Nick Adenhart Update

I don't usually recommend articles and such on here saving that for Twitter and Facebook, but this is a little different.  Amy Nelson of espn.com, wrote a truly amazing article on Nick Adenhart ("Forever in our Harts" from two weeks ago) and it is a must read.  She chronicles the hours before Adenhart's death not only from his perspective but from the perspectives of all those involved.  I can't say enough how well done this article is and I don't give praise out easily.  Here's the link http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4075761, now simply put, go read it.

Tweet Tweet

First it was Xanga.  Then it was Myspace.  Then Facebook took over the world.  And while Facebook is still going strong, there is a new networking phenomenon that is taking over the world: Twitter.  It's simple, you get 140 characters to tell people anything you want.  What you're doing, something they should see, or maybe even what your blog's about.  You can also post pictures and links as long as everything you do is under 140 characters.  You can also send direct messages (like an internal twitter email) or even reply to somebody by mentioning them by name in your tweet (a twitter post).  All this is fine and dandy but what in the world does it have to do with sports?

How about this tweet a few weeks ago:

"grant hill told me before the game that the suns WOULD show up today -- he just looked over at me from the huddle and mouthed 'i was wrong'"

-or-

"heading to dinner with CC and a bus of his family! met Michael Jordan and tori spelling,,,,and we won! great day!"

The first tweet was from ESPN/ABC sideline reporter Lisa Salters during a critical game a few weeks ago between the Suns and Mavs.  The second tweet is from Nick Swisher after the Yankees first win in new Yankee Stadium on Friday.  So what's the big deal you ask?  Here's the big deal, I didn't get these off TV or search for them on the Internet.  I got them off their Twitter pages.  Pages I can see.  Pages I follow.  When you sign into Twitter and go to your home page you can see the most recent tweets from all the people you follow.  And from the people I follow you'd think I was a lot more than a college freshman:  Shaq, CC Sabathia, Derek Fisher, Pete Carrol, ESPN's Jayson Stark, Stephen A. Smith, Lamar Odom, and Chris Bosh.  On top of these sports A-Listers, if I so chose I could be following Ashton Kutcher (the first to 1,000,000 followers), Taylor Swift, Diddy, Ludacris, John Mayer, and yes, Oprah.  I can also follow President Obama and John McCain.  And then there are the multitude of news sites and services that post feeds including CNN and ESPN. 

All of this is just goes to show us once again how much smaller the world is getting.  I, Craig Hoffman, in Murfreesboro, TN, know who Nick Swisher ate dinner with last night.  He plays for my favorite baseball team!  This is also showing us how smart we're getting.  ESPN has mastered twitter.  They have their anchors update from the SportsCenter desk bringing us inside the studio and letting us know what the anchors are thinking as they sit there for 3 hours in the middle of day.  This particularly intrigued me last week when Harry Kalas past and this came through from Chris McKendry on the SportsCenter Twitter: "Chris McKendry: Could cry on TV. Harry Kalas gone at 73. The voice of my generation of Phillies fans. He called every game of my life."

ESPN has also used this (as many others have) as a marketing tool.  On top of SportsCenter I also follow all the ESPN radio shows.  Of course they post from the studios saying random things like Scott Van Pelt telling us he went and got a soda and was going to pay for it later, but more importantly they tell us in tweet form when guests will be on and thus, those of us in Twitter world know when to listen.  

So Twitter can be used to know what our favorite athletes and celebrities are doing, what's going on on the set of our favorite shows, and when things are going to happen on those shows.  Any other wonderful uses?  Sure.  Say maybe a young aspiring journalist (me) bringing his blog to the attention of one of the best in the business (Lisa Salters)?  Yeah, already did it.  (And Ms. Salters if you are indeed reading this I would like to thank you so much for taking a little time out for someone you've never met and I would love to know what you think!) 

Technology makes the world a smaller place and the more people that dive in the better.  It brings people together yada yada yada, but most of all: it's just plain cool.  140 characters have never said so much.  I thought that Facebook would be the end for a while after it sprinted past Myspace, but with Twitter catching on quickly who knows what the future holds.  But in the meantime, I guess we'll all just tweet away.

Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/choffman223

Forever in our Harts

I'm 19 years old.  I have friends who are 22.  Heck one of my best friends is 24.  Nick Adenhart was 22.  He had just pitched the game of his life, six scoreless innings in the major leagues, and was on his way out to celebrate with 3 friends when the vehicle they were driving was blindsided by a minivan that ran a red-light.  The driver of the mini-van was drunk, with a blood-alcohol level 3 times the legal limit.  The driver was also driving on a suspended licence which stemmed from a previous DUI.  This is just another reminder of how precious life is, and it reminds us that every day could be our last.  It also shows us how we can go from our highest moments to the end, just like that.  It's often said that life isn't fair, and the end of life is no different.

At 22, Nick Adenhart was far too young to go.  He was a precocious pitching talent, dominating 18 year old travel leagues at the age of 14, and the night of his death had made his first start in his first full rookie season (he had a few starts last year but is still considered a rookie this year).  However according to teammate Dustin Moseley, Nick Adenhart's talents went far beyond a pitching mound and a baseball diamond.  He was a bright young man who according to his father was everything a dad could dream of as a son.  The most convincing thing to me in the day following Adenhart's death was the reaction of his agent Scott Boras.  Boras is known as a hardass to say the least.  One who doesn't take anything from anybody, and whose sole purpose in life is to make money for his clients and in turn himself.  When talking about Adenhart, Boras completely and utterly broke down in tears.  Not shed a tear; broke down in tears.  A man who some believe has a heart of stone was crying uncontrollably at a microphone and could only compose himself long enough to say, "we lost a great young man."

Although the promising life of Nick Adenhart was cut short, life for the rest of us, and for his teammates goes on as did their season.  Friday night the Angels played their first game since Adenhart's death and what I saw was simply unbelievable.  With a memorial of his image in centerfield, his number 34 on the mound, and heavy hearts all around, the Angels took the field motivated to get a win for their comrade, something they had failed to do despite his brilliant performance a few nights earlier.  I didn't get to watch the game but I did see highlights, and I really didn't need those.  All I would have needed to see was a single picture of Angels' starter Jared Weaver's eyes to know how much this meant to him and the rest of the team.  I have never seen a player in any sport be more in the zone than I saw Weaver Friday night.  To say he wasn't going to be denied would not be doing Weaver justice; simply put, failure was not an option and it never crossed Jared Weaver's mind.  

It would have been very easy, and will be very easy, for the Angels to just go through the motions this year, and really no one could blame them.  The baseball season is 162 games long and during the 8 months a year baseball players are together they become family.  And although Nick Adenhart was only a rookie, he played with many of the young Angels players in the minor leagues and was there through all of Spring Training this year.  He was a brother, and a younger brother at that, to everyone on the Angels roster, and instead of going through the motions they went out and played in their fallen brothers memory.  

I've said it before and I'll say it again, sports has an ability to bring people together after tragedy unlike anything else in the world outside of music.  Sports and music both allow the mind to escape into the world of a game or a song.  After 9/11, all of New York held its collective breath as the Yankees advanced to the World Series.  After Hurricane Katrina, the citizens of New Orleans wanted nothing more than to have their Saints back.  And a year later when they finally did, the buzz in the Superdome was far greater than Bourbon Street (or anyone on it) during Mardi Gras.  And while these situations were far greater tragedies in terms of numbers, the loss of Nick Adenhart hit the Angel and Major League Baseball families just as hard.  I expect the Angels to keep playing for their teammate and despite the fact that their on field talent isn't nearly what it has been in years past, I now expect them to be around in October.  And when this season is over, I think they will be proud of how they represented a teammate, who's life was cut far too short, and who now, as a fan put it at a make-shift memorial outside the Angel's Stadium, is playing with another team of Angels.

R.I.P Nick Adenhart

1986-2009 

What I Heard in The Herd

When some people talk you can't help but listen. When our President speaks people listen, because he's a well-spoken person with incredibly important things to say. When our last President spoke people listened because there was likely to be a verbal train wreck. When Robin Williams talks people listen because they want to laugh and when Charlie Steiner spoke and wasn't laughing it was a miracle. For me, especially lately, when Colin Cowherd of ESPN Radio speaks I've been listening. He admits to being a polarizing figure and is opinionated to say the least, but for the most part I tend to agree with him and there is no doubt in my mind Cowherd gets it. There are those people out there that get it and those that don't, it's a fact of life. Similarly some businesses, including sports leagues also get it and others don't. Citi, trying to give hefty bonuses to upper level executives while their clients money is going down the toilet doesn't get it. The NFL, as Cowherd pointed out on his show Friday, gets it.

"The NFL is only league in this country that runs itself like a business in a TV show, and that's why the NFL leaders get it. They're not even a league. They're not even a sport. They run themselves like a business in a TV show. They are brilliant. Nobody in sports does it better."

And this to got me to thinking. And the more I think about it, the leader of The Herd is right again. The NFL really is King...and here's why.

Think about this: March Madness is supposedly the biggest non-single day event we have in this country. Everybody cares about it in some form or fashion because everybody has a bracket. To me, it's the most wonderful time of the year (see the blog from 2 weeks ago) and yet with it's culmination and showcase event, the Final Four, coming up on Saturday all anyone was talking about all week was Jay Cutler. OK, so after the first few rounds when most people's brackets were screwed a lot less people care and you're back to a typical college basketball fan base. Fine, I'll give you that.

What about, say baseball? It was once king and still is considered America's past time. However, excuse the horribly easy pun, it's past time for the past time. According to two studies, one by Harris and one by ESPN, baseball has lost half its audience in the past 20 years. It has horrible ratings amount young viewers and has nearly no African-American audience, two groups that have flocked to the NFL. Why? Baseball is the ultimate good-old boy sport. The biggest technological change on the field in baseball in the past 100 years is that more players are now using maple bats as opposed to ash bats. Gloves have gotten a little nicer but functionally they haven't changed. It wasn't until last year that baseball finally gave into replay, a technology the NFL gave into nearly a decade ago for the second time. People in baseball and more importantly people in charge of baseball would rather see the game stay the same than a call be made properly. I understand the human element but c'mon...really? And you wonder why baseball's audience is falling by the way-side.

The NBA might be the only pro sports league that has a chance at catching the NFL any time soon. It's entering a golden age (see last weeks blog) and its image is on the rise. However for some unknown reason many people who love basketball HATE the NBA. They say its too much of a one-on-one game. I have two responses to that. 1) Have you ever seen LeBron James play? The man is one of the best passers the league has ever seen. Add in Chris Paul and Deron Williams and you'll get your passing fix. and 2) OK so some games are very 1-on-1 oriented. These are the best players in the world, watching them go 1-on-1 is great entertainment. However some people will be stubborn and still hate the NBA, and even if I did convince these NBHaters there are still far more football fans than basketball fans.

Simply put the NFL is king. The only thing close is College Football. In the South people actually care more about College Football but you'd be kidding yourself if you thought that meant that, like the NBA and College Basketball, they still didn't care about their pro team. Add these people to the millions in places like Boston and New York where the NFL is numero uno and there isn't a legit college team in sight (Boston College doesn't count because quite frankly most people in Boston don't really care about what's going on in Chestnut Hill) and it's clear that across this great nation, our sport is football, and not just football, NFL football. The NBA season is winding down with an epic playoff battle, the MLB season is starting this week, and the Final Four (the culmination of March Madness!) is Saturday night...and tonight's lead story: how an off-season move in a league that hasn't seen a game in 2 months and won't for another 4 will effect the teams involved and the rest of the league. Still have any doubt that the NFL is king? I think not.