In the Win Column

What have I missed in the three weeks since I last updated? Apparently, I missed a lot. Well, I didn’t exactly miss it, I’m well aware of what’s going on, I just haven’t had a chance to write about it. Blame vacation. Long gone are the slow, languid days of August where the big stories in sports are few and far between. Maybe a steroid scandal or two sprinkled in between NFL training camp and the early, lightly drawn beginnings of a pennant race, but typically the dog days of August are quiet and humid.

Not this August though. In fact, less than a month ago, back on July 29th, I wrote this in my column about the Brett Favre and Michael Vick sagas:

“As enthralled as I have been to follow this thrilling coverage, I’m reluctant to say that yesterday Favre decided to stay retired (for now) and on Monday, Goodell handed down a conditional reinstatement to Vick, essentially allowing him to play in the league again by Week 6, if he can find a team that can tolerate the thousands of rabid PETA protesters that will likely picket outside of every game he starts from now on.

Maybe in a few years we can look forward to “BRETT FAVRE! MICHAEL VICK! IT’S SUPER BOWL XLV ON FOX!!!””

Three weeks later, Brett Favre is, in fact, unretired yet again and the starting quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, and tomorrow night, Michael Vick, the real-life Paul Crewe, will be making his preseason debut at quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.  I can’t say I’m the only one who saw this coming, because let’s be honest, this news came as less of a surprise to me than when I found out that pro wrestling was fixed.  Now it’s not really possible for Favre and Vick to face each other in this year’s Super Bowl because they’re both playing for NFC teams, but is the possibility of an Eagles-Vikings match-up in the NFC title game completely out of the question? No, it’s not. Hence, why I should be getting paid for this.

Since I’m sure that everyone is tired of hearing about Brett Favre and Michael Vick, just as I’m tired of seeing people misspell Favre’s name in Facebook statuses (Farve? Really? And how long have you been a football fan?), I will move on to more pressing matters. Like, for example, this year’s tantalizing pennant races and wild card races are heating up now. As we get ready to close out the month of August and flip the calendar to September, we enter the final month of the major league baseball regular season and as of today’s standings it looks to me like every division, with the exception of the NL East and the NL Central, is still up for grabs. The Phillies hold a 7-game lead over the Marlins and Braves in the East, and honestly, the way that Philly is playing right now, with Jimmy Rollins finally getting his swing back and Cliff Lee pitching like Sandy Koufax, I don’t see either team catching them.

As for the Cardinals, they have a 8.5-game lead on the Cubs right now, which is the biggest division lead in the league right now. Pujols has 40 HRs and Chris Carpenter, pitching in his first full season since 2006 after Tommy John surgery, is 14-3 and making a bid for his second Cy Young award. So I would imagine that it’s safe to say that it will now be 101 years for those poor Cubbie fans from the North side.

As for the other 4 divisions, it’s anyone’s game. The Yankees have what seems like a pretty firm 6-game lead on the Red Sox, but with the history that these two teams have between each other (1978 pennant race, 2004 ALCS, etc), would anything really surprise you at this point? The Yankees are in a three-game series right now with the Rangers, who the Red Sox have a 1.5 game lead over in the Wild Card race, so I would guess that Boston will be doing a good amount of scoreboard monitoring over the next few nights.

The Dodgers would be doing scoreboard watching, if not for the fact that they just spent the last three games in Colorado trying not to passively watch as their season imploded in front of their eyes. Before this week’s series against the surging Rockies, the Dodgers division lead, which was once comfortably in the double digits, had shrunk to a minuscule 3 games and it looked like the Dodgers were putting on their best 2008 Mets impression. But the Dodgers took 2 out of 3 from the Rockies and now their lead is at 4 with a month to go.

The Rockies (looking a lot like the 2007 version of themselves that improbably made the World Series, and less like last year’s disappointment of a team) have a back-up plan luckily, if they can’t catch the Dodgers before season’s end. They hold a 3-game lead in the Wild Card standings over San Francisco.

As for the MVP races in both leagues? Four words. Albert. Pujols. Joe. Mauer.

Stay tuned for an action-packed NFL 2009 Season Preview coming up this weekend. Good luck on your fantasy football drafts everyone, and whatever you do, try to stay away from Brandon Marshall.