Bugs Bunny, Greatest Banned Player Ever

As you might notice if you've taken a look at the list of books I'm currently working on, I'm reading a collection of the "best" American sportswriting from 2006 (it's the 2007 edition, but contains stuff written last year). The first few articles in the collection were not exactly what I expected. The second one was particularly surprising.

I think my readership is all old enough to have at some point in their lives seen the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon where he plays a game of baseball by himself against a team of gorilla-type individuals. The author of this column seems to have decided to do a full write-up of the game, focusing on the actual plausibility of the depicted events. I could spend more time describing this entry to you, but it's probably best experienced: http://www.ussmariner.com/2006/03/12/bugs-bunny-greatest-banned-player-ever/

Advance warning: This guy clearly takes his cartoon baseball FAR too seriously.

"Perhaps satisfaction is more important than enjoyment in the long view of life"

I just finished reading A Resilient Life by Gordon MacDonald today. It was a very good read, in my opinion. I'm not going to get into a long winded summary, but basically the book describes the characteristics of what the author describes as resilient people - those whose lives and faith are equipped to handle the inevitable twists and turns of life. He, in turn, discusses how we might go about developing those characteristics in our lives.

One of things that I kept getting hit with throughout the book was that many of the things he was talking about were things that I'd felt God nudging me towards over the last weeks and months. I love it when God hits me over the head with things a few times just to make sure I get it. Seriously, I do.

A key quote from the book that jumped out at me in the very beginning and stuck with me throughout was this one: "I cannot claim that I enjoyed myself in that effort, but on a deeper level I learned the satisfaction of accomplishing something that ends well. Perhaps satisfaction is more important than enjoyment in the long view of life." I've really come to believe the truth of that statement, even in just the week since I first read it. As a result of some of my reflections after my reunion weekend, I have intentionally eliminated a significant amount of time spent doing things that I enjoy, but that provide nothing beyond that simple enjoyment. In their place, I have added activities that, while they may not necessarily provide as much pure enjoyment while in process, give me a great deal of satisfaction when they are complete, and serve a purpose that goes beyond simple pleasure in the here and now. Writing this blog is one of those things, as is taking time to read books like the one I just finished. These are disciplines I hope to maintain. Perhaps I don't "enjoy" my free time as much as I used to, but at the end of the day, I feel a lot better about what I've done with my time.

None of this is to discount the importance of simple pleasure. I still have plenty of time for that in my life. But I understand pretty profoundly at this moment that if I spend the majority of my time seeking pure enjoyment, I miss out on things that bring something in my life that goes much deeper and is much more valuable than simple enjoyment.

Why must they mess with something I enjoy?

So I went to the grocery store today, as is my typical Monday practice. While there, I grabbed a box of one of my favorite cereals without taking a close look at it. I just opened the box up to pour a bowl for a late night snack, and I noticed on the box 3 of my most dreaded words in the food industry "Now Better Tasting". Some corporate types have decided that something I greatly enjoy wasn't quite good enough, and they screwed with the taste.

And so I'm led to ask, why must they mess with something I enjoy? Now, I know that when they make these changes, they do studies that show that like 85% of people like the new taste better than the old taste, but my ability to be in the 15% on virtually every occasion is absolutely uncanny. Even when I do like the new taste better, it almost always only a very slight improvement, and I've had a few of my very favorite foods absolutely ruined for me by a change like this. The food industry as a group is clearly against me.

Just as an FYI - In this particular case, I couldn't really tell the difference, so it worked out. I was lucky.

So, what went wrong?

Okay, so clearly my career at predicting major sporting event outcomes is off to a rather rocky start. I picked the Rockies in 6, and not only did they not win the Series, they were utterly dominated in a Red Sox 4 game sweep. I said in my prediction post that the Rockies were legit, and that even a 4 game sweep would not change my assessment of that. Well, there was a 4 game sweep, and I do stand by that assessment. Obviously though, I missed a thing or two when laying out this series.

First of all, in looking at the Rockies, I missed the fact that, despite continuing their massive string of 21 out of 22 games through the NLCS, the Rockies weren't playing all that well at the end of the NLCS. In their 4 game sweep of the Diamondbacks, the Rockies hit only .222 as a team, with a .316 OBP and .311 SLG. That's not good hitting folks. And this came against a Diamondbacks pitching staff that was certainly solid, but outside of Brandon Webb, was far from spectacular. Clearly some of their offensive momentum had left them before the World Series had even started.

Secondly, I think I underestimated the effect that the "bright lights" of the World Series would have on the Rockies. A lot of people want to blame the terrible start the Rockies got off to in the Series on the layoff. I think you can possibly attribute Jeff Francis' poor Game 1 start to that, but I wouldn't go a whole lot further than that. History says those layoffs just don't have the kind of negative meaning that we assign to them, and I'll stick with that. However, due to the fact that the Rockies came out of nowhere, and were never in a playoff series that drew national focus until the World Series, I think they managed to play in a bunch of big games without ever getting exposed to the full force of playoff scrutiny. It seemed to me that a lot of their guys looked a bit dazed when the series opened, and I think that's somewhat to be expected.

I also failed to acknowledge the fact that, in addition to having the best current postseason pitcher in Josh Beckett, the Red Sox have another guy in their rotation in Curt Schilling who is an all-timer when it comes to October baseball. His shaky Game 2 start in the ALCS had me questioning whether he could get it done in this Series, and I was obviously wrong. I also did not give enough credit to Boston setup man Hideki Okajima. His work in providing the bridge between Schilling and Papelbon in Game 2 (which I believe was the pivotal game in the Series) was absolutely spectacular.

I knew that Boston was the better team, but thought that Colorado had what it took to give them a run. I think the reality is that I picked a little too much with my heart on this one, which is something I'll have to learn to put aside a little better if I want to be a good, objective sportswriter in the future.

What's so hard about giving a signal?

Okay, today is installment #2 in the "Random Things That Bug Me" series. This series will continue, with no preset schedule, throughout the life of this blog.

I'm sure all of you have been in this situation before. Or at least you have if you've experienced Pennsylvania and our many highways with exceedingly short entrance ramps. As you come up the entrance ramp, there's no space immediately available for you to merge into. So, you stop on the ramp and wait, leaving yourself enough room to get up to speed when you finally get an open spot. You're waiting there, looking for your gap. You see a very nice opening after this one last car that is coming that will suit you fine. So, you start accelerating down the ramp, keeping that last car and opening in your view, waiting for the car to go past you so you can pull out onto the highway.

Suddenly, you notice that gap is getting smaller, and that last car hasn't gone past you nearly as quickly as you would have expected. You realize that the last car has been slowing down to let you in. And course, you realize this just about the time it becomes too late for you to pull out in front of them, unless that last car comes to an almost complete stop, which they almost inevitably do. At no point during this entire sequence did they do anything to signal to you that they were going to let you in. So now, in the best case, you pull in front of a stopped car and traffic is momentarily screwed up, and in the worst case, they still end up driving by you and now that wonderful gap behind them no longer exists, and you're still waiting to merge, only further up the ramp and with less room to get up to speed on the next attempt. (Ah, the glory of PA highways)

And so I have to ask of this representative person with the misguided attempt at being a Good Samaritan, what's so hard about giving a signal? I'm in front of you, so I can't see your brake lights, and it's really hard to detect the deceleration of another car when viewing it through the rear view mirror. And furthermore, couldn't you have looked in YOUR rear view mirror before all of this and realized that had you just continued by at your standard speed, I could have merged in right behind you without any inconvenience to you, me, or anyone else we share the road with. I appreciate the thought, I really do. In this me-first society, it is refreshing to see someone being so selfless in this situation. But seriously, just take my advice and you'll save us both a lot of headaches next time.

Setting the stage for a letter to me

In my "re-launch" post, I confessed my love of country music, and told you about my favorite song currently on the country charts. At present, my favorite country artist is Brad Paisley. Almost without fail, I find every Brad Paisley song that hits the radio to either be very clever and funny, or to be rather profound. In addition to that, he's a terrific guitarist, and I really enjoy his voice. He also writes most of his own stuff, which I always appreciate.

I added Paisley's latest album, 5th Gear, to my collection shortly after it came out. Given how few albums I buy this days, that's a pretty strong statement about how much I enjoy his stuff at this time. Since I got this album, my favorite song off it has been one called "Letter to Me", in which he sings through a letter he would write to himself at age 17. I was pleased to find out recently that "Letter to Me" was about to start hitting the airwaves as the 3rd single off of 5th Gear. If you want to hear the song, which I highly recommend, you can check out this YouTube video. If you just want a glance at the lyrics, they are here.

This song has had me thinking about what I would write in a letter to the 17 year old me since I first heard it. Now that I'm back in the writing mode, I've decided that I will be tackling this task here at some point in the near future. So that's something you can look forward to if it interests you.

As I've been thinking through what a letter to the 17 year old me would look like, one thing I've definitely decided against is a laundry list of do's and don'ts related to specific decisions I've made throughout the last 10 years of my life. First of all, I don't know that's necessarily productive to go back and list 10 years worth of specific regrets, which is basically what such a list would amount to. Also, I can think of a number of decisions I made that, had I known how they were going to turn out, I wouldn't have made, and yet they ended up having a tremendously positive impact on my life in a roundabout way. I can think, for instance, of my rooming decision for my junior year of college. Anyone who was close to me that year knows just how chaotic and difficult that environment ended up being, and yet as a result of it, I got to know a guy who would become one of my best friends, and a roommate for 5 years.

Instead, I want to focus on principles that I wish I had used to guide my life over the last 10 years, and that I desire to have guide the rest of my life. Rather than looking back and just coming up with a variety of different decisions that I think would undo the regrets of my past, I want to look at my past and write down the big lessons I can take from it that will help me going forward. As I've thought it through, I'm convinced this is something we all need to do at one point or another. The past is a powerful thing, and the mistakes of the past can either define us and hold us back, or they can be learned from and used to propel us into our future. It's my desire to make the latter a reality for me.

Another reporting failure, and a sad commentary

I need to start out by saying that I love the South. My fascination with the trials and tribulations of Miss Teen South Carolina aside, I've never even remotely been tempted to buy into the notion/stereotype that southerners as a group are less intelligent/educated than people from other parts of the country. I've been around the country, and I've come to the conclusion that the ignorant are pretty much equally distributed by region, color, gender, and just about any other designation typically used to classify people.

I am convinced, however, that the South has a PR problem. I believe it was the great Southern thinker, Jeff Foxworthy, who once suggested that the problem is not that southerners are stupid, but that they can't keep the most ignorant of their people off the television. Miss Teen South Carolina is a perfect example of this. And today, we have what seems like another example here. In way of summary, Channing Crowder of the Miami Dolphins, who are in London this week to play their game against the Giants, is quoted saying that he didn't realize that they spoke English in London until he arrived there earlier this week, and that he couldn't find London on a map if the map wasn't labeled. Crowder grew up in the Atlanta area, and attended the University of Florida.

On the surface, this seems like a classic case of what I described earlier - an ignorant Southerner getting the microphone and giving the South a black eye. Given the way it's been reported to date, that's exactly how it's going to play. However, the reality is that this is a another classic case of taking a shortcut through the facts for the sake of an interesting story. The article in question, which was the source for many similar articles throughout the media, mentions the possibility that Crowder might have been joking. They can do better than that. It took me all of 5 minutes research to discover that in his time at Florida, Crowder posted a 3.5 GPA. Not too shabby. Lest you question the validity of such a mark for a star football player at a major football school, the same research also revealed that he scored a 30 on the Wonderlic intelligence test that all potential NFL draftees take prior to the draft. For some perspective on that, 20 on the Wonderlic equates to roughly a 100 IQ, or average intelligence. Crowder's 30 puts him in the company of an average chemist. This is a bright young man we're dealing with here. Another minute or two of research revealed that Crowder is a notorious smartass and joker. This is such a non-story it's not even funny, and any reporter interested in the actual facts would have seen that right away.

What's most sad about this whole thing is that the American public's view of major college student-athletes has become so low that we would so quickly believe that a young man who was admitted to and spent 2 years at what is a pretty solid university would say such things and mean them. Furthermore, looking at the entire landscape of major college athletics, I can't blame people for having that perception. There are exceptions, and clearly Channing Crowder is one of them, but playing college football stopped having any significant link with getting a college education a long time ago.

Life Lessons from the Trials of an Overexcited Mutt

I hear parents talk quite often about lessons they've learned about God through experiences they have with their kids, and I find that to be a very awesome thing. I have no children, so I have to get my object lessons through other sources. One of the prime sources of late has been this guy right here:This is Chaser. (Awwwwwww, isn't he cute?) Chaser is aptly named, because he is very high energy and is often chasing one thing or another. He's a mix of a yellow lab and a terrier, and if you know a little about dogs, you know that is a very interesting combo. Suffices to say, he is "spirited" and has times where he'd rather not waste a moment standing still.

This evening, after I finished walking him, I was removing his walking harness. I unbuckled the main clip and was taking it down off his legs, with the leash still attached to it. Usually he's pretty good about stepping out and letting me pull the harness away, but today he was in a hurry for some reason and went tearing off as soon as I got the harness down near his feet. The harness caught on his back legs, and since I was still holding the leash, he was tripped up and went sprawling, harness still wrapped around his legs. He was not pleased with me in the least, and let me know it. He got what he wanted, his freedom from the harness, it just came with an unwanted price because he didn't have the patience to do it my way. And it actually took longer for him to get out than it would have if he had let me do it the right way.

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As I reflected on this incident, it occurred to me how often I assume Chaser's role in my relationship with God. I have a goal in mind, one that I believe that God has given me. Rather than looking to Him for His guidance and timing, working in concert with Him, and allowing Him to prepare the way, I get impatient and go off running. And what happens? I trip over something He was trying to get out of my way, and I fall on my face. I may ultimately acheive the goal in mind, but I experience unnecessary pain and frustration in the process, and often slow down the process. It's a lesson I come back to time and time again, learning it a little better each time, I hope. Here's hoping it doesn't take me as many times to learn as it has Chaser.....

R.I.P. English Language

Okay, I'm fully aware that this clip is already a couple months old. I know, because I've heard the audio played multiple times a week while listening to the Jim Rome Show. However, it has yet to become old to me, and I still laugh every time Rome cues the thing up. I discovered a few days ago that not everyone has seen/heard this yet, and so I've decided to do what I can to remedy that problem.

So, if you haven't seen/heard Miss Teen South Carolina lay an all-time beatdown on the English language while answering her question in the last round of the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant, click here. If you have, click the link anyhow and sit there in awe/amusement/horror one more time. The beautiful irony here is that, in her crash and burn attempt to answer the question verbally, she seems to have done very well in answering the question by way of object lesson. I've never been so proud to be a "US American", everywhere like such as.

Why not let the facts stand on their own?

As much as I want to be a sportswriter, I am often wary of becoming a member of the media, even the sports media, because I see so much irresonsbility in reporting these days, as it becomes less about the facts and more about getting a story that people are interested in. Every so often, I see something in print and it just boggles my mind. This morning was one of those times. This article was linked from the front page of ESPN.com, probably the most read sports site out there: Fisher: QB Young likely to start against Raiders Seems like a pretty simple, harmless article, and really it is. But in discussing the return of QB Vince Young to the Tennesee Titan lineup, the reporter says this about his replacement: "Kerry Collins, who started in place of Young, went 25 of 42 for 280 yards without an interception. But without Young there to finish drives, the Titans went 2-for-9 inside the red zone, relying on kicker Rob Bironas to build their lead." The implication of the bolded statement is obviously that the Tennessee offense suffered without Vince Young. And if you were a casual fan who wasn't paying attention to the larger picture, you could easily believe that.

Let's look at the facts of what went down in that game on Sunday. First of all, the Titan offense scored 38 points, which is 14 more points than they had gotten from their offense in any of the 5 games that has Vince Young started for them this season. Secondly, they piled up 422 yards on offense, again, their best performance of the season, and by over 70 yards. Additionally, the two offensive touchdowns they scored marked only the second time this season that they had scored more than one touchdown on offense. Collins' 280 yards passing represented the teams best passing total this season by almost 100 yards. And, lastly, the Titans won the game. Any implication that the Titans offense suffered without Vince Young in this particular game takes a shortcut through virtually all the facts. They were as good or better than they've been all season in virtually every aspect of the game. And yet this reporter seems to want me to believe that the exact opposite is true.

And so I have to ask, why not let the facts stand on their own? Look, I'll be the first one to admit I think that Vince Young has been dramatically overhyped in his short time in the league. But this isn't about me taking a run at him. I'm not suggesting that Kerry Collins should be the Titans QB, only that he played very well in this game and that as a result the offense had their best game of the season. At this stage of both their careers, Young clearly represents the Titans best chance to win consistently, and he should be back in the lineup if he's healthy. But my point is, if Vince Young really is the kind of player this reporter obviously wants me to think he is, why skew the facts? Why not say it like I just did? It would be one thing if this was an isolated incident, but it's just a representative example of a trend I see throughout the sports media, and the larger media in general. We've gone from reporting the stories to creating them. Not a positive development, from where I sit.

How do we cross this great divide?

My project manager, who sits in the cube next to me, is a Democrat, and a fairly hardcore one, as he ran for state house last November. I am often privy to conversations he has with a couple other guys in our office, who are very much Republicans. For those who aren't aware, I'm a registered Republican, but primarily due to laziness in not getting it changed. I've been identifying myself as Libertarian for a few years now, and thus take issue with both major parties. I generally stay out of these conversations for a variety of reasons

Anyhow, I obviously disagree with my project manager on a great number of issues, but he does have some ideas that I resonate with, mainly the fact that the political system as it stands is a mess. That's the subject of the conversation I overheard today. In that context, I heard him to say that he and the more conservative co-worker could both agree on what the various problems are, and if they sat down and discussed it they could come to a solution to the problem, whereas that never really happens in the political system.

As reasonable as that sounds, I found myself questioning whether it was true. Can the conservative and the liberal as presently defined (notice I did not say Republican and Democrat) ever come to a viable compromise? My project manager is precisely correct, he and I both see the same problems, but I've come to believe that the fundamental difference between us on how to solve those problems is a gap that a mere compromise can't rightly bridge. That difference is that I trust people to solve their own problems, and he trusts the government. I, of course, have a fundamental distrust of the government.

And so I'm led to ask, how do we cross this great divide? As I sit here, I don't believe it to be possible. Attempting to walk a line between the two sides has led us to this confused, double-minded mess of a system we're in today. Our political system is broken because it lacks a single identity and purpose, and is rather suffering from a kind of split personality disorder. As a nation, and even as states, we collectively ask our government to be involved, but not TOO involved. We're looking for an impossible compromise to occur. We either need to make up our minds and pick a direction (obviously I have a preference on how that needs to go down), or perhaps just recognize that a government that represents about 300 million people is never going to be anything but double-minded, and start to move power back down the chain, closer to the people themselves.

Which team has what it takes to finish?

Given what I understand my current readership to be, I'm guessing sports takes won't be my most popular pieces. However, I do want to be a sportswriter someday, and there is a rather significant sporting event about to kick off, so I would be remiss if I didn't speak my piece about it. Hang in there non-sports fan. I promise I'll have something more interesting for you up soon, possibly even today if I have time.

Anyhow, the World Series kicks off tomorrow night at Boston's Fenway Park, between the Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies come into the Series on a tear, having won 14 of their last 15 regular season games to even make the playoffs, and then winning their first 7 playoff games to sweep their way into the World Series. However, they've been sitting around waiting for the last 8 days. In the meantime, the Red Sox, who were a popular preseason pick to be World Series champions, have followed through on that promise for the most part, and come off a terrific comeback to win the ALCS after trailing Cleveland 3-1 in the series.

Before I launch into my take on this series, I have to come clean. I want the Rockies to win this series, for a number of reasons. First of all, the first team the Rockies swept this postseason was the Philadelphia Phillies, my favorite team. That will sting somewhat less if they go on to become World Series champions. Secondly, since the Sox ended the curse in 2004, they and their fans have managed to move to just behind the Yankees on my baseball crap list. And finally, I love to witness sports history as it unfolds, and so I would love to see the Rockies close off this historic run with a championship. So, I'm biased here. I have a rooting interest, but I will do my best to step out of that and form an objective opinion.

First of all, I want to start by dismissing the notion I've picked up from a large number of folks, particularly Red Sox fans and fans of other AL team, that the Rockies are pretenders who just got hot at the right time and are lucky to be here. They definitely got hot at the right time, and you don't win 21 of 22 games without some good fortune, but the Rockies are for real. Not even a 4 game sweep by Boston would change my opinion of that. Yes the Rockies were only a handful of games over .500 in early September, and yes the NL is the weaker of the two leagues again this year, at least at the top of the league. But baseball history tells me you don't win 21 of 22 against any level of competition if you aren't a very, very good club. The list of teams that have gone 20 or so games with only 1 loss is loaded with World Champions and teams that won 100+ games in the regular season. What makes the Rockies streak even more incredible is that other than the very first win against Florida, every game has been against a team with a winning record. So that means their last 21 games have been against teams that won over half their games this season, and the Rockies have lost exactly once. They are legit.

That being said, I still think Boston is the better team, but not by as much as a lot of people think. Both teams have a stacked offense, and both teams are pretty good in the bullpen. Where the Sox have the edge is in the rotation, at least on paper, with the real difference maker being their ace, Josh Beckett. This guy is a terrific pitcher at anytime of year, but when the bell rings for the postseason, he just becomes absolutely filthy. He's made 9 postseason appearances, and has an ERA of 1.78. In only one of his 8 postseason starts has he surrendered more than 2 runs. The Sox clearly go into this Series expecting him to get them 2 wins, in Games 1 and 5, and that's a fair expectation.

Lots of people will tell you about how pivotal Game 1 of a series is, and I usually agree. In this case, I don't think Game 1 is going to be extremely pivotal. To be more precise, I think it's only pivotal if Colorado wins. With Beckett on the mound, in their home park, and the Rockies trying to shake off the rust of their 8 game layoff, Game 1 is one that I believe Boston absolutely has to get. If Beckett lays an egg, or if Colorado can scratch a couple runs off him and their pitching can make that hold up, I think Colorado moves squarely into the drivers' seat of the series. Beckett getting beat in either of his 2 starts means that Boston needs to get wins on 3 nights when he isn't pitching, and I'm not confident they can get that done. In my book, where I've basically already given Boston the 1-0 lead in the series, Game 2 is where the series turns. If the Rockies win Game 2 and get the split in Boston, I think they win the series. I think they go back to Coors and beat Dice K (who has looked anything but spectacular in the postseason and whose breaking stuff won't be helped by the thin Denver air) and Tim Wakefield. Then even assuming Beckett wins Game 5 to send the Series back to Fenway, I see them ripping one from either Schilling or Dice K to finish the thing off.

Coors Field, to me, is the X factor in this series for the Rockies. Yes, we all know how it's playing more fair in the era of the humidor, but it's still very much a hitters park, and breaking pitches still don't move as much in the thin air. Rockies pitchers have an edge in that regard, given their experience pitching there all year. Additionally, when the Sox come to Coors, they will have to play David Ortiz at 1B to keep his bat in the lineup. Additionally, there is talk of further lineup shuffling to keep regular 1B Kevin Youkilis' bat in the lineup. Coors Field is still just about the last place you want to be messing with your defense. Giving up extra outs will come back to bite you in Coors, in a big way.

And so I must ask, which team has what it takes to finish? I say give me the Rockies in 6, in the upset. I fully acknowledge that my bias is probably playing a role here, but I just can't bring myself to believe that a team that has won 21 of 22 games can't go out and get 4 of their next 7. Here's hoping for a terrific series, regardless of the outcome.

What is it about the grocery store?

So I thought I would get my first post after the re-launch out of the way quickly. I'm sure you were all hoping for some deep and meaningful insight, or at least a take on a sports topic of the day, but instead, you're going to hear about one of my pet peeves. Okay, pet peeve probably isn't the right term, because I'm a part of the problem here. At least I assume I am. I've never actually observed it in myself, but I've never found an exception to this, and I'm not arrogant enough to assume that I am in fact the exception. At least I hope I'm not that arrogant.

The issue: Grocery stores. More to the point, whatever characteristic of grocery stores causes everyone who enters them to lose all sense of spatial awareness and any concept of the presence of other people around them. You know what I'm talking about. You've seen it yourself. You've been walking down the big wide open aisle that has only two other people in it,both of whom are stopped at precisely the same point in the aisle, carts side by side, both totally unaware of each other's presence, or the presence of anyone else who might want to get down the aisle. You've been coming out of an aisle only to nearly smash into someone walking along the front of the store who decided they needed to grab something from the display at the front of your aisle, and parked their cart lengthwise across the opening to the aisle. You've been nearly run over by the person wandering down the aisle, looking almost aimlessly back and forth between the left and right, and yet somehow never actually looking in front of them along the way. You've seen all of these people, and more. In fact, you've been all these people, and more! We all have, whether we were aware of it or not (and obviously we aren't, that's part of the grocery store curse, you see).

And so I have to ask, what is it about the grocery store? What is it that causes otherwise normal, fully functional people to immediately turn into mindless, lost, spatially unaware drones upon entry? I've been pondering this for far too long without an answer. If anyone from the government is reading this (and I'm sure I have to be on the FBI watch list by now anyhow), a study into this issue would be a much better waste of my money than a lot of the things you've got going at the moment. I'm not saying I would approve, but I would be slightly less miffed.

Don't Blink

I was at my 5 year college reunion over the weekend. I assume it's natural to be in a reflective mode after one attends such an event, and that's where I find myself right now. As an aside, I also find myself in denial of that fact that it has actually been 5 years since I graduated college, which I also assume is natural. I could be wrong about that, but if I am, don't tell me, as I prefer blissful ignorance in this area. One thing I am certain of is that they are admitting kids to college at a younger age now than they did when I attended, because there is no way I was as young as the current crop of college students are back when I roamed the Messiah College campus. But I digress....

So yes, I've been rather reflective after my day of reconnecting with friends I hadn't seen in many years, and hearing about the changes in their lives since we last spoke - weddings, children, career changes, etc. Within the confines of my everyday routine, where change occurs relatively slowly and right in front of me, it's easy to lose track of the passing of time. Stepping out of that to an event like a reunion, however, makes it very easy to see just how much time has passed, in what seems like the blink of an eye.

I'm a confessed fan of country music, and my favorite song that's currently on the country chart is Kenny Chesney's "Don't Blink". One of my attractions to country music is a personal affinity towards songs that have messages that are simple, yet highly profound, and I saw that in this song even before this weekend's events made drove the message home for me in a way I'd not yet grasped.

I've only lived 27 years, so I can't speak to whether 100 years actually goes faster than you might think, but I know that the last 5 years have gone much faster than I would have ever guessed. I look back on a lot of things that I wish I could have done differently, while at the same time seeing so many great experiences that I would never trade. I see much time well spent, and yet also more time wasted than I would care to admit.

One of the results of all this reflection is what you see before you now, the resurrection of this blog after more than 2 years of inactivity. My desire is to one day making a career out of writing something more interesting than technical documentation, and so upon reflection, it is absolutely clear that I need spend more of my time right now, well, writing things that are more interesting than technical documentation. This is my forum for that. I also see rejoining the blogosphere as an opportunity to maintain a connection with friends who I had all but lost contact with, though I would have never intentionally wished for that to happen. We shall see.

Anyhow, my intention is to be more faithful this time around. I still plan on pursuing sportswriting, so you're going to see a lot of sports on this blog. However, I will be sure to include plenty of other pieces to keep the attention of those who might have an interest in what's going on in my head, but have no interest in sports. All of that is to say, welcome, and I hope you find something worthwhile here that keeps you coming back.

Shouldn't a playoff team win at least of half of their games?

It's pennant race time in baseball. I know these days a large portion of the country's sports fans are much more concerned with pre-season football than baseball. Call me old-fashioned, but give me late August baseball over late August football any day. I mean, I love football too, and I can't wait for opening weekend. But the games don't even count yet.

Anyone who follows baseball from year to year will tell you that this year is shaping for a particularly compelling stretch run. All but 2 division races are still very much up for grabs. As I write this, all 5 teams in the National League East are still within striking distance of the division crown, all within 6.5 games of the first place Braves. In the American League, 5 teams are within 5 games of the wild card, and in the NL, 5 teams are within 3 games. Barring a major run by a few different teams, this season promises to provide games loaded with playoff implication down to the very end. There is a lot to get excited about in baseball right now.

And yet, one fact really agitates me - the cespool that is the NL West, and the potential it has to completely undermine the credibility of the playoffs in baseball. At this moment, the San Diego Padres sit atop the division with a 4 game lead and a record of 61 wins and 62 losses. That's right, if the season ended today, there would be a team in the playoffs that lost more games than they have won. The Padres would be 5 games back in the wild card standings if they weren't leading their division.

Matters get even worse when you look beyond the record itself. Consider the fact that MLB uses an unbalanced schedule, meaning that almost one half of a team's games come against the other teams in it's division. The West is easily the worst division in the National League. The four teams other than San Diego have four of the six worst records in the league. Only 1 NL team has failed to win more games against the West teams than they have lost. (Oddly enough, the East leading Braves) And in 44 games against those teams, the Padres are 24-20. Four games over .500 against the worst competition out there? Are you kidding me? Put the Padres in the East and they'd struggle to stay within 15 games of the .500 mark.

And so I ask: Shouldn't a playoff team win at least half of their games? I generally support the current playoff system, and don't normally have qualms about giving division winners a pass into the playoffs. I can't remember ever once balking at sending a division winner to the playoffs while a team with a better record stays home, but even I have my limits. I know teams have been making the NBA and NHL playoffs with fewer wins than losses for years, but this is baseball, and only four teams from each league make the playoffs. In my book, that means the standards should be higher.

The fact that playoff baseball is dramatically different from regular season baseball only strengthens my position. A basketball or hockey team that squeaks into the playoffs still has to go out there and win with the exact same team that got them there. Not so in baseball. Once in the playoffs, a baseball team gets to dump it's worst (and in many cases it's 2nd worst) starting pitcher. They get more frequent off days so they can make more extensive use of their best relievers. Unlike the other major sports, a baseball team can be significantly better suited for the playoffs than for the regular season. So, if you want to maintain the importance of a 162 game regular season that occupies 6 of the 7 months of the baseball season, you have to require teams to earn their playoff spots. I think at a minimum that should include a requirement of winning at least half of your games.

So, keep the divisional system, let the division winners go under normal circumstances. But if you end the season below .500, you forfeit your spot and that league awards a 2nd wild card. At the very least, give the team that finished 2nd in the wild card standings a 1 game playoff for the spot. I really don't think that's too much to ask for. San Diego could make the argument moot for this year by beating up on the West teams enough over the last month of the season to end over .500, but if the system isn't changed, that would only be dodging an inevitable bullet. Perhaps the only benefit of the 1994 strike was that it saved baseball from this embarrasment in the first year of the current playoff system, as Texas was leading the West despite being 10 games below .500 when the strike hit.

Who cares that Notre Dame isn't dancing?

As I mentioned in my last entry, I love March Madness. By this time tomorrow, I will be fully doused in college hoops - watching the games, checking out my picks, watching in agony as one of my Final Four teams goes down in the first round, cheering on my favorite team (Duke, by the way), and everything else comes with it. I enjoy all the speculation and build up to the tournament, but ultimately it's all about the games.

What I do not enjoy is this period immediately following the bracket announcements, where every pundit weighs in on which mediocre teams got "snubbed", how Team A was more deserving than Team B, and so on and so forth. Dick Vitale, in particular, went on and on about how Notre Dame belonged in the tournament. He was joined by many others.

But really, let's look at this team that everyone was so convinced should be playing for the national championship. When Selection Sunday rolled around, Notre Dame sat with a 17-11 record, and were 9-7, good for 6th place in the Big East. They had lost 4 of their last 5 games, including being dumped in the first game they played in the Big East tournament. So, to recap, 11 loses, 7 conference losses, no wins in the conference tournament. And further more, this team that everyone was so high on, promptly went out 2 days later and lost in the first round of the NIT.

And so I ask: Who cares that Notre Dame isn't dancing? I exclude from this question the Notre Dame team and their fans. So they played a tough schedule. They lost 11 of the games. So they played in what was probably the toughest conference in the country this year. They finished 6th. Why should I cry because they, and many other teams with similar resumes, don't get to play for the national championship?

Yes, I understand that there are 65 bids available, and thus perhaps it is a fair discussion whether Notre Dame or someone else was more deserving of a bid than a team that received one. However, my bottom line is this: If you lost 11 games and were the 6th place team in your own conference, you aren't the best team in the nation, and so it's not going to keep me up nights that you didn't get to play for the national championship. Maybe you do have the ability to get hot and win the 6 games required to win the title, or to win fewer but still make a nice run. If you haven't done enough with your regular season schedule to at least rank you in the discussion for best team in your conference, then you haven't earned the right to take a shot at the national picture. Maybe you were more deserving than another team, but in my mind, you have no real room for complaint.

The teams that I feel bad for in the current system are teams from the smaller conferences who win their conference regular season, often handily, but fall prey to the upset in the conference tournament and thus don't get to dance because their conference is only going to get one bid. I'd much rather be spending at-large bids on teams like that (Miami of Ohio comes most prominently to mind), than on the Notre Dames of the basketball world.

Why play the season?

I'll be blunt. I live for March Madness. There is little about this time of year that I don't enjoy. You can't beat being able to turn on the TV at virtually anytime of day and being able to get a basketball game. I eat it all up - the bubble watch, the Cinderella teams, the pundits going back and forth, who's in, who's out, who got lucky, who got snubbed. Every year I fill out my bracket, and almost every year I've torn it up by the 2nd weekend, and yet I keep coming back for more.

In my view, the NCAA men's basketball tournament ranks right up there with the Super Bowl and a few other select events as one of the greatest and most exciting sporting events each year. Think about it: take 65 teams from across the country, toss them in 4 sections of 1 big bracket, and let them fight it out: Do or die, win or go home. Forget the records, this is all about winning 6 in a row. I can't think of a better celebration of basketball, or of sports in general.

And all of this is why what happened tonight offends me so much, as a fan of March Maddness and sports in general. For those who aren't keeping up, Oakland (Mich) of the Mid-Continent Conference, who ended the regular season with twice as many losses (18) as wins (9), will be in the NCAA tournament, complete with their 12-18 record. Seeded 7th in the Mid-Continent Conference tournament, Oakland went on a stunning 3 game run, culminating with a buzzer beating 3 pointer which gave them a 61-60 victory over top seed Oral Roberts (26-7) So, a team that still has won exactly 40% of its games will receive an invite to dance on the biggest stage there is.

And so I ask: why play the season? If, in the case of Oral Roberts, a season's worth of work can be flushed down the toilet in one unfortunate game, what's the point? Likewise, if a season's worth of ineptitude can be erased with one good week, why bother? But this is what we've just seen happen, and will continue to see happen as long as conference tournaments control NCAA bid destinies. This is not a shot at Oakland. They've won their bid fair and square, by the same rules everyone else plays by. And it's not like they are the first to do so. This is, in fact, the 4th year in a row that a team has been granted entrance to the national championship tournament with a sub .500 record.

Don't get me wrong: conference tournaments make for some great and exciting basketball. I'm sure that had I been able to watch, I would have found Oakland's run very exciting. And I understand why conferences put that automatic bid out there for grabs in the conference tournament. It adds incentive and urgency to the games, generating excitement and pulling in revenue. I get that, it's ultimately a money thing, and thus I know that it will likely never change. Still, call me a purist, call me old fashioned, but I think an invitation to play for the national championship should be earned by a body of work over an entire season, and that teams that play the best basketball all season long should be rewarded over a team that got hot for one week.

Even with the understanding that the conference tournaments are here to stay, can we at least make a rule that you have to have won more games than you lost to play in the national championship tournament? That doesn't seem terribly unfair, does it? Then again, maybe I'm just out of touch and misguided.

Will a real challenger please stand up?

Yesterday afternoon, I spent most of my time from 3 to 6 glued to the television. I watched enthusiastically as two of the giants of golf battled each other in a showdown that couldn't have been scripted better by the best Hollywood has to offer. In the one corner was Phil Mickelson, on one of the biggest rolls of his career, beloved as "the people's champion", if you will. In the opposite corner, Tiger Woods, at 29 already boasting career acheivements that rival the all-time greats, but coming off his least successful season as a pro. The two most popular golfers on tour, duking it out in the final group at Doral, with no one else close enough to make a realistic chase.

The two titans fought like gladiators throughout the afternoon, providing a variety of highlight reel moments, with Woods eventually prevailing by a slim one stroke margin. Lefty was not without his opportunities, and in fact came agonizingly close to holeing a chip on 18 which would have forced a playoff. But in the end, Tiger prevailed, regained the title of #1 in the world rankings, and had the majority of the sports media proclaiming "He's back." And that's hard to argue, given that he closed his tournament record 264 with rounds of 63 and 66, tracking down Mickleson, who had held at least a share of the lead in each of his last 10 stroke play rounds.

But the media also lauded Mickleson, saying that he had gone toe to toe with Woods, and stood up to the challenge. They praised his ability to recover from Woods' stunning eagle on the par 5 12, which gave Tiger a two stroke lead and seemed to close the door. Perhaps, it was suggested, if Woods was about to begin another run of greatness, Mickleson and others would be ready to provide stronger competition.

This may ultimately be true. Vijay Singh dominated the PGA in 2004 while Woods struggled through another swing overhaul. Ernie Els played similarly brilliant golf, and Mickleson had a fine season, highlighted by his first major victory at the Masters. We have yet to see how Vijay and Ernie will hold up against Tiger, if he is returning to form. But Phil's first attempt looks earily similar to things of the past, if you go below the surface.

Yes, Mickleson hung with Woods and made him work for his win. He didn't completely collapse, but it would be hard to say he didn't blink under the pressure. Normally a brilliant putter, Lefty missed a variety of short putts at key moments, putts he had been making all week. The most crucial of these was a 5 foot par putt on 16, which would have returned him to the lead after Woods made bogey on the hole. Entering Sunday, Mickleson's worst round of the tournament was 66, the exact score that Tiger carded on Sunday. Mickleson, however, carded a 69 - 3 strokes off his previous high for the tournament, 3 strokes worse than Woods, and enough to turn his 2 stroke lead into a 1 stroke defeat, Mickleson's 3rd failure in three tries when in the final group with Tiger. Perhaps even more telling - Mickleson's margin to Woods on Sunday's round was exactly the average margin that Woods has outshot his opponents in the final group of a tournament going back to 1999. So, for all his bravado about wanting to go toe to toe with Tiger, Lefty once again threw out an effort that was average at best.

And so I ask: will a real challenger please step up? For the whole of the 2004 season, we heard how there were golfers ready to challenge Tiger, to make a serious run at his pedestal. And it was easy to believe, as we watched Phil, Ernie, and Vijay rack up wins all over the world while Woods struggled. But the early returns from this season indicate that perhaps Woods really wasn't fighting last year. Perhaps prevailing opinion is right, and these other stars don't fear Tiger as they once did. However, maybe that fear was only in hiding, along with Tiger's best golf. The first challenger has taken their shot at the new Tiger, and came up with nothing but air.