Yesterday almost made up for all of 2008

I feel very fortunate to have managed to score a ticket to the inaugural game of the Seattle Sounders FC. You can say want you want about soccer, but last night was something special:

Meanwhile, Sounders coach Sigi Schmid is pretty clearly going to compete with Ichiro in the Most Hilarious And/Or Nonsensical Sports Story Quotes category.

"Until all the nerves hit, until all the pressure is there, until you see all the people in the stands and you feel that momentum kick in and the adrenaline kick in, then you see how people react to those situations," Schmid said. "That is what usually separates the guys from the other guys."

Schmid knows what it takes to get to the postseason, having led two MLS teams to titles.

"Our goal is to make it to the dance, because once you're there you have a chance," he said. "You have to make it to the dance to get the girl, and that's what we're trying to do."

Drew Carey, erstwhile sitcom star and a poor substitute for Bob Barker, nonetheless has already proven himself to be the coolest owner of a professional sports team in the history of the world.

The city has embraced the expansion club in a way you wouldn't expect when Americans and soccer are involved. More than 20,000 season tickets have been sold, and Carey likes to think that the team's fan-empowering policies have something to do with it.

Especially since Seattle sports fans recently endured a very unpleasant experience with a team ownership group.

"Here comes this evil NBA owner who takes the SuperSonics, screws the city with this duplicitous deal he put together and takes them to Oklahoma," Carey said. "The whole city hates this guy. One of their major sports is gone now. And we come in like, 'Hey, is yo man not treatin' you right? Come and see us."

Oh... snap.

JLE Part III: Poor, poor Seahawks

The badness: Another team picked by many to win its division instead finished 4-12 on the season. The entire wide receiver corps was decimated by injuries and the defense often was disappointing. An injured Matt Hasselbeck and his replacement Seneca Wallace combined to throw one million interceptions in the final two minutes of close games.

The James angle: Within one week of moving to Seattle in early 2006, the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl, and many fans blamed the referees. During the off-season, the team failed to re-sign Pro Bowl left tackle Steve Hutchinson, who is now opening huge holes for Adrian Peterson in Minnesota.

Before the 2006 season I purchased a Shaun Alexander jersey on eBay; Alexander, the reigning Most Valuable Player of the league and popular with the locals, broke his foot in Week 3 and subsequently turned into a gelatinous running-back-like substance. Soon thereafter he was criticized for lack of toughness and nicknamed "Shauna" by disgruntled fans.

The silver lining: The team's probably will improve somewhat next year, if it can shore up the receiving corps and stay healthy. Their poor record and a sinking economy probably improves my chances of bubbling to the top of the season ticket waiting list that much more quickly.

Meanwhile...

I don't even have the fortitude to talk about the Huskies football team going winless for the first time ever (in over 100 years of history), and the death of local stadium icon Tuba Man. Read this great ESPN article by Jim Caple if you want the gory details on our lost year in sports.

The JLE, Part II: the stupid Mariners

The badness: The M’s finished at 61-101, the first team with a $100M+ payroll to lose 100 games. The one time we wanted them to lose, which was at the end of the season to secure the #1 draft pick, they won three in a row to “edge out” Washington.
However, I don’t feel (fully) responsible for this one. The Mariners’ badness is the fault of Bill Bavasi, the General Manager who spent a ton on such questionable acquisitions as Richie Sexson, Jarrod Washburn, Jose Vidro and Carlos Silva. Sexson’s batting average became fixed to a promotion at Norm’s Ale House in Fremont, in which they matched the price of a beer to it (e.g. .172 average = $1.72 Buds, baby!). Washburn is vastly overpaid and mediocre, and sadly was not traded away last season when the M’s might have had the chance. Vidro made a bid at being the worst designated hitter in history… really. Silva reported gained at least 30 pounds during the 2008 season, and has three years left in his contract, during which we can only pray he eats himself out of a job.
Bavasi used the worst reasoning in signing players: rewarding players for past successes, when it should have been obvious that they were about to enter a down slope in their careers. The team actually competed for the division title well into the 2007 season, but it was something of an illusion… the team’s Pythagorean record was far below its actual record, indicating the M’s were actually getting a lot of lucky breaks, as opposed to actually being that talented. Unfortunately, Bavasi was convinced the team was one good pitcher away from the playoffs, and traded away good prospects for starter Erik Bedard, who, as it turns out, is made from papier-mache. Thus, not only is the team awful, its prospects of getting better anytime soon flew out the window under Bavasi.

The James angle: I’ve been following the M’s for a long time, and this is obviously not their first awful season in history. What stings about this one is the amount of money spent, and the likelihood that, with a gutted farm system, they will be bad for years to come. It’s worth noting that I received a Kenji Johjima jersey as a gift after admiring his toughness and clutch offense in 2006. In 2008, Johjima became something of a reviled figure after signing a huge contract extension at the relatively old age (for a catcher) of 31. Sure enough, in 2008 his average fell off a cliff (.227), and Washburn implied in an interview that the language barrier (Johjima is Japanese) was a factor in the team’s bad pitching performances.

The silver lining: Bavasi’s gone, hallelujah. His replacement as GM, Jack Zduriencik, actually seems to know something about other modern mathematical tools for evaluating players. He’s made moves to improve the outfield defense, which should at least make our crappy pitchers look somewhat better on paper. The team isn’t likely to finish about .500 in 2009, but at least they seem to be in more capable hands.

The JLE, Part I: How I Killed the SuperSonics

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here today to announce a great scientific breakthrough in the field of logic. I have singlehandedly proven that, despite what Wikipedia may think, correlation does indeed equal causation.

For you see, I have long argued that my presence and rooting interest in a city's professional sports scene tends to inevitably doom it to the melancholy of prolonged failure. But, only now, in the year 2008, with my presence in Seattle clinging to the local sports teams like the slow onset of radiation sickness in a nuclear test zone, has the James Losing Effect been NOTICEABLE FROM SPACE.

OK, so I don't really believe in the JLE. But after 2008, a year in which improbably bad things befell the SuperSonics, Mariners and Seahawks, I sometimes wonder if the city will ever recover.

Part the Ist: the SuperSonics Oklahoma City Thunder!

The badness: Predictably, the team moved to Oklahoma City after being sold by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to an ownership group entirely from Oklahoma City. Predictably to everyone except Howard Schultz, supposedly. Schultz sold the team because KeyArena, opened in 1996 to the team's specifications, was no longer profitable (although his ownership group sold the team for $70 million more than they paid for it). An unfavorable lease and too few luxury suites apparently made it hard for a mid-market team with mediocre players to turn a profit. Truthfully, the team's attendance never recovered after the lockout of 1999; without much success on the court since then, the fans never really came all the way back.

The James angle: I used to love following the Sonics. When they were really good in the early '90s, on some game nights I would head to the local sports bar in Jacksonville, drink Cokes, play pinball, and watch the Sonics games via satellite late into the night. I had a Gary Payton poster on my bedroom wall. I still wear a ratty, garish, green-and-yellow puffy Sonics jacket that I got via a cereal box offer. (It's very old, but very warm.)

But I fell out of love with the NBA over the years, primarily because the kind of arena the Sonics wanted to build makes for a terrible place for the average fan (like myself) to watch a basketball game. Ticket prices more than doubled when the Atlanta Hawks moved from the Omni to Phillips Arena; ditto for the Washington Wizards. In both arenas, the upper deck was placed much further away from the action, meaning that a more expensive ticket bought a seat with a less-than-awesome view. These palaces are built for the corporate write-off dollar, and not for the casual fan looking for a cheap night out and a couple hours of entertainment.

When I interviewed at Microsoft, the night I was scheduled to return there was a Sonics preseason game at KeyArena. I bought a cheap ticket in the upper deck and was amazed at how close to the action I was compared to Washington and Atlanta. They had dug underground from the floor of the old Coliseum to fit in more lower level seats; the result was that those seats started right on the edge of the court and went straight up, unlike the massive new buildings which were more spread out to accomodate a larger hockey rink and several tiers of luxury suites. Plus, the tickets were still affordable; there were lots of seats available at $10 and $22, a much lower price point than at the big luxury arenas.

After I picked out an apartment that happened to be near KeyArena, I bought a Sonics hoodie sweatshirt to celebrate. I spent a couple of days cleaning the old apartment in Virginia, wearing that sweatshirt to keep me motivated. After finally finishing the cleaning job the day before my final flight back to Seattle, I checked into my hotel room and settled into a hot bath with the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. This was the same infamous issue of SI in which it was revealed that the Sonics were pressing the city for a new arena; in the article, Seattle City Council member Nick Licata was quoted as saying the Sonics provided "close to zero" cultural value to the city. Thus, a few days before I moved to within a few minutes of the Key, the ball was set rolling on the Sonics' relocation. (Remember, correlation equals causation.) Team owner Howard Schultz soon threatened to move or sell the team absent a deal with the city for a luxury arena; he made good on his promise later in 2006, and in 2008 the new owners moved the team to OKC after 41 seasons in Seattle.

Granted, the lease was part of the team's problem; they definitely had a negative cash flow problem after the lockout. More money went to the city via proceeds from luxury boxes and parking than in most other NBA cities, in an effort to pay off the renovation price tag; this cost the team some revenue, and the city repeatedly refused to renegotiate. But still, an owner that cared about the city could have worked to keep the team here. That just wasn't in the cards.

The sadness: As I said, I've fallen out of love with the NBA over the years, so this move isn't as sad to me as seeing the Mariners or Seahawks leave would be. It's kind of infuriating than an arena built to team specifications and praised by NBA commish David Stern in 1996 is, a scant 10-12 years later, deemed inadequate. Worst of all, I won't be able to take Alex to a game, which I would have liked. I'm sure we'll still make to plenty of baseball and football games, and we've even been to WNBA Storm games. But not having the Sonics nearby is kind of sad.

The silver lining: If you like Schadenfreude, there's plenty to go around here. The OKC owners can only be described as -- and I say this with as much net neutrality as I can -- a bunch of country-fried retarded idiot morons. Aubrey McClendon, one of the team's owners, flat-out admitted to the OKC Journal Record that the ownership group had no intention of keeping the Sonics in Seattle. This earned him a $250,000 fine from the league. That's a quarter-mil that Aubrey might like to have back right now; he was forced to sell almost all his stock in his company Chesapeake Energy recently, a move that cost him an estimated $1.92 billion. Yes, that's BILLION.

Plus, prior to the Sonics and Seattle agreeing to terminate the KeyArena lease, the city's lawsuit against the team yielded some delightful evidence. As part of the discovery phase, an e-mail from lead OKC stupidhead Clay Bennet to NBA commish David Stern revealed some amazing, previously unknown facts.

(Read the e-mail here as a PDF first.)

First of all, one thing I've learned is that CEO-types are so busy that they don't even have time to hit the Shift key. David Stern's reply looks like a 13-year-old girl's text message. "okc has ur team now, lol!" I believe Steve Ballmer follows the same style when he writes his own e-mails, so this is definitely a trend, or at least a hidden key to business success.

Secondly, if you closely read Bennett's message to Stern, you'll notice how much is resembles FELLATIO IN E-MAIL FORM. I had no idea that grown men talked to each other this way, let alone super-rich fat-cats who fly around together in private jets.

"You are among a very few, notwithstanding our relative brief actual physical time together that have significantly affected my life. I view you as a role model as an extraordinarily gifted executive, a deep and compassionate thinker, and a person with a rare and unique charisma that brings out the best in everyone you touch. You are just one of my favorite people on earth and I so cherish our relationship Sonics business aside." --Clay Bennett in an e-mail to David Stern

I don't know about you, but I just threw up in my mouth A LOT.

Who talks like this? I mean, I know it's BS, and that Clay is just trying to butter up David so his team doesn't get fined any worse. But, wow.

Just... wow.

Thirdly, the team is still awful, despite having moved further away from me. Tonight, the Oklahoma City Thunder blew a 21-point lead to lose to the Memphis Grizzlies, sending their record to 2-21. That's two wins, 21 losses. With 59 games to go, their season is effectively over. The record for fewest number of wins by a team in an NBA season is 9; the Thunder are on pace to win only 7, although with the young talent they have I don't expect them to break that record. Still... I can't help but enjoy every single defeat. This has been far more entertaining to follow than any Sonics season in the past 10 years.

Lastly, and most importantly... this whole idea just isn't going to work. It's a stupid, stupid idea. The team just moved from the 14th-largest media market to the 45th. The NBA already has several small- and mid-market teams that are supposedly having trouble keeping up financially with the rest of the league, or even maintaining profitability. Teams in Sacramento, Memphis, Charlotte, and even successful San Antonio are complaining that reduced corporate support coupled with their smaller TV and radio contracts make it difficult for them to compete with the likes of New York, Boston and L.A.

And it's just going to get worse in this economic climate. The Oklahoma City arena is called the Ford Center; guess who just went to Congress asking for a huge bailout? (Maybe they can rename it the Betty Ford Center.) McClendon's Chesapeake Energy is another big sponsor and ticket customer of the team; it has recently lost a lot of valuation and profitability. Companies will be less likely and less able to take on large amounts of debt in this economy. They'll have to keep more cash on hand, which means fewer expenditures on things like sports tickets and luxury suites for employees and clients. They'll have to cut back on sponsorships, advertising, and naming rights deals.

The sliding economy has already resulted in the shutdown of the Houston Comets (four-time WNBA champs) and New Orleans VooDoo of the Arena Football League, and the AFL's entire 2009 season is apparently in jeoporady as the league faces financial difficulties. Struggling franchises in the NBA and the NHL are sure to be next. After the initial fan buzz wears off in OKC (which, judging by their record, could be sooner than expected), the Thunder could very well be in a world of pain.

Frankly, I can't wait.

Stay tuned for more tales of sporting woe!

The Mariners' 2008 season, summed up by one animated .gif

My oh my

Did somebody ask for inventive cursing? Well, this isn't it: the Mariners' latest loss finally sent manager John McLaren over the edge.

I think the most compelling argument in favor of firing him is that he sounds like he's using profanity for the first time.

Ichiro's got me figured out

After a fourth straight blowout loss on the road, Ichiro sums it up:

"Playing on this team and seeing what is happening around me, I feel that something is beginning to fall apart,'' Ichiro said, through a translator. "But, if I was not in this situation, and I was objectively watching what just happened this week, I would probably be drinking a lot of beers and booing.''

Yep, pretty much.

Ichiro: A steals machine, and a quote machine

After taking over the Mariners' franchise record for stolen bases from Julio Cruz, Ichiro gave us this pearl:

Ichiro said Cruz sent him a bottle of cologne at some point in the past, and the odor spelled out the age difference between the two.

"It smelled like old men," Ichiro said through an interpreter. "I felt the generation gap between us."

You never hear the one that gets you

One of the strange baseball traditions is the shaving cream pie. It's a classic practical joke, in which a player fills a paper plate with shaving cream, comes up behind a teammate (preferably during a TV interview), and gets him in the face.

The Mariners' closer, J.J. Putz, is notorious for pulling this prank on his teammates in the bullpen, especially when they achieve a milestone, like their first win. Last night, Putz dominated in the 9th inning for his first save after coming off the disabled list, and after the game, he was noticeably uncomfortable during the requisite TV interviews.

BOOSH!

That is an amazing display of stealth ninja skills on the part of Mark Lowe. He was crouched down and hiding behind J.J.'s clothes in his locker, waiting for the interview to start before striking. Just amazing.

Lost in translation... or not

It's the first Ichiro quote of the year!

Suzuki then broke to steal second base—"I was cold," Suzuki explained— while Lopez got jammed on an inside pitch but squibbed a soft roller to the spot Ian Kinsler vacated to cover the steal attempt.

Collect them all!

Baseball is definitely back

I just heard the Kansas City announcers describe a base hit as "vintage Grudzielanek".

Hooray for baseball! It's a holiday in the Furdell household... pretty much literally, as I'm taking the day off and we're all heading to the ballpark later to catch the Mariners-Rangers game. I've really been pining for the baseball, partially because the M's actually have a shot at the division this year (thanks to Los Angelheim having injury woes in its starting rotation), but also because we'll be going to a bunch of games with my baby son. (And then there's that whole matter of the Sonics being on the verge of leaving, from which we pretty much all need a distraction.)

My favorite M's blog is Lookout Landing. Here's their entry from the best game I attended last season.

Here's a video I sent to Theo, as a new anthem for baseball season.. Any attempt to explain it would prove fruitless, so I present it without further comment: the Peter Gammons theme song.

It's business time

It's not often we football referees get to inject homage into our work, but one college ref managed to do it last week. From the Maryland-N.C. State game:

The original quote, from a 1986 Bills-Jets game:

Baseball world shocked by Barry Bonds indictment

This is why I love the MLB Extra Innings package

Rex Hudler, the Los Angelheim Angels' color commentator on FSN West, just explained to the viewing audience that "MRI" stands for "Magnetic Renaissance Imaging".

Great googaly moogaly...

This is why baseball is great

I'll always be able to tell Alex that, at the first baseball game he ever attended, the Mariner Moose, riding around the field on his all-terrain vehicle, nearly ran down the Red Sox' Coco Crisp.

Step 1: Media Saturation; Step 2: ?????; Step 3: Profit!

I was happy to help out Tim Catts of BusinessWeek with his story about the technical problems some free online contests have had lately, including ESPN's fantasy baseball game (as you recall I detailed problems with them hea-ah, and hea-ah).

Later, when he noticed that he couldn't pick up players other teams had dropped, even days after the fact, Furdell decided to sit out the season. ESPN had a problem.

I like that. Take heed, ESPN. When you wrong the Furdell, YOU'VE GOT A PROBLEM.

It's true, I haven't even looked at my team since they reset the rosters. Kind of a shame, because with the Mariners actually playing kind of well, and me on paternity leave, I've been following baseball pretty closely. I've been to several great games in person this year... a tight 2-1 win over the Yankees, a great come-from-behind win over the B*lt*m*re Orioles (the team that doesn't like to admit where it's from), and a win in extra innings over the Red Sox a couple weeks ago with Dice-K pitching (and with my mom in attendance, to boot).

Plus, something really cool happened to the Mariners the other day, something blog-related that's probably never happened before... I'll have to talk about that later.

So yeah, despite all the baseball interest in '07, I bowed out of my ESPN fantasy league early, and the Emory gang has probably played its last season at ESPN. We will most likely head for the greener pastures of Yahoo next year. But I will treasure my 2005 championship banner. I will treasure it... always.

DID YOU KNOW? Also a baseball fan: my adorable new baby son, Alexander.

Seriously, this kid has, like 12 baseball-themed outfits, and I don't think I bought any of them.

(OK, I did buy him a Mariner Moose one, but you could argue that's for the moose content just as much as the baseball content.)

Doppler has my back

Kimberly and I, and our friend David Cuddy, went to the Seattle Storm game tonight. (That's WNBA, by the way.) They got walloped by San Antonio, sadly, but we had good seats a couple rows from the floor, close enough to see a Lauren Jackson fan who came equipped with props. Amusingly, he made the AP writeup:

One Storm fan showed his support for Jackson, of Australia, by holding up a 4-foot plastic kangaroo every time Jackson scored.

I'm pretty sure the reason that made the article is because he kept accidentally bonking the AP reporter (sitting in front of him in press row) on the head with the kangaroo. That's definitely the best way to make the paper.

Meanwhile: the Storm mascot is Doppler, a purple fuzzy thing with a wind meter on his head. Really.

In the 2nd quarter, while Doppler was making his rounds around the lower level, he spotted me and Kimberly. He pointed at Kimberly's baby-filled belly excitedly, then pointed at me, as if to say, "J'ACCUSE!" Then he gave me the "shame on you" hand gesture. I, of course, don't feel any shame over Mr. Baby, nor being able to conceive. I was a only a little fake-concerned that flaunting my ability to do so would anger the Storm's largely lesbian clientele. Still, being made to feel ashamed of my unborn child by a large fuzzy purple mascot is just downright embarrassing.

But Doppler's a good... man? and not one to leave it at that. After leading all the kids in the arena in an on-court conga line, which is adorable...

...he started throwing out T-shirts to the crowd, one of which, at random, contained a $25 Discover gift card. And before throwing out the third one, he seemed to be heading in my direction. Sure enough, he threw a T-shirt right at me, and sure enough, it was the one containing the $25 gift card, which I happily held up for the Jumbotron camera. (I had already made a cameo appearance on the Jumbotron on a replay, giving my "get out" cheer after a great block by Jackson.)

He had to know he was giving me the gift card, right? He was clearly getting me back for making fun of me earlier. At least, that's what I'm going to believe in my heart for all time.

And as David and Kimberly noted, this brings my total winnings while attending sports events to:
- a cell phone (Braves)
- a home jersey (Braves)
- round-trip airfare to San Fran (BB&T)
- $25 gift card (Storm)

And a shirt! Which I promptly wore so I could give a triumphant pose outside the game.

So, as is tradition, I was forced to pledge my undying devotion to the Storm. Sadly, as you may have heard, they (along with the Sonics) might be moving to Oklahoma City or Kansas City or Las Vegas or who-the-hell-knows-where in a year or so, after the state rightfully decided that spending $300M on an arena for a $250M franchise wasn't worth pursuing. I'm looking forward to laughing at owner Clay Bennett 10 years from now when the Sonics struggle to attract fans; when that sudden realization hits that he moved from the 14th-biggest TV market to the 45th or 31st or 43rd market, respectively, it's going to be highly enjoyable. For all of us.

But it really will be sad when the Storm leave, because it's a cheap ticket that families can afford, with a devoted fan base (only some of them lesbians). And those ladies (the ones on the court) are great role models for all the Girl Scouts we saw dribbling orange-and-white basketballs up the sidewalk after the game. The rest of the nation doesn't really care for this league, but it's a big deal here... there's no way they're going to replicate that in any of those other cities. (For one thing, I think they're just getting over the whole "Women shouldn't be allowed outside the home thing" in Oklahoma City. So there's that.)

Meanwhile, we'll try to enjoy it while they're here. And I'll try to figure out what to spend my $25 on.

A gross misappropriation of the talents of Parliament Funkadelic

I can only describe the Mariners' association of the phrase "FUNK BLAST" with home runs as "really unfortunate."

For the record, ESPN still has at least two problems

...with its fantasy baseball, which I just stumbled upon tonight.

I will label these bugs "A" and "2", and supplement them with bad-design-decision "iii".

A) I can move players around on my roster (make them active/inactive or change position slots), no problem. But when I go to add a new player from free agency, and it brings up the screen asking me to drop a player to make room, the players are back in their old slots, as if I hadn't made the changes. When I select a player to drop and submit the changes, the players I had moved for tomorrow are back in their old slots, and I have to move them again.

2) When I go to add a player from free agency, the screen that pops up asking me to drop a player to make room for him lists all my current players with a checkbox besides each. This would ordinarily not pose a problem, except that the particular move I need to make requires moving my current players around. I have three starting pitchers who are injured and eligible for the DL (disabled list) slot, a bonus slot in addition to your active players that allows you to replace an injured player without having to drop him. To add the free agent I want, I need to be able to drop the pitcher on the DL (Josh Johnson) to waivers, and move another injured pitcher (Chris Carpenter) to that slot. I can check the checkbox besides Josh Johnson's name and click Submit, but the transaction can't be completed because the system tries to add the new player to my non-DL roster, and there isn't any room.

iii) Making the "drop a player" screen based on check boxes is a poor design decision, exactly because of this type of scenario. In previous versions of the game, this screen instead gave you a pull-down list beside each player on your roster, allowing you to drop players OR move them around in various slots to make room for the new guy. The new design takes away this functionality and adds a step to add-drop operations, which is bad.

By themselves, these aren't serious bugs, because I could work around both of them separately. If the roster changes I made got undone by adding a player, I can re-do the changes. If a player I want to drop is on the DL, I can first swap him with another injured player, then check his checkbox on the drop screen and pick up my new player.

But put together, they create a synergy of badness that is impossible to work around. Even if I swap Josh Johnson with Chris Carpenter on the DL, those changes aren't reflected on the drop-a-player checkbox screen, because of bug A. After the swap, Johnson appears back in the DL slot on the drop screen, meaning I can't drop him because of bug 2 (and indirectly because of poor-design-decision iii.) There is literally no way to add the starting pitcher I need.

Wow. Those are problems I managed to stumble on in about 30 minutes, doing fairly standard roster maintenance. It's becoming more and more obvious that the testing on ESPN's Fantasy Baseball was either ignored, non-existent, or completely misguided. There's an important lesson to be learned from all this; good software testing is very important. Do not ignore it, even with your pretty, postmodern Web 2.0 apps.

It's free, but it does not rock

The problems ESPN has been having with its 2007 incarnation of fantasy baseball may go down in the software testing hall of infamy.

I've been playing in ESPN leagues since college with my collegiate buddies, and up until this year it had been a pay service. We stuck with it out of habit, despite free offerings from Yahoo and CBS Sportsline; despite the cost, it was always fairly reliable. Their player listings were up to date, and the website always behaved the way I expected it to.

In an apparent bid to complete with the free games, ESPN decided to jump on the free bandwagon, while at the same time giving their system a major overhaul. There was a whole lot of publicity and ballyhoo, including a funny and expensive-looking ad campaign featuring, among other things, Peter Gammons in a wig. And the look of the new site is great; it's well-designed and sleek, it largely makes sense, and it takes advantage of modern browser technologies, with real-time updates and a tab-based user interface. I had a couple issues with selecting the wrong player during the draft, but the interface is only partially to blame there.

Other than that it all looked pretty solid, until the season rolled around. Some of the bugs I noticed (and I'm sure I didn't hit them all):

- On opening day, roster changes were locked; there was no way to activate players for the following day(s). As a result there was no way to pick up free agents.
- Players who were dropped from a roster are supposed put on waivers for a couple days; if nobody else claims them, they become free agents. In our league, dropped players were never clearing waivers; days after they were supposed to be free agents, they were still marked as being on waivers.

Other issues reported here and there on the intertubes: there were persistent problems with roster moves, live scoring updates, and general site accessibility throughout the first week of the season. Some leagues were not seeing the players they drafted appear on their rosters. There may have even been other problems that haven't been publicized (ESPN hasn't provided a detailed description of all the bugs they've fixed since the start of the season, just that there are "problems").

Earlier this week, ESPN decided it had to take a nuclear bug-fix option: it rolled everyone's roster back to opening day, and made all scoring retroactive to that active roster only. In other words, all transactions were wiped out, so any points gained or lost by roster moves that players had made between the start of the season and April 12 were erased. Which really hurts if you're the kind of player who spends a lot of time adjusting his team (like, um, me... sometimes). I had made a few moves to shore up weak spots in my roster, and they've been wiped out by ESPN's time traveling shenanigans.

Supposedly it wasn't the increased user traffic that caused the problems. ESPN hasn't said how many more players it has had to accommodate since going gratis, but traffic to the site never seemed to slow it down. The problems instead appear to stem from data processing glitches. Which begs the question: what kind of testing did they do before the season?

A fantasy baseball game on the scale of ESPN's has quite a few data processing hurdles to overcome:
- There are 8-12 teams per league, which adds up to thousands of different teams and roster combinations
- There are hundreds of baseball players available to choose from, and the pool of available players changes during the season due to injuries, call-ups from the minors, etc.
- The system has to keep up with all baseball players' statistics, (in real time)
- Relevant fantasy team statistical totals are calculated (in real time)
- League standings are updated based on these statistical totals (in real time)

It was the real-time stuff that was new to ESPN this year, but I don't think that's what was causing the issues, either. In previous years, you could get a real-time box score for your team, but the league standings were not updated live; they were processed late at night after all the day's action had completed. This year, with the addition of real-time updates, the standings appeared to be updating accurately during the day; you could even leave the standings or team box-score page up, and it would update without having the refresh the page.

Instead, the bulk of their processing problems appeared to come from a simple lack of good functional testing. I can only speculate without any details or some kind of public post-mortem on what went wrong, but it sure looks like they didn't bother or just didn't have time to simulate a real season. When nobody can even make a roster move on the first day of the season, and players never clear waivers on the date they're supposed to, that's a pretty good sign to me that they didn't adequately test the system using simulated data and players.

And so you see why my chosen profession, software tester, is something like the red-headed stepchild of software engineering. It's important, because you can catch high-publicity problems like these before an angry public encounters them. But it's often ignored or blown off; after all, you could work as a tester on a big system like ESPN's fantasy baseball, have an infinite amount of time to work on it, and still never catch all the bugs. That makes scheduling time and resources for testing difficult, especially when you're trying to push out a flashy, highly publicized new system under a tight deadline.

It doesn't help that one of the Web 2.0-type philosophies toward testing seems to be, "let the users do it." The teams that create web-based applications tend to not devote a ton of resources to dedicated testers; this is perhaps one of the reasons why GMail, which was originally introduced three years ago, is still marked as being in "Beta" (implying there's still more testing to do).

I'm really curious about what kind of testing ESPN did. Hopefully we'll find out in some kind of ugly, public tell-all. Those are the best kinds. In the meantime, I can't believe I'm stuck with Jorge Julio, AGAIN. I keep trying to drop Jorge Julio, but THEY KEEP PULLING HIM BACK IN.

Watching football in my pajamas

I'm still not entirely used to Pacific time, in regards to how it affects my sports viewing habits. I've barely had time to make coffee, and the Seahawks-Bears game comes on at 10 a.m. In fact, it's not even 10:15 and the Bears are already up 7-0. This game may be over before I've even had time to enjoy Kimberly's football-shaped waffles. (If footballs were square.)

Oh well, at least last week's game was fun; my office-mate, Emeron, and his two kids, Klaus and Silke, camped out on my couch with me and Kimberly and watched a great game against the Cowboys. It culminated in what some are calling a classic sports blunder: Tony Romo bobbling a hold on a field goal attempt, botching what should have been an easy chip shot. Mr. Romo was Lucy; Martin Gramatica was Charlie Brown.

That led to some fun Internet shenanigans, such as Tony Romo's tears available for sale on the Dallas Craigslist (since removed), and the story on The Onion, "Tony Romo Regrets Eating Greasy Fried Chicken During Crucial Field-Goal Attempt."

It was one of those "jumping up off the couch and yelling at the TV" sports moments. Good times.

My personal apology to Shaun Alexander

He was not able to withstand the combined jixes of being on the cover of Madden 2007, me buying his jersey, and me attending his game on Sunday. Result: broken foot.

It's... it's all my fault.

Andrew claims that we're the only ones who get this reference, and he's probably right, so this is solely for our benefit

"You guys seen J.J.?"

(Explanation: This is the closing line from a 1980s-era anti-drug PSA on TV, in which a Len Bias-esque basketball star named "J.J." sees his promising career cut tragically short by the white pony. And now you know... the rest... of the story.)

Dick Vermeil is retiring

If there was some way I could wager my soul on there being some crying during his farewell press conference, I would do it.

Hey, he's from Oaktown too!

Just like me! I'm from Oaktown!

I'm from the STREETS! So is M.C. Hammer!

Where my champagne at

PWN3D

Historical celebrity deathmatch

What officiating high school football has taught me so far this season:

The strategic powers behind the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart, are no match for the brilliant inventions of Thomas Edison and the wily intellect of George Mason, respectively.

Tune in next week to find out if Cardinal Gibbons is any match for the combined powers of martyred tag-team St. Stephen & St. Agnes.

Take a picture, it will last longer

I had to get shots of two of my most amazing accomplishments, which happened this week.

First, I beat Chris and Bowen on The Getaway: High Speed II.

That's big. That's like striking out Ty Cobb, and then striking out Babe Ruth. And, since I'm a complete ass, I had to get a picture of it.

Secondly, today I took first place in our fantasy baseball league.

Since this is not likely to last, I had to get a screenshot of that too.

GO ME!

I RAWK!

Maybe the funniest baseball thing I've ever seen

Last night: Nats vs. Mets.

The weather: scattered showers.

The grounds crew at RFK Stadium: completely incapable of getting the tarp out on the field.

Probably a number of factors contributed to the problem, including "they were too hella-slow rolling it out," and "they didn't hire enough guys to pull it." Whatever the cause, they kept getting stuck in the outfield, and weren't able to pull the plastic over the entire infield.

During the first rain delay, it took 10 minutes to pull out the tarp; by the time they finished, the rain had, of course, practically stopped.

During the second rain delay, it took 30 minutes to pull the tarp out.

Kimberly and I knew they weren't going to be able to resume the game, because by the time they finsihed the puddles were literally a foot deep on the infield. But we had to stay to witness the spectacle of the overmatched ground crew desperately tugging on the tarp as a few thousand remaining fans yelled at them to "PULL! PULL! PULL!" When they started playing the Rocky theme, that seemed to provide the inspiration necessary to finally (almost) finish the job.

Of course, after all that, the game was called eight minutes later. Apparently, both teams filed a protest.

What a mess. But that's what's great about baseball: you never know when you're going to see something ridiculous that nobody's ever seen before.

Great googaly moogaly

I can't believe they got the "two Ns and one T" thing right, but left out the first I.

P.S. Happy birthday Mom!

It's baseball time

My baseball viewing schedule is already packed, and it starts Friday in Atlanta with the Braves vs. the Mets.

I'm getting my custom scorebook ready. (Yes, I'm a huge nerd, I know. Andrew has already let me know multiple times.) I was looking through the old ones and found this doodle I did of John Rocker, right about the time he totally melted down and had to be sent down to the Braves' Triple-A team in Richmond. Among the people mad at him: people with Purple Hair, Twisted Sister, and John Schuerholz.

Where is Rocker now? I have no idea.

Colorado vs. Arizona, ppd.: bees

This is why baseball is great. You never know when you'll get to see something that never happens.

My bracket is toast

Yes, so much for this year. None of my upsets came in, and I didn't pick any of the ones that actually happened. So, the usual. DAMN YOU SMARCH MADNESS!

But I have to give props to Boise State. They weren't in the tournament, but they were hosting some first round games. And, as you might expect from the school with the blue football field, their court is just as flamboyantly cool:

Another favorite: the Cleveland State Vikings, whose mascot looks like an anthropomorphized pickle. Um, with a sword.

Larry Drewett: 1938-2005

My friend Larry Drewett passed away last Friday. He was the referee on my football officiating crew. And he was completely insane.

Insane in a good way, though. This is man who, physically, probably had no right being anywhere near a football field, let alone officiating varsity high school contests, which requires a good level of stamina and endurance. But even though he looked frail on the outside, inside he was like the Terminator. Nothing was going to keep Larry away from the game. He couldn't be bargained with; he couldn't be reasoned with. He absolutely would not be stopped... from refereeing football games.

I only joined up with Larry's crew two seasons ago, but in that time I saw him battle an incredible array of ailments. He had diabetes, and his wife Ellen would dutifully follow us after games to whatever restaurant we decided on; she would shoot him up with insulin, then look at the menu and tell Larry what he could and couldn't eat. During the 2003 season he was on kidney dialysis the whole time; so, three times a week, in the middle of the night, he would endure being hooked up to a dialysis machine via the fistula installed in his forearm.

During one game in 2003, a tackled player fell in such a way that his helmet contacted Larry in the ribs. Larry worked the rest of that game, and all of the following game, with cracked ribs; he had trouble working up enough breath to blow the whistle. In fact, it was obvious that even the walk from the locker room to the field was painful for him. But he shrugged it off and insisted he could get through it. He got knocked down again during our playoff game that year, but bounced right up again like nothing had happened.

When Larry went in for a physical during the offseason, the doctor discovered that, at some point, Larry had suffered a small fracture in his foot; he had continued to work through it anyway, claiming it didn't bother him. Larry's kidney transplant finally came through (he had previously lost one kidney to cancer, and the other was failing), so he went through surgery for that over the summer, and still had the energy to hit the field at the start of the 2004 season.

I was worried that he was going to die on the football field, thus traumatizing me and everyone else on the field for life. I kept having this vision of Larry getting clobbered inadvertantly during a game, and not getting up. But he appeared to be in even better shape than the previous year, up until six games into the season, when he had to go under the knife again to have (of all things) his urethra replaced.

But less than a month later, he came back again. I talked with him before that game, and he complained that the doctors should just go ahead and install zippers in him, so that they wouldn't have to keep cutting him open all the time.

It was the following day when we had a game I'll never forget. St. Johns at Bishop O'Connell, on a warm Saturday afternoon; early in the second half, the game was basically a blowout and already decided. One team's quarterback dropped back, was pursued, and lost the ball. Without looking, one of the defenders turned upfield to sprint for the loose ball. Unfortunately, he turned right into Larry and shellacked him. My horrific vision had come true; Larry went flying and hit the ground.

I was mortified. First, I had to cover the play... the defense picked up the fumble, and ran it back all the way for a touchdown. As soon as I rang up the TD, I jogged back to where Larry was lying, fearing the worst. Our umpire and the home team's physician were already hovered over him. But before I even got back to Larry, he stood up like nothing had happened. Larry sat out one play (the try after the touchdown), and then came right back in. After the game, he showed me the cut on his nose that his glasses had made when he hit the ground. He also talked about how he had managed to twist his body so that he could avoid landing on the side that had just been operated on. I could only shake my head in disbelief.

Larry got through four more games; the last two were part of an unprecedented day-night varsity doubleheader. I remember that Larry was sugar crashing during the second game, and we had to fetch him a candy bar to keep him going. But we got through both those games almost flawlessly. He was so good at what he did; his heath was failing, his hearing wasn't so good, and even his vision wasn't the best (thus perpetuating certain stereotypes about referees), but his knowledge of the rules was unparalleled, and his drive to stay on the field was nothing short of inspirational.

Larry didn't make our last regular season game. Shortly thereafter, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and cancer of his remaining original kidney. It was just too much; he was clearly terminal, and he knew it. But he insisted he would keep fighting. He was actually apologetic that our crew wasn't able to work a playoff game because of his failing health. "I'm sorry I let you guys down," he said to me on the phone, as he was lying in his hospital bed with terminal lung cancer. That, incredibly, seemed like his biggest regret; that we wouldn't get to work one more game because of him. "I'm going to try to get through the chemotherapy, and then get in shape for next season," he said to me. And he meant it.

Like I said: insane.

One of my favorite quotes about life comes from a comic book: Sandman by Neil Gaiman (and Andrew, I know you don't like Gaiman, but I expect some leeway on this particular occasion). One of the main characters is Death, personified; not the Grim Reaper or some creepy spectre, but actually a practical young woman. In this particular issue, she's making her rounds, collecting souls. One man she visits, when he realizes he's died, debates the fairness of it all, whether he deserved to have died right then. And Death replies, matter-of-factly, "You lived what anyone gets... You got a lifetime."

The implication is obvious: you get one lifetime, so do what you love, while you can. You don't want to be the one who, when your times comes, complains that you didn't have enough time. Be the one who says, "I did all right." That's basically the secret of life. I think Larry knew that.

And even though he had literally decades of experience on me, he always treated me as an equal. He never talked down to me; he actually treated me with respect. What more could you ask for from a friend?

That's why I'm going to miss him.

Reason #4,201 why golf is dumb

Dean Wilson, a rookie pro golfer looking to make it on the PGA Tour, had a good second round at the [product-placed old person's luxury car] Open. But he was disqualified when he forgot to sign his scorecard.

Is there any other sport that features the thrill of a player losing because he filed paperwork incorrectly? No wonder my boss likes it so much. Here's an idea: just let him sign the stupid scorecard and keep playing.

Photographic proof

Hey, remember when I hit all those baskets to win free plane tickets?

That was awesome.

OK, I know it was only a month ago. But it's still the best thing to happen to me since... well, since I won a pinball game.

Anyway, Mindy Pipes, BB&T tournament manager and my new favorite woodwind, stumbled upon the site and was nice enough to send me a photo. Thus, Mindy becomes the frontrunner for furdell.com Person of the Year for 2005.

I like the blurry, Bigfoot-esque quality I've got going on there. It seems appropriate for a photograph of such a legendary, mythical event. Plus it illustrates the fact that I'm really fast, like the Flash.

In anticipation of your questions:

- Yes, that was the shot I missed and went to chase down, like a fool.
- No, I don't have lighty-up shoes. Those are little reflectors that caught the light.
- Current plans are to use the tickets to visit San Fran this summer, maybe for a week or so, and catch some Giants games while we're at it. Field trip!

Eye of the Tighe... er...?

As Andrew will tell you, puns are the lowest form of humor. We hate puns, and have tasked ourselves with seeking them out and destroying them utterly.

But my brain's natural pun defenses can't even keep up with the insane pun-mongering of Tommy Tighe. Tighe hosts the halftime portion of the Sunday night NFL game on CBS/Westwood One radio. All season I've been marveling at his ridiculousness while recounting the day's highlights; the puns, which relate to various NFL teams and players, are both insane and numerous. They fly by so fast; just when you think you've recovered from the last one, here comes the next one. Some favorite examples that I was able to retain:

- The Titans were missing their "McNair traffic controller" (Steve McNair is their QB)
- The Jaguars missed the playoffs but "can't blame it on Del Rio" (their coach)
- New Orleans lost? "Saint that a shame!" (Hmm. Also used: "Saint Elsewhere")
- It's not a "Terry Christmas" for the Browns and coach Terry Robiskie (Also, the team experienced an offensive "Brown-out")
- Referred to N.Y. Jets QB Chad Pennington as "Penny and the Jets"
- Referred to Lions QB Joey Harrington is "The Lion King," and said it was "Hakuna Matata" against Green Bay (Tighe really takes these things too far sometimes)
- Two touchdowns on the ground for Baltimore's Jamal Lewis? "That's so Raven!"

Oh man. That last one's my favorite. (Side note: That's So Raven is Andrew's favorite TV show. Let's all gently mock him for a short-to-medium period of time.) There were more examples, but I think my brain exploded in protest. Tune in during the playoffs and maybe you'll hear Tighe and his ridiculous menagerie of puns.

When I turn this goofy Colonial hat around, I'm like a MACHINE

Kimberly, "Staci" and I went to the BB&T Classic college basketball tournament at MCI Center in D.C. We milked Kimberly's George Washington student tickets a bunch the last two years, and had a lot of fun hanging in the rowdy, standing-room only student section. She snagged us some tickets to to the final round of the tournament on Sunday.

We got there early to catch the consolation game between George Mason and Michigan State. I noticed that there were a bunch of NBA scouts sitting nearby in our section; one from Toronto, one from Charlotte, and four or five others. They were taking sporadic notes on some of the more prolific players.

Later on, we're watching GW-Maryland, the championship game. It's a great game, very close all through the first half. I'm having fun, jumping up and down in the front of all the students. I'm wearing my blue Skechers sneakers (I'm trying to skew to a younger demographic), my favorite tan sweater, and a gray Colonials T-shirt over that. Oh, and the coup de grace: a goofy black Colonials hat, which I actually acquired at last year's BB&T Classic. I don't have a picture of it, but it's basically a cheap version of this:

Suddenly, one of the MCI Center employees ("Seth!") approaches me, and asks me if I want to compete in the JetBlue on-court promotion, in which you have to make a bunch of shots to win two free JetBlue tickets.

The key here, is, of course, that you have to do it in front of about 15,000 people.

And, the risk of accepting such a challenge is embarrassing one's self, and permanently shaming one's wife in front of a big crowd of merciless college hoops fans.

I, of course said yes.

My biggest dilemma, as I waited for them to bring me down to the court near the end of halftime, was whether to keep on the goofy colonial hat (I went with yes). I was concerned that, when I inevitably started throwing up bricks and airballs, that the (thousands of) Maryland fans in attendance would start booing, and I wouldn't hear the end of it.

The Terps made a run to cut GW's lead to one, right before the first TV time out of the half. Then, as they walked me out on to the court, the first thing I noticed was that the hoop seems much, much higher when you're on the court than when you're sitting at a higher level. I felt very short. But, I kept thinking back to the last time I had shot a basketball, which was last summer at the Y, and hoped that my arms could recall how to do it properly. I also remembered that I never seemed to be able to sink a damn thing in any of the pick-up games I had played.

They had a few circles on the court from where I had to shoot. Two layups, one from each side of the basket; one just shy of the free throw line; one just shy of the three-point line at the top of the key; and then a big rectangle marked "JetBlue", a good distance away and at a 45-degree angle from the hoop, definitely in NBA 3-point territory. All this in 45 seconds.

I had talked with the organizers about the young woman from George Mason who had participated in the same contest during the earlier game of the doubleheader. She had managed to sink the first four shots to move her out to the long NBA three, but she just didn't have the arm strength to get it anywhere near the hoop. They had been shouting at her to try it underhanded, but she just didn't, and she couldn't manage to get a good shot from that distance.

I gave a quick wave to Kimberly and "Staci" and got set for the first layup.

"Are you ready, James?" said the PA announcer. I nodded. "3... 2... 1... GO!!!"

...

Whew! Isn't this a great story?

...

First, I took the layup from the right with the right hand. No problem. I moved over to the left, and basically took a set shot right-handed, but missed a little too strong. I grabbed the rebound, reset the same way, and hit the second shot.

OK! So far so good, and not much time had elapsed. I backed up to the free throw line and took a shot, but missed off the rim to the left. As I ran to grab the rebound, Seth reminds me that there's a kid standing there to feed me the ball. "Oops," I thought. Oh yeah. I think I missed the next one too. But this time I remembered to stay put, and I managed to sink the next shot.

I backed up to the college 3-pointer circle. Let 'er rip. Swish on the first try! Unprecedented!

And I think, at this point, that I have to credit the high school football officiating I've been doing for helping me out in this particular life situation. I've been a line judge for four years now, and I've done 35 varsity games. And I've gotten to the point where I can be on the field and not let a crowd (or coaches, or players, etc.) affect me. I get a kind of tunnel vision on the field; I just pay attention to what I'm supposed to be doing, and ignore everything else. And I had that tunnel vision as I hustled over to the terrifyingly-far-away JetBlue NBA 3-pointer square... not celebrating, not listening to the crowd, not paying attention to how much time I had left. Just doing what I had to do.

Now it was crunch time. I flashed back to when I played a pickup game at the Omni, the old basketball arena in Atlanta. I think Big Pinz and I were covering some goofy fraternity fund-raiser game before an Atlanta Hawks game, and had finagled our way onto the court. We remarked at how it was more difficult to hit the long shots, what with the clear backboard and multi-colored seats in the background. And how those NBA three-pointers were just so very much further away than the college threes we were used to.

The ball boy fed me the first ball. I was so far away from the basket, I couldn't even use my regular shot mechanic; I really felt like I was forcing it up from the middle of my body, rather than from over my head. I heaved up the first shot, and it felt a little weak. It seemed to me that such a shot would look ridiculous if I could see it on TV; not the way Doug Christie would do it at all. I grabbed another ball from the ball boy.

Oh, but wait a second... THAT SHOT I JUST SHOT WENT RIGHT IN THE BASKET. I couldn't believe it. I JUST WON THE DAMN THING!

(This really, happened, I promise you. I wouldn't lie to you guys. I have eyewitnesses.)

Now the victory theme from Hoosiers is playing through my head. I think I danced up the court, elated, and pointed at Kimberly. Then I jumped up and down some more. Keep in mind I'm still wearing the goofy Colonials hat through all this, so I'm sure it all looked highly dignified.

I came back and high-fived all the ball boys. And all those Maryland fans were actually cheering, happy that somebody had finally taken JetBlue for some tickets and not embarrassed themselves.

I filled out the form for the plane ticket vouchers, which I'm assured will be sent to me post haste. Apparently I get two tickets to anywhere JetBlue flies (which, from Washington, consists of Fort Lauderdale, Long Beach, Sacramento, Oakland, and... ah, of course... Vegas).

I made my way back to the seats, high fiving various people and hearing random cheers. One of the NBA scouts in our section congratulated me; I told him that, if he's scouting me, he should mark me an upgrade on NBA three-pointers and downgrade on free throws. (He didn't look too amused. I thought it was funny.)

Oh by the way: I don't want to necessarily claim that my performance provided the spark that unranked GW needed to overcome the 12th-ranked Terrapins, but they did open it up after that, eventually winning by nine. Draw your own conclusions.

People kept recognizing and congratulating me on the street after the game. I still can't believe I won. I haven't had that much fun at a basketball game since...

(Yes, that's me and Pup at a Hawks-Hornets playoff game in 1998. Awesome. Funny, we were the only ones wearing makeup.)

So anyway... what did you do this weekend?

(P.S. I hope you enjoyed this furdell.com 250th post spectacular.)

Case in point

I'm watching Monday Night Football. New England Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel came down awkward while defending a late game pass. ABC treated us to a close-up shot of him writhing on the ground in pain, shrieking in Dolby Surround 2.0! (Oh well, at least Desperate Housewives is loving the free pub; it finished with its highest ratings of the season last week.)

While I'm complaining about football, how is it I can go a documented 10-5-1 against the spread this week, and finish in a four-way tie for fourth in our nine-person pool? Freakin' Liaps went a documented 12-3-1... inconceivable! And even Pinzur would have kept pace with me had he not foolishly chosen the Bears.

Easy week, I guess. We all should have gone to Vegas.

Great moments in sports brawling

That Pistons-Pacers fan-player mel?e in Detroit was awful. Although this shot from ESPN was kind of funny...

Actually, the whole thing reminded me of a hockey game Andrew and I attended in February 1995. My family was visiting me at Emory, so I picked up a pair of tickets to the Atlanta Knights-Cincinnati Cyclones game. The Knights were actually pretty good... they won several IHL titles, led primarily by Stan Drulia. But the best thing about their team was the mascot, "Sir Slapshot."

Sadly, I can't find any pictures of him on the Internets, but Sir Slapshot was basically constructed of the same material used in those giant inflatable moonbounce things that kids jump around in. He was a big, goofy, inflatable blimp of a knight. And, his arms were attached to his sides at his elbows. As a result, he could only move his forearms, giving him this odd Robbie the Robot waving-my-arms-around style.

So Andrew and I are enjoying the game, sitting in the lower level of the dearly departed Omni. In the middle of the game, I look over a few aisles to my right and see Sir Slapshot bounding down the aisle, toward the glass behind the visiting team bench, preparing to bang on it as hockey mascots often do. I also notice that the visiting team coach is leaning back on the glass, and I cringe as I watch him get knocked forward by the glass when Sir Slapshot bounces into it.

Then, as Andrew and I watched in horror, the coach climbed over the glass, bounded up the aisle, tackled Sir Slapshot, and started wailing on him with a series of right hooks! All the while, the poor mascot is pinned to the ground, flailing its too short arms about helplessly. Unbelievable. And one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Coach and mascot were finally separated. The coach, Don Jackson, was suspended for 10 games, and footage of the incident made SportsCenter. And, as I recall, Sir Slapshot skated out before the third period wearing comically oversized bandages on his head, but otherwise none the worse for wear.

A good time was had by all.

Are you ready for some BOOBIES?!

Oh, the drama.

An ABC-TV cross-promotion on "Monday Night Football" for the new series "Desperate Housewives" worked a little too well, so the network apologized all over itself yesterday.

ABC's intro to Eagles-Cowboys featured a naked Nicollette Sheridan, one of the "Housewives," jumping into the arms of Philly receiver Terrell Owens. Viewers and the NFL then jumped all over the network.

"We have heard from many of our viewers about the 'MNF' opening segment and we agree that the placement was inappropriate," ABC said in a statement.

The NFL called the intro "inappropriate and unsuitable for our 'Monday Night Football' audience."

Here we go again, with the complaints about nudity/sexual suggestiveness adjacent to football coverage. "Oh nooo, think of the children! They will be scarred for LIFE after seeing Nicolette Sheridan's NAKED BACK!" or something. (And don't forget the underexplored "white woman jumping into the arms of a black man" factor, which, in our backward-thinking nation, surely caused at least a portion of the complaints.)

This whole situation astounds me, considering the context: the three-hour orgy of violence known as Monday Night Football. Don't get me wrong, I love football. I even officiate at the high school level. But let's face it: it's an extremely violent sport. When we work games, we concentrate on safety issues in an effort to prevent players from incurring serious injuries. It's an uphill battle, because football fans tend glorify the big hits and revel in the roughness.

MNF has been the scene of some gruesome sights. The one I remember like a recurring nightmare was Napoleon McCallum's horrific knee injury during the first Monday night game of the season in 1994. I even remember where I was when I saw this -- in my freshman dorm room, watching with hallmates, who were similarly disturbed.

With the Raiders playing the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park on Monday Night Football, McCallum took a handoff and ...

"I got the ball and just tried to run through the middle, and the whole line was stopped up," McCallum recalls. "There was a big pile and I tried to go forward, and (49ers linebacker) Ken Norton had my shoulders and he was trying to pull me back. I'm pushing forward, and he's pulling me back and something gave, and that was my knee."

It was a gruesome sight, and a worldwide audience witnessed it over and over on instant replay: McCallum's left knee had been contorted so badly that his lower leg looked to be dangling by a thread. Blood was quite visible.

EWWWW. It's 10 years later and I can't even think about that scene without getting a little queasy. And, of course, the producers kept showing the replay over and over and over... and I kept yelling, "Stop, stop, STOP! I no longer want to see that man's foot touching his own stomach!" (I'm just grateful McCallum's still able to walk, because it really looked like he was going to lose a leg.)

Even more famous is the hit Lawrence Taylor put on Joe Theismann in 1985, breaking Theismann's leg in two places, sending him to the hospital and ending his career. And, again, ABC kept replaying it and replaying it until the nation collectively vomited.

Now, you can argue that violence isn't the main reason we love football, and that everyone involved is properly shocked and somber when a player is injured. But then I would have to point you to this website, where you can buy an autographed photo of Lawrence Taylor, taken right as he's about to break Theisman's leg into three pieces. We, quite simply, glorify the violence.

And, we're willing to let our kids watch players' legs get separated from their bodies, but if the network shows a topless woman from the back... NOW the children watching are scarred for life? There's nothing harmful about boobies, people. Boobies never broke anyone's leg in two. Boobies never bent anyone's knee 45 degrees in the wrong direction. (Well, not that I'm aware of.)

Yes, I realize I live in a country where gay marriage is a hotter social issue than the thousands of people who have died in Iraq, and that this is just symptomatic of that same bizarre mode of thinking. We, as a nation, fear sex and love violence. And I just don't get it. Why isn't it the other way around? It should be the other way around.

(Desperate Housewives, by the way: great show. Highly recommended. We watch it every week with our lawyer friend "Staci".)

I'll take Cancer minus the 3

It's my favorite college basketball event of the year: the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic!

Final score: Cancer 102, Coaches 100 in OT.

Great moments in fantasy football

In last night's Browns-Ravens game, I had Baltimore's drug-running back Jamal Lewis going for me. I assumed he wouldn't be able to get me enough points to win, with about two minutes to go and Cleveland driving slowly for a touchdown.

Suddenly, Ravens safety Ed Reed, also on my team, intercepts a pass in the end zone and runs it back 106 yards for a touchdown, giving me just enough points for a win and possibly saving my season.

Another great moment... in fantasy football.

(Yes, I have started rooting for player stats over team results. I am a bad football fan. I fully admit it.)

The Steelers game: a photo essay

People have been complaining that I haven't posted anything in a while. Those people can go to hell!

Um, really, there's nothing going on. You don't want to read about my dilemma over where to order Molex pins for fixing up the connectors in my new pinball game. Instead, here are some photos from the Steelers game I went to a few weeks ago in Pittsburgh.

Baseball Jones

Atlanta Braves third baseman and all-around redneck Chipper Jones just had a son, and named him Shea Logan Jones. And yes, that's intentional. The kid is actually named after the New York Mets' Shea Stadium, where Chipper is often booed and called "Larry" (his real name, which I can't imagine bothers him), but where he also routinely crushes the Mets (.314 lifetime average, and he hit his first career home run there).

Fortunately for his son, Chipper didn't choose one of the other ballparks out there, which could have resulted in:

etc.

(Although Minute Maid Jones would have been awesome.)

The sport of the future

Oh man, have you guys seen any of that Olympic fencing? I would have been watching the whole thing if I knew the athletes were wearing the coolest sports equipment ever devised... lighty-up helmets.

One fencer is red, the other yellow. Little LEDs in their helmets flash when they touch the opponent with the foil. BRILLIANT.

Plus, the shiny, metallic, bulked-up helmets look like poorly-designed costume props from a low-budget 1970s sci-fi film. I kept expecting James Caan to jump out the shadows screaming "ROLLERRRBALLLLLLLLL!!!" before dismantling another robomatronic Yul Brenner.

I now fully expect Lazer Tag [sic] to become an Olympic exhibition event by 2012. (Andrew and I, being veterans of cheap Lazer Tag knockoff Photon, don't stand a chance.)

It was only a matter of time

Now that Major League Baseball has entered into an agreement to place Spider-Man 2 logos on the bases and on-deck circles for one weekend next month, and is reportedly considering other product-placement advertising on players' jerseys, can we all finally agree that it's time Congress repealed baseball's anti-trust exemption?

Here's the Silly Quote of the Day:

"This [advertising] does nothing to impact the play of the game," [MLB president and CEO Bob] DuPuy said. "The base doesn't know that it has a corporate name on it, nor does the foot that hits the base."

Ahh, but consider, Mr. DuPuy: my eyes that watch the game will know that this looks absoludicrously awful. What's next? Where do we draw the line?

Oh. That's where.

The mystery of Pants... SOLVED

I figured out who Pants is! Our long national nightmare is over!

Long ago, as I was thumbing through a ratty issue of Total Baseball with Kimberly by my side, we stumbled upon an entry with a first name of "Pants."

(Hmm, I'm thinking Lifetime movie. "I Know My First Name Is Pants." Let's make some calls about this.)

Unfortunately, while laughing uncontrollably, I lost the page, and the true identity of Pants seemed lost to me forever.

Until today.

Clarence "Pants" Rowland was manager of the White Sox from 1915-1918. He even won a World Series in 1917, but when the team slipped to 5th the following year he was fired (thus avoiding the whole Black Sox thing).

Pants later umpired in Major League Baseball and served as president of the Pacific Coast League. According to his obituary, here's how he got his name:

When Roland broke into baseball, the first club he played with did not have a uniform small enough to fit him. The pants slid down to his ankles--and a nickname was established.

In that case, shouldn't they have named him No-Pants? Or, to adapt a nickname from another White Sox member, Pantsless Joe?