Title IX is winning

As I watch ESPN in primetime, I’m watching women’s college softball with a WNBA score locked in the top right. I’ve never seen one women’s sport televised with constant updates of a different women’s sport. That’s pretty cool.

An update from my Monica Abbott post earlier: She has now thrown 37 innings without allowing a run (it’s 0-0 in the 9th). Why do I like this sport again?

The best team name ever

The Long Beach Armada of Los Angeles of California of the United States of North America Including Barrow, Alaska.

Classic.

I know this is just a publicity stunt, making of my favorite team, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. But it’s still funny.

The best part of the team name is the Barrow, Alaska inclusion at the end. For those of you who don’t know, Barrow is the northernmost city in the U.S. (Wikipedia entry here) Back in April, the Armada had already partnered with Barrow to become the northernmost baseball team in the world.

I’ve never been to Barrow, but I’d be willing to bet Barrow and Long Beach have little in common. What we need is for the Armada to play a game or two in Barrow. In winter. Now that would be exciting.

Monica Abbott is destroying softball

It was less than a week ago that I wrote about my love of college softball, specifically the World Series.

Well, this year’s competition hasn’t been as exciting. And for that, I blame one person — Monica Abbott.

This is no criticism about how her softball skills. Abbott is having the most dominant World Series I’ve ever seen and may go down as the best college softball pitcher ever, especially if Tennessee wins tonight or tomorrow and gets the championship.

But Abbott has been so good, she’s making these games so uninteresting and unwatchable.

Her game-by-game stats:

May 31 vs. Texas A&M, 7 IP, 0 R, 0 H, 4 BB, 16 K

June 1 vs. Arizona, 7 IP, 0 R, 6 H, 3 BB, 16 K

June 3 vs. Northwestern, 7 IP, 0 R, 2 H, 0 BB, 17 K

June 4 vs. Arizona, 7 IP, 0 R, 4 H, 1 BB, 8 K

TOTAL: 28 IP, 0 R, 12 H, 8 BB, 57 K, 0.00 ERA, 0.71 WHIP, and over half of the batters she’s faced struck out (57/98 = 58.2%)

This is beyond ridiculous.

Obviously, the Women’s College World Series has seen its fair share of great pitchers. Cat Osterman was just there a year ago. But Osterman’s teams never even made it to the finals. As good as she was, the best offenses in the country were able to score the occasional run off of her.

The Lady Vols aren’t exactly offensive juggernauts either. They have yet to score more than three runs in a game at the World Series, only outscoring their opponents 9-0 in four wins.

I haven’t seen the ratings info yet for the World Series yet, but I’d guess they’re down. Fans don’t like 1-0 games where the team with the zero has no chance of scoring at all.

Abbott is turning softball into an individual sport more than it has ever been one before. Something needs to be done to counter this dominance. Move the circle back a foot or two? Make teams use at least two pitchers in a tournament? I don’t know what the answer this, but something needs to change for the good of the sport.

Unless Arizona pulls off a miracle and beats the Tennessee Abbotts two days in a row.

A-rod’s affair – why do we care?

So Alex Rodriguez cheated on his wife with a stripper. So what?

I’m not saying that infidelity isn’t important. Clearly, it’s bad for his marriage that he did this.

But why did this become such a national story?

This doesn’t effect A-Rod’s playing ability as far as I can tell. If he was arrested, that could effect him missing games or getting suspended, so that’s newsworthy.

As a baseball fan, I cared a lot more about the incident where he yelled “ha” while passing Howie Clark by third base, leading to Clark missing a fly ball.

I’m willing to bet that A-Rod isn’t the only pro athlete cheating on his wife with strippers.

I don’t want to sound like an A-Rod defender. But let’s stick to making fun of him for what he does on the field, OK? There’s plenty to go on already.