1. What a pennant race. Wow. If the Tribe holds on today (they are up 8-0), they are 2 1/2 back again of the Sox. More importantly, they now lead the "3-for-2" race for the Wild Card:
Tribe ----
Yanks 1/2 GB
Red Sox 1 GB
Two of these three teams - unless Chicago keeps losing or the A's win out - are making the playoffs. One will miss out.
2. What will it take? 3 days ago, I thought the Tribe would have to go 8-5 to get in. Well, it looks like they will go 2-1 vs. the Sox. Again, the standings and the schedule:
Tribe 89-63 @KC (4), TB (3), Chi (3)
NYY 88-63 Bal (1), Tor (3), @Bal (4), @Bos (3)
Bos 88-64 @Bal (3), Tor (4), NYY (3)
I think:
Yanks will win tomorrow, win 2 vs Tor, 3 vs Bal, 2 vs Bos. That's 8-3
Bos will win 2 vs Bal, 3 vs Tor, 1 vs NYY. That's 6-4.
If that holds, the Tribe needs to go 6-4 to beat Bos. If Bos takes 2 from NYY, then the Tribe needs to win 7. If Bos sweeps, then the Yanks go 6-5, and the Tribe needs to go 6-4.
3. This theories behind the math above will change every day from now until next Friday. What fun this is going to be.
4. This is an incredible race, with all of us looking at 4, maybe even 5 games each night. It just seems like the contenders don't lose. Teams have to win just to keep pace and not lose ground. A loss puts you in a bad mood for 12 hours until the next round of heart stopping games - and if your team wins, you are on cloud 9 again until the next night. Just a whole lot of fun.
5. What a sports weekend. Left for Green Bay on Saturday night - got to listen to the final 3 outs of a 5-4 win on Saturday while driving in rural Wisconsin. Stopped over in Oshkosh Sat night for drinks and to watch football highlights. Sun morning was tailgating (more below) and the Browns' WIN in Green Bay!
Of course, the downside was the looooooong drive after the game back to home. 6 hours' drive , after tailgating and raucous cheering - it made for a long day.
6. Green Bay during an NFL game is something else. The stadium is set in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It's kind of like taking a suburb with mdeium size houses - say, Timonium, MD or Parma, OH, and clearing out 2 blocks and placing a stadium there. The closest I can compare it to is the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore - although Lambeau seemed closer to houses than Memorial was.
Anyway- about 50% of the houses near the stadium rent out their yards for tailgates and parking. We arrived in Green Bay about 10:45 (for a 3:15 game), and decided not to park in a gas station. So we went down one of these side street - and people were there flagging cars into their yards. We pased one house with the inside of the garage painted yellow and green - with 3 TVs - and decided that was home for the day.
A great decision. For $10, we got:
- a parking spot about 2 blocks from the stadium - and we were not blocked in
- full use of bathrooms and TVs
- a full liquor bar
- use of their grill for our food - they had hamurers and hot dogs provided anyway
- beer set out for postgame parties
And they were the friendliest people, even to us enemy fans. The only fans they hated were (not surprisingly) Bears fans.
We have their card - so if anyone wants to go to a game, they are able to secure tickets and get them for you . I will post their name/address in a later post.
Again, I can't say enough about the hospitality of those fans (and clearly many others). What an enjoyable trip.
7. And we won! I think the game was shown to most of the nations, so it's nice to see us play well on TV. The MVP of the season so far is clearly the offensive line. 0 sacks in 2 games.
That being said, this team is going to get killed this weekend in Indy.....I always though we were going to be 1-2 at the bye week, and we can't do any worse than that. After that, it is home vs. Chi, @ Bal, home vs Det, @ Hous, home vs. Tenn, @ Pit, home vs. Miami, @ Minn, home vs Jax. Those are not the hardest 9 games in the world. I think we have a chance to go (in order....) W, L(?), W, W, W, L, W, ??, L - 5-3 over those 8, withthe Jacksonville game a possibility. In fact, 2 other L's - at Baltimore and at Minn - now seem possbile to grab. Who knows???
Enough rambling. Go Tribe!
3 comments:
I don't think its going to be as tight as you think. I think the bullpen for the Sox is just too tremendous to overcome and it will be the Yanks and Tribe making it. But what do I know.
Onto Football...Glad you made the trip and decided to tailgate. For $10 you get all that? Amazing.
As for the Browns, what is up with their schedule? Its like they play nothing but the worst teams in the league. If someone can tell me the difference between the Browns, Lions, Bears, Vikes, Texans, Titans, Ravens, and Miami, please do so. I hate to say this, but I actually agree with you Eric and you could end up looking real nice after this stretch. But with all of that said, I don't think that the Browns are head and shoulders above any of these teams, despite their killing of GB. This means that they have a very good chance of losing all of these games. But once again, what do I know.
Oh yeah, please post any pictures you have from the tailgate. Please tell me you took pictures of this house.
um.... yeah, that would have been a good idea.
No, forgot to take pictures of the garage. My friend here at work has a picture of me at Lambeau with my orange hair... as soon as he figures out how to download it, I'll post it.
Re the Tribe: I'd like to believe you, but I'm too nervous at this point to believe any of our competitors have weaknesses.
Re the Browns: I am in no way suggesting that we are head and shoulders above any of those - but we have a chance to win 50% of those games, maybe even more!
We close, however, with: @ Oak, @ Cin, h Bal, h Pit. So if we somehow do get to 6-6, the final 4 doesn't look too good (with the exception of Bal).
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