The American League West seems to be a wide open division as baseball spring training is about to begin.
Last season, the Texas Rangers took the A.L. West crown for the first time since 2011, a year they came so close to winning the franchise’s first World Series.
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the Houston Astros were both in the race well into the final week of the season.
I see more of the same this season.
As the spring training progresses, I will offer both early and ‘official” predictions in this and all the divisions in baseball.
Alas not picking the wild card entrants does make their presence vanish. Too bad!
The Montreal Canadiens return home tonight facing the Philadelphia Flyers, well on the outside, looking in in the race to make the NHL playoffs.
This glorious franchise, sans a title since 1993, got off to a great start this season.
As their woeful slump continued, one crack about the Canadiens a team with more titles than any but the New York Yankees in major North American sports’ leagues, surfaced.
“The Canadiens will be honoring the players from the hot start at the beginning of the season.”
Montreal won its back to back home games on Super Bowl weekend and another home tilt that followed.
However 3 subsequent road losses leaves Montreal in dire shape, as far as reaching the playoffs.
In looking through past interviews, I came across one I conducted with the wrestler, Sherri Martel, who later would be known as “Sensational Sherri.”
Sadly, she is no longer with us but my memories of her kindness and “schtick” will stay with me.
She yelled, as wrestlers did or do, during our interview, but was so friendly, even granting my co host Sunshine Chance Smith and me, access to her shared dressing room before a show.
What a great, accomodating, forthright lady. An attractive, personable wrestler who climbed higher, after we met in 1986.
Much of what one leaves is how other people remember you and Sherri gets straight A’s from me, leaving me memories of a really nice day.
By this point, “Sensational Sherri” pictured above was so friendly and gracious to both my co host and me in a long interview segment years back. She was Sherri Martel at the time.
Yesterday I listened to an audio reminder of the 1991 Stanley Cup playoffs, specifically early in the preliminary round.
There were updates by me and some commentary.
Then some play by play, brief, but decisive and in the course of time, amazing.
The heavily favored Pittsburgh Penguins had lost game one of their preliminary series at home vs the New Jersey Devils and were in overtime vs New Jersey in game 2 also in Pittsburgh.
Suddenly a great individual effort by rookie Jaromir Jagr ended the game in the Penguins’ favor. The play was called by Chris Moore, still heard on rare occasion on WFAN. I noted Jagr as a potentially brilliant player.
The Penguins went on to the first of two straight Stanley Cup titles led by Mario Lemieux and among others, Jagr.
Incredibly, in two months, barring injury, Jagr will be playing in the playoffs, 25 years later, this time for the Florida Panthers, a team not even in existence when Jagr was a rookie in the 1991 playoffs.
The great hockey player, Jaromir Jagr, pictured above.
There are a total of 14 divisions in major league baseball and the NFL and only one has a complete set of teams that has won its league’s World Series or Super Bowl. That division is the American League Central.
Only one other division, football’s NFC West has a complete set of teams that has won its league’s title, in this case an NFL title.
Interestingly the Arizona Cardinals, sans a Super Bowl title and in their third city won their lone NFL crown as the Chicago Cardinals in 1947.
Another franchise the second incarnation of the Los Angeles Rams won its Super Bowl as the St. Louis Cardinals in 1999.
The Rams also have been in 3 cities and won the NFL crown as the Cleveland Rams in 1945 and as the Los Angeles Rams in 1951.
The other NFC West teams: the San Francisco 49ers have won 5 Super Bowls after never winning a pre AFC/NFC entity of any kind.
Meanwhile the Seattle Seahawks won it all in 2013.
There have been two Super Bowl contested between expansion teams.
The first was after the 1971 season and matched the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins.
Dallas which had lost the previous season’s Supe, beat Miami, which would win the next two such games, by a (24-3) score.
The second of those aforementioned Dolphins’ titles came in an all expansion team Super Bowl after the 1973 season.
In that tilt, Miami prevailed vs the Minnesota Vikings by a (24-7) score.
The NBA is still in its All-Star break and I really see little happening there until the playoffs, so I present more expansion team title notes.
It was highly publicized that the 2015 World Series between the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets was the first between two expansion teams.
Among other things, the result eventually manifested in two expansion teams losing in the baseball and NFL final for the second straight year, the first time that happened.
It is the 7th time that result has taken place with the baseball San Diego Padres, New York Mets, the NFL Miami Dolphins and Seattle Seahawks, the four teams to lose two finals in that situation.
One can never go wrong watching the classic films such as “On the Waterfront.”
In seeing it again last night as part of TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar,” I noticed the superb character actor, Nehemiah Persoff in a key non speaking role as the driver shown after the famous “I could have been a contender” scene between Marlon Brando’s “Terry” and Rod Steiger’s “Charlie.”
That scene is practiced in more acting classes than any other.
Just about everyone can relate to writer Budd Schulberg’s immortal words as so many of us wonder about another path not taken opened or closed.
Persoff, now 96 years old, went on to so many roles including that of gangster “Little Bonaparte” in Billy Wilder directed “Some Like It Hot.”
Nehemiah Persoff, pictured above, has a body of work that is incredible.
The Denver Broncos’ (an original AFL team beginning play in 1960) denial of an expansion Carolina Panthers’ title means only three times since any expansion took place in the NFL or major league baseball, that two expansion one in each sport won titles in the same year.
That is 55 completed seasons in both sports (1960-2015) with there having been no World Series in 1994.
The first time it happened, a pair of the same expansion teams the baseball Toronto Blue Jays and Dallas Cowboys won titles together in back to back years in 1992 and 1993.
The only other and last time it happened was 2002 when the Anaheim Angels and Tampa Bay Buccaneers won crowns together in 2002.
This just completed 2015 seasons first had yielded an expansion Kansas City Royals title but the Panthers were denied.
Joe Carter pictured above just after hitting the World series winning home run for the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays.
A rainy day, still in winter, so thoughts “naturally” turn to Gene Tenace.
Great baseball memories and stories still are a nice thing. Fury “Gene” Tenace was known to me as having a decent Strat O Matic Baseball card, before taking the baseball world by storm in the 1972 World Series, when he hit 4 home runs and was named the MVP, as his Oakland Athletics won it all.
After beating the Cincinnati Reds in an excellent 7 game “W.S.”- the A’s eventually became the first non New York Yankees team to ever win 3 straight World Series titles, something still true through at least next season.
Tenace had a poor ALCS at the plate, getting just one hit, but that hit drove in the winning run in the decisive 5th game vs the Detroit Tigers.
The hit drove in Reggie Jackson, who unfortunately broke his leg on the play and missed the subsequent World Series.
In the World Series, Tenace homered in his first two World Series at bats and was on his way.
Tenace played on 4 World Series winners, drawing a key 7th game walk in the 1982 World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Oh, that Jackson fellow and World Series. He was MVP in the next one in 1973 and again this time for the Yankees in 1977. Altogether, he was a major figure on 5 title teams, all starting with the 1972 title led by Gene Tenace’s World Series feats.
