Memories In The Snow

With the snow blowing in this week, my excitement grew and stayed at a recent high. I love the snow. I embrace it. Even when every weather channel is insisting nobody step foot out of their house, I do. Because why wouldn't you? Why would anybody not cease the opportunity to go outside and make a snow angel or have a snowball fight with their friends and family. Maybe try and make a snowman taller than yourself or even get crazy and call every person in the neighborhood and play a game of football.
This is my favorite memory of the snow. Records, not my memory, indicate a blizzard blew through Utica, New York on the day I was born. The snowfall in the western part of that state is regular and each winter comes in bunches. I have plenty of good memories of that. But, as a young kid, calling every other kid whose phone number I knew and telling them to meet us at the football field for a game in the snow is absolutely and easily the best memory of the snow I have.
Walking around campus with snow all over the place caused a yearning for that childhood memory I haven't felt probably since I was a child. What I would do for one afternoon of football with my brothers in the snow followed by a host of the local pre-teens gathered around the heater vent in my house waiting for someone to learn how to make hot chocolate.

Dave Rhea

I loved what Dave had to say about embracing the digital age. He made so many great points about how to use it and the importance of using it.

I also really liked his blog hub for The Journal Record. The idea that all of the journalists at the newspaper each had their own blog was terrific. Writers all need to have their own voice out there and it is extremely important for them to do that. It is also important for writers to... Write! Yup, I said it. Writers need to be writing.

If a reporter has one story per week published in the paper and then has two blogs per week posted on the publications website, it is only going to be a matter of time before his writing picks up. Writing the news story will become much easier the more a reporter writes and to have all of the writers blogging regularly, and of course related to their beats, is genius.

Baseball Season Is Coming

Pitchers and catchers have reported to spring training, so what will this season bring us in baseball.

The Toronto Blue Jays are the early favorite to win the World Series. First off, the early favorite to win the World Series almost never wins the World Series. But they have an opportunity.

I can specifically remember watching Joe Carter blast a game-winning home run in the 1993 World Series, the last time Toronto was relevant in baseball. Oct. 23, 1993. Now, nearly 20 years later, the Blue Jays boosted their payroll by almost 50 percent in the offseason in an attempt to regain relevance. 

Signing the reigning National League Cy Young Award Winner, R.A. Dickey, is a very important step for them. Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes and Melky Cabrera are also huge steps for a team that wants to be relevant. Oh yea, and they have Joey Bats. 32 years young Jose Bautista has a knack for the home run. The all-star outfielder hit 54, 43 and 27 the last three season’s respectively. Last years shortened because of an injury. This guy can hit the ball. The key factor however will be actually playing the games and doing so successfully.

(AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

More news from the American League came on Tuesday when King Felix completed an extension to keep the ace in Seattle long enough to become a SuperSonics fan again.

The San Francisco Giants of the National League will look to repeat as World Series Champions, something that hasn’t been done since the Yankees won three straight from 1998-2000. The Giants won three seasons ago and have won eight out of their last nine in the World Series. San Francisco does have the talent to win it, obviously, they are the champs. The question will be, can they repeat? It seems extremely hard to do.

No talk of baseball is complete without the mention of the New York Yankees. This may not be exactly true for every baseball story, but this is definitely what makes opponents of the pinstripes despise them even more. Why talk about an aging team that may or may not win half of their games? 10,000 simulations done by ESPN have the Yankees winning less than 90 games, which is actually more than half, but not the same as their 95 wins a year ago that won them the A.L. East.

Alex Rodriguez provides an interesting storyline as he often does but personally I’m over A-Roid and all that comes with that. More importantly, for the Yankees, the greatest closer in the history of baseball is preparing to make a comeback from a devastating knee injury. Mariano Rivera tore his ACL last season while fielding fly-balls in batting practice. The 43-year-old closer has 608 saves and may have retired after last season had he not been injured.

(AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

And then there is the captain. Number two. Derek. Jeter. Almost to 2,600 games played as a Yankee, Jeter will turn 39 in mid-season. This actually brings up the biggest question mark for the Yankees. Can the old guys win?

Whether or not they can is irrelevant. Can they? Yes. It's a game played between to teams, somebody has to win. Will they? Probably. Is this year’s version of the Evil Empire strong enough to endure the next nine months and get hot at the right time and pull out an amazing postseason run and topple some much younger more athletic team who is favored to win? Absolutely.

What's next?

Sports has officially reached the point that most fans think is "Boring."
Boring to me would be the time of the year when there are no games on television or there is nothing happening in the area that I can go and watch. The interesting thing about that is, there is never a single day in the modern-day calendar where that happens.
Maybe sports get to a boring part because football won't be on television again for more than 200 days.

Maybe there is a lull in sports after the NBA season has come to an end. But there is always more than one sport happening each and everyday. Christmas? Yup, that's actually a big day for sports. Thanksgiving? Of course. You are kind of supposed to watch football on Thanksgiving. New Years Eve and New Years Day the same and the rest of the holiday's included, sports do not have a Boring Season.

Football is over and I am a little sad about that. I am partial to watching football on CBS because of their theme music that plays going out to commercials and coming back in. I also love to watch football on any other channel just because it is football!
Not having that until later in the summer is going to be a bummer, but now I get to focus my entire attention to basketball. March Madness is right around the corner. The Finals are coming soon. Hockey is actually playing again, I bet most people didn't even realize that. And pitchers and catchers report this month!
Sports don't get boring, they just keep going.

Super Bowl Blog

The Super Bowl is here. The moment we’ve been waiting for. All season we’ve cheered and jeered. Thought about why our team couldn’t win or if the reason we were winning was legitimate or not. Did we just win that game? How do we win this game but lose this one? Now it’s officially the end of the road.  We have come to the finale, some of us happy and most of us picking a team based on some random rationalization of our football knowledge.

The Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers, or for some of you, the Niners and the Ravens. Who will win? Who is better? These guys can do this but those guys can do this. My favorite part of the Super Bowl might be the two weeks leading up to the biggest spectacle in all of sports. 

Of course watching the game is cool too, watching the commercials is fun and gathering watch parties is always a blast. But the fun facts that pop up on a daily basis before the game actually gets played are so intriguing.

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis announced his retirement just before the playoffs began, sparking a momentous occasion worth discussion every time he did anything. The fun fact, Lewis’ first sack was against the 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh would play against Lewis in practice everyday just two years later.

(AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Speaking of Harbaugh, if you haven’t been tuning in, there are two of them. Brothers, friends, comrades and opposing coaches. What a storyline. It has dominated the two-week layoff pre-Super Bowl. They played against each other on Thanksgiving in 2011 with Baltimore nabbing the victory. John Harbaugh of the Ravens and Jim Harbaugh of San Francisco will provide the most fascinating storyline.

These go on for days, 14 days to be exact. Following their respective victories in the Conference Championships, these two teams instantly became the topic of discussion and have frequently been so since.

The next quirk and very interesting factor is that of the 49ers and their starting quarterback. Colin Kaepernick, starting quarterback for San Francisco for exactly nine starts in a season of 16 games. Two playoff starts included, Kaepernick has shocked the world by replacing a starting quarterback who took this team to the doorstep of last year’s Super Bowl and actually doing better.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Reminiscent of the year a certain Tom Brady replaced the New England staple Drew Bledsoe at quarterback and turned out to be… The best quarterback of our generation. Also, the last time the Super Bowl was in New Orleans, a second year quarterback, Brady, took over at starter following an injury won the Super Bowl. Get ready New Orleans.

All of the storylines are interesting and all of the talk about them is fun. The debate over who will win the game is just as interesting and a lot more intense. Baltimore has a stingy defense and when done right their offense is rather efficient. (Another quirk: The Ravens fired their offensive coordinator in week 14.) But Baltimore has 44 touchdowns in 16 games and they came from a balanced attack, 17 rushing and 22 passing.  For San Francisco, 44 touchdowns, 17 from rushing and 23 from passing.

The comparisons continue through kickoff when the teams actually play the game. Who will win? Baltimore, 27-20.

The Glass Half Full

Timeout. The glass is actually half full. The glass in reference being one decorated in orange and blue. The Oklahoma City Thunder have completed the first half of the NBA season and have done so with the best record in the NBA. Much can be said about such an accomplishment.

Does it matter that they are the best team now and have been most of the season? Well, not exactly. Is it relevant? Sort of. What is most important is to think of the first half of the NBA season, in terms of the Oklahoma City Thunder, is that their glass is half full. And, it doesn’t matter how much they seem to drain out of that glass, it just continues to remain half full.

 (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Alright, analogies aside, the first half of the Thunder’s season does bring some rather interesting notes. One being that Oklahoma City actually does have the best team in the NBA. Defeating the second best team in the league, the L.A. Clippers, by an average of 9 PPG proves there is some difference. Playing alongside the Miami Heat last summer apparently served as the equivalent of eating just one potato chip. 

With the taste in their mouth the Thunder have shown all season how hungry they are to not only get back to the NBA Finals but actually win the series. 

OKC has shown different ways in winning this season, which is why they have made their way to the top. Winning a game from the opening tip all the way to the final buzzer, winning a game that maybe they shouldn't have because they played like crap or winning a game at that final buzzer because they gutted it out and gave absolutely everything they had. Any way you draw up the win, the Thunder have won.

(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Growth is always part of the equation when it comes to professional sports. This is something that the fans in Chesapeake Energy Arena have seen in tremendous bunches in the first half of the season. Russell Westbrook has officially improved statistically. Despite the criticism in each of his errant maneuvers throughout the season, Westbrook has actually gotten better. You do not want to have to try and guard him and if you are trying to get around him your night is not going to easy by any definition of the word. Entering the top-10 in scoring at 23 PPG and adding 8.2 assists and a shade under two steals per game, Westbrook is shall we say, Russellin-Russellin-Everyday-He-Russellin.

Then there is the superstar Kevin Durant. Just when you think there isn't any more this guy can do, he does. For instance, Tuesday night against those Clippers. 32 points with five 3-pointers and nine rebounds. The rebounds are coming in at a career high for Durant as are many other statistics. The Thunder are better because Durant is better now. This is kind of scary because of the early accolades of the young world-star, but KD is careering it in a handful of categories.

Oklahoma City has a target on their back this season, which is something new. The Thunder are suddenly and strangely expected to win and be atop the NBA. The glass half-full attitude has translated to the way both fans and critics look at OKC. Lets hope the second half of the season tastes as good as the first. 

Blogs I find Interesting

http://oklahomawine.blogspot.com
http://roundfootballs.davewalker.org
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.sbnation.com
http://bleacherreport.com