The Blog for the Sports Gamer

So I know with all that’s happened with the Tigers this past week, at least a few of you have expected a Todd-OMG-Tigerz-Pwnz! post. Certainly Magglio’s bottom of the ninth, two out, two on tater that went over Comerica’s old wall of insanity (behind the bullpens, which were only moved there a year or so ago) is just cause for one. But honestly, even moreso than usual, the words necessary to sum up that moment… There aren’t any. Excitement? Pride? Vindication? I don’t know. There’s just not much to say beyond offering up a prayer of thanks to the baseball gods that have twisted this team so cruelly for so long before this year. (Really, Ray Wert summed up what this has meant to Detroit better than anyone, over at Deadspin.)

So yes, I’m excited. In fact I welled up more than once on Saturday night watching Guillen and Monroe and Ordonez circle the bases as virtually the entire team awaited them at home plate. My recent move back to DirecTV was further vindicated since I now get Fox Sports Detroit and was able to see all the lockeroom and postgame coverage that is skipped over on national TV and national highlight shows. I think my favorite shot of the night (aside from Magglio) was of Dave Dombrowski when the ball left Maggs’ bat. He’s been here five years and took hell in 2003, but like I’ve said here before, he made this historic season possible. He put these players in place. He brought Leyland to the dugout. The fact that it was so unexpected, the way the players have brought the fans into it and just the way they’ve won these series; it’ll just never taste as sweet as this again regardless of whether this is a one year wonder or the start of a long run.

This Bud’s for you, Dave.

Anyway, the other reason for lack of posts this time is that I’ve been pretty well laid by the infection that took my voice on the eve of the ALDS Game 4 last week. (That’s why I never got pics from the game up. I haven’t done anything with ‘em yet.) I still don’t quite have my voice back (I couldn’t really talk at all on Wednesday) and was so whipped I was hitting the sack soon after the kids. (My day job hasn’t helped. Vista’s RTM is just about two weeks away and that equals hell for me as I try to shovel through endless chapters necessary to help get our books done.)

I haven’t even played a game in about a week and a half, sports or otherwise. I’m sure the lack of sports game posts from me has been annoying and so I’ve opted for the quiet. And truthfully, I just haven’t had an urge to play a hoops game. The extended Tigers season has left the NBA (and by extension NBA 2k7) far from my mind and right now I can’t imagine what other sports game I’d play. I’ve got zero interest in another Tiger Woods rehash this year, NBA Live is a sick joke. I mean really, what else is there? (I know I should play the hockey games, but I just haven’t gotten into either of them the past few years.)

To me, these really just aren’t good times for sports gaming. I’m not saying there are no good sports games, but the variety and level of innovation and –most importantly value per the almighty dollar- just don’t capture me quiet the way these games used to. I think having to pay $60 to own a 360 game really doesn’t help. $50 was really my cap in terms of buying games and thinking it a reasonably fair value. The genre also needs another High Heat type of game to jump on the landscape. Something that just takes your expectations from a sports game and just blows them out of the water. NBA 2k comes close, but it just doesn’t make me want to come back for more. Maybe when baseball season is over and the NBA season gets going for real.

But enough of that. Hopefully after the Vista maelstrom and the World Series I can actually crack a game and say something related to the goal of the blog. It’s not sports, but I’m thinking of picking up Sid Meier’s Railroads, since it’s just $35 at GoGamer this week. (This is Bill’s fault for introducing me to the Railroad Tycoon! Boardgame.) To me, $35 is good value. If I don’t play it from now till Christmas I’m not going to feel guilty about it, like I do when I set aside a console game I paid $60 for after just a month of play.

A) The fight itself?

B) The cheering players and fans after the fight?

C) Or the “we ready” announcer?

You decide.

I hate to get ahead of myself here. But, since I’m not a player and I don’t need to worry about being focused on the task at hand…I can’t help but look down the road a bit. There is a chance — in fact a better than average chance, that when Michigan travels down to Columbus to face the Buckeyes — it will be #1 vs. #2 with the winner going to the title game.

For people outside of Big10 country — let me try to explain what that means: It’s a lot like the quote from Hymon Roth in The Godfather Part II: “Michael, we’re bigger than US Steel.”

Me, being admittedly biased, truly feel that the OSU/Michigan rivalry is the biggest and the best in sports. Not just college football, but sports in general. Bigger than Red Sox/Yankees (they play each other too often and it’s not always with everything on the line. When OSU and Michigan play in November it’s almost always with a title up for grabs. Same with Duke/Carolina. Sorry, it’ s a huge game each year, but they can play other at LEAST twice a season and sometimes more and it’s not for all the marbles.)

If this were to happen…if Ohio State can get through the gauntlet of Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois, and Northwestern and Michigan can get past Iowa, Northwestern, Ball State and Indiana and if USC stumbles against Notre Dame, Cal or Oregon (and I’m just not sold on USC yet) then it’ll happen. OSU #1, Michigan #2 in both the AP and BCS Standings. I shudder to think what the Horseshoe will be like for that game. Spontaneous combustion comes to mind.

And I want it to happen. No losses for Michigan. Keep on trucking your way to Buckeye Land.

I really do hate to look so far ahead because there’s a lot of football left to play, but it would be an historic event if that were to happen. It would also mean that Ohio State will have played three #2 teams in one season (you’d think that would have to be a record, right?) because after beating Michigan (you heard me) we will have played Texas #2, Michigan #2, and then whoever the BCS throws at us in the title game.

Hopefully Notre Dame.

Blitz The League is on sale at Best Buy this week for $39.99 on the Xbox 360. Keep in mind Best Buy says it’s available this week, but no one else has it available this week. EB says it’s due out 10/31.

They are accepting preorders. I bought it because I get 500 RewardZone bonus points (wee).

For those that may not have noticed, I am a huge GameTap fan. They are adding tons of games, including some Old PC favorites, like Gettysburg and the various SimCity games.

If you like your gaming without cd keys, and want to help assist those people/companies who made the gaming world so vibrant, I think GameTap is worth your while. I really enjoy it.

Right now, they are offering a fantastic deal for their 1 year anniversary. Normally it’s $9.95/month but they are doing a 1/2 off sale if you prepay..that’s one year of old school gaming for $49!

Great deal, great setup…and I’m not making anything off this and yet I’m still pimping them so you know it’s good. :).

Anyway, click here to have a look.

I’m back from gaming land. I suck at roulette.

This little (long) ramble isn’t very sporty, and it certainly has nothing to do with games or baseball, but writing is in many ways my release, so…

2006 has been one for the recordbooks. The fact that there’s still 2 1/2 months left kinda scares me. Most years just seem to roll by; you may have a few things worth remembering — maybe a good vacation, a milestone for your child, maybe even a team you follow wins a title of some sort.

2006, for me, and especially for Mary has been an eventful and trying year. I was about to type, “rough” but that really does only tell part of the story.

We have our new house in the country, which is still only a 20 minute drive to two of Columbus’ best shopping and entertainment areas (Polaris and Easton); we totally lucked out and live next to a wonderful family who happens to have a girl in the 2nd grade that Ashley gets along great with. Ideal neighbors — the father even cut our weeds down this summer with his tractor…we didn’t even ask. He knew we didn’t have our mower yet so he did it for us. They hold an annual Halloween party which is coming up I think in 2 weeks. It’s a big deal — like 100 people plus a boatload of kids. Great people.

So, there’s that. We love the new house, there’s still a ton of work to do in order for it to really feel like home — decor stuff, we still only have a kitchen table and nothing in the dining room — right now it’s a storage room as we are still digging through boxes. The walls are, for the most part, bare except in my office. I have my OSU stuff (lots of that), my painting of the old Cleveland Browns Stadium, and a great drawing of the 11 Triple Crown winners. My office trumps the dining room, I guess.

This wasn’t the plan, you see.

We are set to close on our old house on October 27th at 1:00 PM ET. I hope this sparks a good holiday season and a better 2007. We need it. My wife needs it. We put the house on the market on December 19th, 2005. We are closing in October of 2006. If you have never sold a house let me just say: that’s a long ass time. When we listed the home we thought we’d sell it for X amount of dollars give or take a few grand. We ended up selling the house for $16,000 less than we anticipated. We happened to sell our home during the worst housing market in 15 years.

So, a lot of the stuff we had planned on getting for the house (like..a dining room table…and curtains) are still on the Wait List. This house thing has been an enormous weight, and even though we took a bath on it, in 14 days it’ll be over. At closing, we’re going to get a check for a whopping $434. It pains me to even type that. But…that’s just money. Mary makes good money and I still get paid decent coin to ramble on about videogames, so the money will work out one way or the other.

In February of 2006 Mary was attacked and beaten to a pulp in the parking lot of Don Pablos’ restaurant, suffering a broken orbital bone, a busted nose, and as a result had to have eye surgery. Deep down, she still hasn’t recovered from that. I wouldn’t expect her to. This incident gave me my first sense of real rage in my life. We all get mad one time or another — and we may even think we’re furious over some trivial thing…but I never have experienced anything remotely close to this feeling of pure, unadultered hatred. It was the first time I ever felt like I could actually take a human life — and not feel any remorse over it. None. That feeling has since subsided a bit. A little, anyway.

That’s only a taste of 2006 — there was more, but I don’t feel comfortable talking about some of it in detail (a sister in law in rehab, my 3-year old neice getting mauled by a pit bull on her birthday), so I’ll leave it at that. I don’t know what 2007 will bring.

Hopefully grass.

We planted grass 3 weeks ago after we finished the second grading of the land, only to see it wash away the next day with a surprise fall thunderstorm. We both laughed as we literally saw the rain washing away $500 in grass seed before we had a chance to get peat moss and straw down. What else can you do but laugh?

I am not by nature an optimist. I’m not a pessimist, either — I tend to take things as they come and get happy or sad or mad as required. But when I look back at this crazy-ass year, I try to come to grips with the fact that it could have been much, much worse. Mary could have died in that attack. The building of our new house could have hit all sorts of snags (it didn’t), the old house could have not sold at ALL — many in our old neighborhood are still sitting there with signs on the lawn. We could have moved next to bad neighbors who hate kids. My neice could have very easily died last week. There is, in this case, a bright side.

It’s now 2:48 PM…I am sitting here in sweatpants, a t-shirt, and in my bare feet, drinking a cup of very good Kona coffee, looking out the window at a huge front yard, with small patches of high dollar grass dotting the landscape of dirt. The rest I’m sure is in the gulley. Still, I do see some green out there. I have to get Ashley from school at 3:25. Enough time to finish this, and the coffee, let the dog out, and get the mail. Afterward it’s a quick trip to Hometown Buffet and then to the old house to do the last fixes before the closing.

Today’s work day consisted of submitting a review of Mage Knight, editing a review of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, fiddling with Tiger Woods 07 on the PC, installing NBA Live on the PC (shudder) and making a quick sweep of Duskwood gathering up Grave Moss in World of WarCraft. Hey, I have potions to sell, ya know?

And…just as I type this, my buddy Sal Accardo, the PC editor at GameSpy sends me a message over ICQ that reads: “Want to do a preview of Medieval Total War: 2?”

Yes, life could be much, much worse.

I’m off to a work related conference at Mohegan Sun..so it’s work by day, Roulette and BlackJack by night, so I’m not sure how much I’ll post until Friday.

In the meantime:
Great news about the MLB game and 2K sports. Ben Brinkman has been around a long time and does know his stuff. The fact that he left EA for baseball says a lot about him (I mean I’m sure it’s a pretty tough gig to give up).

Have you been reading the IGN propaganda blogs? My god…take a look at the EA FIFA blog It is downright hysterical to read how much better the Xbox 360 version of the game is, although it is significantly crippled from the other console versions. Look for IGN’s 8.5 review soon. Heh.

You know what game didn’t get a whole lot of press but I’ve been enjoying? EA’s The Godfather for the 360.

Dig Dug is now out for Xbox Live Arcade. I’m done buying these old school retreads when I can play every game on GameTap for a better price. They have leaderboards too, but no achievements. However with achievements like “Get the eggplant” it seems pretty lame anyway.

Various sites are reporting that the PS3 is sold out everywhere. Now, last year, I ranted against the Xbox 360 until I got one and was stunned about how good it was. Mind you I have not had the issues with the console melting down that many others have had. I was debating whether or not to preorder the PS3 just so I could have one. I looked at EB games page and there were zero games I was interested in. I mean the games there are rehashes of 360 games. I’m just not comfortable paying $600 for no force feedback, and there’s no way I’m dropping $60 for Fight Night, a game I did enjoy 6 months ago…

Wii on the other hand is another story…I’m still debating whether to get the GameCube 2. I think the controller is going to be annoying in the same way that Samba de Amigo was fun but the hassle of putting up the maracas controller made it less fun. I don’t have a whole lot of room in my gaming office so if I need to be 10 feet back, the console won’t work for me. I think I’m just going to stick with the 360 for now and wait for everyone to tell me I need one of these other consoles….

For the most part, I enjoy the 2K Sports lineup of games more than I do EA’s stuff. Hockey and basketball (pro and college), I think, 2K Sports absolutely destroys EA Sports. One area that I think 2K stumbles is baseball. I hated MLB 2K6. I caught fan-hell for saying and writing that even though I was hardly the only critic to blast that game, but that’s part of the job. If you can’t stand the heat and give an honest opinion, better get into politics instead.

After reading this short IGN piece, maybe the series is going to start to move in the right direction? At least it sounds good on paper. Kush has brought on board Ben Brinkman, one of the key MVP series leaders, to re-tool the MLB series. A few select quotes from Brinkman:

“I didn’t feel like a lot of the stuff was done, polished, tuned the way it should be, and that was something that I look at, something that if you build the game properly, you have plenty of time to do that stuff at the end, and that’s actually what we’re doing now. For example, the precision pitching, cool idea, but it looked like it only got about 75% of the way there. There were about two or three little things they could’ve done which we’re doing this year, and I won’t get into too much detail, but it will take it into completion and make it a lot more fun and a lot more interactive.”

Yep.

“We’ve gotten back down to bare basics. We’re not adding a ton of bells and whistles this year, we’re going to take what we have and add some cool stuff to it. We’re also going to pull stuff out that takes away from the authenticity of the game. Showboat catches come to mind. Turbo baserunning. We’re getting back to making a game that plays a really great game of baseball.”

2X Yep. This is a very sound approach.

“First year, drill down to the core and get the core baseball game going,” Brinkman said. “Year two, add some cool features, maybe some tersely modes, maybe redesign franchise. The third year, just wrap it up into a nice bow and nail it. We hope to nail it every year, obviously, with everything we do, but we looked at High Heat, even going as far back as Baseball Stars. I play games, and I think that’s a big difference that wasn’t on the team last year. I play the game three, four hours a day. I sit there and if stuff isn’t working, it gets fixed immediately.”

I think I have found a kindred spirit with this Brinkman guy.

IGN: And Brinkman knows the pressure is on to produce as word is Major League Baseball wasn’t too happy with the quality of the game, or the direction the series was headed.

See…I knew Selig read Gameshark!

Anyway, the whole interview is worth a read.

Just received an email that GameStop/EB Games are taking pre-orders for PS3’s today only. You need to put $100 down and by doing so, you aren’t guaranteeing a console for launch day.

Part of me wants to get down there, then I took a look at the launch games, remembered there’s no vibration feedback, and I went meh, I can use that money somewhere else.

But those of you going, make sure you preorder Blazing Angels and all the other old 360 games. Heh.

Well, I’m back. It’s two days later and I still can’t speak above a whisper and my voice cracks like a teenage boy in puberty. Granted, it sounded like that before Saturday’s Game 4 thanks to a nasty cold I’ve gotten from the kids, but around work today I think I’ll pretend I blew my voice out at the game. Even without the cold I’d probably still be hoarse today and I’m sure my throat is much more sore for the mostly failed effort I put into making noise at Comerica on Saturday night.

Let me be clear on one thing about the experience of being at this game. I was at the Detroit Lions 1991 playoff win over Dallas to advance to the NFC Finals. It was the first playoff win for the Lions in the Silverdome (and the only one, as it turned out). I was also at the 1991 Michigan vs. Ohio State game, sitting in the very corner of the endzone where Desmond Howard did his infamous Heisman pose as Michigan cruised into the Rose Bowl. And I’ve certainly been to my share of games that despite being a matter of routine, were jolly-good times.

None of it held a candle to being on Comerica Park Saturday night as the Tigers put an 8-3 pasting on the Yankees and advanced to the ALCS. I swear to god, you’d have thought we won the World Series, cured AIDS and found a solution to global warming, all on the field that night. Aside from my marriage and birth of my children I’m not sure I’ve had a better night.

From the moment the PA guy announced that Fox had initiated their live feed from the game, you knew this was set to be something special. We all just went crazy. Every time Bonderman put two strikes on a batter it was cause for a standing-O, in anticipation of the pitch that would cast aside one more Yankee hitter. Every time a Tiger reached a base (and that happened *a lot*), the place would erupt. When the Tigers scored a run, take your pick of any of the eight, total strangers would exchange hugs and high fives. And each of the last six Yankee outs of the game, in the 8th and 9th innings, brought the top decibel level up just a little bit higher. And then there was the final out…

If you want to know what pure joy feels like, mix 20 years of losing baseball in an underdog diehard baseball city, with an underdog roster going up against the “greatest lineup ever assembled,” and have the national pundits repeat over and over again how your team has no hope of victory. Twenty year of pent up baseball frustration all let out in a collective cheer as the final out was recorded. It was surreal. We were high-fiving the police providing security, the Air Force guys standing behind us (we were the last row on the lower level – amazing seats), a drunk guy practically leaped the railing next to me to share a hug before running up and down the aisle hugging anyone who wouldn’t push him away. The couple in front of us were practically dry-humping. It was absolutely surreal.

And then the players came back out of the dugout, two-fisting champagne bottles, and spraying them all on the crowd as they took a round-trip around the stadium to mix it up and share the experience with the fans. It was like watching a Stanley Cup team take a tour around the ice following a Stanley Cup victory. I’ve never seen anything like it, in person or on TV. There’s simply no way to describe what it all meant to the fans at the game and to the city of Detroit at large for this team to have this kind of season and snatch victory away from a very much despised opponent that had been all but anointed when the series began.

Even in the aftermath, to the media, it’s clear that this will be all about the great Yankee failure as opposed to the pitching of Rogers and Bonderman. Or the clutch hitting of Carlos Guillen and Placido Polanco. The two homers each (in the series) from rookie CF Curtis Granderson or Mr. Clutch LF Craig Monroe. The incredibly strong infield defense, or the diving catches of Tiger outfielders as they snatched extra base hits away from the Yankees. Outside Detroit, I’m sure very few Tigers have become household names over this series. The MSM is much more eager to talk about what happens next to Rodriguez and Torre.

And you know what? It doesn’t matter. National attention? National respect? That wasn’t what Saturday night was about. It was about a franchise and a fan base that has been dying for post-season victory since Reagan was in office. Screw the national media and the talk of a New York meltdown. The Tigers earned this with heart, desire and more talent than they get credit for. And to the credit of the players, many of whom have had only the slightest taste of the franchise’s losing past, they showed when they toured the stadium and shared the experience directly with the fans that they understood what it meant to all the people in that building.

This was bigger than a renewed opportunity to reach the World Series. Anyone who thinks the celebration was out of hand for something as mundane as surviving a divisional series, can’t understand what Saturday night was all about. It was about everything I’ve put into this post and so very much more. To say that I’ll be forever grateful for getting to experience the Tigers series victory over the Yankees on Saturday is to use words far too small to fit the occasion. This was euphoria. Pure joy.

I snapped a load of digital pics from the game. In looking them over last night, not a lot of them came out so great (I really needed a telephoto lens), but after I get a chance to clean up some of the better ones up a bit, I’ll post a few.

Oh yeah, and to answer a note from Glen in the Comment section. No, I didn’t have a kitten over the Tigers win. I had a whole f’ing litter of ‘em.

For the first time in a very long time, the Mrs and I went to the movies. We saw the Departed and it is a holy shit sort of movie. I can’t go into details without spoiling it but it’s definitely worth your $6.00 (matinee) and 2 1/2 hours of your time.

I opted for the movie over the Patriots, but caught up thanks to the power of TiVo. Looks like I didn’t miss much. At least they won though, so that’s good.

Wow. Bob Woodward was very convincing on Meet the Press. Rebutting every quote of the Republican White House with dates, times and quotes. Hysterical how he said that Cheney hung up on him (not that surprising though).

Getting back to sports, congrats to UNH’s David Ball who broke the record of Jerry Rice’s touchdown catches in Division 1-AA.

Oh and congrats again to the Tigers, I can’t wait to hear from Todd if he had champagne dumped on him. Also, where’s Jonah’s yankees round up? I’m dying for that show right now.

Q. What’s the difference between the Orioles, Red Sox and Yankees?
A. Nothing, they are all home right now. hahahahaa.

As most blog readers know, Todd went to today’s game vs. the Yankees. I know that here, I kind of ripped into the Tigers. I didn’t think they had a chance in heck, having seen such a collapse down the strech. Well, I was wrong, and I couldn’t be more happy about it.

Seeing Detroit in the playoffs gives hope to my Orioles, and proves that not every year it’s the Yankees. Maybe Mike Mussina will come back home next year :).

Oakland vs Detroit? Frankly, I want Detroit. I just don’t have a lot of love for West Coast teams…maybe the Dodgers, but that’s only becuase they were east coast at one point. Heh.

Still glad Baltimore didn’t sign Nomar. Way too many injuries and too old at this point. Every time you think maybe we should and then oops another strain/tear/etc. Either his regimen is awful, or that other thing….

I like how you can play a shooter vs keeper game while the game loads…however, no commentary (hope it’s because of the demo) sucks…and the lack of team choice sucks more.

Again, I think I’d rather play Winning Eleven for the Xbox on my 360 than this. Another piss poor demo.