I Have To Be Honest, I Like Where This Is Going

27 05 2010
New York Mets Jason Bay and Ike Davis slap hands at Citi Field in New York

I’ve been absent from writing for the last few weeks due to a little West Coast trip to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and California. I didn’t bring my laptop with me out of fear that I might pawn it in Vegas for more cash to gamble with, so I haven’t been able to properly record all my Mets-related thoughts in a while, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I haven’t been watching my beloved Mets night in and night out. Thanks to the joys of modern technology and being able to watch live television on my phone in airport terminals and casinos, I’m always keeping tabs on our rag-tag bunch of lovable losers. Lately though, they’ve been anything but.

I was able to watch our bats take down Phil Hughes on Saturday night from a blackjack table at The Mirage, and got home just in time on Sunday to see A-Rod strike out with the tying runs on base to seal yet another convincing victory over the hated Yankees. Honestly, if there was anyone I would want to see in that position, striking out to the end the game with runners in scoring position, I wouldn’t want it to be anyone else but Alex Rodriguez.

So, taking two out of three from the Yankees was very satisfying. It helped me forget about the fact that Javy Vazquez managed to stifle us for all of one hit on Friday night (yes, that Javy Vazquez) and it gave me some pretty good ammo to fire back at Yankees fans with, at least until we meet them again next month. That was all good, but as much as I hate the Yankees (and trust me, I hate them with the fire of a hundred million suns) it still wasn’t as beautiful as the first two games of this Philadelphia series.

With the starting pitching back to form and giving us the kind of quality starts we got from them during our first extended winning streak back in April, the bats are beginning to heat up as well and I’m about as optimistic right now as I’ve been in a pretty long time. We’ve outscored the Phillies 13-0 in the first two games of this series. After a great outing from knuckleballer R.A. Dickey (apparently we should throw a knuckleball pitcher on the mound every time we face the Phillies, because after Wakefield and Dickey it’s clear that they are baffled by 64 mph pitches) and an even more impressive start from Hisanori Takahashi tonight, we are now 3 games out of first place at 24-23 and rolling.

What are some of the things that I’m particularly pleased with right now? For starters, Jason Bay has finally started to produce. His two home runs on Sunday off of C.C. Sabathia (the C.C. stands for Cottage Cheese, in case you were wondering) seemed to spark his bat to life and he has begun to grow into his new spot in the lineup as the #3 hitter in front of Ike Davis.

Jose Reyes, with a big triple last night off of former Met Nelson Figueroa and another RBI single tonight, is beginning to look a little more like the Jose Reyes we all know and love and it’s good to see him back in the leadoff spot again instead of batting third where he looked lost and confused.

David Wright, despite his strikeout problems (he’s hit more air this season than baseball) is still 8th in the NL in RBI’s with 33 and his 8 home runs are second on the team behind Barajas and only 2 shy of his total from all of last season. Speaking of Rod Barajas, he’s quickly on pace to become my new favorite Met to ever wear the number 21 and if he keeps on hitting the ball the way he’s been, he might even give old #31 a run for favorite all-time Mets catcher (alright, probably not, he still has a long way to go before that). Another 3 RBI’s for Barajas tonight gives him 27 on the season so far, with 10 home runs, both totals that I absolutely did not expect to get from our #7 hitter halfway through May. So that’s certainly progress.

With four wins in a row coming against the Yankees and Phillies, the two teams that met in last year’s World Series, and the two teams whose fan bases have both singlehandedly brought me dangerously close to being in at least 17 bar fights in the past year, the New York Metropolitans are playing some pretty damn good baseball right now. If you consider the fact that the lineup continues to score lots of runs despite being without arguably its best hitter in Carlos Beltran, then I would say that we are in fairly good shape.  If Beltran ever gets healthy again before the remaining two years on his contract are up, we have the potential to put out a lineup with legitimate hitters from top to bottom.

Tomorrow night, we put Mike Pelfrey on the mound to try for a sweep of the Phillies. Not only would it probably be our first sweep of Philadelphia since our lineup featured Bernard Gilkey and Butch Huskey (I’m exaggerating), but it would also give Big Pelf the chance to start 7-1 and all but guarantee that I start calling him “Cy Young” from this point on.

I’m excited.


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The Endless Appeal of the Underdog

5 04 2010

Don't pretend that you won't be openly rooting for Butler tonight.

Tonight, when Opening Day is winding down and Mets fans have been painfully reminded of just how bad our team really is, two college basketball teams will take the court in Indianapolis for a shot at the 2010 NCAA Men’s National Championship. One of those teams, the Duke Blue Devils, is coached by Mike Krzyzewski, with a total of 76 NCAA tournament wins under his belt and 4 national titles in the last 19 years, along with a handful of Final Four appearances.

The other team that will battle it out in Indy tonight? The Butler Bulldogs. Representing the Horizon League, a mid-major conference that also includes the basketball powerhouses of Cleveland State, Detroit, Green Bay (this conference sounds more like the NFC North), UW-Milwaukee and Valparaiso, Butler is the embodiment of every small school across the nation with big dreams.

Although I picked Butler to go down in the first round of this year’s tournament to UTEP, there was a part of me that always knew that they could make a run to the national championship (I’m just kidding). However, even though I didn’t pick them to make it past the first day, I am going to be rooting for them like my bracket depended on it (it’s been in the garbage since the Sweet 16) when they tip-off against Duke tonight.

Chances are, you’ll be rooting for Butler too, and I know exactly why. It’s because we, as Americans and as sports fans, don’t love anything more than a good, compelling, inspiring underdog story. I mean, we (America) were even underdogs ourselves at one point in history. Yeah, I’m absolutely talking about the Revolutionary War. Don’t think that I can’t slip a little history lesson into a column about the Final Four, because I can, AND I JUST DID.

Anyway, the allure of the underdog is something we can never seem to resist. Whether or not you’re a sports fan, chances are that you’re familiar with the phenomenon of the underdog. In fact, if there was no such thing as the underdog, Hollywood would probably have run out of movie ideas 40 years ago. Either that, or we’d be getting ready for the release of Transformers 28: Cooking With Optimus Prime.

You can find a quality underdog story in pretty much 85-90% of the movies you watch. Forrest Gump? Underdog story. Hoosiers? Underdog story. Rudy? The ultimate underdog story. We love underdogs in this country. Actually, that’s inaccurate – the entire world loves underdogs. The movie that won Best Picture at the Oscars two years ago, Slumdog Millionaire, was an underdog story from beginning to end. Why do we love underdogs so much? It’s because everyone likes to believe that they are the underdog deep down inside. We root for the underdogs because if they can do it, then anyone can.

Underdogs in sports encapsulate all the things that we love about the typical Hollywood underdog story, only playing out in real life, right before our eyes. I can’t help getting constantly sucked into falling for underdogs. I can probably trace it all back to the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals when the Rangers beat the Canucks in seven games. I was 7 years old at the time and not even a huge hockey fan, but I was oddly drawn to the series and the underdog story that surrounded the Rangers, who were trying to end their 54-year championship drought.

Since then, I’ve been captivated by a number of underdog teams over the years, in pretty much every sport. The Florida Marlins in 1997 and 2003, a team with one of the smallest payrolls in baseball that made two improbable postseason runs in 6 years and won two World Series titles; the 2004 Boston Red Sox, probably one of the most memorable underdog stories of the last few decades, the team that came back from a 3-0 deficit to the Yankees in the ALCS to break their 86 year World Series drought; George Mason’s unforgettable road to the Final Four in 2006 (much like the 2009-2010 Butler Bulldogs); the Colorado Rockies and Tampa Bay Rays World Series runs in 2007 and 2008 which unfortunately fell short, and of course the 2007 New York Giants, the road warriors who beat the 18-0 Patriots to the throne to claim the Lombardi Trophy.

Underdogs are not a new concept either. Even the Bible features an underdog story, probably the father of all underdog stories. Ever hear of David and Goliath? Yeah, that’s right, even Jesus was a fan of underdogs. Underdogs aren’t just fun to watch and root for, they also serve as ways to inspire us, and also ways for us to lose tons of money by betting against them.

Here’s a guide to the four different kinds of underdog teams you might encounter in sports. Think of it as a field guide for beginners, as well as a way to help you recognize these Teams of Destiny so that you won’t make the mistake of betting against them and end up trying to back over your own foot with your SUV.

1) The Championship Drought Underdog

This underdog story usually features a team that has either never won a championship in its history, or a team that hasn’t won a championship in a ton of years. A team like the 2004 Red Sox for example, which hadn’t won a World Series since the Ford Model T was cutting-edge engineering. This team will go through their entire postseason run with their incredibly lengthy drought being mentioned at every possible opportunity and beaten into the ground by announcers and analysts almost to the point where they’re almost trying to turn you against them. You can guarantee that every time the Chicago Cubs make the playoffs that Joe Buck and Tim McCarver will do everything but hold a séance on the pitcher’s mound for the ghosts of the 1908 Cubs.

The Championship Drought Underdog is unique from all other underdogs because they can sometimes be a very respected and storied franchise. They might even make the playoffs year in and year out, but they’re still classified as underdogs because they can never seem to break past the imaginary wall that’s keeping them from winning the title. Think of them as the sports equivalent of that one friend you has no problem with meeting girls at bars and getting their number, but just can never seem to be able to seal the deal.
When a Championship Drought Underdog, or CDU, finally breaks through and wins that title, it’s a surreal feeling. It’s the feeling of experiencing something you thought would never happen in your lifetime.

2) “The Little Team That Could” Underdogs

These underdogs are usually teams that have been bullied for years in their respective divisions and are usually perennial doormats. They have a miniscule payroll and their roster is often filled with either names you’ve never heard of or names you can’t even pronounce, but somehow they band together and make an improbable run for to the postseason. These teams are usually the product of “right place at the right time” circumstances and everything short of the planets lining up and raining gold coins on their practice facility. What are some recent examples of this? The 2008 Arizona Cardinals certainly come to mind, also the 2009 New Orleans Saints, the 2007 Colorado Rockies, the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, and probably a ton of other teams I’m forgetting right now.

The thing about these types of underdogs is that you often don’t see them coming. Sometimes they come out of nowhere and sometimes, they disappear right back to nowhere when their magical run is over. You can never tell when one of these kinds of underdogs can pop up, and that’s why they’re so dangerous.

3) The “Injured Star Player” Underdog

This kind of underdog is fairly self-explanatory. Usually it’s a team that is missing its best player due to injury, or retirement, or felony conviction….yet the team still continues to roll on almost inexplicably. Often, this team will come together amidst the adversity of losing their best player and use it as motivation to win. Other times, the team’s inexplicable run will allow people to realize that maybe this star player wasn’t really that important after all. A classic example of this kind of underdog is the 2007 New York Giants. They lost the face of their franchise, running back Tiki Barber, to retirement at the end of the previous season, and then lost another key player, Jeremy Shockey, to a broken leg in Week 15. Despite that, they rolled off 7 straight wins and won the Super Bowl. No big deal.

4) The “Where Is That School?” Underdog

This underdog is very similar to the second type, but it applies only to college, whereas the “Little Team That Could” mostly applies to the pros. The Butler Bulldogs would fall into this category. I’ll admit that I had no clue that Butler University was located 5 miles from Lucas Oil Stadium until I saw it on ESPN a week ago, after their Final Four berth. Some other examples of the “Where is that school?” underdog that I can think of off the top of my head would be the 2006 George Mason basketball team, the 2008 Appalachian State football team that upset Michigan, and even the 2006 Rutgers football team that rose all the way to #6 in the BCS before crashing back to Earth. I’m sure everyone knows that Rutgers University is in New Jersey now, but they sure as hell didn’t know in 2006.

So, after all that, we’re back to the Butler Bulldogs. With a sure-fire future NBA player in Gordon Hayward leading the way, they’re not as big of a long-shot as most people assume. According to just about every team that they’ve beaten in this tournament so far (Syracuse, Kansas State, Michigan State) they’re not really sneaking up on anyone. Nevertheless, they are still proving an enormous point that advocates of the BCS for college football have failed to even consider: that a small school from a even smaller conference can have a legitimate shot at winning a national championship in a major sport.

Tonight, the Butler Bulldogs from the Horizon League will play what might be considered a home-game, for a national title, 5 miles down the road from their campus. Only instead of Hinkle Fieldhouse, it will be in front of almost 72,000 people at Lucas Oil Stadium. A real-life David and Goliath story, the big, bad Duke Blue Devils against the little mid-major team from Indiana. I couldn’t be more excited.


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Five Amazing Non-Predictions for the 2010 Baseball Season

4 04 2010

Hey Carlos, let's try to play more than 40 games this year. Alright?

Why do I love the spring so much? Well, there are several reasons. I’m sure you don’t want me to list every single one, so I’ll cut right to the point of this column. Aside from the weather getting warmer and girls suddenly wearing fewer clothes, I can always trace my love of the spring back to one thing: the start of a new baseball season!

I could smell it when I walked outside today: the crisp, early April air, the smell of springtime and the stench of inevitable disappointment. Of course, the disappointment can be traced directly to the start of a fresh, new baseball season that is finally here. Tomorrow, the New York Metropolitans will take the field in beautiful Flushing for the first time in 2010 to defend their fourth-place finish in 2009. The only thing that stands in our way for a last-place finish this year are those damn pesky Nationals, they just can’t stop losing!

All kidding aside though, I am as ready as I’ll ever be for another baseball season. Last year’s playoffs took a lot out of me. Having to endure a Yankees-Phillies World Series was about as enjoyable as having my fingernails removed one-by-one while being forced to listen to Justin Bieber on repeat. The one thing that is refreshing about the start of a new season is that for at least a few hours, everyone has the same record. It’s a blank slate, a clean start and just about anything can happen, including A-Rod tearing his hamstring on a bad slide into second or Chase Utley getting drilled in the kneecap by a fastball.

My fantasy league draft is tonight at 7 pm, just before the official start of the season at Fenway and thanks to Bill Simmons’ enlightening column this past week on the sabermetrics revolution, I can actually pretend that I know what I’m doing this year, at least until I end up drafting John Lackey four rounds too early.

What it all comes down to though is the simple fact that the beginning of the season is the perfect time to start throwing out uneducated predictions based solely on opinions and gut instinct. We all do this to some degree, even the professionals, so I’m going to take my predictions one step further (or one step backwards, it depends on how you look at it) and I’m going to give you five of my best non-predictions going into the 2010 season. In other words, I’m not really making any grand statements with these.

1) I will not be disappointed with the New York Mets in 2010. What a prediction, right? Not at all. All it means is that I have zero expectations for the New York Mets in 2010. Zero expectations means zero disappointment when they’re 11 games out of first place in the middle of June. That’s what I’m saying. Plus, if the pieces do happen to magically fall into place and we don’t send half of our starting line-up to the DL before the All-Star Break, then that’s a bonus. Either way, you won’t hear me complaining. Actually, you will. Do you know why? It’s because I enjoy complaining. I feel like some of my better writing comes from me complaining about my favorite teams, and you know what, I’m perfectly fine with that. After all, weren’t blogs started as just another way for people to complain about things over the internet? I’m pretty sure they were.

2) Mr. Met still won’t be the most confusing mascot in baseball, thanks to the Philly Phanatic.

WHAT ARE YOU???

3) At least one big name player will be injured for a majority of the season and we will spend 4 or 5 months thinking about where said player’s team would have finished this season if he had been healthy and discussing another hundred different hypothetical scenarios. The player might be Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Ryan Howard, Prince Fielder, Manny Ramirez, Joe Mauer, Chase Utley, Mark Teixeira, anyone who most likely used steroids at all in the past decade, or the entire New York Mets roster.

4) The American League East will be won by a team from New York or Boston. GROUNDBREAKING, I KNOW! Listen, I know the Rays took this division two years ago and ran all the way to the World Series, and I know that their lineup going into this season is one of the best in the AL, on paper. All of that sounds good, and I would like to think Tampa can be a threat, but with Boston’s starting pitching and New York’s lineup, I don’t think any team that isn’t named the Red Sox or the Yankees really has more than an outside shot at winning the division. Sorry, anybody in Tampa, Baltimore or Toronto. Luckily, I also know how it feels to be a fan of a team that you know has no shot at making the playoffs. So why do I watch? Because I like to be tortured. But hey, THAT’S WHY THEY PLAY THE GAMES, AM I RIGHT?

5) My World Series prediction. Actually, here are my predictions for the whole playoffs. Think of it as a bonus. Or think of it as even more things that I will probably be wrong about:

AL East: New York Yankees

AL Central: Minnesota Twins

AL West: Seattle Mariners

AL Wild Card: Boston Red Sox

ALDS: Yankees over Mariners; Red Sox over Twins

ALCS: Yankees over Red Sox

NL East: Philadelphia Phillies

NL Central: St. Louis Cardinals

NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers

NL Wild Card: Milwaukee Brewers

NLDS: Cardinals over Dodgers; Phillies over Brewers

NLCS: Cardinals over Phillies

World Series: Cardinals over Yankees, 4-2

The season officially gets underway in a little less than 2 hours. Let’s hope it’s a good one. Now, it’s time for me to break out my calculator, pull up last season’s VORP ratings and try to pick a winning fantasy team.


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No Cure For March Madness

11 03 2010

Really guys? Come on....

I know I haven’t written in more than a month and that’s pretty irresponsible of me, but I do have a fairly valid excuse. I’ve been working on my first novel during the past few weeks, and so I haven’t had much time to balance both things. Okay, that’s a complete lie. I have nothing but time. Actually, time is about the only thing I’ve had a lot of lately. Either way, the novel is coming along pretty nicely. It’s funny because it’s like I’m having a competition with myself to see what I can make less money doing: blogging or writing a novel. Right now, they’re both tied at $0 a piece. We’ll see how that turns out.

A lot has happened during the past month, and so here’s a quick Cliffs Notes recap of what I think are the most important sports stories of the last month:

- The New Orleans Saints stunned the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in Miami on Feb. 7th to win their first Super Bowl in franchise history. Drew Brees was named the game’s MVP and showed the world that not only does he have what it takes to be mentioned among the top QB’s of his generation, but also that he has a really, ridiculously adorable son.

- Tiger Woods entered rehab for his “sex addiction”. Upon hearing this, men all over the country immediately deleted their internet history out of fear of also being placed in rehab. He then held a 15-minute “news conference” in which he fielded zero questions and spoke with about as much sincerity and emotion as HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

- The Nets kept losing.

- The Knicks also kept losing. Then they dumped even more salary by unloading the contracts of Darko Milicic, Nate Robinson, and the corpse of Jared Jeffries and acquiring Tracy McGrady’s expiring $22 million contract from Houston. In the process, the Knicks created almost $30 million in salary cap space heading into this summer’s free agent free-for-all and now apparently have enough money to sign two superstars. It is likely that neither of these superstars will be LeBron James, despite the collective prayers of the Knickerbocker faithful.

- Spring Training started. The Yankees went to an arcade to show us how much they like each other and how well they all get along. We were all supposed to feel happy for them, despite the fact that they….are a baseball team….and that’s kind of the point.

Tell me this doesn't make you wet your pants a little.

And that was about it. Nothing happens in February, so even the most mundane of stories turn into front-page headlines in the sports world. Thankfully though, the cold, uneventful winter months are behind us and we’re staring right in the face of arguably the most exciting one-month stretch of the year, at least when it comes to sports.

If you look at the next month/month and a half, we get treated to the following:

1) The NCAA Tournament starts next Thursday, which is no doubt, hands-down my absolute favorite sporting event of the year. Why? Because it gives me a reason to really get behind teams that I normally couldn’t care less about. Can you think of anything better than almost having an aneurysm on a Thursday night in March because Syracuse edged out Portland State by 2 points and you came within seconds of tearing up your bracket that had Syracuse in the Final Four? No, there is nothing more exciting than that, I’m sorry. I’ve tried the NCAA Tournament without putting any money on it. I think the last time I did that was 6 years ago. It wasn’t fun. I found my interest drifting away in the early rounds. When you’re in a pool with a $400 pot and you absolutely need West Virginia to beat Texas to have a shot at winning, tell me that it doesn’t make that game about 100,000 times more exciting. That is, if gambling was legal. My favorite thing about the tournament? When we start to get down to the Sweet Sixteen and I’m spending upwards of 8 hours a day playing around with all of the different possible combinations of teams in the Yahoo! Scenario Generator. As the number of teams left in the tournament decreases, the number of hours I spend on the Scenario Generator increases, exponentially.

2) The start of the baseball season on April 5th. With the start of a new season just around the corner, I have realized that the only way to forgot about the unrelenting nightmare that was the 2009 baseball season is to start a new one. What’s worse than the Mets losing two-thirds of their starting lineup to injuries halfway through the season and then having to endure a postseason that ranked somewhere between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all 40 Saw movies on the horror scale? Having to go through that for a second year in a row. What’s worse than watching a Yankees-Phillies World Series that made me want to pull out my own tongue? Watching the Yankees win another World Series. So things can only get better from here, right?

3) The NFL free-agent free-for-all. The Giants already got off to a pretty decent start with their signing of safety Antrel Rolle from the Arizona Cardinals. The thought of him and a healthy Kenny Phillips in the secondary next year makes me a little excited. There’s still a ton of questions to be answered though before free-agent season wraps up. For example, where will LaDainian Tomlinson end up, and will anybody care? How about the question of whether or not Donovan McNabb will be wearing a Eagles uniform next season? What team will Terrell Owens destroy next? Gripping storylines will unfold in the coming weeks and months and as usual, everyone will drool over the Chicago Bears until they start the season 1-4 and we remember that they still have no wide receivers. Oops!

4) The NFL Draft in late April. I don’t really have anything to say about this other than these quick points:

- Sam Bradford will be drafted wayyyyy higher than he should be.

-Tim Tebow will be drafted wayyyy lower than he should be.

-Suh should be and probably will be the #1 overall pick.

-The Giants need to draft some linebackers, maybe.

-The Jets finally can’t screw up a top-10 pick because they won’t have one.

So, as you can see, I’m pretty excited about the coming month(s) and I won’t let anyone bring me down from this cloud of sports bliss that I will be floating on until May when the Mets are 7 1/2 games out of first and LeBron is leading the Cavs to an NBA title that will all but guarantee he stays in Cleveland.

See you next week, sports fans and loyal readers.


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World Series Game 4 Running Diary

2 11 2009

As Bill Simmons would say, anytime you have the opportunity to witness the worst sports day in recent memory and do a running diary at the same time, you have to do it, right? Four hours after the Giants showed up in Philly and then were promptly chased out of the city to the tune of 40-17, the Yankees and Phillies get set to do battle across the street. Anyone who reads me already knows how I feel about the Giants and the Yankees (complete opposite ends of the love/hate spectrum) so there’s no need to waste time explaining the situation. The Giants played like Rick Moranis’s team from the Little Giants today and suddenly, instead of being mentioned among the top 5 teams in the NFL, I’m now hoping we can salvage a 6-10 record out of this season. That’s how bad it looked. To make things better, Carsten Charles Sabathia is on the mound tonight against Mean Joe Blanton with a 2-1 series lead. I know his nickname isn’t really Mean Joe, but I don’t think he has much else going for him other than a made-up nickname so we’ll keep it. Suffice to say, the Yankees winning tonight and moving to within one win of a World Series title, coupled with the Giants losing their third game in a row by a combined 51 points is probably God’s way of saying “Maybe you shouldn’t watch sports anymore.” So think of this running diary as a sort of suicide note for my life as a sports fan. You know, if worst comes to worst.

8:00 – The clocks were turned back an hour last night, so it’s 8:00 but Phillies fans are technically working with a 9:00 buzz, which would make them approximately 4.17% more drunk. I’ll take anything I can get right now.

8:04 – I just learned last night that the FOX World Series music is actually the theme music from North and South, a mini series about the Civil War starring the late Patrick Swayze. I don’t know why this is relevant, but at least it’s more relevant than anything coming out of Ozzie Guillen’s mouth right now.

8:06 – Here are some of my tweets from last night’s game, to kind of give you a feel for the direction that this series seems to be going in:

“Jayson is Werth a lot to this Phillies team right now! HA! Get it?”

“Hey what are the odds of that!? Not the ball hitting the camera, but that the umps actually got a call right!”

“Hamels’ night was over the second that Jeffrey Maier dressed up a camera and caught A-Rod’s home run ball.”

“About eight batters too late, Grady Manuel.”

“So when is Ryan Howard’s Memorial Service? I hope it’s an open casket.”

“Utley homered twice in Game 1, Werth goes deep twice tonight…Howard, still nothing. Yep, I’m gonna keep beating this into the ground.”

“‘McCarver: Rollins was coming from the second base side of second base.’ That joke just made itself.”

“Ryan Howard’s funeral service will be held tomorrow at 5 p.m. in between the Giants-Eagles game and Game 4 of the World Series. Bring flowers.”

“Hey Phillies, good luck tomorrow night pitching Joe Blanton against Carsten Charles. This series is more over than the Gosselin’s marriage.”

8:13 – Is it true that the Philly Phanatic is batting in the clean-up spot in place of Howard tonight?

8:19 – If the Phillies win tonight, Manuel looks smart for saving Cliff Lee for Game 5 and not pushing him to start on short rest….on the other hand if they lose, the series is pretty much over.

8:22 – First pitch of the game is a strike. You know what that means…..it’s an 0-1 count to Jeter.

8:23 – Utley almost makes an incredible play but slips on the wet grass and Jeter has a lead-off infield single. So much for wearing cleats….

8:24 – Damon rips a double off Blanton, Yankees have runners on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out. There’s not even a Sunday night football game on. I might overdose on Nyquil before the 3rd inning.

8:26 – The first pitch was 4 minutes ago and it’s already 1-0 Yankees. Thanks a lot, Mean Joe.

8:26 – A-Rod is hit by a pitch for the second time in two nights. Both benches have been warned, which means Hamburglar Sabathia can’t retaliate now. I read something earlier today that said the Phillies might throw at Yankees batters tonight, but I thought it was a joke like the Giants defense today. Either way, there are runners on the corners and 1 out and Joe Blanton already looks like he borrowed Eli Manning’s “Oh sh–, what am I doing here?” face.

8:30 – 2-0 Yankees, 8 minutes into the game. I think God is now saying, “Okay, you’re not going to turn this game off? Watch me, I’ll make you. I SWEAR I WILL MAKE YOU QUIT SPORTS.”

8:34 – Did Sabathia steal MC Hammer’s pants? What is he, a size 64 waist?

8:35 – Last night after the game, Nick Swisher thanked Joe Girardi for having faith in him….was he referring to that time he was benched for Jerry Hairston Jr. in Game 2?

8:36 – Victorino pokes one off the end of his bat into left field for a one-out double, just out of the reach of a diving Johnny Damon. In case you were keeping score, “Diving Johnny Damon” is the name of a new drink that automatically spills every time you pick it up.

8:39 – Utley breaks out of his slump and rips a double off the wall in right center and it’s 2-1 now. Back-to-back one out doubles brings up Ryan Howard. Sabathia just put on a wind-breaker. I smell strikeout number 11 coming.

8:41 -Howard whiffs at a slider on 3-1 that makes it look like he was trying to gently swat at a fly on Posada’s helmet.

8:43 -Aaaaaaaaand Howard strikes out for the 11th time in this series. At this point, his family should be trying to collect on his life insurance policy.

8:46 – The red-hot Werth walks and now there are 2 on and 2 out for Raul Ibanez. This crowd does not seem to have reached its peak BAC level and I’m disappointed in the city of Philadelphia. No one has been hit with a battery yet, and it’s already Game 4. Ibanez strikes out to end the inning. The Phillies add a run, but it’s 2-1 after one inning. Philly can get to Sabathia tonight, as long as they don’t start swinging at sliders in the dirt.

8:54 – Blanton takes the Yankees down 1-2-3 in the top of the 2nd, striking out Swisher and Sabathia. He’s looking a bit more confident in his pitches now that he got the first inning out of the way. Hopefully he can get things on track now and the Phillies can put up some runs behind him.

8:56 - By the way, 1,100 words already and we’re still in the 2nd inning. This running diary was a great idea, wasn’t it? I don’t know if my WordPress blog has enough bandwidth to support a 10,000 word column.

8:59 – I went to see a game at Citizens Bank Park a few years ago, it’s an awfully nice place to watch baseball. Not as nice when you’re there to see the Mets get spanked, but it has a certain charm. And by charm, I mean cheesesteaks. If FOX keeps showing them, there’s a good chance I’ll make the hour drive to Philly at 1 in the morning.

9:03 – Cookie Crunch Sabathia retires the Phillies in order in the bottom half of the 2nd. Both teams will have the top of the their order heading into the 3rd. I can see this game evening out for the next few innings until the Yankees lineup starts hammering Blanton into submission in the 5th or 6th and Manuel leaves him in a few batters too long.

9:08 – A diving stop made by Pedro Feliz on a Jeter grounder to third. It seems like Feliz is in the sand more often than the cast of Baywatch. He gets the job done though.

9:09 – Joe Buck just commented on the new Pearl Jam album right before Blanton strikes out Teixeira to end the top of 3rd. The day I take a music review by Joe Buck seriously is the day I back over my own iPod with my car.

9:14 – For all the talking that Jimmy Rollins does, he really doesn’t spend too much time on the bases, does he?

9:15 – What’s bigger: Shane Victorino’s head, or home plate ump Mike Everett’s strike zone tonight?

9:17 – Utley against Sabathia in this series: 4/4, 2 HR, 2B, BB and 3 RBI’s. Wait, make that 4/5 now. End of the 3rd inning, still 2-1 Yankees. Are the Phillies done hitting for the night? The bat boy wants to know so he can start packing up.

9:23 – Apparently A-Rod thinks that getting thrown at 3 times in 2 nights is an obvious sign that the Phillies are purposely throwing at him. In other news, the Earth is round and Tim McCarver is uninteresting.

9:26 – Blanton strikes out Posada and Cano to retire his 11th straight batter and it definitely seems like he’s settling into his groove now, which may or may not be wider than Everett’s strike zone. The Phillies have the heart of their order coming up in the bottom of the inning.

9:30 – Are you f—– kidding me?!? Ryan Howard just led off the inning with a single and then STOLE SECOND BASE. This is a bigger twist than when we found out Bruce Willis was dead at the end of The Sixth Sense. It’s like he just got up and walked out of his own funeral!

9:34 – Werth grounds out to third which, in retrospect, makes that stolen base important because it prevented a possible double play. Two outs with Howard on second and Feliz at the plate.

9:37 – Feliz rips a double to left and Howard comes around to score, but never touches home plate. He was called safe, and I’m reluctant to admit this, but he never touched the plate. If the Phillies win, I hope to God it’s by more than one run. Anyway, it’s 2-2 at the end of 4 innings as Blanton strikes out.

9:48 – Jeter drives in Swisher with runners on first and second and 1 out. It’s now 3-2 Yankees. The ball squirts just past the reach of a diving Feliz (in the sand again) and Ibanez’s throw to the plate is late as usual. Actually, it was so late I’m tempted to run out and buy a pregnancy test.

9:50 – Maybe drinking all day has backfired on the Phillies fans. It sounds like they’re playing this game in the lobby of a Borders book store right now.

9:52 – Damon drops a bloop single into shallow right field. Cabrera scores and it’s 4-2 Yankees with 1 out and Teixeira up. Let’s forget what I said earlier about Blanton finding his groove. His groove his so lost right now that even Mapquest can’t pinpoint it. At least the Phillies are hitting. Wait….no they’re not.

9:56 – Phillies need to get something going offensively, they can’t keep letting Sabathia off the hook inning after inning. Also, I think I just saw Shane Victorino in the trailer for Avatar.

9:59 – Hey, Rollins got on base! Apparently I’m good at getting Phillies hitters out of their slumps. I already single-handedly reverse jinxed Utley, Howard and Rollins out of slumps. That has to count for something. Can I put that on my resume?

10:02 – Sabathia, it’s 10:00, do you know where your strike zone is? I’m just kidding, but Victorino really did just walk. Two on and nobody out for Chase Utley aka Sabathia’s Nemesis as McCarver just called him.

10:04 – The Nemesis has fallen behind 0-2. Advantage: Sabathia. Also, there is a plate of hot dogs in the clubhouse. Advantage: Sabathia, again. Check-swing pop-up by Utley. 1 out. Don’t worry Yanks, Ryan Howard is coming to the rescue now to bail out Sabathia.

10:07 – Howard pops up, reverse jinx fails. We enjoyed his short visit to the land of the living though. It was fun while it lasted.

10:09 – If Cream Cheese Sabathia escapes this inning without giving up a run, he’ll roll right through to the 8th. I know this, you know this, Joe Buck definitely knows this. Right now Jayson Werth is swinging like he’s afraid he might break the ball.

10:12 – Posada has made so many visits to the mound that I’m afraid the next one might be a conjugal visit. Aaaaaaand as I’m typing that, Werth strikes out. Inning over, Phils trail 4-2 going to the 6th. I’m going out for a cigarette and to see if I can fit a hose around my exhaust pipe.

10:22 – Swisher forces a two-out walk and there’s now action in the Philadelphia bullpen. Also, there’s an ad for an upcoming FOX series called “Human Target” being displayed behind home plate. I wonder if this show has anything to do with A-Rod.

10:25 – It’s weird, I’m nowhere near a radio, but I can almost hear John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman counting down the number of outs until the Yankees send in Rivera.

10:28 – Remember when Raul Ibanez was a power hitter this season? I swear that really happened.

10:29 – Pedro Feliz is probably the hottest bat in the lineup right now, which is good until you realize that he’s the number 7 hitter.

10:33 – The Phillies go down quietly after the hit by Feliz and now we can look forward to Chan Ho Park in the 7th inning. I just disabled the brakes in my car. I might go for a drive after this game is over.

10:35 – Chan Ho Park looks like the bad guy from a Jet Li movie. I think it’s the beard and long hair that does it.

10:37 – The Phillies will have the top of their lineup due up in the bottom of the 7th, which really doesn’t mean anything at this point.

10:47 – Sabathia just tried to hit a guy sitting in the first row behind home plate with his last pitch. Shouldn’t he be thrown out? I thought both teams were warned already? Rollins continues not-hitting by grounding out to third. And then Victorino flies out. Phillies bats sure are making this look easy for Cream Cheese tonight.

10:50 – Remember when Utley hit two homers in Game 1? It feels like it happened when I was in 3rd grade.

10:52 – ……And the second after I finished typing that, Utley crushes a mammoth home run to right field. My reverse jinx efforts continue. Phils cut the lead to 4-3, Sabathia heads for the dugout. I swear I’m not making this up. I’m like the anti-Joe Buck tonight.

10:57 – Damaso Marte comes in to retire Ryan Howard in 4 pitches. I’m sorry, I’m all out of Ryan Howard jokes right now. Check back again in the 9th inning, maybe.

11:10 – I took the top of the 8th inning off to….not watch the game. Fortunately, nothing too important happened other than FOX showing Rivera in the bullpen a record 315 times. Okay, so I was watching.

11:13 – Joba Chamberlain is in to pitch the 8th inning for the Yankees, which puts them over the 1-ton mark for the combined weight of their pitchers in tonight’s game. That sets a World Series record originally held by the 1915 Boston Red Sox.

11:16 – Chamberlain strikes out Werth and Ibanez to start the inning. Citizens Bank Park sounds like a mausoleum right now. So much for a patented Joba meltdown.

11:18 – You’re going to think I’m lying, but I swear on the Baseball Almanac that I’m not. I was just planning out my next sentence in my head and hoping it would go like this: “Wow, Feliz just hit a game-tying home run to left field.” On the next pitch, Pedro Feliz ripped a game-tying home run to left field. This is getting scary. It’s fine if you don’t believe me. By the way, Pedro Feliz is 3/4 with a HR and 2 RBI’s. You can’t make this up.

11:23 – Brad Lidge on to pitch the 9th inning for Philadelphia. Let’s hope we see 2008 Brad Lidge and not 2009 Brad Lidge. We’re all tied up at 4-4 in Game 4 and here is where baseball in October November gets exciting.

11:26 – The obligatory FOX montage highlighting Lidge’s 11 blown saves this season. Can someone see if Joe Buck is wearing a Yankees hat in the broadcast booth?

11:29 – Lidge fans Jeter for the second out of the inning. Unfortunately, Lidge is due to lead off the bottom of the 9th so this will most likely be his only inning of work. Phil Coke is warming up in the Yankees bullpen. With the game now tied, Girardi may hold Rivera for extra innings. Or he may not.

11:31 – Phillies fans have finally woken up and are making noise, it only took a clutch game-tying home run from the 7th hitter in the lineup to rouse them from their stupor.

11:33 – Damon fights off pitch after pitch and finally gets on after shooting a ball into left field. The Yankees now have a two-out base-runner with Teixeira at the plate.

11:34 – Unbelievable. Damon steals second and then catches Feliz sleeping at second after the throw and runs right around him to third. He just stole two bases in a row. Now all of a sudden New York has a runner 90 feet away from home.

11:36 – Lidge hits Teixeira with the 1-1 pitch bringing A-Rod to the plate with runners on the corners and two out. I guess we got the 2009 Lidge tonight? I think so.

11:39 – I should really stop doing this. Rodriguez doubles to left. So much for the Feliz heroics, it’s 5-4 Yankees. Aaaaaand then Posada lines one into center to score two more runs. Brad Lidge better hope that no one knows where he lives. I don’t think setting fire to his house is out of the question for Phillies fans right now. Even worse, Rivera will come on for the bottom of the 9th with a 3-run lead. It sounds like someone hit the mute button on Citizens Bank Park.

11:44 – Matt Stairs, who has played in every World Series since 1907, leads off the ninth for Philly and then grounds out. How is there anyone still in this stadium? Hoping for a 3-run rally against Rivera is like hoping to land a date with a Victoria’s Secret model just by looking at the catalog.

11:46 – Two outs.

11:47 – 3-1 series lead for New York. Apparently that’s my cue to stop watching sports for about 5 or 6 months. I feel like Justin Long in Drag Me To Hell right now. I’m going to go chug bleach and post a fake address for Brad Lidge’s house on Wikipedia.


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Empire State of Mind

30 10 2009

Yankees fans don’t understand what it’s like to be a Mets fan. Do you know why? Because they’re Yankees fans. For as long as they’ve been around, the Mets have been the second team in a one team city. Ever since the Giants and Dodgers fled New York, the city has belonged to the Yankees. With the possible exception of 1969 and 1986, the Mets have been the adopted little brother, the black sheep of the family. Mets fans have watched helplessly as year after year, October after October, the city is transformed into a Pinstripe Purgatory. This is the root of all the contempt that fills the hearts of Mets fans whenever the topic of the Yankees is brought up. This is why true Mets fans are cheering for the Phillies in the 2009 World Series. True Mets fans who know what it’s like to sit and watch their team get dismantled by the Yankees in the World Series in 2000.

Maybe we won’t admit it at first, but we would rather watch the Phillies celebrate a second world championship in a row then watch the hated Yankees get number 27. This is because up until the last few years the Phillies have been nothing but an afterthought in the National League. For as long as I’ve been alive, the Phillies have been a joke, the team that holds the dubious distinction of having the most all-time loses of any franchise in sports history. Unless you were born in 2006, you don’t recognize the Phillies as anything more than over-achieving cellar dwellers. Of course all of that has changed now, but even so, two years of playing second fiddle in the NL East does not even begin to equal the 40 years that we’ve played second fiddle in our own city.

I haven’t even mentioned the fans yet. For most Mets fans living in New York, or its relative vicinity, Philadelphia fans are few and far between. We’re not exposed to them because they don’t usually venture up to New York City unless they’re lost or they’re visiting family. It’s the Yankees fans that we’re forced to deal with day in and day out, and Yankees fans have had decades of training to learn how to become the most obnoxious fans on the planet. There are no hate crimes going on here though, I happen to be very close with a number of Yankees fans and I love them dearly. Here, this does my job for me (this is taken from a blog post titled “Top Ten Worst Fans in Sports“; the Yankees were #4): “New York Yankees fans: Speaking of entitled, let’s talk about Yankees fans. Yes, we understand that you have the most storied and decorated team in North American sports history; you don’t have to keep rubbing it in our faces. Getting a Yankees fan to shut up about their team is like stopping a train with your bare hands.”  These are fans who will resurrect a 6-year old chant for a pitcher who has pretty much handled them for most of his career (in 32 starts against the Yankees, Pedro has a 3.20 ERA, 261 strikeouts and the Yankees have a batting average of .211 against him). 2783

These are fans who own t-shirts that say “Got rings?” and whenever you mention the fact that they haven’t won a damn thing in 9 years, they’ll thrown their 27 world titles at you like a scared skunk lifting up its tail to spray. Sports, by its nature, is a “what have you done for me lately?” kind of thing. Unfortunately, most fans only care about what their team is doing right now, not from 1998-2000. On Sunday night, I watched 78,000 fans boo the Giants for stinking up the field for 3 quarters, the same Giants that won the Super Bowl 2 years ago and went 12-4 last year. When the Yankees win their 27th title next week, it will open the door to another 6 insufferable months of the New York media making the Yankees winning the title sound like a bigger event than Jesus Christ stepping off of an American Airlines flight at LaGuardia and performing miracles at the Starbucks by Gate 92. Until then, they are just another team looking for a ring.

Phillies fans, on the other hand, still have their training wheels on. They still burn cars when their team clinches something, and they aren’t the wily veterans of braggadocio that Yankees fans are. They can still smell the stink coming off the most recent era of losing and don’t want to jinx anything just yet. For Mets fans, this World Series is a battle between two evils in our world, we are simply choosing the lesser of those two evils. Hatred for the Yankees is something that lives deep down inside of my soul. It’s ugly, I picture it looking like something along the lines of Grendel from Beowulf, and it’s a pitiful monster, but it’s been growing for years and years and every October it comes out and rears its head and there will never be a way for me to stop it.

But anyway, here are your Week 8 NFL Picks, home team in CAPS!

Denver (+3.5) over BALTIMORE

Cleveland (+13.5) over CHICAGO

Houston (-3.5) over BUFFALO

Minnesota (+3) over GREEN BAY

INDIANAPOLIS (-12.5) over San Francisco

NY JETS (-3) over Miami

DETROIT (-4) over St. Louis

DALLAS (-9.5) over Seattle

Oakland (+16.5) over SAN DIEGO

TENNESSEE (-3) over Jacksonville

ARIZONA (-10) over Carolina

PHILADELPHIA (PK) over NY Giants

Atlanta (+10.5) over NEW ORLEANS

Last Week: 8-5

Season Total: 62-41


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Giants-Cardinals Running Diary

27 10 2009

ALSO FEATURED ON THE OFFICIAL NY GIANTS BLOG AT GEAR UP FOR SPORTS

I think it’s about time for me to break out a running diary, and what would be a better occasion for it than a Sunday night game on national television against the defending NFC Champs? Just know that this live account of the game was preceded by 4 hours of tailgating and took place in the very last row of Giants Stadium on a perfectly brisk late-October night. In other words, the circumstances couldn’t be more perfect. Unfortunately, the game didn’t really follow suit. But here’s how it unfolded, for you to relive over and over again, free of charge. You’ll thank me later….10,000 words later.

4:45 p.m.: There’s always a unique atmosphere in the parking lot before night games, which is why I love coming to them. I think that having 6+ hours to drink beer and cook food, coupled with the fact that you have more than 6 hours to drink beer and eat food, is what makes it so special. Wait, did I just list the same reason twice? For the record, my buddy Dan and I are cooking chicken skewers, shrimp and bratwurst tonight. Best menu of the season so far.

5:37 p.m.: I’ve already counted 6 Cardinals jerseys here in the parking lot, which is 6 more than I saw the last time the Cards visited Giants Stadium in 2005. I guess we can chalk that up as being one of the benefits of playing in the Super Bowl; their fans are no longer afraid to leave the house without paper bags over their heads.

6:11 p.m.: Lawrence Taylor was signing autographs outside Gate C for the past hour. The line to see him was longer than the line for the port-a-john, so I had to make a judgment call. I chose to relieve myself. Chalk one up for tailgating. The score: Tailgating 1, Me 0.

7:09 p.m.: Someone is shooting off fireworks over by the racetrack and the people tailgating next to us are playing Christmas music. Oddly enough, these two separate events have me really excited for the game to start. Some things can’t be explained and other things shouldn’t have to be explained. I think this falls into both categories.

8:02 p.m.: Heading into the Stadium along with the masses. On the line waiting to get patted down by security, I hear a guy in front of me remark to his friend, “See, I told you night games are different” as four guys in Jacobs jerseys in front of them are forced to throw out the unopened beers they managed to stuff inside their jackets. Have I mentioned that I love night games?

8:26 p.m.: Tonight we are honoring the 1986 Super Bowl Championship team. Lawrence Taylor gets a standing ovation when he is introduced and I can’t help but think that this should help inspire the defense, in case they’re not already sufficiently inspired. It would be blasphemous to not play well with legends like LT, Harry Carson and Leonard Marshall watching from the sidelines.

1st Quarter

14:54 – On the first play from scrimmage, Warner hits Steve Breaston over the middle for 23 yards to the Giants 43. He’s tackled by….guess who….C.C. Brown! I’m having Vietnam flashbacks of last week and we’ve only played 6 seconds.

13:39 – I forgot to mention that in addition to honoring the ’86 team, Giants Stadium is going to be playing 80′s songs all night. We were just treated to “In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins during the last TV timeout. I don’t know why this is important, but the Cardinals are now on the Giants 27 and I’m wondering if maybe I got tickets to last week’s game by accident.

13:05 – FUMBLE!!!!! Tim Hightower is stripped by Justin Tuck and recovered by Michael Johnson. The play was originally ruled down by contact, but when the replay was showed on the jumbotron it was clear that the ball was out before Hightower was down. What came next could only be described as 78,000 people yelling at Tom Coughlin to throw the challenge flag. I’ve never heard the crowd that adamant that a play should be challenged. Of course Tommy challenged it and of course it was reversed because his challenge record is impeccable. First down Giants at their own 27. I’ve changed my mind, not a bad start so far.

11:39 – Eli has come out with three straight passes to start the Giants first offensive possession, with completion to Manningham and Hixon. I can’t say I wholeheartedly agree with this, but the Cardinals are stacking 9 in the box right now and I don’t have much input on the Giants offensive gameplan anyway. Really? Nine in the box?

10:22 – Three and out. Apparently there’s a baseball game going on right now too. Judging from people around me, it’s a pretty important game. The stadium just erupted in a roar because Vladimir Guerrero got thrown out at first. Clearly, Giants fans are anxious for things to cheer about. (By the way, I’m well aware that it’s Game 6 of the ALCS, I’m just trying to go as long as I possibly can without fully acknowledging it.)

7:21 – Eli throws a deep ball over the middle and ends up trying to force it into a tight spot and, well, you can probably guess what happened. It originally looked as if Hixon came down with the pass in the end zone, but Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie won the jump ball and ripped it away from 87. Not exactly how I expected that play to end. What a tease, Eli. That was like dangling a steak in front of Artie Lange.

2nd Quarter

15:00 – I’ve sat through sociology lectures that were more exciting than that first quarter. After Eli’s interception, both teams traded punts (not even a good punt, in Feagles’ case) and now the Cardinals have the ball on their own 25 yard line. The good news is that not only is it 1-0 Angels in the 3rd inning right now, but also that we will be treated to the world’s best frisbee-catching dogs at halftime. I don’t even think that ‘ecstatic’ fully describes how I’m feeling.

14:06 – Well, our defense finally made a big play. Warner’s pass over the middle intended for Larry Fitzgerald was intercepted by Terrell Thomas. By the way, Thomas has been a ball-hawk all night so far. He has already broken up two passes and now has an interception. I feel like there are 11 of him on the field right now. That’s a good thing. Terrell Thomas is growing on me.

13:34 – Good news: Brandon Jacobs just rumbled his way down the sidelines for 25 yards to the Cardinals 4. First and goal. Bad news: The Yankees just took the lead in the bottom of the 4th. Trade-offs. I feel like I’m in Sophie’s Choice right now.

13:28 – TOUCHDOWN BRANDON JACOBS!!! Only the second touchdown of the season for the Jacobs, but it’s now 7-0 Giants and it’s enough to make me forget about the Yankees score for a second, as well as the fact that I’m losing my fantasy game to a guy that has Kurt Warner, Tim Hightower and Larry Fitzgerald on his team.

10:38 – Cardinals go three and out again. Then Eli is sacked and loses 11 yards on a 3rd and 2. Which raises the question, why are we throwing the football on a 3rd and 2? The run game has been almost non-existent tonight. I don’t know when the Cardinals bought a defense, but I certainly don’t remember them having one.

9:59 – A rare Shankopotamus just appeared. Jeff Feagles managed to boot a 28-yard gem which came off the side of his foot and wobbled out of bounds at the Arizona 44 yard line. Very uncharacteristic of Feagles.

8:18 – By the way, I just checked my fantasy team stats on my phone and found out that Vernon Davis and Miles Austin combined for 60 points today. Of course, none of that matters because both players were sitting next to each other on my make believe fantasy bench. I’m trying to remind myself why I love fantasy football so much.

7:36 - Yet another three and out for Arizona and then another three and out for the Giants. This game is getting a little out of hand. It’s going to be extremely difficult to transcribe this column with all of this constant action. And as I made that comment, Feagles punted 33 yards to our own 46 yard line. Unbelieveable. Two straight awful punts. I don’t think the Cardinals have started more than one drive from inside their own 35. It’s only a matter of time before the field position battle comes back to haunt us.

4:18 – ….And that time is up. Beanie Wells goes 13 yards off left tackle for the touchdown. The Yankees have a 3-1 lead on the Angels. I swear I didn’t just peek over the wall behind me to see how high of a jump it would be. Benefits of sitting in the last row of the stadium.

2:09 – Wow. Either the Giants just got really lucky, or they took the Broncos’ Orton-to-Stokley tipped pass and added it to the playbook. Manning’s deep pass over the middle intended for Manningham was tipped by Rodgers-Cromartie and then caught by Hakeem Nicks, perfectly in stride, who took it in for the touchdown. 14-7 Giants, 62-yard touchdown pass. Score one point for excitement.

Halftime – I missed the Cardinals final drive of the half which resulted in a 30 yard field goal, set up by a 44-yard pass from Warner to Anquan Boldin. I had to get a head-start on the line for the restroom. As it turns out, the lines were predictably long and I also missed the world’s greatest frisbee-catching dogs, which may or may not have been the second most exciting thing to happen in this game so far. 14-10 Giants at the half.

We will now fast-forward to the 13:11 mark of the 4th quarter, because the only notes I have written down about the 3rd quarter are, “ugh”, “not again”, “wow, that’s a lot of  boo’s” and “nice pass Eli”. Just to recap the third, the Cardinals scored on their first possession of the second half on a Hightower touchdown run after another Giants three and out. An Eli Manning pass that was picked off by Eugene Wilson later in the quarter led to a 6-yard touchdown pass from Warner to Jason Wright to make it 24-14 Cardinals. At this point, I was standing on my seat and hoping that they didn’t show anymore highlights from the Yankees game on the jumbotron.

4th Quarter

13:11 – Aside from the touchdown we scored off the fluke tipped pass play and the touchdown that was set up by Terrell Thomas’s interception, the offense hasn’t done much of anything tonight. Regardless, we are now set up on the Cardinals 44 yard line with a chance to cut into this lead.

9:50 – A 17 yard pass over the middle to Steve Smith and it’s first down at the Cardinals’ 11 yard line. The Giants can get a first down without scoring a touchdown, which is definitely an advantage for us and our poor red-zone offense. Although it’s still a two-score game and we need a touchdown and field goal, it’s always easier to get the touchdown first and then only need a field goal to tie.

9:05 – Third and three on the 4-yard line. I’m thinking that if they can’t pick up the first down here that they go for it on fourth down. With 9 minutes left, there’s still plenty of time left to make a stop with Arizona pinned on their own 1.

8:14 – Of course Jacobs only picks up 2 yards on a 3rd and 3 and of course Coughlin opts to kick the field goal instead of going for it on fourth down. Especially when Jacobs already converted a fourth down earlier on this drive. I guess we’ll settle for 24-17 and see if our defense can make some plays.

4:48 – Huge, huge stop for the defense. Kiwanuka comes up with the sack on a big 3rd and 3 play. Three timeouts to go, 83 yards for the touchdown. If the offense has any signs of life tonight, I think now would be the time for it to show its face. The Yankees are up 4-2 in the 8th and I’m starting to feel the first signs of OAS (Overtime Anxiety Syndrome). Amazing.

4:03 – Manning passes over the middle to Kevin Boss who makes an incredible catch for 25 yards to the Giants 42. What’s even more incredible was that he managed to hold onto the ball after he got his bell rung by Antrel Rolle. And even more amazing than that: I can actually feel NBC put up the graphic about the number of career comebacks in the 4th quarter or overtime that Eli Manning has. I hate close games.

3:52 – Well, Boss did a nice job of holding onto the ball after that catch, but guess who couldn’t hold onto the ball? Ahmad Bradshaw. After a nice 14 yard run to the Arizona 44, he loses the football and I haven’t seen the air sucked out of a stadium that quickly since the Vet was imploded. I would probably leave now if everyone else in the stadium didn’t have the same exact idea. Now I’m actually avoiding the traffic by staying.

2:52 – Can someone explain to me why the Cardinals just threw three straight passes? A 7 point lead with under 4 minutes to play and you don’t want to run the football and force the Giants to use up their timeouts? How does this make any sense at all? Actually, I’m not complaining. Improbably, we have one more chance now, at our own 9 yard line. This is it, this is what Eli does best.

2:45 – We’re going the wrong way…..

2:19 – HUGE PLAY! 3rd and 15 from our own 4, Eli completes a 34 yard pass to Steve Smith, and the hope is still alive! My eye is twitching at hyper speed right now, it’s like I have a metronome taped to my eyelid. I love overtime games.

1:20 – Pass to Manningham for 12 yards, Jacobs runs for 9 yards and then another 2 and it’s first down on the Cardinals 39. Timeout Giants. There’s that weird, uneasy, palpable buzz in the air right now that you can feel when a game starts coming down to the wire. It’s hard to describe, but it’s one of the reasons why I love football.

1:08 – A stomach punch. Talk about sucking the air completely out of the stadium, I’ve just seen it happen twice in a five-minute span. Unbelievable. Manning is picked off by Antrel Rolle on a pass intended for Steve Smith. What a somber scene right now, which is sure to be shattered in a few moments when everyone realizes that the Yankees just clinched the pennant. I can’t get out of this stadium fast enough right now.

The Giants beat themselves tonight, plain and simple. That’s what I’m going to convince myself after seeing that disappointing ending. Two opportunities to drive down the field and tie it in the final 5 minutes, two opportunities stopped dead in their tracks by two turnovers. Two awful, completely avoidable turnovers. I’m going to convince myself that we beat ourselves tonight if only because, for the second game in a row, we couldn’t get the job done against a quality team. This week it was the offense, not the defense, that left a lot to be desired. I thought we would come out and play with a little more intensity on our home turf for a Sunday night game, but that intensity was nowhere to be found. It was the costly turnovers that hurt us the most in the end, and at 5-2 now, we still have some room for improvement and luckily some room for error also, but it has to get better when we face the Eagles next week. And I believe that it will.


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