Category: Sports

So I admit I was a man of little faith.  When Chargers went to 4-8, I thought the season was over, but they were not mathematically eliminated.  Now they just beat the #1 team in our division Denver (where my bro-in-law, who must be waving his hands in disgusted, resides) by 21-52, and they’re in the playoffs!!

The Chargers won four in a row and they’re really hot.  Next week against Indy will be a tough game, but it will be an exciting one! GOOOOO CHARGERS!!!

Time to get Lia a baby Charger outfit, probably to the chagrin of my lovely, fashion-conscious wife. 🙂

So this is a slightly late entry, but both of my teams have lost in the playoffs. Seahawks were put to shame by the Packers, but at least Holmgren is coming back next season! Chargers made it to AFC Championship, but couldn’t punch it in the red zone. With no LT, slow Rivers, and hurt Gates, it’s amazing they made it this long, and the fact Norv got conservative against the Patriots didn’t help either. Oh well, but at least they put up a fight and didn’t get blown out like the Hawks.

There’s always next year.

The playoffs is here, and both my favorite teams, the Seahawks and the Chargers are both in the playoffs. The two teams have stadiums that will chew the other teams’ ears off, and both have home field advantage, which is great.

While Seahawk’s QB Hasselbeck is brilliant, I have my reservation about the hawks, though. The RB Alexander can’t run a yard without falling straight into the turf, we’re pressed to depend on the arms of Hasselbeck, and the game we had at Carolina revealed the weakness in that strategy, which is that external factors, such as wind, can really affect our result. As I type, I can hear the wind about to take my roof off, which is not a good sign. Hopefully the wind will die down a bit tomorrow.

As for Chargers, their problem is the exact opposite of Seahawks. The running game is excellent, as they have RB Tomlinson who does wonders, but QB Philip Rivers can be erratic and hit the umpire 10 feet away instead of his target. Then there’s coach Norv Turner, who is riding the talents of this team. I suppose having won last 6 games of the season means they’re how jelling together. Hopefully we won’t see any boneheaded decisions from Norv during this off season.

So there. Let’s go Chargers and Seahawks!

I’m into Poker.  I’ve watched many episodes of World Series of Poker, including the luckiest guy who won the main event this year, Jamie Gold, who seemed to give endless streaks of bad beats.  Now some say that Poker is all about luck, and in a way, it is, but obviously some people with their skills are able to capitalize more on the luck they’re given.  Me?  I never get lucky in anything…  if I’m playing rock, paper and scissors with Karen, she’ll beat me 9 out of 10 times.  I really need to squeeze the miles out of what little luck I have.

By the way, some Christians will say there’s no such thing as luck because God is sovereign, and they would be right.  For someone who is omniscient, God knows every flip of the coin in advance.  For the rest of us who isn’t omniscient, however, the outcome of the coin toss becomes…  “luck”… because we don’t know the result in advance.  Just thought I’d clarify that before I get doctrinally bashed by my fellow brethrens.

Anyway, I logged in at PartyPoker as raid123 and gave the PartyPoker hourly tournament a shot for the first time (play money, so no real money involved).  The first game I played had 2980 Entrants with payout for the top 130, and…  Not too bad…  102 … at least I placed in the money!

So I decided to play just one more game (to Karen’s dismay).  This time there were only 1900 entrants, and…  Number 1 Baby!!  🙂  Of course, not that I’m about to delude myself into thinking I’m great or anything, but at least I know something about Poker!

Bowling has been one of those sports that I have had mixed success. On Friday, my team had a morale event at the bowling alley where I showed off my exceptional skills by handily beating the other three players in my lane.  Now had I broken a hundred, it may have been a more satisfying experience, but I’ll take the win.  The second game I did better, scoring about 156.  However, in the third game I once again entered a (very) cold streak, but half way through the game, a coworker who was on a perpetual cold streak told me, “I’m now trying the spin.  It’s really fun… you should try it!”  Because I’m always up for a challenge (and because it would cover up my subpar start), I decided to take the plunge and learned “the bowling secret”.

Talk about night and day!  Not only did I fare better the second half, but before I left, I barely missed getting a turkey by getting “X X 9/” !  Just to check that it’s not a fluke, the next day Kari, Tim, Karen and myself went bowling, and using only spin shots, I played three games and never a game below 110.  Ok, I better stop before this starts sounding like an infomercial.  “If you call in the next 10 minutes, not only will I share this secret, but I’ll give you a free pair of bowling shoes, absolutely free…”

The game of bowling would never be the same again.  Anyone up for bowling?  😉

I had planned to save this for another day this week as I’ve bombed this blog with too many oversized entries lately, but unfortunately neither Carol nor Jun could hold their cool about withholding kayaking blogs.  I didn’t want to be old news, so here we go.

Over the weekend, Karen and I went kayaking, and even though we were only a tiny, little bit late (40 minutes), our beloved friends (David, Carol, Eddie, Jun, Allen) had forsaken us.  We had snubbed water sports in the past, as the inability of Karen keeping her head above water for more than 0.5 seconds may have had something to do with it.  With the shabby guarantee of the safety vest on her, we decided to take a plunge anyway.  First we headed toward Gas Works…

Then we saw a group of ducks and headed straight for it…

Unfortunately with Karen working against me, we had no chance of catching up.

Then we saw our beloved friends paddling over in our direction.  Strangely enough, the closer they got, the blonder their hair seemed.  Wait a minute!  Those are no friends… counterfeits!  I did receive a call from David, who mentioned they were at the UW draw bridge, but somehow I must have brought the wrong cognitive map with me because I thought the Ballard bridge was the draw bridge.  We turned around.  Then about 15 minutes later I realized my folly and turned around again. What a waste of energy!

By the time we found our friends, they were heading back already.  Because I wanted to show Karen the *real* UW draw bridge (not Ballard), we painstakingly parted with our friends and continued our path toward UW.

We took a slight detour toward the beautiful water lillies…

Then we headed toward the draw bridge…

That’s when I realized a real map was strapped about 4 inches from my face on top of the kayak.  Sheesh.  Rubbing it in my face.  We noticed a path toward the right and headed under a few bridges.  It was a cinematic experience to behold…

Padding out from under the 520 bridge was another gorgeous sight…

That’s when the low battery light on my camera came on.  A practical tip for the wise: charge your batteries.  At this point I received another call from David, and they have already paid and ready to leave.  When we disclosed our location of Huskie Stadium, I slightly underestimated our distance “Give me 20 minutes, we’ll be back.  No problem!”

David answered, “No way!  You’re about 40 minutes away!”

To prove I was no slouch, I kicked into overdrive, supercharged my neglected biceps and triceps, and blazed down the path as the kayak parted the water.  This feat lasted a whole…oh, 30 seconds before I decided to take a break.  That’s also when Karen politely pointed out her need for her break as well–a bathroom break.  Great.  Looked like it was going to be a *really* long trip back. 

On the way back, the wind was against us, and at times it seemed like it was winning the tug-a-war as the kayak stood still.  After an hour we managed to make it back, but the return trip instilled a soreness in my biceps, triceps, and any other ceps you can think of.  It has yet to wear off as of this day.

It was nice being out on a kayak though.  🙂  Maybe next time, our “friends” will wait for us!!

Earlier last week, Tim Hsiung had asked Karen and I to attend a Mariners game today.  It wasn’t until later that I realized the real reason Tim wanted to go: Yankee’s Starting Pitcher Chien-Ming Wang.

After every inning that Wang pitched, we witnessed flashes of blue and red, the Taiwanese flag.

I suppose that being Taiwanese, I should show some national pride as well.  Time to brush the dust off the Shaq-sized Taiwan flag from my attic…

On a side note, when you’re super thirsty and the enticing cold lemonade makes its way down the steps as it preys on the feeble minded, resist the urge.  We gave in to our cravings and paid the $3.75 Safeco tax.  Instead of lemonade, we received Iced Water (1% lemon juice).

Stay away from it.  You’ve been warned.

So the game progressed along with Mariners Pitcher Sele pitching better than expected.  Unfortunately he wouldn’t go far enough as Hasegawa and Sherill took over in relief. Finally when they called the clown…

JJ Klutz… Oops, I mean JJ Putz. I turned and told Tim “And this is where Yankees hit a Grand Salami”.
Tim: “Bernie doesn’t have that power any more”.
Me: “Yeah, but he’s up against Putz”.

That’s when Bernie proceeded to put the ball over the fence.  If I can only be so accurate about other things.

So Chien-Ming Wang gets a W for the win, and the Taiwanese Nationals were ecstatic.  It seemed bizarre, however, that someone would bring a poster of Wang’s wedding photo. By the way, doesn’t Wang look a little like Hideki Matsui?

After the ball game, Karen had cravings for popcorn chicken, so we headed back to Oasis.  Even though I already blogged about the deceptive drinks at Oasis, I just had to take a picture of the incriminating poster…

I refused to purchase their drinks, but the popcorn chicken was good.  Wish I had something to drink while downing the salty chicken though.  😕

It’s not a story about the superheros in the new DVD.  The Incredibles is a volleyball team in Michael Chang’s CSL Volleyball League, and one of the players is yours truly.  If you need a story for hope, a story for inspiration, a story for comeback…  search no further than this.

During the regular season, the team struggled.  Wins were hard to come by, and the team members didn’t gel.  In fact, we had won only 4 games during the regular season, out of 24.  It was grueling time, it was tough, and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Some players thought this would be the last season they join CSL volleyball, as wins were tough to come by.  In a blink of the eye, the regular season was over.

Then came the playoffs.

So we began to seek practice opportunities.  Some of us went to First Presbyterian Church on Thursday night for open gym.  We also had a practice session… at 8am?!? Yeah, thanks Jeffrey.  Drousily we woke up before the rooster crowed and pushed ourselves to practice.

The team began to gel.

On Sunday, we (#7 seed) played Helmet Heads (#4 seed).  We won.  On the following Saturday, we played Friday Night Lights (#1 seed).  Another upset.  Then came the championship game.

“Da da da da da da…. INCREDIBLES!”

The game began.  It was intense, as beads of swet glided down our sideburns, and within the window of our eyes, the windows of our soul, wrote two words: “No Fear”.

Wes whipped out his Air Jordan shoes…  Yes the ref is Michael Chang the ex-tennis player…

David challenging their spikers…

Carol stepping up and getting some kill shots and blocks…

Jessica just good all around…

Phoebe holding her own…

And yours truly providing some offense and defense…

We won the first game, but got destroyed on the second game.  At one point during the third game, we were down 4-12, watching the championship slowly slipping through our swetty fingers.  Then I was up.  Having served both of my serves nicely into the net during the championship thus far, the faith of the team in winning is held by a string as thin as a dental floss.  As the crowd cheered on, “Serve it in!”  “Come on!”  “You can do it.”, I looked at the score. 7-14.  I felt a calmness, a soothing confidence that we could do this as I took a deep breath and flung the ball into the air.  Imagine the entire scene in slow motion as my hand makes contact with the ball, the ball ascends into the air, all eyes fixated widely on the ball with open mouths, and the ball flying… flying… and lands in the court!  The mojo was back.  We won the point.  Then I served, and I served, and I served, and I served, and they took a timeout, and I served, and I served, and I served, then the score was 15-14 when we conceeded a point.  The momentum was on our side, and there was no stopping the Incredibles!

In the end, we won.

So it sounds like I turned the team around, but hey, this is my blog, right?  😛  Well, we won as a team.  Some points that seemed unfathomably hard to return were answered, and everything just clicked.  Everyone really stepped up.

Here’s the team picture for the Incredibles.  During the cerebration ceremony, Carol and Grace won the Most Inspirational Player awards for Incredibles and Superheroes, respectively.

And finally, as the first ECC team to win a championship in CSL volleyball, we were ready to accept our award!  The award that symbolizes the incredulous turnaround!  The award that reflects all the hard work and hours put into volleyball! The award that that bonds our team forever as champions of CSL!  The award…

…was an edible cookie?!!  Sure it says “C Champs”, but come on…  Well, I guess it’s the journey and reaching our personal goals that’s the best reward of all.

Still, a trophy would have been nice.

Last night our fellowship attended the Mariners game.  It started out with red carpet moment where Ichiro received his award for 262 hits.  The national anthem was sung by a lady whose voice was solid except for that, oh, pathetic high note, which won’t be wining any American Idol votes.  Imagine me hitting a high note with some pubscent falsetto.  Ok, don’t imagine that.  Anyway, on to the ballgame. 

Gil Meche was pitching that night, and from the looks of it, he was pitching batting practice.  From the top of the first inning, the Mariners were down 5-0.  Sheesh.  Learn how to pitch, boy!  I was hoping the Mariners would claw their way back.  First up, Ichiro!

And the balls comes to the plate!  Ichiro is locked in!  He looks at the ball! Swings!  And…

…grounds out.

Ironically, after receiving the all-time hits award, Ichiro then goes on to get all of 0 hits that night.  That’s right, zip, zilch, goose egg.  Well, that pretty much epitomizes the night for the Mariners, as we see Brett Boone strike out (no surprise here):

And Beltre still in his HR slump mapping back to the beginning of Spring Training:

During the ballgame, some of the cleaning crew started messing around:

They thought their lazy butts would slip by unnoticed, but my hawk eye spotted them from a mile away and caught them on film!  Slackers!  Get back to work!

Then there was the wave.  You can deduce how the game is going when people are paying more attention to the wave than the game:

But the take away from the game is…  The Ichiro Bobblehead dolls!

Okay, so at least there was something positive from the game.  E-bay, here I come!

There’s a fad today on Fantasy sports. Everywhere you look it’s Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Basketball, Fantasy Foosball, Fantasy Earthworm Hunt, etc. A few weeks ago, my friend Tim extended an invitation to join their league, and like a vegetarian lion eyeing a piece of fresh meat, I decided to give in. If you are a Fantasy virgin, let’s take your through my first experience.

First, there’s the draft, where all the managers simultaneously meet online and grind through a couple hours of player selection. Being ninth in the drafting lineup, naturally I missed out on getting Pujols or A-Rod. You have 90 seconds make your wise selection, and one time my time expired so I ended up with Yahoo’s pick of Carl Crawford. I was pulling my hair out for a while there, but he turned out to be a good pick.

Next, you need to manage your players, and this is not for the light-hearted because you need to manage everyday. Mistakingly I postponed viewing the result until the end of the first day, and to my dismay, two of my starters, Schilling and Escobar, went on the disabled list before the season started. On the bench was Jamie Moyer, who got a win for Seattle that I couldn’t cash in on. Mistakes learned.

As I began descending in the ranks, the low point being second to last place, I’ve learned that you need to examine your lineup daily. People can go on the DL or be benched, and when they don’t play, you don’t make. I’ve also learned that baseball players are very streaky, so when it rains, it pours. Some of my players have sub-.200 average even though they were top-ranked last year. I added the player Edgardo Alfonzo from the free agents list and he was quite a pickup. He added a big boost to my offensive arsenal.

I’ve learned that you need to look at the opponents and get an assessment of whether you want them to play to maximize your chances. If they’re playing against Roger Clemens, they’re probably not going to score 6 HR’s.

Then there’s paying tithe to the service provider. The league I play in is hosted on Yahoo, and without StatTracker, it’s like driving blindfolded. I give props to Yahoo for this devious strategy of offering the stats to you free for a few weeks, then taking it away. Once you have a taste of quality steak, there’s no going back. I justified this by convincing myself that I’ll be tracking this everyday for the next 6 months, and what’s $9.99 compared to the time I’ve saved?

So now I’ve moved my team from the gutter (second to last place) to the 3rd place out of 11 teams. I’ve been doing well lately, but who knows… I saw Big Stix Alpha, my bro-in-law, descend from glory (#2) to gutter (#10) within a week, which I suppose is similar to real baseball. The manager can only do their best putting the lineup together, and then it’s up to the players to get the job done.