Back in 2007, I went to see the Japanese women's national soccer team host Mexico in the first of a 2-game playoff for the final spot in that year's World Cup. There were just over 10,000 fans at National Stadium on that March afternoon, and they witnessed a solid performance as Japan shutout the Mexicans 2-0 behind goals from Homare Sawa and Aya Miyama. Though the Nadeshiko (the team's nickname comes from a pink carnation that symbolizes the mental strength of women) lost the second leg by a goal, they advanced to the main tournament on the 3-2...
Monday, 18 July 2011
Friday, 15 July 2011
While at the Tokyo Dome last week to write a review for Stadium Journey, I made a quick stop at the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, which is located next to gate 21. It is only 500 yen to enter, with a 100 yen discount if you show a ticket to that day's game.Inside you get a great collection of memorabilia, and not just for the Japanese pro game. There are plenty of interesting tidbits from MLB, college, and high school ball. There's even a section...
Friday, 8 July 2011
During the recent NHL and NBA playoffs, I kept track of the scores each game. This enabled me to find a few meaningless stats that made for good Twitter fodder. The one that I found most interesting though was one of the simplest: the number of times the home team won. In the NBA playoffs, the home team win-loss record was 54-27 (.667) while in the NHL it was just 48-41 (.539). That got me to thinking. It's usually obvious that the NBA has the largest home advantage, but just how different is it compared to the other leagues? So I took the regular...
Sunday, 3 July 2011
The NHL came out with their schedule last week and I quickly put together the usual roadtrip spreadsheet that shows each team's home games in roughly the same order that one would make a roundtrip journey. This way, you can quickly see when nearby teams play back-to-back and which teams are away for extended periods (the bane of the roadtrip planner), making it much easier to put together a plan. There are countless possibilities for league-wide trips that take in all 30 arenas, it just depends on where and when you want to start. Rather than bore...
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