The SoapBoxers

Being the golf fan that I am, I just returned from my second trip across the pond. I organized a golf trip for a group of my buddies to the Home Of Golf. St. Andrews Scotland.

St. Andrews is the friendliest place I have ever visited, and I have been to quite a few places. The people are great, the town just breathes history, and if you are a golf fan, it is a trip that must be taken at least once.

But today, I am going to tell you how you can go twice for less than you would typically spend if you book a trip through one of the over-priced tour operators that make a living taking your money and socking it to you.

Yes, just like last time, I planned the entire trip for the group using nothing other than the internet and email.

If you are going to play the Old Course, the best way to get a tee time is to get up at O dark thirty the first Wednesday in September and send a completed ballot form via email to the St. Andrews Links Trust requesting a tee time. You have to also request times on two other courses. My preferences are the New Course (which was designed by Tom Morris in 1890’s) and the Castle Course, which is a David McKlay Kidd design (of Bandon Dunes in Oregon fame). The Castle Course is on the other side of St Andrews and has some spectacular views and spectacular holes.

We continued our golf by going to Cruden Bay, which is up the Northeast coast about 2 and a half hours from St Andrews. We also played North Berwick and Crail, two more classic seaside courses. Crail was established in 1786, funny to think they were playing golf on a course a year before our constitution was officially ratified!

You can contact all of the other courses directly and get your tee times once you have the St Andrews times locked in. You will receive your St Andrews times via the mail typically the first week of October.

Then it is time to line up a place to stay. Avoid the hotels, stay in one or two spots! There are a ton of Bed and Breakfast Operations as well as what we use, self letting. Basically we rent an apartment or you could also rent a house for a week. The advantage is the cost goes down substantially per person, it feels more like home with the amenities, and truth be told you are not going to be in your room much anyway … unless you stay where we do.

I almost hate to divulge my secret but we stay in a second floor apartment overlooking the 18th green on the Old Course. It is the very last building on the right side of the 18th fairway when you are watching the Open Championship coverage next month. Cost per person for the week … about $300. Cost to stay one night at the Old Course Hotel with a view of the course? The same amount.

The other smart decision is to hire a van service to drive you around. They will do airport transfers, take you from your door to the golf course and back (and usually stop off at some nice sightseeing or local pubs along the way back home after golf) and it avoids a lot of hassle – driving on the other side of the road, getting lost – plus you can have a pint on board and enjoy the views. The cost is about the same as if you had to rent vans yourself and then you would have the pain of driving still. We use a Rowan Travel. They are a small but five star outfit. Our driver Tom is the best, I would recommend them to anyone.

Cost for the trip with airfare, all golf, place to stay, van service, money for food and drink ran about $3500 a person, and in our case airfare from the Midwest was just over $1500 of that this time. Of course if you are going to load up on souvenirs, bring more money. The SAME itinerary through one of the travel sites, the only difference being you are staying in a high dollar hotel … hope you are sitting down … $8700.

So after watching the Open this year, if you get the itch, drop Johnny G a line, I would love to help out if you are planning your own trip to the Home of Golf!

Strasburg – It is FINALLY HERE
The hype is almost over … well it is still going on for a few more hours until the highly touted pitcher makes his debut for the Washington Nationals tonight at home in D.C. against the Pittsburgh Pirates. You have seen numerous articles mentioning Strasburg here on the Casual Observer, everything from talent to sports card prices. The place is sold out tonight, which is great for the home team. Here is hoping the kid has a good outing and does not get chased early.

Speaking of Nationals …
They also had the first overall pick in the “Live” draft that was conducted on Major League Baseball Network last night. Bryce Harper was not surprisingly taken as the #1 pick. He graduated high school early and spent this past year in Junior College where he tore the cover off the ball. Harper, according to an ESPN article, hit . 443 with 31 home runs, 98 RBIs and 20 stolen bases in 66 games, That is video game type of numbers. Looks like we have another super hyped Washington Nationals player to keep an eye on over the next couple years.

Speaking of Draft …
The draft coverage last night was definitely the worst coverage of such a type of even I have ever seen. Of course Bud Selig is about as exciting as reading the white pages in the phone book. The real disappointment was twofold. First of all, the “in studio experts” really did not add anything to the equation at all, and secondly the “ticker” at the bottom of the screen showed more historical information about a team’s draft pick from something like 8 years ago and rarely did they actually show the picks that had made THIS year. For reference when the NFL draft is run, the pretty much have the continuous crawl at the bottom of the screen, so if you happen to run to the fridge or the bathroom, you can come back and actually see who was picked over the last couple of minutes. MLB network only updated this what seemed like 4 times an hour … poor job MLB Network. Maybe you can learn from this next year.

Speaking of MLB ….
It is shaping up to be another exciting year in baseball. We have already had a number of events happen. Griffey Retiring, Ubaldo Jimenez winning 11 games and being pretty much unhittable, and what seems like everyone in the American League East winning most all of their games (except the Orioles)

So for you baseball aficionados out there … grab your favorite beverage, and a snack and kick back tonight and see what the kid can do … a lot of people will be watching.

When I was a younger kid growing up in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, collecting baseball cards was something that most of the kids in the neighborhood would do.  We would run to the local grocery store in my small town to pick up the newest Topps cards of guys like Reggie Jackson, Tom Seaver, and who could forget the 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson card.

In those days, sports cards packs were still relatively cheap, and most people collected cards for the enjoyment, and of course to maybe make a buck or two.  Starting in the early 1980’s all of that changed as Topps Company had their monopoly broken up and Fleer and Donruss entered the marketplace also producing baseball cards.

Seemingly overnight hundreds of sports card shops and dealers were opening on corners in cities everywhere.  Flea Markets and Baseball Card shows were suddenly happening every weekend.  Weekly magazines started to be published indicating the relative market value of cards.

This simple hobby was turning from one of fun and collecting to one of investment and opportunity.

Fortunately for me, this was also the time that my interests turned to other things in my mid to late teen years and I held onto and then sold most of my Baseball Cards about the time I started college.  I made an absolute killing as it was the peak of the “sellers” market.  Matter of fact a couple of nice Michael Jordan Rookie cards paid for my wife’s engagement and wedding ring with some of those proceeds!

I recently had the chance to read a new book by Dave Jamieson titled MINT CONDITION – How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession.  I would highly recommend it to anyone of you out there who has collected cards at any point in your youth or even now.

The sad story is that sports cards have now really turned into a two horse game.  One for the “middle aged collector”. A guy like me.  Who still yearns to put together some old sets from their younger days, but will often now utilize third party grading companies to make sure that the cards they are collecting are “authentic” and of a “certain grade”

The other side of the hobby has been around for many years and it is much more scary in my opinion.  It is basically nothing more than impulse gambling.

Sports cards store depend on this “impulse gambling” type of buyer.  With Millions and billions of cards produced throughout the 80- and 90’s most of that inventory they have is completely worthless.  While they will occasionally get the “old school” collector coming in looking for some football or baseball cards from the 50-s and 60’s, most of their business is derived from selling of packs costing anywhere from $5-$250 each, with “guaranteed odds” of pulling things such as fancy autographs, “authentic game used pieces” of jerseys, balls, hats, etc that have been cut up and placed onto cards, and even the occasional factory produced limited #’d cards.  Many times which are numbered to 1 of 1 made, thereby implying extra scarcity that you have the only one like it in the world.

This year is a great boon so far in the baseball market for basically none other than Washington Nationals Pitcher Stephen Strasburg.  He has yet to make a big league appearance, but you would not know it based on all of the baseball card industry hype.  I mean it appears this guy is projected to be a multi 30 game winner, pitch 12 no hitters, and have over nine thousand strikeouts.

He has already had a card produced by Topps under the Bowman name, a 1 of 1 numbered Superfractor card, sell for $16,093 just a week or so ago on EBAY (see the auction here).  Various other examples of Strasburg short printed refractors numbered to 25 or even 250 can be seen up for auction for multiple thousands of dollars right now.  Not bad for a guy that has not even played in a MLB game yet.

Of course the lucky ones are the guys who spend $100 for a box of these cards, and essentially hit the lottery.  With other players such as Jason Heyward from the Atlanta Braves having a great year, there is usually more than one rookie to be chasing.  But here in 2010, Strasburg is clearly leading the pack.

Scary thing is that there really has not been that much product released yet from Topps, who is now the exclusive licensed dealer for Major League Baseball cards period.  As Topps produces some of their more “premium” sets later this year, which will include, cards including autographs, actual “patches” from jersey etc, and you can bet there will be more of these one of one cards made….and you can also bet that thousands of potential sports card lottery winners will be out, spending some disposable income in hopes of hitting their big ticket Strasburg card and flipping it for a quick profit on a site such as eBay.

It is just too bad that for every one that gets lucky, there will be thousands that don’t.

Happy Collecting!

Big 10 … errr … 11 … errrr 15 … errr … 16?

Big news that has been speculated for awhile hit the ESPN newswire yesterday afternoon.  According to a radio affiliate in Kansas City, the Big 10 conference has extended offers for Missouri, Rutgers, Notre Dame, and Nebraska to join their conference.  If all schools say yes, it is also reported that the conference will extend an offer to one more school.

The Big Ten is a conference I have disliked forever.  For a group of institutions with such alleged high standards of academics, they can’t even count to 10 (they have 11 member schools currently).  Doesn’t this make them the Big 11?  And why do you want to add 4 schools to make 15 … just get it to 16, which is where you will need to be for any sort of competent divisions and scheduling of any of your sports teams which is why you are making this move in the first place.  But truth be told it is time for my beloved Huskers to make the move and stick it to the University of Texas on their way out the door.

Will it happen?  I hope so.  Texas has run the show, literally, since the Big 12 conference was formed, using their mightier than thou attitude and pushing through a variety of things that favor the University of Texas in particular, and not necessarily the other member schools.  If Nebraska and Missouri leave the Big 12, Colorado is reported already to being courted by the Pac 10 conference.  This would leave the “old” Big 12 high, dry and screwed.  They would either have to disband the conference entirely, or add some schools such as perhaps, Houston, TCU, and SMU?  Boy that makes up for losing the likes of Nebraska and Missouri on the national scene.

All of these schools should move as it would mean much much more revenue.  The Big 10 has its own television contract in place that covers EVERY football game played by every team in the conference.  Nebraska is the largest grossing pay per view college football team in the nation.  Although it is a very small state by population, it has a national following second to likely Notre Dame, who also is being discussed in the mix.  Missouri gains you the St Louis market, and Rutgers adds another East Coast team to bring even more TV sets into the game.  Notre Dame needs to join a conference anyway, and get away from NBC – the Notre Dame broadcasting network – who I am sure is really excited they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars the last 10 years to exclusively cover what has been a .500 ball club.  No patsies Golden Domers, you would have to play some good teams on your schedule.  No room for the service academies three weeks out of the year. 

The moves of these schools would shake up the college football landscape and send a few other schools scrambling and left holding the bag.  I sincerely hope it happens.

My only question is … would they have to change their name to THE Notre Dame?

This was a great week on the golf circuit.  On the Japanese tour, 18 year old Phenom Ryo Ishikawa shot an amazing 12 under 58 to win a tournament.  58’s are not shot everyday at any level of golf.  (Well maybe for a lot of you readers for 9 holes) but to shoot that low you have to: A- Hit it close a lot and B: make just about every putt you look at.

On the PGA tour, young European Tour Star Rory McIlroy shot an amazing 10 under par 62 on a very hard golf course at Quail Hollow to win the tournament going away by 4 strokes over Phil Mickelson.  McIlroy is just 20 years old and is a player full of a lot of promise to perhaps contend shortly for major championships.  McIlroy shot a smooth 30 on the back 9 including making birdies on two of the final three holes (considered the toughest stretch on the course) to leave no doubt about who the victor would be.

The funniest part of his victory is my wife – who has been on a big reading kick lately – takes a short look at the TV and deadpans “that guy looks like Spaulding from Caddyshack, with just a little longer hair in back”  This lead to a full afternoon of repeating a multitude of familiar lines such as…”I want a Hamburger, no a Cheeseburger, I want a hot dog…You’ll get nothing and like it!”

And other classics involving Spaulding such as “fifty bucks says he eats it”

I haven’t laughed that hard in months.

On the LPGA tour, Lorena Ochoa played her last tournament before hanging it up as she has announced her retirement to work more with her philanthropic efforts and most likely to start a family.  Ochoa would be a lock to be a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame as she has enough Majors and tournament victories to automatically make it in under the LPGA’s qualifying criteria…the one thing she does not have is enough years played on tour to make it.  The minimum requirement is ten years and she has just played eight.  It would be a shame if the LPGA sticks to their guns and does not make an exception to reward her with this honor should she decide to completely stay away from the game.  She has been one of the best players of the last 25 years without any question and has dominated the game over the last three to four years like Annika Sorenstam did before her.

Five and a half weeks til Johnny will be making his second pilgrimage to  Scotland for a Golf Trip.  I will be sure to keep you all posted on that as well as the United States Open in future articles here on the Casual Observer.

Until next week…hit em straight!

Editor’s note: Today, Johnny Goodman resumes his regular gig on The Soap Boxers.  Good to have you back, Johnny.

Tim Tebow … Tim Tebow, Tim Tebow, Tim Tebow …

The Media cannot get enough of this guy. I am thoroughly convinced anyone living outside of Gainesville is sick and tired of seeing his mug on the television.

Of course he is a good guy. I mean the guy is practically a minister. Never in the history of football has a player put God in the forefront so much. Heck he even put bible versus on his eye black stickers that he wore for each and every game last year.

Which is part of the reason the NCAA passed a rule this off-season that messages on eye black are now a big fat no-no … No longer acceptable. I mean we would hate to have eye black patches get us into a big church vs. state discussion right … Not as long as Tim Tebow was in College, but now that he is gone, let’s get the rule into place.

The media made this guy the popular guy he is. Let’s break down what he was at Florida.

• Heisman Trophy winner
• Popular with the fans
• A great leader for his team
• Urban Meyer’s favorite player of all time
• A big bruising punishing runner of a quarterback

What Tim Tebow was not at Florida

• A good passer
• A guy with a great Quarterback motion
• A pro prospect at QB

What is Tim Tebow? A great Human being. A god loving Human being … I mean he has told us all about a million times right. Tim Tebow as a football player in college is nothing more than a media over-hyped and glorified Scott Frost, the former Husker QB who went on to play a few years as a safety in the NFL. Frost was also a big guy, could throw just a little but had a funky motion, but he was like a linebacker when running the football. Big and punishing, and good enough to lead the Huskers and Tom Osborne to a National Championship in 1997, Osborne’s final season.

What are the Denver Bronco’s thinking? This guy is NOT a pro quarterback, not even close. When they ask him if he is will to get better and change and do whatever, what do you expect him to say? “No coach, I want to be a quarterback only, I have no desire to change.”

I give the kid credit for working on changing his throwing motion since the end of the NCAA season, but trust me, Glorified Scott Frost, which is a big compliment while in college, but a huge let down for Bronco’s fan expecting him to be their savior at QB.

I personally think Josh Daniels just put himself about 5 steps closer to the door.

MY APOLOGIES TO BOB RYAN OF THE BOSTON GLOBE

Dear Bob,

I am officially the Village Idiot. In last week’s article in the Casual Observer, I called out sports columnist Bob Ryan, who is often featured on ESPN’s Sports Reporters and Around the Horn for his incredible comment that Northern Iowa was one of eleven teams in the region that could take down the mighty Jayhawks of Lawrence Kansas.

Bob, I was wrong, you were right, I am eating crow, or my hat, or whatever you want to put on my menu. Just pass the salt and pepper.

Kansas was out-hustled, out shot, and outplayed and looked quite “ordinary” in losing to the Purple Panthers from Northern Iowa.

Upsets galore dominated the first weekend of play in the NCAA men’s tourney. Georgetown goes down, Pittsburgh, New Mexico, and even Villanova all bowed out early.

Most of our brackets are in total free-fall this year, including mine, so what do you do when your brackets go down? You root for all the underdogs so everyone else gets jobbed in their office pools too!

Right now I would say that Syracuse and Kentucky look the most impressive to me after week #1. But that is the beauty of this tourney, it is more than a week long. Some teams will continue to play well next weekend, some won’t and some will start to play a whole lot better. When you get down to sixteen, anything can happen. Heck it already has.

TIGER TRAP

Tiger came out of his den on Sunday and “allowed” two different interviews. One with Tom Rinaldi of ESPN and one with the Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman. Both of the interviews where held at Woods’ exclusive Islesworth county club and both were a whopping 5 minutes in length. While it appeared any question was open game, Woods often times said things such as “that is a personal matter” or “that is between Elin and me” aka … there is no freaking way I am going to answer that for you.

Tiger was very guarded as would be expected. The amount of coverage and the amount of sports talking heads hanging on his every word will increase exponentially in the upcoming days and weeks leading up to the Masters. What I am curious to see is how strict the Masters committee will be with the press at Augusta. They run a VERY tight ship, and I am guessing that having four green jackets in your closet likely gets you a little bit of preferential treatment from the committee. The press will be on egg-shells, as it is the toughest ticket in sports, and likely also the toughest place to get press credentials. All it takes is one improperly worded question and you might be shown the gate … It will be interesting to see if any of the sportswriters are willing to take that chance.

I think he will be ultra focused in his return to golf and it would not surprise me in the least if he wins his fifth Masters title this year. After all since winning in 2005 he has a sixth, two seconds and a third place finish … the guy knows this golf course.

PACK OF TWINKIES

The Twins got some good news and some bad news this weekend. First off, their stud closer Joe Nathan is out for the entire year and will be undergoing Tommy John surgery to repair his arm after feeling a “twinge” and taking himself out of a spring training game just a week or so ago. This is a major loss for Minnesota as Nathan has been very consistent and one of the best in the American League over the last few season.

They did lock up all everything catcher Joe Mauer for the next eight years for a whopping twenty three million a year. If you can do quick math that is a 184 million dollar deal. He is really a franchise player and I am sure even to a guy like Mauer it would be hard to spend that much money. Heck just think of what you could do with 184 million dollars …

I for one am sure that would be enough to take Bob Ryan out for a nice dinner and apologize …

Editor’s note: make sure to enter The Soap Boxers’s pool. Details can be found here.
 

It is that time of year again. March Madness! Although they should change this title to something with “April” in the title as this thing is starting to drag out farther than the NBA playoffs!.

The Men’s bracket should be interesting this year. There has been a lot of debate about how evenly balanced this field is, how really it is the shortest list of deserving teams that did not get in…i.e. this is one of the weaker tournaments in recent memory. The talking heads on television and radio love the week leading up to the tourney as sports talk is spirited and millions of people hang on every word making deep analytical decisions when filling out one of their fourteen office pool brackets.

Most of us delve through the websites, watch the seemingly round the clock ESPN Bracketology specials to pick our upsets. One of the #3 seeds always seems to get beaten. The #12 seed wins 34% of the first round games recently. The TV guys love all this talk. Bob Ryan on ESPN’s Around the Horn commented yesterday that eleven teams could take down the Jayhawks in their side of the bracket.

C’mon Bob … really … eleven? You had me until you mentioned Northern Iowa as a team that could spoil it for the boys from Lawrence. Talk about a bold prediction!

Now I of all people love the underdog. It gives you something to brag about to your co-workers and friends when you look smarter than the world when you have Cornell making it to the elite 8 … and they actually do. You do have to pick a few upsets don’t you?

Nope.

This year Johnny is going straight with the chalk. Well mainly. I won’t divulge my entire bracket here, but I am taking the Jayhawks to win it all.

My pick for the team to “make some noise” Kansas State … They have a complete team and great guard play. A factor that is always important in the tourney.

On the Women’s side, well gimmie the chalk again, at least until the Sweet 16. I think the Huskers will be the first #1 seed eliminated. While the team went 30-1 this year it greatly over-achieved, even in an extremely difficult conference with seven teams ranked in the top 25 most of the year. You have to pick UCONN, if someone beats them it will be considered a major upset, after all they have won 72 straight games.

My pick for the team to “make some noise” Texas A&M. The Lady Aggies are playing fabulous right now, are very athletic and are very well coached.

I am sure I will be called a Big XII Homer by someone reading this but I don’t care. Good luck to all of you in your office pools!

My apologies to the Connecticut Women’s Basketball team and their fans, but the entire content of this article will likely be offensive to you …

A dynasty is alive and kicking in NCAA Women’s hoops. It is worse than Duke of the 90’s, The New York Yankees, the Patriots and well … it even makes me more sick than Notre Dame Football.

The UCONN Lady Huskies

This just in … they are pretty damn good. Jedi Mind tricks do not work on the great recruiter Geno Auriemma …

About now I am waiting for all of you to chime in and say “Goodman, you are a Husker fan, and the Lady Huskers are undefeated this year so far and ranked #3 in the country so of course you are to dog the Huskies.”

True all these items are …

My question is this … is Geno the Hut a good coach or just able to work with SUPERIOR talent year in and year out?

I can make a bunch of comparisons here. Coaches that can recruit but really are not that good of coaches in my opinion include:

Mack Brown – CLEARLY the #1 on this list
Roy Williams – This year prove a lot to me
Rick Barnes – is there a Texas theme developing on this list? YES!
Les Miles – wow, he misses Pelini
Rich Rodriguez … nice job there Michigan
Charlie Weis … well … I guess the golden domers did figure that one out.

I think GENO is in fact a good coach. He has a lot of ladies that go on to not just careers in the WNBA, but are in fact some of the best in the league. Many of these players are three and four year starters at Connecticut … and they do indeed improve their games a LOT by the time they get drafted.

UConn will likely win it all again this year. They have utterly destroyed just about every single team they have played all year. But this is not necessarily a good thing for Women’s Basketball in general. The sport is gaining popularity. The is definitely MORE parity than I can remember in a long long time. Heck the Big XII conference has SEVEN count em, SEVEN teams in the top 25 alone.

I for one will be rooting for everyone else. It will be more publicity than ever in the tournament this year if the Lady Huskies get knocked off. There is truly not a dominant team in the Men’s side of things this year, so the Lady Huskies are front and center. It would be one of the better things that could happen for ESPN coverage if the do get beat. Here on Monday when they have set the record for consecutive wins, it has been on all day long

It is on television all day long, because fans love a winner. Especially the home team fans. But ….

EVERYONE roots for the underdog …

My new favorite team this year is now whoever is playing the Lady Huskies.

Editor’s note: We’re happy to announce the return of Johnny Goodman!

First off my apologies to the loyal (are there still any) readers of my column. Unfortunately Johnny Goodman hasn’t been feeling so good the last few months. A return of Hodgkin’s cancer, a couple of special trips down chemo lane, and a few weeks set aside to spend time in the hospital due to complications puts a lot in perspective. Through this entire struggle I have found out stuff about the human body that I never realized, and discovered they can put tubes and wires in such in places that are un-imaginable … but I digress.

Sports was a common theme that kept the fun times going during my hiatus. I was really knocked down with a number of issues right at the first of the year, allowing my hospital bed as a warm respite to watch a variety of college bowl and NFL playoff games.

The Olympics were a nice break. Even nicer that the neighbors to the north won the Hockey Gold Medal. I think Al Michaels said it best indicating that there was a lot of merriment in the streets of Vancouver but if the color would have been silver, the jubilation would not have been quite as great.

The Olympics in many ways have me reflect on my own struggles of going through cancer. There are good days, and bad days. There are high notes, and low notes. There are times where people overcome incredible odds, and times when they disappoint miserably.

The big winner this year has got to be curling. I cannot remember a single sport getting so much free publicity and coverage as Curling received this year in the Games. NFL stars, Face book pages, clothing sites, and I am sure a few other sites as well, will hopefully carry some momentum to more of the warmer reaches of our country as well as others in brining this sport to the next level of popularity.

Too much is made of the drama in all the prima donnas of the sport in my opinion. How many times can we see the tiara put on with the tears flowing. I like Lindsay Vonn but there has to be better stories to cover in depth, such as the US Men’s Bobsled team.

Overall the television coverage did another nice job this year and as the coverage wraps up, I find myself doing what I do every year when the Olympics are over … waiting for another 2 years to see the next games smothered all over of my TV screen.