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Great day for Red Sox, but baseball’s problems linger

By Hector Longo - Staff Writer | Oct 30, 2018

Today is a day to celebrate the World Champs, duck boats and all.

Allow me to bring us all back down to reality.

The Red Sox World Series win over the Los Angeles Dodgers drove home two major points.

First, baseball has to be faster. Check the ratings, outside of Boston or LA.

Dreadful. Four-hours plus cannot be the norm. Nobody is going to watch. I admit, I tuned in as much as possible.

I watched more baseball in the past three weeks than I have in three years. Literally.

But even I found myself snapping away to college football Saturday or the Sunday night game for stretches.

Secondly, baseball can’t survive as is with the current salary structure.

Sorry, there is a new CBA coming and this system with the Red Sox, at No. 1 ($230 million payroll) playing the No. 3 Dodgers ($200 million) while the average payroll in the game is $140 million and five teams are well under $100 million.

You don’t have to look at the World Series to prove Dave Roberts’ incompetence as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I pointed all the way back to the All-Star Game back on July 17 when Roberts allowed a laboring Stripling throw an outrageous 39 pitches in relief.

Stripling, you might or might know is an amped-up version of Nathan Eovaldi, a versatile sort who pitched five scoreless innings for LA in the 2017 postseason.

So where was he this October?

He was tired, overworked by a manager who burned him out in the useless, doesn’t-matter, waste-of-a-spectacle All-Star Game.

Stripling got shelled down the stretch because of the fatigue. He was 8-2 with a 2.08 ERA before the All-Star Game and 0-4 with a 6.41 ERA after it.

I don’t say this often in sports, because I want to see no human being lose their job. Dave Roberts should be fired.

***

The entire world of New England Patriots football gasped then was relieved and then was puzzled by the Monday machinations when NFL.com’s Ian Rappaport noted that receiver Josh Gordon would be disciplined Monday night in Buffalo on the field for being tardy earlier in the week.

Gordon played the whole game, catching four balls for 42 yards.

Both Belichick and the player dismissed the report.

“You’d have to talk to whoever wrote that. I have no idea,” the coach said.

My question about Gordon is not whether there was an incident or not. It’s, “what the heck happened to this guy?”

Here is a guy who dominated games with QBs like Brian Hoyer and Brandon Weeden. Now he has Tom Brady and can’t impact?

What a disappointment so far? Hey Bill, don’t discipline him for being late to the plane. Discipline him for jogging on his routes and not getting open against a slab of journeymen corners in Buffalo.

***

Ah, amid severe adversity and distress, we cull a nugget of greatness. Merrimack High School went down 28-0 to Bedford in the first quarter of Friday night’s 56-14 blowout.

Heard by one Tomahawk athlete on the sideline to his teammates: “I don’t know what planet you’re on but it’s time to get back to earth!”

Brilliant.

***

And finally, this is a special weekend in horse racing with the Breeders Cup on Friday and Saturday.

It is an amazing two days of racing.

Now, the question that will be repeated over and over this weekend.

What the heck are the folks that run racing thinking about holding this at Churchill Downs?

Guaranteed, rain will impact the track at some point. You are asking for misery out there.

Santa Anita or Del Mar, folks. They are the only tracks for this amazing event. Figure it out.

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