BOSTON – Next week (April 10), we’ll be three days into the 2022 Major League Baseball regular season and will be awaiting the Boston Red Sox home opener against the Minnesota Twins, scheduled for April 15th. The Red Sox open the season on the road with consecutive three-game sets against their arch rivals NY Yankees and a sure-to-be chilly trip to play the Detroit Tigers.
While your trusted reporter was able to attend a couple MLB Postseason games last October, the last time Digital Sports Desk graced the press box was Sunday, September 29, 2019 when the Sox defeated the Baltimore Orioles in front of 35,427 fans who had no idea that the terrible hurdle of COVID-19 was four months away. The Red Sox finished 84-78 in 2019, 24-36 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, then rallied back to a 92-70 mark last year.
They knocked-out the New York Yankees in the AL Wild Card game, then took the five-game set against the Tampa Bay Rays 3-1, after dropping the first game of the series at Tampa, 5-0. Of course, the Sox fell short, losing to the Houston Astros, 4-games-to-2 in the ALCS. They lost the final three games of the series after going up 2-games-to-1.
Boston is 9-6 in 2022 Grapefruit League games (as of the morning of April 2). After Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Braves in Sarasota, the Red Sox have only two more Spring Training games on the docket (April 4 & 5) against Minnesota.
HERE NOW, THE NOTES:
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SVG SAYS: (And, we’re not talking Stan Van Gundy) – The Sports Video Group highlighted the bells and whistles that Turner and CBS Sports compiled to cover Final Four Saturday and Monday Night’s NCAA championship game.
“Sports is match-up driven,” says Craig Barry, EVP/Chief Content Officer, Turner Sports. “It always has been, it always will be. It doesn’t always determine the drama of the event, but it definitely helps determine the dramatic impact of an event. To have Duke, UNC, Kansas, and Villanova, it’s going to be unprecedented.”
“[Duke-North Carolina], Barry continued, “is, historically, one of the biggest match ups in Final Four history. It’s all hands on deck to do this show justice and bring something really special to the fans, without focusing on – and I’ll use this word loosely – any gimmicks. We’re bringing a robust broadcast, where we tell the story of the games that are being played.”
In addition to the elite level matchups, this Final Four is bolstered by the return of live fans, following the cancelation of the tournament in 2020 and an attendance-limited event in 2021. According to Bryant, that energy brings better visuals to the show but also goes a long way into spilling over to fuel the energy of the crew behind the scenes.
“The opportunity to have the energy in the arena again [has been fantastic],” says Bryant. “And that’s not just in the arena, it’s the energy in the studio, the energy in the truck, the energy in the control rooms. We’ve been really leveraging that and bringing that into the broadcast. We need to make sure that we have the technology and the assets to harness that. You can add technology, you can build storylines, but [the atmosphere] was the one large differentiator for us that we really felt was going to push us back to normalization.”
This Final Four is the last for director Bob Fishman, the lead CBS Sports director for college basketball for the past 39 years. It’s not lost with the fact both Fishman and Krzyzewski will both retire after they’re finished working this tournament.
“We have become dear friends over these years. I’ve directed every single one of his national championships,” Fishman said. “I said to him a couple weeks ago ‘You know, I’m impartial coach, but it sure would be cool to be there together to celebrate our retirements together and maybe win a national championship.’ That would really top it off pretty well for me.”
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HALL OF A FIVE: The ultimate starting five from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s season-long competition for the best collegiate players at each position.
2021-22 Men’s Naismith Starting Five:
Collin Gillespie (Villanova, Graduate Student) – Bob Cousy Point Guard of the Year Award – 15.6 pts/gm, 3.9 reb/gm, 3.3 ast/gm
Johnny Davis (Wisconsin, So.) – Jerry West Shooting Guard of the Year Award – 19.7 pts/gm, 8.2 reb/gm, 2.1 ast/gm
Wendell Moore Jr. (Duke, Jr.) – Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year Award – 3.5 pts/gm, 5.2 reb/gm, 4.4 ast/gm, 41.1 3pt%
Keegan Murray (Iowa, So.) – Karl Malone Power Forward of the Year Award – 23.5 pts/gm, 8.7 reb/gm, 1.5 ast/gm, 55.4 fg%
Oscar Tshiebwe (Kentucky, Jr.) – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award – 17.4 pts/gm, 15.1 reb/gm, 1.6 blk/gm, 60.6 fg%
CHICAGO LAW: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, (University of Chicago – JD’88), still thinks of himself as a lawyer, wrote Becky Beaupre Gillespie in the u of chicago (sic) news of April 1.
“After all, it’s the skills he learned at the University of Chicago Law School—and later as a judicial clerk and law firm associate—that undergird his approach to the complex issues that have defined his tenure as NBA head, including high-profile decisions related to COVID policy, international relations and more,” she wrote as an intro to a University speaking function headlined by Silver.
“The problem-solving, issue-spotting techniques that you learn, particularly at the University of Chicago, [including] how to reason through issues—I find I use those skills every day of my life, and I really feel indebted to the Law School as a result,” Silver said at a March 22 event co-hosted by the Law School and the University’s Harris School of Public Policy.
OVERTIME: In the past year, the NBA G-League created its Ignite club of talented high school aged players who chose not to attend college but prepare for professional basketball by playing against G-League competition. Similarly, the Overtime Elite team out of Atlanta was mining the same talent.
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This weekend, the Commissioner of the Overtime venture, former NBA executive Aaron Ryan, decided to step down from his post to return to his home in New Jersey to spend more time with his family.
“A little over a year ago, no one had ever heard of Overtime Elite,” wrote Ryan. “However, what started out as a novel idea, has transformed the basketball ecosystem and sports media forever. Elite basketball players, for the first time, were prioritized. They were compensated for their value, provided a top-notch education that met them where they are in their academic journey, and they were given access to elite coaches and training. The opportunity to build a league, with the visionary team at Overtime was a true career milestone. And even more than that, for me it was a mission filled with purpose.
“The past 18 months have been rewarding, exhilarating, and exhausting, given that our work was taking place in the midst of a global pandemic where all business and sports norms were upended. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, my work at Overtime Elite bore fruit through hard work with a great team. It also took a personal toll. As many of you know, I have been splitting my time between my home in New Jersey and my office in Atlanta. Time away from my wife and teenage daughters was a tough sacrifice, but became increasingly more difficult as we moved from working remote, to being in Atlanta,” Ryan stated.
“So it is with a heavy heart, and with the agreement of my colleagues at Overtime, I have decided not to seek a contract extension. As much as I enjoyed the job and was dedicated to the larger mission, putting my family first and being present for my daughters as they go through these formative years is best for me and for my family.
“I’ll forever be proud of what we built in the face of adversity. And I’ll always be grateful to our incredible staff, our first 27 athletes and their families, who made the decision to be a part of history.
“I wish the Overtime Elite team every success as they move forward on this powerful mission,” concluded Ryan.
NOTE: This was also a part of the While We’re Young (Ideas) notebook (link)
Parting Words & Music:
As we did a year ago, here’s the song you ‘wanna hear.”
One Shining Moment from the 2021 NCAA’s:
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