Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Sports

  • Blogger’s Block

    I’m not sure why, but I haven’t had anything interesting to blog about. I’ve been traveling a lot, maybe that’s why.

    Indiana University basketball broke into the top 25 for the first time in ages. And Bob Knight’s Texas Tech team beat two top ten opponents in a week. And Wisconsin (I didn’t go there, but I’ll root for Wisconsin as long as they aren’t playing Indiana) is now ranked #2. Not in hockey, in basketball. Go figure.

    I’ve been debating putting Vista on our home laptop. If I do that, then I’ll definitely have something to blog about…

  • Thankfully, I can now watch the Super Bowl

    There was a stretch on Sunday where I was pretty sure that I would be faced with a horrible situation. What does a football fan do if he completely hates both teams in the Super Bowl? If you had asked me at the beginning of the year what the worst possible Super Bowl would be for me, I would have said Patriots/Bears. I simply hate them both.

    The Bears is obvious. I’m a Packers fan. I have to hate the Bears. It’s the law.

    And perhaps this is because I’m a Packers fan, but really, what’s to like about the Bears? All defense teams with lame offenses are simply not fun to root for. Rex Grossman is terrifying to watch. You’ve basically got Brian Erlacher and a really good kick returner whose name I can’t remember.

    Why I hate the Patriots isn’t exactly clear even to me. But sports loyalties aren’t supposed to make sense. You’d think it’s the whole New York/Boston thing, but that’s not really it (I’m not a native New Yorker, so I don’t hate Boston though I do hate the Red Sox). I really think it goes back to when the Packers played the Patriots in the Super Bowl and I knew several seriously trash talking Patriots fans (no, I’m not talking about Rob Myers). So ever since I’ve just hated them (and I got great pleasure out of that particular Super Bowl).

    So anyway, the thought of watching a Super Bowl where I’d be rooting for the field to swallow up all the players just didn’t seem palatable. OK, sure, there’s always the commercials and the game is usually a big letdown, but I need to root for someone other than space aliens to incinerate the field.

    So, go Colts. And hopefully the commercials will be good too…

  • Random thoughts

    • Barry Bonds may have tested positive for amphetimenes. Isn’t that like Ken Lay being busted for speeding?
    • New York Times editorial about the strange smell in NYC on Monday:

    “…Has air quality improved so much in New York that we can actually notice an odd smell?”

    • Could Indiana University (my alma mater) basketball actually be on the upswing with new coach Kelvin Sampson? We played #5 Ohio State very close in Columbus, beat #24 Michigan State and totally stomped Purdue 85-58.
    • On a related note, had Bob Knight broke Dean Smith’s record while still at Indiana, the media would have made a much bigger deal of it.
    • Creator of Scooby-Doo (Iwao Takamoto) passed away this week at 81. Can anyone name the famous voice that has played the voice of Shaggy for longer than he’s been famous for what he’s really famous for? (ok, call the grammar police for that last sentence).
    • iPhone hasn’t even been released yet and Apple is already being sued by Cisco over the trademark of the name. Usually Steve Jobs is a marketing genius. Excuse me, nail down the trademark first perhaps?
    • And rumor has it that a world famous search engine firm is about to buy STARS Enterprise…
    • Cool things about raising a child in Brooklyn:
      • Children’s books are about places we actually go
      • Dan Zanes (Playhouse Disney channel, lots of children’s CDs) lives in our neighborhood and leads the annual Halloween parade
      • Our daughter has seen more live performances at four than I had at fourteen (and much better quality)
    • Bad things about raising a child in Brooklyn:
      • This condo is for sale on my block. It’s very nice (of course I checked it out), though not quite what we’re looking for (the garden in the back has a pond with actual carp – we’re thinking more like swings and a sand box). And it’s a bit smaller than the place we are renting (remind me not to mention what we are paying in rent). When $1.5 million doesn’t get you what you are looking for, it’s a tad depressing.

  • Baseball Hall of Fame politics

    Baseball seems to have the most interesting politics when it comes to the Hall of Fame voting. All kinds of strange things go on for a variety of amusing reasons. To me there were three stories this year:

    1. How high a percentage would Ripkin and Gwynn get?
    2. How low a percentage would McGuire get?
    3. Would Goose Gossage finally make it?

    Each of the questions has some hilarious political overtones. I say hilarious, because they have little to do with the question of who actually belongs in the Hall, but more to do with the process itself.

    First, let’s discuss #3. For those unfamiliar with the issue here, only recently have relievers begun to be voted into the Hall of Fame. For a while that was an underappreciated specialty. Goose Gossage was one of the most fears relievers of his day and his numbers totally should place him in the hall. To get inducted you need 75% of the voters to vote for you (each voter can vote for up to 10 players). Gossage’s percentage has been rising steady each year of voting so some thought he had a shot this year. But he fell short at 71.2%.

    Why did he fall short? Many voters, when there are a couple of obvious first ballot Hall of Famers (this is Ripkin and Gwynn’s first year of eligibility and they were obvious locks to get in), do not like to vote in other candidates the same year. They feel that having Gossage on the podium the same year as Gwynn and Ripkin would “clutter” the stage and detract from Ripkin and Gwynn. Next year there are no obvious first time candidates, so everyone assumes that Gossage will make it next year. But is he any less worthy this year? No, it’s just politics.

    Item #1 is also political. Some voters do not believe that anyone should get 100% of the votes, under the “Babe Ruth didn’t get 100%” logic. Some voters submitted completely blank votes to protest the “steroid era”. One voter just picked 10 other players besides Gwynn and Ripkin because he figured those guys would get enough other votes.

    And item #2 is the one we’ll all be debating (well, all baseball fans). McGuire didn’t break any rules of baseball. He’s the 7th all time home run hitter. But virtually everyone believes he took steroids and his performance in front of Congress was horrible.

    That’s the fun of baseball. Endless debates…