Recommended Reads: The Sporting News and Reflections on a Hockey Season

By now, you know that The Sporting News magazine has named Pittsburgh as the Best Sports City of the year. I scanned the cover and the photo that accompanies the article for you. Apologies for the quality of the scans - both the magazine and the book (discussed below) are oversized, so the cover of the scanner didn't close completely, so there is some "interference" in the images as a result.

Check out how 6'5" Big Ben Roethlisberger dwarfs our 5'11" Siddo on the cover...

Not surprisingly, there are several Pennsylvania towns on the list of 399 best cities for sports. Pittsburgh is number 1 while Philadelphia came in 2^nd. State College and Altoona, the two cities I live between, appear on the list at 48 and 334 respectively. Also representing for the Keystone State are Bethlehem (218), Lewisburg (243), Easton (254), Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (261), Loretto (271), Erie (272), Long Pond (279), Allentown (297), Hershey (317), Reading (320), Harrisburg (326), Latrobe (327), and Williamsport (382).

...but it looks like they got our Captain a box to stand on for this shot! ;)

Also in The Sporting News is an article called 2 out of 3 Ain't Bad: Votes from 121 Experts - including 35 Hall of Famers - put a pair of Penguins in the trio at the top of SN's 50 Best NHL Players. It's a mouthful of a title, but it sums up the contents exactly. I bet you've already guessed who the top three were: 1. SID, 2. A-hOle™, and 3. GENO! Members of the voting panel included Head Coach Dan Bylsma, Phil Bourque, Bob Errey, Billy Guerin, Craig Patrick, Martin St. Louis, Patrick Kane, Joe Sakic, Patrik Elias, and Jeremy Roenick to name just a few.


The other publication I wanted to mention tonight is this year's installment of Reflections on a Hockey Season. I've been buying these books since they debuted in 2007. There are two reasons you should be buying them, too. For one thing, the photos are amazing. The books are full of some of the best photos you'll see in all of sports. In the first edition, my favorite is a photo of a darkened arena with a single spotlight shining on Curtis Sanford of the St. Louis Blues. The second edition has several photos from the 01-01-08 Winter Classic. :) The third and newest edition, which was released last week, has a bunch of great shots from the Pens' Stanley Cup win. There is, however, an epic fail - the team photo was stretched over two pages, and it just so happens that our title man gets lost in the seam of the binding. The publishers made up for it, however, with an amazing shot of Sid and Mario in the locker room following the win:


The second and most important reason you should be buying these books is because their proceeds benefit Hockey Fights Cancer. If you head over to shop.nhl.com's HFC section to make a purchase, consider at the very least adding Reflections 2008 to your cart - it's on sale for less than $10.00!! :)

Tomorrow we host the Blues. I'll be watching it online... It will be weird. Oh, how I hate DirecTV and Comcast.

GO PENS!!!!!!!!!