World Series Preview of The Obvious

The teams will play each other.

One team will score more runs than the other.

There will be weather.

Fans will attend the game, and be excited to do so.

Pitchers will face batters.

Batters will face pitchers.

Umpires will umpire.

Tim McCarver will annoy everyone.

Filowitz's Friday Five

1) Good for you, Joe Torre. I applaud a man that leaves with both his head and middle fingers held high. This is actually a win-win situation, though. It is probably a good time for a change for the Yankees, and this, in the end, will be best for both Torre and the team, in the long run.

2) Speaking of the Yankees coverage, have you heard what the Orioles and White Sox have been doing this offseason while the playoffs are still going on? You haven’t? What about the Cardinals, or the Padres? No? Weird.

3) Right now, I’m hoping that the Red Sox force a game 7, only for them to lose in that game 7. That will be the most entertaining outcome, as who doesn’t love playoff game 7’s, and is also guaranteed to simultaneously create the most joy (Cleveland fans) and the most pain (Red Sox fans.) No word on how much sunshine and rain it’ll cause, though.

4) Amaré Stoudemire just got a tattoo on his the inside of his bicep that says “Knowing is Knowledge”. That is so tremendous, on so many levels. You need to read the FreeDarko guys talking about it, here and here.

5) I’m officially excited about the start of the NBA season. I’ve realized that for me the NBA has now surpassed baseball as my second favorite sport to follow, behind the NFL. In fact, this year, I’m going to get League Pass so I can watch more games (I need to see Kevin Durant play, and the Suns, and the Warriors, and the Bobcats, seriously, and to see more Knicks games than I would here, and so much more.) There will also be some other NBA-related projects I’ll be involved in coming soon. For those of you that fell out of love with the NBA five or six years ago, I’m telling you, come back now. Or just keep checking in here.

Filowitz's Friday Five

1) There’s nothing more enjoyable than seeing the Yankees get utterly demolished, is there? Knowing all those smug Yankees fans have to shut up and eat a little crap for a day is amusing to me. So, so amusing. For more fun, if you see a Yankees fan, remember to yell at them: Ken-ny Lof-ton! (clap clap clap-clap-clap) Ken-ny Lof-ton! Or say to them, “They have twelve runs. You don’t.”

2) At the same time, knowing that Red Sox fans will feel extra smug after seeing their team do well and the Yankees struggle isn’t much better. I prefer to see Red Sox fans also have to shut up and eat some crap. So does that mean I want the Yankees to win or to lose? I’m confusing myself over here.

3) This would be a good time to point out that I don’t really have a team that’s “my team” in baseball. I love to watch and follow baseball, but I’ve liberated myself from the confines of specific team fandom (as articulated by the FreeDarko guys in regards to basketball.) So I root for scenarios, stories, things that make it fun for me. For example, the Cubs doing well would be a lot of fun for me, since I live a mile and a half from Wrigley. Mostly, though, this has to do with being able to see the anguish of other teams’ fans – especially Yankees and Red Sox fans, and to a lesser degree Phillies fans. My baseball fandom right now seems to be rooted in schadenfreude.

4) The TBS coverage has been decent. The huge advantage they have over Fox is that they don’t actively hate baseball fans, as any network that employs Tim McCarver, Jeanne Zelasko, and Scooter the talking baseball clearly does. There’s also no obnoxious sound effects every few minutes, and no gratuitous interviews with “stars” of the network’s shows. Just baseball, with more or less competent announcing, and the always awesome Ernie Johnson in the studio. The only thing I wish would go away is Frank Caliendo. But looks like we’re stuck with Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson imitations for the next month (oh, how timely and relevant!)

5) Boy, the Cubs sure did strike out a lot in the first two games. Ten times in game one. Thirteen times in game two. You're not going to win any games if all you do is strike out. I suppose we have to blame Bartman for this. Stop making Cubs hitters miss pitches, you!

The apparently biased Yankee playoff preview

After doing copious amounts of research for this piece I have discovered that the team has made wholesale changes since the hey day of the early 90s when the town was painted red by the Wild Thing,Voo Dooed by Pedro, dressed by Dorn and blessed by Harris. Apparently Jake Taylor no longer cleans the dish and ogles Rene Russo.

No folks, a new Tribe is in town and other than a humongous pitcher what do they have going for them? They throw out guys named Casey and Travis and Grady and Trot. They are no match for the soon to be 27th time world champion New York Yankees

We all know by now that the Yanks destroyed the Tribe in the regular season highlighted by a walk off A Bomb from A Rod in April and ending with a 6 game sweep.

In the end it comes down to something similarly uttered by the Evil Geno Auriemma

We have Joba and ARod and you don't


At the end of 4 games you will be saying:
The New York Yankees, Ruth Gehrig, Dimaggio, Mantle, Jeter, Rodriguez and Costanza!

The Sherman Avenue Block Party Completely Biased Baseball Playoff Preview: NLDS, Cubs vs Diamondbacks

I find it generally ridiculous when sports announcers and pundits try to use destiny or fate or other supernatural elements as reasons why teams win or lose. It is the mark of someone without anything better to say, without the ability to do any real analysis of what went on, and without the ability to admit that chance plays a bigger role in sports than most will acknowledge.

Consider the Chicago Cubs.

If they win their series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, pundits will say that they are the team of destiny, that they and their fans are finally due to get their rewards.

If they lose their series against Arizona, pundits will say things about the curse of Bartman and some billy goat.

So either way, it would have little to do with the baseball being played, and instead to do with magical forces that we cannot see or measure or truly understand.

That’s bunk.

Whatever will happen in this series will happen because of actual human agency, the free will of each player to do whatever it is they will do, in combination with the large role that chance tends to play, since the difference between success and failure in baseball has to do with fractions of an inch (in the angle of a swing, rotation of a pitch, wind speed, and many other variables.)

Considering only these factors, and the fact that I live in Chicago and have seen many, many Cubs games this year, and the fact that I can’t say for sure if I’ve seen three innings of the Diamondbacks this year, I can say with confidence that the Cubs will win this series.

The Cubs have the most solid and balanced team of any left in the National League. Their starting pitching is very strong at the top with Carlos Zambrano, and extremely solid after that with Ted Lilly, Jason Marquis, Rich Hill, and Sean Marshall. The bullpen has standout Carlos Marmol and Bob Howry, along with solid veterans Scott Eyre and Ryan Dempster. The top three guys in the lineup (not in the batting order) Derrek Lee, Alfonso Soriano, and Aramis Ramirez, are as good as any top three in the National League. To use the word solid again, the rest of the lineup is full of solid veterans like Cliff Floyd, Jaques Jones, Jason Kendall, and Mark DeRosa.

The point is, the Cubs are poised to do very well in these playoffs. There are no glaring weaknesses on the roster, and some very big bright spots. Not to mention a manager, Lou Pinella, who has been there before and knows what it takes to win in the postseason.

The only weakness of the team, really, is that they do not play consistently. When everyone is on at the same time – when Zambrano is pitching his best, when the top three are all hitting well – they look basically unbeatable, as they did for large parts of September. When they aren’t playing well, they rarely seem to have enough to pull out a game.

The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, are a confusing team. Their pitching is very good, but not ridiculously dominant. This isn’t like when they had Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. This isn’t the 2005 White Sox. They also have no offense worth speaking of – no one on their regular roster hit over .300, no one on the team had over 85 RBI, only one guy on the team had over 25 HR (I defy you to name him. Give up? His name is Chris Young. If you knew that, I defy you to describe what he looks like, or even to tell me if he’s black or white.)

And yet they had the best record in the National League. Which to me speaks to how bad the National League was this year more than to how good a team the Diamondbacks are.

So the Cubs will win because they are the better team, because they have the ability to win with either their pitching or their hitting, or both, depending on the day.

The Cubs will win because teams like the Diamondbacks that no one ever sees or cares about don’t all of a sudden become awesome in the postseason.

The Cubs will win because they have a better home field advantage, since Chicago fans are going to be insane, while fans in Phoenix will be at least a third Chicago fans anyway.

The Cubs will win because Chicago is vastly superior to Phoenix in just about every way.

The Cubs will win despite talk of superstition and karma and curses and goats and some poor guy who just wanted to catch a foul ball.

Because I say all that is bunk.

And I am often right.