I lashed out I wouldn't convince anyone that their unabashed derision of Giants fans was stupid, so I attempted to strike a reasonable tone in this piece. It's easy to read it as a defense of Bonds, if that's what you want it to be, but I think it's really a denouncement of uncritical thinking. I will repeat it as long as I have to: circumstantial evidence indicates PED use is almost certainly rampant in the NFL, the NBA, and MLB. To single out one player as "most evil" among the rest of the proven cheaters is silly.
High School Baseball
I was once told that if I wanted to feel good about myself, I should just volunteer in a kindergarten classroom, because the kids give their love unconditionally. It is a well established literary trope that youth is a cure for cynicism. I saw that in action this April at one of my alma mater's baseball games.
MEDIA
ESPN Is The New Nickelodeon
This one isn't about a sport, but a network. I was chatting with Zach one night when I realized that the rise and fall of ESPN followed a similar pattern to that of Nickelodeon. I asked Zach for a few ideas, and, for kids who grew up on ESPN and Nickelodeon, it was really easy to draw up the parallels. Note, also, that I was just getting on a pretty heavy Chuck Klosterman kick, so I definitely wanted to try the whole "witty cultural criticism" thing.
BASKETBALL
Eating My Words, Or, Maybe, A Basketball
Baseball is, without question, my favorite sport. However, in looking back at this year, I was surprised to see how much I paid attention to basketball. This story is a fun little anecdote about how one of the girls I know picked George Mason to win the NCAA Tourney, and how I made fun of her for it. Yeah, not a good idea.
NBA Draft Philosophy
Zach and I had discussed this issue for about a year before I put the piece together. In short: NBA busts are caused by GMs basing picks on imagination rather than fact. If a GM based his or her picks on how good a player is at that moment as opposed to how good he or she thinks the player will be in the future, then the team would end up with good players more often. The statistical evidence is included with charts linked in the column.
The Ballad of Isiah
I and Sportszilla got a lot of mileage out of this two-minute video slideshow explaining just how Isiah Thomas is a terrible GM. After the post was linked by Deadspin, it spread via basketball blogs and message boards until the MSM took notice. The video got mentioned in several Tri-State newspapers including the New York Times, which tickled my dad to no end. Who'd a' thunk that by the end of the year, Isiah would ratchet up the stakes by taking over as Knicks coach and thoroughly embarrassing himself after an on-court fight by blaming the other team for leaving decent players on the floor and stating that his team had completely surrendered?
