Michael Moynihan: Scouting reports - Acquire? Yes

How do you evaluate players in your favourite sport, beyond technical terms such as ‘savage’ or ‘red raw useless’?

Genuine question.

How do you evaluate players in your favourite sport, beyond technical terms such as ‘savage’ or ‘red raw useless’?

I ask because of an interesting piece on The Ringer website about former baseball player Curt Schilling.

There’s been a minor controversy about Schilling being passed over for the Baseball Hall of Fame — the relevant judges found he had ancestors from Cork and felt entitled to leave him out or something, ho ho — but that needn’t detain us.

More importantly, The Ringer reproduced a scouting report on Schilling from early in his career, which caught my eye.

It reads as follows: “White Sox, Oct. 1989.

Physical descriptions: Proportioned big. White Sox acquire: No. Attitude: Smart. Mental Toughness: Questionable. Hustle: Lacks. Reason for judgement: Inconsistent arm speeds — slows arm in effort for command & strikes. Very hittable — predictable. Must pitch on black in & out. All pitches flat in hitting zone. Slider flat does not fool. Lacks command of all pitches. Slows arm on change floats. No average pitches.”

Park your resistance to the technical terms being used for a second and embrace the rough poetry (“Attitude: Smart.” “Hustle: Lacks”).

To this writer that’s one of the most irresistible aspects of learning about a new field of human endeavour: you inevitably stumble across a rich seam of jargon and expression particular to that endeavour, a mode of description all its own which is used in a slightly off-kilter way.

(Side note: to jump slightly ahead in the day’s proceedings and steal the thunder of the books corner, the best example in this area has always been The Big Con by David Maurer. The best way to describe this book is that it was instrumental in driving the plot engine of The Sting. Hard to find but absolutely worth the search. Reader acquire: yes.)

Of course, the poetry in the report jumps off the page to an outsider, not to someone in the baseball industry: for the latter the quick, vivid descriptions revolve in the gravitational pull of one terse observation: “White Sox acquire: No.” At its core the scouting report carries an economic message — should the organisation make an investment in this player?

Obviously they’re not always correct — in Schilling’s case the ‘No’ to acquiring was an error, as he became an outstanding player — but even allowing for those mistakes, to those in the industry this is still an evaluation which makes perfect functional sense. What about other sports?

The National Football League began last weekend: here’s a scouting report on one player who’ll likely be involved in the sharp end of that competition’s top tier.

“Physical descriptions: Mobile, athletic, big. Attitude: Smart. Mental Toughness: Unquestionable. Hustle: Plenty. Team acquire: Yes. Reason for judgement: Key to team transition and distribution. Predictable in movement but fundamentals too good to be stymied. Must be beaten to ball but very difficult to do so due to mobility. Accurate: left and right. Experienced in all situations. Cannot be intimidated. No average plays.”

Next weekend the Six Nations begins: again, a report on one of Ireland’s central personalities?

“Physical descriptions: Strong, plays brave, injuries. Attitude: Combative. Mental Toughness: Unquestionable. Hustle: Plenty. Team acquire: No. Reason for judgement: Strong, good experience, key skills. Organiser, motivator. Focal point for team. Injury prone, near end of career. Focal point for opponents also.”

By all means email your guesses to the address below, though they’re both pretty obvious methinks.

As I’m inviting contributions, if someone else wants to offer a scouting report on this columnist’s performance, feel free.

Just keep it clean.

On not publicising Gaelic football

I mentioned it over the weekend somewhere on these pages — don’t ask me too many questions, it’s Monday — but it’s worth reiterating, because it still beggars belief.

As John Fogarty pointed out in this paper, by last Thursday just one county had published its team for the NFL opener.

One.

Is there another sport in the world where the participants are trying as hard not to draw attention to themselves? To make their sport as obscure as possible? To treat the people who give up free Sundays to traipse the country and support their team with that kind of casual contempt? To shut down any likelihood of discussion of their sport as the season gets going?

Managers practicing this kind of nonsense should be suspended, though you’d be waiting quite a while for a county board to contradict a bainisteoir. That power relationship tipped irreversibly in one direction a long time ago.

Before the intervention of those who want to defend their managers’ pointlessly furtive ways, a word of advice. When your sport shrivels on the vine from lack of attention, don’t come here complaining. Last week this newspaper carried a terrific piece by Christy O’Connor under this headline: Identity crisis: Why has Gaelic football become hard to watch?

Christy’s focus was on the demise of football as a spectacle. This reticence to publicise teams, though, gives another layer of meaning to that identity crisis.

Meeting the immortals when they were in school

The American football season is winding down across the water. My nemesis Tom Brady’s team lost, so I’m satisfied with how the games have worked out so far, but I noted a terrific piece in The New York Times which is American football-adjacent.

A great idea, executed with aplomb by Ben Shpigel: he interviewed former players who had had the misfortune in high school to tackle — or try to tackle — Derrick Henry, now of the Tennessee Titans.

Henry is now 6ft 3in and close to 250 pounds, and he wasn’t much smaller in school. His former opponents — now regular citizens, financial consultants, and maths teachers — recounted bouncing off Henry, and hurting themselves in doing so.

One remembered his girlfriend texting him excitedly before one game with the news that an NFL player was in the stands near her; when he left the dressing-room to see for himself, he realised she was speaking about Henry, who would soon steamroll all and sundry.

You may or may not be a passionate NFL fan, but even if you’re not, feel free to let me know what Irish sportsperson would be worthy of the same approach.

Chuck Klosterman is back with a new book

This column has long been a fan of Chuck Klosterman, so the fact that he has a new book, The Nineties, about to land is a matter of some celebration.

Many of you will remember the 90s when, as Klosterman says, “No stories were viral. No celebrity was trending.

“The world was still big. The country was still vast. You could just be a little person, with your own little life and your own little thoughts.

“You didn’t have to have an opinion, and nobody cared if you did or did not.”

(If that makes you wistful, I doubt you’re alone).

Klosterman isolates some truly 90s details, like the reason Meet Joe Black became the top-grossing film in America that wasn’t watched by most of the people who bought tickets for it: many of them watched the accompanying trailer for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and then left.

A time when Star Wars content was rare and eagerly — and mistakenly — anticipated? Nothing is more 90s than that.

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