hockey plays game 7's on no days rest???

i tend to be of the opinion that hockey is a notch (maybe 2) below the other 3 major sports, both in terms of interest level and overall relevance.  in my mind, since half the teams make the playoffs and seeding hardly matters, there's no good reason to pay much attention during the regular season.  i do love to jump on the bandwagon come playoff time though.  having said that, the fact that the bruins and canadians travel back to boston and play game 7 tonight without a days rest pretty much sums up the NHL's level of significance.  enormous television contracts basically dictate the playoff schedules for the other 3 sports, but this hockey series had to be adjusted to accommodate a lady gaga concert.  even in montreal, which last i checked was part of canada, where i thought hockey was a pretty big deal.

The problem with another Wild Card team

So it seems a certainty that MLB is going to add an additional Wild Card team in each league for 2012.  I don't like it, but not for the reasons everybody is talking about.  I don't care if they're just doing it for more TV money.  I don't care if it makes the season last longer.  I don't care if it means the Red Sox and Yankees both make the playoffs every year from now till eternity.  I don't like it because they're saying the Wild Card round will be either 2 out of 3, or just 1 game.  My biggest issue with the current playoff system is that the 3 out of 5 first round is too short.  It's just way too small a sample.  Anything can happen in 3 baseball games.  And it's not representative of the whole team when you only have to use 3 of your 5 starting pitchers.  Now imagine ONE game.  It has nothing to do with the teams, just whichever ace is better that day. 

How about this for a comparison: One baseball game is the mathematical equivalent to half a basketball game.  If the first round of the NBA Playoffs was half a game long, the Bulls, Celtics, Magic, Spurs, Lakers, and Thunder all would have been upset last week. 

Or even crazier, one baseball game is the same percentage of a season as 6 minutes of an NFL game.

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puke flavored jelly beans

even though my sisters and i are adults, we do lots of kid stuff at easter.  there's an egg hunt, and my mom still puts some candy and other things in a basket.  this year we each got a box of these crazy jelly beans:

they come in regular colors and flavors, except half of them are gross, on purpose.  so you eat one that is brown, but you don't know if it is chocolate or dog food.  the yellow are popcorn or rotten egg, the orange are peach or vomit, etc.  and the bad ones taste bad, really bad.  like offensively bad.

sweep x 2

i have no data to support this, but my guess is the sox and celtics have never simultaneously closed out 4 games sweeps on the road before. 

RED SOX:   i've run out of things to say about the starting pitchers, now at an absurd streak of just 7 runs allowed the past 9 games.  for everybody who was panicking ten days ago, they have an identical record through 21 games as last year (10-11), and are just 1.5 out of the wild card.

CELTICS:   not many people would have guessed they'd be the first team through to round 2.  i can't wait for all the media love they'll get the next couple days while the heat, bulls, lakers, and spurs struggle on.  the celtics do need to work on their free throw shooting though, ray allen shot a surprising 65% (17-26) from the line for the series.  oh no wait, that was the 3-point line.

and i know the heat will beat philly, but i love this stat.  for those who can't add good, that's 1-19.  it's hard to be too afraid of a team that shoots 5% with the game on the line.

P.S.
("can't add good" was a joke/zoolander reference.  i think in may have been a little too subtle though...)

red sox redonculous starting pitching continues

the sox starting pitchers have now given up a total of 7 runs in the last 8 games.  i'm sure there have been similar streaks in baseball over the last few years, but i can't remember anything this dominant for this long.  most amazing of all is the back to back starts they have gotten from dice k: 15 innings, 12 K, 0 runs, 2 hits.  are you kidding me?  freaking daisuke matsuzaka?  this is the same guy who got shelled for 7 runs on 8 hits over just 2 innings in his previous start.  what the $#IT is going on?!

celtics own the knicks, and not just yesterday...

yeah, i know i'm probably jinxing game 4 on sunday by writing this, but boston is now 7 for 7 vs the knicks this year.  and the funny thing is, until last night they were all close hard fought games.  but there's too many ridiculous stats from this game not to write about it:

- pierce 38 pts, allen 32 pts, rondo 20 assists.  none of those guys have had numbers like that in a while.  rondo's 20 assists is an all time celtics playoff record.  pierce and allen have never scored 30 in the same game before, in fact no celtic teammates have both scored 30 in one game since paul and antoine did 9 years ago. 

- pierce and allen combined to shoot an absolutely preposterous 14-19 for 3 pt fg's.

- ray allen is the only player in NBA history to make 8 or more 3's in a game more than once.  and this was the 4th time he's done it.

- rondo had his 6th career playoff triple double, which puts him on the very short list of bird, magic, wilt, oscar robertson, jason kidd (hmm...), and some guy named lebron who have done that before.

there is one bad thing i feel like i have to mention though.  the bench has been freaking terrible this whole series.

oh, and lester just put up the 7th straight great effort for the sox, who's starting pitchers have now only given up 6 runs in the last 7 games.  as bad as they were for the first 2 weeks, this past week boston has been the best team in baseball.

why do people think beer is better if it comes from somewhere else?

at the restaurant where i work we carry a few beers from spain and south america that are not very well known.  they are just regular, simple, generic beers.  when i am asked about them, if i say they are like stella people sometimes buy them, but if i say they are like budweiser, nobody ever does.  this makes no sense to me.  domestic beer costs less because you don't have to pay to have it shipped from somewhere else, not because it's worse.  my guess is if you go to europe everybody thinks miller is fancy and heineken is cheap. 



and you know what the really funny part of this is?   bud, stella, and a million other beers are all part of the same giant company anyway:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InBev_brands