Celebrate the Phillies’ win: Have a cheesesteak and a Yuengling

This is tough for a baseball fan to admit, but I completely missed tonight’s half-game conclusion to what turned out to be the final game of the 2008 World Series. I was either finishing my bike ride home or hunting for pot lids in the kitchen when Brad Lidge recorded the final out.

I had to settle for watching taped highlights on ESPN of the big plays and the jubilation. To celebrate properly, I need a cheesesteak and a Yuengling beer. Alas, the latter is not available here in California, and the former can only be found occasionally in imitation form.

Nonetheless, three cheers for the Phillies — they’re the real deal — and a tip of the cap to the Rays for a great year.

Phillies follies: Winter caps on the diamond

Until the other night, I had never seen a baseball cap with cold-weather earflaps. But there was Jimmy Rollins on national TV, doing a postgame interview. Although I actually think the cap is cool in a this-is-weird kind of way, it also underscores a major flaw of the baseball playoffs.

They come too damn late in the year. The series should not be finishing — and with this week’s weather in Philadelphia, I’m not sure Game 5 will ever end — during Halloween week. Bring back the doubleheader, or cut back on the days off during the season and early playoff rounds.

Baseball is the summer game, and the series should be over by mid-October — especially for Bay Area guys like Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell of the Phillies. They should dress like ballplayers, not deer hunters.

Hockey night in Canada — tres bien!

One great Canadian ritual is the Saturday evening “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast. Except for the fortunate few in border states where CBC plays on cable, Americans miss out on the fun.

I was thrilled to get a call this evening from my daughter, who with her husband was on her way to the arena in Pittsburgh to see the Penguins play the Maple Leafs. That’s one of tonight’s “HNIC” games being beamed back to the Great White North.

Hockey Night has a full line of merchandise available through the CBC Web site, including the French-language cap shown above that would be a fantastique addition to my collection.

Winners and losers at Fenway Park

The Boston Red Sox pulled off another stunning comeback tonight, overcoming a 7-0 deficit to defeat Tampa Bay 8-7. Even if they don’t get to the World Series, the Sox proved they are winners.

The losers tonight? Not the Rays, who are still up 3 games to 2 in the American League championship series. To me, the losers are all the Boston fans who started streaming out of Fenway Park when the Rays went up 7-0. Those wussies who headed for their cars and the “T” don’t deserve to wear a Sox cap.

Great online caps source: Ebbets Field Flannels

A great source for baseball stuff is Ebbets Field Flannels, a Seattle-based online retailer that specializes in minor league replica jerseys from days gone by. If you want a Sacramento Solons or Seattle Rainiers jersey from the heyday of the Pacific Coast League, this is the place to go.

My wife sports a fun Nevada (Mo.) Lunatics T-shirt that I got her from Ebbets at the holidays last year, and I covet a Cleveland Barons replica sweater from the Ebbets hockey collection. Most of the jerseys run at $100 or better, so if you’re on a budget as I am, you might want to stick to the T-shirts and caps.

Ebbets has a terrific selection of caps from the minor leagues and the Negro leagues. The cap collection is well worth browsing at this link. The caps come in a marvelous assortment of teams and color schemes, such as the black and orange beauty at right. It’s a 1940 San Francisco Seals cap.

The grand game of hockey

This is a great time of the year, when baseball is deciding its champion in the playoffs, the college and NFL football seasons are in full swing, and the hockey season is beginning. Tonight, I turn my full attention to hockey, the great Canadian sport that has evolved at the pro level into the most international of sports second only to soccer.

My sole hockey cap

It’s a challenge to be a hockey fan in California, where ice is largely a novelty. I’ve encountered gonzo hockey fans here, but they are rare, usually transplants from the Northeast or upper Midwest.

Just as the soul of baseball is in the DNA of the kids who played stickball on the streets or Whiffle ball in backyards across America, the soul of hockey springs from the fathers who flood their backyards so their sons and daughters can play all day during the dark months of winter.

My hockey evolution is quirky, to say the least. My first exposure to the sport was two-fold: attending American Hockey League games of the Cleveland Barons on tickets that my Uncle Joe provided, and reading the Stan Fischler “Hockey Stars” books each year as a kid in grade school. Rocket Richard, Stan Mikita, Bobby Orr — they were remote gods of a sport I didn’t fully understand. The Cleveland Crusaders flourished briefly in the ill-fated World Hockey Association.

In college, there was a stretch when I skated every day on the new rink on campus. In grad school in Milwaukee, I bought a Stan Mikita stick and a K-mart puck, only to have a cop toss me off the pond in the park near my apartment.

In the early 80s, hockey was the Milwaukee Admirals minor league team and Chris Chelios and the Wisconsin Badgers. Our daughter would stand up in her crib and taunt imaginary opposing goalies: “Sieve, sieve, sieve!”

In the intervening years, I watched the Omaha Lancers and the San Francisco Spiders. My first NHL game was in Vancouver, Canucks hosting the Sabres. Hockey fever really set in when we moved to New Jersey and I began to follow the Devils, who took the Stanley Cup in 2000 and 2003.

I had figured I’d follow the New York Rangers, one of the “Original Six” in the NHL. But the Devils were — and remain — my team. The Montreal Canadiens are a sentimental favorite, and I’m proud to say I got to see Les Habs play the Colorado Avalanche in Montreal a few years ago at what was then Centre Molson.

As important as hockey is to me, I have only one cap: the New York Rangers model shown above, a hand-me-down from my brother. It’s a nice one, and it needs some company in the rotation.

The new-look Tampa Bay Rays

Tampa Bay Rays cap 2008

The Tampa Bay Rays dropped the “devil” from their name and redesigned their uniforms for 2008. The result: They had their first winning season, first division title and are headed into their first American League championship series.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

The redesigned Tampa cap has a straight-ahead look that, to me, is more “big league” than its cartoonish predecessor. If there’s any more magic under these new caps, the Rays are going to need it against the Boston Red Sox.

Red Sox defeat Angels, thanks in part to blown call

Fool's cap?

The Boston Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Angels tonight to advance to the American League championship series against the Tampa Bay Rays. One of the key moments of the game came in the top of the 9th inning, when Erick Aybar missed a squeeze bunt and stranded Reggie Willits between third base and home.

Boston catcher Jason Varitek ran up the line after Willits. He lunged at Willits to apply the tag and tumbled toward the ground. As umpire Tim Welke was calling Willits out, Varitek landed and the ball popped out of his mitt.

The play was shown repeatedly on the TBS broadcast, and Angels manager Mike Scioscia argued for a bit before returning to the dugout.

So was the call right? I called a friend who’s an umpire on the NCAA circuit in northern California, and he had no doubt the umpire blew it. To record an out, the fielder must have control of the ball, tag the runner AND make a voluntary release of the ball.

No way did Varitek release that ball voluntarily.

Did the call affect the outcome of the game? Certainly. Did it deprive the Angels of a victory? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll never know if Willits, given second life, would have scored. The Angels will have a long, bitter winter to contemplate what might have been.

The dreaded Dodger, Manny Ramirez

On a TV broadcast on one of the last games of the regular season, there was a quick shot into the stands at Dodger Stadium of a fan wearing an LA skull cap with dreadlocks attached. I don’t know whether it was a home-built job with a wig, or whether the kid wearing it had bought it somewhere. I spent a bit of time searching in vain for a photo of the cap, but this image of the original Manny will have to do.

The homage to Manny Ramirez was hilarious. If I could wear a Dodgers cap — and as I’ve previously noted, that’s impossible — the Manny dreads cap would be the one.

Brewers vs. Phillies, and bratwurst vs. cheesesteaks

The long shadows of October baseball

Of the division matchups in the baseball playoffs this year, the only one I can illustrate with a pair of caps I own is the Brewers-Phillies series.

I’m already on record in expressing my devotion to the Brew Crew. Their place in the playoffs this year takes me right back to their last appearance, when they lost to the Cardinals in seven games in 1982. Somewhere in a shoe box I have photos I took out the window of our flat of the Goodyear blimp flying along the Lake Michigan shore en route to Milwaukee County Stadium. I am also on record, if only semi-seriously, as wanting to be buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Milwaukee, hard by the ballpark and not far from my grad school apartment.

I have a soft spot for the Phillies, too. Some of that has to do with having worked briefly in the Philly market at Trenton, N.J. Part of it is rooting for a team that gets only sporadic cracks at the big time.

The Milwaukee-Philadelphia matchup can also be played out in food terms. Milwaukee is the center of the bratwurst universe, and Philadelphia is the capital of cheesesteak nation. I love them both. So although I’m fully pulling for the Brewers, I’m open to the Phils advancing. Does that make me a weenie?