Did you watch the Rockies/Cardinals game last night? The Rockies were down 9-3 going into the 9th inning, and pulled off an incredible come-from-behind win. Lefty Seth Smith’s 3-run home run in the bottom of the 9th capped an incredible and unexpected win. In his post-game interview, Seth (Eli Manning’s backup QB at Ole Miss, by the way) had the greatest quote:

“Clutch is preparation meeting opportunity.” – Seth Smith

I really love this saying. And it definitely makes me think about my current situation.

Last week I had opportunities to get two sizable jobs that would have jumpstarted my fledgling freelance business, and would have gotten me off Unemployment. Both slipped through my fingers. My new goal is to be better prepared for next time, so that when similar opportunities come up, I can snap those jobs up.

So I’m working on expanding my expertise and promoting my talents better. I’ll get the hang of this eventually.

Something about being clutch is also knowing what it’s like to just miss out on being clutch. I think that missing out on these helps us understand lots of things about ourselves, and hopefully I can take these near-misses and translate my knowledge about them into bullseyes. Opportunity is everywhere.

Sports. One of the major problems with most of them is that fallible humans called referees, linesmen, umpires and the rest of the officiating crews can greatly influence the outcome of the sporting event.

Obviously the reason I’m writing this is because of the botched call at first base in the “almost perfect game” a few nights ago. I think that the way all parties involved have acted has been very admirable, what with all those apologies and stuff. But more on that later.

My real question is this: why the fuck haven’t we invented robot sports officials? I think it’s finally time to get the smartest minds in the world together to build a more fool-proof version of these officials. Too many calls are blown too in too many important games, and I’m officially tired of it. So get off your keesters, electronics and sports nerds! We need these robot officials, and we need them now.

I’m sure people will think that this will be the beginning of Cylons and shit, but I don’t believe that this will happen, provided we treat these robots with respect. At any rate, it can’t hurt.

I personally think that Armando Galarraga’s recent “almost perfect game” is the most unique perfect game ever. As far as I can tell, no pitcher has ever gotten 28 outs in a 9 inning perfect game. I don’t really care what the record books say. They’re full of douchebags on steroids anyway.

This deserves to be a perfect game.

The PR shitstorm that has come from Tiger Woods’ marital transgressions is pretty unavoidable, in my estimation (I liked the New York Times’ take on it). You can’t possibly fuck up that bad while having been perennially in the media’s spotlight for more than 10 years and get away scot-free (unless your name happens to be Bill Clinton).

You’re going to lose sponsors, and some major ones, even. But even Kobe Bryant survived his scandal in Eagle County, Colorado – and is now one of the NBA’s biggest stars again (I heard so much about it, living in Vail when it was happening). I’m pretty sure that Tiger Will come back after a while off, his wife will gain a new set of diamond earrings, a beach villa in the South of Italy, and a tighter leash on one of the world’s most iconic personalities.

But Tiger Woods could have avoided this fate if he just listened to the advice of another iconic (and rich) golfer.

Caddyshack is one of my favorite all-time golf movies (it is also one of my favorite all-time comedies). I have a feeling that I’m not the only one who has watched it. In fact, I bet a lot of pro golfers out there would list Caddyshack in their “favorites” list. I am willing to bet that it’s not one of Tiger Woods’ favorite movies, otherwise he probably wouldn’t be in the hot water he’s in. But it should have been. Caddyshack isn’t just a light comedy movie with booger, sex, and golf jokes. It’s an invaluable tool to teach you how to live your life by contrasting the exploits of overprivileged snobbery with those of the underprivileged service industry supporting them. Take this scene, for instance:

It’s all spelled out here for Tiger Woods. What a bummer he didn’t heed the attention of Ty Webb (played by Chevy Chase), who tells a young Danny Noonan about the pitfalls of “night putting”. Two points if you know who he was talking about.

Yes, it was Mitch Cumstein, Ty’s roommate. Had Tiger Woods heeded Ty’s advice to avoid night putting and not fucked all these chicks all over the world (or not gotten married in the first place), apparently, he wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. But no, he had to do it wrong. And he got busted for it.

Ovechkin and Crosby – New Best Friends Forever by clydeorama, on Flickr

Are you watching the NHL Playoffs this year? Because you should be, especially the Washington Capitals vs. Pittsburgh Penguins series. Last night’s game was epic, with Alex Ovechkin picking up the Caps and carrying them past the Sidney Crosby and the Pens for a win. Both Ovechkin and Crosby tallied hat tricks, which is crazy. You’ve got the three best players in the NHL playing this series, with Evgeni Malkin naturally being up there, too (and the probably MVP this year). Go watch the video in the link above to better understand what is happening. Some unbelievable hockey happening.

This is everything the NHL needs to try to regain market share lost from the recent lockout. I’m sure most every fan is hoping to see this go seven tightly contested games. But so are the NHL, Versus and NBC executives, who are still trying to replace the viewership (and revenue) lost from the lockout a few years back. And to be honest, I miss the NHL on ESPN (having multiple channels that could broadcast multiple games at the same time could avoid dumb shit like this. But I’m sure ESPN would rather broadcast some NBA games, as they currently do. More people watch, and there are probably lots more ad dollars to be had. It appears to me that the NHL is going to be on Versus for a long time, which is sort of a bummer (although I will say their broadcasts have been much better this year compared to last).

While talking about the game, Ryan asked about the origins of the term hat trick, and I had no idea (for shame). Check out the awesome history about hat tricks.

Go the distance. Yes, that was ripped off of Field of Dreams (as was the title). But it’s an important thing in the world of Customer Service. Take today, where an expected bad customer service experience has turned into a really nice customer service experience.

I am a hockey nut. I love hockey. Anything to do with hockey. It’s time for the NHL playoffs, and in this round all out-of-market games are being broadcast on Versus. On Denver’s Comcast, Versus shares their HD channel with the Golf Network. So they sort of trade off on the programming, sometimes it’s Golf and sometimes it’s Versus’ programming (hockey, ultimate fighting, cycling, fishing, etc.).

Therein lies the programming dilemma. Not only is this the first bit of games in the NHL, this week is also The Masters, a golf major championship.

So the program listing on Comcast says that there’s a recurring show called “Live from the Masters”. The problem is that this is not actually live coverage of the golf, it’s just analysis. And it’s being repeated like 4 times tonight. When there are live broadcasts of playoff hockey we want to watch, it’s annoying.

So I called Versus, which is actually owned by Comcast cable (which I just found out today). They were not helpful so much, as there was nothing on their talking points sheet for the day which would explain this.

I then called Comcast, and after a decently lengthy wait time, I was redirected to a phone number that nobody ever picked up – 407-363-4653 – not really sure what that was all about.

In my research of this problem, I came across a press release from Versus’ about the creation of the Versus HD channel on Comcast. A little more research showed me that a guy from the press release named Marc Fein is now Versus’ Executive Vice President of Programming, Production and Business Operations. I couldn’t find an email address for him, so I poked around on Google to see how other people at Versus had their email addresses.

And then I emailed him:

I noticed you were quoted in a press release when the Versus/Golf HD
channel was brought to Comcast. As you know, Versus and the Golf Channel
share an HD channel. I live in Denver and have Comcast HD cable.

The regular SD Versus channel today 2 hockey games tonight and the
program listing says that they’re also available in HD. When I go to
channel 672 (your HD channel), there is a repeating “Live from the
Masters” program all evening. Since people can only play golf during the
day, this is appears to be a repeating highlights show or something.

The problem I have with this programming is that the hockey tonight is
LIVE TELEVISION, but someone has apparently decided to show 6 hours of
reruns instead.

Why would the hockey not be broadcast live in HD tonight? Please
explain. I’m annoyed by this move by the Versus/Golf HD channel and it
makes me sad to know that Versus isn’t giving hockey consumers the HD
broadcasts on this channel.

If you are not the correct person to be contacting about this, please
refer me to the appropriate person.

Josh Mishell

Ten minutes later I had a response from someone at Versus (the Director of Scheduling and Program Planning), telling me that the games are actually going to be broadcast on the Versus HD channel, apparently through a last-minute deal with the Golf Channel.

This tells me one of two things:
1.Versus actually cares about their hockey customers, and even though I was wasting some people’s time (including an Executive VP) they were happy to help me out.
2. Nobody watches hockey, so I was the first person to complain about it.

Either way, I’m happy that Versus was able to help me out and I like them a lot more than I used to, especially after this AWESOME customer service experience. Well, I’m off to watch some hockey in HD. Thanks, Versus!

Photo from flickr user brianpoulsen.

If Pittsburgh’s Head Coach Mike Tomlin (pictured above, and not to be confused with baseball pitcher Mike Timlin) didn’t go for those two 2-point conversions in the playoff game tonight, there was a much better chance that the Steelers could have taken the game into overtime. I was talking to my dad about how I don’t think rookie coaches have the necessary skills to make the proper decisions in the playoffs, and here’s a prime example of the aforementioned lack of skills. Obviously, Jacksonville had a chance at a touchdown at the end, but I’d rather be up 3 in the last minute than be up 1 in the last minute.

Another thing my dad brought up is in 1998, when the Broncos were playing Green Bay in the Super Bowl and were driving (the same situation as the Jaguars were in tonight), and Mike Holmgren told his defense to let the Broncos score. That way, the Pack had more time to try to get a touchdown (which they almost did). I would have done the same thing. You’d have like 90 seconds to try to score, rather than the 30+ seconds that Pittsburgh had left.

Better luck next year, Steelers.

I love, however that the image was already up on flickr for me to use in my blog entry. This was the other image from the first page of results (sorted by date posted) that I was going to use for the blog entry. Saucy.

[URGENT UPDATE! I've moved my blog address to http://www.bankgothicoverload.com - you'll need to update this link in your bookmarks - there is also a new RSS feed there to subscribe to. Thanks!]

Facing protests from animal-rights groups, Nike announced it was suspending [Michael] Vick’s endorsement deal without pay, as well as halting sales of Vick-related shoes and other products at its retail stores. (from SI)

I love that animal rights groups protested that Michael Vick’s new shoe, probably called the DogKicker 2000, shouldn’t be sold. That seems fine, but millions of their shoes are made out of LEATHER. Why aren’t people boycotting them for murdering cows by the thousands to make some fucking shoes?

Adrian Dater reports that the Avalanche are close to signing longtime Avalanche-killer Ryan Smyth. Let’s hope he doesn’t continue to kill us by being non-impactful as one of us. That is, if he does sign…

Update – They did sign Smyth, as well as Scott Hannan. Looking forward to maybe a less crappy team this year?

I can’t decide which is most boring in the sports events on tonight, a Colorado Rapids game, the NBA draft or the Rockies at Astros. All are in High Def, none are remotely interesting. Only 3 days until NHL Free Agency, though.

Here’s a really cool look at NHL Salary Cap, laid out smartly for the first time I’ve seen anywhere.