By Sam Handler | Sunday October 28th 2007, 11:13 pm
It’s over. The Rockies aren’t gonna win the World Series this year. It hurts my soul, yes, and unless you’re some kind of monster, it hurts yours too.
To the folks at Coors last night and tonight, you rock. Because of your non-stop raucousness and persistent, thundering “GO…ROCKIES,” I was proud to be from Colorado. Even with our embarrassing performance in game 1. I was watching the game with some other dudes, and a Yankees fan among them complemented me on our fans’ indefatigability. If nothing else, the Rockies’ losses at home at least reaffirmed my love of Colorado and Coloradans.
So remember people, we’re Colorado sports fans. Mourn tonight, root for the Broncos tomorrow.
By Gabe Stein | Thursday October 25th 2007, 11:19 pm
The Red Sox are invading. Let’s show them how real people behave (courteously, not like assholes with extreme entitlement issues) and then show them how real outfields treat fake outfielders. I can’t help but be an optimist: this series is going to be the most dramatic in recent memory. It’s going to fit the rest of the Rockies season perfectly; in other words, gentlemen, start your defibrillators. In the end, though, we’re going to come out on top.
Josh Fogg is pitching Saturday, and before the series began, I felt good about him being on the mound for game 3 should the Rockies lose the first two. He’s that calming, reliable influence that we desparately need right now. We figured out their hitters tonight, and if the offense can get going and the pitching can build on Thursday’s performance, we’ve got them right where we want them.
To all you Boston fans honking your horns and yelling outside my window right now: get ready for a quiet weekend.
By Gabe Stein | Thursday October 25th 2007, 4:05 pm
Take a look at this simulation of the World Series. It has the Rockies winning it all in seven games, and let’s hope they’re right. But look a bit closer at the game 1 prediction: Red Sox 11, Rockies 2. That’s scary accurate, but look even closer at the box score. It has Mike Lowell, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz combining for 8 hits and 8 RBI. The real game? 7 hits (though “only” 4 RBI). It had 2 Boston runs in the first as well. Real life: 3 runs.
The good news is, tonight it has the Rockies winning 8-4. I hope it’s right, but if Matt Holliday hits a two-run homer in the first, I’m calling “Back to the Future” on that thing.
By Gabe Stein | Wednesday October 24th 2007, 10:46 pm
True to form, the celebrating has already begun in Boston. But just remind yourself: One game is not four games. Thirteen runs doesn’t win you four games. A billion extra-base hits doesn’t win you four games. Only winning four games wins you four games.
And remember this, Red Sox fans: the Rockies weren’t supposed to win against Beckett. Win tomorrow and it’s still a successful first two games for les Rox. So don’t wake up in the morning and start talking about the Junior Varsity just because the Rox got their first bad pitching performance in 22 games. That’s called a double standard, that’s called hypocrisy, and that’s called setting yourselves up for major disappointment.
I just posted a Game 1 Preview podcast of sorts on YouCastr.com, which is a new youtube-like website for sports fans. The cool part about it is that they provide some amazingly simple web-based software that lets users do live audio broadcasts and then archives that content with space for comments and ratings and what-have-you, all automagically.
So the analysis is pretty simple stuff designed to introduce Sox fans (and there are a lot of them on YouCastr, just look at the comments) to the Rockies. But you might enjoy it, and, for nostalgia’s sake, I’ve brought back the Rockies Disaster Report name. If they lose, I’ll definitely blame the name and change it to something else, even though I already have the RDR logo work done and everything.
By Sam Handler | Wednesday October 24th 2007, 12:31 am
Okay, okay, okay. Crap. No, shit.Check it out. Check it the crap out: because I’m a so-phisticated man-o-learnin’ currently enrolled at a college, I have a mandatory session with one other student and my theater prof from 6:30 to 8:00 today. This means I’ll miss the first hour of game one. The only possible ameliorator is playoff baseball’s Cal Ripken-like streak of late start times. So yeah, please pray for me and a late start time.
And now the unrelated Simpsons clip you came here to see. God bless you, Nelson Muntz.
By Gabe Stein | Tuesday October 23rd 2007, 3:12 pm
Longtime readers and sports blog junkies might recall this business from last year. What you see there is that I contacted Jay Alves about MLB’s press pass policy. What you don’t see is that after I posted his reply e-mails, he responded with a rather testy and insulting e-mail that, surprisingly, did not even ask me to remove his e-mails. It was simply an angry rant.
Now, the nation gets to see the man’s true colors. For a PR guy, Alves has very little tact and even less charm. The plan to sell tickets exclusively online, whether his brainchild or not, was flawed to begin with. Everyone and their mother predicted it would crash Monday, and low and behold, it did. In steps Jay Alves, who first claimed that tickets were being sold just fine, and then admitted that for whatever reason, the ticket servers had been unable to handle the load of requests. Fair enough, but it quickly became clear that the Rockies didn’t have a backup plan in the event of a server failure - in fact, they didn’t even have a statement prepared. Instead, Jay quickly made up the excuse that evenue.net had been subject to a “malicious attack,” yelled at a few reporters who questioned the official story, and told fans to check back tomorrow.
The attack story was pitiful before Alves flatly refused to provide any details about it; that just made the excuse easier to see through. The truth is, there is no way Evenue’s servers were subject to any kind of attack. The Rockies said they recorded 8.5 million hits in 90 minutes, or about 1,574 hits per second. Your run-of-the-mill targeted denial of service attack floods servers with tens or hundreds of thousands of requests per second, not just over 1,000. Look at it this way: 8.5 million hits would reflect 1 million potential ticket buyers refreshing the now infamous countdown page 8 or 9 times in 90 minutes. Given that the page was set to re-load every 60 seconds, 8.5 million hits is not out of the question.
The bottom line: they should have been prepared, they weren’t, and they lied. Jay should have calmly approached the podium at 2pm Mountain and announced that they were having server problems but that they would open ticket sales at King Soopers locations for local buyers and via telephone for out-of-state customers. Instead, Alves concocted a completely transparent lie, snapped at reporters when they questioned him on it, and totally lost his cool. Had he been honest and calm about the situation, had he even pretended to be prepared, fans may have been willing to spare the organization a little grief.
As it is, frustration is boiling over in Denver. Regardless of how ticket sales actually went down on Tuesday, many fans will want to see Alves’ butt flying from a Rockpile flagpole if Coors Field is anything but jam packed with Rockies fans - not ticket brokers or New England residents - come Saturday. Personally, I don’t blame them.
By Gabe Stein | Monday October 22nd 2007, 10:15 am
Denver Sports Zone: Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions. Red Sox Fan: YEAH!!!!! RED SAWX AHR GONNA WIN SO HAHD CORE!!! ROCK-IES SUCK! DSZ: So, you’re predicting a Red Sox victory? In how many games? RSF: Sweep! Get out the brooms! Broom time, baby! DSZ: Even though the Rockies are the hottest team in baseball? RSF: Dude, I got some news for you. Everyone predicted us to win at the beginning of the season. No one thought the Rockies would be here. NO ONE! DSZ: So? It’s a prediction. RSF: Also dude, Dustin Pedroia. BOOM! DSZ: The Rockies also have a stud rookie infielder, his name – RSF: — Big Papi. Manny. Jonathan Papelbon. DSZ: Yes, I know you have players, but – RSF: — And let’s not forget, let’s not forget… DSZ: Please don’t yell ‘Youk.’ RSF: YYYYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. Ha ha, wicked! DSZ: I wasn’t going to play this card, but, what about when the Rockies won 2 of 3 at Fenway this year? RSF: I don’t recall. DSZ: Really? RSF: … DSZ: Really? RSF: I’m sorry, I gotta go get some chowdah. Seeya at the celebration. DSZ: What celebration? RSF: When the Sawx win the series!!!! DSZ: What are you talking about? I’m a Rockies fan? RSF: A what? DSZ: The team Boston’s playing? The Colorado Rockies? RSF: Oh. Screw you.
By Sam Handler | Wednesday October 17th 2007, 6:12 pm
So I just found out that Yahoo Sports shows live NHL games for free. Not only that, but they’ve got previously intertron-televised games availible too. So yeah, I thought I’d share that. The Avs are gonna be on Yahoo Sports NHL-Intertron-TV on October 23 at 7:30 mountain time, and I’ll be tuning in.
By Gabe Stein | Tuesday October 16th 2007, 10:22 pm
I was browsing the internets today when I came across a post about Fantasy Hockey saving the NHL. While I agree that Fantasy Hockey systems could be improved to help fans get hooked on hockey, the percentage of fans that even play fantasy sports for any league is small compared to TV viewership. Making hockey fun to follow is helpful, but increased viewership is what makes it worthwhile to advertisers (and ESPN) and therefore profitable. I love hockey, so I’ve put a lot of thought into what could be done to save the sport. Here’s my list of far-fetched and feasible ideas that could return hockey to the glory days.
1. Fire Gary Bettman, hire Wayne Gretzky. Gary Bettman should absolutely not have a job. In fact, he shouldn’t have been hired in the first place. He’s not a hockey man, and he’s killed the league with two lockouts at critical times and insane franchise and TV moves. I’ve even read conspiracy theories that David Stern convinved the NHL to hire Bettman because he knew Gary would ruin the sport, leaving the basketball as America’s top third sport.
Meanwhile, Gretzky was more convincing as commissioner of the Bubble Hockey League than Bettman has ever been in the NHL post. Screw the betting scandal: Wayne’s still the NHL’s only household name, a smart guy and more than anything, a hockey guy. You’ve got to promote your stars, and Gretzky should be the NHL foreman.
2. Play games earlier. Games start anywhere from 7 - 8 local time, which is already too late for a sporting event, and makes it impossible for East Coast fans to watch their teams when they head west. I know the NHL wants to avoid scheduling conflicts with other prime time events, but that just begs of desparation. If you aren’t the top ticket in prime time, pretend you are. All games should start from 6-6:30pm local time weekdays, and 4:00pm on Saturday. No one wants to be watching TV as late as 9pm on a Saturday, they want to be out partying. Saturday afternoon games are perfect for filling the spot between college football and hitting the clubs.
3. Simplify Sunday. I know I just said that hockey should pretend they’re the number one sport, but Sunday is a different story. Instead of multiple games at 1pm and Sunday night, the NHL should play just one, nationally-televised game on Sunday. They should play it opposite the late NFL game at 4pm Eastern and coordinate it with the NFL schedule so teams in the Sunday game aren’t competing with cross-town NFL franchises playing at the same time. It probably violates their contract with the NFL, but if at all possible, NBC should carry the “National Game” as the lead-in to Sunday Night Football. It goes without saying that the National Game should feature a steady diet of Malkin, Crosby and Ovechkin.
4. Shorten the schedule. 82 is way too many games. It makes each game less valuable as a spectator event and allows fans to ignore bits of the season instead of being forced to focus on every single match. Plus, and here’s the meat of the issue, the Stanley Cup is played far too late. No one wants to think about hockey, much less attend a game, once the weather warms up and the baseball season starts. The Stanley Cup finals should end no later than March 31, which means cutting the season down to something like 60 games and implementing my next point.
5. Playoffs?! Are you kidding me? Sending more than half the league to the playoffs is a joke. I know the NHL wants to reward fans in small markets with lots of playoff bids, but 16 teams makes it far too easy to get to the playoffs. It rewards mediocre play, and frankly, gives fans little to be proud of unless their team makes the conference finals. Meanwhile, because it’s so easy, fans of teams who don’t make the playoffs have a hard time seeing the bright points and tend to jump the shark after unsuccessful seasons at a higher rate than other sports.
Contrast that to the MLB, where only eight teams (or 26.6%) make the playoffs, and you see why fans get so excited for the baseball post season. I would convert hockey to a similar eight-team bracket, with a first round, conference finals round and Stanley Cup finals round, all best-of-seven series. Like the current NHL format, the division winners should get an automatic ticket to the playoffs as seeds 1-3, with the fourth drawn from the best of the remaining teams.
6. Ditch the zone. I hate the trapezoid, even though I like calling it the trapezone. I’m not a big proponent of math in general, but geometry is my worst subject, so including weird shapes on the rink to create arbitrary boundaries for the goalie doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It sounds like a protectionary rule you might see in youth roller hockey, but not appropriate for the big kids’ game. If you want to decrease the goalie’s impact on the game, let players check them when they venture out of the crease. They’re already wearing more padding than anyone else, they can take it if they want to play out of the crease area.
7. Shoot from the right angles. One of the best things the NHL can do to get fans interested is show them how complex and fast and beautiful the game really is. To do this, they need to get “inside the glass,” as it were, with some new camera angles that bring TV viewers closer to the action. Obviously, last year’s rail cam experiment was a total dud. It’s too shaky and there’s no real sense of depth when you’re shooting from the side. That said, the NHL needs to keep experimenting with how they film hockey, because current camera angles just don’t do the game justice.
8. Widen the playing field. The NHL should adopt the international rink size. It gives players more room to work with and therefore more creative plays and more scoring. Fans love olympic hockey, and the NHL could do well by copying some of the game’s international mystique, which brings me to my next point.
9. Count up, not down. When the NHL records goals, they record them as being scored in the fifth or the 12th minute, and yet the clock counts down, not up, meaning those are realy minutes 15 or 8. This is confusing for new fans and forces people like me to struggle with unnecessary math. The NHL should count up, like in international hockey, both to make it easier on fans and capture some of the mystique of international hockey and soccer. Speaking of which, foreign soccer fans might be more willing to adopt the NHL if the timing system was similar.
10. It’s the marketing, stupid. Back when hockey was “The Coolest Game on Earth,” it was the coolest game on Earth. It also had some of the coolest commercials. MyNHL is by far one of the worst slogans and marketing campaigns ever. It has no energy, no life, and the commercials themselves are just bad. They look like the product of student filmmakers, not a major sports league. If I was the NHL, I would fire my ad firm and hire just about anyone else. I would also start a series of hockey commercials based on the trailers for “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” with the league’s superstars talking candidly, on camera, about other superstars with dramatic highlights from classic games mixed in. Think about it: Hockey is a foreigner’s game, it’s a fast game, it’s a beautiful game with tons of tradition and history, and most importantly, really smart, articulate, humble, respectful and usually funny players people can identify with. That’s something you can market, and done the right way, it should be really intriguing to US audiences.
To make matters worse, companies aren’t really putting a lot of effort into hockey-themed commercials anymore, which is also a problem. I remember watching Avs games back before the lockout just to see the latest Hockey Falls commercial. If I was the NHL, I would do anything to get commercials like those back, even giving Bud Light and other vendors steep discounts to run them. They made hockey personal and made every minute of a game fun to watch. If nothing else, the NHL should buy the rights to Hockey Falls and other famous campaigns and use them as new marketing campaigns. Even though this is the “new” NHL, people have fond memories of hockey’s past, and seeing that stuff around again could draw them back in.
So that’s my rant. The Rockies are in the World Series, which is super exciting, but I wanted to touch one something else while we have a few days off. Hopefully the NHL will still be alive and kicking the next time the Rockies win the pennant. If not, well, I’m always open to take the commissioner’s job…call me.
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