June 2011
3 posts
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Boston Brewin': Some thoughts on the Cup
The Boston Bruins sent their city into a frenzy on Wednesday night when they dominated the Vancouver Canucks 4-0 in Game 7 to win their sixth Stanley Cup. Given Boston’s long sports history and its fans’ general fervor, it’s not surprising to read numerous accounts reminiscing on their personal relationships with hockey and the Bruins. The “Win it For…” thread on Sons of Sam Horn is...
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Best Names of the 2011 MLB Draft
Just as we did last year, this year we kept track of the best names drafted in the 2011 MLB draft. 2011 wasn’t a particularly strong draft. It didn’t give us any Goodrums or Greathouses, but—carrying over Kendrick Perkins (Red Sox) from last year—we were able to field a full (but still bad) NBA starting 5, with Perkins, Brad Miller, Matt Barnes, Aaron Brooks, and Derek Fisher.
ROUND 1...
May 2011
3 posts
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Bullied: The 2010-2011 Boston Celtics Eulogy
At least it ended in a good way. LeBron went off, dropped the dagger, beat his chest, and acted like he had gotten further than the Eastern Conference Finals and like Dwayne Wade wasn’t the main reason for it. Wait, this isn’t a particularly good end. But it’s better than what I had envisioned, which was a game 7 loss, perhaps in overtime, as Lebron or Wade drove to the lane...
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Any Day Ellsbury #4: Very Superstitious
Inspired by Ted Walker’s “Every Day Ichiro” over at Pitchers & Poets, I’ll be chronicling the 2011 Red Sox season by paying close attention to outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury.
I have no idea if Jacoby Ellsbury has any kind of pregame rituals or superstitions. I haven’t even noticed if he has prepitch routine. (I did, however, notice that a few games ago, in his first AB, Ellsbury did the...
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Any Day Ellsbury #3: Where I Ramble About Stephen...
Inspired by Ted Walker’s “Every Day Ichiro” over at Pitchers & Poets, I’ll be chronicling the 2011 Red Sox season by paying close attention to outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury.
I’ve always been drawn to people in the middle of things. One of my former literature professors called them “characters on edges.” Stephen Crane’s Jack Potter, town marshal of Yellow Sky in...
April 2011
7 posts
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Any Day Ellsbury #2: The Weekend in Jacoby
Inspired by Ted Walker’s “Every Day Ichiro” over at Pitchers & Poets, I’ll be chronicling the 2011 Red Sox season by paying close attention to outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury.
Ellsbury hasn’t done a whole lot to write about so far. He has made a couple of nice defensive plays, he’s still struggling at the plate, and—like all of the Red Sox—he’s been...
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Any Day Ellsbury #1: Intro, 0-5, and 0-6
Ted Walker of Pitchers & Poets has been doing a wonderful ongoing project called “Every Day Ichiro,” where he tracks the Seattle Mariners’ season through the lens of Ichiro Suzuki. I’ve chatted briefly with him about my idea of doing the same thing with Jacoby Ellsbury. I’ve been fascinated with Ellsbury ever since he appeared with the Boston Red Sox in 2007 and...
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Lights Out: War
I was tempted to write this final recap in an unending sequence of clichés that built upon each other because it would have been exactly like the season/series finale of Lights Out: a bunch of rehashed tropes that was somehow entertaining to watch. From the boxing sequences (where Lights gets thrown out of the ring and uses the rope-a-dope) to random camera shots (Barry, Hal, Johnny, and Pops...
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Tommy Amaker's Breakfast Club →
But once a month, the fourth-year Harvard men’s basketball coach adds a different element to his routine.
On these days, Amaker pays a visit to Harvard Square restaurant Henrietta’s Table. It is there that Amaker meets with nearly a dozen predominately African-American scholars, doctors, and businessmen from the Boston area for a monthly breakfast that provides an opportunity for the group to...
March 2011
16 posts
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(Dropped) Handoff →
Seriously? Nobody thought the second-to-last paragraph maybe warranted a bit more focus? Maybe even a sub-headline?
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Lights Out: Sucker Punch
In any half-decent writing workshop, someone inevitably says something like, “You know what? I need to know more about (blank) character.” Even if it’s a stupid comment, it always comes up. If Lights Out were being workshopped, that question would be followed by ones like, “Where is the Leary mother?” and “Why did she leave?” And if you’re writing...
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Lights Out: Rainmaker
I’ll be honest: I’ve never gotten completely on board with Lights Out, but I only figured out why after watching last night’s episode. The show seems to float between a successful serial drama and a show more like Law & Order, where the stories are wrapped up at the end of each episode. “Rainmaker” is a perfect example.
All of a sudden, Patrick has to deal with...
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Book Review: Play Their Hearts Out
As the book’s subtitle says, Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine sheds a necessary light on the machine of grassroots basketball that extends from the youth levels into high school, college, and even the NBA. The story’s main players here are a coach, Joe Keller, and his player, Demetrius Walker. Author George Dohrmann follows them on...
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Lights Out: Cut Men
Finally, Lights and Reynolds fight! Too bad it didn’t happen in the ring, as Lights Out has been promising all along. To be honest, I’m not sure I care. Even though this episode cranked up the energy for the Lights/Reynolds rematch, it also reinforced the modern family drama aspect as the show’s real strength.
It turns out Reynolds isn’t that different from Patrick. In...
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October Madness II in Review
Any fool can come close to predicting the NCAA field on Selection Sunday. This fool, however, tried to do so back in October when the season was just getting under way. Last season, I accurately predicted 32 of the 65 teams. This season, my goal was to guess 40 of the 68 teams and get 10 of the exact seeds. I dubbed it the 40-10 challenge.
Well the field was released this weekend, and the results...
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“Athletes carry forever the triumphs from their youth. Anyone who has ever...”
– George Dohrmann, in his book Play Their Hearts Out
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Lights Out: Infight
Lights Out spends most of the time examining the gray areas between right and wrong, understanding that almost nothing in life is ever that simple. Most of this episode built toward Lights’s firing of new trainer and awesome character Ed Romeo. Despite all the hints that made firing Romeo pretty much inevitable—Patrick walking in on what looks like Romeo making Daniella cry, Patrick...
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Diamonds and Doodles: My Scorekeeping Story at... →
The wonderful guys over at Pitchers & Poets asked me to contribute to their blog for Scorekeeping Week, so I gave them a story about my intense desire to ruin those nice, neat scorebooks.
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The New York Times Reports on NBA Naptime →
There are routines for before and after naps. Tyson Chandler of the Dallas Mavericks gets a massage, Ronny Turiaf of the Knicks seeks bread pudding and Antawn Jamison of the Cleveland Cavaliers carefully irons and lays out his clothes before shutting it down.
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Lights Out: Head Games
Last night’s Lights Out episode exposed some sort of duality in pretty much every character involved the show up to this point, and it was all anchored by the appearance of the mysterious Ed Romeo (played by Eammon Walker of Oz, and Cadillac Records). Patrick turned to Romeo after Pops said he wouldn’t train Patrick to fight Reynolds. Enter Romeo, who sets off a chain of subplots...
February 2011
9 posts
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Help a Sportswriter Choose an NBA Team!
When Walt “Crimedog” McGough joined us here at There’s No “I” in Blog, I knew he’d bring along his acute insights and wonderful wordsmithery. I also knew we’d have to do something about his one moral defect: he’s never watched a complete game of basketball. (Before you all crucify him, trust me. He’s a really good guy. He even keeps a nerf gun...
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Lights Out: Crossroads
From a sports drama perspective, the opening scene with “Death Row” Reynolds talking to Lights in the diner may have been the most satisfying scene of Lights Out yet. Personally, I find Reynolds (played by Billy Brown) to be the show’s most intriguing character. Maybe it’s simply because we don’t see enough of him, so every time he makes an appearance becomes...
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Lights Out: Combinations
The best part about getting Lights back in the gym and training is that Lights is finally a force in motion. While a big portion of the show has been setting up the forces working against Lights and getting them to circle him like vultures, at times it’s been a bit frustrating to watch him watching the vultures gather. Meanwhile he’d do just enough to fend them off (such as not...
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Starter: Ray Allen
If you follow my twitter (do it, I’m really interesting), know me personally, or were within earshot of the 02116 area code when I won my ticket, you’ll know that I had the amazing fortune of attending the Celtics/Lakers game last Thursday during which Ray Allen set the all-time record for three pointers made (though he still needs 63 more to match Reggie Miller’s record if the...
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Lights Out: The Comeback
Last night’s episode of Lights Out was all family drama, which sounds lame but isn’t. The family dynamic—complete with money problems, deception, and shattered dreams—is what makes the show interesting. Lights Out obviously aspires to be about a normal American family fallen victim to the current financial crisis. The first 30 minutes of “The Comeback” is a whole lot of...
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Super Bowl Preview
Alex: I’m still a little sour from the Patriots premature exit from the playoffs, so it’s been hard for me to get amped up for the game. That being said, fans of the sport have plenty to look forward to: two historic organizations, Dallas’s beautiful stadium, and perhaps the last game we’ll see in a while. At the beginning of the season, like the rest of the TNIB staff, I...
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Lights Out: Bolo Punch
After last week’s episode, Rachel (TNIB editor and girlfriend extraordinaire) said that it’s hard to watch a show where only bad things happen. This fourth episode of Lights Out sure had its share of terrible things, as it brought the Leary family even farther down the toilet. Johnny gets into more trouble, has the butts beaten out of him, and forces Patrick to save his arse yet...
January 2011
14 posts
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WatchHappy Birthday!
(via waxandmilk:)
“Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?”
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Picked Off: The NHL All-Star Draft
As I was driving around Boston earlier this week listening to the 98.5 (THE SPORTS HUUUBB!) I heard a commercial for the NHL All-Star game being played this Sunday. With only two Bruins in the game and Sidney Crosby boycotting like a child due to concussions despite sharing a locker room with the disgraceful Matt Cooke, I hadn’t been paying much attention. Then the final line of the...
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Lights Out: The Shot
Things keep getting worse for the Leary family. While Lights is busy doing anything he can to keep his family afloat, Pops and Johnny are busy screwing things up. Pops is only trying to help, as he jumps at the opportunity to get Omar Assarian—Leary’s Gym’s next and maybe last hope—a title fight after another boxer drops out. Johnny’s also trying to get Omar that same fight,...
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One and Done (or, Why That Other Sports Blog is...
Big Daddy Drew over at Kissing Suzy Kolber has a great post looking at why the NFL just happens to kick so much ass in television ratings. The main thrust of the argument comes down to “event mentality,” which he chalks up to the fact that people think of long-standing networks as somehow more authoritative:
Part of it is that “event television” mentality, an elusive concept that so...
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Handoff →
Baseball comes to India, one fastballer at a time:
By the end of Bernstein’s plan to outsource baseball to India, Singh had beaten more than 37,000 hopefuls and, in the process, changed the course of his life forever.
…
‘I was a little bit nervous to go, and my mum and dad weren’t happy having me so far away from home, but I said I have to go over there,” Singh...
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Reign Man
Remember when Shawn Kemp dunked on Chris Gatling, and Gatling was like, “Dude, that’s gonna be a fly poster,” then they bro-hugged it out? Well, now you do.
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Lights Out: Cakewalk
Just as I thought, Lights Out slows down a bit after the pilot episode and lets the plot, characters, and themes develop a little more deliberately. Cliffs have been hung, and moments that seem small for now will surely come back in a big way later (e.g. the earring in the locker room). Lights Out now resembles the serialized TV show we’re all used to seeing. The show’s writers also...
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Handoff →
Henry Abbott’s post about race and the NBA is definitely worth checking out:
The NBA has been eager to declare victory, on the topic of race, and then move on. That almost seems to imply that some kind of spell was cast — and since then all that racism we know existed was wiped away for good. But of course it was painstaking and slow progress, born of hard conversations, hard-won...
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Why is Bill Belichick so Hated?
Ask any football fan outside New England (and some of those inside) what they think of Bill Belichick, and you’ll likely get one of the following responses:
“Cheater.”
“Jerk.”
“Arrogant.”
Take one look at fan sites like The Gang Green, or even in multiple national columns such as Gregg Easterbrook’s, and you’ll read the same kinds of...
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Handoff →
The climate for disagreement in the political arena has become so overheated, so mean-spirited, that it’s entirely possible a Congresswoman lies in a hospital right now, fighting for her life, because of a difference in philosophy, an intolerance of disagreement. Maybe, then, the sports arena, with a greater capacity for disagreement, is the more welcome place for the difficult...