How I’d Change Baseball

I don’t think it’s good for the game… and by ‘the game’ I mean ‘the fans.’

mlb-logo.jpgIt’s the last day of July. It’s the Major League Baseball trading deadline. Two reasons not to like the day.

August has always been the lesser summer month to me. Not sure why. Maybe it’s the finality associated with it.

My objection to MLB’s deadline is a little more flushed out. I don’t think it’s good for the game… and by ‘the game’ I mean ‘the fans.’

Teams should work with whomever they had when the season began. They should be able to move players up-and-down from their farm system, but not team-to-team.

No more ringers–and isn’t that what trading to get Lee or Halladay really amounts to?

No–let me use a stronger term. They’re mercenaries.

Contending teams trading for stronger players and mortgaging their future for short term gains upsets the natural balance and chemistry a team has. Think Terrell Owens and the Eagles, but imagine it in mid-season!

Picking up players also removes certain strategic components of the game-within-the-game just as having a designated hitter does.

At the same time it’s disrespectful to the fans of the ‘donor’ team. Remember them?

Cleveland and Toronto I feel your pain even though, as a Phils fan, it’s my potential gain.

T.O To Go

A few minutes ago, Helaine yelled to me upstairs. “Are you going to write about the Eagles in the blog?”

That was her way of saying, “Write about the Eagles in your blog.” OK – who am I to resist, especially after such an emotional victory.

If you’re not a football fan, let me get you caught up in about ten seconds.

The Eagles are Philadelphia’s football team. They used to have a player… a star player, named Terrell Owens. Though he was a pain in the ass, he was our pain in the ass. At least he was until he became such a pain he threatened to create dissension within the team.

T.O. was let go.

A guy’s got to earn a living, so Terrell to his number 81 and went to the Dallas Cowboys. In Philadelphia, the Cowboys are tied with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Kim Il Jung at the bottom of the popularity polls.

To make things a little juicier, T.O. was involved in some sort of incident with the Dallas police. Whether he attempted to commit suicide or just had an accident – who knows? The next day he was practicing on the field and smiling. It was weird.

Today the Cowboys came to play the Eagles for the first time since Terrell left. Fox saw fit to make it their marquee game, shown nationwide at 4:15 PM EDT. Anyone even peripherally connected with sports was talking about it. There was no end to the hype.

Quickly, the Eagles went to a 10-0 lead. Helaine and I pinched ourselves. Then we remembered, this is football the king of non-linear games. Ten points in the first quarter means nothing.

We were so right.

The game seesawed back and forth. Donovan McNabb, Eagles quarterback had a pretty good game. T.O. was ineffective. Still, the game was close.

Late in the fourth quarter, the Eagles were up by seven, when a missed tackle, long pass and offensive pass interference penalty (all on the same play) moved the Cowboys eighteen feet from tying the game.

We had seen this before. So close – yet so far. When the Giants tied the Eagles in week two, they went on to win. Would the same fate befall the Eagles again?

Simply – no.

With the Cowboys charging, Drew Bledsoe threw to the end zone. The pass was caught, but by the Eagles Lito Sheppard who scampered 102 yards for an Eagles touchdown. Case closed.

Here’s the one awful part of this game. We were on an emotional roller coaster, as if it were meaningful in our lives. It’s only a game, but we allow the football season in general and the Eagles in particular to stake a claim on our lives.

Already, in the Eagles loss to the Giants, we took an emotional hit that lasted a few days. We were depressed as if something really awful had gone on.

Even though I can intellectualize the real meaning of football, that’s not strong enough to overcome my emotional attachment. It’s just as bad for Helaine, maybe worse.

The Eagles were picked to finish last in the NFC East. Now they’re leading the way. The emotion has just begun.

Football Season Ends

The Eagles lost another one last night, falling to the Washington Redskins. The Eagles are now dead last in their division.

One of the Eagles’ problems was the missing Terrell Owens. Owens has been the team’s biggest star and biggest problem child, all at once.

He has criticized his fellow players and coaches and, it seems, taken a swing at a former player who is considered the team’s “ambassador.” Now he has been suspended.

Good going Terrell.

From The Associated Press: This was the second time Owens has been suspended during his controversial 10-year career. In 2000, he was suspended one game by San Francisco coach Steve Mariucci following his infamous touchdown celebrations on the Dallas Cowboys’ famed star logo at the center of Texas Stadium.

Owens clashed with management this summer and earned a one-week exile from training camp after a heated dispute with Reid that followed a shouting match with offensive coordinator Brad Childress.

As a kid I thought my sports heroes were heroes in real life as well. It’s not so. I was innocent. Players like Terrell Owens just go to reinforce that realization.

Owens is now suspended and it’s doubtful he’ll ever play for the Eagles again. He’ll probably find another team sometime soon.

The real shame is, I’m not sure he’s capable of being happy. I’ve known people like that… worked with people like that. It’s no fun. They become their own worst enemy. There’s no doubt that description applies to Owens.

Meanwhile. as an Eagles fan, the season seems to have ended early.

Eagles – Helaine’s Got The Sound Down By Now

We are die hard Eagles fans, we Foxes. Before we caught on that even non-drinkers could watch the game at a bar, we listened on the computer. Before that we scrounged as best we could.

Being an Eagles fan is an exercise in self flagellation. They have found nearly every way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

After losing last year’s Super Bowl they proceeded to self destruct in the off season.

Superstar Terrell Owens started sniping at superstar quarterback about the same time the ref shot off the gun ending the game. Had the gun contained more than blanks, who knows what would have happened.

Owens also protested his superstar contract. It didn’t pay enough.

Then there were injuries and unhappy talk from other players. No one was well. No one was happy. It was the Eagles as only a true fan knows them.

I started as an Eagles fan through a strange quirk. A friend had tickets. That first game was played in the sun, on a warm late summer’s day. An American flag covered the entire length of the field as I walked in and gazed down at The Vet.

It would be like prejudging airline service based on airline ads. I started attending games anyway.

By the time that first season ended on an amazingly cold December day, the Eagles had managed to go 4 – 10&#185. I was hooked.

Tonight is the first game of the new season and the Eagles are playing in front of a national audience on Monday Night Football. As I type, they are down 7-14. The league’s most accurate kicker has missed two so far.

Hey, the night’s young.

Before the game began a scuffle broke out on the field. Forty five minutes before the game began, a ref threw a flag! Jeremiah Trotter of the Eagles was disqualified.

The Atlanta Falcons drew first blood. They flowed down the field like water into New Orleans. They were a torrent. Before long they did it again.

This is not to say the Eagles aren’t playing too. They scored a touchdown and missed those two aforementioned field goals.

The game is young. There’s still a full half to go. The Eagles could turn it around and win big… or get blown out.

Meanwhile, at home, Helaine has a game plan going. The next few sentences are based on my 20+ years experience with her.

She turned on the set, but kept the volume low. Then, after the Falcons scored, she turned it off entirely. At the moment, it is Helaine in the darkened house, the flickering TV dimly lighting the room – but no sound.

I would call her, but… Well, I value our relationship too much too call now. She is in pre-mourning, if you will. Even if the Eagles win she will have spent the entire evening knowing they would lose.

Hey, that’s what real Eagles fandom is all about.

&#185 – Back then the season was mercifully 14 games.

The Super Bowl

This is much too painful to talk about – much. I’m not sure if the season wouldn’t have been easier to take had the Eagles gone down in an earlier round.

As someone who has watched Philadelphia play all season, I can tell you the team out there last night was not indicative of what I had come to know. I’m not talking about forced errors by the Patriots. It’s really all about McNabb’s inability to accurately pass.

Maybe it was jitters. I would be nuts under a similar circumstance.

What was astounding for the Eagles was the performance of Terrell Owens. I can’t say enough about how much of a gamer he was, especially coming back with pins and a plate in his ankle.

On the other hand, I wonder if we’ll ever see Todd Pinkston as an Eagle again. He left last night injured, but how injured? This season, it seems he has avoided contact.

Don’t Talk To Me About The Super Bowl

There is unanimity of opinion. The Eagles will get blown out by the Patriots. As an Eagles fan this is disheartening.

Of course I choose not to believe that.

This opinion is widely held by the sports intelligencia but repeated by everyone who has ever seen a game… and many who haven’t. People feel obliged, knowing I’m an Eagles fan, to make sure I know. Thanks.

I will say this. The mouthing off of Freddy Mitchell and Terrell Owens’ possible return are both distractions. The Pats seem cool and collected while the Eagles are acting as if they’ve snuck into a bar with a phony ID.

It is surprising so many Connecticut residents are ready to back the Pats. Have people already forgotten how Robert Kraft played us like the discard in a high school love triangle? What he did to Connecticut was mean spirited, to say the least&#185.

Luckily none of this matters. Only what happens on the field will be meaningful. I think (hope) the Eagles are up to the task.

&#185 – Astoundingly, Governor Rowland’s press release on this matter is still posted on the web. How could the highest officials in the state have been that naive?

Watching the Eagles at the Bar

This is two out of three weeks now. Helaine and I have become ‘regulars’ at Eli’s where the bar is ringed with TV sets showing satellite delivered football feeds.

We decided, so we’d get a good seat, to go at 12:30 for the 1:00 PM start. Maybe we could have gone a little later, but not much. The place filled up pretty quickly with groups of fans clustered near individual sets and games.

To our right a group of Detroit fans watched, cheered, and complained, as the Lions played . When Detroit lost on a botched extra point with a few seconds to go, they were crestfallen. As fans they have lived a life built on heartbreak.

As ways to spend an afternoon go, this is pretty good. Within a few minutes of sitting Helaine ordered a soda and I had some coffee. Then as the game began, so did the food!

Actually, this allows me to question the whole economics of football at a bar. There’s no doubt we got our money’s worth. The food was good. We were thrilled to watch the Eagles. Would it be cheaper over the long run to drop cable and just get DirecTV and the NFL package?

The problem becomes my high speed Internet package. The cable company would ramp up its cost if that was the only service I bought from them – and I’m not about to get my Internet access from anyone else right now.

Something to ponder before next season.

The Eagles’ game was painful to watch. The Eagles went up 6-0 early. The Eagles scored a touchdown but David Akers, who is to kicking as FedEx is to packages, failed to deliver. It was 7-6 a few minutes later, and Dallas stayed ahead most of the way.

One of the Eagles star receivers, Todd Pinkston, dropped another ball in what seemed like a case of hearing footsteps. If, all of a sudden, he’s lost his nerve, that’s troublesome. Then, all star receiver Terrell Owens went down with ankle problems. It’s too early to know how serious that injury is.

Toward the end the Eagles scored to go ahead, and did win. But it was an ugly win for a team that has been a dominating force in football.

Going into this game the Eagles had so little more to gain by winning that a performance like this goes down as a moral loss as much as a “W.”

Next week they’re playing on Monday Night Football. Helaine can watch at home. I will watch at work. We’re out of the bar scene for one week.

The Eagles Win Ugly

The Eagles played the Washington Redskins in this week’s Sunday night matchup. ESPN isn’t ABC, and Sunday night isn’t Monday night. In other words this is less special nationwide, but critical for us, a family of Eagles fans.

It started terribly as the Redskins returned the opening kickoff most of the way down the field and then quickly scored. Then, amazingly, the Eagles returned the favor, scoring seconds later on their first possession. It looked like this would be a wide open shout out.

Bad guess on my part.

Helaine, who scours the Internet for anything good about the Eagles or bad about their opponent, knew there was bad blood between these two teams after Philadelphia had been accused of running up the score the first time they met. Some rumors said the Redskins would play dirty.

Bad guess on her part.

What we ended up watching was an ugly game. Donovan McNabb, one of the top few quarterbacks in the league looked awful. He drilled he ball to the carpet and gave up a critical interception. Terrell Owens, the Eagles trash talking wide receiver, fumbled the ball trying to stretch out a play within spitting distance of the end zone.

I like the ESPN announcers, but by halftime they were starting to sound like ‘homers’ rooting for the Redskins. I find that annoying. At least I did tonight.

The game had heartbreak written all over it. I knew it was bad because Helaine turned down the sound on the TV. Though the Eagles led, the Redskins continued to threaten until an interception in the final seconds locked it up.

The final score: Eagles 17 – Washington 14. It could have easily been the reverse.

The Eagles are now 12-1, much better than anyone could have imagined or asked for. Tonight they were referred to as the only true Super Bowl contender in the NFC. Yet this game only went to reinforce our worry that one off night, one blown play, could end it all.

Go Eagles

I have been an Eagles fan for over 25 years… but I pale in comparison to Helaine. When the Eagles lose, she can’t pick up a newspaper and surfs the Internet cautiously.

Tomorrow, she will get in the car just to listen to WFAN, as they trash the Giants.

The Eagles, especially Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens, looked great in beating the Giants more soundly than the 31-17 score implied.

Is this our year? Stay tuned.