Uncertainty the Only Certainty

Now I know I’m a baseball fan. It’s all I can do to muster any enthusiasm for football anymore. It’s totally unpredictable.

This week it was Dallas and Buffalo who came back from the dead. Teams I expected to come back from the dead didn’t. There was the dreadful Minnesota totally striking out against the Bears, a real juggernaut. There was Brett Favre running around, getting hit, dropping the ball, then running around, throwing on the run, getting intercepted. And then there was Washington on Monday night, Washington, I thought, with that defense that gives up yards but not points. Surely they’ll stop Michael Vick. You know what happened there.

And then there were the “good” teams, such as the Steelers, getting lambasted by Tom Brady, and our Giants, ballyhooed all week for being the best team in the NFC, decidedly NOT covering the best wide receivers in the game, Dez Bryant and Miles Austin, Roy Williams and Jason Witten. Oh, and they didn’t get to the quarterback either. After all, it was only Jon Kitna. You know how that one turned out.

Of course I belong to one of those Yahoo football groups, making picks for each week’s games, just the winners, no point spreads to make things more difficult. This year, the spreads aren’t necessary. Anything can happen and usually will, but only when you’re absolutely SURE of a very different outcome.

Being that I’m one of those analytical types, I need to put this uncertainty into some kind of box. Surely there are underlying reasons for it. I’ve got it narrowed down to two basic factors. Coaches and players. Not bad, huh?

The Cowboys changed coaches after losing became a way of life. Boom! They won, convincingly. You wondered how they could have looked so abysmal all those other weeks. You wonder if they’ll go undefeated for the rest of the season. You wondered how they ever won with a lily-livered coach. You wondered why it took Jerry Jones so long to act. You wonder much the same thing about that Bengals coach, Marvin Lewis. What’s the owner thinking? Oops, there’s another factor, owners.

A subset of owners might be stadiums, new stadiums, and seat licenses, especially unsold seat licenses, to be exact. The Jets sure stocked up on players this year, LaDainian and Santonio and the rest. The Giants actually went out and bought a secondary, not that it looked that way last Sunday. Of course, Kitna had all day to throw. Jerry Jones too had that gigantic edifice in Big D built to accommodate all those rabid Cowboys fans. He figured they had as much talent as they needed, so he didn’t need to go crazy, especially on defense. He figured, as Wade did, that any sorry bunch of bodies could comprise a well thought out system of defense. Heh-heh.

Another factor seems to be the betting line itself. Maybe it’s the Internet betting that’s made the spread more important. Those heavy favorites just never seem to pan out, except when they do, once again totally inexplicably.

Let’s recap. There’re coaches and players and owners and stadiums and the betting line itself. Oh, and maybe the fact that there’s a whole TV network dedicated to football, 24/7, and endless analysis, if you could call it that, of everything you ever wanted to know about, well, mostly about Brett Favre, or Chad Ochochinco or T.O. Oh yeah, there’re those reality shows too, starring the aforementioned, of course, but there are others too, like for Shawn Merriman, I understand.

Of course there’s ESPN too, not that I watch those guys anymore. I wonder, does anybody? I mean…why? There’s a baseball channel and a football channel and teams with their own channels. There’re even channels for tennis and golf, for Pete’s sake. (Pete’s a bigtime golfer and tennis enthusiast, take my word for it). If it’s a sport, chances are it’s got its own channel. Horseracing and soccer, of course, and even fishing and fitness and wildlife and, omigosh, as I write this, there’s a woman getting into dressage. Honestly.

Maybe I should just stop trying to pick game winners and just concentrate on my fantasy team. There’s quite enough uncertainty there alone. Replacing Drew Brees on his bye week with Brett Favre was my brain-fart of the season. And to compound that mistake, I had dumped Jon Kitna for him. After all, he’d be facing those ferocious G-Men. And surely Jahvid Best would finally start producing against the lowly Bills, right? Surely he’d be a better start than Miles Austin, who never did establish any kind of rapport with Kitna. Romo used to love him but not Kitna. He loved Dez Bryant. And besides, they were facing the feared G-Men.

Luckily for me, my other players played great, Percy Harvin and Ahmad Bradshaw, Brandon Lloyd and Knowshow Moreno. But the really fortunate thing was my opponent’s decision to take his chances that his running back, Clinton Portis, listed as questionable all week, would actually play on Monday night, even if Skins coach Mike Shanahan had been saying for days that he wouldn’t play. After all, isn’t it true that Shanahan’s the biggest phony in the NFL, except for Belichick maybe? Shanahan saying he wouldn’t play only kind of guaranteed that he would. Of course we know how that one turned out.

Oh yeah, one more factor, a big one, injuries, even after you figure out the enigmatic code that basically says “doubtful” players are the only ones who won’t play. “Questionable” guys figure significantly in their team’s fortunes week after week, hence my opponent’s hesitation to go with anyone else in that spot. (Yeah, he would have had to drop a player with a bye to replace him but still…).

There are just so few things you can count on. That uncertainty might be the biggest winning factor of them all, the only thing on which you can rely.

I’ll take baseball anytime, and especially those Mets.

And Down the Stretch They Come

Okay, first of all, Zenyatta was robbed. Hey Mike Smith, could you have taken her any further back? The wondrous Z danced her way to the paddock and seemingly all the way to the starting gate. She seemed to acknowledge the crowd throughout, wanting only to squeeze one more hurrah out of thousands of racing fans, and make good on their winning tickets. Even if a lot of them would never be cashed. She seemed sure this’d be a walk in the park, another day at the office, sashaying her way to the winners circle while all the boys were still hangin’ by the water fountain. This would be her 2oth in a row….no problemo.

That was all before her longtime jock strangled her coming out of the gate. Before she could say “dumbass jock”, she was 20 lengths behind, getting clumps of real dirt pounding into her gorgeous peepers. But the queen kept her cool, if somewhat surprised by her rider’s strange reluctance, and wondering when he’d pull out a pair of goggles for her? She cut the lead from 20 to about 12 lengths at the mile pole but by then there was only a quarter mile to go. And those young colts ahead of her didn’t even seem tired.

It was about then that Mike finally took her outside where she could turn it on and, in the space of about 11 seconds, the time it took her to charge through that next to last (who says penultimate anymore?) furlong, she had cut that monstrous lead to about two lengths and she could see that finish line (I’m convinced). She had that chassis moving now with just one horse to beat, but geez, that young stud, a colt named Blame, was rolling too.

So down the stretch they came, as they say. That lead became 2 lengths, then 1 ½, then 1 and then just about nothin’ at all. And there was the pole.

The crowd was cheering but she could feel her rider’s anguish. She seemed to hang her head and she definitely stopped dancing. She probably wondered what the crowd was thinking. Why did thay all still seem so excited?

It probably didn’t occur to her that she had just gobbled up a 12-length lead in a quarter mile, that she had restored hope to all those bettors and fans whose heads had drooped after seeing her hopes diminishing with each succeeding pole for that first mile or so. “She’ll never make it”, I had said to my lovely wife, who had almost never watched TV with me before. She said sumthin’ like “but she always comes from behind, doesn’t she” and I said sumthin’ like “but she’s too far back, she’ll never catch them now”. I remember thinking about an old stretch-runner named Carry Back, who would sweep the field in the last furlong or so, but that was a long time ago, and Carry Back was a colt.

And then I was yelling, “Go! Go! Go!” as Zenyatta’s profile slowly, inexorably, advanced on that lead colt’s flanks all the way to that damned final pole. It was the best horse race I had seen in many a year, and I knew I had seen one of the best horses I would ever see.

They say she had her chance and couldn’t get her head in front. They say she won’t be the Horse of the Year. I say she’s been the Horse of the Decade at least and no other horse had evoked as much admiration out of a crowd since, well, Secretariat in that insane Belmont of the early Seventies. Yeah, there were other big ones too, there was Ruffian of course, and Affirmed and Stevie Cauthen wearin’ out Alydar for the Triple Crown. But that’s about it. I wasn’t around for Seabiscuit. And none of them could dance. (Actually, Secretariat and Seabiscuit both played to the crowd).

So go ahead, racing intelligentsia, make Blame the Horse of the Year. After all, he did keep his head in front at that finish line. It won’t change anybody’s mind, not anyone who had been there at Churchill or anybody who had just watched on TV. Zenyatta’s the Horse of the Year and one of the horses of the century.

There. All that had to be said. I feel better now.

That seemed more important to me than what the Jets or Giants did, or what has developed in the Mets front offices. Of course, all’s quiet on the football front, at least locally, as the Giants have been rolling and the Jets more or less just surviving in good form. The Mets new guy, Sandy Alderson, will probably wind up being a good hire and he’s supposed to be evaluating fiery coaches. (I have almost no hope in that regard, I liked Jerry Manuel). Oh, and I don’t care what the Yankees do. Whatever they do, it won’t be enough, not with trying to carry all that dead weight. (Okay, not dead, just twitching ever more slowly).

The big intrigue in football is in Dallas and Minnesota, what with Wade Phillips finally hitting the dusty trail and Brad Childress hanging on like that cat hangin’ on to that chinning bar in all those cheap reproductions. Both of their jobs were in trouble going into Week 9. Favre and Adrian Peterson, Percy Harvin and even Bernard Berrian for Minnesota rallied the Vikings to victory in a thrilling comeback win. The Boyz flopped historically, and nary a Dallas cornerback or linebacker could be found. They lost 41-7. Wade Phillips needed a secondary to show up in what would turn out to be his final game. He didn’t get it.

But the Vikings still breathe, even if they’re way behind and that finish line seems so close. Down the stretch they come.

They could take a lesson from a magnificent dancing mare who faced the same odds but fought valiantly to that finish line, despite the bad ride.

A Question of Balance

Was there ever a better World Series? Well, yes. The Rangers were very quiet. All those bats did nothing. That wasn’t Yankee pitching out there on the hill. Those were the best pitchers in the National League. And it showed. Whiff, whiff, whiff went the Rangers. Tim Lincecum beat the great Cliff Lee twice. Matt Cain won Game 2 and would have won more had the Series been extended. The very young Madison Bumgarner was lights out too. Only Jonathan Sanchez was touched up for some runs.

While the Rangers were mostly striking out, the Giants did just enough to win at the plate and sometimes did more than that. They were really very good at the plate, certainly better than they had been all season, starting with the World Series MVP, Edgar Renteria. He’d been hurt most of the season. The real stalwarts in the batting order all season had been Aubrey Huff and Juan Uribe. Andres Torres had also shown himself to be a real pain in the neck to opposing pitchers and catchers both. Otherwise, that team just didn’t hit at all.

There was no Cody Ross, no Pat Burrell.. ….just guys like the Panda, Pablo Sandoval, who had a horrible year. Freddy Sanchez didn’t do much either. In the Series, they all decided to be world beaters. Go figure, not that they had to do much in this Series. The Rangers, who had looked so awesome versus Tampa Bay and New York, couldn’t touch the Giants pitching most games.

But at least the Series managers let their teams play. They didn’t impose their wills on the game beyond what was needed. The Giants won because they pitched better, they batted better and they fielded better. Nobody pitched on 3 days rest. There were no outrageous decisions. The managers seemed happy to fade into the woodwork, or the dugout as the case may be. While Bruce Bochy got credit for making all the right moves, his choices weren’t made to call attention to himself.

Contrast that to some or almost all of these NFL coaches. Bonehead of the week went hands down to Mike Shanahan, who took out his fine starting quarterback, Donovan McNabb, in the final two minutes, only to insert one Rex Grossman, formerly of Bears fame and mostly notable for bad throws. Rex was hit and immediately fumbled, thus ensuring defeat in a game that had only seconds ago been winnable.

Shortly thereafter, Brad Childress, already somewhat infamous for being a boob, at least in this column, waived the incomparable Randy Moss, who committed the unpardonable sin of all time by questioning one of Brad’s brain farts that didn’t work in their loss to Moss’s former team, the New England Patriots.

Now don’t get me wrong. Randy Moss is an idiot. But he did make the Vikings a better team, no matter that the Vikings hadn’t been able to parlay his receiving skills into wins. But the Vikings still have a chance to turn their season around. It’s not likely that cutting Randy will prove to be any help in that regard. If nothing else, Moss’s presence completely opened the field for the dangerous Percy Harvin.

Cutting himself would have been a much better idea. Everybody knows it’s Favre’s team anyway. Childress has no football instincts whatsoever. Until and unless Sidney Rice returns to the Vikings lineup, the Vikings will have no deep threat on the field, nobody to keep the opposition off Harvin. And I don’t think we can count Bernard Berrian, or Greg Lewis or Camarillo. Oh yeah, there’s Hank Baskett too.

Childress cut Moss because he could. It’s as simple as that. (As this is written, Moss’s name still isn’t on the list so maybe it’s not so simple after all). Even given Moss’s rather huge indiscretions in the locker room, a warning or other disciplinary action would have been more appropriate at this time, especially if Childress were really interested in what’s best for the Vikings. Childress’s insecurities notwithstanding (and he certainly has ample reason for those), the timing of Moss’s release was poor.

Mike Shanahan is a different kind of case. He removed McNabb from the game totally for the sake of his own ego. He couldn’t stand the thought of the Skins winning another game and having McNabb get the credit for it. Again. But if Grossman could have achieved the same result, then the credit would have reverted to Shanahan. The only other possibility is that the Skins winning too many games in Shanahan’s first contract year is not part of his 5-year plan.

Either way, Shanahan’s taking McNabb out of the game was despicable. That his bonehead move was so spectacularly unsuccessful just proves that there is a God….in case you were wondering.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Jets coaching staff once again proved its free and easy coaching style sometimes doesn’t work. The Jets punter, totally of his own volition, faked a punt from the shadows of his own goal posts. Of course he didn’t make the first down. But he surely did surprise both head coach Rex Ryan and the special teams coach, Mike Westhoff. Did he really have a green light? The punter, Steve Weatherford, seemed to think so.

All I know is that these things don’t happen to Bill Belichick. And these Jets seem to be playing their season as if they’re still doing a reality show.

In Dallas, Wade Phillips, in response to a question as to whether he had lost control of his team, responded that he certainly hoped not. What the hell kind of an answer is that? He could have ripped his secondary new butt-holes. He could have picked on guys like Miles Austin and other receivers who either tipped catchable balls or simply weren’t looking.

Phillips is the other extreme of the NFL coaching continuum, a total wuss. With all those candidates out there, can’t these teams find a balanced guy?

You can’t make this stuff up.