World Series Thoughts, and the Football Weekend

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box While Trying to Avoid a Jim Harbaugh Handshake.....

• I realize that I am hopelessly behind times, but I still consider the World Series a Big Deal. A very Big Deal. Now we know the combatants in this year's Fall Classic, and it shapes up to be a Series with lots of runs and home runs, and perhaps, as Buster Olney suggested, perhaps the worst pitched world Series in memory.


• The Texas Rangers have certainly proved that their 2010 pennant was not the work of a One Hit Wonder. That top-to-bottom line up sure is a marvel to behold.


• The Cardinals trip from being 10 and 1/2 games out of the wild card spot on August 25 to the World Series is quite the story. While I am not fan of the self-important Tony LaRussa, you have to hand it to him. His teams win and they never quit on him. Never.


• I had decided mid-way through the LCS that I was rooting for the Cardinals to go the distance. I made that decision based on two players: Albert Pujols and Stan Musial.


• Rooting interests aside, I am going to pick the Rangers to win the Series. I just think that last year's loss to the Giants will have them extremely motivated this time around.


• That said, I will point out that I picked the Tigers and Brewers to win their respective LCS.


• As thrilling as the three Games Five were in the division series were, the two games six in the LCS were sure at the other end of the spectrum.


• That was a weird win for the Steelers yesterday. After a first half that gave all indications of being a blowout, they came out at halftime and did nothing offensively, and were barely able to hang on to win 17-13. A more experienced Jacksonville QB would probably have won the game for them. Very hard to explain that performance.


• How about that post game dust-up between Coaches Jim Harbaugh and Jim Schwartz? If a couple of high school coaches behaved like that, I would suspect that their respective school boards would severely discipline them, or perhaps even relieve them of their duties. When coaches at football's highest level act like that, how do you think every Lombardi-Wannabe coaching a peewee football team is going to act?


• Peter King had a good line on this today: He liked it better when coaches wore business suits.


• And how about yet another awful performance by the Pitt Panthers. The highly touted Todd Graham Offense (and let's hope the Pitt publicity machine starts to cool it with the gasoline metaphors) throws up (good choice of words there) a goose egg on Saturday, abandons Ray Graham, and barely generates 100 yards in total offense.


• First year coaches like Graham usually get a honeymoon, but he ain't getting one and he can blame himself for all his off season hyperbole. I do like his enthusiasm, but he's paying the price for it now.


• Maybe in a year or two when Graham recruits the players to fit his "system", Pitt will be steamrolling their opponents, but right now maybe Graham and his coaches should be dialing back the system to fit the players he has. Of course, coaching egos would never allow that to happen.


• I will close by paraphrasing Dejan Kovacevic by saying that if anyone can explain the Pirates' decision to not pick up Paul Maholm's option for 2012 as anything other than the team being cheap, I'm willing to listen, but it's going to take some convincing.