The Big Tease and other thoughts

The big tease...the New York Yankees. That's what they've become. They're the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990's, the Philadelphia Eagles of the first part of this century. They have become the American League version of the Atlanta Braves.

They make it to the post-season, they just can't do anything when they're there.

And this time Yankees' fans can't blame A-Rod who batted a vaguely respectable .267 with one home-run, two runs scored, and one RBI.

By contrast, Derek Jeter, the Yankee-who-can-do-no-wrong with Yankee fans - .176, no runs, one RBI. The Yankees had five starters bat below .200 for the series with their starting first baseman at a rousing .000.

Maybe George Steinbrenner should take a closer look at the talent he forces Cashman to pursue before he cans Joe Torre. The fact that they removed Roger Clemens from the post-season roster is a pretty strong indictment of Steinbrenner's personnel wants and needs.

Bring on the Indians.

They had a bad day...

And still scored 34. The defense came up big when needed, but gave up more yardage to the Browns than to any other team so far this year. Tom Brady, however, looked distracted and frustrated the whole game.

When Brady missed his mark, it was generally his fault. Very few of his passes were dropped, and several of the times that they were (passes primarily to Moss) the receptions would have been highlight reel sort of plays.

Next week the Pats play the Cowboys who barely escaped from Buffalo with a win last night. Is this another indictment of the quality of football in the NFC, that Dallas was within seconds of losing to one of the worst teams in the AFC East?

Running on empty...

There's no other way to say this than - the organizers of the Chicago Marathon are idiots. Complete morons. And they need to keep sponsors of the event from making stupid comments to the press.

For those of you who don't know, the Chicago Marathon was run in close to 90 degree heat without adequate water supplies.

This is from the CNN report -

Organizers insisted they adjusted their plans for the heat and boosted the number of drink servings at the race's 15 aid stations to 1.8 million from 1.6 million, as well as adding misting areas, extra ice and water-soaked sponges.
"We did feel we had more than adequate water supplies out there," said Shawn Platt, senior vice president of LaSalle Bank, the marathon's sponsor.
Platt said planners did not anticipate runners would use drinking water to cool themselves when misting stations and sponges weren't available. He acknowledged many stations and sponges were set up toward the end of the route instead of early on when runners first started showing signs of fatigue.

I have been running in road races since I ran track in high school...some 23 or 24 years now, and that includes at least one marathon. I have never been in a road race where runners didn't use drinking water to cool themselves. It happens in every road race.

Now this guy Platt is a senior VP at a bank, but I guess he is not a particularly gifted mathematician. His argument is that they increased the total number of drink servings at the marathon by a total of 200,000 for the 35,000 runners. Let's run through the math on this. That's an additional 200 servings per 35 runners, or a total of an additional 5.7 servings throughout the course of the marathon. Split between the 15 aid stations? That's less than half a cup additional per runner per aid station. That means they went from 3 cups per station per runner to approximately 3.4 cups on a 90 degree day.

Part of what's amazing about this is that the organizers continue to try and defend themselves instead of coming out and owning up to the fact that they completely fucked this up.

Rounding up those stray little thoughts like the sheep they are...

The NYpon Ham fighters...
Okay, so I stretched a little for a pun here, but right now the Yankees seem to be feeling a little hamstrung. Over the course of the first month of the season the Bronx Bombers have lost four pitchers including the latest casualty, pitching prospect and expected phenom, Phil Hughes to hamstring problems. Since spring training under the stretching program instituted by the Yankees new strength and conditioning guy Bobby Abreu, Chien-Ming Wang, Andy Pettitte, Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui and Mike Mussina each went down with ailments that could potentially be tied to conditioning and stretching issues. That's four starting pitchers and three starters for those keeping score at home.

According to the NY Daily News - "After Mussina strained his hamstring on April 11, Cashman threw his full support behind [trainers] Miller and Cavalea, saying, 'None of these injuries have anything to do with this new program.'" Yesterday Miller was shown the door, possibly in a move by Cashman to avoid that same door himself. Someone had to take the fall for the Yankees' slow start, and it appeared that the trainer was ripe for the kicking.

If the Yanks have a May like their April, rest assured there will be other heads that roll before the end of the month.

Not exactly waiting for Godot...
Josh Beckett has accomplished something in a Red Sox uni that not even Pedro did...six wins in six decisions to start the season. Only a handful pitchers in Sox uniforms equaled or topped that feat - Roger Clemens and the ole' southpaw, George Herman Ruth are among them. Not bad company to be in.

The early returns seem to be that Beckett is on course, as long as he stays healthy, for a 20-win season, even if he stumbles a bit, and a strong candidate for the Cy Young. Right now he has 6 wins (1st, which could put him on pace for close to 14 by the All-Star break), is 9th in innings pitched (39.2), 8th in strike outs (35), 9th in ERA (2.72), 8th in Walks/Hits per Inning Pitched (WHIP) with 1.06, and opposing batters are hitting only .219 against him (10th).

If he maintains these averages, he has every chance of finishing in the top five in every important pitching category. The big question is, can he do it? As a Sox fan, I sure hope so.

What is truly amazing is that in almost every one of the categories I mentioned, there is another Sox pitcher in front of him - Schilling in innings pitched, Wakefield in ERA and opponent's batting average, and Matsuzaka in strike outs.

I think Sox fans would be hard pressed to find a time in the team's history when four members of their pitching staff were in the top ten of those statistical categories over the course of any one month period of time in any season. Hitting? Sure. But pitching...

Feeling a little drafty...
As readers may have noticed, I'm not much on covering the draft, but I am going to say a couple of things about this past year's draft -

Feeling Patriot-ic - I think some good and some...well let's just say that the jury is out as to what happened here. I honestly don't know enough about Brandon Merriweather to claim he's a bad guy. Yes he was involved in a gun incident, no, the police found nothing illegal in his involvement - the gun was licensed and it was determined that he was indeed acting in self-defense. I'm not happy about it, but to borrow a Belichick-ism - it is what it is...and what it is appears to be an isolated incident.

Then there was the brawl where he was caught on film stomping on a Florida International player's head. I understand that football is a game of great emotion - when in high school I had to be restrained from going after another team's center, but I was 15 at the time, not 21.

Are these red flags? Yes. But people have been comparing this to picking Pacman Jones which I believe is...shall we say a touch of hyperbole. Jones had been arrested for assault in a bar incident in West Virginia and had a history of trouble in high school including suspensions from both school and team, I have not heard the same in the case of Merriweather. Merriweather could easily be heading in that direction, or it's quite possible that there will be nothing else along these lines. He has shown, from what I've read, little indication of following the troubled paths of Jones, Chris Henry, Tank Johnson, or even Washington safety Sean Taylor.

Trading places - The Pats made one pick on day one of what was considered a weak draft class, trading picks for extra places in next year's stronger draft. One of the big coups for the Pats was getting San Fran's number one next year. While the Niners figure to be better next year, I'm guessing it will still give the Pats a pick in the teens.

Rolling stones gather no Moss - There are a lot of positives to the Moss deal. The Pats picked up a talented player for virtually little to no real cost to themselves. The controversial wide receiver automatically makes the offense better. Currently, he's saying all the right things - even lauding Troy Brown as the best receiver to come out of Marshall. I still don't like the deal.

I don't feel they needed him to put them over the top at this point. I have no respect for a player that, "plays when I feel like it," and feel that it's the equivalent of the Red Sox going out and getting Derek Jeter (or in the past, Don Mattingly or Catfish Hunter) to play for them - it just wouldn't feel right.