Playoffs

Baseball Playoffs

Though long, as long as 5 hours in one case, the baseball playoffs have been pretty entertaining, full of clutch plays, miscues, good pitching and loads and loads of drama.

As much as I loathed the outcome, Saturday night’s Yankees win was a classic. And it was good to finally see the Angels break through tonight. I thought they were definitely toast this afternoon, especially after Bobby Abreu got thrown out by whom else – Derek Jeter – trying to stretch a leadoff double into a triple.

But Joe Girardi will be mercilessly second guessed for taking out Robertson and bringing in Aceves, with TWO outs and nobody on in the 11th. Aceves gave up back-to-back hits, a single and a long double, and gave the Angels life in the process.

One random note: I think Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are doing a great job announcing this series.

I know he can sound smug, but I think in general McCarver is a pretty fine analyst. He sure has some juju over Mariano Rivera. In 2001, he practically predicted that a blooper against Rivera could drop with the Yankees playing the infield in, and as folks know that is exactly what happened as the Diamondbacks defeated New York to win game 7. Today he mentioned that in that same 2001 World Series game Rivera made a throwing error on a bunt seconds before Rivera made ANOTHER error fielding a bunt.

Despite the pummeling the Dodgers received in game 3 I am still on the LA bandwagon. I thought the game was over tonight when Howard hit that 2-run blast in the first. But the Dodgers made a nice comeback to take the lead as I blog between innings, 4-3.

One other random note: Besides Carolina blue, of course, is there a finer, more beautiful color than Dodger Blue? That uni is a classic; ditto the LA hat.

Greece is in the playoffs, too

The Greek men’s football team will play Ukraine in a two-game playoff with the winner qualifying for the 2010 World Cup. Greece, Ukraine, and six other squads that came in the second in their groups are in the playoffs.

The first game, on November 14^th, is in Athens, and the second game is in Ukraine on November 18^th. Let me know if you want to cover over to watch that contest on Saturday the 14^th.

Greece has some history with Ukraine. One, we civilized them and they use the Cyrillic alphabet. And two, in 2006 the two nations played in the same group, with Ukraine qualifying while Greece, the 2005 European champs, finished a disappointing third.

This year, Ukraine came in second in their group - won by England - and even defeated the English squad 1-0 in London (though in fairness to the Knights of St. George they had already qualified and fielded a B-team in that contest).

Ukraine has some good players who are regulars in the English Premier League, but from a cultural stand point join Moldova, Latvia, and Luxembourg in Greece’s recent run of games versus utterly inconsequential countries.

However, like Switzerland – who defeated Greece twice in the qualifying round - Ukraine also has a sordid history of Nazi collaboration. The Nazi occupiers found many willing collaborators in Ukraine, mainly nationalists who hated that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union (those same folks really hated Jews, too).

All in all it’s a decent draw. Having the first game in Athens should help, and the Hellenic team should want to avenge having Ukraine keep them out of the previous World Cup.

A birth in the world’s most popular sporting event, revenge and pay back for being Nazi collaborators should make it an entertaining two-game playoff.