TV Review: Elseworlds

TV Review: Elseworlds

Welcome to the third annual CW crossover event, where all (or some) of the shows in the Arrow-verse (shouldn’t it be called the Berlanti-verse, sort of like Shondaland?) get to meet each other and hijinks ensue.  The firs crossover event had definite problems; they siloed each show’s episode, so it seemed like a party game where The Flash got to produce an hour of television and then Arrow had to take over and make the next hour.  The Flash episode was definitely a Flash episode, the Arrow episode was incomprehensible to those who didn’t watch Arrow, and the Supergirl contribution was literally just the last 2 minutes of a Supergirl episode.  But the whole thing was entertaining and a nice way to package shows that maybe not everyone was watching.

Last year’s crossover event, Crisis on Earth X, solved almost all of the problems that the first crossover had.  It ran like a 4-hour mini-series, with supporting characters from each show popping up in any of the four episodes, and it was magnificent.  The fight scene in episode 1, where Nazis from Earth X attacked the wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West, was beautifully fight choreographed (it helped that Guest Star William Katt, from The Greatest American Hero, was the first person to get zapped by the invading horde).  The bad guys were a real threat, the episodes had both gravitas and humor, and Alex Danvers from Supergirl and Sara Lance from Legends of Tomorrow had the greatest drunken hookup in superhero TV history (punctuated by Mick Rory asking Sara Lance, “So . . . you hit that?” at the end).

This year’s crossover event, Elseworlds, is a step backwards.  It has some fun moments, but the plot never manages to make any sense what so ever, even by the loose logical standards of the Berlanti-verse.  What saves it is the acting; all of the participants seem to get a kick out of stretching their characters and interacting with different actors.  But man does this not make sense.

Let’s start with the premise: geeky psychiatrist Dr. John Deegan (played by Jeremy Davies, so you know he’s not mentally all there) is given a book by a character we subsequently learn is called The Monitor, that allows him to rewrite all of reality.  Does he use this power to sleep with any woman he wants?  Does he make himself the richest man in the world?  Does he burn off his unsightly body fat without diet or exercise?  No, he has The Flash (Grant Gustin) and Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) switch places.

What?  Yeah, I don’t get it.  Since it turns out he’s from Gotham City, why would he even care about the Central City speedster and Star City’s Green Arrow?  If there was an explanation, I missed it.  That said, it never failed to be hilarious to see Steven Amell in The Flash’s bright red superhero costume; it is hard to be broody when dressed in a candy apple red onesie.  Anyway, the two heroes are upset by the arrangement (Barry Allen is Oliver’s friend, but the prospect of his wife waking up next to Oliver Queen freaks him out), so they travel to Earth 38 to consult with Supergirl (Melissa Benoist).  The investigation leads then to Gotham City where Batman is MIA but Batgirl is alive and well and kicking ass.  They go back to Central City, Deegan rewrites the universe again and this time he makes himself Superman, which makes way more sense.

Okay, let’s get to the biggest problem with Elseworlds: the ending.  In order to stop Deegan from rewriting the universe, the good guys decide they have to stop time.  How?  The Flash will one run direction at Mach 7, Supergirl will fly in the other at the same speed, and the Earth’s rotation will stop, freezing time.  Right.  The biggest sin the original Superman movie committed was that nonsense about reversing the Earth’s rotation reversing time.  Ain’t gonna happen.  Then there’s the methodology; how would two superheroes moving rapidly in opposite directions affect the Earth’s rotation?  And given their small mass compared to the Earth, how could they possibly affect the Earth’s rotational momentum, even if they weren’t cancelling out the other’s effect?

Let’s focus on the positive though.  The cast seems to be having a ball, especially Amell who gets to lighten up for a change.  Elseworlds also makes good use of Supergirl’s Superman, Tyler Hoechin, who is criminally underused on that show.  It also introduces two additions to the Berlanti-verse, Ruby Rose’s Kate Kana, aka Batgirl, and Elizabeth Tullock’s Lois Lane.  Batgirl, for whom a new show is being considered, has apparently taken up Batman’s mantle while he is missing and makes an impressive appearance.  Tulloch, who was as interesting as water on Grimm, made a good impression as Lois Lane; lively, smart, fearless and connected to Clark/Superman on an emotional level.  She was a definite improvement over Erica Durance’s overly aggressive portrayal on Smallville.  The show came up for a reason for them to be away for a while (while visiting the Kryptonian outpost Argo City Lois somehow got pregnant, so they will have to go back to Argo City lest the baby’s kicking results in Lois’ death), which takes some pressure off of Supergirl as it always struggled to explain the absence of Superman when crises occurred.  When (not if) they come back, I would welcome a new Superman series with the in the leads (although they won’t top Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain in Lois and Clark).

One other neat thing about Elseworlds is that it maintains The Flash’s almost fanboyish enthusiasm for the 1990 version of The Flash that probably few people remember.  It once again features John Wesley Shipp, the star of that show, as the Flash from an alternate universe (I think Earth 3, but I can’t keep the alternate universes straight).  Shipp has been featured as Barry Allen’s father on the modern version of The Flash, while his 1990 co-stars Amanda Pays and Mark Hamill have reprised their roles as Tina McGee and The Trickster.  Such enthusiasm and attention to detail are no doubt part of the success of the modern version of The Flash.

Elseworlds was a fun way to spend three hours (unlike the past two years, Legends of Tomorrow wasn’t included this time, something they snarkily commented on during this week’s episode), but after the spectacular success of Crisis on Earth X it has to feel like a letdown.  It is still an improvement over the first crossover event.  The final episode of this year’s event ended with a promo for next year’s crossover event, Crisis on Infinite Earths, so let the fanboy speculation start now!

Harold Baines isn't quite a Hall of Famer

So this is what it’s come to, Harold Baines is in the Hall of Fame.

It’s too bad there isn’t a Hall of Pretty Good, because that’s where Baines belongs.  He hit 384 home runs, which sounds like a lot (although far less than 500) until you realize he played for 21 seasons, so it adds up to about 18 per year.  Right . . . Ruth, Mantle, McGuire, Bonds and Baines; peas in a pod.  His 2,866 hits averages out to 136 per year, which isn’t Pete Rose territory.  He once finished in the top ten in homers, and twice finished in the top ten in RBIs.

If anything, there is an argument that players like Baines are traditionally undervalued by Hall of Fame voters.  What do I mean by “players like Baines”?  Basically, jacks of all trades, good average hitters with some pop, good fielders, guys who played a long time because as their skills diminished their leadership and coaching abilities still made them valuable.  Maybe Baines should have to buy a ticket to get into the Hall of Fame, but a guy with 384 home runs should also have done better than maxing out at 6.1% of the votes.

The problem comes in when you have players who played a long time and how it affects counting stats, like home runs and runs batted in.  Because of better conditioning and higher salaries, players now stay in the majors for much longer careers than in past eras.  If you get a mediocre number of some counting stat (say 18 home runs per year) and combine it with an extraordinarily long career (say 21 seasons), you get totals that look more impressive than they actually are.

I’ve made the argument before regarding Rafael Palmiero, whose 3,000+ hits and 500+ home runs would have made him a lock for the hall but for his failed steroid test.  Those were impressive markers when careers lasted 12-15 seasons but spread over 20 they aren’t that impressive.  Baines’ 384 home runs put him at 65^th all time, behind Jim Edmonds, Craig Nettles and Aramis Ramierez, all of who are NOT in the Hall (Edmonds, arguably one of the greatest fielding center fielders of all time, should be, but few players get into the Hall for fielding).  He is 34^th in RBIs, which is bordering on impressive.

I put more stock in how a player was judged by his contemporaries when he was playing.  Palmiero played for 19 seasons and started exactly ONE All-Star game, and only went to a total of five (once as a DH).  So for the bulk of his career he wasn’t considered one of the best at his position.  The same thing is true for Baines, who went to only six All-Star games in a 21-season career.  MVP voting is another key indicator of respect during a career, but Baines came in the top ten in voting only twice, and then it was 9^th once and 10^th once.

The biggest mistakes in the history of the Hall have been made by these Veterans Committees.  In the 1960’s Frankie Frisch was the chair and as a result people like his former teammate Jesse Haines got in despite being woefully unqualified.  It is absurd that Baines can get no more than 6.1% of the votes from the 400-500 or so voters in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), but then gets 12 of 16 votes from the Veterans’ Committee and he’s in.

I could also rip the other person to be voted in, Lee Smith, but my objection to him is that closers are vastly overrated, and I am not impressed by guys who only pitch one inning per game (except for Mariano Rivera, Dennis Eckersly and Goose Gossage).  The save is a stupid stat, but Smith did hold the record for most saves when he retired which is one more record than Harold Baines held when he called it quits.

Obviously, the HoF voting needs to be reformed.  How can a player who got 6% of the vote from over 400 voters not get in, then be admitted after getting 12 votes from a committee of 16 (several of whom were former owners and teammates of his)?  Who are we going to believe, the collected wisdom of 500 baseball writers, or a bunch of old baseball guys voting for a buddy?

Doctor Who's season thus far--I am not thrilled

We are four episodes in to the reign of the 13^th Doctor on Doctor Who, which isn’t a large enough sample size for a definitive evaluation, but it is about one-third of the way through the season, so some criticism can be justified.  On the whole . . . I am not sanguine about where new showrunner Chris Chibnall is taking the series.

This is in no way a complaint about the new Doctor, played for the first time by a female actor, Jodie Whittaker.  I have the same complaint I had about the prior Doctor, peter Capaldi, which is that I occasionally find her accent impenetrable, but other than that she has been fun, quirky, smart, and in command of most situations she finds herself in.  Casting a new Doctor is always tricky, and they’ve had an excellent track record (in the 50-plus year history of the show, the only major casting mis-step for a Doctor was Colin Baker as the 6^th Doctor, and that was probably a failure of concept, not acting). 

As for what doesn’t work, let me start with a couple of minor things that really irritate me.  The first is the new opening credit sequence, which looks like someone just started messing around with some computer program that makes psychedelic swirls.  Prior credit sequences referred either to the Doctor’s capacity to travel in space or (for the previous credit sequence) in time, but this looks like a throwback to the 1970’s when they discovered they could do neat psychedelic effects on a computer and just went nuts.

I also hate the design of the interior of the TARDIS, which is dark, confusing, and not at all comfy looking.  I thought prior designs of the control room made it look bigger than necessary (if for no other reason than to get the standard reaction, “It’s bigger on the inside!” when someone enters), but the new set looks positively claustrophobic.  They haven’t spent too much time in the TARDIS in the first four episodes, since the Doctor didn’t reclaim the TARDIS until the end of episode number two, but I hope they make it look more habitable if they do spend more time there.

New showrunner Chris Chibnall has been checking off the episodes types as he begins his stint as the head of the Who-niverse, with an Earth invasion show, a show set on a foreign planet, an historical show, and then another Earth (well, Sheffield) in peril adventure.  Overall, I think Chibnall has picked up former showrunner Peter Moffat’s most annoying habit of creating preposterous premises but without Moffat’s ability to justify them eventually.  The second episode was supposed to be the last leg of a massive marathon race to find something, but the two finalists in no way gave any indication of why they were successful where all their competitors failed.  How either survived without the Doctor’s assistance in prior legs of the rally is a mystery, as is the reason for the elaborate rally in the first place.  The appearance of the TARDIS at the end is a deus ex machina and not an ending earned by the script.

The third episode, Rosa, was a noble effort to humanize an historical feature known almost solely for her name, but I thought it came across as heavy-handed and overly earnest.  The whole idea that the Doctor and her companions were fighting to keep the historical record on track when another time traveler was trying to disrupt history seemed too derivative of other TV shows like DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, or Timeless, or Quantum Leap.  Also, the whole scenario of Rosa Parks being arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery bus was orchestrated, so if she had missed that particular bus it would not have been the end of the Civil Rights movement; someone else would have done it.  So the Doctor’s efforts to restore history weren’t really needed.

I also have major issues with the way the fourth episode, Arachnids in the U.K., was resolved.  So, there are these giant spiders in England, and they are killing people (not because they are evil but because, well, they’re hungry).  The 13^th Doctor has a strict “no killing” policy, but her method of solving the giant spider infestation is to lock them in a room and . . . let them starve to death.  She gets angry with an American businessman (played by Chris Noth, whose face is a little too familiar to be a credible guest actor) who shoots a giant spider near the end, but she had just said the spider was dying from suffocating because it was too large to be supported by the spider’s lungs, so it was sort of a mercy killing.  I appreciate her anti-gun stance, but whether the spider died by bullets or suffocation isn’t really a distinction with a difference and letting them starve to death isn’t a humane alternative.

She also maintained an anti-gun stance in the second episode when one of her companions used a weapon to incapacitate a number of hostile robots, which someone pointed out to her weren’t alive so it’s not killing. I do applaud the anti-gun stance in theory, but let’s be reasonable.

I do like the three companions, and hopefully they will be fleshed out more as the series unwinds.  Having one companion seemed to lead the creators of the shows into making the companion almost as “special” as the Doctor (I’m thinking of Clara, Donna, and Rose).  I can’t believe I am saying this, but Amy Pond became a better companion after she and the Doctor were joined by her husband Rory.  For now, I like the group interactions of a crowded TARDIS.

I was glad that Steven Moffat decided to step down as showrunner, not because he hadn’t done a good job but because he had developed a “swing for the fences” approach that made overall seasons interesting but precluded any single episode being great.  New blood is good, change is good, and the show Doctor Who is still good despite my many reservations based on the first four episodes.

But seriously, lighten up the interior of the TARDIS!

Let's stop with the reboots, okay?

Let me say something that we’ve known for some time: the world is going to hell.  I’m not talking politics, the environment, or the composition of the US Supreme Court (although any of those would provide excellent evidence).  I’m talking about the complete and utter bankruptcy of the creative people we rely on for our entertainment.

I understand the desire to reboot TV shows from the 1960’s, or turn series from the 1980’s into movies.  But this week it was announced that Disney is considering rebooting the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.  This follows hot on the news last week that NBC is developing a spin-off of that long lost show Grimm.  

The AV Club article linked to above says, with what I can only assume is tongue planted in cheek, that the Grimm spin-off might “satisfy TV viewers’ unquenchable thirst for nostalgia.”  At least I hope this is sarcasm because how can audiences feel nostalgic for a show that ended last year?

Rebooting the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise would be making the same mistake so many reboots make, namely taking a property whose popularity is based primarily on the star power of the actors, and then remaking it with a new actor.  Rebooting Hawaii Five-O is one thing, because the original show wasn’t popular because of the charisma of Jack Lord; but remaking Magnum PI without Tom Selleck is just an exercise in futility.

When I (correctly) predicted that Johnny Depp would get an Oscar nomination for the first Pirates movie, a friend said I was nuts, that films like that didn’t get acting nominations.  I replied that a) Depp was a respected actor among his peers, and b) the film made $300 million domestically, and it wasn’t because of the script, or the direction, or Orlando Bloom or Keira Knightly.  Probably $200 million of that $300 million gross was due to Johnny Depp’s performance, and while Hollywood does not generally reward high grossing films with Oscars, they do acknowledge when a performer brings in the dough.

I’ve written before about Grimm, a show I find fascinating because of its flaws.  It was a clever concept, but the show runners would set up serialized plot lines then go back to a “Monster of the Week” format, leaving plot lines dangling.  The supporting actors were generally great, especially Silas Weir Mitchell, Sasha Roiz, Reggie Lee, and Bree Turner, but the lead actor (David Giuntoli) was fairly wooden.  On top of that, there was NO chemistry between Giuntoli and his on-screen girlfriend (Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch), which is the embodiment of the cliché that off-screen couples usually have no on-screen chemistry since Giuntoli and Tulloch were an item off-screen and eventually married. 

So maybe a rebooted Grimm could work with a slightly more charismatic lead.  Certainly the concept appears flexible enough to be expanded upon. 

But just starting a series over from scratch because the producers want to keep the franchise going with younger actors is creatively hollow.  The only memorable thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (I bet you forgot about the part after the colon) was Depp’s performance, and Disney managed to wring 4 sequels out of it (one of the “blink and you miss it” jokes in the TV Show the Good Place was a poster in Hell that advertised “Pirates of the Caribbean 6, The Haunted Crow's Nest, or Something, Who Gives a Crap, Now Playing Everywhere Forever").

Disney caught lightning in a bottle once with Depp’s performance in the original Pirates movie, but it is unlikely to happen again with a reboot.  Given that Pirates is just about the only Disney movie based on a ride at Disneyland that was successful (personally, I loved Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland, but the box office [$93 million domestic gross on a $190 million budget] shows I am not in the majority), creating a new franchise on that concept seems to me to be a risky proposition.

Reboots occasionally work (the Addams Family movies are a vast improvement over the original).  But I’d be willing to bet that for every successful reboot there are a dozen flops (remember the movie based on Car 54 Where Are You? The Beverly Hillbillies?  Bewitched?  The Flintstones?  McHale’s Navy?  I thought not).  Note: for purposes of this discussion, the Mission Impossible films are NOT in any way, shape or form related to the TV series; they appropriated the name as a brand identifier, but they only use the words “Mission Impossible” because they are easier to market than films called “The Ethan Hunt Adventures.”

Dredging up properties from the 1960s or 1970s is bad enough, but rebooting properties that began in the 21^st century is simply robbing too fresh of a grave. Surely Disney can come up with another ride at Disneyland to base a movie on.  Autopia: The Movie anyone?

Luke Cage est mort

In this era of “Too Much Television” it is hard to make too much out of the cancellation of a TV series.  No matter how good or how unique a series may be (after any TV show gets filtered through network notes, censorship limits, and budgetary limitations), there will always be another show coming along.  Between broadcast networks, basic cable, premium cable, streaming services, and so on, it’s almost impossible for any television show to offer a form of entertainment so individual that its passing makes an impact on the universe.

Still, the news that Luke Cage was cancelled after season 2 makes me a little sad.  It had a perspective unlike pretty much any other show other than Black Lightning, another show that dealt with issues of humanity in general and the African-America experience in America specifically through the prism of the superhero genre.  Here was a superhero as physically imposing as anyone imaginable, but he often agonized over how he used force. Despite all the machinations about control of Harlem and the drug trade therein, the show had an acute sense of humor.  Luke Cage generally avoided slipping into clichés when creating characters, giving the bad guys multiple dimensions and conflicted motivations.

The show was about an ex-cop/ex-con who was subjected to medical experiments in prison that rendered him invulnerable to bullets, explosions, or any other implement, as well as giving him super-strength.  Instead of running around in some lame costume with a mask, he openly performed acts of superhero-dom (sometimes with footage going viral) while trying to be a role model for the African-American community in Harlem.

The series lead, Mike Colter, had the physical heft to make Luke Cage imposing, as well as a genial, “aw shucks” persona that made the character more human than other superhero types.  He had a nice chemistry with Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple, the character that crossed over between the Netflix Marvel shows and provided some cohesive quality.  In fact, Colter also had chemistry with Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) when his character was introduced in that series, as well as Detective Misty Knight (Simone Missick) at the start of the eponymous series.  If Peter Parker knew how much action Luke Cage got, maybe he’d re-think the costume.

The odd thing about Luke Cage was that the show made the same mistake in each of its two seasons.  In season one, Luke’s primary antagonist was Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes, the head of the criminal underworld in Harlem.  As played by future Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, Cottonmouth was a smart, calculating, charismatic rival who posed a real threat to Luke’s physical prowess.  But then (spoiler!) half-way through the season he is dispatched and replaced by his sister, Mariah, played by Alfre Woodard.  Woodard is a great actress, but her character was never smart enough to pose a real threat to Luke Cage.

In season two Luke faced another worthy opponent, a Jamaican named “Bushmaster” who used special Jamaican pharmacology to give him enough strength to match Luke Cage in a one-on-one fight, although his main beef was with Woodard’s character.  Luke spent the season alternating between battling Mariah’s efforts at consolidating power in Harlem and protecting her from Bushmaster.  I believe at one point Luke Cage says he should just let Bushmaster kill her just before he saved her life yet again.  As with season one, the worthy rival petered out mid-way through the season and at the end he is battling Mariah.

It’s frustrating when a series creates a number of characters who you like spending time with, then has them do stupid things.  Luke Cage was great at character building, not so great at understanding what characters wanted and what they would do to get it.  The show often got lost in its own convoluted plotting, which is maybe why the character of Luke Cage came across better when he was in the Jessica Jones series, or in the crossover series The Defenders.

Season two of Luke Cage ended on an interesting note, with Mariah willing ownership of her nightclub to Luke Cage (presumably to ensnare him in the underworld activity necessary to keep the place afloat), while Luke rebuffed the attempt of Claire to renew their relationship after being apart for most of the season (I don’t know if this was scripted or due to Dawson’s unavailability, but it definitely hampered the second half of the season).  Given that Claire’s role was often that of an angel perched on Luke’s shoulder urging him to do the right thing, the situation was set up for Luke Cage to go down a dark path.

But there will be no season three of Luke Cage.  I hope the character will appear in more crossover events like The Defenders, which (while somewhat erratic) was greater than the sum of its parts.  With Iron Fist and Luke Cage cancelled, Netflix has only 50% of its Marvel properties on-going.  I haven’t gotten through Daredevil season 3 yet, but early reviews are promising; on the other hand, I felt Jessica Jones season two was a significant let down.  Will Marvel maintain its Master of the Universe status with two of its four Netflix series cancelled and after the resolution of the Infinity Wars motion picture?  Only time will tell.

Mis-managing relief pitchers

I’ve watched a lot of baseball in my life, and I’ve heard a lot of announcers say a lot of stupid things.  But by far the topper was uttered during the 7^th game of the NLCS between the Dodgers and the Brewers, when one f the announcers (I can’t recall which) said, “The Dodgers have only scored four runs off Brewer starters in this series.”

Normally that would not be an insanely stupid concept but given how Brewers manager Craig Counsell was using his pitching staff, it provoked a loud guffaw from me.  Counsell, showing that he had zero faith in his rotation, was pulling his starting pitchers before the Dodgers had any chance to score off them. His game one starter, Gio Gonzales, was pulled after two innings and eight batters.  His game four starter, Gonzales again, was pulled after one inning and seven batters.  He yanked his game five starter, Wade Miley, after he failed to get the first batter out.  The Brewer starters faced, on average, 12.67 batters during the first six NCLS games.  No wonder the Dodgers weren’t scoring on them.

I don’t want to come down too hard on Counsell’s handling of his pitching staff, although I do believe it cost his team a trip to the World Series.  The Brewers were the winningest team in the National League, and part of that was a starting rotation that allowed the 8^th fewest runs per game, 4.04, a figure only slightly behind the Red Sox’s 3.99.  So the Brewers had a quality starting rotation.  But despite this Counsell felt the need to resort to gimmicks like pulling Gonzales after two innings in Game 1 for no reason and pulling Miley after pitching to one batter in Game 5.

The deal with Game 5, trying to get the Dodgers to platoon one way and then flip the pitcher, has been tried before, as mentioned in this article at ESPN on "bullpenning."  It’s not entirely insane, but it does betray a lack of confidence in your pitching corps.  Yes, the playoffs are different than the regular season, but the post-season is hardly the time to start experimenting like you are playing a game of Strat-O-Matic in your parent’s basement.

In seems like in the past few seasons mangers have gone relief happy in the post season.  Dave Roberts, the Dodger manager, was too eager to pull the hook in the 2017 World Series and possibly cost the Dodgers the crown.  Even Joe Maddon, for my money the best manager alive today, nearly cost the Cubs the title in 2016 by over-using Aroldis Chapman against the Cleveland Indians in the World Series.  I get the temptation; you have a lights-out closer who is effective for one inning; it’s the end of the season, so let’s get two innings out of him.  Instead of waiting until the ninth, let’s put him in in the 7^th.   There are three reason why this may not work.

The first is that baseball players are successful if they do what they are accustomed to doing.  If a relief pitcher is used to facing three batters in the ninth and recording a save, then it might upset his equilibrium if he is asked to pitch for two innings.  The Dodgers brought closer Kenley Jansen in for the ninth inning against the Rockies in the 163^rd game for the NL West title with a 5-run lead, and he gave up two home runs; was that because he was unaccustomed to such a large lead and couldn’t focus as well as he usually did?

Secondly, relief pitchers are effective because they are seen so rarely.  If Josh Hader is effective pitching to three batters a night, then no one on the other team gets a good look at his motion.  But if he goes two innings a couple of times during a short series, then the other team can pick up on any vulnerability that might be there.  Familiarity breeds contempt and, in this case, it may breed extra base hits.

Lastly, there is the psychological factor.  If you have Josh Hader in the bullpen, the other team knows it is an 8-inning game.  The prospect of facing a lights-out closer in the ninth adds urgency to a team’s need to score runs, which might make them do foolish things in early innings and take risks that needn’t be taken.

But if you bring Hader in at the third inning, you’ve lost that edge.  Suddenly it is a nine-inning game again, and there is no reason to improvidently try and take an extra base or pull a pitcher for a pinch hitter while the pitcher is on cruise control.  There may be an edge to using your closer earlier in the game than the ninth inning, but you lose something as well.

Post-season managers seem to want to drop the strategies that got them to the playoffs and start relying on their relief pitchers even if their starting pitching is one of the team’s strengths.  I’ve heard several announcers mention that managers pull starters to avoid them being seen a third time through the line-up; while it is true that, on average, pitchers are less effective when the batters are seeing them for a third time, what is true of an “average” pitcher is not necessarily true for Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw.  There is an old axiom in statistics: a man with his head in an oven and his feet in a block of ice is, on average, comfortable.  Average doesn’t apply to everyone.

So, will Dave Roberts learn from his foibles last year and manage his bullpen better in the World Series this year?  Frankly, after seeing Red Sox batters destroy the best starting rotation in baseball during the ALCS, I have a feeling Roberts may be going to his bullpen sooner in games rather than later, but out of necessity.  But we shall see; that’s why they play the games.

Newsflash: Tiger Woods is NOT back

For the past five years, the talking heads at ESPN have talked about the same thing over and over and over: when is Tiger Woods coming back?  Five years ago they said it would be the next year; four years ago they said it would be the next year; three years ago they said . . . you get the idea.

As the saying goes, a broken clock is right twice a day.  After five years of predicting that Tiger Woods was about to win a golf tournament, he finally won a golf tournament, winning the Tour Championship in Atlanta.

According to the talking heads, this means Tiger is back.  He’s BACK, baby!  One of the talking heads said that Tiger Woods is now the prohibitive favorite to win the Masters’ next year, an opinion reflected in the wagering.  Frankly, I’d love to get a piece of that action; anyone who wants to put money on Tiger, give me the field.

Tiger went from being a player who hadn’t won a tournament in five years, to a player who has won one tournament in five years.  It’s an improvement, but unless he does parlay this win into a winning streak it doesn’t improve his winning percentage by that much.

Plus, Tiger is still 42 years old and, unless he has made a deal of some sort with Beelzebub, he will continue to age.  Barring injury, players don’t suddenly flip a switch at some age and go from great to hopeless; their skills gradually diminish as they age.  People generally remember Willie Mays’ tenure with the Mets as a disaster, but in fact he posted one of the 20 best seasons for a player over 35 in MLB history.  The fact that Willie Mays could still hit a home run at age 41 did not mean he could hit 50; the fact that Tiger CAN win a golf tournament does not mean he is going to start winning multiple majors for the foreseeable future.

There is also the fact that Tiger entered the Sunday of the Tour Championship with a three-stroke lead.  This is important as Tiger has never won a tournament in his career by coming from behind (and, conversely, he had never squandered a three-stroke lead on a Sunday).  That means he has to be a front-runner; one bad round (even one bad hole) on Thursday, Friday or Saturday and his chances of finishing first diminish dramatically.  He has a narrow window, and the chances of making that window get smaller and smaller as time does its inexorable thing.

And I haven’t even mentioned the knee surgeries, back surgeries, and other physical ailments that have plagued him.  He has pronounced himself to be physically fit before only to have his body break down soon after.  Things that are surgically repaired tend to break down again and need re-fixing, and they never come back better than before.

Bottom line: Tiger woods won a golf tournament.  Good for him!  Will he make a habit of it?  I doubt it.  He’s played in 18 tour events in 2018 and finished outside the top ten in 11 of them, which does not sound like someone dominating the circuit.  Tiger is JAG: Just Another Guy.  He isn’t back to being Tiger, despite what every talking head on ESPN will tell you.  He’s an over-the-hill duffer with a spate of physical ailments, and once in a while his body will cooperate and give him a taste of past glory. 

But it’s not going to happen on a regular basis.