Super

Eli Manning won the Superbowl. As a Giants fan I guess I should be ecstatic about this. But I just find the whole thing so improbable that it has tempered my reaction. Plus, I'm still recovering from the emotional high that was the Johan Santana trade and signing by the Mets. But I mean, did anyone really think Eli was going to win the Superbowl and be named MVP? Little Giants was on basic cable the other day. It amused me (not he movie itself, I saw it at some point not long after it was released and was not overly impressed) that it was on the day before the Giants were essentially playing the role of the little Giants against the Pats' juggernaut. Besides, in another 20 years, Rick Moranis might look an awful lot like Tom Coughlin does now. But damn if it wasn't an incredible game.

The commercials, on the other hand. What kind of garbage was that? Remember the year, I think it was 2000, when like every other commercial was for some new .com (I refuse to use the conventional "dot.com" spelling, the extra "dot" is as superfluous as anything gets, assuming there can be varying levels of superfluosity)? Those were some awful commercials. And it's been downhill since. The Superbowl used to be a time where companies would begin whole new ad campaigns, new packaging or something. The Budweiser frogs, assorted Pepsi campaigns, the old Jordan vs. Bird "nothing but net" commercials. Now it seems like everyone is just trying to do something ridiculous and while they're succeeding at that, they're failing miserable at being memorable or funny. Seriously, can you remember one commercial from the game? Probably not, since no one is reading this and by the time anyone does the game will be months old, but still, the point remains. And yes, I realize that one of the major goals of an ad campaign, if nothing else, is to get people talking, even if it is negative. But I mean, where were the good commercials? Something with monkeys, anything?

*****

Johan. Santana. The best pitcher in the world is going to be pitching for the Mets. He is replacing an aging and increasingly ineffective (I believe that's how he was described back when they signed him) Tom Glavine. I have spent many months trying to forget their collapse of last year and one of the few things that has kept me going is simply this: fundamentally the Mets were four wins better than the Phillies and Braves last year (thank you, baseballprospectus.com). While this isn't much, it's all I have. And what it means is that all things being equal, going into next season, the Mets are still the better team. And all that's happened in the mean time is the Braves lost Andruw Jones and Edgar Renteria, while signing Glavine, and the Phillies lost Aaron Rowand (who will never again be as good as he was last year, but still, it's a lot of production to lose) and they signed Pedro Feliz, a blackhole of offensive suck. Assuming even a moderate bounceback from Carlos Delgado and hoping and praying that Jose Reyes' second half was the aberration, and the Mets are pretty easily a 95 win team. No one else in the NL can make a remotely similar claim. February 15th can't come soon enough.