Category Archives: Sports

I really MUST start paying more attention to sports: Michelle Jenneke video

Probably everybody else out there saw this last year, but since I’m not much of one to follow sports, I missed it.

The way I ran across it was… bizarre. Trying to do research for this previous post, I was watching this excruciatingly boring video, and when it was done, YouTube took pity on me and suggested the Michelle Jenneke clip.

At first, I thought it was just a music video. Then, I realized that it was actual footage of an actual athlete warming up.

It really made me smile. And I don’t mean in a dirty old man way. After all, this girl is younger than any of my daughters.

No, I shared it with my wife, and she saw it, too. What an amazing endorsement of life.

The only bad feeling it engenders is envy. Look at her. What would it be like to feel that good, that young, that fit, that strong, that ready — even for a moment? I don’t think I ever felt like that, including when I was her age.

But setting the envy aside, she’s inspiring. Makes you want to embrace life. I may actually get on my elliptical trainer (which sits, neglected, a few feet away as I type this) before the day is out, and see it I can get enough endorphins flowing to feel one fraction of the way she seems to feel in that video.

But I’m not going to try to warm up like that first. I would probably hurt myself. Besides, it wouldn’t look as good on me…

Top Five baseball movies, 2013 version

7 Replies

Marking the start of the season and the release of the new movie about Jackie Robinson, the WSJ offered a slideshow of stills from baseball movies this morning, which was fun to flip through.

It didn’t really make judgments or rank them. It just grouped them into categories: One Last Shot (“The Rookie,” “Mr. 3000″); The Church of Baseball (“The Natural,” “Field of Dreams”); Game Changers (“Moneyball,” “A League of Their Own”), etc.

But what’s a list without a Top Five? So I quickly drew one up. And only after drawing it up, while feeling a bit of déjà vu, did I realized I’d done this before. (When I realized that, I almost trashed this post, but then thought maybe some of y’all would enjoy it anyway.) The new list differs slightly from what I said before, indicating that list-making is affected by mood. Or something. Here’s what I came up with this morning:

The Natural — I don’t care how sappy it is. Baseball is sappy. I don’t care that it’s nothing like the cynical novel on which it’s based — which I hated. I like that it’s a celebration. I like the gauzy sentimentality. Not in all movies, but in this one, because it fits the subject matter. Roy Hobbs is what we want our baseball heroes to be, and we have a right to want that.
Major League — Silly, yes, but it captures the fun of the game. I watched it again recently, and wondered what had happened to Wesley Snipes. Turns out he’s in prison. I had no idea.
Eight Men Out — A baseball tragedy. Or morality play. It’s like the entrance of the Serpent into the Garden of Eden that was baseball. Still, there’s so much innocence among the guilty, and so many gradations of corruption, that you find yourself sympathizing (for some of them), even if they can’t honestly say it ain’t so. Nice ensemble of actors, too.
The Sandlot — Very much like my childhood, since I never played organized ball until senior Little League when I was 15. I spent a lot of time on sandlots. Yes, this is about mythmaking (although on a less heroic level than “The Natural”), but its cliches and stereotypes are so lovingly drawn, and they ring true.
Field of Dreams — You know what? I changed my mind about this. See below.

Initially, I was going to say sorry, ladies… I couldn’t include “A League of their Own” because there was crying in it, and there’s no crying in baseball. That was my first thought this morning. Last time, I included it at number five, on account of the deep flaws in “Field of Dreams.” Such as Ray Liotta being nothing like Shoeless Joe Jackson. (D.B. Sweeney in “Eight Men Out” was a thousand times better.) And the famous writer not being J.D. Salinger, which is who he was in the novel.

And because its gauzy sentimentality seemed more forced and artificial, unlike in “The Natural” and “The Sandlot.” Like the difference between sugar and saccharine.

So, never mind. I think I was right in 2011… In fact, the only reason I’m posting this is to celebrate the season, and give any of y’all who missed the previous post a chance to voice your opinions.

Better than the planets aligning

4 Replies

I didn’t realize that Major League Baseball got under way this coming Sunday until I saw this.

Well, now I know, thanks to the MLB Memes Facebook page.

And to think, there are some here on this blog who don’t believe in American exceptionalism…

Rumsfeld’s right about this one: Bring back wrestling

13 Replies

I may not have been happy about the way he ran the war in Iraq, but I’m in complete agreement with Donald Rumsfeld in decrying the insane decision by the International Olympic Committee to drop wrestling:

Wrestling is a universal sport. To compete, all that is needed is an opponent and a flat surface. Anyone can participate, regardless of geography, weather, race, gender, culture or economic background. It doesn’t require a golf course, a swimming pool or a horse. More than 170 nations from all over the globe have competed. In the 1996 Olympics alone, 75 countries were represented on the mat. Athletes from a great number of nations have won medals — countries as diverse as Iran, South Korea, Sweden, Cuba and Hungary. Indeed, more countries have been represented on the winners’ podium for wrestling than for nearly any other sport.

Wrestling uniquely encapsulates the Olympic spirit, even though it harkens back to older and more martial virtues, rather than the arts festival and Kumbaya session that some may prefer the modern Games to be. Few other sports are so directly aggressive: It is you vs. one other person. There is nothing to hide behind; there are no time-outs. It is all up to you. Yet, precisely because of those conditions, few other sports create such remarkable camaraderie among their participants…

Yeah, I know, some of y’all’s hackles are rising over that Kumbaya crack. But hey, the Committee invited wild speculation with its unexplained, secret vote.

And what did they vote to replace wrestling with? An idiotic nonsport called the modern pentathlon:

You might have missed the modern pentathlon last summer in London, where only 26 countries participated in the combined shooting, horseback-riding, running, swimming and fencing event. In the same Olympics, there were wrestling medalists from 29 countries. In other words: more countries won medals in wrestling than competed in the modern pentathlon. Globally, the TV audience for wrestling averages 23 million viewers. The modern pentathlon averages 12.5 million.

… which calls for someone to quote Dave Barry and say, “I am not making this up.”

I was a wrestler in high school. I had an undistinguished career. Both years I was on my high school team, after weeks of training, something intervened to knock me out of contention (bad case of bronchitis one year, a neck injury the next). But I had enough exposure to appreciate a pure sport for what it was.

I can’t even begin to imagine what those clowns on the Committee were thinking.

My Top Ten favorite ads from the 2013 Super Bowl

67 Replies

To hundreds of millions of Americans, today is the day after Super Sunday. To me, it’s Monday. (Hey, if I were a football fan I’d use those Roman numbers instead of “2013″ in my headline.)

Still, I took some time this morning to look at the ads from the big event last night for the ADCO blog, and following are the ones I put in my Top Ten. (“Top Ten” may not sound very selective, until you reflect that there were 47 of them. Really.)

Here were my admittedly simplistic, off-the-top-of-my-head criteria:

Does it sell the product?
If it features a celebrity, does it make good use of that star power (or is it just a gratuitous appearance)?
Is it original, clever, creative, witty, funny, whatever?

Anyway, here’s my list:

Time Warner Cable: “Walking Dead” — Definitely sells the product, and most awesome use of star power: Isn’t Daryl everybody’s favorite “Walking Dead” survivor? “Yes, ma’am.” See video above.
Mercedes: “Soul” — Great casting (nobody else can do that evil look like Willem Dafoe), and only Martin Scorsese has made better use of the Stones’ music. I was wondering how they were going to get out of the trap of the Mercedes actually being a devilish temptation; it was handled deftly, by punching the car’s (relative) low price.
Dodge: “Farmer” — Accomplished what the “Jeep” one tried to do, and did it in an unexpected way. This one is the rightful successor to the much-maligned, but remembered, Clint Eastwood one.
Kraft MiO Fit: “Liftoff” — I’m gonna miss that character. Or maybe not. Good thing we have Netflix. My favorite line of his from last episode of “”30 Rock”: When he calls a computer “the pornography box.”
Volkswagen: “Get Happy” — Not a match for the Darth Vader kid, but a laudably original attempt.
Samsung: “The Next Big Thing” — Two of Judd Apatow’s stars took it to one level, Saul from “Breaking Bad” took it to the next.
Toyota: “Wish Granted” — Funny. Good star power. Give it a B+.
Go Daddy: “Big Idea” — Had the hurdle of communicating (to the remaining millions who don’t have their own websites) what Go Daddy, does; jumped over it nicely. Far better than the other GoDaddy ad that everybody’s on about.
Hyundai Turbo: “Stuck Behind” — Loved the “Breaking Bad” reference, if that’s what it was (the guy in the hazmat suit).
Budweiser: “Brotherhood” — Deftly evokes the question, “Can a really big horse be man’s best friend?” (See video below.)

The resurgence of The Chicken Curse?

3 Replies

522792_216874205110417_1504477813_n

My friend Doug Nye is gone, and many think his great discovery, The Chicken Curse, is gone with him.

But it pops up now and then.

The Chicken Curse, properly understood, is not just about the Gamecocks football team losing. So the recent winning seasons by the home team don’t mean the Curse is dead. In fact, as I was introduced to the concept in the late 1980s, it’s more about people who otherwise have nothing to do with South Carolina being done in by an incidental association with our flagship university, particularly with anything bearing on its athletic programs.

Under this interpretation, for instance, we understand that Gary Hart missed his chance at the Democratic nomination for president in 1988 because of his relationship with a former USC cheerleader, Donna Rice.

Anyway, the thing that brings all this to mind is the fact that, just days before the BCS Championship game, The Wall Street Journal carelessly decided to run a lengthy interview with Lou Holtz talking about how great the Irish were this year, headlined, “Why Notre Dame Is Back on Top.”

Textbook case of the Curse, as I was taught to understand it…

City’s ice skating rink extends its run by a fortnight

15 Replies

Just got this release this morning from the city of Columbia:

MAIN STREET ICE TO REMAIN OPEN FOR TWO MORE WEEKS

The City of Columbia has announced that the seasonal ice skating rink in downtown Columbia that was set to close this coming Sunday, January 6, will remain open until the M.L.K. holiday on January 21.

Main Street Ice has become quite a popular attraction since its opening on Thanksgiving Day 2012. Thousands of area residents and visitors from across the state have made their way onto the ice over the past six weeks, bringing added excitement into downtown Columbia and increased traffic for surrounding businesses.

“We are pleased that so many have been receptive and supportive of this outdoor ice skating experience thus far and we hope that many more will take advantage of the opportunity to come out now that we are extending our season,” said Jeff Caton, Director of City of Columbia Parks and Recreation.

The ice skating rink will still operate seven days a week. New hours of operation will be as follows:

Monday –Friday, 4 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Saturday, 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.

Sunday, 1 p.m. – 9 p.m.

The rink will operate on special hours on closing day from 11 a.m – 10 p.m.

Skating fees will include skate rentals and will remain at $10 for adults and $8 for children ages 12 and under. Special senior and military discounts will be offered.

Be sure to head on out to Main Street Ice on Saturday, January 5, 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. for special guest appearances by the clowns of RINGLING BROS. AND BARNUM & BAILEY® DRAGONS, PLAYING THE COLONIAL LIFE ARENA MARCH 7 – 10, IN THEIR CLOWNING AROUND THE MIDLANDS TOUR. Come take a picture with Cherie and join her as she laces up her skates and takes her clowning onto the ice!

The release doesn’t answer my main question, which is… how does the ice stay frozen on days when the temp is in the 60s?

In honor of our late friend, Doug Nye

The Ron Morris/Steve Spurrier brouhaha

21 Replies

Things have come to this: The other night, Mr. Darcy asked me whether Ron Morris had been fired by The State.

OK, so it wasn’t actually Mr. Darcy, who after all is a fictional character (don’t tell Bridget Jones that!), who in any case would be long dead had he ever lived. No, it was local actor Gene Aimone, who will portray Mr. Darcy in the SC Shakespeare Company’s production of “Pride and Prejudice,” which opens at Saluda Shoals Friday night. See, I can get a plug into anything.

I told him I had no idea. I wondered why he asked. He said hostilities had resumed between Coach Steve Spurrier and Ron, and that the coach had said something mysterious on the radio, or on TV, or on one of those newfangled gadgets that Mr. Darcy has no business listening to, suggesting that there would be developments forthcoming that would pleasing, at least to him.

I said I ran into Ron at Barnes and Noble several months ago and we chatted pleasantly for a time, and he appeared alive and well, and that’s the last I knew of him.

And I thought no more of it, until Neil McLean mentioned it over breakfast at Cap City this morning. Neil is the new executive director of New Carolina (replacing the retiring George Fletcher), and the son of Tom, my old boss at The State. Neil and I were talking economic development and world travel and all sorts of things, when suddenly he, too, got on the subject of Morris and Spurrier.

And I realized that I was probably the only person in South Carolina not fully briefed on this burning issue. So I went and read up on it. The State itself did not have anything on the controversy, beyond this self-effacing column by Ron (the message, in a nutshell: It was business, not personal).

Then I found this column by Dan Cook at the Free Times:

For a man who seemingly has everything — a multimillion-dollar salary and one of the most successful teams in college football, for starters, not to mention a Heisman trophy — Steve Spurrier is no doubt lacking at least one thing: a thick skin.

How else to explain Spurrier’s repeated tantrums about the writings and comments of a sports columnist, Ron Morris at The State?

At first glance — and second, third and fourth — the situation seems utterly absurd. How can the mighty Spurrier, a legendary coach revered by literally millions of college football fans, even care what a lowly local sports columnist says?

And yet, he does — apparently a lot.

Last week, it was a comparison Morris made between Penn State and the University of South Carolina that set Spurrier off.

Speaking off the cuff on Bill King’s XM radio show in response to a question about whether Spurrier would take questions at an upcoming press conference (Spurrier had recently instituted a policy of refusing questions), Morris said, “I think it’s a real test of the [USC] administration. This is how things like Penn State happen — when the administration won’t step up and confront the football coach, and he becomes all-powerful. When the football coach begins to dictate company policy, I think you’re asking for trouble.”

Spurrier responded in a later radio appearance by implying that if he had to put up with Morris any longer, he might as well retire and “head to the beach” instead. “That’s not part of the job, so we’re going to get it straightened out,” Spurrier said…

So now I see what it was about. And as I see the actual words Ron spoke, I see the matter quite differently from the Gamecock fans who have gotten so upset over it. I understand how a fan (to the extent that I can understand a sports fan, a breed not unlike political partisans, who often mystify me) would get upset if he heard, “Hey, that Ron Morris compared the Gamecock football program to the Penn State mess.” But of course, that would be a grossly unfair characterization of what he said.

To a dispassionate observer, it’s obvious that he was saying this situation was like that other in that you had a popular, successful coach, and if that popular coach becomes beyond reproach in your community, and becomes the tail that wags the dog that is your state’s flagship university, that’s a problem.

While the statement can be defended on rational grounds, there’s no question that Ron stepped in it, and that all this emotion could have been avoided if he’d just found a better way to express himself.

Of course, if he’d simply said, “Steve Spurrier’s getting too big for his breeches,” and not mentioned Penn State, he’d still be in trouble, because, well, Mr. Spurrier actually does happen to be a coach who has become beyond reproach in his community. A lot of people are fine with that state of affairs. As a skeptical journalist, Ron seems to have a problem with it. And therein lies the conflict.

Paul Ryan: The Deerslayer, policy wonk version

6 Replies

OK, you know veep candidate Paul Ryan is a major policy wonk. One thing you might not think of him as is a good old boy. But a magazine with a name that sounds like a stutter – Deer and Deer Hunting — is aiming to set you straight. See this release:

Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan opens up to Deer & Deer Hunting Magazine about his love of the outdoors.

“Bowhunting is my passion,” said Ryan to Deer & Deer Hunting’s Editor Alan Clemons. “Studying the strategy, preparing food plots, the strategy of where a dominant buck is living or will be moving and then being in position to get a shot, that’s really exciting.”

Ryan talks more about his childhood, being a father and balancing his hunting and Capitol life in an exclusive interview with Deer & Deer Hunting. The column will be in the October issue of Deer & Deer Hunting and will be available on newsstands September 4.

If you’d like to learn more about the interview, I can provide you with the pre-released interview, a press release, a copy of the magazine issue or any additional information you may need.

For more information on Deer & Deer Hunting, please go to www.deeranddeerhunting.com. For any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

I didn’t get to read the whole story because I didn’t want to give the mag my email address and have a whole new batch of emails to delete (I’ve made that mistake too many times in the past). But I confess to being curious as to whether the piece contains any other quotes as, um, interesting as “Studying the strategy, preparing food plots, the strategy of where a dominant buck is living or will be moving and then being in position to get a shot, that’s really exciting.”

Yeah, OK. I thought he only got that excited about cutting Medicare costs.

Of course, I’m a bit of an old hand with a bow myself. One day when we were in England last year, we were strolling in Hyde Park and came across a sort of carnival, which had a booth called “Robin Hood,” which enticed marks to shoot an arrow at balloons. Sure, it could have been a trap set by the sheriff, but I couldn’t resist. I immediately laid down my five quid (the real Robin Hood would have loved to find a fat friar carrying that on him), gave my camera to my wife to record the moment, and took my three shots. Unfortunately, my wife thought the camera was set for still photos rather than video, and merely aimed it at me, pressed the shutter release, and turned away.

So it was that she missed when I actually burst one of the balloons. But the great tragedy was that she missed my next shot, which split the previous arrow… yeah, that’s the ticket…

OK, so that last part didn’t really happen. But I did get one of the balloons. Of course, I’m sure that doesn’t match the excitement that Ryan speaks of. But that’s OK by me.

Take THAT, ye oppressor of good Saxon yeomen!

From ‘legitimate rape’ to the Country Club

82 Replies

Just a quick post to give y’all a chance to comment on today’s two main trending stories. First this:

Rep. Todd Akin said Monday that he will not give in to calls for him to end his Missouri Senate campaign after his controversial comments about “legitimate rape.”

“I’m not a quitter. My belief is we’re going to move this thing forward,” he said during an appearance Monday afternoon on Mike Huckabee’s radio show. “To quote my friend John Paul Jones, I’ve not yet begun to fight.”

Akin also said he still sees himself as the right candidate to take on Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), even as many Republicans have begun to doubt it. He apologized for his remarks but said it doesn’t mean he should end his campaign.

“I feel just as strongly as ever that my background and ability will be an asset in replacing Claire McCaskill and restoring some sanity in government,” Akin said. “Just because someone makes a mistake doesn’t make them useless.”

Akin has found himself in hot water after saying in an interview airing Sunday that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy. Akin was explaining his no-exceptions policy on abortion…

And then this:

The Augusta National Golf Club, home of The Masters tournament, said Monday it had admitted female members for the first time, following years of criticism both public and private over its stubbornly-held policy of admitting only men as members.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina investment banker Darla Moore were both invited and accepted membership, golf’s most prominent club said in a statement. The club’s next season opens in October.

The step breaks with the 79-year-old private club’s practice of admitting only men, who make up a veritable who’s who of corporate America. The club has been under pressure from corporations, some members, a prominent women’s organization, and most recently President Barack Obama, who said through a spokesman before this year’s Masters tournament in April that he thought women should be invited to join….

I congratulate Darla and Ms. Rice, assuming of course that they wanted to join. If they invited me, of course, I’d have to refuse in light of the Marx rule (that would sound so much better than admitting I couldn’t afford the dues). I’m not sure whether this changes anything in the larger picture, unless they didn’t have ladies’ tees before. But as I said, I’m happy for the new members, especially since I know one of them.

I am not capable of thinking like a feminist or anyone else who is into Identity Politics, but I’m imagining that if I were a feminist, I’d be looking at today as sort of a mixed bag. You win some ground, you lose some ground.

No, scratch that. Given the general reaction to Akin, it looks more like a win-win.

One last thought — someone needs to break it to Nikki Haley that Darla got in and she didn’t…

George Will on Football’s Big Problem

9 Replies

Will asks: "Are you ready for some football? First, however, are you ready for some autopsies?"

As that season prepares to invade and occupy us once again — even as I type this, its bulky troops are training to the point of apoplexy in this heat — I find myself pleased to contemplate George Will’s Sunday column. After describing several recent suicides by former NFL players, two of whom shot themselves in the chest so as to preserve their damaged brains for study, he shared this thought:

Football is bigger than ever, in several senses. Bear Bryant’s 1966 undefeated Alabama team had only 19 players who weighed more than 200 pounds. The heaviest weighed 223. The linemen averaged 194. The quarterback weighed 177. Today, many high school teams are much bigger. In 1980, only three NFL players weighed 300 or more pounds. In 2011, according to pro-football-reference.com, there were 352, including three 350-pounders. Thirty-one of the NFL’s 32 offensive lines averaged more than 300.

Various unsurprising studies indicate high early mortality rates among linemen resulting from cardiovascular disease. For all players who play five or more years, life expectancy is less than 60; for linemen it is much less…

Will is so good at disdain, I particularly appreciate his taking on football.

Another good bit:

In the NFL, especially, football is increasingly a spectacle, a game surrounded by manufactured frenzy, on the grass and in the increasingly unpleasant ambiance of the fans in the stands. Football on the field is a three-hour adrenaline-and-testosterone bath. For all its occasional elegance and beauty, it is basically violence for, among other purposes, inflicting intimidating pain. (Seau said his job was “to inflict pain on my opponent and have him quit.”) The New Orleans Saints’ “bounty” system of cash payments to players who knocked opposing players out of games crossed a line distinguishing the essence of the game from the perversion of it. This is, however, an increasingly faint line.

Not that America will pay attention.

Speaking of which… an answering column — more of a rant, really — has already appeared in The Washington Times, headlined “Preserve football and cancel George Will’s column.” Conveniently, it is accompanied by this perfect illustration of what Will described as “the increasingly unpleasant ambiance of the fans in the stands.” The rant calls into question Will’s characterization of football fans as “a tribe not known for savoring nuance.” But who can look upon that photo and doubt that description?

Yes, many good and sensible people, including some I love and respect, look forward to the coming season. I just hope they will read this column and think about it. They, at least — unlike the people in that photo — are still reachable, I hope.

The Blackminton Scandal of 2012

10 Replies

Not that I care about this, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do a play on the “Black Sox Scandal.”

Beyond that, I really am sort of indignant at the creepiness of people who would deliberately lose in order to eventually win by getting to play weaker opponents. It’s just despicable on a number of levels:

Associated Press9:07 a.m. CDT, August 1, 2012

photo by Arne Nordmann

LONDON — Eight female badminton doubles players were disqualified Wednesday from the London Olympics after trying to lose matches to receive a more favorable place in the tournament.

The Badminton World Federation announced its ruling after investigating two teams from South Korea and one each from China and Indonesia. It punished them for “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport” in matches Tuesday night….

IOC Vice President Craig Reedie, the former head of the international badminton federation, welcomed the decision.

“Sport is competitive,” Reedie told the AP. “If you lose the competitive element, then the whole thing becomes a nonsense.

“You cannot allow a player to abuse the tournament like that, and not take firm action. So good on them.”

Good on them, indeed.

It’s not that I care about whether something is detrimental to the “sport” of badminton, which seems perfectly adapted to the way most of us experience it — as a backyard mockery of sport for klutzes staggering about with racket in one hand and a beer in the other. How is this an Olympic sport to begin with? (And don’t even get me started on how I feel about having the Horse Guards Parade become a venue of beach volleyball, of all bogus sports. I imagine former members of the Horse Guards are harrumphing up and down the length of Britain. I certainly would be, were I they. What have they done with the horses while this nonsense is going on? That’s what I want to know…)

But it is indeed a violation of what sport is about.

It reminds me of my longtime nemesis in slow-pitch softball, the opposing player who deliberately tries to draw a walk. I played a lot of slow-pitch softball in my younger days, and I was usually the pitcher, because I was the only one willing to stand there lazily tossing the ball from a mound much closer to the plate than in baseball, at bruisers who were doing their best to send it back rocketing at my head.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been a slow-pitch softball pitcher, but it is next to impossible to keep throwing strikes — much, much harder than if you get to throw straight at the plate. You have to loft it up into the air just so, at a prescribed height well above the batter’s head, and then have the momentum fall away from it at precisely the right point and the right speed so that it drops toward the ground exactly through the strike zone.

The point of slow-pitch softball — as I always wanted to scream at the cretins who stood there with their bats on their shoulders, waiting for the walk — is to allow everyone to hit the ball, and get it into play. It’s not a duel between pitcher and batter. It’s a small step away from putting the ball on a tee. It’s to make the game fun, not to avoid hitting for strategic reasons. And of course, after the first guy stood there and took a walk, I got so angry that I couldn’t throw strikes for anything, and soon I was walking in runs, and had to be relieved. Which is way more humiliating than being taken out in the Major Leagues.

OK, so it’s not exactly the same thing. But it ticks me off the same way…

So did they win those games, or didn’t they?

20 Replies

Photo by Melissa Dale from Meadville, USA

First, I’d like to know whether this Penn State thing is over yet. Oh, I know it will never be over in terms of what happened to the victims of that pervert coach. May God ease their pain. I just want to know whether, now that he has been duly convicted, the bulletins will stop coming on my iPhone, and interrupting me as though war had been declared, as though what happens or doesn’t happen to a college football program in a whole other part of the country from me were of earth-shattering importance. Which it isn’t. I think it reached the height of absurdity on Saturday (or was it Sunday?) when I was awakened (I like to sleep late on weekends) by bulletins telling me that this Joe Paterno person’s statue was being taken down. Really. A statue.

As of this moment, there are four recent bulletins still available on my phone from The New York Times reaching back nine days. Two of them are about Penn State (one is about the Colorado shootings, the other about the new Yahoo CEO). I still have five WLTX bulletins, going back about two days (WLTX has a low “bulletin” threshold) . Two are about Penn State, one of them being about said statue. Another is also about college football, telling me that former Gamecock coach Jim Carlen has died. The other two are actually about things that people in the community might need to know about urgently — the standoff in Five Points on Saturday.

Now, another question…

The most recent bulletins to pester me had to do with this morning’s decision by the NCAA as to how it would punish Penn State, in the wake of last week’s finding of a long-term coverup.

First, what the NCAA did not do: It did not close down the football program. If you want to say the program was rotten because of the cover-up, it seems that would be a logical thing to do. But they didn’t. Whatever.

But what grabbed my attention was among the steps taken against the program was that “all victories from 1998-2011 have been vacated,” to which I went, “Huh?”

Excuse me: Did those players win those games or didn’t they? If they won them, they won them. If they didn’t win them, they didn’t win them. Period.

I Tweeted that out early today, and one reader immediately responded to agree with me. But others started arguing. Beth Padgett, editorial page editor of The Greenville News, explained, “Games won Wins don’t count,” which may make sense to football fans, but not to me. I replied, “You’ve lost me. Probably because I’m not fan, don’t understand the mystique. Facts are facts. Wins are wins. Not that I care…”

Garrett Epps responded to my assertion that “they either WON those football games or DIDN’T, regardless of the unrelated, horrible things some coach did,” with a one-word question: “unrelated?”

Absolutely, said I. Over here, some coach did horrible things. Over there, some kids won some games. One fact is not dependent upon to the other. He responded, “Glad we cleared that up. Sanduskywas NOT defensive coordinator for a number of years? i was confused. Thought he was.”

OK, so… is the theory that without this guy, they wouldn’t have won the games? We know that? How? All we know is what happened.

And to me, whether some kids won some games they played in is a fact that has no moral content whatsoever, good or bad. I could not care less who won those games. But I do know absurdity when I see it. And saying they didn’t win games they did win, for whatever purpose, is an absurd lie. We don’t get to say that the North lost the Civil War because (in South Carolina’s estimation, anyway), William Tecumseh Sherman was a terrorist, and Ullyses S. Grant was a drunk. They either won or they didn’t. (And they did. So, you know, time to take down that flag, boys.)

Saying Penn State didn’t win games it did win is like the NCAA deciding to “punish” the program by declaring the players took the field in yellow uniforms instead of blue. It’s just not true.

I get a clue as to the thinking behind this denial of reality from this WashPost Tweet, “Joe Paterno is no longer the winningest football coach in college football history.”

OK, so, from what little I know about college football, I’m guessing that statement would really hurt Paterno where he lives. If, you know, he lived. But he’s dead. You can’t do anything to hurt him. And as an attempt to do so, this denial of what happened is pretty lame.

I mean, as long as we’re changing history, why not wave the same magic wand and declare that all those kids were not abused by Sandusky? I’ll tell you why not: Because it would be a cruel mockery. Of course they were abused, and that pain will never go away. And it seems extremely unlikely that it would be assuaged in any way by pretending that Paterno’s team didn’t win those games.

The real problem with the U.S. Olympic uniforms

27 Replies

After noting that failing to have the U.S. Olympic team’s uniforms made in this country was a serious missed opportunity, Peggy Noonan raises the other problem, which has occurred to me whenever I’ve seen photos of these ridiculous togs:

But that isn’t the biggest problem. That would be the uniforms themselves. They don’t really look all that American. Have you seen them? Do they say “America” to you? Berets with little stripes? Double breasted tuxedo-like jackets with white pants? Funny rounded collars on the shirts? Huge Polo logos? They look like some European bureaucrat’s idea of a secret militia, like Brussels’s idea of a chic new army. They’re like the international community Steven Spielberg lined up to put on the spaceship at the end of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Americans wear baseball caps, trucker hats, cowboy hats, watch caps, Stetsons, golf caps, even Panama hats and fedoras. They wear jeans and suits and khakis and shorts and workout clothes. The Americans in the now-famous uniform picture look like something out of a Vogue spread where the models arrayed on the yacht look like perfect representatives of the new global elite.

Our athletes aren’t supposed to look like people who’d march under a flag with statues and harps and musical notes. Also, the women’s uniforms make them look like stewardesses from the 777 fleet on Singapore Airlines.

The failure of the uniforms is that they don’t communicate: “Here comes America.”

They communicate: “Chic global Martians coming your way.”

Amen to that, Peggy.

I saw a photo in the WSJ the other day showing the uniforms, and at first I thought sure they were on male fashion models — you know, the kind who are distinguishable from the female models only by slightly larger jaws, with neither gender looking entirely like normal, healthy humans? The effect was heightened by the fact that they were wearing clothing no normal person would wear.

I was shocked to learn they were actual American athletes. I’m still not sure the cutline was right. So maybe it was entirely the uniforms that made them look so unreal.

So is fishin’. And eatin’. And watchin’ TV…

11 Replies

This morning, I saw something that made me feel good, in advance, about any tag lines or campaign themes I might come up with for ADCO this week.

“Huntin’ is good!” it insisted. Not just hunting, but huntin’, which I suppose is meant to convey a certain deep and informal intimacy with this particular activity.

What really grabbed me was the registered trademark symbol, which seemed to assume that this phrase was just so darned clever that it was inevitable that some unscrupulous varmint would be tempted to try to steal it…

But I declare, I don’t believe I’ve ever run across anything as vanilla as that in my life. There was no indication why huntin’ was good, or why anyone might think it wasn’t. It didn’t say it was particularly good in this or that locality, or at any particular time. Nor did it bother to reach for any adjective more descriptive or precise or evocative than good.

It was a marvel, and I had to look it up on my phone during the morning meeting at work. That’s where I found this website, huntinisgood.com, which offers all sorts of merchandise, such as the very decal I had seen.

The website seems dedicated to perpetuating the art or hobby or whatever of hunting at a time when the number of hunters is dwindling in our once rugged, intrepid nation of pioneers. I had known that. I had read before about how the industry was worried about how few children of hunters were taking up their forefathers’ outdoorsiness, and how marketers were trying to entice the kids, as well as women, to the pasttime with such innovations as pink rifles.

But I had never seen such a full litany of threats to hunting as what were detailed on this site:

Hunting Industry Under Attack

Tracking Down An Industry-Wide Problem. Across the United States, and for well over three decades, the population of hunters in our country has been on the decline. Since 1975 alone, the number of hunters in the field has been reduced by over one third.

Since the issue of attrition within the hunting community has only recently become a cause for serious concern, usable research is still limited. But just as writers, industry experts and retailers all speculate on the causes, we have developed our own list of suspects which have created a negative impact on the hunting culture.

Erosion Of The Family Unit. With divorce rates and single parent families on the rise, the number of Dads and Grandfathers in a position to mentor our youth, and pass on an appreciation for the hunting culture, are dwindling fast.

The Anti-Hunting Community. Highly organized, with seemingly unlimited budgets, their goal, simply put, is the elimination of the hunting industry.

The Lure Of Technology. These days, our children are “jacked-in” to video games, hunting only in Cyber Space. They’ve become masters of Wi-Fi and pixels, not the way of the woods.

Industry Fragmentation. We have evolved into a highly fragmented industry… bow hunters, turkey hunters, rifle hunters, safari hunters, duck hunters, muzzle-loaders, gator hunters, low-fence, no-fence, high-fence… it’s all become a lot of nonsense!

One thing we can all agree on 100% is that:
Huntin’ Is Good!®

The day is fast approaching when we all must decide a course of action, or face the reality that our industry, and the way of life it represents, may become extinct.

It’s time we draw the line! The Hunting Tradition, and its’ Way of Life, needs your help! Please wear your HIG gear soon and often. This will let other’s know, what you already know, Huntin’ Is Good!

Whoa. Huntin’ may or may not be good — I’m neutral on that point — but it certainly seems endangered. Either that, or paranoid. (Of course, if some outfit as ominously named as the Anti-Hunting Community got after you, you’d be paranoid, too!)

I’ve never gotten into it myself. I like to go out shooting now and then with my uncle in Bennettsville, who does hunt, but I prefer to shoot at tin cans and pine cones to living things. On account of the fact that pine cones don’t have to be skinned and dressed and butchered and put up in some freezer bigger than the one I have at home. They’re just a lot less trouble.

Something else women would never think of

11 Replies

This week, we’re going to be celebrating the particular genius of the human male — why he is special and essential, as wonderful as women may be. I mean, as wonderful as they are.

I’ll explain why later.

Here’s something else (in addition to the subject of this earlier post) a woman would never think of.

Seriously. First of all, it’s hard to get most of them even to care about video games. You may have noticed this. But to think of inserting Bo Jackson into Super Mario Brothers to run the board? That is something that only the male of the species, with his uncanny willingness to sit and think about stuff like this for hours on end, could possible conceive. And to actually spend the time turning the idea into reality? Well, you have to have that extra bone in your head that the male is blessed with to achieve it.

Watch the video, and bask in the brilliance of the concept, even if the execution is a bit lacking (obviously, Bo should have been bigger, so you could see him better — but that leaves room for the next generation of guys to improve the concept, so it’s all good).

Boogity, Boogity, Boogity, Amen (the cover)

27 Replies

This post is a ripoff of a post by Burl Burlingame over at his Honolulu Agonizer blog, headlined “Great Songs Are Inevitably Covered.”

I owe him a debt of gratitude because, while I had heard of the “Greatest NASCAR prayer ever,” I had never bothered to listen to it. It’s… remarkable. That is to say, it’s remarkable to me as a Catholic. Maybe you protestants pray like this all the time. But I doubt it. I went to my cousin Jason’s church for Easter Vigil this year, and there was nothing like this.

The original prayer was actually like this. The version above has been “songified” by The Gregory Brothers. I don’t know who they are, but they definitely rendered the pastor’s effort more awesome.

Here is some bare-bones explanation of the prayer, posted on HuffPost last July:

Prior to Saturday night’s Nascar Nationwide Series race in Nashville, Tenn., Pastor Joe Nelms was tasked with delivering the invocation. What happened next plays like a scene straight out of Will Ferrell’s “Talladega Nights.”

And here is a followup at The Christian Post:

A Tennessee pastor claims he was emulating the apostle Paul when he was called on to deliver the opening prayer at a NASCAR event in which he thanked God for his “smokin’ hot wife,” among other things. Some fans have called it the “best prayer ever” while critics are calling it disrespectful and possibly blasphemous.

Joe Nelms, pastor of Family Baptist Church in Lebanon, Tenn., insists that he was just trying to be like the first-century apostle, but some wonder how far Paul would go in his effort to become “all things to all men.”…

Although the prayer might have offended some people, Nelms said the prayer was not really for Christian audiences. He was more trying to reach out to the unsaved or those turned off by church.

“Our whole goal was to open doors that would not otherwise be open. There are a lot of folks who think churches are all [full of] serious people who never enjoy life and [who have] just a list of rules.”

His invocation was all about showing the world what Christian joy looks like, he said, sharing a bit of his testimony. “We who have been saved by Christ, we know that living has just begun. When I accepted Christ, that’s when I really learned what joy was.”

Despite criticism, Nelms’ evangelism effort has apparently paid off; several people have contacted him expressing a desire to give church a try.

The cover is by some kid named Roomie, who posts a lot of music videos on YouTube.

And that’s all I know.

Santorum could beat Obama — at bowling. Can Romney say the same?

4 Replies

Mitt Romney has, from the start, based his candidacy for the nomination on the claim that he’s the guy who could beat Obama, if anyone can.

But now we have proof that Santorum could easily beat the president at one thing — bowling.

The ex-senator has been putting in time in some bowling alleys lately. The only actual score I’ve f0und was a 152, which Bloomberg calls “respectable.” Which it is. That’s all it is, but it is that. A guy who can’t go out and roll a 150 basically shouldn’t bowl in front of cameras. That’s about what my average was when I was in a league in high school in Tampa.

“Respectable” is not a term anyone would use to describe the president’s skills at this game. So Santorum should have really played this up from the start.

Here’s video of him rolling a turkey. And if you don’t know what a turkey is, you shouldn’t bowl for money against Santorum. Or me, even though I haven’t bowled seriously in more than 40 years.

According to The New York Times, Santorum even managed to work in a communitarian theme while at the alley:

In an interview about his bowling background, Mr. Santorum referred to the famous book about bowling as a thread in the fabric of small-town America, “Bowling Alone,” by Robert D. Putnam, a professor of history at Harvard.

“ ‘Bowling Alone’ is about the breakdown of social capital in this country,” he said. “People used to come together in leagues and groups. Bowling is a social sport. You talk and eat and drink and are together. It’s a commitment to go every week. My dad bowled in a league, and I went with him. He was a lefty. We went on league night, it was part of my childhood.”

I had to laugh at this site, though, which breathlessly stated that “He even has his own bowling ball.” Oh, yeah? So do I. Doesn’t everybody? And in my younger days I had my own two-piece pool cue. Didn’t make me Minnesota Fats.

He can’t spell the name, but we’ll claim him

1 Reply

First, I was impressed when I saw this video of a third-grader making a half-court shot at the buzzer.

Then I heard his name. Austin Worthen may not spell it right, but he’s obviously one of us…

As first reported by the KOBI and KOTI NBC affiliates in Medford and Klamath Falls, Okla., Austin Worthen nailed a trey from just beyond midcourt during his team’s victory in an elementary school basketball tournament on Saturday.

While Worthen’s shot came from a fairly typical buzzer-beater distance, it wasn’t delivered in a traditional way at all, thanks to Worthen’s diminutive size. Rather, the third-grader put his entire body into his baseball-style heave, which then banked in through the net to close out the third quarter of his team’s 25-4 victory.

As is the case with many buzzer-beaters, the hysteria set off by Worthen’s bucket was at least as entertaining as the shot itself. The shooter himself went racing around the court in near delirium while his coach exploded on the sideline as if he had just won the lottery himself.

Brad Warthen

All The News That Gives You Fits