Dog gone.

I'm gonna say this now, on Saturday, because I try to write from a raw place, as a fan prone to emotional swings before reason takes over, not as a journalist bound to objectivity. I'll cool down in the morning, just as I tend to do after huge wins, and a month from now I may recall that our ace had a bad day in Baltimore but may not remember much else from Orioles 8, Rangers 6, especially if the first 162 end up, as they should, with Texas getting ready to play on. But I write this tonight because of what I'm thinking right now, as much as I hope that I'm wrong about it, and in spite of the fact that I'm not sure I really believe it in the first place. I wonder if this team isn't much better as an underdog. They'll be that again in October, but that doesn't help now. Especially with seven left head-to-head against Los Angeles, and seven against Oakland, which is six outs away from drawing to within six games of the Rangers. The personality of this team, from its manager to its leaders to some of its star players who have come from other teams, is to prove people wrong, to fight its way out of a corner, to be motivated by adversity and to overcome it. It's a team marked by its resilience as much as anything else. But there's not a whole lot of experience with a big lead. And right now – depleted by injury or not – Texas doesn't appear to be playing as loose, and is making more mental and focus mistakes than usual. That concerns me. You don't want to coast into the playoffs, having to turn the intensity back up from zero, but at the same time it would be pretty lousy to have to fight for your life over the final six weeks after building what seemed, and still seems, to be a virtually insurmountable lead. I hope I'm wrong. And in the morning I'll probably feel differently. (I'm pretty sure I know how this will play with the Sabermetricians out there. To unsubscribe to this mailing list, email listserv@listserv.tamu.edu and in type "Signoff NMLR" in the body of the message.) =========================================================== To join the free Newberg Report mailing list so you can get e-mail deliveries of every edition of the newsletter, daily minor league game recaps, and frequent Newberg Report News Flashes, go to www.newbergreport.com and click the "Mailing List" link on the top menu bar. (c) Jamey Newberg http://www.newbergreport.com Twitter @newbergreport