Category: Business Day One

[Business Day One] Fantasy Etiquette

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Baseball’s not over yet. Not by a long shot. Most teams still have around 40 games left, and the divisional and wild card races aren’t buttoned up. Plenty of baseball left, to be sure. Oh, and Beckham fever is going strong. ESPN reported that 66,237 showed up for Saturday’s Red Bulls/Galaxy game. And the Little League World Series is as compelling as ever, with plucky kids from all over the country playing their hearts out for a shot at glory. Truly, a wonderful time to be a sports fan.

And all of this great stuff will be waiting for you when you get back. You see, you all are going to be busy for the next couple of weeks. It’s fantasy football draft season!

With fantasy football being as prolific as it is nowadays, I work under the assumption that everyone I know (including you the readers) is going to be drafting sometime between now and the start of the season. I also assume you’re already researching your late-round fliers and trying to figure out which non-LT, non-Steven Jackson running back is worth reaching for in the first round. As such, I’m not going to kick down your door and give you a sure-fire draft strategy that will win you a championship. You already have one, in theory. (Unless you plan on drafting wide receivers early. If that’s the case, I’m sorry. No one can help you.) No, what I’m here for today is to help you marry your fantasy football draft into the rest of your life. To let you know that it’s ok to be doing this, and to not do other things in order to do this. To put my hand on your shoulder and say “Hey, buddy. You can avoid a child’s soccer game to do a live draft at your old frat brother’s condo. ????? ????? ?? ???????? ” I’m like a modern day Miss Manners. If Miss Manners was a bald Italian that comes up with inspirational nicknames for all of his players.

So below is a list of commandments and suggestions that will help you navigate the tumultuous non-draft parts of your life during this most sacred draft time:

Your girlfriend will not understand why this is so important, so don’t explain the specifics. Read More

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[Business Day One] Home Game at Camden Yards

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I took in the Red Sox/Orioles game this Saturday, and the experience so dominated my weekend that I must write about it today. Like at all Sox home games, the area around the ballpark was packed with fans wearing Papelbon and Ortiz jerseys and Boston hats of various colors. Kids in oversized red shirts jogged around to avoid their parents, who were yelling after them in every accent from North Shore to Southie. Folks carried bags of souvenirs, gorged on pretzels and drank $2 bottles of water. Just like every other Mardi Gras-esque pregame party on Lansdowne Street.

Only we were about 400 miles away from Lansdowne Street. At Camden Yards. At which the Sox were playing an away game. Could’ve fooled me. Considering the ratio of Sox to Orioles fans both on the streets of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor (10 to 1) and the ratio inside the stadium (let’s say, conservatively 4 to 1), you’d think Baltimore was a stop on the Ashmont-Mattapan High Speed Line. Might as well have been, really. The City of Baltimore makes it very, very easy for a Bostonian to come down and have a great weekend.

If you have never seen a game at Camden Yards, you owe it to yourself to do so. In fact, make a weekend out of it, as I did. Here’s a good itinerary for a Saturday game:

Friday – Take an afternoon or evening Amtrak down to Baltimore’s Penn Station. Read More

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[Business Day One] Progress Report

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For starters, congratulations to Tom Glavine on picking up his 300th win. The man from Billerica has had a dominant career on a pair of durable legs, and when he’s ready to hang them up, people will see him as a class act and one of the finest of his era. Not a bad way to go out.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the meat and potatoes. With all the sports buzz bounding about in our beautiful burg of Boston, I want to give a quick snapshot of the four major sports (sorry, Revolution) for the benefit of you out-of-towners. What’s going on right now is a level of multi-faceted sports excitement that fans rarely see condensed into once city. With three teams widely expected to make deep playoff runs over the next year, there is an energy coursing through the Boston’s fans that have apparently nullified any bitterness or latent pessimism that longtime residents might expect to find. So here’s a break-down by team, and how each franchise is contributing to this buzz.

The Boston Celtics – Pierce, Allen, Garnett: The New Big Three. Read More

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[Business Day One] Verges and Cusps

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I woke up this morning to a busy sports world. Or, rather, a sports world that is about to become very busy. It seems as if a hundred different, sports-important things are about to take place over the next 24 hours.  I’m going to look at what I’m seeing at the Top Four.

-Barry Bonds is about to tie Hank Aaron.

-Alex Rodriguez is about to hit 500.

-One of the Michael Vick “co-conspirators” is about to enter a plea (and assuredly testify against Vick).

-Sources are reporting that a Kevin Garnett deal is imminent (WEEI reports it has already happened).

Heck of a way to start the work week, really. Of those four potentially huge “unfolding over the next day” stories, only one of them has some positives ramifications. Bonds is about to tie to most hallowed record in sports and there are doubts whether the commissioner of baseball will even be there. Football’s most athletically gifted quarterback is having his camp start to turn on him. And one of basketball’s most historically significant teams is about to demolish it’s future for a two year championship window. Looks like A-rod will be shouldering all of the positive sports energy of this early week.

That is, unless Jose Canseco’s hard-hitting investigation has anything to say about it.

If we fold the implied steroid allegations into the A-rod story, that means that four of the top stories in sports right this second are negative or somehow tainted. I’m not going to throw up my hands and lament the death of purity – it’s not even 10 a.m. yet for me. But this is something that makes me stop for a second and shrug.

It’s Monday morning, and we have to take some bitter coffee with our milk and sugar.

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[Business Day One] Make It Rain Dogs

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What could be said about Michael Vick and Pacman Jones that hasn’t been said yet?  I won’t leave you in suspense – nothing.  It’s all been said.  Pundits weighed in and race relations were discussed and speculations on suspensions have been put forth.  Just so that I am not left completely off the “blog about idiots that forget they’re famous athletes” wagon, I’m going to weigh in for a paragraph or two before I get to the fun stuff I want to do:

One of my best friends in the world played Big East football for four years.  He was a popular and touted defensive player in a big time conference.  He was covered on national television, interviewed by local media and was someone that everyone on campus knew.  At last check (I e-mailed him about a week ago), he was not involved in any strip club fights, drug runs or illegal cabals.  In point of fact, he was going home to visit his family and get some quality video game time in.  Football obviously doesn’t turn people bad.  Pro sports as a whole doesn’t either.  Playing in front of the cameras runs someone through an industrial process, not an alchemical one.  They get pounded and sculpted and scrutinized, but their component parts do not change.  What you put in is what comes out, generally.

Pacman Jones came into the League with behavioral issues.  Vick had a hard knock life in Newport News before he got to VTech and eventually Atlanta.  These were guys with big chips on their shoulder and posses of folks that hoped they’d be earning enough bank to put them up in guest rooms.  These guys brought a lot of emotional and entourage baggage with them into the process, and this is what happened.

Alrighty, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff.  I have compiled a Hall of Fame Jackass and Criminal All-Star Team for this upcoming season.  Here we go:

Read More

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[Business Day One] The Worldwide Leader

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This is a dead time in sports. Baseball is still shaking off that All Star nap that it took and everyone associated is trying to work off the 5 pounds they gained from their Celebrity table tennis paddles matches and Bowling tournaments. The pre-break freshness of a young season has faded, and the playoff chase has really yet to begin. Unless you’re a big fan of college recruiting, football news is pretty infrequent. Basketball summer leagues have nothing to do with anything, and are justifiably not followed by fans, coaches or even most players. And hockey is hockey.

This makes ESPN’s job rather difficult. They need to fill numerous SportsCenters each day with compelling stories that will draw an audience and keep the ratings high. ???? ???? ?????? As someone that watches SportsCenter every day, I can say definitively that they are failing. ESPN, who has an entire department dedicated to flashy graphics and laser sound effects, cannot keep the mid-July doldrums entertaining. Granted, I don’t think anyone can, but watching ESPN fail is like watching your dad get smacked around. Emasculating to a frightening degree.

But damn if ESPN isn’t trying. The Worldwide Leader launched two big things at us to try to ease the post-All-Star, pre-Playoff sports deficiency. This month, we were treated the ESPYs and the launch of the Who’s Now tournament. I sure as heck appreciate the network’s tenacity, but I think they only went 1-for-2 at the plate with these. I loved the former and hated that latter…

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[Business Day One] We Could Use A Break

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Major League Baseball’s All-Star Break elicits the same response from me every year.

“Holy crap, the season’s half over?”

Every single summer, without fail, I get completely surprised by the All-Star Break. As with all things I dislike in the world, I blame the media. For the first two months of the season, whenever a sports commentator talks about a team’s momentum or a player’s hitting slump, they always attach the “but it’s still early” rider on the end. Then, for two weeks, sports analysts don’t make reference to how far into the season we are and we as fans just sort of forget. And all of a sudden, we start hearing “coming into the All-Star Break.” What?!?!?! Already?!!?! But the season was still young two weeks ago? Read More

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[Business Day One] Don’t Call It Retirement

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I was browsing the channels yesterday and stumbled upon a commercial for NBC’s Fourth Of July Fireworks Spectacular.  As a resident of Boston, I do not have much interest in staying in and watching a televised party.  Wouldn’t make sense to, what with the Pops playing while barges on the Charles River launch fireworks for all of Eastern Massachusetts to see.  However, my interest was immediately piqued when I saw who was hosting – the not unattractive Natalie Morales, and the New York Giants’ all time leading rusher, Tiki Barber.

“Whoa,” I actually said out loud.  “Good for Tiki.”

Tiki Barber is 32 years old and, if he was still playing, would be entering the phase of his career where commentators begin using phrases like “timeless,” “elder statesman” or “lot of miles on those legs” during the pre-game shows.  Every hit he sustained would give the analysts pause for a half-second longer, to see if the aging running back got gained his last yards.  Retirement questions would begin to pile up, and we’d get to hear Tiki answer them every week in front of the relentless New York media.

But Tiki Barber is not still playing.  Read More

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