Just for Sport

Last night we were all graced with one of the great football games in recent memory.  It surely goes down as one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen.  If I had to choose the five greatest games in all sports in the last ten years without spending a bunch of time thinking about it or researching, they would go as follows:

5 - 2007 Fiesta Bowl, Boise State over Oklahoma, 43-42 (OT).  This makes the list for me because (A) I hate Oklahoma - see sidebar, (B) Nobody thought Boise State would stick it to OU for three and half quarters, much less pull the upset, and (C) Those last couple of plays - The Hook and Lateral and The Statue of Liberty.  Instant classic.

4 - Super Bowl XLII, New York Giants over New England, 17-14.  Not many people predicted a low-scoring game, much less a close one.  The three lead changes in the 4th quarter plus Eli Manning’s escape/David Tyree’s catch (Do we have a name for that yet?) made it a great game anyway.  The storyline behind the game (destroying the perfect season, etc.) put it on the list.

3 - 2004 AL Championship Series, Games 4 & 5, Boston over New York.  Game 4: 6-4 (12 innings).  Game 5: 5-4 (14 innings).  I think it’s fair to lump these two together because it was really the series that was impressive.  Also, Game 5 started 16 hours after Game 4 ended.  These games were great not only because nobody had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit before, but because the Yankees had so thoroughly dominated the series up until that point.  The way they won those games was just fantastic.

2 - 2006 Rose Bowl, Texas over USC, 41-38.  This one was just like last night’s game, except with 4 times the scoring.  USC were the overwhelming favorites, and Texas overcame the odds in the Championship Game, with Vince Young scoring the winning touchdown on 4th down.

1 - 1998 NBA Finals, Game 6, Chicago over Utah, 87-86. Michael Jordan hits "The Shot" (Does that play have a name?  What is it?) in his last game in a Bulls uniform to cap off a 45-point performance and the Bulls 6th Championship.

There are some others that perhaps mean more to me than the greater sports world:

1999 Stanley Cup Finals, Game 6, Dallas over Buffalo, 2-1 (Triple OT).  Creasegate.  Modano plays 55 minutes with a cast on his arm.

June 29, 2007, Chicago Cubs over Milwaukee, 6-5.  The Cubs rally from a 5-0 deficit to win on Aramis’ walkoff home run.  This game also turned the tide in the division race.

2007 NL Wild Card Tiebreaker Game, Colorado over San Diego, 9-8 (13 innings).  This was a great game even before the 13th inning.  Plenty of offense early, followed by dominant pitching and stellar defense.  There was a grand slam and a killer error that allowed the game to go into extras in the first place.  The Padres got 2 in the 13th, and the game was thought over.  But the Cinderella Rockies beat the odds and killed Trevor Hoffman.  The play at the plate, which is consistently the best play in sports, capped it all off. 

2006 NL Championship, Game 6, Florida over Chicago Cubs, 8-3.  I hate this game, but for the Marlins, this was a GREAT game.  Cubs fans, please don’t blame Bartman.  Blame Baker.

2007 AFC Championship Game, Indianapolis over New England, 38-34.  If this game was the Super Bowl, it might have made the list.  The Colts looked dead in the water, behind 21-3, then rallied to beat the team that had been keeping them down in dramatic fashion.

Feel free to disagree or suggest some other games. 

I’m too dumb to embed YouTube videos, so here’s a couple of links:

Great Play

Best Commercial 

The following two things come from the Beating a Dead Horse Department:

1 - Someone in the national media has finally woken up. Wait - Reggie Bush isn’t Michael Jordan? But he did so well against Fresno State and Arizona State…it was supposed to be a sure thing!

2 - The Red Sox have officially become the Yankees. Boston and New York should join together and form a super-team, so they can be the first ones to pay $85 million dollars to some 13 year-old in Belgium for exclusive draft rights in 2013.

The common link between the two issues I find myself writing about most often? You got it…sports teams and sportswriters overrate potential. I blame it on Lebron James, the one athlete of this generation to even come close to living up to the hype. The very moment he scored 25 points in his rookie debut, we should have seen it coming. All of a sudden everybody wants to jump on the next big athlete’s bandwagon. For as long as it’s been around, ESPN the Magazine has published an annual “Next” magazine, where a large majority of the ink is spent projecting which high schooler will be the next Michael Jordan, Walter Payton, or Albert Einstein. It had just gotten to be ridiculous when they got Lebron right, so it made sense that that would start a feeding frenzy. And this is what it has led to…Large-market teams willing to pay over $50 million dollars just to talk to somebody (By the way, this money doesn’t count toward the luxury tax, does it? Try to tell me that the Shared Revenue/Luxury Tax system works now…) and entire professional teams are ostracized in the media for picking the “wrong” player before a snap is even played. Five or so years ago, Tank McNamara spoofed the whole idea with a strip that portrayed a major shoe company executive approaching a pregnant woman with a large shoe contract for her unborn son. At the time, it seemed ridiculous. Now, the “experts” seem to be capable of determining how well a 14 year-old will perform in the professional sports arena with no room for error. Signing a fetus to a shoe contract now would seem to be prudent, as the young man’s stock can only rise. Get them while they’re cheap! It can only get worse if Reggie Bush can somehow right the ship and Daisuke Matsuzaka’s gyroball is all Peter Gammons says it is. I’m personally rooting that they do, so that my wife and I can sign that Adidas contract in a couple of years.

As the title might suggest, I hate getting wrapped up in all of the New York-Boston hoopla. Let’s face it - the rivalry is overrated, and while I have been well-documented in my hatred of the Yankees, I have never subscribed to the school that says if you hate the Yankees, you must cheer for the Sox. The Red Sox have turned into the Yankees, and I honestly don’t see how a card-carrying Yankee hater can root for them. Nevertheless, whenever the two teams get together, I generally root for the lesser of the two evils. Today, though, I’m (gasp) rooting for the Yankees.

Why? Because of David Freakin’ Ortiz. I’m sick of sportswriters (especially ones that write for a company based in New England) writing things like, “Anybody who’s watched a Red Sox game this year knows who the MVP is.” Let me tell you, watching Boston play doesn’t really define MVP for me, unless you’re talking about Jason Varitek, the one player who can spark that team. An MVP doesn’t throw his team under the bus by saying, “Come hit in this line-up and see what kind of numbers you get.” So the rest of the team doesn’t do it for you? What about Manny, your best friend, who has hit behind you all year? The Red Sox have such a ridiculous payroll; it’s absurd to insinuate that the rest of the line-up isn’t up to snuff. Maybe Ortiz should switch places with Jermaine Dye or Magglio Ordonez or Frank Thomas and see what his statistics look like. I know one statistic that would stay the same: .000, as in Fielding Percentage.

Any part-time player that would be rendered useless by switching leagues doesn’t even deserve consideration for Most Valuable Player. A player is only valuable as long as he is on the field. Anybody who takes the field helps his team for 27 outs, plus however many at-bats he gets, plus however many hits/walk the other team gets. If every team averages 9 hits/walks per game (a very conservative estimate), then a full-time player is on the field for 40 of the game’s 72 plate appearances. A DH is “on the field” (Consider this: if a designated hitter doesn’t reach base in a game, he will never have set foot inside the foul lines) for 4 of those 72 plate appearances.

Maybe David Ortiz should spend all the time he spends on the bench considering a different method for winning the MVP he apparently wants so much: stop complaining about reporters and other players and pick up your glove.