Feel-Good Stories from a Not-So-Good Tribe Season

Now that the Indians' every-other-year funk is out of the way, a few upbeat notes from an otherwise disappointing season:

Cliff Lee. Duh.

Kelly Shoppach. Talk about taking advantage of an opportunity. The guy proved that he's an every-day big league catcher. Anybody notice that his 21 homers was tops among A.L. catchers? One of the best acquisitions the Indians have made this decade.

Jamey Carroll. Don't look now, but Carroll (left) had a better batting average than Grady Sizemore or Ben Francisco. Again, he took advantage of an opportunity (when Asdrubal Cabrera fizzled early and Josh Barfield went down with an injury) and made the most of it. Whodathunkit?

Shin-Soo Choo. Quietly the best hitter on the team down the stretch. In fact, in just over half a season, he had 14 homers, 66 RBI and 68 runs scored to go along with a team-best .309 batting average. Should come into 2009 with a starting outfield spot all sewn up.

Jhonny Peralta. I wasn't exactly in his camp early in the season, but he settled down and put up some solid numbers (like Carroll, posting a better batting average than Sizemore). I'm not a big fan of his at short -- I happen to think that his growth spurt a few years ago hindered his quickness and mobility -- and hope that he meant what he said this week when he told reporters he'd be willing to consider a move to third base if that's what's best for the team. Good for him. He would instantly become a solid presence at the hot corner, both defensively and offensively.

Grady Sizemore. I'm torn on this one, because his batting average took a disconcerting drop, but he still managed to put up big numbers for an average team. A career-best 33 homers, with 90 RBI and 38 stolen bases. Excellent defense, tremendous hustle. Cornerstone of the team.

Jensen Lewis. Hey, he produced as the closer when asked to do so. After the nail-biting adventures of Joe Borowski and company all season, Lewis got the job done, with 13 saves and a 3.82 ERA. Don't know if he'll be there next year, but the team could do worse, as we all know.

Scott Lewis. OK, call it beginner's luck. But he pitched like a seasoned veteran at the end of the season. In fact, he was as good or better than Cliff Lee in his late-season starts. Maybe it was a flash-in-the-pan thing, I don't know. But it was fun to watch, after a year of disappointments.

Casey Blake and CC Sabathia. Both good guys, who left fond memories behind, and now are in the N.L. playoffs. Good for them, and give Mark Shapiro credit for sending them places where they had a chance to taste the postseason. I hope they meet in the N.L. Championship Series, and may the best man win from there.

Finally, does anyone remember Jorge Velandia? It was that kind of season in 2008....

USC, Georgia, Florida -- Even Ohio State -- Got It Right

So, a big weekend of college football saw lots of top teams get knocked off their perches.

Big deal.

If history is any indicator, they'll all hover around the top and, more than likely, one of them will be right back there by season's end. I'd guess it will be USC, but time will tell.

It all comes down to polls, which, in all honesty, are a silly way to determine any type of champion. For years, that's all there was. Now, the BCS tries to even the score -- mostly to no avail.

Who said that any team should be ranked where they are? Writers. Coaches. It's all based on opinion, not fact. Not performance. Opinion. Where in sports does that count for anything, except in college?

Before a college team plays a down -- or in basketball, scores a basket, or in baseball, scores a run -- opinions determine where they rank.

And so, when they lose, opinions determine how far they should fall in the polls -- if at all. Ohio State loses big to USC? They drop about 10 spots, to push them, for all practical purposes, out of national title contention for good. That's probably as it should be, considering their lackluster performances against YSU, Ohio and even Troy.

Now it will be interesting to see where USC lands, after losing to Oregon State, a team that previously lost to -- wait for it -- Stanford.

Fact is, it always comes down to how you perform on the field. Teams lose. Sometimes, they lose games they're not supposed to, like when the New England Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the New York Giants. After the USC debacle on Thursday night, favored teams like Georgia and Florida were upended on Saturday.

So we end up waiting breathlessly for the polls to come out, so we can determine who, for now, is the #1 team in the land.

Why? Why do we need to know that now?

We don't know who the best team in Major League Baseball is, and won't until after the World Series is played. What a novel concept. Play the season, play the playoffs, and let performance on the field be the only arbiter.

Same goes for the NFL, where we won't have a clue until the Super Bowl is played. Oh, sure, last year everybody thought the Patriots were tops -- perhaps the best ever. Performance said otherwise. And they were beaten by a Giants team that, had polls been relied upon, might have been excluded from the playoffs altogether.

Granted, there's never been an equitable method determined to have a college football playoff, and chances are there never will be.

And so we have the odd system of determining rankings by opinion. And that takes us back to the headline on this post. The teams that have already lost are in a better position to be higher ranked than any team that loses down the road.

Oklahoma and Alabama are sitting pretty right now. But, should they lose a game later on, look out! They'll tumble several spots, and one or more of the teams that have already lost will move ahead of them. We see it every year. A loss late in the season is far more costly than a loss early in the season.

It's silly, but that's the way it is. Don't be surprised if one of the early losers -- USC, Florida or Georgia -- finds its way back up the rankings and into the BCS title game. Not because somebody else just as deserving lost more games, but because they lost one at the wrong time -- late in the season.

Bumbling Browns

Yecccch.

Sunday's 28-10 loss by the Browns at Baltimore was ridiculous -- inexcusable on many levels. Fans are harping about Derek Anderson -- and yes, he was bad -- but the whole team looked lethargic and undisciplined. After an early drive showed such promise and resulted in a touchdown (and a 7-0 lead), the Browns simply frittered away the remainder of the game. You can cut the defense a little slack -- after all, they were handed impossible situations more than once thanks to DA's interceptions -- but, once again, this was a team that appeared to be woefully unprepared and terribly outplayed. The longer the game went on, the worse it got, and it became difficult and disappointing to watch.

And it comes down to coaching. There's simply not much being said, at any level, about Romeo Crennel's genius as a football coach. People more knowledgeable than I are not exactly leaping to his defense, which confirms my suspicions that there's a problem at the top. The fact is, the Browns have played seven games this year and lost them all: four in the preseason, and three in the regular season. It's been ugly, frustrating and shocking, all at once. Fans came into the season with enormous expectations. There was, no doubt, some wishful thinking involved, but 0-3? That's simply inexcusable.

While we're on the subject of Romeo Crennel, I want to scream when he refuses to refer to players by name during press conferences. This time he talked about getting more reps at quarterback for "the other guy" -- instead of referring to Brady Quinn by name.

Here's a suggestion for Phil Savage and Randy Lerner: How about, real soon, you refer to Crennel as "the former coach?"

Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.

OK, I'm Back

Enough of that silly retirement stuff. So I took a month off -- sue me. The whole Brett Favre thing still bores me. So much so that I got bored satirizing it!

Now then:

-- Anyone who honestly thought Ohio State was going to make a game of it against USC was kidding themselves. That they barely beat Ohio University was evidence enough. Fortunately, I had an event to attend that night, and didn't see a down. No loss. I'm a fan, but in the way I'm a fan of my son's high school team. I follow the team, and I hope they'll win, but I sleep fine either way. This Buckeyes team is not national championship material, so let's enjoy the season and be realistic about things.

-- I'm tired of the Browns' act. Really am. This is a team in disarray. They don't come to play. They're unprepared. Opposing teams punch them in the mouth and take over games before they know what hit them. After the talent on display last year, there's no excuse for it. There's a reason the experts had high expectations for the team this year -- THEY WERE EXPECTED TO BE EVEN BETTER. Instead, they stumbled through the preseason and stumbled through the first two games of the season. One can only assume they stumbled through training camp, too. It's ridiculous. I don't know Romeo Crennel, and I don't know as much about football as Romeo Crennel, but something is very, very wrong with this team and its ability to compete. I do know that he is responsible for that.

-- Cliff Lee has turned in one of the most remarkable pitching performances in baseball history, but I could care less if he wins the Cy Young Award or not. I suspect that it's not at the top of his list, either. It's great to win awards, but the list of sports awards from over the years is littered with one-hit wonders. And that's not what Lee wants. It remains to be seen if he'll be able to string together several excellent seasons, but, hearing his comments this year, it seems that's what he's most focused on -- being consistent, and giving his team a chance to win game in and game out. If he keeps that focus, he'll go down as one of the best in the game. That's more important in the long run than any individual award in one season.

-- I get a kick out of all these NASCAR rivalries and wars of words. This guy cut off that guy, this driver ran that driver into the wall, blah, blah, blah. Come on - these people are flying around oval tracks at ungodly speeds. Of course there are going to be bumps and bangs and crashes. Shut up and drive, and be glad you come out of these insane events alive.

-- I thought what Michael Phelps did was cool. People expected him to win eight gold medals, people wanted him to win eight gold medals, and he won eight gold medals. I can't even fathom how good he had to be to do that, and how many things had to go just right for it to happen. Good for him. Best ever? Who knows? Who CARES? It was remarkable, and that's enough for me.

-- The USA men's basketball team, on the other hand, was overhyped and surprisingly weak, I thought. Early in the qualifying rounds, Dwayne Wade actually said something about how the team was "growing" after they barely edged one of those tiny countries with a couple of factory workers and a baker on its roster. Growing? The best the NBA has to offer, and they're GROWING? Please. The decline of the NBA game -- lousy outside shooting, phantom defense, standing around on offense -- was on display for all to see. The Dream Team of Magic, Bird, Jordan, et al, simply dominated all comers. The "Redeem Team" would have lost to that group, based on what I saw this year. They may be athletically superior, but they're fundamentally inferior. A game between the two teams wouldn't have been close, I don't think.

Good sport, of a different sort

Last weekend I had the chance to rub shoulders with one of the most famous chefs in America, if not the world: Cat Cora, best known from her knockout performances on The Food Network's "Iron Chef America." Cat was in Northeast Ohio for a benefit for Meals on Wheels of Stark & Wayne Counties, where I do PR. She is, quite simply, the real deal -- a total delight, gracious and patient and kind in every way. A star, yes. But never a prima donna, even if she had the right to be, considering her exceptional talents and bonafide fame. Cat delivered meals for the agency, did a book signing at the local Borders Books, and wowed 230 guests at a fundraiser. She was down-to-earth and a blast to be around. The pic to the left includes her assistant, Ashley Campbell, and my wife Doreen. A great time, and a great memory.

So there. I'm back. Let me know what you think.