A Day for the Downtrodden

It was a day for the downtrodden. It started in the morning when a tough young woman named Gisela Dulko took the measure of Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon. Then in the afternoon, the incredible U.S.A. soccer team beat the best soccer team in the world in the Confederations Cup. It continued into the evening when the under-manned Mets just trounced the Cardinals and the Yanks won with the help of an unlikely home run from catcher Francisco Cervelli.

It’s hard to not just enjoy the heck out of seeing great performances in very unlikely places. It gives us all hope. If these yahoos on TV can do it, then we can do it too, whatever our particular “it” may be. Or, if you’re one of those superstars who really doesn’t need any more hope, well, Mazeltof.

Anyhow, the Mets were great tonight. After seeing them do absolutely NOTHING the night before, how great was it to watch a very unlikely Fernando Nieve pitch the Mets to within a game and a half of the Phillies, this despite playing without Carlos Beltran, after having already lost Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, J.J. Putz, John Maine, Oliver Perez and some others too.

Just winning by 11-0 is nice. And winning with three Fernando’s has got to be pretty special too. If there was anything I didn’t like, at first anyway, it was Ryan Church and Brian Schneider, who I’ve just killed in this column every time I’ve had the chance, who did the most damage at the plate, just socking the ball all over the place.

It makes you think maybe the Mets really can withstand all these hurts and ow-ies. Just replace Delgado with Murphy, Tatis and now Evans. Just spell Jose Reyes with Alex Cora. Just put Reed in center to try to replace Carlos. Put Nieve on the mound for Maine (or Perez, take your pick). Try a few relievers out to see who wants Putz’s set-up job.

If Church and Schneider can continue playing well, something they’ve never been able to sustain over any period of time before, and if so many others chip in in a little, players like Omir Santos and yes, even Gary Sheffield. And tonight it was Nick Evans, bringing back that hot 2008 duo of Murphy and Evans. Evans was great tonight, and maybe his return will give Murphy a little shot in the arm, not that he’s needed one lately.

It really does take a total team effort when you’ve lost so many players. And, incredibly enough, the Mets are getting it, over and over. Even when they’ve lost, they’ve played pretty well; they just haven’t hit. Another thing that made tonight’s win so good was that they managed to hit a sinkerball pitcher after having been totally shut down the night before by a sinkerballer…..in the most boring exhibition of baseball I’d seen in a long time.

So Mets fans can be happy for another day or two. It really doesn’t make much sense to look too far ahead. Just trot out the uninjured and see what happens. And, so far, it’s working nice and easy, a tribute really to the composition of the original team. The backups almost everywhere are pretty good, it would seem. They can play baseball, all of them.

And let’s say this about Joba. He was great tonight. Well, maybe not great, but pretty good for sure. He didn’t face many batters, started the game well and actually got better as he went along, striking out 4 batters in the 4th and 5th innings, and he pitched well into the 7th inning.

That the catcher was Cervelli was especially sweet, after having to witness the embarrassing Posada singlehandedly destroy Joba’s confidence last time out. His insistence on controlling the game seems to be tiring out a lot of Yankee pitchers. After seeing that throw he made from his knees to second base the other night, I’d just sit him down for a long while.

Oh, and Arod came through with a hit in a big situation. That’s been missing, and while I can’t really root for him, maybe it’ll quiet the detractors for a while. The team really hasn’t been hitting though, and they’re now 5 games out, tied with the Blue Jays for 2nd. Boston keeps rolling so the Yanks will have to roll a little too. Maybe they can do that if Arod chips in, if not as the Arod of old, just as a major-league third baseman, somebody who can produce home runs and rbi’s.

Maybe the most heartening victory of the day was the incredible U.S. victory over Spain in the semifinal round of the Confederations Cup. The U.S. goalie, Tim Howard, stopped shot after shot and Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey scored to keep the heat on a team that had won 35 matches in a row. But everybody dressed in white today looked pretty good to me, and to Spain too. Not too shabby! It’s comparable to the U.S.A. hockey team victory over the Russians so many years ago. It was great to see Landon Donovan have a good day too, not to mention the coach Bob Bradley.

On the beautiful lush green that is Wimbledon, everybody expected Maria Sharapova to beat Gisela Dulko, especially after she came back in the second set to win about 5 or 6 games in a row. It certainly appeared that Ms. Dulko was quitting, but then she came back and it was the much taller Sharapova who was wilting a bit at the end.

Of course, Sharapova has been having her share of hard luck with injuries lately too, so it was good to just see her on the court again. If she can stay healthy for a stretch, I think we’ll be hearing from Sharapova again before the 2009 tennis year runs out.

So in baseball, soccer and tennis, it was truly a day for the downtrodden. We should have more of those.

A Nice Quandary

Shall I tell you today about the fall of Maria Sharapova at lush Wimbledon or shall I address another renewal of Mets-Yanks in a momentous doubleheader for both?

Or, maybe I could just turn an analytical eye to the brave Knicks selection of a young Italian with their first pick, or the Nets extreme shuffling, trading a bigtime producer on the court in Richard Jefferson for a couple of question marks and drafting two big guys.

Ah, what the heck! Let’s do a little bit of everything. They all make for a good story.

Maria the beautiful fell to another young Russian for the second straight year at that London sanctuary of tennis. Can it really be four years since she won at Wimbledon, when both shoulders operated in pretty much the same fashion?

Those were the days when she was at the top of her game, when she moved like the wind yet hit hard enough to beat even the likes of Serena into submission. But yesterday Maria double-faulted eight times and made more unforced errors than was absolutely necessary against a determined Kudryatseva.

Sharapova, though, was once again gracious in defeat if her father was not. Instead, he proved once again that he may not be worthy of such a daughter, one who doesn’t blame every loss on a bad day or some imagined injury, one who doesn’t hold up play in a desperate attempt to change the winds of fortune. She only expressed some natural frustration at her own vulnerability.

The back-and-forth Mets face the pitching-short Yanks today, resulting in some interesting matchups, the still plugging Pedro facing the newly acquired and well-travelled Sidney Ponson and then Mike Pelfrey facing the Yanks Dan Giese, who apparently has a lot of difficulty traveling at all. (Giese missed a flight).

It says here that the Mets sweep the Yanks today. That Mets pitching duo of Pedro and Pelfrey will be too much for the Bombers, despite that awesome Yankee lineup. Doesn’t good hitting always succumb to good pitching? We’ll find out tonight, I guess, after all the votes have been tabulated.

As riveting as the baseball may be, it can’t be more dramatic than the Knicks first pick of the 19-year old Italian Danilo Gallinardi, whose Dad used to room with the apparently fearless new coach Mike D’Antoni. In selecting such an obvious family favorite, he puts himself into a precarious position, but, come to think of it, not too unlike the football Giants Coughlin’s position upon the selection of Chris Snee. And that turned out just fine.

I’m hoping the Italian Connection just points to D’Antoni’s beliefs in the kid’s abilities, which are prodigious by all accounts. But at 210 pounds, it’s a little hard to believe he could become any kind of post presence, something the Knicks desperately need, or would have needed the way they used to play.

Of course, a little more shooting never hurts, but that hasn’t really been the Knicks problem. It’s been more the curious inability of the likes of Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph to get up in the air once in a while, or great while, for that matter. But the best big man available at number 6 was Brook Lopez of Stanford, whom nobody expects to really set the NBA back on its heels.

Rome wasn’t built in a day though, even if you do bring in an Italian. I just hope he’s the shooter and ball-handler Donnie Walsh expects. I suppose the inadequacies in the post can be addressed later. After all, the Knicks have been pretty bad for a long time, what’s a season or two among friends?

The Nets surely made a lot of moves, though whether it made them any better is seriously open to question. Trading Richard Jefferson (BYE RICHARD!) is a significant loss of scoring and why don’t Bobby Simmons and Yi Xiang send me? They certainly did get bigger though, nabbing center Brook Lopez of Stanford with the 10^th pick and then what might be a very serviceable Ryan Anderson at 21.

Right now, it looks as if Vice Carter will have to do a lot of scoring, not that he’s incapable of it. But, if the 6’10” 240 pound Anderson can light up the NBA as he did the Pac 10, anything is possible. Not that I expect it this year. It seems to me the Nets are gearing up for a great first season in Brooklyn. And, as a died in the wool Jerseyan, I can’t say it makes me happy.

But it all works for me. Mets-Yanks, Wimbledon, and the never-ending saga of basketball misfortunes in New York. You can’t say it’s ever boring, or even likely to be.

Great Equalizers...Clay...Distance et al.

All week I have been amazed by the French Open tennis action, and what a difference the surface has made in the outcome of matches and tournaments. Thank God for clay, I thought. There’s always a good chance of seeing a Final you could never dream of when they’re sliding around on that red stuff. It surely beats the hard courts for long rallies.

And, sure enough, there was the lovely Maria Sharapova, while not actually looking too much like a “cow on ice” (as she had once referred to herself), losing to her compatriot Dinara Safina. The really big servers, the Williams sisters for example, had already been beaten. So the Roland Garros faithful had the pleasure of watching two rather unlikely semifinals, a Russian duel between Safina and. Kuznetsova and an all-Serb matchup of the elegant Ivanovic versus the quick-as-a-snake Jelena Jankovic.

And what a semifinal was the latter. Ivanovic proved that she’s not justt a pretty face, sliding back and forth with ease and grace while slamming winners left and right to come back in the third set to prevail. Safina beat Kuznetsova a bit more easily to advance, all of which sets up a tantalizing women’s final, one unimaginable on grass or blacktop.

As much as I await the men’s results, and the fate of the Frenchman Monfils, who has the misfortune of drawing Roger Federer later today, I look forward even more to the Belmont on Saturday afternoon, and wonder about the outcome of what has set up as a classic duel between Big Brown, winner of the first two Crown jewels rather handily and the bred-for-distance Casino Drive, half-brother (through the dam amazingly enough) to the last two Belmont winners.

The great equalizer will be the distance, of course, in that affair, not that there aren’t other variables to consider; Big Brown’s cracked hoof, for example, or getting stuck on the rail. But, even these two seemingly-unrelated questions are amplified by the 1 ½ mile distance. That is to say, one factor is aggravated by the other.

A cracked hoof, although it’s been pooh-poohed by Brown’s loquacious trainer Rick Dutrow, maybe wouldn’t figure too heavily over a mile and a quarter but what will it do over those last two furlongs, especially considering the injury did necessarily affect Big Brown’s training.

And, in a shorter race, Kent Desormeaux would figure to just sprint to the lead, thus staying out of trouble while saving ground. But will Big Brown be able to overcome the energy-sapping effort it’ll take to take the lead in a potential stretch duel after 11 furlongs? After all, there is a rabbit in the race and Casino Drive has the pedigree to get the distance.

The race is setting up for a late drive, either by Casino Drive or even one of the others, for, after all, this is first and foremost a horse race, and horse races tend to propagate unusual finishes. Otherwise, there’d be happy railbirds everywhere, and that’s a prospect I can’t even imagine.

Then, there are the NBA Finals, and the home-court equalizer. The advantages of playing at home in the NBA can scarcely be over-estimated. Without going into boring statistics, the numbers favoring the team on its home court are staggering. While some of the advantage is due to a familiarity with the court, and some due to the noise of the home crowd, it’s those whistle-blowers who have the greatest affect on the outcome.

Very unfortunately, I might add. Even the most die-hard NBA fans have this year cringed at some of the calls, none more noteworthy than the no-call in Game 5 of the Lakers-Spurs game that handed the victory to the Lakers.

Given the questionable nature of the trades that made this Celtics-Lakers death match possible, the ridiculous Pau Gasol trade from Memphis to the Lakers, of course, but also the timely Boston acquisitions of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, one has to wonder whether this entire season was story-boarded back in the New York offices of NBA Commissioner David Stern.

Happily, although the Celtics have jumped out ahead in Game One at home, the whistles did not largely figure in the outcome. It was more the defense of the Celtics and the ineffectiveness of Kobe, no doubt forced by the Celtics Defense.

In any event, though, it’s a no-brainer to figure that, once this Series finds its way back to La-La Land, the odds will swing to the Lakers, no matter what should happen in Game Two in Boston. Jack Nicholson, a host of other stars and starlets, the Laker-Girls, all that gold and purple figure to sway the result, if not the officials.

A discussion of equalizers would not be complete without mentioning injuries in football. I still savor with fondness the Giants playoffs-run this past year, but it was all the more remarkable considering the injuries the G-Men withstood throughout that run.

It wasn’t just Jeremy Shockey. There were what could have been devastating injuries to the secondary, against opponents who certainly should have been able to take advantage, Giants-killer Freddy Garcia, the irrepressible Tony Romo to Terrell Owens combination, and Hall of Famer Bret Favre.

Last but not least, if certainly the sweetest, there is the lingering image of Tom Brady, with Giants seemingly draped around, under and through him, trying desperately to find Randy Moss. In retrospect, it was a lack of injuries along the defensive line that spelled defeat for the Patriots.

In baseball, of course, there is a slight advantage to playing at home, but it never really seems to be a significant determinant of a game’s outcome. The great equalizer in baseball is pitching. Or the lack thereof, as the case may be.

I was reminded of this last night as I watched the Mets lose a close one to the Padres, on bases on balls followed by a hit batsman, served up by the usually reliable Scott Schoenweiss. But it could have been worse. It could have been Heilman.

The Big Lull

It's that time of year again, that interminable pause between the Division Championship Games and the Super Bowl. That week where we learn who plays dirty, who would've been better if certain players hadn't been present all year, who played on previous Super Bowl winners and losers. We get the initial point spread, of course, and everything but real live injury reports. So I turn off to football for several days each year at this time, and concentrate on better things, which translates to anything that moves. I usually start paying a bit of attention to college basketball, tune in to the tennis action and see what's happening with the Knicks and the Nets. Of course, there's hockey but I never really have warmed up (or cooled off) to ice hockey. Football will be fun again by Wednesday maybe.

At the Australian Open, Maria Sharapova was dazzling, both in power and athleticism. She ripped through every opponent out there, which meant Justine Henin and Jelena Jancovic as things heated up. She was devastating, her opponents seemingly had no chance. Then she was matched up against another 20-year old who had only been wow-ing most of a continent for a couple of weeks, the beautiful Ana Ivanovic from Serbia. Ironic that a final in a professional sport could come down to two individuals who could have ended up on Broadway.

Although Ana put up the good fight, there was no touching Maria, she was just too strong and too fast and too tall and too mean. And when she was done, she proved that she could be almost be too gracious. As she received her Championship award, she waxed poetic upon her text message from Billie Jean King and her love for the Serbian fans, was philosophical about her transformation from 2007 to 2008. And, of course, she was beautiful all the way.

She’s now won Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Australian. That leaves only the French Open. She may never get that one, as it’s anything but her natural surface, but, with this vibrant and imaginative personality, I wouldn’t bet against her. She just seems to try harder than anyone else. Despite all the money and fame, she has remained the Maria of old for as long as she’s been in the spotlight. And that’s pretty darned good.

As good as The Australian Open was, there were also some interesting things happening with Seton Hall, the Nets and the Knicks. Seton Hall has been proving it belongs in the Big East. The Nets are proving that you can sign a guy for less, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be the winner in the negotiation. See Vince Carter. The Knicks are showing that they can play creditable basketball, but whether the results are despite of or because of its management , it is really hard to tell.

The Knicks seem to finally be getting it. Maybe it took the fall of Stephon Marbury to finally make it happen. It’s truly been a phenomenon observable in New York, the disappearance of a star and the concurrent emergence of a team. It’s certainly been true with Marbury and may also be true for Jeremy Shockey and Tiki Barber and the Giants. The G-Men have never been better. Manning has never been more commanding. There have been some reports that Shockey may have been a distraction and may have detracted from Eli’s position as the leader of the huddle. Whether you believe it or not, I personally do NOT believe in coincidence. I’d trade Shockey next year. He’s become extraneous for the Giants. He’d no doubt benefit another team though. And maybe we’d get a third-rounder back.

The Nets have been just pathetic. They’ve lost eight straight, I think it is. Kidd wanted to play elsewhere but we signed him, Carter wanted more money but stayed, and Jefferson can’t save the day all by himself. So that’s what we have to look forward to. Good luck, Lawrence Frank. How do you spell “Prima Donna”?

And speaking of prima donnas, how about Daniela Hantuchova’s huffy exit from her semifinal loss to Ivanovic? We are to understand she was upset about the squeaking of Ana’s sneakers while Daniela was serving? I think it’s high time Daniela got out of the tennis game, to take her act elsewhere. There’re just too many sane tennis players around, Daniela. Take that bony ass on the road!

Oh, and then there were the Williams sisters, the nice older one and the silly squat one. Once again, they were interesting in defeat but only one was even halfway gracious in defeat. With the Williams sisters, it’s always about them. What it was that they did to lose rather than what their opponent did to win. God, it gets old. Retirement beckons, sisters!

If I could just get by this weekend, I’ll be fine. There should be enough basketball to keep me going until then. I can’t possibly listen to any more drivel from the football players, never mind the coaches. Bellichick and Coughlin, what a personality-fest this is gonna be…

I’ll tell you one thing though. I can almost feel the tide beginning to turn. The New York teams are ascending, the New England teams seemingly on the decline. The Giants lost to Dallas, then beat them in the second game. They lost to Green Bay, but beat them in the rubber match.

And, let’s see, yes, the Pats beat them, but not by much and not that convincingly. And now they’ll be meeting again. It’ll be mostly older guys against mostly newer guys. And a hobbling (or lying) quarterback against a newly-confident gunslinger. Yeah, I think I could wait another few days….