Sports

To Tank or Not to Tank- Sports Talk with the Straight Shuter

by Jesse Shuter

Staff Writer

Image is Courtesy of http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/oct/31/ michael-carter-williams-76ers-lebron-heat

The Philadelphia 76ers season has started with a boom. They quickly became 3-0 beating three of the best teams in the NBA with what appeared to be ease.

Finally game four, their gameplay began to fall apart and even looked sloppy at some points. They finally began to look human. Ex-sixer Andre Igoudala seemed unstoppable against his old team, looking like possibly the best player in the league during that game.

It was widely believed that the Sixers both should and would tank this season on purpose in order to land the highly coveted NBA prospect Andrew Wiggins. After the first three games the game plan seemed to have changed.

Michael Carter-Williams has been the surprise of the season. He has played like an absolute super star. This was shocking especially considering he was in my opinion the Sixers’ third choice in the draft. After they traded Jrue Holliday away for Nerlens Noel and New Orleans’ 2014 first round pick, I thought they wanted college star Trey Burke, but Burke was taken two picks before them so they had to settle for Carter-Williams.

Settle may be the wrong word considering how good MCW had been for the Philadelphia basketball team. Experts have been comparing the Syracuse rookie to legend Magic Johnson, which is quite an impressive comparison.

So here is the question, what do the Sixers do? Should they tank, or should they try to win it all?

Whatever the decision will be they need to make it soon. If they keep winning they will quickly lose the option of drafting Wiggins. Some people say that the Sixers are one star away from being the best team in the NBA. If speculation proves true, Wiggins could be that star.

The interesting thing is that most Philadelphia fans wanted the Sixers to fail and all other Philadelphia teams (Eagles, Phillies, Flyers) to succeed. Of course the opposite seems to be true considering the other teams have had very disappointing seasons (which is a generous way to put it). Meanwhile the Sixers have saved the honor of Philadelphia sports for the first time in a long time.

Philadelphia might be the city with the biggest differential between fan adoration and love towards their teams and the talent that those teams possess. The entire franchise of Philadelphia sports is on the bottom, while fans continue to sell out games and follow their teams with vigor.

The Take Away:

The Sixers are legitimate contenders, and it’s only a matter of time before they either figure that out and try to win it all, or decide to tank. It appears that at this rate if they really want to get Wiggins, they are going to start trading away players. I speculate the first to go will be Spencer Hawes. I personally think that the Sixers should tank especially considering that they have finally been brought back down to reality. The NBA is the only professional league that relies on stars, and this may be the Sixers only chance in a while to get one. I can only imagine how good they could be with Andrew Wiggins.

Shuter’s Sleeper of the Week:

Victor Cruz (WR) Giants-

The Giants have had possibly the most disappointing year of any team in football. This week they are playing the Oakland Raider, the same team that was absolutely demolished by the Philadelphia Eagles. If Riley Cooper can grab three touchdowns against this team with the ball being thrown by Nick Foles, I can only imagine what Cruz will do getting the ball from Eli Manning.

What started out as a club team dating back to the very early years of SLA is now a Masterman crushing, Radnor-beating team of ultimate frisbee players.

When the club started out, it was a few students that liked to play after school. The team has quickly developed to play in regional tournaments and contests.

Now in it’s fourth year with founding teacher and co-coach Ms. Echols and, new co-coach Principal Chris Lehmann, the team had a strong season–causing many upsets to other bigger and more established teams.

“When I first started working at SLA, frisbee was sorta like an activity that a bunch of kids would do after school–mostly student initiated. Occasionally an adult like Mr. Best or I would go out there and teach them some skills, but there wasn’t a team.” Said Physics Teacher Ms.

Echols. In  the early days of frisbee at SLA, it was just a sport that teachers and students alike enjoyed play.
“A couple years after I got here some students expressed interest in having a team that plays games and tournaments and stuff like–we started playing some other schools in games and went to a tournament.”

After this first team was created, the following year the team expanded and had a girls and boys team. Both played a tournament. It was still co-ed because they still didn’t have enough players.

Starting the 2012-2013 school year, the team finally had enough players to have a boys and girls team. The girl’s team is in the spring and the boys teams are in the fall and spring. Also they have a JV and a varsity team.

“The team plays in the PADA league. It stands for Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance. That’s a league that runs all the adult leagues, and under that it has youth leagues. All of the teams in the Philadelphia area participate through them. They take care of all the insurance and other things that would come from the district. We’re totally separate from other school district sports”

Philadelphia has a tight knit ultimate network and plenty of teams to play like Caroll High School, who they just beat for their last game of the season.

“Lehmann has lofty aspirations for the team, which I think is great and is good for a lot of kids. He’s upped the level of intensity and made it a serious sport as SLA–that’s been good.

Senior Captain Rob Jenkins agrees that Lehmann has made the team more intense through his experience with coaching and more vigorous practices.

With the team coming off of a big win, they will continue to practice every morning at 6:30a for their spring season.

Sports Talk with the Straight Shuter

Referees in Sports

by Jesse Shuter

Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of http://blog.oregonlive.com/mlb/2010 /06/jim_joyces_response_to_mistake.html

The World Series is one of the most important times in a sports fan’s life. When my favorite team is in the World Series I feel as though I would do anything for them to win. I can only imagine how the actual players must feel.

So far in the 2013 Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series (WS), there has been two major controversies that could influence the outcome of the MLB Championship. These controversies are typically solved by officials. However my question is, How much power should these officials have?

The first of these came after game one of the series, after an 8-1 win by the Boston Red Sox over the St. Louis Cardinals. One of the Cardinals’ minor league players claimed to have seen Jon Lester, the starting pitcher for the Red Sox, using Vaseline in his glove.

If proven to be true, which so far there is no evidence to back up this claim except for a picture in which Lester’s glove appears to be wet, this would be an outrage and would not only disgrace Boston sports, but the World Series itself.

In game three with the the series tied 1-1, the Red Sox and Cardinals were battling back and forth the entire game. The game was tied in the bottom of the ninth with Jon Jay, outfielder for the Cardinals, up to bat. Jay hit a grounder to Second Baseman Dustin Pedroia, who dove to grab the ball and got an out at home.

Next, Allen Craig, outfielder and/or first baseman for the Cardinals was going home from third after a bad play by Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia where he tried throwing to third to get Craig out as he ran to third. Third baseman Will Middlebrooks dove to catch the wild throw, and Craig began running home.

As Craig was running home, Middlebrooks lifted his legs up into the air, tripping Craig to the ground. Craig then stood up to continue running but at this point would be out. The umpire, Jim Joyce,  seeing this called that Middlebrooks obstructed Craig, illegally preventing him from advancing to the next base, and therefore awarded him the next base in this case, home plate. This call would win the game for the Cardinals. Currently the series standings are 2-2 entering game five.

Many people were very frustrated by this call, and for more reasons than one. Obviously many people would argue that the umpires got this call wrong and costed the Red Sox the game. As Red Sox manager John Farrell pointed out in a post game press conference, Middlebrooks was just playing the ball, there was no way for him to go for the ball without being on the ground, therefore Craig could have anticipated this and not have fallen over Middlebrooks.

Another point that I would like to bring up is, how much power should these officials have? Should they be able to influence the entire game of the most important series in baseball, on a call that could have gone either way? This is not the first time this idea has come into question.

On June 10th, 2010, Armando Galarraga pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, was pitching what is now known as the best game of his life. It is dream of every pitcher to pitch a perfect game. This is when the pitcher goes through an entire game without giving up a walk or a hit. It is widely considered the most difficult thing to do for any Major League pitcher, and it instantly sends the pitcher to the record books.

Galarraga had a perfect game going into the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs. All he needed was one more out to accomplish this task. The batter hits a weak grounder to the shortstop, who gets the ball to Galarraga at first in plenty of time, winning the game and putting Galarraga’s name in the history book right? Wrong.

The umpire missed the call, saying the runner was safe and ruining the game for Galarraga. Do you know who this umpire was? Oh, only Jim Joyce, the same man from the World Series controversy. Joyce later apologized for the call saying, “I had a great angle on it. I had great positioning on it. I just missed the damn call. I missed from here to the wall.”

The Take Away:

The MLB is contemplating installing an instant replay system, similar to the National Football League (NFL), where officials can review the tape of controversial calls to make sure that they get the call correct. I like this idea and the they should implement it immediately. My only concern would be that the officials would become lazy and reliant on the tapes of the calls. That concern aside, today’s world is a technologically centered one, and it is time that the MLB accepts that and stops ruining their games with these officials who make human errors.

Shuter’s Sleeper of the Week:

T.Y. Hilton (WR) and Darrius Heyward-Bey (WR), Colts

After Reggie Wayne went down for the season, one of these men needs to step up to fill the void left in that offense. My guess is that T.Y. Hilton will be the guy, but if the opposing defenses figure that out and cover him, Heyward-Bey will be open and score quite a few TDs.