Sunday, July 15, 2018

A FAMILY MATTER


                I discovered Sports Illustrated magazine early in its life and was a faithful subscriber for, maybe, 40 years. Back in the day, when the likes of Gilbert Rogin, Dan Jenkins and Curry Kirkpatrick wrote for it, it epitomized good writing in the sports field, albeit often with a smirky slant. Being a magazine it almost always weighed in on events well after they’d occurred, but usually found ways to add something to their discussion and was well worth whatever it cost.

                About 15 years ago, though, I fell out of the SI habit, and stopped reupping. So did many others in our post-literate, sports-saturated age, and the magazine shrunk and began appearing less often. It got cheaper, too, so cheap that two or three years back it sent me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I mailed in my check and the mag started coming. It hasn’t stopped, even though I can’t remember writing another check.

                I mostly leaf through the SIs I get, not caring much about the subject matter, but every third or fourth issue contains a piece I’m glad I read. One such is in the issue of July 2-9. By the excellent Greg Bishop, it’s titled “The Search For Why.” It’s about the recent suicide of Tyler Hilinski, a football quarterback at Washington State University, and his family’s search to make sense of an act that often seems senseless.

                If you’ve read about Hilinski’s suicide it’s probably because of the news that his autopsy revealed evidence in his brain of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. It’s a condition that has turned up in the brains of many former football players. It can produce chronic and debilitating headaches and Alzheimer-like mental confusion and memory loss, and sometimes leads to suicide. Hilinski, though, was no veteran National Football League battering ram but a lean and agile 21-year-old whose football history included only the youth and high-school sport in his native La Verne, California, near Los Angeles, and a handful of appearances as a sophomore backup QB in college. Bishop wrote that the young man never had a verified concussion, although he suspected he might have suffered one in a practice as a WSU freshman. His family said he’d shown none of the physical symptoms associated with CTE.

                A further wrinkle is that Hilinski’s younger brother, Ryan, was a talented high-school quarterback who soon will begin his freshman year playing football at the University of South Carolina. The Hilinski family’s decision to allow Ryan to play makes up a large part of the article.

                Underlying the piece is the quandary many parents like the Hilinskis face because of how little is known about CTE. First diagnosed 1940s as the “punch-drunk syndrome,” and thought to be associated mainly with boxing, the condition was tied directly to football in the early 2000s by the work of Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian-born pathologist in Pittsburgh who investigated the untimely deaths of ex-Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster and, later, another former Steeler.

             That caused a splash, but research into the condition’s causes and consequences was delayed by the NFL’s attempts first to discredit Omalu (dramatized in the 2015 movie “Concussion,” starring Will Smith) and then to steer studies away from blaming the sport. While the football-CTE link now is firmly established, as well as is the fact that less-than-concussion-level head injuries can contribute to it, it’s still not possible to identify CTE brain patterns in living humans, determine at what levels symptoms kick in, or know which types of individuals are susceptible to it and which aren’t. Many young suicides have no history of brain trauma, so Tyler Hilinksi’s action may have had nothing to do with football.

                The article paints the Hilinski family as an affluent and educated one; dad Mark founded a software company and mom Kym is a lawyer. The parents do not look to sports as a “way out” of poverty or stilted ambition for their children; their oldest son, Kelly, is a medical student about to become a physician. The three boys played musical instruments and engaged in various sports as kids, assertedly not pushed in any one direction.

 Kym Hilinski said she’s always viewed her sons’ football playing with trepidation. The couple is aware that if genetics play a role in CTE susceptibility, son Ryan is more likely than most to be harmed. If he were 10 years old “he wouldn’t play football because it’s too scary for me,” she admits.

In the modern way, however, the Hilinskis left the decision to Ryan, who is almost 18, and he’s decided to play, partly because he loves and game and partly as a tribute to Tyler. “I’m going to do everything that Tyler wanted to do with football,” he told Bishop. “I’m going to do that to honor him.”

I’m sure that some other parents, reading the article, will come to a different conclusion. Kids today have many sports alternatives that don’t involve the constant bang-bang of football; ones who like it rough can take up wrestling, whose physical contact is noncranial. In the last few years more of us spectators now wince at rather than applaud the frequent hard hits of the gridiron sport. If it will be difficult to watch Ryan Hilinski play for South Carolina without that reaction, imagine what it will be like for the Hilinskis.

Sunday, July 1, 2018

NEWS & VIEWS


                NEWS: PHOENIX SUNS LAND NO. 1 NBA DRAFT PICK

                VIEW: BIG DEAL, MAYBE

                The most-celebrated basketball player in my adopted home city of Phoenix, Arizona, has yet to score a point or, even, bounce a ball in the uniform of his new team. That, however, hasn’t stopped the press and public hereabouts from obsessing over DeAndre Ayton, the way they have for several months already.

                The team “earned” the right to select Ayton by conscientiously compiling the NBA’s worst won-lost mark (21-61) last season, then converting its 25% chance for the top pick in last April’s draft lottery. That culminated a three-year Suns’ run of losing on purpose, the object of which was to collect the favorable draft choices that might end a playoff drought, which now has lasted for eight seasons. For better or worse, that’s the way things are done in our pro major leagues these days.

 Young Mr. Ayton oned and doned last season down the road at the U. of Arizona in Tucson, thus qualifying as something of a local even enough he was born and raised in the Bahamas.  He’s an athletic seven-footer who looks the part of a basketball-team savior, and eventually may play that role. But such things don’t always turn out as planned.

 His addition gives the Suns a dynamic-looking, three-player “core” of top player/prospects, also including Devin Booker, the 13th pick of the 2015 draft, and Josh Jackson, the 4th pick in 2017. Trouble is, Ayton is just 19 years old and Booker and Jackson both are 21. Add the 20-year-olds Marquese Chriss and Dragan Bender, their 2016 first-round draft choices (Nos. 4 and 8) and you have a lineup that would be young for a college team, much less one in the world’s best professional league.

The chancy nature of the draft is best illustrated by the experience of the Philadelphia 76ers, who picked first in both 2016 and last year. Their ’16 No. 1, Ben Simmons, didn’t play as a rookie because of injuries, and their ‘17 prize, Markelle Fulz, appeared in just 14 games his first year for the same reason. Further, Joel Embiid, their 2014 first choice and third pick overall, missed two full years and most of a third before showing up for good last season. It’s not wishing Ayton any bad luck to point out that the same fate could befall him.

Or he could be mediocre, the way Chriss and Bender have been in their two seasons in the league. Or a knucklehead, like the talented but technical-foul-prone Jackson might be. Until they prove otherwise, the Suns will continue to exemplify this old joke:

“What do you call a good, young NBA team?”

“An also-ran.”

NEWS: BASEBALLS FLY FARTHER THAN THEY USED TO, BUT THEY’RE NOT “JUICED”

VIEW: HMM

You may have missed it but Major League Baseball in May came out with a report from a study by a panel of 10 scientists (physicists and such) that looked into why home runs per team jumped to 1.26 a game last season from .86 in 2014, a truly outlandish increase of 46%. The group’s conclusion was that improvements in the ball-manufacturing process got the credit/blame, rather than playing-field changes or any deliberate plot to make balls livelier.

“A change in the aerodynamic properties” of the balls “reduced drag for given launch conditions,” the panel wrote. The likely causes of this was a better centering of the rubber pill at the heart of each ball and a general improvement in ball-making that produced a rounder sphere that would travel farther. The jump was “not due to a livelier, ‘juiced’ ball or any change in batter/pitcher behavior,” the scholars wrote.

So okay¸ let’s discount the fact that more hitters swing for the fences these days against more pitchers that throw in the 95-100 mph range. What physics I know tells me that the faster a ball comes in the faster it will come out when struck, but my background in the subject is meager. Let’s also throw out some hitters’ changes in swing angle to create more fly balls, some of which leave the parks.  But how about the also-well-known fact that chicks dig the long ball? Until that changes I’ll remain dubious about any juicing disclaimers from MLB.

Incidentally, the report also pointed out that for some years now all baseballs used in Major League games have been made in Costa Rica, under the Rawlings label. Keep that in mind the next time you hear discussions about what the world is like, tradewise.

NEWS: SOME YANKS CRY ‘VIVA MEXICO’ IN THE WORLD CUP

VIEW: WHY NOT?

Landon Donovan, the U.S.’s best international soccer player ever, caught some flak a few days ago by saying that, with the U.S. not in the competition, he was rooting for Mexico to succeed in the World Cup that’s now unfolding. The country is our biggest hemispheric rival in the sport so why boost it? the flak shooters argued.

To that I say phooey. If ever a country needed a boost it’s Mexico. The folks down there are caught in a drugs war that’s worse than most armed conflicts and stuck geographically between a northern neighbor that once regarded them fondly but now abuses them daily and a bunch of crime-ridden banana republics to the south. They produce peppy music and a tasty, spicy cuisine. What’s not to like?

Alas, from here Mexico’s championship hopes look less than bright. They kicked off their World Cup bid by shocking Germany, the defending champ and world No. 1, and then won their second game, but with advancement on the line got their butts kicked by Sweden and made the round of 16 only because South Korea also upset Germany. Big-time improvement will be needed for “El Tri” to beat Brazil in a “knockout” game Monday (7/2). But hey! Stranger things have happened, like them and S. Kor. beating Germany.