September 2008 Archives

The New York Post's Phil Mushnick rips Fox TV's Mark Grace for saying nice things about the wild card.

Mushnick is amazed that "Grace thinks it's a modern marvel that between the Brewers and the Mets -- two spectacularly deficient and richly undeserving teams -- one would end the weekend among the eight clubs starting at scratch in pursuit of winning the World Series ..."

But more "deficient" than whom? Are the National League wild-card Brewers (90-72) more deficient than the NL West champion Dodgers (84-78), or the American League wild-card Red Sox (95-67) more deficient than the AL Central champion White Sox (88-74)?

I'm watching the Twins-White Sox game on TV and noticing everybody looks cold. I'm seeing on weather.com it's 53 degrees in Chicago right now, not exactly freezing. So it's dawning on me guys in postseason baseball tend to look cold whether or not it's actually cold. Maybe it's something about the way people carry themselves under pressure. Maybe this is the way to pick the winner, look for the guys who don't look cold.

Here are my Pac-10 Conference football rankings, updated. To see last week's, before USC's fall, click here. They're based foremost on how many wins each team has above or below the number an average major-college team would have if it faced the same schedule. A "half" game plus or minus is the result of winning or losing a game that looked like a tossup going in. Essentially I divide college teams into three groups: top-25 teams; teams with sub-.500 records, and everyone in between. A school should win home games against sub-.500 teams and middling teams, and lose road games against top-25 teams and middling teams; home games top-25s and road games against sub-.500s are toss-ups. It's not the most scientific method in the world, but a fair way to estimate how satisfied or dissatisfied fans should be with their team's results so far. Ties (and there are a lot this week) are broken by looking at raw won-lost records and performance against the spread and over-and-under line.

1. Oregon (+0.5 win compared to average, 4-1 record)
2. Cal (+0.5, 3-1)
3. Arizona (+0.5, 3-1)
4. USC (+0.5, 2-1)
5. Stanford (+0.5, 3-2)
6. Oregon State (+0, 2-2)
7. UCLA (-1.0, 1-3)
8. Arizona State (-1.5, 2-2)
9. Washington (-2.0, 0-4)
10. Washington State (-2.5, 1-4)

News: NEW YORK (AP) -- Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will perform at the 2009 Super Bowl halftime show in Tampa, Fla., the NFL and NBC announced Sunday night.

Comment: I've been to a couple of Super Bowls and a bunch of Bruce Springsteen concerts. May I suggest that from what I've seen, the Associated Press has the story inside-out. Bruce isn't playing at halftime of the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl is being played on either side of a Bruce show.

Jerry Magee, the great San Diego sportswriter, has retired after more than a half-century in that town. Right up to the end, his was the liveliest copy in the San Diego Union-Tribune. His column in Pro Football Weekly always was the first thing I turned to in that publication. Colleague Nick Canepa paid tribute to Magee in a Saturday column (click here). Magee signed off with a Sunday column from Oakland about the Raiders (click here). "End of career," Magee wrote, "if what a newspaper guy does can be called a career. I would call it a joy." With Magee, it always read that way too.

The Dodgers have announced an all-time Los Angeles team, chosen by fans in on-line voting, and there are some odd exclusions.

I'm at Santa Anita, waiting with something less than breathless anticipation for the arrival of Curlin, the 2007 Horse of the Year who is supposed to get in this evening after winning Saturday's Jockey Club Gold Cup in New York. Curlin's owners haven't committed to running him in the Breeders' Cup Classic on Oct. 25 at Santa Anita because they aren't sure what to make of the Arcadia track's new synthetic oval. But sending him here, to train on the track and see if he likes the footing, is a big step toward making the Classic a titanic Curlin-Big Brown showdown.

I'm been covering the horses this weekend while our racing writer Art Wilson is away. Saturday was a blast, with six Grade I races at Santa Anita and five on TV from Belmont Park. Writing my story, I was reminded of Red Smith's assertion that there are more stories at the racetrack than anywhere else in sports.

A lot can change in the nearly four weeks before the Breeders' Cup. But with Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown aiming for the Classic, international No. 1 Curlin getting closer to a commitment, and Zenyatta 8 for 8 after her Santa Anita prep for the Oct. 24 Breeders' Cup Ladies Classic, the world's richest sports event appears to be lining up the stars it wants.

Update: Curlin arrived at Santa Anita at 5:05 p.m. Sunday, walking down a ramp from a big silver trailer, his bay coat shining in the sun, etc. He looked great considering he'd run a hard race Saturday to win the Jockey Club Gold Cup. This is the world's No. 1-ranked thoroughbred, so for racing fans it's the equivalent of the best in any sport coming to town. The half-dozen photographers on hand were racetrack veterans. Said one: "I haven't been this excited since John Henry," referring to the champion of the early 1980s.

I'm not going to say I told you so. I am going to say Scott Wolf told you so. Our USC beat writer took a lot of heat for defying the early-season conventional wisdom and voting the Trojans only No. 3 in the Associated Press poll -- almost as if they might not be an unconquerable football team. Scott looks pretty good after the Trojans' loss to Oregon State tonight. Unless, of course, you want to rip him for overrating them.

On Aug. 29, the day Gov. Sarah Palin was named to the GOP ticket, the Dodgers were 4 1/2 games behind Arizona and had lost eight in a row. So Palin turned one race around.

I was sorry to read on the AP wire this morning about the death of Mickey Vernon, the 1946 and '53 American League batting champion with the Washington Senators. Vernon was 90 when he died Wednesday in Media, Pa.

When I interviewed Fred Claire on an unrelated topic recently, the former Dodgers general manager told me how much he had enjoyed talking with Vernon not long ago.

Click here to read the column Claire wrote about Vernon for mlb.com, in which Claire remarks on how Vernon still had the incredibly detailed memory that all great baseball players seem to possess.

A few days after I wrote a column chastizing athletes for overly choreographed, over-the-top, self-serving celebrations, a potentially embarrassing thing happened:

I scored a goal in a soccer match.

And had to celebrate without breaking my own "rules."

Here's an update of my Pac-10 Conference football rankings. Again, they're based foremost on how many wins each team has above or below the number an average major-college team would have if it faced the same schedule. A "half" game plus or minus is the result of winning or losing a game that looked like a tossup going in. Essentially I divide college teams into three groups: 1. top-25 teams; teams with sub-.500 records; everyone in between. A school should win home games against sub-.500 teams and middling teams, and lose road games against top-25 teams and middling teams; home games top-25s and road games against sub-.500s are toss-ups.

1. USC (2-0 record, +1 win compared to average)
2. Arizona (3-1, +0.5)
3. Cal (2-1, +0.5)
4. Oregon (3-1, +0)
5. Stanford (2-2, +0)
6. Oregon State (1-2, -0.5)
7. UCLA (1-2, -0.5)
8. Washington (0-3, -1)
9. Arizona State (2-2, -1.5)
10. Washington State (1-3, -2)

Not quite sure what to make of The (London) Times' great columnist Simon Barnes' broadside against the United States, saying our recent failures in Ryder Cup golf are a symptom of our supposed bad attitude about international sport.

The Daily News is moving at the end of this week to a new office a few blocks away in Woodland Hills. As we empty drawers and cabinets that have been here for 21 years, we're finding old copies of the newspaper. Some are historic, but even the unremarkable editions of the paper are fun to look through.

Here's what's in one picked at random, from Saturday, Nov. 9, 1996.

Some things that haven't changed:

One of my favorite Web sites is sportsclubstats.com, which gives daily updates on the chances of teams making the playoffs, percentages calculated by computer based on the standings and the remaining schedules.

Baseball is the most relevant now, but the site offers similar updates for all the major U.S. sports as well as motor sports and overseas soccer.

Going into today's games, the Dodgers had a 93.3 percent chance of making the National League playoffs -- up from 11.5 percent just 20 days ago.

But before you rush out and buy 93.3 percent of a Dodgers playoff ticket, take note: Roughly a year ago, the New York Mets had a 99.1 percent chance of making the 2007 playoffs.

Anyway, it's a fun site.

Contrary to popular opinion, the biggest threat to the USC football team's No. 1 ranking might not be Scott Wolf, our writer who voted the Trojans No. 3 in this week's AP poll. The biggest threat might be the perceived weakness of the Pac-10, which provides most of the Trojans' remaining regular-season opponents.

People love rankings, so here's a ranking. It's the Pac-10 Conference football teams from top to bottom. It's based foremost on how many wins the teams have above or below the number an average major-college team facing the same schedule would have.

1. USC (2-0 record, +1 win compared to average)
2. Oregon (3-0, +1)
3. Cal (2-1, +0.5)
4. UCLA (1-1, +0.5)
5. Stanford (1-2, +0)
6. Arizona (2-1, -0.5)
7. Oregon State (1-2, -0.5)
8. Arizona State (2-1, -1)
9. Washington (0-3, -1)
10. Washington State (0-3, -2)

I'll try to keep it updated. It shouldn't be hard.

I'm looking forward to reading Scott Wolf's column in today's paper. Scott writes about why he put USC only No. 3 in the ranking he submitted to the Associated Press pollsters after the Trojans' blowout victory over Ohio State on Saturday. Scott is one of three AP voters -- on a 64-member panel -- who don't have the Trojans No. 1 in the nation.

You can contribute to a column I'm planning to write. The topic is the right and wrong ways for athletes to celebrate victories, big plays, etc. Tell me what kinds of celebrations you like and what kinds go too far -- or not far enough.

Does it seem as if Francisco Rodriguez's saves-record pursuit is getting less attention than other record chases? I sure hope so.

Rodriguez's next save for the Angels will be his 58th of the season, breaking the record held by Bobby Thigpen of the Chicago White Sox. The question isn't how Rodriguez's achievement stacks up with Thigpen's, it's whether any achievement involving the statistic called saves is as big a deal as the feats of starting pitchers and hitters.

My attitude, and this applied to Eric Gagne's record-setting saves streak for the Dodgers a few years ago, is that the feats of bullpen closers are more like curiosities than Cooperstown calling cards.

If the Dodgers beat Arizona in their series opener tonight at Dodger Stadium, they'll pull within one-half game of the division leaders. Then?

To me this is the most amazing thing about the Dodgers' season: Since climbing within one-half game on July 4, the've been one-half game back or tied for first place 14 times. That is, 14 times they've woken up thinking this is the day they take over sole possession of first place. They haven't taken over sole possession of first place yet.

The frustrating details follow, showing the each day the Dodgers began one-half game back or tied for first, and what the Dodgers and Diamondbacks did that day to keep the Dodgers from the division lead: