How can you tell if a columnist is complaining? His lips are moving.

I know, this is minor in the scheme of all the potential disasters and pitfalls that could happen on the first day of an event as big and widespread as the Empire State Games.

But to me, this was big. At all the team sports events I attended today, and I saw plenty of them, only the ice hockey at the Ice Hutch in Mount Vernon had rosters with players and their uniform numbers for the hundreds of fans in attendance.

And there were good crowds at all the venues I visited. The ESG puts out a program, and inside the program are the rosters for every team in every event, every sport. But there are no uniform numbers.

At girls basketball, there was a roster with numbers taped to a table in the lobby. You could take your program and write the numbers in if you were so inclined. But there were several hundred people there, and they did not have rosters.

How hard could it be to photocopy rosters. Baseball, I was told, was working in them this afternoon. In some cases, it was just an oversight. Hopefully it gets fixed.

Some things I saw at the Games today:

I saw a basketball player from, I think, Central—sorry, I saw so many games that I got confused—save a ball while leaping out of bounds in the defensive end of the court, then run completely around the press table near the stands and back inbounds in the offensive end to join a fast break. He didn’t get the ball, and the officials didn’t seem to notice his short cut.

I saw the Hudson Valley open men’s basketball team win at Iona, matching the number of wins at Iona by Iona this past season.

I saw two girls soccer goals while looking for a parking space, and then leaving the lot, an hour apart at Manhattanville. The first one made it 1-1, the second 2-2. What are the odds?

I saw one of my favorite hockey players in the area, Tommy Natoli of Suffern, who was backing up today for HV (and who calls me Mr. Carpiniello, which I hate). It made me realize that two of the best goalies in the area, in two different sports in these Games, have the same last names but jumbled: Natoli and John Jay lacrosse goalie Chris Latino.

I saw plenty of stuff. Some of it is in our “Tick Tock” diary in The Journal News and on LoHud.com tomorrow. I also wrote about my trek around the area—and about the rosters—in my column. “Check out our ESG Web page”:http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=SPORTS10. I hate to brag, but it’s pretty good.

And “to view our Empire State Games blog, click here”:http://esgames.lohudblogs.com.