IS THE MAGIC BACK?

***YANKS WIN IN A WALK-OFF***
Jorge Posada was shown in the dugout last night, mouthing the words, "It's about time." Right you are, Jorge. Rallies have just not been part of the the Yankee offense this year and it sure needs to be.
Is there a better choice for Team MVP than Curtis Granderson so far? Grandy came to the Yanks with a reputation for being unable to hit left-handers, but after a mid-season adjustment with Kevin Long last year, that reputation is now gone.
I thought it was interesting that Toronto 3rd baseman, John McDonald seemed to tell reliever Frank Francisco, not to forget about the runner at first with two outs and the score tied in the ninth. I guess Francisco's attention span leaves a lot to be desired, since Granderson promptly stole second. He scored on Mark Teixeira's "single" to win the game for NY. Teixeira's winning blow hit off the glove of baseman, Juan Rivera, who tried to ole' the ball. It that situation, you MUST keep the ball in the infield, even if it means just blocking it with your body. It probably would have been better for Toronto if they left it up to A-Rod, even if he came though with one of his swinging bunts, which has become his trademark this year.
A-Rod's hitting the fastball okay, but he looks pretty silly when the pitchers throw those slow breaking balls down in the dirt. He started the season looking like a triple crown candidate, but he hasn't been the same since he got hurt.
Congrats to CC Sabathia, who apparently has to throw a complete game to have a chance at a win.

***TALKING ABOUT STATISTICS***
After being berated by Lucy for his poor pitching and hitting records, Charlie Brown responded, "Tell your statistics to shut up!" Probably not a bad idea for all the announcers out there. Stats and averages mean nothing without a large sample size. Telling us that Player X is "hot" because he has 7 hits in his last 20 at bats, doesn't mean he's about to go 4 for 4 today. Last night, Michael Kay told us that A-Rod has been on a tear lately, hitting .386 in his last 10 games. Are you impressed? Actually, he's had 17 hits in 44 at-bats, but only 4 or 5 of them were of the line drive, solid hit variety. The rest were infield hits and seeing-eye ground balls. So if you weren't watching all the games, you might think (mistakenly) that A-Rod was in a groove...except that "groove" is deep enough to be called a rut.

I've ranted before on all the stats that people come up with to judge ballplayers, but even some of the more established stats are being watered down so much that they are losing value. Last night, Marc Rzepczynski (I'd like to buy a vowel, please) entered the game in the 8th inning for Toronto with the score 4-1, faced three batters and gave up two hits and allowed 2 runs to score before getting the 3rd out. For that performance, he was credited with a "Hold." He didn't HOLD anything. Why does he get credited with a positive stat? Next week, some announcer is going to say, "Wow, Marc has 7 holds. He's having a good year."
Jon Papelbon pitched the ninth for Boston last night and gave up a home run. Luckily, he had a three run lead at the time, so he was still able to get his "save." You can have up to a three run lead and still get your save. Seems like an awful lot of leeway for a guy who is supposed to 'close down' the opposing team.
Michael Kay likes to talk about "Quality Starts." That's pitching six innings while giving up three runs or fewer. First of all, that's a 4.50 ERA. You can lose a lot of games giving up 4 or 5 runs every game. What kind of quality is that?
I agree with Charlie Brown: "Tell your statistics to shut up!"

***FROM JANICE HOUGH***
"So the Big 12 conference, despite being down to 10 teams, will keep its name. Meanwhile, the Big 10, which has had 11 teams, will also keep its name when Nebraska joins this fall. Meanwhile the Atlantic 10 has 14 teams. And we wonder why college football players are bad at math."

CP-