Borderline Fantastic Sports

A few weeks ago Evan called to let me know he had purchased a plane ticket to NYC. School would be over, so he was free. He didn’t have any plans for when he arrived. He checked the baseball schedule after booking the ticket and saw that the Phillies were in town on Thursday and the Mets would be there for the weekend.

Phillies? I’m in. I checked with Janos, he was in too. Evan’s sister’s boyfriend John rounded out the group.

I went on to StubHub and got 4 tickets in the very top row of the stadium, in a section where I thought we’d get a good view of everything. I think that goal was accomplished.

There were Phillies fans everywhere. By the end of the game, they were all that was left. The 9th inning took forever and the Phillies put a few more runs on the board, leaving to a slow exodus of the rest of the stadium.

I’d been to the old Yankee Stadium twice. Once when I was about 11 and during the last season because Evan hadn’t been there so we made the trip. The new one certainly doesn’t have the charm of the old one. I feel like they tried to copy how the stadium looked at the end. Meaning they attempted to make the new building look old instead of letting it age. It either will look great in many years or will fall apart very quickly. To me, the biggest improvement is the amount of extra space. The lines for food used to fill the concourses so you couldn’t even walk through. Now there is almost too much space, which is a good thing.

Any points gained by design improvements are lost by that ridiculous restaurant in center field. There is no excuse for the bleacher seats being blocked from seeing the other outfield. TV screens are not enough.

The video screen in center field looks amazing. I’m just not sure why they don’t use it for replays. I saw a few early on, but later in the game, there was nothing. Especially in the 9th when the Yankees left the field and no one could figure out what had happened. When I got home I saw that Ibanez had been hit by the grounder to end the inning. No replay or anything in the stadium to let us know what happened.

On last thing, every seat in the stadium has a warning: “Be alert for bats and/or balls.” Every seat. Even all the way in the upper deck. This picture isn’t even from all the way at the top where we were sitting, yet still, really, really far. No bat was making it’s way up there.

My iPad stand arrived this week. I went with the Twelve South BookArc for iPad. I wanted something that could hold the iPad in either direction. I would have liked one that adjusted the angle but they all looked pretty large. Last night I was finally able to use it how I envisioned it.

The Phillies were between innings so I had on the White Sox/Nats game on MLBNet. On the iPad I had the Gamecast up for the Phillies game in the MLB At Bat app. If I get MLB.tv, I can watch video on the iPad, but I don’t need that just yet, maybe in September.

The stand is exactly what I wanted. I will probably get a Bluetooth Keyboard soon and use the stand for things besides supplementing TV watching.

If I were running baseball …

The baseball season spans, what I consider to be, four major holidays. Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. The fourth? Opening Day. A non-baseball fan could argue it being a holiday, but for my purposes, you don’t need to worry about that argument.

First, and this should be how it already is if it weren’t for tv (which is the case for most things), all teams should open on the same day. A single Opening Day. Not an Opening Night followed by two Opening Days.

My proposal is that every game, all 15, on each of these holidays should be on some sort of national tv. ESPN and MLB Network will show quite a few games, but not all, and I don’t expect them to show all of them. Other channels should jump in on this new tradition. Broadcast or cable, whatever. On most of these holidays they are showing a marathon of whatever they find around on the floor. I don’t care what the channel usually shows. Food Network? Sure. SOAPNet? Perfect. Some would make sense: Nick, MTV.

I know your question, ‘why would a non-sports channel want to produce a baseball game?’ They don’t. All these games are already on somewhere. MLB Net shows a local feed for most of their games already. If you wanted to be real ambitions, you could alternate the feeds for the national audience to get a taste of each team’s announcers. For the local fans, the game would still be on their regional sports net as usual.

I mentioned Nick and MTV has channels that would make sense because I could see them producing it themselves and bringing their own style to it. I bet Nick could even convince Fox to let them dig up Scooter. In these instances, it will be even more important for the local nets to still broadcast the game. It would be great for their target audiences, but not the real fans.

This could make baseball a big deal on each of these holidays. It’s supposedly the ‘national past time’ (and is for me, but sadly, not for everyone), it should act like it on occasion. Instead of tweaking (ruining) the all-star game and having November World Series games that take all night.

Today’s Phillies game was nuts, but this one play was just amazing.

Watch

First, mlb.com called this clip ‘Howard’s strong throw home’. Umm, did you watch the clip? Schneider turned into an acrobat to make up for the poor throw by Howard.

Look at everything that went in to the play:

Howard decides to go home instead of getting the 2nd out at 1st. The infield was in, but he still could have gone with the easy out, letting the Giants tie the game. He made the throw and it made it to the catcher.

Schneider catches the off-line throw. Spins around to get his glove to the plate. He not only gets it there, he gets it in front of the plate. This blocks the front of the plate and he’s in position to sweep the plate. He does this and Uribe plants his hand right on the glove. The bat was even in play, if Uribe had decided to go a different route.

Schierholtz, who was on 2nd after a double, doesn’t advance on the play. I don’t know what game he was watching. At worst, he froze on the hit. Once Howard goes home, he should have broken for 3rd. Even if the throw is on line, it’s very unlikely that he’s getting thrown out at 3rd. The Giants were left still a run behind with an out left, but the tying run was on 2nd, not 3rd.

The Phillies got that last out and won the game. I still would have been just excited about this play had it all fallen apart, again.

It’s Opening Night. Baseball Picks is back on Ice Cream Helmet again this season. Here are the top 10 rated series that can be picked for Week 1. No surprise, tonight’s Yankees/Red Sox game is on the list. Make your picks!

The Lehigh Valley IronPigs (Phillies AAA) are offering possibly the greatest Valentine’s Day gift ever. One of the Pork Racers (I assume they race at some point during the game) will go to your love’s work or home and deliver a special gift. There are two packages available. Both include 2 tickets to an IronPigs game, 2 pig snouts, and a box of chocolates. You get to choose between a dozen roses or an IronPigs hat and t-shirt.

Questions …
1) Which Pork Racer to pick? How do you begin to choose between Chris P. Bacon, Hambone, and Diggity?
2) Which package to get? The roses or the hat and t?
3) What is the expected reaction to a gift that includes pig snouts?

Sadly, these are only available in Lehigh and Northampton counties. I guess that makes the decision easier about sending one to myself. Hey, maybe that’s why they have the hat and t-shirt option.

Also, it looks like the AAA All-Star game is in Lehigh Valley this year. The fanfest is called Pigapalooza. Can you possibly resist that?

My parents found this in a bag of pretzel chips. I’m not sure what they are doing buying/eating pretzel chips. Those are two things that are just fine on their own and don’t need to be combined.

Anyway, I take this as a good sign for the Phillies.

I’m not sure how I didn’t see this one months ago, but I love this Philly ad.

I really need this picture. Go Phils.

Can you name the starting lineups for the World Series winning teams, in the winning game, dating back to 1987? This one is just nuts. I’ve seen some pretty crazy Sporcle quizzes, but this one managed to not quite get to the ‘too crazy to try until time expires’ line. So I just tried to fill in as many of the 198 spots that I could. I don’t think I did very well, only getting 90. There are some names that I just couldn’t spell correctly, which would have helped me a lot because some of them won multiple titles. Anyway, sorry, and good luck.

Can you name the World Series champion lineups?

Last week! Right there at the top of the list is an epic NL East battle: Mets/Nats. The Mets closed up shop a few months ago. The Marlins and Braves also face off. The Marlins were eliminated from NL East contention, making me a huge Marlins fan for this series.

The matchup of the week: Twins @ Tigers. The Twins trail the Tigers by 2 games heading in to this 4 game series.

Make your ICH Picks