Monday, May 19, 2008

Jim Leyland Resigns?

Now the problems the Tigers are having this season have been documented many times, but I've recently had a Nostradamic run, so here goes:

I think Leyland quits today. I hope I'm wrong. He's done great things for the Tigers and Detroit baseball in general. But this season will not end well. The Tigers are on pace for 63 wins. 63-99. Read that again. 63-99. Do I think that'll happen? No way. Too much talent. But if I had to predict a season-ending record, I'd probably go with 79-83. And that's going to mean people get fired and/or cut. I think Jim will try to go as gracefully as he can, but it's Jim Leyland. A ballerina he ain't. His way is gruff and blunt, and I think that's how he'll leave as manager. And I think it will happen in the next 4 hours. And I think the Wings win tonight. Finally.

Labels:

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Nobody Hates Swedes, Do They?

Don Cherry is an institution in Canada. In the northern US, too. If you have the option to watch the NHL on CBC, you do it, and Cherry is part of the reason. He wears outrageous clothes and says outrageous stuff. That's what he does, and it's why he gets paid. Among his views: that every NHL team should play like the 74-75 Flyers, and would win the Stanley Cup and please all hockey fans by doing so. So he called Detroiters rednecks and says they want the team to be more physical. He has a reputation for disliking European players. Here's the video from the other night:



I'm a lifetime Red Wings fan. I love the Red Wings. Even the guys who were there in the bad times - John Ogrodnick, Reed Larson, all of them. I'm also 28, which means I was 10 when the first Russian players joined the NHL. A year later, Sergei Fedorov made his NHL debut. And my God, what a debut it was. I imagine I'll be writing something similar in a few years when he retires, but the effect Fedorov had on the Detroit area was incredible. We had just seen Cecil Fielder hit 50 home runs, which was a Herculean feat in 1990, and everyone was buzzing about him. The 1990 Michigan-Michigan State football game was one of the greatest, and most controversial, in the history of the rivalry. But above all this was the rookie season of Sergei Fedorov. I remember one net crashing goal late in the season that was part of a 5-point game for Sergei. Very few regular season goals are memorable. That one was amazing.

My dad brought me to a sports card show in January of 1991, and I had one goal: to procure a Fedorov card at any cost. Series II Pro Set had just been released, and this was the card I judged to be the most affordable. It was $5, which to me was a fortune then. My dad tried to bargain with the card dealer, and he curtly explained that 100 other people would buy it if we didn't. So my dad bought it for me. And I was thrilled. We went to the lumber yard after the show and I took the card with me. I carried it in its hard plastic case all day long.

He was so exciting. The Russians who had entered the league before him were older, slower, more traditional-style hockey players. You know them: Larionov, Makarov, Fetisov, and Kasatonov were among the first. The Wings had two other thrilling rookies that year in Johan Garpenlov and Paul Ysebaert, but no one could compare to Fedorov. Bure and Mogilny were great goal scorers, but Fedorov could pass, check, and play great defense. I believe he was the best player in the NHL in the 1990s. He could have put up 150 point seasons in the right system and with no restrictions, but he never had that. He did whatever you needed among the best in the league.

So what's the point? I grew up with these players, and that's the style of play I appreciate. There are a lot of hockey fans who never saw the league when it was all-Canadian. European players made the NHL even greater than it was, and brought it closer to being a true major sport in America than it has ever been.

I will never understand Don Cherry's attitude, much as I will never understand the Flyers' management trying to play Don's choking, dull style. There are empty seats at Joe Louis Arena. And economics is a lot of it. Is it everything? Probably not. But as people are pointing out, the Wings didn't win Cups with their imposing lineup in the late 80s and early 90s. They lost to more balanced teams who stayed out of the penalty box. I think Mr Ilitch will take a Cup winner over a 5 percent attendance slump.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Changing of the Guard


I will miss you, O Orange One. So by now, if you care, you know that Mr Tony has opted to roll out from the Washington Post. After 29 years. Dag, some would say. He'll still be on PTI, and have his radio show five months every year, and do Monday Night Football, which are all good things, I guess, but I don't know that he can represent DC as well anymore.

The Post job, even with what it had become over the last five years, gave us credibility on the national sports reporting scene. Sounds weird, but sometimes we've been a little bitter about all sports programming coming from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and sometimes Chicago or Los Angeles, although those last two aren't as irritating. When PTI hit the "airwaves" (it's a cable show, people) in 2001, DC became a sports news place. Around the Horn. The US studios of the NHL Network are here. The steroid hearings oddly helped this image. We're legit now. Yeah, Wilbon's half the equation, and national guys like Norman Chad and Richard Justice came from here and still recall those days fondly, but Mr Tony is an ambassador for DC in many ways. He gets a lot of crap from a lot of people, but he's genuine in celebrating his uncoolness, and he at least creates the illusion that he's a pretty regular guy. He's a rare celebrity who seems to care about his family and talk about them as much as normal people would around their office, but his fame is still enough that you would tell your friends about it if you saw him somewhere. And most would know who he is.

I don't know that I'll raise a toast to him or anything like that, but it'll be odd without him. Hopefully someone else will get a great start to a career out of this. But I don't think that's the way the world works anymore.

Labels: