One of the best World Series games ever, the never-clutch/homophobic Mookie Betts, sloppy/ripe-to-be-beat New England Patriots, the Bruins' goaltending situation, latest installment of the Holy War

Monday 11/3/25

That was an amazing Game 7 on Saturday night to close out the World Series. I guess I'm unsure how serious Blue Jays fans are as Blue Jays fan in a way I'm not with Red Sox, Yankees, and Cubs fans, but that had to hurt.

I wouldn't say the Jays choked. But the chances were so close to zero that the Dodgers were going to win that game, and they needed like a half dozen very improbably things to happen--and every last one of those things--to somehow win that game. It almost feels like a magic act that they did win. That slide on the force out at home plate looked to me like the Jays' player was doing this victory slide rather than a straight slide. I think in the back of his mind he was thinking, "This is the image of the run that wins the World Series!" The arms raised in exaltation. Just didn't look like a natural slide to me.

Mookie Betts sucked as he always does when it matters. He has a case for being the worst postseason performer of any star position player in baseball history. The sample size is huge, and he's always sucked. In this World Series, he was 4-for-29 for a .138 batting average, with no extra base hits, a .138 slugging percentage, and a .424 OPS, and one homophobic comment that no one else said a thing about, because 1. They're too stupid to notice 2. People worship these athletes and are also so broken as humans that they create these super creepy parasocial relationships with them 3. They're hypocrites and 4. Most people don't give a fuck about anyone else and only pretend to if they think it makes them look better. I don't like Mookie Betts as a person and I know that he's trash in any clutch situation.

Ohtani is over-hyped as a pitcher, but he'll do his thing at the plate. He seems very even-keeled there. I don't know that he really rises to the big occasion, but he is who he is consistently, and that means you'll get production out of him in games big and small. Do you understand the difference? Ortiz rose to the occasion. Ohtani is just always Ohtani at the plate. It's like everything else is everything else.

Everyone says that "The Jays will be back!" but they probably won't be. That's not usually how it works. A team finally gets its shot, and then many years, or decades, pass before it does again, unless it's a team from an organization that makes sure to be in the thick of it. Is Toronto such an organization? That was their first World Series since 1993. How many postseason appearances have they had? Isn't many. There's no reason to think they'll be back.

And Vlad Guerrero is a good player, but he's just a good player. He's not great by any means. He had 23 home runs this year. He isn't an outstanding power hitter. He hit a bunch of homers in the postseason. But don't confuse the two things. I mean, he drove in 84 runs and had a 133 OPS+. Again, good, not great, a somewhat star--lower end--and not some superstar. That's just not who he is as a player. His 48 homers to lead the league in 2021 was a weird blip. You look back at that now and you're not sure where it came from.

Watched most of the Patriots-Falcons game. Pats were bad. They could have lost if the Falcons hadn't missed an extra point attempt that would have tied the game. I know New England fans think they're "back" and all of that, but I'm telling you, Drake Maye is going to get hurt if things keep going like they're going. Thought he wasn't good yesterday. You can have these games where the stats say you were good, because you have a high completion percentage and a QB rating over 100, but that only tells part of the tale. Or it can.

Maye was sloppy yesterday. He had an untidy game. He gets sacked a lot. I don't know this for a fact, but I'd venture that he's been sacked more than any quarterback in the NFL so far this year. That offensive line was pretty porous yesterday, but Maye is culpable in how many times he goes down as well. He needs to make faster decisions, get himself out of harm's way, have more awareness as the defenders close in.

The Pats were up 21-7 late in the first half, were set to receive the ball in the second, and you're thinking blow out, then there's the strip sack of Maye and it's 21-14 going into halftime and we have a game--a game that the Patriots easily could have lost.

The Patriots are looking ripe for a loss down in Tampa next week. They've had their run against the dregs, got their winning streak--barely--and if I was a betting man--which I'm not in the slightest--I certainly wouldn't be taking them next Sunday. But we'll see. Maybe they clean things up and have a much sharper game.

As for Maye--I'm not running him down. We're halfway through the season and he's as strong an MVP candidate as anyone. But there's a reason seasons are the length they are. Things tend to shake out to where they should be by the end. The Patriots have had the easiest schedule in the league thus far, and they have the second easiest going forward. We may or may not have a good read on where Maye is at in terms of his game by the end of this regular season. This could really swing. He's more accurate than I figured he would be. He might end up being really good. Definitely is at a higher level than he was last year.

How bad was Patrick Mahomes yesterday in the Chiefs' loss to the Bills? Will the Chiefs make the playoffs? Yes, I'm being serious in asking that question. Is anyone else asking it?

The Bears had a wild one with the Bengals in which they came out on top 47-42. I bet that score has never happened before in the NFL.

Everyone needs to relax with these quarterback stats that are getting thrown around, like how Drake Maye is the best ever through this many games on account that he's had a passer rating over 100 for however many games in a row. Look at everyone else. The stats are super-inflated.

Do you think Caleb Williams is stellar? He had a 114.8 rating in that game on Sunday. Almost a third of the quarterbacks in the league have ratings over 100...on the season. If you took Williams' stats from last year--when everyone said he sucked--and dropped them back in the 1980s, the guy who had those stats would have won the MVP most years. You have to look at these things relative to everyone else. It isn't hard right now to rack up those 100 ratings. Does anyone else know this? Have a clue about this? Is it only me? Because this seems pretty basic. Granted, you have to look at the numbers, understand the numbers, and think a tiny bit, but surely...wait, never mind.

The Bruins gave back-to-back starts in net to Joonas Korpisalo. You don't see the theoretical back-up getting starts in two straight games when the theoretical starter is healthy. It's akin to benching the latter. Then Jeremy Swayman was back in goal, and he played better. Here's what I think is happening, or is on the table at least, with the Bruins doing a form of due diligence: The club is really starting to think that Jeremy Swayman is not a frontline number one NHL starter, which I could have told you all along, and which I wrote in these pages going way back.

I think Swayman is a back-up on a good team, and he's not the guy you want in net for sixty games if you're trying to contend. And yes, I get that the Bruins aren't trying to contend right now. But they're paying Swayman like he's an annual Vezina contender, or should be, a guy who goes out and steals games for you while you're not as strong as you want to be roster-wise. The "most" he is is a platoon goalie.

And I think that's now on the table for the Bruins, too--to basically rotate these guys. Give them close to equal time in net. A problem is that Korpisalo isn't very talented for an NHL goalie. He's among the worst in the league himself. The team plays for him, I guess. I don't think Swayman is well liked.

But you might have two of the weaker goalies in the league splitting the games and trying to make the best of it that way, like each guy will play better than he would have otherwise in trying to seize his moment than if he was out there most nights. Cover up the deficiencies at the position in that manner. This would be the Bruins admitting they were wrong about Swayman. You might as well. You were wrong. My best prediction: Swayman starts tomorrow, Korpisalo gets the game after.

No one has a rosier outlook on anything than many Celtics fans have on their team. Everything is happy and wonderful or for the best. Are we talking Team Celtics here or Team Pangloss? Wonderful--I've made a joke that anyone who likes the Celtics or sports is almost certain not to get, but I needn't be that specific or limiting, because in this uneducated, illiterate society, no one anywhere is going to get it. (As a general and true enough rule--Sports people usually don't like art and reading, and reading and art people usually don't like sports.) But look it up, if you want.

The other night, the 2-2 Rockets came to town, and even the Celtics announcers--who are the same way as the fans I just described--were saying this was a scheduled loss, there was no way the Celtics could win, but if they did, then wow, they were so amazing, and honest to goodness contenders. The Rockets were 2-2, man. This isn't the 1996 Bulls. It's that farfetched, that impossible, to beat the 2-2 team just because you were on a back-to-back and they weren't? The Celtics did lose. But that's not the point here.

The Red Sox, who were putrid defensively in 2025 as they are every year now, had two Gold Glove winners, Wilyer Abreau in right and Ceddanne Rafaela in center. Does that not seem weird? Because those two positions--especially when we factor in Fenway--are responsible for the coverage of a lot of ground. And the team still blew defensively? Remember how people used to go on about Jackie Bradley and what an amazing defensive center fielder he was? He wasn't! He was okay.

People don't make nearly as big a deal about Rafaela, who is better than Bradley but still not amazing. The best Red Sox outfielder I've ever seen remains Dwight Evans. What's interesting about Evans is that if another ballpark other than Fenway was his home park, he wouldn't have had the same defensive value and importance. But it was, and he was legitimately great in that extended, extensive right field space.

Was talking to someone on Friday about the BC-Notre Dame game, and they said there was no way I could think BC would win, to which I said that wasn't true. You never know. So there's that. And every year there are some results that are total head-scratchers. I said that I fully expected Boston College--with what is perhaps the worst team in the school's history--to be crushed by Notre Dame, but if I didn't watch the game and woke up the next day to see BC had won I wouldn't have been shocked. They laughed at me.

Then I explained exactly how it could be close. Notre Dame would need to be terrible. Like barely show up. As if they wanted to be somewhere else. They'd have to self-destruct, whatever form that took. Put the ball on the carpet four times. BC would need to get players back on defense who'd been out with injuries. The game would have to be low-scoring, boring, with BC eating up chunks of clock with long, slow drives. The Eagles would need luck, the bounce of the ball. They have a fifth-year senior quarterback who is only playing because the transfer from Alabama has sucked so much. This quarterback's football career is done as soon as BC's season is done. He'd have to play like this was the game of his life, he was the leader, this is his last big moment--the last of which probably came in high school, but whatever.

Well, that's kind of how it went. With just a few minutes left in the third quarter--a quarter in which the Eagles had the ball nearly the whole time--Notre Dame only led 12-10. The game was winnable, for a team that could make a play or two. Alas, the Eagles are not that team. And even in the fourth, BC was driving down eight. You are in that game.

Having watched Clemson pummel BC earlier this year, I learned that Clemson sucks. Forget the score--they suck. I'm not someone who sits on his ass watching football for fifteen hours on Saturday and then follows it up with another nine hours on Sunday, but when I watch a game, I can tell you what's really what, how good someone is, how good someone isn't. Notre Dame is better than Clemson, but Notre Dame also sucks. They're not laden with talent, they have no discipline, they play stupid. If that's a playoff team, it's only because you're trying to fill the field out, because that's not a good college football team.

The BC quarterback looked like he was playing hurt to me as well. He had some kind of lower body injury, and he had it right away. I think he went in there hurt. BC's offensive line was awful. As soon as the QB had the ball, he was under pressure. I mention the lower body thing because I've seen this guy run kind of effectively in the past, and that wasn't an option for him on Saturday. If it were, maybe the final score would have been a bit closer.

Revealing fact: Bill O'Brien is the only FBS head coach who hasn't defeated an FBS school in 2025 who still has a job.

I looked at the ticket prices on Stubhub the day of the game. I wasn't going to go--was just curious. Cheapest were $80. More Notre Dame fans were probably there than BC fans. I might head out there for one of the last home games if there's a cheap enough ticket and I feel like I've worked hard enough and gotten enough done to take some work with me on the trip out to Alumni. We'll see. And it'd be nice to begin rereading To Walk the Night which itself begins with a trip to a college football game in November.