U.S OPEN & TENNIS; NFL & NEW-SEASON CHARACTERISTICS; MLB: RIGGED FOR LOSSES

For more analysis, go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team, milehighsports.com. SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner. . . /// . . . U.S. OPEN (Tennis) --- WATCHING Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka work the courts throughout a tennis year, and especially at Grand Slam events, reminds that tennis and the martial arts have a common characteristic. Both sports are gladiator-against-gladiator, one-versus-one until “last player standing (metaphorically).” And while in both sports the hit is always an attempted game-changer, in tennis each hit lands with a result that adds or subtracts for the perpetrator. In the martial arts, you can swing and miss now and then and it need not mean anything. There are no reprieves in tennis, “every swing counts.” In this context, except for the blood, broken jaws, flattened noses and black eyes, tennis can be as brutal as, say, a 15 round Boxing match. So, with players like the aforementioned, each with comparable skills, winning at tennis demands, like boxing, “high octane fusion” of four athletic attributes: Raw Power, Endurance + Force-Of-Will, Speed, and Cunning Use Of Familiar Tactics & Skills. Lose an edge within but one of these attributes and you can be a goner, like Federer losing early during the recent U.S. Open due largely to some loss of raw power and speed, and Azarenka unable to outwit and penetrate Williams’ savvy employment of standard defense skills. And, Nadal defeated Djokovic yesterday at the U.S. Open with advantages in Power evolving from raw physical strength, from amazing Force-Of-Will, Speed and what seemed to be automatic leaps into the appropriate stances for offense and defense hits, no thinking required, often like a perfect machine, while Djokovic’s unusually long physical stretch, his not quite equal power factor and his defense strategy just couldn’t prevail. Outcomes: Serena Williams became the women’s winner at the 2013 U.S. Open, and Nadal the men’s winner, both with evidence that for some time tennis will continue to be a Power/Endurance/Force-Of-Will/Speed and Surprise-execution of tactics game, this latter the equivalent of boxing’s sudden “No-see-um” Kayos after lots of hits, with fewer, if any close-to-the-net volleys, this as if boxers engaging in fewer body-to-body clinches, fewer short hooks, fewer uppercuts. . . /// . . . NFL: WHEN compared with seasons of other team sports, e.g., professional baseball, basketball, soccer and hockey, the NFL season is quite short, and so not all aspects to the NFL game can be seen readily, in that there is a lot to watch in a short period of time---just 16 weeks. More precisely, that’s 16 games each for the NFL’s 32 teams. It’s impossible to watch all of the NFL season unless you’re in a hovering Goodyear balloon high in the sky every Sunday, Monday and Thursday until the end of the year and then in the post-season, equipped with multiple TV connects and you have several brains and multiple eyes. Seeing more during the 16 week season is, of course, aided by knowing what to look for in the games that you can watch, and here’s what a lot of analysts have been talking about in this regard: Ground vs. air, i.e., the game being dominated possibly more by the rush, than by quarterbacks quickly seeing receivers free and deep for the successful pass. Some analysts have argued that fans will see more of the running game because of some success viewed last season from employment of a tactic called “the read-option,” an offense method chosen by a QB based on rushing opportunities built immediately by an opposing defense when that defense has been forced into mistakes allowing openings for “the rush,” a tactic that the QB might choose to do by himself. Maybe this tactic should be called, “read-College,” for it’s been a mainstay in college football, largely because only a few college QB’s have that long throw ability for anything other. Our thinking is that whether air or ground, such will depend on a QB’s particular advantages re. going-down-the-field skills, e.g., Denver Broncos QB Peyton Manning and N.E. Patriots QB, Tom Brady, haven’t today the speed or the flexibility for the read-option that newcomer QB’s RGIII (Washington Redskins), Andrew Luck (Indianapolis Colts), Colin Kaepernick (S.F. 49ers) and Russell Wilson (Seattle Seahawks) have for it; but no matter, Manning and Brady now win games primarily via the long pass or via successive first downs purchased by the short throw, then comes that end-zone spillover for the TD. So, read-option employment will likely be seen from the more versatile QB or from the QB who can move as speedily and as cannily as the best among running backs, not necessarily from the best passer in a division. (Here’s where former Broncos, then Jets QB, Tim Tebow, had some talent, if only he had the QB savvy for when exactly NOT to pull it off by himself). On Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles defense kept RG-III from successful rush execution ffom sheer phsycial pressure mostly, and Eagles QB the older Michael Vick amassed needed win points by using a classic mix of run and pass, no reliance on constant repeats of any aspect of the read-option. In sum, the read-option probably won’t be a major tactic used repeatedly by each of the NFL’s 32 franchises. More than likely, read-option endurance will be curtailed by defense coordinators coming up with the tactics to subvert, bound to happen sooner than later, and when it does the read-option will have the infrequent appearance in pro-football that the Hail Mary maneuver now has . . . Too, “the new decorated-with- applause + noise heroes” in the NFL will be former “silent or sometimes flash-in-the-pan heroes,” those linebackers that can not only sack but also disorient a QB before the QB can execute sharply. Here, the sack won’t be the only goal for these LB’s, instead “disorientation” could be a primary goal because it’s got a better chance of happening, and this will include efforts to force a QB into selection of his worst rather than best option, for instance, throwing to the deep or close-in receiver or nearby back least likely to have a chance of significant if any reception, better yet forcing the QB to try running with the ball and be pushed backward into loss of yardage. Moreover, look to some more “platooning,” i.e., use of on-the-spot personnel depth, thus coaches deciding to revamp immediately for specific offense and defense situations, which means number two QB’s and other secondary players given more time afield. / / / . . . MLB: NINE of the 30 MLB franchises are now close to or above having won half of their scheduled 162 ballgames, the AL East’s Boston Red Sox ahead with 87 wins, the NL East’s Atlanta Braves close behind with 86, then the NL West’s Los Angeles Dodgers, NL Central’s St. Louis Cardinals and AL West’s Oakland Athletics tied at 83, next the NL Central’s Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds and AL Central’s Detroit Tigers with 82, and the AL West’s Texas Rangers having 81. This means that each of the nine clubs has still lost 56 and as many as 62 games, a sure indication of how baseball is rigged against “constant winning.” Yet of the aforementioned nine teams, six are leading their respective divisions, two are second place clubs (the Pirates and the Rangers) and the remaining third team (the Reds) has the same number of wins as second place club, the Pirates, but an additional loss keeping it at third place. Fuel to the fire here is that some MLB clubs have already lost almost half or as many or more than half of their scheduled games, among these, the Houston Astros (96 losses), the Miami Marlins (89 losses), the Chicago White Sox (85) and the Chicago Cubs (82), with last year’s World Series winner, the S.F. Giants, close with 79 losses. Add the Seattle Mariners coming near with 78 losses, and the Toronto Blue Jays, 76 losses. That’s eight MLB clubs far beneath the margin, another sign that the majors constitute a game incredibly hard for production of a winning season, signaling that there are many variables favoring “the loss” that are glued to that category politely labeled, “Unintended Consequences.” Frustrating for so many MLB execs and managers is that the causes of why a team wins more than half of scheduled games is usually evident, but why the numerous losses? That’s usually of the hard to find variables, and when found they are hard to decode. END/ml