The thrill of defeat, the agony of victory.
[wik] Yeah, it's petty.
[alsø wik] And a little late to the party, but hey, perfidy didn't exist last fall.
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No easy way to excerpt, so I'll just quote the whole damn thing:
Let me start by saying I have no problem with LeBron James leaving Cleveland for a bigger city, for a team with more talent, for more money, or for any other reason to his liking. It’s his talent. His body. He’s free to market his skills as he pleases. But like just about everyone else outside of Miami, I thought his decision to schedule a 1-hour prime time special on ESPN to make the announcement was tacky and gratuitous. (And shame on ESPN for playing along.)
So I don’t blame Cleveland for hating him.
When LaBron and the Heat visit Cleveland for the first time next season, the game will almost certainly be nationally televised. Cleveland fans could go ahead and boo and hiss when James takes the floor as expected. But that would really be no different than the reaction of every other city who lost a hometown hero to a bigger market. As these things go, what James did to Cleveland was uniquely insulting. So when James comes back to town, Cleveland needs to come up with an appropriately unique collective middle finger to let James know just how his home city feels about him. It needs to be special.
Here’s my idea: Make him play before an empty arena.
Go ahead and buy your tickets to that game. Sell the place out. In fact, for this idea to work you may need to sell the game out way ahead of time. There’s no sense in punishing the Cavs organization for all of this. If you want, have a city pep rally or two the afternoon before the game to let current Cavs players know it’s nothing personal.
But come game time, don’t step foot in the arena. Do go downtown. Patronize the local bars and restaurants. Watch the game from a sports bar. Do some shopping. But keep your tickets in your pocket. Set a goal: See if Cleveland can set an all-time record for lowest attendance at an NBA game. Put so few people in the stands that LeBron’s first dribble actually casts an echo through Quicken Loans Arena. And on national TV to boot.
Any crowd can boo. This would show some civic commitment. It would take some coordination. Some advance planning. It would demonstrate a lingering anger still potent enough to compel an entire stadium of fans to eat the price of a couple tickets. And if it works, it would be a pretty awesome spectacle to behold.
Even better: There’s a pretty good chance that the first Miami/Cleveland game in Cleveland will be on . . . ESPN.
As a native of Cleveland, I was horrified. Well, not really. But Radley has the right of it - the way James went about this was just classless. Or, to put it another way, exactly how you'd expect a player in the NBA to behave. At least we still have the rest of the team, which isn't always the case.
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On the recommendation of Aretae, I went and downloaded Body by Science. Damn. Another consensus wisdom bites the big one. Doug McGuff and John Little show through the magic of science, that most of what you've been told about exercise is wrong.
The basic idea is that only by exercising to failure do you actually convince the body that it needs to be stronger. They go into rather more detail than that - and convincing detail, backed by studies™ - but that's the essential take-away. Constant low-energy exercise is just wasted time and energy because you do not fully test your muscles, and you are interfering with the body's efforts to heal after exercise. Also, you put yourself at risk for injury, and you are adding wear and tear that isn't necessary if your goal is increased strength or cardio-vascular fitness. They go on to say that the distinction between aerobic and other types of exercise is bogus - if you build the infrastructure of greater strength, you are building cardio-vascular fitness. Separating out cardio merely benefits one aspect of fitness, at the expense of others, and at the great waste of time and effort.
Ten minutes a week, five exercises. That's a program that I can get behind, and the fact that the authors totally diss on running is a plus point in my book. Looking back, I was at my strongest after a long summer breaking up concrete. I think I became strong and fit because I was unconsciously following elements of this program that I never did in earlier exercise programs. A lot of what I did, day to day, was relatively low intensity effort. But every so often, I'd have to really exert myself all-out to do something - move a huge-ass chunk of concrete, whatever. And according to the theories in Body by Science, it was probably that that made me strong. I had never exerted myself all-out in the gym, and the results were always limited.
Cool. I am going to add this to my my paleo diet. I go into work a couple days a week, and there's a gym there, so that will be just perfect.
For those of you without a program and wanting to keep score, here's a short list of consensus views that I now think are largely bullshit:
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Does anyone in the Ministry circle care about the shocking, *shocking* revelation that the comically bemuscled 45-year-olds who were breaking records were hormone junkies?
If so, why?
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Talking to my mom the other day, we wondered if any city has suffered longer than Cleveland. It has been more than forty years since Cleveland has won a sports championship of any flavor. Boston fans have until recently been the greatest of whiners, bemoaning endlessly the decades that had lapsed since the Red Sox won a World Series. Waaagh, the curse of the Bambino, waagh, Bucky Fucking Dent, waaagh.
Of course, in the meantime, they’ve had several recent Patriots Super Bowl wins, and the Celtics once won eight NBA titles in a row, and that was in the middle of a 11 of 13 stretch. And even more of course, that’s completely aside of the fact that the Chicago Cubs had gone a full decade longer without a World Series win, and in fact never will win the World Series again.
A little research turned up a startling fact. There are 21 cities with at least three major league teams out of a possible four. (Only New York City has two of each, though once Los Angeles did. Cleveland had, for several years in the seventies, a “grand slam” – one team in each of the majors.) Of these, all but three have won at least one championship since 1990, and most have won one in the current decade. The three sad cities are Philadelphia, Seattle and Cleveland. The ‘76ers won in 1983, and the Super Sonics last won a championship in ’79. And Cleveland has been winless since the two days after Christmas, 1964 when the Browns beat the Baltimore Colts 27-0.
We’ve been suffering fifteen years longer.
But hey, surely there are other sufferers out there! Well, let’s be generous and roll in cities with only two major league teams. It gets only slightly tougher to complain. There are ten more cities with two major league franchises. Of these, Charlotte, Nashville and New Orleans have had no championships, ever. But – but! - in each of these cities, major league sports came to the city after Cleveland’s last championship: New Orleans just after, and Charlotte and Nashville within the last decade or so.
So they haven’t suffered longer.
Only one city has actually gone longer without a championship. San Diego, whose Chargers won an AFL League championship in ’63, one year before the Browns’ last NFL Championship. The Bills just miss, and squeak by with a ’65 AFL win. However if you, like my mom, consider the AFL to have been a minor league up until the beginning of the merger with the NFL – the first Super Bowl (technically, the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game that was later renamed Super Bowl I) in 1967 – then Cleveland is still the city with the most suffering.
ESPN agrees – a couple years back they voted Cleveland the most tortured sports city.
And I know from personal experience that this is true.
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Okay, getting to the top stop took some help.
Like from Pittsburgh and Oklahoma most recently, but also Kansas and Arkansas, and in fact every unranked team that beat a top-five ranked team this year (all what? fifteen now?) starting with Appalachian State's crushing Michigan. (Excepting of course, Illinois.)
Go Bucks!
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Nearly 3,500 Chinese named 'Olympics'
Sun Nov 4, 2:52 AM ET BEIJING -
The upcoming Beijing Olympics is more than just a point of pride for China — it's such an important part of the national consciousness that nearly 3,500 children have been named for the event, a newspaper reported Sunday. ...
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I didn't try to buy World Series tickets this morning when they went on sale at 10 AM MST. The Rockies, in their questionable wisdom, opted not to allow any sales via phone or box office and went exclusively with online sales. The rationale behind this is that it gives every fan an equal opportunity to buy their tickets.
"What about ticket brokers?" we asked.
"We're limiting sales to only 4 per person. That will stop people from buying up hundreds or thousands of tickets at a time and reselling them," they said.
"But what about people who can write programs to do this automatically?" we asked.
"Hey, look...bunnies!" they said.
And then, after the "box office" was open for approximately two and a half hours, the vendor's server suffered catastrophic failure after trying to swallow about 8.5 MILLION hits. That's 1500 hits a second, folks. Now, I know the Rockies are a super-popular team around the world, but I'm finding it a little rough suspending my disbelief that there were really that many people trying to snag one of the 22,000 tickets for sale. That's about twice the population of the entire state of Colorado. Even if there were a tenth that amount with everyone hitting the site ten times during the first two hours, that's still a ridiculously large sum of people trying to get to watch a team that (honestly) nobody really cares that much about outside of our nice square borders.
The more conspiracy-minded have advanced the theory that this is a Denial-of-Service attack by Red Sox fans. Or Arizona fans. Or Giant Evil Space Robots. In the meantime, the Rockies and the ticket vendor are still trying to figure out what to do.
[wik] It occurs to me that when dealing with a sporting event of this magnitude, going with the lowest bidder for ticket sales might not have been the smartest thing to do.
[alsø wik] Ticketmaster routinely deals with huge venues and events. And online sales are second-nature for them. Cleveland was going to use them if they beat the Sox.
[alsø alsø wik] I am not, nor have I ever been an employee of Ticketmaster.
[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] The title of this post refers to the countdown page every potential buyer was redirected to, informing them that the page would automatically refresh when the timer reached zero and try to connect once again.
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It is a good day to be a Cleveland Sports fan. I have proof. Cleveland is often slighted by the national sports press - most recently, ESPN devoted nine minutes to analysing the aftermath of the Yankee's defeat in the first playoff series and mentioned the Indians not once. Granted, the possible demise of Joe Torre's storied career is significant. But really. The Yankees lost, the Indians won.
Between episodes like that, and the constant pain of watching highlight reals where, seven times out of ten, the victims of the highlighted star is a Cleveland team, it gets kind of annoying. Even when Cleveland teams do well, we still get ignored.
Yet, today was a good day. Looking at my Google News page, I scrolled down to the sports section, and look at this:
All three of the featured stories are about my teams. (Counting OSU as a Cleveland team, which is fair, I believe.) I've never seen anything like it before, and unless the NBA moves its opening day back to October - which is not totally implausible, given that their post season stretches into July - will never be topped.
Despite living more than a year quite contentedly without cable, I have summoned the cable minions to my home, because I think, hope, that I will have cause to watch the World Series this year. I may even buy a bigger tv.
[wik] I will note, however, that they still couldn't bear to put up a picture of someone in a Browns uniform.
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There's two things that I am for sure: a rabid pro football fan (American style) and a bleeding heart pablum puker.
So, I've been growing increasingly concerned over the last few years as reports have surfaced of the extent and callousness of the NFL's disregard for on-field player injuries and for disabilities suffered by retired players. Now, I'm no idiot. I know coaches regularly put guys in numbed up against cracked ribs or a broken finger to finish a series or a game. It's football! But when you get beyond that, into the realm of doping up a lineman with a broken spine and sending him into the game, or letting your QB or running back play when he's been hit on the head so hard he's not sure of his name, the date, or which way is up, that's a different story. Then pro football with its pads and lucrative ad deals, devolves into mere crude bloodsport (rather than a bloodsport at a remove, which is so much more civilized and refined). My own New England Patriots and their coach Bill Belichick are reportedly among the worst offenders here, taking horrible and stupid risks with players' health that has cut many careers, and doubtless many lives, short.
Now, again, that's theoretically an uncomplicated matter of well-informed people making choices as adults to put themselves in harm's way. But the truth, naturally is not so neat. Via unfogged I have found a fascinating and dismaying article in Men's Journal about the shameful and shabby treatment of retired injured players at the hands of the NFLPA (the players' union), the league itself, and the various bodies set up to take care of retired players.
[wik] A final question: What sense could it possibly make to put a player who makes $6M a year, by contract, for multiple years, in harm's way unnecessarily? How is that good business? Your journeyman halfback plays on an injured knee, blows out his meniscus and his ACL or fractures his spine, and then collects the rest of his four-year contract from the sidelines, unable to do what he was hired to do but owed every penny of his salary. Wouldn't it make more rational sense to take better care of your players and try not to play them when injured, in an effort to preserve your investment in him? Hell, leaving aside the fact that this would be the decent thing to do, it's economically sensible!
Am I right? Am I right?
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(With a serious nod to the actual creators of the "Quotes entirely relevant..." genre, Long or Short Capital):
"There are some players that have psychologists," Cabrera said. "I smoke."
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Presenting the branding icon for the 2012 games, which will encompass all marketing, communication, structures, uniforms, and all other aspects concerning the look and feel of this most significant international competition.
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Patton has accused me of being overly concerned about wasting a scarce natural resource. The category tag. In this, of course, he is completely wrong. Naturally, I could have argued that over-categorizing a post dilutes the utility of tags. And I would have been right. But that wasn't the point. I was attacking him on aesthetic grounds, and just to stick a stick in his eye.
Just to prove that I am not some sort of homo-tree-hugging-enviro-commie, this post, which really is about everything, is tagged with every category we have. And, when I have a free moment, I'll add some new categories, and add them to this post.
So there.
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Holy shit, the Cleveland Frigging Cavaliers are in the NBA Finals for the first time ever.
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I'm taking off tomorrow morning for another in a long series of annual gatherings of a group of my friends, at which much golf will be played and several other forms of hell may well be raised. In preparation for the trip, one of the participants, Rick, sent out a link to this video.
In our group's defense, I'm comfortable asserting that none of us will play anything near as badly as those on the film above. At least not during the first 18 holes of any given day. Oh, and the several incoherent misspellings you see in the video were there when I got it, just in case you were wondering.
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Old news, by now, but dredged back to my frontal lobe after having heard ESPN's Dan Patrick and Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly talking on ESPN Radio today on the way back from lunch, and Reilly having said something to the effect that in five years, the winner of the 2007 Masters tournament, Zach Johnson, would be waiting tables at Olive Garden.
Apparently, Reilly has a habit of recycling his jokes:
(regarding Brett Wetterich, a rookie in last year's Ryder Cup matches) Rick Reilly, the celebrated American columnist, was more brutal. "You look at him and think, was he my waiter at Olive Garden last night? If he wasn't, he will be soon."
AUGUSTA, GA—World No. 1-ranked golfer Tiger Woods, after appearing to struggle through the weekend—playing with uncharacteristic inconsistency, bogeying twice in the final rounds, and breaking clubs—shocked the crowd at Augusta...
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At least so far, it's contained a few important items, many more less important items, a tiny bit of spam, and this kick in the teeth:
Florida President unsure of what to do with Ohio State
By VERN JACKSON
Gainesville Sun Staff Writer
April 4, 2007
GAINESVILLE – In the wake of Florida’s unprecedented dual championship victories over Ohio State, the University finds itself with a unique and somewhat perplexing problem.
What to do with Ohio State now that Florida owns it.
According to little known and never before used “Clause 121” of the NCAA charter, when a University defeats another member University for two consecutive national championship games by “convincing margins,” the defeated University becomes the sole property of the victor.
University of Florida President J. Bernard “Bernie” Machen readily admits that he was unaware of “Clause 121”, and is unsure of what to do with Ohio State. “They have, what is it, over 54,000 students? Plus, it’s in Columbus, Ohio. It is very inconvenient.”
The University of Florida Board of Trustees is holding an emergency meeting this Friday to deal with the unprecedented situation. According to sources on the Board, initial ideas include –
Sell It – The easiest move the Board might make is simply to sell Ohio State. However, due to the University’s size, and its location in the relatively depressed real estate market of central Ohio, it may be difficult to find a willing buyer. “We are looking into this option,” Machen says. “We have contacted the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio to see if they need more land.”
Keep It – This option has several difficulties, but may be the only one if Florida is unable to get a buyer for fair market value. Primary among the difficulties is the large student body population of Ohio State. However, sources on the Board did say since OSU’s student population is near Florida’s 50,000, there may be a situation where Ohio State students could be lent to Florida students on a semester by semester basis as personal valets.
Florida junior Kevin Young thinks the valet idea is just swell. “Everyone should have their own pet Buckeye,” said Young. “It would be like having your own personal fraternity pledge. I think the idea rocks!”
Were Florida to keep Ohio State, issues of whether to allow OSU to keep their current team name and mascot, as well as whether to allow them to continue to play in the Big Ten, would have to be resolved. Says Machen, “I think we could reach some sort agreement that would allow them to keep Brutus Buckeye and play in the Big 10. After all, what would we do – move them to the SEC? They would only get hurt. Since they are our wards now, we could never allow that.”
The prospect also exists that Florida would have dissolve Ohio State athletics. In that case, the issue of what to do with the student athletes is uncertain. Florida football coach Urban Meyer, when approached with the prospect of having to absorb Ohio State’s football team, paused for a moment and said, “I suppose they could be a scout team for our scout team. They really aren’t fast enough for anything else.”
Finally, there is one other idea University officials have floated, and that is simply to donate Ohio State to charity. “As I understand it, thousands of Hurricane Katrina refuges are still displaced. We could give OSU to the Katrina Relief Fund, and allow people to relocate there,” Machen said. “That could be the win-win situation everyone is looking for.”
As Kenny, my Melbourne-FL-based-Ohio-State-fan correspondent said at the end of the forwarded screed:
The Buckeye basketball team should have a good chance of making it back to the big dance next year...I saw they signed some good talent for 2008.. but what are the chances they'd get a re-match with Florida?? Not likely.....at this point I'd settle for a Buckeye Championship in Women's field hockey.
Such are the fruits (for the Buckeyes) of losing the big game, twice, I guess.
[wik] Also found, at the same site as was the t-shirt picture above, this snippet:
"I saw a sign at the game, OHIO STATE -- The New GEORGIA"
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Perhaps someday, Sports magazines will report on sports, and not offer fatuous environmental pap.
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In all my life, in nearly thirty years of NASCAR fandom (albeit casual), I have never before seen someone finish a race upside down and on fire.
[wik] For those of you who might be less than fully up to speed on the intricacies of stock car racing, please consult this handy primer on the subject from QandO.
[alsø wik] And because I think it's funny, here's a good recap of the race from the New York Times, including a great shot of the thrillingly close finish.
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Newsflash: Tim Hardaway Wants Only Straight Men to See His Penis
In case you've missed it, there is a minor brouhaha due to Tim Hardaway's comments yesterday:
"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.''
This chain of events was triggered by a new book by John Amaechi, a former NBA center, including his disclosure that he is gay. Big whoop. So no, he's not the bad guy here. Dan LeBatard, the Florida ESPN radio host who provided Hardaway with the shovel he used to dig this hole, is also exempt from condemnation, due to the fact he just asked a simple question about current events, one of which was Amaechi's disclosure (audio available via the Deadspin link above). Totally above board, in my opinion.
With the exception of the San Francisco press (just an AP story, really), I've not seen much coverage of the story, and even then, it seems relegated to the sports section. ESPN radio, however, has seemingly been 50% devoted to Hardaway's gaffe ever since last evening.
Much of that ESPN radio commentary I've heard seems to indicate that people think Hardaway's wrong for feeling the way he does. I disagree - while his feelings on the matter are inflammatory and unfortunate, they're his feelings, not those of the radio callers (notorious retards, the lot of them), and he's entitled to them, however odious.
They'd have been far less odious if he'd simply said he was uncomfortable with the prospect of gay teammates. If I gave a shit about Tim Hardaway (I don't), I'd certainly say that he should have learned to exercise the governor on his cake-hole, since not every thought that runs across one's brainpan needs to be aired, on the radio or otherwise.
A bit late for that admonition, I'm afraid.
Discomfort at being put on the spot (tough crap, Tim - you're a big-time former ath-a-lete, and LeBatard was completely fair) might have caused him to amplify his rhetoric, resulting in the inflammation of sports-talk-radio listeners' sensibilities.
Having written an over-the-top headline or two myself, I should really give the Deadspin blog a bit of slack, but their article's title misses the point: Tim Hardaway is entitled to some opinion, if not some control, of who should see his penis. I guess so, anyway, though I've never really given it a lot of thought. And there are a lot of polite ways to make such a statement. Claiming to hate an entire group of people you've never met based on something you find distasteful but which they've not done to you, around you, or to anyone you know, is prima facie evidence of stupidity. Such extreme thinking has never been acceptable, but while it has been accepted the past, it's not now, and even Hardaway should have known this.
Have we, as a society, forgotten how to apologize? Tim Hardaway is way beyond any ability to retract his statement - it was pretty unequivocal. He did have the option to say something like "What a stupid I am!" (channelling Roberto DiVicenzo), and to apologize not for his views, but for his intemperance at expressing them in a public forum where people would then point at him and laugh. What did he say, instead? An attempt at the classic misdirection play:
Hardaway issued a statement Wednesday night to Local 10 saying: "There are more important things to worry about than my comments. We should be more concerned about President (George) Bush and all the people dying in Iraq."
Niiice. Real nice. That should calm things right down, moron. I'd almost prefer that he take the same approach all the other glitterati have after recent similar missteps. He could just check himself into the Betty Ford Clinic, under the delusion that they can cure "stupid" there.
[wik] Perhaps Amaechi's revelation has been improperly analyzed?
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