Man Crush of the Week: Chicago Blackhawks

We are halfway through the NHL season and the Blackhawks have a ‘0’ in the loss column. I’m not even sure how to describe how crazy this is. And apparently ESPN isn’t either since it gets about no coverage ever.

Thankfully, someone who does get national sports coverage has also noticed in LeBron James, who tweeted about the Blackhawks. So ESPN also compared them to the Heat since they’re one of the non-Tebow approved topics for them. And combined with the only hockey player ESPN thinks people know about commenting on the team, the Hawks have never been more popular.

And really what they’ve done this year is the most impressive thing any team as done for quite a while. Right now the Heat are winning every game as well, but basketball is basically up to two or three players, especially when you have LeBron James on your team. But what the Blackhawks are doing is just pure domination of the sport. They’re getting strong play from more than just their stars, although it should be noted how awesome Patrick Kane is this year.

This is what hockey needed (although it really needed ‘not a lockout’ more). Hopefully everyone else will start noticing too.

Douchebag of the Week: Jon Paul Morosi

Dude. Stop trying to make the World Baseball Classic a thing.

It’s like the WBC is an improv group and Jon Paul Morosi is THAT GUY who keeps sending invites and really you or no one else actually wants to go when there is actual, good improv to see.

He’s tried to make it some sort of bordering on jingoism event to prove the United States of America is the best at baseball. Except instead of actually playing a game of baseball with the best players from each country in the games (like, say, the World Cup) they’re playing fake games of baseball with limits on how much the pitchers can pitch, turning it instead into an All-Star Game with a lot of not All-Stars.

The problem is you can’t just create an event and expect it to have a ton of importance when you can’t get the best players or real rules. I don’t doubt that the players want to win. It’s what they do for a living. I mean, if I play a game of pickup basketball, I want to in. But that doesn’t mean you should care. The WBC might be going on already and I, as a huge baseball fan, have no idea. I could probably Google it but I care so little about the tournament that I thought it would be a better use of my time to write this sentence.

Legendary tweeter (and sometimes MLB pitcher) Brandon McCarthy seems to also find the WBC slightly less than legitimate as well. I understand how these things work with the World Cup. But in sports you can’t do things less than 100% and expect 100% interest. This is why the All-Star games don’t matter anymore either.

So congrats to whoever wins the WBC this year, maybe even whatever country won it before will win it again (again, Google was too much effort) and then Morosi will have all sorts of material to obsessively write about.

Now, back to the 5^th starter battle for the Houston Astros.

Follow Scott Bolohan on Twitter: @scottbolohan

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Rich Tran vs. the NHL 
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