Stuff, and more Stuff.

Meandering through my brain this morning there's 'stuff'.  All sorts of 'stuff'.

We watched game seven of the series between the New York Rangers and the Washington (DC) Capitals - if you have never seen professional hockey, you have never seen one heck of an exciting sport! It flashes by so fast, and the scrums in front of the Rangers's net last night (they were in overtime) were furious and intense - and seemed to last forever because I was rooting for the Rangers.

Mike Emerick - the game caller last night - WHEW!!  How he does it, I don't know, but he keeps up and calls the plays like an old time radio announcer. He gets so into the game, so invested, that I can just see him hunched over the microphone, his eyes following every move, every flash of a stick as he tells us who just did what. He's almost as exciting to listen to as the game is to watch - and he is one impressive caller!

And I use the term 'caller' with precision because that is what he does - he calls it, play by play - and it makes what we're watching that much more exciting because it adds so much to the visual. Sadly, great game callers are few and far between.

Emerick is one. Lon Simmons of the Giants who recently passed was another. Bill King is a third. You can count great game callers of the past on two hands. The rest, and there are a lot of them, sit back and jabber on about anything and nothing. We get frustrated by the A's announcers because it's like sitting in a room with two idiot blowhards.

They know everything but don't talk about what's happening on the field. They talk about everything but what's happening right in front of them. It drives us nuts because there will be a play - perhaps we missed it or what happened wasn't clear - but they won't describe it. There are at least two or three important plays - runs, hits, errors, great fielding - in each and every game we watch and they talk right past them. Sometimes, but only sometimes, they'll go back and mention it in a casual 'oh yeah, and...' kind of way. Grr! Infuriating.

So, back to last night. Lunqvist, the Rangers' goalie, was amazingly good! Through it all, he blocked every attempted goal - surrounded by bodies all flailing away with their sticks.

Credit to Holtby, the Capitals goalie, because he was just as good - but the Rangers got a shot off almost immediately after a faceoff because of a Capitals icing call.

Part of it might be attributable to the fact that the Capitals captain, Ovechkin, declared they were going to win last night. I'm sure the Rangers weren't happy with that attempt at a 'psych', so went in determined to prove him wrong. Whatever. Fans got a rockin' good time!

They've advanced to the second round of the playoffs, and game one for them is on Saturday against Tampa Bay (Florida). On Sunday, the Blackhawks (Chicago) will play the Anaheim (California) Ducks - and both of those are going to be really good series, too.

On the baseball side of things, both the Giants and the A's lost. I didn't see the A's game, but I heard it was 'ugly'. The Giants got a tough break. Apparently, the Houston Astros are 'hackers' - they swing at anything and everything, just as hard as they can. Normally, that's not a good idea because you get a lot of outs that way but, because of the power of their guys, they also get a lot of home runs. Last night there were three - which accounted for three of the four runs that won them the game. 'nuf said on that.


The weather people are saying we're going to get rain today. They said that about yesterday, too. I'll believe it when I see it. No rain that I saw yesterday and while there are clouds out my window this morning, they're not rainclouds. They're high and ... not rain clouds. Maybe that will change, later, but we'll see. At this point, if it's not actually raining, I don't believe it will because the promises sound almost desperate.

Watching television will get a little easier once hockey is over. The season is expected to end in early June - June 3rd I think, which is when Game 7 of the Stanley Cup will be played, if needed. In the meantime, hockey is a filler when the A's and Giant's are off or have early games, but when they're playing at the same time it's click...click...click... all night long until one or another of the games end. Which is fine - because if something exciting is happening in one, we'll stick to it - like last night's hockey game.

Next fall and winter we'll still watch 'nancy' football, but it will be primarily college ball. The pros have gotten too stupid.

'Inflategate' with Tom Brady knowing that the staff of the Patriots was tampering with the balls before one of the playoff games. Hello, Tom - that's called 'cheating'. Cheating is not good sportsmanship. Idiot.

If you can't win by talent and guts, and you have to cheat to win, what is the point of playing?

That's something hockey and baseball both have going for them. There's no really good way of cheating in either sport. You can't deflate a puck and you can't deflate a baseball. In theory a baseball team could 'throw' a game (sorry, couldn't help it) by bad pitching or taking swings at pitches that are obviously out of the strike zone - but it's not like football where there's so much scope for cheating.

Unfortunately, with the salaries the players make, the old saw, 'cheaters never prosper' is just not on any longer. Oh, yeah. They profit plenty. Bonuses for winning playoff games, wildly inflated salaries, signing bonuses, etc. They prosper plenty and the consequences for cheating are non-existent. Oh yeah. A fine - to the team. And a four game suspension to Brady. That'll be effective.

How about he's suspended for a full season? How about he's fined $1M and the team is fined $10M? That might make a bit more of an impression.

The one sport I really wish we could watch here is Aussie Rules Football. Every once in a great while ESPN will deign to show a match and it is so fun, so fast. It makes soccer look like a nancy sport (sorry, guys) and I can't see much scope for cheating there, either. Oh, yeah, a forward could take a dive, but it would be hard and with both teams using the same balls during the game any tampering would be seen immediately.

Anyway. It's getting late, I gotta run - have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

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