Michael Friend —
The snow is finally starting to melt, clear, blue skies have replaced the perpetual gray clouds and the birds have returned to western Pa., to serenade us with their songs. The temperature isn’t the only thing that’s heating up in and around the Steel City, as the race for the NHL playoffs loom. The Penguins have clinched a spot and look to stave off other hungry teams fighting, figuratively and literally in some cases, for a spot in the quest for Lord Stanley’s Cup. While hundreds stream to the North Shore to cheer on the Buccos and eat the heart attack on the plate that is “The Closer,” diehard fans will still fight their to the CONSOL Energy Center to cheer on the Pens in the hunt for the top seed in the east.
Sure it’s spring and most days you can venture outside without risking hypothermia, but the reality is that it is still hockey season. Baseball purists will say that hockey is a “cold weather” game and that it’s had its turn, but judging by the long sleeves and thermal head gear some of the Pirates have been sporting, I would still contend that it’s hockey season.
Baseball is meant to be a hot-weather game, not a warm weather, but a hot-weather game. The best games and time for baseball is from mid-June, after the Stanley Cup finals of course, to late August when the numbers on the thermometer mimic the speed on a Francisco Liriano fastball. Granted, the past few days have been warm, but for the most part, April and March have been cold and typically are making for perfect hockey conditions both indoors and out.
When the hockey season starts it competes for fans with the NFL, and for many Americans, not just those in Pittsburgh, the Steelers own the fall. With the NFL season not coming to an end until midway through hockey’s regular season, hockey should be the primary focus for fans from January to end of the playoffs in June. In addition to competing for fans and in some places air time, the NHL season is only 82 games long and the MLB season is 162 games long, making the opportunities that fans get to go to a hockey game at more of a premium than MLB games.
The argument between fans of which season it truly is, is an understandable one, with TV and radio deals lengthening seasons to the point that overlapping schedules for most of one sport’s season is almost a guarantee. However, as a fan, when looking at the NHL and MLB during this time of year, most of the games in the NHL have some sort of play off implication, where with the exception of Opening Day most of the games being played in baseball will have little bearing come playoff time. On Tuesday, the Penguins battled the Red Wings to a shootout, winning 4-3. On the other hand on Tuesday night, the Pirates squeeze by the perennially bad Chicago Cubs for a 7-6 after a 4 run first inning.
With the playoffs so close that fans can smell them in the NHL and the finals of the NCAA Frozen Four commencing within the next week, it is most definitely hockey season. Some purists will argue baseball starts with spring training and the NHL should just drop everything and go home when that happens, but that argument can be answered by simply saying, they didn’t call Reggie Jackson “Mr. April” did they?
Jacob Oberdorf —
It was former Major League Baseball owner Bill Veeck that once said, “There are only two seasons, winter and baseball.” Now Veeck’s quote might be a little extreme, especially considering the success that the Steelers and the Penguins have had in recent history, but I still feel that this statement has some truths to how American sports fans think.
The way I see it, Super Bowl Sunday and Opening Day are two of the closest sporting events our country has to being a national holiday. In fact, there was an online petition that was being sent around in attempt to make Major League Baseball’s Opening Day a national holiday. The petition was signed by an overwhelming amount of people, showing that this country is still as crazy about baseball as it was back in the golden days of the game.
This trend was shown even in spring training when there were many teams that broke attendance records at its respected fields. The Pirates were one of the many teams that were included in this attendance spike. The Pirates recorded 91,046 fans attending the teams 15 home spring training games held at Mckechnie Field in Bradenton. To me, these numbers show that baseball season begins the day that pitchers and catchers report to camp in many cities.
It may not be as apparent in Pittsburgh, considering the success that the Penguins have enjoyed in recent years and considering that the Pirates success still being a new trend to everyone in the city. But consider this, ever since the Penguins have won the 2009 Stanley Cup, the team has continually underachieved when it comes to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
A prime example is last year’s team who had one of the best offensive lineups that the franchise has ever put on the ice, and yet the team got swept by the Boston Bruins with its young goaltender Tuukka Rask. With the new-found success of the Pirates in the past few seasons, this provides the Pittsburgh sports fans a form of new hope.
After last season, fans can expect the Pirates to be contending from Opening Day until the last pitch of the season. The team showed its capability of doing that when they took the eventual National League Champion St. Louis Cardinals to a series deciding game five in the National League Division Series. This trend of baseball madness has also been proven in many different ways all over this country.
It came out earlier this week that the University of Alabama Athletic Department had earned more revenue in the last year than every National Hockey League team. I feel that this shows how hockey may not be as big to people around the United States as it is in the cities in Canada. However, baseball is still very prominent in the Canadian cities.
The Toronto Blue Jays hosted two exhibition games in the former home of the Montreal Expos, Olympic Stadium. In those two games alone, over 96,000 people showed up to watch the games. Now let me say this again, these were exhibition games. And it wasn’t like the Blue Jays were playing the Yankees or Red Sox either. The struggling franchise of the New York Mets were the opposing team to the Blue Jays in both games.
During Opening Week alone, over 3 million fans attended baseball games across the United States. That is 31,963 fans per game. The Pirates alone had 160,000 people show up to their first six games.
There have been over 10 nationally televised baseball games in the past week. Even in the middle of hockey season you may be hard pressed to fined 10 nationally televised NHL games over the course of a month.
This all goes to show that baseball is still, and always will be America’s Pastime. As soon as pitchers and catchers report, baseball is in full swing and hockey is a near after thought.
