Posts Tagged ‘sports’
Fan Frustrations
As many distractions as I mustered to keep from solely focusing on sports outcomes yesterday, the negative vibes of witnessing the abuse that referees allowed to continually occur in last night’s hockey game between Minnesota and North Dakota left me stewing. It’s too bad, given I had a great start to the sunny, warm March day, taking a long, brisk walk with Cyndie that worked wonders to stretch out the ol’ hamstring and lift my spirits. Plus, there’s that news which broke about an hour before the hockey game had even started that the basketball team is in this year’s NCAA Tournament! Such a shame that all that good potential got lost in the angst of my suffering the malicious intentions displayed that seem to have a history of occurring in games I’ve witnessed involving the Dave Hakstol coached UND Souix. It frustrates me to the extreme.
I truly love the game of hockey, but I have never understood the culture of allowance for post-whistle chippy activity that permeates the sport at most all levels. That fighting is still woven into the NHL and other professional leagues is mind boggling enough, but then the game barely looks any different in the levels below where fighting is supposedly not allowed. It starts with checks that would earn unsportsmanlike penalties in most other sports, and includes post-whistle punches, stick hacks, and passive aggressive intentional contact that deftly provokes under a guise of innocence. Nine times out of ten, the officials just skate in and separate all the players, as if that will end it. Ridiculous.
I dream of someday watching a game where every time a player smacks a stick or pushes their glove into a player’s face mask after the whistle has blown, they get sent to the penalty box without hesitation. I’m pretty sure they would get the message real quick. Imagine what the game could be like if they had to channel all that miscreant behavior into actual skating, passing and shooting the puck.
A fan can dream, can’t he?
Time Shifting
Big deal, move the clocks. I’m not a fan of shifting the clocks, but it’s not so significant to me that it causes me to have health problems. I saw one report that indicated an increase in heart attacks in the three days following changing the clocks. This morning was dictated to be the time for moving the clocks ahead one hour to Daylight Saving Time. Imagine dying from this time change. Wow. That’s extreme.
I would expect more heart attacks this time of year to come from trying to follow your hockey team or your basketball team in the post-season tournaments. I join my good friend, Rhonda, in having a weakness for the drama of Minnesota Gopher basketball games. Even as much as we love the team and the sport, it’s hard to endure the rough parts of their performance. They made it easy on us yesterday, (although past experience as a fan leaves one weary that any lead can be lost) as they overwhelmingly dominated Purdue to advance to the championship game of the Big 10 tournament today. This is the first time in the history of the event, which began in 1998, that Minnesota has made it to the championship game.
The Gopher hockey team squeaked out a victory last night against North Dakota to force a third and deciding game today in their playoff for access to the Final Five of the WCHA tournament. So, today I run a much higher risk of succumbing to anxiety as a local college sports fan than from the adjustment of the clock.
At least there will be more sunlight later in the day to console me if the sports outcomes are dreary for me.
Just move the clocks, and suddenly there is more sunlight in the day! It’s a miracle!
Humans. Aren’t we just so silly?
Slow But Real
Something that I have always wanted to be able to do is move in slow motion, in real time. As a kid, when we tried to reenact outstanding achievements that we’d seen our athlete-heroes perform in slow motion replays on television, the best moves always reached a point where gravity would overcome our ultimate maneuver and wreck the timing with a fast fall.
It occurred to me, when watching Olympic figure skating the last couple of weeks, that we can’t even judge what the athletes are doing anymore without using slow motion video. They spin so fast that judges need to review a slowed replay to discern the actual positioning of the skater’s blades. I don’t think a play goes by, in sports I watch on television, that I don’t wish to view each previous move from the perspective of the slow motion replay. Even video games provide slow motion replay of what just occurred prior.
I say, let’s just take it to the obvious extreme that we seem to be inevitably headed toward anyway and devise a way to slow everything down (anti-gravity?) in real time. But it has to be EVERYTHING, or it won’t work properly. If you are in slow mode and something looks amiss, you can’t just speed your reaction to avert calamity. You must suffer seeing it all play out as you remain synchronized with the slow speed and unable to alternatively influence the outcome. Ya gotta take the good with the bad.
Why, in slow motion, real time, I could have made that move to get open and release that quick shot to win the men’s hockey gold medal game.
Curl This
Against my own inclination to choose not to write about something that is already getting more than enough attention, I’m going to toss out my thoughts about the curling event that is getting plenty of television coverage by NBC in the US this Olympics. One of the first things that surprises me is how many folks I have heard from who are revealing themselves to be great fans of what they are seeing. Even as they admit they don’t entirely grasp all the details, they are nonetheless fascinated with watching.
I have mixed feelings. The first time I was exposed to it, in a previous Olympics, I found myself mesmerized and drawn to want to see more. I described myself as a fan. This year, upon further review, I have to admit, I’m not getting it. Suddenly, I’m finding the hollering: “yep-nope-yep-no, no, yep, no, HAAAARRRDD!, HARD!, HARD!!” to be a bit too schizophrenic for me to handle. Especially when the two people yelling, one from each of the opposite ends, are giving conflicting commands.
With the action interspersed with so much inactivity, I figure it should be an event ripe for multi-task viewing. I was definitely wrong. Every time I looked up during one recent match, there was nothing there. No stones in the house. I could hear shouting and stones being delivered, but by the time I looked up, nothing. Then I hear cheering and excitement and I look to find the cheering is for another match happening on the adjacent space, off camera. The members of the team I was watching are standing around, leaning on brooms, strategizing.
As for scoring, I am embarrassed that something so simple continues to evade me. When I’m trying to figure out which stones are going to count for points, players are pulling them off and tossing them to the side, not to be counted. Other times, similar stones might be left in play. Then, somehow no points will be granted for an end. I’ve no clue.
I must admit that I am bugged that for this “sport” the network offers full audio of the participants, something that helps me very little since I can’t understand their logic or their lingo, and often times, even their language. For my whole life, I have wished for this same opportunity to hear what the discussion is out on the pitcher’s mound in baseball or in the huddles and coaching instruction circles of basketball and football.
My biggest problem is that curling is like a different version of chess. They are making immediate decisions based on what will be happening multiple moves later in each “end”. I have no sense of what will be happening later, so I take each individual delivery and result on its own. Entirely underwhelming. It doesn’t provide much in the way of what I value in a spectator sport.
As much as I want to be a fan, I am more frustrated than not. I say, bring on the hockey games. That, I understand.
Sad Reality
Yesterday, when I did the laundry, I was presented with a vivid depiction of a brutal reality I am currently facing. Happily, it wasn’t a decline of my mental balance that was bringing this to my attention.
If you research the word addiction, you can find that it isn’t automatically framed as a negative affliction. For many years I have been playing indoor soccer early in the morning, three days a week. It provides a combination of physical exercise and social camaraderie to which I can admit being addicted. It happens to be one of the primary activities that I undertake to manage ongoing depression without medication. And when I play three times a week, it creates a lot of laundry that needs to be washed on a regular basis. When I picked up the basket of dirty clothes, there was hardly anything within. It being a day of rest from the normal day-job work week, I had enough free time to pick up around the house. One area that was long overdue for attention was my mystery pile of clothes that have collected from the returning clean laundry and the things I’ve worn recently, but don’t require washing. There I found stacks of the shirts, socks and shorts that I wear for morning soccer. With a heavy heart, I put it all away for now, wondering how long it might be until I can return to my favorite pastime.
In two more days, it will be two weeks since I injured my hamstring. The first weekend after the injury was really promising and I had high hopes that the damage was minor and that I might not have far to go to rehabilitate it. But for the last week, I have suffered a confusing series of signals leaving me unclear about what’s going on. Part of what happens is I detect discomfort from other areas that are either referred pain, or irritation from ways I move in compensation, or a result of my icing and compression regimen. I’ve done some research and am encouraged over recommendations for massage to speed recovery and allow correct fibre realignment and minimize scar tissue. I was under the impression that massage should wait until later, but I would like to begin as soon as is safe. I will now set my mind to working a routine of stretching and strength building within the limits of pain-free range.
Unfortunately, it is a far cry from the fun and fellowship of which I am being deprived.
Winter Games
Enough about my silly winter weekend activities. The eyes of the world are on the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. As much as I love to watch sports, (I saw a wonderful opinion piece yesterday questioning whether a lot of what we see being subjectively judged should really be called a sport), there is a lot about these games that I fail to fully grasp.
The US snowboard star, Shaun White, was asked how his gold medal winning run of 4 years ago would stand up against the judging of today’s event. His guess was that it might barely be enough to qualify for the finals now, but that’s it. The same thing happens in figure skating. Once someone masters a new level of trick that has 4 spins instead of 3, then 4 spins becomes compulsory to challenge for the top medal. What if, when someone hit an extremely long homerun in baseball, it became the new standard and all homeruns needed to be that long? These judged events just continue to grow more outrageous every year.
How in the heck, as a casual spectator, am I supposed to discern whether a person has spun around 3 or 4 times? How am I going to notice whether a boarder spun a 900 or a 1080? If Curling can be presented as a spectator sport, why don’t they spend a little of that dead time between stone deliveries to explain to all of us who have never set foot in a venue where curling occurs, (the majority of the world’s population), what the actual rules of the game really are?
The most difficult aspect of wanting to see actual Olympic competition, especially those of us subject to receiving US television broadcasts, is surviving the overwhelming volume of advertising blasted at us throughout the hours the network has scheduled their coverage. It’s worse than trying to watch an NFL game on television, and that is a pretty drastic milestone to surpass! There seem to be more minutes per hour of ads than there are Olympics. What little competition we are granted tends to get whittled down to the medal winning performances. There is a lot more going on than we ever get to see.
Lastly, I don’t understand why there is any reason to compare how many medals each country has. If they need to do it, the least they could do is weight it to take into consideration how many athletes per country there are. Either way, it fails to provide any valuable information related to the spirit of the Olympic competition.
Regardless all my gripes, I still love to see the winter Olympic games. All the way to the end of the month, any free time I have will likely involve a large percentage of tuning in whatever coverage I can get. It definitely offers something that none of the professional or college league sports are able to conjure up during the rest of the days of the year.
Speaking of Punishment
Well, well, well. I’m enduring ongoing punishment here. It seems that for some strange reason, one of the muscles in my leg wasn’t up to full speed soccer yesterday morning, after 5 days straight of the intense stress of shoveling. Looks like I’m out of athletic activity for about 6 weeks. Could the fatigue from shoveling, and my injury playing soccer, be related?
I take it as a sign of progress that neither of my calf muscles failed me. No, this time it was a hamstring. Or, more precisely, the biceps femoris long head. I felt the “pop” on the back of my leg, just above the knee, the same as it feels to get hit by a raquetball. I have never injured a hamstring to this degree before, and never down near the knee. I didn’t know what to think. I hopped off the court, afraid to put any weight on it, and began to assess what the heck I had just done. It felt like, if I moved at all, it would cramp up. Eventually, with the encouragement of my soccer mates, I determined I could move the knee joint fully and stand to put weight on the leg without specific pain. The pain is when I try to move in any way that requires strength from that muscle. It is a soft-tissue injury that will get ice, rest, compression, and elevation for treatment. And long term, it will get massage to break up any scar tissue that forms. I learned about the benefits of that the hard way, with my calf.
All I needed to do was drive home from the club. Then I remembered I drive a manual transmission vehicle. Working that clutch is a real treat with a muscle injury. I figured I could take it slow and do as little shifting as possible. As if the driving situations are going to be sensitive to my plight. I felt like such an invalid, trying to maneuver this car with my injury, and I wanted everyone in the vicinity to realize that I was injured and might need an allowance to navigate home safely. From outside my vehicle, I looked perfectly capable to others. It struck me that the normal reaction I have to other vehicles I see every day is that the drivers would be fully prepared and equipped to drive. Why would I consider it to be any other way?
Well, now I’m here to report that I have a new insight. Even though a vehicle might look just fine, the driver could be on their way home from injuring themselves while playing sports and deserve a little extra patience. For every car we have to deal with in the rush hour on the way to or from work, which we assume is being driven by someone just as capable and aware as ourselves, we could actually have someone who just learned some terrible news, or were just involved in an intense argument with someone they love, causing them to experience a psychological injury, or even recently suffered a physical injury, and now they must try to get themselves home or somewhere safe or where they can get help. Don’t just assume people driving around you aren’t dealing with some dramatic problem of their own, just because you can’t see it.
Of course, it is still equally possible that they are driving erratically because they are eating while texting as they read the paper and fiddle with the radio. You may still be inclined to curse them, but keep in mind that other possibility as you lay on the horn to let them know of your dissatisfaction with their driving performance.
Game Day
This is the best moment, folks. Before the game even starts. After last week’s Vikings victory over the Dallas Cowboys, to earn a spot in the NFC Championship game that will commence later today, the whole state has been atwitter. Everywhere I turn, I find people wearing bright purple team wear. We have had a week of building anticipation, all targeted on this day. Prince released a new song written for the team. There are only 4 teams left and the entire nation of NFL fans will focus on these games with no competing games as distractions.
Have you noticed how the broadcasts during the playoffs seem to have difficulty breaking from their regular season format? At the usual intervals they interrupt the play-by-play to update other games in progress. Now, even though there are no other games in progress, they fail to drop that routine and interrupt to report on a game that already finished or tell us about the one coming up next. It seems so awkwardly unnecessary. Maybe the “Gamebreak” has a sponsor that requires the spot, whether or not there is anything to report on worthy of the interruption.
The odd thing about the buildup of anticipation for this game and so many others like it, is that it becomes larger than the game itself. And the sad thing about that is that as soon as the game starts, the anticipation is over. No matter how the game turns out, it is very difficult to live up to the anticipation. If the game goes sour for the home team, the deflation is decidedly thorough. Stranger still, if the home team is victorious, it is such a hoped for outcome, the reality can’t live up to it.
All we really have then is the anticipation for the next game.
Enjoy the Conference Championships today!
OUCH!
I broke my floorball stick last week. Heartbreaking loss, it is. Even Kitty seemed a bit distressed over it. I really need to improve my skills to a level that involves a lot less flailing in desperation. These things ain’t cheap! To that point, I kept my old stick, that partially fractured long ago, and have prolonged its life by creating a crude splint out of random materials at hand. It has already more than served its purpose as a backup. I think it is a pretty good strategy to play a sport that involves equipment that wears out before you do. It doesn’t always work that way, but maybe if I keep thinking like that, I can prolong the success of breaking sticks instead of tearing muscles. 
More Sports Speak
It is Sunday morning and after a two-week wait due to a bye in their schedule, the NFL Vikings play football again today. As if I really need more sports this weekend. Friday night, I attended the Gopher basketball game at the U of M, and yesterday morning, I was back down there to see the football team. Later, at home, I caught the hockey team in fine form on television, triumphing over Bemidji State. But this year, with Brett Favre as quarterback, watching the Vikings is once again becoming almost as interesting for me, as college sports.
One other thing has renewed my interest in professional football this year. Julian organized an online pool of competition in which we pick the winner of every NFL game each week. Brings back memories of the old ‘office pool’ I used to do when he was young. It instantly makes games that I would otherwise care less about, particularly interesting. It also forces me to become aware, if even superficially, of the status of every single team in the league.
We are competing for bragging rights, but win or lose, I have gained the increased entertainment value that playing such pools provides. As well, it has been interesting to witness how often Julian’s and my predictions appear similar. As a result, our year-to-date total is dead-even. Just last week, I was thinking that I will need to find a way to get a little distance between us. When all the participant’s selections were locked in and became visible, it became clear how difficult that is likely going to be. Julian’s and my picks were identical.
One of the tricks to getting more guesses correct than all the other people in the pool, is to pick at least one unlikely upset. The hope is that no one else will have the same selection, and then you just need your underdog team to steal a victory for you. The reality is that the odds are much greater for the outcome to go doubly against you, since being wrong instantly puts you behind everyone else. There ends up being multiple ways the game can be seen as an upset.
One easy way to assume you will get a pick that most of the others won’t choose, is to bet against the home team. That can be a hard decision to make. This year, when I finally felt the situation was right to try that ploy, it turned out perfect, except for one thing. Julian saw it exactly the same way. He and I were the only two who correctly guessed the Vikings to lose that week. Like father, like son.
Relative Something 