Monday Sports Rant

INSTANT REPLAY

On a positive note, I can’t believe that Major League Baseball, of all the leagues, figured out how to handle instant replay. Instead of taking up all of our time and the referees looking back at every replay, they’ve got all of their people set at Park Avenue looking at the questionable plays, so that when something is reviewed there is an objective person watching a replay making the right call. Hence, not making us sit in our seats for an extended period of time. So, hats off to MLB for getting it right and figuring it out. Great job!

TV TIMEOUTS

On the other hand, you’ve got NCAA basketball games. The NCAA Tournament is one of the most exciting things in sports and having gone to a whole bunch of NCAA games throughout this year like Syracuse/Duke, Kentucky/Louisville and Michigan/Michigan State, among others, I’ve gotten to see a lot of that excitement first-hand. But, I think we can all agree that there is nothing worse than these timeouts every four minutes. What makes it worse is that these Coaches will call timeouts minutes and even seconds before these TV timeouts and it completely screws up the flow of the game. From a fan’s standpoint this is just completely ruining games, particularly at the end of games.

Of course, from a business standpoint it’s really good because you get an incredible amount of quality time if you take your clients out to a game.

GETTING CLOSER TO THE GAME

If you go to an NBA game and you’re not sitting in the first three rows- now that can be tough because of how expensive it is- you’re probably not really watching the game. If you get an opportunity somehow to sit in those first three rows, it’s a complete game-changer. Every now and then I get an opportunity to do that and I realize how physical the game is, how impossible it is to referee a game and just the sheer talent of these guys is just amazing!

THIS YEAR'S MLB MVP

The most valuable players in Major League Baseball this season won’t be the players on the field. It will be the physical therapists and strength trainers off the field. There are two reasons:

1)      It’s incredibly ridiculous the amount of games these guys play on successive days

2)      With no one, or at least very few, taking steroids anymore (as wrong as it may be),guys will have a tougher time recuperating and keeping themselves healthy on a day-to-day basis

So that’s when the therapists and coaches come into play. They will be the most important people on rosters this year and the teams that can stay healthy will be the teams playing in October.

BARCLAY'S CENTER

If you haven’t been at Barclay’s Center for a Nets game- wow! The place is so out-of-the-box and it probably rates as my number one place, not only to watch a basketball game, but to grab something to eat. They’ve taken the food options in that arena to such a level that I wouldn’t doubt that even people that don’t like basketball will buy a ticket to a game just to check out the food options. I would! From the Spumoni Gardens to Junior’s Cheesecake and the Boomer and Carton Kitchen…and I could go on and on. It’s certainly one of the most creative venues in the food and beverage industry.

WHO'S THE HIT KING?

Ichiro is just over 200 hits shy of tying Pete Rose for the most career hits at their highest levels of professional baseball. If Ichiro passes Rose, who’s the hit king? Rose himself has been quoted as saying, “Hey, if we're counting professional hits then add on my 427 career hits in the minors. I was a professional then, too.” He makes a good point, but another point to consider is that the rules of the Nippon Professional Baseball League prevent Japanese players from immediately being able to coming over to play in the States when they are ready. So, if Ichiro gets there, who do you think should be the hit king?

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I still want to stay firm on my thought that relief pitchers should start the first three innings of a baseball game and then a “starting” –caliber pitcher should come in to finish the rest of the game, except for having a closer come in. I just don’t understand why when you get to the most critical part of the game the best pitcher, the guy you came to see, leaves the game and some other guy comes in.