Commissioner of Sports: November Decrees

Ah, November Baseball

On the NFL's new tackling controversy:

Many NFL players and alumni were upset recently when Commissioner Goodell said that helmet-to-helmet and other illegal hits would result in increased fines and even suspensions.  The common defense of these hits was that "football is a violent game," "that's how we've been taught to tackle since pee-wee football," and "they're interfering with my ability to do my job." 

Each of these points is stupid because the hits that Goodell is cracking down on were already illegal.  Yes, it is a violent game, but there is no need to intentionally inflict injury, and James Harrison infamously said is his intent when he hits someone.  Intentionally attacking someone physically is a crime and as we have seen in the NHL, especially cheap shots on the field can be prosecuted off of it.  No pee-wee football player was taught to dive into another player headfirst - you are taught to keep your head up so you can see if the guy makes a move and you are taught to wrap him up with your arms, not bounce off and hope you hit him hard enough to knock him down. 

On the MLB schedule and playoff expansion:
Major League Baseball's season is unnecessarily long, causing the World Series to tumble in November.  There are two reasons why this has never been remedied: cutting games means cutting revenue and would destroy baseball sacred statistics.  Both are reasonable.  But not enough.

MLB should change to a 140 game schedule, cutting interleague out of the regular season schedule.  The season could start later and this would also allow more time for the World Baseball Classic and the Olympics.  The shorter season would still provide ample time to determine the best playoff teams.  The risk is that owners would raise ticket prices fractionally to make up for the 11-lost home games, but I will address that later. 

Additionally, the playoffs should not be expanded beyond the current 8-team format.  If after 162 (or 140) games, you still can't get yourself into a better position than third place, you are clearly not the best team and shouldn't get to be in the playoffs.  And no World Series game should ever be scheduled to be played in November.  The divisional series should be expanded to best-of-7 series, which will require a tightening of the playoff schedule.  This year teams played 162 games in 182 days (including a 3 day break for the All-Star game).  That means they play a game every 27 hours for six months - 20 rest days.  If a team had played all 19 scheduled playoff games (5+7+7), they would have played a game every 35 hours - 9 rest days.  There is no need for so much time off.  One travel day could be eliminated from each of the three playoff rounds (still leaving two rainout makeup days per round), two games could be added to the LDS round, and the whole 21-game tournament could be completed in fewer days than the current system is - and in October, where it belongs. 

On ticket prices at sporting events:
On one level, sports is a business and business owners have the right to charge whatever they want for their products.  If the price is too high, consumers won't buy and they'll have to drop prices.  Hurray America.  But as any sports fan will tell you, sports is not just a business.  When a deli has a good month, the owner takes home a little extra cash.  That's a business.  When a sports franchise has a good month, millions of fans are taken along for the ride.  When a business succeeds in some huge way, there's a blip on the ticker on your TV.  When a sports teams succeeds in a huge way, there are parades through downtown. 

So since sports is more than a business, it is a part of people's families, it cannot only be controlled by the free market.  From season to season, ticket prices cannot be raised beyond the rise in inflation plus a percentage increase equal to the increase in value for the seats (new HD jumbotron?  That's worth a percentage per seat per game).  Additionally, while it is reasonable to have premier pricing for premier opponents, it is not reasonable to increase pricing based on expected weather or other factors that the team cannot control. 

The San Francisco Giants charge more for a Dodgers series than a Marlins series.  That's reasonable.  But they and others have reportedly considered having pricing increase based on other factors, such as weather forecasts and specific player matchups.  That's not reasonable because they cannot guarantee the thing they are charging more for.  If my seat is in the shade and I am a little cool, I might want a refund.  Or it is too sunny and I get a sunburn.  Or it's a little windier in my section.  Or the forecast is wrong completely.  Or on gameday Roy Halladay decides his shoulder is sore and he wants a few days to rest it.  Or the manager decides to give Albert Pujols the day off.  Or Pujols gets hurt in the first and comes out of the game.  Or he goes 0-4.  In any of these (very reasonable) situations, the fans aren't getting what they paid for and should be entitled to a refund.

On college sports rankings:
Is there anyone left who still thinks the BCS is a good idea or that it is working properly?  During its reign, how many times has it come up with a #1 vs. #2 matchup that was unassailable?  Once?  Twice?  The previous system did not work either, of course, which is what necessitated the change in the first place.  But we now have a pretty good sample size and this experiment doesn't work.  You know what does work for basically every other league at every level of basically every sport in the world?  Playoffs.  Bad for business?  I don't think so.  Will you watch the BCS title game this year?  Sure.  How many of the next best 15 bowls will you watch?  Three?  Four?  How many of the 15 games would you watch in a 16-team tournament?  Twelve?  Thirteen?  Tell advertisers that viewership will be roughly 3-4 times what it is currently and see how bad for business a playoff would be.

The AP recently named their preseason All-America team and for the first time in a long time, the men's team included a freshman.  That sound you hear is the death-knell of such pre-season voting.  I officially bad pre-season All-Conference and All-American voting.  This is even more of a complete guess than Mel Kiper's 2011 Mock Draft that he published in April of 2010.  At least Kiper had seen the kids play before.

On the NFL's various expansion plans:

No American sports league shall expand to include European-based teams until travel from the west coast of North America takes as long to get to the eastern edge of Europe as it does to get to the east coast of North America today, and until the world stops using time zones.  So don't hold your breath. 

Currently the NFL absurdly forces two teams to play one game per season in London.  The schedule is set so that these teams have their bye week after the trip.  How would it work if we had teams playing in Europe regularly?  Byes would have to be scheduled throughout the season for such travel.  And European teams would have to have multiple byes to make up for all the games they have to travel to America for. 

Another thought is that the NFL would have a third conference based in Europe.  Not only would this not eliminate the constant travel problems, it also creates a talent-pool problem.  Teams in the current NFC and AFC play inter-conference games each week.  Would they continue to play these while the 16 new European teams only play one another all season?  Certainly that would be a competitive imbalance, not to mention that adding many more teams would destroy the talent level in the league as whole. 

Additionally, the NFL tried this before.  NFL-Europe failed miserably.  Why would this do any better?

Finally, the NFL will not expand to an 18-game regular season.  Goodell parades around with a stern look on his face and a quick trigger for suspensions and fines when it comes to issues of player safety, but if he had to choose between player safety and more revenue, he'd double the ticket prices and have players play without pads and allow each team to have a sniper on the sidelines.

Yes, players could get injured in Week 1 just as likely as in Week 18, but that's not a good argument.  Russian roulette is dangerous.  Maybe you'll find the bullet on the first try, or maybe on the sixth.  But why not negotiate for more chances to pull the trigger?  By the end of an NFL season, teams are quite lucky to have the key players in tact.  So lucky that the top seeds are even given an extra week just to try and recover a little.  So why make them all beat themselves up for two more weeks when they already barely make it out standing up?

On professional sports labor standoffs:
Basically every time a labor agreement is set to end in any professional sport, both sides accuse the other of unfair negotiation tactics.  Often there is a lockout or strike.  And neither side really needs to budge because they're all millionaires (or billionaires) anyway.  But the fans get screwed.  We miss out on games, playoffs, and even entire seasons.  So from now on, if the two sides cannot negotiate a new deal by the time the current one expires, all the issues being haggled over will be posted on the league's website.  Each side will be given a paragraph per issue to make their case.  Fan will then vote.  The options will be A: Players get their way. B: 50/50. D: Owners get their way.  No other options to confuse it.  Find some fancy way to prevent ballot stuffing and post it online. 

I Still Hate Baseball, But Football Is Making Me Happy

It has been tough to bring myself to writing about sports lately because of my utter disgust at the way the baseball postseason has gone. Not only did the Mets not make it, but the Brewers embarrassed themselves in the Mets' place, and now I have either the Dodgers or Phillies to root for...both of which are among my five least favorite teams in the game. I could also root for the Rays of course, but they are in deep trouble even after winning game 2.

When the final pitch was thrown in Game 1 of the ALCS and the Red Sox had won it on the road in Tampa Bay, I said to a co-worker, "well there's your World Series champ." He told me that it was a little early to say that and the memory of him cursing the Dodgers' season months ago flushed back into my memory. I looked through my sports-notes that I write and found the game.

The Dodgers trailed 2-1 in the 7th inning and were 2-games behind the Diamondbacks at the time. There were 54 games left. I hadn't been watching and asked him the score and he said in all seriousness, "Who cares? They suck. It's all over." This is the voice of reason telling me I am jumping to conclusions about the Red Sox winning the World Series after winning Game 1 of the ALCS on the road.

It is funny watching the playoffs from a relatively neutral observer's position. When Steve Phillips described Brett Myers Game 2 game-winning, 2rbi single as a "Chris Evrett two-hand backhand down the line," I thought to myself how much I would hate him at that moment if I gave a damn about that game.

Sometimes I think that the TV stations are having contests to see who are the least knowledgeable, least well-spoken, most arrogant people they can put on the screen and still get ratings. It is like a social experiment to find out if the sports are really important enough for us to watch despite being angered at their incompetence the entire time. Seriously, how else can you account for Chip Caray, Stu Lantz, Shannon Sharpe and DeMarco Farr's careers?

On the lighter side, the Redskins and Cowboys both lost in painful and embarrassing ways this weekend, and the Eagles narrowly escaped another tough loss. And the Giants are now everyone's favorite team. This does scare me a bit because being the one that no one respected fit their team psyche well and this is a new mode all-together. But this Giants team doesn't seem like the type to have an ego-induced collapse. A huge win over the Browns tonight will make me happy. No one seems to be mentioning it, but the Giants are the team that pretty much destroyed the Browns' season earlier this year.

If you remember, the Browns were one of the up-and-comers last year and actually had more Pro Bowlers than the Giants did. Big things were expected from the great Derek Anderson, the warrior Kellen Winslow, and the talented trio of Brylon Edwards, Donte Stallworth and Jamal Lewis. They were going to score a lot of points and have a bruising, physical defense. Then they went to New York and the Giants surged out to a 30-3 lead early in the second quarter and knocked Anderson out before before pulling their starters. Then the city of Cleveland sunk meekly into Lake Eerie.

Of course, they could be out for revenge and could ruin the Giants 19-0 season tonight back in Cleveland. The Browns are coming off of a bye week and at 1-3, this is pretty much a must-win if they want to play in January at all. But for the Giants, they are two-up in the loss column and have almost already made the playoffs. But I don't see the upset happening. Anderson has thrown twice as many picks and touchdowns and his longest completion of the year was barely a first down. Winslow has just been released from the hospital after an undisclosed illness (that allegedly had to do with one of two reproductive organs and the term "grapefruit sized"). Jamal Lewis has one touchdown and is averaging a little over three yards-per-carry. All of which has culminated in the defense spending more time on the field than Chad Johnson has spent coming up with touchdown celebrations that he doesn't get to use.

Giants 27-Browns 13

No More Divisional Series - No More Frank TV Ads

Really, there is only one thing that I take away from watching pretty much all of the LDS games: I have never hated any television show that I have never watched more than I hate Frank TV. And that includes that Tyler Perry show, which apparently uses the same advertising company. Who the hell is Tyler Perry to have "Tyler Perry's [fill in the movie/show name here]" as the title everything he works on? Seriously, who is he?

But I digress. Frank Caliendo is pretty funny. The Charles Barkley impersonation on TNT when he was talking about Kim Jung-il was fantastic. His John Madden on Kevin & Bean every week is better than the real John Madden. I would have voted for his President Bush. And then, there are the rest of his characters. None of them look like who they are supposed to look like at all, and a few of them kinda sound like it.

There is one ad (the one where the character asks Frank for a hug) in which I have no clue who he is supposed to be. It seem like a cross between Robert De Niro, William Shatner and Robin Williams.

The point of this rant is that I can't believe that TBS thinks this shotgun-style ad campaign can possibly work. I love ice cream. But if I had two servings of it during every commercial break for 3-10 hours a day for a week straight, I would probably never want ice cream again.

Towards the end of the week, they started to release commercials where Caliendo sorta apologized to viewers, saying basically, "I know you are sick of these commercials, but watch my show." Then apparently yesterday he released a statement saying that if the ratings were better for the show, they wouldn't have to bombard us with ads. To use a medical metaphor, the reason that people don't race out at every chance they get to have a colonoscopy is not because it isn't advertised enough. So maybe if the show didn't suck, we'd watch it. After all, there have been lots of shows that did really well in the ratings that did not have up to 10 commercials an hour.

They are turning off their audience and while I would probably watch the show every now and then when I caught it, I will now go out of my way to avoid it.

The saddest part of all of this, of course, is that the rest of the playoffs are televised on Fox and they are the grand-daddies of this type of advertising. So I hope you are excited to see the stars of Fringe, House, Prison Break, 24, Bones, Terminator and the whole slew of reality shows in which the titles are complete sentences as they sit in the stands reading magazines because they were sent there so Joe Buck could "happen to notice them in the crowd" at coincidentally the same point of every game, which is also right when a promo for that show was about to air. And with games in L.A. this time, it could be even worse than normal.

Most Overrated: Cubs, Torre Or Francona?

The baseball playoffs are not exactly going as I had hoped. For one thing, Omar Minaya is ruining my life and the Mets are not in the playoffs. For another, the only teams I don't like keep winning.

Although there are two sides to the coin that was the Dodgers-Cubs series. On the one hand, the freaking Dodgers (who let's face it, are a crappy team having a good week) won the series and are in the NLCS. This makes me sad because it has been fun getting to tease obnoxious Dodger fans by saying, "At least the Mets have won a series in the last two decades." No more fun there. On the other hand, I can now pretty much expect to stop reading and hearing about the Mets "collapse" this year because of what the Cubs have done. Sure the Mets led the East by a few games and were out of the Wild Card race entering September. Sure the Phillies went nuts and passed the Mets, while the Mets ran down the Brewers before tiring at the end and getting passed up in the last two days. But the Cubs had the best record in the league and were a sure thing to make the World Series since Spring Training. Thank you Cubbies!

Joe Torre is getting a ton of credit for the Dodgers' late success, as he always got in New York, and while I like Torre a lot, I think it is pretty unfounded that he is considered such a managerial genius. His records on teams that did not have the highest payroll that year (including this year) is pretty poor. When he won in New York, he had the perfect teams: youth/experience/defense/pitching/chemistry all rolled together. As his payrolls grew, his players got more talented, his chemistry waned and his teams couldn't win it all.

So he came to L.A. and took over an extraordinarily average team. They were inconsequential for most of the season and reports started to leak out that he and third base coach Larry Bowa were not happy with the Dodgers because the team stunk. Apparently they were unaware that it was their job to do something about it. Then they got Manny Ramirez (and Casey Blake) dumped into their laps and the team suddenly surges, with Torre suddenly a genius again. The common denominator between their pathetic first half and their torrid September was Torre and the everyone but Manny basically. So why is Torre getting credit for the change?

I think managers get far too much credit when things go well. Really what do they do besides get out of the way of guys who get hot? Pitching coaches and hitting coaches deserve credit/blame more often than managers because they tinkering with people's games. They are instructing. How many managers actually do anything during the course of a game that is not by the book? Pitching changes, pinch-hitters, when to steal, etc. It is all predetermined and everyone in the building knows when they're coming. But managers can make unusual decisions which either make them lucky geniuses or get them fired.

In Game 3 of the Angels-Red Sox series Terry Francona made a very strange move. Francona is considered a great manager, but he has also benefited by spectacular pitching and Manny Ramirez/David Ortiz in their primes. A horse could have managed these teams. The score was tied in the eleventh, and Ortiz was on first base. The series-winning run was 270 feet from home in the form of a nearly 300-pound man. Clearly the right move was to pinch-run, then you can either steal second and score on a single (like how the Sox beat the Yanks in THE series), or bunt him over and score on a single, which was less likely since their had the heart of their line-up up, and for some strange reason, logical decision-making is thrown out the window when the guy hitting has a 1 in 15 chance of hitting a homer (and incidentally, a 3 in 4 chance of making an out). Even if you do not steal or bunt, a pinch-runner could go first-to-third on a base hit, and Ortiz could not.

But Francona didn't pinch run for the portly Ortiz. Maybe he didn't have a deep enough bench left. Then it was first and second with two outs...certainly you pinch run for him in this scenario! Screw the bench, the game ends with a speedy runner on second and any hit...what is the bench being saved for if not a game-winning hit!? But no pinch runner came on.

Then Mike Lowell walked and the bases were loaded with Ortiz at third with two outs. Not much need for a pinch-runner for Ortiz now. Even he could score from third on a ball into the outfield. So out comes a pinch-runner...for the guy on first!

I understand that Lowell is slow and has a bad hip so he's really slow, and having a speedy runner there makes it harder for the Angels to have an easy out at second on a ball in the infield. That is not a bad play. But can a fast guy at first really be expected to beat out a ball to the short-stop? And if he does, won't they just throw to first for an easy out anyway? And why was Ortiz running for himself all that time if you had a pinch-runner to waste all along?

With speed on first, the pitcher has to respect it and worry about it and throw over and be distracted. With Ortiz there, no problem. With speed on second, the pitcher is even more stressed because he knows any base hit means the series is over.

You can't say it actually cost the Sox the game because Ortiz did not get thrown out at the plate, or make a base-running blunder to end the inning. But it definitely changed the situation for the pitcher and made it easier for him to relax and focus on the guy at the plate. Terrible move by Francona and the Sox eventually lost in the next inning.

I Hate Baseball

Today is one of those days that I wish it was socially acceptable for a grown man to cry in public at the drop of a hat like those two guys in the double-stroller in the Taco Bell commercial.

While the word "collapse" seems to be the word-o-the-day for sports writers and talk radio folks when talking about the Mets, I hardly think that that is fair. After all, the Mets were 13-12 in September. By comparison, the Brewers (who are the heroic September-survivors) went 10-16. Yes, the Mets went .500 for the final month and that wasn't enough to get it done, but keep in mind that they were out of the Divisional race by 7.5 games two months ago and out of Wild Card by four games three weeks ago and roared back into both races, surviving until the last day.

That said, they should never have been in either race and should have been able to run away with the division in June, thus making September irrelevant and that is why Omar Minaya absolutely needs to be fired. Of course if you have been paying attention, you saw that he apparently was just given an extension.

Minaya takes flak from some fans for supposedly being too Latin-player-centric in his personnel moves. Personally, I think this is ridiculous. His flaw is that he is too over-the-hill-player-centric and expects big name moves to solve all of the small problems. Anyone can sign big names to huge-dollar contracts. A good general manager find diamonds in the rough, and Minaya doesn't. Many of the star players on the team had good years, in fact David Wright and Jose Reyes had arguably their best years, but there were so many glaring holes that they simply couldn't overcome them.

The team won 89 games despite some huge, obvious problems that were clearly evident in last year's team and not fixed in the offseason or at the trade-deadlines. There was no doubt that the bullpen was a problem last year, yet Minaya made no significant move to fix it. It is unfair to pin the whole season on the bullpen, but look at it statistically: this season there were 654 blown saves in 1837 save opportunities in the Majors - so saves are blown 36% of the time. Among playoff teams (including the Twins and White Sox since they are both still alive), they blew 195 out of 600 opportunities, 33%. Mets relievers blew 31 saves in 72 opportunities - an average of 43%! They blew one save almost every five games. Essentially, they lost one game that they had a lead in late per week. By comparison, the Phillies blew 16 of 66 chances, 24%. Had the Mets' bullpen completed this task at the League average, they would have won the East by three games. At their divisional rivals Phillies' average, they would have won the division by 12 games, won 103 games, and had the best record in Baseball.

But we all knew the bullpen stunk. This isn't news. So the Mets bullpen was far worse than the league average, let alone a playoff team's average. The offense was among the league's best, so that should have cancelled it out. Or were they? Of the players who usually started for the Mets (Ryan Church, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado), all had good seasons. They made up for 73% of the home runs hit and 63% of the RBI by Mets this season. They also made up about the same percentage of the team's payroll. By no means am I suggesting that any of these five should be dealt, but the point is that nearly any G.M. with this payroll could have found these types of players. The problem I have with Minaya is that the role-players all stink.

The team was decimated by injuries during the course of the season. Four starting left-fielders were injured for the remainder of the year in succession (Moises Alou, Angel Pagan, Trot Nixon and Fernando Tatis). Church was injured and missed nearly half of the year as well. But Minaya did hardly anything to replace these players and in the end, the Mets bench consisted of players like Endy Chavez (.267), Robinson Cancel (.245), Argenis Reyes (.218), and Marlon Anderson (.210). Most of the players who were injured for significant time (Alou, Orlando Hernandez, Damion Easley, Tatis, Nixon, Pedro Martinez, Billy Wagner and Anderson) are in the waning years of their careers and injuries like these could easily have been foreseen.

In the offseason, Minaya traded for Johan Santana to fix the starting rotation. This was a good fix for a huge concern for 2007, but anyone would have made the same move. Minaya also planned on using Martinez and Hernandez despite that it was clear neither would be any use in 2008. No players were brought in to fix the hemorrhaging bullpen and it proved disastrous. Ryan Church replaced Shawn Green and was only a moderate improvement (thanks largely to his injury) and Brian Schneider was brought in to replace Paul Loduca and was hardly an improvement. Midseason, the manager was fired and this proved to be a key move that catapulted the team into the playoff race that they'd eventually lose by a nose. However, they should have already won that race by that time and Minaya is to blame.

My only solace in this whole situation is these three things:
1) Dodger fans and the L.A. media seem to whole-heartedly believe that this is their year despite not apparently realizing that their "amazing, Manny Ramirez-fueled August/September run" is the seventh best record among the eight* playoff teams in that time. They are actually worse than the Brewers who overcame a massive collapse to survive, and the Mets who supposedly blew it down the stretch! Whoops.
2) While CC Sabathia's 2 wins, 26 K's and 1.88 ERA over the last two weeks ultimately doomed the Mets, they helped my fantasy team win the league.
3) My Giants won the Super Bowl, so for at least a decade more, I am good to go.


*Winning percentages in August and September: Red Sox .641, Rays .618, Cubs .615, Phillies .611, Angels .593, Brewers .569, Dodgers .556, White Sox/Twins .519; Mets .574

Being A Recovering Alcoholic And A Baseball Fan Couldn't Be Easy

On Wednesday, I wrote about how the Mets game from Tuesday night felt like one of those turning point games that might be the driving force that pushes the team. I don't think this team is winning a World Series unless the bullpen starts to channel John Franco (that is to say, loading the bases is fine...giving up a bases-clearing triple is not). But it did look like they would at least overcome the September 2007 demons and get back into the playoffs.

Then on Wednesday night they came out and blew a four run lead and left the winning run on third base after he hit a leadoff triple in the ninth. In fact, they had men on third with no outs in each of the last three innings. Ouch. And of course the Brewers won on a walk-off homer to tie up the Wild Card race. Ouch! To say the least, I did not want to acknowledge that any of this happened, let alone write about sports yesterday, so I took a day to regroup.

And the funny thing is that now that the Mets and Brewers have both played one more game, and each won theirs in spectacular fashion, it is painfully clear that all this magic and heroics really do have nothing to do with what happens the next day. Sure they make folks feel more confident, and confidence is crucial, but so it hitting and pitching and fielding.

The Brewers had a come-from-behind win and won it on a walk-off grand slam in the 10th. Their second walk-off homer in two games. You don't think they feel like a team of destiny? The Mets had their amazing win on Tuesday and then last night had Ryan Church score on the strangest play at the plate in history to complete a three-run comeback. As a rainstorm that had already causes a game in DC to be cancelled water-logged Shea Stadium, they played on into the 9th when Carlos Beltran hit a game-winning shot off the glove of the first baseman that stopped dead in the soaked grass that the right fielder couldn't get to before the winning run scored. They earned a split with the best team in the League. You think they aren't feeling good about themselves? Does Destiny have a favorite?

This is all kinda like how fans pray for their teams, or athletes pray for themselves before events - like God is only listening to one side of the argument. Granted, when it is Boston College playing Miami, God clearly has a side. And He apparently does not like Arod either so whatever team he is on, God's on the other team. (greatest player ever perhaps...not a sniff of a World Series title).

There is only one way that the idea of Destiny intervening can be upheld this season. And that is that the Mets and Brewers both make the playoffs, meaning the Mets have to make up a game on Philly in the last three days. After all, the Rays are the AL East winners, the Yankees are playing golf, and the Twins are about to complete a miracle comeback to win the Central despite having traded away Johan Santana among others in the off season. So amazing things happen. Of course, God doesn't watch American League baseball, so you can't blame it on Him.

The funny thing in all of this is that as a fan, I have no idea what to do with myself from day to day. Wednesday night I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach and yesterday I couldn't even watch ESPN because I hated seeing the ticker show that the Wild Card was tied. Now the Mets pick up one more win, and even though they are still in the exact same position - tied - I feel like they are sure to get it done. I guess the easiest way to calm myself on this rollercoaster is to take solace in the fact that I am not a USC fan.

40-Year Old Curse Rears Its Head At Shea

In Tuesday's Mets-Cubs game, the Mets trailed 2-0 in the 5th. A loss here and they could have found themselves out of the race in the East and tied for the wild card. David Murphy had just been hit by a pitch and the Mets' pitcher, Johan Santana came up to bat. Santana first showed bunt but wound up swinging away. He hit a slow roller right back to the pitcher, but the bat broke and the head of the bat went bounding back up the middle with the ball.

Needless to say, the pitcher couldn't field the ball and jumped out of the way of the bat and left the grounder for the short stop to field (still in time for a double play). That's where it got weird.

During the course of a season, fans (and likely many players) see so many moments that as they happen, seem to be potential turning points. Some turn up, some down. We often see unusual, bizarre, or big hero/goat plays as the ones that mean something significant. Objectively, you could pretty easily say that very few of them really has the impact that we subjectively imbue them with. In fact, a skeptic would argue that there is no such thing as momentum or turning points or luck or curses. But if the players think there is, then who know what kind of effects they could have?

For instance, look at last year's New York Giants. At this point, the story of the season is pretty well documented but why is it that that team seemingly had so many important turning points on the way to an historic championship? Their defense had been run through like a tissue on a train track for the first two-and-a-half games until suddenly they held on first and goal from their own one-yard line against the Redskins and it all turned around. Then when they sat on the brink of missing the playoffs, a hurricane seemingly hit Buffalo and they pulled off an ugly win on the road in week 16. Then they went against convention and played their starters in a loss to the Pats in week 17. Then improbable play after improbable play happened, capped off by perhaps the most improbable play in NFL history...and suddenly they were the champs.

But why did Destiny choose them? Was it karma punishing Tiki Barber for retiring early and bad-mouthing his former team and quarterback (who would wind up winning the Super Bowl MVP)? Was it that the team didn't fall apart and bicker after that bad start, but rather banded together and played for each other and not for themselves? Was it Jeremy Shockey and Mathias Kiwanuka going down, Plaxico Burress playing hurt and Barber not being there that forced so many others to go above and beyond? Was it a final reward to end Michael Strahan's career? Was it favorable scheduling and good old fashioned dumb luck?

If after about week 10, you had asked fans of all 32 teams if their team might be the team with the magic - the team who had the right turning points, I imagine you would get a yes from no less than 20 of them. No doubt right now there are Dolphin fans envisioning a Super Bowl win this year after last week's demolition of the Pats.

It is the same way with baseball, only the season is so long that any rational fan (yes, I realize that that is a contradiction in terms) would admit that a play like what happened to Johan Santana last night would mean nothing if it happened in June. But on September 23?

In the last month, I have seen about 20 turning points for the Mets. On September 1st, they were red hot and had opened their largest division lead of the season. This would avenge the collapse of last September. Suddenly the wheels fell off the already shaky bullpen and no lead was safe. They lost two in-a-row including the first half of a double header in New York against the Phillies. Their lead was gone. Then they won the night cap and crushed Washington twice. They they lost a series to the lowly Braves and scored 3 runs in two games against those same Nationals that they'd scored 23 runs in two games against the week before. Then Jerry Manuel joked that Johan Santana would throw 170 pitches so we wouldn't have to see the bullpen and everyone was laughing and the team won three in-a-row and everything was ok again. Then they couldn't beat Atlanta again and the Cubs came to town with the best record in the league and beat the Mets in New York with a scrub starter. They were 2.5 out in the East, and just a game up on the re-awakening Brewers for the Wild Card.

Then Johan Santana's bat broke and fended off not one, but two Cubs from picking up the ball. The bat actually danced along with the ball like some bounding black cat, scaring away the pitcher and then actually hitting the ball again and forcing the short stop to abandon hope of getting an out. Was it the ghost of the black cat that ran out onto the same field against these same Cubs that marked the turning point for those Mets 39 years ago?

If there is to be one last fall of Miracles at Shea, that play will be where the magic started. The savior traded for who would erase the memory of last September stepped onto the mound to erase the memory of last weekend. And he hit the ball that miraculously didn't result in a double play. And then he was the one who crossed the plate after David Wright's two-run single to tie the game. And then you just knew he wasn't going to let anyone else score against him that night.

And on a play where Johan Santana got two hits, something truly improbable may have happened. Maybe not. If the Giants are any example, it seems that one amazing, miraculous, lucky, strange play is not really enough to make any difference in the long run. It takes a run of them strung together either by divine intervention or an overwhelming confluence of effort, ability and timing. Maybe last night's play will spark a big run, but then aren't Brewers fans saying the same thing about Prince Fielder's walk-off homer? As they say: Momentum is tomorrow's starting pitcher, so if Oliver Perez hits for the cycle tonight, maybe we will have a better indication of how things are going to go.

Two Monumental Occurences Right Under Our Noses

With the Ryder Cup happening, this weekend vaults from another great Fall sports weekend (college football, NFL, baseball races) to one of the year's best. But I am not here to write about the Ryder Cup or football or baseball in general. Rather I just want to make sure that we are watching closely as two significant events are about to occur in baseball.

The Tampa Bay Rays are going to win the American League East.
The New York Yankee are going to miss the playoffs.

These two points cannot be oversold and need to not be undersold. Both are about as significant as anything that has happened in sports in a long time (besides the Giants beating the Patriots in the way that they did with the significance that was attached).

The Rays looked like they were just about to fold as their lead vanished and they had two more games left in Boston. Then they quickly won both and jumped back out to a two game lead. It's over. Two years ago this team lost 101 games. The best they have ever done in franchise history was win 70 games. Right now they have already won 90.

It is not like they have been on the cusp and finally put it all together. It is not like they have been a middling also-ran and signed a big name to put them over the top. It is not like they have been hovering at or around .500 for years and finally made it happen. They have never been anything but terrible in their franchise history. They made no major free-agent signings and didn't even make any trade-deadline moves. And they are beating the Red Sox in the midst of their powerhouse era and trouncing the Yankees despite their payroll being something like six times what the Rays pay. What is happening in Tampa is nothing like what the Marlins did for their two titles - they bought their rings. I cannot remember any other team in any sport doing anything remotely similar to what the Rays are doing.

And speaking of those Yankees, perhaps they are not as bad as people make them out to be. After all, they are 10 games over .500 and have suffered through many injuries. Or maybe they are as bad as they get ripped for being...they are in fourth place, and everyone has lots of injuries. And besides, they will finish the season with their supposedly crippled pitching staff allowing over 50 runs fewer than they did in any of the last four years. The problem is that their vaunted, overpaid, aging offense will score almost 200 fewer runs than they did last year.

But all those numbers and comparisons are not the salient point, which is that the Yankee are going to miss the playoffs. Derek Jeter is going to miss the playoffs. I have not been enjoying this nearly enough all year. They never really were in the race. When they struggled early on, we all said, "Yeah but they always struggle. Then they always come back." But they didn't. They just kept being a little above average, and falling further and further behind. And I never stopped to smell the roses. But now, for the final 10 games, I am going to live it up. The Yankees and Braves are both in fourth place. I won't know what to do with myself next month when I have no one to root against.

Except the Red Sox. And the Dodgers. And the Phillies. And the Cubs.

Ok, so I have people to root against. But I will also have lots of good guys too: Mets, Angels, Twins and Rays! But seriously, the Yankees are going to be eliminated from the Playoff chase by the end of this weekend which makes it one of the truly great sports weekends of the year!

Not-So-Sweet Seventeen

There are 17 games left in the Major League Baseball regular season. For most fans, this just means that the only have to ignore their team's crappy season for two more weeks before they can move on and focus fully on the NFL. For some, it means that they only have two more weeks to see if their boys can pull it out and get into the playoffs. For Mets fans, after what happened in 2007, "17-games left" means a little something different.

As a sports fan, particularly as a baseball fan, there are many numbers that stick out in my mind. 755 was the home run record. 41 was Jackie Robinson's number. Cy Young won 511 games. Cal Ripken, Jr. played in 2,632 consecutive games. Nolan Ryan had 5,714 strikeouts. Pete Rose had 4,256 hits. Then there are the landmarks: batting .300, the 30-30 club, 100 rbi, 300 K's, 300 wins, 3000 hits, 500 homers.

As a Mets fan, I have my own list of numbers: 1962, 40-120, 1969, 1986, Game 6 and many others, but sadly the number 17 has been replaced on my list...it used to stand for Keith Hernandez.. Plaxico Burress did his best trying to give it positive connotations for me by scoring the Super Bowl winning touchdown with a 17 on his shirt, but sadly, the number is still tainted.

I have a friend who is another Mets fan, who is one of those people who wants everyone fired all the time. He can't stand anyone on the team; they are all a bunch of primadonna chokers. No heart. No fire. No talent. Over-the-hill. So when this guy whined throughout the second half of 2007 that the Mets were gonna blow it, I always had to take it with a grain of salt. "They have a huge lead and they are playing fine...not great...but fine," I thought.

My wife works with this guy and she would come home occassionally and ask me what was wrong with the Mets because the guy had been particularly nuts that day. I can specifically remember one conversation with her in the beginning of September, 2007. She asked how far behind they were, and I said, "Behind? They are way out in the lead! He is nuts. He hates Willie Randolph for being too calm when everyone loved him for that same trait last year. The Mets are fine. They're in the playoffs for sure; they may not win it all, but they are in."

It has been pretty well documented that with 17 games left, the Mets had a seven game lead in the East and then the wheels came off. They had played mediocre baseball for most of the season leading up to that point, and finally they bored the baseball gods enough that they turned on the team and everything went wrong. Within days, you could feel this momentum building as the season plumetting down the tubes.

Still I reassured my bride (and possibly myself), "They are still way out in the lead. They would need to lose a game every other day to miss out and they'd still probably get the Wild Card. They are in the playoffs." As it turned out, they pretty much lost a game every other day and on that last fateful Sunday, the ball (and season) rested in Tom Glavine's experienced left hand. Then that bastard completed the sobatage he had been serruptitiously working on since arriving in Port St. Lucie in 2003.

I was working at CBS on their NFL coverage that last day and was trying to figure out if we had a satellite available so I could watch the Mets game. Sadly (or perhaps, luckily) there was no way to get the game on since we were recording all of the NFL games for the show. So I had to follow along with the Mets game on the internet. Glavine allowed 73 runs in the top of the first inning to the Florida Marlins, a team that had was 3-158 on the season (don't quote me on those stats).

In their last 17 games, the Mets allowed the Division to be stolen out from under them, and now with 17 games to go this year, the Mets again sit atop the East with the Phillies on their heals. Only this time the lead is only three.

From an objective point of view, I can see that the collapse of 2007 and the subsequent mistrust of the number 17, are the kinds of things that make sports great. They are the reasons we root in the first place. It is like getting your heart broken by a girl - you need that in order to really enjoy the good times later. But from a subjective point of view, I will tell you right now that if they blow it again, I am going to punch Tom Glavine in the face, steal a crane from Citi Field and raze Shea Stadium to the ground.