Hang Up and Listen: The Unnecessary and Frivolous Edition
Slate’s sports podcast on the College World Series, the NBA draft, and the value of mercy rules.
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In this week’s episode of Slate’s sports podcast Hang Up and Listen, Josh Levin and Mike Pesca are joined by special guest Keith Law, senior baseball writer for ESPN.com, to discuss the College World Series and whether college baseball should be a model for other NCAA sports. They also look at the upcoming NBA draft and compare scouting and player development in basketball and baseball. Finally, they talk about huge mismatches in sports and when (if ever) a mercy rule should be applied.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned on the show:
- UCLA and Mississippi State will play a best-of-three series to determine the College World Series champion.
- Pat Borzi of the New York Times observed that new metal bats have led to lower scores and better baseball.
- Borzi examines if UNC coaches jeopardized Kent Emanuel’s professional career by letting him throw 238 pitches in 8 days.
- Andrew Richards, a Division III pitcher, recently threw 156 pitches on his third straight day on the mound.
- In 2009, University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido let Austin Wood throw 169 pitches over 13 innings.
- UCLA entered the CWS with a .251 batting average that ranked 253rd out of 296 Division I teams.
- Pete Incaviglia holds the NCAA records for single-season home runs (48) and RBIs (143).
- Chad Ford of ESPN has Nerlens Noel going first in his 2013 NBA mock draft.
- Keith Law re-evaluates the 2003 MLB draft.
- Tim Marchman of the Wall Street Journal makes the case that the MLB draft is absurd.
- Sports Illustrated’s Joe Lemire explains MLB’s complicated rules governing draft spending.
- The Astros blog the Crawfish Boxes recaps Houston’s 2012 draft and the influence of the new collective bargaining agreement.
- Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com explains the unusual, yet highly successful approach to player development by Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ general manager.
- In Slate, Ken Early writes about Spain’s 10–0 victory over Tahiti and how the drubbing was a sign of respect.
- The Wikipedia entry on mercy rules.
- A high school football coach in Connecticut was suspended for running up the score in 2012.
Hang Up and Listen’s weekly bastard sliders:
Mike’s bastard slider: Are those who hate LeBron James robbing the NBA’s best player of his humanity?
Keith’s bastard slider: Nik Wallenda’s tightrope walk across a gorge near the Grand Canyon Sunday night was an irresponsible act for a family man.
Josh’s bastard slider: Why do we say that long-range shots in basketball are “from way downtown”?
Podcast production and edit by Mike Vuolo. Our intern is Michael Gerber.
You can email us at hangup@slate.com.