I need my keyboard modified like THIS for the Olympics
February 16, 2010 at 9:11 pm | Posted in Minda's Take, Nerdery, Olympics | Leave a commentTags: Olympics, two-minute Photoshops, USA, USA Olympics
This key would make my jubilant Tweeting and IMing SO MUCH EASIER.
Hockey heaven: UNO tops Ohio State in 7-round shootout
February 6, 2010 at 6:41 pm | Posted in Minda's Take | 2 Comments[Note: Photos are here! I took roughly 2 million, so it took a while to sift through them and find the best ones to share.]
When the puck dropped last night, it didn’t take long for Ohio State to score on Omaha goalie Jeremie DuPont. And it didn’t take long for them to score again – the Buckeyes had two goals before two minutes had passed in the game. It was going to be one of those games.
What other direction can a game like that take when the visitors stomp on the home team’s throat so early? Omaha looked feeble and overmatched, and I settled in for what I figured would be the biggest blowout loss I’d ever seen at the Qwest Center. (That would be an unbelievable disaster, given that I’ve seen the Mavs get blasted 7-1 before. Yikes.)
Oh, and a school-record crowd was on hand to witness this uncomfortable start to the game. It would have been one ugly night, if things kept going like those first two minutes.
But they didn’t. DuPont started stopping the occasional shot and Omaha finally penetrated OSU’s lines to take some shots of their own.
In the 2nd period, the Mavs were down 4-2, and freshman Terry Broadhurst decided to heft his entire team on his back and turn the game around himself. He scored at 11:03, and again at 17:18 to tie the score.
…and then he scored again to put the Mavs up 5-4 late in the third. A hat trick! I had never seen one in person before. All 3 of Broadhurt’s goals came on Mavs power plays. But still: HAT TRICK!
That last goal put Omaha up 5-4, but Ohio State answered with 1:34 left in regulation to send the game to overtime. Neither team scored in OT, so we went to a shootout. I barely remember the details of the shootout, because my heart quit beating like six times throughout. What I do know is, the thing was seven rounds long, Rich Purslow scored the winning goal, and I am still high from that epic game.
GO MAVS!
Inspired by FanGraphs: My language of stats nerdery
January 12, 2010 at 12:34 am | Posted in Baseball, Idiocy, Major League Baseball, Minda's Take, Minor Leagues, Nerdery, Sabermetrics, Writing | Leave a commentAt FanGraphs, the incomparable Dave Cameron lists how he pronounces various statistical categories. This sounds profoundly stupid to an outsider, I’m sure, but when the bulk of your statistical conversation is nonverbal, the first time you’re confronted with talking about a stat can create an awkward moment.
Does WAR rhyme with “star,” or is it pronounced like the second word in “World War II?” Or do you just say Wins Above Replacement? Here’s how I do things:
Phoenetical pronunciations:
FIP – rhymes with dip, which is fitting in the baseball world.
wOBA – It’s much easier to say “whoa buh” than it is to say “W-O-B-A” or “weighted on base average.”
SLG – “Salt and slug, salt and slug, one’s sodium chloride, the other’s a bug!” I also say “slugging” sometimes.
BABIP – Joe Posnanski once described this as rhyming with “crab dip.”
WHIP – Just the way it looks.
WAR – To me, it rhymes with “star,” but I understand if people pronounce it like “War! HUH! Good god, y’all.”
Acronyms I spell:
E-R-A – Does anyone say this like the word “Era?” I’ve never heard it that way. I could though, since I’ve used Era laundry detergent for as long as I can remember. Good stuff.
O-B-P – This could also go in the next category – the full names. I alternate between “O-B-P” and the full “on base percentage is a better indicator of talent than batting average, sucka!”
O-P-S – I’ve heard some older TV announcers comically bumble through a conversation about “ops.” They were talking about OPS, but pronounced it like it was short for “operations.” It was awkward.
U-Z-R – This one also switches between the spelled-out acronym and the full name. Just depends on the audience.
I use the full name for these:
ISO – Isolated power.
LOB% – Left on base.
OBP and UZR – as mentioned above, fall into this category and the acronym one.
What do you say? Also, do you find yourself reading a ton about a particular prospect, and then realize when you’re talking to someone out loud*, that you have no idea how to pronounce the player’s name? This happens to me all the time.
*or even on the radio, NOT THAT I HAVE EVER DONE SOMETHING THAT STUPID.
Two must-reads for Royals fans and/or Omahans
January 9, 2010 at 6:14 am | Posted in Minda's Take | Leave a comment[Ed. note: Non-Royals fans can skip this. My Royals blog has no home at the moment - the old URL no longer exists because MVN shut down, and my new home at RealClearSports hasn't been set up yet. It's supposed to be up soon, though.]
Two fine Royals people wrote things today(ish) that must be read by lots of people.
1) Do you want to know how the pointless Scott Podsednik signing figures into the grand scheme of things? Matt Klaasen (nee devil_fingers) continues his streak of frighteningly right-on posts at FanGraphs. “Trust the Contest” is the new “Trust the Process.” It’s a contest for the title of the worst GM, and Moore is winning!
2) Lee Warren talked to the author of “The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes, and History at the College World Series.” If you live in Omaha or have ever visited to take in games at Rosenblatt Stadium, go read this Q&A. I grew up in a tiny town, and Omaha seemed like The Big City. But when I moved there on a whim in 2007, I fell in love with the city in a big way. Now, when people ask where I’m from, I usually answer with “Omaha.”
So when I read the things Ryan McGee – not an Omahan – said about my fair city, it felt like a slice of my three blissful summers there. He talked about the tailgating, and compared the atmosphere to that of tailgating at a bowl game. Anyway, the whole post is a tremendous read.
There’s not a square foot in that ballpark where you can’t stand or sit or walk where a great story didn’t take place. -Ryan McGee
Yeah. What he said.
Is it baseball season yet?
“wtf” doesn’t begin to describe…
January 7, 2010 at 10:07 am | Posted in Awkward, Minda's Take | Leave a comment
"We want BRAAAAAAAINS!"
…this sentence:
Chen said Li’s neurosurgeon was perfect for the job since he had extensive experience with surgeries involving chopsticks lodged in eyes, foreheads and necks.
Extensive experience? I don’t even want to know…
[Source]
(I’m sorry. This post has absolutely nothing to do with sports.)
Another thing that I strongly agree with
January 7, 2010 at 5:09 am | Posted in Baseball, Major League Baseball, Minda's Take | Leave a comment(or, “with which I strongly agree,” if you want to be That Guy about it. But please don’t.)
In a much longer post about Tim Raines, Jonah Keri shares his love for the details that players share – on those rare and wonderful occasions that such details are actually shared:
Love, love, love when players go into some detail about how they do what they do. If we’re going to put ex-athletes behind the mic to do color commentary, or in the studio for a talking heads show, this is the stuff I want to hear. Fine details about a hitter’s ability to keep his head steady; in-depth breakdowns of a pitcher’s mechanics; second-by-second accounts of basestealing technique. Spare me your thoughts on MVP worthiness or anything to do with stats, ex-jocks. I can get that from any number of great writers, or even a learned play-by-play man like Boog Sciambi. Tell us what all those years of training and playing taught you.
Exactly. Occasionally, guests on various MLB Network shows do this in Studio 42. Tim Lincecum talked about his mechanics. Rickey Henderson talked about – what else? – base stealing. Stuff like that should be the primary reason most athletes or ex-athletes should be on TV or the radio. Give us something we as writers or fans don’t know, because we didn’t play at a high level.
Any old blowhard (like me!) can talk about why Player A should be in the Hall of Fame, or why Player B was a stupid choice for MVP, or whatever. But only players can share the details that makes their performance stand above the thousands around them who didn’t make it to the Majors.
Sure, some jocks or former jocks have a knack for writing or broadcasting, but most don’t. Those who don’t can still add value to the media, but only by giving insight that isn’t readily available to fans. Sadly, those guys actually got jobs calling games or showing highlights, and they suck at that.
Jason Whitlock was absolutely, 100% correct…athletes are NOT role models
January 5, 2010 at 6:44 am | Posted in Basketball, Media, Minda's Take, NBA, Sports Culture, Writing | 2 CommentsTags: Agreeing with Whitlock this much is scary, antiquated notions, Gilbert Arenas, Gilbert Arenas gun, put that pedestal AWAY young lady!, sportswriting
I’ve never agreed with every single word of a Jason Whitlock column before. I’m pretty sure that, at those sad times when he has attempted to dissect baseball, I’ve disagreed with every word. I do think his football columns are quite good, but I can still disagree with him even in his best football work.
But this column is perfect. The nail could not have been hit more squarely on the head, no matter how hard any writer tried. I can’t decide what quote to highlight, so I strongly recommend reading all of it. Many (most?) pro athletes* are indeed pretty rotten human beings.
Google tried to send me to "shopping results for pedestal." I didn't bite.
We let them get that way – once they figure out they’re awesome at a sport, all they have to do is play that sport well and everything else works itself out. Girls flock to them even if they’re jerks. People hang on their every word, even if they have nothing to say. I’m guilty of it myself – the hanging-on-words part, not the flocking-to-athletes part. Just look at the people I follow on Twitter. Lots of jerseys there.
*to my athlete friends – I’m sorry! You know I don’t mean you! But you also know you can think of a few teammates whom my description fits to a T, right?
This shouldn’t be news, yet lots of people still cling to this idea that athletes belong on pedestals. It’s absurd, but I think it won’t take much longer to change. Is it always right for blogs and gossip rags to air out athletes’ dirty laundry? Nah. But at least the public can see that it’s really not OK for little Timmy to worship Tiger Woods or Derek Jeter or really anyone who is paid for sport. Emulate them as athletes, sure – I always reminded myself of some of Tiger’s philosophy when hitting endless range balls in high school – but look somewhere else for heroes, please.
Here is another link to Whitlock’s column, in case the first two weren’t enough.
My Year in Cities
December 31, 2009 at 4:42 pm | Posted in Awkward, Minda's Take | 1 CommentJonah Keri does this, and although my list is much shorter, I’ll give it a shot. It’s every city where I spent at least one night this year. You’re about to see how boring AND how poor I am. And my love of day trips shortens the list even more. Yikes, this is bad.
Washington, DC
Madison, WI
I was in Pittsburgh and Cleveland twice each, but didn’t stay the night either time.
Not one of my trips to Kansas City involved staying the night. I always drove back late at night after glorious Royals games.
McCook, NE
Do Lincoln and Omaha count? I live in both of them at various times of the year…
Ugh, I think that might actually be it. If I hadn’t had surgery, I would be in Orlando right now.
And so ends my pathetic journey in never leaving the house. Where have you been? Leave yours in the comments, or on your own blog and then give me a link!
[Goal for 2010: Double this list!]
Regarding marching bands
December 30, 2009 at 11:47 pm | Posted in Minda's Take | 1 CommentMy brother called with this fact. I graphed it.
You know it's true.
Public Service Reminder: Ndamukong Suh is playing tonight
December 30, 2009 at 1:40 pm | Posted in Football, Minda's Take, NCAA football | Leave a commentTags: Ndamukong Suh, Nebraska Cornhuskers, There is no place like NEBRASKA
He’s a beast, a one-man wrecking crew, and far and away the best college football player in the country (though that was apparently kept a secret from certain pieces of garbage Heisman voters, not that I am bitter).
He’s Ndamukong Suh, and we haven’t seen a defensive tackle quite like him, ever. Suh’s final game as a Nebraska Conhusker is the Holiday Bowl against Arizona, and I’m guessing every quarterback he’s ever terrorized is celebrating tonight.
(Still my favorite highlight EVER)
This is your friendly reminder to watch that game, because Suhis not the kindof player college football fans get to see every day, or ever. He’s a little piece of sports history and he’s flat-out fun to watch. So tune in tonight and treat yourself to the mighty House of Spears.
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