Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Sports

  • Manning/Brady Seattle/San Fran

    Sure, as a Packer fan I’d like to see Rodgers in there, but for the most part, aren’t these the matchups football fans wanted to see?

    Manning/Brady is a classic story. Sure, it’s about the teams and the coaches as well, but this game will be billed as the latest matchup of two hall of fame quarterbacks.

    The NFC game has two exciting quarterbacks as well, but this is more about the teams. Division rivals, Seattle looking unstoppable at home, but San Fran on a serious roll.

    Next Sunday should be a great day for football…

  • “I had been drinking”

    Did anyone really think Dennis Rodman attempting basketball diplomacy with North Korea would end any other way?…

  • Bragging

    We had a NY/ Philly company holiday party today that started with bowling.

    I’m not a bowler. I bowl once in a blue moon. But this was a fun group to bowl, hang out, and drink beer with.

    First game I was lame. Broke 100, so not horrible, but barely. Second game I got in a groove.

    Strike or spare in frames 2-9. I bowled a 186 (I am Fish below). More than 20 pins over my all time high. Crazy.

    image

  • No Storybook Ending

    Our nephew’s soccer team fought the good fight in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but there was no storybook ending. They got the #9 (at the time) ranked team in the country, York (PA). The match was in Hoboken at Steven’s Institute of Technology (ranked #5) so I was able to go see it.

    You could tell from the beginning that York was good, particularly their defense. Someone told me over the season they only gave up on average 4 shots on goal per game (not 4 goals, 4 shots).

    Mount Saint Mary played them tough, sending it to overtime 0-0, but finally lost 1-0. York would go on to beat Stevens (also in OT).

    But overall a great season, and something Mount Saint Mary can really build on. The team is young and almost everyone is back next year. Should be fun to watch.

  • Running with the Blind

    This is a touching, uplifting article about a guy running the NYC marathon with a blind person, helping her achieve her goal.

    About 15 years ago, I volunteered with the Achilles Track Club, which is for disabled runners, at the NYC marathon. My story is neither touching nor uplifting. It’s moderately amusing though.

    Pre-kids I was a runner. I ran several marathons, but this was an off year (I forget the exact year). A friend asked if I could help the Achilles Track Club. They had a legally blind runner doing the marathon, and he was pretty fast (3:10 was his goal). They needed volunteers to run with him along the course.

    If you think about it, this is quite tricky. Nothing would be worse that having a disabled runner not meet his goal because the runner assisting him hit the wall. So they always have multiple people assisting. In this case, since he was fast, they split up the course so there would be two people running with him for about 6 or 7 mile splits, then pass him off to the next two.

    So me and one other guy were going to assist him from miles 14 – 20. We waited at the 14th mile marker. But we had been told that the mile marker was in a certain spot. It was actually a little farther down the road and on the other side. Not a big deal.

    Time passes. We know the guy’s pace. He should have been here by now. This is 15 years ago, people aren’t running the marathon with cell phones. We have no way of knowing where he is. There’s one other volunteer from Achilles there. He suggests that the two of us sprint ahead to try to find him. The concern being that if they missed the mile marker (since it wasn’t where we were told), the people running with him are going longer than expected and may tire.

    So we sprint off. This is actually one of the best parts of the marathon. When you come across the 59th street bridge into Manhattan around mile 15 the crowds are simply amazing. But we can’t find the guy.

    At mile 16, the guy I’m running with says, “hey, I told my kid I’d be assisting a blind guy. He’s watching up ahead a bit. Can you pretend to be blind?”. Why not? I run a mile with my hand on the guys shoulder as though he’s guiding me. We get a ton of “Go Achilles!” cheers, which makes me feel somewhat fraudulent, but the kid cheers his dad so it seems worth it.

    We make it to the 20 mile marker where the next two runners are waiting and still no one has seen the blind runner. There’s really nothing we can do at this point. The guy asks me, “what do you want to do?”. “Finish the race?”. Again, why not?

    It was a great way to do it. You get the crowds of the NYC marathon and we only had to run half of it. But the finish wasn’t nearly as rewarding as when I did it for real.

    What about the blind guy, you ask? We would later find out that he didn’t connect with the very first group of runners who were helping him. He was legally blind but not totally blind, so he just talked to other runners who helped him along the way. He finished around 3:15.

    Go Achilles!

  • MLB Team Values

    Very nice interactive graphic from Bloomberg (h/t to Daring Fireball). Gruber is right, sort by wins…

  • Hat Trick Sunday, Game Winner Tuesday

    Our nephew, Matt Garcia, is on a roll. We saw his hat trick Sunday (against an admittedly not great team). Today he had a much more challenging away game against a good team.

    It was tied 1-1 after regulation. Still tied after the first overtime.

    Garcia had the game winning shot in the 110th minute of play off of a free kick he bent around the line of defenders to place it in the left corner of the net, lifting the Knights to a 2-1 victory over the Hawks.

    He had a similar free kick goal last Sunday. It’s Division III, but I think he’s leading the conference in scoring.

    Fun stuff…

  • Mo

    I’m obviously biased as Mariano Rivera is my favorite baseball player ever (grew up in Milwaukee a huge Robin Yount fan, but he’s #2 to Mo). This is as good an historical overview on Mo’s career as I’ve seen. Courtesy of Joe Posnanski and NBC Sports.

    Some highlights:

    Mariano Rivera has been the perfect athlete in a time long after we stopped believing in perfect athletes.

    …

    Think of the pitfalls today. One misstep. One misspoken statement. One insensitive tweet. One mistranslated thought. Celebrity life in the 21st Century is the wildest of high-wire acts, a thread-thin tightrope, fire above, no net below, and all the while people shoot pellets at your legs. Rivera did not just walk that tightrope. He danced on it. He did backflips on it. He did not just pass every test. He aced every test.

    …

    People will always argue about the baseball greatness of Mariano Rivera. Much of the argument depends on the way you view baseball. If you view the ninth inning as a bomb that only the nerviest and most extraordinary people can defuse, then you probably see Rivera as an all-time great. If you view the ninth inning as just another inning, and view closers as specialists not unlike punters, then you might not see him as an all-time great. And there’s a lot of room in between.

    But I do wonder if this misses the real story. How does someone close games in New York for 16 years and come out of it adored? How does someone who wears nothing but Yankees pinstripes his entire career — can you even picture Mariano Rivera without his Yankees cap on? — get honored at Fenway Park? How does someone in today’s Twittery, bloggy, First Take, Facebook, chat board, talk radio, GIF-infused world come out of a long career as universally beloved? 

    See, even people who loathe Mariano Rivera love him.

  • There is Crying in Baseball

    I wish I could embed MLB video. Cheers and tears and a great moment with Mariano Rivera’s last game at Yankee Stadium…

  • Yankees 2013 RIP

    It’s not like Yankee fans really thought we’d make the playoffs this year. The early unexpected good start raised expectations, but when more and more players got hurt you had to wonder how Girardi was keeping them in contention.

    So it was a rough year, with watching Rivera’s last year being the only highlight. But if you are a Yankee fan can you really think, “hey, we’ll be healthy next year so we’ll be back”? Only with a series of wildly optimistic assumptions.

    Let’s go around the diamond:

    1B: Teixeira. Has to come back healthy and productive (wildly optimistic)

    2B: Cano. The Yankees one young star. But he’s a free agent. He will command boatloads of money/years. And he can see that this team is in decline. Him signing is still likely, but no guarantee.

    SS: Jeter. His contract has an option year and it’s his option. Unless a tank runs over him in the off season he will take the option year. So we have to hope he gets healthy and returns to form. Did I mention he’ll be a 40 year old shortstop next year? (wildly optimistic).

    3B: A-Rod? We would have to assume that he gets healthy and avoids being suspended (wildly optimistic).

    C: Cervelli. Needs to be healthy. Not a star but a solid catcher.

    Outfield: Probably Granderson, Gartner and Soriano. Granderson’s injuries were two freak broken hands (both hit by pitches) so it reasonable to assume he’ll be healthy. A decent outfield.

    Starting Pitching:

    CC Sabathia: Yankess fans simply have to hope he returns to form. We have no compelling reason to believe he will, but seriously, without him pitching like an top tier pitcher the Yankees aren’t going anywhere. (wildly optimistic)

    Ivan Nova: Good young pitcher. Rare bright spot for the Yankee’s future. Still hasn’t pitched a full season though (optimistic).

    Hiroki Kuroda: Was the ace most of the season but totally ran out of gas at the end of the year. Free agent, getting old, might not be back.

    Dellin Betances: Who? Pitched great in AAA last year. 6’ 8” and throws serious heat. Supposedly. Honestly, I’ve never seen the kid. But we have huge holes in the rotation so we need a new face (wildly optimistic).

    Free Agent Ace: This is what Yankee fans are hoping for. (wildly optimistic).

    Bullpen:

    David Robertson: Won’t make us forget Mariano, but is a great reliever.

    Other than that, the bullpen is pretty bare.

    Yankee fans are pretty much hoping that everyone miraculously gets healthy and young, and they go on a free agent buying spree. But with all the huge contracts still on the payroll it’s hard to see enough of a reload to really contend.

    Yankee fans have been spoiled for a long time. I think it’s going to be bad for a while…