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At The End, A Beginning: Part II

…Continued from the previous post.

This day was 11 months and 13 days in the making. So there was no such thing as being too early for the game.

As enjoyable as watching opening round coverage of the NCAA Tournament is, Kels and I had no remorse about leaving March Madness behind in Scottsdale’s Fox Sports Grill at 3:45 PM for the 7:05 PM first pitch that would begin Event #100 – a Spring Training game between the Los Angeles Angels and the San Francisco Giants. After all, we had almost ten miles to travel.

Twenty minutes later we pulled into a free parking lot adjacent to Scottsdale Stadium – an absolute gem of an old-fashioned downtown ballpark. And we were by no means alone in our eagerness. It would be another 45 minutes until the gates would even open, but already there were hundreds of people milling around, even though all 11,622 tickets had long since been sold. These people, like us, just wanted to get inside and drink up the atmosphere as soon as possible.
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At The End, A Beginning: Part I

March 20th is just another day. Equinox, schmequinox. And Punxsutawny Phil? He’s a groundhog, for God’s sake – just another figurehead with no real authority.

Ask any sports fan when Spring really begins and they’ll reply without hesitation:  The day that pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training. No matter where you live, from the snowiest of Frost Belt towns to the warmest Sun Belt city, the day that baseball’s pre-season camps open is always the most reliable harbinger of hope. And what is Spring anyway, if not the Official Sponsor of Hope?

When Spring Training begins, every team is a potential World Series champ. Yes, even the Pittsburgh Pirates! OK, that’s patently ridiculous, but see how easily the concept can sweep you away?

With that in mind, what better place to end my journey than at the home office of Renewal?
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Pre-Madness: College Basketball’s Championship Week

Submitted for your consideration:  Do college basketball’s conference tournaments mean anything anymore?

Of course I’m not talking about the MVC, the WCC, or the MAAC – or any of those conferences for which there is but one invitation to The Big Dance. These tournaments mean everything –perhaps too much, as a team that dominates its conference during regular season play can have one bad night and see its season go down the drain. Certainly there is drama of the highest kind in the alphabet soup conferences.

No, I’m talking here about the glamour conferences. The ones that dominate media coverage of college basketball. The ones that are amateur in name only. The home of “one and done” players putting in their time before heading to the NBA. The Big East, the Big Ten, the ACC. These conferences have traditionally sent at least four teams to the NCAA tournament each year, and as they’ve grown in size by engulfing major media market teams from smaller conferences, they’ve gained even more at-large bids.

One could argue that the drama for these conference tournaments has been usurped; pretty much every team with a decent record is going to the NCAAs. When you really get down to it, you could actually make the case that winning one of these tournaments is detrimental to a team’s chances for March Madness success. For example, no Big East team has won the NCAA title since the conference expanded to 16 teams and instituted a conference tournament that brings to mind the Bataan Death March. Coincidence?

I do not bring this up merely to watch myself type. I had a decision to make.
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Why It Pays To Have A Housewares Expert On Your Rugby Sevens Team

…Continued from the previous post.

Without question, the USA is the finest rugby sevens team on the planet. I mean, just look at what they did to poor Uraguay.

Wait, hold that thought…OK, it’s Japan that’s the premiere team. I mean, Guyana never had a chance to…

Hang on, hang on. Wow! Canada is really putting the hammer down on poor France. These guys are pretty much unbeatable…except by Scotland, who seemed not to have much trouble doing so. Or was that Wales? But didn’t they lose to Kenya? Who lost to New Zealand…and England?

Welcome to the IRB Rugby World Series, and its USA Sevens tournament, in sun-drenched Las Vegas. To become that confused about what countries rule the world of rugby sevens, you’d think I would had to have seen a lot of teams play. And I had.

I mean, I’d been there for over an hour.
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Rugby Sevens: The Perfect Antidote For The Time-Starved Sports Fan

A scrum during the Fiji vs. South Africa Cup Final at the USA Rugby Sevens tournament in Las VegasWhen I began this walkabout, it was not without careful consideration of the risks. Eye strain. Chapped hands from applauding. Being trapped on a Delta Airlines middle seat between two 300-pounders.

But I never contemplated the chances of being victimized by crime. Yet there I was, being robbed. In broad daylight, no less.

She didn’t fit the profile – they never do. She couldn’t have been more than 25 years old. Pleasant-looking. A little on the slight side. I don’t know how tall she was, because she was sitting down at the time. I never saw it coming.
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College Hockey: The Women Lace ‘Em Up For Their Own Beanpot

Northeastern women's hockey goalie Leah Sulyma makes a save against Harvard Breaking news – girls are different from boys.

While I’ve had a few years to familiarize myself with the more obvious differences in the sexes, I had to admit that I’d never considered the question in the context of ice hockey. So when presented with the perfect opportunity to come up to speed on that topic, I jumped on it.

I had spent the previous night at a sold-out TD Garden, home of the tradition-laden Boston Bruins and Boston Celtics…and a pretty popular 59-year-old college hockey get-together they call the Beanpot.

On this night I was headed to Conte Forum, on the campus of Boston College, where I would experience that event’s little sister – the 33rd annual Women’s Beanpot.
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College Hockey In The Cradle Of The American Revolution

All cell phone photos courtesy of Martha Mae

First things first.

It’s called the Beanpawt, and it’s held every February at The Gahden. As in “Oh my Gawd, I’m goin’ ovah to The Gahden for the Beanpawt!”

The alert reader will of course recognize that the sporting event du jour takes place in Boston, home of the hypnotic, syrupy sweet accent popularized by postman extraordinaire Cliff Clavin.

I had not been to the Gahden since it was the Boston Garden, i.e. before it became headlined by a series of financial services companies. To get there back in those days, you simply took either the Green or Orange line to North Station and then followed the rats.

If you were attending a game at that time, it was tremendously helpful if you were a “people person”, since you and your fellow fans were all going to be squeezing into seats that conformed to the size of the average Bostonian – the 1928 version. And of course you hoped like hell that it wasn’t an overly warm day, because there was no air conditioning in the building.

People loved this place. No, really – they did.
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Small College Hoops: Like A Moth To The Light (Gymnasium)

Brown University's Freshman Sensation Sean McGonagill

We were young. We were giddy.

Wait, let me start again…

We were giddy. Blame it on Sean McGonagill.

Doc and I were still basking in the glow of one of the most unexpected treats we’d ever witnessed on a college basketball court – a freshman tossing in 39 points over, under and around everyone in sight, while wearing headgear from the Hannibal Lecter Collection.

So it was only natural that the seedling of an idea that had been germinating for a few days began to sprout and ripen at an alarming rate. I’m talking Jack and the Beanstalk stuff.

A little background…

See, way back at the beginning of the “It’s Game Time Somewhere” Tour’s Winter Sports Swing, the first casualty of fickle weather had been a scheduled pilgrimage to Ithaca, NY, where through a sepia-toned lens I planned to vicariously re-live my own college basketball “playing” days, if I may be somewhat expansive when using that term.
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Ivy League Basketball: A Brown Bear Legend Is Born

…Continued from the previous post.

There we were with 70 or 80 of our closest friends, on a night that a dog wouldn’t have sent us out into.

I was with old friend and hoops aficionado Doc, and we were making the best of a bad situation. Ice-stormed out of an originally scheduled pilgrimage to see Doc’s beloved Syracuse Orangemen play against Connecticut, we had opted for a somewhat less glamorous Division I basketball contest – an Ivy League game.

We were at Brown University’s Pizzitola Center, where the Bears were playing host to the Columbia Lions. Somewhere in there was a joke about tigers just begging to be cracked, but we were still a little despondent about the weather having forced us to stay close to Doc’s Pawtucket, RI home.
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Ivy League Basketball: I Got A Feeling…

My friend Doc has worked for the Syracuse University Athletic Department for each one of the 34 years I’ve known him. But if you were to contact SU, they’d tell you they’ve never met him. They really should make the effort, for Doc has been the best unpaid PR agent the Orangemen have ever had.

Many years ago Doc relocated to New England for reasons of love and money, but that hasn’t deterred him from his appointed rounds as Diehard. Should anyone doubt his passion, consider the following…

Immediately upon moving to Rhode Island, Doc applied for and was delighted to receive license plates that read “ORANGE”. When the time inevitably came for him to get a new car, he did his research and negotiated a sweet deal on a leased vehicle. Except for one tiny thing. Almost as an afterthought, he was told that he wouldn’t be able to transfer his existing plates to the leased car.

Houston, we have a problem.

A team of diplomats worked through the night to find common ground, before the dealer finally caved in and agreed to tackle the administrative red tape necessary to keep Doc and his ORANGE plates together.

Hearing this story didn’t faze me (or anyone else who knows Doc) in the least.
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