Spring Training

It is spring, you know what that means! Baseball and Soccer right around the corner. I’m usually not one to be super excited about baseball, but it finally feels like the Mariners have done some actual moves in an attempt to be competitive. I like that. However, I’ve been excited before and been completely disappointed. I’m looking right at you Richie Sexson. I’m pointing my finger at you Adrian Beltre. That being said, I get an irrationally positive feeling for the new signees. I get some good vibes. I feel like these guys are a step in the right direction. I hope I’m right; it would be nice to have more reason to watch Baseball this year than fantasy leagues. Yes, I just properly used a semi-colon in a sentence, I’m almost ashamed.

Now Soccer! It looks like Major League Soccer is going to have a season, despite their labor dispute. This is good news for me because I’m addicted. A word of support for the players though, I think they deserve a better deal. I’m not saying they should make money on par with other sports leagues in the United States, but they deserve to have a little bit of free agency. I think MLS is missing out on some talent and making things unnecessarily complicated when they do land the few that are willing to sign. I’d go into more detail, but instead I’ll use a poor simile. It is like a pie that is owned by everyone and a piece gets cut and that piece says, “I’d like to go to either Harry or Sue.” You then have a raffle based on who got the last piece and the winner bargains with Harry and Sue. The point is that if the pie wants to go to a certain person they should be able to go to the Sounders…I mean Harry or Sue.

At this point I gotta say, I’m also incredibly excited for the NBA post season and March Madness. That’s the thing about basketball and me: I don’t like regular season games. The players in the NBA play at a much higher level when every game counts. The College players play well in regular season games but I can’t seem to get excited about them during my “NFL is over” hangover. It takes until at least March before I snap out of the empty NFL void and realize there are other sports. If I had my way the NBA and College Basketball wouldn’t play in anything but post season games.

Finally, Hockey. That was an exciting game, USA V Canada. It is almost enough for me to get back into hockey. But it can be really hard when the NHL team closest to me is named the “Canucks.” No thanks, for now I’ll remain mildly aloof and claim the hockey is only a Canadian sport.

All for now,

-Nate

Stasis Completed

I’ve been in a writing hiatus. Actually more like a writing stasis. That’s what happens when you are looking for a new job I suppose, writing takes a back seat. But I’m back! And I have a couple of things to talk about briefly to catch the blog up.

Super Bowl: I was not really cheering for either team, I like them both. However, the commentary about New Orleans Katrina catastrophe caused me to make the following potentially offensive statement. “If we listen to the news and all the puff pieces, when the Saints win the victory will spontaneously re-build all the broken houses downtown and the suffering of Katrina will be forgotten.” Seriously, I’m happy for New Orleans, but let’s not tie a natural disaster to a professional sporting event.

MLS CBA dispute: It seems like every sporting division is having labor disputes or struggling to get a new CBA done lately. However, Major League Soccer should not be one. It is a World Cup year, USA is in a bid for a future world cup and the owners stand to gain from a USA bid. I’m not saying they have to agree to a plan that will make them lose money. However, they WILL lose money if no plan is agreed upon. Unfortunately, they realize the players will lose more out of a strike or lockout than the owners will. And that’s where we are right now.

Winter Olympics: This may be blasphemous but I can’t get behind any sport that uses subjective judging as the criteria for victory. This includes half-pipe snowboarding. I like watching those sports, but I care less about who wins and more about the entertainment value. Curling is another sport I just have a hard time watching because I have this vague feeling that if I practiced I could be on the Olympic team. Look, I can rub a sponge broom back and forth on the ice real fast, it wouldn’t take that much learning to figure out how to do it so that the stone travels far enough to clunk the other team’s stone out of the target area.

Speaking of Winter Olympics, the starring sport final is on right now. USA v Canada in Hockey. I’ll be back more often. The stasis is over, but for now U S A U S A!

-Nate