Hit by a Pitch

Congratulations to Luke Harangody and ESPN on their recent engagement! It looks like the wedding plans are going well, and I like the green Lacoste towels on your registry!

ETA: I just received word that my boyfriend Jon Garland signed a one-year deal with the Diamondbacks. I do not approve of him hanging out with such a team (stay away from Eric Byrnes!), but at least this will bring him to Denver.

I’m really disappointed in the Winter X Games, which sucks because I love the Winter X Games.

Last night’s snowboard big air featured four athletes, three from Norway (holla!) and one from the U.S. Two Norwegians went head-to-head and one Norwegian went head-to-head against the American in an elimination round.

I’m not an expert by any means, but I thought the Norwegian, Mikkel Bang, performed WAY better than the American, Travis Rice. However, because the results were determined only by audience text messages, Rice advanced, with 92% of the audience voting in his favor.

In the gold medal round, Rice went up against Norway’s Torstein Horgmo (best name ever, by the way), who won gold last year. Horgmo bobbled his first landing but nailed the second, which the announcers referred to as a “textbook” switch backside 1260. Rice did a double back rodeo 10 and landed his first and dragged his hand on the second landing. Although Rice’s jump was exciting to watch (flips are fun!), my non-expert opinion had Horgmo winning the gold. Audience members voted in Rice’s favor, 78% to 22%.

I’m not going to whine because the guy I thought should win (Horgmo) didn’t win or that the guy I thought should advance to the gold medal round (Bang) didn’t advance. The problem is that it’s really clear what happened in each round — the audience, consisting of mostly Americans watching an event that occurred in the U.S., voted for the American. There is no way in hell, for example, that in any universe, Rice outperformed Bang 92% to 8%.

That’s just weak, and frankly, it makes us look kind of stupid. No disrespect to Travis Rice, but nobody should win a gold medal in the X Games just because he’s American.

Normally in big air, judges, who know the sport and know how to objectively judge jumps, give points for several factors, including difficulty, amplitude, style, and landing. If I recall correctly, last year’s big air competition was decided by judges and audience text participation. Personally, I’d rather have only judges determine the winner, but a determination by judges and the audience makes much more sense than allowing the audience only — a bunch of people who may or may not know jack about judging snowboarding — decide who wins the competition.

I really hope the X Games powers that be change this next year. I don’t see the point of watching what amounts to reality-show bullshit. It’s not like the X Games are the Olympics or anything, but the athletes who work very hard to prepare and put on a good show deserve to have their efforts taken seriously and be judged by people who know what they’re doing.

This isn’t the best quality video, but here’s Chris Andersen hitting a shot from half court as time expired in the third quarter last night. I love this guy!