From The Sports Desk

[Sancho]

Hello Sports Fans!
Here’s a thread to post about your favorite sports writing

How about some intro music:


You gotta be a football hero
To get along with the beautiful girls
You gotta be a touchdown getter - you bet
If you wanna get
A baby to pet

The fact that you are rich or handsome
Won’t get you anything in curls
You gotta be a football hero
To get along with the beautiful girls

>>HORN SECTION<<

https://youtu.be/TSVBhRVVd_A (Jazzy version)

Anyway, bounty and I were over on the Nature-Writing thread when the conversation morphed into a chat about baseball and all of our favorite books on that subject. So I got to thinking, what a great idea for a thread, not just baseball but sports writing in general. And not just the obvious stuff from sports desks around the world, but sports writing that is embedded in a larger work. For instance, football and ping pong is nicely handled in Winston Groom’s novel Forrest Gump.

I’ll start. Has anybody read The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved, from the Sports Desk of Hunter S. Thompson?

[bounty]

hopefully Sancho there will be more than just you and me here!

your song hearkened me right back to a quote I shared in the "quote of the day" thread:

"The delightful attention of women, almost the sole aim of man's exertions..." -- pushkin

I haven't read the Thompson book in question but I have a fair amount of horse racing reading under my belt. I used to teach a class in which we'd spend 1-2 days on it. my most prominent memories were I would share video from secretariat's triple crown victory in 1973 that came from a documentary espn put together chronicling the 50 greatest athletes of the century. I think he was 36th. the race scenes are incredible, and the music is deeply emotional. then I would read to them the compelling account of his death from his most addicted biographer, William nack (his book as a whole was only okay, but the writing at the end was very powerful).

I also read some material from laura Hillenbrand's history of seabiscuit and we listened to the radio account of the match race between him and war admiral. some of her writings worth sharing here. from the preface:

"in 1938, near the end of a decade of monumental turmoil, the year's number-one newsmaker was not franklin Roosevelt, hitler or Mussolini. it wasn't pope pius XI, nor was it lou Gehrig, howard hughe or clark gable. the subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn't even a person. it was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named seasbiscuit."

she goes on to provide fascinating accounts of his popularity, including "tuning into radio broadcasts of his races was a weekend ritual across the country, drawing as many as 40 million listeners."

p85: "A thoroughbred racehorse is one of god's most impressive engines. tipping the scales at up to 1450 pounds, he can sustain speeds of forty miles per hour. equipped with reflexes much faster than those of the most quick-wired man, he swoops over as much as twenty-eight feet of earth in a single stride, and corners on a dime. his body is a paradox of mass and lightness. his mind is impressed with a single command: run. he pursues speed with superlative courage, pushing beyond defeat, beyond exhaustion, sometimes beyond the structural limits of hone and sinew. in flight, he is nature's ultimate wedding of form and purpose.

p97: "Man is preoccupied with freedom yet laden with handicaps. the breadth of his activity and experience is narrowed by the limitations of his relatively weak, sluggish body. the racehorse, by virtue of his awesome physical gifts, freed the jockey from himself. when a horse and a jockey flew over the track together, there were moments in which the man's mind wedded itself to the animal's body to form something greater than the sum of both of their parts. the horse partook of the jockey's cunning; the jockey partook of the horse's supreme power. for the jockey, the saddle was a place of unparalleled exhilaration, of transcendence. 'the horse,' recalled one rider, 'he takes you.'"

[Danik 2016]

I have to contribute to this thread with a sad Information: Pelé, the greatest footbal player of all times died today at 82, from cancer.
https://www.dw.com/en/brazilian-football-legend-pele-dies-at-82/a-64223887

[bounty]

ah, am sorry to hear that danik.

i have a book about south American "football" (have you seen the commercial with peyton manning and oh who the heck is that famous british player who's really handsome, david….where they fight over whether its called "football" or "soccer?" beckham, that's it!) from Eduardo galeano called soccer in sun and shadow. its one of the most romantic books written about sports ive ever read. i cant remember if there is anything "pele" in it but if i can hunt the book up, i'll check.

there was a tv show from back when i was a kid called abc's "wide world of sports" and in the opening scene montage, pele figured prominently.

[tailor STATELY]

So sorry for his loss to the world. Even I have heard of Pelé's greatness, probably through abc's "wide world of sports" way back in the day. My Echo/Alexa went out of the way to announce the news via NPR as a notification which must be something in itself. Great football player and world ambassador. Rest in peace.

- tailor

[Danik 2016]

Thanks, bounty and tailor. I am no fan of football myself, but Pelé is one of our Brazilian legends that is leaving us, before 2022 is over.

[Sancho]

Think I’ll echo that sentiment. I don’t know much about soccer/football, but I do know Pelé played the game with beauty and heart. RIP.

[Danik 2016]

Thanks, Sancho!

[bounty]

from my galeano who has one little section devoted just to pele, p132-133:

" a hundred songs name him. at seventeen he was champion of the world and king of soccer. before he was twenty the government of brazil named him a "national treasure" that could not be exported. he won three world championships with the Brazilian team and two with the club santos. after his thousandth goal, he kept on counting. he played more than thirteen hundred matches in eighty countries, one game after another at a punishing rate, and he scored nearly thirteen hundred goals. once he held up a war: Nigeria and Biafra declared a truce to see him play.

"to see him play was worth a truce and a lot more. when pele ran hard he cut through his opponents like a hot knife through butter. when he stopped, his opponents got lost in the labyrinth his legs embroidered. when he jumped, he climbed into the air as if there were a staircase. when he executed a free kick, his opponents in the wall wanted to turn around to face the net, so as to not miss the goal.

"he was born in a poor home in a far-off village, and he reached the summit of power and fortune where blacks were not allowed. off the field he never gave a minute of his time and a coin never fell from his pocket. but those of us who were lucky enough to see him play received alms of an extraordinary beauty: moments so worthy of immortality that they make us believe immortality exists."

[Danik 2016]

That's a beautiful homage, bounty. Tomorrow when I'm on PC I'll add some images.

[bounty]

I am just a page or three away from finishing the ted Williams biography I have been reading. a very solid book worth reading if you are interested in the subject. the author is leigh Montville.

I felt like one little section was worth quoting for others to see. in 1999 major league baseball unveiled an all-century team at the world series. ted Williams was the oldest (he was 80) of the surviving players selected and presented at the park. the author described the occasion:

"he could be caught one last time in this late curtain call for a generation. world war II veterans were supposedly dying at a rate of 1,056 per day now, a layer of history being peeled off the top, but there was still time for one more wave, a good-bye, a wet-eyed standing ovation. he was wrapped in the flag, wrapped in all the sweet childhood memories of baseball, in the promise of youth, the sadness of old age, wrapped in noise and emotion. he was elevated to some level of secular American sainthood." (p416)

[bounty]

finished the book last night. it closed with an addendum from the author. early on in that chapter he talked about how he used to send letters to professional baseball players when he was a kid in hopes of hearing back from them and collecting their autographs. he got a postcard back from ted Williams, but then later was told that usually the return writing was done by a clubhouse manager. he hoped against hope that the signature on the postcard though was actually ted williams'.

the writing ended on a romantic, nostalgic note:

"the book is certainly a much darker cat. lewis Watkins, the first director of the ted Williams museum, said one day, 'when you do a book like yours, youre reaching down to the bottom of the ice chest, where you touch all the dirt and strange things.' this is true, my fingers are still a little numb.

"and yet...

"my wife framed that little penny-postcard, maybe-autographed picture of ted Williams at the beginning of all this. it has sat on my desk for all of the phone calls, for all of the typing, ted looking at me as I punched out the bad words that he sometimes spoke and the troubles that he sometimes had. his face never has changed. he is in the finish of a swing, his eyes looking upward at the certain home run that he has just hit. he is still young and perfect and indominable, able to do anything he wants to do.

"and I am still ten years old." (p493)

[Sancho]

Nice.

Hand-eye coordination wise, I think Ted Williams was a freak of nature, or at least way out to the right side of the bell curve, several standard deviations from the norm. I just bought a book (haven’t started it yet) about guys a little closer to the mean: Where Nobody Knows Your Name, by John Feinstein. It’s all about life in the Minor Leagues. I’m looking forward to reading it. In fact I’m looking forward to baseball season. The preseason is only a couple of months away.

I gotta tell ya, in a lot of ways I enjoy Minor League Baseball more Major League Baseball. For one thing it only costs a couple of bucks to get into the park. Then there’s the crowds, which tend to be more raucous. The players, of course, biff more often, which is fun. And nobody’s got a multi-million dollar contract. Anyway the Mariner’s Triple A team (The Rainiers) plays not too far from my house. Twenty or so years ago I had a part time job in Alexandria, LA and loved going to watch the Alexandria Aces play. They were Double A I think. I’m not even sure who’s system they were in, The Rangers probably. Anyway we were just happy to get through the game without the bleachers crashing down into a heap.

D’ya ever see the Netflix documentary The Battered Bastards Of Baseball? It’s all about about the Portland Mavericks, an independent Single A team who only had a couple seasons back in the 70s.

[bounty]

some of my college classmates and I once got into a friendly discussion over who was the greatest athlete. then we quickly figured out we needed to define our terms. it was pretty tough, if not impossible to do. one of our profs argued that the hand eye coordination that top level hitters in baseball display is unparalleled in sport and that therefore the greatest athlete probably came from baseball. I don't buy the logic but its still a fun thing to think about.

my area is host to a summer college league team. I haven't been to a game yet, but I see them going on in passing and they are a pretty popular draw. no raucous fans though. often when I watch M*A*S*H I think of the Toledo mud hens and klinger's vehement love and defense of them. I went to a couple of little league games this year and those were enjoyable. I haven't seen that documentary but I can well imagine it being worthwhile. let me re-recommend to you little league confidential by bill geist. its both hysterical and precious.

I have some other of Feinstein's books, but not that one. i'll keep my eyes peeled if im able to hit that big sale in buffalo.

meanwhile, having just finished ted Williams, I mentioned I would start the natural next and I just now fetched it from the garage.

[bounty]

some interesting notes about the natural.

its much older than I thought, 1952. I was thinking late 60s at the oldest but more likely early 70s. I wonder how the decision to make it into a movie came about.

I recently watched the hitman's bodyguard. despite the movie seemingly being about something else, there was a constant thread of romantic love that ran through both of the main characters.

ostensibly the natural is a baseball book---but early on the main character, roy hobbs is smitten by harriet, a fellow passenger on the train and you know it just portends something meaningful that's going to last the whole book.

and more to the point of "because there was a girl"---it was interesting to note how that has motivated and influenced the behavior of roy and whammer.

it was funny how roy was cleaning out the prizes the ball throw game at the carnival such that the proprietor had to offer up kisses from his daughter as an alternative. and how after he struck whammer out in their impromptu face-off, she unnecessarily flung herself on him to deliver them.

also---harriet seems to have switched gears from whammer to roy after the latter struck the former out.

[tailor STATELY]

I vaguely remember reading in Ball Four/Jim Bouton something about ballplayers cringing watching Ted Williams in batting practice while Ted continually yelled something to the effect that "I'm Ted (bleeping) Williams... (insert more epitaphs here)" at each pitch before he knocked each ball into the stands. I received the book from my maternal Grandmother when I was a teen, which is odd thinking back on it, and read it fervently; it foreshadowed the PED age with player's rampant "greenie" usage... makes one wonder even way back when. I lent a friend my book and never got it back circa 1988... prolly burned in the Paradise fire.

Watched a documentary on Nolan Ryan the other day that reminded me of why baseball is America's game.

I forgot to mention in another thread that The Natural is one of my plethora of favorite movies... watch it often still... the book sounds worth reading :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

I read ball four years ago but don't remember anything from it really. I can however confirm tailor from my recent ted Williams reading via leigh Montville that he had a major sewer mouth.

have you seen the Seinfeld episode where a library copy, ironically named mr. bookman, shows up at jerry's place looking for a long overdue book? want we should sic mr. bookman on your book thieving friend??

so far im enjoying the natural but its gotten confusing in two major ways. at the end of the first chapter harriet shoots roy hobbs in the gut. there is no indication this is a dream sequence or some sort of fantasy cut-out. what the heck?

and then in the next chapter roy shows up to a dug-out at a new York knights game. the whole first chapter of the book seemed (was I mistaken?) to give the impression he was going to Chicago to join the cubs. what the heck?

[Sancho]

Yep, he got shot. Derailed his whole career. He’s an old guy by the time he makes it to The NY Knights.

I’ve got that Nolan Ryan documentary in my cue. I’m looking forward to it. As for Ted Williams’s use of colorful language - hey, he was also a Marine Corps fighter pilot. If you took all the profane words out of his vocabulary, he wouldn’t be unable to communicate with the other guys in the squadron. They’d all just silently be standing around, miming air battles with their hands (shooting their watches) and glaring at each other.

So, tailor, you guys float away yet?

Bounty, I’d forgotten all about Kinger’s love of the Toledo Mud Hens. Minor league teams have the best names, eh? The Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, The Amarillo Sod Poodles, The Fort Wayne Tin Caps, The Lansing Lugnuts, The Rocket City Trash Pandas, The Albuquerque Isotopes, The Hartford Yard Goats, to name a few. You know in my OP I was sort of channeling MASH the movie with the Football Hero song. One of the great scenes in that movie was the grudge match football game between the 4077th MASH and the 325th Evac Hospital. After the game Radar sort of bumbles his way through that tune.

[bounty]

there wasn't any passage of time indicated in the writing, like "and 15yrs later." it just goes right from him being shot, to the next chapter with his walking into the dugout. although that said...id have to go back through the first chapter to see if his age is mentioned or implied. there is a point in the second chapter where he gets asked what has he been doing for the past bunch of years and he answers something like "id rather not talk about it." but still...its a big leap the author is asking the reader to make.

and why on earth would harriet shoot him in the first place? because he got a handsy with her on the train? baaaaaaad story telling!

there is a story of Williams' plane being hit on a combat mission in north korea and somehow he ended up flying in a direction other than back home. he was spotted by a colleague who was able to turn him around and get him headed back in a safe direction.

its been so many years since ive seen the M*A*S*H movie I don't recall radar's singing, but maybe someday in the not too distant future it'll be on the telly and i'll watch it again.

yes those are indeed great names. there is some funny scenes in summer catch where Jessica biel's little sister tries to come up with a suitable mascot for the chatham A's.

that's making me think of, what was he---the mascot for the padres I think? that hysterical chicken that used to do all sorts of antics at games back in the 70s or 80s.

[Sancho]

I’m not sure what Harriet’s motivation was for shooting Roy, but I’m pretty sure karma was paying Roy a visit. I mean he’s aged 19 and on a train going to a major league tryout. Rather than keeping a low profile and holding his cards close to his chest, he’s living it up, bragging, and then trying to hook up with Harriet. She asks him if he’s going to be the best that ever was and he says yes, so she shoots him - with a silver bullet. I can think of several (twisted) reasons she would do that but Malamud, I think, leaves it up to his readers to interpret her motives.

As for the football game in M*A*S*H, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it too, but certain things stuck with me. For instance the nurses are cheerleading for the 4077th and Hotlips clearly has no clue about the game of football. In the first half the 325th is running up the score. They’d score a touchdown and Henry Blake would say, “Ah it’s only 6 points.” Margaret would exclaim, “Six Points!” Then at one point the Ref throws a flag and Margaret leads a cheer, “A flag! A flag! We got a flag!” Henry says, “That’s a penalty, you idiot.”

Anyway, the game has racial tension as well. One of the black players for the 4077th gets a personal foul for a cheap hit. Back in the huddle his teammates ask him about it. He says, “that guy called me a coon.” Spearchucker, who used to play for the SF 49ers, tells him it’s an old pro trick to get him to loose his cool and get tossed out of the game.

Spearchucker says, “just throw it back at him.”
“What call him a coon?”
“No that guy’s got a sister. They all talk about her. Use it”

Next you see the players get set on the line of scrimmage for the next play and before the ball is even snapped, (you don’t even hear what was said) the guy with the sister charges across the line and chases the 4077th player around the field. Meanwhile the nurses/cheerleaders are chanting - Sixty Nine, He’s Devine - The big white guy gets tossed out of the game and on the very next play the gun goes off to end the quarter.

Margaret screams, “My God! They’ve shot him!”
Henry explains, “Hotlips, you incredible nincompoop, it’s the end of the quarter.”

I liked the comparison between war and football. Hotlips Houlihan had probably never been to football game in her life, but she was solidly behind her team - The 4077th. She had also spent quite some time at the front lines working as lead nurse in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital putting young men’s bodies back together, and she was solidly behind her team - the US Army. When the gun went off, she thought -

My God! They’ve Shot him!

https://youtu.be/o6eYjus_Olc

[tailor STATELY]

Lol... no flooding on our property... surrounding us yes locally very much. I live on a hill and the only thing I worry about is cyclonic winds and trees falling on us and lightning, and now maybe F0 tornados... oh, and gas prices for our generators.

Yeah, I remember Ted being a decorated fighter pilot.

Re: Hobbs, I thought the movie did a good job re: him getting shot and the premeditation of killing first The Whammer if I recall and changing her mind and shooting Hobbs. The time transition made a lot of sense too.

Seattle must be getting their share of the water event. Spent my best 7+ years of my life growing up on NW 107th in the 50's and 60's :)

Prolly mentioned this previously but I had a (2nd) cousin, Jerry Harper, who played a bit spot on M.A.S.H. once. His Mother, my dear Great Aunt, lived on NW 105th for a long time. The football game is hilarious.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

i remember that scene Sancho, and Margaret's exclamation too. i have the book that inspired the movie. its buried in totes with all the rest of the fiction books ive read, but if i dig it up someday i'll see how they handled the game in the book. there are a couple of seemingly weird sequels, M*A*S*H goes to maine and M*A*S*H goes to hollywood.

tailor, what was the bit spot?

in the book there isn't any indication that harriet was planning to shoot whammer.

i can see how in the movie a passage of time, and therefore a change of events in the storyline would be more recognizable.

marrying the two topics together, one of my favorite M*A*S*H episode was a sort of "year in the life" of the unit, of which baseball was a significant part where klinger got major Winchester to bet on the dodgers against the rest of the league in the NL pennant race and it was the year of bobby Thompson's "shot heard 'round the world."

"the giants win the pennant! the giants win the pennant! the giants win the pennant!"

and major Winchester has passed out on the ground.

laughs...

back to the book---roy has spent the past many pages being smitten with memo, the managers niece and the now deceased bump's flame. here is an interesting quote consistent with my pushkin thesis about the "efforts of man..."

"so he blazed away for her with his golden bat" p80.

[Sancho]

I don’t want to spoil anything, bounty, but tragedy lies ahead in the book.

Ya know, tailor, Seattle has changed a lot since the 50s and 60s…bah…but it hasn’t changed that much. For all the high-tech hipster sophistication here, just below the surface it’s still a stevedore/lumberjack town.

I read Richard Hooker’s MASH as a teenager and liked it. But then I read it again a few years ago and decided, as an art form, the movie was better - a rare case of the movie being better than the novel. I watched the TV show sporadically and the thing that strikes me about the novel, the movie, and the TV show, is that are all very different in tone. The novel is about young, eastern-schooled, country club type doctors who were drafted into the army for the war. The movie was about those same army doc’s only somehow they’d turned into hippies. And the TV show started out light hearted but then got a little preachy towards the end of its run.

So, one more sports scene from MASH the movie and I’ll move on. Country club doctors prefer golf as a sport. Am I right? Well there’s a scene where Hawkeye and Trapper are chipping balls from the helipad over to the mine field. Soon enough a helicopter carrying wounded shows up and as it lands the rotor wash blows all the doctor’s stuff away. Trapper matter-of-factly says to Hawkeye:

“I wish they wouldn’t land those things while we’re golfing.”

Or something like that.

[tailor STATELY]

re: Seattle - Yes, my elementary school is now a bunch of offices and neighborhoods have sprouted where I once roamed in the gullies.

My 2nd cousin played in 2-episodes of M.A.S.H. it turns out it :) Unnamed sergeant... https://mash.fandom.com/wiki/Love_Story_(TV_series_episode) and as Mr Phillips... https://mash.fandom.com/wiki/Phillips

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

thats kinda neat. the incubator episode was just recently on tailor.

and I love the "ah bach" schtick. its still making me laugh.

what you've put forth about M*A*S*H would probably make for a great masters thesis Sancho.

i was in undergrad school when the final episode was broadcast. its my recollection that pretty much the entire campus informally shut down in order to watch it.

i usually don't mind spoilers. the books not striking me right now as one that has a happy ending. roy got handsy with memo in last nights reading and she seems to have implied she has breast cancer. although id guess youre talking about some other bad ending.

its interesting that all the teams the knights play have actual MLB team names while the knights are clearly fictional. i suppose the author couldn't have made the team the yankees and gotten away with not having actual yankee players in the story.

[Sancho]

I wonder if the producers of the TV show skipped over the movie and went back to the book when they created Charles Emerson Winchester III MD. He’s a little stuffier and a little snootier, but in many ways he’s more like the Hawkeye in the book than Donald Sutherland’s Hawkeye is.

Anyway M*A*S*H the book, the movie, and the TV show were good at reflecting the sensibilities of their audiences. Give ‘em what they want, I reckon.

American Football has changed a lot since Korean War. Can you imagine an Ivy League trained doctor in today’s Army putting together a football game? Maybe a doctor who went to U of Alabama, but Dartmouth — Nah. However back in the early 50s football was mainly a college sport, and it was huge in the Ivy League. Also the helmets didn’t have face masks back then, so the movie got that wrong. And I don’t think anybody playing football for Harvard in the 40s or 50s ever hit another player so hard that his heart stopped.

Get well soon, Damar Hamlin.

[Sancho]

Alright then back to baseball, the kingly sport.

One thing I find unique to baseball is that I like to listen to it on the radio. A well-called game is a thing of beauty. If I’m in my garage working on a car, or in my barn fixing a machine, I’d rather listen to Major League Baseball than, say, rock-a-billy. Although that’s a close call.


Pulled outta San Pedro late one night
The moon and the stars was shining bright
We was headin’ up Grapevine Hill
Passin’ cars like they was standin’ still

But I digress.

I’m talking about announcers like: Vin Scully (Dodgers), Harry Caray (White Sox then the Cubs), Phil Rizzuto (Yankees and also a pretty good Meatloaf tune - “Holy Cow! I think he’s gonna make it!”)

But I didn’t really want to talk about play-by-play announcing in this post. What I wanted to talk about is the feel you get going to the ballpark.

So I was listening to a podcast about Mary Shane who was one of the first women to work as an MLB announcer. It was 1977 and she got a job calling White Sox games. (Harry Caray gave her an in) She was a school teacher in Milwaukee and what sent her on the path to sports casting was an apocryphal moment she had at the ballpark. Her sister had just died as the result of a car crash and understandably she was depressed. So she went to a Brewer’s game for solace. She said a feeling of peace came over her while she was at the game. She writes a about it in an unpublished memoir:


Something happened to me at the ballpark. For the first time since Pat’s death I felt a sense of peace. I went to another game, secretly afraid that it wouldn’t work again, but it did. When I tried to analyze what was happening, I couldn’t, it didn’t make any sense, but then neither did anything else.

She goes on to describe the game. The Brewers weren’t too good back then.


They booted balls. They threw wildly. They stumbled on the base paths. But it didn’t matter. I don’t even remember who they played. I just remember the feeling of being at the ball park, the hotdogs and the green grass and the throw around the infield after a strikeout. And I remember that I kept hoping for extra innings. I didn’t want the game to end.

[bounty]

i was actually gonna peek back in and write something about boxing. i'll end with that.

I live south of buffalo about 70ish miles. its bills' territory for sure.

major Winchester was my favorite character. I suspect that's because when I watch things, among other things, whats high on my list is an emotional impact. there were a few scenes in his time on the show that I think we amongst the best. one was his responding to virginia, a little girl from hawkeye's elementary school in response to a letter she had written him. another was his defense of a stutterer, and his subsequent listening to a tape from his sister, who was herself a stutterer. then another was how devastated he was when he found out the patient who's nerve damaged hand ostensibly ruined his career as a concert pianist, and then he (Winchester) rallied around the man. another was a scene where he donates chocolates to the orphanage, is livid when he finds out the director did not give them to the kids, humbly apologizes when he finds out the chocolate was traded for rice and blankets, and then klinger, overhearing the conversation, personally serves him food with the admonition that the giver "must remain anonymous." last one was an episode where radar wrote to Winchester's parents and got them to send him his old winter hat, which radar surprised him with.

paradise by the dashboard light is an utterly fantastic song!

one of the recurring scenes in john grisham's the painted house which takes place in Arkansas, is the family listening on the radio to the cardinals games. i can see the attraction.

have you seen the naked gun movie with leslie Nielsen trying to save queen Elizabeth from being assassinated at a baseball game?

I had a fellow grad student who was studying something like (oh im going to botch this!) the culture of stadiums and a large part of it was how their design and "feel" affected the people visiting it. i think what you just wrote about mary shane is a beautiful story. i have a book by someone named ehrlich called the solace of open spaces. itd be tough to find in my garage but i'll keep my eyes peeled for it.

nothing new to share from roy hobbs…

but im also reading another fiction book, which is really rare because i hardly ever read two at the same time. any twosomes are overwhelmingly one fiction and one non-fiction. anyway, in the girl who played with fire which is the sequel to the girl with the dragon tattoo, Lisbeth salander at one time took boxing lessons from a former boxing champion who lived in Sweden (although his name isn't Swedish at all). he finds out that Lisbeth is in trouble and wants to help. he tries to meet with one of Lisbeth's lovers in order to find Lisbeth and in the process of waiting for her, he witnesses her being kidnapped. he gives pursuit and catches up with the bad guys at a warehouse way out in the country. one of the kidnappers is a "blond giant, 6"6' and about 300 lbs" and he gets into a fight with him in order to save the girl.

(i thought this part worth sharing here. our boxing hero is getting creamed.)

"then came the moment that every boxer has experienced with dread. the feeling that could turn up any time in the middle of a bout. the feeling of just being not being good enough. the realization that you are about to lose.

"that's the crux of almost every fight, the moment when the strength drains out of you and the adrenaline pumps so hard that it becomes a burden and surrender appears like a ghost at ringside. that's the moment that separates the pros from the amateurs and the winner from the loser. few boxers who find themselves at the edge of that abyss manage to turn the match around, turn certain defeat into victory." p550.

[Sancho]

I think you and I have a similar problem, except my books are in the basement instead of the garage. I have box after disorganized box of books and my wife gets more and more pissed off about it every time she goes down there. She’s not a reader. Every so often while I’m away she’ll haul a few boxes off to the donation center and hope I don’t notice. I do, but I usually let it slide in the interest of marital bliss.

I remember that about John Grisham’s A Painted House. I liked that book. I also liked learning about the logistics of getting farm workers to pick the cotton back then. But what I remember most is that the story was told from the perspective of a 7 year old boy and told with the sensibilities of a 7 year old. If I recall this right, the town had a Baptist church and a Methodist church and rich folks went to the Methodist church. At one point the boy is going past the newly built Methodist church and he comments (something like) “Those Methodist’s think they’re so good with their fine new church, but us Baptists, we knew we had the inside track to god.” (I probably murdered that quote, but that’s how I remember it.)

So here’s one about boxing, and radio. It’s a nonfiction book by Jimmy Carter (yep President Jimmy Carter) about growing up in rural Georgia in the 30s. An Hour Before Daylight. His family was one of the few in town who had a radio and, well, I’ll just let him speak for himself:


The most memorable radio broadcast was in 1938, the night of the return match between heavyweight boxers Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. The German champion had defeated the black American two years earlier, and the world's attention was focused on the return bout. For our community, this fight had heavy racial over-tones, with almost unanimous support at our all-white school for the European over the American. A delegation of our black neighbors came to ask Daddy if they could listen to the broadcast, and we put the radio in the window so the assembled crowd in the yard could hear it. The fight ended abruptly, in the first round, with Louis almost killing Schmeling, There was no sound from outside or inside the house. We heard a quiet "Thank you, Mr. Earl" and then our visitors walked silently out of the yard, crossed the road and the railroad tracks, entered the tenant house, and closed the door. Then all hell broke loose, and their celebration lasted all night. Daddy was tight-lipped, but all the mores of our segregated society had been honored.

[bounty]

I actually have a pretty good system Sancho, but lacking a little space compromises it a bit. I have all my adult fiction organized roughly by author alphabetically, and then everything else in the garage is organized by kind. since space is limited though, and things aren't alphabetical, I just have to search through large and hidden piles.

ack! do you have an attic you can hide your books in?

that's a great memory about the painted house. I only remember that I liked the book.

i used to teach sport history, and i had my students listen to the radio broadcast of the louis/schemling rematch.

how interesting, and sad though too, to hear "with almost unanimous support at our all-white school for the European over the American." i have to wonder a little bit how accurate his account is and how much of it is racially "romanticized" for social/political effect.

ive read a louis biography, and i even have a whole book about the rematch, beyond glory: joe louis vs max schmeling and a world on the brink by margolick. its a good read. i'll take a peek in them to see if theres any carter corroborating material. if youre interested in that sort of thing Sancho, unforgivable blackness: the rise and fall of jack Johnson by ward is a really good book too.

and back on the baseball front. roy hobbs has been in a major O-fer slump, and then just recently hit an impossible home run as a pinch hitter that travelled through the legs of the pitcher and some mysterious woman iris has appeared in his life.

and meanwhile, the seahawks are beating the 49ers. wouldn't that be a heck of an upset? I think, though I would be happy to be wrong because im rooting for the bills, that the super bowls going to be the 49ers and the bengals. second choice is eagles vs chiefs.

[bounty]

I just finished the natural. what a bizarre book that I probably would not recommend to anyone. (don't read it tailor!)

it might be the only book ive read that's been made into a movie that I don't feel like watching. I think I said this earlier, I wonder how the book got made into a movie.

back to boxing and my skepticism of jimmy carter's recollection of the louis-schmeling rematch. ive only peeked a little in my margolick, I can do a more exhaustive look later, but in the meantime, here's a relevant retort:

"that schmeling was fighting a black man, and on behalf of a regime for which race was paramount, upped the symbolic ante. all whites, the Nazis asserted were in schmeling's corner--not just in germany but in the American south, Australia, south America, and south Africa. german communicators had repeatedly charged that the united states was more concerned about retaining the heavyweight crown than about upholding the honor of the white race, so the task had fallen to germany. that anyone could accuse a segregated and bigoted America of giving people of color a break was almost comic. but louis, only the second black man ever to win the heavyweight title, and the first in twenty-two years, had made himself indispensable--and, just as remarkably, largely acceptable--to white America." p9-10.

[bounty]

dag nab double posting again!

I plan to still do some looking in margolick but, in keeping with the intent of the thread, ive got a ton of sport history and some sport fiction I still haven't read.

I could go with football, baseball, tennis, figure skating, maybe horses, golf, cycling, drugs, boxing, swimming, tv (like roone Arledge, and jim McKay) and maybe a few other odds and ends.

Sancho, tailor, if you wanna weigh in on a particular area, youre invited. if im going to be reading something, I might as well read something that prompts some conversation.

danik---if you see this, ive also got my life and the beautiful game by pele. if you would peek in here lots to see the updates on it, id be happy to read that one.

[Sancho]

Shocking epiphany, bounty, the bevy of books in boxes in my basement don’t need to be organized and categorized like the stacks at the library, I’ll just go with boxes of fiction or nonfiction and tape a list on the front. A tremendous weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Thanks.

Anyway, I can’t speak to the accuracy of Jimmy’s memory, but the comment rang true to me. I’ve got nothing to base it on except that I grew up one state over from his (to the north and east) and in the South for an event like that you had to pick a team and the team generally ran along the same lines as the community’s segregation lines. I wasn’t around for the Louis/Schmeling fight, but I was for The Fight of the Century - Frazier/Ali. Seems like all the white folks in my town were pulling for Frazier and all the black folks were solidly behind Ali, and that’s despite the fact that Smoking Joe Frazier is from South Carolina. Donno. The South is weird that way. It’s getting better. But still. Back in school when a white kid referred to his mother’s sister, he called her “my ant”. A black kid would say “my ahhnt”. Black kids called the goo you squirt on ice cream “care-a-mel”. White kids called it “car-mul”. Black kids wore Pro Keds and White kids wore Converse (then an exchange student showed up wearing Adidas and all hell broke loose).

I was in school for busing. We got bused to their school for a couple of years. And then they got bused to our school for the next couple of years. Initially there were a lot of fights. But then we started becoming integrated. And Ya know what integrated us better than anything else? SPORTS! Yep, ya get a bunch of black kids and white kids playing on the same sports team and amazing things happen. The coaches were awesome. They were the unsung heroes of desegregation.

[tailor STATELY]

Ok, no read The Natural... still love the movie though 'some' might find it tedious.

I was an Ali fan way back in time... let's face it, he was a poet in the ring as well as out.

Got bussed circa '67-'70 in Stockton, California - Webster JHS (8th & 9th grade)... never saw the point then, nor now. I got more out of one class in sociology at Hay U in my brief stint at higher education reading Soul on Ice. The only thing that kept my sanity living in Stockton was the three bowling alleys in town I could go to on occasion. I took a bus to one downtown, walked to another, and had to get a ride to another where I bowled in a league (no wheels yet... too young) :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

given ali and frazier ware both black, then the differing camps are attributable to personality, character traits and life choices. I remember my father not liking ali because he was a "loud mouth." I suspect a lot of conservative and/or Christians took offense with him because of his becoming muslim and his early ties with the controversial nation of islam. i remember similar criticisms concerning lew Alcindor. lastly, considering how many people were still alive who had served in the military in WWII and korea, ali's stance on the draft made him hugely unpopular. jack Dempsey lost a lot of popularity and garnered a lot of haters by his not being in the military during WWI. by contrast joe frazier came across as a blue collar working class fellow who loved America.

one of the other big things going on at the time was the rise of the black panther party, the 1968 mexico city Olympic black power salute controversy, and all the race riots. rightly or wrongly, I think ali was identified with that.

your post reminded me of one of my all time favorite movies remember the titans.

tailor, your word "tedious" is probably something id use to describe the book. ironically, it became all the more so at the end, during the last game of the season. I just started skimming paragraphs looking for bits that advanced the story.

[bounty]

here's another margolick blurb:

"Louis's appeal was no accident. by temperament and design, he tried to be everything the much-vilified, still-controversial previous black titleholder, jack Johnson, was not...while whites still patronized him, bill corum of the new York evening journal had written of him the previous year--they generally liked him, even below the Mason-Dixon line. once, southern exhibitors put louis footage at the end of newsreels, the easier to crop it out; now it was played and applauded. one black columnist estimated as the louis-schmeling fight approached that two of three white southerners were pulling for louis...for louis then, much of the bigotry that afflicted America was briefly and selectively suspended." p12.

[Sancho]

The elephant in the room for the Frazier/Ali fight was whether you were for or against the Vietnam war. Ali famously said - “no Vietnamese ever called me n____.”

I think The Natural is more of a Greek tragedy with a backdrop of baseball than a “sports” book. Roy certainly had a tragic flaw - vanity, or maybe arrogance. I remember Roy clipping foul balls into the stands trying to hit the loud-mouth dwarf. That scene ended tragically.

I’m sure there’s been studies on the ups, the downs, and the break evens of the busing program. In the south, it seems to me, the major up was that prior to busing the black schools were chronically underfunded. Those schools went through a major renovation the summer before the white kids showed up that fall. The major down was white flight. Rich white kids went to private school and a lot of others fled to school districts that didn’t bus to the city. So in Columbia, S.C. Lexington county boomed and Richland county suffered. It seemed like everybody was trying to move into the Irmo School District. Irmo, South Carolina is the town that white flight built. The break even was that I never really got any better at algebra.

Right off the bat the sports teams were mixed, tables in the lunch room, not so much. Then an amazing thing started to happen. Black and white kids on the baseball team started eating together. I remember distinctly eating at a table with a kid from the city, Hodges, he was loud and boisterous and funny and man could he hit, probably somewhere north of 500. He wound up enlisting in the army…and then working his way all the way to bird colonel before he retired.

The band got a lot better too.

[bounty]

my hometown only had one public high school, so such things weren't even on our radar screen. I don't know if "busing" ever occurred up in buffalo or rochester where there are a ton of high schools.

that's another "masters thesis" worthy thought Sancho, about the book being like a greek tragedy. "literary themes in euripedes and Malamud" by student X.

oh, a nice segue into your algebra woes. I have this somewhere, did a quick look but couldn't find it, a math meme that goes something like "dude, stop looking for your x, she's gone, get over it."

I think I maybe made a good choice for my next non-fiction reading with the intent of keeping this thread going. I have two books, the greatest sports arguments of all time and andy Roddick beat me with a frying pan. both pose questions that might be fun wrangling about as I go through them.

here are the first two chapters in each:

"the slammer of 41: which feat was more formidable, DiMaggio's 56 game streak or Williams' .406 season?"

"could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an nhl team?"

I hope I can lure you all in with the questions, and then respond with what the texts say.

[bounty]

dag nab double posting!

but I can take the opportunity to add this.

if you guys aren't star trek fans, you might enjoy hearing that in deep space nine, Benjamin sisco, who is the station's Starfleet commander, is a huge baseball fan and actually keeps a baseball on his desk as a memento of his love for the game.

[tailor STATELY]

re: "whether you were for or against the Vietnam war." - By 1971, when I signed up for the draft, the liberal society in the SF Bay Area had pretty much brainwashed its youth through music and education, etc. It never occurred to me that Ali/Frasier was anything but boxing however... I never went down that rabbit hole. By mid-1972 it was all I could do to save my sanity while trying to go to college, working, living on my own (at first), paying bills, and watching my family disintegrate from within and without to worry about the draft... I would have gladly served had my number come up, it never did.

re: Deep Space Nine - yup, big fan. Binge watch the series prolly every other year.

re: "which feat was more formidable, DiMaggio's 56 game streak or Williams' .406 season?"... DiMaggio's streak IMHO... .406 isn't untouchable.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

Hey, that gives me an idea for new thread: The Literature Of The Counterculture. I can feel myself slouching towards Bethlehem already. Nah. I’ve barely got time to keep up with sports writing.

The other thread I was thinking of is sexual innuendo in verse and poetry, which dovetails nicely with the music of the 60s and 70s that Tailor mentioned. I was listening to Little Feat the other day when I had this idea. Specifically I was listening to Fat Man in the Bathtub.

Spotcheck Billy got down on his hands and knees and said, hey momma…
He really wants to hook up with Jaunita, you see, but she says:

No, no honey, not tonight. You come back Monday, you come back Tuesday, and then I might.
So Billy goes away sad and dejected. I’ve always liked this tune. It’s a real toe-tapper. I like its structure and it’s complex rhythm, but I never really listened to the words all that closely. I thought it was simply a song about sexual frustration and I assumed Billy was the “Fat Man in the Bathtub with the blues.” Well I got to surfing around the web the other day to see how other people interpreted the song and a fair number of people thought that the “Fat Man in the Bathtub” was a whole other thing. Old hippies, man, they know stuff. It’s one of the things I love about art - it can mean different things to different people.

So I’ve strayed slightly from sports writing.

[bounty]

heck Sancho, there could be all sorts of interesting threads here if there were more than 5-6 people to inhabit them!

tailor, im halfway through season 5 and really enjoying it. the most recent episode was the crew's capture of eddington, the former star fleet security officer who in fact was working for the maquis. other recent notables---kira had the O'Brien's baby, odo got his shape-shifting abilities back, and nog is back on the station after his first year at the academy.

while im here, if you are a star trek fan, let me highly recommend star trek: picard and star trek: lower decks. the latter is an animated series and sometimes its laugh out loud funny.

seems like I might have peeked before at the authors answer to that question and tailor you are on their side. i'll read it tonight and tell you all tomorrow what they say.

I don't pay much attention to baseball anymore but last I knew (and this was a long time ago) George brett had batted .388 and pete rose had hit in 44 (I think) straight games? those kinda seem equivalent in terms of how close they came to the marks in question.

[tailor STATELY]

re: star trek: picard and star trek: lower decks - I don't have a Paramount account at this time, but may re-evaluate my choices as their library grows. Also rural internet choices really makes premium streaming difficult for viewing.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

True dat. I paid extra for the cable company to run a line to my house. Just streamed Facing Nolan on Netflix, good documentary.
7 no-hitters seems like unbreakable record.

This is from John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name. He’s talking about all the fun stuff they have for the fans at a minor league ballpark, in this case for the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs:


In Allentown, one of the more popular fan-participation contests is called Whack an. And yes, it is family entertainment... not what you might otherwise think. A large box with four holes cut in the top is brought out to the third-base line. Four of the Pigs' summer interns crawl beneath the box. Two fans are selected and handed plastic bats. Each time an intern pops his head out of one of the four holes, the fans attempt to whack him. The fan who connects most is the winner.

While almost everyone in the ballpark was paying rapt attention to Whack an Intern, the reliever called into the game by manager Beyeler jogged in from the left-field bullpen. When the public address announcer introduced him, there wasn't a hint of a reaction from the crowd. The plastic bats ruled at that moment.

That reliever was Mark Prior.

He also mentions, “one of the biggest disappointments of the 2012 season in Durham was when George Jetson Night was rained out.”

So here’s a random personal experience from your region, bounty. Have you ever met your doppelgänger? Or have you ever had someone tell you that you look just like somebody else they know? And then you meet that person and you think, nah, not even close. So 8 or 10 years ago a couple of coworkers and I went to Dinosaur Barbecue in Rochester. I seem to remember we entered the restaurant at the bar. Behind the bar was a really good-looking, sort of Milfy, bartender and when she laid eyes on me she just lit up with a great big smile and motioned us over to the bar. I was thinking - this has never happened to me in my entire life. Pretty soon she realizes that I’m not the person she thought I was. It may have been coincident with me opening my mouth and my South Carolina drawl spilling out all over the place. But nonetheless she was quite friendly and told me how much I looked like a friend of hers. Well sure enough half an hour later or so her friend shows up. She introduces us and I gotta say, it was like looking in a mirror. We all had a pretty good laugh about it. She just kept shaking her head whenever I talked because southern vowels coming out of her friend’s mouth didn’t compute. And my people kept cracking up whenever her friend spoke his upstate NY accent.

So what does that have to do with sports writing? Well, it was sort of a Sports Bar.

[Sancho]

Screwed up the quote. The contest was called - whack an intern.

[bounty]

I got both of those star trek shows from one of the local libraries tailor. so maybe one near you will have them?

that's a neat story Sancho. twice in my life I have been confused for other people, and in both instances I knew who the other person was that I was being confused for. slight resemblance, but it I don't think enough for the mistaken identity. I have been told I look like cal ripken, jr, and also alexi Grewal (a former professional cyclist).

I suspect "whack an intern" would not go over well in today's hyper politically correct society.

the authors (Christopher russo [aka mad dog] and allen st. john) believe the 56 game hitting streak is the more impressive and unbreakable. their argument was that it requires more consistency and that that attribute is the more difficult in baseball. "the guy on a hitting streak afford a bad day."

also, some baseball statistician fellow did a study and found this: "he programmed a computer to spit out a thousand seasons' worth of random stats based on DiMaggio's career numbers. the computerized clipper never had a hitting streak longer than 48 games. he did the same thing with wade bogs. the results? cyber boggs hit over .400 five times."

the authors go on to mention todd helton and ichiro Suzuki as potential .400 hitters. by their time I wasn't paying attention anymore so I cant say how that prophecy ever panned out.

I perused the book last night. some of its dated, some of it arent really arguments/debates in the strictest sense. so i'll be picking and choosing what to put next.

here is potentially another fun one:

five on five fantasy: if cousy and company took on Michael's crew, who'd win?

so they've got the old timer team of bob cousy, bob pettit, wilt chamberlain, elgin baylor and Oscar Robertson

against

john Stockton (the authors eliminated magic Johnson because of the extreme height difference between him and cousy), karl Malone, Shaquille O'Neal, Julius erving and Michael Jordan.

which team wins?

[Sancho]

Uhh, I don’t know, man. Seems to me basketball as a sport has moved on from the old timer’s team. It’d be like a Model T racing an Indy Car.

Now there’s a sport we haven’t covered — auto racing. I went to a stock-car race at The Atlanta Motor Speedway once and was amazed at how LOUD it was. The crowd was fun, though. I saw a woman dressed in Richard Petty bumper stickers. Yep, she’d pasted bumper stickers over most of her private parts. I was thinking, that’s gonna hurt when she peels those suckers off.

[bounty]

the jaguars just made a go good at it with the chiefs but fumbled inside their own five yard line to turn the tide of the game away.

shockingly, the authors pick the old-timers! (I think they are whacked.)

"I think the problem that the new team has is that erving doesn't match up well against elgin, so I think the old guys would win." p6.

ps: its a little weird that Julius erving qualifies as a "new guy." his career overlapped a smidgen with wilt chamberlain and Oscar
robertson.

there are three auto race tracks within a 45-ish minute drive from me but ive never been. when I was a kid and my grandpa used to take me to the county fair, they had midget car racing, those were pretty neat. there's a local go-cart racing track that's kinda popular. I had an uncle that enjoyed going to the Daytona 500 every year. id go to some big race, probably at least once, just for the experience.

the andy Roddick beat me with a frying pan asks the question: "are these guys really athletes?"

nascar drivers
field goal kickers
relief pitchers (what??)
golfers

[tailor STATELY]

NFL... sorry to hear; where's Blake Bortles when you need him :)

Old timers I'd go with: Wilt, Elgin Baylor, Oscar Robertson, Rick Barry, Bill Russell

Athletes: bowlers ?

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

pps: some years ago I wrote a paper on "muscle dysmorphia." here's a relevant section:

"I compared height and weight information from basketball and football players from approximately 25 years ago to that of today’s players. T-test results were significant at the .001 level for the mean weight of the basketball players as well as the football players. Ball handling football players (QB, WR, RB) are on average 13 lbs. heavier and starting teams in basketball are 11 lbs. heavier. What is more, today’s player’s BMI’s are also significantly higher, which means that players of today are heavier per unit of height than they were 25 years ago. What this translates to mean is they are not just bigger, but since muscle is more dense than fat, they are therefore more muscular. "

in short, todays players are bigger, stronger, and more likely faster. your indy car vs the model t.

blake bortles! holy cow tailor I remember that name!

youre missing a guard and have two centers tailor---ya gotta trade out bill Russell for jerry west.

okay, lets add your suggestion to the andy Roddick frying pan question of "are these guys athletes?"

nascar drivers
field goal kickers
relief pitchers (what??)
golfers
bowlers

[tailor STATELY]

Ok... Bill as my sixth man and bring on Jerry ! Let Wilt bump and grind and Score until he fouls out.

athletes? -

no... endless left turn tracks
no... just need one strong leg and half a foot and a therapist
no... this almost made yes for me when I thought of Mariano Rivera
no... laughably no
no... I thought of going pro, so a definite no.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

What about curling? It’s in the Olympics.

As for the basketball team, bounty — bigger stronger faster and I’ll add — smarter. I’m not saying MJ and friends are more intelligent than the old guys. What I’m saying is they know more, by virtue of the fact that they came after the old guys and benefited from everything that came before them. Plato stood on Socrates shoulders and Aristotle stood on both of them, which would mean in this contest Michael Jordan is slotting in somewhere around Søren Kierkegaard.

[bounty]

having grown up in western ny and being so close to Canada, I got to watch curling on the telly when I was kid, and I enjoyed it. I spent time in Minnesota in the early 2000s and went once to a bonspiel (a curling tournament) in which the contestants portrayed themselves as representatives from all over the world. they dressed in the colors, and had the flags, and it was all really neat.

I agree---today's game seems to be played at a much higher level of thoughtful intricacy than in the past. same with football.

tailor in a bit of the build-up to the author's conclusions (or rantings), he takes up your bowling question. "while the legendary warriors who have advanced to the top ranks of games such as darts, pool, and bowling are universally regarded as something less than real athletes..." p156.

he says no to nascar
no to field goal kickers (poor garo Yepremian)
barely yes to relief pitchers
and no to golfers, adding insult to injury with---"if there is a sport where a grandma can beat you, then its not a sport." p163

setting aside for a moment the difficulty of settling on a universally acceptable understanding of the world "athlete", id give the relief pitchers more credit than he does. his whole argument seems to rest on the fact that some of them are fat and can still succeed in spite of that.

don't know the final outcome but the eagles were trouncing the giants last night when I went to bed.

todays the big bills/bengals game that will very likely be the source of all sorts of anxiety and exasperation. the bills are going to have to step it up quite a bit to win. I hope im wrong but I think the bengals are going to beat 'em.

my favorite part of the game is when its over and the opposing players meet on the field for hugs and quick conversations. I wouldn't mind if they showed a little more of that.

using the present question as a segue, we can go either with:

how would a pro-bowler do at skee-ball?

or

how good are pro golfers at miniature golf?

or

playing one-handed, could a pro billiards player beat an amateur?

or

can fans hit as well as pitchers?

or

how long before nascar drivers are replaced by AI?

[bounty]

dag nab double posting!

[Sancho]

Hah! Good questions.

I’ll bet a pro bowler, with a little practice, would kill at skee-ball.

My guess is, on his home course, a Putt-Putt hero would kill a pro golfer.

One handed, I think a pro billiards player would beat a recreational player but not a good amateur.

Some MLB fans would outhit some MLB pitchers, but not all MLB pitchers. As the old saying goes (I think) — You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of time.

As for AI and NASCAR, what’s the point? Would it be some sort of hillbilly Turing machine? Anyway (and I’m no NASCAR expert) I’ll bet driving a stock car is a lot more physical than the detractors let on. It’s also got complexities that a casual observer doesn’t see, like curling.

Is a Reno Air Racer an athlete? Those guys deal with serious g-forces which make it seriously physical.

[tailor STATELY]

Living in California I just don't get curling.


tailor in a bit of the build-up to the author's conclusions (or rantings), he takes up your bowling question. "while the legendary warriors who have advanced to the top ranks of games such as darts, pool, and bowling are universally regarded as something less than real athletes..." p156.... true dat :)

"I’ll bet a pro bowler, with a little practice, would kill at skee-ball." Yup, also Corn Hole game and Horse Shoes... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ray_Williams_Jr.

"My guess is, on his home course, a Putt-Putt hero would kill a pro golfer." - lol

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

the summary version from last nights reading:

the author coaxed a former mlb pitcher, paul abbott, to give the question a go. in 7 at-bats, the author put the ball into play 3 times with the judgment of "what appeared to be one hit." but the he also gave the caveat that since abbott was removed from the game, he was throwing his fastballs probably 10mph slower than normal. previously he had batted in a cage simulating a "90 mph slider from randy Johnson and all I saw was a blur." he went on to say "I really looked dumb trying to hit his curve, and his best pitch, his change-up." the general consensus from the author and the pitchers he talked with is that no way the average fan could hit as well as a pitcher, but mayyyybe some former players who batted really well in high school/college MIGHT be able to.

the mini golf question. the author took on a former pga ranked player to the former's home course, and they effectively tied. the number 1 ranked putt-putt player played a match with the number 1 ranked pga putter, and they split two rounds. consensus was a large advantage is given to the home course players and that if the pga players had time to practice on the mini golf courses, they'd be even better and would usually win.

nascar---apparently already such things go on (AI racing) but the participants---kinda like what youre hinting at Sancho---allow that a lot of nascar's allure is the personalities behind the wheel, and so AI wont be replacing them anytime soon.

pool---a similar retort to the mini golf question. the author, who considered himself an excellent player who could run tables, lost in a best of five match with the pro, but the pro made a point of saying "see, to people who don't play, they see your game and think you are an excellent player. but to a pro, youre nothing. I have not shot one-handed in a very long time. give me a month, two months, you come back and it would not be so good for you."

haven't read the bowler/skee-ball chapter yet, so more suspense on that one...

[Sancho]

Hah! Great stuff, bounty. They don’t have windmills and giant day-glo orange jumping frogs in the PGA.

Alrighty-right. I like a challenge, and since we’re already on it, I’ll defend golf as a sport. And I don’t even like golf. I’ve scoffed at the idea of golf as a sport … to golfers. In fact I’ve always agreed with the quip — golf is a good walk spoiled. I’ve only played the game a few times in my life, and then it was just an excuse to go drinking with some buddies. This was done mostly at the golf course on Osan Air Base in South Korea. The Air Force does love their golf courses. I think when they plan out an Air Force Base they start with the golf course and only then do they get around to planning out the runway. Anyway on this particular course a clever golfer can bank a shot off a concrete wall on one of the holes to get the to the green in 2. There’s a hill right in the middle of the course, and on that hill sits a Hawk missile battery. (Used to anyway) The Hawk is an Air-Defense-Artillery system, something the Air Force deems as important as golf.

So with that lead-in here’s my defense of golf as a sport. All sports are a combination of mental and physical exertion. Some sports lean to the physical side some to the mental. Golf is largely mental. The physical part just requires that you leave the cart at the clubhouse and lug your clubs around for a couple of hours. Golfers who use golf carts lack moral fiber. The mental side of golf requires an almost zen-like focus — it’s a teeny-weeny little ball after all. It also requires a keen awareness of the environment — wind, humidity, visibility, slope, turf conditions, to name a few. It requires a sense for geometry and trigonometry and perhaps even a passing familiarity with derivative calculus. Golf is social as well as competitive. You can play as a member of a team or individually and you gotta get inside your opponent’s head:

Nice drive, Bill.
F*** you, Bob.
No really, Bill, I’ve never seen anybody put that much English on a golf ball.
F*** you, Bob you F***.
Hey, want me to help you look for it? I can go get my waders.
F*** you, Bob, you f***ing f***.
Just trying to help, Bill. Hey, you feeling OK?
Ack.

But here’s what makes golf a sport and quite possibly a sport that’s superior to many of the more generally accepted sports. Golf is something you do, not something you watch. People watch it, but I think they watch it to get better at it and then go out and do it. Additionally golf is something you can do pretty much your whole life. Football is something you do during your school days and then you just watch it. Almost nobody plays football past the age of twenty. So football is a spectator sport. Golf is a participatory sport. And isn’t it more fun (and healthy) to participate than to spectate? Sports, music, conversation, and of course … ah well, you know.

I’ve got friend who loves golf. Lives for it I think. He’s pretty good. I give him a hard time about golf being a waste of time. He’s a pretty easy-going guy, with a knack for telling a good story. He explained it to me like this, and I kinda got it — So he’s been a member of a foursome for years. Once a year they take a trip. The year he was telling me this story they’d just gotten back from playing some sort of amateur tournament at Pebble Beach. They’d been trying to go there for years. It was their first time to Pebble Beach. They’d all spent a ton of cash to get there. Anyway on day-one, first hole, their best golfer tees up. There’s a small crowd. He takes a few practice swings and steps up to the tee, concentrates a moment, takes a mighty swing, and … whoosh … misses the ball. Looks around, shakes his head, steps up to the tee, swings again, and … whoosh, misses a second time. The crowd is dead silent now, no doubt thinking, these guys are supposed to be good. He looks at the crowd, shakes his head, and says “toughest course I’ve ever played.” Steps back up to the tee and launches the ball down the fairway like a rocket.

Golf takes confidence too.

[bounty]

the skee-ball chapter was the best of the recent bunch.

"skee-ball, for those who grew up in communist Russia, is a game played at family fun centers where a player rolls a tennis-sized ball up a ramp nine times, attempting to enter one of five different holes...and you can win a Chinese finger torture toy or a super bouncy ball if you do well."

the author invited a hall of fame pba bowler, pete david weber, to join him trying to scoop up all the tickets they could. weber beat the author 4 games out of 5 (by quite a substantial amount). the author asked the proprietor what the all-time skee-ball record was. they didn't keep track of such things but the guy said "the most ive really seen is about 290." weber had just shot a 300.

Sancho, any mention of "zen" and "golf" must be followed up with a reference to caddy shack!

I think "destination golfing" sounds pretty neat.

many years ago here in ny, the high school PE programs made a change to lifetime and fitness type activities. I don't know if golf made it into the curriculum though.

I grew up in the neighborhood of the local country club. we'd sneak onto the tennis courts sometimes, very rarely into the pool, one of my friends caddied a bit. one of the club's hallmarks was it was the most popular sledding place in the winter time. likewise on another side of town where the local university course and cemetery properties met. another is that every alumni weekend in my hometown they host a tournament that's very well attended by most of the classes.

have attached something in poor taste but probably still funny...

[Sancho]

Bah-hahaha
Those guys should be in the marching band. They’re all in step. If I had to put money on the foot race, I’d back the 19th-hole guy, he’s less encumbered.

I’m gonna have to get that book, bounty. It sounds hilarious.


Be the ball, Danny.
Where’d it go?
Right in the lumberyard.

Ya know, I’d forgotten all about that scene, but speaking of Caddy Shack and Communist Russia I used to use that movie as an informal authentication that I was dealing with an actual American not an foreign imposter or a Russian spy. I’d say “so I got that going for me.” And if the other guy didn’t immediately come back with “which is nice,” he was definitely under suspicion and everybody kept a close eye on him.

Anyway I think I was channeling Robin Williams on Tiger Woods with the zen comment:


Tiger. Son of a black man and Thai woman. Not even a German geneticist could’ve thought that one up. — Black athletic ability, Buddhist concentration.

[bounty]

caddy shack is such a good movie! im pretty good at remembering lines from movies but I wonder if I would have gotten that one. it might have been a function of how many years removed.

also by then I wasn't paying much attention to baseball anymore so for sure I would have failed "who won the world series last year?"

I have an old friend who is a fellow star trek fan. we have a line and reply from the voyage home

"so, you were at Berkeley?"
"I was not."

between the two, the Gallagher book is much more humorous, whacky and innovative. if you like sports in general, and some snark thrown into the weird things the authors got going on, it is a good read.

"could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an nhl team?'

"could an Olympic swimmer doggie-paddle and still beat a regular guy?"

"would a major league batting champion dominate in whiffle ball?"

and the raciest so far: "how easy is it for pro athletes to get laid? and how easy if it for a groupie to bag a pro athlete?"

[Sancho]

‘Stros won it, dominated in fact, as would an MLB pinch hitter playing whiffle ball in the park. I was hoping for a Padres - Mariners matchup. That’d a been more fun.

The full quote goes like this:


And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

I think there may a problem of a thermodynamic nature with a goalie that large in the rink. I don’t remember too many formulas from my college days, but I do remember the ideal gas law from Thermo-1, “pivnert” or: PV=nrT, hence, pivnert. P is pressure, V is volume, T is temperature, n is quantity and r is a constant we don’t care about it. In plain English, a goalie that big would put so much Pressure on the tiny volume of ice under his blades that the Temperature’s gonna go to the moon, and change the nature of the H2O from a solid to a liquid and maybe even a gas. If he’s heavy enough, he could melt all the ice in the rink… Or maybe not. Donno. I got a C in Thermodynamics.

As for a pro athlete’s romantic prospects, I think a better question is, does a pro athlete do better than a lead guitar player. My guess is the rock-n-roller wins, which begs the question: why’re folks wasting so much time at the gym?

How many groupies bag a pro athlete? Well, if the athlete happens to be a man and that man happens to be heterosexual and the groupie happens to be a woman, then all she really has to do is smile at him and it’s a done deal. Am I right?

Swimming. An Olympic swimmer dog paddling will beat an average dude by a mile. A world class swimmer knows how to move through the water regardless of stroke, and he’s got feet the size of flippers and probably webbed fingers. However if the average dude ever swam on a team in school, all bets are off. A beach bather will splash and churn around in the water like a shark-bit seal, getting nowhere fast, but expending a tremendous amount of energy. A super-fit, chiseled gym rat will attack the water with purpose and exuberance, but other than doing an impression of a blender on purée, he isn’t going anywhere fast. But anybody who has ever swum competitively has learned stroke efficiencies and has a muscle memory that will send him up and down the pool at least as fast as an Olympic dog paddler. Swimming, in a way, is like a foreign language - it’s real hard to learn as an adult. You can learn a language as an adult, but your always going to have an accent and sound funny to native speakers. You can learn to swim as an adult, but you’re always going to look like a wounded seal to a competitive swimmer, or a shark.

[bounty]

Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-galunga

let me hold you in temporary suspense for all the other ones Sancho (especially the whiffle ball one) and just tackle the obese goalie question.

I think that's an interesting view of the goalie, and one the author didn't take. although im confident in saying, in so much as pressure and temperature can be separated, itd just be pressure as the issue. its possible that could be addressed, if the rules allowed, by having double or triple blades, extending their length, and making them as thick as possible.

one of the retorts (there are a few) the author provided was that there are strict rules governing how large all the goalie's pads can be and that an obese person's body would not be sufficiently covered by them.

they got a competent college goalie and outfitted him with padding to make him the size of ~1000lb man, and recruited a handful of Washington capitals to shoot against him. some of the shots he was able to block, others hit what would have been his body. he said "And if that was my skin instead of padding I would be in the emergency room or dead right now."

[Sancho]

Bah, I was just joking around with the PV=nrT equation. Any second year engineering student would point out the fallacy of modeling a fat man on the ice with the ideal gas equation. Nobody chimed in here probably because engineers don’t tend to frequent The Litnet. (Papayahed is an exception, but I haven’t seen her around here lately.) Even an C-student in liberal arts would probably raise the BS flag noting there are no ideal gases to analyze in the problem of an XXXL goalie in the rink. Except maybe methane, but that’s a whole other problem. Ice can sublimate into a gas, but H2O in that form is really a vapor not an ideal gas.

Anyway that reminds me of a joke:

Why does an engineer prefer his wife to know about his mistress?
— because when he’s away from his wife she’ll assume he’s with the mistress, and when he’s away from his mistress she’ll assume he’s with the wife, and that means he can get more work done at the plant.

Ain’t it cool how a chat about sports writing can morph into a conversation about the personality disorders of engineers?

I still believe Michael Phelps can dog paddle faster that 99% of the people on earth. Mark Spitz probably can too and he’s in his 70s.

[Sancho]

Crikey! I’m writing like someone who majored in a science. I meant Phelps and Spitz can dog paddle faster than 99% of the people on earth can swim when swimming as fast as they can. Probably 99.9%

[bounty]

one of the attractions of Star Trek was how much Scotty loved his engines and the ship. not that he didn't have an occasional romance or two, but his other love featured far more prominently. the Next Generation episode where he gets to meet Geordi LaForge is kinda special. Geordi wasn't as fanatic as Scotty but he ended up in love with a holographic re-creation of Leah Brahms, the woman who designed the Enterprise's engines.

the other consideration for the goalie was that unless he weighed 2000lbs and essentially covered the entire goal, his mobility would be so hampered by his size that the offense would still be able to score on him. "As our session progressed, the Caps went through a number of drills and shot from various angles. They began methodically testing the fattie's limited ability to move...Caps winger Matt Bradley seemed bothered as a particularly good wrister was easily stopped, while Trevor (the goalie) kept complaining about his inability to lift his arms or breathe. this led me to believe that real science was occurring, because it didn't seem like anyone was having fun. From our practice session some easy conclusions could be drawn. Breakaways, in particular were death for Trevor...Angles and wraparounds were also extremely problematic...[in Trevor's opinion] in a real game a portly net-minder wouldn't stand a chance."

dog paddle news next time!

when I was in undergrad, the school had a swimming requirement for the entire student population. you could not graduate without either having passed a swimming competency test, or swimming 101. I understand back then such requirements weren't all that uncommon, but they have long since gone the way of the dinosaur.

the school district in which I live now is k-12 in one building and they have a pool. I know the elementary kids get at least one session of lessons and I think the high school kids do also.

some years ago I knew that mark spitz's Olympic swim times had subsequently been bested by either college women, or high school boys, I don't remember which. im trying to find a reference to that but haven't succeeded. I could look up the actual data and figure it out but my internet at home makes doing such things torturous if not impossible.

[Sancho]

Concerning the Scotty character, I guess I’ve always admired, or at least been fascinated by, people who’ve found their passion in life and are hugely dedicated to it. To be really great at something, I think, requires so much time and effort that it winds up excluding so many other things in life. I got to talking to a professional musician not long ago and asked her something along those lines, (How is life on the road? Is music still your passion? How much time does it take? Did it turn into work at some point? Would you do it again?) She said it was still her passion, but she never anticipated how much shear work was involved and yes she’d do it again. It made me think we’ve got to make a choice in life - to be really great at one thing, or sort of mediocre at a lot of stuff. I’ve chosen the latter, never been all that good at any one thing, but enjoy doing lots of stuff.

So I found a pdf for U.S. age-group swimming records. In the 100m freestyle it looks like boys 15-16 beat Spitz. College women probably do, but NCAA Div 1 only records short-course records, which are swum in a 25yard pool instead of a 50 meter pool (curses be on the head of Henry VIII or whatever English King it was who saddled us with imperial weights and measures. Now I’ve gotta have one toolbox for metric wrenches and one for SAE wrenches). Anyway it looks like girls 13-14 beat Johnny Weissmuller (you know, Tarzan). Interestingly before Weissmuller, Duke Kahanamoku dominated the 100m freestyle. Yep, Duke, famous Hawaiian surfer dude. Those records are fun to compare, but I don’t think they mean much. The sport has changed. The pools have changed. The training has changed. I think in Duke and Johnny’s case, they were a couple of guys who liked to swim and were good at it so they went to the Olympics in Paris to see how fast they could go. Probably they marked off 100 meters in the Seine, lined up, and somebody said, “go.” Also I’m fairly certain neither Kahanamoku or Weissmuller were juiced for the race.

Speaking of juicing and sports known for it, there’s a great picture from the Tour de France around about Weissmuller’s era. It’s of the cyclists riding along and sharing cigarettes. Back then (1920s) they believed a cigarette would clear your lungs so you breathe better.

[bounty]

one of the more popular star trek episodes Sancho was called "the trouble with tribbles." the enterprise crew was taking shore leave on a space stations, on which some Klingons were also visiting. the Klingons starting verbally harassing the crew members, even to the point of insulting (in absentia) captain kirk. scotty kept telling everyone to calm down and not respond...until the Klingon insulted the enterprise, upon which scotty decked him, and a Klingon-star fleet melee occurred.

I was pretty confident the boys had beaten spitz's times. there's still something impressive out there though that college girls have done, separate from the high school boys. sometime later when ive got some relaxed high speed internet...

ive got a nice collection of tour de france history books. i'll see if there are any incriminating photos or lines of text. the riders also took strychnine and other whacky things.

I was in paris in 1986 the first year greg lemond won. hands down the most exciting athletic event ive ever seen. skeptical i'll happen but id like to be back in france to climb a lot of the famous mountains made famous by the tour.

so---on to the dog paddle excitement!

the Olympic swimmer in question was josh davis. "davis clocked his 50 yard lap in 42.23, finishing about a quarter lap ahead of me. I did not finish, walking in the final 10 yards. the laughing crowd called for blood, and a second handicap match was set. now davis could swim the freestyle, but he and I started at opposite ends of the sprint pool, the handicap being he had to do 50 yards up and back before I made it 25 yards. this race proved even more disastrous and humiliating. fatigue combined with zero talent and hubris added up to a fatal mix of total failure..."

finding it hard to believe davis' time was as bad as a USA swimming official had said (the worst high school girls he coached bested it), the author wanted to see how "the average person would do, since no one seemed to think I met that standard, I later took a random sampling of ten friends, neighbors and people from my gym. the only qualification was that they be in reasonable shape and hadn't swum regularly at any point in their lives."

the manager of the gym swam the distance in 40 seconds, but no one else beat davis' time. in davis' defense he hadn't really trained for it and said he was only going about 90% during the race.

next up, the whiffle ball or the sex with a pro athlete?

[Sancho]

Hah! I knew it!

I remember that episode of Star Trek, but I don’t remember that scene. Reminds me of line from a Lyle Lovett tune - you can have my girl but don’t touch my hat. My wife is a huge fan of Lyle and has dragged me to more of his concerts than I care to remember.

I just read a good article about Greg Lemond. He’s not quite as svelte as he was when he on the tour, but he still looks good, and still has some bird shot lodged next to his heart. I always admired him as a stand-up guy. In fact during the Lance craze when everybody was still defending him against doping allegations, Lemond steadfastly said - uhh, I don’t know, man. So I pretty much took it to mean that Lance was on the juice. Of course that wound up to be true and by calling him out, Greg wound up losing his bicycle business. Lance can be a bit of a dick, you see. There are some parallels to swimming. Spitz has said the sporting commissions haven’t done enough to keep swimming clean.

At any rate, both of those sports fit my criteria for great sports because are things you do, not just things you watch. I still like to do both. I’ve gotten to where I enjoy open-water swimming. The PNW has a few swims each year. A couple are in Lake Washington (Fat Salmon and the Park to Park) and we’ve got one from Vashon Island to Owen Beach in the Puget Sound. A thick layer of subcutaneous fat helps for a swim in the Puget Sound if you plan to do it without a wetsuit. The water temp is in the low 50s. And speaking of being chilly, we’ve got our first group ride of the season coming up this month - The Chilly Hilly. It a 33 mile bike ride on Bainbridge Island. Brrrr.

So let’s hear about the sports groupie’s success rates.

[Sancho]

While I’m thinking about it, and speaking of cycling, if I had to pick the greatest American bicyclist of all time it wouldn’t be Greg Lemond, or Lance Armstrong, or even Major Taylor. It’d be Dave Stoller of Bloomington, Indiana.


Cyril - Are you really going to shave your legs?
Dave - Certo. All the Italians do it.
Mike - Some country. The women don’t shave theirs.

(Daniel Stern, Dennis Christopher, and Dennis Quaid from the 1979 movie “Breaking Away”)

[bounty]

I have to train, the Italians are coming!

a fun piece of trivia the next time you watch breaking away, in one of the close-up clips they show when he's drafting behind the semi, he's in his small chainring! what a great movie though nonetheless.

it sorta kinda almost broke my heart when lance Armstrong confessed to having done everything he did. I suppose if oprah had been a better interviewer, she could have gone into Armstrong's culpability as concerns greg lemond too.

I don't remember the exact timing of it relative to events but some time in the midst of all that I met frankie andreiu's wife. I told her I was a cyclist and she graciously invited me to meet her husband. i declined, but still a pretty neat thing.

if you like cycling history Sancho, especially embedded in the larger world around it, let me recommend road to valor by aili and andres mcconnon. its the story of gino bartali and its a good read, especially the WWII stuff.

on that note, i found an appropriate photo and blurb from one of my books and attached it.

onto the groupies!

i'll see if i can stretch this into a 2-3 day thing.

the author "recruited" a 22yr old former model who maybe was an ex also, as the field operator so to speak.

"we all grow up with dreams. some of us want to be astronauts, some want to be doctors or lawyers, some want to be president. and some grow up wanting to bone LeBron James. this was Amanda mitt's dream, or rather the one that was assigned to her for a night on the town in Cleveland we wet out to explore the wild world of nba nightlife."

"who is this laron guy again? he plays basketball or something? i'm not really going to have to sleep with one of these guys right?"

[Sancho]

Such a great movie. One of my favorites of all time. Dave has the perfect mom:


>>Dave crosses himself<<
Evelyn Stoller - “Oh, Dave, try not to become Catholic on us.”

Anyway I suppose I can overlook the small-ring faux pas. The rest of the scene makes up for it. I liked the collaborative interaction between Dave and the truck driver. I gotta say though, the biggest glaring mistake in that scene is this: never in the history of the State of Indiana has there ever been a need for a tractor-trailer full of Cinzano vermouth. Miller High Life, sure, but Cinzano - no way.

I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the Gino Bartali book. I like that kind of stuff.


Who is this Laron guy again?

So a few years ago my wife was flying to L.A. The guy sitting next to her leaned over and said, “you know that’s Charles Barkley sitting behind us.” She said (a little too loudly) - “WHO’S CHARLES BARKLEY?” Her seat mate motions behind them. She turns around to see Charles Barkley, with a great big grin, waving at her.

BTW that’s exactly the photo I was thinking of.

[bounty]

I was just looking for something else Sancho and came across this:

https://www.moviemistakes.com/film210

that's a good Charles barkley story.

their first night out wasn't a success. they kinda didn't know what they were doing, and i'll pick up the story on the next day:

"...when game day arrived we had renewed hope, since it's common knowledge that groupies use the games as their first contact point in the battle for the athletes sperm...Amanda made her way into the arena primed for action, wearing the sluttiest groupie getup imaginable."

"per the game plan, Amanda first went to the front-row seats next to the home bench to make googly eyes. unfortunately, because our real tickets were next to uecker and spud McKenzie, she kept getting kicked back upstairs. then, by the tunnels where the players come in and out, she attempted to set up something under the pretense of getting an autograph. again, security was on to her game, or lack therof, and tossed her. frustration was starting to mount..."

[Sancho]

I like those IMDb message boards where they find that sort of stuff. I think pretty much any movie, high or low budget, will have a few gaffes, most of them unintentional. Anyone who’s ever watched a movie about a subject they’re intimately familiar with, can see clearly the many mistakes movie makers make. My father-in-law is a retired cop and he’s never been able to watch cop shows or detective shows. He can’t get past all the screwed up deets. Meanwhile I’m thinking - who cares that a real cop doesn’t wear his Sam Browne belt that way? The scene is about the cop’s reaction to finding a dead girl.

I checked out the tractor-trailer drafting scene on YouTube. Dave is on the big ring except for the point-of-view closeup of his legs pumping away — on the small ring. Incidentally I’ve always wondered if those closeups were of the actor’s (Dennis Christopher) legs or of an actual cyclist’s legs. I mean whoever it is, he’s got some jacked quads. Anyway as the semi is approaching and Dave shoves off from the shoulder of the highway, he is clearly pushing a big gear. I liked that detail. The closeup was spliced in. I’m not a theater arts major but I imagine they got that shot with a camera on a pole and the cameraman hanging out the back of a flatbed while the cyclist hammered away. Probably easier (and safer) to get it at a slower speed, hence the small ring. Also that film didn’t have huge budget, so I suppose they did what they could.

Speaking of movie gaffes, here’s one so bad that I’ve always wondered if Stanley Kubrick did it on purpose. In Doctor Strangelove after Major Kong evades a direct hit by a Soviet missile, he drops his B-52 down to treetop level to further evade radar threats — and continues to ingress the target. (Hell yeah!) There are a number of shots of the bomber flying along over arctic Siberia with the airplane’s shadow just below it. The shadow is clearly not that of a B-52, but rather a B-17, or a B-25, or something with propellers and big round recip’ engines. It cracks me up. But I’m not smart enough to figure out if there was some artsy-fartsy reason for doing it, or if it was just the footage they available to them.

[bounty]

dennis Christopher was such a twig id strongly suspect a body double.

the only other cycling movie im aware of is American flyers with kevin Costner and rae dawn chong.

I have to confess ive not seen dr Strangelove. but its so often referenced in pop culture id probably do well to. I think your latter explanation is the better one.

I have a couple of star trek books that follow the entire series of next generation. each episode on the series has a few pages dedicated to it and often times, things like the small chain ring are pointed out. its fun to watch an episode with book in hand.

so back to Amanda and her googly eyes...

after the game they went to the restaurant that apparently was the go-to place for players, and talked with one of the waitresses. they were psyched to find out they were in the right place, but dismayed to find out the team had a road game the next day and had already left town. while they were there however, the waitress connected them to a man named Julius, who apparently was an expert in the player/groupie dynamic.

it turns out there are in fact male groupies who exist for a number of reasons, and one of their roles is to act as an intermediary between the players and their "prey."

"turning to Amanda, he said, 'see, if you came to the game with me, that would have been the easiest thing in the world. ive got tickets right behind the cavs bench. youd just stand there and look pretty, make eye contact, and bam, its over. theyd motion to one of their male groupies to come and get your contact info. happens all the time.'"

it almost makes you want to watch a game on tv, or go to one in real life, to see if you can spot it happening.

super bowl today---normally id pick the nfc over the afc, the east over the west and the north over the south, but contrary to all my traditions and geocentricity (and green being my favorite color), I think i'll be rooting for the chiefs today. although, I don't like how they won against the bengals a couple weeks ago. take away that rightfully called, but incredibly stupid unsportsmanlike conduct call in the closing seconds, the game probably goes into overtime and who knows...

[Sancho]

I’m not sure which is a more shocking revelation, bounty: you never seeing Doctor Strangelove or me not knowing who’s in the Super Bowl this year. I usually use Super Bowl Sunday to go to Costco, no lines at the checkout counter.


Major T.J. “King” Kong — Well boys, we've got three engines out, we've got more holes in us than a horse trader's mule, the radio's gone and we're leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower, why we'd need sleigh bells on this thing... But we've got one thing on those Ruskies… At this height, why they might harpoon us, but they dang sure ain't gonna spot us on no radar screen!


President Merkin Muffley — You're talking about mass murder, General, not war.

General Buck Turgidson — Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops! Uhhh…depending on the breaks.

[bounty]

for sure my not having seen that movie is a deficit in my pop culture resume. I should be at the library this week to be able to check if its in the system anywhere.

the super bowl was great right up until the end when a ref made a call that he probably shouldn't have and it totally affected the outcome of the game.

so the author and Julius hung out and talked while Amanda went to the bar within eyeshot of a lone browns player.

"with Amanda making progress, I asked what percentage of athletes Julius had seen who were married or in relationships."

'"pretty much all of them"' he said. later I read that the player Amanda was talking to at the bar was married.''

"do the wives and girlfriends know what goes on?"

"yeah. they let it slide as long as its not in their face. and even if it is, they still let it slide really."

"finally Amanda came back to the table. roughly an hour has passed since her departure. a Pulitzer awaits:"

"I cant believe you made me do that. why would any girl lower herself like that?"

"okay okay mother superior...how easy was it?"

[Sancho]

Yup. That sounds about right.

Men.

Jonathan Franzen gets at it pretty good in Twenty Seventh City:


Probably the best metaphor for the State was sexual obsession. An absorbing parallel world, a clandestine organizing principle. Men moved mountains for the sake of a few muscle contractions in the dark.

[bounty]

the local library has dr Strangelove. will probably fetch it tomorrow when im there to fetch some other movies.

i had a photo in my collection that would have captured that sentiment nicely but it seems to have disappeared, which is really weird. it was of a boxer sitting in the corner between rounds, his trainer holding a water bottle to his mouth, while the boxer has his attention focused on the model carrying the card indicating what round it is!

so ive had to go with an alternative photo that captures pretty much the same thing AND ties in nicely with the posts above.

so on to the whiffle ball challenge!

who was your money on Sancho? the whiffle ball pitcher or the major league baseball player?

[Sancho]

At first blush I thought a major league pitcher would dominate, but the more I think about it the more I think that may not be the case. Pitching and pitches in the majors are highly specialized and highly dependent on the weight and structure of the baseball — 4-seam fastball, 2-seam fastball, palm ball, slider, curve, slurve, etc. The whiffle ball is so different from a baseball that it’s a totally different thing. Also I imagine the types of pitches available to the whiffle baller are very different than those available to a base baller, so much so that success on the baseball diamond won’t translate into success on the whiffle ball diamond. Speed skaters and figure skaters both skate on ice but neither, I think, would do well in the other’s neighborhood.

El Sancho’s conclusion: a whiffle ball pitcher would destroy a MLB pitcher on the field of whiffle ball.

As for the photo — yup, been there - done that.

[Sancho]

Ya know, in retrospect a better analogy would’ve been a Hockey player and a Figure skater instead of a Speed skater and a Figure skater. It’d’a made for a better visual — Wayne Gretzky trying to keep up Dorothy Hamill on the ice.

The more I think about it (and this is with a very limited knowledge of Whiffle Ball) I’ll bet a whiffle ball can do a wicked curve.

BTW Major League Baseball preseason is officially underway. Woo-hoo.

[bounty]

I think the closest analogy might be between two racquet sports---say, tennis and racquetball. the objects being struck at behave and respond differently, and so the nature of the strokes are different and have to be learned.

apparently competitive whiffle ball is (or was at the time of the writing of the book), a thing.

(the author spells it "wiffle" but the auto spell checker here doesn't like that. the bat I have says "wiffle" but im going to go with "whiffle" to avoid the red squiggly lines.)

a reminder of the question the author asked, "would a major league batting champion dominate in whiffle ball?"

he writes "there are hundreds of whiffle ball communities throughout the country, filled with thousands of men who do battle against one another every weekend with plastic bats and plastic balls. the elite of the whiffle community is an organization called fast plastic. with more than 300 teams, 1,500 plus players, and 18 locations spread across the country..."

the author got freddy sanchez who batted .344 for the Pittsburgh pirates, winning the 2006 batting title, to square off against a fellow named jim balian, a "two time whiffle ball national champion and mvp...protégé randy dalbey, a 6'6" 21yr old former all state basketball player; tom raven, who played baseball at asuza pacific...and kyle ramsey, one of the best pitchers in all of whiffle ball."

I found this interesting---they gave sanchez some time to get used to the lightness of the bat, which isnt the little skinny yellow thing we grew up with, nor the oversize things that became available later, but rather has the dimension of a real baseball bat.

after watching him, the author's early inclination appeared to be on the side of the batting champion, saying, "I was becoming concerned that the first inning would never end..."

as for preseason, exciting for baseball fans everywhere! "the one constant through all the years ray, has been baseball..."

[bounty]

by the way, the name of the movie escapes me but there is some rom-com out there that was made around hooking a former hockey player up with a former ladies singles skater to enter pairs competitions.

[Sancho]

Whoops answered the wrong question. Hah! And Oh Yeah a MLB .344 batting champ would definitely dominate at whiffle/wiffle ball, even with one hand in his pocket, or batting as a lefty, I bet. Anyway sounds like they had a good time. BTW I got to watch Sánchez play when he was with the Giants.

So we’re having the last gasp of winter here in western Washington, which is one of the reasons I like baseball— the preseason signals the arrival of nice weather. I’ve got in-laws down in Arizona. The other day I told my wife we should go visit her mother. She saw right through my ploy, “you don’t want to see my mom. You just want to go to a ball game.” I was thinking — well, duh.

It is fun to picture Wayne Gretzky trying to land a triple axel, or for that matter trying to do compulsory figures in his NHL get-up. Think of Dorothy Hamill donning a pair of glasses to do the figures in the ‘76(?) Olympics. It’s not as much fun trying to imagine Peggy Fleming in the Hockey Rink, although Tonya Harding could probably hold her own. (Sorry Tonya. That’s a cheap shot. You got a raw deal in the press, and you still ROCK!)

Speaking of racket sports, we’ve got a weird one here in the PNW — Pickle ball. In a nutshell, pickle ball is to tennis what whiffle ball is to baseball. The pickle ball courts at my local Y are booked well in advance. It seems to be a favorite with the geriatric crowd. We’ve got 80-year-olds strutting around, fresh off a victory, chest puffed out, bragging and trash-talking like a little leaguer. It’s awesome.

[bounty]

im halfway through dr Strangelove and enjoying it.

we have pickleball out here too. I cant say this for sure, but id have to guess that someone at a ymca invented it and that's how its traveled the country relatively quickly. there are even a couple of commercials on the telly that have people playing. one might be old folks, one might be with people that have a medical condition. I think anything that's adapted that can allow people to continue to move and play is great.

I used to follow figure skating, was a huge michelle kwan fan, have been to a couple of stars on ice shows (they are wonderful), read some biographies, have a couple of skating musical box globes, and enjoyed Peggy fleming, dick button and terry gannon as announcers on nbc. terry gannon's still there I think but I haven't watched anything seriously for a long time. I wonder what tonya harding's up to these days?

we still have snow in ny in march, and april, and very rarely sometimes in may but the heralding of better weather for me is when the geese show up on my pond. they got here over a week ago, I think they are early, its the earliest they have ever arrived, but its been a mild winter so far so we'll see how it goes.

but yes, I can see how baseball season and spring training and good weather are inextricably woven together. I think catching a preseason game might even be more enjoyable than an in-season game. a smaller stadium and more intimacy sounds desirable. I used to date a girl a long time ago who had family in vero beach. take mom-in-law to the game!

so your guy sanchez against the whiffle ballers!

"play ball.

"balian opened on the mound for the whifflers.

"holy sh*t!

"as far as whiffle ball, or any other kind of pitching is concerned, his pitches were as nasty as nasty gets. balian has been clocked at 87 mph, which from 45ft away is the equivalent of 117 mphs in baseball. jim was throwing pitches that looked like they were done with CGI effects: a drop ball that completely fell off the table, a riser that started an inch off the ground and ended up over the batters head, and a slider that broke 4ft.

"but he was wild early. freddy walked to open the game and was fouling off pitches and making balian work. sanchez went down with three strikeouts in the first inning, but I was sure the levee would break."

[Sancho]

Do you realize that fluoridation - is the most monstrously-conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?

Still got my money on Sanchez.

I’m afraid I don’t know too much about figure skating. I watch it every four years at the Olympics and that’s about it. Also as every fan of crossword puzzles knows, an AXEL is a figure skating jump but an AXLE is that rod that goes between two wheels (and for post Wednesday puzzles, AXL is Rocker Rose).

At any rate, Tonya Harding is a fascinating figure In figure skating. I’m not sure what she’s doing now, probably she’s just living her life as best she can. I know she’s from the PNW, Oregon I’m pretty sure, and that she had a rough upbringing. I know she was one of the few women to ever successfully land a triple axel. And I know the press and late-night talk-show comedians were merciless to her. Once the whole knee-bashing thing went down, the pile-on effect was relentless. I don’t think the press was interested in getting to bottom of what happened. They had a story that would sell and they stuck with it - Tonya is trash, and trash gonna do what trash gonna do, so let’s all hate on trashy Tonya. I don’t know how she managed to keep focus and compete after that. El Sancho was pulling for her. El Sancho almost always pulls for the underdog. El Sancho had his money on the Phillies in this year’s fall classic.

[bounty]

I thought George c scott stole the show. he was so good, i could well imagine him playing a comedic part in young Frankenstein

the dvd I got has bonus features to it, so im enjoying that too.

for sure that was part of the general non-acceptance of tonya harding, that she wasn't the typical ice princess people want their ladies singles skaters to be. I have an advanced copy of a book called culture on ice, figure skating and cultural meaning, i'll have to go hunt it up to see if and what the author mentions about her. ive also got Christine brennan's inside edge and a book called frozen assets: the new order of figure skating. they are all relevant to that time period.

yes, named after a Norwegian fellow who invented it, axel Paulson. im not a stickler in the strictest sense but I strongly suspect if we examined the degree of rotation, a lot of the females who have "completed" triple axels would be found to be short. I suspect there is some degree, pun intended, of shortness that's allowed.

alas Sancho...

"by the 3rd inning freddy was no longer remotely even close to getting a hit...[he] was missing pitches not by inches but by feet. the foul tips were a thing of the past. balian's drop ball was untouchable at this point.

(after a couple of walks, sanchez did whack a double driving in a ghost runner)

"but that was the end of the fun for the batting champ. balian regained immediate control and polished off the inning with a series of pitches so devastating that two thousand miles away chuck tanner felt a disturbance in the force...

"we resumed play with dalbey on the mound..."

[Sancho]

Freddy, Freddy, Freddy. Just stand there and take the walk. Any slider that breaks four feet can’t wind up piercing the strike zone very often.

I think you hit the nail on head with the ice princess comment. For Tonya that had to sting. She’d come from humble beginnings and worked hard to get to the top. Nancy also came from humble beginnings, (Southie, I believe) but she looked and acted the part of an Ice Princess. If she’d’a had a couple of exes, big thighs, and her brothers showing up to the competitions wearing track suits, gold chains, and carrying a six pack of Sam Adams, she’d’a probably gotten the same treatment. I can see Tonya under the hood of a pickup, tuning a carburetor, greasy bloody knuckles, smoking a Chesterfield, tall boy sweating on the fender, Lynyrd Skynyrd on the radio. I can’t picture Nancy doing that. Seems to me Tonya’d be more fun to hang out with.

Anyway, I look at all of this with mild amusement. You see I’m from a region of the country known for its trashyness— the south. But I’m here to tell you — North Georgia hillbillies ain’t got nothing on these people in the PNW. Every once in while somebody around here will hear my fading southern drawl and try to give a hard time, or ask me about about Southerners. I usually channel Bill Murray and say something like — “C’mon, man, people are the same everywhere. Y’all are the same as those people down south, maybe just not quite so sophisticated.” Then I watch them puff up.

Speaking of tackiness, there used to be an ice show in the tackiest town in the U.S.A., possibly the world — Vegas. It was called “Nudes On Ice” but everybody referred to it as “Tits on the rocks.” I enjoyed the show.

[bounty]

makes you wonder if they filmed the whole occasion. although I suspect freddy sanchez would probably want it locked away in a vault.

"we resumed play with dalbey on the mound. his stuff was kind of like balian light but it was still goodnight nurse for freddy. K, K, K. the game took on a monotonous air of inevitability at this point. K, K, K. the box score was starting to look like it was done by david duke.

"for the final inning kyle ramsey took the mound. freddy continued taking hard cuts and going after pitches with his trademark intensity, but the results were the same, K, K, K..."

freddy went 1 for 19, with 18 Ks.

"to understanding how freddy ended up looking like your typical Pittsburgh pirate, I asked him to compare hitting a whiffle ball to a baseball.

"'This a lot harder. this is way harder.'"

however later, an all-star catcher corrected the course a bit "we face randy Johnson and don't strike out every time...I guarantee if you give freddy a week or week and a half of swinging that bat, he'd start rocking those guys."

on the figure skating front, since the temporary inaccessibility of the site I haven't taken a peek at my resources. I did however find an old journal article from the journal of sport and social issues called "making sport of tonya: class performance and social punishment." i'll have to give that a re-read. I know Nancy Kerrigan damaged her brand a bit when she got caught on a hot mike (I think) disparaging either mickey mouse, Disney or the parade she had to be in.

that's funny, I hadn't heard of "nudes on ice." figure skaters, pun intended, usually have great figures, so im sure the aesthetics were interesting. the very first broadway play I went to "oh Calcutta" was done in the nude. I had no idea prior to it starting.

[bounty]

forgot to mention---in the "special features" part of dr Strangelove you find out that the original major kong was peter sellers, playing his 4th part in the movie. the reason slim pickens ended up playing the part on screen was that sellers fell out of the bomb bay doors and broke his foot. which might be why dr Strangelove was in a wheelchair.

[Sancho]

Yeah, this website has had its ups and downs over the years. The mod’s have done a nice job of keeping the discourse civil, but the number of active people has fallen off a cliff. Anyway when the site drops offline like that I think - whoop, there it goes, off to the cyber graveyard in the sky, never to be heard from again, and we all shuffle over Goodreads or something.

I heard that Slim Pickens was a late addition to the cast, but I didn’t know why. The story I heard was that they got him over to the studio in England as soon as they could after hiring him because they’d already started filming. Kubrick had never met him and really didn’t know anything about him. Well Slim shows up and saunters onto the set wearing cowboy boots, Wranglers, a western shirt, and a Stetson. Kubrick takes one look at him and thinks he’s a method actor. He says to him something like - good, good, you’ve read the part and are getting into character. One of Kubrick’s assistants leans over and says - no, Mr Kubrick, that’s just how he dresses.

[bounty]

ive tried a few times, alas unsuccessfully, to get the powers that be to address the current state of affairs.

yes, the special features dvd had that same story about slim pickens.

I recently read fight club. there is a lot to that book that could be tied to competitive athletics. I also just watched a movie that had a relevant quote in it (from memory, I might be botching it a bit), "where to the man when the mission is over?"

haven't peeked at Nancy and tonya yet but I mean to. still plenty of chapters to go though in andy Roddick beat me with a frying pan.

which one sounds the most appealing?

would sumo wrestlers make great nfl lineman?

could any celebrities play in the pros?

does a six-fingered pitcher have an unfair advantage?

or maybe all three!

[Sancho]

Talk about serendipity! Last week’s New Yorker had an article by one of my favorite writers — Elizabeth Kolbert. The article was all about the creepy crawly things (caterpillars and such) and the people who study them. Here’s her description of one such scientist:


Wagner is an entomologist who teaches at the University of Connecticut. He has close-cropped silvery hair and a square jaw and bears a passing resemblance to George*C. Scott playing General Buck Turgidson.

I liked that she didn’t feel the need to explain who General Buck Turgidson was. She just expected us to know. Good article by the way. I ought to lift a few quotes from it and revive the nature-writing thread.

So hey, Sportsfans, speaking of old movies and books, I just reread The Great Santini by Pat Conroy. The last time I read that book I was in high school, which was —ahem— some time ago.

If you’re not familiar with the book or the movie here’s the basic rundown: Bull Meecham (aka The Great Santini) is a Marine Corps F-8 fighter pilot nearing the end of his career. He’s an alcoholic, and he’s a though guy who’s physically and mentally abusive with his kids and his wife, but he does have a certain raw charm about him, and also he’s a good leader. Bull Meecham has a few verbal tics. He calls everybody “Sportsfans” or “Jocko” or “Hogs.”

To his children: “Line up for inspection, Hogs, and quit yer belly aching.”

Anyway his wife is Lillian, a real looker with the affected manners of a genteel southern lady. His oldest son is Ben who is about to graduate high school and has borne the brunt of his father’s abuse. A year younger than Ben is Mary Anne, a wicked smart but plain girl. There’s a couple of younger kids, (Matt and Karen) but they don’t play too big a part in the story.

So towards the end of the book Mary Anne is all dolled up for the Prom. She’s going with her brother Ben oddly enough. It took a lot of coaxing by her family to get her to go. Here’s the scene:


The dress was blue with white ruffles at the shoulders and Marry Anne made her way down the stairs cautiously, afraid of tripping. She had borrowed a string of pearls from Lillian and a pair of long white gloves from Paige Hedgepath. She was not wearing her glasses and she held tightly to the bannister during her descent.

“You look absolutely stunning, sugah,” Lillian said.

“I didn’t know you were so stacked, sportsfans,” Bull crowed.

“Hush, Bull,” Lillian admonished, “before God or somebody hears you.”

“How sicko can you get?” Mary Anne said, but she blushed with a forbidden pleasure at the compliment. …

I suppose that scene doesn’t have a lot to do with sports, except that The Great Santini does call his daughter “sportsfans.” There are, however, a few excellent basketball scenes of Ben playing on the high school team.

So let’s hear the rest, bounty, inquiring sportsfans want to know.

[Sancho]

Ohtani started Trout off with an eighty-eight-mile-per-hour slider that slipped below the strike zone for ball one. Then came heat: a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball, which Trout swung at and whiffed. A second fastball missed the zone; ball two. Trout swung at a high fastball—also clocked at a hundred m.p.h.—for strike two. The fifth pitch, a ball, reached a hundred and two. The count was full. Having faced four fastballs, Trout might have been looking for a fifth. Or perhaps he was expecting the switch to an off-speed pitch—it might not have mattered. Ohtani threw a beauty, a slider that swerved from inside to out. Trout swung early. Japan had won.

Nice. In case you missed it, the World Baseball Classic finished up this week. The above description is of the game-ending at-bat between the pitcher, Shohei Ohtani for Japan, and the batter, Mike Trout for the USA. Ohtani and Trout are currently the star players for MLB’s Los Angeles Angels. It’s from the New Yorker daily article by Louisa Thomas:

A SPECTACULAR AT-BAT THAT ENDED THE WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC
One moment, between Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, made baseball feel, once again, like the most dramatic, joyful sport that there is.

[tailor STATELY]

Great for baseball :) I thought I read somewhere a before the game that "wouldn't it be great if Ohtani was pitching and Trout was the last at bat with the game on the line?"... quite prophetic.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

It really was a magnificent moment. I didn’t watch the game. I just started hearing the buzz after the game. A coworker of mine said, “wow, did you see Shotime strike out Mike Trout in the World Baseball Classic?” I said, “Tha wut?”

About 15 or so years ago I found myself on a 24-hour layover at a Radisson near Narita Airport (outside of Tokyo). There was a little league park near the hotel, so wandered over to watch the kids play. Gotta tell ya, I was impressed. Those kids were killing it. They knew the game and were serious about it, and so were their coaches. I remember thinking, these Japanese kids would destroy the average American Little League team. The last one those games I watched (to see my nephew play) I had to laugh. At one point the right fielder had his glove affixed hat-like on his head whilst he picked his nose, and the center fielder was way out on the edge of the field watering the flowers. I don’t remember what the left fielder was doing, probable checking his phone.

[bounty]

extra torturously slow internet lately, hope to take care of it soon...

[bounty]

be back later for actual conversation, quick post for now (from an old article I have):

"Tonya Harding, celebrated and scorned after the notorious January 6, 1994, attack on Nancy Kerrigan, was not merely a great, if flawed,
skater. For a brief moment, Tonya had a shot at being the champion in an infinitely more ruthless sport: class climbing. Tonya is now the stuff of
the occasional newspaper paragraph, sitcom joke, or novelty television show like “Celebrity Boxing,” but she was once the feature player in a much discussed morality play about two subjects Americans are preternaturally skilled at interpreting and policing: celebrity and class mobility.
As her continued, if somewhat shop-worn celebrity proves, Tonya remains somethingof a puzzle, partially, I think, because although her commitment to success is unwavering (this is doubtful based on other sources), her commitment to upward mobility, to which success is almost
always linked, has been lukewarm at best. Although she enjoyed—and still seems to enjoy—money and publicity, Tonya, a working-class woman, seems stubborn about some crucial elements of public relations. Unabashed about telling the media that she wanted to enjoy a better standard of living, she was less forthcoming about the obligatory expression that she would like to enjoy a better style of living. That is to say that even when she told the press that what she saw in the future after the Olympics were “dollar signs,” she never took the trouble to narratively convert those dollar signs into other kinds of signs—signs of a hard-won middle-class lifestyle. If she wanted an
SUV, it was to go four-wheeling, not to go to Pottery Barn.

"Tonya might have been a more sympathetic public figure had she ever shown herself willing to learn the occulted ways of the clan of the middle class, but curiously, she did not. It would be easy to argue that Tonya simply did not know what to do or say to make herself appealing to a general audience, but this is not the case. Interviews show Tonya to be quite aware of how her background would be read and interpreted. Even more acutely, Tonya has always been aware that she does not conform to standard scripts about how good girls who want to succeed ought to act. Aware of the existence of cultural scripts governing class and gender, she has been especially attuned to her difference from the class and familial background that the general public, mistakenly or not, attributes to figure skaters."

[Sancho]

Yeech! Been falling down on my duties on this thread — too much work to be done in the springtime on my little farm. I love this time of year. The sun is back. The buds are budding. And baseball IS BACK.

That said, this post isn’t about sports writing, but maybe just a personal tale of fandom. So the other day I was at my neighborhood Costco. For anybody who’s unfamiliar with Costco, it’s one of those big-box warehouse stores, the kind of place where you can’t buy a quart jar of mayonnaise but you can buy a 5 gallon tub of the stuff - cheap. They don’t have a huge variety, but they do have a broad variety, and what they’ve got — you need. You can fill up your gas tank, pick up dinner, clothe yourself, get some rain gutters for your house, and get a flu shot all at the same place. They know what you need and when you need it. In the fall they’ll have a table piled high with one or two styles of flannel shirts, and within a couple of weeks everybody in my neighborhood will have the same shirt. If somebody’s wearing last year’s Costco shirt, we’ll make some discreet inquiries to insure they haven’t fallen on hard times.

Anyway I was wheeling my cart up to the checkout lane and notice that the guy running the register is sort of smirking in my general direction. I think it’s Costco’s policy for the checkers to try to engage the customers with chit-chat. He’s still looking at me when I get to the front of the line and he says, “Would you have picked this lane if you knew I grew up in San Diego and I’m a diehard Padres fan?” It was at that moment I realized I was wearing a beat up San Francisco Giants ball cap. I said, “Uhhh, maybe we can compromise and root for The Dodgers.” A look of pure, unabashed horror crossed his face and he said, something like — NOOOOOOOOO!

[bounty]

is there "bad blood" between giants and padres fans? seems like the distance is far enough apart where it wouldn't really be an issue, although maybe still fun to joke about in line at the store.

are their any teams in the league that rise to a yankees/red sox level of animosity?

I was perusing the tv schedule a few weeks ago and saw the "world baseball classic" listed, went to the channel and alas something else was on. the biggest news I had heard from the event was a Cuban player defecting. I haven't followed the story to see if he succeeded.

its interesting that there were mlb players in the event. one would think their teams would say "no way!"

on that point---I suppose much like the first robin of the year in the northeast is a harbinger of spring, espn had its first mlb game on a few days ago.

I just re-read the chapter "would sumo wrestlers make great nfl linemen?"

whaddya think? (the most interesting part of the chapter was actually demographics)

[tailor STATELY]

re: Tanya/Kerrigan - A sports aberration if there ever was one.

re: is there "bad blood" between giants and padres fans? - prolly only in S.D. fan's mind. S.D. baseball is a 1969 invention in search of validation (just guessing). However I'm always conflicted when the Yankees play the Giants/A's. Yankees fan first as a child in Seattle (Mantle/Maris era), then Giants/A's fan after family relocating to the SF Bay Area.

re: Sumos - would they even pass the physical ? Combines ? 100° F workouts would be murder.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

Hah, I doubt many rivalries rise to Yankees-Red Sox level of animosity. And I don’t really think there’s “bad blood” between the Giants and Padres so much as they’re just natural enemies, both teams being in the NL West. In that exchange with the Costco checker I picked The Dodgers because they are NL West as well and geographically between San Fran and San Diego. If he’d’a been an Angels fan and I had an As hat on it wouldn’t have worked because there isn’t another AL West team in California between Anaheim and Oakland.

So let’s hear about the Sumo wrestlers. I’m thinking a nose guard playing his own game on his own turf would make short work of the ichiban wrestler.

[bounty]

its interesting in the sandlot how the kids were ostensibly dodgers fans (maybe benny was the only real one) but they all revered babe ruth.

I started paying attention to professional sports in the late 60s and started my baseball card collecting then too. I remember the advent of the padres and the pilots---and being from ny, the miracle mets! although I confess, I liked the orioles too.

i'll try to drag the sumo explanation out for at least a few posts in order to hopefully build some anticipation...

I mentioned "demographics"---the author made the point of that since we don't pay too much attention here in the states to sumo, we might be surprised that the wrestlers who have achieved "Yokozuna" status are "treated like gods." there are only about 70 of them in a 900 strong field of participants. they are "extremely well-paid and have a huge following in japan..." The argument being that the best of the sumo wrestlers have no incentive to try their hand at American football. the rest of the wrestlers are working for room and board and probably don't have the necessary athleticism.

there was a lot interesting in the chapter and one of the things was that the best sumo wrestlers often aren't Japanese, but rather, Mongolian. but since the sport is centered in japan, they limit the amount of foreigners who can compete in the ranks. even then, "almost one in three wrestlers in the top division [are Mongolian]…"

the author arranged to have two Mongolian sumo wrestlers have a "tryout" with "gene miranda, a veteran arena league coach currently with the los angeles avengers."

[Sancho]

Giants had a good day on Saturday eh Tailor? It was a real cliffhanger with the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth.

[tailor STATELY]

As usual I missed the game on the telly (busy and no sports package)... a split with the Yankees about as good a feeling there is for me re: both "home" teams :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

Ya know, I’ve never been to a Yankees game. I’ve been to many Giants games though. Oracle Park is a great venue. I like the free area behind right field under the Levi’s sign. It’s a unique perspective of the game.

[tailor STATELY]

Never been to Oracle Park nor Yankee Stadium... Candlestick Park and Oakland Coliseum only. Yankee Stadium was on my unofficial bucket list, now in vain :(

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

I was thinking for sure the sumo wrestler/nfl lineman teaser had been keeping you guys awake at night and that someone would have responded to my last post...!

in the meantime, I recently saw a charity pickleball match between john McEnroe & Michael chang vs andre Agassi & andy Roddick. I was initially greatly intrigued but then very quickly greatly disappointed. in theory I suppose it sounded nifty, but it felt kinda stupid watching it.

I know its been around for a long time but I was watching a teenie bit of mlb recently, and I don't like the tv-projected strike zone. its distracting.

[tailor STATELY]

re: "I know its been around for a long time but I was watching a teenie bit of mlb recently, and I don't like the tv-projected strike zone. its distracting." - I kind'a like it, especially with the clocked ball speed indicated. Haven't been able to watch a game but I see highlights on CBS Sports on my "smart" telly news feed :)

Pickleball sounds easy, maybe like wiffleball, but the only times I've heard of either is in the most rigorist sense.

Back to MLB... what do you think about the new pitching clock and larger base size or other recent changes this season ?

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

I gotta say, I find both the above kinda distracting. Maybe it’s my inner Luddite. That said I hardly ever watch a whole game on TV until the division playoffs. I just watch the highlight reels. And, like you Tailor, in the recap, I find the floating strike-zone box somewhat helpful. Did you guys see Dodger’s pitcher Dustin May throw a 100mph slider a week or so ago? Sheesh. With the strike-zone box you could really see that thing move. It was a most heinous display of a baseball breaking the laws of physics.

[bounty]

I haven't paid enough attention to baseball over the years to know if the complaints about how long the games last, and how slow they move along, got to a tipping point or if there was some other impetus for the change.

it'll be interesting to see if a higher density of pitches affects pitcher longevity in any particular game.

am trying to think if bigger bases favors the runners or the defense...hmmmm.

didn't know about the 100 mph slider---but im skeptical!

[Sancho]

Crikey! You’re right to be skeptical, Bounty. It was a sinker. I think I’m losing it. Over on the Quixote thread I called the windmills monsters instead of giants. Now I’m calling sinkers sliders. If yous aren’t already, y’all should take anything I say with a grain of salt.

[bounty]

ah that happens. i catch myself frequently doing things like that.

i watched a few minutes of the giants/mets game yesterday and the commentators had a graphic up related to the pitching clock. its shortened games from 3:09 to 2:39.

again, i wonder what it will do to pitcher longevity. the "density" of their throwing is increased dramatically and its likely to end with more injury, burnout, or use of relief pitchers.

they also said stolen base attempts are up, though the numbers seems close enough to maybe not be actually statistically significant. they didn't expound as to why though, im assuming because of the larger bases giving the runners a more accessible target.

i noted a couple of instant replays, one where a call was overturned and one where a call was confirmed.

the first instance was particularly interesting because it closely mimicked an issue i remember discussing in grad school. runner trying to steal second, umpire not necessarily in the best position to see the attempted tag. if the ump were to ask the second baseman "did you get him?" would he be obliged to answer? and to be truthful? in the case in the game yesterday, the runner was called out, but he clearly wasn't and it seemed like the second baseman must have known it. should he have just said "hey ump, i missed him."

[Sancho]

Haha, George Washington didn’t play Second — “Ump, I cannot tell a lie. I missed the tag.”

I’ll bet position players like the pitch clock, but I kind of like the pacing of the game like it was. When you go to a football stadium it’s all about what’s happening on the field, but when you go to a baseball park there’s all kinds of stuff going on in there and, oh yeah, there’s a baseball game being played too.

Part of the new MLB rule that institutes a pitch clock also limits the number of pickoff attempts a pitcher can make. On the third pickoff attempt, if the base runner isn’t tagged out, he automatically moves to next base. I think that’s what has the stolen-base stat up this year. A clever base runner will try to draw two throws from the pitcher and then the whole dynamic of stealing a base changes.

[bounty]

I see George Washington more as a center fielder type. James Madison plays second. laughs...

I didn't know about the pickoff attempt limit. the sports making a concerted effort to increase offense.

there is a small D-I basketball university nearby, its been years since ive gone to a game but my memory of it is I liked all the trappings of the game more than the game itself (despite the near constant motion of basketball)---the cheerleaders, the pep band, the people-watching, etc.

im looking forward to the first round of the NFL draft tonight. I don't know how long its been televised but despite my not liking hype, I watched last year for the first time and kinda enjoyed it. last evening I watched a half hour show where some of the local sports tv commentators discussed the needs for the buffalo bills and their projections as to who they'd pick. its fun to watch the life changing events for the kids who get drafted, and then it also helps build some anticipation for the upcoming season.

[Sancho]

Good call, although I might go with little Jimmy Madison at shortstop. Buh-dump-bump

[bounty]

I watched a fair amount of the nfl draft, and then some of the espn show nfl live over the subsequent days wherein they talked a lot about the picks.

its fun to watch but still, too much hype for the first round, and I have to say, im not a fan at all of roger goodell and the draftees hugging each other as if they are long lost friends. a hearty handshake and a "congratulations" would seem better. also, in the subsequent rounds, way too many talking heads and what ended up happening over and over and over, which seems really bad, is the talking heads would be on something that wasn't related to what was going on in real time behind them.

espn is making a two hour show over the release of the nfl schedule coming up soon.

the biggest nfl news is aaron Rodgers going to the ny jets. theoretically that's going to make the afc east lots more competitive.

[bounty]

im going to feel bad writing this but nevertheless here I go...

I was in the village today for a little bit in time to catch opening day of little league baseball!

lots of people supporting the kids, watching the kids, coaching and officiating and manning the concessions, it was great.

but the play---holy moly---I think if I were the coach, if it didn't ultimately harm the kids development, I would tell them not to swing at anything because the pitchers could barely get the ball over the plate (surely not 3 times out of 7), and then to steal second and third (or wait for a double steal) all the time because the catchers cant throw anyone out.

[Sancho]

Haha.
Kids these days, eh? They’re eating cotton candy while back in my day we chewed nails.
Well, maybe not. I seem to remember my first Little League game we scored about 40 runs in the top of the first. Then the opposing team scored 41 runs in the bottom of the first. And then nobody scored any runs for the rest of the game. We were all too worn out from running around the bases in the first inning.

[bounty]

i cant remember if I mentioned this before Sancho, you must read little league confidential. the title makes it sound like its an sordid expose of youth baseball, but actually its a guy's comical memoir of his first year coaching little league.

[Sancho]

Sounds like something I’d like. Now that I’ve given up on print and switched to reading on a kindle, it should be easy to find. Hey! That gives me an idea for a book. It’ll be about my first-year experience in Little League as a player. It will be entitled Riding The Bench; the adventures of a kid with the cleanest uniform in the league. The title makes it sound like a memoir by a guy who was lousy at baseball, but actually it’ll be a memoir by a guy who was lousy at baseball.

[bounty]

if you are a good embellisher, maybe you can be the Patrick McManus of little league?

I don't remember if I even batted my first year in little league, but if I did, I didn't get any hits. the next year I only got two hits and I remember detouring on my way to first base to pick up my batting helmet that had fallen off. my third year I was tearing the place up and how I didn't make the all-stars is a mystery that fortunately doesn't keep me up at night.

I watched a few minutes of the orioles-braves game today and the orioles have a relief pitcher who is 6'8" and 280lbs!

[Sancho]

Oh hey, I can embellish like any other natural-born liar.

Chapter I: in which our hero gets a splinter in a most unfortunate place.

[Sancho]

Chapter II: At Bat - How to not hit a dinger

[Sancho]

Chapter III - Trey Naught — Season One Batting Average, point zero-zero-zero

[Sancho]

Chapter IV: The Art of Fielding — when a fly ball is headed your way, it’s best to hold back in case one of the other outfielders wants to catch it, also it helps to yell “yours” before the ball reaches apex

[bounty]

chapter IV the most entertaining so far.

I watched a bit of little league yesterday. I was in the village and ran into one of my neighbors son, so I felt obliged to stay a bit. it was torturous. in the game that was going on while I was waiting to watch my neighbor---passed balls galore, wild pitches galore---I don't think the catcher caught anything. and to make it worse, he would walk after the ball instead of hustling. the pitcher, supposedly in an attempt to help, would star walking towards home plate---and even then a significant amount of times he didn't catch the throw from the catcher.

finally---my neighbor kid's game starts. he's 8th in the line-up, but the first inning took a half hour (see the aforementioned wild pitches and passed balls) and I didn't want to wait another half hour to see if he got up to bat.

[Sancho]

Found myself at my nephew’s T-Ball game on Saturday. It was clear to me that the kids would have preferred to be elsewhere. I think they were all just humoring their dads. Nephew was playing 2nd. He didn’t notice the first two grounders that rolled by him, but he did manage to throw his glove at the third.

Chapter V: Coaching 3rd — Not sure what it’s all about, but us bench warmers get sent to coach 3rd a lot. A good technique is to point to home with one hand and pinwheel your other arm as fast as you can whenever a runner headed your way.

[bounty]

would be interesting to see how many kids make the transition from t-ball, through to rest of the levels ending in high school, and what causes the dropout.

good thinking for your nephew. seems like I heard or even saw a story once about a fielder throwing his glove at a liner and then being able to catch it after the glove intercepted its trajectory.

by the way, I recently caught a couple minutes of professional wiffle ball on tv---it was indeed amazing what the pitchers could do with the ball.

[tailor STATELY]

Hmmm... I wonder how many home runs have been stifled by a player throwing a mitt high in the air on what might have been a sure homerun ? Googled for the answer: https://baseballrulesacademy.com/else-fails-throw-glove-ball/ ... and now I know :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

There it is. Thrown gloves and mitts are probably a little more common in the lesser leagues. In a related question, I wonder how many home run or foul balls get caught by a fan in a beer cup.

https://youtu.be/kxCEpfTSfJU

Go M’s

I don’t remember having T-ball when I was a kid. We started with Little League. A lot of kids dropped out after Little League. Almost all of those who made the transition to Pony League stuck with it through High School. I’m not sure why kids bail on baseball, but I suspect it’s either because there’s not enough action in baseball for a kid or there’s too much pressure for a kid. I mean, for a Little League outfielder, he waits and waits and waits and then the ball finally comes his way and then everybody in the park is looking at him.

A possible third reason is the reason I quit baseball as a kid — the coach was a jerk. He seemed to be in competition with the other coaches and just yelled at us kids. I switched to competitive swimming. The swim coaches were a husband and wife team and they were awesome. I still keep in touch with them. Also the swim team had girls. Woo-woo!

Chapter VI: How to deal with an over caffeinated coach — Hey Coach, is that other coach a friend of yours? Because those guys are killing us! Oh man! Those other guys really know what they’re doing, eh Coach?

[bounty]

there wasn't t-ball when i was a kid either. it came some years later.

i have a scan of an old newspaper article that has all the little league teams and the rosters from when i was in 6th grade. there were ~168 players on 14 teams. but by the time you get to high school, that whittles down to one team with maybe 16-20 players. some of its just plain attrition due to lack of opportunity, or getting cut.

that said, there are studies out there tracking loss of participation. in general the main reason for drop out is often "lack of fun."

I cant remember the fellows name, or for that matter now the team he played for, but I caught a few minutes of a game last week where the pitcher was a side arm thrower. he was fun to watch.

i'll probably ride into the village for a little bit Saturday afternoon to take in the baseball sights.

[Sancho]

Been a rough year for the ponies. So I dug up this one from one of my favorite writers.

This is from Hunter S. Thompson’s 1970 article in Scanlan’s Monthly — The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved


The race itself was only two minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12-power glasses, there was no way to see what was really happening. Later, watching a TV rerun in the press box, we saw what happened to our horses. Holy Land, Ralph’s choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the final turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch, but faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16-1 shot named Dust Commander.

So that was the race, but Hunter Thompson (the journalist) and Ralph Steadman (a British Illustrator) had gone to the Derby to crowd-watch more than to horse-watch. Thompson had grown up in Louisville and been to The Derby many times, but it was Steadman’s first:


He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn’t seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for the lead drawing. It was a face I’d seen a thousand times at every Derby I’d ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry—a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient—to the parents—than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways.

[Danik 2016]

"But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient—to the parents—than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways."
Lol!

[bounty]

I haven't read it but im only 10ish days away from experiencing the live tv version of Dancing on the Pedals: The Found Poetry Of Phil Liggett, The Voice Of Cycling when the tour de france starts! he's fantastic, and the tour is the yearly highlight of my sports watching on the telly.

[Sancho]

The Tour!

The thing I like about cycling is it’s something we watch (for me the highlight reels anyway) but it’s also something we do. It’s not like football where fans watch it — a high school game on Friday, a college game on Saturday and an NFL game (or three) on Sunday — and then they talk about it all week. They never actually do it.

Speaking of “doing” cycling, the STP is coming up next month. The STP is a Seattle to Portland ride that most people do in two days, and it’s not so much a race as it is a traveling party. Oughta see if I can get time off to do it this year.

Hey, did you ever read Bike Cult? It’s probably out of print now, but I think I’ve still got my copy of it around here somewhere.

[bounty]

when I first started watching the tour back in the 80s (I was in paris in 1986, on a bike trip, and saw the last stage there the first year lemond one), most of the coverage then was a little half hour highlight show but for quite awhile now NBC has done a really good job of showing hours worth of every stage, often from start to finish. I don't watch every minute of it all, depending on whats going on, but I keep the telly on and within earshot.

I hope you do it----sounds like a great time and then good memories.

I haven't heard of that book before so I haven't read it, but I have a formal "books I want" list and I just added it.

I recently watched tomb raider with Alicia Vikander. I really enjoyed the movie, and liked her a lot in the role (was bummed to find out if there is a sequel, she wont be in it)---she plays a bike messenger and early on in the movie all the messengers have a game of fox and hounds, she plays the fox and its fun to watch.

[bounty]

I was library sale/used book shopping yesterday and picked up a lance Armstrong photo book. despite his being (heartbreakingly) disgraced, the photos of the tour are great. maybe i'll find a particularly good one to scan and post here.

just a little bit ago I stumbled upon some mlb highlights and apparently the reds-braves game yesterday was a barn burner, 11-10 with lead changes, boatloads of home runs (in one case, I think 3 within the span of 4 batters), and some young fellow on the reds hitting for the cycle.

[tailor STATELY]

re: reds-braves - Saw the highlights on CBS sports... the sportscasters took a lot of time in praise of the game... one for the ages :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Sancho]

Elly De La Cruz I think. Just called up. Man, he was fun to watch in that game, and I’m a Bravos fan

[tailor STATELY]

Yankees: Perfect... yeah.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

tour de france starts tomorrow!!

[bounty]

just found out that nbc is only barely broadcasting the race on the USA network, and often when they do, its going to be on at 2 in the morning! almost everything else is exclusively on nbc peacock, their streaming service.

#()&*@&%$)(@&$O*@P()%(&#@)(%&&%!!!!

[Sancho]

It played on my local NBC channel. You might need to have a chat with your cable provider.

Stage One was a gas. The two leaders seem physically to be on a pretty equal footing. Just saying. You’d probably know this, bounty, are those Yates twins any kin to Sean Yates? I remember watching a stage race back in the 90s when he was near the end of his career. The route went through his home town. At one point the entire field pulled back so he could crest a hill in front of the pack. At the top of the hill his mother was waiting for him. He stopped, gave his mom a big hug, and then the race was back on.

What a sport.

[bounty]

I was able to catch it on normal nbc, but after today, its only on at a viewable hour on USA a half dozen times, and isn't on nbc again until the final stage. I don't think I know anyone who could record it for me when it comes on at 2 in the morning. im pretty hacked off at nbc.

they also made some personnel changes I wasn't fond of. they used to have chris horner and Christian vandevelde in the studio with paul burmeister (who does a great job) but they moved vandevelde to the back of a motorcycle, where I think he's wasted, chris horner is out, and they have two guys replacing them who don't have the personality nor the popular appeal and they are not familiar "old friends" that I was looking forward to seeing.

the timing would work for sean to be their father but no relation so far as I know.

yes, professional racing has those little traditional niceties that give it a beautiful flavor not available in other sports. letting riders go ahead when they are racing through a hometown is a really good one.

I don't pay intimate attention to racing prior to the tour, just a long distance view---but from what little I know, tadej pogacar has been somewhat banged up earlier in the season and missed some racing. I liked him as a champion and would be happy to see him win again, but my money is on Jonas vingegaard.

by the way, there might be some sympathy here for me given this is a literature forum and we pay at least a little attention to words and how they are pronounced. for all of my life the scandinavian "gaard" has been pronounced as "guard." think Asgaard, or Kierkegaard for instance. this fellow comes along and all of a sudden its "vingego"---what the heck? it drives me nuts!

and this travesty has gone on for a few years now (we might have talked about this before) they got rid of the traditional podium girls!

[Sancho]

Cycling don’t get no respect in the U. S. of A. You’re right, bounty, I tuned up my local NBC station on Sunday morning, expecting to see the Tour like I did on Saturday, but I saw Chuck Todd instead. The Tour does have a pretty good website though.

So I just finished The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. It’s set in the 1950s on The Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Boxing matches pop up a couple of times in the book. I thought the writer did a nice job with the blow-by-blows. The last match is between Wood Mountain and Joe Woblesznski, a Chippewa and a White guy. It’s held in the community center on the reservation and it’s purpose is to raise funds for the tribe to send a delegation to Washington DC to save their reservation and their status as Chippewa Indians.

This is the last round. No more pussy-footing around, the real slug fest had begun.


So the round began, but the crowd was muted. Joe opened a deep gash on Wood Mountain’s eyebrow. Wood Mountain dealt a body blow that made Joe stumble across the ring. By the final moments, they were merely clubbing each other, moving in an earnest fog, and Jarvis was silent. There was no strategy, no design.

“It’s just ugly,” said Patrice, looking away. When the gong sounded, people cried out in relief.

They clapped in distress and left in disordered clumps. Wood Mountain did win on points but winning was beside the point. Joe Wobleszynski sat dumb in a chair. Their eyes were swollen shut, lips split, eyebrows taped, ears ringing, noses snapped, brains swelling in their skulls, and every bone and muscle ached. It was wonderful, it was terrible, it was the ultimate. It was the last time either of them fought.

Spoiler alert! The delegation does go to Washington. The tribe survives — battered, but still alive.

[bounty]

its available on the USA network for a handful of days, thankfully that incorporates some earlier than usual stages in the mountains, starting tomorrow, so im really happy about that.

unfortunately my internets barely usable and seeing anything with photos, and videos and lots of news is impossible for me at home.

I was coaching high school xc, wrestling and track & field. I recruited a couple of the xc girls to work a scorer's table at a home wrestling tournament. they had never seen the sport before and I think it actually hurt them to see boys behave in such a way. I imagine had they seen wood and joe they would have ran into the middle of it yelling "in god's name, stoppppppppppp!"

one of my all-favorite scenes in movies is in Rocky when Adrian comes out of the locker room near the end of the fight and rocky is so battered and beaten up she has to look away, but out of love for him, she knows she has to look and steals herself to do it.

[bounty]

first day in the Pyrenees today, vingegaard buried pogacar, who lost about a minute at the end of the last climb and the subsequent run-in to the finish, despite being a part of a larger chase group.

the fun question for tomorrow is will today's stage winner, jai hindley who won the giro last year, be able to repeat his performance from today.

not quite sports writing, but related, and interesting; from holly golightly in breakfast at tiffany's: "I'm all for horses, but I loathe baseball...I hate the sound of it on the radio but I have to listen, its part of my research. there're so few things men can talk about. if a man doesn't like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn't like either of them, well, i'm in trouble anyway: he doesn't like girls."

[bounty]

for everyone on the edge of their seats wondering what went on today...

hindley got ceremoniously dropped partway up the second climb by the pace being set my vingegaard's team, jumbo visma. eventually (the 3rd climb) it was only vingegaard and pogacar and not only was pogacar able to hang on, he attacked vingegaard, who couldn't respond, with a few kilometers to go before the summit finish and was able to claw back 20ish seconds on him.

[Sancho]

Boxing, Baseball, Bicycling, and Horse Racing. That’s almost an alliteration grand slam right there.

I liked the pre-fight festivities in Rocky. Mickey sees the Meat Market ad on Rocky’s robe:


Mickey - I trained you to be fighter not a billboard. What’d ya get for it?

Rocky - Paulie gets 3 grand. I get the robe.

Mickey - Shrewd

Later in the ring, Apollo’s got on Stars and Stripes boxing trunks and a big top hat.


Rocky - He looks like a big flag

[bounty]

I remember those. part of rocky's attraction was his naivete. it made him all the more winsome. somewhere in one of those movies in a pre-fight context, I remember him saying (about Apollo maybe?) "he looks mad."

im also somehow reminded of a commercial from, must be way back in the 70s---"baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet..."

[Sancho]

That’s one of the things I like about that scene — people see it differently. I took it as gallows humor. Rocky knows he’s about to take beating of his life, but he’s still chill. So he states the obvious, with a smirk, “He looks like a big flag.”

Back to the bike: from Bike Cult — Unless it’s an actual tattoo, a chain-ring tattoo on your right calf is never cool.

Of course he wrote that in the 90s before everybody was all tatted up.

[bounty]

gallows humor is a good possibility, but one bit of evidence for my "naivete" theory is that in rocky II he didn't want to invest in condominiums because he never uses them!

ive got an old cycling photo you might like (and maybe some more to follow). cant remember if I have shared it before.

[Sancho]

Haha!

I remember an ad I saw in Bicycling magazine years ago. A young couple is lying in bed, the man is sporting a cycling tan, has a big smile on his face, and has his arms over his head in the pose of a guy who just won a stage. The woman by contrast looks nonplussed. The caption said — speed is not always the objective.

Or something like that.

[bounty]

that's clever and I love double entendre type stuff.

long before Nike came out with "just do it" their motto was "there is no finish line." I loved that.

in the last three mountainous type stages, pogacar has gained back 44 seconds on vingegaard and is now only 9 seconds back. commentators this morning though were saying how the next few mountain stages seem to favor vingegaard.

[Sancho]

Stage 16 was a VO2MAXextravaganza. Is Jonas Vingegaard unbeatable now, or does he flame out in the mountains?

So I let my subscription to Outside magazine expire quite some time ago. They’d gotten a fetish for extreme mountaineering and I was tired of reading articles about altitude induced cerebral edema. So they start sending me reminders, polite at first, then pleading, then begging, then bribing, and then they just got mean and nasty. The last thing I got from them was a postcard with no text, just a photo of a fat guy in his bathrobe doing a midnight raid on the ‘fridge.

It was pretty funny. But I still haven’t renewed.

[bounty]

since im missing lots of the viewing, I don't know the terrain of the remaining stages to know whats in front of the riders. tomorrow there is a 22km time trial and im guessing since its so short, its probably very hilly and/or mountainous. I don't remember which of the two is the better time trialist and its hard to gauge which ones been the better climber so far. tomorrow may well be the decisive stage. im kinda hoping i'll wake up at 4ish this morning so I can watch on USA.

that is funny.

ive been revamping my garage, where all my books are, and came across some things that'll be fun to post here.

I saw a quick clip where a grounds crew member fell down when they were pulling a tarp over the field and he got covered up.

[Sancho]

The Tour of France 2023 is history! And all I’ve got to say is:

USA-USA-USA, We’re Number 1, We’re Number 1, Woo-Hoo, All Y’all can suck it.

Wait, uhhh, who won? Hmm, never mind.

[bounty]

one wonders why so much of the rest of the world embraces cycling and we don't in the usa.

last year after vingegaard won, something like 150,000 people greeted him on his return to Denmark. my goodness the guy looks like he could being winning the tour for the next 5-6 yrs.

i watched a few minutes of baseball last night and haven't paid enough attention to not be surprised by the boston red sox' uniforms looking like they are from colorful south American/Caribbean little league team!

[bounty]

just to keep the thread from dying...

ive been reading sports illustrated's mantle remembered. its collection of articles written about him from early on until after he retired and close to his death. there was a very touching part I read last night worth sharing here:

(its from a 1995 article by Richard hoffer, in an attempt to understand the attraction people had to mantle)

"Even know that, acknowledging the pinstripe pedigree, the fascination still doesn't add up. if he was a pure talent, he was not, as we found out, a pure spirt. but to look upon his youthful mug today, three decades after he played, is to realize how uncluttered our memories of him are. yes, he was a confessed drunk; yes he shorted his potential--he himself said so. and still, looking at the slightly uplifted square jaw, all we see is America's romance with boldness, its celebration of muscle, a continent's comfort in power at a time when might did make right. mantle was the last great player on the last great team in the last great country, a postwar civilization that was booming and confident, not a trouble in the world."

[tailor STATELY]

Mickey Mantle was prolly my first sports hero. There was mention of him in Ball Four... by Jim Bouton ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Four ) so I may try to find this book :) It's not easy to see one's heroes in an unfavorable light.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[bounty]

mine might have been chris evert---although initially it might have been difficult to separate "hero" from "crush."

I read ball four years ago and remember enjoying it. I just took a peek in my copy, there's no index so I couldn't look up anything mickey mantle quickly. their careers only very slightly overlapped tailor. if you are interested in reading about mantle, I thought the sports illustrated book was good, but its a very short read. if you are looking for something more scholarly, hunt up the last boy: mickey mantle and the end of america's childhood by leavy. I read that bunches of years ago and enjoyed it.

[Sancho]

There’s still a couple of weeks in MLB’s regular season, but football is back! Gotta say I don’t have much interest in the NFL, but I do like going to watch the neighborhood kids play HS football on a Friday night.

High School Football figures into my present read, Demon Copperhead. Demon’s friend, Angus, is complaining about the inordinate amount of effort the school system puts into their football program, and Demon rationalizes it:


If I wanted to discuss unfairness, let’s talk about football. Uniforms, equipment, buses to away games, state championships. The school board threw money at all that like water on a house fire. And I was like, Angus. It’s football. Take that out of high school, it’s church with no Jesus. Who would even go?

Demon has gone out for the Junior Varsity team as a tight end. Here he is talking about his teammates:


Cush Polk for one, our JV quarterback, decent as milk, a preacher’s kid from way the hell over by Ewing. Tall, blond, actual red cheeks, the type that still said “Yes ma’am” to teachers. He claimed he got his speed from being youngest in a family of nine, and his mom only ever cooked for eight. And Turp Trussell for another, that once drank a shot of turpentine for purposes that remain unclear. Big clown, built like a brick sh*thouse, boldness of a bull in rut. Brain of a deer tick, but that’s not something to hold against a running back.

I think every football team in the history of football has had a Turp.

[bounty]

on a more real world level Sancho, but consistent with angus' lament---I live near the city I grew up on. my old local high school, despite having 1/2 the amount of kids in it compared to years ago, and many less people (and less athletic) on the football team, is having a multimillion dollar turf field being constructed.

yes, a turp and a cush.

[Sancho]

I thought you could probably identify, Bounty. I seem to remember you were/are an educator.

Speaking of archetypes, here’s Bob Nelson running through the college all-star roster at Dangerfield’s in 1984. It’d probably get tackled by the PC police nowadays, but it was considered high comedy in the 80s, and doesn’t at all seem mean-spirited to me today:

https://youtu.be/dMR2C09hmhA?si=Sq-Hn32ShpSNHbPm

[bounty]

i loved that, and laughed out loud in at least a few different places.

[Sancho]

Can I just say, Dickens is difficult to read while the Division Series is going on. ALDS and NLDS. Is it — Series? Serieses? Donno. Probably ought to just go with — The Playoffs.

(Go Phillies! Tough one last night. Final play by the Bravos was a doozy.)

[bounty]

I have a similar thing going on Sancho. with the recent acquisition of high speed internet, ive got live stream cycling, and am able to follow a couple of cycling news websites.

[Sancho]

Yep life is full of choices and choices are made based on priorities. A couple of years ago we had a pretty big snowstorm for western Washington and the power went out for a week or so. We bumbled along for a day or two playing in the snow, enjoying the quiet, roasting weenies in the fireplace, and thinking the power company would get the electricity back on in any minute. When it became obvious they wouldn’t, I dragged a generator over from the barn, fired it up, and started hooking up the essentials. Here was the power-up sequence, and hence our priorities:

1 — Espresso maker
2 — WiFi
3 — TV
4 — Fridge
5 — Water Pump
6 — Heater

Oh yeah, sports…

Yeech!
2023 NLDS Game III today
Philadelphia 10, Atlanta 2
I think I’ve spotted the problem — The Braves were playing baseball, but The Phillies were playing football.

[bounty]

im pretty confident over time though sancho if generated power started to wane, that water and heat would have moved up the list.

i think in the past we've shared the george carlin baseball/football routine?

on the topic of football, being in bill's territory can be an exasperating rollercoaster. although i can commiserate with other places. yesterday i saw a sign meme for the cleveland browns "rebuilding since 1964."

if you want to try some live stream cycling:

https://cycling.today/live-streaming/

[bounty]

and all the cycling glories of youtube too!

i suspect you'll like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rMNV8FJYZQ&t=2s

[Sancho]

Such a great sport. But since it doesn’t involve a grown man chasing a ball around a field or driving a car really-really fast around a track, I don’t think it’ll ever catch on here in the U.S. of A. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.

That was a good montage of the Paris-Roubaix race. I’ve never seen anybody brake by jamming their foot against the top of their rear tire.

I’ve got a book in a box around here somewhere about Major Taylor. It’s appropriately entitled “Major Taylor”. I oughtta dig it out and post something from it here. That said, I don’t remember the prose being particularly inspiring, but the story is fascinating.

[bounty]

id have to go back to look more carefully, but i took the foot on the wheel tactic as the rider cleaning the tire.

ive got two major taylor books. and i think yes, the story is worth reading.

i might have mentioned before, if you want to read a good one, give "the road to valor" a peek, its about gino bartoli and his time pre, during, and post WWII.

went back to check the video again, i think your interpretation is the correct one.

[Sancho]

I’ll check out “Road To Valor”. I like that sort of thing.

Have you read any good ones about Eddie Merckx, or from that era?

[bounty]

i havent but ive got three books about him on my "books to find" wishlist, along with a half dozen other biographies and period pieces. maybe someday i'll break down and buy them all online as opposed to waiting to find them at used book sales or book swapping sites.

[bounty]

if you still peek in here Sancho:

im about to make my first ever order for some books on "thrift books." lately ive been listening on YouTube to a channel called "like stories of old" and im absolutely in love with it. a couple of the productions I watched mentioned a book by carol pearson called the hero within and given how much I enjoyed those topics in the videos I went looking for the book in my local library system. alas, none of the libraries have it. so im knuckling under and am going to buy it.

while I was on the site, I started looking around for books that im likely never going to find in all the used sales I go to. as I was going along, I got the "spend x many more dollars for free shipping notification." so I might get one more book.

im leaning towards a biography of any of the following: honus wagner, hank Greenberg, dizzy dean, joe jackson, rocky Marciano, john unitas, or bart starr. all the cycling ones I was interested in were either unavailable for a bit more dollars that I was wanting to spend.

ive enjoyed most of the bb bios ive read, same with boxing. ive yet to read a good scholarly football one so one of the above might be refreshing in that regard.

[Sancho]

Oh yeah, I'm still here. The Lit-net sends me an email every time somebody posts something on a thread I've also posted on. It's just that I've gone into sports-fan hibernation until MLB spring training. Ya know, I can't think of a single football book, bio or otherwise, I've ever read. Like you said there's plenty of good books on baseball and boxing, but football — cricket...cricket...cricket. So I see a huge opportunity for a football fan who's also a literary type to write a great about the gridiron, assuming of course there are any literary types out there who also like football. Har-Har.

[hellsapoppin]

Cricket? The one novel I've read about it is,


https://www.amazon.com/Cricket-Match-Hugh-Selincourt/dp/1443734934



Very good book.

There's also a great movie called Lagaan:


https://www.google.com/search?q=Lagaan&rlz=1CAKSOU_enUS1067&oq=Lagaan&aqs=chrome..69i57.2722j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8


A bit long but entertaining.

[bounty]

heck Sancho, one would think a nice baseball biography over the winter months would be a way to both hibernate and build some anticipation too.

if I don't recognize the author I typically look at the publisher to see if its a scholarly type place. usually you have good fortune with anything "university" wise.

I didn't wake up this morning with any clear cut winners from my choices but since its football season, maybe a small leaning that way. I might also keep looking.

this is one of the books im planning on:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/bicycle-love-stories-of-passion-joy-and-sweat/1082941/#edition=3242454&idiq=1796968

poppin, id snatch up that cricket book if I ever see it in the sales I go to. and the movie looks interesting too.

[bounty]

you might enjoy hearing that I temporarily gave up on them all and went instead with a Patrick McManus book!

[Sancho]

Haha. I get it. In fact after my trip to the watery part of the world, I’m gonna need to read a McManus book too.

[bounty]

the one im getting is a relatively newer one called the bear in the attic.

while im here, didn't know this was a thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qOr1mfxvfg

[Sancho]

I guess I was unaware of the Tom Simpson story. The youtube has piqued my interest, though. I really only follow professional cycling occasionally. Cycling for me is that feeling right before a day-long ride as the sun is just coming up, the weather perfect, the wheels trued the night before. I’ve got a powerbar and a credit card in my jersey pocket, and I’m off to do battle with texting-while-driving people. Ya just can’t beat that feeling.

[bounty]

you can never watch a tour that goes up mt ventoux, or that talks about doping, without tom simpson's dying on the ascent being mentioned. I hadn't known he was as accomplished as he was though.

despite wny being heavily covered in snow just a few days ago, we've had unseasonably weather since and i went out for a ride today. no power bars, or lots of miles, but i think any time you can get on a bike, its a good.

[bounty]

im watching the jets/Texans game and its been pouring down rain the whole first half so far. the announcer, kevin Harlan goes "I don't think the heavy stuffs gonna come down for awhile."

[Sancho]

Haha. CaddyShack has some hang-time, eh?

BTW, I'm a fan of Pro Cycling, about like a guy who's a baseball fan but only watches game 7 of the WS. I religiously watch The Tour of France every year as ride along the Champs - El - Eesees.

[bounty]

no Champs-Élysées this coming season. the race organizers moved the finish to nice because of the olympics.

cant remember if I mentioned before, I was in paris in 1986 the first year greg lemond won. it was the hands down the most exciting athletic event ive ever seen.

[hellsapoppin]

I used to watch road cycling's TDF every year. Same with Giro D'Italia and La Vuelta de España. But when the Lance Armstrong disclosures were made I got turned off completely. Just cannot watch those great sporting events without thinking about Armstrong's corrupt practices. UGH!!!

[hellsapoppin]

My favorite annual amateur sporting event is the IIHF Hockey World Juniors

The 2024 IIHF World Junior Championship will take place Dec. 26, 2023 - Jan. 5, 2024 in Gothenburg, Sweden:


https://teamusa.usahockey.com/worldjuniors2024



This is played annually from late December to early January. Every year it produces future NHL super stars. This year Matt Smaby from Minneapolis will be the coach:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Smaby

[Sancho]

I remember you telling us that, bounty. I was jealous. I remember that tour well. I’ll bet Lemond winning that tour did more to get Americans cycling than all 7 of Lance’s.

I was trying to think of my most exciting sports moment. This might not be it, but it popped in my head because of the Moby thread:

So I took up open-water swimming a while back because the ole bod needed a nonimpact sport for longevity purposes. I was lucky enough to be going to Maui semi-regularly with my job a couple of years ago. We stayed at the Maui Coast Hotel, which is right across the street from a small but nice public beach, which was a good place to swim. I'd go from the beach up to a city park and back. At a couple of hundred yards from shore the water gets gloriously clear and there is always a good chance of seeing some interesting sea critters. Everybody from the mainland gets up early in Hawaii on account of body-clock time, so I was standing on the beach, getting ready to dive in as the sun was coming up. This was probably in February or March, which is when the humpbacks migrate through there. I could see spouts a mile or two off shore.

So I'd made it up the park and most of the way back when I noticed people around me on paddle boards were all more-or-less looking my way. (When you swim by yourself in the ocean you tend to be aware of what's happening around you so as not to get run over by a jet-ski or something) Anyway everybody seems to be looking at me so I stopped to see what was going on. And right about that time, not more than 30 or 40 yards from me, a couple of humpbacks surface. I felt the swell. One of them, with that big ole eye, was looking right at me. Their tails went up and I felt like I was on the sidewalk looking up at a tall building. I know this word gets overused nowadays, but it was AWESOME. I’ve seen whales from the shore, and I’ve seen whales from a boat. I’ve even seen whales from an airplane. But nothing compares to seeing two whales in their ocean, right next to them. (I think one of them said — you in my house now, bubba)

[hellsapoppin]

Sancho,

I’ll bet Lemond winning that tour did more to get Americans cycling than all 7 of Lance’s.



He certainly did quite a lot to popularize road cycling in the States. I remember how he was the anchor that secured a couple of wins for Hinault (can't remember offhand the name of the team). He was in a hunting accident but bravely came back to excel in more international events and served as inspiration for millions of hopeful youths world wide. And he blew the whistle on the cheating Armstrong.

The popular Eddy Merckx (Belgium) did a lot to popularize road cycling back in the day. He was extremely popular in NYC though he was not quite so well known nationwide. Growing up in Gotham, I well remember how so many New Yorkers were greatly obsessed with just about anything that came from Europe in those times.

[bounty]

i was able to follow-up the 86 tour finale with a later trip to the world championships in Colorado springs. not as grand as the tour, but still pretty neat.

if you are looking for a sports-minded vacation, I think the tour is a good destination. something that combines a famous mountain stage, along with a sprint finish type stage, and then the finale in paris.

id disagree with the lemond/Armstrong influence comparison. id hedge my bet toward armstrong, while its true his cheating, bullying and subsequent confession, was very unpalatable and broke lots of hearts (mine too poppin), along with a lot of blind eyes, he was the beneficiary of at least two things, one was lemond's success and the other was a much broader mass media than lemond enjoyed. by the time Armstrong was coming into his own, the tour was getting more attention in the states, and the internet was making the world lots smaller and more accessible. but the questions a really good one and would make for a great masters thesis/doctoral dissertation.

on another point though, if someone told me greg lemond "doped" too I wouldn't have a difficult time believing it.

that's a neat story Sancho---if you havent already, go back to the moby thread and look at the link I last posted. you'll enjoy it.

I spent 4 yrs in Minneapolis at the university of Minnesota and one of those years coincided with the men's hockey team winning the ncaa back to back. hockey in Minnesota is like basketball's march madness in the much of the rest of the country.

[hellsapoppin]

bounty,

I spent 4 yrs in Minneapolis at the university of Minnesota and one of those years coincided with the men's hockey team winning the ncaa back to back. hockey in Minnesota is like basketball's march madness in the much of the rest of the country.



That's super awesome!

I well remember the 2002 Championship because of Johnny Pohl's great work in it. Saw him play at Red Wing high school and he later became a pro. Today he is athletic director at prestigious Hill-Murray school.

The 2003 Championship ended in a massive four goal onslaught by the Gophers in the ending period.

Back to back Frozen Four trophies for coach Mike Lucia who is now head of the Conference. I liked Doug Woog cause he was a really good guy, one who was very approachable. This especially so when he was home in South St Paul's Dakota (now, Woog) Arena. A great high school coach but not really a good college coach. His recruits were good high school players but not always good college players and they lacked size and finesse. Lucia changed all that.


You're right when you say that folks here love their hockey. Am reminded of the movie "Slap Shot" which remains a highly popular classic in these parts. I've seen it several times but gotta see it again. :santasmil

[bounty]

i had lots of athletes in my classes over my years there, but oddly enough, no hockey players, so i didn't know any of the players or coaches and i don't think i went to a game.

youre in Minnesota poppin? one of my hockey memories was just simply going back and forth to campus in the winter time and one of the parks i went by had 2-3 rinks and it seems there were pick up games galore.

meanwhile, i just stumbled across this that i'll look forward to checking out later:

https://pluto.tv/en/search/details/series/6287c7b1e6e53d0013677ead/season/1

[Sancho]

Oh yeah, bounty, that post you made of the sperm whale at the beach in Australia is what reminded me. It also made me wonder if their population is recovering.

I agree, Lance got more press and still has better name recognition. And I suppose it’s a question that has an unknowable answer, but I think LeMond has a multiplier effect whereas Armstrong has an inverse multiplier effect. Guys my age got excited about cycling while Lemond was riding and got their kids excited about riding and those kids got their kids excited. Lance got a lot of people on bikes while he was riding, but then there was his mea culpa moment with Oprah after which I think a lot of people left the sport, thinking it’s dirty. Anyway, might be a good hypothesis for a thesis, but I don’t know you’d go about testing it.

I actually saw Lance ride once. It had to be in 04 or 05 when he was still hanging with Cheryl Crow and I was living near Atlanta. He was riding in the Tour of Georgia and the race came right by my house. So we all went out to watch the peloton go by. And there he was. It was pretty cool. We were real close. So close in fact that we could smell him. He wore Brute Aftershave and reeked of Lavoris.

[bounty]

holy cow, I don't think ive thought about lavoris in years!

I think a couple markers would be relatively easy to check from a correlation perspective---one would be sales of bicycles and another would be the amount of racing licenses.

[hellsapoppin]

i had lots of athletes in my classes over my years there, but oddly enough, no hockey players, so i didn't know any of the players or coaches and i don't think i went to a game.

youre in Minnesota poppin? one of my hockey memories was just simply going back and forth to campus in the winter time and one of the parks i went by had 2-3 rinks and it seems there were pick up games galore.

meanwhile, i just stumbled across this that i'll look forward to checking out later:

https://pluto.tv/en/search/details/series/6287c7b1e6e53d0013677ead/season/1



I watched that series when it was on back in the day ~ outstanding programming

[bounty]

first time ive seen it. haven't watched anything yet, but hopefully I will soon.

in principal its reminding me of the espn 50 greatest athletes of the century countdown and documentaries they made in 1999.

I love the secretariat one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtuEoiYiqZw

I have a vague memory of my writing espn complaining that the list over represented athletes from the big four sports, plus golf, and that they had done a disservice to greg lemond, michelle kwan, dan gable and john smith.

[Sancho]

This ain't sports writing, but I just gotta say - Man! The Dodgers are spending a ton 'O coin this preseason.

[bounty]

does it help if I say I liked vin scully, read a sandy Koufax biography, (maybe a don Drysdale one?) a couple of Jackie Robinsons, praying for gil hodges, the boys of summer and that I used to date a girl who had family in vero beach?

and then of course there is benny, the jet, rodriguez!

[Sancho]

Dem Bums!

[hellsapoppin]

Dem Bums!


I grew up in Brooklyn, NY {what we used to call God's Country}. Am old enuff to remember how PO'd so many folks were over the loss of our Bums to LA. For decades many people blamed Walter O'Malley but historical revisionists now put the blame on dirty dealing real estate developer/planner Robert Moses. Moses was more corrupt and profited far more than Tammany Hall ever did. But he did so "legally" and got away with it.

[Sancho]

Yup. And history repeats. It’s not a perfect correlation but, like the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Oakland A’s have stadium problems. So … Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire:

I like this version: The Reverend Horton Heat, Viva Las Vegas:

https://youtu.be/58LGAl88gOk?si=BwY2sXy3pgnZIWk-

I’m sure you guys have read Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer. Great sports book, in my humble opinion. I had to go to Flatbush and visit the old site of Ebbets Field after reading it. I like to do that sort of thing. After reading Killer Angels I went to Gettysburg, PA. I’m still trying to figure out how to get to Nantucket to visit the whaling museum.

Hey, speaking of Flatbush, not long after the movie My Cousin Vinnie came out I was working a NYT crossword puzzle and this four-letter clue came up: Flatbush Juvenile… ans: YUTE.

Herman Munster — The two what? … What was that word?
Joe Pesci — Uhh, what word?
Herman — Two what?
Joe — What?

https://youtu.be/ThEf_88FFs4?si=BFvS6cvolErnDvWH

It’s almost painful watching Joe Pesci try to pronounce “Youths.”

[hellsapoppin]

Sancho,

It’s almost painful watching Joe Pesci try to pronounce “Youths.”



The following is a true story:

Growing up in Brooklyn way back in the 1960s, I was in the 6th grade and the teacher tried to get us to pronounce month(s) and myth(s). Almost none of us could do it properly. We kept saying muntz and mitz. I tried to alter it by saying mumfs and mifs. The teacher would call on someone and would get angry because the kids couldn't say it right. Thankfully, she did not call on me. What a relief it was when she finally stopped.

Fast forward several decades later after I moved to the Midwest. Now late in life I finally learned to pronounce months and myths properly. Jeepers. Took almost forever for me to learn.

[Sancho]

Haha. Good story.

Although it's been fading my entire adult life, I'm saddled a regional accent as well, only from a little further down the Eastern Seaboard than yours, hellsapoppin. But my wife is from California, so the first time I took her back home to South Carolina, I had to act as interpreter. The next-door neighbor back there was a sweet old lady named Reetha, and Reetha had a very thick southern accent. Anyway Reetha could understand my new wife just fine because she sounded "jess like they do on the TV." But my wife couldn't make heads or tails out of what Reetha was saying. And Reetha was going a mile a minute because she was excited to meet her. Anyway it was hilarious, the wife was in auto-nod mode, with smile pasted on her face, faking comprehension. Then every once in while Reetha would stop, signaling a response was needed, and the wife would look at me for help:

Sancho — She says she likes your dress.
Wife — Oh thank you. I like your dress too, Reetha.
Reetha — unintelligible, unintelligible, unintelligible...
Sancho — She says she likes your hair
Wife — Oh thank you. I like your hair too, Reetha.
And so it went

[bounty]

Sancho, if it ever looks like you'll make it to Nantucket, and are interested, give me as much heads-up as you can. I think I mentioned this in your moby thread, one of my closest friends from undergrad days is from there, and still lives there. I could make an effort to get you two connected.

[Sancho]

Oh man, that’d be awesome. Thanks, bounty. Although who knows if I can ever make it there. Nantucket isn’t really on the way to anywhere, and once you get there, to get back, you gotta go were you already been. I would like to visit it though. And Sancho’s old lady would too. It’s nice to know we’ve got a local contact.

[bounty]

its not so far away that if you are in boston for a length of time that you couldn't make a three-ish day detour, or to tie it into a visit to cape cod.

its funny---I was backpacking around Europe and I ran into all sorts of fellow adventurers who told me they were planning on going to Nantucket, and id give them her name and address and apparently more than one of them showed up at her house looking for a place to pitch their tent.

[Sancho]

I’ll manage to get there one of these days. Most of my travel is work related, hence I’m at their beck and call and I don’t usually have that much time for a side trip. Also I’m not set up genetically to travel on my own nickel. Boston was fun last month. We went Seattle to Boston and laid over for 24 hours. Then Boston - Lisbon, 24 hours, Lisbon - Boston 24 hours, then back home. Good trip.

[bounty]

maybe someday the red sox and mariners will play for the al championship and you'll get tickets.

[Sancho]

Haha. Something about hell freezing over immediately popped to mind.

[bounty]

I watched a video yesterday of a little boy, in an effort to earn some doritos from his father, made a pig fly.

[bounty]

captain sisko on star trek: deep space nine is the captain of the station. he's a huge fan of an old American sport. an old rival from Starfleet academy shows up and challenges him to a contest. some of the highlights, with a heavy lean towards worf's involvement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzPQAeRsBXc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRRbYE9jRCk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N22YyheMW-c

[Sancho]

Haha!
That pitch wasn’t even close. Yer blind ump! What are ya? Regenerating?

I do love a good baseball metaphor. Came across this one in my current read. Dave Robicheaux has been surveilling a small-time mobster with binoculars and the guy sees the glint off the lens and goes to investigate. Dave figures he can skedaddle so he doesn’t get made, but:


I could have gotten out of there, I suppose, without being seen. But sometimes self-respect requires that you float one down the middle, letter high, big as a balloon, and let the batter have his way. I walked through the trees back to the road.

What Dave really wants to do is provoke the guy so he can beat the livin’ tar outta him, which he does.

From Black Cherry Blues, by James Lee Burke

[bounty]

I think the more you know about life in general, the richer any particular reading can end up being, a la your dave robicheaux section.

captain sisko keeps a baseball on his desk in ops on the station. when the federation had to evacuate and let the dominion capture the station, the old/new bad guy gul dukat takes over. watch from 2:11 to the end...

among other things, its interesting to consider that baseball lasts into the 24th century.

[Sancho]

Every time we think baseball is dead, it rises from the ashes. The king is dead. Long live the king. You know, spring training is just around the corner.

Hey, I was happy to see the baseball metaphor I posted above was more fully developed later in the novel:


Maybe it’s like the seventh-inning stretch, I thought, when they’ve shelled your fastball past your ears and blown your hanging curve through the boards. Afternoon shadows are growing on the field, your arm aches, the movement and sound of the fans are like an indistinct hum in the stands. Then a breeze springs up and dries the sweat on your face and neck, you wipe your eyes clear on your sleeve, scrub the ball against your thigh, fork your fingers tightly into the stitches, and realize that the score is irrelevant now, that your failure is complete, that it wasn’t so bad after all because now you’re free and alone in a peculiar way that has put you beyond the obligations of victory and defeat. The batter expects you to float another balloon past his letters, and instead you take a full windup, your face dry and cool in the breeze, your arm now weightless, and you swing your leg and whole butt into the delivery, your arm snaps like a snake, and the ball whizzes past him in a white blur. And that’s the way you pitch the rest of the game, in the lengthening shadows, in the dust blowing off the base paths, in the sound of a flag popping on a metal pole against the blue sky; you do it without numbers in your head, right into the third out in the bottom of the ninth.
Black Cherry Blues, by James Lee Burke

Oh yeah! The sh*t’s about to go down.

[hellsapoppin]

Baseball "dead" ???


Many moons ago I was outside of Kansas City and was thumbing thru a book about baseball. It included an article from a Baltimore writer who complained that ticket costs were exorbitant, that salaries were ridiculously high, and that so much fun had been taken out of the game. If this persisted, wrote the critic, baseball would no longer exist in ten more years.

The article was written in 1867.

While baseball is not as much fun as it used to be because the pace is so slow today, the strike zone much too small, the ball itself far too lively, so many commercials are shown, and that idiotic kiss cam is so repulsive, the game will live on. It's American as is apple pie and will always be with us.

[bounty]

and not to spite James lee burke in the least, but as far as baseball metaphors and pop culture, I don't think anything beats paradise by the dashboard light by meatloaf!.

[Sancho]

“…So now I’m praying for the end of time, to hurry up and arrive
‘Cos of I gotta spend another minute with you,
I don’t think that I can really survive…”

Why is it I can remember lyrics to thousands of tunes from the 70s, but I can’t, for the life of me, remember where I put my car keys?

“I am stuck on Band Aid, ‘cos Band Aid’s stuck on me
I am stuck on Band Aid, ‘cos Band Aid’s stuck on me”

Jingles too.
Enjoy the ear worm.

[Sancho]

I'll never break my promise or forget my vow
But God only knows what I could do right now
So I'm praying for the end of time
It's all that I can do, Woo, Woo
Praying for the end of time,
So I can end my time with you

Chorus

Well it was long ago and it was far away
And it was so much better that it is today

It never felt so good
It never felt so right
And we were glowing like
A metal on the edge of a knife

Ya know, this song speaks to high schoolers and to dudes in their middle age, but it probably doesn't get at it from the lady's perspective. I wanna think Mr Loaf came back at this song with a reply tune 20 or 30 years later, but I don't really remember that song.

[bounty]

i wonder about that, given how true we all know this to be:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d3diodXKPU

just did a quick search for "reply to" and "sequel to" and nothing came up.

[Sancho]

I could be mistaken. I frequently am. I think maybe it was — I would do anything for love, but I won't do that. When the song came out the music critics liked to compare it to Paradise, so it’s probably not an answer song, but rather a compare-and-contrast song. It sort of tracks the arc of his music from Hot Patootie Bless My Soul, to Paradise, to I would do anything. Or not. Donno. Hey, it’s rock-n-roll.

[bounty]

that's a fun way to look at it---like the tunes on the beatles "red album" to their "blue album."

I just finished a ride while watching a DS9 episode and took a screen shot for you of the closing scene. note the forefront of the shot.

[hellsapoppin]

Super Bowl 58 soon!



San Francisco vs KC Chiefs



I have never missed a Super Bowl. Have seen each and everyone without fail. Am thinking of making a pork roast for the occasion. Will be fun fer darn sure ...

[bounty]

I have a love/hate relationship with football. on the hate side, its so regulated with rules, and those rules get transgressed with so much frequency, and the officials miss things, misjudge things and find consistency difficult, it makes loving the sport difficult.

my favorite part of the game is when its over, and the players from the opposing teams get together for congratulations, commiserations and other greetings.

who ya gonna root for?

[hellsapoppin]

on the hate side, its so regulated with rules, and those rules get transgressed with so much frequency



Too many rules, indeed. Things like back field in motion, intentional grounding ~ both rules should be eliminated. Just let them play. Endless stoppages of the clock unlike soccer or rugby, interminable commercials, mindless pre & post game interviews of players/coaches/commentators each with their own opinions spewing nonsense much of which has nothing to do with the match itself ~ all take away from the game.

In the old days we had numerous tip offs per game in basketball. People got tired of it and as these things needlessly prolong the game. The rules were changed to remove them. Today the kickoffs are not returned for TD's or for long runs like they were in the past. Why not eliminate these needless wastages of time as well?

While I always enjoy the Super Bowl, I NEVER watch the interviews, half time show, or anything not related to the actual game itself.

Don't have any faves in this particular game. All I want is that it be fun and memorable.

[bounty]

I agree that flow is an important aspect of the fan experience. im okay with kick-offs though. as a normal part of the game, without the tv time-outs associated with them, they can happen pretty quickly and add variety and excitement.

I recently watched an old episode of Hogan's heroes. the actual show time for the half-hour slot was 27 minutes. today's half-hour shows are ~21-22 minutes. ninety minute movies on the telly take 2 1/2 hours to get through. I trust there are lots of reasons for that, but one of them has to be the necessity of more commercials in order to pay the huge salaries of the actors. the same thing has to be occurring with the nfl.

all else being equal, i often find myself often rooting geographically---east over west, north over south. i don't necessarily have that for this game, but since im a bills' fan, i think you gotta root for the team that beats your team.

[hellsapoppin]

The NFL has conceded that on average, the amount of actual play time per game is only 10 minutes.

Back in the way back when, there used to be fewer passes per game and much fewer incomplete passes. Also the RBs did not go out of bound like they do today.* Because of that there were much fewer time clock stoppages and the game was often completed in about 2 hours or so. I would like to see changes in the game today that would reduce the amount of time. Sixty minutes of football should be sixty minutes. Not 3+ hours of interminable commercials and talk.


There is talk today that Bill Walsh of the SF 49ers was a cheat. There had been rumors of that years ago but nobody proved it. Now the talk has reemerged. Perhaps his actions were what inspired Bill BeliCHEAT. Hopefully, it will be a clean game. Am looking forward to it.




*Years ago I remember when Cleveland RB Jim Brown condemned Pittsburgh RB Franco Harris for running out of bound during the games. Harris would run out of bound to avoid hits and to accumulate more yardage. In doing so the time clock would stop and that would prolong the game. Try that in soccer or rugby and you'll cause a turnover!

[bounty]

everything you said poppin, and id add in lots more stoppages of play for injuries too. it could be that memory is deceiving but I barely remember players getting hurt back then compared to the extent they are today. everyone's bigger stronger and faster and that combined with less natural grass leads to lots more injuries.

seems like lots more penalties too, plus coaches challenges.

I don't remember hearing that about bill walsh---what were the allegations?

[hellsapoppin]

~ bill walsh---what were the allegations? ~


Tons of them: https://yourteamcheats.com/SF


The one that I remembered the most was the headsets "problem". Many of these came out in 2011. Thereafter, Giants Coach Bill Parcells wrote a book in 2018 in which he repeated these allegations. IIRC there may have been some allegations of spying & stealing of signals as well - that these tactics were later used by BeliCHEAT in New England.

[Sancho]

Hah, good screen shot, bounty. I see that Commander Worf (pretty sure that’s who that is anyway) and I both see the baseball as a thing of beauty, art even. And like a sword, it can be beautiful and dangerous at the same time. The first time the grown-ups let us kids play with a real baseball, we all thought we’d entered a new world. We were big kids now and entrusted with important stuff.

Anyway, is there a more vulnerable time for a player of any sport, than there is for a major league pitcher after he releases a 100mph fastball and is following through, waiting for the ball to come off the bat at 115+ right at his head? Sheesh!

[bounty]

its captain sisko, although in the baseball episode, worf was by far the most comical as the naïve straight man.

to your point---when I was a kid I was a cardinals fan and I remember how discombobulated (no pun intended) bob Gibson was after he threw a pitch.

not that im condoning it poppin, but the headset debacle actually sounds kinda funny.

and though ive never been intimately read-up on the stories, sign stealing to me always seemed to be a part of the game. unless maybe its going on in some way other than in plain view.

I always think its comical when football coaches cover their mouths with clipboards while they are talking. they've apparently never seen the nfl bad lip reading clips.

[Sancho]

Speaking of using the ball as a weapon, here’s a fun one from the gridiron. Christian is the new QB. Myron is his agent, watching from the stands. It’s a scrimmage in full gear:

On the field Christian was fading back again. For the third straight time Tommy Lawrence blitzed over left guard untouched. In fact, the left guard stood with his hands on his hips and watched.

“Christian’s own lineman is setting him up,” Myron said.

Christian side-stepped Tommy Lawrence, cocked his arms, and whipped the ball with unearthly velocity directly into his left guard’s groin. There was a short oomph sound. The left guard collapsed like a folding chair.

“Ouch,” Win said. Myron almost clapped. “The Longest Yard revisited.”

The left guard was, of course, wearing a cup. But a cup was far from full protection against a speeding missile. He rolled on the ground, back curved fetal-like, eyes wide. Every man in the general vicinity gave a collective, sympathetic “Ooo.”

Christian walked over to his left guard—a man weighing in excess of 275 pounds—and offered him a hand. The left guard took it. He limped back to the huddle.

“Christian has balls,” Myron said.

Win nodded. “But can the same be said of the left guard?”
Deal Breaker, Harlan Coben

[bounty]

ah good one---you see that or variants of it a few times in movies, but that's the first ive heard it in literature.

[bounty]

a very sports related pre-super bowl super bowl commercial:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1753080114223677873

[bounty]

...Anyway, is there a more vulnerable time for a player of any sport, than there is for a major league pitcher after he releases a 100mph fastball and is following through, waiting for the ball to come off the bat at 115+ right at his head? Sheesh!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gR3nO90I_7Q?feature=share

[Sancho]

Oh man!
I don’t know but I wonder if the NCAA mandates face masks for pitchers. I mean she’s smiling, but without that mask she might have been stuck with a snaggle-toothed grin.

[Sancho]

Superbowl LVIII is history

La Señora thinks it was all about the Ben Affleck, J-Lo, Matt Daman, Tom Brady Dunkin Spot:

https://youtu.be/Ve2miT5iF2M?si=oyFsXuvGJVBzqnYN

But El Sancho thinks the Reese's Caramel Big Cup won the night:

https://youtu.be/sOH23Pup6AQ?si=7N6274QMDJaafAGR

Man! I like that hula-hoop dog.

[hellsapoppin]

As usual for me, I did not watch any commercials. But Super Bowl 58 was AWESOME! Coach Andy Reid made some great calls.

I have never missed a Super Bowl in all these years. Am already looking forward to the next one.

[bounty]

for a variety of reasons I missed all of last nights commercials, but in going in search of almost of all them today...

id say the reeses commercial overtook the former first place of Arnold being a good neighbaah, and maybe held it until I saw this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjLzH8qj0gQ

[Sancho]

Good one. It made me want to buy a chartreuse microbus. Would’ve better if they’d’ve used Long Strange Trip for a backing track.

Etsy’s, Statue of Liberty
https://youtu.be/cXT8JgdvCHc?si=esKj0SsyUmGPPVLQ
Oh crap! That’s a really good gift.

State Farm, like a good neighbah
https://youtu.be/p8ZYgb8Osek?si=i8mcjMEFO49NhYrL
Okay, that was the sheep

Also I hear there was a football game. The Señora and I were watching it in a sports-bar type restaurant. The whole place would go quiet when the commercials came on, and then everybody’d go back to their meals and conversations when the game was back up on the screen. That is, except for one guy, a Niners fan, who’d startle everyone by having an outburst every so often because something was happening on the field.

[bounty]

yeah I think if you go to a restaurant for the event, its less about paying really close attention to the game.

With a thousand screamin' trucks
An' eleven long-haired Friends a' Jesus?

I thought the song was perfect, especially given the saying at the end, "you shape its soul" an absolutely wonderful testament to what cars have meant to our culture and to ourselves as individuals.

you might remember this one (non-superbowl) from a few years ago. the long version of one of the best ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ1uqkBeTHY

[Sancho]

Yep. Even La Señora comes up with a line from that tune (when I'm driving):

"Ah, breaker, Pigpen, this here's the Duck. You wanna back it off on them go-go girls?"

I do remember that Chevy ad. It's tough for an ad department to go sentimental, but I think they pulled it off.

I just thought Neal Diamond was wrong for that spot because they had all those hippies out hippy-ing. I mean even back in the 60s he was a fav' of the blue-hairs not the long hairs.

[bounty]

song choice for that commercial would be a fun, live formal debate.

its funny you mention "senora"----none of the streaming sites I used all season long were working, and I had to watch the superbowl in Spanish!

[Sancho]

Haha! Football might be better in Spanish — Olé! I’ve watched plenty of baseball games on Mexican TV, but never a football game.

That would be a good live debate, in old SNL style. Point - Counterpoint: “Jane, you ignorant slut.”

[bounty]

laughs...I remember dan akroyd saying that.

another good example (maybe a better one) linked to an earlier post:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HEOCLRA6mBE?feature=share

[Sancho]

Jaysus! Thought I wuz ded. Breathe in. Breathe out. Holy crap! Can’t buleeve I got my arms up in time! OMG! I gotta find a new job. Sheesh! Hey! WTF is this thing in my glove? Oh yay-uh. I’m tha man. Mister Cy Young they call me. Prolly win a Golden Glove too.

[hellsapoppin]

old school ice hockey just like in the old days:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUOGe-mx0l4


they even had a fight!

HUMONGOUS sized crowd. Emile "the Cat" Francis said NYC fans are the greatest hockey fans in the world. He sure knew his stuff.


What a game!!!

[Sancho]

So, bounty, I’m hoping you got something to say about Paris-Nice.

[bounty]

i appreciate your wondering...

I didn't get to see every day of it but I caught quite a bit. tirreno-adriatico was on at the same time and depending on the race layout, I sometimes checked in on Jonas vingegaard.

the weather was miserable for much of the race which is extra cruel considering the ideal is supposed to be the "race to the sun."

it was encouraging to have the couple of young americans (mcnulty and jorgenson) do so well. at the same time though, im skeptical evenepoel, roglic and others were up to form. major kudos to mcnulty for staying in the race leaders jersey on the penultimate stage and ditto for staying on the podium after losing his lead on the final stage. in both cases he got dropped and had to dig deep to preserve what he could.

just prior to these two races, pogacar had an absolutely amazing ride in the strade bianche. between that, and a couple of dominating performances by vingegaard, it looks like these two have picked up where they left off last season, and they are head and shoulders above the rest of the field.

on a side note---paris-nice was tough to watch because one of the announcers, ironically sean Kelly, said "you know" multiple times each time he spoke. apart from that its weird to watch a bike race without phil liggett announcing, its irritating as all get out.

next biggies are milano-torino in a couple of days and milan-san remo this weekend.

mathieu van der poel is set to enter his first road race of the year after having won something like 13 of 14 cyclo-cross races over the winter. so he'll be a great addition to the mix.