Featured – Portland Sportsman http://urbanhonking.com/portlandsportsman Wed, 16 Oct 2019 00:58:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Hawks Fill Portland’s Diaper With Breast Milk, Lose to Seattle In a Shootout http://portlandsportsman.com/hawks-fill-portlands-diaper-with-breast-milk-lose-to-seattle-in-a-shootout/ Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:29:46 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1806 Continue reading ]]> I’m sorry to report that the Portland Winterhawks lost to the Seattle Thunderbirds on Saturday, October 2nd, 2010. I feel like I kind of won though, because I had a pretty decent time at this hockey game. I walked into the Rose Garden about 10 minutes deep into the 1st period. I have to be upfront with you and let you know that I’m not really much of a stadium guy. I try to avoid large gatherings of people, and have a difficult time standing inside of expansive, ceiling heavy structures. So, I wasn’t completely psyched about having to surmount both of these obstacles in order to get to some sweet sweet hockey. These thoughts were weighing pretty heavily on my mind, and within moments of entering the building, I promptly exited through a no re-admittance stairwell. Events that transpired earlier in the day had left me completely unable to communicate with a human being in a non-suspicious way, but with fool’s courage, I sweet talked my way back into the building. One club level stair climb later, I was in section 201 and ready to watch some fights.

I recoiled with horror upon arriving in red 201. I paid five dollars more than I probably should have in order to bump my ticket grade up to the non-family section. The last thing I need when I’m taking in a hockey match is the accusing eyes of a father, the protective warding stare of a mother, and the relentless babble of babby. I thought I was making a cool move by getting a pricey ticket. I thought I’d be in the sort of section where men in Marmot brand jackets drink Widmer brewed beers, and make off-color jokes about the bedroom world of a middle-aged couple. I was slightly disappointed to discover that my game buddies consisted of a man in sweat pants with an oxygen tank, seemingly hell bent on spending his last moments on this earth screaming and coughing at teenagers passing a puck around; a boyfriend/girlfriend couple that took every opportunity to ham it up for any potential camera man that might look their way; and a man in a “Big Dawg” t-shirt, proudly proclaiming to the world that not only does he require clothes that are made out of multiple pairs of other clothes, but that he had also “just farted” while I was reading his shirt. The entire scene put me ill at ease, and I felt everyone’s hateful glaring as I slowly ascended the staircase to M3. It was at this moment (10:35 into the 1st period), as if hearing the force of my awkward climb, Winterhawk’s #25 Taylor Peters took it upon himself to fling a puck past Seattle’s goaltender, immediately drawing all attention away from my section mates. Taylor was this year’s co-winner of the Winterhawk’s scholastic award, and is apparently quite a young scientist. I accepted his gift and quickly took my seat. The Winterhawks had tied the game at 1-1.

Everyone seemed really happy about the goal, and that made me happy. Here’s a thing about Winterhawks games that sort of sucks though; they play AC/DC’s “TNT” every time a Winterhawk scores a goal. Winterhawk mascot Tom-A-Hawk’s myspace page (www.myspace.com/tom_a_hawk) has this song listed as the “official Winterhawk’s goal song”. This is really bad news for my relationship with the Winterhawks, because I can’t stand AC/DC. I think of this music as a thing that is played by cars that have raised portions of them so that the car can suck air in or something, and cool down its engine? Anyway, AC/DC probably plays on cars like that all the time. My joy experience with the scoring of a goal can not be summed up in this way, and I found the whole thing to be distracting. As I was thinking about this and writing it down, I heard the GF portion of the BF/GF cam hams say to her BF “I don’t like how that guy is just sitting there writing things down”. He responded with a “HUH?” and then quickly turned around, stared thoughtfully at me for a moment, and then pointedly asked “ARE YOU A JOURNALIST?”. I responded with “no, not really, just on the Internet sometimes”. He assured me that I had his complete permission to use anything he said in whatever news article I was composing. This was regrettably the most interesting thing that came out of him. This level of contact with a stranger had unsettled me, and the euphoria of the goal had been replaced with the paranoid look-a-rounds of a man who has done the world wrong.

It was at this point in the evening that my mind began to wander. I love the sport of hockey, but I kind of consider it to be more of a participant’s sport than a spectator’s sport. Junior hockey doesn’t present a strong case against this line of thought either. Most of these young men are aged 15-20. Some of them were recently drafted into the NHL, and the rest of them are fostering dreams of following suit. This isn’t very conducive to a “let’s do what it takes to win this game atmosphere”, and I find that what ends up on the ice tends to skew towards a demo for scouts rather than a battle for playoff berths. The game felt like those moments in high school gym class when you have to play basketball, and some of the people that you have to play against are also on the school’s basketball team. You don’t want to play against those guys, and those guys probably aren’t that interested in playing against you. So, I wandered. I thought about the slight tinge of guilt that I felt every time I clapped for the Hawks. Their logo is the same as the Chicago Blackhawk’s logo. As a longtime Red Wings fan, it felt like sleeping with the enemy. I was able to excuse myself for cheering though, because I reasoned that this is the same sort of thing as selecting an out of state team to represent you in an EA sports game; a temporary vacation from familiar banners.

Another Winterhawks goal at 15:48 in the 1st snapped me back into the action. This one was by #18, Brad Ross. I noticed that people in the arena seemed to clap louder at Brad’s accomplishment than they had for Taylor’s, so I drew a little star next to Brad’s name. This guy was a 2nd round draft pick this year, which is cool, but he ended up going to the Toronto Maple Leafs, which is absolutely not cool. The Maple Leafs are the filth of the NHL. The Maple Leafs are the Scott Summers (Cyclops, the leader of the X-Men) of the NHL…a team dressed up in history, and with iconic color schemes…but ultimately limp and running on the fumes of an early dynasty. At this point in the game, I also noted that the Hawks were outshooting Seattle 16 to 2. That’s sort of amazing actually, and always raises the question of whether the opposing team has an excellent goalie, or if the home team is just taking crappy shots. I’m sad to say that Saturday’s game featured the latter. Portland put a lot of shots on goal, but very few of them seemed destined to go in. The intermission horn blew, ending the 1st period, and I felt no remorse.

Intermissions are leaps and bounds my favorite part of any sporting event. They are essentially a showcase of all that is delightfully horrible with humanity. It’s a 20 minute landslide of T&A, cash prizes, and superficial moments of fame. I’m not trying to say that I am opposed to any of these things by themselves, but when they all line up like this, it’s difficult for me to turn a blind eye to the futility of the laughter that the non-capacity crowd shared together that night. It began as all great intermissions begin, with a dance number from the Winterhawk’s Rose Bud dancers. I like the Rose Bud dancers, and I won’t bad mouth them here. They are sponsored by two separate tanning salons, and I think that’s pretty funny. As a team though, they seem pretty legit. After the Rose Buds were done provoking questions of “how do they dance on the ice like that without falling?” from the audience, it was time for a group of six paraplegic men to come out and show everyone that they were still able to play hockey without employing power from their legs. I guess this was supposed to be sort of a nice thing, but it was sullied for me because they played the theme to “Kids in the Hall” the entire time that these guys played hockey. This catapulted the event into sketch territory, and I was left confused as to whether I was supposed to cheer, nod approvingly, stifle uncomfortable laughter, or try to politely ignore the whole thing. I ended up just clapping, and waiting things out. I was quickly rewarded with an event that is by far my favorite moment of any Winterhawks game, the kiss cam. Here’s how much of a creep I am. I went to a junior hockey league game on a Saturday night, by myself, and my favorite part of the entire event was the six minutes that I spent watching couple kiss each other on the jumbotron. I don’t even care though, I think the kiss cam is a beautiful thing. What happens is, the camera people at the stadium find couples, and then they point their cameras at them until the couples kiss. So simple, but yet, for me, a complete affirmation of the power of love. The best kiss cam moments are when older couples show up, and they still kiss each other. It just gives me hope or something, I dunno. I think it’s nice.

I thought about the kiss cam for a while, and then the 2nd period started. I spaced out for a lot of this period, but not much really happened. I watched some kids standing up and banging on the glass for a little bit, and that kind of gave me pause. It’s not the fact that kids were banging on glass that tripped a flag with me, it’s the way that the kids went about doing it. It was clear that the patterns of their glass banging had absolutely no correlation with the action on the ice, they were just doing this to try and curry favor with the camera people; a desperate attempt to be on the jumbotron for a bit. Not cool. I spent a lot of time thinking about the ice too. I’ve always loved the smell of ice, because it reminds me of freedom. Growing up in Michigan, I played a lot of pond hockey as a young man. This was a place that my parents would not follow me. It was a place that I had to go alone, and that struck a chord with me at an early age. I was snapped out of this wistful journey by a Thunderbirds goal at 15:38 by #7, Mitch Elliot. Mitch’s Facebook page (http://facebook.com/mitchelliot) lists his favorite quotation as “wat (sic) doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”, so that’s pretty cool. Mitch got his goal because of a lazy poke check by Winterhawk goalie Keith Hamilton. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this goal spawned off a butterfly wing effect that would end up delaying my arrival back home by at least 30 minutes. The horn blew for intermission, with the game tied at 2-2.

The second intermission of the night was a rip-off intermission. The Rose Bud dance wasn’t as zippy as the first one was, and awkward moments of silence couldn’t even be filled with the question of how they were able to dance without falling, because everyone had already talked about that. The only game played during this intermission was chuck-a-puck. I’m into chuck-a-puck. For $5, you get a puck with some sort of unique identifier on it. At the appointed time, you gather around the perimeter of the play field, and then “chuck” your “puck” onto the ice, with the goal of making it land as close to the center of the stadium as possible. I liked chuck-a-puck for three reasons. 1) it was nice to watch all these red pucks arc violently onto the ice. 2) some of the support staff that was standing arrogantly around the perimeter of the rink got hit in the head by poorly thrown pucks. 3) they played “Hot Buttered Popcorn’s” smash hit “Popcorn” during the entire spectacle. I quietly hummed to myself for another 10 minutes or so, and eventually it was time to play hockey again.

The 3rd period of the night was by far the worst period. People smashed into each other a bit, but no one took enough offense to start a fight. There was some high sticking going on, but you could tell that it was the sort of high sticking that happened accidentally. I used this time to tune into the things that fans were shouting from the stands. It’s a weird thing, hearing these fans. I’d imagine that they have the best interests of the team in mind when they shout things at them, but what comes out tends to be things that aren’t very constructive. “GO!”, “SHOOT!”, “WHAT?”, “COME ON!” aren’t actionable items, and I’m not sure how the Winterhawks would respond to these things if they were forced to be made aware of each suggestion. I like the Winterhawks, so I feel bad about saying this, but I was overcome with dread at around the 17:30 mark of the 3rd period. This was simply not hockey that was exciting enough to keep me on the edge of the my seat. I was reminded of something a friend of mine, a recent owner of a second child, said to me about cleaning dirty diapers. I remarked that it was really difficult for me to clean up cat litter sometimes, because of how gross it is, but that things must be way worse for him because he’s constantly having to clean up dirty diapers. He responded with “it’s not bad really, I know that at this point in the kid’s life, everything inside of the diaper is just processed breast milk, so it’s not really that gross of a thing.” I was floored. The perception that this filthy leaving is somehow less filthy because of the “purity of its nature” was mind blowing to me. In those final minutes of the 3rd period though, I think I finally understood what he was talking about. Winterhawks hockey might not be the prettiest thing to watch, but these young men are out there playing because of their love of the game, and their yet unsoiled hopes for the future. Regulation play ended with a 2-2 tie.

Overtime was pretty boring, lots of Winterhawks shots directly into Seattle’s harsh of a goalie. Five minutes later, we were in a shootout. Seattle’s #15, Mercel Noebels (a man who lists HIMSELF among his interests on Facebook) scored the unanswered shootout goal that ended this game. I immediately rose from my seat and headed home. My life was largely the same as it was when I set out for the stadium earlier in the day.


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Round Rock Express 6 Portland Beavers 2 http://portlandsportsman.com/round-rock-express-6-portland-beavers-2/ Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:23:56 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1800 Continue reading ]]> As this report will be, if not the last, most likely second to last in Beaver coverage for the Portland Sportsman, I will be bringing back old faithful. Baseball Report, Ecstatic Truth Style, or “the one with the innings”.

Warning: Some of the names of the sections of this article may or may not have been lifted directly from the 1973 Academy Award winning, con man classic, The Sting.

Inning 1: The Players
I know what you are thinking. I’m that good. You reader are thinking, “Hey I think I know my American geography but I have no clue where the hell Round Rock is.” Well Round Rock is in central Texas about 20 miles north of Austin. The Express are the AAA affiliate of the Houston Astros and as recently as earlier this year had Astros regulars, third baseman Chris Johnson and starting catcher, Jason Castro. There aren’t any super exciting prospects left in Round Rock, but the kinda exciting ones will be covered later. Oh, this guy played for the Express earlier this year too:

Whimsical Trivia: Can you name another sports team, college or professional, whose name ends in “S” but is not a plural noun?

Inning 2: The Set-Up
Misquote of Benjamin Franklin about beer:
“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
Franklin was actually talking about wine, but the quote was co-opted by beer lovers.

Feeling like late summer in multiple ways, another verse in the swan song of the Portland Beavers was played at Thursday’s game against the Round Rock Express. This particular baseball contest was the last cheap beer baseball game of the 2010 season and therefore the last thirsty professional baseball game to be enjoyed by Portlanders for the foreseeable future.

Normally, the term bittersweet seems to me to be a bit maudlin for occasions like this. After all, it is just AAA baseball we are talking about. But bittersweet may be appropriate as Thursday night felt like a real baseball game at PGE. Sure, the beer garden was full and the douche quotient was elevated, but being one of 8,000 rather rowdy attendees watching the Beavers on Thursday did fill me with a little sadness as well as excitement.

Sadness because there should be more games like this during the year for baseball. Also, because there are only five home games for the Beavers in Portland. That means five more chances to, as one spectator called Allie remarked, “watch Kyle Phillips run the bases like he’s got something extra in his drawers.”

Inning 3: The Tale
Unlike some sports that are timed affairs, baseball’s time is governed by the 27 outs each team is given. This difference can lead to some interesting developments. Thursday night’s game provided one scenario where, especially against the 2010 Portland Beavers, the game was largely decided within the first twenty minutes after the first pitch.

It is commonly stated that certain starting pitchers have a tendency to have “one bad inning” that otherwise undermines their quality appearances. But you, the sensitive baseball observer, know that “bad innings” can come in different forms. There are four run innings that could come directly from bloop hits, bad defense, seeing eye grounders. Cesar Carrillo, starter for the Beavers, gave up four runs in the first inning of Thursday night’s game. His four runs against were not the result of these previously mentioned outcomes.

Leadoff man for the Express, and fairly interesting prospect, Jack Shuck singled on a sharp ground ball up the middle. Cesar Carrillo got the first out on a flyball to center. That was where it got interesting (euphemism) for the Portland starter. Carrillo got his second pitch up in the zone to Andrew Locke, and Locke, with much distaste, smashed a screamer onto the boardwalk above the left field wall at PGE. The subsequent batter, Brian Bogusevic got a 3-1 fastball on the inner half and straight up jacked it over the right field wall, bouncing the ball off the PGE lightbulb guy in right center (that’s far away). Carrillo gave up a RBI triple later in the inning and just like that the Beavs had a large (and in retrospect, insurmountable) deficit to overcome.

The Beavers threatened on a couple of occasions however. Held scoreless for six innings, the Beavers hit three consecutive singles to load the bases in the 7th inning. With nobody out pinch hitter, and resident slow guy, Dusty Ryan grounded into a double play, scoring a run and immediately killing a potential rally.

The Beavers loaded the bases again in the ninth but were unable to push across any runs, which otherwise would have made the game a little more interesting. With the bags full and one out, Round Rock closer, Gary Majewski struck out Sean Kazmar and Mike Baxter to end the rally and the cheap beer era for Portland.

Inning 4: The Hook
The following is an actual headline written after a recent Round Rock Express vs. Tacoma Rainiers game in Tacoma WA:

Ozzie, Express Mount Rainiers 2-1

That’s at least a triple entendre!
Well played Express press release writer, well played.

Inning 5: The Wire
Mike Baxter, right fielder and sometime 1st baseman for the Portland Beavers is having an 2nd half to remember. Ever since the AAA All-Star game in mid-July, Baxter has had Locked-in Syndrome. I don’t mean the one where you have to blink at hot French nurses to write books. In the past 35 games, Mike is slashing .389/.476/.651 for the Beavos. On Thursday, he was 2-5, but did strike out as the tying run in the ninth for the Beavers.

Side note: Radio voice of the Beavers, Tim Hagerty mentioned that Baxter was the hottest hitter in professional baseball. Mike Baxter has been impressive but I would urge Hagerty and y’all to check out Joe Mauer’s recent numbers. They’re Insane!

I won’t even make you look ‘em up
Mauer since the break:
Games: 29
Batting Average: .427
On Base Percentage: .489
Slugging Percentage: .658
Holy Crud that’s awesome!

Inning 6: The Shut-out
Let’s be honest with each other. The Beavers offense is, if not offensive, pretty anemic. The only regulars with an above average wOBA this year are Mike Baxter, Kyle Phillps and Cedric Hunter are above average. And as I discussed with a certain employee of the Beavers, Cedric Hunter is the only prospect among them.

What’s wOBA you asked? It’s a statistic that measures both on-base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage in a way that weights OBP more heavily than slugging. Because OBP is generally is more important in terms of team run scoring as opposed to slugging wOBA has been shown to be a more sensitive measure than the more commonly used OPS (on-base plus slugging).

Thursday, the Beavers were shut out for six innings by the Express pitching staff though they recorded more hits than Round Rock. For comparison however, 9 of the 10 Beaver hits were singles while the Express jacked two dongers, two doubles and a trip-piece.

Inning 7: Stretch
Chicagoan or not, this is awesome: (posted by a guy in my ridiculously nerdy fantasy baseball league):

Dandruff, Tons!

Inning 8: The Sting
As professional baseball in Portland comes to a close, at least for a while, I just wanted to take a moment for a little self-indulgence and thank Mike Merrill, other Sportsman contributors and readers for having the intestinal fortitude to read these baseball articles for the past year or so. It has been fun as all get out and I hope that it came across in the words written here.

Inning 9: Foul Balls!
Press Box Menu: Sponsored by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Pizza Party!: Cheese, Pepperoni, Fancy Sundried Tomato Spinach, Garlic Chicken
Various sweets: Brownies, Cookies.
Fruit Plate
Awesome Spinach Salad with Red Onions, Pistachios, Dried Cranberries.

Soundtrack: Partially Automobile Related!
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)- AC/DC
Life Is a Highway- Tom Cochrane
Green Onions- Booker T and the MG’s
Shake it Up- The Cars
Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car- Billy Ocean


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Portland Beavers 3, Salt Lake Bees 0 http://portlandsportsman.com/portland-beavers-3-salt-lake-bees-0/ Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:30:59 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1783 Continue reading ]]> Bill James, the Cassandra of baseball stats:

I’d probably be a writer if there was no such thing as baseball, but because there is such a thing as baseball I can’t imagine writing about anything else.

Some folks have texts that they turn to on a semi-regular basis as an spiritual edifier, provider of ecstatic literary moments, or in the case of Bill Cosby’s Fatherhood, artifact of hilarious family anecdotes. In my late teens I had the slightly embarrassing idea of reading Kerouac’s On the Road on a yearly basis before I realized that Kerouac’s style was not only blinding (use some punctuation, Jack), but the not so subtle messages in that book ran against my slightly rigid Catholic upbringing and more prominently, my rather neurotic psyche.

Later on, as I thought of myself as more sophisticated, my repeat reading attention focused mostly on the “Bandini Trilogy” by John Fante. A depression era, Italian-American writer, Fante’s “from the guts” writing style appealed to me as a sort of alt-Hemingway. Fante’s protagonist Arturo Bandini in Ask the Dust is a man of contradictions: masculine, yet vulnerable; confident yet insecure; freewheeling and guilt ridden; as tied to tradition and convention as he was eccentric.

On a recent trip to Chicago, I stopped by Myopic Books in Wicker Park. While killing time I came across a book that I realized had become my current repeat reader. I decided to finally purchase a used copy of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball. A book I read originally read around the time of its paperback release, I have frequently gone back and read, if not the entirety of the book, at least specific sections, almost compulsively. Since the purchase of the book last week, I have returned to the text and read the entirety of the book almost completely out of order.

The perfect book about sport, Moneyball combines a David v. Goliath story, an interesting partial biography of many flawed characters, a case study in sports economics and a classic “season with a team” narrative. Personally, Moneyball was more important because it was an introduction to the rational analysis of baseball. More than simply increasing my understanding of what happened on the field of play, rational analysis became a way to delve deeper into a complicated game, while also increasing my enjoyment of the game exponentially (believe me I made a graph).

All this very long introduction means is that the following article will be sprinkled with ideas from Moneyball that I will be cramming into the themes of the report of this game.

The Don Corleone of baseball analysis, Bill James.

…baseball statistics, unlike the statistics in any other area, have acquired the power of language.

Radhames Liz: Gettin’ Peripheral

One of the chapters of Moneyball is dedicated to examining what makes a successful pitcher with special consideration given to the statistical noise that a baseball game normally provides. This phenomenon is examined through the lens of weird-ass underhanded pitcher, Chad Bradford. For two years, Bradford, with little in the way of actual pitching stuff (mid-80’s fastball), was the A’s relief ace. This meant that Bradford was brought in the game when the A’s were in the most peril in terms of the outcome of the game. Bradford was awesome mostly because he did three things. He struck guys out, didn’t walk many, and induced ground balls from batters at an alarming rate (in the 60 percent range).

What some baseball nerds, namely Voros McCracken, figured out is that beside the type of batted ball (line drive, pop up, fly ball, ground ball), number of strikeouts and bases on balls, pitchers had little control over the outcome of batted balls put in play. Home runs were an exception to that batted ball rule.

The starting pitcher for Portland Monday night against Salt Lake, Radhames Liz, is sort of an anti-Bradford case study. Liz is currently sporting a rather pedestrian 4.71 ERA and 7-6 W/L record. All this while Liz has a fastball that touches 98 MPH and a pretty nasty slider that was around 87 MPH. He also does two of the three things that Bradford did to be successful, in a way even more impressively than Bradford considering Liz’s role as starter. His strikeouts per nine innings stand at 8.6 while his walks/9 innings are low, at 3 per 9 innings.

So what up? Why hasn’t Liz been more successful? Well you probably guess it, that third category of batted ball types have been biting him in the proverbial back flank. Radhames Liz can’t get ground balls. So far this season 37 percent of his batted balls have been categorized as ground balls. For a reference, the Major League average for pitchers is 43.2%. Generally balls in the air rates increase as the competition improves. So if Liz is six percent below the MLB average at AAA, one can assume that his ground ball rate would decrease further at the major league level.

The ground ball rate is important because more punitive hits (doubles, triples, HR) happen on line drives and fly balls almost exclusively. In the case of Liz, his home run numbers against are inflated at least partially due to the frequency of line drives and fly balls he gives up.

As for Monday, Liz’s results were magic as he kept the ball in the park, K’d 8 and walked only 2 in 7 and 2/3 innings and only gave up one hit, a double to Bees catcher Hank Conger, after pitching 6 and 2/3 innings of hitless baseball. Nine of his fourteen batted ball outs came in the air, so it was seemingly the same old Radhames. However, he was largely working ahead in counts which could account for some of the bad contact by the Bees.

From an aesthetic standpoint he’s easily the most fun to watch starting pitcher for the Beavers right now with electric stuff. Now, just get that ball down, Radhames!

Hank Conger and Hidden Victories

One of the main premises of Moneyball was that the Oakland A’s couldn’t necessarily afford players that looked and played like all-stars. They were forced then to look for players who did things on the baseball field that were a little harder to measure. With that said, I give you Hank Conger.

It is the nature of having a minor league team that baseball prospects come through town on a fairly regular basis. This season, Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, Chris Carter, Michael Pineda, Mark Trumbo, Peter Bourjos etc. have all been through. This week, Angels preseason number 1 prospect, Hank Conger played in Portland. MVP of the Futures Game this year, Conger is a 22 year-old, switch hitting, Korean-American catcher, who is not only talented, but shows many of the traits that make baseball nerds’ panties get all weird.

Just off the disabled list, and manning the most defensively rigorous position behind the plate, Conger (rhymes with donger), carries a .266 batting average currently for the Salt Lake Bees. Lacking many of the athletic gifts of some of the aforementioned prospects, Conger provides value in hidden ways, value that doesn’t normally get assigned to 22 year old kids. In other words, Conger has secondary skills, based around his batting approach that are valuable, regardless of batting outcome.

Currently, Conger is working base on balls at basically the same rate at which pitchers are striking him out (13% BB to 14% K). That’s really flippin’ good. He is also averaging 4.19 pitches per plate appearance. With the same average in MLB he would be 9th in all of baseball in between Franklin Gutierrez and Elvis Andrus. That’s good too. I hear you reader mumbling, “who cares how many pitches he sees when he’s up?”.

Well, first, it shows that Conger has a really good idea about what kind of pitches he can hit hard, swinging at pitches at a rate well below average (Conger 37.7% MLB average 43%). Secondly, it can generally be assumed that starting pitchers tend to be better than relievers and if a team can drive up pitch counts on starters and force relievers into the game, teams can have a better chance of winning.

Thirdly, as players advance in levels the pitching gets better, one of the best ways a player can maintain the ability to hit is by controlling the pitches at which a batter swings. Swinging at strikes instead of balls should feasibly mitigate strikeouts and bad contact (given a talented enough hitter).

Conger’s fourth plate appearance on Monday night demonstrates a microcosm of this approach. To start the plate appearance, Conger took two really close pitches from Liz. One up in the zone but away, and the second barely away and down in the zone (pretty close to unhittable). Liz came back in the zone with a belt high fastball, on the inside half, that Conger also took. On the 2-1 pitch Liz grooved a fastball in the same spot as the third pitch and Conger smoked it to straight-away center, over the head of Luis Durango for a one bounce, ground rule double, breaking up the no-hitter.

It is well known that hitting with two strikes is like batter Kryptonite, so if Conger offers and misses at either of the first two pitches he’s in a much different scenario than how it actually played out. Moral of the story is that process is just as, if not more important, than results. The manifestation of the process in the form of plate appearances such as these can be very valuable.

Game recap: Starring Dusty Clutch

Another low scoring affair took place at PGE Park Monday as both starting pitchers, Liz for Portland and Matt Palmer for Salt Lake, threw hitless ball through four innings. Remaining a tied shutout through six and after Liz’s no-no was broken up in the top of the 7th, the Beavers broke through the Bees bullpen in the bottom of the frame when with two outs, Sean Kazmar singled and stole second. Beavers catcher, Dusty Ryan doubled down the right field line scoring Kazmar and the Beavs took a 1-0 lead.

After Liz and Luis Perdomo shut down the Bees in the top of the 8th, the Beavs went back to work at the plate. Relatively new Beaver Cedric Hunter lead off with a single and was sacrificed to second base by Craig Stansberry. Stansberry reached first on the sacrifice via an error by Bees pitcher Barrett Browning. With no outs Mike Baxter and Kyle Phllips added two RBI singles to make the game 3-0 Beavers. New closer, Adam Russell then came in and pitched an uneventful ninth to get the save and nail down the Portland victory.

Foul Balls!

Press Box Menu:
Pulled Pork Sandwich w/ lettuce, tomato, cheese
Pommes frites
Cole Slaw
Blackberry Crud

Soundtrack:
Summertime: DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
The Underdog: Spoon
Monday: Wilco
Pump It Up: Elvis Costello
Breakdown: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.


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Can’t Lose for Losing http://portlandsportsman.com/cant-lose-for-losing/ Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:46:20 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1757 Continue reading ]]> On a brilliant Saturday evening last week, in front of a sold-out Merlo Field in North Portland, 5,018 strong witnessed one of the most impressive collections of soccer talent ever assembled onto a local pitch. And not only because Manchester City brought — and started — many of their top players; Portland has also been playing strong soccer of late and the hometown team showed they were up to a world-class challenge.

The timing of Manchester City’s trip to Portland, part of the English side’s “2010 USA Pre Season Tour,” couldn’t have been better. Not only is Portland gearing up for the debut of MLS in 2011, but local fans are still buzzing from the World Cup and there’s a growing sense that professional soccer has the chance to become a major force in the everyday sporting lives of Americans. You see it on the soccer complexes around the city, whether it be the thousands upon thousands of youth players that swarm around Delta park every weekend or the scores of teams criss-crossing the Pacific Northwest to attend tournaments, camps and other training vehicles. If this year’s World Cup taught us anything about the state of US soccer, it’s that we have the talent and the population to genuinely compete, and with legions of hungry young players on the cusp, it’s now just the difficulty of instilling good strategy up and down the system that keeps us from a chance at winning the whole caboodle.

Josh Berezin/Portland Sportsman

Getting back to the game at hand, I want to liken the feeling at Merlo Park to that of a graduation. And not only because the intimate (university) field is mostly comprised of simple metal bleachers that don’t offer one bad view among the five thousand (plus the sneaky few that found clever ways to watch for free: I saw a someone I know after the game who refused to shake my hand because his palms were covered in sap. He’d watched the whole game from the branches of a pine tree behind the north end); no, the graduation feeling had more to do with a palpable change: in expectation, in talent, in desire for the future. It’s like Portland is ready for the next step and we’re stuck in some senioritis of the late-stage 2010 season. (The Timbers mid-season performance as a kind of second semester dive?)

Some details to push the graduation analogy further: we had Gavin Wilkinson matching wits with Italian star manager Roberto Mancini, he of two Italian Cup championships and numerous other titles. There was our own Mamadou Danso and Co. going up against the relentless attack of Adebayor, Bellamy, and the fantastic young midfielder Adam Johnson. We had Portland favorite Ryan Pore trying to author something on the attack with his emerging strikers Bright Dike and George Josten against a strong Man City defense. And while the final line of 3 − 0 in favor of the Premier League side was telling, Portland emerged from the game proud of its team’s performance.

Postulate: Portland had zero chance of winning the game.

I think readers will agree with that statement, but let’s tease it out a little. What does that mean, exactly, to have a professional game in front of a sold-out crowd that had come to observe what was essentially a foregone conclusion? I don’t think it’s rocket science to come up with good reasons, but on the surface it’s illogical. We watch our favorite teams from the stands in the hopes that they will perform well enough to win. In the case of Timbers v. Manchester City, though, the stakes were different. We came out to watch superior players — players we generally only see on a screen — perform brilliantly in front of our very eyes. In a way, it would have been disappointing if the Timbers were to have won, if, of course, that had meant the world-class players on Man City had played below expectations. To me, the perfect score would have been something like 5 − 3 Man City, with three hard-fought goals by the Timbers (including the opening goal just to make the place go nuts), and five goals of different types for the visitors (a flying header like we saw from Adebayor, a bending strike off a free kick, a break-away goal, a long strike from just outside the box, and, for good measure, a bicycle).

As it was, we did witness a good game that could have easily turned out 5 − 3 or 6 − 2 or something in that neighborhood. Portland’s first twenty minutes, and what seemed to be their primary tactic in the first half, was to play tight man defense and feed the midfielders on the ground, who in turn unleashed long passes in the air toward Dike in the hopes that he’s break free for a one-on-one with Joe Hart. The strategy didn’t work out, but those were the most evenly matched minutes of the game, before City’s pace simply wore down the home side and lead to an increasing number of mistakes on the Timbers’ back line.

Josh Berezin/Portland Sportsman

With the first half winding down and the score still tied, rising star Adam Johnson (well worth watching during the upcoming Premier League season) took over the midfield and created two goals for his Man City teammates. The first strike came in the 43rd minute with Johnson coming up the right side and confusing the Timbers’ defense on his approach. He pushed the ball toward the net and it appeared to glance off several players, including Stephen Ireland — the official goal-scorer — on its way in. But for all the first goal’s mediocracy, goal number two made spectacular amends. A minute after their first tally Johnson raced down the same side and created enough space against his defender (Ian Joy, I believe) to loft a curving pass toward the center of the pitch and the perfectly timed flight of Emmanuel Adebayor’s forehead. Even at full speed and without the benefit of instant replay, the exchange unfolded as if in slow motion. The brand of football everyone had paid for. So there we were at the 44th minute, now fully impressed by the Timbers’ pluck and play, but happy to see the visitors stretch things out a bit and catch a rhythm. The outcome, if it had ever been, was truly unimportant.

Of course, that rhythm was not to last. As predicted, both sides completely overturned personnel and unleashed what might be considered the second teams onto the field. For the Timbers that changeover took the length of the second half, but for Man City, which had a different objective, the change was instant. According to Assistant Manager Brian Kidd, who spoke highly of Portland and the Timbers players after the game, City wanted to test out a few different strategies in order to best understand what kind of players they have entering the Premier League season. With so much new money on the books and such a deep wealth of talent, you can’t blame the guys for testing the full roster (minus the real gems that are still catching their breath from the World Cup, including Carlos Tévez and David Silva) in game play.

While the second half wasn’t quite as entertaining, aside from some very close chances for the Timbers, we were able to witness the prodigious talents of young Brazilian striker Jo. He’s had an uneven career up to now, but it seems that his eye for the goal and his physical presence should make him at least a capable goal-scorer off the bench for the Blues this coming season. It was Jo who completed the game’s final line with a strong left foot in the 68th minute, establishing space at the edge of the box and working his way left before turning on the ball and powering it past the diving Cronin.

Despite my wish that the sun would come back up from the horizon and the two teams would agree to play another full game, ninety minutes finally did elapse and the game ended for what I can only assume was a completely satisfied Merlo Park. There wasn’t a whole lot to dislike about the entire proceeding. If Friday, July 17th was a graduation, I look forward to seeing what comes next.

Josh Berezin/Portland Sportsman


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The Making of a 5-Sport Day (or: 4 sports and 1 kind-of-sport) http://portlandsportsman.com/the-making-of-a-5-sport-day-or-4-sports-and-1-kind-of-sport/ Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:55:14 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1747 Continue reading ]]> I wake up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, eat a hearty breakfast and put my game face on. Am I preparing for a bike race, in this city of cyclists? Am I getting ready to run in one of Portland’s many running events? Not exactly: I am preparing for a 5-Sport Day.

It all began one Friday in April, 2009, when I was sitting at a Hood River pub with friends, enjoying a slice of pizza and a delicious beverage. We planned to ski in the morning, and perhaps go for a road bike ride in the afternoon. I jokingly said something to the effect of, “Maybe I’ll run, too, and maybe do some yoga… (pause for dramatic effect). . . I’m going to do a 5-Sport Day!” My friends may have doubted my sincerity, but I promptly traded in my beverage for a large glass of water and began planning my 5 events. Thus, the 5-Sport Day was born.

Finding 4 sports was relatively easy: the next day, I went for a 40-minute run first thing in the morning, then my sister, husband, and I loaded up the car and headed up to Mt. Hood for some spring skiing. Upon our return, my sister, my dad, and I went on a 12-mile bike ride. By this time, my legs were getting just a bit tired (okay, exhausted). I did some yoga on the deck (sport #4) to stretch my aching muscles. Four sports down, one to go.

By now it was nearing dinnertime, and I needed a 5th sport. I quickly called my friend Kate for help. Coming to my rescue, she invited me over to the park near her house for some whiffle ball. (By now I was using the term “sport” quite loosely.) My 5th sport consisted of Kate pitching the ball and me hitting it into the field, where a group of children was eyeing us suspiciously. After about 20 minutes of this nonsense, I checked the 5th sport off the list and congratulated myself on a successful 5-Sport Day. I returned to Portland, where I caught a Blazer game on TV. (Damn, basketball would have been much more legitimate than whiffle ball! Next time…)

Since that fateful day, I have done two other 5-Sport Days, both in Portland, and have recruited friends to join me. Here’s a quick rundown.

February 2010, 5-Sport Day with Cat

  1. 7 mile run in Forest Park
  2. Yoga Sculpt class at Corepower Yoga
  3. Bike up to Mt Tabor from my house
  4. Play tennis at Mt Tabor
  5. Play Frisbee at Mt Tabor*

May 2010, 5-Sport day with Kate and Sara

  1. Flow yoga class at Corepower Yoga
  2. Bike up to Mt. Tabor
  3. Play tennis at Mt. Tabor
  4. Hike up and around Mt. Tabor
  5. Push-ups (3 sets of 10) at the top of Mt. Tabor*

Summer 2010 in Hood River, exact date and partners in crime TBD

  1. Stand-up Paddleboarding
  2. Road bike ride
  3. Run
  4. Windsurfing
  5. Yoga

*Having at least one sport with questionable “sport” status is highly encouraged.

Now that it’s finally summer, there are infinite 5-sport combinations to be discovered. Go for it, and good luck!


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Timbers Look MLS Ready but Fall in PKs http://portlandsportsman.com/timbers-look-mls-ready-but-fall-in-pks/ Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:51:38 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1712 Continue reading ]]> TIMBERS 1, SOUNDERS 1 (SOUNDERS WIN 4-3 ON PENALTY KICKS)

To the local sportsman yearning for a spot of good news, Wednesday’s US Cup matchup between the Timbers and hated rival Seattle Sounders offered several reasons for optimism. The house was packed. The privileged perch at the MAC was in full bloom. The little pocket of downtown near PGE Park hummed. And the 15,422 in attendance could be forgiven for imagining that 2011 MLS had already descended on our fair city.

The last time I covered a Timbers v Sounders match, I was new to the rivalry and so I viewed the game with, if not skepticism, at least the cool eyes of an outsider. I knew that Seattle was reviled, but I did not fathom the extreme dislike that exists between the fans of our two clubs, especially, on our grounds, from the Timbers faithful toward Seattle fans who drive down I-5 for a match. But in the days that have followed Portland’s loss-by-penalties to the Sounders, I’ve been impressed by the local fanbase’s ability and willingness to see the game as a promising bit of entertainment rather than a cause for the kind of blustery anger I was afraid would emerge.

It’s as if the fans wanted a good showing and a dose of civic pride even more than they wanted a win, and while the win didn’t come in the end, the first two desires came true.

DAY-GLOW PAJAMAS, BIZARRE COUSINS

With both their home and away jerseys too closely matching Timbers colors, Seattle resorted to their third-level kits, which make the team look like a ten-pack of fresh tennis balls bouncing around the pitch. You almost have to wonder whether these neon unis were designed with only Timbers games in mind, which in turn makes you feel special, knowing the bad guys would degrade themselves and their entire aesthetic just for you. Compliment, no, but satisfying? I think yes.

Robby Russell/Portland Sportsman

But there’s something behind the uniform similarities — a marketing problem, perhaps — that I think Portland and Seattle should be aware of. While it’s true that many great sports rivalries have an aspect of geographical proximity to them (Yankees v Red Sox, Cardinals v Cubs, Packers v Vikings), most of those examples are fortified by other, more apparent differentiators. Looks can be one; history another; and then there’s something like personality. Despite our ability in the Northwest to rattle off differences between the two cities, most of the country casually clumps us together. We’re the eco-friendly bohemian towns that drink good coffee and dress in, well, green. Some sports fans in New York, at least the ones that don’t read the NY Times food blogs, might think we’re pretty much the same city altogether, like a west coast version of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It’ll be interesting to see how these two clubs try to define themselves against each other in the MLS if and when the league gains more prominence across the country.

For now, though, I sense a bit of cousin rivalry when I attend the games. There’s a layer of pain and hatred that can only come from being family. The disdain dates back more than thirty years, which in US soccer terms is a geological age, but essentially it’s a turf war, and as with other high-passion/small-stakes competitions, claws grow sharp. The fear, though, is that the parties involved will forget that people outside the family feud might quickly lose interest.

WORTHY ADVERSARIES

Of the game itself it should be said that both teams played admirably, if not spectacularly. You can find a more granular assessment of the play-by-play elsewhere, but this embedded reporter was more focused on the general shape of play and specifically the Timbers standouts — players the team would do well to retain. Our back line excelled against the Sounders, especially the imposing Mamadou Danso, who looks even taller than his listed 6’3” and wears his #98 very well. Ian Joy, slighter but no less feisty, and the veteran Scot Thompson also played well in the back for Portland, which kept Seattle off-balance most of the night and didn’t allow the opponent to make clever plays in the center. Couple the strong defense with Bright Dike’s increasingly persuasive attacking style and you have the skeleton of a contending MLS side.

Robby Russell/Portland Sportsman

It’s impossible to say whether Seattle would have performed better had they played all of their starters instead of rolling out a mostly reserve team, but their on-field product left a lot to be desired. In fact, Portland outplayed Seattle for most of the game: better passing, better ball control in the center of the pitch, better thinking on the counter attack. And while Sounders net minder Kasey Keller has a more impressive pedigree than our own Steve Cronin, having served his national team in four World Cups and recorded what was by all accounts a stellar clean sheet against Brazil some twelve years ago, he’s grown long in the tooth. He looked slow on Dike’s goal in the 38th minute, and for much of the game he lumbered around his box like an aging giant.

GOD BLESS THE MAN WHO GETS BACK UP

In Portland, Oregon, 2010 might be remembered as the year international soccer in general and pride for the USA national team specifically made the leap into mass appeal. A common story of this Cup: I waited in line at 6:30am on a Wednesday morning to enter a local bar and watch the USA match up against Algeria, and by the time Landon Donovan scored the winning goal in the 91st minute to put our side into the knockout round, the place was absolutely packed, rocking, dizzy, and not just with card-carrying members of local soccer leagues. We’re talking shirtless, fraternity-tinted bros who’d probably spent the previous night bouncing coins into beer-filled Solo cups and bobbing their heads along to the sweet sounds of the Black Eyed Peas. Same guys who yelled things like: “Fuck no he wasn’t offside” before whispering to next dude over, “What’s the rule on offsides again?”

Robby Russell/Portland Sportsman

These are the same people used to seeing NHL players skate back onto the ice with sutures holding their gums together or gridiron football players getting smashed full speed, helmet to sternum, only to bounce right up and spike the ball smiling. And let’s face it — we need these dudes to care about the sport if only to ensure that professional soccer continues to grow Stateside and secure the kind of funds required to attract talent. So I’d have to think the repeated image of World Cup players crumbing to the grass after minor contact or (now infamously) covering one’s face in agony after having been hit in the chest, isn’t going to sit well with American audiences over time. (And yes, the fantastic camera work has frequently exposed close-up footage of painful contact that might have have seemed like kid stuff from distance, but still. So much flopping.)

Watching this sport you want to love and these players you want to respect flop around is uncomfortable, like watching a beautiful woman spit out a bit of food during a dinner conversation. You want to pretend it never happened.

But I think US soccer dodged an even bigger bullet during this tournament when Donovan scored the winner against Algeria to advance our side. If the Americans hadn’t won that game, the argument for keeping soccer a second-class sport over here would have added a significant piece of evidence in the form of Dempsy’s unfair offside call. Just imagine, the most talented team in USA history being forbidden the opportunity to advance by a series of unfathomable calls: first the shocker in Slovenia that nullified Maurice Edu’s goal, and then the Dempsy affair. It would have set us back eight years if not more. With so many other sports offerings in this country, why would the fringe fans continue to care about a tournament whose refereeing vacillations can ruin in one second what has taken four years to construct? It’s infuriating, especially with the growing prominence of video-aided replay in other leagues and for other sports (which is topic for another conversation altogether). I’m just saying: good thing the US was ousted during a fair match rather than being unjustly turned away again, as was the case in 2006 and, worst of all, 2002.

RESULT

Winning by penalty kicks is about as pedestrian a result as you can imagine. Yes, the winner advances, but the victory feels divorced from the game itself. And the loser can only console himself by saying, “Them’s the rules.” (It’s not my intention to dissect the different ways to end tournament soccer matches, but in short relying on penalty kicks to decide the outcome seems just a hair better than drawing lots or shooting free throws.)

Robby Russell/Portland Sportsman

But the old ogre Keller stopped two of Portland’s tries, and in the end his teammates managed to net four of their five chances for the victory. The Sounders live to play another day in the 2010 US Cup, taking on the Galaxy and their returning hero Mr Donovan. It would have been nice to welcome the country’s current soccer hero into town, but so it goes. We had our chances, we played a solid game, and, as they say, them’s the rules.

CLOSING NOTE: CAUCASIAN WAVES OF CONCERN

I have to add a note here at the end, if only to start some conversation about something that bothers me about gameday at PGE. In the course of some Timbers fight songs, notably “When I Root I Root for the Timbers,” fans throw both arms out in front of them like they’re trying to shoot lightning bolts from their palms or signal an oncoming vehicle to stop. But from a slightly removed vantage point, say, from behind the throng, the gesture looks considerably more menacing. Especially when you notice that over 90% of the arms in question are white. Am I the only person made uncomfortable by this uniform, militaristic outpouring? The math is pretty simple: many people at once, elbows straight, hands forward, palms open. I realize there are only so many ways a human can hold his arm while cheering, but historical context is important here, especially in soccer where racism has been mixed up in fandom for as long as the sport has existed. I guess this is more of a question than anything, since the persistence of said cheer makes me feel like I’m the only person who gets the willies when those familiar drums start up and the arms fly out. So what’s the verdict? Has this question come up before the Capos before, only to be disregarded or explained successfully away?

Robby Russell/Portland Sportsman


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Not Half Bad, But Not Enough: Portland falls to Minnesota at Home http://portlandsportsman.com/not-half-bad-but-not-enough-portland-falls-to-minnesota-at-home/ Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:57:05 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1741 Continue reading ]]> The Portland Timbers once again failed to find a victory this past Thursday night against the NSC Minnesota Stars, unable to recover from an early goal despite 60 minutes of continuous pressure.

From the first kick, Minnesota made it clear that they wanted to win, out-working the Timbers, pushing the tempo against a confused defense and dominating control of the midfield with a strong presence and sharp passing. It only took 20 minutes for them to finally break through, with Ely Allen skillfully controlling and a 40 yard cross with his chest and burying the ball into the back of the Portland Timbers’ net.

Following the Minnesota goal, the Timbers began to possess the ball better and control the attacking half, creating chances and putting some shots on goal. Just as the visiting side’s energy and passing really began to deteriorate, the ref blew the whistle indicating the end of the half. Portland 0, NSC Minnesota Stars 1.

The second half saw an additional boost of energy from the Portland Timbers team, sparked by the hustle of midfielder Tony McManus, who came on after the break. This energy was threatened in the 52nd minute when Portland midfielder James Marcelin was sent off after committing a foul inside the Timbers’ penalty area, awarding the Stars a penalty kick. However, Timbers Goalkeeper Steve Cronin came through with a massive save on Melvin Tarley’s attempt, and kept Portland’s chances alive.

Cronin’s save fanned the flame of the Portland attack, who, despite having one less player, mounted barrage after barrage against a tiring Minnesota defense for the remainder of the game. If it wasn’t for some fine goalkeeping from Minnesota’s Joe Warren, the Timbers would have easily found the net once, if not twice, with several reasonable chances falling at the feet of Portland’s offense. Despite the effort, when the referee blew his whistle for full time the scoreline read 0-1, and the Timbers had failed to win again.

All things considered, Portland didn’t play half bad. I would even go as far as to say that they played well… for 70 minutes, at least. However, the dreadful start against a feisty and motivated Minnesota side allowed just enough room for them to find the net and go home with three points.

With this loss, Portland Timbers remain in second to last place with 13 points in 12 games.


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Crest? We Don’t Need New Stinking Crest! http://portlandsportsman.com/crest-we-dont-need-no-stinking-crest/ Fri, 18 Jun 2010 23:04:46 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1686 Continue reading ]]> While many of us are enjoying what the Onion hilariously reconsidered as a series of Vuvuzula Concerts being disrupted by international soccer events, Portland began its run in a lesser-known but well loved tournament of its own, the venerable U.S. Open Cup. The Timbers’ Cup (not the one in South Africa) experience began against a team made up of what appeared to be extras from Baywatch with a few northern California booze hounds tossed in for good measure. Yes, I’m looking at you, #14, with your shorts that stayed in the dryer too long and your skin pink with blood exhaustion a minute after the opening touch.

The opponent: Sonoma County Sol [1]. The objective: live to see round two. The result: a convincing Portland victory that wasn’t certain until 58 minutes into the match.

So we were playing a bunch of high school buddies from NoCal in a single-elimination tourney on our home turf. Everyone in the sparse crowd [2] expected a win, and what with Portland’s recent, drastic standings dive, the fans were dying for a genuine romp. When you’re feeling shitty about yourself you go out and fuck with someone on an even worse streak. It’s what human animals do.

Except it took the Timbers 58 minutes to score. That’s right. A full half and a dozen or so minutes into the next before Suzuki and Co figured out how to unlock (a term I’m stealing from the amazing World Cup commentators) the Sol defense.

(OK. There were no photographs taken of this game, and I’d like for people to read to the end, so I’m having to cut out a lot of my regular bullshit and tangent. That probably makes you happy, doesn’t it? Well, so be it. I’ve added some footnotes at the bottom to flesh out the finer points, but in general let’s soldier on here. Nothing but the facts. For now, please enjoy the cheesy-as-fuck unveiling video that I hope came free from RARE Design, the company that created Portland’s new crest and a wealth of other inane professional and semi-professional insignia.) [3]

Timbers New Crest

So don’t get me wrong. The Timbers were never going to lose this game. Never. Sol just weren’t going to score, not against Portland’s back line, which looked like stone pillars against Sonoma County’s fleeting attack, stepping solidly into every run and flicking away even their most skilled passes. So the outcome wasn’t the question. But until Doug DeMartin was able to work to the Sol touch line and thread a beautiful pass across the mouth of the goal for a streaking Nimo [4] to bury in the netting, it wasn’t clear how long Portland would take to get a scoring chance to succeed.

Once the Timbers broke the ice, so to speak, they continued to pile on. Suzuki, who played the entire game and used his still-considerable quickness and grit to frustrate the overmatched Sol defenders, made the game 2-0 some thirty minutes later, and James Marcelin sealed it right just before the final whistle with a solid finish to what was essentially Rodrigo Lopez’s goal (beautiful pass, hard to miss).

Fun stat that brings home Portland’s dominance: Shots — Portland 18, Sonoma County 2. Yes, a 9:1 ratio. The game could have easily ended up 7-0.

There was plenty more to discuss (a reporter I’d never met before who smelled of dryer sheets and didn’t utter a word the whole game; the failure of PGE’s wireless; the pancake fries which were so strange, just little strings of dough that should have had something else inside but did not; the opening rainbow rooted firmly in section 107; and more and more), but let’s bring this thing to a merciful end. Let’s talk about the U.S. Cup.

2010 is the last year Portland will have to slog through the first two rounds of minor-minor league action, since MLS teams enter in the third round like some army of men gathered by Gandalf to make their triumphant entry whenever they damn please. It works like this: 32 teams start the single-elimination tournament, grouped regionally. Hence Portland’s slot against the kids from Cali. The first game involves some pro team like the Timbers with a team going on the ride of its collective life. The field shrinks to 16 following that game, which again tries to be at least semi-regional. Then the trick: when the sixteen are halved again, a set of 8 MLS teams refattens the bunch and we’ve got a full 16 again. Then as you’d expect: 8, 4, 2, 1. Champs.

And so we’re alive and well in the Cup, and hopefully it’ll bring Seattle down here for another good old fashioned vitriol fest. I know I’ll be there.

[1] All in all, the Sol players seemed quite nice, and they were elated to play in front of the small but boisterous crowd at PGE. I’m guessing the Cup game will be the biggest many of them play in their lives. my evidence being their profiles on the official site, the fact that they still list their high school teams on their profiles, their incredibly homogeneous hometowns (Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa, Davis, and Santa Rosa, ad nauseum). At the end of the match, after Portland had cemented the victory and emerged as the clearly stronger team, the visitors walked past the Timber’s Army faithful and clapped up in appreciation. They were having a moment. The TA clapped back and said kind things in return, such as, “Get your shitty loser ass off my pitch” and “Go home, fucktards.” I nearly wept at the outpouring of emotion.

[2] The game was announced some two weeks ago, previously unknown and unmarketed to fans. The result, partly due to even more shitty June weather, was the thinnest attendance I’ve seen in a few seasons. Even the normally packed TA sections — which usually spill some three aisles in either direction — were condensed into three health clumps total.

[3] To his credit, Merritt Paulson, after getting railed at the unveiling and apparently shouting at a fan to “Stick his minor league crest up his minor league ass,” or something to that effect, met cordially with Timbers fans at the game on Tuesday and talked them down off the ledge. Because seriously. It’s ugly, it’s cheesy, but it’s not the end of the world. There’s a fucking hole in the ocean, right? Bad design isn’t worth flipping on that high stress cancer switch that we all know lives somewhere deep down dark inside ourselves just waiting for that bad juice to hit red line.

[4] Nimo. You should have seen him holding that slice of the log. The thing was larger than his torso. Little, lightning Nimo.


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Cirque du Cycling 2010 http://portlandsportsman.com/cirque-du-cycling-2010/ Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:54:48 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1673 Continue reading ]]> In the spirit of Portland’s funky Pedalpalooza, which features a slew of zany bike rides/parades/parties, it makes sense to hold one of the biggest tight-pants-parades on the Oregon Bicycle Racing calendar. The Cirque du Cycling’s first outing was in 2008 and the race has become one of the few chances for Portlanders to experience bike racing in the city. Plus the weather is always nice and there are a ton of great places to get a beer and hang out while a hundred or so races turn themselves inside out on the street next to you.

A few days before the race, Portland Sportsman’s Mike Merrill asked if I would be interested in both covering the race and competing myself. I said yes to the writing part and no to the racing part. It wasn’t because the Cirque doesn’t offer a women’s field – I jumped in the men’s category 3/4 race back in 2008 along with only one other woman – but more the fact that I was looking forward to camping out at Por Que No and sampling their margaritas while watching the races. Armed with some friends who were as dedicated to the margarita sampling as myself, I spent Saturday evening doing all the hard work that bike racing reporting requires in addition to margarita drinking: taking pictures of the back tires of racers as they flew by, squinting into the sun and trying to pick out who was who and cheering for people I thought I knew, only to find out they weren’t actually in the race. No one said this would be easy.

Stephanie Chase/Portland Sportsman

People often ask me if discerning who’s where and what in a peloton is difficult. This is about the same as me asking a hockey announcer if they have a hard time figuring out where the puck is or asking as a baseball announcer how they manage to not fall asleep during games. You just get a knack for looking at body shape, uniforms and posturing, and somehow it’s all interesting and not the least bit pervy. For the previous two outings, Steven Beardsley of the fantastically-named Gentle Lovers squad had won the Pro 1/2 race along with teammate Pete Groblewski serving as the runner-up both times. Last year Beardsley had quite a run-up to his win at Cirque du Cycling with that victory coming in the midst of a two week win rampage. Beardsley had entered a race almost every other day and won almost all of them. But that was 2009 and this year the Rubicon-ORBEA benefiting the Lance Armstrong Foundation was certain to put up a strong showing along with other teams such as HP Chiro, Guinness and some other characters.

The men’s category 3 race kicked off at 5 pm and soon after I settled at a table armed with a notebook (for penning profound insights and witty captions about the race), a camera (for the aforementioned back wheel pictures), my Blackberry (for making sure I was able to connect to Facebook and see what people were posting after their race) and a pomegranate margarita. By the start of the Pro 1/2 race I had drank one margarita, taken no pictures and written one incomplete sentence. But I blame my less than desirable recording of the race not on the drinks but on the fact that Por Que No is situated right at one of the more interesting parts of the race course. The Mississippi circuit is like a elongated figure eight with eight forty-five degree turns and two long straightaways. The turns serve to start fracturing the group; take a bad line, get stuck towards the back of the peloton, etc., and you’ll be playing catch-up as the front of the race heads out of the turn and begins accelerating on the straightaways. It’s like a game of “crack the whip” with your heart rate above threshold. But while the turns might start to break things up, it was the three-block long straightaways that solidified any moves. With Por Que No situated right at the start of the the straightaways, we watched racers launch attacks down the street and the tried to cheer the stragglers at the back to catch up and get back onto the group. Most of these cheers were directive, as in “the front of the race is up there! (insert enthusiastic gesticulating with drink in hand) Get up there!” I am sure it was well appreciated because by the next lap a good portion of those racers had taken our advice and moved more towards the front, where it’s safer and you can actually contest anything that goes off.

Of course the corners and the technical nature of the course mean things can go very wrong very quickly. The Pro 1/2 field lived through a couple of crashes that also sifted out the field but hopefully didn’t injure anyone too badly. Over halfway through the race with a four-man breakaway successfully away and their teammates content to not let any chasing happen, the leaders relaxed enough to enjoy the shenanigans of the spectators. Imagine the skill it takes to successful smack a row of bare bottoms while riding your bike around 30 mph. Impressive, to say the least!

Mike Merrill/Portland Sportsman

With less than ten minutes to go, it was apparent that Beardsley’s third title was out of reach. His teammate Sam Nicoletti (the 2009 Oregon criterium champion) was in the break along with Rubicon-Orbea’s Quinn Keogh, HP Chiro’s Donald Reeb and Team Exergey’s Austin Arguello, meaning that all their teammates (making up a large portion of the remaining racers) were not going let anyone try to bridge up or chase the leaders down. Now it was coming down to a waiting game. Start the sprint prematurely, and much like anything else that you might preface with the word “premature,” you’ll end up disappointed and wheezing. Wait too long and the playing field gets a little more level raising your chances of missing out on a good finish. Nicoletti started things off with Arguello tucked in behind him but the OBRA champ hadn’t put enough distance between himself and his competitors to make it a sure thing. But no one ever said VO2 max was a place of rational and calm analyzing. Nicoletti threw his hands up at the finish only to realize Keough had thrown this bike (not literally, but throwing one’s bike consists of pushing bike forward to garner any extra inches on the line), and beaten him. It was a close call. Keogh, Nicoletti and Arguello were 2010 Cirque du Cycling podium with Reeb in fourth.


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Sacramento River Cats 5, Portland Beavers 3 http://portlandsportsman.com/sacramento-river-cats-5-portland-beavers-3/ Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:19:07 +0000 http://portlandsportsman.com/?p=1649 Continue reading ]]> Inning 1: Weathertude!

So it turns out that there might be baseball life in Portland after all. Summer flashed its brightest smile of the year on Saturday and Portlanders responded with its best crowd that I have seen all year at PGE Park. Evidently Portland residents prefer their baseball without 77 inches of rain and temperatures in the 40′s Fahrenheit and it showed with an announced attendance of 3532. Who woulda thunk? Crystal blue skies were predominant Saturday with temps in the 70s at first pitch. It felt like freakin’ baseball weather! And although seats around PGE remained half empty not including the tarped off upper sections of General Admission, the atmosphere was more alive and optimistic than it had been all spring.

Dan Lurie/Portland Sportsman

Dan Lurie/Portland Sportsman

Inning 2: John Halama v. Anthony Bass

Starting pitching can be one of the more influential factors in regard to whether a baseball game viewing experience is extremely enjoyable or not. Former Sportsman contributor Carson Cistulli has sought to quantify this phenomenon over at Fangraphs. There is an idiom that comes close to describing Saturday’s matchup. It could be said that these two left something to be desired in terms an interesting starting pitching matchup, only that they left everything to be desired. I am no closer to being a Buddhist because of Saturday’s starting pitchers.

Inning 3: River Cats More Like River Mastodons: They Grow ‘Em Big In Cowtown.

Dan Lurie/Portland Sportsman

It has been noted during the course of the season that the Portland Beavers are a fairly diminutive team, especially compared with other modern baseball teams. The Sacramento Rail Cats have no such Napoleonic tendencies. The two most interesting players on the team are two of the Oakland Athletics’ top prospects Michael Taylor and Chris Carter. First baseman Carter checks in at a 6’5” and weighs 230 pounds, American, while Taylor plays right field at a Kyle Blanksian 6’6” and 260 lbs. For some perspective, the largest rostered Beaver is Dusty Ryan who is 6’4” and 220 pounds. The Rail Cats have other giant men on the roster too. Dallas McPherson, Anthony Recker “Damn near killed her” and pitcher Henry Rodriguez aren’t missin’ any meals either.

Inning 4: Game Report

Although the pitching matchup didn’t give the fans goose pimples, John Halama, 38 year-old former post-season rotation man for the Seattle Mariners, took the mound for the Sacramento River Cats on Saturday facing a spot starter for the Beavers 23 year-old A-ball call up Anthony Bass. Halama definitely got the better of the Beavers pitching 7 2/3 innings including 3 1/3 innings of no hit ball which came to an end with Beavers first baseman Mike Baxter’s jack over the right field wall with one out in the fourth.

Bass faired worse, struggling with the base on balls (3 in 5 1/3 innings) and gave up a absolute screaming line drive home run to Michael Taylor in the sixth. The ball left the yard really flippin’ fast, and the crowd didn’t see the peak elevation of the ball as it caromed off the boardwalk behind the two rows of left field seats and onto SW 18th Avenue. It was the kind of batted ball that elicited visceral vocal reactions even from cynical press box contingent. It’s fairly safe to say that PGE park hasn’t seen a ball treated that badly in a long time.

Dan Lurie/Portland Sportsman

The Beavers were kept in the game by Aaron Poreda. Centerpiece in the Jake Peavy trade from the San Diego Padres to the Chicago White Sox, Poreda has struggle with the control, walking a batter per inning in AA San Antone so far this year. On this Saturday night he came in, the Beavers down 5-1 and retired 7 batters allowing no hits and striking out 4. Still young at 23 years, with some upside, if Poreda can control those bases on balls, he could be a pitcher to have fun watching this season.

The hometown team mounted a semi-interesting charge late in the game and had a chance with the tying run making it to the plate in the bottom of the ninth. In the ninth, the Sacramento River Cats went to the bullpen and to Everth Cabrera-Lance “The Hobbit” Zawadzki dance continues. Cabrera, the San Diego Padres shortstop went back to the Disabled List since the last Beavers write-up and it was Zawadzki that again benefitted with the call up. He’s still not playing a ton, basically acting as the Padres’ utility man. He’s showing good plate discipline but just not hitting that much, slashing .207/.281/.276. Those numbers aren’t going to keep him in the MLB but he’s young and not getting regular time, so there’s that.

In other promotion news, Beaver left-fielder Aaron Cunningham got a call up this week as old-guy, designated pinch-hitter Matt Stairs went to the disabled list. It seems as though General Manager Jed Hoyer is doing the right thing using his AAA roster as extra depth and by filling it with fringe Major Leaguers who are in their prime. As a result,the Pads have been able to play well despite injuries to key regulars.

Inning 6: A love Letter to Newly Minted Major Leaguer, Texas Ranger Reliever, Alexi Ogando!

(For a primer on Ogando read here.) The following is evidently a love letter found before the game on Saturday suspiciously written about a pitcher who last pitched in Portland when the Sportsman covered the Beavers. Strange innit?

Dear Alexi,

Ever since I saw you pitch for the Oklahoma City Redhawks against Portland I’ve been crushing on you really hard. I’ve just been wanting to see the downward, heavy action on that 96 MPH fastball again as soon as possible. And as Kylie Minogue once sang, “I just can’t get you outta my head, boy your strikeout per 9 innings’s all I think about.” (12.6 K/9 in 2010) I can’t wait to see you refine that crazy slow slide piece, and get Major League Batters’ panties in a confounded bunch. Though we may never see each other in person again because of your promotion, know that you will always have a devoted follower in Portland. And if it doesn’t happen to work out in the bigs (I know, impossible), maybe we’ll meet again, for the first time in a Pacific Coast League stadium somewhere in this great land that you were kept out of for so long.

Yours,
Anonymous

Inning 7: Stretch

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce my photographer and partner in crime for Saturday night’s game. His name is Dan Lurie. He’s a Minnesota Twins fan and is the frontman for the band with the best baseball-related name ever, The Grapefruit League. Below is a link to a video to their instrumental jam, Unicorn Motel. Enjoy the pictures and music people!

Rock & Roll Music

Dan Lurie/Portland Sportsman

Inning 8: Codger Talk

So the press box welcomed an atypical guest Saturday evening as there was an injured Pacific Coast League Umpire taking in the game. He had recently suffered a head injury and forced to sit out for a bit. For a while during the game he had a companion in the press “box” who is on the Beaver payroll to apparently be the “Old Storytelling Guy” of the organization. Topics of discussion will be listed below in this weeks edition of…

CODGER TALK!

  • Detroit Tigers Manager Jim Leyland- Codgers love talking about other Codgers.
  • MLB Umpire Jim Joyce and Armando Galarraga‘s near perfect game- Codgers love beating a dead horse.
  • Sciatica: Does this require explanation?
  • Neck Steroids: see Sciatica
  • The Good Old Days

Inning 9: Foul Balls!

Press Box Menu (East Indian Edition?)

  • Non-Descript Chicken Dish in the Masala Style
  • White Rice
  • Hush Puppies (Samosa substitute?)
  • Green Salad
  • Already Eaten Fruit Plate
  • Coffee/Hot Chocolate (finally not necessary)

Soundtrack:

  • Pre-Ceremonial 1st Pitch: We Want the Funk – Parliament Funkadelic
  • River Cats introduction: Green Onions – Booker T & The MG’s
  • Top Second Music: The Right Stuff – New Kids on the Block
  • Middle Third: I Want You Back – Jackson 5
  • Chris Stewart batting music: Jesus Walks (as a back up catcher at AAA, he’s gonna need Jesus to make it to MLB)
  • Middle Fourth: Humps – Fergie
  • Top 5: She’s Crafty – Beastie Boys
  • Top 6: Your Love – The Outfield (Second best baseball related band name ever. Number 1 previously mentioned)
  • 7th Inning Stretch: Take Me Out to the Ballgame- sung by Rich Burk. June 12th rendition included Burk pegging an innocent fan directly in the back of the head with a bag of peanuts. Considering the fan’s douchey faux hawk, the pegging was most probably deserved.
  • Craig Cooper Intro Music: The Ditty – Paperboy

More photos from Dan Lurie:


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