Jusssst a bit outside: the Boston Red Sox

Duty calls to preview the MLB season, providing up to 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams. At bat: the Boston Red Sox.

1. Waiting for lefty: Jon Lester Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz and John Lackey could all be signed through 2014, leaving one spot open for a left-hander to balance out the group. Paging Cliff Lee ...
   
   
2. Winning with pitching and defence at Fenway? Runs scored across MLB have dropped for four consecutive seasons, so the Sox are following the curve by adding centrefielder Mike Cameron (right in photo) and building an Adrian Beltre-Marco Scutaro-Dustin Pedroia-Kevin Youkilis infield.
   
   
3. Over-under: 94½ wins.
   
   
4. Take the ... Over. It takes 95 wins to make the playoffs in the AL East, but more than that to win the whole shootin' match.
   
   
5. Blatantly obvious: Blowing smoke about Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis. They're good and glorified to death. We get it.
   
   
6. So cute how: How far Boston diehards will go to avoid giving rightfielder J.D. Drew, who puts up a near .900 OPS each season, any credit for their success. Yankees fans have learned to abide that Alex Rodriguez doesn't play more than 140-145 games anymore.
   
   
7. For the record: That line was written before Bill Simmons' better late than never "I like sabermetrics" column. Just look how long it took him to mention you-know-who. (Third paragraph.)
   
   
8. One flaw in Theo's genius: GM Theo Epstein's regime has yet to draft and develop a power hitter (as the Boston Globe noted the other day), but other than Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx and Manny Ramirez, the Red Sox have never been known for that sort of thing.
   
   
9. Designated scapegoat in case of struggle: Probably Cameron, on account of coming as a free agent, on account of his .748 on-base-plus-slugging vs. righty pitching last season and the fact it's Boston.
   
   
10. Don't kid yourselves: They're still wicked talented, even if they're still lugging around Jason Varitek.
    
    
11. Needless manufactured drama: Whether Daniel Bard is going to usurp the closer role from Jonathan Papelbon. Just let it happen organically, people.
    
    
12. Trouble spot: Middle relief, but that's every team. It's like 12-man pitching staffs put a strain on every team's depth.
    
    
13. Smoke screen: With respect to Jacoby Ellsbury, there have only been about three players in recent history who could hold down a left-field job without hitting for power. Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines and Carl Crawford actually had power.
    
    
14. Potential deal-breaker: Whether Manny Delcarmen and Ramon Ramirez provide sixth- and seventh-inning relief. Yea to the former and not sure on the latter.
    
    
15. Prediction that may not come true: "With Scutaro batting ninth, he should be able to score at least 100 runs." Yeah, lots of players score 100 runs hitting last in the lineup.
    
    
16. Carbo reload: Everyone has linked to it already, but a should-read is the story about former Sox outfielder Bernie Carbo's journey out of depression and drug abuse.
    
    
17. Just stirring the pot: Manager Terry Francona just can't stop playing Jason Varitek, no matter how little he hits.
    
    
18. FanGraphs notes Boston has gone over slot 16 times in signing draft choices, just in the last three years, proving teams which abide by the slotting system are a bunch of suckers.
    
    
19. Milestone alert: Mike Cameron is 202 strikeouts away from a career 2,000.
    
    
20. Fenway folk hero: With a name like his, Boof Bonser was born to play somewhere where fans still have a capacity for zaniness.
    
    
21. Actual conversation on Toronto subway after Red Sox-Jays game in 2008: "How long has Toronto had a team?" ... "They've won as many World Series as the Sox have since 1920."
    
    
22. How long has Tim Wakefield been pitching? He was on the Pittsburgh Pirates' last winning team.
    
    
23. It is novel their top pitching prospect Casey Kelly (TINSTAAPP notwithstanding) dabbed at shortstop in the minors. It's like how the Jays gave Dave Stieb a chance to try centrefield before he realized where he belonged.
    
    
24. Zing! Ellsbury's entry in Baseball Prospectus 2010 notes, "Jim Rice thinks Ellsbury has Hall of Fame potential, which is true if you work under the assumption that the standards will continue to erode, thanks to the induction of players like Jim Rice."
    
    
25. .328 was also his blood-alcohol level: It has to be an urban legend that Wade Boggs once drank 64 beers on a cross-country flight.
    
    
26. PECOTA says: 95-67, first AL East, 847 runs scored, 696 against.
    
    
27. In English, please: What does contempt breed?
    
    (Why 27? Carlton's Fisk's number.)
    

Bill Simmons has Masshole appeal, any way you thin-slice it

People will decide for themselves whether Bill Simmons The Book of Basketball is worth picking up (it's 700-plus pages, so lift with your legs) but it's worth pointing out a couple of the more splenetic reviews.

The joke, whoever, might on Charles Pierce at Deadspin ("Somewhere in these pages is a real book, and somewhere in that book is a very real heart and a very redeemable soul") and Josh Levin at Slate ("He'd be twice as funny — and a lot less repetitive — with half the jokes.

Sorry, fellas, calling out Bill Simmons is as dated as the phrase "calling out." Some loser did it 10 months ago:

"Simmons' act was fresh in the late '90s and in the 2000s, but it's become the sport media's analog to Will Ferrell's man-child act. It ticked the giggly in the late '90s and early 2000s, when people — especially men who realized that you're not going to be young forever, but you can at least be immature — just needed to disappear into, say, one of Ferrell's comic constructs and laugh like a hyena for 92 minutes. Eventually, you wonder when someone who's a NBA guy in his medium will stop making an ABA movie, to paraphrase one review of Ferrell's thin 2008 vehicle, Semi-Pro. It is often a similar deal with Simmons' references to 1980s pop culture, the Boston Celtics of that era, gambling, Grady Little and porn."
— January 16, 2009

Ha!

Like Sean Kealey of Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician said, "What were the odds (Deadspin's) review of Bill Simmons' book would be negative? 1:100?" Neverthless, those who relish the carve-up of genius will dig Pierce's takedown ...

"He did not reinvent sports writing, or even the way people write about sports, which is not the same thing. He didn't even really break down the formidable 'kicked in the gonads' barrier as far as the language of journalism goes. (Did anyone arguing that point ever actually read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail? Hunter Thompson wrote some pretty wild stuff before he got to ESPN.com.) He didn't pioneer the use of pop culture reference in sportswriting; Andre Laguerre's Sports Illustrated did that and, anyway, Simmons' vaunted pop-cult knowledge is carved out of a very thin loaf of Wonder Bread. He did very little that was new. But he did it on the Internet. He created a gig for himself and sold it well. That should be good enough.

"But, alas, he seems to have bought into a lot of this messianic bullshit, and it shows."

... and Levin's:

"Simmons wouldn't be Simmons without the pointless asides. One of the Sports Guy's biggest flaws, though, is that he tries too hard to entertain: He'd be twice as funny—and a lot less repetitive—with half the jokes. Simmons clearly gets a rise out of mixing sex and sports. Three pages after the Moses Malone-Marilyn Chambers analogy, he says that Shaquille O'Neal is like porn star Peter North — 'dominant, but not the best." He also likens Karl Malone to a 'fake-boobed Asian stripper' and Jason Kidd to "a smoking-hot girl … wearing a 32A." (The small bra size is a reference to Kidd's poor shooting ability. It kind of makes sense in context.)"

Does anyone else find the sports-porn analogies a bit creepy? People consume porn is mass quantities, but it's the low-hanging fruit on the analogy tree. The rub is Simmons created the taste which he is to be savoured by, so screw aiming higher. There's some depth there, but he serves as a very flattering mirror for similarly stunted males to gaze upon their own reflection and say, "Nothing needs changing here."

It's very Guyland, which is why he needs to be stopped. The possible irony is those who set the bar a little higher, the blogging sober and thinking too hard types, might be the ones who are out to lunch. You will never know for sure.

Related:
Bill Simmons: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut; The Sports Guy's The Book of Basketball is a crude, fantastic mess. (Josh Levin, Slate)
You Are Not The Cosmos: A Review Of Bill Simmons' Book Of Basketball (Deadspin)

Big Papi (and what it means to a Jays fan)

In another time and place, there was a young reporter who knew "here it comes" when an editor peered at him and said, "Question for you ..."

Would that George Mitchell could be held to account. As Jason Rosenberg pointed out, the question for him is how is that the much-ballyhood Mitchell Report failed to make mention of David Ortiz and Manny Ramírez and it now it's alleged the Red Sox's erstwhile slugging tandem apparently testing positive for steroids? How could that be when Mitchell, the former U.S. Senate majority leader, is employed by the Red Sox. (You also know the same media outlet which broke this also owns a stake in that baseball franchise, right?)

That's about it. With respect to Ortiz, you can't convict based on an anonymous survey test, which is what it was in 2003.

Releasing all the names at once just to stop this slow drip is a no-go since there is that troublesome due process, although Rosenblog suggested, tongue-in-cheek, "(Commissioner Bud) Selig sells Fox the rights to the names that get released as part of a one-hour special."

People certainly do care. Ortiz is the top trending topic on Twitter at this moment, with the 3-4 slots occupied by "Manny Ramirez" and "Big Papi," just like Boston's batting order during their championship years (well, actually Ortiz hit third and Manny hit cleanup). It's just that they're not necessarily angry.

Really, though, everyone is compromised and anyone who says they are "done with baseball" due to steroids, well, in Bill Daly's phrasing, you have to question their bona fides as fans.

The schadenfreude of it all, speaking as a Blue Jays fan whose team which isn't the darling of the U.S. media, is that MLB's symbiotic relationship with ESPN and FOX Sports means there is less incentive to expose a Toronto player. It is far-fetched to think the Jays would not have someone among the 104 names.

In other words, praise Buddha the U.S. media is only interested in uncovering positive tests by players on big-market teams, with bonus points if the player is a visible minority.

It (turn on your sarcasm detector) means the Jays are safe since 2003 was their White Jays phase. They don't have anyone who put up big numbers in 2003 and has seen his stats fall down the side of a cliff like Ortiz did for the first part of this season. That doesn't sound like anyone on the Jays, least of all their starting centrefielder. Carry on.

Jays-Sox: They keep underestimatin' ya

Getting a game-face on for a cataclysmic Blue Jays-Red Sox series means amplifying slights real or imagined.

Well, then: It did not escape notice that the Boston Globe's 5 Things To Know About The Blue Jays, a column and a video discussion all neglected to mention Mar-co Scu-ta-ro. Scutaro is only leading the majors in runs scored and bases on balls, has reached base at a .415 clip from the leadoff spot and is keeping everything neat and tidy over at shortstop, where he has started all 41 games.

Scutaro has been a revelation. The Baseball Prospectus 2009 called him a "splendid fielder," adding, "The Jays could do worse" for an everyday shortstop (and have they ever since Tony Fernandez left for the second time after the 1993 World Series). He has been their most valuable fielding out of the "back seven" by FanGraphs' reckoning. How do you ignore that?



(OK, so, the Orioles' Adam Jones has scored one less run than Scutaro while playing in nine fewer games. Runs scored are a partially a function of what the other hitters, like Aaron Hill and Adam Lind, are doing. Fielding-wise, Jays shortstops are helped a little by always getting a true hope from Rogers Centre's turf, but that's neither here nor there).

One reason to be optimistic about the Jays being able to keep this up, albeit with some tapering-off since they're not going to go 107-55, is their fielding. This is just a layperson's understanding, it probably needs to be rigorously tested, but out of hitting, pitching and fielding, the latter probably varies the least according to the strength of the opponent. The Jays have made only 14 errors in 41 games, the fewest in the American League. There is bound to be some evenout, but that should help keep them somewhat afloat. Of course, fielding only buttresses pitching so far.

Anyway, as for the Showdown in Beantown, so-called, it's best to play it light and breezy. It's only May 19 and neither team is throwing its Nos. 1 and 2 starters. The bad man with the knuckleball, Tim Wakefield, who's always tough to predict. Their starters for Wednesday and Thursday, Brad Penny and left-hander Jon Lester, both have ERAs north of 6.50, which should not continue much longer. A result similar to the Yankees series last week is probably to be expected.

The arrival of interleague play, to be honest, might be as much of a concern, since the Jays are only 62-64 in those contests dating back to 2002, when J.P. Ricciardi became GM.

(For anyone wondering, the deepest the Jays have ever gone into a season with only 14 losses was 1984, when they started 31-14.)

Batter up: Boston Red Sox

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team who you know fully well won't win. In honour of an popular Internet meme, we're presenting lists of 25 things tangentially about each Major League Baseball team. At bat: The Boston Red Sox.

1. Clay Buchholz, who threw a no-hitter in 2007, didn't even make the team. Their pitching staff is pretty loaded.
   
   
2. They're projected to score the most runs in the American League. They have eight solid hitters (and then there's 'Tek. And then there's 'Tek!). They're not a consensus pick to beat the Cubs in the World Series for nothing.
   
   
3. First baseman Kevin Youkilis actually batted more in the cleanup spot than anywhere else in the lineup last season. He hit .299/.399/.569 batting fourth, pretty on par with his season averages.
   
   
4. Jon Lester is could be viewed as the ace by the end of this season than Josh Beckett, but there's not much drop-off between the pair of them.
   
   
5. Daisuke Matzusaka has a lot of pitches and you will see all of them, usually by the end of the first inning. He doesn't work deep into games, but that's half his charm.
   
   
6. Shortstop Jed Lowrie (.258/.339/.400 in '08) is a big X factor for this season, although he's probably not going to be hitting like a superstar. At third, Mike Lowell is coming off an injury-marred year (he OPS-plused 103, which is adequate).
   
   
7. Leftfielder Jason Bay's first minor-league manager when he was in the farm system of a team which no longer exists was Ottawa resident Tim Leiper, how about that?

   "Leiper still never has seen anyone, from the minors or majors, so utterly destroy spring training pitching.
   
   "... The Expos, at Leiper's urging, decided Bay would begin his career with a high-A affiliate in Jupiter, Fla." — Adam Kilbore, Boston Globe

8. Jose Canseco is linking former Sawx slugger Manny Ramírez to steroid use. Of course, it's dirty pool to put that in the Red Sox preview just because they both played in Boston, but not at the same time.
   
   
9. Ten of the 25 players on the Opening Day roster were born outside the continental United States: Three in Japan, two in Canada, two in the Dominican Republic, two in Puerto Rico and one in Jamaica.
   
   The Red Sox do not have a black player born in the U.S., notwithstanding whoever the player is on utilityman Nick Green's Yahoo! Sports page. That's not a reflection on the organization, as much as some people would like it to be ... the sport is getting more international all the time.
   
   
10. Canadian George Kottaras made the team as the designated Tim Wakefield wrangler. He caught another knuckleballer, Charlie Zink, all last season in Pawtucket.
    
    The best way to catch a knuckleball, as Bob Uecker once said, is wait for it to stop rolling and pick it up.
    
    
11. The team that used to be famous for plodding baserunners (see, Rice, Jim, Game 6, 1986 World Series) had a 77.4% stolen-base success rate last season, second-best to the Oakland Athletics . Even if Jacoby Ellsbury (50-for-61 to lead the American League) is factored out, they were still successful almost three times out of four.
    
    
12. He seems to personify what makes Boston teams insufferable, but it's hard to completely hate second baseman Dustin Pedroia. He was the first middle infielder since Zoilo Versalles in 1965 to be elected American League MVP while hitting less than 30 home runs. Players with a balanced skill set have been traditionally overlooked in MVP voting, so it's good it's changing.
    
    
13. The bullpen was a trouble spot at times in '08. Sidearmer Justin Masterson is going to be in the 'pen from the start of the season, which helps.
    
    
14. C'est la vie: Being a Blue Jays fan whose all-time favourite ballplayer is Ted Williams and whose favourite sports figure is another Red Sock, Bill (Spaceman) Lee.
    
    
15. Masterson's sidearm offerings break in on left-handers and they already have two good lefty options in the bullpen,Javier Lópezand Hideki Okajima. It will be hard to get much off them in the late innings. Right-hander Manny Delcarmen has punched above his weight the past couple seasons.
    
    
16. The wannabe wordsmiths who write the headlines are going to love Daniel Bard once he matures into a major leaguer.
    
    
17. Only two of the top five articles on the Boston Herald website at this writing are about the Red Sox, who haven't a World Series in more than 17 months. Celtic Nation has spoken.
    
    
18. The franchise which shrewdly gauged the best-before of Pedro Martínez and Nomar Garciaparra is rolling with 37-year-old catcher Jason Varitek, who couldn't hit a right-hander. Which of these things is not like the other?
    
    
19. Minor-league slugger Lars Anderson, who's at Double-A Portland (the one in Maine), will man first base before too long. It won't be much longer until the Red Sox are sending him on some goodwill trip to Stockholm to stake out that player pool the way they have with Japan.
    
    
20. Junichi Tawaza, the Japanese phenom signed late last season, is going to be in Double-A. Examiner.com pointed out every AL East team has a Japanese player of note in its system, except the Blue Jays. Hey, it's not like Japan has won the first two World Baseball Classics.
    
    
21. The Red Sox ended their affilation with a single-A team because its park was hitter-friendly and they didn't want it to skew their evaluation of young hitters. Talk about leaving nothing to chance.
    


22. Reliever Mike Timlin retired after last season. He was the last active player in the majors from the 1992-93 Blue Jays.
    
    
23. Fun fact: Lowrie will be the first switch-hitter to start on Opening Day for the Red Sox since the immortal Spike Owen in 1988. A funner fact is that he's not Julio Lugo.
    
    
24. You're excused for wanting to smash Dustin Pedroia's face into a bowl of mashed potatoes after seeing his spot for for MLB 09: The Show.
    
    
    
    
25. Pedroia referred to the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez "as a dork" during a puff-piece magazine feature. He needs to hire UFC president Dana White to advise him on more creative insult methods.

You learn something new every day...

There's not much original to add, but canoe.ca, as part of Black History Month, is running personal essays all month from prominent black Canadians. The basketball player Tammy Sutton-Brown has written one. It's worth a click through, just to get a perspective on Canadian athlete who is little publicized.

The Indiana Fever centre claims, aside from her parents, her major influences are her Hall of Fame-nominated coach at Rutgers, C. Vivian Stringer, and her namesake, Tamara Dobson, Cleopatra Jones herself.

(Incidentally, Vivian Stringer's nomination caused one column in Springfield, Mass., home of the Basketball Hall of Fame, to validate the Masshole stereotype of dreaming up snubs where none exist and being kind of parochial. Namely, Rebecca Lobo, was not one of the two women's finalists over Stringer, a true builder in the women's game and, Cynthia Cooper, who actually has some name recognition among casual sports fans.

This in pretty much in keeping with the time that one Boston-based Sports Illustrated columnist referred to Howard Stern as Boston University's "most accomplished alumnus," either not knowing nor caring that Dr. Martin Luther King did his PhD at BU. C'est la vie!)

Updike and the Splendid Splinter, for those scoring at home

For anyone wondering, John Updike's famous essay, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," on Ted Williams' final game was referenced into the fourth paragraph of his obit in The Guardian in England. The New York Times put it in the 11th paragraph.

In keeping with some of Updike's themes, one has to feel guilty for being able to quote part of the Williams essay ... Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs — hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of ... which isn't even from the best part of the essay. It was not even the best piece of writing produced from that day, Sept. 29, 1960.

Rereading Updike now, having devoured it as a younger reader, what sticks out is the part about baseball is the one team game where a loner can flourish.

"But of all team sports, baseball, with its graceful intermittences of action, its immense and tranquil field sparsely settled with poised men in white, its dispassionate mathematics, seems to me best suited to accommodate, and be ornamented by, a loner. It is an essentially lonely game."

That is it in a nutshell, even you can see Updike making it about himself.

The funny part is that out of that day, Ed Linn, who was there for Sport magazine, wrote one of the best pieces of his career. It was the kind of blend into the background and observe piece, but it was in keeping with most of the writing about Ted Williams, as a cranky guy who was very particular, but was a genius at baseball (like another leftfielder named Barry Bonds, as Sports On My Mind noted).

It is nowhere near as widely quoted, although when a book called Impossible Dreams: A Red Sox Anthology was published in 2003 (conveniently, just before Boston fans become completely insufferable), the Linn piece was included.

It's worth picking up. One should go for Ed Linn making writing accessible over John Updike making it look impossible every day of the week.

Stratagems: Not punting the football

Someone else is using math to ruin sports.

Gregg Easterbrook at ESPN.com has often Don't Punt proselytizers who have produced analyses saying that punting the ball away on fourth down is a poor percentage play. The pointyheads have evidently got to a high school coach in Little Rock, Arkansas, named Kevin Kelley. His team, the Pulaski Bruins, won the state championship without punting all season.

The numbers say that Kelley is right to go for it on every fourth down and, according to the Rivals High article, go for an onside kick on about 75% of the team's kickoffs.

If Pulaski converts on fourth down, it creates a momentum change similar to a turnover. Other high school coaches have told Kelley they would rather see his team punt.

The Bruins even avoid punting when the defense has stopped them inside their own 10-yard line.

"You can just tell people are in the stands thinking, 'You're an idiot,' " Kelley said.

... If Pulaski has a fourth-and-8 at its own 5-yard line, Kelley said his explosive offense likely will convert a first down at least 50 percent of the time. If it fails to convert, statistical data from the college level shows that an opponent acquiring the ball inside the 10-yard line scores a touchdown 90 percent of the time. If Pulaski punts away (i.e., a 40-yard punt with a 10-yard return) the other team will start with the ball on the 38-yard line and score a touchdown 77 percent of the time. The difference is only 13 percent.

Anyone who has covered high school football, speaking from experience, has probably wondered why the stronger teams don't call for onside kicks at least half the time, aside from situations where the outcome is not in doubt. The up men on the return team often have little experience handling the ball. The sight of the ball coming toward them when it's not expected can cause a young athlete to panic.

In a general sense, these are fun ideas to play around with on a Sunday morning before settling in for a NFL Sunday. It comes back to a key principle of being a sports fan that some sports geeks can forget. When a crucial situation comes up, don't think of it in terms of of what a certain coach or team might do, suggest what they should try. You'll live longer.

This is apropos since Denver and San Diego play tonight for the AFC West title – someone has to win it, and laying aside what you might think of Ray Lewis or Bill Belichick, you should be annoyed that an 8-8 team might go into the playoffs ahead of the 10-6 Baltimore Ravens or New England Patriots. In those teams' first meeting this season, as you know, Denver beat San Diego 39-38 after passing up a sure extra point to go for a 2-point conversion in the final minutes.

Right before that play, a newsroom colleague said, "They should go for two." Someone pointed out, "They never do that in the NFL," and he replied, "So what? I want to see them go for two, they should go for two. Don't tell me what you think the coaches will do, tell me what you think they should do." Weak, OK-you-win reply: "Go for two, then."

In that spirit, teams should punt less. Kicking the ball away when the other team knows a punt is coming often does seem like a give-up play. Now there are numbers that confirm as much.

Obviously, field goals are another kind of apple. That involves putting points on the scoreboard. Media types who have roasted the New England Patriots' Bill Belichick and USC's Pete Carroll for ill-fated fourth-down gambles in big games had a point. Going for it on fourth-and-13 in the Super Bowl when your offensive line is being owned will always be dumb.

The quick kick on third down, where the quarterback lines up in the shotgun formation, inches back a few steps and boots the ball away, is also separate.

A fourth-down punt only seems worth it when the punter has a chance to pin a team inside its own 10-yard line. There was a perfect example Saturday of where Don't Punt might have helped a team. The Wisconsin Badgers were down by only four points late in the first half in their Champs Sports Bowl capitulation against Florida State, facing fourth-and-2 on their own 15-yard line. They punted. About 40 seconds later, Florida State scored a touchdown to open a double-digit lead and went on to win 42-13.

It might have ended up that way anyhow (big, slow Big Ten team vs. a big, swift southern team, don't you know). It didn't have to, though.

Keeping the offense on the field on fourth down allows for more creative play-calling. Third-and-long does not have to be a passing down. The Little Rock school can run the ball, throw a screen pass or use any number of formations. Defenses do not know whether to use a nickel or dime defense. And Pulaski's offense has less pressure on third down.

On the previous play, the Badgers faced third-and-6. In their minds, they had one chance to get six yards, not two, so they lined up in a formation that screamed Obvious Passing Situation. Wisconsin is famous for its power running game, but Florida State knew it could sell out for a pass. The Wisconsin receiver caught a short pass and was quickly dropped two yards short of the first down, boom went the punt and soon enough, the rout was on.

It's always enjoyable to think about unorthodox strategies. The Don't Punt strategy seems like a winner. It will not appear in the NFL any time soon, but anything that requires more brainwork for the players and more excitement for fans should be welcome, even the bastards have to resort to introducing empirical evidence.

Related:
Arkansas coach punts traditional game plan (Jeff Merotin, Rivals High; via JonahKeri.com)

Snark break...

It's not clear what the Boston Red Sox are thinking by introducing new uniforms. New Englanders aren't the type to jump on the bandwagon and snap up officially licensed merchandise willy-nilly.

Will Leitch has suggested that instead of saying you're going to "scalp" an extra ticket to a sports event, you should say you're going to "Blago" it.

Disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich should have been indicted long ago just for what he told ESPN.com's Gene Wojciechowski during a 2004 interview, "Baseball is a metaphor for life, and it's very much a metaphor for politics. Politics is very competitive. The campaigns are long, just like baseball seasons. Like innings in a ballgame, you have a certain game plan. You have tactics and strategies." Enjoying baseball is hard enough without the George Will-type dilettante drudges who are always looking for meaning between the white lines.

It's owners such as the Tampa Bay Lightning's who are responsible for leading the Frank D'Angelos of the world to believe they could own a NHL team. Investigate Barry Melrose all you want, fellas.

The Philadelphia Phillies ace Cole Hamels called the New York Mets "choke artists" yesterday. You'd think he'd just led his team to the World Series title or something.

A day in the life for a Minnesota Vikings fans: Interior linemen kick butt in court, team courts disaster by going with Tarvaris Jackson as its starting quarterback.

(Seriously, T-Jack is gonna be OK. He just needs a receiver like the Chicago Bears' Devin Hester, who can draw a pass interference flag whenever the QB underthrows him or overthrows him by 10 yards, which happens a fair bit with Kyle Orton.)

A happy 58th birthday to Battlin' Billy Smith. It seems like yesterday that the last welt he left on a crease-crashing NHL forward's leg healed. Actually, it probably was yesterday.

The Columbus Blue Jackets are letting Nikita Filatov play in the World Junior Hockey Championship for Russia, which is training in Kingston. This will be the first time any Frontenacs fans have seen a good European player up close since Larry Mavety's been GM.

(OK, Radek Smolenak. That's one in 11 seasons.)

You know what's great as a Toronto sports media consumer? Hearing Howard Berger do a fluff piece on Lee Stempniak being from Buffalo in the afternoon and then reading the same damn story in the paper the next day. Isn't pack reporting great?

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting

• Vancouver basketball phenom Bol Kong, who's been barred from entering the U.S. due to his Sudanese citizenship, is practising with the NEDA program in Hamilton. This is such an underreported story that's it not even funny.
• Doug Marrone, the next coach of the Syracuse Orange football team.
  
• It was nice of the Globe & Mail to pick up on the story about the Chicago Blackhawks busing up to Gravenhurst, Ont., to visit GM Dale Tallon after his father's death. It would have been even nicer to credit Deadspin for the scoop (the Chicago Sun-Times did)
  
• The score in last night's potential preview of the OHL final: Mike Murphy 4, Windsor 0.
• Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Bunning, now a U.S. senator, is ballsy, give him that much.
• Jason Clermont is apparently a Saskatchewan Roughrider.
  

That's all for now. Posting, will be light on this second-to-last Friday before Christmas, since plans are to head to an OHL game out-of-town, the Barrie Colts at the Kingston Frontenacs. No one will Blago tickets outside that one.

(Listen to Offsides, Kingston's most-listened-to sports talk show, 4 p.m. ET with Kinger, cfrc.ca).

Is their offence called the Beebe gun?

Don Beebe, who was part of all four Buffalo Bills Super Bowl losses in the early '90s, might finally win the big one.

Beebe is coaching the Aurora Christian Eagles in the Illinois 4A state championship game. As you know, Beebe made that famous play in the '93 Super Bowl, the Bills' third Super Bowl loss. It was 52-17 in the fourth quarter when Beebe chased down Leon Lett and knocked the ball out of his hand at the one-yard line to deny the the big Dallas Cowboys d-lineman a touchdown (and screw over everyone who had the "9-7" square in a Super Bowl final score pool). Now, why is this kismet?

Well, in the days afterward, every high school boy in North America who was taking gym that semester probably got the Don Beebe speech. The phys-ed teacher, God love her or him, would hold up Don Beebe's play on Leon Lett -- which ESPN, in its wisdom, so-called, has deemed the No. 1 sports blunder in history -- as an example of why you always hustle, never give up, and keep playing no matter what it says on the scoreboard. is perfectly kismet, then, that having been used as a pep-talk prop by so many moulders of young bodies and minds, that former Buffalo Bill Don Beebe is now coaching high school football.

Reading about Don Beebe is a bit of a reminder of what the NFL will lose when the Bills are liberated from Buffalo once and for all and put in Toronto (although at the rate those tickets aren't selling for the Dec. 7 game, don't be so sure). At the high school level, as our estimable commenter Dennis Prouse noted in a post from a couple months ago back about another high school football team named the Eagles, it really is about the game itself.

That vibe is all but gone from the NFL, except in Green Bay and Buffalo, where the lowest ticket prices in the NFL, lake-effect weather and the, uh, vagaries of the Western New York economy contributes to the sense that it's all about the game.

The Bills, at least looking back from the remove of 15 years, were always about those players whom the real fan could appreciate. They had talent and All-Pros, for sure, but Beebe was one of a number of lunch-bucket guys who was just a football player, not a physical freak, although he was pretty damn fast for a Caucasian. (Just imagine the replica jersey sales if he had ended up with the New England Patriots, oh, about 12-15 years later.)

There was Beebe from Chadron State, wherever that is, the free safety Mark Kelso with his Gazoo helmet was from William & Mary, and the special teams dynamo Steve Tasker. Even Andre Reed, the great receiver, came from a Division 2 school. Thurman Thomas was a second-round draft choice. The Bills, under Bill Polian, always found hidden gems. That's football.

True, Marv Levy was David Letterman Top 1o list fodder after four Super Bowl losses. Who can forget "Top Ten Things Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy said at halftime"? ("Number six -- 'Hey, Kelly. Leave some champagne for everyone else!' ")

Levy, though, was whip-smart. You knew he was because he'd coached in the CFL in the days before teams had 6-8 assistant coaches, so you had to know the fundamentals of every position. He had coached special teams. The Bills' epic comeback against the Houston Oilers in January 1993 was pure Marv, the professor masterminding it all, but giving the class the chalk. Another coach might have pulled that off, coming back from 32 points down with the starting quarterback and running back each out of the game, but Marv actually did.



Seriously, that short kickoff that Bills recover at the 1:50 mark of the clip below, that's football. Brains and brass balls. It's not Joe Buck talking about the Jonas Brothers' halftime performance.

That is what the NFL is becoming, and that is the teat the Toronto interests want to suckle at as they embark on the Long Transition with the Bills. Well, they're not going to find football no matter how much he or she puts on the expense account for the privilege to to sit indoors at Rogers Centre for the Dolphins-Bills game on Dec. 7.

You want football, from afar it's an ex-Bill coaching together with one of his brothers at a high school in Illinois. That sounds all right.

Related:
Oh, brother: Beebes have ACS on roll (Kane County Chronicle)

Zen Dayley: Baseball writers have thing for short, stocky second basemen

Dustin Pedroia winning American League MVP honours is kind of like Marisa Tomei winning an Oscar 15 years ago -- the academy was divided.

Pedroia was actually left off one writers' ballot. The Red Sox second baseman was a reasonable enough choice. Five players, including Canada's own Justin Morneau, who was the runner-up after he once again was not even the best Minnesota Twin with the initals JM, got at least one first-place vote. That's the most in the AL since the Great A-Rod/Delgado Schmozzle of 2003.

Pedroia's park-adjusted OPS+ of 122 is no great shakes, but remember, he played a key defensive position, second base and won the Gold Glove. It is pretty tough for a second baseman to win MVP. It has not happened in the AL since Nellie Fox 49 years ago, so until the baseball-followin' world clues in to how rarely a talent such as Joe Mauer comes along, Pedroia is an OK pick.

Craig Biggio and Roberto Alomar were across-the-board brilliant second basemen in the 1990s, and neither of them ever got much support from MVP voting. Biggio's best finish was fourth in 1997; Robbie Alomar finished third in 1999 (when the award should have gone to Derek Jeter, who ended up coming sixth) and fourth in '01, along with coming sixth three seasons in a row during his Jays days.

The larger point is, for lack of a more profound way to see it, it is good to see that the MVP can go to a player who doesn't have ginormous home run and RBI totals, because it takes all kinds to have a winning baseball team. One would think that would be appreciated by the anti-Moneyball flat-earthers, but a certain traditionally minded Toronto baseball writer got it wrong, calling Morneau, the RBI machine, to win.

His theory was that the Boston vote would be split between Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, which would have allowed Morneau to sneak in.

He obviously could have used the help of some president-elect Obama's delegate counters. Pedroia won 317-257. The way it works is that a first-place vote is worth 14 points, a second-place vote is worth nine, a third-place vote worth eight, and so on all the way down to 10th place.

If you split the votes for Pedroia and Youkilis down the middle, you get a player who got nine first-place votes, five seconds, four thirds, five fourth, one fifth and two sixth-place votes. Do the math. One hundred and twenty-six (nine times 14) + 45 + 32 + 35 + 6 + 10 = 254 points.

Youkilis also got a seventh-place vote, which is worth four points. Two writers put Youk eighth, good for six points. That would have put "Youkroia" or "Pedkilis" over the top, just by a smidge.

The larger point is that whatever you think of the selection, it is gratifying to see someone other than a slugger win -- just like it's nice to see an Oscar go to someone who was in a movie that was made for moviegoers, not critics.

Update: Jeremy Sandler from the National Post lets us in on the rationale for his vote — his ballot went Pedroia-Mauer-Youkilis-Morneau.


(And what's with Francisco Rodriguez finishing higher in the MVP voting than he did for the Cy Young Award?)

Zen Dayley: Cinderella times the knuckleball; Yawkey Way rhymes with Fannie Mae

Whether you buy into the notion that the Rays are a Cinderella team or reject it out of resistance to a warmed-over sports cliche ... well, it depends on your interpretation of the source material.

A Cinderella team, quote-unquote, doesn't ring up a 22-5 cumulative score over two nights against the Boston Red Sox. Then again, some would say that Cindy had it in her all along and was just trapped in unfortunate circumstances. That does apply to being a small-market AL East team whose stadium used to be a hockey. The Rays are definitely headed to the World Series. Boston has come back from being down 3-1 in the American League playoffs twice in four years; three times seems a little beyond their grasp, unless about half their team breaks out of their hitting slump all at once. Tampa Bay is a more convincing opponent than Cleveland was last year. These Red Sox don't have the same depth in their starting pitching as the 2004 Idiots.

It would be nice to say one saw this coming in April. Outside of Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections, which had the Rays down for 88 wins, no one really did. (Considering that the previous worst-to-first teams, the 1991 Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins, came during the last U.S. recession, maybe we should have. Ah, let's face it, there's no connection.)

It says here the Rays aren't less than a Cinderella team in the conventional sense. Along with being cliche, Cinderella team is a ketchup answer (hat tip to Nathan Whitlock). It covers everything. It works against figuring out how the hell this happened, how a team with a $43.7-million payroll managed to get to within one game of a World Series where they'll be heavily favoured.

Meantime, talk about a Mass exodus from the Red Sox bandwagon. In Boston, the local news is sounding the alarm about a drop-off in the demand for tickets on StubHub and in souveiner sales around Fenway Park. Boston Dirt Dogs is turning on their heroes (i.e., David Ortiz has gone from Big Papi to Big Pop-Up). The Red Sox have been a licence to print money since about 2003, but with the way things are headed in the U.S. economy, even that is not so certain.

What is certain is that Cinderella gets dragged out when people can't believe what they're seeing.

This should have been apparently much earlier

The long-time Sports Illustrated writer Roy S. Johnson pointed out that, "On the rosters of the eight teams that qualified for the postseason, there are 30 black players – a rate (15 percent) almost double that of baseball overall."

Johnson lists the Rays with three African-Americans, although B.J. Upton and Carl Crawford, the veteran DH Cliff Floyd and pitching phenom David Price make four. (It would be five if you count No. 5 starter Edwin Jackson, who hasn't pitched in the playoffs.) It is notable, considering the 2005 Houston Astros were did not have a single African-American on their World Series roster.

Other business

• Please try to forget that Matt Stairs played for the Red Sox. He's an ex-Expo, ex-Athletic, ex-Ottawa Lynx and ex-Blue Jay, but Boston's not claiming him.
• Stephen Brunt contends that, "Nothing negative can come from the hiring of Paul Beeston as the interim CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays." I write the same thing and everyone either ignores it or says, "what an idiot." But, oh, Brunt writes it and you say, "Brilliant, nuanced, well-considered" and applaud the use of le mot juste.

Playoff Primer: Red Sox-Rays

Here's a dozen randomly cherry-picked items about the real World Series American League championship series between the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays, which opens Friday.

1. One cockamamie theory you should dismiss out of hand
   
   The Red Sox weren't really built to win this year, but still won 95 games just because they're that good. Still, one wonders what they have to play for.
   
   Most of the key guys are either youngsters who will have many post-season games in their futures (Kevin Youkilis, possible American League MVP Dustin Pedroia, shortstop Jed Lowrie, et al.) and the few holdovers from the Idiots of 2004, Jason Varitek and David Ortiz, have their rings already.
   
   There might not be a lot of there there once you get past the Red Sox's formidable reputation and their starting pitching. The Red Sox will be near the top from here to eternity, but the games are still played on the field.
2. Where strip-mining Google Images to show one's personal bias happens
   
   See what we did there with the photo selection? It basically implies that the Red Sox, as personified by their closer Jonathan Papelbon, are the jerk from every high school comedy who always gets his just desserts in the final 15 minutes. The Red Sox are an outstanding organization and running
   
   The Rays and Evan Longoria are a bunch of nice guys who are only tough in the face of a tough job. They're good enough, they're smart enough and doggone it, people have liked them for all of six weeks.


3. Respect the roar
   
   Here's the big bring-it-home with regard to Tropicana Field, which used to be as quiet as a suburban mall at 10 a.m. Tuesday morning. Dave Wills, the Rays radio voice, told the Southtown (Ill.) Star that the stadium's decibel level is reminiscent "of the old Chicago Stadium.
   
   "I remember the roar. I know that our manager, Joe Maddon, no longer shouts instructions to fielders. He gives the defensive signals by hand."
   
   If you need further convincing of Tampa Bay-St. Pete's commitment to baseball, a spa down there is offering something called a Rayhawk bikini wax. Ouch! Remember the roar, indeed.
   
   (Glove tap to Deuce of Davenport.)
   
   Seriously, though, the Red Sox are used to intense environments. You could argue that perhaps they will play better in Tampa than they did when it was half-empty during the regular season.


4. Jason Bay is not seeing another fastball until the 2009 World Baseball Classic
   DRaysBay has broken down the B.C.-born slugger's at-bats in Boston's first-round win over the L.A. Angels, concluding, "In the entire series, he never seemed to squarely connect on a decent breaking ball." Bay vs. the Rays is a major subplot, since as you will recall, he almost went to Tampa at the July 31 trade deadline.
   
   Has everyone seen the Sitting On the Dock of J-Bay video?
   
   
   
   (Via Boston Dirt Dogs.)


5. He can pitch you into paradise, or bring Big Papi to his knees ... Jazzman.
   
   The Rays best left-handed option in the bullpen, J.P. Howell, likes to listen to Louis Armstrong to get into the right groove mentally. His other superstition? PBJs.


6. Dice-K is not facing Kazmir, which is good, since some of us need to get up in the morning
   
   Daisuke Matsuzaka, who's usually hitting the 100-pitch mark by about the fifth inning, starts Games 1 and 5. Rays lefty Scott Kazmir, who also pitches like he's playing a game of burnout, throws in Game 2. That being said, the game probably still goes past midnight Eastern time.


7. The Rays can't hit lefties
   
This is a problem, since Jon Lester would start Game 7. The Rays' options it goes to The Decider, by the way, will be either Matt Garza or James Shields on three days' rest, and that could be end worse than it did for Cleveland last fall. Tampa Bay will just have to get it done in six games, then!


8. They have also waited 100 years, and for 90 of those, didn't even have a team
   
   "Given demographic reality, there has to be at least one Tampa centenarian whose last, burning ambition is to see a flag raised over the Trop." -- Tim Marchman, Slate


9. Fortunately, no one outside of his ESPN/TSN colleagues pays attention to Steve Phillips
   
   The analyst, so-called, wanted the Red Sox to trade their best left-hander, Jon Lester, in a package for Johan Santana, who of course went to the New York Mets. Lester could be the best left-hander the Red Sox have had since Mel Parnell in the late 1940s and '50s. He won all three of his starts vs. the Rays this season and allowed just two earned runs in 20 innings.
   
10. Why the Rays might win
    
    Their bullpen is getting it done (3.55 ERA in the regular season, 0.77 in the first round against Chicago). They were 6-0 in one-run games against the Red Sox in the regular season (Gordon Edes, Yahoo! Sports). They have the better catcher in the series -- all-star Dioner Navarro over Varitek, who is useless as a hitter -- and could very well only need to win one of the three games at Fenway Park.
    
    They fared well in the regular season against the Red Sox (then again, so did the L.A. Angels). Tampa's entire body of work as a group of hitters is only OK. Once you account for the injuries that kept Longoria and tablesetter Carl Crawford out of the lineup for prolonged stretches, you realize they have enough hitting to win a best-of-7 series.
    
    Throw in a shaky Boston bullpen, the spectre of J.D. Drew re-aggravating something and we could see the twilight of the gods.
    
    Plus, being totally off-the-cuff here, New Englanders totally deserve to go down. Case in point: A Connecticut columnist called Mike Scioscia's ill-fated squeeze bunt call in the deciding game of the Angels-Red Sox series "the biggest managerial gaffe in postseason baseball history."
    
    How soon they forget Grady Little (and John McNamara, and Don Zimmer, and Joe McCarthy, if you count one-game playoffs).
    
    Red Sox Nation no longer knows its own history. You only have the last eight years of U.S. politics as proof of what can come from that.


11. Why the Red Sox will win (and why you have no guts for calling this)
    
    There is always tendency with predicting to focus 75% of your attention on 25% of what matters. Boston had the best run differential in baseball over the run of 162 games. They can ride with their starting pitching -- Dice-K, Josh Beckett and his his iffy oblique muscle, the lefty Lester and bad man with the knuckleball, Tim Wakefield, who throws in Game 4.
    
This could just as easily be a Red Sox sweep as a knock-down, drag-out seven-game epic. It's a form pick, since no one can get wrapped around the Rays' accelerated development. One scenario is the Red Sox scrape by, but many come away convinced Tampa Bay is the better team.


12. Last word to the curmudgeonly Chicagoan, since it's all about you even though both your teams will be watching The Office tonight
    
    "If the Tampa Bay Rays win a World Series a few years after the Arizona Diamondbacks did, I feel it is only fair that the North Side of Chicago be permitted to apply to Major League Baseball for an expansion team." -- Mike Downey, Chicago Tribune

Other business

• Two days ago, MLB Trade Rumours did list the Jays among possible teams who could end up with lefty slugger Prince Fielder if the Milwaukee Brewers trade him. Hey, Lyle Overbay has already been traded once in his career to make room for Fielder -- and speaking with full awareness that he and his dad, Cecil, have been on the outs, who wouldn't want to see him wearing his father's old No. 23 on Flashback Fridays?
  
  (Fielder wears No. 28, which Shaun Marcum has for the Jays.)


• The Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy (savetigerstadium.org) is seeking donations as part of its efforts to save the historic Detroit ballpark. The preservation effort is by no means complete.
  
  The Conservancy has a memorandum of understanding to take ownership of the park and restore it, but need to raise $50,000 US to pay for security costs until all financing is in place. For any U.S. readers, the OTSC has 501(c)3 status from the IRS, so you can count it as a charitable donation.
• Jays catcher of the future J.P. Arencibia had a home run last night in the Arizona Fall League.


• It is crazy to think how much tech-savvy brainiacs such as Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus/FiveThirtyEight.com fame are changing how people analyze in sports.
  
  Meantime, in Canada, editorial decisions get made by Boomers who don't even know what a memory stick is for.
  
  


• Dave Basso is the Jays' Triple-A manager.

That is all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

Zen Dayley: Vlady the (gasp) inhaler, and the concept of "Cub it up"

(Yes, it's OK to root for a Milwaukee-Tampa Bay World Series, just for the mental picture of Fox Sports executives doing a 2 1/2 tuck off the catwalk at Tropicana Field.)

Red Sox 4 Angels 1 (Boston leads 1-0): Vladimir Guerrero doing his best Bengie Molina on the basepaths is as good a jumping-off point for a belated wrapup of Day 1 of the MLB Playoffs.

A commenter over at Yahoo! Sports' Big League Stew commented that it's a damn shame almost no one saw Guerrero play in Montreal, back when he could run. It's not a shock that he got thrown out going first-to-third on a hit, since Baseball Prospectus 2008 noted that "his baserunning speed is all but gone." Still, there's reading something in a book marketed to statheads and then there's seeing it unfold in an October game.

Meantime, Trail, B.C.'s Jason Bay (hey! he began his career in the Expos organization until the franchise got Seliged) hit the game-deciding homer for the Red Sox. We're all proud of him, liberal guilt over how he was used to make Manny Ramirez look bad notwithstanding.

(As for the other Canadians: Russell Martin also homered, but Ryan Dempster got jocked.)

The upside for the Sox is they might be able to win this series without Josh Beckett at his best. For Game 2, it depends on what you put more stock in -- Daisuke Matsuzaka getting hit hard in his only start against the Angels during the regular season, but he's also pretty much untouchable on the road (2.37 ERA, .178 opponents' average.

"Regular season" is the operative word. The Angels are fast becoming the Ottawa Senators in double-knit unfirms. There are the great regular seasons followed by playoff linen-soilings, plus the lameness. David Eckstein has changed teams four times since the Rally Monkey was broken out, and it painfully unhip then.

Dodgers 7 Cubs 2 (L.A. leads 1-0): The phrase "Cub it up" (terrorist fist jab to Terp's Take) could move into wider circulation if Carlos Zambrano and Co. can't deliver a W in Game 2.

(Martin and Andre Ethier, L.A.'s two best hitters who actually played a full season in the NL, are 8-for-13 and 6-for-13 respectively vs. Zambrano. Expect to hear this a 1,000 times in the next 12 hours.)

Dodgers righty Chad Billingsley could handcuff the Cubbies on Thursday night. A Roy Halladay comparison seems a bit glib at first blush, but he had 201 strikeouts and gets more groundballs than he did in his first full season in 2007, and he's only 24 years old.

The opener pointed up the big matzo ball the Cubs have hanging out there: No left-handed power. They really probably should at least think about benching Kosuke Fukudome and his .379 slugging percentage. Their most reasonable facsimile of a lefty power bat is either Mike Fontenot or Jim Edmonds. One weighs 160 lbs., and the other is 38 years old.

Random thought: What kind of odds could you have got two years ago betting there would be a playoff game where Ryan Dempster threw the first pitch and Greg Maddux threw the last one?

No what happens, this series is really all about the Yankees.

Phillies 3 Brewers 0 (Philadelphia leads 1-0): There's not much point in going too deep into this game, since it was over by the dinner hour. There's a strong case that the Phillies, between the Brewers' bobbles and Brad Lidge's nervous ninth, got kind of lucky.

CC Sabathia, who will start a pretty much do-or-die Game 2, has actually got better pitching on three days' rest. The Brewers, between CC Sabathia and Prince Fielder, are the husky gentleman's pride and joy (what else would you expect from a team from Wisconsin?) Truth be known, their batters could be going cold again. Did everyone forget what got Ned Yost fired in September?

White Sox vs. Rays: Tampa Bay in four seems like a pretty good form pick; Baseball Digest Daily is calling a sweep.

The Rays get more runners on base, field better than the White Sox and their bullpen isn't followed around by men in fire-retardant suits. To use a hockey analogy, offensively, they are last season's Pittsburgh Penguins -- the team who didn't have their top guns together all the time. Despite that, they won 97 games, and have home field advantage straight through the World Series.

Basically, this is a contrast between one team that puts a lot of runners on but doesn't bring them around as well it could, and one team that doesn't get enough on, but brings them in. The White Sox hit those 235 homers, but one pet theory is a team that ranks higher in home runs (first) than it did in runs scored (fifth) is doomed in the playoffs, when teams can shorten their rotations and bunch up the relief appearances among a few guys.

It's cute how the White Sox still play 1990s-style baseball, right down to the black uniform tops and superannuated Ken Griffey Jr. in centrefield. Come to think of it, Junior actually won't be that far from Ponce de Leon's mythical Fountain in Youth down there on the Gulf Coast. Yes, Griffey threw a runner out at the plate in the San Diego County Credit Union AL Central Tie-Breaker, but he didn't hit much after the trade.

(Among all the contradictions in our life, one is having sleeping problems tend to flare up right around the time of the baseball post-season. I'll try to be more timely tomorrow.)

Sophomoric? But Cassel hadn't started a game since high school

Seventh-grade humour fans might enjoy this: A parody blog called More Like Matt Ass-Hell and written by Totally Tom Brady, debuted today.

It's even well-written, so you know it has to be Brady, since he played in the Big Ten. Don't you know, the Big Ten has strong academic standards, which became even stronger retroactively after the number that Florida and LSU did on Ohio State in the last two BCS title games -- not to mention what USC did to the Buckeyes last Saturday.

(Hat tip to Hugging Harold Reynolds.)

The Brady injury: It's funny because you pseudo-know him

The Tom Brady Schadenfreude Tour has officially become played-out. Funny clip, though.

(Clip by RotoHog and via Epic Carnival.)

Snark break...

Hopefully, the stupid and ugly doesn't stay in the system all day.

The Hater Nation is jumping the gun a little by trying to figure out which NFL team has got the best shot at going 0-16.

Why hasn't there been anything here on that 82-0 women's hockey game? It's Geek Code -- don't blab on about a sport or a league that you ordinarily ignore. Until 10 days, that was the "U of T Varsity Blues" rule.

Truer words might have never been accidentally spoken about big-time college football: Tim Tebow on the Miami Hurricanes: "They are paid to stop us."

The life of a baseball prospect: Being assigned to the Hawaiian Winter League means Buster Posey will play for five teams in one calendar year. At this point, he doesn't ask where he's going, he just says, "What colour undershirt?"

The Terrier Hockey Fan Blog is calling shenanigans on any inference that Ethan Werek chose the Kingston Frontenacs because the hockey in the USHL is poor quality.

Hate to pull out the easy reference, but Larry Mavety is Lisa Simpson in that episode where the family gets a backyard pool. "He's just using you to help his draft status." ... "Shut up, brain!"

It's best left unexamined what it says about anyone who watches this Tom Brady clip more than 25 times in succession. Please keep it in the low 20s.



(By the way, the male Democratic vice-presidential nominee is more of a feminist than the female Republican one has been. (Charging women for rape kits, really?)

Snark break ... it just doesn't matter!

• Some us learned long ago that a person worthwhile can put emotion into words without a pop-culture reference every so often. Bill Simmons took the Tom Brady injury in less than heroic fashion.

  "Getting final word on the Brady injury felt like being an actor on a cop show and identifying a murder victim at the morgue: Yep, that's it. That's the 2008 Pats season. You can pull the sheet back over it. Thanks."

  Please, it's sports -- it's the toy department. Everyone, present company very included, has been known to fulminate and do the inanimate-object kicking routine after a beloved team loses, but it just doesn't matter. It's no sign of character to go around in a mope after a loss, well, at least 99% of the time.
  
  
  Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life
  
  It's sports. It lives in your mind, in your gut, it shapes your general view of the world, but it really is only a game.
• Rick Mercer on the difference between the U.S. and Canadian elections: "(John) McCain suffered at the hands of a hostile enemy bent on breaking his body and soul and he survived and triumphed. Stephen Harper, the story goes, suffered from onset adolescent asthma and so was often picked last for team sports. This helps explain his dislike for all people in general."
• There is a bit of disappointment in the UK that a crowd of only 7,500 turned out to see their national basketball team play last Saturday. It boggles the mind to think what Canada Basketball would have to do in this country to get that size a crowd out to see our senior men's national team.

Stuff that's kinda important

• The Hockey News has an item on the newest Kingston Frontenac, Ethan Werek, with the all-important qualifier: "... no matter what you think of ... Kingston GM-coach Larry Mavety as a developer of talent, it’s great for Werek that he bucked the hockey establishment for more than a year..." Translated: His Royal Mavness isn't junior hockey answer's to Isaac Newton because Werek decicded to report -- he's the branch that was holding the apple.
• Remember Darnellia Russell, the American point guard who was slated to play basketball at Lakehead University?
  
  Would that there could have been a happier ending, but Russell has opted to return home, explaining she couldn't bear being apart from her two daughters. In the press release, Russell said "I am really sorry for letting everyone down," but no one should have to apologize if they got homesick from being in Thunder Bay.
• Small world ... Concordia safety Bryan Charleau, who earned Quebec conference defensive player of the week in his first career start vs. Bishop's last Friday, was a standout high school player at Simcoe Composite School during a certain someone's confusing stint as sports editor of the Reformer.

Snark break ... once smitten, twice shy

First things first: R.I.P., Don Haskins ... is it OK to say it? -- most important college basketball coach ever.

• Go to the washroom, splash some cold water on your face and give yourself a blast if you feel the least bit empty over Tom Brady likely being out for the season.
  
  (Update, Sept. 9: Kissing Suzy Kolber has a typically outstanding parody.)
  
  But, your argument goes, even though I'm not a fan of the Patriots, I just love to watch them because of the way they taken offensive football to such a high level.
  
  Sure you do. That's about as likely as the possibility Gisele Bundchen was first smitten by the cool way Brady delivers a checkdown pass to Kevin Faulk when all of his wide receivers are covered, not his good looks, fame and money.
  
  Did the Brett Favre drama teach you nothing? The NFL is a full-contact soap opera, an industry built on personality, where everyone can have an opinion without having to know the intimate details or the background. It's like the original Facebook.
  
  Brady being out is bad for the Patriots, most likely bad for Randy Moss' stats and bad for the NFL's bottom line. It should not affect your overall football-watching experience and if it does, then you Stockholm Syndromed yourself, big-time. Shame on you.
  
  Point being, you shouldn't get hung up on personalities. Personality is what gets Gisele, while the stylists often end up sleeping alone.
  
  (The Patriots were past due on the karma account. It's as if they tempted fate by habitually listing Brady on the injury report when he wasn't hurt and by not having a credible backup -- not to mention the cheating and the beating Brady took toward the end of last season.
  
  That being said, anyone who cheered the sight of his injury should get a swift kick. Incidentally, you can count on Patriots fans playing the underdog card sooner rather than the later.)
• Is it worth pointing out that any number of contending MLB teams who reeling of late might might avoided that with Barry Bonds in the middle of their batting order? Looking at you, Tampa Bay Rays.
• Michael Cera is a funny kid.
• Emmitt Smith of Dancing With The Stars Dallas Cowboys fame can really be a putz sometimes.

(Jeff Pearlman's Boys Will Be Boys comes out in eight days.)