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Babe Ruth, Upon Becoming A Yankee (1920)

February 8, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Sports | Permalink

The above classic photograph depicts Babe Ruth in the year he became a New York Yankee and tried on the pinstripes for the first time. The sale of his contract from the Boston Red Sox (for $125,000) stunned observers of the game. Truth be told, there weren’t a lot of great players in organized baseball’s early decades (because of the color line, among other reasons), so someone truly gifted like Ruth could have a massive impact on an organization. Fans in both Boston and New York were wise to that fact (for the most part), and this trade set off what would become a nearly hundred-year war between the clubs. From a January 7, 1920 New York Times article in the immediate aftermath of the deal:

“Babe Ruth, the Colossus of Swat, has signed his name to a document promising to play with the Yankees next season. Manager Miller Huggins, who went to Los Angeles to sign the player, wired President Jacob Ruppert yesterday that the home run slugger had signed an agreement to play here. Manager Huggins’s message also said that Ruth was very much pleased with the transfer that brought him to New York and would be delighted to play here next Summer. Huggins left California last night for New York.

Just what agreement Ruth has signed is not known by the officials of the New York club. That he has not yet signed a contract is certain from Huggins’s telegram. It is believed to be a tentative agreement that he will sign a contract at a certain time. Ruth expects to leave for the East next Monday. and his new contract will probably be signed in New York. He demanded a contract calling for $20,000 a year from Boston and this figure will undoubtedly be the basis of the new contract which the Yankees will give him. According to Huggins’s message, however, there is no question that Ruth is pleased with the change and glad to join the New York club. 

The purchase of Ruth for the record price of $125,000 was the topic of the conversation along Broadway yesterday and baseball fans of all ages and sizes already see a chance for the Yankees to land the 1920 pennant. Manhattan’s fondest dream of having a world series at the Polo Grounds between the Giants and Yankees now becomes a tangible thing and that is the big event which New York fans will be rooting for all Summer.

The two Colonels–Ruppert and Huston–were praised on all sides for their aggressiveness and liberality in landing baseball’s greatest attraction. If the club, strengthened by Ruth and by other players the owners have in mind, does not carry off the flag, it will not be the fault of the owners.

Boston is duly shocked at the sale of Ruth and there is a wide difference of opinion about its effect on the game in the Hub. The newspapers yesterday had cartoons showing a ‘For Sale’ sign on the Boston Public Library and on the Boston Common. They also picture Fenway Park, the home of the Red Sox, in darkness, with a sign ‘Building Lots for Sale.’

Two Bostonians prominent in Hub baseball in the past, Fred Tenney and Hugh Duffy, are quoted as saying that the sale of Ruth is a good thing for the Red Sox and that it will be a better club without him.”

Babe Ruth, 1918.

Babe Ruth, 1918.

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“Those Are Exactly The Kind Of Players Who Won’t Be Playing Football In 30 Years”

February 4, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

At the Smithsonian site, Joseph Stromberg interviews Dave Zirin, author of the new book, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down. The two discuss the biggest changes in sports in the past five years, including the impact of concussions on the NFL. An excerpt:

“Question:

The other day, Baltimore Ravens safety Bernard Pollard said he doesn’t think the NFL will exist in 30 years due to these sorts of problems. What do you see happening?

Dave Zirin:

I disagree with Bernard Pollard—I don’t think the game will be appreciably different than it is now. But I think it will be less popular, the same way that boxing is much less popular today. Fifty years ago, if you were the heavyweight champ, you were the most famous athlete in the United States. Now, I bet the overwhelming majority of sports fans couldn’t name who the champion is. It’s just not as popular.

So I think it’ll be less popular, and I also think that the talent pool is going to shrink as more parents keep their kids out of playing. You’ll see the NFL invest millions of dollars in urban infrastructure and youth football leagues, and it’s going to be the poorest kids playing football as a ticket out of poverty. This year, the four best young quarterbacks—Andrew Luck, RGIII, Russell Wilson, and Colin Kaepernick—all four of them excelled at multiple sports and came from stable, middle-class homes. Those are exactly the kind of players who won’t be playing football in 30 years.”

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“I Pledge Of Allegiance To The Flag”

February 3, 2013 in Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Do you remember when astronauts recited the Pledge of Allegiance before the Super Bowl and the Halftime Show was a college marching band? Me neither.

Before the game was sold as a global event, it was a national one. At Super Bowl III in the Orange Bowl in 1969, a trio of Apollo 8 astronauts led the crowd–which included Joe and Ted Kennedy, Bob Hope and Spiro Agnew–in pledging allegiance to the U.S. flag. The Florida A&M University marching band entertained between halves.

The Jets became the first AFL team to win the game, defeating the heavily favored Colts, solidifying the planned NFL-AFL merger. Joe Namath became a national sensation, having boldly predicted the upset. A very gifted and confident quarterback who threw tons of interceptions, Namath was a very good player who would forever be overrated as great because of this game.

“In The Old Days, I Played A Whole Doubleheader With A Broken Leg”

December 26, 2012 in Sports, Videos | Permalink

Billy Crystal recently joined Jimmy Fallon, Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Higgins and that other guy in a fun sequel to the classic Abbott & Costello routine, “Who’s on First?” But it’s still not as great as the perfect mid-’80s SNL short that Crystal and Christopher Guest did about the Negro Leagues. It beautifully captures the tall-tale culture that grows around those not deemed important enough to be given consideration by mainstream historians of their era. 

 

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“I’m Not Yet In Top-Notch Condition”

December 14, 2012 in Sports, Videos | Permalink

I worshiped Muhammad Ali when I was a child, and I never watched boxing again after he began to slur his speech. There’s a great and heartbreaking Albert Maysles documentary about Ali preparing for his 1980 fight with Larry Holmes–a match that never should have been made. Ali was old, slow and already showing signs of Parkinson’s syndrome, and he was marched into the ring against the best heavyweight in the world at that time. There are moments in the doc (which isn’t online, but is sometimes replayed on ESPN Classics) in which Ali tries to convince himself that he’ll find some way to outwit Holmes–and time itself. But the reflexes and bounce were gone and soon the mystique would be as well. The fight was a travesty and anyone who profiteered from the destruction of a great champion should have had their licenses revoked.

Here a sluggish Ali does the pre-fight promotional shuffle with Merv Griffin:

A piece of Muhammad & Larry:

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“In Reality The Move Was Caused By A Bug”

December 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Blake Masters’ blog has ideas about and notes from Peter Thiel’s recent Stanford address, “The Future of Legal Technology.” From an exchange during the audience Q&A, which points out, among other things, that we can sometimes mistake error for genius:

“Question: 

What is your take on building machines that work just like the human brain?

Peter Thiel: 

If you could model the human brain perfectly, you can probably build a machine version of it. There are all sorts of questions about whether this is possible.

The alternative path, especially in the short term, is smart but not AI-smart computers, like chess computers. We didn’t model the human brain to create these systems. They crunch moves. They play differently and better than humans. But they use the same processes. So most AI that we’ll see, at least first, is likely to be soft AI that’s decidedly non-human.

Question: 

But chess computers aren’t even soft AI, right? They are all programmed. If we could just have enough time to crunch the moves and look at the code, we’d know what/s going on, right? So their moves are perfectly predictable. 

Peter Thiel: 

Theoretically, chess computers are predictable. In practice, they aren’t. Arguably it’s the same with humans. We’re all made of atoms. Per quantum mechanics and physics, all our behavior is theoretically predictable. That doesn’t mean you could ever really do it. 

Question: 

There’s the anecdote of Kasparov resigning when Deep Blue made a bizarre move that he fatalistically interpreted as a sign that the computer had worked dozens of moves ahead. In reality the move was caused by a bug. 

Peter Thiel: 

Well… I know Kasparov pretty well. There are a lot of things that he’d say happened there…” (Thanks Browser.)

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“It Made Table Tennis A Game Based On Fraud, Deception, Deceit”

December 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Marty Reisman, the Lower East Side kid who became one of the greatest table-tennis players in the world, just passed away. He was a John Henry of sorts in his arena, battling technology that he felt threatened the game, from new-fangled paddles to robot players. From Harold Evans’ fun remembrance of Resiman at the Daily Beast:

“The turning point in table-tennis history was in Bombay in 1952. Reisman was the favorite to win from a field crowded with stars. It was not to be. They were massacred, baffled by an indifferent player on the Japanese team, Hiroji Satoh. He came equipped with a destructive technology: resilient foam rubber he’d glued to his racket. It was like the silencer on a pistol, and it was as lethal. The sponge imparted unreadable spins. Gone was the distinctive kerplock-kerplock conversation of the ball being struck and returned by rackets surfaced with thin pimpled rubber. Gone were the classic long rallies that were such fun for basement players and that thrilled thousands of spectators in the tournament finals. The sponge players who followed Satoh are fine athletes, but the games they play have been generally unwatchable. Serve and smash became the competitive norm and, save for the Olympics, mass audiences vanished.

The Reisman kid refused to adopt sponge. ‘It made table tennis a game based on fraud, deception, deceit.’ He was convinced that the universal appeal of the game—the world’s most popular—was in simplicity, in strokes and tactics, not in technology and trickery. He tested his faith by challenging the new champion Satoh to a return match in Osaka, pitting his hardbat against sponge. Before an astounded crowd, he beat Satoh fair and square.”

••••••••••

Reisman as a 19-year-old hotshot in 1949 at Wembley Stadium:

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Thoughts On Bob Costas’ Gun-Control Comments

December 6, 2012 in Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Regarding Bob Costas’s gun-control comments in the wake of Jovan Belcher’s murder-suicide:

  • As difficult as it is to control handguns now, the advent of 3-D printers is going to make it virtually impossible to ban any physical object.
  • An NFL player with money will have no trouble getting a gun in a capitalist society–or any society, really–if he wants one, regardless of law. There’s no sense in creating a black market that makes it even more difficult to track weapons.
  • Costas and Jason Whitlock (whom he referenced) are correct in saying that the gun culture makes us less safe and can escalate violence. But the prevalence of guns stems from a myriad of social and cultural issues that is not going to be reduced by legislation. That doesn’t mean that the number of firearms among young people can’t be reduced, but you can’t erase manifestations without dealing with the underlying causes and influences. That requires a great deal of education, not the quick fix of legislation. Laws have had very little success in reducing drug use and handguns are no different.
  • If you really want to protect football players in particular, present an editorial about how they should stop playing football or fans should not watch or attend the games. Brain-related injuries will damage and kill more members of the NFL than handguns will. Such injuries cannot be reduced by technological innovations because even helmets with space-age protection can’t stop the brain from being jarred within the brain fluid as a result of violent contact. There’s really no workaround for the NFL: It’s a killer.•

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“There Was Nothing Noble About What We Did”

November 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

We’re all prone to arguing our “side” rather than the facts and changing our opinions if our so-called enemies accept them. You see it in the minutiae of day-to-day life and you see it writ large in national policy. When President Obama relented and decided to use a health-care reform idea from the conservative Heritage Foundation (individual mandates), his counterparts branded the idea as a tool of socialism. When they got something they wanted they didn’t want it anymore. Emotion and narrative were more important than fact.

Marvin Miller, the first Major League Baseball Players Association union leader, who just passed away at 95, was no stranger to this phenomenon. When he went to court to fight for the players’ right to enjoy the same basic employment freedoms as any other American worker, team owners went ballistic. They had been in control of the game since the start, and they weren’t worried about what was right morally or for business; they just wanted to maintain that upper hand. Even if that was bad for the bottom line. Free agency and player movement, which Miller eventually won, grew fan interest, lifted attendance and TV ratings, and transformed the owners from millionaires into billionaires (or close to it). If the owners had been paying attention to facts instead of fighting for “their side,” they might have noticed this sooner.

There will be stories, no doubt, about how every modern player should attend Miller’s funeral, how they all owe him a debt. And that’s true. But every owner should be there as well. He did even more for them, though they fought him every step of the way. From Jeff Passan’s Yahoo! Sports piece about Miller’s passing:

“Over his 17 years as leader of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Miller instilled confidence in what was a fractured group of players and fear in ownership, preaching the strength of unity. During his tenure through 1982, Miller oversaw MLB’s first collective-bargaining agreement, gained free agency for players, weathered three strikes and two lockouts, and positioned the players to reap the benefits they do today, when the average major league salary is more than $3.4 million.

‘There was nothing noble about what we did,’ Miller said in a May interview with Yahoo! Sports. ‘We did what was right. That was always at the heart of it.’

Baseball’s era of labor discord has evolved into one of peace that’s now deep into its second decade.”

 

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“False Narratives Can Have Serious Consequences”

November 16, 2012 in Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

Baseball is just fun, not important. There are no real ramifications. There are errors, sure, but each one is spelled with a small “e.” I can understand children crying or being really depressed if their favorite team loses. They haven’t had enough life experience to be consumed by headier matters. But adults who behave this way are lacking something. They haven’t evolved properly, haven’t developed the best priorities.

So it doesn’t really matter that the wrong player won the AL MVP award yesterday when Miguel Cabrera beat Mike Trout, or that many of the voters used stubbornly illogical, irrational reasons to justify their choice. The world will be fine despite this mistake.

But it’s still a little galling to see so many educated adults use such faulty reasoning, to cling to a narrative of their choosing in the face of facts. It was simple: Trout added more value to his team than Cabrera did for his, when you factor in offense, defense and baserunning. It doesn’t take a degree in advanced statistics to figure this out. The sportswriters who supported Cabrera did so because they cherry-picked certain statistics (offense, in this case) because they wanted to choose a player who won the Triple Crown (led his league in homers, RBIs and batting average). They wanted to reward the “historical importance” of such a feat. Except that at best it’s a tradition steeped in false logic and one that’s selective reasoning when used as the crux of an MVP argument.

They chose the narrative they cared about most for emotional reasons. The sad thing is, Trout, the actual best player. had a very real and wonderful narrative. A 22-year-old rookie who was the absolute best player in either league in his initial season? Such a rare and wonderful thing.

As I said, it won’t do any harm. But in other areas of life false narratives can have serious consequences. People can be passed over for employment or housing because “common wisdom” says certain things about certain people. Believing a narrative instead of facts can convince parents to not immunize children because of unwarranted fear. Mitt Romney lost nine out of ten swing states not only because he was a weak candidate but because of his campaign’s disdain for numbers. Facts matter and it would probably be a good thing if we practice using them even when considering the less important things in life.•

“He Was Not Magnificent From The Start”

October 25, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

The opening of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Slate piece about Bobby Fischer, which is taken from Jewish Jocks: An Orthodox Hall of Fame: 

“A Jew wrote The Natural, but has there ever been a natural Jew? Free-spiritedness, joie de vivre, ease in the world—these are not what we do. We do scrappiness, resilience, hard work, self-questioning, self-consciousness, self-destruction, and unflappable will. This applies especially to our athletes, many of whom were not given the best of genetic toolboxes. Most great Jewish athletes have at least this in common: they overcome God’s gifts.

Not a jock, and not a Jew by any definition richer than heredity, Bobby Fischer was the quintessential Jewish Jock. He worked harder than any of his peers. He attempted to conceal his insecurity behind an ego built for 20, and his self-love behind self-hatred behind self-love. And perhaps more than any human who has ever lived, he kvetched: The board is too reflective, the presence of breathing humans too distracting, the high-frequency sounds—which only he and Pomeranians could detect—made game play utterly impossible. Some loved him for his loony obstinacy. Most didn’t.

Contrary to our notions of a chess prodigy and the accepted version of Bobby Fischer’s biography, he was not magnificent from the start. He had to learn, practice, and mature. As an adolescent in Brooklyn, he developed an unusually strong passion for a game that he was not unusually good at. (Children his age regularly beat him.) While he did clearly come into some innate prodigious talent—hard work might unleash genius, but it never creates it—what distinguished him, both in his formative years and through his career, was his single-minded, obsessive devotion to the game. He was known to practice 14 hours a day, and fall asleep with one of his several hundred chess books and journals on his chest. (‘I give 98 percent of my mental energy to chess,’ he once said. ‘Others give only 2 percent.’) Like a good Jewish boy, he outworked his peers and brought the A home to Mama. And like a good Jewish boy, he couldn’t stand Mama—her politics, priorities, relationship to money, or religion.

He got better. And better. “

  • To see all the other Bobby Fischer posts, go here.

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“They Bowed Their Heads And Raised Their Gloved Hands To The Sky”

October 23, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Sports | Permalink

From a 1968 Pete Hamill report in Ramparts about the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, the Games of Tommy Smith and John Carlos’ Black Power salute but also of George Foreman’s flag-waving:

“HE FIRST BLACK SCOURGE of the Republic to appear at the games was Jim Hines, who won the 100 meters in the world record time of nine and nine-tenths seconds. Hines opposed San Jose State College Professor Harry Edwards’ proposed boycott, but let it be known that under no circumstances would he accept his medal if Avery Brundage was the man awarding it. Avery Brundage did not award the medal.

But the real confrontation was yet to come, and it came from John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who were running in the 200-meter dash. It began when they wore long black socks (later changed to ankle socks, to prevent cutting circulation in the legs) in preliminary heats. They went on to win with Smith finishing first, in a blazing 19.8, setting a new world record. Smith might have peeled another few tenths off the record had he not raised his arms in exultation as he crossed the finish line. Carlos finished third, behind Australian Peter Norman.

When they came out for the award ceremony, they walked without shoes, carrying a track shoe in one hand, with the other hand tucked into their windbreakers. They climbed the stand, and then, after receiving the medals, they turned toward the American flag as the Star Spangled Banner was played. They took their hands out. Smith’s right hand wore a black glove, Carlos’ left hand its mate. As the anthem played, they bowed their heads and raised their gloved hands to the sky in a clenched fist salute. Thirty hours later they were kicked off the team.

At this point the Olympic team almost collapsed. Carlos, who couldn’t stop talking before the protest, now wouldn’t talk to anyone. He stomped back and forth through the Olympic Village, followed by reporters and cameramen, and he even threatened to punch one of them. Smith, who had finished first, was less available than Carlos. In front of Building II, more than 100 people assembled while Roby tried to explain what had happened. The members of the committee had met (‘How many blacks on that committee?’ someone shouted) and decided that the two members of the team had violated the Olympic tradition of sportsmanship by their ‘immature’ conduct (‘What rule did they break?’ shouted Joe Flaherty of the Village Voice.) The crowd was told that if strong action was not taken, the American team would be completely disqualified.

A banner saying ‘Down with Brundage’ fluttered from the seventh floor of the American dormitory; on the fourth, a Wallace for President bumper sticker appeared. The seventh floor housed the black track athletes; the fourth floor housed the rifle team.

When Lee Evans, Larry James and Ron Freeman finished one-two-three in the 400 meters, everyone waited to see what they would do. They wore Black Panther berets because, said Evans, who had been in tears over the dismissal of his teammates, ‘It was raining.’ But they were not thrown off the team. They were still needed for the 1600-meter relay. Smith and Carlos had not been needed for anything.

The protest of the black athletes was more muted than had been expected. But the people on the IOC, and especially the members of the American Committee, seemed terrified. Something even as restrained as the gesture of Smith and Carlos had never happened before. They had always before been able, in Roby’s phrase, to ‘control’ their athletes.“

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“It’s Continuous–You Go, Go, Go”

October 22, 2012 in Film, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Here’s an oddity I never knew existed until now. In 1975, seven years after making the landmark horror film Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero directed a serious documentary about old timey pro wrestler Bruno Sammartino. The connection seems to be that they both lived in Pittsburgh. (Romero also did a TV film about Pittsburgh Pirate Willie Stargell in the ’70s.) The following year, Romero released Martin, his eerie, moving allegory of soldiers returning from Vietnam with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

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Some Thoughts About The Baseball Playoffs

October 19, 2012 in Sports | Permalink

  • It’s amazing that people can do something really well for a long time, but learn nothing about that thing they’re doing. If you watch baseball at all, especially the big stage of the playoffs, you realize that managers, all of whom have played the game and been around it for decades, know very little about strategy. How is that possible? Even someone intelligent like Joe Girardi, who was a catcher and holds a graduate degree from Northwestern, makes one suspect decision after another. I know that a good carpenter isn’t necessarily a good architect, but it’s still kind of stunning. The Baltimore Orioles weren’t a surprise success this year only because Buck Showalter is the rare gifted strategist in the dugout, but it certainly was an advantage.
  • Many fans and many sportswriters are worse, even some who are otherwise intelligent people. I’ve heard countless in both camps constantly knock advanced baseball statistics supporting Mike Trout over Miguel Cabrera for American League MVP. But it doesn’t take a degree in math to know that Trout is the MVP nor to knock down the ridiculous arguments against him. But the stubborn streak of ignorance around sports persists regardless.
  • I think most people understand this, but one last time: Ticket prices aren’t high because player salaries are high. Player salaries don’t dictate ticket prices; ticket prices dictate player salaries. Team owners charge whatever they believe the market will bear (sometimes they’re wrong), and they would charge the same amount even if players were making tiny salaries. Because baseball players have the strongest union in the country, they share in the profits. The free-market system is also for workers, not just owners.

“Whenever It’s Hot, The Humans Actually Beat The Horses”

October 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

Pushing the human body beyond what seems normal might not be healthy but it is fascinating, whether we’re talking about professional pedestrians in the nineteenth century or today’s ultramarathoners. Harvard evolutionary scientist Daniel Lieberman has an excellent post at Edge about the origins and development of endurance in humans. An excerpt: 

“We have this notion that humans are terrible natural athletes. But we’ve been looking at the wrong kind of athleticism. What we’re really good at is not power, what we’re really phenomenal at is endurance. We’re the tortoises of the animal world, not the hares of the animal world. Humans can actually outrun most animals over very, very long distances.

The marathon, of course, is a very interesting example. A lot of people think marathons are extraordinary, and they wonder how many people can run marathons. At least a million people run a marathon every year. If you watch any major marathon, you realize that most of those folks aren’t extraordinary athletes, they’re just average moms and dads. A lot of them are charity runners who decided to raise money for some cancer cause or diabetes or something. I think that proves that really your average human being can run 26.2 miles without that much training, or much ability to be a great athlete. Of course, to run a marathon at really fast speeds is remarkable, but again, it just takes some practice and training. It’s not something that’s really extraordinary.

We’re actually remarkable endurance athletes, and that endurance athleticism is deeply woven into our bodies, literally from our heads to our toes. We have adaptations in our feet and our legs and our hips and pelvises and our heads and our brains and our respiratory systems. We even have neurobiological adaptations that give us a runner’s high, all of which help make us extraordinary endurance athletes. We’ve lost sight at just how good we are at endurance athleticism, and that’s led to a perverse idea that humans really aren’t very good athletes.

A good example is that every year they have races where they actually compare humans and horses. In Wales, this started a few years ago, I guess it started out as a typical sort of drunken pub bet, where some guy bet that a human couldn’t beat a horse in a marathon. They’ve been running a marathon in Wales for the last, I think 15-20 years. To be fair, most years, the horses beat the humans, but the humans often come very close. Whenever it’s hot, the humans actually beat the horses. They also have now ultramarathons in Arizona, where humans race horses. Again, most years, the horses beat the humans, but every once in a while, the humans do beat the horses. The point is not that humans are poor athletes, because the horses occasionally beat us, but humans can actually compete with and often beat horses at endurance races. Most people are surprised at that.”

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“Mostly, He Was Afraid Of The Radiation”

October 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, the ego-driven Vegas oddsmaker who did as much to legitimize gambling in America as any, lived for decades on the edge before going over it. In addition to his casino and TV work, Snyder did public relations for Howard Hughes. From a 1974 People article:

People:

What do you do for a living?

Jimmy the Greek:

Basically, I’m a PR man. I have a firm called Jimmy the Greek’s Public Relations, Inc. We have offices in Las Vegas and Miami, 19 people on the staff, and we gross about $800,000 a year, representing companies like National Biscuit Company—the candy division—and Aurora Toys. For three-and-a-half years, I handled PR for Howard Hughes.

People:

What did you do for Hughes?

Jimmy the Greek:

Different things. Hughes was opposed to atomic testing so close to Las Vegas. Every time there was a megaton-plus test, the windows of the hotel shook, and there were already cracks in some of the buildings. He didn’t want the people he brought to Vegas hurt. Mostly, he was afraid of the radiation. Mr. Maheu, his manager, would call and say, ‘Mr. Hughes is against megaton-plus testing, Jimmy.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, what else?’ And he’d say, ‘That’s it, Jimmy.’ And you were on your own from there on. I was very happy working for him. And $175,000 a year isn’t hay.•

________________________

“We are saddened that our 12-year association with him ended this way”:

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“I Felt Fine…I Just Lost A Piece Of My Ear”

September 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

I’ve mentioned before that I think eventually an NFL player will be killed on the field. The players are too large, strong, fast and effective, and no rule changes will be able to overcome that. What you may have missed from this Sunday’s slate of games, since the main story from the media was that the replacement refs suck, was that Houston quarterback Matt Schaub lost part of his ear during a bruising hit. He lost part of his ear! And who knows down the line what that hit will mean for his brain function. From Chuck Schilken in the L.A Times:

“Matt Schaub is just fine. Don’t worry about the Houston Texans quarterback, who lost his helmet and had to miss a play following a brutal — and illegal — hit by Denver Broncos defender Joe Mays.

‘I felt fine,’ Schaub said. ‘I just lost a piece of my ear. I was bleeding and my helmet came off. So I had to come out for a play, but I was fine.’

Wait … what?!

Is it just me or does Schaub seem a little nonchalant for a guy who just lost a piece of his ear?

Well, technically, it’s a piece of his ear lobe.”

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“There’s Never Been Anything Like It In My Lifetime”

September 23, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Pete Hamill refers to the evening of the first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight, which took place on March 8, 1971 at Madison Square Garden, as “perhaps the greatest night in the history of New York City.” Maybe. Of course, it would have been amazing to be in Times Square when WWII ended or to hear Abraham Lincoln speak at Cooper Institute in 1860 or to be there in 1927 to watch the ticker-tape parade for Charles Lindbergh after his transatlantic solo flight.

But Ali-Frazier was no doubt very special, considering the political backdrop of the former Cassius Clay being stripped of his title and two of the greatest heavyweights ever meeting while each was still undefeated. Just prior to the fight, Life magazine published a cover story by Thomas Thompson about that anticipated match, “Battle of the Champs.” An excerpt:

There is almost an obscene aura of money hanging over the fight. It might seem to be the ultimate black man’s revenge–each fighter getting his $2.5 million. But the white man will, as per custom, get his. The promoter of the fight is a 40-year-old California theatrical agent and manager named Jerry Perenchio whose clients include Richard Burton, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis and Henry Mancini.

Perenchio is a pleasant man who wears monogrammed shirts and who would seem to be more at home beside a Beverly Hills swimming pool than at ringside of Madison Square Garden. But he is so far cleverly navigating his way through the turmoil. “I feel like I am smack in the middle of the court of the Borgias,” he said the other day. “So far I am being sued in various lawsuits totaling $58 million, and I have people calling me for tickets–the same people who, before the fight, I couldn’t even get on the telephone.”

The fight will be seen in at least 350 closed-circuit locations in America totaling 1.7 million seats, at prices ranging from $10 per ticket to $30. (Top price at Madison Square Garden is $150, but scalpers are already getting $500 per ticket.) “There’s never been anything like it in my lifetime,” says Perenchio, “very possibly since time began.”

alifrazier34

Promoting the fight has not been without its problems. Perenchio simply took the map of America and the world, carved it out into various sections, and set a price tag on each for the closed-circuit rights. If the price was met, the rights were granted. If not, they were withheld. So far, more than 20 auditoriums in the U.S. have been withheld from potential entrepreneurs because of Muhammad Ali’s conviction on draft evasion charges.

The fight will be seen live in Canada, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, and in England at 4 a.m. There would be considerably more outlets if there were enough time. ‘We only had two months really to promote it,’ complained Perenchio. “We’re like a guy in an orchard with only a limited amount of time to pick the fruit. We can only get at the lower branches.”

Perenchio is not overlooking any way to make money from the event. Besides the expected $20 million to $30 million gross anticipated from the fight itself, he is selling the rights to the souvenir program, between-rounds commercials, a special poster and post-fight movie–to be delayed for six months–for a total of $4 million. “We haven’t sold it yet, in fact we’ve only had a few offers of $500,000 or $250,000. We just don’t want to schlock it.”

On top of all this, Perenchio actually plans to seize both boxers’ trunks and gloves so that he can auction them off later. “If they can sell Judy Garland’s red Oz shoes for $15,000, then we should get at least as much for these,” he said. “We get a little blood on the trunks, it makes them all the more valuable.”•

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“Parents Will Stop Letting Their Kids Play, Starving The League Of Talent”

September 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

When I first became conscious of sports as a child, I was obsessed with boxing. But I was still a kid when Muhammad Ali lost his amazing speaking ability, and I never could watch it again. Ali was very important to me not only as an athlete but for his politics. It isn’t giving him enough credit in and of himself to say that he was for me a gateway drug to Malcolm X, but there’s a lot of truth to that statement. In fact, studying boxing matches that took place long before my birth taught me so much about history and race and politics and sociology. The sport had the same effect on millions of others. Boxing was king until it wasn’t. The shadiness of the promoters had something to do with its decline, but mostly it was watching these beloved figures grow shaky in their hands and voices.

Rich Cohen has an article in the New Republic about football’s future being threatened by the growing awareness of the sport’s unavoidable head injuries. It seems inconceivable that football could severely decline because of the cash cow that the NFL is, but, then again, no one is building insta-stadiums to handle overflowing boxing crowds anymore. An excerpt:

“The worry is not just that people will stop watching the game—it’s that parents will stop letting their kids play, starving the league of talent. Speaking on The Tonight Show, Terry Bradshaw, the great Steelers quarterback, predicted the demise of football, saying if he had a son, he would not let him sign up. ‘The fear of them getting these head injuries,’ he explained, ‘it’s just too great for me.’ Something similar happened to boxing, which was once the biggest sport in the United States. But the country evolved away from the ring, until boxing became a mirror of its own saddest character, the nobody, the palooka, the bum.”

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“In The Summer Of 1856, Edward Payson Weston Was Struck By Lightning And Fired From His Job At The Circus”

September 14, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you read this blog with any regularity you can understand that a story about the most famous pedestrian of the 1870s might have a special place in my heart. Still, this Grantland article by Brian Phillips about a walking wonder named Edward Payson Weston is wonderful on its own merits. The opening:

“In the summer of 1856, Edward Payson Weston was struck by lightning and fired from his job at the circus. He was 17 years old and had been traveling with the big top for no more than a few weeks — ‘under an assumed name,’ as he reassured the readers of his 1862 memoir, The Pedestrian. One day, as the troupe’s wagons passed near Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, he was ‘affected by a stroke of lightning’ and nearly killed. Nineteenth-century circus managers were about as tenderhearted as you would expect when it came to physical infirmity. When Weston was too sick to perform in Boston a few days later, he was unceremoniously sacked.

For most of us, being hit by lightning and kicked out of the circus would be an extraordinary turn of events. For Weston, it was a pretty typical week. Weston, whose story is recounted in the spectacularly entertaining book A Man in a Hurry, by the British trio of Nick Harris, Helen Harris, and Paul Marshall, lived one of those fevered American lives that seem to hurtle from one beautiful strangeness to the next. By his mid-teens, he had already: worked on a steamship; sold newspapers on the Boston, Providence, and Stonington Railroad; spent a year crisscrossing the country with the most famous traveling musicians in America, the Hutchinson Family Singers, selling candy and songbooks at their concerts; and gone into business for himself as a journalist and publisher. In his 20s and 30s, he somehow became one of the most celebrated athletes in the English-speaking world despite the fact that he was physically unprepossessing — 5-foot-7, 130 pounds, with a body resembling ‘a baked potato stuck with two toothpicks,’ as one journalist wrote — and that his one athletic talent was walking. Just straight-up walking made Weston, for a while, probably the biggest sports star on earth.”

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“Swimming Humanoid Robot For Research Of Unsteady Fluid Force”

September 13, 2012 in Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

The Swumanoid, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

“He Developed Theatrical Calls, Aiming Hand-Pistols At Runners And Screaming OUTOUTOUTOUTOUT”

September 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Ron Luciano, a showboating baseball umpire and tireless self-promoter, might have been amusing if his constant need for attention wasn’t a sign of desperation. His emphatic out calls and (relatively) outrageous book, The Umpire Strikes Back, made him a well-known figure in the ’70s and 80s. In a game of rules, he made his own, openly mocking a sport that was often taken too seriously. But he had no second act. When his routine grew tired and the beer commercials ran out, Luciano returned to his hometown and sadly committed suicide in 1995. From Matthew Callan at the Classical:

“As Luciano began his slow, undignified climb to the major leagues, he compensated for his lack of knowledge about the game by constantly chatting up players, managers, and even fans, as if hoping to acquire their expertise by osmosis. He developed theatrical calls, aiming hand-pistols at runners and screaming OUTOUTOUTOUTOUT as he emptied an imaginary clip; the hope was that, even if he was wrong, he’d at least be remembered. Luciano made sure to volunteer for every dumb stunt local owners put on both so he would be seen as a good sport and team player, and so he would be seen, period.

Once in the bigs, he constantly got in trouble with league American League president Lee MacPhail, usually for engaging in behavior that dared suggest baseball might be fun. Even if MacPhail wasn’t a fan, Luciano’s antics brought himself attention immediately, at a time when the average fan would have struggled to name even one umpire. A 1974 Sports Illustrated profile painted Luciano as ‘a rebel, an individualist,’ which says more about the staid atmosphere of baseball at the time than it does about the umpire. (His birdwatching hobby was counted among his acts of wanton individualism.)

By the end of the decade, he became president of the umpires’ association through what amounted to determined nudging, positioning himself nearest to the door during union meetings so he could be the first man to talk to reporters waiting outside, and therefore appear to be important; he understood this, correctly, as the most important factor in being important. Luciano’s tales from behind the plate made him a favorite on the winter banquet circuit, a hot stove tradition that’s nearly gone the way of the dodo, and eventually landed him a gig doing color commentary and profiles for NBC’s Game of the Week. The Umpire Strikes Back was the culmination of all this, a huge bestseller that blazed the ‘wacky sports’ trail of the 1980s later trod by The Hall of Shame series, Miller Lite commercials, and an infinite loop of blooper reels.”

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Luciano, at the end of his fame in 1991, selling diet cream soda:

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“What Do You Intend To Do Now?”

September 6, 2012 in Sports, Videos | Permalink

We don’t know what we will face in life…

…we don’t even know what’s inside of ourselves…

…yet we make plans.

Bobby Fischer, unaware of the terrible thing he would become, discusses his future in 1972, shortly after dispatching Spassky.

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“The Difference That Swamps All Of These Is The Difference Between The Present And The Past”

September 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

We don’t know precisely what the future will look like, but we know that it will look different. Often we think we’ve reached our limits, though we don’t truly know where our limits lie. If we’re lucky, the future will lap us and laugh at us. We should welcome that. From a post by Stuart Armstrong at Practical Ethics:

“In 1920, Jackson Scholz set the men’s 100m world record at 10.6 seconds. The 100m race is one where progress is very hard; we’re getting towards the limit of human possibility. It’s very tricky to squeeze out another second or fraction of a second. Still, in 2009, Usain Bolt set the men’s 100m world record at 9.58 seconds.

Apart from the Bolt, who else today can run faster than Jackson Scholz? Well, the fastest 16 year old ran the 100m in 10.27 second. The visually impaired world record is 10.46seconds. The woman’s world record is 10.49 seconds.

The point of this extended metaphor is that we are focused on the differences we see today: between teenagers and adults, between men and women, between the able-bodied and those not. But the difference that swamps all of these is the difference between the present and the past.”

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“Pretty Much Anyone Who Wishes To Compete…Takes Something To At Least Dull The Pain”

September 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

There’s a good chance that you’re favorite baseball legend from an earlier, “cleaner” era used some sort of performance-enhancing drug, whatever was available at the time. From an interview at the Classical that Pete Beatty did with Villanova professor and baseball historian Mitchell Nathanson:

“The Classical: 

In your book, you talk about presenting ‘counter-stories’ to the anodyne, mostly cheerful history of baseball that MLB espouses—for every Black Sox scandal that teaches a canned moral, there’s a Hal Chase; for every PED bust, there are steroid-era records that will never be asterisked or erased. What do you think some of the counter-stories of the future might be for baseball, or some of the issues that will shape how we see the future history of the game?

Mitchell Nathanson: 

I think we’re in the midst of one right now: the Melky Cabrera ‘tainted’ batting title story. As it becomes more and more likely that he’ll win the NL batting title, there’s going to be an ever-increasing push to strip it from him by whatever means necessary in order to protect the ‘integrity of the game.’ Of course, this assumes that that PED story is a black-and-white one—involving ‘good guys’ like Andrew McCutchen and ‘bad guys’ like Melky Cabrera. The truth is that everyone and everything is shrouded in gray. I don’t know what McCutchen (or Derek Jeter for that matter) takes to enable him to hit consistently well over the course of a grueling season but I’m willing to wager that it’s more than milk and spinach. Those days are over (in fact, they never existed). The only difference between the so-called good guys and the bad ones is that the supplements taken by the alleged bad guys have been banned whereas the ones taken by the alleged good guys haven’t been—yet. Don’t forget that that bottle of Andro spotted in Mark McGwire’s locker in 1998 was purchased legally as a widely available ‘over the counter’ nutritional supplement. The truth is that pretty much anyone who wishes to compete—at the professional or even the amateur level—takes something to at least dull the pain enough to enable them to make it through nine innings or eighteen holes. Supplements are a growing fact of modern life and the lines between what is acceptable and what isn’t are blurred and only becoming blurrier by the day. This holds true, by the way, for the people who write, often sanctimoniously, about the game as well. I’m pretty sure that more than a few of the scribes calling on Bud Selig to do something, anything, to purge Cabrera’s name from the record book are meeting their daily late night deadlines with the help of a Five Hour Energy drink or something like it.”

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