Baseballhead:
Second Season

Michael Cox

Happy Monday, cherubim and seraphim, and welcome to Baseballhead, where we just saw the new Michael Jackson video, and are wondering 1) whether he actually intended to have his face altered to the point where he looks like a thin Lou Piniella, and 2) whether one more surgical procedure might leave him with no facial features whatsoever.

The hardest part about writing a weekly column, aside from the carpal tunnel and enormous coffee bills, is that sometimes there is just too much to cover. It would be plenty this week if I only had to wrap up the regular season and prepare you for the playoffs, but then MLB had to go and give us what was most likely the greatest weekend in baseball history.

In the space of three days:

- The single-season home run record fell (and Mark McGwire got over his bitterness to boot).

- Ty Cobb's career runs record was broken.

- Two cherished "good guys" of the game, each of whom played for only one team their entire career, retired.

- The first team in 95 years to win 116 games won their, er, 116th game.

- The same guy who just broke the runs record also got his 3000th hit.

Okay, so one of these actually happened Thursday. It could have been a long weekend.

The crazy thing about all this is that the national media all but buried the record-breaking achievements until they were practically upon us. In 1998 FOX pushed aside prime-time programming to bring us Mark McGwire's 62nd homer, despite the fact that it wasn't even guaranteed that he'd hit it (mind you, preempting most FOX programming is no big loss). On Friday, Bonds got his record-breaker on ESPN2. It's highly likely that after the Rockies sign Jason Giambi in 2005, his 74th dinger will be brought to you via tape delay on the Food Network.

Not that MLB's leadership cared a whole lot more -- Bud Selig couldn't be bothered to travel to San Francisco, likely because he was busy deciding between Spam or Underwood Deviled Ham as the Official Canned Meat of Major League Baseball. However, he did send Paul Beeston to tell Barry that as soon as actual broadcast TV airwaves are available, Selig will bestow upon him the Mighty High Commissioner's Really Important Award.

Add to all that the fact that the Homer Of Great Importance was hit at the beginning of what turned out to be the longest nine-inning game in history (no, really). This meant that it was about 4 am Eastern time when Willie Mays offered the testimonial, "I looked at a five-year-old Barry Bonds and told him, 'Get out of my locker.'"

But the lack of Bonds coverage pales when placed next to the two even bigger accomplishments of the week. Mind you, very few people really knew the level of achievement that was the Runs Scored record (and one of those people was me). That, coupled with the lingering belief in Middle America that Rickey is some kind of record-hogging egomaniac, kept him from breaking the record even on national cable. Oh, and the fact that he plays for the Padres might have something to do with it as well.

Then there's the Mariners' wins record. If you want to fully understand the depth of the East Coast-based media's ignorance of this feat, compare it to the '98 Yankees' AL-record-setting final weekend, covered from head to toe at the top of SportsCenter. The M's 115th and 116th wins were recapped approximately midway through the national sportscasts, their record-tying performance appearing after a meaningless Diamondbacks-Brewers contest and the Longhorns-Sooners tilt. Fortunately it isn't golf season, so quotes from a 15th-place Tiger Woods didn't bump the M's entirely.

Insult was added to injury last Thursday when ESPN's Linda Cohn announced that Seattle had yet to catch the '98 Yanks after recapping the game that tied the AL record. History repeated itself when ESPN.com wrote on Sunday, "The Mariners...had to settle for 116 wins -- one short of the 1906 Cubs' record -- after losing to Texas." (Italics are mine, although I wouldn't have put it past them.)

At this point, allow me to reiterate my stance on the major-league single-season wins record: it should be treated as more valuable than a World Series victory. Of course, sportswriters everywhere are copying and pasting the line, "Seattle's incredible season will not be seen as truly historic unless they win the World Series." Heck, other people wrote it, so it must be true, right?

Moving on to the Playoffs: There's another cliche being Xeroxed at this very moment: "The Yankees just know how to win in October."

After giving you a very, very good reason why this is not true, we can together knock back a shot of fine sippin' whiskey (or Ovaltine) on the sofa and laugh at the people who go ahead and say it anyway. This brings us to our playoff previews -- we know who the best teams in baseball have been, day in and day out, over the past six months, now let's see who might win an extra little tournament, shall we?

In the National League, the Astros and Cards went to the wire to determine which of them would get the privilege of hosting the Braves to begin the postseason. I say "privilege" because the 2001 Atlanta team is the weakest of the entire playoff crop. Never mind that the Braves have a tradition of difficulty in the second season even after they win their own division handily. This time they barely held off the Phillies. I do not believe a punchline is required.

The 'Stros have blown hot and cold lately, but recovering against the surging Cards to regain the division title (albeit on penalty kicks instead of a manly one-game playoff) was a heartening way to finish the season. My spider-sense says Houston's hitting beats Atlanta's pitching, but then again that could be the chicken vindaloo I had for dinner.

The Diamondbacks might be the best-positioned team in the NL version of the postseason, but I don't know if I'd bet against the Cards, who have had an amazing September. This is precisely why I don't even like to make predictions, and why you should consider those I do make to be the equivalent of a Magic 8-Ball. That is to say, for entertainment purposes only. No Jim Rome-style swaggering proclamations for me. No poor facial hair grooming, either.

Oh, yeah, D-Backs-Cards. I'll take the team with Schilling and Johnson every time, aging hitters be damned. Sweep? My sources say no.

The Junior Circuit ought to be incredibly exciting, with the supposedly-October-win-knowing Yanks facing the habañero-hot A's, and the mighty decent Tribe facing the still-toasty M's. My only certain prediction: whoever emerges from the top of this heap will win the Series.

The Mariners, being the top-seeded AL squad, do have the "easier" opponent, if you can call any team with Jim Thome, Roberto Alomar, and Juan Gonzalez "easy." What the Indians don't have, however, is consistent pitching, and their Game One and Two starters didn't fare well in their tune-up outings. The M's style of scraping and scratching for runs should help them greatly in postseason play, although it may cause any rashes to scab. How can you not pick the team with 116 wins?

On the other hand, the A's actually performed about five wins better than the Mariners during the second half of the season. The Yankees have spent the same period watching the Red Sox beat themselves, winning the East virtually by default and wondering whether they would enjoy a fully functioning David Justice, Paul O'Neill or Livan Hernandez (answer: reply hazy, ask again).

Again, there just isn't a good reason to bet against a team who has performed on the level of the A's, especially remembering that Oakland swept the Yanks in two of their three regular-season series. "Knowing how to win in October" might be something the Athletics learn this week.

Don't forget to check back and see how I did. Do promise not to laugh.

about the author

Michael Cox knows how to use similes in October. Just don't ask him to rock you like a hurricane at mc@strikethree.com.