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The Sporting Life: Mr. Ohlendorf Goes To Washington

February 19, 2010 in Politics, Sports | Permalink

Not Rosie O'Donnell.

Tyler Kepner has a fun article in the Times, which is prosaically titled “Pirates’ Ross Ohlendorf Exercised Brain with Federal Internship.” The piece focuses on the middling Pittsburgh starter, who spent a couple months this offseason working as an intern for Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

It would seem that the rare professional athlete who is intellectual and well-rounded could have such opportunities for the taking. Ohlendorf wisely uses these open doors as learning experiences. An excerpt from the piece:

“Ohlendorf, 27, has the unusual combination of superior intelligence, athleticism, curiosity and drive. It helped him become a star at Princeton while earning a degree in operations research and financial engineering. It has helped him develop into a dependable major leaguer who was 11-10 with a 3.92 earned run average in 29 starts for Pittsburgh last season.

The internship was the product of a midsummer brainstorm, which can be rather powerful for a person with a 3.75 grade-point average in the Ivy League. Ohlendorf had spent a previous winter as an intern in the finance office of the University of Texas system.

He also helps his father manage a herd of longhorn at the family’s Rocking O Ranch near Austin, Texas.”

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Decoder: Tiger Woods’ Press Conference

February 19, 2010 in Humor, Sports | Permalink

Pardoned by Governor Mark Sanford. (Image courtesy of Tim Hipps.)

Tiger Woods: Good morning, and thank you for joining me.

Decoder: I wish I was anywhere else. Preferably a brothel.

Tiger Woods: Many of you in this room are friends.

Decoder: Friends with benefits.

Tiger Woods: I am deeply sorry for the irresponsible and selfish behavior I engaged in.

Decoder: Sometimes three or four times a night. Sometimes with two strippers at the same time in a hot tub. In all different kinds of positions. Except for 69. I don’t like that one. That looks like a trick they train seals to do.

Tiger Woods: My behavior has caused considerable worry to my business partners, to everyone involved in my foundation, including my staff, board of directors, sponsors, and most importantly, the young students we reach.

Decoder: Why did I try to sell myself as a family man and philanthropist? I could have stayed single, partied hearty and been fine. Jeter is smarter than all of us.

Tiger Woods: Some people have speculated that Elin somehow hurt or attacked me on Thanksgiving night.

Decoder: If I don’t deny it, she will beat me again. And she hits hard.

Tiger Woods: I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply.

Decoder: I’ve been hitting a golf ball like a robot since I was two. You expected normalcy?

Tiger Woods: Achievements on the golf course are only part of setting an example. Character and decency are what really count. Parents used to point at me as a role model for their kids. I owe all those families a special apology.

Decoder: My ego is still telling me that I need to be something more exalted than just a golfer and a good husband and dad. I don’t.

Tiger Woods: As I proceed, I understand people have questions. I understand the press wants me to–wants to ask me for the details of the times I was unfaithful. I understand people want to know whether Elin and I will remain together. Please know that as far as I’m concerned, every one of these questions, and answers, is a matter between Elin and me. These are issues between a husband and a wife.

Decoder: This is the truest thing I’ll say today. I owe apologies to my wife, kids and business partners. Anyone else who wants an explanation should get a life.

Tiger Woods: Some people have made up things that never happened. They said I used performance-enhancing drugs. This is completely and utterly false.

Decoder: I shouldn’t be thinking about my athletic legacy at all today, but I just can’t help myself.

Tiger Woods: Part of following this path for me is Buddhism, which my mother taught me at a young age. People probably don’t realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood.

Decoder: Buddhism is the one with the Karma Sutra, right?

Tiger Woods: I do plan to return to golf one day. I just don’t know when that day will be. I don’t rule out that it will be this year.

Decoder: It will be this year.

Tiger Woods: I look forward to seeing my fellow players on the course.

Decoder: Imagine how badly I will beat them if I actually focus more on golf than on arranging three-ways with waitresses in Olive Garden restrooms.

Read other Decoders.

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Listeria: Top 15 Minor League Baseball Team Names

February 16, 2010 in Sports | Permalink

Not Rosie O'Donnell.

Pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training camps in Florida and Arizona this week, so it’s time to look at the best names of minor-league baseball teams with major-league affiliations. Enjoy.

Read other Listeria lists.

Great Photography: The Big Picture’s “Tough Guy Challenge 2010”

February 11, 2010 in Photography, Sports | Permalink

The "Tough Guy Challenge 2010" attracted 5,000 male and female entrants. Each one of them is a special kind of crazy.

If you look at this site with any regularity, you probably have an idea how much I love the Big Picture photography site at Boston.com. It’s consistently the best marriage of photography and the Internet. The essay “Tough Guy Challenge 2010” by Mike King is no exception.

The annual excruciating and almost indescribable contest complicated by fire, barbed wire and mud on an English farm is described as “the safest most dangerous taste of physical and mental endurance pain in the world.” I don’t have the rights to repost any of the images here, but I encourage you to go to their site and have a look. It’s worth it.

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Listeria: Top 25 Athlete Names Of 2010 Olympic Games

February 10, 2010 in Sports | Permalink

In all fairness, "Afflctor" is pretty fucking stupid name, too. Few domains left.

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, approaches, so it’s time for us to look at the best names of the athletes competing. The names only go up to “M” because the “N-Z” names really sucked.

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Science/Tech: Garry Kasparov Tackles Computers Once Again

February 5, 2010 in Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

In 1997, Garry Kasparov didn't believe Deep Blue had defeated him fairly. See the documentary "Game Over" to learn more.

I can’t claim to be the world’s biggest chess fan, but I’m fascinated by Garry Kasparov’s article “The Chess Master and His Computer” in the New York Review of Books. The legendary champion, who famously lost a match to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, looks at the intersection of chess and AI from just about every angle possible–and does so brilliantly. An excerpt about the ramifications of the availability of top-flight chess software:

“There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it’s no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top-level opponent at home instead of need ing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn’t care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn’t good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn’t been done that way before. It’s simply good if it works and bad if it doesn’t. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.”

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Excerpted: “Classic Boom–Minerva’s Temple In Guatemala Is Blown Up For Baseball Fans,” Life, (1953)

February 2, 2010 in Excerpts, Politics, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Minerva: Totally into wisdom and check out that great rack. Not too shabby.

Came across this strange article in a 1953 issue of Life magazine. “Classic Boom: Minerva’s Temple in Guatemala is Blown Up for Baseball Fans” chronicles a Central American temple being exploded to extend the stands of a baseball stadium. Minerva was the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena, so she was quite the A-list deity. Baseball is still played in Guatemala City today at the Enrique “Trapo” Torrebiarte Stadium–same site?–but I don’t believe there are any current MLB players from Guatemala. The opening of the article:

“Fierce Don Manuel Estrada Cabrera, dictator of Guatemala from 1898 to 1920, was a man of many quirks. To get elected president he used to draft all males into the army on election day, decorate them with campaign buttons and march them into the polls to vote for him. To encourage education he built temples to Minerva, Goddess of Learning, and called out the citizenry to hold fiestas around the shrines. In due time Don Manuel was forced out of office by an angry electorate which had come into possession of a few cannons. But his monuments remained. A baseball park grew up near the one in Guatemala City and as the game grew more popular more room was needed for grandstands. So one day last month Minerva’s temple came tumbling down, victim of ‘beisbol’ and large charges of dynamite.”

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Excerpted: “Karate: New Tough-Guy Cult,” Life, 1968

January 31, 2010 in Books, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

You can kick me in the head if you like, but please stop looking at me with your death-ray eyes.

I always thought martial arts became popular in the U.S. in the 1970s because of the TV series Kung Fu. But according to an article I found in a 1968 Life magazine, a different martial art became popular the previous decade. “Karate: New Tough-Guy Cult” examines the sport’s nascent popularity in America. An excerpt from the article’s opening:

“The worried looking would-be strongman, the one who looks like Woody Allen–that crack in the gut is only a sample of the trouble he’s on for. The oddly dressed platoon on its knees in the rain, they are there because rain, like an occasional thrashing with a bamboo pole, builds character. These particular character-builders are members of Brooklyn’s School of Scientific Karate and part of a growing army of U.S. devotees of the muscular cult. Inspired by the manly mayhem of film heroes–the Sinatra who split a table in The Manchurian Candidate, the Spencer Tracy who splintered a bad guy in Bad Day at Black Rock. Americans have made karate a national sport in less than a decade. The School of Scientific Karate (250 students) is only one of 750 karate schools scattered around the country. A dozen years ago there were none.

Developed in China and systemized in Japan, karate (which means “empty hand” in Japanese) is designed to kill or maim. But karateists like these Brooklynites are not aggressors. They practice a year to smash the edge of a hand into a brick, not a solar plexus. In practice they learn to pull their punches. Much of their practice is in pulling punches. And ultimately, according to practitioners, they get from karate the confidence–and the placid equanimity–that less determined souls find in religion.”

The Sporting Life: Where Will All The New Teams Go?

January 29, 2010 in Sports | Permalink

Not Rosie O'Donnell.

The excellent Sports Economist pointed me to an article on Portfolio.com which examines the viability of the five major professional team sports (football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer) in untapped North American markets. They used income levels and not actual fan interest and other factors, so it’s really more of a speculative experiment than a real-life investigation.

A few of Portfolio.com’s findings with my comments in parentheses:

•The Los Angeles area has the population and income base to support five NFL teams. (Los Angeles can handle a couple of NFL teams, and with a new L.A. football stadium set to open in 2011, there will definitely be a team or two relocating to this market. The Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars are possibillities.)

•Baseball can only be supported in two new markets: Riverside-San Bernadino, California, and Montreal, which saw its franchise founder and move away just five years ago. (MLB would make more sense if it added two teams and shifted to four eight-team divisions. The article doesn’t give the benefit of the doubt to Portland, Oregon, which has often been named as a propective MLB city.)

•The study identifies Denver area as a seriously overextended city with teams in all of the five main leagues. Only the Broncos and Rockies seem like safe bets to continue drawing well. (The Rockies have probably been aided attendance-wise because the thin air at Coors Field makes for a lot of home runs, which help drive attendance.)

•Six other markets are very overextended: Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Phoenix. (Cleveland and Pittsburgh have had serious population losses as their industrial bases declined. Phoenix is hurting because the economy has been especially terrible in states that rode the real estate boom. The Phoenix Coyotes have by far the worst attendance in the NHL this year. Of course, there was never a good reason to put an ice hockey team in the desert when there are so few teams in Canada. Commissioner Gary Bettman should be fired for that reason alone.)

•The league with the most opportunity to expand: Major League Soccer. The article contends that there are more than 40 North American markets that the 15-team league can move into. (Six MLS teams draw fewer than 15,000 fans per game. Perhaps that can cover small operating costs, but it’s difficult to fathom how MLS will ever attract great athletes if it has by far the lowest salaries. At the same time, it’s likely the only game in town if Akron or Allentown want their own “professional” franchise.)

The Sporting Life: Searching For The New Red Grange

January 23, 2010 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

I question the wisdom of this new contraption called the "forward pass."

The Wonderlic Personnel Test is a 12-minute, 50-question exam that is supposed to measure a person’s ability to learn and solve problems. It has become most well known for its association with the NFL, as college football players looking to enter the league are administered the test. It’s not exactly a perfect determinant of a player’s ability, as Dan Marino famously scored very poorly and became one of the greatest QBs in NFL history. (It should be noted that the average score of an offensive tackle is equal to that of a journalist.)

This seems like a new-fangled type of athletic measurement that would never have flown during the sport’s earlier days, but that’s not true. I came across a 1931 Popular Science article that examines how the University of Illinois used a battery of physical and psychological tests to try to find a quarterback who would be as great as the legendary Red Grange. An excerpt from the beginning of “Illinois Seeks New Red Grange by Electric Tests”:

“At the University of Illinois, experts in a pioneer psychological laboratory are seeking a new ‘Red’ Grange by means of flashing colored lights, whirling electronically connected disks, and reels of super-speed films.

The successor to the ‘Galloping Ghost’ of Illinois football teams of a few seasons ago will be picked from gridiron candidates who run the gauntlet of strange electrical testing machines that rate their muscular coordination, nerve control and mental alertness. Even before the athletes don their cleated shoes and leather helmets for the first scrimmage, the coaches thus know the rating of each in the qualities that make for stellar performance in the heat of pigskin battles.

Electrified gameboards, covered with rows of tiny lights like those on Christmas trees, duplicate in running flashes various football players. The candidate records what he would do at each crisis in the play while judges note the time he takes to decide and the correctness of his decision.”

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Excerpted: Joe Namath, Sports Illustrated (1963)

January 21, 2010 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

These days, Joe Namath boldly predicts he will be first on line at the early-bird buffet.

As the New York Jets prepare for a shot at only the second Super Bowl appearance in their tortured history, I looked up the first-ever appearance of the name “Joe Namath” in Sports Illustrated. Joe Willie is, of course, the most famous Jet ever and is still one of the best-known sports figures in America. During his playing days, he was the most outspoken athlete this side of Muhammad Ali. He predicted the underdog Jets would win Super Bowl 3 and then quarterbacked them to victory. He parlayed the subsequent fame into everything from pantyhose commercials to sitcoms. Most of it was godawful, but he smiled his way through it the way only a legend can.

The first mention of Namath in SI occurred on September 23, 1963 when the Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, QB was a sophomore for Coach Bear Bryant at Alabama. Even then he wasn’t exactly lacking in confidence. Here is an excerpt:

“Namath already is the only Yankee on the Alabama team. He came to Tuscaloosa from Beaver Falls, Pa., for two unshakable reasons: he ‘wanted to play football in the South’ and he wanted to play football for Bear Bryant. Known in high school as the ‘Hungarian Howitzer,’ he had offers of football scholarships from 52 colleges, and a Chicago Cubs baseball scout was talking in terms of a ‘$50,000 bonus.’ Once in the South, the talented Namath told Alabama reporters as a freshman that it was ‘nice’ that Bryant had varsity quarterback Jack Hurlbut coming back because ‘I might get hurt.’

The following spring, true to his word, he won the starting job, and one day as he huddled with his cast of upperclassmen he piped: ‘Fellows, this is an option play. But I think old Joe’s going to run with it. Let’s see some blocking. Coach Bryant don’t want to get me hurt.'”

The Sporting Life: Mark McGwire And The Media Strike Out In 1999

January 14, 2010 in Misc., Sports | Permalink

Mark McGwire finished his career with 583 home runs.

Sports Illustrated has many great articles in its online SI Vault, featuring work by some of the greatest nonfiction writers of the past 65 years. You should check it out. A less-than-great article is one I found by Tom Verducci, who breathlessly brushed aside talk of McGwire’s PED use in the August 16, 1999 issue. This isn’t a knock on Verducci, who is a talented guy and hardly the only one who rushed to believe McGwire’s lies instead of common sense; it’s more a portrait of that time. An excerpt:

“The home run count of Mark McGwire clicks away incessantly, like the spinning numbers on a speeding car’s odometer. Baseball had never seen a 500 like this. Daytona, maybe, but baseball? Not even close. It wasn’t just that McGwire blew away the old record pace of Babe Ruth—after belting No. 499 on Aug. 4, he could have gone 0 for 312 and still hit 500 home runs in fewer at bats than the Bambino—but it was also that McGwire hit the last hundred quicker than the hundred before that, which came quicker than the hundred before that, and so on and so on. Zero to 500 in 5,487 at bats of pure acceleration.

The celebration of 500 seemed all the more joyous because just before hitting it, McGwire revealed that four months ago he stopped taking androstenedione, a substance that the body converts to an anabolic steroid, out of concern that kids were following his lead. ‘This shows that andro is irrelevant,’ he said.”

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Built For The Wrecking Ball: Temporary Stadiums

January 8, 2010 in Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jack Dempsey: Enjoy the fisticuffs and remember to visit the confection stands.

Temporary stadiums are still built and torn down for some Olympic events, but the practice was pretty common for larger sports gatherings in the early-20th century when few permanent structures of tremendous size existed. No mere hole-in-the-wall could have contained a crowd for a boxing match featuring Jack Dempsey during the 1920s, when as Urban Oyster points out, he was an even bigger star than Babe Ruth.

Boxing promoter Tex Rickard outdid himself in 1921 for the Dempsey-Georges Carpentier fight, spending $250,000 to build an octagonal, wooden 91,000-seat stadium (see photo) called Boyle’s Thirty Acres in Jersey City, the largest such structure in the world to that point. A June 26, 1921 article in the New York Times fills in the details. It covered 300,00 square feet and took two months to complete. Reserved seats cost from $5.50 to $50.

Dempsey dispatched of the Frenchman quickly, knocking him out in the fourth round. According to New Jersey City University, the stands were full, though only 81,000 were paying customers (2,000 were women). The gate was close to $1.8 million. The stadium played host to several other prizefights before being torn down in 1927. A housing project was built on the land in 1950 and remains there today.

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Listeria: Top 10 NFL Player Names (NFC)

January 6, 2010 in Sports | Permalink

Jake Delhomme: Name as lackluster as his quarterback rating.

In preparation for the NFL playoffs, we brought you the Top 10 player names in the AFC earlier this week. Today the NFC gets its due (in alphabetical order):

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Great Photography Online: “Pelé Looks Back,” Life.com

January 4, 2010 in Misc., Photography, Sports | Permalink

Don't move so fast, Pelé. I have to set up my tripod.

Giants Stadium has had its final football game, but for a brief period in the late ’70s, the stands were packed for the other kind of football. The New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League was an international glamor team of stars winding down their careers–and no star was bigger than Pelé. The Brazilian sensation, now 69, has curated a slideshow of spectacular photos of his career for Life.com. Of course, there are shots of Pelé making his amazing bicycle kick, scoring spectacular goals and meeting all manner of dignitaries. But there’s also a surprising one of him playing goalie, which he did occasionally in his career. The images are well worth checking out.

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Listeria: Top 10 NFL Player Names (AFC)

January 4, 2010 in Sports | Permalink

Jake Delhomme: a name as lackluster as his quarterback rating.

As we prepare for the NFL Playoffs, let us celebrate the great player names of the league. It was a brutal competition; even Sen’Derrick Marks couldn’t make the list. Today (in alphabetical order) we focus on the great names of the AFC.

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Featured Video: Sasson Jeans Commercial

January 2, 2010 in Sports, Videos | Permalink

Because ice hockey, blue jeans and great lyrics never go out of style, I’m posting this classic 1979 video of the disco age. Sasson was a ubiquitous name in that first burst of designer denim during the ’70s, before an ebb in the craze and poor management decisions led to bankruptcy and criminal charges. (In Hebrew, Sasson means “happiness.”)

The Rangers of the ’70s and ’80s never brought a Stanley Cup to the Garden, but they were big celebrities. Ron Duguay was sort of a proto-Bon Jovi on skates–a guy who got by on good looks and okay talent. Phil Esposito, who later became the team’s GM, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1984. And simply put, the man was an exquisite ice dancer.

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The Sporting Life: The Brief, Wonderful Life of Mark “The Bird” Fidrych

December 30, 2009 in Excerpts, Misc., Sports | Permalink

Not Rosie O'Donnell.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine published its wonderful annual “The Lives They Lived” issue last weekend and Nicholas Davidoff wrote a perfect send-off to the late, briefly great Detroit Tigers pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. It’s hard to explain the appeal the gangly, eccentric Fidrych held for children of that era. He was athlete, Muppet and rock star all at once. He was the awkward kid who grew to greatness without losing his awkwardness. Because of injuries, his career was sadly brief; because of an accident, his life tragically so. From the article:

“We had sensed how well he understood childhood. I was not the only self-conscious adolescent who on a sad day decided to tell a baseball about it. Seeing an adult acting like a boy also made the promise of growing up seem attractive. That a man could behave strangely and be applauded led you to think that eccentricity might be a virtue.

Any great athlete’s career represents a life span in miniature, an early lesson in mortality. Fidrych’s allotted days were as evanescent as his baseball career. Last spring, at 54, while he was repairing his dump truck, his shirt got caught in the drive shaft and he suffocated. There is something particularly brutal about the pitcher who publicly played with dirt being killed by the vehicle he used to carry it, as there is about a man who died young twice.”

Read the full piece.

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The Sporting Life: Fixing NFL Overtime

December 28, 2009 in Sports | Permalink

Jake Delhomme gets his whole body into that interception.

I know the NFL has bigger issues than fixing overtime. The players have non-guaranteed contracts, concussion syndrome has thankfully become a subject du jour and one very geeky journalist is fairly questioning the moral justification for the sport’s existence. But I like trying to solve problems, so I’ll have a go at fixing the inequitable system of NFL overtime.

The problem. In the current system, which started 35 years ago, a coin flip determines which team gets the ball first in OT. Since it”s sudden death, that first possession is key and the team that gets the ball first wins more games by a few percentage points. Chance shouldn’t determine the first and potentially only possession.

The changes I’d make. In order to favor merit over luck, there’d be no more coin toss. If there is a tie at the end of regulation, a 10-minute overtime period would begin from exactly where the action stands at the end of regulation. Even if one team scores, the ten minutes will be played to completion. If the game is tied at the end of this period, a horn will sound and a five-minute sudden-death period will commence from where the action stands. The first team that scores in this period wins. If neither team scores, the game is a tie. In playoffs, the five-minute sudden-death portion continues until there is a winner.

The ass kissing. That pretty boy NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell needn’t thank me if he’s busy. It would be nice, sure.

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Old Print Ad: Bantron Smoking Deterrent Tablets

December 14, 2009 in Misc., Sports | Permalink

The chin strap interferes with my smoking.

The chin strap interferes with my smoking.

From a March 1968 copy of Life magazine comes this print ad for a smoking-deterrent tablet called Bantron. The spokesperson in the ad is former New York Giants quarterback Y.A. Tittle. From Tittle’s testimonial:

“After my doctor advised me to stop smoking I made many starts–with no success. Just as I needed help on the football field, I found that desire, alone, wasn’t enough to stop smoking. Then Bantron was recommended to me by a friend. Bantron did the job! I stopped smoking completely in 5 days and I’m proud to say I haven’t smoked in well over a year. It’s like quarterbacking my team to a championship. It’s a real accomplishment.”

Bantron, which featured the active ingredient lobeline sulphate, was passed many times from one company to another into the 1980s and is no longer manufactured.

Tittle, who was the subject of perhaps the most famous photo in football history, was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971. He is 83 years old today and was honored earlier this year by LSU, his alma mater.

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The Sporting Life: Gambling Is An Uneven Playing Field

December 13, 2009 in Books, Sports | Permalink

Ed Helms will play him in the movie.

Ed Helms will play Donaghy in the inevitable movie.

NBA official Tim Donaghy bet on basketball, so he automatically must  join the Chicago Black Sox and Pete Rose as a pariah forever banned by his sport. That’s the way it is for all pro athletes and officials who are caught gambling on their games. There’s a zero-tolerance policy, right? No, not always.

Prior to the 1963 season, two of the NFL’s better players, Detroit defensive tackle Alex Karras and Green Bay running back Paul Hornung, were caught gambling multiple times on football games. Karras also was proven to have business ties to underworld figures. Pete Rozelle suspended each player for the ’63 season and reinstated them in 1964. No one would have questioned him if he had given both lifetime bans, but he chose not to. Hornung was eventually elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and Karras regained All-Pro status in 1965 and became a successful NFL commentator and actor (most notably in Blazing Saddles and Victor/Victoria). How would their lives have turned out differently if they had been banned for life? Difficult to say. That doesn’t mean Rozelle made a right or wrong decision–he just made a different one. And that doesn’t mean that the gamblers deserve any leniency; they don’t.

Donaghy has gone on record saying that he believes Michael Jordan bet on basketball games and that was the real reason he left the NBA in the 1990s to try baseball. Would David Stern really have covered up that type of scandal to protect the NBA? It’s a harsh implication. There’s no proof he did and no reason to treat Donaghy’s word as gospel. But it’s easy to see that even something as seemingly black-and-white as athletes and officials gambling on their sport has some gray area.

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Who Was That Masked Man?

December 2, 2009 in Sports | Permalink

I’ve always marveled that there weren’t two or three hockey goalies killed in every NHL game, back in the days before face masks and helmets. In November 1959, Jacques Plante of the Montreal Canadiens became the first goalie to regularly use the equipment (though it had been tested and discarded decades earlier).

From ESPN Classic: “His coach, Toe Blake, opposed the idea, but relented after Plante was struck in the face by a shot from the Rangers’ Andy Bathgate and balked at returning to the ice unless he could wear a plastic mask that he donned frequently in practice.

The goalie endured taunts about his manhood and questions about the mask’s durability and effect on his vision. Asked if he were scared to play without a mask, Plante replied, “If you jumped out of a plane without a parachute, would that make you brave?” Montreal went 10-0-1 that month with a masked Plante, and the face of hockey was changed forever.” Read the rest of this entry »

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“He’ll Inevitably Fail This Year In His Shameless Attempt To Buy A World Series”

December 1, 2009 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

In “Brian Cashman: Bad Lieutenant,” his scathing Men’s Journal article from April 2009, Matt Taibbi was none too kind to the New York Yankees General Manager:

“The GM of the New York Yankees may be the worst ever at the best job in the world. Which is why he’ll inevitably fail this year in his shameless attempt to buy a World Series.”

Yes, watching the Yankees spend more than gazillions and win the World Series was as soulless an experience as seeing Mike Bloomberg putting a third term as NYC Mayor on his American Express Black Card. But they did win and Taibbi is wrong. He should have eaten some post-Series crow.

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