Monday night rewind

Monday was one of those epic days in sports where everything kind of fell into place the way everyone expected. Robert Cheruiyot dominated the Boston Marathon... again.

The Flyers went from a 3-1 lead in a best-of-seven series to a do-or-die Game 7... again.

And Chase Utley hit a home run and made some clutch plays to lead the Phillies to a victory... again.

You know - no big whoop.

Anyway, Cheruiyot won his fourth Boston against a weaker field than in past years. One reason for that is because the top American runners either ran in the Olympic Trials last November (or London two weeks ago) or will run in the track Trials in July. So unlike the past handful of years where the elite Americans showed up and ran with Cheruiyot for a little bit, this year there were other things going on.

Additionally, guys like Ryan Hall and the fastest runners in the world went to London where the course is much more forgiving, the competition fierce and fast times are inevitable. Boston's course beats the hell out the quads and calves with the undulating terrain. No, Boston isn't exactly a slow course - there is a net downhill, after all. There are parts of the route from Hopkinton to Boston where runners actually have to hold back to avoid going too fast.

In contrast, the uphill climbs in Newton come at a point where a runner's glycogen stores are just about gone. They don't call them Heartbreak Hill for nothing. Hell, I recall doing workouts through the Newton hills and attacked the famed (infamous?) Heartbreak Hill fresh and it gave me a little kick in the ass. Imagine spending miles 16 to 21 of a marathon trying to get over those hills.

Lance Armstrong, who mastered Alpe d'Huez (among others) during his seven Tour de France victories, ran his first Boston yesterday. From the sound of it, Armstrong got a little boot to the rear in Newton though it should be noted that he ran negative splits for a respectable 2:50:58.

According to the Associated Press:

Armstrong said there's no comparison between running a marathon and cycling, either physically or mentally.

"You can't compare the pounding or running with the efficiency of a bicycle," he said. "Nothing even comes close to comparing the pain, especially it seems like this course, with a significant amount of downhills ... that really take their toll on the muscles."

But Boston is not exactly a world-record course, either. Cheruiyot was on course-record pace yesterday, casually ripping through miles 3 to 19 in 4:53 or faster. That includes a 4:37 at mile 19 that obliterated the rest of the field. However, Cheruiyot "slowed" over the final 10k to finish in 2:07:43, well off his record 2:07:14 he set in 2006. Interestingly, Cheruiyot's fourth victory in Boston was only the fifth winning time under 2:08 in the 112 years of the race.

Compare that to the London Marathon this year where the top six in the 2008 race ran under 2:07 and it's easy to see why the best runners don't show up to Boston (or New York) any more. Why go get beat up when Chicago, London and Berlin have (relative) cakewalk courses?

Nevertheless, Boston and its sponsors might have to dig into the coffers to lure the big guns away from London in the spring. The fact that Haile Gebrselasie, Paul Tergat, Martin Lel, Khalid Khannouchi - and worse - Ryan Hall, have not lined up on Patriot's Day in Hopkinton proves that Boston is missing something.

Sure, runners like London because of the speedy course and the chance for fast times. But more than anything else runners go where the best competition is. That hasn't been Boston for a long time.

*** Elsewhere, it's Game 7 night in Washington where most folks seem to have a bad feeling about the fate of the Flyers.

There. That's the depth of my hockey analysis.

*** Had Chase Utley not broken his hand last season, Jimmy Rollins probably wouldn't have won the MVP Award. Chances are Utley would have been in the top three with Prince Fielder and Matt Holliday. So noting that it was Utley's injury that pushed Rollins into the MVP discussion in 2007, it's kind of ironic that Rollins' injury has the spotlight on Utley.

Then again, six homers in five straight games kind of gets a ballplayer noticed...

Plus, it's only April 22, too. There is a lot of baseball to go.

Nevertheless, Utley is off to one of those stop-what-your-doing-when-he-comes-up starts. So far he has reached base in all but one of the Phillies' 20 games, has posted gaudy numbers in categories that all the stat geeks love, and seems to have his hand in the outcome of every game.

Things happen whenever Utley is on the field. But then again that's not new.

Remember when Ryan Howard used to be that way?

Anyway, during his pre-game powwow with the writers prior to last night's game at Coors Field, the Wilmington News Journal's Scott Lauber reports this quote from manager Charlie Manuel:

"Chase Utley is a very, very, very tough player. I've been in the game a long time, and he's as tough as any player I've seen. I'm talking about old throwback players, guys like Pete Rose and Kirby Puckett. You could put Utley in that category. He could play with any of them."

So there's that... which is nice.

Blah, blah, blah...

ESPN is here at the ballpark for one of those national cable broadcasts that any clearheaded person with a normal life and responsibilities finds nauseating. There are a lot of reasons this is the case, but for lack time (and desire) we'll stick with the superficial. Firstly, a Sunday night game means the game won't start until after 8 p.m. My kids go to bed at 8 p.m. and my oldest boy (he's 4) says "baseball is boring." The reason is because there are never any big games on TV before his bed time. I suspect there are a lot of kids out there who don't say baseball is boring and have a respectable bed time as well. They get shut out, too.

Worse, because Sunday night games are produced by ESPN it means they are overwrought with all sorts of gizmos, graphics, teevee things and general fluff that hinder the natural ebb and flow of the game. When ESPN gets its hands on a game it's just like building a dam in the middle of a free-flowing river. Sure, the water moves a little bit, but there are no rapids. In fact there are times when some production geek jumps out onto the field to tell the umpires to halt the game because all of the commercials haven't run yet.

Look, I'm an adult with a brain who doesn't like to have his chain jerked. Just show me the game so I can get to bed at a respectable hour on a Sunday night because the kids are getting up at the crack and after that all bets are off.

Sleep, as we have written on this site on so many other occasions, is better than HGH.

Another reason why the ESPN game stinks is Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. Truth be told, Miller was brilliant with the Orioles before Peter Angelos destroyed that once proud franchise. These days it seems as if he gets paid by the word. Meanwhile, Joe Morgan was brilliant as a big-league second baseman with that kinetic chicken wing flap that personified all his at-bats.

They say true genius is marked by a little bit of crazy[1], so in that regard Morgan at the plate was quite a treat.

But listening to Morgan has an announcer is like listening to that old man who slowly drove his big-assed car with the tail fins through my neighborhood a few weeks ago while I was out running. Instead of passing by, the old guy sidled that beast next to me to chastise me for "running on the wrong side of the road."

"You should run on the other side so you face traffic," he yelled through the passenger-side window. "You're going to get killed running the way you are."

"Dude," yes, I called the old man (he was at least 80) driving a powder blue Cadillac with tail fins, "Dude." "It's a one-lane road. There is no other side."

So yeah, that's what Joe Morgan sounds like to me. He's a guy chewing me out because he can... until I turn the channel.

Which is what I usually do.

But not tonight - instead I'm sitting in the press box filthy with New York writers and local TV types who like to get out for a ballgame once in a while. Better yet, the TV hanging from the ceiling right over my seat perfectly augments the action on the field. That's because ESPN games are on a seven-second delay, so if I miss a pitch on the field all I have to do is look straight up to catch what happened.

Thank you, ESPN. And thank you to the folks at the Federal Communications Commission for protecting our eyes and ears from something.

*** Had I been in better shape during November and December of last year I wouldn't be at the ballpark tonight. Instead, I would be fast asleep in a cozy hotel room with an early wakeup call the night before the Boston Marathon. When I was figuring out my racing plans for 2008 back then, I thought I'd need a good four months in order to get into great shape.

Who would have guessed that I would have been ready to go for Boston instead of two weeks from now?

Nevertheless, the Boston Marathon is tomorrow and like the geek I am I will be glued to the Internet coverage on WCSN.com as well as the television broadcast on Versus.

Is there any way Robert Cheruiyot won't win his fourth straight Boston? I wonder if Brian Sell considered jumping in the race as a hearty warm up for his buildup before the Beijing Olympics in August.

Anyway, this year's Boston had the extra added flair of playing host to the women's Olympic Marathon Trials this morning. It was kind of a doubleheader of marathoning, if you will. But rather than run the regular Boston course from Hopkinton to the Back Bay, the women's trials looped around the Charles River into Cambridge and back a few times before finishing on Boylston Street.

And just as everyone suspected, Deena Kastor won easily by coming from well off the pace to lead a relatively weak field. Kastor is one of the best five or six marathoners in the world as well as one of the best one or two American marathoners ever, so the fact that she didn't take over the lead until 23½ miles into the race wasn't as dramatic as it could have been.

Actually, Kastor made it look kind of easy by rolling through at 5:43 pace.

But when she goes to Beijing for her second Olympic medal, Kastor knows a 2:29 won't cut it, nor will her main competition be the No. 42-seeded and unsponsored Magdalena Lewy Boulet or the No. 17-seeded Blake Russell, the 2006 national cross country champion.

In Beijing it's going to be hot, dirty and intense.

Meanwhile, Joan Samuelson, the 1984 Olympic Marathon champion and former U.S. record holder, finished with a respectable 2:48. That's really good considering that Samuelson has qualified to run in every single Olympic Marathon Trials and will turn 51 next month.

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[1] Actually, I don't know if "they" say that at all. I just made it up.