Good: Marlins win in six. Josh Beckett is a freaking stud. His arm may fall off, he may succumb to all the temptations that will be available to him, or he just may have pitched the best he’ll ever pitch. But I love the fact his first postseason experience was much better that Roger Clemens’ first experience. I’m not sure why I’ve become obsessive about hating Clemens, but I have. Jeff Loria may be one of the worst owners in baseball, and a personification of all that’s wrong with the game, but he ain’t George Steinbrenner. Then again, King George may be good for baseball. If he spends $200 million next year to try to win again, the rest of the game may finally shape up and put some kind of measures in place to help give better opportunities to sign and keep players to the smaller clubs. More on this subject later. Why was George wearing thick, dark sunglasses for night games this week? Trying to hide his wildly dilated pupils from everyone?
Bad: Dallas loses to Tampa Bay convincingly. After the Bucs’ loss last week, this one was easy to call. Hopefully the Tuna gets the ‘Boys back in gear.
Ugly: I was at a friend’s house watching Purdue-Michigan Saturday. Clearly in an effort just to piss me off, ABC didn’t show the KU-K-State score until late in the Purdue game. As soon as I saw 42-6, I thought, “I hope Whittemore didn’t get hurt.” Sure enough… Now we’ll really see how good of a coach Mangino is. Texas A&M and Nebraska were legitimate reaches for wins if our defense showed up in those games. Now he has to keep the team’s attitude up through a tough three game stretch and hope they’re still in a position to play well when Iowa State comes to town. 6-6 still gets you to a bowl game in the Big 12, and even if it’s done with a fifth string QB, it’s a huge lift for the program.
It’s 35 in Indianapolis this morning. No snow, though. Hopefully you all remembered to change your clocks this weekend. That extra hour I have before football starts is brutal. It just begs you to get off your ass and do something, and you end up missing the first half of the early games. As the local NPR announcer said this morning, while the rest of the nation went back to Standard Time, we stayed on Twilight Zone Time.