Borderline Fantastic

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.

The post positions were set today, so you can now make your picks.

Make ICH Picks

You pick how you expect all 20 horses to finish. The default scoring is as follows (you can change any of these values if you create your own group):

Correct Pick: 2 points
Correct Win: 20 points
Correct Place: 10 points
Correct Show: 5 points
Correct Last: 1 point
1 Finish Position off: 1 point
Each Finish Position off by more than 1: -0.2 points (If you pick a horse to finish 5th and it finished 7th, that is 2 positions off, so you would get 0.8 points)

Perhaps a little complicated, but I wanted something more than just Win, Place, Show. It’s so difficult to get finish positions exactly right, so I wanted some value in being close. Create your groups with whatever settings you like. If you have some suggestions to improve the default scoring, leave a comment.

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.

I wasn’t sure about the new Thursday/Friday NFL draft idea. Seemed a little unnecessary and that the NFL was thinking it was too important.

Turns out, it was a good idea, at least for me. I don’t really like watching the draft anymore. I like to keep up with the picks and trades but I don’t need the analysis. I read enough online leading up to the draft. With so many people covering the draft on tv now, the quality of analysis had dropped off a cliff. Toward the end of the night I was able to flip between NFL Net and ESPN. NFL Net was good (once Deion stopped interviewing people) and ESPN had a lot of holes (I barely heard from Mel Kiper with so many people on the panel).

The Thursday night worked because I wanted to watch the Flyers playoff game and Phillies more than the draft. Thankfully NFL Network was streaming online. I was able to fire up the draft on my laptop and flip to the Phillies during breaks and intermissions in the Flyers game.

The Friday bonus: I don’t think this was fully taken advantage of. This morning every site should have been pushing mock drafts for rounds 2 and 3 along side their recaps. Everyone was already invested in what happened in Round 1. They also had a good idea of who was left on the board. No one cares about the guys ranked in the 30s before the draft. Now, the top 10 guys not picked in the first round are known with a day of coverage to devote to them. The mock drafts have been coming out during the day but they weren’t on them this morning.

Now, the draft will pick up tonight. 6pm is a brilliant move as well. They’d lose a ton of audience if they started at 8pm, fewer people would even start watching. Now fans will get to see most of the 2nd round and maybe get hooked for the rest of the night.

Saturday for rounds 4-7, who really cares. The underrated benefit of all of this is that the NFL has given me a Saturday back. I probably won’t do anything useful with it, but I could.

But is Bracket Boy Fail necessary?

I’m catching up on back issues of SI. I need to mention that because the story isn’t exactly timely since it relates to the Olympics. Although, I think Olympic sports should be talked about year round.

The story was ‘A Tale of Two Lindseys.’ It discussed Lindsey Vonn and Lindsey Van. You know Vonn, but who is Van? She’s a female ski jumper. I mentioned how ridiculous it was that there was no woman’s ski jumping in the Olympics in the last IDM. I wasn’t aware of the fight over the idea. The IOC says it’s not competitive enough. In the article, they compare the woman’s ski jumping world championships, which had 39 competitors, with the woman’s skeleton at the games, which had 26 competitors.

I really don’t understand what the issue is. They’d have to buy a few extra medals? That’s all I can think of.

The Winter Olympics are all done. Time to take a look at the final ICH Standings. Only two other people made picks. Evan spent some time making his picks. I really just picked one country per discipline and picked that country for all the events. Check out February’s IDM featuring a recap of the Winter Olympics.

ICH Olympics

NBC opened their afternoon coverage talking about how terribly Norway was doing. Great. I’m not sure if Norway is rubbing off on me or we were both meant to be miserable this week.

I decided I want to visit Vancouver. That isn’t new, I’ve wanted to go to Vancouver for a while. Now I want to go there in two weeks. Right after the Olympics. With Spring Training starting up I’m growing concerned that winter is going to be over soon. I want to take a trip, but unlike normal people going south for Spring Break, I want to go north. Although, Vancouver is warmer than it is here, it’s still wintery if for no other reason than it hosted the Winter Olympics.

I’m disliking figure skating more and more each day. NBC seems to love it. They love it enough that they show almost everyone live and push speed skating to late night. Here is my idea to move things along. With widescreen I think you could show 6 skaters going at the same time. As each one stumbles or falls, they get dropped from the screen. By the end, you only have 1 or 2 on the screen. How much time would this save? Would you miss anything?

Biathlon – Women’s 10k Pursuit
Are there any other olympic events where you are rewarded by your finish in a previous event? I feel like the second medal should only be worth half as much.
5. BERGER Tora – Started 33rd, made up almost a minute.
8. FLATLAND Ann Kristin Aafedt – Started 10th.

Biathlon – Men’s 12.k Pursuit
7. BJOERNDALEN Ole Einar – Started 17th. Made up 50 seconds.
8. SVENDSEN Emil Hegle – Started 2nd but struggled in the standing shooting.
17. HANEVOLD Halvard – Started 24th.
23. BERGER Lars – Started 46th.

Boarder X
4. Helene Olafsen – She made it to the finals and was getting a lot of chatter. In typical Norway fashion, she slipped up and fell and finished last in the finals. No medal.

Curling
Men lost 7-6 to Canada but in the late session, beat the USA 6-5. To top things off, have you seen their curling pants? http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centre/newsid=41700.html
Hockey

Trouble against Canada, losing 8-0.

Day 6 has 7 medal events scheduled:
Women’s Downhill
Cross-Country – Women’s Individual Sprint
Cross-Country – Men’s Individual Sprint
Speed Skating – Men’s 1000m
Luge – Doubles
Short Track – Women’s 500m
Snowboard – Men’s Halfpipe

Thankfully, Norway does not have any team events.

Today is going to be difficult. I need to avoid finding out about the Downhill. Then the Halfpipe finals don’t start until 10:15.

538 has been doing medal projections. They expect 17.4 more medals for Norway, which would be good enough for 4^th.

I tried avoiding results yesterday, which is nearly impossible. I would go to MSNBC and see a picture that looked like the olympics and panic before letting it sink in. In my panic, I’d go to my homepage, which is SI. So I’d have to panic again. I made it through work but while I was at home I managed to see the USA finishes for the two events I cared about (Downhill and Boarder X) before I got to watch. I should have made it to the Downhill but NBC didn’t put that on until primetime, even though it started at 1:30. Hopefully today will be better. I think NBC only has 2 hours of coverage this afternoon. I imagine that will cover Biathlon and Boarder X Qualifiers.

Cross-Country – Women’s 10k Individual
The announcers kept talking about the disappointing day for Norway.
3. BJOERGEN Marit – 3rd Olympics. Silver in this even in 06. Also a Silver in the 4x5k Relay in 02.
8. STEIRA Kristin Stoermer – In 06, had 3 4th places and a 5th. So close. Hopefully a medal for her this year.
22. SKOFTERUD Vibeke W
49. KRISTOFFERSEN Marthe

Cross-Country – Men’s 15k Individual
What a disappointing day for Norway in Cross-Country. They have the #1 in the world, and the best finish was 28. It wasn’t even him!
28. GJERDALEN Tord Asle
33. JOHNSRUD SUNDBY Martin
41. NORTHUG Petter – #1 in the world.
42. HAFSAS Ronny

Men’s Downhill
A 2nd Silver for Norway.
2. SVINDAL Aksel Lund – Competed in 06. Best finish was 5th. Finished 21st in Downhill.
These two tied for 31st. Kind of crazy for two from the same country to tie. The top 3 were a record for how close they are, so ties can happen.
31. JANSRUD Kjetil
31. MYHRE Lars Elton
46. KARLSEN Truls Ove

Boarder X
I will continue to call this Boarder X. Norway had 2 qualify for the quarters, but it doesn’t look like they made it out of that.

No Norway in Speed Skating or Pairs. Speed Skating got all screwed up because of the ice yesterday. Pairs wound up being the first event I skipped over most of. Figure Skating is looking to be my least favorite event. I don’t think I’ll watch any Ice Dancing. We’ll see about the singles.

Norway Totals: 2 Silver 1 Bronze

Day 5
Norway’s Men’s Curling debuts with a morning match with Canada and a night match with the USA. They also start up Men’s hockey, facing Canada this afternoon. Norway has 0 NHL players. Ole-Kristian Tollefsen was traded by the Flyers last week to the Red Wings. The Red Wings put him on waivers and no one picked him up. So he’s in the AHL now. I don’t feel a good day coming on for Norway’s team sports.

6 medal events scheduled for the day:
Biathlon – Women’s 10k Pursuit
Women’s Boarder X
Biathlon – Men’s 12.5k Pursuit
Men’s Super Combined
Women’s Luge
Speed Skating – Women’s 500m

Biathlon – Men’s 10k Sprint
I don’t think I’ve ever watched an entire event before, but it was a lot more interesting than I expected. It was a little difficult to keep track of who was in the lead because they did the leaderboard at each shooting area. So someone would be at #1 but he had already had a penalty at the next stop, so that #1 didn’t really matter. It would have been even more exciting had anyone who started later had a chance. It rained and snowed so the people that didn’t start early had no shot.
2. SVENDSEN Emil Hegle – Finally, a medal for Norway! In 06 he finished 6th in the 15k Mass Start. I don’t know what that event is yet, but I think I’ll find out this week.
17. BJOERNDALEN Ole Einar – All sorts of Olympic experience in 98/02/06. Totals: 5 Golds, 3 Silvers, 1 Bronze.
24. HANEVOLD Halvard – Had no shot starting 73rd. 40 years old, I didn’t see any reference to previous Olympics on the site.
46. BERGER Lars

Nordic Combined – Individual Normal Hill
9. MOAN Magnus H. – In 06 won Bronze in this event and Silver in the Large Hill.
17. TANDE Petter L. – In 06 finished 4th in this event and 6th in the Large Hill.
23. SCHMID Jan – 4th in the Team Large Hill in 06.
32. KOKSLIEN Mikko

Speed Skating – Women’s 3000m
8. HAUGLI Maren

Luge – Men’s Single
No competitors from Norway. I noticed they refer to themselves as ‘sliders.’ I guess they got sick of the luger jokes.

Men’s Moguls
So far my favorite events have been the moguls. I think their closest competition will be from Boarder and Skier X. The announcers have been solid as well.

Monday features 6 medal events.
Cross-Country – Women’s 10k Individual
Alpine Skiing – Men’s Downhill
Cross-Country – Men’s 15k Individual
Snowboard – Men’s Snowboard Cross
Figure Skating – Pairs
Speed Skating – Men’s 500m

A few of my friends decided to pick countries and keep track of their performance during the Olympics. It’s not a competition. I’m not even sure how it will work. My country is Norway.

On Day 2 (Saturday), there were 5 medal events. Norway did not compete in the Women’s Moguls or the Men’s Short Track 1500m. This is disappointing because these were by far my two favorite events of the day. In each of the three events they did compete in they at least finished in the top 10. In the Men’s Speed Skating 5000m, all three finished in the top 10, but no medal.

Ski Jumping – Individual Normal Hill
9. JACOBSEN Anders
12. HILDE Tom
18. BARDAL Anders
23. ROMOEREN Bjoern Einar – Won Bronze in Team in 06

Speed Skating – Men’s 5000m
4. BOKKO Havard – Competed in 06 but DNF 1500m and DNP in Team Pursuit, but I’m pretty sure he made the trip to Turin.
8. CHRISTIANSEN Henrik
10. HAUGLI Sverre

Biathlon – Women’s 7.5k Sprint
What I gathered from watching this was that if you missed a shot, you had to take a penalty lap, which costs about 30 seconds. I didn’t realize it was such a severe penalty. I thought they just added a few seconds and you kept going.
10. FLATLAND Ann Kristin Aafedt
33. BERGER Tora – Competed in 5 events in 06. Best finish was 5th in the 4x6km Relay.
70. EIKELAND Liv Kjersti

Five medal events are scheduled on Day 3. Norway will compete in …
Biathlon Men’s 10k Sprint (4)
Speed Skating Women’s 3000m (1)
Nordic Combined (3)
Not competing: Luge Men’s Single and Men’s Moguls

My knowledge is limited to what I found on the Vancouver 2010 site.