A Rochestarian in Boston, Part 2

(or Kat Goes to a Lacrosse Game…Alone)

“Put your hands together and let’s support your hometown team!!!”

Okay, I will, Boston Cannons announcer guy. But I don’t think you really want me to cheer for my hometown team, because my hometown isn’t Boston.

And thus is the dilemma I faced while attending the Rochester Rattlers-Boston Cannons Major League Lacrosse game at Boston U’s Nickerson Field on Saturday night. I decided Saturday morning to go to the game, seeing that it would fulfill both my need to see live sports and my homesickness. For those of you not up on your Western NY sports, lacrosse is huge in Rochester and Syracuse. Rochester has two major league lacrosse teams (indoor and outdoor, and their new soccer stadium will be also the best stadium for outdoor lacrosse in the country), and Syracuse University is like the Yankees of college lacrosse. So lacrosse is a mildly sized deal there, further proving that we are just Canadians who took a few too many steps south.

However, despite my father and I always making empty promises that “this is the year” we’re going to go take in a Knighthawks (indoor) or Rattlers (outdoor) game, I had never been to one. (In case you haven’t noticed, my father and I say we’re going to do a lot of things that we don’t get to do. However, next year’s trip to the Pro Football Hall of Fame is set in stone, and has been for years. Well, provided Steve Young gets inducted in his first year of eligibility.) So I decided I would go and make it my first official professional sports experience of my time in Boston (It took almost 3 weeks for my first Boston sports experience. This is saddening.). At $10 a ticket, it’s probably the most affordable Boston professional sports experience I’ll have. And yes, I went alone (hence the sub-title of this entry).

I’ll warn you now–don’t attend a Cannons game if you find 7-15 year old boys annoying. Out of the announced attendance of 5,308, about 5,000 had to be 7-15 year old lacrosse stick wielding boys. I happen to have lived with and be related to a 7-15 year old boy (albeit he’d rather play Yug-i-oh then lacrosse), so I don’t find them annoying. If you know that age, they refuse to sit still, and these boys were no exception. Up, down, around, all over, all the time. But they were excited to see the Powell brothers (Casey and Ryan), who both play for the Rattlers, so I don’t blame them. The Powell brothers are like the Young and Rice of lacrosse–they may not play for your team, but if you’re into that sport, and get the chance to see them, you have to see them to have said you’ve seen them playing together. (There has to be a better analogy, but I’m currently watching Steve Young butcher a teleprompter on the Children’s Miracle Network telethon, so it’s the first one that popped into my head. Swoon, drool, sighhhhhhh. The man gets better with age. Okay, maybe not. But come on, I’m sitting through a telethon to see him, although this is one of the more bearable ones because it doesn’t involve Jerry Lewis.) But anyway, Casey scores the goals, and the majority of the assists are from Ryan. But it was weird to hear all these boys talk about the Powells. “Look at him! Casey’s number 1, look at him. Look at that! Oh, look at that! He’s awesome!” In addition, both teams are made up of players from programs from across my part of New York–Syracuse, Hobart, Nazareth, Cornell, even Ithaca players fill the rosters of both teams. I didn’t really realize what Rochester had in the sport of lacrosse until that moment. These boys may be striving to play for the Rochester Rattlers or the Knighthawks someday. It’s weird–after years of being told that my city is nothing, here was something that my city was tops at.

Well, maybe.

The final score was Rochester 19, Boston 21, and the Rattlers fell to 1-2 on the season so far. The Cannons are 3-0, and they stayed on top by avoiding penalties, something that the Rattlers just couldn’t do. It was basically back and forth for the majority of the first two quarters, until the Cannons pulled away in the third and went up by 6. Rochester attempted to make a comeback and got to 19, but the Rattlers got another penalty called, giving the ball back to the Cannons with a few seconds remaining, sealing the deal. If the Rattlers could only have played a little cleaner, they would of been able to pull out the win. But the Cannons aren’t too shabby of a team, and should contend for the rest of the season because they seem to work extremely well as a team.

There’s just one little thing about lacrosse–you can’t see the ball. I don’t care that the MLL made their official ball bright orange so “the fans can better follow the action” (per the program)–you still can’t follow it. It’s worse than a hockey puck on a 13 inch television. So here’s my suggestion for the future of lacrosse–a light up ball. Come on, that can’t be too hard to do. And if you want to get really wild, here’s another crazy idea: so have a light up ball, but have like three balls in play at one time, and have only one light up at any given time and only that ball can score a goal. But the balls are constantly changing, so you have to play all of them, because you don’t know which one is going to light up at any given time. It would be CRAZY!!!

Isn’t that like the best idea in the history of ideas?!

No?

You can’t even indulge me on that one?

Does anyone even get what I’m talking about?

Fine.

And in another interesting note on the MLL, the league is owned by the “Body by Jake” guy. So in case you ever wondered what happened to him and his infomercials, that’s what happened to him. He’s “innovating” the sport of lacrosse by changing the ball color to orange instead of yelling at you from the TV to get in shape.

All in all, it was an enjoyable time and well worth the $10 of my meager grad student budget. I was home by 9:35, made myself some dinner, and watched the Lightning force a game 7 in the Stanley Cup playoffs, which I’m sad and happy about. Happy because it means one more game of hockey until who knows when, but sad because I really really want the Flames to win.

Man, I just realized how Canadian I sound. I spent a Saturday night watching lacrosse and hockey, eh. And yes, I had pop. But really, Saturday night is my favourite night of the week.

On to less Canadian things:

-So I’m watching arena football right now, and as it started, I was talking to my mom, who was too watching NBC. We had been watching gymnastics while talking on the phone (even though I was switching back and forth between the previously mentioned telethon and gymnastics), and then that ended and arena football began. My mom says to me, “Hey, I know this guy.”

“What guy?”

“This Graziani guy. I’ve seen him before. He played in the NFL.”

Mind you, Tony Graziani (now quarterback for the LA Avengers of the AFL) hasn’t played in the NFL in years. But my mother remembered him all the same. This is how much my family was into football in the mid-late 1990s–even my mom recognizes obscure second-string quarterbacks for the Falcons. If you ever wonder why such a girly girl like me knows this much about sports, there’s the reason. (Never mind the fact that my mother force fed the Olympics to me like most mothers force fed their children brussel sprouts.)

And on this note, on June 15, ESPN is announcing where auditions are going to be for the second season of Dream Job. I’m guessing that Boston will be one of the places they hit. And with that comes the inevitable throng of my friends telling me that I should audition. Let me tell you, with the events of the past week, it is very tempting to say screw grad school and cast my fate to the whim of ESPN producers. However, I will not. Despite people saying I have pretty good communication skills (whenever I got interviewed on TV or radio in college, people always said I sounded good), I still am not the best speaker in the world. I stumble over certain words, despite practicing them over and over, and exteramperously, I struggle sometimes. And really, I don’t know enough about sports. I mean, me and the NBA just don’t get along. So there is no way I’d make it past the initial round. I’d be a great story, and I’d be a great token female, but I don’t think I’d make it. But trust me, I’d love to audition and get through to the final rounds, win, get a job on Sportscenter, be paired up with the wicked hot Dream Job Mike and then he’d fall in love with me, we’d get married and then, like, there we’d probably have some kind of reality show about us.

Sigh.

A girl can dream, can’t she?

Hmm…but wait. Those auditions could have hot guys. And some of them would have to be single…

Maybe I’ll think about it.

-Yeah, I just realized why John Elway is not a commentator anywhere. “I just think that, uh, the difference, uh, was uh…” and he looks just absolutely thrilled to be interviewed. “John, how does this compare to your playoff days?” “Yeah, I love the arena football league and uh…”

-So for those of you who don’t know, my apartment got a cat last Monday, and I spoil her like she’s my first born child. The amount of pictures I’ve taken of her since she got here rivals the amount I took of my brother as a toddler. Her name is Annie, and she’s eight weeks old. She’s got the best qualities of my family’s three cats (we’re not crazy cat people–we only had one until two different relatives gave us their cats to “watch” and never took them back)–the cuteness and ditziness of Tabitha, the talkativeness of Xander, and the desire to eat people food like Muffin (I warn you now, I didn’t name any of them)–all in cute little tiny kitty format. Plus she sits in the living room and watches sports with me! (And just sports–she didn’t like it when I watched “Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?” on Style earlier.) I didn’t name her (my apartmentmates did) but the more I think of it, it’s kind of fitting: all the girls in my family have the middle name Ann, and I’ve always intended on keeping on the family name if and when I have daughters, and when I was little, one of my ambitions was to be in the musical Annie (which is a problem when you’re tone deaf.) So it works. And she’s adorable. And it’s so nice to have a pet around again. I never considered myself a pet person, but with Lucky my fish and now with Annie, I’ve realized that I kind of am. Actually, I’m just motherly in general, with all the good and bad that comes with that.

I’ll post the pictures somewhere once I get them developed, which will be in the next few weeks. I still have to finish the roll. Annnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee, come heeeerrrrrreeee, I have 6 pictures to burn on this roll…

-CD recommendation of the week: Avril Lavigne’s new CD. So hurt me. It’s good. Listen to “My Happy Ending.” Man, I didn’t know a 19 year old Canadian could be so bitter. I never really liked Alanis Morrisette because I was way too young when she was big, she swore too much, she complained too much about guys (like, honey, guys aren’t everything, and really, maybe you were some of the problem in those relationships) and sometimes I just like my music stupid. So Avril Lavigne corrects all those problems I had with Alanis Morrisette and puts it in an easily digestible format.

-This entry is a rare example of Part 2 being far better than Part 1.

Off to act as a high school guidance counselor and go pick out colleges and arrange visits for my sister! My mom is like frantic. My sister just wants to go to Ithaca. Neither understands that you can’t put all your eggs in one basket.