I've been watching a fair amount of sports lately. Baseball and Hockey. Both have been wonderful this year.
My local hockey team, the Red Wings, is not in contention. (Aside: Detroit sports teams except the Lions -- Red Wings, Tigers, Pistons -- tend to be competitive once every 15 or twenty years. The Lions tend to compete once every century.) So as a result I spent the playoffs wondering who should be my favorite. There are a number of ways to assess it. The closest teams to southern headquarters in Savannah would either be the Tampa Bay Lightning or the Carolina Hurricanes. There are two other teams that are related to places I love, the Florida Panthers and the Las Vegas Golden Knights. One other thing I enjoy about all four of these back-up teams is the irony of warm weather hockey. That must really rub Canadians raw.
A couple other teams that I hold a certain irrational affection for are the Seattle Kraken, just because I love to roll my Rs and say Krrrrraken. I also like the Arizona Coyotes because they are the ultimate underdogs. They are not particularly good, have weak fan support, lost their arena and ended up having to play on a local college campus. If they were good, they could be like the Indians in Major League or the Jamaican Bobsled Team, or dare I say it, The Mighty Ducks.
We are coming up fast on the Stanley Cup Finals and it's Vegas versus Florida, so I'm cool with either winner. Truly there is no sport more fast and exciting than playoff hockey. Hockey's not-so-secret weapon is changing lines on the fly. The result is that skaters get on the ice and go all out for ideally 90 seconds and they are replaced on the fly by fresh skaters. In fitness terms, think of it as 90 seconds of anaerobic exercise. To compare to football, suppose that instead of after a play everybody stopping and setting the ball and huddling up, a batch of fresh players came on and just kept going where the last play left off. (Would that be rugby?). The action is relentless and game stoppages are relatively few -- you can get 4 to 5 minutes without a break; emotions and momentum and fate can turn in an instant.
The average hockey game is 2 hours and 20 minutes. The average baseball game is 2 hours and 38 minutes this year, down from about 3:10 the last few years. So in other words about as long as the standard mildly bloated Hollywood movie.
Truth be told, the pitch clock in baseball has made the games much more watchable. It's interesting that they were modifying the rules surrounding the 20 second pitch clock almost up to the start of the season. Technically the rule is that the pitcher must pitch within 15 seconds if there are no runners and 20 seconds if there are runners on. There is also stress on the hitter in that he must be in the box and prepared with 8 seconds left on the clock. There has been some getting used to, but mostly it's really moved the games along well.
I'm less enamored with some of the other rule changes but I understand them. There is now a limit on trips to the mound, a limit on the number of times a pitcher can throw to hold a runner, and a minimum number of batters a relief pitcher must face in some circumstances. These remove an aspect of strategy, but perhaps open another, in the name of stopping baseball from becoming like football where you stop after every play and re-adjust to maximize your personnel. One I continue to not like is the forbidding of "the shift", overloading one side of the infield to account for batter tendencies. This was outlawed in the name of "making the game more athletic", but I don't know. It does seem to have improved overall batting average so maybe that was the subtle goal. More offense = more eyeballs? Maybe.
A couple of narratives have started to build in the season. One is the Tampa Bay Rays getting off to an enormous start. One is the comic occurrence where, as I write this, the entire AL East has better records than the entire AL Central (including the Tigers). Last place in the AL East is better than first place in the Central. Sheesh. Another interesting thing to note is that the team with two of the best players in the game and stars of the World Classic from the summer -- Shohei Otani and Mike Trout -- continues to struggle to stay above .500. Lastly, the Mets, who have reunited the last great Tigers pitching duo of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, are also treading water around .500.
In any event it looks like it's going to play out to be one of the more interesting and enjoyable baseball seasons in recent memory.
Addendum: The most fun reporting on baseball is generally coming from Jomboy Media on Youtube. Simultaneously reverent and irreverent. Both informative and entertaining. Recommended.
