Hockey...?

Date: 4/14/2010
Watching: San Jose V. Col, Game 1, Round 1:
So I'm watching the Stanley Cup playoffs, because it occurred to me: all I have to do is start following hockey, and I could totally be the fan of a winning team. I'm totally covered by sports fan rules, because I've never really followed hockey, or been the fan of a particular team, AND I just moved to the home town of said team. It's not bandwagon jumping. And I know all the Sharks fans are like, "whatever, they're going down in the first round anyway," (that is a direct quote from multiple sources). But still, just to be the fan of a team that was a contender! Like, and taken seriously by other teams in the league! Do you know how long it's been since that happened to me? TWENTY YEARS! (Specifically, since the 1990 World Series).

So, anyway, it's a commercial break, and naturally they run an A's spot, and I love that their advertising slogan is "Green Collar Baseball." I'm like, oh, I recognize this campaign. This is the "our team kind of sucks this year, so come out and see some likeable, hard-working kids give it their best shot out there. They might even win the day you're there! Who can say?" The A's are really the American League Reds. They haven't been that good since the early 90's, though they've each had brief flirtations with relevance. Any decent players they develop (and the A's have had a few more than the Reds) will move on to a bigger market team. They're not great, and never will be, what else is there to sell? But then, baseball can get away with it. The beauty of baseball is the fact that the season has a million games in it. So any particular game, you hope they win, but if they don't, you know, you can live with it. And maybe your guy hit a home run, or had a good start before the bullpen blew it. Their motto should be "come to the ballpark, and at least you won't be miserable." Which is why ESPN hasn't been good for it. ESPN needs to hype up everything, that's its whole business model (though you have to admire their tone control, they do keep a clear separation between their "news" shows and their "opinion" shows, thus making the hyping in the news shows that much more insidious). But baseball pre-dates hype, and doesn't really benefit from it.

It's hard to get into hockey, though. It's like basketball, if teams only made 2 or 3 shots a game.