AND DOWN THE STRETCH THEY COME!!!!

You have the Mets dying, the Cubs crying, the Phillies trying.....

3 games left and only the NL West is decided. The Cubs could clinch the Central but they have seemingly forgotten how to win one game.

Oh well, at least I got three of four of the AL teams right in my pre-season predictions (Tigers out, Red Sox in). If the Mets finish their gag job and the Phillies get in, I go 0-for the NL.

Maybe next year.

Interesting article by Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus ranking the all-time gag-jobs:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6764

Mets would be 2nd all-time on his list, Cubs 12th. The 1964 Phillies and the 1969 Cubs are ranked surprisingly low using his methodology. Considering these are two of the poster-teams for late-season collapses. Silver highlights some others.

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BONDS WILL NOT BE A GIANT NEXT YEAR

Nothing really shocking here. There was a good shot he might not have been in a Giant uniform this year (if the Giants had signed Soriano or Carlos Lee) so we'll go through the "Who's' going to want Barry Sweepstakes" again in the off-season.

Early possibilities:

Detroit - Leland's there and Sheffield. They should have won the WS last year vs. the Cards and this year, not even in the playoffs. That spells re-loading. They have the bucks to spend and the need for a bat. With the PR of the Aaron chase behind, it comes down to purely a decision based on wins and losses.

UPDATE - Leland has been quoted in the Detroit papers as saying Bonds will not be a Tiger next year, so scratch them off the list.

Angels - depends how well they do in the playoffs, as well as in the potential A-Rod sweepstakes.

Yankees - only if they lose A-Rod. Or if the Red Sox make a move first. But especially if the should lose A-Rod to the Mets. The Boss would have to make a back-page counter move and Andruw Jones just might not cut it after his sub-par year.

Red Sox - he'd look great in the lineup, but terrible in the back pages of the sports section here. Not a good fit.

Seattle - their late season swoon puts them in a let's-take-a-peak-under the-hood mode at the very least.

Oakland - possible for attendance bump. His high-OBA fits their approach. They would look for a hometown discount or an incentive laden contract. Or both.

Tampa Bay - looks good for attendance, and not by much. Doesn't help wins and losses much, he can't pitch. They may not want his influence on the young bats coming up the chain as well. Kind of silly thought considering where some of those prospects have been. He might actually provide a stabilizing influence on the youth.

Cardinals - only if LaRussa returns would they even remotely express interest. But Bonds protecting Pujols or vice-versa. Intriguing lineup possibilities. Need a speedy center fielder.
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POINT COUNTER-POINT FROM THE BLOG-OSPHERE RE: BONDS BYE-BYE:

From BaseballMusings.com

I hear Barry Bonds won't be returning to the Giants. Tim Kawakami sums up the reasons the Giants parted ways with Barry:

The Giants are still angry he held them up for ransom last year. Ridiculous action by Bonds. Hope he's happy with the $16M he got this year, but it cost him any shot at 2008.

(Plus the angry reaction from fans after the Giants caved to him last year shocked the heck out of management and told them that the Bonds love affair is over. That's why they signed Barry Zito, and that's a whole other problem.)

Will any team pick him up? Bonds is old, he's not playing much, but he's still very good when he does play. Would an AL team be willing to take him on as a DH? Or will 762 be his final home run total? I'm guessing the latter.

FROM OnlyBaseballMatters.com and Baseball Prospectus article by Joe Sheehan

http://www.onlybaseballmatters.com/archives/2007/09/23/mvp-redux/

BP’s Joe Sheehan tells it like it is, and it isn’t pretty:

…. The naked glee generated by this decision was embarrassing (links courtesy Buster Olney’s ESPN.com blog), with the San Francisco writers falling all over themselves to praise McGowan for cutting loose the best player in franchise history, the most productive player on the current roster, the best hitter in the National League and, dollar for dollar, one of the better values in the game. The press pool showed no recognition that Bonds remains an amazing player and an asset to any team, even one far from contention. Yes, he requires special treatment; is it some kind of news to everyone that the very best people in any line of work tend to get perks that separate themselves from their peers?

…. The Giants are free to run their team however they care to, but we shouldn’t persist in this fiction that Bonds is what stands in the way of the rebuilding process. The Giants, as effective as they’ve been in drafting and developing pitchers, have had little success with hitters. The Dan Ortmeiers and Rajai Davises populating the outfield and the lineup aren’t prospects, they’re MLB fourth and fifth outfielders who are being evaluated generously by virtue of not being Barry Bonds. The Giants have no prospects being blocked by Bonds, and if they did, they’d actually be being blocked by Dave Roberts and Randy Winn. As we saw with Alex Rodriguez and the Rangers, the team, the press and the public is focusing far too much on the best player with the biggest contract, rather than the money being wasted on the ridiculous contracts for inferior players throughout the rest of the roster. Bonds is worth the money; Ray Durham and Barry Zito, not so much.

Barry Bonds is still a great player. Concerned about how often he can be a great player for your team? At 41 and 42, he’s averaged 127 games and close to 500 PAs a season while playing in the field regularly. This notion that he’s a part-time player who can’t stay in the lineup is another of the myths propagated by the industrious San Francisco media. Bonds is just shy of an everyday player in the National League, and for an American League team, getting most of his playing time as a DH, there’s no reason to think he couldn’t play more often. Even at 125 games and 500 PAs, Bonds is a force to be reckoned with, and a team signing him would be in good position to add in some playing time for him in October.

The local media have portrayed Bonds like a serial killer, and he’s been nothing short of a consumate professional for 15 seasons. Steroid rumors? As Sheehan says, let me know when the guys who have actually tested positive for using steroids give money back, or their teams void their contracts, or give back wins. Until then, all that’s been proven of Bonds is that he’s the best player alive, and has been for almost 20 years.

2007 FOOTBALL GIANTS - WEEK 2

I don't miss Tiki Barber, I'm glad Coach Coughlin is back, The trade for Eli Manning (Phillip Rivers, Shawn Merriman and more) was a great deal.

I don't miss Tiki Barber, I'm glad Coach Coughlin is back, The trade for Eli Manning (Phillip Rivers, Shawn Merriman and more) was a great deal.

I don't miss Tiki Barber, I'm glad Coach Coughlin is back, The trade for Eli Manning (Phillip Rivers, Shawn Merriman and more) was a great deal.

I don't miss Tiki Barber, I'm glad Coach Coughlin is back, The trade for Eli Manning (Phillip Rivers, Shawn Merriman and more) was a great deal.

I don't miss Tiki Barber, I'm glad Coach Coughlin is back, The trade for Eli Manning (Phillip Rivers, Shawn Merriman and more) was a great deal.

Pass the Big Blue pitcher of Kool-Aid. I guess I should be glad that Strahan is back, why I don't know. I guess I shouldn't wonder why the Giants defense doesn't have a huge endorsement deal with a Swiss Cheese company. Pass rush non-existent, pass defense atrocious, they made Favre look like a Hall of, uh they made him look like a God. And we've already fired a defensive coordinator. Who's next?

And Brandon Jacobs doesn't last two games as Tiki's replacement. WOW, it's a good time to be a Giant fan.

FREE THE JENA 6

http://www.cosellout.com/?p=121

READ IT AND WEEP.
No, no racism here. Not in America, not today. We're too enlightened. BS.

And it boggles my mind that people will try to spin this as a story that can't possibly be about racism, it's about inequity within the justice system. Which relates to race.

Let's see if I'm getting it straight.

There's a tree on PUBLIC PROPERTY that is known as a "white" tree because historically only white people congregated there. ON PUBLIC PROPERTY?

Black kids felt they had to ask for permission to sit under the tree.

And when they did, the next day, there were nooses hung from the tree.

And the kid(s) who put the nooses under the tree said he did it as a joke, a prank? And he was surprised that it was taken so far. Cajuns have a rather unique sense of humor, I could see right away that this would not be taken as a joke by black folks and I suspect the kid and his parents understood as well. They didn't think it would get the attention that it did.

Racism is like that, it doesn't thrive well under the light of day.

This kid SHOULD have been beaten with a shoe. Although maybe not quite to unconsciousness, but beaten enough to knock the stupid out of him. This beating perhaps makes up for some of the proper child-rearing he wasn't getting in the past.

But it's not about racism? This article does a good job of framing the concept of white denial.

TIM WISE: WHAT KIND OF CARD IS RACE?
http://www.counterpunch.org/wise04242006.html

Every generation has said, nope, no problem with racism here. Why can't those people just shut up and get along? And although, yes progress has been made over the years, when you look closely, there are still some pretty ugly incidents that remind us that this is a cancer that is not entirely in remission. And like some cancers, it has the potential to come back.

I would think if some who don't see racism here could walk for a DAY in the black victims shoes, they would take that shoe and beat the tar out of somebody with it. If they had to suffer the same indignity, FOR ONE DAY. Never mind everyday. 24-7-365.

I would say if he beat the correct kid, I have virtually no problem with it. The kid who got beaten in error allegedly went to a party later that night. So aggravated assault? And a shoe as a deadly weapon? C'mon.

A deadly weapon is a gun, a knife a machete. A shoe is footwear, if someone comes at me with a shoe, other than my Mom, I'm probably going to have a hard time not laughing at them.

That's where the unequal justice comes in, but the whole incident stems from a hateful, racist act. If that doesn't happen, none of the other stuff does.

Seems like Jena hasn't progressed very far from the Rosa Parks era. Maybe some there need considerably more than a shoe to smack the backwardness out of them.

HAVE YOU GOT CHEATING ON YOUR MIND??

Rick Ankiel?
Troy Glaus?
Jay Gibbons?
Bill Belichick?

Cheating, in the context of a game or sport, is "violating accepted standards or rules". Period, it should be simple enough to understand.

Interesting how now that the feel-good story of major league baseball this season and now the genius coach of the NFL have fallen into the abyss of cheating, the Court of Public Opinion is issuing some softer rulings on the subject.

The same guys who come down hard on baseball have just gone flaccid now that football is placed under the moral microscope.

It's gamesmanship. Mangini is a snitch. He violated the "code". The same "code" Canseco was lauded for violating. The code being another way of saying "accepted standards or rules" whether they are written or unwritten.

We don't really know if what Ankiel was doing to rehab a pitching injury helped him as a hitter.

The Pats Super Bowls aren't tarnished one bit.

Yeah, because then we have to start rethinking the budding legend that is Tom Brady. Does his star shine as bright with one or two Super Bowls erased from his resume. Or asterisked. Not saying Brady cheated, but he and his team clearly benefited from said cheating. And we don't want to knock down the legend that is Tom Brady, yet now do we?

It's good to see the Court of Public Opinion put away the hanging noose and start thinking a little more liberally. Would the opinions expressed about Belichick be the same if the coach under the gun were Dennis Green or Ray Rhodes?

As far as the baseball side, regarding this recent tendency to explain away HGH use as some sort of recovery from injury, some modern form of therapy--be advised that this is not recommended by any therapeutic modalities I'm aware of, not recommended by any reputable surgeons that I'm aware of, and you certainly would not need a years supply anyway when typical therapy sessions to recover from injury or surgery do not last more than six to eight weeks in most cases. Certainly not in the cases cited above.

How long will it be before baseball does something about both the Cardinals and Orioles organizations? Both seem to have been in the middle of too many of these bad-news stories regarding steroid-HGH-alcohol abuse. Maybe some sort of NCAA-style, lack of institutional control penalty might be in order. Especially for the Cardinals, who seem to be very belligerent in defense of their behavior (see LaRussa and GM Walt Jocketty), which only increases their level of culpability in my mind.

I have to wonder if the Patriots have been doing this as well as some of the other nefarious methods they've been accused of doing to win games lately, one has to wonder if the the number of Super Bowl rings for Tom Brady (3) vs. Peyton Manning (1)
could conceivably be reversed if they were playing on a "level playing field".

And who would be considered more of a coaching "genius" if the results of past Colts-Patriots matchups leading up to a couple of Super Bowls were reversed. Wouldn't Tony Dungy be the "genius", possibly one of the greatest coaches of all-time?

My First Trip to Wrigley Field

I was finally able to fulfill a near lifetime-long desire--to attend a game at Wrigley Field. This now leaves me with attendance at two-thirds of the Holy Trinity of Historic Baseball Fields: Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. Notice that no corporate naming rights would dare soil the names of these ancient landmarks of baseball. My brother and I scalped tickets to the World Series in 1978?, the game Nettles made all those remarkable fielding plays and snuffed out their offense. When I walked out towards our seats and saw that field, it was truly breathtaking.

Our trip was something like the following submission to YouTube, except we left the car at home and enjoyed a leisurely train ride in to the city from South Elgin. From there we walked about a mile or two through the business center of the city to the subway, or elevated train. This was a hectic ride. The conductor drove like a kid with his newly minted license in a fast car. I swear he almost pitched the thing off the tracks a couple of times.

FIRST TRIP TO WRIGLEY FIELD IN CHICAGO

From the subway station, you walk up to Waveland Avenue, and after running the gauntlet of local pubs, with waitresses strategically placed out doors to attract current and future patrons, you arrive at the shrine: Wrigley Field.

It really is all it's cracked up to be. The fans are obscenely close to the action. Fans behind the home plate area could probably scratch the on-deck hitter or adjust his cup for him, without leaving their seats, should the need arise.

We were down the left field line, mid-way between third base and the left field bleachers. In the shade thankfully, as the sun was shining all afternoon. Good for the sun worshipers and those who came to scope out the oppo-sex. But we had a ballgame to watch and I wasn't going to waste my first timer at Wrigley on those prurient pursuits. There will be plenty of meaningless Cubs games in the future for that, if history is a guide. CUBS TRADITION 1: SEE THE EYE CANDY, BE THE EYE CANDY

Anyway, we saw a good game. An umpire with a generous strike zone kept the game moving along with numerous backwards K's. This forced the hitters to swing the bats, resulting in four home runs. One was hit by Carlos Lee of the Astros onto Waveland Avenue, where it stayed for awhile, presumably in the loving arms of the fan who caught it or chased it down there. However, upon being told by the left-field bleacher patrons who hit the ball there, the fan who caught it felt obliged to derisively toss the ball back into left-field, to the considerable delight of Cubs fans throughout the park. TRADITION 2: THROW THE OPPOSITION'S HR BALLS BACK.

The Cubs fans seemed to have many unique traditions that I have not seen elsewhere. The left field patrons seemed to be the leaders of the pack of all fans in the stadium as they took it upon themselves to mock and deride and generally distract Carlos Lee while he attempted to patrol left-field for the Astros. I presume they did this to most LF'ers in the league, as they seemed quite good at it. Many times Mr. Lee would look back as if he was taking down names and faces for future reference, should a good public thrashing of said fan be in order. These guys must have had a field day with Barry Bonds. TRADITION 3: MAKE THE OPPOSITION FIELDERS LIFE AS MISERABLE AS POSSIBLE.

Anyway, the LF bleacher fans at one time seemed to believe that the right-field bleacher fans were not on top of their responsibilities regarding making the Astros right-fielders stay in Chicago miserable. So they began the chant, "Right Field sucks, Right Field sucks". This seemed to re-energize the right field bleacher-ettes for the rest of the game.
TRADITION 3A: MAKE CAMERON CRAZIES SEEM LIKE THE AMATEURS THAT THEY ARE.

I mean c'mon, how hard is it really to bring an 18 or 19 year-old superstar to tears. This is THE SHOW, THE MAJOR LEAGUES. These guys have been razzed by minor league leather-lungs that are probably too drunk to see their targets. You have to have serious s_ _ t-talking game to get under major-leaguers skin.

Anyway, we looked forward to the most popular tradition, the seventh inning stretch and the singing of take me out to the ballgame. We got ex-Cub and current local commentator Dan Plesac, so we knew there was going to be zero controversy. A real straight shot. But it's really a genuinely quaint tradition. And it seems like the game really begins right around the time the crowd gets done singing. The intensity of the crowd really picks up, they get a second wind. Which in fact, is exactly what the seventh inning stretch is meant to do. The communal sing-a-long is just an added bonus. When you think about it, in most parks, the seventh inning stretch is an excuse for a communal town meeting in the bathroom.
SO THEN THIS WOULD BE BETTER THEN--NOW WOULDN'T IT?
TRADITION 4: SING TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME

Anyway, the Cubs hold on to win. Since Harry Caray is no longer around to shriek CUBS WIN, CUBS WIN anymore, it seems like a new tradition is bubbling up. The post game GO CUBS GO Serenade as shown below.

CUBS FANS CONTINUE TO SING "GO CUBS GO"

TRADITION 5: POST GAME FRIVOLITY

Anyway, it was a great time. The intensity of a playoff baseball game, the fun and frivolity of a college football or basketball game and the charm and unique community identity of a minor league baseball game all rolled up into one event. HOW CAN YOU BEAT THAT?

The only other time I got the same unique feeling, as if the game wasn't rolled out of the same cookie cutter as all the others was when I saw a college baseball tournament game at Durham Bulls Stadium in North Carolina. For the seventh inning stretch, instead of take me out to the ballgame the speakers blared and the fans sung along to James Taylor's "Carolina on my Mind". HOW PERFECT IS THAT, like John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" at a Rockies game or Sinatra belting out "New York, New York" at Yankee Stadium, they're just made for each other. They just SO perfectly fit for that time and place and event. It gave me chills at the time, very emotional.

CAROLINA ! courtesy www.mrtarheel.com

I can see why the Cubs sell out games regardless of the teams record. It is like a block party with a ball game going on around it. So for now, officially, given that the Giants are all but dead and buried, I am exercising the my-teams-out-of-it, the home-teams-in-it, they-aren't-a-clear-front-runner so I can root them on the rest of the way without violating any of the Official Rules of Fandom. So please, STFU now, I don't want to hear it. I'll be back with my team when they need me. And when they show at least some of the characteristics of life a fan expects of his/her team.
GO CUBS!!!!