"It's Indiana."

Tonight, Indiana hosts Florida Gulf Coast to open their 2010-11 basketball season. I'm going, but this week will be a win for IU no matter what happens (okay, that's not true. If they lose to FGC, that will really suck). Indiana basketball has already won the week because yesterday afternoon, Cody Zeller committed to come to Bloomington next year.

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When Tom Crean took over as coach a couple of years ago, he was asked why he, a successful coach who'd build a very nice program and life for himself up at Marquette, would want to take over the absolute quagmire that IU basketball was at the time. Honestly, even as an IU student and life-long fan, I couldn't figure it out. I suppose on the surface it made sense as a classic high-risk, high-reward move - if he succeeded, he'd be enshrined as the man who restored Indiana basketball to its former glory, a basketball savior in a state that lives and breathes basketball; if he failed, though, he'd be the person who couldn't save the Hoosiers, the one who left a safe, good program and was left out in the cold by the full collapse of the program.

His answer, though, made perfect sense. "It's Indiana." Not only did that answer fully encompass the "high-reward" part of my original equation, it added a new factor. Yes, at the time IU basketball was probably at its lowest point. Crean was coming into a program that had just narrowly escaped the NCAA's death penalty, but had crippled itself with its own sanctions (as well it should have done, by the way). For years the high standards set by Branch McCracken and Bob Knight had been slipping - not so much under Mike Davis, but drastically under Kelvin Sampson (by the way, they were slipping under Bob Knight at the end as well). Almost the entire team left when Crean was hired, which had been expected for the most part - only two players, Brett Finkelmeier and Kyle Taber, were left.

But it was still Indiana. There were still five national championship banners hanging in Assembly Hall. Players like Scott May, Steve Alford, and Jared Jeffries hadn't ceased to exist. When a school has a history in a sport, a down period doesn't erase the history of that program. It doesn't destroy a fanbase. It simply forces it into hibernation, awaiting something to revive it. And that process started when a coach came to Bloomington who understood, truly, that this was Indiana. And that coach immediately set out to raise the program and the recently jilted fanbase from the dead.

That process did not start with the commitment of Cody Zeller to IU - hell, even when the team wasn't great last year, attendance was high, as was optimism among most of the fans with whom I come into contact. That's part of the beauty of Indiana basketball, what makes it what it is - the fans knew that the team would not be great, but as soon as they knew that the team had a steward who understood the weight of his responsibility, and who was bringing in players who not only were highly skilled, but who also understood that responsibility, they re-invested in the program.

What Zeller represents is a reward for those fans, the ones who trusted Crean. Cody Zeller is a top prospect, but even if he doesn't end up being a top player, he is still a win for Indiana. He's an in-state prospect who's staying here, and at the expense of other top programs. Zeller chose IU over North Carolina and Butler: respectively, a program with five championships, just like Indiana, but with more recent success and Zeller's older brother Tyler; and a program also in Indiana coming off a national runner-up performance and likely still on the rise. Crean went up against those competitors (and surely more) and won.

Zeller's influential - in his comments yesterday, Zeller said that he'd call Yogi Ferrell (another IU target and friend of Zeller's) "in the next day or two," and Ferrell's father has said Yogi is "very excited" about Zeller's decision. Does that mean that Ferrell and others will commit to Crean tomorrow? No, of course not. But it shows that there is a domino effect of sorts here, that one recruit can make a program more attractive to others.

And that is what Zeller means to Indiana. He was the big catch, the crown jewel recruit, and we got him. Cody Zeller is a signal that Indiana University can recruit, attract, and lock in players of the highest caliber once again; a signal that Bloomington is once again a destination for the best young basketball players in the country.

When Tom Crean first took the job at IU, I'll admit that I had tempered hopes. I loved the hire, and I felt like if anyone could save this program, it would be him or someone like him. But I'm a pessimistic person a lot of the time, and I felt like there was a good chance that it wasn't possible to bring the program all the way back to where it had once been. After all, this was a team that hadn't won anything of import in the lifetimes of the players Crean would be trying to recruit. I figured that it would be hard to attract players who were worth attracting to a school that hadn't won a championship since 1987, and hadn't challenged for one since before I was in high school. At best, I assumed that it would be several years before top players wanted to come to Bloomington. I was wrong.

It's Indiana. And history doesn't die. The college basketball world should step lightly, as there's a sleeping giant in Bloomington, Indiana, and that giant may be truly stirring for the first time in twenty years.

Sunday night liberation

When I found out that ESPN was shaking up its Sunday Night Baseball announcing team, replacing both Jon Miller and Joe Morgan, this was my first reaction. In short, sheer jubilation.

I've never had a problem with Jon Miller; in fact, I think he's a pretty good play-by-play announcer. As he's gotten older he's become more prone to making mistakes, but he typically catches them and corrects them. I like his voice and the energy he brings to a game, and he has a good feel for the rhythm of a baseball game. Others feel differently, but I've never really understood most of the complaints about him. He'll be missed, at least by me.

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An aside: one of the most common complaints that I've heard about Jon Miller is that he mispronounces Carlos Beltrán's name (obviously, this is a complaint that I hear mostly from Mets fans). Now if there's anyone who reads this who has more expertise in Spanish than I, please correct me, but from four years of studying the language, I'm 99% sure that I have this right. Beltrán's name is spelled as I have it, with an accent mark on the "a." Typically in Spanish the penultimate syllable is accented, unless there's a mark as there in in this case. Additionally, all "a" sounds in Spanish are short (like saying "ah," like when a doctor's examining your throat). Long story short, Jon Miller (who's fluent in Spanish, if you're wondering) is right, and everyone else is wrong.

Joe Morgan, on the other hand, is the cause of my glee. I don't think I need to go into why I and practically all other baseball fans dislike him; hell, there was a whole website devoted to his suckitude for a period of several years. Suffice it to say, I'm happy for the change, and this all has me thinking of how enjoyable SNB could become next season. That all depends, though, on who the new team is. Fire up the Speculation Machine!

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Jon Sciambi: This is my first choice, as well as a fairly unlikely one. ESPN's probably going to go with a well-known game with a lot of experience, a person who the casual fan already knows. Sciambi is not that. However, he is one of my favorite baseball announcers.

He has experience with the regional networks of both the Marlins and the Braves, and he is presently working for ESPN, usually in mid-week games. You may have never seen him call a game; trust me, he's good.

One of the things I like most about Sciambi - and a marked change from the old crew - is his progressive take on the game. He's not an old-school baseball guy, and he's well-versed in sabermetrics and advanced analysis methods. He's still mindful, though, of the fact that the vast majority of the baseball-watching public is not on the cutting edge or even near it, and works advanced thinking into his game calls in an easily accessible way. He talks about doing just that here. In my eyes, Sciambi really brings the whole package, and would be a great straight man for a SNB broadcast team.

Dan Shulman, Dave O'Brien: I don't know as much about either Shulman or O'Brien as I do about Sciambi, so I may be underrating them, but in watching games that they've called, they've been pretty middle-of-the-road. They seem to be roughly replacement level announcers - they aren't outstanding, as far as I can tell, but they aren't terrible enough to drag a broadcast down. They'd be adequate, and because of that they're the most likely choices (that, and the fact that like Sciambi, both are currently employed by ESPN).

Chris Berman: OH HOLY GOD PLEASE NO. All I need is to have to listen to "BACK BACK BACK BACK" and "HE HIT THAT ALL THE WAY TO KENDALL PARK" every week. I hate almost everything about Chris Berman. It's bad enough that he exists at all; please don't let him ruin my favorite sport more than he's already ruined football. Since this is what I want least, it is of course the thing that is probably going to happen.

Color commentator

Steve Stone: I used to hate Stone when he was with the Cubs, back when he and Chip Caray were on WGN together almost daily. It had little or nothing to do with Stone, I just didn't like the Cubs much at the time. But in retrospect, he's a really good announcer. He knows a lot about the game, and he's particularly good at explaining what's happening without sounding smug and holier-than-thou (like Morgan did so much of the time) or sounding like a total idiot (the best example of this would be Rob Dibble). In particular, I like the fact that he had the guts to call out the Cubs that year for underachieving, which ended up getting him fired. That's something that I'd like to hear from a color guy - tell me why what a manager or team is doing is wrong, if it is. Don't pull punches if punches need to be thrown. He would be a very good pick, and is my favorite candidate.

Orel Hershiser: Again, Hershiser is pretty much a replacement level broadcaster, or maybe slightly above. I liked him relatively well on SNB, and he was definitely a step up from the atrocious Steve Phillips. He was willing to call out Morgan for some of the stupid things he'd say, and that's no small feat, considering how ensconced Morgan was at ESPN. He'd be acceptable, and maybe even good with Morgan out, but Stone would be far superior.

Jeff Brantley, Rick Sutcliffe: Kill me now. What I said above about Dibble goes for both of these former players as well. Neither is particularly intelligent, neither has a good television voice (the two are oddly similar, with a drawl that sounds vaguely self-important, like every comment is a gem worthy of immortality). Sutcliffe is more likely than Brantley, due to the fact that he's already an ESPN employee. Listening to either one weekly would be eardrum suicide. Sutcliffe or Brantley would be the worst possible scenario, and if either one ends up on SNB, I'd recommend against watching. It would be a Morgan redux.

So to sum up, the most likely team is probably one of Dan Shulman or Dave O'Brien teamed with Orel Hershiser. All are inoffensive, all are already employed by ESPN, and none are particularly widely disliked. That would be a good, solid team that I wouldn't hate, though it also wouldn't excite me. My dream duo would be Jon Sciambi and Steve Stone, but they're not likely (in large part because it's what I want most in the world). They'd be smart and progressive, and would actually improve the broadcast rather than dragging it down into stupidity and screaming. Which, incidentally, is exactly what would happen if ESPN put Berman and Sutcliffe or Brantley on Sunday Night Baseball. In fact, if that happens it's possible that Major League Baseball will fold on principle.

With the end of the Miller-Morgan administration, there's a chance that Sunday Night Baseball could turn the corner and become a truly great baseball broadcast. Knowing ESPN, though, they'll probably give us Chris Berman and Rick Sutcliffe, and I'll put a brick through my TV. At least now we'll all know what we're missing.

Arsenal 0-1 Newcastle: Do I have to do this?

When a team plays like Arsenal did Sunday, it makes it really hard to go back and look at the game dispassionately. That's why this took me so long to write - every time I sat down to start, I had a Vietnamesque flashback to Cesc Fabregas lobbing a long pass into the box and had to find something else to do. I think I'm finally ready to get some thoughts out now.

The first thing, and most important thing about Sunday's monstrosity, is that this is a team game, and Arsenal played horribly as a team. Something just seemed off from the start of the game - there was no chemistry or communication; it seemed like nobody had any idea what anyone else on the pitch was thinking. They looked a bit like a pick-up squad, a bunch of guys who know each other so they think they know what people are going to do, but haven't played together enough to actually know. Players weren't finishing runs, passes were going awry seemingly on every possession, defensive responsibilities were abandoned expecting help where none was coming. It just seemed like the rhythm and pace of Arsenal players were unsynchronized and wrong all game, and that was reflected in the scoreline.

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I want to talk a bit about Łukasz Fabiański, because it's related to what I just said about winning and losing as a team. I'll preface this by saying that I think we should have bought a keeper this summer, not necessarily because I think the current crop Arsenal have are bad, but because once it came out that Wenger was looking for a keeper, we needed to get one. You can't publicly say that you are looking for a player's replacement, fail to do so, then ask that player to perform well. Honestly I've been impressed with Fabiański and Almunia this year for that reason - instead of losing confidence, both seemed to have set out to disprove the idea that they were useless.

Yesterday, Fabiański cost Arsenal a goal. That much is for certain. But he wasn't the only one who had a hand in the matter. There was a chain of events that occurred causing the goal; there were many points in that chain in which an Arsenal player could have done something to prevent the goal, and at each opportunity, he failed. As Tim from 7amkickoff said,

Cesc gave the ball away, Sagna fouled, and 3 Arsenal players couldn't stop Carroll

Fabiański could have stopped the goal from scoring, and should have. But the same could be said for Fabregas, Sagna, and others. The "Flappyhandski" meme does not need to make a return, and honestly it can only hurt the team. He made an error that I've seen plenty of goalkeepers make (like, for example, Tim Howard against Spurs a few weeks ago), and he got no help from his midfield or defense on that particular play. This loss is not his fault, it's the team's fault.

So why did this happen? I wrote yesterday about the Wenger controversy, and how it might affect the team. I don't know if it did or not - not being in the locker room, I don't really have any way of knowing, as nobody would admit that publicly - but it's possible. There's a chance that the team wasn't properly prepared due to the manager's preoccupation, but Wenger has never been anything but professional in my eyes, so I find that to be an unlikely scenario. Whatever effect that had, there had to be something else. I really hope that they didn't take the opponent for granted, as one would think the West Brom and Shakhtar games had taught them a lesson. If not, this is extremely worrying.

Arsenal is best when Cesc Fabregas is at his best. That should be pretty obvious to a knowledgeable observer (or even the ignorant observer, sometimes). Yesterday he very clearly was not at his best. He missed the mid-week Champions League game ostensibly due to injury - the hamstring was tight, I believe the story was - but played all 90 minutes yesterday. He was very clearly not himself. It's possible that he just had a bad game, but there's a distinct possibility that the injury is still bothering him. If that's the case, he needs to sit until he's fit. Wilshere can play Fabregas' role - not as well as Cesc, but well enough - and it's clear from Newcastle that an injured Fabregas (if that's the issue) cannot win a game on his own, and honestly is a drag for the rest of the squad. Orbinho on Fabregas' performance:

Cesc completed 67% of passes so far, the lowest of any Arsenal player.

That rate continued to the end of the game. According to Orbinho, that was his worst passing performance since 2006. That's not going to get it done. As I said above, this is a team game, and I am not trying to say that Fabregas single-handedly lost Arsenal the game. What I am saying is that a team can't win if its captain and on-field maestro can't play his game, and resorts to a Blackburn-esque strategy of lobbing balls into the box over and over again, hoping for magic.

I think we sent players onto the pitch who weren't ready to play, due to injury or lack of match fitness. I think we were tactically monolithic, and didn't play Arsenal football (to our detriment). I think this was a flat, uninspired performance from a team that was just wrong from the start. I don't know if Wenger is to blame or not, but if so, he needs to step his game up. I can say for certain that the players on the pitch - all of them - need to.

Man of the match: All of us, for actually watching this crap.

Arsenal v. Newcastle: a game preview wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery

This has quickly turned into a pretty crazy week for Arsenal, and with things flying around the squad as they are, an already important fixture is becoming more so seemingly by the day. But no pressure, boys.

We play Newcastle, who are right smack in the middle of the table (9th, to be exact). They're as good on the road as they are at home record-wise (2 wins, 1 draw, and 2 losses home and away) but they are +7 at home in terms of goal differential, where they're -2 away. So the record may be a bit deceiving, but they're more than able to win on the road. They are not to be taken lightly. Nobody in the Premier League is; a lesson Arsenal learned the hard way when they brought a weak effort to West Brom's visit, and were handed their heads.

That's not the only pressure placed on the Gunners.

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Manchester United won yesterday, but Chelsea plays Liverpool today. Even with the Merseysiders playing beneath their station this year, they should be a tough out for Chelsea, and this could be an opportunity to pick up points. Manchester City have West Brom, who they should theoretically be able to handle (but Arsenal knows how that kind of thinking can hurt you). The upshot is this: the pace must be maintained; wins are required, especially at home.

The big news in the week was the weird loss to Shakhtar Donetsk. The team was flat, and honestly didn't look to be a great threat to a team they had already beaten handily once. Granted several players were missing due to injury concerns, but the effort was not there (much like in the West Brom game), and even with players missing if effort had been present, it's likely that the outcome would have been different. Now the Newcastle game will be looked at as a chance to bounce back, lest a losing streak begin.

The strangest news came in the weekend, when reports surfaced that Arsène Wenger is involved in an extramarital affair. I'm not going to go into the details here, for a few reasons. I'm a sports blogger, not a gossip blogger. I don't feel like I'm qualified to comment on the personal lives of players and personnel. Honestly, I hate the idea of adultery, and it's something that I would never condone. But Wenger (as far as I can tell) hasn't commented on the matter, and all I have to go on is tabloid reports. I'm not going to fly into a rage every time the British tabloids say something about an Arsenal player, nor their manager. To put it succinctly, I do not care about this story. Things that don't directly have an effect on Arsenal's play are not my business, and this falls neatly into that category.

Or at least it should. It's relevant here, because it's something that's in the news, and because of that, even though it really shouldn't, this has the potential to have an effect on Arsenal's play. The old chestnut of "off-the-field distractions" rears its ugly head; whether it's Fabregas leaving for Barcelona, Wenger's comments on officiating, or this, media memes can be a distracting force against a team that really doesn't need the trouble. I really hope that one way or another, this doesn't become a long-term issue - Wenger either needs to admit to what happened, deny it, or refuse to comment based on principle (this, if you're wondering, is the one that I'd choose), and then put it to bed. Whatever happens, don't let it fester, because that could be disastrous.

There is one piece of (hopefully) good news to cleanse the palate, though. According to the Daily Mirror (via Young Guns), Robin van Persie has been named to the squad for today's game. It won't be known for sure until near game time whether he'll be starting or in the bullpen (if I had to guess, based on how long he's been gone, I'd bet my house on the latter), but either way this is an encouraging sign. The walking wounded are finally nearly all back - still waiting on you, Vermaelen - and Wenger will soon have the enviable issue of finding playing time for everyone. Skill has come from unexpected places, and it will take deft management to keep everyone sharp. Again, though, that is a good problem to have.

With the number of problems facing Arsenal, it's nice to have one good one.

The revolution begins...at 2 PM Eastern

Today begins a new era in Mets baseball, one that honestly should have begun years ago - the post-Omar era. Sandy Alderson will officially be named the new general manager, and based on what I've read about him I'm very excited about the next four years.

I'm not a fool, I don't expect miracles from Alderson and his new regime; in fact, quite the opposite - I'd bet the Mets of 2011 won't be appreciably better than the Mets of 2010, unless the changes made in the roster are more drastic than I think they will be. The changes that Alderson will bring, though, are going to go far beyond the team's win-loss record, and that's what excites me.

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Over the past decade or so, the Mets have been a wreck, both on and off the field. They went to the World Series in 2000 and were arguably the best team in baseball in 2006 (though they lost in the NLCS). Aside from that, as a baseball-playing group, they've failed. They were "contenders" who missed the playoffs in 2001, 2007 and 2008 (spectacularly so in the latter two years). Every other year in the 21st century, the Mets have been flat-out bad. And I'm sure that it goes without saying that rooting for a crappy team isn't much fun.

If anything, the Mets have been even worse off the field. They haven't had quite the issues with players that some teams have, Francisco Rodriguez and Johan Santana notwithstanding. The real issue has been the non-player staff. Let's go through the greatest hits:

- In 2009, VP for player development Tony Bernazard challenged minor leaguers to fight after a game. The incident included Bernazard taking his shirt off, a la Jersey Shore.

- Shortly after that incident came to light, Bernazard nearly got in a fight with K-Rod after a game, for no discernible reason. He kept his shirt on that time.

- Obviously, getting in fights with the players isn't good, so Omar Minaya (finally) fired Bernazard. Simple enough? Well, not if the general manager of the Mets openly accuses a beat writer of "lobby" for a job with the team. (Read this transcript of the press conference. It pretty much explains all of the problems that Omar Minaya had as GM of the Mets.)

Beside all that, actual player decisions were made in a totally irrational fashion. Rich, long-term contracts were given to ageing and inconsistent players. Terrible trades were made. Player injuries were handled in a haphazard and simply dangerous fashion. Player development was, to put it bluntly, a joke. In short, Omar Minaya's Mets did everything wrong.

As a fan of a team, you want to be able to defend against outside mockery. When rival teams' fans take shots at your team, you want to be able to have something, anything, to use to defend your team. When Omar was in charge, there was no way to do that. The team was run in an irrational manner, and there's no way to rationally defend irrationality.

And that is a big reason why I'm thrilled about the installation of Sandy Alderson. I don't expect domination. I don't even expect a championship. I am smart enough to know that it's really hard to win a World Series, and that while fans should definitely hope to win, expecting to win is really only the realm of the arrogant and the egotistical. But what I do expect is rationality. I'm listening to Alderson's introductory press conference right now, and what I'm hearing is what I expected, based on what I know about Alderson - a smart, well-spoken man who thinks rather than feels. When Minaya was in charge, it seemed that most decisions were made based on faulty reasoning and gut reactions. Alderson says things like "the mathematics don't lie" and that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are important. That's the way to build a team that has the ability to win a championship, and more than anything, it's the way to make a franchise respectable again.

The Mets may not win the pennant every year for the next decade - in fact, they probably won't. But at least we know that the people in charge know what they're doing, that they will create and execute a plan, and that the plan will be based on sound principles. We know that we no longer have to fear that at any moment, team officials could be forcing a guy with a concussion to play, or challenging 20-year-old kids to fights. The team will not be a laughingstock, and that's a damn good first step.

A hurried baseball playoffs preview

I went for a run last weekend, and I needed to wear a glove. It's cold out, but it's still the kind of cold that makes you feel more awake than you really are, rather than the kind of cold that makes you wish you lived in Mallorca. And while this means many things, the thing it means for the purpose of this blog post is that it's time for playoff baseball.

It's been a rough couple of years for me as a baseball fan. The Mets haven't been legitimately good since I was a freshman in college. The Red Sox are out of the playoffs for the first time since that same year, but they haven't been a legitimate championship contender since the 2007 season (in which they were really strong contenders, contending longer than anyone else). In the past two seasons, the two teams I most hate - the Phillies and then the Yankees - won championships. It got to the point where I was sort of rooting for the Braves at one point this year. The Braves.

But though it's not much fun, with my favorite teams on early-fall vacations and my most despised primed for glory, I'm a baseball fan, so I'm obligated to watch the playoffs. Why? Because the playoffs are awesome, no matter who's playing. The only sport that has an argument for a superior playoffs is hockey, and that's mostly just because they have a cooler trophy. But that's not what I'm interested in talking about right now, mostly because it's far too Costasian and I'm far too tall to write like he talks.

I'm sticking to who's going to win and why it's going to happen. I know the games have started, but I tweeted the picks earlier. So I'm not using the first slate of games as a barometer - these are blind picks. They're blind in another way - though I love me some statistics, I'm going against my own advice and going mostly on gut feelings. We'll see how much I know about a baseball season that I largely ignored, for the sake of my emotional state. I'll talk a bit about the championship series and the World Series as I pick them, but I'll cover that more after the actual teams are set. I'm assuming I won't have a perfect record of picks here. Let's do this thing.
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ALDS: Rays over Rangers (3-1), Twins over Yankees (3-2)

There are two reasons I'm picking the Rays to win the first of the divisional series to start. First of all, I'm totally unconvinced that any team expecting to get anything out of Jeff Francoeur can win. He's played pretty well since the Mets traded him, but that's mostly (if not entirely) due to the small size of the available sample. He is not a good hitter. Of course, he's a bench player, because though he's a cocaine fan, Ron Washington is still apparently smarter than Jerry Manuel. So he's not really that much of a factor.

The main reason I'm picking the Rays is because I think they're much deeper than the Rangers. Josh Hamilton has been hurt, as has Evan Longoria. But the Rays don't rely on Longoria the same way that the Rangers lean on Hamilton. They also have a deeper pitching staff, to my eye. I feel like the Rangers have, to an extent, gotten fat on a weaker division out west, while the Rays have had to deal with the Yankees, Red Sox, and Blue Jays all summer. The Rays have performed better against better competition, and that's why they'll win this series.

In the other series, I'm going against history. The Yankees have beaten the Twins in the playoffs several times in the past decade, but this year I think the twins are going to finally break through. The main reason for this is my belief that these Yankees are very overrated. CC Sabathia is a very good pitcher (not the best in the league, but that's another post), but after him, they'll be relying on the injured Andy Pettite and the unknown quantity that is Phil Hughes. Their bullpen is Mariano Rivera and a collection of inconsistency. Their lineup is very good, but hitting doesn't win in the playoffs the same way it does in the regular season. They're going to have to lean on their pitching, and their pitching is going to crack at some point. The Yankees are going to win two games, but that's all.

NLDS: Phillies over Reds (3-0), Giants over Braves (3-1)

The Phillies are a good team. They have three pitchers better than the Reds' best, and I see no situation in which the Reds will be able to beat the Phillies. The Reds have some hitters, but I don't think that they'll break through against Halladay or Oswalt. Hamels is a bit less reliable in my eyes, but he's still better than Johnny Cueto. Also, as much as I dislike Hamels, he hasn't ended anyone's career.

The Giants and Braves can both pitch. Neither can hit. The Giants are better at pitching. They're going to win. (That, by the way, is the most laconic thing I've ever written.)

ALCS: Twins over Rays. This will be a very even series if it happens. Fundamentally sound, well-played baseball - entertaining for the fans, but maybe not anyone else. I see Joe Mauer having a huge series, and Jim Thome right behind him.

NLCS: Giants over Phillies. There will be about six runs scored in this series. The Giants are more used to having to scrape together runs, so they'll be better suited for a matchup like this.

World Series: Twins over Giants. The streak continues for San Francisco. Minnesota christens their new ballpark in style. Also, I'll get to say "Well played, Mauer" a lot.

Feel free to offer your own predictions in the comments, if you like. And if I said something stupid that is statistically unprovable, feel free to call me on it, but remember that this is based on my feel of the series, rather than...well, things that you can prove. It's less accurate, but it's more fun that way.

Spurs 1-4 Arsenal: Are you watching, Tottenham?

Lansbury is really pumped about scoring against Spurs. (Tom Jenkins, The Guardian)

I've only been an Arsenal fan for a few years, but in those years I've grown to love the club dearly. As a person living on the far side of the Atlantic, and a person who didn't grow up with the club, it's taken a lot of effort to learn all about Arsenal - the history, the traditions, and all that.

It has taken no effort to hate Tottenham Hotspur.

I really don't know why. I don't know whether it's the players, or the manager (let's be real, 'Arry is pretty hateable), or the fans. Probably all of the above. It's just something that's come so naturally to me that it's almost disturbing. Naturally, I blame Spurs for this personal deficiency. See how easy it is?

So even when Arsenal play Spurs in a largely meaningless Carling Cup game (because honestly, nobody cares about the Carling Cup) I get amped up. It would appear that I'm not the only one, because Arsene Wenger - from on high in the director's box while serving his one-match ban for not just hauling off and punching a referee on Saturday - fielded a not-terrible team, which is unusual. There were only three overlapping starters from the Sunderland match, but players like Eboué, Gibbs, Denilson, and Rosicky starting and most of the first team on the bench, you could tell the match was actually being taken seriously. Even though Fabianski was in goal.

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The first half was extraordinarily one-sided. The scoreline wasn't, with Arsenal up only 1-0, but they had control of the ball for what seemed like about 90% of play. Spurs were getting passed into oblivion, but Arsenal couldn't finish but once; a great ball in the box from Jack Wilshere was bombed in by Henri Lansbury, both of whom are younger than I am. It was a game in which missed opportunities could have come back to haunt the Gunners, and it almost did.

Just after the half, Robbie Keane received a ball over the top in the box, and slid it past a diving Fabianski, who was honestly just there for decoration. It was a fine play, but would have been better had Keane not been criminally offside. The call wasn't made, the goal stood, and the score was leveled. (This was compounded by the fact that Arsenal left-back Kieran Gibbs had a chance fraudulently taken away for offside before the half, by the same linesman no less.)

The score remained unchanged through full-time, setting the stage for a barrage in extra time. Twice Arsenal were awarded penalties: once for a foul on Samir Nasri and again for one on Marouane Chamakh. Rosicky's penalty miss Saturday (along with many, many other things) cost two points, but Nasri wasn't as wasteful. He took both shots, and Spurs keeper Stipe Pletikosa guessed wrong both times. Andrei Arshavin finished the scoring with a solid shot, and Arsenal coasted to the finish.

Hopefully Gibbs won't end up being the biggest story. Reports after the game are saying that he may have a broken bone in his foot, which is similar to the injury that put him out for three months last year. It would be a major setback for a player who has looked better than first-teamer Gael Clichy so far this year, so hopefully it will not be as bad as is feared. More on that will probably be available today, so we'll see.

Here are some stats, courtesy of Orbinho...Spurs come first then Arsenal, as usual in football.

Goals: 1-4

Shots: 12-24

On target: 4-7

Possession: 36%-64%

Passing accuracy: 77%-84%

Fouls: 23-14

Duels won: 47%-53%

Man of the Match: I'm going to go with Koscielny, but that's primarily due to my slowly-developing mancrush on him. He's shown himself to be a supreme badass since coming over to the Gunners, and I didn't get to shower him with praise after the Sunderland match. Second star is Jack Wilshere, who's developed into a bit of a mini-Cesc. I'll give third star to Nasri for not missing any penalties, unlike freaking Rosicky (whose name is not pronounced the way it looks like it should be, if you're wondering).