This time of year in sports is primarily focused on two areas: baseball season, and the postseason in the NHL and NBA. But there is a little faction out there that holds quite a few fans interests, both casual and rabid, and that is outdoor lacrosse.

 

Take the best aspects of hockey, football and basketball, wrap it up into one sport, and you have lacrosse. And while the sport has been around in this country stretching all the way back to the time Native-American Indians dominated this landscape, the professional side is still fairly new. In fact, indoor lacrosse, a take on the outdoor game using the same dimensions of hockey and indoor soccer, had a pro league created long before the outdoor game could claim one.

 

I won't go into a whole history lesson on Major League Lacrosse-mostly because any wag out there with half a sense can look it up on the MLL or Wikipedia websites-other than to say that it was started in 2001, the commish-and one of the league founders-is Jake Steinfeld, creator of the whole "Body by Jake" line of exercise videos and equipment and actor, and that ESPN covers most of the games, even though most of the broadcasts are tape-delayed and aired during the middle of the day during the following week.

 

MLL decided to expand from its East Coast area with six teams, to a nationwide league of 10 teams (one team in the Central and Mountain, and two teams in the Western time zones) last year. One of the expansion clubs was the Chicago Machine. Since I love lacrosse, and I'm always looking to work in sports one way or another, I offered my services to the Machine as a volunteer game reporter. I did that gig for all six of the Machine home games (regular MLL season is 12 games, from mid May to mid August). While it was a new experience, it wasn't one I enjoyed most of the time. For one thing, writing about lacrosse forces you to constantly change your story, as the scoring is fast and furious. Goals are usually one point, unless you shoot from beyond the two-point arc (a unique innovation to MLL, something similar to the 3-point arc in basketball). But since there's a 60-second shot clock (again echoing basketball), teams are forced to move-move-move upfield and shoot the ball quickly. It's not uncommon to have final scores of 19-11, 20-14, and so on. If a team scores less than double digits, that's considered a bad game.

 

Speaking of bad games, and getting to my second point of why I didn't really enjoy writing for the Machine last year, well, every game I saw was a bad one for Chicago. 0-12 in their inaugural year, I didn't find much good things to say about the Machine, which is what you try to do when you're working for any sort of sports club, and want to try and draw people's interest in the team.

 

So this season, I decided to try my hand at something I've always enjoyed in all sports: statistics. I knew I'd have my hands full doing this for lacrosee because of the reason I gave before with the quick pace of the game, and my lack of real knowledge of the sport, but nevertheless I'd give this a go, knowing I wouldn't get paid a thin dime for my participation.

 

While there was expected change with the team itself (new head coach, coaching staff, and a few new players), there was also change in the front office. Specifically, there's a new head of public relations, Josh Cole, that I answer to directly. At first, I told him of my desire to help out the Machine like I did last year, which he said was fine. But after my change of heart, and lucky timing, Josh said there was a spot available in the stats department, so I jumped at the chance.

 

Basically, I'm a note-taker. I have a scoresheet that keeps track of most of the major stats in lacrosse: goals, assists, shots on and off goal, groundballs (like fumble recoveries in football), etc. We have two "spotters" on the field who happen to be local high school lacrosse coaches that know their stuff (because I sure don't, I'm learning): Bob and Vic. Anytime anything happens in the game-shot, goal, penalty, whatever-they call me up on a walkie talkie, and give me the rundown according to the players involved via their jersey color and number. For example, if the Machine score a goal, this is what Bob and/or Vic tell me: "Shot, red 23. Goal, red 23, assisted by red 17."

 

Since the Machine's primary color is red-and since I'm watching the game myself as a third spotter. . . but mostly as a fan-I know to mark down a shot on goal and goal for #23 of the Machine, with an assist given to #17, as well as the time of the goal. At halftime and at the end of the game, all that info gets put into the computer by Nick, who works for the Machine and is also considered an MLL statistician.

 

Sound simple? It would, if things didn't happen bam-bam-bam all the time. It takes a practiced eye to figure out what's going on the field, so I usually leave it up to Bob and Vic to guide me through the game.

 

My first game doing all of this happened May 19 at the Machine's new venue, Toyota Park. Toyota Park is primarily the home of the Chicago Fire of the MLS, but it sure is a step up from where the Machine played last year. While Illinois Benedictine College Field is nice for lacrosse, it still doesn't hold a candle to what the Fire have. Toyota Park is located in Bridgeview, on the south side of Chicago, and it's a real gem of a place. Seats 20,000 comfortably, all with great views of the field. Fantastic scoreboard at one end that shows the action on the field in crystal-clear. . . well, whatever they're using it's nice.

 

And naturally, my first time at the park, I got a little lost. I tried to follow the directions of how to get to the press box as best as I could, but wound up in a sort of a dead end. Plus, there's no elevator up to the press box, just a bunch of stairs. While it wasn't a hot summer day, it was still pretty warm, and I was sweating a bit when I finally made it, saying "hi" to Josh out of breath.

 

But getting to the press box was worth it. See, at IBC, the press box is all enclosed, and the right-hand wall blocks out view of the one and only scoreboard. Not at Toyota Park, where the press box is all open (they do have space heaters set into the ceiling in case it gets chilly), with fantastic views of the field, scoreboard, and even downtown Chicago off in the far northeast distance. Midway Airport isn't too far away from the stadium, something I found out when I kept seeing jets take off from there and fly high over the field.

 

Game time was 7:00 pm, but Josh wanted me there at 4pm just to get used to what I was going to be doing this season. After that took 15 minutes, there was a lot of sitting around, eating free pizza and drinking free pop or water, and watching the end of the Cubs-Sox game on a plasma TV. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

 

But from 7pm, til the game ended after 9, it was all business, action and craziness. Halftime came and went like nothing, because Nick and I were trying to enter in game stats when we found out how bad was the stats program we were using. The Machine now stand 0-13 for their history after a 20-14 loss to the Los Angeles Riptide, one of their division rivals. The Machine started out great, treating the 4000 or so fans (which was an attendance record, and hopefully one which will be broken repeatedly this season) to a 2-0 start. But what happened after that was like a lot of the Machine's losses last year: opposing team runs off a bunch of points, Machine tries to catch up by firing wildly at the net, and the game's over.

 

While I was disappointed in the Machine's performance, I was even more disappointed in how our stat-taking turned out. MLL uses a program called Pointstreak, which is just fine if you're covering a hockey game. But there are differences between hockey and lacrosse, the biggest one (and the one we had the most trouble with) is shots on and off goal. Hockey doesn't count shots off goal, lacrosse does. After tallying shots taken by both teams, we were coming way off in our totals. After checking and double-checking what everyone had, we called Pointstreak to figure out what the hell we were doing wrong. Minutes flew by, and by the time we got an answer from Pointstreak, it was almost 11pm. Bascially, the program was only keeping track of shots on goal. Since we were keeping track of both shots on and off, there was a discrepancy. The solution? Give all the extra shots to one player who didn't have any stats, and write a note to MLL about this.

 

Yep, gotta love 21st-century technology.

 

So I got home pretty late, but other than that, my first time as a lacrosse statistician was a great one. I got to watch a game for free, eat for free, and keep track of stats. How jamming is that?

 

Well, had I got paid for it. . . that would have been better. But as I've learned working in sports: you take the opportunities when they come, no matter how bad they might look at first.

 

I can't wait for our next home game June 2. It's fast, it's crazy and a little nerve-wracking, but I love what I do, and like statistics, that counts.