Time for some hard ball?

We got back from Vegas a few hours ago and have been in de-compress mode ever since. Between a bowl of soup, the Monday Night game and Game 5 of the World Series, we’ll share some random thoughts on our weekend in Sin City, baseball, football and the elections that were, unfortunately, encroaching into our Vegas bubble more than we desired, in a series of updated posts.

And speaking of Game 5… the Phillies have themselves set up perfectly to wrap things up at home this evening as their ace Cole Hamels (4-0 in the playoffs this year) takes the hill against the Tampa Rays, Scott Kazmir. This should give Philly’s finest a riot-control live scrimmage opportunity against Philly's passionate and championship-starved fans in preparation for 8 days from now when this historic election will take place and win or lose, hordes of Sarah Palin supporters will take to the streets in America’s larger cities in either a really good mood or a very nasty mood.

The Giants-Steelers game yesterday was a highly entertaining affair featuring two of the more high profile teams in the league and would’ve been a perfect fit for NBC’s Sunday night prime-time slot except for the fact there was no Sunday night game last night. Why? Fox was broadcasting Game 4 of the World Series and the NFL was protecting one of its broadcast partners (Fox carries the NFC games) by not airing a game opposite that most surely would bury any World Series match up short of Red Sox-Yankees (uhhh, Beers? The Sox cannot play the Yankees in the World Series. Well, there you have it.) in what is already a historically low-rated Series.

We understand why the NFL does want to protect Fox but next time the T.V. contract is up and we’re Roger Goddell, we make it very clear to Ed Goren and the gang at Fox that the free pass on that first Sunday of the Series is over and that the NFL intends on running the Sunday night game as scheduled. Hey, we’re not totally heartless towards the national pastime… if the NFL has decreed Sunday night as “Football Night in America” with the prime match-ups then they need to start acting like it. As such, we could be talked into possibly giving up the now second-tier Monday night game (which, on the whole, has provided better games than the Sunday night affairs) for this late-October baseball sacrifice.

Picture is from I-15 North and the first pulse-quickening look at the California-Nevada border and its casinos.

(UPDATE #1): Suit was everywhere in Vegas and boy, was that ever a bummer. Well, to be precise, he was on T.V. an awful lot which we still resented. Imagine chilling at the the sportsbook, keeping an eye on the games while handicapping the ponies, when the benevolent patriarchal visage of America’s favorite infanticidal socialist pops-up on the big screen. Buzz. Kill. At least Kerry had the common decency (if not the funds) to not interrupt our blissfully ignorant-to-the-rest-of-the-world Breeder’s Cup weekend back in ’04.

Bumper stickers: We have absolutely no data to back this up – it is merely an anecdotal observation but for all the passion that Suit has supposedly generated among the Democratic faithful, we recall actually seeing more Kerry-Edwards stickers out and about in '04 than Suit-Gas Bag bumper stickers.

… and is anyone really surprised by this:

"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."

The speed by which the dirt on Joe the Plumber was unearthed certainly suggested something was amiss.

Or this: Barbara West, a news anchor in south Florida was interviewing Gasbagus Maximus and had the unwitting bad luck to use the word “Marx” as in, “Karl Marx” with regard to a question she asked concerning Obama’s economic policies. Gas-Max didn’t appreciate it and, again, faster than one can say, "G. Gordon Liddy" we find out that Barbara West's husband is a scofflaw of very minor proportions. Again, do not answer that door!

We're with the Rock-Throwers and Car-Torchers on this one.

A couple weeks back we were made aware by the sporting media that the Boston Red Sox were in Japan so we naturally wondered what they were doing there. Opening Day was 2 weeks away and since neither ESPN nor any other news outlet made mention of another MLB team being there, we figured they were on some sort of good will tour and would play an exhibition game or two against one of the Japanese professional baseball teams.

Well, lo and behold, on Monday of last week, we were informed that the Boston Red Sox would be playing 2 games against the Oakland As….. two regular season games. Whiskey-Tango…? That’s right, Bud Selig and the brain trust in the MLB front offices thought it would be a grand idea to kick-off the renewal of America’s pastime a full week prior to the start of the season in the Tokyo Dome. So for nearly a week, baseball fans would look at the standings in static form… Red Sox and Athletics, 1-1… Everyone else 0-0. And to put an exclamation point on this ridiculous stunt, both teams returned to the States to finish up their exhibition schedule.

That MLB thought this would be a good idea is baffling but that’s big-league sports these days where “expansion’, “tapping into new markets” and “globalization” have become key buzz terms.

Problem is, this sort of expansion isn’t going to work because it comes at the expense of the core fans of baseball. To wit, outside of Sully, Mikey, Fitz’ and Stosh, who woke up at 3 A.M. to start drinking and cheer on their beloved Saaahx from the stools of their favorite pub in Boston, no one watched this game and no one cared.

The NFL staged their first regular season game overseas last year when the Giants played the Miami Dolphins in Wembley Stadium. We were in Vegas at the time and we wanted some action on the game. While waiting for our drink at the bar, we struck up a conversation with a flight attendant who said she always felt punch-drunk after the flight from New York to London and would never recover before hopping back on the return flight.

Hmmmm…. The Giants and the Dolphins played exactly like that and in one of the few highlights of that weekend we covered the "under" easily as neither team could get out of its own way.

That’s what the NFL was trying to sell Britons. Why would they think any other two teams (one of which was the eventual Super Bowl winner, mind you) would perform any differently?

For this global expansion to work, what obviously has to happen is that the interest and thus revenue generated overseas (minus the expenses associated with overseas expansion) must be greater than the revenue lost here as….. the leagues are freaking screwing around and playing games in front of people who don’t give a hoot instead of fans who do.

Just a gut feel but we don’t think this is going to work and the dirty little secret is neither do the leagues.

With the billions of dollars they have at their disposal this whole enterprise becomes an ego trip for the respective league commissioners and owners, a lot whose collective ego is perhaps unsurpassed by any other group of people on the planet. They want to be seen as people who created or at least attempted to create something bigger, grander, bolder, if not better.

And actual results can be dammed or just ignored because in either success or failure these people want to be known as “visionaries”… and no higher an accolade can be bestowed upon the vainglorious.

H/T: Jonesy for sending this.

Attempting to Save the NFL from Itself

Sean Taylor, who was 24 yrs. old and who played defensive back for the Washington Redskins is dead from gun shot wounds from an armed intruder who broke into his Palmetto Bay home in South Florida early Monday morning.

All signs point to this being a “hit”. The same home had been broken into just 8 days prior and though nothing was taken, a knife was left behind on Taylor’s bed. Taylor’s fiance’ and young daughter were not harmed and when the fiance’ attempted to call 911 she could not complete the call as the phone lines were cut. We cannot recall anything like this happening before in the NFL.

Taylor had trouble with the law prior to this including facing felony assault charges with a firearm to which he later pled down to avoid jail time. This same Taylor, though, by all accounts since the birth of his 17 month-old daughter was making substantive changes in his life in order to make a clean break from the thug life and fashion a normal existence for himself and his young family. It appears that someone, though, had different plans for Taylor.

Though generally applauded, Roger Goddell the NFL commissioner has taken a some heat for his strict enforcement of the NFL’s personal conduct policy with respect to players and coaches in order to protect the image of the league. He has not hesitated in handing down lengthy suspensions to players, such as, Adam “Pacman” Jones of the Titans, Tank Johnson, now of the Cowboys after being released by the Bears and Chris Henry of the Bengals because he believed they were not living up to this policy.

Prior to today, critics of Goddell have noted that, in the case of “Pacman”, he has not been convicted in any of the cases in which formal charges have been brought. This is in addition to several “he said-she said” incidents including at least two separate occasions where a female has accused Jones of spitting on her.

Goddell has every right to execute this strict policy standard as he owes it to the owners, players and fans to present the NFL in a positive manner and not in which the very people who pay the salaries of every single person associated with the NFL (us) think the League is overrun with thugs.

And after Sean Taylor’s death, Goddell’s personal conduct policy would appear to not only be to protect the image of the League but to keep his players merely alive as well.