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Tuesday, October 23, 2007
TV dragging World Series into irrelevancy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
This is ridiculous. It’s time the corn has been shucked and the pumpkins harvested, and the first frost is just around the corner. And the first World Series pitch hasn’t been delivered.
World Series, mind you. The jewel of our national pastime, but losing ground. When you stack up the game’s most glorious event behind two weeks of preliminaries, and you finally get around to it, the edge is worn off. The glow has faded. We’re dragging it along behind us like an afterthought.
The way it has been bedraggled, the World Series is beginning to look like a second cousin. We’ve had years when the team that won the World Series didn’t even win the pennant. Take this year, for instance.
Now, the first inclination is to blame Bud Selig. He’s the commissioner, you know. He was just standing there when some club owners decided Fay Vincent was getting too oatsy in the job. He resigned after getting a no-confidence vote. Then “Hey, you” over there was called in and said, “You’re the commissioner.”
He was just a commonplace one-time car salesman who owned the Milwaukee Brewers, but a harmless little guy who wouldn’t stir up the waters. He has been wearing the title a good while, and hasn’t done much damage, for in real life, the so-called commissioner is television.
The guys who push the buttons and schedule the shows and report to guys who sit around board rooms. You find Bud Selig somewhere down there in the middle of the pile smiling nicely and being harmless.
So baseball jumps when television says jump. The regular season ended Sept. 30, and for the most of three weeks since the two leagues have been working their way toward the World Series.
But first, Colorado had to take care of some overtime duty. You see, this is the third stage of the Rockies’ postseason. They had to play San Diego for the wild-card ticket, and that game ran on into extra innings, and ended when a Rockies baserunner scored the tie-breaking run, though it was obvious that he never touched home plate.
Then they had to play Philadelphia in the divisional playoffs, and won. Then they had to play Arizona for the league championship, and won. They just forgot how to lose, and here they are playing in the World Series, though they got here on a disputed play at home plate against San Diego.
Silliest thing is, after barely crashing the party, the Rockies have been sitting around nine days waiting for the American League to come up with a champion.
You see, the reason for that is television. The networks schedule games to fit in between the nut-house shows they book. It’s a game that has to take its place in line with television fare that wouldn’t pass kindergarten inspection.
This time television stretched it out to the very limit. Now, on the 24th of October, when both teams should have uniforms and equipment stowed, and spring training on their minds, the Rockies and Red Sox are just beginning to have it out in the World Series. Ridiculous.
Presumably, they’ll be through by Thanksgiving, allowing for Denver’s fractious weather. One day it can be 75 degrees and next day comes a blizzard. Not that Boston doesn’t spend a good part of its winters shoveling. Me, I’m pulling for snow. (You know, of course, that Cleveland got snowed out on opening day and had to move the series to Milwaukee under cover.)
With no thought to the younger generation - and a lot of us oldsters - television doesn’t vary from its bad manners. I never saw the last out of any of the first two series. It’s rare when kids have baseball heroes any more. They have to turn the lights out before the game is over. Thanks to you, Mr. Commissioner, and Mr. Push-button Television exec.
In addition to snow, I’m going for the Rockies. I’m a Helton, Holliday, Hawpe, Atkins and Tulowitzki guy, and especially Tulowitzki. Remember, he was the rookie who turned an unassisted triple play against the Braves.
Another thing, these were the guys who voted a full player’s share to the family of Mike Coolbaugh. Coolbaugh was the coach at the Tulsa farm club who was struck and killed by a line drive. He’d been with the team for only three weeks, and the Rockies barely knew of him. That’s what I call heart, and I like guys with heart.
As for the Red Sox, I’m getting pretty tired of Big Papi and Ramirez and his floor-mop hairdo, and oh, so tired of seeing Terry Francona spit the evening away. Somebody send him a spittoon.
Permalink | Comments (44) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Long layoff will hurt Rockies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Only baseball, the silliest of sports, could have taken the hottest team in the history of down-the-stretch baseball and given it eight days to cool off. Nobody else has been able to slow the Colorado Rockies, but Bud Selig and his schedulers have managed.
The Rockies will play Game 1 of the World Series Wednesday in Fenway Park. They last played on Oct. 15. They last lost on Sept. 28. The last thing a surging club needs is a week off, but baseball was weary of its crowning event starting and ending on weekends and thereby being forced to share a stage with college and pro football. So Bud and his minions added more off-days to the postseason, and what has baseball gotten?
A showcase event that, if it doesn’t end in a sweep, will share a city with the NFL. The Broncos, long Denver’s favored team, are scheduled to play host to the Green Bay Packers at Invesco Field on Monday night. Game 5 is set for Coors Field, 3 1/2 miles away.
But we shouldn’t be too hard on baseball for not seeing the Rockies coming. On Sept. 15, Colorado was 4 1/2 games behind the San Diego Padres in the wild-card race and only one game ahead of the Braves. It won 13 of its final 14 regular-season games to force a one-game playoff with San Diego. Down 8-6 in the 13th inning against Trevor Hoffman, the Rockies scored three runs - actually only two, given that Matt Holliday never touched home plate with either his hand or his chinny-chin-chin - to buy postseason passage. Once in, the Rockies have proved invincible.
Since it started playing in 1993, Colorado has been the baseball equivalent of arena football. The Rockies had finished above .500 only four times and had qualified for the playoffs but once - they lost to the Braves 3-1 in the 1995 Division Series - and had proved beyond all doubt that baseball without pitching isn’t baseball. In 2002 the frazzled Rockies installed a walk-in humidor at Coors Field to keep baseballs from hardening at altitude and thereby traveling farther than they should.
Until then, nothing had worked. After the 2000 season the Rockies spent $172 million on free agents Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle - recognize those names? - and those two were a collective 40-51 with Colorado. These Rockies, believe it or not, had the National League’s best ERA the second half of the season.
And now the man who overspent for free agents is being hailed as the smartest general manager east of Billy Beane. With no real alternatives, Dan O’Dowd chose to go homegrown, and the Rockies’ system has yielded hitters (Holliday, Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe, Troy Tulowitzki) and even pitchers (Jeff Francis, Ubaldo Jimenez, Manny Corpas). Meet the new Rox, organizational model.
The Rockies have reached the World Series with a payroll of $54 million. Their opponent has invested nearly three times that. Just as Colorado has re-invented itself, so have the Red Sox. Once the team that couldn’t win no matter what, Boston has become the club that expects to win no matter what and will spend whatever it takes.
The Red Sox trailed Cleveland 3-1 in the ALCS but outscored the Indians 30-5 over the final three games. (It was reminiscent of the 1996 NLCS, when the Braves faced a similar deficit and outscored St. Louis 32-1 thereafter.) Boston broke the much-ballyhooed Curse of the Bambino by overthrowing the Yankees and winning the World Series in 2004, and now the Sox see championships as manifest destiny.
Game 7 against Cleveland: Shortstop Julio Lugo, hugely unloved by Red Sox Nation, drops Kenny Lofton’s pop with Boston holding a one-run lead in the seventh inning. In olden days this would become the moment of undoing, the Bucky Dent/Bill Buckner moment. Instead the Sox are spared when coach Joel Skinner inexplicably holds Lofton at third base. See, times do change.
Don’t look for the Rockies to succumb meekly, but don’t look for them to keep winning. The eight-day hiatus will have a massive effect. The Rockies have enough hitters - almost an American League lineup, to invoke the highest form of praise - to make the Sox work, but Boston has two World Series MVPs (Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling) in its rotation. There’s your difference. Sox in six.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Falcons’ present, future ruined
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN
10: I suddenly find myself strangely attracted to Marie Osmond.
9: I didn’t watch “Dancing With The Stars” Monday night, and if I did I wouldn’t admit. But I did see video of my Marie fainting (you can find it here: http://www.tmz.com/tmzmainvideo?titleid=1266416895) and it got me thinking: Why not: “Passing Out With The Stars”? There are more than enough candidates in Hollywood and the sports world to fill episodes, just in the NFL alone, and ESPN and MTV can fight it out for TV rights.
8: Oh, I’m sorry. Were you in a hurry to talk Falcons football?
7: So. if you’re the Falcons, do you think about going to Roger Goodell and saying, “Look, we surrender. Take our gate receipts for the rest of the year. Take our TV revenue. Forget the next eight games. Leave us with what little dignity we have left.” Because while it can’t possibly get any worse, we’ve said that seven times and it keeps getting worse.
6: Now the Falcons are even killing next season. Here’s why: The decision to start Byron Leftwich at quarterback was less about trying to salvage this season than it was about previewing next year. The thinking: Even if the Falcons draft a quarterback, that rookie was not going to step straight into the lineup. The Falcons need a veteran QB and Leftwich was/is the most likely candidate. Now you’ve blown several weeks of him working in Bobby Petrino’s offense.
5: Then again, I guess that assumes Bobby Petrino’s offense will be here next season.
4: The Don Waddell-coached Thrashers went from in inaugural 5-3 win over New York to a 6-2 loss to Tampa Bay, during which they were outshot, 17-2, in the first period. I guess the system needs tweaking.
3: I’m leaving for Boston tonight for the World Series. I promise to return with a full scouting report and answer to the question that we never figured had to be answered: Can the Braves be as good as the Rockies?
2: One day, I hope to be like Joe Torre and feel insulted by a $5 million contract offer.
- If Paul Byrd was taking HGH when he was with the Braves, how come he stunk?
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
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