John Hendow

Yesterday I attended my first Seattle Sounders FC match, and I’m hooked! It was a great game and I’m impressed by both the team and the fans. It’s amazing that Seattle has such a huge soccer fan base, and the level of support is very high. It helped that we had tickets to a great match in which (1) we won and (2) my seats were out of the sun! I’m excited about seeing more matches this season and may purchase a ticket package for 2010. Go Sounders!

The intrepid Tube Sox began this summer’s softball season with a 17-2 victory. After having our first two games rained out (and rescheduled for July), we finally managed to take the field. Most of the crew is back from previous years. I was impressed that everyone on the team got a good hit or two at the plate, and our fielding seems pretty good this year. As always we followed our game with a trip to Bad Albert’s for beer and food. Gotta replace those lost calories. We’ll continue our adventures this season and will look forward to the meeting up with familiar teams in our league. After ten years, you get to recognizing a lot of other teams. Good fun all around.

Saturday’s round 2 games were great. I was delighted that both UW and Gonzaga made it to the second round. In their initial appearances both teams handily won their games and it looked like they were both poised to do well in the second round. Unfortunately, UW played a flat first half against Purdue and was never really in the game until well into the second half. By then the inertia was in Purdue’s favor. Although my alma mater only lost by 2 points, they were never really all that close to winning.

Gonzaga put up a great fight agains WKU, and the game came down to the final few seconds. Seeing the Zags pull of a last-minute victory basket was incredible. Everyone was really impresesed with the whole game. Honestly, I thought WKU was the best team of the weekend. They played with intensity and speed. The fact that Gonzaga pulled out the victory was a testament to their tenacity. Great game!

The concession disorganization continued Saturday, with lines continuing to block passage in the corridors, and wait times of up to an hour for food. I had expected they might make some kind of adjustment to improve logistics, but apparently not. I tried to pretend I’m not a PM and did my best to ignore the unaddressed inefficiency. Meh. It’s hard for me… I want to fix things and plan iterative improvement. Thankfully, there wasn’t a whiteboard handy or I might have started diagramming.

This was such a fun weekend of sports, great company (family and friends in abundance), crazy running around in Portland, yummy food and of course, excellent microbrews. So, with my first NCAA tournament games behind me, I’m really looking forward to going again next year. We’re putting in for 2010 tickets for rounds 1 and 2 in Spokane. Teri and I are planning to watch the next round of games on TV, even Friday night’s game – which occurs on our wedding annivarsary! Before this year I never spent much time watching college basketball… I think during the whole time I was a college student (which, admittedly, was a pretty long time) I might have attended 2 games in total. I guess I just never really thought about it when I was a student at the UW or WWU. I always had my snoot in a book or was practicing music. Go figure.

Yesterday I attended four basketball games… a personal record. As much as I enjoy the NCAA tournament, four games in one day is pretty much a caboose-killer. The four victors of round 1 (Purdue, WKU, UW, Gonzaga) looked pretty good. I especially found WKU impressive; they had an amazingly fast game and adapted well. They also had an awesome pep band and easily the best mascot of the entire weekend (although no one seems to know exactly what it is). The day was broken into 2 sessions, each with 2 games. Ten hours of great basketball.

The Rose Garden in Portland is a great venue. It has excellent sight lines and is the perfect size for basketball. The MAX rail line made it very easy and convenient to get to the games. The level of fan support is wonderful and I had a lot of fun being at the games. However, there were a few things about Thursday’s experience that were disappointing:

• The food vendors were unprepared for these events and didn’t seem to have considered the logistics involved. On Thursday the basketball games ran from late morning until late evening. People were trapped onsite throughout the entire day. If you left the venue during the morning session or the afternoon session, you would not be re-admitted. No outside food or beverage allowed. This meant 20,000 attendees were trapped inside the building with the vendors being our only option for food. The concession stands were understaffed, undersupplied and inefficient. It was typical for a food run to require 30+ minutes of standing in line, with some waits closer to an hour. Vendors ran out of food at various times. The lines were disorganized and blocked traffic from getting past the concession area.
• Between session 1 and session 2, the building had to be completely emptied, then ticketholders were admitted (actually, re-admitted, since most people held tickets for both sessions). All of this had to take place in 20 minutes! Utterly ridiculous under the best of circumstances. With limited exit doors available (why?) and limited admission doors open (why?), this was chaotic and annoying. Woe unto anyone who thought they would just trot out and get a bite, then return for game 3.

It seems to me a moderate degree of planning could have improved the experience for everyone. An investment in controlling the line flow, bringing in extra concession support, and planning for logistical resupply would have been great. And for the gold star, taking a look at the game start times and half-times would have given the organizers some idea of when to expect 20,000 attendees to simultaneously storm the counter. With the average food purchase around $10, I’d estimate that a 10% increase in efficiency would have justified the expense of having that planning meeting.

As for emptying / readmitting this size of crowd… seriously… those handheld scanners are PORTABLE and WIRELESS! Great Zeus… can’t you just have people move out into the concourse into a designated holding area, then station a few people at various points to scan and admit ticketholders? Those without tickets could be shunted to a patrolled queue that went directly to an exit door. Apparently I’m in the wrong business and should be a consultant to event venues 🙂

Saturday we’ll be attending the next round of games. I’m sure the games will be every bit as good.

This interview has been passed around for a long time, but it always makes me smile. I love Yogi Berra. Earlier this year I acquired a baseball with his autograph. But I digress… on with Yogi’s jazz insight…

Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?

Yogi: I can’t, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it’s wrong.

Interviewer: I don’t understand.

Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can’t understand it. It’s too complicated. That’s whats so simple about it.

Interviewer: Do you understand it?

Yogi: No. That’s why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldnt know anything about it.

Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?

Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it.

Interviewer: What is syncopation?

Yogi: That’s when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don’t hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they’re the same as something different from those other kinds.

Interviewer: Now I really don’t understand.

Yogi: I haven’t taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.

I’m not truly a Yankees fan. It’s not because I don’t like New York; in fact it’s one of my favorite places on the planet and I would love to live there for a few years. Since Seattle is home I support the Mariners but find the Yankees fascinating because they’re similarly inspiring and disappointing, just with a much bigger payroll. Watching last night’s final regular-season game at Yankee stadium made us all just a little more a fan of the team – or at least their place in baseball history. How can anyone who loves baseball resist an emotional tug when looking at that park? My friend Bob says it’s “beautiful ugly… a perfect loveable mutt of a stadium for this town”. Seeing ostensibly tough New Yorkers sitting moist-eyed in the stands for the final time was touching and is a testament to the powerful connection they have to that park.

Yogi Berra’s pre-game speech was moving and inspiring, and free from the maudlin sentiment that seemed so prevalent in the broadcast. He remains my favorite baseball player of all time, both for his brilliant playing and for being Yogi. If baseball were a religion, he’d be a great pope. Seeing Don Larson and Whitey Ford scooping some souvenir dirt off the pitcher’s mound before the game… priceless. And the ceremonial first pitch by Babe Ruth’s 92-year old daughter Julia Ruth Stevens… awesome.

Seriously. You gotta love this game. I hope the new stadium is every bit as loveable as the old mutt across the street.

“The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.”- Yogi Berra

Last night we successfully came from behind and prevailed in our first playoff game! It was an extra-innings contest against a fairly good team, and through a combination of good hitting and solid fielding we found a way to win. Of course, the game didn’t start until 9:15 PM (!) so we weren’t done playing until well after 11:00. But that didn’t stop us from heading down to Murphy’s Pub to celebrate the victory with a hearty toast or two. 🙂

It sure makes for an early morning the next day…

It’s our bye week, so we are spending tonight thinking victorious thoughts and pretending we might have won a game. The team is actually pretty good this year and everyone seems to be having a great time. I’m glad that we added some new folks this season; keeps the blood fresh and we’re picking up all kinds of strange new on-field patter. It’s not the same as having patter provided by the inimitable Jon Hyde, but still mighty fine.

Last night was another great softball game. We came from behind to win against a pretty good team. Hats off to the “banal fowls” for a great game and for having such an awesome team name. The team is playing pretty well, and after two games I think we’re starting to find our groove. I managed to reach base and even swatted for an RBI. I think my average is something like .400 so this is the perfect time to print my stats 🙂

As usual we headed down to Bad Albert’s for some post-game refreshment. Gotta love that place.

My softball team “The Tube Socks” had our first game last night, which we won by one run. Good way to kick off the season and get some momentum going. My new cleats are surprisingly comfy, given the fact that until just a few days ago they were sitting in a box at a sporting goods store. I meant to up pick some up sooner and break them in, but never got around to it. Fortunately, they’re pretty good… and now that I got some grass stains and dirt on ’em, they look a lot better 🙂

I managed to go 2-for-2 at the plate last night, with both hits being minor dribblers to the infield; this meant having to peel out and run like a madman to make it to 1st base. I’ll hit the batting cage next week to tune up my swing.

The team is largely the same as previous years, and the everyone is very supportive. It’s a fun bunch of humans, and we always manage to have a great time. I suppose the promise of cold beer afterwards might be a good incentive…