THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Sunday, October 4, 2015
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October 3, 2015 8:55 PM
If you’re a fan of a certain quasi-local baseball team more than 300 miles away, your interest in their season likely ended about a month ago.
Even the most diehard of Mariners fans can only take so much optimism spewed at them, as their favorite team, pegged by some as a possibility to reach the World Series, spirals toward another losing season.
Even the most diehard of Mariners fans can only take so much optimism spewed at them, as their favorite team, pegged by some as a possibility to reach the World Series, spirals toward another losing season.
September was a time to turn the attention to more pressing matters — high school football, college football, that other quasi-local team over there that has aspirations of playing in the big game at the end of the season, getting that septic tank pumped …
… Anyway, that’s why it was a little bit startling to look at the AL West standings recently and see the Texas Rangers and L.A. Angels still in the hunt for a playoff berth.
Wait … what?
Wasn’t Texas’ season over when Yu Darvish had to miss the season due to injury? Didn’t the Angels go through a late-summer freefall that should have been fatal?
Didn’t the Houston Astros, the new sexy pick, clinch the division title in May?
… Anyway, that’s why it was a little bit startling to look at the AL West standings recently and see the Texas Rangers and L.A. Angels still in the hunt for a playoff berth.
Wait … what?
Wasn’t Texas’ season over when Yu Darvish had to miss the season due to injury? Didn’t the Angels go through a late-summer freefall that should have been fatal?
Didn’t the Houston Astros, the new sexy pick, clinch the division title in May?
But as we head into the final day of the regular season today, the Rangers have clinched a playoff berth, the Astros were trying to hang onto one, and the Angels were trying to steal one.
I DON’T have a baseball team that I follow anywhere near as passionately as I do the 49ers in the NFL. I root for the Dodgers, though I still have a hard time stomaching their “rent-a-pennant” philosophy, and I also keep an eye on the Athletics and the Braves.
Sadly, the A’s have gone back to their strategy of de-emphasizing competitive baseball — selling off or giving away their best players because they can’t afford to keep them.
As for Atlanta, it’s harder to tell what’s going on down there, since TBS no longer carries the Braves games. But they conducted a fire sale of their own, and the Braves will lose close to 100 games this season — hardly the kind of momentum they’d like to generate as they prepare to move into a new ballpark in 2017.
That leaves us with teams in the postseason like the Yankees, an old, mismatched squad, where A-Rod has emerged as somewhat of a sympathetic, rags-to-riches hero with his bounce-back season this year (OK, maybe Seattle fans might disagree).
There’s the Cardinals, likely the only franchise that could tell its top player to take a $300 million hike, simply replace him with the next man up, and keep winning pennants with a lot of players you’ve never heard of.
And there’s the Blue Jays, last heard from in the postseason roughly a generation ago, proving that sometimes, those trade deadline deals that the experts say you “have to make” to improve your club actually make your club noticeably better.
(How dare a team stand pat? What kind of message does that send to the fans?)
IN ANY event, the postseason will begin this week, with more former Spokane Indians and former Seattle Mariners playing than current Seattle Mariners.
If that doesn’t excite you, well, the ground in the backyard should still be soft enough to dig up for another few weeks, anyway.
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.
I DON’T have a baseball team that I follow anywhere near as passionately as I do the 49ers in the NFL. I root for the Dodgers, though I still have a hard time stomaching their “rent-a-pennant” philosophy, and I also keep an eye on the Athletics and the Braves.
Sadly, the A’s have gone back to their strategy of de-emphasizing competitive baseball — selling off or giving away their best players because they can’t afford to keep them.
As for Atlanta, it’s harder to tell what’s going on down there, since TBS no longer carries the Braves games. But they conducted a fire sale of their own, and the Braves will lose close to 100 games this season — hardly the kind of momentum they’d like to generate as they prepare to move into a new ballpark in 2017.
That leaves us with teams in the postseason like the Yankees, an old, mismatched squad, where A-Rod has emerged as somewhat of a sympathetic, rags-to-riches hero with his bounce-back season this year (OK, maybe Seattle fans might disagree).
There’s the Cardinals, likely the only franchise that could tell its top player to take a $300 million hike, simply replace him with the next man up, and keep winning pennants with a lot of players you’ve never heard of.
And there’s the Blue Jays, last heard from in the postseason roughly a generation ago, proving that sometimes, those trade deadline deals that the experts say you “have to make” to improve your club actually make your club noticeably better.
(How dare a team stand pat? What kind of message does that send to the fans?)
IN ANY event, the postseason will begin this week, with more former Spokane Indians and former Seattle Mariners playing than current Seattle Mariners.
If that doesn’t excite you, well, the ground in the backyard should still be soft enough to dig up for another few weeks, anyway.
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.