how the hell did the patriots get this reputation?

a semi-outrageous blurb from a dumb AP article about a "controversial" non-story that happened in sunday's patriots/browns game involving a late, low hit by new england LB mike vrabel:

Whether Vrabel's move on Thomas was intentional or not, to Steinbach, it's yet another spot on the Patriots' once-impeccable image, which seems to be getting more tarnished as the months pass.

let me clarify that this isn't yet another of my "god i hate the red sox/patriots soooooo much!!!!1111" tirades. although i do enjoy writing those... expect one as soon as bill simmons releases his inevitable "HA HA RED SOX WON YANKEES LOST TAKE THAT YANKEE FANS" article later this week. anyways, there's no negativity for the patriots themselves here. i'm just pissed about the way the media portrays them. the way i've always understood it, the reason they're widely regarded as a model NFL franchise is because they consistently make great player personnel decisions and have won 3 super bowls in the last 6 years. that's all and that's it. they spend their money wisely, draft well, and win a lot. what other team wouldn't want to emulate them in this regard?

so here's the rub- how did they somehow along the way add a "they're the classiest, nicest, swellest team in the league too!" component to this rep? since when did they also become known as pinnacles of character? when the whole camera controversy thing happened back in september, i couldn't help but wonder why so much attention was being paid to the possible "damage" this would do to the patriots' legacy. what legacy? the one in which they won a lot? i realize that was cheating, but the way i heard things pretty much every team in the league was doing the exact same thing up until this year. it was far from out of the ordinary. the patriots kept doing it into 2007, got caught, and got penalized. that was a mildly interesting story, especially because i hate them. but again, i really didn't (and still don't) understand why everyone is acting like this hurts their reputation as a collective bunch of goody two shoes. as far as i knew, they had a reputation for being really good at football and that's about it.

so getting to the dumb little story that prompted this post, why is one questionable late and low hit all of a sudden doing even more harm in the exact same way? i don't get it. i looked around and couldn't find any penalty statistics from previous years, but i'm going to go way out on a limb and guess that the patriots have committed their fair share during the construction of this mini-dynasty they have going. including some late hits and other personal fouls! oh my heavens! and then when it comes to off the field stuff, their coach tried to steal a guy's wife! (i can't believe how many football fan friends of mine hadn't heard of this before i told them about it. sorry the link isn't great, but the story is right there.) their golden boy QB just had a kid out of wedlock! (probably don't need a link for that one.)

now, don't get me wrong- i'm not criticizing the patriots for this kind of stuff. on the field, tons of players all over the league play dirty each and every sunday. off it, plenty of athletes and coaches have shady lives. larry eustachy, anyone? but apparently, according to this writer (and many many more just like him/her...trust me, it's an epidemic) prior to this season the new england patriots had never done anything wrong or dirty. ever. it confuses the hell out of me. maybe i'm just out of touch; have they actually legitimately developed a reputation of classiness along with their reputation for making good player decisions and winning? or is the former just a function of the latter- as in, everyone just assumes that because they win a lot and they don't have any ray lewis/chris henry type convicts on their team, they must be nice guys as well? i'm frustrated and pissed about this. and furthermore i'm now pissed that this is a rambling post in which i'm kind of sort of defending a boston sports team. i think i'm just going to cut my losses, but please, leave me your thoughts- is this "classy reputation" thing a bunch of crap or what?

thanks for nothing, TBS

anyone out there who's a baseball fan is well aware of how atrocious most of their announcing teams have been for both the NLDSes and ALDSes. chip caray, earlier tonight, re: a fly ball to yankee CF melky cabrera:

"Routine fly ball to center... and... that's a little vitamin D for the 'Melk' man!"

are you kidding me? that might be the worst metaphor/nickname extension of all time. what the hell do a baseball and a vitamin have to do with each other? let me put my feelings more simply:

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

He's Back, He's Bad, He's......VENTIN' VENTRE

Everyone, we are about to get hit with some of the worst metaphors known to man.

Red Sox have become baseball tornado

This is what happens when a team wins 3 baseball games in a row, people! It transforms into a natural disaster that annihilates everything in its path!

ANAHEIM, Calif. - The earth opened up Sunday and swallowed the Angels.

Now when did tornadoes get the ability to "open the earth" and make the earth swallow things? This double-metaphor really isn't doing it for me.

Actually, it just seemed that way.

Whew.

It was the Boston Red Sox who devoured them, and really Saturday was more like the final bite before the last burp. Rarely do you see an entire baseball team push itself back from the table, take a deep breath, loosen its belt, and reach for a mint.

....I'm speechless.

What's going on here?

The Red Sox advanced Sunday to the American League Championship Series by completing a sweep of the surprisingly submissive Angels with a 9-1 victory in the best-of-five division series.

Aahhhhh ok. There we go.

Although Stanford upset USC on Saturday, proving that just about anything can happen in sports, this result seemed as if it had been etched in stone, or more specifically, in Bill Stoneman, the Angels’ GM whose mantra is that the Angels don’t need another big bat.

Purpose of big bat: Score more runs
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: Already pretty good at that

Somehow I don't blame him.

The Red Sox are moving on because, at least in this series against Los Angeles, it seemed like the only kind of bats they have are big ones.

Also: not hard to win a series when your pitching holds the other team to 4 total runs.

The contrast was startling, as it figures to be in the ALCS. The Red Sox had been sliding somewhat down the stretch in the regular season, allowing their formidable lead in the American League East over the Yankees to dwindle to a squirmy margin. But now that that nonsense has been dispensed with, it’s almost like they’re interested again.

So that's it. They were bored. The Boston Red Sox have been looking up at the Yankees for over a decade, and now that they were the ones sitting in first with a nice lead, it was just too uninteresting for them to care. Cool.

Skipping to later......

Just about every baseball club these days pops champagne after every significant postseason development — gaining the playoffs, winning the division series, winning the championship series, winning the World Series. Investing in champagne stock at this time of year is probably the wisest move on Wall Street.

I'm actually going to stick with my initial conviction that Ventre thinks you can just "invest in champagne stock". Also good: investing in pumpkins near Halloween (like Homer Simpson), investing in pine trees around Christmas, in eggs around Easter, and in fireworks around the 4th of July. These are proven excellent financial strategies.

(we'll leave out the discussion of Ventre's lack of understanding of weak-form efficient markets and the pure idiocy of thinking that the sale of like 1500 bottles of champagne would affect its stock price, if it had a stock)

So it was no surprise to see the Red Sox erupt late Sunday in a bacchanal of bubbly.

After careful analysis of past trends, Michael Ventre has determined that no, it was completely un-shocking, and actually quite predictable that the Red Sox celebrated with champagne.

There was first baseman Kevin Youkilis madly shaking a bottle and spraying it in a 360-degree guyser. There was prankster Manny, filling a tub with ice water, then sneaking up on several unsuspecting teammates. When the champagne ran out, they used cans of beer.

These guys are a fucking baseball TORNADO. What were we writing about again?

Red Sox Nation may turn out to be the greatest country in the world, at least as far as this 2007 baseball season is concern.

This is just a mind-bogglingly stupid sentence.

Oh yeah, and "is concern"? Nice. We don't need no stinkin' editors. Fight, the power, Mike.

Go Indians!

TXTNG MY BFF TG

Peter King finds new ways to entertain me every single week. I need a reason to read MMQB, which I do every single week, religiously, and it's certainly not for the analysis or predictions.

King is like that high school cheerleeder. You know, the one with several UTIs and a hilariously scandalous reputation by the time she graduates. And I say that because there is no way that anybody in the world has fellated as many all-star or former all-star QBs as Peter has.

I don't mind his inside information about Trent Green's brutal concussion from laying out a low block; in fact I think it's kind of cool (in a creepy stalkerish kind of way) that he has so much personal knowledge about so many players. Here is a text message conversation (or in text message terms, convo) between Peter King and Trent Green after the game

Here's the exchange:

King to Green, 5:14 p.m.: "peter king here. just texting to wish you well and to say hope you come out of this okay.''

Green to King, 9:06 p.m.: "Will b ok. Not like lst yr. TG.''

King to Green: 9:08 p.m.: "hey -- how about johnson calling your block a malicious hit? feel better. peter.''

(And this is the one I found interesting.)

Green to King, 9:12 p.m.: "He outweighs me by over 100 lbs. Where shld I blk him? TG.''

Here is what I find interesting:

1) Trent Green writes text messages like a preteen girl
2) Peter King Actually has Text Message conversations with NFL players

LOL OMG WTF UR RITE TRENT :)

Bonus Peter King Baseball Analysis that doesn't involve the Red Sox

d. There can't be a more improved player in baseball over the last couple of years -- other than maybe Carlos Pena -- than Kaz Matsui.

I love Matsui and all but let's look at the numbers (OPS+)

2004: 88
2005: 72
2006: 76
2007: 87

He was injured most of '05 and '06. So in between his rookie year and this season, his OPS+ has gone up by a staggering -1! WOW! Kaz has become an outstanding defensive second basemen though, but I'm pretty sure that's not what king was looking at. And I'm certain that the only 3 rockies games king has seen all season were against philly in the playoffs, so I guess give Kaz "Babe Ruth" Matsui due props.

Last second edit:

Just to clarify, I personally think Matsui has improved even though the OPS+ hasn't changed.

1) He's played almost a full season
2) He's been really solid defensively as I mentioned above.
3) Adjusting OPS for park factors really hurts a hitter like Matsui at Coors Field, who gets on base through infield hits, bunt hitting, and gets a ton of Extra Base Hits by hitting low line drives (especially down the first base line). All of those batting numbers aren't really changed from park to park. Still though, Most Improved Player in all of Baseball? Coooooooome Onnnnnn

Now the Cubs are Really Screwed

In honor of our new friends at jaythejoke.com, I've decided to take some valuable (sarc) time out of my day and pick on the latest Jay article. Cub fans, whatever shred of hope you still had remaining should be gone. Yes friends, Jay is throwing in the towel (after 3 months of sucking Piniella's dick).

You want me to roll out the gush and the goo, the ``Go Cubs Go'' chorus, the Pat-and-Ronnie bop. You want me to suggest an emergency Bill Murray visit, an Ernie Banks pep talk, a Harry-and-Jack seance and all those desperate devices Cubdom pulls from its tail when 99 Seasons of Fear on the Wall are about to become 100.

First off, "Fear on the Wall"? Has "Cubdom" been terrified of something through all of these past 99 seasons? This, ladies and gentlemen, is why Jay Mariotti sucks at writing. I'll even throw out that Jay is wrong about 99 about to become 100, because it's 98 about to become 99.

Here's how that little phrase got in there. Jay realized that it's been (or going to be) 99 seasons of losing. His brain searched for a phrase with the number 99 in it. "Hmmm....99 bottles of beer on the wall, maybe? 99 seasons of....something on the wall? I need a word that rhymes with beer. Cheer? No, that's the opposite. Queer? No, that's what I had to convince the world I'm not after Ozzie made fun of me. Fear? Hmmm...seems like the best one. But it doesn't really make sense. Ah well, I'll toss it in there and hope people just read it as a clever phrase and don't think about it."

Too bad.

But why would I do that?

Gee, Jay, because you've been saying nothing for months but that Piniella is a baseball Yoda who will carry the Cubs to the promised land, first past the Arizona "Smoke-and-Mirrors" (as you have been calling them for weeks). I don't know, I'd think a dude with any sort of spine would stick with his prior convictions and maintain some sort of shred of hope. But you don't have a spine. (BAD JOKE ALERT!) That's why you flop on every issue.

You say the Cubs are due. I say they're too deep in doo-doo.

Jay, can you imagine yourself saying that terrible play on words out loud, like on Around the Horn or something, in front of thousands of people? You're a fucking embarrassment.

It's easier to make a case why Bartman should throw out the first ball today than why they'll win Game 3 behind erratic Rich Hill, win Game 4 behind a short-rested Carlos Zambrano and then return to Arizona and conquer the Diamondbacks behind The Mad Leather Whipper.

Really. The Cubs still have like a 10% chance of winning the series and you think it's easier to argue that Steve Bartman, a man upon whom most at Wrigley Field wish serious harm upon, should step out into the middle of all of them and throw out the first pitch of the game?

Meh, you've never really made sense before, not like I expected you to start now.

The Cubs need to sweep the next three games. I'm thinking January thongs on Oak Street Beach are a more likely scenario.

Right, if I might be of the opinion that you're overreacting juuuuust a tad, you wouldn't hold it against me, would you?

The Cubs haven't even been competitive in crawling into their 0-2 crater.

Really? Wasn't Game 1 a 1-1 tie until the late innings? Ask Carlos Zambrano if he was competitive that day.

Sure, they do. Rule No. 1: Pitch the ball out of the strike zone and make a lot of stinkingly wealthy hitters look silly, striking out 23 Cubs in two games. Rule No. 2: Make the Cubs' pitchers pay by scoring on four of six walks Thursday. Rule No. 3: Play grinder ball, throw down a suicide squeeze, have fun and apply even more pressure to an uptight team that is feeling the weight of 99 years.

Grinderball????? That's how the DBacks are doing it?

Game 1: 2 solo homers, then walk-double-sac-fly

Game 2: single-walk-sac bunt(rendered meaningless by...)-homerun. Single-triple. Single-walk-triple. Walk-walk-single. Okay, we've scored 7 runs and we're up by 5. Now let's play some fucking GRINDER BALL and lay down a suicide squeeze. GRINDING IT OUT. That's what the Diamondbacks are doing. GRINDING for all these runs. Look up the fucking definition of GRINDER BALL, would you? I mean, you'd have to look it up in a fictional dictionary containing stupid media-invented terms that don't mean anything, but for the love of shit, ask yourself, "when you are putting down a suicide squeeze after scoring 7 runs (hence, proving you don't need to "grind out" runs) and attaining a 5 run lead, is this GRINDER BALL?" IS IT?????

The only saving grace: The games are on TBS. No one's watching.

Yes, no one is watching baseball, because baseball becomes less interesting when it's not on a major station, where we could hear Joe Buck and Tim McCarver struggle through broadcasting while the former doesn't know shit about baseball and the latter spews ridiculous expressions that don't make sense. I mean, yes, the audience is more restricted, but most people owning a TV have basic cable, Jay.

As if life's odds aren't already stacked against the Cubs, examine the history they must overcome. In the wild-card era, no NL team has come back from an 0-2 hole and claimed a best-of-five series. When the Cubs have started 0-2 in a postseason series, they've lost all five times dating to 1910. There is a shred of hope involving Piniella, who overcome an 0-2 deficit in 1995 to beat the Yankees. But he was managing the Mariners then.

What does past Cubs teams failing in this situation have to do with the chances of the present Cubs team? No. Tell me. Why the fuck does what the Cubs did in 1946 (year picked at random, don't sue me) have anything to do with the odds of the 2007 Chicago Cubs beating the 2007 Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2007 National League Divisional Series in 2007???

Okay, brace yourselves everyone, because for the first time ever, Jay is about to do some analysis, and it's actually interesting and informative and shows that he's researched something.

Should the Cubs find their thrill on Rich Hill, Zambrano returns Sunday on three days' rest at home, where he is wildly inconsistent. When Piniella tried Big Z on three days last month, it didn't work out. Nor does the three-day theory succeed much in the playoffs. When managers have brought back starters on short rest in best-of-five series the last 10 Octobers, those teams have lost nine of 14 series. Expand that to all rounds, and teams have gone 4-17 in short-rest games.

See? That wasn't so hard, was it? Good paragraph, Jay! (except for the thrill/Rich Hill wordplay) Just think, if you made sense like this more often, the entire city of Chicago wouldn't want to dump a large container of hot tar on you!

I'm actually guessing that this was written by either Jay's editor, Jeffrey, or Jay's secretary, Rachel.

When asked if he'll view the year as a success if elimination comes quickly, Piniella said yes. ``Look, this team finished last in the division last year, the most losses in the National League, and here we are in the postseason in one year,'' he said. ``If that's not a success, well, I really don't know what it is.''

Then, a minute later, he waxed philosophical about what this all means in the grand scheme. ``It's only a game,'' said Yoda Lou. ``It's not life or death.''

If the Cubs lose tonight, he'll come to realize how many millions think otherwise.

I'm guessing the latter quote is taken totally out of context. And also, I assure you that zero people in Chicago feel that Game 3 is of life-or-death seriousness. Millions of people, however, think you should be thrown out on your fat ass, because the Sun-Times is getting less talent per dollar spent on you than the White Sox are getting from their players! BURN! PWNED KENNY WILLIAMS!

Displacing the Blame Here, Maybe?

Scott Miller points the finger at Soriano.

Leadoff man Soriano has not been a threat at all, going 0-for-5 in Game 1 and then fanning in each of his first two at-bats in Game 2 before finally collecting a single in the fifth inning. In the two games, he is 2-for-10 with four strikeouts.

Fuck you, Soriano for having 2 hits in 10 ABs. If you were clutch, you would have gotten 2.99 hits like your batting average says you should. Asshole.

Never mind that the team is hitting .179 in the series, that .200 is a higher BA than the team's BA, that Aramis Ramirez is 0-9 with the same number of K's as Fonz, or that Ted Lilly showed the world that he does a fantastic impression of Casey Fossum

more comedy at the expense of old people

since the big lead linked us last week, i guess it's only fair that we link them. after all, both our sites are roughly equal to each other in popularity so fair is fair.

anyways, read the post below where i make a quick little joke about gregg easterbrook talking like a curmudgeony old man. then, go to this link, for perhaps the best curmudgeony old man rant i've ever seen from a professional journalist. gregg's got absolutely nothing on beano cook. (well, obviously. i mean, it is beano cook. but still... you've got to be kidding me.) stick around for the full two and half minutes; the conclusion is amazing.

weekly gregg easterbrook report

nothing too extraordinary going on here; just a belated review of what the TMQ had to say earlier this week. as usual, there's at least a little bit of baloney. (check the "gregg easterbrook" label if for some reason you find this entertaining and want more.)

this first part is not sports related, but so hilariously cliched from a "crusty old guy who complains about kids and their rock music" angle that i have to include it.

Now think what has happened in technical and artistic trends in the 50 years since 1957. Scientific endeavors have made fantastic strides in quality, complexity and significance. Consumer product quality has increased dramatically -- new cars are packed with features unknown in 1957 yet are far safer and more reliable, and the cell phone in your pocket and the computer you're reading this on, to say nothing of the Internet it's transmitted over, would have been viewed as supernatural by the engineers who built Explorer I.

At the same time, the quality of art has plummeted. There hasn't been a musical of artistic merit to open on Broadway in many moons -- right now, it's all vapid dreck. (In fact, I think the show "Vapid Dreck," based on a remake of a remake, opens at the Brooks Atkinson soon.) And although good books are still written, what truly great novel has been produced in the past decade or two? Fifty years ago, technical stuff was buckets of bolts and art was splendid; now, the technical stuff is splendid and the art is in poor repair. This tells us something -- I just wish I knew what.

here's what that tells me- you're old, and no longer appreciate new art because it's scary and unfamiliar to you. i hope to god i have the kind of forum gregg has in which to express this exact same (inevitably held) opinion once i'm old. i bet writing this kind of thing in his columns really helps his blood pressure/arthritis/aching back/other old man ailments.

later, some of easterbrook's trademarked WRONG clock management analysis (if you're familiar with him, you know he writes something dumb like this basically every week):

Bills note 1: Leading 17-14 with less than three minutes to play, the Ivies faced third-and-short and threw incomplete, stopping the clock. At the end, the Jets reached the Buffalo 38 before turning the ball over on a desperation play. Had the Bills simply run up the middle for no gain on their final snap, the clock would have expired with the Jets far from Buffalo territory.

no. no no no. you don't know that with any certainty whatsoever. i don't even have to explain why this is wrong. anyone with a brain and a basic understanding of football knows exactly why.

some ridiculously misguided thoughts about running up the score:

Florida, Rutgers Punished by Football Gods: Every college season has an Upset Saturday, and it fell last weekend for 2007. Top-10 teams Florida and Rutgers were upset almost immediately after displaying poor sportsmanship by running up the score: Oh ye mortals, trifle not with the football gods. Reader Jeffrey Camp notes that against hapless Norfolk State, Rutgers showed terrible sportsmanship by calling all three of its timeouts in the final minute of the first half, frantically trying to score again before intermission -- although Rutgers was ahead 45-0 at the time. Camp asks, "Aren't Knights supposed to be honorable and chivalrous?" Reader Chris Shirley notes that when leading Tennessee 49-20 in the fourth quarter, Florida still had Tim Tebow on the field and still had him throwing deep; leading 52-20 with first-and-goal with less than two minutes remaining, Florida could have taken a knee to end the game, but instead, Urban Meyer had his charges pound the ball into the end zone to run up the final score to 59-20. As Tuesday Morning Quarterback often notes, running up the score is little-bully behavior that evinces lack of character. And it always comes back to haunt you because when the pressure is on, little bullies fold.

yes, running up the score is generally kind of lame (particularly against a non-conference opponent, like in rutgers' sitaution... i can sort of see why florida did it because they were playing a hated conference rival). no, that last part about "little bullies fold[ing]" is not legitimate analysis. i'm too tired to do this right now, but i guarantee if i had fifteen minutes to burn i could find plenty of instances in recent college football history where a team ran up the score at some point in the season, and went on to win multiple "high pressure" games later in the season. hell, i bet plenty of national title winning teams have run up the score on opponents. this is like saying "this mean kid i knew in middle school who used to beat me up and take my lunch money broke his leg in a skateboarding accident. it just goes to show you: people with no character always break their legs in skateboarding accidents."

finally, one of the worst explanations for a team's dominance i have ever read:

What is [patriots offensive line coach dante] Scarnecchia's secret? It's so, so simple, yet few NFL teams understand it: New England offensive linemen never stand doing nothing, watching the play. On a shocking number of NFL plays, there is at least one gentleman simply standing there doing nothing at all, and often that gentleman is an offensive lineman. New England's offensive linemen never stand around doing nothing. More than anything else, never standing around doing nothing is what separates the Patriots from the rest of the league, and this approach pays the most dividends on the offensive line.

i beg, you please pay attention to the offensive line on a reasonable number of snaps in the college and non-patriot NFL football games you watch this weekend and see if this analysis is anywhere close to correct. (hint: it is not. i'm going to go out on a limb and say the patriots are good because they have a fantastic coach, fantastic coaching staff and fantastic players. but go ahead, check out some other teams this weekend for yourself and see if easterbrook's theory holds water.)

This helps explain why Belichick has such great luck with retreads and unknown players. He takes players who were in environments where people were standing around, or where success was judged by individual stats rather than team outcomes, and puts them in an environment where no one ever stands around and team outcomes are all that matter.

wow... more anecdotal bullshit, please! i really don't think this attempt at an explanation for new england's success has enough of it. if i thought easterbrook would reply to me, i would email him about this and ask for a complete explanation and some objective evidence. but i know he wouldn't and i'm lazy anyways. needless to say- there is no way to prove this. none. there's not even a good way to sort of start going about the process of beginning to establish that it might be the case.

thanks gregg, see you next week! and hey, could you please put more science fiction blurbs in the non-NFL parts of your column then? i really feel like you're not covering enough of that crap.

now, let's cut to dayn perry with some breaking mlb playoff news!

dayn, are you there? please, give us your expert opinion about who the "players to watch" in this year's postseason are. i'm going to be extremely brief in my intro here and just flat out say this is one of the least-needed-to-be-written articles that ever didn't need to be written. if that makes any sense. you'll see what i mean.

October stars: These guys have to step up

These are the guys who are going to be in the spotlight this post-season and, to a great extent, these are the guys whose teams need them to rise to the occasion. In other words, these are the guys upon whom the fate of the World (Series) may rest. Let's have a look ...

get ready for some mind numbingly boring analysis that contains exactly one new thought/mildly interesting piece of analysis.

1. Alex Rodriguez, Yankees

from out of nowhere! who'd have guessed he'd be on this list? what a bold inclusion.

Rodriguez was actually a highly accomplished October hitter until the last two times he and the Yankees appeared in the ALDS. Against the Angels in 2004, A-Rod "hit" .133 AVG/.381 OBP/.200 SLG, and last year against Detroit he authored a paltry batting line of .071 AVG/.071 OBP/.071 SLG.

you can't be serious. a-rod didn't play well in the yankees' last two playoff appearances? i never heard anything about that. i wish the media would have covered it; that's the kind of thing i could read about for months and years on end.

2. Joe Borowski, Indians

pshh. a closer? like they ever matter during the playoffs.

3. Carlos Zambrano, Cubs

When Zambrano's on, he racks up ground balls and strikeouts by the truckload and he's one of the best in the business. When he's off, he's distracted, frustrated and unable to find the strike zone. The Cubs' fate to a large degree depends on which Zambrano shows up.

wow. another dark horse candidate! the media lightning rod that will start games 1 and 4 in the NLDS and potentially start games 1, 4, and 7 in the NLCS is important to his team's postseason success?

(god, i am using way too many sarcastic rhetorical questions in this post. i just don't know how else to illustrate my point. which is why i am an angry nobody blogger and not a national sportswriter like dayn perry. you know what, let's just breeze through the rest of these before i waste any more of your time or mine with nitpicky analysis.)

4. Manny Ramirez, Red Sox

what? no way. no freaking way. he's only their #3 hitter and a probable HOFer who, while beginning to decline at age 35, is still a moderately huge power threat. i'm sure they don't expect too much out of him.

5. Kelvim Escobar, Angels

the #2 starter on a team with a struggling offense? this is madness.

6. Roger Clemens, Yankees
7. Jamie Moyer, Phillies

you know, at least these guys aren't #1 or #2 starters, closers, or #3 hitters. so their inclusion on the list is a little less annoying. still... gag me. just blow out your elbow and retire already, you jackass. (that's directed at roger, not dayn or jamie! if dayn retired i don't know where i would get my bad baseball analysis from. and jamie i'm just kind of neutral on.)

8. Travis Hafner, Indians

how thought provoking. another middle of the lineup power threat.

9. Augie Ojeda, Diamondbacks

here we go! non-sarcastically, this is actually a great item for the list. he's orlando hudson's injury replacement. the d-backs have a very questionable offense, so they need all the production they can get out of a guy filling in for one of their better hitters. i wonder who told dayn to include him.

10. Matt Holliday, Rockies

there we go. that's more like it. who would have thought- the rockies' playoff chances apparently depend on their #3 hitter/MVP candidate!

so let's summarize- dayn perry decided to write an article about 10 guys who will have a big impact on the baseball postseason. he chose: four power threats who hit cleanup or in the #3 spot for their teams, two top of the rotation starters, two middle of the rotation starters (who used to be top of the rotation starters and also happen to be media darlings), one closer, and..... augie ojeda. what journalistic gusto! thank goodness for professionals like dayn who bring us these in-depth stories filled with information we could never discern on our own.


[firejay BONUS! here's an imaginary list of dayn's perry's "players to watch" (!) in the NFL this season:

1. peyton manning
2. brett favre
3. ladanian tomlinson
4. vince young
5. terrell owens
6. brian urlacher
7. carson palmer
8. frank gore
9. adam podlesh (punter, jacksonville; critical to the jaguars' field position game)
10. tom brady

i think that list pretty accurately drives home my point, if for some reason the rest of my rantings and ravings did not.]

If Anyone Knows Anything About Playoff Success, It' Reggie Jackson

You sure can't tag this article "anecdotal bullshit", because this is Reggie F'in Jackson talking. I realize that the baseball world is inundated with A-Rod and Yankees crap lately, but this article from the NY Post seems particularly egregious to me. So here goes:

"Meet the New Mr. October: Reggie Believes A-Rod Will Keep On Rollin"

"Rollin"?

October 3, 2007 -- The man who spit in the face of October pressure believes Alex Rodriguez won't be smothered by it for the third straight postseason.

“I think he will do super well," Reggie Jackson said yesterday ...

"SUPER" well, Reggie? Is that really what you meant to say? "I think he willl do SUPER well!"? Up until now, I thought Reggie Jackson was pretty manly; now I think he's a bit effeminate.

“Look at the year he had. You can't have a better year than he had. Who was the last guy to roll into the postseason with the kind of year he had this year?"

Albert Pujols, last year.

Jackson knows what makes Rodriguez tick;

Which is? A watch battery? Lime jello? Strippers? Boos? His Collector's Edition DVD of Mallrats?

Oh. You're not going to tell me. Darn.

understands that despite the MVP season, there are people waiting to empty their lungs with boos for the one guy who the spotlight will be on from beginning to end.
“They booed him from the start this year," said Jackson, who will be with the Yankees for today's workout at Jacobs Field.

Yawn.

Loudly booed when he dropped a foul pop in the first inning on Opening Day, Rodriguez turned the boos to a summer full of cheers, and chants of “MVP, MVP" and finished with 54 homers, 156 RBIs and a .314 average. Now, that success is something Jackson believes Rodriguez is going to lean on.

“He got off to a great start and never stopped," Jackson said. “And it wasn't all smooth. He couldn't have gone through anything tougher than what happened to him in Toronto and the family situation. It wasn't like he got a free pass."

Hyperbolic crap. He could've gone through something much worse. In fact, word has it that A-Rod and his wife are expecting another child. It could've been much tougher; he could've been hit by a bus. Except most bus drivers are better at driving buses than baseball writers are at writing about baseball.

Is Rodriguez's regular season enough for him to bounce back from an 0-for-4 effort in a Game 1 defeat?

This is quite the non sequitur Is he referring to the past or speculating about the future? The Yankees haven't even started playing their series yet!

Remember in 2005, Rodriguez was coming off a year in which he would be voted the MVP and soiled the bed in the ALDS against the Angels when he batted .133 (2-for-15) and set the record for the most inhales and exhales at the plate. The deeper the breath, the worse the at-bat.

I am good at remembering this because writers like you have mentioned it in every article this season.

Rodriguez promised in March this year was going to be different, and it was. Instead of his life being an open book,

huh?

what he said was measured and rarely in depth. Now, on the verge of his fourth - and possibly last - postseason as a Yankee, Rodriguez is poised to wash away the stench of 2005 and 2006 (1-for-14; .071 against the Tigers).

“I am focused on 2007," Rodriguez said following a brief workout at Yankee Stadium. “It's a whole new year. I am taking one pitch at a time."

I feel like sports stars have to give cliched bites to writers because that's all the feeble-brained writers can handle. I think it'd be funnier if A-Rod announced, "Fuck it. It's a whole new year. I am taking it TWO pitches at a time, and when I hit TWO home runs at a time maybe you goddamn writers will stop writing about those thirty goddamn at bats!"

Since Indians starter C.C. Sabathia is murder on lefties - they hit .203 (41-for-202) against him - a larger responsibility falls on Derek Jeter and Rodriguez, who are a combined 19-for-39 (.487) against the lefty they haven't seen since Sept. 1, 2004.

Poorly written. Sentence is too long; separate last clause into independent sentence. I will now stop picking on grammar.

And you know who will get the blame if Jeter and Rodriguez don't hit Sabathia and the Yankees lose, right? It won't be Jeter.

Which is a damn shame, because it seems to me that in your previous sentence, you said that Jeter and Rodriguez share the responsibility. It's too bad you asshole writers are willing to assign Jeter a share of the responsibility, but you know goddamn well that you won't assign Jeter a share of the blame.

“When you come to New York you get invited to the dance every year," Rodriguez said. “You keep getting chances."

Wow. This is competes with the opening quote for "Most Effeminate Thing Said By Current or Former Yankee Superstar". I wonder if A-Rod was sad about not getting invited to dances every year when he was in high school. Or maybe when he played in Texas.

With the right to opt out of the final three years of his contract, this could be Rodriguez's final chance to win a World Series in pinstripes. It's a chance Jackson believes Rodriguez will finally cash in on.

“He has got to be digging himself," Jackson said. “If that was me, I would be digging myself once a day. The year he had was unbelievable."

Digging himself? I don't think I even know what that means. Speak English, Reggie, or at least spit your candy bar out when you're talking.

Now we will see how it ends. Will it be a springboard or an albatross? The guy who had put Mr. in front of October is betting on the former.

YOU BE THE JUDGE!

If you think A-Rod is cool, turn to page 81, then buy this poster and send it to George King.

If you think A-Rod sucks, go back to page 1 and realize that this is what real baseball fans want to do to you.