Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

What an end to the 2011 baseball regular season. Boston had a 9 game lead over Tampa this month, and Atlanta had an 8½ game lead over St Louis, and they both blew the leads. Boston went 7-20 in the month of September to blow it. All they had to do was have a .333 winning percentage for the month (9-18) and they would have been in. On the last day (last night), they blew a 3-2 lead with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th to lose 4-3, while Tampa was down 7-0 and came back to win 8-7 in extra innings. The finish of the Boston game (because of a rain delay) was literally 3 minutes before the finish of the Tampa game. Fortunately, I saw both finishes late last night. Atlanta was up 3-1 in their game, gave up a run in the top of the 9th which tied the game at 3, and then lost in 13 innings while St Louis was beating Houston 8-0. Atlanta lost the last 5 games of the season, and went 9-18 for the month of September to miss out on the playoffs. The playoffs begin tomorrow with Tampa pla...

For those people that bet on college football, last Saturday's Utah/USC game was the ultimate in bad beats. USC was favored by 8 for most of the week leading up to the game. The lines I saw were 8, 8½, and 9. Late in the game, the score was 17-14 USC. Utah was lining up for a game-tying field goal. If Utah makes it, the games goes into overtime and Utah is going to beat the spread (even if they lost in OT, they would most likely lose by less than 8 - I guess it would be technically possible for them to lose by 8, but then it's a push). If Utah misses the field goal, they lose by 3 and beat the spread. It was blocked, and USC ran the block back for a touchdown as the clock ran out. That makes the score 23-14, and USC covers. Except all the USC players run onto the field and get an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and the ref says the touchdown doesn't count. So the game ends 17-14 with Utah beating the spread. But that's not the end of the story. A couple hours after ...

Now that it's September, I can officially say that I spent every single night in August in my own bed. That is the first time that has happened for an entire calendar month since May of 2009 - the month before my daughter was born. June of 2009 was spent all "at home", but I stayed overnight in the hospital with my wife a couple nights while she was recovering form the C-Section. And normally there's some kind of a trip (personal or business) each month that puts me in a different bed for a night or more.