Spread the Word Baby, Omar Back

It's been quite some time since my last post, and a whole lot has changed. I went from living on a couch in Battery Park City to a air mattress, then futon in Harlem, and now have a crib in the East Village. Unemployed to intern to full time employee. Cheering for Durant at the NBA Draft to Felix in the Bronx to the Seahawks in Green Bay. Added a few Facebook interests (cheese, Kenny Mayne hosting SportsCenter), found a few new bars to frequent (Lucy's, Mudville 9), got hooked on a few TV shows (The Wire, Lost). I missed over half of 2007 here in Cyberspace. I guess that's what happens when you get a job.

Despite my job, I still managed to get out and experience one of my favorite things in life: Live sporting events. Here's a rundown of what I've been up to:

• NBA Draft, Madison Square Garden: Sporting my Chris Wilcox t-shirt, I was in the front row of the back section of the MSG WaMu Theater, and was officially the first Seattle Supersonics fan in the world to shake the hands of Kevin Durant and Jeff Green. I also gave props to fellow Washingtonians Spencer Hawes and Rodney Stuckey. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
• Yankees/Angels, Yankee Stadium: When a few of my buddies from Boston came to town and we had extra tickets to a Yankees game, naturally we all put on Red Sox gear and made a trek out to the Bronx. One of us had a few too many beverages beforehand and nearly instigated a riot, as the entire stadium booed us and tried to get us kicked out. It was arguably worse than it would have been had the Yankees actually been playing the Sox. Remind me not to do that again. I'm not even a Sox fan.
  
• Yankees/Devil Rays, Yankee Stadium: On a nice Friday night in July, I got to see the Yankees get crushed by Tampa 14-4. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
  
• Yankees/Mariners, Yankee Stadium: I got to see King Felix pitch for the first time in my life, and he delivered: 7 innings, 1 run, 5K in a 7-1 Mariners victory including an Ichiro! home run. The hopped on the subway to go to...
  
• US Open, Queens: Roger Federer defeating Feliciano Lopez, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-4. We got hooked up with incredible seats. What a day of sports.
• BC/FSU, Chestnut Hill, MA: The beginning of the end for BC Football, this is when the wheels came off. I should have learned my lesson and not attended any other games.
• BC/Maryland, College Park, MD: If the wheels came off against FSU, the whole thing caught fire and burned to the ground at Maryland. Not even my Jesus piece could help us.
• Sonics/Knicks, Manhattan: Kevin Durant's first trip to the Mecca, and boy did he impress. Led the Sonics to a 117-110 victory with 30 points, including key buckets down the stretch and a thunderous jam right on David Lee. I loved it. Spike Lee would disagree.
• Blazers/76ers, Philly: After meeting Greg Oden and spending a day with reporters demoing College Hoops 2K8 (I love my job), we posted up 7 rows back on the baseline for the Blazers/Sixers game. I was excited to see my boy Brandon Roy play, and by halftime the game was an embarrassment: 45-27, advantage Portland. But the Sixers came out hot in the 3rd quarter and eventually completed the improbable comeback, winning the game by 4 points. It was the first time I had ever seen Louis Williams play. I added him to my fantasy team the next day. The kid is going to be good.
  
• Mavericks/Jazz, Salt Lake City: After I missed my connection in SLC back to NYC from Sun Valley, I rang up my one friend from Mormon Country and he had a spare ticket to the game. I have honestly never seen an NBA crowd quite like Utah--every single person was engaged, the place got LOUD, and everyone stayed until the finish. Deron Williams is going to go down in history as a great point guard. Mark my words.
• Seahawks/Packers, Frozen Tundra, Wisconsin: This trip truly deserves its own post, but I'm not sure that'll happen or not. The abbreviated story: 14.5 hour drive from NYC to God's Country, freezing weather, snowflakes as big as softballs, lots and lots of cheese, and the best experience you could ever have while watching your favorite team lose a playoff game on the road. Simply amazing. Until that 14.5 hour drive home.
• Clippers/Knicks, Manhattan: Typical Knicks game, they stayed in it for nearly 4 quarters before letting the game slip away with 3 minutes left. It was great seeing David Lee dunk on Chris Kaman, exclaiming "That was out of this world!" after a Sam Cassell drive, and discussing how he was an "All-Universe" guard, representing Mars.

The main staple of The Roundup has been sports, especially attending games live. Doing so is one of the things in life that I truly value. Sure, I grew up watching Michael Jordan on NBA on NBC, but I'll never be able to tell my kids that I saw him in person. But over the last 7or 8 months, I've added some good new ones to my list. Crawford, Felix, Federer, Ryan, Durant, Green, Roy, Igoudala, Louis, Dirk, Deron, Favre... and of course, the only extra terrestrial playing professional sports, Sam Cassell.

Bombed in the Bronx

Just as I did with Madison Square Garden, I made a point to get to Yankee Stadium this season because I live in New York. A weekend series against my Seattle Mariners was a perfect excuse. After the game Friday night (a 15-11 Seattle win that I did not attend) I was thinking there could be 100 runs scored in the 4-game series, with the problems the Yankees had been having with their rotation and the Mariners lack of good pitching in general with Felix Hernandez on the DL. Boy was I wrong.

Saturday started off with a nice little reunion on the roof of a parking garage with a few of my friends, as we enjoyed some beers and sunrays. With Jeff Weaver pitching for Seattle, I made a couple bets that the Yankees would hit a first inning home run. Keep in mind, Weaver was entering the game 0-4 with an ERA over 18. We found our seats and settled in with an $8 beer to enjoy America’s pastime.

Surprisingly, Jeff Weaver didn’t get shelled in the first inning as I had expected. Or the second. Or the third. In fact, it took until the sixth inning for Weaver to let the game get away. You know it’s bad when you go five and two thirds of an inning and give up six runs, and your ERA actually goes down.

On the other side of the ball, it was a completely different game. Chien-Ming Wang had been perfect. No hits, no walks, even aided by a couple great defensive plays by A-Rod. At this point, I became a very annoying person to all the Yankee fans in our section, continually asking out loud, “Is it bad that I’m talking about this being a perfect game? Am I going to jinx it?” Sure enough, in the eighth inning the Mariners finally got to Wang as Ben Broussard pulled a misplaced changeup over the fences in right. Perfect game, huh? Almost made it.

I returned to the Bronx on Sunday, two glorious days in a row to watch a baseball game. It wasn’t quite like watching a perfect game unfold, but it was fun nonetheless. In the fifth, as Yankees first baseman Josh Phelps scored New York’s first run, he went out of his way to railroad Mariners catcher Kenji Johjima, even though Kenji had left home plate wide open for him to slide through because he knew the throw from Ichiro would be late. The following inning, as Phelps came to the plate, Jarrod Washburn plunked him in the back in retaliation. Because it was Yankee Stadium and not Safeco Field, the fans didn’t even realize that Phelps had made a dirty play and this retaliation was inevitable. So when Scott Proctor threw at Yuniesky Betancourt’s head in the seventh inning and got tossed, the benches cleared and the crowd came to life. Comments like “David Justice wouldn’t have let this happen” and “Where’s Paul O’Neill when you need him” poured on much to my amusement. Unfortunately for us, no brawl ensued, but it sure would’ve been fun to watch A-Rod get pummeled by Richie Sexson and Ichiro have a kung-fu battle with Kei Igawa.

Even though I saw the Mariners gather only six hits and one run in the two games I attended, my trips to Yankee Stadium were great. I saw a nearly perfect game, a near brawl, and Roger Clemens announce that he is returning to the Yankees. It truly is a wonderful ballpark, and it’s a shame it is being torn down. I’m sure the new stadium will be great, and I hear they are keeping all the same dimensions, but there’s something about the history of a ballpark that I love, like at Fenway Park, that I never had in Seattle. The Kingdome wasn’t a historical ballpark, and as beautiful as Safeco Field is, it doesn’t have that same feeling as Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium. So I’m glad that I got to see some baseball in one of the game’s historical playgrounds before it is gone forever.

An Introduction

So they call me "Big B." It was a nicknamed coined my freshman year at BC, after two Brians emerged in our group of friends. One was short, while the other (me) was 6'7". Makes sense. So it should also make sense that "Big B" has decided to move to the Big Apple. This should be interesting.

I was born in Seattle, but moved to the tiny town of Coupeville, WA (pop. 1813) before I started gradeschool. Throughout my childhood I had my eyes set on bigger and better things than Coupeville. Don't get me wrong, I love my hometown. My core group of friends are great, and it's beautiful. But I had to get out, do new things, experience a new city, a new way of life. 2,492 miles later, I enrolled at Boston College. This has turned out to be the best decision of my life. I fell in love with Boston. Just a great city. And, after graduation, I wanted to be close enough to Boston to be able to see my friends who still remained and catch the occasional BC game. But, as the great decision I made earlier in my life, I decided to take the opportunity to experience something new. So, where was I to decide to move?

The Criteria

1. Close proximity to Boston. This means the ability to drive or take a reasonable bus ride to get back. In other words, nothing on the West Coast or deep south.
2. A city that I would have a lot of college friends around, because by being on the East Coast, I have eliminated being close to my friends from home.
3. A good job market for Sports Media, PR, and Broadcasting.

Cities of interest eliminated: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Washington DC, Philadelphia.

New York City is a short enough bus ride from Boston. There is a great network of my BC friends throughout the greater NYC area. And if you want to talk Sports Media, PR, and Broadcasting, the Big Apple has to be tops on the list.

So this is how it's going to go down. My first time really living away from home. My blood relatives are all on the West Coast, spreading from Seattle to LA. Then I've got the uncle in central Mexico. But I'll make it work. I've got my Jewish mother and sister in the City. And I"ve got my brothers and sisters from BC from Boston down to Jersey. I have a lot of love in the Northeast. And it's gonna be a heck of a ride. I might as well keep you posted.