Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
If no one shows up for a baseball game…
In North America sports culture summer is the time for baseball. The MLB season kicks off in early April and for the most part flies under the radar for the first few months as fans’ attention is focused on the NBA playoffs, the NFL draft and to a lesser extend the NHL playoffs.
By the middle of June an NBA champion is crowned, (sorry LeBron, maybe next year with your new team) the NFL is as far removed from the ever watchful media’s eye as it ever is, (thank you Brian Cushing, OTA’s were still a few weeks away) and the NHL playoff run receives unprecedented media coverage…in Canada.
Until then, baseball only dominates the headlines for three reasons. Fame, finances, and futility.
But when the middle June rolls around this year a disturbing trend will begin making headlines, one that could dominate baseball for the rest of the season.
Since the implementation of the luxury tax in 2003, the average number of teams that failed to fill at least 50% of their stadium for the season was 3.5. The three years before the tax twice 10 teams failed to hit the 50% mark and once nine teams were under.
But this season a whopping eight clubs are already below the 50% threshold. Two other teams, the Kansas City Royals and Arizona Diamondbacks, are barely filling half of their stadiums and with both clubs already 10+ games out of the division lead, attendance numbers may well decrease as the season wears on.
Ten events that capture the essence of American sport
Passion for sport is no greater or less in North America than in other countries but there is a difference. The focus here is unashamedly on the domestic, with an ambivalent attitude among many fans about what the rest of the sports world is doing or thinks.
On the same day that Woods held his first media conference before this month’s US Masters at Augusta, an event that was streamed live around the globe, the hottest topic of conversation in North America was who would win that night’s college basketball final between Duke and Butler.
Historians and sociologists will tell you the reasons are cultural, a reflection of North America’s determination to break away from the old world. There is certainly no attempt to disguise it, let alone a need to apologise. North Americans neither need nor seek the approval of the rest of the world to justify their own competitions. The NFL, NBA and NHL are doing just fine, thanks, and who else would dare call the MLB finals a “world Series” when only teams from North America are allowed to compete?
It is in stark contrast to most other countries, including my homeland Australia, where international interest is not only sought but regarded as the measuring stick of success.
I have been an avid follower of all sports since I first learned to walk and talk but now that I live here I could not resist the temptation of drawing up a “bucket list” of what I considered to be the 10 most important sporting events on the continent.
But do the events that capture the most interest overseas really capture the quintessential nature of North American sports? What would your top 10 events be? What’s missing from my list?
Comments are very welcome.
Hope you’re enjoying America Julian! Don’t forget about the NCAA tournament – aka March Madness!
New York City eyeing NHL Winter Classic
For the third straight year, the National Hockey League hit all the right notes at its annual outdoor extravaganza at one of baseball’s most revered shrines: Fenway Park. The Boston Bruins fought back to beat the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1 in overtime in front of nearly 40,000 fans.
“It was neat,” Boston defenseman Derek Morris said. “We were trying to yell and scream to each other, but you couldn’t hear yourself it was so loud. It was amazing. We wanted to win that game for the fans. It’s a fairy-tale ending. It was pretty special.”
While backyard and frozen pond hockey are ubiquitous parts of the Canadian winter landscape, the NHL borrowed the concept from U.S. college hockey. The 2001 “Cold War game” between arch rivals University of Michigan and Michigan State University set the world record for the largest crowd at an ice hockey game at 74,544.
In 2003, the NHL played its first regular season game outdoors in Edmonton. It featured the Edmonton Oilers and the Montreal Canadiens. The event was later re-branded “Winter Classic”.
After Fenway Park, the old Yankee Stadium in the Bronx seems like a logical venue, but the Mets have expressed a great deal of interest in hosting the event at Citi Field, in Flushing Meadows.
“Gary has told me that he and his team will come out and do a site visit early in the year, so I know that we are going to be under consideration.”
What about Detroit vs Colorado at Invesco Field in Denver? Obama could return to the site of the Dem National convention to drop the puck! 
NFL, NHL tackle head injuries
A phone survey commissioned by the NFL last September reported that diagnosis rates of Alzheimer’s and other memory-related diseases among former players appeared to be much higher than in the population as a whole — five times the national rate for men aged 50 and above, and 19 times for men aged 30 to 49.
The NFL’s response was to point to the limitations of that telephone survey, saying its own study on the long-term effects of concussion would provide a much better picture, but facing growing criticism from outside experts, the players union and members of Congress, the League’s stance now appears to be somewhat different.
On Sunday, the NFL said it would support research by its most vocal critics and said that concussions can have lasting consequences.
“It’s huge that the NFL actively gets behind this research,” Robert Cantu, the co-director at Boston University’s research program, told the Associated Press. “It forwards the research. It allows players to realize the NFL is concerned about the possibility that they could have this problem and that the NFL is doing everything it can to find out about the risks and the preventive strategies that can be implemented.”
There have been several stark examples of NFL retirees suffering problems in this area.
A post-mortem on former Pittsburgh Steelers lineman Justin Strzelczyk in 2004 concluded that his depression and dementia were exacerbated by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease known to cause cognitive decline, behavioral abnormalities and ultimately dementia. CTE is usually associated with athletes vulnerable to head injuries such as boxers. Strzelczyk was only 36, but his brain looked like that of an 80-year-old.
In another case, neuropathologists concluded that former Philadelphia Eagles player Andre Waters’ depression and suicide in 2006 were the result of concussions.
The introduction of safety gear has actually increased the severity of injuries. Helmets have become weapons as well as head protection. When the game was played with minimal protection, it was a less violent game.
The rule of unintended consequences. But once adopted, good luck in rolling things back.
Who will be the new Captain Canada?
It’s hard to predict who will become Captain Canada, when Canada hasn’t even picked a team.But who will lead Canada’s men’s hockey team into battle at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics will spark more debate than who will be the hockey mad country’s next Prime Minister.
With 46 of Canada’s best taking part in last week’s national team orientation camp you could not swing a hockey stick without hitting a worthy candidate.
There were captains of 11 NHL teams in Calgary but only one man will be called forward to try and lead Canada to the gold medal the host country covets more than any other.
Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Phil Esposito and others have worn the Captain’s C above the Maple Leaf into international battle and sometime before Canada’s opening faceoff on February 16 against Norway another name will claim that singular honour.
Phoenix Coyotes’ Shane Doan has assumed the role of Captain Canada at recent world championships and possesses the blue collar, get-the-job-done approach fans admire and team mates respect.
Los Angeles Kings’ Ryan Smyth also regularly answered the call when others wouldn’t, playing in seven consecutive world championships and for many years was “Captain Canada”.
But neither Doan or Smyth are locks to make the 2010 Olympic squad.
Pittsburgh – the champion of Champion Cities?
Pittsburgh held a parade on Monday to celebrate the Penguins’ Stanley Cup triumph along the same route that the Super Bowl trophy was carried in triumph by the NFL’s Steelers in January.
It was the second time the city had claimed two of North America’s four top team sport prizes – the Superbowl, World Series, NBA championship and Stanley Cup — in the same calendar year after 1979, when the Steelers were NFL champions and the Pirates won Major League Baseball’s World Series.
The Steel City was re-dubbed “Champion City” after that double achievement 30 years ago and a quick skim through the winners of the four prizes since 1970 indicates that it is a pretty rare achievement.
Los Angeles did it in 1988 when the Lakers took the NBA title and the Dodgers won the World Series and if we give the New England Patriots to Boston, which only seems fair, Beantown also doubled up when the Pats won the Super Bowl and Red Sox were baseball’s champions in 2004.
The Lakers’s NBA triumph on Sunday might not be it for LA this year, however. The one remaining prize up for grabs is the World Series and, although there are a lot of games to play, the Dodgers have the best record in the major leagues at the moment.
Any other nominations for the champion of Champion Cities?
It is great to be a life long sports fan in Pittsburgh!! Your article contains two errors. The super bowl XLIII , and the parade both occured in February, not January. Also Pittsburgh was not re-dubbed Champion City, it took on the name “City of Champions” which was well used in local print and TV spots for years after. If we could get the Pirates owners to stop trading their starters may we would have a shot at getting three championships in a year.
Penguin chicks clinch Stanley Cup
The Pittsburgh Penguins won their third Stanley Cup on Friday night with a 2-1 defeat of the defending champion Detroit Red Wings in Game Seven of the finals series.
A good evening for co-owner and Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux, who many credit with saving the franchise or keeping it in Pittsburgh at least.
The most striking thing about the Penguins, however, is the relative youth of their standout players.
Captain Sidney Crosby, widely tipped to be one of the future greats of the game, is just 21, while Russian forward Evgeni Malkin claimed the Conn-Smythe trophy as the Most Valuable Player of the playoffs at the age of 22.
With 20-year-old Jordan Staal also highly-rated, this looks like it might be just the start of a new era of success for the Penguins after their back-to-back championships with Lemieux on the ice in the early nineties.
Picture by Shaun Best
from DealZone:
BlackBerry maker’s CEO sends letters of reference to sway NHL
Jim Balsillie, the co-CEO of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion desperately wants a National Hockey League franchise and relocate it to his native Southern Ontario.
Balsillie has tried twice in recent years to buy a hockey team, only to be blocked by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who this week assured people there was nothing personal between him and Balsillie. Balsillie is currently locked in a court battle with the NHL in his efforts to move the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton.
On Monday, Balsillie sent in his application to the NHL explaining why the Phoenix Coyotes should move to Hamilton, Ontario and why he'd make a good owner. Late Tuesday, he supplemented that with 22 letters of recommendation from a variety of mostly Canadian VIPs.
Still, with friends like these, maybe Bettman will be swayed this time. Here are some excerpts:
From Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty , congratulating Balsillie on May 21 for receiving a Public Policy Forum Testimonial Award: "Take pride in knowing that you are playing a pivotal role in advancing the discourse that is so vital to the health of a democratic society." Fellow Premier, Brad Wall of Saskatchewan, also sent him a written note on April 4 to congratulate him on the honor.
From Isadore Sharp, CEO of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts: "Congratulations on this distinguished honour" in reference to receiving Order of the Business Hall of Fame in Canada.
From WIlliam Swanson, CEO of Raytheon: "Your presentation helped us better understand the importance of driving innovation through leadership."
We interrupt this music to bring you some ice hockey
The official name for the tournament is the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship. But its real motive seems to be to cram 10,000 people into a covered a arena and then subject them to over two hours of Euro-rock crowd pleasers.
Imagine a soccer match being interrupted at every free kick, corner, throw-in and goal by a burst of music, usually of questionable taste, and you start to get the picture.
At the world ice-hockey championship, each of the three 20-minute periods will typically be halted between 20 and 30 times.
As Funky Town, La Bamba, Leader of the Gang or, heaven forbid, the Final Countdown blare out for the umpteenth time, the scoreboard will order the spectators to stamp their feet, clap or make some noise (fleeing outside apparently is not an option). Occasionally, the tournament mascot, a smiling Swiss cow call Coolly, will attempt to whip up the fans or entice them to do a Mexico wave.
Just as a sample, here’s the playlist for the second period of the Canada v Latvia quarter-final. Somewhere in the middle of all this, an ice hockey match tried to break out.
0:48 – Hound dog (Elvis Presley)
Carolina Hurricanes storm towards playoffs
The hottest team in the National Hockey League rests atop neither the Eastern nor the Western conference these days.
Like their name implies, the Carolina Hurricanes are the ones blowing away the opposition.
Carolina, an Eastern Conference contender, stormed to its seventh successive win with a tough 4-2 victory over the New York Rangers on Thursday. The triumph, before a sellout crowd in Raleigh, was a team-record 10th consecutive home win.
Strong netminding and improvement elsewhere have turned a team that two months ago was trying to find itself into the leader of The Hockey News’ NHL power ratings.
“It starts with the goaltender,” leading goal scorer Eric Staal said of netminder Cam Ward. “He has been very, very solid.”
Ward, who sparked the Hurricanes to a 10-1-2 record for March to earn the NHL’s First Star of the month, is playing like the netminder who led Carolina to the 2006 Stanley Cup.
“Cam has been so good that it brings confidence to everybody else,” said right wing Chad LaRose.
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