Snowman On Fire

A family trip to Cincinnati was punctuated with a trip to see Reds game.  Their relatively new stadium is a wonderful place to see a baseball game on a spring afternoon. On the plus side: parking was easy an hour before the first pitch. Entrance was eased by plenty of security and ticket scanners. Large-bore kielbasa at the food concession with outboard, individually wrapped packages of kraut. To top it off, we never missed more than a single at-bat of play for food, drink or bathroom excursions. Everything flowed together (Ohio stories require river references) to make it an outstanding game day experience.

One of my less-secret goals in life is to visit every Major League Baseball stadium, to sample their food and comment on the sight lines and respect their new or old histories by refusing to use corporate names when referring to a field of play. Our Reds seats (acquired through Stubhub a week before the game) left us in the second row of the left field bleacher balcony, with a view fit for the day. “Great” and “American” are perfect compound adjectives for baseball, but I’ll refrain from adding them to the stadium moniker to invoke an insurance company by name. Deep down, it’s still an echo of Riverfront Stadium, home to the Red Machine of the 1970s to me, which is what set the stage for the afternoon’s game. Like visitingPNC Park last year, there was a childhood memory waiting for me inside the gates.

I can trace my childhood love of baseball to October 11, 1972; a month to the day from attaining double digits in age and three years precisely before my Bar Mitzvah. As I sat on the floor with my twin friends Scott and Glenn, watching our favorite Pittsburgh Pirates play the Big Red Machine in the National League Championship Series, Game 5, bottom of the ninth, tie score, George Foster on 3rd base with Bucs reliever Bob Moose on the mound. Moose threw a wild pitch, Foster scored to win the game for Cincinnati and I saw my friends’ mother cry. It is one of the most amazingly trivial pieces of knowledge I carry around, yet for 80% of my life it’s been one I can recall as the moment at which I correlated sports with something I felt, not just something I watched or a champion for whom I cheered. It was easy to get caught up in the Miracle Mets of 1969 or Joe Namath and his Jets; it was hard to watch WIllie Stargell, my childhood hero and number-sake, lose one that literally slipped away.

Stepping into the Reds’ ballpark, I wondered if visiting an echo of an event 36 years prior might somehow bring closure. It would be the equivalent of forgiving the girl in your 5th grade class that tortured you over a ridiculously colorful pair of pants, without admitting that you’re secretly happy her life turned into the equivalent of the Reds in the last decade and a half. Like an old Masters’ canvas, though, the answer comes not from recoloring the past but from applying fresh paint over the old to create something of recent memory.

Enter Ken Griffey Jr. On the east coast we have little incentive to follow him, although his pursuit of 600 career home runs has made the occasional breakfast time SportsCenter appearance. Center field in the Reds’ park has a home run counter, tantalizingly set at 598 dings when we arrived. In Griffey’s first at-bat, he deposited a 3-1 pitch into the right field bleachers, igniting fire works in the stands and above the running total. Each inning, each play, became a game of front-running to determine a sequence of hits and base running to bring Junior to the plate, giving us a chance to be first-hand witnesses to history. For a game in which my main interest was sampling the hot sausages, the baseball mattered more.

For anyone who doubts there is redemption through baseball; that family memories can be intertwined with a sport in which the names of players, teams and stadiums change literally with the seasons, I offer this: leaving Cincinnati this morning, my son found his game ticket in his pocket and said “Have to keep that one, #599″. No matter where the paper stub ends up, he’ll keep that one.

Whenever we teach “teamwork” to our kids or employees, we always imply that it’s intra-team work. And when we teach players to establish goals, far too often we imply winning or awards, rather than simple objectives that demonstrate improvement in any aspect of the game. This video segment from ESPN shows what happens when team work means looking beyond your uniform crest, and a goal is something that hasn’t yet been achieved, but is a swing, a stroke, a shot, an attempt away, separated only by practice and attitude.Scrap every bit of youth sportsmanship training there is, and just have the young sports in your home, as well as any sports parents you know, watch this clip. Even better that the batter literally carried by other team mates wears #8: Somewhere in heaven, Willie Stargell is proud of everyone involved.

One of my co-workers refers to anything that involves confusion, lack of leadership, conflicting goals, and mild amounts of directionless meandering as a “goat rodeo.” That’s the best metaphor for the New York Yankees right now. A-Rod and Posada are hurt (hey, A-Rod, for $275 million dollars, try staying in shape in the off-season); the Yankees can’t buy a hit with runners in scoring position, and Bobby Abreau looks like he phones it in from right field about one in every four plays. In tonight’s Subway Series game Abreau’s throw on a sacrifice fly had a better shot of reaching Joe Girardi (in the dugout) than Molina (fillling in for the one-armed Posada).

The Yankees are in last place. And not just one of those artifacts of scheduling, short-term respite at the bottom of the statistical ladder; they’ve earned this one. With a new manager, key injuries and a pitching rotation that hasn’t improved one iota over last year, I’m inclined to see what happens, making it all the more amusing to see the front office goat herder himself (that would be Hank Steinbrenner) stage mini-outrages in public. If Steinbrenner really wants to improve the Yankees, he can stop with the histrionics and start by finding someone who can pitch, followed by someone who can hit when there’s another pinstriped uniform in view on second or third base. And maybe provide some much-needed leadership on the team in the process.

My friend Claire always wonders what makes us love sports so much. By “us”, of course, she means guys who have severe Claire-attention deficit problems when a game of even minor interest is broadcast over television, radio, internet, or via grunts and hand signals nearby. I’ve thought about her question for close to four years, much more so this past hockey season as each time the Devils lost, I sunk into a foul mood that even Ben & Jerry’s could not redress.

I think the answer hit me after the Devils decided not to show up in Philadelphia last Friday night. We love sports and sporting events because, for a short time, we do not distinguish between the players and ourselves. When they win, we win; when they lose, we lose and feel anguish; when they flirt with disaster our heart rate skyrockets and when disaster is averted by a goal post, poke check or shot that sails wide, we breathe easier on our way to the bathroom or beer cooler. What man hasn’t personally felt (or at least imagined) the cold ground striking the back of Charlie Brown’s head as Lucy snaps the football away from him? Even in cartoons, we time share with our favorite players.

I think this self-identification is part of the charisma that drives March Madness to ever increasing levels of public visibility. You can be a fan, an alum, or just a long-shot bettor on a school that doesn’t get so much as an ESPN Bottom Line score during an entire academic year, but once you make the Dance, everybody wants to be you if only for a little while. It’s also why all men tear up, ever so slightly, as CBS rolls “One Shining Moment.” We get to trade mental places one more time, and when the clock strikes midnight all of the Cinderellas, young and old, begin to dream of next year’s ball.

I came to this deep, Ganesh-given insight thanks to Bubba, who noticed my funk on Saturday morning. “Even if the Devils don’t do well in the playoffs,” he argued, “another season starts in the fall, all over again.” That was it. We love sports on a tribal level, wearing the colors, designs and marks of our alter egos, but we also love them on a temporal level. The seasons change - football, hockey, baseball, vacation, as the joke goes - and yet things don’t age as long as we have a fresh scoresheet, an empty stats page and an entire schedule of games to fuel our double lives.

Now that college basketball has been safely tucked away for the summer, it’s time to truly focus on the rites of spring: Passover, NHL Playoffs, and the disaster known as the Yankees bullpen.

It’s been a few days since Joe Torre’s implicit dismissal as the Yankee skipper, coming full circle with Joe Girardi’s filling the managerial jersey today. I’m still flabbergasted by this move: Torre was micro-managed from above (like he couldn’t figure out how to pitch Joba Chamberlain himself?), was given horrible resources to manage (his pitchers either sucked or were ancient or both, with the exception of Chamerblain), and had to deal with the media circus known as Alex Rodriguez. And he made the playoffs, again, as he did every single year he was in the Bronx. Normally I’m not a big LA fan, but go get’em Joe, and return some of that Dodger blue pride to the La-la-valley.

Then there’s A-Rod. The picture says it all — I snapped this one coming out of the Hynes/Convention Center “T” stop on the Green Line in Boston, halfway between the hub of the universe and Fenway Park, the true heliocentric point for the sun shining on Red Sox Nation. Why would the Sox want A-Rod? They actually won two World Series titles without him, and seeing how much Rodriguez failed to contribute in terms of baseball performance or on-field leadership, he’d only reverse the winning curve again. What on earth are A-Rod and Scott Boras thinking? That fans stop caring after the last regular season game? That someone who shelled out thousands of dollars on season tickets, and then doubled down for the playoffs, is going to think it’s fair that their signature player checks out for the postseason? The Yankees offered him more than he’s worth, which isn’t atypical, but somehow Boras thinks A-Rod can get more money for more years somewhere else. Loyalty, anyone? What difference will $3-5 million a year make for Rodriguez? Please don’t tell me it’s about the money, or providing for his future after baseball. It’s not about loyalty. Maybe it’s about where A-Rod thinks he can chase Barry Bonds’ record, and he’s shopping for a ballpark, not a team. That I could understand because it fits his public persona so well.

In the warped universe where I’m a baseball GM, here’s how I’d sign Rodriguez: give him a nice base above where the Yankees pitched, but with a negative performance option: Miss the playoffs, and he’ll forfeit the amount that would have been paid by season ticket holders for the divisional and league championship series home games. Get knocked out in the division series, and forgo the LCS home season ticket holder revenue. If you average out to 3.5 home games, $100 a ticket, and 15,000 season ticket holders, that’s $5.25 million a round. And that money would go directly back to the season ticket holders (if the team signed him it clearly had the cash to spare, all I’d be doing is redistributing it to the people who really lose when someone isn’t a team player.

I’m now officially worried that the Devils organization is proceeding with complete and total oblivion to the fan base, or at least to how the fan base communicates, collaborates and exchanges ideas in the world of user-generated content and media. We’re not all sitting here waiting for the official line on ticket sales, the new arena, or Colin White’s eye; we’re reading blogs, comparing notes, and generally commenting on the (sad) state of affairs in what I had hoped would be Rock City. I don’t get a daily newspaper, but I do read 2 Man Advantage, In Lou We Trust, and Tom Gulitti’s Fire and Ice (Tom writes for the Bergen Record, covering the Devils) at least daily. I get ESPN Magazine and The Hockey News, but if I want to find out about the Devils, I read grass-roots media. And the grass roots are being stepped on.

Looking for some kind of uplift on a crummy Friday morning, I called the Devils office to see how my Power Player application was received. It was received (or so they say), but according to the woman who organizes game entertainment, the Power Player team was selected already. I can appreciate the Devils not wanting to burn an audition slot on a fat middle-aged guy who was there for humor and publicity purposes, but at least let me know that. No email, no phone call, not even a nicely printed note with a picture of someone scoring a non-existent goal. What I read into this: The Devils will do things their way, and if you have an idea, shut up and sit down in your $200 seat.

Which leads to the subject of seats. I am a member of two groups that share season tickets. My total spend for one group, which had been happily in Section 232 of the swamp for years, went up by about 25% this year. The seats are in the new lower bowl, with probably a better view, so we’re willing to try it for a season. I’m hoping that we’re actually closer to the ice surface in the Rock, and that I’m not flushing money into this bowl, but we’ll see on October 31st when I’m at my first game. The other group hasn’t gelled yet; it involved seats four rows off of the ice. I know that the group decided to cut our ticket plan in half, going for 2 seats instead of 4, mostly due to the fact that the cost per ticket has nearly doubled. Our $72 seats in East Rutherford are now $150, and while they include food — and I am never shy about eating at a game — I can’t see spending about $50 per person on chicken and soda. I know of three other season ticket holders scrambling to unload parts of their plans as well. This does not bode well for the new arena — without a strong season ticket holder base, you have a lot of premium seats without butts in them.

Which leads to the subject of ticket resale. Many teams have developed ticket resales systems where you can put your season tickets up for sale, effectively emailing them to someone else, collecting a fee for the transfer of the seats. The San Francisco Giants DoublePlay system is probably the best I’ve used, allowing me to pick up tickets the day of a game, through the Giants’ web site, through eBay or StubHub (now the same company) or directly from the ticket holder, with a simple email moving the seats to their new covers. More people will make larger commitments, earlier in the year, if they know that travel, vacation, illness, work emergencies, school plays, and unexpected dinners with the in-laws won’t lead to money scraped up by the Zamboni. Furthermore, the data collected by the teams with such a system gives you insights into how tickets move, who buys single games, what kinds of premiums are placed on various days, dates and times, and what the optimum packaging and re-packaging might be. Listening to the fans one email removed, in a way. There’s a reason the San Francisco Giants can sit in the bottom of the NL West, and still sell out nearly every game, and it’s not Barry Bonds. It’s because they truly invest in making sure their fans are loyal and having fun.

So far this season I’ve found out there’s no parking deck (yet) at the Prudential Center, I’m paying a lot more for seats without any assurances that I can easily resell tickets I might not be able to use, I’m implicitly told that my opinions as a long-term fan and strong, vocal, public free-lance writer are not worth a simple acknowledgement, and the team plays defense worse than my son’s bantam team due to lack of a reasonable signing over the summer. Perhaps this customer-last attitude works on Wall Street (I’ve certainly witnessed it, which is why I do my business with on-line brokerages only) but it’s not healthy for a franchise that depends on fans. Unlike Wall Street, there’s no money to be made in losing transactions. I would love a piece of the Rock — but don’t throw it at my head.

Almost precisely 3 months ago I posited that Scott Gomez and Alex Rodriguez were increasingly alike.

Let me add to the list: neither one has shown up for big games in October. At least Gomez recorded three shots tonight (plus one miss, and one blocked, is it me or are the new NHL statistics not bad once you learn to decode them)? A-Rod is A-WOL for the Division Championship Series (let’s hear John Sterling make a big deal out of that one). That giant sucking sound you hear is the extra $7 million or so that Rodriguez thought he’d coax out of a team next year when he exercises his contract option. I think I’ve invented a new unit of measure: The Gomez, more specifically, $7M paid for non-performance when people are watching.

Some other random thoughts, two games into the season:

I like Kevin Weekes. He brings his A-game, a solid effort, and he has no fear. Goalies are always a few sigma off of normal anyway, but he has impressed.

The Islanders are 2-0, and the Sabres are 0-2 as a result. So much for the predictive power of the hockey press. Yes, it’s early, but c’mon. Shuffle off to Buffalo for some ugly practices this week.

The Capitals are better than anyone thinks, and the Rangers will miss Nylander as they realize why.

Mike Cammalleri is now in my top five favorite players. Three goals, same pace as Dany Heatly through week one. The Kings aren’t as bad as everyone thinks, and the Ducks might not be as good as everyone predicted.

How cool is it that Chris Young was voted to the MLB All-Star Game? Not only does it demonstrate the power of the fan’s voice (MLB received about a million votes an hour down the home stretch), but it shows how the right mix of real world (in-ballpark prompts to vote for hometown favorites) and electronic (votes cast over mobile phones) experiences can capture the sense of a particular point in time. Young pitched outstandingly well on the day voting closed, and he launched himself up the coast for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.

I’ve been following his career for a while — since he played center for the Princeton University basketball team, was drafted by the Pirates (who cut short his roundball career as a contractual condition), played for a San Francisco Giants farm team in Hagerstown, Maryland, made his debut with the Texas Rangers, beat the Yankees for his first “big” win and then settled into current stardom in San Diego. Along the way ESPN Magazine gave him props as “The Bigger Unit” (around 2004) and he married the granddaughter of Lester Patrick, he of Patrick Division fame (ooh, a hockey-tie in!)

He does the work, every day, and I’m thrilled to see him get the recognition he deserves. And it puts him in some outstanding company. Young is the first Tiger (of Princeton stripes) to appear in the baseball All-Star game, and only the sixth Ivy graduate to achieve that distinction. The first — Lou Gehrig, Columbia graduate — not a bad pairing for the answer to a trivia question in the future.

First the strong words: Forget the comparisons to Bobby Holik. Scott Gomez is the next Alex Rodriguez, in the eyes of the fans, the league, the press, sports agents and possibly youth hockey players. Tough call? Absolutely, and not one I’ll make in publicly lightly, because as a person I still think Scott Gomez is mostly a good guy. Don’t ever confuse business success with personal and brand integrity. Gomez has assured himself of business success (financially); he’s still got his personal integrity (in terms of being approachable, kid-friendly, and an outstanding spokesman for hockey diversity); but he’s taking a brand hit. That’s the A-rod comparison.

Let’s go down the list one demographic at a time:

In the summer of 2007 it’s a parade of free agents who form a veritable Clustrmap of player movement. Continuity in rosters builds a fan base; it helps drive attendance and loyalties in kids who eventually pass those on to their kids. When the players that your kids adore take off, either their loyalties go to an out of market team or their interest in the home team declines. Neither is good for the long-term health of the league. Just because the salary cap forms a nice big allowance doesn’t mean owners have to spend the whole thing; spending less on players and then building a local fan base through local broadcast television rights, local cable coverage, or even community outreach like low-cost ticket distribution will ensure the “financial certainty” that figured so prominently in the lockout settlement. Paying players to jet set between teams only ensures that at some point, owners are going to scratch their heads trying to figure out how to de-cap-itate a long-term contract with a player who is nursing a sore groin for what seems like half a season.

Final A-Rod comparison: Mike Greenberg of ESPN Radio claims that A-Rod is going to escape from New York this year, setting up “the biggest free agency” in recent history. Ask the kids who follow baseball if they care. None of them want to be A-Rod, proving that maybe the Beatles were right: Money can’t buy you love. But it can buy you a pair of centers.

The New York papers are abuzz with rumors of Joe Torre’s imminent firing. I hope the reports of his coaching death are greatly exaggerated, because Torre was far from the one to blame for the Yankees’ post-season demise. He was handed a pitching staff that might have been young (as opposed to the Padres’ Chris Young, who looked spectacular) a decade ago, sporting Carl Pavano (who didn’t throw a single pitch in pinstripes this year) as its poster child. Matsui and Sheffield got hurt, and along comes Melky Cabrera. Who knew? Joe knew. Joe managed, and played the hand he was dealt, and played it well. If Steinbrenner is going to give him the equivalent of 7-2 offsuit hole cards in a game of hold’em, Joe knows how to play it.

On my way to the airport this morning, the sports talk radio was filled with “Ditch A-rod” and “Take Jeter’s captaincy” complaints. The engineers were hitting the dump button more than for the Howard Stern show, deleting invective laced with expletive. Everyone seems to think it’s Jeter’s problem that A-rod doesn’t feel loved, and if A-rod isn’t loved then he can’t play well.

Excuse me? A-rod gets paid in a year what most people make in ten careers. That’s love. That’s the fans love of the game translated into insane ticket prices and $7 beers and $9 sausages and $25 t-shirts to pay for Mr. “I want to be liked”. You want to be liked? Start with the fans, and the community, and your teammates. Don’t wait for people to come to you, go to the people. Do the work. Joe Torre is in front of the press, win or lose, every day, doing the work even when his team isn’t.

Young, exciting prospects sell tickets and jerseys too. And they are eager to build up some street cred, on the street, so they’ll engage with the community. Veterans who want to win with every fiber of their (able) bodies sell tickets. Ray Borque, anyone? Pudge Rodriguez?

The Yankees will retool, and there will be a long winter of discontent when everyone is a manager, coach, third baseman, and negotiator, and then it starts again in 22 weeks. For once, it would be nice if the Yankees opened up with a clear gap between the average age of the players and that of the year-round residents around training camp. I just hope Joe’s still there to point out the players.