I felt something new yesterday. I didn’t like the feeling, but it was unavoidable. The feeling was relief. Relief that the baseball playoffs were over. Relief that nightly dramatic baseball games were no longer going to be played. Relief that the month-long process was complete.
This is bad for baseball.
I am one of their biggest fans. [...]
After a championship, I like to look at the players on the championship team and pick out some of the great stories. The Phillies are World Series champions and have plenty of good stories to tell.
It starts with the manager, Charlie Manuel. Charlie’s hometown is Buena Vista, Virginia, about 40 miles north of my hometown, [...]
Drama. Insanity. Chaos. That’s the new story of this World Series.
The umpires have been terrible in this entire series. Every game has seen at least one bad call. Proof of that comes from the umpires themselves who have publicly admitted two of their mistakes to the media. In Game 5, they were caught in a [...]
The story seems to be the same for every World Series. One team gets surprisingly good performances from their mediocre starting pitchers. The other team gets surprisingly bad performances from their best hitters.
This year, the surprisingly good pitchers are Jamie Moyer and Joe Blanton. The surprisingly bad hitters are Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria.
Pena and [...]
This past Sunday, the first BCS standings came out. They confirmed what I already told you about the three tiers of undefeated teams. You can read that in this college football column. (Note: There are now 9 undefeated teams. BYU was still unbeaten when I wrote that column.)
Coincidentally, the top three teams in college football [...]
After two games, one thing is glaringly obvious. Baseball without the Red Sox and Yankees is much, much better. The Red Sox and Yankees are painful to watch. Their four-to-five hour marathon games are a drain. I don’t like to watch them.
This World Series is like a breath of fresh air. Great young talent. Quality [...]
Game 1 went to the Phillies, and the baseball “experts” patted themselves on the back. They called this game for the Phillies because Cole Hamels was their starting pitcher. Now, I will agree with the “experts” that Hamels is the best pitcher in this series for either team, but remember from my column earlier this [...]
I am on record as saying that I like the Rays-Phillies matchup in the World Series, which begins tonight. (By the way, if you are waiting for me to write a World Series preview, you’re reading the wrong blog. Writing a preview would contradict my words from this baseball column.)
The way homefield advantage is determined [...]
In this column, I will attempt to mention every major American sport. Why? No reason really. It just seems like a fun idea.
October is a hard month for me. I love the baseball playoffs, and when there’s a sporting event I love, I want to watch every minute of it. I’m starting to think, though, [...]
The two most thankless jobs in this world are meteorologist and baseball expert.
Baseball is a game that is impossible to predict. I refuse to waste my time watching ESPN’s SportsCenter for baseball predictions. I refuse to watch pre-game shows. I even refuse to watch the opening remarks by the announcers before a baseball broadcast.
I refuse [...]