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Category: Boston MA (Page 1 of 13)

Accountability and Expectation: Why The Josh Beckett Anger Is Justified

I thought out this blog post while in the shower this morning. So, we’re not even going to pretend that it is well-researched. It’s stream of consciousness. I apologize in advance.

Josh Beckett and Kelly Shoppach

Josh Beckett (image from Over The Monster and Getty Images)

There are Boston Red Sox fans who I follow on Twitter who are upset that the media has pointed out that Josh Beckett went golfing, despite having a muscle issue and missing a scheduled start on the mound. They feel as if the media has ganged up on the pitcher, and he has every right to play golf on an off-day. Beckett himself even defended his actions by saying that he “only gets 18 off-days a year” and that he had every right to use one to hit the links.

Let’s put the supposed media “witch hunt” aside. Let’s look at the actuality of an athlete playing another sport as leisure while in season.

Professional and college athletes are often forbidden from playing any other sport – even one as innocuous as golf – while in season. For example, a very good friend of mine played Division I hockey, but she also loved to ski. But when she was home for the brief time she had for the holidays because she was in-season, she had to watch everyone else in her family ski while she sat there. She couldn’t downhill or cross country ski. She had an understanding with her teammates and her coaching staff that because she was an athlete in season, she couldn’t jeopardize being injured participating in another sport at leisure.

Sometimes this expectation is physically written into a contract with a professional athlete, and sometimes it is just implied. If you make a living from your body being at its peak, you don’t put it at risk of any type of injury.

There is a vast difference in athletic output between golf and skiing, but you still can be injured playing golf (ask my father, who actually broke ribs playing golf a few years back.) While those injuries are usually relatively mild, the risk is still there. And given that baseball is a sport where players often miss starts due to things as minor as ingrown nails and broken toes*, the minor injuries that golf can cause are significant enough to meddle in the everyday life of a baseball player. For a pitcher, the repetitive shoulder isolating actions of golf increase that risk more. If you’re a pitcher with over ten years of major league wear and tear on your arms and shoulders, and you have a sore latissimus muscle (which Beckett has) the motion of hitting a golf club may not be advisable in season. (In layman’s terms, the latissimus muscle is the muscle found from under your armpit around the side of your back. It’s a muscle used in both pitching and swinging a golf club.)

Also, there is that old adage that if you’re not well or performing well enough to do your job, go to school or attend an event, than you shouldn’t be stepping out and doing something enjoyable in its stead. When you were a kid, and you had to stay home from school with either an legitimate illness or a trumped up cold because of an exam you wanted to avoid, your mother wouldn’t just let you go to the mall or playground or what have you later in the day. No, even if you were feeling better, you stayed home. You needed to keep up appearances – or at least my mom wanted us to. Even to this day, if I am stuck home sick, I’m not jumping in The Kat Mobile and putting around. That’s playing hooky. I don’t want to appear to be playing hooky.

If you are being paid handsomely to show commitment to your job, you never want to appear to be playing hooky.

Josh Beckett knew he was not making his next scheduled start. He then decided to go play golf with another pitcher. He’s an adult and is allowed to make his own decisions, but I just don’t know if that was his best one. Is the media out to get Beckett? Frankly, the media is out to get anyone and everyone involved with the Red Sox because no one within the organization is showing accountability. It’s like a consumer report – you pay $50 to attend a game, you spend $140 a month to get a cable package with NESN so you can watch it, but you’re getting nothing but failure from that money. I think it’s fine for the media to ask these questions. The product is faulty, and they are just trying to figure out why.

*And before anyone comments, “Have you ever had one of those injuries? They hurt,” yes, I have had both. And danced on pointe, ran cross-country and did beam with both. I’ll get off my high horse now.

Super Bowl Sports Gear: Women Apparently Love Tom Brady Jerseys.

Tom Brady Jersey - Women's Edition Leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl, what NFL  jerseys were hot in the world of online shopping? Not surprisingly, New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady is very popular with online jersey buyers.

Nextag.com rounded up some figures and shared them with members of the media throughout the web. Here are some of the facts and figures I found interesting:

• In terms of Patriots’ gear, “Tom Brady continues to be the most sought-after jersey with 8 of the top 10 selling items, followed by Wes Welker.”

• Women’s merchandise account for seven of the top ten most popular Patriots’ items sold online. The most popular item is the “Reebok New England Patriots Tom Brady Premier Team Color Jersey,” with a women’s pink jersey, the “Reebok New England Patriots Tom Brady Women’s Pink Fem Fan Jersey” coming in a close second.

• Despite the usual outcry towards pink and sparkly sports wear for women, two of the top ten Patriots items on Nextag.com are pink female jerseys. Another two have rhinestone embellishment and are in fabric and prints exclusive to women’s styles.

Big thanks to Nextag.com for sharing this data with sportswear geek me. What will I be wearing to the Super Bowl Party I’m working Sunday? Not anything Brady, but not anything Manning either. I’ll be wearing a very special outfit that will represent the two teams that would have made the Big Game…if the AFC and NFC determined their representatives based solely on the first four weeks of the season. I promise to post a photo sometime Sunday on my Twitter feed.

A Gillette Stadium Guide for The Non-Regular

Gillette Stadium during Monday Night Football on 11/21/2011On New Year’s Day, I’ll join hundreds of fellow transplanted Buffalo Bills fans and thousands of New England Patriots fans and take in the last regular season game of the year at Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium. It will be my second game at Gillette this year, and my fourth ever game at the massive complex.

Like any stadium, you learn a few tricks and tips after a few visits that make your trip all the more enjoyable. After I attended November’s Monday Night Football Chiefs-Patriots game, I jotted down this list of the tips I’ve learned to share with other non-Gillette regulars. Continue reading

Is The Baseball Community Overprescribing Tommy John Surgery? If So, Is John Lackey The Perfect Example?

Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.New Boston Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington had his introductory (or re-introductory?) press conference overshadowed Tuesday afternoon by an announcement he made about 45 minutes into the event. In one of his first public acts as GM, he announced that beleaguered pitcher John Lackey would be going under the knife for Tommy John surgery.

My first thought was, “Isn’t that a bit…convenient?”

I do not have the ability to argue that Lackey does not need an ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (UCL, the medical term for Tommy John surgery.) I am not a member of the medical community. But we have reached the point where it seems like every time a major league pitcher needs to take a “vacation” for a spell, they’re sent down to visit Dr. James Andrews (the nation’s best surgeon for this particular procedure) in Birmingham, Alabama.

This leads me to ask: Is the baseball community overprescribing Tommy John surgery? Continue reading

College Hockey: Consider The Boat Missed

Picture 291It’s a football-less Sunday in New England. The New England Patriots are on a bye week, and thus Boston sports fans are looking for something to fill their Sunday. Looking for the reigning Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins to fill the void? They’re off today, having played the San Jose Sharks Saturday night.

Why, for the most part, is the New England college hockey scene also quiet today? Why not take advantage of the region being sportless* for the day and showcase some early season action?

Even Boston College, who have created quite the Sunday afternoon game niche at Conte Forum over the past few years, is off today. The only game today is Minnesota hosting Vermont, as the Catamounts try to avoid getting offensively overpowered like they were Friday night. (Dartmouth is hosting Norwich in an exhibition at 7pm, but that doesn’t count.)

The excuse that college hockey schedules are set in a year in advance and thus are inflexible is a weak one. Dates and times are changed several times during the summer and even during the season. A month before this season started, a few games were moved after the second edition of Frozen Fenway was announced. Times are changed during the season to take postseason play by professional teams into account. And if a television broadcast opportunity becomes available, some games will move times to accommodate that.

So the powers that be within Hockey East didn’t take a gander at the NFL and NHL schedules when making this season’s final slate and see a gaping open Sunday? Why not move Boston College’s league tilt against Northeastern from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon? Both the NFL and NHL schedules were known far enough in advance that the change could have been made before tickets were printed and team training schedules were set. Given the Eagles and Huskies proximity to each other, no travel would have to be accounted for. And instead of NESN filling time by broadcasting Fox Sports North’s feed of the Minnesota-Vermont game, they could broadcast a league game between two teams that would draw much higher ratings. (And they could show local commercials, a revenue source they miss out when they simulcast from another channel.)

If Hockey East wants to further promote the idea that they are the “premiere” college hockey league (and the recent addition of Notre Dame was made with that in mind), they need to begin looking for opportunities to expose their sport to new audiences. Waiting for February to catch casual fans with the Beanpot isn’t enough. Channel hopping casual fans could be lured in this afternoon and hooked in for the rest of the season.

The league missed the boat by not having a league game on a Patriots-free Sunday. If they want to grab any more of the very saturated New England sports market, they need to start making the most of rare empty spaces in the seemingly endless sports cycle and promote college hockey in them.

 

* Sportless – A word I made up. Definition: being without sports. Like being homeless, just must less dire.

 

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