Last night the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Tampa Bay Rays 4-3 to win the World Series 4 games to 1. As a die hard Rays fan this is a sad, sad post for me. Congratulations to the Phillies, and hopefully the majority of your non-douchebag fans will enjoy this championship. The Rays will be back next season, and I'm not that down about this as we are the AL East and AL Champions, have a young team bound to return as an even better team next season, and we did a lot better than anyone expected. Congrats again to the Phillies as you are the champions of the sport that seems to be the predominant favorite on this blog.

Don't worry baseball fans, we will have more than enough off-season baseball news to carry your interests. Yet for the time being, since it is the NHL, both MLS and Premier League soccer, NBA and NFL seasons we will shift more of our focus to those leagues. Also my write up of my trip to game two of the World Series will be up soon.

It's hard to give an award of this nature to a person who has spoken so much truth, especially when that person's team just won the World Series, and yet regardless, this week I'm forced to give the award to...

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Scott Eyre.

Dumbass!

• Rays to wall: Oh hai, I'm gonna put my back up against you, k?

• Joe Blanton spent the vast majority of his career in the AL, meaning he rarely had to bat. He hit a home run today that looked better than Ryan Howard's. How does that have to make the Rays feel?

• Evan Longoria is slumping at the worst possible time.

• Sonnanstine should not have gone for as long as he did. He was pitching a terrible game.

• For a game with so many home runs, it sure was boring.

• Chase Utley may very well be considered the best 2B of all time when his career is done.

• Even if the Rays don't win this Series, this is a very, very good team. I have a feeling this isn't the last we'll see of them at all.

• I can't lie, I stopped watching after Ryan Howard's second homer.
  

• The Rays may be in trouble. Matt Garza isn't their best pitcher, but he's been their ace so far in the playoffs. Jamie Moyer has been much worse at home than on the road all season, and yet he managed to strike out five Rays while only walking one on the way to giving up only 3 runs in 6.1 innings. This is a game that the matchup dictates the Rays should have won hands down.

• If the Phillies win the World Series, Carlos Ruiz may get the MVP award, officially making him the worst MVP since David Eckstein. It could also be Shane Victorino. Slightly better than Eckstein, but still a terrible MVP.
  

• Matt Garza was no slouch in this game, either. He struck out seven batters and walked two, but he gave up four runs while Moyer only gave up three.

• BJ Upton is a HUGE threat on the basepaths. This kid is loaded with talent, and not in the Juan Pierre "he can't hit, but man, when he's on, he will probably steal a base" way, but in the "this guy can hurt you in a lot of ways" way.

• The Rays may have missed their best chance to guarantee that the Series goes back to Tampa. By no means is this Series locked up for Philly, but the Rays are going to have to win a tougher game than this one to send it back to Tropicana Field.
  

When Willie Parker sustained a sprained MCL during the Steelers week 3 game against the Eagles, the Steelers announced that he would miss the next week's game against the Ravens and the following game against Jacksonville, but would likely be back after the bye week that followed. It is now week 8, and it looks like Parker will miss the game vs the Giants.

After the bye week, Parker went from being listed as probable on the team's injury report to being questionable, and eventually sitting the game out, giving Mewelde Moore his second straight start. This week, the Super Bowl's record holder for the longest run again went from probable to doubtful for the team's game agains the New York Giants. This leads to the question: is Willie Parker more injured than the Steelers are letting on?

Of course, this could all be due to the fact that Mewelde Moore has played incredibly well in Parker's absence, and due to Parker being an offensive star the Steelers see no need to rush him back and risk worsening the injury when the team isn't hurting much from his loss. That would make sense, especially considering that the team already lost rookie running back Rashard Mendenhall for the season.

In my opinion, however, Willie Parker is probably hurt worse than Pittsburgh is letting on. The Giants have a great rushing defense as well as a spectacular pass rush, making this a tough offensive matchup for the Steelers with or without Parker. With this in mind, it seems to me that a team would not normally go to battle with the defending Super Bowl champions starting a halfback that was originally listed as #4 on their depth chart if they had a choice in the matter. If this is a case of being more cautious than they have to be with Parker, one would think that would have to end this week. The fact that Willie Parker is listed as doubtful on the injury report indicates to me that something is seriously wrong with him, which is disconcerting to Steelers fans to say the least.

After my World Series Game One bullet points, some of our readers may be wondering where the Game Two bullet points are. The answer is that they're not coming. As posted earlier on this blog, Peter and Thomas were both in attendance for Game Two in Tampa, so I imagine that their write-up of the game will be much better than mine would be, due to having a live perspective.

Two posts in one day? Madness! Madness, I tell you!

Here are some of my thoughts from the first game of the World Series:

• The Phillies pitching coach is named Rich Dubee. Stoners have never giggled so much at a sports name.

• Carl Crawford, of all people, hit a homer. Not typically a power hitter, that Crawford fellow.

• The "fake to second, throw to second" move has never worked. Ever. If you showed me video evidence of it working, I still wouldn't believe that it has ever worked.

• Barack Obama is running campaign ads in the World Series. This man's face is inescapable. Even in Madden. He also used his "parents need to turn of the TV" line in one of the ads, which I'm sure Fox and MLB are thrilled about.

• Joe Maddon had the most calm discussion I've ever seen a manager have with the home plate umpire about what he considered a balk.

• At one point, the commentators referred to the "quality start" stat and said that it was "invented by agents to help sell their players." Honestly, why do you get to be commentators if you're just going to be flat wrong like that? The term "quality start" was invented by sportswriter John Lowe to describe a game where a pitcher threw for 6 or more innings while giving up 3 or fewer runs. It's widely regarded as a better evealuation of a pitcher's talent than win-loss record, because it lets you know that the pitcher didn't get a lucky W while giving up 7 runs or something, while at the same time letting you know they didn't get an unlucky L when they only gave up one run (which happens a lot...ask Johan Santana). Still, though, it's near the bottom of the list of important pitching stats, and I imagine that most sports agents don't make it their main selling point.

• Former Pirates GM Dave Littlefield drafted LHP Bryan Bullington, who projected to be a third starter, first overall ahead of both BJ Upton AND Scott Kazmir. Never more than these playoffs has that decision angered me more.
  

Starting this week, I'll be introducing a new feature to the blog, termed "Dumbest Player of the Week." Every Wednesday (or thereabouts), I'll blog about an athlete that showed exceptional stupidity either on or off the field.

The inaugural candidate for this shameful award is Baltimore Ravens DE Terrell Suggs.

Dumbass!

So after a few phone calls Sixty Feet, Six Inches is going on a road trip! Sadly, Nate will not be joining us. Nothing against the man, we love him very much, but the offer extended to us only allowed for two people. So here we go, the first ever road trip for Sixty Feet, Six Inches.


Now for those of you "in the know" this blog is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Which means St. Petersburg is quite a long distance away. So Thomas and I are forgoing our Thursday classes, and late Wednesday classes in favor of going to see the World Series. We'll be there for game two, along with my father. We'll take pictures of the game, the drive, and anything that seems applicable. Well that's all for now. More to come.

I don't have words to describe how insane this is. This is one of the coolest feelings I've ever had as a sports fan. There is a chance that I could be flying out to St. Pete for game two. If it does, we will post pictures, and I will report fully on it.

As much as I hate the Flyers and their fans, this is good stuff:



Not only can you hear the boos, if you look in the stands you can see several Obama/Biden signs in the crowd.

A quote from the LA Times reads "Despite pleas from the scoreboard at the Wachovia Center, which read "Flyers fans, show Philadelphia's class and welcome America's No. 1 hockey mom, Sarah Palin," ABC News' Jake Tapper reports that the booing was so prevalent that the music had to be cranked up to "deafening" levels in order to compete with the fans from the city of Brotherly Love."

As I am an Obama supporter, all I can say is "AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!" If only someone had thrown a battery.

This is a subject I feel hasn't gotten much attention on this particular blog, that of playoff baseball. It's not like we don't care, it's just that only one of the three writers has their favorite team in the playoffs this year. For me, this isn't an unusual occurrence, but for the particularly painstaking way that it happened to Thomas, and the fact that it's the first time Peter's Rays have made the playoffs (or even had a winning season), I can see how Thomas would be too bummed to write and Peter would be too excited to collect his thoughts.

In fact, it seems that we've managed to let the entire divisional series of both leagues go unwritten about, as well as what has already happened in the league championship series. That changes...right now.

We all know what happened in the divisional series. In the NL, much to the surprise of everyone, the Cubs got swept and the Brewers only won a single game. In the AL, we all know that the Angels got beat and the Red Sox and the Rays beat the White Sox. Nothing is news about these series. Anything I can say, you've already heard. Any opinion I can give, you've heard a thousand times. I'm about to make it a thousand and one by hitting you with these bullet points.

• I don't believe in curses. The Cubs are a fantastic team, but I think the Dodgers have been a better team than them since adding Manny Ramirez. Their record wouldn't suggest it, but the Dodgers are a good team in spite of Ned Colletti. It also helps that Joe Torre finally got the nerve to sit Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones. This is not to take anything at all away from the Cubs, however. If the Cubs can keep this lineup together, they'll be back. In fact, I'd give them a better chance than the Dodger team that beat them to be back. If they can keep the team together and possibly replace Fukudome with a more productive player, eventually they WILL win a World Series.
  

• The Brewers will also be back. It's easy to believe the hype that by losing Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia, they're not coming back next year. What people often forget is just how good their lineup is, and just how good Yovani Gallardo is. Gallardo is probably better than Ben Sheets already. Sabathia will be a big loss, but I think the Brewers squeeze back into the playoffs next year. Unlike the Dodgers, the Phillies were really not the better team. That's what makes the playoffs exciting: there's always the potential for an upset.
  

• Odds are that the White Sox will not be back. They put together a surprisingly impressive team this year, but it's not one that was set up for long-term success. I think the White Sox miss the playoffs next year while they inject some youth into their roster, and then they'll be back the year after.

• The Angels will be back. Bank on it. Francisco Rodriguez is NOT a big loss for them. (I'll post on that a little later this week.)

• The Rays are not too young to win it all. You'd think after Evan Longoria and BJ Upton both homered twice in the ALDS, the announcers would shut up about the pressure getting to these youngsters, but alas, the Red Sox had to go and win Game 1 of the ALCS and fan the flames.

• Speaking of the ALCS, I'm not sure who to root for to win it all. The Rays are kind of the feel good story (I say "kind of" because anyone that really follows baseball has seen the Rays coming for a while now), and I'm a sucker for those. On the other hand, they'd be the second expansion team since 1992 to win the World Series. That would make them the second team to come into existence and win the World Series before the Pirates even broke their streak of losing seasons, and that would really sting. Compounding this is the fact that I don't think there's a roster in Major League Baseball with more likable players than the Red Sox. My best friend is a Yankee fan who hates everything Boston related, and even went so far as to burn our friend's Red Sox hat in a bonfire, and even he likes David Ortiz. It's impossible to hate that man. Plus, they have my boy Jason Bay on the team now, and he's really murdering the ball. With those things in mind, it's really hard to remember how much I hate Boston fans. The Red Sox winning their third World Series since 2004 and thus getting all kinds of dynasty talk surrounding the team would just make those fans even more annoying. They're already obnoxious enough with the Patriots dynasty. There's no need to get two teams involved in this.

Due to the increasing length of our blog posts, we've implemented a new feature in the site design. Now, whenever we make a longer post, there will be a couple of paragraphs and then a link that says "MOAR!" Click on that link to expand the post and keep reading. It won't open a new window or tab, just drop down the rest of the post in the window you're on. When you're done, click the link in the same location that says "LESS!" and the text will collapse.

Unfortunately, as of right now this change is not retroactive. That means that you'll still have to scroll through all the long posts on this page, but in the future, it should be much easier for you, our beloved readers, to find topics interesting to you without having to scroll through the text of ones that are not. If we can find a way to make it retroactive, we'll get on it ASAP so the whole site will be a lot nicer on the eyes.

EDIT 10/12/2008: Found a way to make it retroactive. Changed all of the long posts on the front page, but it's quite a tedious process, so it may take a couple weeks to get the whole blog updated.

To see how this new feature works, just go ahead and give the "MOAR!" link a click.

Pretty neat, huh? To collapse this, just click on "LESS!"

In case you haven't heard from ESPN, most sports analysts these days say the Steelers are among the NFL's elite. In spite of their pitiful showing against the Eagles, I'll have to agree. The Steelers are 4-1 so far this year, and they're putting together a pretty impressive campaign. Their win on Sunday against Jacksonville only makes my belief stronger.

Any discussion of the Steelers and how they got here starts with Ben Roethlisberger. In my opinion, Ben is one of the most underrated QBs in the NFL. He's a true franchise QB, and his team lives and dies with him. Some of his detractors say that he doesn't throw the ball very many times in a game, I say that's because he's so efficient that he doesn't need to.

Statistically, there are a lot of better QBs than Big Ben. What's important to remember, however, is that stats don't tell the whole story in football.

I know this statement may be surprising to many of the long-term readers who know I'm such a stathead when it comes to baseball, but we're talking apples and oranges here. Baseball is a much more individualistic sport than football, and as such stats have a smaller margin of error when determining true ability. If a batter has a line-drive percentage of 28%, there's a chance that it could be higher if he were thrown more fastballs or lower if he were thrown more cutters, but the largest part of it is influenced by the batter. Due to this, it's easy to follow my credo in baseball stats that "stats don't tell the whole story, just the most important parts."

Football, however, is completely and totally a team sport. Ben Roethlisberger has 10 people working with him and 11 working against him, and they're all trying to accomplish different things at the same time. There's no one-on-one as with a pitcher and a batter. Ben's stats are reliant not only on his own ability, but the ability of his teammates to catch the balls he throws, the ability of the defense, the ability of the offensive line to block the pass rush, the ability of his RB to sell a play-fake, and myriad other factors. No statistic in football is anywhere near purely individualistic, thus stats are more of a scouting supplement than a sure thing.

What Ben Roethlisberger does well is enhance the ability of his teammates to make a play and at the same time minimize their shortcomings. He has a subpar o-line to say the least, and yet his ability to break a tackle and get the ball out puts his playmakers in the position to make things happen. In my opinion, he's one of the best at doing this.

2. The defense

Throughout history, great defenses have been a staple of the Steelers franchise. This year is no exception, but this defense is off-the-charts good.

The combination of James Harrison and LaMarr Woodley coming off the edge is lethal, to say the least. So far, these two alone have combined for 12 sacks, 3 forced fumbles and an INT. The play that swung the game against the Ravens in the Steelers favor was one where Harrison got in the backfield and forced Joe Flacco to fumble, and Woodley picked up the ball and returned it for a TD. The outside linebackers in Dick LeBeau's 3-4 defensive scheme play the most important pass-rushing roll, and I've never seen a group do it better than these two have this year. They're giving opposing QBs nightmares.

Combine this with the always exceptional play of Casey Hampton on the d-line to open up penetration for the defense, James Farrior in the middle to be one of the league's better run-stoppers, and Lawrence Timmons being a versatile middle linebacker, and you're got trouble in the box. Add in a fully healthy Troy Polamalu, who already has 3 INTs this year, and I think it's fair to say that the defense is the biggest reason the Steelers are 4-1 right now.

3. Chris Kemoeatu

The offensive line last year, as a whole, was awful. The lone bright spots were Alan Faneca, who everyone knew would be leaving as a free agent at the season's end, and Marvel Smith, who spent most of the season injured. When Faneca departed, many Steelers fans were wondering if the line would be able to improve on their sad performance from last year.

As a whole, the answer is no. This line is still giving up way too many sacks in pass protection (although it would help if Roethlisberger could get the ball out faster), but the running game is looking much better than it was. Part of this is because Justin Hartwig replaced Sean Mahan at center. Hartwig is only an average center, but that's still a big improvement over the job Mahan was doing, if that tells you anything. The biggest reason for the improvement in the running game, however, is Chris Kemoeatu replacing Alan Faneca at left guard.

This guy is a beast. While I wouldn't say that he is a better blocker than Faneca was in his prime, I will say that I think he's better than the wrong-side-of-30-years Faneca is today. Kemoeatu pulls so well that you'd think Faneca never left, and he hits like a sledgehammer. He has quick feet, knockout power, and a great ability to get to the next level. For the life of me, I can't figure out why he wasn't starting over Kendall Simmons at right guard last year.

The vast majority of the big runs Willie Parker and the other Steelers backs have been able to pull off this year comes when they're running behind Chris Kemoeatu. If you need any more evidence, check out these posts from postgameheroes.com, who, by the way, do excellent analysis every week.

4. Depth

The Steelers are deep at a number of positions in ways that would make most NFL teams green with envy. It's because of this that they were able to win two straight games despite significant injuries to the roster. The Steelers are deep in positions including, but not limited to:

• Running back. The Steelers are probably the most RB deep team in the NFL, and in today's era of the multiple RB system vs the feature back systems of bygone years, that's saying a lot. The only team that can give Pittsburgh a run for their money as far as RB depth is concerned are the Giants. If you doubt me, I propose a challenge to you: find me another team in the NFL that can be down to its #4 running back due to injury and still have a game where their starting RB has 99 rushing yards and 54 receiving yards. Willie Parker has been out for two games, Rashard Mendenhall was knocked out for the season by Ray Lewis, and Carey Davis was also sidelined with an ankle sprain that game, and yet the Steelers were able to say "no problem" and let Mewelde Moore, Minnesota's former 3rd down back, do his thing against a tough Jacksonville defense. The Steelers are so good at this position that they were able to cut Najeh Davenport and send Gary Russell to the practice squad after the preseason because they had so many skilled RBs. On most teams, Najeh Davenport would have a role as either a third down back or somebody to spell the starter, and Gary Russell would be a goal-line back. Due to circumstances, Gary Russell has been recalled and Davenport has been resigned, which is a testament to the hard decision the coaching staff must have had to make.

• Quarterback. In the NFL draft this year, the Steelers took former Oregon phenom Dennis Dixon, with plans of making him their primary backup once Charlie Batch retired. Batch himself had served as one of the best backups in the league during his time with Pittsburgh. I know as a Steeler fan, I was never too worried when Ben Roethlisberger got injured. Even though he's the face of the franchise, Charlie Batch can come in and play good football for a game or two. He's not a world-beater, and he won't get you a Super Bowl, but as a backup, he's pretty much the cream of the crop. This year he went down with an injury, and the Steelers signed two QBs to take his place - Daunte Culpepper and Byron Leftwich. They were all set to compete for the job as Roethlisberger's primary backup until Culpepper made it public that he had a desire to compete directly with Roethlisberger for the starting job. As a result, the backup position kin dof defaulted to Leftwich. Of the two, I would prefer to have Culpepper, but as far as second string QBs go, it's pretty much a win-win situation for Pittsburgh. If Roethlisberger goes down this year, a former starting QB in a system not too dfferent from Pittsburgh's will step in to take his place. If they both go down, I have confidence that Dennis Dixon can provide a couple big plays while the others are sidelined.

• Safety. Everyone knows how good Troy Polamalu is. Less heralded is Ryan Clark, the starting free safety, who isn't an INT or sack machine, but who can do the job of being the last man between the runner and the goal-line very well. He's a hard hitter, and he's usually in position to stop the big play from being a huge one. Beyond the starters are backup SS Tyrone Carter, who could probably start on some teams, and Anthony Smith. There's a big drop-off in performance between Polamalu and Carter, but it's more to do with Polamalu being an exceptional DB than Carter being a bad one. Tyrone Carter is able to get the job done efficiently when called on to do so. Anthony Smith is most famous for running his mouth about the Patriots last year and getting shown up for it, but he's also an incredibly hard hitting backup FS. He's a raw product, which is why he's not starting, and as the Pats showed, he can be beaten deep. However, he does have the ability to put a hit on somebody big enough to make them think twice about coming at him with the ball. In most cases, Tyrone Carter will start at FS ahead of Smith if Ryan Clark goes down, but in the event that Anthony Smith plays he's an adequate backup. Last year he played in all 16 games and in the playoffs, and he started 10 times. He showed why he's on the roster with 53 solo tackles and 2 INTs returned for a combined 50 yards.

• Defensive line. This one is a big surprise, as last season when Brett Keisel went down, it quickly became apparent that the Steelers had absolutely no talent along the d-line past the starters. The Steelers didn't draft a d-lineman. Instead they signed Orpheus Roye as a free agent, who was a special teams ace for the Steelers in the mid-to-late 90s, but who is not of much use to the team in his 13th NFL season. However, Nick Eason has improved dramatically since last year, and while Chris Hoke is certainly not Casey Hampton, he's done such a good job filling in for Big Snack for the past two games that some Steeler fans are calling for him to start. Even Orpheus Roye has done about as well as you would expect a 35 year old defensive lineman to do in his limited action.

Obviously, the Steelers are a beatable team. They have a lot of weaknesses to go with their many strengths, chief among them a paltry offensive line and horrendous kick and punt return teams. However, despite all of their weaknesses, only the Eagles have been able to exploit them enough to achieve a victory against Pittsburgh this season. We'll have to keep watching to see if Pittsburgh's strengths continue to beat out their weaknesses, or if their glaring weaknesses will eventually catch up to them.