Category Archives: Sports

ICYMI: Baseball MVP and grandmother

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Those of you who watch TV news probably have already seen this, but for the rest of you, I provide this video of the National League MVP being reunited with his grandmother — who taught him to play — from Cuba.

Here’s the way the video was described by the website I initially saw it on:

At the risk of sounding like a sentimental sap, this is definitely the coolest thing you will see today. Marlins superstar pitcher Jose Fernandez hasn’t seen his grandmother since he defected from Cuba at the age of 15. So the Marlins decided to sit him down for an interview, ask him to talk about how much he loves his grandma, and then surprise him by bringing her into the room.

The whole thing plays out perfectly. “Everything I do is for her,” Fernandez says when the interviewer asks him what he would say to his grandmother if he could send a message to her. Then she asks him what he thinks his grandmother would say to him if she were here. “I don’t think she would be here.”

And then the door opens. Boom, there’s grandma. Have fun crying at your desk.

Russia has committed a deliberate, hostile act against U.S.

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Lindsey Graham took little time in reacting to the news that Edward Snowden has been allowed to enter Russia technically and officially, and will be granted asylum for a year:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement today on the reports that Russia has granted Edward Snowden temporary asylum.

“If these reports are accurate, Americans in Washington should consider this a game changer in our relationship with Russia. Mr. Snowden has been charged with serious crimes and has put American lives at risk at home and abroad.

“Today’s action by the Russian government could not be more provocative and is a sign of Vladimir Putin’s clear lack of respect for President Obama. It is now time for Congress, hopefully in conjunction with the Administration, to make it clear to the Russian government that this provocative step in granting Snowden asylum will be met with a firm response.”

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Basically, Putin has just flipped a gigantic bird at the United States. He has shown a gross disrespect for the United States and its laws, protecting Snowden from prosecution on charges of doing things for which — and here’s the ironic part — were a Russian citizen to do them to his country, Putin would put him under Lubyanka Square.

So, what do we do about it? For his part, Sen. Graham has suggested that we consider boycotting the winter Olympics to show our displeasure. Some have reacted as though that were crazy talk. I don’t know why. Jimmy Carter kept us out of the real Olympics in 1980 to protest the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan.

But it doesn’t seem to me the best response to this situation. Right off, it would seem to accept the fact that we’re not getting this mutt back before February 2014, because that’s when the games are. On the other hand, if we got him back before then, we could then go ahead to the Olympics.

There must be a better approach, but I don’t know what it is. What does Putin want that we could deny him without hurting our own interests further? Someone must know.

Before “stand your ground,” was there such a thing as a “run to the wall” law?

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Here’s something for you lawyers out there, or you martial artists, or somebody.

I attended the University of South Carolina for exactly one semester, the fall of 1971. On top of my regular classes, I took a free short course in the evenings, not for credit.

It was karate. A friend from the Pee Dee and I took it, and we probably spent more time practicing our moves outside of class than we did studying for any of our academic classes. Or at least, I did. (We never hit a dorm elevator button with our fingers — we always used our feet.) One night, we staged a huge sparring match in the hallway of Bates House, and drew quite a crowd. We were really over the top, leaping into the air, kicking, and generally pretending to be Billy Jack, since that movie was huge that fall.

Amazingly, none of the guys watching us cracked up laughing. I think we actually fooled some of them into thinking we knew what we were doing.

Anyway, the guy who taught the classes — I remember his name as being John Bull Roper, which I thought was a great name for a black belt — used to tell us that in South Carolina, there was something called a “run-to-the-wall” clause in the law.

What that meant, he said, was that if you were an expert at killing with your hands and feet, as we believed him to be, you had to do everything you could to avoid a fight. You had to “run to the wall,” and only when there was nowhere else to retreat to could you defend yourself with your skills.

I forgot about that over the years, until everybody started talking about “stand your ground” laws. Which, of course, would be the opposite thing.

Was there ever such a thing? Anybody remember it? I can’t find it on Google. Maybe I’m remembering the words wrong; I don’t know…

Hot dang! Andre ‘Fireball’ Bauer rolls again!

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Haven’t seen any news coverage of this, but I thought it worth noting that, according to his Facebook page, Andre Bauer is again indulging his impulse to “go fast.”

This time, it’s legal.

Back on Wednesday, he promoted the event thusly:

Race tomorrow night July 4th, 2013 at Myrtle beach Speedway. I will be driving #32 for PALM Charter School. Come out and watch. It is always a good time.

Later, he reported that he came in third, and can’t wait to race again. Let’s hope that from now on, it’s on a sanctioned track.

The creepy thing is that Putin’s first thought was that he could KILL somebody with the ring

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The thing that gets me about this silly story about Vladimir Putin and the Super Bowl ring…

The Russian president has an eye for the bling: In 2005, he admired — and pocketed — a $25,000 Super Bowl ring with 124 diamonds owned by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Putin walked off with his ring, Kraft said last week, and the White House let him get away with it to avoid an international incident…

The NFL owner claims he met the Putin during a meeting of top corporate execs in St. Petersburg, reports the New York Post. Kraft was showing off his oversized bling when Putin slipped it on his finger and said, “I can kill someone with this ring,” Kraft said he put his hand out to get it back when Putin “put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”…

… is that Putin’s first thought was that he could kill somebody with it. How like him that seems.

By the way, Kraft now says he was joking; that he meant for Putin to have the ring as a gift. Maybe he’s remembered that Putin now has a ring with which he can kill a guy (not that he needed it, according to the Daily Mail)…

By the way… Best tabloid headline about this: The New York Post‘s “Vlad: The precious is mine!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top Five baseball movies, 2013 version

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better than the planets aligning

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

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

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

Rumsfeld’s right about this one: Bring back wrestling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Top Ten favorite ads from the 2013 Super Bowl

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

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

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

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

Anyway, here’s my list:

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

The resurgence of The Chicken Curse?

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

But it pops up now and then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAIN STREET ICE TO REMAIN OPEN FOR TWO MORE WEEKS

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

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

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

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

Monday –Friday, 4 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Saturday, 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.

Sunday, 1 p.m. – 9 p.m.

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

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

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

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

In honor of our late friend, Doug Nye

The Ron Morris/Steve Spurrier brouhaha

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet, he does — apparently a lot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Ryan: The Deerslayer, policy wonk version

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take THAT, ye oppressor of good Saxon yeomen!

From ‘legitimate rape’ to the Country Club

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George Will on Football’s Big Problem

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

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

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

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

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

Another good bit:

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

Not that America will pay attention.

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

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

The Blackminton Scandal of 2012

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

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

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

photo by Arne Nordmann

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

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

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

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

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

Good on them, indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Photo by Melissa Dale from Meadville, USA

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

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

Now, another question…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bradwarthen.com

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