Tuesday, July 12, 2005
PG-RATED ALL-STAR GAME
We're a few hours from July 12th. Of course, this year the 12th is the day after baseball's All-Star Game, which of course means it's the slowest sports day of the year. The Majors take a day off (AAA has their All-Star Game), and the NBA, NFL, and NHL are all out of season.
So where does that leave us?
I'm left to come up with different material for a day, in part because the Mariners aren't playing. But it also gives me some free time to mess around. What have I been thinking about the last couple days?
(***NOTE -- scroll way down for the All-Star related thought)
1) There's two words we've been getting searched for like crazy lately that I know I've only mentioned on this site once in our entire existence. What are they?
I'll give you 20 seconds to guess...
Are you still guessing?
Do you feel confident in your answer?
Okay. Ready for the answer? Here it is...
Paulina Gretzky. Yes, that's right, the 16-year-old daughter of the Great One. I mentioned her once on the site after she sang "O Canada" before the Czech Republic/Canada game at the World Cup of Hockey late last summer, seriously one of the three best hockey games I've seen in my life.
So I try to trace back through these Google searches and Yahoo searches and see if something newsworthy has happened involving Paulina. The most recent headline is this, saying that she'll be a cover girl on the August issue of Flare magazine. Good for her. But is that alone what's really driving up the amount of hits at Sports and B's? I mean, this is nuts. We haven't seen hits like this since everyone was searching for pictures of Anna Benson. If we have Canadian readers than can clue us in better to the situation, it'd be appreciated.
2) Okay, my long-awaited second thought. For the All-Star Game, game day is preceded by other on-field events the two days beforehand, namely the celebrity/old-timers' game which nobody cares about, the Futures Game, and the Home Run Derby. Football doesn't truly have a hyped-up All-Star event showing off skills, except for the shown-after-the-fact Quarterback Challenge. Basketball covers both ends of the crowd-rousing play spectrum, having both a three-point contest and a slam-dunk contest. Hockey has the SuperSkills Competition with fastest slapshot, most accurate shot, fastest skater, and that shootout thing (forgive my forgetting the name of the event) where all the scorers take penalty shots against the goalies.
What am I saying here? I think something is missing from baseball's All-Star festivities. I'm not saying to cop hockey here, but I do know some other skills should be featured. Hitting jacks isn't the only thing ballplayers can do, though it's certainly the most glorified.
So, I'm just going to start spewing here, with completely random and made-up sponsors...
--- AOL Broadband Fastest Baserunner
Pretty self-explanatory. Make Ichiro, Juan Pierre, Scott Podsednik, et al., race against the clock. Whether the race would be from home to first or all the way around...that'd be a debate.
--- UPS Speed Pitch
We all know they dumb down the radar guns when you're throwing balls into the machine on the concourse. Do you think there'd be some ego involved in this? Just have the guys (say, Billy Wagner, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling healthy, and company) warm up for 10 or so minutes beforehand, and then have 'em let loose. Would there be an elimination bracket? No idea.
--- Garmin/Dartfish Craziest Breaking Ball
Who's breaking ball has the greatest horizontal and/or vertical movement without bouncing it up to the plate? Where would Francisco Rodriguez' slider go? Maybe even an Aaron Sele curve? A Kerry Wood curve? Kyle Farnsworth's slider when he was good? Of course, this could be done on a type-of-pitch basis. There could be a changeup competition, a curveball event, a slider event, etc.
--- DoubleTree Suites Double Play
I'm reaching with this one, but follow me. I somehow can imagine this going nuts and being a slam-dunk-type event, going for style points and possibly even using props (that's the sound of purists shuddering). Maybe someone could do a study beforehand to tabulate what would be the time cutoff to get the ball to first. Or...you could strike a deal with the USOC and have the middle infielders go up against sprinters off the US track team. Crazy thoughts, I know.
--- ADT Home-Run Robbing
I have no idea how this could happen, I just know it'd be cool if someone could pull it off. Of course, how do you get someone or something to keep hitting rob-able homers to the fence? It'd be hard, but the reward would be infinite if it were physically possible.
--- NRA Gun-Down
Pretty simple. Which catcher has the fastest/most accurate throw to second base? Third base? Pickoff to first? Miguel Olivo would train all year for this event. You could also expand this to include outfield arms throwing to the plate. You could have a completely reverse contest and enter Randy Winn in the event.
Those are the only ideas I can think of right now. Of course, this would require moving the All-Star Game to a weekend, but would that really be that bad? Basketball and hockey have all-star weekends, and football camps out here in Hawaii after the season. What you do is have all this stuff on Friday or Saturday, or have it all day on Saturday and cap it off with the Home Run Derby to close SkillSaturday or something.
Seriously, scrapping the celeb/oldies softball game would buy you an hour-plus right there that could be used to showcase some skills that just don't get the same pub that the homers obviously do.
So where does that leave us?
I'm left to come up with different material for a day, in part because the Mariners aren't playing. But it also gives me some free time to mess around. What have I been thinking about the last couple days?
(***NOTE -- scroll way down for the All-Star related thought)
1) There's two words we've been getting searched for like crazy lately that I know I've only mentioned on this site once in our entire existence. What are they?
I'll give you 20 seconds to guess...
Are you still guessing?
Do you feel confident in your answer?
Okay. Ready for the answer? Here it is...
Paulina Gretzky. Yes, that's right, the 16-year-old daughter of the Great One. I mentioned her once on the site after she sang "O Canada" before the Czech Republic/Canada game at the World Cup of Hockey late last summer, seriously one of the three best hockey games I've seen in my life.
So I try to trace back through these Google searches and Yahoo searches and see if something newsworthy has happened involving Paulina. The most recent headline is this, saying that she'll be a cover girl on the August issue of Flare magazine. Good for her. But is that alone what's really driving up the amount of hits at Sports and B's? I mean, this is nuts. We haven't seen hits like this since everyone was searching for pictures of Anna Benson. If we have Canadian readers than can clue us in better to the situation, it'd be appreciated.
2) Okay, my long-awaited second thought. For the All-Star Game, game day is preceded by other on-field events the two days beforehand, namely the celebrity/old-timers' game which nobody cares about, the Futures Game, and the Home Run Derby. Football doesn't truly have a hyped-up All-Star event showing off skills, except for the shown-after-the-fact Quarterback Challenge. Basketball covers both ends of the crowd-rousing play spectrum, having both a three-point contest and a slam-dunk contest. Hockey has the SuperSkills Competition with fastest slapshot, most accurate shot, fastest skater, and that shootout thing (forgive my forgetting the name of the event) where all the scorers take penalty shots against the goalies.
What am I saying here? I think something is missing from baseball's All-Star festivities. I'm not saying to cop hockey here, but I do know some other skills should be featured. Hitting jacks isn't the only thing ballplayers can do, though it's certainly the most glorified.
So, I'm just going to start spewing here, with completely random and made-up sponsors...
--- AOL Broadband Fastest Baserunner
Pretty self-explanatory. Make Ichiro, Juan Pierre, Scott Podsednik, et al., race against the clock. Whether the race would be from home to first or all the way around...that'd be a debate.
--- UPS Speed Pitch
We all know they dumb down the radar guns when you're throwing balls into the machine on the concourse. Do you think there'd be some ego involved in this? Just have the guys (say, Billy Wagner, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling healthy, and company) warm up for 10 or so minutes beforehand, and then have 'em let loose. Would there be an elimination bracket? No idea.
--- Garmin/Dartfish Craziest Breaking Ball
Who's breaking ball has the greatest horizontal and/or vertical movement without bouncing it up to the plate? Where would Francisco Rodriguez' slider go? Maybe even an Aaron Sele curve? A Kerry Wood curve? Kyle Farnsworth's slider when he was good? Of course, this could be done on a type-of-pitch basis. There could be a changeup competition, a curveball event, a slider event, etc.
--- DoubleTree Suites Double Play
I'm reaching with this one, but follow me. I somehow can imagine this going nuts and being a slam-dunk-type event, going for style points and possibly even using props (that's the sound of purists shuddering). Maybe someone could do a study beforehand to tabulate what would be the time cutoff to get the ball to first. Or...you could strike a deal with the USOC and have the middle infielders go up against sprinters off the US track team. Crazy thoughts, I know.
--- ADT Home-Run Robbing
I have no idea how this could happen, I just know it'd be cool if someone could pull it off. Of course, how do you get someone or something to keep hitting rob-able homers to the fence? It'd be hard, but the reward would be infinite if it were physically possible.
--- NRA Gun-Down
Pretty simple. Which catcher has the fastest/most accurate throw to second base? Third base? Pickoff to first? Miguel Olivo would train all year for this event. You could also expand this to include outfield arms throwing to the plate. You could have a completely reverse contest and enter Randy Winn in the event.
Those are the only ideas I can think of right now. Of course, this would require moving the All-Star Game to a weekend, but would that really be that bad? Basketball and hockey have all-star weekends, and football camps out here in Hawaii after the season. What you do is have all this stuff on Friday or Saturday, or have it all day on Saturday and cap it off with the Home Run Derby to close SkillSaturday or something.
Seriously, scrapping the celeb/oldies softball game would buy you an hour-plus right there that could be used to showcase some skills that just don't get the same pub that the homers obviously do.
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