So the White Sox have won the World Series. And in many ways it paralleled the Red Sox World Series win last year. Consider this:

Off-the-field comparisons:

Last year was the Red variety
This year was the White variety

Last year was Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”
This year was Journey’s “Don’t stop believin’”

Last year broke an 86-year drought
This year broke an 88-year drought

Last year broke the 84-year “Curse of the Bambino” (Babe Ruth sold to Yanks in 1920)
This year broke the 86-year “Curse of the Black Sox” (Eight White Sox throw 1919 World Series)

Last year it was for more than just the city of Boston, but the entire New England area.
This year it was for less than the entire city of Chicago, but just the south side area (the Cubs dominate the north side.)

On-the-field comparisons:

Both teams opened the playoffs with a sweep, and did so with power.
Both teams lost the opening game of the ALCS, in a close game.
Both teams won the ALCS by winning four straight, doing so with good pitching and timely home runs.
Both teams swept the World Series to make it eight straight wins.

Both teams were absolutely dominant throughout (even if there were a number of close games) essentially winning 11-straight broken up in the middle only by a short hiccup.

At the same time, both teams got a great number of breaks. In fact, both turned their losing “streak” around on a critical play in the ALCS in the bottom of the ninth inning at home of a game they looked to possibly lose. In the Red Sox game it was more dramatic, in Game 4 down by one run trailing 3-0 in the series, getting a stolen base from Dave Roberts that was ever so close. He could have easily been called out, but he was correctly called safe. Who knows what would have happened if he was called out – they probably would have lost. Next batter, Bill Mueller, drove him in, David Ortiz got the winning home run in extras, and the Sox never looked back, winning seven more in a row.

In the White Sox case, it was Game 2, A.J. Pierzynski strikes out but decides to run to first and we all know what happens. The umpire rules that the ball hit the ground and allows Pierzynski to stay at first; problem was he didn’t make the call until after the catcher Josh Paul had rolled the ball to the mound thinking it was the third out. So a controversy ensues (which I got into in my last two posts). Even though most people seem to think it was clearly caught, to my eye it was as close as the play at second base on the Roberts stolen base, only not as conclusive. It may very well have hit the ground. Anyway, that was critical because “Mr. Clutch” Joe Crede got a double and drove in Pierzynski for the winning run, and the Sox never looked back, winning seven more in a row.

On top those two plays, there were more breaks that the teams got that parallel each other.

The Red Sox got a break in the ALCS in extra innings when a ball hit by the Yankees that clearly would have scored a run bounced into the crowd, it forced the runner to stop at third on the ground-rule double. The Yankees didn’t score, and the Sox won in the bottom of the 14th.

The White Sox got a similar break in the World Series when a ball down the line caught part of the wall to keep it in shallow outfield and kept a run from scoring. The Astros didn’t score the run, and the Sox won in the top of the 14th.

It looked like the Sox may have blown a play when Bronson Arroyo tried to tag Alex Rodriguez running down the first base line and the ball ended up knocked away. But the umpires got together and properly ruled that Rodriguez intentionally slapped the ball out of the glove and was called out.

On the flip side, it looked like A.J. Pierzynski was tagged out by an Angels’ pitcher running down the first base line and that’s what the umpire called, even though the pitcher had the ball in his other hand and the glove he tagged with was empty. But the umpires got together and properly ruled that the ball was not in the glove he tagged him with and he was called safe.

I can’t think of any other similar controversial calls or non-calls - like the Jermaine Dye hit by pitch or catcher’s interference on Steve Finley - in the Red Sox case, but suffice it to say both teams got a fair share of breaks, but more importantly capitalized on them with home runs and even grand slams.

And of course, in both cases, their World Series wins brought tremendous joy to legions of long-suffering fans in the entire New England area last year, and the south side of Chicago this year.

Back to instant replay. There have been three major controversial plays since that one:

1. The missed catcher’s interference on Steve Finley double-play grounder.
2. The tag on A.J. without the ball in his hand.
3. The hit-by-pitch on Dye where it appeared to only hit his bat.

If they had employed instant replay on these, the results would have been:

1. Overturn. Finley awarded first, and the Angels have first and second with one out instead of inning over.
2. Upheld.
3. Hmmm. Well, it definitely hit the bat. And it seems pretty clear that it didn’t hit any part of Dye. But are we sure? How long would it take the umpire to be sure. He would have to spend a great deal of time to be absolutely certain. I’m not sure he could overturn it. It’s not enough to see that the ball hit the bat. Because if it hit any part of him – even just his sleeve – before hitting the bat, that’s still an HBP. It’s not like instant replay in other sports, where most of the time you’re looking for something positive, ie did such-and-such occur. In this case, you’re looking for something negative, ie, am I sure it didn’t hit him? And that’s much harder to be certain of.

So, what do we have. One sure overturn, one sure status quo, and one probably overturn, but maybe not. And we’ve wasted a heck of a lot of time to obtain this.

And suppose we do implement this. When is it employed? Only on controversial plays? If not, it would be used way too often, without any overturns. Do we give managers challenges, like in the NFL? Well, then what happens if a manager’s challenge is wrong? We can’t penalize the manager a timeout like in the NFL. So do we limit the manager one per game? But then what happens if there are more than one missed cal per game?

And even if we are able to cover all of these controversial plays, they account for less than one per game! And that still leaves the part of the game that’s much more subjective and has a much greater impact on the outcome of a game, which is the calls of balls and strikes. And there’s no way you can institute instant replay for that. You might as well forget about baseball as a watchable sport if you do that.

There’s one more key thing to mention regarding the whole issue. And that’s that none of the controversial plays have directly resulted in a run, or the negation of a run.

In the Eddings play, the Angels still had a chance to get the Sox out and they didn’t. Yes, it’s unfair to have to get four outs as it were, but who’s to say they wouldn’t have lost the game in the tenth inning anyway.

In the catcher’s interference play, even with a replay overturn, the score doesn’t change and maybe the next runner grounds into a double-play anyway.

And on the hit-by-pitch, even with a replay overturn, maybe the next pitch is a ball, and we end up in the same situation as played out.

So, the integrity of the situation may not have been altered at all. The point is, the team still had a chance to get out of the situation without any damage done.

So, any talk of these calls tainting the wins by the Sox is not only unreasonable, but unfair to the Sox players themselves, because it’s not their fault – the possible acting jobs by A.J. and Dye notwithstanding.

But compare these plays to some of the major missed calls in the past. The Jeffrey Maier fan interference, where the umpire called it a home run, that literally gave the Yankees a run that they shouldn’t have had. Yes, you can argue that on the next pitch, he may have hit a home run, anyway, but the difference is, there’s nothing the other team can do now to stop the run from being scored. The run’s already on the board.

So, if ever there would be instant replay, I could maybe accept it only on plays in which it directly results in a run being scored or taken away. So, on a home run ball where it’s uncertain if it stayed fair or foul, or whether it cleared the fence or stayed in play or there was fan interference. This is a situation in which it would be reasonable. And it also wouldn’t slow down the game, since the runner is rounding the bases in anyway, and the next batter is coming up, (and the manager is possibly coming out to argue.) These are also cases where the umpire’s subjectivity doesn’t come into play. It either cleared the pole or not, or cleared the fence or not, and should be definitively discernible upon replay.

Plays at the plate, where it may be disputable whether the tag occurred are, much more subject to the umpire’s subjectivity – as with balls and strikes – and should remain that way for practicality and purposes and to maintain the nature of the game.

Here’s the problem with instant replay in baseball. It won’t make the difference that everyone thinks it will.

Take the Doug Eddings call. The problem wasn’t that he got the call wrong – if indeed he got it wrong. The problem was that he didn’t make a call at all.

See had he said it was a caught ball – inning over. If he said that it was not a caught ball, then Josh Paul tags A.J. – inning over. But he intimated as if it were a caught ball, then said, “No, I didn’t make a call.”

Now, if instant replay were involved, what would happen? Well, it wasn’t 100% conclusive, so the play on the field would have to stand. Which means A.J. would have to stay on first. So it’s not instant replay that would solve the problems. It’s having umpires who do their job.

There’s nothing wrong with umpires who make mistakes. They’re human too. But the problem I have with Eddings was that he couldn’t answer questions about the mistake. If he had said, “It was a mistake, I blew it.” I could accept that. If he had said, “It was not a caught ball in my opinion, and Josh Paul should have made sure I was calling the runner out,” I could accept that too. But to respond with, “Well, I don’t know how you can be sure it was a caught ball,” and “I was waiting to see what Josh Paul was going to do,” that’s unacceptable! He has to take charge. That’s his job. He has to be clear.

And for the league to back him up with, “Well, the umpire is not required to make a definitive out call,” is unacceptable too. There’s no way Eddings should have been back umpiring in the next game. Not because it was in Anaheim, not because he made a mistake, but because he couldn’t properly explain his actions. The league dropped the ball on this one, no pun intended.

Last week, I saw an advance showing of “The Greatest Game Ever Played”. It’s the latest golf movie to hit the big screen, this one about Francis Ouimet winning the 1913 U.S. Open championship.

It’s a Disney movie, so it has the typical feel-good, family-friendly themes and underdog overcoming obstacles including class prejudice of the day type stuff.

But it is also directed by Bill Paxton, so certain parts have a somewhat tormenting style to it. If you’ve seen Frailty, the first movie he directed you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Okay so it’s definitely not as dark as Frailty (it’s hard to be as dark as that movie actually – though I still recommend it because it was very interesting... think “demons”.)

But back to “The Greatest Game”, it was surprisingly good. Very compelling story, good history, great action – sports action, that is.

Paxton jumped around with a bunch of different styles, which made it a little odd. But still entertaining.

I actually wrote a review of it for Sportsnet. Check it out!

That’s it for today.

So the New York Yankees have just clinched the AL East title, for the eighth straight season, over my Boston Red Sox. But what's stupid about it is there is still one game left between them, and if Boston wins tomorrow they'd finish with the exact same record.

So why have the Yankees clinched already? Because the Cleveland Indians lost. Huh?

It boils down to what happens if two teams finish tied for the division title. One possibility is to have a one-game playoff. Another is to just look at head-to-head records.

MLB came up with the brilliant idea that head-to-head records would only be used to decide the division if both teams have already clinched the playoffs. What that means is if the loser of the tiebreaker automatically becomes the wildcard qualifier, then they use the head-to-head record as the tiebreaker. This seems to have the purpose of not allowing the head-to-head determine who makes the playoffs and who does not.

But what it really does in this case is penalize the Boston Red Sox because the Cleveland Indians, who will finish second in the AL Central, didn't win their game. Had Cleveland won, then they'd still have a chance to finish with the same record as both Boston and New York. In that case, there would be a three-way tie, and Boston and New York would have to face a tiebreaker to determine who wins the division, and the loser of the tiebreaker would then have to face Cleveland to determine who wins the wildcard.

MLB decided that it would be unfair in this case to simply use head-to-head to determine the winner between Boston and New York and would force them to play a one-game playoff. In this case, it would be possible for Boston to 1) beat New York and win the AL East, or 2) lose to New York, but beat Cleveland and win the wildcard, or 3) lose to New York, lose to Cleveland and miss the playoffs entirely.

But now that there cannot be a three-way tie, they lose the first option, which doesn't make sense. New York cannot miss the playoffs at this point, but they should still have to earn the division title, irrespective of Cleveland. If MLB felt that a one-game playoff was necessary to determine who wins the division and who must face another team for the wildcard spot, then a one-game playoff should be just as necessary to determine who wins the the division.

Otherwise, MLB's message is this: "if both teams are going to make the playoffs, who cares which team is the division winner and which is the wildcard?" I don't think that's the message they want to send. And if they think the head-to-head record is reasonable enough, then make that the tiebreaker across the board. You can't have it both ways.