Winner take all...

We strongly feel whoever wins game 3 tonight will be in complete control of the World Series. Unfortunately, we think the Yankees have the edge.

Why?

Because Andy Pettitte and Cole Hamels are the pitchers.

The left handed Pettitte figures to be tough on Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. And the left handed Hamels figures to be tough on no one. (Except for his outfielders, who most likely will be running all over the place tracking down balls.)

We will say this, if Hamels lays yet another egg tonight, he will be our new Whipping Boy.

On a happier note, The Playmaker celebrated his 8th birthday this morning with a 4-2 soccer win for Team 801. The Birthday Boy netted 2 goals. We are now 5-0-1 on the season.

Stay safe out there tonight, people.

The World has NOT Ended...

A return to Natural Order was on tap last night, as Your Flag Football Cardinals returned to their winning ways, 27-14. Trailing 14-12 at halftime, The Playmaker scored the go ahead touchdown on a 10 yard catch. (He also scored a TD during our 28-21 loss on Black Tuesday.) We are now a nifty 9-1 with four games remaining.

That's one...

Great first game. Cliff Lee is a frigging man. (Was there any doubt?!?) We are tired today, but it is the best kind of tired. If Pedro somehow gets the W tonight, this thing will be over.

The World has Ended...

Eagles 28 Cardinals 21.

Depression. Serious Depression.

One...One...One

We won our third straight fantasy football game, 111-80. We are now 5-2 and tied for first in our division. Drew Brees had a second half rally against the Dolphins to finish with 21 points and Ryan Grant came up big with 20. But the biggest puff of smoke lift came from Ricky Williams. We benched Clinton Portis, who would have given us just 4 points (and 1 thrown helmet). Instead, we picked up 27 points (3 TDs) from Williams. Our receivers did little (star Mike Sims-Walker had the bye), as Larry Fitz, Jeremy Macklin Maclin and Michael Crabtree combined for just 18 points (and zero TDs).

Eagles - Redskins...

Best we can do...

We loved it in 8th grade. We still love it now.

Dollars & Goals...

1. We participated in the neighborhood multi-family garage sale from today from 9-12. Our expectations were, well, we were expecting to sell nothing. Old games and books, some stuff from the in-laws' old Hallmark store, lots of little things. The most expensive thing we laid out was a toy box ($15). Yet, somehow, someway, at the end of the 3 hour sale, most of the stuff had sold and we had netted almost $200.

2. Team 801 abused its opposition today, winning 8-2. The Playmaker led the way with 6 goals. Our record is now 4-0-1.

Three & Out...

1. Your Flag Football Cardinals won (again) last night! This time it was 28-14. The Playmaker had one catch for 12 yards. On defense he had (at least) 5 tackles, including 3 behind the line of scrimmage.

2. Brent Suicide Pool! We are one of four peeps left. Sunday, we're taking the Patriots over the Bucs.

3. Fantasy! Currently on a two game winning streak, we are 4-2 for the season. Last week we shattered the 100 point mark for the second time. We have a standing offer to move Brent Celek for DeSean Jackson.

1980...2008...2009

World Dominance...

Your Flag Football Cardinals got another victory last night, topping the Seahawks, 28-14. Our record is now 7-0. It's not our style to brag, but The Playmaker was the star of the game. He caught two passes for 50 yards. One of those was a 40 yard TD down the right sideline. On defense, he made at least 4 tackles, including two behind the line of scrimmage on (foolish) rushing attempts. It was also his turn to get a series at quarterback. And how did he do?!? He completed all four of his passing attempts as he led the team down the field on a 40 yard scoring drive. The TD pass come on a crossing pattern that he threw about 8 yards and his receiver ran another 10 yards to the end zone. Just for kicks, we went to primecomputing.com and figured out his passing rating. ***It was a whopping 148.

Again, not our style to brag. Just reporting the fax facts!

J-Roll...

That stuff we said when the playoffs started about not having high expectations for the Phillies and, as such, we were not going to stress out during the playoffs?

Yeah, that lasted about 30 seconds into the Colorado series.

It's impossible for us not to stress out during the playoffs.

So there we were last night in the bottom of the 6th, trailing the Dodgers by one run with two outs and runners on first and third. Raul Ibanez sliced a sinking liner to left field. And just as the game was about to be tied, Manny pulled a defensive gem out of his ass and somehow managed to catch the ball just before it hit the ground.

Manny making a defensive play?!?

Manny hustling?!?

Those were signs, to be sure. Pissed off, we sulked up to bed -- sure that the Phillies were heading for a loss.

However, we did The Blackberry with us.

We tossed and turned, too agitated to fall asleep. Every five minutes or so, we peaked at the score. (Making sure to do so under the covers so as to not wake up The Wife.)

Seventh inning. No change. Eighth inning. No change. With that, we turned off The Blackberry and set it on the nightstand.

Five minutes later we decided to check one final time. Matt Stairs had walked. Carlos Ruiz got clipped on the elbow, First and second with one out. Greg Dobbs made out number two. Even worse, he failed to move the runners over. The Blackberry said Jimmy Rollins was batting.

Thirty seconds later the auto-refresh said PHILLIES 5 DODGERS 4.

We flew out of bed and descended the steps downstairs and turned on the 50 Incher. Pandemonium was reigning at The Bank. Through the magic of the almighty DVR, we were able to rewind and watch the whole 9th inning unfold.

Unfrigging believable.

Phillies

Thoughts on last night's 11-0 win:

1. We expect Joe Torre to now give Ryan Howard the Barry Bonds treatment! At this point, why would the Dodgers want to give Howard anything to hit?!?

2. Jason Werth's home run! That was the hardest hit dinger we can remember seeing. Ever. Seriously, that thing left the park in about two seconds flat. Wow.

3. The Bullpen! No one has really talked about this, but with the Phillies up 8-0 in the 8th, Uncle Charlie sent Cliff Lee up to the plate. It was clear Lee was going to go pitch the 9th. Only when Shane Victorino clubbed a 3 run homer did the bullpen phone ring for Chad Durbin. Apparently Uncle Charlie was a bit leery trusting his pen with an 8 run lead over the final 3 outs. Can't say that we blame him.

4. Tonight is HUGE! The Phillies are infamous for exploding offensively one night and then snoozing the next. Look no further than games one and two. Eight runs the first, just one the second. They need to score early tonight so that Buster Blanton has some wiggle room.

Snow in October...

Snow football...

Tennessee @ New England

Playing with fire...

Taking a break from sitting in front of the day-long fire just long enough to say...

1.OU is now Texas' bitch! The pain of saying that is real. We have now lost four out of five to those arrogant A-holes. We outplayed them for most of the game, but the usual suspects (Dom Franks and DC Brent Venables) made their usual mistakes. Franks tried to be cool and pick up a bouncing punt, only to, of course, fumble it and give Texas 3 points. Venables had the Bonghorns totally confused in the first half with his constant barrage of Buddy Ryan-esque blitzes. In the second half, however, he went back to his boring, vanilla self and stopped blitzing completely. As such, Texas scored 13 second half points. Of course, we would have won had Stone Hands himself, Keenan Clayton, managed to hang on to either of his pick six opportunities.

2. Brent NFL Suicide Pool Update! Along with The Playmaker, we are one of six people still alive in the $400 pool. Today we are going with the Steelers (for the second and last time this season), while The Playmaker is going with the Eagles (also for the second and last time).

3. Throw away the book, Uncle Charlie! There was no reason on Earth to take Pedro out of that game Friday afternoon. He was under 90 pitches and could have easily taken the mound for the 8th inning. Your pen sucks and your starter has yielded just 2 hits in 7 innings. Let him at least pitch the 8th and then go to the pen. Oh, and it's not our style to be critical, but how and why has Ryan Madson become a total pu$$y?!? How can you throw 97 on the gun and have a killer change up and still wilt under pressure like a little baby?!? Un-frigging-believable.

4. Team 801 won its soccer game yesterday, 6-5, to remain undefeated! The Playmaker had 1 goal.

From this to this in 90 minutes...

Happy Friday...

Your Flag Football Cardinals keep churning out victories. But last night was a tough one (second straight, for those keeping track). We won 21-14. And The Playmaker, for the second time in three games, scored the game winning touchdown. How he did it, we honestly don't know. He caught a simple 6 yard button hook, turned and ran right down the middle of the field. Somehow, someway, he ran through four defenders without getting his flag ripped. Forty yards later he was in the end zone and everyone was looking for one of his flags on the field. None were to be found. Other than that, we really did not play very well. So today the Head Ball Coach will be putting together a new game plan for next week. Still, 6-0 is just that. 6-and-oh.

The Philles seem destined to keep our anxiety up for the next week. They always seem to win, but never seem to blow people out and save us the mental anguish. Last night, they jumped out 5-1, only to see J-Roll and Chase Utley eff-up an inning ending double play. That, of course, allowed Manny to come to the plate. After seeing, like, his 12th change up in a row from Cole Hamels, Manny golfed one out of the park. Two things: Is it possible for Hamels to go one game (one!) without giving up a dinger?!? (He surrendered two last night.) And, how badly do you think Rollins and Utley wanted to punch Hamels in the face after he showed his disappointment over the botched DP?!?

Have a great weekend!

Phillies @ Dodgers...

A week ago, we had no faith in the Phillies advancing far in the playoffs. Now, having swatted away the pesky Rockies, we are full of chest thumping confidence. We truly think they are a better team than the Dodgers. However, game one tonight will be huge. While we believe in the Phillies, we do not yet believe in Cole Hamels. For whatever reason, he has been nothing (nothing!) like he was last season. We have seen small windows of brilliance -- but nothing sustained like last fall. So if he somehow gets the Phillies a W tonight, we think it could very well be a short series. If not, we still think they will win -- but we will have to agonize over six or seven games.

Yawn...another W...

We won another flag football game last night, 28-14. The Playmaker played well. He had 3 catches for roughly 60 yards. On one of them, he hauled ass down the center of the field, only to be caught at the 1 yard line. Literally, the 1. On defense he had one tackle behind the line of scrimmage (drawing the ire of the opposing d-bag coach) and a suh-weet interception where he cut right in front of his man for the pick.

That brings our record to a spotless 5-and-oh. We have now played every team once. For those keeping track at home, the scoreboard reads: 3 coaches we like and 2 coaches we want to punch in the face. (We're just saying...)

Any questions?!?

ONIONS...

Man, are we glad we stayed around for the end of this one.

First fire of the season...

Four on the floor, yet again...

1. We are not hopeful about Fantasy Football today! Drew Brees and the Saints have a bye. However, given the way Brees has played the last two weeks, maybe that is actually a good thing. Mark Sanchez is our backup. We only wish we had moved him three weeks ago when we were offered The Hamburglar for him. Oh well. Also, we picked up Shady McCoy on waivers yesterday. (Michael Bush, we hardly knew ya.) Winning has almost become secondary to us. We now are simply trying to get as many Eagles on our team as possible. DeSean Jackson is now on our radar and we preparing a blockbuster deal to land him.

2. In our Brent NFL Suicide Pool, we are going with the Steelers on the road against the Lions! The Playmaker has opted for the Eagles at home against the Bucs. The two of us are among seven peeps still alive heading into week 5.

3. With LSU and Florida putting us to sleep last night, we spent a lot of time watching Michigan at Iowa and Georgia Tech at Florida State! It was our first sustained look at Tech's option attack. That thing is nasty. The Noles had no way to stop the ground attack last night. It reminded us of watching Oklahoma's wishbone overwhelm inferior teams in the '80s.

4. Survival Sunday for the Phillies and Red Sox! If Boston loses, the season is over. If J.A. Happ can't get the Phillies up two games to one, the Phillies season will likely be over, too. We are hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

Rumeal Robinson: From hoops hero to professional loser...

The dude played with The Edge...

Four on the floor...

1. It was 30 degrees in Minnesota for the Gophers game against Purdue! If you don't like cold weather football, then you are a communist. In fact, the only good thing about Big Ten football is the cold weather. Purdue got smoked, but does anyone even care?!?

2. Have you heard Tebow had a concussion?!? Good Gawd, man, enough already! We told you two weeks ago The World would be forced to endure 13 days of Tebow updates. Thankfully, it all ends in a few hours. There is a better chance of snow in Gainesville today than there is of Tebow not playing in Baton Rouge tonight. Of course, Tebow's BFF, Urban Meyer, will milk this for all it's worth. Heck, Coach will probably have Tebow's picture mounted on the wall. It will read: Tim Tebow played two weeks after sustaining a concussion! Meanwhile, in the NFL guys play, like, five minutes after a concussion. Oh -- even if Tebow does not play, Florida wins by at least 10 points tonight.

3. What's your weight, boy?!? We caught a few minutes of the 1983 replay of Michigan and Iowa this week. Classic how the heaviest starter on Michigan's team was its 255 pound center. Now, that guy would be an outside linebacker.

4. Ties suck -- the only thing worse is getting cheated into one! Team 801 tied this morning, 2-2. We would have had at least two more goals except for the fact the other coach thought it was cool to let 3 or 4 of his kids stand in the goal at one time. We kid you not. Frigging D-bag. Anyway, The Playmaker had both of our goals.

Coach Nickerson: "That pass interference penalty was no fluke..."

We figured sooner or later we would get there. The only surprising thing is that it took four games for it to happen.

We finally found a flag football coach to despise.

Common Sense Memo: When a 7 year old kid makes a great (great!) sliding catch in the corner of the end zone and you're not sure if he's in bounds or not -- HE'S INBOUNDS BECAUSE HE'S 7!!!!!!!!! Hello?!? Anyone home?!?

Common Sense Memo, Part II: When you have a good kid on your team, you can't throw the ball to him on every play (and we mean every play!). We have four Big Guns. And if we threw the ball to one of them on every play, we would be dropping half-a-hundred on teams, no sweat. Instead, we throw the ball to a different kid on every play.

So there we were last night, locked in a tight battle at 14-all. (And yes, the two scores on the other team came from that One Kid.) The other team had been "quick-snapping" all game (another no-no in the 7 year old league) and there had been some trash talking on their side, too.

There were five minutes left and our kid made the aforementioned Awesome Catch for the go ahead touchdown...only to have Coach A-hole rule him out of bounds. So what did the Head Ball Coach do? (After listening to one of his coaches drop the F-Bomb...)

He just smirked at the coach. For 30 seconds. And then he went into the huddle and told one of his Big Guns to get open in the end zone.

A few moments later, The Playmaker hauled in the winning touchdown. Cardinals 21 Eagles 14.

In your face, Walnut Heights!

Snooze-you-lose...

We were cruising the web during lunch yesterday and happened to be on when the Michael Crabtree story broke. Ten seconds later we were seeing if anyone had beat us to the punch in our Fantasy World. Seeing no one had, we quickly waived OU Guy Mark Clayton and welcomed Crabtree onto our team. About an hour later, the Blackberry blew up with texts from the rest of the league cursing us out.

Sorry, boys. And good gawd, an hour?!?

As we hinted at a few weeks ago, we always wanted to stash Crabtree on our team for a rainy day. Will he do anything in the immediate future?!? Of course not. But he should be a major factor in the second half of the season.

For now, he will be on our bench. Tuesday we dumped Chansi Stuckey (who, ironically, was traded in real life yesterday for trouble making Michigan Man Braylon Edwards) and claimed Tennessee's Nate Washington. He will start with over-achieving Mike Sims-Walker and under-achieving Larry Fitz. Also, we cut bait with LenDale White and gave his spot on the bench to Reggie Kardashian Michael Bush.

Jayson Werth back on track...

Phillies now up 5-zip in the 8th.

Our Ambitionz as a Ridah...

1. We are not optimistic at all regarding the Phillies' post season chances! And we're OK with that. They gave us a championship last year and a third straight National League East title this season. They owe us nothing. So we are going to sit back and try not to get stressed out this week. There are simply too many problems with this team. Cole Hamels has not pitched well all season. Cliff Lee, clearly burned out by a slew of complete games this summer, has not pitched well in over a month. Brad Lidge has been terrible. The rest of the pen is hurt -- Moyer, Park and Romero have all been shut down for the rest of the season. Still, their offense has the potential to be the best in baseball. So, who knows?!?

2. Another game, another W in flag football! The Cardinals won last night, 28-7. Yes, we actually gave up a touchdown for the first time all season (on the first play, no less). The Playmaker caught one pass for 20 yards. (It was the only time all night we threw to him.)

3. A first in this space -- a FIELD HOCKEY update! It is actually nice to go watch The Playmaker's Sister play and not be the coach. We can just go and be a parent-slash-fan. There aren't a lot of teams at the 5th/6th grade level, so the girls have only played two games. They lost their first one (against a 7th/8th grade team), 4-0. Monday night, they lost to a 6th/7th grade team, 2-0. Major improvement, though, Monday as the girls actually had the ball in the other team's half of the field for a while. (Maybe that happened game one for a total of 20 seconds?!?) The Playmaker's Sister played "middie" (which we can only assume stands for midfielder?!?) the first game and forward the second.

4. Rumor has it the NBA has started playing pre-season games! The Sixers won their first game last night, defeating the Raptors 107-98. (Bosh and Hedo did not play.) The only thing that caught our eye was Jason Kapono wearing number 72. His explanation? "It's a rare number and I'm a rare person." Um, OK, if you say so. ZZZ.

Sharing our fantasy...

We dropped our third straight fantasy football game, 120-89. The good news is we were up from the pathetic 49 points the week before. The bad news is for the second week in a row, Drew Brees gave us nothing. In week 3, he got us a wimpy 4 points. This past Sunday was not much better -- 7 points. After dominating week 1 (45 points), he has somehow gone 2 straight games without throwing a touchdown. With Larry Fitzgerald having the bye, we needed someone (anyone!) to get us some points at the flanker spot. Chansi Stuckey got us nothing -- literally. And he is now on waivers. Mark Clayton gave us 4 points for the second week in a row. Even worse, we sat in the stadium watching him drop two potential scoring passes. Good news, though, as last week's waiver wire pickup Mike Sims-Walker came up HUGE and got us 21 points. And Denver, our new D, earned a nifty 15 points. Finally, we made the right decision to bench Clinton Portis, as Ricky Williams got us a solid 15 points.

As for this week, of course we will be active during tomorrow's waiver period. Yet another receiver will be added. And we are still dangling our tight ends (Dallas Clark and Brent Celek), who are first and second in tight end scoring. So far, however, the receivers we have been offered are not impressive enough.

After this, it all went south...

Up in smoke?!?

The Clinton Portis era is over. At least for us. At least temporarily. With the underachieving Washington running back questionable with a bad knee, we have decided to bench him. In his place is Mr. Blunt himself, Ricky Williams -- making his first appearance of the season for us.

Perhaps it was a move we should have made sooner, as Williams has been a more productive player over the first three weeks of the season.

Also, we officially dumped receivers Eddie Royal and Antonio Bryant. In their place we have added OU/Raven flanker Mark Clayton and Mike Sims-Walker of the Jags. (We added MSW after losing out on waiver prize Pierre Garcon.) And we swapped the Falcons' D for Denver's. Finally, with the Eagles having a bye, we temporarily waived kicker David Akers in favor of Lawrence Tynes (Giants). We will bring Akers back next week.

We are 2-1 on the season.

Suicide Pool/Last Man Standing Update: Heading into week four, we are still alive (as is The Playmaker). We are going with the Giants over the Chiefs and The Playmaker is taking the Colts over the Seahawks.

Take a memo...

Memo to Michigan QB Tate Forcier: Stop being like Brett Favre and forcing passes into tight spots. You brought your team back today against Michigan State. But then you gave the game away with a terrible interception in overtime.

Memo to Kansas basketball coach Bill Self: Get control of your team. A week after your ballers brawled several times (losing each one) with the Fighting Manginos, one of your players got clipped for DWI.

Memo to OU defensive back Dom Franks: Shut your mouth and play winning football tonight against The U. You have talked for two years. Last year, Saint Tebow abused you. A month ago, the immortal Max Hall of BYU toasted you. Shut down Miami's passing game, secure the W tonight and then you can wolf.

23 years ago...

A week later, we FINALLY post this clip...

Team 801 FAILS to win*

*Because the game was rained out.

The march continues...

Your Flag Football Cardinals improved to 2-0 last night with a 20-zip shutout. Due to a late start because of "flag issues", we only had 4 possessions in the game -- and we scored on 3 of them. (For the season, we have scored on 8 of 9 possessions.) The Playmaker had three catches. One was good for an extra point and another one was a touchdown reception. The TD was a nice 10 yard pass and then he ran another 15 yards into the end zone. Believe it or not, the play came on an audible. The original route was and out-and-up. But upon seeing the center of the field was wide open, The Head Ball Coach audibled to a simple fly pattern down the middle of the seam. The beauty of coaching 7 year olds is how the audible worked. Here's how it went down: The kids take turns hiking the ball to the coach. It was The Playmaker's turn to hike it to us. As we readied for the snap we whispered, "Can you hear us?" When The Playmaker whispered back, "Yes", we told him to run a fly pattern. He snapped the ball, blew by his man and then made a nifty over the shoulder catch and chugged it into to the house.

Good stuff.

That's what we're talking about...