Star, Bonehead of the Week (10/11 - 10/17)

by Julian Spivey

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Superstar: Chicago Sky
The Chicago Sky defeated the Phoenix Mercury on Sunday, Oct. 17 to win its first WNBA Championship in its 16-year history. The Sky defeated the Mercury 3-1 in the best-of-5 series.

The Sky got big performances in the clinching game from a couple of hometown heroes on the roster: Candace Parker, who came over before the season after more than a decade with the Los Angeles Sparks and scored 16 points with 13 rebounds and five assists in the clincher to win her second career title and Allie Quigley, a former DePaul star, who led the Sky with 26 points and hit five 3-pointers. Kahleah Copper was named MVP of the WNBA Finals scoring 17 points per game over the four-game series. Cooper had a big breakout season for the Sky making her first career All Star game after not playing a whole lot over the first four seasons of her career.

The only quibble I have with this is that the clinching game of the WNBA Finals was held on a Sunday afternoon during NFL season and as a result likely won’t have been seen by as many eyes as should have seen it. If the WNBA is going to continue its growth, it’s going to need its championship games in primetime. It needs to work with its television partners on this. 

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Bonehead: MLB Umpire Gabe Morales
The National League Division Series between the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers, the two best teams in Major League Baseball this season by record, was a terrific series that came down to a nightmare ending in a deciding fifth game due to a massive mistake by first base umpire Gabe Morales on a check-swing by Giants batter Wilmer Flores when he said Flores went around and struck out. Replay on the telecast showed Flores wasn’t even closing to going halfway on his swing. Honestly, I think it would need to be an obvious swing for the umpire to call a strike in that situation when you have the two best teams in baseball fighting for their postseason life.

The biggest game of the year simply shouldn’t come down to an umpire’s call on a non-reviewable play. And that’s another bonehead thing – this should be a reviewable play. If it had been the game would’ve gone on for at least one more pitch and likely would’ve ended without controversy. This postseason has shown on multiple occasions that the game needs to investigate some rulebook and review changes. 

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