Yankwatch 2008

The race for October is heating up, and here's how the standings look with about 35 games remaining for each team.

AL East

Boston 73 - 54, -
Yankees 67 - 60, 6 games out
Toronto 66 - 61, 7 games out
Tampa Bay 49 - 77, 23 1/2 games out

AL Wild Card

Yankees 67 - 60, need one win to clinch playoff birth
White Sox 0 - 127, disqualified
Minnesota 0 - 127, disqualified

After last night's humiliating loss to the Blue Jays, can we finally stop talking about the Yankees as contenders?

Teams in the playoffs, if the playoffs started today:

Tampa Bay
Chicago White Sox
Anaheim Angels
New York Mets
Chicago Cubs
Milwaukee Brewers
Arizona Diamondbacks

Teams not in the playoffs, if the playoffs started today:

Boston Red Sox / Minnesota Twins (one game play-in)
New York Yankees
Los Angeles Manny Being Mannies

Newsflash: ESPN sucks

John Buccigross, during Sportscenter's highlights of the epic Indians-Royals game, speaking about Cleveland shortstop Jhonny Peralta:

"If he played anywhere else, they'd be talking about him as an elite shortstop."

Who's they, dipstick? Maybe your network could, if you weren't trying to force feed us the antics of 12 year olds non-stop.

"Going yard" with the Little League World Series

Sometime in October, the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays will win their league's pennant, and many of us will not even know their lineups or entire pitching rotations. Sports media types will talk about these "surprise teams" as if it wasn't obvious they would be making the playoffs in August.

And why couldn't they inform us about these teams in August you ask? Because they were too busy showing us the home runs of snot-nosed kids with an overinflated sense of self thanks to these same overhyping whoring morons. Thanks.

An order of Turd pudding and a side of BROWN pants?

Yes, nothing like hearing know-nothings like Tony Kornheiser talk about how bad your football team is for an hour during their first nationally televised appearance of the year. Almost as good is having the ESPN announce team pronounce that the Browns had no chance against the Giants in the rematch later in the season because of the results of one quarter of one preseason game. Good thing the Giants didn't show up for the NFC title game in Lambeau after getting dominated by the Packers last regular season, I'll tell you that.

And nothing like seeing D.A. leave with a concussion.

And nothing like seeing Brown pants. WTF??? Look, either bring back the Brian Sipe orange pants, or stick with the white shirt white pants look. And God help us if they ever went all Brown...

Anyway, clearly the team is just lulling the rest of the league into a false sense of security. Yuck.

Arizona's Acquisition of Adam Dunn makes the Mets the team to beat in the NL East

A guest column by ESPN's Buster Olney

At the time of his trade, Adam Dunn had mashed 32 home runs. This tied him with Carlos Quentin of the Chicago White Sox of the American League for the Major League Lead. This is major news, because as any encyclopedia of baseball can tell you, no one who has ever led their league in home runs has ever been traded before. It's also interesting because Dunn is the first name player ever to be traded to the Diamondbacks, who play way out there in the NL South. When Arizona's not serving its purpose as the Yankees' farm system, they're playing through a futile attempt to hold off the amazing Dodgers and the incredible Manny, who has been Manny enough to lead the Dodgers to a record two games over .500. In the brief history of the division (2004), this is the highest winning percentage any team has ever had. I give Arizona a 0% chance of holding them off.

Now, let me tell you who the real winner between this trade of the Reds and Diamondbacks was. The New York Mets. The Mets, who entered play Tuesday at 62 - 56, sit a mere four games in front of Philadelphia for the NL East lead. The Mets have already finished their season series with Arizona, and I'm pretty sure the Phillies still have to play them - so the advantage here goes to the Mets. New York has also already finished their season series with the Reds, preventing anyone from claiming that the Mets' 9th straight division title was earned by beating teams that had already given up on the season. Thirdly, Arizona's a ridiculously small market. I don't know how they can possibly even have a baseball team, but they do. There's no way they'll be able to keep Adam Dunn for more than these two months - and at that point, the Mets will be able to sweep in and grab both Dunn and CC Sabathia of the Brewers, making sure that in 2009 we'll be able to see the league championship series that we all want: Red Sox - Yankees and Mets - Cubs. Those four clubs have more tradition than the other 26 combined, and quite frankly it's a crime that they're not the last four teams standing every year - but the trade of Adam Dunn to the Diamondbacks changes everything. This trade is the thing that puts the Mets over the top in the National League East.

This has been a special guest column by ESPN's very own Buster Olney

Welcome to the Weekend

It's the weekend, so you know what that means: another Indy car race where the television networks attempt to portray Danica Patrick as a sex symbol and fail miserably. Here's a tip to all future racing promoters: sex symbols should be attractive and not look like men. Also, if they're going to be the only racer you're going to talk about, they should have a winning percentage better than .011.

This has been Ja Doe, once again. Where are the other guys, anyway?

Chris Mortenson Is A Clown

It’s unbelievable. After Brett Favre unretired, this genius, who is most notable for telling us that Bill Parcells would retire after the 2003, 2004, 2005, AND 2006 seasons and then tooting his own horn when he was finally right, made several Favre-related predictions.

1) Brett would be welcomed back to the Packers.
WRONG.

2) Brett would be traded within the division, most likely to the Minnesota Vikings.
WRONG.

3) Brett Favre would be traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
WRONG.

4) Brett Favre was considering taking the Packers’ 25 million dollar marketing offer. Of course, Ed Werder reported the next day that Favre was considering spurning it as ESPN covered all the bases.
Mortenson was (surprise!) wrong again.

He predicted four different outcomes for the 2008 Brett Favre unretirement saga in the span of two months. All four were WRONG. Naturally, ESPN refuses to acknowledge this clown ever made these mistakes. After Favre was traded to the Jets, ESPNNews had the gall to actually have Mortenson on and ask him how he thought this trade would affect the Packers and Jets after he had proven without a shadow of a doubt that he had no idea what he was talking about.

Maybe I’m just still bitter about the 2006 NFC Championship game, when Mortenson, Sean Salisbury and five other ESPN experts predicted the Saints would prevail over the host Chicago Bears, ignoring just about every sign along the way. Mortenson was wrong about that too, as you may have guessed.

Ja Doe attended his first major league game at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland during August of 1992. The Indians beat the Rangers 6 – 2 on a Paul Sorrento home run.

Tim Tebow Is Terrible

Now that I've successfully grabbed your attention, allow me to state that this is not exactly how I feel. I just feel that Tim Tebow is doomed to failure as an NFL quarterback, and it would be a terrible move to draft him as such. Here's why.

The Scrambling Quarterback OR Tim Tebow Sucks

The NFL has gone through some changes throughout the years. In 1977, defense was at its most recent peak – teams were allowing (and likewise scoring) less points than in any year since the NFL was hampered by World War II (in 1942, for example, the Lions (who else) went 0 – 11 and somehow only scored 38 points all year). In 1977, the Atlanta Falcons set a modern day record when they allowed only 129 points in 14 games. Of course, they only scored 179 points and went 7 – 7. Rules were liberalized in 1978, and the NFL has seen an explosion of offense since then – especially passing offense.

The Chicago Bears are in a precarious position – they have to win this year, or blow up their offense and start over. Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton will both have to go if the Bears fail to win at least 9 games. At the start of this season, however, it appears that no quarterbacks will be available in the 2009 NFL draft worth making a franchise signal-caller.

There is one guy that a lot of people like, and I can’t figure out the reason. If the Bears drafted him and played him at quarterback, it would torpedo their organization for a good eight or ten years. I am, of course, referring to 20-rushing touchdown / 20-passing touchdown one-time national champion Tim Tebow out of Florida.

Tim Tebow will not be a good NFL quarterback. Tim Tebow will not even be a serviceable NFL quarterback. Tim Tebow is going to fail in the NFL as a quarterback. This should be apparent to anyone who watches football, but it isn’t. The NFL is not built for running quarterbacks. The only way to be a successful quarterback in today’s National Football League is to be a pocket passer. It helps to be mobile, sure, but if a quarterback uses his running and passing abilities to equal measure, he will not succeed in the NFL. Michael Vick, for all of his faults, had the greatest scrambling ability of any NFL quarterback ever. He broke Bobby Douglass’ 34-year-old record of 968 rushing yards for a quarterback in 2006 when he rushed for 1,039 yards. What did it get his team? It got them a 7 – 9 record. Vick had one NFC title game appearance, in 2004 – a 27 – 10 loss to the Eagles. If Michael Vick’s scrambling ability could not usher in a new paradigm where scrambling quarterbacks led the way and pocket passers were left in the dust, it cannot be done. At least, it cannot be done without a change in rules making it easier for quarterbacks to scramble and more difficult for them to pass. As presently constructed, NFL rules render running quarterbacks unviable. How many quarterbacks must fail, and how many college QBs must have a potential career wasted because their college coach doesn’t force them to learn how to be a pocket passer? Hey Terrell Pryor – I’m watching you, and I’m going to watch you be awful in the NFL, too.

People think Tim Tebow is different for some reason. Here’s why – it’s because he’s a white scrambling quarterback. Oddly, people (white and black) tend to think that pocket passing is a “white man’s” method of passing, while it is more natural for black quarterbacks to use their athletic ability and scramble. This is ridiculous, and perpetuated by (who else?) the media. Just ask Hall-of-Famer (and pocket passer) Warren Moon what the most effective strategy is. It’s not a black thing or a white thing, it’s a “pocket-passing works and scrambling doesn’t” thing. Tim Tebow is not going to succeed where the others failed because he’s more talented, or a better runner, or a better passer, or because he’s white where all the other running QB’s weren’t. He’s not going to succeed at all because he’s a running quarterback. Hopefully, Tim Tebow - as a white running QB spectacularly failing in the NFL - will put this myth to bed once and for all. I just hope he doesn’t put it to bed while playing for the Chicago Bears.

This brings me back to the Bears, as was my goal. If Rex Grossman flops, it’s likely that the Bears’ fan base will not want to see them draft another quarterback out of Florida anyway (a school that has produced an astounding number of quarterback flops in recent years, actually). Another option they could go for is Curtis Painter, a pocket passer, out of Purdue… except that Kyle Orton also attended Purdue, and they might want to stay away from that school too. So what options do they have? Their only option, really, is to succeed this season and make it irrelevant. Hopefully that loss to the Chiefs was just preseason jitters and not a harbinger of a terrible year to come.

As a youth, Ja Doe attended 15 Norwich Navigators games. He saw a loss, two wins, eleven consecutive losses, and a win before the team became a San Francisco Giants affiliate and he ceased going out of principle.