Sporting Life

The last two years of my life have been ruled by work and school, but 2008 looks promising. I turned in my last final a few weeks ago, which means my time away from the Sentinel won’t be spent doing homework. I finally have a chance to read something other than anthropology books, and take full advantage of living in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’m glad this is a leap year so I have an extra day to reach some of these goals.

Surf: When people learn I live in Santa Cruz, they always ask if I surf. I want to be able to tell them I’ve done it at least once.

Play pick up basketball: I’m 5-foot-10, can’t jump, and shoot about 25-percent from the field and 15-percent from 3-point land. If you’re looking for a player like that for your weekend hoops game, my e-mail is rmoses@santacruzsentinel.com.

Play tennis: I played all four years of high school and loved it, but stopped once I got to college. I’m better at tennis than I am at basketball, so e-mail me if you need a doubles partner.

Hike: Sometimes I forgot we’re surrounded by red wood forests. I need to start taking a few Sunday afternoon hikes and exploring them … once football is over.

Go to the driving range: I’ve spent the last year unwinding from work by writing midterms. This year I’m going to try hitting the crap out of golf balls and see if my blood pressure drops a few points.

Study Sabermetrics: Maybe becoming even more of a baseball nerd won’t help me with my non-sports related resolution of finding a girlfriend, but I really want to understand how EqA is calculated for some reason.

Read: I haven’t read a book for fun since August.

No Fantasy: I wrote in this blog a while ago that I was retiring from fantasy sports, but then some of my Sentinel colleagues peer pressured me into joining the office football league. As always, I stopped paying attention after Week 3. I’ll be fantasy free in ‘08.

Blog more: Check. Only 365 days to go. How will you be spending them?

I saw the Celtics stomp all over the Kings 89-69 at Arco Arena while I was back home for Christmas. Here are a few things I noticed:

-Double teaming Garnett doesn’t work. He’s too good of a passer and even if Pierce and Allen aren’t open, James Posey will be.

-Triple teaming Garnett doesn’t work. The Kings trapped him multiple times at the high post and down in the block. He fed someone a wide open jumper everytime.

-The Kings went on a couple of runs when they pressed and got lay ups, but they couldn’t get into it very often because they can’t shoot.

-Arco has lost that lovin feeling. It used to be deafening in there. The biggest cheer Wednesday night was when they showed Natalie Gulbis sitting courtside.

A few friends and I spent last weekend at Lake Tahoe for our first snowboarding trip of the season. Unfortunately, we just missed the big storm that was expected last week, so the ski conditions were man-made and windy — so windy that we couldn’t even board on Sunday because Heavenly shut down the lifts just as we got there.

We were crushed. We made the walk of shame back to our hotel and were ready to settle for a day of watching football. But my buddy Kyle refused to spend his time in Tahoe sitting in a hotel room. After a little pep talk, he convinced us to re-don our snow gear and drive to Desolation Wilderness to do some hiking.

We parked next to the freeway overlooking Emerald Bay and started walking into the wilderness. The trail was difficult, alternating between snow-covered sheets of rock and iced-over granite steps. I didn’t have any boots, and my worn down sneakers were slick on the ice. Still, it felt great getting exercise outdoors, and the scenery was gorgeous.

Hikers passed us going the other way on the trail and I noticed one of them had a hockey stick. Just then I realized it was probably cold enough to freeze a lake. We passed another group of hikers with skates tied to their backpacks. Scenes from “Mystery Alaska” began playing in my mind. I imagined playing hockey until sunset in an arena made of mountains and forrest. I had never seen a frozen lake before. Suddenly the walk wasn’t so difficult. I needed to see this Sierra skating oasis before sunset.

Just over a mile into the mountains, we arrived at Eagle Lake. It didn’t look frozen at first, until I noticed the water wasn’t rippling in the strong wind. My friend Tom pointed to the other shore a few hundred yards in the distance where ice skaters were carving lines in the reflection of the mountains.

As I walked towards the shore, clips of Bear Grylls falling through the ice on “Man vs. Wild” replaced the “Mystery Alaska” montage playing in my mind. Kyle never hesitated and ran out onto the frozen surface. I followed, carefully following his path, but not stepping exactly where he stepped. We reached the middle of the lake where the ice was clearer, and I could see it was probably more than five inches deep, thick enough to support a horse. It was a rush. My friend Ariel joined us in the middle as Tom hesitantly tested the ice near the shore. I ran and slid and wished I would find an abandoned pair of ice skates in the snowbank, or at least a puck to play with. We settled for an empty beer bottle, which gained speed as it glided across the ice because of the wind.

Exploring that lake was better than any day we could of had on the slopes. I found an article from the New York Times online last night about the short lake skating season. After the storm this week, I’m sure Eagle Lake is covered with snow, but I’m going to try to get there next year, and bring skates next time.

Sfgate.com just reported today the A’s traded All-Star starter Dan Haren and pitching prospect Connor Robertson to the Diamondbacks for six prospects. The details haven’t come out yet, but my initial reaction is it’s a pretty good move.

The A’s needed to re-stock their farm system after calling up most of their top prospects like Kurt Suzuki and Daric Barton last year. There is very little chance they will make the playoffs this year, so this was the opportunity to reload.

Haren is a great pitcher, but his stats really fell off in the second half of last season with 4.10, 4.15, and 4.82 ERAs in July, August and September. He is definitely an ace, but the A’s won’t be able to afford him when his contract expires in three years, and they wouldn’t have contended until then anyway unless they swung a deal like this.

Arizona was loaded with young talent and Oakland took five of their top 10 prospects with this deal, not including LHP Dana Eveland, who pitched in the majors last season. Outfielder Carlos Gonzalez was considered the best outfield arm in the D-back’s system, and averaged mid-800s in OPS in the minors, though he struck out a ton. Scouts project 19-year-old lefty Brett Anderson to be a solid No. 2 starter in the future. Those seem to be the two prizes in this deal, unless Billy Beane sees something in Eveland, pitcher Greg Smith, infielder Chris Carter and outfielder Aaron Cunningham that nobody else sees, and that could very well be the case.

Think of it this way: If two of these six prospects end up contributing on an A’s playoff team in 2-4 years, this deal was more than worth it. In the meantime, I’d rather watch a young, 70-win team with potential than an 80-win team going nowhere. Neither one is going to win the World Series, but at least youth gives you something to look forward to.

The losers in this deal are every team in the NL West besides the D-backs, who now look like championship contenders after winning the division last year.

Speaking of the NL West, good for the Giants for signing Aaron Rowand instead of trading one of their talented young pitchers to the Blue Jays for Alex Rios, like was rumored. Last season, Rowand ranked 24th in the majors in VORP, while Rios was 47th. So San Francisco got a better hitter who is a Gold Glover without giving up a starter. Sure it cost them $60 million over the next five years, but they need to get younger and trading top pitching prospects is not the way to do it.