betED.com - The View from the Couch - by Gavin McDougald!
September 26th , 2007 - Keeping our Eye on the Ball
It?s hard to remember when there was a better ending to a regular baseball season.
In the National League things are nothing short of nuts. A full 157 games into the season and in the NL there are still no guaranteed playoff spots. The Arizona Diamondbacks, the Chicago Cubs and the New York Mets are all only two games up with five to play. Arizona has the best shot at clinching first, sending their top three pitchers against the Pirates who have lost nine straight. But after that, if they don?t get it done, they face a red hot Colorado. The Mets, who just can?t seem to clinch and are driving their fans to distraction, have to get past three teams spoiling to be spoilers, Washington, St. Louis and Florida. As for Chicago, who play all their remaining games on the road, that silence you hear is every Cubs fan everywhere holding their collective breaths.
The Wild Card chase is, not surprisingly, wild. The San Diego Padres looked like they were a lock until a four game losing streak. The Rockies are peaking at the perfect time winning nine in a row. As a result they, along with the Phillies, are just one game back. Even Atlanta is still in it, climbing within three games of the Wild Card.
All that boils down to this: With just the rest of the week to go, it is still realistic that all three current division leaders could be left out of the playoffs when the final game is played.
The American League is less unsettled with two of the three division titles locked up. However the AL East and the wild card are still up in the air, and almost miraculously the New York Yankees are still in the mix. If you remember from earlier in the season, they where counted out by just about everyone, except the true diehards (and me), as being dead as the Babe and virtually guaranteed to miss the postseason for the first time since 1993.
From last place and 14.5 games out of it in going into June, they crept out of the cellar by going a major league-best 47-24 since the All-Star break and still have a slim shot at the AL East title. It?s always a bad idea to discount the power of George?s money.
So, with all that going on, and with only a handful of games to go, what would you expect to be the lead baseball headline in every major sports section?s across the country today? Something about the chase? Something about the Yankees? Something about how great this time of year is if you are a baseball fan?
How about these instead:
* New York Times: Bonds Ball to Be Branded With Asterisk
* Los Angeles Times: Bonds Ball Branded With Asterisk
* Washington Post: Asterisk for Bonds Ball
* ESPN: The votes are in: Bonds' 756 ball to get asterisk
* CBS Sportsline: Bonds Ball to Be Branded With Asterisk
The Los Angeles Dodgers get eliminated from the postseason, and the biggest headline the next day in their hometown paper is about Barry frikin? Bonds! I ask you, who is running baseball? Britney Spears? Press agent?
The guy who bought homer ball #756, fashion designer Marc Echo, set up a website and asked fans to vote on what they thought should be done with the ball. (My vote, which was for sending it off into outer space, lost by a narrow margin.)
Echo won the ball at auction on September 15th for the final selling price of $752,467.00. That staggering figure, for something that isn?t truly a sports relic, rather a curiosity, even inspired Bonds to describe Echo as an ?idiot.? But that idiot did something clever and allowed the fans to voice their opinion on what to do with it. Good for him and now it is going to be immortalized in the shrine to baseball ? but with a witty statement attached.
It?s going in branded with a large *. The Hall?s reaction was nothing short of, ?goodie!? They did insist that accepting the ball with the mark did not mean the Hall necessarily accepted the fact that Barry Bonds used drugs to get to 756, rather that they were simply ?happy to get it.? But they know, bogus or not, it is a novelty, and novelties attract a crowd.
Hopefully when they install it, it will go beside the ?exploding scoreboard? and the ?Death to Disco? exhibits.
So here we are, in the last week of what has been, from a competition point of view, a great season for baseball. It would be easy to say that it wasn?t baseball?s fault that their season ending thunder has been silenced a bit by Bonds, but they should have seen this coming a mile away and dealt with this stunt early on. But typical for them whenever Bonds is involved, they messed up.
The bottom line is: Leave it to the man with the overly large head to cast an overly large shadow over the game of baseball.
Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch
Bet on MLB here!
September 26th , 2007 - Keeping our Eye on the Ball
It?s hard to remember when there was a better ending to a regular baseball season.
In the National League things are nothing short of nuts. A full 157 games into the season and in the NL there are still no guaranteed playoff spots. The Arizona Diamondbacks, the Chicago Cubs and the New York Mets are all only two games up with five to play. Arizona has the best shot at clinching first, sending their top three pitchers against the Pirates who have lost nine straight. But after that, if they don?t get it done, they face a red hot Colorado. The Mets, who just can?t seem to clinch and are driving their fans to distraction, have to get past three teams spoiling to be spoilers, Washington, St. Louis and Florida. As for Chicago, who play all their remaining games on the road, that silence you hear is every Cubs fan everywhere holding their collective breaths.
The Wild Card chase is, not surprisingly, wild. The San Diego Padres looked like they were a lock until a four game losing streak. The Rockies are peaking at the perfect time winning nine in a row. As a result they, along with the Phillies, are just one game back. Even Atlanta is still in it, climbing within three games of the Wild Card.
All that boils down to this: With just the rest of the week to go, it is still realistic that all three current division leaders could be left out of the playoffs when the final game is played.
The American League is less unsettled with two of the three division titles locked up. However the AL East and the wild card are still up in the air, and almost miraculously the New York Yankees are still in the mix. If you remember from earlier in the season, they where counted out by just about everyone, except the true diehards (and me), as being dead as the Babe and virtually guaranteed to miss the postseason for the first time since 1993.
From last place and 14.5 games out of it in going into June, they crept out of the cellar by going a major league-best 47-24 since the All-Star break and still have a slim shot at the AL East title. It?s always a bad idea to discount the power of George?s money.
So, with all that going on, and with only a handful of games to go, what would you expect to be the lead baseball headline in every major sports section?s across the country today? Something about the chase? Something about the Yankees? Something about how great this time of year is if you are a baseball fan?
How about these instead:
* New York Times: Bonds Ball to Be Branded With Asterisk
* Los Angeles Times: Bonds Ball Branded With Asterisk
* Washington Post: Asterisk for Bonds Ball
* ESPN: The votes are in: Bonds' 756 ball to get asterisk
* CBS Sportsline: Bonds Ball to Be Branded With Asterisk
The Los Angeles Dodgers get eliminated from the postseason, and the biggest headline the next day in their hometown paper is about Barry frikin? Bonds! I ask you, who is running baseball? Britney Spears? Press agent?
The guy who bought homer ball #756, fashion designer Marc Echo, set up a website and asked fans to vote on what they thought should be done with the ball. (My vote, which was for sending it off into outer space, lost by a narrow margin.)
Echo won the ball at auction on September 15th for the final selling price of $752,467.00. That staggering figure, for something that isn?t truly a sports relic, rather a curiosity, even inspired Bonds to describe Echo as an ?idiot.? But that idiot did something clever and allowed the fans to voice their opinion on what to do with it. Good for him and now it is going to be immortalized in the shrine to baseball ? but with a witty statement attached.
It?s going in branded with a large *. The Hall?s reaction was nothing short of, ?goodie!? They did insist that accepting the ball with the mark did not mean the Hall necessarily accepted the fact that Barry Bonds used drugs to get to 756, rather that they were simply ?happy to get it.? But they know, bogus or not, it is a novelty, and novelties attract a crowd.
Hopefully when they install it, it will go beside the ?exploding scoreboard? and the ?Death to Disco? exhibits.
So here we are, in the last week of what has been, from a competition point of view, a great season for baseball. It would be easy to say that it wasn?t baseball?s fault that their season ending thunder has been silenced a bit by Bonds, but they should have seen this coming a mile away and dealt with this stunt early on. But typical for them whenever Bonds is involved, they messed up.
The bottom line is: Leave it to the man with the overly large head to cast an overly large shadow over the game of baseball.
Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch
Bet on MLB here!
