Wild Wild Life

Baseball is layered thicker than lasagna with stories.  These stories are immensely varied in length, quality and character.

The smallest unit is the individual pitch.
An at-bat.
A half-inning.
A full inning.
One pass through the batting order.
The full game.
A three or four game regular season series.
The full season series between two teams.
The playoff race near the end of the season.
The whole regular season.
The playoffs.
The whole year.
A generation of players for any team (for instance, the Derek Jeter era).
The full history of a team.
The full history of baseball.
The perogie race (Hunter Pence cheers for Potato Pete).

There's one thing that cuts this structure of stories off at the shoulders.  The Wild Card game.

It's a one game win-or-go-home pressure cooker.  There's no "We'll get them next game!"  There's no chance for a multi-game comeback.  It has the pressure of a game 7 without all the build-up of games 1-6.  No chance to develop a nice seething hatred for Hunter Pence (who loves Jar-Jar Binks).  It doesn't even feel like a true playoff game.

It should be a best of 3 series.  It's short, which doesn't give the division winners that much additional rest, and you can have multiple high-pressure games.

There are some downsides, of course.  How do you manage the travel issues?  Pittsburgh-San Francisco is some serious back and forth, when games are every day.  Does it give too much rest to the division winners, such that they're at a significant advantage over the teams that had to play at least two additional games?  Does this end up being like the NHL playoffs, where it seems like they go on longer than Hunter Pence spends doing his hair?

But I think it would be better for the game to have a longer Wild Card series.

(Disclaimer:  I live in Pittsburgh.  But I felt this way last year too).

Heart to Heart

In the NHL preseason, Rich Peverly of the Dallas Stars underwent a procedure to address an irregular heartbeat.  Medical professionals monitored his health throughout the season.  It wasn't enough.  Less than a minute after finishing a shift 6 minutes into tonight's game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, he collapsed on the Stars' bench, and the ensuing emergency and concern caused the game to be called (it's postponed until an as yet unscheduled time).  For the record, he is alive and as well as can be expected in this situation.  When he came to and was able to talk to Stars' coach Lindy Ruff, he asked about the progress of the game.  You can't say for sure that there was no damage, but it's a good sign, I think.

Short term, this game was postponed, and Dallas' game tomorrow against St. Louis may also be postponed.  I'm not sure about tomorrow, but today, anyone suggesting any other course of action is wrong.  This impacts fans, and the teams, but those things are manageable.

The medium term repercussions are obvious.  Peverly will be out for some time to recover and determine his future with regards to hockey.  He's not a prolific scorer, but he has 30 points in the season, that's important.  Dallas' players will have to manage their emotional state, after experiencing an event like this.  Game schedules will have to be rearranged.

Long term, the NHL and the organizations involved in this come out smelling like roses.  He survived, with most if not all of his faculties intact.  His wife was present at the arena or at least able to get to the hospital with him.  The management of this medical emergency couldn't have been better, and the NHL is acknowledging the concern of the fans, both for Peverly as a person and for the more business oriented side of things.  I reserve judgement on how they will handle the people who came to see a game and only got just over 6 minutes of hockey.  But I think they'll do the right thing, for once.

He's My Cherry Pie!

Don Cherry is an idiot.

He says that the 15 game suspension to Shawn Thornton was too much.  Now, let's get the accusations of Homerism out of the way:  yes, I am a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Yes, Thornton concussed Brooks Orpik, who is a Pens player.  Therefore, I can be accused of bias.  Let me nip that in the bud here:

1>  No player deserves to get slewfooted, knocked down and punched in the head twice while flat on his back on the ice.  Ever.  Not even Eric Lindros.

2>  James Neal got 5 games for kneeing Brad Marchand in the same game.  That's hardly enough.

3>  Puck Daddy (Yahoo's hockey blog) agrees with 15 games.

To get back to Don Cherry, this is a guy gets mad when the Toronto Maple Leafs don't have any players from Ontario.  Talk about Homerism.  No wonder they missed the playoffs for so many years.

Another point against him:  You fight, you get hurt.  Really?  I think fighting has its place in the NHL, but the guy is basically condoning concussions.

He's a dinosaur that needs to shut the hell up, and preferably soon.

I wear my visor in a fight*

The NHL has implemented a rule where, if a player gets in a fight (where they get a 5 minute major for fighting, instead of the 2 minute roughing call) and removes his helmet, he gets an additional 2 minute minor for unsportsmanlike conduct.

It's been stated that the reason for this rule is to avoid concussions.  But it's really just a way to penalize fighting even more than it already is.  And I think it's a dumb idea.

Let's be clear here:  the staged fights you see when the guys drop their gloves just after a face-off need to stop.  The players are transparently attempting to pump up the energy of the team, and it's generally transparent.  Although this one (Max Talbot vs. Dan Carcillo in 2009) was an example of one that broke that mold, leading to the Pens eliminating the Flyers.

But a spontaneous fight, where the players just start smacking the living bejeebies out of each other because one guy smashed the other guy into the boards, that almost always results in a momentum shift.

There are also logistical issues with this.  What happens when a guy knocks the other player's helmet off?  What happens if the cause of the fight was a guy high-sticking someone and knocking it off?  Are they penalized then?

I think it's a bad rule, and the NHL should feel bad.




*Sung to the tune of that great 80s hit "Sunglasses at Night".  Yeah, it's a reach.  Deal with it.