Category Archives: Sports

The intelligent hype around “MoneyBall”

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I had never heard about “MoneyBall” until I heard a story about it on NPR yesterday morning.

Then last night, I heard Terry Gross interview Brad Pitt about it. OK, they talked a lot about “Fight Club,” with Ms. Gross asking the star how many people come up to him and say, “The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.” Not that many, actually. But the bottom line message of his being there was, “See ‘MoneyBall.”

Then this morning, I hear a review, also on NPR, from Kenneth Turan. Again, the message is to see the movie.

Also this morning, the teaser across the top of The Wall Street Journal (you know, the space devoted to football, year-round, in The State), was all about “MoneyBall.” It referred you to a big story headlined, “Baseball After Moneyball,” and a review by Joe Morgenstern, which says this film “…renews your belief in the power of movies.”

Then, in my email this morning, I get a link to the Roger Ebert review:

In the 2002 season, the nation’s lowest-salaried Major League Baseball team put together a 20-game winning streak, setting a new American League record. The team began that same season with 11 losses in row. What happened between is the stuff of “Moneyball,” a smart, intense and moving film that isn’t so much about sports as about the war between intuition and statistics.

OK, I get the message: I want to see this movie. Not only because I like good baseball movies, but because I’m very interested, as readers here will know, in “the war between intuition and statistics.”

But I have to say, I’m also quite impressed by the hype. Not just the volume of it, but the quality.

Note this isn’t your usual slam-bam action movie kind of promotion, that washes over you like a tidal wave and either pulls you into the theater or makes you run, screaming, for higher ground. The kind with lots of stuff blowing up. The kind that would never concern itself with “the war between intuition and statistics.”

This is targeted. This is more subtle. And it grabs people who are into baseball as a Thinking Man’s Game. Grabs them every which way.

Nice job by whoever was handling the media relations on this. I mean, everything they did was rather obvious, but I don’t remember the last time I saw these particular venues flooded this way for one movie. The buildup, from my perspective, was last-minute, but compete, and effective.

I may even shell out money to go see it in the theater. Which for me would be remarkable.

USC athletic director’s message to Rotary today

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USC Athletic Director Eric Hyman spoke to the Columbia Rotary Club today. Eric’s a smart guy with a big job, but since I’m not much of a sports fan a lot of what he said went right by me. But this jumped out, and I shared it on Twitter:

Eric Hyman, USC athletic director, tells Columbia Rotary, “We do not get any state money.” He adds, “We. Do. Not. Get. Any. State. Money.”

Yeah, you knew that. I knew it, too. But it’s worth repeating, because a lot of people don’t know it. I’ve already heard from one on Twitter. She was incredulous. (Did I already say “incredulous” once today? Seems like it. Good word; don’t want to overuse it.)

Knowing that is one reason why I don’t write all that much about the Gamecocks here. If I thought it was costing us money, I’d go ahead and fight the tide and say we have better things to spend the money on. But since that’s not the case, since this a case of misplaced public priorities, I have few opinions to express. And since I know Gamecock success actually does boost the local economy, I’ll say “Go Cocks!”

I don’t have to understand why so many people are so football-crazy. I just have to acknowledge the fact.

By the way, there were some other interesting facts that Mr. Hyman threw out: that football generates 70 percent of the athletic revenue, that basketball generates 18 percent, that baseball (while he is deeply, deeply appreciative of our back-to-back national champs) is actually “expensive.”

At least, I think he said those things. The only thing I wrote down (and I had to borrow a pen to do it, having left mine at the office) was the above quote.

A few words about football fashion

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Most mornings, I read both The State and The Wall Street Journal over breakfast. This morning, I was struck by a certain contrast.

The WSJ had, teased from the front and filling most of a section front, a feature on the coming fashion season.

The State had a fashion spread, too. But it was football fashion. That says a lot about who we are, don’t you think? The fashion thing may have seemed odd to old-time readers of the Journal, but the football stuff looked right at home in the hometown paper.

Here’s a thought: The new Maryland unis looked pretty good. They’re sharp, innovative, and yet invoke tradition, really telling you where they’re from.

Wouldn’t it be great (and I’m bracing myself as I say this, at the height of Garnet and Black Fever time) if the Gamecocks wore solid indigo blue uniforms with white lettering, and the Palmetto tree (in white) on one shoulder and the crescent moon on the other? That would say so much about this being the University of SOUTH CAROLINA.

It would also, politically, position the school as THE flagship university in an indelible manner.

And it would look really, really sharp.

But I’m not holding my breath for that to happen.

What? They got a FASHION season, too?

Ray Tanner at Rotary today

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As president-elect of the Columbia Rotary Club, car dealer J.T. Gandolfo is responsible for lining up speakers for the club this year. And he is going all-out to make them the kinds of speakers who get everybody talking. So far we’ve had Nikki Haley, and the guy from FN, and Trey Gowdy. Next week, it’s Lindsey Graham, and the week after will be Jim DeMint.

But the biggest crowd so far was today, for Ray Tanner, coach of the back-to-back National Champion Gamecocks. We had to add tables, which has not happened in awhile. Someone remarked that there seemed to be more guests than members.

It’s interesting to watch how a crowd reacts to a guy who has had remarkable success in the sports arena. First, he got a standing ovation before he opened his mouth. That’s not unique — so did Leon Lott (it even happened to me once, but I had to get fired first) — but it’s rare.

Then, after extremely brief remarks — which were very well received, with enthusiastic laughter at anything that seemed remotely to have ambitions of being a joke (which made me jealous, I confess) — he went to Q&A with 38 minutes left in the hour-long meeting. Since the main speaker is the last thing on the agenda at Rotary, expected to fill out the rest of the time, that would seem a risky move. With another speaker, the questions could peter out. No chance of that here. The crowd would have asked him questions all day if allowed to.

And the questions were not of the sort that politicians get. There was no challenge in them, but rather a laudatory celebration in every word from the floor. It was like he’s an oracle, and everyone wants to be favored with his magic.

To Coach Tanner’s great credit, while I’m sure he gets it a lot, he doesn’t let this stuff go to his head. He gives the fans what they want, sharing anecdotes that feel like the inside dope, complete with self-deprecating remarks that everyone can chuckle at. He stays a regular guy, which is no mean feat considering the way the fans look at him.

The media was much in evidence, and Andy Shain from The State was Tweeting. A sample that illustrates what I said above:

Ray Tanner: C Robert Beary’s backhanded catch was his most memorable play of ’11 CWS. ‘I’d like to tell you that was coaching.’

That was typical of his perfect mix of inside perspective on cherished memories coupled with joshing humility. And it works because it’s genuine.

I doubt the club will be quite as charmed by Sen. Graham, but I’ll let you know how it goes…

It’s still sinking in: We have two-time, back-to-back, National Champions

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Well, it was certainly Famously Hot today. Particularly walking there and back. But worth it. (Actually, as you might be able to tell from the great vantage point and the slight glare/reflection on the window, I watched a good bit of this from the coolness of the Capital City Club. But hey, I did walk there and back.)

It’s a great day for, let’s see… South Carolina, Columbia, the University, and for baseball. Because those young guys showed how the game ought to be played — steadily, honestly, with mastery of all the basics, and as a team. I’m not even going to get into how communitarian (and how very non-Tea Party) that is, because I don’t want to spoil the day with politics.

Great job, boys. You’ll treasure this day for the rest of your lives. So will everybody else around here.

Why not a triumphal arch for the Gamecocks?

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I’ll be at the parade for the National Champion Gamecocks on Friday, and I’m sure it will be great, but… we had a parade last year. And we flew a flag from the State House, etc.

All of that was very fine. But it seems like when they win the championship two years in a row, we ought to do something exponentially bigger. Something that really shows some lasting, monumental pride in the new Gamecock dynasty.

Yesterday, I was exchanging Tweets with Aaron Sheinin about the big win (he called it a “Great win for the common man”), when it hit me, and I responded:

If we don’t build a triumphal arch in front of the State House, we’ll never have a better chance. (Hey, I think I’ll blog that.)

Why not? Just move the Confederate soldier monument, and its flag, back to Elmwood Cemetery where it used to be (bet you didn’t know that), and replace it with something on the order of the monument they have in Paris, or Washington Square, or the Marble Arch in London?

This afternoon I heard SC Commerce Sec. Bobby Hitt touting the Gamecocks achievement as a sign to the world (and really, to ourselves) of what we can do in South Carolina if we work as a team. Instead of, I would add, fighting with each other all the time.

Wouldn’t that be awesome? Isn’t it high time that we start defining ourselves in terms of a famous victory, instead of our historic defeat? Isn’t it time to stop wallowing in the biggest mistake our (or any other) state ever made, and proclaim to the world just how great we can be?

I think so.

Well, they did it. Again.

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Don’t know what to say, except those boys are just deadly competent. No, way beyond that. They just do it right, play after play. Real baseball. Solid. Constant. Superb.

And we have a national champion again. Or still. Or however you say it. We’ve never had to say this before. That’s OK. We could get used to it.

Actually, I guess we’ll have to, right?

About that ballgame last night…

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CUSTOMER: Al, did you read Mercy’s article?
Al: Why should I read it? I heard it.
— “The Natural”

I sort of figure that if you were interested, you also heard — or rather, watched — the Gamecocks beat Florida last night, bringing them… Well, never mind where it brings them. Don’t want to jinx anything.

So I’m not going to attempt a written description here.

But Bud mentioned the game back here on an unrelated subject, and in case some of y’all would like to discuss it here, I thought I’d give you a place to do it.

Pretty good game, huh?

I got stabbed in the back today — literally — so I’m temporarily out of action

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I’m sure you can see the problem right away…

It’s OK — I asked them to do it. It was done with a needle.

I had my reasons. It all started about 40 years ago…

Recently, I had this old problem with neck and shoulder pain — and numbness, all down the right arm, which is the most disturbing part — crop back up for the first time in about a decade. It started when I was on the high school wrestling team in my senior year (1970-71). Burl was there (not on the wrestling team, but at the school), but he didn’t really know me yet.

We used to do these drills that would probably get a coach fired today (let’s hope so), designed to “strengthen” our neck muscles, but which caused an injury to mine that caused me to quit the team after my right hand started going numb and I had trouble holding a pen in class. My favorite: We’d pair off and one guy would stand on his head on the mat and the other guy would hold his legs and bounce him repeatedly on the mat — the illegal piledriver, essentially. Oh, but that wasn’t all. We had this other drill — also done in pairs — where one guy would stand with his legs a bit apart, and you would come up behind him, bend double, stick your head between his legs, and pick him up, using your neck to lift his full weight, until you were fully standing with him sitting on your shoulders. (You have to be pretty strong to be a wrestler — and stupid.) Then, finally, we’d get in a bridge — you know what a “bridge” is? Here’s what it looks like (but it’s not a FULL bridge until you roll back so that your weight is on your forehead). And while we were in a bridge, the coach, walking around amongst us, would suddenly and without warning drop down onto our chests with his knees, his full weight from the knees up testing the strength of the bridge — a position in which the main stress is on your unnaturally bent-back neck. Fortunately, he was a little guy, smaller than most of us. Probably didn’t weigh 125 pounds. Which is probably why I can still walk.

The coach’s picture is on this page of the Virtual Yearbook Burl created years ago. I’m not going to point him out, though — although you may be able to pick him out because he looks the part, the little fascist. No, really, he’s all old and decrepit if he’s still alive, and probably sorry for all he’s done, and no point picking on him now. Hey, I’m feeling kind of old and decrepit — thanks to him…

Anyway, I recovered the feeling on my right side and sort of forgot about it mostly until 1993. I was in pretty good shape just before I had emergency major abdominal surgery that year, which kept me from working out for a couple of months. The first day I started back, the very first shoulder press I did made something go crunch, very painfully, amid the cervical vertebra.

I dealt with pain and numbness from that off and on for years until doing something about it about 10 years back. The MRI then showed one vertebra sort of cockeyed and squeezing bundles of nerves both above and below. I went through all kinds of things to try to fix it — home traction, chiropractic, massage, muscle relaxers — but nothing really worked until a specialist sent me to the hospital for cortisone injections next to the spine. That reduced the inflammation around the area for long enough for me to relax (muscle tension always exacerbated the problem) and heal up.

And I did really well for a decade.

The problem came back suddenly on April 13 — no trauma, it just came on gradually over a couple of hours. Next morning, I called my internist to ask for a prescription of Soma — not the Aldous Huxley kind, but carisoprodol, a muscle relaxer. I’ve taken it pretty much every night to enable me to sleep the last couple of months. More than once, I’ve waked up in the middle of the night and taken another, if it’s been long enough. Along with ibuprofen. Lots and lots of ibuprofen. That eliminated most of the pain. But my whole right arm goes numb in certain routine positions that can’t be avoided in the course of a day, and two of my fingers are numb and itchy ALL the time.

So I went back to the same doc, and today I got another shot of steroid next to my spine — between C6 and C7. It’s not bad enough for surgery — in fact, the neurosurgeon was very encouraged that he didn’t see much deterioration from last time. Just the rather disturbing experience of having a long needle inserted next to my spine and stuff injected into there. Feels really weird.

I was ordered to take it easy. So I sit at home, trying to take it easy with the frickin’ telephone ringing every five minutes. Everything from Mike Huckabee auto-calling me to enlist me in the Kulturkampf (something about atheists and the National Day of Prayer) to my auto-insurance calling NOT to check on my tree-falling claim (I’m already set to take it to the body shop on Monday), but to routinely check all the data on all the cars on my account. Took forever, and made my neck more sore.

Tomorrow I can return to normal routine. Driving and everything. And in 3-4 four days, I’ll know whether it helped.

Anyway, the last few days I’ve blogged less than usual on account of trying to get real work, the kind I get paid for, out of the way to take today off. And today, sitting at the laptop is sort of uncomfortable. We’ll see how it feels tomorrow.And once it’s all better, I’m definitely going to start exercising again, which I think might have prevented this onset. Y’all hold me to that.

The first moment it really felt like summer

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Summer is felt not in furious action, but in the almost motionless intervals BETWEEN actions...

Last night, I went to a Chamber of Commerce “Business After Hours” reception out at the ballpark before the Blowfish game. As I told Ike McLeese, it was the first time I’d been there since the Bombers days.

And there was for me, as the sun was lowering to a more acute angle in the west, and the ballplayers were warming up and wandering about lazily the way they do before a game, with their uniforms still clean and fresh, and the markings on the red clay of the infield still white and clear, and the smell of the grass, a sort of magic moment. Something like what Ray Liotta (as a very unconvincing Shoeless Joe Jackson) was getting at in “Field of Dreams” when he talked about “the ball park in my nose, the cool of the grass on my feet… The thrill of the grass,” and observed, “Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for food money. It was the game… The sounds, the smells. Did you ever hold a ball or a glove to your face?”

It was like that, one of those hard-to-define, quintessentially American moments of anticipation. Like the time I was at a Braves game, and Greg Maddux was wandering about back and forth slowly on the mound during a commercial break, with nothing happening on the field, staring absently at the ground, and the P.A. system was playing “Strawberry Fields Forever”… OK, maybe not exactly like that, but you know, transcendental…

It was, among other things, the moment that it first felt like summer to me. Yeah, I know we’ve had really hot weather the last week or two, and I also realize that according to the calendar it’s not technically summer, but for me, this was when it started.

Summer is felt not in furious action, but in the almost motionless intervals between actions…

These iPhone photos don’t perfectly capture it, but I thought I’d share them anyway.

I framed this one this way because I liked that kid's hat. And the two nonplayers lounging against this side of the fence...

Which Super Bowl ads are worth watching on Monday morning?

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Since I’m now a Mad Man, some of the conversation at the start of this morning’s traffic meeting was about the Super Bowl ads. I missed part of the exchange on account of going down the hall to get more coffee, but I also felt a bit left out since, well, I didn’t see watch the whole game. In fact, all I did was record part of it (I didn’t think to activate the DVR until long after it started), and occasionally flip back to it in hopes of catching a commercial.

Despite the fact that I have been watching some football since I got HDTV, there was no hope of my having any emotional involvement in this one. The Steelers mean nothing to me, and Green Bay — well, they were my team’s (Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colts) nemesis back when I cared about such things, but with Bart Starr gone, well, what’s the point? I couldn’t even get interested in cheering for their opponents.

But the ads — well, I found Super Bowl ads interesting even before I became a Mad Man.

Not having seen them all, though, I felt unqualified to say anything about which was the best, or anything like that. I was able to chime in when someone mentioned the beaver one (below). That was awesome. I called my wife into the room and replayed it for her.

So, since I don’t have time to sit here this morning and watch all of these… which did you think was the best, and why? What should I go find and watch? What would be worth my time? Or rather, ADCO’s time, since that’s what I’d be using…

Is that really Andre behind those souvenir photos?

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Since I watch my football on HDTV and don’t actually rub elbows with the fans, I haven’t seen what Andy Shain, business editor at The State, wrote of on Twitter the other day:

Andy Shain Spotted Lt Gov Andre Bauer hawking framed photos after USC game. Hid himself behind one of his photos when I tried to shoot a pix. #sctweets

@Erinish3 @paigecoop they were gamecock-related photos. The one he held up was the USC flag atop the statehouse. Will post photo soon.

@TheBigPicture it was a surreal sight after the surreal sight of watching the gamecock football team beat no. 1

Look who’s hawking: Lt gov Andre Bauer shields himself while selling photos after USC game. #sctweets http://twitpic.com/2w76h9

Above you see the image to which he was referring.

If that is Andre, then, as a guy who was unemployed for nearly a year, I’m all for what he’s doing. To quote Don Corleone, “I want to congratulate you on your new business and I’m sure you’ll do very well and good luck to you. Especially since your interests don’t conflict with mine.”

Actually, I don’t know if it’s a new business. I seem to recall that Andre started a business when he was in college having something to do with Gamecock memorabilia, but I had idea he was still doing it.

And the thing is, if there’s a fortune to be made in souvenir photos, Andre will make it. He styles himself the hardest-working man in SC politics, and the hustle he’s always shown on the hustings backs it up. I’ll bet if HE were trying to sell blog ads, he’d do better than I have…

Gamecock fans, you may now thank me

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How did the Gamecocks topple the No. 1 college football team in the nation? Well, I’ll tell ya…

Saturday was the first time I watched an entire Gamecocks football game ever. So of course, it follows that they had their biggest win since I moved back to SC in 1987.

As you know, I’m not a football fan. But I now have HDTV in my house. I got the TV for my birthday, and Thursday the cable guy spent 7 hours at my house hauling it out of the 18th century. So this was the first Saturday since I got HD, and as I always suspected, I DID get interested in football once I had HD. Something about the color and spectacle of it, rendering in super-sharp digital imagery. (“Hyper-intense eye candy,” as I described it after the first time I experienced it.) A true case of the medium being the message, I guess.

And I enjoyed it. I say again, I’m not a football fan, but there’s a certain enjoyment to be had in watching someone do something well. Back when I was a reporter and sometimes helped out the sports department by covering a game for them in one of the rural counties I covered, I used to always sit in the stands — the press box held no charms for me — and when there was a good play by either team, I’d get so into it, I’d stand up to applaud. Which was awkward if the stands I happened to be sitting in was occupied by fans of the opposite team.

And on Saturday, we saw Stephen Garcia (selected as national Offensive Player of the Week by the Walter Camp Football Foundation), Marcus Lattimore and the rest of the boys playing football just as it should be played. Which was fun to watch.

Oh, and if you doubt that they won because I was watching, here’s proof: I didn’t quite watch the entire game. I wandered away from the TV during halftime, and missed the beginning of the second half. Yes, I was out of the room when Garcia bizarrely threw for a safety. In other words, the Chicken Curse briefly asserted itself when I wasn’t watching.

As a new business model for the blog, I may turn from advertising and instead get Gamecock fans to pay me to watch every minute of every game in the future. If the price is right, and it’s on HD, I just might do it…

Hail the conquering heroes, say the 42,000!

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I have a rather unpleasant trait in common with Mark Sanford: I’m not crazy about crowds, or group enthusiasm. Confronted with such, like our governor, I tend to make ironic or disparaging remarks. So it was that while waiting for the triumphal procession to begin on Main Street today, I grumbled about the helicopter hovering directly overhead that to my ear was becoming as obnoxious as a neighbor’s leaf blower, and wondered whether Ray Tanner would have anyone whispering in his ear as he passed, “Respica te, hominem te memento” or “Memento mori.”

Which, let’s face it, is obnoxious on my part. Definitely not one of my best traits, as my wife, who has heard a surfeit of such, can attest.

So it was that I was happy to have my grouchiness dissolve once the parade got under way, as I remembered once again how thrilling the victory was the other night. Talk about your contact high. This really was a wonderful communal event for our state, and for Columbia. Did you notice the glorious goofiness of EVERYBODY, including the ballplayers, being so busy taking pictures that nobody seemed to stop just to experience the event? That was understandable. Nobody wanted to forget this. It was that special.

And by the end, even I was in just as good a mood as everyone else. And as I walked back to the office with ADCO President Lanier Jones, I heartily agreed as he marveled at the tremendous juxtaposition of things to celebrate:

  • The new mayor’s inauguration, an exciting new beginning for Columbia.
  • The tremendous victory of our National Champion Gamecock baseball team.
  • The start of the July Fourth weekend.
  • The beautiful weather, which was far, far more pleasant than we have any right to expect in Columbia in July.

Actually, Lanier didn’t mention that last one; I added it on my own. Aren’t you proud of me?

Beyond that I’ll add this: Have you ever seen that many people assembled downtown for something so unquestionably positive for our city and state? (Something I heard a number of people marveling at.) This was a very special moment.

And how many were there? I just got the official estimate from our new mayor: 42,000 people were there today!

Huzzay, Gamecocks!

No. 1 on the field, No. 1 in the classroom

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Two quick items on the National Champion USC Gamecocks baseball team:

First, the picture above of the Gamecock flag flying on the State House dome, taken today by my ADCO colleague Lora Prill with the iPhone 4 of which she is inordinately proud. That’s certainly infinitely better than the flag that used to fly in that third position. This one is one we can all be proud of.

Second, I was talking to my friend Jack Van Loan today, and he mentioned hearing something at the big welcome-home rally for the team yesterday (pictured below, taken by another ADCO colleague): That of the eight teams who went to Omaha for the CWS, the Gamecocks had the highest GPA, at 3.18. (I tried to check this out, and did not find that number. I found that for the most recent semester, though, they had a GPA of 3.07, which ain’t shabby. Maybe the number Jack heard was for the whole year; I don’t know.)

Jack was sufficiently impressed with that that he wrote to the athletic director at his alma mater up in Oregon to say, why doesn’t your team have a GPA like this.

As Jack said “Number One on the field, number one in the classroom.” That’s another reason for South Carolina to be proud.

Finally. Finally! The whole nation knows that SOUTH CAROLINA IS THE BEST!

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Finally, something not just positive, but SUPERLATIVE for South Carolina on the national stage.

Tonight, America sees us as the BEST!

For so long, we’ve been last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last, the punch line of far too many national jokes. I’ve grown so weary of typing it.

Not any more. Not after tonight. The Gamecocks just changed all that. We can do anything now. We’re not only the best in the country at something, but at the National Pastime, no less!

It would be sweet to see this happen with any major sport, but having it happen with baseball makes it SO much more awesome.

Congratulations, Ray Tanner! Glad we built that new ballpark for you — you’ve made good use of it. (You know, the ballpark in the Innovista.)

Congratulations, Harris Pastides, and Eric Hyman, and all the coaches.

But congratulations most of all to the kids who won it, the Gamecock nine, South Carolina’s finest!

You’ve made us all proud…

Hey, how about them ‘Cocks?

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I don’t often get the chance to say that. At least, if I said it, I normally wouldn’t mean it — in the sense of suggesting some sort of interest on my part.

That’s because one hears it too seldom in connection with baseball.

But now, with the Gamecocks poised on the verge of winning the College World Series — well, that causes me to sit up and pay attention, and care for a change. Why last night, I even got indignant — the way real fans do — when the ESPN announcer said something extremely dismissive about Blake Cooper, to the effect that of course, the pros won’t be interested in him…

The very idea of talking about a kid that way on the biggest night of his life.

Anyway, I’ll be cheering for them tonight. You?

Just for fun, a bit of philosophy football

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Well, I have a front page, but if I’m ever going to have a full virtual newspaper, it must have a sports page, right?

Right.

So it is that I thought I’d share this wonderful Monte Python skit. Maybe you’ve seen it, but I never had. At the end of a long day, I looked it up tonight, having read about it this morning in a book review in the WSJ, to wit:

In a blissfully funny, vintage Monty Python sketch, there is a soccer game between Germany and Greece in which the players are leading philosophers. The always formidable Germany, captained by “Nobby” Hegel, boasts the world-class attackers Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, while the wily Greeks, captained by Socrates, field a dream team with Plato in goal, Aristotle on defense and—a surprise inclusion—the mathematician Archimedes.

Toward the end of the keenly fought game, during which nothing much appears to happen except a lot of thinking, the canny Socrates scores a bitterly disputed match winner. Mayhem ensues! The enraged Hegel argues in vain with the referee, Confucius, that the reality of Socrates’ goal is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, while Kant holds that, ontologically, the goal existed only in the imagination via the categorical imperative, and Karl Marx—who otherwise had a quiet game—protests that Socrates was offside.

What, you were expecting Gamecock football? Perish the thought. You want that, go elsewhere…

Knowing how to stand at the plate is a GOOD thing

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So the other day I saw this WSJ front page, and the thought I had immediately was, “Well, she certainly knows how to stand at the plate.” And I almost posted that, but then my threat receiver went off. I could see me getting it from the feminists on the one hand — “You mean, … for a girl’…” And yeah, I guess that’s what I did mean, so that was only going to lead to more trouble.

Then I’d get hit from another direction because somebody would say I was suggesting Ms. Kagan was a lesbian. Which would lead to a lot of “no I’m not, but what if I was; are you saying that would be bad” yadda yadda and I just didn’t want to go there. So, as happens with nine out of 10 ideas for blog posts, it got dropped.

Now, I see that the WSJ has gotten into hot water over the picture for that very reason (and yeah, I’m behind on this “news;” I just saw an old Drudge Tweet about it while looking for something about her views on the Bill of Rights, silly me):

A spokeswoman for the Wall Street Journal said today its cover art was not intended as innuendo about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation after the paper’s front-page use of an image of Kagan playing softball provoked a mixture of irritation and amusement from gay and lesbian advocates.

“It clearly is an allusion to her being gay. It’s just too easy a punch line,” said Cathy Renna, a former spokesperson for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation who is now a consultant. “The question from a journalistic perspective is whether it’s a descriptive representation of who she might be as a judge. Have you ever seen a picture of Clarence Thomas bowling?”

The vintage of the image, released by the University of Chicago, was a particular source of questions in the context of persistent, public chatter about the nominee’s sexual orientation. This isn’t exactly a whispering campaign, as the question — no longer particularly scandalous — has made it to the Washington Post and widely-read websites. White House officials have denied, on background, that Kagan is a lesbian.

“I think it’s strange that you’d go back 17 years to dig up a photo of someone who’s one of the most photographed women in the world today,” said Jenna Lowenstein, communications director for the National Stonewall Democrats.

“Personally I think the newspaper, which happens to have the largest circulation of any in the U.S., might as well have gone with a headline that said, ‘Lesbian or switch-hitter?'” grumbled the Dallas Voice’s John Wright.

The Wall Street Journal’s sister papers in the News Corp. empire are famous for cheeky cover photographs and thinly-veiled innuendo, and the Journal appeared to cross into the same territory earlier this year when it inserted a picture of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger into a photo array accompanying an article on feminine-looking men.

But Journal officials ridiculed a question about the image, which also appeared among other photographs in the Times’s coverage of Kagan.

“If you turn the photo upside down, reverse the pixilation and simultaneously listen to Abbey Road backwards, while reading Roland Barthes, you will indeed find a very subtle hidden message,” said Journal spokeswoman Ashley Huston.

“I think your question is absurd,” said Journal Deputy Managing Editor Alan Murray in a separate email.

Oh, boy. All we need. Then I saw this from today, also brought to my attention by Drudge (who seems obsessed with the nominee’s sexuality):

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 16, 2010 The White House ripped CBS News on Thursday for publishing an online column by a blogger who made assertions about the sexual orientation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, widely viewed as a leading candidate for the Supreme Court.

Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, wrote that President Obama would “please” much of his base by picking the “first openly gay justice.” An administration official, who asked not to be identified discussing personal matters, said Kagan is not a lesbian.

CBS initially refused to pull the posting, prompting Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who is working with the administration on the high court vacancy, to say: “The fact that they’ve chosen to become enablers of people posting lies on their site tells us where the journalistic standards of CBS are in 2010.” She said the network was giving a platform to a blogger “with a history of plagiarism” who was “applying old stereotypes to single women with successful careers.”

Sheesh.

Back to the photograph: Personally, I thought it was a flattering picture that put her in a positive light. Hey, not enough people know how to address the plate properly nowadays, including a lot of guys. So put this in the nominee’s plus column, far as I’m concerned. I’d pick her for my team.

Top Five Sports Movies Ever

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This post was inspired by my having inadvertently run across someone else’s list of best sports movies. There are several others out there — such as this and this and this — if you want to go look. My own may be incomplete, because I have yet to watch “Raging Bull” all the way through (I’ve got the DVD, I just need to block out the time), and I really need to go back and see “Body and Soul,” which I may have seen once when I was too young to appreciate. Those are the two that crop up on other people’s lists that I haven’t adequately vetted.

But unless one’s life is over, one’s Top Five list is always incomplete, right? So here’s mine:

  1. Hoosiers (1986) – This just has it all – the more or less obligatory underdog storyline, the nostalgia, Gene Hackman (in his best role ever), Dennis Hopper (ditto, and then some – he’s the best thing in it), Barbara Hershey (and not a seagull in sight), and a team of non-actors who succeed as no actors could in making the action more real than real. You may surmise I have a particular affinity for a story about a fiftyish coach in need of professional and personal redemption (starting with a job). And yet, I was first impressed with that theme 24 years ago, and even then there was a personal identification. And I suppose we could have a long discussion about the difference between White Ball and Black Ball, and the nostalgic pleasure that a gray-haired White Guy might get from watching some basketball from back in the days when traveling was still against the rules, and everybody wore black Chuck Taylors. But beyond all that, just an awesome flick. And don’t forget, it’s based (loosely) on a true story.
  2. Rocky (1976) – When this came out, it was the first new film I could remember as plain and simple and sincere as this. And there’s been little to touch it since. This is like a plain granite block of a movie – the basic, unadorned stuff from which all good movies that touch the heart are made.
  3. The Natural (1984) – Thank goodness they went all Hollywood on this one, and slathered on the gauzy sentimentality, because it was exactly what this story needed. In Malamud’s novel Roy Hobbes was a brutish antihero, a case of natural talent invested in an unworthy creature, not a guy you particularly wanted to see succeed (and he didn’t, by the way; the ending leaves you feeling dead and empty inside). Redford’s frayed farmboy stoicism, modified only by a tendency to get misty-eyed and lyrical on the subject of baseball, worked perfectly. The ultimate baseball movie, when you’re feeling reverential about the game (when you’re feeling less so, go with “Major League”). Favorite little slice of life: Pop and Red in the dugout during practice, trying to stump each other with “Name that Tune.”
  4. Vision Quest (1985) – As a former high school wrestler myself, I can attest this is THE definitive high school wrestling movie. OK, there isn’t a lot of competition, but that just makes me grateful that when Hollywood made this one attempt, they got it right. Matthew Modine perfectly expresses the awkwardness of being an intelligent, introspective young guy trying to figure out life (favorite example: – he’s trying to impress the girl by complimenting her musical taste and when she says it’s Vivaldi, he says, “Yeah, Vivaldi – he’s great” in a way that utterly fails to convince that he’s ever heard of the guy. Another: He confides to his teacher that he thinks he’s suffering from priapism. Also, before I let you out of this parenthetical, the scenes shooting the bull with Elmo the dishwasher are gems.), and while “coming of age movies” constitute one of Hollywood’s most overworked genres, this is possibly the best such attempt ever. While there was never any danger of my becoming state champ and I never had a hot 21-year-old semi-bohemian chick come to live with me when I was in high school, this feels like what life was like at that age.
  5. Chariots of Fire (1981) – Just thought I’d throw in a posh, arty, nonAmerican film to round out the five. Not that this one doesn’t deserve the honor. Like all good sports flicks, it displays what is best about sport, in terms of its capacity to lift the human spirit (as Elmo explained to Loudon in the clip linked above). Favorite scene – the quiet little homily Eric Liddel offers in the rain after a race, which is as powerful an expression of faith as you’re likely to find in a major Hollywood movie.

That’s my Top Five, and I’m sticking to it — for the moment. But a couple of those choices were a little arbitrary in light of the competition. And as much as I want to preserve the unities of Nick Hornby’s Top Five concept, here’s what I would include also in the second five of a Top Ten:

  1. Breaking Away (1979) – Almost made the Top Five, but it seemed that it was only marginally a sports movie. Wonderfully goofy film about a young guy trying to find his place in the world and meet chicks, and the lengths he’ll go to. Kathryn may be offended by what the kid’s Dad says about “all them “eenie” foods… zucchini… and linguini… and fettuccine. I want some American food, dammit! I want French fries!”
  2. The Endless Summer (1966) – The classic surfing quest movie. The documentary travels the globe in search of the perfect wave. Which is what all of us surfers (and I’m really stretching the definition of “surfer” when I say “us”) would do given the time and money.
  3. Major League (1989) – Also almost made the Top Five, but I only wanted one baseball movie there, and this one wasn’t reverential enough. But this one captures how much FUN the game is, both for players and fans. Favorite line: Bob Uecker’s gloriously goofy hometown-announcer’s understatement when he describes a pitch that goes about six feet astray as “JUUUUST a bit outside…”.
  4. Tin Cup – (1996) Throw me out for including a Kevin Costner flick, but this is WAY more apropos than “Caddyshack” as an evocation of what golf is about. And it’s got Cheech in it, advising Cup that he can win the bar bet with “a hooded four-iron.”
  5. Eight Men Out (1988) – Nice treatment of a key chapter in real-life baseball mythology, helping you understand how the Black Sox scandal could have happened, and how Shoeless Joe could have gotten caught up in it. D.B. Sweeney’s Jackson is a thousand times better than Ray Liotta’s generic effort in the overrated “Field of Dreams.” A great cast, including John Cusack and Charlie Sheen, and a great baseball movie. Say it ain’t so, Joe.

You’ll note that all of my Top Five are from the 80s except for “Rocky,” which just missed that decade by four years. And if you drop out “Endless Summer” and “Tin Cup” (which would stretch the span to 30 years), my whole Top Ten covers a 13-year period, from 1976 to 1989. I don’t know what it is about that period. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I was particularly impressionable. Or maybe it’s that film-making reached just the right pitch during that era. “Rocky” came along when irony had taken such a hold that such a simple, sincere film seemed a throwback, although with modern grittiness — and to some extent that describes something all of the best ones had in common. It’s hard to imagine a character as layered and conflicted as Norman Dale in a movie made in the 30s or 40s (and absolutely impossible in the 50s). Hollywood didn’t think enough of its audiences then. Movies were less frank, less realistic. There’s no way, for instance, a character would have been as obsessed with his sexuality (in a healthy way) as Loudon Swain in an film made before “The Graduate.” Not that that’s everything; it’s just an example. Except for wonderful quirky films like “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” (far better than the remake “Heaven Can Wait,” by the way), sports figures were just a little too monolithic, and their treatment too hagiographic, for my latter-day tastes.

Or maybe there’s some other explanation. In any case, these are the ones I see as best. What would be your picks?