Beautiful Baseball Stadium Prints

With four teams left alive in the baseball playoffs, fans of the San Francisco Giants, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Kansas City Royals are freaking out about their teams with good reason. Making the semifinals (called the American League Championship Series and the National League Championship Series) is an achievement in and of itself. For fans of the Orioles and Royals in particular, this year will be one to remember for a long time. One of those teams (they play each other) will make it to the World Series after only making the playoffs once since 1997 (Baltimore) or not at all since 1985 (Kansas City.) If you live with a fan of one of these teams, you might want to invest in one of these wonderful minimalist baseball stadium prints by S. Preston. Not only are they great presents but they’re also a good defense against your fan buying a regular sports poster to remember the season by; one that you will not want hung in your living room. A gift of one of these prints says, “I like how big of a fan you are and I support your team” without saying “let’s turn our house into a locker room.”

S. Preston is a “graphic designer and digital artist, born and raised in Canada, now living in sunny California.” These prints are a side project for him but an extremely successful one. As I think you’ll see from looking at his work, he’s a super talented artist. In his minimalist stadium series, he identifies one signature element of a stadium and designs a beautiful version of it. All of the prints are available for sale on his site in a number of different sizes and configurations. Particularly cool is the option to have the stadium name, city, and the date it was built excluded from the design. If you choose this option, you’re left with a striking, colorful representation of your or your fan’s favorite stadium without any words on it to clue in the uninitiated. Here are links to and samples of the prints for the four remaining teams in the playoffs. Follow this link to S. Preston’s website if you’d like to check out any other stadiums.

Kansas City Royals – Kaufman Stadium

The Royals are my favorite team remaining. They’ve lost forever and now that they’re good, they bunt constantly. It’s fitting that this is one of my favorite of S. Preston’s prints. I love how this print immediately makes you think of the Royals without showing a baseball, glove, bat, field, or anything.

Minimalist Kaufman Stadium

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Baltimore Orioles – Camden Yards and Memorial Stadium

The Orioles are my second choice to win the World Series if the Royals can’t do it. They’re a bright, vibrant team from another long-suffering city. S. Preston not only creates visuals of current stadiums but also of some great stadiums that are no longer in use. Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, demolished in 2002, is one of the stadiums that got S. Preston’s retro minimalist treatment. I have to say, I love the Camden Yards one — it shows just the B&O Railroad warehouse that sits behind the outfield of the stadium and still, you can tell what he’s getting at.

Camden Yards

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Memorial Stadium

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St. Louis Cardinals – Busch Stadium and Busch Memorial Stadium

St. Louis is one of the most successful baseball franchises and I’ve heard that it’s a more crazed baseball city than any in the country. If so, the city’s living rooms should be full of these prints. Both prints are great — the modern one identifies itself by the St. Louis arch mowed into the outfield. The vintage print shows the sky, the upper deck, and some very cool architecture on the roof.

Busch Stadium

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Busch Memorial Stadium

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San Francisco Giants – AT&T Park

If you only know one baseball stadium, you probably know Boston’s Fenway park because of its signature Green Monster wall looming over left field. If you only know two, you probably know Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field with its classic brick walls covered with ivy. If you know three though, you probably know San Francisco’s AT&T Park because you probably saw it on the news when Barry Bonds was busy smashing balls over the wall and into McCovey Cove where lunatics in kayaks waited to grab them. That image is the one S. Preston chose in his second (and the only one still for sale) design of AT&T Park.

AT&T Park Version 1

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AT&T Park Version 2

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Cue Cards 10-9-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

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Yesterday —  Wednesday, October 8

  1. Hockey opens with four games — The NHL season started yesterday with four carefully chosen games. Two games were in Canada between Canadian teams and two were in the United States between American teams. Two were in the East, two were in the West. All the teams involved were good teams from markets that support them well.
    1. The Boston Bruins beat the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1.
      Line: The Bruins are definitely the best team in the East and it’s probably not that close.
    2. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-3.
      Line: Not that one game matters that much, but this result matches the tradition of these two teams that goes back at least fifty years. Canadiens win, Leafs lose.
    3. The San Jose Sharks beat the L.A. Kings 4-0.
      Line: After a humiliating loss to the Kings in last year’s playoffs, the Sharks show some pride in winning this game.
    4. The Vancouver Canucks beat the Calgary Flames 2-0.
      Line: Hard to find a second good team in Western Canada for the Canucks to play. The only other choices, Calgary and Winnipeg, are likely to be among the worst teams in the league.
  2. Everyone else breathed — No games for the NFL or MLB yesterday. The stretched-out football weekend starts tonight with a game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Houston Texans. The two Championship Series’ in the baseball playoffs start on Friday and Saturday.

Why is the start of a season in sports so exciting?

Dear Sports Fan,

Sports seasons are so long — how can anyone get excited at the very start? It’s going to be at least six months until the playoffs in most sports.

Thanks,
Jan

— — —

Dear Jan,

The start of a season is exciting for many reasons and only a few of them have to do with making the playoffs. You’re absolutely right about how long sports seasons are. Take the National Hockey League (NHL) which is starting tonight. The NHL regular season is 82 games. It starts in early October and ends in mid-April. That’s a long, long time and a lot of games! The National Basketball Association plays the same number of games. Baseball plays 162 or roughly twice the number. Football is the outlier here with relatively short seasons — 16 games in the National Football League and around 12 for college teams. Setting football aside, the first few games for a baseball, basketball, or hockey team don’t actually mean very much in terms of their eventual record and qualification for the playoffs. A fan’s excitement for and enjoyment of the start of the season can’t be measured in wins and losses but it can be described. Let’s give it a shot.

Saying hello to old friends and meeting new ones

Part of following a team is getting to know the players on the team. The players on your favorite team or even their biggest rivals[1]  become like characters on a long-running sit-com. You learn their quirks. You cheer with them when they celebrate and you share their anger and frustration when the team is down. You track their various injury rehabilitations with bated breath. You might even wear a shirt with their name on the back. Players on your favorite team feel like an extension of your social circle in a weird way. The start of a season in sports is a little like the start of a season of a television show you really like or a new book in a series you love. You can’t wait to drop back in on their lives to see how they’re doing, if they’ve grown a funny beard, lost weight, gained weight, changed in any way. As a Penguins fan, I look forward to dropping back in on Sidney Crosby’s life just as much as I look forward to seeing what’s up with Lady Mary as a Downton Abbey fan.

Teams never stay the same from one season to a next. Players are traded, retire, or become free agents and move to another team. The first games of the season are your first chance to meet the new guys or gals on the team you follow. Some of them are players you know from other teams in the league. This can be great if you’ve always grudgingly respected their play. It can be challenging if you’ve always (sports) hated them and now you have to find a way to root for them. Rookies or players who have moved up from the minor leagues are always exciting to meet because their potential is unknown and therefore theoretically limitless.

Returning to ritual

Watching sports is also an important part of many fan’s social lives. Whether you go to games in person, watch them in a bar, or at home, watch them alone, with a partner, or with friends, watching and rooting can be a big part of a sport’s fans life. The start of the season means a return to social settings that you haven’t had access to during the offseason. It’s like the end of summer when you were a kid and all your friends got home from summer camp or the end of a long sustained period of craziness at work that allows you to rest, relax, and actually meet a friend for a drink instead of just heading home to rest up for the next day.

I have friends that I know I’m going to hear from ten times more during a particular sports season than I would otherwise. It’s great!

Getting a feel for your team

The first few games of a hockey, basketball, or baseball season may not have much of a statistical effect on their outcome for the year but that doesn’t mean fans don’t watch them attentively to get a feel for how their team might do. If you root for a team that just won a championship, you’re looking for evidence of the lethargy that often infects teams after they win. If you’re like most of us and you root for a team that did well but didn’t win the championship last year, you’re looking to see if the team has improved or taken a step back. How has a new coach affected the team’s play? How well are new players integrated into the team? Which players have improved? Which have lost a step? If you root for one of the worst teams in the league last year, the first few games may be your only time of true hope during the year.

Truthfully, the first few games probably can’t shed too much light on what the season will hold for your team, but that won’t stop fans from trying!

Enjoy the start of the season,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. note the outpouring of sincere love from Red Sox fans for the departing Derek Jeter↵

Cue Cards 10-8-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

clapperboard
Yesterday —  Tuesday, October 7

  1. Good bye Washington — The San Francisco Giants beat the Washington Nationals 3-2 to win game four of their series and advance to the next round. The Nationals were said to have the best five pitcher rotation in the league, and they might have, but scoring nine runs in four games was just not enough to beat the Giants.
    Line: It wasn’t Washington’s pitching that mattered in the end because their hitting was so bad.
    What’s Next: The Nationals clean out their lockers and go home. The Giants advance to the National League Championships (the semifinals) which begin on Saturday.
  2. Another home run, another victory — One swing of the bat was enough to lift the St. Louis Cardinals over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Matt Adams hit a three run home run in the seventh inning and the Cardinals beat the Dodgers 3-2. The most gossip-worthy plot point of this game was the Dodgers’ manager’s decision to bench young star Yasiel Puig who had not been playing well. It’s never clear in hindsight whether it was a good move or not (the Dodgers could have lost more decisively if their manager hadn’t done that) but because sports is so results oriented, I’m sure the manager will be a much criticized man today.
    Line: I don’t think I would bench my star in an elimination game no matter how poorly he was playing.
    What’s Next: The Cardinals move on to play the Giants in the NLCS which starts on Saturday.

When fantasy football gets real

Fantasy football is so commonplace that we never stop to think about how funny it is. Luckily two NFL players recognized the humor for us…

Fantasy football has become such a popular game that it’s become quite commonplace. We rarely stop to think about how weird it all is. Millions of people play a game based on the statistics generated from hundreds of people playing a different game. That’s weird! It’s especially weird for the couple hundred people who are notable enough football players that their names and statistics are the ones being used in fantasy football. Two NFL players made news recently by playing with the comical boundary between fantasy and reality this past week.

Glenn Davis of the USA Today reported that New York Giants Tight End Larry Donnell lost his fantasy football game last week because he chose to start 49ers Tight End Vernon Davis over himself! Little did he know that he was going to catch three touchdowns in the Giants game versus Washington while Davis was going to leave his game against Philadelphia early with an injured back. Whoops! As a fantasy owner, it’s comforting to know that even the player involved has no idea before the game whether or not he’s going to do better than another player.

Barry Petchesky of Deadspin reported recently on another NFL player having fun with fantasy. San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Stevie Johnson has been perpetrating a running joke on his twitter feed. He pretends that he is fielding a “Fantasy Work team” and his twitter followers reply with clever reasons to be included on or excluded from his team. It’s an incredibly clever gag. Here are a few of my favorites:

Johnson himself continues to be a surprisingly useful fantasy player himself. In the past three weeks he’s had one game with 100 yards receiving and two other games with a touchdown. As good as he is at football, he’s probably even better to have in a fantasy good-natured-comedy league!

What happens when a forest grows in a NASCAR track?

The Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsborough, North Carolina, was one of the first race tracks in NASCAR history. A .9 mile long, oval dirt track, it was purchased and expanded by NASCAR pioneer Bill France and was ready for racing during NASCAR’s inaugural season in 1949. The first NASCAR race at the track was won by Bob Flock and drew 17,500 fans. The Occoneechee Speedway continued to be used as a NASCAR track until 1968 when, in part due to complaints from local churches that didn’t like racing on Sundays, it was closed down. There’s a little bit of dramatic irony in this choice because the first Super Bowl had just happened a year before, in 1967. Little did those church-going folk know but Sundays were just starting to be dominated by another sport and getting rid of the raceway was not going to be the most effective move ever.

After a few years, the speedway fell into disrepair and a fast growing forest sprung up in and around the track, covering what used to be wide open fields with beautiful trees. In 2002 the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A walking trail was created along the path of the track soon after and restoration of the grandstand and some of the track buildings in 2006. There is a local group devoted to the track’s restoration which you can join here and which also runs an annual racers reunion and car show.

I’m visiting friends in North Carolina this week and I had the pleasure of walking a few laps of the track yesterday. It’s a beautiful, peaceful place which makes it hard to imagine dozens of cars powering their way around the track while thousands of people watched and cheered. I took some photos:

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If you’re wondering what it looked like in the old days, check out the video clip of the track at the bottom of this New York Times article about the track by Robert Peele. The footage was taken in 1963 by the Peele’s father!

The Occoneechee Speedway is a great example of how sports weaves itself into the cultural and natural history of the world. It was fun to visit it!

Cue Cards 10-7-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

clapperboard
Yesterday —  Monday, October 6

  1. Cardinals over Dodgers — We’ve written a lot about the bunt in the last few days because the Royals have been using it so effectively in this year’s playoffs. Think of the Cardinals as the anti-Royals, if only in this game. They beat the Dodgers 3-1 thanks to two home runs from Matt Carpenter and Kolton Wong.
    Line: Talk all you want about bunts but you can score in one fell-swoop with home runs.
    What’s Next: The Cardinals now lead the best-three-out-of-five series two to one. Game four is today at 5 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
  2. Nationals over Giants — The Washington Nationals avoided a 3-0 sweep by winning 4-1 over the San Francisco Giants. The biggest play of the game came when the Nationals were able to score two runs on a wild throw by Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner.
    Line: Sometimes, in the playoffs, a little bit of luck is all you need to turn things around.
    What’s Next: The Giants still lead the series two games to one. Game four is tonight at 9 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
  3. Washington loses to Seattle — Washington put up more resistance than expected in Monday’s featured NFL game but still lost 27-17. Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was the star of the game, throwing for 200 yards and running for 122. That’s roughly the production you’d expect out of your starting quarterback and your starting running back.
    Line: It’s hard to talk about moral victories when your team is 1-4 but Washington actually looked pretty good.

Why is the bunt controversial in baseball?

Bunt 2

Last week we answered a great question about what bunts are in baseball. We decided to split up our answer into two parts: How does a bunt work in baseball? and Why is the bunt controversial in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a bunt work in baseball? And why is it so controversial right now?

Thanks,
Otis

— — —

Dear Otis,

One of the best things about baseball is how long we’ve been playing it professionally in this country. The first professional league started in the 1870s. Baseball fans love that their sport has such a long professional history in this country and they keep a lot of it alive. Bunting has been alive as a strategy since the very beginning of professional baseball and it’s been controversial for one reason or another for almost the whole time! Let’s take a quick trip back in time to see how bunting and the reasons for its controversy have changed. To help as along our way, I found two wonderful articles about the history of  baseball and bunting that I’m going to lean on heavily. The articles are “Why do baseball players still bunt so damn much” by Erik Malinowski for Bleacher Report and “Baseball’s long and complicated relationship with the bunt” by Randy Leonard for The Atlantic. I recommend reading both!

In the 1870s, baseball was basically an adolescent. It was played by established rules but they weren’t the rules that it would settle into in time. The two rules that we’re concerned with are the shape of the bat and the rule that determined what a foul ball was. Today, of course, bats are rounded and a foul ball is one that either falls outside of the lines that extend from home plate to the outfield or passes first or third base to the outside of the bases. In 1870, these rules were a little different. The shape of a batter’s bat was up to him and critically to the subject of bunting, a flat bat was allowed. The foul rules were different in that a ball would be called fair no matter where it landed as long as it first hit the ground in fair territory. The combination of these two rule differences made bunting a particularly effective strategy. The flat bat made it much easier to do and the fair/foul rule made it much more effective because you had far more territory open to you to direct the ball away from fielders. Bunting was so effective that in the 1870s, a bunting specialist named Ross Barnes led the league in hits and batting average more than a third of the time.

Effective as it may have been, bunters took their share of abuse. According to Leonard, fans in the 1870s “jeered that it was effeminate” and in 1904, then president, “William Howard Taft publicly scorned the bunt.” And there’s more:

In 1873 The Boston Globe called bunting “the black game,” an acknowledgment of one’s “weakness at the bat,” and a few years later the Detroit Free Press called it a “babyish performance.”

There is something that feels, even to this day, underhanded about bunting. You feel instinctively that the batter should be trying to hit the ball hard not let it bounce gently off of their bat. When a bunt doesn’t work, it feels foolish, but when it does work, it makes the defense look foolish in a way that a hard-hit line drive or even a home run does not. The bunt plays against the ultra-masculine image of sports and for that reason it can be controversial. That’s not the main reason why the bunt is controversial today.

The bunt is controversial today because it’s basically been proven to be a bad idea. Baseball has been undergoing a statistical and cultural revolution since the 1980s. Many stats that once were seen as meaningful indications of performance, like RBIs and runs, have proven to be mostly meaningless and have been replaced with better stats. The statistical reality of bunting is that even when it works, the team that does it is intentionally sacrificing an out to advance a runner. The value of doing this is negative. A team with no outs and a man on first base (a normal scenario before a bunt) has a better chance of scoring a run that inning than a team with a runner on second and one out (a normal scenario after a bunt.)

Bunts are back in the news in a big way because the Kansas City Royals have been bunting like crazy. Or, more accurately, they have been bunting like they are a team from the 1980s, as Will Leitch suggests they might be in his enjoyable Sports on Earth article:

Watching them [the Royals] play — the five sacrifice bunts, the seven stolen bases, the lack of homers and strikeouts — has me thinking that this isn’t just the first time the Royals have made the playoffs since 1985: I’m honestly concerned that this team has been beamed here from the year 1985.

And they’ve been winning. The Royals are 4-0 in this year’s playoffs and are only four wins from making it to the World Series. Are they doing this because of or in spite of their bunt-happy retro style? Dave Cameron looked into the four bunts of their wild Wild Card victory for fangraphs.com and concluded that of the four, one bunt was a mistake, one was unclear, and two were “probably positive.” Overall, Cameron writes that:

In late game situations where one run is paramount, bunting can often be the correct play, and the don’t-bunt-ever reaction can be just as incorrect as the bunt-always fanaticism.

Looking at the comments under his article, it’s clear that many readers and baseball fans don’t agree. After 140 years of baseball history, the controversy about the bunt may just be getting started.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Cue Cards 10-6-14

Cue Cards is a series designed to assist with the common small talk about high-profile recent sporting events that is so omnipresent in the workplace, the bar, and other social settings.

clapperboard
Yesterday —  Sunday, October 5

  1. Two baseball sweeps — The Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles both won games yesterday to complete three straight out of five game sweeps of their American League division series. In case you need to check quickly, this is how the Major League baseball playoffs work. The Royals beat the Los Angeles Angels 8-3 and the Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers 2-1.
    Line: I guess in this case, having the early series be a best three out of five instead of four out of seven was the right choice. Both teams won convincingly in sweeps.
    What’s Next: The Royals and the Orioles get a little rest before their series starts on Friday. That’s because the four teams in the National League, the Cardinals, Dodgers, Nationals, and Giants are still playing their divisional series. The National League divisional series continue today.
  2. An exciting day in the NFL — The NFL had its customary slate of games yesterday but they were more closely contested than most weekends. There were two overtime games and another won in the last second. All the recaps you want or need can be found in our NFL One Liners column.
    Line: Football overtime isn’t as good as hockey or baseball overtime but it’s still unusual and exciting.
    What’s Next: Monday night football is lined up to be a clunker. It’s a good chance to do something else!

Week Five NFL One Liners

NFL One LinersOn Mondays during in the fall, the conversation is so dominated by NFL football that the expression “Monday morning quarterback” has entered the vernacular. The phrase is defined by Google as “a person who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event.” With the popularity of fantasy football, we now have Monday morning quarterbacks talking about football from two different perspectives. We want you to be able to participate in this great tradition, so all fall we’ll be running NFL One Liners on Monday. Use these tiny synopses throughout the day:

Week 5

Sunday, October 5, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Buffalo Bills 17, at Detroit Lions 14

The first of a series of extremely close games this week. The Bills beat the Lions on a last minute 58 yard field goal. That’s an incredibly difficult feat. Kickers are not totally accepted in the football fraternity but when you need them, it’s good to have a good one.
Line: I guess benching quarterback EJ Manuel was a good idea for the Bills.

Baltimore Ravens 13, at Indianapolis Colts 20

Two good teams played a pretty good game. One won but they’ll both be fine in the long term.
Line: When in doubt, go with the better quarterback. Andrew Luck on the Colts is better than most.

Chicago Bears 24, at Carolina Panthers 31

The Bears continue to torture their fan base by looking like a supremely talented team… and then losing. Meanwhile, in an attempt to prove how crazy football players really are, Panthers quarterback Cam Newton had four wisdom teeth taken out in the last week and played professional football on Sunday.
Line: Can you imagine having four wisdom teeth taken out and then playing football a few days later?

Houston Texans 17, at Dallas Cowboys 20

The battle of Texas was won by big-brother Dallas but little-brother Houston really made them work for it. The whole “battle of Texas” thing is probably more of a media creation than a real rivalry because the two teams play in different divisions and conferences but it sure made for a good game anyway.
Line: Love them or hate them, the Cowboys do seem to play in an inordinate number of exciting games.

Pittsburgh Steelers 17, at Jacksonville Jaguars 9

The Jaguars fall to 0-5 making them one of only two unvictorious teams left. They’re really just not as good at football as the rest of the teams.
Line: The Jaguars will probably win a game at some point but it’s hard to imagine when.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31, at New Orleans Saints 37

The second overtime game of the day, two weeks ago the Buccaneers had just been humiliated on national television and were winless. Now they’ve won one game and taken another good team to overtime. Although, really, how sure are we that the Saints are good? Not very.
Line: This game says more about the Saints (in a bad way) than it does about the Buccaneers (in a good way.)

Atlanta Falcons 20, at New York Giants 30

This game was a microcosm of the Giants’ season so far. They fell behind 20-10 just like they started the year 0-2. Then they seemed to get their act together and came back to score the next twenty points just like they’ve won the last three games to get to 3-2.
Line: When Eli Manning retires from football he should go right to his next career as the villain in a zombie movie. Every time you think he’s down, he rises back up.

St. Louis Rams 28, at Philadelphia Eagles 34

The fate of the Rams seems to be to scare teams but not to beat them this year. The Eagles, on the other hand, are specialists this year in finding ways to win without looking all that dominant.
Line: The Eagles look like the weakest 4-1 team I can remember seeing.

SUNDAY, October 5, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

Arizona Cardinals 20, at Denver Broncos 41

This game exemplifies the current era of the NFL. A good offense beats a good defense every time. The Broncos have a great offense and the Cardinals have a very good defense. It wasn’t close.
Line: A good offense beats a good defense every time.

Kansas City Chiefs 17, at San Francisco 49ers 22

A couple years ago, the 49ers decided to move on from Quarterback Alex Smith and go with Colin Kaepernick. Smith went to play in Kansas City and Kaepernick took over the starting job in San Francisco. Since then, both quarterbacks have played extremely well. Today, Smith’s old team beat his new team but there’s no shame in that.
Line: Football is a team game. It’s too simple to make it into Smith vs. Kaepernick or any one player against another.

New York Jets 0, at San Diego Chargers 31

Whoa. Uh oh. The New York media was out for struggling Jets quarterback Geno Smith after last week’s poor performance and slight misbehavior (he cursed at some fans.) I can’t imagine how hard their going to slam him this week.
Line: Smith’s time as a starter in NY might be done.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Cincinnati Bengals 17, at New England Patriots 43

The NFL stands for the National Football League but people often say it stands for the No Fun League or the Not For Long league. This game was an exhibition of why people call it the Not For Long league. The Bengals were undefeated coming into the game an the Patriots had just spent a week in an existential crisis over old-age and poor performance. Not for long!
Line: I guess Tom Brady and Bill Bellichick still remember how to win.