You might have heard that the World Series That Nobody Wanted ended recently, with the Not New York Yankees defeating the New York Yankees four games to two. I will now turn my attention to more important matters of sport.

No, not LeBron, although let's talk about his Nike commercial that showed about 30,000 times last night to coincide with his NBA regular-season debut. The ad shows LeBron taking the ball just across halfcourt, and then freezing as if in indecision. Prospective Nike customers are treated to 30 seconds or so of LeBron staring at the floor, while the arena goes silent. The commercial ends with LeBron breaking into laughter and driving forward. (To watch the commercial, go here, click Launch, then click the LeBron rectangle.) Did everybody else hate this commercial as much as my poker buddies and I did? Good.

Anyway, only 64 days remain until the Colorado Mammoth opening home game against the San Jose Stealth. The Mammoth? The Stealth? Perhaps I should explain. The Mammoth and Stealth are teams in the National Lacrosse League. Yes, lacrosse -- the game where you toss the ball around with the sticks with the nets on the end. I am a fan of professional lacrosse.

I had never seen lacrosse played before last season. But my friend G-Dog and I had seen some billboards around town for the Mammoth, and decided to give it a shot. Why not? The tickets were cheap enough. We showed up at the Pepsi Center about 20 minutes before game time, figuring that getting tickets would be no problem. It was lacrosse, for chrissake.

We were wrong. A line stretched from the box office out to the street. G-Dog and I couldn't believe it. The game would have been half over by the time we got tickets, so we went out drinking instead.

We made sure to get tickets ahead of time for the next home game the following week against the Vancouver Ravens. I was hooked immediately. If you like hockey -- that is, if you like to watch Canadians hit each other with sticks -- you will love lacrosse. Lacrosse is full of scoring, checking, fighting, and fast end-to-end action. The arena was packed and the fans were raucous, even though most of them, like us, had no idea what was going on. The Mammoth shocked the league by drawing over 17,000 fans a game, more than the world champion Not New York Yankees drew this past season.

If you live in the San Jose, Phoenix, Anaheim, Denver, Buffalo, Calgary, Rochester, Philadelphia, Toronto, or Vancouver areas, you must sample some lacrosse this winter.

+posted by Lawrence @ 10/30/2003 06:53:00 PM