Fun Night at Camden Yards

Our first and last Oriole's game of the summer - Sun, Baseball, Friends, Fun, and Fireworks all combined for a wonderful evening!  And it also explains why I don't have any brain cells left to compose a coherent Friday Five post. 

52 Lists: Week 21

I'm not nearly as with it when it comes to sports as some people are, but I'm also not completely clueless.  I like watching certain sports and I do root for a few specific teams.  But when it comes to stats, player rankings, and scoring I usually get pretty lost.  I base my opinions on what I always judge first - the people.  I don't look at how great they are at playing or what their stats were last year.  I'm interested mostly in if they're a good person. If they're not I tend not to like them.  If they are, I'll always root for them - even if they're terrible. 

So in honor of my very favorite sports person being in the lead for the British Open right now (a 63, baby!), this week's list will be favorite and least favorite sports figures. 

Faves (aka Loves!):

Phil Mickelson - Best golfer and best human being around.  Love his personality, and his dedication to his fans.  And such a great sense of humor!  He will always be my number one favorite sports person!

And while we're talking about golfers, also add Jordan Spieth, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell, Lee Westwood, Matt Kuchar, and Freddie Couples to the list.  (In all honesty, there's probably a lot more to add to the list - golfers tend to be great people.)

Torrey Smith - Even though he doesn't play for the Ravens anymore, I'll always be one of his biggest fans.  He seems like such a down to earth guy and he really reaches out to the community to try to help those less fortunate.

Justin Tucker - Have you seen his Opera singing?  He's hilarious!  And a kick-butt kicker.

Cal Ripken - How can I be from Baltimore and not add him to the list?

Scott Hamilton - I've always loved him!  I will always be hopeless at figure skating but it was my favorite thing to watch when I was little.  His back flips are legendary, almost as much as his positivity and kindness.

Alex Ovechkin - He's always been a great player for the Caps (aka the only hockey team I know anything about), but he got my undying love last year when he took a little girl with special needs who was his biggest fan on a "date" last year.  Adorable!

* I feel terrible that there are no girls on this list, but I know next to nothing about girls sports. That really needs to change!

Least Faves (aka those I can't stand and will always root against)

Ben Roethlisberger
Tom Brady
Tiger Woods
Dustin Johnson
Ndamakong Suh
Ray Rice
The guy that got punched by Manny Machado because he purposefully hit Manny Machado with a pitch
Rob Gronkowski

Sports-a-palooza

Somehow, all of the stars aligned today, to give sports fans, one entire day of nothing but fantastic events to watch.  Now, while I'm a fan, I have to say, there isn't one sporting event I was super excited about today.  If we were talking football season, I could be inclined to be a crazy sports fan but instead, the sports that are dominating today, are kinda boring.

Up first was baseball - Yankees at Red Sox.  Since I'm an Orioles fan, I could care less about who won.  However, because I'm an O's fan, I will always root against the dirty Yanks.

Then it was NFL Draft day.  I love football and I love the Ravens, but honestly, what's more boring than watching Roger Goodell read out names all day?

Up next, was the NHL Playoffs; in which the Capitals are playing.  I'm actually a Caps fan, so I have to say, I'm invested in this one.  However, because the Stanley Cup Playoffs seem to last months on end each year, I sort of ignore the games until the final.

Then of course, it was Derby Day, which is exciting, but so much more exciting if you're joining in on the fun in Kentucky wearing a nice hat and having a mint julep.  It's also only exciting for like the 3 minutes the race takes.  If I want to see a horserace, I'll wait until the Preakness rolls around. At least that one's here in MD.

Lastly, it's the Mayweather - Paquiao fight; of which I have no stake in whatsoever.  How anyone thinks that with all the violence that exists today, watching 2 grown men beat the crap out of each other is enjoyable, is completely beyond me.  Not to mention, the fact that Mayweather hasn't been expelled from the sport after going to jail for beating his wife, is completely reprehensible.  On that note alone, I'll be hoping Paquiao wins, but I will most definitely not be watching the violence.

While I'm sure all the fans out there were enjoying themselves greatly, I'll just sit here and wait for NFL season to start.  At least then I'll have something to root for.  Let's go Ravens!

Baseball + Food = Fantastic

What an awesome day for a ballgame!  Or should I say, what an awesome day to eat! Today's pairing of gorgeous weather, good friends, delicious food and a great baseball game, was quite the combination.  I wasn't really looking forward to using the free tickets I received to a Nationals game; mostly because it wasn't an Orioles game.  But as it turns out, as historic and beautiful as Camden Yards is, Nationals Stadium is just a bit on the cooler side.  They have a Ben's Chili Bowl and a Shake Shack for goodness sake, as well as picnic tables all around to hang out if sitting in the stands isn't your thing, and sofas and comfy chairs on the upper deck in front of a ginormous screen broadcasting the game.  How can you go wrong?!

So after a day spent with great people, eating some seriously delicious food (I think Ben's chili is the best restaurant chili I've ever had and I'm not sure what's in the Shack Sauce that was on my Shake Shack burger, but I'm going to venture a guess it has some sort of addictive substance in it because I couldn't get enough), I just may need to change my baseball loyalties.  Though the Orioles have Boog's BBQ so maybe I'll just start rooting for 2 teams instead...

Sorry for the photo quality - the ancient iPhone4s had to suffice. 

Seriously, Suarez?!

I was talking to a friend at work today about sports - actually we were debating the fact that he's a Steelers fan living in Baltimore which is so very, very wrong.  But that's beside the point.  Anyway, my major argument against the Steelers is the fact that Ben Rothlisberger is a terrible human being who likes to pick on people much smaller than he is.  But his major argument against the Ravens was that they've had more arrests than any other team in the off-season, which I had to whole-heartedly agree with.  Those boys need to get their act together.  But mildly-terrible human beings that happen to be sports stars started us on a list of the few that exist today, luckily he agreed with me on the Tiger front or we'd have had some serious words.

To name a few, we agreed on Tiger, Kobe Bryant, and Ray Lewis.  I agree they're great athletes but kids really shouldn't be looking up to them, but of course they are. In all the talk about sports, we really didn't bring up Soccer.  Even with all the World Cup craziness happening, we couldn't name one player. But after seeing today's headlines, I suppose we should have.

A player for Uruguay actually bit another player - for the second time, without drawing a yellow card.  How does this happen?!  I mean he didn't beat up his girlfriend or cheat on anyone, but really, biting?! Gross!

Go USA!

For the record, before today, I was aware the World Cup was happening.  I knew that Brazil was busting their collective butt to get everything done in time for the opening ceremonies. And I know there were some definite questions as to whether the whole thing was even going to happen due to some serious delays.  I also knew that the World Cup meant everyone was going to be talking about soccer for the next few weeks.  I just didn't really care.  Soccer, to me, is just like basketball (lots of guys running back and forth) but with a different color ball.

Though, since the USA is game is finally being played today, I was not so politely schooled in the "awesomeness" (his words not mine) of World Cup Soccer.  There is apparently, lots I didn't know.  For example:

~ There's a guy playing on the US team from Crofton MD.  How cool is that?!  

~We played Ghana in our first game, not French Guyana as I originally thought (points for having the "G" correct though)

~ The US coach is from Germany which seems to be a bit of a conflict of interest if you ask me, but not to the Americans who hired him I suppose.

~ Pele isn't the only famous footballer, he's just the only one I actually knew about.

~ On the subject of famous footballers, Wayne Rooney was NOT a coach for Manchester United in the 50s but IS currently something to do with Soccer.  

~ The teams will play in groups of 4 and the 2 best teams will move on - nothing at all like the medal round in Olympic Hockey like I thought. And bonus points: the US is in a group with Ghana, Poland and Germany (I think...)

All of this is to say, based on the above information, as you can see, I don't know much more than when I started the day.  But I did watch today's game and it was pretty darn awesome! And those players kicked some butt!  There were some bumps in the second half, and I was a little worried we'd never pull out the win but they did it.  Go USA!

Muddled Mess

I hate nights like this.  Nights when there are about 452 things going through my head but none of them are actually "blog-worthy."  To begin with, it wasn't a fabulous day.  In less than 24 hours, there were 2 terrible accidents - one with a fatality, and a murder-suicide, within a 5-10 mile radius of my home.  That's just too much death and destruction for one day.  

It's easy to complain and moan about the traffic that shut down an entire county at rush hour, but when you think about the families who lost a loved one or who are now nursing loved ones back to health, you start to feel quite guilty.  So as you may have guessed, those are things 1-3 circling their way around my my brain.

The others of course, are not really all that deep.  There's the topic of weather.  There's a slight possibility of even MORE snow next week - will there be yet another snow day or will we get lucky and finally get some spring action?  Then there's March Madness - why the heck is this even a thing?  It's the only gosh darn month of the year that anyone cares about College Hoops.  Why does it have to disrupt all the good TV?  Isn't that what ESPN is for?

Others include, Etsy ponderings (an almost daily occurrence), what shall I do with this crazy staticky mop of hair on my head that's quickly turning grey, where is flight MH370 and, is Match.com as absolutely and completely terrifying as it sounds.  Plus about 104 other random things that only make sense if you backtrack through the previous 52 thoughts,   So you can see, the mind of Kristen this week (though usually most other weeks as well) is quite a jumbled mess.  Hopefully this post and these feelings makes a bit of sense to someone and if they do, could you please explain them to me? : )

Bummer

Fresh off the heels of my new-found love for hockey, this had to go and happen.

I have to admit that Canada did play well, but what made this game so heartbreaking was the fact the US was in the lead all the way up to the 57th minute.  Up until that time, the US had shut out the Canadians.  The Canadians hadn't scored a single point but then managed to score 2 in the last 3 minutes to tie the game and go into OT where of course, they scored the winning goal.  So sad!  I suppose the US women should be grateful that they'll still be walking away with a medal. But it's most definitely not the one they were hoping for.

Of course, when it comes to US sports, today has been a topsy-turvy one all around.  On top of the US Women's hockey team failing to gain gold, the US was also shutout of medal contention in Women's figure skating.  While Gracie Gold fell, Wagner did not but still managed to wind up below Gold, which I still haven't quite figured out.  The whole medal round seemed to be a little off-kilter anyway, without even accounting for the Americans.  A Russian won gold, but not the one they were counting on.  The Gold medal favorite won silver and an Italian who wasn't even in medal contention won bronze.  While it's sad to see the Americans off the podium, the 3 that won skated flawlessly and deserved their wins.  Way to go ladies!

Friday Five: Olympics Week One Edition

1. Justin Wadsworth: While everyone else at the Ski park watched Anton Gafarov struggle on a broken ski after a fall.  Justin, a coach for the Canadians, ran over and gave him one of his own skis so that he was able to finish the race.  Wadsworth showcased everything the Olympics represent and worked his way into the hearts of millions.

2. The US Slopestyle Boys:  Seeing as this is the first year Slopestyle has made it into the Olympics, we've heard quite a bit about it.  We assumed that Shaun White would bring the US a gold in the snowboard slopestyle but that wasn't to be when he was forced to withdraw to focus on his other event.  But after the hoopla from that decision died down, it was time for ski slopestyle.  The US had 3 competitors in the event and they somehow managed to sweep the medal stand.  It was awesome to see 3 US flags raised over 3 of the coolest guys around.  Way to go boys!  

3. Noelle Pikus-Pace:  While the last 2 runs of the Skeleton event haven't been shown in primetime yet, I unfortunately know who won already.  I say unfortunately because I was hoping to watch it this evening and keep it a surprise, but MSN spoiled it for me again. Anyway, it's still awesome to see (spoiler alert!) Noelle was able to grab silver!  She and her adorable family (2 kids and a husband and about 20 other relatives) are pretty amazing.  I was hoping she'd be able to grab gold seeing as she's been racing fantastically and has been so positive the entire way.  But I'm just happy she was able to take any medal - she most definitely deserved it! (Anyone who chooses to propel themselves down an ice luge at 90 miles an hour head first deserves any medal they receive!)

4. US Hockey: I'll be honest here, I have a very hard time following hockey.  I don't understand everything that happens and the puck is very, very small and therefore I lose it quite a lot.  But that doesn't make it any less thrilling.  It's great to see the Men and the Women doing so well.  I know they have a rough road ahead seeing as they have to play Canada and Russia yet, but I'm hoping for some medals for them.  Once again, anyone who is willing to play such a rough sport deserves all sorts of acclaim and recognition.

5. Scott Hamilton: I know he's not competing anymore.  That doesn't stop me from loving him!  He's been doing this commentary for years and years now but it's so nice to have his voice explaining all sorts of triple sowcows and toe loops each Olympics.  He seems to absolutely love the sport and of course he knows his stuff.  But he's also (from what I can tell) just about the coolest person ever.  He's just one of those guys you want to have dinner with.  Love me some Scottie!

And one thing that I have to complain about: 

Dear MSN and all other news sites,

If you're going to spoil tonight's primetime scores, add a spoiler alert.  Don't just splash the headline all over your front page. Some people would still like to watch them this evening.

Sincerely,
A disgruntled fan