It’s not that fun alone

You know what sport really needs actual fans in the stadium?

Not just because I don’t otherwise care about it, but because this sport’s fans are notoriously part of its tapestry…

yeah, that communist sport we all play as kids… soccer.

Yesterday’s Champions League final between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich just wasn’t the same without 100,000 rowdy people there with the players, no?

Reason number 50 billion life needs to get back to normal.

Caps still alive

My hometown NHL club (that would be the Washington Capitals) staved off elimination last night, I’m afraid though just prolonging the inevitable: a first-round playoff loss. I still like their chances better than I do those of the Portland Trailblazers, though, who despite last night’s win still have quite a climb against the Lakers in their first-round bubble matchup.

Gotta love hockey and basketball in the summertime.

Caps melting

I do love hockey games that start at noon, as my hometown Washington Capitals faced off yesterday against the underdog Islanders of New York in the Toronto ice bubble.

Several hours later, however, I wasn’t really feeling too good about summer hockey at all, as my hometown Caps dropped their third game in a row to their lower-seeded opponents.

Opponents from Long Island.

That’s just embarrassing.

Finding amusement in little things

While perusing the nutritional labels of my pantry items the other day (quarantine life) I came across an unusual description on my can of PAM spray butter. Actually, no, it’s not PAM, it’s Wegmans brand, and actually it’s not spray butter either, it’s “cooking spray, butter flavor.” (Apparently both “PAM” and “butter” are copyrighted.”) But here’s the best part… serving size: “1/5 sec. spray.”

“Hey, Google… set timer for one-fifth of a second!”

Stranger still is that every single value following the serving size is either zero or zero percent. I’m assuming that these values are something like 0.499 and conveniently round down for the 1/5 of a second serving. Some guy in a lab coat somewhere is figuring out that at a quarter or a third of a second you’d have to admin that the product actually contains nutritional value.

Actually his quote was something like, “I came into the office for this?”

Yup.

O’Connell trivia

When I am asked who my all-time favorite baseball player is I do not hesitate when I answer. Same guy it’s been since 1989… Donald Arthur “Don” Mattingly. Donnie Baseball. Captain of those woeful Yankee teams in the late ’80s and early ’90s that introduced me to the game.

You never forget your first love.

Yes, I found great joy in watching Tino, Bernie, Jeter, Posada, and company. Even A-Rod had his moments toward the end. But no one ever topped Mattingly as the guy I proudly called “my favorite player.”

Last week “The Hit Man” became the Miami Marlins’ all-time winningest manager. Seriously. Longevity does help in these things, and Don’s been on the job since 2016. That’s kind of ancient by Marlins standards. Add his 446 wins as manager of the Dodgers (2011-2015) and, well, you’re looking at a manager who’s won a lot of games.

Still looks better in pinstripes though.

Back online

Nice thing about having your own website is that you can make up whatever schedule you want and take days off at random. It’s always new content on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays–except when I don’t feel like it. Like last Friday.

Since we last did speak there have been several developments in Major League Baseball, not all of which are related to Covid-19. For example, yesterday’s game involving the defending World Series champions (that would be my hometown Washington Nationals) provided a few storylines. First, the matchup was a local rivalry of sorts, with the Nats facing off against our neighbors from Baltimore. I’d say it was kind of like a high school game, with townspeople filling opposite sides of the stadium rooting for their respective teams. But this is the Covid era and ain’t nobody goin’ to the park.

The contest marked the 2020 debut of postseason hero Stephen Strasburg, who sailed through the first four innings before unraveling in the fifth. He left the game down 5-0, then the Nats scored two runs before, well, a volcano erupted in centerfield. Well, no, it was actually a sudden rainstorm, but my God it might as well have been a volcanic eruption it was so sudden and unexpected. (I live 19 miles away and there wasn’t a single drop of rain all afternoon.) Apparently the regular grounds crew was teleworking and couldn’t type the codes for the tarps in time, and before the folks they rounded up to roll the thing out couldn’t actually get the thing covering the field there was an ocean forming on what used to be basepaths. The game will be resumed Friday.

In Baltimore.

Huh?

Then again, if we’re not allowed to go to the games, does it really matter where they are?

On this date in history

This past Christmas my wife got for me one of those little tear-off-a-page-every-day desk calendars. Each page has a sports fact or trivia question relevant to that particular day.

From March 12 until June 1 it sat untouched on my desk at work. June 1 was the day I stopped in to school to clean my room and pick up any materials I might need for the “summer.” (Which might last until 2027, apparently.) It was weird to say the least, of course, walking into that time warp, and among other things I considered immediately tearing off 75 pages from the calendar.

No, I thought, I’m going to make this a little more interesting. I’m going to tear off not one but two pages every day from now until I’m caught up.

Well, today I caught up.

And now I know that on August 5, 1974, a game between the Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers was interrupted in the eighth inning when a whippet (that’s a dog) named Ashley ran on the field to catch a Frisbee thrown by its owner. (Ashley’s owner, Alex Stein, later creates the Frisbee Dog World Championship–a.k.a. the Ashley Whippet International World Championship.)

And now you know too.

College basketball fix

Over the weekend I finished reading John Feinstein’s latest book, The Back Roads to March: The Unsung, Unheralded, and Unknown Heroes of a College Basketball Season. The book has been out since early March (when the world was very different), but of course I rely on my local library to provide me with a copy (waitlist!) and dang it’s tough to get people to return library books these days.

Though it’s getting better every day, I’ll admit, we still live in a sports-starved world. I’m sure any book I read about college basketball these days would be fantastic. Just an average book that any of us could write.

And that’s what all of Feinstein’s books are, actually. Any of us could write them. It’s just that… he’s John Feinstein, and has a billion percent more access than any of us could dream. If one of us mortals went to a publisher and said, “I’d like to write a book about my experiences over a winter traveling around to a bunch of college basketball games,” he or she would say, “Who the hell are you?”

Well, John Feinstein has an answer to that question.

I’m John Feinstein.

[Publisher: (Sigh.) When can I have it?]

John Feinstein has written something like 40 books and I’ve probably read 30 or 35 of them. Actually most of the books are exactly the same, with passages recycled from one story to another. The Back Roads to March, a story of the 2018-19 college basketball season through mostly small-school lenses, is basically a retelling of The Last Amateurs (with a little of A March to Madness and A Season Inside, etc. mixed in). And yeah, I’m fine with that.

Because he’s John Feinstein.

And hey, I’ve gotta get my college basketball fix somehow.