On a snowy April night in the lately-drab sports city of Toronto, the Blue Jays gave the city a night of hope that has been long overdue.
Buoyed by 6 RBI from too-young-to-DH Adam Lind and a strong all-around offensive performance, the Jays gave 48,027 live and more watching at home a glimpse of what this team could be like if all of the ‘what ifs’ fall their way. 12 runs, 15 hits, 7 for extra bases, and only a solitary 1-2-3 inning, with big hits from youngsters Alex Rios, Adam Lind, and Travis Snider (whose opposite field home run, strictly power, was a thing of beauty).
Fittingly, Roy Halladay, making his franchise record 7th straight opening day start, went into Jack Morris mode, copying the MLB record-holder for consecutive opening day starts (14) by easing up and allowing a few runs with a big lead. It was meaningless, as Halladay probably cares little about his pitching line beyond the W, and the bullpen came in and cleaned up nicely (especially Brandon League, whose stuff looked live). More after the jump!
Some would say the potential for upsets. Some would say filling out brackets. Some would say the game of basketball itself.
But really, the reason we’re all so drawn to March Madness is the drama. You probably know this. What’s unclear sometimes is how exactly we experience said drama. Our bias towards teams or players, our surroundings, or our personal comparison points can alter the level of enjoyment we take from a game. Personally, I feel the two most important non-game factors are your viewing situation (with friends, big TV, good snacks, etc), and the announcing crew.
Alex, Stu, Josh…you see where this is going already. Thanks to Awful Announcing, I’ve gotten a sneak peek at the announcing teams for the first weekend of March Madness. I’ve opted to forego a tourney-wide preview. Sad, I know. Instead, I’ll give you an in-depth preview of the portion of the bracket with the highest potential for drama, based on announcing alone, the Minneapolis Region, henceforth known as The Gus Johnson Region. More after the jump!
I watched The Natural for the first time this week. Please don’t question why it took one of the world’s biggest sports movie fans until he was 22 to see one of the best sports movies ever made. Anyway, I enjoyed it. If you can suspend your disbelief (and it’s a movie, so you better be able to) it’s thoroughly enjoyable and tells a great story.
Ignore the senseless plot set-up, the evil businessmen, the over-dramatic home-run distances, etc, and you have a very good sports movie. The reason I think it’s so compelling is that there’s nothing spectacular about the main character, Roy Hobbs. Unlike other sports movies, he has nothing exceptionally unique about him, he’s not lovable unconditionally, he’s not on extremely high moral ground, and he doesn’t possess any superhuman ability, really.
Roy Hobbs is simply a phenomenal baseball player. To give you an idea of the film, the plot description is as follows:
An unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs with a mysterious past appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team to the top of the league in this magical sports fantasy. With the aid of a bat cut from a lightning struck tree, Hobbs lives the fame he should have had earlier when, as a rising pitcher, he is inexplicably shot by a young woman.
Obviously, you would have to watch the movie to get a better idea of the plot and character intricacies, but even reading that paragraph you can see why my mind continued to drift to one image while watching The Natural, why one thought pressed against my forehead for two hours.
Look, cheering for a losing team sucks. Especially when they admit to you in advance that they might suck. However, baseball is far too great a game to spend the season bitter at your favorite squad.
Jays fans, of course, I’m talking to you.
Somehow though, when you cheer for a losing team, playing in the AL East can actually be a blessing. Normally, being overmatched in the AL East is unfortunate – I’ll reiterate that the Jays have the most wins over the past three years of any team that didn’t make the playoffs. Trying to compete on a medium-market budget in a major-market division makes being a playoff team extremely difficult. You’ve heard all this before, it’s the general Blue Jay Way to use the Yankees and Red Sox as a crutch for missing expectations.
But seriously, this year being in this division could be a blessing for fans. We’re probably not cheering for a playoff team, but we do get to watch AL East teams all year. In fact, the Jays play other AL East teams a combined 72 times.
So today, I present to you 72 reasons watching the Jays will still be enjoyable in 2009. Actually, there’s no way I’m giving you 72 reasons, but here are some reasons to look forward to 18 match-ups against each of the usual AL East rivals. More after the jump!
The Weekend Connect is a weekly round-up piece I’m going to be experimenting with, recapping the week past (ODC articles, links from around the internet, etc) and pointing you in the direction of the weekend ahead. Feedback on what you would like to see included would be appreciated.
First: I am terribly sorry for the lack of NHL trade deadline coverage here at The ODC this week. Luckily for you, every other website in Canada had nothing but. I just didn’t have the time to write anything about it, and nobody else did. I apologize, seriously, you can stop mentioning it. Below is the Connect, sans hockey, as usual. Enjoy.
I won’t waste your time outlining the evidence that Performance Enhancing Drug use may exist in the NBA. Trevor Smith did a fantastic job laying it out in his article this morning, The Needle and the Damage Done: The NBA and HGH. While Trev’s remarks were more exploratory than accusatory, his message was very clear: passing off potential PED use in the NBA with a Fresh Prince-style ‘Psshhh’ is foolhardy on the part of fans and the league alike.
I debated even responding to Trev’s article – after all, the case studies of Dwyane Wade and the Phoenix Suns, and the obvious evidence of the difference in body types from 1980 to 1990 to today spell out a pretty compelling argument. Again, the argument is not that the NBA has a problem with PEDs, specifically Human Growth Hormone, but that the league and its fan base are being ignorant towards the possibility.
I want to take this notion a step further – the league and the fans need to speak up about this issue immediately. Allowing this giant to lay in slumber would be a grave mistake, and the NBA, specifically David Stern, must learn from the mistakes of the NFL and Major League Baseball. More after the jump!
Apparently, this article is pretty good (so my editor, Ryan, tells me - but he might just be trying to get with me, I can’t be sure).
I strongly feel the NBA needs a Most Outstanding Player Award. You’ll have to read the article to find out why in detail, but it has nothing to do with the MVP award being insufficient - it is simply a problem of award definition dirtying the award’s prestige, a problem an MOP award has solved in the NHL and NFL.
I say the following knowing full well that the internet is run by Portland Trail Blazer fans:
How the hell is Kevin Durant vs. Greg Oden even a debate still?
Seriously, this is a question in some people’s minds? There is a debate to be had here? Excuse me while I groan, as it appears the only thing more difficult than selecting a wing over a big man is admitting it was the wrong decision.
I promise, I won’t even use statistics to settle this argument. It wouldn’t be fair. Durant’s are phenomenal, and Oden doesn’t have them.
The crux of my argument, though, was written on April 22, 2007. In one of my very first articles ever, I debated Alex Pennycook on the issue of Durant vs. Oden, two months before the draft took place. At the time, the site was too small for anyone to notice or comment, but I’m sure I would have been assumed stupid. Most of my friends disagreed with me and, according to something I read around All Star weekend but couldn’t find to link to today, 30 General Managers disagreed with me, too. Most importantly, the otherwise savvy Kevin Pritchard disagreed. So Greg Oden was selected first overall by Portland, and Seattle ‘settled’ for Kevin Durant. More after the jump!
If you want to make it big as a professional wrestler, there are a few criteria you have no choice but to meet. You almost always have to have a great body. You usually have to bring something unique, whether that be in look or character. In most cases, you have to be able to cut a decent promo. A catch phrase goes a hell of a long way, too, if you smell what I’m cooking.
These are the keys to making it to the top - look, uniqueness, mic skills, and marketability.
But if you’re missing some of these qualities, or if you have them and still aren’t everything you want to be as a wrestler, I’ve got two words for you:
Finishing. Move.
A finishing move can make or break your career. It has to be unique (or at least performed in a unique way), it needs a catchy name, and it has to be usable in the flow of a match. That is, it has to be fairly easy to pull off, it has to be able to come out of a number of situations, and it has to be convincing enough to end a match and make it meaningful when someone kicks out.
With all of that said, I give you the 10 best finishing moves in wrestling today. More after the jump!
On a snowy April night in the lately-drab sports city of Toronto, the Blue Jays gave the city a night of hope that has been long overdue.
