It's enough to get you beaten

Many of you remember what has been roundly described as the worst piece of sports journalism in history when back in August of 2009, Mark Whicker of the Orange County Register "congratulated" Jaycee Dugard for having "left the yard", a yard in which she had been imprisoned for 18 years.

Well, thankfully for Whicker, it looks like he may have some company.

Earlier, last week, after a Dodgers-Giants game up in Los Angeles, Giant fan, Bryan Stow a paramedic from Santa Cruz, was badly beaten by two men in the parking lot. Stow has been in the hospital since that time and remains in a coma.

However, according to John Steigerwald of something called the Observer-Reporter out of Pennsylvania, Stow kind of had it coming to him because he was, get this... wearing Giants gear.

Maybe someone can ask Stow, if he ever comes out of his coma, why he thought it was a good idea to wear Giants' gear to a Dodgers' home opener when there was a history of out-of-control drunkenness and arrests at that event going back several years.

Remember when it was the kids who were wearing the team jerseys to games? It was a common sight to see an adult male coming through the turnstile dressed as a regular human being with a kid dressed in a "real" jersey holding his hand.

Cute.

Are the 42-year-olds who find it necessary to wear their replica jerseys to a road game, those kids who are now fathers who haven't grown up?

Are there really 40-something men who think that wearing the jersey makes them part of the team? It was cute when a 10-year-old kid got that feeling by showing up at Three Rivers Stadium in a Pirates jersey, but when did little boys stop growing out of that?

Here's tip for you if you actually think that wearing your team's jersey makes you a part of the team:

It doesn't.

We've never owned a team jersey as they tend to be too expensive and to Steigerwald's point, they just never seemed to make a whole lot of sense to us as game-day attire. But to suggest that wearing your team's gear leaves you fair game for some sort of comeuppance is pathetic as well as dangerous.

It's the equivalent of those in this country who blamed the massacre at the U.N. embassy in Afghanistan carried out by crazed Islamists on the Koran-burning pastor down in Florida which included reliable lefty and Time magazine contributor Joe Klein who said: "There should be no confusion about this: Jones’s act was as murderous as any suicide bomber’s.”

In both cases, be it drunk Dodger fans or unhinged Muslims, we see the soft bigotry of low expectations excuse the inexcusable.

So, congrats John Steigerwald. You've joined Whicker and Rick Reilly as generators of some to the worst sports-writing we have read in years.

This man will now vet your religious convictions

Like the Sun rising in the East, Rick Reilly wades, inevitably , into the Iowa-highschooler-won't-wrestle-girl-because-of-his-religious-beliefs dust-up and dispenses the usual Rick Reilly ass-hattery we used to endure from time to time before we stopped reading his overbearing sanctimonious crap altogether.

The Herkelmans -- and most of the state of Iowa -- praised Northrup for being a boy of faith. "It's his religion and he's strong in his religion," says Megan Black, the only other girl who made state. (These were the first two in the state's history. Black lost both her matches.) "You have to respect him for that."

Why?

Does any wrong-headed decision suddenly become right when defended with religious conviction? In this age, don't we know better? If my God told me to poke the elderly with sharp sticks, would that make it morally acceptable to others?

So, Reilly has established himself as arbiter of what people can and cannot believe and act or not act depending upon that belief. Good to know.

And what a ridiculous straw man. No one is getting poked. The young man is refraining from activity not engaging in obviously anti-social behavior as justified by God. To take this ridiculous strawman to its deserving ridiculous end, the wrestler, one Joel Northrup, is refusing to poke the elderly with sharp sticks.

Given Reilly's logic, he should probably think that refusing to eat bacon is wrong-headed as well. Bacon's awesome. Why would anyone refuse to eat such a delightful meat? Because God or Allah told them so? In this age, don't we know better?


Perhaps Reilly should be taking to task athletes' refusals to play on certain religious holidays, a predicament that has faced Jewish baseball players like Sandy Koufax, Hank Greenberg and Shawn Green (Koufax refused to pitch Game 1 of the '65 World Series against the Twins as it fell on Yom Kippur. Don Drysdale got the start instead but gave up seven runs in 2-2/3 innings prompting Drysdale to quip "I bet right now you wish I was Jewish, too").

But no, Reilly chooses instead to ridicule some Christian kid (home-schooled, no less) living in fly-over country. Nothing like a soft target, eh, Rick?


What a testament to the deplorable state of sports journalism that this clown is only 3 National Sportswriter of the Year awards (11) behind the greatest sportswriter of all-time, the late, great, Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times. Murray once wrote of the Boston Celtic point guard legend, Bob Cousy, "He led the fast break like the lead kid out the door on the last day of school." Reilly prays to the sportswriting gods he could turn a phrase like that. Just once.

Good lord, Reilly is a tool.

Deadspin commenters... they'll be here all week.

Writes Deadspin:

Michigan Stadium, opening after renovations, will again be the nation's largest with a capacity of 109,901. They've still got a ways to go to catch Pyongyang's Rŭngrado May Day Stadium, which seats 150,000.

Steve U:
Of course, attendance at Rungrado only approaches capacity on Dollar Dog Night.

Babcocksure:
wow, 109,901, that's amazing...I didn't know you could fit that many arrogant douchebags in one place.

bevraj ofchoice:
Finally, the UAW brass have a suitable site for their company softball games.

FavreFAIL:
Well on one hand you have a secretive, chaotically run regime with millions of feverishly devoted followers who worship it as though it were deity, and on the other you have North Korea.

don't-forget-where-you-:
Seats 109,901? Are they renaming it the Palindrome?

Still just soccer to us

Finally, a word about soccer and politics. Many years ago, the sport was embraced by yuppie parents eager for their children to play a game that provided good exercise and was relatively safe. It has long boasted high rates of youth participation across the country. But its association with snobbish Bobo liberalism — along with the way it has been championed by certain left-wing critics of American exceptionalism — has triggered an anti-soccer backlash among some conservatives.

Personally, I have many liberal friends who hate soccer and many conservative friends who love it, so I find the constant politicization of the game to be more than a bit silly. Just as I cringe when pro-soccer liberals paint anti-soccer conservatives as knuckle-dragging reactionaries, I also wince when anti-soccer conservatives depict the sport as somehow un-American. It’s well past time to end the phony culture war.

Nonsense. We have fun with these quadrennial exercises where sports and politics/culture collide. We feel we're hep enough to dive into the tepid international waters every 4th year for a month of futbol - it's a huge international event... and it's all in Hi-Def.

So, revel in the psuedo-intellectual discourse regarding the corrosive effects of futbol on American exceptionalism and rail against American banality, insularity and paternalism as the root causes for refusing to accept futbol as being on par with football, basketball, baseball, NASCAR, hockey, tennis, golf, volleyball, softball, horse racing, gymnastics, swimming, rowing, badminton, croquet, horse shoes, bocce ball and lawn darts.
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We heard somewhere once that academic arguments, or perhaps, arguments among academics produce the most passion, vitriol and vehemence simply because there is the least at stake.

Quote of the day

"We've seen since Meb's win (in the New York City Marathon) that American athletes are standing taller. It was one thing to be tapping on the ceiling. Once one person crashes through, it makes all the difference."

That from Mary Wittenberg director of the New York race on the effect of Meb Keflezighi's (San Diego High alum) victory with respect to U.S. chances in the Boston Marathon which will be run tomorrow on Patriot's Day.

No U.S. male has won the Boston Marathon since 1983.

Playing the "J" Card

Disgraced dog-killer, Michael Vick, formally entered his guilty plea to a dog-fighting conspiracy charge.

The attached link contains Vick’s formal statement in its entirety. In it, Vick stated, “…through this situation I found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God. And I think that's the right thing to do as of right now.”

We really want to give Vick the benefit of the doubt, here. We sincerely want to believe that he stared into the abyss at some point these past few weeks and had a literal honest-to-God change of heart.

Our souls are genetically pre-disposed to “going it alone” until we get kicked in the gut by life’s circumstances or those of our own doing… and only then do we look upward for any divine guidance.

But, man…. We are a nation of cynics and in the PR campaign to rehabilitate Vick’s image that kicked off today at his sentencing, the timing of this statement put things out of order. Contrition, punishment and then… redemption is more what this country is comfortable with.

Again, none of us are equipped to sit in judgement on matters of the heart and we will give Vick the benefit of the doubt but it just seemed a little too easy to make that claim when he did.

Click here for full statement.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/football/nfl/08/27/bc.fbn.vick.plea.text.ap/index.html

Racing.... Under the Lights!

Though not necessarily fans of the sport, we have followed NASCAR on the periphery for years in no small part because of Tom Wolfe’s epic “The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson, Yes!” that we read nearly 25 years after it first appeared in Esquire magazine in 1964.

Wolfe’s innate ability to provide his subject a context within the broader American cultural experience was a perfect fit for this curious Southern phenomena that has gone Main Street, particularly in the past 10-15 years.

And though, open-wheel racing is more visually appealing and appears to take far more driving skill, they can’t seem to get organized here state-side, so it’s NASCAR for our intermittent auto-racing jones.

We’ve never been to a NASCAR event but we aim to. These races have the feel of an NFL or major college football tailgate on HGH. And when it comes to completely unabashed, bold-typed, in-your-face American culture experiences, it doesn’t get any better than a tailgate. Tailgates make our list of the 10 places/events to which we would take a foreigner that would best describe/define this country.

An outdoor sporting event, cold beer, grilled meats, unapologetic flag-waving and halter tops. How could it get any better?

The boys will be racing under the lights on the high banks of the short track at Bristol, Tennessee this evening.

http://www.nascar.com/2007/news/headlines/cup/08/24/bristol.repaving.reaction/index.html

Professional Sport's Michael Vick Problem

(Since the site wasn't up and running when the Michael Vick dog-fighting indictment was handed down, there wasn't a chance to comment on it. The following is lifted primarily from an email exchange with some friends at the time of the indictment)

A while back, the NFL Network ran a segment where Marcellus Wiley, a pro football player and native of Compton, CA., was speaking with two ex-gang bangers. They were talking about how once there was a time when you used sports to get out of the poverty, crime and hopelessness of the mean streets. Recently, though, that trend has reversed whereby the athlete is bringing the mean streets with him to the NFL and NBA.

Why was this happening? The NFL segment didn't offer an opinion but a big reason is that over the past few years there has been a mainstreaming and a general acceptance of a culture that celebrates violence, violence against women, drug use and gun play. Acceptance to the point where Don Imus felt perfectly comfortable breaking-out his "nappy-headed hos" comment on nationally syndicated radio. And if the patron saint of the Big Apple's chat class goes 'ghetto', you know 'ghetto' has gone Main Street.

The NBA was at the forefront of this mainstreaming effort. When Jordan retired, the powers-that-be in the Association looked around at each other and asked, "Now what?" At that fateful moment in the late 90s they decided to make Allen Iverson their poster boy. Cornrows, tats and a criminal backround (from high school) became the image of the NBA in an effort to maintain "street cred" with the kids. And though possessing of cornrows and tats in itself doesn't make you a criminal, it is certainly evocative of a criminal lifestyle... and with a wink and a nod, that is exactly how the NBA played it.

It can be argued that the NFL is to a lesser degree playing the same game the NBA was. It is apparently a well-known secret that Under Armour's signature "click-clack" refrain in their commercials featuring current NFL players, is the same sound a hand gun makes when you cock the hammer.

The current relationship between the NBA/NFL and the "thug life" parallels that of the Federal Government and Big Tobacco. The former will demonize the latter but only to a point as the former knows full well its dependance on the latter as a lucrative revenue generator.