Something to ponder

Why are fans so connected with teams or players?

I sit down almost everyday of the week wondering how my yankees are going to do today or how the longhorns are gonna do in the first half of their game this weekend. 

I don't know why I am so attached to an entity that is supposed to be simply for entertainment purposes but has the ability to ruin my day, weekend, week or hell sometimes even month.  But the contrary to that is the joy of your seeing your team do well and show promise and come out on top and rub it in my friends faces who talk smack. 

Why?

Well here is what I think and probably many more as well but I am going to write it any way cause that's what blogging is right?

i)  It is my escape from my inescapable life:
- I go to college and I hate it.  Don't get me wrong I love getting an education and learning and seeing all these fabulous advancements in technology and education but I honestly just don't like inputting copious amounts of information in to my head that I probably won't use in the real world.  But as my college see's fit they give us "general requirements" that are supposed to better us and be as smart as those overworked asian folks who seem to be grabbing all the jobs. 
Sports allow me to come home watch a game, check the score, watch an amazing play, see a competition and experience something that many other people are experiencing.

ii)  Everybody likes sports in some form or fashion and gives me the opportunity to talk about it with other people.  I just like talking about the game last night or a play or even a bad play or just the state of a team with a friend or co worker. 

iii)  Sporting events and stadiums are just so freaking epic.  The sheer size of a stadium makes me loose my speech.  I have yet to go inside the cowboys stadium but that thing just looks epic.  I went to every longhorns football game last year in Darrel K Royal Memorial Stadium and when the croud chants in unision "TEXAS!! FIGHT!!"" I get chills down the back of my spine. 

These are some things I love about sports and I am sure there are more but I can't think of them right now but will probably soon and slap my head for it.  But that's okay I have a blog and I can write whatever I want. 

Till next time

Cheriooooo

Wow

Wow so it is a lot harder to maintain a blog than I thought.

After attempting to make a some what knowledgeable yet "witty" web log I realized it is a serious pain to do it everyday and I tip my hat to those ardent bloggers who keep it up.

But lets update shall we.

The last time I blogged:

i)Everyone on earth(well except people still bitching about obama) were cussin out the yankees cause they had a bad start to the season. What happened next?

They went on to win the divison, the best record in the league, best record in baseball.

I think they did alright don't you? Let's see how they go through with it cause that is what's important.

ii) Cristiano Ronaldo still played for Manchester United. Well turns out he was worth a pretty penny as he was sold to the ever in-debt Real madrid. A cool 80 million pounds sounded real good to united who cashed in and brought in some more young players and guess where they are one month into the new season. You guessed it folks. FIRST.

Presidents come and go, the end of the world is off and on, it's cold one hour and hot the next in texas, but Manchester United and the New York Yankees seem to some how always find a way to to the top.

Obviously there have been copious other sports related things that have happened and there will plenty of time to talk about all that in the days to come. Just gota wait another 6 months folks.

Alrighty see ya in the spring.

No No it will probably be sooner than that....I hope.

The Reds keep marching on..

It depresses me that more people do not watch football. No I don’t mean the one where one guy THROWS the ball to another guy and the ball touches a foot a handful of times in a game. I am talking about soccer but will refer to the beautiful game as football as it is known everywhere outside of the United States.

The first sport I ever played was tennis and will always appreciate the game, however my first sports love was football. Waking up early in the morning to watch a football game with my father felt nothing short of amazing.

As soon as I could differentiate teams and players I knew I would forever be a Manchester United supporter.

At the time the team was a budding sensation that was slowly but surely starting to dominate the new league formed in England: The English Premier League.

I have followed the team from King Eric to Giggsy. The red devils have always been a title contender and Sir Alex Ferguson(SAF) put up another amazing squad this year following last year’s double.

But SAF always knew how to fuse experience with youthful ingenuity.

Putting out a team lacking three of their starting defenders and his two starting strikers SAF knew it was going to be an uphill battle against a thirsty Aston Villa squad who got trampled 5-0 by Liverpool a week before. With Liverpool winning on Saturday they were not 2 points ahead of united atop the table.

United were all but up to the challenge.

Down 2-1 going into the last 15 minutes game the reds would need to produce another magical comeback. It started with Ronaldo completing his brace with a swift left-footed shot passed the keeper bringing Man U level again.

But the icing on the cake was produced by a completely unknown 17-year-old that Ferguson had placed on the bench before the game due to the lack of fit strikers.

Kiko Macheda was subbed in at the 60th minute and showed glimpses of what he was about to do at the end of the game.

In the 3rd minute of extra time Macheda received a pass, with his back to a defender, from Ryan Giggs just inside the penalty box and swiftly got away from his marker with a heavenly turn through his legs and placed a remarkable curling shot into the top right corner of the net passed the diving keeper.

Macheda had done it, United had triumphed, and effectively stomped on Liverpool’s dream of winning the Premier League for another year.

Even though there United still have five games to play, they have a game in hand over Liverpool and had gotten over their recent slump with Macheda’s resounding strike.

Watching that game made me realize why I had fallen in love with the game. Football always left me feeling anything could happen at any point. I only wish more American’s would see the sport for what it is and choose not to embrace it because they feel they have their “own sports” in baseball, “football”, basketball and hockey.

GLORY GLORY MAN UNITED!

Technorati Tags: sports,manchester united,macheda,soccer,ronaldo,football

Macheda is swarmed by his teammates

The good, the bad, the Tiger…

 

Tiger Woods is to golf what Billy Mays is to infomercials.  He is the undisputed champ.  You can just see it.  “TIGER WOODS HERE AND I WANT TO INTRODUCE YOU TO MY DOMINATION OF GOLF!  WATCH ME OWN MY COMPETITION WHO ALREADY KNOW THAT THEY ARE GOING TO LOOSE BEFORE THEY EVEN TEE OFF!  ONLY THREE PAYMENTS OF $9.99!”

How many human beings do you know that can miss almost an entire year in their sport and still remain the No. 1 player.  Who can return after 9 months and be considered the odds on favorite to win the tournament.  There is no one else besides Tiger.

Woods won the Arnold Palmer Invitational Tournament today.  It was his first win out of three starts since returning from knee surgery that kept him out 9 months.  The win made it Woods’s sixth victory at the Palmer invitational. 

Woods won it in classic Tiger fashion.  He knocked down a clutch 16 ft put on the last hole and with darkness creeping over his shoulder.  Half way through the balls roll towards its inevitable end in the hole Woods knew and was already celebrating in classic Tiger fashion.  Fist pumps to the air and flash bulbs galore illuminating the darkening green.

Woods made the invitational the fourth tournament that he has won six different times.  That is just ludicrous.  Woods somewhat shaky in his previous two tournaments leading up to the win.  By shaky I mean he only finished in the top 10.  Jeez what a bum. 

The man is a poster child for hard work getting you results.

NBC was showing his daily workout routine.

• Wake up at 5
• Two hour workout with weights at 6
• Breakfast at 8
• Hit balls at 9
• Play nine holes at 10
• Lunch Break at 12
• Hit balls and practice putting at 1
• Play another nine holes at 3.

The guy is dedicated and he just had his second kid.  He is married to a former Swedish model.  He is half black and half asian.  He has everything going for him.  Woods is the most marketable individual on the planet.  He is extremely well spoken and he isn’t half bad at golf.

All hail the chief

Thought this was really refreshing.

http://www.aprilwinchell.com/wp-content/cache/supercache/www.aprilwinchell.com/2009/02/05/barack-obama-is-tired-of-your-motherfucking-shit//index.html

I guess I never knew the new president till he told me to “buy my own damn fries.”

All Hail the Chief!

Technorati Tags: obama,fries,dirty mouth,hillarious

An A-Bomb for A-rod…

Waking up this morning and turning on ESPN news I expected to hear about the previous nights scores and what not.  But no.  It couldn’t be that simple.  There had to be some kind of breaking news flashing at the bottom.

“SI.com is reporting that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003.”

Immediately I turned off the television.  Instead of going through my normal routine of checking espn.com, foxsports.com, and SI.com, I decided to get some coffee and think about this later.  I then thought maybe  I should blog about this but decided against it because I didn’t have all the facts and was simply running away form reality. 

So after reading the original SI articles and the ESPN ones as well as some Yankees blogs I have come to my own conclusions on the much discussed super star. 

I don’t care.

Just of the boat, this is information that should never have been released into the public.  Rodriguez participated in a voluntary drug test in 2003 and was told that none of the results would be revealed and was to be sealed under court orders.  So none of this is supposed to be public knowledge and whoever has released this information to SI is the real criminal and I wish there were a way of trying them for violating court orders.  So all of this information should be irrelevant and nullified by the fact that it was obtained illegally.  Just the way that evidence obtained without a search warrant is thrown out because permission was not given for the search to be conducted in the first place.

It doesn’t matter to me that he took steroids in the past before it was being tested or even if it was considered wrong.  Whatever happened as happened.  You can say what you want about steroids but it does not give you better hand eye coordination which is what most of hitting is.  Rodriguez has never been on the media’s right side and is constantly being bombarded with questions about his character, marriage, hitting, fielding, kids, contract, image, friendships and of course for him not being "clutch”.  When will it end.  It seems reporters try anything and everything to find something wrong with him. 

Say what you what but A-rod was a star and the best player in baseball way before he tested positive for steroids.  Even before 2000 he had two seasons of 40+ home runs.  I can guarantee by looking at him at that time you would see a scrawny little kid who just had all the god given talent in the world and was using it to max.

Now for those of you who are going to say that the Yankees now have another steroid user on their team and they are full of them.  Well screw that.  The Yankees did not know about any of this and are just as shocked as me or you.  This all just a sad situation that should never have happened and now Alex Rodriguez is going to be the next Barry Bonds and will probably get dirty looks for the rest of his life.  Great job Sports Illustrated!  You just ruined another life.  Kudos to you!  Did someone say Pulitzer?

You don’t deserve it.

Technorati Tags: SI,espn,arod,pulitzer,foxsports,steroids

Reality is a cruel woman who throws salt on your wounds..

Cruel mean woman = Nadal  vs. Wounded child = Federer

Nothing was more defining of the legacy that Roger Federer will have to live with than the winners ceremony at the Australian open early last Sunday.

Staying awake until 2:30 a.m on Sunday I was hoping that Federer would finally take down Nadal because he had yet to loose to him in a hard court grand slam final.  You notice how there are such little places or surfaces that he has not been beaten by his arch rival and this was the last straw.  Federer came out of the gates and was nicely broken in the first game but broke back in the second.  So both men were shaky but Federer had to have the edge as he didn’t play a 5 hour semifinal match.

Nadal looked crisp and won the first set as Federer was unable to again unable to hold his serve at the end of the set and I believe he was broken 3 times in the set overall.  Not a very auspicious beginning.  Over the course of the match they kept giving and taking cracking blows and neither showed much signs of wearing.  Federer won the second set and seemed to have some momentum.  Fed had about 10 break points in the third set but did not capitalize on Nadal’s mistakes and was forced into a tie break.  Fed made too many errors and Nadal claimed the tie break.  The story of the match so far was Roger’s inability to serve a high percentage.  He went as low as like 40% first serves in the second set but managed to win that set.  For the match he ended up with a 52% first serve percentage.  Horrible stats for someone who knew he had to serve well in order to beat Nadal. 

Throughout the match I saw the most unbelievable gets and shots I have ever seen.  Both players showed why they were the cream of the crop and produced some of the most amazing points I had ever seen.  Federer to me still has the best forehand and used it greatly to his advantage and won a great deal of his points thanks to that side.  He firmed up his backhand as well and kept it flatter and I thought for a while that he had changed and was playing smart and could finally beat Rafa.  He used all these to his advantages and won the fourth set and pushed it to a deciding 5th. 

Federer came out flat and I had a really bad feeling.  After Nadal went up 4-1 I couldn’t watch my idol any more and turned of the television and went of to to sleep hoping to dream of a better result. 

Nope, I couldn’t even come up with a dream that had a different solution and Roger was beaten 6-2 in the deciding set.  I would later watch the highlights of the trophy presentation and see Roger come to tears and couldn’t even complete his sentences.  I felt disgusted and did not know who I was seeing.  It wasn’t the 13 time grand slam champion but a mere child who couldn’t move the rock that was Rafa Nadal. 

In the end Nadal proved that he was the best indeed and that the era of Federer complete dominance.  I have to this point despised Nadal for being the one hump that Roger couldn’t go over and kept him from the title of greatest ever, but I have realized that he isn’t going away and he has a better shot of gaining that title then Roger does. 

I will still cheer for Federer in future events but will never forget the images of him crying holding on to the runner up trophy, jealous of Nadal’s abilities and his own stubbornness to adapt to his toughest opponents weaknesses. 

Nothing is more defining then the pictures below:

                                                  

Oh how hard the great fall…… 

Technorati Tags: Federer,australian open,crying,nadal,greatest,pathetic,first serve,looser