Bundesliga – Day 30: So that’s it then…

Eintracht Frankfurt – Borussia Dortmund 1:1
Hamburger SV – FC Schalke 04 0:1
Karlsruher SC – Werder Bremen 3:3
Hannover 96 – Hertha BSC Berlin 2:2
1. FC Nürnberg – Arminia Bielefeld 2:2
FC Energie Cottbus – FC Hansa Rostock 2:1
VfL Bochum – MSV Duisburg 1:1
Bayern München – VfB Stuttgart 4:1
Bayer Leverkusen – VfL Wolfsburg 2:2

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NPB: How to stay up-to-date with the action

It’s pretty hard to follow the action in the japanese NPB league, especially the games in the Central League, since there seem to be no streams for any of the matches. And when there are they are strictly limited to a japanese audience. In times of teams and sports looking for new chances of revenue and income all the time that can be considered to be rather anachronistic, I guess. Sports like football and leagues like the English Premier League seem to be willing to do anything to draw new crowds to their games and they even discussed an extra day of play at the end of the season in foreign countries, so the fans in Asia and elsewhere can watch there stars live instead of on the screen.

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DEL Finals: Cologne lose it but the doubts remain

So Kölner Haie lost Game 4 of the finals on Sunday in dramatic fashion. The whole series remained at a dealock in almost every single game and these must have been the closest playoffs I have ever experienced in my entire life. Of the eight teams who made it to the post season at least six might have had a legitimate shot at the title. So the final series ended with a 3-1 victory of Eisbären Berlin, who, alongside with Adler Mannheim, dominated German ice hockey over the past few years.

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Red Sox and Hanshin Tigers get a good start into the new season

And once again here’s proof that a baseball game should be watched until the final out. I tuned into the coverage of Red Sox vs Rangers from Fenway yesterday and although the match itself was pretty close and interesting I somewhat lost interest and started doing other things while listening to the commentary and occasionally looking at the screen. Rangers went ahead 2-0 early and even extended that lead to a 5-0 advantage later in the game. The Red Sox left a lot of baserunners stranded over the first 6 innings and they weren’t looking they they would be able to make a comeback this time. Now in football when a team is 0-5 down the final minutes of a match can become really boring because both sides know that nothing will change until the final whistle.

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Polar Bears, Germany’s new national mascots

For quite some time now Germans are stark raving mad about polar bears. Yes, polar bears. Those artic predators. Still most people would consider them to be very cute at a young age. It all started with a polar bear baby at the Berlin zoo which was seperated from its parents after his birth. There was one animal welfare activist who said in a newspaper article that the poor animal would be better off if it was killed which caused a huge uproar by the nation’s biggest tabloid, the Bild-Zeitung. So the media caught on to the story and suddenly the small polar bear was a front page celebrity.

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Old Firm Derby: Now that’s what you call football

There are a lot of rivalries in sports, especially in football. Those London derbys in England, Manchester united and Liverpool FC, in Germany there’s the “Ruhrpott” derby between Schalke and Dortmund, the Munich derby, the Rhineland derbies involving Düsseldorf, Mönchengladbach and Cologne. In France you have Marseille and Paris and of course there in Madrid versus Barcelona in Spain. In Southamerica you have the Fla-Flu in Brazil or River vs Boca Juniors. But nothing, absolutely nothing beats the intensity of Rangers vs Celtic in Scotland.

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DEL Finals: Series tied at 1-1

The Kölner Haie tied the series against the Eisbären Berlin tonight at the KölnArena with a 2-1 win. Trailing 0-1 after one period they came back to turn the tide and win it in the final period with a goal by 40 year old Dave McLlwain. It seems like the Haie weren’t able to convert their powerplay chances. Or were the Eisbären so good in killing the penalties? I have no idea.

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Statistics in football are plainly dumb

There used to be a time in German football coverage when there were only three television stations in the country. Back in those days the sports program “Die Sportschau” used to show small clips of three games, all the other matches were just shown as results at the end of the program. Then in the 1980s private television was introduced and the broadcasting rights went from ARD (public television) to RTL (private). The coverage became more flashy and they even introduced live matches. I especially remember the matchup between 1.FC Cologne and Bayern Munich in 1989, I think. But since there were other private stations who offered even more money the rights went to SAT1 at the beginning of the 1990s and that’s when the nightmare began.

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DEL Playoffs: Cologne and Berlin in the finals

While the playoffs in the NHL are just getting started the German DEL is already in the final stages. The past few years haven’t been very interesting in the domestic league with Adler Mannheim and Eisbären Berlin splitting up titles every year. It has been especially frustrating for my local team, Kölner Haie, who enter a season each year as one of the big favourites and then fail miserably in the playoffs. They won their last title (of eight in total) in 2002 and have made some impressive shots at the championship since then, but there weren’t successful at all.

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A Day At The Record Store (IV) cont.

Just to finish this off here’s some words about the 7″ singles I got while being at the record store a few days ago.

The Ice “s/t” 7″
The Ice were roommates of ours when we still had our rehearsal room in Cologne Mülheim and that basically is the only reason I bought the record. Well, it’s not as bad as it sounds when I say this, it’s just that it’s not my cup of tea anymore. When I was listening to the single at the record store for the first time I had the record player on 45 rpm and the intro on the A side sounded cool. Not great, but cool. But then the voice set in and it turned out I had the wrong speed. Well, at 33 rpm the intro wasn’t as cool anymore.

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