The moment the ball spilled out of Mike Cameron's glove Saturday, I turned the television set off. I didn't need to see what was about to happen - the home team emptying the dugout and staging a celebration fit for an aluminum-bat clang of a game-winning hit in the Little League World Series - so I jabbed the button and pondered how a game that took four hours to play seemed like it lasted two days.
In a quiet basement room, detached from the bombardment of Fox Sports Network sound effects, it occurred to me:
Is this some kind of baseball season, or what?
There are 16 teams still in playoff contention. I don't mean 16 teams in mathematical contention. I mean 16 teams in it's-time-to-start-thinking-about-postseason-ticket-orders contention.
Fans are following the standings in virtually every region of the country, from the Pacific Northwest to south Florida, from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Northeast corridor between Philadelphia and Boston.
And then there's the Midwest, where six teams on Saturday morning were within 1 1/2 games of first place - including the Cubs and White Sox, who've produced a late-August, bragging-rights duel not seen in Chicago since 1908.
The great races aren't confined to the standings, either. Any of 10 players could win the AL Most Valuable Player award, and while the run for the MVP in the NL is much easier to handicap, it's still a coin flip between Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds.
Ah, Bonds. I was listening to a nationally syndicated radio talk show Thursday, after Bonds hit his second game-ending home run in three nights (a "walk-off" homer, in trendy SportsCenter parlance), and the discussion dwelled on the disinclination of Braves manager Bobby Cox to give Bonds a free pass to first base in the 10th inning of a 3-3 tie.
Regardless of your point of view - to me, it's a sort of pick-your-poison dilemma - the debate underscored the beauty of the 2003 baseball season: The hot topics are all about strategy, about pitch selections and bullpen maintenance and flexible strike zones and snap judgments made on the basepaths.
Baseball fans, to put it simply, are talking about the game.
That's not the case in other sports. College football fans are talking about the serial fibbing of former Washington coach Rick Neuheisel and the Maurice Clarett fiasco at Ohio State and the latest linebacker from (go ahead, just name any school) who just got arrested for (go ahead, just name any crime).
College basketball fans are talking about the Baylor slaying, and the crumb of a coach who tried to deflect a slush-fund investigation at the expense of the victim's reputation.
Fans of the NBA, for the next year or so, will be talking about the Kobe Bryant rape trial. A warning to the squeamish: Coat your stomach.
Meanwhile, NFL fans, in the aftermath of the broken leg suffered by Atlanta electra-back Michael Vick, are reciting their annual lament of the unnecessary perils of the exhibition season. Oh, and wondering what other dumb comment will be made by bratty tight end Jeremy Shockey.
Refresh my memory: Who was the last major league player associated with a foot-in-mouth controversy? John Rocker?
Refresh my memory again: Is John Rocker still alive?
Baseball's most celebrated scandal this season involved the corked bat of Sammy Sosa, and his ludicrous insistence that carrying the illegal stick to the plate was an absent-minded mistake.
Sosa immediately was labeled a pariah, a cheater who betrayed the role-model image he worked so hard to create.
It turned out the Sosa corked-bat incident, to borrow Mike Scioscia's economical paraphrasing of Shakespeare, was was much to do about nothing much. College professors maintain the benefits of a corked bat are more steeped in psychology than physics.
Sosa, in any event, supposedly had undermined the legitimacy of his power-hitting feats, and never would regain his status as a popular superstar.
Yeah, right.
Sammy Sosa, mired in the most extended slump of his career when he used a corked bat, now has 30 home runs. So much for the downfall of a popular superstar.
Sosa doesn't have MVP credentials, but an intriguing case could be made for him as Comeback Player of the Year.
The most gripping comeback story of 2003? That's got to baseball itself. Last year, you might recall, a season-ending strike was scheduled for Aug. 30. Attention that should've been put on the pennant races was diverted by the possibility of still another labor dispute, a dispute that might've crippled the sport for good.
Twelve months later, no newer than 16 teams are playing pressure games that invite second guessing, demand debate, and turn sleepy late-summer Saturdays into riveting theater.
And you know what?
The best is yet to come.
http://www.tribnet.com/sports/story/3752030p-3780523c.html
In a quiet basement room, detached from the bombardment of Fox Sports Network sound effects, it occurred to me:
Is this some kind of baseball season, or what?
There are 16 teams still in playoff contention. I don't mean 16 teams in mathematical contention. I mean 16 teams in it's-time-to-start-thinking-about-postseason-ticket-orders contention.
Fans are following the standings in virtually every region of the country, from the Pacific Northwest to south Florida, from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Northeast corridor between Philadelphia and Boston.
And then there's the Midwest, where six teams on Saturday morning were within 1 1/2 games of first place - including the Cubs and White Sox, who've produced a late-August, bragging-rights duel not seen in Chicago since 1908.
The great races aren't confined to the standings, either. Any of 10 players could win the AL Most Valuable Player award, and while the run for the MVP in the NL is much easier to handicap, it's still a coin flip between Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds.
Ah, Bonds. I was listening to a nationally syndicated radio talk show Thursday, after Bonds hit his second game-ending home run in three nights (a "walk-off" homer, in trendy SportsCenter parlance), and the discussion dwelled on the disinclination of Braves manager Bobby Cox to give Bonds a free pass to first base in the 10th inning of a 3-3 tie.
Regardless of your point of view - to me, it's a sort of pick-your-poison dilemma - the debate underscored the beauty of the 2003 baseball season: The hot topics are all about strategy, about pitch selections and bullpen maintenance and flexible strike zones and snap judgments made on the basepaths.
Baseball fans, to put it simply, are talking about the game.
That's not the case in other sports. College football fans are talking about the serial fibbing of former Washington coach Rick Neuheisel and the Maurice Clarett fiasco at Ohio State and the latest linebacker from (go ahead, just name any school) who just got arrested for (go ahead, just name any crime).
College basketball fans are talking about the Baylor slaying, and the crumb of a coach who tried to deflect a slush-fund investigation at the expense of the victim's reputation.
Fans of the NBA, for the next year or so, will be talking about the Kobe Bryant rape trial. A warning to the squeamish: Coat your stomach.
Meanwhile, NFL fans, in the aftermath of the broken leg suffered by Atlanta electra-back Michael Vick, are reciting their annual lament of the unnecessary perils of the exhibition season. Oh, and wondering what other dumb comment will be made by bratty tight end Jeremy Shockey.
Refresh my memory: Who was the last major league player associated with a foot-in-mouth controversy? John Rocker?
Refresh my memory again: Is John Rocker still alive?
Baseball's most celebrated scandal this season involved the corked bat of Sammy Sosa, and his ludicrous insistence that carrying the illegal stick to the plate was an absent-minded mistake.
Sosa immediately was labeled a pariah, a cheater who betrayed the role-model image he worked so hard to create.
It turned out the Sosa corked-bat incident, to borrow Mike Scioscia's economical paraphrasing of Shakespeare, was was much to do about nothing much. College professors maintain the benefits of a corked bat are more steeped in psychology than physics.
Sosa, in any event, supposedly had undermined the legitimacy of his power-hitting feats, and never would regain his status as a popular superstar.
Yeah, right.
Sammy Sosa, mired in the most extended slump of his career when he used a corked bat, now has 30 home runs. So much for the downfall of a popular superstar.
Sosa doesn't have MVP credentials, but an intriguing case could be made for him as Comeback Player of the Year.
The most gripping comeback story of 2003? That's got to baseball itself. Last year, you might recall, a season-ending strike was scheduled for Aug. 30. Attention that should've been put on the pennant races was diverted by the possibility of still another labor dispute, a dispute that might've crippled the sport for good.
Twelve months later, no newer than 16 teams are playing pressure games that invite second guessing, demand debate, and turn sleepy late-summer Saturdays into riveting theater.
And you know what?
The best is yet to come.
http://www.tribnet.com/sports/story/3752030p-3780523c.html
