TimLemkeSports.com

Cashing in On the Grass

Philly.com today takes a good look at the partnership between Major League Baseball and Scott's Miracle-Gro Company, highlighting the special seed blends that allow average people to grow grass similar to that seen at many ballparks. 

According to this article, it's been a pretty successful arrangement so far for both Scotts and the Phillies. The Citizen's Bank Park blend was the top seller, according to Dave Buck, the Phillies VP of marketing and advertising. 

"Scotts buys radio and television advertising from the Phillies. It paid to have its logo emblazoned on the tarp cover along the third-base side of the infield and on the rakes and shirts of the grounds crew.

And like any licensed Phillies product, including hats and jerseys, the team gets a share of the sales of grass seed and fertilizer. There are other non-apparel licensed Phillies brand products: Phillies Franks by Hatfield Quality Meats Inc. and Phillies Graham Slam ice cream by Turkey Hill Dairy Inc."

This reminds me that I need to go out and do something with my lawn, which looks like crap at the moment. 

Astros To Swap Tickets for Electronics

If you're a Houston Astros fan with a television you need to get rid of, lucky you. 

The Houston Business Journal reports that unwanted electronics including DVD players, cell phones, televisions and computers can be dropped off at Minute Maid Park on May 22 in exchange for a pair of tickets to that night's game against the Tampa Bay Rays. 

It's part of a new "e-cycle" campaign sponsored by Major League Baseball and Waste Management. 

Items that will not be accepted, according to an Astros press release, include: microwave ovens, smoke detectors, fire alarms, fire detectors, thermometers, large appliances, medical equipment, and--this is my favorite part--"any product with sludge or liquid."

The Wizards and Wall

The Washington Wizards got lucky with the ping-pong balls Tuesday night and landed the first pick of the NBA Draft, leading to immediate excitement that they would have John Wall in the backcourt next season. 

I won't pretend to be a basketball expert, but I will note that just about every pundit believes Wall will give them the best chance to win games. How he will fit in with Gilbert Arena on the court is a mystery, but the feeling is that he's a great player and that Wizards fans should be excited about him coming to D.C. 

The good news, too, is that Wall is probably the most marketable of any of the players coming out this year. Aside from maybe local hero Greivis Vasquez, he is the most recognizable name, came from a top program and, as far as we know, doesn't come with any obvious baggage. 

As a guard, he'll have the ball a lot, which will make him more visible. And that means he can easily become a focal point of marketing and advertising campaigns. This is not an unimportant consideration for a team that jettisoned many of its most popular players and saw its current most recognizable star spend time in jail. 

Already, you hear the suggestions: "Great Wall of Chinatown." Not bad, actually. 

The best part of all this is that by the time next season starts, Ted Leonsis will be comfortably in as the Wizards' majority owner, and the team can truly boast of ushering in a new era of excitement. The results on the floor may take a while, but the likely arrival of Wall and Leonsis buys the franchise some time in the eyes of fans. 

From CSNWashington.com: Teams Await Leonsis Empire

I contributed a piece to CSNWashington.com about Ted Leonsis and his growing sports empire. It was a fun piece to report and write. Enjoy!

http://www.csnwashington.com/05/17/10/Teams-Await-the-Leonsis-Empire/landing_09.html?blockID=236235&feedID=2992

Why I Don't Use Bloomberg Sports

Earlier this spring, I was very excited by the launch of Bloomberg Sports, a new service designed to give fantasy baseball players an edge with a host of new analytics and tips. I even had a chance to see a demo of the service in March and assumed it would be a daily part of my life as I managed the several fantasy leagues I have joined. 

Now it's May, and I recently realized that I have not checked in with Bloomberg Sports in weeks, except to read the columns, which are great. But in terms of actually checking the site to analyze my fantasy teams, see who's hot and who's not, etc., I usually find myself going elsewhere. 

This has not been a conscious thing. It's just that as the season as gone on, I found there was less motivation to go to the site. After some analysis of the service and my own fantasy habits, I think I've narrowed down to why. 

The Site Is Too Clunky - This has as much to do with my own Web surfing habits as the site itself. I tend to be a little ADD when it comes to how I use the Web. I'll check my email, jump over to Facebook, check Twitter, back to email, over to the Washington Post, to Baseball-reference.com, back to Facebook, etc. And for the most part, all of the sites I use have one thing in common, which is that they load pretty quickly. Bloomberg Sports really doesn't. And I know it seems absurd, but I don't like to have to log in and wait several seconds for everything to load. Navigation also comes off as slow to me. The site is very graphic intensive, which I realize is part of its identity and the charm of its design, but I find myself getting oddly impatient when I check it out. 

It's Not Full Integrated With My Teams - I can't go on Bloomberg Sports and drop a player from my Yahoo! fantasy league. I can't go on there and offer a trade to someone in my ESPN league. I'm essentially only using Bloomberg Sports to analyze my team and players in the league. But that reason alone isn't compelling enough for me, because I know that ultimately I have to go back to Yahoo or ESPN to make any transactions. 

The Fantasy Leagues I'm In Are Weird - Bloomberg Sports might work for traditional non-keeper leagues. But I play in a funky keeper league that allows us to draft players who may be several years away from cracking a major league roster. What is the value of Stephen Strasburg? And how does the answer to that question change if you know he's locked in as a 10th-round pick for the next three years? Bloomberg Sports can help with the statistical analysis and projections, but fantasy leagues have so many different rules and variables that it can only help so much.  

I Don't Care Too Much About Graphical Representations of Data - Bloomberg Sports does an excellent job at creating charts and graphs to show data trends, and even has a nifty 5x5 graphic to demonstrate how well-rounded a player is. But I found myself unmoved by it all. I like numbers, and a list of numbers usually works for me just fine. 

I Feel Too Inundated - Some people just can't get enough of a good thing. Others, like myself, have a limit to how much of one thing they can consume. When it comes to baseball data, there's already a lot out there. You can spend hours on ESPN.com just looking at traditional box scores and stats. And you can dig deeper by sifting through the data compiled by Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs. Heck, I could spend 24-straight hours on Hittrackeronline.com. For me, I think it's just too much. I don't need another site to check, especially if it isn't really offering me anything all that new. 

So there you go. As you can see, my reasons for not using Bloomberg have as much to do with me and my tendencies as the service itself. And I may go back to using it, especially as new features are rolled out. (This new trade analyzer seems very promising.) I would never tell anyone not to use Bloomberg Sports. In fact, I might even recommend it to those who ask. But it has not been as useful to me as I thought it would be at the start of the year.

New Partnership With Sports Business Radio

Last night I taped a segment on Sports Business Radio with Brian Berger. We talked about a number of topics including the Coyotes and Rangers sales, a potential Super Bowl in New York and whether the PGA can do without Tiger Woods. It's always great to be a guest on Brian's show. But what's even more exciting is that beginning next month, I will be a frequent guest blogger on his site. So keep an eye on for that.

Sports Business Radio was recently honored by TheBusinessofSports.com as tops in the "Best Alternative Sports Content Category" in the site's annual Business of Sports Awards.

The Poor Coyotes

The city of Glendale, Ariz. voted this week to put up $25 million to the NHL to help keep the Phoenix Coyotes playing at Jobing.com arena for the 2010-11 season. 

Has it really come to this? Cities putting up direct cash just to keep teams in the city? It's bad enough that cities offer massive financial incentives, millions of dollars in cash for stadiums, tax breaks and other monetary considerations to lure owners or keep them happy. But when a city has to put up cash just so a league can keep the arena going, you know things are bad. 

The NHL, the city and the prospective new ownership group all say the money may not be necessary. But The funny thing is that there does not appear to be a general consensus that any of this will matter in the long run. 

Winnipeg--the city that was the previous home to the Coyotes franchise--has mounted a fairly compelling bid to bring the team back. And NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has not ruled out a move. 

For the health of the NHL, Bettman must get serious about the Coyotes long-term prospects in Phoenix, and also take a look at other teams in non-traditional hockey markets like Nashville, Atlanta, Tampa and Miami. While not all of these teams deserve to be relocated--moving a team is terribly painful for fans and doesn't always solve a franchises problems--there is no doubt that the United States is probably too saturated with hockey while some hockey-crazy cities in Canada are underserved. 

Look at Winnipeg. Look at Southern Ontario. Look again at Quebec City. Because the status quo just isn't working.  

Boston Globe Messes Up, Rangers Pull Out, D.C. United Gets Screwed

Ah, bummer for soccer fans. Reports from Britain indicate that Rangers F.C. has pulled out of a U.S. tour that would have included a match against D.C. United at RFK Stadium and a throwdown against Scottish Premier League rival Celtic at Fenway Park in Boston. 

According to the BBC, the Rangers pulled out in part because of concerns over possible bad fan behavior, and hinted that a negative blog post in the Boston Globe may have played a role. The Globe last month outlined some examples of fan violence stemming from the rivalry between Rangers and Celtic, though that article has since been removed from the Globe's Web site and the author, Mark Stokes, apologized for writing it.  

In any case, support among Rangers fans was not universal, as Ross Blyth, a vice president of the Rangers Supporters' Assembly, told the BBC Scotland that he would "urge the club to look elsewhere."

It seems as if D.C. United are the innocent victims here, as Rangers decided to pull out of not just the Celtic match, but the whole visit to the U.S. in favor of a trip to Australia. While there may have been some reasonable concerns over Rangers battle with Celtic in Boston, there would have been little controversy over a match involving the MLS club in D.C. Without the Cetic match, the economics of the U.S. visit may not have made sense. 

Give credit to D.C. United for even being a part of this discussion, though. The team is six years removed from its last MLS Cup, hasn't made the playoffs since 2007 and plays in a beat-up facility, but still manages to land attention from international clubs.

Monday Haiku

Twenty-seven up

Dallas Braden Looking Sharp

Twenty-seven down

Mystics Attendance Banners Gone

For years, one of the biggest jokes in Washington was that the only Mystics-related banners hanging in Verizon Center were those of WNBA "attendance championships." The banners were especially laughable because they were raised during a period when the Mystics were a lot more, um, "creative" in how they reported crowds from games. 

Now Ted Leonsis, the majority owner of the Mystics, Capitals and now the Wizards, has decided to take down the banners.

In his latest blog entry, he writes: 

"The only banners we should display revolve around winning a division or conference or league championship.

So to all of the folks who have emailed me your thoughts over the years about the attendance banners– as a heads up know they are no longer up in the rafters.

I hope we can put up some real championship banners based on team performance soon."

Not sure what took Leonsis so long, but I guess this is part of ushering in a new way of doing things now that he owns the Verizon Center and three major teams in the city.