The U.S. Open

Because I'm not really a professional tennis buff, this post might lack the usual key takeaways that Caught Looking fans have come to expect.  In the recent past I've been to some professional tennis tournaments - the most memorable of which was the second-tier Bank of the West Classic at the Home Depot Center (home of MLS's Los Angeles Galaxy) in Carson, CA - but I hadn't been to the U.S. Open since I was a kid and had really no idea what to expect.  With little to compare my experience to, here are the random obsevations I took away from my first trip to a tennis Grand Slam event in well over a decade.

• I loved how the entire tennis complex is so much more than a tennis stadium (or even two).  The two main stadiums and all of the other courts surround a larger area that includes a bunch of decent food options, a number of fun sponsor activation areas and large video screens to watch the live action.  I've never been to the Olympics, but I kept thinking that the outdoor area was what I'd expect a mini version of an Olympic Village to look like.  We ate at a umbrella-covered table outside before heading into Arthur Ashe Stadium, and it was a really nice way to start the evening.

• When I go to a new baseball stadium, I never cease to be blown away by how perfect and large the playing field and the grass really is.  Similarly, I love stepping into an arena and taking that first look at the spotless NBA hardwood or perfectly smooth NHL ice.  I definitely didn't get that same feeling when I looked down at the Arthur Ashe court for the first time.  Sure, it's a beautiful court, but the difference between it and the one at my high school is way smaller than the difference between Madison Square Garden's hardwood and our school's gynmasium floor.

It's a nice court - it just didn't blow me away.

• I was admittedly predisposed to hate them going in, but I really didn't click with what I perceived as the average U.S. Open fan.  Not surprisingly, the stadium was filled with weathly socialites more concerned with people-watching than tennis-watching.  To me, going to the U.S. Open is something that weathly New York-area residents do during the summer because it's what "people do," much like going to the Hamptons for the Fourth of July.  I like my sports fans to be more concerned with seeing something cool than with being seen by someone cool.

• As soon as you enter Arthur Ashe stadium, you know it's a premium event.  Every sponsor, by design, is a luxury company - Mercedes-Benz, J.P. Morgan and Emirates Airlines, all of which you can see featured in the photo above, are just a few of the premium brands with prominant signage in and around the stadium.  What's more, all of the signage is in white writing on the same blue background, adding a classy feel that you definitely don't get in other sports, where billboards are often plastered all over the place.  I liked it. 

• I really enjoy how someone interviews the winner at the end of each match, and the interview is broadcast over the PA system.  I also loved how, after he won his match, Andy Murray hit autographed tennis balls into the stands.  There seems to be a very friendly relationship between the players and the fans that I'm not really used to, but which I really appreciated.  Perhaps it has something to do with tennis being an individual sport, so people are much more attached to specific players (as opposed to teams).  I would love to see more player / fan interaction in baseball, basketball or football.

I definitely enjoyed my trip to the U.S. Open, but to me it was less of a sporting event than it was a New York City cultural experience.  I'd almost compare it more to a Broadway show or a concert than to a Yankees or Knicks game.  While you're sure to enjoy the actual event, many people seem to go to the U.S. Open just to say that they went to the U.S. Open.  If you're interested in people-watching and feeling like part of the "in crowd," then Arthur Ashe stadium is the place for you.  For me, however, I'd prefer a good ole' fashioned baseball game in the cheap seats any day.

Caught Looking On Caught Looking

Last year, I noted that Victoria's Secret stole my Caught Looking name for their line of baseball-themed women's clothing and underwear.  That injustice, however, doesn't hold a candle to the crimes recently committed by NBC Sports Network and its new show entitled - you guessed it - Caught Looking.  If NBC Sports wanted to steal my blog's name for the title of its new, Hard Knocks-style weekly baseball documentary, the show's creators could have at least worked a little harder on their logo and done something more original than simply de-italicize my font - compare the show's image (below) to my page header (above) and see what I mean.  Obvious intellectual property theft aside, I'm somewhat flattered that the good people at NBC Sports chose my (admittedly brilliant) name and logo for their program, and I would definitely recommend the show to anyone who enjoys baseball, documentaries or well-crafted ideograms.

Obvious name and logo theft aside, NBC Sports' Caught Looking is worth watching.

Anyone who played baseball at any semi-serious level growing up knows that the sport is as much about surviving a long season as it is about winning individual games.  Most of us, however, follow Major League Baseball by watching live contests and recorded highlights, putting all of our emphasis as fans on the three-hour-long games and ignoring the other 21 hours in the day.  Even though we (especially us Braves fans) understand that the key to a championship is reaching the playoffs healthy and motivated, very little televised baseball content covers this facet of the sport (unless it's about shutting down Stephen Strasburg, of course).  Caught Looking does a great job trying to change that, covering in detail the behind-the-scenes aspects of baseball that we rarely see.

This week's episode covered a series between the Cardinals and the Reds at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.  Much like Buzz Bissinger's excellent work of non-fiction Three Nights in August, the show provides an insider's perspective to the traditionally closed-door nature of a Major League Baseball series.  While still taking its viewers through the series' highlights and top plays, Caught Looking focuses more on what the players and coaches are thinking, seeing and saying while standing on the field or sitting in the dugouts.  The show lets you feel like you're part of the organization by granting access to conversations between opposing players, teammates, managers and umpires, and more. This show might be the closest I ever get to a MLB clubhouse or dugout, and I'm really enjoying the opportunity to better understand the conversations that drive a 162-game season.

Caught Looking isn't perfect, however.  The show seems to drag at times, and in an effort to add a cohesive story to each episode the content often focuses on one or two players that you may or may not really care about.  The Cardinals and Reds series coverage, for example, centered around Reds rookie Todd Frazier, who has done a great job this year playing third and first while filling in for Scott Rolen and Joey Votto.  While Frazier is a legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate who deserves more national attention than he gets, after half an hour I was ready to move on to another "character."  Given that the show is new, however, I'm happy to overlook this one minor criticism and continue to watch Caught Looking.  With a name and a logo this great, how can NBC Sports' new show not be a success?

Conference Camaraderie

Although I no longer live on a university campus, I'm still very excited for the NCAA football season to get started tonight with South Carolina at Vanderbilt.  In honor of college pigskin's opening weekend, I spent some time this afternoon reading through ESPN's weekly blog coverage for my conference of choice, the Pac-12.  The weekly post on "What to watch in the Pac-12"  featured this curious line:

"The Pac-12 is favored in 11 of 12 games in Week 1, with Washington State being the only underdog. That means -- at worst -- the conference should go 11-1 . . .Wouldn't be a bad announcement to the rest of college football if the conference runs the table."

If this was a blog post about an NFL division - say, the NFC East - this note would come across as very odd.  Why should a Stanford fan like myself really care about how the other eleven Pac-12 schools are doing in their opening games?  The obvious answer, of course, is that having Pac-12 schools win non-conference games boosts the strength of the conference for BCS purposes, and thus helps the league's schools compete at the national level.  Whereas in the NFL is doesn't help the Giants at all if the Eagles, Cowboys or Redskins win their out-of-division games (if fact, it directly hurts them), one of the quirks of college football is that a quality win by Washington State at BYU this weekend, for example, would indirectly benefit the Cardinal.

But if you think about it, there are a number of other reasons why college football fans should be rooting for their most hated of rivals in non-conference games.  One is conference reputation.  In the NFL, every team gets plenty of media coverage on Sportscenter, NFL Live and pretty much every other highlights show.  In the NCAA, air time is heavily skewed towards the conferences with the stronger reputations, like the SEC and the Big Ten.  If the Pac-12 can win a few notable non-conference games over the next two weeks, then conference games featuring teams other than Oregon and USC might become more nationally noteworthy.  Also remember that, unlike the NFL, the NCAA's national TV schedule isn't completely set, so the more non-conference games that the Pac-12 wins the higher the odds that their games get picked up by ESPN or ABC later in the season.

Another reason for me to root for the Pac-12 to run the table this weekend is pure economics.  With the launch of new conference-specific television channels like the Pac-12 Network, schools have their financial outcomes more closely tied to their conference-mates than ever before.  As the conference gets stronger and interest in Pac-12 football continues to grow, the Pac-12 Network will get more subscribers which means more money for the conference and each of its teams.  If Washington or Arizona State get off to a hot start and become teams that, like Oregon and USC, even out-of-market college football fans want to see regularly, that can translate into more dollars for Stanford's pockets.  With college football becoming more and more about money, sweeping the Pac-12 Network's first ever football weekend would be a very good thing.

It goes without saying that, of this weekend's college gridiron action, I primarily care about Friday night's Stanford game versus San Jose State.  At the same time, though, I'll be pulling for the rest of the teams in the conference to head into Labor Day with 1-0 records.  In particular, Washington State, Arizona (against surprisingly dangerous Toledo) and Colorado (against in-state rival Colorado State) can put the conference on the map with significant victories this weekend.  For the next two weeks, the other eleven Pac-12 schools are tied for my second-favorite FBS college football team.   

The Fall of Rick Reilly

I don't have a subscription to Sports Illustrated anymore, but I used to read it religiously.  When each issue came in the mail, I used to immediately flip to the inside back cover and blow through the latest Rick Reilly column.  Reilly was my favorite sports writer in the business, and his ability to mix legitimate sports journalism with humor and a colloquial tone was something I admired and looked forward to.  When Reilly left SI and eventually made his way over to ESPN, I stopped renewing my Sports Illustrated subscription and began to read ESPN The Magazine instead.  I recently renewed my subscription to The Mag for another year, but this time it wasn't because of Rick Reilly.  Actually, it was in spite of him.

Somehow, Reilly went from bring one of my favorite sports writers to arguably my least favorite "journalist" in a matter of a few short years.  After ditching SI and starting to cash in what I assume are massive paychecks from ESPN, Reilly's writing has become increasingly lazy and decreasingly insightful.  Instead of digging deep into the sports world for the unique and original material that used to distinguish him from other sports media personalities, Reilly now seems to tackle whatever subject requires the least amount of research time and allows for the largest number of cheap jokes and uninspired random analogies.  Instead of a quality piece of writing, every recent Reilly article reads like a bad Family Guy script.

Rick Reilly's columns used to get well-deserved billing on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Take last week's "column" (if you can call it that) on regulars at the gym, entitled "Where everybody knows your name" and posted on ESPN.com on Friday, August 24th.  Devoid of any real content, the column buckets gym-goers into twelve different stereotyped charicatures, none of which are particularly funny, original or, frankly, even that accurate.  In typical modern Reilly fashion, his last line refers back to himself - a cheap, self-deprecating joke that does nothing for the reader other than remind him that, yes, Rick Reilly still exists and he's getting paid a lof of money to do very little.  I don't even know why I keep reading what Reilly writes anymore, given that I haven't enjoyed one of his columns in longer than I can remember.  I guess I keep hoping that, one day, the old Reilly will miraculously return to form, even though I know it's never going to happen.

I'll confess that, months ago, I was caught in the middle of a serious case of blogger's block and thought about writing a similar post about the types of people you see at the gym.  But after I thought about it for about 45 seconds, I realized that the content wouldn't be strong enough for Caught Looking - it wasn't really related to sports, it wouldn't be that funny and it would come off as nothing more than a cheap excuse to get something posted.  So if I decided that a similar post wasn't good enough for my blog, how could ESPN let Reilly post this column on its website?  Have his prior accolades and track record gotten him to the point where he can throw any garbage onto a page and his readers and editors alike will accept it?

After posting on Caught Looking every three or four days for the past two-plus years, I recognize that it's difficult to generate compelling content on a regular basis.  I also recognize the irony in me dedicating an entire post to blasting an extremely accomplished guy for obviously struggling with the same issues that I deal with while trying to maintain this blog.  But given how much I used to enjoy Rick Reilly's writing and how much I now dislike it, I felt like I had to capture my disappointment with his evolution the way the old Reilly himself might have done it - in writing.  Perhaps my expectations were just way to high, but I was hoping for much better when Reilly made the jump from SI to ESPN - and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Sometimes You See It Coming: A Review

Since finishing graduate school, I've made it a priority to get back into the habit of reading regularly.  While (unlike the rest of my life) my book choices don't completely revolve around sports, I have recently read two baseball-centric books that I really enjoyed.  The first was Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, which has dominated Best Seller and Best Books of the Year lists since it came out in September 2011.  While I could go on and gush about how much I enjoyed Harbach's book, you can easy go online and find dozens of glowing reviews about this work that, according to Sports Illustrated, "will knock out baseball and literature fans alike."  Instead, I'd like to offer some praise for a much less heralded, but almost as enjoyable, book - Kevin Baker's Sometimes You See it Coming.

Take a few days to read through Kevin Baker's debut novel, published in 1993.

Baker's book, loosely based on the life of MLB legend Ty Cobb, follows the life and career of fictional right fielder John Barr, "the kind of player who isn't supposed to exist anymore. An all-around superstar, he plays the game with a single-minded ferocity that makes his New York Mets team all but invincible. Yet Barr himself is a mystery with no past, no friends, no women, and no interests outside hitting a baseball as hard and as far as he can."  The book follows Barr's life through the eyes of a number of different, well-developed and seemingly realistic characters - teammate "Rapid" Ricky Falls, manager Charli Stanzi, and Mets beat writer Ellie Jay.  Rather than focusing on the dominant superstar himself, Sometimes You See It Coming is unique in the way it concentrates on what it's like to play alongside, coach and cover an unparalleled talent.

Having only experienced MLB players and coaches through the eyes of the media, it's hard for me to say with confidence what these people should truly sound like.  Baker does such an incredible job of creating a number of unique and believable voices, however, that I imagine that he has an excellent grasp on how people involved in professional baseball really speak and act.  As he moves his readers through the book's chapters, he bounces back and forth between narrators - sometimes we hear from Falls, other times from Stanzi, Jay or other more minor characters - and you actually feel like you're hearing from completely different people.  As with any complicated personality, real or fictional, John Barr is best understood through the eyes of the people closest to him.  Only through the differing but complementary opinions of Falls, Stanzi and Jay does Baker show us what mysterious athletes like Barr (and Cobb) are really about.

I won't go into the plot in detail (it's not really what makes the book so special, anyway, as it's somewhat predictable), in hopes that you'll read it and find it out for yourself.  At just over 300 pages in paperback (yes, I still read non-electronic books), I ran through Sometimes You See It Coming in just a few days.  If you like baseball, I'd highly recommend Baker's only sports-related novel (but I still think that you should read The Art of Fielding first).  Even if you don't, though, Baker's character development and wit make this one worth reading.  And after you make your way through this book, you can move on to Baker's other (albeit non-sports-related) novels, all of which I'd also highly recommend.