HITW published August 25, 2015
With baseball heading toward the postseason and football just getting cranked up, how can this not be the most wonderful time of the year?
I mean, besides April with the Final Four, baseball starting and the NFL Draft. Or January with hockey and basketball in full swing and playoff time in the NFL and, now, the NCAA.
Or June, with the beginning of summer, hockey and pro basketball playoffs and baseball almost every day.
Looks like I have more than one favorite time of the year. Hey, it’s a free country!
Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff going on these days, and here’s a few “Sports Shorts” I wonder about.
Reggie Wayne has signed a one-year deal with the Patriots. There’s something very, very unnatural about a Colts superstar playing in Massachusetts, but it’s not about the money or the legacy at this point in his career. It’s about playing time and a legitimate chance for another Super bowl title. Evidently he could get one in Indy, but not the other.
Surely we all understand Wayne’s not a No. 1 receiver anymore; it’s not like he doesn’t understand that. And before anything else, professional sports is a business (and more so amateur sports, but that’s another column in the next couple of weeks or so).
But seeing Reggie play for any other team just seems wrong somehow. Here’s hoping he’s not just clinging tenaciously to a career that’s over; we’ve all seen what it looks like when a superstar becomes a journeyman. It’s never pretty.
On the baseball front: has the time come for baseball to adopt netting between the foul poles for the lower decks? I’m not sure what else to do about it.
This summer my brother treated my sons and I to a Kansas City Royals game and our seats were about 25 rows straight up from the home team on-deck circle. The usher, while showing us our seats, implored us to stay on the lookout for foul balls; they’d come from above us and behind us.
Sure enough, during the game we had, without exaggerating, a dozen or more fouls land within a 30-foot radius of us.
One landed eight seats away, a pop-up that seemed to come more-or-less as straight down as a foul ball can go. An 80-something lady in a wheelchair was hit on her arm, and the sound it made was enough to churn stomachs.
Her arm was clearly broken, but fortunately she’s just taken her regular pain pills a few minutes before the ball came; otherwise she’s have screamed, she said.
I understand the monetary value of those seats, and the expectation, or the hope that reins supreme in the heart of every little kid and most adults, of getting a souvenir and making a lifetime memory. I’ve been to dozens of professional games over the years, enough to not remember them all, and the only balls I’ve retrieved were in a mostly empty minor-league ballpark in South Bend at the beginning of a doubleheader.
To me it’s not about the liability; I’m sure the lady at the Royals game received the same instruction we did. But with bats getting thinner handles, and balls moving faster every year, it’s time to put up the nets. As fans, we’ll adjust.
It’d be nice to see ballplayers give fans a better shot at autographs after a game in exchange for such a thing, but that seems unlikely to happen.
Speaking of the Royals, if you’d have told me by the time high school football season starts, Kansas City will lead the division by a dozen games, I’d have prayed for you to have a sound mind once again. It was so weird to have the Royals be buyers, rather than sellers, as the non-waiver trade deadline came and went. I understand this is a limited time opportunity, and am enjoying this season for all it’s worth.
Someone from my church asked me if I was up for a Cubs-Royals World Series. I wouldn’t want Kansas City to be responsible for losing and triggering that kind of celebration.
As time passes this edition of the Cubs, young as they may be, needs to win a title soon. Right now they’re playing like they feel no pressure regarding the time since the last trip to the Series, or the last win. That will change, and grow with each passing year.
It’s exciting to see so many teams still have at least a mathematical chance to make the playoffs. And we all saw what happens when a team gets hot at just the right time.
How frustrating does it have to be to Cub fans for their team to have the third best record in the league, and still be third in the division? And how crazy would a wild-card game in Wrigley Field between the Pirates and Cubs be?
Personally, I haven’t been this excited for October since...well, last year. But before that it had been a while!
I mean, besides April with the Final Four, baseball starting and the NFL Draft. Or January with hockey and basketball in full swing and playoff time in the NFL and, now, the NCAA.
Or June, with the beginning of summer, hockey and pro basketball playoffs and baseball almost every day.
Looks like I have more than one favorite time of the year. Hey, it’s a free country!
Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff going on these days, and here’s a few “Sports Shorts” I wonder about.
Reggie Wayne has signed a one-year deal with the Patriots. There’s something very, very unnatural about a Colts superstar playing in Massachusetts, but it’s not about the money or the legacy at this point in his career. It’s about playing time and a legitimate chance for another Super bowl title. Evidently he could get one in Indy, but not the other.
Surely we all understand Wayne’s not a No. 1 receiver anymore; it’s not like he doesn’t understand that. And before anything else, professional sports is a business (and more so amateur sports, but that’s another column in the next couple of weeks or so).
But seeing Reggie play for any other team just seems wrong somehow. Here’s hoping he’s not just clinging tenaciously to a career that’s over; we’ve all seen what it looks like when a superstar becomes a journeyman. It’s never pretty.
On the baseball front: has the time come for baseball to adopt netting between the foul poles for the lower decks? I’m not sure what else to do about it.
This summer my brother treated my sons and I to a Kansas City Royals game and our seats were about 25 rows straight up from the home team on-deck circle. The usher, while showing us our seats, implored us to stay on the lookout for foul balls; they’d come from above us and behind us.
Sure enough, during the game we had, without exaggerating, a dozen or more fouls land within a 30-foot radius of us.
One landed eight seats away, a pop-up that seemed to come more-or-less as straight down as a foul ball can go. An 80-something lady in a wheelchair was hit on her arm, and the sound it made was enough to churn stomachs.
Her arm was clearly broken, but fortunately she’s just taken her regular pain pills a few minutes before the ball came; otherwise she’s have screamed, she said.
I understand the monetary value of those seats, and the expectation, or the hope that reins supreme in the heart of every little kid and most adults, of getting a souvenir and making a lifetime memory. I’ve been to dozens of professional games over the years, enough to not remember them all, and the only balls I’ve retrieved were in a mostly empty minor-league ballpark in South Bend at the beginning of a doubleheader.
To me it’s not about the liability; I’m sure the lady at the Royals game received the same instruction we did. But with bats getting thinner handles, and balls moving faster every year, it’s time to put up the nets. As fans, we’ll adjust.
It’d be nice to see ballplayers give fans a better shot at autographs after a game in exchange for such a thing, but that seems unlikely to happen.
Speaking of the Royals, if you’d have told me by the time high school football season starts, Kansas City will lead the division by a dozen games, I’d have prayed for you to have a sound mind once again. It was so weird to have the Royals be buyers, rather than sellers, as the non-waiver trade deadline came and went. I understand this is a limited time opportunity, and am enjoying this season for all it’s worth.
Someone from my church asked me if I was up for a Cubs-Royals World Series. I wouldn’t want Kansas City to be responsible for losing and triggering that kind of celebration.
As time passes this edition of the Cubs, young as they may be, needs to win a title soon. Right now they’re playing like they feel no pressure regarding the time since the last trip to the Series, or the last win. That will change, and grow with each passing year.
It’s exciting to see so many teams still have at least a mathematical chance to make the playoffs. And we all saw what happens when a team gets hot at just the right time.
How frustrating does it have to be to Cub fans for their team to have the third best record in the league, and still be third in the division? And how crazy would a wild-card game in Wrigley Field between the Pirates and Cubs be?
Personally, I haven’t been this excited for October since...well, last year. But before that it had been a while!