Category Archives: Sports

Sportsmanship at the Olympics

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I love the Olympics, particularly the winter ones. A lot of people say this, and it’s absolutely true — nobody gives a damn about luge, bobsled, or cross-country skiing at any other time, but during the Olympics, we’re all glued to it. Same in the summer – am I ever likely to sit and watch a swimming or gymnastics competition outside of the Olympics? Not a chance, and yet during the Olympics, I have no problem watching that stuff — actually, I really enjoy watching Olympic gymnastics. The combination of grace and strength is amazing.

A couple of things about the Games so far – an American hockey player has been complaining about the Canadian women’s hockey team “running up” the score in their first two games, saying that it was disrespectful to the other teams. Hogwash. The Italian coach said before the game that he was hoping to keep the goal differential to “under 20” (and they did – the final score was 16-0). They knew they were playing a powerhouse team, and fully expected to be blown away. At the same time, Canada is playing to win the Gold, and one of the factors if there are ties in the standings is goal differential, so it’s in their best interest to score as many goals as they can. Personally, I think that not playing to the best of your ability and just passing the puck around, trying not to score would be more disrespectful, essentially telling the other team “not only are you not going to win, but we’re not even going to bother trying”.

Major kudos to the Norwegian cross-country skiing coach who gave a Canadian skier a new pole during the race when the Canadian’s pole broke. The Canadians ended up winning a Silver medal, while the Norwegians finished fourth. That’s the embodiment of the “Olympic spirit” and good sportsmanship right there. Funny part: the coach said that it was no big deal, but that he wouldn’t have done it for the Swedes.

OT Thriller!

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Wotta game! The Rock only get 6 shots in the entire first quarter and by partway through the second, are down 5-1. Then they claw their way back into it, finally tying the game at 10 with six minutes left in the 4th, and winning it 24 seconds into overtime. Matt Shearer scored the last three goals of the game, Aaron Wilson got 4 goals (including Toronto’s first three), and Jimmy Veltman and Dan Ladouceur both played excellent games.

The offense just wasn’t there at all in the first quarter, and really didn’t get it together all game. Both goalies were amazing, and Toronto’s defense played really well.

Some of the people I go to lacrosse games with hate overtime – one even said she wouldn’t care if Rochester scored, just as long as the game ended. I don’t get that. I love overtime – even the first Rock game of this year, which the Rock lost in overtime. Everyone plays their hardest, knowing the next goal wins – I find it very exciting. When they scored the winner tonight, the whole stadium stood up at once, as if they’d just won the championship.

A 3-4 record isn’t anything to write home about, but they play the expansion (and winless) Edmonton Rush tomorrow night, so here’s hoping they hit .500 and never look back.

Gambling again

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So now there’s a gambling scandal in the NHL. Not as bad as the Pete Rose thing, but still bad. This time, we have a former player involved in betting and possible money laundering and other stuff. The NHL has already stated that there is no evidence indicating that anyone involved was betting on hockey, which is the big difference between this and the Pete Rose case. Ever since Rose was banned from baseball (and therefore the Hall of Fame), I’ve been of the opinion that he should be reinstated, since there is no evidence that he threw games or ever bet against the team he was managing.

If you want to simply follow the letter of the law, then the case is closed. Baseball players, coaches, managers, etc. are prohibited by Major League Baseball from betting on baseball games. Rose has admitted that he did bet on baseball while manager of the Cincinatti Reds, so he’s done. But perhaps we shouldn’t look at the letter of the law – perhaps the question should be: is this a just rule? I’ve always thought that unless you are betting against your own team and/or throwing games, then betting on baseball should not be prohibited. However, after listening to some comments on the radio today, I think I’ve changed my mind. The rule is just, and Pete Rose should be banned from baseball. Here’s why.

In 2004, Rose admitted (after 15 years of denial) that he did indeed bet on baseball games involving the Reds, which he was managing at the time. Perhaps he never bet against the Reds, but he also did not bet for the Reds in each and every game. It’s possible that in the late stages of a season, when the playoff hopes were gone, he’d bet on the Reds to win a game, and not bet on them to win the next game. This could make him do whatever he could to win the first game, possibly at the expense of the second. Maybe he rearranges when pitchers are starting, or brings in more relief pitchers or pinch hitters than he normally would, to ensure that game 1 is a win. If there were no bets, he might do things differently to save players for the next game, but if he didn’t bet on the next game, his judgement, and therefore his decisions, will not be the same. This is not exactly throwing game 2, but it’s close, and damn near impossible to prove. This is what Rose critics mean when they say he compromised the integrity of the game.

Another thing I’d never considered is that when a rich person gets involved in gambling, it’s not unlikely that he may meet some “connected” people, i.e. the mob. If he needs a loan, or is otherwise indebted to the mob for whatever reason, they may force him to throw games as part of repaying said debts. This could happen even if you’re not betting on your own sport – if a baseball player (who’s not allowed to bet on baseball) gets involved with the mob while betting on football, the same thing could happen.

MLB commissioner Bud Selig has stated on numerous occasions that Rose will not be reinstated as long as he’s commissioner, so Pete may have to wait until a new commissioner is elected to try for reinstatement again. Good luck Pete, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

b2 and 0-3

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I tried the b2 thing on Saturday night to watch the Toronto Rock game in Rochester. More on the actual game later. b2 basically takes whatever video feed is available (local TV or whatever) and streams it out onto the ‘net for $6 a game. For some games, the only video available is the video shown on the scoreboard, complete with crowd shots, “kiss-cam”, and whatnot. In this case, the game was being shown on a local Rochester channel, so we got the feed for that, including commercials. I streamed it to my laptop and plugged the laptop into the TV, so I didn’t have to watch it on the laptop screen. It was OK, in the sense that I could watch a game that I couldn’t otherwise watch, but the video quality kind of sucked. It was sometimes possible to read the names on the back of players’ jerseys, but not always. Following the ball was next to impossible, though.

There’s another thing out there now called lacrossetv — for $10 US/month, you get a box that you have to plug into your broadband connection, and then you get lots of games – live games as well as older ones available on-demand. Sounds pretty cool, but (a) I don’t know where we’d put the box, and (b) I don’t know when I’d have time to watch older games anyway.

Anyway, onto the game itself, which the Rock lost 14-9. I only saw about half of it, since it started at 7:30, and by the time the boys went to bed and I read them their stories and such, it was into the 3rd quarter. The Rock gave up 12 goals in the first half, and were losing 12-4 at one point. The 12 goals were the most the Rock have ever given up in a half, and after 10, Watson was pulled for backup goalie Phil Wetherup. He only let in 4 goals the rest of the way, so he did a great job in a backup role, but the Toronto offense couldn’t get anything going. Manning had another frustrating game, only getting 2 assists, where Josh Sanderson had 2-and-3.

Shawn Williams had a great game for the KHawks – 4 goals and 3 assists. Shawn is my buddy Mike’s nephew, so we all like to see him do well. I’m sure he especially enjoys playing well against the Rock, since he was once a member of the Rock (won a championship with them in 1999), but was then traded to Buffalo for nothing but a draft pick — and the guy they chose with that pick never played a game. Don’t know why that trade was made, but Shawn spent one productive year in Buffalo before being traded to Rochester in a blockbuster deal the next season, where he’s played really well ever since. On any team not featuring John Grant or John Tavares, Shawn would probably be the number one forward.

So the Rock are now 0-3, and are off to the worst start in franchise history. However, 4 of the 5 teams in the east make the playoffs, and the playoffs are all one-game things, not the best-of-5 or best-of-7 you see in the NHL or MLB, so as long as we get into the playoffs, it’s still quite possible for the Rock to repeat as Champs. Either way though, I just want to see the Rock playing the way we know they can.

Another close one

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The Rock lost their second game of the season to the Buffalo Bandits last night, 13-11. Other than the outcome, it was a great game – kind of chippy in the 1st half though. It seemed for a while that we wouldn’t have 5-on-5 lacrosse at all – there would always be someone (or two or three) in the box. Josh Sanderson, who didn’t show up in game 1, came out guns-a-blazing last night, and ended up with 4 goals and 3 assists. Blaine Manning, who had a great game 1, got no goals and a single assist. If this trend continues, both Manning and Shooter will have a great game tonight, and Doyle will do nothing.

The defense played pretty well, though stopping Mark Steenhuis on transition is next to impossible. Man, that guy’s good. He’s one of those annoying little pricks that you hate to play against, but you’d give your left nut to have on your team. He ended up with 5 goals and 4 assists. Chugger put on a clinic, although a lot of shots seemed to hit him square in the chest. Watson made some really nice saves, but also let in 12 goals on only 44 shots.

The most interesting part of the game was a fight (well, sort of) that I actually agreed with. Normally, I don’t much like fighting in lacrosse or hockey; most of the time, it’s seems pointless. But when Chris White gave Toronto MVP Colin Doyle a cross-check to the head after the whistle was blown, Toronto enforcer Tim “The Surgeon” O’Brien went after White and started pounding him. White immediately turtled, dropping to the floor and covering his face. Since White never threw a punch, he didn’t get a fighting penalty, and O’Brien got 5 for roughing. (White did get 5 minutes for cross-checking.) Like I said, I don’t generally like fighting, but when someone hits your star player with such a cheap shot, I have no problem with sending someone after him.

Toronto plays in Rochester tonight, trying to avoid starting the season 0-3. Winning in Rochester, however, has never been easy for the Rock – I think they’ve only done it once ever. (Of course, that once was the 2004 NLL Championship.) The game is on b2, which is some live video streaming thing that I’ve never tried, but I’ve heard good things about it, so I think I’ll give it a shot tonight.

Rock lose in OT and Wireless G

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Cool – a rhyming title. Gotta like that.

Lacrosse season is back! The Rock played their first game of the season on Saturday night, and lost to the Arizona Sting 14-13 in OT. It was a rematch of last year’s final, where the Rock won something like 19-13, but this time, the Sting were the dominant team. They had a 9-3 lead at one point (after an absolutely awful 2nd quarter), but the Rock battled back and tied it at 11, then 12, and then again at 13 with 36 seconds left in regulation. But 2 minutes into overtime, Andrew Guindon put a shot past Whipper to end it. The Rock were rather rusty – lots of dropped balls, passes that went nowhere, and even shots that missed the net by miles. Josh Sanderson looked like a rookie – taking a stupid penalty less than a minute in, and only ending up with 3 assists. Other than the 2nd, Whipper played pretty well, and Brad MacDonald, who came over in a trade with Calgary, made an amazing play to save a goal late in the game.

Arizona started Mike Miron in net, which kind of surprised me, considering they acquired Rob Blasdell in the off-season. I assumed Blazer would be the starting goalie, with Miron as a solid backup, but perhaps it’s the other way around, or maybe they’ll platoon, as Whipper and Cosmo did a couple of years ago in Toronto. Miron played a pretty good game though, so it’s possible that the Arizona GM and coaches know more about lacrosse than I do.

On an unrelated note, I finally managed to get my new wireless G router set up the way I want it – all of my machines can connect to the ‘net and each other, and no other machines can use it (using MAC filtering). I had to download a firmware upgrade and reset the router to factory defaults at least four times before I got this done, but it eventually worked. It’s kind of a waste though – the old wireless B router gave us 11 Mbs, while the new one gives 54 Mbs. Sounds great, except that the 2 machines upstairs only have 11 Mbs cards in them, so they don’t notice any difference, only our laptops (both from work) do. However, the cable modem coming into the house only gives about 3 1/2 Mbs, so the laptops don’t notice any difference either, unless they’re copying files between each other, which has never happened. Long story short – the new router gives exactly the same performance as the old router. I’ll have to look for cheap wireless G cards on eBay or Factory Direct.

Luckily, the router was on sale – after the $20 mail-in rebate, it only cost me $10. The mail-in rebate should come in 8-10 weeks – if it doesn’t, I’ll probably have long forgotten about it by then, and even if I haven’t, it’s not like there’s anything I can do. I was promised a mail-in rebate (something like $60) when I bought 3 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD, which I did (I eventually bought all 7), but 8-10 weeks later, I received a letter saying that I hadn’t included proof of purchase from each DVD package, which I had. But of course, I had no proof of that, so I was SOL.

Ovechkin and Ponikarovsky

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I’ve heard quite a bit about Alexander Ovechkin recently. He was the first pick just before the “season that wasn’t”, but then seemed to have been forgotten about, what with the lockout and then the end of the lockout and then the whole Sidney Crosby mania. He won’t be forgotten about for long though – he’s rivalling Crosby for most points by a rookie this year. The way they talk about him on the radio is impressive – he’s a scoring machine, who has as good a chance as anybody of scoring 70 goals in the next couple of years. Considering 50-goal scorers have been rather rare in the last couple of years, this would be quite an accomplishment. Anyway, I heard an interview with him the other day, and he said that he wants to play as much as possible – forward, defence, on the PP and PK, anywhere. He just loves to play. His coach said that he’s adapting to life in North America quite well – he’s working hard on his English, and even turned down an offer to be roommates with one of his Russian teammates, figuring that if he’s bunking with a native-English speaker, his English will improve that much faster. Nice to hear about a hard-working athlete who is playing because he loves to play, and doesn’t consider himself God’s gift to his sport (are you reading this, Terrell Owens?).

Also heard another nice story about the Leaf game yesterday – Carlo Colaiacovo took a shot towards the net that Alexei Ponikarovsky seemed to deflect into the net. Ponikarovsky was given credit for the goal, but immediately went to the ref and told him that he didn’t touch it, and that Colaiacovo should be given credit. He also knew that it would have been Colaiacovo’s first NHL goal, so he went and grabbed the puck. After talking to the ref the second time, he gave the puck to Colaiacovo, and credit for the goal was changed. He could easily have just taken credit, but went out of his way to make sure the right person got the goal. Attaboy.

Showin’ Shaq the money, and goodbye to Joe and Gary

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The Miami Heat signed Shaquille O’Neal to a 5-year $100 million contract today. This will actually result in a pay cut for Shaq, because his old deal (which he has now opted out of because of the new deal) would have seen him make over $30 million next season, but it gives the Heat more flexibility to be able to sign more players and still stay under the cap. The quote from Shaq that I thought was funny:

This contract allows me to address all of my family’s long-term financial goals while allowing the Heat the ability to acquire those players that we need to win a championship…

Sorry, Shaq, but if you haven’t addressed your family’s long-term financial goals by now, 12 seasons into your hall-of-fame multi-million-dollar-per-year career, either your financial goals are a touch lofty, or you really suck at financial planning.

So Gary Roberts and Joe Neiuwendyk (yes, I had to look up the spelling) have signed with the Florida Panthers, and so will not be back with the Leafs next season. I liked both of them, but I can’t say I’m really all that broke up about it – both of them are still good players, but well past their prime and too expensive. I’m sure players that are just as good, younger, and cheaper are out there — one of whom is Jeff O’Neill, who the Leafs just signed. Now if I could only convince the Leafs not to resign the vastly overpriced Tie Domi (unless he agrees to a big-time pay cut), I’d be a happy guy.

Hockey’s back!

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So the lockout’s over, and hockey will return this fall. We’ve got the salary cap that the players insisted they would never accept, as well as the 24% salary rollback, although the minimum salary is now an insane $450,000, so presumably the lower earning players actually got a raise despite the rollback. Most interesting of all, however, are the rule changes, intended to make the game more entertaining. I’m not a big fan of the shootout, mainly because it seems unfair to decide the output of the game based on 3 shots by the best shooters – this is a team game, not an individual competition. However, there’s no denying the excitement of watching a shootout, so I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I like the new icing rule – if you ice the puck, you can’t make any line changes before the ensuing face-off. So if you’re killing a penalty, you have to actually work to get a line change – you can’t just grab the puck and fire it down the ice. Tag-up offsides are back, and the red line has been removed for two-line passes, although I don’t know the intricacies of the game well enough to know what effect that will have.

We took Ryan out to ride his bike yesterday – only about his 4th or 5th time on a two-wheeler (with no training wheels), and he’s almost mastered it. When I last went with him, he could go maybe 10 feet, rather wobbly, and then put his foot down. Yesterday, Gail gave him a little push to start, and he was off – probably went by 5 or 6 houses before stopping. By the end of the route around the block, he was starting by himself, and not even wobbling as much as at the beginning. I’m impressed with how fast he’s learned – his first time ever was the July 1st weekend in Ottawa.

NHL playoffs and Roger Clemens

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The NHL has apparently decided to add 4 more teams into the playoffs each year, for a total of 20 teams, and now 5 rounds. This is insane. Not only do we now have 2/3 of the league making the playoffs, but the regular season is 84 games, and now a team could have to play 31 games in the playoffs as well? The playoffs already end in mid-freakin’-June, why extend them? I could see it if the first round was best-of-3 (as it now is), then the second (and maybe even third) rounds were best-of-5, and the last two best-of-7, but FOUR best-of-7 rounds is just too much. All it means is that four extra teams will make big playoff dollars each year.

Roger Clemens has stated that he does not want to pitch in the All-Star game if Mike Piazza is catching, so he’ll only pitch later in the game, once Piazza has been taken out. Pardon my French, but how fucking stupid is that? Should we have to tell a 41-year-old man to grow the fuck up? Apparently so.

I don’t know what to think about Clemens. He’s easily the best pitcher of the last 20 years (only Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux are even close), and is still a force to be reckoned with at 41. I respected him as a member of the Red Sox, and grew to like him even more when he played for the Jays (probably because he was just so damn dominant, and won 2 Cy Young awards in the 2 years he was here). Then he basically said “This team sucks, so I demand to be traded to a contender”, which the Jays promptly did. I lost a lot of respect for him then, as did a lot of other Toronto fans. For whatever reason, I gained back some respect over the next few years, then lost some after the Piazza incident. In the last year or two, since he came out of “retirement”, I’ve started to like him again, and now this. I think I’ve now decided that he’s simply one of those people who is an outstanding athlete, but a total prick off the field.