What $1.6 billion buys

On Sunday I went to my first game at the New Meadowlands stadium. My grandpa, who has had Giant's season tickets for over 50 years, and I took the short drive from my home in Demarest to the swamp in East Rutherford to watch the G-men take on the Titans. The game the Giants played was appalling and embarrassing but that's a whole other issue.

As for the new $1.6 billion stadium, I felt sad, frustrated, and flat out angry. Basically, the stadium sucks! There was no reason to build a new one in the first place, but the fact that they did and made it worse, is disgusting.

It is not for the fans! I'm sure the box seats are nice but the average person does not get to go to a box to watch a football game. Big business, corporations, greed, and corruption are taking over professional sports while the working class guy who wants to enjoy himself for a few hours on a sunday is getting screwed. My grandpa, who's been going to games since the Giants played at the Polo Grounds, had to pay more money for his seats this year and the seats are further away and higher up. How did this happen?

Problems with the stadium:

1. Parking was completely ignored. Getting to the stadium is a nightmare so even if the stadium was great, the experience would still be ruined.
2. No roof. How can $1.6 billion be spent, and they can't even get a retractable roof so fans don't need to sit in snowy 20 degree weather.
3. No urinal dividers. For all that money they could at least give people who are peeing a little privacy. I do not enjoy it when a 300 pound drunk guy is rubbing up against me while I'm trying to urinate. $1.6 billion! Give us urinal dividers!
4. My seats suck! So, this one doesn't concern people who can afford to pay $20,000 PSLs and sit in the front row or in a box but for the normal people...I sit in the upper level and I could barely see the game. We payed more, and got less.

The New Meadowlands stadium is a perfect symbol for America. It's big, expensive, and it doesn't care about the little people. Sports are supposed to be for everybody. I want to get back to the days when it was cheap and fun to go to games, not expensive and tiring. I always loved going to games but maybe sitting on my couch, with my own food, my own bathroom, and a remote to change the channel if its a blowout , is a better option.

When I was younger I loved professional sports. Now that I understand its a business, professional sports make me very sad sometimes. There are 35,490 homeless people in New York City, but there's a brand new $1.6 billion football stadium across the Hudson. and a crappy football stadium at that.

Right now, professional sports seems to be a world where spoiled millionaires complain about playing a game for living, and they can drink and drive and just have to sit out a quarter (Braylon Edwards). Going to the New Meadowlands stadium made me a little sick about how we spend our money in this great country.

Oh, and one more thing! A bottle of water in this stadium is $5.25. That should be a crime.

In Europe and Africa, Americans provide us incredible sporting accomplishments

When I witnessed the most exciting conclusion to a soccer match in USA soccer history, I thought for sure that it would be the number one story of the week in sports, if not the month in sports, if not the year in sports. After 90 minutes of frustration and agony, finally, in stoppage time, in the 91st minute, Landon Donovan, the greatest US soccer player of all time, was able to score a goal and give the Americans the 1-0 victory they needed to advance out of their group and into the round of 16, in the World Cup.

But as it turns out, the thrilling American soccer game wasn't even the best sports story of the day.

The best sports story of the day, week, month, year, also involved an American and it also took place on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not in South Africa, but in England, at the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

Concluded today, after 11 hours and five minutes, which spanned over the course of three remarkable days, the American John Isner defeated the Frenchman Nicolas Mahut in the most amazing tennis match ever played. Shattering every record possible in one match, Isner and Mahut played an epic first round match that no words can correctly describe and no superlatives would be fitting.

Here's the final score line: Isner def. Mahut 6-4, 3-6, 7-6, 6-7, 70-68.

The final set was 70-68!

Due to the Wimbledon rules that a fifth set must be won by two games, Isner and Mahut just kept on going, no one breaking serve for 69 games each, and showing fortitude unmatched by anyone in the history of sports. Marathon runners don't have anything on what Isner and Mahut just accomplished. In 100 years people will look back on this match as one of the greatest sporting events of all time.

While Isner finally won out, Mahut, obviously distraught, showed an amazing amount of class in a losing effort. Both players are now immediate household names and will be linked together forever in tennis lure no matter what they both go on to accomplish. Their embrace at the end of the match showed us exactly what sports are all about.

In the past couple of days, we have witnessed American sports victories the likes of which have never been done before, and both of them weren't even in America. The NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL could never produce the sort of raw emotion and victories of the human spirit that we just saw in Wimbledon and the World Cup.

So what did we learn from the greatest tennis match of all time, and the greatest US soccer victory ever? Sports are the greatest entertainment in the world because they can't be scripted and sports are better on an international stage.

The Lake Show Championship and the World Cup

On the latest edition of the Jared from Jersey Show, Jared and Crush talk about the NBA finals and the World Cup!

And in honor of the opening of Toy Story 3, here are my rankings of Pixar's 11 great films:

1. Toy Story

2. Finding Nemo

3. Toy Story 3

4. Toy Story 2

5. A Bug's Life

6. The Incredibles

7. Monster's Inc

8. Wall-E

9. Ratatouille

10. Cars

11. Up

Chi-town gets the Cup

After 49 years, the best and most coveted trophy in sports, Lord Stanley's Cup, is back in Chicago.

The Chicago Blackhawks win was a result of a game 6, overtime goal that almost no one saw. Patrick Kane went down the left side of the ice, threw it at the goal, and then went crazy. Kane threw off his gloves, sprinted to the other end of the ice and jumped on his goalie as everyone at the Wachovia Center in Philly was stuck in a state of confusion. The announcers didn't even know if it went in.

But after a review, the goal that only Patrick Kane knew was good at first, was confirmed to be the game winning goal of the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals.

It's always a good feeling to know that the best team has won, and in this case the Chicago Blackhawks were the best team. From Kane to Byfuglien to Toews, the Chicago stars outperformed the Philly stars and in the end the Flyer's goaltending proved to be a fatal weakness.

You gotta feel good for Marian Hossa. After losing in the finals two years in a row with two different teams, he finally found redemption with the Blackhawks. Hossa nearly cost the Hawks game 6 with a huge turnover in the neutral zone that gave the Flyers a breakaway early in the game, but thanks to a huge Antti Niemi save, Hossa's mistake was eradicated. After Captain Jonathan Toews took his skate with the Cup, the first person he handed it to was Hossa. Hossa was finally able to touch the hardest trophy in the world to win.

And the Chicago goalie Antti Niemi. He was wildly impressive. I'd be lying if I said I knew who he was before this year, but in the playoffs he performed like exactly what he is now, a champion.

So, the Blackhawks become the first Chi-town team to win a championship under the presidency of Chicago native, Barack Obama. while I doubt though, that Obama knows too much about hockey, maybe the joy felt in his city will help ease the struggles that he's going through now. Probably not, but maybe. By the way, Chicago pizza is only second to New York pizza.

Now every player on the Blackhawks gets to spend a day with the Cup which is one of the coolest things about winning it. I'm looking forward to hearing some funny stories about what the players do with it.

Congratulations Chicago. Well deserved.

No one's perfect, except cameras

Armando Galaragga pitched a perfect game. period.

I have never been this angry about something to do with sports in my life. Every North American pro sports league uses replay, except for MLB. Baseball is the sport that needs it the most!

MLB has to get out of the dark ages and move into 2010 where we have the technology to get the calls right. SCREW THE HUMAN ELEMENT. HUMANS ARE WRONG.

Why are important calls in important situations in important games being left to a guess? A simple replay showed that Galaragga has indeed pitched a perfect game, but since MLB is so intent on pleasing baseball purists and is basically just stupid they won't use replay to make calls.

Look, Bud Selig is the worst commissioner in sports. He screwed up steroids, he doesn't market the game well at all, and lacrosse is going to be more popular than baseball in 10 years, but he could do one positive thing now...

Implement instant replay to get close calls right and give Galaragga the perfect game. Knowing Selig, he's not gonna do either of those things. Selig Sucks. Galaragga's perfect.

But, this whole ordeal has provided a world class example of sportsmanship from both the Tigers and the umpire Jim Joyce. No one feels worse than Joyce who apologized and has been brought to tears, while the Tigers have handled the situation to well, perfection.

As for Galaragga, he has been incredible, offering support for Joyce and staying all smiles. This "perfect game" will go down as the most infamous of all time, so Galaragga doesn't belong to the club of 20 pitchers to pitch official perfect games, but a club of one.

Galaragga knows he was perfect, so do the fans and so does everyone else. So in the end, what does the record book actually mean. Hell, half the records in the official record book are false anyway (steroids) so it only makes sense for baseball to leave out a record that is real.

Just talkin' some sports on Memorial Day Weekend

I seem to go back and forth on the Kobe vs. LeBron argument all the time, but after last night's masterful performance in game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, I think I'm gonna be going with Kobe for awhile. I don't care if people say Kobe's getting old and he's not what he used to be, number 24 is still the most dominant scorer in the NBA. If I'm playing a game of pickup basketball, I'm the captain, and I have first pick, I'm picking Kobe Bryant.

The bottom line is Kobe is a ring away from filling up an entire hand, while LeBron is still looking for his first.

Kobe scored 37 points to advance LA past Phoenix in game 6, to set up what is sure to be an epic finals between two rivals that seem to be competing for an NBA championship every single season. There have been 63 NBA championships, 32 have been won by either the Celtics or the Lakers (that's more than half).

Due to the ridiculous NBA finals schedule, game one doesn't get played until Thursday, so the NBA has plenty of time to amp up the rivalry. You're not gonna be able to go a day until the end of the finals without seeing an image of Magic vs. Bird.

Not only did the NBA luck out with their finals this year, but the NHL also got a great Stanley Cup finals. Chicago and Philly are two huge hockey markets, with teams rich in history, and both are enduring a seemingly interminable Cup drought. Game one was played last night with the Blackhawks winning 6-5. Hopefully people will watch because this Stanley Cup is going to be a perfect example of great hockey, much like the Olympics was.

And even with the Flyers in the Stanley Cup, the biggest sports story out of a city I hate, Philadelphia, took place on a baseball diamond in Florida. Roy Halladay, always dominant but stuck in Toronto, threw MLB's 20th perfect game in its history. And second this season, only three weeks after Dallas Braden's. Halladay has always been one of the best pitchers in baseball without achieving much celebrity playing in Canada, but now he's carving up

the National League like he's a killer in a horror movie.

Speaking of baseball, seeing A-Rod smack that ball right back into that Indian's pitcher head was extremely frightening. It's really amazing that doesn't happen more often actually. I would never wanna be a pitcher in MLB, and yesterday's incident just shows how stupid it is for any level of baseball to be using metal bats. If A-Rod hits that ball with a metal bat, the pitcher might have been killed.

And then not as important as someone's life, but still...how the hell did the Yankees lose that game?!?! Obviously it's just one game and it doesn't mean that much but the Yankees bullpen is really, really shaky. The thing that concerns me most is Joba Chamberlain. When he goes out to pitch, you have no idea what to expect. He is the most inconsistent relief pitcher I've ever seen. But there's still 113 games left for the Yankees to play, so no need to panic, right? Nah, it's New York baseball, every game is cause to panic.

The End

Ok, I'm not gonna lie, I cried last night. No, not because the Yankees lost to the Mets, although I am getting a bit worried, but because the greatest television program of all time came to an end.

Titanic, The Lion King, and Lost. Those are the three works of film or TV I have ever cried at while watching and none more than last night's series finale of Lost.

Screw the haters! The Lost finale was brilliant. Lost has never been about answering questions, its been about the characters and their journeys, and the conclusion for these characters was completely emotionally satisfying. If you didn't like the end, you missed the entire point of the show.

Just as in life, with Lost, many questions remain unanswered. But I think that's exactly the point. Not all questions can get answered.

Sure, it was confusing as hell and doesn't really make sense, but who cares? I loved Lost from beginning to end and the great thing about this show is that it will continue to be debated forever. The show is open to interpretation. You have to think, and that's a good thing.

Lost, I will miss you. Thank you for the best six years of television of all time.