Tag: MLB (Page 7 of 9)

This is going to be a very, very good World Series, I think. Two teams that absolutely deserve to be there. Both are great on offense, have spotty starting pitching (I’m not ready to accept Schilling will be able to provide two starts at full health yet), great bullpens. They play similar styles of baseball. They have arguably the two most rabid fan bases in the Majors. Loads of history on both sides of the field. I’m very excited about this one, mostly because for the first time in many a Series, my rooting interest won’t be primarily against one team or the other. I predicted the Cards in seven a few weeks ago. I think it goes at least six games for certain. I honestly think you can flip a coin and get your winner.

Paul Hamm keeps his gold medal and the Red Sox beat the Yankees. The downside to all of this is I think M. is a Yankees fan. She cried when David Ortiz went yard Sunday night. She cried when he knocked in the game winning run Monday. She cried when A-Rod was called out on the play at first base Tuesday. And last night, she cried when Johnny Damon hit his grand slam. I fear she, like so many other well-meaning women, has bought into the myth of Jeter. S. isn’t nearly as concerned as I am. “I’m sure you’ll teach her to hate them.” “Yeah, I just need to make her a fan of a team that loses to them every year in her formative years. That should do the trick.” In a way she is keeping up a family tradition. The Yankees used to make me cry a lot too.
Regardless of which team wins tonight’s NLCS game seven, it’s going to be a fascinating World Series to watch. All three managers can be described as “interesting”. Tony LaRussa can suck the life out of any game by totally over-managing it. Both Phil Garner and Terry Francona have made decision after decision in the playoffs that made even the most casual of observers scratch their heads. Somehow, Francona has survived.
How about Peter Gammons positively gushing after the game on ESPN last night? Gabe Kapler has a great line when he appeared with Gammons live, “Come on, Peter, you can admit that you’re a Red Sox fan now!” I’m really not sure why people would be shocked by that, although he could have been a little more professional. He’s the best baseball writer in the game and has been covering the Sox for 30 years. I think he’s allowed a little fun.
In speaking with Cardinals fan D. Smith earlier this week, I predicted a Roger Clemens meltdown today. Since he’s in the NL now, I can see him reaching base, having to go into second hard to break up a double play, and taking out Edgar Renteria a little too hard. A scuffle ensues, and Roger is left protesting to the umpires, “I thought he was the bag!” Go crazy Cardinals fans!

If you told me last Friday that the Red Sox would be able to force a game seven, I would have slapped you in your face. Hard and with impunity. Yet here we are, in a baseball fan’s nirvana: game six of the incredibly entertaining NLCS this afternoon and then the final showdown between the Yanks and BoSox serving as the nightcap. Looks like another evening with no studying is in my future.
The only downside to the ALCS going seven is the hype machine has been cranked into overdrive. “Red Sox. Yankees. Game Seven. Anything can happen!” By default, can’t anything happen in every baseball game? Even if we had Pedro circa 1999 and Kevin Brown circa 1998 on the mound tonight, it could just as easily be a 13-12 game as it could be a 1-0 15 inning epic. Calm down, folks. I know it’s exciting that we’re at this point, and so many crazy things have happened that it’s tough to gauge who has the advantage, but it goes without saying this is a big game. We don’t need Peter Gammons hyperventilating and telling us this is the most anticipated baseball game OF ALL TIME! (Said in Mohammed Ali voice.)
Go Cards, Go Sox.

I’ve watched almost every inning of the last three Yankees-Red Sox games. I’ve taken copious notes of things I could write about. But sitting in a basement in Carmel, IN and being a Yankee hater isn’t like being at Fenway as a lifetime Sox fan. I recommend (big surprise) Bill Simmons’ excellent summary of the absolutely incredible games four and five.

The surreal life at Fenway

As a Yankee hater, I’ve become a defacto Sox fan over the past few years. They are certainly an entertaining group of guys to watch. When looking at them through the prism of “How does sports relate to life?” I think the Red Sox represent the struggle each of us has at some point with a nemesis. There may be something you love and are good at, yet there’s was always someone who was a little bit better. Who was a little luckier. Who was a little better financed in their pursuit of excellence. We all know what it’s like to be the Red Sox (Red Sox fans are a whole other story) and I think that makes their epic battles with the Yankees even more compelling. As if the drama on the field wasn’t enough already, I suppose.

One classic Fox moment I had to share that I’m sure most of you missed since it took place before 5:00 PM CDT yesterday. In the third or fourth inning, Pedro Martinez buzzed Hideki Matsui high and tight. The Boston crowd went nuts celebrating Pedro’s attempt to throw the .897 batting Matsui off his game. Fox proceeds to find shots of as many Asian Sox fans cheering as possible. One woman alone was shown three different times. What, are all Asians supposed to cheer for Matsui regardless of their team affiliation? Is Fox trying to drive a wedge into the Asian viewer demographic? When Pedro hit A-Rod, they didn’t find every Hispanic face in the crowd to gauge their response. I doubt it means anything, but I found it hilarious and typical of Fox.w

OK, I can admit when I’m wrong. Fox knows what they’re doing. They knew the Red Sox had no chance to compete with the Yankees, so they’re giving disheartened haters like myself something else to watch.
What’s going to hurt worse for Red Sox fans? Last year, when it took a small miracle to get past Oakland just to play the Yankees, then they were five outs from winning and only lost on an 11th inning home run? Or this year, when they had swept through the ALDS; their Yankee killer basically twists his ankle, rendering him lame and ineffective; and on paper they looked like the stronger team but they get swept or lose in five? If the Patriots lose their next game, Boston’s going to be a dangerous town to live in.

Forget all the asinine cross-promotion (Am I the only one who noticed the guy in the Homer mask knew exactly when to jump up as the Fox cameras highlighted him last night?) and exploding scoreboard features. The fact they’re airing Game 1 of the NLCS at the same time as Game 2 of the ALCS tonight is probably the dumbest thing they’ve ever done. After two hours on the couch with M. watching ESPNews, consensus is Fox made the decision to compete against itself for, shockingly, ad revenue related issues and the desire to avoid an early afternoon broadcast on the West Coast. Allow me to retort:
* How does airing two games at the same time increase ad revenues? Aren’t you splitting the audience by doing that? There’s no way they charge as much on Fox Sports Net as they do on big Fox. In some markets, they’re pushing at least half the audience (totally made up, unscientific number) away from the flagship network to a cable outlet. In addition, viewers, now having the choice to watch a different game, will probably switch away during commercials rather than sit there and soak up the encouragement to consume. Seems to me like you’re losing viewers during the exact time advertisers want them most.
* Fox has a limited national lineup in the afternoon. Isn’t a single prime time game plus afternoon revenue you can’t normally count on going to be greater than those received from a split audience at night?
* There are no West Coast teams left in the playoffs. WHY DOES THAT AUDIENCE GET VETO POWER OVER THE REST OF THE COUNTRY???
* There’s a Presidential Debate tonight. So an audience that would already be reduced by a certain amount is watered down further by Fox’s idiocy.

I do understand how Fox gets significantly more ad revenue during prime time than during the afternoon, and with the amount they’re spending to secure broadcast rights, they need to maximize those revenues. I don’t see how tonight’s broadcasts do that, though. This decision just proves that business decisions will almost always trump the interests of fans. It’s bad enough that after all the pregame activities, games usually don’t start until 8:20 Eastern. Throw in the grinding pace of playoff games and you’re asking half the country to stay up watching games well past 11:00 PM local time. Now we can’t even get a late afternoon/early evening game to enjoy at a reasonable time. Fox did show game six of the ALCS in the afternoon last year, so perhaps things will improve as the series progress. I’m not going to hold my breath, though. One of the great things about being a baseball fan in the 80s was coming home from school in October and watching the last half of an LCS game that started anywhere from 12:00 to 3:00 Eastern, then catching the other LCS game that night. Of course, Fox wasn’t around then. Idiots.

I never thought I’d have to give up on Game One of the ALCS before the 4th inning even started. I can only hope this was a little like Atlanta’s outburst in Game One of the 1996 World Series and the Sox right things tomorrow. I was contemplating the long-term effects of a Yankees loss, though, and am a little concerned. The two biggest names on the free agent list for this off season are Carlos Beltran and Carl Pavano. If the Yankees lose either this series or the World Series, I estimate there is a 99.9% chance the Yankees will sign both players (and jack up Pedro Martinez’s price so it ruins the Red Sox payroll as well). If they win another title, though, the odds drop to 99.5%. So should I want the Yanks to go ahead and win out to give the rest of baseball a glimmer of hope? Will even the most myopic of Yankees bandwagon fans jump ship in disgust over a $300 million payroll? For some reason, I doubt it. Just in case anyone accuses me of jumping on the anti-Yankees bandwagon, I’ve been hating them since 1977. This ain’t anything new. And in case you accuse me of jealousy, think again. Maybe it was jealousy in the era when the Royals had an equal or higher payroll than the Yanks. Now it’s pure hate; there’s nothing envious about it.

I used to really be into omens, mostly concerning up-coming basketball games, but I was never afraid to extend them into other sports. As an example, the first day of the 1993 NCAA tournament, it snowed in Lawrence, KS. I got very excited, because the last time it had snowed in the KC area on the first day of the tournament was 1988. KU did make the Final Four in ’93, but the karma didn’t translate into another title. So it really wasn’t an omen, but for three weeks I thought it was and told anyone within earshot about it.
Anyway, two potential baseball omens have been rattling around my head and I feel obligated to go on record with them. First off, our bird feeder has been host to even more cardinals than usual lately. A few days I’ve looked out and seen three cardinals on the feeder and several more in the trees and shrubs around it. Could this be a harbinger of more good news for fans of the St. Louis Baseball Club? The second omen is a little more universal. The Houston Astros finally winning a playoff series has to mean something to the Boston Red Sox. I just can’t figure out if it’s a sign that baseball history will shift this post-season, or if all the transforming karma has already been sucked out of the playoffs. It’s gotta mean something though, right?
Speaking of the Houston-Atlanta series, a couple thoughts. First, I loved seeing Carlos Beltran break out in the series. There are a lot of experts around the country who dismissed his talents just because he spent the first chunk of his career in KC. In the tradition of George Brett, it was wonderful to see a homegrown talent explode when the lights shine brightest. It’s just too bad he’s doing it for someone else. How many former Royals were on playoff rosters anyway? Beltran, Jeff Suppan, Johnny Damon, Paul Byrd, Brent Mayne to name just a few. Second, it’s not news, but Atlanta baseball fans suck. The team has been on one of the greatest runs in the history of the game and the upper deck was half full for game two. That might explain why the team always comes up short. They don’t know when to cheer, or what to cheer for, when they do show up. I think I have a solution: move the franchise to a new ballpark in Montreal. You don’t think fans there would support a team with this much talent and this good of a farm system? Atlanta would be freed from the burden of having to support the most successful franchise in the sport over the last 15 years. Everyone is happy. I solve problems; it’s just what I do.