Monday, June 05, 2006
DIFF'RENT POSTS TO MOVE THE WORLD
I don't do anywhere near as many things with Sports and B's as I'd like. Mostly, I crank together those game pieces, and that's pretty much what I'm doing while I'm watching the games. However, there's stuff that I obviously can't write into a game post for the Mariners. I don't get around to this very often, but I've managed to scrape this one together.
-- I follow the Mariners day-to-day, which people might be able to surmise by reading this here weblog. They're terrible. What other baseball-related things would I rather pay attention to? Well, I can tell you what I'm sick of hearing about. Barry Bonds, Yankees/Red Sox, Kerry Wood/Mark Prior, etc. Of course, that kills about 75% of the content on every installment of Baseball Tonight. I don't know whose idea it was over at ESPN, but the Trifecta is the absolute worst thing ever. Never should Baseball Tonight be shown at a length of less than 30 minutes. Every game should get the full-screen partial boxscore graphics. The best thing in the last couple years, however, is that Brian Kenny is no longer the #2 guy behind Karl Ravech. The bad news is that Scott Reiss is. Still, there's no "ONE run will score, TWO runs will score..." over and f#*$ing over. Don't ask me! Ask the PLAYERS!***
-- The Seahawks have minicamp starting up today, with eight practices coming in the next two weeks, as per Sando's blog. I guess the most eyebrow-raising news I've seen over the past few weeks is that Wayne Hunter was cut loose after some off-field problems, and that Bryce Fisher is up for a fourth-degree assault charge after putting an arm bar on his wife. I wasn't too surprised about Hunter, since he'd had a previous record, but I didn't expect to see Fisher get into the police blotter. The additional information doesn't sound like much, but it's still a fourth-degree assault charge and there was a struggle involved. None of this is Leonard Little-type stuff, sure (and let's hope it never is), but I'd rather the Seahawks kept this stuff to a minimum.
-- Neither team between the Spurs and Pistons got into the NBA Finals this year, so I've gotten all I've wanted out of the playoffs. What I really wanted to talk about was KJR's David Locke being handed the radio play-by-play reins for the Seattle SuperSonics, taking over for Kevin Calabro. The other thing I didn't realize was that the Sonics are moving from KJR to KTTH. I used to love that Kevin Calabro could pull off the radio/television simulcast, and he was really good at it. What changed? When the Sonics got the cable deal with FSN, it got a bit less and less radio-friendly when they did the simulcast. When they started having Brian Davis come in from the commercial breaks with the sideline/crowd reports, that's when it got better on the television side, but on the radio, you'd hear Davis talking about various things and wouldn't know that ten seconds or so had been elapsed off the clock after the ball had been inbounded. Thus, something had to give. It started getting weird on the radio too, since they would set up the commercial break and would cut off Calabro abruptly before he'd say "you're watching Sonics basketball on FSN." About Locke, though, he's done his time manning the microphone for the Storm, and he's wanted to do this all his life. Not only will his voice be three octaves higher than Calabro's, the broadcasts will be chock full of so many advanced stats your head will spin. You'll know so much about plus-minus, five-man units, and effective field-goal percentage, your head will spin.
-- The Stanley Cup finals start today, with the Edmonton Oilers in Raleigh to face the Carolina Hurricanes. You could root for a Canadian team to finally take the Cup up north for the first time since Montréal in 1993, or you could root for Carolina because they used to be the Whalers or because the Carolina pro sports fanbase may still be shaken from having the Seahawks beat the Panthers so badly back in January's NFC title game. Carolina is a very deep team with a rookie goalie, Cam Ward, who is currently standing on his head every night in net. Add your Rod Brind'Amour, Eric Staal, and midseason acquisition Doug Weight. As for Edmonton, you've got Chris Pronger in his first Stanley Cup final after all those years with the Blues where they made the playoffs every year and never got anywhere. I know they gave the Canucks fits this season -- they beat the Canucks in each of the first five meetings and ended up winning six of eight. The thing that chaps me, though, is goalie Dwayne Roloson. His inability to win games down the stretch was the one thing that kept the dead-in-the-water Canucks clinging to a morsel of playoff hope. The Canucks lost six of their final eight games, and it seemed every night the Canucks had control of their own destiny coming in and would lose it with every loss, but the Oilers would bail them out every night because Roloson couldn't win. What little luck the Canucks had finally ran out in San Jose in the second-to-last game of the season. Edmonton got the eighth seed in the Western Conference, and look at them now. Sigh...
-- Jeremy and I know two things: Jerome Bettis is from Detroit and Tara Kirk is from Bremerton. I got an email on Friday from Charlie Snyder at the USOC telling me that he put together a Tara Kirk photo gallery at USOlympicTeam.com. If for some reason it gets pushed from the front page, I think this link should work, though you don't get the conveniently sized browser window and you'll get a full-sized window with a bunch of empty space. Nonetheless, thanks to Charlie for taking the time to put that together and for bringing that to our attention. Tara rules. Beijing is two years away.
And with that, it's well wishes on the week ahead for all our readers, be they from the Northwest or in various places on the continent and around the world. Thanks to those of you who are still reading.
[***Piniella outburst reference]
-- I follow the Mariners day-to-day, which people might be able to surmise by reading this here weblog. They're terrible. What other baseball-related things would I rather pay attention to? Well, I can tell you what I'm sick of hearing about. Barry Bonds, Yankees/Red Sox, Kerry Wood/Mark Prior, etc. Of course, that kills about 75% of the content on every installment of Baseball Tonight. I don't know whose idea it was over at ESPN, but the Trifecta is the absolute worst thing ever. Never should Baseball Tonight be shown at a length of less than 30 minutes. Every game should get the full-screen partial boxscore graphics. The best thing in the last couple years, however, is that Brian Kenny is no longer the #2 guy behind Karl Ravech. The bad news is that Scott Reiss is. Still, there's no "ONE run will score, TWO runs will score..." over and f#*$ing over. Don't ask me! Ask the PLAYERS!***
-- The Seahawks have minicamp starting up today, with eight practices coming in the next two weeks, as per Sando's blog. I guess the most eyebrow-raising news I've seen over the past few weeks is that Wayne Hunter was cut loose after some off-field problems, and that Bryce Fisher is up for a fourth-degree assault charge after putting an arm bar on his wife. I wasn't too surprised about Hunter, since he'd had a previous record, but I didn't expect to see Fisher get into the police blotter. The additional information doesn't sound like much, but it's still a fourth-degree assault charge and there was a struggle involved. None of this is Leonard Little-type stuff, sure (and let's hope it never is), but I'd rather the Seahawks kept this stuff to a minimum.
-- Neither team between the Spurs and Pistons got into the NBA Finals this year, so I've gotten all I've wanted out of the playoffs. What I really wanted to talk about was KJR's David Locke being handed the radio play-by-play reins for the Seattle SuperSonics, taking over for Kevin Calabro. The other thing I didn't realize was that the Sonics are moving from KJR to KTTH. I used to love that Kevin Calabro could pull off the radio/television simulcast, and he was really good at it. What changed? When the Sonics got the cable deal with FSN, it got a bit less and less radio-friendly when they did the simulcast. When they started having Brian Davis come in from the commercial breaks with the sideline/crowd reports, that's when it got better on the television side, but on the radio, you'd hear Davis talking about various things and wouldn't know that ten seconds or so had been elapsed off the clock after the ball had been inbounded. Thus, something had to give. It started getting weird on the radio too, since they would set up the commercial break and would cut off Calabro abruptly before he'd say "you're watching Sonics basketball on FSN." About Locke, though, he's done his time manning the microphone for the Storm, and he's wanted to do this all his life. Not only will his voice be three octaves higher than Calabro's, the broadcasts will be chock full of so many advanced stats your head will spin. You'll know so much about plus-minus, five-man units, and effective field-goal percentage, your head will spin.
-- The Stanley Cup finals start today, with the Edmonton Oilers in Raleigh to face the Carolina Hurricanes. You could root for a Canadian team to finally take the Cup up north for the first time since Montréal in 1993, or you could root for Carolina because they used to be the Whalers or because the Carolina pro sports fanbase may still be shaken from having the Seahawks beat the Panthers so badly back in January's NFC title game. Carolina is a very deep team with a rookie goalie, Cam Ward, who is currently standing on his head every night in net. Add your Rod Brind'Amour, Eric Staal, and midseason acquisition Doug Weight. As for Edmonton, you've got Chris Pronger in his first Stanley Cup final after all those years with the Blues where they made the playoffs every year and never got anywhere. I know they gave the Canucks fits this season -- they beat the Canucks in each of the first five meetings and ended up winning six of eight. The thing that chaps me, though, is goalie Dwayne Roloson. His inability to win games down the stretch was the one thing that kept the dead-in-the-water Canucks clinging to a morsel of playoff hope. The Canucks lost six of their final eight games, and it seemed every night the Canucks had control of their own destiny coming in and would lose it with every loss, but the Oilers would bail them out every night because Roloson couldn't win. What little luck the Canucks had finally ran out in San Jose in the second-to-last game of the season. Edmonton got the eighth seed in the Western Conference, and look at them now. Sigh...
-- Jeremy and I know two things: Jerome Bettis is from Detroit and Tara Kirk is from Bremerton. I got an email on Friday from Charlie Snyder at the USOC telling me that he put together a Tara Kirk photo gallery at USOlympicTeam.com. If for some reason it gets pushed from the front page, I think this link should work, though you don't get the conveniently sized browser window and you'll get a full-sized window with a bunch of empty space. Nonetheless, thanks to Charlie for taking the time to put that together and for bringing that to our attention. Tara rules. Beijing is two years away.
And with that, it's well wishes on the week ahead for all our readers, be they from the Northwest or in various places on the continent and around the world. Thanks to those of you who are still reading.
[***Piniella outburst reference]
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