Why the Cheatriots Couldn't Win

Here are some great stats I saw about this past weekend's superbowl, many of which are in this article about the effect of luck on the game, and which I really think highlight well my lasting impressions of this game, these teams, and the 2011-2012 NFL season.

For starters, some stats to give an idea of just how amazing the Giants' feat this year is. For example, did you know that Eli Manning and the Giants finished 3-0 on the road in this postseason, while all other teams in the NFL finished 0-9 on the road? So in a year where nobody seemed to be able to rise up and win a game against a better team in the playoffs, the Giants stepped up and beat the Falcons at home, followed by the 15-1 Packers at Lambeau, and then the 13-3 49ers in San Fran, and then they followed it up by winning the Superbowl in Indianapolis against the 13-3 Cheatriots.

Moving to their performance in the Superbowl itself, in their Super Bowl 42 meeting, the Giants held New England to 14 points, which was 23 fewer points than its regular-season average in that season of incredible offensive outbursts for the Cheats. In their second Super Bowl meeting this past Sunday night, the Giants held New England to 17 points, again 15 fewer points than its regular-season average. The Giants defense simply stepped up big time against the Cheatriots, both times they have met in recent memory in the superbowl. At more than two touchdowns below the Cheatriots' season averages, it is really worth mentioning.

And regarding Eli Manning, I did not realize this but Eli Manning is now 7-0 as a starter on the road in the playoffs, with 12 touchdown passes versus two interceptions. That right there might be one of the sickest stats you will ever see about the NFL postseason. Forget Mark Sanchez and his four road playoff wins, Eli Manning at 7-0 on the road in the playoffs, with 12 tds and just 2 picks? Mark Sanchez doesn't even dream of being that good in the clutch. What a stud Eli turned himself into this year. Much as I hate to admit it.

Some interesting stats comparing this year's Giants run to that of last year's Green Bay Packers, and the general mediocrity of the teams in this year's championship, during the regular season:

The Packers and Giants, the last two Super Bowl champions, were a combined 19-13 during the regular season followed by a combined 8-0 in the postseason over the past two years. If you recall, the Packers were all but done after an embarrassing loss at home to the Lions in Week 14 back in 2011, and then they backed into the playoffs anyways and the rest was history. And this season, the Giants' Week 15 debacle loss at home to the hapless Redskins in a game that wasn't even as close as the 23-10 score would indicate seemed to all but ensure that they would miss the playoffs as well, but then wins at the Jets and against the Cowgirls in the last two weeks of the season catapulted them in anyways, and once again, the rest has since become the stuff of NFL legend.

Also, the Giants and Cheatriots finished the 2011-2012 season with a combined record of just 6-6 against teams that had winning seasons, and that includes all the playoff games. The Giants beat only New England this year during the regular season among its 9 wins, 8 of which were against teams who ended the year 8-8 or worse. Meanwhile, the Cheats did not win a single game against an over-.500 regular season team despite winning 13 games overall this year. Think about that -- the Cheatriots played only two games against winning teams in 2011 -- the Steelers and the Giants in Weeks 8 and 9 this year -- and they lost them both, by an average of 6 points. Neither of these teams faced particularly strong schedules this year, nor did either team perform particularly well against the few good teams they did face, but just like last year's Packers, they got hot at the right time and rode their big players to victory.

There are also some good stats that I think give some solid insight into how the Cheatriots managed to lose this game:

Tom Brady completed 25 of his first 31 pass attempts in Superbowl XLVI, but then ended the game completing only 2 of his final 10 attempts as he desperately tried to lead his team on a late-game comeback. Eli Manning, however, completed 25 of his first 34 pass attempts much like Tom Brady did, but then he finished the game completing five of his final six attempts, including the amazing pass to Mario Manningham (see below) that will go down as the biggest and most amazing play of this year's superbowl.

Which really illustrates the larger point here, to those of you who are big football fans and have watched a lot of these big games over the past decade or so: Tom Brady is simply not as good as he used to be. This should not surprise anyone, as he is now in his 12th year playing in a league where the vast majority of players don't ever survive half that long. By NFL standards, Brady is getting up there in age, and the simple fact is that, when his team was recording signs and stealing plays and winning superbowls back in the early 2000s, Tom Brady was at the time one of the absolutely most accurate, best decision-making quarterbacks in the league. Nowadays, Brady's accuracy is just not up there with the Rodgers's and the Brees's, and it really showed in this year's superbowl.

For starters, let's take a look at the play everyone (including Brady's wife) is talking about, Wes Welker's huge drop late in the 4th quarter which would have sustained a key Cheatriots drive and gone a long way towards ensuring a New England victory in the superbowl:



If you take a look at the play above and you're capable of some objectivity that so many people lack when it comes to their favorite sports team, this really isn't about Welker missing the catch, even a little bit. It's a bad throw. Period. Not only is this ball about four feet straight over Welker's head, when it had no need to be given that Welker is completely wide, wide open, but it'a also at his back shoulder, making this a very,very difficult catch. Now, don't get me wrong -- Wes Welker is the most productive receiver in the NFL for the past several years, and he does quite often find a way to make this catch. And I can certainly feel for Tom Brady when I see his top receiver get both hands on a thrown ball in a situation where he was not otherwise touched by any defenders. But at the end of the day, the inescapable conclusion from watching this play is that Tom Brady made a bad throw. The precision accuracy that used to be such a hallmark of Brady's success back in the early days of his Cheatriots career, is now gone, at least in any consistent aspect. In this case, Brady had his #1 target wide open on an absolutely crucial, nearly superbowl-winning play, but Brady's throw ended up in an extremely difficult spot to catch it, even for Wes Welker. Gisele, Tom and anyone else can say what they want, but this one is probably 85% on Brady, and 15% on Welker in my view.

Similarly, let's look at the next biggest play in the game, from the Cheatriots' perspective -- the Chase Blackburn interception:



Once again, here is Tom Brady given all the time in the world behind the line, but when none of his wideouts are open, Brady opts to go with his ever-trusty tight end Rob Gronkowski and heaves one up there, at a time when Gronk had clearly beaten his defender and was a good five yards open downfield and counting. Unfortunately, just look at that pass. Brady throws it a little off his back foot, a little tentatively, and the result is just what one might expect -- this ball is at least ten feet short. And really, it's even shorter than that, because Gronk had his guy beat when the ball left Brady's hands, so Brady should have led Gronk even deeper with his throw, but this toss ends up about 10 feet short of where Gronk was when Brady threw the ball. There's just not even close to enough juice on this throw, and this is the one and only reason why Chase Blackburn was able to make what was admittedly a nice catch on his part. But if this ball is thrown well, there's no chance for Blackburn to even make a play, and given Gronkowski's performance this year, it seems a pretty safe bet he takes this one into the end zone for a huge score that almost certainly changes the outcome of this game. Instead, however, Brady launches a duck well short of its intended target, and this gives Blackburn -- who was already behind the play right from when Brady threw the ball -- the opportunity to be in better position that Gronkowski to make the huge interception and take away one of the Cheatriots' last good opportunities to score in this game. The simple fact is, Tom Brady did not used to miss this badly on his longballs in superbowls past, but now his accuracy is just not what it used to be, and it shows in his results.

Before anyone says I'm just nitpicking here, let's take a look at the Giants' biggest play of the superbowl, which was this amazing catch by Mario Manningham down the left sideline late in the 4th quarter with his team needing a score in the final minutes to take the lead from the Cheatriots:



I mean, just look at that play. Where Tom Brady stepped down in his team's biggest throws of the day, making questionable decisions and missing his spots as detailed above, Eli Manning shows us what Brady used to do in the superbowl back in the day -- he absolutely nails it. Nails it! As amazing of a job catching that ball as Manningham did -- hauling it in, feet both in bounds, retaining possession while being hit and tackled out of bounds -- I just can't get away from the fact that Eli Manning's throw is even better. Play that vid over again and just look at where that ball landed. And this was with Eli also off his back foot and under pressure to boot, but just look at what Eli did there. He lofted this one and landed it in a spot where absolutely, unequivocally, the only player who could make any play on the ball whatsoever is his guy. Those defenders -- though Manningham seemed like he was draped with coverage when this play happened in real time -- but those defenders literally had no shot to even touch this ball. Manning put this throw perfectly where only Manningham could make a play, and yet just close enough to him to enable him to actually be able to make that play.

This is what winning superbowl quarterbacks do, and this is exactly what Tom Brady used to do back in the day when his Cheatriots were winning superbowls themselves. But not anymore. Now, impeccable, almost impossibly perfect throws like this are what Eli Manning does to Tom Brady's team. While Brady, on the other hand, basically, well, Brady's himself. You thought Tebowing was big, but Bradying might be I think the Next Big Thing.

I'll leave this post with a couple of final thoughts about the superbowl, and the Cheatriots's cheating past.

Before Spygate, Bill Belicheat's Cheatriots were 12-2 overall in the playoffs, and 3-0 in superbowls. But since the team was caught cheating in the middle of the 2007 NFL season, the Cheatriots are now 4-4 overall in the postseason, and 0-2 in the superbowl. If you choose not to see a connection there, then that's your prerogative. But then it's my prerogative to laugh at you, which I will most definitely do.

Also, I saw pointed out in that article interestingly that the Giants are 4-0 in the superbowl when Bill Belicheat is on the sidelines. That of course is 2-0 with Bellicheat as an assistant under Bill Parcells, and now 2-0 against Bellicheat's Cheatriots team. Maybe they can hire him as a strategic consultant or something if they ever make it back to the big game again, since it seems unlikely to this writer that the Cheatiots will make a return trip to the superbowl anytime soon.

Interesting Football Tidbits

If the NFL playoffs go with the chalk the rest of the way, we will have the New England Cheatriots facing off against the Green Bay Packers in Superbowl XLVI in Indianapolis on February 5. And that will be the first time in NFL history that the two statistically worst defenses in the NFL will match up in the Superbowl. Those two teams each gave up over 411 yards of total offense per game through the 2011 regular season, and while the rush defenses on both teams are more middle-of-the-pack, the Cheats and the Packers are also the two worst teams against the pass in the entire league -- a good 20% worse than even the next-worst pass defending team -- which should be interesting because the passing game is far and away the strength of the other team. If the chalk takes it the rest of the way, we'll be looking at the #2 and #3 offense and the #2 and #2 passing offense, playing against the #31 and #32 teams both in total defense and in passing defense. That game could be just crazy.

Speaking of the playoffs, all the buzz in New York City this week is word that a bunch of Jets teammates have anonymously ripped Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez in the press this week, saying among other things that he has no legitimate fear of being replaced by head coach Rex Ryan, and several players questioning his work ethic. Of course, if you watched "Hard Knocks" this preseason, you already saw shades of that lack of work ethic, and the beginnings of a potential attitude problem, as I think it would be hard for mostly anyone to have been exactly "impressed" with Sanchez's personality if you sat through all the episodes of that series earlier in 2011. In this case, you've got the usual complement of talking heads, former players especially, who are ripshit about this move, questioning any player who would dare take such shots anonymously instead of just coming out and assigning a name to the comment. Because, the thinking goes, the next time Sanchez walks into that locker room, he's going to be wondering "Was it you who said that bad stuff about me?", "Was it you?", "Or you?". But that doesn't really seem to be the case here, does it? In this case, I count at least four different players specifically cited in that story -- at least some of whom are apparently leaders on the team in one capacity or another, so not insignificant players like the story from the third-string quarterback that broke last week. The bottom line for Sanchez is, it's not just one player here or one player there. It's most of his entire team who think these things about him. So focusing on who said it and how we find out who said what is, in my view, completely missing the point in this case. Mark Sanchez's team has a problem with his lack of preparation, his poor work ethic and his entitled attitude, and of course with the results that has led to for the entire team now here, three years in to the Sanchez / Rex Ryan experiment. At this point, the Jets can either waste time chasing down who said what and why they said it, or they can start moving on by beginning to work on fixing those problems. And nothing short of that is going to get the Jets team with this nucleus of players back where they want to be.

And before I go, did anyone else out there see this story? That Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow is Americans' favorite active athlete today? Seems crazy, doesn't it? But "Tebow was recognized by 3 percent of Americans surveyed as their favorite active pro athlete, placing him above Kobe Bryant (2 percent), Aaron Rodgers (1.9 percent), Peyton Manning (1.8 percent) and Tom Brady (1.5 percent) in the Top 5." Above Tom Brady, above Aaron Rodgers, above Peyton Manning? I mean, Tebow is more beloved by sports fans in this country than those three titans who happen to play in the exact same sport, and the exact same position as him, already? That just seems crazy. As does the fact that Tebow takes this top spot much faster than any other athlete since the inception of the poll in 1994, attaining the vote before the end of his second season as a pro. It took LeBron James eight years to reach this status, and Kobe Bryant 11 years before he became America's favorite active pro athlete. I'm not sure I would describe Tim Tebow as my "favorite" pro athlete just now, but I don't have any problem admitting that I would like to watch Tebow play this weekend more than I want to watch any other single athlete in professional sports in the world today. So maybe there's really something to this after all.

Bring on the Rants

So the World Series is over. I will admit to feeling a slight twinge as I watched the San Francisco Giants climb all over each other, a feeling that someone else was celebrating something that wasn't theirs, that belonged to my team. But in the end, that's a good thing. I'm from Philadelphia, and to be honest, as sports fans we are incredibly demanding on the micro level, often known for booing our hometown heroes when they fail to come through in a big spot in a given game, but on a macro level, we Philadelphians just have low expectations when it comes to championships. It's not like it's in the water or anything, but it's just a reflection of the historical reality: we haven't won much. When you go 25 years and 100 seasons between the four major U.S. sports between 1983 and 2008 without a single championship for the city to celebrate, when your baseball franchise remains the first and only franchise in all of professional sports to lose 10,000 games, when your basketball team has basically been hanging out in the pooper since the mid 1980s save for a few good years a decade ago under Allen Iverson, you just start to accept it. So yeah, I know the Phillies had the talent to win another World Series this year, and believe me as a long-suffering Philly sports guy I very tangibly feel our failure to nab that elusive World Series title this year while we had the chance and when we had come so close, but I mean, come on. I'm not a New York sports fan. These aren't the Yankees here. My Phillies have just won their fourth consecutive NL East for the first time in franchise history, we went to back-to-back World Series before bowing out to the eventual WS champion in the NLCS this season, and we've got an incredible pitching staff and most of our powerful lineup locked up for at least another year heading into 2012, plus one of the best, most devoted young GMs in the game today.

Try as I might, I just can't get crazy about the Phillies not winning the World Series again in 2010. I felt a twinge all right watching the celebration last night, but that's all it was. This Giants team clearly deserved to win the championship this year. As I wrote all about before the NLCS began, this Giants' staff posted the best team ERA in more than 60 years over the final 8 weeks of the 2010 season, and in the end it was their pitching that dominated, all through the playoffs really. Sure, it's easy for us Philly fans to get mad at Ryan Howard and his 12 strikeouts in the NLCS, or Chase Utley's and Shane Victorino's inability to get a big hit after coming through in the clutch so many times in postseasons past, but the rest of the sports-watching country sees the real reality: these Giants pitchers are fucking good. They made the Philly hitters look bad -- it's what they do. Matt Cain didn't give up a run in the entire postseason for the Giants. 21-year-old Madison Bumgarner pitched 7 shutout innings in a huge spot in the World Series. The Texas Rangers, who led all of MLB with a .276 batting average during the regular season, hit just .190 in the Series overall, with Giants ace Tim Lincecum beating superstar Cliff Lee not one but twice in the span of a week to clinch the championship in 5 games. This Giants team was the best team in the league when it came right down to it this year, and Bruce Bochy and those players deserve a hell of a lot of credit for coming together and peaking at the absolute best possible time, and playing their game despite consistently being picked to lose in the postseason along the way. Congratulations to the fans of the San Francisco Giants, who are celebrating like crazy today after the franchise's first championship in 57 years, and first ever while in the Bay Area.

But there is a lot of other crazy sports news going on out there today, isn't there?

For starters, this Randy Moss stuff is just craziness. Four games after the Minnesota Vikings actually trade away a third-round pick to the Cheatriots to acquire troubled wide receiver Randy Moss, Brad Childress up and cuts the guy after a bad loss to the Cheatriots in which Moss had just one catch for seven yards. Four games? For a third-round draft pick? I'm sorry, but is Brad Childress literally trying to force his owner to fire him? I mean, Chilly was already probably gone after this season -- after all, he is a stone cold jackass and has no control over this team -- but this move simply boggles the mind. Was Moss that much of a cancer in the locker room? Probably. Where hasn't he been? But how you simply cut a guy to waivers after four games when you gave up a 3rd round pick to get him, and when you will likely be on the hook for most of his $6 million salary now as well? That is some fucked up stuff right there. And meanwhile, Moss is quoted as saying he would like to go back to play for the Cheatriots again. Yeah right. For starters, the Cheatriots currently sit with 1 loss and the best record in all of the NFL, which means they are 32nd out of 32 teams on the waiver wire, and IMO Moss is not likely to slip through every other team in the league without being claimed by somebody desperate for some help on offensive in the ultimate win-now league. But even assuming Moss did manage to slip by without any other team in the league claiming him, I say no way he ends up back in a Cheats uniform. You're telling me that Bill Bellichik is going to take back the guy who nearly came to blows with the Cheatriots' offensive coordinator less than a month and a half ago about lack of focus on him on the offense? With his team sitting with the best record in all the league, he's going to welcome back a locker room cancer who's already caused trouble on this very team in this very season and who basically forced a trade after malcontenting his way through the preseason and five regular season games already in 2010? Fat chance, my man Randy. I don't think we'll be seeing you in a New England uni anytime soon, bro. Some bridges you just can't un-burn.

Another great NFL story from this past weekend, in particular for me personally -- is this whole saga with Donovan McNabb and Mike Shanahan in Washington. When the Skins took the ball with under two minutes to go in their game at Detroit on Sunday afternoon, Shanahan shocked the team by benching McNabb in favor of backup Rex Grossman to run the two-minute drill. Immediately following the game, Shanahan candidly told sideline reporters that he benched McNabb due to concerns over McNabb's "competence" with the two-minute offense, but then a day later after persistent questioning, Shanahan has now changed his story to the benching instead being about McNabb's conditioning more than his mental capacity to run the two-minute drill. For my money, it really doesn't matter a whole lot which one of Shanahan's totally different explanations is right, because either way we already know the true reason -- Shanahan doesn't think McNabb is good enough to be in there in that spot. That's it. With the game clearly on the line and his team down by less than 7 with 1:50 to go and needing a touchdown, the Redskins' head coach decided to bench McNabb in favor of a longtime shitty backup who hadn't really taken crucial game snaps in some two years. Whether McNabb's perceived failings were mental or physical doesn't really matter in the end. As I've been pointing out repeatedly during this season after the Eagles traded him away to the Skins -- within the division no less -- the Eagles obviously saw something (or many things) they didn't like in McNabb as the season wore down to a close, and it looks like they were right. And if Shanahan isn't careful (he usually isn't), he will soon get to experience firsthand what a pussywhining McNabb is like as well, another annual occurrence that the fans and the team management just got used to over time in Philadelphia, but which will likely be very poorly received in a new city, especially given McNabb's pace for his worst full season ever as a pro in 2010, including throwing more picks than interceptions and really failing to fully take the reins of the offense yet even through seven games of the regular season. I was always a big McNabb fan in Philly as I've written about here many times, but I won't lie -- I smiled a lil bit when I saw this story, and with every passing day as McNabb comes closer and closer to publicly griping about it, I am enjoying watching the Skins squirm more than little bit.

Oh, and here's another thing in the world of sports that I find utterly ridiculous right now: the BCS. I'm not going on a general rant here about how stupid the whole system is, the impossible to follow formulas, the computer ranking, or the lack of a playoff system or a true national champion which clearly keeps the sport from growing by probably several multiples with every passing year. No, I'm just talking right now about the unbelievable bias in this thing towards the big-conference teams. I mean, this shit is as close to a set-up for the big conference schools as it could ever be. This whole BCS thing, with each of the big conferences exerting some elements of shared control and manipulation, is one of the biggest scams I have ever seen accepted by the American sports-watching public. How many fucking teams have to lose before Boise State is given a chance to play for a national title? Just one chance is all I'm asking for here guys. If they play for a title, and some big-conference team with one loss during the regular season blows them out by 40 points, then I'll shut up. I'll stop complaining about it right away because then I'll know, then we'll all know. But instead, this team has been top-5 all season long. They were top 5 last year, and when given a chance during the regular season last year, they took down a top 10 team. They took down top-5 TCU in their bowl game last year. They started this year in the top 5 again, and they haven't even let anyone get close to them so far this season, including a solid beating of then-top 10 Virginia Tech this year as well. Boise State has played three top 10 teams in the last two seasons and beaten them all, so in the few chances they've been given at a fair shot at the top teams, they've risen to the challenge every single time. It's not their fault if none of the other big conference schools won't schedule a fair home-and-home series to play Boise State during the regular season -- these schools are scared to death of Boise State! They would rather play almost anyone than Boise, so Boise just takes their two shots a year at the big boys and dominates them all, and otherwise totally flattens everyone else in their path. Now this season was supposed to be all about Notre Dame, but they quickly proved that they suck by losing early. Perennial powerhouse Florida dropped a game in the earlygoing as well to lose their shot at a title. USC quickly lost as well to take their NCAA-embargoed self out of the realm of the unbeatens. Overlooking Boise State completely after three early favorites lost games, the BCS controlled solely by the big conferences lifted Ohio State to then the overwhelming favorite early on, until they too lost a shocker a few weeks back. Then it was Alabama leap-frogging Boise State, with all the talking heads on ESPN proclaiming that Nick Saban's team would never lose a game this year and roll on to another national title. Until they lost a couple of weeks ago to South Carolina. After Michigan State and Missouri both lost their undefeated records this past weekend, I figured the case for Boise State could no longer be ignored by the BCS, but then boom! Now it's Auburn -- another big conference school who had hardly been talked about at all until just a couple of weeks ago -- who is the new greatest team in the league this year. And when they lose the SEC championship game to Alabama in a few weeks, then you know what's gonna happen with the BCS, right? Then Alabama with one loss will be back to being ahead of Boise State again. With Ohio State right behind, how much you wanna bet.

Boise State is The Best Team in NCAA Football in 2010. Period. The big schools refuse to ever play them during the regular season except in unfair, highly favorable circumstances to the big school teams. The big conference-controlled BCS then promotes every single undefeated team over Boise State week after week, even switching it up over and over with every passing week as every single team without exception that the big schools have tried to inflate this year have done. This past weekend has now brought it all to a head as the BCS is now forced to start talking about promoting one-loss teams over Boise, who has beaten three top-10 squads in the last two seasons while dominating everyone. It's simple. Boise State is the best team in the league. Yes, they would beat Alabama if they played them right now on a neutral site, and yes they would beat Ohio State as well. Open your eyes and stop believing what the totally and laughably biased BCS is telling you and trying to change on you week after week after week after week. Congratulations to your Boise State Broncos, the real national champions of the 2010 NCAA football season.

MLB -- Championship Series Update

How unfortunate is it that baseball has apparently hired the same money-grubbing monkeys to schedule their postseason who already schedule the NBA playoffs these days? I mean, here we are, all done with the divisional rounds of the playoffs, and we have to wait until Friday night to start up the ALCS, which just ended on Tuesday night, and until Saturday night for the start of the NLCS, which ended on Monday night? I mean, in the end, sure this helps my Phillies this year in that we will have more than enough time to line up our pitching staff just the way we want to for the NLCS, but is it the way the games should be played? Personally, I prefer a system that favors the teams with the incredible 2- or 3-man starting rotation less, by having fewer off days in between series and even during the series themselves, but as I said, there's no doubt that this helps mostly every team still alive by this point in the playoffs and I imagine that is 90% of the reason behind the move (the other 10% being media money, in some form or another), but it totally takes away from the excitement and the momentum of the games to us fans, and I am not specifically a fan of this move one bit.

All that said, it was an entertaining divisional series round of games, with some surprises in the AL but nothing but chalk in the NL. First, in the American League, the Rays and Rangers played a very unusual series in which -- for the first time in divisional round history -- the road team amazingly won all five games in the series, including the Rangers clinching on Tuesday night on the back of yet another stellar postseason performance out of Cliff Lee. I think the owner of the Rays made a major, major screwup by coming out right as the regular season was coming to a close and announcing his intentions to essentially slash the payroll and break up the team after this postseason run was over. His team played tight as hell in the playoffs right from the getgo, they couldn't score runs when they needed them against a very scoreable-against team (other than when Cliff Lee is out there), and in the end their best pitcher (and the Rays' only great pitcher at this point in the season) lost two starts in the series, both at home, and that's your season right there in a nutshell.

On the other side in the AL, I picked the Twins to take down the Yankees finally after years and years of ineptitude against the Bronx Bombers, but instead we were all treated to one of the biggest step-downs I've in the postseason in years, in any sport. I mean, even for the Twins, and even against the Yankees, this was a huge puss-out for the Twins. They did not come to play, they allowed themselves to get rolled over by a pitching staff that has been very assailable by many teams throughout this season, and they continued with their total inability to hold on to any kind of a lead whatsoever, even late in games. The Twins led in two of the three games of the series, one of them late, and they had homefield in both games where they led. The fact that they got bounced this badly by a team with noticeable weaknesses compared to last year's world championship team is a huge black mark on that team and on Rod Gardenhire, who I now can only label as the game's best regular season coach, not best overall coach given his total postseason ineptitude.

Looking forward, the Rays would have been a much, much better matchup with the Yankees I think, other than the one big, fat, huge scary part about the Rangers to every Yankee fan in the world -- Cliff Lee. Recall that as a Phillie in 2009, Lee won both of his starts against the Yankees, including in Game 1 when he came out and absolutely moved down the best lineup in the AL by far. And the sick thing about watching Lee pitch is how incredibly calm and stone-faced he seems out there, even in the biggest spots of his life. Who could forget this catch by Lee in Game 1 of the World Series last year, when it was almost like he was too busy thinking of something else to be bothered really paying attention while making this catch. It is a small, insignificant play but I think speaks volumes about Lee and his ability to shine against the best lineup in the game while under the biggest spotlight in his sport. Unfortunately, even though I never believed the Yankees would make the World Series this year after around the halfway point in this regular season, I just don't see the Rangers as having quite enough on either the offense or the pitching staff to take down this juggernaut Yankees squad. Especially with the way that Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes pitched against the pussies Twins, the Yankees have got to be a significant favorite in this series, despite the fact that every Yankee fan out there is quaking in their boots about facing Cliff Lee. Not having to face Lee until Game 3 was the Yankees' biggest win of the entire postseason so far, and is a major factor in my thinking the Rangers will not have enough to find their way to their second-ever postseason series win as a franchise.

The National League divisional series had much less excitement and interest, and they went right along with the chalk. The Phillies took the best-hitting, most prolific run-scoring team in the National League in the Reds, and no-hit them in the first game, gave up 3 earned runs in the second, and then 2-hit complete game shut them out again in the third game to nab the easy sweep for the far and away the league's greatest team. Meanwhile, equally prdictably on the other side, the incredible pitching staff of the Giants was as expected far too much for a very ordinary Braves lineup, and they easily disposed of Atlanta in four games with no big offensive outputs throughout out of the overmatched Braves batters.

People are having fun predicting the Giants to take out the Phillies or at least to make a serious run at the best team the National League has seen in some 90 years, but to be perfectly honest I am just not seeing it. I mean, there is no doubt that the Giants are the team I would have wanted the Phillies to face the least, because between Lincecum and Sanchez they have two starters who have previously and I am sure will again shut down the Phils' lineup, and we could easily face those two starters as many as five times in a 7-game series. Plus the Giants' bullpen is excellent, which is the only weakness this Phillies team has here in the 2010 postseason. But in the end, even though I respect the Giants' picthers quite a bit, I am just not seeing this as anything but an awful matchup for them. The Phils have homefield advantage, and even though I could surely see Lincecum outlasting Roy Halladay in a pitchers duel in one of his two starts in Games 1 and 4, the bottom line is that the matchups of Halladay vs. Lincecum -- both in Philadelphia -- and Oswalt vs. Sanchez -- one in Philly and one in San Fran -- plus Cole Hamels pitching Games 3 and 7 against the Giants' #3 starter, and again with the extra game at home in Philly, this one just seems like a mismatch to me for the defending NL champs. This Phillies lineup is the total opposite of the Braves' light-hitting squad, and those games that were 1-0 and 3-2 wins for the Giants in the NLDS are more likely in my mind to be 5-3 and 6-1 losses for the Giants here in the NLCS.

In any event, Friday cannot get here quickly enough for those of us big baseball fans out there. It's been quite a ride so far and it should only get better from here as we march towards the 2010 World Series.

March Madness

Happy Passover to all the tribe members out there. I had another great seder on Monday, including some of the most delicious and tender steaks I have ever made. Of course, the 6 inches of rain that fell in my area over the preceding day and a half put a little bit of a damper on my plans to fire up the Weber again this early in the season, but with the help of three good-sized pans and a nice stovetop, it all worked out great in the end.

The family spent a good deal of time sitting around talking about this year's NCAA tournament, which has really been an amazing one. In the end it comes down to a 5 seed playing a 5 seed on one side of the Final Four (Butler vs. Michigan State), and a 1 seed vs. a 2 seed in Duke vs. West Virginia on the other side. I don't remember the last time we had two seeds as low as 5 both battling it out on one side of the Final Four bracket, and frankly it's pretty damn rare that even a mid-major conference team like Butler makes any appearance in the Final Four these days. The thing that is so interesting about this year's tournament is not to me so much the teams that made it, but the teams that didn't. To think that in this of all years, Kentucky did not make the Final Four, Kansas did not make the Final Four, and Syracuse did not make the Final Four, that is truly amazing. That right there is like a third of all the first-round NBA draftable players in all of college basketball on those three teams, and not one of them could win four games in a row in the Big Dance. In a year where otherwise, the talent just seems to be spread much more thinly than in previous years.

Which brings me to the first point I was keying on with my family this weekend. This year, moreso than maybe any other year I can remember, the Final Four is truly not about the players. It's about the coaches. It could have been totally about the players, if John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson from Kentucky were matching up with Wes Johnson, Andy Rautins and Scoop Jardine of Syracuse, or Sherron Collins, Cole Aldrich and Marcus Morris of Kansas. But instead, it's Butler, it's Michigan State, it's Duke, and it's West Virginia.

On the Duke and West Virginia side of the bracket, you're looking at coaching legend Coach K in his incredible 11th Final Four appearance in his 25-year career at Duke, going against Bob Huggins, the former Cincinnati coach who has led his alma mater back to the Final Four for the first time in some 60 years. Huggins has always been known as a guy who gets the absolute most out of his players, and now with bona fide star Da'Sean Butler leading the way, Huggins once again has one of the hardest-working teams in the country, with three players averaging around 7 rebounds and 3 more players averaging around 3 assists per game. Huggins went an amazing 379-113 in 16 years at Cincinnati, 46-24 in two years at Kansas State, and has now put up an 80-27 record in his first three years at West Virginia, for a combined head coaching record of 670 wins to just 240 losses, all of which were not at the top programs in the country with the ability to hand pick every recruit in the country like the Coach K's and the John Calipari's of the world. Huggins is the reason this team is where it's at right now, and the matchup with Coach K -- who himself is probably coaching the least talented of all his Final Four squads over the years -- should be an intersting one.

On the other side, first there is Butler head coach Brad Stevens. Although Stevens is in just his third year as an NCAA head coach, what an illustrious beginning that career has had so far. In his first year as Butler head coach, Stevens led Butler to a school and Horizon league record 30 wins, becoming the third-youngest head coach in NCAA Division I history to lead a team to 30 wins in a season, and the fourth winningest first year coach in NCAA history. Still as a rookie coach, his team won the Horizon League regular season and tournament championships, and went on to win one game in the NCAA tournament. During the year Butler was nationally ranked for a school and league record 19 consecutive weeks. Despite losing four seniors after the 2007–08 season, Stevens once again surprised the world by winning the regular season Horizon championship and taking Butler to the NCAA tournament as an at large selection. Stevens' 56-10 first-two-years NCAA record places him second only to Bill Guthridge (58) in total wins during one's first two years as head coach in the history of the league. Also during the 2008–09 season, Stevens became the sixth head coach in NCAA history to reach 50 wins in 56 games or fewer, earning Stevens the Hugh Durham Mid-Major Coach of the Year Award as well as the Horizon League Coach of the Year for his efforts. And now there is this year, which has seen Butler go 30-4 once again under Brad Stevens, including a perfect 18-0 in the Horizon League which they once again dominated, before beating UTEP, Murray State, #1-seeded Syracuse and then #2-seeded Kansas State to earn the Bulldogs the first Final Four appearance in school and Horizon League history. So while this guy's coaching career has definitely been short, it's started off about as good as anyone's out there. Literally.

But even after all that gushing about Butler head coach Brad Stevens, Michigan State's Tom Izzo simply has to lead the pack. 2010 is now Izzo's amazing sixth final four since 1999 -- six Final Fours in just twelve years. And the truly amazing thing about it is, he has done all of that with exactly one NBA lottery pick in that entire run -- Jason Richardson back in the 2001 NBA draft. During that same span, Duke has made four Final Fours, and has done so with 11 NBA lottery picks coming through its halls along the way. UNC has made five Final Fours in that time and had six players drafted in the NBA Lottery. But think about it -- can you even name anyone good who's played for Michigan State basketball in the past 12 years? Me either. And yet somehow, here we are again heading to Indianapolis, heading to another Final Four, and Tom Izzo is once again there. Six Final Fours in 12 years, with basically no talent to speak of. Tom Izzo is the new best coach in NCAA basketball, hands down.

So in my mind, with all the great, most-talented teams having gone down now in the 2010 NCAA Tournament, the Final Four is truly about the head coaches and not the players. And the other realization I came to this weekend, unfortunately, is that I don't think a Final Four about the head coaches and not the players makes for very interesting viewing. I mean, if Butler beats MSU and plays for the national championship, that in and of itself will have some excitement to it for me. Butler winning the national title would be in my mind about as big of a championship story as we've ever seen in the NCAAs. But if Butler goes on to lose to the ongoing wizardry of Tom Izzo, I really feel like the tournament was so good this time around, that by now it's kind of burned out and can only fizzle away from here. Once Syracuse lost late last week, and then the moment it become obvious with about 8 minutes to go in the second half that Kentucky simply was not going to come back against West Virginia this past weekend, the last burning embers of 2010 March Madness went out for me. And don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm saying I'm a Cuse fan at all (I am more of a genocide fan than a Syracuse fan believe you me), but rather just that those seemed to me to be the biggest, most captivating teams of this year's tournament. Kansas losing early was ok and I think the true craziness of the tournament could still have been preserved if we had some of these other strongly-talented teams still in the mix. But my guess is that, despite how truly great this year's NCAA Tournament has undeniably been so far, ratings for the Final Four are going to be down and down noticeably from the past few years. I guess only time will tell if I'm right about that one, but here's hoping that the Big Dance finds one or two more crazy miracles in 2010 and turns this coming weekend into one more for the ages.

2010 March Madness Picks -- Elite 8 and Beyond

So here we are. March Madness is finally upon us once again. Thursday and Friday this week in particular have always been awesomely fun days for me, although I still as yet have never fulfilled my longtime dream of heading out to one of the big sports books in Vegas to sit and watch all 16 games today and all 16 games tomorrow, followed by all 16 games over the weekend in style (i.e., smoking and drinking for free). And betting on every one. Of course. Maybe someday, but I think one Vegas trip a year is just right for me these days, and that trip is looking more and more like it will be happening in early June. But more on that on another day; it's time to finish my 2010 March Madness picks.

First, I thought I would review some general trends I am trying to follow in making my picks this year. First off, I think it is a long-proven NCAA Tournament maxim that the teams that play the best competition all season long tend to run deepest in the Big Dance, and for that reason I am putting a lot of weight this year on the relative goodness of the big conferences in the country. I find myself weighting it this year more than I almost ever have before, because frankly there seems to be such a vast margin between the quality of teams in the couple of good conferences and the quality of those in all the rest, dramatically different than last year or any other year in recent memory.

Looking quickly among the power conferences, the ACC was just abysmal this year, as I mentioned earlier I am pretty comfortable saying this is the worst the ACC has been since I can ever remember. Duke is decent, but if you've watched them play the really good teams (the very few on their schedule this season), they've gotten abused and have no chance of winning it all. Maryland had a good year, but that's about it really. Virgina 5-11, UNC 5-11, NC State 5-11, BC 6-10, Georgia Tech 7-9, Wake and Clemson 9-7. There isn't a single other good team in the ACC other than Duke, and even though I fully expect a tough Maryland team to win a game or two this year, I am not picking a single ACC team to make a deep run in this year's tournament. This year more than any year I can recall, those ACC teams simply have not had near the gritty, high-powered experience of playing top-ranked teams again and again all season long down to the wire when it feels like everything is on the line. Usually, by the time a #20-ranked Maryland team makes the NCAA Tournament, they've played top-5 Duke twice, and top-five Carolina twice, and top-ten Wake Forest twice, plus whoever else is good that year in the ACC. This year? Maryland's schedule includes losses at neutral sites (just like the NCAA Tournament's games) against non-Tournament bound Cincinnati, plus Wisconsin and Villanova, and then in their first game of the ACC Tournament as well against Georgia Tech in Greensboro. This Maryland team lost a game to William & Mary for crying out loud. At home. And what big wins has Maryland had this year? What even big games has Maryland played in, what big-time experience have those players had this season? Beating a crappy Indiana team on the road back on December 1? Truly, the single solitary true good win on Maryland's entire schedule this year is the one against Duke at the end of the regular season. Otherwise, these ACC teams haven't even been tested, so we have no reason to believe they will succeed against the big boys. I'm not picking any of them to go far.

The Big 12, in stark contrast to the ACC, had a great year in 2009-2010. You've got seven legitimate good teams in the conference -- Oklahoma State (who's had a couple of huge wins this year and who I'm picking to win a few games in March), Texas (who was ranked in the top couple of teams in the nation earlier this season), Missouri, Texas A&M, #3 seeded Baylor (having their best season in ages and their first legitimate shot to reach the Sweet 16 I think in my lifetime), #2 seeded Kansas State (who turned a lot of heads this year with also their best basketball season in a long while), and of course #1 Kansas, who is ranked as the top team in the country heading into today's action. This conference is loaded with talented teams, and as I've discussed above that action feeds on itself because it makes these teams much, much better in the Tournament to have faced 9 or 10 games against tough competition this year already. And you will note, I am picking at least three teams from this conference to reach the Sweet 16 in this year's Tournament.

The Big East, I don't have to get into again. Suffice it to say that each of Syracuse, West Virginia, Villanova, Georgetown and Pittsburgh is a legitimate top-15 team in the country, and all but probably Pitt have a realistic shot to reach the Final Four this year. No other conference in America has quite the depth of the Big East, nor quite the strength at the top of the group (though the Big 12 is definitely close on both counts), and another especially impressive facet is the strength in the middle of the conference. Take the ACC for example, and once you get through Duke and Maryland, there is a significant dropoff until the next teams (Virginia Tech and Florida State), and then another big drop until the rest of the dregs. Not in the Big East, where even after the four legitimate Final Four contenders I mentioned above, it's still Pittsburgh (who is better than anyone in the ACC, including Maryland), it's Marquette, it's Louisville, and it's Notre Dame, all of whom have at least 20 total wins and all of whom won at least 10 games in the toughest conference in college basketball. You can only say that about four total teams in the ACC, and they play in a far worse conference to boot. This is why I am expecting a lot of early success for the Big East teams -- even the ones not playing so well down the stretch and who I therefore cannot pick to go to deep in the Tournament -- and why you will see a number of them in my Sweet 16.

The Pac-10 is having its worst year of my lifetime, hands down, no questions asked. Arizona is down, UCLA is down, Stanford's got nothing, USC is nowhere to be found, even the Oregon schools decided to completely take the year off. There are only three schools in the Pac-10 with more than 16 total wins on the season, and only three that finished over .500 overall if you remove Division II schools from the equation. That conference is unthinkable, as is picking any of those teams to reach the Sweet 16 this year for me. The SEC has got a few decent teams, although beyond Kentucky I don't trust most of those other teams to make it very far in March, and there really was not much depth beyond the three quality teams in the conference on the year. I've also heard some people say the Big Ten is having a good year. Well, those people are fools. While the Big Ten has certainly not been the worst major conference in the country in 2009-2010, the fact that so many of the traditionally strong teams are having down years again weighs on the ability of even the better teams in the conference to really make me think they have what it takes to step up when it counts in March. Purdue was looking good, easily the best of the bunch in the Big Ten this year, but the loss of Robbie Hummel has left that team looking like a shell of its former self, and I would not stake anything on picking this team to win even one or two games after I watched how badly Tubby Smith's Minnesota gophers trounced them at the start of the Big Ten Tournament. Beyond Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan State and Wisconsin all had decent years to round out the other quality teams in the conference, but none of them -- even the ultra-experienced Tom Izzo's Michigan State squad that played in the Final Four in 2009 -- have particularly wowed me, and I think a lot of it has to do with the absence on their schedules of big games with the likes of Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and even Illinois and Minnesota who each lost at least 13 games during the season. And as discussed above, this is not the kind of team I like to pick to go far in my bracket as a rule.

The other thing I should mention is that I also tend to like to pick teams who have not only played a lot of big games against strong teams and won a lot of those games, but also teams that have won some big games away from home. Big home wins are big, huge even in determining seeding and odds of success in the NCAA Tournament. But you show me a team that has traveled away from its familiar court, the cozy locker room and its thousands of adoring fans to take on a top-10 team in unfamiliar, often hostile, territory, and come away a winner, and I'll show you a team that's going place in March.

So, with all of the above in mind, let's take a look at my Elite 8 teams. In the Midwest, I have Kansas against Georgetown in what should be a matchup of two hot teams playing well and bringing a ton of talent to the court. Unfortunately, having watched many of the Hoyas' (and the Jayhawks') games this season, one thing I can say with certainty in my mind is that Kansas has been the model of consistency, while Georgetown has been among the most inconsistent teams among the nationally-ranked squads in the country. I can see exactly how this game is gonna go in my mind already -- Kansas jumps out to a sizable lead, something in the 16-4 range to start the game, and then by the time Georgetown gets off its heels, it just won't quite be able to come back and make up for the slow early start. Although it's clearly not where my heart is, I like Kansas to win the Midwest regional and advance to their billionth Final Four as a school.

In the East is probably the Elite 8 game that I am looking forward to the most heading into the NCAA Tournament: Kentucky vs. West Virginia. I have a ton of respect for Bob Huggins as I mentioned the other day here in the blog and I think his West Virginia squad is probably the most underrated, under-appreciated team in the nation. They always always always come to play for their coach, and they play sick defense and never give up. Unfortunately for them, after a nice run in March I just don't think they will quite have the firepower to stop John Wall and the Kentucky offense. Although John Callipari has proven himself beyond a shadow of a doubt to be one of the biggest scumbags involved in the game today, he's a scumbag who can Coach. I just don't see anything stopping Kentucky from plowing their way through the East and also appearing in the 2010 Final Four.

I have Syracuse matching up with Kansas State in the West regional Elite 8 game, and if you've read here during this season then you know I think the Cuse is destined for great things. I have a lot of respect for K-State and what they've accomplished this year in a very tough Big 12 Conference. But I'm not sure anyone in the country can stick with Syracuse's prowess on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball, and K-State is not the Kansas school that I think might have the best shot to do so, if you know what I mean. I feel confident that Syracuse will emerge from the West to stake its claim against the winner of Georgetown-Kansas on that half of the NCAA Tournament Bracket.

And lastly, the South, where the Tournament organizers decided to blow Coach K again by giving him easily the least difficult path to the Final Four, but where as I discussed yesterday I still don't think he's going to get there. Despite having the fewest truly good teams in the bracket, I think this is by far the most difficult bracket to pick, and I think mostly anybody doing a bracket this year is either picking Duke or picking a total crapshoot. In my case, I've decided to have Duke losing to Louisville, and Louisville eventually going on to lose to Villanova to make it two more Big East teams in the Final Four for the second straight year. Truthfully though, I am not confident about Louisville as they were so up and down this year, and I am not confident about Villanova either after the way they ended the season. I don't like Duke, and I just can't bring myself to pick Baylor to make their first Final Four in 850 generations. And lord knows I'm not picking Purdue at #4 to win anything this postseason. It's tough when you just don't trust any of the top four or five seeds in a bracket -- in the end I am picking Nova over Louisville but it could be almost any team in the bracket playing for the right to get spanked by Kentucky in the Final Four.

So my pre-Tournament Final Four includes Kansas playing Syracuse, and Kentucky playing Villanova. I think Kansas-Syracuse should be a game for the ages, but in the end if forced to choose right now without seeing how each team is playing in the tournament, I would go with Kansas, and on the other side of the bracket I have to pick Kentucky, despite their youth and the fact that its a Callipari team so you know less than 10% of the students will actually graduate or even probably ever go to class. I just don't like the way Nova ended the season enough to pick them to beat a team like Kentucky on this big stage. And when the season-long anticipation of Kansas vs Kentucky finally happens in early April, I'm going with the talent of Kentucky to complete a Carmelo-Anthony-with-Syracuse type of single-season run to a title in John Callipari's first year with the Wildcats.

Here's hoping we see some nice upsets and fun action in these first couple of rounds over the next few days.

Superbowl

So here it is: the moment of truth.

Do I go with who I feel pretty confident is going to win the big game on Sunday? The team that seemed destined to win it all right from the getgo this season? The team that has won every single game all year long, regular season and postseason, when they actually attempted to win the game?

Or do I go with the opposite?

You may recall, after a dismal end of the regular season and early playoffs in picking these games, for the conference championship round I decided to do something drastic, opting to go Costanza on your asses by taking the opposite of what my gut was telling me for each game. So, since it was clear to me that the Colts were favored by too much against the Jets, I picked the Colts. And won. And it was equally clear to me that the Saints were going to cover the 3.5 point spread at home against the Minnesota Favres who had fallen dramatically at the end of the season. So there I went with the Vikes. And won.

2-0 after weeks and weeks of 2-3 and 1-4 performances?

I just don't see how I can forsake it now.

So with that, I present to you the hammerplayer pick for Superbowl 44:

New Orleans Saints +5 vs. the Indianapolis Colts. I don't know how else to pick it. My gut tells me that the Colts are the better team here. They played better in the regular season. They played better in the playoffs. After a slow start the Colts handily beat their conference championship opponents in the Jets, while the Saints got outgained badly and had to rely on 6 turnovers from the Favres including a final-seconds interception from near field goal range just to snatch a 3-point victory from Minnesota. Drew Brees is good, but Peyton Manning is better. And the Colts have experience on their side as well, with much of this team having been in the superbowl a few years ago as well. It all points towards the Colts, and the 5-point line is I think very beatable by this high-scoring Colts offense, especially considering how porous the Saints defense looked last week against a less potent offense than the Colts' this weekend.

So go with the Saints, and take the points. 2-0 going the Costanza, as compared to 6-23 in my final six weeks picking games the real way. I'll stick with the opposite. Go Saints!

Closing the Book on MLB 2009

As the last of the confetti was cleaned up this weekend after the Yankees parade in lower Manhattan, I had some good time to close the book in my own head on the 2009 baseball season. With a few days to reflect, most of my impressions from last week of course remain the same, but there are some additional thoughts that gradually crept into my head a day or two after Game 6 and which have only gotten stronger since then.

For starters, although most predictions about the greatness of this series coming in (my own included) proved to be inaccurate and exaggerated by the time the teams got on the field to actually play the games, one thing was clearly correct: the ratings for this series were strongly up from past years. The average share for the six 2009 World Series games was just under a 19, meaning approximately 18.8 million viewers in U.S. households tuned in each night to watch the Phillies and Yankees battle it out for the world championship. The most-watched game was Game 4 -- the game I attended in Philadelphia -- with nearly 23 million viewers, while Games 3 and 5 both garnered between 15 and 16 million watchers on the low end. Game 1 of the 2009 Series was viewed by over 19 million in the U.S., while in contrast, Game 1 of the 2008 World Series between the Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays brought in just over 10 million viewers, and Game 1 in 2007 between Colorado and the Red Sox came in at around 13 million. Overall viewership was up just over 40% above the series last year, and the 2009 Fall Classic was the most watched World Series since the Red Sox broke their 50,000 year slump by riding steroided-up horse-pill-takers to the World Series championship back in 2004.

But the main feeling I am left with now that the 2009 major league baseball season has come to a close is that it really is sick what the Yankees have done, using the absurd structure of the sport and their deepest of pockets to their extreme advantage. And yet, like most non-Yankee fans I keep running in to in real life, on the internet, national sports talk shows, etc., I do not say this with a whole lot of admiration, so much as rather with a solid helping of disdain. Here's the thing: the Yankees missed the playoffs in 2008 one time. One year. The Bombers were not in the playoff hunt in 2008, after participating in the postseason previously in every year since 1996. And their reaction to missing the playoffs one time -- keep in mind they had made the playoffs twelve straight years before that, equalling the number of times the Phillies have made the postseason in their entire nearly 130-year history -- but after just one year of missing the playoffs, they had had enough. Oh sure, Yanks' GM Brian Cashman had thought he had had enough before already -- several times in fact -- but what everyone involved in the Yankees organization found out quickly during the 2008-2009 offseason was that they hadn't seen anything yet.

Before anyone could say "competitive imbalance" five times fast, the Yankees went out in the offseason before this year and signed the not one, not two, but the three biggest free agents out there in CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira. And it's not like they had to scrimp or anything in paying these guys in order to manage to afford all three of them in one offseason on top of what was already for years the highest payroll in all of baseball. Nope -- they committed to $161 million for 7 years with Sabathia, $82 million for 5 years with Burnett, and $180 million over 8 years on Teixeira. All three of these deals were announced within a few days of December 18, 2008, and it was obvious that the Yankees were negotiating with all three players simultaneously and, clearly, without real regard to the money it was costing them. That's over $420 million committed by the Yankees over the next 8 years on just these three players, again on top of what was already the highest payroll in baseball by about $20 million more than the second-place Red Sox even before last season came to a close.

In 2009, the Yankees spent a total of a whopping $208.1 million on their payroll. Second place on that list is now the New York Mets, but coming in way "down" at 145.3 million. In third are the Cubs, coming in at $134.8 million, with Yankees rival the Boston Red Sox rounding out the top four at 122.4 million. So the Yankees are spending more than 70% more money on their team than their closest rival in the AL, and the team that still has the fourth-highest payroll overall in the majors, and the Yanks are spending 43% more than anybody else in baseball. 43% more than the 2nd highest payroll in the league right now. And lookie there, they went out and won the 2009 title. Shocker.

When a team is spending 43% more than the 2nd place team in a professional sport, and between 70% and 500% more than any other team in their league, that sport is walking a really fine line. Basically, it's fine when that team is not winning the world series title every single year and when, generally speaking, at least a decent handful of other teams are entering every season with a reasonable shot at winning it all. But when someone is spending more than 43% more than the next closest payroll, and more than 70% more than anybody else in their league, and they go out, win more games than anybody else by a mile, and basically show game in and game out why nobody else in the major leagues can even touch them, well, that really causes some problems. Obviously it is bad for the sport as a whole -- take a look at the teams at the bottom of the payroll list in Florida, Pittsburgh and Washington, for example, who cannot compete so have just given up trying, not to mention the teams like Minnesota, Cleveland, etc. who seem to come up every few years in talks of bankruptcy, significant losses and even contraction. But the Yankees just keep chugging along, even in the worst economy of any of our lifetimes. Think about it -- this was December 2008, right smack in the midst of all that shit last winter with the financial meltdown, the markets were in the tank, just about everything seemed to have come to a standstill. Everything, that is, except the Yankees, who in the span of three or four days committed to spend over $420 million on three players for the next 5-8 years in what was without a doubt the most sweeping, literally not believable free agency extravaganza by any team at any time in baseball history.

All I know is that I, like just about every other non-Yankee baseball fan in America it seems these days, am left with a very bitter taste in my mouth about this Yankees team and what exactly they did to basically secure their 27th world series title before the 2009 season has even begun. Sure this team has always spent the most money in the league for most of their history, but what they did prior to the 2009 season was corpulent and gluttony even by Yankees standards, and it bought them exactly what they wanted. I guess if you spend enough money on players, enough more than everybody else in the league is willing to spend regardless of the situation, the economy, the state of the game, etc., you really can buy a championship. And that's exactly what we saw in the 2009 baseball season: the purchase of a World Series. Price tag? $208.1 million. Not even a fraction of a bailout.

And one of the least satisfying aspects of this entire thing is what it means for the future. Look at the state of baseball right now, and ask yourself who you honestly think is going to win the world series in 2010. Think about that lineup we just watched the Yankees trot out there every night against the Phillies, and think about that starting rotation that held the Yankees back for years but which was completely and totally transformed by the addition of Burnett and Sabathia at the top of the list, and think about Mariano Rivera coming in from the pen in the 9th. Face it -- the Yankees are already your 2010 World Series champions. Might as well book it now. The only question is: do the Yankees win 120 games next year? I have very little doubt that this team -- without the issues around A-Rod's getting caught for steroid use, the injury and the poor start without him in April and part of May -- will give the 1998 Yankees and their 114-42 regular season record a serious run for their money. There is some age on the Yankees roster, but outside of Rivera who is still, far and away, the best relief pitcher in baseball today, there isn't much that the addition of last year's three huge free agents can't overcome for at least the next couple of years. The Yankees are here to stay, the $200 million+ behemoth in a league of $30-120 million competitors, unless and until baseball does something to change their system that they have shown no indication of changing whatsoever thus far.

I mentioned A-Rod's preseason revelation about having used steroids from 2001-2003 in baseball. Personally, I find the Yankees' reliance over the past several years on steroided-up players to be one of the most disgusting aspects of this whole nasty team that has been permitted by league rules to completely trump all others in terms of skill and experience amassed on its roster. Think about this for a minute -- although Hideki Matsui won the 2009 World Series MVP award (and deservedly so), who would you name as the Yankees' overall postseason MVPs in 2009? I'll tell you who -- Alex Rodriguez, for starters. Despite an only "good" World Series in which A-Rod won Game 4 in the top of the 9th and contributed solidly on offense to one other win as well, the man ended the 2009 postseason going 19-for-52 for a .365 batting average, with 6 home runs, 2 doubles, 18 RBIs and two stolen bases. A-Rod was an offensive machine for the Yankees and would simply have to be thought of as the MVP of this team's postseason run in 2009. And who would be next on that list for the 2009 Yankees? Andy Pettitte, who pitched and won the series-clinching game in each of the three playoff series in 2009 against the Twins, the Angels and then the Phillies in the World Series. Pettitte really lived up to his career reputation as a stopper for the Yankees, taking the ball in the biggest and most crucial of spots time and again in the postseason, and coming through in a big way. Alex Rodriguez and Andy Pettitte literally led their team 1-2 in postseason contributions in 2009, including both winning games during the World Series itself.

And both are admitted juicers. And guys, might I add, who only admitted their steroid usage after getting outed publicly, A-Rod by the biography of him released earlier this year, and Pettitte in connection with the ongoing investigation into the steroid activities of Roger Clemens, another guy who contributed greatly to the World Series runs of the Yankees several years ago.

Both A-Rod and Pettitte have had their bodies forever altered in immeasurable ways by the illegal and banned substances they knowingly ingested over the past several years in their attempts to cheat skirt the rules. Both found muscles that most people never even know they have, as a result of illegal steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, muscles which are still more developed in their bodies today as a result of that usage, regardless of how long it's been since they received more PEDs. Both used illegal steroids to rehab from injuries, injuries which we'll never even know if they could have recovered from the same without cheating the rules of the game. And both of those guys are now on the roster of the team with the astronomically high payroll, and the two led the New York Yankees to the first world title in 10 years in 2009. It's disgusting, it's despicable, and most of all, it's just not fair.

A last impression I have after the 2009 baseball season relates to home field advantage and the All-Star Game. It is truly and totally ridiculous that home-field advantage in the World Series is decided by who wins the freaking All-Star game in mid-summer every year. Yes, I mean, everyone has said this and there's no doubt that it's an accurate statement, but I mean it for a slightly different reason, getting right back at the competitive imbalance in the sport these days. For years the Yankees and the Red Sox have led the league in terms of team payroll, and even though this year the Red Sox have fallen to 4th place, the fact remains that the highest-payroll teams are still concentrated in the American League, and the lower-paying teams are still concentrated in the National League. Just the presence of the Yankees alone, stockpiling and overpaying for talent in wallet-busting fashion, basically helps ensure that the American League teams will have homefield advantage in the World Series under the current system because they help tilt the talent scale in favor of the AL over the NL. Four of the top six payrolls in baseball were in the AL in 2009 (Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers and Angels), while the bottom four payroll teams in baseball -- including the bottom three which are each at least 25% below the lowly Washington Nationals' 2009 payroll -- are all in the National League. The result? There is more talent in the American League because there is more money being spent there, year in and year out -- at least partially due to the outdated DH rule in the American League, by the way -- and as a result, the National League is stupidly disadvantaged in the World Series by never getting to have home field advantage.

Prior to 2003, home field in the World Series simply alternated every year between the AL team and the NL team. That's also dumb, in that in a year like 2009, it could have given the Phillies home field advantage despite the Yankees having the best record in baseball by far. Instead, home field in the Fall Classic should simply be based on which team had the better regular season record (just like the other sports have figured out years ago by now). In the seven years that the All-Star game has been used to determine home field advantage in the World Series ever since Bud Selig butchered the 2002 All-Star game after 11 innings, the AL has won the All-Star game with their clearly superior talent every single year -- again buttressed tremendously by the Yankees' and Red Sox's penchant for extravagant spending and bidding wars, as the AL has held at least four of the top 6 payroll spots in each year in the league since 2003 -- and as a result of the Yankees' and Red Sox's largesse, the AL team has had four home games on the World Series schedule every year. In a year like this year, that dictates the correct result, but allowing the league with all the overspending to get this kind of a home-baked advantage in the location of the World Series games is just the final stick in the eye of all true baseball fans in this country who are sick and tired of the Yankees taking extreme (and growing) advantage of this sport being the only one of the major professional sports in this country not to enforce some form of a salary cap to help ensure that all teams have a chance to win it all.

Here is where I normally would make some kind of an optimistic statement about the powers that be in the sport hopefully recognizing the problem in their league and doing something to fix it right away. But that's not going to happen here. So given that, get yourselves ready everyone for another year (or more) of the Yankees on top.

Reflection

What a fun day to be a Yankees fan, and a terrible one to be among the Phillies faithful. It was terrible for the Phils because you just knew right from the getgo that the team had no chance to win Game 6 of the World Series on Wednesday night. As soon as the first inning, when Pedro was throwing fastballs that were registering a bare 84 miles per hour on the gun, you had to know. Most major league hitters are going to pound on any clown throwing 84-mph cheese up there, but when you're facing a lineup like the Yankees', the whole notion is an absolute joke. They were all over P-Mart from his first pitch to his merciful last in just the 4th inning, and thanks to Charlie Manuel's continued insistence on leaving his pitchers in for too long and for too many bad pitches, the Phils were out of it by the time they finally got Pedro out of the game in the 4th. But as soon as Pedro came out in the first with guns ablazing with 84 mph fastballs, this game was as good as done.

There are so many reasons the Phillies lost this series. Ultimately, they simply could not compete with the Yankees, who overmatched them about as badly as the Phillies themselves outmatched everyone else in the National League in this postseason. As much as I hate to admit it, this was not a close series in my book. It was about as bad of a blowout as the Yankees did to the Angels a couple of weeks back. Sure, like with the Angels, the Yanks lost Game 5 on the road to extend the series to six and come back home to New York, but as with the ALCS, once things got back to Yankee Stadium, the best team in America quickly retook control of the series, on the back of Andy Pettitte, who got the incredible sixth series-clinching victory of his illustrious career, mostly with the Yankees.

Just like I said here how the Phillies had an advantage both in starting pitching and on offense against every team in the National League and both of its postseason opponents in the NLDS and NLCS, the same proved to be true for the Yankees over the Phillies in this series. On the offensive side of the ball, I think the two lineups are fairly comparable, with the Yankees probably retaining a slight edge as far as their five or six "big boppers" at the top of the lineup. The biggest difference in the lineups to me is that the Yankees, as an American League team with a designated hitter, have that one extra big hitter -- I'm talking a 30 HR, 100 RBI type -- who in this case happens to be Hideki Matsui. I'm not just mentioning him because he utterly destroyed the Phillies in the World Series in nabbing his first ever World Series MVP award. I'm saying if you compare the lineups, both teams have a couple of poor hitters at the bottom of their rotation who are mostly in there for their defensive prowess on a team that simply does not need any more offensive firepower, but otherwise the biggest real difference is that the Yankees go one more man deep among the big hitters they can put at the top of their lineup. Sure the Phillies get the benefit of the same DH rule when they play World Series games in their American League opponent's park, but how can you even compare when the Yankees throw Godzilla's bat into that already stacked lineup, while the Phils are adding in Ben Francisco's, or Matt Stairs'? You can't, because there is just no comparison, and ironically that DH position ends up being one of the big items to tip the scale in the Yankees' favor in this series. The fact that the Yanks so thoroughly handled the Phillies throughout this series, even with A-Rod, Teixeira, Cano and Posada basically hitting like shit is really a testament to just how strong their lineup as a whole is when compared to the competition.

Then, moving on to the pitching, once again the Yanks just had a clear advantage in this World Series. Even though CC Sabathia failed to record a win in his two starts against the Phils, he pitched well enough both times, the second time for his team to secure the late victory off of Phillies idiot Brad Lidge in the 9th inning of Game 4 in Philadelphia. Even though AJ Burnett was hideous on three days rest the in Game 5 loss to the Phillies, he pitched extremely well in Game 2, outlasting a valiant attempt from Pedro Martinez to get his Yankees back into the series after the Phils' surprising Game 1 win. And even though Andy Pettitte pitched on three days rest for the first time in over three years in Game 6, the man was able to put together enough good innings to leave his team in a position to win when they needed to to put this series away. And meanwhile, on the Phillies' side of the ball, the story was pretty much totally reversed. Heading into the postseason I had viewed the Phils' likely rotation of Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Pedro Martinez and J. Happ as among the best baseball has to offer this season on one team. However, in practice, once the Yankees posed some actual competition to the skill level on the Phillies' team, Hamels sucked balls every time he went out there, Happ didn't even start a game in the entire postseason for some reason I will never ever ever understand, and when he did pitch in the Series it was constantly Charlie Manuel inserting him into games with guys on 2nd and 3rd, nobody out in the middle of a key inning, a situation which Happ was totally and completely unfamiliar with prior to this postseason. And Pedro, well, it looks like the oil well finally ran dry for the old man here during the World Series. After looking great in a dominating start in LA against the Dodgers in the NLCS, Pedro could not find that form in Game 2 of the World Series facing the Yankees' huge bats, and by the time Game 6 rolled around, even on five days rest, Pedro was worthless. As anyone who watched this series knows, in the end the Phillies simply had nobody on their entire team -- other than Cliff Lee of course -- who could stop the Yankees. Ever. In any inning. Period. Whether it was Hamels, Pedro, Blanton, Happ, Chan Ho Park, Scott Eyre, Ryan Madsen, Brad Lidge or anyone else, in the end the Phils simply could not keep those huge Yankee hitters off the basepaths, and when you combine that with the Yankee pitchers success against most of the Phils' lineup not named Chase Utley or Jayson Werth in this series, it's not hard to see why the Phils weren't even close in this matchup.

This morning on Mike and Mike, Buster Olney was on the air and he was talking all about what an amazing postseason this was for major league baseball. "Amazing"? Really? Try again, Robert. This was about as bad and as boring of a postseason as there has been in baseball in a long time, and ultimately the World Series did little to change that conclusion. Think about it -- the four LDS matchups saw three 3-game sweeps, and one 4-game win for the Phillies over the Rockies. I don't even remember the last time I saw that happen, but from there it just got worse. In the NLCS, the Phillies lambasted the Dodgers in five games, never trailing in the series and never even giving the impression that it was going to become close at any point. The Yankees had a very similar experience in the ALCS against the Angels, although as I mentioned they allowed their series to go six games, but again, it was not a series that ever saw the Yanks trailing or that anyone who understands the game actually ever thought the Angels were close to winning. The path of these two teams to the World Series here in 2009 was about as bad and as boring as possible. And then, sadly, even the World Series ended up not coming close to living up to the hype that a bunch of morons like me spread about it heading into the Fall Classic. This was supposed to be that amazing, historic series -- on paper -- and it was destined to go seven games, right? Wrong. Sure, again the Phils made it to six games in this Series and to that extent it might be tempting to consider this a close matchup, but it really wasn't that close if you actually watched the games, and from the moment that Game 1 ended, the Yankees took complete control of the series and just never looked back, like any championship team should.

As the Yankees bombed their way past the Phillies to win the 2009 World Series on Wednesday night, I did the obvious and took some time to reflect on what this Phillies team has accomplished over the past year or so. It really is amazing if you think about it. The Phillies are a team that in their 130-year history as a franchise, had only been to the World Series five times before last year, and only won it once, in 1980 when I was a mere babe. Staying up and watching that 1980 championship -- watching the late Tug McGraw strike out Willie Wilson to eliminate the Royals in Game 6 -- became my first real clear sports memory, the first time I can specifically remember a sporting event having a big effect on me and those around me. In Philadelphia, just making it to the finals in any sport has always been enough during my lifetime to make you a statue in front of the art museum and to be remembered forever in the lore and stories of old men on their porches in Northeast Philly, the local mailmen on Cottman Avenue, and the lifelong blue-collar workers down in Manyunk.

But this Phillies team really changed all that, didn't it? Those in Philadelphia know exactly what I'm talking about. These Phillies went all the way through the postseason last year and never even came close to losing any series. They won it all and did so in fairly dominatory fashion, putting an end to a 25-year drought of misery and failure that no other city with teams in all four major professional sports in this country has ever had to endure before. By the time the 2008 Phillies arrived at the World Series, they were there to win and they just clamped their collective foot down on the Rays' necks and never let up until the series was over.

And then they went back. It's never been done before in Philly -- two straight World Series appearances -- and in the eyes of the fans it really legitimizes what happened last year as not being some kind of a "fluke" or an accident. And that's not to say that the team wouldn't always have been remembered for being good, but I mean even that 1993 World Series Phillies team never made it back to another postseason, let alone another Fall Classic. Philadelphia has never before been a city of dynasties, but the 2008-2009 Phillies actually got people talking in the city about the "D" word for the first time in decades. In the end, I have never made any bones here at the blog about the fact that the Yankees were the best team in baseball this year. It became clear to me somewhere in the middle of the summertime, and nothing that happened anywhere in the season or during the postseason gave me any reason to doubt that the Yanks's superior talent would eventually prevail and they would win the 2009 World Series.

In a way, knowing how great this Yankees team was really helps ease the acceptance process for the Phillies fans out there. Despite all the bravado and braggadocio and pride from the Phillies Phaithful this postseason, despite all the bad calls, all the questionable coaching decisions, in the end in this World Series, the best team won. I can admit that -- I have no doubt about it at all, for that matter -- and so should everyone else out there. For now, it's time to put the memories of another incredible Phillies season on the back burner, and time to really focus on NFL football.

Thank you, Phillies, for another fabulous season. Here's to more to come in 2010!

World Series Game 6 Preview

Well, I figure I've been basically wrong about every other game of this World Series so far, so why not go ahead and make another prediction that only a jackass would follow with regard to Game 6 coming up Wednesday night in the Bronx. Game 6 pits Yankee ace and winningest postseason pitcher of all time in Andy Pettitte against another all-time pitching great in Pedro Martinez for the Phillies. The Series returns home for the Yankees, who already hold a 3 games to 2 edge in this best of 7 championship series, and as I mentioned they've got their all-time stopper on the mound in Andy Pettitte who has personally pitched the team to clinching five separate postseason series in his time on the mound for the Bombers. The Phils have had a couple of good games so far in the Series, but they've never quite been able to get everyone hitting at once in the series, and the pitching has not quite been able to hold the Yankees' power lineup at bay, at least not quite enough to hold on to any kind of a run advantage over the Yanks. So this one should be a clear clincher for the Yankees tonight then, right?

Wrong. I'm just not feeling it. It's hard to explain, but I just can't get over the fact that the Phillies are going to hit Andy Pettitte hard on Wednesday evening in the Bronx. As I've mentioned here many times over the past few weeks, this Phillies team -- World Champions that they are -- have shown a ton of heart, throughout this season and especially in the postseason. Although so far the series has been devoid of that special moment where the Phillies really rise up and make their greatness known, I can't shake this feeling that tonight we are going to see that moment.

Let's look a little deeper at that pitching matchup for a minute. Andy Pettitte has actually faced the Phillies now twice this season, once at each stadium. The Phils squared off against Pettitte at Yankee Stadium back on May 25, where Pettitte threw 114 pitches in giving up 4 earned runs in 7 innings, including two home runs to Raul Ibanez and the first-ever game for first baseman Jermaine Mayberry. Pettite fell behind 4-1 in the 5th inning and stayed behind 4-2 when he left the game in the 7th, and although he did not pitch terribly, the two homers and 5.2 ERA for the game were enough for him to leave the game knowing he got outpitched by rookie J. Happ of the Phils.

Pettitte also faced the Phillies on Halloween night just last week in Game 3 of the World Series, this time in Philadelphia. There, he threw 104 pitches in 6 innings, again giving up 4 earned runs and 2 homers, this time both monstrous shots to Jayson Werth, for a game ERA of 6.00, although this time he did leave the game with a 2-run lead thanks to his offense stepping up for him in the middle innings against embattled Phillies starter Cole Hamels.

And on Wednesday, Pettitte will face the Phillies a third time, this time back in New York with a chance to clinch the franchise's 27th world championship in front of the home town fans. But Pettitte will have to do so on three days' rest, something with which he is not nearly as comfortable as his colleague CC Sabathia in the Yankees' rotation. This will be the first time that the 37-year-old veteran pitches with just three days rest between outings since late September, 2006, when that arm was a much younger 34 years old. In 18 appearances on short rest in his illustrious career, Pettitte's numbers drop off dramatically: 5-7 with a 4.18 ERA, as compared to much better numbers over the rest of his career. What's more, Pettitte, now an old man by baseball standards, as well as an admitted steroid user who took "the cream" and "the clear" to help heal more quickly from injury but who no (presumably) longer has access to such miracle healing cures, has worked on an extra days' rest in his last eight starts, dating back to early September, and there's a reason for that: he needs it. At 37, his arm is old and used, just the kind of arm that the Phillies ought to be able to take advantage of on Wednesday in New York.

So, looking at all the stats, I think we can paint a reasonable prediction for what Pettitte will pitch like tonight. He was good for 7 innings against the Phils back in May in New York, and 6 innings against the Phillies' lineup in Game 3, and I see no reason to expect Pettitte to last any longer than 6 innings (at the outside) in Game 6 on short rest. What's more, he has given up two home runs and four total earned runs in each of his last two starts against the Phils -- again both on full or even extra rest -- and again tonight I can't see the Phils not at least equalling that feat and probably besting it slightly given the short time between Pettitte's starts. So for Game 6, a reasonable expectation based purely on the facts would have the Phillies scoring, say, 5 earned runs off of Pettitte in, say, six innings of work. Five runs.

The question is, what will the Yankees' run total be at the end of 6 when the Phils have had five men cross the plate? Will it be 5-0? Probably not. The 38-year-old Pedro Martinez was able to hold the Yankees to 3 earned runs in 6 innings in Game 2 of this World Series, and he has had not just the full four days of rest, but five days off since that Game 2 appearance. I still would expect the Yankees to hit him about as well as they did in Game 2, and possibly a little better, although Pedro on extra rest has pitched extremely well for the Phillies this season, and remember he is generally well-rested unlike a guy like Andy Pettitte because P-Mart didn't even play baseball until the middle of the summer this year. So Pedro should have the fresher arm, and Pettitte is likely going to be hit a little harder tonight in my view than the Phillies' starter is likely to be.

5-3 at the end of six tonight? 5-4? Or 5-5? It's going to be one of those, the way I see it. And then the Phillies' job, if they really want to extend this series one more game, is to get to the Yankees' middle relief -- which has performed atrociously all through this series -- without letting the Yankees get to theirs (which has also been pretty bad, but not quite as bad).

It's extremely hard to predict something like this with any precision of course, and as I mentioned above I have basically gotten every guess wrong in terms of individual games so far in the Series, so what do I know. But something tells me that you'll be reading here tomorrow about the anticipation and hype surrounding a Game 7 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium on Thursday night in New York City.

Phillies - Yankees Live

It all started with an innocent, if not fairly common, telephone call from my older brother around 10am on Sunday this weekend. I was on my way back from the weekly run to the grocery, and when I picked up my cell, the one sentence I heard would change the path of my day and my weekend:

"The team needs us, man. Joe Blanton needs us."

I couldn't even begin to argue with my brother's sentiment. After Philies manager Charlie Manuel exhibited his mental retardation when it comes to pitchers better than I ever could have dreamt up on my own, opting to pitch Joe Blanton in World Series Game 4 -- a crucial game for the Phils, down 2-1 in the series -- against Yankees' ace CC Sabathia instead of going with Phils' ace Cliff Lee, I knew my brother was right. The Phils simply had to win Game 4, and to do that under the circumstances Charlie Manuel had put the team in was going to take every ounce of support from the real Phillies fans in Citizens Bank Park on the night.

The logic was inescapable. I had to be at that game.

The internet is really a modern day miracle. Within half an hour or so, my brother had not only found us a pair of incredible seats to Sunday night's World Series Game 4 at The Bank via StubHub but sitting in my email box was a printable pdf which included my actual ticket. Unbelievable. I went from spending the afternoon with some friends who were bringing their new baby over to hang with our kids, to heading down Route 95 to Philadelphia to make the trek from Yankees land to Chilladelphia and see my team through to a 2-2 World Series tie.

After the tickets had been procured, the next question was when to get there. In a rare two-game city sports matchup, the Eagles were already playing the Giants at Lincoln Financial Field, just caddy-corner from the Bank, in a 1pm game which would probably end close to 4:30pm. The traffic from that badboy was sure to last until at least 5:30 or 6 in and around the stadium, and I did not necessarily feel like getting involved in that whole morass if I could avoid it. But then with the World Series scheduled to start shortly after 8pm in basically that same space, it stood to reason that the traffic for that game would likely start picking up somewhere around 6pm as well. So, I reasoned, my best bet was probably to make it into parking lot of The Bank sometime around 6pm and try to sneak in during that small window where the football traffic should be winding down while the baseball traffic should just be starting to pick up.

Amazingly, the 124.3 mile trip from my place to my parking lot at The Bank took me under 2 1/2 hours despite having to drive clear through two major cities, and I managed to time things just about perfectly. What's more, my brother arrived just minutes after I did, and we quickly headed upstairs to one of the sit-down restaurants at The Bank for a couple hours of preparations for the big game. This would actually be the third World Series game I would be attending with my brother, having been at both the 15-14 Mitch Williams debacle and the 2-0 Curt Schilling dominatory shutout in the 1993 Phillies-Blue Jays series, so we pretty much have the routine down pat and we executed it to perfection on Sunday night, such that by game time we were nice and toasty in our seats and ready to see the Phils take back control of this series.

Oh, did I mention our seats were incredible?



This is the view of the Fox Sports set on the field just prior to the first pitch. It's also the view from sitting in my seat for the game. We were in the second row of the stadium, not three feet from the dirt in foul ground about ten feet behind first base, where you often see people leaning way over the gate to try to pick up a foul ground ball. We were right on the aisle, second row, right there. It was so sick. Like I said, if you have the money to spend, you can get some pretty effing amazing things from the internet pretty much on demand. While I've been to several World Series games before in my life, I can definitely say that I've never gone in style quite like this. But that's one of the great things about my older brother, which I know I've written about here before in the context of my Vegas trips with him over the past few years -- the man certainly knows how to live right.

The Bank was electric as Joe Blanton threw the first pitch to Carlos Ruiz to start the top of the 1st inning, but right from the first couple of foul balls and even one lineout, it was obvious that the Yanks were keyed on him early. Within minutes, Blanton had quickly given up two runs and somehow had managed to quiet the stadium's 45,145 fans even before the Phillies had come to bat. But a run in the bottom of the first brought the home town crowd back into it, and the Phils spent the next several innings doing what they've been forced to do all through this World Series -- playing catchup. Blanton calmed down a bit and put the Yanks down without further runs over the next few innings, and in the meantime in the 4th, as Sabathia's pitch count ran into the 60s, the Phils eked out another run to finally get back to even. It seemed that Blanton's early mistake had been forgiven and now the team was being given new life to win this game that they knew they had to win. But no sooner had that occurred than Blanton came out and gave up two more runs to the Yanks in the top of the 5th to bring the score to 4-2 and leave the Phils in yet another 2-run hole, and the home crowd once again gasping for its collective breath just minutes after feeling like the team had finally gotten the second chance at this game that it dsperately needed.

The fans in the stadium were amazing. After Blanton was pinch-hit for in the bottom of the 5th, the stadium erupted in support of Chan Ho Park and Ryan Madson as they came in to try to hold the Yanks down while the Phils could chip away at another 2-run lead, and chip away they did. While Park and Madson weaved their way through a couple of mistakes and continued to hold the Yankees at 4 total runs, first Chase Utley smashed a home run deep into the right field seats in the 7th to bring the Phillies to within 4-3, which really got the crowd rocking and rolling. Then, out of nowhere with the bottom of the Phillies' order up in the 8th, Phillies' third baseman Pedro Feliz drove a liner deep to left-center, clearing the wall and sending the hometown fans into a serious frenzy as he tied the game up once again at 4 with just one inning left to go. Carlos Ruiz soon grounded out to end the Phillies' 8th, but one thing was clear to every single person in the stadium -- the fans, the players on both teams on the field, even retard Charlie Manuel as the 8th inning ended -- hold the Yankees scoreless in the top of the 9th, and the Phils were going to win this game with the top of the order coming up in the bottom of the 9th. You just knew, with the way the game had gone, the Phils' unlikely tying of the game in the 8th, and with how desperately the team needed the game. Three more outs from Madson, and the Phils were going to nab a run off whoever Joe Girardi ran out there to pitch to the home team in the bottom of the 9th and tie this series up at 2.

But unfortunately this is not a fairy tale, and when management repeatedly fails to address the team's blatant, glaring weaknesses in the bullpen, stuff tends to happen. Charlie Manuel unabashedly brought Brad Lidge out to hold the Yanks scoreless in the 9th inning, and the whole stadium collectively groaned. Even when Lidge got the first two batters out in short order, and got up 1-2 on third batter Johnny Damon, nobody exhaled. Because on some level we all knew. We all knew this was Brad Lidge, the literal worst player in the entire major leagues this year as I've been screaming here for months. We knew this was a huge, huge spot for the team and for the franchise, and we know how hideous Lidge has performed in this situation over the months and months that have comprised the 2009 season. Despite the refonkulous claims of manager Charlie Manuel that Lidge was "back", that the postseason was a "clean slate" and that Lidge was ready, willing and able to lead this team back to another world championship, I'm not the only one who knows who truly untrustably bad Lidge is and always will be. We all knew, all 45,000+ fans on their feet all through that 9th inning, so when Lidge ended up giving up a hit to Damon after running the count to 3-2, then plunking Mark Teixeira to let two guys on base, and then serving up a delicious swedish meatball to Alex Rodriguez to lose the tie before throwing another soft-tosser in there to Jorge Posada for another two runs and to complete the blowout, nobody was surprised. Stunned, yes. Definitely. But not in a surprised kind of way. More in an I-told-you-so kind of way.

Despite sometimes feeling like I'm completely alone here in this space screaming for months about how horrible Brad Lidge is and how the Phillies had absolutely, positively zero chance of repeating as World Champions when Brad Lidge was our closer, on Sunday night I had the oppotunity to learn how 45,145 of my fellow Phillies fans felt about Lidge, and what I learned is that everyone -- every body in the city -- feels just like I do. Nobody wanted Lidge out there to pitch to this lineup, in this stadium. Nobody thought the inning was over at 2 outs, nobody on, and 1-2 to Johnny Damon. And nobody thought there was any chance whatsoever that Lidge would be able to stop the bleeding at just one run by getting Posada out, down 5-4. Everybody knew. And somehow, for some reason, I actually take a little comfort in knowing that. We were all in the same boat at The Bank yesterday, and walking out with the hordes as that game came to a close on Sunday night, I recognized all too well the dazed looks I saw everywhere I turned my head. I was sporting the same look myself, as I eased into the front seat of my car and started the long trek that would eventually get me back into my own bed shortly after 2am.

Let me be clear about one thing: I still expect this series to get back to New York, which is all I ever felt sure about coming in to the series as far as length. Although I can personally attest that the loss on Sunday night was emotionally draining for the team and for the city, these players have been through this before. Several times. Like, 15 times just this season with Lidge, plus another 6 or 7 with Madson and others. Blowing a game in the 9th in a spot like this is always one of the hardest things to get over, and I can't say I would be completely shocked if the team couldn't muster up enough chutzpah to grab one win in Philly tonight after what has happened in Philadelphia over the past few days. But this Phillies team has been resilient all through the season, and they've come back with tough, hard-fought wins time and again in the face of adversity, even the day after Lidge blows a big game like happened on May 25 to end that Phillies - Yankees intraleague series back in the spring. I like the matchup of Cliff Lee vs AJ Burnett, and I think there is a good chance that the defending World Champions will not let the Yanks off that easy tonight at The Bank. After Game 5 the Phils will have a major uphill battle to wage, but at this point, you know the routine.

One Game at a Time.