A Sports Muse

The Sox are playing Oakland as I write this….day baseball is always a good thing. Unfortunately, the Sox are trailing, and it looks like poor Tim Wakefield is going to have another one of those years where he pitches just OK, but the team doesn’t give him any run support.

But tonight is the main event….another Boston-LA NBA final. Much like baseball, I wonder if the rest of the country ever gets tired of seeing this matchup? Yankees-Red Sox is always relevant in The Hub, but how does it play in Des Moines?

In any case…just some thoughts for today. Did you see the Almost Perfect Game the other night? A blown call on batter #27 cost the pitcher his place in the record books. This has sparked renewed debate on whether or not baseball should have an instant-replay rule. I must admit, I have mixed emotions about this. No doubt the Sox would have been helped by overturning many questionable calls over the years….but I tend to be a purist where baseball is concerned. I like games to be played on natural grass and dirt out in the sunshine…and I really don’t like the Designated Hitter rule here in the AL.

But for something of this magnitude, where the ump very clearly missed the call? (I mean come on, the runner was out by a full stride.) A friend posted on Four Freedoms that perhaps the managers should be given just 3 challenges per game…that might be the way to go. But I really don’t want to see MLB go the way of the NFL. There’s still a human element out there on the diamond that hasn’t been corporatized, computerized, or controlled yet. A human blowing a call is part of the game, too.

I also have an issue with the NBA stealing things from other sports. Anyone remember the last time the Lakers and Celtics were hot, back in the 80s? The last NBA final to be played under the “2-2-1-1-1” format was 1986…where the Celtics beat the Rockets for #16.

The following year, they took the format from the World Series and changed it to “2-3-2”. But therein lies the problem. It’s that pivotal 5th game. Larry Bird had it right back in the day…assuming the teams are evenly matched, the go-ahead game should be at the team’s building with the home-court advantage. The way it plays now, if the Celtics were to steal one in LA tonight, the all import game 5 would be in Boston.

I suppose it’s inconclusive which team has home-court advantage under the current system, but suffice to say I don’t like it and never have.

Lastly, a couple of things to ponder from even further back…all the way to the Russell/Auerbach era. Much has been written of late that the C’s are too old and too tired to win it all. Well, the same was being written about the 1968-1969 Celtics. They creaked into the playoffs with a 42-40 record that year…but beat LA for the title in 7 games.

Red had it right then, and it still holds true today. The Celtics are a T E A M. On any given night, they can beat a single-star team. LA’s got Kobe for sure…but after that it’s a bunch of (very good) role players. Look up what happened in the Michael Jordan record game in 1986. MJ got 63 points that day, but the C’s shut down the rest of the team and won anyway.

I suspect it may go all 7 games…but I’m betting the C’s wrap it up in 5 or 6.