Back Bites #01

Crazy Birds: Nothing makes sense in the Cardinal’s 2006 season: from reversing into the playoffs with a woeful 83 win record; their startling victory over the NL’s best M-e-t-s, Mets; their dominance over the Detroit Tigers, cream of the so much superior American League; Pujols lacklustre hitting; Ecsksteins big day; their non-handling of the Smudgegate affair. Sheesh!! Let’s just get the thing over with before the snow comes down.

That AL Myth: If the AL is so superior to the NL, how come the Tigers are getting hog-tied by the Cardinal’s supposedly wobbly pitching line-up. Is everyone too polite to blame the seven day layoff after their sweep of Oakland? Guess the Tigers are on an adrenaline low after spiking against the Yankees and surfing the tide against the woeful Athletics.

It’s like in seventh grade when the geeks snuck home and left the (AL) bullies to wait at the gate till they got bored: there’s only so many times you can neat up on those chess club geeks before they plain out smart ya, eh?

Barber’s Cut: Where do these pundits get the idea Tiki Barber shouldn’t, in Mid-season, announce he plans to retire?

It’s not as if he’s a coach-when maybe you could see knowing they guy wasn’t going to be here next year might harm team motivation.

How can a player retirement affect a team? Let’s think … oh! Wasn’t Jerome Betis on a season long farewell tour last season? HOW did that turn out for the Steelers? Not so bad, uh?

Time to dish out one of ESPN’s Mike and Mike’s ‘Just shut up’ awards to these guys. Pipe down.

dailyAside

So, the rain puts a damper on the Cardinal’s dash to glory last night. Sat up awhile waiting to see the game but it was obvious early there was going to be no Soup on offer that night.

Supan’s shutout pitching performances in the NLCS give Card’s fans belief that this is their ‘year of destiny’ … Lord knows they deserve some payback after seeing the 2004 team just rolling over on the Red Sox.

And although Game 4 isn’t a ‘must win’ for them, still the Tigers have to hope they can find some timely hitting if they are to avoid getting into a deep hole.

The rain delay, with more forecast for Thursday stacks the odds further against the Tigers. If Supan can pickup a win on (say) Friday to go 3-1 up then La Russa may go for the power play of pitching Carpenter in game 5; aiming to seal the series in St. Louis rather than risk being taken behind the wood shed in Detroit.

It’s an intriguing matchup. Mop up … And play ball!

sportsrant: Rogers non-story

What the hell is all the fuss about? So, Kenny Rogers is suddenly deadly effective in the clutch! You can’t pin that on the pine tar. Or benzo-something-ate, or whatever it is pitchers slip on to gain a better purchase on the ball.

All the geeks who’ve pored over the video tapes can tell you, he’s had the same smudge on his hand through a good not great (17-8) regular season too. So have a lot of pitchers, especially after swinging the pine in the National League.

It’s a part of the game. Who says so? Tony La Russa for one. I guess that’s why he didn’t himself make a whole big deal of it. Come to that neither did Joe Torre. Yet it was there to be challenged.

I guess Rogers was careless in flouting one of Baseball’s famous unwritten rules just a little too brazenly … Just like the speedster who’s copped for an 80mph dash when he normally gets away with a 75mph dash.

That’s the entire scale of it.

And let’s remember Rogers was pretty darn good once he’d got rid of the stuff, whatever it was.

Maybe with him it’s more a mental crutch than physical help he needs; but isn’t that what we’ve always known about this 200 win vet with an under achieving playoff slate?

Maybe this time the ‘numbers’ game is smiling his way. But game 6 could be his defining moment. With this niggling in his head it’s going to be tougher than ever.

It sure is stacking up to a gripping World Series though. And maybe, just maybe, La Russa has gotten one over on his old friend Jim ‘horse whisperer’ Leland by putting this one in his back pocket.

Leland has been spot-on with his decision making and man management to date in these playoffs, getting this thing out of Rogers head in time for a game 6 win could be his greatest challenge yet.

Play ball!

Technorati Tags: tigers, rogers, baseball, pine-tar

View from the Bridge: Merriman joins the queue …

How refreshing was it to finally hear someone take a rap and apologise instead of getting their publicist/agent/mother to issue a standard vanilla denial.

Step up Shawne Merriman. Take a caning for having relied upon steroids to boost your God-given talents. Then take a bow for having had the courage to admit a mistake.

Woah. Woah, there boy. Woah. We got to back this baby up.

For a minute there I thought we’d hit character paydirt … Seems not.

After the Chargers’ second-year pro bowl linebacker, Merriman, was hit with a four game suspension ruling him out of a quarter of San Diego’s season he said he wanted to take responsibility for what happened, and then did the exact opposite.

So, Merriman joins the long line of cheats who didn’t do it. Are they all guilty? Probably not all. But equally they ain’t all innocent either.

For just a moment I thought Merriman was at least different; seems he’s not.

He resolved to appeal any suspension telling ESPN: “Hopefully nobody makes any kind of judgement or anything that basically makes me guilty for anything because nothing has been done wrong on my part.”

Then he had his lawyer trot out the obligatory plausible excuse, having David Cornwell blame the detection of nandrolone on its presence as an unnamed ingredient in one of Merriman’s supplements.

Then Cornwell adopted tactic number #2 (seek to deflect and defuse) by stating this was a wider issue of ‘tainted supplements’.

Cornwell said nandrolone “is the primary culprit in tainted supplements. I know that people get tired of hearing it, but it is a fact and it is not going to go away until the Congress of the United States deals with it.”

Unregulated supplements may well be an issue for Congress, but until they get a lot higher up the US Government’s To Do list perhaps millionaire sports stars had best avoid them.

That way people like Merriman will not – as his lawyer put it – “unwittingly (play) Russian roulette with his career”.

That way the sports fans will see true talents knocking seven bells out of each other in a fair contest to excel.

Technorati Tags: NFL, Chargers, Merriman

The GBU Report

23Oct06: The GBU Report

The Good:

Brady Quinn. There’s 1:10 on the clock and the ‘Irish’ are trailing by 4 to an amped-up UCLA Bruins. The Bears have harried Quinn all afternoon and they smell blood. But 38 second, three plays and 80 yards of real estate later Quinn has marched Notre Dame down field and freed the shackles on Samardzija who wouldn’t be tackled as he stormed into the endzone for the decisive score.

How good must it feel to be BQ at that moment?

The Bad:

The self destructing Arizona Cardinals who couldn’t get it together again after their gutting loss to the Chicago Bears defence and stumbled to their sixth loss of the season, confounding pundits who had slated opponents Oakland for an 0-16 season.

The Ugly:

Rosin or not, the dirty hands of Kenny Rogers cast just a little doubt on another otherwise overwhelming playoff pitching performance from the veteran.

But Rogers washed-off and pitched another seven spotless innings in steering the Tigers back to 1-1 with an eight inning shutout.

Whether he deliberately tried to cheat or not, the first inning intervention of Cardinal coach, Tony La Russa, saved him from a playoff asterisk and a dodgy footnote.

The fact he cleaned up literally before cleaning up the Cardinal sluggers through another seven innings ought to overshadow the doubters.

But it won’t stop the cynic from poring over his performance against the Yankees for even the hint of a smudge.

Technorati Tags: NFL, NCAAFB, Quin