Tuesday, 4 June 2013

Introducing the ‘Glass Joe Title’: Honoring baseball’s losingest losers

We as a baseball-watching society are very good at talking about who's the best. We have standings and power rankings and plenty of statistics. One cool new idea this season came from our fellow baseball bloggers at CBS Sports — the Eye On Baseball Heavyweight Championship Belt.

It's a fun way to track the top team in baseball and it has a championship belt. Who doesn't like championship belts? To win the belt, a team must beat the title holder in a series.

The San Francisco Giants, as defending champions, started with the belt and lost it to the St. Louis Cardinals, who have since held it most of the season, except for a week when they lent it to the Milwaukee Brewers and Pittsburgh Pirates.

This weekend, when we saw two of baseball's worst teams — the Houston Astros and the Miami Marlins — actually dominate other teams, we at Big League Stew knew what the baseball blogosphere needed. It needed a title for the losers. A hot potato of a title that every team would try to get rid of as quickly as possible. Since ours is dedicated to the losers, we're calling it the "Glass Joe Title," in honor of the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out character with the 1-99 record.

The inaugural (dis)honorees are the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Mets, because they were swept, respectively, by the Astros and Marlins. Yes, we have two titles. One for the American League and one of the National League, though all that can change pretty easily with interleague play. Mainly, there are two because we're rooting for title unification at some point this season.

Our Glass Joe Title holders both start new series on Tuesday. The Angels are facing the Chicago Cubs, a prime candidate for unloading the Glass Joe Title, though it's only a two-gamer, so the Angels would have to sweep. The Mets, meanwhile, are playing three against the Washington Nationals with the Marlins looming again after that.

For the sake of keeping the Glass Joe Title interesting, we're hoping for some TKOs.

Baseball season's in full swing. Don't miss a thing.
Follow @MikeOz and @bigleaguestew, on Twitter, along with the BLS Facebook page.



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