Nobody on the road...

nobody on the beach...

Amazingly summer '05 is in its twilight. For me it endures, at least as far as employment is concerned until the middle of October but for all intents and purposes the "white" season ends Monday.

This end brings more than colored leaves and cool evenings. It brings the best sporting months of the year. The last 35 games of the Red Sox season and the beginning of Patriots and BC football slip and slide right into the first hockey season since 1943 and the beginning of basketball. It's a virtual (why does everyone always use virtual to precede...) cornicopia (are there such things are real cornicopias?) of blogging vodder.

Sure I'll be mired in Dockside hell with one lonley drunk roofer to keep me company for the next 6 weeks and I'll blow the remainder of my summer savings on cheap Cape Cod moonshine, but at least there will be sports to watch.

Heading into this stretch there are questions galore. Will the Red Sox hang on to win their first division title since 1995? Will the Yankees out pace the A's / Angels to take the Wild Card giving us all a reason to add to our prodigious stress ulcers still festering from the past 2 playoff runs? Will the Patriots overcome (?) their key losses at linebacker and coordinator to continue their dominance? Will BC be able to compete in the utterly stacked ACC or will they simply be annihilated by Florida State and Miami, and if they do compete will they roll over and die in the big game at the end of the year against an inferior opponent as the always do? Will anyone ever watch hockey again? What in the heck am I going to do with my life in October? (Forget that last one I don't even want to think about it.)

To even put on my prognosticators hat at this stage seems totally premature but what the hell, no one reads this anyway. Maybe I've caught stupid from watching too much "1st and 10" with the two worst sports reporters in the history of suck-ass (yes that is a word) sports reporting.

The Red Sox will win the division, IF the pitching holds. They cannot keep staking teams to 5 run leads like they have the past 2 nights against Tampa Bay. It's great that both Schilling and Wakefield were able to turn it around after shaky starts but on the road Mueller's wall balls are outs and the shots Damon catches just in front of the triangle are home runs. The offense will be there regardless of who is playing first or second base. This race will not be decided by Graffanino and Cora or Millar and Pettagini. Rather it will be Schilling, Timlin, and Foulke. You know what you're going to get from Wakefield and Arroyo, Wells is fat and I can't fucking stand him and I strike him from this blog for being so T.O. like in his press conference after his suspension came down, and I don't see any suprises from Manny Delcarmen or Abe Alvarez in the next 4 weeks either. The three guys listed above are the key, Foulke needs to close Timlin needs to continue to be the 7th and 8th inning horse and Schilling needs to figure it out, his stuff might not be there but he needs to win with guile and craftiness regardless. The sad truth here is that in one bad week this could all come unglued without a true stopper in the rotation. If Schilling returns to form he is that guy, and I'd feel a whole lot better knowing that there was someone out there who could stop the bleeding at least every fifth day if the rest of the staff goes into the tank. Deep down I think they're going to pull away a bit and win by 5, after that as we know anything can happen.

The Patriots are going to win the division but there will be no talk of going undefeated and they will be favored just because they are the Patriots once we get into the heart of the season. Their schedule is almost unfair it's so hard and even within their own division their competition has vastly improved. The Jets added, obviously Ty Law and other defensive help, the Bills got rid of 34 interceptions per season just by ditching Bledsoe, and the Dolphins have essentially the same team as 3 years ago when they were competitive with the return of Ricky Williams. They have to go to Indianapolis where maybe the mystique of their dominance over Peyton Manning will be lessened, and that is only the cornerstone of a very arduous road schedule. However, they still have the only three things they simply could not afford to lose, Bellichick, Brady, and Dillon. Take Weiss, take Crennell, take Law, Bruschi, and Johnson. It doesn't matter. In this his fifth full season as a starter Brady has a greater command of his offensive scheme than any quarterback in football save that country bumpkin in Indianapolis. Bellichick may have lost his right hand men but don't think for even a second that he did not see this coming and hasn't had someone groomed for each position and at the end of the day he is the brains behind the operation, Weiss and Crennel were, as the new coordinators will be, just the arms and legs. Corey Dillon with a year under his belt is ready to explode as a premier back, just look at his rating on every fantasy football site, he's always in the top 10 even though he only had 12 TD's last year, they see it coming and so do I. So my prognosis is that until someone rears their head to beat them the Patriots are the favorites, the Colts can't beat them, Roethlisberger is bound to take at least a half step backward and both of the Pittsburgh running backs are hurt, and the Eagles are prone to completly implode on the back of one pompus ass. At this point all the legitimate challengers are unimpressive, that will likely change however as this is the NFL and everyone is good enough to win every week.

I don't know a freaking thing about BC's team this year aside from the fact that some of the girls I swam with thought the starting quarterback was hot when he was a freshman. Actually check that I know another thing, Quinton Porter isn't taking us anywhere and he certainly isn't going to ride us through Tallahassee and Miami. I see a "correction" coming but they are ranked 22 to start the season and I'm quite sure that those who make the rankings are much more informed that I. One thing I am sure of is that I will be there, drunk.

Technically I'm managing right now so I guess I ought to head back downstairs and put out any fires the stupid Polish waitresses have set in my absence. There was a reason you made Polish jokes when you were a little kid, sometimes stereotypes are true.

Last chance to see the Cape at it's best this weekend. Way to make it down here tons this summer....