It's How You Play

From Gregg Easterbrook of ESPN.com -

"Everybody wants turnovers -- but luck with them can make you seem better than you are, while lack of luck with turnovers can show who you are. Good teams win regardless of turnovers, while pretenders rely on turnover luck. On the season the Pittsburgh Steelers are minus-12 for turnovers, while the Seahawks are plus-seven and the Bills plus-four. Which of these three teams would you least like to play?"

We here at Central Standard are Seahawks backers, but even we have to admit the answer to Easterbrook's question is the Steelers. After years of listening to network announcers on NFL broadcasts, one would assume you have to win the turnover battle to be a good team. Easterbrook's counter-intuitive observation challenges that. This is one reason his articles are so enjoyable.

Happy Days. Not.

I'll tell you what - it's a bad time to be a fan of the Cardinals, Seahawks and Celtics. I don't even want to look at the sports and see if there is any news about the Blues.

Today, the Cardinals found out for sure that ace pitcher Adam Wainwright is done throwing baseballs off a big league mound for at least 12 months and probably more. He has ligament damage in the elbow which requires surgery whereby the damaged ligament is removed from the elbow and tendon from the non-throwing arm is grafted in. It's called Tommy John surgery, named for the pitcher who first had it done. A story on the Cardinals website today said Wainwright needed Tommy John and I wisecracked that the Cardinals team needed Tommy John. As in the pitcher. Even though he's 67 years old. His elbow is probably still in good shape.

As for the Celtics, they traded away Kendrick Perkins, a center, today. I listened to the analysis on ESPN.com and none of the experts can figure out what the Celtics were thinking. Their one big advantage over teams like Miami was lots of bigs. Now they got rid of one. I'm no expert but when the real experts don't know what you are doing, it's not good.

As for the Seahawks, well, no news today, though there will probably be an NFL lockout. But they remain a team with an unproven coach and a roster in flux and no high draft picks and an aging quarterback.

This could be a long, dark time for the Cardinal-Seahawk-Celtic fan. And you know who you are.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

One time Clint Eastwood made a movie. That movie had the same title as this post and more than one writer has leaned upon it as a device for outlining an article or essay or some such thing.

And who am I to let a handy device slip away?

The Good

The Seattle Seahawks who spanked the San Francisco 49ers 31-6 on Sunday. The Seahawks have embarked upon a renovation under the direction of new coach Pete Carroll who has churned the roster, jettisoning many veterans and bringing in fresh faces. It looks like the 'Hawks may be at least a bit better than advertised in 2010.

The Bad

I think the Christine O'Donnell victory in the Delaware Republican primary for the U.S. Senate is bad news. It does not appear that O'Donnell, the Tea Party favorite, is capable of garnering enough support in November in a decidedly blue state to defeat the Democrat and defeating Democrats is the point, not ideological zeal. Mike Castle, the man that O'Donnell defeated appeared to have had a relatively easy path to winning the seat for Republicans which would have been critically valuable if the GOP were to threaten the Democratic majority in the Senate. He's not a conservative as I would prefer, but beating Democrats is the name of the game. I think this is bad news. I would be glad to be wrong here.

The Ugly

How about them St. Louis Cardinals? Pennant hopes are on life support in St. Louis and there is not a decent chance to revive them. What a frustrating season it has been. And could the off-season be worse? We'll see. The Birds need to re-sign Albert Pujols, the best player on the planet. If he doesn't get signed there may be riots.

Well, not really. Maybe.

Finally, a clip from the Eastwood movie I mentioned before. It's the famous duel at the end. I had never seen this movie until a few weeks ago. Number One Son was home and we watched it. The whole movie is a bit tedious, but this scene is marvelous.

OK, NOW They Tell Us

The 2006 Super Bowl featured the Pittsburgh Steelers and, my favorite team, the Seattle Seahawks. Pittsburgh wound up winning the game 21-10, but it was fairly close throughout and Seattle had chances that they did not take advantage of. There was also this matter of a questionable call or two that, were they not made, would have helped the Seahawks fortunes.

Well, now one NFL official, in Seattle's camp this week for a rules session, admits that he made mistakes in that Super Bowl. There's no way to really know, but it's conceivable that the Seahawks might have had a 17-14 lead in the fourth quarter if the calls weren't made.

Honestly, I glad for him for telling the truth and I think this will close that chapter, which still irritates Seattle fans.

Sure would have been nice to win that game.

New Seahawk in Seattle

Pete Carroll, a very successful college football coach, will take over the Seahawks as head coach. Carroll has had previous NFL experience with mixed results.

I'm hopeful the Seahawks are on the road to recovery now. They have floundered for the past two years. It was unclear to me that they were headed the right direction after Mike Holmgren left.

Football Cardinals

There was a brief time in the late 70's when I was interested in the St. Louis football Cardinals. They were generally referred to as the St. Louis football Cardinals because of the historically successful baseball franchise in town with the same nickname. The 'football' part distinguished which Cardinals one was referring to. Sometimes they were also called the Gridbirds which I like.

The Gridbirds of those days were competitive, high-flying and a lot of fun as coached by Don Coryell. Coryell was of the Ernie Zampesi school of aerial offensive attack. There were even a couple of years when they made the playoffs, though they had no success there.

By and large, though, I didn't ever get too attached to them, they were rarely successful and eventually, as we know, they moved to Arizona. The NFL expanded in 1976 and I began following one of the fresh franchises, the Seattle Seahawks, who, unlike the Gridbirds, have actually competed in conference title games and have been to a Super Bowl.

All that windiness aside, I think I'm pulling for the Cardinals today, even though they are division rivals of the Seahawks. I am really pulling for Kurt Warner, their quarterback. Warner, a Christian, is the former QB for the Super Bowl winning Rams team of St. Louis.

The game is on as I write and I have no idea how it will go, but I'd like to see Kurt Warner and that Gridbird helmet advance.

118. Tuesday Roundup

Here's a brief roundup of stuff -

An article on SportsIllustrated.com by Kansas City's Joe Posnanski about the Cardinals' Albert Pujols. He makes a solid case for Pujols for MVP, though, I think St. Louis' absence from the playoffs will hurt his chances.

He says: "Perhaps there were once genuine grounds for debate about Pujols' talent. Not anymore. He is, in my mind, the best player in baseball, and I don't think that anyone approaches him."

And he says: "He (Pujols) has the best on-base percentage the last five years. He has the highest slugging percentage the last five years. He has the most total bases, the most extra base hits, the most times on base. And this year, despite missing a few games, he probably had his greatest offensive season. With offense down all around baseball, the guy hit .357, walked 104 times (while striking out 54), banged 44 doubles and 37 homers, scored 100 and drove in 116."

Albert Pujols - The Best Player In Baseball.

More on the job former Seahawk Jim Zorn in doing in Washington with the Redskins. Keep in mind that this was written before the 'Skins defeated the Eagles Sunday.

From the article: "But as turnarounds go, it's hard to match the one the Redskins and Zorn have pulled off in Washington, because we're not even talking about last year to this year. How about the strides the Redskins have made from the beginning of September until the end? Anybody who watched Washington's Week 1 disaster against the Giants on that opening Thursday night at the Meadowlands wouldn't recognize the team that fairly well dominated Dallas on Sunday."

Washington's next three games are St. Louis, Cleveland and Detroit and a 7-1 start is very possible. You gotta feel good for Jim Zorn.

Finally, if my research is correct, this is the first time in Major League Baseball postseason that two cities had two teams involved: the LA Angels and LA Dodgers and Chicago's White Sox and The Team That Shall Not Be Named.

But there will be no intra-city World Series as only the Dodgers advanced of the four.

Incidentally, I only found four instances of one city having two teams in MLB postseason prior to this season and not surprisingly, they all have come after the addition of two more playoff teams in each league. Both New York teams in '99, 2000 and '06 and the two LA teams in '04. In 2000 we had the all-New York World Series, won by the Yankees.

115. Vikings, 'Skins, 'Hawks and Zorn

Number One Son graduated from Parkview High School last spring and during his four years in school he never saw the varsity football team win a game. In fact, the losing steak went all the way back to October 2002. Fifty-eight games in a row. Three senior classes, ’06, ’07, and ’08 never saw their squad win.

And finally the streak ended last Friday night. The victory came against one of the city teams, Hillcrest, in a double-overtime thriller, 39-36. Congrats to the Parkview Vikings.

And in Seahawk-related stories, original Seattle QB and former QB coach Jim Zorn is tearing it up as the newly-minted head coach of the Washington Redskins. This past weekend saw the ‘Skins beat the class of the NFC, the Dallas Cowboys, 26-24.

This from the Seattle Times – “A few weeks ago, there was doubt whether Zorn was the right guy to replace Joe Gibbs. Now, he's off to a great start, including being 1-0 against Washington's biggest rival and ending a 1-for-12 skid at Texas Stadium.”

The Redskins are 3-1 while Zorn’s old team languishes at 1-2. Thankfully, the Seahawks are not out of the race in the mediocre NFC West.

Hey! How about Jim Zorn’s new team hooking up with his old team in the playoffs? At the beginning of the year that seemed impossible. Now? It’s possible.