An Olympic observation

See, I understand that they want to reward the attempt but I just don't like that a quad where they fall on their butt is worth exactly as much as a perfect triple.


(photo of Nathan Chen in team short program Feb 8, 2018, from Washington Post)

Burn it all down

This article, by Charles P. Pierce, is intense and devastating. It's also in Sports Illustrated. That means it will reach more people who need to read it than it would have in something like Vanity Fair, Harper's, or Teen Vogue. Aly Raisman's statement alone should be read by every athletics fan in the country.

A couple of quotes from the article to whet your appetite:

"Burn it all down. That is the calm and reasoned conclusion to which I have come as one horror story after another unspooled in the courtroom. Nobody employed in the upper echelons at USA Gymnastics, or at the United States Olympic Committee, or at Michigan State University should still have a job."

"The courthouse is supposed to be the great leveler. It is supposed to be the place where all the monsters are called to final account as fairly as possible. It is supposed to be where flaming vengeance is cooled into steely justice. It is the secular equivalent of the passage from the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus tells the assembled that, “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.” God knows, it doesn’t always work out that way in our courthouses. The thumbs on the scales of justice weigh heaviest on the poor and the brown. But it is by god working out in the courtroom in Lansing, Michigan over which Judge Rosemarie Aquilina presides."
 
And "the school’s gymnastics coach tried to coerce her athletes into signing a card to support Nassar when the first charges began to come down. This is unfathomable to me. I believe it also would be unfathomable to Vlad the Impaler."

And then this: "Twenty-three years ago, a gifted journalist named Joan Ryan tried to warn us that gymnastics and figure skating – two sports that attained wild success through athletes who barely were old enough to go to high school – were warping young lives in dangerous ways, and that they were ideal hunting grounds for predators like Larry Nassar and pocket fascists like the Karolyis. That book, Little Girls In Pretty Boxes, was named by Sports Illustrated as one of the top 100 sports books of all time, and the revelations therein prompted USA gymnastics to put together a handbook for parents to alert them to the signs of eating disorders, abusive coaches, and other delights of the sporting life. By then, Larry Nassar was already climbing the ladder of that organization, so we can see how well that all worked out."

Goodbye, Pat

Pat Summitt has died. She was the winningest Division 1 coach ever, male or female. She was a class act through and through. She will be greatly missed.

Here's her obit in the New York Times.

And here's a video from WBIR, a Knoxville station.

Spring!

Almost imperceptibly the days
Have lengthened and the sky has grown more blue.
Unclipped forsythia tangles in a blaze
Of gold; bright jonquils shine, and crocus too,
Amidst the paler shades of blooming trees:
The pinks and whites of apple, cherry, pear,
And darker redbud in the pastel seas
Of tossing blossomed limbs so lately bare.
Grass reborn spreads its imperial jade
In carpets envied by a monarch's throne,
And birds from dawn to dusk sing out their hearts.
And in each town some space is found or made
For that sure sign that winter's truly flown:
With that first pitch, at last the summer starts.

Peyton Manning

PEYTON!

 

PEYTON!

 

PEYTON! 

 

That is all.

Half a sigh, I guess

So, the Kansas City Royals are the best in their league and going to the World Series.

However, this year the Mets were #5.

Yeah, it's not as bad as last year, when tied for #5 played #3, and not nearly as bad as 2012, when #7 played #3. But still.

Goodbye, Yogi

“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.”

Yogi Berra died yesterday. Here's the NY Times obituary. He was a heckuva ballplayer, including 3 Most Valuable Player awards, and a heckuva person, even if he was a Yankee.

He's well known for his sayings - people keep talking about "mangled syntax" but there's no mangling of syntax here, everything is accurate and grammatical. What's "wrong" - but right - turns on polysemy, the property words have of multiple meanings, and on reference - in "Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours." just who does "they" refer to? Or in "It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.", who is "everybody"?

A few more:

If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.

Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.

You can observe a lot by watching.

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

It’s déjà vu all over again.

Ninety percent of the game is half mental.

The future ain’t what it used to be.

Ben Zimmer looks at the language, and here's the baseball.

And one more note: he supported gay athletes: "Respect the game, respect others -- that's what I always learned in sports. Whatever background or whatever you are, it doesn't matter. Treat everyone the same, that's how it should be." That one's not funny, nor hard to parse.

A good run ... now ABC

Tennessee had a good run, making it into the Elite Eight again but falling to Maryland. In the women's tournament, the Final Four is all the Number One seeds, so somebody did a good job.

But of course, I'm for the Terps now! Heck, I'd even take a Notre Dame championship... ABC (anybody but Connecticut).

March Madness

Tennessee is in the tournament (seeded #2 in the Spokane Division), playing their first game on Saturday afternoon.


I don't think they'll win, but they have a good chance. They'll have to play Maryland to get to the Final Four, and Connecticut to get to the final game (yes, I'm assuming those schools will win), and then face Notre Dame or South Carolina (again, assuming the number one seeds advance).

It'll be a good tournament. Watch the brackets here.

One Reason

Cyd Zeigler asks:Why isn't Michael Sam in the NFL? (We all know why.)

The players were cool with it - by all accounts he was very well-liked by the Cowboys, Rams and Missouri Tigers players. The fans were cool with it, Sam receiving applause from his home fans and during away games and selling lots of jerseys. While there was plenty of media attention on Sam, there was no media distraction from having him on the teams.

"He wasn't available to the media that much during training camp," said Howard Balzer, a St. Louis NFL stalwart and Pro Football Hall of Fame voter. "There were a couple times national media came in and they didn't make him available."

If rejection by the fans or players, and the projected media distraction, simply didn't materialize in Dallas or St. Louis, where was the Armageddon that, by the admission of SI's anonymous sources and the CBS Sports rankings, would befall any team that brought Sam in? Where was the discord that would suddenly erupt in the locker room?

When I was a kid, I always outsmarted myself in multiple-choice tests. I'd always get it wrong because I over-thought the question every time. In my adult life I've learned that the most obvious answer is generally the right one.

The answer to the question I've posed to so many - Why is Michael Sam not with an NFL team? - is also likely the most obvious one: because he's openly gay. Defensive ends with the same size and the same speed - yet with less production in college and the NFL preseason - are in the NFL and Sam is not because he's gay and he just won't stop being gay.

Read it all to see the mounting evidence, especially the comparisons with other players who did make it.

PS: For them

I quoted the Alouettes' announcement that said

kickoff will be at noon, i.e. one hour earlier than usual. Sunday also marks the day that clocks are turned back an hour.

I'm betting the game is at noon instead of one so the players' body clocks aren't thrown off!

Go Als! This year in Montreal! Cette année à Montréal!

Extra measures

So, this was in my Montreal Alouettes Facebook feed yesterday, referring to Sunday's decisive game:

Alouettes fans are asked to arrive early on Sunday as kickoff will be at noon, i.e. one hour earlier than usual. Sunday also marks the day that clocks are turned back an hour. Also, following last week's events, extra security measures will be in effect on Sunday. Bags will notably be searched at every stadium entrance.

Am I a bad person for seeing zero connection between a guy (or guys) who went after uniformed soldiers and members of Parliament in Ottawa, and anybody attacking a football stadium in Toronto? I mean, it's one thing if you have credible intelligence, but absent that, why is this game different? It's like the guy in my office who was afraid to go to DC earlier this week.

I mean, the Canadians are being way cooler (as in cooler-headed) about this than we would be, but it does seem like the "be afraid, be very afraid" mantra is seeping north of the border, too.

162 games

I was hoping for a Parkway Series. I did not expect one, but I was hoping.

But I'll tell you that as sad as I am that the Orioles got knocked off by the Royals, what really gets me is that the freaking Royals were not only a wild-card team, they were worse than the other two division leaders. Same thing for the Giants, by the way. Records? Royals 89-73, .549; Giants 88-74, .543. Six teams won at least 90 games this year and we won't see any of them in the Series. (Barring a miracle comeback by the Cards, of course, and they just won 90, behind five others.)

If baseball was still the way it used to be (get offa my lawn!), the Series would be underway  - over, more likely - and it would have been Nats (96-66, .593) and the - no, not the Orioles. Their record was the same as the Nats' but the AL had the Angels at 98-64, .605. They got knocked out by the Royals, while the Nats got taken down by the Giants, who tied for fifth with the Pirates.

But if the Royals beat the Angels aren't they the better team? No. No, they are not. Over the long season - this isn't football - they lost nine more games than the Angels did. They're getting lucky in short serieses with an expanded roster; they were worse than three other teams in the regular season. The Giants likewise in their league.

This isn't as bad as 2012, when the third-place Giants beat the seventh-place (yes, seventh) Tigers. But I'm really not excited about watching two fourth-place teams play in the World Series. And it may be easier for me to say with the Orioles out of it, but it's no less true.

O RLY?

The WaPo writes: The San Antonio Spurs made history Tuesday by hiring six-time WNBA all-star Becky Hammon as an assistant coach, making her the first full-time female assistant coach in any of the four major professional sports.

I believe you mean "first full-time female assistant coach in any of the four major mens professional sports."

Not that anyone asked

Isn't June a bit late in the year for hockey and basketball to be finishing up?

(Or am I just getting really old?)

Epic

Looks like a facepalm... perhaps fittingly, given that epic John Oliver piece (below the logo)

O.M.G. Nailed it.

Watch this video to put Michael Sam squarely in the NFL context. Seriously. Watch it.

Final Four

Final Four this weekend. Once again, I'm going on vacation with someone who doesn't care about sports - at all. But once again, my main interest is that UConn not win. I am in fact pulling for Maryland (one, they beat UT and two, I live here), but I expect Notre Dame to beat them. If Stanford takes out UConn, I'll be very happy.

And the Madness begins

The NCAAW Division I tournament is underway. (Yes, I'm pleased the men got in this year, but I'm not a real fan of the men's game.) The UT women are seeded No 1 in their bracket, playing at home for the first four games - and in Nashville for the Final Four, close to home! Up by only two points against Northwestern State, they came out playing hard. And with less than five to go, NBC figures their lead is so unstoppable that they've just switched over to the Fordham-California game, which is Fordham up by 2 with 5:22 to go. (edited to add: and NBC was right, they won, scoring more points in the second half than Northwestern scored total! On to the next round!)

Grind For Nine! Let's go!

Brackets here.

Seven and One

Via fev over at Heads Up, this:

Fred kindly says it's a case of not being able to count, but I say it's an outright slap by Sports on Earth  at whoever that is on the left (since he's the one cropped out when they fixed it - see Heads Up for details). Yep: there are seven excellent teams, and one more that's only there to make up the numbers.