Judge-Mental

In a week where an Islander suffered a horrific facial cut that took 90 stitches to close, a Rangers forward scored 5 goals including the game-winner at home against the high-flying Washington Capitals, and the Devils defeated the Rangers at the Garden, I was not going to discuss hockey. 

In a week that saw Steph Curry return to the court and score 23 points in limited action in a Warriors home loss to defending NBA champ Toronto after a Curry-less Golden State team won at Denver, the current third seed in the West, that was not going to turn me to pro basketball. Nor was the Spike Lee-James Dolan imbroglio this week prior to and at halftime of the Knicks upset of the Houston Rockets at the Garden going to change my mind.

It wasn’t the Seton Hall losses to Villanova on Wednesday and Creighton on Saturday which set Creighton, Villanova and Seton Hall as the 1-2-3 seeds heading into the Big East Tournament next week at MSG that would be my topic of my college basketball discussion this week. Nope. But more on them later. 

There was nothing to write about in the NFL. The combine is done and the NFL Draft looms on the horizon after free agency begins. The players have to vote on the new CBA. Even the daily saga of Tom Brady’s landing spot for 2020 wasn’t enough to make me write in chapter and verse about the NFL.

So what is on my mind this week? Well, I was going to do a piece on arenas I visited this fall and winter. I fully intended to do that. 

But there are other events I want to talk about beforehand. And circumstances have changed dramatically in 24 hours.

Leading off are the Yankees. When Gerrit Cole surrendered 4 homers to the Tigers in Lakeland (they say the wind was blowing out at Joker Marchant Field), I started to think the worst. He is having trouble with his arm/shoulder and an IR stint is ahead. I wasn’t very pleased that Jordan Montgomery was also shelled by the Tigers, who scored 15 runs while “holding” New York to 11. Maybe the Tigers are improved from last season when they resided in the cellar of the AL Central. Nah.

I also was concerned that Tyler Wade and Gary Sanchez were batting way below .200. Or that outfielder Mike Tauchman had been hitless in his return from injury. And that Miguel Andujar dropped a routine throw from Gio Urshela while Miggy learns how to play another position. Let’s face it, Yankees management—great bat, not so swift a fielder no matter where he plays. I was happy to see that everyone’s favorite new Yankee from last season, DJ LeMahieu, is hitting lasers like he had never stopped for four months between the end of the regular season and now. 

Still, I had this sickening uneasiness eating away at me. We Yankees fans are spoiled—I have had 14 Yankees World Series victories in my 69 years on this planet. We expect winning the big prize. 

Yet there is growing discomfort within Yankeeland that a World Series win is needed now, with such a loaded squad. There is the feeling that the Bombers were cheated out of a chance for a title by the Houston Astros. (something the Los Angeles Dodgers feel too). Going a whole decade without a World Series crown is unacceptable. 

Thus the prevailing belief of the experts, the odds makers and fans across the county is that the Yankees are the team to beat. If healthy.

There’s the rub. Spring Training is more than halfway through. Bodies have fallen—big ones. James Paxton. Luis Severino. Giancarlo Stanton. Gary Sanchez’s back is bothering him, just like two relievers. Plus Domingo German is still unavailable until his suspension is lifted. 

All of that was nothing compared to the looming problem facing the Yankees. After a myriad of tests and keeping it easy so far for him, a CT test showed that Aaron Judge has a stress fracture of the first rib on his right side. One which, if it does not heal, could lead to surgery and doom his 2020 season as well as that of the team.

Judge claims that he was so frustrated with his performance last season and in the playoffs that he took little time off and dove straight into workouts. In preparation for 2020. Knowing Judge’s penchant for perfection and his chiseled physique, these were anything but light workouts. 

This injury apparently came up last year during the latter stages of the season.  Professional athletes are no different than those who love to workout. Aches and pains are common and there is a whole lot of denial that something is more seriously wrong. 

While Judge is frustrated about how long it took to reach a correct diagnosis, the danger lies in the treatment. Re-injury would almost certainly mean the end of his season and Yankees hopes. 

It is this constant doom and gloom scenario which wears out the New York faithful. We are always fearfully waiting for something worse to happen. Yankees fans feel like the team is snakebitten.

In a very inexact analogy, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo described the virulent coronavirus in this way: The virus is an epidemic, and the emotional reaction is a pandemic. It is kind of the way Yankees fans feel right now—the injury list grows and there isn’t a cure for it.

As a Yankees fan and as a humanitarian, let’s hope that both are under control fast.

As I had stated before, I was going to talk about the arenas and gyms I have been to recently. They are unrelated in any capacity. I just happened to visit them for games. 

Before I get there, I want to talk about the now 28-1 Yeshiva University men’s basketball team. Ranked #13 in Division III, the Maccabees lost their first game of the season at Occidental College and haven’t lost since. 

The Yeshiva campus was affected by the coronavirus. Thus, the team played a 2:20 pm game on Friday against Worcester Polytechnic Institute, due to Shabbat, in an empty gymnasium on the campus of Johns Hopkins University. Having handily defeated WPI by a 102-78 score, Yeshiva faced off against Penn State-Harrisburg at 8:45 pm on Saturday due to religious reasons and again in an empty Goldfarb Gymnasium. Which must be tough on the teams. Plus a few hotels did not want to have the team stay in their building over the corona virus issue.  

Not a problem for this crew. Yeshiva is now in the Sweet 16 after a 102-83 win. Up next is Randolph-Macon on Friday, with the site to be announced. Such a good story.

Back to the arenas. First, there is the Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata, Ontario, an outlying suburb of the Canadian capital. The home of the Ottawa Senators, it is a rounded facility shaped like a tire that sits prominently in the middle of nowhere. Kind of like the Senators—they seem to be continually going nowhere in the standings. 

Originally called The Palladium when it opened in January, 1996, it has also been named the Corel Centre and Scotiabank Place. It seats 18,652 for hockey, although capacity usually is not reached except when the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens visit, along with the marquee teams like Washington, Pittsburgh, New York Rangers and Boston Bruins.

I liked the sight lines, the atmosphere, the fans—even if there were maybe 9,000 present on a late January Monday night for a game between two teams not headed for the playoffs. I had a nice experience. The seating area reminded me of Rogers Place, the Edmonton Oilers home; Rogers Place was much nicer outside the hockey area, having opened in 2014. Of the 10 hockey arenas I have visited, Canadian Tire Centre sits at number 5, behind the current  Madison Square Garden, Brendan Byrne Arena, the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and Edmonton.

We visited Drew University in December to see the home team take on Carnegie Mellon. While the game was exciting, Baldwin Gymnasium, even refurbished with new paint, bleachers, scoreboard and logos, was maybe a bit more dignified than a pedestrian high school gym. Rarely are the 800 seats filled, although some students do attend the games and they make their presence known due to the close proximity of the stands to the basketball floor.

Those who follow this blog know that 2 weeks ago we visited Franklin and Marshall College and took in a game versus Ursinus. The 3,000 seat venue has had its makeover too, and the new bleachers, and scoreboard make a distinct difference. So too, do the listings of all pf the great athletes who played winter sports in the gym, the center of F&M basketball, wrestling, squash and volleyball since 1962. 

I am prejudiced. I went to college there. I played numerous games of basketball on the gym floor, even after baseball practice. It is one of my home courts. I have seen other Division III basketball facilities and, for a building that is nearly 60 years old, it looks as good if not better than many others.  When packed, it has an atmosphere that is electric for that level. Seeing the place redone in the tasteful manner the Athletic Department had chosen, in concert with a plethora of more modern sports facilities at or near the campus, the new Mayser Gymnasium fits right in and looks very small college smart.

On Saturday night, we were going to head to Philadelphia to see an arena I always had wanted to enter. That would be the venerable Palestra, the home of the University of Pennsylvania Quakers and for many, many years, was the Mecca of Philadelphia college basketball, hosting numerous Big Five games and acting as the home floor for Temple, Villanova, St. Joseph’s and La Salle in many instances. 

However, my cooking must have disagreed with my wife, who has had it a bit rough with her digestive system. Rather than travel the nearly two hours to Penn, sandwiching in a stop in Cherry Hill for chicken cheesesteaks at Chick’s Deli, the better move was to stay home and let her rest. Which has helped considerably.

Remaining home turned out to be very fortuitous. On Tuesday night , I was 4 rows from the floor at the Rutgers Athletic Center when #9 Maryland came to Piscataway. And left on the short end of a 78-67 score, looking like a tried and very defeated bunch. The RAC, newly known as the Trapezoid of Doom for its unique shape, largely attributed to the lack money the architects had to work with, is a cauldron of noise when the fans get going. Opened in 1976, the RAC is widely recognized as one of the hardest places to play in college basketball. 

The RAC was fully alive on Tuesday night, constantly roaring with the highlight reel performance of their beloved Scarlet Knights. For Coach Steve Pikiell’s group, the Maryland game represented a do or die game as far as attaining the first NCAA bid since 1991. They passed that test with flying colors, white RU jerseys streaking down the court time and time again, handling the vaunted Terrapins with relative ease.  

I love the RAC, It is my adopted home court. There is nothing better to me than going to the RAC for a big game and RU coming out on top. 8,000 people can make a ton of noise.

Is the RAC antiquated and outdated.? To a large extent, it is. The outer corridors and general design aren’t the prettiest. Many have compared the RAC to a glorified high school gym, which I believe is unfair. With the music of the band so loud, the cheers of the fans, many of the alumni rooting hard for a return to the glory days of from the mid-1960’s to 1991, the RAC can be deafening. It must be hard for the visiting players to concentrate with so much fervor within the building. The new scoreboards make for a nice look even if the place itself is old by Division I standards, the Palestra notwithstanding. 

Rutgers had to win 2 out of the last 3 games ending the season to stand a chance at a 20 win campaign and that coveted NCAA bid. Losing the first game to a ranked Penn State team near the end of the game could have broken this team. Instead, they showed their resiliency with the win over Maryland.

What laid ahead was a final road game at Purdue, a team alive and on the bubble even with a 16-14 record heading into the Saturday afternoon contest. Rutgers had a 1-8 road/neutral site record this season, which, contrasted with the 18-1 mark at the RAC (the best record in Division I at home), was not enough in many forecasters eyes to make certain a bid to the Big Dance. A win at Purdue was the way to punch that ticket. 

In a very entertaining and toughly played game. Rutgers took everything the Boilermakers threw at them, surviving the onslaught and winning 71-68 in overtime. This was a thrilling matchup of two teams fighting for their post-season lives, with Rutgers having the more difficult task given its road woes this season. Led by a determined Geo Baker, who tallied 19 points and aided by Ron Harper, Jr. with 15, Akwasi Yeboah scoring 11 points and Jacob Young adding 10 points, this team has looked every bit the NCAA team RU fans believe they are.

Nothing is for certain when it comes to NCAA bids. The Big Ten may send 9 teams to the Tournament, depending on what the selection committee looks for and its criteria in making up the field. Rutgers still might have to perform very well and win against nemesis Michigan in the 8-9 game at the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis on Thursday (if Michigan loses its final game at an agitated Maryland team coming off of two consecutive losses, it appears that Rutgers is the 8th seed).

For certain, RU has had a heck of a season. The judgement of the Selection Committee is what awaits Rutgers. 

As a matter of fact, this whole article has been judgmental or in the case of Yankees devotees, Judge-Mental.