The Journey Continues In 2011 With Team No. 38: The Philadelphia 76ers

Yes, 2011 is almost six whole weeks in and here I am with not one new team knocked off the list. This isn't the worst thing if I'm planning on keeping pace with the needed rate. I decided a year ago that if I wanted to see all 122 teams by the time I was 55, this would require seeing roughly six new ones per year -- or one every two months. Well fortunately, I'm not too far gone for that pace to continue so far, and this calendar year could actually have me seeing as many as 11 teams or as few as, well, one.

But I will have one!

And I know that because Team No. 38 will be crossed off the list this Friday when myself and at least five other hearty souls attend the Knicks-76ers game at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. While I've already attended this building once for a Flyers game a year ago, I'm extremely excited for a few reasons. Firstly) It's one step closer to my goal. Obviously. Secondly) While I was never not a Knicks fan over the last decade, this season has easily made me a reinvigorated one. Thirdly) Rather than traveling to meet one or two people, as is the usual situation, a whole group of my friends and I will be driving down to Philadelphia for the game. Fourthly) I'll be wearing the first Knicks jersey I've ever owned. Fifthly) There may be a potential tour of Lincoln Financial Field in the works provided I don't let my anti-Philadelphianism get the best of me.

And I am anti-Philadelphia. I have made this clear. But sometimes you have to go to the belly of the beast to get what you want, and I have a goal to accomplish. Sometimes we do unsavory things, even if there are cheesesteaks involved.

Whether or not that cheesesteak from Pat's is involved is yet to be seen, but either way, it should be a fun evening for all involved with one more step being taken towards those white pearly gates of the North American sports scene.

As it stands, that will be my first trip of the year, but hopefully the first of many. I am expecting to see the Washington Capitals when they host the Blackhawks in March and I recently booked a flight to Detroit in April where I will see the Pistons and Red Wings. Originally I considered flying out in January to see the Red Wings play the Devils, but a) the Devils are in the midst of a painful season and b) it's January in Detroit. I've had more than my fair share of snow this year. I'm not interested in anymore. Unless all of the snow results more star wars statues like the one to the left.

I'd sign up for that in a second.

Before I wrap up, I should note that this will be my first trip since December's adventure to Nassau Coliseum to see the Islanders face-off with the Penguins, and in a bit of full-circle quirkiness, the Islanders played the Penguins again tonight. This time the Penguins won fairly easily, but the score was almost secondary because this game featured something I would have killed to see in person. That's right. This game featured the two greatest words in hockey.

"Goalie Fight."



That's the Islanders' Rick DiPietro being dropped like a rag doll by Pittsburgh's Brent Johnson, and while Johnson may be a backup goaltender, he appears to be a first-rate pugilist with a cross like that. If that isn't DiPietro's career as an Islander in a nutshell, well, I don't know what is. Thanks for letting us watch, Rick.

On that note, I'm done with this ramble. See you in Philly.

NFL Picks Weeks Seventeen: In Which I Look Back on 2010

I'm not entirely sure how I did it, but after taking a few deep breaths and looking back, well, I'm not sure how I managed to come up with a nickname for each week of football picks that started with the phrase "In Which". Damn I'm good. It should be noted of course that this is one of the few that makes sense, and given that we're approximately 23 hours away from the dawn of 2011, well, it seems appropriate that I spent one last day checking out a brand new team I had never seen before. Granted, that this one team was the New York Islanders who don't play nearly as far from my home as most other new teams I've seen makes it less impressive, but if you understood the trials and tribulations that Debs Francisco and I undertook in our public transportation adventure to Uniondale, N.Y. and back, you'd understand why it was far more difficult than going to, say, Indianapolis.

Getting out to an Islanders game is, in fact, not even the least bit easy. Each leg of the trip from door to door took roughly two hours and 40 minutes and required going in the wrong direction at least once. Once there, however, Debs and I were not disappointed. Not only did we have fantastic seats, but, well, it was an awful lot of fun for a game I had no real vested interest in. While the Islanders won in a fourth-round shootout, with both goalies Marc-Andre Fleury and Rick DiPietro standing on their heads the entire time, the real news of the night was that Sidney Crosby's 25-game scoring streak came to an end at long last. It's always fun to see a little bit of history.

I will say, however, the Islanders' postgame celebration was a bit much.

I've been told Nassau Coliseum is one of the more antiquated and awful arenas in all of sports, and I won't lie and tell you it isn't, but the atmosphere was tremendous last night, the setting intimate and fun, and the experience generally pretty enjoyable, even if the concourses felt like you were in a bowling alley from the 1970s. In many ways it felt like a Fenway Park for hockey, but without the charm. Many amusing things happened along the way and at some point I will have a full report ready for everyone, but for the time being, my trip to Nassau Coliseum, and my venture of the 37th different team I've seen in the flesh, is a nice capper to my year.

And what a year it was.

To really give you all the full treatment on 2010, it seems appropriate to do one of those ridiculous lists where I put in perspective just how many different teams I've seen, stadiums I've been to, cities I've visited and, what the hell, plane rides I've been on. Why the hell not? Here it goes.

2010 In Review

-- I saw 7 new professional sports teams (Philadelphia Flyers, Atlanta Braves, Baltimore Orioles, Los Angeles Dodgers, Indianapolis Colts, Minnesota Twins, New York Islanders)
-- I saw 9 new stadiums both college and professional (Wachovia Center, Turner Field, Camden Yards, Dodger Stadium, New Meadowlands Stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium, Target Field, TCF Bank Stadium, Nassau Coliseum)
-- I saw sporting events in 16 total venues (Giants Stadium, Wachovia Center, Prudential Center, Citi Field, Turner Field, Camden Yards, AT&T Park, Dodger Stadium, New Meadowlands Stadium, TD Garden, Lucas Oil Stadium, Target Field, TCF Bank Stadium, Madison Square Garden, Wrigley Field, Nassau Coliseum)
-- I visited 20 different cities (Philadelphia, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Tzfat, Eilat, Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington D.C., San Diego, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, Sonoma, San Luis Obispo, Boston, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Chicago)
-- I spent time in 2 countries (United States, Israel)
-- I flew on a plane 20 different times.
-- I stayed in 13 different hotels, some of them amazing, some of them horrendously awful.
-- I passed through 14 different airports.

-- I attended 2 weddings.
-- I delivered 1 Best Man Speech.
-- I had 1 sibling get married.
-- I ate at 2 different In-N-Out Burgers.
-- I had 4 slices of Giordano's stuffed pizza.
-- I saw 1 football game in a baseball stadium.
-- I won 0 fantasy leagues.
-- I wrote 141 entries in this space.
-- I got 1 new job.
-- I traveled 2 times for work.
-- I started 1 tedious, boring and insignificant blog.

Busy, huh? Yes, I thought so, too. Don't worry though. It's almost over. 2011 is almost here and with that there will be a new 12 months filled with frantically planned trips to sports venues, more weddings, more plane flights, more general exhaustion and probably about four new page views at this blog by someone other than me. Can't wait.

To close 2010 out, here, for the final time this regular season, are your sure to be wrong football picks.

Last week: 9-7-0
Season: 119-112-10

NY Giants (-4) over WASHINGTON
ATLANTA (-15) over Carolina
Pittsburgh (-6) over CLEVELAND
Minnesota (+3) over DETROIT
Oakland (+4) over KANSAS CITY
Miami (+5) over NEW ENGLAND
NEW ORLEANS (-8) over Tampa Bay
NY JETS (even) over Buffalo
BALTIMORE (-10) over Cincinnati
San Diego (-4) over DENVER
Chicago (+10) over GREEN BAY
INDIANAPOLIS (-10) over Tennessee
Dallas (even) over PHILADELPHIA
SAN FRANCISCO (-7) over Arizona
Jacksonville (-3) over HOUSTON
St. Louis (-3) over SEATTLE***

***If it were possible for both teams to lose this game, I would pick that result.

That's it for me. Happy New Year, everyone. Bring on 2011.

On The Docket: An Impromptu Trip To Nassau Coliseum For Team No. 37

Ah, yes, Nassau Coliseum. The old barn. If by "old" you mean "completely decrepit and falling apart" and by "barn" you mean "only fit for livestock". Or so I've been told. I've actually had one or two people tell me the arena is a decent place to watch hockey, but I'm going to reserve judgment either way until later tonight when I make my first ever trip to see the New York Islanders and knock yet another team off that vaunted list of 122.

What's that? Shocked that I've never seen a sports team play at home when its home is in the same metropolitan area I've spent 21 years of my life in?

Well, so am I. In fact, I find it downright mindboggling that I've never actually made a trek to Uniondale to see the Isles ply their trade or check out their home building. A rational look back on it reveals the reasons are many: a) I'm a Devils fan, b) the Devils and Rangers are both closer to where I grew up and live currently, c) it is almost impossible to get to Nassau Coliseum on mass transit.

Once I decided to do this whole "see every team in the MLB, NHL, NBA and NFL" thing I knew the day of reckoning that forced a trip out to Long Island would come, but for some reason I just continued to push it further and further back -- though there have been a few near misses and close calls. If it's right there, the urgency to get moving seems to not be particularly pressing. But at long last I've decided to finally get off my rear with the help of an equally eager coworker, which will see us take the LIRR from Penn Station to Hempstead, NY, then a bus from the Hempstead Transit Station to the Coliseum -- this is after I've already taken a subway from my apartment to Penn Station. All in all, it's a tidy 90 minute trip on mass transit to get to a suburban hockey arena with little around.

But oh boy, am I excited.

The Islanders, perhaps you've noticed, are not particularly good, and haven't been for a while. Given that it seems kind of odd to me that they used to be great.

Like really great.

Seriously. There's an argument to be made that they had the greatest dynasty of any professional sports team in the last 30 years. From 1980-1983, the Islanders won the Stanley Cup four straight times, a fact that, seemingly, no Islanders fan I've come across professional will forget to mention to you. Yes, other teams have won four straight Cups or four straight championships before, but none have done it in the same age of expanded playoffs that the Islanders did. New York had four rounds of postseason jockeying to get through in order to win it all, and they did it four straight times. And very nearly a fifth.

Add it all together and the Islanders won 19 consecutive playoff series in the early 1980s, a stunningly impressive achievement that is arguably not to be seen again.

Of course, those Islanders are a far cry from the current ones, who are deeply steeped in rebuilding mode currently, and as a fan of the Devils who can't avoid reading about their current season, I'm starting to find out what that's like. But it should still be an interesting game for any number of reasons, namely that a) it's a new place, and b) they're playing the Penguins and Sidney Crosby, who just might be the hottest player in the world right now.

How hot?

Well, Crosby scored two goals and tallied an assist last night against Atlanta, which gives him a scoring streak of 25 games, a stretch during which he's scored 50 points. It's a streak so long, the last person to have one longer did so for a team that no longer exists. That, since you're wondering, would be Mats Sundin, who had a 30-game streak in 1992 for the Quebec Nordiques. To make the night even more interesting, the game is going to be captured by HBO for its current Penguins/Capitals 24/7 series, which, if you have no been watching, has been spectacular television -- and I'm not just towing the line of a hockey fan on that one. It has been gripping, informative and visually arresting to see. Oh yeah, and it's on again tonight.



Now, I will admit, the show is far better on HBO where the cursing isn't censored because, well, hockey players, and their coaches, swear a lot, regardless of who's listening. Fortunately for Washington's Bruce Boudreau, the Commish has let it slide.

So put it all together and you've got an interesting TV show, a phenomenal player, and apparently a reason for me to make the arduous trek to Nassau Coliseum for the first time ever tonight. And since nothing seems to be going right for the Giants right now in any way whatsoever, I could use the distraction. If anything the extensive mass transit to Uniondale will be long enough that I probably won't remember the Giants exist by the time I get there. Until Sunday, of course, when I foolishly hope against hope that the magic will happen.

I'm a fan. I don't know any better.

It's a Great Time For All My Teams

When I perused my twitter feed this morning an interesting thought came to mind when I saw this tweet from @TheHappyRecap noting that of the four New York sports teams he follows, the one that had a starting wide receiver accidentally shoot himself in the leg while wearing sweatpants was probably the least embarrassing. Because I went to sleep fairly early last night, it was after this that I saw that Francisco Rodriguez had gotten himself arrested last night after apparently taking a swipe at his father-in-law at Citi Field following the Mets 6-2 loss to Colorado.

Man, I love this team.

With the Mets set to conclude their three-game set with the Rockies this afternoon, reports are coming out that K-Rod is still being held in police custody at Citi Field, and while I'm sure, in the long run, this incident will start to fade from memory, it brings up an interesting question of which team I follow, or perhaps in a larger context, which team in general, has had the most embarrassing history. The Mets are making themselves strong contenders with this latest dust-up piled on top of a litany of others -- The Wilpon-Madoff Connection, The Adam Rubin Incident, The Midnight Massacre of Willie Randolph, The Mo-Licious, Mark Corey being unable to handle his Pot, the Vince Coleman Firecracker Affair, that whole massive collapse in consecutive seasons thing, just to name a few -- but why stop there when I have plenty of other reasons to be embarrassed by the teams I dedicate so much of my time to?

Because make no mistake, the Mets have some strong competition.

No discussion can really start in this without the Knicks, who have put their fans through what might be the most embarrassing five years of sports mismanagement any organization has ever endured with the circus that was the Isiah Thomas era. Sexual harrassment scandals, players trading sex for influence and dealing two unprotected first round picks for career-long lazy wastes with a known heart condition are just a few of the highlights. It is not unusual for a sports franchise to suffer one or two black eyes, particularly ones that get magnified in the media spotlight of New York City, but few are so dramatic that they actually inspire fans to rally outside the team's arena in support of firing the man in question.

The only way to understand how Isiah Thomas could have been in charge of the Knicks for so long is to assume that he must have had some sort of dirt on completely inept Knicks owner James Dolan. How else could we explain the recently embarrassing news that New York was bringing Thomas back into the fold as a consultant just two years after he completed running the 'Bockers into the ground? Naturally this didn't go over well with most of the fan base, and fortunately for all of us, NBA bylines deeming the deal a conflict of interest with Thomas' day job as the head coach at FIU have saved us all from those best laid plans.

By comparison, the Giants' struggles with Burress and their stunning loss to close out Giants Stadium last season, or the Devils having the largest move in team history blow up in their faces are downright positive developments.

But, like I said, this isn't just about the joke-a-thons that are my favorite teams. The Jets, Rangers, Nets and Islanders, a team once nearly purchased by a man with no money, have all had more than their fair share of misery both on the field and off over the past few decades.

So as I sit here, I'm going to make a rare plea to my four readers and ask you to submit some comments and ideas. Of all the teams, not necessarily in New York, which has had it the worst?

If you're a pained, suffering fan, you'll know what to do.

Hockey In Queens?

Recent scientific studies have shown that there is apparently a third NHL team that plays in the New York metropolitan area. In addition to the preeminent Rangers and perennially contending New Jersey Devils, there is apparently another team called the "New York Islanders", which plays in a rundown shack in Uniondale, New York called the "Nassau Coliseum".

I know, I was shocked, too, but apparently these "Islanders" have been around for more than three decades, and evidently have some history to their credit. One of the oft-forgotten dynasties of North American sports are the Isles of the early 1980s, who won four consecutive Stanley Cups from 1980-1983. In fact, they very nearly had a fifth one in 1984 until they ran into the Edmonton Oilers, who had some young buck named "Wayne Gretzky" (whatever happened to him?). The Islanders are now terrible, having not won a playoff series since 1993, but they still bring joy to the dozens of fans who show up at the Coliseum 41 times a year.

Who knew?

Ok, I knew. I've always known the Islanders existed, I'm very aware of the exploits of Mike Bossy and Bobby Nystrom, I know of their celebrity fans, which include Christie Brinkley and E from Entourage, and I actually own one of their jerseys -- but only because it's the most ridiculous sports uniform known to man. I especially dig the cheesy lighthouse logo on the shoulders. Those jerseys are so reviled by the 40 or so fans the Islanders still have that the team was forced to switch back to their old logo midway through the season.

I bring this up because yesterday brought a particularly interesting revelation as the Islanders sift through a long, and difficult process to upgrade the Coliseum or find a new stadium. Team owner Charles Wang has spent several years bickering with Nassau County officials over financing for a proposed renovation project that he favors called "The Lighthouse", which has a totally awesome website.

Unfortunately for Wang, the project has stalled over recent months, and while the Islanders' current lease doesn't run out until 2015 or so, time is beginning to run short on the crumbling Nassau Coliseum and Wang would like to know sooner rather than later if he's going to be able to keep the Isles in New York or move them to a plumb stadium deal elsewhere, such as Kansas City, which has the brand new Sprint Center waiting for a tenant. So while there had been rumors for a while that the Isles were considering moving into the yet to be built Barclays Center in Brooklyn or a new arena in Queens, no real progress had been made on either front or even been of discussion in public.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, word broke that Mets owner Jeff Wilpon has been in discussions with Wang over moving the Islanders into a new arena that would sit next to the Mets' Citi Field. The idea would be to level the chop shops behind Citi Field, which theoretically could be claimed by eminent domain, and build the arena over that territory, a plan which, to me, sounds awesome. There are any number of reasons why the Mets might be interested in partnering with what has looked like a moribund franchise for quite some time.

-- For one, the Isles and Mets share a generally common fan base, with the Mets drawing much of their market share from Nassau and Suffolk counties.
-- The acquisition of a hockey team could help improve Wilpon's prospects for landing a future Winter Classic at Citi Field, something he has publicly mentioned as a possibility.
-- The Islanders arena would increase the real estate value of the area and thus the value of both franchises.
-- The Islanders could provide Wilpon with winter programming for SNY, which spends most of November through March talking about how badly it wishes it were baseball season already.



I find this prospect pretty exciting, though it would mean we'd unfortunately never get to hear this again, because it would mean all three of the area's hockey teams would be easily reachable by train, heightening attendance and rivalries for all of them. Nassau Coliseum is notoriously hard to reach via public transportation, to the point that I, a 20-year area resident, have never even been to a game there.

Now, given how much time the Islanders have left in their current lease, any move or new arena is still several years off at best, but the prospect of having them play in a world class, accessible arena without leaving the immediate area is so exciting I get giddy at the prospect of wearing my Devils jersey out there on the 7 Train.

Maybe if we try hard enough, they'll bring back the Fisherman logo, too. Of course, we can't have everything. Besides, I think Gorton's might have some copyright issues to discuss in regards to that. Either way, having the Islanders in my home borough is an exciting prospect even if it's a ways away. I won't actually root for the Isles, but I will be watching. And you might want to, too.

Stay tuned on this one.