IT'S NOT WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOSE; IT'S HOW WELL YOU PLAY THE GAME: The AL Cy Young race this year may be the most interesting one in a long time. That's not exactly because it's close. Just about everybody with an opinion thinks it's not close at all. It's just that a huge portion of the people you ask say that the Yankees' C.C. Sabathia is the only possible choice, and another huge portion of the people you ask say that there is no rational argument for anyone other than the Mariners' Felix Hernandez. (A small percentage of the people you ask would like to give it to Liriano or Lee.)

The argument for C.C. Sabathia is that he is going to hit and exceed the 20-win mark while pitching pretty well, which indicates that he just "knows how to win." The argument for Felix Hernandez is that he has been better than Sabathia in literally every respect other than the ability to play for a team that scores runs. Quite literally everything that a pitcher does, Felix has done better than Sabathia (including performance in high-leverage situations, which indicates the Felix pitches better when the game is on the line and puts the lie to the "knows how to win" line). Yet Sabathia is the favorite, because 120 years ago some writer decided to assign wins to pitchers, and because a diminishing but still significant number of baseball writers believe that everything that ever was should ever be, to the exclusion of sense and reason.

Yes, I am a Mariners fan. Last year, though, Felix had a great year and more wins than Greinke. You may recall that I said in this very space that Greinke deserved the Cy by a wide margin. Is there really any argument this year that Felix doesn't?

SHE CAST OUT HAGAR: Prompted by Adam's comment below, I rewatched Isaac and Ishamel, the (in)famous first episode of the third season of The West Wing in which Sorkin and the cast grapple with the events of September 11. A few thoughts:

• Yes, it's contrived--we lock down basically the entire regular cast with a group of students as a result of a security breach, and each of them gets a brief monologue to the students "responding to a question"--but it's well made and designed within that contrivance. It was completely put together in two weeks, and given that, it's in decent shape.
  
• Though Sorkin clearly pushes certain broad points of view, it's significant that the characters are not monolithic on the issues--for instance, CJ's entire monologue is directed to how the CIA is a good thing, while Toby is more skeptical. There's not a lot of debate or interchange, but there's clear difference in where the characters come from.
  
• Man, John Spencer was good--he has to play the heavy here in a lot of ways, interrogating a White House staffer, and manages to make it work. (And it's an interesting bookend to his plotline back in Season 1 with Liza Weil as the intern who leaked data about him.)
  
• Even though it's clearly written in and of the moment, it's fascinating how a lot of the issues the episode addresses are still in front of us. (I won't say more so as not to get overly political.)
• While there's an opening warning about "don't worry about continuity," credit to everyone involved for keeping it relatively in continuity--the characters' positions all seem natural and not created for purposes of the episode. The one glaring issue is that Toby talks about a (positive) experience with his father's friend, which seems to be directly contradicted by the 4th Season Christmas episode, which revolved around Toby's frosty relationship with his father.
  
• Man, Bradley Whitford has aged a lot since then (though part of that is due to the kind of character he's now playing on The Good Guys). It's particularly odd, since the rest of the cast has not seemed to age quite as much.
• I then proceeded to watch Manchester, and had forgotten that Connie Britton recurred in Season 3 as Ron Silver's character's female right hand.
  

LIKE COBB, JOHNSON, MATHEWSON, RUTH AND WAGNER, ONLY WITH PASTIER SKIN AND LESS SOCIAL SKILLS: Greg Ambrosius, Matthew Berry, Scott Engel, Eric Karabell and Greg Kellogg are the inaugural inductees into the Fantasy Sports Writers Hall of Fame. I'd argue for Joe Bryant's induction solely on the basis of popularizing Value-Based Drafting, but can't think of who else belongs.

WE REMEMBER: It's a bit odd having a September 11 anniversary on a weekend, because that's not how we experienced the day itself, though today's perfect autumn-like weather here in Philadelphia is eerily reminiscent.

I have nothing new or profound to say today, but it's been a tradition here to provide some apolitical space for members of our community to speak their minds on their memories of or reflections on the day, or on those we lost or anything else you deem appropriate. Below the fold, still the song that hits me hardest about that day:

A FOUR-HOUR LOVE LETTER TO A SLAVE-BASED ECONOMY: Matt Zoller Seitz registers some disagreement with Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, The Silence of the Lambs and six other classic films.

THROUGH EARLY MORNING FOG I SEE VISIONS OF THE THINGS TO BE: Almost belatedly, but we have created a free NFL Suicide Pool on ESPN for the second straight year. Lou W. won it last year in fifteen weeks, and the rules are simple: pick one game each week (no spread), and you cannot re-use a team once selected. Good luck.

THE INTERNET IS INSENSITIVE: I clicked on a CNN.com video about the fire in San Bruno, and I had to wait out a commercial for the Blackberry Torch. Not a joke.