This key would make my jubilant Tweeting and IMing SO MUCH EASIER.

This is the guy who scored Ohio State's goal with 1:34 left to send it to overtime. Jerk.

Cute baby + french fries + hockey night = AWWWW

We got there really early, which gave a lot of time to watch people watching warmups.

This bad boy drops coupons into the crowd. People practically murder their seat-neighbors for what turns out to be like 35 cents off milk. Roberts Dairy is awesome, though.

This kid got to be on the ice during player intros.

UGH, I could kill that stupid post. It's in the way of the puck - this was Joey Martin's goal in the 1st period.

This is John Kemp skating while making his best Pirate face.

Green Man stretching. The girl in the top-left is NOT AMUSED.

Somehow a Buckeye got into our net, and absolutely destroyed Jeremie Dupont on the way down.

...it took him a while to get up. Poor guy.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

More fighting!

Even MORE fighting!

Brad took this, and I LOVE it. He's picking up those players by the scruff of their necks, like naughty puppies.

The crowd liked all the fighty-ness, too.

Because apparently I REALLY wanted to focus on the glass there.

The Mavs JUST missed a goal here.

I wonder what the OSU goalie is telling Matt Ambroz here.

Nick Fanto skating in front of his teammates. Brought to you by Mutual of Omaha.

Jeric Agosta is like, "No big deal guys, I got this."

Do you see the way the net is bowed out in the back? That's because the WINNING FREAKING GOAL was being scored. That stupid ref is in the way.

Holy overexposure, Batman! Sorry bout that. I was too delirious with joy to adjust my levels.

Number One star of the game Terry "Bratwurst" Broadhurst getting interviewed.

Despite taking roughly 2 million pictures, I don’t think any of them are like “OMG AWESOME.” Our seat location had a little to do with that – the posts in the glass, or the net above the glass, got in the way of everything that would have been good. Oh well. It was still an awesome time. Go Mavs!

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!

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 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?

"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.)

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.

Forgive me if I take a slightly contrarian track here, but I can’t wait for the Hall of Fame announcement tomorrow. All the spirited & intelligent exchanges are appreciated, but there comes a time where the battle of good versus evil, the “us versus them” and “right versus wrong” chorus grows stale.

THIS.

Thank you, Drew Fairservice. May I send you a fruit basket to express my gratitude?

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.

January
I had to root for the Sooners to be national champions, and it was painful. All the while, I missed the little things about baseball season.

These are one of those little things

February
I mused about the Rocky Mountain News’ closing – and shared the Reader’s Digest version of a school paper I wrote about the evolution of sports blogs – all in one post. That was quite the post. Later, I saw an incredible hockey game, from right behind the home team’s bench. My gallery of ridiculous Spring Training photos got linked by Deadspin.

Joel Zumaya leads the Tigers in a game of airplane. Then he goes on the disabled list. (AP/Tony Dejak)

March
I shared why I really don’t want to be a baseball wife anymore, got linked on Deadspin again with a story about Royals catcher and Cuban defector Brayan Pena, and mused about autographs and the people who seek them.

April
I giggled at April Fools Day shenanigans, hated my life after the Royals lost on Opening Day, and was hit surprisingly hard by Nick Adenhart’s death. (Public service reminder: Don’t drink and drive!)

Chilling.

May
I went to a thrilling, instant-classic Royals game (and shared some photos from it the next day), made up some new Wonderlic* questions, and shared my Baseball Prospectus Idol entry. Then I got mugged and rescued by my brother! Whew, what a month!

June
This was my favorite month in the history of the blog, mostly thanks to the MLB draft. On Draft Day, I made some decent predictions, tracked and analyzed the first 20 picks (part 1, part 2), and interviewed 2008 Royals draftee Tyler Sample about his own Draft experience and how potential picks should handle the experience.
Meanwhile, the College World Series teams got commemorated with galleries of sad players after each elimination.
That month, I also went to the game where Gil Meche’s arm died. It was fun at the time, though, and I had some amazing seats thanks to my favorite KC radio host!

July
I gave Juan Uribe an award for botching a perfect game (and later listened to an actual perfect game), felt awful for poor Erin Andrews, and made up a Baseball-Reference drinking game with my brothers.

August
Joe Posnanski got his well-deserved position at Sports Illustrated, so I shared how he changed my life. (Later that month, I got to hang out with him for a bit in Omaha. Pure bliss.) Later, I was greatly moved by a tour of Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, and strongly disagreed with a stupid Royals TV commercial.

Me in the Memoral Stadium press box.

September
My name was in Posnanski’s book! AAAAHHHH! Here’s what Poz meant when he said I “almost” tracked down George Clooney for an interview. That weekend, I was heartbroken by Bo Pelini’s decisionmaking against Virginia Tech. With the start of the NFL season, I launched the Chiefs Fan Experiment series. The Huskers sold out their 300th consecutive home game, and I boasted.

That's my name!

October
Nebraska beat Missouri! The Chiefs won a game! I picked on Buzz Bissinger’s lack of understanding of sample sizes, then compiled some great #oneletterofffamousquotes ideas. And then I put Fievel’s hat on his twin, Jorge Posada.

...yep.

November
Nebraska and Oklahoma is an awesome rivalry, and here’s why. I was thankful for a bunch of stuff, then made a handy guide for reporting medical statuses of celebrities.

December
Barry Bonds was intentionally walked more in 2004 than almost everyone in baseball was in the entire decade. The Heisman voters are dumb and I don’t respect them. Here’s some awesome photos from a hockey game; here’s the opening shot in my battle against unfair MiLB wages, and a Venn diagram about marching bands.

Horrifying.