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Category Archives: ALDLAND
2013 Kentucky Derby Preview
Due to circumstances beyond our control, ALDLAND’s coverage of this year’s Kentucky Derby will be significantly more limited than it was for last year’s. Among other things, this means that there is no planned live blogging of the race.
Instead, the following is available for your prerace enjoyment:
- The broadcast schedule for this year’s Derby;
- A story about
William Faulkner at the 1955 DerbyLouisville; and
- The last video footage ever taken of Secretariat:
Enjoy the race tomorrow.
NHL playoffs start tonight, and the Red Wings’ streak is alive
With a shutout win over the Dallas Stars in the final game of the regular season Saturday night, the Detroit Red Wings extended their playoff streak to twenty-two years, continuing the longest active postseason streak in all of professional sports. Their immediate reward? A seven seed, and a matchup against the high-flying Anaheim Ducks, beginning late tonight in Southern California.
Before the puck drops this evening, check out what Grantland has identified as the top five moments of the past twenty-one years of Red Wings playoff appearances.
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Big changes afoot in Hockeytown?
Bay of Cigs: April in the D
As briefly mentioned at the end of the last post, ALDLAND will have a presence in Detroit this weekend, where the Tigers will host the Atlanta Braves for three games, beginning tonight.
After twenty games, the Tigers can’t seem to get themselves above .500, and the early ride has been bumpy.
Yesterday afternoon’s game was particularly rough. After allowing just one earned run, starter Justin Verlander left the game with a lead on the scoreboard and a sore throwing-hand thumb. Rookie reliever Bruce Rondon, making his first major-league appearance, promptly gave up that lead, and then the ball. Phil Coke entered and, through a series of walks of varying intentionalities, put Detroit behind. Darin Downs relieved Coke and immediately gave up a grand slam. The supposedly hard-hitting Tigers, who have a way of not scoring late, plated no runs from the fifth inning on through the tenth, when they lost.
As anyone reading Upton Abbey knows, the Braves are red-hot. The consensus best team in baseball, Atlanta is off to a 15-6 start, and they’re hitting home runs like crazy. I haven’t taken a close look at their runs/inning distribution, but it sure seems like they can hit for power both early and late. Keep reading…
Ultimate Freedom Jam
Earlier this week, great American folk singer Richie Havens died at the age of seventy-two. I saw him perform a few years ago, and while he had a few more rings on his fingers then than he did when he opened Woodstock with a three-hour set in 1969, his vibrance did not seem diminished in any way.
2013 NFL Draft: The Detroit Lions’ future is so bright, their draft pick had to wear broken 3-D glasses
(Honolulu Blue Hat Tip to Deadspin.)
The guy from Biff’s gang thinks Ziggy Anash is a poor man’s Russell Westbrook.
Big changes afoot in Hockeytown?
The Detroit Red Wings have the longest active playoff-appearance streak– twenty-one years– in all of professional sports. With two games to go in the regular season, they barely are hanging on to the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. The way this season has gone, failing to make the playoffs couldn’t be called a surprise, but the end of their postseason streak would be monumental for a historically great franchise.
As big as that seems, even bigger changes may be on the horizon for Detroit. Buried at the bottom of the ESPN.com story on last night’s win over the Los Angeles Kings was this note:
Chris Ilitch, president and CEO of Ilitch Holdings, which owns the Red Wings, said progress is being made on a new arena for the team.
(By way of background, Chris Ilitch is the son of Mike Ilitch, owner of the Detroit Tigers and the Little Caesar’s Pizza empire.)
I have been fortunate enough to see the Red Wings play in person three times– at Colorado, at Nashville, and at Chicago, plus the Red & White game in Grand Rapids— but never in the epicenter of Hockeytown: the legendary Joe Louis Arena.
I can’t imagine most fans will be happy to hear this news. For me, knowing that little is likely to stand in the way of the winged wheel of Progress, all I can do is redouble my efforts to make it to the Joe before time runs out.
[Cross-posted at Winging It In Motown. -Ed.]
ALDLAND Podcast
Not a lot going on in the sports world these days with the MLB still getting into the swing (heh) of things and the NHL not quite to the playoffs yet. Co-host Marcus “Primetime” Paschall and I have scraped the bottom of the barrel and come up with some discussion of the thus far lackluster NBA playoffs, which is really more of a discussion of hypothetical future playoff matchups. But it will still be fun for you because what else do you have to do? Work? Hang out with family? So listen as we dig into the meat of the NBA playoffs and talk about the excessive NFL Draft coverage on ESPN.
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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:
The voice of West Michigan sports moves on
Even though I no longer live in the listening area, I still tune in to WBBL– “West Michigan’s Sports Leader”– from time to time when I want a dose of local perspective on Michigan-based teams, and I did so this morning, expecting to hear “Bakita & Bentley,” the station’s usual morning show. I heard Ray Bentley, but the other voice was one I didn’t recognize. At first, I assumed it was someone filling in for the show’s usual lead, Bret Bakita, but as the conversation between Bentley and “Doc” continued, I began to get the feeling that the two were working on developing a more lasting rapport between each other and with the listening audience. Bakita was never mentioned as being out sick or on vacation. Before leaving for work, I found this story, which confirmed that Bakita had left the show and the station.
This isn’t the death of Pat Summerall— the voice of the NFL, along with John Madden, for a generation– or even the departure of Paul Finebaum from WJOX— the temporary silencing of the voice of the SEC– but Bret Bakita was WBBL, and WBBL was West Michigan sports radio. He joined the station in early 1994, and he was the most prominent on-air voice across the station’s programming for the nineteen-year period that ended in late February of this year. Keep reading…
Bay of Cigs: Jet Set (Sigh?)
Airships are away in the Detroit Tigers empire as I write. After a crash landing at the final destination of the team’s only West Coast trip, the Tigers limped back to the Motor City, and promptly (indeed, retroactively) placed Octavio Dotel, who has been pitching without a functioning elbow since Oakland, on the disabled list. In immediate need of bullpen reinforcements, GM Dave Dombrowski & Co., air traffic controller furloughs be damned, revved up the sky fleet. The first move was to bring the franchise’s top relief prospect, Bruce Rondon, in from Toledo, something that admittedly is unlikely to require the services of a jet airliner. But then! Wheels up! Jose Valverde is on a flight to Detroit RIGHT NOW! The town and team turned on the once-perfect (49-0!) reliever after a down year last season, but now, in their need, redemption? The front office is mum for now, but the implication from Valverde’s comments this evening is that, at the end of his short-term minor league contract, he will sign a one-year contract with the club in Detroit.
What does all of this mean for a should-be frontrunner floundering in third place in the weak AL Central with a .500 record? Even though it’s early, and fans of baseball teams that struggle early love to rail against “small sample sizes,” we can set aside results and other numbers and acknowledge that the bullpen was working way too hard this month, and two fresh, if unsteady, arms are sure to provide at least temporary relief for a staff that seems like it could use a collective deep breath. For Rondon, my hope is that he’s ready for the big leagues. For Valverde, I just hope he has enough left to allow the coaches to use him in a way that helps the team. That may be ending this jet-set flourish with something of a sigh, but let it be, in part, a sigh of relief as you remind yourself that at least it wasn’t Brennan Boesch’s birthday flight that landed at DTW this evening.
Keep reading to find out who else will be on a flight to Detroit this week…
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