Getting to First Base

It’s well-documented how much I despise winter. To me, it’s too long between the time the World Series ends and Opening Day. Football is great, and I loves me some college basketball, but those things are just placeholders in my life - no sports season feels as complete to me as baseball season. I’m lost without baseball.

However, every year I begrudgingly accept the fact that winter has to happen, and try to manage. This weekend might have been the most perfect solution to the problem of winter. . . I went to a hockey game on Friday, watched football in a bar on Saturday, went to another hockey game after that, and went to a Nebraska basketball game today.

1. Hockey game #1: I had never been to a hockey game above the level of junior high roller hockey before. I grew up in a tiny town that’s pretty far from everywhere, so I never really had access to hockey. But now…I just want more of it.

2. Husker football: Without bars, I’d never be able to see a Nebraska Pay-per-view game. No way I can pay 30+ bucks to watch on TV; a ticket to attend Husker home games is significantly cheaper than that.

But luckily, I did have a place to watch the Huskers pound Kansas State on Saturday afternoon. I have this seething dislike for K-State that only grows every year, especially their quarterback Josh Freeman, who committed to Nebraska first before leaving for Manhattan. So I was grateful to be able to see my Huskers mount a 56-28 win.

And then, what a game it was. NU quarterback Joe Ganz might be the manliest man to ever be a man. He rushed for 95 yards yesterday, in addition to passing for 270 which put him over 3,000 for the season. Two of his rushes were into the endzone…if the Big XII weren’t so ridiculously stacked with great talent at QB, Ganz would certainly be the focus of more conversations at the national level. I panicked internally when he threw a pick on the first drive that K-State returned 57 yards for a touchdown. Bad start, right? But Ganz and the Huskers recovered quite nicely.

And my, oh my, did Roy Helu Jr. have a great game. He rushed for 72 yards and two more highlight reel-worthy touchdowns. He’s my new favorite Husker, for sure.

My brothers and I wondered if there was a special free admission for K-State fans who dressed up as empty bleachers. The Wildcats drew a pathetic 48,444 fans to this game, and most of them left around halftime. I haven’t ever met a “good” Kansas State fan, but I know a ton of people who root for them when things are going well. Just saying.

3. Hockey game #2: My first hockey fight. Wooo!

4. Nebrasketball!: The thing - the ONE thing - that I absolutely love in the winter is Nebraska basketball. Today was the first regulation game of this season, and it was…well…at least Nebraska won. I like this description from the Huskers.com writeup:

While Nebraska shot poorly, San Jose State didn’t fare much better.

Yikes. But true. The Huskers really looked awful in parts of the game, like the first eight minutes of the 2nd half. What struck me is how none of the upperclassmen stood out; they all sort of blended together instead of stepping up as the new team leaders. The only player who did himself any favors was freshman Toney McCray, who aaaaaalmost pulled off a double-double but ended one rebound shy. Those 9 boards and his 17 points both led the team.

Even though the team played an uninspiring game, I’m still thrilled that it is basketball season again. I’d love for the Huskers to burst forth and surprise everyone with an awesome team, but I don’t think it will happen. But that doesn’t mean you won’t find me in the bleachers of the Bob Devany Center every home game!

If it HAS to be winter, I guess that means I HAVE to be at sporting events. I can deal with that.

The Chiefs/Chargers game wasn’t televised here yesterday, so I didn’t see most of it. But CBS (I think?) switched to coverage of that last :51 of the game, right as Kansas City was down by 7 and pushing to score. They did score a touchdown on a Tyler Thigpen pass to Tony Gonzalez, and I settled in for the overtime that was sure to come after the extra point was kicked.

But then…Thigpen and the rest of the offense stayed on the field. They lined up to go for a two-point conversion to win the game, and it failed. Another loss for those hapless Chiefs.

Some people liked the move - Jason Whitlock defended it in his column, and a majority of KC Star readers said in a poll (on that page) that they would have gone for two, too. Whitlock writes:

The Chiefs’ single mission this season is improvement. As fans, we should have two missions: 1. Improvement; 2. Securing a draft pick high enough to pluck the best quarterback in the 2009 draft (Ball State’s Nate Davis if we’re lucky).

For the third week in a row, the Chiefs demonstrated dramatic improvement without jeopardizing a shot at the league’s No. 1 pick. Only the irrational would argue the Chiefs aren’t making progress.

I agree with Whitlock when he talks about how the Chiefs showed improvement in this game, and KC fans should be encouraged by the performance of all the replacements who have had to take the field this year. And normally I do love aggressive, play-to-win moves, and I like the bullheaded winner’s mentality that drives someone to never settle for playing for a tie.

However.

HOW. EVER.

The 2008 Chiefs are not winners, not so far. They have one win, and seven losses. They’ve been in very few situations where overtime is even a consideration, and when you’re one of the most win-starved teams in the country you should not throw away an opportunity for a non-loss on one play. It’s not fair to the Chiefs and their fans.

Like I said, I like playing to win, but only if you’re a winner. I don’t fault Tom Osborne for going for two in 1983 when his Cornhuskers were looking for a national title. He’s Tom freaking Osborne, and he had Turner Gill under center. That was a football team going for a big title, not one mired in suckitude and a revolving door of no-name replacement players.

Chiefs fans are calling for coach Herm Edwards to be fired, and given how trendy it is to fire NFL coaches these days, they might get their wish yet this season. Given that circumstance, and all the uphill battles the team is facing with their on-field personnel, Edwards should play to not lose, and let the rest sort itself out. This Chiefs team under his leadership hasn’t earned the right to go balls-out and play to win. If they say they’re not struggling, it’s either a lie or a sad heap of denial.

The Chargers were a somewhat superior team on Sunday, and the Chiefs should be applauded for hanging in there as long as they did. But going for two was a fool’s move; it was a bunch of losers trying to act like winners without actually winning anything first.

And don’t get me started on Whitlock’s comments about “not jeopardizing a shot at the league’s No. 1 draft pick.” COME. ON. Bill Simmons made up a name for this loser mentality, and it’s called Fantanking. I hate the thought of ever rooting against your team for any reason. Rationalize it all you want with thoughts of next year’s draft, but to me you’re still just booing your own guys. What’s noble about that?

Besides, there’s no way the Chiefs get next year’s No. 1 draft pick. That would suggest that the Lions win, ever, and we all know that ain’t gonna happen.

One of the most-speculated players of this Hot Stove season is Matt Holliday, the left fielder for the Colorado Rockies. Rumors have linked him to just about every team, and it seemed that the Rockies’ demands for him were steep.

All along, I wondered if teams would be suckered into giving up more than Holliday is worth. His offensive numbers certainly LOOK fantastic, but a closer look quickly reveals that he benefited greatly from playing in a hitter’s park.The 28-year-old righty has hit 128 homers in his five seasons in the Majors, but 84 of them - that’s over 65% - have come at home. Maybe I’m wrong here, but it seems like that number is disproportionately high given that a team’s schedule is split roughly in half between home and road games.

Is Holliday a formidable hitter? Oh yes. But should the A’s realistically expect him to hit near as many homers in their Coleseum as he did at Coors Field? That would be beyond foolish. I hope they adjust their expectations and how much they give up for him according to how good he actually is, rather than according to how he performed in an extreme hitter’s park.

As of this posting - about 4 p.m. Central - we don’t know who Oakland is sending to Colorado for Holliday. This page will be updated as those facts come out.

Two weeks ago, I accompanied my little brother to an event that’s considered life-changing around here. My father was with me for mine when I was 13.  A child’s first Nebraska Cornhusker football game is a Big Deal around here.

Ask any one of the 85,000 fans in Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium, and they all remember when their first Husker game was. Maybe it was decades ago, in the early part of Nebraska’s incredible streak of 296 consecutive sellouts*. Maybe, in the case of a guy in my row today, it was only a few years ago because he grew up in Virginia and married into Husker Nation.

That guy was the best. He’s only been a Nebraska fan since he got married, but he’s awesome. He came into our section on crutches, and later revealed that he needs leg surgery but is waiting until after the season so he can follow the Huskers to Manhattan, Kan., next week, come back to Lincoln for the game against Colorado the day after Thanksgiving, and then to whatever bowl game Nebraska finds itself playing in December. Yep, this guy was born to be a Husker fan.

*side note about that sellout streak: Every home game since 1962 has sold out - today was #296 - despite numerous expansions to Memorial Stadium’s capacity. Go back to 1962 to see what kind of changes the world has witnessed since the last time there was a single unsold seat in Lincoln…newspapers printing in color was a new thing, as was a human orbiting the earth. East Germans had to worry about that pesky Berlin Wall. The first Wal-Mart opened in that year, ditto for Target. The Beatles released their very first single, and the first James Bond movie was released. Before 1962, the term “personal computer” had never been used in the media. ZIP codes didn’t exist yet, and gas cost about $.40 per gallon. Our president-elect was crawling around in diapers. This sellout streak has spanned 9 U.S. presidencies. Incredible.

Next to me today was an adorable 8-year-old boy with red hair, freckles, and a few missing teeth who braved the cold today to attend his first game with his dad. I’m always delighted to hear that someone is attending his/her first game, and this kid was certainly no exception. He never complained about the cold, but occasionally needed his dad to help him put his hood back up (a difficult task when one’s little hands are bundled up in mittens!), never asked to leave his seat to go buy snacks or find somewhere warm to stand, high-fived everyone whenever Nebraska scored, and asked his dad lots of questions.

This kid being there was such a delight, and an opportunity to think back to my own first Husker game. I don’t even have to look up the date; I’ll remember forever that it was October 27, 2001. Nebraska hosted Oklahoma, which at that time was a matchup between #1 and #2 in the country. My dad and I got up long before the sun rose to drive from our home in western NE to Lincoln for the 11:00 kickoff.

It was the first sporting event I attended after 9/11, and there were American flags everywhere. Dad bought a flag decal for his car window from a random charity, and that sticker is still there (it’s my car now). I’ve been to many, many Husker games since that day, but the loudest and quietest I’ve ever heard that stadium were both that day.

Before the game there was a moment of silence to honor and remember the victims of the 9/11 attacks. It was the only such moment I’ve ever witnessed in which everyone was actually silent; usually there are people who continue their conversations and keep moving around the stadium, but not that day. The 77,000+ that day stood as silent as they could be in one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen.

That silence turned to an absolute frenzied roar later as quarterback Eric Crouch, that year’s Heisman winner, caught a touchdown pass to seal the 20-10 victory for the Huskers. You can sort of get a sense of that roar in the background of the video. I remember feeling the stadium shake under my feet.

A Nebraskan child’s first Husker game is as big a rite of passage as any; most of us hold that day in the same level of personal importance with the first time we drove, first kiss, high school graduation, and so on. I’m so grateful that my first was not only a win, but a classic chapter of one of the country’s finest rivalries. The befreckled 8-year-old next to me today has a lot of greatness to remember from the Husker win over Kansas. We had a defensive lineman take the field with the offense and grab a touchdown pass late in the game. A B-2 flew over during the National Anthem.  Joe Ganz threw for 324 yards. The Huskers are now bowl-eligible. That’ll be something fun for our little first-timer to tell his classmates on Monday, right?

I AM excited for tonight’s Game 5 of the World Series. Really. Cole Hamels vs. Scott Kazmir? This could be a lot of fun!!

BUT. As I sit here and wait for one last commercial break (Flomax, Viagra, and DirecTV, oh my!), I must acknowledge with great sadness that this could be the last MLB game I watch this fall. If the Phillies win, that’s it; the fat lady sings and we’re left with no baseball until Spring Training. Sure, I’ll be glad to be rid of Joe Buck (whose broadcasts might be more outright offensive than Joe Morgan’s) and Tim McCarver, but I will miss baseball!

I want to love the World Series, and just get wrapped up in all the action, the pagentry, the dreams coming true (and the corresponding dreams of the losing team getting crushed). Instead, I can’t help but realize the finality of it.

It’s a darn long time from tonight until Opening Day ‘09. I’m praying the Rays can pull out a win tonight (and maybe even 1 or 2 more) so that number can shrink, even if it’s just by a few days.

Go Rays!

UPDATE: I am SO glad the Rays got that one run in before the game finally had to be delayed. The weather in Philly is about as miserable as weather can be; that cold-but-not-freezing rain is indescribably awful. But even that is not as bad as the idea of awarding Philiadelphia the World Series because they happened to be ahead after 5 innings when the rain became too much to play through. Now that Tampa has scored to tie it 2-2, that fear is erased. Awarding the Series on a rain delay call could be one of the biggest scar on Bud Selig’s time as commissioner of baseball.

UPDATE again: They’ve just announced that the game has been suspended, and will resume tomorrow at 8/7 cenral. It’s the first time in World Series history that a game has been suspended. So…kind of an antixlimax for Phils fans, but such is life, right?

This is just a rumor so far, but I’m already imagining future Sunday nights, with happy feelings and lower blood pressure and no need to assault my mute button every 30 seconds. I shouldn’t get ahead of myself until it’s official, but the New York Daily News has word that Joe Morgan will no longer be a part of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts.

Could the 19-year “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcasting partnership of ESPN’s Jon Miller and Joe Morgan be coming to an end? And will their ESPN Radio call of the Rays-Phillies World Series be the final chapter?

Well-embedded baseball moles contend the answer is “yes” to both questions.

In a word: Woooooooo!

In more words: I’m sad that Joe Morgan’s broadcasting career has gone this way. I wish it had never started, so that I could just know about him as part of the Big Red Machine - the phenomenal Cincinnati Reds of the ’70s. Morgan’s play at 2nd base is legendary; he’s definitely who I’d emulate if I ever had dreams of making it big as a 2nd baseman. (Sadly, my baseball dreams ended in 6th grade, when I became too old for the no-tryout Little League, and I wasn’t good enough - and was, you know, not a boy - for the next level up.) That’s the Joe Morgan I wish I knew.

Instead, what I think of when I hear his name is a completely deficient announcer. As the linked article says, he’s been criticized by many of his contemporaries for not studying for his broadcasts. It really shows. If you ever read his weekly chats, one theme he repeats almost every week is that he doesn’t watch enough of Team X to answer a reader’s question. (You can read hilarious ripping-apart of the Joe Morgan chats here.)

This man’s JOB is to know about baseball. Any schmuck with a couple hundred dollars can see almost every single game from every single team if he/she so chooses. Morgan certainly has the dough for the Extra Innings package, so why doesn’t he seem to EVER watch a game besides the one per week he is paid to announce? Casual fans of the game should be able to look to the Sunday night announcers to teach them something about the teams on the field. Instead, Morgan skates by on either generalities or flat-out misconceptions about the players, instead of…oh, I don’t know…taking 5 seconds to peek at some baseball-reference pages maybe?

And don’t even get me started on his nonsensical hatred of statistics. He bashes even basic metrics like on-base percentage, which is highly ironic because his career, and the greatness of the Big Red Machine, was all built on OBP. It’s ridiculous. How can anyone honestly believe that “team chemistry” is more important than getting on base? Does your team get two runs if a guy is driven in by a teammate who is also his BFF?

I’m not saying that players are merely compilations of stats - y’all know better than that - but let’s be real. How often does the personal closeness of a bunch of players actually, tangibly affect the outcome of a game? These guys are professionals; they each play as hard as they need to to stay in the Majors. (For some, that’s 100% effort; for others, notsomuch.) If a Player A causes some drama in the clubhouse, Player B is not going to fall apart and forget how to play baseball, or purposely fail out of spite. Team chemistry makes for nice stories, but it is not that important if players can’t get on base. Yet Morgan continues to bash all stats.

Ugh. I’ll do handsprings down the hallway if he is, indeed, gone. I’m sure Jon Miller will too.

I’m not, by any means, a sports expert. I spend as close to 24 hours as I can every day thinking about/reading about/studying/watching baseball, but NO. I am NOT any kind of expert. I’m just a fan with a mild case of Nerditis and a couple of blogs. That no more makes me an expert than any other fan, or most other baseball writers. Joe Posnanski wrote a while ago about how silly it is that he has to pick NFL outcomes and scores every week. People think he’s got some kind of magical insight that average fans can’t have, an 8-ball of stats and scores that only sportswriters are able to see.

People make that assumption about me, too, though probably to a lesser extent. In one of my classes, we spend a while every week talking about current events, including sports stories. The teacher always  - ALWAYS - calls on me, out of a class of around 50 kids, to detail the week’s sports stories. I’m a sports writer, she reasons, so I must know what’s up. And yeah, usually I do know what has happened in major sports; I’d be out of work in a hurry if I didn’t.

But please don’t come to me looking for future outcomes. Odds are good that I can’t predict with any greater accuracy over time than you, your mother, or her next-door neighbors who never watch TV. Reading extra Deadspin every day doesn’t make me better at knowing who’s going to win the World Series; I can’t counsel anyone on which team to bet on.

Buuuuuuut….I’m a polite girl. I would never say the things in the previous paragraph to someone’s face. People do ask me, in all sincerity, to share some special insights and “expert” predictions. I always politely deflect the question. “All I want is a 7-game series,” I tell them. “Philly winning tonight at Tampa was a good start.”

Bam. Question dodged. If I never make a cut-and-dried prediction, then by golly I can’t be wrong! Man, I think I should be a baseball “expert” on TV!!

I’m not a particular fan of the New England Patriots. I mean, I don’t hate them*, but they’re not my favorite NFL team either. I wasn’t one of the people rejoicing when Tom Brady’s knee went in a direction that knees are not supposed to go during a game against the Chiefs early this season. I think, even if were a Patriot-hater, I’d rather see all their best pieces out on the field. If they win, they’re clearly better (but I can hate on them anyway, for reasons of my choosing). If they lose, then hey - more power to the victor for overpowering the best players New England had to offer.

*my hatred of NFL teams is limited exclusively to the Cowboys, the Raiders, and the Broncos. All other teams are subjected to periods of dislike or utter indifference, but never hate.

Anyway, Tom Brady’s early-season injury isn’t my point at all, because the Patriots have done OK, if a little schizophrenic at times, without him (they’re 4-2, and won handily over the Denver Broncos on Monday).

BUT despite a huge margin of victory, it was a sad night for Pats fans, who saw safety Rodney Harrison suffer a season-ending injury.

I didn’t get to watch a whole lot of NFL action over the weekend because I was spending time with my family, but I did see Harrison go down. Even though he’s not a player I particularly care for, I felt weird seeing that happen to him. I think it was all the talk about how this injury could spell the end of his career. There’s just something sickly surreal about watching a short video clip of football, and knowing the result of that footage is that some guy’s career is over.

It’s hard sometimes to feel sorry for guys whose job is to play a game, especially when people all over America are losing their more real-world jobs as I type this. In rough economic times like this, it’s extra-sickening to see athletes swimming in pools filled with money while the rest of us worry about getting through the day.

But still. I feel for athletes who have to call it quits because of an injury. Retirement should be a choice, and a player should know when he’s suiting up for the last time. Just like anyone else, they should get to know when the end is coming, rather than be surprised by it in front of a national TV audience.

Note: a personal item, if I may. Both my desktop computer and my laptop are on the fritz today. The laptop refuses to connect to the Internet, and the desktop needs either a new video card or a new motherboard. My sudden lack of personal  computers will make blogging (and homework!) a little bit harder than usual this week.

Something about me you might not know, unless you are my mom, is that I like to sing. So every Thursday, shortly after The Office ends, I head over to my campus church to sing in its choir. Tonight wasn’t any different than last Thursday, or the one before that, or the one before that.

I watched as much baseball as I could before I left, but honestly I had lost hope for the Red Sox. I mean, they were down 3 games to 1 and it looked like Tampa Bay had a pretty tight grip on Game 5 and therefore the AL penant. It was 5-0 Rays, the Sawx bats looked beleaguered and completely ineffective, and I thought I’d spare myself the torture of watching them get spanked - again - and just leave for choir.

So I missed all the good stuff, up until Kevin Youkilis was up to bat for Boston in the bottom of the 9th. It was 7-0, Tampa Bay at one point?? Are you kidding me?? And…those sleepy Boston bats woke up, all at the same time? WHAT?!?!?!? One of the greatest single-game comebacks in MLB playoff history…and I wasn’t there. Immediately, two items showed up in my Google reader with the simple title Unbelievable. And those were written by people who saw it happen. And, for good measure, here’s more immediate-postgame reaction.

The main headline at redsox.com called this win “magical.” It had to have been, following a week in which Tampa Bay has put more dents in the Green Monster than there are shoes in my closet, and legendary pieces of Fenway lore started setting themselves on fire. I mean…yikes. It was a glum time for Red Sox fans. (Not that I am one of those, but I have enough Sawx fan friends that I can feel pain when things are going badly. And things certainly were bad this week.

But now….will it be bad again? Was this one game enough to propel the Red Sox into another of their historic October comebacks, or was it just delaying heartbreak by two more days? Game 6 is Saturday at Tropicana Field. Hopefully I won’t do anything stupid like join a Saturday choir.

He’s Adam now. Grown up, calmed down, focused on nothing except playing footba– what? Pacman Jones is in trouble again?

I’m still a little surprised that a team as completely image-self-conscious as the Cowboys traded for the troubled cornerback in the first place. The Cowboys, after all, are America’s Team, and if one of their players is involved in a nightclub shooting or smokes pot in his hotel room or shoves around his security guard, well by golly that looks bad for America, not just a football team.

And I really have to wonder how Pacman Adam doesn’t watch himself more closely. He was suspended an ENTIRE SEASON in a league where most suspensions are one- or two-game slaps on the wrist. The Cowboys took him anyway, on the condition that he behave his darn self. Surely Jones must realize that if he keeps screwing up, America’s Team will kick him to the curb and no team would scrape him up from the gutter.

Then again, look at this laundry list compiled by The Tennesseean:

Since the Tennessee Titans drafted cornerback Pacman Jones in 2005 he’s been questioned, named or arrested in connection with at least eight off-field incidents:
• Strip club incident
Where: Atlanta
When: April 2005
What: Jones’ name appeared on the police incident report after a fight broke out in a strip club. The female involved said she had no plans to pursue the case and it was dismissed.

• Hotel incident
Where: Nashville
When: June 2005
What: Security officials at Regal Maxwell House Hotel had trouble getting two of Jones’ friends to clear their room after checkout time. Police arrived, smelled marijuana and found some on a tabletop. Jones was in the room, but one of his friends took full responsibility for the evidence.

• Nightclub arrest
Where: Nashville
When: July 2005
What:Jones was arrested on two counts of misdemeanor assault and a felony count of vandalism after a fight at a Nashville nightclub. Charges were dismissed less than a year later.

• Vehicle confiscation
Where: Nashville
When: April 2006
What: Metro Police said a vehicle registered to Jones was involved in a drug trafficking ring. “Pac Man” was embroidered on the leather seats of a 2004 Cadillac XLR which was confiscated from a friend of Jones. Jones later bought the car back at an auction.

• Shots fired
Where: Nashville
When: April 2006
What: Jones was at the scene where gunshots were fired following an altercation at a Nashville gas station at 1:50 a.m. Police questioned Jones but labeled him only as a witness. The incident occurred just three days after the vehicle confiscation.

• Nightclub arrest
Where: Murfreesboro, Tenn.
When: Aug. 2006
What: Jones was arrested and charged with public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors, for an incident at Sweetwater Saloon. With six months of good behavior the charges will be dropped, a judge ruled last month.

• Spitting incident
Where: Nashville
When: Oct. 2006
What: Jones was issued a citation for misdemeanor assault after being accused of spitting in the face of a Tennessee State student following a verbal exchange at a downtown nightclub. The charge was dismissed in general sessions court earlier this month.

• Triple shooting
Where: Las Vegas
When: Feb. 2007
What: Jones a plea deal reducing felony charges against to a gross misdemeanor that got him probation in return for his testimony about a strip club triple shooting that left one man paralyzed.

Wow. He must have squirmed out of trouble for a few of the early ones with the “wrong place/wrong time coincidence” excuse, but nobody can be unlucky enough to be coincidentally present for THAT many brushes with the law. He clearly had some behavioral issues to work out. And for a while, it looked like he might have himself figured out. The last item on that list was a long time ago, almost 2 years. It’s what got him his full-season suspension that many thought would be the shameful end of his NFL career.

As he worked his way back to the league’s good graces, he tried hard to show the world he had changed. He figured people would take him more seriously if he dropped the name “Pacman,” a name which had been connected with legal troubles far too many times. “Adam” sounds so much more serious, right? Heck, it’s even Biblical. This latest incident seems to be his first significant trouble since the big nightclub shooting. Has enough time passed to think of this as an isolated and unfortunate blunder for some guy named Adam Jones? Or will Cowboys brass, for fear of their sparkling reputation, be swift to publicly discipline Pacman for betraying the second chance they gave him?