Starting Five

1. The Man Who Fell To Earth… Austrian sky diver Felix Baumgartner, 43, detonates the entire concept of “Lazy Sunday” by leaping from a capsule, buoyed by a balloon, some 24 miles above the earth. A few facts:

Altitude at time of jump: 128,100 feet (24.26 miles)

Top Speed: 833.9 mph, or Mach 1.24 (faster than speed of sound)

Time of Descent: Roughly 9 minutes

Ground Control to Major…Felix?

Height of Helium Balloon: 55 stories

Time of free fall: 4 minutes, 20 seconds

Landing Site: Roswell, N.M.

Numbe of Viewers on YouTube: 7,000,000

Altitude at which he opened parachute: 5,000 feet

“So this is what Karen Carpenter was talking about…”

Coincidences: The leap was originally scheduled for last Tuesday, but by attempting the stunt on Sunday Baumgartner and his team found a wonderful, albeit unintentional, way to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeager first breaking the sound barrier, a.k.a. Mach 1, in a jet. Also,  the stunt took place 50 days after the death of Neil Armstrong, who had the most famous quote about a leap in history.

2. The Team Who Fell to Earth… One day earlier and only 175 miles east of Roswell, college football’s highest-risk undefeated team hit terra firma with a thud in Lubbock, Texas. West Virginia, which entered its game at unranked Texas Tech ranked No. 5, fell behind 42-7 before eventually succumbing 49-14 (and that wasn’t even the worst beating a Big 12 team suffered in Texas). As someone — we forget; rail at us later — noted on Twitter, the Mountaineers allowed 1,080 yards in their last two games while No. 1 Alabama has allowed 1,087 through its first six.

3. Pinstripe horror as Derek Jeter breaks his ankle, an ankle he had been favoring for most of the previous month, going to his left for a grounder. The Captain’s season is over, and if Robinson Cano cannot break out of an 0-for-26 slump, so is his team’s. It doesn’t get any easier for the Yankees, in an 0-2 hole to Detroit, as they face Justin Verlander tomorrow night. Perhaps only Kate Upton can save them.

So, um, when does the Nets season begin?

4. Packers regain form as Aaron Rodgers throws six touchdown passes and knocks the Houston Texas from among the ranks of the undefeated, which is meaningless in the NFL, anyway.

5. Our friend –and loyal MH supporter — Matthew Zemek only gave the game a “C-plus” on cfn.scout.com, but we happen to think Notre Dame 20, Stanford 13, with an epic goal-line stand staged in a driving rain (on real grass!) was a classic. Did Stepfan Taylor score? There are excellent arguments on either side of the debate.

“I’ll set fire to the rain…”

Reserves

No comedic riff captured the zeitgeist of the 21st century better than Louis C.K.’s excellent, and insightful, “Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy“. This weekend Saturday Night Live did its own riff  (video at bottom; Fred Arnisen in classic form) on this piece using recent complaints about the iPhone 5 as its stepping stone.

Quotable: “Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS”

                                 –Ohio State backup quarterback Cardale Jones on Twitter. Jones was suspended for the tweet and WORSE, his Twitter account was deleted. Although, let’s face it, his is a legitimate question.

The top ten teams in the FBS in terms of Turnover Margin are a combined 56-4. Turnovers are not accidents of nature.

Late August: Notre Dame irrelevant, AP poll relevant. Mid-October: Notre Dame relevant, AP poll irrelevant.

The irreplaceable Stephen Colbert, as himself, on “Meet the Press.”

Our official Felix Baumgartner Great Leap Playlist (although it may take more than nine minutes to listen to):

Up, Up and Away… The Fifth Dimension

Top of the World… The Carpenters

Jump… Van Halen

Free Fallin’ (but of course)…. Tom Petty

We are a nation too infatuated with statistics when it comes to sports. Especially when it comes to validating choices for MVP or Heisman. Yes, Geno Smith of West Virginia has thrown 25 TD passes versus zero interceptions, and that is incredible, and yet if he were wearing the uniform of the team that beat his on Saturday (by five touchdowns) all you’d hear is “system quarterback.”

If we were naming Heisman candidates purely by who have been the most captivating, and exemplary, players so far this season, Geno would certainly make our list, but so would these players (in no particular order):

Johnny Manziel, QB, Texas A&M (“Johnny Football” just fits)

Kain Colter, QB, Northwestern

Manti Te’o, LB, Notre Dame

Ace Sanders, PR/DB, South Carolina

Collin Klein, QB, Kansas State

Blake Bell, Not-So-Secret Weapon, Oklahoma

Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports on the morgue that is the new Yankee Stadium. It’s a terrific read. I wish JP would’ve emphasized the moat that separates the big spenders who sit between first and third base on the lowest level and the rest of the fans. As a New Yorker who watches a plethora of games on TV (and has never attended a game at the new stadium in person, as much out of principle as due to finances), it is a blight on the franchise to see so many empty seats behind home plate each game.

The old Yankee Stadium was the House that Ruth Built. The new one is the McMansion that Avarice Built (with taxpayer money). Constructed at the height of the Wall Street bubble, the stadium was erected as a monument to all the fiscal wizards and other wealthy types in the tri-state area who could either afford $1,200 seats on their own or write them off on the company’s expenses. But then the market crashed and suddenlty the Yankees couldn’t sell all those tickets (and a similar thing happened with Arthur Ashe Stadium, which will never be as dramatic a place to watch a tennis match as Louis Armstrong Stadium, and every last member of the USTA knows it).

We sort of like that Fearless Felix Baumgartner was cruising toward earth unencumbered by anything other than a space suit while the space shuttle Endeavor was basically starring in its own episode of “The Californians.” (“Ehhhh, what are YOU doing here?”)

Speaking of “The Californians”, look who made a cameo appearnce at the end ot its latest installment.

We already have a playoff (open your eyes):

No. 1 Alabama: Still at No. 12 Mississippi State, at No. 6 LSU (all rankings BCS, since they’re all that matter)

No. 2 Florida: No. 7 South Carolina, No. 11 Georgia, at No. 14 Florida State

No. 3 Oregon: at No. 10 USC, No. 20 Stanford, at No. 8 Oregon State (and look out for the unranked Sun Devils on Thursday night in Tempe)

No. 4 Kansas State: at No. 13 West Virginia, No. 17 Texas Tech, at No. 23 TCU, No. 25 Texas

No. 5 Notre Dame: at No. 9 Oklahoma, at No. 10 USC

Anniversaries: 24th anniversary of Kirk Gibson’s home run and Catholics 31, Convicts 30 (another epic South Bend game in which the visiting team had a legitimate beef about a rushing play near the goal line); 46th anniversary of the birth of the funniest man I know from Notre Dame, Mike Smoron (a 2:35 marathoner and an attorney, too), and two days past a monumental birthday for my sister, Lorraine.

Starting Five

1. October rocks, which is why FM radio stations refer to it as Rocktober. Baseball has more than met its obligation, as all four divisional series go five games for the first time since divisional play began in 1995. Also, as of this moment, the last three World Series champions — St. Louis, San Francisco and New York — are still playing.

— Joe Girardi pinch-hits for Pay-Rod again, this time in the 13th inning. Lord bless us, we want Joe G. to pinch-hit for Pay-Rod in the bottom of the first in Game 5 tonight just to see what happens. Ballgame over. Yankees lose. Thuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Yankees lose.

— Jayson Werth, Natitude walk-off. How has he not landed a deal as Brawny’s paper towel endorser yet?

— Justin Verlander: allowed a home run to first batter he faced in ALDS — our man Coco Crisp– then shut down the A-men on four hits in 14 innings. The Chain Smokers advance.

— Cincy-SF: Five games, all won by the road team, and the side that went down 0-2 won the series. That had never happened.

Strike a Posey

2. The top right-hand corner of the front page of yesterday’s New York Times had this piece on Lance Armstrong and the manner in which he and other U.S. Postal Service riders obviated the mandatory drug testing procedures overseen by the USADA. We’ll say this: for years now we’ve always pointed out to friends that Armstrong was resolute about saying how he’d “never tested positive” as opposed to saying that he had never blood-doped or taken PEDs. We always thought that was revealing. Apparently, so does the Grey Lady.

3.  One photo tells you all you need to know about last night’s Vice Presidential debate. Net week Sasha and Malia take on Tagg, Matt, Craig, Ben and Josh in Family Feud.

4. The Pittsburgh Polamalus lose on a walk-off field goal (or do they not call it that in football) at Tennessee. Pittsburgh has now lost at Oakland and at Tennessee. Those should have been gimme games for the Asymmetric Helmets.

5. Roger Ebert loves Argo, which opens today. We think we’re going to love it as well. Turns out that Will Hunting’s best friend, who has now produced both this and “The Town”, is “wicked smaht” as well. How do you like them apples?

Reserves

The European Union wins the Nobel Peace Prize. “We’d like to thank Adolf Hitler for being the worst person of the 20th century and thus somewhat necessitating our union…”

A Yankee pitcher was hit by a flying bat in the postseason and somewhere Mike Piazza is laughing his ass off.

Bat-itude?

The Colorado Buffs trail Arizona State in Boulder, 20-17, at halftime. Then apparently the entire team hit The Hill for pizza and beer. The Sun Devils outscored them 31-0 in the second half. Colorado, the only state whose borders are straight lines, has fallen off the map as both a football school and, sadder yet, as a party school.

Up next for Todd Graham’s 5-1 Sun Devils: a Thursday night visit from  No. 2 Oregon. This could be interesting. If you don’t think every college football writer in America is not trying to persuade his/her editor to send him to Tempe next week, well, then you’ve never been to Scottsdale/Tempe.

Flori-Duh: The words “Enema Tampering” appear in the headline. Read on at your own risk.

Babs does Brooklyn: Barbra Streisand, 70, returns to her home borough (The Way We Were, indeed) and performs at the Barclays Center. She even name-dropped Jay-Z, another Brooklynite who christened the arena last week, in a tune.

I wanna rock and roll all night! (wait, wrong post-60 year-old performer who played in NYC this week)

Also in New York City one day earlier, KISS performed live on Letterman and did a post-show concert for fans (and for a live webcast). What does it say about pop culture in 2012 that Streisand, KISS and Dave still move the dial? Oh, and if we only had tickets to Peter Gabriel’s show at Mohegan Sun tomorrow night…

We are pinch-hitting for today’s Starting Five — we haven’t pinch-hit for the SF since high school — with a special itemized report of minutiae from last night’s Game 3 win by the New York Yankees:

1. Before last night the Baltimore Orioles were 76-0 in games that they led after the seventh innning this season.

2. The Orioles had won 16 consecutive extra inning games. In fact, they are 16-0 in extra inning games this season against everyone else, but 0-3 versus the Bronx Bombers.

3. Alex Rodriguez has struck out seven times in nine at-bats versus righties in this series. Oriole closer  Jim Johnson is a righty.

4. Raul Ibanez hit two home runs on three pitches. He has more home runs this series than the rest of his team combined.

Greeting Raul: A-Rod is first to meet Ibanez at home

5. Ibanez is 40 years old, or three years older than A-Rod. So, yes, one of the five or ten greatest hitters of all time was pinch-hit for by a 40 year-old.

6. Ibanez was chosen by the Seattle Mariners with the 1,006th overall pick in the 1992 draft. A-Rod was chosen by the Mariners with the first overall pick in the 1993 draft. The pair were teammates on Seattle’s Single-A Midwest league team in Appleton, Wis.

7. Ibanez is both the oldest player ever to hit a walk-off homer in the postseason and the first to ever hit a home run in both the ninth inning and in extra innings of the same playoff game.

8. Ibanez has now hit three game-tying homers in the 9th inning in the past three weeks. All three came at Yankee Stadium (previously versus Oakland and Boston in games that the Yankees also won).

9. The New York Post called Joe Girardi’s decision to pinch-hit for the No. 6 all-time RBI man and No. 4 all-time home-run hitter “the boldest managerial move in Yankee history.” We’ll leave that for you to decide, but there’s no doubt it was the right call. You didn’t even need hindsight to see that.

10. Genius or serendipity?  If Joe Girardi  puts Pay-Rod at 3rd bas instead of at DH, is Ibanez still in the game in extra innings?  Almost certainly not unless Eric Chavez had been the DH, allowing a double switch.

11. Adam Jones, Baltimore Orioles: “It kind of caught me off-guard, hitting for a guy who’s half a billionaire.” (actually, it’s closer to one-third of a billionaire, but the point is well-made).

The Pinch-Hitters

What happens now? A-Rod appeared genuinely gracious and excited for Ibanez  in the postgame press scrum. Let’s give him that. Still, A-Rod has rarely been clutch in the postseason for the Bombers — his effete attempt at swatting away a tag after a harmless roller for the final out of Game 6 in the 2004 ALCS versus Boston is forged in infamy here — and now he’s just not that fierce of a hitter anyway.

Currently at the hot corner…

Yes, A-Rod suffered a wrist injury in August, and that may help explain his having just six extra-base hits in September and October. However, here’s a vet of 17 full seasons with a career slugging percentage of .560 whose average the past two seasons, respectively, has been .461 and .430.

It’s funny: For all the talk of when Derek Jeter’s skills will begun to atrophy — or that they already had –maybe the dude whose pinstripes were fading faster is his infield neighbor. Jeter, 38, led all American League players in hits this season with 216.

Meanwhile A-Rod, who has missed more than one-third of the past two seasons, has just 13 more hits in those two years combined than Jeter had this year.  The man who never hit fewer than 30 home runs in a season between 1998-2010 has a total of 34 over the past two seasons.

Injuries? Age? PEDs? We don’t know the exact answer. However, yesterday Pete Rose opined that Jeter would never catch him as baseball’s all-time hits leader (Rose, 4,256; Jeter, 3,304, and in 10th place) becaue he’d never want to leave New York and because the Yankees cannot afford to keep him at shortstop, defensively, over the next three to four years.

A few solutions: First, why can’t they? If Jeter can lead the league in hits while making all the smart plays he does defensively and elsewhere — sure, he pushed Nate McLouth off second base during his first-inning steal in Game 3 but he’s Derek Jeter; he can — why is he SUCH a liability at SS?

Second, maybe the Yanks just push Jeter to third and find a way to unload A-Rod (after all, A-Rod went from SS to 3B to join Yanks). Maybe they’re already thinking about that. But who is going to want Pay-Rod, whom the Yanks must compensate with $28, $25, $21, $20 and $20 million per season between 2013-2017?

Might he someday play third?

Here is where the Yanks will eat at least some of his salary — at least half — and be done with him. You may look at it as having to pay $14 million per season to a guy who is not even in uniform, but you can also see it as saving $14 million. And, the player you add to the roster is almost certainly going to sign for less tahn $14 million while adding just as much value as Pay-Rod currently does and likely will in the future.

In short, not only was Girardi’s move bold and likely the defining moment of his career; it was also the first step toward the Yankees unburdening themselves of Pay-Rod’s salary and all the drama that accompanies it… as soon as they find a taker.

*********

Lost in all of this: The Oakland A’s walk-off was even more dramatic. First of all, the A-Men were down to their final three outs of the season. Second, they trailed by two runs, not one. If you stayed up last night to watch it, the A’s earned this one. All four hits were legit ropes versus the Tiger closer, Jose Valverde. Now if only they could tear the tarp off the stadium’s upper deck so that it didn’t feel, when the panaroma shots are taken, as if we were watching the filming of a baseball movie instead of an actual MLB postseason game.

For a dude who spent most of the season at the very bottom of the N.L. ERA list, Tim Lincecum/Mitch Kramer was masterful in Game 4 at Cincinnati. In middle relief. A two-time Cy Young Award.  He’s the N.L. A-Rod.

The parallel is so obvious that it leaves us both dazed and confused

Our most excellent friend, Tim Crothers, a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated, has just had his third book published. Titled “The Queen of Katwe“, it is the true story of a Phiona Mutesi, a girl who lives in the slums of Kambala, Uganda, and who also happens to be one of the world’s top chess prodigies. To originally report the piece for ESPN the Magazine (it was later nominated for a National Magazine Award in feature writing: SI had turned down Tim’s pitch originally), Tim flew from Raleigh-Durham to Atlanta to Kambala and  then to Siberia, where the Wold Chess Championships were being staged (and where his luggage was lost).

Tim Crothers, author

Many, many stories about Tim, but here is a favorite. In the early 1990’s there were budget cutbacks at SI and we reporters were told we could only write our own stories if 1) they were approved and 2) the travel was no more than the cost of a subway ride. Tim, without informing any editors, persuaded Washington Generals coach Red Klotz to allow him to ride on their bus for a game or two and then turned in this brilliant profile of the Harlem Globetrotters’ whipping boy (this is how you write a lede to a takeout feature, by the way).

Tim knew that if he pitched the idea alone that it would be poached by a senior writer. So he took a huge gamble and turned in the finished product first. It was, as far as I know, the first “bonus” piece to appear in SI that was penned by a fact-checker.

One more thing about Tim: almost everyone he has ever profiled (Tim Floyd being a notable exception) loves him. Anson Dorrance has actually asked him to become an assistant coach with the Tar Heels, but Tim turned him down. Much success to Tim with the release of this book; no one I know is more deserving.

Finally, one of my favorite efforts in SI was the “Pub Memo” I wrote about Tim (we were never credited for these; the managing editor signed his name to it).

And, finally… John Cusack attends a Peter Gabriel concert 25 years after “Say Anything” is released. Gabriel plays “In Your Eyes.”

And all my instincts, they return…

The light, the heat. I am complete.

Cusack walks ontsage holding a boombox. And now there is a new superlative degree of meta.