Giants and Eagles becoming focus of fans after Baseball

With baseball over for fans in New York and Philly the natural coping mechanism a wounded baseball fan utilizes is to move on to concentrating on the fortunes of their favorite football team. The Giants and Eagles are tied atop the NFC east, something of a surprise considering almost everybody and their mother picked the Cowboys to win not only the division but the conference, and with Donovan McNabb joining the Redskins many experts figured they would also be a team to be reckoned with in the division.  As the baseball playoffs just showed us, you never know what’s going to happen in sports, just about every week this season for the Cowboys has been like the Heat’s “big three” debut, pretty bad considering the talent. The Heat will have time to turn it around as every sports analyst in the country has reminded us but the Cowboys are pretty much done. The Redskins have shown signs of being dangerous but at this point in the season they don’t appear to be one of the better teams in the division.

                Giants and Eagle’s seasons going in opposite directions

                While the beginning of the Eagles season seemed brimming with promise due to the surprise resurgence of Michael Vick and the Giants looking dismal thanks to being blown out on a Sunday night game by Eli’s big brother and a mistake riddled game at home against Tennessee which saw the Giants out play the Titans on both sides of the ball, but come up on the short end of the scoreboard.  Since then Vick has been injured and Kevin Colb, along with the rest of the Eagles have been up and down.  The Giants on the other hand have been rock solid consistent with the defense looking like the unit that won them a Super Bowl and the offense finding a good rhythm with Ahmad Bradshaw leading the NCF in rushing and Eli Manning playing well, considering all of the dropped and tipped passes that have been picked off this year. He’s thrown 8 interceptions thus far and at least 4 of them were passes that should have been caught. The Giants have now won 4 in a row, and on Monday night they put the nail in the Cowboys coffin and Tony Romo’s arm in a sling and Eli Manning and Hakeem Nicks carving up the vaunted Dallas secondary.

                The Eagles have been inconsistent with Kolb as the starter, but managed to pull out a victory in San Francisco and a blow out win over the favored Falcons that left the Philly fans praising Kolb for the first time in his career. However the good feelings were quickly forgotten when the Eagles lost a bad game to the Titans last Sunday, Kolb and the offense weren’t to blame for this game, Kolb wasn’t spectacular but he managed to play well enough to keep the Birds in the game. The defense was the unit that hurt the Eagles as Kenny Britt and Kerry Collins hooked up for 3 TD’s.

                Both teams have a bye this week, and have to dig for the rest of the season, Vick will be returning for the Eagles which could energize them and the bye could give them a chance to regroup and turn things around after the bad loss to Tennessee. The Giants have the task of keeping their momentum going after the bye, and after receiving the news that they will be without Defense End Mathias Kiwanuka for the rest of the season.

Yanks and Phils disappoint fans waiting for re-match

Every one up and down the Jersey turnpike was hoping for a rematch of last year’s World Series which pitted the Yankees against the Phillies. The Yankees were the first ones to disappoint with the Phillies quickly following suit. The Yankees were clearly overmatched in this series as the Rangers out pitched and out hit the defending champs along with producing runs far better than the experienced Yanks, forgive the very tired cliché but the Rangers “did the little things” much better than the Yankees. I went to the clinching game 3 against the Twins and the stadium was jumping, granted I was in the right field bleachers in the infamous section 203, but the rest of the stadium seemed to possess the energy you would expect for playoff baseball in the Bronx. After the Yanks disposed of the Twins in 3 games I was sure we were going to win the ALCS, Phil Hughes throwing 7 shutout innings in his first playoff start had be believing we could make up for A.J. Burnett regressing into a play off liability. However, I was being an overconfident Yankee fan; I underestimated Ian Kinsler, Elvis Andrews, Nelson Cruz, Michael Young, Vlad Gurrero and of course the lethal Josh Hamilton who was hitting balls over the right field porch in the stadium by just waving his bat threw the strike zone. Then there was Cliff Lee, who once again stifled the Yankees, frustrating them with his masterful artistry around the strike zone. His ability to change speeds, pitch with power and throw knee buckling breaking pitches is the best I believe I’ve seen since Pedro circa 2000.
            As vaunted as the Rangers lineup is and as amazing as Cliff Lee’s performance was, the Yankees still failed to take advantage of several opportunities to win games throughout the series. Only one player hit over .300 in the ALCS for the bombers, Robinson Cano who hit .348 with 4 homers, which tied a championship series record. Cano’s dominant hitting coupled with his tremendous range and arm at second solidified his spot as the best 2^nd basemen in the game, sorry Phillies fans, he’s better than Utley, check the numbers. Losing Texiera was bad, even though he was 0-14 in the series before his injury, but then A-Rod compounded the problem by hitting .190 in the series with only 2 RBI’s, a far cry from last year’s epic home run binge which helped propel the Bombers to the World Series. Swisher who provided the Yankees with pretty good power throughout the season (28 HR, 88RBI) was anemic whether he was hitting 2^nd in the order or 8^th, going 2-22 in the series, hitting .091. If you think about it as a Yankee fan, it’s really not that surprising, besides the rabid late inning comeback in game one and the back to the wall win in game five, the Rangers outplayed them, if you watched the series you came away believing the Rangers were the better team.
            One thing that eased the considerable pain of this loss was the Phillies immediately losing in Game six of their series against the underdog Giants. When I first arrived in Philadelphia I never really gave much thought to the Phillies, they had been terrible for the majority of my childhood so I never really liked or disliked them. However, ever since the 2009 season the Phillies have become besides the Red Sox the team I root against the most in baseball. Phillies fans hate the Yankees more than they should, they try and discredit the Yankees at every turn and proclaim the Phillies to clearly be the better team. I had my satisfaction last year when the Yankees clearly displayed how the Phillies fans beliefs were misguided. This year had me a little worried, the Yankees looked a little older, especially Jeter who struck out 7 times in the ALCS and the Phillies had a tough line up and an intimidating rotation. However, Halladay proved to be human, Roy Oswalt proved to overrated and Ryan Howard and Chase Utley came up short at the plate, as the Giants entire staff kept the Giants in games and their unheralded line up came up with timely hitting. Rookie Buster Posey proved to be the real deal as he made spectacular plays in the field and came up with clutch hits. Oh well, there’s always next year, time to focus on the Giants and Eagles.