Hail to the Red Sox and Other World Series Thoughts

After a particularly unmemorable World Series last year (wherein the Giants defeated the Tigers, and no one will blame you if you didn't remember that), the Red Sox and the Cardinals ratcheted up the Memorable Scale for us with the Fall Classic that ended last night with Red Sox 6-1 win in Game Six.  

Congratulations Red Sox!

This Series is made memorable due to the following factors:

• The absolutely other-worldly hitting of MVP David Ortiz.
• Pitching performances by Jon Lester, John Lackey, Koji Uehera, Michael Wacha (despite last night's loss), and Trevor Rosenthal.
• The unbelievable and unprecedented finishes in Games 3 and 4.
• Only the blow-out nature of the Game Six finale - which also meant that there would be no Game Seven - scaled back the Memorability Factor where this Series was concerned.

As a rule, I am a fan of the broadcast team of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.  Indeed, there are times when I think that I am the only guy who likes McCarver, but I have to say that the incessant pointing out that the "Red Sox have not won a World Series clinching game in Fenway Park since 1918", followed by such facts as "Babe Ruth was a pitcher on that 1918 team" (really???) was enough to make me want to throw a shoe at the TV set.  Yes, it was an interesting factoid the first, second, and maybe even the third time we heard it, but it seemed like that as ALL THEY TALKED ABOUT for the final three innings of the game.  It was even incorporated into Buck's closing call when the final out was recorded.  

As final calls go, it was a 180 degrees removed from "I cannot believe what I have just seen." This one where as time goes on I will bet that Joe Buck wishes he had a Do Over.

Speaking of John Lackey, wasn't he one of the guys who was part of the Fried-Chicken-and-Beer Brigade that indirectly led to Terry Francona getting fired in Boston two years ago? Unless you're a real Sox fan, that made him a hard guy for me to root for last night, or any night for that matter.

And at the risk of sounding like a right-wing reactionary from the 1960's, I hope those guys will now shave those God-awful beards.  I gotta tell you, I did not like that look, and if they decide to keep them, we'll be stuck looking at the all the time when ESPN decides to televise every one of the Red Sox games in 2014.

Finally, and this is good news, I think, the last-place-to-World-Series season for the Red Sox will pretty much guarantee that Bobby Valentine will never manage in the major leagues again.

Oh, and for the record, The Grandstander had this one wrong, as I had called for the Cardinals in six.  Can't win 'em all!

Now, it is time to officially get into the Hot Stove League.  106 days, more or less, until Pirates pitchers and catchers report in Bradenton.  

To Absent Friends: Lou Reed

A melancholy Happy Trails to rocker Lou Reed, who passed away this past weekend at the age of 71.  I have to admit that I was not a big fan, and am not all that familiar with his overall body of work, but "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" was a big song when I was in college, and I rather liked it.  As you can hear in the link below, it's still a pretty good one.

RIP Lou Reed.

Trap Game Today? Steelers at Oakland

Since the Steelers have won two straight, visions of Playoffs are dancing in the heads of Stiller Nation, especially with a game against the putrid Oakland Raiders this afternoon.  However, these same Steelers LOST to an equally bad Raiders team last season, and, as Gene Collier spells out in his column today, the records of these two teams are eerily similar.

Don't get me wrong. Like most of you, I will be cheering mightily for a Steelers win today against the Evil Raiders, but nothing is going to surprise me.

Game Three: Cardinals 5 - Red Sox 4

Well, I was tired as I sat down to watch the third game of the World Series last night, and there were times during the game that I was close to packing it in and going to bed, but am I glad I didn't!

If you care at all about this stuff, you already know how the game ended - the Cardinals winning in the bottom of the ninth with a Walk Off Obstruction call against Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks.  I don't know this for certain, but I am pretty sure that neither the Cardinals nor any of the other 29 teams in the majors spend a lot of time practicing this play in Spring Training.

Just a couple of thoughts:

• As the play happened in real time, the thought ran through my head in a nano-second that "isn't that interference with the baserunner?"  Honest to God, I really did think that.  So did Mrs. Grandstander.
• The replay showed clearly that third base umpire Jim Joyce immediately pointed to the tangle at third to signal the obstruction.  Home plate umpire Dana DeMuth merely confirmed that when he signaled back to Joyce after Allan Craig crossed the plate.
• The call was definitely the correct one.  And as it was apparent from his body language when he went to argue the call, even John Farrell knew it.
• Friend Stephanie Liscio mentioned on Facebook that while she didn't see the play, she was listening to the Boston announcers on the radio, and even they said it was a correct call.
• Had this play happened in the third or fourth inning, it would have merely been an interesting footnote to the game.  Since it happened in the bottom of the ninth and ended the game, it immediately became an Immortal Play.  How about we christen it "The Immaculate Obstruction"?
• And wouldn't it have been something if this had been the seventh game of the Series?

Speaking of Facebook, I have to say thank you to Mark Zuckerberg for giving baseball fans  the ability to instantaneously share such a ball game.  It was like I was at the ball park with Al Blumkin, Joe Risacher, Tim Baker, Madison McEntire, Stephanie Liscio, and dozens of others watching this game.  It was great!

It also proved one of baseball's oldest cliches: Every time you go to a ball game, you might see something you have never seen before.  Or, as Al Blumkin put it, just when you think you've seen it all, baseball proves that you haven't.  

Check and double-check!

Some Farewells

As Tony and Mike say on Pardon the Interruption, we bid Happy Trails today to.....

Jim Leyland

As you no doubt know, Leyland announced yesterday that he would not be returning as manager of the Tigers in 2014.  Leyland, after eight years and four post-season appearances, including two AL pennants, has decided that age 69, he's had enough.   

When I first heard this news, I said to myself, can the slurp job column from Ron Cook be far behind?  Well, Cookie did not disappoint.  Hey, I get it that Cook thinks Leyland was a great manager and a good guy, but he really should be embarrassed with that column this morning.  No Hollywood press agent couldn't have written a bigger puff piece than that one.

More to the point, I will accept the fact that Leyland has been a good, though not necessarily great, manager throughout his career (although even his admirers admit that he didn't have his best series in the recently concluded ALCS), but to me, he is the guy who broke his contract with the Pirates for better and more lucrative deal in Miami, and flat out quit on the Rockies in Denver when things weren't to his liking.  His loyalists will defend those moves - as Cook does in his column this morning - but they are black marks on his resume and his character as far as I am concerned, but, again, that's just me.  And I find it interesting that Mrs. Grandstander, upon hearing the news, said, "Do you think he means it this time?"

Bum Phillips

The colorful former coach of the Houston Oilers passed away this weekend at the age of 90.  How can Steelers fans of a certain age ever forget Bum Phillips, strolling the sidelines in back-to-back AFC Championship games at Three Rivers Stadium?  I wonder if we would still find him lovable had the Oilers managed to win one or both of those games?  Sad to think that in the NFL of Roger Goodell, the Stetson hat, cowboy boots, and sheepskin jacket that Bum wore on the sidelines would not be considered "approved sideline apparel", and Bum would have been forced to don whatever Nike and Park Avenue told him to wear.

It was a bad weekend for Houston Oilers fans as death also claimed owner Bud Adams.  Adams was a Texas oil gazillionaire who, along with a few other risk takers, started the American Football League back in 1960.  Of course, Adams also grew to fit the profile of the modern sports owner when he moved the Oilers to Nashville when a better stadium deal, i.e., one that made him more money with no cost to him, came along.  Only 95 year old Ralph Wilson in Buffalo remains from that group that started the AFL back in 1960.

Enjoy that retirement, Jimmy Leyland, and smoke 'em if you got 'em, and RIP Absent Friends Bum Phillips and Bud Adams.

Cardinals vs. Red Sox

It turns out  Major League Baseball could have just skipped three rounds of Playoffs and had the St. Louis and Boston, the teams with the best records in their Leagues go directly to the World Series this year.  This would have made the purists who long for the days of two eight team leagues happy, but it sure would have deprived fans in Pittsburgh of a lot of excitement this Fall.

This is the fourth time that these two teams meet in the Fall Classic, so expect to see a lot of the following:

• Black & white highlights of Enos Slaughter's "mad dash" to home plate, and endless debates about whether or not Johnny Pesky held the ball too long.
• Nostalgic hand wringing over Ted Williams' poor performance in that '46 Series and how Ol' Teddy Ballgame never got to another one.  
• Ditto for Stan Musial.
• Interviews with Bob Gibson and Carl Yastrzemski.
• Personal reminiscences from everybody's favorite announcer, Tim McCarver, who batted .125 with 2 RBIs in the '67 Series.
• A complete and total overdose of Neil Diamond and "Sweet Caroline".

I would also hope that MLB and Fox might work in some feature about '67 Cardinals star Curt Flood, and how his efforts sowed the seeds for the multi-million dollar salaries being earned by the players participating in this year's World Series, but I won't hold my breath waiting for that.

My call - the Cardinals in six games.  Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina to be the stars in the Cardinals' Series win.   

And, hey, wouldn't a Gibson-pitching-to-McCarver be a great First Pitch for one of the games in St. Louis?  We can only hope that the punjabs in the offices of Bud "Bud" Selig are working out the logistics that will  make that happen as we speak.

Enjoy.

Pay TV

Back in the summer of 1968, I was working at my first paying job - a usher at the Forum Theater in Squirrel Hill.  At one point during that time, the theater owners were asking all patrons to sign a petition against the looming menace, then known only as "Pay Television".  Pay TV, the reasoning went, would enable people to purchase first run movies in their homes to watch on their televisions.  Such a development would surely put movie theaters, as we knew them back in 1968, out of business.  No one knew exactly how "pay TV" would work when and if it finally arrived.  I think most of us envisioned some type of meter that would be attached to out TV sets into which we would put money to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

In time, that sort of Orwellian device did not come about, and the money-gobbling monster that the theater owners were describing in those petitions forty-five years ago never did quite come about, but eventually cable television emerged, and most of us do, in fact, have a device attached to out television sets, only we call them "cable boxes", and we are, whether we realize it or not, are purchasers of "Pay TV".   There are some people, and I can only think of one such person among my acquaintances, who enjoy truly "free" television - no cable and access to only the local network affiliates via over-the-air signals.

To be honest with you, I don't even think of it that way anymore.  The cable bill is just another utility bill, like the electric and gas bills, but if I ever decided that by god I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to pay what should be free anymore, think of what I'd be missing:

• All those Pirates and Penguins games on Root Sports
• The MLB Playoffs that have been shown on TBS and MLB
• Anything on ESPN including all those great College Bowl games every New Year's Day
• Wolf Blitzer
• The Sopranos, The Americans, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and any number of arguably the best shows on television on cable networks like HBO, AMC, TBS, TNT, FX etc
• Turner Classic Movies
• Love It or List It
• Giada De Laurentiis
• I even saw that basketball's Final Four will be on TBS, and not CBS, this coming spring.
• How far off is it until the World Series and Super Bowl will only be available cable outlets such as the MLB and NFL Networks?

Pay TV is here, folks, and if came upon us in a way that we probably didn't even realize it was happening.

And the technology is evolving beyond cable.  Just this week I heard that the NFL is considering offering one game a week via streaming on an Internet outlet such as Netflicks or Google, in which case who then needs a cable box?  And if the money is there, and it will be, don't think it won't happen.

Those theater owners weren't entirely wrong back in 1968, either.  Oh, there are still movie theaters, but terrific, classy, and intimate movie theaters like the Forum are all but gone now, replaced by big suburban multi-plexes, often attached to shopping malls.  My old Squirrel Hill neighborhood, once home to four such theaters, now has only one, The Manor, and even it has been converted to a four screen multi-plex.  I suppose that that is progress, of a sort.

We live in interesting times.