The good news is I still have beer. I can drink about two or three per week and that will get me through April (ordinarily I’d probably drink about 4-8 in a week). Then I’ll have to start drinking all the wine that I’ve been given as gifts over the years and never drank because I don’t like wine. That would last me through the middle of June. Hopefully it won’t come to that. Of course, I could go out and buy more beer, but I haven’t been going out at all other than to take walks. I’ve been getting everything delivered, but I can’t get beer delivered from grocery stores. I might be able to get it delivered from local breweries.
Anyway, I’ve been around for over 36 years now and this has to be the weirdest time of my life. It will end, but we have no idea when. The numbers in Italy have started to get better, but they’re far from being out of the woods and we’re a couple of weeks behind them. Hopefully things will turn soon here and warmer weather will get rid of this thing and there won’t be a second wave. But there’s no way to know yet if any of that will happen.
So I haven’t blogged since November when I went to the Notre Dame-Duke game. The world was so much simpler then. Anyway, we’re about three months into 2020 and I’ve been to one sporting event this year. It was the NBA G-League for the Long Island Nets against the Maine Red Claws at Nassau Coliseum. Carsen Edwards scored 33 and Tacko Fall had 16 points and 14 rebounds. The G-League has the silly rule where you only shoot one foul shot and it counts for however many foul shots you would have gotten. So a foul shot could be one, two, or three points. It’s a terrible rule, but it’s the G-League so whatever (it’s not as bad as starting extra innings with a runner at second, but it’s bad). I think they use regular rules with foul shots in the last couple of minutes of the game.
I was supposed to go to the Big East Tournament this month. I had tickets for the last three nights. There was a good chance of seeing Villanova against Seton Hall in the second semifinal game on Friday night, which would have been awesome. The winner of that game would have most likely played Creighton or Providence in the championship game, which also would have been great. I had Kyle, Vinny, and my dad lined up to go to the games with me. On the Sunday before the Big East Tournament, the CDC said that people over 60 should avoid large crowds. I told my dad that he shouldn’t go and as much as I wanted to go to the final, I decided that I was most likely just going to sell both tickets for that night. By the end of the next day, I had decided that I wasn’t going at all. Of course, they started the Big East Tournament. They had Wednesday night and they started Thursday afternoon without fans. My tickets were Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. So as it turned out, none of the sessions that I had tickets for were played.
Losing the Big East Tournament was disappointing enough, but then the NCAA Tournament was cancelled. They had announced that they were going to play without fans, but once the NBA shut down the season and all the conference tournaments got cancelled, I knew the NCAA Tournament wasn’t happening. College basketball is definitely behind baseball and college football on the list of sports I pay attention to. It’s definitely ahead of the NFL now. Whether I care about it more or less than the NBA pretty much depends on how the Celtics and Notre Dame are doing. If they’re both good, I probably care about the NBA a little more. Of course, this year the Celtics were good and Notre Dame looked like a decent NIT team. But even when college basketball is behind the NBA on the list of sports I care about, there are few things I enjoy in sports as much as college basketball in March. I had a streak of 10 straight years of taking the first Friday of the NCAA Tournament as a personal day so that I can watch 12 hours of college basketball without any distractions (actually I attended the tournament on that Friday in 2013 and 2016). I was set to continue that streak this year. Instead I was working as a teacher from home.
Of course, all sports are shut down right now. Bill Simmons said something about how he’s heard that the NBA has to get their season done by Labor Day. If that’s the case, I’m hopeful that the NBA will have their playoffs this year. But I won’t be too broken-hearted if it doesn’t happen. The Celtics are pretty good, but I don’t think they’re a legitimate championship contender yet. I think there’s a chance they could beat anybody, but I don’t have confidence in them to win four straight series against at least three good teams (they’d have Philadelphia in the first round who isn’t that good, but they’re a bad matchup for the Celtics). I would say the Lakers would have a better chance of winning the championship than the Celtics and as we know, the Lakers winning the championship would be worse than not having a champion.
Last Thursday was supposed to be Opening Day in baseball. I did the best I could to make it a good day. I’ve gotten into a routine where I take a walk late in the afternoon. I moved that up to the early afternoon so that I could watch the Dodgers and Giants on Opening Day in 2013 on MLB Network. My dad and I were at that game because it was during my Easter vacation and I had never been to an Opening Day so I wanted to go. I’ve probably been to somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 baseball games in my life. That was my favorite game that I’ve been to. Clayton Kershaw shut out the Giants. He was due to lead off the bottom of the eighth and it was scoreless. I figured they’d pinch hit for him. But no, they let him hit. And he hit his first (and so far only) career home run. The Dodgers tacked on three more runs and Kershaw finished the shutout. So on what was supposed to be Opening Day I watched the game, ate peanuts, drank a Sam Adams Chocolate Bock (not really a baseball beer, but it’s probably my favorite beer), and then made myself hot dogs. They only allotted two hours for the game so they cut out the Dodgers hitting in the bottom of the second and the bottom of the sixth. It’s quite possible that I’ve never seen the bottom of the second of that game. I definitely got a beer at that game. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss Kershaw pitching and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the first at bat for the Dodgers. So the bottom of the second seems like a probable time for me to have gone for a beer.
I was supposed to have my annual Easter vacation trip coming up. I was going to go to minor league games in Louisville and Wichita (it was going to be the second home game ever for the Wichita Wind Surge) and then I was going to get to two games at the newly renovated Dodger Stadium. Why Louisville and Wichita? Why not? I’ve pretty much only driven through Kentucky and Kansas so I would have added them to my lists of states where I’ve spent the night and where I’ve seen sports. The two Dodger games I was going to go to were Dollar Dodger Dog Night and Friday Night Fireworks. I’ve done Friday Night Fireworks twice before (2017 and 2019) and you get to go on the outfield grass so that’s pretty awesome. But that’s not going to happen. I had also thought about going to see the Dodgers in May in Kansas City because I’ve only been to one game in Kansas City, that stadium is awesome, and the Dodgers so rarely play there. The Dodgers are supposed to be playing in New York in late May. The Astros are supposed to play the Mets in early June and I wanted to go and boo them. We’ll see if baseball is happening by late May/early June. I was also hoping to get to the new Rangers stadium this year, but that’s very much up in the air. As for a non-sports trip, I was thinking about taking a trip to Rome/the Vatican (and Poland) this summer. Hopefully Italy will open for business by then, but yeah, that trip isn’t happening this year. I haven’t given up on getting to a Dodger game or two in Los Angeles, but it’s probably a long shot at this point.
There are lots of questions about baseball. When will the season start? How many games will be played? What happens to the All Star Game? How late can the season go? I have some thoughts. I have no idea when the season will start, but I hope they play at least 100 games. I think they’re just going to have to remake the schedule. There’s been talk of doubleheaders on Sundays. I’m down with that. Let’s say they can play a 108 game season. Here’s what I would want to see. You do away with interleague play, you play everybody in your division 12 times (48 games), and you play everybody in the other divisions six times (60 games). There’s one big problem with that. You have 15 teams in each league, which means that you can’t get rid of interleague play without having at least one team off in each league each day. So let’s try this again. You redo the interleague opponents so that you just have the East playing the East, Central playing the Central, and West playing the West. You play one team from the other league four times and the other four teams from the other league three times for a total of 16 interleague games. You play the teams in your division 10 times (two five-game series with a doubleheader in each series) and you still play the teams in the other divisions in your league six times. So that would be 116 games. As for the All Star Game, I hope it happens. It’s supposed to be at Dodger Stadium and it hasn’t been played there in 40 years. Next year’s All Star Game is in Atlanta and 2026 is in Philadelphia, but I don’t think any other All Star Game hosts have been picked yet. So you could just put the 2022 All Star Game in Los Angeles. But I have another idea (which isn’t entirely serious, but I like it a lot). The season might have to go deep into November. You can’t be playing night games in the Bronx or Cleveland or Minnesota in mid-late November. So we just award all seven games of the World Series to a neutral site like they do with the Super Bowl. And since the All Star Game was supposed to be played at Dodger Stadium and you can play night games there in mid-late November, we play all the World Series games at the hopefully not so neutral site of Dodger Stadium.
So yeah, I would be crushed if baseball didn’t happen. It would really hurt if I was denied the chance to see Cody Bellinger and Mookie Betts play in the same outfield (and Betts is a free agent after this year) and another opportunity for Clayton Kershaw to win a World Series. And by the way, I haven’t blogged since the whole Astros cheating scandal came out. Clayton Kershaw has had his struggles in the postseason, but he was great in the 2017 postseason except for his one start in Houston. The Dodgers won his first four starts in that postseason. He wasn’t great in the first start, but he was good enough. In his next three, he pitched 18 innings allowing four runs on 10 hits and four walks with 20 strikeouts. In the World Series, he pitched 11 innings at Dodger Stadium and allowed one run on five hits and two walks with 15 strikeouts. The start in Houston when they were illegally stealing signs (it can be done legally, but that’s not what the Astros were doing) was a total disaster. Like I said, Kershaw has had bad playoff performances, but for the Astros to never swing and miss on a breaking ball in that game tells you everything you need to know about what was going on there. Kershaw and the Dodgers were cheated out of that World Series. If not for the Astros cheating, the Dodgers win that series in five or six. It would be an absolute travesty if Kershaw ended his career without winning a World Series. Hopefully this year is the year. By the way, it’s interesting how the Astros cheating scandal cost three different managers their jobs, but the Patriots get caught cheating multiple times and everybody talks about how great Bill Belichick is. And also by the way, I guess I’m glad Tom Brady went to Tampa Bay. I will still hate the Patriots. I already disliked the Buccaneers because of Jameis Winston, but now I might have to put more effort into disliking them because they might be better (but hopefully Tom Brady is just over the hill and they won’t be good).
We’re not going to have the Olympics this summer, which isn’t fun. But if you gave me NBA playoffs this summer and the Olympics next summer, that would be a pretty good deal (NBA Summer League in Las Vegas was another thing I at least thought about going to, but I doubt that’s happening this summer and I’d rather have the playoffs than the Summer League anyway). It would also shorten the gap between the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. I’m not going to talk about the future of football right now. I’m not 100% convinced that the season will be played entirely as scheduled, but I’m hoping that we’ll be past all this in time for football. I am hoping to see Notre Dame at Lambeau Field in October so I hope everything is good with football.
So yeah, I’m two weeks into spending pretty much all of my time at home. So my time has been spent working at home, some light weight lifting, going for walks, listening to podcasts, and watching the Office and Parks and Rec. I’ve seen every episode of the Office multiple times (I’m not up to season 8 yet, usually I just skip season 8 entirely and most of season 9 because it’s pretty bad after Steve Carrell left until the last few episodes, but I’ll watch everything this time), but this is the first time I’m watching Parks and Rec. It’s good, but it’s not the Office. I might have to start rewatching some movies and perhaps do a movie blog post at some point. I’ve had a movie blog post in mind for a long time that I’ve never gotten around to, but I don’t make any promises.
I hope everybody is doing okay. I’m really looking forward to when life gets back to normal and I can just go back to being mad at the Astros for cheating. They deserve the reaction they were going to get from fans on the road this year and I hope they don’t miss out on that.
