Playoffs
Playoff baseball is fun. Really fun. Especially when your team is involved.
We grew up a Dodgers fan. Steve Garvey was our first favorite player. Dude crushed with a short swing and forearms that looked like cord wood. (Later in life we learned that Garvey had more 'friends' in more cities than a Facebook junkie, and planted more 'seeds' than any three farmers you know. Garvey didn't earn the nickname 'Father of our Country' for his patriotism friends.)
The Dodgers lead the Cubs 2-1 in the NLCS after Rich Hill pitched six stellar innings in a 6-0 win Tuesday night.
The storyline for the rest of the country is pretty simple. The Cubs have not won a World Series since the 1908, when they went back-to-back after winning in '07 too. (Chaz you remember that team, what was their strength? Kidding. Mostly.)
The Cubs' place as the perennial underdog and the lovable loser makes them attractive as a rooting option for a lot of casual sports fans. The numbers play that out too.
In the primetime TV ratings for the week that ended Oct. 16, in the coveted 18-49 demographic, three of the top four spots on the ratings chart were Cubs games - the first two games of the LCS with the Dodgers and Game 4 against the Giants in the division series.
The Cubs are the fan favorite for obvious reason, and they have a legit national following. Their lineup has been the best in baseball, but it has not scored since Game 1 of this series and has endured back-to-back shutouts for the first time since May. Of 2014.
In fact, as this ESPN story noted, the desperation level of the Cubs has reached a point where Jason Heyward and his .105 postseason average was considered a better option than Addison Russell and his .042 playoff mark. Yes, the Dodgers pitching has been good - Kershaw was aces Sunday and Hill's nasty breaking stuff was in command Tuesday - but it's hard not to feel like there's more involved here.
Words like curse and Bartman and the ever-known phrase among Cubs fans of "There's always next" are two more losses away from being repeated.
The series if far from over of course. The Cubs were the best team in baseball for a lot of reasons, and there's no reason to think they can't win three of the next four. But we know two things: The pressure is fully on Chicago now, and that hardly helps a team struggling with the bats in their hands. And secondly, it has been and will continue to be, fun to watch.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump listens to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis on Oct. 9, 2016. The third and final debate is tonight. (AP Photo/John Locher)Debate preview
The third and final debate is tonight.
Do any of us know what to expect? Of course not because there is no way to expect the unexpected. There is no plausible way to predict anything in the most unpredictable and unplausible political race in the history of the world. So we wade into this final round of the war of words that has been long on the warring and short on inspiring words between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton hoping for the best and fearing for well the reality.
We hoped for the best in this entire process, especially from a Republican side that had a bevy of choices that ranged from maverick (Trump of course) to old-school political fossil (Hey, did Jeb Bush blink) with a number of at times interesting and odd choices in between. The process was dominated by the spin-cycle Cinderella that was Trump, who led every newscast and was embraced by millions for bringing fun and energy and newness to the process.
He was completely different, which was especially appealing when the thought was we were starring at a very real possibility of a Bush running against a Clinton, which would be again to watching a Stallone and Hanks film festival and then realizing it was Frank Stallone and Chris Hanks.
So Trump capture the moment and rode the electricity into an improbable nomination. (In his memoir when this is over, it will be interesting to see if he pulls back the curtain of bravado and admits that in the beginning even he was surprised by the momentum and tsunami-like waves of popularity that carried him to the front of the GOP ticket.)
Either way, not unlike Frankenstein, the monster was created and loved by the populace and now he's being destroyed. And the destruction will continue to be on display. Sure, Trump will land body blows and be at times entertaining and could even quote-unquote 'beat' Hillary Clinton in Wednesday's debate.
But that's like Trevor Burbick winning the prefight news conference with Mike Tyson. Trump is going to get KOed in the election, and almost every electoral college poll screams that fact. In a lot of ways, it's been a scry ride that was one part reality TV, two scoops of marketing - the "Make America Great Again" slogan was downright genius people - and two heaping cups of political angst.
And Trump was in position to make the most of it. Was he ever going to win? That's hard to know because the last six weeks were always going to be the toughest for any newcomer to navigate, especially a newcomer with a graveyard of skeletons in his closest. But Trump's fatal mistake in this mystical and misery-filled march on Washington was not his past transgressions.
Nope, when Trump deviated from his original message - the message that created splash and impact like that fat kid doing the cannonball off the high dive - and transformed into something that we are all-too-familiar with and betrayed the one quality that jumpstarted his early popularity.
He became a politician just like the rest of them. He became a Clinton or an immoral Bush cousin or any number of the Kennedy clan - we've been in a number of 'locker rooms' and heard a lot of talk that assuredly was not like Trump's but the Kennedy locker room was filled with some serious skeletons. His message became about mud-slinging and back-stabbing. He went toe-to-toe with Clinton, a life-long political knife fighter, and went into dirty politics.
Forget about his lack of experience - a fact that has been exposed time and again in these debates - as he has tried to out politick a career politician (and that is not a compliment) like Clinton. It only became a weakness for Trump when he tried to dance to her music.
Being a non-politician was easily the single most attractive quality Trump possessed. Imagine if he had met every scandal with contrition rather bombast and redirected the natal narrative back to the nation's problems rather than his personal failings. Imagine if his stance had been consistently turning to the refrain that running this country in the same old way is going to get us the same old problems instead of falling in love with his sound bites and blaming everything on the media.
Imagine if his message on policy questions had stayed true to his CEO tendencies and experience. Or simply imagine if his focus had stayed on the broken place we are as a county is because of the familiar names and faces of the last quarter century of failed political leadership - and man, is Hillary Clinton not right in the center of that team picture all things considered - on each side.
Trump got into politics, at least in part I believe, because he was looking to change the game. In the end, the game changed him.
And he has no shot at beating Hillary at her own game. Regardless of how the final debate plays out.
Tennessee senior linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin, a captain and the team's leading the tackler the past two seasons, isn't likely to play again this season after undergoing shoulder surgery on Saturday.Tennessee's epic injury battle
Man the Vols are falling like dominos.
There's an unbelievable list of 20 players who have started at least one game this season who are either hurt or are no longer with the team. The recent names include Alvin Kamara, who may miss the rest of the season with a knee injury suffered against Alabama, and a few other dudes. It's staggering really.
It's so bad, that one fan - Matthew Art - had a little fun with the logo on Twitter.
Now UT heads into the bye week needing the rest and some good fortune as it comes to guys getting better as soon as possible. We believe the Vols will be favored in each of their final five regular-season games and 10-2 seems doable.
How much does the injury epidemic change the perception of success or failure of getting to Atlanta or finishing at 10-2 or worse?
It has to play some role in the matter of perspective, but the weight of that coming down the stretch is worthy of discussion.
One thing every Tennessee fan should be hoping for is that Jalen Hurd decides to return to being a difference maker on the field.
This and that
- It was 97 years ago today that the Chicago Black Sox won the bet and lost the 1919 World Series. That has to be far left on the Rushmore of sports scandals right? What else is there?
- One of the great parts of "Eight Men Out" - the movie made about the Series-fixing in 1919 that threatened baseball's very existence - was the details about Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was a very simple kid who was caught in the mess. There's no doubt that commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis had to rule with a heavy hand on this, but Jackson's numbers - he hit a series-best .375 with the only homer of the series for either team and six RBIs, which led the White Sox - and the fact that he didn't make an error bring great question to how much Shoeless Joe 'threw' the series, which the Reds won 5-3. (Back then it was best of nine.)
- Final tidbit on the 1919 series. According to Baseball Reference, the stats are amazing. In the 1919 regular season, Jackson and Happy Felsh (who was played by Charlie Sheen in the movie) shared the team lead in homers. They each hit all of seven. Three White Sox pitchers shared the team-lead in saves. Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams and Erskine Mayer each had one save. Cicotte and Williams pitched in 81 of the teams 140 games and started 75 of them.
- This is a cool story about a Lookout Mountain fourth-grader hauling in a whopper fish with his family. Teddy Wingfield's 32-pound catch was a certified world record. Side note: The TFP in particular and the community as a whole owes a lifetime gratitude award to Ron Bush, the deputy sports editor and eternal story-teller of smaller tales big and small like this one. He is an institution in this town.
- Another TFP treasure, sports columnist Mark Wiedmer, asks a very pertinent question here about the Mocs facing a future without star running back Derrick Craine. The Mocs have enough depth and talent that they should be able to handle VMI this weekend even if Craine is sidelined. But longterm, the bruising back will be needed for the Mocs to make a playoff push.
- We'll see how far Coach Hoodie can push his agenda now. Earlier this week Patriots coach Bill Belichick discussed how much he hates using tablets for sideline intel and prefers the traditional use of photos and such. It should surprise absolutely no one that Belichick is old-school in any way, shape or form. But Belichick was quite cutting in his criticism of the tablets and the reliability of the technology. He likely did not know that Microsoft pays the NFL about $80 million a year to be the supplier of that 'less-than-reliable' stuff.
- The SEC hoops media event is today. We're going to go out on a limb and predict that Kentucky will be projected to win the league. This year, and every year moving forward. Forever.
Today's questions
We are committed to One-Word Wednesday. In fact, we have our own imaging right here with Curly from "City Slickers" (he's standing right behind me isn't he).
The scourge of injuries on this Tennessee football team is __________.
Tonight's debate will be ____________.
The Cubs, down 2-1 in the NLCS with Kershaw looming likely for Game 5, are _______.
And as is the One-Word Wednesday Way, answer some and pose at least One of your own.