Archive for the 'sports' Category
 They say money can’t buy happiness. The same also goes for celebrity, and even the status that accompanies being among the best in the world at your profession. We’ve had ample demonstration of this in recent days.
Robert Enke, the goaltender for Hannover 96 (who currently hover in the middle of the German Bundesliga standings) and a potential member of next year’s German World Cup team, died the other day. His death was apparently a suicide.
“At 1825 (1725GMT) he was run over by a regional express train running between Hamburg and Bremen,” said police spokesman Stefan Wittke. “The train was travelling at the speed of 160-kph.”The player’s friend and consultant Joerg Neblung told reporters: “I can confirm this is a case of suicide. He took his own life just before six (pm).
Enke lost a child in 2006 and has left behind a wife and eight month-old daughter. Full Story »
What. The. Fuck.
The summer I turned 16, I decided to reinvent myself. I was going to be a baseball player. My girlfriend thought that was a great idea, even though I would have to practice on the other side of town for four nights a week, then play for two nights. So, with her encouragement, I committed myself to baseball.
Now, any normal person could glance at me and see that I was a guy destined to play football. I looked like a football player, talked like one, and ran into things with a violence that suggested a natural linebacker. But I didn’t like football that much. Truth be told, I was just clumsy and always late. Hitting other people was OK, but getting hit by other people hurt. A lot. I was too cerebral for football, so I went to the Babe Ruth Baseball League tryouts for boys aged 13-16, and was drafted by the Elks Lodge, Post 1776. Full Story »
Posted on October 15, 2009 by Dr. Slammy under Constitution, Internet, Republicans, conservatives, democracy, free speech, freedom, politics, race relations, sports [ Comments: 13 ]
 America’s democratic ideal doesn’t work perfectly. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, and in these cases it feeds our cynicism to the point where we’re tempted to conclude that the very possibility of true freedom is a sham. I know whereof I speak, because there are few people out there more soaked in bile than I am.
Still, this whole “marketplace of ideas” is a marvelous concept. Perhaps the most marvelous concept in history. Drawing on the Miltonian belief that if people are allowed to enter the agora and freely state their cases, then “the truth will out” (that is, an educated and informed citizenry will unerringly perceive the truth and that weaker ideas will be disregarded in favor of stronger ones), our nation’s founders crafted a Constitution that assured people the right to voice their opinions, free from government intrusion. Full Story »
 UPDATE: We’ve revised this post to replace disputed Rush comments with confirmed-by-video ones. After all, we want to be fair. And balanced.
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Rush Limbaugh wants to be an NFL owner. Or does he? Jason Whitlock says it’s a publicity stunt, and he may be right. Glenn Beck has been getting a lot of run lately and Rash needs to maintain his position as the Barking Right’s alpha blowhard. Whitlock also wonders why the NFL’s uber-dominator, Commish Roger Goodell, didn’t immediately neuter this, the Mother of All Bad Ownership Ideas. After all, a high percentage of the league’s players, coaches and fans are black, and Rush has a history of saying bad things about black people. Some samples: Full Story »
I graduated from college in August, 1981 and took a job as an English teacher/assistant football coach at a junior high school in Columbia, Tennessee. You may ask why an English teacher would think he could coach football? I had a plan. I was a fairly decent high school football player in the early 70s, First Team, All Mid-state, a three year letterman, a genuine football fanatic. So, using another English major football coach (Joe Paterno) as my inspiration, I boldly took my place along the sidelines. True, as a player I tended to be more cerebral than reactive. Many times my high school coach would stare at me when I asked to deploy my famous symbolic blitz or offered to confuse the opposing quarterback with a barrage of metaphor. Coach Crabtree just didn’t understand. Full Story »
 by Josh Sternberg
Michael Vick could be the best thing to happen to the American reputation in quite some time. His heinous acts of violence and horrific judgment were undeniably stupid. But the lesson learned is not about dogfighting or about why individuals do stupid things. It’s about the nature of our society.
America can show the world that we are not only a nation of law, but also a society of forgiveness – that someone could commit a crime, spend their time in a rehabilitation facility and come out to be a productive member of society. We all have made mistakes, some larger than others. But in the end, we all subscribe to the belief that if we make amends, the past becomes just that: the past. Full Story »
 There’s been a lot of controversy in King James Land this week. Apparently Xavier’s Jordan Crawford dunked on LeBron in a pickup game. Nike officials confiscated the two videos of the dunk. Depending on your perspective, LeBron is being a punk-ass little bitch or Nike was fully justified in its actions.
Please. Where was all the hoopla last month when I posterized James three times in one session? That’s right. We were playing pick-up down at the club and we matched up. Early in the first game I laid a wicked crossover on him and windmilled one before he could recover. Full Story »
Just because….
 The New York Yankees earned some well-deserved criticism in the off-season when they spent a bazillion dollars on CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira and then started charging admission at the new Taj Mahal Yankee Stadium that was so exorbitant that Donald Trump couldn’t afford a seat in the lower deck. Such excess, it was felt, was inappropriate during times of extreme financial hardship such as those the nation is enduring right now.
Well, move over Hank Steinbrenner. Just a few days ago Spanish futbol superpower Real Madrid ponied up a £59M transfer fee to pry Brazilian midfielder Kaka loose from AC Milan. If you don’t have your currency calculator handy, that’s roughly $94M US. And to be clear, that figure does not include salary. That’s just Milan’s take on the deal. The good news is that Kaka’s weekly earnings probably won’t come to more than the GDP of a mid-sized European country. Full Story »
 We watch sports for a variety of reasons. To revel in the thrill of head-to-head competition. To marvel at the athleticism. To root for the home team, in which we have somehow invested a piece of our own identities. To mark our place in the timeless ritual. To learn, even.
With the NBA, there’s one more reason: to see which narrative the league has decided is the most compelling.
Now, I’m not generally a conspiracy theorist. I don’t think the world is biased against me personally and I don’t believe that the refs are out to get my team. In most cases, my attempts to explain bad officiating, whatever the sport, need go no further than “basic incompetence.” Full Story »
Here’s what you need to know about today’s National Basketball Association. Imagine the following sentence in any previous era:
The defending NBA champion Boston Celtics were defeated on their home floor in a playoff Game 7 because they couldn’t find a way to stop a small forward from Turkey. Full Story »
 by Rich Herschlag and Bill Staples
We knew LA was a little weird, but we really had no idea. Not even a year out there and sweet old Manuel Ramirez from the Bronx is caught taking human chorionic gonadotropin, a female fertility drug. Soon, Manny will be studying Kabbalah, eating quiche, and opening a Botox clinic in Malibu.
This wasn’t exactly juicing. Let’s call it milking. There are boobs and there are man boobs. Now there are Manny boobs. First there was Octo-mom. Now there’s Octo-Manny. This is not Manny being Manny. This is Manny being Mommy. Just in time for Mother’s Day. And this Mother’s Day, Mom got a hypodermic needle and a syringe.
This is not so much a fifty-game suspension as it is a maternity leave. Full Story »
 Oh, the sheer deliciousness of it all. Manny Ramirez has been busted for using.
The word is that ManRam didn’t actually use steroids.
However, two sources told ESPN’s T.J. Quinn and Mark Fainaru-Wada that the drug used by Ramirez is HCG — human chorionic gonadotropin. HCG is a women’s fertility drug typically used by steroid users to restart their body’s natural testosterone production as they come off a steroid cycle. It is similar to Clomid, the drug Bonds, Giambi and others used as clients of BALCO.
This may be even sweeter, for a couple of reasons. First, this line: “…typically used by steroid users to restart their body’s natural testosterone production as they come off a steroid cycle.” Outing Manny for roid use would have been great, but the next best thing is the lingering shadow of suspicion that’s bound to follow him around for the rest of his career (and, with luck, well into the latter years of his Hall of Fame eligibility). Full Story »
 Harry Kalas, the long-time broadcast announcer for the Philadelphia Phillies and the voice of NFL Films, passed away today. Kalas died in the booth prior to today’s game between the Phillies and the Nationals. The cause of death was not immediately known.
“We lost our voice today,” said Phillies team president David Montgomery.
In fact, baseball and football fans alike were struck dumb by the news. Full Story »
 Professional athletes are notorious for their selfish and temperamental behavior. Nor do those who behave like prima donnas seem to understand or care how their acts play to the public. NFL quarterback Jay Cutler is the obvious example (this week anyway). When his new coach evinced an interest in beginning his tenure with a quarterback with whom he might feel more comfortable, Cutler cut off communication with his team.
Imagine if your new boss said, “I’m bringing in my own guy. But, don’t worry, I’ll find you another job at the same or greater pay.” Worst-case scenario — his own guy can’t free himself from his current contract and your new boss keeps you on. But Cutler’s inability to see how fortunate he was compared to much of the rest of the public is dwarfed by the conduct of the King of Tone-Deafness, Michael Vick. Full Story »
 I remember childhood afternoons at Tiger Stadium. The smells, the sounds. The Game. And the old men who followed it through cryptic pencil notation in their programs. Baseball was perhaps a pastime for a slower age. Transistor radios captured the game in its glory years, but even those are unnecessary for the orthodox baseball fan. A small box of numbers convey the entirety of the story; a page of boxes contains a whole day and the season to date. Numbers. It’s a game of mathematics, where situational percentages and probabilities determine strategy and describe results. But on the field the game is far deeper. On the field, baseball is the game of zen.
Full Story »
The Return of Hope
Pitchers and Catchers Report to Spring Training
For those of us that have survived a long winter of discontent, our hopes are renewed once again this February 12th.
Full Story »
The appearance of Bar Refaeli on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is not without controversy. Yes, it may be the magazine’s most uncovered cover pose to date. True, too, that comments the Israeli model made to a magazine last fall cast her in an unpatriotic, cowardly, and shallow light.
Israel’s Ynet reported the story in an article sensationally titled Dodging IDF paid off big time. First, it pointed out that to take advantage of an exemption from mandatory military service, Ms. Refaeli married an acquaintance who she later divorced. Worse, she said:
I really wanted to serve in the IDF, but I don’t regret not enlisting, because it paid off big time. … That’s just the way it is, celebrities have other needs. Full Story »
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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has conditionally reinstated