Split is all the Phillies get

Whenever a team you like wins the first game of a playoff series on the road, you immediately get greedy and want a 2-0 lead going back home. I don't necessarily like the Phillies, but I hate the Yankees enough to be a full-fledged Phillies fan in this World Series. Cliff Lee was tremendous in game 1 and dominated the "Cleveland bowl". Both game 1 starters were ex Cleveland Indians and both pitched very well. But CC was no match for Lee on this day. I loved Lee's nonchalant plays on the field too with a couple of come-backers and popups. But in game 2, the tables got reversed. Pedro pitched good, but A.J.Burnett was better. He pitched 7 innings of 1 run ball and Girardi turned the game over to Rivera for the last 2 innings. Seems like Girardi has no faith in his bullpen outside of Mo and Mo shut the door on the Phillies. All things considered Phillies are probably happy to go back with a split and even happier to have beaten CC in game 1. Now onto Cole Hamels and Andy Pettitte. Great pitching match-ups and evenly balanced teams in this series. I think this is going be heck of a World Series.

NBA is rolling and Cleveland is 0-2. Thats the headliner. They lost at home to Boston and then lost again at Toronto despite the King's triple-double. Shaq is doing OK, but the team doesn't look sharper or better than last season. They better start winning soon or Cleveland will be in all sorts of trouble with LeBron's impending free agency and all other distractions. The teams that are looking good so far are the Celtics, Nuggets and of course the Fakers. Reggie Miller is saying the Fakers will be 20-1 after their first 21 games. That will make this NBA season a living hell for me. Hope they don't do that well and rather settle for something more mediocre like 17-4! Melo is playing like a man possessed for the rich and creamies. Following the footsteps of Kobe and LeBron, this guy has also become a truly committed professional with an eye on the prize. Of course KG is always a "man possessed" and his Celtics are one of the several serious contenders this season. With all that said, we need the Cavs to get in the mix and do their thing. The Suns are 1-0 after a close win against the paper-clips. Nash looked great in the money quarter. They open the home schedule tomorrow against the Warriors.

In the NFL, another Favre versus Green Bay weekend coming up. Thats always fun and never gets tired. I hope they meet again in the playoffs. I think A-Rod and the Packers take this one. Tennessee has named Vince Young their starting QB and the Niners have turned over the keys to Alex Smith. I am happy for Alex Smith. I don't know him personally, but from all accounts, it seems like he is a great guy. Of course he has not been a great QB up to this point, but he is going to be better now. How much better we will see. Denver-Baltimore, Atlanta-New Orleans and Giants-Eagles are the other premier match-ups of the weekend. We have never had 3 undefeated teams this late in to the season and 2 of 3 might win again this weekend. Denver might lose, but then again we keep under-estimating them and they just keep winning. There are still 3 winless teams as well in the league. The good news is one of the 3 teams will definitely not lose this weekend. Tampa Bay has a bye this weekend. Good for them and even better for us the fans,

NBA is back and so is Alex

The NBA starts tomorrow. Wow, time just flies! It just feels like yesterday that the 2008-2009 season ended. The good teams this year are loaded. They all got better. Cavs got Shaq, Lakers got Ron-Ron, Boston got Sheed and the Spurs got RJ. Even Magic minus Hedo plus Vinsanity should be interesting. These teams are going to fight it out from day one. There are truly 4 serious contenders and they are going to be focussed from day 1. And so should we as fans. The next week or so is the best part of the sports calendar. The World Series is beginning. NBA is starting and the NFL is in full flow. All 3 pro leagues that matter are in play and so is college football. Good times indeed. The Suns open their season Wed against the Clippers. SI has picked the Suns to be the 8-Th seed in the West. I expect them to be 6 or 7. They are going to score a lot a win a lot of regular season games this year. But I guess thats why I am called a fan.

Alex Smith is the other guy who is back. He subbed in for the Niners against the Texans and is now named the starting QB for next week. I think he is going to be much better this time around. There were way to many blowouts in the NFL last weekend. Too many bad teams these days. The Rams, Lions, Jaguars, Titans, Raiders, Bills, Redskins, Panthers, Bucs, Seahawks and the Chiefs are all horrible. And the Bears are fast joining this list. They got pummeled by their old friend Cedric Benson and Carson Palmer at Cincinnati. The league is so bad that the Jaguars lost 0-41 to the Seahawks a couple of weeks back and are still 3-3. Among he good teams, Favre and the Vikes finally lost against the Steelers at Pittsburgh. Now Favre is going to Green Bay next week and thats gonna be fun. The one surprise result of the weekend was Dallas beating Atlanta rather convincingly. I guess the boys came out of the bye week well prepared. They controlled Matt Ryan pretty well and Romo was awesome. Miles Austin is probably the find of the season for them. The two plays of the weekend were Adrian Peterson absolutely leveling that Steelers DB and Reggie Bush jumping and covering 6 yards in the air laterally to get to the end zone.

The Yankees took care of the Angels and are now in the World Series again after a few years. This is the first trip for A-Rod. He is on fire and is getting the ultimate respect on the field with things like the opposing team walking him in the ninth inning when leading by just a run. It's him and CC and Mo and Andy Pettitte and Jeter doing their thing - a healthy mix of the veteran Yankees and the new ones getting it done. But the Philles are no joke. They are loaded with guys who hit 30 home runs or more during the regular season up and down their lineup. And they wont be star-struck because they were in the World Series last year and they won it and they totally expect to win it again. I want the Phillies to win, but I am afraid the Yankees will win. Either way, I think the series goes 6 or 7 games.

Anyways, time to go get the NBA league pass on TV.

A-Rod is a Yankee God

On a rainy and chilly night at the new Yankees stadium, A-Rod continued his post-season heroics. What a difference a month makes. A-Rod went from being a choker to Mr.October in a matter of a couple of weeks. Rodriguez hit a tying homer in the 11-Th inning and the Yankees won the game in the 13-Th on a Maicer Izturis error. Angels are making a lot of errors these days. They better start catching the ball when they get back to Anaheim. They are playing a team thats loaded top to bottom and you can't give them many chances. Yankees are so loaded that even A-Rod doesn't seem to feel the pressure of carrying the World on his shoulders anymore and that may be the reason for his success. Mark Teixeira has been a God-send for A-Rod and every time they walked Tex to get to A-Rod during the regular season, I think A-Rod relaxed a little bit more. He was not expected to be the man anymore and he liked it that way.

But the truth is, there is no real basis for the "clutch player" and the "choke artist" tags. I understand sports, and even life for that matter, is mostly mental and guys handle pressure and the stress in different ways. But the bottom-line is, if you are good, you are good and if you are bad, you are bad. And A-Rod is very good. So it was just a matter of time before he came through in the playoffs. This is also why I think Derek Jeter is good, but over-rated. He plays for the Yankees and plays 10+ playoff game almost every year. Of course his post-season stats are going to be on-par with his career stats with such a large sample size. Most guys in other teams can't get to play in these many playoff games and their sample size is very small. So the stats are going to be hit or miss, but mostly miss because the playoffs also brings you good pitchers and great competition. Chances are, you are not going to have great stats if you just play 5 or 6 playoff games in your career. But if you play 100 games or so, things even out. So A-Rod's numbers will only get better as he plays longer for the Yankees and gets more and more post-season opportunities.

A-Rod and C.C.Sabathia are carrying the Yankees in these playoffs and A.J. Burnett was not too shabby today either. The Angels needs a masterful pitching performance in a game or two if they want to turn this thing around against A-Rod and this offense. May be Jared Weaver in game 3 can be that guy. Actually Teixeira is hitting just .100 and both him and A-Rod combined for a 1/11 night today. But that 1 hit was A-Rod's homer. If Tex gets going as well, the Angels will be in trouble. They lost a golden opportunity today and they can't afford to do this again and lose game 3. The Dodgers and Phillies play game 3 tomorrow. It's Cliff Lee against Hiroki Kuroda and you have to think the Phillies are the favorites. But thats why they play the game and lets see what happens. This might be a good time for Manny to come out of his .111 funk.

Pretty Passes

Another Monday night, another fun game. This one featured the Jets and the Dolphins and their 2 young QBs. They combined to score 5 TDs just in the fourth quarter and there were many pretty long bombs from both. Chad Henne is not as highly rated as Mark "Sanchise", but he has a strong arm and throws a pretty ball. I am not sure how good he is gonna be, but he sure looks like the QB of the future for the Dolphins right now. Couple of weeks back I wrote about the Dolphins being completely incapable of big plays and that hurt them against the Colts though they ran the ball great. With Henne, the same team looks different. Henne has a live arm unlike Chad Pennington and with Ted Ginn Jr. lined up wide, they have a legitimate deep threat now. Both Henne and Sanchez threw several deep balls in this game and both looked good. It felt like this could be a rivalry in the future and I am glad the Dolphins won. I love their wildcat. Once again, it couldn't be stopped and the Jets defense got killed. The rookie QB on offense was least of their problem. It was their defense that got pummeled in this game.

Speaking of pretty passes, the Manning brothers threw several more this weekend. Another 300+ yards for the older one and a filthy 36 of 44 passing night. Eli pretty much had an off day playing the horrible Raiders. But one of his long passes to Steve Smith in this game was the best pass I have seen this year. Both the Mannings are undefeated and so are Vikings, Saints and the Denver Broncos. Unusually large number of undefeated teams right now and there are also many bad teams in the league. The bad teams this season look really horrible and thats probably why so many of the top teams are undefeated. The Bills, Browns, Chiefs, Raiders, Titans, Ram and the Bucs are all HORRIBLE! This list doesn't even include the Lions and thats how bad these teams are. The Lions at least show up and compete and give people good games these days. The Browns beat the Bills 6-3 last weekend and put everyone of us to sleep. But the top-line in the league is great right now and I can't wait for the Saints-Giants game next weekend. The winner of that game probably will be in the Super Bowl, but the Vikings are very much in the NFC mix as well. So are the Falcons. They looked great last weekend crushing the Niners 45-10.

The big game of the weekend was Broncos hosting the Patriots. Denver came up big and shocked the Pats. Kyle Orton actually threw for 330 yards and outplayed Tom Brady. Wes Welker had a good game, but Randy Moss was nowhere to be seen in this one. The Pats are nothing great this season and I think the hoody might have out-smarted himself with his roster moves in the off-season. Too many shake-ups on the defensive side and now Junior Seau is coming back from retirement for the third time. Even Brett Favre is saying "Come on!". Cincinnati shocked Baltimore and the Bengals are now leading the AFC north. Carson Palmer is driving them down the field in the clutch every week and they are for real, especially given Pittsburgh's inconsistency. As long as Palmer is healthy, they will only get better and more consistent and confident. Arizona won and are beginning to look good. So did Seattle with Hasselbeck coming back and throwing for 4 TDs. Cards should now have a shot at winning this division given the Niners shocking embarrassment against the Falcons. But I expect the NFC West to be a 3 team race all the way to the end. In the East, Donovan McNabb came back from his injury and won in style - his very first pass was a TD. The Cowboys on the other hand needed overtime to beat the lowly Chiefs. The Boys are in trouble.

Sweep, sweep, sweep

The MLB playoffs are full of sweeps. 3 strong teams - Yankees, Angels and Dodgers swept three mediocre teams - Twins, RedSox and the Cards. The Eagles finished the quartet with a 3-1 win over the Rockies today. There have been some interesting finishes in these playoffs so far. The best and the most satisfying end was to see the RedSox and Papelbon blow the save in game 3 at home. The Angels scored 5 runs in the last 2 innings as Papelbon converted a 2 run lead into a one run loss. The inconsistent RedSox just picked a bad time of the year to have another one of their bad stretches. Now they are done and the TV dudes don't get their Yankees-Sox ALCS. Even I would have loved to see it. It's been a while.

As for the aforementioned Yankees, A-Rod is living large right now. Between dating Kate Hudson and batting .455 in the playoffs and the 6 RBIs in one series, it's hard to question this guy. All the doubters and haters have to be quiet right now. He is known for disappearing in October, but now he is the best player in the playoffs. Of course, he needs to be at least half as good as what he has been so far in the next 2 rounds to really cement his place in October, but he has started strong and without him, there would not have been a sweep. In game 3, he tied the game up with a homer in the 7-Th. Carl Pavano of all people was pitching a shutout in to the 7-Th, but A-Rod turned the tide for the Yankees.

Another 9-Th inning miscue happened today as Houston Street blew a save against Ryan Howard and the Phillies. Street had saved 35 out of 37 games, but now he has to deal with this loss the entire off-season. He lost the game on Saturday too and the Eagles stole 2 playoffs games on the road with 9-Th inning wins. Street has blown 3 saves this year and all of them are against the Phillies. Hope these 2 games don't affect his head permanently. It's tough being a closer in this sport. He probably feels like if not for his mistake, the Rockies could have forced a game 5 and even advanced. Matt Holliday probably does and should feel the same way too. His error in game 2 was a killer. The Cards never recovered and were eliminated at home. I was expecting a lot from that series, but the Dodgers cruised rather easily. Now on to the Eagles for the Dodgers. The Yankees have to face the dreaded Angels and they are hoping the result will be different this time around.

Clutch Troubles

The Yankees have been walking off on the the Twins at the new stadium all season long. Today in game 2 of their playoffs series, they did it again. This was the Yankees' fourth walk-off victory over the Twins this season and ninth win in nine games. Thats amazing to me. A-Rod has some serious post-season mojo going for him right now. He hit the game tying, 2-run bomb against Joe Nathan in the 9-Th to send the game to extras. The other stud, Mark Teixeira, hit a line-drive home run in the 11-Th to one of the shortest parts of the stadium to win the game. That thing reached the fence is no time. It was a short and low ride for that baseball. Suddenly A-Rod is a post-season savant. It would be interesting to see how the haters handle his success now. Me personally, I hate the Yankees more than I hate A-Rod and I can handle his success. The Twins are now in trouble. Down 0-2 and nowhere to go, but back home.

The Angels on the other hand are doing great against the BoSox. They are up 2-0 after 2 strong pitching performances by John Lackey and Jared Weaver. Both Lester and Beckett have now lost and the RedSox nation should be gripping big time. The Angels always lose to the RedSox, but win against the Yankees. May be it's going to be the reverse this post-season. In the NL, Matt Holliday was both the hero and the goat as the Cardinals lost a game they almost won against the Dodgers. He hit a home run in the second, but dropped a game ending catch in the 9-Th that turned out to be a rally-starting error for the Dodgers who ended up winning the game 3-2 instead of losing it 2-1. Brutal game for the Cardinal fans. In the other series, the Rockies and the Eagles are tied up and the series should be fun as it moves to Denver. I mean fun for us, but not for the players or the fans in the stadium and the temperature there is supposed to plummet to the thirties.

Tomorrow in College, Florida @ LSU. That should be a good one.

Game number 163

We always say the MLB season is a marathon and not a sprint. I guess Detroit and Minnesota decided the marathon was not long enough. They extended it by one more game today and then they extended today's game number 163 beyond the usual 9 innings. Minnesota finally won it 6-5 in 12 innings. Both teams let many chances slip away before Minnesota clinched it in the 12-Th on a hit by Alexi Casilla who is batting .198 for the season. Perfect end to a disastrous slump by the Tigers. I thought this race was over a while back. But the Tigers found a way to miss the playoffs after leading the division by 3 games with 4 games to go. Miguel Cabrera didn't help by partying with the enemy between games during that final weekend series and then coming home drunk and fighting with his wife. Too many controversies for one weekend. At the end of the day, or rather the season, Tigers loss ends up being Twins gain and they won the tie-breaker this year unlike last year when they lost to the White Sox. This is the third straight year with a one-game playoff in baseball. It's an interesting way to get us primed for the real playoffs.

The playoffs start tomorrow with 3 games. Twins have to go into the Bronx and face the game's top lineup less than 24 hours after winning an extra-inning game. I always thought the league was tough on these teams playing the one-game playoff by scheduling the real playoff game the very next day. But only today I learnt that the Yankees actually have the right to choose when they start their playoff - tomorrow or the day after. Of course they chose tomorrow because that puts the most pressure on the Twins. Not that the Yankees need these things on their side to win it all. They should be able to handle the Twins pretty easily. They have won all their 7 games this season against them and they should win 3 more though they may lose one game in the process. They better win the series. After all, they have the game's highest paid catcher, first baseman, third baseman, shortstop, starter and reliever ! No wonder the Yankees always say anything less than a championship is a failure. What a stupid system MLB is running. It's like a football team having the highest paid QB, RB, WR, linebacker and cornerback in the same team or a NBA team having the highest paid point guarrd, shooting guard and power forward in the league. I don't think that'll happen in those sports, but anything goes in baseball. It's not all about the Yankees though. The Rockies play the Phillies and the Dodgers play the Cards tomorrow as well. I pick the Cards, Rockies, Yankees and Boston to advance.

Bring on the playoffs anyways. Best way to spend the time between the NFL games is to watch playoff baseball. And did I mention the NBA pre-season has started too! Nothing wrong with that.

Mannings and Favre dominate

The NFL is slowly but surely becoming the personal property of the Mannings. Looks like the little one might be almost as good as the elder one. But then again nobody is as good as Peyton Manning these days. I love good QB play more than anything else in the NFL and I look for it in every game. I was a huge Dan Marino fan because he was the ultimate, pure QB. He still might be and I thought he will always be the best pure passer ever, but Peyton Manning is shaking my commitment to Dan-da-man. Manning is on top of his game like no other right now. His mastery of the mental aspect of the game is next to nobody. We have seen many great QBs and there are still a few good ones in the league. It's fun seeing Tom Brady and Brett Favre play and be in control, but nobody seems to know everything the defense is trying to do quite like Peyton. He seems to know what's coming even before the defensive coordinator on the other end calls the play. He often audibles and confuses the defense and gets what he wants out of them. It's usually the other way around with the defense confusing the offense, but not with this guy.

Peyton's physical talents are comparable to any of the other great QBs, though clearly slightly inferior to Dan Marino and the likes, but his mental capacity seems to be way beyond everybody else. It comes from hours and days and weeks of film study. It's no accident. It's a pure joy watching him play. Of course if you are puling for the other team he is playing against, then it's the ultimate torture. Like it was for me last weekend when the Colts played the Cards. Of course the Cards took it easy on me by completely sucking. That game deteriorated to a point very quickly where it didn't matter what Peyton did. I was not hanging on to his every pass. In any case, both the Mannings are undefeated and look unstoppable right now. Peyton is making stars out of Pierre Garcon, Austn Collie and Donald Brown and Eli is making stars out of Mario Manningham and the other Steve Smith. Archie should be a proud papa. Eli got a scare with a non-contact injury that looked bad. I think he should be fine.

Brett Favre had a breakout game today against his Packers. He looked awesome and after downplaying the game all week, he gave conflicting answers after the game which kinda proved the obvious - that this game meant a lot more than he would admit too. But he was awesome on the field - 24-31, 271 yds, 3 TDs. This team looks scary right now as the young receivers are learning to play with him. The Vikings D harassed Aaron Rodgers all night. Neither team could run the ball, but the Vikings D made it hard for the Packers to consistently mount an attack. A-Rod is very good and he still passed for 384 yards, but he needs better protection. He also needs to get rid of the ball quicker sometimes. He holds on to the ball a little too long. The Packers were still in the game and a critical 4-Th down call in the second half I think hurt them. They should have taken the 3 points instead of going for the TD and failing when they were trailing 14-28. That made it harder for the Pack. Of course Donald Lee could have and should have still caught that TD pass and A-Rod could have thrown a slightly better ball too. No such issues with Favre. He was on the money and was hitting everything. I also liked Sidney Rice going way up and catching both those on-side kicks. Thats some real athleticism right there and goes to show you how much of a team sport football is. While Favre gets all the press, it's little plays like that which clinches these football games. I am a big A-Rod fan and am disappointed for him and the Packers, but as always A-Rod looked good, but it was not enough. Favre looks more than enough right now for the Vikings.

The other great game of the weekend was Baltimore at New England. As always, it was close and as always, it was a frustrating, heart-breaking loss for the Ravens against the Pats. This time, Flacco was driving them cooly and assuredly towards the end zone when Mark Clayton dropped a pass on 4-Th and 3 deep in Patriots territory. The ball hit him between the numbers and he flat our dropped it. Lucky Patriots and Brady, who also got bailed out a couple of times with absolutely ridiculous personal foul calls. NFL needs to take another look at these stupid QB calls. In other games, San Francisco shut out St. Louis and Jacksonville embarrassed Tennessee. JaMarcus Russell still sucks and Derek Anderson showed us again that he is better than Brady Quinn, though neither of them can save the Cleveland Browns. San Diego and Dallas are still two of the most over-rated teams in the league, though Philip Rivers is a much more consistent QB than Tony Romo. Denver of all teams is 4-0 and I have to admit, I thought they'll absolutely suck. I guess I was wrong. They beat Dallas and if I was Wade Phillips, I would be getting ready to find another job next season. Dallas seems to be going nowhere and I am not sure what's Romo's problem either. Wonder if he is longing for TO in his team now.

Frustrating Loss

It was painful watching the Arizona State Sun Devils play on Saturday against the Oregon State Beavers. The Devils seem to have no problems moving the ball or eating yards in chunks. But they couldn't get the key yards when it counted on third downs and made too many mistakes. It was frustrating to watch them get 12, 15, 18 yards and then just stall. They out-gained the Beavers 413-299 yards and had 27 first downs to the Beavers 16. But the Beavers won the game almost by an identical number, but in the reverse - 28-17. It was Oregon State's first road win over the Sun Devils in 40 years and the Devils didn't need it after that close loss at Georgia last week. Not the best way to start the Pac-10 season and I am not sure where Dennis Erickson is taking this program. The Pac-10 seems wide open this year, but seems like the Devils will be looking in from the outside again.

Miami was once again the big newsmaker this Saturday. They went into Oklahoma and beat them 21-20 in a classic. They ran all over them and bounced back from a bad first half. Miami's QB Jacory Harris is a mature dude who recovered well after a bunch of early mistakes. Miami lost badly to Va Tech last weekend. Otherwise they will be in national championship contention after playing four straight ranked opponents to open this season. They are doing good even now with 3 wins considering they were not expected to do anything this season. As for Oklahoma, this defeat pretty much eliminates them from the national title contention. They may still bubble up the Big 12 standings and create some noise, but they won't be playing in the national championship game.

I was a little surprised by the Michigan loss to Michigan State. Tate Forcier looked good as always, but his pass in OT was deflected and intercepted and State cashed in. Tough loss for the kid, but he had a great 4-Th quarter once again. This was one of the few upsets this week which was not upset heavy. I guess the big upset might be next week when Florida visits LSU. Not that LSU Is any kind of powerhouse, but I am not sold on Florida either especially if Tebow is hurting. LSU was lucky winning against Georgia 20-13 and are hoping this will continue next week. It should be a great game. The big game this weekend turned out to be a clunker as USC blasted Cal 30-3. Pac-10 as usual is done in the eyes of the experts and the only savior left might actually be Oregon, who are now doing very well after the season opening loss at Boise State. They might even reinstate RB LeGarrette Blount and that would be the right thing to do. The week was quiet otherwise with Houston losing to UTEP being the only other "upset". No big deal.

In the MLB, Detroit somehow managed to turn a comfortable 3 game lead into a one game playoff with the Twins on the road this Tuesday.