The Pendulum Swings

2010 has left, borne into the glorious past on the shoulders of a World Series victory for the Giants, leaving behind the forgettable details of a 49er football team mired in futility, and whose change of head coach and presumably quarterback will hopefully end this recent reign of error at Candlestick.

Spring Training begins in a matter of months, and no one gives the Giants any shot of repeating. The Phillies have been anointed champs already with the signing of Cliff Lee, so I guess there's no point in playing the games, then.

Alas, Edgar Renteria claims to have been insulted that the Giants offered him "only" $1 million dollars to come play one more season. All the people who attempt to justify his indignation need to adjust their definition of disrespect.

In the meantime, it is time to refocus on the English Premier League. Newcastle is in the thick of a relegation dogfight, with all teams ranked between 11th and 18th in table all within three points of each other. So that will be an ongoing narrative of survival, a question of adjusting life bit by bit, earning enough points to stay up in the Premier League, which is, of course, what most of us are trying to do in the metaphorical Premier League of life.

Without an apparent chance of Newcastle winning the title or qualifying for Europe, and with more anti-management anger after Chris Hughton was abruptly fired, the season becomes, for me, a matter of neutral enjoyment, with a tendency to hope for Arsenal or even Manchester United to beat Chelsea to the title.

And so it was that I watched Manchester travel to play West Bromwich Albion today, in the hope that I would see fine attacking soccer from a high-quality team, thinking that West Brom's injury crisis in defense would allow Manchester to play a free-flowing game and hopefully provide me with lots of fantasy points through Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez and Darren Fletcher.

The game was entertaining, but as always, nothing was simple. West Brom was clearly struggling on defense, conceding within three minutes to a fine header from Wayne Rooney, but for the bulk of the game, the Baggies, playing in front of a home crowd, looked much more enthusiastic on offense, harder-working, more dangerous. In particular, Chris Brunt, James Morrison, Jerome Thomas and Graham Dorrans were out-hustling the more famous names of Patrice Evra, Gabriel Obertan, and Dimitar Berbatov to the 50-50 balls, and Morrison scored the best goal I've seen this year on a long-range volley, and Manchester United was extremely fortunate to avoid being down to ten men when Gary Neville escaped unpunished for a tackle in the box that should have resulted in a penalty kick and a red card.

But the difference in quality in these teams showed through, as it so often does in the other 9 times out of ten encounters between a David and a Goliath. And it showed through in just a couple of details, a few moments that made all the difference. West Brom justly earned a penalty kick in the second half when Jerome Thomas cut past Rio Ferdinand who blatantly tripped him. This should have been the moment of redemption, a moment of justice for the earlier penalty that was not awarded. But Peter Odemwingie, in stepping up to take the penalty, twelve yards away from the goal, rolled the ball woefully wide of the post. And moments later, perhaps distracted by that failure, perhaps suffering from an abrupt withdrawal of momentum, West Brom's defense collapsed on a corner kick, allowing Hernandez to direct an unchallenged header into the goal for the win.

So in this game, as in so much of life, the (Red) Devil was in the details, but there was a lot of joy to be had in the big picture as well, for an entertaining game that could have gone the other way just as easily.