One of the best weekends of my life

Our view of the opening kickoff from the South endzone

The Notre Dame defense De-narded Robinson.  From now on, he'll be known as De Robinson.  I totally stole that joke from an NDNation poster.  Before I get to the story of the weekend, let's go back six years:

September 16, 2006:  One of the worst days of my life.  If you know what I'm talking about, I'm not joking.  Notre Dame had come off giving Penn State a beatdown in the second game of the season.  With a 2-0 record, we were ranked number 2 in the AP poll (I actually didn't remember being ranked quite that high).  I woke up that day being extremely confident that we would beat Michigan.  They destroyed us and it was the first time I was worried about Charlie Weis as a head coach.  As it turned out, the Weis Era ended poorly.

Until this weekend, 2006 was the only game against Michigan that I've attended.  It was one of several disappointing losses.  So it was a personal score that needed to be settled.  I needed to see us beat Michigan in person.  I think it was our biggest game since I was a student.  I would even say it was our biggest home game since USC in 2005.  The Michigan game in 2006 is an obvious contender for that title, and it probably should be the answer since we were ranked number 2 and they were number 11.  But I think we were too confident going into that game.  If we had won, it would have been totally expected.  For this game, I hoped we would win, but nothing was going to surprise me.  The other contenders for biggest home game since 2005 are USC in 2009 and 2011.  In 2011, we already had two losses.  And in 2009, I think the 2007 and 2008 seasons put a damper on that.  We were already seriously worried about Weis (and that loss was when I gave up on Weis).

This game was made huge by our win over Michigan State and the last three years against Michigan.  It was our first time at 3-0 since 2002 and we needed to stop losing in the most painful ways possible to Michigan.  A win would put us into the top 10.  A loss would mean that we still weren't ready for primetime.

I applied for this game in the alumni lottery totally expecting not to win.  I ended up getting two tickets and I was joined at this game by my brother Sean.  We met at O'Hare Airport in Chicago and drove to campus.  The night game allowed us to fly in the day of the game (a move I had never pulled before).  As we were driving to campus, the weather got really bad.  It was coming down for a while.  When we got to campus around 2:30, we didn't want to get out of the car.  My friend/Notre Dame law student Jon picked us up and drove us to campus and right around that time, the weather began improving.  We had a beverage in Jon's room with another former St. Ed's resident Kevin.  Unfortunately, Kevin's sister and Kyle were not there because they got along so well.  Then Sean and I went to mass at 4:00 (which counted for Sunday, awesome).  The priest was pretty funny.  He got his biggest laugh from a line I had heard before when welcoming any visiting Michigan fans:  "God is neutral, but his mother isn't."

After mass, we were ready to go.  We met with big Notre Dame fan/former camp co-worker Chris to get the tailgating started in the library parking lot.  Chris is also a big Giants fan who attended the Super Bowl last year.  I hoped he'd bring some good results with him.  After that, we met up with Jon again in the Joyce Center lot.  The tailgating there was significantly more intense.  Four fighter jets did a practice run for their flyover about an hour early and got everybody excited.  That was pretty cool because Sean and I missed the real thing because we were headed to our seats right when the national anthem was happening.  They held us up until it was over, so we missed it.

I won't really go into all the details of the game, but we won behind some great defense.  Prince Shembo was mad because Michigan stole his bike seat.  Shembo, Stephon Tuitt, and Sheldon Day each sacked Denard Robinson.  Manti Te'o made eight takles and picked off two passes. Te'o is an amazing human being (not surprising considering he's a Mormon) and he's becoming just as good of a football player.  Dealing with incredible emotional pain, he's playing his best football.  I remember Te'o committing on signing day in 2009.  I gave all my students high fives when I found out he committed.  In his first three years on the team, I always thought he was very good, but not great.  Right now, he's great.  I've never seen a Notre Dame defensive player play this well.

The crowd was great.  This was the first really big game that I watched from anywhere other than the student section (USC in 2005, Penn State and Michigan in 2006, and I was able to sneak in with Jon for the USC games in 2009 and 2011), so it's a little hard to compare this one to other games.  We actually did move over to the student section with Jon for the second quarter, but we watched the rest of the game with the regular folks in section 20.  The crowd stood the whole game, except for timeouts.  It's three days later and I still haven't fully regained my voice.  I doubt anybody would notice it now, but I can still feel that it's not all the way back.  It was noticeable yesterday.  Hopefully the my next game will be an easier win and I won't have to be quite so loud for four quarters.

And I have to mention Tommy Rees.  I wore my Rees jersey to the game (which I have because 11 would be my number if I was a real athlete, but also because he holds a special place in my heart for beating Utah, Army, USC, and Miami in his first four starts to salvage the 2010 season), which was fitting because he had to come in to relieve Everett Golson.  He scored the only touchdown of the game and he audibled from a run and completed a huge pass on third down to Tyler Eifert late in the fourth quarter to pretty much seal the victory.

It was a great feeling.  This was the most significant win for Notre Dame that I've witnessed in person.  At 4-0, I've started dreaming.  Brian Kelly might be bringing Notre Dame back.  There's a lot of work still to be done, but this defense gives me hope.  One score is settled for me.  I'm hoping that we settle the score with USC (the other team I absolutely must see Notre Dame beat in person), but it's not time for that yet.  Hopefully we'll beat them in Los Angeles in November and then I'll be there for another win against USC at home next October.  Until then, we have some other big games coming up.  I'll be headed out to Notre Dame again for the BYU game on October 20.  Hopefully we'll go into that game at 6-0.  But for now, the only thing that matters is another old enemy:  Miami.  I actually heard it was Miami that stole Prince Shembo's bike seat.  Somebody needs to tell him.

It's a little blurry, but Sean and I are enjoying a great win.

In the words of Knute Rockne

"Looks like a Big Ten suckhole out there to me."

Huge game this weekend for the Irish.  I've been looking forward to going to this game for a while, but after beating Michigan State last week, I'm really really looking forward to it.  I'm hoping for the best win that I've ever attending in person, but one of the things I'm worried about is the Big Ten officials.

Doesn't the system of conference officials create a very high potential for some fishiness?  Yes, yes it does.  If you have a Big Ten team playing a Pac-12 team and there are Big Ten officials working the game, don't you think that could potentially be a factor?  Yes, you do.  Even in a game between two Big Ten teams, it could be a problem.  If it's late in the season and Big Ten has a team hoping for an extra BCS team playing against another Big Ten team that won't be going to the BCS, isn't there a possibility of the BCS hopeful getting some favorable calls?  Yes, there is.

So after Notre Dame has forever scorned the Big Ten by joining the ACC and has a chance to sweep the Big Ten in football this year, I'm worried about Big Ten officials working the game on Saturday.

I don't know much about soccer, but I'm pretty sure if Brazil plays Italy in soccer in Italy, they don't bring over Brazilian referees with them.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I would imagine the referees would be from another country.  That would make the most sense.  I can't imagine what Tommy Heinsohn would do if every team that played the Celtics in Boston brought referees from their city with them.

Of course, there's a very easy solution to this problem:  NCAA officials.  Officials should work for the NCAA, not the conferences.  You could assign crews to different regions of the country so that they're not travelling all over the country all the time.  There's a much lower chance of shenanigans if the officials get their paychecks from the NCAA instead of the conferences.

Hopefully Notre Dame wins by three or more scores on Saturday and the officials won't have a chance to affect the game.  I started with a quote from Knute Rockne and I'll end with one from Lou Holtz:  "Whatever you do, don't laugh at their stupid-looking helmets."  Go Irish!

How Henry VIII messed up my Sunday in Ireland

First, I'm going to the Notre Dame-Michigan game on Saturday, so I figured I should finish my posts about Ireland before that.  Hopefully I'll have more on that soon.

And before I explain how Henry VIII messed up my Sunday, a few other thoughts about Ireland.  I was wondering how weird it would be with people driving on the left side of the road.  When I was in my cab from the airport to the hotel, I thought it wasn't that weird.  But when I was crossing streets, I looked the wrong way a couple of times and almost wandered out into oncoming traffic.  Fortunately, many of the streets had writing on them telling you which way to look when crossing.  Also, what was really weird was signing signs written in Irish and English, with the Irish first (which is also weird because nobody speaks Irish anymore).  That really gave me a sense of being in a foreign country.  And finally, it was cool listening to the accents.  It was always nice to hear American accents.  And I would say definitively that the Irish accent is better than the English accent (I had layovers in London so I got to hear the English accent a good amount).

I had a lot that I wanted to do on my Sunday in Ireland.  I wanted to get to the Guinness Storehouse, Kilmainham Gaol, Brazen Head Pub, and Trinity College.  And of course, it was Sunday, so I had to go to mass.

I figured there had to be a St. Patrick's in Dublin.  I googled it and sure enough, there's a St. Patrick's Cathedral.  There was a mass at 9:15 in the morning, so I was thinking that was perfect.  I'd get an early start to my day and then have plenty of time for everything else.  There was just one problem that I didn't realize until I got to St. Patrick's:  it's an Anglican church.

I had to find a Catholic church.  I figured out how to navigate Dublin pretty quickly when I knew where I wanted to go, but now I didn't know where I was going.  I started walking around and there are two more Protestant churches right by St. Patrick's.  Stupid Protestant Reformation.  Eventually I asked for directions and found a Catholic church that had a mass at 10:30.  Of course, after mass I walked past several other Catholic churches.

From mass, I went to the Guinness Storehouse.  My friend Jon gave it a kind of unenthusiastic review, but I had to go.  I genuinely enjoy beer and Guinness is the only foreign beer that I drink on a somewhat regular basis.  I enjoyed learning a lot about the history and making of Guinness.  My favorite fact was that Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease when he opened his brewery.  I liked the way the Storehouse was set up.  You had to go up several levels to get to the Gravity Bar at the top where a free pint of Guinness was waiting.  But no worries, there was plenty of Guinness to be had along the way (there were small free samples or you could buy a pint at various places).  I enjoyed seeing some old Guinness advertisements.  This one was my favorite:

This reminds me of what Benjamin Franklin said:  "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

I had always heard that Guinness was better the closer you were to Ireland and that it was served warmer in Ireland than in the US.  As for the first, I didn't really notice much of a difference.  But when I came back and had a Guinness at Finnegan's in Huntington, I would say I noticed a little bit of a difference and I would give Guinness in Ireland the edge.  As for the temperature, I did not notice any difference.  Maybe the entire city of Dublin decided that they were serving Guinness at American temperatures for the week with 35,000 Americans in town, but if not, I didn't notice any difference.  Anyway, when you get to the Gravity Bar, it's round and about 350 degrees of the circle are covered by glass.  On the glass are captions that tell you what you're looking at.  One of the captions talk about the Wellington Monument.  It honors the Duke of Wellington who was born in Dublin and defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo.  On the one hand, Napoleon was a scumbag.  On the other hand, if everybody who defeated the French in battle had their own monument...

No caption needed.

Me enjoying a free Guinness at the Gravity Bar

From there, I was on my way to Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced jail).  It was used from the late 1700s until 1924.  I think they said on the tour that about 85% of the prisoners were common criminals and the other 15% were political prisoners.  I might be wrong on those numbers, but there were many Irish patriots executed there.

After that, I went to Brazen Head Pub with some Notre Dame fans from Iowa that I had befriended.  Brazen Head Pub has been around since 1198 which makes it Ireland's oldest pub.  We had a good dinner (I wasn't a big fan of the food in Ireland, but this was pretty good) and a few pints of Guinness.  By that time, it was too late to get to Trinity College.  Fortunately I had enough time to get there before flying home the next day or I would have been really mad at Henry VIII.

I had a lot of fun in Ireland, but it was good to get back to the United States, where we spell our words the correct American way and drive on the right side (as in the non-left side and correct side) of the road.

Irish Invasion of Ireland

It would take a football game to get me to leave the country for the first time.  As you probably know, I went to Ireland for the Notre Dame-Navy season opener.  Thanks to Jon and Erin for some suggestions about what to do besides the game.  Before I get to the details, I have to say that jet lag has no effect on me.  I've been out west a few times now and the three hour time difference has not affected me at all.  Now I've been five hours ahead and that didn't affect me either.  I should really go to Australia and see what a 14-hour time difference would do to me.

One more thing before I get to the game:  the Irish people were awesome.  They seemed very happy to have all the Americans there (and with good reason, we were spending lots and lots of euros in their country).  Even though I have very mixed feelings about Ireland (on the one hand, it's a truly Catholic country, but on the other hand you have the IRA), I'm glad my first trip out of the country was to Ireland.

Anyway, this post will just be about game day and I'll have another one about how Henry VIII messed up my Sunday in Dublin.  I started the day by going to a 9:00 mass celebrated by the bishop of Dublin at Dublin Castle.  It was quite crowded, but it was outdoors and the weather was nice so it was a good way to start the football season.  Father Jenkins walked right past me when he was about to give out communion.  I resisted the temptation to try to shake his hand for his admirable defense of religious freedom. Mass ended with the band leading everybody out on a parade from Dublin Castle to Temple Bar.  This was absolutely amazing.  It was so cool being surrounded by Notre Dame fans in a foreign country and seeing the American flag displayed in many Dublin establishments.

Mass at Dublin Castle.

I loved seeing this in Dublin.

Notre Dame parade down Dame Street in Dublin.

The whole Temple Bar area is really cool.  I went to the actual Temple Bar itself and started drinking at 10:30 in the morning.  That was 5:30 in the morning my time.  Notre Dame won later in the day by forty points.  So, should I start drinking at 5:30 on Saturday mornings from now on?  Probably, but I'm not going to get up that early.  I had a Guinness and a Kilkenny beer.  I'll have more on my thoughts on Guinness in my next post, but Kilkenny was interesting.  It's from the makers of Guinness and like Guinness, it's nitrogenated so it has that creamy head.  But unlike Guinness, it has the same color as a regular beer.  I've never seen it in the US, but apparently it's popular in Canada and Australia (another reason to go to Australia).  As I was about to leave Temple Bar, I ran into Cris Collinsworth.  I'm pretty sure it was my first random encounter with a celebrity (yes, I consider Cris Collinsworth a celebrity, I'd rather meet him than the vast majority of Hollywood celebrities).  Anyway, he was very nice and I got a picture with him.  Hopefully his son will be healthy next season and be a contributor for the Irish.

The band marching outside of Temple Bar.

From there, I was on my way to Aviva Stadium for the game.  It was a 50,000 seat stadium and it was sold out.  I read that there were 35,000 Americans at the game.  The stadium was built recently and it was nice, but one difference between Aviva and American stadiums was the lack of scoreboards.  There were only two in the stadium and I could only see part of one of them from where I was sitting.  I could see down and distance and maybe the game clock, but I couldn't see the score anywhere.  It wasn't really a big deal since I was paying attention so I knew what the score was, but I did think about how American stadiums have many more scoreboards.  Actually, Notre Dame Stadium only has two also, but they're placed in much better locations.  You can always see at least one of them.

One thing that I enjoyed was the national anthem.  There's something really awesome about belting out the Star Spangled Banner with lots of fellow Americans in another country.  After that, the Irish national anthem was performed.  I stood politely, but was my hand over my heart?  Of course not.  My allegiance is to the USA.

It wasn't an exciting game for neutral observers, with Notre Dame dominating Navy for the entire game and winning 50-10.  So I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I've seen enough losses to Navy for a lifetime.  Theo Riddick and George Atkinson III ran for a combined 206 yards and 4 touchdowns on 28 carries.  That's an average of 7.4 per carry, so of course Brian Kelly gave them a total of 16 carries in the next game against Purdue which we almost found a way to lose.  Everett Golson was solid in his first college game and Manti Te'o came up with his first fumble recovery and interception in his college career.

Opening kickoff.

If I remember correctly, Notre Dame and Navy announced this game in Dublin when I was still in college.  I remember thinking at the time that I had to go.  When I found out that my school was closing, that caused a problem.  Many schools on Long Island start for the kids on the Wednesday after Labor Day and the teachers have to be there the day before.  But some schools start for the kids on the Tuesday after Labor Day and the teachers have to be there for a day or two the week before Labor Day.  So I was worried that I might get offered a job at a school like that.  About a month before I was finally offered a job, I just decided that I was going to do it.  I don't know if Notre Dame will ever do this again and I didn't want to miss it.  Fortunately, it all worked out that it wasn't a problem when I was offered a job.  But either way, I'm glad I decided to go.  I've got two more games this year.  I'll be there next week for the Michigan game and I'll also be at the BYU game in October.  Hopefully Notre Dame will win both of those games by 40 points also.  Go Irish!

$214 Round Trip Flight to Denver

When I saw that price, I had to go.  It was one last baseball trip for the summer.  Football season was a week away and that meant I couldn't go anywhere on weekends anymore (actually Notre Dame doesn't play on September 29, so I guess I could theoretically do something that weekend).  School was about to start so that meant I couldn't do anymore midweek trips.  So this was a chance to get to one last stadium this year and one more state (it turned out to be two).

I had an early flight to Denver that got me in around 11:00 in the morning mountain time.  This was my first real trip to the mountain time zone since Arizona was on Pacific time when I went.  Anyway, I couldn't check into my hotel for several hours, so I had to figure out what to do.  As always, anywhere Adam Richman went on Man vs. Food is a possibility.  The one I considered was the Cherry Cricket in Denver, which is known for having great burgers.  Initially that's what I thought I would do, but then I realized there was another possibility that I couldn't possibly say no to:  Casa Bonita.  Fortunately, my brother Sean had already been there and told me about it.  If not for that, I probably wouldn't have thought of it even though I'm a huge South Park fan.  If you've never seen the South Park episode, watch it now and come back and read the rest of this when you're done.

And you're back.  According to the user ratings on IMDB, Casa Bonita is the 9th best South Park episode ever.  I would put it in the top 5.  So yeah, Casa Bonita is a real place and it's pretty accurately depicted in the episode.  It's really in the middle of nowhere.  It's a little bit outside of Denver in this strip mall with several vacant shops nearby.  But it's awesome.  If I was Eric Cartman, I'd probably kidnap Butters so that I could go to Kyle's birthday party also.  I went for lunch on a Monday.  There was hardly anybody in there, but the cliff diver was still performing several dives into the pool which is 14 feet deep.  The food was kind of typical Mexican food.  Nothing special, but if you like South Park and you're in Denver, you absolutely have to go to Casa Bonita.

This has to be the greatest place ever for a kid to have a birthday party.

At night, it was Dodgers-Rockies at Coors Field.  It was my tenth and probably final baseball game of the 2012 season.  Josh Beckett was making his first start with the Dodgers.  He gave up a home run on his second pitch as a Dodger.  Beckett was actually decent after that and left the game trailing 3-0.  The Dodgers couldn't hit at all and ended up losing 10-0 after giving up seven runs in the eighth inning.

As for the stadium, it was pretty good.  I liked the outfield setup a lot.  There was a little pond/fountain thing behind the wall in center that was pretty cool.  Before the game, I was able to stand right over the Dodger bullpen as Beckett warmed up.  In the upper deck, there was a row of purple seats to show where you would be exactly a mile above sea level.  That was a pretty cool touch.  But that brings me to the very obvious problem with Coors Field.  Professional baseball is not meant to be played at that altitude.  Even though it might be the biggest outfield in all of Major League Baseball, it's one of the easiest stadiums to hit home runs in.  And it's a double whammy for pitchers because the outfielders have to cover so much ground.  If they play deep, that means more singles.  If they play at a normal depth, it's easier for hitters to find a gap for a triple that would be a double in a normal-sized outfield.  If you put Coors at sea level and just shrunk it a little bit, it would be one of my favorite stadiums, but baseball really shouldn't be played at an altitude that high.

Maybe I'll be able to get seats like this at Citi Field next season.

The next morning I drove to Wyoming for breakfast.  It was about 105 miles from my hotel to Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Why did I go?  Because I probably would never have any reason to be in Wyoming ever again.  With a population of nearly 60,000, Cheyenne is the largest city in Wyoming.  For comparison, the Town of Huntington where I reside has a population of over 203,000 (in fairness, Cheyenne is smaller in terms of area, so it does actually win on population density).  Anyway, I had a very nice breakfast at a diner in Cheyenne.  But I was totally the guy who didn't belong.  There were legitimate cowboys in there.

I was very much a fish out of water at this diner, but I can cross Wyoming off my list.

So I guess that wraps up Part I of the Year of Jim (baseball, 2012).  This season I got to games in eight different stadiums (six that I hadn't been to before).  If you go back to the beginning of the 2011 summer, I got to games in ten different stadiums and visited seven states for the first time.  I've now been to 16 stadiums (14 that still exist) and 24 states.  I'm almost halfway there on both.

How I became a basketball coach

I'm following in the footsteps of my dad.  I've become a basketball coach.

This summer, I joined a basketball league with a bunch of guys from camp.  After we lost by 40 in the first game, I had two goals.  My first goal was to hit a three.  My second goal was to win a game.  We lost our second game by 50, but our scoring output more than doubled.  In the third game, I hit my three and gave us a 5-4 lead at the time.  I'm pretty sure it was our last lead of the game and we lost 31-23.  After the game, a bunch of us went out for some drinks and we were discussing the game.  I thought that was a very winnable game.  One of the reasons that we lost was that we played too many guys.  We had 11 guys splitting up minutes.  I realized that I was taking away minutes from players who were better than me.  So I retired with six points in three games (three foul shots and one three), bought one of those dry erase coach's clipboards and became the team's coach.  Unfortunately, I was never able to run a practice (we had one all summer and it was before I took over coaching duties), but I did what I could.

Did I wear a suit and tie for every game that I coached?  Of course I did.

In my first game as coach, we led for most of the game.  I can't say that I did much other than switch to a 2-3 zone and manage our substitutions.  The other team cut into our lead with a big run to end the first half.  Not calling a timeout during that run was probably my biggest mistake of the game.  I think we led by one point at halftime.  I think our biggest lead in the second half was six points.  Sadly, we lost 44-42.

I coached two more games and we lost both.  Neither were as close as my first game.  I would have continued coaching, but we were missing some guys for all our games after that, so I decided to dress again and play limited minutes.  In one game, Connor took over coaching when he was out with an injury.  I made my greatest defensive play ever in that game.  The ball got inside to a guy a good eight inches taller than me and I came down from the top of the zone for some help defense.  As he went up for the shot, I tried to just foul him and keep him from getting a shot off.  Instead, I got all ball and he came down with the ball for the jump ball.  We got the ball on the possession arrow.  In the other games, I took on kind of a player-coach role.  I didn't play much and still handled the substitutions.  With one regular season game remaining, our record stood at 0-7.

We would finish strong.  In our final regular season game, we held on for a 29-28 victory.  We led for most of the game and managed to hang on at the end.  Fortunately everybody made the playoffs, so we had at least one more game.  It was not pretty at the beginning.  We were down 15 at halftime.  I hadn't played at all in the first half.  Down by that many points, I didn't mind going in to start the second half.  I played some solid defense and grabbed three rebounds (easily a season high for me).  I came out after five or six minutes and we had cut the lead to about 10.  Thanks to a great team effort, we eventually took the lead, but it didn't last long.  The other team went up by four once again and the game seemed to be slipping away.  Connor hit a huge three to cut the lead to one.  Andrew scored on a beautiful drive to regain the lead.  My biggest contribution came with us up by one with less than a minute to play.  We had the ball, but our point guard had given up the dribble and was surrounded by defenders.  Instinctively, I yelled for a timeout from the bench to save the possession.  With less than 10 seconds left, Mike hit both shots of a one and one and we won 42-39.

The Swamp Donkeys celebrating a playoff victory.

We lost our next playoff game to a much better team by a score of 73-44.  It was our highest point total of the season.  We came together at the end and finished strong.  So thanks to the Swamp Donkeys for some fun times this summer.  If we get back together next year, I think we'll increase our win total.  My record as head coach was 0-3, but I took solace in the fact that Red Auerbach lost his first three games as coach of the Celtics.

I did enjoy coaching.  I might try to get into coaching at my school.  I could definitely see it being something I'd want to do.  I'd love to do it where I actually had a chance to practice with my team.  So hopefully my coaching career is just getting started.