Jason Giambi Brings Back The Magic

The Indians were left for dead on Tuesday night. They had won four straight games but closer Chris Perez had just given up two solo homers in the top of the ninth to turn a one-run lead into a one-run deficit. Through the boobirds voicing their frustration as Perez was pulled, you could hear the air being deflated out of the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

The Indians were dead in the water. When you watch enough baseball games, you can feel when a team will make a rally in the ninth. They might not come through but you at least can tell when they will put a little game pressure on the closer. Last night felt like 1-2-3.

And this loss felt like more than that. The Rangers aren't losing to the Astros and a deflating loss in the last week of the season, hello Grady Sizemore, can send you into a quick tailspin that has you making tee times on Monday.

Maybe it was the two pitching changes that Terry Francona made in the inning that allowed his team to rally itself. Maybe it was the hug Jason Giambi made Perez give him as he came into the dugout. Or maybe it was just a little of that old Jacobs Field magic.

It didn't look good as the Indians were down to their last out in the bottom of the ninth. Giambi then came through with the biggest hit of any Cleveland Indians' player this season, crushing the 1-1 curveball deep into the right-field seats.

Play-by-play announcer Tom Hamilton lost his mind. I had goosebumps for like two minutes. Chaos ensued on the diamond and all of a sudden the Indians went from staring at a tie with the Rangers for the last playoff spot into holding serve and staying one back of Tampa Bay and one ahead of Texas.

Pennant races are awesome. They are even more awesome when your teams win games. This season has been one heck of a ride for Tribe fans. The team has been counted out a number of times but they are about as hot as a team can be in the month of September. Teams that get hits like Giambi's late in the season don't see their season end in Game 162.

Francona said it best when he had a man-crush on Giambi. I think there are a lot of male Cleveland Indians fans who would admit to the same thing this morning.

Tebow Bandwaggon

I'm not going to hide it, I'm not a Tim Tebow fan and I'm not a Florida Gators fan.  I don't have any real good reason, it's not like I'm a Florida State fan or a Georgia fan and by association of rivalry I don't like Florida.  I actually just don't like any football team in the state of Florida.  Now that I've provided context for my bias, I'm going to vent about the Tim Tebow bandwagon.

Watching him play, I'll admit, he's a great player.  He seems to be consistent, look at his stats.  He doesn't throw for a lot of yards compared to a lot of other quarterbacks, generally has some pretty good rushing days for a quarterback and he gets a lot of touchdowns.  It seems most of his passing touchdowns are because of the superior speed of his receivers and he gets a lot of red zone rushing touchdowns because he's got the size to take a hit.  However, I think that you could take any good quarterback and put him in that system and if you call his number enough times close to the goal line, he'll put up some PS3 type TD numbers.  

Tebow is not the best quarterback in the country, he's not the best offensive player in the country and there are a number of other players I would rate as more valuable to their team than Tebow is to Florida.  Watching a Texas game and you'll see that everything McCoy has to do to find success for his team is 10x harder, and yet he does it better than Tebow too.  If you want total touchdowns, McCoy has more of them.  You like rushing yards?  McCoy has more of them this year too.  How about efficiency?  McCoy has better accuracy and a better QB rating.

The biggest thing going for Tebow right now is the lack of top tier offensive players in the SEC compared to the Big XII.  The votes are going to be split between Bradford and McCoy and Tebow will join Archie Griffin as a two time winner.  My consolation is this, McCoy and Texas will be upset enough over this second snub that they will destroy Ohio State by 40 points and there will at least be a little fairness returned to the world.

On a side note, I think Harrell was snubbed, but I could see this being the same situation in part as 2006 when Brady wasn't invited just out of the risk that someone sitting on stage wouldn't finish in the top.  I also thinks that this helps Bradford and McCoy so that Big XII/ western votes don't get split even more than they already will.

How I Feel (2)

Wanted to post this as a comment, but couldn't get the picture in.  Just trying to maintain the balance of this blog - as I'm sure it's obvious to all that there's never been a bias towards any team, sport or individual athlete from the BD Sports Empire.

Big XII vs SEC (cont)

So everyone has their opinions on who is the better conference - SEC or Big XII.  There's only been one inter-conference match up and Texas soundly defeated Arkansas 52-10 (which is hardly a good judgement of how the conferences would stack up since you take the best from one against the worst from the other).  That being said, I'm going to throw out there (in my view) the top six potential match ups pitting a Big XII team against an SEC opponent.  I'm going to give each game a neutral location so home field advantage doesn't come into play.

1. Texas v Alabama - Texas: The Longhorns are rolling right now and Colt McCoy is putting up some amazing numbers against top 10 teams.  Alabama has talent, but they're still young and not going to be able to keep up, Texas is putting up on average 45 ppg and giving up 18, that's a lot of ground for Alabama to make up.
2. Oklahoma v Georgia - Georgia: Georgia can put up points and Oklahoma is having a hard time stopping anybody.  Fortunately for Boomer Sooner, Sam Bradford has the offense clicking so OU can get out to an early lead and boat race the opposition.  I realize it's a hard sell since Alabama destroyed Georgia between the hedges of Sanford Stadium, but in the long run I think Georgia is the best team in the SEC this year.
   
3. Texas Tech v Florida - Texas Tech: The Gators have woken up the past two weeks but Mike Leach is actually running the ball and the Red Raiders are dominating.
   
4. Oklahoma State v LSU - Oklahoma State: The best that LSU has on their resume right now is beating an inept Auburn team and getting blown out at home by Georgia and on the road by Florida.  Okie State won on the road against Missouri and played Texas tight - OSU gets the edge for being competitive in big games this year.
   
5. Missouri v Vanderbilt - Missouri: This is where the depth of the Big XII comes into play, good luck Vanderbilt, they might stay within 30 of Mizzou.
   
6. Kansas v Kentucky - Kansas: Kentucky doesn't have a defense like the top part of the SEC to stop Todd Reesing, Dezmon Briscoe, Kerry Meier and Jake Sharp.  KU's defense hasn't look great against Oklahoma or TTU but it's a lock they'll score more points than the Wildcats.

Across the whole conference the Big XII is putting up on average 36+ points and 442 ypg with average scoring defense of 25ppg.  The SEC is scoring 25ppg with 345 yards and posting an average scoring defense of just under 20ppg.  Basically, conference to conference the SEC will have a hard time keeping up with the Big XII head to head and the depth of the Big XII will win out if there was a showdown this year.