Strange as it may seem, the team with the best record in Major League Baseball the entire season, including tonight, will probably not win its division. The Red Sox lost again tonight after a good game by Lester was blown by Eric Gag-me. I don’t know how much the Sox are paying this meatball, but it’s too much. And why he was left in the game after walking in the tying run is a question that has no good answer. It’s like the Red Sox just don’t want to win. No such problem with the Yankmees, who smell blood in the water. The way things are going, they’ll end up winning the division by several games. The Sox will probably stagger into the post-season with the wildcard, only to be eliminated in 5 games by the first team they meet. Sadly, this is typical Red Sox baseball. With each passing year it seems more and more likely that 2004 was a fluke.   🙁

Here’s the brutal picture. Which team looks like the contender?

I was just getting into the Red Sox – Yankmees game yesterday afternoon when suddenly the screen went blank and a message that the “channel would be available shortly” came up. After waiting 30 minutes or so, I called Mediacom to find out what was going on. The service rep told me that there were no technical problems. Fox had just decided to pull the broadcast. He said it’s happened before with Fox.  I couldn’t believe it.  😡

So instead of showing a movie or some other game, Fox gets viewers interested in a crucial game like that one and then pulls the rug out from under them. What a bunch of heroes. I already can’t stand Fox Sports announcers and I don’t watch anything else but sports on Fox, but now I have one more reason to avoid Fox TV whenever possible. Fox sucks.  😡

It seems these days that everyone cheats a little. Mike C. outlined it pretty well on his blog. But Mike was referring to individual cheating. What about team cheating? How far should a team go to win?  The two recent examples I have in mind are the New England Patriots and the McLaren-Mercedes Formula One team.

The Patriots were caught videotaping the NY Jets defensive coaches sending in signals to their team. The idea being that once you knew what a signal meant, you would know what the team was about to do next. The NFL confiscated the video camera and determined that the Patriots were knowingly violating the NFL rule prohibiting such videotaping. Coach Belichick was fined a cool half million dollars while the team was fined a quarter mil. They will also lose either a 1st, 2d, or 3d round draft pick depending on where they finish in the standings this season.

The McLaren-Mercedes Formula One team was found to have in its possession a load of very confidential design documents which belonged to their arch rival, Ferrari. They came by the documents by way of a rogue Ferrari mechanic named Nigel Stepney. At first it seemed like a one time incident and that McLaren stepped up and reported the incident right away. But further investigation showed that communication between Stepney and two McLaren drivers was extensive, with at least one McLaren driver asking Stepney for further information. Clearly McLaren knew any transfer of confidential information was illegal and yet they pursued the opportunity regardless. The Formula One governing body, the FIA, correctly saw this as intent and really threw the book at McLaren. McLaren was docked all their current Constructor’s Championship points and will not be allowed to earn any points for the rest of the season. This is no small thing because the Constructor’s Championship is the one the Formula One teams really care about. McLaren also got hit with a $100 million fine. That’s a tidy sum no matter who you are.

Both these incidents point to a team management so obsessed with winning that it will knowingly violate rules and invite huge punishment upon itself. In other words, they’ll cheat to win. It also leads one to wonder what the management of these two organizations were thinking. Both these teams are currently the best in their respective sports. Neither team needed to cheat to win, yet they both chose to do so. In the case of the Patriots, it can be said that signal stealing is a common occurrence in the NFL and the Patriots have been both the offender and the victim before. But the NFL specifically prohibits videotaping signals and the Patriots knew this. Likewise, in Formula One the teams collect as much information about their rivals as possible. But crossing the line into receiving illegally obtained documents from a Ferrari insider is akin to the difference between military reconnaissance and spying. Troops captured while conducting recon are treated as POWs. Spies are shot.

The thing that strikes me in both these cases is the utter stupidity of those involved. Not only did the Patriots not need to cheat as they did, they could have gotten away with it simply by having their cameraman sit in the stands rather than stand on the sidelines with the rest of the team. The folks at McLaren should have known right from the start that Ferrari would find out about the missing documents and that it would cost McLaren dearly. Not blowing the whistle at the very beginning was just plain stupid. The only explanation I can see for professionals at this level to commit such stupid and useless acts is a complete obsession with winning at all costs. When it gets to that point, you have to wonder if it’s worth playing at all.

If you win a ton of games and have a tiny ERA and still collapse when you need to win the big game, are you really the best? The best BP in baseball just blew a 5 run lead in the 8th against a team they REALLY needed to beat.   🙁

I’ve often watched “professionals” at work and thought, “I could do that at least as well.” And since some of these pros get paid big bucks, I could even do what they do more efficiently as well. In other words, I could attain the same level of mediocrity for less money. To wit:

1. Weatherman – I mean, I could easily be wrong 50% of the time. Piece-o’-cake. I wouldn’t even need all the fancy computer stuff. Just give me a 3×5 card painted sky blue with a hole in the center. I’ll walk outside, look up through the hole, and see if the colors match. If they do, hey, it’s going to be a nice day. If not, well…

2. Relief pitcher – I could easily throw four balls or lob a home run ball to end a game. I’d do it for half the money the lowest paid MLB pitcher gets and smile all the way to the bank. I know damn well I could throw a baseball from 20 feet in front of home plate to the first baseman close enough for him to catch it. Are you listening, Mike Timlin?

3. Copy editor – Ok, maybe this one is not so easy. I suppose you could really get burned out reading so much drivel. But I’ve seen one too many tpyos, grammatical errors what any kid would know, and, excess, commas, that slipped by folks whose careers revolve around getting it right on paper.

4. Traffic engineer – I can’t remember the last time I saw a properly timed series of traffic lights. Champaign is definitely in need of a good traffic guru. Neil St comes to mind. Indianapolis is another nightmare that needn’t be. Maybe cities are too cash strapped to afford traffic engineers. If so, my apologies to the profession.

5. Sporting event TV director – I was watching the Formula One race from Monaco (Monte Carlo) a few weeks ago and the French TV feed director kept missing important racing action to show the faces of the mechanics in the pit lane. I mean repeatedly. It would have been comical if he hadn’t missed so much on-track action. And then during a recent Red Sox/Yankmees game, we got to see a close up of Alex Rodriguez’s face over and over and over. Plus we got to hear about his antics through the entire show. Maybe A-Rodent owns a big piece of ESPN, who knows.