Weekend Thoughts

In how many ways was it emotional to see the final act of number 42 in New York? I’m not even a baseball fan, but watching the clip of Rivera’s last pitch brought tears to my eyes. The last pitch by the greatest closer of all time, and the last appearance of the most famous number in baseball. Awesome.

There is, as always this time of year, mumbling about modifying NASCAR’s “Chase For The Championship,” which is sort of like a playoff system. Matt Kenseth says, however, that NASCAR should “leave the Chase alone for now.” That’s not surprising, given that he has won the first two races of the Chase and is leading for the championship by 14 points.

Chargers tight end Antonio Gates is again spouting the line about the team losing games by “just missing one play.” As I wrote after lest week’s game,

The Chargers were outgained on the ground by 170 yards to 102 yards. We were outpassed by 299 yards to 184 yards. Tennessee ran 68 plays to our 53. We gave up 299 passing yards to a team that passed for 246 yards in its two previous games combined, and surrendered 170 rushing yards to a team with a previous high of 119 yards.

That is not “just one play” short of a win, regardless of the score. They were 15 plays short last week, and in any case, one play does not gain 68 yards rushing and 115 yards passing that the Chargers were short in terms of yardage that day. You cannot correct a problem when you do not admit that you have a problem.

Time to go brace myself for LSU at Georgia. Geaux Tigers.