Hysteria

While much of the noise coming out of the hometown has been about this little blooper – goodness, I’m the only person in this city who actually feels terrible for Luis Castillo – I spent last night and this morning observing some of the post-Stanley Cup reflections from Pittsburgh and Detroit.

The hysteria behind what was an inexcusable, but hopefully un-Chuck Knoblauchian* error, is amazing compared to the responses in Michigan.

It’s amazing how bent out of shape a good portion of New York Mets fans have gotten in the same time span that every Red Wings fan grew sorrowful after losing a tough battle.

It’s amazing in the sense that a fielding error made by one of the more sure-handed second basemen in the game has made the Mets a complete and utter failure as a franchise, business and collection of human beings.

It’s amazing that as a few callers in talk radio suggested, the Mets need to work on the fundamentals of the game. A botched play in the new Yankee Stadium and a bad throw 3000 miles west in Los Angeles just under a month ago have suddenly made the Metropolitans the worst defensive team to ever take up a baseball field.

It’s amazing in that this was game 59 of 162.

Sure, the mistakes become more and more glaring as the season labors on. Yet, this is baseball, my friends. What’s an endless season in many other depots around North America is actually 162 seasons in a six-month stretch that comes up every calendar year for a place like the New York metropolitan area (or any cold-weather, northeastern bastion of happiness).

In Season 59 – the opening of another Subway Series that players themselves want to end as quickly as possible – Luis Castillo became the worst human being to ever don a Mets uniform because of an unfortunate flub against the team that the Flushing faithful will never admit it wishes to be.

Meanwhile, in Detroit, where the most cherished accolade of a sport – the championship of hockey’s premier professional league – was on the line in Game 7, Maxime Talbot and Marc-Andre Fleury broke the hearts of one of the most passionate fan bases anywhere. A couple of defensive lapses and missed scoring opportunities in the game’s final minutes doomed the repeat for the Wings.

Despite some posturing and whining from a few bitter fans, Nikolas Lindstrom has not been nominated for most vile man on the planet. Brad Stuart and Nikolas Kronwall have not been thrown under the jail that Kwame Kilpatrick once resided in. Chris Osgood, a familiar scapegoat when things have not gone well over the years for Detroit, was tremendous in a valiant losing effort.

All of the marbles were on the line at the Joe Louis Arena, but this morning, Detroiters didn’t have to wake up and see this…

Wow.

Thanks to the uploaders of the pics and video.

* - Knoblauch was an excellent second baseman for Minnesota and his first season with the Yankees until 1999, where he picked up a psychologically dehabilitating case of 'the yips'.

Recommended

A few recommended articles to check out (if you haven't done so already):

• Yankees fans beware... but Red Sox, Angels, Mets, Dodgers and Cubs fans, don't show that grin too much. Your financial comeuppances are near.
  
  
• Continuing with the business side of sports, here's BusinessWeek's annual 100 Most Influential People in the Business of Sports.
  
  
• With the NHL season about to begin this weekend in Europe (Eastern Conference champion Pittsburgh plays Ottawa in Stockholm, Sweden while the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning tango in Prague), they hope to build off of the creeping marketing momentum of the past three post-lockout seasons.
  
  
• A slight diatribe before the next referenced article: Something that has always stuck out to me in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was the immediate response from athletes. Whether it was the Manning brothers or Kevin Garnett or the charity game organized by former NBA guard and TNT analyst Kenny Smith, I found myself marveled by their sense of urgency and their understanding of their stature (fair or not) as public beacons for entertainment and social causes. Yet, I was simultaneously screaming at the television about the "Johnny-come-lately" actions of the many levels of government and (dare I say) other entertainers who essentially sat by and waited to be told what to do. However, the continued efforts of one former athlete should be lauded and exemplify how someone used his former standing to try to make a dent in the mess in New Orleans. Respect due to the so-called bust, Jonathan Bender.
  Because while folks are talking about change these days, the basketball player who was forced to give up his physical gifts changed his own life by giving to others.
  
  
• Something that I wanted to expound an argument on earlier this week is still on the radar, but at least for the moment, ask yourself this question: is this the best sports year ever?
  Usually, I hate these best-ever questions, mostly because of how VH1 and others have driven that phrase to the ground. However, it's an intriguing thought.

Forward (II)

One of the most annoying sports clichés is “the game the way it was meant to be played.” It the believers of that phrase meant the raw and unadulterated way, then they may have found something special on New Year's Day. It wasn't a bowl game created for television or a redundant marathon of old-school boxing matches featuring Muhammad Ali. It was hockey... yes, Scribe is talking about that game on the ice with the pucks, sticks and Canadians.

NHL: Can we make them care? They’ve heard the slights for well over a decade now about the death of a league. The strike following the 2003-04 season relegated the league to minor-league status in the minds of anyone with a microphone, blog and newspaper column. Even worse are the snark-laden comments from people who go out of their way to slam the sport instead of reading the stories around it. Yet, though the fan base is the smallest of the major professional leagues, its core fans are equally as passionate about their sport as those for others.

The National Hockey League is well aware of the monumental challenges presented over the past decade-plus; the loss of Canadian teams because of poor economic decisions, the criticized additions of American teams (also for similar reasons), the lack of crossover appeal, a borderline-discriminatory backlash against the influx of European players, lack of racial diversity/interest and debates regarding fighting. Most of these issues can be attributed to any other league, yet because the NHL was never a behemoth across the United States, its struggles become punch lines instead of headlines.

The league opened the New Year with the Winter Classic, its second-ever outdoor game and the first in the U.S. The location couldn’t have been better, choosing hockey-happy Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson Stadium. Drifting snows, dropping temperatures and a plethora of college football bowl games couldn’t stop the crowd of just over 71,000 from enjoying the event. The fact that thousands more had been turned away is a testament to how deep passions run in hockey fans. Even better for the NHL were the once-mysterious television ratings. The game garnered a 2.6 rating (which calculates to just three million households) and a 5 share (meaning five percent of all homes with TVs in use at the time tuned to the game). This was a huge success for a sport which became accustomed to a fifth of the audience for nationally-televised games in the States. This was a huge success, even against the aforementioned bowl games that obviously trump everything in their sights. The game itself was no disappointment as the Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins went to a shootout. Unlike other sports where their superstars are seemingly set up for drama, somehow the shootout, Ryan Miller and Sidney Crosby wove naturally for the shining moment.

Of course, the question people have now: what’s next?

The answer: it’s up to you.

The Classic succeeded where other attempts of popularizing hockey failed because the NHL was willing to truly celebrate the roots of their game. So many of these athletes and fans played the game on some frozen pond or lake when they were kids. Not a knock on any other sport, but you’re not going to see a pro or college game at Rucker Park or a Field of Dreams in Iowa. Despite the loss, even the Sabres were ecstatic to have been a part of a special game instead of a gimmick. In a sports world that openly complains about the lack of fundamentals and innocence in the games, potential new fans were introduced to a game in a nearly-pure form. Outside of the frequently necessary clearing of snow on the ice, there had been few icing penalties, few penalties and no fights. For novice fans, they could become more intrigued to watching a traditional game indoors without FoxTrax to tick off the purists and constant clutches to turn casuals away.

The NHL adopted flex scheduling, borrowed from the NFL tactic that gives NBC the ‘premium matchups’ of the games with playoff and/or historical implications. Being a national broadcaster that begs for the best potential ratings, you shouldn’t be surprised to see the New York Rangers every Saturday if you live in suburban Minneapolis. However, considering that the Rangers, Penguins and many other teams across North America have pools of talent, flex scheduling maximizes exposure for stars around the league such as Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin, Rick Nash of Columbus and the young Chicago Blackhawks. Since all of the Original Six teams are playing competitively at once for the first time in years, it benefits NBC’s ratings push into the late spring.

For a league that is criticized for being handcuffed by the purists, the NHL has not been completely assailed for opening the game to attract new crowds. In fact, no one is stopping them from doing so. Again, this is due to the fact that ESPN and its most ardent fans have told the sport to essentially ‘come back when you’re bigger’. Yet, there has been success in bringing back fans lost during the lockout. Now, they can focus on solving its other problems. One step at a time.