Street Corners and Tastee Freeze

The second stop of my Easter vacation trip was Chicago.  Obviously I’ve been there several times (for Cubs games in 2009 and 2016), but the Dodgers were playing there during my Easter vacation so I wanted to get back.  I was able to go to two games and do a Wrigley Field tour before heading out to the last stop on my Easter vacation trip.

I arrived at my hotel around 3:30 on Tuesday.  I had been to two Adam Richman Man vs. Food spots in Chicago (Gino’s East and Lucky’s Sandwich Company) and they’ve since done a Casey Webb Man vs. Food Chicago episode.  Of the three spots Casey Webb went to, one has closed.  I was interested in the other two.  If it was earlier in the day, I might have gone to Timothy O’Toole’s, where he had his challenge, which was the Big Timmy Burger.  Obviously, I wouldn’t be up for the challenge, but I could have done another burger.  But I decided that I wasn’t too excited about a burger (you can get a good burger lots of places and it was on the show not because the burgers are so great, but because they had a challenge).  It was a little out of the way also so I decided to just order from Lucky’s since it was much closer to where I was staying.  Lucky’s is like Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh.  They put coleslaw and fries on the sandwich.  Three years ago, I had the two bagger (corned beef and pastrami).  This time I had the Fredo (ham, salami, and capicola).  It was quite tasty.

I went to the game on Tuesday night.  I was feeling full from the sandwich and didn’t eat at the game.  I wanted some Illinois craft beer.  It took some searching, but I found a Half Acre Daisy Cutter.  They had plenty of stuff from 3 Floyds in Indiana and Bell’s in Michigan, but Half Acre is a Chicago brewery (there was also plenty of Goose Island, but that’s Anheuser-Busch InBev).  It was pretty good.  The game was not good. It was Jose Quintana for the Cubs against Kenta Maeda for the Dodgers.  Maeda gave up six runs in the first two innings.  Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez hit home runs.  The Dodgers had some chances to score more runs, but they ended up losing 7-2.  Let’s move on.

My view on Tuesday night

I started my day Wednesday with a tour of Wrigley Field.  The tour was very good.  It’s amazing that before 2016 the last Cubs championship came before Wrigley Field was built.  In fact, the Cubs were not the original tenants of Wrigley Field.  The Chicago Federals of the Federal League played there.  They were renamed the Whales and won the only baseball championship won at Wrigley Field (they won the Federal League there in 1915, the Cubs won the World Series in 2016 in Cleveland).  They are still the reigning Federal League Champions as 1915 was the last year for the Federal League.  I think the tour guide said that the Whales won the only championship ever at Wrigley Field, but it appears that’s not the case.  Five NFL Championship Games were played at Wrigley Field before the Super Bowl Era began (I think the Bears playing in Wrigley Field was mentioned on the tour, but they didn't mention that Wrigley Field hosted the most NFL games out of any stadium until it was passed by Giants Stadium).  The last one was in 1963 when the Bears beat the Giants 14-10.  The first night game at Wrigley Field was in 1988, but it could have been decades earlier (the two games I went to were the first night games I've been to at Wrigley Field).  The Cubs were going to put in lights in the 1940s, but they donated steel that was going to be used in the construction of lights for the war effort.  The tour guide said that the Cubs lost home field advantage in the 1984 NLCS because they couldn’t have night games and that’s what spurred them to put in lights by the end of the decade, but my quick internet research indicates that story is a myth.  We got to sit in the bleachers.  The tour guide suggested bringing a baseball (or any white sphere close to the size of a baseball) if you’re sitting in the bleachers so that if you get a home run ball hit by the visiting team you can keep the home run ball and throw back the fake one.  The basket at the top of the wall was not put in for catching home runs, it was put in to catch bleacher bums.  Apparently they used to run along the top of the wall and several fell onto the field and hurt themselves (they also changed the wall so that it comes to a point at the top, which makes running along it much more difficult).  The last interesting thing makes perfect sense, but I never thought about it before.  Wrigley Field is the only Major League Ballpark that still exists today where Jackie Robinson played.  Of course, Fenway Park was around also, but Jackie Robinson never played there.

Looking in from the bleachers

Me on the field at Wrigley Field

After the tour, I ordered a personal deep dish pizza from Pequod’s.  Casey Webb had a pizza with pepperoni and sausage on Man vs. Food so that’s what I did.  I have to say, it was pretty underwhelming.  The crust on the bottom of the pizza was too thick.  It was like having pizza ingredients on a big piece of bread (it’s not like the crust was particularly tasty).  I ended up cutting off a lot of the crust from the bottom.  On the outside of the pizza, rather than using dough, they used burnt cheese.  They made a big deal about the burnt cheese on the show.  It was nothing special.  It was a long time ago that I had Gino’s East, but I remember that being a lot better.  Three years ago I had a personal Giordano’s pizza at Wrigley Field and that was better.  It’s not like it was terrible.  You take cheese, tomato sauce, pepperoni, and sausage and put them together and it can’t be too bad, but I wouldn’t be having it again the next time I’m in Chicago.  And of course, I’m reminded of Jon Stewart’s words of wisdom about pizza:

I already knew that it wasn't really pizza, but I was still expecting better.

I was back at Wrigley Field on Wednesday night for the second game of the series.  I had a Bell’s Oberon to drink.  I’m like 99.5% sure that I had a Bell’s Oberon one time either before or after a Notre Dame football game at Jon’s recommendation, but if not, I thought I might not have ever had a Michigan beer (although on my beer state list I listed Bell’s Oberon and Bell’s Amber for Michigan so apparently I did have a Bell’s Amber at some point) so I went with that over a 3 Floyds beer or another Half Acre Daisy Cutter.  It was a solid baseball beer.  I just had a hot dog to eat.  It was listed as a Chicago Dog so I was a little worried that they’d have all those extraneous ingredients (Chicago is right about not using ketchup on hot dogs, but all that other stuff doesn’t belong on there).  The hot dog was good, but the bad thing was that they only had yellow mustard.  Cosmo Kramer knows that’s not acceptable:

It was Cole Hamels against Walker Buehler.  The Dodgers got off to a good start.  The Dodgers had runners on first and second in the fourth and an infield single (with no error) resulted in a run scored and runners on second and third.  Unfortunately they couldn’t get those runs in from second and third.  Cody Bellinger hit a two-run homer in the top of the sixth to put the Dodgers up 3-0.  But then the bottom of the sixth happened.  The first three batters went strikeout, single, fly out.  But Buehler couldn’t get the third out.  Anthony Rizzo walked and then Javier Baez hit a home run on an 0-2 count.  Scott Alexander came in.  He had been good so far this year, but not this night.  He gave up a double to David Bote and then they intentionally walked Wilson Contreras to set up the lefty-lefty matchup with Jason Heyward, but Heyward hit a home run.  So they had a runner on first with two outs and ended up getting six runs.  Anthony Rizzo drove in another run in the seventh off of Joe Kelly (who has been terrible) to put the Cubs up 7-3.  Alex Verdugo hit a three-run home run in the 8th to make it 7-6.  Max Muncy’s walked to lead off the ninth, but a strikeout and a double play ended the game.

My view on Wednesday night.  You can see part of the pole that obstructed my view of left field on the edge of the picture.

I like Dave Roberts, but I'm going to complain for a minute.  He had Cody Bellinger hitting sixth in both games.  The Cubs had two lefties pitching.  I understand moving Bellinger down a little bit against a lefty, but he had Corey Seager hitting fourth.  Seager is another lefty and he hasn't been anywhere near as good as Bellinger so far this year.  So far this year, Bellinger has hit second twice, third four times, fourth 15 times, fifth thrice, sixth five times, and seventh once.  It makes sense that Bellinger was hitting lower in the lineup earlier in the season, but by now, he needs to be hitting much higher.  Nobody can get him out right now.  I would have him hitting third probably (you could definitely talk me into second).  You need to make sure he's hitting in the first inning.  I don't think he's hit any lower than fourth for the last few games and hopefully he won't be hitting lower than that any time soon.

So it was two disappointing games in Chicago, but the beauty of baseball is that you have 162.  I can have a pretty good time at a game during the regular season even if the Dodgers lose.  If I go to a Notre Dame football game and they lose, I’m miserable.  Attendance at the two games was 35,536 and 35,743 (about four times the attendance as the game I went to at Tropicana Field).  Wrigley Field was good.  Unfortunately the ivy wasn’t green.  But other than that, everything at Wrigley was good.  Since the Cubs have been consistent contenders, the atmosphere is very good.  I had a pretty good view for both games.  On Wednesday, I was closer, but a pole was more of an issue.  Fortunately, the infield wasn’t obstructed at all, but I couldn’t see most of left field.  There were four home runs in the game and three of them were to left field.  When Bellinger homered, I was able to move down my row a bit to look around the pole and see it land.  I had two big criticisms of Wrigley Field the last time I went.  One was the beer selection.  It could still be better, but there was a definite improvement.  The other was how difficult it was to move around when I got food on the upper level because there was only one area up there to get food/beer.  Thankfully the renovations added a bunch of areas up high where you can get food and beer.  I didn’t actually buy food at the game where I was sitting up high, but it would have been easy to quickly get something to eat and I was able to quickly get my beer.  Thanks to these improvements, I’m moving Wrigley Field up at least two spots on my rankings.  That puts it at fifth ahead of Kauffman Stadium and Petco Park.  I have PNC Park at number four.  I was only there once seven years ago.  I’m going back at the end of May for two games.  So let’s see if it can hold off the improved Wrigley Field for the fourth spot.  The one thing I didn't like about the renovations was that they moved the bullpens.  You can check out one of my favorite websites to get an overview of how it has changed.  They moved the bullpens off the field.  Ordinarily I don't like having the bullpens on the field, but I don't like how they've moved them to a secret lair underneath the bleachers.  They'll show you who's warming up on the scoreboard, but I'd prefer it if the fans nearby could actually watch the relievers warm up (and say all sorts of stuff to them).  But the improvements outweigh that negative change.

I'll end by pointing out that the last team I saw lose a game at Wrigley Field won the World Series.

Terrible Tropicana Field

Going into the season, I had been to 28 of the current 30 Major League Baseball Stadiums.  I had 28 out of 30 after getting to Anaheim four years ago and then I was back to 28 out of 30 after getting the new Braves stadium last year.  I’ve had plenty of time, but I didn’t have much of a desire to get to the last two.  Tampa Bay and Oakland have the two worst stadiums in baseball and I just wasn’t motivated to go.  I always said that I’d go when they got new stadiums.  They need new stadiums, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen so I figured I’d make it happen this year. But I wasn’t just going to go to Tropicana Field.  I needed to combine it with other stuff.  So Tropicana Field was the first stop of three on my Easter vacation trip.  I’ll get to the other two stops later.

I left the day after Easter for Tampa.  I had been dealing with a cold for a few days and then my stomach was a little unsettled on the way to the airport.  So I was a little concerned as I was on my way.  When I got to Florida, I just took it easy.  I ordered some alligator tacos and they were pretty good.  Lent is over, but I learned this year that alligator is allowed on Fridays in Lent.  Obviously I knew that fish was allowed (which I took advantage of twice this year when I went out to dinner with friends on Fridays), but reptiles and amphibians are allowed also.  If I was making the rules, I’d say no vertebrates, but if we’re making sacrifices it seems that lobster and shrimp shouldn’t be allowed either.

Anyway, after relaxing for a bit, I headed to the stadium.  I waited until the day before to buy a ticket.  I like sitting near home plate, but tickets seemed overly expensive on Stubhub (which was still cheaper than the Rays’ website).  The issue was that in order for a robust secondary market to exist, the team needs to sell a good number of tickets and the Rays don’t (especially for Rays-Royals on a Monday).  I had my eye on a ticket on Stubhub and I was able to wait it out until it came down $5.  In reality, I probably could have just bought the cheapest ticket way out in the outfield and then sat wherever I wanted, but whatever.  I had a pulled pork sandwich and a Coppertail Independent Pilsner (I wanted something local).  Both were fine, but later on I saw a stand selling Cuban sandwiches and regretted not getting that.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a Cuban sandwich, but I was in Florida so that would have been something to try.

My view for most of the game

After five and a half innings, the Royals had a 3-1 lead, but the Rays came back.  I watched from my seat until the seventh inning stretch and then walked around.  The Rays took the lead on a home run by Mike Zunino in the bottom of the seventh.  If you go to the 3:26 mark in the video below, you can see me as his home run goes out.  The home run goes to center.  A little bit to the left there’s a section of chain link fence and I’m standing all the way to the left wearing my yellow St. Edward’s Hall shirt.  I ended up walking around and taking a seat pretty close to the field for the end of the game.  The Rays won 6-3.

I had very low expectations for Tropicana Field and those expectations were met.  Let’s go through what I didn’t like.  It’s the only stadium with a non-retractable roof.  Baseball should be played outdoors unless it’s raining or it’s 109 degrees in Phoenix or whatever.  It’s one of three stadiums with artificial turf (Chase Field in Phoenix was just added to that list, so if I do an official reranking after I get to the Oakland Coliseum, it's definitely moving down in my rankings).  Baseball should be played on grass.  When I was looking through the chain link fence, it appeared that the warning track was the exact same surface as the fake grass, only it was brown instead of green.  Does that help the outfielders at all?  Aren’t they going by feel?  It’s not like they’re looking at the ground when they’re tracking a long fly ball.  The food and beverage selections were decent, but they definitely could be better.  But I guess it doesn’t make much sense to have a huge variety when you don’t have many fans.  Attendance was 9,914 and it was quiet.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever been to a minor league game with more fans, but it’s not out of the question.  I’ve definitely been to minor league games with a better atmosphere.  It’s more fun going to a game with 6,000 fans when the stadium holds 6,000-8,000 or whatever than going to one with 9,914 when the stadium holds 42,735 (although the capacity for this season is 25,000 because they’ve covered up the seats on the upper level).

Seats that they don't sell because they can't sell them

My view at the end of the game

So not surprisingly, I have Tropicana Field ranked last on the list of stadiums I’ve been to.  Here’s an idea that I love, but it definitely won’t happen:  if the Rays make the playoffs, they have to pick the stadium of an AL team that didn’t make the playoffs for their home games.  I mean, yes, they can probably sell more playoff tickets playing in St. Petersburg than they could in another AL city, but I don’t want to watch games on TV played in that stadium.  To make this slightly less unrealistic, for logistical reasons let’s assume that they have to play every round in the same city and they have to pick right at the start of the playoffs.  As of today, the Rays have the best record in the AL, the Yankees would be the first wild card and and the Mariners would be the second wild card.  Where would the Rays play if my very unrealistic idea was adopted?  Like if they thought they were going to play the Yankees (or it least that was a strong possibility), would they pick Boston and hope that Red Sox fans show up to root against the Yankees?  But then they’d be running the risk of having lots of Yankee fans show up also since it’s a fairly short trip.

They have some rays swimming around in right center.  That's kind of cool, I guess.

So I’ve been to 32 stadiums all time (29 out of the current 30).  Tropicana Field ranks 32nd.  I’m expecting it to get bumped down to 33rd when I get to the Oakland Coliseum (which I’m expecting to be 32nd), but we’ll see.

Two Weekends in the City

This weekend is all about watching college basketball on TV.  But I spent good portions of the last two weekends in New York City.  Two weeks ago, Jon was in town for work.  I went into the city on Friday evening to get dinner with Jon and Kyle.  I didn’t really plan on blogging about this, but Saturday was certainly worth a blog post.  Friday night, we met at the Perfect Pint.  It was a Friday in Lent, so fish and chips it was.  By the way, I still don’t understand why fish is allowed on Fridays in Lent, but I don’t make the rules.  Fish and chips are fine, but it’s not too exciting.  There were a couple other seafood options that sounded more interesting, but I didn’t feel like they would have kept in the penitential spirit of Fridays in Lent.  By the way, amphibians and reptiles are also allowed on Fridays in Lent.  I don’t know if I’ve ever eaten an amphibian, but I have had alligator in Florida.  I don’t know if I was going to find any reptiles on any menus in Manhattan though.  To drink I had the Perfect Pint Irish Red.  Although it’s a house beer, it’s brewed somewhere upstate so I still haven’t had a beer brewed in Manhattan (to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t had one brewed in Queens either, I’ll have to try to take care of that at a Mets game this year).  Manhattan doesn’t really seem to have breweries, probably because rent is too expensive, but there seems to be one place that makes their own beer pretty close to Penn Station, Death Avenue.  I don’t know when I’ll be in Manhattan again, but I’ll have to check it out the next time I’m there.

I stayed with Jon on Friday night.  We were in lower Manhattan and he mentioned going to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum on Saturday morning.  I hadn’t been there before so I was definitely in for that.  It’s hard to describe.  In the museum, you’re pretty much working your way underground.  If you live anywhere near the city, you should definitely go.  One thing I learned was that when the buildings were built, there was concern about how close they were to the water.  They were worried about water leaking in underground so they built this huge wall underground to keep the water out.  Then there was concern that the wall wouldn’t hold up after the attacks, which would make the cleanup much more difficult, but it held.  I also learned that they took all the stuff that they dug out to build the buildings and used it to expand the island of Manhattan.  There were all sorts of artifacts to see there.  It was pretty emotional.  The last thing we saw in the museum was a temporary exhibit on sports after September 11.  That was pretty cool.  I recently watched the entire Ken Burns Baseball documentary.  The first nine innings came out in 1994.  The tenth inning was released in 2010.  It was great, but I did have some issues with the tenth inning.  There was lots of coverage of September 11, but no mention of the Mike Piazza home run to give the Mets the lead in the first professional sporting event in New York after September 11.  There was also no mention of George Bush’s first pitch in Game 3 of the World Series in Yankee Stadium.  What’s up with that?

This was the last piece pulled out of Ground Zero.

Mike Piazza's jersey from the first game in New York after the attacks

This was the greatest first pitch in baseball history.

After the museum, we went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff.  Jon was staying another night in the city with another friend.  After parting ways, I stopped at the graveyard at Trinity Church before heading to the subway.  Alexander Hamilton is buried in the cemetery at Trinity Church.  Besides Hamilton, the other people buried there that I knew of were Robert Fulton, Albert Gallatin, Horatio Gates, and John Peter Zenger.  Then I headed back to the 9/11 Memorial.  Jon and I had walked around it, but I checked their website and figured out how to find specific names, so I found my friend Bobby’s father’s name before heading home.

Alexander Hamilton's grave.  Notice all the coins that people leave there.

Freedom Tower

I was back on Thursday night for my favorite most likely completely meaningless sporting event of the year, the Big East Tournament.  Somebody other than Villanova, Marquette, Seton Hall, or St. John’s would have had to win it for it to have any meaning.  I met Adam for St. John’s-Marquette.  It was nice to see St. John’s, but it would have been nicer to see a more competitive game.  Five minutes into the second half, St. John’s cut Marquette’s lead to six.  Then Marquette destroyed them.  They won 86-54 and Markus Howard had 30 points and 7 rebounds.  Adam left shortly before the start of the second game, which was Georgetown-Seton Hall.  Seton Hall was up 53-28 at halftime.  I did not stay for the second half.  Georgetown did not make it interesting.  Myles Powell had 31 points.

Our view on Thursday night.  I was supposed to be over to the right a few sections for Friday night.

I was supposed to come back Friday night, but life got in the way.  I missed two good games.  Villanova had a nice late comeback and beat Xavier in overtime.  Seton Hall beat Marquette by two.  With the two semifinal games, Seton Hall-Villanova was the championship game I wanted.  Those two teams will bring lots of fans to Madison Square Garden.  Xavier-Marquette would have not been as exciting.  Since the new Big East was created, five different teams have made it to the championship game.  The five old teams (St. John’s, Villanova, Georgetown, Seton Hall, and Providence) are much closer to New York and are always going to have more fans at Madison Square Garden.  Fortunately the championship game has always featured at least one of those teams.  The five teams that haven’t made the championship game since the new Big East was created are St. John’s, Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul, and Butler.  St. John’s hasn’t made the championship game since 2000 (which they won).

I went back to the city on Saturday afternoon.  I went to the 5:15 vigil mass at St. Francis.  It’s a very short walk to Madison Square Garden, but I was a little concerned about getting in on time for a 6:30 game because of lines to get through security at the Garden, but it was a very efficient mass.  I was out of St. Francis at 6:01.  I was meeting Vin in the Garden.  We’ve been to many Big East Tournament games together, but this was the first time we were doing the championship game together.  It was a good game.  Villanova led by two at halftime.  It was back and forth for most of the second half.  Kevin Willard got a technical foul about halfway through the half, which allowed Villanova to tie it.  With three minutes left, Villanova went up nine, which I think was the biggest lead of the game for either team, but Seton Hall was not done.  Myles Powell made a layup to cut the lead to one with 16 seconds left.  Eric Paschall made one out of two free throws to give Villanova a 74-72 lead with 14 seconds left.  Myles Powell missed a three that would have given Seton Hall the lead with four seconds left and then that was the game.  Paschall had 17 to lead the way for Villanova.  Phil Booth had 16 and was named tournament MVP.

Four Big East Championships in five years for Villanova.  They now have five all time, which is tied with Syracuse and only behind Georgetown and Connecticut with seven.

Villanova is on quite an impressive run.  They’ve made it to five straight Big East Championship Games and won four of them (including the last three).  Their only Big East Championship before this run was in 1995.  Villanova has been a good team for a while.  Jay Wright has gotten them to the NCAA Tournament 14 out of 15 years, but what they’ve done for the last five years is pretty amazing.  I’ll always be grateful to Villanova for defeating the forces of evil to win National Championships in 2016 and 2018.  Because of that, they’re my second favorite college basketball team.  But they’re a distant second.  I would like to see St. John’s, Seton Hall, Georgetown, and Providence give them some more competition in the Big East.  I don’t dislike the other Big East teams, but I always root for the old Big East teams before the new ones.

As always, I love the Big East Tournament.  Every session was sold out with the exception of Thursday afternoon (which was just a few hundred tickets away from being sold out).  I wish Notre Dame was still in the Big East.  I despise Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse, and Rick Pitino (who used to coach an ACC team).  I would love to just go back to the Big East and be the 11th team.  But I came up with my ideal scenario for Notre Dame men’s basketball.  I’ve had lots of ideas on this blog and this is probably the most unrealistic one.  The idea is that for men’s basketball only, the Big East is a national conference of Catholic schools.  We go with sixteen teams in four divisions.  You play the other three teams in your division twice and the other teams once for a total of 18 conference games.  Here are the divisions:

Northeast
St. John’s
Seton Hall
Providence
Holy Cross

East
Villanova
Georgetown
Xavier
Dayton

Midwest
Notre Dame
DePaul
Marquette
Creighton

West
Gonzaga
St. Mary’s
San Francisco
Loyola Marymount

Butler would be welcome to stay if they converted to Catholicism (in that scenario, I guess I’d kick out San Francisco or Loyola Marymount and move Creighton to the West), but if not, those are my teams.  Of course, the conference is still called the Big East and the tournament is still in Madison Square Garden.  If you win your division, you get a top four seed and a double bye.  The rest of the seeding would just be done by record.  Besides having a national conference of Catholic schools, I helped the Big East out by adding some diversity of colors.  Currently, nine of the ten teams use blue in their color scheme.  And except for St. John’s and possibly Marquette (yellow), blue is the primary color for those teams.  I’m adding some green (San Francisco), red (Dayton and Loyola Marymount), and purple (Holy Cross).

I told you this was pretty unrealistic.  But I could have made it even more unrealistic.  For example, I could have gone with Boston College over Holy Cross, but I stayed with non-FBS schools (Notre Dame is the exception, but I’d go back to being totally independent in football).  I also could have just had Gonzaga and St. Mary’s from the west coast and added in two of St. Joe’s, St. Louis, St. Bonaventure, Duquesne, Iona, Fordham, and LaSalle, but I wanted four west coast teams to make the travel a little easier on Gonzaga and St. Mary’s (also I figured Villanova wouldn’t want to share a conference with St. Joe’s or LaSalle and St. John’s wouldn’t want to share a conference with Fordham or Iona).

Sadly, my dream conference is not to be.  I’ll just have to continue to enjoy Notre Dame basketball (hopefully, I didn’t enjoy this year) and Big East basketball separately.  Of the teams still alive in the NCAA Tournament, I’m rooting for Villanova, Gonzaga, and Iona.

Outdoor Hockey and Other Thoughts

This post is long overdue, but the NHL has another outdoor game tonight so that got me to finally finish it.  Last month I made it to my second outdoor hockey game.

I was watching some of the Winter Classic New Year’s Day and the idea of going out to Notre Dame for the Notre Dame-Michigan hockey game in the stadium reoccurred to me (the Winter Classic would have been cool, but it wasn’t really a possibility because I had to work the next day).  I had thought about it before.  But I was worried about the weather.  The cold wasn’t so much what I was worried about.  It was the possibility of getting stuck out there because of snow.  I’d have to come back on a Sunday and go to work on Monday so if there was a big snow storm in the Midwest or Northeast, I could get stuck out there.  So I checked the weather on New Year’s Day and it looked good.  The next things I checked were flights and hotels.  I got a room for $56.  Flights to South Bend were not too bad either.  So I ended up deciding on  Wednesday fly to South Bend on Saturday for the game.

When I first considered going out for the game, I thought about getting in on Friday night.  There were two issues with that.  First, getting a flight that would leave late enough for me to work on Friday was an issue.  I think there might have been some options, but they were either cutting it pretty close or they would have been more expensive.  The other thing with going out on Friday night would have been that would have meant another night in a hotel.  If I had gone on Friday night, I could have gone to the basketball game at noon on Saturday.  But as it turned out, that would not have been much fun.  This has been a rough year for Notre Dame basketball.  Our freshman class is supposed to be good, but it’s good for a freshman class that’s actually going to go to class and be legitimate students (you know, unlike the freshmen at Kentucky and Duke).  So hopefully next year will be much better.

Anyway, I really wanted to go because how many times are we going to play hockey in Notre Dame Stadium?  This probably won’t happen again for a long time.  So I’ve now seen Notre Dame play hockey in a hockey arena (Compton Family Ice Arena), a baseball stadium (Fenway Park), a basketball arena (Barclays Center), a football stadium, and a fencing arena (we played in the north dome of the Joyce Center when I was a student, it wasn’t nice for hockey and now it’s the home of Notre Dame Fencing).  As far as outdoor hockey games go, the shape of a football stadium is definitely better than a baseball stadium and Fenway Park’s layout is probably about as bad as a baseball stadium could be for hockey (but still, it’s Fenway Park, so I was totally cool with hockey there).

It was still Christmas vacation for the students so you had nobody on campus and most stuff on campus (other than the bookstore) was closed.  It was pretty weird being on campus with nobody around except for the fans for the hockey game.  I definitely would have preferred if they switched the dates of the outdoor NHL games so that Notre Dame would host a game later and then they could have a Notre Dame hockey game with the students on campus, but oh well.

The game was not fun.  It was delayed an hour because of sun glare (it's unusual to see the sun in South Bend between November and March, but fortunately the delay was announced in advance).  Michigan scored three goals in the first ten minutes.  We scored in the second and then late in the third to give ourselves a chance, but Michigan put it away with an empty net goal.  If it had been a football game, I would have been miserable.  But it was cool to see hockey in Notre Dame Stadium.

I had a pretty good view for the game.  This is the opening face off.

It was probably a better picture once the sun went down.

It was my first event in the stadium since the renovations have been completed.  It’s been a while since I’ve been there for a football game.  I did see the stadium when I did the tour over the summer, but I hadn’t been there for a game.  The crowd was 23,422, which was the biggest crowd ever for a home hockey game for Notre Dame.  One thing I noticed was that they should have done a much better job with the jumbotron.  They never showed any highlights of Michigan’s last two visits to Notre Dame stadium or Notre Dame beating Michigan on a buzzer beater in the Frozen Four last year.  Don’t worry, I’ve included them for you below.  Apparently when we played Michigan a few weeks later in the Compton Family Ice Arena, they had Brian Kelly on the big screen making fun of Michigan for not scoring.  They definitely should have made better use of the jumbotron for this game.

I was thinking about where I’d want to see outdoor hockey games played.  I’m limiting this to US venues.  Outdoor hockey in Canada is totally cool with me (it is hockey, after all), but I’m just not very familiar with which outdoor venues in Canada would be possible for hockey.  For American venues, football stadiums are better for viewing the game in person, but I'm cool with playing games in baseball stadiums as long as they're good stadiums.  There's no reason to play in whatever the White Sox stadium is called these days, but Wrigley Field is cool.  So here’s what I came up with (places that have already hosted NHL games are in bold):

Bruins- Fenway Park (definitely not Gillette Stadium or at Boston College)
Rangers- Yankee Stadium, Michie Stadium at West Point, Central Park (Major League Baseball built a temporary stadium at Fort Bragg, so I figure the NHL could do something like that).
Sabres- Ralph Wilson Stadium
Flyers- Citizens Bank Park, Lincoln Financial Field
Penguins- PNC Park, Heinz Field
Capitals- Nationals Park, National Mall, Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium
Hurricanes- Clemson Memorial Stadium
Blue Jackets- Ohio Stadium (I guess, I’d rather not have games played at colleges that I despise), FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, Paul Brown Stadium
Blackhawks- Notre Dame Stadium, Wrigley Field, Soldier Field, Lambeau Field
Blues- Busch Stadium, Kauffman Stadium, TD Ameritrade Stadium
Predators- Neyland Stadium
Wild- Target Field, TCF Bank Stadium, Lambeau Field
Stars- Cotton Bowl (next year's Winter Classic site), Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium
Avalanche- Coors Field, Broncos Stadium, Falcon Stadium (Air Force, this is happening next year), Albertsons Stadium (Boise State), LaVell Edwards Stadium (BYU)
Sharks- AT&T Park
Kings/Ducks- Dodger Stadium, Rose Bowl

Let’s shift to baseball because it’s coming soon.  Tom Verducci also had an idea for baseball to do something similar to the NHL Winter Classic.  And baseball has kind of started to do it.  They had the Fort Bragg Game, the Williamsport games with the Little League World Series, and this season they’re going to play at TD Ameritrade (in Omaha where the College World Series is played).  There are a few problems with doing it in baseball though.  The first is that a baseball field is much bigger than a hockey rink so there aren’t as many places that seem like obvious options.  The second is that for some teams, you’re not going to beat where they regularly play their games.  Are you going to have the Red Sox play somewhere other than Fenway Park?  Wait, don’t answer that, they’re having the Red Sox play two home games in London this season.  At least when the Dodgers played in Sydney, they were the road team.  I’m okay with playing outdoor baseball in other countries in soccer or cricket stadiums.  But if we’re limiting this idea to the United States, here are some places where I’d like to see baseball games:

Actual Baseball Stadiums that Work:
TD Ameritrade Stadium
BB&T Ballpark at Historic Bowman Field (Williamsport)

Baseball Fields that have Issues to Resolve:
Doubleday Field (center field is a little short, the rest of the outfield dimensions are definitely a problem)
Field of Dreams (field dimensions are a big problem)

Temporary Stadiums Would Have to be Built:
National Mall
The foothills near Mount Rushmore
Central Park (have the Mets play there, don’t make the Yankees play a home game outside of Yankee Stadium)
Any military bases

Football Stadiums:
Rose Bowl
Any number of SEC football stadiums or Clemson Memorial Stadium for a Braves game
Lambeau Field

Major League Baseball has already shown that they can build a temporary stadium.  We know Williamsport and Omaha work.  Could they make some football stadiums work for baseball (I mean the Dodgers used to play at the Los Angeles Coliseum, so I’d think so).  What about Doubleday Field or the Field of Dreams?  The dimensions are an issue for sure.  Maybe you put up big screens to make hitting home runs more difficult (they might have to be the whole field rather than just left field like the Los Angeles Coliseum used to have).  You'll notice I didn't include Notre Dame Stadium.  I love Notre Dame, but I'm not putting baseball in a stadium with fake grass (I wish we'd go back to real grass for football)

I also think the Blue Jays should take one homestand each season to a different place in Canada and just embrace being Canada's team.  Like I said, I don't know about the outdoor venues available in Canada, but Canadian football fields are bigger than American football fields so I'd have to think they could make some CFL stadiums work.

I’ve been off this week and I’ve spent the week watching Ken Burns’s Baseball documentary.  It’s really good.  I’m almost done.  I love the sport so much.  If I could go back in time, my first stop would have to be Brooklyn in the 1950s, right?  There are some changes to baseball I’d like to see made.  Why could games be played so much faster decades ago?  One of the biggest reasons for that is the way pitchers are used.  I wish there was a way to change that other than the rule that there’s been talk about that would require pitchers to face at least three batters.  My answer was to limit the number of pitchers on a roster and having two relief pitchers inactive for each game.  I also really don’t want to see the DH in the NL.  I hate that idea so very much.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the season.  Hopefully this year is finally next year the way 1955 was.  I think I’ll be seeing baseball games in at least five different Major League stadiums this year, including Tropicana Field.  I’ve resisted going there, but it’s going to happen during my Easter vacation.  That would leave just the Oakland Coliseum (until the Rangers get their new stadium).  I’m going to try to make that happen over the summer, but I don’t have anything planned for sure on that one yet.  I’m also hoping to make it to Alaska for some of the Alaska Baseball League (a summer league for college players).  Alaska is the only state I have left to get to.  And I have a few minor league stadiums I’d like to get to over the summer as well.

Winter is almost over.  College basketball is about to get good.  And I love college basketball, but it’s baseball that I’m really looking forward to.  I’ll leave you with one of my favorite parts of the Ken Burns documentary:

Make the Bowls Great Again

It’s college football bowl season and we’re approaching the fifth edition of the College Football Playoff.  This is the second straight year that the Big 10 and Pac 12 have been left out.  So there’s lots of talk of playoff expansion.  I don’t love the idea of playoff expansion.  One of the best things about college football is how every game means so much.  As you let more teams into the playoff, the regular season becomes less important.  Of course in college basketball, the regular season is pretty much meaningless.  The good teams just have to do well enough to get into the NCAA Tournament (which might mean .500 in conference play in the best conferences).  For teams that aren’t in major conferences, all that really matters for most of them is winning their conference tournament to get to the NCAA tournament.  I don’t want to diminish the college football regular season.  But if the College Football Playoff is going to expand (and it probably will at some point), I’ve put a lot of thought into how to do it.

I had a first attempt at a playoff expansion proposal at the end of last season.  There were some issues with my proposal.  The Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl wouldn’t be equal to the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Orange Bowl.  They’d only be playoff bowls one out of every three years and people wouldn’t care about them when they’re not playoff bowls.  Here’s what it would have looked like this year under my first proposal:

Rose Bowl:  Ohio State vs. Washington
Sugar Bowl:  Alabama vs. UCF
Orange Bowl:  Clemson vs. Georgia
Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, or Peach Bowl:  Oklahoma vs. Notre Dame

Another problem is that you’d end up with weird matchups.  Why does Ohio State get to play the lowest ranked team?  So yeah, I could live with a system like that, but I never thought it was that realistic anyway.  I’ve modified that idea and come up with something much more realistically possible.  I don’t anticipate that this is how playoff expansion will happen, but I would love to see it happen this way:

The basic idea is that you have a four team playoff after the bowls.  That’s kind of what my first idea was, but now I’m making all six major bowls matter.  How cool would it be if you had two days with three bowls each that could actually matter?  That would restore some of the tradition of the bowls.  For example, in the 1977 college football season, Notre Dame went into the bowls ranked number 5.  We beat Texas who was ranked number 1 in the Cotton Bowl.  Number 2 Oklahoma lost the Orange Bowl and number 4 Michigan lost the Rose Bowl and Notre Dame won the National Championship.  You had three bowls that had a hand in determining the National Championship.

So my new idea is that you have six major bowls.  Four of the winners of those games will advance to the playoff after the bowls:

Rose Bowl:  Big 10 vs. Pac 12
Sugar Bowl:  SEC vs. at large
Orange Bowl:  ACC vs. at large
Cotton Bowl:  Big 12 vs. at large
Fiesta Bowl:  Group of 5 or highest ranked at large vs. at large
Peach Bowl:  Group of 5 or highest ranked at large vs. at large

You’d have conference champions plus a Group of 5 representative plus the highest ranked at large team filling up seven of the 12 spots.  So this year Notre Dame and UCF would be assigned to the Fiesta and Peach Bowls.  I’d give the higher ranked team between the highest ranked at large team and the Group of 5 representative the choice of which bowl they want to go to.  So this year Notre Dame would get the choice.  Notre Dame might prefer playing in the Peach Bowl because it’s closer.  But maybe they’d prefer playing in the Fiesta Bowl based on the opponent.  The at large teams would be the highest ranked teams that aren’t are left after those first seven spots are taken.  So the question would be how do you assign the at large teams?  I think I would just do it randomly.  I would avoid rematches from the regular season.  I could live with Alabama and Florida playing because they didn’t play in the regular season.  But if you wanted to make it so that there wouldn’t be any conference matchups, I’m cool with that too.  So I used a random number generator to hypothetically fill out what it could look like this year:

Rose Bowl:  Ohio State vs. Washington
Sugar Bowl:  Alabama vs. Penn State
Orange Bowl:  Clemson vs. Georgia
Cotton Bowl:  Oklahoma vs. Michigan
Fiesta Bowl:  Notre Dame vs. Florida
Peach Bowl:  UCF vs. LSU

I assume Notre Dame would choose to play Florida in Arizona rather than Georgia, but if we had drawn Penn State, maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference where we played.  If there had been an at large team from that Pac 12 that we drew, we’d almost certainly prefer to play in the Peach Bowl.

So they play the games and then rank the winners.  The top four go to the playoff with the semifinals happening on the campuses of the two highest ranked teams.  Obviously, if the top four teams won with the match ups I have, they’re going to the playoff.  If you get some upsets, then it gets interesting.  You’d also have a situation where UCF is hoping to draw the best possible team.  Beating LSU wouldn’t do much to help their chances of getting to the playoff.  If there’s one upset of the top four teams, the Rose Bowl winner probably gets in.  But if UCF played Georgia and won, that might get them in ahead of the Rose Bowl winner.

So you’d have six major bowls that all have the possibility of mattering.  You don’t necessarily have 12 teams with a chance of winning a National Championship, but you have at least eight.  LSU likely has no chance with the matchups that I have.  They would have been much better off drawing Clemson or Notre Dame.  As the lowest ranked team to get in, Penn State likely doesn’t have a chance, but drawing Alabama would be their best case scenario.  Let’s say Penn State, Florida, and LSU all won.  At least one of those teams would be going to the playoff.  Beating Alabama would probably be enough for them to jump Florida and LSU.

One problem with my plan would be potential conflict with the NFL Playoffs.  I’ve long advocated for pushing back the Super Bowl to the day before Washington’s Birthday.  I’d also greatly prefer having the National Championship Game on a Saturday.  With the calendar this year, my college playoff system, and the Super Bowl on February 17, that would put the National Championship Game and the Wild Card round on the same weekend.  My answer to that would be to work out some TV deal where you have two NFL Playoff games that afternoon and then the National Championship Game in prime time.  Another possibility would be having the National Championship Game on the weekend between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.

I’d make a couple other changes to college football.  I’d probably get rid of conference championship games or at least get rid of divisions.  Getting rid of conference championship games would eliminate the possibility of a team like Northwestern or Pittsburgh this year being a conference champion.  As for divisions, if you look at the SEC and ACC for example, with eight conference games and two seven-team divisions, you’re playing everybody in your division and then only two of the seven teams in the other division.  There’s been a move toward nine conference games, but I’d prefer eight conference games and then more good non-conference games.  As for getting rid of divisions, you’d be playing some teams in your conference on a much more regular basis.  Of course, you wouldn’t be playing the teams that were in your division as much.  My answer to that would be to have each team have one or two protected rivals that they play each year, but then you rotate your other conference games each year.  I’d actually be for keeping divisions if you have a conference with 12 teams as long as there are no protected rivalries across the divisions.  You could play every team in your division every year and then you play every team in the other division once every two years.  But the Pac 12 is the only major conference with 12 teams right now anyway.

The other change is that I’d want to get rid of teams playing FCS teams.  That might be difficult.  Some states might have political stuff involved with state schools playing each other.  But I’d definitely make it so that you can’t play an FCS opponent after the second weekend in October (no more of this SEC nonsense of playing FCS teams the week before Thanksgiving).  And I’d at least try to limit it to like two FCS opponents every five years or something.

Anyway, I’d love to see playoff expansion happen this way.  I’ve heard the possibility of an eight-team playoff with the first round on campus.  Then you’d have two playoff bowls (which is what we have now), but the other bowls would be even more meaningless.  Would the losers of the quarterfinal games go to bowls?  If they do, is there any reason to care about the outcome?  If they don’t, now you’re taking four of the best teams out of the bowls.  My plan would make the bowls matter more.

Go Irish!

Playoffs? Are You Kidding Me?

Notre Dame has made it to the College Football Playoff.  I meant to do this post last week, but I’ve been busy.  Much like in 2012, it came down to a game on the road against USC.  I definitely expected to win.  I thought it would be pretty easy, but we got off to a bad start.  USC went up 10-0 in the second quarter and the score stayed that way until the last three minutes of the quarter.  We finally scored a touchdown on a nice pass from Ian Book to Chris Finke.  Finke seemed like the only Notre Dame player who came to play in the first half.  We got the ball back before halftime, but some bad clock management by Brian Kelly cost us a chance to get at least three more points.  The half ended up on a completed Hail Mary inside the five yard line.  We had a timeout that we didn’t use on the possession.  If we had used it, we could have run another play or two to either set up a field goal or have a better shot at a touchdown.

I was pretty annoyed at the start of the game.  People from work were texting about bringing in ornaments for the Christmas tree in the office.  I did not care one bit about that when we were playing terribly in our biggest game in the last six years.  But when we went into halftime down only three after playing a terrible first half, I felt very good.  All we had to do was play one good half and we were going to win.  I had confidence that USC wouldn’t play as well in the second half because they just weren’t very good this year.  Dexter Williams gave us the lead early in the second half on a 52-yard run.  We never looked back.  A field goal made it 17-10 late in the third quarter.  We were totally outplaying USC in the second half, but it was still a one possession game.  That changed when Tony Jones took a short pass 51 yards for the touchdown with 3:09 left.  It didn’t look like it was going to be a huge play right away, but it got to a point where only one defender had any chance and Jones had Miles Boykin as a blocker.  I was calling for Jones to cutback as the play was happening and when he did, Miles Boykin took out the last defender with a great block.  At that point, the game was pretty much over.  I was watching the game with my brother Sean.  He was lying down.  I think it was after the Jones touchdown that Sean put his hands up in the air and I just slapped one of his hands without thinking.  It made me think of how the high five was invented spontaneously at Dodger Stadium in 1977.  Anyway, USC scored a touchdown, but we finished the regular season with a 24-17 win over USC, the same score that we beat Michigan by to start the season.

So we are going to our first College Football Playoff.  Strangely, we’re the first team to wear blue to make the playoff.  We are a big underdog against Clemson and we should be.  I don’t really expect to win, but I do think we have a chance.  Everybody remembers what happened when we took on Alabama six years ago for the National Championship.  Nobody seems to remember three games that were more recent than that:

October 18, 2014:  Florida State 31, Notre Dame 27.  Never have I been less upset with Brian Kelly about a loss.  We deserved to win that game and some terrible officiating killed us at the end.  That Florida State team went 12-0 before losing to Oregon in the playoff (they’d say they were 13-0, but I refuse to give any of the teams I’m about to talk about any credit for beating FCS teams).

October 3, 2015:  Clemson 24, Notre Dame 22.  The game was played in a huge rain storm.  We got off to a bad start and made a valiant effort at a comeback.  Brian Kelly went for two before he needed to and we didn’t get it.  We scored with seven seconds left and failed at another two point conversion.  Kick two extra points and we’re going to overtime (this wasn’t the first or the last time that Brian Kelly has made this mistake).  That Clemson team went 13-0 before losing 45-40 against Alabama in the National Championship Game.

September 9, 2017:  Georgia 20, Notre Dame 19.  Georgia never led by more than one in this game.  It was close for the whole game, but we couldn’t pull it out.  That Georgia team went 12-1 before losing 26-23 in overtime against Alabama in the National Championship Game.

Three games against teams who made the playoff in our four previous seasons.  All three were highly competitive.  We just haven’t come out on top yet and I’m not going to believe that we will until we actually do.  I think Brian Kelly will have the team ready to play a competitive game, but I’m going to predict a loss.  You think you know how much I want to be wrong, but most of you probably don’t understand.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with Brian Kelly as Notre Dame’s head coach.  I wanted him fired after 4-8 in 2016 (his seventh year).  That would have been totally defensible, but keeping him has worked out.  If we compare this season to 2012, it feels very different.  2012 felt like a magical season and we were a team of destiny.  It looked like we might go undefeated and not make it to the National Championship Game because Oregon and Kansas State were ahead of us.  And then they both unexpectedly lost on November 17.  We were number 1 and all was good in the world.  But that might have been what cost us a National Championship because that meant we had to play Alabama instead of one of those two teams.  Still, I thought we would beat Alabama (crazy in hindsight, I know).  This year has been fun.  After 2012, I didn’t know if we could get back to this point.  And now here we are.  But the big difference is that I have no expectation of winning it all.  I think we have a chance to beat Clemson, but if we do, I’m definitely not expecting to beat Alabama.  Going back to Brian Kelly, I wanted him fired after 2016.  After 2017, I said that he needed to make a major bowl this year.  Well, we’re not going to the Peach Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl (which I would have been satisfied with), we’re going to the Cotton Bowl in the College Football Playoff.  If he loses to Clemson, there’s no shame in that (I really don’t want to get blown out, though).  But we need to get to where Clemson and Alabama are.  They are clearly the best two programs in college football.  I mean, I guess Ohio State is pretty close, but I have have no desire to have anything in common with Ohio State other than beating Michigan all the time and winning lots of games every year, but Urban Meyer will be gone soon and they’ll most likely take at least a little bit of a step back.  Winning a major bowl has to happen soon.  It’s been far too long.  And then we need to win a National Championship (also far too long).

Just some quick thoughts on Oklahoma making the playoff and some silly thoughts we’ve heard this season.  I don’t want to see Oklahoma in the playoff.  Their defense is terrible.  Like really, really bad.  They’re going to lose to Alabama 56-24.  I’d rather see UCF get a chance (even though they’d probably lose 63-10).  I’d rather see Georgia play Alabama because as we’ve seen, Georgia can give them a game.  However, Georgia doesn’t deserve it.  While I definitely think Georgia is better than Oklahoma, the games have to matter.  Georgia lost by three scores against LSU.  They had their chance against Alabama and blew it.  If you’re not going to give UCF a chance, Oklahoma is the most deserving team.  Along those same lines, we heard for two months that even though Notre Dame beat Michigan and was undefeated, Michigan was better.  Fortunately, Ohio State put an end to that.  Obviously there are lots of factors to consider, but when two teams played each other and there are no other losses between the two of them, no other factors really matter besides head to head.

We play Oklahoma in basketball tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden.  Tickets are weirdly expensive.  It is a doubleheader, but it’s December and the four teams are Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Florida, and West Virginia.  It’s not like we’re talking about Syracuse, Villanova, and Duke, and somebody (there’s a lot more interest in Notre Dame football than Notre Dame basketball in New York).  So it looks like I’m not going.  But maybe I’ll be totally wrong about football and we’ll be playing them in football next month for the National Championship.

Go Irish!