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Tax time has passed once again finally. Government sure do take a bite. A non-traditional sports fan in America has to find ways to be an frugal sports fan in these economically-turbulent times. I found myself over hanging out with my wife’s uncle at his house, trying to understand basketball. We were watching Portland demolish Denver, and I found myself being drawn immediately to the skilled fundamental play of the foreign guys for the Blazers. The “Spanish Armada”, headed by Rudy Fernandez, is but one example of how European and South American players have come to alter the cerebral aspects of the game of basketball.

I also found myself sitting here at home, watching the opening day of the NHL playoffs online. With the Pittsburgh-Philadelphia and Washington-New York games airing side-by-side on my monitor, I was in fanatical bliss. No longer must a fan click back and forth on his remote to see snippets of the games he wishes. People in their own homes can have the multiple-monitor experience of guys in a television studio, catching games from around the globe.

That is where the advent of the internet was such a boon for a guy like me. Before, when a guy wanted to keep up with sports overseas, he would have to subscribe to a stack of specialty magazines and foreign newspapers. There was little opportunity to see these sports unless one had the expendable income to jet across the Atlantic for a weekend or two. Many Americans hardly realized that the sports they saw their best and brightest countrymen contesting every four years on the Olympic stage were full-time careers for these athletes.

I remember first discovering the internet’s potential back in the mid-nineties, when I was a teenager becoming immersed in an acculturation in a greater world out there. Growing up on a seasonal resort upon which a slew of young employees from around the globe would descend every summer for a chance to work in Grand Teton National Park, I was quickly introduced to the delights of soccer and tennis and cycling and rugby.

I had always watched Wimbledon, and the Olympics, and whatever else Jim McKay could throw at me on Wide World of Sports. But I soon found myself, thanks to the internet, listening to animated British announcers calling matches from places like Old Trafford and Anfield and Highbury and Stamford Bridge. It sure helped having a father who was an IT Director for a major resort. I was following more sports and absorbing more data than I ever had before, scouring sites from Rome to Rio de Janiero.

When video capabilities came around, I was hooked. No longer must a fanatic of sports more obscure expend stacks of greenbacks just to satiate his or her fanaticism. You can find free live broadcasts of most any major sports event occurring around the globe. As long as you don’t mind turning down the sound when the language is foreign -- and what sports fan, no matter how traditional or non-traditional, doesn’t like turning down the sound on sportscasters? -- anything is within access with just a zippy line into the cerebral vortex.

Which brings me straight from the grainy, slow radio broadcasts of my adolescence straight to this past Easter Sunday, when I found myself up before six in the morning here in Eugene, watching Tom Boonen power away to his third Paris-Roubaix victory and contemplating his place in cycling history. Another notch in an already-stellar career, Boonen proved once again why he is the preeminent cobblestone specialist of his generation. Yet that historic ride for the Belgian cyclist was but six hours in a momentous week in global sport. Follow the above link for my thoughts on his ride… and hold on tight as A Non-Traditional Sports Fan in America guides you through all the excitement of a wild week in worldwide sport...

Sunday proved a wild day in sports. After Boonen started the day favorably for favorites to take victory, all hell broke loose. First, it was the Masters, where Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were paired together in the final round. But despite the fireworks each put on during their last round -- Mickelson shooting a front-nine 30; Woods hitting key birdies throughout the back nine -- their pairing would not provide the winner. The runaway leader after three rounds, though, almost bobbled the green jacket right off of his shoulders. Argentine veteran Angel Cabrera is a twenty-year pro whose greatest glory in golf had come at the 2007 U.S. Open, where he shot the only under-par score on the final day to take the title from four strokes back. But his propensity for performing under pressure nearly took a serious hit, as he couldn’t shake Kenny Perry or hard-charging Chad Campbell from forcing a three-way playoff.

Cabrera came through on the second hole to take his second major championship. We often look to the Tigers and the Mickelsons of the golf world to provide our drama, our excitement, our entertainment live from the links. But it is guys like Cabrera who make the sport what it is. Sheer athleticism cannot do it alone. All the endorsement dollars and high-tech equipment can’t bring a course to its knees. The course is the same for every player which steps on it, and it is the shrewdest man on the day who takes the title. It is man versus nature -- a highly manicured nature, mind you -- at its finest, a pure expression of individual achievement...

Later that Sunday evening, it was a team tumbling back to earth on its home turf when all signs pointed toward their second consecutive title. Kevin Martin and the Canadian men’s curling team had been blitzing through the World Curling Championships. Playing before home crowds in Moncton, the Canadians had dominated their competition through the entirety of the round-robin part of the tournament. That is, until they met up with the Scottish squad, which dealt Martin and crew their only loss of the opening round, 6-5.

Scotland proved that their victory was not a fluke by taking the 1-2 game of curling’s quirky Page playoff system by a 7-5 margin. In this system, four teams make the playoffs out of a round robin. One plays two; three plays four. The winner of the 1-2 contest advances straight to the finals. The winner of the 3-4 matchup advances to a semifinal against the loser of the 1-2 game. The loser of the semifinal plays the loser of the 3-4 game in a bronze medal match; the winner goes on to play the already-advanced finalist for the gold.

So Scotland advanced to the final with their second straight defeat of Canada… and the Canadians soon found themselves back in the finals after dispatching three-seed Switzerland. Scotland, obviously, was not intimidated by the Martin mystique. David Murdoch captained the Scots to a 7-6 victory with shrewd throws, outfoxing Martin to deny the Canadian skipper his second world title and taking a second of his own (Lowell 2006). After the result went the opposite way up in Grand Forks in last year’s championship game, Murdoch achieved sweet revenge.

It appears, though, that curling is trending ever closer to becoming a two-horse race for the coming future. With Murdoch and Martin both showing no signs of slowing, it will be amazing to see which team might emerge as a serious challenger in the coming years. A couple skippers to keep your eyes on in coming years are Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud and Switzerland’s Ralph Stöckli. With Martin appearing eternally young even as he pushes fifty, he cannot last on the scene forever. Stöckli, Ulsrud and Murdoch are a trio of thirty-somethings that will surely carry their squads through the coming decade and more, challenging for more medals as the years advance...

One person who ostensibly will no longer be challenging for titles is the man who won world titles in more of boxing’s weight classes than any other fighter in history. Oscar de La Hoya, the versatile boxer from East Los Angeles, announced Tuesday that he is retiring from the sport which has been his breadwinner for nearly twenty years. The 36-year-old, who dominated his sport from the time of his 1992 Olympic lightweight gold to his first professional world title (the WBO Super Featherweight title in 1994) and up through the ranks until he had conquered the WBC Super Welterweight title in 2006, is finally hanging up the gloves.

The toughest thing with which a professional in any sport must eventually cope is the depredations of time. The body cannot do forever what it could physically achieve in its prime. De La Hoya was forced to ultimately come to grips with the fact that his skills had been waning for the better part of the past five years. Since his defeat in the “Sugar” Shane Mosley rematch of 2003, in which he forfeited both his WBC Super Welterweight and WBA Light Middleweight belts via unanimous decision, De La Hoya has been on the wane. His unanimous decision over Felix Sturm to take the WBO Middleweight title in 2004 only masked his deficiencies.

Bernard Hopkins dealt De La Hoya the only knockout loss of his career to unify the WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF Middleweight belts only three months after De La Hoya had taken the fight against Sturm. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. would take the WBC Super Welterweight title from him in May 2007 -- 364 days after De La Hoya had originally earned it against Ricardo Mayorga. His last fight, an eighth-round TKO loss to Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, really put the writing on the wall for Oscar…

So we bid him farewell and good luck in his future endeavors. Here’s hoping for the sake of both his health and well-being and for our untarnished remembrance as fans of his greatness that his retirement sticks. De La Hoya has given boxing fanatics a decade and a half of incredible fighting across six weight classes, staking his claim as one of the best pound-for-pound fighters of this or any generation. I’d hate to see that legacy destroyed were the aging ex-boxer to overextend himself and try to come back again. He deserves his rest...

Just as four clubs were made to take their season’s rest from intercontinental competition as the second legs of the UEFA Champions League quarterfinal matches commenced over the past two days. On Tuesday, Barcelona didn’t have to do much to advance to the semifinals after their first leg at home ended in a 4-0 victory over Bayern Munich. In the return match at the Allianz Arena, neither team could crack the other’s resolve through the first half. Just a few minutes after halftime, though, Bayern pulled ahead thanks to the deft footwork by Franck Ribery, who took Ze Roberto’s pass and lofted over Victor Valdes for the one-goal lead. Still down three goals on aggregate, though, it would prove too much for Bayern to overcome. In the seventy-third minute, Seydou Keita blasted a loose ball on the edge of the box to level the contest, guaranteeing the Spanish side’s passage.

They would be the only non-English side to advance to the semifinals. Chelsea and Liverpool played their second leg at Stamford Bridge in London on the twentieth anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy which left 96 Liverpool fans dead during an F.A. Cup semifinal clash between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on the neutral ground of Sheffield Wednesday. The ensuing Taylor Report, which led to the revamping of stadium design and safety measures throughout England and across the channel to the continent, thankfully kept those deaths from occurring in vain. Liverpool fans held a memorial at Anfield as their club played on in London.

The game would prove an instant classic. The action was fierce from the opening kickoff. Home side Chelsea held the 3-1 advantage coming out of Anfield the week prior; but it was Liverpool, still smarting from the home loss, which came out first to challenge the Londoners. Fabio Aurelio connected on a free kick just inside the twentieth minute to put the Merseysiders up one. Xabi Alonso converted a penalty nine minutes later, and the aggregate score was now 3-3. Chelsea would still advance on away goals, but there was no doubt that Liverpool had more in store.

After halftime, though, it was Didier Drogba and Alex connecting in the first fifteen minutes to level the score. Frank Lampard then connected on a low Drogba cross from the left to beat Jose Manuel Reina, putting Chelsea up 3-2 in the game and 6-3 aggregate. Leiva Lucas would pull it back even in the eighty-first; Dirk Kuyt pulled the aggregate to 6-5 just a minute later to put the scare on the home crowd. But Frank Lampard would answer coolly once again, clanging the ball off both posts behind Reina before it dropped in to set the final score at 4-4. Liverpool was headed home, while Chelsea awaited their opponent’s announcement.

Both games played on Wednesday had the suspense of beginning with a tie score from the first leg. Arsenal made short work of Villareal, punching their ticket with relative ease. Theo Walcott had his side up 1-0 after just ten minutes, chipping over Diego Lopez after receiving a flick of the ball from Cesc Fabregas. Emmanuel Adebayor would make it 2-0 at the start of the second half; Robin van Persie would convert a penalty twenty minutes from time to seal the deal at three-nil. So much for uncertainty there...

The second game was a nail-biter. Porto had pulled out a draw at Old Trafford in the first leg, scoring two away goals in the process to heighten their chances for advancement. Cristiano Ronaldo, competing for an English club against many of his Portuguese compatriots, blasted a long-distance goal past Helton da Silva in the sixth minute to pull Manchester United ahead. Porto pressed the pace through the rest of the game, recognizing that one goal to pull it level would still send them through on away goals. But Edwin van der Sar proved indefatigable in net for the visitors, and the Red Devils became the third English side in the semifinals.

Another exciting week awaits at points across the globe. The Champions League will take a break before the semifinal duels begin. Tennis continues its cross-continental preparations which will culminate next month at Roland Garros. Track stars come out to Senegal for the IAAF Grand Prix Dakar; the descendants of the tradition of Pheidippides head to Massachusetts for the Boston Marathon. And just for fun, let’s hypothesize once again -- since I am two for three so far in the spring classics -- on who will win the next bicycle race.

Cycling turns its attention eastward into the Ardennes. While guys like Tom Boonen -- who might or might not have broken his right foot in a crash at the post-Roubaix Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen, the final Flemish race of the spring -- head to recuperate and vacation after a hard early spring season, the punchy hill-climbers of the late-spring classics come out of the woodwork to contest the Amstel Gold Race this weekend. Three former champions will line up at the race. Davide Rebellin, who swept Ardennes Week (Amstel, the mid-week Fleche Wallone and the following weekend’s Liege-Bastogne-Liege) in 2004, returns to challenge defending champion Damiano Cunego for this year’s title. Also in the hunt will be 2006 winner Frank Schleck as well as three-time world champion Oscar Freire, who is returning from injury but will still be deceptively threatening. If I had to put money down (or at least my reputation as a resurgent Bigalkedamus), I’d pick Cunego to defend his title. He is on the best recent form, having taken sixth at the recent week-long Vuelta al Pais Vasco stage race, and won the Coppi e Bartali race earlier this year in his native Italy.

So stay tuned, folks, and snoop around a while. Being a sports fan does not mean you have to shell out hundreds and thousands of dollars to catch the action for your favorite teams... even if those favorite athletes and teams compete on the opposite side of the globe. Get creative, pad that bank account back up, and don’t stop searching for sports action in places near and far... not even the tax man can keep this non-traditional sports fan down...

Submitted 4/16/2009

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