The Happiest Day

It's hard to be a critic on this, the happiest day in the history of sports. A collection of thoughts from the ridiculously copious coverage of Game 7:

- Buster Olney, target of SRAM's wrath yesterday, manned the chat post last night on espn.com, and was notably short on prediction and speculation. However, it should be noted that he was panning Brown's stuff after just 6 pitches. Good call. Although Harold Reynolds on Baseball Tonacht said afterwards he thought Brown had "good stuff, bad location." Okay, guys.

- That same chat had a few users advocating small ball in the first inning. Because, after all, you gotta get a lead to prevent Rivera from coming in. That's right, Moneyball is anti-getting-a-lead. The result of the Sox' brief small ball experiment: "Yeah, Damon steals second!" "Crap, Damon gets thrown out at home." With 1 out, mind you. A true Moneyball team has Ortiz hitting a 3-run homer with runners on first and second.

- The Daily Quickie admits to eating crow! At last! ("The ALCS is over" after Game 2.) Only about 999 more failed predictions to acknowledge, now. Let's go back to the DQ for last Monday (Oct. 18th) and revel in his Game 4 "analysis":

Delusion of "moral victory": Difference between "didn't lose" and "won." (Not that you could tell from Red Sox celebration.) Boston fans can't seriously "Believe" there's a chance, can they?

Spectre of Schill for Game 6: He's more valuable as a mind-game than for what he could actually do on the mound ...

- The whole world is bagging on ARod and Sheffield's AWOL offense over the last 4 games. No doubt, that was a killer, but it's a 7-game series, so let's look at some batting averages over the whole series:

Jeter: .200
Rodriguez: .258
Sheffield: .333

Good to see that His Jeterness at least made it up to the Mendoza line with his clutch play.

- Speaking of The Winner, one of the best lines of all Game 7 coverage came from Jim Caple:

"It's upsetting to lose,'' Derek Jeter said. "But in terms of being the first team to lose after being up 3-0, I couldn't care less.''

Don't worry, Derek. After a winter of listening to Yankees fans rip you for the collapse, you will.