Bleacher Creature Feature

#47: "Random Thoughts"

3 September 2003

Terri and I were in Toronto this past weekend for the World Science Fiction Convention. Due to travel necessities, we missed a chance to go to the game Monday afternoon, which turned out to be for the best. Terri did get to see much of Saturday's epic against the Red Sox, thanks to Fox.

One friend of ours, Cecilia Tan (who has her own excellent running commentary on baseball in general and the Yanks in particular at her Web site), went to watch Sunday's game at Wayne Gretzky's Bar. Imagine her surprise when David Wells came in and sat down next to her.

I'll leave you all to make your own comments on that......

Wells didn't exactly warm the cockles of my heart with his performance Monday. Yeah, he was better, but he still wasn't good, and the gap between now and the last time he didn't suck is expanding. We'll be at his next start Sunday, which will be the final game in the exceedingly important weekend series against Boston. It's his last chance to convince all and sundry that he's still worth having in the rotation.

Not that we're overburdened with alternatives, since the next in line to take over is Jeff "Tweak" Weaver. (Kudos to Terri for noticing the similarities between Weaver and the South Park character.)

Phil Rogers pointed out today on ESPN.com that there's at least a possibility of an all-Chicago World Series, with both the Cubs and the White Sox in the running for the post-season. In fact, that's only one of several entertaining possible combos:

---St. Louis-Kansas City: all-Missouri Series, and a rematch of the 1985 fall classic.
---Philadelphia-Oakland: past and present Philly teams.
---San Francisco-Oakland: all-Bay Area, and a rematch of 1989.
---San Francisco-New York: rematch of the past and present New York teams; the Yanks faced the Giants in their first Series in 1920 and beat them for their first championship in 1923.
---Los Angeles-New York: rematch of the other past and present New York teams, and of the 1977, 1978, and 1981 Series.
---St. Louis-New York: pitting the two league leaders in World Series victories, and a rematch of 1964.
---Atlanta-New York: rematch of '96 and '99.
---Chicago-New York: can you imagine how cool it would be to have all the Series games at either Wrigley or Yankee Stadium?
---Chicago-Boston: the apocalypse, as one of them would have to actually win the Series, thus causing the world to end.

Nick Johnson just got thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double for the second game in a row. Nicky, we love you, you do many great things for this team. Running is not one of those things. Please stop trying to be Alfonso Soriano on the basepaths....

In general, it's great to see that there's still quite a bit of doubt as to who will make the playoffs. In the AL, four teams (New York, Boston, Seattle, Oakland) are competing for three slots (AL East, AL West, wild card), with three more teams (Kansas City, Minnesota, Chicago) fighting for the fourth (AL Central). In the NL, it would take a catastrophe of epic proportions for Atlanta and San Francisco to not win their respective divisions, but we're still left with two slots (NL Central, wild card) being fought for by no fewer than eight teams (Philadelphia, Florida, Los Angeles, Houston, St. Louis, Chicago, Arizona, Montreal/San Juan).

This is going to be a fun September for all baseball fans. This is what MLB should be promoting, instead of whining about how some "small-market" teams can't compete (which is news to Royals, Twins, and A's fans).

Soriano just drew a walk. This is a sufficiently rare occurrence that it's worth noting.

Bizarre Stat Of The Day: going into tonight, the Yankees, Blue Jays, Royals, Mariners, Angels, Phillies, Marlins, Astros, Cardinals, Cubs, Pirates, and Dodgers are all 5-5 in their last ten games.

John Sterling has just started a rant on WCBS that is frighteningly similar to what I just wrote upstream about the ambiguity of the pennant races and how MLB should be promoting it more. You know this is a big deal if I'm agreeing with Sterling about something.

More bizarreness: tonight Oakland, owners of a ten-game winning streak, played Baltimore, owners of a nine-game losing streak. Oakland's defense imploded for five errors, and both streaks were broken in spectacular fashion, as the O's beat the A's 9-0.

What is this, a disease? Pinch-hitter Ruben Sierra was just thrown out stretching a single into a double, which cost us the game, as it turned the potential tying run into the first out.

And, with Boston winning, our lead's only three games. We've lost two in a row, our offense can't get its shit together, the bullpen continues to have more holes than Swiss cheese, and our starting pitchers are not lighting the world on fire.

This is not the best way to go into this weekend's series...

NEXT: Another Year, Another AL East Title

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