Sports Writer to Be

*****

PATS AT THE FENS . . .

. . . but please, if you know what is good for you, stay away . . .

by John Doyle, sportswriter2b.com

*****The Red Sox had their season opener at Fenway yesterday, complete with all the bells and whistles that are appropriate for a team that has not won a World Championship in eighty-six seasons. The Sox unveiled a new seating area in right field (how many more seats can they cram into that outdated dump of a stadium?), Sox greats from days of yore, and for the second time in three years, the World Champion New England Patriots. The greatest owner in the history of American professional sports, Bob Kraft, threw out the first pitch.

After the pitch, the Red Sox came out of the dugout and onto the field to greet the NFL champs, and a lot of handshaking and hugging ensued. Now, I am usually a "glass-half-full" guy. But I am also a Red Sox fan, which trumps all other considerations. When the "love-fest" commenced, I could have seen it as a chance for some of the good vibes and winning ways of the Patriots to rub off on our beloved Sox. But no, I could not help but think that it was the Sox and their putrid ability to piss away golden opportunites rubbing off on the Pats. That said, the Patriots are doomed. I am not saying that they will finish in last place or even miss the playoffs. But something bad will happen. For instance, finding themselves in the same exact game-ending situation in next year's Super Bowl, up by three with seconds left needing only to successfully defend the kickoff, the Patriots will somehow let the return man run 95 yards for the score. And dammit, when that happens, if I won't be thinking about that love-fest with the Red Sox ten months earlier . . . .

*****Frozen Four final is tonight, Denver vs. Maine. The final features a team that represents the city in which my father, college hockey fan extraordinaire, was born and grew up, one that represents the state in which he now resides, fifty-five years and one day after his birth.

Maine comes into the game having one eight straight, each by only one goal. They should win their third National Championship, and I cannot stand it. While you have to be happy to see a Hockey East team represent at the Frozen Four, Maine keeps on winning and winning while UNH keeps on waiting and waiting.

Denver, on the other hand, showed great resilience and tenacity in coming back against Minnesota-Duluth the other night. They could win if they are able to shut out the mystique of the Black Bears and what will certainly be a partisan crowd at the Fleet Center. This is, after all, a program that has won five national championships, three more than Maine. However, the Pioneers' last title came in 1969, five years before they were even playing Division I hockey up in Orono.

My prediction: Maine 4, Denver 3. Damn Black Bears.

*****Back to baseball. On Monday, Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-times wrote about the upcoming season in Chicago:

Yet, somehow, there also is optimism. Look in the mirror. See your eyeballs tingling with hope, your face flush with confidence, your tongue ready to tangle with any fan of the crosstown team who gives you lip. On April 5, no issue is inconquerable and no autumn goal unreachable. Unlike the start of a Bears season, which will bring a sense of drudgery until a coach establishes himself as a keeper, baseball season still carries a promise that maybe, just maybe, this is the year your father, grandfather and great-grandfather awaited. And, shhhhhhhhhhh, never mind that the Cubs and White Sox haven't won a championship since the days of silent movies. The reset button of every fan is pushed anyway, regardless of the strong likelihood of more anguish and suffering.

While I agree with Mariotti, I cannot help but think about what baseball fans in Kansas City, Montreal, Arlington and St. Petersburg think about all this. I hope that the irony is not lost on them. The irony that Chicago, a die-hard baseball town, still believes and hopes that a championship awaits them in baseball, a sport which has the most uneven playing field of any pro sport, while the same fans approach the upcoming NFL season with "drudgery." Have fans in Chicago not seen the last seven Super Bowls? Is there not hope for every franchise in the NFL? And is there even one baseball fan in any of the four cities I mentioned who is making plans for a ticker-tape parade in his town in October?

Personally, I find it interesting that the whole "this is the year" mentality is so storied in baseball, thanks in large part to the suffering of fans in Boston and Chicago, whose teams' colossal failures have become part of baseball's lore. In reality, it is the NFL which provides fans of all thirty-two franchises a true reason to believe that any given season could in fact be "the year." With only sixteen regular-season games, more available playoff spots, and far more importantly, COMPREHENSIVE REVENUE SHARING and a SALARY CAP, the NFL is truly the one part of the sporting landscape where "hope springs eternal."

John Doyle is a freelance sports writer from Dover, New Hampshire, and the editor of sportswriter2b.com He can be reached at UNMdoyle98@hotmail.com

*****

HUSKIES AND HABS

by John Doyle, Sports Writer to Be

BETHEL, MAINE--The Sports Writer to Be takes his show on the road this week, writing to you from his hotel in Bethel, Maine.

--The University of Connecticut has won the National Championship in Division I basketball on both the Men's and the Women's side. Such a feat has never been accomplished before and likely may never happen again. Such a feat is not necessarily unprecedented, as pointed out by Bob Ryan in yesterday's Boston Globe. For instance, Middlebury won the men's and women's ice hockey championships in Division III this year. Hats off to the Middlebury teams, but let's face it: Division I basketball is, quite simply, a much more vast land to conquer, and this morning, the Huskie men and women are kings of two very large mountains. There are three-hundred twenty-six teams in NCAA Division I Men's basketball, and nearly as many on the Women's side. That means, if the champions were determined by pulling two names out hats, the same team would come out of both hats only once every three and a half centuries or so.

Consider this fact about Diana Taurasi and the women's team. The Lady Huskies made the Final Four each of the last four years, eliminated in the semi-finals in 2001 and winning it all in the last three years. That means the Lady Huskies' record in the NCAA tournament alone is twenty-two and one. How many programs, men's and women's, would give anything just to have a twenty-two and one season?

Diana Taurasi is an absolute joy to watch. She embodies everything that is good about sports, and specifically women's sports. That she plays with heart, determination, talent and drive goes without saying. What she has, though, that makes her so much fun to watch, is the joy of basketball that is so evident in the woman's eyes whenever she takes the court. And that is why the women's game is gaining so much well-deserved ground.

Save me the arguments about the physical differences between the men's and the women's game. I get it: they're different, period. If you prefer one style of basketball simply based on the physical differences, then so be it. To me, the women's game is different not because it is played under the rim, or that it does not depend on low-post play, hot-shot slam dunks or a quick three pointer. It is different because the women, for the most part, play the game with a joy that is missing in the men's game. And Diana Taurasi is a big part of that.

--It must be spring in Boston, the Habs are in town. As irrelevant as the Bruins and the NHL have become in my life lately, I have a lot of emotion riding on this series, and I hope the B's do well. For one, the NHL as we know it will not exist after this season. If, in fact, the NHL is headed for an apocalyptic work stoppage in an attempt to give the league a much-needed scrubbing, then I applaud the cleanup. I certainly will not miss the NHL as it exists now, with teams awarded with a point for an overtime loss, franchises awarded to Nashville, Atlanta and (the most heinous) Raleigh-Durham, and pros playing in the Olympics.

But I DO miss the NHL of old. I miss the Hartford Whalers and the Quebec Nordiques. I miss the Old Garden, Maple Leaf Gardens and the old Montreal Forum. I miss the Smythe, Norris, Patrick and Adams Divisions. I miss the Clarence Campbell and Prince of Wales Conferences. I miss a third of the league playing in Canada. I miss two points for a win, one point each for a tie and zero points for a loss. I miss an eighty-game season that eliminated only five teams. I miss the only way to not make the playoffs would be to finish in dead last (or next to last in the Patrick). I miss the first two rounds of the playoffs matching up division rivals only.

While none of the things I loved about the old NHL will ever come back (although I am holding out hope that they will reverse that STUPID overtime-loss rule), the Bruins and Canadiens are one seemingly annual rite of spring (made all the more rare with the league expanding by almost forty percent in the last decade) that still reminds me of why I loved the NHL so much during my teenage years. And should the Bruins go "Patriots" on New England over the next seven to nine weeks, then that will make the inevitable greusome lockout that much easier to stomach.

--In case your wondering, here is a quick rundown of the changes to the NHL I would make: return the Whalers to Hartford. Immediately. Move the Nashville Predators to Milwaukee, the Atlanta Thrashers to Seattle, one of the Southern California teams to Rochester, NY, and one of the Florida teams to Omaha. The rest of the Sun Belt teams would stay. Shorten the season to sixty games, or, better yet, keep the season at eighty-two games but reduce the number of playoff teams to eight. Get Disney out of the league. Forget about a national TV contract. Keep overhead low. Get rid of the four-on-four for overtime. And did I mention that I hate the overtime-loss rule? Think about it: a team could potentially LOSE all of its games, but make the playoffs by virtue of having 82 bogus "points." Oh, and one more thing: apologize to every true hockey fan north of the Mason-Dixon line for insulting their intelligence by dumbing-down and "Disney-fying" the league to cater to a bunch of rednecks and hicks, who, by the way, had no intention of ever taking your sport seriously.

John Doyle is off to find some fresh Maine blueberries.

Take me out to the Ballgame . . .

. . . just not right now, please.

By John Doyle, Sports Writer to Be

Another baseball season is upon us, and this columnist will break with tradition. Here you will not read about what a joy baseball brings, how every spring fills me with excitement and how I just cannot wait to get to the old ballyard. As I write this screed in my Dover office, I look outside and see miserable weather. It has rained non-stop in New England for four days, with two more being forecast. There is even talk of snow tonight and a messy early morning commute tomorrow. The Red Sox and Orioles are set to start their 2004 campaigns in just a couple of hours, and the Fisher Cats and Sea Dogs kick off their home schedules in eleven days.

This is not to say that I am not excited about baseball. I love baseball--it is, hands-down, my favorite sport, and I love it for all of the reasons any American sports fan loves it. I am just not ready for it. I am a true New Englander, who loves baseball mostly because it goes hand-in-hand with every New Englander's favorite season, summer. It just isn't summer yet. It is early spring.

Baseball in New England in April means high school players shagging flies in the parking lot. It means college teams taking long weekend trips to Georgia and Oklahoma. It means helicopters hovering over Hadlock Field, Gill Stadium and Fenway Park, desperately trying to disperse the water from leftover snow, in time for season openers. It means fans packing Fenway for the Sox' first home game, and sporadic crowds, bundled from head-to-toe, the rest of the month. It means starting times of six o'clock on weeknights. It means the indescribable sting of hitting a baseball with a metal bat in cold weather.

Get back to me in May. Sure, I will brave it for a couple of games in April. But I hit the ballyard in full-force when the warm weather swings by our six-state region. I, with the rest of New England, will have the Sox and the voice of Jerry Trupiano booming through my radio when I can sit out on my porch when I can wear sandals instead of socks and shoes. I will be there when I do not have to grab my coat. I will be there when the beer is refreshing, not the same temperature as the air I breathe. I will be there when the lazy summer afternoon sun turns to a soft, cool, inviting twilight. When the full power of the lights does not catch on until the middle of the fifth inning, you will know where to find me.

More baseball notes:

--The Red Sox made their final 25-man Opening Day Roster public today. There are only six players on the Sox younger than me: Bronson Arroyo, Jamie Brown, Byung-Hyun Kim, Scott Williamson, Gabe Kapler and Dave Ortiz. That is refreshing news for a man about to enjoy the last baseball season of his 20s.

--Weather for Baltimore tonight: windy, showers and cold.

--Boston.com, one of my favorite websites, unveiled a new Red Sox page this weekend. I think it is excellent. It features links to the most recent baseball columns by Dan Shaughnessy, Bob Ryan, Jackie MacMullan, and Michael Holley. It also features Eric Wilbur's weblog, plus the mailbags of Jerry Remy, Tom Caron, and Sox beat writer Gordon Edes. I urge everyone to go there for up-to-date information on the Olde Towne Team. It is better than the official Red Sox site, which is nothing but a propaganda machine.

John Doyle will frequent Gill Stadium and Hadlock Field this summer. He will also go to the beach.