Jan 21

Becoming a Hockey Fan: Part Three

20130121-110221.jpgI am at a party. The jangle of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” rattles the house, a steady thump thump thump pulsing against the kitchen floor. Every now and then, a head pokes around the corner in search of the bathroom or a stack of pizzas or alcohol squirreled away in the cupboards.

“Oh, the Canucks?” My friend strolls through the kitchen, crossing in front of the TV where I’ve stationed myself for the evening. “They’ll win. Guaranteed.”

My burgeoning team pride flares. It’s the first period. The Ducks are knotted at 2-2 with the Canucks. I make an ill-advised beer bet. My friend leaves with a smirk on his face.

Hockey is breathless. The puck skitters from skater to skater so sharply that I barely have time to check jersey numbers or scribble in my notebook. My thoughts, likewise, are jumbled. Those are boards! I remind myself. That’s a face-off spot! Is that icing? Is that icing? Oh, that’s how you pronounce ‘Selänne.’

Sometimes, it’s a good thing I don’t watch sports around other people.

In the second period, Anaheim stockpiles goals as if salvaging an overtime shootout. I lean forward in my chair. My heart is pounding, even with a cushion of three goals. “Come on,” I mutter as Selänne darts toward the net. It occurs to me that, short of unnecessary profanities, I have no idea what to say. Pass? Shoot? Skate fast?

Nothing seems appropriate, so I settle back in my chair. Teemu nabs the Ducks’ sixth goal with 14 seconds left on the clock. Looks like he didn’t need my help after all.

Even now, baseball permeates my understanding of hockey. Kyle Palmieri’s #51 invokes memories of Ichiro’s career in Seattle. I nearly tweet how many runs the Ducks have driven in. The broadcasters total Jonas Hiller’s saves at 26, and I giggle because that is over half of what the Mariners amassed in 2012.

Vancouver goes quietly in the third, slipping the puck past Hiller for their third and final goal of the night. Teemu answers with another shot, securing Anaheim’s lead, his reputation as one of the best in the game (at 42 years old, no less), and my affection. The camera pans to disgruntled Canucks fans in the stands.

I close my notebook and push back my chair as the final score flashes on the screen: Ducks 7, Canucks 3. It has been the warmest of welcomes from Anaheim, but for now, I have a beer bet to collect.

Jan 16

Becoming a Hockey Fan: Part One

The first thing you should know is that this title is misleading. I find the idea of purposely setting out to become a fan of something quite ridiculous. Two and a half years ago, when I tuned into my first Giants game, it was the sight of Andres Torres executing a double steal that stole my heart. Last season, it was the charisma of Munenori Kawasaki and the way the afternoon light hit Safeco Field just right that fueled my addiction for the Mariners.

Fandom is often best when it comes organically. With that said, I am not striving to make myself a hockey fan, or, as I’ll get to in a moment, an Anaheim Ducks fan. The sport intrigues me. My first reaction is to throw myself into it headfirst. We’ll see what happens when the games begin.

The second thing you should know is that I have decided on a team to follow this (shortened) season. It’s not the closest, most prestigious, longest-tenured, most successful, or even the most interesting team. It is, however, the team with the most ties to Disneyland. It is the team with Teemu Selänne, who I am told is one of the most beloved players in the league. It is the team whose quiet rink and diehard fans appeal to the Seattle sports fan in me. It is the team whose history, characters, and Cinderella playoff run pique my interest.

The third thing you should know is that my curiosity about hockey is nothing like my curiosity about baseball. When I began West Coast Fan[girl], I barely dipped my toes into the pool of baseball knowledge, memes, and statistics available. Now, having glimpsed the depth of baseball coverage and analysis out there, I am anxious to reach that level of knowledge and passion about hockey—like, yesterday. I’ll try to take things slow on this blog for now, and hold myself back from exploring Hockey-Reference and Hockey Prospectus before I grasp concepts like icing and high-sticking.

Until then, I’m going to sit back, watch some NHL Vault, enjoy The Mighty Ducks, and wait patiently for the season opener this Saturday. Go Ducks.

Jan 12

Saturday Morning Links

Procrastination and writer’s block has been lurking around every webpage this week. As a result, very little reading has been done, while my Pocket app is backlogged with over 150 unread articles. You win, internet.

Today’s list is brief, but the pieces mentioned are poignant and necessary reads. Enjoy.

Richard Ben Cramer, Joe Posnanski
There are few writers who inspire us so deeply and move us so greatly that we would be loathe to turn away any book or article or napkin scribbling they write.

For me, one such writer is Joe Posnanski. For Joe, one writer—perhaps the writer—is Richard Ben Cramer. In a moving tribute to his late friend, Joe pays homage to a truly incredible journalist, one who not only mastered words on a page, but dared to take enough risks to make those words sizzle and pop on every line.

Important Saber Concepts, Sky Kalkman
Pick your favorite inflammatory statement:

  • “Today, every stat matters. There is no end to the appetite for categories — from OBP to OPS to WAR. I mean, OMG!”
  • “I really want to dive into his sabermetrics, starting with his JAWS, WAR, and WAR7, and then moving on to his JPOS, WPA, OPS, and—last but certainly not least—the all-important holy quadrinity of VORP, GORP, SCHLORP, and THUNDERCORK.”
  • “It’s as if the Tea Party is taking over one part of baseball discussion, and that’s not right.”

Continue reading »

Jan 8

And Now, For Something New

October 2009. Through a series of misunderstandings, I found myself alone on the couch at a friend’s home in Santa Cruz. The crucial understanding we failed to reach constituted the following: first, that his two friends, who had made the four-hour drive up the coast with us the evening before, would not be staying at the house for the four-day weekend; second, that he was spending one of the four days attending a San Jose Sharks game with his father and brother. I curled up with a worn paperback copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and waited.

It never occurred to me to turn on the game.

—

February 2010. I could think of no better way to enjoy a bright, crisp winter day than from the confines of my artificially-lit dorm room. From the still, sun-spotted courtyard erupted a cacophony of shouts and shrieks, likely coming from the common area a few doors down. I sprinted barefoot toward the noise, where fellow students crowded around the TV set. On the screen: the final event of the 2010 Winter Olympics, a nail-biting gold medal game between the U.S. and Canada.

The screams were induced by Zach Parise, an American left winger who scored the tying goal with 25 seconds remaining and sent the game into overtime. I lingered for what was sure to be an exciting finish, caught up in the momentum, the close score, and the jitters of twenty hockey fans on the edge of their seats.

The slice of blades on ice, the mad dash for a puck I could never quite follow was dazzling. Sidney Crosby ended the contest in seven minutes and forty seconds, netting Canada’s third goal and sending the U.S. to second place. The roar that emanated from the students was of a slightly different tone than the one that sent me running into the room. I left as quickly as I had arrived.

—

January 2013. The National Hockey League, for all intents and purposes, has appeared to reach a satisfactory agreement with the players’ union that will end a four-month lockout and restore hockey fans to their teams once again. It’s the second such lockout in the past decade, and returning fans are understandably torn between the desire to don familiar jerseys and the desire to stick it to those who callously ripped away teams and games and seasons from them.

I am on the sidelines. 2009 did not push me away from the Sharks, and 2010 did not spark more than a passing curiosity in the sport. I have not laid eyes on a hockey rink since those brief seven minutes of the last Winter Olympics.

While my heart is full and my stress levels high after watching the 2012 San Francisco Giants stretch out a 16-game postseason and the Seattle Seahawks make their current playoff push, a new sport may provide a brief respite from the agony of a torturous offseason.

Hi, hockey. Show me what you’ve got.

Jan 4

The Hall of Fame, Designated Hitters, and Jesus Montero’s Chinstrap

Hello, 2013! I don’t know if I like you yet, but it’s nice to have a fresh year to enjoy baseball and break a new set of resolutions. I still can’t decide if this is worth writing every week, but as long as my Pocket app is full and I’m reading neat stuff, I’m going to want you to read that neat stuff, too.

1. The 50 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame, Graham Womack and every other baseball writer ever
This bypasses long form articles and goes straight for the distinction of novella, but Graham Womack has done an exceptional job of putting together a list of those Hall of Fame nominees who are undervalued, short of votes, or ineligible for induction. Each name is given its due consideration and argument for Cooperstown, with compelling anecdotes and detailed statistics to boot.

While the above list of authors is, in fact, hyperbole, Graham enlisted the help of 48 talented writers from all over the sports blogosphere, including BBWAA voter Art Spander, Dale Murphy’s son, fellow Aerys Sports, FanSided, and High Heats Stats colleagues, and yours truly (my Albert Belle entry is buried at #47).

2. Journalism Is Not Narcissim, Hamilton Nolan
About six months ago, I fell out of love with a website that shall remain nameless. For a good part of the year, I had visited and revisited this place that excelled and reveled in the art of the personal essay. After gorging on tales of new loves, old loves, friend drama, family drama, and college escapades, a steady diet of twenty-something sagas grew stale.

That’s where this article is relevant—to those of us who are still stuck in our twenties and have an insatiable appetite to write and consume stories. It’s tempting to get hung up on our own stories, and there’s no denying that what we have to share can be powerful and important and necessary. Still, there is just as much (if not more) importance to be found in telling the stories of others. Continue reading »

Dec 29

7 Things I Read That You Should, Too

If you haven’t heard of it by now, Pocket is this nifty little app that allows you to bookmark and download articles, images, and videos from around the web. By itself, it is a powerful tool. Combined with a complementary desktop client and browser extension, well, let’s just say that I haven’t been able to finish any work for the last few days. It’s addicting.

As someone who reads upwards of 20 articles a day, I figured I should channel some of that into a weekly post, if only to spare my Twitter feed from endless recommendations and RTs. Here goes.

1. The HOF: Why I stopped voting, T.J. Quinn
As the January deadline approaches, there has been ceaseless debate about the ethics of voting a known PED user into the Hall of Fame. Former beat writer T.J. Quinn questions not only the BBWAA’s failure to determine the appropriate consequences for PED usage, but the qualifications of the 575 writers responsible for the voting process.

Withholding ten Hall of Fame votes is a bold move, and not one that is received kindly by many baseball fans. While I can respect the case he makes for a more balanced and qualified voting panel, this is just the beginning of a very long conversation. Continue reading »