How Super Could It Be Without Joe McEwing?

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. If Rex Grossman sees his shadow, we get eight more weeks of winter. If Peyton Manning earns a trip to a theme park, we get eight more weeks of winter.

Yeah, that’s about the size of it. One football team will beat another tonight and 56 nights hence the Mets play the Cardinals in St. Louis. Now that will be a super Sunday and a super matchup, one surely worthy of carrying on in the name of double-alum Super Joe McEwing. May the victor walk a mile in his shoes.

Until then, let the other national pastime do its thing. Why not? I like chips. I don’t mind hype. I love NFL Films. I get a kick of counting to XLI. Not to be uncool about this, but I dig the drop everything & gather ’round nature of the Super Bowl, even one featuring two teams whose respective fortunes concern me not a whit.

They know what they’re doing in rigidly timed football. One big Tarantino adrenaline shot to the chest, we all burst out of our winter comas for a potentially thrilling moment and then it’s back to normal. One and done. It works for the Super Bowl.

It wouldn’t work for baseball. We like math. Best of five. Best of seven. The World Series is a microcosm of that long march of a season of ours. Oh, the games start too late unless you live in California (which I hear nobody does) and Fox debases it year in and year out (I really wish C-Span would telecast baseball in October) and it’s unwatchable if the Mets lose the seventh game of the NLCS, but otherwise baseball’s championship is perfect for baseball.

You don’t invite people over to watch it with you. You don’t fill in boxes to make it more interesting. You don’t wait for the third out so you can see the next Bud Light commercial. It’s best taken as a solemn vigil. It was exactly that when you were sneaking your transistor into school and it is exactly that when you’re prying your eyelids open to the 14th inning at Minute Maid Park at two in the blessed A.M. when you don’t know when or if or how it’s gonna end. If the Colts win tonight, we’ll get Peyton Manning out the wazoo. When the Giants and Mets and White Sox won, we got pleasantly surprising dabs of Dusty Rhodes and Al Weis and Geoff Blum. I bet they’d make pretty decent company at Disneyland.

Nevertheless, I’m willing to let football carry the ball today. It will be interesting to see what Marlins Stadium looks like with people.

The forecast in Miami calls for rain. Prepare the Soilmaster.

Elsewhere amid all things super:

• Super kudos to XM Radio for again replaying Game Four of a certain 1999 National League Division Series in the just-completed wee, small hours of Saturday night. Murph and Cohen still sound immortal and Todd Pratt still should have kept running.

• The super, one of a kind talent of tenor Billy Henderson has left us, another one of the Spinners gone too soon. Thankfully the music he left behind means that whenever we need to hear from him, he’ll be around.

• The most super superlative of all this morning is for the FAFIF readers and Mets fans everywhere who helped the Baby Miranda tribute at the Starlight Starbrite Childrens Foundation surpass and shatter its fundraising goal. Our deepest thanks for pitching in and brightening some otherwise dark days. PS: It’s not too late to lend a hand to the kids and families who can truly use your help.