In Point/Counterpoint, a guest writer is invited to debate a topic of interest with NLN’s senior sports writer, Ray D. Enzé.

Monday, September 28, 2010

POINT
If There’s One Threat Greater Than Bakersfield, It’s Fargo
By Ray D. Enzé, Northern Lights News

Prior to the start of the 2008 playoffs, yours truly warned you not to take the Bakersfield Bears lightly. And did you listen? Of course not; young whippersnappers these days never listen to their elders. Hopefully you were listening as I cackled, “Told ‘ya so!” at the top of my voice after the Borealis were swept out of the playoffs. I think you just might have been; it would explain the spike in toilet papering of my front lawn.

Last year I again sounded the warning trumpet heralding the grave danger posed by yet another Sovereign League Division Series matchup against Bakersfield. As luck would have it, Aurora snuck past Bakersfield in four. This prompted all manner of derogatory emails ridiculing me as a “curmudgeon”, a “coot”, and some other youthful jargon I had to look up (strangely, the victory also resulted in a spike in toilet papering of my front lawn).

Maybe you thought you had heard the last of me, but you can’t keep a good, crotchety sportswriter down. And so I’m back to serve notice to the citizens of Aurora and the greater Denver area: Be warned. If there’s one threat greater than Bakersfield, it’s Fargo.

Aurora fans have become soft and overconfident. Whenever the playoffs roll around, they point to the team’s gaudy regular season record as if it’s going to save them from the dangers ahead. Well, let me ask you this: What did those 112 wins buy you in 2008? A 3-game sweep at the hands of Bakersfield, that’s what! All the regular season success in the world doesn’t matter a hill of beans once it turns to fall on the calendar.

“But Ray,” I hear you sniveling, “We won 120 games this year. Surely that’s a sign that we’ve got a dominant, can’t-lose squad of destiny on our hands!” Wrong! That glistening record is fool’s gold. The Borealis are actually a team in turmoil. Over the last three weeks the team has a record of 10-12. You read that right: 30% of Aurora’s losses have come within the last three weeks of the season. Talk about staggering into the playoffs!

Included in that inauspicious stretch was a 7-game losing streak which just so happened to feature a 3-game sweep at the hands of Fargo. And what a sweep it was! The Dinosaurs held Aurora to just four runs and 18 hits in the series. Sure, the games were played at Jurassic Park, but it’s not like the Borealis were facing the pitching equivalent of Murderer’s Row. Fargo rolled out their #4 and #5 starting pitchers in the first two games and still shut down Aurora’s bats. What’s going to happened when we have to face Encarnación, Gallegos and Juárez back-to-back-to-back?

Struggling against the Dinosaurs has been par for the course. No team has played the Borealis tougher than Fargo, and Aurora has fewer wins against Fargo (seven) than any other opponent. Every year there seems to be one team that has your number in particular. Unfortunately for the Borealis, they’re going to be facing that team in the SL Division Series.

I mentioned Javier Encarnación earlier. He’s an amazing story. After a dreadful rookie season in 2007 and a career-threatening rotator cuff tear right at the start of the 2008 campaign, Encarnación has come on with a vengeance. He’s won 36 games and struck out 391 batters over the past two seasons. While the nicknamed trio of “Fireworks”, “Pep” and “Gigolo” hog most of the attention, a solid argument can be made that Encarnación has earned a spot amongst those elites. Oh, did I mention Fargo has won each of his last seven starts, a span in which Encarnación hasn’t allowed more than 2 runs during any appearance? Are you still feeling confident that this newcomer to the postseason is going to be a push-over?

And yet, unbelievably, Encarnación isn’t the greatest threat on the Fargo squad. First baseman Ramón Flores is a born and bred killer of pitchers, my friends. Just like Encarnación, Flores escapes notice from most unobservant baseball “fans” because he plays for a less “sexy” American heartland team. If he were playing on one of the coasts, in the glitz and glamour of Palm Springs or Jacksonville, you better believe people would know the name “Ramón Flores”. As it is, this unheralded beast was inexplicably left off the SL All-Star team. He’s taken his frustrations out on the league, posting an OPS over 1.000 in four of the season’s six months. He finished the year with the third highest OPS in the league (1.023) and clubbed 17 of his 27 home runs in the second half of the season. StatsLab compares Flores’s career path favorably to more household names like Michael Smith, Narahiko Imada and Kuemon Kiyomizu. I suggest you become familiar with him, Aurora fans, and fast, for you’re staring at your doom when you watch him in the batter’s box.

While Fargo enters the playoffs healthy, Aurora staggers in minus two of their relievers. Yasuhiro Ohayashi will be out into the 2011 season after mangling his elbow on the final pitch of a demoralizing 3-2, 13-inning loss at the hands of the Codgers. In that same game, key setup man Orlando “Crabby” Ramos had to be removed from the game due to the formation of a blister on his left index finger (side question: Why did the Borealis not call up a single minor league pitcher to provide September relief for an overworked pitching staff?). A source inside the organization tells me that Ramos is being left on the Division Series roster but that he will most likely be unavailable to pitch for the first three games. Since Aurora is planning on carrying 14 batters, that will leave just 10 healthy pitchers on the roster for games 1-3.

Add it all up and the odds seemed stacked against an easy romp. Yes, Fargo is a newcomer to the postseason dance, but don’t be fooled. This team is a serious threat to Aurora’s dreams of a Rodriguez Cup repeat.

COUNTERPOINT
If There’s One Threat Greater Than Bears, It’s Dinosaurs
By Stephen T. Colbert, nationally syndicated conservative talk show host

Time for our latest Sport Report update. It’s that time of year again, folks. The leaves are changing color, and the enemies of democracy are preparing to make a mockery of our national pastime. I’m referring, of course, to the looming Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance playoffs. In previous years, the savage brutes known as the “Bakersfield Bears” have threatened to lay claim to the league’s coveted championship trophy, the Rodriguez Cup.

Now nation, as you all know, I’m no fan of bears. They’re Godless killing machines and a menace to good, decent Americans everywhere. I’ve often referred to bears as the #1 threat facing America. Fortunately, the great bear baseball insurgence was put down last year when the Aurora Borealis defeated the Bakersfield Bears in four games, eliminating the heathen scum from the PEBA playoffs.

But just when you thought it was safe to bust out your honey pots and pack the family into the RV for a nice fall picnic, an even greater danger has emerged. Yes folks, I said a greater danger than bears! I’m referring, of course, to dinosaurs.

It’s a little-known fact that dinosaurs are the forefathers of bears. In fact, the modern day bear is the unholy amalgamation of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Stegosaurus, and the snake from the Garden of Eden. Jimmy, I believe we have a stock photo of how these beasts came together to form the monster that we now know as the bear?

Terrifying! And now, just a couple thousand years after they were thought to have gone extinct, these bloodthirsty dinosaurs have returned to wreck havoc on our beloved game of baseball.

Now it’s bad enough that dinosaurs have joined bears in ruining our national pastime. What’s really insidious about this evil animal invasion is its source. One could almost predict that a bear attack would originate from California. Those wackos have a picture of a bear on their state flag, for crying out loud! But this incursion is far more sinister, folks, for it originates from the very heartland of America: Fargo, ND. What a perfectly diabolical plan! Who would suspect baseball bat-toting dinosaurs to use North Dakota as the staging ground for an assault on American sports? It sounds to me like something we’d see coming out of New Jersey.

The brutes are led by “Javier Encarnación”, a starting pitcher, and “Ramón Flores”, who mans first base. Great, not only are we dealing with dinosaurs; we’re dealing with immigrant dinosaurs! That’s two threats to America rolled into one! And folks, these are not threats to be taken lightly. I’m told that the dino that goes by the name “Ramón Flores” is truly a monster at the plate. He had an OPS (On-base Plus Slugging %) of 1.023 this year, not to mention an IPS (Innocent People Scarfed %) of 5.000! Jimmy, do have a picture of this “Ramón Flores”?

Apparently he’s not just out to destroy America, but time itself! Now, nation, there is still hope. Once again standing in the path of unholy sporting annihilation are the Aurora Borealis. You may recall that the Borealis faced the bear threat in 2008, and while unable to stop their rampage they bravely took on these gaming grizzlies again last year, this time beating them back into an early hibernation. Now it again falls to these Rocky Mountain heroes to keep our beloved Rodriguez Cup trophy where it belongs: In the hands of a team named for the effect brought on by the interaction of gases. Seriously, what says “baseball” to you more than the interaction of gases?

So here’s wishing the very best to those stalwarts in Aurora who stand between us and the dinosaur menace. All of America is counting on you, Aurora. The last thing we want to see is a dinosaur victory parade through the Dakotas. They’d probably chew the faces off of Mount Rushmore.