There's No "I" in Blog

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 played an integral role in the team’s World Series run. The fact that both he and I went to Oregon State University certainly helped me jump on the Ellsbury speed train as well. In baseball, I’m always drawn to the hyper-athletic, speedy players like Ellsbury (and Ichiro). These players demand attention because every pitch might lead to something brilliant; with them, diving-catch highlights, inside-the-park homers, and any other exciting or rare feat is always a possibility. Any poorly hit ground ball still might result in a single, which will probably result in a stolen base, which can easily change the dynamic of a game. So, inspired by Ted, I’ve decided to track the 2011 Boston Red Sox season through Ellsbury.

I decided to go with “Any Day Ellsbury” instead of “Every Day Ellsbury” for a few reasons. The first simple reason is that 162 games is a lot of games to write about, let alone watch. For example, today’s first pitch was at 12:05 p.m., which means I couldn’t watch it while at work. Also, while Ellsbury makes fun baseball plays, he doesn’t really carry the enigmatic, zen-like presence of Ichiro. (The closest thing Ellsbury might have to that is that Red Sox fans think he’s dreamy looking.) Still, on any given day, Ellsbury might do something that makes me think, “I need to write about this!”

Last night, Ellsbury went 0-5 (same as the Red Sox record at the time!) bringing his batting average to .143. I should be in panic mode, right? I mean, Red Sox Nation is! Okay, maybe the Nation isn’t on red alert, but no one thought it would take this long for the Sox to get a win. I’ve always wondered what goes through a professional athlete’s head after a 3-strikeout, 0-5 game after the the postgame interview or the immediate frustration. I wonder what lingers, if anything, after a game like that, and after six games without a win.

Sure, it’s a long season, but Ellsbury’s final AB last night (broken bat groundout to second) pretty much sums up the Red Sox season so far.

*Top photo courtesy of Keith Allison via Creative Commons License

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 waiting in the hall after the fight could have been lifted straight out of Ocean’s 11), everything seemed overdone.

Instead, I’ll keep this short because, unfortunately, there’s not a lot to say about this show. This final episode seemed to be building new story lines for the show’s second season that won’t happen, like the League of Extraordinary Boxing Gentlemen, the incredible and bloody aftermath of trifling with Barry K. Word’s business, and the (immediate) onset of Lights’s memory loss. None of that really matters, I suppose. The only thing I’ll miss without a second season is seeing how Reynolds deals with his fall from grace. I’ve said before that Reynolds was a lot like Lights, and it would have been interesting to see how that played out as he went through the same things Lights did.

Sidenote: During the press conference, Reynolds points out that if he were in the same legal troubles as Lights, he would immediately face an assumption of guilt because he’s black. This is obviously a huge theme that seldom arose throughout the season, and discussing racism so openly always puts people on alert. This should have been bigger all season. This is why you can’t have nice things, FX Network.

Real Life Sidenote: The moment where Lights tells the ref to stop the fight was interesting, when you consider what happened in the recent Manny Pacquiao fight.

Literary Sidenote: The ending of Lights Out had a very nice ambiguously happy-sad ending. I immediately thought of Thom Jones’s The Pugilist at Rest, which is a fantastic book of short stories about boxing (and other awesome things).

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 share in conversation, laughter, and good-natured trash talking.

Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t you forget about me.

via Best Week Ever

Oregon State University basketball coach Craig Robinson is featured in the latest issue of Business Week for choosing basketball over business.

People wouldn’t know Craig Robinson if I wasn’t the brother-in-law of the President. It gives me a little bit of brand recognition and helps with recruiting. I tell my players that everybody’s watching what they do. It brings more pressure, but that’s life. I also tell my players what my parents told me: Don’t pick your career on the amount of money you make. When I got a chance to buy all the stuff I wanted, I discovered it didn’t mean a thing.

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.