The Job Search, Day One
7:52am- Woke up at traditional time without benefit of alarm. Went back to sleep.
9:05am- Re-awakened to watch Regis and Kelly. For Halloween, they were dressed as Anglina Jolie and Brad Pitt. If forced, however, my guess would have been Elvira and Regis Philbin with sunglasses on.
10:00- 11:30am- Watched episodes of "The Office" and "Taxi" on DVD.
11:30am- 2pm- Nap.
2pm-4:30pm- Watched "Superman" on HBO. That movie's awesome.
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I'm just kidding. I actually went to a job interview during the middle of the day. I'm not going to let moss grow under my feet. There's a whole world out there. I've already been a cub reporter like Jimmy Olson. Now I'm going to make my mark on the world like Lex Luthor. Maybe someday I'll have made enough money to move out of my phone booth.
And lesbians, to boot
60 Minutes was in the Howard Stern studio this morning, taping an upcoming segment about the King of All Media.
As an addendum, here are some on-line comments from media critic Jeff Jarvis:
I hope they don't miss the true significance of Stern in American media. It's not that he farted. It's not that he was attacked by the so-called Parents Television Council, which hounded him off our airwaves with the aid of our own damned FCC (though that, too, is a story.) It's not even that he single-handedly blew up the radio industry: His departure didn't just cause them to find replacements but to blow up the formats of every one of his stations (though that is a story.) And it's not that he could well turn satellite into an industry (which will be a story.)No, it's that he was honest in a media world that has become packaged and sanitized for our protection: bloodless, soulless, faked to look real. And they couldn't take it. I'm bailin' on Friday.
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Congratulations to the Chicago White Sox. It's the culmination of a remarkable 88 year story. America's ambivalence would completely confound me, if I didn't share in it partly myself. I'm still trying to sort out my thoughts.
And my feelings, which aren't necessarily the same thing. I am pissed on the team's behalf, though, about one element of the media coverage. They are not the
South Side White Sox. They are the
Chicago White Sox. Get it right, faceless, soulless media!
Bush to Appoint Someone to Be in Charge of the Country
President Bush has declared war on
The Onion, the weekly newsstand and on-line satire page. The New York Times
reports that the White House is seeking to prevent
The Onion from continuing to use the Presidential Seal on its satirical recreations of the President's Weekly Radio Address.
The nuttiest part of the Times story is the last comment from the White House spokesman. Nothing tells the world you have a sense of humor like a Cease and Desist order.
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I got a kick out of
this article by
Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander. The column is average, but his Chicagoan's map of the world is pretty funny.
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Speaking of the White Sox, the team our greatest sports scribe, Thomas Boswell,
calls "baseball's most overlooked, ignored, and almost utterly invisible team," they're headed towards a sure World Championship. I write this even as they trail in Game 3 of the Series. This will be 17 out of 19 for the teams with home field advantage in the Fall Classic.
It's time for the designated hitter to go. It's long outlived its usefulness offensively, and it's ridiculous to play under two sets of rules in the final series. Someone explain to me why so many people think this is a good thing. If it created more interest and mystery in the Series, then why would the outcomes based on home-field be so assured.
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Kudos to Major League Baseball for making the Astros open their roof for tonight's game. It's good to know the Cardinals' complaining didn't go for naught, albeit too late to make a difference in the LCS. It is patently unfair for Houston, or any team, to have the crowd noise advantage of an indoor stadium. And
especially in Texas, where the climate is mild and baseball fans still have to be told by the scoreboard when to cheer.
Moeller TV Listings 10/25/05
Charles Schultz's 1966 classic "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" airs tonight at 7 central on ABC. Through this annual re-broadcast, Snoopy has singlehandedly kept "The Red Baron" alive in the American consciousness, and Linus deserves the bulk of the credit for the contemporary pumpkin industry's commitment to sincerity. Grab the bobbing apples, cut up the bedsheets, and remember to let a Notary take a look at those signed documents.
Gauging the threats
The Senate's King of Pork, Alaska's Ted Stevens,
says he'll resign if money from his appropriations bill is re-directed to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. What's the downside here? The tragedy is that 82 of his fellow Senators voted in his favor.
Where are the Democratic leaders on pork spending? Waste should be a bipartisan issue.
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Senator Stevens will have to secure spending for a thousand more bridges when large chunks of his state are underwater.
Here's the latest on our inevitable destruction.
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This is very possibly the most disturbing poll I've ever seen.
It doesn't say much for the future of this country, as we continue the pursuit for the best and brightest minds in science. It's not the rejection of Darwin's theory, in itself, that's most alarming. It's the rejection of scientific expertise and its method, replaced with pseudoscience and anti-intellectualism. Fact has been reduced to a polling sample.
It's time for the secularists to push back. The scientific facts will be safe, regardless, but our nation's future in innovation and rational decision-making will suffer if we turn our backs on our natural scientific curiosity. Don't just complain. If the flat-earth gang demands equal time for theology in science class, demand equal time in Sunday School.
The TV Festival Screening Schedule
The 4th Annual Moeller TV Festival is nearly upon us. We'll commence the two day event early in the afternoon two weeks from today, Saturday, November 5th, at the home of Aaron's landlord in Cedar Rapids, IA. Sandwiches and drinks will be provided. If you're interested in attending, e-mail me at
christophermmoeller@msn.com.
Now here's the screening schedule. The "Open Remote" segment allows you to submit your favorite shows for viewing. If you have a way of providing the show on DVD or video, e-mail your pick to the above address or
atmoeller@hotmail.com.
The schedule is subject to small variances.
Saturday afternoon, Nov. 5th"The Cane" #16,
Newsradio, 12/12/95, NBC
"The Puerto Ricans are Coming" #22,
Sanford and Son, 11/10/72, NBC
"Episode #23"
Chappelle's Show, 1/23/02, Comedy Central
Amy Sedaris Tribute:
"Let Freedom Ring" #7,
Strangers with Candy, 6/21/99, Comedy Central
Clip from "Show #2170"
The Late Show with David Letterman, 5/14/04, CBS
Open Remote
HBO Tribute:
"The New Writer" #70,
The Larry Sanders Show, 12/18/96
"Here Was a Man" #4,
Deadwood, 4/11/04
"Hot Child in the City" #45,
Sex and the City, 9/24/00
"In Camelot" #59,
The Sopranos, 4/18/04
"Larry David"
60 Minutes, profile with Bob Simon, Winter 2004, CBS
"Trick or Treat" #13,
Curb Your Enthusiasm, 10/7/01
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Sunday afternoon, Nov. 6th"What to Think" #2,
Mr. Show with Bob and David, 11/10/95, HBO
"Clean Up Radio Everywhere" #68,
WKRP in Cincinnati, 4/12/81, CBS
"Louie's Mother" #60,
Taxi, 3/26/81, ABC
"My Name is Asher Kingsley" #67,
The Larry Sanders Show, 11/20/96, HBO
"Like Father, Like Son" #12,
The Jeffersons, 4/5/75, CBS
"Season 2, Episode 4" #10,
The Office, 10/21/02, BBC
"Righteous Brothers" #40,
Arrested Development, 4/16/05, FOX
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Let us know if you plan to attend. Hope to see you there!
On notice
"Two Weeks Notice" is a great concept. I recommend giving it. People know you're leaving, but you haven't left yet. They say nice things, and you shake a lot of hands. If you share the details of your departure with them, a surprising number will return in kind by dishing out classified information and juicy gossip. I feel as though I'm a vessel departing out to sea, and people are coming to me to safely stow away their burdens and deepest-held opinions about life in the office.
Many, though, don't know yet, I think. No e-mail has been sent, and it seems immodest to spread the word myself. Typically, it's one of two types of e-mails when someone goes. If someone gets canned, and that always happens on a Friday afternoon (that's in all the corporate manuals,) they send out a curt "So-and-so doesn't work here anymore. We wish him or her the best." The people who leave at noon on Friday don't find out until Monday. If someone leaves for a different job, they send out the old "So-and-so is moving on to such-and-such. It's a tremendous opportunity. We will miss him or her very much, but know they will be very successful... Now get back to work." (I made up that last part, but it's implied.)
If you quit because you wanted more money, you're on your own. An e-mail might produce copycat behavior.
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The Cards are done, and I'm frustrated. They were out-pitched, out-hit, and out-executed. The umpiring was garbage, and needs to be addressed by the league on principle, but those mistakes were magnified by the Cardinals' overall lack of scoring chances. I knew it was over in the third inning last night. All they had going for them in the series was momentum, and they lost that when they fell behind.
Let the demolition begin. I'm ready. Bigger and better...
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I'm rooting for Houston, even though I may not watch much of the Series. The four reasons: 1) It would call more attention to the lack of an advantage given to Division Winners over Wild Card entrants, hopefully sparking some major rule changes, 2) Bagwell and Biggio have been worthy opponents for nearly two decades, and deserve their chance to represent the NL in the Series, even though they're both shadows of their former selves, 3) Darryl Kile would be rooting for them, and 4) I'm starting to think they need to win it all before Roger Clemens will retire.
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The award for best timing by a major sports publication goes to
The Sporting News, for naming Andruw Jones their Player of the Year the day after Pujols' Game 5 bomb.
The Great Pujols beat by a .263 hitter. Mind blowing.
New life
Last night, Albert Pujols slugged a two-out, three-run, ninth-inning, season-rescuing, stadium demolition-delaying, 450-plus foot home run over Minute Maid Park's left-field wall. The ball also cleared the so-called "Crawford Boxes," the facade that rises above those seats, the train tracks that run across the top of the facade, and finally off one of the glass windows designed to keep the NASA launch facility in Houston safe from such errant Pujols blasts. In addition to helping the Cardinals avoid their first-- and last-- four game losing streak of the season, it made Pujols' team the first in 13 years to win a post-season elimination game after being down to their final strike. It has linked Pujols' name with the likes of Thomson, Mazeroski, Gibson, Carter, and Henderson, where it had already been linked with Musial, Gehrig, and DiMaggio. Ten hours before the home run was launched, I quit my job.
I walked in the door of WHO Radio and then-Palmer Communications in 1996. My tenure, upon the exit in two weeks, will have lasted nearly precisely the duration of Matt Morris' St. Louis Cardinals career, provided the 31-year-old right-handed pitcher departs the Cardinals as a free agent this winter, as expected. The details of my departure are exhaustive, but sufficed to say, the dispute that arose between labor and management is one as old as the hills-- the balancing of duties, performance, recognition, and respect against financial compensation.
My negotiation skills, in truth, probably lacked finesse on this day; my demands lacked flexibility. Four times over two conferences, a superior incorporated the expression, "I feel like I have a gun to my head." This was a metaphor that I resented for its violent tone and for its implication of criminal pursuit, but one that I found strangely self-affirming as well. The "St. Louis Swifties," the Cards' championship clubs of the 1940s, would have referred to this type of dialogue, or the like, as "Country Hardball." It was a bitterly-fought battle of offers and counter-offers-- or lack thereof; a volley of both negotiating ploys and semantics. One man's "hands being tied," after all, is just another man's "failure to show respect." One man's 30 percent "raise" is another man's "already-six-year-withheld cost-of-living wage increase." One man's "2005 overriding company expense," i.e., a brand new building to house five radio stations, is another man's "The House My Bonus Built."
The success of my negotiating strategy remains in doubt, as I enter autumn with few financial alternatives in which to counter lost paychecks, short of offering up my body for sport along Des Moines' 6th Avenue. My chin remains high, however, for when the story of October 17th, 2005 is finally told, and your faithful blogger is judged either a pauper or a king, no one will be able to claim he hung a slider on that fateful afternoon. "Lights Out" Moeller was pumping fastballs.
The Phil Cuzzi Show, starring Phil Cuzzi. Also starring, some baseball players
The eighth inning of tonight's game was a complete travesty. I don't know what to even say about it. Wait, it's coming... You have an umpire throwing an All-Star slugger out of the game in the eighth inning with two outs for arguing ball four on a 3-1 pitch, the tying run already at first, and the best hitter in the world due to bat next.
The call, by the way, was utter garbage, as anyone could attest. Baseball wants its players to be emotional and play to win, and you have an umpire stepping in and essentially giving the Astros the win in the eighth inning. And for what? Questioning a call? Sickening. The umpires have completely marred the 2005 season. Baseball is (again) going to deliver the match-up FOX wants-- market #4 vs. market #3, the Black Sox Curse vs. Clemens and Pettitte. I feel like a sucker.
10:50pm update: How does Cuzzi respond after the game? He doesn't. He fails to appear in the interview room, and baseball declines to send a pool reporter into the umpire's room. MLB president and CEO Bob DuPuy: "It doesn't matter if it's a playoff game or a regular-season game. (You can't argue balls and strikes.) Tony (the Cards manager) was warned twice, and when he didn't do it, he was thrown out. It's a shame, but those are the circumstances."
DuPuy acknowledged that the ball to Edmonds may have been out of the strike zone, but why was there not more latitude shown at that point in the game and the season? No explanation offered, only "The four pitches that got LaRussa tossed were all balls." We'll wait for Cuzzi to appear. At least Doug Eddings had the balls to face the media after he blew the American League Series.
In Suppan, we have to trust
You've probably guessed already that I won't post as consistently after demoralizing post-season losses as I will after post-season victories. (I apologize, in particular, for my NLCS Game 2 negligence, but that defeat at home hurt badly.)
After a playoff loss, I take those first moments of artistic inspiration and attempt to smother them, hiding under the bed, which in my studio apartment, entails pulling out the hide-a-bed and propping the cushions around the sofa to block out natural light.
The Cards face a must-win in Game 4 of the NLCS today. They're as banged-up as they've been in two months, mostlyly because of bad luck, but partly because of ill planning as well, a point I'll return to briefly.
The Astros' throw their weakest link against the Cards today in Brandon Backe, but Backe is a tough pitcher at Minute Maid Park in Houston, close to his hometown of Galveston, TX. The Cardinals counter with one of their strongest starters, post-season or otherwise, in Jeff Suppan, but one who hasn't pitched at all since tossing eight shutout innings in Milwaukee on September 25th.
Losing in the playoffs or the World Series four of the last five seasons, Cards fans have learned a little something about what factors can trip you up in a short series, and inactivity is one of them. In 2000, the Cards swept through the Division Series in three games, like they did this year. One of the disadvantages of doing that, though, is that you don't get to use all four of your post-season starters before the LCS. In 2000, the Cards were already doing without Matt Morris, but they lost Rick Ankiel to baseball's equivalent of the yips in Game 1 of the NLDS, and Garrett Stephenson blew out his elbow in Game 3. The Cards had a 20 game winner that year in Darryl Kile (RIP,) but a numbers game forced LaRussa to bring him back in Game 4 on short rest against the Mets, a series they ultimately lost in five games.
Having Suppan gives Tony the luxury of holding out his ace, Chris Carpenter, until Game 5, which is nice, but now Soup has to come up huge. He did it twice last year-- first in the clinching game against the Dodgers in the Division Series, and then in a career-defining victory against Roger Clemens in Game 7 against Houston. He doesn't have to beat Clemens today, but he does have to pitch after an longer period of inaction, and he has to pitch on the road. Cards fans can take solace in the memory that Suppan was their road warrior in 2004, going 10-1 in 14 starts on the road, plus the playoff clincher at LA. This year, he was a solid 9-5 on the road, with a 3.78 ERA.
Where the Cards' front office is accountable for their rash of injuries is in the outfield. Retiring Larry Walker has been the very definition of a lame duck, and now Reggie Sanders is a victim of "Montgomery Burns disease," (that is, he suffers from every ailment known to science, but those which, collectively, might actually make him available to play.)
GM Walt Jocketty will ultimately be held accountable if these players can't go, because the Cards went into the post-season with the second-oldest outfield in baseball (behind only San Francisco.) Jim Edmonds has not been himself all year, physically, and Walker continues to grind despite four cortisone shots since the All-Star break. Fourth outfielder So Taguchi was LaRussa's best clutch hitter during the regular season, but Jocketty failed to deal for a Matt Lawton or Adam Dunn at the trade deadline. I agreed at the time that the Cardinals were competent enough off their bench to weather any storms, but Jocketty finds himself squarely on the hot seat with many fans.
The Cards had time enough to fill the hole left by Scott Rolen's season-ending injury, but they have been broadsided by the October injuries to Sanders, Rolen's fill-in Abraham Nunez, and set-up man Al Reyes. Yesterday's game could not have illustrated this any better. Sanders' replacement (Taguchi) went 0 for 4, and left Albert Pujols stranded in the on-deck circle three times. Nunez's replacement in the sixth inning made a mammoth error on his first chance, and Reyes, LaRussa's best bullpen option when he needed a strikeout, suffered a tear of the elbow on Fan Appreciation Day, and couldn't be used in that same key sixth inning.
If Suppan comes through again today in Houston, I will write to St. Louis' local daily in support of a statue in his honor outside the new ballpark. A Cards' win would allow their ace, Carpenter, to return on full rest for pivotal Game 5. It would knot the series at two games a piece, and it would deliver home field advantage back to the Birds. It will also assure that at least one more game will have to be played at retiring Busch Stadium.
Hey, Jesus was a Carpenter, too
They should say some nice things about the Cardinals in Thursday's paper. They could still stand to tighten up the bullpen, but other than that, they were almost flawless tonight.
Something tells me Chris Carpenter might have made a slight difference in last year's World Series, had he been healthy. To wit on Carpenter, and in the well-chosen words of the Coward Jack McCall on
Deadwood, "You think they know my name in New York City by now?"
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You gotta love Reggie Sanders.
You gotta!
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A special shout-out tonight to Willy Taveras, Lance Berkman, and Morgan Ensberg for each swinging at Carpenter's first pitch in the Astros 8th, down 5 to 2. It's nice when your starter can get through that frame-- against the heart of the batting order, no less-- throwing just 4 pitches.
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I thought Astros' skipper Phil Garner invited some criticism by sending up Jose Vizcaino in the ninth spot as the tying run in the ninth. I know Vizcaino is a switch-hitter who can bat lefty against Jason Isringhausen, but future Hall-of-Famer Jeff Bagwell never saw the batters box in this game. Maybe Bags is more banged-up than the Astros have let on.
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Nutty finish in Chicago Wednesday night, but if you watched the last pitch of the Cards' game, like I did, then you didn't see the whole play develop. Was there no appeal to the third base umpire regarding the pitch to Pierzynski? I can forgive any umpire (except Denkinger.) But they have to be in the position to make the call. The home-plate umpire can't be expected to rule correctly on that, can he? I hope catcher Josh Paul (a former Sox player) is not a goat on that play, but Mike Scioscia needs to explain , at least to me, why he has two catching Molinas on his team, and neither were in the game.
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Three LCS ballgames so far, and they've all been over before 10 o'clock. No Yankees. No Red Sox. The next two and a half weeks are going to be great.
The Kirsten Science Monitor
I caught a sneak preview Tuesday of Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown," a romantic comedy starring Kirsten Dunst, Orlando Bloom, and Bloom's American dialect coach. I went in thinking that two of Crowe's previous pop films, "Say Anything" and "Jerry Maguire," had worn out their welcome, but I enjoyed his autobiographical "Almost Famous," and one of his books, "Conversations with (Billy) Wilder," a definitive profile of my favorite director, sits on my shelf.
Cameron's turned up the emotional quotient on this latest release, which longtime observers might find hard to even imagine. The film cries, "Love me, love me, love me," and chances are your girlfriend will. Though it would have been more enjoyable for
me if Crowe had dialed back the melodrama and the soundtrack by roughly half, and dialed
up sharply the narrative focus.
Dunst is the most enjoyable part of "Elizabeth," as she is in almost every one of her projects. She's carefree, illuminant, and breathtakingly beautiful. And she's always surprising, which I consider to be the highest praise of all. (By comparison, her co-star is vapid and lacking the chops for comedy.) Critic Tom Carson wrote of Dunst in November 2001 that, "Even in her frothiest movies, she doesn't play airheads, she plays young women who don't know they have brains... She grasps each role so completely on its own terms that her behavior is utterly idiomatic; only later does it sink in how intuitively to the point her performance has been."
Watching her grow into herself during the time since that review appeared in Esquire has been one of the cinematic pleasures of the new millennium. It's hard to be optimistic that she'll find meaningful adult roles to play as she approaches her 24th birthday and the dismal fate of grown-up women in Hollywood, but Crowe's got his over-exposed heart in the right place as far as his leading lady is concerned. He adequately cuts her loose to explore a vivacious and rather eccentric young woman. She's safer in his hands than in Spiderman's.
Moeller TV Listings 10/10/05
Don't miss
Alicia Keys tonight on Letterman. Call in sick tomorrow if you have to.
Judging and budging
Things sure can change in just one or two generations. In 1960, Candidate Kennedy, a practicing Catholic, had to promise the American people that his religious beliefs would not impede his ability to uphold Constitutional principles. Fast forward nearly half a century and it's now seemingly impossible to gain confirmation to the nation's highest court without proving an abiding and overriding loyalty to Christian scripture.
All this has Christopher Hitchens
pissed off.
I see the Harriet Miers nomination as another "integrity moment" for Senate Democrats. This woman is clearly underqualified for the Court. The threat to the government's balance of power (due to her close relationship to the President) should be reason enough to cast a 'nay' vote. If the Dems support her nomination simply because they view her as the best candidate they're likely to get from Bush, they will once again prove they're willing to put politics ahead of the good of the nation-- and it's some bad politics to boot. Bush can't afford to pick a fight with an extremist candidate right now, having drowned all of his "political capital" from the 2004 election in the Gulf Coast.
I must be naive because I've never understood why you treat the nominee of the other party's president any differently than you would treat your own. If you're a liberal and you're not convinced that the candidate in question is committed to civil rights and liberties, and the concept of a living, breathing Constitution, than vote no. What part of "vote your conscience" don't you understand? Besides, there's an entire constituency out there desperate to know what you stand for.
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There was some bad news out of the New York tabloids last week. The film studio, Warner Independent, cancelled the planned release later this month of "Strangers With Candy," based on the cult TV comedy of the same name. "It's off our release slate," said a studio rep, though an insider says the film, which was a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival, is still likely to be released, most likely now by a different studio. The film's cast is led by the TV show's regulars, Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert, and also features Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Allison Janney, and Kristen Johnson. Producers still hope to get the film released in time for the Moeller TV Festival, November 5th and 6th, an event in which one of the "Strangers" TV episodes is considered likely to appear.
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Here's my two minute argument in favor of last year's National League Championship Series between the Cardinals and Astros as the greatest league playoff in baseball history:
Though the world was fixated on the Yankees and Red Sox AL Series, the NL series stretched a dramatic seven games. Games 1 and 2 were won by the Cards' daunted offense, Game 3 by the Astros' legendary pitcher Roger Clemens. The Cards blew three different leads in Game 4, causing Cards' relief pitcher Julian Tavarez to break his glove hand punching the dugout wall. The Cards' Woody Williams threw seven innings of one hit ball in Game 5, but the Astros won it on a walk-off, ninth inning home run by Jeff Kent. Game 6 was an epic in St. Louis with Tavarez returning to the mound to get some big late-inning outs. The Astros tied it in the ninth, but Jim Edmonds hit a two run bomb in the 12th for the series' second walk-off winner.
Get this now: The series went to Game 7 with
each team having scored 29 runs,
each team having an ERA of 4.80, and
each team having a batting average of .246.
Each team's top slugger (Albert Pujols and Carlos Beltran) had hit
four home runs. Unbelievable. The Cards won Game 7 in David and Goliath fashion-- Jeff Suppan vs. future Hall-of-Famer Clemens. Future Hall-of-Famer Pujols hit a game-tying double in the 6th inning, and future Hall-of-Famer Scott Rolen followed with a two run laser-beam home run that proved to be the difference for St. Louis.
Good times.---
ESPN.com's Buster Olney
thinks the ALCS should be delayed a day because of Saturday night's rainout in New York, which has caused a quick turnaround flight to Chicago for tonight's winner between the Angels and Yankees.
First, let me say this about Buster Olney... when ESPN.com brought him on last year, he filled a glaring hole at the media outlet. Many times I had asked myself, do you know what this website is truly lacking? The answer each time: a baseball contributor who has covered the New York Yankees locally for six years.
I
never want to hear the Yankees bitch about playoff scheduling. Every other team gets whiplash from being flung around the TV schedule to accomodate the Yankees. I shouldn't have to remind Olney that delaying the ALCS by one day would put it on the same calendar schedule as the NL Series, causing baseball to lose as many as two nights of television revenue.
Some playoff teams-- though, not the Yankees-- count on that national TV revenue to make up for the money they don't make in
local TV revenue. Hmm, maybe the National League could delay their entire series by a day also, just to help out. Just like the Red Sox delayed the World Series by a day last year to allow the Cardinals more than one day to recover from that epic NLCS. Just so you know: I blame that World Series on the Yankees, too. Their historic collapse created the Red Sox monster.
A bold-faced lie
Well, it's noon in Midwestern America as I write this. Only ten more hours until I can watch baseball's only 100 win team (two years in a row) play a potentially series-clinching playoff game. Better get my nap in. I touched briefly on this topic Thursday, but this late start time is preposterous, and I want to thank Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-MO) for calling commissioner Bud Selig to complain on Friday. (This almost makes up for Bond's pro-torture vote earlier in the week.)
Selig claims he has no veto power over network decisions, but get this: (and I vaguely remember it) Selig received a call from Bond in 2002 over a similar scheduling fiasco against the Diamondbacks. How did Selig respond then? The direct quote, reprinted in today's St. Louis Sports-Dispatch: "I told my people, no more 10pm starts. That's the end of it." Read his lips, I guess.
Selig says "the networks have a lot of football commitments," and by "the networks," he means ESPN. FOX scheduled a baseball doubleheader today beginning at three, but ESPN has Purdue and Iowa at that time. (A real "Clash of the Titans." My brother is a sports fan who went to school at Iowa, and he probably couldn't tell you who the Hawkeyes play today.) The problem, as I see it, though, still lies equally with FOX and MLB. FOX gets first crack at the Yankees. A Game 4 between Chicago and Boston would have been played at noon, but in its absence, the Cardinals and Padres can't move into its slot because the series matchup has shifted to the west coast.
The Cards and Padres should have had the Yankees timeslot at three, and a game in a more flexible time zone should have been given the other slots. That's what the league did to the Cardinals last year. Do the Red Sox and Yankees get the highest ratings? I guess, but maybe that's because their teams and players have been the only thing promoted by baseball since 1998. That never seemed like a good long-term strategy for the game. You might be surprised to find out that the most watched World Series of all time-- not the highest share of TV sets, but watched by the most households in North America- is the 1985 World Series, played between Kansas City and St. Louis on ABC. FOX execs would poo their pants if they were handed that matchup next year.
12:20pm News Alert: The Yankees/Angels game has already been rained out for today. Now we're down to two playoff games, neither of which starts until 6 o'clock, and a Saturday afternoon in October will pass without any baseball on TV, whatsoever. This commissioner is a genius! Listen up, Bud Lite, this is the self-loathing I've been talking about. You should be "all up" in the face of the ESPN president, "Kit Bond-style." You say, Jump. He says, How high? Threaten to walk. You think ESPN wants to go back to second-tier college sporting events, 17 Sunday Night NFL games, and 300 nights a year of televised poker.
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I realize my baseball topics spend a lot of time bashing the league itself, but so be it. This is a major difference between the sports, it seems to me. Football broadcasters are vomit-inducing in their failure to criticize the game's shortcomings. This is why football players continue to grow and grow in physical size in virtual obscurity, despite so-called "stringent" steroid testing. Let's at least admit that the media holds baseball to higher standards, nearly across the board. (Here's an example: Rafael Palmeiro never killed his wife. For all the reasons cited for OJ Simpson's crimes, we never hear about the inherently violent nature of the sport in which he made his living.)
I heard it said once of liberals and conservatives in the political spectrum-- by fellow liberals-- that they love America the way a parent loves a child, while conservatives love America the way a child loves a parent. I don't subscribe to this theory, although the latter does seem to apply to both Bush Republicans and Clinton Democrats. The axiom does however apply, almost entirely, to baseball and football announcers. Football desperately needs more Bob Costases, which is probably why Bob's HBO productions are the best NFL programs available on television.
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I wept no tears last night for the Boston Red Sox, swept out by Ozzie Guillen's White Sox. Just what I thought would happen to Boston has begun to happen-- they have begun a long nose-dive into obscurity, having broken the Curse of the Bambino. With an 86-year championship drought, the Red Sox were tortured and relatively fascinating. Stephen Jay Gould called them "an opera." Now they're just a shitty franchise with one World Championship in 88 years. Take comfort, Cubs fans. You can still root for the same beloved and assured losers you grew up with, and with less competition for the ultimate crown of ineptitude.
Better luck next year,
Edgar.
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Boston's loss in three games was delicious in more ways than one. In its last year, Busch Stadium in St. Louis has the opportunity to retire having hosted more post-season games than any other ballpark in baseball history other than Yankee Stadium. The stadium in the Bronx is the run-away leader with 155 (after last night,) and Boston added only one this year to reach 54. Busch's total stands at 50 after Tuesday and Wednesday. The best case scenario is to reach the World Series, though. It's not worth coming back home to face the Padres in a Division Series Game 5 just to pad this record. (FYI- Busch started this year in a tie for third (48) with Oakland's now-called McAfee Coliseum.)
Don't forget to take that nap today.
Yanks split, Sox drop 2, other teams play
If the Cardinals meet some of my basic post-season expectations, this blog will be preoccupied with baseball during the month of October. (It's already due, in part, to the pull of our grand and glorious game that I have failed to blog this week.) Here are three random thoughts to get the ball rolling on the 2005 post-season.
--- Cardinals fans have grown accustomed to second class treatment by the TV networks. The noon starting time for Game 1 of the Division Series has become an almost annual St. Louis tradition. Townsfolk party at Kiener Plaza downtown, the teams take the field in bright sunshine, and I wear my Ozzie jersey to work. This year, the Cards' games appear to be last in network priority. TV execs have naturally climbed up the butts of the Yankees and Red Sox, but even today, as those teams travel, the Cards and Padres played a matinee to accomodate a prime-time start by former Yankees and Red Sox ace Roger Clemens. On Saturday, the Cards will attempt to clinch the first series in a contest that will begin at 10 o'clock PM in St. Louis. Meanwhile, baseball's post-season ratings have dropped to such a pathetic level that FOX didn't broadcast either prime-time game last night.
--- The most infuriating part of the TV-- and internet-- coverage of baseball's post-season is the league's insistance on pushing post-season stats. After the player's first at-bat of the playoffs, we never again see their season statistics. I know what the Cardinals did, I watched all the games, but if Xadier Nady or Ben Johnson come up with runners on base for the Padres, I don't give a shit that they're 2 for 6, or 0 for 2 in the Series, I want to know what they did during their previous 200 or 300 at-bats. Baseball should put baseball people in charge of these decisions, and it's clear they don't. FOX, in particular, hates baseball. They behave as though they constantly have to wake the fans up and dumb the game down, which admittedly sounds like FOX programming policy, except when you consider that it never treats the National Football League with such blatant disrespect.
--- Major League Baseball's apple-polishing broadcasters won't report what the bastardized six-division Wild Card playoff system cost fans this year, but I will.
If the 14-team American League were still divided into two divisions, like it was throughout the 1970s and 80s, we would have been treated to a one-game playoff between the Red Sox and Yankees, instead of the mucked-up "tie-breaker in the fine print" result we got. The Indians would have still been in contention with two or three teams into the last week, regardless of whether they were in an Eastern Division with Boston and New York, or in the West with the White Sox and Angels. And the stakes would have been much higher for all concerned because the reward would be a place in the League Championship Series, rather than just a Division Series. (I also blame the watered-down six-division format for allowing the lowly Padres into the playoffs with an 82-80 record. No wonder the Cardinals get relegated to ten o'clock.)
The National League East would have still been a great race between four or five teams. In fact, the NL's Houston Astros are the only team in either league that had their post-season chances significantly extended by the Wild Card format. And you'd have a hard time convincing me they deserved the second life.
On the day the Cardinals clinched the NL Central, the second-place Astros were 12 1/2 games out of first, and had lost 11 of 14 games to St. Louis head-to-head. The divisional deficit was roughly the same as last season, a season in which Houston managed to finagle a playoff rematch against the Cards as the league Wild Card. I ask you-- is this fair to the Cardinals? Haven't they earned more of an advantage in this matchup than simply an extra home game? Is this all consistent with the first 125 years of professional baseball tradition? Does the Masters golf tournament culminate with the two low scorers going head-to-head and evenly onto the 18th, regardless of score, with the leader allowed to hit from the ladies' tee? (There's no ladies' tee at Augusta, but you get my point.)
I have two solutions to the dumbing-down of baseball's post-season. The first is
especially unlikely. Contract the league by two teams. (I suggest Washington and Tampa Bay.) Return to four divisions, each with 7 teams and old-fashioned pennant races on the square. Under terms of the current collective bargaining agreement, owners have to wait until the end of either the 2007 or 2008 season to implement a contraction (I don't remember which,) but at such a point, they can disband up to four teams without union approval. Returning to only two post-season rounds would restore meaning to baseball's unique 162-game regular season, and would surely boost long-lagging World Series TV ratings as well, by cutting the fat from baseball's bloated TV schedule in October.
The second, and admittedly, more realistic solution would be to toughen the road of Wild Card teams (who collectively have won each of the last three World Series.) I suggest adding another Wild Card team to each playoff, and pitting the two teams against each other in a one-game matchup to be played the Monday after the regular season ends. Both teams would be forced to expend a starting pitcher in a do-or-die situation before advancing to meet a division winner.
But that's not enough. I would also strip the Wild Card teams of all home games that follow in the league playoffs. They could still receive the same percentage of the league's post-season profits, their fans would be grateful that their second-place heroes got to play in any post-season games at all, and their home-field rights would be restored if they reached the World Series, in deference to tradition and fairness between the two leagues.
Either of these well-reasoned plans would be welcome improvements, either by returning the polish to the six month regular season marathon, the Fall Classic, or both. Baseball was a much better game before it was gutted with self-loathing.
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And Go Cards! Let's win it for the old ballyard!
