Thanks, Scott! That sounds so awesome!

I have a friend who is a big baseball fan, mostly the Dodgers because he has lived in Los Angeles all his life, but he just lives and breathes baseball history, philosophy, culture, etc. (Every year, he takes a vacation for a few weeks and he goes to different U.S. cities and goes to baseball games. His goal is to eventually see a game in every Major League baseball stadium. When possible, he sees the home team play the Dodgers.)

So when I lived in L.A., we went to a lot of Dodgers games. (I'm from Indiana originally, and so I was (and still am) a Cincinnati Reds fan. But it's easy to be a Dodgers fan when you live in L.A. And the Dodgers just have such a rich history, and I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.) There were three or four years from 2002 to 2006 (around there) where I went five to ten times each season. (And the Dodgers won almost every time I attended. The only time the Dodgers lost when I was present, they lost to the Reds.)

So in September 2004, we went to see the Reds play the Rockies. If you remember the fall of 2004 at all, you might remember it as being a very volatile time for politics because the election was coming up, and there was a moment in the Dodgers game where the nation's frustrations were expressed by some of the fans. I wrote about it on my blog at the time:

And after that ... eleven innings! At the end of the ninth inning, Rockies and Dodgers were tied 1-1. In the tenth inning, both teams scored once. Finally in the eleventh, Dodgers got a home run and the game ended with a 4-2 score. So it was a great time.

I've been to a fair number of baseball games in many different stadiums, and even went to an ALCS Game (Sox vs. A's) while I was at BC. I also went to a number of minor league games in New Britain, CT (first when they were the Sox AA affiliate and later when they became a Twins affiliate.  BC made it to the Frozen Four (hockey equivalent of the Final 4) when I was a junior there and we road tripped out to Detroit to Joe Louis Arena to watch the games and support our team. Went to one NFL game (Pats vs. Dolphins, in the old Foxboro, while Marino was QB for the Dolphins), been to a number of hockey games (mostly Whalers games at the old Civic Center but a few Bruins games at the old Garden, got to see the likes of Gretzky, Gordie Howe, Mario Lemieux and others play in person over the years. Been to Big East tournament games (back when BC was part of the Big East), but I am not much of a fan of basketball beyond the high school level.

I refuse to support the NCAA exploitation of student's any longer (for every one who goes pro and makes millions there are hundreds who toil for nothing while the schools and the conferences cash in big on their efforts from TV contracts, ticket sales, concessions, alumni donations, etc. etc. etc. and the BCS is one of the biggest jokes in sports.

And the cynic in me believes the NBA is almost scripted as much as the WWE, and the officials have mandates from the league to ensure certain aspects of the game continue to be featured. That's why "Rogue" officials with their own agenda (hello Tim Donaghy) are such a threat to the game, not for the integrity of the game-it has none-but for the security of the agenda of the NBA itself. "Superstar" players would not prosper if the rules of the game were enforced to the letter so they change (rarely) or ignore rules to accommodate the product at the expense of the integrity of the game (we're reevaluating what that rule means...and how we will instruct our officials to interpret it). For example, you could probably count the number of times Shaq touched the ball in his career and didn't either travel or commit an offensive foul by the letter of  the rules as written (not enforced) on your fingers and toes and have plenty to spare when you were done. But they can't change the rules because that would be a tacit admission they have lost the spirit of the game.And you can't enforce the rules as written because then the players who are the marquee draw would not be on the floor and you would have disgruntled customers who had paid to see them play but didn't. Now the Leagues wallow in manufactured free agent drama to keep themselves in the newscycle in the ESPN era because the fake melodrama is actually more compelling than the games being played on the floor and if they had to rely on the quality of the product they would lose money hand over fist. The last time I attended a "pro" basketball event I enjoyed was a Harlem Globetrotters game (and it was long enough ago that Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal were still part of the team. 

-M

All of which basically is why I expressed the disregard I did for the NBA in my "Meanwhile ..." post. I've made the pro wrestling comparison more than once, for instance.

I'd love to know how the refs would act if one of the brand-name stars just decided to hold the ball over his head & run up & down the court without dribbling. Would they dare call traveling, at least without checking with the league office to see what they should do?

Martin Kaymer dominates at the US Open to shoot 9 under par and win by eight shots. He becomes the first person to win pro tournaments on both Mother's Day and Father's Day.

One of the runners up, Erik Compton, has had two heart transplants and with his high finish gets an invitation to next year's Masters.

Sometimes I wish the entire professional sports industry, as an industry, would collapse through a lack of fan support, because the fans, including myself, should really wake up to the way they're being taken advantage of.

When I first moved here to Ottawa for a job at the very end of the 80s, it was the first time I'd been within travelling distance of an NHL team (this was before Ottawa got its own NHL team). And it was great: you could go to the old Forum on Ste-Catherine in Montreal, buy a standing room ticket for $10, and if you were savvy enough to time it right, run up the stairs as soon as they opened the doors and get a great view in the mezzanine area, between the lowest and 2nd lowest seat sections.

For a comparable view in the new and inevitably corporately named stadium you'd have to pay well over $100.

When I was growing up, I read a lot of hockey books about my favourite players. And one thing all those stories had in common was how Gordie Howe or whoever learned their hockey by playing out on the pond, wrapping magazines around their shins because they didn't have the money for actual gear. Now it seems that if the parents aren't rich enough to send their kid to some expensive hockey school every summer there's no way he's ever making it to the NHL.

Hockey used to be thought of as a working man's game, but like all pro sports it's really a rich man's game now, whether you,re a player or a fan.