Ryan Braun, his pee and a basement fridge

In Major League Baseball, Ryan Braun is a big name. He should be a bigger name, considering he was named National League Most Valuable Player in 2011, but he plays left field for the Brewers. Milwaukee is not Manhattan and if Braun had put up a .330/33 HR/111 RBI season for a Mets or Yankees team that won a franchise-record number of games he’d be a megastar.

On Thursday Ryan Braun blew up the twitter feed of anyone interested in MLB. And it all came down to where his pee was stored on a particular weekend last October.

In October 2011 a PED (Performance Enhancing Drug) tester asked Mr. Braun, 28, to pee in a cup. This he duly did. The tester, as it was a Saturday, didn’t bring it straight to a FedEx depot as he presumed it would be closed. Instead, he stored the sample in a basement fridge at his home.

The Brewers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series. The Cardinals then, improbably, won the World Series against the Texas Rangers as the people of Milwaukee looked on, satisfied with their hometown team’s record season and their star, Ryan Braun.

All was then quiet in baseball.

That changed in December when it was announced that Braun, who had been named National League MVP in the meantime, had tested positive for a banned substance. Well, “announced” is not really correct. “Leaked” is the correct word. It was leaked, ESPN reported it, and that’s something we’ll come back to.

A positive test would require Braun, as a first-time offender, to serve a 50-game suspension. For anyone unfamiliar with the length of the MLB season (162 games) that’s the equivalent of a footballer being suspended for 12 Premier League games. It is significant.

Braun immediately and publicly pronounced his innocence: “I am completely innocent. This is B.S.”, he tweeted to the local newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. And he appealed the suspension.

In the meantime the debate started in earnest. Talking heads, media scribes, bloggers and tweeters all weighed in on the “Should we strip him of the MVP award?” debate. Some went all-in; others didn’t, taking a more circumspect approach in preferring not to come down on either side until the appeal was heard, ruled upon and an official announcement regarding a suspension actually made.

*As an aside, the world of fantasy baseball was thrown into chaos. Like Schrödinger’s Cat, Braun was now both suspended and not suspended. How low should he be dropped in the rankings? If he was using and he’s been caught, when he comes back after suspension will he be the same player now that he’ll have to stop ‘roiding up? Such were the musings of the armchair GMs of MLB.

In the shadows behind Braun lay MLB’s PED era, that period from the mid-90s until the late 00′s when offensive production went through the roof*. A proper testing policy had been put in place in 2006 with proper penalties. Since then, an assortment of players had tested positive for banned substances – hitters and pitchers; bit-part players and future Hall of Famers – nobody was immune. But a reigning MVP from a fairytale season who’d allegely tested positive during the playoffs? That was a punch in the gut.

* To the educated observer there were numerous reasons for this: a rash of new, smaller ballparks (owners loved to see home runs); the umpires calling a tiny strike zone; rumours about a secret change to a new baseball with a more lively core; the effects of expansion as a weaker level of competition needed time to find its natural balance. Oh, and drugs. Except perhaps not the ones you might think.

It rumbled on through the offseason.

After their amazing 2011 run when they had won the NL Central division for the first time and won a franchise record 96 games, Milwaukee lost their powerful and implausibly-proportioned first baseman, Prince Fielder – 5′ 11″ and over 20 stone in weight – to the Detroit Tigers and a $214m contract. Add the possible loss of Braun for a third of the 2012 season and the Brewers would be behind the 8-ball, to put it mildly.

And the person who leaked it sat quietly by.

The appeal went to arbitration. This process requires three parties: a representative from the Players’ Association (who will always side with the player appealing), a rep. from Major League Baseball (who will always side with the testers) and an independent arbitrator. This might seem on the surface to be a very odd system, placing all the weight on a single person’s shoulders. However, since either side is free to “fire” the arbitrator, it is in their interests to be scrupulously fair to both sides at all times.

Baseball’s arbitrator is a man called Shyam Das, and on Thursday night he made his decision: Ryan Braun would not serve a suspension.

The precise reason boiled down to what Das ruled to be a chain of custody problem with Braun’s sample, in particular its being stored in the tester’s basement fridge rather than a FedEx facility. To some, vindication of an innocent man. To others, Braun got off on a dubious ”technicality” because at no stage had Braun’s legal team challenged the test result or the integrity of the sample itself.

And then MLB came out with an extraordinary official statement:

“Major League Baseball considers the obligations of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program essential to the integrity of our game, our Clubs and all of the players who take the field. It has always been Major League Baseball’s position that no matter who tests positive, we will exhaust all avenues in pursuit of the appropriate discipline. We have been true to that position in every instance, because baseball fans deserve nothing less.

“As a part of our drug testing program, the Commissioner’s Office and the Players Association agreed to a neutral third party review for instances that are under dispute. While we have always respected that process, Major League Baseball vehemently disagrees with the decision rendered today by arbitrator Shyam Das.”

From any perspective, this was stunning.

Major League Baseball was coming out in a very public manner against a decision that resulted from a process that it had campaigned for, had insisted upon after prolonged negotiation with the Players’ Association and had trumpeted in order to get the US Congress and other interfering parties off its back.

This boils down to something interesting, something that it’s not clear that MLB, the players, the baseball media or the fans understand. Drug testing isn’t perfect. It never will be. If it was, there would be a full body scanner that each player had to walk through as they walked out onto the diamond that would beep if they were juiced. But there isn’t such a machine, and as with all drug testing the testers will always trail the cheats as new drugs are developed, pushed and used.

Drug testing is about behavioural economics and incentivisation. That is to say, it’s not about catching every cheat, rather the priority is about creating an environment where fewer people cheat in the first place.

For some context, a quick history lesson. Until the very recent past there was no penalty imposed by MLB for using performance enhancing drugs. There wasn’t even any testing. Mark McGwire shattered the home run record in 1998 in an epic duel with Sammy Sosa, where McGwire’s 70 homers and Sosa’s 66 both smashed the 61 home runs that Roger Maris hit in 1961.

When a reporter saw a bottle of Androstenedione sitting in broad daylight in McGwire’s locker, not a steroid per se but the equivalent of a large neon sign saying “I AM USING STEROIDS AND I DON’T CARE IF YOU KNOW IT”, nothing was done. Nobody wanted to do anything. The cancellation of the 1994 World Series due to a players’ strike had caused huge damage to the game’s fanbase and the longball was bringing them back. MLB, the owners and the media wilfully suspended disbelief.

Other players saw this and made an obvious and understandable decision. “Juicing” was an open secret in the game but after McGwire and the Andro discovery it was very clear that there was no disincentive to load up on whatever drugs would make you stronger, faster and richer. We now know that all sorts of players used them, big guys and small guys, from minor leaguers to future Hall of Famers, pitchers and hitters alike.

Without testing in place, let alone penalties, there was every incentive for players to use PEDs and zero incentive to stay clean. So use them they did. The perception was that drugs would help you hit home runs or strike people out and that’s what people would pay money to see. And nobody would stop you.

What about peer pressure? The list of high profile players who publicly denounced the use of such drugs was small, really small, with only a single player, the now-retired Frank Thomas, willing to go on the record for George Mitchell’s controversial report into the use of performance enhancing drugs in MLB.

So, if one accepts that the goal of having testing and penalties isn’t about catching cheaters but instead changing the incentive system it’s clear from its Thursday statement that MLB doesn’t understand this. Its official reaction revealed a raw and barely-restrained desire to clap Ryan Braun in irons and have him publicly flogged. Shyam Das too, while they’re at it. But at what cost?

Ryan Braun doesn’t matter. He is one player among thousands. His being found guilty or innocent is ultimately of no consequence provided the system for doing so is seen to be above reproach. Getting off on a “technicality” will not do as much damage as the potential harm that could result from the initial leak that placed this all in the public eye combined with MLB forcefully condemning its own system.

There are always positive tests; some are confirmed and others are found to have been false positives. Others still are appealed, just like Braun, but it should all take place in private so that both the system and the people involved retain trust in each other. MLB should be taking action, quickly and in full view, to find out how the initial leak to ESPN happened in the first place.

Baseball Prospectus writer Jason Collette nailed it when he said that he didn’t recall MLB “vehemently disagreeing” with the initial leak of Braun’s (allegedly) positive test. Not a peep out of them was heard back then and that needs to change should any similar incident occur in the future.

MLB needs to see past Ryan Braun and look at the much bigger picture. That forest in the distance ain’t trees; it’s needles, with a load of ballplayers eyeing them up.

Liverpool, the Red Sox and Pumpsie Green: why LFC would always have to back down

This piece appeared on The Journal on Monday, Feb 13th 2012: http://thescore.thejournal.ie/liverpool-the-red-sox-and-pumpsie-green-why-lfc-had-to-back-down-354104-Feb2012/

Pumpsie Green.

Today that name is unknown to, conservatively, 99.99% of Liverpool FC’s players, coaches and fans. They would have done well to have known it before the Suarez/Evra racism affair reached its nadir with yesterday’s non-handshake at Old Trafford.

Elijah “Pumpsie” Green is the reason that Liverpool football club, with Kenny Dalglish as its managerial and spiritual figurehead, could not continue their isolationist course in defending Luis Suarez.

On Sunday Liverpool FC released a statement containing an apology by Luis Suarez for his pre-game actions at Old Trafford.

“I should have shaken Patrice Evra’s hand before the game and I want to apologise for my actions. I would like to put this whole issue behind me and concentrate on playing football.” (Luis Suarez, Feb 12th)

In order to understand why Dalglish, Liverpool and Suarez were always going to be forced to back down from their stance, one must first journey back to Brooklyn in 1947.

Baseball had been a white man’s game for over 50 years. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Ty Cobb, giants of the game, never played against a player with skin much darker than his own. It was a game run by white men, played by white men in front of (mostly) white men.

The infamous and shameful “Color Line” had been drawn as an unwritten rule by Major League Baseball in the late 19th century; after that point no player “of color” would wear a major league uniform until the great Jackie Robinson was given his chance by the Branch Rickey, General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1947.

Rickey was no Rosa Parks; he was a canny businessman and one of the shrewdest minds in baseball history. Where some saw an opportunity to integrate the Great American Pastime as being a grand act of civil rights, Branch Rickey saw a market inefficiency that could be exploited.

The canny Dodgers GM saw players like pitcher Satchel Paige, speedster Cool Papa Bell (a man “so fast he’d turn off the light switch and be in bed before it got dark”), slugging catcher Josh Gibson, all prevented from playing in MLB. They were stars of the Negro Leagues; parallel leagues set up by non-white owners for non-white teams to play in front of non-white crowds. In particular, Paige and Gibson were known by all in baseball to be two of the greatest players to have ever played the game, whatever the colour of their skin. Rickey saw huge opportunity here, the age old advantage of being first to the well.

The choice of player to break the MLB color line was important. He would have to be extremely talented, for even some of his own teammates would not accept a black player of even equal talent to a white man. On top of that he would have to already have had some existing public credibility, perhaps in another sport. Finally, and most importantly, he would have to be a man of outstanding personal confidence, dignity and inner strength because it was guaranteed that he would be the focal point of abuse from fans, opposing teams, umpires and even some of his own teammates.

The man chosen by Branch Rickey was Jackie Robinson, former collegiate football and track star at UCLA who had spent time in the US Army before joining the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. He made his debut on April 15th, 1947, at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn where it was estimated that over half the crowd were black. Robinson’s success on the field and his dignity off it broke open the door for black players to follow and his number, 42, was retired from all of Major League Baseball* in 1997.

Not everyone was happy with Rickey, Robinson and the Dodgers, and it was fully 12 years until every MLB team had a black player on their roster. The date? July 21st, 1959. The player was Pumpsie Green, and that team was the Boston Red Sox, now owned by John Henry, owner of Liverpool FC.

The 12 year gap between Jackie Robinson and Pumpsie Green is considered to be a stain on the long and storied history of the Boston Red Sox. Pumpsie didn’t have it easy, even though Robinson’s breakthrough had been over a decade past, as told to Harvey Frommer for his 2006 book “Where Have All Our Red Sox Gone?”. At Spring Training, he roomed alone. Even after his debut he didn’t have a roommate until Earl Wilson, another black player, joined him.

 ”I had no roommate. It never crossed my mind to have a roommate, since I was the only black on the team. It wasn’t a rule. It wasn’t a law. But it was unwritten that blacks did not room with whites.” (Pumpsie Green, 2006)

Echoes of this delay in fully integrating the team and the sport were felt for decades in Boston. As recently as last season the Red Sox asked representatives of the National Urban League, whose convention was in Boston, to throw out the first pitch and serve as bat boys/girls in an effort to provide further evidence of their break with that racism-tinged past.

John Henry is an extremely smart businessman, one of the shrewder owners in the game. He brought two World Series to Boston after a famous 90 year drought via a devotion to analysis, statistics and giving opportunity to brilliant minds like Theo Epstein (hired as GM at age 29) and Bill James (the “underground” Kansas baseball analyst and one of the greatest analytical minds there has been in baseball). His money helped bring those titles, of course, but one of the flagship franchises in the sport had shown that there was room for them to exploit market inefficiency too. Henry was unafraid to take the right business decisions when others in the game might laugh at him.

Likewise this business acumen would come to play in the sorry Liverpool saga of racism followed by an unswerving backing afforded to a player already suspended for eight games who when refused to shake the hand of the man whom he was found guilty of racially abusing.

“Would you shake the hand of a man who had falsely accused you?”, the Liverpool fans screamed in their online fury. But what they, Suarez and Dalglish failed to grasp is that the truth of the initial accusation did not matter. That point had been long since passed.

On Saturday the New York Times website published a piece** attacking Liverpool for their stance on this issue. It was then printed in the Sunday New York edition.

The final two lines are most interesting.

“It is time for John Henry and Tom Werner, leaders of the Fenway Group that controls Liverpool, to state clearly the direction the team will take on this issue.” (New York Times, Feb 11th)

Why is this interesting, apart from it being printed by the Grey Lady? Well, the New York Times is a part owner of the Boston Red Sox. This was a crossing of the rubicon. And ultimately this came down to a business decision, made by business minds.

John Henry, owner of a team with a long-remembered racial stain on its history, could not afford to have a team under his control being seen to be defending acts borne of racism.

Suarez’s apology was coming. He just didn’t know it.

* existing players already wearing the number 42 were permitted to continue wearing it; the most famous and last of these is future Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees

** http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sports/soccer/liverpools-luis-suarez-refuses-to-shake-the-hand-of-uniteds-patrice-evra.html

The Fourteen Minutes

As Tuesday’s crowd left the Aviva stadium and went on into the night, the atmosphere was that of having seen a job well done. Ireland 2, Armenia 1. The result was the important thing and Ireland had sealed their place in the Euro 2012 playoffs. And as a seeded team, no less.

All but the fastest out of the blocks to a nearby television would have missed Eamon Dunphy approach full pencil-tossing fury in his criticism of Giovanni Trapattoni’s tactical approach to the game. The argument put forward by le Dunph is that in using such tactics Ireland will not make it through the playoffs, let alone develop as a footballing power. He referred, as he has done before, to the sadness of the “real football men” when witnessing such football, if indeed it qualifies to be referred to as such.

The counterargument to this is that Ireland is a country with such limited footballing resources that Trapattoni’s way is the only approach that will yield results; style and ambition sacrificed in favour of safety and pragmatism.

Many have offered opinion, on the airwaves and in print, about the type of game played under the little Italian. Most depict a man seemingly devoted to the clean sheet at all costs, as evidenced by the most recent run of 851 minutes without conceding a goal (thanks to Gavin Reilly of The Journal for that stat).

In this vein, it’s worthwhile looking at how Trap’s Ireland team is typically set up.

Goalkeeper: No playing out from the back; instead launch the ball long. In the days of Kilbane playing wide midfield this worked very well; the aged one’s heading ability along with Given’s accuracy from kick offs provided a way of quickly moving the ball up the pitch while having a better than even chance of winning that first contest. In the current first choice team those headers are most often lost with possession surrendered quickly to the opposition.

Defence: The back four stay very flat with the full backs on a tight leash. No overlapping allowed; effectively they have no role in attacking play.

Centre Midfield: Two holding players, mostly Glen Whelan and Keith Andrews, whose job is to break up the opposing midfield play. They keep possession by passing backwards (preferably) and sideways only if it is absolutely safe. No risks are permitted. Similar to the defence they have no role in attacking play.

Wide Players: Tasked with the hardest job on Trap’s Republic of Ireland team, both wide men must be the creative sparks when Ireland have the ball then immediately form part of the second flat defensive line the instant the ball is lost. While this is highly effective defensively, they are partially neutered when Ireland have possession due to a lack of support from their full backs as well as a lack of option in any central midfielder arriving to assist an attack.

Forwards: The front men stay very high up the pitch with plenty of running into the channels. Usually after a time one will drop off (usually Robbie Keane) into the gaping space behind the front line in an effort to pick up possession to feet. They receive offensive support from the wide midfielders only.

Tuesday’s Irish team was set up in this fashion and played thusly for the first 25 minutes. At that point the Armenian goalkeeper was sent off*, leaving Ireland with a full 65 minutes to play against ten men. For the remaining 20 minutes of the first half, Ireland’s tactics changed not one iota. Even though Armenia had withdrawn a central player the tightly disciplined approach continued with the team (and manager) happy to accept any lucky crumbs that would come along.

* Complaints about the red card are highly spurious. The goalkeeper came charging out of the area with his arms held aloft trying to block the ball. The ball duly struck him on the shoulder joint. If he had run out and clearly kept his hands down this would have at least given the referee an option of giving him the benefit of the doubt. As it was, his arms were up; he’d already accepted the risk of a red card and that’s what he got. Now complaints about the way in which Cox controlled the ball coming over his shoulder, those can be entertained.

Not for nothing is Trapattoni known as the Lucky General, and a second even luckier crumb would come along before the end of the first half. Few more unlikely own goals have been witnessed at the Lansdowne Road site than the inexperienced Armenian defender, Aleksanyan, panicking his clearance, poking the ball nicely into the corner of his own net. The whistle blew just minutes later for half time.

The crowd stood and clapped the teams off while muttering a collective “Jaysus, that was a weird half” to their neighbours. Not much talk of the football itself, the majority of which had been played by people in red shirts with unpronounceable names.

Nobody in the stands could have thought that that for a brief fourteen minutes at the start of the second half there would be a tantalising glimpse of something different from Trap’s men, but that’s what happened.

As the teams took their places for the second half, most fans immediately spotted that McGeady had switched wings with Duff*. The more subtle and important change became apparent as soon as the ball was tipped off.

* the Duffer is not what he was – few are – but he’s still a valuable cog in this team. He just doesn’t lose the ball very often at all. He’s the anti-Hunt.

Both full backs, John O’Shea and Stephen Kelly, had abandoned their previous positions directly in line with their central defenders; instead they were now about stationed 15 yards further upfield while sticking diligently to the touchlines.

The impacts of this tactical change were immediate and significant.

- It made the pitch very, very wide, stretching the 10-man Armenia and creating space all over the park.

- The Armenian wide midfielders were pushed back deep into their own half, completely isolating their centre forward.

- It gave Ireland’s wide men real support, with Kelly even offering an overlapping option on occasion.

- The central midfielders were forced to break from their usual “flat two” approach, with Whelan and Andrews on occasion going as far as to take the ball from a centre half and play it forward to the other.

- Up front, Cox and Doyle immediately had supporting options coming from three places; the midfield (Andrews, primarily), a full-back hugging the touchline, and a winger who had either stayed wide or cut inside.

The men in green were suddenly playing with patience, intelligence and even a small bit of flair. Each player when given possession had two, even three options with all looking for the ball. As Kelly and O’Shea were pushed on Glen Whelan hung back, slotting into the defensive line to snuff out any Armenian attempt to exploit the space left by the full backs.

There was movement, positional interchange, cleverly angled passing. There was patience and creativity, intelligence and calm. This was momentous stuff considering the dross of the previous half and so many previous halves. It was not Barcelona, perhaps not even Stoke, but it was most definitely proper football.

Not all fans were immediately enamoured with the patient approach, all 14 minutes of it, and when the ball was passed from side to side without being seen to go forward with haste to the front men there were some murmurings of discontent. The “football men” however, as le Dunph would later describe them, would certainly have approved.

Nor was this simply a case of style over substance; during this time Ireland had a sustained period of possession lasting a full two minutes without interruption (50:20 – 52:20) which ended with a good chance. Notably, the chance was created for a full back, Kelly, arriving into the box after excellent team approach play. That the chance was missed due to a combination of Kelly being unsure on his “wrong” foot and a well-timed challenge from the defender is unimportant.

Let the record show that Richard Dunne’s scrambled goal in the 60th minute was not the direct result of such enlightened football, but for the previous fourteen minutes the Armenians had been made to look like a team with little experience and playing with a man less, both of which they indeed were.

Unfortunately Mkhitaryan’s goal for Armenia would signal the end of this brief time of illumination. All in green reverted to type with a speed and efficiency worthy of Pavlov; the wide men pulling in, the full backs tucking back safely beside Dunne and St. Ledger, and Whelan and Andrews going back to being, well, Whelan and Andrews.

It got worse.

Trap’s first substitution was to bring McGeady off and replace him with Steven Hunt. Removing McGeady from proceedings was inevitable; he was having one of those days where everything he tried went wrong, and the few things he tried to do correctly went even worse. But to bring on Hunt when Keith Fahey was sitting there on the bench made little sense when facing a team playing with ten men.

Fahey will never be a candidate for a World XI but the former St. Pat’s man is a tidy player, sure of touch and intelligent with the ball at his feet. Stephen Hunt has his uses in the green jersey, mostly if Ireland are a goal down at home and need the crowd to get going to set up a gung-ho final ten minutes. Aside from that Hunt’s standard output is be a possession-surrendering machine of rare efficiency.

The introduction of Hunt surrendered Ireland’s man advantage over the assured, ambitious Armenians. When the ball was pushed towards his wing there was, as always, much effort and sweat and that mop of hair a-flying but ultimately that ball would come back out safely controlled by an Armenian foot.

After Ireland went down to ten men due to Doyle’s second yellow card, Armenia continued to be on top for the remaining fourteen minutes (including injury time) as they had both the technical and tactical advantage over the men in green.

Happily for the home fans, Ireland held out, the crowd sang songs, the MC was his usual overbearing self and on everyone would go into the night thinking about the playoffs to come.

Huzzah!

But what of dreams?

It would not do to throw a tantrum and say that Ireland should play in the style of Barcelona or the wonderful Arsene Wenger teams of the past fifteen years. Idealism is worthy but must be grounded in some notion of realism in order for true progress to be made. After all, Giovanni Trapattoni has been paid to produce results and Ireland’s going through to the playoffs as a seeded team is most definitely that.

Ireland’s World Cup 2010 qualifying campaign was carried out in similar vein – stolid, pragmatic football – and was greeted as a net positive when compared to the awfulness of the preceding management. Then came that fateful night in Paris when, after one had brushed the Henry handball from memory, there was a match in which Ireland had played some wonderful football. As a nation tried to leave the trauma in Paris, so too was Trap strangely content to leave that football behind, happy to go back to the ultra-defensive game that had got the team to that stage on the first place.

The Aviva Stadium is not Paris, and a young Armenian team are not the France of Anelka and Henry. But there were fourteen minutes in that match on Tuesday which should open some eyes as to what could be possible.

It might, perhaps, even be enough to give hope to the football men.

League Championship Series Week on TV…

It’s ALCS and NLCS time in the world of Major League Baseball with the winner of each facing each other in the 2011 World Series.

Detroit faces Texas in the ALCS with the Rangers leading the series 1-0. Over in the National League it’s the Brewers holding a 1-0 lead over St. Louis.

Full Week’s TV Schedule: (all games on ESPN America)

Monday 9pm: Detroit @ Texas – Game 2

Scherzer vs. Holland

1am: St. Louis @ Milwaukee – Game 2

Jackson vs. Marcum

Tuesday 12:30am: Texas @ Detroit – Game 3

Lewis vs. Fister

Wednesday 9pm:  Texas @ Detroit – Game 4

Harrison vs. Porcello

1am: Milwaukee @ St. Louis – Game 3

Gallardo vs. Carpenter

Thursday 9pm: Texas @ Detroit – Game 5 (if nec.)

1am: Milwaukee @ St. Louis – Game 4

Friday 1am: Milwaukee @ St. Louis – Game 5 (if nec.)

Saturday 12:30am: Detroit @ Texas – Game 6 (if nec.)

Sunday 9pm: St. Louis @ Milwaukee – Game 6 (if nec.)

1am: Detroit @ Texas – Game 7 (if nec.)

Monday 1am: St. Louis @ Milwaukee – Game 7 (if nec.)

This Week’s Playoff Baseball…

After a weekend of playoff baseball action here’s the state of the Division Series in both leagues.

American League Division Series (best of five games)
Detroit and New York are tied 1-1.
Texas and Tampa Bay are tied 1-1.

National League Division Series (best of five games)
St. Louis and Philadelphia are tied 1-1.
Milwaukee leads Arizona 2-0.

With three series are now tied at a game apiece, drama fans would be quietly confident of at least one of those going to a crucial game five. The immediate highlight is the Sabathia vs. Verlander matchup on Monday night, now taking place in Detroit instead of Yankee Stadium after Friday’s rainout.

The notable thing about the playoffs thus far is that Milwaukee are rolling some proverbial beer kegs over Arizona, up two games to zip and their lineup looking downright formidable. With the top three of their rotation (Gallardo, Marcum and Greinke) the best of any playoff opponent apart from the historically-good Phillies threesome, along with an ace closer in John Axford, at this point the Brewers are certainly worth a cheeky bet for the World Series in what is Prince Fielder’s last contracted year with the team.

Bonus: ESPN America are showing the excellent documentary “Catching Hell” (http://tv.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/arts/television/catching-hell-from-alex-gibney-review.html) at 7pm on Sunday evening. The film, directed by Alex Gibney, revisits the infamous Bartman Game from Wrigley Field in the 2003 NLCS.

To the uninitiated, the Chicago Cubs were ahead in the series vs. the Florida Marlins and seemingly just five outs away from the World Series. A long, harmless-looking fly ball was hit down the third base line; the crowd went for the ball, as did Cubs left fielder Felipe Alou, and one fan in particular stopped Alou from making the (what would have been spectacular) catch. The fan? 26-year-old lifelong Cubs fan Steve Bartman; for him, a life-changing moment and the subject of this two hour film. Cue a Cubbie collapse where the score turned from a comfortable 3-0 lead to an 8-3 deficit and a feeling of impending, inevitible doom. The Cubs duly lost the game and the subsequent game 7 in Florida to ensure that the Cubs would be no threat to win their first World Series since 1908.

The documentary provides some fantastic videoanalysis of the incident, interviews with people who were seated around Steve Bartman on the night, review of the crowd’s (over)reaction and some remarkable and frankly frightening never-seen-before footage from inside the ballpark at the time. To go along with this Gibney also goes back to the treatment of Bill Buckner in Boston after his botched play of the 1986 World Series as well as taking an interesting look at the idea and background of “scapegoat” in the first place. It’s well worth a look, especially if you were one of those sitting watching that game in the wee hours of the morning eight years ago while all hell was breaking loose in Chicago.

TV schedule for the week

N.B. All games are on ESPN America unless specified otherwise. Pitching matchups are included where available. Note the shifting game times depending on how many games end up being played in each series. Simple, eh?

Monday 10pm: Texas @ Tampa Bay (Game 3)
Lewis v. Price

1:30am: New York Yankees @ Detroit (Game 3)
Sabathia vs. Verlander

Tuesday 7pm: Texas @ Tampa Bay (Game 4)
Harrison vs. Hellickson

10pm: Philadelphia @ St. Louis (Game 3)
Hamels vs. Garcia

1:30am: NY Yankees @ Detroit (Game 4)
Burnett vs. Porcello

Wednesday 11pm: Philadelphia @ St. Louis (Game 4)
N.B. shifts to 1am if there is no game 4 necessary in the Milwaukee/Arizona series

2.30am: Milwaukee @ Arizona (Game 4 – if necessary)

Thursday 10pm: Tampa Bay @ Texas (Game 5 – if necessary)
N.B. shifts to 1am if this is the only game of the night

1:30am: Detroit @ NY Yankees (Game 5 – if necessary)
N.B. shifts to 1am if this is the only game of the night

Friday 10pm: Arizona @ Milwaukee (Game 5 – if necessary)
N.B. shifts to 1am if this is the only game of the night

1:30am: St. Louis @ Philadelphia (Game 5 – if necessary)
N.B. shifts to 1am if this is the only game of the night

Saturday 12:30am: ALCS Game 1

Sunday (bonus) 7pm: ESPN Films “Catching Hell”

9pm: ALCS Game 2 / NLCS Game 1

1am: ALCS Game 2 / NLCS Game 1

MLB Playoffs on TV – American League

After a welcome break on Thursday following Wednesday’s truly remarkable night of baseball, the playoffs are here. The American League Division Series starts tonight with the National League starting tomorrow.

Rays @ Rangers (10:07 pm)

Friday sees the Wild Card winning Tampa Bay Rays travel to Arlington to play the Texas Rangers, AL West champs. Rookie phenom Matt Moore, with only nine major league innings under his belt, will take the mound for the Rays as they try to continue their improbable run. Moore has shown devastating strikeout ability in the minor leagues and in his short time up has already demonstrated that he can make major leaguers swing and miss just as easily (15 Ks in 9.1IP). He’ll need all of that against a tough Texas lineup.

C.J. Wilson pitches for Texas; the big left hander knows that even without a good playoff run he’ll be the biggest name in the pitching market this offseason with strong rumours already circling that the Red Sox will have the chequebook out. Wilson, a thirty year old former reliever who made a successful transition to the rotation only last season, could add upwards of $20m to his free agent price with a dominating playoff performance.

First pitch from Arlington will be at 10:07pm on ESPN America.

Tigers @ Yankees (1:37am)

Where pitching is concerned, Moore vs. Wilson is an exciting prospect in its own right. However, in boxing parlance it is but the undercard when compared to the marquee matchup of Justin Verlander and C.C. Sabathia at new Yankee Stadium when the AL Central winning Detroit Tigers face the AL East champion, and #1 seeds, New York Yankees.

Detroit’s Verlander has put himself in very realistic MVP contention, remembering that no pitcher has won the award since Oakland closer Dennis Eckersley in 1992 while no starting pitcher has won since Roger Clemens’ 1986 season. Verlander pitched a no-hitter in Toronto this year, facing just the minimum 27 batters, and finished 24-5 for the year with a major league leading 251 innings pitched. His ERA of 2.40 and particularly remarkable 0.92 WHIP demonstrate just how unhittable he’s been in 2011, firing down 100MPH fastballs regularly in the late innings.

The massive Sabathia, pitching for the Yankees, has had a superb season in his own right and will rightly receive some CY Young votes this year. Despite putting a few more men on base this season than in recent years he had a shiny 3.00 ERA backing up a 19-8 WL record.

On paper the Yankees should beat Detroit but anything is possible in a five game Division Series. This is made more difficult by the Tigers having a spectacular 1-2 pitching punch in Verlander and recent trade acquisition Doug Fister, whose performances since arriving from Seattle have been remarkable.

That said, New York has little to fear from the Tigers’ batting lineup aside from MVP candidate Miguel Cabrera so if they were to beat Verlander tonight they would be heavy, heavy favourites to take the series.

First pitch at new Yankee Stadium is at 1:37am on ESPN America.

Best Night of Baseball. Ever.

What a night.

WHAT A NIGHT!

It’s 5:15am and I’ve just witnessed the greatest night of baseball in living memory.

I cannot put it any better than this: ”Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”

Those are the words of the great Red Smith writing of the “Shot Heard Around The World”, Bobby Thomson’s home run to win the National League pennant of 1951 after the Giants had come back from an improbable deficit to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Going into last night the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays were tied for the American League Wild Card lead, with the St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves similarly tied in the National League.

Boston played in Baltimore, Tampa Bay hosted the New York Yankees while St. Louis visited Houston and Atlanta welcomed Philadelphia. A win and a loss for either team and their respective league rival would have seen them advance to the playoffs, with any other scenario leading to a single-game tiebreaker playoff game on Thursday.

In Tampa, New York bounded out to an early lead going 5-0 up in the second inning. David Price, Rays starting pitcher, was having a nightmare on the mound and the Tampa Bay hitters, facing the dregs of the Yankees’ pitching staff, couldn’t hit a lick.

Meanwhile in Baltimore Boston took a third inning lead, only for the Orioles to score two runs in the bottom of the inning. The Red Sox scored runs in the 4th and 5th, carrying a 3-2 lead into the 7th inning. Then the rains came.

As the grounds crew dragged out the tarp in Camden Yards, the Yankees had pegged on another couple of runs to make it 7-0. At this stage the Rays had managed a mere two hits against those Yankee “pitchers”. The Rays fans started to leave the ballpark.

Over in the National League, Atlanta was holding a 3-1 lead over the Phillies after the third inning. This got important, quickly, as St. Louis, starting their game an hour later in Houston, jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first inning and never looked back. Houston starting pitcher Bret Myers, whose generosity was accepted by countless Cardinal hitters, will not be a welcome man in Atlanta for some time.

A recap on the state of play at this point:

- Boston are in the playoffs, cruising against Baltimore while the Rays are getting beaten up by the Yankees

- Atlanta and St. Louis, both winning, are playing a single-game tiebreaker on Thursday

Then things started to happen.

Philadelphia pulled a run back in the 8th inning to make it 3-2 to the Braves, then tied up the game in the ninth to send the game into extra innings.

St. Louis finish their game in Houston and head inside to watch the Atlanta game, safe in the knowledge that they’ve secured a place in a tiebreaker game at worst.

The Red Sox players are all sitting happily in the clubhouse feeling pretty much exactly like the Cardinals club – after all, there’s a rain delay along with a terrible forecast for the night and even if they have to back out there the Rays are getting tonked, right?

It was at about this point that the players trotted out in Tampa for the home part of the 8th inning. The Rays then proceeded to load the bases with zero outs, at which point the Yankees manager Joe Girardi brought in Luis Ayala to pitch.

Sam Fuld walks to force in a run. 7-1.

Sean Rodriguez was hit by a pitch. 7-2.

Desmond Jennings made an out; BJ Upton then hit a sacrifice fly to cut the lead to 7-3.

Enter Evan Longoria, star third baseman, who strode to the plate, stared down Ayala and smacked a three-run home run to left field.

The Trop went wild.

Twitter went wild.

The Rays’ announcers went wild.

And it sure has heck woke up those Red Sox players from their up-to-then satisfactory snoozing during their rain delay.

Over in the NL, Atlanta and Philadelphia remain tied through 10 innings.

Word comes through from Baltimore. The rainclouds and lightning has cleared; play will start in ten minutes.

The action from Tampa moves to the ninth inning. Yankee hitters go down in orderly fashion 1, 2, 3. The home side comes to bat knowing that they need a run to keep their season alive.

Ben Zobrist flies out to centre. One out.

Casey Kotchman grounds out to third base. Two outs.

Sam Fuld, journeyman and storybook hero many times over for the Rays during this incredible season, was taken out of the game for a pinch-hitter. Surely if miracles were to happen it would be Fuld, but not tonight. Instead the chosen figure was Dan Johnson, an unlikely looking slugger with pasty skin and reddish beard.

With the count at 2-2, a single strike left for the Rays entire season, Johnson clubbed a home run over the right field fence to tie the game at 7-7.

The Red Sox player came out of their dressing room, stunned.

Atlanta and Philadelphia remain tied through 11 innings. The Cardinals wait, and watch.

Boston get through the 7th inning, and the 8th, still leading 3-2.

Atlanta give up a run in the top of the 13th inning, Philadelphia lead 4-3.

New York and Tampa go through the 10th and 11th, still tied at 7 runs.

Almost simultaneously we enter the bottom of the ninth in Baltimore and the bottom of the 12th in Tampa.

Philadelphia holds on to beat the Braves in 13 innings. Atlanta are out, suffering one of the worst late-season collapses in baseball history. The Cardinals players spray beer and champagne in the Houston clubhouse as they win the NL Wild Card.

Boston brings on star closer Jonathan Papelbon to save the 3-2 game. The first two Baltimore batters, Adam Jones and Mark Reynolds, both strike out swinging. Next man up, Chris Davis, hits a double to right field. Baltimore manager Buck Showalter substitutes Davis for a pinch-runner, former college football wide receiver Kyle Hudson.

With a count of 2-2, Nolan Reimold hits a ground-rule double scoring Hudson. Both games are now tied.

The Boston pitching coach visits the mound. Robert Andino, a very ordinary middle infielder who’d been having a decent month or so, was up next. No problem Jonathan, you’ll blow your stuff right past him.

Not so much.

After seeing a slider and a fastball go by, Andino hit a single to left off a split-finger fastball… Nolan Reimold scores. The Red Sox players are visibly shellshocked.

Back to Tampa, literally minutes later. It’s the bottom of the 12th inning and, lest one forget, the Rays have already come back from a 7-0 deficit to tie the game with 2 outs and 2 strikes in the bottom of the 9th inning.

Scott Proctor is the Yankees pitcher, not a notable star but the man who was appointed to finish the game off. BJ Upton struck out swinging sending Longoria to the plate, he of the 8th inning bases-clearing blast which had restarted the fading heartbeat of the ball club.

2-2 pitch… fastball… Longoria hits it hard and low and it sneaks over the left field wall.

Tampa Bay win the Wild Card.

Boston go home, completing a collapse even worse than that suffered by theBraves.

What a night.

A great night, and the use of the word “great” is appropriate here. One of the greatest sporting nights it has been my privilege to witness, especially so given that it was past five in the morning here in Dublin by the time it had finished.

Baseball may have killed off fiction in 1951 but in 2011 it did a little jig on its grave.

What a night.

 

(Note: updated 09:29 to reflect Longoria’s 3-run shot rather than, as I had originally written, a grand slam)