Ladies and gentlemen, as depressed as I am that the New York Yankees are no longer playing while the Boston Red Sox still linger on in these playoffs, I have a more pressing concern on my mind. In my understanding of the pass interference rules, a defender cannot cover a pass receiver by standing in his face and raising his arms. That seems to me to be the very definition of face guarding.

And yet that is exactly how Jabari Greer covered Terrell Owens in the end zone on the attempted two point conversion which would have tied the game. Of somewhat less importance, that two point conversion would have clinched the victory in my fantasy game this week. It also would have given Buffalo a chance to win their first home Monday Night Football game in 13 years.

Of course if Tony Romo had taken care of the football just once and spared me an interception or the fumble, I would have won and that two point conversion wouldn't have mattered for fantasy purposes. I would still be bent about it, as anything that adversely impacts Terrell Owens is anathema in Cincinnati Kid land. And no matter what happens, next Sunday when the Patriots go down to Dallas, Randy Moss will still be the second best #81 on the field. But I'll explain why I feel Dallas will win this game as the week progresses.

Before I leave aside the NFL for the week, I have two things to say. First, I jinxed Romo and Owens by taunting a close friend whose fantasy game had already been decided by 0.1 points in his opponent's favor. And finally, hopefully this kid Foulk nailing the 53 yard field goal even after that late timeout trick invented by Shanahan earlier this season wiped what we thought was the game winner off the bear will end the trend and the debate.

Other people will be more interested in whether, or perhaps when, Joe Torre posts his resume on Monster.com in the next few days. I felt it was time for a change last season after they got crushed by the Tigers. I just got the feeling as I watched him in the last couple of seasons that he looked tired. That he was managing this team as though it were 1998, and the last six or seven seasons hadn't happened.

The Yankees have an interesting blend of old players and prospects like Hughes, Cabrera and Chamberlain coming on strong. It just might be time for a change, not because Torre is a bad guy, not by a long shot, nor a bad manager. But he's been in one place so long, how could things not stagnate after so long.

Torre has had great success. Even though the Sox are still alive, and he's on his way out the door, it will be a very, very, very long time before any two Red Sox managers match that level of success for that long. It might even require a miracle with this ownership group in place. Hell, one could win 5 straight World Series in Boston and still get fired for wearing his shoes in the cabin of John Henry's yacht or failing to genuflect when the RemDawg walks in the door.

But what am I to do going forward? I don't really want to see these Indians win the title, but for the next few days, I'll root harder for the Indians than I feel comfortable doing. Because anything is better than a Red Sox win. As my friend the Cubs fan said while this nightmare unfolded in the Bronx: "It looks like we're Rockies fans now."

I don't want to see the Dbacks win. Maybe it's a lingering aftertaste from the 2001 World Series. Maybe it's their terrible uniforms. Maybe it's because the last thing a real fan wants to see is the half-assed media circus that would surround the meeting of JD and Stephen Drew should the Sox and Diamondbacks play a World Series. I imagine Joe Buck and Tim McCarver could beat that to death before the first pitch would be thrown.

I'm intrigued at the prospect of who replaces Joe Torre, and I'll be posting on it in some detail in the not too distant future, even if it is after Steinbrenner makes his decision. I'm just too tired tonight. I will sign off with this thought: God help us all should the Pats, Celtics and Red Sox win it all this year. With so many miserable bastards involved in pulling the strings of these ghastly marionettes, this level of success cannot be healthy for the Republic.

Start spreading the news. The Yankees aren't quite dead, at least not for the moment. Maybe it was George Steinbrenner and his statement that Joe Torre would be looking for something to do with his time other than managing the New York Yankees if the team did not prevail in this series. Or maybe the announcers were right when they compared the Yankee offense to a 2 liter bottle of soda that had been shaken and shaken and was due to explode at any moment. Whatever it was, it happened. The Yankees won and they play again tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the Angels lacked the will of a warrior and fell victim to Humpty Dumpty and the Boston Red Sox. So now the Red Sox have a chance to rest and reset their rotation as they wait to see whether the Yankees can come back or the Indians will win their divisional series matchup. If this were another team with another group of players, perhaps one might worry that this lag time might dull their wits and adversely impact their readiness to play.

However, with this version of the Boston Red Sox, one needn't worry about any situation having an adverse impact on the wits of these players. In fact, with titans of the intellect like Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia and Jonathan Papelbon in prominent roles, one could fairly say that the wits are this team's least vulnerable spot.

It is a good thing that the Yankees came back tonight, if for no other reason than it redeemed Roger Clemens, at least until his next turn to pitch. Unlike a certain element of Red Sox fans, led by Bill Simmons, I harbor no resentment for the way Clemens left town. I don't believe athletes owe the fans a damn thing. Especially after winning a few Cy Youngs, having a couple of 20 win seasons and setting the MLB record for Ks in a game.

I'm not sure I'm ready to see Clemens retire. He's been such a big part of my memories of watching baseball for so long, I just don't remember a time when he wasn't pitching. I think Bill Simmons is just a total d bag. After all, he whines about the Yankees bringing Ronan Tynan in to sing God Bless America in the seventh inning stretch. Even if it is a long version, it's still the best rendition out there now.

Perhaps the Yankees should trot out 14 year olds who couldn't carry a tune if their lives depended on it, as the Red Sox have been known to do. Or maybe they could resurrect hard rock has beens who haven't had a decent song since Carter was President like Steven Tyler. Speaking of Aerosmith, I wish someone could explain their comeback. Outside of Dream On, their songbook is weak, to say the least. If Run DMC hadn't covered Walk this Way, would anyone have remembered them to stick a banal song on the Armageddon soundtrack?

To make a long story short, I still have hope that a team can step in and stop the Red Sox. And the Indians, even with Carmona and Sabathia don't seem to be the team to do it. I realize that Colorado and Arizona had success against Boston earlier this season, but that was a long time ago now. Plus I don't see the Red Sox folding like the Cubs. Nor do I see the Colorado lefties laughing at Ortiz and the other Sox lefties the way Howard and Utley did.

No matter what Red Sox fans tell you, you know that they fear the Yankees a little bit. 2004 is ancient history. Beckett might have been lights out in Game 1 against the Angels, but there's no guarantee that he can do it again. And if Matsuzaka pitches the way he did in Game 2, something tells me the Yankees might do a tad more damage than the Angels did. And Schill might want to sit this one out, unless he can whip up another ready-made "blood"-stained garment for the occasion.

As for this weekend's football games, Notre Dame finally won. Say what you want about the UCLA quarterback situation and their offensive ineptitude, but the Irish won a game no one thought they could. This could be the start of something interesting. I'm not holding my breath, but it's possible.

The Patriots continue to roll, but then who really thought the Browns would be the team to end the streak. The Chiefs and their subpar offensive line continue to drag my fantasy team down because they can't block for LJ. Far more vexing is the fact that I shall soon lose Travis Henry to his pending suspension for violating the league's substance abuse policy for the third time.

I'm not going to be the guy to pile on him when he's down. I just have to laugh a bit at his grand sense of timing. Henry was due to rotate out of the substance abuse program on October 1st, and he had to get high in September. I realize that a guy might need a little pick me up to take the edge of the whole 9 illegitimate kids situation. But it might have been nice if he thought of me and my fantasy team in all of this.

I think the real story of the NFL weekend came from the Seattle Pittsbugh game. It was a very good thing that the Seahawks were motivated by the outcome of Super Bowl XL. Otherwise the 21-0 beating the Steelers hung on them this afternoon would be quite humiliating. Perhaps this was some novel strategy of Mike Holmgren's. After all, letting Denver score a TD to get the ball back in Super Boxl XXXII worked so well, maybe letting Pittsburgh score three unanswered touchdowns today is just setting them up for some vague game to be played in the not too distant future.

I hate to see guys like Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander unhappy. They have done so much to elevate the profile of the NFL the way they whined about the officiating in that Super Bowl, they deserved better than what they got today. I think the only way to evaluate that officiating, which did leave a lot to be desired, is to ask whether Seattle would have objected had calls like that gone in their favor. If they would have been quiet if the calls went against Pittsburgh, then they should let it go at this point.

In tonight's Bears vs. Packers game, I was interested to hear John Madden mention that the Green Bay Packers expect AJ Hawk to start having a bigger impact on their defensive performance. Perhaps they need to find the man who wielded the ugly stick to such great effect on Hawk's wife, the sister of Brady Quinn and the fleabag who sported the trashy makeup and jersey tailor made to show her divided loyalty when the Irish met the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl two years ago. Surely he could motivate Hawk to perform up to expectations.

I have been defending Cedric Benson for so long now, it has become a habit. He did get plenty of carries tonight, for a change. And he didn't gain enough yards to justify his salary, or the Thomas Jones trade today, even though Jones didn't exactly reverse the rotation of the Earth in the Giants Jets game. He had some very promising runs, but he wasn't consistent.

I thought the offensive line was better tonight than they were against Detroit, and better than they have been in any game this season, for that matter. That said, this group still hasn't been good enough at any point in 2007. For what the Bears do in running the ball, relying on play action passes and using deep drops in the passing offense, the offensive line needs to stay on their assignments longer and generate more push up front. So I'm not ready to turn on Benson yet. I think I'll wait until Mariotti praises him.

Even though Griese finished with 2 TDs and came out on the winning end, I'm not thrilled about him as the Bears try to dig their way out the hole that they still haven't escaped. It was good to see both TEs involved in the game plan. The Bears still have albatrosses around their neck and will have them as long as the O-line underperforms, and they need much more production from the wide receivers. Tonight the best wide receiver on the team was Mark Bradley, and that just can't happen every game if the Bears are to get back to where they were last season.

For all the Bears did, and with Benson's decent numbers, I still need a very good game for Tony Romo and Terrell Owens tomorrow night. So I have a lot on the line, with the Yankees playing for their lives, with the Cowboys playing for my hopes of a Patriots humiliation and my fantasy life (I am one game back in a playoff race, with a log jam at 2-2). So I'll either be very happy, or very unhappy tomorrow. Even if the Cowboys are outstanding, but the Yankees fail, I will be disappointed, in case you care.

I should, while I think of it, address the recent comments on my posts. To answer Alle, yes Guerrero might have left on account of the pitch that hit him. But unless he needed some sort of critical operation, there is no reason a guy should leave a game his team desperately needed to win. If he can hold a bat, he has to stay in that game.

And to the author of the anonymous comment pointing out that I was mistaken when I attributed the song "Uncle Albert" to the Beatles instead of Paul McCartney, I would apologize, provided that I gave a damn. I guess the only reason the song impressed me as having any merit is that only one of the Beatles was involved in the project so the collective power of the suck factor couldn't taint the entire song. So my bad.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out how the game between the Indians and the Yankees went to extra innings tonight. I watched the entire telecast, I know what's what. The Indians have somewhere on the order of 30 future Hall of Famers on the roster at any given moment. Or at least if all you knew about baseball were culled from Chip Carey's broadcasting, you'd be forced to think along those lines.

In the last two innings, the overt bias toward the Indians was as bad as I have ever seen for a broadcaster. Kenny Lofton led off the bottom of the 9th and hit a fly ball to center. According to Carey, Lofton spanked the ball. From what I saw, Melky Cabrera drifted maybe five feet to his left to catch it. Now I might need a ruling from a trained and licensed physicist on this, but I think it's safe to say that an outfielder should have to take at least 13 or 14 steps or break into a run before a ball can be considered to have been spanked by a batter.

Among the many things Chip Carey said this evening which bothered me, was Casey Blake's nickname "Mr. Shocker." I don't know if that's Blake's nickname in general, or one that Carey just gave him tonight. Either way, it's a stupid name. I didn't realize that he was so closely associated with his alma mater (Wichita State) to be called Mr. Shocker.

Of course Carey fell all over himself to tell us that Blake had two walkoff homers this season. Too bad they came against the Royals and the Tigers. That meant that he really should have ended the game with one swing of the bat in tonight's game. After all, if you can win a game against the Royals or the Tigers then Mariano Rivera is no match for you. As it was, Blake and his stupid Mountain Man beard hit what Chip Carey called a towering fly ball, which fell short of the warning track by a good twenty five feet.

Interestingly enough, when Posada flew out to the wall in right field in the next half inning, it was neither spanked nor towering. Perhaps he should have played for the Indians, then maybe he'd be worthy of Chip Carey's notice. Like Perez, the Indians reliever who did pitch very well. After his 1-2-3 top of the tenth, Carey said he dazzled. Of course Carey would probably describe Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series as a workman like effort.

In the bottom of the tenth, when the Indians loaded the bases, Mariano Rivera threw a ball on the 0-1 count and Carey giddily remarked that there was no place to put the batter at the plate. With Mariano Rivera on the mound and a 1-1 count, who thinks of the walk? It's kind of like calling for the punt team to get ready when it's second and five in a football game.

Carey was the only part of this game more troublesome than the swarms of flies which showed up at the game as though they were a Biblical plague. I know Ohio is a blight on the rest of the country. I know most of the Indians, notable among them Hafner, Blake and Garko, practice such poor hygiene that insects flock to them as though they were pounds of rotting meat.

Why were the flies hovering around the players when there were so many thousands of losers and Ohioans watching the game? If ever there were fans who were a close second to Red Sox fans in deserving swarms of biting flies descending on them, it has to be Indians fans. These slack-jawed yokels react to every favorable development that befalls their team with so much surprise that it makes you wonder why they took out a second mortgage on the family combine harvester and bought playoff tickets.

If you don't believe me that Cleveland is full of dbags, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, look at this thread on a Cleveland sports site speculating that Eric Wedge and Casey Blake might have a little something something going on between them. Let's not forget, either, that the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire several times. Any city that has a river catch on fire has to be very, very, very pathetic.

There is, as the old saying goes, no such thing as a moral victory. However, the Yankees pitched much better in this game than they did in game one. Unfortunately, there is no room for gradual improvement in the playoffs. The Yankees aren't out of it, yet. And of the three teams down 0-2 so far (the Phillies and the Cubs being the others), the Yankees have far and away the best chance to come back from the dead.

The Phillies pitching is dreadful. The Cubs don't have enough speed to play small ball consistently, and outside of Wrigley their power is a lot less powerful. Plus the Cubs have a massive karmic roadblock in the form of that awful Aquafina commercial featuring Lou Pinella. But I'm not ready to write the Yanks off just yet. Perhaps because they're the only team that looks like they can beat the Sox, even though they aren't the same team that came back from 0-2 against the As in 2001. But on to the Red Sox vs. Angels game.

I have a hard time accepting some facts from the early portion of tonight's game. First, JD Drew came to the plate with the bases loaded in a two out situation and he didn't fail. Far from it. He drove in two runs. Now if the game were out of reach, one way or the other, I would have had less difficulty wrapping my brain around the fact. Who knows, maybe this is the start of something big for him in a Red Sox uniform? Or maybe this is just a calm before the storm and he will be an even bigger disappointment in a bigger moment yet to come.

The other thing that caught me by surprise is that the Angels fell behind 2-0 in this game, but bounced back with a vengeance to take a 3-2 lead. Admittedly they had some help when Manny Ramirez misplayed that ball in left, which was somehow not an error. As an aside, that is a terrible rule, that he misplays a ball but doesn't get an error because he didn't touch it. I think it should be a bigger error because he butchered a ball that was fairly routine and couldn't even get a hand on it.

Maybe I was wrong to sell the Angels short the way I did. Of course it's still too early in this series to be optimistic about their chances. It just might be that Daisuke Matsuzaka is tired out from this different style of baseball. Or maybe he got depressed when Buccholz came up and he was no longer the new sensation in the rotation. Either way, he slumped down the stretch, and maybe that's why the Angels got to him tonight.

Of course if the Angels get the kind of help like Coco Crisp gave them with his Little League level base running blunder in the sixth, they may prove more formidable than I led you to believe in my last few posts. How does a guy with his experience get himself doubled up on a fly ball to center field because he had rounded second but forgot to touch the base on his way back to first?

I had some rather unpleasant things to say about Mike Scioscia the other day. Now I think I have to take them all back and say far worse. How do you go into the last inning and a half of a tie game and manage yourself into such a terrible corner that you have to take your best offensive weapon out of the game? He pulled Guerrero to keep Reggie Willits in the game?

Even better, Garrett Anderson was still in the game at that point with his swollen eye. I will concede that I know a lot less about baseball than Mike Scioscia. But it seems logical, doesn't it, to leave the guy with two good eyes in the lineup, especially when he's your best power threat? Or maybe that's just too logical. That's exactly what they'd be expecting Scioscia to do. Of course, there are some who'd say that managing as though you were running some sort of bad caper in Get Smart might not be a good idea in a playoff game.

Of course it was all academic when Scioscia rode the percentages and conventional wisdom all the way to Manny's walk-off shot. All in all, this was not a good night for me. Sooner or later this team is due for an epic collapse. Perhaps this will be it. I doubt it, but there is a chance. Anaheim did win more home games than any other team in the league this season.

If it weren't for the tool who whipped the piece of pizza off the back of the bigger tool who ragged on the first tool for eating a pizza at a baseball game in Fenway Park this April, the douche who asked for an autograph from the fan who prevented the Angels catcher (Matthis) from catching Manny's foul popup in the 5th would have been the biggest tool in the history of Fenway Park. If Lowell's sac fly which tied the game had been a bit deeper, that skinny little wuss would have become a huge celebrity. As it is, he'll milk that novelty act 15 minutes of fame for all it's worth.

Speaking of tools, we have a small tool of note feature today, for the first time in a while. A long time friend of the blog forwarded this feature on the triumphs and trials of Donny Osmond from the Daily Mail in England. My heart bleeds for poor Donny Osmond, who had to bear the cross of being a teen idol. If his life was a bed of pain because people wouldn't accept him as a grown up and not the scrawny Mormon dork who ripped off Paul Anka's Puppy Love, then maybe there is justice in the world after all.

I particularly enjoyed this bit: "Say what you like, Donny is big on self-pity, which is why in the run-up to his latest tour he wants to talk about how hard it was being the Most Adorable Singing Child On Earth." Something tells me Donny Osmond for all his pain and anguish probably doesn't wake up each and every morning with a bad back, bad knees and callouses on his hands as though he worked for a living. People turned on a lot of 70s icons, so what? Just because he had more staying power than a-Ha doesn't mean he achieved anything tangible.

I also love the fact that Jesus is one of his heroes. I bet that really put a smile on Jesus' face and got Him packing His bags for the Second Coming. Or more likely, Jesus was probably trying hard to hide from Donny Osmond. If there is one consolation here, given his age, Donny will meet his hero face to face long before I do.

Curiously, the article brought up his 1988 hit, Soldier of Love, which I don't remember. I was young in 1988, but I remember a lot of things from that time frame. Am I the only one who doesn't remember the song, or was it a song that hit 99 on a countdown and they're trying to be as nice as possible to Donny? I guess if they didn't do all they could to massage his ego, Donny Osmond would have to retreat to his compound in Utah. What a shame that would be.

Perhaps it wouldn't have made much of a difference tonight, and maybe I'm more than a little tainted by bitterness, but kudos to Joe Torre for playing Doug Mientkiewicz and leaving Jason Giambi on the bench. Hindsight, as they say is 20-20, but going with a guy for his defense and leaving an infinitely better hitter on the bench is so National League. In fact, it smacks of Dusty Baker in his prime, and what a prime it was.

And then when it came time to pinch hit for Mientkiewicz, Torre threw Shelly Duncan out there instead of Giambi. I realize that Duncan is a right handed batter, and maybe Giambi didn't have terrific numbers against Sabathia. But wouldn't you feel better with a guy who has won an MVP award, even one tainted by allegations of steroids, over a guy whose greatest claim to fame is being the son of the Cardinals pitching coach.

The trouble with conventional wisdom is that it's conventional. So what if every body knows something? 95% of people are total nitwits. Derek Jeter came into the game batting .500 lifetime off Sabathia and sporting a very good postseason average in general, but he didn't exactly rip it up in this game. Hell, CC Sabathia walked six guys tonight (one was intentional) and none of them scored.

And if ever there were an omen that a given night would not be a given player's night, it had to come tonight. Mientkiewicz almost ended up a scratch from the lineup before the game even started when he tripped over a cameraman from a New York TV station getting off the team bus. Who in their right mind thought that things would break his way after that? What more did he have to do, walk under a ladder, cross paths with a black cat? For a profession that is notoriously rife with superstitious dudes, there is no way he should have seen the field after that.

Torre played the percentages right into a 0-1 hole in this series. Now things are looking good for Red Sox fans, which is always bad for America. This postseason is starting to remind me of the Beatles song Uncle Albert. I don't hear it very often, since I don't like the Beatles and I don't listen to the radio very much. But when I hear it, it confuses and vexes me.

Every time I hear the start of that song, I start thinking to myself that maybe I'm wrong about the Beatles, that they might not be as bad as I had thought previously. Then the second part of the song with the aggravating uptempo music and the random nonsense about Admiral Halsey kicks in, and I find myself hating the song and the band more than ever.

I've come a long way around to say this, but if the Yankees lose, the only other team I'd like to see win this World Series is the Chicago Cubs. So I find myself stuck rooting for teams that I can't stand simply because they stand in the way of the team I really hate. If neither the Yankees nor the Cubs advance, I am in a lose-LOSE situation. Either the Indians win, and I'm bummed, or the Red Sox win and their fans are happy, which is a nightmare scenario I'd rather not envision right now.

By the way, thanks to the Major League Baseball playoff promos, I have had to reevaluate my opinion of Dane Cook. At first, I never cared about him even though Bill Simmons whined about him, which is generally a sign a guy isn't a total douche. But now, I've seen way too many of those stupid "There's Only One October" ads and I hope he gets some wasting disease.

And kudos to the genius at TBS who went into a meeting and said: "I know what let's do. Let's put Tony Gwynn in a booth with Bob Brenley and Chip Carey and we'll have them broadcast the New York Yankees series." This guy should get a Peabody Award, or at the very least the Nobel Peace Prize. Those three worked together like vodka and anti-freeze.

Tony Gwynn is a nice guy, and he brings a lot to the table. Bob Brenley just might be brain-dead. I'm just glad he left his comments on the stadium wind situation behind on Cubs telecasts. But Chip Carey has to stand second only to Joe Buck in shaming a famous grandfather who is also a broadcasting legend. The shameful indecency with which he celebrated every single development in favor of the Indians this evening was sickening.

I found myself forced to switch over to the end of Twelve Angry Men on Turner Classic Movies before I was pressed into service in the Ryan Garko Hall of Fame movement. Yeah, he hit two home runs tonight, but I've missed a great deal if Ryan Garko is considered a big bat in a lineup. Speaking of Twelve Angry Men, if there aren't twelve angry men in the Yankee clubhouse (and with morons like Damon and Mientkiewicz, there might not be) then there ought to be.

And while I'm on the subject of TBS: how is FrankTV going to change the face of late night TV? Is it going to be the worst show ever? I know he has a good impression for John Madden and for the President. His Nicholson is passable, but his Pacino is terrible. And those are the four featured in the commercials that have run somewhere in the neighborhood of a quadrillion times now. He better be holding a hell of a lot of A material in the vault, or the American people have to be an order of magnitude dumber than I think they are for this show to succeed.

It would be a lot easier on the viewing public if the American League playoffs were rescheduled with an eye to sparing us from terrible teams. I must confess, I do not know very much about the Cleveland Indians. Nor do I particularly care to learn. But this season, like 1999, 2003 and 2004 seems destined to end in a Red Sox vs. Yankees grudge match.

The Angels are just not built to win a game at Fenway, at least the way it looked tonight. I told my friend as we watched the game that if the Angels didn't score in the first inning, this game was as good as over. After Figgins very nearly ran into a bizarre double play with Guerrero grounding to third while he was trying to steal, I got to thinking that if they didn't score, the Angels were finished for good.

Maybe if the Angels were playing in the National League, their style could work. But right now they look like a running team built around one and a half big bats. They can't run, however, if they don't get on base. I suppose most of the credit has to go to Josh Beckett for that, as much as I loathe admitting it. That said, it seemed like the Angels gave him a hell of a lot of help.

I can appreciate the notion that you have to take pitches and work the count to try to tire out an opposing starter. However, as the Michael Douglas character in the Ghost and the Darkness said about prize fighting, every one has a plan until they get hit. Tonight, Beckett was throwing first pitch strikes at an alarming rate. And worse, he was throwing second pitch strikes. It seemed like he was throwing nothing but strikes. The Angels just seemed content to follow the game plan all the way to quick and, for me at any rate, painful defeat.

It makes we wonder about Mike Scoccia. I know he has a World Series ring, and his team has beaten the Yankees in a couple of big postseason series. These Angels have no luck, no plan, no mojo when they face the Red Sox. They just seem to roll over. For a guy who is supposed to be a phenomenal manager, it's a situation that I can't reconcile. I think he's suffering from the after effects of radiation poison from the time he spent working for C. Montgomery Burns in the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant 15 years ago.

Does any one know if John Lackey secretly grew up a Red Sox fan? The guy has to have a 1.50 ERA against the rest of the league to overcome his abysmal numbers against the Sox. Was there any pitcher slated to start in this first round that had his team's fans less confident in his chances? I think even Cubs fans with the erratic, volatile and always prepared to come up small in big moments Carlos Zambrano due to take the mound in Arizona have to be thrilled compared to Angels fans.

It is entirely possible that I have overlooked the Indians in all of this. I am reminded of last season when the Tigers destroyed the Yankees. But that Tigers team had better pitching. It's hard to argue against Sabathia and Carmona, they are pitching very well right now.

They might need to throw complete games like the 2005 White Sox, though, with their bullpen. They certainly don't have a fireballer like Zumaya prior to his Guitar Hero incapacitation. That's what killed the Yankees last season. They just couldn't catch up to his pitches. And the Tigers were hot offensively. I'm not too worried about this Cleveland lineup, even with Trot Nixon.

This was not a very good week in Sedition in Red Sox Nation land. I think, at this point, that I just might be out of things to say about Notre Dame. Maybe I might have something to throw out there if they ever manage to win a game, but that isn't looking very likely at the moment. Who knows what Navy is capable of after the last 40 years of losing to the Irish? And Duke is looking tremendously better than they have in living memory.

It is true that the last two weeks have seen some improvement. They seem to be moving closer to victory, but that's not the way things are supposed to be. That's not the way things are supposed to be at all. It was supposed to be a thing of beauty. Even if they manage to beat BC, it's still depressing. BC is supposed to be the spoiler of seasons, not Notre Dame.

And then for the first time since 1995, the Boston Red Sox have won the AL East. The Yankees twelve year reign of terror is over. If I were a Red Sox fan, however, I wonder just how optimistic I'd be as the playoffs open. In one way of looking at this matter, the Red Sox are rolling into the playoffs tied with the Indians for the best record in Major League Baseball. But that's only part of the story.

The Red Sox finished the season 42-30 against the AL East. The Yankees ended up at 39-33 in the division. There could be some small cause for concern there. After all, I'm sure Red Sox fans remember that the Yankees took the season series 10-8. That means the Sox won five more games against the Blue Jays, Orioles and Devil Rays than the Yankees did.

I hope Sox fans will forgive me for going the long way around to make this point, but the rest of the AL East wasn't particularly good this season. Toronto did finish two games over .500, which really surprised me. I haven't paid much attention to them, even when they play the Red Sox. But the Orioles finished twelve games under .500, and the Devil Rays ended the year two games behind them.

I said all that to say this - managing to beat these teams more than the Yankees did isn't a tremendously encouraging sign going forward. Last I looked, none of these teams are going to be playing in this postseason. The competition facing the Red Sox as they chase that World Series trophy is going to be slightly more formidable.

The Red Sox did win the season series against the Indians and the Angels. But it seemed that their victories against the Angels came early in the season and then later on the Angels got the better of the Sox. One wonders just how much this matters when the division series starts. I wish it weren't the case, but the Angels and the Indians scare me. And not in the good way. The matchups seems all wrong to me. I can't stand either team, so it will be a lot harder to root for them than it would be to root for the Yankees.

The last time the Red Sox and Angels met in the playoffs was in 2004, and the Sox swept them in the ALDS. I know that's all in the past now, but I don't see the Angels winning this one, to tell the truth. I know all about his stats and his talent, but something about Vlad Guerrero doesn't inspire confidence in me. Their running game could pose problems for Varitek whose arm isn't really all that good. But that hinges on them getting on base, and I'm not entirely sure that they will do it consistently.

Should the Red Sox win and the Indians prevail, I won't much enjoy the ALCS. Until guys like Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore show me that they can produce in pressure situations, I won't be too optimistic about their chances. Obviously it's kind of hard to build a postseason resume when your team hasn't gotten into the playoff. But I don't remember them burning it up two years ago when they chased the White Sox down the stretch.

Of course the Yankees might be a more formidable opponent, and I'd love to see them beat the Red Sox because it will vex Red Sox fans much more than any other team taking an ALCS from them. Should the Red Sox fall to the Angels, that would be interesting, since they have had a nasty habit of beating the Yankees in playoff series lately. But I'm not too worried about that since, as I've said, I'm not holding out hope for an Angel win.

In unrelated matters, Donovan McNabb really showed me how wrong I was when I ripped him last week. He really took over tonight's game against the Giants, right? Getting sacked 12 times showed that his knee is completely healed, that he is the answer for the Eagles and the best QB of all time. Of course the dozen sacks weren't all his fault. Obviously the line sucked, and the coaches might have wanted to think about taking a different approach to blocking that guy who got six sacks by himself somewhere between sack two and sack six, but that's just me. But you can't tell me that McNabb couldn't have thrown it away two or three of those plays, can you?

This was an eventful week in the NFL to say the least. I must say that I am forced to recant all the mean, hurtful things I said about Donovan McNabb in the wake of the single most impressive performance by a quarterback in the history of professional football. Throwing for 381 yards and 4 touchdowns in a regular season game in week three just shut me right the hell up, right?

I realize the Detroit Lions were 2-0 going into the game against the Eagles. But I'm not going to let that bother me too much. As I keep saying, this early in the season funky things will happen. Look at the Packers beating the Chargers even though they can't run the ball. So even though Donovan McNabb did everything but cure polio again this Sunday, it might be a little early to reverse field on his play.

I might be more impressed with McNabb if he shows a capacity to produce like this consistently against good teams and goes on to win the Super Bowl, but before that I won't be making any apologies to him. He put up big numbers against a team that has been horrible for several years now. Only this and nothing more. Let's not forget that the Lions were probably distracted by the dreadful throwback uniforms that must have been worse in person.

What is far more vexing is the continuing problem besetting the Monsters of the Midway. I am inclined to blame Ron Turner more than Rex Grossman, even though Rex simply sucks right now. The Bears look like they have no sense of continuity on offense. It looks like the offensive staff comes into each individual drive with an attitude that says "Let's hope this works," rather than the attitude that this series of plays will work and will showcase their strengths and the defense's weaknesses.

Last night was difficult for me as a fan. I had to watch a game featuring a team I have championed for more than a year now facing a player that I have defended against all reason for quite some time. To the point, in as much as I have a favorite NFL team, at the moment it's the Bears and in as much as I have a favorite player, it's TO.

And to add into the mix, there is the problem of fantasy football. I have TO, Tony Romo and Cedric Benson. And I have a problem with following conventional wisdom. I benched Romo against Chicago to play Big Ben against the 49ers, thinking that the Bears would play a bit better. It's hard to say that cost me the game, though since LJ and Santonio Holmes didn't score. But it didn't help.

I think the Bears need to take this week to reevaluate what works in their system and what isn't working right now. They have the talent to run the ball well. Benson, I think, is a great back in waiting with his size and speed. They need to use him more consistently to keep his focus and his confidence in his abilities from going north and south. That's the real issue this week, not this quarterback controversy.

I think Rex sucks, but I have no faith in Griese. In a way, I'm glad Rex sucks right now. Wasting a season isn't a very good idea, but it's better to let him play himself out of Chicago than to let him play himself into a big deal and then turn back into a pumpkin. It is far more important to get the running game together so that they can extend drives, work the clock and rest a defense that is on the verge of mutiny.

Also, improving the running game will only help an offensive line that is all but complicit in Rex Grossman's poor play. Perhaps I'm an incurable optimist, but I think that better pass protection might reduce Grossman's interceptions by 25%. It would probably cut down on his fumbles, too. But then, as a Catholic, I'm obligated to believe in miracles.

It was unfortunate to see the Yankees lose to increase the lead of the hated Red Sox to 2 games. I'm not too worried. With the way the Red Sox have gone on winning streaks after every time I've enjoyed a sweep or stumble too much, I have been prepared for them to win the division. What I like most about this team is the way they have thrived on weaker competition. That won't help them in the postseason. But I'm not going to talk much about it until the possibility of the reverse jinx looms less large.

If I were the type of blogger in the habit of giving titles to posts, I guess I might call this one Damn Yankees. The Yankees fans might be consoling themselves with the dulcet tones of Crowded House in their hit "Don't Dream It's Over." I wanted the Yanks to win, not as a Yankee fan, but as a Red Sox hater. But I like Jim Leyland as a manager. I think he radiates an old school, more competent, less snakebitten Pop Fisher (the manager from the Natural) vibe. I've never been able to summon up any negative feeling against the Tigers, which is strange for me since I hate so many things with so few reasons.

The Yankees assembled one of the great paper champions of all time this season. But like another team I hoped would best a squad from Michigan this fall, they were ready for every eventuality but one. In case you're wondering or you don't read my blog regularly, I'm referring to the Notre Dame loss to Michigan. I still don't know whether the Irish are better than the Wolverines, I believe it but I'm biased. The Yankees seemed to deflate when Detroit battled back to win game 2.

It's just me talking, but I got the sense that the Bronx Bombers expected Damon's 3 run shot to put the kibosh on the Tigers. The whole team seemed to be looking around for some other one of the All Stars to step up and get the big hits. Unfortunately, no one stepped up against Bonderman or Kenny Rogers. I don't want to diminish the excellent pitching performances both gentlemen submitted. But the Yankees of 6,7 years ago with a lesser galaxy of stars made a living out of surviving against excellent pitching performances.

This Yankee team just seemed like it lacked guts in huge moments. The Tigers seemed more like the Yankees of old than this edition of Yankees did in this series, and it decided the series. Read this article from the Tigers website. It tells me that it's go time for Oakland, and in the immortal words of Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: "This will all end in tears" if your Billy Beane. Or at least another Bonderman inspired tantrum where he throws a chair into the wall.

Alex Rodriguez has to go. He's a great talent, I can't deny it. He says he wants to be part of the solution in NY, but I just don't think he can do it. The big stage and the pressure seem to eat him alive. It might be self-inflicted, he might take the pressure the media and the fans and his teammates put on him and internalize too much of it. But he has an absolute knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. First there was his infamous war of words with Trot Nixon a couple of years ago. In the recent Sports Illustrated piece, he complained that people didn't like him because he was biracial and good looking. That seems odd to me, what with the fact that the average Yankee fan would take a bullet for Derek Jeter, who is both good looking and biracial.

I looked at his Wikipedia page, and you who read this tell me that a Red Sox fan wasn't at this. I didn't know that ARod was openly gay. I didn't know he was gay at all. Somehow, with the amount of ESPN I watch and the sports articles I read, I think I would have heard that one of the most famous players in the game swas gay. Not that I care, because it's not my business, but it presents a chance to try Red Sox Nation. Are you really so petty, and pathetic that you need to call a high profile Yankee a homosexual to feel better about yourselves? Even homophobes should be horrified by this trend.

Some other team will take him if the Yankees pay a big percentage of his salary, and he'll fill seats for them. Any other team will be glad to make the postseason, and he just might make a difference (think Magglio Ordonez, but much more talented). In New York, a Yankees championship is not the amazing event that it is elsewhere. Even winning the World Series there has a "Nice work, you did what you were supposed to do, now shut up" feel to it. Outside of the New York pressure cooker, his errors will likely drop and his offensive numbers will probably go up.

The Yankees can afford to pay him to play somewhere else. They might be better off as an organization, as strange as it seems, to pay him to play for another team. He won't be a focal point, no more pressure, no more controversy. The Yankees will have a hole in the lineup, and they'll need to find a third baseman. Aaron Boone is available, since the Indians declined his option. He'll be a cheaper alternative, with less power, but the power numbers weren't there for any Yankee in this series. It's time for the team and the player to go in a different direction, and Red Sox fans surely share my fond memories of Aaron Boone's home run to end the 2003 ALCS.
Gary Sheffield will likely be gone from the Bronx next season too. His option is too expensive for the production one can expect from him. I'll miss him. His massive swing and his if looks could kill expression were pretty cool. I remember Bill Simmons saying that Sheff looked like the last guy you see when you get too deep in the hole with your bookie (I'd link the specific article if the ESPN archive fee weren't too steep for the limited budget of this blog). He didn't look good at first base today, and is he a better option in right field than Abreu (who is most definitely under contract for next season)? Big Stein spent a boatload on the two, but he can afford to cut his losses. And as the Walrus said, the time has come to talk of other things...

I think it was unfair to talk about this Yankee team as the best offense ever assembled. Obviously they weren't, when you look at the fact that Giambi, ARod and Sheff managed three hits among them in the ALDS against the Tigers. There are, or were, two factors oft overlooked in the rush to overhype and overanalyze this Yankee team.

First, it is insane to compare any team from this era to the Murders Row Yankees of the late 1920s and early 30s. In case you may have forgotten, let me remind you that in the dark ages, pitchers hit every day. There was no DH until the 1970s. So there was a weak link in the lineup every day for those Yankee teams.

Most people who know that Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett would have submitted the two most dominating pitching performances that the human mind can conceive understand that I am fabricating the second factor from thin air. Unfortunately for Red Sox fans, they spend too much time looking at the world through rose colored glasses or perhaps the bottoms of empty glasses. But the second reason I think it is pointless to compare the current MLB players to their far distant antecedents is this: they lowered the pitcher's mound after Bob Gibson (who disappointed me by not throwing a hellacious beating on scribes who compared him to Pedro Martinez in the mid to late 90s) ruinated the MLB hitters in the 1968 campaign.

I haven't even mentioned the other peripheral issues one ought consider in such a comparison. Advances in nutrition and exercise regimens altered the physical dimension of even the average American, so what has it done for pro baseball players? And then there are the ball parks. Back in the day, what is now Monument Park in Yankee Stadium was in play. The centerfield wall was 450 feet away. I'm surprised no one else mentioned anything like that on ESPN. That has to be like 12, 13 minutes of talk on Baseball Tonight. Perhaps it's too intricate for the average fan.

I think the Tigers will win it all. Right now, they have a serious team of destiny vibe. Kind of like the Red Sox had the vibe that they were destined to be swept by the Yankees in a pivotal five game series. Heads had to roll for this season, and they did. The path is now paved for a title run next season. Ron Jackson and Dave Wallace will not be joining us for the rest of their lives (to borrow a phrase from my favorite movie villain, Hans from Die Hard).

It seems like only yesterday that Ron Jackson was the genius who undid the singles hitter mantra the Twins tried to instill in David Ortiz and turned him into one of the most feared power threats in baseball. We live in a what have you done for me lately world, and apparently when they reckoned the account on Ron Jackson, the answer was not enough. Francona (or Francoma, as the Red Sox fan who told me he'd be happy with a 12-7 split in the season series with the Yankees calls him) is still in place for the time being, but like Nebuchadnezzar's kid, the writing is on the wall. I'm thinking of betting that he'll be looking for a job come next November. I take no joy in it, I merely use it as one more avenue to pour salt into the wounds of Red Sox Nation.

This offseason will be an interesting one. Will the Red Sox spend to compete with the Yankees? Or will they weasel out and rely on the dwindling reservoir of goodwill from the travesty of 2004? At some point, Red Sox fans might cowboy up and kick back against a team with the highest ticket prices in baseball, a penchant for charging nitwits $12 to tour an empty stadium and $9.95 for citizenship in Red Sox Nation, a skewed concession economy that leaves fan with a colossal thirst paying over and above the cost of a 30 banger in a packie for a round of watered-down Bud/Bud Light and an front office devoted to misinformation (OK, so I made that last one up, can you find it in your heart to forgive me?). Third place in the AL East sticks going down, even if they did win the title two years ago, and fickle friends in New England won't take it again.

Remember, you heard it here first. The Yankees will win it all next season if they sign Roger Clemens. I dreamed it two weeks ago, now we'll see if it becomes reality. I believe in mysticism and dreams and that irrational stuff. It's fine with me if you don't, but that's how I roll. I feel so strongly about it that I'm willing to be that guy and provide a link to my own post where I initially mentioned the dream. I hate the self reference, but just so you know that the Yanks were still alive when I dreamed it.

Notre Dame did what we expected them to do today. They beat Stanford, and I actually felt badly about it. I hate Stanford, I root against them all the time in every sport, but they looked like a high school team out there this afternoon. It was like me arm wrestling my four year old niece. Dallas plays Philly tomorrow. I'd be rooting for them anyway, but I have TO, Bledsoe and Jason Witten in fantasy. Poor drafting, I know, but I was drunk.

What did we learn from the rest of the college football games this week? Michigan beat Michigan State pretty badly. Last week Illinois upset Michigan State in East Lansing. Today Illinois lost a shootout at home to Indiana. The Fighting Irish needed a miracle comeback to beat the Spartans. So Notre Dame might get through the remainder of their schedule unscathed and face USC with a 10-1 record, but then again they might be in the weeds if Illinois or Indiana decided to pull a fast one and ambush them WWE style.

While it might be intriguing to see a team that had game planned for one opponent suddenly be surprised by another team jumping into the stadium without warning, that's simply not football. And I doubt the NCAA would approve. It might happen one day, with the degeneration of sports fandom. Hopefully, I won't live to see it. I think Michigan still isn't quite as good as they were on that day in South Bend, and Notre Dame wasn't that bad. But the long and short of it is, Michigan has national title hopes, and they killed Notre Dame's chances of competing for that stupid crystal football.