MLB; "THE RANKINGS AT SUNSET" // NFL: WEEK TWO: BRONCOS & CHIEFS; Excerpt from "SPORTS & THE HEROIC"

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . 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 . . . MLB: “THE RANKINGS AT SUNSET” // NFL: WEEK TWO: “BRONCOS & CHIEFS”// EXCERPT FROM “SPORTS & THE HEROIC.”. . . MLB---BASEBALL fans in L.A. and Baltimore are surely smiling, for the AL West’s 91-55 Angels and the AL East’s 86-59 Orioles own 10-game leads today over their respective division second place clubs, the Oakland A’s and the Toronto Blue Jays. Meanwhile, fans at Denver and all over Texas are probably feeling torched from the NL West’s 59-87 Rockies and AL West’s 54-92 Rangers occupying the two last place positions within the majors. The Rockies are 24 games behind NL West first place team, the 83-63 L.A. Dodgers, the Rangers 37 behind division first place club, the Angels. Likely, then, with fewer than 20 games left in the regular MLB season for the 30 MLB teams, is an Angels/Orioles face-off for grabbing an AL-LC series berth, and that the Rockies and Rangers won’t be finishing the season at or above .500, they will land where usually seen are the now 64-82 Chicago Cubs (NL Central) and the 65-81 Houston Astros (AL West). The Angels and the Orioles are also the two top teams in the majors now, and atop the NL are the NL East’s 83-62 Washington Nationals tied with the Dodgers, the Nationals being ahead from one less loss. Sandwiched between the top and bottom in the majors, however, are leading teams that could be unseated quickly as the season closes. While the Nat’s have a secure eight-game lead over the NL East’s second place team, the 75-71 Atlanta Braves, the Dodgers are leading the 81-65 S.F. Giants by only two wins, and the NL Central’s 80-67 St. Louis Cardinals sit above the Pittsburgh Pirates by just two, the AL Central’s 80-65 K.C. Royals over the Detroit Tigers by one. Encouraging in all this for the second place clubs is that only two of the six third position clubs have a chance to move up as replacements, the NL Central’s 76-71 Milwaukee Brewers and the AL Central’s 76-69 Cleveland Indians being but four wins behind second place. The four other division third place teams---the NL West’s S.D. Padres, NL East’s Miami Marlins, the AL West’s Seattle Mariners and the AL East’s N.Y. Yankees---are 10 and more games behind respectively. Were numbers alone the driver of which teams would comprise the WS today, it’d be the Angels vs. the Nat’s. . . //. . NFL---IF this Sunday the 1-0 Denver Broncos defense can perform across four periods as effectively as it had during the first half of last week’s Broncos/Colts game, and the Broncos QB Peyton Manning-led offense can repeat in the same manner, the 0-1 K.C. Chiefs won’t be assaulting much in ways that are meaningful for points on the board. It could be an embarrassing zero for the Chiefs by the third period. Yet the Chiefs QB, Al Smith, can read a defense certainly by that period and could engineer a series of TD breakthroughs but only if the Broncos defense softens and slows down in a second half as it had vs. the Colts last Sunday, although, like the Colts, the Chiefs will achieve from this a “respectable loss.” From what was seen during Week One, the Chiefs defense won’t be keeping the Broncos offense in a freeze at any time, not in counter-penetration plays that the Broncos couldn’t escape from, and likely is a Broncos defense operating from lessons learned from last week’s vs. Colts game. Against the Tennessee Titans last Sunday, the Chiefs wimped due largely to a defense that couldn’t get close enough to the Titan’s offense that included effective receiver protection and swift receiver positioning for the catch. Our take, the Broncos will polish the Chiefs off by 17 or more. . . // . . “SPORTS & THE HEROIC,” an excerpt from this book that pertains to the recent NFL mishap, the Rice saga (paraphrased:)---“. . . Professional athletes have been accused of murder, have cheated on and abused their wives and kids, cold-cocked a nagging drunk at the bar and have been that nagging drunk at the bar . . . they have ingested PED’s, meth and heroin, paid large for hookers while depriving their families of basic needs, taken bribes, lied to their owners and to their coaches, lied to their teammates and to the public. . . Add all this up and you’ll see the same dark side of many other professions . . . but in professional sports, these actions exact a heavy toll because the good society maintains when professional athletes, like elected officials, are held to high standards of behavior.” Yes, it can be hard for some professional athletes and their counterparts in other professions to “walk the line,” and those that fail should accept the consequences of their acts and be exiled from their sport, which shouldn’t cancel out an NFL-led opportunity for the perpetrator to reconstruct providing that sincerity for such lies within the perpetrator. According to Baltimore Ravens head coach, John Harbaugh, and Rice’s Ravens teammates, Ray Rice should NOT be forgiven for what he had done to his then fiancé, now wife, but, they have argued that Rice is also salvageable, probably in need of behavioral adjustment-treatment supervised by professionals. So, too, is NFL leadership re. its responsibility toward the unconscionable Rice act “salvageable,” and such ought to begin with “NFL zero tolerance” of any physical abuse, whether against girl-friend, wife, a child---the perpetrator should be exiled from the NFL for life, but without any taking away of his opportunity to enter rehab or accept another form of help, say, from a psychologist or from a neurologist, or via all three methods if such is a requirement that’s been determined via thorough examination(s). . . Marvin Leibstone’s non-fiction book, SPORTS & THE HEROIC, is available by order from Barnes & Noble and through Amazon. END/ml