Baseball Is Here, College Hoops Is Gone, And Other News

It is a big week in sports and I have been pretty lax in writing anything, so here's what I would have written about if I had not been busy watching baseball all the time.

This just in: Lance Armstrong passed a doping-test on his hair, urine and blood but the French think he cheated. You'd think that by now they'd be used to losing and would take it better than this. Though Armstrong won on French soil seven times and there are only 30-40 countries that can say the same thing.

Also hot off the presses: According to the New York Daily News, 23-year-old Olympic legend Michael Phelps was spotted drinking alcohol and dancing with his girlfriend at a bar in New York City. So that's "news" now-a-days.

Of the 20 starters on the Final Four teams in the NCAA Tournament, there was one freshman, one sophomore, eight juniors and 10 seniors. Is it a coincidence that the last four teams standing were some of the most experienced? That's why having seniors, particularly a senior point guard, is on my Rules to Picking the Tourney (that I have not actually made yet).

I did not pick North Carolina because Roy Williams lied to me through my television about Ty Lawson's toe, but in retrospect, has there ever been a more obvious pick to win it all? They're like an all-star team with a USC-football-like draft class. That said, Carolina has 17 guys on their roster. 8-9 played regularly and all of them will be gone next year. By my count, they will lose 12 guys to graduation or the draft. Williams had better be the recruiter everyone says he is or Kansas' mediocre post-championship run this year after losing their stars will look like a dream come true in Carolina.

During a broadcast of the Mets first ever game at Citi Field (preseason against Boston last Saturday), the announcers kept calling the park "Shea." So at one point Gary Cohen said that they should pledge $10 for every time they inadvertently call it "Shea." Then at the end of the year they will donate it all to charity, and Keith Hernandez broke in after Cohen suggested this and said, "no, let's all go out to dinner!" Now having typed that, it isn't very funny and makes Hernandez seem like a bum, but it was funny as hell at the time. In related news, I am calling the park "New Shea" and there is not a damned thing anyone can do about it.

New Shea does not look like home to me. It was hard to watch the game and know this was in the Mets' stadium, even though everything looked like all the other new stadiums. I miss the barred-off boxes in the lower bowl when foul balls go into the stands. The place is spectacular, but it isn't home. This is gonna take a while.

Pete Carroll, who is apparently incapable of referring to himself in the singular, has recently come out wildly supporting his former USC quarterback Mark Sanchez. Carroll now says Sanchez is a great QB, a great guy, he'll make a great pro, and he gives him his highest recommendation. This is what a coach should do for one of his kids, but the problem is that when Sanchez announced he was leaving USC, Carroll acted like a 5-year-old (which is on par with his typical behavior). So how does Carroll explain the change from, "he's not ready and we think it is a mistake that he's leaving, so now we am going to storm off stage and make him face the media alone," to "Mark's number 1! Mark's number 1!"? Carroll actually said, "We were testing his resolve." Screw you Pete Carroll, and as much as I love my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, screw all things-USC because of you (and by "you," I mean the singular "you," not the plural. As in "You are an ass", not "You are asses").

Plaxico Burress is mercifully gone from the Giants. He'll soon be a Bengal since they only sign felons (enter Tank Johnson). And in case you missed it, Burress actually shot himself in the leg when he went to a nightclub with a handgun tucked into his sweatpants' waistband. The gun slipped down his pants, Burress reached for it, and hit the trigger. Why sweats at a club? Why a gun in a bar? Why a gun at all? How sweatpants were expected to keep the gun up? Why was there no safety on? Why did he not have a permit? How this incident is protected by the Constitution? Your answers are as good as mine. Good riddance.

Gary Sheffield is a Met. Apparently there was not a high enough asshole quotient on the team. If that's the case, success! I do keep hearing that Sheff is actually a good guy and his teammates always like him but he is just bad at breakups (he's left all seven of his teams in ugly ways, including, of course, calling Joe Torre a racist after leaving the Yanks). My only experience with him was when he was a Dodger, he used to put his batting gloves in his back pocket in such a way that the middle finger stuck up. An accident? 9 straight innings, his batted glove flipped off his own home crowd at a game I went to and sat in the bleachers for. And yes, he did use that glove when he batted and then replaced it purposefully. And I noticed it at multiple games. Strange sense of humor or huge a-hole? You make the call. I haven't decided if I will boo him when I see the Mets play this year. Probably will. (Update: Sheffield struck out, taking five straight fastballs in his first at bat as a Met, to lead off the ninth with the top of the lineup coming up behind him, trailing by 2...one more vote in the "boo him" column.)

Hal Steinbrenner said last week that he thought the Yankees' tickets may be a little overpriced. Guess what, you're the boss. Lower them. I think he is exaggerating though. $2625 for a single ticket to a single game that includes food but not alcohol doesn't seem high to me. So what that your average ticket price nearly doubled this year ($41.40 to $72.97). So what that your average price is $22 higher than the next highest team, twice what the Mets charge across town, and triple the league average ($26.24). So what that the standardized "Fan Cost Index" says that a night at the ballpark for a family of four at Yankee stadium is $410.88. So what that a Pabst Blue Ribbon costs $9 and foreign beers cost the GNP of the countries they come from. As Steinbrenner said, it is the Yankees and people expect to pay a little more for the best (or third best, based on last year's AL East Standings). And they can always get the cheap seats for $5...and only have a partial view because they are set behind a restaurant that blocks nearly 1/3 of the field.

Baseball is back of course and the Mets cannot be stopped. (Update: apparently they can be.) Frankie Rodriguez has two saves and Aaron Heilman and Scott Shoenweis are far, far away. Does being 2-0 matter with 160 games remaining? No. Am I getting ready to buy my Mets-Dodgers first round playoff tickets? Yes.

It is Masters Week, so you can't go 5 minutes without hearing about Tiger Woods. And while I do think he is a brat and I don't really like him, I am glad I am around right now to watch him. That dude was told his ACL was torn and his leg was broken and he obviously couldn't play the U.S. Open. So he replied that he was going to win the U.S. Open and then take 8 months off to get back in time for the Masters. And he did. Best competitor ever? I'd take him or Lance in a heartbeat on that one. Also, check out this video of Vijay Singh skipping a shot across a pond at the Masters Par 3 competition on Wednesday...and getting a hole-in-one.

Update: Courtney Paris said that if Oklahoma did not win the national championship in women's hoops, she'd return her scholarship worth $64,000. Apparently in the month since then, she hit the all-you-can-eat cafeteria pretty hard to make sure she'd get her money's worth and wound up getting run into the ground in her Final Four game. The only question now is if she, statistically one of the best players in women's college history, or Tyler Hansbrough, statistically one of the best players in men's college history, will have a shorter pro career.

Finally, Mythbusters had perhaps their best episode of all time last night: "Demolition Derby Special." During the course of the show, they wrecked a bus, two semis, a trailer, a pickup truck, and 10 cars, including dropping one from a helicopter at 3000 feet, dropping three from the highest crane in California, and crashing a rocket-powered sled into one at the speed of sound. Is the science in this show questionable much of the time? Yes. Do I care? Absolutely not.

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.