sports
Michael Rand started RandBall with hopes that he could keep lies from conquering the minds of the weak. So far, he's only succeeded in using the word "redacted" a lot. He welcomes suggestions, news tips, links of pure genius, and pictures of pets in Halloween costumes here, though he already knows he will regret that last part.
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Posts about NHL news
Weekend Links with Jon Marthaler: NHL alienating its hard-core fans
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: December 22, 2012 - 11:32 AM
Jon Marthaler bakes up a delicious batch of links for you every weekend. Other times, you can find him here. Jon?
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Merry Christmas to all! When you think about it, Christmas is probably the closest thing we have to a universal day off; few people work the day, with the exception of essential services, some gas stations, and (at least in the movies) Chinese restaurants. It's the one day of the year that virtually everyone expects to have a chance to spend with their families. Even Scrooge gave Bob Crachit the day off on Christmas Day.
The one exception to this rule seems to be sports, where the NBA has no compunction about ruining Christmases far and wide. The league has a quintupleheader scheduled for Tuesday; you'll be able to watch basketball from 11 am to midnight, should you so desire. It's one thing for the home teams, who theoretically will get a chance to have Christmas morning and/or Christmas dinner fit around their schedules, but those five games have five road teams, all of whom are away from their families this holiday. The Celtics, Knicks, Rockets, Thunder, and Nuggets - sorry, guys. You're spending your Christmas on a plane and in a hotel room.
Speaking of the players is to say nothing, too, of to the thousands of other people who'll miss Christmas thanks to these games. Stadium staff, team personnel, TV crews, team beat writers - all of these folks have to give up their Christmases as well, thanks to the league's desire for holiday hoops. Spare a thought as well for a few college football teams - the Gophers among them - that have Christmas Day scheduling issues.
The jokes all say that most people can't wait to escape their families on Christmas, but the truth is that most of us relish the chance to get together and celebrate. This year, though, I'll be thinking about all of those people who give up that chance as a blessing to the rest of us - not just nurses and doctors and firefighters, but Kevin Durant and James Harden, and all of the ESPN announcers, and the Staples Center staffers, and all of the football players across the country who'll eat Christmas dinner in a team lounge. Merry Christmas, everyone. Thanks for giving up your day to make it better for the rest of us.
On with the links:
*I want to print out this Steve Rushin column about hockey, and hand-deliver a copy to every owner, possibly by stapling it to his forehead. If somebody wanted to dump a hundred thousand copies on the houses of Jeremy Jacobs and Craig Leipold, I'll start buying printer ink. Dear NHL: You're not alienating casual fans now; none of them now exist. You're alienating your actual fans, and we're a disappearing breed. You're on your way to second place in CANADA, and if you lose Canada you might as well fold up shop.
*This three-part interview at The Classical with the guys behind Fire Joe Morgan was absolutely delightful. Here's Part 1, here's part two, and here's part three.
*Brian Phillips of Grantland heads to the rodeo finals in Las Vegas, and the whole thing becomes a wonderful mishmash of one part stranger-in-a-strange-land diary, one part Vegas travel journalism, and one part elegiac rumination on his lost Oklahoma childhood. It's tremendous.
*And finally: not only am I now convinced that squash should be an Olympic sport, I'm also convinced that it is the greatest sport ever invented.
TFD: This is what the NHL lockout has done to us
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: November 5, 2012 - 5:02 PMHarrison Mooney, writing for Yahoo's Puck Daddy, misses the NHL. How much? Well ... let him explain. Then have a look-see. We're pretty sure Rocket is steaming mad he didn't think of this first:
Weekend Links with Jon Marthaler: A plausible Mauer-to-Boston scenario
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: October 20, 2012 - 9:21 AM
Jon Marthaler bakes up a delicious batch of links for you every weekend. Other times, you can find him here. Jon?
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After a brief flurry of hope, it turned out that the NHL owners weren't so much interested in negotiating as in running focus groups, so the NHL lockout is still firmly in place and will be for the foreseeable future. Players want to play hockey (albeit without their paychecks being slashed). Fans want to watch hockey. Near-arena businesses are desperate for hockey. But the owners have the game held hostage, so without hockey we remain.
The players really have no leverage here; they can't threaten to not play, obviously. About all they could do is go play somewhere else, so it makes me wonder: what would a breakaway, rebel league look like?
This new WHA wouldn't want for coverage. ESPN would probably pick up the TV contract -- they've started televising KHL games, so they clearly are desperate for content of any kind. The media would go nuts to cover it, especially at the beginning, as the scads of NHL talent would be re-allocated like a real-life fantasy hockey draft. Cities like Quebec City and Seattle would have a shot at having a pro hockey team in town. It'd be immensely entertaining and always teetering on the edge of disaster, just like a good hockey game itself.
It'll never happen, of course. All but five NHL teams own or operate their own arenas, so it'd be a major struggle to find places for the WHA teams to play. Nobody but eccentric Candian billionaires, and possibly someone desperate in Seattle, would dare own a team that's likely to fold any minute. The NHL itself would threaten to blackball anyone - player, referee, coach, or otherwise - who worked with the league. Every player currently in the minor leagues would have to choose between the WHA and the NHL, a recipe for trouble both in the original WHA and now. The entire sport would be in an uproar for years, and the whole thing would damage hockey, perhaps irreparably.
Still, it'd give us hockey back. And a rebel league is the only leverage the players might have. So, if there are any eccentric Candian billionaires out there reading, please call up these guys and see if you can't make an offer. It's the first step towards getting hockey back.
*On with the links:
*The World Series hasn't even started yet, but the Twins silly season is in full swing. Twins writer Jim Crikket constructs a plausible scenario in which Joe Mauer is traded to Boston, while Nick Nelson thinks that even at an absurd price, the time might be right for Zack Greinke in Minnesota. (And if both these moves happened at the same time, I'm guessing St. Paul would burn and the internet would explode.)
*Dan Jenkins is, in a way, the patron saint of sportswriting, so I can't tell you how happy I was when Grantland printed a "director's cut" of Jenkins's first long-form piece in Sports Illustrated, from way back in 1963. It's funny and descriptive and in many ways perfect, and the real shame of the whole thing is that a thing like Dan Jenkins can only come along once.
*Sports on Earth profiles the great Verne Lundquist, and one of his best qualities - his ability to let a moment speak for itself.
*Joe Posnanski looks at Chiefs fans cheering when Matt Cassel gets hurt, and talks to someone who's stopped going to games, and wonders: are we reaching a tipping point, on the other side of which nobody is going to attend NFL games?
*The Vikings are playing in London in 2013, and reportedly may play there once per year while the new stadium is under construction. The Vikes Geek is, well, not at all happy about this.
*And finally: in ten years, when some kicker makes a 79-yard field goal, this is going to look pretty quaint.
Hockey blues, marathon burgers and soccer madness: A weekend in Toronto
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: October 15, 2012 - 1:21 PM
In a strange twist, we left the self-proclaimed State of Hockey (debatable, Marth might say) and headed to the Country of Hockey on the first weekend during which NHL games were canceled in this most recent labor spat.
It did not take long for the inherent sadness and anger to materialize in this part of the world; in fact, it happened before we even officially left the United States. After flying into Buffalo (roughly two hours from Toronto, our final destination, and about half the price since it’s not an “international” flight), we overheard pieces of an airport conversation that went thusly:
“I don’t even care about the lockout any more. I will just follow my son’s team for a year.”
That was a man, 45ish, wearing a Sabres cap. The comments were directed at a man of similar age, who replied, “Give me 100 dollars to play. I would be happy.”
In Toronto, the locals are trying to conjure up even more enthusiasm than usual for the Marlies, the top-level minor league affiliate of the Leafs. Indeed, this squad draws quite well (and proves that in a market mad enough for a sport, major and minor league teams can do quite well). But you could feel it in the grey skies. With every day that passes and takes Toronto closer to winter, the absence of the NHL will cut more and more. It’s a shame in all hockey markets, but especially so there.
****
Toronto is undeniably one of the friendliest major cities we have ever visited. This was our third trip there, and you wouldn’t think it would be possible to cram so many people into such a limited space and keep the general populace in good spirits, but Toronto manages to pull it off.
One secret to the happiness, we would imagine: smart building. There is certainly some suburban sprawl in Toronto area, but the city itself builds up not out – which we have always thought is the smartest thing possible. Classic row-houses are three- or four-stories high but look no wider than a standard SUV. They are either attached (sharing a wall with homes next to them) or detached (meaning there is a gap barely wide enough to see through, though apparently wide enough to house a family of raccoons in the case of our friend John Sharkman.
To go with these single-family dwellings are massive glass apartment and condo structures. Brilliant. We’re not sure exactly how real estate works, but we always imagined building to the sky was far more cost-effective then elbowing outwards. It’s how you feel compact without being cramped.
****
The main event connected to the trip to Toronto was running a marathon there on Sunday. When Sharkman moved to Toronto, we made the commitment to run 26.2 miles with him there. Here is what we now know: Canadian marathons are strangely more difficult because all of the markers are measured in kilometers. That’s 42-plus in all, and it plays wicked mind games over the course of several hours. Once you get to a certain point during a marathon, you have no idea what the difference is between a mile and a kilometer. You just know that somehow you have passed marker 28, which you’ve never seen before, and you still have 14 left.
But we made it. This time, we ran the whole thing with Sharkman; you’ll recall, maybe, that in a similar setting in June for Grandma’s Marathon, we ditched him midway through in order to run a sub-4 hour race. This one was all about fun and amusement, or as much as someone can have while doing unspeakable things to one’s legs. The height of this was live-tweeting much of the experience, culminating with a kilometer 37 stop at a McDonald’s that was basically 100 meters off the course. We went in, bought a couple of cheeseburgers to the stunned amusement of the cashier, ate them as we walked and pounded out the final 5K. Our overall time was somewhere in the 4:55 range, but when you adjust for Canadian time that’s actually quite good. Maybe even vice presidential good.
****
One final thing you should know about Canadians, or at least something we feel we learned: they are sticklers for rules. One of those rules is that you cannot just walk into a World Cup qualifier soccer match without a ticket, which we suppose is kind of an international rule. But still.
We had it in our head that we could just show up at halftime of the not-sold-out Cuba vs. Canada match Friday and slip in a side gate or some such thing. When no side gate presented itself, we thought (again, for some reason), that waltzing in ticket-less when all the smokers returned from the break would be a keen idea. This, again, proved to be extremely false. (Quoth the usher: “Sir … Sir … Sir!”)
The more strategic plan emerged from Sharkman of all people. He targeted folks leaving the arena at the break and offered to buy their tickets. What happened instead was a father and son simply gave us their tickets, which were still good and re-scannable. And these tickets turned out to be in the front row of the entire stadium, quite near midfield.
And this is how we came to watch the final 40 minutes or so of Canada’s 3-0 romp over Cuba, which had exactly 11 players after several defections earlier in the day.
What a country.
TFD: Wild players with WCHA connections show the Gophers very little love
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: October 4, 2012 - 5:22 PMA bit of amusement from the Minnesota Wild web site on an otherwise dreary hockey day: The seven members of the Wild organization who used to play in the WCHA were asked for their predictions on how the teams would finish in the final season of the league (as we know it). None of them played for the Gophers; not surprisingly, then, the favored local squad was not shown much love by the Wild connections. Have a look-see:
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