Best Moment of the World Series So Far

Steve Perry sings along to “Lights”:

Not Werth It

The big outrage in Philly today is that GM Ruben Amaro said in a radio interview that there’s a chance the team could be a better team without Jayson Werth, the righthanded slugger who appears likely to leave the team when he becomes a free agent.
Some are even calling for Amaro to be fired- although among those “some” are people who can’t spell Amaro’s name right in a headline.
But really, what is Amaro supposed to say? “Yes, we’re going to be worse?” That’s going to depend on who they get to replace him, how Werth does with his new team, etc. There are a million variables. GMs who aren’t named David Kahn aren’t generally in the business of admitting they’re about to have a bad year. And Bill Smith didn’t say “we’ll be better without Johan Santana” right before he was traded, but guess what- the Twins ended up being better without Santana.
Sure, the Phils will probably take a step back, short term, without Werth. But the question shouldn’t be “will they be better next year?,” it should be “is it wise to do what it would take to keep Werth?” Giving a five-year deal for huge money, or at least huge enough money to win a bidding war, to a player who’s over 30, when every other regular on the Phils is also over 30, might not be so advisable, especially for a team that really, really needs to get younger.
There’s also the fan fantasy that Werth will take less money or fewer years to stay in Philly, although players who fire their agents and hire Scott Boras, as Werth did a few months ago, aren’t known for doing that sort of thing.

I Don’t Know What’s Sadder…

That Tarvaris Jackson might play on Sunday, or that I’m already trying to talk myself into it.
But this whole “Childress threw Favre under the bus” thing- who cares? Why are athletes such little children about this kind of thing? Yea, Childress offered some mild criticism in a press conference that it was bad for Favre to throw three interceptions- well, isn’t that true? Isn’t that plain to see to anyone who watched the game?

RIP, Limewire

The popular file-sharing service announced today that it is complying with a court order and shutting down. Napster got there first, but Limewire managed to last a lot longer.

Quote of the Day

DougJ of Balloon Juice:

What I�ve learned over the past few days is that both sides do it. Whether it�s a left-leaning writer using the phrase �curb-stomping� or an angry mob of conservatives actually performing a curb-stomping, whether it�s a liberal drawing a Hitler mustache on George W. Bush or a right-wing militia member blowing up a federal building, whether it�s two black guys in berets standing outside a polling station or a hundred years of Jim Crow laws. It�s all the same stuff and we should just admit it.

That’s a reference to this incident last night, in which a woman was beaten by a mob at a Rand Paul rally, and got a concussion. Yes, a WOMAN was BEATEN by a MOB at a political rally. Why isn’t the lead story of every newscast in the country today?

Fire Childress?

PFT thinks Childress may be on the hot seat, but then again, PFT ALWAYS thinks EVERY coach is on the hot seat.
Is Chilly doing a bad job this year? Of course he is. And he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory spending the whole offseason begging Favre to come back, and then immediately start feuding with him. But the team did come within one stupid Favre pick of the Super Bowl, and that was last year, and he did get an extension. The only way I see Childress getting fired is if they lose the rest of their games, and even then I imagine he’ll last the season.

“You’d Think Eventually an Entire Team Would Just Be Wiped Out”

News Item: Phillies plane nearly collided with another on Philadelphia airport runway
Link is to Craig Calcaterra, who of course thought of the same “Seinfeld” reference as me. Luckily everyone’s okay.
But I can’t help but think- an entire professional sports team being killed in a plane crash, during or immediately after a playoff series, would be both the biggest tragedy and the biggest story in the history of sports. I mean, it would be about 50-100 people, all of them generally famous, dying all at once, and would have such an effect on that city and that team and that sport. You thought Cleveland was devastated by LeBron leaving?

Rex Ryan, Defender of the Gays

I love KSK so, so much.

Film Critic Quote of the Week

Matt Zoller Seitz on the now-frequent paradox of movie stars being terrible, terrible people:

Instead of either/or, how about both/and? [Alec] Baldwin is a hot-tempered, maudlin, navel-gazing bozo, and one of the great character actors and improvisational comics alive. Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite, a sexist, a homophobe, and very possibly a deranged religious fanatic; he’s also one of the few bona fide movie stars of the last three decades and the most brilliant action filmmaker since Sam Peckinpah. Polanski is a great director and a sex offender. Kazan was a great director and a rat. Lohan and Moss are substance abusers and arresting beauties whose most interesting work probably lies ahead of them. Sheen is a master of droll self-parody and an unexpectedly charming sitcom star, and a wife-abusing scum that should be behind bars right now. If I cared enough to hypothesize an ideal future for Sheen, I’d picture him serving several years in prison for assaulting his wife, preferably in maximum security with the hardest of hardcore felons, then moving over to HBO, playing himself.

That last scenario is now looking increasingly possible.

If Payrolls Won Baseball Games

A great, great graph from the wonderful Flip Flop Flyball. I love how much of the top ten in payroll- the Cubs and Mets especially- were terrible this year. And who knew the Twins would ever be so high in those sorts of standings?