It’s getting more difficult to focus. Definitely. There are a lot of things happening worthy of some commentary, that’s for sure, Brett Favre’s, um, sticky situation, the Mets hiring a GM, the Yankees looking a little vulnerable (though the Twins folded nicely, bent, folded and mutilated even). My favorite team (and God only knows why), the Mets, are starting over, hiring a GM who’ll run the show. The football Giants have been looking good lately and the baseball Giants are, like the Yankees, looking vulnerable, for totally different reasons. My adopted team this year, the Texas Rangers (they’re easy to like if you forget about George Bush and who’s more eminently forgettable), finally put away the Rays in a ridiculous series that featured great performances by the “away” team in the home park. Even the Knicks and Nets are beginning to become print-worthy.
I’m so tempted to just come out and say that Brett Favre is a pig, evil incarnate, one hell of a quarterback, if you don’t count all those turnovers. And then, what a surprise, a 41 year old guy has tendinitis! Bummer. The Vikings would be a pretty good team otherwise. But I can’t really come down on him until it’s clear whether he really took a picture of his privates and sent it out as a text message to his latest, um, amour? Anyway, I never liked Favre so anything I said would be just piling on.
As for the Mets, one burning question keeps coming to me. And that is, “Where did it all go wrong, Omar?” We were looking so good for a while back in ’06 and then we folded in ’07 and ’08, and then we really fixed all the problems in ’09 only to have the most ridiculously horrible streak of bad luck and injuries ever to befall a major league club. Things were never the same after that. The Wilpons closed the checkbook after Jason Bay and Oliver Perez. 2010 was a little interesting early before the team just folded up its tent right before the mid-season and right through the mid-term break.
To my mind, Omar is just unlucky. They say you make your own breaks, and there’s some truth to that, but really, he’s got that Mr Mxtplyk (from Superman) hanging over his head. I mean, could anyone have figured Ollie Perez would so utterly fail? Well, maybe. But still, he was Pavano-bad and worse, if just because he kept showing up, like a bad apple, a really rotten one, to the core, as they say. And then there was Jason Bay. If Bay hadn’t run into that wall, he would have been boo-ed out of the stadium when the Mets returned to CitiField. He was that bad.
It was right around then, I figure, that the Wilpons decided not to send good money after bad and let Minaya play out the season with what he already had, which was, sadly, not nearly enough. It’ll be a different GM and manager who reap the benefits of R.A. Dickey and Ike Davis, Josh Thole and that nifty second baseman. And that’s a shame, because there was a lot to like about the Mets before their tailspin. An acquisition then would have made a big difference. But it is what it is, or was what it was, I guess.
Jerry Manuel will be missed for sure. That he couldn’t make a third or fourth place team finish first is no reflection on him. He was funny, wise, ironic, and totally in the game mentally, almost too much at times. But you can’t hold that against him. He won as many games as he lost. And managers do win and lose games for sure, just as much as bad umpires if not more, although that’s hard to imagine. To me, 2010 was the year of the bad umpires, even more than it was the year of pitching.
Omar will be missed too, by me at least. Omar was a very personable guy, and if not for his road-rage-like tirade against a New York reporter, you could say the guy never made a mistake in that respect. Omar’s clubs played exciting ball almost all the time. Too often, that excitement kind of petered out in the really big games. That will ultimately be his legacy but not to this guy. As I said, the man was just unlucky. I’ll look forward to the new administration. I can’t imagine that they’ll be more likeable though than what we had.
The Twins stink in the post-season. ‘Nuff said. That the Yankees beat them means nothing. The Twins never had a post-season game they couldn’t lose. Without getting into cases, the Twins never faced a Yankee they could look in the eye. Every Yankee pitcher and every player in pin-stripes became a superhero. It was disgusting to watch.
But let’s review. There is Sabathia looking a little worn, a Pettite who pitched one good game, a young guy in Hughes who may get rattled in a big one, and a psycho-Burnette who’ll maybe be bad and maybe be good. If pitching wins post-season games, if that’s true, then the Yankees are in big trouble. They might finish off the Rangers, who were a little too happy after their win over the Rays to suit me, but even that’s pretty questionable. The Rangers match up pretty well with the Yankees position for position. They have pitching too, and not just Cliff Lee. C.J. Wilson, Tommy Hunter, Colby Lewis, they’re not too shabby. If you match 1-2-3-4 vs 1-2-3-4, closer vs. closer, setup guy vs. setup guy, the Rangers should be more than competitive.
We’ll see if the Yanks are the best team money can buy. The Phils and Rangers spent some too.
The Giants and Jets…..what can you say? Both teams are playing great football. The Giants do have an offensive line, even without Sean O’Hara. The Jets do have a secondary, even without Darrelle Revis.
All of that and Chilean miners too, life is good.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Disappointing...Exhilarating...Maddening
Disappointing, exhilarating, maddening……these are the first words that come to mind this beautiful Saturday morning as I contemplate the action thus far in these 2010 MLB playoffs.
There are at least three disappointments to me at this juncture, the failures of the Twins to take even one game from the Yanks , the fold perpetrated last night by the SF Giants against the Atlanta Braves and the very similar choking done by the Cincinnati Reds against the Phillies.
For sheer exhilaration, there was Tim Lincecum’s pitching gem of a complete game pulled off against the Braves in the first game of that Braves-Giants series. I also felt very much the same watching the Giants’ Matt Cain blank those same Braves over 7 innings or so. And then there’s Josh Hamilton of the Rangers who only does something great every single time. (Okay, he was the star of my fantasy team).
It was the umpires that were responsible for my maddening. But the umpires continue to blow calls, easy calls, game-altering calls, that your sister could have made correctly. (Okay, sisters, no mail please)..
Let’s take it from the top again. The single most disappointing team thus far has been the Minnesota Twins. What a sorry bunch. I’m sorry. When they see the Yankees on the field, they just go into choke mode. They had Sabathia on the ropes and they let him go. Then they did absolutely nothing against the old man with the mad stare, Andy Friggin’ Pettite.
Yeah, I know, the Reds did some fancy folding themselves. (The Rays were just outplayed totally, a result I was completely happy with). But I expected the Reds to fold. Didn’t everyone? There was real hope for the Twins, especially after their early good fortunes against the big guy Sabathia.
In the history of baseball, was there ever a worse location for a pitch? I’m referring to the ball left on a tee for Yanks first baseman Mark Teixeira late in that first game, the pitch that made it 6-4 after the Twins had been up 3-0. And did they have to pitch so boldly to Granderson or Berkman? And then there were the pitching decisions made overall by the Twinkies, who are doing everything possible to justify that name.
Francisco Liriano pitched valiantly for those Twins in that first game and was up 3-zip going into the 6th. The idiots in the dugout left him in way too long. They waited until it all unraveled, despite the Yanks killing him softly, with hit after hit after hit. When they finally brought in the relief in the person of Jose Mijares, they managed to snuff the rally but, by then, it was too late. The Yanks had taken the lead.
Then the Twins gave us Yankee-haters hope once again by staging a 2-out rally that featured another Cuddyer big bang enveloped by bases on balls, a strange way to score, I thought at the time, but the Twins would surely have better luck in their spanking new stadium than they ever had in that old dome.
But the Twins inserted still another pitcher into the mix, one Jesse Crain, who failed colossally. He managed to get Jeter out in the 7th on a hard line drive to center but he then gave up another hit to Swisher. His pitches had nothing. And the pitch that had the most “nothingness” was that ball up and in the middle of the plate for Teixeira.
The Twins had Yanks reliever Kerry Wood in a lot of trouble in the eighth inning, managing to get the tying and winning runs on 2nd and 3rd but then Girardi called in a guy named Mariano, you may have heard of him, last name of Rivera? He promptly ended things….again.
It seems as if it’s always the same guys, Posada and Pettite, Rivera and Jeter. The Twins see these guys and fold. Posada didn’t do too much in the victory yesterday but then he didn’t need to. In that first game he was pretty clutch. Pettite just scared the bejeezus out of them, possibly with that ridiculous stare. And of course Rivera just shuts them down. Jeter? Well, there’s still Game 3.
Okay, that’s enough about disappointing, I think. I have to focus on the finer things in life, such as, for example, Tim Lincecum. A little slip of a guy, that’s Lincecum. A bit of a flake, the Prince Valiant hair, the laid-back attitude, they all seem to contribute to the aura of the man, if that’s what you could call it.
The man just knows how to throw the baseball. Every ounce of his body gets behind every pitch to the plate. So he can overpower with his fastball when needed or he can just flick his wrist, take something off and watch the batter flail. Lincecum did it all in that first game and he did it for 9 innings.
How about some more on exhilaration? The Rangers have been awesome in all phases. For pitching, there were Cliff Lee and C.J. Wilson and Neftali Feliz For hitting, there were, well, just about everybody, Vladimir Guerrero and Michael Young, Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz and Bengie Molina. Hell, even Jeff Francoeur joined the festivities. Oh yeah, and there was Josh Hamilton.
Hamilton just does it all. Five tools? Is that all? It seems like more. He’s the best hitter in both leagues, both for average and for power. He’s a fast runner. He stole a base in Game 1 and made two great catches in Game 2, both to his left and right, and went sliding on his belly, broken ribs be damned.
Hamilton hasn’t shown off that throwing arm yet. And he hasn’t hit any tape measures yet. But there’s always Game 3 for that.
There are at least three disappointments to me at this juncture, the failures of the Twins to take even one game from the Yanks , the fold perpetrated last night by the SF Giants against the Atlanta Braves and the very similar choking done by the Cincinnati Reds against the Phillies.
For sheer exhilaration, there was Tim Lincecum’s pitching gem of a complete game pulled off against the Braves in the first game of that Braves-Giants series. I also felt very much the same watching the Giants’ Matt Cain blank those same Braves over 7 innings or so. And then there’s Josh Hamilton of the Rangers who only does something great every single time. (Okay, he was the star of my fantasy team).
It was the umpires that were responsible for my maddening. But the umpires continue to blow calls, easy calls, game-altering calls, that your sister could have made correctly. (Okay, sisters, no mail please)..
Let’s take it from the top again. The single most disappointing team thus far has been the Minnesota Twins. What a sorry bunch. I’m sorry. When they see the Yankees on the field, they just go into choke mode. They had Sabathia on the ropes and they let him go. Then they did absolutely nothing against the old man with the mad stare, Andy Friggin’ Pettite.
Yeah, I know, the Reds did some fancy folding themselves. (The Rays were just outplayed totally, a result I was completely happy with). But I expected the Reds to fold. Didn’t everyone? There was real hope for the Twins, especially after their early good fortunes against the big guy Sabathia.
In the history of baseball, was there ever a worse location for a pitch? I’m referring to the ball left on a tee for Yanks first baseman Mark Teixeira late in that first game, the pitch that made it 6-4 after the Twins had been up 3-0. And did they have to pitch so boldly to Granderson or Berkman? And then there were the pitching decisions made overall by the Twinkies, who are doing everything possible to justify that name.
Francisco Liriano pitched valiantly for those Twins in that first game and was up 3-zip going into the 6th. The idiots in the dugout left him in way too long. They waited until it all unraveled, despite the Yanks killing him softly, with hit after hit after hit. When they finally brought in the relief in the person of Jose Mijares, they managed to snuff the rally but, by then, it was too late. The Yanks had taken the lead.
Then the Twins gave us Yankee-haters hope once again by staging a 2-out rally that featured another Cuddyer big bang enveloped by bases on balls, a strange way to score, I thought at the time, but the Twins would surely have better luck in their spanking new stadium than they ever had in that old dome.
But the Twins inserted still another pitcher into the mix, one Jesse Crain, who failed colossally. He managed to get Jeter out in the 7th on a hard line drive to center but he then gave up another hit to Swisher. His pitches had nothing. And the pitch that had the most “nothingness” was that ball up and in the middle of the plate for Teixeira.
The Twins had Yanks reliever Kerry Wood in a lot of trouble in the eighth inning, managing to get the tying and winning runs on 2nd and 3rd but then Girardi called in a guy named Mariano, you may have heard of him, last name of Rivera? He promptly ended things….again.
It seems as if it’s always the same guys, Posada and Pettite, Rivera and Jeter. The Twins see these guys and fold. Posada didn’t do too much in the victory yesterday but then he didn’t need to. In that first game he was pretty clutch. Pettite just scared the bejeezus out of them, possibly with that ridiculous stare. And of course Rivera just shuts them down. Jeter? Well, there’s still Game 3.
Okay, that’s enough about disappointing, I think. I have to focus on the finer things in life, such as, for example, Tim Lincecum. A little slip of a guy, that’s Lincecum. A bit of a flake, the Prince Valiant hair, the laid-back attitude, they all seem to contribute to the aura of the man, if that’s what you could call it.
The man just knows how to throw the baseball. Every ounce of his body gets behind every pitch to the plate. So he can overpower with his fastball when needed or he can just flick his wrist, take something off and watch the batter flail. Lincecum did it all in that first game and he did it for 9 innings.
How about some more on exhilaration? The Rangers have been awesome in all phases. For pitching, there were Cliff Lee and C.J. Wilson and Neftali Feliz For hitting, there were, well, just about everybody, Vladimir Guerrero and Michael Young, Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz and Bengie Molina. Hell, even Jeff Francoeur joined the festivities. Oh yeah, and there was Josh Hamilton.
Hamilton just does it all. Five tools? Is that all? It seems like more. He’s the best hitter in both leagues, both for average and for power. He’s a fast runner. He stole a base in Game 1 and made two great catches in Game 2, both to his left and right, and went sliding on his belly, broken ribs be damned.
Hamilton hasn’t shown off that throwing arm yet. And he hasn’t hit any tape measures yet. But there’s always Game 3 for that.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Series Hopes on an All-Sports Sunday
It was one of the best sports days ever. NFL action and all its fantasy implications, MLB playoffs races coming down to the wire and the Mets on the verge of finally ending the Omar Minaya era and its four years of disappointing mercenary baseball.
Ultimately, it will be that last event that will be the most important event in my life. But in the short run, for sheer excitement and that feeling of true participation in the day’s events, you just can’t beat Sunday NFL action, especially if you have the resources to buy the NFL Redzone package, or watch streaming videos of games on the Internet.
After watching the G-Men (yes, they finally deserve that name) vanquish da Bears last night on mainstream TV, I can’t imagine going back to that totally unwatchable platform for commercials, even if it did afford me the opportunity to get along further in my reading . I also became quite accomplished in manipulating the remote control, especially the “mute” and “last” buttons.
The G-Men weren’t expected by many to beat da Bears last night. That was before the nation witnessed the total humiliation of the Bears offensive line. It reminded me of a similar game against McNabb’s Philadelphia Eagles a year or two ago when Osi Umenyiora just ate up the guy in front of him. (Come to think of it, it looked a lot like the Colts decimation of the Giants offensive line just last week).
Things change so quickly in the NFL. Those same Giants who looked like gangbusters in that first game of the season returned last night. After that pitiful effort against the Colts, they turned their season around with a resounding victory against a Chicago team that had been undefeated at 3 and 0. And that result wasn’t even as surprising as the action in a few other games on the slate.
The lowly Lions from Detroit gave Green Bay fits before losing. The Jaguars, a team I had thought incapable of ever winning a game this season, beat those same Colts who ate up that Giants offensive line just last week. And they did it by outcoaching the brash Indi team, who called timeouts for their offense while the Jags still had the ball!
Ahmad Bradshaw broke my heart by fumbling once again down by the goal line, even if he did have a really marvelous day. I could watch those nifty changes in direction forever, that and his ability to run over people. Tom Coughlin broke it again when he inserted old sourpuss Brandon Jacobs into the game, in effect rewarding the Twink for his surliness by giving him the touchdown, not Bradshaw.
That last decision crippled my chances of winning my fantasy contest this week. Coughlin also limited the participation of Mario Manningham, a player who could have played after his concussion fears were laid to rest. And a player I had foolishly decided to pick up to replace Miles Austin and/or Percy Harvin in my fantasy lineup. Manningham gave me the big zero.
I still have a fantasy of a chance, but even the most optimistic outlook would snigger at the prospects of my opponent’s Ronnie Brown and Davone Bess (from Miami) failing to achieve 80 yards or a touchdown, even against a New England team that hasn’t really distinguished itself for defense of any kind this year.
And all that NFL action was only a portion of the excitement for the day. The interminable 162-game baseball season finally actually ended. And, in the National League, the only league that still plays the actual original game of baseball, the playoff teams were actually determined on the season’s final day!
It ended much to my satisfaction too. The San Diego Padres, a team with almost no hitting, a team that had relied almost entirely on pitching all year long, finally succumbed to the Giants from San Francisco, a result that cemented the Giants as NFC West Champions while, at the same time, anointing the Braves as the wildcard, thus assuring that the venerable Bobby Cox, long-time manager of that forever Mets rival Braves team, would get a chance to win a World Series.
The San Francisco Giants had been a favorite of mine all year, what with their great pitching and exciting (if nothing else) brand of baseball. I had relied upon some of their players for my fantasy baseball team, the Panda Pablo Sandoval and the 4-tool Andres Torres giving opponents fits when super-sub Juan Uribe did not, or when big Jersey guy Matt Cain couldn’t otherwise pitch himself into another win.
So it’ll be the Phils and Reds, the Giants and Braves, and that’s okay with me. The Phillies are the real class of this bunch but I’ll be pulling for the Giants, the only other team that rates a chance of unseating the American League World Series representative, whether that winds up being the Twins or Rangers, Rays or Yankees (God forbid).
I’ll be pulling for the Rangers in the American League. Even including the baseball Giants, they were my favorite team, with the likes of Ian Kinsler and Michael Young, Josh Hamilton and Pedro Guerrero all capable of bashing the ball and the opposing team out of the ballpark, especially at home in the friendly confines of that Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas.
In Josh Hamilton, the Rangers own the most exciting and revered baseball player since Mickey Mantle. That’s a huge statement, sure, but Hamilton is that kind of player. It’s Hamilton who’ll be the MVP and it’s the Rangers who’ll win the World Series.
They open against Tampa Bay, who couldn’t duck as fast as the Yankees in their efforts to avoid the prospect of playing them. The Yanks will beat the Twins. The Rangers will beat the Rays, Yanks and then the Giants in a dream of a Series.
The Yanks have Sabathia and Arod. You can have the rest. And that’s what the Rangers will do.
Ultimately, it will be that last event that will be the most important event in my life. But in the short run, for sheer excitement and that feeling of true participation in the day’s events, you just can’t beat Sunday NFL action, especially if you have the resources to buy the NFL Redzone package, or watch streaming videos of games on the Internet.
After watching the G-Men (yes, they finally deserve that name) vanquish da Bears last night on mainstream TV, I can’t imagine going back to that totally unwatchable platform for commercials, even if it did afford me the opportunity to get along further in my reading . I also became quite accomplished in manipulating the remote control, especially the “mute” and “last” buttons.
The G-Men weren’t expected by many to beat da Bears last night. That was before the nation witnessed the total humiliation of the Bears offensive line. It reminded me of a similar game against McNabb’s Philadelphia Eagles a year or two ago when Osi Umenyiora just ate up the guy in front of him. (Come to think of it, it looked a lot like the Colts decimation of the Giants offensive line just last week).
Things change so quickly in the NFL. Those same Giants who looked like gangbusters in that first game of the season returned last night. After that pitiful effort against the Colts, they turned their season around with a resounding victory against a Chicago team that had been undefeated at 3 and 0. And that result wasn’t even as surprising as the action in a few other games on the slate.
The lowly Lions from Detroit gave Green Bay fits before losing. The Jaguars, a team I had thought incapable of ever winning a game this season, beat those same Colts who ate up that Giants offensive line just last week. And they did it by outcoaching the brash Indi team, who called timeouts for their offense while the Jags still had the ball!
Ahmad Bradshaw broke my heart by fumbling once again down by the goal line, even if he did have a really marvelous day. I could watch those nifty changes in direction forever, that and his ability to run over people. Tom Coughlin broke it again when he inserted old sourpuss Brandon Jacobs into the game, in effect rewarding the Twink for his surliness by giving him the touchdown, not Bradshaw.
That last decision crippled my chances of winning my fantasy contest this week. Coughlin also limited the participation of Mario Manningham, a player who could have played after his concussion fears were laid to rest. And a player I had foolishly decided to pick up to replace Miles Austin and/or Percy Harvin in my fantasy lineup. Manningham gave me the big zero.
I still have a fantasy of a chance, but even the most optimistic outlook would snigger at the prospects of my opponent’s Ronnie Brown and Davone Bess (from Miami) failing to achieve 80 yards or a touchdown, even against a New England team that hasn’t really distinguished itself for defense of any kind this year.
And all that NFL action was only a portion of the excitement for the day. The interminable 162-game baseball season finally actually ended. And, in the National League, the only league that still plays the actual original game of baseball, the playoff teams were actually determined on the season’s final day!
It ended much to my satisfaction too. The San Diego Padres, a team with almost no hitting, a team that had relied almost entirely on pitching all year long, finally succumbed to the Giants from San Francisco, a result that cemented the Giants as NFC West Champions while, at the same time, anointing the Braves as the wildcard, thus assuring that the venerable Bobby Cox, long-time manager of that forever Mets rival Braves team, would get a chance to win a World Series.
The San Francisco Giants had been a favorite of mine all year, what with their great pitching and exciting (if nothing else) brand of baseball. I had relied upon some of their players for my fantasy baseball team, the Panda Pablo Sandoval and the 4-tool Andres Torres giving opponents fits when super-sub Juan Uribe did not, or when big Jersey guy Matt Cain couldn’t otherwise pitch himself into another win.
So it’ll be the Phils and Reds, the Giants and Braves, and that’s okay with me. The Phillies are the real class of this bunch but I’ll be pulling for the Giants, the only other team that rates a chance of unseating the American League World Series representative, whether that winds up being the Twins or Rangers, Rays or Yankees (God forbid).
I’ll be pulling for the Rangers in the American League. Even including the baseball Giants, they were my favorite team, with the likes of Ian Kinsler and Michael Young, Josh Hamilton and Pedro Guerrero all capable of bashing the ball and the opposing team out of the ballpark, especially at home in the friendly confines of that Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas.
In Josh Hamilton, the Rangers own the most exciting and revered baseball player since Mickey Mantle. That’s a huge statement, sure, but Hamilton is that kind of player. It’s Hamilton who’ll be the MVP and it’s the Rangers who’ll win the World Series.
They open against Tampa Bay, who couldn’t duck as fast as the Yankees in their efforts to avoid the prospect of playing them. The Yanks will beat the Twins. The Rangers will beat the Rays, Yanks and then the Giants in a dream of a Series.
The Yanks have Sabathia and Arod. You can have the rest. And that’s what the Rangers will do.
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