I Like(d) Ike.

       Ike Davis could have had it all.  Ike Davis should have had it all.  The son of a major leaguer, he was drafted in the first round by a team in New York and was fast tracked to the big leagues from moment one.  He looked good as a 23 year old rookie in 2010 and wonderful things lay ahead.  Instead, it all went horribly horribly wrong...

His sophomore year was over before it really began after he had a freak injury to his ankle during a collision with David Wright on a pop up.  The wonderful Mets medical team misdiagnosed him at least twice and he never got back on the field.  But he eventually healed and we were all looking forward to his 2012 season.  I insanely predicted big things for him.  He got off to a dreadful start, if by dreadful I mean nightmarish, and if by nightmarish I mean absolutely god-fucking-awful.  In the middle of June he was hitting a buck eighty with 6 homers.  The hitch in his swing that was supposed to be smoothed out by now was bigger than ever.  Then a funny thing happened...he got hotter than the sun.  The rest of June was a supernova and he bashed homer after homer.  He got his average up to .227 and finished with 32 dingers and 90 RBIs.  Now the question remained, which Ike was the real Ike?   Was it First Half Ike or Second Half Ike?

Sadly, we got our answer almost immediately in 2013.  Ike came out hitting a whopping .160 for the first two months and was demoted to the minors by the all star break.  All of our Mets fan dreaming of a homegrown power hitting Paul Bunyan first baseman were being dashed before our eyes.  The Mets even drafted the Next Big Thing at first in Dominic Smith in the first round. The dream was over for Ike Davis as a Met.

By spring training of 2014, the Mets had announced that he was going to be part of an unfathomable and untenable three way platoon at first with the immortal Lucas Duda and the incredibly terrible Josh Satin.  He was sadly third in a two man race.  He got into 12 games and got 30 at bats but it was obvious to anyone who has ever seen one game of baseball in their lives that Ike was on the outs with the Mets.  He did whack one last pinch hit walk off grand slam on April 5th to emphasize those saddest words of tongue and pen.  He was unceremoniously dumped on the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 18th for a middling middle reliever and the ol' player to be named. 

I collected all these Ike cards out of hope, not for profit.  I bought and traded specifically to get most of these cards and hoarded the ones I pulled.  I really had such high hopes for Ike.  I want him to do well with the Pirates, I really do.  But he is yet another in a long line of disappointments for the Mets in terms of developing power hitting prospects.  He's that girlfriend you wanted to move in with and make babies with but instead she flakes out and you just have a little pile of her shit in the corner of your apartment in a shopping bag, waiting for a day to get around to giving it back to her so you never have to see her again.

There's A Draft In Here.

       Tonight is the first night of the NFL Draft and let me tell you the best part about that: in four days, people will stop talking about the NFL Draft for about 11 months.  Yes, I realize I am part of the problem and not the solution by pointing that out but it does give me the opportunity to also point out that if as much time, effort, meticulous attention to detail, and just pure man hours were given to any number of this countries' problems as is given to the NFL Draft then every Late April/Early May we could solve a problem a year until there were no problems left.  Drugs, teen pregnancy, financial imbalance, racial injustice - all could be eradicated rather than speculating what kind of tools Johnny Manziel has. I am no social engineer, but I am willing to bet I am closer to correct than wrong with that particular hyperbolic speculation.

The NFL Draft boils down to a few simple things.  Your team will take some players and you have no idea how they will work out.  None.  And you probably won't have any idea for at least three years.   The first round will shake out as follows:  2 or 3 players will be superstar to hall of fame caliber studs, around 20 will have anywhere from serviceable to admirable careers, and about 10 of the players chosen will completely wash out.  That's about it.  The rest of it is all mindless nattering and endless conjecture.  The NFL draft make election coverage look subdued and innocent by comparison. 

Want to know why all the attention paid to the draft is useless?  Ryan Leaf.

Sure, there are hundreds of busts to choose from but Ryan Leaf encapsulates every possible bust story.  Leaf was a decent college quarterback in a second level conference (he is the second most famous person from Washington State).  But he looked like an NFL QB. The scouts fell in love with him.  He shot up draft charts.  He looks stupendous in workouts.  People actually once argued over whether he or Peyton Manning would be the better franchise quarterback.  There was no one who came out against him.  A tremendous wave of goodwill washed over Ryan Leaf.  No one doubted him, everyone loved him, he had the world at his feet.  And he booted it.  Badly.  He failed miserably as both a football player and as a human being.  I don't think I need to rehash his entire story here, but believe me, no one has ever crashed and burned so spectacularly.  You can see some busts coming a mile away and some sneak up on you.  Ryan Leaf somehow did both.

So while it was once an interesting little distraction during the spring after the furor of baseball returning died down, I now find the NFL draft a colossal waste of time to follow.  It gives people who have no accountability jobs and encourages the sports media to continue the misguided notion that speculating about the games is more fun than the actual games.

Who knows, your team might draft a game changer of this caliber...

It is that last part that has resulted in me - an absolute sports nutjob - from watching less and less ESPN as the years have gone by to the point where I hardly watch any of it at all, except when actual games are on.  I used to watch SportsCenter all morning when I was at home and now I watch MLB Network and their Quick Pitch show because they actually show highlights of the games.  What a concept.  On the days when I accidentally have it on the worldwide leader, I usually can't change the channel fast enough because all there ever is is people arguing, speculating, some kind of awful cross promotion to a movie, or some kind of tear-jerking human interest story.  Anyway, I have bitched enough.  Wake me up when the Mets actually score a run.

Labor Pains.

or, The Failure Files: Daisuke Matsuzaka.

       I know where we are in the Mets season, I am fully aware of it.  We are in the "Throw it against the wall and see what sticks" portion - lots of rookies and reclamation projects. So when I heard the Mets were going to give Daisuke Matsuzaka a shot a couple weeks ago, I was like "hey, what do we have to lose?" Well, I'll tell you what...about 12 hours of my life I will never get back and every last ounce of my sanity watching him pitch both deliberately and horribly.

I don't often speculate in prospects and rookie cards, but I will admit, it was my own failure in buying into Dice-K mania.  I didn't buy any crazy 1/1 ultra rare butt swatches or anything, but I did hoard his cards for a while.  I now wouldn't put them in my bicycle spokes for fear of slowing the damn thing down too much and making it crash and burn.

I once kind of offhandedly dismissed poor Dice-K and felt kinda bad about it, really.  Now?  If I ever see him pitch again for the Mets, I will go on the kind of rampage that will make the headlines on several continents.  This is what happens when you pitch three starts to a 10.95 ERA, and believe me, that does not even begin to say how terrible his pitching has been.  Is there anyway to luck into an 11 ERA? Well, ol' Dice-K has done it (at least we didn't pay $51 million for the privilege).  *sigh* It's all so depressing.  At least my fantasy football draft is tonight.

The Failure Files: Vince Young.

       Welcome to The Failure Files.  I am fascinated with players that everyone thinks will hit it big and somehow miss (and miss big).  I have more than a few pages of such players.  I keep them as a reminder of the fragility of the human condition and as a warning of the dangers of the dreaded label 'potential.'

I was all set to begin this series with an obvious choice: Ryan Leaf.  I had his page scanned and the post written in my head all ready to spill out onto the screen.  It was low hanging fruit I was ready to bite.  But then this week another player hit the headlines and has become yet another cautionary tale in the world of sports.  So I am going to shift gears and be topical and instead start off with Vince Young.

       Vince Young should need no introduction to even the most passive sports fan.  He was one of the most dynamic college football players of his, or maybe, any generation.  He had all the moves, he had style, and he had drive (at least he seemed to).  His signature moment was in 2005-06.  After the Heisman Trophy results were announced in late 2005, Young lost to Reggie Bush.  He then showed the voters what they missed.  In the 2006 Rose Bowl - the national championship game that year - he dominated a game in a way I have never seen before and we might never see again.  He accounted for 467 yards of total offense, scored three touchdowns, and scored the winning TD on a bootleg with 19 seconds to play.  It was a virtuoso performance.  Vince Young was on top of the world. He was the third pick of the 2006 draft.  He signed a contract for $26 million guaranteed.  He was handed the keys to the Tennessee Titans.  Everything should have come up roses for Vince.

But obviously, they didn't.  His low Wonderlic score (6! maybe 16, either way, pretty low) seemed to foreshadow some very poor decisions to come.  His work ethic was shaky.  He made headlines by being out on the town and missing team meetings and curfews.  He won some games, but not enough to impress his coach. He got hurt.  He did not knock anyone out with his rehab habits.  He found himself on the bench.  Did he work harder?  Nope.  More ups and downs followed him.  He eventually got released and backed up Michael Vick for a year in Philly.  Then this year, he got cut by the Buffalo Bills in the preseason.  If there is a more fitting metaphor for hitting rock bottom than "getting cut by the Bills," I don't know what it is.

Now Vince Young can't even find a job in the CFL, a league where his skills would seem to fit perfectly.  This speaks as much to his attitude as to his talent.  I was rooting for him; through all his ups and downs, I saw more than a couple glimpses of brilliance in his play.  And even through all his issues, he didn't seem like a bad guy.  I don't recall him being arrested or saying anything completely asinine and foolish.

Vince Young is not the first player to have "too much too soon" but he seems to be a prime shining example of it. And he certainly wouldn't be the first player to flame out when everyone seemed so certain he would succeed.  But there is a second layer to his failure.  His failure to himself and his family.  It also turns out Vince Young is flat broke.  How do you go through $26 million in less than 7 years?  You would have to spend $7000 a day every day and have nothing to show for it.  And this does not take in to account any endorsement deals and what not (of which there were plenty).  He trusted the wrong people.  He never thought about the future for a second.  He figured those fat NFL paychecks would roll in forever.  How can you be handed millions of dollars and not set some aside for the future?  It boggles my mind every time I see this story play itself out. 

There have been a ton of players who never amounted to much when so much was expected of them and there have probably been even more who have gone broke due to poor planning.  Very few of them combine that one-two punch of failure as spectacularly and depressingly as Vince Young.