50; No Softball

So here's a magazine cover from fifty years ago, on the day I was born...

Or if you're a little less highbrow, like me...

50. Yikes. So far it isn't really any different from my 40s. Except I can join the AARP and start benefiting from my advanced age. (And dammit, why can't I find a video of this Grampa Simpson clip?)

Anyway, if you've ever checked out my Twitter profile page you've seen what I wrote for a bio, at least since I began my job in October: "I may have a job now but I will still spend way too much time online, on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Oh, and blog. And play softball..." But I've made a change. It now ends with "...but not this year." The softball league's season begins this weekend, weather permitting. However, this year I'm not playing. I had been planning to, but there was a problem with my team's practice schedule that led to my not making it to practice. (We talking about practice! Not a game, not a game, not a game -- we talking about practice!) I won't go into the gory details; suffice it to say there was an exchange of negative emails and, had I decided to play, I probably would have preferred finding a new team.

But I got to thinking (which is always dangerous). If I did play I wouldn't be as effective pitching as I've been in the past. One of the things that spurred me to rejoin the league in 2008, after a 20-year hiatus, was the fact that I had been dieting and lost a lot of weight (eventually the total loss reached 50 pounds), so I felt more able to do things without overtiring. Unfortunately, since then, slowly but surely I've been gaining it back. And if anything, with the stress from my job schedule and commute to and from work, I've probably eaten worse over the last 6 months.

Philly Sports FIVE-team update!

Finally! I don't know why I haven't really blogged about the local teams much recently, but I promised I would do so this weekend. As I begin to write this, there's an hour before Daylight Saving Time takes effect. If you don't believe me, it says so at philly.com:

See? The Associated Press confirms it. I suppose that makes for something of a deadline, like professional writers have to deal with. So let's get to work, shall we? And hey, I've got a mention of a brand new team! In order of best to worst...

The Phillies are in the midst of spring training, and even so they're in the best shape of our local teams. They're a pretty solid favorite to win their third straight National League championship. I have some concerns (the bullpen, the bench) but if their key players are in good health, I don't see why they won't be in the World Series once again. Thus far in the spring, their starting pitchers have been excellent. Roy Halladay, of course, is the main focus, and in his first two starts he hasn't allowed a run in 5 innings while striking out 8 batters. With the offensive support he should get, with the switch to the NL meaning he'll face lineups that include opposing pitchers instead of designated hitters, with the fact that he's now in the same division as the Nationals and Marlins instead of the Yankees and Red Sox, he ought to rack up a lot of wins.

The Flyers need to rack up a lot of wins to secure a playoff spot, but they're still too inconsistent. The Olympic break, as I feared, dented their momentum. They've gone 4-2-1 over the last two weeks, but have been rather subpar defensively, capped off by an embarrassing 5-1 loss at home to Boston on Thursday night. But they followed that up with a 3-2 win over the tough Chicago Blackhawks today, coming from behind to tie the game with 2:04 left, and winning on a Chris Pronger goal with 2.1 seconds left. Besides the inconsistency, their goaltending has to be considered a question mark. Ray Emery is out for the season (and may never play again), and even though Michael Leighton has played very well, this is the first time he's had such a stretch of success. There's no guarantee it will last, or that he can step it up for a playoff run, and after Leighton there's Brian Boucher, who has been poor in very little playing time.

The Eagles need a great draft to shore up their weaknesses because they haven't done it through free agency. It's a weird situation because clauses in the collective bargaining agreement that's going to expire in a year or so have led to there being no salary cap, but also to most of the quality free agents being restricted instead of unrestricted (meaning if you want to sign one, the player's current team can either match the offer or receive draft picks as compensation). Still, all the Eagles have done is sign a guy coming off injuries (we saw how well that worked out with Stacy Andrews in 2009) and bring back Hank Baskett, who is now known for his fumble of the onside kick that jump-started the Saints' comeback to win the Super Bowl, but is still best known as Mr. Kendra Wilkinson. Also, they still haven't traded any of their quarterbacks, so the endless Donovan McNabb debate continue to pollute the airwaves.

And now for the new team: the Philadelphia Union, a new expansion franchise of Major League Soccer. There are three things wrong with this. One, it's soccer. Two, their stadium is in Chester. Three, the team may be shut down before it plays a game because the league's players are threatening a strike.

Still, they rank ahead of the pathetic 76ers. One of the worst teams in the NBA but probably not pitiful enough to really improve their draft lottery odds. A building that's half-empty almost every game. A coach who seems to be a moron, even to a non-basketball expert such as myself. And Allen Iverson's season was ended because of some combination of his daughter's illness, his wife's filing for divorce, his alleged gambling problem and his alleged alcoholism. Sorry, Sixers. Thanks for playing...



One bit of good news: I've beaten my deadline!

Flyers, Eagles, Sixers (Yes, Sixers!) Updates

The fun and absurdity continues on the local sports front. And this doesn't include the Phillies' participation in the baseball winter meetings, because there isn't really much going on there...

Having returned from his exile, Allen Iverson finally hit the court for the 76ers on Monday night. He was in the starting lineup, where he'll presumably be for at least a while. He got a huge ovation when introduced, and kissed the Sixers logo painted on center court. He scored 11 points in 37 minutes. It was a huge success, as they sold out the building and the crowd got to adore their hero. Not that the people cared, apparently, and not that management cares, because they finally sold some tickets, but the Sixers lost -- for the 10th game in a row.

Speaking of returning from exile, Michael Vick returned to Atlanta on Sunday, and the Eagles' afternoon was interesting. I expected it to be pretty close, since both teams were missing key players due to injury, but the Falcons were just awful. For a while it was close (13-0 at the half) because of some lingering Eagles ineptitude, but the game turned on the Eagles' goal-line stand at the end of the first half. The Falcons had 2nd-and-goal from the 1, tried to run it in on 2nd, 3rd and 4th down and were stopped each time. The second half the Eagles became more efficient, and they went on to a 34-7 win, with Atlanta not scoring until the final play of the game with the Eagles' defensive starters out.

Two of the second-half scores came from Vick -- a 5-yard run that made it 20-0 in the 3rd quarter, and then a TD pass that made it 34-0 in the 4th quarter. They were his first scores since getting out of jail. As for his reception from the fans, on both TV and radio (I was monitoring both) it sounded like a lot more boos than cheers the first time he entered the game. But when he ran for his score, and especially when he threw for the touchdown, it was mostly cheers. I don't know how much of that was Atlanta fans. The camera shots of the stands seemed to show quite a lot of Eagles fans in attendance from the start. I'd say that when it got to 27-0 the Falcons fans either started cheering for Vick or just left.

The win puts the Eagles (8-4) back into a first-place tie with Dallas, thanks to the Cowboys' loss to the Giants (7-5). The Eagles visit the Giants next week, and if they win I'd say the playoffs are pretty much a guarantee.

No such guarantee exists for the Flyers. Their first two games since firing head coach John Stevens ended in defeat, making it 9 losses in the last 10. Saturday night against Washington, new coach Peter Laviolette had to be wondering what he got himself into. With the score 1-1 in the latter part of the first period, Flyer Dan Carcillo (I'd call him a goon but really he's more of an idiot than the typical NHL fighter) managed to get 29 minutes in penalties and give Washington a 9-minute power play. The Capitals scored 3 times in that span and rolled to an easy 8-2 win.

Last night, in Montreal, the Flyers managed to hold the Canadiens to just 13 shots on goal in the entire game -- only one in the first 25:51. But Montreal managed to score 3 times on their 13 shots, and held the Flyers to just 15 shots of their own, gaining a 3-1 win.

Tonight, however, the Flyers actually managed to win! The 6-2 victory came over the New York Islanders -- the only team the Flyers beat in the previous 10 games. Unfortunately, there are two problems. One, with so many games on the schedule right now (4 games a week for a couple of weeks) there is little practice time available for the new coach to put his systems into effect. Two, the next nine games are against teams other than the Islanders.

Oh, make that three problems: goalie Ray Emery is having surgery to repair a torn abdominal muscle and will likely be out for 6 weeks. Oh, make it four problems: he's had the problem since November and has been playing with it, with the Flyers' knowledge. They've been trying to treat it without surgery until now. Considering how this team has had a number of players with similar abdominal and groin problems in recent years, I'm amazed Emery wasn't shut down sooner. I think it was irresponsible of the Flyers to let him keep playing.

Is The Answer really the answer for 76ers?

You may have heard that the 76ers have signed Allen Iverson to a contract. The same 76ers who told him to stay home before trading him to Denver in 2006, having tired of a decade of drama -- the "We're talkin' about practice!" rant, the ball-hogging, the clashing with coaches, the occasional off-court incident -- now have decided to bring him back.

Iverson provided a lot of excitement over the years to go along with that drama, but he's now 34 years old. From all reports he isn't quite at the elite level he once was. He still thinks he is, however. That's why he ended up unemployed and temporarily retired after dismal stints in Detroit and Memphis (the latter lasting three games), as those teams wouldn't give him the amount of playing time he felt he deserved.

In his press conference today Iverson said all the right things, such as "All I told (GM Ed Stefanski) was give me an assignment and I will help you win basketball games." But when he hits the court, will those words be forgotten? What happens when guard Lou Williams, out eight weeks with a broken jaw and whose absence is ostensibly the reason the Sixers signed Iverson, returns? The Sixers have been emphasizing giving their young players experience in order to become a better team in the long run. Will Iverson accept playing fewer minutes? He hasn't the last two years.

And with a team who, under new head coach Eddie Jordan, is still trying to learn to play the Princeton offense, an offense that requires lots of passing, how is Iverson going to fit in? He's never been known for spreading the ball around. What happens if Jordan sits Iverson for longer stretches because he doesn't fit the system? Or, worse, what if Jordan revises the system to fit Iverson's needs?

I don't really see this working. To me, there is only one valid reason to bring back "The Answer," and if the Sixers were honest they'd admit it: they want to sell tickets. The team is 5-14, they've lost 8 in a row, and they're next-to-last in the entire NBA in attendance. They've been an afterthought in the minds of the sports public. But since word first broke that they were interested in Iverson, suddenly they're garnering a lot more pages of coverage in the papers and many more calls on sports talk radio (not to mention getting me to write all of this -- I hardly ever watch the NBA).

And the excitement provided by "The Answer" on the court in his first stint here has seemingly made a lot of fans nostalgic. Reports are that tickets are selling fast for their home games next week, when Iverson is expected to make his debut.

The problem is, historically the 76ers have not had as loyal a fan base as the Eagles and Flyers. If they're not winning they have trouble drawing big crowds. Even with Iverson, when the Sixers struggled after their peak of reaching the 2001 NBA Finals, attendance started to drop. Barring a miracle, bringing back Allen Iverson is a temporary solution -- both on the court and at the box office.

Not too desperate, are we?

More fun with Craigslist...and I thought it referred to Allen Iverson...

A.I. fans
Date: 2009-09-16, 2:47PM EDT

Justin Guarini will be performing on a local TV show on October 1st. We are looking for his fans to be in the audience, tickets are free. Arrival is 9 AM, taping at 10 AM and you will be out by 11:15, :30 AM the latest. if you are interested please email me with the ammount of tickets you would like......

So if you ask for, say, 20 tickets, no problem. After all, it's not about Allen Iverson.