Tag: Sports, Games and Competitions

One More Day Closer to Deadwood


New Englanders in Iraq bowling candlepin

I am taking a week off this spring. There is a Boston wedding to attend which will be fun but that is at the end of the week. First, we are off to the Gulf of Maine coast in search of friends and family and a good amount of candlepin bowling. Ontario teases you with five pin as well as Freddie Flintson big ball ten pin but I grew up with candlepin – played only in Atlantic Canada and New England. Whatever I play, I score pins in my head one point at a time like candlepin – like I measure distance in feet rather than metric. It is fair and equitable every pin being meaningful. I do not, however, throw a ball like the Friday night Brookfield Elks softball pitchers of my 1980-ish teens at the Beazley Lanes near little T.O.’s Fletchers Restaurant and the old Crappy Tire. They might as well have been throwing fastball, ball bouncing once on the wood before hitting the pins well off the floor. Pins in the gutter and, half the time, into the next lane. You can’t do that with Freddy Flinston big ball. First time I played Freddieball with Jim from Newfie after passing the bar we hit strike after strike. Like shooting fish in a bucket. You also leave the pins where they fall, leaving you to deal with them through the second and third balls. No sweeping machine delay. You can hit the deadwood among half the others still standing and miss them all, guided by those down to the gutter. Cruel mistress the deadwood. Gotta learn to play the deadwood.

The game dates from the 1880s, when a shipment of narrow pins – later widened to two inches wide – gave a guy an idea. You can find an inordinately detailed history here…and another here. I recall hearing that Howie Meeker brought it to Newfoundland after he left the Maple Leafs and before he was Don Cherry before Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada. In 2003, CBC radio’s Inside Track ran an 11:30 minute piece on the sport. [Click the link and a .ram or RealAudio file will trigger.]

Funtime Lanes in Holyoke, near our Sunday night stop, has 20 candlepin lanes…maybe the most westerly in North America. Smokefree and bumper bowling for the weejins. Practice.

Boston Wins

It has taken a few creeky starts but Boston beat the Yankees last night. Apparently the great Mariano Riviera had an off night (again) against the Sox as is explained from this example of the wonder that is the baseball writing in The New York Times:

It was the first time Rivera walked three in one game since Aug. 23, 1997, his first season as a closer. But he said he was more discouraged by Tuesday’s blown save, when Jason Varitek homered off a pitch that missed its spot. That was a mistake, Rivera said. Yesterday, he suggested, he was beaten more by the circumstances. “The result wasn’t what I wanted, but I was happy with the pitches,” Rivera said. “I feel comfortable with the selection I made. It just didn’t happen.” For Rivera, though, it keeps happening against the Red Sox. He has blown six of his last nine save opportunities against Boston, starting with Mueller’s game-ending homer last July 24 and including the playoffs. Since the start of the 2001 season, 43 percent of Rivera’s blown saves in the regular season (12 of 28) have come against Boston.

Yea! That is a great stat. For all the money and all the skill, one key to the Yankees just gets a little off his game for the Sox. It is amazing that the two teams played each other 56 times over the last two seasons and have already added three more so far this year. Over all those games they are just about tied. You know, I think I could follow soccer fairly well if it was on the TV but I only had the standings. I do not know how I would follow baseball without the great reporting on it.

In other sporting news, the mighty Morton has been slowly ceeping up on Stranraer for the second promotion spot in Scottish Division Two fitba, now lying only 4 back with five games to go including one against them and the rest against weak teams…

Pos’n Team Games Goal Diff Points
1 Brechin
31
37
64
2 Stranraer
31
9
57
3 Morton
31
19
53
4 Stirling
31
0
45

Fingers are very much crossed and hopes are high for another big finish to the season.

Cricket Update!!!

The BBC wrote:

…the report relates specifically to the bowler’s action when delivering the doosra…

The words I read ran down my spine as if someone had walked on my grave.

Under the ICC’s bowling review process, Harbhajan, who was also reported and cleared in 1998, will undergo analysis of his action by human movement specialists within 21 days. A bio-mechanical review of his action should reveal whether his action falls within the 15 degrees of permitted elbow straightening.

Good God!!! Don’t they know there are twenty points riding on this in the pool!?!?. If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times: STRAIGHTEN YOUR DOOSRA, HARBHAJAN!!!

2005 Hockey Sports Pool

OK – I couldn’t get up any interest for an all-hockey pool either. So we are going to go with a mixed sports pool this year. Have your picks in by Friday 18 March 2005 at 5 pm EST – that is this week.

The Rules

A. US College Basketball – CBS Sports should provide all you need.

1. Name the final four teams in the mens NCAA championship. 5 points for each correct pick.
2. Ten points for the NCAA mens basketball champion.

B. Hockey – check TSN.ca for helpful household hints.

3. Name the winner of the Memorial Cup, Canada’s Jr A Men’s hockey championship. 10 points.
4. Pick four scorers in the Memorial Cup. One point for each goal or assist.
5. Pick the winner of the AHL’s Calder Cup. Ten points.

C. Fitba – try BBC Sports for information.

6. Pick the two teams in the English FA Cup Final. Five points each.
7. Pick the winner of the FA Cup. 10 points.
8. Pick the winner of the Scottish Premier League – not a Cup, #1 in the league table. [Ed.: Hint – it will likely rhyme with “Brangers” or “Beltic”.] Ten points.

D. Baseball –
Try the home web sites for Boston and the Yankees.

9. Who wins when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 11 April 2005? Ten points.
10. Who wins when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 13 April 2005? Ten points.
11. Who starts as pitcher for each team when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 14 April 2005? Ten points for each correct pick.

Comments? Other questions – other than my weight – you are interested in?

Hockey Pool 2005

Given the collapse of NHL/NHLPA talks on uncancelling the cancelled season this afternoon, we have to move on. We have to show the NHL that we don’t need their stinking hockey and show that we know our own hockey. Since 1997 when it began on a Kings College ’80’s alumni Idle Crows email loop, I have operated [with the help of computer wizards more wizardly than I am] an internet NHL playoffs hockey pool in the spring and by jumbo I am going to do a pool of some sort again this year. But what rules? I think we have to pick the winners of the Memorial Cup, the World Hockey Championship, Swiss League, Swedish league, the NCAA tourney…that sort of thing. As these competitions would exist otherwise, this is not a scab picket-crossing sort of pool but it will take a bit of research and edjification so any ideas?