sports

Tomorrow night? I'm going to a FARM! Lol, hell yea. Every fall, my friend Kelly invites a handful of her friends to the farm where she grew up, in Walnut, IL (yes, there is a city in Illinois named after a type of nut). I missed Kelly's farm party last year, but I was totally there in '03 and '04. Should be some fun times.

I was watching the US Open last weekend at my girl's place in Connecticut with my parents. (Did you get that? At my girlfriend's house in Cconnecticut with my parents?) and they implemented a new technology to allow players to challenge line-judge calls on whether a ball was in or out. Here's how the USTA summed up the technology in a 'new enhancements' press release sent out a week or two before the US Open:

"*'Instant Replay' Electronic Line Calling*: The most highly anticipated innovation at this year’s US Open—instant replay technology with player challenges—will be available in Arthur Ashe Stadium and Louis Armstrong Stadium. This breakthrough for the sport has been developed to improve officiating while increasing the interest and excitement for in-stadium fans and television viewers."

An article about the technology on C|net credits a British company hawkeye, but I wasn't able to get a huge amount of detail on how the technology was implemented. It seems that Hawkeye had their own cameras set up in places throughout the stadium, and based on what the cameras see they can estimate up to a 2-3mm accuracy where the ball probably hit the ground. When talking about minute details in estimating an accuracy of 2mm, what sort of assumptions are they making when calculating where the ball hit? While watching a match, when they use the instant-replay technology, it's a computer generated graphic of where the ball hit, not an actual photo of the ball hitting the ground. The mark of the ball is an oblong circle, proly to accommodate for the ball stretching when travelling at a high speed, but is the stretched circle a standard mark? Or do they use different amounts of stretching a regular circle based on how fast the ball was actually going? I wonder how many cameras they actually have set up in the stadium, and where they are, and what exactly they're looking at. That would be a sweet tour to take!

Saturday of this past weekend, a few friends and I watch the US play like a high school soccer team—and the officials throw up cards like they were flags in football—against Italy in what ended as a draw. So the group of four teams the US was playing against after this past saturday was still really, really close. In most other groups, by that point it had already been decided what two teams will advance and what two were going to be elimated, because enough teams had won to secure their spots. But in the US's group, after 2/3s of the games in the first round had already been played, things were still very much up in the air.

In order for the US to advance to the next round, the US needed Italy to beat the Czech Republic. Czech is ranked like number two in the world, so chances seemed sort of slim that that was going to happen. But the other game we saw last Saturday made us wonder if it was really a long shot, cause Ghana, who was a team that not many people gave credit to, had just got done whomping on Czech, in a game where they just outplayed a team that came into the tournament with a lot of weight on their side. So if Ghana could do it, maybe Italy could to. In which case, all the US had to do was beat Ghana. In yesterdays game, low and behold, Italy beat the Czech Republic, elimating them from the World Cup tournament altogether. So all the US had to do was beat Ghana... but Ghana kicked our asses yesterday... So the US is elimated, too. I'm glad to see Ghana doing so well, cause they were underdogs in the group, especially among the heavily eastern european patrons of the bar we were at last weekend (the bartender asked me if I was from Ghana... being only one of a few people of color in the bar that morning, I guess he assumed I was out supporting my "home team"). So, go Ghana, hopefully they'll keep playing with the aggressiveness they've showed thus far. But that sucks the US got elimated...

Tonight I'm going to my buddy Jim's place, he's having a "movie in the park night", where he's going to have a bunch of friends over, and watch movies projected against the garage in his backyard. How sweet is that??? Tomorrow morning I've got the June maahaul discussion session happening at my place, then a karaoke birthday party for a friend that evening (look out Bon Jovi, here I come), and Sunday I'm helping another buddy move to Oak Park. SWEET!!

A few friends and I have been getting together Saturday mornings to watch World Cup soccer, and it's been pretty sweet. I've never watched too much soccer. I just remember I enjoyed it a lot when we played in gym class in high school, and over a summer while I was in college, a few friends of mine would get together at the field of the church across the street from my parent's house and play midnight soccer games on the weekends. There was no order to these games, we just kicked the ball back and forth a bunch and pretended we were hardcore. But that's what made it such a great time!

The few games we've been able to catch have been pretty intense. It's also been a decent opportunity for us to check out some local neighborhood bars around our area, cause we all live around Logan Square. We checked out one place near Diversy and Western, another place on the actual square, then another place a little further west on pulaski. It's been pretty cool, and the type of people who hang out at a bar on a saturday morning are a pretty interesting group of folks. :P

There's a handful of desi's playing professional soccer, but only one I think who's gonna be playing in the World Cup. Check out what some peeps are saying about him.

Congrats to the White Sox for SWEEPING the World Series. HELLO. Who the hell knew? Plus the symbolism of a minority coached, racially diverse team sweeping the series in TEXAS, at a game where George Bush Sr. and his wife were sitting behind home plate... stickin it to the man.

“Arguably just as obvious and important, the Sox are no longer lily-white, which was due to the institutional racism and segregation that dominated baseball and American society. The team is truly diverse: racially, ethnically and nationally. The team’s current roster includes white, African-American, Asian and Latino ballplayers: Cubans, Venezuelans and Dominicans. Thanks to the civil rights movement and globalization, perhaps baseball has finally become the meritocracy it has long claimed to be.” full article

I watched game four the other night with my one and only die-hard-sox-fan buddy out in the burbs, and the bar went CRAZY after they won. I took the el home and walking down my street to get to my place: stark silence. Northside was quiet that night... but then today on my lunch break, I went to check out the parade, again, hoping to hook up with my one die-hard-sox-fan buddy, and it was MOBBED. Soooo many people, soooo much niose, soooo much CONFETTI. It was insane. But it was good seeing the city supporting its teams so fervently. It's on.

Since Sunday I’ve been watch the American League penant race games. It’s been addicting, dudes. The yankees were up 3 games to nothing, and the Red Sox after last night, just won the past three games to tie the series up. NUTS. Sunday and Monday’s games went into 12 and 14 innings, respectively. And last nights game finished in 9 innings, but was still pretty intense. Since the Cubs aren’t in the race this year, the only team that would make me care about the series is if the Red Sox got in. I don’t really give a shit about the Yankees, Astros, or Cards. Tonight’s game 7, so we’ll see.

I think over the past year or so, my patience for entertainment has gone up, like, a lot. It used to be that the only time I could watch baseball was if I was AT a game. I could never just sit in front of a tv and watch a game. But as of late, and especially this season, I have been. Is it because I’m getting old? Probably partially (since my cousin’s started calling me kaka cause I like whiskey), but I also think it's due to the fact that I’ve been sitting for 40 minutes at a time listening to a single classical Indian song. That takes some patience, my friends. maybe that’s translating over to baseball... Somehow.