Starting Five

 

Simmons (L) and Leitch are not unfamiliar with a word or two about their respective pastime passions.

 

 

 

 

1. The World Series of Blogging

The Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals will meet in the World Series, which begins Tuesday, for the second time the past decade. The Sawx, you may recall, swept the Stan the Mans the last time they met in October, in 2004.

This Fall Classic also represents a summit between sport’s two most successful bloggers. For the Fenway faithful, there’s Bill Simmons, alias “The Sports Guy” (2,271,000-plus Twitter followers), who is both the progenitor and the paragon of sports blogging. Here’s a Holy Cross alum who went from tending bar in Boston to basically becoming an unofficial vice president of ESPN. How’d he do it? Hard work and immense talent.

For the Busch Stadium faithful, there’s Matoon, Ill., native Will Leitch (46,552 followers), creator of Deadspin, the most influential sports blog yet to exist — just ask Lennay Kekua, if you can find her (Carl Monday is on the case).

In 2004, when the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918, Simmons published his first book, “Now I Can Die In Peace”, which was all about his fandom. Last year Leitch unleashed a column about the Redbirds for USA Today, where he now works, titled, “My Team Is Better Than Yours.” Then just last week, after the site that he founded published a column titled “Why Your Cardinals Suck” (more mean-spirited good humor by Drew Magary), Letich was inspired to compose a letter of response, the blogging equivalent of a pitcher whose teammate has already been beaned retaliating by beaning someone on the other team.

Is there a way that neither team can win the World Series? Can we make that happen? Or can there at least be a prop bet as to which blogger publishes the more insufferably self-indulgent column in the next week?

2.The Joyful Luck Club

 

The Indianapolis Colts defeated the Peyton Mannings last night in the most watched promo for a Carrie Underwood vehicle (she’s slated to play Maria Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” on NBC!) ever aired, 39-33. You might say, as NBCSports., com does, that Indianapolis “stunned” the Broncos, but the Colts have now beaten San Francisco, Seattle and Denver who –sorry, Chefs — may be the three best teams in the NFL.

Besides the Colts, that is.

Andrew Luck: 21-38, 228 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INTs.

Peyton Manning: 29-49, 386 yards, 3 TDs, 9 INT.

What to remember: As the Broncos stormed back, Wes Welker made one of the most ridiculous catches that you will ever see. Also, the Wild Horses might have been able to recover from a 33-14 third-quarter deficit if not for Ronnie Hillman’s fumble at the Colt 3 (a Bronco score would have made it 39-37 with more than three minutes to play) or if not for defensive tackle Kevin Vickerson’s cheap shot on Andrew Luck on the ensuing series.

“That’s a killer right there,” opined Cris Collinsworth on NBC, and he’s right. Was Vickerson’s inadvertent bump-with-extra sauce on Luck mild? Sure. Did he need to put that extra oomph into it? Of course not, and he’d already committed two personal fouls in the game. I don’t think Vickerson is going to win the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award this season.

3. Insane Clown Posse

An assassin posing as a clown at a children’s party in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, gunned down Mexican drug lord Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix over the weekend. Arellano Felix, 63, was the oldest brother in a family that is known as the Tijuana Cartel, one that controlled much of the drug trade in northern Mexico.

The killer, who apparently had two accomplices, did not honk a horn after firing the two bullets that felled Arellano Felix. He was last seen fleeing the scene on a tricycle (okay, not really, but how awesome would that have been?).

4. Too Soon To Worry

The first BCS standing of the season, the last season that will feature BCS standings, were released last night. The order of the top five goes Alabama, Florida State, Oregon, Ohio State and Missouri. So of course pundits must weigh in on how Oregon will be able to waddle past the Seminoles, as if the season is already over.

It’s only just beginning, of course. Marathoners will tell you that the true halfway point of the 26.2-mile race is about Mile 18 (or even that that is where the odyssey actually begins), while this hoary college football observer will advise that the season only really begins now.

What you need to know:

–Ten undefeated teams remain. At least four, and most likely six, of them will face off.

Miami at Florida State on November 2.

Texas Tech at Baylor on November 16.

And,  Alabama or Missouri in the SEC Championship Game on December 7.

–Oregon still has three ranked teams on its schedule: UCLA, Stanford and Oregon State.

–Fresno State has no one remaining that has not already lost three games, but the Bulldogs must make up a postponed contest (flooding) with Colorado. If an FSU is headed to Pasadena, this is not the one.

–Northern Illinois faces Ball State, which is 7-1.

–Ohio State will sup on four Big Ten Leaders Division bottom-dwellers before heading to Ann Arbor on the final day of November. That could be interesting.

–If you were to rank teams by taking their Scoring Offense ranking plus their Scoring Defense ranking, with the lowest sums indicating the top teams, your three top schools would be…

1)  Florida State: 3 + 3 = 6

2) Baylor: 1 + 7 = 8

3) Oregon: 2 + 12 = 14

— The Grange Award winner frontrunners at this moment are all quarterbacks with six letters in their first name and seven letters in their last name. I don’t have an order for you, but alphabetically it’s Johnny Manziel, Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston.

5. “Big” Fun

 

 

Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, currently starring in the planet’s two biggest movies (“Captain Phillips” and “Gravity”), appeared on a British talk show last week and played piano with their feet. The presenter, as they are known in the UK, is Jonathan Ross. I think his first idea –have Hanks and Bullock pilot a double-decker bus  that cannot go slower than 80 Km/Hr through the streets of London — was better.

Reserves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I Own You!”

Interesting Friday edition of The New York Times. Inside you could read a glowing review of “12 Years a Slave”, the true story of Solomon Northup, who was a free black man living in upstate New York in 1841 when he was abducted and sold into slavery. You could also read, on page A-1, about a company that hopes to soon be selling stock in individual athletes. The company, Fantex Holdings, is already planning to issue an IPO on Houston Texans running back Arian Foster (who, despite that first name, is half African-American and half Hispanic), who will receive an upfront payment of $10 million in exchange for 20% of his future earnings.

Some 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, you can still own people in the United States. It’s just that now they’ll be paid handsomely for it.

 

–A dude named Nugent came into Ford Field and beat the Detroit Lions with a 54-yard field goal as time expired?!? Cat scratch fever from a Bengal.

–Notre Dame held USC to 0 for 11 on third downs after the Trojans’ opening series of the game, the only series in which USC scored a touchdown, as the Irish won 14-10. It was Notre Dame’s third defeat of Troy in the past four seasons, and yet their first win against the Fight Ons in South Bend since 2001. Neither side scored in the second half. Irish QB Tommy Rees was knocked out of the game early in the third quarter, and his replacement, Andrew Hendrix, answered “No” to that timeless musical question, Are You Experienced?

— New England lost in overtime to the New York Jets via an arcane rule that no one had ever seen invoked before. Karma is a bitch. As I tweeted yesterday, Upset Boston fans are my favorite people.

–This touchdown catch by Stanford’s Kodi Whitfield defies at least four laws of physics.