MLB: Moose Continues to Mow 'em Down

The Yankees have slowly inched their way back to the top of the American League East, and one of the reasons is their sarting pitching, namely Mike Mussina.

Mussina (4-1) is off to one of the finest starts of his career. He has kept his club in every game that he has started so far this season, and he has surrendered no more than three earned runs in any one of his starts. He ranks in the top ten in several different categories, including wins, save percentage, and innigs pitched, and he is in the top three in earned run average and strikeouts.

He has been the true glue of the starting pitchers of this club for several years now, and when he was thrown into the fire of facing the Red Sox' Pedro Martinez in several starts in the span of a few weeks a couple of seasons ago, he was brilliant, winning nearly every one of those starts.

Mussina has always been known for being one of the better fielding pitchers in the league, as his five Gold Gloves from 1996-2003 would indicate, but perhaps now the Moose will be recognized as one of the better all-around pitchers of his era.

Currently, he owns a 4-1 record and has an ERA of just 2.31 after his outstanding performance againtst the Toronto Blue Jays: six innings pitched, one run, seven hits, two walks, and seven strikeouts.

In his only loss of the season he gave up three runs but the Yankees didn't hit for him. And his strikeout-to-walk ratio is always excellent, usually at least three or four to one.

And the way that he's been pitching so far this season, this just may be his best year yet.

NHL Playoff Spotlight: Rangers' Back Against the Wall

The Rangers, who were one of the more dominating teams in the NHL this season, turns out to be one of two teams that has lost the first three games of their series and finds themselves on the brink of elimination.
New York, who slumped its way into the playoffs after losing a season-long grip on first place in the Atlantic Division, continued to play the way they ended the season, uninspired and lifeless.
The Rangers had two major problems going into this year's post season. Let me preface this by saying that you have to throw out game one. Since the Rangers aren't scoring, they thought that they would just come out and bully and beat up the Devils. The problem was they did it illegally, they got caught doing it, and they looked ugly doing it. You're never going to win a game, especially a playoff game, when you give the other team 13 power plays and five PP goals. So forget that one.
Back to the two problems.
First of all, as great a season that he may have had, Henrik Lundqvist is a rooke who had not yet experienced the overdrive and ferocity that is the NHL Playoffs. That can be a very bad thing.
Second, this team is far too top heavy in the scoring department. They don't have the depth that you need to go deep into the playoffs. This team relies heavily on its all-world player, Jaromir Jagr. They aren't getting any scoring out of their other lines. I have been wondering for some time now how New York would fare without its prized posession. We saw what happened, and it wasn't pretty. It still isn't. From the moment I saw him get hurt, it appeared to me to be the type of injury that results in a separated shoulder or a torn rotator cuff. As often happens during the playoffs, all that the Rangers would release on Jagr's injury was that he had an "upper body injury". Yea, big surprise that was to hear.
Jagr has been leading this club all season long, and without him they are in deep trouble and may not live beyond tonight.

NHL Playoff Spotlight: Devils Burn Rangers in Game One

The NHL Playoffs have begun, and the teams are wasting no time battling it out. It's almost like opening day, when the bad teams still don't know how bad they are. Every team starts evenly, and the lower seeded clubs are playing like they are ranked higher than they are.

Just a game or two into most of these series, the underdogs are fighting for their playoff lives right from the first game.

In the Eastern Conference, the series between the Ottawa Senators and Tampa Bay Lightning is locked at 1-1. After winning game one, the Sens couldn't make it two in a row. The significance of that fact is that Ottawa is now 0-for-13 in games where they can take a 2-0 series lead. The defending Cup Champs didn't have a great season, but they're not going down without a fight.

Heads turned when the Carolina Hurricanes, one of the hottest clubs in the league all season, dropped the first game of their series against the Montreal Canadiens. Game two will be Monday night, and I expect that the series will be tied at one apiece when it's over.

The Buffalo Sabres needed to go into a second overtime to continue their season-long dominance over the Broad St. Bullies, the Philadelphia Flyers. It wasn't easy, but Buffalo took a 1-0 lead. Look for Philly to make a series of it.

The final Eastern Conference series is the one that's closer to home to the Metropolitan New York area, and that, of course, is the Rangers-Devils. The Rangers are looking to throw the first game into the garbage pile and start over, as they could not have played a worse game against New Jersey if they tried. It was a game with non-stop penalties, and the Devils would make the Blueshirts pay, scoring four power-play goals on their way to a 6-1 smacking of New York.

In some circles they say that it's easier for a team to get over a blowout than a close loss. The Rangers better hope so, because this one is a bitter pill to swallow.

The worst news for the Rangers after game one wasn't just the lopsided scoreboard, but their injury to their stud scorer, Jaromir Jagr.

The Rangers owe their success this season to basically two players: Jagr and goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. The Rangers go as these two players go. When Jagr was lighting up the scoreboard and Lundy was hot, New York was practically unbeatable. Towards the end of the season when Jagr started to slip, the Rangers went into a funk that appears is not yet over.

Rangers fans should come in off of the ledge, because we have not yet heard the last from this team. Look for New York to rebound and make a run at New Jersey...possibly as soon as game two. But if the Jagr meister is as hurt as he appeared when he left the ice on Saturday, the Rangers could be in big, big trouble and could make yet another early exit from the Chase for Lord Stanley's Cup.

In the West, Edmonton is trying to keep the Red Wings up against the wall as that series is 1-1. The Oilers believe in themselves, something that can be not just overlooked but unappreciated. Give a team a little confidence in the playoffs and it can go a long way. Just look at what Anaheim accomplished a few years back.

The Colorado Avalanche surprised the Dallas Stars as they took the first game of their series in Dallas. The Stars will come back as long as they put more pressure on Colorado than they did the last two periods of game one. This is one of the more evenly matched series, so it's possible that it may go the distance.

The Calgary Flames had to go into OT to beat the Mighty Ducks, but the Ducks came back to tie the series on Sunday night. This is another series that could go seven games.

The Nashville Predators won more home games than any other team in the NHL this season, but San Jose has high-scoring Jonathan Cheechoo and possible MVP Joe Thornton. They were a very impressive team this season, and they should come back and knock Nashville out.

Drop a line, give me your take on how the NHL Playoffs will shape up, and who you think is going to win the Cup.

The State of the City Teams Address, part 2

The Giants and Jets had two different seasons, with the G-Men giving their fans a ray of hope and the Jets fans reaching for the Pepto Bismol before September was over. The question that the fans have to ask themselves is "Is it better to not make the playoffs at all so that nobody's talking about you or is it better to get waxed by a score of 23-0 in a first round home playoff game after winning the division?"
The Giants had a season that would be considered successful by most standards (11-6 incl. playoffs, first place in the NFC East), but they had some disappointing losses as well that had they been wins they would have been set up even better for their first round matchup.
The 16-13 loss to Dallas was embarrassing, was were the two 24-21 losses; first to a Minnesota club that was in disarray all season (even if they did improve in the second half), and then in Seattle, where they should have won the game on several different occasions.
Yet they managed to hold on to beat the Redskins by one game to win the East, even though Washington beat the Giants on Dec. 24 by a score of 35-20 where the boys in blue barely showed up and Eli was awful.
Had they won two of those three games they would have finished with 13 wins, which would have given them the #1 seed in the NFC, and they would have had homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. More than likely they would have opened the playoffs with a home game against the Redskins, and I'm sure that they would have been out to avenge their Christmas Eve loss in their own stadium.
Even if they had accomplished that much and gone out in the next round, the taste that was left in the fans' mouth would not have been quite as bitter.
Chalk it up to a second-year quarterback making his first postseason start.
As for the Jets, it was a season that their fans will want to forget as soon as possible.
With a 4-12 record and winless on the road (and let's not forget that their division incudes trips to the powerhouse Dolphins and Bills), the Jets were about as bad as they could get.
Once again they lost their #1 QB, Chad Pennington, to injury. By the time that it was all said and done, they actually were on the phone with Vinny T. before season's end.
They began the season by getting scalped in Arrowhead, and the team never seemed to fully recover from the loss. The following week they beat the struggling Dolphins at home, only to follow that with a home loss to Jacksonville and an anemic offensive showing as they lost 13-3 in Baltimore.
Herman Edwards regrouped the troops to shock everyone when they beat Tampa Bay at home 14-12, but that would be about the highlight of the season as they would go on to lose seven in a row and nine of their final eleven games, with their other two wins on the year coming when they hosted a physically decimated Raiders' squad on week fourteen and three weeks later when they sent the Buffalo Bills home searching for answers.
Since this horrible season ended, they lost Edwards to the Chiefs, they have questions to answer about the durability of their quarterback, and they seemingly have more holes to fill than a block of Swiss cheese.
About the only positive that the New York Jets can take from the 2005 season is their draft pick. They will pick fourth, and if they're lucky, they'll take advantage of this pick and make the best move for this club.
Report cards for the Giants and Jets: Giants B-, Jets F

Yanks just starting to heat up

The Yankees are still hovering around .500, but they're just heating up. Giambi had two blasts today, one of them being a mammoth shot to the upper deck in center field of the Metrodome. The starters have looked good so far, and overall they have deserved a better fate than they have had. When the bats are going, which is most of the time, you never know who's going to be the star of the day at the plate. One day it's A-Rod, the next it's Posada, another it's Matsui, and today it was Giambi. It's going to be a long season, that's for sure, but before it's all said and done it will be a longer season for opposing pitchers.

The State of the City Teams Address

Welcome to the first annual State of the City Teams Address. And by city teams I mean no other than the teams that play in and around the biggest, best city in the world, New York City.
First I’ll take a look at the teams whose season is coming to an end, then I'll talk about the Giants and the Jets, and then I’ll analyze the teams whose seasons have just begun.
I’m going to make this a four-part series, since one blog entry would be too long to try to analyze the seasons of nine professional sports franchises.
I’ll begin with the two area teams that play on the hardwood, the Nets and the Knicks. These are two clubs that couldn’t be closer together geographically, and further apart in the standings.
For argument’s sake we’ll call the Nets a New York City team. In the NBA, there are only two cities that have two teams: New York and Los Angeles.
In L.A., there are the Lakers and the Clippers. The Clippers have been perennial doormats for the league, but even they are closer to their cross-city rivals than the Knicks are to the Nets.
New Jersey has been an Eastern Conference powerhouse ever since the acquisition of point guard Jason Kidd. Then they got Vince Carter and they became even stronger. They went to the NBA finals a couple of years ago, and are once again a strong playoff team with a chance of representing the East in the finals.
Then there are the Knicks. I ask, is there a team in the league that has less direction than the Knicks? It appears as if the Knicks don’t know which direction they’re headed or what they want to accomplish. Are they going for a youth movement or are they trying to win now?
By the looks of this team, they sure don’t look like they’re trying to win now. At least they don’t show it on the court. This club has been below .500 and has not made the playoffs for what will be the fifth consecutive year. Ironically enough, they’re neighbors across the Hudson River have been above .500 for five seasons now and have made the playoffs in those years.
If you’re trying to rebuild, you need veterans that are willing to teach the young players and aid in their development, not players that are more concerned with their own numbers rather than the wins and losses column.
The team looks lost on the court, Larry Brown looks as though he’s trying to direct traffic during a Chinese fire drill in downtown Hong Kong on New Year’s Day, and Isiah just smiles at the cameras and continues to bring in round pieces to this square puzzle.
The Knicks have a lot of time on their hands for Larry and Isiah to try to get on the same page while they’re on the golf course. Because it sure doesn’t look like they’ve even been in the same library this season.

March Sadness

We're down to the fianl game of another stellar NCAA tournament. This year's action was absolutely fantastic, perhaps the most entertaining in years; and that includes last year's tourney, when we had games like Vermont knocking out defending champion Syracuse in the first round.

There were some unbelievable runs in this tournament, we never would have guessed that we would still have been talking about some of them as late in the dance as we were.

But hats off to the George Masons, the Wichita States, and the LSU's of this year's tournament. These teams all turned heads this season and they made it all so much fun, not just for us, but for themselves as well. And isn't that what it's all about, anyway?

So, although most of us didn't win our pools, our favorite teams were knocked out, and our brackets looked like hell by the time that it was all said and done, it was a heck of a ride.

It may be a bit anticlimactic that the teams that won over America's hearts, George Mason and LSU, didn't make it to the final game, but let's enjoy this championship game anyway. It's been years since UCLA was in the final battle, and Florida has never been a basketball powerhouse. So let's shift gears and embrace this game, so be it for different reasons then we may have wanted to, but for the fun of what it means to the two teams that are there. And congratulations to UCLA and Florida, whoever wins. It will be a tremendous accomplishment for either club. And for the rest of us, there's nothing more that we can say, except for thanks and we'll get 'em next year.