Sporting Thoughts

A scattershot look from The Grandstand at recent happenings in the World of Sports.

Steelers 28 - Washington Football Team 27

Najee rumbles

George Pickens does magic

Russ drops one down the 

chimney to Mike Williams

In a week that can be described as "depressing" for some of us sitting in the Grandstand, the Steelers road win on Sunday over the Washington Commanders can be rightly described as "euphoric".  The Steelers were coming off a bye week and were 6-2, and the Commanders with their terrific rookie QB Jaydon Daniels were the surprise of the league at  7-2.  In all honesty, I was expecting a Steelers loss on Sunday.   The nature of the win....a Steelers defense severely limiting Daniels, overcoming a double digit second half deficit, and the dime that Russell Wilson dropped to newly acquired Mike Williams with a little over two minutes to play for the go ahead touchdown....it was, well...euphoric!

I have not written much about the Steelers or the NFL so far this season, so let's reflect a bit.  Sunday's win gives the Steelers a 7-2 record and a half game lead over the 7-3 Ravens, and sets ups a BIG GAME this Sunday when Baltimore comes to Pittsburgh.  It will be the first divisional game that the Steelers will play and the stakes are, well, big.  First place in the division, tie-breaker advantages, and blah blah blah.  At the beginning of the year, I felt that Baltimore would be in the Super Bowl, and Lamar Jackson is playing at a level that will probably bring him a third MVP Award.  However, the Ravens have shown some defensive vulnerability and a strange propensity for blowing leads late in games.  I have often said that there is no better rivalry in the NFL over the last 15 or so years than Steelers-Ravens, and this week should prove to add to the luster of these games.  And expect to hear the TV announcers trot out the Mike Tomlin-John Harbaugh to George Halas-Curly Lambeau comparisons.

After that 6-2 start, the Steelers post-bye schedule appeared, and still does appear, to be a brutal one:  all six divisional games, plus the Commanders, Eagles, and Chiefs.  They already have notched one W from that gauntlet.  The rest of the way won't be any easier, but with how the team looked against the WFT, I am anxiously awaiting the next eight weeks, but, of course, I'll be taking them all one game at a time.

Grandstander Power Rankings

Not sure how regularly I'm going to do this, but here is my first GPR of the season, submitted without comment:

1. Lions 8-1
2. Chiefs 9-0
3. Bills 8-2
4. Ravens 7-3
5. Steelers 7-2
6. Eagles 7-2
7. Commanders 7-2
8. Vikings 7-2
9. Falcons 6-4
10. Cardinals 6-4

Others receiving consideration: Bengals 4-6, Broncos 5-5, Chargers 6-3, Texans 6-4.

Dodgers Win World Series

The Dodgers five game World Series win over the Yankees was just a little over two weeks ago, yet it already feels like so long ago, so I don't want to let it recede into the mists of history without a few comments.

First off, a Dodgers-Yankees face off was an exciting prospect, because it would pit the two greatest offensive players in the game today in a showdown against each other, Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the Yankees.  That was going to cause fireworks like we hadn't seen since Reggie Jackson turned into Mr. October.  Well, it didn't turn out that way.  Over the 162 game season, Ohtani and Judge combined to hit .315 with 112 home runs and 274 runs batted in.  In the five game series, they combined to hit .162 (6-for-37) with 1 HR and 3 RBI.

And then there was that fifth game.  After four innings the Yanks led 5-0, Gerrit Cole hadn't surrendered a hit through four innings, Judge had hit a home run, and the Yankees appeared to be cruising to a win that would extend the Series to a sixth game.  Then it all fell apart in a way that only baseball can deliver to us.  Aaron Judge, who hadn't committed an error all season (you can look it up), dropped a routine fly ball in center, short stop Anthony Volpe made a throwing error, and then, inexplicably, Cole failed to cover first base on a ground ball to first, and BOOM, the Dodgers had tied it 5-5 and were on their way to a 7-6 win in Game 5 and a World Series Championship.  Overall, perhaps it won't go down as one of the Great World Series of our time, but that fifth game, and especially that fifth inning, will make it a memorable one for sure.

Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman, playing with an injured ankle that would probably have put him on the injured list in the regular season, was the Most Valuable Player of the Series.  He batted .300, had a Series record tying 12 RBI, and hit 4 home runs.  The first of those was an extra innings walk off grand slam that, in retrospect, may have effectively ended the Series right then and there.   The MVP Award for this Series was never in doubt.

Freeman came to the majors full time with the Braves in 2011.  In those days I was still playing fantasy baseball, and I always coveted him for my team, but he always got drafted by someone else before I had the chance to nab him.  From the start he was, as my Dad would have put it, "a nice looking ball player."  He was a good player from the start, and he seems to be a likable guy as well.  He always seems to chat up and laugh with other players whenever they reach first base, which I think is kind of cool to see.  Through 15 seasons, he has hit .300 with 343 HR and over 1,200 RBI.  Next year will be his age 35 season, and he appears to still have gas in the tank, so an eventual landing spot in Cooperstown is not hard to imagine.  I will look forward to still watching him play.

College Football

What with conference realignments, NIL money, the transfer portal, and a twelve team Playoff, the business model of college football is well on the way to becoming Major League Baseball.  If you follow the sport, you know exactly what I am talking about, so I needn't spell it out for you here.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is still TBD, but one thing for sure is that this 2024 season has produced some absolutely terrific match-ups and games, and seems to be doing it on weekly basis.  I cannot recall a season where I have looked forward to at least one game every single weekend as much as I have this season, and it shows no signs of stopping right up on through the conclusion of the CFP Championship game on January 20, so at least there will be one good thing that will happen on that day.

Russ Cooks. and Other Sporting Thoughts

The talk all last week among the sporting cognoscenti here in The Burgh was Mike Tomlin's not so secret decision to start Russell Wilson at quarterback over Justin Fields.  You could make an argument in favor of fields, who had led the Steelers to a 4-2 record and seemed to be improving each week.  Personally, I was not totally sold on Fields, for whatever my opinion might be worth, and I figured that Tomlin gets paid big money to make these decisions, and if he goes with Wilson, well, then let's just see how it will all play out.

After a first half in which Wilson's performance could be charitably described as "shaky", Tomlin apparently spray coated Russ down with a can of Rustoleum to remove whatever rust had accumulated on him, and both Wilson and the Steelers proceeded to kick the collective asses of the New York J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets. 

 As I usually do, I stayed off of social media as I watched the game last night, so it was with a wry sense of delight that I looked at my Facebook feed after the game and saw all of the posts that were made throughout the first half of the game (New York led 15-6 at halftime).  Tomlin was being crucified by all the armchair GM's out there.  My favorite was some one who stated that by starting an obviously over-the-hill Wilson in place of Fields, "the Steelers have become the Pirates."  It was quite amusing, actually.   I haven't checked yet today to see if any of those experts retracted any of their statements.

Under Wilson's hand, the Steelers scored four touchdowns in a game for the first time since November of 2022.  They sit at 5-2 and should be considered in the second tier of teams, behind Kansas City and Baltimore, in the AFC.  We will see how it goes with Wilson as the season wears on, but he was throwing the kinds of passes last night that we haven't seen from Fields so far this year, and certainly unlike anything we saw all of last season.

One other Steelers note.  The team had its "Alumni Weekend" where they honored the 1974 team on the fiftieth anniversary of their first Super Bowl Championship team.  

Nice team picture, ain't it?  To observe the occasion, the team wore "throwback" jerseys that featured the block numerals that they wore throughout the 1970's and into the 1990's.    This begs the question:  When will they return to the block numerals permanently?  I don't know of a single Steelers fan anywhere who would not be in favor of that.

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In other sports news....

In the fifth and final game of the WNBA Championship Series, the New York Liberty defeated the Minnesota Lynx to claim their first ever WNBA title.  The final game went into overtime, the second OT of the series, and was a thrilling game right until the final buzzer.  In fact , four of the five games were all decided by razor thin margins.  The competition was thrilling and terrific sports theater.  If you are a basketball fan, but chose not to watch the Playoffs, you deprived yourself of some damn exciting hoops watching.

If it had not attained such status prior to 2024, this year marked the occasion when, I believe, the WNBA has arrived as a full fledged "major league" sport in America.  Many people came to the sport because of Caitlin Clark, but once they arrived, I think that eyes were opened as to just how good and enjoyable the women's game is.  I, for one, will be looking forward to next season.

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In one other event of significance last night, the Dodgers defeated the Mets 10-4 in the sixth and final game of the NLCS, thus setting up a "traditional" World Series between the Dodgers and the Yankees.  That is, if you consider something that hasn't happened in forty-three years a tradition.  

In that deciding game last night, both teams used seven pitchers, continuing a trend that I lamented in my most recent Grandstander post.  As friend Dave Glass noted on social media this morning, a Dodgers win 

"..will be the first time recent memory (and I'd bet ever) that a team won with basically zero starting pitching. Call me an old man but I think baseball is better when the starters matter at least a little.  I don't need Bob Gibson, but 6 or 7 innings maybe?"

Couldn't have said it better, Dave.

One intriguing thing that this World Series does give us it a head to head matchup of the two best hitters in the game today, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, and I most certainly do look forward to that.

I'll predict a Yankees victory and hope that it goes seven games.

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I know that many of you are probably asking, "But, Bob, the Jets-Steelers, Lynx- Liberty, and Mets-Dodgers were all on at the same time. How could possibly have taken all of that in last night?"

Well, when your various television sets are no longer tethered to cable boxes, a little unplugging and moving around can turn any living room into your personal Sports Bar.

This solved the problem of the 8:00 PM conflicts, but also came in handy when watching the Penguins in the afternoon up against the 1:00 NFL games, and I even caught some of the Liverpool-Chelsea EPL match game in the late morning.

You may say that you feel sorry for my wife for putting up with this, but actually, movies the two other sets into the living room was her idea.  Those other two sets were returned to the bedroom and the office earlier this morning.