2010 Sharks Teal and White Game September 21

Thanks to a couple of nice posters at HF Boards, Adie and I decided to "sneak" into the Teal and White game (TWG). 

The TWG is the Sharks annual preseason welcome for season ticket holders.  The event is free with your ticket holder id and there are autograph tables set up for all the players followed by a scrimmage.  Needless to say, we are not season ticket holders. 

One poster emailed me the "save the date" flyer to use as a season ticket holder invitation and another poster pm'd me his phone number in case the "invitation" didn't fly. See?  There are still awesome people in the world.  Otherwise, I might not have made the drive to San Jose with no guarantee of getting in the doors.  We did have a backup plan, which was to backtrack to Oakland since the A's were in town. 

But, with just a little stress, we got in!  Yay!  First thing we did was note that all of the lines to the autograph tables were already hella long.  No thank you.  The sucky thing (for me) was that 3 of the 4 tables were located in the upstairs eateries...so you couldn't just walk thru and see the players and take photos.  You had to actually stand in line if you wanted to gawk.  Again...no thank you.

So, thanks to the setup, here are a ton of pictures from the ONE table that was located directly on the concourse. 

Luckily three of my favorites were at the table,

My Day at Sharks Training Camp

The things I'll do for my new-found passion....I didn't realize the transition from casual hockey fan to passionate Sharks fan would put so many miles on my car!    I left Sacramento @ 5:47 a.m. on a Sunday morning to head to Sharks Ice in San Jose for day 2 of the Sharks training camp.  I should have been snuggly in my bed.  But, les presents d'occasion as they say. 

It was a semi-eventful drive - hit some rain in Dixon...saw some crazy looking mountain sheep on the side of the freeway near Sunol...saw a dude dressed in Raiders gear come out of a perfectly barren field to walk up to a CHP car that was monitoring the road construction.  Asking directions to Oakland perhaps?

I pulled into Sharks Ice at 8:05 and immediately walked over to the nice old gentlemen who were handing out wristbands.  Mr. Wristband asked what my tattoo meant....I answered "Peace & Harmony, Hope, and Honor" to which he replied "Well, I like the honor part".  hahahaha

Even though some people were lining up outside of the entrance to South Rink (for autographs presumably?), I headed over to the North Rink to grab a seat.  Settled in at center ice in the second row at about 8:16.  The Zamboni came around at 8:18 and kept me awake for the moment. 

I woke up in full a few minutes later when I heard a booming voice entering the rink. No, it was not Joe Thornton...  It was a fan whom I shall call Mr. Friendly.  In a demonstration of my usual luck, Mr. Friendly chose to sit right behind me, although there were many open benches on the bleachers. 

"Hi!  Hello!" said Mr. Friendly to just about everyone... "How long have you been a Sharks fan??" was a question put to most.  "ZOMG! I love the Zamboni!!"  Mr. Friendly put a strange (although possibly accurate) emphasis on the syllables.  Zam-bone-EE!  He proceeded to give a history of the Zamboni and then go on about how much he wants to ride one.  A couple people agreed that it would be really fun, at which point he sounded disgusted that they had fallen into his trap. "It's just an ice scraper.  No big deal."  Did you know that the ice at the Tank is only 2" deep? 

BTW, it was too fucking cold in the North Rink. I wonder how deep the ice is? :-p  And that Winnipeg is colder than Edmonton (or vice versa)?  I confess (as if you can't tell it from my prose thus far) that I was reading Solipsist and therefore feeling somewhat cynical and superior.  There are some good points in that book but I digress.  Mr. Friendly is glad when football is here because it means hockey is right around the corner.  He goes on to enumerate why all other sports suck...

...but suddenly I'm distracted because it's 8:39 and Antti Niemi enters the ice.  Thomas Greiss follows exactly one minute later.  Mr. Friendly is quite an asshole - yelling at Greiss (very LOUDLY) 'go away!  put him back in the cooler!  he sucks!' What a dick.  Now I don't feel bad about mocking him.

Group B practice was scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m., but as mentioned, the goalies and their coaches were on ice at 9:40.

Hockey Season! How about a little Captain's Skate 9/9/10?

I'm sitting here (mainly) watching the Blackhawks and Avalanche start their season.  Go Avs!  And Sharpie!  Funnily enough I'm having a tough time cheering for the 'Hawks for the following reasons:

1)  They swept us!  Come on!
2)  I want Turco to suck ass.
3)  We have Niemi who is our defacto starter; Greiss (and possibly Niitty) had a better camp.
4)  John Michael-Liles
5)  Tutu!

SHARKS NEWS

Jumbo is our captain!  Jumbo is our captain!  So happy this makes me!

Awwww...I luvs Joe Thornton!  There will be a lot of naysayers but I think it could be a really, really good thing for Joe and the team.  And I'm glad that Danny Boyle is the A; he deserves it.  Patty and Clowie will share the other A.  In honor of our new captain...  O Jumbo, my Jumbo!

courtesy of NHLPA

In other Sharks news...I'm inclined to believe that Doug Wilson is a bit of a dick. 

Now, I know that I don't fully appreciate the business side of hockey and definitely come from a homer fandom point of view.  That being acknowledged, I think it was a total dick move to take Thomas Greiss to his home country of Germany and then not let him play in the preseason game.  Give him one fucking period already. 

I understand that your new acquisition is late to the party...errr, system...and needs all the playing time and practice he can get so that hopefully he will be a semi-decent goalie for us with our fairly crappy defense.  And I also understand that you're not going to admit that Niemi might not be the greatest goalie to ever win a Stanley Cup.

But that was pretty damn bad.

It was also pretty lame to take Lilja to Europe and then release him just before the start of the season.  When he has like 4 days to fly home and gather his family to move them back to Sweden.  Unless he finds another job. 

End Sharks News

And now for another installment of Captain's Ice.

(But may I just interject that Vampire Diaries is killing it tonight?!?!  Awesome...)

Oakland Athletics Breast Cancer Awareness Day 9-5-10

So, still in the process of "catching up" on my blog entries.  I'm trying to go in chronological order of my various outings and decided that today would be a good day to post this one since Dan Haren pitched against the A's today.  And he was high on my priority list when I made it a point to attend this game.

The highest priority was, of course, Breast Cancer Awareness. 

An acquaintance of mine - who is one of the most sweetest, most beautiful human beings I've come across - is currently fighting her battle against this horrible disease.  She is young, has three young children and no family history of breast cancer.  She's gone through the surgery, chemo, etc., and is now on the road to recovery.  My prayers go out to her and her family. And to all those affected by this disease.

The A's were playing the Angels - unfortunately now the team that my Danny Haren calls home.  Yuck.  So I got there pretty early because I wanted to be sure to get into the park early (and get my giveaways) and I was glad I did since I was treated to PITCHER'S WORKOUT!  This used to be one of my very favorite A's photo opportunities back in the day when we had the hottest pitching staff on the planet.  They're not so hot now; but they've got great personality!  But I digress...  Pictures!

Catching Up - Moar Captain's Ice! 9-2-10

Ya know, for something I enjoy, I'm pretty bad at keeping up with this blog!  I suppose it's understandable when you figure I work full-time & take care of an Alzheimer's patient full-time + my naturally lazy, procrastinating personality.  :-)

In my last entry, I touched upon Thomas Greiss and the Shark's goalie tandem of Niittymakii and Greiss.  I mentioned that it was current as of that day but lasted for only one week.  As our adventures in ice continue, we learn that Grandmaster Doug Wilson went out and bought himself another Finnish goalie!  A Stanley-Cup winning Finnish goalie named Anti Niemi.  So now we have Finnish bookends at goal and a media blitz at Shark's Ice to report on this new development.



Thomas looked pretty bummed during the whole skate...  He and Patrick Marleau shared a cute moment during the scrimmage.  Thomas came out to play the puck and Patty skated up and gave him a pretty good shove.  Greiss shoved him back; then they stopped and smiled at each other.  I'm so glad I snapped this blurry picture to capture the moment \sarcasm

The Perfect Day Part II

It took us about 45 minutes of mostly light (for the Bay Area) traffic to reach the Coliseum.  We decided to park in the actual lot since the game was just about to start and I didn't want to trouble with a BART station filled with actual workday commuters.

Went to the ticket window and got pretty much the exact seats we wanted - Section 128, right behind the A's bullpen, 3rd row from the field.  Awesome.  We stopped at the concessions to buy A a hat since it was super bright out and she had forgotten to grab sunglasses or a hat from home.  Bought a couple A's magazines with Swooney and Bailey on the covers. 

We made our way down to our seats, located conveniently close to my current A's man candy, Conor Jackson. Thankfully our game was between his DL stints. *sigh*

 Missed only the first inning...but of course the A's scored.  lol  Gio G was starting and he pitched great!

The Perfect Day Part I

Wednesday, August 18, 2010, was damn near a perfect day.  After working for two weeks without a day off because my boss was in Hawaii, I begged to take the 18th off so A and I could head to the Bay Area for a sports blitz.

Sports, whether playing or spectating, are my escape...my stress relief.  Almost nothing is more relaxing to me than a day game at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum.  So what better way to relax than combine a day game in the bright, hot California sunshine with my newfound love of ice?  Ice hockey to be exact. Shark's Captain's Skate, to be even more precise. 

We had to leave early early early in order to get to San Jose at 10:00 a.m., which is the time Captain's Skate (CS) was scheduled.  CS is kind of a crapshoot as far as seeing NHL players.  It's an informal practice and the players are not required in any way to show up.  Last week, Joe Pavelski was the only big name player who showed.  So I told myself that I was just going to be happy to be at the rink, seeing some live hockey. 

The drive was really nice...a mild glorious morning.  Going through Dixon there were about five hot air balloons in various stages of take-off which is always cool to see.  We arrived at Shark's Ice at about 9:45 and took the time to wander around the three main rinks.  Some dudes were playing pond hockey and they looked thrilled to have an audience.  Some showing off did occur. 

We eventually made out way over to the Shark's rink and practice was in full swing.  By practice, I should say more pond hockey except with NHL'ers.  I was THRILLED when we walked in and Jonathan Cheechoo walked in front of us to get to the ice!

I quickly perused the ice and saw Owen Nolan and Danny Boyle!  I LUV Dan Boyle.  Yes I do.