At 12:37 PDT on March 31^st, I hit the “Publish” button on my Wordpress screen, and the final post about the final event of the “It’s Game Time Somewhere” Tour had been completed. Exactly 33 minutes later, third baseman Meicer Izturis stepped into the batter’s box in Kansas City to face the Royals’ Luke Hochevar and start the 2011 Los Angeles Angels season.

End and beginning. A new cycle starts.

For those that interpret that to mean that I’m planning an IGTS Tour sequel, how can I say this in the nicest possible way…I know – how about, “Are you out of your mind?”

Don’t get me wrong. It was an incredible experience, one that I will cherish forever. And I have a feeling that my memories will become even fonder as time goes by. But it’s going to be nice to sleep in my own bed every night for a good long stretch of time, and wonderful to go to a game without notebooks, cameras, video recorders, etc. This may come as a shock, but I’ve already been to two sporting events since the end of the Tour, and it was blissful to relax and simply watch.

Me Capturing The Tour's Final Photo

So what did I learn on what a good friend called “The Best Quest In The West?” Believe it or not, when I began this journey, I naively thought that I would be able to sum it up at the end in a tidy little package. I anticipated a single blog post titled something like “What I Learned On My Nationwide Vacation”. I went out into the wide world of sports (now there’s a catchy name for a show…) to find out if I still love sports after having spent a decade of work-a-day life in the sports biz. To be honest, I truly expected to come back and wax poetic about how my love of sports has been validated beyond all reasonable doubts.

Has it? Well…sort of.
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…Continued from the previous post.

This day was 11 months and 13 days in the making. So there was no such thing as being too early for the game.

As enjoyable as watching opening round coverage of the NCAA Tournament is, Kels and I had no remorse about leaving March Madness behind in Scottsdale’s Fox Sports Grill at 3:45 PM for the 7:05 PM first pitch that would begin Event #100 – a Spring Training game between the Los Angeles Angels and the San Francisco Giants. After all, we had almost ten miles to travel.

Twenty minutes later we pulled into a free parking lot adjacent to Scottsdale Stadium – an absolute gem of an old-fashioned downtown ballpark. And we were by no means alone in our eagerness. It would be another 45 minutes until the gates would even open, but already there were hundreds of people milling around, even though all 11,622 tickets had long since been sold. These people, like us, just wanted to get inside and drink up the atmosphere as soon as possible.
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March 20^th is just another day. Equinox, schmequinox. And Punxsutawny Phil? He’s a groundhog, for God’s sake – just another figurehead with no real authority.

Ask any sports fan when Spring really begins and they’ll reply without hesitation:  The day that pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training. No matter where you live, from the snowiest of Frost Belt towns to the warmest Sun Belt city, the day that baseball’s pre-season camps open is always the most reliable harbinger of hope. And what is Spring anyway, if not the Official Sponsor of Hope?

When Spring Training begins, every team is a potential World Series champ. Yes, even the Pittsburgh Pirates! OK, that’s patently ridiculous, but see how easily the concept can sweep you away?

With that in mind, what better place to end my journey than at the home office of Renewal?
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Submitted for your consideration:  Do college basketball’s conference tournaments mean anything anymore?

Of course I’m not talking about the MVC, the WCC, or the MAAC – or any of those conferences for which there is but one invitation to The Big Dance. These tournaments mean everything –perhaps too much, as a team that dominates its conference during regular season play can have one bad night and see its season go down the drain. Certainly there is drama of the highest kind in the alphabet soup conferences.

No, I’m talking here about the glamour conferences. The ones that dominate media coverage of college basketball. The ones that are amateur in name only. The home of “one and done” players putting in their time before heading to the NBA. The Big East, the Big Ten, the ACC. These conferences have traditionally sent at least four teams to the NCAA tournament each year, and as they’ve grown in size by engulfing major media market teams from smaller conferences, they’ve gained even more at-large bids.

One could argue that the drama for these conference tournaments has been usurped; pretty much every team with a decent record is going to the NCAAs. When you really get down to it, you could actually make the case that winning one of these tournaments is detrimental to a team’s chances for March Madness success. For example, no Big East team has won the NCAA title since the conference expanded to 16 teams and instituted a conference tournament that brings to mind the Bataan Death March. Coincidence?

I do not bring this up merely to watch myself type. I had a decision to make.
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The University of Delaware

It was the end of an era. Assuming of course, that a time span of just over three months qualifies as an “era”.

On this day, the U.S. Synchronized Team Skating Championships would proudly round out the winter sports portion of the “It’s Game Time Somewhere” Tour.

I have to admit that, once actually onsite I’ve enjoyed each and every one of my Ice & Snow events. It was the process of getting to each venue that provided a steady stream of…how do I put this…“opportunities to exhibit problem-solving skills”. Yeah, that’s it – opportunities. Two feet of opportunity one day. Negative 29 wind-chilled degrees of opportunity the next.   

So I reveled in the irony that the last Ice & Snow event would take place in the winter wonderland of Ontario. Ontario, California, that is, with its 80 degrees of sunshine bathing at least the outer confines of Citizens Business Bank Arena. Granted, it felt a little odd wearing two layers of clothing (and carrying a third) as I crossed the parking lot, but at least I could be sure that here the ice and chill would be confined to the arena.
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