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☛ The Games of April
I broke out of my writing slump and wrote a thing at Medium about sports, hockey and spring.
Oh, those years. When the warm weather meant switching from your team’s Starter jacket to their sweatshirt. When you felt that surge of momentary happiness, the kind that comes from being a sports fan, from being a part of something bigger than yourself. All these people, all these regular season games spent with one common hope, one common vision: make it to the playoffs. Give us a post-season. We may not as a people agree on so many things, so many important things, but for a few hours a night we have a commonality that supersedes any differences we may have.
Read, share, if that’s your thing.
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hockey hockey hockey
Sports rivalries are awesome. Sometimes those rivalries are full of anger, bitterness and and underlying sense of rage and that can make for some really ugly moments. And sometimes those rivalries die out a little because one or both teams isn’t doing that well and it’s just not the same.
Then one day you find the two teams on somewhat of an even keel again, both playing games in April that mean something. And of those “mean something” games is against each other.
The rivalry flares up again, the way it was back in the good old days, not with hatred but still with an intensity that makes it feel like 1993 again.
Two teams fighting to keep playing after the season ends. Two teams from the same area, with fans that sometimes span the same household.
April is always a good time to be a hockey fan.
Right now - today, this moment, this build up to a meaningful game with a lifetime rival - is a really good time to be an Islander fan. The joy is back. The hope is back. The fun that comes with watching a team where the players genuinely like each other and are having fun playing their hearts out is back. The excitement that comes from playing the Rangers in April and having it mean something is back.
This is the hockey I love.
Let’s go, Islanders.
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☛ Are We the Super Bowl?
Have I mentioned American McCarver is back?
Well, it is. And I have a piece up this morning.
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Winter Classic is dead: Not a good sign for hockey fans as the NHL cancelled the annual outdoor game, according to The Associated Press. This means there is a greater chance the season could be cancelled next.
This is what is known as a death knell.
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Chiefs tackle Eric Winston gets after fans for cheering the injury of quarterback Matt Cassel on Sunday. About time someone put it down like this.
This is important.
I’ve written before about extremely rabid sports fans cheering injuries. It’s sickening.
Watch this.
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Friday morning was the first sign that things were different. Friday morning, it finally felt real.
On a day when training camps around the NHL were supposed to open with medical exams and fitness testing, hockey fans instead woke up to highlights of Alex Ovechkin and other locked-out players making their regular-season debuts in the KHL and other European leagues.
It was yet another reminder that the landscape is changing, that hockey might have to be consumed differently this season. If you want your fix, it can be had. You just might need a translator to understand.
Photo: Maxim Shemetov/ReutersEverything was wrong and everything hurts.
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14 things to do in lieu of watching hockey
- Take out VHS tapes of 80s NHL games. Mumble shit about the good old days.
- Play a season on Sega’s NHL ‘94. As the Hartford Whalers.
- Introducing…the Brooklyn Nets!
- Make collages of photos of Gary Bettman, sell them on etsy as kitty litter liners.
- Watch Slap Shot 82 times.
- Start an Occupy NHL Offices movement.
- Watch football and complain that you can’t follow the ball on tv.
- Iron your collection of pennants of defunct NHL teams.
- Punch anyone who says “It’s just hockey, who cares?”
- Adopt a displaced arena worker.
- Live tweet games that aren’t really happening just to confuse the hell out of people.
- Wonder what Don Cherry is doing.
- Go to Presidential debates, wait until someone asks about abortion, yell “LET’S TALK ABOUT ABORTING THE NHL SEASON INSTEAD!” Show off your “Bettman Sucks” tattoo to the secret service as they escort you out.
- Don’t watch Slap Shot 2. Things are never that bad.
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on becoming a casual sports fan
The Red Sox are floundering. It’s mid-August and they’re 12 games out and the team is in mutiny mode with Bobby Valentine. The Mets are 16 games out.
In a weird turn of events, I have not shoved these facts in the face of a single Red Sox or Mets fan. I have not reveled in their losing records or taken any glee in the fact that their fans are suffering. In fact, I had to Google the MLB standings to make sure I got my numbers right.
Turns out, I just don’t care as much. Not about the sports, per se, but about the intense fandom side of sports.
I’ve become a casual sports fan.
There was a time when I could name every single player on every roster of every NHL team. I could probably tell you their jersey numbers and stats as well. There was a time when I spent every summer night in front of the tv with a scorebook in my hands, performing the hieroglyphics of baseball scoring while watching the Yankees. If the Yankees had an off day, I’d watch whatever game was on tv. There was a time when my entire Sunday would be spent in a bar, eating chicken wings out of a football helmet while the NFL was broadcast before me on over a dozen tvs hanging from the ceiling. I used to read the newspaper - back when I read newspapers - backwards, starting with the sports section because that’s what was most important to me.
Along with those times came the rabidness of being a sports fan. The fights - physical and verbal - with Ranger fans and Bruins fans. The heated arguments, the name calling, the gloating, the defensive insults thrown at people who disparaged my favorite team, the nearly poisonous hatred of the Red Sox and Mets, of LeBron and Bryant, of anyone who dared to talk shit about Favre.
I never realized just how angry and volatile my passion for sports had become until recently. Thanks to social media - namely twitter, with tumblr and Facebook playing lesser but equally important roles - I’ve come to see just how ugly sports fandom can be. And it’s made me take on a smaller role as a sports fan.
I’ve seen interactions between fans that have made me unfollow certain people. I’ve seen bitterness, anger, people wishing injuries upon opposing players. I’ve witnessed fanaticism that made me wonder if some people know where they end and their team begins. I’m not talking about the bantering that goes on between friends who happen to be loyal to rival teams. The jabs and insults behind those tweets have an implied friendliness behind them. I’m talking about fights between relative strangers, exchanges between people filled with anger and hatred, people live tweeting games in a way that makes me envision as the type of person who would take a sledgehammer to a tv after their team loses.
Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but this has all gotten very tiring. The hate, the anger, the constant stream of insults, it’s not something I want to spend my time doing or being a part of. It’s sports. Sports. Games. A team’s win or loss has no impact on my life whatsoever and to expend so much energy getting worked up about those wins and losses seems counterproductive to, well, everything good.
Sure, I could just back away from social media or unfollow the people who are engaging in the behavior I cited, but that’s not really the entire problem. It’s me, too. Not just them. I’m tired of a lot of things about sports. I’m tired of the business side of it, of agonizing over CBAs and worrying if the hockey season is actually going to start on time. I’m admittedly bitter about everything going on with the Islanders and the Nassau Coliseum. I don’t want to hear about player contracts and what they’re doing off the field or in the clubhouse. I just want to watch a game, you know? A game. I don’t want all the other stuff that comes with being a sports fan.
I don’t want to give up sports entirely. I still want to root for the Yankees as they march toward October. I still want the Islanders to show some spark this season. I still want to watch football on Sundays and soccer games on Saturdays. I just don’t have the room in my life anymore for the hate and competitiveness. I don’t really want to hate LeBron. I don’t really want to hate Crosby. I want to just enjoy a sport for what it is and to do that means to watch it for the game and block out everything else. Or, become a casual sports fan, the kind where baseball on the tv is relegated to the background while you’re doing something else. The kind of fan who knows who’s ahead in the standings but doesn’t get worked up about it.
I need to watch from a distance because every time I talk about a sport on twitter, I end up with people jumping my shit about something, or engaging in arguments with people who are so involved with their teams they take every negative thing said about them as a personal insult.
I’m a baseball fan. I’m a hockey fan. I just want to watch the games without working myself into a frenzy over a bad call or extra inning loss. I don’t want to be aggravated over something so inconsequential as a pitcher walking home a run.
I partly blame social media for my sudden distaste for sports fandom. But I also blame myself for having been such a big part of it for nearly my entire life. The fact that I can now see hundreds of people at one time spewing expletives at each other over a game has just laid it all out there for me; I don’t need this. It’s just a part of what’s ruining the experience of sports for me, but it’s a big part. Yes, I can unfollow a lot of those people, and I’ve already done that. Yes, I can stay away from social media but there’s so much more to my enjoyment of it than what sports fans offer me. I’m not going to deprive myself of the good aspects of social media because of the bad aspects. What I can do is just not engage in that part of it anymore. I don’t want to troll Boston fans. I don’t want to make fun of the Mets. I don’t want to start a conversation that might end up in insults and injury wishes.
I’ve taken a step back. I’m taking a more casual approach to sports. I’m trying to lead a calmer, more centered life and tweets like “I hope Crosby gets another concussion” kind of leave me bewildered at this point. Why? Why would you take sports so seriously that you’d wish that on a person? I don’t want to add to that conversation and I don’t want to add to that part of the culture of sports.
I don’t want to talk about the business. I don’t want to talk about the personal lives of players. I don’t want to pop a blood vessel screaming at the television. I don’t want to be part of the rabidness.
I just want to enjoy a game.
So now I’m considering myself a casual sports fan. I’m going to try to go back to enjoying the games for what they are. Games.
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![[I wrote this over at American McCarver last year and now I’m stealing it from myself and repeating it here because I can]
7/4/85: The Greatest Baseball Game Ever Played
You’d think as a Yankees fan my favorite Fourth of July baseball memory would be Dave Righetti’s no-hitter in 1983. And it was. For two years. Until a Mets game took over the crown. Yes, the New York Mets.
July 4, 1985. New York Mets at Atlanta Braves. The greatest baseball game ever played.
Back in the 80s I was a huge Braves fan. Even though I loved my Yankees, I had a soft spot for the National League and a permanent place in my heart for Dale Murphy. That whole Braves team was a joy to watch. Horner, Hubbard, Ramirez, Camp (we are not going to talk about Len Barker). They weren’t a good team. But they were a fun team.
My parents had a television in the backyard, expressly for the purpose of watching baseball games. On this particular Fourth of July, the Mets-Braves game took precedence and a bunch of us gathered in front of the tv with our beer and hot dogs to watch the game, which started late due to a rain delay.
The first seven innings or so were unremarkable, save for the field being waterlogged which made for some slip-n-slide action in the outfield which resulted in at least one Mets run.
It was 7-4 Mets headed into the 8th.
Let’s note here that the 1985 New York Mets at the time were my most hated sports team ever (that lasted until the 1986 Mets, who remain Number One Sports Enemy). I loathed everyone on that team. Gary Carter. Lenny Dykstra. Keith Hernandez. I didn’t want to sit around with a bunch of drunk Mets fans watching them beat my team.
My man Dale Murphy came through in the bottom of the 8th with a three run double and the Braves took an 8-7 lead.
Thanks to two rain delays, it was close to midnight when the ninth inning started. There weren’t a lot of fans left in Fulton County Stadium, most of them assuming the after-game fireworks they showed up for weren’t going to happen. The Mets tied the game up and as we headed into extra innings, I think there were about 200 people left in the stands.
After three scoreless innings, we sent someone out for a beer run at the end of the 13th. When the Mets went ahead 10-8 and the Braves came right back to tie it up, we sent someone else out for a Taco Bell run. By this time, my parents were in bed, the party cleaned up and a just a few of us were left huddled around the television in the backyard.
A few more scoreless innings passed. Darryl Strawberry and manager Davey Johnson were thrown out of the game for arguing a call. At 3am. Umpire Terry Tata would later tell a reporter “At three o’clock in the morning, there are no bad calls.”
It was getting close to morning. There were five people left in our group. There were about as many left in Atlanta. The players were weary, the field was a mess and at that point I didn’t even care who won. This was a game for the ages. Everyone would be talking about it for weeks and I’d be able to say I stayed up for the whole thing.
Bottom of the 18th inning. 11-10 Mets. Two outs, nobody on and Atlanta was down to their last available man. Pitcher Rick Camp. This was it. I was sure the game was over. Rick Camp? How the hell was a pitcher going to tie this game up?
By hitting the only home run of his entire career. That’s how. I let out a triumphant shout of near-victory that woke my parents. My father dragged his ass outside to see what was going on. “Holy shit, this game is still on?” He sat down with us to watch history unfold.
We were going into the 19th inning. It was almost morning. The cameras panned the stadium and we applauded the people who were still there eight hours after the game was supposed to start.
The game’s current hero, Rick Camp, came out to pitch. Unfortunately, his heroics didn’t last and the Mets took a 16-11 lead into the bottom of the 19th.
Mets starter Ron Darling came out to pitch at close to 4:00 am. Suddenly it was 16-13 with the tying run at the plate.
Rick Camp.
Could he do it again? Could this pitcher who was batting .60 before the game started pull of another hero moment? At the 1-2 count we all held our breath.
Strike three. Game over. 4:00 am.
Fireworks went off over Fulton County Stadium, as promised.
Everyone, even the Braves themselves, even the few of us still watching the game in my parents’ backyard applauded. I’d like to say that the effort put out by both teams in the game meant there were no losers, but the Braves would probably beg to differ.
And that was the greatest baseball game ever played.
*ed note: this was 26 years ago. my memories might be hazy, but mostly accurate. also, click through for large version of the game’s scorecard.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6muhoI1pn1qzwnozo1_500.jpg)
[I wrote this over at American McCarver last year and now I’m stealing it from myself and repeating it here because I can]
7/4/85: The Greatest Baseball Game Ever Played
You’d think as a Yankees fan my favorite Fourth of July baseball memory would be Dave Righetti’s no-hitter in 1983. And it was. For two years. Until a Mets game took over the crown. Yes, the New York Mets.
July 4, 1985. New York Mets at Atlanta Braves. The greatest baseball game ever played.
Back in the 80s I was a huge Braves fan. Even though I loved my Yankees, I had a soft spot for the National League and a permanent place in my heart for Dale Murphy. That whole Braves team was a joy to watch. Horner, Hubbard, Ramirez, Camp (we are not going to talk about Len Barker). They weren’t a good team. But they were a fun team.
My parents had a television in the backyard, expressly for the purpose of watching baseball games. On this particular Fourth of July, the Mets-Braves game took precedence and a bunch of us gathered in front of the tv with our beer and hot dogs to watch the game, which started late due to a rain delay.
The first seven innings or so were unremarkable, save for the field being waterlogged which made for some slip-n-slide action in the outfield which resulted in at least one Mets run.
It was 7-4 Mets headed into the 8th.
Let’s note here that the 1985 New York Mets at the time were my most hated sports team ever (that lasted until the 1986 Mets, who remain Number One Sports Enemy). I loathed everyone on that team. Gary Carter. Lenny Dykstra. Keith Hernandez. I didn’t want to sit around with a bunch of drunk Mets fans watching them beat my team.
My man Dale Murphy came through in the bottom of the 8th with a three run double and the Braves took an 8-7 lead.
Thanks to two rain delays, it was close to midnight when the ninth inning started. There weren’t a lot of fans left in Fulton County Stadium, most of them assuming the after-game fireworks they showed up for weren’t going to happen. The Mets tied the game up and as we headed into extra innings, I think there were about 200 people left in the stands.
After three scoreless innings, we sent someone out for a beer run at the end of the 13th. When the Mets went ahead 10-8 and the Braves came right back to tie it up, we sent someone else out for a Taco Bell run. By this time, my parents were in bed, the party cleaned up and a just a few of us were left huddled around the television in the backyard.
A few more scoreless innings passed. Darryl Strawberry and manager Davey Johnson were thrown out of the game for arguing a call. At 3am. Umpire Terry Tata would later tell a reporter “At three o’clock in the morning, there are no bad calls.”
It was getting close to morning. There were five people left in our group. There were about as many left in Atlanta. The players were weary, the field was a mess and at that point I didn’t even care who won. This was a game for the ages. Everyone would be talking about it for weeks and I’d be able to say I stayed up for the whole thing.
Bottom of the 18th inning. 11-10 Mets. Two outs, nobody on and Atlanta was down to their last available man. Pitcher Rick Camp. This was it. I was sure the game was over. Rick Camp? How the hell was a pitcher going to tie this game up?
By hitting the only home run of his entire career. That’s how. I let out a triumphant shout of near-victory that woke my parents. My father dragged his ass outside to see what was going on. “Holy shit, this game is still on?” He sat down with us to watch history unfold.
We were going into the 19th inning. It was almost morning. The cameras panned the stadium and we applauded the people who were still there eight hours after the game was supposed to start.
The game’s current hero, Rick Camp, came out to pitch. Unfortunately, his heroics didn’t last and the Mets took a 16-11 lead into the bottom of the 19th.
Mets starter Ron Darling came out to pitch at close to 4:00 am. Suddenly it was 16-13 with the tying run at the plate.
Rick Camp.
Could he do it again? Could this pitcher who was batting .60 before the game started pull of another hero moment? At the 1-2 count we all held our breath.
Strike three. Game over. 4:00 am.
Fireworks went off over Fulton County Stadium, as promised.
Everyone, even the Braves themselves, even the few of us still watching the game in my parents’ backyard applauded. I’d like to say that the effort put out by both teams in the game meant there were no losers, but the Braves would probably beg to differ.
And that was the greatest baseball game ever played.
*ed note: this was 26 years ago. my memories might be hazy, but mostly accurate. also, click through for large version of the game’s scorecard.
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WAH.
“We play too many night games on getaway days and get into places at 4 in the morning. This has been my toughest season physically because of that. We play a lot of night games on Sunday for television and that those things take a lot out of you…They can put the Padres on ESPN, too. The schedule really hurt us. Nobody is really reporting that.”
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Adrian Gonzalez, blaming Sunday Night Baseball for the Red Sox collapse
Oh shut the fuck up. Seriously. NOBODY IS REPORTING IT BECAUSE WHINING IS NOT A STORY.
“We had the biggest collapse in baseball history BECAUSE OF ESPN.”
Jesus.
