Category: Sports

Posted on

Penn State University

Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from it’s football program. The University eats, breathes, and suckles football.

It’s stadium holds 107,000 people.

State College– what a dumb name for a town!– only has a population of about 50,000.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Coach Paterno and assistant coach Mike McQueary didn’t call the police because it was former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky raping that ten-year-old boy. The more I think about it, the more ridiculously lame Paterno’s excuse– that he notified Penn State’s administration and trusted them to do the right thing– sounds.

Let’s leave that aside for now.

My question is, why do they even bother with the “university” aspect of their operations?

All those professors and non-football-playing students and courses and books and libraries and museums and lectures and panel discussions and seminars and sororities and fraternities– why bother? Who needs them? Who wants them? Why not just convert all the big universities into sports franchises, like the NBA, NFL, or MLB?

The football is obviously the only real focus of the institutions that devote so many resources to the sport, and whose mostly highly paid employee is the football coach.  Why are you pretending to give the slightest fuck about education?

Let’s say you’re interested in learning. Yeah, lets say you are a total weirdo by American standards. If you really wanted to, you could probably buy a few buildings, hire a few smart, educated people who know something about history or English or physics or economics, and see if you could get them to pass on their knowledge to young people who think there might be some value to it.

You could have a place where learning is valued, where knowledge is prized, and the imagination is appreciated.

Some young people who didn’t think the life of the mind was a mere after thought, a tiny, insignificant garnish to the gleaming athletic trophies, might sign up. You could have dorms and cafeterias. You could name the place after a brilliant writer or artist or economist or scientist.

And once in a while, if the kids need to get their yah-yahs out, there could be a game of football or something.

But just imagine:  place devoted to learning and knowledge and the arts and intellectual development!  Would that be amazing.

Posted on

The Long Lost NHL Code of Humble Celebrations

Are there people who think it’s really cool when a batter like David Ortiz stands in the batter’s box and admires his own hit? Even when it doesn’t go out. And it hits the wall in left-center field and stays in, and the delay cost Boston a base, as it did tonight against the Jays?

It’s repulsive. I hope I never see a Blue Jay do it.

I once copied a bunch of old video tapes of NHL hockey from the 1970’s to DVD for a friend at work. These were tapes of games from 30-40 years ago. The most striking thing about hockey then compared to now? When a player scored a goal, he modestly skated back to his bench, or to center ice, and his team-mates practically had to chase him down to be able to pat him on the back and congratulate him.

It was considered unseemly back then for a player to open celebrate his own achievements.

Who likes this showmanship, this preening, arrogant posturing? Are there fans out there who thrill to Ortiz’s snarling self-satisfaction? There was a near-brawl in Anaheim in late July when Jared Weaver reacted to some show-boating by Carlos Guillen by nearly beaning Alex Avila. In the head. With a fast ball.

He shouldn’t have done it. But why is there so little comment about the showboating?

I freely admit it: I hold a minority position here.  Most people I know love the showboating.  They are wrong.

Posted on

Community Property

Conventional wisdom rules: if a woman marries a man who gets rich and then they divorce, the court will act as if she earned half of all their property herself, even if all she did was sit at home and watch tv, eat, and shop.

That’s not the image they use to sell it to you though– that image is the hard-working, loyal, dedicated mom, producing children, raising them, changing their diapers, attending parent-teacher interviews, while that cad of a husband goes gallivanting around having sex with other women. Tiger Woods.

There is a portion of this kind of judgment that is not really based on any sound principle of justice, but on the repugnance some people feel for fornicators and adulterers. So she takes him “to the cleaners”. Even though this is established practice, feminists would like to have you believe that women still get ripped off in this arrangement. They are not embarrassed by the fact that he, through dedication, ingenuity, determination, and sacrifice, was able to command a good income.

On the other hand, more likely he got hired by someone he knew, and promoted because he was white and congenial and a good drinking buddy.

Let’s also consider just how stupid a man like Tiger Woods is to marry anybody. Why oh why oh why, if he wants to have sex with many different women, would he bother to marry any of them?

Never mind.

[2011-07]

Posted on

Posada Snit

Wow– here it is, in the flesh: you fans paying $100 a pop to watch the Yankees play– you won’t mind if we trot out some washed up old-timer to take a few hacks during a real game do you? Just so Jim Bowden can feel good about himself.

Jorge Posada is batting .165. Jorge Posada is batting .165. Jorge Posada is batting .165.

30 strikeouts in 109 at bats.

.165.

Furthermore, he makes about $15 million this year. Batting .165.

He does have 6 home runs. So let’s be fair– six home runs in 109 at bats is not totally, ridiculously shabby. That would prorate out to about 36 for the year– not shabby. However, the 30 strikeouts don’t look good. And the .165. That means you give up a ridiculous number of outs for those 36 home runs.

No matter– that’s not the point. The point is that Jorge Posada took a careful look in the mirror, and at those shabby stats, and decided, yup, still good enough to play for the Yankees. Those promising young kids in AAA ball? Suck it up. I deserve respect! I am owed respect! Don’t disrespect me. You don’t just play your best player. You owe it to the fans to lose a few games here and there just so you can trot out those old familiar names: Jeter, Rodriguez, Posada….

So when Girardi put Posada 9th in the batting order, in order to minimize the damage he does to the team’s chances of winning every night, Mr. Posada had a royal snit and took himself out of the line up.

If you are not familiar with baseball, especially with Yankee baseball, no one takes himself out of the line up one hour before game time.

As a Blue Jays fan, however, I must respond differently. There is a possibility that the Yankees might actually cast off those venerable veterans like Jeter and Posada, the way they cast poor Johnny Damon aside. I urge the Yankees to keep Posada and Jeter in the line-up every day! They are entitled to months and months and years and years to prove that their current slumps are an aberration! Give them another chance! And another. And another! They’ll show you.

Posted on

The Ingenue

An ingénue is a dramatic and literary archetype. “The ingénue symbolizes the mutable character par excellence, the blank slate in search of an identity,” the French scholar Julia V. Douthwaite wrote about the role of the ingénue in Ancien Régime French fiction. The ingénue is defined by her age — that crepuscular moment between adolescence and adulthood — and also by her innocence. A naïf in a complex, urbane, foreign world, she moves unaware of the hypocrisy, duplicity and exploitation all around her. She is credulous and vulnerable and dependent on a protective paternal figure and lives in constant peril of being exploited or corrupted by some lurking cad or villain. This threat is the central tension of her life. What makes her interesting are the questions of how she will navigate this world, who she will become and what will become of her. Traditionally, there have existed two possible outcomes: marriage (whether successful or ruinous) or death.

From New York Times, Carina Chochano, April 22, 2011

Link to the Full Article

So, at the very heart of it, the ingénue doesn’t know she is about to be tricked into having sex.

Once she realizes that the men in her life are willing to use her, she becomes a different person. Either she takes control of her life and becomes “worldly” or “cool”; or she becomes a victim, destined to appear on Oprah.

Kim Yu-Na, the Olympic figure skating champion, appears to me to have almost perfect proportions.  Waist, trunk, thighs, arms, shoulders: perfect.  If I was looking for a model for a sculpture of “Eve”, I’d ask her.

Posted on

Rudy

I watched and admired a movie called “Rudy” several years ago. It’s the “true” story about a devoted Notre Dame football fan named Rudy Ruettiger, who saved up his money and enrolled in Notre Dame so he could try out for the football team. He tried out and practiced hard and trained with determination and sucked up to the entire football department for four years and got to be a second-stringer, without once getting a chance to play. Finally, in his last year, his teammates all threw their sweaters onto the coach’s desk and declared that they would not play if Rudy was not put onto the field.  So he was allowed on the field– for one play–  in the last minute of a game that was already decided.

I thought the film was intentionally funny. I thought it did a reasonably good job of showing how Rudy wasted four years of his life under a delusion. I thought most people watching the film would realize that if Rudy had devoted half the energy he gave to the Notre Dame football team to almost any other pursuit, he would have had something important and meaningful or even beautiful to show for it.

I thought it revealed that our so-called heroes– athletes, especially– inevitably use people like Rudy because that’s the way the system works.

Years later, I realized that I had it all wrong: it was meant seriously– Rudy was to be admired for wasting most of his college life waiting for a chance to play while he had none of the skills or attributes required to be a good player. He was a hero. He never quit. The lesson we were supposed to take away from this film was: never give up on your dreams.

Even if your dream is to flap your arms and fly, or marry Angelina Jolie, or be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Well, the one thing that didn’t occur to me was that most of the movie was pure hokum. It didn’t occur to me because I assumed that a film made of an unremarkable man who led really an unremarkable life would at least adhere to a few unremarkable facts.

The main “facts” are that Rudy tried out for the team, never got to play until the very last moment, and in that very short moment, had some peripheral involvement in a quarterback sack. The crowd did not know Rudy’s story and did not cheer wildly because he had just realized his dream (as if). They did not chant his name. The play-by-play announcer did not note his presence. The opposing quarter-back did not mutter, “who was that man!” under his breath (all right — I made that up — it wasn’t in the movie). He didn’t have a brother. The coach did not oppose him going into the game– in fact, he insisted on it. His team-mates never dropped their sweaters on the coach’s desk as a protest gesture against Rudy being denied a chance on the field.

Without those delusional Rudy’s out there– the losers in this scheme of things– how could we have winners?

So, aside from the facts, yes, it’s a true story. Does it still inspire you? I have an investment opportunity, if it does…

A real comment by a real fan of the film on IMDB:

If this movie doesn’t get you motivated, then something is wrong with you. This movie proves that good things happen to people who work hard and don’t except[sic] the circumstances they are dealt. I’ve seen this movie more than 30 times in my life, and i still cant get through the end of this movie without getting tears in my eyes. Another thing this movie teaches you is to listen to the people in your life who believe in you and want you to succeed, don’t listen to the people who want you to fail and constantly remind you that you are going to fail. “The best revenge is success.” One of my favorite quotes comes from this movie as well, when the coach dan devine tells rudy and the rest of the team that “Nobody, and i mean nobody, comes into our house and pushes us around.”

And thus the viewer becomes complicit in the hoax.

Posted on

Jeter’s Batting Stroke

The idea that Derek Jeter can somehow shorten his stroke or change his batting stance in order to restore some of his lost effectiveness is ridiculous.

Baseball players, like most athletes, achieve success by optimizing every aspect of their game until they are competitive with the best athletes in the world in their sport. This happens in their late teens and early 20’s. By the age of 30, most athletes are in decline.

There is nothing for Jeter to find in his batting stroke or his stance, or his head, or his diet, or his preparation, or his discipline, or anything. Jeter lost his real effectiveness years ago. Like Cal Ripken, he was allowed to trade his moderately decent offensive skills for a few more cycles in the field and the illusion of defense. The illusion of defense is easy. Nobody knows if you should have had that runner at first but didn’t because you were too slow, or your arm was too weak. Nobody knows if you should have reached that ground ball to the left that got through. Nobody knows if you should have been able to turn that double play. All the average fan knows if whether or not you fumbled the ball, or if you got a hit. Even mediocre shortstops can catch most of the balls they can reach.

Because I am a Blue Jays fan, I hope the Yankees do everything they can to gratify the peanut galleries and keep Jeter out there, day after day after day, at shortstop. I promise you: he will come out of his slump if you give enough at bats.

Blue Jays fans understand the difference a less famous but more talented defensive player can be: Devon White replacing Lloyd Moseby. It was a revelation. I didn’t know balls hit into the alleys could be caught.

That said– please don’t come back at me with “well, Jeter’s having a pretty good season, isn’t he? The adjustment worked.” Jeter had a sub-par season last year. Most players who have a sub-par season– like most teams that have a sub-par season– will bounce back to some extent. That won’t change the essential equation: Jeter’s defensive effectiveness is long gone, and .280 with 18 homes runs won’t obviate the Yankees’ need for a new shortstop.

I would also bet that long-time, faithful Yankee fans will be a little startled when the new kid gets to play. Habituated to Jeter, they will be a bit surprised to see ground balls that they thought were going through snatched up and turned into outs.

Update September 2011: as you may have noticed Jeter has brought his batting average up to a respectable .290 or so. However, he still only has 4 home runs, and not much else to show for it. So, essentially, my assessment here holds.

Other exhausted talents: I’m glad to see Tampa Bay struggling after signing Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon. Had the Blue Jays signed either of them, I would have been seriously depressed.

The Blue Jays 2011 version have a respectable club. Everything depends on which way the talent breaks: they have a lot of young players, especially starting pitchers, who could be fabulous, or merely good. Romero, Murrow, Cecil, and Drabek — nobody knows if these are tomorrow’s stars or tomorrow’s 4th and 5th starters on average teams.

They play in what continues to be the toughest division in baseball, a disproportionate share of their games against three of the best teams in the American League. According to baseball writers, Boston will win the World Series, the New York Yankees will struggle with Tampa Bay for the wild card, and even the Orioles are ready to move up. So the Blue Jays, in 2011, are up against four of the best teams in baseball.

I’m appreciative of the fact. The Jays are entertaining to watch lately. But they are up against a few very good, very well-financed teams, so I doubt they will finish any higher– or lower– than 3rd, again. And again. And again.

Their only real hope is that Boston and the Yankees have serious pitching problems– and they might.

The American League Eastern Division is probably, this year, the division of death.

3000 Hits

3000 hits, by the way, is really remarkable but not for the reasons most people think it is: what is remarkable is that these players– decent hitters, all– were so successful in avoiding serious injuries. You have to be good to get 3000 hits but you also have to be pretty lucky. Chances are pretty good that there are more than a few hitters with 2000 career hits or less who were actually better players than Derek Jeter… when they weren’t injured.

Posted on

Jittery Jeter

As a fervent Blue Jays fan I would definitely say to the Yankees, Jeter at a different position? Are you mad? Derek Jeter is THE shortstop of the century and has to stay there, just like he says, right through 2014. Everybody knows that range and quickness are over-rated: what really matters is that he almost never fails to catch any ball he can reach. And of course, the kiddies will be screaming and screaming for him at every home game no matter what he does.

Posted on

Your Reward for Buying a Ticket

It’s a lot of money– $72. For a ticket to a Blue Jays game.

Nobody goes to Blue Jays games. When the Blue Jays were very successful and packing them in–18 years ago, now– tickets were about $30 for the same seats. The stadium was full– 50,000 people coming out every night to root for the Jays. If I remember correctly, the Jays were the first team to break the 2 million mark in annual attendance.

Now that nobody wants to come, the tickets are $72 each.

Why don’t they lower the price? One guess. Obviously, because there is no competition. Who is is going to fill up a baseball stadium by charging less than the Blue Jays? Nobody. That’s how baseball operates. In exchange for this special dispensation from the usual rules of competition and free enterprise, you get…. what? Yes, there is a reason why there is only one top-tier professional baseball league– because the government officially allows them to stifle competition. In exchange for that, you get to buy the team a stadium, pay $72 for a lousy seat, and buy cold chicken and fries for $14.95.

If the stadium is empty, why not lower the prices? I believe they are afraid that it will alter the public’s perception of what they should pay for a major league ticket. And once lowered, it will be difficult to fool us again.

So when nobody else wants to come to a Blue Jays game but you do, and you are generously willing to pay the outrageous sum of $72 for a lousy seat (there are no good seats anywhere in the Skydome, or in most stadiums), what exactly do you get for your hard-earned dollars?

You don’t get to see a replay of close plays. Nope. You should have stayed at home if you want to see if a runner really beat the throw to second base.
You get assailed with noise and flashing lights emanating from every square inch of the stadium. Constantly. All the time. After a while, you realize that the owners of these professional teams are desperately aware of the fact that their product is actually quite dull and uninteresting to most people most of the time so all the special effects are required to prove to you that you are having an exciting experience.

You get to buy crummy food for high prices, warm beer, ugly, cheap souvenirs, a “program” that consists mostly of lavish praise for mediocre players, and over-priced shirts and hats with the precious logo on them.

Within five minutes of the start of the game, half the stadium decides to get up and buy something to eat or go to the bathroom, forcing you to stand up to let them pass, five, six, seven times.

The seats are too small to ever feel comfortable.

The netting in front of home plate, to protect the fans from the rare event of a fluke foul tip hitting someone in the head, is annoying and ugly. I bet it’s possible to have a reasonably safe normal backstop without that massive, ugly net.

Most people seem to spend most of the game waiting to see if they get shown on the jumbotron video screen. When they do get on the screen, they jump up and down with excitement, spilling their beer. Then they go home happy, having paid $72 to see themselves on a giant TV screen.

I can’t prove it but at times it seemed like they were playing crowd noise through the speakers, as a way of hyping the alleged excitement of what was going on on the field.  I have no doubt that it is something they would do if they wanted to, while holding nothing but contempt for spoil-sports like me who want to hear the honest sound of a stadium crowd.

Every player on the Blue Jays is presented as some kind of god-like super-athlete of unspeakable accomplishments.

It’s hard to believe that on May 9, this conglomeration of staggering talents is in third place, 5 games back of Tampa Bay.

The Blue Jays in 2010 are a very odd team so far. This was a rebuilding year– they traded away their best pitcher, Roy Halliday– yet, so far, they are hanging in there in the American League East, in third place. They are five games back of Tampa Bay and the Yankees, but in any other division, they would be first, or close to first.

They lead the league in home runs, and they have had four starting pitchers throw no-hitters into the seventh inning. Four different pitchers. They also have five players hitting below .200, including the hugely expensive Lyle Overbay, and last year’s breakout star Aaron Hill.

Unfortunately, Alex Gonzalez, who leads the team in home runs with 10, doesn’t seem likely to continue the pace. Vernon Wells is a nice guy but, like Overbay, ridiculously overpaid given his achievements. I don’t expect much from the Blue Jays in 2010.

The hope for this team for the future is the five or six starting pitchers (Marcum, Romero, Cecil, Morrow, Eveland– and young Drabek in the minors), who look very promising, along with Adam Lind and 20-year-old Cuban prospect Adeiny Hechavarria.

Those starting pitchers, seriously, look like the core of a very strong starting rotation in another two or three years.

Travis Snider has yet to show he can handle major league pitching. Bautista and Fred Lewis are place-holders. I like John Buck so far.

But the Blue Jays will never again be able to match the Yankees and Boston in spending (as they did in 1992-93), so, this season, and all the rest, the Blue Jays will likely finish 3rd.

Posted on

Tiger Woods

You have to give it to Tiger Woods– his “strategy” for dealing with his scandal was flawless. Controlled disclosure. Hide. Pro-forma confession and penitence. Chill. “Treatment”. Resurrection and resumption of endorsements. It’s all as if nothing had happened except– guess what– he’s now even more famous and thus worth even more than he was before. Even PBS Newshour had to do a story on him. That’s depressing.

I personally thought the Nike ad was brilliant. It was, of course, entirely manufactured by a pr firm (which at one time even included Ari Fleischer, press secretary to George W. Bush for a few years), but you have to consider the fact that a good pr firm would certainly advise Tiger not to undermine his own very expensive strategy by carrying on as if nothing had happened. I imagine they might have asked him– what do you want to do? Do you want to continue to philander as if there was no tomorrow? No problem– we can do that. We can do the George Clooney approach. Stay single and make no commitments to anybody. Choose carefully. Don’t, for God’s sake, promise anything.

The Nike ad was bold, brilliant, and moving. Don’t listen to the critics who claim–as if this was a revelation–that Tiger’s father was actually describing Tiger’s mother, not Tiger. That is irrelevant. It’s a work of art, not a documentary. The important thing is that it appears to confront the issue in a tasteful, dignified tone. What would you say to Tiger: what were you thinking? And the beautiful thing about it is that Tiger doesn’t give an answer. He doesn’t say anything at all. It’s as if he was above that sort of pedestrian give and take, the kind of thing the tabloids suck on. It’s as if a mere apology would be inadequate and demeaning. It’s as if no scandal, no matter how salacious, can touch the real Tiger Woods. It’s as if he took the paradox at the heart of the question– do you mean, about my behaviour or about the consequences of getting caught— and raised it, in his mind, to the level of poetry and religion. What is “is”? What is morality and ethics and principle when you make enough money to buy and sell entire nations? When you spend your spare time in a darkened casino in Las Vegas betting you can have even more money, instead of travelling, or reading, or supporting a charity– I mean, really supporting a charity, not that token foundation crap– No, Tiger says nothing. He might just be thinking, I had no idea how the media would try to cash in on the destruction of my family, with such self-righteous glee. I had no idea that the public would project themselves into my story except that would have had the luxury of pretending they really deserved it. He had no idea of how entitled the public feels to your soul, your dignity, your privacy, once they have bought into the image you fabricated just for them to substitute for the emptiness at the core of your talent.

Don’t forget– none of the scandalous stuff was anybody’s damn business in the first place. I heard a golfer state that he used to think of Tiger Woods as a role model and now he is so, so disappointed, and I wanted to slap him on the side of the head and scream: Tiger Woods was never a role model. He was a manufactured plastic robot intended to manipulate you into buying extravagantly worthless trinkets with his face or name on them. Then he took your money and gambled with it, alone, in Las Vegas, with his body guards to keep smelly, unimportant people like you out of his life; he spent it on nannies and maids and gardeners and publicists and lawyers and pr consultants, and the women… Anyone who would see Tiger Woods as a role model in the first place was always a fool.

But anyone who buys the repentance shtick, and the phony reconciliation, and the phony therapy– is even more deluded.

You want a role model? Go down the street and watch somebody work hard to support his family. Read about Bethany Maclean or Brooksley Born or Bernhard Schmidt. Never heard of them? Of course not.