If you’re a sports fan like I am you just went through an action packed four days including an NHL game 7, an NBA champion, numerous World Cup games, and some quality baseball. Here’s a recap of what I saw over this period
NHL Champion Carolina Hurricane: It’s great to have hockey back. Of course it never really left for Bethany and myself since we still made it to 20+ college hockey games during the lockout. An exciting finals saw the resilient Edmonton Oilers storm back from a 3 games to 1 deficit to force a decisive game seven. If you’ve never attended or watched a sudden death hockey game you have no idea what an exciting experience you’re missing. For next years, here’s to the Bruins not becoming the Clippers and the NHL getting a decent TV deal. This also marks my third Stanley Cup finals of not rooting for the eventual champion.
NBA Champion Miami Heat: The Heat appeared dead in the water after losing the first two games in Dallas, but stormed back to win the next four games of the series to give the “team built to win” the trophy. Jason Terry is a player, but Dwayne Wade channeled Michael Jordan by taking over in dominating fashion and appears to have a long successful career ahead of him. The NBA has returned and if you watched any of the Suns series or the first round Cavs/Wizards games you know what I’m talking about.
MLB/Red Sox-Braves Sunday Night Baseball: How the mighty have fallen. Baseball has commercialized a traditionalist game by heavily emphasizing offense only to have most of its stars turn out to be cheats or a bunch of jerks. Oops. Sunday’s pitching match up, however, between John Smoltz and Curt Schilling lived up to all the hype. Two guys who know how to pitch each throwing fantastic, intense games until the chaos of the bullpens took over (although I have to admit that was exciting in it’s own right). The problem with baseball is they have decided to not teach the fans the game and they have no interest in quality. You end with full stadiums cheering over pop ups because the ball’s in the air when you can clearly see the batter got out on his front foot and it isn’t going anywhere. I’m not really too sure what to make of the rest of the season just yet, although Ozzie Guillen really needs to go away. He kind of reminds me of that annoying, racist relative who ten minutes into Christmas you realize the act grew old in 1987 and he needs to leave.
World Cup: I will proudly stand up and admit I have watched too many World Cup games to count and have enjoyed all of them. The U.S. have proven their eight year initiative to match the rest of the world has flopped and needs to retool or more realistically recognize it’s not going to happen. The best athletes in every other country play soccer while the U.S. gets everyone after baseball, basketball, and football. So they came out and stunk it up against the Czechs. Big Deal. What stood out to me was after watching Ghana beat the Czechs and Brazil defeat Australia was that the boys in red, white, and blue did not even come close to matching the speed, skill, and intensity of those squads.
NHL Champion Carolina Hurricane: It’s great to have hockey back. Of course it never really left for Bethany and myself since we still made it to 20+ college hockey games during the lockout. An exciting finals saw the resilient Edmonton Oilers storm back from a 3 games to 1 deficit to force a decisive game seven. If you’ve never attended or watched a sudden death hockey game you have no idea what an exciting experience you’re missing. For next years, here’s to the Bruins not becoming the Clippers and the NHL getting a decent TV deal. This also marks my third Stanley Cup finals of not rooting for the eventual champion.
NBA Champion Miami Heat: The Heat appeared dead in the water after losing the first two games in Dallas, but stormed back to win the next four games of the series to give the “team built to win” the trophy. Jason Terry is a player, but Dwayne Wade channeled Michael Jordan by taking over in dominating fashion and appears to have a long successful career ahead of him. The NBA has returned and if you watched any of the Suns series or the first round Cavs/Wizards games you know what I’m talking about.
MLB/Red Sox-Braves Sunday Night Baseball: How the mighty have fallen. Baseball has commercialized a traditionalist game by heavily emphasizing offense only to have most of its stars turn out to be cheats or a bunch of jerks. Oops. Sunday’s pitching match up, however, between John Smoltz and Curt Schilling lived up to all the hype. Two guys who know how to pitch each throwing fantastic, intense games until the chaos of the bullpens took over (although I have to admit that was exciting in it’s own right). The problem with baseball is they have decided to not teach the fans the game and they have no interest in quality. You end with full stadiums cheering over pop ups because the ball’s in the air when you can clearly see the batter got out on his front foot and it isn’t going anywhere. I’m not really too sure what to make of the rest of the season just yet, although Ozzie Guillen really needs to go away. He kind of reminds me of that annoying, racist relative who ten minutes into Christmas you realize the act grew old in 1987 and he needs to leave.
World Cup: I will proudly stand up and admit I have watched too many World Cup games to count and have enjoyed all of them. The U.S. have proven their eight year initiative to match the rest of the world has flopped and needs to retool or more realistically recognize it’s not going to happen. The best athletes in every other country play soccer while the U.S. gets everyone after baseball, basketball, and football. So they came out and stunk it up against the Czechs. Big Deal. What stood out to me was after watching Ghana beat the Czechs and Brazil defeat Australia was that the boys in red, white, and blue did not even come close to matching the speed, skill, and intensity of those squads.
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