Peridyd's Progress

It seems that the one thing you can count on these days (in baseball at least) is that the Yankees will choke in October. For the 3rd (?) year in a row, they're out of it in the first round. Rather than blaming it on the fact that he's aggregated too many superstars and their supersized egos (the best teams and the best Yankees teams have few superstars and a bunch of solid players), Mr. Steinbrenner will blame Joe Torre and fire him, probably immediately.

If you love baseball and you aren't a bandwagon fan, the Yankees are the team to hate. They're worse than Microsoft (and I reserve that level of insult for the truly corrosive). Baseball needs revenue sharing and salary caps; the KC Royals need to win a pennant again; the Yankees need to be just another team.

And despite the fact that I categorize them as "inherently evil," I find it very, very difficult to criticize their skipper. He's a fantastic baseball man, and a man of integrity. (Only a fantastic manager could manage those egos, including the boss').

How long will Torre be on the job market before he gets an offer? Let's put it this way: I think it's very likely that someone will get fired just to make room for him. If only he were going to the Mariners (sigh).

But there's no chance of that.

Zero.

Dodgers?

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Go Padres!

(Need I say any more?)

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looking at the off season acquisitions they've made one might well think that the Dodgers are sitting pretty and that Chavez Ravine will soon be heaven on earth. After all, this is their opening day pitching rotation:

Jason Schmidt
Randy Wolf
Derek Lowe
Brad Penny

Chris Jenkins from the San Diego Union correctly terms that rotation the best in the NL. Given the incompetence of the GMs of my two favorite teams, the Seattle Mariners and the San Diego Padres, you really have to give Ned Colletti credit for strengthening his team in the most important area: pitching.

This coupled with the fact that the Dodgers are no long owned by Rupert Murdock should mean that they aren't on my short list of teams whom I always and unequivocally root against--i.e., The New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves. These are teams that Amy and I call inherently evil. We do so a) because it's fun to argue that baseball teams are good and evil, and b) because the transactions that those teams make are, in the long run, bad for the game of baseball. If you want to know what I'm talking about, read Bob Costas' excellent analysis of the state of the game, Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball.

So why the title of this post, you might well ask? Because the Dodgers, despite the fact that they were soundly beaten in the head-to-head contest with the Padres and therefore won the wild card, and not the division championship, despite having the same record as the Padres after 162 games, are claiming that they're the "defending NL West co-champions".

Those aren't the rules, guys. The rules state that if you end up having identical records at the end of the season, then the winner of the season head-to-head contest is the champion. Period. The Dodgers won the wild card, not the division. The Padres, ever lackluster in the post season, did, however, win the division.

That they would claim otherwise smacks of unsportsmanlike conduct--in the front office, which, to my mind, negates any boon they might have garnered by sloughing off the infamous Murdock as their owner.

In short, there are still 3 inherently evil teams on Amy's and my list: Yankees, Braves, and, once again, the LA Dodgers.

May the Dodgers reap the rewards that were visited upon both the Braves and Yankees last year: either a post-season miss or a post-season early departure.

Not that my Padres did any better, you understand....

Thanks to Mom for the Jenkins article.

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I got half my wish. The Padres won the N.L. West, but it's the Phillies who'll be eating cheese steak sandwiches on South Street tomorrow rather than the Dodgers wolfing down Tommy Burgers in Santa Monica.

Given how strong the Padres and the Dodgers are playing right now (hot and searingly hot, respectively), and given the fact that the Cardinals and Mets backed into the playoffs, the NLCS could very well end up being a rematch of the two top teams in the West.

'Tis a consumation devoutly to be wished. There's nothing I'd rather see than the Padres denying the Dodgers a trip to the World Series. It's been an awfully long time (the Kurt Gibson miracle series in 1988) since Los Angeles has been there.

The probable pitchers for Tuesday's game in San Diego are Peavy and Carpenter. Given the way the Padres handled the defending Cy Young award winner last time they met, I'd give us the edge.

Since neither team's the New York Yankees, the game will be played when all of us working stiffs are preoccupied with earning a living. Sigh. Guess I'll have to bring a radio to work.

Enjoy the playoffs.

Peridyd

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay. Given the design of this site, one might well think that I like baseball a bit. Yet I have not blogged a single post on any topic related to America's other pastime (is there any doubt what our primary pastime is?). There's a mere week left in the regular season, and the team that I followed for most of my adult life, the San Diego Padres, is battling for a playoff spot against their nemesis to the north, the evil Hollywood (nee Brooklyn and erstwhile Los Angeles) Dodgers. As of the time I'm writing this, my beloved Padres are maintaining a game and a half lead on the Dodgers. The Dodgers have the best offense in the National League, and the Padres have the best pitching. We have all-time saves leader, Trevor Hoffman; Woody Williams; Dodger castoff, Mike Piazza; Jake Peavy; and one of my favorite players, Mike Cameron. They have Greg Maddux, Derek Lowe, Brad Penny, and Nomar Garciaparra. Based purely on the cast of characters, I'd have to give the advantage to the Pads. However, baseball has defied my sense of justice more than once. I try to accept its judgments with humility—as long as inherently evil teams like the Yankees and the Braves aren't the beneficiaries. More of that in another post. Suffice it to say that the post-Ruppert Murdoch Dodgers have shaken off the shackles of unmitigated evil.

If it were two and a half game lead with only a week to go, I'd feel a bit more comfortable, but with ninth inning heroics like Nomar's walk-off grand slam today (not to mention the infamy of the four consecutive home runs on four consecutive pitches in the bottom of the ninth of Monday's game), it's clear that evil won't go quietly into that dark night.

Of course there are more important things than baseball, some of which I've written about. Don't ever forget that innocent people are dying because of the actions of a government that purports to speak for each and every one of us (it does not speak for me). However, even the most terrifying narrative needs some comic relief. The poetry of baseball provides that for me. It's this kind of dogfight that makes for storied rivalries. This is the ideal way to head into October.

Here's how a perfect week in baseball would shape up for me:

Padres: NL West title
Phillies: NL Wild Card (can you say Ryan Howard?)
Dodgers: Eating Tommy Burgers in Santa Monica on October 1

Posted by Dennis Bennett at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)