Euro 2008 Day 13 (Quarterfinal 1): 2006 all over again. Schweinsteiger remains Portugal's nemesis

Yet another piece about all the flags on cars, balconies and especially on people. Today I was going home at around 4pm but had to leave the house once more to pick up the birthday present for my mother. My walk to me around the campus of the University of Cologne and I was rather surprised to see so many people walking around in Germany jerseys there. When I got home and entered the lift four people jumped in, dressed in Germany jerseys, wearing black-red-gold scalfs and face paint, you name it. This thing seems really to be getting out of hand. Or is it just getting normal? I have to be honest, it's not just a German thing, it's all over Europe. people are going crazy when their team plays, they come out in masses to support them and wear their national colours. So is Germany becoming what some people here would consider to be a normal country? Well, I still don't like the fact the half of the population (according to a recent survey) would love to see flags being raised for the whole year. This is way too much for me. Still it's just half of the population, I would have figured it's way more.
On the positive side I like it when people sport more than one flag. There is a lot of cars driving around the city with a German and another European flag. Turkey has the most, mainly because there's a lot of people with Turkish origin live here. In second place would be Italy, I think. Still there are some weird combinations. I saw a car with a Turkish and a Greek flag which, when you consider the history between the two countries, is quite remarkable. And, oh my, The Netherlands and Germany? You gotta be kidding me?! That car still has all four tires? Lucky guy. I reckon quite a few people would go bezerk when they see a car dressed up like that.
So, to end this let me just say that I find it very remarkable that the immigrant communites have a German flag waving on their car, something a few years ago would be considered to be highly unusual. Maybe that's the thing when people talk about Germany is becoming more of a normal country. The immigrant communites seem to slowly accept Germany as their - at least second - home and maybe the Germans start to acknowledge the immigrant communites a little bit more.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying a nice game of baseball with the Yankees playing the Padres on Interleague play. It's another outing for pitching wonderboy Joba Chamberlain and right now the commentators a going crazy over a play he made while covering home plate. Did I meantion the Hanshin Tigers are still winning and remain at the op of the Central League? And the Red Sox just won't give in even though they seem to lose one starting pitcher after another. Somehow it#s nice to watch a slow sport like baseball as a contrast to all the football madness going on at the moment.

Germany vs Portugal 3-2 (Quarterfinal 1)
Huge upgrade from the last game's performance by the German team. This looked much more like the football invented by Klinsmann and Löw again. And finally a great outing by Bastian Schweinsteiger, a player I usually love to hate for his sometimes egoistic style of play. Portugal somehow didn't look convincing at all, a huge setback from what they had shown in their group matches. Cristiano Ronaldo never looked like he was in the game and their short pass play ended at the German penalty box almost every time. The changes the German coaching made compared to the game against Austria looked good, this time this was almost a 4-3-3, although some would see it as a 4-2-3-1. Still I can't understand why they set up Miro Klose to play the lone striker up front. That's the perfect role for Kevin Kuranyi who brilliantly shades the ball from the defenders and is a workhorse as a one-man attack. The defending midfielders positions were played really well by Thomas Hitzlsperger and Simon Rolfes and although they didn't do much offensively their defending was good, to say the least. A great team effort by Germany and this fuels the hope for a cup final berth because with a performance like tonight's they should not fear neither Croatia nor Turkey.
One has to mention though that there was a foul play by Michael Ballack before the 3-1 and Portugal's coach Luis Felipe Scolari was right to complain about it. I wonder what German newspapers would have written had a Portugese player scored the winning goal that way. It would have been conspiracy theories all over again.

Red Sox and Hanshin Tigers get a good start into the new season

And once again here's proof that a baseball game should be watched until the final out. I tuned into the coverage of Red Sox vs Rangers from Fenway yesterday and although the match itself was pretty close and interesting I somewhat lost interest and started doing other things while listening to the commentary and occasionally looking at the screen. Rangers went ahead 2-0 early and even extended that lead to a 5-0 advantage later in the game. The Red Sox left a lot of baserunners stranded over the first 6 innings and they weren't looking they they would be able to make a comeback this time. Now in football when a team is 0-5 down the final minutes of a match can become really boring because both sides know that nothing will change until the final whistle. When first watched the Japanese drama series "H2" which is about high school baseball in Japan the main character says one sentence while playing the first game for his new team. They are a few runs behind and the opposing pitcher is trash talking to him pointing out that restistance is futile, he's already lost the game. "Let me show you the benefits of a game with no time limit". There certainly are some. What happened in Boston was that the Sox scored two in the 7th and then rallied to score 4 more in the 8th, the final one being a bases-loaded walk. I guess that's something I really like about the sport. That you have to be aware until the very last out of the game. There's always the possibility that something happens which turns around the game in favour of the other team.

Meanwhile in Japan the Hanshin Tigers are on a run. They lead the Central League 15-4-0 while their fiercest rivals, the Yomiuri Giants are second to last with a 7-12-1 record. Seems like we are in for some surprises this year although it's still very early in the season. There is a great blog which keeps track of the Tigers games regularly.

Curses and buried shirts: Baseball lore revisited

There seems to be a strong belief in baseball that curses really exist and work, although some of them seem to have been overcame over the past years. The best known one must have been the "Curse of the Bambino", but is there any clue as to what made the curse go away? One that apparently is still active is the "Curse of the Billy Goat" which prevents the Chicago Cubs from winning a championship in the past 100 years. In Japan the Hanshin Tigers are still waiting to win the Japan Series for a 2nd time and there a fastfood mascot is taking all the blame. The "Curse of the Colonel" is thought to prevent the team from winning since 1985 now when excited fans dropped a statue of KFC mascot Colonel Sanders into a river.
This kind of sports lore is something which makes baseball interesting to me. Legends, curses, witchcraft, that's something which adds to the fun. Fans and supporters always turn to higher powers when they are trying to explain the inexplicable. Why has my team not won a championship in a long time? Well, maybe it's not bad management or even worse players. No, it must have been a curse. There we go...
Now, it seems some people even try to force their "luck" a little bit and with the New York Yankees building a new stadium what better way to put a little flaw in the construction. A worker buried a Red Sox jersey under the visitor's dugout, told the New York Post and then the Yankees resurfaced the jersey with lots of media attention. At least this kind of child's play is one where no one gets hurt, unlike the stuff football supporters to over here.

A week in baseball

So here we go, the baseball season is in full swing after a week of play. And it seems that a few teams try to ridicule some of the experts who were labelling some clubs as losers before opening day. I found it quite surprising to see that the Orioles, the Royals, the A's or the Rangers (incidentally all AL teams) who were all considered to be cannon fodder for the big teams before the season suddenly turned out to be good ball clubs. Now I know that there will change a lot over the course of a 162 game season, but I found it quite astonishing that there wasn't a single team who was predicted to lose really did so. Everyone was talking about the great offense of the Detroit Tigers (0-7 after last night's loss to the Red Sox), the great Angels (5-4) and so on. In football the three teams who get promoted usually are considered to the the first three candidates for immediated relegation. Normally there's one stand out surprise (this year that would be Karlsruhe), but usually they go down the drain as the season continues. But that doesn't seem to be the case in baseball. What I like about that is the balance of the league. It's not like that every team has a chance to win the World Series, but it's close. Closer than in European football competitions.
And, oh boy, you got to give credit to the Americans for celebrating their championship teams. I was watching the ceremony for the Red Sox yesterday and that was brilliant. Although I don't really like F-16 flyovers, but bringing out legendary players from different sports teams (Bruins, Celtics, Patriots), honouring a former player who gave the club one of it's worst memories (Bill Buckner in 1986) by letting him throw the opening pitch, that's something you won't get in German stadiums. I like the way they honour their tradition.

In Japan meanwhile the spring Koshien ended with a win for a school from Okinawa. I guess that the population of those islands down south is rather small so that must have been a highlight for the region.
So this means the Hanshin Tigers finally get to take their home field again after having a great start on the road. They are now 8-2-0 and lead the Central League. I still wasn't able to watch a game because of the different time zones (Japanese baseball games will air at 11 am over here), but I really hope to catch one on some weekend in the future.

MLB: Opening Day holds its promise

I was really anxious for the new baseball season to start, something I didn't even think of at the same time last year. This is kind of strange for me to get sucked up into a sport which I didn't find very interesting some time ago. But somehow the excitement of grown up man clubbing small balls with way too thin sticks out of parks got me hooked and that is why I was watching a few games yesterday.
I started with Royals at Tigers, a highly anticipated game because of the tuned up offense of Detroit. They went ahead early but then Kansas City came back to tie the game and it all went into extra innings (Final: KC 5 DET 4).
There were quite a few rain delays and the final opening game for the old Yankee stadium was postponed to today. Impressing how the Cubs audience at Wrigley Field was cheering on every pitch Carlos Zambrano threw in the first inning. That was more like a rowdy crowd at a European football stadium than people hanging out at a baseball game. Well, they have been waiting for 100 years now. Oh, by the way, this seems to be the year for anniversaries of championship droughts. In German football two teams will have to celebrate as well. Schalke 04 is 50 years without a championship, 1.FC Cologne is waiting for 30 years now. In the end the Cubs also went to extra innings after their newly acquired Japanese outfielder Fukudome Kousuke entered the MLB stage in style by tying the game with a 3-run homer. Still they lost to the Brewers 3-4.
I also took a glance at the Dodgers who were facing the Giants at home, the only game I watched where there was nice weather, by the way. That wasn't as close as the other matches with L.A. getting in front early. (Final SF 0 LAD 5).

Meanwhile across the Pacific the Japanese season got started as well and the Hanshin Tigers are leading the pack in the Central League after sweeping the Yokohama BayStars. What makes this even sweeter is that the Giants lost their series to the Yakult Swallows.

Finally something to do in the evenings on boring days.

Spring is coming and so is the sound of cracking bats

I have to admit that I have been very anxious for the baseball season to start again and spring training games haven't had a great placebo effect on me. So I gladly accepted the opportunity to watch the season opening game from Tokyo between the Athletics and the Red Sox at a decent time. It was 11 AM in Germany so I was able to watch a few innings before I had to leave for work. I twas nice to watch, some nice defensive plays and hits, some shaky pitching by homecoming Matsuzaka Daisuke at the beginning, and a nice outcome for the Red Sox with a 6-5 win in extra innings.
I wasn't able to watch the exhibition games the days before though. I would have loved to see the Hanshin Tigers play against the American teams and they seemed to have done well against the defending World Champions from Boston. But those Tigers games were broadcasted too early for me unfortunately. And they were at Tokyo Dome and not at Koshien stadium which currently is hosting the invitational Spring Tournament.
Which leads me to the website for that tournament. The great thing is that you can watch every game there as a replay once it is finished. Just click on one of the numbers 1-13 which represent the game days. Complete game coverage with no commercial breaks. And the commentary is just hilarious. I watched a little bit of a surprising match in which Yokohama crashed out of the competition. Yokohama of course being the former school of Matsuzaka.
And finally in Japan the new season kicked off as well. Until now it is only the Pacific League, but the Central League will join the action this weekend, if I read the NPB website correctly. There is a nice blog about the Hanshin Tigers on a website which deals with almost everything about baseball in Japan which I really recommend.

Aah, I am really looking forward to another season...