My weekend did not go according to plan. I was supposed to be at the Notre Dame game against Virginia. Instead, I found myself picking up my car at school at 10:00 on Friday night. I was really looking forward to being back at Notre Dame, but I had no control over the situation.
My last football season as a student was 2006. I had a pretty nice run after that. Between younger friends, Dennis’s fifth year (back when he was working on Notre Dame degree 2 of 4), and Jon going to law school, I had a place to stay on or near campus for six out of seven years after I graduated (2007-2013). In those seven years, I got to 12 games on campus (Navy in 2007, Syracuse in 2008, USC and Washington in 2009, Western Michigan in 2010, Air Force and USC in 2011, Michigan and BYU in 2012, and Oklahoma, USC, and Navy in 2013). In six years since then, I’ve been to two games on campus at Notre Dame. I saw us have a nice win against Stanford in 2014 and I saw one of the many disasters of the 2016 season (Duke). So I was pretty excited to get back for the Virginia game, but it was not to be.
My flight was scheduled for 7:30 from LaGuardia. I despise pretty much everything about LaGuardia. But I discovered the bus from Woodside. I took the train from Hicksville to Woodside and you can get a bus to the airport from there. The bus was ridiculously crowded, but not until the second stop and I got on at the first stop. So I wouldn’t say it was a particularly pleasant experience, but it was easy. I got to the airport in plenty of time and had Five Guys. Getting through security was as easy as I’ve ever done it at LaGuardia. I got to my gate and there was plenty of room to sit and relax. This started as the best LaGuardia experience I’ve ever had. But the 4:30 and 5:30 flights to Chicago had been canceled. The 6:30 flight was now listed as departing at 8:50. But my 7:30 flight was allegedly still on time. I had a similar situation to this when I was flying down to Raleigh to stay with Tom and then go to Charleston. Eventually that flight got delayed so I didn’t really trust that this flight would be on time. I had been sitting down for about ten minutes when my flight got changed to 9:20. I was supposed to be landing a little after 9:00 Central. Now it was going to be around 11:00 Central. This wasn’t ideal because I was supposed to be getting a 5:00 bus to get to campus, but whatever. An hour later, my flight was canceled. There was no way I was getting to Chicago early enough to get to the game at Notre Dame at 3:30 the next day. I briefly considered going to Cleveland or Detroit. My options there were either ridiculously expensive at the last minute and/or I’d be racing to make it to campus for a 3:30 game. So I gave up. I took a depressing bus ride back to Woodside. I took the train back to Hicksville. And then I walked back to school. I was back home at about 10:30. I did watch some of the Dodgers beating up on the Giants so that was fun. Unlike my very unpleasant experience at LaGuardia when I was flying to North Carolina in 2017, I can’t blame LaGuardia for this one. It was entirely because of the weather in Chicago. It just would have been nice if they figured out earlier that my flight wouldn’t be happening. I wasn’t mad about the whole situation, I was just disappointed. I missed out on seeing Jon, his family, Kevin, and Notre Dame-Virginia.
As for the game, I missed an enjoyable second half. I’m still confused about Notre Dame, most of the teams on our schedule, and most of the currently ranked teams other than like Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, LSU, Auburn, Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. I think those teams are all pretty good. Who else is good? Who was the best team left on our schedule after the Georgia game? I think it’s one of Virginia, USC, and Michigan. I mean, USC probably has the most talent, but they don’t seem like a particularly good football team. Are we any good? All we had done was beat two bad teams and lose to a good team. Our running game had been nonexistent, our second-year starting quarterback has followed the pattern of Brian Kelly second-year starters and regressed, and our pass rush had been disappointing. We weren’t particularly good in the first half and trailed 17-14 at halftime. The defensive line dominated the second half. I thought the pass rush would be the strength of the team and they played like it in the second half with a bunch of sacks and forced turnovers. They set the offense up for one easy touchdown and scored one of their own. We ran the ball pretty well (taking out Book’s carries, the rest of the team ran for 168 yards on 28 carries, 6.0 per carry, and four touchdowns). But Ian Book continued to not be very impressive (6.6 yards per attempt and 0 touchdowns). The good news was that he didn’t turn the ball over. I also got Old Fields Barbecue delivered since I missed out on some tailgating. It came at halftime. That was a solid decision.
We play Bowling Green next week. Brian Van Gorder is their defensive coordinator and not surprisingly, they’re giving up 50 points per game against FBS schools. They’re scoring 9 per game against FBS schools. That game should be over by the middle of the second quarter. Then we have USC, a bye week, and then we go to the most evil place on earth to play Michigan. If we can get through those two games, our November schedule does not look bad. We’re home for Virginia Tech (2-2), at Duke (3-1, they got smacked by Alabama, beat two pretty horrendous teams, and beat up on Virginia Tech), home for Navy (2-1), home for Boston College (3-2 with losses to Kansas and Wake Forest), and at Stanford (2-3, they seem pretty bad). I guess Duke is the best team of that group. I would still say I’m expecting another loss and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more than one, but with our talent, a well-coached team should probably go 11-1 and certainly no worse than 10-2.
I had a really fun trip to Notre Dame for a stadium tour, basketball game, and hockey game in February 2016. I was on campus in the summer of 2018 to see Dennis (then working on Notre Dame degree 4 of 4), do a stadium tour, and get to a South Bend Cubs game. I made a last minute trip to Notre Dame in January for outdoor hockey. And that’s all fun, but it’s not the same as being there for football. I definitely hope I get there next year, but my top football priority next year is the game against Wisconsin at Lambeau Field (I still say we should have done one at Lambeau, one at Wisconsin, and one at Notre Dame against them instead of one at Lambeau and one at Soldier Field). Let’s look at the rest of Notre Dame’s 2020 home schedule:
9/12- Arkansas
9/19- Western Michigan
10/10- Stanford
10/31- Duke
11/7- Clemson
11/21- Louisville
Obviously, Clemson is the highlight. But it’s going to be the most expensive and it’s almost certainly going to be a night game and it’s in November. Night games are not ideal when I don’t have a place to stay on campus. Traffic is going to be really bad leaving because nobody is hanging around after the game. I can pretty much rule out Western Michigan and Louisville unless a bunch of my friends all plan on going (even then, I wouldn’t really want to go to a game at Notre Dame the Saturday before Thanksgiving). Maybe Arkansas would be interesting (they haven’t been very good lately, but they’re an SEC team and it’s the first home game and we should be 1-0 after beating Navy in Dublin). I’ve generally avoided October games lately because of baseball playoffs, but Stanford would be early in the NLCS so I could live with missing games at that point (if the Dodgers win the World Series this year, I’ll be more willing to miss playoff games next year). But Stanford might be a night game also. Next year’s World Series will be over before Halloween so the Duke game would be a possibility too. I guess a lot will depend on what my friends are doing. If they want to rent a house somewhere near campus, that would make a night game much more appealing. So I hope I get to the Lambeau Field game and one home game. Next year’s away schedule isn’t very interesting. There’s Navy in Dublin (I guess I would be interested in that one if I hadn’t done that in 2012, but I’m mad at Ireland for turning their backs on Catholicism), Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, and Georgia Tech in NFL stadiums (Pittsburgh plays all of its home games in an NFL stadium so that’s fine, but I’ve done that game before, I’d rather play Wake Forest and Georgia Tech on their campuses), and USC. It would be cool to do a Notre Dame-USC game in Los Angeles and my brother does live out there now, but it’s Thanksgiving weekend and flying home the Sunday after Thanksgiving from LAX doesn’t sound like fun (that might be worth staying an extra day and taking a personal day on Monday).
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I have a big October ahead. Hopefully 2019 is finally going to be 1955 again for the Dodgers. And Notre Dame has games with their biggest rival (USC) and their biggest enemy (Michigan is not our rival). Go Dodgers! Go Irish!
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
The Best of the Best
I got to see Clayton Kershaw again. No, not the Croatian circus clown who travels through Croatia in a wagon led by mules. I saw the Clayton Kershaw who recently passed Jewish woman Sandy Koufax for the most wins ever by a Dodgers left-handed pitcher. (If you’re confused by all that, listen to the Ron Burgundy Podcast with Clayton Kershaw. Thanks John for sending it to me.)
The Dodgers were in town for a weekend series. I bought tickets a while back for the Friday night game. Ordinarily I’d wait to see how the rotation lined up so that I could see Kershaw if he was pitching here. But with the Dodgers coming here in September, I didn’t want to miss football. Yes, Notre Dame had one of their two easiest opponents of the year, but we’re hopefully playing fourteen games this season. I didn’t want to miss any. As it turns out, the Sunday game got moved to the night game. If Kershaw had pitched on Sunday, I probably would have gone. That’s a combination of my waning interest in the NFL (between the Jets having their second USC quarterback in a decade and the Patriots cheating and winning all the time, college football is so much more fun) and the NFL’s poor scheduling. Hold on, I have an NFL rant:
The NFL needs to hire a Vice President of Common Sense for their scheduling. They just had ten early afternoon games and three late afternoon games. I’m fine with splitting up the Los Angeles and Bay Area teams, but they easily could have moved at least two of Seattle at Pittsburgh, Arizona at Baltimore, and New England at Miami to the late afternoon and gotten a better split with the afternoon games. Other than splitting up the Los Angeles and Bay Area teams, why do teams from the Pacific time zone have to play in the early afternoon? Why not have the Dolphins play their home games in September in the late afternoon when it won’t be so hot? That’s it for my NFL rant.
Anyway, Dodgers-Mets worked out well for me. Clayton Keshaw ended up pitching on Friday night. It was also Catholic Night at Citi Field, which I didn’t realize when I bought the tickets. My former student Patrick got picked in a lottery to throw out the first pitch. I had bought the tickets thinking that my dad would go with me, but he was not feeling up to it. I offered them to four people, but they were all going out of town for the weekend for weddings and family birthdays and stuff like that. So I just ended up selling the extra ticket. Even though it was the Dodgers, I would have just sold both of them, but I didn’t want to miss Patrick throwing out the first pitch or Clayton Kershaw throwing many pitches.
As it turned out, I missed Patrick’s pitch. I took the Long Island Railroad (or the lirr, as another former student called it). I had to change at Woodside and get a 6:07 train. I thought I’d be fine. The train was a little bit delayed, but it wasn’t too bad. The problem was when I got to Citi Field. I walked from the train and was right outside the stadium at about 6:25. The lines to get in at the rotunda where ridiculous. I’m pretty sure that’s where I’ve entered the stadium for all 22 previous games that I had been to there. I was hoping that pretty much everybody goes in there and if I tried another gate, the lines would not be so crazy. I was wrong. The lines were terrible everywhere. I probably would have been better off just waiting to get in at the rotunda. I ended up getting in around 6:55, about five minutes after his pitch. I felt really bad. His mother, who I’ll call, um, Mrs. Patrick since I don’t use last names of people I know on the blog, showed me the video. I had reminded Patrick of Derek Jeter’s advice to George Bush before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series, but his catcher was some girl that he hadn’t met before and she asked him not to throw it too hard so he didn’t, which meant that he bounced it. If one of the Mets was catching it, he could have fired it in there. He did get to throw it from the mound, though. I was thinking they'd make him throw it from the grass in front of the mound.
Anyway, the game got off to a bad start. Clayton Kershaw gave up a home run to the second batter of the game, J.D. Davis, and I worried that this would be one of those silly 2019 games where everybody is hitting home runs. Fortunately for Clayton Kershaw’s two biggest fans, me and Patrick’s sister/my former student Briana, that was not the case. Kershaw mowed down the Mets for the next five innings. He ran out of gas in the seventh and left with one out and the bases loaded (I thought Roberts left him in for a batter too long). Joe Kelly allowed one of the inherited runners to score. So Kershaw’s line was six and a third with two runs on four hits, three walks, and five strikeouts. He was in line for a win thanks to a four-run fourth (with an RBI singe from former Notre Dame baseball player A.J. Pollack and a three-run home run from Dodgers’ top prospect Gavin Lux) and a three-run seventh (Chris Taylor had a two-run double and Cody Bellinger drove him in with a single). Edwin Rios added a two-run home run in the eighth and the Dodgers won 9-2.
I only watched a couple of innings from my real seat. Then I went down to say hello to Patrick, Briana, and Mr. and Mrs. Patrick/Briana. I didn’t realize that they were sitting with a whole group of people who were there for Catholic Night. Two more of my former students, Michaela and Fiona were there. It was good to see all of them. There were empty seats nearby so I sat with them after talking up on the concourse for a bit. I only had a hot dog to eat. It was good, but it was no Dodger Dog. I opted not to have a beer. It would have been a little weird to drink in front of former students who are all in the 16-18 range. If they were 21, I would have offered to buy them a beer. I did have a victory Summer Ale when I got home.
Patrick is a senior so we talked about the whole process of applying to colleges (Briana is a junior so she’ll be doing it next year). He’s going to have plenty of good options. It made me think about what I would do if I was a senior in high school applying to college now. Back in 2001-2002, I applied to four schools and I really didn’t consider sports at all. That was a mistake. For me to have the best possible college experience, sports needed to be part of that. I wanted to go to Georgetown, but that had nothing to do with the basketball team (they hadn’t been particularly good since Iverson). And the other schools I applied to were not big time sports schools. I would also lean strongly toward Catholic schools (three of the four schools I applied to were Catholic, I’ll refrain from making a joke about how they were all Jesuit). Of course, I ended up at Notre Dame eventually for the two good Charlie Weis years. If we assume that I’m a high school senior who was a Notre Dame fan, Notre Dame is obviously my first choice. I think Villanova would be my second choice. If I want a Catholic school with good sports, they’re the clear second choice (you could argue their basketball team could make it the first choice, but I’ll say Notre Dame’s football/basketball combination plus academics keeps it number one). After that, I don’t really know where else I’d apply. I mean, I guess I’d apply to Boston College, maybe. You know, if I didn’t get into Notre Dame and wanted to go to a school that loses to Notre Dame all the time (yes, I know they used to beat us in football way too often, but we’ve won the last six in football and they can’t beat us in basketball even when we’re bad). I guess I’d look into the other Catholic schools in the Big East. St. Joe’s in Philadelphia has had some success in basketball and isn’t too far away. Gonzaga has a great basketball program, but I couldn’t see going all the way out to the west coast unless I was going to the Los Angeles area. I wouldn’t have too much interest in other major football schools. I just can’t picture having any allegiance to a college football team other than Notre Dame. I mean, I always root for the service academies as long as they’re not playing Notre Dame, but I am clearly not meant for the military. If I was going to consider any big state schools, they would be Virginia (the campus is great and they’re not completely detestable like Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Florida State, etc.) and UCLA (I could go to Dodger games, I could watch football games in the Rose Bowl, and USC would still be my rival). Anyway, hopefully Patrick ends up at the right place right away, unlike me.
That was probably my last game of the season. If the Dodgers make it to the World Series and end up playing the Yankees, I’ll look into getting tickets, but I’m not optimistic about the prices being reasonable enough for me to go. Here are the updated numbers for Kershaw with me in attendance:
10 starts (Citi Field in 2009 and Washington in 2010 before the blog, 2013 in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, 2015 at Citi Field, 2016 at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, 2018 at Citi Field, and this game at Citi Field), 2 pinch hit appearances (0-1 with a sacrifice bunt)
Dodgers: 11-1 (the loss came in the game where he unsuccessfully pinch hit)
Kershaw's Win-Loss: 5-0
65 innings
1.25 ERA
68 strikeouts
38 hits
14 walks
0.80 WHIP
2 complete game shutouts
The Dodgers were in town for a weekend series. I bought tickets a while back for the Friday night game. Ordinarily I’d wait to see how the rotation lined up so that I could see Kershaw if he was pitching here. But with the Dodgers coming here in September, I didn’t want to miss football. Yes, Notre Dame had one of their two easiest opponents of the year, but we’re hopefully playing fourteen games this season. I didn’t want to miss any. As it turns out, the Sunday game got moved to the night game. If Kershaw had pitched on Sunday, I probably would have gone. That’s a combination of my waning interest in the NFL (between the Jets having their second USC quarterback in a decade and the Patriots cheating and winning all the time, college football is so much more fun) and the NFL’s poor scheduling. Hold on, I have an NFL rant:
The NFL needs to hire a Vice President of Common Sense for their scheduling. They just had ten early afternoon games and three late afternoon games. I’m fine with splitting up the Los Angeles and Bay Area teams, but they easily could have moved at least two of Seattle at Pittsburgh, Arizona at Baltimore, and New England at Miami to the late afternoon and gotten a better split with the afternoon games. Other than splitting up the Los Angeles and Bay Area teams, why do teams from the Pacific time zone have to play in the early afternoon? Why not have the Dolphins play their home games in September in the late afternoon when it won’t be so hot? That’s it for my NFL rant.
Anyway, Dodgers-Mets worked out well for me. Clayton Keshaw ended up pitching on Friday night. It was also Catholic Night at Citi Field, which I didn’t realize when I bought the tickets. My former student Patrick got picked in a lottery to throw out the first pitch. I had bought the tickets thinking that my dad would go with me, but he was not feeling up to it. I offered them to four people, but they were all going out of town for the weekend for weddings and family birthdays and stuff like that. So I just ended up selling the extra ticket. Even though it was the Dodgers, I would have just sold both of them, but I didn’t want to miss Patrick throwing out the first pitch or Clayton Kershaw throwing many pitches.
As it turned out, I missed Patrick’s pitch. I took the Long Island Railroad (or the lirr, as another former student called it). I had to change at Woodside and get a 6:07 train. I thought I’d be fine. The train was a little bit delayed, but it wasn’t too bad. The problem was when I got to Citi Field. I walked from the train and was right outside the stadium at about 6:25. The lines to get in at the rotunda where ridiculous. I’m pretty sure that’s where I’ve entered the stadium for all 22 previous games that I had been to there. I was hoping that pretty much everybody goes in there and if I tried another gate, the lines would not be so crazy. I was wrong. The lines were terrible everywhere. I probably would have been better off just waiting to get in at the rotunda. I ended up getting in around 6:55, about five minutes after his pitch. I felt really bad. His mother, who I’ll call, um, Mrs. Patrick since I don’t use last names of people I know on the blog, showed me the video. I had reminded Patrick of Derek Jeter’s advice to George Bush before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series, but his catcher was some girl that he hadn’t met before and she asked him not to throw it too hard so he didn’t, which meant that he bounced it. If one of the Mets was catching it, he could have fired it in there. He did get to throw it from the mound, though. I was thinking they'd make him throw it from the grass in front of the mound.
Anyway, the game got off to a bad start. Clayton Kershaw gave up a home run to the second batter of the game, J.D. Davis, and I worried that this would be one of those silly 2019 games where everybody is hitting home runs. Fortunately for Clayton Kershaw’s two biggest fans, me and Patrick’s sister/my former student Briana, that was not the case. Kershaw mowed down the Mets for the next five innings. He ran out of gas in the seventh and left with one out and the bases loaded (I thought Roberts left him in for a batter too long). Joe Kelly allowed one of the inherited runners to score. So Kershaw’s line was six and a third with two runs on four hits, three walks, and five strikeouts. He was in line for a win thanks to a four-run fourth (with an RBI singe from former Notre Dame baseball player A.J. Pollack and a three-run home run from Dodgers’ top prospect Gavin Lux) and a three-run seventh (Chris Taylor had a two-run double and Cody Bellinger drove him in with a single). Edwin Rios added a two-run home run in the eighth and the Dodgers won 9-2.
 |
| This was my view for a couple of innings. This was Kershaw's first pitch. He got an easy out here. |
I only watched a couple of innings from my real seat. Then I went down to say hello to Patrick, Briana, and Mr. and Mrs. Patrick/Briana. I didn’t realize that they were sitting with a whole group of people who were there for Catholic Night. Two more of my former students, Michaela and Fiona were there. It was good to see all of them. There were empty seats nearby so I sat with them after talking up on the concourse for a bit. I only had a hot dog to eat. It was good, but it was no Dodger Dog. I opted not to have a beer. It would have been a little weird to drink in front of former students who are all in the 16-18 range. If they were 21, I would have offered to buy them a beer. I did have a victory Summer Ale when I got home.
 |
| Briana and Patrick are easily two of the best students I've ever taught and they're even better people. When I signed Briana's yearbook, I said that she was the Clayton Kershaw of students that I've taught. |
 |
| I made this for Briana when she graduated. FanGraphs did most of the work for me, but I had to do a little work to include playoffs. |
Patrick is a senior so we talked about the whole process of applying to colleges (Briana is a junior so she’ll be doing it next year). He’s going to have plenty of good options. It made me think about what I would do if I was a senior in high school applying to college now. Back in 2001-2002, I applied to four schools and I really didn’t consider sports at all. That was a mistake. For me to have the best possible college experience, sports needed to be part of that. I wanted to go to Georgetown, but that had nothing to do with the basketball team (they hadn’t been particularly good since Iverson). And the other schools I applied to were not big time sports schools. I would also lean strongly toward Catholic schools (three of the four schools I applied to were Catholic, I’ll refrain from making a joke about how they were all Jesuit). Of course, I ended up at Notre Dame eventually for the two good Charlie Weis years. If we assume that I’m a high school senior who was a Notre Dame fan, Notre Dame is obviously my first choice. I think Villanova would be my second choice. If I want a Catholic school with good sports, they’re the clear second choice (you could argue their basketball team could make it the first choice, but I’ll say Notre Dame’s football/basketball combination plus academics keeps it number one). After that, I don’t really know where else I’d apply. I mean, I guess I’d apply to Boston College, maybe. You know, if I didn’t get into Notre Dame and wanted to go to a school that loses to Notre Dame all the time (yes, I know they used to beat us in football way too often, but we’ve won the last six in football and they can’t beat us in basketball even when we’re bad). I guess I’d look into the other Catholic schools in the Big East. St. Joe’s in Philadelphia has had some success in basketball and isn’t too far away. Gonzaga has a great basketball program, but I couldn’t see going all the way out to the west coast unless I was going to the Los Angeles area. I wouldn’t have too much interest in other major football schools. I just can’t picture having any allegiance to a college football team other than Notre Dame. I mean, I always root for the service academies as long as they’re not playing Notre Dame, but I am clearly not meant for the military. If I was going to consider any big state schools, they would be Virginia (the campus is great and they’re not completely detestable like Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Florida State, etc.) and UCLA (I could go to Dodger games, I could watch football games in the Rose Bowl, and USC would still be my rival). Anyway, hopefully Patrick ends up at the right place right away, unlike me.
That was probably my last game of the season. If the Dodgers make it to the World Series and end up playing the Yankees, I’ll look into getting tickets, but I’m not optimistic about the prices being reasonable enough for me to go. Here are the updated numbers for Kershaw with me in attendance:
10 starts (Citi Field in 2009 and Washington in 2010 before the blog, 2013 in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, 2015 at Citi Field, 2016 at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, 2018 at Citi Field, and this game at Citi Field), 2 pinch hit appearances (0-1 with a sacrifice bunt)
Dodgers: 11-1 (the loss came in the game where he unsuccessfully pinch hit)
Kershaw's Win-Loss: 5-0
65 innings
1.25 ERA
68 strikeouts
38 hits
14 walks
0.80 WHIP
2 complete game shutouts
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