It's Allowed
Bill and Tony and Paul can keep on doing what they're doing
My own personal biggest sports news of the week is that Bill Self will return for his 24th season as the University of Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball head coach. (It’s not quite entirely baseball season here yet.) We know it might be Bill’s last season- heck, there’s been a recent pattern of head coaches resigning weeks or days before the season begins and elevating the top assistant at once. That’s also very much a possibility here, with coach-in-waiting Jacque Vaughn getting the nod…
Besides, I don’t think HCBS (that’s “Head Coach Bill Self” in Jayhawk shorthand) is as heavily involved in recruiting as he was before, anyway. It used to take multiple home visits to get a player, now it just takes multiple bank transfers. HCBS’s ability to wow the parents in a home visit by his aw-shucks folksy manner (but anybody I know who’s dealt with him in business dealings confirms that’s, shall we say, not his entire personality and nobody should be surprised) has for the most part been supplanted by lots of home visits by Benjamin Franklin and his friends. I suspect he is now mostly just HCBS when it comes to the actual on-court basketball stuff, and CEO of the rest…
As for other men’s basketball head coach news, it sure seems like North Carolina will go after current Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan- who won multiple national titles at Florida before heading for the pros- now that future 2026 National Champion Tommy Lloyd of Arizona has agreed to stay in Tucson. North Carolina could go elsewhere, like to Michigan’s Dusty May or Iowa State’s TJ Otzelberger, but I’ve wondered for a long time why Billy has continued to stay in Chicago. Maybe Billy has finally come to that same realization…
NOW BASEBALL: The San Francisco Giants Tony Vitello finally won his first home game as Giants skipper on Thursday night against the New York Mets. I understand there’s a lot of scrutiny on Tony V. as the first manager to jump straight from college to the pros with no prior baseball experience, but the things I’ve already heard questioning him is absurd.
In a lot of ways it feels like this is the first time a lot of these so-called experienced baseball-watchers have actually paid attention to what a manager does. Having actually worked for teams, I’ve been in enough baseball clubhouses when there aren’t any cameras. Tony V. hasn’t done anything completely strange and questionable in my eyes. (Well, aside from being a Mizzou grad.) There are a lot of other first-time managers and a bunch of allegedly experienced managers who have looked a lot worse in the first week than Tony V. has…
If you want to look at MLB managers and wonder how anybody won anything, go back to the days of 1916 when relief pitchers and at-bat strategies were thought of in entirely different ways. It certainly helped the New York Giants win a still-record 26 games in a row that September. They had more than a few comebacks because pitchers were clearly tired late and the idea of bringing in a fresh pitcher to finish the game was inconceivable. You can read all about those games and a lot more in my book: 26 In A Row: The 1916 New York Giants and Baseball’s Longest Winning Streak
UNBELIEVABLY UNENDING RSN UPDATES: Officially, 14 major league teams now have their games produced and distributed by MLB with the collapse of the Regional Sports Network (RSN) industry- the channel where you watch your local MLB, NHL and NBA teams. The most recent conglomerate to own most of these was “Main Street Sports Group,” which ran the things that were called “FanDuel Sports Kansas City” and the like. They are shutting down all their channels at the end of the NBA and NHL regular seasons, which left all the MLB teams in the lurch, and most of them gave their rights back to MLB. That means you may have to find a different channel to watch the team if you have traditional cable, but it should still be there- there just won’t be 23 other hours of programming on that channel every day.
Lots of teams relied on RSN money to contribute somewhat to their payroll, so some of them are being even more penny-pinching than usual with this switch to MLB control as they figure out advertising dollars- the Milwaukee Brewers seem to be the most vocal in crying that they are losing $20 million dollars, but they’re certainly not the only one. (This does mean that they will be even more cheap at the deadline and it will cost them dearly late somehow, either trying to sneak into the playoffs over Tony V.’s Giants or in the playoffs if they do get there. Somebody remind me about this in September.)
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of issues with two of the teams that stayed independent with the RSN collapse- the Detroit Tigers and Atlanta Braves- but of course the third team, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Azuza and Cucamonga, is doing the dumbest thing of all…
They bought control the FanDuel Sports West lock, stock and barrel and kept most (I assume) of the employees that worked Angels games and the pre-and-post shows. That part’s not weird, it’s basically what the Tigers and Braves did- but then the Angels decided to not change the name.
What?
You’ve bought the bankrupt company and aren’t going to do anything with the most public-facing part of the company, the name? You’re the success (well, in theory- it is the Angels), why would you keep the worst part of the company you bought? Why would you not embrace the “Yes, we own it all now” part of it? It makes no sense. They’re claiming it’s to keep them on the same channel on all the cable distribution platforms in Southern California, but people find programs on different channels all the time. Heck, it’s happened to 14 other MLB teams in the past couple years and people seem to be watching them just fine (even the “woe-is-me” Brewers). Besides, we all find TruTV for two weeks in March to watch the NCAA Tournament and then immediately forget it exists. So something smells in this Angels deal that I haven’t figured out yet...
BEATLENEWS: As your resident Beatles fountain of knowledge, I of course highly recommend the new Paul McCartney documentary available on Amazon, “Man on the Run” about his years with Wings, an understandably overlooked part of his career. What “Man on the Run” and the corresponding new book makes clear is that Paul’s entire intention was to make it fun all the time, because by the end The Beatles felt too much like work. The songs are looser throughout Wings, and that’s by design.
But what it made me really realize is how important Linda McCartney was to Paul’s success. One of her favorite phrases for doing something unconventional was “It’s allowed,” which I have immediately adopted. And that gave Paul the freedom to experiment with how music and albums and the industry existed. Want to take all your toddler kids on tour with you? It’s allowed. Want to release an album that’s basically goofy studio jams (The first Wings album, “Wild Life”)? It’s allowed. Want to adapt all your songs and make a Broadway-style musical (“Give My Regards to Broad Street”)? It’s allowed. Who cares if it flops? It’s allowed.
So, I appreciate that Paul is making a new album, called “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” which is named after a road in Liverpool and the theme is his childhood memories. I’ve listened to the first single, “The Days We Left Behind,” and it’s fine.
But “it’s fine” describes every Paul album of originals after Linda died in 1998 of breast cancer. They’re missing something. And the documentary made me realize it’s Linda’s presence. He’s going to turn 84 in two months, he’s still making music and touring and I’m glad he’s still doing it. It’s allowed. But it’s not the same.
It’s like when HCBS finally hangs ‘em up. There will be somebody else, but it won’t be the same. Even Bill and Paul towards the end of their careers are preferrable to anybody else…
Hire a manager with no major playing, coaching or managerial experience? It's allowed.
So far, Tony V's moves have been fairly conventional. Particularly, given that the lineup is woefully inconsistent and the bullpen is populated with journeymen, waiver acquisitions, and struggling prospects. Maybe, someday, fans will realize how good Tyler Rogers is. He may not be your closer, but the underhanded underdog is 25th in career holds with fewer games pitched by far than any pitcher in the vicinity and his career numbers are better than solid. Oh, and he has never been on the disabled list and is the leader in appearances for pitchers in the decade.
Wonderful update on the wonderful, wacky world of RSN. Fans will find the network if they want to really to watch the game. It's allowed.