Something Smarmy about the awesomeness that is Syracuse

Two of my friends from Nottingham came to visit me this week, so tonight I took them to my favorite restaurant on Arthur Ave, Zero Otto Nove. While we were waiting for a table, we had drinks at the bar, where one television screen showed the latest football (soccer) scores and highlights, while the other was showing the ACC tournament highlights.

I had to explain to my friends that yes, we do televise college basketball in the States, about March Madness and about why college basketball is so popular.

They went to sleep tonight after watching Jon Stewart rip into Jim Cramer (in my opinion, Stewart's best performance yet), but I think now that I should have made them stay awake.

See, even though they are avowed non-sports fans, I'm not sure anyone could have watched the Syracuse/UConn Big East Quarterfinal game tonight and not become a fan.

This is, after all, what March Madness is: insane things happening, like buzzer beaters, non-buzzer-beaters and multiple overtiems.

As a Syracuse alumna, of course, it figures I had a vested interest in the outcome of the game. Four years in the frozen tundra of upstate New York has taught me to hate UConn and to hate them well. I thought nothing could surpass the glory of beating them in the 2006 Big East Tournament...

...And then tonight happened.

At times I felt sick to my stomach from nerves, and at others I had to look away because of a an incessant feelings that the teams I like play best when I don't watch, if only then because if I don't see it, I can't see anything wrong with it.

Tonight's game, though, tonight's game re-affirmed everything that we love about sports: the rivalries, the competition, the play-till-you-bleed-your-heart-out, the never-give-up, never-surrender attitude that can take down Goliath. Sure, it's not as though Syracuse was David, even in David's prime, as a #20 nationally ranked team is far different from an unranked mid-major, but the Goliath of UConn has been portrayed as such that you would think anyone not named Pitt or UNC that had won the game would be hailed as a Cinderella.

Syracuse does face the unenviable task of having to again field a team for tomorrow's match up against West Virginia, but somehow, some way, they will.

And once again, I'll be there watching, even through six OTs if need be...

Baseball's Gift

It was cold in the Bronx today.

It was like the cold I experienced in Syracuse, but, at the same time, it was different.

In Syracuse, you don't really talk about the weather a whole lot. It snows and snows and snows, it's dark, and it's cold. It's the type of cold that makes it hard to breathe, that physically hurts you when you're outside.

It was that type of cold today in the Bronx, but, strangely, awkwardly, unexpectedly, the sun showed up and stayed most of the day.

I'm not used to this, this reminder that yes, this, too shall pass, this hint that in half a month baseball will regale us yet again and in three days we'll see something many people thought that they would never see in our lifetimes.

Although this off-season for the Yankees has been longer than the 2007-2008 off-season, it feels shorter.

I don't know why. It just does. Maybe it's because it hasn't been this cold for weeks on end, maybe it's because it hasn't snowed for months on end, maybe it's because I know this year's not a leap year.

See, that's the thing about baseball. No matter how dark or cold the night in the dead of winter, you know that spring will come again.

It's a sport that's built on hope--it has to be, because otherwise the Chicago Cubs would have gone the way of the St. Louis Browns a long time ago.

Unlike basketball or football or hockey or soccer, there's no clock in baseball. A game can be played in two hour or five; it can be played in five innings due to rain, nine or go as long as twenty-two. A team can be up by six runs in the ninth and still lose the game, and it's not something that only happens once every ten years--it happens, almost without fail, every season.

There's a reason that Dodgers fans could always get away with "wait 'till next year!"--because they understood that next year would come. They never gave up hope, and in 1955, next year came.

It came for the Red Sox in 2004 (obligatory shudder, of course), and it will come for the Cubs.

Even when the temperature dips below 0, when I'm outside wearing four layers and two scarves, when it's so cold that it becomes exhausting just to walk three blocks, the sun can still come out and remind us that baseball will be back again. That the hope inherent in a baseball season will be back again, one more time.

This is baseball's gift to us, and why the issue of who you're a fan of isn't nearly as important as the fact that you are a fan.

Because if you're a baseball fan, you already know that there's nothing in the world more important than hope.

Shelley's Shoes

Some notes from today's exhibition game against Tampa, as gathered from various blog sources and Gameday:

1) Shelley's slide was dirty. It doesn't mean I don't like him as a player or that I'll never root for him again, just that his slide was, well, dirty. If you see a picture, his spikes are nearly taking Iwamura's manhood with them, and, well, I'm no athlete...not even a male...but that play wasn't clean.

That said, it's great to see these kids playing with some intensity. This is not Joe Torre's team.

1a) It doesn't sound like the pitch that buzzed Longoria was intentional, and that the umpire over reacted.

2) Albaladejo had a poor showing, which is bad no matter what, but when you're at this part of Spring Training, when you're getting called into the manager's office because he's about to cut you it's REALLY not good. Albie may have punched himself a one-way ticket to Scranton.

3) Posada had a double and Patterson pitched well.

4) Thoughts with Stump Merrill

5) SYRACUSE BROKE MY HEART. I'm sorry. I need to get it out there. I have tickets for tomorrow, Friday and Saturday, and I was hoping to get one last look at 'Cuse before I graduate.

The irony is that they won it all when I was in high school, and will have a better chance next year, when I am gone.

The Best Part About Syracuse

Only have time for a short post right now, but I want to get it out before I forget.

Last night I dreamed I was visiting my middle school, and I ran into a woman I knew as being the mother of perhaps the most athletically gifted student in the school. She recognized me, and asked me what the best part about Syracuse was, and then, of course, I woke up.

I actually had to think about the answer to that one.

I've settled on it being the amazing people I've met--and I really have met some really awesome people.

However, there's another aspect that I think should get mentioned.

Despite a football team that's won five games total in the past two years, and 0-1 this year, Syracuse is a sports school.

Basketball seems to be the one thing that really truly unites the campus, but it's not just Syracuse sports that gets the campus going.

This is where Yankees/Sox is at its best, outside of Fenway and the Bronx.

Last week was the first week of class. You think everyone would be anxious about that, anxious to see just how much work they'd have to do this semester (I have way, way too much for a semester in which I have to apply to grad school AND be a bridesmaid!) However, as I walked across campus, there was a tension that could be felt.

Every fourth or fifth guy, and even a fair number of girls, was wearing some sort of Yankees or Red Sox hat or shirt. No one said anything, but no one had to.

In 2004, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE watched the ALCS. At the end of game seven, some students reportedly went and lit bonfires on the Quad--the center of campus.

There's no doubt that this year will be more of the same.

Heck, even my geography professor got involved (albeit for the Phillies, who have a minority fan base here).

In a city that can boast only the second-to-last-place Chiefs (Toronto's AAA team), Yankees-Sox is what it should be.

It doesn't look like it at first, you have to dig a bit, but baseball lives here.


Anyway, I've got to get to class. I've got the sort of professors that actually care if you're on time or not.