We're No. 57,266!

            According to Blogpulse, 57,265 web logs were created in the past 24 hours.

            Make that 57,266 – a little more than the world’s population increase every six hours, but less than the number of words Joe Theismann uses on the average football broadcast.

            In other words, we’re a grain of sand on the beach, a pixel on the HDTV of life.

Even the tiniest of particles vibrate, though, so here we are – and what better time to crack the bottle of champagne over the bow of a new sports blog than September? Pennant races, football (and futbol) injuries, hockey’s back, the season for marathons and horse races.

            In other words, there are more hopes on the line this time of year than any other. And on the subject of that, is there a better team going than the Cleveland Indians, the easiest team to like in pro sports right now?

            Last night, the Indians won in Chicago with the same recipe they’ve used for the past few months: the best bullpen in the league, smart baseball sense, nice defence, timely hitting and the game’s next great player.

As good as they look, though, the White Sox, which held a 15-game lead on Aug. 1, counter with the emotionless, haunted visage of fabled September collapsing artists – it's so quiet, writes Mike Downey, "you could hear a pennant drop" -- which is the other side, always, of these kind of autumn stories. Bucky (Bleeping) Dent is nobody without the ’78 Red Sox, and Yaz slumping his shoulders after popping up to third for the final out. The ’04 Red Sox are nothing without the Yankees’ swoon for the ages, with A-Rod’s slap the pratfall that best illustrated their fall (and those ’04 Red $ox, with baseball’s second biggest payroll behind the default-setting Yanks, are just another baseball team without the overrated baggage of all those title-starved years following them around). If the White Sox are indeed done when this is all over, they too will carry that iconic moment of failure -- unless, like the '64 Phillies, the mere mention of their name is enough.

But that was last year. It's the Red Sox' turn to get back to their usual gagging, and over at the always entertaining Soxaholix, they're asking the question:

"When exactly did the Sox toss out all the Bill James books and replace them with Deepak Chopra?"

A troubling thought: There’s an entire generation just coming of age here in Toronto that can’t remember just how delicious this pennant race stuff is. It's either/or, all month long, which sure beats trying to remember what year we're into J.P.'s rebuilding plan.

A question for the day, because for another fall, all we have are memories: What was the biggest sporting collapse you can remember by a Toronto team? And the most memorable comeback? Let me know, and more, in the comments.

Couple of other good reads this morning:

Fan apathy, a boring product, soaring ticket prices, spiralling salaries -- welcome to the Premier League.

Best. Video game. Ever.

Comments

[Jaq]

Painfully to say, the Boston Red Sox comeback in the 2004 ALCS vs. the New York Yankees.

[denial]

hi chris, nice going with #57,266! i'm so happy that there is now a second blog for me to spend time in, rather than, well, improving my own life etc etc blah blah blah I'LL DO IT LATER OKAY

so much to comment on; i'll try and limit myself to 1 or 2 for now.

my guess is that the greatest sports collapse in memory will be the Jays in 1985. I cried. really -- when Sundberg hit that triple off the top of the fence, i was very depressed for like 3 days. you see, i had a baseball video game on my brilliant IBM XT that would have included the Jays in the following year's edition if they had made it to the world series. I could have then matched the Jays up against about 50 other teams.

i had planned to spend an enormous, destructive, atrophying amount of time doing that, and then jim sundberg had to ruin it with a triple on a ball that look liked a shallow pop up. damn you exorcism stadium, damn you.

closely behind this collapse is the Leafs against the Kings in 93. that wasn't so much a collapse -- the leafs were exhausted -- but it was excrutiating. i used to park myself across from that giant TV at the HMV on yonge and watch it with the other riff raff. it was glorious and i can still smell the carbon monoxide from the cabs who refused to turn off their engines. it smelled like overtime victory.

and as for greatest comeback? that high scoring jays game against Philly in 1993 ws -- game 6, i think -- was absolutely mental. it never should have happened, but it did. The Jays getting a hit, let alone a run, off of Dennis Eckersely the year before (I think?) is a close second.

also... is it just me, or is NFL football getting more tedious, or CFL football getting better, or both, or what? I just can't get engaged with any of the games; aside from the video game feel that the broadcasts have, the game itself is really, really boring. rush, rush, short pass, do it again or punt.

and good call about Theisman. that is a problem in need of a solution, stat. another massive problem is the entire FOX halftime panel. one more inane zinger from bradshaw and i'm going to send an email to the ACLU, and maybe one to the humane society. nothing, however, is as troubling as phil simms. i think that his name should become the term for a condition, as in: my God, you have Phil Simms! Stay 50 feet away from a microphone, and run this ointment on your bad self until you stop talking about football plays that simply cannot tolerate commentary. even shakespeare would have shrugged. what can you say about a 1100 pound humanoid who sat on the centre? nobody drew that play up, phil. it just happened. the laws of gravity and inertia; it's not a play. did you hear me phil? IT'S NOT A PLAY, IT JUST HAPPENED.

FOR THE LOVE OF LOU FRANCESCHETTI, YOU'VE GOT PHIL SIMMS!

okay, done for now. thanks for setting up a new blog, chris, it will be fun

[cy]

Yes, Denial, two blogs.
That kind of excess verbiage, I guess you might say I've got -- PHIL SIMMS! Stay away! It could be contagious!
(Others have said it: You should have your own blog, man.)
Agreed on Sundberg's triple. It was a fly ball that just kept going and going and going on a windy night -- it still troubles, don't it? But there was another contender from the Blow Jays era -- their three-game series in Detroit, at the end of the '87 season, and two small words: Manny Lee.
And even further back, two more possibilities, i reckon: Leon McQuay's fumble in Vancouver, and the Leafs having the utterly detestable, vampirish Flyers on the ropes (was it '75? '76? I don't remember), prompting Tiger Williams' ill-advised "they're done like dinner" line.
But '92? Oh, man. That was like a Star Trek TNG line from the episode where Picard travels to the planet where the guys with the dinosaur heads speak in metaphors: "Alomar and Eckersley, at Alameda." And we all bow our heads in reverence and remembrance.

[denial]

i think i'm the only person who is embarassingly aware that if i were to have a blog, the joy and freedom and general stupidity that i gently (and hopefully, kindly) blurt out on an ongoing basis would become...full of effort. and then i'd start to worry, sutbly, about what the hell i was doing. and then i would worry for worrying, and then i'd become like what happened to dennis miller on MNF -- a chariacture of myself, co-opted by my very own hand (doesn't that sound so dirty?).

there's more space to play out here in no man's land. as i said the other day, you have the much tougher job, and it is admired. from afar.

i TOTALLY forgot the blow jays (like that!) in 87. Yes yes yes yes i remember it now. losing to the tigers was bad enough; losing to that ogre, Doyle Alexander, was the truly painful part. and yes, i'm still waiting for CBC to end its strike so that someone can pour a trainload of public money into "The Man from Second Base: the Long and Winding Road of Manny Lee". I think it will win the Juno for Most Irrelevant Documentary about Manny Lee (it's a new category).

of course, maybe the greatest let down in sports history was daniel alfredson promising that the sens would win the stanley cup in 03-04. bahahahahhaa. Talk about diluting a line that used to mean something.

[Billy Bonds]

Yes, the NFL does seem more boring. And the CFL players can be really exciting. But I can never take the CFL seriously for two reasons - the coaches and the refs. Don Matthews going for two points trying to win last week in BC was the icing on the cake. But at other times, I wonder if there are any defensive co-ordinators in the CFL. Yes, the field is bigger, more players in motion. But seriously, I rarely see ANY pass coverage. And a lot of the QB play in the CFL is about freelancing. Yes, Dave Dickinson is good but does he even know (or has he been instructed) to just throw the ball out of bounds when you're being chased. He just puts his head down, often leading to a sack.

The refs in the CFL are another story. How many blown calls are there in every game? If a league ever needed replay, this is it.

Like I said, the players are great. But their talents are undermined by amateurish coaching and refereeing.