Winner of the Week
There were not too many candidates for this week’s Winner of the Week. Alabama certainly showed they are for real with a big win over the favored Clemson Tigers. East Carolina proved that they were more than just Chris Johnson and pulled off an upset over 17th ranked Virginia Tech. But unfortunately I put less weight into preseason college football rankings than Calista Flockhart puts into her latest outfit, so neither upsets were impressive enough to earn Winner of the Week honors. There was not much news in the NFL, nothing really changed during the last week in the NBA, the Olymics have come and gone, it is still early in the U.S. Open, and Vijay Singh just won his 2nd straight tournament, but it was finished on Monday (not last week) and done sans Tiger. CC Sabathia was a close 2nd after his bazillionth complete game (does this guys literally have a rubber arm?) in which he threw a no hitter, but was robbed by a fool for an official scorekeeper and possibly lost his Winner of the Week award with that weak grounder. So, this week we’re going with a scrappy little team that yours truly wrote off in this very blog just a few days ago.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays lost their first game of the week to the Toronto Blue Jays, but then went on a tear to finish out the week with 5 straight Ws. In the process, they created a 5.5 game lead in the AL East over the Boston Red Sox, who are more banged up than the Persian army in 300, and a 12 game lead over the Yankees, who are older than… well… the Persian army from 300. Despite proclaiming the Red Sox as the eventual AL East champs and the AL Central runner-up as the Wild Card winner, it is now very difficult to imagine the Rays on the outside looking in come October.
A few more post game celebrations like this, and the Rays will be looking at their first Playoff appearance.
The Rays DO have 6 games left against Boston, 3 against New York, and 3 against Minnesota. However, the Red Sox DO have to play 6 against the Rays and 3 more against the Yanks. It works both ways. The Sox have a slight scheduling advantage, but with Beckett out and Wakefield throwing about as hard as a 9 year old kid, I don’t know if they have the arms to come back from 5 games down with only 25 to go. Yet, even if they do, the Rays still aren’t out of it. The White Sux and Twins are both trailing the Rays by 8 games currently, an even larger task if one of the two will be battling the Rays for the Wild Card spot. ESPN now has various odds on their standings page and they currently give the Rays a 99.2% chance of making the playoffs. I have to say it’s starting to look more and more like a lock.
So Tamp Bay Rays…. I apologize. I hope you accept this Winner of the Week award as my show of repentance.
Tags: Alabama, Boston Red Sox, CC Sabathia, Chicago White Sox, Chris Johnson, Clemson, East Carolina, Minnesota Twins, MLB, NBA, New York Yankees, NFL, PGA, Tamp Bay Rays, Vijay Singh, Virgina Tech
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September 2, 2008 at 7:58 am
Oh, and a shout out to Elaine Youngs and Nicole Branagh, who knocked of the unbeatable duo of Misty May and Kerri Walsh, ending their streak of 112 straight match wins.