Time to play GM

Let’s forget about one rumor right away.

Alex Rodriguez is not coming to Chicago—North side or South side—but for very different reasons.

With Cubs ownership in a state of flux, they can’t offer him the $30 million annual salary he will seek. The partial ownership idea served better as a joke of the day then an actual solution that would have put him at Wrigley Field for 81 games. Explain this: how would a franchise that is having trouble identifying a true owner at this time offer partial ownership to a player? That’s a head-scratcher.

Meanwhile, the White Sox won’t sign A-Rod. I’d love to see him playing at Comiskey as much as anyone, but Jerry Reinsdorf isn’t going to fork over that kind of money for anyone—period, end of discussion.

As for what the White Sox might do in free agency to rebound from their dreadful 2007 campaign:

• I’ve been told by a very good source at ESPN that Aaron Rowand will be brought back. This as before he priced himself out of consideration for the Phillies by starting the bidding at 6 years, $84 million. I believe that to be merely posturing on Rowand’s part. Now, he can take a bit less (lets say 4 years, $40-44 million) to return to the Sox. One thing is for certain; I want no part of Torii Hunter. There’s no “I” in team, but there are 2 in Torii. I can’t stand it when a player has far and away his best big league season in a contract year.

• That still doesn’t address the leadoff situation where Coco Crisp’s name seems to be popping up. I just don’t see where Crisp is a better solution than Jerry Owens. If that is really the best move, then Ken Williams might as well just let Owens continue to progress. Owens seemed to really come along at the end of the season. Over a full year, he could steal 75 bases and his bunting and slap hitting should only improve during instructional winter ball and spring training.

• Jose Contreras will hopefully be moved. Another World Series hero it’s time to cut ties with. I am sure if KW can get a box of major league baseballs for him that’ll do the trick. No fake balls though, that’s why Contreras wasn’t dealt at the deadline.

• That being said, a trade of Jon Garland might be more likely. Garland will be entering the final year of his contract and I don’t see the Sox giving another pitcher similar money to the $14 million they gave Mark Buehrle. Garland is near the top of baseball in wins over the past 3 years (46) and he is only 28 years old. He also has a World Series championship and came up big in those playoffs. He can net a major-league position player like Wily Taveras from the Rockies, a major-league reliever and a top prospect in return. Or I’ll just take Carl Crawford from the Tampa Bay Rays (they dropped the Devil).

• Finally, another big name probably needs to move. Will any team take a chance on Joe Crede before seeing him play in spring training? If not, is there an American League team interested in Jim Thome? KW will have to wait for the dominos to fall on the A-Rod situation before looking into this. My sources say A-Rod is bound for Los Angeles to do his best Shaquille O’Neal impression and own Hollywood; but whether it will be the Angels or the Dodgers is a mystery. Both teams just coincidentally happen to need a third baseman AND a power hitter (cue Twilight Zone music).

Once the dust settles with Mr. Rodriguez, KW should approach the loser of the sweepstakes and offer Crede (if it’s the Dodgers) or Thome (if it’s the Angels). Each should be able to land either a position player with some speed like Rafael Furcal, Chone Figgins, Howie Kendrick, Kenyi Morales or Mike Wood; or a relief pitcher such as Jonathan Broxton or Scott Shields.

Last but not least, let me address the Kobe Bryant to the Chicago Bulls rumor:

If John Paxson pulls the trigger on this one after watching an Eastern Conference rival load up with Kevin Garnett, I am going to be pounding my head against a wall for quite some time.

First and foremost, he can’t include both Ben Gordon and Luol Deng in a trade. Second, the Bulls are one missing puzzle piece away from winning and that is a scoring big man. Lastly, trading so much for Bryant would seem to be more of a rebuilding than continuous building. There’s a difference.

A very good source told me the real reason Kobe wants out of LA is because his wife is ready to file for divorce and California state laws are the most strict in the country. No matter what city he is traded to, the ruling on a divorce case will probably guarantee he keeps more of his money and assets than if it were handled in Cali.

That’s exactly the kind of player the Bulls need. A guy more concerned with his personal life than the game. Bryant is selfish, a bad teammate and hasn’t won a single playoff series since losing Shaq. His talent is undeniable and it’ll be great seeing him score 40-60 points in 10 games—albeit while throwing up 45 shots. Heck, he might even score 100 once. But, he’s not the right fit for the Bulls.

I got the perfect trade:

The Denver Nuggets just lost their starting point guard, Chucky Atkins for a considerable period of time and are desperate for help at the position. So, the Bulls send them Chris Duhon, Victor Khryapa, Joakim Noah, a future draft pick and cash for Nene (Hilario, though last name doesn’t apply for him) and my good pal Linas Kleiza.

Then, Pax fills the backup point guard role by signing Earl Boykins who remains a free agent. The Nuggets get their point guard in Duhon, a tall guy who can run the floor and play good defense next to Marcus Camby in Noah and a bench-filler with Khryapa who only has to stay out of Iverson and Carmelo’s way.

Has there ever been a GM in numerous sports at once? Where can I apply for that job?

P.S. Did it shock anyone that the Red Sox swept the Rockies to win their second World Series title in 4 years? The layoff killed Colorado as I predicted. More importantly, the AL just flexed its muscle and proved once again how big of a discrepancy there is between the two leagues.

One final stat to chew on: For the first time since the wild card round began, all 4 NL teams got swept out of the playoffs. Read that again if need be. It’s truly mind-boggling.

Here’s the breakdown:
NLDS: Cubs lose to Diamondbacks 3-0, Phillies lose to Rockies 3-0
NLCS: Diamondbacks lose to Rockies 4-0
World Series: Rockies lose to Red Sox 4-0

This speaks volumes ladies and gentleman….

A night in the life of... ME... at work...

In an effort to provide more insight as to what I am doing for “The Worldwide Leader…” let me fill you in on my evening last night. I was scheduled from 5pm (ET) until 2 am (ET) although I didn’t leave until about 3am.

I was assigned two games: the 7pm (ET) Toronto Maple Leafs @ Buffalo Sabres game and the 10:18pm (ET) Arizona Diamondbacks @ Colorado Rockies NLCS Game 4. I was entrusted to cut highlights for both games for ESPNEWS.

Here’s a look at what took place:

Game 1: The Maple Leafs entered the third period with a 2-0 lead. My 30-35 second highlight was basically planned already. It began with an iso shot of Sabres’ defenseman Brian Campbell since he is the leading scorer among NHL defenseman right now and his team had scored 13 goals in their last two games.

That was followed by a shot of an unbelievable save by Leafs’ goalie Andrew Raycroft on Sabres’ forward Drew Stafford at point blank range (see above). I decided to show a replay for dramatic effect. This was truly “a glove save… and a beauty” to quote our anchors. I’ve seen a lot of great saves and this ranks right up there with the best of them. It was one of those that make you question whether NHL goalies are that good and have that great hand-eye coordination or whether Raycroft merely got in decent position, said a quick prayer and the puck luckily found his glove rather than the huge net behind him.

The rest of the highlight would be the other Leafs’ goals as they cruised to victory. A 30-35 second highlight? No problem.

Then they dropped the puck to start the third period and all hell broke loose. In an eight-minute span, the two teams combined for 6 goals. The score went from 2-0 Leafs… to 2-2…to 3-2 Leafs… to 3-3… to 4-3 Leafs… to 4-4… to OVERTIME. One player on each team scored a pair of goals in a single three-minute span. Literally, each time I started changing my shot sheet (the script for the anchor) and having the editor lay down a new play, another goal was scored. It was surreal.

Of course, we got bumped to 1 minute of highlight time to accommodate the action, chose to run the save, the 4-3 goal by Toronto and the tying goal by Buffalo and waited for the game-winner in OT or the shootout.

Sure enough, the Sabres scored with 5 seconds left in OT and the goal required a replay because it clearly went in the Toronto net only after TORONTO defenseman Bryan McCabe knocked it in (see above).

WOW…. Okay, onto game 2 of the night…

Has there ever been a team hotter than the Colorado Rockies? Ever? With their win last night they have now won 21 of 22 games and joined the Cincinnati Reds as the only NL teams ever to begin a postseason 7-0. We basically knew they were going to win and had 1 minute, 15 seconds of time to play with. This had to include celebration shots at the end.

So, imagine our shock when the Diamondbacks jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the top of the 3rd inning. When the Rockies didn’t score in the bottom half, it marked only the 4th inning of 59 postseason innings that the Rockies had been trailing. So, we had to include that.

But, shortly after--in the bottom of the 4th inning to be exact—the Rockies put up that normal 6-spot that playoff teams light up the scoreboard with on a regular basis. This was capped by a 3-run bomb to center off the bat of NL MVP Matt Holliday. On a side note, seriously, if this guy isn’t the MVP I won’t care about the steroid issue anymore because we’ll need to take urine samples of all the voters to make sure they weren’t high on something when they filled out their ballot.

The Holliday homer was clearly the play of the game and I wanted to go SOT FULL. That means instead of the anchor talking over it, I wanted to put in the play-by-play call from the game. At first, it only made sense to use Chip Caray’s call on the TBS broadcast. However, I must have forgotten how poor Chip is at actually doing his job and after the ball cleared the centerfield fence he went dead silent meaning his call was no good.

We plugged ESPN Radio’s Dan Shulman into the highlight and ran that version once before finding out we could get in trouble with Major League Baseball because we didn’t have the rights to use our radio call over TBS video. Go figure…

All was good until the top of the eighth inning rolled around and D’Backs catcher Chris Snyder hit a 3-run HR down the left field line to cut the lead to 6-4. Replays showed that this ball was so close to being foul you couldn’t throw it up there any better. Centimeters—not inches—to the left and it hits the pole. Inches left and it is truly foul.

The rest of the eighth and the ninth I am sitting on the edge of my seat praying Colorado closer Manny Corpas can navigate through the rest of the Arizona lineup without allowing the tying runs to score or else I basically have to remake my entire highlight except for the Holliday homer. Outside of Denver, I was probably the biggest Rockies fan in the country for all of 28 minutes until the final out was recorded.

Being as opinionated as I am, I must offer my opinion of the Rockies real fast. Sweeping was arguably the worst thing they could have done. Didn’t they see what happened to the Detroit Tigers last year? A hot team needs to continue to play—and win—every day. Taking too much time off can only hurt. Tigers’ pitchers forgot how to throw to the bases last year and lost the World Series because of it. Yes, I am still on that. They lost the 2006 Series, the St. Louis Cardinals DID NOT WIN IT!!!

It probably wouldn’t matter though. Once again the AL is just so far superior to the NL (quadruple-A) that the winner of the Cleveland Indians vs. Boston Red Sox series will beat the Rockies anyways.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that look into my evening at work. Yes, work. That is what makes this job beautiful. Was it stressful? Sure. But, was it fun? Hell Yeah! I would have been watching NLCS game 4 anyhow. I would have loved to watch a great hockey game like that, but probably wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t been working there. The best part is I get paid for this. I feel like I’m ripping Mickey off.

I just don’t think too many people in the world can say that their day at work on Monday, October 15, 2007 was like that….

Best duo ever?

It's going to be hard for Randy Moss and Tom Brady to replace Joe Montana/Steve Young and Jerry Rice as the best QB/WR tandem in NFL history. But, while it's only four games into their time together, the possibility is very real.

Prior to the season, I posed the following age old question to many of my friends: "Does a great QB make his receivers better or does a great receiver make his QB better?"

I always side with the receiver. Not to take anything away from Brady, but he wasn't putting up these kind of gaudy numbers with such big names as Deion Branch, David Patten, David Givens, Troy brown and Jabar Gaffney. Granted, he has three Super Bowl rings, but those could be attributed to many other factors of the Patriots' system.

Now, with Moss, Wes Welker and Donte Stallworth in the mix, Brady is on pace to break Peyton Manning's record for TD pass in a season (49). Brady has 13 thus far. It'll be hard to do because he'll be playing in the frigid winter conditions in Foxboro come November as opposted to the comfort of a dome, but it's still a possibility.

Meanwhile, Randy Moss has decided that it's okay to play football again now that he's out of Oakland--the NFL's version of hell. I don't necessarily agree with his attitude. When athletes are being paid as much as they are, they should give 110 percent at all times no matter where they're playing. But, it's nice to see that he's gotten his career back on track.

For my avid readers, you're probably asking why I am writing about the New England Patriots. Did I jump ship on the Chicago Bears? No. Did I jump on their bandwagon? No, not really. I simply have a great deal of respect for Tom Brady and enjoy watching Randy Moss make opposing CB's look like they don't even exist.

Oh yeah, and somehow the other 11 guys in my fantasy league let me wind up with both Brady and Moss on my fantasy team. To quote Borat, "Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiccccccccccccceeeeeeeeeee!"

One final note: Through 4 games, has their ever been a better line for a Wide Receiver? Moss currently has an eye-popping 31 catches for 505 yards and 7 TD's. If he stays remotely close to those numbers this trade--the Pats' gave up only a single 4th round draft pick for him--will go down as the greatest trade in sports history.

Why can't the Bears ever luck into a Brady type at QB? Why can't they ever pull off a trade for a guy like Moss?