The Threshold Game

I apologize in advance. Just read 700 pages of Bill Simmons, so I've started to think and write like him.

We've got a game going at work called "The Threshold Game." Basically, what's the lowest common denominator of doing something. Work Example:

Would you bang the hottest chick in the office, if you first had to bang the fattest (and I'm talking Mark Mangino-fat)? No.

Would you bang the hottest chick AND the 2nd hottest, if you first had to bang the fattest? Hmmm...no.

Would you bang the hottest, 2nd hottest, and nobody ever knew you banged the worst? Deal.

BINGO - that's how the Threshold Game works. Get it? You can use this for millions of situations.

Which brings up a subject I've debated for about 15 years now. What's the lowest level of basketball that would beat a WNBA team?

First, I'll give you a lame real-world example in which I participated. In 7th grade hoops, we scrimmaged the High School Varsity Girls team. We destroyed them, it wasn't even close. And A) we sucked, B) they lost like 3 games all year, and C) they wouldn't let us block shots. So, for context, a crappy 7th grade boys team rolled one of the best Varsity Girls team in school history. Rolled!

I think it's pretty obvious all NBA, and D1 schools would destroy a WNBA team. We'll even take the best WNBA team, the Phoenix Mercury (yes, I had to look this up).

Next, lets take a mediocre DIII squad - oh, say, UW-Eau Claire. I know the tallest team doesn't always win, but WNBA's Mercury has a mere 4 players over 6-0 tall, and zero players over 200 pounds. UWEC? Again, a pretty crappy D3 squad: Everyone is at least 6" (with 10 at least 6"-5") and 11 at least 200 pounds. UWEC would absolutely destroy the WNBA chanps.

After this, to make a long story short, we decided the top 10 high school squads in Wisconsin (Washington, Tosa East, Madison Memorial, Vincent, Oshkosh West, etc...) would win, also would 8 random guys from Lincoln Park in Milwaukee or James Madison park in Madison.

What's my point? I have no idea other than work is more fun to playing The Threshold Game at than doing actual work. Agree? Disagree? And wouldn't this increase you viewership of WNBA games? If the Phoenix Lesbians played Milwaukee King HS, would you watch? I would. I think this should be proposed to Mr. Stern.

The Brewers Official Scorer is a Joke

So, I was one of the 20,000 people or so actually in attendance at the Brewers game on Friday night. It was a good game. Cameron hit a 3-run bomb in the first to get things going, Prince hit one of the highest home runs I have ever seen, and Parra pitched a good game against a good team.

Parra retired the first nine batters in a row. Jimmy Rollins led off the 4th with a chopper that McGehee tried to field in-between hops. It git by him and Rollins ended up at 2nd. It looked like an obvious error to me, and thanks to the fact that Miller Park rarely shows replays, I couldn't confirm this, but it took the official score a good couple of minutes to make the error call on this one. Victorino walked and Utley grounded out, advancing the runners.

Ryan Howard came up and hit a hard hit grounder right at Prince that kind of caught him in-between hops as well and the ball squirted into the outfield. 2 runs scored and Howard was safe at first. After considerable time, the play was ruled an error on Prince. Parra gets out of the inning with 2 runs allowed but the no hitter still intact.

The second batter in the 5th for the Phillies, Paul Hoover, gets a clean single to left. The scoreboard immediately flashes 2 hits and only 1 error for the Brewers. I call complete bullshit here. I know that calls get changed all the time, but I think it speaks to a lack of integrity on the part of the Brewers official scorer if he was willing to call the ball hit by Howard an error on Prince, so long as Parra still had the no hitter going. To change the scoring on Howard's ball to a hit at the exact same time the Phillies got their first clean hit is either an amazing coincidence, or a piss poor job of being an official scorer.

I know there were issues last year in Pittsburgh with the Sabathia should have been no hitter. And I understand the hometown official scorer will often make decisions to benefit the home team, but I found this just ridiculous. You can't claim that a batted ball is an error, so long as the team doesn't get another hit. The play is what it is, it is not dependent on what the Phillies did the next inning. I know this isn't a big deal, but I just though it was a pretty weak sauce effort on the part of the Brewers official scorer and just reeked of an unprofessional effort.