Brace yourselves. I'm about to say something nice about baseball commissioner Bud "Bud" Selig.Those who know me will appreciate this is not unlike me nominating Harry Reid for the Nobel Prize in Political Science, but fair is fair. (And I have said nice things about Reid, as well. Not too damned often, but I have.)
Selig has presided over many things I don't like about baseball: interleague play; second-place teams in the post-season and the resulting additional tier of playoffs; widening disparity in team payrolls; the Steroid Era, during which he placed his head in the sand deep enough to strike oil until the public and political outcry became so great he had to don his Crusader robe and take credit for both the outbreak of offense and stopping it; ever-lengthening games; a tied All-Star game, then changing the rules to make it "count." For a relative purist such as myself, who understands baseball is a business, but, Jesus Christ, enough already, Selig has been a train wreck looking for a crossing with a school bus of disabled kids on it.
Tonight Buddy gets his due. Game 6 of the World Series has been postponed well in advance. This was true of another playoff game in an earlier round, as well, even though the weather report for that game was incorrect and things cleared up nicely in time for the game. It was still the right thing to do, and the decision was made easier by another decision Selig made a few years ago: all post-season games will be played to their conclusion. If a game must be halted due to bad weather, it will resume from the place where it left off. Regular season rules concerning shortened or suspended games do not apply.
This is as it should be. I'm old enough to remember a 1978 National League Championship Series game between the Phillies and the Dodgers played in rain so heavy it was hard to see the pitched ball from the center field camera. Those conditions not only endanger the players, they risk making a travesty of the most important games of the season.
Trying to sneak the game in despite the forecast would have been a horrible idea for a potentially series-ending game, killing much of the sense of drama a Game 6 entails. Call the game now, tell FOX to calm the fuck down and reschedule their ads for the X Factor, and do it right.
For one day at least, this Bud's for all baseball fans.
Showing posts with label baseball playoffs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball playoffs. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Friday, October 02, 2009
Struggling for a Topic
I try to post something here at least once a week so my legion of regular readers have something to look forward to when they adjourn from their meetings in a carnival photo booth. It’s been hard lately. I try to stay timely, but look at the options:
Health Care
I’m getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from typing about health care, and I’m not positive I’m insured for it.
Politics
As this column shows, writing about politics is currently beneath even me, which is kind of like saying someone is such a low-life, not even Rod Blagojevich will drink with him. Even if he buys. Things are officially bad when one becomes nostalgic for such statesmen as C. L. Schmidt and Bill Scranton.
Chicago’s Failed Olympic Bid
Good for Rio. South America’s first Olympics and a time zone ahead of us for a change, so NBC won’t too badly butcher the concept of “plausibly live.” That’s about all there is to say about that, and it’s not worth an entire post. Obama’s trip to Copenhagen? Bad PR, insignificant otherwise. See above comment.
Sports
The most exciting baseball news for me this summer is the Pirates’ heroic chase to avoid 100 losses. Last night’s rainout helped their chances as much as a win. Still too early in the Steelers’ season to get worked up, and the Penguins don’t start until tonight.
At least the baseball playoffs start next week. I may be sleep deprived, but I’ll be interested. Since the Pirates have kept their seventeen year streak of ineptitude alive, here are my rooting interests for baseball’s post season, in decreasing order.
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Colorado Rockies – The Sibling Correspondent and his family are Rox fans. That’s good enough for me. Who could root against a team with a player named Tulowitzki?
St. Louis Cardinals – Maybe the best baseball town in America. Tony LaRussa’s kind of a tool, but Albert Pujols is the shit.
Philadelphia Phillies – A tough choice. They could have been second—I like a lot of their players—but they’re from Philadelphia. The schadenfreude potential of watching their obnoxious fans lose drops them to third.
Los Angeles Dodgers – Again, a lot of players to like, and Joe Torre. Man Ram outweighs them all.
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Detroit Tigers – Jim Leyland was the last Pirate manager to win more games than he lost for even a single season, and that was in 1992. He gets it, too. Told the players early in the year things were tough in Motown, so running out ground balls would be a good idea. Owner Tom Ilitch has also done what he can with ticket prices and promos. Be nice for Michigan to win one after Michigan State (college basketball) and the Red Wings (hockey) came so close. (No sympathy for the Wings. Pens rule!)
Boston Red Sox – Normally the Number One choice for a card carrying fan of Red Sox Nation, but the Tigers have a lot of intangibles, and the Sox payroll and revenues have turned them into Yankees Lite. The David Ortiz revelations don’t help, either, no matter how much he denies them.
Los Angeles California Anaheim Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim – I’ve always been a Mike Scioscia fan, and I love the way they play the game. I almost put them Number 2, but realized they’ll play the Sox in the first round, and I’d wind up rooting for the Sox without thinking about it just out of habit.
New York Yankees – Yankees suck.
The World Series? National League always trumps the American League, unless they send the Dodgers, or the Junior Circuit sends the Sox. (Maybe the Tigers.) If the Dodgers play the Yankees, it’s time to check the hockey listings.
Health Care
I’m getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from typing about health care, and I’m not positive I’m insured for it.
Politics
As this column shows, writing about politics is currently beneath even me, which is kind of like saying someone is such a low-life, not even Rod Blagojevich will drink with him. Even if he buys. Things are officially bad when one becomes nostalgic for such statesmen as C. L. Schmidt and Bill Scranton.
Chicago’s Failed Olympic Bid
Good for Rio. South America’s first Olympics and a time zone ahead of us for a change, so NBC won’t too badly butcher the concept of “plausibly live.” That’s about all there is to say about that, and it’s not worth an entire post. Obama’s trip to Copenhagen? Bad PR, insignificant otherwise. See above comment.
Sports
The most exciting baseball news for me this summer is the Pirates’ heroic chase to avoid 100 losses. Last night’s rainout helped their chances as much as a win. Still too early in the Steelers’ season to get worked up, and the Penguins don’t start until tonight.
At least the baseball playoffs start next week. I may be sleep deprived, but I’ll be interested. Since the Pirates have kept their seventeen year streak of ineptitude alive, here are my rooting interests for baseball’s post season, in decreasing order.
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Colorado Rockies – The Sibling Correspondent and his family are Rox fans. That’s good enough for me. Who could root against a team with a player named Tulowitzki?
St. Louis Cardinals – Maybe the best baseball town in America. Tony LaRussa’s kind of a tool, but Albert Pujols is the shit.
Philadelphia Phillies – A tough choice. They could have been second—I like a lot of their players—but they’re from Philadelphia. The schadenfreude potential of watching their obnoxious fans lose drops them to third.
Los Angeles Dodgers – Again, a lot of players to like, and Joe Torre. Man Ram outweighs them all.
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Detroit Tigers – Jim Leyland was the last Pirate manager to win more games than he lost for even a single season, and that was in 1992. He gets it, too. Told the players early in the year things were tough in Motown, so running out ground balls would be a good idea. Owner Tom Ilitch has also done what he can with ticket prices and promos. Be nice for Michigan to win one after Michigan State (college basketball) and the Red Wings (hockey) came so close. (No sympathy for the Wings. Pens rule!)
Boston Red Sox – Normally the Number One choice for a card carrying fan of Red Sox Nation, but the Tigers have a lot of intangibles, and the Sox payroll and revenues have turned them into Yankees Lite. The David Ortiz revelations don’t help, either, no matter how much he denies them.
Los Angeles California Anaheim Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim – I’ve always been a Mike Scioscia fan, and I love the way they play the game. I almost put them Number 2, but realized they’ll play the Sox in the first round, and I’d wind up rooting for the Sox without thinking about it just out of habit.
New York Yankees – Yankees suck.
The World Series? National League always trumps the American League, unless they send the Dodgers, or the Junior Circuit sends the Sox. (Maybe the Tigers.) If the Dodgers play the Yankees, it’s time to check the hockey listings.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Good Riddance (Finally)
I’m a simple man, with simple tastes. Working class background. No extravagant vacations or fancy cars. Meat and potatoes. Coke, not Pepsi. Among my unadorned joys is watching the New York Yankees lose. I enjoy seeing the Yankees lose so much that the city of Cleveland (aka The Mistake By the Lake) has even redeemed itself in my eyes until the Browns play the Steelers again.
With apologies to the Low Brass Correspondent (a dear friend and Yankee fan, proving the two aren’t mutually exclusive), what makes it so much fun to see the Yankees lose is the attitude of Yankee management and fans that it is their divine right to win every year. In their eyes, no one has ever beaten the Yankees. The managers makes a bad decision. A player, or players, stink, or choke. Bad umpiring.
Yankee owner George Steinbrenner sank to a new low this week. Forget about the threat to fire Joe Torre if the Yanks didn’t win. Big Stein has made this threat every year since 2001, so no one but the media got too worked up.
The new low came when the SOB (Senile Old Bastard) said Game Two should have been stopped when his rookie pitcher, Joba Chamberlain, was distracted by swarms of small, flying insects. Blaming umpire crew chief Bruce Froemming, a thirty-seven-year veteran, Big Stein promised Froemming would umpire no more Yankee games.
Huh? Last I heard, teams didn’t get to pick their umpires, and Froemming worked Games Three and Four. This is just the Yankees being the Yankees, blaming everyone and anyone for their own inability to parley a $216 million annual payroll into anything better than a wild card spot and an early playoff exit. Maybe Steinbrenner should ask who authorized paying 45-year-old Roger Clemens $18 million to pitch half a season (and not very well, at that.) Or who signed the checks for Jason Giambi, a $120 million platoon player. Or trade for Alex “The Invisible Man” Rodriguez. Sure, A-Rod hit a home run last night. Down four runs, with no one on base. He hasn’t had a playoff hit that mattered since Saddam Hussein was in charge.
Speaking of early playoff exits, the Yankees’ demise is one of few early exits this year. Last night’s game lasted four hours, three minutes. The average for all Division Series games was 3:24. Contrast this to Game Seven of the 1960 World Series, possibly the greatest baseball game ever played. Pittsburgh beat the Yankees 10-9, in a game with pitching changes and base runners galore, capped by Bill Mazeroski’s home run to lead off the ninth inning, two hours and thirty-six minutes after the game began. (Today is the forty-seventh anniversary of the glorious event, the first memory to which I can attach specifics.) The only games shorter than that so far this year are Josh Beckett’s four-hit shutout of the Angels (2:27) and the Diamondbacks’ 3–1 dispatching of the Cubs in Game One, a game in which ten hits were crushed by both teams combined.
Fox tampered with the post-season schedule to keep Games Six and Seven of the Series from falling on a Saturday and Sunday, where they draw low ratings. Maybe Fox should exercise its considerable clout within the Commissioner’s office to do something about the length of the games. Schedules are tweaked to allegedly accommodate the Eastern and Pacific time zones, but the games go on so long only the Central and Mountain folks can actually see the whole game. People in the Pacific aren’t home from work when the game begins, and those on the east coast are asleep when it ends.
This proves baseball is the single greatest creation of the mind of man. Otherwise, the skills of those in charge for the past 131 years would have run it out of business.
With apologies to the Low Brass Correspondent (a dear friend and Yankee fan, proving the two aren’t mutually exclusive), what makes it so much fun to see the Yankees lose is the attitude of Yankee management and fans that it is their divine right to win every year. In their eyes, no one has ever beaten the Yankees. The managers makes a bad decision. A player, or players, stink, or choke. Bad umpiring.
Yankee owner George Steinbrenner sank to a new low this week. Forget about the threat to fire Joe Torre if the Yanks didn’t win. Big Stein has made this threat every year since 2001, so no one but the media got too worked up.
The new low came when the SOB (Senile Old Bastard) said Game Two should have been stopped when his rookie pitcher, Joba Chamberlain, was distracted by swarms of small, flying insects. Blaming umpire crew chief Bruce Froemming, a thirty-seven-year veteran, Big Stein promised Froemming would umpire no more Yankee games.
Huh? Last I heard, teams didn’t get to pick their umpires, and Froemming worked Games Three and Four. This is just the Yankees being the Yankees, blaming everyone and anyone for their own inability to parley a $216 million annual payroll into anything better than a wild card spot and an early playoff exit. Maybe Steinbrenner should ask who authorized paying 45-year-old Roger Clemens $18 million to pitch half a season (and not very well, at that.) Or who signed the checks for Jason Giambi, a $120 million platoon player. Or trade for Alex “The Invisible Man” Rodriguez. Sure, A-Rod hit a home run last night. Down four runs, with no one on base. He hasn’t had a playoff hit that mattered since Saddam Hussein was in charge.
Speaking of early playoff exits, the Yankees’ demise is one of few early exits this year. Last night’s game lasted four hours, three minutes. The average for all Division Series games was 3:24. Contrast this to Game Seven of the 1960 World Series, possibly the greatest baseball game ever played. Pittsburgh beat the Yankees 10-9, in a game with pitching changes and base runners galore, capped by Bill Mazeroski’s home run to lead off the ninth inning, two hours and thirty-six minutes after the game began. (Today is the forty-seventh anniversary of the glorious event, the first memory to which I can attach specifics.) The only games shorter than that so far this year are Josh Beckett’s four-hit shutout of the Angels (2:27) and the Diamondbacks’ 3–1 dispatching of the Cubs in Game One, a game in which ten hits were crushed by both teams combined.
Fox tampered with the post-season schedule to keep Games Six and Seven of the Series from falling on a Saturday and Sunday, where they draw low ratings. Maybe Fox should exercise its considerable clout within the Commissioner’s office to do something about the length of the games. Schedules are tweaked to allegedly accommodate the Eastern and Pacific time zones, but the games go on so long only the Central and Mountain folks can actually see the whole game. People in the Pacific aren’t home from work when the game begins, and those on the east coast are asleep when it ends.
This proves baseball is the single greatest creation of the mind of man. Otherwise, the skills of those in charge for the past 131 years would have run it out of business.
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