Soccer
You know it’s been a poor sports weekend when you’re
starting off with soccer. Oh, it’s
likely more my fault than sports in general, but athletics haven’t done
anything to rouse me from my funk.
I thought last weekend that somehow the English Premier
League had its championship. Imagine my
surprise as two teams were playing for a cup and neither of them were the team
that was being congratulated last week.
I have no idea.
I decided to give it a look-in because my favorite soccer
team, Arsenal, was playing. How did I
acquire a favorite team in soccer when I don’t even have a favorite hockey
team, a sport which I actually watch regularly and enjoy? Simply, they are the favorite team of my
favorite F1 driver, Jensen Button. Also,
they seem to be nicknamed, the Gunners, which would actually be a great team
name. Unfortunately in our repressive
thought-controlled society, we’re unlikely to ever see that name used
here. (More on team names later.)
My Arsenal guys managed to make the greatest soccer comeback
of all time as they were down by the insurmountable score of 2-nil, but tied it
in regulation and went into Extra time.
Failing to break the tie, the teams into Extra Extra time. Arsenal scores! Yea!
Championship!
Wait, why are they still playing? Two minutes later, the teams decided to stop
playing for whatever reason, and Arsenal had indeed won, this time for
sure. I have no idea what I watched or
how the game works, but my guys won! I
wonder if there’ll be another championship next weekend? (Actually, I think there is.)
Cycling
Oh yeah, now I’m officially scrapping the bottom. Even I may not read the rest of this
post. Actually, I enjoy bike racing, or
did. Because of all the scandal in the
sport, it’s lost a lot of prestige and, frankly, it’s highly un-cool to say
that you like it these days. It was the
Tour of California. Cyclists in the
final stage were challenged by high mountain elevations and even higher state
taxes, and a flat out urban sprint, dodging illegal aliens left and right. I’m just kidding. It was an upscale neighborhood. No doubt the residents had sent the lawn
workers away for the day. What’s great
about cycling is that the winner gets kissed by trophy girls on the podium, the
way God intended. The winner had twin
ruby red lipstick marks on his cheeks during the interview. Awesome.
Hockey
My ability to watch hockey seems to be diminishing as summer
temperatures rise. I skipped the Sunday
game, even though I like the Blackhawks.
I paid indifferent attention to the Saturday game where the Ranger
drubbed the Canadiens. They were playing
in Montreal ,
and I couldn’t help but notice that there was an Expos banner up in the rafters
with the hockey team’s banners. This
brings up the obvious question of what did the Expos ever win?
I think I missed mentioning this early in the baseball
season, but late in Spring Training, I saw the Blue Jays in an exhibition game
at Olympic Stadium. The Montreal fans were
encouraged to break out there old Expos jerseys, and they actually filled the
stadium there. Where were all of these people when they had a
team? Seems like there’s good-sized
potential fanbase there. Montreal Rays? Montreal
A’s? Hmmmm.
Indycar
Wait. That was a
hockey update? Weak. I deserve a good, cheap shot into the boards
for that one.
Well, it’s about to get weaker. Local boy, Ed Carpenter won the pole for the
Indy 500 for the second year in a row. I
couldn’t watch more than five contiguous minutes of qualifying, in spite of
four hours of coverage over two days. Sunday
was particularly bad as ABC/ESPN spent an hour doing nothing before drivers
actually went out on track. The new
qualifying format made no real sense to me.
The change was probably mandated by the lack of needing a “bump” day,
which certainly means that they’re probably paying a few teams to start to make
up the field of 33 cars. Still, I’m
looking forward to the big race next weekend.
Sort of. During the cycling, NBC
was advertising the Monaco
race starting at 5:30 am. Memorial Day
Sunday promises to be a very long day for me.
Baseball
Why am I even bothering with these section titles? First up, I have to mention the NMSU Aggie
baseball I listened to all afternoon on Saturday. The second game of the double-header was
rather memorable at 22-15 Aggies. I
think the football team would be happy if they could score like that. It was a 7-inning game that, no surprise,
took longer than the 9-inning game that preceded it. There was something like five pitchers used
in the first inning. That was the end of
their regular season. They’re off to the
WAC tournament this week.
In Major League Baseball, the rash of pitcher arm injuries
continues unabated. I don’t pretend to
have any special knowledge about this subject, and apparently neither do the
people who get paid to take care of these guys.
For all of the babying of Strassburg’s arm, he still ended up needing
surgery. My Rangers are getting
devastated for the second year in row over injured pitchers. Nobody seems to know what they’re doing when
it comes to managing arms, especially new pitchers. I think this issue will be (or should be) headed
to the Commissioner’s office.
I was pleasantly surprised that KROD was carrying the ESPN
Yankees-Pirates game Saturday afternoon.
I almost listened to it instead of Aggie baseball. Unfortunately, apparently nobody at the
station was listening either, as local commercials kept interrupting the
game. I changed stations in sheer
frustration. Let’s see you guys at KROD
pull this kind of amateur hour broadcasting during a Cowboy game or during your
local sportstalk sometime. If it’s too
difficult for you to broadcast national baseball games correctly, why don’t you
just broadcast dead air/ESPN sportstalk (same thing) in between commercial
breaks instead?
This is what’s known in journalism as “burying the
lead.” I have to make another apology to
the team. On the team’s website, there’s
a link to a contest for best minor league cap.
After perusing the entries, I’m forced to conclude that “Chihuahuas ” is not only
not the worst team name, it may not even be in the top ten of bad names. The Biscuits, the Rubber Ducks, the Sand
Gnats, the Hops (beer hops), the Kernals (cob of corn), the Tourists, and the
Manatees are just a sampling of, not just worse, but much worse names. I won’t even get into some of the weird,
disturbing logos.
There’s some winners on the list like the Arkansas
Travelers, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the Tulsa Drillers, the San Antonio
Missions, but for the most part, most teams are lucky to even have a
questionable name. Listening to all
those Texas League games, I had just assumed most minor league teams had good
names. How about those cats? We got Mudcats, Fishercats, Rivercats,
Rockcats, Valleycats, and Flaming Cats (I’m just kidding about that last
one). I’m beginning to think somebody
should take up my gag name, Surfing Bears, for real. (If I ever own a team, I’m naming them the
Gunners. I expect harsh criticism from
the PC police.)
The team, meanwhile, has sent down the hero of their first
homestand, Jake Lemmerman, to Double A. I
said Triple A rosters were fluid. His
game-winning grand slam lives on in the promos.
The Las Vegas 51’s came to town and lived up to their
second-best record in all of baseball, taking the first three games in the
series. On a Dog Day Sunday afternoon,
where El Paso
fans were encouraged to bring their dogs, the 51’s went up 7-0 halfway through
the game. Game over? Hardly.
In the bottom of the 6th, Cody Decker would drive in a
go-ahead run for the dogs, capping a 7 run inning. (No word on what he was wearing though.) Needless to say, the sell-out crowd went
berserk. From the sounds of it, I don’t
think any of them left at 7-0.
The score would go back and forth again, but El Paso
would prevail 10-9. Another signature
game for the team at home. Unlike the
Diablos, where it didn’t matter if they won, it only mattered what the
promotions were (really, they didn’t budget for promotions in the post-season,
the fans and team management literally didn’t care if they won or not), I think
the fans are expecting more now. The Chihuahuas need to win
to keep their fanbase. Victories like
this are exactly what they need to keep the buzz going. Another thing that helped this series was
having local El Pasoan, Omar Quintanilla, playing, albeit for the opposing team. The fans did applaud him and give him a warm
welcome. Very knowledgeable.
My only disappointment with today’s game would have to be
with the canine fans. I don’t know how
many dogs were in attendance, but I only heard one distinct bark. Apparently the dogs were sitting on their
paws for the game. What were they
thinking while their owners were going crazy?
Would the dogs rather have been home watching golf or hockey? Mad that they never get taken to basketball
or football games? I blame their owners
for not properly training them.
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