From The Sports Desk

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.

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Spotcheck Billy got down on his hands and knees and said, hey momma…

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He really wants to hook up with Jaunita, you see, but she says:

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No, no honey, not tonight. You come back Monday, you come back Tuesday, and then I might.

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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.

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.

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

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:

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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.

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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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

dag nab double posting!

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.

Living in California I just don't get curling.

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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.

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... 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

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...

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.

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...

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.

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

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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:

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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.

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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?"

‘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:

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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.

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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.

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."

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.

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%

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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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.

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

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?"

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

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

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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.

Quote:

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Who is this Laron guy again?

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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.

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..."

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.

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...

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.

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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!

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Quote:

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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.

---

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?"

Yup. That sounds about right.

Men.

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

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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.

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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?

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.