Lots of people are talking about tonight’s All-Star game (8 p.m. EST on FOX), with much speculation about whether or not this is the year for the National League to finally break the American League’s 11-game winning streak.
The NL’s roster may help to push the odds in their favor, with highly-accoladed Robert Pujols (St. Louis) a shining point of the starting lineup and pitcher Tim Lincecum (San Francisco) who is currently regarded as the best in the game. Still, those who are betting men/women may not see this as a comparable rebuttal to such a long-standing record as that of the AL.
The All-Star game determines who gets home field advantage for the World Series, and if statistics are any indication, this seems to be an important point. In the last 12 years, the AL has also had more World Series wins than the NL.
Who do you think is going to win?
Also, beginning the sixth inning of the game, viewers can vote for who they think should be named as the Ted Williams MVP. Voting takes place at MLB.com for fans. The MLB.com fan vote will count for 20 percent of the total with the other 80 percent coming on location at Busch Stadium from the All-Star Game’s three broadcast rightsholders: FOX Sports, ESPN Radio and MLB International as well as the Baseball Writers Association of America.
The MVP winner will be announced at the conclusion of the game, and will receive the Arch Award Trophy.
July 14th, 2009 by Sports Fan | Posted in Baseball | Comments (0)
From the blood-soaked coliseum floor of the gladiator games to the neatly manicured sod of the baseball field, sports are timeless and universal. I remember riding the u-bahn in Berlin during soccer season and having mobs of blue-and-white-clad Bayern-Muenchen fans spill out onto the platforms.
While vacationing in Turkey during the World Cup, the ground shook as Turkey made it to the final six. During the Super Bowl, over 141 million American homes were glued to the screen as the modern-day gladiators sacked and threw their way down the field.
Why do sports have this pull over people? Why do even grotesque sports such as dog fighting, bull fighting and cock fighting have such following?
In this day and age, it seems like everyone needs a sport to live vicariously through. As people work through their daily lives and don’t make time for their own athletic achievement, they look to experience the feelings of accomplishment through other people. The violent aspects in some sports, like football or boxing, can mitigate some built-up aggression within human nature.
While this is understandable, the cruel and ruthless nature of the animal fighting has no justification. These sports are perpetuated by insecure, emotionally detached individuals. It’s no surprise that this is the way most of our serial killers start out.
Sarah Montrowl
(photo credit: scorpionworld)
April 11th, 2009 by Sports Fan | Posted in General | Comments (0)
Last week, Richie Sexson of the Seattle Mariners was suspended for taking the lead on a fight that cleared the benches of both teams. He was originally suspended for six games, but that has been reduced to five games following his appeal. Although he had charged the mound, tackled the pitcher for throwing the ball too close to him and then gotten all his buddies involved, his apology seemed to focus on the fact that he threw his helmet, which he admitted wasn’t “the right thing to do.”
The Mariners haven’t been off to a great start–they are ranked 4th in their league and, up until last night, were on a losing streak. Of course, that means that they won their last game on Sunday against the White Sox, which was the series directly following the Thursday night show-down against the Texas Rangers. Is it any wonder that, right before Sunday’s bombastic offensive show by the Mariners, their manager, John McLaren, gave some face time to the press waxing pop-psychology in what Bud Withers of the Seattle Times dubbed, ” a prolonged examination of the psyche of a team trying desperately to find itself.” I say this, because there’s something sort of spiraling about a team on a losing streak, bursting into a late-game riot and then being apologized for by its manager.
Although I don’t have a ton of experience with sports, I do have quite a bit with men. And from my experience, I can guess that, when they started the game on Sunday, their pride was fed up with being on a team that was mimicking a plane crash. This is the sort of scene that you often find in inspiring sports films. “We Are Marshall” is a good example. A team comes in on a low note, then faces a catastrophe, then pulls it out at the end. It’s almost a necessary pattern. It’s true what they say about rock bottom, though–the only way to go is up.
In that way, I think the Mariners needed Richie Sexson to blow his top and invite the rest of them to join in. Losing is frustrating. Losing repeatedly is even worse and is almost self-perpetuating. May as well take yourself down to the very bottom as quickly as possible so you don’t have the option to dig yourself further. But, yes, throwing the helmet was a little much.
Angela Bull
(photo credit: marksobba)
April 10th, 2009 by Sports Fan | Posted in Sports Scandals | Comments (1)
Video games have come a long way since Atari broke on to the scene almost three decades ago. Back then, the most action you could get from a game was a frantic tactical move with a joystick. Today, the Wii actually brings your whole body into play, so that the level of skill and coordination you need to rack up the points involves more than just your hands and your eyes. And with a list of games that includes skiing, bowling, boxing, martial arts and even table tennis, you have to start wondering: Could video games become the newest events in 21st-century sports?
Before you can talk about including video games in sports, you have to talk about how a sport is defined. Of course, this conversation is probably as old as Rome, where gladiators were the professional athletes of the day. Back then, one of the key elements of a sport may have been a fight to the death, which would certainly not have as universal an appeal in today’s sports world. Cheerleading is only now starting to take a place of respect within the sports world, though this is due largely to the infusion of gymnastics and technical choreography. Clearly, the definition of a sport changes with time and society. However, there must be some basic, underlying principles that separate baseball from debate club. But what are they?
The Maine Center for Sports and Coaching (MCSC) says that some of the basic elements of sports programs are “Philosophy, Values and Sportsmanship, Sports and Learning, Parents and Community, Quality of Coaching, Opportunity to Play, Health and Fitness, and Leadership, Polity and Organization.” No where in those key words does it say that sports have to take place in reality (as opposed to virtual reality), or that a coach has to be a real person. So, in theory, if we could apply the principles above to a video game, we might be able to determine its viability as an actual sport.
Let’s take Wii tennis as an example
This game is based on a sport, and you have to learn it, those two qualities are satisfied. In theory, the game’s “Help” features probably offer some coaching tips, and there is no doubt that someone will eventually write a book on special codes or methods for getting higher scores.
If you own a Wii, you no doubt have every opportunity to play you could ask for. Since you are moving around, there is some physical activity that could contribute to health and fitness. If you play Wii tennis with a group of people, there is no doubt some semblance of leadership, polity and organization (to determine who plays who, etc.).
Since Wii is accessible, you could feasibly include your parents as spectators, or even as competitors, and there are already small communities starting to form around Wii playing. In situations where you are playing with others, you have to learn the philosophy, values and sportsmanship associated with sports, or else you’ll be stuck playing the computer over and over again (and it really knows its stuff).
So it seems like all the points for a sports program, according to MCSC, are potentially there with the Wii. So does that make Wii games candidates for becoming official sports?
Angela Bull
(photo credit: wijkerslooth)
April 9th, 2009 by Sports Fan | Posted in Sports Scandals | Comments (0)
While comparing the most popular sports Web sites in my last post, I came across the most popularly searched British sports page, BBC Sport. There were a couple main differences that I noticed between the American and Britain sports pages that I thought would be interesting to go over here.
The Olympics - The BBC Sport page had Olympic coverage very prominently posted on the main sidebar of the page. Not only that, but upon clicking on the page, the various methods of reporting on the events are comprehensive and interesting. The sports are broken out, “Team GB” is featured for faithful followers, there are blogs and other media and–perhaps most interestingly–nothing was really obviously focusing on the negative coverage that the Olympics have received around the protests for Tibet. Just lots of fascinating stories and media to peruse and bookmark.
British Sports - I’ve always known that Great Britain boasts some sports all its own, so I was excited to find that a few of these sports are considered regular fare for the sports lovers there. The obvious candidates are rugby and cricket, but snooker, squash and bowls were also pleasant finds. In case you were curious about what these sports actually are:
- Rugby: Sort of like the British version of American football, rugby involves two teams of 13 players, each trying to score a goal on the other team. Some of the most notable differences between rugby and football are that rugby involves more kicking than passing, and rugby players don’t wear protective padding.
- Cricket: A bat-and-ball sport sort of like baseball, it involves two teams of 11 playing in an oval-shaped grass field. The goal, like baseball, is to score runs by hitting the ball, but some of the more noteworthy differences are the flat wooden bat, the bounce of the ball before the pitch and the funky setup and rules for batting.
- Snooker: Snooker looks like billiards or pool, but the object of the game is to score more points than your opponent. This is accomplished by sinking all of the 15 red balls (one point each), and then dropping the other colored balls in order of point value.
- Squash: This is essentially racquetball on a smaller court with faster speeds. The rules differ slightly, and there are many details to consider in equipment and playing styles, but the two sports are otherwise very similar to one another.
- Bowls: Also referred to as Lawn Bowling, this game involves rolling asymmetrical balls closest to a small white ball, also called a “kitty.” The game is typically played on grass or artificial grass surfaces, indoors and out.
The BBC Sport page has so many links and stories to explore, it’s almost surprising their country is so much smaller in comparison. Click some links and see what you’ll find!
Angela Bull
April 8th, 2009 by Sports Fan | Posted in General | Comments (0)
Since I am new to the sports scene, I’m looking for a quick way to get immersed in the endless knowledge that is America’s 50 favorite pastimes (sorry baseball, but you’re not the only one anymore). As a result, I took a look through the three top-ranking sports-related pages to get a taste of what’s out there, and what’s in it for me.
In no particular order:
- Sports Illustrated - This Web site seems to be more about sports as a part of pop-culture than as a man-hands-only topic for discussion. This site opens up with the up-to-the-minute sports headlines that you would expect, but then also puts its gossip links and blogs front and center. Scrolling down, you also find features like “Extra Mustard,” which go beyond the rumors to cover pop-y highlights such as Jenna Jamison’s cameo at recent team parties. Of course, there’s a drop-down to let you choose the image of your swimsuit model of choice and goofy photos of mascots are also close by. It is easy to get the latest on teams and scores from the front page, and I really like that I don’t have to register in order to customize “my pages” to the teams I want to follow. The specific team pages are very robust, but the advertisements make it feel cluttered and may even effect the page loading time. Finally, I was really impressed with SI’s inclusion of high school coverage, which can be accessed from the front page along with everything else. The focus of SI seems to be to cover a lot of different angles of sports, from guts to pop to sex to human interest. I thought it was stimulating.
- Fox Sports - Fox Sports is the sort of Web site you’d expect of a sports page: It’s very masculine and in your face, but it’s in your face with a lot of information. Once I was no longer overwhelmed by the bold graphics, I found that it was really easy to find the information I was looking for, particularly the scoreboard, which was just enough in front of the page that your eyes didn’t have to search for it, but it didn’t get in the way of the top story.Scrolling through the page, I got the sense that Fox Sports was really into interactive play with its readers. There seems to be a lot of emphasis on Fantasy sports, and its Fantasy page gives you the opportunity to participate in sports from baseball to racing. I don’t play fantasy sports, but I’ve known people that have in years past. I remember that this was their go-to page for that purpose, so I’m assuming the extra attention is well-deserved.
The page goes on to highlight its own articles on the typical goings-on of sports teams, but again you notice right away that they give you every opportunity to stay plugged in through RSS feeds, mobile updates, etc. Other pages probably offer these amenities as well, but it was just more obvious through Fox.
Finally, when I registered with Fox to customize my page, I liked that they created sidebars for my favorite teams on the main page, that I could collapse as I liked. The individual team pages were also very well put-together, and I especially liked the extra features on these pages such as salary amounts and transactions (again, probably associated with the high fantasy-focus). There isn’t as much fluff as Sports Illustrated, but I imagine the Fantasy aspect helps to fill that void. Overall, a hard-hitting sports site from what I can tell.
- CBS Sports - CBS Sports’ Web site is what I would imagine my grandfather looking to for information on his ailing Cornhuskers. The site has a very clean, quiet look about it, which, for a former sports bartender such as myself, is a little bit disarming. I expect to have sports information fly at me with pictures of screaming basketball players and intense-faced footballers. In most of the pictures I saw, though, the players seemed to be smiling, having a good time. What?Demure attitude aside, though, the information to be found here is very cut and dry. There is very little offered in terms of blogs and not a sign of rumors to be found. You get the scores, the stats and the rest of the information you need with few ads, graphics or any other stimulation, to be frank. For some, though, this might be a good thing, so I’m not counting it as a negative.I signed in to customize the pages, and I was disappointed at the results. The only noticeable difference was that the scores had a “My Scores” page, and a box below featured select stories about my chosen teams. Otherwise, no fireworks here.There was some community interaction on the team pages, but it was pretty subdued. I did like the “depth chart” on the baseball team page, because I always forget who’s on first (haha).
I should say that CBS has a pretty extensive Fantasy page, but they don’t make much of a fuss about it, so neither will I. Overall, I think CBS Sports is just delivering the information and making itself available to you if you have any questions. As long as you ask nicely.
Across the Pond - While these pages were great for getting acquainted with American sports, my next blog will delve into getting to know the sports of Great Britain. Stay tuned!
Angela Bull
(photo credit: imovermyhead)
April 7th, 2009 by Sports Fan | Posted in General | Comments (0)
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