Sports

World Series 2012 Game 1 Recap: The Ballad of Barry Zito, Kung Fu Panda 3, and Why Time Off Leads to Failure

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Alright, so I know that I promised a playoffs preview. That fell through, mostly due to a combination of ineptitude on my part, a miscalculation of the amount of time between the end of the regular season and the Wild Card Playoff Play-In Games, and my being so emotionally invested in this year’s edition of the Cincinnati Reds that I couldn’t write anything without sounding like a huge homer.

For example: Sure their line-up lacks the consistency of a world champion, but they’ve got the best bullpen in baseball, a frighteningly consistent rotation pulling together at just the right time, and one of the three best players in baseball! HOW CAN THEY POSSIBLY LOSE?

I even thought about doing a preview of the LCS once it seemed as everything would be working out. I started that particular Opus right about halfway through Game 3 of the Reds-Giants Series.

Oops.

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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

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As you may recall, one of my first articles on the Recorder decried baseball as a profoundly boring sport played during the interminable period of boredom that is summer. Happily, summer is all but over. Classes have begun, the weather is cooling, and that most essential of American sports returns this week. Having defended its virtues in my previous article, I feel no need to make a case for football, especially college football, as the most entertaining, strategic, and exciting of the major games. Instead, I want to discuss some of the wonders and curiosities that are peculiar to this grand game.

On a very basic level, the pleasures of college football are very simple and tied into the season that hosts the game. The game kicks off at the tail end of summer, with the first few weeks of games played comfortably under clear cerulean skies. Up here in the Midwest, the first sharp crack of cool air and blustery weather means that the conference games have begun. Rivalries that stretch back over a century are fought once again as jackets and hats are pulled out of closets and Oktoberfest beers are toasted in victorious satisfaction.  When the calendar turns to November the crowds bundle under winter jackets and heavy scarves as the most bitter of enemies face off on freezing fields underneath slate grey skies. The bowl games around Christmas and New Year’s are played mostly in warm locales, a last tantalizing glimpse of fun before winter finally wipes out all warmth and the football season ends. It’s no accident that the four months that correspond with the football season are my favorite time of the year, but I’ve been an old man since I was 15. No one should be surprised that I revel in the season of decay and passing, and celebrate its sport above all others. It’s a wonderful time that I pine for constantly during the off-season.
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I Bless the Rains Down in Indianapolis: Andrew’s NCAA Non-Preview

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Here at the Addison Recorder, we all love sports, but our loves were not created equal. Forget just me and my two cohorts; almost no one I know outside this site has an emotion to match Alex Bean’s magnificent obsession with football, NCAA more than the NFL. Far more. I’d swear that not just the blood but every fluid which comes out of his body is Michigan blue and maize.

And I’ll stop right there.

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Olympic Observations: the Four-Year Cycle

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Ten days in, one week to go, and the Summer Olympics in London have been… Well, they’ve been the Olympics.

Depending who you are, that statement will mean different things:

  • The Olympics have provided compelling, once-in-a-lifetime narratives that we will never forget; the Olympics is the one time every four years where we buy into teary storylines and spend a few weeks deeply caring about sports cut from university budgets.
  • The Olympics are a shining example of the ideals of athleticism, amateurism, and community; the Olympics are cash cow controlled by a corrupt governing body and served up by exploitative corporations.
  • The Olympics are a beautiful display of the world’s finest athletes; the Olympics are fifteen minutes of fame for folks who’ll be back to the ‘real world’ when the global audience gets bored and goes back to watching the major sports.

So far, the Olympics have done everything possible to fulfill those pre-conceived notions, and many others. Personally, I fall on the positive side of those notions. I mean, you could weigh very similar platitudes and criticisms against NCAA football – the only difference being that I don’t really care about NCAA football.

Which is why I am about to attempt an entry in the Addison Recorder’s diary of the Olympics. I will try to cover angles that haven’t been plastered across magazines, blogs, and websites by hundreds of others. Some people might call it a Quixotic attempt, and those are the people who probably own the same thesaurus that I do.
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The Addison Recorder Watched the Opening Ceremonies and Lived to Tell the Tale

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I am writing these sentences just ten minutes or so before the commencement of the 2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies. This is the second event the Addison Recorder has deemed worthy of keeping a running diary during. Like the first, it has a lot to do with sports…indeed, the Olympics are in my mind the epitome of sports, the greatest athletes in the world competing for national pride and the chance to break some records. But the Opening Ceremonies in particular are a mixture of athleticism and culture, a chance for the host nation to revel in their heritage and promote it for the world.

And after that high-minded introduction, inspired by my own lifelong love of the Olympics, so much that I’ve read reference books about the games cover to cover, I will promise to be irreverent and biting about the Ceremonies.

England has not hosted the Olympics since 1948, when Clement Attlee was pulling the U.K. out of its wartime haze. Now, in 2012, London is arguably the soundest world financial capital, England’s moving along pretty darn well compared to us, and their aesthetic standards since the war guarantees an event like no other. Oscar-winner Danny Boyle has put together the show. Knowing and loving Boyle’s films…this could go many ways. What if he draws some ideas from his own work? Giant, flashy, A.R. Rahman-style dance numbers and whimsical interactions between children and supernatural figures? I’m game! Heroin-addled hallucinations and men cutting off their own arms? Not so much. Zombies? Maybe.

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Kansas City Blues: Live-Blogging the 2012 MLB All-Star Game

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As you may recall, one of my esteemed colleagues here at the Recorder wrote in one of his first essays that baseball is a boring spectacle that has been surpassed in recent years by nigh every other major professional sport short of cricket, curling, and non-Triple Crown equestrian events.

Unfortunately, the MLB All Star Game is one of the best arguments that can be made for his position.

Like most All-Star games in the other major American sports, the All-Star game is a relic of a distant past, a game where the greatest stars of the American and National league would be pitted against each other in an exhibition of their talents. (Key word being exhibition – the game did not count for anything.) In past games, there was nothing to compete for except for pride and the sheer mystery of competing against the best teams of the other league. (This was long before interleague play became a mainstay, regularly pitting the two leagues together. Remember, it once made a difference to be in either the National or the American Leagues. Although one might call the fact that the DH is still in play makes the AL still the League of the Devil…but that’s neither here nor there.)

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How Fantasy Saved My Hockey Soul

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or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Puck

According to my esteemed Recorder colleague, there was an insanely-important, mega-massive sporting narrative that occurred around the same time the northern hemisphere officially welcomed summer’s arrival.

It was about a ‘King’ finally winning a trophy, or some other such story.

Really, it confused me. Who cares about a King winning a trophy, when the L.A. Kings won Lord Stanley’s Cup for the first time in franchise history?

But this was the only signal of summer’s advent: besides the Cup finding a brand new home, I won my NHL Playoff fantasy league, Adam Henrique didn’t win the Calder Trophy, Pavel Bure did get elected to the Hall of Fame, the Draft came and went, and the NHL free agency season came to life.

Despite my excitement, I can’t say my priorities were always aligned this way. Once upon a time, the bleak months after the Super Bowl were a dead time before the catchers & pitchers reported to Spring Training. This is because, for much of my life, I had turned my back on the NHL. But I was saved from this ignorant hockey darkness by the trinity of friends, family, and fantasy sports.

Meanwhile, the other theme here is that I care not one jot for David Stern’s NBA.

My up-and-down relationship with the NHL began back in my childhood. I had attended a couple Milwaukee Admiral games (who were, at the time, part of the IHL). When I started to watch hockey on TV, which wasn’t too often, I found myself rooting for the Minnesota North Stars.

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All the King’s Men: Modern Loathing in the NBA

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The NBA finals, recently concluded, pitted the Miami Heat against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Rife with storylines, these included the quest for Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden to aid the Thunder’s rise from worst in the NBA to the ultimate heights. It was also about Lebron James’ continued quest for his first title in his pursuit of becoming one of the best basketball players of all time. As we now know, the latter proved to be the dominant storyline, granting this incarnation of the Heat their first title and fully forging James’ status as the best basketball player currently playing the game.

Really, it boils down to two people. The other eight roles on the Finals were played by an assortment of flaming hedgehogs. #nerd

What strikes me now, reflecting upon the match-up, is how this particular finals pitted two villains against each other. In this case, it is Lebron James vs. the Zombie Sonics, a bitter feud of egos, tormented fan bases, and entire states of disgruntled ex-fans, and what it means to passionately care about overpaid gazillionare athletic freaks throwing a rubber ball through a 10-foot metal hoop.

Allow me to break this down.

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In Defense of Our National Pastime

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A Simple Rebuttal to a Bold Statement of Frightful Inaccuracy Regarding the State of Affairs of that Most Sacrosanct of Sporting Affairs, the Treasure Trove of Existential Eccentricities, the Apple Pie of our Eye, and how a Simple Misunderstanding and Misappropriation of Thought, Time, Care, and Concern will Inevitably Result in the Misguided Notion of Irreverence in the Face of Centuries of Trial and Error, and How Better to Appreciate the Simplistic Joy of the Nation’s Greatest Game

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Why Bean is a Douche

Greetings,

Recently, it has come to my attention that one of my esteemed co-editors has put out a piece regarding the status of summer sporting events in the United States as being “boring as fuck.” (Bean, pg. 1) In fact, it would seem that baseball has earned my colleague’s ire in particular. He has invited me, in effect, to respond to his article with a rebuttal of my own form and nature, and given the particularly vicious manner of his approach, it feels all too necessary that I should jump to not only defend our national pastime, but also to point out the glaring inaccuracy of some of his statements.

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Our Long National Nap: Baseball as America’s Most Boring Sport

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A few college-football-themed blogs celebrated a minor holiday recently. Wednesday, May 23rd, marked 100 days until the 2012 college football season kicks off.

Understandably, in the estimation of sites like EveryDayShouldBeSaturday.com and its ilk this was a momentous occasion. For the madly faithful, like the men who run those sites, such a date is akin to the solstice celebrations of early civilizations around the world. It marked a moment of passage and equanimity, wherein the previous year’s toil and effort was handed off to memory and the anticipation for what lay ahead could begin in earnest.

Being a die-hard college football partisan (Go Blue!), I must say that I understood this celebration entirely too well. I have a way of viewing summer holidays not as celebrations of leisure and nature’s fertility, but as the stepping stones towards that marvelous autumn festival of pads and pageantry that is football season. Memorial Day is around the time that the season preview magazines are released, the 4th of July means I can start talking about it with friends, and the dog days of summer in late July and early August are when training camps open and I can devote myself wholeheartedly to reading tweets about the progress of this senior wide receiver or that incoming freshman at linebacker.

This is a celebration of being able to talk about football without feeling weird about it.

Summer is, of course, packed with all the excitement of sporting the Major League Baseball season. Why not put off my football obsession until pads are actually being put on? My answer: baseball is boring as fuck and increasingly irrelevant to American life. These are bold words, and I expect a rebuttal from at least one of my colleagues on the Addison Recorder, but I stand by them.

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