Lets Play Ball...Just Not on TV

The Toronto Blue Jays have won 8 games in a row, the first time they've done so since the 1999 season. Three of those wins came against one of the two teams ahead of them in the wildcard race in the Minnesota Twins. Three more of them came against the division leading Tampa Bay Rays. And the remaining two wins came against the New York Yankees, who the Jays have now surpassed in the overall standings.

Winning late in the season isn't unusual around the Jays franchise, and neither is being all but mathematically out of the playoff race at this point in the season for every one since 1993. With 20 games remaining, and despite the hot streak, the Jays remain 8 games out of the playoff race. Now, whether you want to call out the MLB for having the smallest playoffs of any major pro sport, with 8 of 30 teams getting extra play; or are willing to accept life in the perennial best division in baseball, Jays management has stepped afoul of fans somehow in not having the final game of the season scheduled for TV broadcast according to the Yahoo! schedule.

Going into the season, the Jays were being sold as a true competitor for a playoff spot. And while that clearly didn't pan out with a lacklustre offensive output until things seemingly turned around with the firing of John Gibbons and hiring of throwback Cito Gaston, the Jays still find themselves playing quasi-meaningful games at the end of the season. At present, the Boston Red Sox sit 8 games ahead of the Jays, with 7 of their remaining 20 games scheduled opposing one another.

Despite all this, the final game of the season has apparently not been picked up by any of the big three Canadian sports networks for TV. This, combined with the ridiculous blackout restrictions on MLB.TV in Canada such that no Blue Jays games are available on the online package, means that a game that may infact have playoff implications will go unseen in Canada. At the end of September, not even the beloved Maple Leafs are back in season, so the reasoning behind this scheduling blunder seems unclear. Jays fans can only hope that the issue is resolved come the end of season, hopefully whether still in contention or not.

NFL 2008/2009 Regular Season Schedule

The season is coming up and after not being able to find a convenient schedule already in a spreadsheet online (without succumbing to joining the Micro$oft community), I decided to spend some time and set up a sheet complete with pivot tables very similar to a schedule I was able to find a few years back.

I figure I might as well make it accessible to anyone that needs it for setting up pools, etc., so here it is: NFL 08/09 Regular Season Schedule [xlsx]

Valid Code

As nice as being able to control the finest details is with code, differences between things like '&' and '&' that have you Googling around for 2 hours before you find them can be rather frustrating. But now my pictures are displaying properly in Firefox 3, so its worth it? And really, what else do I have to do?

Last week's awesome weather has faded into cold rainy crap, putting an abrupt end to any plans to have an outdoor poker night this week on the picnic table I built this weekend. I'm not a fan of the furnace kicking on overnight in the middle of June.

I am however a huge fan of the Netherlands domination of Group C at Euro, despite handing an undeserving Italy a pass to the quarter finals in beating Romania yesterday. Beyond changing in 9 second string players, there's not much more Holland could have done to help Romania along. Here's hoping they don't go ahead and choke now against whoever of Russia or Sweden they meet on Saturday. If they keep playing the way they did in the group stage, I'm convinced they can beat any team out there. The key is not getting too cocky.

Hup Nederland!

After a France-Romania draw, the Dutch are the leaders of Group C after taking it to the Italians. You can dispute the first goal all you want, the fact is, until the player beyond the end line gets treatment, he is still in play. Further to that is Holland's pretty second goal and the 3rd goal.

The plan now is to be back at Kickoff for game 2, hopefully the French supporters show up as strong then as the Italians did today.

In other news...the Catholic school board is at it again with their monopolistic business partnerships. Apparently my mom ordered Grad photos for my brother a few weeks back at an astonishing total of $162 dollars for a very limited package of photos. Well, while I was out today apparently the people at the company that the Catholic School Board chooses to do the grad photos called my mom up and promptly informed her that she wasn't entitled to the photos she ordered, despite ordering over their '$100' dollar minimum. In the world of cash grabs and monopolizing people with a once in a lifetime opportunity (e.g. graduation), Lifetouch / Life Touch has done their utmost best to fuck over the little man. Similar to the uniform monopoly run by McCarthy's for uniforms in Catholic schools in the area...this bullshit needs to stop. The Catholic schoolboard, if they want to sustain themselves within a society with so many other religions needs to stop buying into these bullshit contracts. And the people who run these companies need to be held accountable for their actions. If no-one is willing to even file a complaint (i.e. my mom) then these issues won't come to the forefront.

So if you have an issue with Life Touch / Lifetouch and their photos...be sure to at the very least file an e-mailed complaint with the board. If the board doesn't hear about it, they have no official cause for concern. In the end...no matter what watermarks you put on your proofs Lifetouch, educated people will find a way around it.

A New Distraction

Less than a week after the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Euro 2008 is underway. Sure the NBA playoffs are still going, but now that the Pistons or Spurs can't win it, I'll be pretty much satisfied with whoever wins. That said, I'm not a huge Kobe fan, and think Garnett deserves a ring, so go Celtics I guess.

The Euro so far has been great. Despite Groups A and B not being very deep, the games have been contested fairly evenly, even in the case of the poorly ranked Austrian team who are only there by virtue of hosting this year's tourney. I have my concerns about the Netherlands even making it out of the group phase, somehow getting lumped in with both Italy and France who at any given time are football forces. Somehow 3 of the top 10 teams in the world ended up in the same group of the European tournament, but if nothing else, it will provide for some fiery, tightly contested play. As I write this, 5th ranked Germany has scored its 2nd against 28th ranked Poland, and they still get to play Austria who is ranked below Canada (?!) in the world.

Anyways, competition and all that, I hope to go out to Kickoff in campus plaza for the Netherlands-Italy game tomorrow. What Kickoff lacks in menu, it more than makes up for in tasty, obscure imports on tap and always having a soccer game tuned in.

Hup Nederland!

Something in the Water in the City of Saints

A couple days ago a video appeared showing two men being swarmed and beaten by a crowd of people in Montreal. Varying reports have come in since, some saying the two men were near death, others like that linked saying the men suffered cuts and bruises and were able to avoid hospitalization. Of course wanting to avoid hospitalization may speak to the two men's own guilt in the matter, with differing reports saying that racial taunts may have incited the violent attack. In reality, there's no place for either behaviour.

Then, after last night's Montreal Canadiens win to advance in the playoffs, the fans decided to honour the win and celebrate the pride in their home team in their own way, by looting stores and burning police cars in their home town. I have never understood the reasoning behind rioting over a sporting event. We get it, you're excited that your team won, but why trash the store of a fellow citizen who him or herself is likely a fan of the same damned team. Why endanger the lives of police officers who, were they not out watching over your dumb asses, would likely be home watching the game and celebrating as well.

Sure there are those cases where there are two clubs from the same city, New York, LA, Chicago have their sports with multiple teams, along with cities all over Europe, where they are even more accustomed to witnessing rioting like this.

I've been reminded that the same thing happened when the Oilers went deep in the playoffs a few years back. Not that the magnitude of the event in any way justifies this kind of behaviour, but this was a first round win. The Senators fans last year at least had it right, and the Flames fans tonight have a chance to show that this isn't a growing tradition that needs to be continued. If this kind of thing continues in Montreal, they won't deserve to have the first Canadian team to win the Cup since they won it in 1993.

I Want to Break Free

Two days in a row with a temperature above 10 degrees meant that it was time to rid my head of a couple months worth of shag yesterday. Earlier in the week I pulled my mountain bike in for the limited spring tune-up I'm capable enough to perform.

Last year after my early season crash, I took my bike in to the shop to have things re-aligned and looked over since my knee was so buggered up that I wasn't going to be riding for a few weeks anyways. At the time, I was told that my shocks were likely in need of new bushings to eliminate some of the 'sloppy' feel I was noticing at the time. Well today, after placing an order online for some parts I need at prices 50% to 75% cheaper than those at the local shops, I decided to finish the work I had started on my bike.

After truing up the wheels and putting my tires back on, I checked the compression on my shocks and noticed a kind of squelching, squirting noise coming from inside. After a bit of reading, I think it means that the oil seals inside are pooched which could make for some expensive time in the shop unless I can find a decent guide to do the work myself. After having turned to an online store to avoid the mark-up in the local lower volume shops, I can only imagine what they'll want to charge me for more limited parts and labour. They sure won't want to take any parts I can find for cheap online and do the labour for me, as nice as that would be.

The money spent on keeping the bike in good shape so I can get my own ass in shape is already enough to cover a few 24s of beer that could serve well to keep me out of shape. The forecast repairs, will likely cover a few more cases. All I wanted was to get out on my damned bike.

The Resurrection

Warm weather appears to be on its way back from the dead. The 14 day trend is still almost entirely below the historical average for this time of year, but I have to find satisfaction with above zero for now. Lowered expectations.

The baseball season officially gets under way tomorrow in Japan. My buddy Como and I have tickets for the Saturday game of the Jays opening weekend that I'm told are on the wall in left field similar to the ones I fluked into a couple years back. All this Super Premium, Premium, Value game pricing adjustment bullshit needs to go though. What started with the occasional mid to late summer series against the Red Sox or Yankees being rated a premium game with slightly higher ticket prices has morphed into an increasing number of pricing levels and games for which the pricing isn't just some 'regular' amount. Paying 39.00 for a ticket that cost me 21.00 for opening weekend just a couple years ago is handicapped. I prefer to be called retarded.

And the injuries are already starting to add up for the Jays. Combined with manager J.P. Ricciardi's asinine move to pick-up Shannon Stewart and drop spark plug gamer Reed Johnson, all the talk about the Jays resurrection from the middle of the AL East look like another fictional anecdote to get hopes up leading to the perennial 3rd spot in the East. More lowered expectations.

But the hockey pool is coming together well enough, despite all the Leaf fans who still think they have a chance to go anywhere. Make sure you pass on the word to anyone else that might be interested.

Pro Bore

The NFL's version of the all star game is the most useless one in all of pro sports. I understand that in football with the players playing through injury as they do, playing an exhibition game mid-season is more of a penalty than anything, but why bother even playing the Pro Bowl? Does anyone actually care? Why not just make it like John Madden's Horse Trailer, give the players the distinction they deserve, whether they are injured and unable to play or not.

Its not that the other pro sports offer a substantially better all-star 'game', though they at least do offer better showcases in the home run derby or the slam dunk competition. And baseball even took the step, after that awful tied game in Milwaukee, to make the actual game mean something, giving home field advantage to the winning league in the World Series.

Hockey did its best, with mixed results, to make its talent exhibition better this year. I actually didn't see a second of the breakaway competition, but even the game itself tends to be filled with some dazzling plays.

The Pro Bowl misses the boat on all these things, and comes across like an afterthought the week after the Superbowl; something to placate the Sunday football hangover for some, for others, ruining chances to see the local pro basketball team play an actual meaningful game.

EDIT: Also, in the sports vein, I've set up a Fantasy Baseball league for this season. If you can commit to actually managing your team til the end of the season, feel free to join.

ID: 41506
Pass: void
Draft: Live draft; March 22, 12:00pm EST

Gary Bettman Is A Douchebag...

...but this has already been well established. The latest is this farce of an opening of the season in London, England. While I'm all for spreading the game, and developing new interest, Britain seems to be about the last place that would make sense to go. Are there even any active British players? Doubtful. Sure the 2 games between the Ducks and Kings have sold out, but on multiple networks I tuned into yesterday there was speculation about perhaps having a group of teams in Europe as part of the NHL as well. If Gary Bettman thinks he can compete with soccer, cricket and rugby in England, and most of the rest of Europe, he is going to be shown, once again, how wrong he really is.

He can't even get it done right in a bunch of American markets, nevermind the complete shunning of Canada. What's that you say? You are a billionaire investor looking to grossly overpay just so you can bring a team up into a market where people will actually go out to the games? You sir shall be cockblocked. Twice.

And don't think I didn't notice that the pre-game opening of yesterday's game included the British and American national anthems with no sign of standing on guard for thee. A cookie goes to the first person who correctly responds with the country that 12 of 24 of the Kings, and 16 of 27 of the Ducks come from.

I'm fully in support of another player strike just to see Bettman take a walk. The NHL's players (for the most part) aren't involved in murder trials, its referees aren't involved in game fixing, sure some of its owners may be tied up in gambling rings, but the hockey pool is the one thing the NHL has and always will have going for it. It was fantasy hockey before fantasy hockey. Despite all this, the NHL still is pretty much ignored anywhere but Canada. But lets not bring a team up here Gary, lets look at Las Vegas and London, England. Just ask the Coyotes how well a hockey team in the desert works.

Parabolic Annoying

I'm all for technological advance in delivering better sound and video to me at home infront of the TV, particularly when it comes to sports coverage. But all day today I've noticed, particularly in the NFL coverage, but also baseball, that they've taken it too far. I don't mind the features where they mic up players and take soundbytes though a game. Interviewing baseball managers early in innings is also tolerable. What I can't take now is listening to the fucking 13 year-old kid in the second row screaming incoherent gibberish repeatedly and it being picked up on the game audio and getting pumped into my rec room.

Also, the 49ers are now 2-0...NFC Championship is next!

For the non-sports inclined...I picked up tickets to the Matt Good stop in town the other day, and am pumped for that. That is, if I'll be in town. The prof I'm working for this term wants to meet this week, presumably to discuss upcoming work in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Florida, Wyoming, and/or California; all of which I will do my best to avoid.

Until then, someone please shut up this goddamned kid in Miami.

Endless Distraction

Around this time of year every year is like christmas for all the sports networks. With the NHL and NBA winding down their seasons with tight playoff races, the Masters kicking off the golf grand slam tour, and baseball and auto racing starting up for the summer, there is no need for the fluff pieces on some local phenom who never comes to fruition, or annoying banter between hosts.

All that sports activity also serves as a major distraction to the tri-annual studying season. Being a resident minority here in Leaf nation, I get sucked into the whims of the vast blind majority and all their uneducated devotion to a shitty hockey team. And so last night saw me crammed into an overcrowded bar, packed with blue and white jerseys, as well as the disgustingly tacky pink alternatives whining about every possible bullshit non-call or call against possible.

And then what do you know, the Leafs get some absolute shit luck garbage goals as are so typical of their teams over the years, and they keep themselves alive in the playoffs. To top the evening off, the Avalanche dropped the ball on their playoff run, only to get the help they would have needed from the Oilers beating Calgary and leaving the control in the hands of Colorado.

So where does that leave me today?

After actually managing to get some productive studying in, its left me channel surfing between the Jays game, the Masters, and the New York Islanders game hoping beyond hopes that the acquisition of Ryan Smyth from the Oilers pays dividends, if only to be eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

Right now the Isles are up 1-0 and holding tough, making it look like those Canadian teams that aren't in Ottawa will soon get a whole bunch more blind bandwagon hopping support from the large proportion of Leafs fans who actually know nothing of the sport. At this point I don't become much better throwing my support towards the Sens and Canucks, but not so much blindly as hoping to get a cup in Canada for a talented team that isn't the Red Wings for example. The best possible outcome being a Sens cup win just to incense all the Leaf fans that much more.

With that I wish you a happy easter if you celebrate it, and a happy playoffs which you definitely should be celebrating.

Update: In the same vein as last night's fans: na na naa naa, na na naa naa heeyyy heeyyy heyyy, goodbye. What's another year to wait after 40 anyways right?