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Sunday, October 28, 2007
NASCAR doesn’t need teamwork
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
This was considered a good day for Carl Edwards. He finished second in a Nextel Cup race and he didn’t come close to decking a teammate.
I dunno. I kind of liked last week better.
It’s not that one NASCAR driver pushing another and feigning like he is going to throw a haymaker — as Edwards did with Roush teammate Matt Kenseth, live on TV (and now YouTube) — elevates the sport to new heights. But it’s honest. And Edwards feuding with a teammate, as lame as some might find it, qualifies as some needed honesty in NASCAR.
Has there ever been a sport filled with more conflicts of interests?
For all of its economic success, NASCAR is forever wearing blinders. There are owners with multiple teams. There are drivers from “competing” teams drawing paychecks from the same owner seeking the same championship.
Worst of all, there is Jeff Gordon, who, in addition to driving his own car for Hendrick Motorsports, is co-owner of the car driven by Jimmie Johnson, who trails Gordon by a slim nine points in the Cup standings going into the season’s final three races.
“Listen, it would be fun if we all had separate owners, separate teams, everything,” Edwards said Sunday, standing by his motorhome-away-from-home after a second-place finish behind Johnson in the Pep Boys Auto 500 moved him into fourth in the points standings. “That would be kind of neat. But our sport’s not as simple as others.
“Hey, if last week’s events have proven one thing, it’s that things are not always rosy between teammates. There’s good and bad to it. It’s not like it’s always an advantage.”
No. But the fact that it ever can be an advantage, or that there’s the perception of a conflict, is problematic. Teammates can run interference for each other. They can swap leads in races so both can accumulate bonus points in the standings. They share information.
Nothing against Gordon, who is an honest competitor and I’m sure wasn’t happy that he finished seventh, and not first, Sunday. But I get the feeling he would’ve been a lot more upset if somebody other than his buddy — and employee — won.
Johnson won. So Gordon made money. There is something seriously wrong with that.
“If those guys beat us and did positive things to win the race, I’ll go give them high fives,” Gordon said.
Most drivers will tell you they don’t have a problem with this incestuous relationship.
Johnson defended the situation again after his win, saying: “I think there’s more drama that we have two teammates racing each other for the championship. It’s not like, ‘OK, you go, now I’ll go.’ We go after it.
“There’s a lot of respect Jeff has for people he races against, including me. If it was Tony Stewart or Kurt Busch that Jeff was racing against, it wouldn’t be any different. We’re really bringing out the best in one another and being forced to step up our game.”
But that misses the point. Teammates often share information with each other about things like track conditions. True competitors don’t share information.
Know what? Sometimes, true competitors sometime feel like punching each other.
Can you imagine George Steinbrenner owning both the Yankees and Red Sox, and the teams sharing scouting reports — then claiming all is kosher while they compete for the pennant? Why would you provide information to another team that might help them win — effectively increasing your chance to lose? Because it’s good for the “team”?
When Edwards said NASCAR is “more complex than other sports,” what he’s really saying is this is about money. “It’s cheaper for someone to add a second team than start a new one,” he said.
Owners want to build the best teams with the best drivers to draw the most sponsorship dollars. Do you believe Hendrick wants Johnson to take a risk on a pass or put Gordon into the wall in the name of winning?
Earlier in the week, Gordon admitted: “When you are on the track going for a pass, and you know how hard you have to push it, you think of them as teammates because you know that [Hendrick] is going to be really mad and you’re going to get a call if you wreck one another.”
It wasn’t a left hook. But at least it was honest.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Postseason baseball games too slow to keep interest
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — I love postseason baseball — in theory. The reality is rather different. I don’t love nine-inning games that begin at 8:36 p.m. EDT and end 4 hours and 19 minutes later. Saturday night’s Game 3 had a lot of things to keep you interested — a big Red Sox surge, a big Colorado comeback, a clinching Boston countermove — but how many in the Eastern Time Zone (outside New England, that is) stayed up to watch?
The first World Series game I ever saw in person was Game 1 in 1972 at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. The Oakland A’s beat the Reds 3-2. Gene Tenace hit home runs his first two times up. Vida Blue worked 2 1/3 innings in relief and earned the save. Jackie Robinson, who would die 10 days later, threw out the first ball. Time of that game: 2 hours and 18 minutes.
I ask myself: If I were 17 years old today, would I have the patience to watch — or, to use a more pejorative word, endure — postseason baseball? Would games that never run less than three hours and often run past midnight hold my interest the way the games did in my formative years?
My answer: No way.
USA Today ran a story last week on the glacial pace of October baseball, and it noted that, contrary to what many of us believe, the overlords of MLB and Fox TV don’t mind if games last until tomorrow. “Up to midnight with a close game,” consultant Neal Pilson was quoted as saying, “that makes network executives sleep well.”
Why? Because, according to USA Today, research indicates viewers often turn to baseball after watching prime-time shows, which end at 11 p.m. in the East. But let’s think about that: The target audience for baseball’s showcase event has become the audience that doesn’t really care much for baseball? Is that how far America’s former pastime has fallen?
Clearly the game has changed from the days of Gene Tenace and Vida Blue, to say nothing of Joe DiMaggio and Al Gionfriddo. The ability to take pitches has become, to many organizations, as great a skill as the ability to hit pitches. There were 339 pitches thrown in Game 3, and when you added all that to Fox’s 35-minute pregame show and its three-minute commercial breaks between half-innings, you wound up with the longest nine-inning game in World Series history.
And that’s too much for the casual viewer, too much for even the truly interested viewer. When the NFL saw its games running ever longer, it moved to have its 40-second clock start on the whistle that ends a play and to let the game clock restart after a player runs out of bounds (except in the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the second). The NFL, which has long been the gold standard for sports as a product, was smart enough to grasp that in a world where everything moves faster, it made no sense to go slower.
Baseball being baseball, it hasn’t gotten the memo. It hasn’t demanded that Fox start games earlier or cut pregame shows in half. It can’t do anything to keep batters from taking pitches, but it could do more to keep the games moving. It could preclude batters from stepping out and readjusting each article of clothing after every pitch. It could put pitchers on a pitch clock. (The idea has been floated in years past, but it needs to be more than floated now.)
The first World Series game I ever attended took 2 hours and 1 minute less than the one I witnessed here Saturday night. Think about that. I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I have to confess: If I hadn’t been getting paid, I wouldn’t have watched Game 3 to the end. Life’s too short. As Lenny Megliola of the Metro West Daily Post said when the official time of 4:19 was announced, “My first marriage didn’t last that long.”
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Rockies’ streak ended by ‘big boys’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — It was fun while it lasted, but it’s over now. The Colorado Rockies, who forgot what it was to lose, have been rudely reminded. The only thing wrong with winning 21 of 22 games was that all 22 were played against National League opponents, and there is a difference.
The National League is known as the Senior Circuit, but in contemporary baseball it’s more akin to Class AAAA. The American League is where the big boys play, and the biggest boy on any block is the kid who, for 86 excruciating years, was Charlie Brown.
The Red Sox used to be the team that couldn’t win, but everything changed in October 2004. Boston clambered from a 3-0 hole to beat the imperial Yankees in the ALCS, and since then the Sox have graced two World Series and haven’t lost a game yet. They overwhelmed St. Louis in 2004, and now the cute little Rockies are in danger of being similarly swept.
All that time New Englanders were praying for deliverance, who knew it would arrive with such force?
Here’s how lopsided this Series has gotten: Rockies manager Clint Hurdle changed his lineup for Game 3, deploying as his center fielder the legendary Cory Sullivan. Who’s Cory Sullivan? He’s the guy who drove in 14 regular-season runs, who entered Game 3 with one postseason hit. He exited having gone 0-for-2.
Said Hurdle, speaking before the game: “I don’t believe you ever want to put a lineup up at this point in the season where the guys go, ‘What?’ ” This one, however, came close.
To be fair, a young Willie Mays could have patrolled center field Saturday night for all the difference it would have made. The Colorado starter, the regrettably named Josh Fogg, faced 19 batters. Twelve reached base. The Sox scored six runs in the third. The fourth and fifth runs stemmed from a single by Daisuke Matsuzaka, who hadn’t had a big-league hit since arriving from Japan. At the point in the 2007 World Series, the imported pitcher had as many RBI as the team that led the National League in hitting.
In their breathless September-into-October surge, it was often said the Rockies have almost an American League lineup. The Sox, as has been apparent for years, have the American League lineup — a batting order that will take pitches until the cows come home and often long thereafter, that will put the ball in play and more than occasionally over the fence. (Though it must be noted that the Sox have hit only one homer in the Series, that by Dustin Pedroia on the second pitch of Game 1.)
To their credit, the Rockies finally put up a fight. They scored twice in the sixth inning and in the seventh Matt Holliday launched a preposterous three-run homer. That pared the Colorado deficit to a run, and for a heady moment it seemed the team that won 21 of 22 was alive and well and swinging a hot stick.
But these Red Sox aren’t the 1996 Braves, who wasted a six-run lead in the pivotal Game 4 of that World Series, or the 2002 Giants, who squandered a five-run lead in Game 6. With the game back in question, the Sox promptly scored three runs in the eighth — the top-of-the-order rookies Jacoby Ellsbury and Pedroia had run-scoring doubles — and the big ballpark on Blake Street went silent again.
And now all that’s left is the clinching. It could come tonight, when Jon Lester, who has beaten back a cancer diagnosed 13 months ago, starts for Boston. If not then, the untouchable Josh Beckett awaits in Game 5.
It was a nice story, this rise of the Rockies, but it has been trumped by a much better team from a much better league. That’s the trouble with nice stories: They sometimes meet a not-so-nice end.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Mark Bradley
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