On Sports and Luck

Yes,the Giants victory over the Eagles was fun and unexpected, especially the performance of a Jersey boy named Victor Cruz, and the Jets loss was eye-opening, even if the handwriting should have been on the wall, but the nicest surprise for me occurred on Monday night when another Ryan brother coached the defense that shut down Santana Moss and the Redskins.

My fantasy opponent needed just 10 points from the Redskins Moss in order to send my team down to defeat. Moss is no stranger to the Boyz, of course, and, over the course of many years battling each other, Moss almost always had the upper hand, averaging about 15 fantasy points per contest. As the rest of my team had fared very well in Week 3, I looked with trepidation on my prospects for holding the pesky Skins wideout to zero touchdowns and less than 100 yards gained.

But Rob Ryan’s defense would concentrate on Moss that night. He would take away Moss for most of the game and, even when game conditions dictated that Shanahan’s Skins should concentrate on getting the ball downfield, they managed to do so only once or twice.

There’s no feeling better than winning the game you fully expect to lose. I had determined relatively early that my only chance in the contest relied on my opponent’s quarterback Aaron Rodgers either having a terrible day, which he never does, or throwing all his TD passes to my fantasy tight end, Jermichael Finley. As luck would have it, Rodgers threw all his 3 touchdowns to Finley. Go figure.

It didn’t hurt either that Buffalo had the day it had against the feared Patriots. My running back Fred Jackson continued his hard-pounding and elusive running while David Nelson, one of the Bills’ relatively unknown wide receivers, would gain 89 yards through the air. And Matt Ryan (you won’t see me calling him Matty Ice anytime soon) finally threw some passes to Julio Jones.

Drew Brees, my fantasy QB, ignored the fact that he was missing Marques Colston or that he was facing a newly rugged Texans defense. Mr. Brees just kept on keepin’ on. At any rate, big outputs from 3 or 4 players offset the total failure of my running back #2, one Javon Ringer from Tennesee and the paltry stats racked up by Hakeem Nicks, the Giants wunderkind whom the Eagles shut down only to watch Victor Cruz beat them.

Life is good sometimes. Just ask the Bills or Cowboys or, switching sports, ask the Tampa Bay Rays or St. Louis Cards. The unexpected can happen once in a while. The Bills came back from three TD’s down to Tom Brady’s Pats, picking him off four times in the process. The Cowboys and Tony Romo held steady against the rugged Skins and blitzed Rex Grossman into the big mistake of the game.

In baseball, Tampa Bay finally caught the Red Sox, the dream team of baseball going into the season, whose pitching went almost totally into the tank the entire month of September. The Cards still have a shot at what had been a sure wildcard for the Braves going into September.

The San Francisco Giants added Carlos Beltran but would have needed at least two more of him to prevent their unhappy demise. The Angels had a shot too for a while and still aren’t mathematically eliminated. So major league baseball is right at the forefront of sports fans’ imaginations going right into October. So much for changing the wildcard rules.

This just in. The judge trying the Mets bankruptcy case just ruled that that Pirate Picard, the snake lawyer representing the Madoff downtrodden, has to prove that Wilpon and Katz knew there was a fraud being perpetrated. That’s a huge win for the Wilpons.

I’m listening now to Mets fans calling Mike Francesa to complain that the Mets would be better off if the Wilpons were forced to sell, that it’s a setback for Mets fans that the Wilpons will prevail in this gigantic legal fight. It makes me sick. The Wilpons have been pretty good owners. They just haven’t been the brightest lights in the sky…..or the luckiest.

Think about the Mets collapses, the failures down the stretch of Glavine and Pedro Martinez, that brutal curve ball for a called strike 3 on Carlos Beltran. Omar Minaya could have been more prudent to be sure in his day but the Mets owners’ decision to hire him wasn’t that bad.

But Minaya had always worked for organizations with almost no money to spend. Minaya was like a kid in the candy store. Glavine and Pedro were too old. Beltran was just paralyzed. He should have been way more attentive.

Their latest decision on a GM was a great one. Sandy Alderson is like the anti-Minaya. He doesn’t act without careful study. He’s surrounded himself with good people, not drones. He understands that Reyes is a Mets frontispiece. He brought in Collins. Together, Alderson and Collins have brought in young talent, have shuffled the right pieces and have positioned this Mets team for the future.

What a way to end the baseball season. Not only are we provided with wildcard races down to the wire but now Mets fans can visualize their appearance in a playoff series somewhere along the road. They can also think about shorter fences and lower walls. The “half-full” crowd can even dream about a successful return of Johan Santana.

The sky’s the limit for the Mets (but that sky has been defined as from 100 to 120 million dollars). Still….

This fellow will never minimize the significance of luck. Luck shot down the baseball Giants, luck shut down Santana Moss for me, luck crippled the Red Sox and Braves in September; luck may have just saved the Wilpons in bankruptcy court even as it had abandoned them for much of the 21st Century.

They say people make their own luck. “They” can sell that bit of nonsense elsewhere.