Cautiously Ratcheting Down My Pessimism

Well, we're four days into July and the San Francisco Giants are not only over .500, they have the second-best record in the National League! Will that continue to be the case? Probably not. But they at least need to be taken seriously as a playoff contender. Their pitching is certainly strong enough. When Barry Zito is currently your worst starter, you're doing well. I know that he hasn't done much good since coming to the team for a ridiculously inflated price, but he is still capable of making fine starts, usually stays healthy and might still return one day to the form that made the much-lambasted Brian Sabean bring him across the bay. Randy Johnson has pitched better of late than his ERA indicates. Newcomer Ryan Sadowski shows real promise. And Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum are reminding me of Bill Swift and John Burkett back in 1993. Not only that, the team is finally hitting, though most players in the lineup are way too impatient at the plate.

The Greatest

The first tennis match I watched with complete focus was the famous Björn Borg victory over John McEnroe at Wimbledon. That one still ranks as the best one I've ever seen, because their respective styles of play led to so many long rallies and beautiful shots. I missed much of last year's rain delay-prolonged epic in which Rafael Nadal defeated Roger Federer, but what I saw came very close to that match. Today's contest between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick was of a different order, given the dominance of both men's service game. But it was remarkably well played and developed, over the course of that astonishingly long final set, the sort of tension that the Borg-McEnroe tiebreaker provided. I'm so glad I was woken up in time to watch it. I was pulling for Roddick, but I knew that I'd be happy if Federer won. He's a truly remarkable champion, with a feathery touch of incomparable precision. In the end, though, I think it was the onset of early-evening shadows that gave him the edge he needed to prevail. He couldn't have asked for a better mach in which to stake his claim to the title of greatest men's player ever.