Tag: Business Day One

[Business Day One] Shaken Faith

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The prevailing emotion in Boston today isn’t anguish. Aaron Boone was anguish for Boston. Brady-out-for-the-year was anguish. Last night, a good team lost to a great team. It happens all the time. Lowell was out, Varitek got old and Ortiz was playing with one arm. Pluckiness got them to game 7, but pluckiness alone can’t win it.

Personally, I thought the Gods of Sport would wield their divine power to drive both the Red Sox and Dodgers into the World Series and create the greatest storyline of the last ten years. But the Gods crapped the bed, and The Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles wimpered and fell. I should’ve known that They would not do any favors for the Sox.

Now the world braces for the excitement of a Phillies/Rays World Series. I don’t like Philadelphia because the city is awful and I don’t like the Rays because I just don’t like the Rays. I have absolutely no interest in watching the World Series, and I plan on actively avoiding it or any references to it.

For 90% of the country, the countdown has begun until Pitchers and Catchers.

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[Business Day One] Lost Seasons And House Money

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I said Matt Cassel would be “fine” this season, and so far, he’s been just that. Not great. Not awful. Just fine. His stats so far support the assertion that’s he’s a perfectly average backup quarterback. Three touchdowns to four interceptions and a rating around 80. He’s playing exactly like a guy told specifically not to screw anything up. The trick is that each mounting loss will upset the merciless Boston sports media more and more, despite Cassel playing within his particular gameplan. Despite the fact that this loss could be hung on the cornerbacks as much as the quarterback, many fans (and the sports reporters that pander to them) don’t care so much about Deltha O’Neil and Ellis Hobbs as they do about the guy that replaced Tom Brady.

But I don’t think townsfolk with pitchforks are showing up at Gillette any time soon. Boston fans are an impatient bunch sometimes, but they’re not stupid. No one will demand Cassel be shackled and kept on the sidelines, since anyone who knows anything about Patriots football knows that no one else on roster can throw the ball. Backups-to-the-backup Matt Gutierrez and Kevin O’Connell aren’t the answer this season, and the drop-off from Brady to Cassel or anyone else will not be narrowed by any means. The fans know this, the media accepts this (though I’m sure they’ll write stories to the contrary when the Bills open up a three game lead in the division), and so this season has essentially become a “we’ll take anything” kind of season.

The Patriots are playing with house money now. With Brady down, everyone I know that owns a jersey with his name on it threw up their hands and lamented the soon-to-be 6-10 season. Anything above that is a pleasant surprise. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if I see a town of rah-rahs if 9-7 and a wild card berth becomes the reality in a few months. Thankfully for everyone, the Sox are still alive in the playoffs. That’ll make any grim twists of fate go down a bit easier.

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[Business Day One] On The Firing Of Coaches

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Let me just cut to the meat of it today. When a team’s ownership fires a head coach, particularly midseason, the ownership does not expect the firing to suddenly make the team better. A firing is meant to do a lot of things, but improve play on the field is not one of them. A firing, like, say, Scott Linehan’s, will have the following effects:
1) It shows the fanbase that the ownership is “serious” about getting the best possible product on the field (despite the fact that the coach wasn’t the one failing to stop opposing defensive ends from murdering the quarterback).
2) It shows the media that the ownership recognizes the team is underachieving and is, in some way, responding to the criticism.
3) It reminds people that the ownership can not fire itself for the poor operational decisions it has made over the years.

Remember when Willie Randolph got the axe in June? Did that improve the team? If so, why will they be spending the playoffs the same way I am (as a spectator)? Does Wretched Living Skeleton Al Davis think letting Lane Kiffen go will suddenly cause all of Oakland’s problems to go away? Not at all.

I cannot make this clear enough. Coaches aren’t fired to make a team better. That’s not how it works. Anything owners say about “new directions” or “opposing viewpoints” is garbage. Know that they’re lying to you and know also that if your team gets its head cut off halfway through the season, the problems that caused it aren’t any closer to being solved.

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[Business Day One] The Quarterback Position

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“I’m not trying to be Tom Brady. I’m just trying to be Matt Cassel. I don’t know where that’s going to take us.”

The press conference is going to be at 3 o’clock today, or so the reports say. I’m going to withhold any condemnations or statements of hope until then. And even at 3, I’ll probably still refrain because, in truth, no one knows what’s going to happen from here on out in Foxboro. In the fall of 2001, Mo Lewis caved in Drew Bledsoe’s chest and the keys to the Patriots war wagon were handed to a sixth rounder out of Ann Arbor. Folks cried out in anguish before the first of three Super Bowls rolled in later that year.

And now here were are, a few hours before news of what will become of the face (and arm) of the franchise. Everything that anyone has said so far about whether or not Brady will play again is pure speculation. All the analysis done so far is worth as much as the Word Document that they were written on. As of right now, all we know are that the Patriots are 1-0 and the back-up came in and played well.

But such is the nature of football. The quarterback position is the most important on the field by a decent margin during the game and the most important position by a massive margin in the media. Teams rise and fall with the signal caller, so when the signal caller falls, people start checking the life boats. That’s the nature of the game and the coverage of the game, and it’s nothing new. Unless the defense is setting records, all eyes are on the QB.

Three and a half hours away from the coach taking the podium, so I’m going to kill time by making a prediction. I write and my words appear on the internet, so I have as impressive a list of credentials as any other yahoo that is making a prediction. Here’s mine:

Matt Cassel is going to play superb football for the season and will take the Patriots deep into the playoffs. By Week 4, we’ll be thoroughly relieved and, while we’ll look forward to Brady returning next year (assuming, of course, he’s out for the season), we’re not going to start burning season tickets in Boston. The Patriots are a 10-6 team, and Matt Cassel completes 60% of his passes and has more TDs than INTs. You heard it here first. The Quarterback Position in New England will be fine.

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[Business Day One] The Pavano Grudge

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Sports fandom is filled with hatred. If you love a team enough, you hate that team’s rival. Really, truly hate. Irrationally hate. Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins fans hate each other and have for a long while. Ohio State and Michigan fans hate each other because of how intertwined their storied histories are. India and Pakistan cricket fans hated each other… due mainly to decades of horrific war. Such is the way of sport, really. We give ourselves so willingly and so fully to our club that anything that attemps to defame or diminish it becomes the target of our burning rage.

I consider this a price. Fandom isn’t free. You need to invest a lot in it – money, time, love, and hate. Only when you are fully invested in this way can you truly experience the impossible highs and devastating lows that sport was created to evoke. I do my best to keep this in mind when I discuss my intense hatred of Carl Pavano.

Carl Pavano, the Yankees’ 4 year, $40 million dollar mistake, just pitched in (and won) his first Major League game in over a year. And I couldn’t be more disgusted. I hate Pavano. I hate him as much as I hate Manny Ramirez. I hate his attitude (poor), his health (awful), and what he represents (the blind spending of the early 2000s Yankees). He is a great weight hanging around the neck of the organization – a reminder to the owners and the fans that mistakes like him have given us nearly a decade without a championship. I wish I could direct some of this hatred outward, away from my Yankees, but I can’t. Everything that is wrong with how that team did business is encapsulated in one man, fairly or unfairly.

In my mind, Carl Pavano has been worse for the Yankees playoff chances than any other player on any other team. Accordingly, I have a Pavano Grudge. And I know I’m not the only one.

If there can be a lesson taken out of this, I suppose it would be that it is alright to hate something in sports. We’re all imperfect humans, and our body gives off a lot of hate. So we might as well direct it at something harmless, like a wretched, consistently injured jerk. Like Carl Pavano.

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[Business Day One] Olympic Dashboard

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I’m still in an Olympics state of mind, so I’m going to spill some info on you in the most efficient way I know of: conversation-inspiring bullet points! Here we go!

-I have had a sinking suspicion for the past week that many Olympic commentators were secretly wishing that Michael Phelps would fail to pick up eight gold medals. Why? Because it’d make a better story. Pundits would be able to dissect possible reasons why for months to come. Every news agency would be clamoring for that first “what was it like to come up short” interview. Sports shows feed on this kind of thing; human tragedy is much more compelling of a story than human triumph. Maybe that’s why they heap on the pressure – it’s as if the media was trying to do its part to manufacture a story of heartbreak and sadness.

-I check the Medals Tracker once a day. Currently, the US leads in medals but China leads in overall golds. I spent most of my morning commute trying to figure out what exactly that represents, but nothing convincing materialized. I guess I should just start chanting “USA!”

-The Men’s Basketball team nearly doubled up Germany a few hours ago. I’ve often heard that the secret to basketball success is to peak at the right time. I’d say hanging 106 on a team with NBA players on it counts. The big different, best I can tell, between this year’s team and the previous manifestations is defensive tenacity. I’m seeing our smalls diving into passing lanes and doing their darndest to pull down rebounds. I never got that sense in years past. They’re playing with pride. That makes them an easy team to root for, even with Kobe Bryant on it.

-My favorite player on the soon-to-be-gold-medal Women’s Softball team is Crystl Bustos. She’s like Babe Ruth, in terms of separation between her and the rest of existence in terms of homerun power. If you have an opportunity to watch a women’s game, pay attention when she’s at bat. Like Ruth, when she steps into the box, the expectation is homerun.

-Chicago is in the running for the 2016 games. I hope that it comes here, just so that I’ll be able to watch things at a reasonable hour.

-So far, these are the controversies that I’ve counted in this year’s games: Lip synching girl during opening ceremony, computer generated fireworks during opening ceremony, a murder, underage Chinese gymnasts, pollution, Tibet protests, media censorship, mass displacement, and the paying of fans to fill seats. All things considered, not too bad for a gruesomely oppressive government.

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[Business Day One] “He Looks Like A Shark”

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I spent a long weekend on the Cape, and despite the availability of lobster rolls, sandy beaches, mini golf and hot tubs, my attention kept drifting to the Olympics.  I didn’t care much for Athens, and I don’t really follow the winter events, so this has been the first time in at least a decade that the international competition mattered to me.

I’m not sure what spurred the interest, really. I’ve done my best to keep pre-Olympic hype on a slow drip instead of an overdose-causing deluge, and picked my stories carefully. I decided that I’d care about Michael Phelps, the US Men’s Basketball Team, and any other Americans that I happened to notice competing when I flipped the television on. The results of this have been good so far. I’m able to pick up and watch whenever I want and also have specific races or matches to look forward to.

The Olympics is best enjoyed as a grand three week buffet. Try a little of everything, find out what you like, and keep going back to that over the course of the affair. Don’t binge or you’ll get tired of it. Don’t avoid it completely or you won’t be able to talk about how awesome it all was afterwards. Speaking as a buffet and sports enthusiast, I feel this analogy holds.

So try to log some time watching. Despite the generally gruesome political and economic climate of late, there’s some splendid purity to be seen in the pool, on the court and in the sand.

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