Wait Till Next Year...

Watched the final game of a very disappointing season. Vin Scully, always seeking the silver lining, mentioned something at the top of the game that surprised me. In the fifty years since the Dodgers left Brooklyn, they've had 38 winning seasons. The only team with more in that time is the Yankees with 40. Not particularly comforting after a season that held such promise not all that long ago, and in a final game when they played like they couldn't wait to get on the bus. The Dodgers were absolutely shellacked today, but still finished a game over .500. Juan Pierre? Still sucks, and looked particularly hapless out in the field today. Next year!

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That choking sound you may have heard was the Mets' season ending. The Mets had a seven game lead in the division with fourteen games to go, and didn't make the playoffs. I've followed the Mets since their first season, but this season I'm really enjoying the schadenfreude. I've spent most of the season listening to the noontime hosts on WFAN basically dismiss the rest of the National League, and the NL West in particular, as not being at the same level as the Amazin's. Yeah. Right. Have fun on the golf course, guys.

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Jimmy Rollins took a lot of heat for his spring training comments that he thought the Phillies were going to win the division. The New York fans and media took his comments as a personal affront, and roasted him for it. Rollins backed it up, though, hitting .296/.344/.531 on the year. Meanwhile, the man the NY media proclaimed as the best shortstop in the division, if not the league, turned into the East Coast version of Slappy McPopup down the stretch, hitting a pathetic .205/.279/.333 in September.

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Dear Bud Black,

What in god's name were you thinking about? The Padres need to win one game to win the NL wild card, and you have Jake Peavy, the best pitcher in the league, available to pitch it. Instead, you decided to trot out Bret Tomko. Bret Tomko? Is it any wonder that the Brewers cleaned your clock today? Of course you will have Peavy on the mound tomorrow for your play-in game with the Rox, but you could've avoided the whole thing. Weird things can happen in a single game. Ever hear of Bucky Dent?

Best regards...

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Meanwhile, Colorado went ahead in the bottom of the eighth today, and held on to force the play-in. The game will be at Coors, and Josh Fogg will oppose Peavy. It's an odd choice, and it surprised the heck out of Vin Scully, who put it as delicately as he could, "Josh Fogg, who is, uh, an ordinary pitcher..., but he's going to pitch the big game."