We Interrupt This Coverage of Joe Torre's Rejection of the Yankees Job to Bring You ALCS Game 7

Just a couple weird things, just in the first inning....I'll be adding them as I see fit. That's right folks, I'm LIVEBLOGGING. Because it's live, all quotes are not exact, but close!

1) McCarver: They've been saying Grady Sizemore is Superman. It looks like Superman has lost his cape!

Ooh.....sorry Tim. The obligatory reference we were looking for was "Kryptonite".

2) McCarver: When you get 2 strikes on the batter, the advantage definitely swings to the pitcher

Thanks!

Update: This is lame. 5th inning, Boston winning, McCarver not ridiculous. These things need to change.

***7th inning***

3) McCarver: And as you can see, Lofton was held up, because Skinner, the 3rd base coach, and as you can see this is a fair ball.

Quite the sentence, eh?

4) Tim McCarver just argued that Joel Skinner made the wrong move in holding Kenny Lofton because a) a double play followed and b) Franklin Gutierrez would still be on 2nd if Lofton was out.

The correctness of the decision to send a runner home is apparently independent of whether or not he is likely to be safe or out.

***End of 7th***

5) I'd like it if someone checked me on this, but it sounded like Joe Buck just said that Skinner, the 3rd base coach, was responsible for Lofton being thrown out (assuming he wasn't actually safe) earlier in the game.

Also, a serious question....with the Red Sox rookies playing very well in this game, can we still expect to see articles about the Indians' lack of postseason experience costing them if they don't wind up winning?

***8th inning***

The Red Sox fans are chanting "M-V-P" for Mike Lowell. That's a joke, right?

Hey did you guys hear?

Apparently the Red Sox and Indians are playing GAME SEVEN OF THE ALCS AT FENWAY AND THE GREEN MONSTER!!! Seriously, they are playing at FENWAY where the Red Sox have MADE MAGIC HAPPEN BEFORE. I don't know if you guys read or saw about this, so I'd thought I'd inform you.

The best thing that could happen in this game would be an ending that leads to Bill Simmons hanging himself.

Here's what I hope happens:

Bottom of the 9th. Two Outs. Red Sox down 8-4. Bases loaded for JD Drew: 0-2 count. Drew smashes a grand slam to tie the game up and send it to extra innings.

Fast forward to the bottom of the 15th. Indians up 9-8. David "king of clutch" Ortiz comes up with the bases juiced, nobody out and a 3-0 count. Ortiz then grounds into a game/series/season ending triple play.

This way, even the patriots couldn't save Simmons from himself.

We can only pray.

Somehow, "WRONG" Just Isn't A Strong Enough Word....

It's a quickie from Mariotti's 24/7 EXCLUSIVE ONLINE COLUMN DUUUDES!

Torre would revive fading Sox

No. Good players and centerfielders not named Jerry would revive fading Sox. Signing A-Rod. Getting Rowand back. These things. Not Torre.

If the White Sox hired Joe Torre, I'd like their chances of winning 90 games next year.

For those of you new to this site, this sentence is why us crazies believe that Jay Mariotti should be fired on the spot.

Considering the best White Sox are either in their prime or past it (and their young players have very little upside), an extra year of aging would peg the same team to do a little worse this year. This means that Jay Mariotti thinks that Joe Torre's handwriting on the lineup sheet is worth more than 18 wins.

He would re-focus them, lead them like men, manage with dignity and end the circus-like silliness that has dogged this team the last season and a half.

Ah, there's the issue. Jerry Owens isn't bad at baseball....he's just not focused! Juan Uribe doesn't walk because he thinks he's in the circus! Jose Contreras can't get people out because he's not being led like a man! Bravo sir, nail on the head!

Torre would turn underachievement

*exact, spot-on, predicted achievement.

into purpose and have the Sox right back in contention, even with the Indians and Tigers in the same division.

The Indians are better at every position except right field, (Dye > Gutierrez) first base (Konerko > Garko) and third base (healthy Crede > Blake). Thome vs Hafner is essentially a wash over past 3 years. Indians have better starters, Indians have a better bullpen.

The Tigers are better everywhere but first (Konerko > Casey), DH (Thome > Iron Sheff) and left (Fields > black hole). Inge v Crede is basically a wash. The Tigers have better starters, the Tigers have a better bullpen.

None of this matters because the Sox would have: Torre.

But, oh, I forgot. They gave Ozzie Guillen an extension through 2012.

Rats. They did? You should write a really bad article about that sometime.

Torre is class. Torre is a winner who won four World Series championships and six American League pennants.

Torre won them. Not Jeter, not Bernie, not Posada, not Pettitte, not Mariano, not Scotty-B (looool!), not Tino, not D-Cone, the Rocket, Spence, or Chuck Knobby-knees. It was all because of Torre's winnery-ness.

Torre is a good man who made the clubhouse a comfortable place for most players, a near-impossibility in New York.

For this he deserves credit, but he is not worth 20 wins.

Torre is a no-nonsense professional who completely would transform the image of the franchise from the current tone of immature, hot-tempered, blustery idiocy.

It's ironic because most of Jay's writing can be classified under one or more of the following: (1) immature, (2) hot-tempered, (3) blustery idiocy. This one is just (3). My favorite example of (1) was when he devoted an entire column to talking about how some comedian called Rex Grossman a "retarded vagina".

But, oh, I forgot. They gave Ozzie Guillen an extension through 2012.

Heard you the first time. Jay is under the false pretense that repeating the same sarcasm makes his writing better.

Someone will hire Torre to manage. It was time for him to go in New York, but not before he showed us the size of his heart by pulling a Johnny Paycheck and telling George Steinbrenner and Sons, ``Take this job and shove it.'' Shame on the Steinbrenner clan for first making Torre twist in the wind, then offering him a paycut after all his fine duties in reaching the playoffs 12 straight years. How wonderful to see Torre prioritize pride over pinstripes and pay. After all those years of maniacally firing managers -- to be precise, 20 changes between 1973 and 1995, including Billy Martin more times than we can count -- The Boss and his kids had it shoved up their tails. A lot of people lived vicariously through the gumption of Torre, the first manager ever to fire Steinbrenner.

Can someone check some sports news sites and see if any of this actually happened? I've been watching ESPN for 3 days straight and I haven't heard a thing about it.

I'd love to have that kind of man's man on the South Side.

But, oh, I forgot. They gave Ozzie Guillen an extension through 2012.

Fools.

For the love of shit. Ozzie doesn't hit. He doesn't pitch. He doesn't field. There aren't any plays to draw up in baseball. All he does is decide when to bunt (poorly), decide who bats where in the order (poorly), and decide when to pull certain pitchers to insert certain others (very well). He's not a good manager. He's also 0% of the reason the White Sox took a dive. Got it?

I suppose we should have a parade at this point. This is the first article Jay has written about the White Sox in months that did NOT make a nonsensical reference to July 2, 2006!

A Rant About Addition by Subtraction

The Big Lead is reporting that Rick Reilly is leaving Sports Illustrated. Assuming it's true, what a fantastic turn of events for the publication! I really enjoy SI. In general I think it makes for great dentist office waiting room reading material. But I've always maintained that the one way they could make it even better would be to stop filling up the back page with mindless drivel made up of single sentence paragraphs and puns that wouldn't make the cut for Laffy Taffy wrappers. I'm OK with puff pieces; but his come off as heiniously preachy. And there may not be a better example anywhere in sports journalism of someone who is not nearly as clever as they think they are. More than anything, I would describe his style of prose as awkward. Seriously, Rick. You're a travesty. His nephew went to my high school, so they got him to speak at our fall athletic banquet my sophomore year. I'm happy to report he is even less entertaining in person than he is in print.

The sad part: popular opinion/conventional wisdom on this is going to be that it's a "big loss" for SI. In fact, The Big Lead says so in different words in their post. Are people like this reading the same Rick Reilly as I am? Just because hordes of stupid people love something heartwarming doesn't make it good. (See: popular comic strips, such as "For Better or For Worse" or "Baby Blues") There are literally a hundred sportswriters out there who, given the kind of access Reilly has to big time athletes, could do a waaaaaay better job than Rick. I'm already looking forward to reading the work of whoever replaces him. The kind of people who think Reilly won't easily be replaced are the kind of people who think Jay Mariotti is clever and informative.

The End of an Era

It's noon on a Friday and I notice "SportsCenter Special" is on the screen. What is it for? The Yankees. Joe Torre not signing with the Yankees. In the middle of Rockies vs. Indians/Red Sox, there is somehow hours of Yankees coverage. Honest to God - it's called SportsCenter Special: 2007 Yankees The End of an Era Take a look. If this is the new direction of 'This is SportsCenter' ads, then you can count me out. How is this any better than the repeat of the west coast show? At least then I could have seen highlights of the Rutgers/USF game... instead I'll have to watch FSN's Final Score. The ALCS is still going on. I know nobody is really watching ESPN in the middle of the day, but c'mon. I'm watching in a bar and there's no volume or captioning, so I borrowed a computer and TiVoed it on over the internet. Here's the best of the best of what I heard from Joe Torre's news conference. All times are central. 1:17 pm - and not very important - The TiVo was awakened from recording a suggested recording of Card Sharks to record. I join the press conference in progress, which is a shame. I really wanted to hear what was said when I was in the bar. 1:20 pm - Budd Mishkan, NY1 - "We've seen some strange things from the Yankees in years past. Managers fired, then the decision is reconsidered in the next couple days. Billy Martin was announced at an Oldtimers day a couple days after he was fired. I know it's a long shot, but in the next couple of days, they reconsider for whatever reason would you or is the door absolutely shut?" I bring this up not because of how confusing the question seems at the end there, but what's on the screen. TheBottomLine has JOE TORRE STATISTICS scrolling along the bottom instead of who will play tonight and a meaningless stat about that match up or a player in that game. Moments later, the SportsCenter Pièce de résistance of live action split screen with vaguely related stat gives us Longest Tenured GM/Manager. No doubt that somewhere in Bristol, makers of these stat screens were sitting at the screen like parents at a children's beauty pageant. Quickly, they pace around a control room hoping that something is asked that kind of resembles their stat so that THEY get picked. Sure it's interesting that the four longest GM/Manager relationships all broke up this year, but maybe it's time that they moved on. I'm sure there are other managers looking for a GM out there. Better managers. Managers with feelings. And a boat. 1:23 - Amy Nelson, ESPN.com - "What is it that you're going to miss most about being manager of the Yankees?" Hard hitting questions today. I can name a couple of the things that I would miss about being a manager: The money. Bottomless buckets of bubble gum and sunflower seeds. Being the only coach that wears a uniform, therefore being the only coach allowed on the field in all of sports. But let's see how Joe answers: "Well, spring training is wonderful. Even though George'd never agree with me, I said spring training is great because you don't have to win games." ...and then he talks out of the side of his mouth, waiting for uproarious laughter from the press. Nothing. Boy, tough crowd. Maybe something a little blue will crack them up yet, Joe. Quick, SAVE IT! "...but that didn't always sell on my part. I had a lot of fun with it though. The thing I'm gonna miss most are the players... I mean, the players and the game itself... uh... and my coaches. That was the most fun for me." Well I guess I missed the mark. He could have two of the three of those things with a fantasy team and MLB Extra Innings. 1:30pm - Joe Torre: "I know Brian [Cashman] as General Manager has a lot of balls to keep in the air at the same time. As fas as I'm concerned it's pretty simple..." A little out of context, juvenile quoting for you. I was actually typing the intro when I heard that and pressed pause so I could get right back to it. 1:34 pm - CJ Papa, TV55: "What was it like for you this morning when you woke up knowing you were not the manager of the Yankees anymore?" Torre at the Improv: "Well, you know, it wasn't that tough. I mean, which time when I woke up?" Torre brings out the laughs with incontinence. I really hope there's a follow-up question coming from NY1 that involves holding a lead. CJ Papa hiccups into the microphone laughing. Torre is probably kicking himself that he forgot his fart machine. That thing would have killed. 1:37 pm - Bob Wolf, News 12: "All of the sudden, the Yankee front office seems to believe that a 3 out of 5 series is more important than a 162 game campaign. Have you ever been able to convince them that it's just a matter of luck, you're going to do a short series like that? Let me check real quick... nope, they still play a postseason. That would make a 3 out of 5 series more important than a 162 season. It would appear winning the regular season didn't get the Yankees a championship. 1:47 - Back to the studio, where we are told to tune to ESPNews What's interesting about this is the last question that aired on ESPN was from ESPN, then they cut away. The studio crew takes us to the top of the hour, where the coverage is accidentally summed up by Karl Ravech as he throws it to Buster Olney to close it all out. "Let's get Buster in here quickly. We had Donald Trump talk about the early 70s and we know how they struggled in the 80s. What crossroads do you think the next 6 months will be for the Yankees?" That's right. To talk about baseball, ESPN called Donald Trump. They can bring in an endless parade of sports writers to be talking heads. But somebody said "GET ME DONALD TRUMP!" and it was so.

MLB.com: Just as Bad as ESPN.com

This is the lead article on MLB.com. It's awful! Someone named "Jason Beck" wrote it. He sucks at writing; he sucks at choosing non-sensationalist topics; he sucks at respecting decent baseball teams.

CLEVELAND -- The wounds haven't even been measured from what the Indians did to the Evil Empire. Now they have a chance to overthrow Red Sox Nation.

Hold on, Jason. This is your first sentence. You don't want to screw it up. Wait - "The wounds haven't even been measured"? What the hell? Who measures wounds?

No team has beaten both the Yankees and Red Sox in the same postseason,

That's because nobody ever could until the Wild-Card in 1995. Since the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry only heated up in the last 4-5 years when both teams were actually good, this comes to no surprise.

a feat that has only been possible in the dozen years of Wild Card postseason play

Oh. You even knew that. And you still wrote the article. This doesn't bode well.

But as the Indians head into Wednesday's scheduled off-day, they can see an opportunity to add that to their place in postseason history.

More like a place in the "media-invented Red Sox and Yankee obsession" history. What the hell? As the winningest team in the AL and the team that is controlling the AL playoffs, don't the Indians deserve respect in their own right, not just because they happened to beat the two teams that garner the most media attention?

With a 3-1 series lead entering Thursday's Game 5, they have three chances to finish off the ultimate twin-killing. But there's little doubt they'd much rather do it in front of their home fans at Jacobs Field.

The only other team to face the Red Sox and Yankees in the same postseason was the 1998 version of this Cleveland club,

Oh. So, Jason, you recognize that this "postseason history" the Indians are creating is actually something that you are "adding undue importance to because writing a story about the Red Sox and Yankees will add more readers/generate more interest than a story just about the Indians".

an 89-win AL Central champion that dispatched the 92-win Red Sox in the Division Series by winning back-to-back one-run games at Fenway Park. The Indians had a 2-1 series lead on New York in what had the makings of an ALCS upset before the 114-win Bronx Bombers won three straight, including two in Cleveland.

Number of wins equates with relative dominance of teams. I see. That '98 team sure was full of True Yankees.

These Indians aren't upset-minded, having tied for baseball's best record with 96 victories in the regular season.

So, this season, it would've been an upset for the 94-win Yankees to beat the Indians.

If that weren't enough, with a 3-1 series advantage, they've established themselves as the team to beat heading into two games for their workhorse starters. They only need one win.

I'm glad you reminded us that you only need four wins in the ALCS, Jason.

"I'm excited that we've taken it this far," manager Eric Wedge said. "But we still have a lot of work to do."

I'm glad you included this quotation, Jason.

And if any team knows about overcoming series deficits, it's the Red Sox. If anything, they're a win ahead of where they stood the last time they reached the brink of the elimination in the ALCS.

Though it certainly was an exciting baseball moment, I'm getting tired of the massive popularity that resulted from the Red Sox' AMAZING 2003 PLAYOFF RUN!

More than a half-dozen players remain from the 2004 team that made history by overcoming a 3-0 series deficit to beat the Yankees and go on to the World Series. Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett weren't with them then, but they were on the 2003 Marlins squad that overcame a 3-1 NLCS deficit by winning three straight over the Cubs.

Playoff experience means nothing. See: Rockies, Colorado. I'm sure Theo Epstein is happy to have this guy and his career 88 OPS+ on the 2007 postseason roster because he sat the bench on the 2003 postseason roster. Note to Jason Beck: just because Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett's team happened to win three games in a row four years ago gives them NO ADVANTAGE IN THIS POSTSEASON!

"I think what [the experience] does," Lowell said, "is you realize it can be done. It's not something that's impossible.

I, dan-bob, did not play in the 2003 ALCS. Kevin Youkilis did not play in the 2003 ALCS. Is Mike Lowell implying that Kevin and I don't "realize it can be done"? I think he is! Mike Lowell realizes it can be done because Mike Lowell was on the team that did it.

"There's only one must-win game, and that's the one two days from now. That's the only one we've got right now on our agenda, and we have to look at it that way."

I'm glad you included that quotation, Jason.

Considering how much the Indians, who'll start co-ace C.C. Sabathia, would rather end this here than go back to Fenway Park and the atmosphere that awaits them, they're undoubtedly thinking one game at a time, too.

Here's a writing tip: the subject and verb in your sentence shouldn't be the 31st and 32nd words. MLB.com has a staff of awful writers.

They don't have to think about the math, but it's in their favor. Since 1985, when the League Championship Series expanded to a best-of-seven format, 10 of the previous 13 teams to hold 3-1 leads in the ALCS have gone on to win the series. Eight of them finished it off in Game 5. Eleven other teams held 3-1 leads in the NLCS, and nine went on to win the series, though five of them lost Game 5.

It's an example of how much momentum means to the team in front, but it also shows how much it can change with one win from the team on the brink.

No, it doesn't. It shows overwhelmingly that a 3-1 lead is nearly insurmountable, even if the losing team does CHANGE THE MOMENTUM with one GRITTY WIN.

That's why both teams have to take it one game at a time.

Jason, whenever this line appears in one of your columns, it should appear in quotes. This is an acceptable line to print when uttered by a player or manager, who is paid to play or manage the game. This is not an acceptable line to print when you are being paid to comment on the game, because it's stupid and offers no insight.

Only three teams -- the 2000 Yankees, 1997 Indians and 1992 Blue Jays -- lost Game 5 with a 3-1 ALCS lead and went on to win Game 6. Three others went on to lose the series.

Jason, you forgot your conclusion! You started talking about the POSTSEASON HISTORY that the Indians were about to create, and ended up talking about the 1992 Blue Jays. You forgot to finish your article! You forgot to actually talk about the Indians' team! You suck!
___________________________________________________________________

After I read this article, I said to myself: shit, I just wasted a few minutes of my life. Now that I spent the last twenty minutes writing this, I say to myself: shit, I just wasted that twenty minutes. Still, I feel I've done my part to indicate my growing distaste at the two growing trends in sports that we at FireJayMariotti hate most:

1. National media's obsession with sensational stories and large-market myopia
and
2. shitty writing and analysis.

This article had both. I do feel a little better now!

Who Are These Guys Again? The Colorado Mountains? Is That a Real Team?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Mike Celizic. I'm not sure if he's been made fun of here before or anything, but he sure is a bad journalist. That...thing...on his head is the reason I'm going to call him HatGuy, which is an original nickname that I just now made up for the first time ever, and definitely isn't copied from some really funny website. Ol' Hatty usually dabbles in writing about baseball twice a month. Yesterday was once such day. Let's check out the column.

Rockies would be royalty if on East Coast
Amazing run by no-names is like nothing we've seen in baseball before

Oooh, a Rockies column. That bunch of no-namies that plays is Colorado. 25 men who don't have names (and a manager who may or may not have one). This looks intriguing.

This is a terrific team that’s stormed out of the thin air of Denver and into the even thinner national TV ratings they’re drawing from an audience that has no idea who the Colorado Rockies are.

A play on words making fun of the nationwide popularity of a small market team? Genius! No one has ever done that before!

It’s doubtful that any team has ever arrived at the World Series with less cachet and name recognition than the Rockies.

I'll see your 2007 Rockies (a team that likely contains both the NL MVP and the NL Rookie of the Year, despite both of them lacking a name), and raise you the 2003 Marlins. Granted, they have a lot of players who are famous now, but we're talking about when they arrived at the World Series. And at that time, other than Ivan Rodriguez and ROY Dontrelle Willis, it was 23 guys who weren't given names at birth (some people on the team made up names mid-season, in case you were wondering how they communicated with each other, or why there was a player on this team listed under the alias "Tim Spooneybarger").

Most of the team’s players couldn’t be more anonymous if they were in a witness protection program.

Ah ok, thanks for writing this sentence. I really didn't know where you were going with this before now, especially because the title and first two sentences did not have the same essential meaning as this one.

And it’s not like many fans are bothering to get acquainted. Those TV ratings for their NLCS romp over the equally unknown Arizona Diamondbacks?

Hockeyesque, folks. Hockeyesque.

Who are these guys?

Get to the point, please. That's 4 statements, 2 rhetorical questions, 2 fragments, and one subtitle saying the exact same fucking thing. Maybe if you watched baseball before (minus Yankee games, and I'm still not sure if you even watch those), these players wouldn't be so foreign. You see, that's the important thing about being an "analyst". You learn about the entire league of teams so that if one of the lesser-known ones makes it to the World Series, you have more important and interesting things to say than, "BREAKING NEWS: World Series Team Not As Famous As Country Initially Hoped".

Brad Hawpe? Is that a right fielder or a typo?

Typo. Definitely a typo. (Side note: typo of spelling what word, exactly? Hawke, I guess?)

Tulowitzki — that’s a tropical disease, right?

Yep, death tolls from Tulowitzki virus are reaching the thousands in Hawaii.

Josh Fogg? Is he any relation to Phileas?

No, actually, but we're still trying to figrue out if he's the distant cousin of Kirk Fogg, the host of the ever-popular kids' game show "Legends of the Hidden Temple"

Then there’s Yorvit Torrealba. I know Torrealba — that’s a resort in the Yucatan, or maybe Majorca, right? But Yorvit? Sounds like one of those designer Scandinavian vodkas that comes in a frosted bottle and costs $12 a shot. Even their manager, Clint Hurdle, is named after a piece of track equipment.

Yadda yadda yadda, we get the point. This is so stupid, and can be done to the players on any Major League Baseball team.

It is a shame, because the Rockies are on an amazing winning streak, a roll like nothing baseball has ever seen. And that’s part of their problem: until the last couple of weeks of the season, they weren’t even in the playoff picture.

If I'm reading this right, Celizic thinks that the Rockies aren't getting any attention becuase they've been on a miraculous comeback run. Makes sense to me!

By the time they went on their almighty tear down the stretch, winning 13 of their last 14 games to force a playoff for the NL wild card with the Padres, sports fans around the country had already moved on to football.

What? Football happens every year. Why is this specific to the Rockies?

Besides, it was all taking place in the NL West, the games starting too late and the division too weak to make more than a ripple in the dreaded East Coast media.

Division too weak!?!??!???! The division with the highest winning percentage in the NL and 4/5 teams finishing the season over .500 is too weak???? Really?

They won the playoff and then seven straight playoff games, removing any sense of drama and competition from the NL playoffs, shrinking their audience even more.

Those IDIOTS!

They arrived too late and too quickly to pay grasp what they were doing

There is definitely something wrong with the 2nd half of this sentence.

especially since for nearly six months before the middle of September, there wasn’t any reason for the country to pay attention to them. Their line-up was made up of kids — a gang of first- and second-year players too new to the business to know that what they hoped to do is impossible.

Welcome back to www.doesnoresearch.hatspot.com

We'll throw out the fact that this last sentence doesn't make any sense. Rather, we're going to count the number of seasons that players in the Rockies' starting lineup have played in the major leagues, removing seasons in which they've played less than 50 games. Sound good?

Taveras - 3 (WS 2005, shoulda known that one, Mikey)
Matsui - 4
Holliday - 4
Helton - 10, a relative dinosaur
Atkins - 3
Hawpe - 3
Tulowitzki - 1 (HE GOT ONE RIGHT!!!!!)
Joetorrejessicaalba - 6 (dude's been bummin around the league since like 2001)

If these kids, who are so fresh and enthusiastic and devoid of braggadocio and bluster, were busting into the game in Boston or New York, they’d have been on the cover of Sports Illustrated by the All-Star break.

Unlikely, seeing as how they were 44-44 at the All-Star break. If they were in Boston or New York, people would be doing nothing at the All-Star break but bitch about how bad they are.

We’d have hailed them as the new faces of a game, the standard-bearers for a new generation of stars who are taking over the game.

Intelligent baseball minds have already done that. Ignoramuses like yourself are still trying to find out how you can suck Joba Chamberlain's proverbial dick.

This year, Troy Tulowitzki, Matt Holliday, Brad Hawpe, Josh Fogg and company were learning their trade and putting up their big numbers in Denver, where the game of choice is football.

It's time to play dan-bob's favorite game! One of these is not like the others.....

Josh Fogg, 2007: 4.90 ERA, 1.46 WHIP.

Hmmmm...well I guess these numbers are technically sort of "big".

And it’s not as if the Colorado franchise is wrapped in a mantle of heroic history and legend. It’s known for its mile-high home park, which is to ERAs what Denny’s Grand Slam breakfasts are to cholesterol levels. It’s not known for its great accomplishments in the regular season, much less the playoffs.

Gotta love it....Hatguy continues to put allusions to unhealthy foods in his columns.

The Rockies have one player with a national reputation — Todd Helton. He’s also the team’s only player making more than the $4.4 million that Holliday, the National League batting champion and the best outfielder most fans don’t know much about, pulls down.

Holliday, to the casually-informed fan, has more of a reputation than Helton. And he still hasn't touched home plate!

The team payroll is around $54 million — one of the bottom five in the game, and if you take away Helton’s $16 million, the other 24 guys are making a combined $38 million, which isn’t enough to pay the left side of the Yankee’s infield.

That’s another reason we don’t know much about them — their salaries. We live in a society that equates income with importance — what other explanation is there for the national obsession with Donald Trump and Britney Spears?

That's just a weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bit of oversimplification there, Mikey. Is Prince Fielder really less "important" than Jason Kendall because Kendall makes more money?

The average salary in major league baseball this year is $2.7 million. The Rockies have at least 15 players making less than that, 11 players making under a million, and 10 — including starting outfielders Hawpe and Willie Taveras and starting infielders Tulowitzki and Garrett Atkins — making $400,000 or less. That’s not even enough to buy a house in one of Denver’s pricier suburbs.

"Willy". And where is this going?

None of that should diminish what they’ve accomplished or lessen the luster of the terrific crop of kids the team’s management has assembled. In an ideal world, which is one in which people are celebrated for the accomplishments and not their bank accounts, their presence in the playoffs would swell the national television audience instead of shrinking it.

If this is true, then you, Mike Celizic, are one of the chief reasons why we do not have an ideal world.

Go ahead and ignore them if you can’t be bothered to get to know who they are. Then sneer at the ratings they bring to the World Series, if that’s how you get your jollies.

I've made it clear several times that YOU haven't bothered to get to know who they are. And I'm reasonably sure that you think Josh Fogg is the only pitcher on the team. Nice choice, by the way. Fogg. I hear he's the best one!

But don’t turn around and whine about how the game has been ruined by all the spoiled-brat players who are making more money than third-world countries. And don’t ask what happened to innocent kids who play the game for the sheer joy of it.

Ummmm...those "spoiled-brats" were once "innocent kids". Did A-Rod make $20M his first few seasons? A lot of these Rockies players are very good, and will make a lot of money, and will be (mostly unjustly) thrown into the "spoiled-brat" category. Are these Rockies so innocent that they're going to say when they're 30, "No Mister GM, I want to play for less money than I'm worth in the market, because I'm innocent"?

They’re right in front of you. Playing in the World Series. Turn on the television and enjoy the show.

Scene: Celizic's living room, Game 1 of the 2007 World Series.

Celizic: (turns on TV) "Who the fuck is Francis?"

Isn't that some sort of species of fruit fly indigenous to Uruguay?

Color Commentators Operate Blogs

I suppose that I should start off by introducing myself. My name is Jarrett, and I now blog here. I'm not quite as angry as I should be to blog here, and I certainly don't care for grammar's "rules". What I do care about is hockey. Now that I've stopped everybody from reading any more, I urge the "hockey is on Versus, therefore I shouldn't care about it" crowd to wait a couple days for everybody else here to post. You'll get your kicks then. Foreplay aside, I'm here to make you read, and read you shall.

Daryl "Razor" Reaugh is the color commentator for the Dallas Stars. A former goalie in the hockey equivalent of AA baseball, he must really know his hockey. But put a computer in front of him, and this happens.

According to The Hockey News and their league sources, NHL players will be traveling more and resting less starting next season when the league does away with the unbalanced schedule and opens the regular season one week later.

Multiple high-level sources have confirmed to THN.com that the NHL will push back its starting date next season by one week, to either Oct. 9 or Oct. 10.

Sources have also indicated that the league will kick off in Europe next year with two games in Prague between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Ottawa Senators (It had previously been reported that the Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning would play those games).

Because the whole "regular season in Europe" thing worked out so well this year. The only thing the league is doing is stealing games away from season ticket holders for the Penguins who fill the ancient igloo in Pittsburgh... but that's not why I'm targeting his comments.

This season, not including the two games played in England between the Los Angeles Kings and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, started Oct. 3.

In order to accommodate the change, the league will further compress the schedule early in the season rather than have the season run one week longer.

My take?

Here's why I'm writing.

Schedule Change: Great news. If you have a league of 30, have all 30 play each other. (Isn't that the point of a league?)

I have to say that I agree with every part of this. The NHL really screwed up having teams play so much in their own division and not having the new line of NHL superstars playing against every team. This Saturday will be Alexander Ovechkin's first trip to St. Louis, and I'm excited.

Delayed Start: The delayed start is a step in the right direction but one week isn't enough. The NHL should seriously think about starting no earlier than Oct 15th, and preferably not until November 1st. (Let the NFL get into the ho hum middle of their schedule, same with college ball, and avoid clashes with MLB playoffs)

No. Not at all. No. Yesterday was October 15th. What a day it would have been to start the hockey season, because it wouldn't clash with baseball's playoffs at all. The NHL starts at the right time as it is. A little more than 2/3 of baseball's fans have been eliminated from their favorite team playing in the postseason. With only 16 games in their season, I would hardly call any part of it "ho hum," but that early it's hard to tell if a team is good or not, I suppose. Or go with Razor and start your season in the middle of the LCS. I don't care about any of the teams playing, but I still watch because the games can be exciting. Some nights, you are rewarded with a call that still has 30 people talking and other nights you stay up for three hours to see the Indians humiliate the Red Sox. Leave the start of the season alone.

Condensed Schedule: Call a dumbulance!

Take THAT, NHL! What a moronic move! So dumb, in fact, that a specific vehicle dispatched by 911 should be called to your schedule gurus!

The NHL doesn't need to gift their coaches a reason to play even more conservatively.

Gift suggestions: A large book of quotations that a color commentator could look at so he can turn a phrase correctly. "gift their coaches"? Let's see how he stumbles to the finish line.

I've always maintained that in order to maximize intensity two things should change; Teams should never have more game days than off days during any given week of the regular season. And, the season should be trimmed from 82 games down to 72.

A Jay Mariotti flip-flop special! You want every team to play every team, and rest in between, but you want to trim the schedule down for less games? HINT! The names of the conferences - - Eastern and Western - - denote the teams might be on the opposite side of the continent as the others! How about you change the game while you're at it? Add 3 more players per team to the ice, an extra puck, but to make sure they don't get tired, have the periods trimmed from 20 minutes to 2.

No Way! Are You Serious? I Can't Believe That's True!

No less than three minutes ago, Tim McCarver said one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard from Tim McCarver. And that's saying a lot.

Situation: Red Sox/Indians, Bottom of the 5th. The Indians have scored six in the frame. The inning began with a Casey Blake solo home run. Tim, take it away (not verbatim because I don't have DVR, but I didn't fudge anything or omit anything important).

"You'd think a leadoff walk would lead to more multi-run innings than a leadoff home run. We did some research and ran the numbers... turns out that's not the case. A leadoff home run actually creates more multi-run innings. Go figure!"

Oh... so you mean... wow. Who'd have known? Just goes to show you, you can't always trust conventional wisdom. I mean, if I were a manager and were looking for a big inning, I for one would much rather have a guy on first with no runs in than no one on and one run in already. But as the saying goes, "That's why they play the games!"

That's applicable here, right?

One Yankee Fan Purports to Speak For Millions of Other Yankee Fans

How often can you say this: whew, what a Monday!

First, we got Big Leadeded. Always a thrill to check that morning roundup and see our blog's humble name among those cool enough to make the cut. And if anyone reading this is new, as in, you hadn't seen us before yesterday and were somehow motivated to return this morning, we appreciate it. Poke around a little bit. If you don't like what you see, go to one of our links. I guarantee you might enjoy us or someone we plug.

Second, we got into a couple reasonably bitter comment fights. For the second time in two weeks we squared off against some angsty Padres fans, in addition to exchanging words with a couple of Simmons supporters in the post that was linked on The Big Lead. What can I say; I'm not exactly proud of how often we get into these nerdy wars of words... but they're still fun anyways. Hey, what's the point of living in your parents' basement if you can't anonymously argue with other people living in their parents' basements?

Third, longtime FireJay reader, interviewee, and whipping boy Jeff Pearlman had this to say about the Yankees, their season, and how their fans (supposedly) perceive the way things went down in 2007:

When did a baseball season in New York become solely about the finish line, and not about the journey? How can a team that clawed its way out of a 14½-game hole be deemed a failure for falling to a team -- the Cleveland Indians -- that features two of the league's top five starting pitchers? Do the memories of Alex Rodriguez's 54 home runs and Chien-Ming Wang's 19 wins and Derek Jeter's steely determination and Joba Chamberlain's meteoric rise fade to ashes without a diamond-studded ring?

Is this who we are?

Is this what we've become?

Yes, I know plenty of ink has been spilled on this topic. But Jeff's angle interested me because of an email I received from FireJay tipster/reader Tom E. In Tom's words:

Of course, the “voice of the fans” is a ploy that Pearlman did not invent. Many columnists use it to express disapproval without admitting that they are the ones who are doing the disapproving. I suppose that claiming that the fans are upset allows them to avoid directly confronting the coaches and players they are skewering.

In my house, where three die-hard Yankee fans reside, we certainly were disappointed by the Cleveland series, but we also took pleasure in what we thought was an exciting season with a great comeback and an influx of exciting young players. And watching closely on TV, I didn’t get the sense that the fans at the game were anything but supportive. The gross generalizations that claim to have insight into how millions of people feel about a team and its season are weak, at best.

Tom: thanks for the insight. I certainly and obviously appreciate it. Now let me basically restate what you said in my own less articulate terms.

Whoa whoa whoa. Listen. I'm no Yankee expert, but this is mildly suspicious to me. Maybe that's how Steinbrenner feels about your boys. Maybe he feels that anything less than a championship is automatically a failure, regardless of circumstances (like being fifty games out in May or whatever it was). But here's the question- do many/most/all Yankee fans feel that same way? You never say for certain that that's the case. Meanwhile, the impression I get from interacting with a large number of Yankee fans on the web (besides just Tom) is that most of them feel the season was definitely a success. At the very least it wasn't a failure. The number that want to see Choke-Rod resigned, as well as the number that want to see Joe Torre brought back, speak volumes to that end. So who's setting the standards... millions and millions of devoted fans, many of whom are mature adults with well developed decision making capabilities? Or a crusty old bastard of an owner who's never been famous for is rationality? I'm just saying is all.

Anyways hopefully our week ends up being as exciting as I promised. Thanks for checking in and be sure to tune in frequently lest you miss out on a sissy-ass comment fight.