A Half Empty Outlook

Wow, it’s August 18th already and the baseball season is winding down. Professional football action is right on the horizon. And professional basketball will never again be played in our lifetimes. The U.S. Open for pro tennis is one of my personal favorites (not that I’m a tennis player but I like to play) and do I really have soccer in my sights? Well, no.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I forgot hockey again. Oh yeah, and there’s the Triathlon swimming controversy and drugs in biking and a whole bunch of other stuff but really, how many things can you concentrate on at once?

Anyway, I don’t really have a point but if I did want to make one, it’d be along the lines of what the hell are you doing swimming the friggin’ Hudson River if you’re concerned about injuries? There’s all sorts of stuff floating around in the water. That just two died of heart attacks is pretty good, I’d say, under the circumstances.

What other points need to be made? Let’s see, the friggin’ Port Authority is right up there on my list. Let’s make it impossible to travel. Let’s charge people road licenses, after all, the NFL manages to charge for seat licenses. Let’s build more tunnels and make bridges higher so we can get humongous ships into Port Newark.

Oh yeah, and another concern of mine, still waaay before pro sports of any kind, is that friggin’Christie is a hair from the Republican presidential nomination. I mean, he’d get things done but would they be the right things? Would he have thought things through? I don’t know.

And Obama is stinkin’ out the joint.

Okay, okay, I know I should be worrying about more socially irrelevant things like the friggin’ Mets, for one good example. Yesterday, they torched the San Diego Padres in San Diego for a really impressive win in a hostile environment (yeah, I know, it was only Kansas City), and how nice was It to see David Wright finally play like a superstar?

David’s 3-run homer was impressive enough against a tough Matt Latos but then his fielding gem was even better. I mean, he was in the moment, recognizing that he’d never make the play at first while watching Cameron hustling around third base, that his best choice and doable too was to step up and nail Cameron before he could get back to the bag.

Angel Pagan is doing everything after months of doing not so much. There’s the big kid Duda too and Justin Turner and hard-workin’ Thole and Pridie and those young pitchers….and the continuing saga of Jason Bay. I guess I’ve already given up on Jose, either coming back immediately or long-term too. The bankruptcy proceedings overhang everything….

Meanwhile, the Yankees took back first place from the fear-ed Red Sox. Y’know, it’s easy for even me to root for them this year, as an underdog, not just to the Red Sox, but to the Phillies also, if the Bombers should be fortunate enough to ever get past the Red Sox in the ALDS and ALCS. And a lot of these Yankees are damned good baseball players.

Take a look around the diamond. Start at first base….watch Teixeira play the position…..holy shit!! On to second base, there’s Robinson Cano who sometimes seems to have a magic wand over there in the hole. Shortstop? Derek Jeter is playing like a young guy. Uh-oh, third base is a little shaky right now, I suppose, but a guy named Arod can at least still swing the bat.

Outfielders? There’s Curtis Granderson contending for MVP honors and that smilin’ plugger Swisher and the crazed left fielder with the blazing speed and pesky at-bats. Yeah, and Posada can still play in spots. Will he make the playoff roster?

And the crazy pitching staff is kinda’ interesting too, right now a struggling CC and a bunch of question marks in Burnett, Colon, Garcia, Hughes et al. Of course, sometimes those guys will come through, and if they do, the relief corps is dynamite…..not just Rivera, who can be forgiven his recent lapse, but Robertson too, and now the long-awaited Soriano. ( Does anybody else wonder that they’d sign another Soriano after the first one)?

So I’m obviously rooting for both New York teams, solid underdogs both, for the Yanks because of the pitching questions and for the Mets because they have this friggin’ cloud hangin’ over their head. Tomorrow there will be another ruling that will be appealed either way. Oh yeah, and then there’s the friggin’ mediation still plodding along…..

All this baseball drama is perfectly complemented by the anxiety about the football season, the Giants seemingly having done nothing while the Jets and especially the Eagles dominate the headlines with signing after signing, and what about the friggin’ Patriots?

Balanced against all these willy-nilly signings is the stability of the Giants organization, and their almost Steeler-like affinity for Football 101, running the football and playing solid defense and a guy who can throw too, with protection (and hopefully those line-changes will work).

Listening to GM Gerry Reese, he’s not worried. Yeah, they have no proven slot receiver and no tight end that you could really call a complete tight end, and oh yeah, the #1 draft choice got hurt on the first day of camp, but still, there’s that pass rush and Jason Pierre-Paul and a Tuck and a Umenyiora, who’d play hard if we give him more money.

I don’t know. I’m a half-empty kind of guy, I guess. But that 2007 team that won the whole shebang wasn’t expected to do great things. And the guys that helped a lot that year were brought in by Gerry Reese. But geez, their defense really did stink last year.

And I’m happy for Plaxico. I think it’s great that he’ll be a Jet and already I’ve heard one of those SNY crazy people predict 55 catches for him this year.

We shall see.