Here I Am . . .

UPDATE:  Turns out the Nets home opener vs. the Knicks was postponed afterall.  I think this only proves my point, though - if Sandy was able to delay an NBA game scheduled a full 3 days after the storm, imagine what it could have done to the World Series . . .

I woke up this morning, took a look out my window and saw something I haven't seen much of over the past 72 hours - the sky.  Like many in the Tri-State area, I spent the last few days holed up at home, bracing for Hurricane Sandy's impact and going borderline stir crazy.  That being said, I was extremely lucky - we didn't lose power even once throughout the storm, so I was able to keep tabs on what was happening in other areas of the country and pass the time by watching TV and going on the internet.  In between local news updates I would periodically flip to ESPN for sports scores and highlights, but I realized that very little was going on in the sports world on Monday and Tuesday.  Given the havoc that Hurricane Sandy could have wreaked on the professional and collegiate sports world, it's very fortunate that the MLB, NBA, NFL and NCAA all emerged relatively unscathed.

First off, the fact that the hurricane hit on Monday was extremely fortunate.  Had Sandy reached the coast on Saturday or Sunday, dozens of college football games and a handful of big NFL games would have been negatively impacted.  Given football scheduling, these games would have been very difficult to postpone or reschedule - what would the Dolphins and Jets have done if they couldn't have played at MetLife Stadium on Sunday?  How would the undefeated Falcons have been affected if they couldn't get through their battle with the Eagles in Philadelphia?  The NFL also dodged a bullet by scheduling Monday Night Football on the west coast - the weather was obviously fine in Arizona this week, and the 49ers had no problem flying in from northern California.  What could have been a football scheduling nightmare turned into a non-event for the NFL and NCAA.

One of the few silver linings in what was one of the least competitive - and likely to be least memorable - World Series in recent memory was the fact that no games were impacted by Sandy.  If MLB had gotten its pre-World Series wish, we would have seen the Yankees playing in a seven-game Fall Classic.  In retrospect, however, that scenario would have been a complete disaster.  Check out the video of "Citi Field Lake," below, and you get an idea of what the playing conditions would have been like on the east coast.  What if MLB had consecutive World Series games postponed because of the weather?  Game Five of the World Series was scheduled for Monday, with Tuesday supposed to be a travel day back to the National League City.  Had an East Coast American League team like Baltimore or New York made the series (instead of the Tigers), we'd still be waiting for the Fall Classic to resume.

Indoor sports could have been impacted by Sandy, too, but the NBA schedule also worked out perfectly.  The hurricane arrived a full day before the start of the 2012 basketball season, and the Tuesday games were all played outside of the storm's impact radius (in Cleveland, in Miami and in Los Angeles).  With the much anticipated Brooklyn Nets home opener against the New York Knicks scheduled for Thursday night, the NBA gives itself a chance to get the Barclays Center up and running prior to tomorrow evening and keep the early season schedule intact. As of now, it seems like the next wave of home openers will be played as scheduled on Wednesday.  While Hurricane Sandy unleashed a lot of devastation on parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the sports world was very fortunate.

Island(er) Hopping

As one of only ~500 New York Islanders fans seemingly left on the planet, many of you have asked me to comment on the recent announcement that the Isles will be moving to Brooklyn in 2015.  Before I get into my reaction to the move, let me first give you a little glimpse of what it's been like to be an Isles fan over the past two decades.  When news of the relocation leaked yesterday morning and ESPN picked up on the story, I was excited just to see to Islanders mentioned among the Headlines on the upper right corner of the ESPN.com homepage - I can't remember the last time anything Isles-related graced anything other than the deepest NHL-only bowels of The Worldwide Leader in Sports' website.  The Isles have set the bar pretty low. 

Sadly, the big headline wasn't focused on something the team did on the ice or even in a roster move - instead, the news revolved around the Islanders' pending departure from Long Island and the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.  To the average sports fan, a move from Uniondale to Brooklyn, separated by a distance of only 28 miles by car, probably doesn't seem like much of a shift; even the Los Angeles Lakers' move from the Great Western Forum to the Staples Center was a 10 mile trip.  Culturally, though, this represents a big shift among New Yorkers.  The Islanders have always been a blue collar, suburban team.  Whereas Madison Square Garden's Rangers catered to the wealthy city-dwellers, Nassau Coliseum was the home of Long Island's Average Joes - a place for fans to share their hockey-related inferiority complexes.  While Brooklyn isn't far away geographically, the sleek new Barclay's Center doesn't exactly fit the team's working class image.

The Islanders will keep their name and logo, but if they change their minds . . .

From that perspective, the move is unfortunate.  As I've written about before, the Islanders have a uniquely Long Island vibe that no other New York area team can replicate.  In a perfect world, Nassau County would have gotten a deal done to build a new arena in Uniondale, providing the team with a state-of-the-art venue while preserving the franchise's Long Island presence.  I've heard a lot of grumbling from disgruntled Islanders fans about how disappointing the move to Brooklyn is, and in a way that's true.  After all, being a fan of the team was always more about being an "Islander" than it was was about being from "New York," and the move to Barclays is definitely going to change that.  While the rivalry with the Rangers will undoubtedly be recharged in a mostly positive way, it will never be the same.  Rather than white collar vs. blue collar, we'll have bankers vs. hipsters - potentially cool, but decidedly different.  Throw in the fact that the new arena isn't really made for hockey (see below), and the solution is far from ideal.  So, no, in my mind the move to Brooklyn wasn't the perfect outcome for the Isles.

A U-shaped NHL arena, coming to Brooklyn in 2015.

However, I'm realistic enough to know that a perfect outcome was not a realistic one.  After years of trying unsuccessfully, it had become painfully obvious that the Islanders were never going to get a new arena on Long Island.  Because the team couldn't possibly make money playing at the Coliseum - I've gone on the record calling it "one of the worst venues in professional sports" - they had to go somewhere else, and for a while it looked like that new place would be either Kansas City or some random town in Canada.  So, compared to the realistic alternatives, I'm happy with the Brooklyn solution.  It's going to be a lot easier for me to get to games, the smaller capacity should help the team move more tickets, and the draw of Brooklyn and the Barclays Center should help attract top-tier players.  Yes, it would have been great to have kept the Isles on the Island for another 40 years.  But no, that was never going to happen, and after judging the alternatives a move to Brooklyn seems like the next best thing.  

Losing Lance

On the whole, I'm not a big fan of individual sports.  I've actually gone on the record as saying that I don't think most individual competitions - including track and field, gymnastics and swimming - are actually sports, arguing that they are at best athletic competitions and at worst recreational activities.  99 times out of 100, I'll rank a football, basketball or baseball player's accomplishments ahead of anything that a runner, gymnast or swimmer can do, and as a result I don't find it at all surprising that we spend every day of our lives following either the NFL, NBA or MLB (and even the NHL) while individual sports grab the national spotlight only once every four years.  All of that being said, however, I have always had an irrational and unexplainable affinity for Lance Armstrong, and have been more affected by his use of PEDs than I have by similar injustices on the part of baseball, basketball and football players.

Lance Armstrong had all of the necessary ingredients for becoming an American sports icon.  Regardless of how you feel about the sport of cycling and the Tour de France, no one would argue that Armstrong isn't a phenomenal athlete, and virtually everyone acknowledges that winning any worldwide, annual competition seven times is a row in a remarkable accomplishment the likes of which may never be seen again.  In addition to his athletic abilities, Armstrong had the same charisma and charm that has caused Americans to fall in love with guys like Peyton Manning and Derek Jeter, highlighted by his Oscar-worthy cameo in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.  And perhaps most importantly, Armstrong seemed to have the leadership qualities that you rarely find in an individual sport athlete.  I know that cycling / the Tour de France is supposedly a team sport (though I can't say I really understand it) so I'm sure that had something to do with it, but his work with the Livestrong foundation really led me to believe that Armstrong, like Manning and Jeter, was the kind of guy you'd follow into battle.

When news first came out about Armstrong and PEDs, I didn't believe it.  I'm typically pretty cynical when it comes to this kind of stuff, and have often adopted a "guilty until proven innocent" mindset when it comes to athletes accused of doping.  But for Lance, I truly believed he was clean - I didn't want to believe otherwise.  I wanted his seven consecutive Tour de France victories - all after recovering from cancer - to be legitimate, and figured that some jealous former opponent who got tired of losing (or teammate who got tired of staying in the shadows) was trying to defame cycling's golden boy.  Now that every officiating body - not to mention Nike and Livestrong - have parted ways with Armstrong and stripped him of everything that he "earned" as an athlete, I'm depressed.  When other athletes have been found guilty of doping, I've found myself feeling happy that justice has been served.  When it comes to Lance, however, I just want to wake up and have all of the PED-related news and accusations just disappear.

As I followed his utter domination of the sport of cycling, I always believed that we'd never see anyone monopolize the spotlight like Lance Armstrong did from 1999 to 2005.  Now that we know why Armstrong was so much better than the (allegedly clean) competition, I hope we never do.  The only thing sadder than Lance's fall from grace is what this says about our champions, particularly in individual sports.  The next time we witness a prodigy like Armstrong, we won't be focusing on the impressiveness of his or her feat.  Instead, we'll be wondering what sort of illegal boost he or she used to reach the top.

Avoiding Controversy

Earlier on Wednesday, Kansas City Chiefs head coach Romeo Crennel announced that quarterbacks Matt Cassel and Brady Quinn would compete to be named the starting signal caller going forward.  Since the announcement, basically everyone in the world seems to agree that this is an absolutely awful decision.  Amazingly, even coach Crennel himself acknowledges that having his two top QBs compete for the starting gig is likely to result in disaster:

"It is distracting," Crennel said. "Everybody's wondering who the guy's going to be, and all those kind of things. Then what happens, some guys on the team kind of favor one guy over another guy. Even though everybody's got a job to do and they will do their job. But it is a distraction."

My question: Why does everyone out there (including the guy who made the decision) seem to think that this is such a bad choice?  Through six weeks of the 2012 NFL regular season, the Chiefs are 1-5 and, in the eyes of many (myself included) are the worst team in the entire league.  They're coming off a week where they lost 38-10 to a mediocre Tampa Bay team (2-3) in a game that Quinn wasn't actually that bad (Cassel was ruled inactive after injuring himself the previous week).  Whereas a jolt of some sort seems in order, most people are calling for Crennel to make a semi-arbitrary starting QB selection and just stick with it.  Nevermind that his team might not win another game for the remainder of the year.  Apparently, the negative ramifications of a QB controversy are so severe that you'd rather stick with one guy and lose than roll the dice a little bit and improve your chances of winning.

Cassel or Quinn?  Shouldn't the decision be based on who plays better?

As fans, are we expected to believe this?  As rational people, are we supposed to just accept the fact that a quarterback battle should be avoided at all costs because "some guys on the team kind of favor one guy over another guy" or because "everybody's wondering who the guy's going to be?"  I'm lucky to have been raised a New York Giants fan, so I haven't had much QB controversy experience as of late (and with Eli Manning playing well and seemingly getting better, I don't anticipate confronting what Chiefs fans are going through for at least a while longer).  But if my favorite team was 1-5, I don't think I'd be shying away from a QB battle.  I think I'd be willing to try any reasonable measures to improve a team that just lost by four touchdowns to the Buccaneers.  NFL fans shouldn't have to accept subpar quarterback performances just because a positional battle might get a little "messy."

I understand that quarterbacks are the leaders of their offenses, and that in a perfect world you want a steady and confident presence under center to run the show.  I also understand, however, that the Kansas City Chiefs and their fans are not living in a perfect world right now.  Instead of pretending that everything is good and convincing themselves that either Matt Cassel or Brady Quinn is definitively the man for the job, shouldn't the Chiefs coaches let both guys play until one of them emerges as the better candidate?  We see running backs and wide receivers compete for playing time regularly, even for high-performing teams.  Haven't the Chiefs reached the point where they owe it to their players and fans to have Cassel and Quinn do battle on the field?  Good for Romeo Crennel for throwing his top two QBs into the proverbial ring.  Now if only he could have done it with a little more conviction and a little less apologizing.

Pulling The Plug

First off, let me caveat this post by stating that I have no idea whether or not this article is true.  If you're not in a link-clicking mood, the New York Post is reporting that "after being replaced in the bottom of the eighth inning in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, [Alex Rodriguez] openly flirted with a pair of pretty women two rows behind the dugout — even sending them a ball bearing a note asking for their phone numbers" (see right)  The report follows the well-publicized news that A-Rod, the highest-paid Yankee, was benched for the win-or-go-home Game 5 of the ALDS against Baltimore, and has been a non-factor so far in the 2012 American League Playoffs.  With Derek Jeter out for the remainder of the post-season with a fractured left ankle, some are hoping that Rodriguez will step up and fill the massive void on the left side of the Yankees infield, while others argue that he should be benched in favor of Eric Chavez.  Who's right?

Earlier this week, a friend sent me this link, which notes that A-Rod has the 21st highest post-season OPS all time among players with a minimum of 150 playoff at-bats, just a few ten-thousandths of a point behind perennial October hero Jeter.  I'm not sure why this friend emailed me this data, but I can only assume it was to defend Rodriguez from all of the criticism he's receiving this month (and from the criticism he's gotten every October since he joined the Yankees).  While I admit I was surprised to see A-Rod on this list just below Jeter - after all, we're always talking about how bad Rodriguez has been in the playoffs - I dug a little deeper into the numbers.  Without going into any real analysis here (that's not what Caught Looking is all about), it's clear from the data that A-Rod has fallen off in recent years.  While he was great with in the early 2000s and again in 2009 when the Yankees won the World Series, he's been pretty brutal over the past three years.  So if you're a Yankees fan, do you ignore the recent trends and hope that the "old A-Rod" comes back, or do you look at the numbers and acknowledge that A-Rod's post-season batting average is below .200 over the past three years?

Let me make a comparison to fantasy football here, if I may.  Despite knowing a lot about the NFL, I suck at fantasy football.  In my 16-team college league, I think I've made the playoffs twice in nine seasons (22% of the time, while 37.5% of teams make it each year).  I think much of the reason why I'm typically unsuccessful is because I stick with big name stars for too long and leave higher-producing (but lesser known) guys on my bench or on the waiver wire.  Just because a receiver is named Randy Moss, for example, doesn't mean he's the same player that he was half a decade ago.  The guys that win fantasy football are the guys who react quickly and put production over reputation.  The same is true for the MLB playoffs, and keeping Alex Rodriguez in the middle of the Yankees order is like keeping Moss in the starting lineup of your fantasy team.  It's time to make a change.

If Yankees fans are hoping for a big 2012 playoff comeback from A-Rod, they're going to be disappointed.  The 2012 version of Rodriguez has little in common with the guy from a decade ago (or even from 2009) except for the name.  A-Rod is now older, supposedly rid of PEDs, and clearly distracted (as the New York Post article, if true, makes plainly clear).  Down 2-0 in the ALCS, it's time for Joe Girardi and the Yankees to roll the dice and make some big changes heading into Detroit.  One of those moves should be to give someone else a chance at third base and acknowledge that this version of A-Rod isn't going to get it done.  It's comforting to know I'm not the only one out there clinging to big name players long past their expiration dates. 

Hoops in the Hoosier State

Before this week, I had been to the state of Indiana twice - once when I drove across the country and spent a night in the South Bend area (right off I-80) and another time for a business trip to the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.  While the latter trip was highlighted by a visit to Bankers Life Fieldhouse (then called Conseco Fieldhouse) for a Pacers game, I never got a glipse at "real" hoosier state basketball until this week.  Not only did I get a second, more casual look at Bankers Life Fieldhouse - this time for a WNBA Eastern Conference Finals game between the hometown Indiana Fever and the Connecticut Sun - but I also got to play pickup basketball at Hinkle Fieldhouse, home of Butler Bulldogs basketball and the place where they filmed much of the classic sports film Hoosiers.

First, let's talk about Bankers Life Fieldhouse, one of the NBA's hidden gems.  You don't hear much about the home of the Pacers, mainly because Indiana hasn't been overly competitive since the arena was built, but it's one of the best NBA arenas that I've been to and supposedly served as an example for what the Brooklyn Nets wanted the brand new Barclays Center to look like.  It's got a great old-school, retro feel to it that does a great job of showing respect for Indiana's rich basketball history, and is also extremely well-designed.  The seats are packed in tight, making the arena feel louder and more crowded than it really is (especially relevant during the sparsely attended Game 2 of the WNBA Eastern Conference Finals), and the building has a clean look that makes is easy to navigate.  It's also located in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, right by Lucas Oil Stadium (home of the Colts) and the majority of the city's large hotels.  Overall it's a great place to see a game, and will be even better starting this NBA season when the Pacers install a brand new, giant scoreboard.

 Even without the new scoreboard, Bankers Life Fieldhouse is a great basketball arena.

On Wednesday morning, I got up at 5:45 AM (no small feat after a night out on the town in downtown Indianapolis) to play pickup basketball at Butler University's Hinkle Fieldhouse, one of the most iconic arenas in college basketball.  As a fan of Ivy League basketball, I've always considered Penn's Palestra ("The Cathedral of College Basketball") to be the perfect type of college hoops venue - ideal size (not too big, not too small), classic look-and-feel and a great energy.  While it was hard to tell with the place completely empty, I'm pretty sure that Hinkle is that kind of college basketball arena.  With the fans right on top of the court and accoustics akin to that of an indoor pool, I'm sure that a packed Hinkle Fieldhouse is an intimidating road test for opposing A-10 (and formerly Horizon League) players.  Playing on the Hinkle court just felt special, as if I was sucking down rarified air.  Truly a memorable experience (and I hit a few nice shots, too).

There's nothing like walking onto the playing surface of an iconic sports venue.

Between Bankers Life Fieldhouse - one of the NBA's stronger arenas - and Hinkle Fieldhouse - at one time the largest and most state-of-the-art basketball arenas in the United States - Indianapolis is home to two of the country's premier places to watch basketball.  Add in the fact that Hinkle Fieldhouse is where they filmed many of the key scenes in Hoosiers, and Indianapolis becomes an extremely desirable tourist destination for basketball and movie fans alike.  While I wasn't originally ultra-excited about a two-night trip to Indiana, the visits to these two great venues highlighted a thoroughly entertaining week in the Midwest.

The Infield Fly Rule Game

In the 48 hours since one of the worst calls in baseball’s postseason history, just about everyone I know has asked me about my reaction to the already-infamous “Infield Fly Rule Game.” Up until today I refused to talk about it – I needed the entire weekend to grieve, and only inspired comeback victories by both Stanford (vs. Arizona) and the New York Giants (vs. Cleveland) could slowly bring me out of my baseball-induced depression. On Saturday morning I got a voicemail from my Dad saying he wanted to “talk about baseball.” I still haven’t returned his call.

Even today, however, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to fully process my reaction to the Braves’ elimination from the 2012 playoffs. Despite every urge to ignore Friday’s events and pretend that the National League Wild Card game never happened – after all, in a better world we wouldn’t have a ridiculous one-game playoff after a 162-game season and the Braves would be playing in the NLDS right now – but for the sake of my readers and those concerned about my well-being, I feel compelled to post. Clearly I’m upset. Clearly I’m frustrated. But more than anything, I’m disappointed. Disappointed in Major League Baseball. Disappointed in the Braves. Disappointed in the Atlanta fans.

First, let’s talk about Major League Baseball. In yet another effort to dilute the regular season, baseball introduced its new Wild Card format this season. The league will try to tell you (and tell you, and tell you, and tell you) that the Wild Card makes the regular season more valuable, because now there’s a serious punishment for not winning your division. Indeed, the punishment was more severe than anyone could have imagined – who knew that the Wild Card game would be played under a completely different set of rules than the rest of the year? All sarcasm aside, people spent the entire regular season talking about how big of a mistake a one-game Wild Card playoff was, and they were right. Baseball is built around the concept of a series, and should reward teams that can outwit and outplay their opponents over a stretch of games. An ill-fated attempt to get people excited about the beginning of the MLB playoffs, the Wild Card game goes against everything that baseball stands for and, as we saw on Friday, makes the game much more about the umpires than about the players.

All of that being said, the blown infield fly call wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the Braves had taken care of business during the game’s first six innings. After last year’s epic collapse that left Atlanta outside of the playoffs, I was extremely hopeful that Atlanta would follow up their strong September with a good start to October. Instead, the Braves wasted another solid performance from newfound ace Kris Medlen (who threw much better that his stat line suggests) and played their worst defensive game of the year. While their struggles to drive in runs are nothing new (they’ve been inconsistent at the plate all year), the complete breakdown on defense (eerily reminiscent of the 2010 NLDS against San Francisco) was a total anomaly. Unfortunately, it came during a win-or-go-home scenario, and as a result the Braves are sitting on their couches instead of hosting the first two games of an NLDC series against the Nationals.

Last, I’m disappointed in the Atlanta fans. Sure, it’s nice to see some emotion from the tomahawk-wielding Braves faithful, especially after so many well-publicized seasons of empty seats during playoff games. But once the dust settles on the 2012 NL Wild Card game people are only going to remember two things – how bad the infield fly call was, and how inappropriately the Braves fans reacted. In a division that includes intolerable Mets fans and classless Phillies fans, the Braves fans are supposed to be under control. Throwing bottles all over the field and killing the Braves’ momentum was a short-sighted reaction to what was of course a terrible call. Unfortunately, the Braves will probably get another chance to redeem themselves in another one-game playoff soon, because the Wild Card is sadly here to stay.

Keepin' It Unreal

Before last night, Adam Greenberg's only Major League plate appearance came in July of 2005 as a member of the Chicago Cubs.  The first pitch that he faced hit him squarely in the back of the helmet, knocking him out for the remainer of the season, impacting his vision and balance and derailing his career.  Since that terrifying moment more than seven years ago, Greenberg has been working tirelessly to get back to the Majors, bouncing around the Minor Leagues (most recently with the independent Atlantic League's Bridgeport Bluefish) and even playing for Team Israel in the qualifying rounds of the 2013 World Baseball Classic.  Greenberg hasn't been with a Major League organization since 2008, but thanks to a clever marketing campaign was given a one-day contract and a pinch hit appearance with the Miami Marlins.  Last night, Greenberg struck out against Mets ace R.A. Dickey in an at-bat seven years in the making.

After a seven-year wait, Adam Greenberg returned to the Major Leagues last night.



Greenberg got a tremendous ovation from the Miami crowd both when he was introduced as a pinch hitter to lead of the bottom of the sixth inning on Tuesday, and again after he struck out swinging on three pitches.  It seems that everyone is thrilled that the Marlins and owner Jeffrey Loria gave Greenberg another chance to face big league pitching, even if it did come as part of a one-day contract during a meaningless early October game for an underachieving ball club.  Everyone seems happy that Greenberg's struggle now has at least a quasi-happy ending - the guy who worked for more than half a decade for another chance finally got his 15-minutes of fame (actually, the entire at bat lasted just 33 seconds).  And everyone seems eager to pay $12 to Regal Cinemas to see The Adam Greenberg Story whenever Disney gets around to making it.  Everyone, that is, except for me.

Don't get me wrong - I'm happy for Adam Greenberg.  I've never been hit in the head by a 90+ mile per hour fastball, but I'd still do almost anything for a chance to have one at bat in a Major League Baseball game.  But while most people think last night's at bat with the Marlins adds a special wrinkle to Greenberg's baseball journey, I think his strikeout sort of cheapens what was, in my mind, a very special MLB career.  To me, Adam Greenberg's career up to last night was so baseball that it deserved to be remembered and appreciated.  I can't think of a person who better personifies how incredible becoming a Major League Baseball player really is than Adam Greenberg.  While we spend most of our time as baseball fans talking about guys named Ruth and Mays and Aaron, we often forget that the sport is built atop a foundation of guys named Greenberg and van Dusen (the only other player to be hit by a pitch in his only plate appearance, in 1955).

I was aware of Adam Greenberg's story well before this week, and I always admired him.  Here was a guy who worked hard at his craft, had his entire career derailed by a freak accident, and then spent another seven-plus years working to make it back on top.  The fact that he never made it all the way back - and would never have if not for the Marlins' generocity and some well-placed publicity - made his story even better.  He was the face of the career Minor Leaguer, and his experience was so real that, unlike virtually anyone else who's ever played in a MLB game, I felt like I could really relate to and understand him.  Now that Greenberg's life has been transformed into some sort of baseball fairy tale, I've lost the emotional connection I once felt to the 5'9" outfielder.  While I'm glad that Greenberg got his moment in the sun, I wish he would have recognized the significance of his baseball experience leading up to this past week.  Just because a story doesn't have a happy ending doesn't mean it can't be profoundly relevant.