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Monday, November 2nd 2009 - Sports Commentary
The best minds in sports have a way of putting it. "It isn't over 'til it's over", says baseball sage Yogi Berra. "Forty minutes hard", is the mantra UConn men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun drives into the psyches of his players. Whether it's determined by outs or minutes, every game has its limits and you play to them. Football is a game of sixty minutes. Fifty nine minutes and twenty two seconds won't finish it, not with a three point lead, not with another team on the field. The UConn football team's attention span wandered with thirty three seconds left and eleven seconds later the Huskies found themselves in a four point hole they couldn't get out of, just sixteen seconds after Jordan Todman had given them a three point lead with a two yard fourth down touchdown run. Starting at their own nineteen yard line with thirty three seconds left Rutgers needed just one play, a pass over the middle to Jasper Howard's childhood friend Tim Brown on the day the slain UConn cornerback was honored by thirty eight thousand plus at Rentschler field. Brown split the UConn defense and went eighty one yards to hand the Huskies their fourth come from ahead loss of the season. "We had the opportunity to make a play when we needed to and we didn't", said UConn coach Randy Edsall a half hour after the Scarlet Knights inserted the dagger, "They make a good throw and they make a good catch, but then we had a young man that really took a bad angle to the ball and then he didn't make the tackle. It was a coverage we used all day, our best guy on their best guy (Reggie McLain on Brown) but the guy over the top has to come up and make the play." Twenty four hours later, three miles away, at the XL Center, the Hartford Wolf Pack was locked up in with the number one team in the American Hockey League, the Manchester Monarchs. Sixty minutes hard, and then some. Sixty minutes and a 2-2 tie. Overtime. Five more minutes and, if still undecided, they put it in the hands of the shooters and the goaltenders, mano-a-mano. "It isn't over 'til it's over." A big swing game for the Wolf Pack, looking to take four of five on the homestand to get to .500 and within striking distance of the Atlantic Division lead. Two first period goals for the Pack, two second period goals for the Monarchs, a standoff in the third. The last attack goes to the Wolf Pack with P.A. Parenteau, disappointed by his return from the NHL New York Rangers, bringing it in and setting it up. Twice the Monarchs appear to clear it out of harms way, twice Bobby Sanguinetti keeps it in, the second time getting it to the front of the net, stick side. Three seconds left, Corey Locke takes a swipe. Under the pads, two seconds left. The puck gets through and slips, open, into the crease. One second left, a poke by Locke, the puck clears the line just as the final digit ticks off the clock. "That's one of the things we ask them to do", said Wolf Pack coach Ken Gernander, "Stay with the plays up front, continue battling and get those second and third opportunities. That was a good finish there." Indeed it was, a finish Randy Edsall might want to show his football team. A team that's just thirteen points, and four breakdowns in the closing minutes, from being undefeated. With a comment from the sports world, I'm Scott Gray.
Tuesday, November 3rd 2009 - Sports Commentary
I must be doing something right. I know how Joe Buck and Tim McCarver feel. The FOX World Series broadcasters have drawn heat from Yankee fans who feel they've been showing favoritism toward the Phillies. FOX reports they get just as many communications complaining of favoritism toward the Yankees. Any teams in the World Series offer a lot of good things that can be said about them. Fans hear what they want to hear and the scale has yet to be invented that can accurately measure which team is getting the most kudos. The problem with this pair is they talk too much. Not many moments in this World Series, and there have been some big ones, have been left to speak for themselves. McCarver talks so much he reduces most of what he says to a state of irrelevence. He'd be a better listen if he did openly root for one team and cut his output in half. But the critisism they're recieving from both New York and Philly fans is an indication they're doing at least one part of their job right. Last year when Tampa Bay eliminated the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series a friend I've played golf with every Monday for twenty years gave me a "Red Sox Crying Towel". When I asked him why he told me after listening to me talk baseball for so long he knew I was a Red Sox fan. Two weeks ago at the weekly meeting of the Willow Inn Hot Stove League a long time member accused me of being a Yankee fan. It was the day I'd done the commentary on why the Red Sox should trade Jonathan Papelbon. He identically worded his reasoning, after nearly thirty years of listening to me talk baseball there was no question in his mind I was a Yankee fan. It's an interesting dynamic, living on this Mason-Dixon Line between Boston and New York. Fans hear what they want to hear. If you don't sound like an incarnation of Joe Castiglione or John Sterling or any other home team announcer who's view is distorted to the point of making the game almost unrecognizable, "You ain't for us, so you're agin us". I can understand why my golf buddy thought I was a Red Sox fan last year. Like the Yankees and Phillies have done for McCarver and Buck, given them a lot of good things to say about each team, the Red Sox gave me a lot of good things to say about them last year, when they went to game seven of the ALCS and the Yankees missed the playoffs. It's interesting I should have so many good things to say about the Yankees this season. Coincidentally they're in the World Series and the Red Sox are playing golf. It's a dynamic I've lived with my entire life. Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle were both childhood heroes of mine, but my first baseball hero was Johnny Podres, when he pitched the Brooklyn Dodgers to their only World Series title, over the Yankees. My dad was a Boston Braves fan. He weaned me on the National League. By the time I was old enough the Braves were gone and the Dodgers were the team. Whatever it is I'm doing that angers both Red Sox fans and Yankee fans I come by it honestly. And I must be doing it right. With a comment from the sports world, I'm Scott Gray.
Wednesday, November 4th 2009 Sports Commentary
When luring the money to you becomes problematic, go where the money is. Golf is on course, pardon the pun, for cultivating a new source of revenue in the most burgeoning financial market in the world. While there have been signs of rough waters ahead for the PGA Tour, which has lost title sponsors while others reduced their committments, the Tour is still full speed ahead for next season. It's been able to keep a full compliment of events for next year, despite losing two tournaments, by adding a new event, the Greenbriar Classic in West Virginia, and moving the Reno-Tahoe Open into the date vacated by the U.S. Bank Championship. There will again be thirty seven official Fed Ex Cup Tour events leading up to the four tournament post season, culminating with the Tour Championship the final weekend of September in Atlanta. But the Gerrymandering needed to keep the schedule intact could be a portent of things to come as the economy continues to take it's toll on the sports world. The NBA, for example, saw a one percent drop in attendance for home openers, a third of the teams failing to draw capacity crowds, and a two point eight percent drop in average ticket prices. The New York Yankees, who have a knack for finding new revenue sources and beating others to tapping them, made an interesting move two years ago when they signed two Chinese players to minor league contracts. The Yankees already have a Chinese player on their major league roster, Chien Ming Wang, for two years the ace of their pitching staff, but the two new players were from mainland China. Neither is given much chance of becoming a major league prospect, but a new, already lucrative market had been tapped. The Yankees are already cashing in on marketing in China. Golf takes a major step into that market and into the future today with the tee off of the first World Golf Championship event ever to be played in Asia, in Shanghai, and the PGA Tour has its heavy hitters there. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are in the field taking aim at a seven million dollar purse, nearly double the majority of purses on the PGA Fed Ex Cup Tour. Financial and sports experts are in agreement with a prediction that by the end of the next decade China, with its committment and revenues, will take the same position in the golf world it's assumed in other international competitions, in great part motivated by the introduction of golf as an Olympic event in 2016. It was state committment and financial support that vaulted China to the top of the medal list at the 2008 games. Tiger himself sees China as a launching pad for a global expansion of the game, telling USA Today, "This tournament will play a big part in spreading the recognition and appeal of golf world wide." The NBA already has a foothold in China with superstar Yao Ming on the Houston Rockets, so the cure for what ails it economically may be right around the corner, or on the other side of the world. Golf has already put itself ahead of the curve in terms of a new revenue source, and this one really wasn't hard to find. In today's global community China is pretty hard to miss. With a comment from the sports world, I'm Scott Gray.
Thursday, November 5th 2009 - Sports Commentary
Who's the team now? There was more at stake than a World Series title. In the most heated rivalry in North American sports it was more important than that. There was a certain symmetry to Johnny Damon's double steal of second and third in game four, the single play that turned this year's World Series the Yankees way as they went on to claim their twenty seventh world championship with last night's 7-3 win over the Phillies that gave them the Series in six games. Damon's steal of second and third on the same play not only set the Yankees up for a commanding three to one series lead, he also stole a coveted distinction from the arch rival Red Sox, the team he led to an unprecedented comeback against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series in 2004. A year later the Red Sox elevated the venom level of the rivalry by declaring themselves "Co American League East champions" after finishing statistically tied with the Yankees, but the Yankees won the head up season series, the first tie breaker. Two years later, after claiming the 2007 World Series title, the Sox marketed themselves as "The first team to win two World Series in the twenty first century", a very legitimate claim and a distinction that can never be taken from them, but a claim that, none the less, grated on the citizens of Yankee Universe. Since the year two thousand the American League has established it's dominance over the National League, annually pushing the senior circuit into the right hand column in the All Star Game while winning seven of ten World Series dating back to the turn of the century. As much as the American League has the National League the Eastern Division has dominated the rest of the American League. Anyone who would question that the East is the beast need just check the landscape of the last decade. The L.A. Angels of Anaheim won the World Series in 2002 and the White Sox won it in 2005. The Tigers represented the American League in 2006, falling to the Cardinals. The American League representative in the other seven years of the decade has come from the East. The Tampa Bay Rays
lost to the Phillies a year ago. The Red Sox represented the American League in 2004 and 2007 and have yet to lose a World Series game in this century. Until last night the Sox, as the only team with two World Series titles, had a firm hold on the title "Team of the Decade". Johnny Damon's steal of second and third of the last World Series of the decade set up the Yankees for a steal of their own. While both teams have two World Series wins in the decade, the Yankees have reached the Series four times over the span and beaten out the Red Sox for their own division title seven times while missing the post season just once. The Yankees are the team now. Last night they slid safely under the tag at home in the bottom of the ninth and stole from the Red Sox the title of "Team of the Decade". With a comment from the sports world, I'm Scott Gray.
Friday, November 6th 2009 - Sports Commentary
Just sitting here musing over a few things while the Yankees prepare for their twenty seventh trip up the Canyon of Heroes. Now the serious discussion of Andy Pettitte's hall of fame credentials can begin, now that he has a record eighteen post season wins after going 4-0 in this year's playoffs, and he's the only pitcher ever to start and win all three series clinching games in a single post season. A lot of borderline regular season numbers can be outweighed by a player's performance when the money's on the table. In that category Pettitte stands alongside the likes of Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax. The Yankees won the Series by reducing their rotation to three pitchers, one of whom, Pettitte, may not be back next season, which tells us a lot. The Red Sox have the better rotation. When they say, "Wait 'til next year" in Boston it isn't a plaintive groan, it's a threat. The biggest hit not by Hideki Matsui in game six was the eighth inning single by Derek Jeter, bringing the iron of the Yankee lineup around. All of a sudden the Phillies weren't just faced with the psychology of having to score four runs against Mariano Rivera in the top of the ninth. If they did accomplish that Herculean feat they would then be faced with Teixeira, A-Rod and Matsui in the bottom half. Jeter's hit turned a trip up the Matterhorn in bare feet into a climb up Everest in a bathing suit, without oxygen. At that moment any glimmer left in the Phillies all but died. I know I've mentioned this before, but how much more impact does it have in retrospect? Joe Girardi may be the only manager ever to win more than one hundred games in the regular season and never be mentioned in the Manager of the Year conversation, yet every time the discussion turned to managers who's jobs were on the line going to the post season his name was among the first to come up. Now add this wrinkle. How many managers have won three World Series as a teammate of four players they would then manage to a Series championship? After anticipating all day that Pedro Martinez had at least one glowing moment left in his hall of fame right arm, how sad was it to see his fastball topping off at eighty seven miles an hour? That was what told Charlie Manuel it wouldn't be a long night for the gallant Dominican. If it was Pedro's swan song, he deserved a better one. Whatever happened to Selena Roberts? How many copies of that book did she manage to sell? Any idea when her next tell all expose comes out? After my commentary yesterday morning I went to my e-mail where a long list awaited me. The first, in so many words, some not repeatable, accused me of being a blatant Yankee fan for declaring them the "Team of the Decade" while the second opined that it was my love for the Red Sox that led me to spoil what should have been a commentary devoted only to the Yankees on their "morning after" by recounting the Red Sox successes of the last decade. I didn't bother to read the rest. I turned off my computer, wiped my hands and, declaring, "I've done my work for the day", went home. With some World Series musings from the sports world, I'm Scott Gray.
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