42: A Review

Itching for a great new baseball movie for some time now (Trouble with the Curve certainly didn't do it for me), I was very excited to see 42 last week.  There's no point in providing the plot synopsis for the film: If you don't know Jackie Robinson's story you must have been living underneath a rock for the past 65 years, and that's what makes 42 such a bold and daunting project.  As spectacular as Robinson's tale is, virtually every American knows it by heart, putting pressure on this movie to add a new dimension or layer to one of sports history's greatest true stories.  While 42 did a nice job of covering Robinson's journey from Negro Leaguer to Hall of Famer, it failed to show me a side of the story that I hadn't already heard before.

On one hand, this can be seen as a good thing.  Unlike some other sports movies that over-dramatize the "facts" in order to create a more entertaining story, 42 looked pretty realistic.  Other than Harrison Ford's portrayal of Dodgers owner Branch Rickey (which at times was a bit over-the-top), I thought most of the other characters felt true to life.  On the other hand, however, the film definitely lacked the drama associated with other Rocky-esque sports films that I've come to know and love.  At times 42 screened more like an educational documentary than it does a sports movie, and while there's nothing wrong with that it's worth noting before you enter the theater and expect to be fired up by a movie that feels like Miracle.

We all know that, over time, Jackie Robinson was able to win over the majority of his racist critics and cement himself as one of the greatest and most beloved players in MLB history.  I'm not exactly sure how that transition was made, and 42 didn't really do much to explain it.  If the movie is correct, Robinson played hard enough to pretty easily and rapidly convince his teammates to abandon their deep-rooted racist beliefs and rally behind him.  The movie suggests that even opposing players and managers were quickly and naturally won over by Robinson's athleticism, professionalism and kindheartedness.  While I find the fact that the transition was so smooth hard to believe, it's better than having the film build to some super-cheesy, unrealistic climax. 

Overall, I give 42 a decent but unspectacular rating.  While I certainly enjoyed the film and recommend it to any baseball fan, it didn't truly win me over.  This might be another example of "the grass is always greener," where I'm happy that the movie was true to itself but simultaneously left wanting something a bit more exciting and made for Hollywood.  No matter how I look at it, though, I'm glad I spent the time and money seeing 42, and suggest you all do the same.    

Trouble with the Curve: A Review

Believe it or not, my favorite movie of all time is Major League.  I'm admittedly a sucker for cliched sports movies - from The Mighty Ducks to Rocky - and love a good underdog story (including Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, of course, shameful Lance Armstrong cameo not withstanding).  There's something about the highly predictable David-over-Goliath climax that I can't get enough of, no matter how ridiculous the film is.  This only applies, however, to movies like the ones mentioned above that don't take themselves too seriously.  As long as the film doesn't try to be anything more than a fun sports movie, I'm all for it.  When a movie shifts over into For Love of the Game territory, however, I draw the line.  Thus begins my review of Clint Eastwood's Trouble with the Curve.

Let me start with the usual caveats.  I saw this movie on a United Airlines flight from New York to Miami, so I didn't get a full cinematic experience.  That being said, the best thing I can say about Eastwood's most recent film is that, at 111 minutes, it took up basically the entire flight.  The worst I can say?  Where should I begin? Let's start with a brief synopsis.  You can read more here, but the plot is essentially exactly what you'd expect it to be: Eastwood plays an old-school baseball scout for the Atlanta Braves whose health and eyesight are deteriorating as he travels around North Carolina following a high school baseball prospect.  His daughter (Amy Adams) joins him on the roadtrip to made sure he's doing OK, despite Eastwood's solitary style.  While on the trip, Adams gets close to a rival scout (Justin Timberlake), and they all learn a lot about baseball, love and family along the way.

Sigh.

I would have been more disappointed if I had paid anything to see this movie.

As much as I like predictable baseball movies, Trouble with the Curve was just awful - and this coming from one of the only people in America that genuinely liked Eastwood's Gran Torino.  Every character in this movie is way over-dramatized, from the cocky (and unintentionally hilarious) high school prospect to the Moneyball-types that populate the Atlanta GM's office.  In an obvious effort to create some memorable, non-traditional baseball characters, the movie goes way overboard - everyone in the film has way too much personality, to the point that the film quickly becomes exhausting and unrealistic.  Even if you can look past the fact that the Braves are supposedly employing a scout that can't see well enough to drive (which, frankly, I couldn't), there are dozens of other "what the . . .?" moments throughout the movie that I found incredibly distracting.  No offense to the daughters of any baseball scouts, but there's just no way that a woman could out-scout a bunch of pros after spending years away from the game to pursue law school and a career at a top-notch law firm.

Again, if Trouble with the Curve acknowledged how absurd its entire plot is, I'd have been OK with it.  I have no problem with Major League's plot, even when the Indians pulls an ex-convict out of prison, give him a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and turn him into Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn.  Eastwood's movie is so self-righteous, though - as if it's teaching you things about baseball and life that you never even imagined before - that it just drove me nuts.  Had I paid money to see this in the theaters - which I almost did, only to be talked off the ledge by a mediocre Metacritic score - I'd have been genuinely pissed.  As airplane movies go, I've seen worse - but this was still pretty bad.  In a sentence, I had a lot of Trouble with this Movie.

TV Anywhere . . . Sort Of

So, my excuse is admittedly a lame one.  After having been away for five days over Thanksgiving break and with only limited time to watch TV last week, our DVR has gotten pretty full.  In an effort to avoid recording any additional shows, last night our TV was turned to CBS in order to watch 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly in real time.  Now, I know what you're thinking.  First: who watches sitcoms in real time anymore?  Second: 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly?  Really?  And third: What about Giants at Redskins on Monday Night Football?  Well, desperate times call for desperate measures (and yes, a full DVR classifies as a desperate time), CBS is America's most watched network for a reason, and thanks to Time Warner Cable's TV Anywhere app I was able to watch the first half of the Giants' crippling loss on the iPad.

This summer I bashed Time Warner Cable on this blog, and I stand by that bashing: Their channel selection is terrible, their services are overpriced and their TV quality is spotty at best.  All of that being said, I've been relatively impressed by the TWC app for the iPad.  In an effort to avoid turning into a zombie, I've resisted the urge to put a TV in the bedroom.  When there's competition for TV time, I've started using the iPad as a second, portable TV screen.  Partly because the iPad screen is pretty small, the picture quality on the TWC app is extremely good, and the application is relatively user friendly.  You can watch live TV and stuff from your DVR, and it all loads pretty quickly.  Yes, the NFL viewing experience is far superior on a larger screen (though I guess "bigger is better" applies to 2 Broke Girls as well), but there are benefits to watching sports on the iPad.  I'm not going to say I watched the Eli Manning-to-Martellus Bennett touchdown pass while on the toilet, but I'm not going to say that I didn't, either.

The TV Anywhere app might be TWC's best product, but that's not saying much.

Before I go and give too much credit to the TWC app, it's important to highlight its (many) drawbacks.  Primarily, despite the fact that it's called "TV Anywhere," it only works when connected to your home wireless network.  So while it's good for watching NFL games on the toilet, you can't watch TV while riding a WiFi-enabled Bolt Bus from D.C. to New York, as I tried to do a few months ago.  Thus, the universe of instances where TV Anywhere is useful is most certainly a finite one.  I understand why this is the case - local market restrictions, concerns over cannibalization of traditional television, etc. - but it doesn't make it any less frustrating.  Because the video content is designed for a large TV screen, some of the graphics on the ESPN broadcast were also difficult to read - again, I don't blame this on ESPN or TWC, but it's a fact.  So TV Anywhere should probably be renamed "TV Anywhere Inside Your 800 sq. ft. Apartment."

Would I watch a sporting event on my iPad again?  Absolutely.  It's certainly not ideal for a game that you really want to focus on, but it's great for passively watching something while you're also walking around doing other stuff or restricted to a room without a TV.  Now, if we can get the TWC app to truly work anywhere, that would be something different.  Either way, next time I get kicked off the coach because Mike & Molly is on, I'll have my iPad ready to go.   

NFL Network Fumbles

In addition to criticizing officials, fans love to mock TV announcers and analysts.  Having very little sports media experience (I dabbled with a little sports radio in college and, at one point, co-hosted a weekly Pardon The Interruption-style show called Time Out), I try not to give TV personalities an overly tough time.  After all, I'm sure their jobs are harder than they look, and live TV is very unforgiving.  That being said, these people are supposed to be professionals, so I expect some reasonable quality standards from them.  This is particularly true in football, where announcers have an entire week to prepare for a game and plenty of down time to get their acts together.  After that lengthy preamble, let me get to my point - last nights Giants vs. Panthers broadcast on NFL Network was one of the least professional televised sporting events I've ever seen.

Now, I'm not really talking about the quality of the analysis, so I'll cut the broadcast team of  Brad Nessler and Mike Mayock some slack even though they a) praised Cam Newton after everything he did, despite the fact that he played pretty terribly and helped put his team in a massive first half whole, b) seemingly went out of their way to continuously note what a great job the officiating crew was doing (they were admittedly solid), as if the league office was demanding that they do so and c) confidently picked the Panthers to win the game during the pre-game show.  After all, these things happen, and it's not like I tune in to a Thursday night Giants game to hear what the NFL Network crew has to say.  All I ask is that information about the game is presented clearly and accurately.  This, sadly, did not come even close to happening.

First of all, I lost track of the graphics errors midway through the second quarter.  Luckily, I was texting back and forth with my brother throughout the game, so I have a written record of some of NFL Network's many screwups.  At one point during a Giants drive, after New York RB Andre Brown finished a great run, a graphic came up on the bottom of the screen announcing that Mike Tolbert had 1 carry for 16 yards.  Not only are Andre Brown and Mike Tolbert not the same person, they're not even on the same team.  When the Giants kicked a field goal in the second quarter to go up 20-0, NFL Network went to commercial with the score listed as 17-3.  Throughout the broadcast, the announcers would use the yellow pen function to draw on the field - unfortunately, most of the time the broadcast switched camera angles while they were drawing, rendering the arrows and circles they sketched completely incomprehensible and sometimes hilarious.

The mistakes weren't limited to the visuals, however.  At one point, Giants TE Bear Pascoe caught a pass, but Nessler claimed that Martellus Bennett made the grab.  This mix-up might be understandable if not for the fact that Bennett is black and Pascoe is super-pale; no one who had ever watched the Giants play before could possible confuse these two guys, and the shot of the play was a nice closeup where you couldn't miss Pascoe's bare, white arms.  After one of Cam Newton's few decent passes, the announcers praised the nice throw . . . by Eli Manning.  Again, Eli Manning and Cam Newton don't often get confused for one another - and after praising Newton the entire game for doing basically nothing, Mayock ironically messed up his name the one time he threw a half-decent ball.

In a game where the halftime report was taken over by a tribute to NFL Films President Steve Sabol, who passed away earlier this week, NFL Network did absolutely nothing to honor his legacy (as my brother accurately, and somewhat hilariously at the time, pointed out via text).  As I mentioned earlier this week, I'm not in love with the Thursday Night Football concept in general - I like having games concentrated on Sunday afternoons as much as possible, not to mention the fact that the quick turnaround prevents injured players from healing in time for the game.  But if the NFL is going to insist on hosting a mid-week game on its network, they have to improve the quality of the broadcasts.  If not for the presence of the HD cameras everywhere (one of which was too close to the field and as a result lacerated Antrel Rolle's knee), I would have thought I was watched a high school game on puclic access. 

Don't Dilute Sunday

Sundays in the fall are a special weekly tradition, much like the sabbath for sports worshippers like me. The ability to find a TV equipped with the Sunday Ticket package (any sports bar or DirecTV-subscribing household should do) and watch more than a half a dozen NFL football games at once is unlike any other professional sports-watching experience, and is rivaled only by the NCAA basketball tournament (and that's only a few weekends a year). While I'm not really a sports bar kind of guy, I still loving sitting at home on Sunday afternoon and watching the Giants on FOX, some of the Jets on CBS and whatever other game the networks might be showing, all while getting in-game updates from the studio. Sunday is a day for football, and I love the way so much action is concentrated into one six or seven hour span.

I'm guessing that most NFL fans view Monday Night Football (MNF) and the newly-added Thursday Night Football (TNF) as fantastic additions to the weekly football schedule. After all, spreading games out across the days of the week gives fans more opportunties to watch football. Now fans don't have to wait an entire week to see NFL teams in action - no longer do we have more than a three-day span without an NFL game. Rather than pretending that we're interested in the NHL because there's nothing else to do, now we can spend Sunday watching football, Monday watching MNF, Tuesday dissecting MNF, Wednesday previewing TNF, Thursday watching TNF, Friday dissecting TNF, and Saturday previewing the Sunday games while watching college football. This has to be viewed as a good thing for football-loving fans, right?

I don't agree. Sure, it's nice having a mid-week game to watch, especially if it's a good one like tonight's Chicago vs. Green Bay matchup. But I see a number of problems with this revised scheduling. One, it asks a lot of the NFL players to play on a Thursday after a Sunday, and also creates a lot of long layoffs for teams that play on Thursday and then don't have another game until the following Sunday. Similarly, it wreaks havoc on fantasy football - it's much harder to set lineups efficiently when you have to make key decisions on Thursday afternoon, and forces diehard players like me to spend Friday and Saturday agonizing over scores that never used to exist. It's bad enough that many games are decided on Monday night - the addition of Thursday night games effectively quadruples the length of each weekly fantasy game from one night to four.

Most significantly, though, I'm worried that the Thursday night game might set a precedent that could, over time, erode the specialness of Sunday afternoon football. What's to stop the NFL from breaking up its schedule and having games during each night of the week, selling a nightly package to the highest bidder ("It's Tuesday Night Football, only on FX!") and rendering the Sunday afternoon sports bar experience a thing of the past?  While Thursday Night Football might be a big revenue opportunity for the NFL and it's NFL Network, the league should be careful and avoid spoiling a large part of what has made football the nation's most popular sport.

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?

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.

Continental Divide

Today is the launch date for the Pac-12 Network, a brand new TV channel dedicated to Pac-12 sports.  As a Stanford / Pac-12 fan who recently moved to the East Coast, the timing couldn't be better - all of a sudden, I went from Googling "Stanford football bars New York City" to trying to figure out how and if I could get the Pac-12 Network at home.  I signed on to Facebook just minutes ago and found that the Pac-12 was one step ahead of me - they had just posted a link to their Channel Finder, and I immediately filled out my information to see how I could get the channel.  While this should be a pretty easy process, I almost forgot that I'd be forced once again to deal with Time Warner Cable on this.

As you might recall, I despise TWC - I was hoping the Pac-12 Network website would provide me with all of the information that I needed without having to navigate Time Warner's predictably horrible site.  All the Pac-12 site would tell me, though, was that "Pac-12 Networks will be available in August 2012 on Time Warner Cable."  But where?  Would it be a part of the basic cable package?  Would it be a part of the provider's digital sports tier that includes a few regional sports networks and a few of the lower tier ESPN channels?  Or would it be available On Demand?  And how much would it cost?  Neither the Pac-12 Network or Time Warner Cable websites provided any explanation of how to sign up for the channel, and a search for "Pac-12" on the Time Warner Cable website somehow yielded zero relevant results.

I understand that the main purpose of the Pac-12 Network is to televise every conference football and basketball game to viewers in the core Pac-12 markets.  By keeping their media rights, the twelve Pac-12 schools believe that they can extract more value than if they sold those rights to Fox Sports, Comcast or ESPN, and they're probably right.  But given the fact that many of these schools have diverse alumni bases that span the entire country (especially Stanford, Cal, USC and UCLA), there seems to be a great opportunity to get some subscribers from outside of the core Pac-12 markets.  Isn't one of the advantages of signing a deal with a quasi-national TV provider like Time Warner the opportunity to get national distribution?  Assuming so, why do they make it so difficult to find the channel?

Only after some serious Googling did I find a USA Today article that suggests that the channel will be available in New York "on a premium sports tier."  Later I found that the Pac-12 Network now has a channel number on Time Warner Cable in New York City (lucky 414), but it's still not clear how to get access to the network.  I'm excited that the Pac-12 is launching its network tonight and I'm looking forward to potentially having the opportunity to watch non-nationally televised football and basketball games from here in New York.  Unfortunately, the conference made the mistake of choosing to partner with Time Warner Cable, so the chances of anyone on the East Coast being able to order the channel are slim.

Channel Surfing

Now that we're finally moved in to our new apartment on the East Side of Manhattan, time has come to set up our TV and internet access.  As much as I love living in New York City, one of the huge drawbacks is having to deal with the awfulness that is Time Warner Cable.  In addition to its notoriously bad customer service, TWC offers a paltry number of sports-related services as compared to its major competitors.  Unfortunately, Time Warner has a monopoly over TV and internet service in my building (and, in fact, throughout much of the island), so I'm stuck with them at least until my apartment gets wired for Verizon's Fios.

Now, Time Warner Cable isn't all bad.  In addition to ESPN, ESPN2, NBC Sports (the artist formerly known as Versus) and the local RSNs (YES, SNY and MSG / MSG2 / MSG+), it offers MLB Network and NBATV on the standard cable package.  They also offer a Sports Pass for an additional ~$5.95 a month that gets you CBS Sports Network, NHL Network, ESPN Goal Line and ESPN Buzzer Beater and more.  Granted, some of these are included in the standard package offered by other TV providers, but at least you can get them for a comparatively reasonable fee.  What you can't get, however, is NFL Sunday Ticket or other RSNs from around the country, both of which are offered by DirecTV.  Fios similarly has Sunday Ticket, ESPN Gameplan for college football and a host of other premium offerings.

When you include the fact that Time Warner Cable is, in general, more expensive than either DirecTV of Verizon Fios, being forced to deal with TWC is extremely frustrating.  Within the past year, TWC also went through a fierce contract negotiation with Madison Square Garden which resulted in Knicks and Rangers games being blacked out for many New Yorkers for a few weeks in January.  If not for Jeremy Lin's unexpected rise to dominance which happened to coincide with the negotiation and force a deal, MSG and MSG2 still might not be offered by Time Warner.  Who knows what other channels might be stripped from the TWC lineup - could ESPN be next?

For most sporting events I want to watch - starting with tomorrow's Euro 2012 finals between Spain and Italy - Time Warner Cable will suffice.  But when football season rolls around and my friends are watching every NFL game on Sunday Ticket - or at least the scoring plays on the Red Zone channel (offered by both DirecTV and Fios) - I'll be pissed that I've been forced into doing business with Time Warner Cable yet again.  At least, for the moment, the internet is working - with TWC, who knows how long that will last.

East Coast Bias

Yesterday I moved back to New York permanently.  After spending the last two years in the Bay Area, it's great to be back on the East Coast and my timing couldn't be better - I arrived in the Big Apple just in time for the Braves' visit to Yankee Stadium, and I've already secured tickets to see Wednesday afternoon's game.  While I loved my time in Northern California and had a number of memorable sports experiences over the past couple of years (in fact, most of this blog has been written from Palo Alto), moving back to my home town is extremely exciting.  In addition to being a lot closer to family and friends and starting a new job that I'm really fired up about, I once again get to take advantage of all of the perks of being a New York-based sports fan.

Before we go into those perks, though, I have to acknowledge the good things about West Coast sports.  As I've written about before, I loved the early start times for NFL and NCAA football games - being able to get up and immediately turn on a New York Giants game at 10 AM local time is a beautiful thing, and having most of Sunday's action over by 4 PM Pacific still gives you the rest of the afternoon to relax.  The Bay Area specifically offers some fantastic sports venues - AT&T Park is one of the best ballparks I've been to, and HP Pavilion is a well-run and fun hockey facility.  I've really enjoyed following the Pac-12, particularly during football season, and I've appreciated the opportunity to take part in a legitimate college sports rivalry between Stanford and Cal.  Overall, there's a lot to like about Bay Area sports.

All of that being said, the Bay Area can't hold a candle to the Big Apple as far as sports are concerned.  Yes, I'll be losing morning football and big time college sports, but the list of what I'll be getting is long and impressive.  Starting Wednesday at Yankee Stadium I'll get to regularly enjoy New York's many brand new venues for baseball (Yankee Stadium and Citi Field), football (MetLife Stadium) and basketball / hockey (the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and, soon, a renovated Madison Square Garden).  I get solid regional sports networks in the YES Network, MSG Network and SNY, rather than Comcast Sports Net and Fox Sports (both of which are pretty terrible).  New York has a local ESPN site (ESPN New York), while the Bay Area (shockingly) still doesn't.  Perhaps best of all, I get to be in the same city as my fellow Giants, Knicks and (sometimes) Islander fans, and eavesdrop on people talking about Carmelo and Eli instead of about Zynga and Foursquare.

In short, I'm excited about spending the summer and beyond in New York and becoming a full-fledged New York sports fan again.  The fun will start with a Yankees game, move on to the Mets later this summer, and then transition over to a winter full of Knicks, Giants and Islander games.  For once Sportscenter will lead with the local teams - there will be no more flipping over to the local six o'clock news to check in on the A's, Warriors or Sharks.  While my time in Northern California was great - New York can't offer the same great weather, the beautiful surroundings or the great Mexican food as the Bay Area - it's good to be back where I belong.

Blown Away By Bloomberg Sports

One of the greatest things about being a student is the opportunity and excuse to network with so many great sports industry executives.  Over the past two school years I've spoken with a number of impressive leaders of teams, leagues and other sports-related companies, many of whom I've had the opportunity to meet in person and others with whom I talk periodically on the phone.  Included in the former is one of the heads of Bloomberg Sports, which " takes the technology developed by Bloomberg, the leading global provider in data and analytics, and applies them to the vast data analysis opportunities in sports."  I took advantage of an offer to come visit Bloomberg's midtown offices when I was in New York last month over Spring Break, and was blown away by what I saw.

First off, the Bloomberg offices (most of which are taken up by the company's core finance-oriented business) are modern and incredible.  It's just a great-looking place to work, and just being there made me feel like I was about to see something new and exciting.  When I met my contact and he took me into a glass-walled conference room to show me what he and his team had been working on, I wasn't disappointed.  First, I got to see the company's new professional baseball tool, which it sells to MLB teams for research and scouting purposes.  As the company's website accurately notes, "Bloomberg Sports is at the cutting edge of analytic development and implementation for professional teams by providing a comprehensive, integrated data system for all scouting, player development, and player evaluation operations."  

The Bloomberg building in New York City is incredible, inside and out.

For a baseball geek like me, seeing the Bloomberg pro tool was incredible.  My contact asked me to name a current pitcher that I liked - I picked Tommy Hanson of the Braves.  He picked a hitter - the Mets' David Wright - and up popped a series of beautiful graphics detailing the battles between the two young stars.  There were pie charts that showed how often Hanson threw particular pitches on particular counts and how his previous pitch(es) impacted his probability of throwing future ones.  You could see a dot denoting the location of every pitch Hanson has every thrown while Wright was batting, what kind of pitch it was and what the result was - absolutely incredible.  And Bloomberg's not just providing teams with data - after all, they're getting all of their information from MLBAM.  Instead, Bloomberg is synthesizing and outputting this data in a meaningful and clear way so that teams can use it and digest it easily  It's brilliant.

Obviously, selling data to MLB teams is a limited market - there are only 30 franchises, so upside is capped.  For a huge company like Bloomberg, they're looking for a homerun opportunity out of their Sports division, and they believe that fantasy sports and gambling (internationally) are ways that they can make big money.  As you can see on the Bloomberg Sports website, the company is selling products that will help you manage your fantasy baseball teams using their data, and they're launching a European product that will educate soccer fans before they place wagers.  While these products are intriguing, are there enough people willing to pay a monthly fee for the data Bloomberg can provide?  I'm a huge fantasy baseball and football fan, but even I couldn't see myself paying $9.99 a month for the right to pour through data before setting my weekly lineups.  Would you?

Despite my concerns about the company's domestic business model, I absolutely loved my hour-long visit to Bloomberg Sports.  I'd highly recommend checking out their website to learn more about their fantasy products, if only to get a vague and simplistic idea about all of the detailed outputs that Bloomberg can, and does, produce for its MLB team customers.  While Billy Beane and Bill James may have discovered the power of baseball analytics, Bloomberg Sports is doing an amazing job of bringing it to the masses. 

Decisions, Decisions

Because I currently live on the West Coast but mainly follow East Coast teams, I don't often run into conflicts between live and televised sporting events; usually, I can make time to watch one of my teams play on TV in the afternoon and head to a game in person at night.  Yesterday, however, I had a surprisingly difficult choice to make: Go to a sports bar to watch my Giants battle the previously undefeated Green Bay Packers on TV, or make the short drive to campus to watch an intriguing non-conference college basketball match-up between Stanford and the NC State Wolfpack.  Both games started at 1 PM PST.  I'll take you through my decision-making process, and you can tell me which way you would have leaned:

Reason to watch Stanford: It's a live sporting event.  Televised games can be DVR'd and watched later in the day (although admittedly it's not the same), but there's nothing like watching sports live.  There aren't that many Stanford basketball home games that I'm realistically able to attend - many of them are during the month that I'll be away for Winter Break - so I feel like I should take advantage of the opportunity to go to free college basketball games when I can, particularly when they feature interesting battles such as this one.

Reason to watch the Giants: I've been a Giants fan for way longer than I've been a Stanford fan, so picking the Cardinal over the G-men seems wrong.  It would be like ditching your childhood best friend to go hang out with a guy you just met through work - something about it just rubs me the wrong way.  I've invested so much time in the Giants in my life and received so much joy from them - highlighted, of course, by the Superbowl victory over New England in 2007 - that I feel like I owe it to them to watch their games whenever possible.

Reason to watch Stanford: Unlike the Giants, Stanford had a good chance to win their game (and they did, 76-72, in a hard fought battle).  Although the Giants did put together an impressive performance (particularly offensively) in a narrow 38-35 defeat, I was pretty confident that the inconsistent Giants weren't going to take down the NFL's top team.  While I'm certainly not a front-runner - I root for my teams no matter how awful they are - it is undoubtedly more fun to see a victory than a loss.

Reason to watch the Giants: The Giants' match-up with Green Bay was clearly more critical than Stanford's non-conference game versus NC State.  At 6-5 entering Sunday and desperately needing a victory to save their seemingly sinking ship, the Giants would have received a major boost to their potentially crumbling playoff hopes had they been able to knock off the Packers.  While Stanford's win over NC State might help them beat out another bubble team when Selection Sunday rolls around (but probably not), there's no doubt that a Week 13 NFL game is more significant than a December college basketball one.

There were some other factors that went into my decision-making process, but those were the main ones.  In the end, I decided to go to Maples to watch the basketball game (it was the live versus televised factor that swayed me) and I'm glad that I did - the crowd was excellent by Stanford basketball standards, the team showed resiliency in coming back from a double-digit deficit in the second half and the Cardinal earned a valuable victory over a solid ACC opponent.  I even made it out in time to "watch" the fourth quarter of the Giants game on my computer and, considering the way it ended, it's probably better for my sanity that I wasn't at the sports bar watching it.

Real Steel: A Review

I'll start off with a caveat: Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman, isn't exactly a sports movie. It's actually a film about robot boxing which, in the year 2027, has replaced human boxing as the preferred form of combat-for-sport because of people's desire to see increasing levels of brutality, carnage and pain that only robots can provide.  Amid this not-so-subtle critique of  Mixed Martial Arts is a film about relationships, fatherhood and most of all, remote-controlled fighting robots.  And since boxing is (sort of) a sport and, other than Moneyball, no one has made a widely-released sports movie in a while, Real Steel will have to count as a sports movie for the purposes of this blog post. 

Next, let me state the obvious.  Real Steel is a terrible movie according to the way films are traditionally judge by "legitimate critics."  As evidenced by it's mediocre 58% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is predictable, contrived and formulaic.  From the opening credits, you know exactly what's going to happen - against all odds, Jackman and his son, with whom he has been reunited due to the untimely death of the boy's mother, are going to build a fighting robot on a shoestring budget that can hang with - and ultimately defeat - bigger, stronger, faster and more expensive robotic competition.  That last sentence doesn't even merit a "Spoiler Alert!" tag because it's so painfully obvious.  If you can't guess the plot going into the movie, you've probably never seen an underdog-style sports movie before, and I pity you for that.

But fortunately for Real Steel, I don't judge my sports movies based on traditional movie ranking criteria.  In fact, when I see a sports movie, I want it to be predictable.  I want the underdog to slowly improve throughout the course of the movie, preferably through the lens of a well-timed and appropriately soundtracked montage, and in the end get a shot at the title.  Anything more "clever" would ruin a perfectly good, proven formula of sports movie success.  If it's been good enough for classics such as Major League, Rudy and The Mighty Ducks, you better believe it's good enough for Real Steel.  So not only did I avoid complaining about the corny dialog and unoriginal plot - I applauded it.  With Real Steel, I got exactly what I asked for.

Yes, I enjoyed Real Steel.  Don't judge me.

With all that being said, a new sports movie needs something to differentiate it from others that have come before it.  Warrior, for example, tried to take the classic boxing movie formula, cross out the word "boxing" and replace it with "MMA," and carve out a new niche for itself.  For me, this wasn't enough to make me want to see the film - I need more of a "hook" to get me to spend my $10.  Real Steel, on the other hand, added a futuristic element and some top-notch special effects to the sports movie recipe, and the resulting dish was solid.  Think Transformers meets Rocky and you have a decent feel for what Real Steel was all about.  Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? So don't feel bad if you, like me, have the urge to check out the movie in theaters.  Just make sure you're not expecting anything more than some cool visuals, some unintentionally-comical writing and a moviegoer-tested, studio-approved plot and you'll have a great time. 

Moneyball: A Review

Ever since Michael Lewis's Moneyball hit bookstore shelves in April of 2004, I've been a big fan of the story of Billy Beane's transformation from small market GM to baseball revolutionary.  The story, as portrayed by Lewis's book, is one not just about baseball, but also about risk-taking, relationship-building and management style.  It's these themes that have placed Lewis's book in the hands of business executives across the country and motivated countless people, myself included, to pursue professional opportunities on the then-emerging, now-established numerical side of sports.  Shortly after the book came out, I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Lewis on the phone about his experiences while writing it, and I was also fortunate enough to meet Billy Beane himself this past year.  The next logical step in my love of Moneyball was to see the movie, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, and I took care of that last night.

Overall, I found the film extremely entertaining, both as a baseball / sabermetrics nerd and as a moviegoer.  From my brief interaction with Billy Beane last school year and from what I read in the book, Brad Pitt's representation of the Oakland GM seemed accurate and well-acted.  Jonah Hill did a great job playing the part of the "baseball outsiders" who really lead the statistical revolution popularized by the A's and Moneyball during the early- to mid-2000s; while most people assume Beane is the father of sabermetrics, in reality his contribution towards the movement was using the tools that Bill James had invented and "stat heads" like Hill's character had embraced.  While sports movies typically struggle to find actors who can artfully and realistically portray professional athletes, the cast of mostly no-names who played A's Moneyball poster children Scott Hatteberg, David Justice and Chad Bradford handled the roles well.  I also loved Philip Seymour Hoffman as bumbling and over-praised Oakland manager Art Howe - perhaps the most underrated performance in the movie, in my opinion.

The movie is admittedly slow, and takes a little while to get to its ultimate point - that Beane took a huge risk by transitioning from traditional scouting practices to analytical reasoning and, after early-season struggles and internal conflict with his scouting director and manager, won (at least until the playoffs rolled around).  There are a lot of scenes showing the conflict between Beane and his scouts, coaches and, at times, his own "gut," most likely left in there to ensure that the average movie-goer fully understands the distinction between Beane's Moneyball strategy and the more traditional, career-maintaining strategies of baseball's "old school."  Readers of the book and baseball fans might find all of these scenes a bit repetitive and slow, albeit very entertaining and at times quite humorous.

Brad Pitt does a great job as Billy Bean in Moneyball.

What I liked most about the movie, though, wasn't how it portrayed what Beane did, but instead the way it accurately portrayed what Beane didn't do.  At the end of the movie - I don't think this needs a "spoiler alert" tag because a) the book has been out for more than seven years and b) it's based on historical events that happened almost a decade ago - Beane is left without a World Series championship and caught between staying in Oakland near family and leaving for a much higher paying job with Boston.  The movie acknowledges that while Beane's Moneyball shockingly took the 2002 Oakland A's to the American League playoffs, his methodologies were incorporated even more successfully in places like Boston, which won the 2004 World Series with then-29-year-old GM Theo Epstein adopting Moneyball-esque practices.

Whether or not you've read the book (or even like baseball, for that matter), I would highly recommend the film.  More than just a baseball movie, Moneyball is a great story about leadership, self-transformation and risk-taking - a true underdog story that relies more on mental will than physical strength.  Start by seeing the movie and, when you find yourself enjoying it, you can go back and read the book for the full story on Billy Beane's impressive rise to the top of baseball's list of most wanted General Managers.

Room For HGH In The NFL?

On my way to check my fantasy football roster this morning, I stumbled across an intentionally provocative headline on the CBS Sports website arguing that "In Peyton's case, using HGH to heal is no crime."  The article, written by CBS Sports columnist Gregg Doyel, argues that if doctors prescribe HGH to heal Peyton Manning's injured neck, he should be allowed to take it and, as soon as he's ready, play in the NFL.  Doyel asserts that this would be fair, since it would be for medical (and not performance enhancing) purposes, and would be good for the NFL because it would ensure that one of the league's marquee players returns to the field faster.  Doyel acknowledges, however, that fans are already mentally opposed to HGH, but claims that people are missing the point - that if a doctor says it's OK for Peyton, then we should accept it.

To me, Doyel is missing a lot in his argument.  First, we need to think about what's best for Peyton Manning and his legacy.  As of now, Manning is considered one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game of football, and one of the NFL's best ambassadors as well.  The way his team has been struggling so far this season without him is further testament to his value, and suggests that he might be an even greater asset than his extremely-impressive career numbers originally lead us to believe.  Manning is a first-ballot Hall of Famer who can't do anything to change the public's opinion of him; except, that is, start using HGH to recover from his off-season neck surgery.

Additionally, we're walking along a very slippery slope here if we agree to let Peyton Manning use HGH to recover from his injury.  This is the National Football League we're talking about - it's the most savage sports league in the world and, despite the league's efforts to protect its players with rule changes, virtually every player is injured every week.  Where would we draw the line between who's injured enough to take HGH and who's just "regular injured?"  You can quickly see every player lining up to take HGH to recover from sore muscles, ankle tweaks and all sorts of very routine ailments, creating a league of suped-up freaks.  And the fact that a doctor prescribes the HGH doesn't really change anything - as we've seen in other sports (baseball, track and field, etc.) there are tons of unsavory characters in the sports medicine community willing to do anything for a buck.  Don't think anything will change when it comes to prescribing HGH to NFLers.

It's easy to say that allowing Manning to take HGH to recover from his neck injury is a "no brainer" when you don't think about the long term consequences of such a move.  Admittedly, neither the NFL nor fantasy football are as fun or exciting without Peyton Manning under center for the Colts every weekend.  But, unfortunately, injuries are part of football; they've derailed the careers of great players before, and they're surely do so again in the future.  There's no reason to risk the NFL's rock-solid relationship with its fans by allowing one of its stars to do what many will perceive as break the rules, though.  At the end of the day, the NFL is an entertainment property, and I think most fans will find an HGH-fueled Peyton Manning more upsetting than entertaining.

Televised Sports To The Rescue

With HDTV, 3DTV and a host of other new ways to consume sports on television popping up recently, more and more emphasis has been put on the video quality of sports broadcasts.  We no longer care as much about what game is on as we do about the coverage itself, and at times we take for granted the fact that we can watch sports - albeit on small screens and in standard definition - from a number of amazing places.  I flew across the country last night and watched Boise State play at Toledo for more than half of the flight, which got me thinking about some of the best places to watch sports on a really shabby screen.

• AIRPLANES: While JetBlue and Virgin America may be considered discount airlines because they lack first class seating, I'll take a JetBlue coach seat with DirecTV over a first class seat without television any day.  In January I watched Stanford play in the Orange Bowl from a JetBlue flight, and nothing makes a long trip better than 36 channels of DirecTV programming.  JetBlue carries ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN News and ESPN Classic (plus the chance of catching sports on ABC, CBS, TBS, etc.), so there's bound to be something good on.

• FITNESS CENTERS:  I'm not a great long distance runner, and don't really enjoy my time on the treadmill.  An iPod definitely helps move a run along, but nothing helps me pump out a long jog like good sports on TV.  Newer treadmills that have individualized screens are ideal (see right).  I like to workout on a Sunday afternoon during NFL football games - pick the time slot where both CBS and FOX are showing games, toggle between the two, and you're all set.  In general, I find faster-paced sports better for the treadmill, so I try to stay away from baseball in favor of basketball, football (the big hits get your adrenaline pumping) or sometimes hockey.  Stay away from NASCAR at all costs, too - nothing makes you conscious of running in circles than watching a bunch of stock cars driving in circles.

• WAITING ROOMS:  I'll never understand why not every doctor's office / hospital waiting room and every airport gate area has a TV in it, but amazingly some don't.  Fortunately, most of the time you can kill some waiting time with TV and, if you're reasonably pushy, can usually get sports on the screen.  I watched some of Team USA's amazing Women's World Cup victory over Brazil from a hospital waiting room, and it made the entire experience much more relaxing.

Of course, it's always best to watch a game on a big HDTV from a nice, comfortable couch.  But when you're on the road and can't make it home by game time, it's nice to be in a place where you can catch some sports coverage.  Now that more and more people have video-enabled phones and tablets and channels like ESPN continue to roll out more live mobile video, the need for TV screens at the gym or in waiting rooms has admittedly shrunk.  But until mobile video is universal, let's show come appreciation for the small screens that bring us sports when we need them most.

We're Goin' Streaking!

Sports teams, leagues and media companies are always trying to walk the thin line that distinguishes online sports fantasy games from sports gambling.  The NCAA, for example, knows that encouraging fans to fill out March Madness brackets (and offering prizes to the winners) will encourage them to watch more games.  The NFL loves that fans are obsessed with fantasy football; while the league would rather people play on its own NFL.com site, even playing through ESPN or CBS Sportsline indirectly helps professional football.  Sports media companies, as opposed to sports leagues, aren't looking to promote any one sport or sporting event, but instead are working to encourage people to consume more sports in general.  It's here that ESPN.com's "Streak for the Cash" is such an addictive and brilliant concept.

While "Streak for the Cash" isn't new, I'll briefly explain it for those of you who aren't aware of how this simplistic game works.  Every day, ESPN posts a number of bets that you can select, from "Who will win the game between X and Y?" to "How many strikeouts will Player Z record in tonight's game?"  The choices range from money line to prop bets and everything in between, and span every conceivable sport, league and country.  The goal is to build the longest streak of correct selections in any given month, with the month's longest streak winning a $50,000 prize and another few grand worth of bragging rights.  One wrong pick, however, knocks you back down to zero and you're forced to start over again.

For a $50,000 per month investment on ESPN's part, it seems like "Streak for the Cash" is generating a lot of interest in random sports - in particular, random sports than ESPN is trying to promote.  Let's use myself as a case study of a typical sports fan and ESPN consumer: Within the past two weeks I've "bet" on international club soccer, the soccer Under 20 World Cup, the WNBA and, most recently, PGA golf in addition to a lot of MLB baseball.  Not only am I playing the online game, but I'm also trying to follow my bets - and thus, some obscure sports - on TV or elsewhere online.  Today, for example, I bet on Tiger Woods shooting 71 or worse during the second round of the PGA Championship and have spent most of the afternoon tuned in to TNT for the live broadcast and tracking the scoreboard on PGA.com.  Without ESPN's "Streak for the Cash" game, would I be glued to the TV this afternoon?  Highly unlikely.

Hopefully a 71+ from Tiger Woods will get me to seven straight wins.

For someone who never bets on sports for money, I've become strangely addicted to this simple ESPN fantasy game.  I love how it rewards you for a wide range of sports knowledge; knowing a little something about club soccer or WNBA hoops might help make the difference between an impressive 11-game streak and two respectible 5-game streaks with a loss in between (for reference, since I started playing at the beginning of August, the best I've done is six straight, but I'm hoping that another collapse by Tiger gets me to seven - the game is harder than it seems at first blush).  If you like meaningless competition and testing the breadth of your sports knowledge, try your hand at "Streak for the Cash."  And if you win next month's prize, I'd say that $5,000 would be a fair and reasonable referral fee.

Way Ahead of the Trend

Over a year ago, I posted an "Open Letter to MLB Network," asking the channel's executives to implement an idea I called Ducks On The Pond; essentially, a Red Zone Channel for baseball.  Amazingly, MLB Network listened and debuted an hour-long block called Solid 60 featuring "highlights, updates and live look-ins at games" as part of the network's MLB Tonight program. It was a small victory for Caught Looking and all fans of out-of-market baseball games, and I was happy with MLB Network for heeding my advice.

That is no excuse, however, for MLB Network to steal my intellectual property (please ignore the fact that the Caught Looking logo does, admittedly, slightly resemble that of Major League Baseball).  Recently, MLB Network has unveiled a new series of promotional sports for their live game coverage, where the network shows live baseball games in their entirety four nights a week.  What slogan has the MLB Network chosen to promote these games, you ask?  They went with "Get Caught Looking on MLB Network" - check out the video below for the proof.  The video was uploaded to MLB.com on April 29 of this year, still well after the debut of this blog in April on 2010, though I just noticed it on TV fairly recently.  After the Solid 60 debut, I could have believed that the MLB Network heads had independently come up with the same idea as me shortly after I posted about it.  Now that the channel has incorporated the name of this blog as the slogan for its live game programming, however?  I'm not so sure.

Incredibly, this isn't even the first time this year that a company has started using the "Caught Looking" slogan to promote baseball-related products.  You may recall that, in May, I posted about Victoria's Secret's line of PINK / MLB-branded merchandise featuring the "Caught Looking" tagline.  While the raunchy-ness of the first example of IP theft made me question my choice of blog name, this more recent offense actually makes me more confident than ever that "Caught Looking" was the right choice.  While stealing is always wrong (shame on you, MLB Network - I appreciate your readership, but next time please ask my permission before blatantly ripping off my blog title), if "Caught Looking" is good enough for what has quickly become one of my all-time favorite TV channels, it's certainly good enough for me.

If a Puck Drops in the Forest . . .

As you may have heard, the Boston Bruins won the NHL's Stanley Cup earlier this week.  Then again, you might have only heard about some rioting in Vancouver and not have had any idea of what is was all about - after all, the NHL isn't exactly easy for people to follow these days.  Despite what NHL pundits are calling an extremely extertaining playoff season and a championship series that matched two strong hockey markets against one another, it still seems like sports fans have all but stopped tracking the NHL.

It's upsetting, because ice hockey is a wonderful sport.  The problem is that the NHL has consistently been damaging the game over the past decade.  First there was the NHL lockout, which drove many fans away.  Once the game returned, the league had an unfortunate string of Western and Southern Stanley Cup champions (Anaheim, Tampa Bay, Carolina) which did little to bring in the core hockey fans in the northeast and Great Lakes regions.  This season, though, it's harder to pinpoint the NHL's excuse.

As a result of the league's horrendous national TV deal ("split" between NBC and Versus, with the majority of games on the latter channel), sports fans have to work hard to find playoff hockey.  With so much competing sports content airing on ESPN and the broadcast networks, the question comes down to how much do fans really love hockey, especially when their team isn't playing?  Although I love the game and love the Islanders, I found it surprisingly hard to get myself to watch Bruins-Canucks.  Every time I flipped the game on, I would drift back to baseball on ESPN, the NBA Finals on ABC, and, one time, "Say Yes to the Dress" on TLC (Is he joking . . .?).

Highlights were even hard to come by while watching SportsCenter.  At various points earlier in the series, the Stanley Cup Finals was buried below the NBA Finals, regular season MLB action, the French Open, NFL and NBA lockout updates and more.  After the series ended with a Boston victory, the riots in Vancouver got more air time than the game highlights.  If the NHL wants to compete for viewers with the NBA, let alone MLB and the NFL, it needs to focus their strategy on making hockey content more available to the typical lazy sports fan.  Whether it's a more agressive online media strategy or a renegotiated TV deal with the newly-united NBC and Comcast, the NHL must stop forcing its fans to work as hard to watch its games as the players do on the ice.