The Wax and Wane of Red Sox Pitching, by Sara Hatch

It’s an interesting time for the Red Sox rotation. There is a newness and an oldness to it, exemplified in forms by Daisuke Matsuzaka and Curt Schilling.

Matsuzaka is the hope for the Red Sox. Japanese players are becoming a more common feature in American baseball, akin almost to the American presence in European football. Matsuzaka and his improbable salary had a rough night in his first home game this past week but he’s got a bright future ahead of him. His command of pitches is good and he’s got a range of them. Also, he is used to pitching far longer games in Japan which will mean he’ll be much more durable than many of the other pitchers on the team.

Pitchers are treated with such a revered sense of coddling these days. They can’t have over 100 pitch counts; they can only pitch every five games. But Matsuzaka will be good for the franchise and his newness will have an effect for at least the first half of the season. His loss at home this week wasn’t even all that bad of a game. Sometimes you pitch a good game and the other pitcher is just better. I see good things in his future, especially as he adjusts to the Majors and becomes more comfortable with his surroundings.

On the other end of the spectrum is Curt Schilling who is facing the pull of age. Schilling was such a good pitcher in his time that even now at 40 he can pitch his way out of almost any situation. His fastball has lost its bite but he hasn’t lost his pitcher’s brain. But this year may be his last and it will be a sad thing to see him go. The past few years have been years of brilliance and excess for the Red Sox and Schilling will forever go down in Red Sox history for his World Series performance.

But with time comes change and the masterful command Schilling has on his pitches will become harder to maintain. Going six innings will be a blessing and the great games will come farther and fewer between. Even with all that though, he’s still one of the keys to this year’s rotation.

This year, more than anything, this team will live and die by the strength of its pitchers. When will Matsuzaka settle and when will Schilling break?

Click here for entire post.

The US Should Embrace Soccer, But Not Because of Beckham, by Sara Hatch

David Beckham is coming to the US. He’s been a very gifted soccer player for both the England National team and various European clubs. He’s also losing his gifts and is playing at nowhere near the level required to be a star in Europe. Any soccer fan that pays of a modicum of attention to the sport worldwide has seen the Beckham move coming for months. Still, there’s been plenty of talk about the possibility of him reviving the MLS and therefore soccer’s popularity in this country. This misses the point though, because the best way for Americans to get into soccer isn’t MLS; it’s the World Cup.

The World Cup is the best fit for a society that already has overlapping major league sports. It comes once every four years in splashes of over-exuberance. European papers drone on endlessly about the relative merits of their national teams, with at least one bemoaning the horrible tragedy it is that their team, obviously the best in Europe, didn’t make it to the final tournament.

The World Cup also comes during the peak of summer. Any veteran sports fan knows that pretty much the only thing going on at that time is the doldrums of baseball, the time when it really doesn’t matter yet who’s winning what. There’s no other serious competition in the sports world that can hinder one from tuning into the World Cup. Unless, of course, you watch a lot of golf, but that’s a whole problem in and of itself. And in recent years the games have become easier to watch: in 2006, every game was shown in its entirety and on ESPN or ABC, whereas before American audiences could only watch parts of games, and then only on cable.

But probably the best thing about the World Cup is its character. It’s all about the good kind of patriotism, a word I’ve found it hard to espouse in the past few years. When I sit in front of a TV with thousands of screaming fans in some sold out stadium somewhere in the world and watch the American team (which has competed in the last two Cups and should into the future) run up and down the field I can’t help but be proud of my country.

The World Cup is truly global and the stories it produces can’t be repeated. In the 2006 World Cup, the warring factions in Cote D’Ivoire declared a truce when their team reached the tournament. Talk about bringing people together. For all the good things the World Series and the Super Bowl do, they’ve never reunited a war-torn African nation.

Those who really love soccer (and anyone who’s ever lived for any amount of time in Europe) might call it a travesty that a fan only follows the World Cup. But for a nation with too many sports, I’d call it more than progress if they could get behind that much. One month every four years…and the best competition you’ll ever see.

Click here for entire post.

Powered Out, by Sara Hatch

A professor of mine once said “there’s something inherent in America, in our national psyche that loves rankings.” He was talking about ranking presidents, but the statement works equally well for the NFL and the current obsession with Power Rankings.

Power Rankings are a way for a fan to know that his team is best. With the shortest schedule of the four major sports, it’s almost a given that at least two teams each week will have the same record. How can these teams be qualified? How is one to know for sure that an 8-5 is better than a 7-6 team? They can’t. Thus, Power Rankings. But as this past Sunday’s slate of game shows, even Power Rankings can’t predict the future, much less how whether or not a team is good or just great.

Fans want to know that their 7-6 team is better than your 7-6 team, and they are great ways for commentators to wax poetical about why one team is better than the other despite the fact they’ve lost two more games. At the beginning of the season, everyone considered the Giants as definite contenders. They lived up to the expectations for the first half of the season, going 6-2. They then lost 4 games in a row; falling from spot 6 in ESPN.com's rankings down to 15, and then back up to 11 with one win over a lackluster Carolina team. There is no formula to the madness, no logic to the numbers. It was a crucial game that the Giants needed to win and they stood up and did it. But they’re still not guaranteed a playoff spot, much less a win next week. Their rise to spot 11 means nothing all that much.

It matters even less when you get to the top of the rankings. Indianapolis has a worse ranking than the Saints but a better record, as does Chicago. But all have looked capable of an almost total implosion. Ranking reveals little, as evidenced by the ESPN-ranked #9 Seahawks falling to the #29 Cardinals. It’s all a big guessing game, and hardly a perfect science.

ESPN is not the perpetrator of Power Rankings. Many sites have them and everyone has a different opinion about who’s the best and who is the most likely to fall on the spikes of defeat. The best example of is Profootballtalk.com’s short and pithy Power Rankings that dispense with trying to make some sense of a crazy NFL season where good NFC teams look like peewee football and bad AFC teams beat up on perennial favorites.

Great examples from last week their characterizations of the Falcons (“Finger-flickin’ bad”), the Patriots (“Junior, say-ow”), and the Buccaneers (“Yo ho yuck”). This week’s offerings are no less entertaining: Panthers (“Show your Weinke”), Bears (“Gross, man”), and Lions (“Try softball?”).

This is what sports coverage really needs, a good dose of not taking itself a little too seriously. Great minds of football can predict all they like, try to explain why the Colts implode with regularity, and sing the praises of LaDanian Tomlinson and Philip Rivers. But good old comedy always gets the job done. And editors are always yelling, “tighten, tighten, tighten!” Finally, someone is listening.

Click here for entire post.

Put On Your Sunday Best, by Sara Hatch

Years ago, ESPN conceived its brainchild Sunday Night Football to give some competition to the Monday Night network stalwart. Sunday Night Football has long been MNF’s inferior cousin, but with the regular season winding down, I’ve come to a realization: Sunday Night Football has superseded Monday Night Football as the premium prime-time game.

Sunday night is a better night for football. During the week, there are major shows to compete with, which isn’t really a factor on Sunday night. The biggest hit on Sunday night is Desperate Housewives, which I have a hard time believing pulls all that many viewers away from football. Also, the game starts earlier on Sunday. It’s not a complete and total deal-breaker to stay up often until one for the end of the game, especially if your team is playing, but it’s very hard once the week has started. Staying up on Sunday night is no picnic, but it’s still technically the weekend.

Monday Night Football has become the NFL’s spectacle. The ornate and long pregame revelry and the commercials that last forever and interrupt at every possible turn have made the game a stalled, badly paced event. (One week they actually brought the guy who sings the Monday Night Football theme up into the booth to talk during the game.) Even the announcers are of the sort that makes it harder to focus on the game over whatever they’re blasting off about that week. No offense to Tony Kornheiser, but if I want to hear your objections to every part of football, I’ll turn on Pardon the Interruption.

Sunday Night also has one feature that completely tips the scales: in weeks 10-15 and week 17, the flexible schedule will be in place, ensuring an exciting and playoff-worthy game every week. This can be seen most recently with the decision to pull the Giants/Bears game on 11/12 to the prime-time slot. This game pits two of the best teams in the NFL against each other and puts in on a national stage. Monday Night Football unfortunately is not blessed in this capacity. They are locked into their schedule. With the flexible schedule, good teams will get showcased and good games will follow. Unpredictable things will happen but the quality of football will be higher.

This season, some of the most exciting games this season have been on Sunday Night Football. The Giants-Colts game at the beginning of the season and the Pats-Colts are some examples. The Monday Night match up the same week as the Pats-Colts game was between Seattle, which is a good team, and Oakland, which is not. Further degrading the play of Seattle was the loss earlier in the season of their quarterback. Profootballtalk.com’s writers stopped writing their blog at halftime in protest. Tonight’s game between the disappointing Panthers and McNabb-less Eagles looks to be not much better.

Even in the non-flexible weeks, Sunday Night Football had interesting and competitive match-ups, while Monday Night Football will feature Oakland twice and there have already been three blowouts this season. And while the Giants and Bears fought it out to the finish, two teams with only mediocre records will played on Monday night. It’s seems that the prominent franchises always get two appearances a year while other decidedly good franchises do not. Favoritism is the name of the game in Monday Night Football.

Finally, Sunday Night Football is the only prime-time game left on one of the three major networks. Thursday Night Football is exclusively on NFL Network and Monday Night will almost certainly be on ESPN for at least a decade. In an age when cable is affordable by large swaths of the population, this does not seem as bad. But it still places one of the most popular American sports on networks that are not accessible by every viewer.

With their flexible schedule and premium placement and time, it’s clear that Sunday Night Football is the best that TV has to offer for true football fans. Are you watching?

Click here for entire post.

A Letter to Eli Manning Following His Third Abysmal Performance This Season, by Sara Hatch

Dear Eli,

I’ve been a Giants fan all my life and I’ve been a fan of you since you came on the team. I lived through the Kerry Collins offense for many years so it’s nice to finally have a quarterback who can run an offense on the field. This season has been especially enlightening (I lived in England for most of last season and was not able to view your progress then). You’ve shown no less than some of the purest talent I’ve seen in my time watching the NFL. Let’s face it, you’ve got amazing potential. But frankly, after suffering through a third straight loss that I can’t hang on anyone but you, I’ve become a little concerned.

There are a lot of reasons that you guys have lost the last three games. The roster of injuries on this team is overwhelming, and I don’t think anyone really appreciated Luke Petitgout before he broke his leg. Brandon Short and Michael Strahan are instrumental pieces in the defense. No less than that, but Strahan has really become the cheerleader for the defense—firing them up on every play, pulling together on a bad run. Even through all the injuries though, you guys have still held strong. Antonio Pierce seems better now than at the beginning of the season. Fred Robbins gets mentioned several times every game. Even the secondary is starting to tighten up a little, although they have a long way to come. But Eli, you are the scale on which all these things balance. And you’ve been tilting off to the side for weeks.

There is absolutely no reason that you aren’t up in the top 5 quarterbacks in the league. You’re extremely talented. When you take your time and step up in the pocket, your throws are like heat-seeking missiles. You can thread the ball past two defenders and into the hands of Jeremy or Plaxico like it’s nothing at all. But then two minutes later you can throw the same ball and have it picked. When you’re on a roll, like a few of the drives in the Jags game last night, you’re near unbeatable. But something seems to come loose when things aren’t going the right way and you seem to lose all confidence in your playing ability.

It must be hard being a Manning in this league, living in the shadow of not only your father but Peyton too. You’ve probably grown sick the number of times you’ve had your stats compared to Peyton or been mistaken for him. I understand the frustration. But here’s the thing. There’s a thin line separating you from mediocrity and greatness, and that line is all in your mind. You have been incredibly lucky to end up at a franchise that wants to make you one of its marquee players. You have a rock solid defense and an offense that can knock your socks off when they’re firing on all cylinders.

Whatever you need to do, you need to calm yourself down in your head. You need to throw to Jeremy early and often. He might be a little bit crazy off the field, but he’ll fight to the death for any pass that you throw him. You two seem to have this unmistakable connection. When you need a clutch play, he’s the guy you can go to. Same with Plaxico on long plays. He’s tall enough to reach over most cornerbacks and safeties. He’s the guy who will make those downfield catches for 20+ yards. Even Tim Carter has presence and can be a great asset. And never forget that you have two great running backs with explosive power off the line. The Jags had you stuffed, but once Bob Whitfield settles in you’ll start getting more running options—leaving you to make the big plays and better control the offense.

There is no end to my faith in you. But right now, this is succeeding or failing on your back. There’s no doubt in my mind that some day you will be compared to Peyton not as a younger brother but as a rival or equal. You are that good. It’s time to step up.

Sincerely,
Sara Hatch

Click here for entire post.

The Classic Position, by Sara Hatch

When I was a kid, I loved pinball. It’s one of the oldest and simplest arcade games, but also one of the most fun. I was once reading a book where a father was describing the experience of playing pinball in a Paris café with his son. It was marvelous. It’s one of those classic games. I think my love of pinball is also the reason why I love running backs the most of any position in football. Watching the running game is like watching a game of human pinball.

If you asked me ten times whether I prefer offense or defense, nine and probably even ten times I’d say that I like defense more. A good sack of the opposing quarterback is one of the most thrilling things to see in football. But defense is a team effort. A safety can get a sack just as easily as a defensive end. And one player alone rarely accomplishes stopping a running back at the line of scrimmage. There are true defensive stars on all of the best defensive teams, like Brian Urlacher for the Bears and Michael Strahan for the Giants, but without a well-built defense around them they’d just be getting good tackles every few plays while mostly getting scored on from here till Monday. So, I find it hard to say that I love one position on the defense more than the other.

But running backs are pure pleasure to watch in action. A good running back will be supported by his offensive line, but he must also have the uncanny ability to see the holes that develop on the field. When I say that the run is like human pinball, I mean it. It’s a series of repetitive tasks: running towards objects that are trying to push you in the opposite direction. Most gains are little snippets, 5 or 6 yards here or there, constantly pushing closer to the goal line as boundaries are whizzed past. And then every once in a while there’s a brilliant convergence where all the pathways open up and it’s a clear line ahead. The goal is achieved. The touchdown is scored and you’re back at the beginning, ready to do it all again — to rack up more points.

The running game is fundamental and incredibly lethal. Indianapolis is 10-1 at this point but one key reason many fans don’t buy them as a Super Bowl favorite is their inability to defend against the run. It’s the running game that turns an offense from good to amazing, that gives the quarterback the ability to make throws on plays that look good, to set them up beautifully. So while the quarterbacks stand on the field ready to deliver those few laser strikes when coverage opens up, the running backs are there, bouncing off on down after down, relentlessly driving towards the goal.

Click here for entire post.