This Could Get Ugly

A good friend of mine really struggled to watch playoff baseball, not because he wasn't interested but rather he was too keenly interested. Simply put, the pressures of October were nearly too much for him to handle.

I'm starting to understand how he felt and it's only August. In the National League only four teams can reasonably be eliminated from the playoff chase. It's sort of like watching European horse racing (excruciating for the record): everybody stands in their irons in one big, barely jogging mass for three-quarters of the course, then hunkers down for a furious sprint in the stretch.

That's how the NL feels after the Rockies swept the Brewers this week and then split with Cubs to leave them only two games out of the Wild Card and within striking distance in the NL West. The Rockies! Steve Phillips just picked them to make the playoffs.

I'm fine with that as long as it doesn't come at the expense of the Cubs. Sweet Lou's squad has not responded to the loss of Soriano, going 2-4 on their latest road trip. The losses were only tempered by the fact that Milwaukee was losing too, but Chicago needs to find some answers this week at home against Cincinnati and a suddenly relevant St. Louis team. When Soriano went down I circled August 28-30 on my calendar. It's the final series between the Cubs and Brewers and it was going to be pivotal. Now I'm just hoping both teams can tread water long enough that the winner of that series will still be in first place at the end of the month.

And then there's the Red Sox. As you've no doubt heard, Eric Gagne didn't have a good trip to the Charm City and now the Yankees are a scant four games back in the AL East. Make no mistake, if New York catches Boston this race is over. Boston's hopes of a World Series already look pretty shaky but if the Yankees return from the dead it would be catastrophic for Sox fans. They had done something they never would've had the balls to do before this year: bury the Yanks, disregard them.

To lose that lead? Well, it would feel like 2003 all over again.

I can't deal with all of this, so I'm just going to keep preparing for college football season and try not to scoreboard watch. Somebody nudge me when this race reaches the stretch. I'm afraid it's all I can give.

Morning Walk-thru - Faster than a cannonball

The wrecking ball that is...the Colorado Rockies just swept the Yankees. New York came to Coors as the supposed hottest team in baseball and the Rockies--winners of 7 of the last 8, 6 straight series, owners of the best record in June--laughed in their faces.

Here's a stat for you: the Rockies now have more wins against the AL East (9) than the Yankees (8) do.

Oh, and please go to MLB.com and vote for Matt Holliday. The guy needs to be an All-Star starter.

Goodnight Canada...The US slept through another Gold Cup win last night, beating Canada 2-1. They'll try to sweep North America against Mexico in the final on Sunday. (Although you could say Mexico has already won.)

I urge you to check out this wrap-up of the game by That's On Point. It's fantastic.

Hi Rob...Michael Barrett's replacement filled in admirably yesterday, going 1-3 with an RBI and two walks. Meanwhile, Barrett, batting fifth, went 0-4 with three strikeouts.

Cubs win!

Morning Walk-thru - Huh?

Cubs win again?...What's that you say? The Cubs won another one-run ballgame? This latest one a come from behind job with the go ahead RBI delivered by Cesar freakin' Izturis? You tell me that their last three wins have been by one run?!

Preposterous. But true.

Prior to this home stand, the Cubs genuinely were about 10 runs short of having a winning record and being neck and neck with the Brewers at the top of the Central. They'd outscored their opponents on the season, but when the games were tight so were the Cubs.

Maybe that's changing now. It's only four games, 2/81st of a major league season so I'm not going crazy yet, but the Cubs are 9-5 since Zambrano slugged Barrett.

And speaking of the Cubs backstop, looks like he'll be getting some time off in the next couple of weeks. Lou's saying all the right things, but privately I still think he's seething.

Blindsided...Who would've thought that Josh Becket's first loss of the season would've come against the Colorado Rockies? Not me, but maybe we should stop being surprised, the Rockies are .500 now thanks largely to going 15-6 in interleague play thus far.

Garrett Atkins is finally starting to hit, Matt Holiday has been one of the best players in the NL so far, Todd Helton has been Todd Helton, and Brad "This is Why I'm" Hawpe truly has been fly, flirting with the .300 mark.

The Red Sox on the other hand, just got rocked by the Rockies in their home park and we can keep being surprised by that because the Sox haven't been the Sox of late. (Exhibit A: Winning the Wakefield game but getting shelled with Schilling and Beckett on the bump.)

Meanwhile, the Yankees won their ninth straight. Two games over .500 and only 7.5 out. Something wicked this way comes Boston.

Oh and by the way...the Spurs are your NBA Champions. The last four minutes of last night's game were the first I made an effort to watch and I immediately regretted it. This series was sort of like watching a dung beetle do it's thing on the old Discovery channel. (When the channel was a punch line, not one of the best sources of programming on cable.)

You knew those beetles would get their shit together, literally, just like everyone knew the Spurs would get rid of the Cavs rather quickly. There wasn't any drama but there's still a bit of interest in the process. For me, that interest lasted about four minutes of the fourth quarter in game four. Then the Spurs won and the lamest championship celebration ever ensued.

Everyone just raised their hands and hugged one another. It wasn't joy, just relief. The Spurs were able to take what had been handed to them and now they can listen to dynasty talk until next October.

A Weekend of Endings?

Originally published in BostonNow.

There are two sides to The Sopranos. Some episodes are your good old fashioned, off a guy and scatter the appendages throughout New Jersey mob drama. Other episodes are more cerebral. Lots of therapist face time and ho-hum household tension.

It seems like the final season has been a little heavier on the cerebral side which is surprising when you consider there are only two episodes left. It's been like watching a firecracker fuse burn: you know the big boom is coming and the anticipation might just be better than the actual release.

We're about to find out if we've got an M80 or an inch-and-a-halfer, which got me thinking: what's the body count going to look like over these last two episodes? I'm not so sure it will be the shootout everyone thinks it is, but let's break it down:

-- Tony - Popular opinion seems to say that Tony's death is the only logical end and I tend to agree but I'd actually be more interested if the series ended with the Skipper still heavily mouth-breathing. Nevertheless, my money in the Black Hand Stakes is on Carm. After turning a blind eye to Tony's lifestyle the entire series, the revelation that Tony killed Christopher and Adriana will be too much to deal with. The perfect crime and catharsis.

--Phil Leotardo - Did you see the look Tony gave him at the end of the episode last night while Phil was yelling out his window like a little girl? He's gone.

--Paulie - He's just too big of a prick not to meet an ugly and (un?)timely fate. It's actually a miracle he's made it this long. Probably gone before the final episode.

--Silvio - The rock. I think Silvio escapes a dirt nap, but the preview for the penultimate episode led me to believe that he might turn on Tony. If that happens, goodbye Sil.

-- A.J. - The wildcard. The fate of Tony's heir might be the most interesting arc left. His time to die was last night and he escaped so I think he's safe unless things get totally Shakespearean.

Throw in a couple of random goons and I'm setting the body count over/under for the final two episodes of The Sopranos at 8.5.

The Battle for Nebraska

I count myself a fan of interleague play. Sure, I wish there was a little more variance in the schedule. I can think of about 20 teams I would rather see the Red Sox play than the Braves again, and that's always the beef from the traditionalists. For every Subway (or El Train) series, there's a Washington v. anybody match-up that just isn't that interesting.

Who cares who Toronto plays? What's at stake between San Diego and Seattle? I don't know, but to lump tonight's Royals-Rockies match-up in that same unsavory group would be a grave mistake. The fate of an entire state is at stake.

When it comes to professional baseball, Nebraska is a vast wasteland. (Insert your own "when it comes to baseball?!" joke here.) Before the Rockies came around, Kansas City was the only team that could be considered a regional interest, but outside of places like Nebraska City, even that was a stretch.

Then Eric Young ushered in the Rockies era with a home run and the Western half of the state had a team to root for that was less than 10 hours away; games they could hear on the radio, or even attend. Ever since, the state's been divided somewhere around the 100th Meridian. Half purple, half blue, or at least that's how it exists in my mind.

So you see, this isn't just some nondescript interleague series between perennial bottom-feeders. This is for bragging rights for an entire season in the Good Life. This is to get a Runza at the winning team's stadium and gain total commercial control of both I-80 and the North Platte and Niobrara Rivers. This is for Grover Cleveland Alexander, the greatest hardballer ever to call the Cornhusker state home.

It's also to ensure that the winner won't have the worst record in their league come Saturday.

The tension is palpable.

Morning Walk-thru - This Post is 100% Death Proof

Good or bad for golf?...Nobody at the Masters shot under par for the tournament and your winner is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In fact, that's what Zach Johnson had to say after outlasting the Tiger-style on Sunday, "I'm from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. That's it. I'm just a normal guy."

So the question is, is this good or bad for golf? Do people want to see Tiger win again, or will there be some some intrigue because the "least accomplished Masters champion since Larry Mize" took it home?

Or maybe the better question is, at least in my mind, who are these people who attend the Masters or golf tournaments in general? I know people who are passively interested in golf, but nobody who would want to go to a tournament, even the Masters. I'm fascinated, really.

Poor Aaron Cook...Everything was going great on Sunday for the young Rockies hurler. He'd out dueled Jake Peavey, shutting out the Padres for 7 2/3 innings. The Rockies were four outs away from starting the season 4-2 and then he gave up the weakest home run you'll see this season to Jose Cruz Jr.

Credit to Clint Hurdle for leaving Cook in there for the 9th, where he worked himself out of a first and third, one out jam, but too bad that LaTroy Hawkins couldn't hold it in the tenth.

A great weekend for media...Caught Grindhouse on Saturday and it was exactly what I had expected--for the first half.

Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror did a great job of playing up the schlock and titillating from beginning to end, but I was actually more excited for Tarantino's Death Proof and I was totally wrong in that expectation.

After nearly two hours (Terror plus fake trailers), Tarantino's dialogue heavy slasher-flick felt like The English Patient.

Sure the car scenes were great, but hearing two different girl quartets talk like sailors for an hour only felt like audience exploitation. Funny, 15 years ago that's what made Reservoir Dogs so great. Maybe none of it matters because, as Ty Burr pointed out in Friday's Boston Globe, the beauty of real exploitation films was that it presented the seedier side of Hollywood but that side might not exist when Saw III makes $80 million.

Luckily, The Sopranos met all expectations. In the Sunday New York Times there was a quote from Norman Mailer saying that The Sopranos was the closest thing we had in the modern era to the Great American Novel.

Couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, HBO is now following up all the drama and tension with Entourage which is the closest thing we have to chick-lit for guys.