Posts Tagged Under ‘Sports’

Winter Classic: The Review

It went well. Here’s why:

• If I were a more cynical dude, I’d say the NHL scripted that game in advance and then played it out like pro wrestling. Taking the game to a shootout that rests on the final breakaway, by the game’s biggest star, who slides it in to win? Fixing a hockey game though seems particularly difficult: Chris Pronger leads the NHL in ice time per game right now, and he’s still out there for less than half of the game. You could try buying off the goalie, but what’s the likelihood you can pay both goalies to maintain a 1-1 tie and have them deliver?

  Then there’s the fact that people tend to bet on sports that are popular, so I think it’s a very high likelihood that we’ll see the end of ice occurring in nature before we run into a massive goal-shaving scandal.

• My favorite thing about this outdoor game idea is that it unintentionally does what the NHL should have done all along in the disastrous 1990s: it focuses on the existing fan base. Bill Clement wrote a piece for MSNBC before the game where he pointed out that random TV watchers are likely to see a few seconds of outdoor hockey, stop and watch with interest, then potentially become hockey fans. You’re still talking about a crazy disconnect in most of the country: nobody living in Phoenix even experiences winter, much less nostalgia for frozen-pond hockey. But the people who already follow hockey, who have been saying for years that the game isn’t what it used to be, eat that purist-hockey stuff up: tickets to today’s game sold out 30 minutes after being offered. So while the NHL probably had the same fans in mind who’ve been ignoring hockey for 10 years even as pro teams opened up shop in their home cities, the whole idea is hella cool to pre-existing fan dudes like me.
• Penguins throwback jerseys: it worked, though I wish they had been the all-yellow jerseys from the ’70s. I can’t seem to find a pic, even when I googled “Rick Kehoe”. What good are you, Internet?
• I haven’t seen a dude get hit like Brooks Orpik did in a long while. I thought I was watching NFL Films by mistake.

Out.

Posted January 1, 2008 at 11:53 pm | Link | Tags: Hockey | No Comments »

Ringing in 2008

Happy New Year, and don’t forget to watch the Penguins decimate the Sabres New Year’s Day at 1 p.m. on NBC.

Return of the Steeler Funerary Rites

The Post-Gazette wrote that another fan tied his memorial rites in with the Steelers, this time by having the Steelers logo carved into his gravestone and having his wife bring his ashes to the game on Sunday. This story was kind of bittersweet, in that he died having never fulfilled his wish to go to Heinz Field, but he did make it there in the end and it gave comfort to his family. He gets extra props by being from New Hampshire and becoming a Steeler fan by choice instead of by region.

This follows the infamous Pittsburgh funeral of two years ago, where the dude was laid out wearing Steeler gear, sitting in a recliner in front of a TV that played Steeler highlights. He even had a pack of cigarettes and a beer next to the chair. That one was more awesome than sad, and made me think that the deceased must have been a great guy to hang with.

In poor taste, I’d like to note that the Steeler / burial connection is starting to prove a lot more relevant after the past two games.

Steelers v. Bengals

The game:

• The Steelers clearly won that game on merit, but I hate seeing so many controversial calls make it a murky win. This one wasn’t as bad as the Super Bowl, which even I will admit was a lucky break. Still, Seattle beat themselves that time. Enough revisiting.
• Willie Parker has fumbled twice in the entire season before today. Therefore, the fumbles this game get a “so what”.
• Congrats to Hines on the TD record.
• I hate the Patriots, but I hate the Ravens more. That’s why I really hope this screenshot from my Time Magazine NFL pick ‘em league comes to pass. (Also note how close I was on the Sunday tiebreaker score. Hell yeah. Good thing I was wrong, because my prediction would have wound up as a push. But, it didn’t. Hell yeah again.)

3-0

That was the most relieving end to a football game in a long time.

And they even name-checked Woodland Hills. (Though from what I’ve read lately, it’s probably not a place to be proud of anymore. Be sure to read the part where a student tries to excuse his punching a cop because he thought he was only punching a security guard.)

Tank J.

Is any football fan surprised that the Cowboys picked up a dude who pled guilty to weapons and assault charges? I’d like to see them play the Bengals in an arrest-off.

Barry Bonds: True Greatness

Yay Barry! Yay baseball!

I would like to take this post to acknowledge that, unlike Rick Reilly or any of the sports media world’s other garment-rending, tsk-tsking tradition police, I’m taking a real stand on Barry Bonds’ new MLB career homerun record:

This is the greatest thing to happen in baseball in 30 years, and perhaps ever.

Remember when baseball was cool? Yeah, it really wasn’t that long ago, maybe the 1980s or even pre-1994. Skinny dudes like Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds (see photo), or big fat guys like Tony Gwynn and Fernando Valenzuela, were the real stars of the day: they could hit (well, maybe not Barry in the 1990-1992 NLCS), field, pitch and occasionally even crush a 500-footer over the fence. Hell, teams even wore brown uniforms with pride, so great was baseball’s prestige.

What about 2007? Today, Major League Baseball is proud to note that its fan base consists entirely of the residents of Boston and New York, the yuppies of Chicago’s North Side, a smattering of bandwagoners in Los Angeles and San Francisco, some dudes in Seattle, the city of St. Louis, and George Will. The rest of us get a kick out of watching the national media wring their clammy hands and pull out their hair over steroids and pennant races, because we know that they’d really feel a lot better about the sporting world if they just calmed down and waited for NFL Week 1 like the rest of the 300 million people in this great nation.

I keed, I keed. Well, no, I don’t.

Major League Baseball is hella busted. We’ve had a baseball class system for some years now (my dislike isn’t based entirely on the Pirates’ performance: do you think the residents of Milwaukee, Baltimore, Toronto, Cincinnati, Tampa Bay, Detroit (except for last year), Kansas City, San Diego, Cleveland, Florida or Philadelphia really feel that much better about the past 10 years?) and it shows no signs of improving, because even with revenue sharing, who’s going to compete against a baseball-crazed East Coast media market? Then you have the drugs, which while a problem in other sports, don’t seem to have the same, “Yeah Mom, I’ll clean it up, just let me just beat the mall, beach and warehouse boards in Skate or Die 2 first!” result that they do on baseball’s leadership. Football and basketball offer us genetic-freak gladiators without shame, and in fact portray their players as a warrior elite; baseball still clings to its all-American, Charlie-Hustle (admitted gambler, BTW) tradition even as we watch 250-lb. behemoths smash balls over the fence.

Barry Bonds’ No. 756 is the icing on the crap-flavored cake that we’ve been served in the past decade by the powers behind MLB. Baseball’s most glamorous record is now held by a universally-loathed, self-pitying, race-baiting bully with a head like Space Ghost and a disposition rivaling Albert Belle. Does the public like it? No!

It seems to me that Bonds’ asterisk-ridden eclipse of Hank Aaron’s record is exactly the kick in the butt that MLB needs to blow itself up and start over. Baseball managed to learn from Ty Cobb that “Pistol-whipping a man for being of a different race is bad! OMG!” We haven’t seen any pistol-whippings lately, so in a more minor offense, surely baseball can learn that “Letting a chemically-juiced potato-head break our most cherished record is probably bad! LOL!”

And I would also like to applaud the Pittsburgh Pirates for attempting to break the all-time unintended crowd-booing record with this effort! Time to usurp Dick Cheney’s record!

(For real, putting a tribute to Barry “I failed you in the playoffs and then left you for more money than you could afford” Bonds on the video screen in Pittsburgh? Is this a joke by some really smart dude in the Pirates p.r. office who likes to make people mad and then laugh at how he did so? If so, kudos to you, sir!)

Ducks

I was all set to be angry that another warm-weather city won the Stanley Cup, but I’ll give Anaheim the benefit of the doubt for the following reasons:

1. People in the region seem to care about the team at least a little bit.
2. Changing the name to just Ducks to get rid of the Disneyfied “Mighty Ducks” legacy reversed one of the most emblematic embarrassments of the corroded, corporatized and corpulent 1990s NHL.
3. It gave me a reason to re-read the hilarious anger directed by Edmonton fans at Chris Pronger and his wife. For Pittsburgh fans to understand, this stuff rivals the local hatred of Barry Bonds.
4. Teemu Selanne crying. I didn’t even think the Euros cared about the Stanley Cup, yet he was on there bawling his eyes out. Funny stuff.
5. Ottawa knocked out the Penguins, and it’s fun to watch them lose yet again.

It helps to have the triple deke.

Bummer.

It ended too soon, but they still exceeded expectations. Good jorb, Pens. See you this fall.

Pens in the Playoffs

Back again, readaz.

I’m in Pittsburgh for Easter, and definitely feeling good about the Penguins’ chances this NHL playoff season. Tonight’s the regular season finale against the Rangers, so as my friends and I get together to watch, I’ll be watching the following in particular:

• Marc-André Fleury - a few months ago, I regarded him as the wild-card for the team. But now he’s looking pretty solid, so I’m all good with this.
• Third-line play - Laraque was a great pickup, but more than being just a tough guy, he’s got good skills as the third-line anchor. The dude can play, plus he beat Donald Brashear real good at the last Capitals-Pens game I attended.
• Gary Roberts - combined with Laraque, this guy represents part of the best trade the Pens have made since 1992. He’s got a great ability to get under other teams’ skin around the opposing goal, and I don’t think things will be any different against (most likely) the Senators.

Point is, I’m amped. Let’s do this.