SPIDER MAN REFERENCE

There are times when I know what I'm talking about, and times when I don't. Tonight was neither. I said that if Manny got a hit with the bases loaded, the series would be over. However, Eric Wedge must have heard me, because pitching around Manny might have just saved their season. I will take full and complete credit for this. I can call things. If we could make prop bets that were mixed with futures, I'd be driving a Bentley with twelve ladies hanging off the roof (I'd let them in, but this is leather in here baby).

Anyway, baseball is great and all, but sleep might be a little better. Fuck, my roommate from Rhode Island (or RI Guy) started freaking out about this loss. Yeah, I'd freak out too if I had the best lineup in the postseason. Boston fans are like fat high school girls - they need to bitch about problems. Until next time.

Twenty players, 5 innings, one goal: baseball goals.

ALDS Game 2 partial diary

I'm waiting till about midnight to go out dancin', and I'm not going to do homework on a Saturday night, so I'm going to do a live diary of Game 2 of the ALDS, starting in the bottom of the 1st.

7:45 - Do we need to see those fans holding up that Ortiz sign in the last row every night? Fuck, we get it - they're losers.

7:52 - Wait...the Red Sox put Schilling on the DL when he wasn't hurt? Get Gregg Easterbrook on this! Let's call it InjuryGate! I don't know what I hate more right now, Page 2 or the Red Sox. If Bill Simmons and Jim Caple were calling this game, I would be positive I died last night and that wasnt a dream.

7:56 - Minnesota athlete shout-out alert! Very classy ad showing a little girl pinning up a picture of Joe Mauer, especially seeing as that's how every young girl in Minnesota considers themselves a Twins fan. Hey, the more the merrier (that's not meant as a pedophilia thing). Annnnnd it's ruined by Dane Cook. "Who would want to play the Diamondbacks right now?" I dunno. The Rockies are probably pretty jacked about it.

8:07 - Beautiful moment with Buck fawning over Casey Blake's beard. "It's just full." Made so much better by McCarver hanging his man out to dry. He reminds me of the farmers in that one episode of Family Guy.

Stewie: So, anyone seen any good movies lately?
McCarver: Nope.
Stewie: ...read any good books?
McCarver: Nope.
Stewie:...anything new with baseball?
McCarver: OH BASEBALL'S ALWAYS INTERESTING

Cabrera makes a great catch to set down the Sox and HOLY SHIT Fox goes to commercial using the song from Snakes on a Plane that features heavy hitters such as the woman from the Sounds, the dude from the All American Rejects, and the black guy from Gym Class Heroes. If there's one thing that was worth seeing in that movie, it was that sequence during the credits. Hey Buck! I can see the venom in yer eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyes!

8:12 - With the way Minnesota sports are going, I'm nearly certain that Joe Mauer, Johan Santana, Joe Nathan, Justin Morneau and Torii Hunter will all be named on the Mitchell Investigation report. With any luck, it'll only be Nick Punto. Man, this Jimmy John's veggie club is fucking delicious. Mmm... Schlling get the Sox out of the inning.

Here's something I wonder about a lot: games that are Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium on Fox are always a lot louder. Now, most people would probably say that it's because the fans are more active, but couldn't it just be that Fox turns the mics up for these games? I mean, they want to keep the myth of those teams alive, so wouldn't that be in their best interest? Someone should do some kind of decimal test, because a born Yankee fan told me at a Twins playoff game that he's never heard a fan base louder than the Twins in his life. Including NFL games.

You know what would be great? Dane Cook and Frank Caliendo fighting to the death. I don't know why everyone needs to repeat how great an impressionist Caliendo is, because that doesn't matter unless you're also funny. Also, Julio Lugo and Nick Punto should fight to the death on the undercard.

8:20 - Wow. Terrible at-bat for Lugo. Missed a hit-and-run, missed a bunt, struck out. Also, Kevin Youkilis looks like he should be fixing my dad's Chrysler.

8:26 - Buck on Youkilis - "Year in and year out, one of the most patient hitters in the game." Dude's been playing for, what, like two years? HOO BOY he wasn't patient on that swing was he?

8:34 - Fuck ass fuck fuck. Bases loaded. If Rameriez gets a hit here, it's over. Not just the game, but the series. I can call it here. I might put money on a home run. Carmona is shitting himself right now. 3-0. He's gotta throw a strike, right? You can't walk in the tying run, can you? Fuck, just did. 1-1.

8:35 - Lowell singles, 3-1 Sox. Ya know what, that's it. I'm done for now. I'll check the score to see if it gets closer later, but I can't watch a game in Boston where the Sox are winning. It's like kicking myself in the nuts. Later

Big Ten Network is for fools and liberals

For those of you who can't tell (which involves everyone and no one...can you decipher what you don't read? THIS IS WHAT WE THINK ABOUT IN COLLEGE) I'm from Minnesota. If you all know your regionally defined conferences well enough, you know that Minnesota is entrenched in Big Ten country. Also, we're, like, adjacent to Big 12 country, but no one's sure if Iowa State counts. Anyway, yeah. Big Ten. All about it here.

We're also one of the battleground states for the Big Ten Network issue - which makes it sound a lot more important than anyone should ever give it credit for. Currently, you can only get the BTN on dish providers, so we get lots of commercials with Tim Brewster's mug asking us to petition Comcast to put the channel on its basic package. Now, it's not worth asking whether or not this is insane - it's insane. There are already five sports channels here on the standard package (if you don't think golf is a sport, well, fuck you). Also, unlike Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Purdue, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, and Indiana, the U of M is located in a large metro area with professional sports, which seriously brings down the amount of interest for those who don't go (or haven't gone) to the U.

This also leads to a larger, more pervasive problem. Here at the U, sports are not a big deal. People like them, and many people get into it, but it's not like Michigan or Ohio State or Iowa or Penn State (football), Indiana (basketball), or Northwestern (Women's Lacrosse - probably). The world wouldn't stop here if sports fell off the face of the earth. This may change with Tubby Smith becoming the new basketball coach and the football team getting a new stadium, but until then, there's not going to be much enthusiasm.

And, sadly, Gopher football is only making the matter much, MUCH worse.

God, how the fuck do we lose to NORTHWESTERN? If you've read a sports blog over the last four years, you understand that Northwestern is about as perfect a target as they come - terrible teams, uniforms that feature purple, boring stadium. I mean FUCK - remember when they won the Big Ten like 10 years ago? People freaked out! I'm sure someone had a heart attack because of it. They're the dredge of the Big Ten, they're awful, they're excrement - and WE LOST TO THEM.

The point of this article is that I deeply enjoy getting mad, losing my shit, yelling everywhere, causing a scene. You name it, I freak out about it. I was all set to freak out about not getting the BTN, but now why should I? I don't need to watch the Gophers lose to Bowling Green, FAU and Northwestern. I can imagine that shit, fuckers. God damnit, Tim Brewster? Why did you do this? Is it because you know how much I like getting angry? Wait...now I'm angry! Awesome! Thanks, Tim Brewster!

I hope David Ortiz eats Manny Ramirez, or, A Long, Drawn out fuck you to Bill Simmons

As a sports fan, I have evolved significantly over the last five years. I went from someone who watched games because they were fun and exciting, and I never really followed my teams all that close (if the Twins or Bills were on, I'd watch, but unless it was do or die I wouldn't watch intently). Now, I start to watch games closer, pick up certain elements of the teams and how the games are being played. I'm certainly not to the point where I know what Joe Mauer's average with runners in scoring position is, nor do I really ever want to be. But I'm trying to become a little more attentive to detail.

One thing that has never changed about my love of sports is my appreciation for the big game. This is something that I take a great deal of pride in: if it's important in sports, I want to see it. I went through great pains to see the Padres-Rockies sudden death playoff game two weeks ago, I watched Game 7 of last year's NLCS even though I'm not a fan of either the Cardinals or the Mets. College basketball, football, boxing - I like seeing the moments when athletes transcend their sport to become something amazing, something beautiful.

My love for ESPN.com's Page 2 has coincided with this evolution of fandom. When I first started to read it, I thought it was the greatest outlet for sports journalism available to me. The articles were varied, they dealt with the fan condition, they dealt with racism and sexism and all the great and worldly things that sports could encompass. However, after the first few years my love began to wain, and I would check every once in awhile for updates, maybe read Jason Whitlock's article (before he was fired), see if Simmons was updating. Now, however, it's done, it's been finished, it's been killed.

What Page 2 has become is a lazy, glossy shadow of its former self. Though the number of writers of color has (in my best estimate) quadrupled, Tom Boyd is the only one that I enjoy reading. Jemele Hill has a mean streak to her writing, something sinister that I simply can't get behind. I've tried, Snoop Jackson, but your style is just a little too much for me. Bomani Jones, isn't awful, per say, and neither is LZ Granderson, but they just don't jump off the page at me.

Then we have the old guard, which was always (in my humble opinion) the worst part about Page 2. I've never liked Jim Caple, I've never liked Eric Neel (except when he did basketball jones, that was neat), David Flemming is bad, and same goes for Patrick Hruby and Tim Keown. They just do nothing for me. For a website that has so much potential for outside the mainstream opinions on sports, these writers simply don't do enough.

This leaves Bill Simmons, and the conclusion to the point about watching baseball I was making earlier. I've always been a Simmons fan, even though I'm firmly entrenched in the midwest, which he doesn't give a fuck about. He has a lively understanding of language, and most of his writing pops with a youthful vigor which is sincerely lacking in most sports writing. However, the shtick is just getting old. Simmons was brought in to represent the home region of ESPN, a region that had beleaguered with sadness and hardship in sports for at least 10 years at that point. The Pats never did anything, the Celtics were terrible, the Red Sox were the little brother, the Bruins were no good, they lost the Whalers - it made sense. Now, after 3 Super Bowl rings, one WS ring, two massive free agent signings for the Celtics and the abject collapse of Hockey in America, Boston is on top. They're bigger than New York. They've won. They can shut the holy fuck up about it.

What made Simmons so popular (which is the point here) is that his troubles endeared him to everyone who grew up in a sad sports town. His Red Sox teams of the early 2000s reminded me of my Timberwolves - always great, but could never bring down the big guy. Same with the Vikings. Same (a little later) with the Twins. Now, he's living in the middle of success, a success that people from smaller markets will never understand or experience because we can't spend the damn money. Sure his Sox won the series, but only because they went crazy and bought free agent after free agent before 2004. These are all money issues, but Simmons never wants to take responsibility for them - he would much rather disparage small markets for having terrible fans, cold weather, ugly women, etc., etc., etc. This all leads to today's mailbag, where he wrote:

No matter how much you love baseball, it's nearly impossible to care about the Colorado-Arizona series. You might watch it, you might enjoy it, you might even gamble on it ... but unless you're an absolute baseball nut or a Rockies/D-backs fan, how could you honestly care who wins when neither franchise is older than Jamie-Lynn Spears? It's like going to a wedding in which you don't know anything about the bride or the groom.

What about the fact that the Rockies are the hottest team in postseason baseball history, that they have an official religious affiliation, or a man who has stuck with the team for nearly 10 seasons with no playoff births and will now be playing for a shot in the World Series? What about the Diamondbacks - who, if I recall, were written off so many times this year as a pretender that they probably should have quit trying in June - making it this far with a team that has almost no holdovers from their 2001 World Series victory? (wait - do they have ANY holdovers? that might be worth looking up) What about the Diamondbacks having two of the most exciting young players in either league (Stephen Drew and Chris Young), plus the best pitcher no one seems to recognize? What about one of the most beautiful stadiums in one of the most beautiful cities in America? Or two fanbases that have never been given any credit? Or the fact that the Rockies might just make their first fucking World Series in the history of their franchise? No, you're right man. Nothing to care about here. Might as well put together your 32 plasma TVs and watch every NFL game with Hench, Sal, Lodi, Dreamy Pete, Huck, Tush, Skrape, and the rest of the gang while you all secretly wish the Yankees had made the ALCS. I can't take it anymore - I will never read a Bill Simmons piece again.

I hope David Ortiz eats Manny Ramirez.

Nick Saban: Douchebag

Watching Alabama lose to Florida State, I realize that I hate Nick Saban more than anyone else in sports. I believe this is a valid viewpoint. Why? Who cares? He sucks. He's the worst. Look at his track record:

- Wins National Championship, a truly remarkable feat.

- Goes to Miami Dolphins, a possible savior for a team much maligned with Fiedlers and Wannstedts.

- Famous for making a rookie cry during training camp.

- Forced to choose between a Running QB coming off a knee injury or a Pocket QB coming off a shoulder injury. In hindsight, he made the wrong decision.

- Somehow never learns that as a coach in the NFL you're not going to be loved unconditionally.

- Reassures everyone constantly that he will not leave Miami.

- Leaves Miami, instantly embraced by Alabama fan base that wouldn't care if Hitler was their coach as long as they won football games. Roll Tide

- Causes students to transfer because he's an asshole

- Looks like a smug fucker



How's anyone worse than him? He's a mercenary, he doesn't care about any of his fan bases, he doesn't care about his players, and he's a cash-grubbing douchebag. Sorry, this isn't an example of great journalism, I just really really hate this bastard.

Torii Hunter's taking his two I's and heading on out

There are two things I would like to say right here about Sunday's Twins game. The first is that I will miss Torii Hunter endlessly. As much as I was never able to realize it, he was my favorite player during his entire tenure, from that first newspaper article I read before his first season that was about how he had a goofy name (it was also about how Doug Meintkewicz and Johan Santana had weird names). His first full year with us was when you could see the team turn around. We weren't the Twinkies anymore. You see, this is why I was never really able to love Brad Radke; he still made me feel like we were a losing team. Same with Denny Hocking.

Torii has meant so much to this state and this team that it feels so wrong to have to lose him, and it is. We're losing Hunter because he knows he can get more money elsewhere, and that should be no reason to blame him. He's going to get paid huge bucks this offseason because 1)he's an aging centerfielder 2) he just had arguably his best offensive season and 3)he makes amazing catches all the live long day. (For a deeper explanation, please look up Gary Matthews Jr.) We won't pay him that money, no matter what he means to this team. If this were Boston or New York, there'd be riots if they let someone that meant this much go. But we have an image burned into our heads of Carl Pohlad's pockets untucked, his hands out wide and a face that says "Golly, I just don't have the cash!", so we say goodbye. I don't think you can be a real baseball fan unless you know what that feels like.

(Also, if Torii Hunter spent his career as a Yank or a Red Sock, he might be a Hall of Famer. As a Twin? No chance, even if he was/is the best defensive player of his generation. If Tim Salmon gets in I'm gonna slit his tires. HE HAS TO RUN AND DIVE BECAUSE HE'S WHITE AND SLOW.)

So I'm going to miss Torii. But almost all of these happy feelings were wiped out by Ozzie Guillen on Sunday. This is the second point: in a franchise players' last at-bat with his franchise, how do you sleep at night intentionally walking him? How do you not feel like the most evil fucker in the world. Kids at the stadium are already having a confusing and upsetting day (I would NOT want to be a parent of an 8-year-old and have to explain baseball market economics is the reason his/her favorite player has to go somewhere else) and then they see you do this? That wasn't the right play, that was gamesmenship. You're team has been mathmatically eliminated since last February, Ozzie. You just had to be a stupid son of a bitch and do that, cause everyone to feel pissed off on such a nice day. You make me puke, you stupid prick. I hate to end this way, but it was the bitches of bitch moves.

Today should be joyous in my world. As luck would have it, I was able to transfer out of a terrible situation at the University of Minnesota-Morris into the much more amicable Twin Cities campus well passed the normal transfer deadline. And don't get me wrong, this makes me very happy; I know longer hate everything about my life. Which is good.
However, just as I'm trying to enjoy this wonderful new development, the entire Minnesota sports scene decides to implode around me. In two swift moves, the Timberwolves decided that they were going to start the infamous five-year rebuilding plan and the Twins gave away one of the only people on their team who can hit. We now officially have the golden sombrero - four teams who have no logical chance of winning anything anytime soon.
Both teams got it half right - both of them needed to make a trade, and they needed to trade those specific people. However, further instilling the idea that we are a backwards sports state, we accidentally forgot to get anything in return. The T-wolves received one quality player, a bunch of crap players, one pick they shouldn't have traded in the first place and another that's lottery protected, meaning it's worthless. The Twins once again showed their absolute and complete lack of balls by trading away their best middle infielder for for a double-a catcher (you know, something we really need) and a single-a outfielder.
So now we got nothing. Everything's over. There are no championships in the future, no playoffs in the future, no fun or winning or anything. It's the worst since the mid-90's in Minnesota to be a sports fan.

2007 Open Championship

There was a simple, eloquent beauty to the close of the Open at Carnoustie yesterday. Inside the perpetually grey skies and bright yellow scoreboards, the tight out of bounds fences and the golden grass walkways, there seemed to exist another world, a world left behind. Stone gathered centuries before any of us line the Barry Burn, holding up ground forged into its' modern image by Old Tom Morris, slant at angles that menace but still provide the smallest amount of hope. It looks as if ABC simply sent us a long-lost tape from decades ago, and we watch like it were new.

Watching Padrig Harrington and Sergio Garcia battle for a championship that us American's tend to treat as the "easy" major in golf created an atmosphere that comes out purely in major golf, no different than a contentious Masters or U.S. Open. What elevated it passed these standard examples was that vicious Carnoustie, with all it's looping greens and jagged fairways. It's greenside bunkers with the five foot walls, it's 251-yard par 3 17th. All this leading to the golf war zone, the 18th, "home", and the ghost of 1999 preventing any ease of mind.

Of course, in 1999, this was a different course. A 24-year span between Open's obviously made the caretakers of the ancient course feel like there was something to prove, causing modifications that would create a feral beast of a golf course. The rough was raised to nearly knee-height, the fairways were thinned. On some holes, layup landing areas were 9 feet wide. Weather conditions helped no one, as coastal wind ripped the golfers for most of the week. To all involved, this was a prime example of making a golf course overly difficult in the modern era; not many golf courses have psychological terms named for them, nor do they drive professional golfers to tears. Carnoustie was eased slightly, allowing golfers to have a punchers chance this time around.

However the Beast played this week, it went out the window when Padrig Harrington, nursing his one-stroke lead, was led Home. Seeing the driver coming out of his bag, the quiet gasps of Mike Tirico illustrated the answer to a great question of humanity: we do not learn from mistakes that are not our own. Somewhere in our mind, lost amidst the hours of memory footage of Jean Van de Velde removing his shoes to wade in the Barry Burn, is a silent majority that will not let us pull out the 4-iron. It's different. Harrington knew it was different. And when he whacked it into the Burn, we all knew it was exactly the same.

So we watched the wayward ball stumble off the footbridge into the water, mere paces short of relieving Harrington of a spectacular failure. It pocked off the stone, and into the Burn, about five yards past where Van de Velde's drive went eight years ago. He judged his play as Garcia teed off behind up - or more correctly, over him - on the 17th. Now a stroke down on the hole, his only option was to whack it hard and close...leading him to another visit with the Burn. His boyish face looked bamboozled, hoodwinked, startled, lost, dead. He made his double bogey, knocking it up and down, and walked to his waiting son, who leaped into his arms with a sad smile.

It was at this point when the ghost of Jean Van de Velde awoke at Carnoustie. Van de Velde is still alive, of course, but the ghost of his championship body walks Carnoustie. The young frenchman, so coy and smart with his play all week, so stiff and numb at the end, showed his head. Van de Velde has said the loss didn't affect him too much, that it was "just another round of golf." And it was true; the man who would have cared about such things remains at Home, wondering just how everything could have gone so wrong.

He saw Padrig, and what had the makings of a colossal failure. A failure that lacked the panache of his distruction, but something huge all the same. Garcia came to the tee and whacked it strong with an iron. He drifted his second into a greenside bunker, but that was fine; he still needed only par to silence the critics and become a champion. The ghost saw his bunker shot, a marvelous play that put the Spaniard and his belly putter feet from glory.

Now, this is not a haunting ghost, mind you. He was, like his original host, a very even-handed soul. He contained no ill will towards the other golfers, or even the course. Simply that one moment where everything had gone wrong and had inadvertently chained him here. He knew what this did to people; he saw the look in Harrington's eyes after his double, and saw himself eight years ago. Numb, dead, lost in a game he had mastered. As Garcia hit what looked to be the winning putt, the ghost walked to the cup and caught the ball just as it were to fall in. He knew Harrington would win in the playoff; he also knew that Harrington had waited longer for this championship. He dropped the ball outside the cup and let it roll a few feet away, crumpling Garcia.

Of course, Harrington won. The ghost of Home were with him on this day.

The End's Not Near, It's Here

In a world where sports are covered with the ferocity, there is no savoring a victory. A win comes, and immediately the talk switches from what the team/player did now to what they will do next week, or next year, or whatever. Predictions that failed miserably for the pundits don't deter them at all from telling us what will happen next year, and why. This system is most at fault with baseball, mostly because once the World Series ends everyone comes out to make the bold prediction that the Yankees and the Red Sox will be good, Skip Bayless thinks of a new nickname that demeans someone, and the cycle of life continues.

What bothers me most about this system is not the fact that it exists, for the sports world can only take so much time digesting the past. The real issue is the use of these seemingly reflection-based periods to lash out at the team that just became victorious, especially if that team is small market. The San Antonio Spurs are a great example, as most pundits can barely catch their breath after "congratulating" them on their victory before decrying the notion that they're a dynasty. No one believes that they are a dynasty, even though they've been the dominant team for the better part of this decade. Everyone's quick to call them boring, even though no one ever seems to back this claim with any real defense, especially when the team features two reckless slashers like Parker and Ginobli, and the most dominant big man of our time. Sadly, this is old hat for most of the sports media.

However, the funny part of this general injustice is how most of these folks choose to define dynasty. A fellow on Jim Rome's television show this afternoon said that, for a team to become a dynasty, it would need to win at least three in a row. Now, I wanted to confirm this, so I went to my composition notebook looking for a dynasty conversion chart, which would certainly help to prove mathematically whether or not this team was great. And you know what? There was no chart! How could Mead be so behind the times! Everyone knows the defined meanings for dynasties, superstars, big-game quarterbacks, character guys, and every other sports qualifier known to man. It's simple physics, really.

There is no way to qualify this as a dynasty, and anyone who says otherwise is wistfully trying to explain the unexplainable. Things like dynasties come into focus after time of reflection and the sweet, hazy glow of history have been glazed onto the team. My gut tells me that most people who argue against the Spurs being a dynasty do so because the team doesn't feel like a dynasty. That's because we haven't had years of Top 50 shows, masturbatory articles and books, and massive punditry to canonize it yet. Instant historians will always learn that turning to the present to get their fix will never do, because nothing will ever look as good as what came before it. Glory days don't happen, they're made.

The same people will argue that they remember what the Bulls/Celtics/Lakers dynasties felt like, and this doesn't feel the same. I can only speak to the Bulls, but they felt exactly like Spurs do right now: they scare the hell out of me when they play the Wolves, and you understand that when they come to town or are on TV they will more than likely win and handily. What team isn't scared when they see the Spurs coming up? If anything should define dynasties, it should be the amount of fear that one is struck with when possibly facing that opponent.

Those who say that the Spurs had no true opponent during their great run? Please. The Mavs, Suns, Rockets, Lakers, and Kings have all been very good during this time, and they are all in the same division. Two of them are in the same state. Also, in a league that has so many teams, for a single entity to remain dominant for so long is something that sounds fairly dynastic to me.

So, can we drop the semantics, and focus on baseball? Thanks.

Running Diary (sort of) of the U.S. Open

9:36 am - God it's early. Can't sleep, so decided to do running log of U.S. Open. Today we're at beautiful Oakmont Golf Course in Pennsylvania. And by beautiful I mean completely unnecessary and ridiculous. Any course that plays like this for professional golfers should be destroyed. Anyway, we'll see how far we can go with this.

9:38 am - Tied for the best moment so far: the guy who holed his second shot...in a hole in the practice green...that was a part of the same green as number nine, which led our rules expert telling us that the rule is "play it as it lies" (bitchiest rule in sports, easily), and the fact that Sergio Garcia is 7 over before the turn. He's the Andy Roddick of golf.

9:42 am - Well, ESPN is broken right now, so i get to watch NFL coverage on First Take, formerly known as Cold Pizza. I hate this. Alot. It's June, we shouldn't be talking about football. Also, just found out that the Bills starting DT wont play for us this year. Stupid Techmo Super Bowl.

9:45 am - Back to golf, just in time to see Retief Goosen blow a put and Ernie Els stop a chip long as the announcer warns him not to go long. Cut then straight to Geoff Ogilvy and Monty. That's four foreigners in a row if you're keeping track.

9: 48 am - Jesus Christ! The rough behind the second hole looks like it belongs to some white trash family. How is this fun? Does anyone look forward to this course, or do people just start praying in January?

9:50 - more technical difficulties, so back to First Take with...Skip Bayless! My god I hate Skip Bayless. No one gets more indignant quicker, no one relies on gimmicks and stupid nicknames faster. He also seems to conveniently criticize every high profile black athlete that comes by...oh right, so does everyone on ESPN. My bad.

9:55 - Still difficulties, He Got Game and Gilmore Girls both start in five minutes. This might become a very different running log.

10 am - and now FX is out! Get ready to hear about the Gilmore Girls wacky adventures in Stars Hollow!

This AmEx commercial forgoes the necessity for creativity by showing FAMOUS PEOPLE! LOOK IT'S ELLEN AND ANDRE AGASSI IN THE SAME ROOM! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Wow, Milla Jovavich and Rosario Dawson are in this movie? Sorry U.S. Open. That was fun and all, but this takes precedent.

There is so little better in this world than a sweep of the White Sox.

The way that we won the games should have been enough - comebacks galore, scores of hits (47??!!!), great defense, a walk-off walk. But that wasn't everything, not by a long shot. The best of this gorgeous, beautiful sweep came from what it did to the team. You could see them waking up to climb from the doldrums that the first two months of the season represented. It is our annual late May tradition - we finally decided to stop hibernating, and start playing some damn ball.

We have a ways to go to become top of the pops in the best division in baseball. As much as we came back to help our pitching, it would help if: Baker could calm down, Slowey could descend from the heavens and Santana would stop giving up so many home runs so I could stop hyperventilating. We left an absolutely obscene number of runners on base throughout the season, although that could be a credit to how much offense we were producing (I repeat - 4-fucking-7 hits??!?!??!?!) But questions can't come too much right now. The point is, we rolled. We bloody rolled against our hated rival and, more importantly, we finally seem to be showing some life.

For all of my pre-season pessimism, it's hard to not be happy right now. And we don't even have Mauer back yet.

...

EEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

The End of Roddick

Of all the early summer sporting events that draw constant attention, my favorite is the French Open. Partially because of how pretty France looks in the setting shots, partially because of how bizarre and unnatural the clay surface appears, and just a little because of how much fun it is to hear the sidejudges call out "egalite!" What is less fun, however, is the more recent tradition of watching Andy Roddick continue to lose before getting out of the numbered rounds. He has never made it past the third round at Rolland Garros, and has now been eliminated in the first round two years in a row. We all know the rap sheet on this guy by now: hasn't won a Grand Slam since 2003, has only won one Grand Slam, can't come through in the big match, can't beat the best in the game.

So why do we still care?

Any experience with me will tell you that I generally like to stand up for the athletes that the media constantly batters. This tendency exists, however, only because I often see the media criticizing players without warrant. For Mr. Roddick, the charges thrown against him are almost always valid. As with Michelle Kwan (another one of my mortal enemies), most people love Roddick even though he has done so little to earn it. In all fairness, Kwan has done more in her career (and that is saying something).

For the better part of a decade in the 90's (and for periods of time before then), America had a very stoked ego in terms of tennis dominance. While Sampras and Agassi strolled the courts with an aura of nearly assured victory, we as a country could smile at our champions of a sport that we really don't care about. Winning at tennis became almost second nature to most of us, like breathing or walking. Now, as all of our champions are retired and Sportscenter has almost dropped any tennis highlights from its programming, we stand as a nation without a tennis identity. Roddick was once championed as the next great wonder in American tennis, but it is obvious that he has become anything but. He hits his backhands with all the confidence of a drunk frathouse rat trying to convince the police that she looked way older than 16. He looks petulant and boyish when the calls aren't going his way. He coasts way too much for someone who can't win. Also, in what may be the most telling part of his psyche, he takes every loss in stride nowadays. He could care less about his losses, or about the tradition of American tennis that he carries on his back.

With no end in sight for Roddick's woes, I've officially given up. I don't care what he does anymore; he 's worthless. He has achieved Kwan status in my mind, always smiling and cheerful, but never able come through when it really truly matters. He will never become the tennis player he should have been or the player we hoped he'd be or the player that matches the success of those gone by. He's a loser. And that's that.

Recap

I haven't been able to pay close attention to the sports world the past few weeks, what with finals and the end of the semester. However, this seems to be the gist of what's going on:

Dirk: Done.

Yankess: Hilarious.

Justin Verlander: Smoked.

Barry Bonds: Tapdancing all over history.

Sammy Sosa: Hitting homers and nothing else (which is bad for a designated hitter, apparently)

Brady Quinn: Aww.

Brady Quinn's girlfriend: Mmmmmhmmmm

Raiders: Got rid of a headcase. For their trouble, got another headcase.

Browns: There's a plane crash in your future.

Vikings: Cautiously optimistic.

Bills: Ya know, if you had just kept Mcgahee, you could have used that first pick on something else. You know, just saying.

ESPN

"It's days like this that make us wonder if sports really matter."

This statement (and many like it) has been said dozens of times over the last two days, as people react to the shootings at Virginia Tech. It is also heard whenever there are major tragedies in this country. It speaks to the thin line that sports lives on as an escape from reality; the average fan uses sports as a way to escape from politics, society, and dozens of other important daily occurrences. However, what is it also seems to say is something that gets addressed very rarely in this world: are sports too important?

It's a valid enough question. Sports these days make billions of dollars from fan attendance, advertisements, television deals, and so on. Should something that boils down to "shooting/running/hitting/kicking an object into another object" be of such worth in the modern world? Should someone really be getting paid anywhere near a million dollars to throw a ball?

However applicable, these are ultimately trivial questions. People will keep buying tickets, jerseys, shoes, hats, and everything else they can get their hands on from their favorite team, and so the money will continue to flow. Perhaps the better question is less about the sport itself, and more about the coverage it receives. Thanks to ESPN, sports is only rivaled by politics in sheer levels of punditry. Every visible moment in sports is scrutinized, analyzed and reanalyzed until everyone knows every conceivable aspect of every play ever. Hours are spent waxing on whether or not someone might be drafted, or someone might be signed, or someone might be hurt. And because these are mostly sports writers we're talking about, the opinions that get endlessly regurgitated on show after show tend to be identical, with the only discourse coming from those who are bored from the lack of discourse and feel the need to spice things up a little bit (Around the Horn is COMPLETELY built around the idea of making an argument, whether you believe it or not).

So why do people who cover sports constantly wonder if sports are that important in the face of tragedy? Because they're worried. Their livelihoods are at stake. The local sports writers will always remain; I'd be surprised if Sid Hartman hears Virginia Tech and doesn't automatically think about their offensive scheme. However, on a national scale, there simply is not that much to talk about. Unless a player makes an offensive comment or somebody says something insulting towards another player or a coach calls out the referees, basically all that is available to talk about is what is Inside the Lines. And that can't really fill a whole days' worth of programming (ask ESPNEWS)

The best example of this mentality permeating sports media happened a few years ago at a journalism workshop I attended. Throughout the days at this workshop, we would attend seminars taught by certain industry professionals. One of the last seminars we ever attended was about sports journalism. This, of course, was particularly exciting because 1) IT'S SPORTS and 2) it was being taught by a woman. However, my initial excitement died when she started to talk about how sports coverage wasn't about scores anymore; it was about the people behind the games. It was about knowing what and who these people were more than what they were producing on the field. She even went so far to insinuate that those who read sports coverage for the scores and stats were a dying breed.

This is something that I have a fundamental problem with. It is this sort of analysis of character that turns the possibility of one of the most momentous events in American sports history happening this season into 2nd-tier news. Sure, Barry Bonds will soon cement his place as one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, but he's such a jerk! Phrases like "clubhouse killer" and "bad character guy" get thrown around with such reckless abandon that you'd think someones personality affected his ability to swing the bat or catch a ball.

It would help if they represented multiple points of view, but that also never happens. The best example of this would be the Pacers-Pistons fan brawl a few years ago. The next day, in response to the attacks, the correct idea would have been measured responses about how no one made the correct decision. Instead, what happened was all three panelists - Greg Anthony, Stephen A. Smith and Tim Legler - completely and only attacked the fans for their actions. You had THREE PEOPLE! Couldn't you have convinced ONE to say "hey, maybe running into the stands a punching people was worse than throwing a beer". To hear these three grown men essentially give the "they started it!" excuse was absolutely inexcusable. ESPN is less fair and balanced that FOX News.

What does all this add up to? ESPN makes its bread and butter by banking that people are willing to shape reality around something that, at its core, is meant to be an escape from reality. After finally admitting this to myself, I'm going to make a concentrated effort to watch less ESPN. I think my life will be better for it.

Cricket Is Scary

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/6555009.stm
Go on, I dare you to try and understand a word of that.

Waaah, it's wet and cold!

I am slowly being converted into a baseball fan. It started with my manager at my high school job being a die-hard Red Sox fan and turning me on to the sport, and continues now with my roommate, a die-hard Twins fan, turning me on to the Twinkies. It's gotten to the point where I do my best to watch every Twins fan I can, though I am still learning all the goofy rules and terms that go along with a sport.

However, even with my growing appreciation for the "American past-time", I still cannot ever see it moving above football, lacrosse, or college basketball on my list of sporting priorities. It's not that I think baseball players are less athletic (although one does have to question how someone like David "Boomer" Wells can be considered an athlete...) or less talented. I just cannot become passionate about a sport that is afraid of a little cold or wet weather.

When you think of famous NFL games, some of the top spots belong to games that have been played in ridiculous terrible weather. The Rams and the Vikings squaring off in the "Mud Bowl", the Packers and Cowboys playing in the Ice Bowl, the Bears and Eagles in The Fog Bowl, etc. etc. However, it seems baseball players refuse to play in any sort of bad weather at all.

So far, 17 baseball games have been called in the infant stages of the MLB season. I can somewhat understand snow; it's pretty hard to see an all-white spheroid amongst a crap ton of snowflakes. But rain? Sorry you don't wanna get mud on your pretty uniforms. And don't get me started on canceling a game cause it's too cold. Put on a sweater you freaking pansies.

Au stade du Twins

Some thoughts on the newly released drawings of the Twins stadium:

• It looks really, really nice. I love the idea of putting an entrance behind the actual outfield table area. I also love the possibility of sitting on the top of a parking structure and watching the game.
  
• Glad to see the right field wall will still be raised, although I wish it would be as high as the baggie. Also, if they could still find a way to make it out of old trash bags, that would be killer.
• This looks to be a hitters park - what with the lack of deep foul ground and clearly defined alleys. This should make for a fun home run derby.
  
• I never liked the look of parks with an unrounded warning track. Can't we just make the grass rounded? It bothers the living hell out of me, I mean it.
  
• I'm not quite sure what to think of the outside. It looks like a mixture of something cool and of an airport concourse. I think it will work in the same city with the Guthrie, however.
  
• I don't care how cold it is, I would give anything to be there on opening day.
  

Tonight's Twins game, abridged version:

Carlos Silva: Ouch, it's kinda hot out here. (note: I never doubted you, Carlos. JK BFF)

Cuddy: The first time always feels so right

Juan Rincon: Okay well I think I'm just going to come out here and pitch OH NOOOOOOOO!

Joe Nathan: le sigh

Carl Crawford: (runs to third, gets lead runner thrown out) Oh no! (runs back to second, gets self thrown out) Oh no! (cries)

Torii Hunter: Your shame is funny to me.

Morneau: No one said I had to work overtime this week! Oh fuck this.

Fin

Does this mean I'm pretentious?

Look at me Ma, I'm part of the "blogosphere"!
Did I spell that right? I'm usually pretty good at made-up internet words.
My first post will be short, and sweet:
If Alex and I disagree, I'm right. The End.

Standing Up for Barry

By now, most people know about the plan to celebrate Jackie Robinson's 60th anniversary by having various players wear No. 42 on April 15th. The number was retired in 1997 to celebrate his 50th anniversary. The number will be worn by various African-American players for each team. It is a classy, tasteful way to honor such an important figure in baseball. I am very excited that both Torii Hunter and first base coach Jerry White will be wearing it for the Twins on Sunday.

Now, if there was only a way a sports writer could ruin such a nice gesture with personal prejudice...

Oh, that's right. There's a reason most Page 2 writers exist.

Normally, we here at the BKHFH are big fans of ESPN.com's Page 2 - they're one of the few venues where creative, thoughtful and emotional sports writing seems to come in bunches. Jemele Hill is still sort of new, but she takes some big chances that tend to pay off. Bill Simmons is great. DJ Gallo and Paul Lukas are personal faves.

The rest, however, we can take or leave.

Jim Caple is generally okay because of the gratuitous Minnesota references (a guaranteed ticket to our heart), but sometimes he gets a little...off in our opinion. Scoop Jackson is the epitome of hit and miss. Pearlman, Keown and Neel are generally either browsed or skipped. We know what we like from Page 2, and those three writers either stay too negative or too Outside the Lines to garner our full appreciation.

These were all known going into Pearlman's article today, which features a headline of "Bonds Shouldn't Wear No. 42" on Page 2's main page. However, with a headline like that, I at least have to look at the article - the Barry Bonds v. Media battle is still endlessly compelling to me. I know the general sentiment against Bonds that lives in most ESPN writers, with Jim Caple's insane homerun king tale (requires ESPN Insider) being the sites' Sgt. Peppers. But the Pearlman article takes a whole different angle towards hating Mr. Bonds - criticizing his actions as a black ambassador to the game.

There are a few different problems I have with this article. The first has to do with the section about Bonds never helping a black rookie teammate, ignoring black fans and doing a disservice by not visiting the Negro League Hall of Fame after being invited several times. While these are all fair points, do any of these make him unworthy of wearing the sacred number? They all point to a bad guy who is kinda selfish, but Bonds is still the most accomplished black baseball player in modern history. In fact, early in Bonds' career, he was a contact hitter who stole bases - a style of play that was a hallmark of Robinson. I would hope that sports haven't evolved to a point where personality is more important that playing ability.

The second is Pearlman's criticism of Bonds support of Republican Governor Pete Wilson. Granted, Wilson's track record on racial issues is not enviable or even respectable. But my question is WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BASEBALL?! Who cares who Barry Bonds supports in the political realm? If we want to look at this in a scrutinizing light, shouldn't we support Bonds for supporting the candidate he believes in? This is a free country, chock-full of democracy, right? The most Robinson did during his career as an ambassador for black America was play baseball. Why should Bonds be held to a higher standard?

The final argument tossed out by Pearlman is that Bonds showed no respect towards those pioneers who came before him by taking steroids to pass the likes of Reggie Jackson and (soon enough) Hank Aaron. I don't really see this as being that big of a deal. I'm sorry, I just don't. He's still never failed a steroids test, never received a suspension based on drug tests, and the worst descretion on his record is a failed amphetamines test last year (which- according to many baseball analysts- is pretty damn widespread throughout the league) . If he did take steroids, he's certainly not the only one-he just happened to have a more fully developed swing than those others who took the drugs, which helps hit home runs just as much as strength.

I don't think, as Pearlman suggests, that Bonds owes anyone anything. He isn't an ambassador to the game. He isn't a future spokesperson or cult of personality. He is simply an excellent black baseball player.

If that's not honoring Jackie Robinson, I don't know what is.

No Pacman Fever :(

So today the NFL suspended Pacman Jones and Chris Henry, the former for the entire season and the latter for half. I must say, what a wonderful decision on the part of the NFL. Truly Roger Goodell is showing that he is the new sherrif in town, and he is not going to take no guff from no one. Good show! Umm...I...er...

Hmm...

I'm sorry. Give me a moment.

Ya know what? I don't care. There we go. Right out there. I do NOT care about the indecscretions of players off the field. I try reeeeally hard to care that someone decided to "make it rain" at a strip club, and that these incidents led to three people getting shot. Off the field, yes, it's terrible. If Jones had anything to do with the shooting (especially if he ordered the shots to be fired), then he should be punished severely.

Except he should be punished severely by the law.

Today on Sportscenter, Chris Mortensen made the argument that this policy is simply concurrent with the policies of almost every other organization and business around. To be sure, most employers hold the right to terminate an employee if said employee is charged with a felony, just like universities have the right to expel students who get in similar trouble. However, the employee rights handbook at Target should have nothing to do with the NFL players policy because it's different. Most jobs don't involve the need for a high level of skill to perform the necessary duties. The NFL does. Those businesses can plug just about any Tom, Dick or Pacman into their roles and be on their way. I'd really like to see anyone off the street return four touchdowns in an NFL season.

I understand why these issues are becoming more prevalent: Sports have gone from being covered in the daily paper to having 24-hour news cameras pointed towards it. Every move is analyzed and commented upon, and then bloggers get to have the fun of picking it all apart. I don't necessarily believe more viewpoints to be a bad thing, but I do believe that once sports loses that separation from reality it has lost something terribly valuable, and we no longer can have fun watching our favorite team.

Rather than "What's the score?", all we will ask is "What's that guy getting paid?"

Ponson era!

I've missed a lot in my life. High school was mostly boredom for me, sadly NOT filled with naked girls, illegal drugs and drag races around Dead Man's Curve like those TV shows would have you believe. God damnit, I never even had a chance to have Marissa shoot my brother. I'm getting upset just thinking about it.

With the Twins, however, I almost never miss. I watch every game I could possibly care about. Last year, when Johan struck out all kinds of Red Sox and Kubel hit a Grand Slam to win the game in extras? Yeah, I watched on TV. When Morneau hit that little Bush League single to beat Mariano Rivera? I was there. Saw Kirby get hit in the eye and his press conference. Erickson's no-hitter. Wells' drunken perfect game.

Sadly, I did not see Sidney Ponson's first start. This was heartbreaking for two reasons: 1) This would signal the official start of the Matt Garza era and 2) There is nothing more watchable than the meteoric fall of a sports star. I must admit, I'm a sucker for watching old glories fall flat on their face, to the point where everyone wants them to succeed just because it's so sad. It happened last year with Rondell White. He seems like he might be back on-line, but he was terrible for the first few months last year. The 400 bar in Minneapolis had a "Domestic beer at Rondell White's batting average" deal last year, and until about mid-July it was a really good deal.

Anyway, I had hopes. I'm a Twins fan. Of course I'm going to hope. I really wanted him to walk out there, put his whole body behind every pitch, maybe strike out some of the big guns for the Yanks. There would have been a huge, loving smile on my face if I looked up his line and saw something akin to 6 innings, 4 runs, 6 hits. That would have made me smile.

Of course, his actual line made me smile, too. Just in a mean way.