Archive for June, 2009

For the first time in a longtime, maybe ever, there was quite a bit of media buzz surrounding this year’s MLB Draft. The story, of course, centered on San Diego State RHP Stephen Strasburg who recently completed one of the most dominating college seasons ever. His 100 MPH fastball, 13-1 record (in 15 starts), 1.32 ERA and 16.1 strikeouts per nine innings this season made the 6-foot-4, 200-pound pitcher the most highly anticipated MLB prospect since Ken Griffey Jr. was drafted in 1987. What makes the story so much more interesting is “The Angel of Death” to MLB owners, agent [...]

Over the last 20-25 years, as many media conglomerates have bought-up television and cable networks that carry sportscasts, it seems like game analysts have gotten more watered-down and vanilla with their commentary. Not that they, for the most part, can’t accurately explain the hit and run, the pick and roll or the 4-3 defense – but today’s sports analysts, as a whole, stay far away from statements that could be construed as negative or critical and spin everything into positives…really boring stuff. Nobody turns on a game to listen to an analyst degrade or embarrass an athlete or coach, but [...]

Well, the Yankees went ahead and did it again. You may remember a posting on this blog a few weeks ago (May 16) where I examined the Yankees public relations efforts regarding criticisms and negative feedback from fans and the media about some of the team’s new stadium policies. The overall point of the blog was that the Yankees need to wrangle in their front office staff members who had been speaking with the media in a reckless fashion, hurting the organization’s public image. I recommended, strongly, that the Yankees leave the media statements to just one or two appropriate [...]

Click Here To View an Image Slide Show of a L.I. Ducks Game Experience I have to preface this blog post with the fact that I’ve worked, on and off, for minor league and college baseball teams for more than nine years. So I feel very strongly about the importance of minor league baseball in America and the community’s responsibility to support its teams. So…when I realized that my parents lived less than four miles from the Long Island Ducks in Central Islip, NY, I bought some tickets a few weeks ago and insisted we attend a game.Because the Ducks [...]

The American sports world was taken by storm when Serena Williams exploded onto the professional tennis scene in 1999. With an unusual geographical and cultural background for an American tennis player, Williams, along with her older sister Venus, consistently made national sports news with big tournament wins. After winning a few smaller tournaments, Williams solidified her position as one of the world’s best when, as a seventh-seed, she upset #4 Monica Seles, #2 Lindsay Davenport and #1 Martina Hingis to win the 1999 U.S. Open Women’s Singles title, becoming just the second African-American woman (after Althea Gibson) to win a [...]