…it’s over? It’s over. Kane put the game winner through Leighton’s legs and nobody noticed, except Kane, and me apparently, because as soon as 88 puts the puck on net I leap to my feet and shout, then play continues and Quick, who has joined me upstairs, looks at me like I’m retarded. But fuck him! I was right! The Flyers are stunned, the Hawks celebrate, looking out of place among the sea of disappointment. It’s over.

Niemi, with his boyish grin, lifts the Cup and hollers. Keith, Kane, big Dustin Byfuglin, they all get the chance of a lifetime. The Cup looks weightless.

I want to feel satisfied, having rooted for the Blackhawks in this series, but there is something of an empty feeling rising in my chest. Good God, have I grown to respect these villians in orange? Does the sight of Leino, and Briere, and the goalie-with-movie-star-good-looks Brian Bouche, looking devestated actually bum me out, a little? Yes, I suppose they’ve deserved my respect. The empty feeling isn’t helped when Jeremy Roenick, at the sight of his former team winning the cup, breaks down in to tears Live, on the air. I have to wonder whether or not that will be a commerical next year either.

The Blackhawks have won a hard fought, well deserved Stanley Cup. Now, next season can’t come fast enough

Galarraga walking away in disbelief that the MLB can accept such malarkey as reasonable functionality

The history of a game between the Indians and Tigers that occurred June 2nd, 2010 could be read a whole lot differently and with better spirits than it will be written. Two men will forever go into the record books with blemishes on their record, one much more egregious than the other.

A single play at a base isn’t always reason to completely rethink the approach to integrating technologies into a game whose professional history runs deep into the 19th century. I just don’t think it’s correct to accept the idea that human error is a part of the game when it comes to the rules that govern that game. We have the ability to implement these technologies, they merely need expansion.

Armando Galarraga pitched 8.2 innings of perfect baseball before Jim Joyce ruled that Jason Donald was safe at first when Miguel Cabrera threw to his pitcher covering the bag. The fans at the stadium, the home audience, and Jason Donald himself knew that Galarraga had beat him with the baseball to first, but Joyce had seen otherwise. Instant replay, a technology used for television broadcasts and large-scale stadium displays for decades, was able to show the fans at home the play again from multiple angles in slow motion, furthering the idea that Donald was out.

After the game had ended and Galarraga finished with a complete game shutout having given up one hit, Joyce eventually apologized to the pitcher whom he had robbed of a historic outing. He said that he was sure he’d made the right call until he saw the video replay. That quote alone should tell Major League Baseball that there’s a problem with this situation; the umpire was able to see that he had made a terrible mistake, a monumental error, through his obviously incorrect call. The real problem is that it wasn’t even close at the base, and the ramifications are enormous.

Had some larger-scale instant replay system been in place, this uproar could have been avoided. Jim Leyland or Manny Acta could have come out of their dugouts and approached the officiating staff asking for a review of the play. 10 seconds of watching the recording of the play at 1st, even at full speed, could have salvaged the perfect game. We could have stopped having this dreaded conversation, been unaware of Jim Joyce’s existence, and moved on with our lives.

Instead, Jim Joyce has to feel remorse that he blew an obvious call and, in his own words, “cost that kid a perfect game.” Joyce will now have that hanging over his head for the rest of his life. Galarraga was unable to throw a perfect game, which would have made it the 2nd in less than a week’s time, and the 3rd in less than a month. I’m concerned because this could have been monumental, there hasn’t been two perfect games in the same season since 1880 before this season, and this could have been the third in the same season. Such feats will most likely never been achieved again, which is why this ordeal strikes me as offensive.

Rather than having a realistic outcome to this situation, we have to wonder when the MLB is going to stop rejecting technology like a bastard child. They need to accept the fact that it is unreasonable that someone watching the game from hundreds (if not thousands) of miles away can better judge a play at first base. I find it outright disrespectful to the players in professional baseball, as well as the owners and especially the fans, that Galarraga’s perfect game can be shrugged off with the notion that “nobody’s perfect.” Considering what was up for grabs here, that’s downright despicable.

Oh good, this jersey on NBC again!

According to multiple reports, Gary Bettman is going to announce today that the 2011 Winter Classic will be played at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh between the Penguins and the Capitals. It’s been rumored that this would be the sight and matchup since 10 minutes after this year’s Winter Classic ended and the US Olympic Hockey team was announced by racially diverse children wearing oversized jerseys. I personally remember saying that they’d fashion a network ratings wet dream: Crosby vs. Ovechkin vs. The Snow.

I’m a fan of great hockey, regardless of who’s playing. Regardless of who’s playing, I can enjoy the game that I love, even if it’s a bitter rival of my Devils (i.e. the Stanley Cup Finals this year). But the fact of the matter is that the NHL has been billing itself as a league with 2 superstars, and the rest of the players are just a bunch of ragtag guys who beat each other about the face and head until their teeth fly out, and I’ve just about had enough.

For the record, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin are without a doubt two of the best players in the league. I highly doubt any sane and rational person can dispute that fact; they’ve put up stellar numbers in the regular seasons and demonstrated tremendous individual skill for the past few years. This fact, along with the history of general discontent with one another, should not be a justifiable reason enough to put the Pens back in the Winter Classic. In 2008, the Pens beat the Sabres in a shootout in the inaugural Winter Classic with Crosby potting the final goal. Having the Winter Classic in Pittsburgh puts the Penguins in 2 of the first 4 nationally televised outdoor games, and I don’t see that it’s fair at all.

I’m sure the league office can justify why they’re choosing Pittsburgh to play again: Heinz Field was available and seats 65,000+, weather in Pittsburgh in January is conducive to a quality game atmosphere, etc. Most of all, it comes down to exposure for the league. Crosby and Ovechkin will draw a large audience because they’re easy to hype. Show each of them scoring some absurd goals, then the two of them jarring from the 2009 Playoffs, splice in a couple shots of each of them standing in a poorly lit hallway with spotlights on them and a bad voice over, “The NHL on NBC,” date and time of the game, and onto the next commercial.

What irritates me most is how much thought must have gone into this decision with only regards to how profitable the entire endeavor would be. The league office doesn’t seem to care that there’s other marquee players they could be promoting with such a great platform. Take a look at what Joe Pavelski did in this year’s playoffs and tell me they couldn’t turn that into a viable ratings success. Tell me that there’s no players that come close to the level of excitement of the two men I’ve mentioned so many times, I refuse to do it again here. Parise, Stamkos, Sedin, Kovalchuk (wherever he may land), Gaborik, Heatley, nothing? Maybe the NHL could have played off the success of NBC’s Olympic Hockey coverage and put two teams chock full of US and Canadian Olympians, like the Devils with Zach and Jamie, or the Sharks with their entire top line.

The bottom line is I’ll watch the game, and I’ll almost certainly enjoy it. I’ve watched every Winter Classic game from beginning to end like a giddy schoolgirl, loving every second of it. However, I promise that I’ll watch the game under protest with a distant hope that the 2012 Winter Classic will see the Devils take on the Rangers in Yankee Stadium. Make it happen, Bettman. If that’s not an option, don’t put a repeat team in this once-a-year masterpiece. Maybe you could get really crazy and put a Western Conference team in there that wasn’t an Original Six, perish the thought of me.

Completely improper use of a Venn Diagram

Baseball is a thinking man’s game. Presumably it’s been labeled as such not only because mental defectives make poor base runners, but because there’s a great deal of thought that goes into the actions of a single player. Fielders need to make decisions regarding where they’re throwing the ball depending on whether or not they can get the runner out, pitchers and catchers need to be on the same page about pitch locations and what to throw to beat the man at the dish, and the manager pulls it all together like an orchestral conductor who likes touching his ears, nose, and chin with his index finger.

But in reality, I think baseball was invented for one group of people – statisticians. Someone in a basement emerged one day, taking off his glasses, declaring that he figured out which team was best and would win the pennant, boldly shouting the word, “SCIENCE!”

Statistics are an ever present reality in all sports nowadays. Save, slugging, and down-conversion percentages; points, assists, and yards per game; batting average, all purpose yards, sacks, minutes on ice, you get the picture. Omnipresent panels and scrolling bottom bars bombard you with every number you could ever dream of having, most of it very useful. Which brings me to my least favorite stat ever.

OPS

This is a very simple number to compute, and its name says it all: On-Base plus Slugging . It combines the two percentages into a single, super statistic. Each of these two original stats stands on their own to feet and are quite useful. Slugging Percentage is a measure of how many total bases a hitter gets per at bat, with a maximum number of 4.000 (something Barry Bonds aimed for and went to great lengths to attempt). On-base Percentage is a self-explanatory statistic, it gives a percentage of the number of times a player would reach base per at bat, with a maximum number of 1.000 (again, Barry Bonds couldn’t find enough juice at a Tropicana distribution warehouse to make this happen). The digs at Bonds come from the fact that with a little help from some doctors, he achieved the highest slugging percentage ever recorded, and that offends me.

I wonder who came up with the idea of combining these two stats, because realistically it’s measuring the same thing twice more often than not. If a player reaches base safely, that ups his on-base percentage, and ups his slugging percentage, so naturally that’s reflected in his OPS from both sides of the equation. Naturally, these people must be enormous fans of the old adage “measure twice, cut once.” I’ve grown to be more of a fan of “never measure, cut with your mind” because it’s more fun to be dangerous than careful when dealing with woodworking.

Most everything I’ve read says that OPS is more of a measure of how well a hitter is doing rather than telling you hard-nosed facts that are based on science and mathematics. Instead, you’re supposed to judge a player’s OPS against other players and use it as a comparison. The wonderful people that have popularized this number have neglected the fact that on every panel that pops up under your favorite hitter when they come to the plate, they list a bevy of numbers for you already, and they can help you judge that person’s performance just fine: BAA, HR, RBI, and even SLG and OBP. Those have worked for years, why bother adding something else that merely combines two numbers you’re already throwing up there?

If ESPN, Fox, and the MLB want to combine SLG and OBP, why not take it all a few steps further? Let’s say we present a new number that gives a better, well-rounded measure of a player’s performance?

BAAHRRBI

As the heading says, we’ll be creating a new number called “Barbie,” read it quickly and it’ll make sense. It’s the perfect, quintessential number in all of sports. We’ll take the batting average and multiply it by 200 and round it to the nearest whole number, then add that to the hitter’s home run total, then add that to their runs batted in. Who needs to know the particulars of each of these antiquated statistics when you can have one number that conveys how your favorite player’s really doing in one easy-to-understand number? Jeter’s got an 86 Barbie, he’s having a horrendous year at the plate by his standards. Andre Ethier has a 127 Barbie and he’s going out of his mind on the DL because he can’t keep growing that tremendous Barbie number. Those numbers are clear cut measures of how a player is doing, just as relevant and silly as OPS, and I look forward to using it from here out as my one and only super stat.

It’s a crazy sport.

Having said all that, New Jersey residents, and Devils fans in particular, tend to be…dickheads. Which is great, in most social situations, but for me, at least, it doesn’t transfer over to hockey. It could be that I’m just painting too idyllic of a picture of other teams’ fans, but I never feel like a New Jersey crowd has the same energy of a place like Pittsburgh, or even Phoenix before the Red Wings slapped them with their wieners in game 7. When I go to a game, I feel like everyone around me is there more to criticize everything the team does, regardless of the score, rather than root their hearts out for the team. I mean, isn’t it an indication that something is wrong when the loudest shout of the night is invariably “Rangers Suck!”, even if the Devils are hosting Calgary at the Rock that particular night.

Don’t get me long, I love to bust some Ranger fan balls as much as the next guy. That’s one of the things makes the sport great, the rivalries, especially between teams in such close proximity, like the Devils and Rangers and their most recent playoff executioners, the Philadelphia Flyers.

I like to think of myself as a new breed of hockey fan at best, and at worst a guy already well suited for a job as an NHL analyst. I might bleed red and black, but I don’t live and die by the tip of Zach Parise’s stick (his dick?…totally different matter). I respect the players of the National Hockey League and all the great things they do every night. I’d like to see every team in the NHL win a Stanley Cup at some point in my lifetime; save one, and that one is a team currently ahead of the Boston Bruins by a score of 3-2. I’m a lover of the game man, but do I hate the fucking Flyers.

Now, don’t go calling me bitter. This isn’t about the first round. This is a matter of principle. Honestly, I like a lot of the Flyers players this year. Boucher, Pronger, Briere, even that vaudevillian villain Daniel Carcillo; these guys are great players, but they’re Flyers. I’m all for loving the game, and I think it’s important to be able to separate yourself from your team and enjoy the game from the perspective of a different team, but there is a flip side of that coin. Just as the game needs rivalries, the fans need an enemy. A nemesis. Ask most Devils fans who their nemesis is, and most answers will be the same. The Rangers of course.

Daniel Carcillo, Flyers Winger.

Having been raised by a pair of expatriot Ranger fans, I was never indoctrinated in the Ranger-loathing that so permeates the senses of most Devils fans. Instead, my parents ever so subtly (or maybe not subtly at all, I don’t remember, I just know it worked) directed my innate hockey-hate at the other nearest city and team, those Philthy bastards. Not that it was hard, growing up, to hate the Flyers. I didn’t know many Rangers fans as a kid, but there were plenty of heathens and idolaters rolling up to the playground during recess wearing some gaudy Flyers gear, or even worse, a Phantoms shirt.

Totally lame.

So, as the third period of this game four gets ready to kick off, let me make this plea to you, New Jersey Devils fans. In this new decade, as we approach thirty years as a franchise, let us stop waging a war on two fronts. Until such time as they prove a threat once more, let’s retire the Rangers as Enemy Numero Uno, and officially start hating  the Flyers, a team Colin Powell once called “The root of all evil and everything bad that has happened to anyone.” with all the copious pent up hostility and sexual frustration that comes along with every New Jersey childhood. Not because they out played us in Round 1, but because let’s face it, people who root for Philadelphia are usually WAY bigger dicks than people who root for New York or New Jersey. While the Devils fan base can’t do much to improve its ‘tude during the off-season, at least we can pass the time with spite.

Go Bruins.

Los Dodgers, that's what the signs say right?

Tommy Lasorda is many things. Pitcher. Coach. Executive. Hall of famer. Porn and hooker enthusiast. But today, he’s just another asshole in a sombrero. Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Nice knockoff championship tee, diq.

Hilarious.

This happened two days ago and everybody else already covered it, but here’s the cold hard facts: the kid and the cop who got him with the taser are both faster than Shane Victorino. Of course, this kid might wind up wearing a giant helmet for a while if you listen to over-protective ninnies like Woody Paige, but that just makes it funnier. Bonus: he was the only sober 17-year-old at the game.

Here’s the clip: