The Girlfriend's Guide to Sports

So, the Dude I live with did some freelance research* (freelance in the sense that nobody asked him to look it up or share what he found, yet he happily did it anyway) and tells me the following things that will be sure to impress your own dude’s idiot friends when they come around, matching their sneakers to their jerseys:

• R.A. Dickey, the knuckleball pitcher for the New York Mets, leads the major leagues in wins, strike-outs, Earned Run Average (ERA) and Walks & Hits Per Innings Pitched (WHIP). He is only one inning behind Matt Cain (who pitched a perfect game a week or so back) of the San Francisco Giants in total innings pitched for this year. He also recently had back-to-back games where he gave up only a single hit (called a one-hitter).
• There were nine home runs in the Yankees-Braves game at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. And the Braves had most of them, beating the Yanks 10-5.
• Roger Clemens was once thrown out of a postseason game in the second inning for arguing balls-and-strikes. (Later this week, we’ll take a look at Clemens’ acquittal of perjury by a jury of his peers. So they must have been a jury of 12 steroidal megalomaniacs?  Where’d they findthoseguys?)
• College football is moving closer to have a national championship game for the first time ever. Want to hear a really boring but impassioned conversation?  Ask a group of guys in college tee shirts about the college bowl game system.  Then order a tall drink because you’ll probably be there awhile.
• Rob Hennigan, the new general manager of the Orlando Magic basketball team, graduated from Emerson College in 2004.  Which means he’s 30 years old, and the youngest general manager in the NBA.
• On ESPN.com, they’re already touting the Brooklyn Nets…hey, didn’t those guys used to be in New Jersey?

Now go forth and impress.

Andrea

* The Dude would like me to point out that much of his research was in the service of his sports spot on our community radio station. You can catch the podcast of his spots here.  He seriously knows all the things.

Yankees win, Mets lose. Even Mets fans have to admit, we spend more time getting our hopes dashed to pieces than we do looking forward to the post-season.  The best thing about the end of regular season play, generally speaking, is that the pain of Mets fanship temporarily ceases for the winter, allowing us to focus more clearly on our Fantasy Football rosters.

And it wouldn’t be so bad if the team in the next borough didn’t have this annoying habit of, like, winning a lot.  Beyond that, though, the Yankees are known for winning. Even when they’re not winning, the baseball world generally assumes that they are. That extends to the mentality of rival fans, apparently, as well. 

For example:

The Yankees record for this season so far stands at 26 games won, 23 games lost. They are in third place in their division, the American League East. The Mets’ record is 28 wins, 22 losses. They are in second place in their division, the National League East.

And yet this afternoon, I found myself in a Turntable.fm room listening to some friends spin their playlists when the song “Call Me Maybe” came up. The conversation went like this [edited and condensed for clarity]:

D: Isn’t there a NY Yankee who uses this as his at bat song?

Me: It’s actually a Met that uses Call Me Maybe. Demonstrating yet another way the Mets are insecure as a team. A Yankee would probably have Blondie’s “Call Me” as their song, without the uncertainty. At least this is my crazy new hypothesis that I just made up.

D: I think you are on to something. A real metaphor for Mets v. Yanks.

Me: SCIENCE.

D: Write Your Blog, Maybe

Clearly, as we have seen, this is not supported by the numbers.  The numbers say the Mets are better than the Yankees — right at this very moment in history — by one a half games (I’ll explain this math in a later post. I had to call the Dude at work to doublecheck my math. Oy.) and yet here’s a typical case of Mets Downerism.

This is the year I break out of the Mets Downerism and start saying things like, “David Wright is batting .370!” instead of adding in the usual “…for now.” And, in October, when I’m watching two other teams compete in a World Series that has all but lost its significance to me, I will at least feel a little bit better about how I chose to support my team.  

Except I guess that last paragraph is based upon a foundation of Downerism.  Oh, well.  A big first step.

LET’S GO METS!

**

This is Justin Turner, Mets utility infielder (meaning he plays where he’s needed in the infield), who has “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen play when it’s his turn to bat.  He’s on the disabled list right now with an ankle injury, where he joins like, a third of the team including highly paid dudes like Jason Bay and Mike Pelfrey. Have a little confidence, Justin.  Handsome guy like you?  Get a song with a strong message.  May I suggest “Walkin’ On Sunshine”?

**

Subtext is a series that looks at issues sports nuts seem to care about and talk about a lot, without slowing down to inform people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

If you’re like me, (although if you’re still reading this, you probably are) you sometimes wonder how the dude who shares the couch with you can DVR a game, and use the time during the commercials to check in on the other game he’s interested in EVEN THOUGH THAT ORIGINAL GAME IS RECORDED AND HE COULD EASILY BE FAST FORWARDING OVER THE COMMERCIALS TO GET BACK TO THE GAME.

Well, here’s the Rosetta Stone to unlock the answer to that one: it’s because there are simply too many things going on at once.  Sure, he could miss all of the other things going on but then you’d just have to sit through the SportsCenter recap, when all you really wanted to watch tonight was the finale of Downton Abbey that’s been sitting in the DVR FOR-LIKE-EVER (Oh, Dame Maggie Smith, you just kill me), but he brought home dinner and did the dishes and you’re going to be a good sport about it (PUNS!) because, after all, love is full of little favors.

So here are the things you may be flipping through this evening.

Baseball - Happening Now
Mets @ Phillies
Nationals @ Pirates
Rays @ Yankees

Baseball - Happening Later
Marlins @ Astros
Red Sox @ Royals
Angels @ Twins
Cardinals @ Diamondbacks
Tigers @ Mariners
Padres @ Dodgers

Baseball - Delayed Due to Inclement Weather
Rangers @ Orioles
White Sox @ Indians

Basketball - Happening Now
Knicks @ Heat [game 5, first round of NBA playoffs]
- The Heat (stars include LeBron James, Dwyane Wade & Chris Bosh) are up 3-1 in the series over the Knicks (stars include Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, Tyson Chandler and Jeremy Lin of “Linsanity” fame). Should the Knicks win, they will play a game 6. If the Heat win, they will move on to the next round of the playoffs.

Basketball - Happening Later
Clippers @ Grizzlies [game 5, first round of NBA playoffs]

Hockey - Happening Now
Rangers @ Capitals [game 6, first round of Stanley Cup playoffs]
- Game 5 included a triple overtime win by the Rangers. The series currently has the Rangers besting the Capitals 3-2. A win tonight would advance them to the next round of the playoffs, while a loss will force a game 7, which is ALWAYS exciting.

Happy watching!

-A.

I don’t want to burn you ladies out on baseball — it is, generally speaking, a long season that often feels like a wasteland, and there are so many teams and games going on simultaneously, that I could pretty much fill your head with a lot of crap about Designated Hitters*, and trades and rookies and injuries and whatnot. But, in the interest of keeping you current enough to crack wise on the day’s major stories, I present to you another baseball-related installment of This Guy.

This guy is Josh Hamilton. And, like his arm says, he has priorities. He got these priorities after running face-first into drug and alcohol addiction. He got sober in 2005, prior to making it to the big leagues, but slipped up in 2009 and again in the 2011-2012 off-season. It’s the kind of thing where a handsome, extremely talented and seemingly nice guy makes these kinds of errors in judgment and the sports media kind of holds its breath hoping he won’t go the way of an athletic Lindsay Lohan.

Anyway, he apologized to his fans, his wife and his current team, the Texas Rangers (who play in Arlington, a suburb of Dallas) and went on to begin this season in a pretty awesome manner.

Tonight, he hit FOUR HOME RUNS.  FOUR TWO-RUN HOME RUNS. Some math:

4 home runs x (1 man on base + Hamilton at plate=2 runs per home run) = 8 runs batted in (RBIs, sometimes called “ribbies”)

To give you some perspective on what an accomplishment like this means:

• This is the first time anyone has hit four home runs in a single game since 2003.
• The Rangers beat the Baltimore Orioles (this year, a very good team) in their own stadium, 10-3. Of the ten runs the Rangers scored, Hamilton was responsible for eight of them.
• Nobody has ever hit five home runs in a game…yet.
• Last year, Hamilton was injured for part of the season. He finished the 2011 season with 25 home runs. After tonight, he has already hit 14 HOME RUNS.  For real?

My cynical husband seems to think, as he sits here next to me critiquing my every written word, that Hamilton is going to have a great year, because his contract is up at the end of the 2012 season. (That’s a thing dudes seem to care about.  We’ll touch back on that subject later.) Some simple math reveals that, if he were to play all 162 games that the Rangers will play this season, he’d hit 84 home runs. Since that is 11 more than has EVER been hit in a season, this is unlikely, but a good talking point if you feel like impressing some dudes who are boxing you out of their baseball conversation. 

The dude-dominated sports blogs and ESPN are going nuts for this story, so expect to see it absolutely everywhere tomorrow.

—A.

*Designated Hitters are guys who don’t play a position on the field, they just come up to bat — the American League has them, the National League does not. The National League has their pitchers come up to hit instead.