Off Day

So: the 'Stros and Yankees have, between them, provided one blissful day in the past nine: this past Saturday.

Joe Torre was going to be fired, or not--an act that might have made sense last October, but would make none now. You fire a manager for one of three reasons:

1. His managerial skill set (judgment of talent, analysis of statistics, and game strategy) is suspect;
2. His personality has become either a distraction or a non-factor, meaning the players are tuning him out;
3. Some better candidate is available.

In the case of Joe Torre:

1. He has always been solid in the first two categories and passable in the third. These things don't change.
2. By all accounts, the players (read Jeter) love him; his best asset as a manager (providing cover for the players while not allowing them to slacken in their duties) is as sound as ever;
3. Who is out there? Lou Piniella would have the stature to flog the team into a stretch of intensity, but he's taken; Mattingly and Girardi are miniature Torres, comforting presences, minus four World Series rings. (As a manager, anyway.)

So, what? Torre can't go out to the mound and pitch. He can't bat for his players. Fire him, fine. But don't think that Girardi or Donnie Baseball will catch Boston with a rotation that belongs in Triple-A.

What comfort I could take in the weekend was found in the New England Patriots, a team so loaded heading into the fall that I would be happy to forgo what is shaping up to be a dismal summer and head into the fall. The Patriots, who were one first down away from the AFC Championship (and an almost certain win over the Bears), have added three wide receivers, all better than any of the receivers they had last season. The true test of the Randy Moss acquisition was that the Pats were Super Bowl favorites before the draft. Now, adding the kid from Miami, along with Moss, was simply a bonus.

Perhaps only a lifelong Patriots fan could appreciate the team as now composed. I awoke this morning to "Mike & Mike," heard of the Moss trade, and said, out loud, "Um, what?" And all day, heading from office to classroom to car to campus to classroom, kept thinking about the trade as if remembering the three hundred I'd won the previous night at Blackjack (for instance). Never has a gamebreaker come into a situation with less screw-around room.

Repeat: The Patriots were overwhelming Super Bowl favorites before the past weekend. Meaning: if Moss messes up once, the Hoodie will cut him loose.

It didn't hurt that Miami made a hash of its draft day, that Buffalo seems at least a year away, that the Jets will have to play a second-place schedule in 2007.

Rain today. Saturday was a million miles away.