I wouldn't normally give credence to anything written by Simmons (the drunken fratboy of sportswriters) but in this case I have agree. I'll even take a stab at a theory. Baseball players spend an inordinate amount of time just standing there while the game is played. Thus they have a lot more time to fret about all the things that could go wrong. Players in other sports don't have time to think about that once they enter the flow of the game. The tendency to fret is exacerbated by the fact that baseball is about making deliberate decisions about what you are going to do (which pitch to throw, where to position yourself on defense) that are in some sense irrevocable once the pitcher goes into his windup. I suppose, therefore, that players who have just seen something go incredibly wrong the way the Astros did last night have a lot of time to second guess themselves into on-field paralysis. I think the Astros are done. I predict the Cards will win a close game 6 and blow Houston right off the field in Game 7.

When I lived in San Diego fifteen years ago, Jeannie "Go-Go" Zelasko did traffic and weather for a local AM station. She was pretty annoying then too (I can remember people remarking on it) but she mercifully only had thirty seconds in which to be annoying (plus about ten or fifteen seconds of banter with the on-air personality on either side of her report). She was insufferable then, and--as if she were on a mission to prove that people can't ever change in any way--she is insufferable in exactly the same way today. How she moved up from local traffic to national studio host is a mystery. Someone at Fox clearly likes her work though. Perhaps if Murdoch fired that person we would all be spared any more of "Go-Go," and, one could only hope, Brennaman...

Also, I have tried watching with the volume off, but the camera angles and quick cuts are still too distracting. I can only watch about a half inning or so before I have to get up and go do something else for a while.

King et al.,

Actually, I was screaming "go for it" on fourth and less than one at the TV yesterday, except it wasn't at Vermeil and the Chiefs, but rather at Schottenheimer and the Chargers. Now Shottenheimer is the very epitome of the coach who makes the "don't blame me" decision. Late in the game, with an eight point lead and facing a fourth and goal inside the one, with the best player in the league (who had already scored three rushing touchdowns on the day) Marty opted for the field goal. Now, of course, it all worked out in the end, but doesn't the 15 point lead just end the game right there? I think Tomlinson scores way more than 68% of the time from there against that defense, and guarantees that the game doesn't come down to one final play in the endzone the way it did.

Of course one could argue that the eleven point lead was just as good, and I suppose that Marty is pretty confident that he did the right thing in hindsight, but he is the one who put the team in the situation in the first place by giving the ball to O'Neal instead of Tomlinson on the previous play. The Chargers should have broken the Jets' backs, not given them hope. And then Marty wonders why he keeps losing the close games.

One other thought that occurs to me is that coaches did not always get excoriated for going for it. Tom Osborne opted to go for two (and the win) at the end of the 1984 Orange bowl, when the extra point (and the tie) would have at least guaranteed a split championship in the polls (the Huskers were undefeated and had been number one in the polls since before the season had begun). Instead he decided to win or go home, and then Irving Friar dropped the quick slant pass on the goal line to hand the championship to Miami. Perhaps my memory is now failing me, but I seem to remember the announcers praising Osbourne's courage rather than criticizing him for putting it all on the line. Maybe the tendency to go for the safe play and the media scrutiny that occurs in the wake of perceived failures to go for the safe option are indicative of some larger changes in our cultural attitudes between 184 and today.

Actually, the Steelers caught the break on the catch and fumble non-call. While it is true that the Pittsburgh linebacker had a clean shot at the ball before the refs whistled the ball dead, he would have recovered it somewhere around the ten or twelve yard line. Two plays later the Seahawks punted and Rouen put it in the end zone for the touchback. Net result of the non-call was first and ten at the twenty instead of the ten. An important net gain for the Steelers given that they had not been able to move the ball at all up to that point (and went three and out again after that).

The phantom TD could have gone either way, and the Jackson push-off also could and probably would have been overlooked except that the back judge was standing two feet away when it happened. But the holding call was a real back-breaker, and after watching the replay a dozen times I still can't see it. Too bad, because a Seahawks TD at that point would have made the game really exciting--which is all I cared about since I had zero rooting interest in it.