Mishmash

One thing that is the worst is knowing that you have ideas to write, but can't come up with enough content to make a full on post.  Every time I start to write, I get a few paragraphs on, run out of coherent thoughts, and it just sits in the drafts pile until I get frustrated and delete the whole thing.  Well, NO MORE!  For I have decided to just throw a few of them together and make a mishmash of a post.  Here are a few random topics that I started and never finished.

Pete Rose bet on baseball.  Betting on baseball is illegal if you play.  He was banned for life.  Every once in a while, he petitions the commissioner to reinstate him.  Each of them refuse to let him in.  Because of his gambling, Pete Rose is kept out of the hall of fame.  But does he deserve consideration?  Technically the baseball hall of fame is not run or owned by MLB and he was only banned by the MLB.  So he could get in if the veteran's committee voted him in.  Which I don't think they'll ever do.  Fox drags him out occasionally for televised events, but I think he is terrible at analysis.  Just like with any player that tests positive for PEDs, I think Pete Rose should be left out of the hall of fame.  I know he didn't cheat, but he broke the rules and got caught.  If, IF, they ever let him in, and his plaque doesn't have an asterisk explaining why he was banned, that would be a total disgrace.

--

My goals for this year are going okay so far.  I have finished two books and am halfway through another one.  It's now the end of February so I think I am on track for my ten books.  I have eight books lined up for the rest of the year.  I got some for Christmas, some I bought with money from my birthday.  They are three comics (Daredevil collections),  a three fantasy books, a sports book, and a Stephen King short story collection.  As far as music, I have a few new albums.  I bought Adele's '25' for my wife for Christmas.  I put it on the computer for her and have it on my phone now.  It's a very good album, very enjoyable.  Sad music, not surprisingly, but it's so good.  I also bought Kendrick Lamar's 'To Pimp a Butterfly'.  It's good.  So good.  So, so good.  It covers subjects I have little to no insight on, so it's really outside my comfort zone.  But that's what I wanted to do.  I wanted to find new music.

--
 
The outdoor NHL game has lost it's allure.  I think the main reason is because they have saturated the market.  When they first started doing the outdoor game, it was once a year.  On New Year's Day.  It was fun and exciting because it was just that one time a year.  Now, they have the Stadium Series in which they have a few more games.  The two they had this year had teams I have some interest in:  Minnesota and Detroit.  Minnesota because this is where we live now, and Detroit because that's where we're from.  The Detroit/Colorado game was good.  It was close until the very end.  The Minnesota/Chicago game was not.  Surprisingly, Minnesota thumped Chicago.  As fun as it was to see the teams I wanted to win, win, there just wasn't the same buzz as there was when it was only one game a year.  Part of it, I think, is because the fans are so far away.  Seriously, the ice is in the middle of a baseball stadium and the fans are so far removed from the game that it takes away.  We all know the sound of drunk fans slamming the glass and that was one thing that was missing.  

--

I spent my birthday lazing around do a whole lot of nothing.  Just how I wanted it.  I watched the 'Star Wars' trilogy, went out for lunch and a beer, came back home and cooked dinner.  Usually we go out, but my wife worked late and we ended up going out a few nights later.  As an adult, I never really wanted to have big birthday parties for myself nor did I want a big party thrown for me.  We had a friend who threw a surprise birthday party for his wife when we were living down in Wichita, and she was so surprised and it was fun.  I told my wife that if she ever did that, I would turn around and walk out and go home.  That's just not my thing.  I'm all for a good party, but I don't want it to be all about me.  That's not who I am. 




So there you have four posts crammed into one because I couldn't come up with enough content.  And hey, it's February 29th.  LEAP DAY!  I always thought that it would be cool to have a birthday on the 29th.  Would you celebrate it on the 28th or the 1st on non Leap Years?

Rivalries Needed. Apply Within.

One thing that seems to be missing in most sports right now is rivalries.  Not just rivalries, but heated rivalries.  Rivalries filled with so much hate and anger that it carries over from one game to the next, one season to the next.  Heated rivalries makes the stadium or arena buzz with both excitement and anxiety.  Each play can add to the hatred. 

The last GREAT heated rivalry that lasted for years has to be the Red Wings and Avalanche.  Each time the teams took the ice after Claude Lemieux boarded Kris Draper, you never knew what was going to happen.  It had everything.  Players calling each other out in the media.  Full on brawls.  Goalie fights.  GOALIE FIGHTS!  At center ice.  It made you hate another team.  It made them the enemy.  It was the game you could circle on the schedule and look forward to an intense game.  Sure, the fights took away from the game itself, but if you could get players like Peter Forsberg and Igor Larionov to drop the gloves, you know it was a hatred that was on the next level.  

It's nice to have a respectable rivalry like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, but there's no real drama that stems from the rivalry.  They shake hands at the end, say good game, and go to the locker room.  How much better would it be if one of them stepped up to the microphone and said 'I hate that guy' or 'I hate that team because they play dirty.'  It is nice to have rivalries where each team holds the other in high regard, it shows that the players are human after all and not just there for our entertainment.  But wouldn't it be nice to have Brady say something like 'look at the head to head record, not much of a rivalry if you ask me.'? 

You see heated rivalries pop up every now and then.  Think Pistons/Pacers after the Malice at the Palace.  The hatred was there but wasn't sustained.  The rivalry lasted all of two season (I'm guessing, I'm not big into basketball).  So why wasn't this a big a rivalry as Wings/Avalanche?  One thing that sustains rivalries is players and success.  If you have the same players on the teams, they learn to hate each other.  If you have players traded or they sign with another team, part of the rivalry goes with them.  If Lemieux has been traded away or retired the same year he boarded Draper, would the rivalry been as angry as it was?  I don't think so.  If you take an element like hatred out, you might have an overall rivalry because the two teams are at or near the top of the sport, but it won't be as angry a rivalry if you keep a hated player on the roster.  You wouldn't have an enemy, you would just have competition.  

If you have two teams that go in different directions and one is successful while the other team struggles, it never seems to be much of a rivalry.  If you have a team that is doing poorly and they start to get physical with another team that is doing well, the bad team is seen as goonish.  Like they are trying to hurt the other team's players because they are succeeding.  However, if you have the two teams that are playing at a higher level, or I suppose if both teams are struggling, and they play with hatred it's seen as okay because they both risk the same thing.   

The era that sports are in right now lends to the rivalry decline.  Players, no matter what sport, sign with or get traded to, any team.  You don't see a player saying that they would retire rather than play for a team that they considered a life time rival.  The reason Jackie Robinson retired a Dodger is because he wouldn't play for the Giants (then the New York Giants) because he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Or so the legend goes.  With players going to several different teams throughout their playing careers, they start to make more friends.  So when they end up on a rival team, are they going to brush the batter back off the plate?  No.  Are they going to take them harder into the corner once they passed the puck?  No.  That's because, even if they are on a traditionally rival team, they still know and might even like the guy that is their 'rival'.

Reading back on the Ruben Tejada/Chase Utley incident during last year's playoffs makes my point that heated rivalries are fading fast.  Chase Utley BROKE THE DUDE'S LEG on a dirty slide to break up a double play.  And here's a few quotes I'm pulling from an ESPN article.

"That's not a slide. That's a tackle."  Michael Cuddyer, Mets outfielder

"We're losing our starting shortstop now for the rest of the playoffs.  He's got a broken fibula. It cost us potentially this game. And we don't have anything to show for it."  Kelly Johnson, Mets second baseman

After the Wings/Avalanche series in which Draper was injured was over, Dino Ciccarelli famously said 'I can't believe I had to shake that guy's (Lemieux) hand.  That pisses me off.'  You know what's missing from the Mets players' quotes?  Anger.  Animosity.  Hatred.  I couldn't find a quote from a Mets player after that game about any sort of retaliation.  I found some slightly veiled comments from the manager and the next game's starting pitcher.    I'm not calling for injuring another player, what I'm looking at is that if this is going to be a rivalry, how are Tejada's teammates not outwardly angry?  Is it because they haven't player with Tejada for a number of years?  Is it because the Mets/Dodgers aren't much of a rivalry because they are on opposite sides of the country and for a long time the Mets have struggled to win 70 games a season?  Perhaps a mixture of those elements.  But when you have guys coming and going on teams, you don't have the history against an opponent.  And that is the one thing that makes rivalries have less of an edge to them.