Oh This Won't Be Depressing At All

Yes, fair readers, I know it's been a while since I've posted here and that surely you're all very upset at me for it. I apologize. It's been a busy week you see. A number of important and wild, crazy things have happened, such as the Knicks losing not one, but two soul-crushing playoff games in their first postseason appearance in seven years, some wild comebacks in the opening round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the NFL's 2011 schedule release, an event that has left me wondering if my two designated road games this season will actually be feasible given that they're in back-to-back weeks.

But friends, I come here to talk about none of those right now. Because those are good things. Fun things. And what I have to tell you is not fun at all.

I'm going to my first Mets game of the season tonight. It won't be pretty.

See, I've had several seasons when the Mets fell into mediocrity -- and did so early -- but it's rare that I've been living in the New York metropolitan area and seen them fall so quickly that I haven't even gotten out to a game yet. And fallen they have. After losing two straight to the Astros, the Amazins and their sparkling 5-13 record are at the very bottom of the Major Leagues, meaning that unlike last year's team, which simply plodded its way through injuries to a mediocre 79-83 record, this year's squad, with mostly the same roster, is downright awful.

The team is so bad that New York Daily News beatwriter Andy Martino actually got away with two of the more scathing -- and at the same time brilliant -- game stories I've ever seen, capturing not just the Mets awfulness, but the ambivalence of the fans that are currently watching. I'm generally disinclined against Martino since he grew up a Braves fan, but he does a masterful job of tiptoeing the line between truth and bitter sarcasm that apparently has eluded other writers in recent days.

And he hits the nail right on the head. This team is bad. Really. They're not good. We know it. They know it. And yet here I am ready to pull up stakes around 6:00 pm tonight and ride the 7 train to Citi Field for what is sure to be the first of several times this year. The positive to all of this is that when you know the team is bad you can at least laugh at it to make the pain dull itself. Also those $6.50 bags of fresh Kettle Corn they have at Citi Field are a tremendous deal.
Seriously. They're enormous.

So yeah, I've got that going for me tonight as I start my weekend, but on the plus side the Stanley Cup playoffs have been so good that I'm almost able to forget about how bad the Mets have been. I'm not sure how many of you have been watching, or keeping up with the very exciting awards announcements, European hockey news or top playoff performers, but it's all been pretty sweet -- in particularly Tuesday night's utterly wild Game 3 between San Jose and L.A. that saw the Sharks rally from a four-goal deficit to win in overtime.



And last night's double-OT games between Washington and New York and Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay weren't bad either. All in all the hockey playoffs are shaping up to be pretty tremendous so far, which is good because they might be the only distraction I have to keep me from watching baseball other than planning out my potential European vacation this summer or my two Giants road games I have planned.

If you're curious I'm looking to hit up New England on Nov. 6 and San Francisco a week later.

So hockey is what I will rely on for now, and the great thing about that is that they last for six more weeks. The only downside?

Baseball season lasts six more months.

When Buses Get In The Way

If you went to Northwestern, and I'm guessing since this is mostly read by my friends then the proportion is higher than usual, you might have noticed that the Wildcats got bounced in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament today by No. 1 Ohio State. What you might not have noticed is that Northwestern had a lead in the final minute that it let slip away before falling in overtime. Not only could this have been the single greatest moment of Northwestern's rather thin basketball history, but it also would have kept the highly faint hopes NU had of reaching the NCAA Tournament for the first time, hopes that it would seem rested solely on claiming the Big Ten's automatic bid by winning the conference tournament.

The Wildcats are likely to get an NIT bid, but that seems small consolation for coming so close to knocking off the No. 1 team in the country, a feat that just might have invigorated what has been a steadily improving but nonetheless fledgling program. What makes the loss all the more frustrating, however, is that this is second time this season Northwestern has taken the No. 1-ranked Buckeyes to the final minute with a chance to pull off the monumental upset. It feels like something greater than the season at large has been lost when two narrow chances to make a bold statement to the world of college basketball both slip through the Wildcats' fingers.

What was most frustrating for me, however, was that being a dedicated alum and a Northwestern fan, you'd think there was no chance I'd miss what could be the greatest moment in the lackluster history of NU basketball. And you'd be wrong. For you see at the exact moment Northwestern had shockingly taken the lead in the waning moments this afternoon, I was somewhere in northern Maryland on a bus bound for D.C. where I will be seeing the Blackhawks and Capitals Sunday afternoon.

This presented a number of issues.

I was hoping to follow the game on my laptop using ESPN3.com, which I have remote streaming set up for. However, when you're on a bus internet can be, diplomatically speaking, "shitty". In the case of the M31 Megabus from New York to Washington D.C. on March 11, 2011, it was utterly nonexistent.

I spent most of the game following on my phone and on twitter, refusing to believe that my Wildcats would actually make a game of it, let alone take the lead late in the game. Then I glanced at my phone and saw it was a one-point game in the second half.

It was time to break out the big guns. I got out of my seat, rifled through my luggage and pulled out my laptop in hopes of connecting to the bus's mobile internet. Connect I did.

And then: Nothing.

Apparently being connected to the internet isn't the same thing as actually getting to use the internet, and despite the comments of the young man next to me that on his bus to New York earlier this week he was able to watch the Big East tournament, I wasn't able to so much as load my homepage. Though when I consider that he also told me Rocky IV was the best of the series, perhaps he wasn't the man to trust.

Either way, the inevitable outcome was clear. I was not going to get to watch the magic or lack thereof happen in live streaming video. Instead I had to resort to painstakingly reloading the score on my iPhone's ESPN app, where I saw that not only did Northwestern let its late lead slip away, but the Wildcats got beat up in overtime in what eventually would be a season-ending 67-61 defeat. Sometimes it just isn't meant to be.

And sometimes you aren't meant to see it, regardless of what it is.

Luckily, the whole reason I'm here is to see the Blackhawks and Capitals this Sunday and cross team No. 39 off the list. While there are still some questions as to whom, exactly, will be seeing the game with me, I do know that at least I'll be there in person. I will actually witness that game.

And no bus is going to stop me.

Holy Crap Capitals Games Are Expensive

Like shockingly so. For a franchise that has all of one Stanley Cup Final appearance in four decades, no championships and really very little historic greatness to speak of, it is amazing how much they can charge for a marquee game at the Verizon Center.

Then again, I guess they do have this guy.

I found this much out this week as I painstakingly monitored eBay auctions and kept a watch on Stubhub to guarantee that I might actually get to sit somewhere in the crowd for this Sunday's Blackhawks-Capitals game, a game I had pegged since past summer as my preferred visit at long last to see the Caps play hockey. I was hoping I might be able to swindle the ducats through work, but when that avenue dried up I had to resort to the secondary market to find that the Capitals, last year's Presidents' Trophy winners, have instituted a tiered pricing system for this season to get more money out of the more desirable matchups.

I don't really have a problem with this. After all, the Mets and just about every other Major League Baseball team has the same system, but for some reason it didn't occur to me that a game against the defending Stanley Cup Champions, which could very well serve as a preview of this spring's Stanley Cup Final would be one of those pricier games.

And boy howdy is it pricey.

I had anticipated that a markup would cause me to part with somewhere between $40-50 for a spot in the upper deck, but after looking at eBay auctions aplenty, I found that this would be nearly impossible and that face value for upper deck seats for this particular game -- behind the goal -- is $95. That's almost $100 to watch from the nosebleeds for a regular season game. Egads.

Now granted, I understand the magnitude of this Sunday's matchup. Both teams are suddenly on incredibly hot tears and happen to have some fo the best young players in the World, one who is younger than me and has already captained a Stanley Cup champion, and another who is younger than me, might be the best player on the planet and appears to have way more fun than I do.

That said, I really didn't want to pay $95 for a ticket, and it took some emotional convincing to finally find tickets that, while overpriced to start with, were still somewhat reasonable considering. In the end last night I purchased a pair of seats in section 407 for a total of $147.50, which, working out to $73.75 each, is technically lower than face value even if it is outrageous. Of course, there were some sticky issues with this. First of all, they're print out e-tickets, and for purposes of building up my personal collection of entertaining ticket stubs, I loathe e-tickets when it's my first time seeing a team.

I managed to convince the original ticket owner to mail me his hard tickets afterward so that I can keep them as a souvenir, so on that front all is well. But because this person obviously had season tickets they aren't victim to ills of tiered pricing which means they pay a flat average rate for each game over the course of the year, and that rate happens to be far lower than face value for this game if you bought it individually, and that rate -- which is a mere $29 -- happens to be plastered in the top left corner of my printed out e-tickets. This begs the question on how I can justify asking a friend to pay me back for all or even part of their ticket when it was more than twice what is listed on the ticket itself.

Conundrums abound.But it could be worse. After all, I still get to see this guy for the first time.



Of course, while I will be seeing two of the hotter teams in the League this Sunday for Team No. 39, I won't be seeing the hottest team, which of course remains the New Jersey Devils who are humming along after cutting down the current deficit to 8 points with 17 games remaining after a 20-2-2 stretch in their last 24 games. The miracle run is still alive, although some jerk is spreading doom and gloom about the Devils' legitimate postseason prospects, but lately talk has sprung up from some experts that New Jersey is not just a possible playoff participant, but a certain one. Even if the Devils don't make the impossible possible, some are saying, in my mind legitimately, that Jacques Lemaire should still be considered for coach of the year.

My guess is that unless New Jersey makes the playoffs, the award will go to Tampa Bay's Guy Boucher, but in any event, watching the Devils right now is a lot of fun -- something it hasn't been for a while.

Finally, and in news that none of you will care about other than me, something else that I haven't been able to watch for a while, Aussie Rules Football, is just over two weeks away from starting its season, and after finding this picture on the twitters yesterday, I'm hopeful there might be a new fan. Yes, that's President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard testing out their best handballs with an authentic footy, known by many fans as a "Sherrin" in the oval office during a state visit by the Aussie head of state. Gillard, as I've mentioned before, apparently has quite the knack for prognostication when it comes to footy, and rumor has it she's an enormous Western Bulldogs supporter. During the visit she gave Obama a cultural education that, according to Barry, nearly cost the U.S. goverment a bust of Abe Lincoln.

Surely that's a joke, just like the price I paid for my tickets for this weekend. But either way, it should be a good visit, if for no other reason than to scratch a team off the list. And apparently it'll be a good visit for the Blackhawks even if they don't wind up coming away from the Verizon Center with two points Sunday. They may not have a Sherrin, but they have a big silver bowl. As a result, they get a day with the President, too.

On The Docket: An Impromptu Trip To Nassau Coliseum For Team No. 37

Ah, yes, Nassau Coliseum. The old barn. If by "old" you mean "completely decrepit and falling apart" and by "barn" you mean "only fit for livestock". Or so I've been told. I've actually had one or two people tell me the arena is a decent place to watch hockey, but I'm going to reserve judgment either way until later tonight when I make my first ever trip to see the New York Islanders and knock yet another team off that vaunted list of 122.

What's that? Shocked that I've never seen a sports team play at home when its home is in the same metropolitan area I've spent 21 years of my life in?

Well, so am I. In fact, I find it downright mindboggling that I've never actually made a trek to Uniondale to see the Isles ply their trade or check out their home building. A rational look back on it reveals the reasons are many: a) I'm a Devils fan, b) the Devils and Rangers are both closer to where I grew up and live currently, c) it is almost impossible to get to Nassau Coliseum on mass transit.

Once I decided to do this whole "see every team in the MLB, NHL, NBA and NFL" thing I knew the day of reckoning that forced a trip out to Long Island would come, but for some reason I just continued to push it further and further back -- though there have been a few near misses and close calls. If it's right there, the urgency to get moving seems to not be particularly pressing. But at long last I've decided to finally get off my rear with the help of an equally eager coworker, which will see us take the LIRR from Penn Station to Hempstead, NY, then a bus from the Hempstead Transit Station to the Coliseum -- this is after I've already taken a subway from my apartment to Penn Station. All in all, it's a tidy 90 minute trip on mass transit to get to a suburban hockey arena with little around.

But oh boy, am I excited.

The Islanders, perhaps you've noticed, are not particularly good, and haven't been for a while. Given that it seems kind of odd to me that they used to be great.

Like really great.

Seriously. There's an argument to be made that they had the greatest dynasty of any professional sports team in the last 30 years. From 1980-1983, the Islanders won the Stanley Cup four straight times, a fact that, seemingly, no Islanders fan I've come across professional will forget to mention to you. Yes, other teams have won four straight Cups or four straight championships before, but none have done it in the same age of expanded playoffs that the Islanders did. New York had four rounds of postseason jockeying to get through in order to win it all, and they did it four straight times. And very nearly a fifth.

Add it all together and the Islanders won 19 consecutive playoff series in the early 1980s, a stunningly impressive achievement that is arguably not to be seen again.

Of course, those Islanders are a far cry from the current ones, who are deeply steeped in rebuilding mode currently, and as a fan of the Devils who can't avoid reading about their current season, I'm starting to find out what that's like. But it should still be an interesting game for any number of reasons, namely that a) it's a new place, and b) they're playing the Penguins and Sidney Crosby, who just might be the hottest player in the world right now.

How hot?

Well, Crosby scored two goals and tallied an assist last night against Atlanta, which gives him a scoring streak of 25 games, a stretch during which he's scored 50 points. It's a streak so long, the last person to have one longer did so for a team that no longer exists. That, since you're wondering, would be Mats Sundin, who had a 30-game streak in 1992 for the Quebec Nordiques. To make the night even more interesting, the game is going to be captured by HBO for its current Penguins/Capitals 24/7 series, which, if you have no been watching, has been spectacular television -- and I'm not just towing the line of a hockey fan on that one. It has been gripping, informative and visually arresting to see. Oh yeah, and it's on again tonight.



Now, I will admit, the show is far better on HBO where the cursing isn't censored because, well, hockey players, and their coaches, swear a lot, regardless of who's listening. Fortunately for Washington's Bruce Boudreau, the Commish has let it slide.

So put it all together and you've got an interesting TV show, a phenomenal player, and apparently a reason for me to make the arduous trek to Nassau Coliseum for the first time ever tonight. And since nothing seems to be going right for the Giants right now in any way whatsoever, I could use the distraction. If anything the extensive mass transit to Uniondale will be long enough that I probably won't remember the Giants exist by the time I get there. Until Sunday, of course, when I foolishly hope against hope that the magic will happen.

I'm a fan. I don't know any better.