The Afternoon After: Paint it black

As evidenced by my relative lack of activity here, November didn’t turn out to be as placid as I would have liked. I make my living in baseball, and it seems to never really shut down at this point between awards, transactions and the new CBA being announced. In addition, my fiancée has moved into my apartment, so a lot of my time has been spent making sure this place is inhabitable for someone other than me. I’d characterize all of this as the good kind of busy.

Scene of the crimes

After Thanksgiving dinner, my fiancée dozed off at around 10 p.m. while I watched episodes of The Walking Dead – pretty standard.

Amazingly, she still insists she intends to marry me after I woke her up at 11:30 to drag her to Wal-Mart.

Continue Reading

The Afternoon After: Just a phase?

Here are my usual layman’s thoughts on football. As always, I’ll offer the disclaimer that I’m hardly an authority on the sport.

All wet

I went with some friends to a New York City barbecue joint on Sunday to watch the Dolphins-Jets game. When the final seconds ticked off the clock, I high-fived and celebrated with two fellow Dolphins fans, because even though the game was one of the worst in recorded history and our team’s probably not going anywhere, you’d still rather see your team win than lose.

And, frankly, none of us have any love lost for the Jets, though don’t get me wrong, that head coach of theirs is a real peach.

At that moment, some young socialite resplendent in a pink button-down shirt got up with his family to leave the restaurant. As he walked by us, he turned and spat out, “Well, they’re not going to make the playoffs, anyway.” Obviously, he was a scorned Jets fan.

We got a good laugh out of this – I mean, a pink button-down shirt? – but a little later, I started to wonder: When exactly do we lose our ability to forget the big picture and simply love our teams?

Continue Reading

The Afternoon After: Sainz of underlying sexism

I started writing some weekly thoughts on football last year, so I’m going to give that a shot again, probably sometime on Monday or Tuesday whenever I get up, which is usually around 1 p.m. The Jay-Z/Eminem concert at Yankee Stadium on Monday pushed this back a bit. I’ll also preface this, as usual, by saying I don’t really know an enormous amount about football relative to other sports, but I enjoy looking at it from a social and cultural standpoint.

From Monday Night's game

I’m sure everyone’s sick of this situation with TV Azteca reporter Ines Sainz getting heckled by the Jets – that’s the nature of things now, Twitter makes you sick of things the moment you hear about them. And this sort of thing comes up every couple years and eventually just goes away without any real change affected, so I’d imagine this will probably be about the same, though maybe Roger Goodell does something here. I can’t think of what it would be.

But to those saying Sainz “brought it on herself” by wearing revealing outfits, that reeks of jealousy and latent sexism. Whatever the Jets said to her, I’ve much likely heard far worse spewing from people who blame her for being harassed.

Continue Reading

Something to believe in: Finding inspiration in rival fans’ celebration

A sea of green

New York City definitely isn’t the most comfortable place for a Dolphins fan these days, as I witnessed first-hand when I made a rare sojourn to Times Square to hit up Foot Locker today and found myself smack dab in the middle of a massive Jets playoff pep rally.

Continue Reading

The Afternoon After: All-day football bonanza proves good for the soul

After a one-week respite, let’s get this party started. Hope all had an excellent holiday weekend.

It has a certain charm

Back in the day, before I had a job that caused me to work most Sundays and get up not before 1 in the afternoon, Football Sunday had a tremendous meaning in my week. Namely, it was a day I could completely devote to the supreme American pastime of drinking beer, eating fried foods at a sports bar and immersing myself in an entire day of watching overgrown men crash into each other. I started this tradition in high school – minus, of course, the beer.

Of course, times change. As I said, I generally work on Sundays, and I sometimes get up after the games actually begin. I rarely drink, and it’s even more rare that I eat fried foods. I generally don’t like watching sports with loud fans around me. And it had been several years since I had given over nearly an entire day to watch football.

Until yesterday.

Continue Reading

The Afternoon After: NFL’s embrace of Big Ben – the clock – illogical

Here’s my weekly roundup of what I saw in football, starting with the latest nonsensical idea from a league commissioner. This turned into The Day After (thanks, day job).

English fans get ready to watch a sport they likely don't understand -- which puts them on the same level as Eric Mangini

Professional sports leagues constantly want to expand their horizons. The thinking is that the more people in more places that see your brand, the bigger market there is to sell jerseys and such. I get that.

But now I hear that the NFL may eventually want to move a team to London, and I think it’s an ambitious but preposterous sentiment.

Continue Reading

The afternoon after: Saints may be ready to make The Leap

As per usual, my look at the weekend’s football games from a decidedly untrained eye, as evidenced by last week’s eulogy for the career of Tom Brady.

Now THIS must have been a scintillating conversation

It’s no secret that the Saints are currently the best team in football, as evidenced by their demolition of the previously unbeaten Giants. But just how good are they? What is the limit to their potential success?

Continue Reading

The afternoon after: Heel the world – Giants deep everywhere but QB

Here are my usual post-Sunday thoughts. More a “late-night after” than afternoon today. I’ll reiterate that football isn’t my thing, but I’ll give it a shot as usual.

Eli gets it off (for a touchdown); Carr in his usual position

  • The Giants have a deep and talented team, particularly on defense. Steve Smith is open every time you look up. They gave the Chiefs fits on Sunday. I do believe they’re the best team in football, but their huge weakness was exposed when Eli Manning somehow hurt his foot. The “bruised heel” diagnosis was shady at best, as I simply view such an injury as impossible under those circumstances. I get injured all the time, so I’m sort of a self-proclaimed expert; the first thing I thought was that he messed up his Achilles’. Now I’m hearing that it may be plantar fasciitis, which would be far from a best-case scenario, but at least it wouldn’t be his Achilles’. Regardless, I believe Eli – who’s far tougher than he looks – won’t miss a whole lot of time with this. I’ve had plantar fasciitis, and though it’s no picnic, it’s at least manageable. With the horrible Raiders coming to town, they may choose to sit him until the following week in a huge showdown in New Orleans. But David Carr isn’t suitable to play quarterback in this, or any, league. And as deep as the Giants are at most positions – including running back, where Ahmad Bradshaw has been at least the equal of Brandon Jacobs thus far – David Carr simply is not an NFL quarterback, having been permanently ruined by years of playing behind a sieve-like offensive line in Houston. I believe the Giants are very good, and potentially dominant, but until Eli plays a whole game and shows no ill effects, you have to temper your enthusiasm.

Continue Reading

The afternoon after: Demise of Pennington sad, but not a shock

Again, some quick thoughts on the NFL. It’s not “the morning after” since I generally wake up after 1 p.m.

  • Never a good sign when they have to cut off your uniform... I’ve been a fan of Chad Pennington dating back to his Jets days. He’s gutsy, smart and tough. I think my arm is stronger than his, but his guile and heady play have always set him apart in my opinion. He validated that last year by finishing runner-up for the MVP Award while leading an overachieving Dolphins team to 11 wins, a stunning turnaround and a division title. Pennington blended seamlessly with the Wildcat offense and was a joy to watch. But the problem with Chad has always been his inability to make it through two seasons in a row. And sadly, he was unable to prove the skeptics wrong in that regard. Football’s a tough sport, and you can’t blame someone for having his shoulder shredded. But with Pennington paying greater attention to fitness at this stage of his career, it’s just a bad break. I’m not sure we’ll see him play again, and it’s a real shame: Pennington is a gentleman and a fine player. It’s just too bad that he lived up to his reputation, in a negative sense.

Continue Reading

The afternoon after: Jets need to overcome history of teases

Though I know football, it’s not really my thing. But I’ll give it a shot. Here are a few observations I have from watching some games this weekend.

  • This year's Joe Flacco?I think the Jets are for real, but it’s tough to truly commit to them. In the past, every time they won a huge game and it seemed like they were going to take that leap to the upper echelon of the NFL, they lost their next game in crushing fashion and it was back to square one. It’s rare you find a franchise as snakebit as they have been, at least since Namath’s knees went. But the defense truly does look legit, Mark Sanchez looks like the quarterback they’ve been waiting for perhaps since Namath – i.e. a star, albeit one not asked to carry the mail just yet – and you have to be impressed that not only did they say they were going to beat the Patriots, they went out and did it. Challenging the Patriots is like calling out Floyd Mayweather – usually not a good idea. But they pulled it off. Their next three games are home against the Titans, at the Saints and at the Dolphins – two explosive offenses and a divisional rival. If they go 2-1 in those games, things may be different.

Continue Reading