3/14/08 Gone Fishin'
As far as I'm concerned right about now is the doldrums of the sports season. The sports fan in me is lost at sea without a breeze or clear direction home. Football is over and the NBA and NHL playoffs are still a bit off. The post-season seedings are still up in the air, but their regular seasons are a yawner compared to football. Could be because, in a way, the entire NFL season is one big playoffs.
Consider, hockey playoffs are four rounds of seven games or 16 to 28 games. Similarly the NBA playoffs are 14 to 26 games. The entire NFL season including playoffs is 20 games max. This means just about every game, every week of the season is important and can make or break in football. Plus there's no do-over rematch in the playoffs. One bad game and you're gone fishin'.
I'm not saying football is better than basketball or hockey, but there is some aspect of attention economics here. Supply and demand and the law of diminishing returns or something. You get 82 regular season games a year in hockey. That's plenty of supply, a whole lot of fish in the sea. No wonder my attention diminishes. Landing a rare fish is simply a better trophy.
Baseball is something else again. There is one unique aspect to baseball, the starting pitcher rotation. Since pitching is such a big part of the game, in a way it's like your team is different and the opponent's team is different every game. So what might seem like 162 games of monotony, actually isn't.
Maybe.
1/23/08 Superman-nings?
The Super Bowl tilt is set, the New York Giants against the New England Patriots. I imagine this pleases the NY dominated east coast media. It also gives us several story lines which seem to interest sports writers if not fans themselves.
First we have the usual fodder for many a sports tale, the big underdog versus the overwhelming favorite. A story dating back to ancient times and the Bible, David and Goliath and all that. This is rather unexceptional, happens all the time. I can't get too excited over that.
More interesting, to my way of thinking at any rate, is the possible undefeated season of the Patriots. 19-0 with a win in the big game. This is rather rare. Happened only once before in my lifetime, the Miami Dolphins did it in the 70s. Though in two fewer games as they finished 17-0.
Another storyline is the possibility of the two Manning brothers each quarterbacking their teams to consecutive Super Bowl wins. What are the chances of that happening? Don't remember ever hearing of such a thing. Brothers may have played in consecutive championships before, maybe even faced each other. But not at quarterback, the glory position of football.
In either case they're bound to be trivia questions in the years to come. Though perhaps the Manning brothers feat would be more in the trivial vein. I would say if Eli can pull it off, it will be more surprising than what Payton did. The Giants over the Patriots? We'll see.
1/15/08 Snowbowl redux?
It'll be the New York (football) Giants versus the Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship game at Lambeau Field. Who'd have predicted that at the start of the season? Granted, this ain't Vince Lombardi's Packers nor Eweb Eubanks' Giants, but it seems like the 1950s all over again. Eli Manning as Y. A. Tittle? Maybe they should broadcast the game in black and white. I think it'd be cool if they wore their throwback uniforms, too.
It's funny how some people still say the New York football Giants as if the New York baseball Giants haven't been long gone to San Francisco for over 50 years now. Maybe that's a New York thing, or a Howard Cosell thing if I rightly remember him always using that wording.
It's also funny how a city the size of Green Bay can support an NFL franchise, but Los Angeles doesn't have one. And hasn't for a while. LA has had three different teams: the Rams who moved from Cleveland and moved away to St. Louis; the Raiders who moved from Oakland and then went back; and the Chargers who moved to San Diego.
12/31/07 Dead Again.
The NFL 2007 season ends on a losing note for the Lions at Green Bay, 34-13, despite the Packers resting their stars for the playoffs and playing second-stringers most of the game. So Detroit finishes 7-9, which sadly is the high water mark for the Matt Millen era. Here's the sorry season details.
As you can see, strong start, weak finish. They beat some bad and average teams, lost to good and average teams. Here's where it gets ugly. One big win, six close wins. Four close losses and 5 blowout losses.
Here's some more. Bold indicates leading the league. If giving up the most points and yards is "leading" the league. More like trailing the league.
That's almost a touchdown deficit per game, not exactly the sign of a good team. Oh well, there's always next year. Which, unfortunately Lion's fans have been saying for the last 50 years. Now, Cardinal fans have been waiting longer, but that team has been run out of town for their failures, twice! I guess the good news, no need to spend money expanding the trophy case.
11/4/07 Pete Rose by Any Other Name. Sports Nicknames.
Colorful sports nicknames have been around probably as long as there's been sports. Their origins vary, some follow the athlete from childhood, some are applied by teammates, some are coined by the press, and some, like many boxing nicknames, are promotional gimmicks.
I'm breaking it into three basic types. First is a substitute for the name like Joe DiMaggio being called The Yankee Clipper. The second is a nickname that flows into their real name as in Mark "The Bird" Fydrich. Sometimes this second type loses the quote marks producing a third variety where an athlete is known only by the nickname as if it were a given name, much like Satchel Page.
Just for fun, see if you know the given names for these nicknames:
Type One: The Big Unit, The Big Train, The Manassas Mauler, The Splendid Splinter, The Big Hurt, Charlie Hustle, Sweetness, The Iron Horse, Mr. October, The Galloping Ghost.
Type Two: _____ "Crazy Legs" Hersh, _____ "Night Train" Lane, "Three Finger" ______ Brown, _____ "Oil Can" Boyd, _____ "Rocket" Richard, _____ "Catfish" Hunter, _____ "Spaceman" Lee.
Type Three: Dizzy Dean, Pele, Tiger Woods, Magic Johnson, Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, Babe Ruth, Deacon Jones, Yogi Berra, Bubba Smith, Satchel Page.
Answers:
Type One: Randy Johnson, Walter Johnson, Jack Dempsy, Ted Williams, Frank Thomas, Pete Rose, Walter Payton, Lou Gherig, Reggie Jackson, Red Grange. (Though Red Grange isn't his given name, see type three below.)
Type Two: Elroy Hersh, Richard (Dick) Lane, Mortacai Brown, Dennis Boyd, Maurice Richard, James (Jim) Hunter, William (Bill) Lee.
Type Three: Jerome Dean, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Eldrick Woods, Ervin Johnson, Harold Grange, Branislau Nagurski, George Herman Ruth, David Jones, Lawrence Peter Berra, Charles Aaron Smith, Leroy Page.
This is not even close to a comprehensive list, and you might argue about where to draw the line between type two and three. Still, I imagine most sports fans have their own favorite players nicknames, pseudonyms, aliases and AKAs. For my money I really like Dick "Night Train" Lane for the mystery and power it evokes, as well as Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hersh as an inventive and slightly loopy description of the man in action.
One of my other favorites is bicycle racer Eddie Merckx who was called "The Cannibal." But I think he deserves an entry of his own. Which I'll get to some other time.
9/28/07 Dressed to Coach
Do you find it strange that baseball managers wear uniforms just like the players? It's not like they're going to put themselves in the line-up, and so need to be dressed to play. No other sport does anything like this.
Can you imagine Scotty Bowman in hockey kit? If he did, would he wear skates or street shoes? I don't see Bill Parcells outfitted with full padding and a helmet prowling the sidelines. And I certainly don't want to see the spectacle of Bobby Knight in a tank top and shorts blowing his top courtside. Maybe he has nice legs and a super torso and arms, but I don't really want to find out.
I can only suppose this baseball tradition of managers in uniform goes way, way back to when teams were captained and managed by players, before there were actual staffs employed for the job. I think Ty Cobb was a player/manager for a while. I'm sure in the old days there were others. I seem to remember this happened in my lifetime, but I don't recall the particulars. I clearly remember Bill Russel being player/coach of the Celtics at one time. I also know some sports don't allow it. Some time ago Alex Delvechio had to retire as a player when he became coach of the Red Wings. When he did, he started wearing a suit, he didn't remain in uniform.
Connie Mack wore a suit when he managed the A's back when they were in Philadelphia. But then, he was also the GM and owner so an exception in other ways as well. Perhaps in the near future we'll have another player/manager in baseball and the uniform will make sense. Still, it's a bit odd in my view. I wonder if there's a dress code for managers. Do they wear a cup, you think?