After all the hoopla all summer long about a Subway Series, neither the Yankees nor the Mets will participate in the World Series. Both teams built - or should I say bought - lots of bats to sprinkle all through the line-up. Both teams went with an aging set of pitchers at the top of the rotation and a sure-fire closer. Both teams went down when injuries hit their aging pitchers at the top of the rotation and they had to turn to "unproven quality" to start important games. Going into last night's game, the Mets chances to reach the Series relied on Oliver Perez whom the Pirates were ever so happy to escort out of town. He was 4-13 with an ERA of 6.60 going into Game 7 of the NLCS. Surprisingly, he gave the Mets 6 full innings and gave up only one run. The Mets' hitters could not have asked for more but they took the night off and the Cardinals will go to the Series.

Trailing by two runs in the bottom of the ninth, the Mets loaded the bases and had their biggest bat at the plate in Carlos Beltran. The only reason Beltran is in NY with his huge contract is because he was the shining star for the Astros in the playoffs just a couple of years ago. This moment should have been a coronation for him and an affirmation for the Mets' front office for paying him such a huge chunk of cash. Beltran struck out on three pitches and never took the bat off his shoulder for the third strike.

Let me get this straight, the Cardinals won the game and their prize is that they get to play and stay in Detroit. Maybe that's why the Mets' hitters took the night off?

The upcoming World Series provides a lesson for folks about inflation and the price of sporting events. Charlie Walters had this tidbit in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press:

"A lower-level World Series ticket in 1965, when the Twins played the Dodgers, cost $6. Tickets for this year's World Series cost $225."

For another example of the growth in value and the difference in revenue levels of pro sports, the Pro Football Hall of Fame has on exhibit the contract document from 1926 that effected the sale of the Duluth Eskimos. Two gentlemen purchased the franchise and the total cost to them was $1. Presumably, they did not need to arrange financing for the deal. When the Houston Texans were the last team to join the NFL, it cost a total of almost $800M to join the fraternity. If you believe Forbes Magazine and their methodology for valuating sports franchises, they said several months ago that the Washington Redskins are currently worth just north of $1.4B.

I'm not a big movie fan, but I do recall Forest Gump as a character who stumbled through life and found himself in and amongst a series of historic events. I happened across a short bio sketch of a former NFL player and he too had a football life that had him in and around an awful lot of football history. In that sense - and in that sense alone - Adrian Burk is sort of like the Forest Gump of Football.

Adrian Burk graduated from Baylor as an All-American quarterback in 1949. He played QB for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1951-1956; in 1954, he tied the NFL record for touchdown passes in a single game when he threw seven TDs in a 49-21 victory over the Washington Redskins. He shares that record with George Blanda, Sid Luckman, Joe Kapp and Y. A. Tittle. Interestingly, Burk and Y.A. Tittle were teammates on the Baltimore Colts for the 1950 season. That same 1950 Colts' team had a running back on the roster named Rex Grossman.

Adrian Burk also went to law school and became an attorney in Houston but he maintained ties to football. He was the Houston Oilers' general counsel when the team was chartered in the AFL and Burk is credited with signing Heismann Trophy winner, Billy Cannon for the Oilers. Burk also spent his weekends as a football official in the AFL and the NFL. He was part of the officiating crew for the longest NFL game ever played. That was in a playoff game between KC and Miami in 1971; the game went into the second overtime period before KC won the game. He was also on the field for the Immaculate Reception game between Oakland and Pittsburgh in 1972. Adrian Burk died in July 2003.

If you've watched sports on TV for a while, you have to have noticed the annoying trend of networks using sporting events to do cross-promotions for other shows they have on the air and for other things that they sell. All of the networks do this; FOX and ABC/ESPN (Disney owns ABC and ESPN and they cross-promote one another) are the worst of the lot by a long shot. How can sports fans meaningfully get a message across to the suits at these networks so that the suits can instruct the producers of games going out over the air to change what they do on the air? Here's what I want to seethe networks do - and I'll wager that this is not all that different from what you want to see them do too:

Show the game on the field.

Offer straight play-by-play and color commentary about the play on the field unencumbered by hyperbole.

Allow for brief periods of silence via the audio channel.

Reduce the number of "crowd shots" and "cheerleader shots" (or should those really be called "cleavage shots") by 99.44%

No celebrity guests in the booth other than nationally elected US officials, foreign heads of state or space alien delegates from the Xygork Nebula.

David Whitely had an observation in the Orlando Sentinel about cross-promotion by the networks that shows where this could go if left unchecked:

"Mobile ESPN went belly-up, but the network's drive to dominate all life on Earth marches on. Now you can apply for an ESPN credit card. Coming soon: Tony Kornheiser ESPN Shampoo and Stephen A. Smith ESPN Earplugs. God, please make them stop before John Clayton ESPN Lingerie."

Finally, Scott Ostler had this observation in the SF Chronicle:

"Moss and Porter: Glum and Glummer"

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

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