I don’t know about you but I can’t remember getting much out of school. I had a good-enough time, I guess, and escaped more or less unscathed, but can’t recall any teacher doing or saying much that struck a chord. That led to my belief that school mostly is a place where kids get together with other kids, from whom they learn. The continuing national hysteria over education goes down easier with that in mind.
However (you knew there’d be one), one line from my years at Roosevelt High on Chicago’s great Northwest Side has stayed with me. It was uttered by Captain Seabury, the school’s band director, whose military title, which everyone used, stemmed from his WWI service.
I was thoroughly unmusical but encountered the droll captain in a freshman study hall he monitored. Sometimes apropos and sometimes not, he’d ask us kids “Do you know what you know?”
Now as then, it’s an excellent question. Much of what rattles around in our brains is garbage, the residue of stereotypes, wishful thinking and downright misinformation. Along with the few actual facts we’ve managed to absorb, it’s all mixed together into the goo that makes us the lovable creatures we are.
The sub-world of sports, my usual focus of discourse, is not immune to conceptual distortion; in fact, a case can be made that its conventional wisdom contains more nonsense than that of most subjects. Now come Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim to make that case with the book “Scorecasting; the Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won” (Crown Books, New York, 278 pages).
Using statistics from many sources—not the least of which were the major sports leagues themselves-- boyhood chums Moskowitz, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago, and Wertheim, a writer for Sports Illustrated magazine, put to the test many things that sports fans and participants think they know for sure. They concluded that, often, they really don’t.
In a way I found the book satisfying, and in a way not. The satisfying stuff, naturally, came when the duo’s data confirmed examples of sports’ home truths that I’ve long suspected were wrong. For instance:
-- Batters always should “take” a 3-0 pitch. Not so, the authors concluded from voluminous data; umpires increase the strike zone enormously in such instances, so the “taking” batter probably just concedes a strike. (Conversely, the zone narrows on 0-2 pitches.)
--- A punt usually is the best fourth-down call. Nope; risk-reward analysis (you can read the book for details) usually dictates that it’s best to go for it on fourth down, even in a team’s own territory. I liked this chapter particularly because it cited approvingly the example of the Tennessee high school coach Kevin Kelley, whose teams never punt and have compiled an overwhelmingly winning record and won several state titles. The remarkable Kelley was the subject of my blog on Jan. 1, 2009. You can find it by scrolling down.
-- When a basketball player gets within a foul of fouling out in the final quarter, it’s a good idea to bench him so he’ll be available during a game’s final minutes. No again. The average NBA player with five fouls picks up a sixth just 21% of the time, and a “star” (defined as one who has been among the top 10 in any year’s Most Valuable Player voting) just 16%. Either way, taking him out deprives his team of his services for as long as he sits and lessens its chance of winning
--In football and basketball a good offense is nice but (as Michael Jordan always declared) defense wins championships. Actually, offense-- as determined by statistical rankings-- turns out to be an equally good a title predictor in both those sports.
--It’s smart for a coach to call a timeout to “ice” a shooter or kicker just before a key free-throw or field-goal attempt. Actually, “iced” and “uniced” competitors succeed at almost exactly the same rate.
But harder for me to swallow was the book’s showiest thesis: that the home-field advantage-- sports’ unquestioned central verity—is caused not by such things as home cooking, familiar routines and playing conditions, and the encouragement of friendly crowds, but by game-official bias. The last, the authors assert, accounts for almost everything that measurably favors home clubs.
Moscowitz and Wertheim have stats aplenty to back up that contention, including home-visitor differences in foul calls in basketball and football, ball-strike calls in baseball and the awarding of injury time in soccer. Moreover, they say their data shows that the more crucial the game situation, the more umps, refs, etc., help the home team.
It’s not that officials are instructed to be ‘homers” or that the phenomenon is part of any conscious intent, the authors say. It’s because of a psychological concept called “influence conformity.” This holds that in pressurized situations decision makers will lessen the pressure on themselves by siding with what feels like the majority view of any issue. In other words, in sports they get along by going along with the home crowd. It’s human nature, the authors aver.
Maybe so, but I have my doubts. It’s been my observation that a certain personality type— let’s call it a “screw you” guy or gal—tends to gravitate toward certain occupations. Policing is one, also news reporting. Sports officiating is a third. These are people who enjoy going against the grain, who’d just as soon say “f---, er, screw you,” as make nice. In the ninth inning of game seven of a World Series, with the home team down by a run, two outs, the bases loaded and a 3-2 count on the batter, my money would be on the ump calling a borderline pitch “Strike three!” instead of “Ball four!”.
I have no data, of course, just a gut feeling.
If you don’t agree, screw you.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
BARRY AND ROGER
Double features long since have disappeared from the movie theaters, but we’re about to get one in our court rooms over the next several months.
One will star Barry Bonds, the best baseball position-player of the last 25 years. The other will feature Roger Clemens, the best pitcher of that period. Separately, they’ll face charges that they lied when denying they knowingly took steroids during their illustrious careers—Bonds to a Federal grand jury and Clemens to a committee of Congress.
In the dock alongside them, albeit invisibly, will be the sport that enabled and abetted them in their nefarious pursuits of greatness, but the fact that a guilty verdict already has been delivered against baseball in the court of public opinion shouldn’t overly affect the trials’ ratings. We stuck with “Law and Order” all those years even though the verdicts were predictable, didn’t we?
Bonds will get first bats in a trial scheduled to begin Monday (March 21) in San Francisco, if it isn’t pleaded out first. It probably won’t be because many chances to do so have been bypassed in the years the case has been kicking around. The charges against Bonds stem from statements he made before a 2003 grand jury investigating Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), the Burlingame, California, steroids brewer and peddler whose exposure—along with that of its clients the sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, the boxer Shane Moseley and the baseball players Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield and Bonds, among others—put an overdo national spotlight on drug use in American sports. BALCO founder Victor Conte went to prison as a result of the probe, along with several associates. These included Greg Anderson, who doubled as Bonds’ personal trainer.
The case against the all-time home runs king would have been adjudicated long ago if not for the silence of Anderson. He’s served about a year behind bars for refusing to testify against the ballplayer, on top the six months he put in for his BALCO convictions. That he potentially faces further charges of obstructing justice in the Bond matter easily qualifies him as Buddy of the Century. Mostly as a result of his noncooperation, the number of criminal counts against Bonds has been reduced to five from the original 14.
But Anderson’s continued absence may prove to be a mixed blessing for Bonds. That’s because the judge in the case has ruled it opens the way to testimony against him by former associates and teammates who stand ready to relate conservations about steroids they had with him or Anderson, and about the physical changes Bonds underwent while he allegedly was juicing. The juiciest of these witnesses may be Kimberley Bell, the player’s ex-mistress. It’s been reported she’ll say that while some of Bonds’ parts got larger as he forged the Michelin Man physique of his later playing years, other parts were shrinking. Ouch!
The case against the 354-game-winner Clemens, due to be heard in July in Washington, D.C., seems both stronger and weirder than the one against Bonds. The weird part is that while Bonds was subpoenaed by the BALCO grand jury, the Rocket Man showed up voluntarily to make his “I never took ‘em” statements before a 2008 House Committee. And while Bonds’ trainer Anderson isn’t talking, Brian McNamee, Clemens’ fitness guru from 1998 to 2001, has lined up as the main witness against him. Additionally, the careful McNamee is said to have retained some vials, syringes and, even, gauze that he used while he says he was injecting the pitcher, and the DNA thereon looms as hard-to-refute physical evidence.
Why the two players put themselves into their current binds is a matter of conjecture. My take is that both are prime products of a culture that lionizes top athletes almost from birth and shields them from the sort of choices that help turn most of the rest of us into reasonable human beings.
Athletes always have been a privileged group in this land but in recent years that has increased exponentially with their salaries. While team jocks used to at least have to relate to teammates who might not buy their acts, present-day demigods in the class of Bonds and Clemens can surround themselves with business advisors, trainers, nutritionists and an array of other yes-men and -women who cater to their every whim (Bonds had a personal shopper, for heaven’s sake). The idea that anyone might not accept their versions of things probably never occurs to those guys.
Both, it seems, are banking on star-struck jurors to give them a pass once again. They promise to tacitly invoke the Richard Pryor defense: “Who you gonna believe—me or your lyin’ eyes?” And indeed, who among us would forfeit a photo-op with a top-drawer celeb and an invitation to a really good acquittal party in order to uphold some nebulous idea of justice? It worked for O.J., didn’t it?
Trouble is, though, that by denying the obvious, and trying to cover it up, Bonds and Clemens already have blown it in the immortality department, which is what it’s about for the handful of jocks who can pass the highest performance tests. Guilty in court or not, they’ll be followed by mental asterisks forevermore.
And so should baseball for its head-in-the-sand stance during Bonds’ and Clemens’ period of dominance.
One will star Barry Bonds, the best baseball position-player of the last 25 years. The other will feature Roger Clemens, the best pitcher of that period. Separately, they’ll face charges that they lied when denying they knowingly took steroids during their illustrious careers—Bonds to a Federal grand jury and Clemens to a committee of Congress.
In the dock alongside them, albeit invisibly, will be the sport that enabled and abetted them in their nefarious pursuits of greatness, but the fact that a guilty verdict already has been delivered against baseball in the court of public opinion shouldn’t overly affect the trials’ ratings. We stuck with “Law and Order” all those years even though the verdicts were predictable, didn’t we?
Bonds will get first bats in a trial scheduled to begin Monday (March 21) in San Francisco, if it isn’t pleaded out first. It probably won’t be because many chances to do so have been bypassed in the years the case has been kicking around. The charges against Bonds stem from statements he made before a 2003 grand jury investigating Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), the Burlingame, California, steroids brewer and peddler whose exposure—along with that of its clients the sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, the boxer Shane Moseley and the baseball players Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield and Bonds, among others—put an overdo national spotlight on drug use in American sports. BALCO founder Victor Conte went to prison as a result of the probe, along with several associates. These included Greg Anderson, who doubled as Bonds’ personal trainer.
The case against the all-time home runs king would have been adjudicated long ago if not for the silence of Anderson. He’s served about a year behind bars for refusing to testify against the ballplayer, on top the six months he put in for his BALCO convictions. That he potentially faces further charges of obstructing justice in the Bond matter easily qualifies him as Buddy of the Century. Mostly as a result of his noncooperation, the number of criminal counts against Bonds has been reduced to five from the original 14.
But Anderson’s continued absence may prove to be a mixed blessing for Bonds. That’s because the judge in the case has ruled it opens the way to testimony against him by former associates and teammates who stand ready to relate conservations about steroids they had with him or Anderson, and about the physical changes Bonds underwent while he allegedly was juicing. The juiciest of these witnesses may be Kimberley Bell, the player’s ex-mistress. It’s been reported she’ll say that while some of Bonds’ parts got larger as he forged the Michelin Man physique of his later playing years, other parts were shrinking. Ouch!
The case against the 354-game-winner Clemens, due to be heard in July in Washington, D.C., seems both stronger and weirder than the one against Bonds. The weird part is that while Bonds was subpoenaed by the BALCO grand jury, the Rocket Man showed up voluntarily to make his “I never took ‘em” statements before a 2008 House Committee. And while Bonds’ trainer Anderson isn’t talking, Brian McNamee, Clemens’ fitness guru from 1998 to 2001, has lined up as the main witness against him. Additionally, the careful McNamee is said to have retained some vials, syringes and, even, gauze that he used while he says he was injecting the pitcher, and the DNA thereon looms as hard-to-refute physical evidence.
Why the two players put themselves into their current binds is a matter of conjecture. My take is that both are prime products of a culture that lionizes top athletes almost from birth and shields them from the sort of choices that help turn most of the rest of us into reasonable human beings.
Athletes always have been a privileged group in this land but in recent years that has increased exponentially with their salaries. While team jocks used to at least have to relate to teammates who might not buy their acts, present-day demigods in the class of Bonds and Clemens can surround themselves with business advisors, trainers, nutritionists and an array of other yes-men and -women who cater to their every whim (Bonds had a personal shopper, for heaven’s sake). The idea that anyone might not accept their versions of things probably never occurs to those guys.
Both, it seems, are banking on star-struck jurors to give them a pass once again. They promise to tacitly invoke the Richard Pryor defense: “Who you gonna believe—me or your lyin’ eyes?” And indeed, who among us would forfeit a photo-op with a top-drawer celeb and an invitation to a really good acquittal party in order to uphold some nebulous idea of justice? It worked for O.J., didn’t it?
Trouble is, though, that by denying the obvious, and trying to cover it up, Bonds and Clemens already have blown it in the immortality department, which is what it’s about for the handful of jocks who can pass the highest performance tests. Guilty in court or not, they’ll be followed by mental asterisks forevermore.
And so should baseball for its head-in-the-sand stance during Bonds’ and Clemens’ period of dominance.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
THE LAST UNIONS
“North Dallas Forty” was a good movie about pro football with a number of very good lines. One of them came in a scene in which a group of players were sitting around grousing about some stunt management had pulled at their expense.
“They can’t do that to us-- we’re the team!” exclaimed one player.
“No we’re not,” said a wiser player. “They’re the team. We’re the equipment.”
The line seems especially apt these days as the National Football League’s owners and players’ union close in on the March 3 date (Thursday) when their current labor contract expires. Maybe they’ll reach an agreement before then, and maybe they won’t. Maybe the next NFL season will start on time next September (it’s a long way off), and maybe not. Either way, though, the showdown provides an opportunity for some musings about the state of labor-management relations in these United States, and the balance of power therein.
For starters, there’s no small irony in the fact that in 2011 A.D. America’s most-potent labor organizations are those composed of professional athletes, relative newcomers to organized labor’s ranks. With no little help from their unions, the jocks have waxed rich beyond their own and everyone else’s imaginings, while many of the people whose dollars make their prosperity possible (us) struggle in an ever-more-unforgiving economic climate.
Back in the 1960s, when I broke in as a business-news reporter (covering labor, among other things), much of the nation’s economic drama stemmed from the clashes between the major domestic industries of day—steel, autos, appliances, coal—and the muscular unions that represented their employees. Now, those industries are fragmented and puny, and what’s left of their unions are reduced to trying to hold down whatever cuts in pay and benefits the companies are demanding in the name of competitiveness.
What companies mostly are demanding—and getting—is no unions at all. Union membership in the U.S. last year fell to 12% of wage and salary earners, from 20% in 1983 and 35% or so during the post-war-boom years of the 1950s. If the governor of Wisconsin and like-minded pols have their way, that figure will shrink further in the years ahead. Why shouldn’t states extract 24/7 performance from their workers (with no overtime pay) the way private employers do? Hey, you don’t like it, there’s the door, and there are 15 people waiting to take your job.
Professional athletes had no unions to speak of through most of their history, and lived under contracts that bound players to their teams until the teams chose to trade or release them, so they pretty much had to take what they were offered. Some teams, like the New York Yankees in their 1950s’ glory days, hired private detectives to seek out pecadillos that could be used to blackmail recalcitrants into line.
That began to change in 1966, when the Major League baseball players hired Marvin Miller to head their association. Miller was a real union guy—the United Steelworkers’ chief economist—and a smart one to boot. He saw what some others saw—an industry whose employees possessed skills that were both rare and potentially valuable—but he also recognized that those assets couldn’t be exploited fully unless a base of solidarity could be secured.
Miller’s first major achievement was obtaining binding, outside arbitration of contract disputes, a role the game’s commissioner, an owners’ proxy, formerly filled. In 1975, the cases of the pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally led to the arbitrator’s ruling that threw out baseball’s “reserve clause” and led to the free agency that has fueled spectacular player gains across the team-sport spectrum.
Miller’s second and biggest accomplishment was to convince players to sublimate their short-term interests for broader objectives, no small matter in a profession where careers can be brief and chancy. It took strikes in 1972, 1980 and 1981, and lockouts in 1973 and 1976, to make the point, but it finally took. The upshot has been that the average baseball player’s salary last year stood at $3.3 million, up from $19,000 in 1966, while the game’s minimum salary rose to $400,000 a year from $6,000. Other sports unions marched in baseball’s footprints, and while the footballers haven’t done as well at the bank as the baseballers (they play a much-shorter schedule, after all), they’re doing okay, too, with annual salaries that average $1.8 million and a $260,000 minimum. We all should do as well.
In what may be the biggest irony of all, it turns out that the well-entrenched football players’ union’s most-potent weapon isn’t unionhood, but its lack. Team by team, it has voted to decertify in case of a lockout, something that’s counterintuitive unless one understands that the NFL is a monopoly and its player-control cornerstones—the draft, team-salary caps, free-agency limits and “franchise” tags—are legally acceptable only if they are arrived at through collective bargaining. If there’s no union there’s no collective-bargaining agreement, in which case the whole edifice collapses. Cute, huh?
I’ve just finished reading the novel “The Given Day,” by Dennis Lehane. Its central event is the 1919 Boston police strike, which the Beantown Establishment used to squash the nascent union movement among the city’s much-put-upon cops. Babe Ruth is a character in the book, and his sublime talents allow him to float to a life of wealth and privilege while others in his social class remained mired in the grimy scrum. “What goes around comes around” is a familiar saying, but it ain’t necessarily so. Sometimes, what goes around just keeps on going.
“They can’t do that to us-- we’re the team!” exclaimed one player.
“No we’re not,” said a wiser player. “They’re the team. We’re the equipment.”
The line seems especially apt these days as the National Football League’s owners and players’ union close in on the March 3 date (Thursday) when their current labor contract expires. Maybe they’ll reach an agreement before then, and maybe they won’t. Maybe the next NFL season will start on time next September (it’s a long way off), and maybe not. Either way, though, the showdown provides an opportunity for some musings about the state of labor-management relations in these United States, and the balance of power therein.
For starters, there’s no small irony in the fact that in 2011 A.D. America’s most-potent labor organizations are those composed of professional athletes, relative newcomers to organized labor’s ranks. With no little help from their unions, the jocks have waxed rich beyond their own and everyone else’s imaginings, while many of the people whose dollars make their prosperity possible (us) struggle in an ever-more-unforgiving economic climate.
Back in the 1960s, when I broke in as a business-news reporter (covering labor, among other things), much of the nation’s economic drama stemmed from the clashes between the major domestic industries of day—steel, autos, appliances, coal—and the muscular unions that represented their employees. Now, those industries are fragmented and puny, and what’s left of their unions are reduced to trying to hold down whatever cuts in pay and benefits the companies are demanding in the name of competitiveness.
What companies mostly are demanding—and getting—is no unions at all. Union membership in the U.S. last year fell to 12% of wage and salary earners, from 20% in 1983 and 35% or so during the post-war-boom years of the 1950s. If the governor of Wisconsin and like-minded pols have their way, that figure will shrink further in the years ahead. Why shouldn’t states extract 24/7 performance from their workers (with no overtime pay) the way private employers do? Hey, you don’t like it, there’s the door, and there are 15 people waiting to take your job.
Professional athletes had no unions to speak of through most of their history, and lived under contracts that bound players to their teams until the teams chose to trade or release them, so they pretty much had to take what they were offered. Some teams, like the New York Yankees in their 1950s’ glory days, hired private detectives to seek out pecadillos that could be used to blackmail recalcitrants into line.
That began to change in 1966, when the Major League baseball players hired Marvin Miller to head their association. Miller was a real union guy—the United Steelworkers’ chief economist—and a smart one to boot. He saw what some others saw—an industry whose employees possessed skills that were both rare and potentially valuable—but he also recognized that those assets couldn’t be exploited fully unless a base of solidarity could be secured.
Miller’s first major achievement was obtaining binding, outside arbitration of contract disputes, a role the game’s commissioner, an owners’ proxy, formerly filled. In 1975, the cases of the pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally led to the arbitrator’s ruling that threw out baseball’s “reserve clause” and led to the free agency that has fueled spectacular player gains across the team-sport spectrum.
Miller’s second and biggest accomplishment was to convince players to sublimate their short-term interests for broader objectives, no small matter in a profession where careers can be brief and chancy. It took strikes in 1972, 1980 and 1981, and lockouts in 1973 and 1976, to make the point, but it finally took. The upshot has been that the average baseball player’s salary last year stood at $3.3 million, up from $19,000 in 1966, while the game’s minimum salary rose to $400,000 a year from $6,000. Other sports unions marched in baseball’s footprints, and while the footballers haven’t done as well at the bank as the baseballers (they play a much-shorter schedule, after all), they’re doing okay, too, with annual salaries that average $1.8 million and a $260,000 minimum. We all should do as well.
In what may be the biggest irony of all, it turns out that the well-entrenched football players’ union’s most-potent weapon isn’t unionhood, but its lack. Team by team, it has voted to decertify in case of a lockout, something that’s counterintuitive unless one understands that the NFL is a monopoly and its player-control cornerstones—the draft, team-salary caps, free-agency limits and “franchise” tags—are legally acceptable only if they are arrived at through collective bargaining. If there’s no union there’s no collective-bargaining agreement, in which case the whole edifice collapses. Cute, huh?
I’ve just finished reading the novel “The Given Day,” by Dennis Lehane. Its central event is the 1919 Boston police strike, which the Beantown Establishment used to squash the nascent union movement among the city’s much-put-upon cops. Babe Ruth is a character in the book, and his sublime talents allow him to float to a life of wealth and privilege while others in his social class remained mired in the grimy scrum. “What goes around comes around” is a familiar saying, but it ain’t necessarily so. Sometimes, what goes around just keeps on going.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
GO ARTICHOKES!
Yes, I know, you have to hold your nose to enjoy college sports, but there are saving graces. One of them is the names that history or accident have bestowed on some schools’ athletic representatives.
While it’s true that most colleges have found their team names in the same generic zoo that stocks our professional clubs, the difference in numbers between colleges and the pros means that the former have had many more opportunities for creativity. That’s particularly evident during the basketball season, when some 1,500 senior colleges field squads, plus at least as many more junior or community colleges. Give enough chances, even academic types can get things right once in a while.
The kinds of college nicknames worth savoring cover a wide gamut. There are occupational names tied to a school’s academic mission, such as the Purdue Boilermakers or the Leigh Engineers. There are names with a meteorological tilt, like the Miami Hurricanes, the Iowa State Cyclones and the Arizona State Sun Devils. There are whimsical names (the Hampshire College Blacksheep) and neo-whimsical (the California-Irvine Anteaters, the Cal-Santa Cruz Banana Slugs and the Fighting Artichokes of my beloved Scottsdale Community College). They are plays on words like the Pace University Setters and the Bryn Mawr Mawrters.
There are a couple of commercial tie-ins but they aren’t irksome because they’re either appropriate or non-commercial in result. Stetson U., in Deland, Fla., calls its teams the Hatters because both it and the hat maker had the same founder, John B. Stetson. Converse College, a woman’s school in Spartanburg, S.C., used to call its athletic reps the All-Stars even though it had no connection with and received no special treatment from the shoe company of the same name. Indeed, the last time I checked its basketball team wore Reeboks. The kidding must have gotten too great, though, because it recently changed its moniker to the Valkyries, indicating that someone in the place knew a little opera.
Usually, college cheers echo team nicknames, but sometimes the reverse is true. Georgetown U. calls its teams the Hoyas after its old “Hoya Saxa!” cheer which, the school says, is a Latin-Greek amalgam meaning “What rocks!” Virgina Polytechnic Institute dubbed its teams the Hokies because of a cheer composed by a student in 1896, the year the institution’s name was changed from Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. That chant began “Hokie, hokie, hokie high/ Tech, Tech, VPI.”
Catholic-run Manhattan College names its teams the Jaspers after Brother Jasper, the faculty member who was its first baseball coach. The school asserts that it was Jasper, not President Taft, who initiated the seventh-inning stretch in the diamond sport. The University of Idaho names its teams the Vandals, not for the ancient Germanic tribe but because a long-ago sportswriter wrote that its basketballers had “vandalized” an opponent.
Several of the better nicknames are steeped in regional lore, however vague. The University of North Carolina traces its Tarheels appellation to a couple of stories. One involved North Carolinians dumping tar into a river near Rocky Mount to impede British troops during the Revolutionary War. The other has a troop of local Confederate soldiers during the Civil War claiming that their battlefield tenacity stemmed from dipping their heels in the plentiful North Carolina gunk.
The roots of the term “Hoosiers,” Indiana U.’s marvelous nickname, are equally murky. One version traces it to the Anglo-Saxon word “hoo,” meaning hill, making Hoosiers early hillbillies. Another contends it first meant followers of Harry Hoosier, a frontier evangelist. Still another contends it’s what early homesteaders in the state hollered when strangers knocked on their doors. Whatever, it made a great movie title.
There’s nothing vague about the origin of the University of Oklahoma’s Sooners nickname. It honors the less-than-honorable gang that jumped the gun in the April 22, 1889 free-land rush that helped open the state for settlement. By such logic, jumping off-side in football should be cheered as a show of initiative, but there you have it.
For my money, however, the award for best college-sports nickname, for reasons of local color and amiable obscurity, goes to the St. Louis U. Billikens. A billiken, it seems, is an elfish, round-bellied figure of Asian origin, statues of which used to be considered good-luck charms. Around 1910 a St. Louis sportswriter decided that John Bender, the school’s football coach, looked like one of those and took to calling the team “Bender’s Billikens.” The name stuck.
You don’t get that kind of name from a brainstorming session, or from taking a poll. Aren’t you glad they didn’t have those way back when?
While it’s true that most colleges have found their team names in the same generic zoo that stocks our professional clubs, the difference in numbers between colleges and the pros means that the former have had many more opportunities for creativity. That’s particularly evident during the basketball season, when some 1,500 senior colleges field squads, plus at least as many more junior or community colleges. Give enough chances, even academic types can get things right once in a while.
The kinds of college nicknames worth savoring cover a wide gamut. There are occupational names tied to a school’s academic mission, such as the Purdue Boilermakers or the Leigh Engineers. There are names with a meteorological tilt, like the Miami Hurricanes, the Iowa State Cyclones and the Arizona State Sun Devils. There are whimsical names (the Hampshire College Blacksheep) and neo-whimsical (the California-Irvine Anteaters, the Cal-Santa Cruz Banana Slugs and the Fighting Artichokes of my beloved Scottsdale Community College). They are plays on words like the Pace University Setters and the Bryn Mawr Mawrters.
There are a couple of commercial tie-ins but they aren’t irksome because they’re either appropriate or non-commercial in result. Stetson U., in Deland, Fla., calls its teams the Hatters because both it and the hat maker had the same founder, John B. Stetson. Converse College, a woman’s school in Spartanburg, S.C., used to call its athletic reps the All-Stars even though it had no connection with and received no special treatment from the shoe company of the same name. Indeed, the last time I checked its basketball team wore Reeboks. The kidding must have gotten too great, though, because it recently changed its moniker to the Valkyries, indicating that someone in the place knew a little opera.
Usually, college cheers echo team nicknames, but sometimes the reverse is true. Georgetown U. calls its teams the Hoyas after its old “Hoya Saxa!” cheer which, the school says, is a Latin-Greek amalgam meaning “What rocks!” Virgina Polytechnic Institute dubbed its teams the Hokies because of a cheer composed by a student in 1896, the year the institution’s name was changed from Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. That chant began “Hokie, hokie, hokie high/ Tech, Tech, VPI.”
Catholic-run Manhattan College names its teams the Jaspers after Brother Jasper, the faculty member who was its first baseball coach. The school asserts that it was Jasper, not President Taft, who initiated the seventh-inning stretch in the diamond sport. The University of Idaho names its teams the Vandals, not for the ancient Germanic tribe but because a long-ago sportswriter wrote that its basketballers had “vandalized” an opponent.
Several of the better nicknames are steeped in regional lore, however vague. The University of North Carolina traces its Tarheels appellation to a couple of stories. One involved North Carolinians dumping tar into a river near Rocky Mount to impede British troops during the Revolutionary War. The other has a troop of local Confederate soldiers during the Civil War claiming that their battlefield tenacity stemmed from dipping their heels in the plentiful North Carolina gunk.
The roots of the term “Hoosiers,” Indiana U.’s marvelous nickname, are equally murky. One version traces it to the Anglo-Saxon word “hoo,” meaning hill, making Hoosiers early hillbillies. Another contends it first meant followers of Harry Hoosier, a frontier evangelist. Still another contends it’s what early homesteaders in the state hollered when strangers knocked on their doors. Whatever, it made a great movie title.
There’s nothing vague about the origin of the University of Oklahoma’s Sooners nickname. It honors the less-than-honorable gang that jumped the gun in the April 22, 1889 free-land rush that helped open the state for settlement. By such logic, jumping off-side in football should be cheered as a show of initiative, but there you have it.
For my money, however, the award for best college-sports nickname, for reasons of local color and amiable obscurity, goes to the St. Louis U. Billikens. A billiken, it seems, is an elfish, round-bellied figure of Asian origin, statues of which used to be considered good-luck charms. Around 1910 a St. Louis sportswriter decided that John Bender, the school’s football coach, looked like one of those and took to calling the team “Bender’s Billikens.” The name stuck.
You don’t get that kind of name from a brainstorming session, or from taking a poll. Aren’t you glad they didn’t have those way back when?
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
COLLEGE CAPERS
The main question writers are asked by non-writers is where we get our story ideas. It’s usually asked with a trace of wonder, as though we possess some special or even secret knowledge.
I always laugh at the query. Then I’ll say that if one looks at the world in the right (or wrong) way it teems with things that are deserving of comment because they are so wonderful, terrible or, simply, interesting.
Like most columnists, I kept a list of subjects that caught my eye, and as a blogger I still do. Contrary to public perception, it’s a list that tends to grow rather than shrink. I’m sure that once I finally pack it in –either by choice or necessity-- it will be with many opinions or observations unexpressed.
The past week was a case in point. I entered it with what seemed like a perfectly good blog idea only to see it superseded not once but twice. I won’t tell you what the discarded ideas were because I might choose to revisit them. The winner, though, shone through like the headlights of an 18-wheeler coming ‘round the bend on a foggy night.
The subject was big-time college sports, an old punching bag of mine. Every time I think it can’t get worse, it does. That happened last week, with exclamation points.
Exhibit A was a hoot-- the news that Robert G. Burton, a businessman from Greenwich, Conn., asked for a refund of the $3 million he’d contributed to the University of Connecticut’s athletics department a few years earlier to build on its campus an office-locker-workout facility named the Burton Family Football Complex. His gripe is that he wasn’t sufficiently consulted before the school hired a replacement for Randy Edsall, the football coach who recently left the Storrs job for one at the University of Maryland.
Burton’s demand came in a single-spaced, five-page rant he sent to Jeff Hathaway, the UConn AD. Naturally, it wound up on the Internet. In it, Burton tore poor Hathaway a new one, declaring him to be unqualified for his post because (among other failings) he lacked the skills to “manage and cultivate” fat-cat donors like himself. He declared Hathaway’s choice of ex-Syracuse coach Paul Pasqualoni to replace Edsall an “embarrassment” not only to him but to his entire family. Apparently, Mrs. Burton also is mortified.
Burton wrote that he’d be withdrawing future support for UConn athletics. He helpfully reminded Hathaway that this would include his purchase of a $50,000-a-year football-game box, $8,000 for his ad in the school’s football program and the $20,000 he’d kicked in annually to help fund Edsall’s coaches’ clinic, one of the ways universities pad the salaries of their already-overpaid coaches without the sums appearing on their books.
The incident offered a peek into the world of college-athletics “boosters,” people who may or may not be alums of the institution they support (Burton isn’t) but who believe that their earthly happiness depends on the school fielding really good major-sports teams year in and year out. Depending on their level of largess they can be rewarded with such perks as the ability to call the coach the day before the game to get his view on whether his team will cover the spread, and a voice in the school’s councils.
The most common reaction to Burton’s demand, on UConn websites and elsewhere, was that he’s a rich jerk who deserves to be rebuffed; after all, colleges are supposed to run their own affairs in the name of “academic integrity.” To that I say “Nonsense!” Big-time college sports have little to do with academics and institutions forfeit their integrity when they get into the entertainment business. UConn should give the guy his money back. He didn’t get what he paid for.
Exhibit B was, simply, appalling. It was the hospitalization of 13 University of Iowa football players after what only could be described as a brutal workout that included prolonged, high-poundage, high-speed weight lifting, under the supervision of the team’s so-called “strength” coaches. The young men came down with something called rhabdomyolysis, a condition that occurs when too-strenuous exercise causes muscle breakdowns that release substances harmful to the kidneys. Some of the players were confined for as much a week, and the extent of their injuries still is unclear.
Almost equally distressing was that the revelation of those injuries—several days after they happened-- came from the victims, not the university, via emails and tweets. Several players reported being unable to walk before being hospitalized, one said he’d fallen down some stairs. “Just thinking about it [the workout} makes me vomit,” wrote a third.
The university initially tried to downgrade the matter, with an athletics department spokesman calling the workout “allowed and routine.” Later he backtracked some, saying that if “due diligence” (ugh!) showed they were required “steps would be taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” In other words, “we did nothing wrong but we won’t do it any more.” Great. Can you spell l-a-w-s-u-i-t?
Football head coach Kirk Ferentz was out of town during the incident. He’s returned but the university said he wouldn’t answer questions publicly until after tomorrow (Feb. 2), the national signing day for new recruits. First things first, right?
One thing besides Iowa’s callous attitude should be obvious: it’s that the kids were killing themselves in January for a sport that isn’t played until September. The workout in question may have been called “off-season,” but, in truth, there is no off season for the collegiate big-timers. It’s an exhausting, year-round grind that, for players, amounts to a full-time job and then some. Anyone who emerges from the jock mill with an education worth the name deserves a medal as well as a degree.
And maybe a Purple Heart.
I always laugh at the query. Then I’ll say that if one looks at the world in the right (or wrong) way it teems with things that are deserving of comment because they are so wonderful, terrible or, simply, interesting.
Like most columnists, I kept a list of subjects that caught my eye, and as a blogger I still do. Contrary to public perception, it’s a list that tends to grow rather than shrink. I’m sure that once I finally pack it in –either by choice or necessity-- it will be with many opinions or observations unexpressed.
The past week was a case in point. I entered it with what seemed like a perfectly good blog idea only to see it superseded not once but twice. I won’t tell you what the discarded ideas were because I might choose to revisit them. The winner, though, shone through like the headlights of an 18-wheeler coming ‘round the bend on a foggy night.
The subject was big-time college sports, an old punching bag of mine. Every time I think it can’t get worse, it does. That happened last week, with exclamation points.
Exhibit A was a hoot-- the news that Robert G. Burton, a businessman from Greenwich, Conn., asked for a refund of the $3 million he’d contributed to the University of Connecticut’s athletics department a few years earlier to build on its campus an office-locker-workout facility named the Burton Family Football Complex. His gripe is that he wasn’t sufficiently consulted before the school hired a replacement for Randy Edsall, the football coach who recently left the Storrs job for one at the University of Maryland.
Burton’s demand came in a single-spaced, five-page rant he sent to Jeff Hathaway, the UConn AD. Naturally, it wound up on the Internet. In it, Burton tore poor Hathaway a new one, declaring him to be unqualified for his post because (among other failings) he lacked the skills to “manage and cultivate” fat-cat donors like himself. He declared Hathaway’s choice of ex-Syracuse coach Paul Pasqualoni to replace Edsall an “embarrassment” not only to him but to his entire family. Apparently, Mrs. Burton also is mortified.
Burton wrote that he’d be withdrawing future support for UConn athletics. He helpfully reminded Hathaway that this would include his purchase of a $50,000-a-year football-game box, $8,000 for his ad in the school’s football program and the $20,000 he’d kicked in annually to help fund Edsall’s coaches’ clinic, one of the ways universities pad the salaries of their already-overpaid coaches without the sums appearing on their books.
The incident offered a peek into the world of college-athletics “boosters,” people who may or may not be alums of the institution they support (Burton isn’t) but who believe that their earthly happiness depends on the school fielding really good major-sports teams year in and year out. Depending on their level of largess they can be rewarded with such perks as the ability to call the coach the day before the game to get his view on whether his team will cover the spread, and a voice in the school’s councils.
The most common reaction to Burton’s demand, on UConn websites and elsewhere, was that he’s a rich jerk who deserves to be rebuffed; after all, colleges are supposed to run their own affairs in the name of “academic integrity.” To that I say “Nonsense!” Big-time college sports have little to do with academics and institutions forfeit their integrity when they get into the entertainment business. UConn should give the guy his money back. He didn’t get what he paid for.
Exhibit B was, simply, appalling. It was the hospitalization of 13 University of Iowa football players after what only could be described as a brutal workout that included prolonged, high-poundage, high-speed weight lifting, under the supervision of the team’s so-called “strength” coaches. The young men came down with something called rhabdomyolysis, a condition that occurs when too-strenuous exercise causes muscle breakdowns that release substances harmful to the kidneys. Some of the players were confined for as much a week, and the extent of their injuries still is unclear.
Almost equally distressing was that the revelation of those injuries—several days after they happened-- came from the victims, not the university, via emails and tweets. Several players reported being unable to walk before being hospitalized, one said he’d fallen down some stairs. “Just thinking about it [the workout} makes me vomit,” wrote a third.
The university initially tried to downgrade the matter, with an athletics department spokesman calling the workout “allowed and routine.” Later he backtracked some, saying that if “due diligence” (ugh!) showed they were required “steps would be taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” In other words, “we did nothing wrong but we won’t do it any more.” Great. Can you spell l-a-w-s-u-i-t?
Football head coach Kirk Ferentz was out of town during the incident. He’s returned but the university said he wouldn’t answer questions publicly until after tomorrow (Feb. 2), the national signing day for new recruits. First things first, right?
One thing besides Iowa’s callous attitude should be obvious: it’s that the kids were killing themselves in January for a sport that isn’t played until September. The workout in question may have been called “off-season,” but, in truth, there is no off season for the collegiate big-timers. It’s an exhausting, year-round grind that, for players, amounts to a full-time job and then some. Anyone who emerges from the jock mill with an education worth the name deserves a medal as well as a degree.
And maybe a Purple Heart.
Friday, January 14, 2011
VIVA TOMSULA!
Unexpected pleasures are the best, which is why I was delighted soon after tuning in to the NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals a couple of Sundays ago. Among the pre-game shots was one of Jim Tomsula, the ‘Niners’ interim head coach, entering the stadium, grinning broadly at and shaking hands or swapping high-fives with just about everyone within reach on his way to the field.
On the greensward, the gaiety continued. The rotund, mustached Tomsula, the team’s defensive-line coach before being elevated to replace Mike Singletary for the last week of the regular season, ranged his bench area, hugging players and functionaries.
Even the commencement of hostilities didn’t cool Tomsula’s enjoyment of the occasion; once foot met ball he seemed as much a cheerleader as a coach, taking obvious delight in his team’s good plays. These turned out to be many as the once-uptight ‘Niners, 5-10 in wins and losses going in, turned in their best performance of the season and emerged with a 38-7 victory. When it was over they gave their coach a Gatorade bath, putting a happy ending on an otherwise unhappy year.
I was happy, too, even though my new-home-city team came out the loser. When, I asked myself, had I seen an NFL coach exude so much genuine good feeling before or during a game? That others shared my view was evident the day after the contest, when I tapped into the NinersNation fan website and found that, in a poll on whether or not to make Tomsula the team’s permanent head coach, yeas outnumbered nays 668 to 90.
That wasn’t going to happen, of course; Tomsula’s credentials and repute were too modest for such an august appointment. Having at least the requisite half a brain, he must have thought so himself or he wouldn’t have behaved the way he did. “Sober as a judge” used to be the common expression of grim probity, but, these days, “sober as an NFL coach” is more apt.
Fact is, a judge-like stance doesn’t do justice to the overwhelming sense of self-importance with which the NFL and its minions regard themselves and their activities. To them, brain surgery is penny-ante poker compared with their, um, game. A few seasons back, when the league was legislating against players’ on-field celebrations, some sportswriters dubbed the NFL the No Fun League. The label still holds even though the players seem to have won the above-mentioned tussle.
The NFL, after all, is the outfit that puts Roman numerals after the editions of its annual title contests, as though the appellation “world’s championship” isn’t grandiose enough. It’s the one that, years ago, sponsored a high-school essay contest on its role in American history, as if it had one.
And it’s the gang that pioneered and champions the practice of reviewing via video replay the decisions of its field officials, putting microscopic analysis to such things as ball spots in the name of fairness and the American Way. It’s like it thinks the republic would crumble if a first down were awarded improperly.
The on-field avatars of the Imperial NFL are its coaches, and a more sour-pussed bunch is hard to find. With few exceptions, such as the Seattle Seahawks’ Pete Carroll and the New York Jets’ Rex Ryan, both of whom occasionally show some animation, the football mentors have the collective personality of a boiled turnip, or worse.
Coaches are the most imitative of sorts, and the guy they currently are imitating is Bill Belichick, the chief honcho of the New England Patriots. He’s been hailed as a genius since his team won three Super Bowls during the past decade (in 2001, ’03 and ’04), but he wasn’t so smart when he bombed out after five mostly losing seasons (1991-95) running the less-talented Cleveland Browns.
In 1999 the curt, unsmiling Belichick made history by serving the shortest tenure of any NFL head coach—one day with the Jets, for which he’d been an assistant—before bailing for Boston. His gracious resignation note there exemplified his notion of communications. “I resign as HC of the NYJ,” he wrote (honest).
Belichick roams the sidelines dressed like a construction worker on the job. Not only is he’s the model of coachly paranoia when he covers his mouth with his play chart when mumbling into his head-set, he’s also a partial cause of it. A few seasons ago he was fined $500,000 when one of his assistants was caught taping an opponent’s defensive hand signals for future decoding and use. It’s been alleged that he’s miked his defensive linemen’s shoulder pads to record other teams’ audibles, but that’s never been proved.
Belichick has a 63% victory rate in the league (177 wins-104 losses), proving again that jerks can succeed in his business, but he’s looking up at Tomsula, whose 1-0 head-coaching mark works out to 100%. I find that a pleasant fact.
On the greensward, the gaiety continued. The rotund, mustached Tomsula, the team’s defensive-line coach before being elevated to replace Mike Singletary for the last week of the regular season, ranged his bench area, hugging players and functionaries.
Even the commencement of hostilities didn’t cool Tomsula’s enjoyment of the occasion; once foot met ball he seemed as much a cheerleader as a coach, taking obvious delight in his team’s good plays. These turned out to be many as the once-uptight ‘Niners, 5-10 in wins and losses going in, turned in their best performance of the season and emerged with a 38-7 victory. When it was over they gave their coach a Gatorade bath, putting a happy ending on an otherwise unhappy year.
I was happy, too, even though my new-home-city team came out the loser. When, I asked myself, had I seen an NFL coach exude so much genuine good feeling before or during a game? That others shared my view was evident the day after the contest, when I tapped into the NinersNation fan website and found that, in a poll on whether or not to make Tomsula the team’s permanent head coach, yeas outnumbered nays 668 to 90.
That wasn’t going to happen, of course; Tomsula’s credentials and repute were too modest for such an august appointment. Having at least the requisite half a brain, he must have thought so himself or he wouldn’t have behaved the way he did. “Sober as a judge” used to be the common expression of grim probity, but, these days, “sober as an NFL coach” is more apt.
Fact is, a judge-like stance doesn’t do justice to the overwhelming sense of self-importance with which the NFL and its minions regard themselves and their activities. To them, brain surgery is penny-ante poker compared with their, um, game. A few seasons back, when the league was legislating against players’ on-field celebrations, some sportswriters dubbed the NFL the No Fun League. The label still holds even though the players seem to have won the above-mentioned tussle.
The NFL, after all, is the outfit that puts Roman numerals after the editions of its annual title contests, as though the appellation “world’s championship” isn’t grandiose enough. It’s the one that, years ago, sponsored a high-school essay contest on its role in American history, as if it had one.
And it’s the gang that pioneered and champions the practice of reviewing via video replay the decisions of its field officials, putting microscopic analysis to such things as ball spots in the name of fairness and the American Way. It’s like it thinks the republic would crumble if a first down were awarded improperly.
The on-field avatars of the Imperial NFL are its coaches, and a more sour-pussed bunch is hard to find. With few exceptions, such as the Seattle Seahawks’ Pete Carroll and the New York Jets’ Rex Ryan, both of whom occasionally show some animation, the football mentors have the collective personality of a boiled turnip, or worse.
Coaches are the most imitative of sorts, and the guy they currently are imitating is Bill Belichick, the chief honcho of the New England Patriots. He’s been hailed as a genius since his team won three Super Bowls during the past decade (in 2001, ’03 and ’04), but he wasn’t so smart when he bombed out after five mostly losing seasons (1991-95) running the less-talented Cleveland Browns.
In 1999 the curt, unsmiling Belichick made history by serving the shortest tenure of any NFL head coach—one day with the Jets, for which he’d been an assistant—before bailing for Boston. His gracious resignation note there exemplified his notion of communications. “I resign as HC of the NYJ,” he wrote (honest).
Belichick roams the sidelines dressed like a construction worker on the job. Not only is he’s the model of coachly paranoia when he covers his mouth with his play chart when mumbling into his head-set, he’s also a partial cause of it. A few seasons ago he was fined $500,000 when one of his assistants was caught taping an opponent’s defensive hand signals for future decoding and use. It’s been alleged that he’s miked his defensive linemen’s shoulder pads to record other teams’ audibles, but that’s never been proved.
Belichick has a 63% victory rate in the league (177 wins-104 losses), proving again that jerks can succeed in his business, but he’s looking up at Tomsula, whose 1-0 head-coaching mark works out to 100%. I find that a pleasant fact.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
REASONS TO SMILE
A new year is beginning but it’s hard to find many big-picture things to smile about. The U.S. economy sputters in a Catch 22: joblessness won’t improve until people loosen their purse strings, but that won’t happen until they’re convinced their jobs and incomes are secure. Who can blame them?
We remain stuck in unwinnable wars in irredeemable places. “Beliefs” trump science. Shortsightedness is regarded as a virtue; no politician dares to look past the next election, no CEO past the next fiscal quarter.
Thus, we are forced to seek personal solace, finding small pleasures to distract from larger concerns. Fortunately, these are abundant. Here are 10 of mine, in no particular order:
HI-DEFINITION TV. Wife Susie and I bought ours (a Sony) almost three years ago, but I’m still dazzled by its sharpness and clarity. It’s not just a technical improvement, it’s a whole new medium! It’s especially good for sports; the argument for watching games at home instead of in person never has been stronger.
GOOD MARINARA SAUCE. It used to be scarce, even in Italian restaurants, but it’s everywhere now. I give much of the credit to the Food Network, my favorite daytime-TV outlet, which I think has lifted cuisine generally in this land. It used to be said that anyone who could read could cook, but now literacy isn’t required.
TRANSITION LENSES. They turn regular glasses into sunglasses and back again with no effort on the part of the wearer. No need to shlep sunglasses or leave them around to be lost or broken. As the ads say, they protect eyes from harmful UV rays, and look cool to boot. Why doesn’t everyone wear them?
AMAZON.COM. Through it you can get just about any book ever written, often at a bargain price, and delivered to your home. Yes, Kindle, et al, eventually will make books obsolete, but I’m betting I’ll be obsolete before they are. One caution: never pay up for quick delivery. Amazon will pocket your money and deliver when it pleases.
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD PUZZLES. You might recall I devoted much of a previous blog to their excellence, but I feel an encore is needed. I work the Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday ones. They’re testing but doable and, almost invariably, clever. Will Shortz, their editor, is a great man. He should get a Nobel Prize for contributing to human betterment.
NETFLIX. Another new-age marvel whose postal delivery of movie and TV-show DVDs is all but seamless. No runs to the video store, no late fees, and customer reps who are based in the U.S. and whose native language is the same as mine. Claiming to offer some 100,000 titles (OK, the number is disputed), it almost always has the movies I want, and you can take it with you on vacation.
TOYOTAS. Susie and I have owned or leased six of them in the last 13 years, and none has seen the inside of a repair shop except for tire problems or brake jobs. They’re dead solid reliable and have a lot of juice besides. I thought the flap over their supposed unintended accelerations early last year was a classic case of mass hysteria. After a couple weeks of leading the national news, such complaints stopped, cold. No recall eliminates 100% of any problem
ROBERT CARO— The biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson is a marvelous historian, one who never fails to captivate with a writing style that turns a mountain of painstakingly gained detail into a cohesive and griping narrative. Three volumes of his four-part series on Johnson have been published: “The Path to Power” (1982); “Means of Ascent” (1990); and “Master of the Senate” (2002). If you haven’t read them, you should. The fourth, “The Presidency,” isn’t due out until next year, but I will spend this one happily anticipating it. Caro is 75 years old and I wish him good health.
HBO DRAMAS—“The Sopranos” was the best thing on TV, ever (“Lonesome Dove” was second-best), and while the network’s recent original offerings have fallen short of that lofty standard they’re still better than anything else around. I never missed an episode of the war drama “The Pacific” or “Treme,” the one about post-Katrina New Orleans, last year. Ditto the just-concluded “Boardwalk Empire,” despite wondering what delicate-looking Steve Buscemi was doing playing a rough-tough political boss. I’m glad to see that “Big Love” is coming back for another go-round. Even though that series gets progressively nuttier I find hilarious the premise of an ordinary guy humping to keep up with three pretty wives. I especially like the blond one, Nicki.
THE McDOWELL SONORAN PRESERVE. It’s across the street from where I live and from the nearest trailhead I can walk for 15 or 20 minutes and enter a world of desert serenity that’s as different as it can be from the hubbub of the city around it. It’s free, and I can poke around for as long as I wish. You might not live in Scottsdale, AZ, and be able to go there, but I bet there’s somewhere like it reasonably near you.
We remain stuck in unwinnable wars in irredeemable places. “Beliefs” trump science. Shortsightedness is regarded as a virtue; no politician dares to look past the next election, no CEO past the next fiscal quarter.
Thus, we are forced to seek personal solace, finding small pleasures to distract from larger concerns. Fortunately, these are abundant. Here are 10 of mine, in no particular order:
HI-DEFINITION TV. Wife Susie and I bought ours (a Sony) almost three years ago, but I’m still dazzled by its sharpness and clarity. It’s not just a technical improvement, it’s a whole new medium! It’s especially good for sports; the argument for watching games at home instead of in person never has been stronger.
GOOD MARINARA SAUCE. It used to be scarce, even in Italian restaurants, but it’s everywhere now. I give much of the credit to the Food Network, my favorite daytime-TV outlet, which I think has lifted cuisine generally in this land. It used to be said that anyone who could read could cook, but now literacy isn’t required.
TRANSITION LENSES. They turn regular glasses into sunglasses and back again with no effort on the part of the wearer. No need to shlep sunglasses or leave them around to be lost or broken. As the ads say, they protect eyes from harmful UV rays, and look cool to boot. Why doesn’t everyone wear them?
AMAZON.COM. Through it you can get just about any book ever written, often at a bargain price, and delivered to your home. Yes, Kindle, et al, eventually will make books obsolete, but I’m betting I’ll be obsolete before they are. One caution: never pay up for quick delivery. Amazon will pocket your money and deliver when it pleases.
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD PUZZLES. You might recall I devoted much of a previous blog to their excellence, but I feel an encore is needed. I work the Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday ones. They’re testing but doable and, almost invariably, clever. Will Shortz, their editor, is a great man. He should get a Nobel Prize for contributing to human betterment.
NETFLIX. Another new-age marvel whose postal delivery of movie and TV-show DVDs is all but seamless. No runs to the video store, no late fees, and customer reps who are based in the U.S. and whose native language is the same as mine. Claiming to offer some 100,000 titles (OK, the number is disputed), it almost always has the movies I want, and you can take it with you on vacation.
TOYOTAS. Susie and I have owned or leased six of them in the last 13 years, and none has seen the inside of a repair shop except for tire problems or brake jobs. They’re dead solid reliable and have a lot of juice besides. I thought the flap over their supposed unintended accelerations early last year was a classic case of mass hysteria. After a couple weeks of leading the national news, such complaints stopped, cold. No recall eliminates 100% of any problem
ROBERT CARO— The biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson is a marvelous historian, one who never fails to captivate with a writing style that turns a mountain of painstakingly gained detail into a cohesive and griping narrative. Three volumes of his four-part series on Johnson have been published: “The Path to Power” (1982); “Means of Ascent” (1990); and “Master of the Senate” (2002). If you haven’t read them, you should. The fourth, “The Presidency,” isn’t due out until next year, but I will spend this one happily anticipating it. Caro is 75 years old and I wish him good health.
HBO DRAMAS—“The Sopranos” was the best thing on TV, ever (“Lonesome Dove” was second-best), and while the network’s recent original offerings have fallen short of that lofty standard they’re still better than anything else around. I never missed an episode of the war drama “The Pacific” or “Treme,” the one about post-Katrina New Orleans, last year. Ditto the just-concluded “Boardwalk Empire,” despite wondering what delicate-looking Steve Buscemi was doing playing a rough-tough political boss. I’m glad to see that “Big Love” is coming back for another go-round. Even though that series gets progressively nuttier I find hilarious the premise of an ordinary guy humping to keep up with three pretty wives. I especially like the blond one, Nicki.
THE McDOWELL SONORAN PRESERVE. It’s across the street from where I live and from the nearest trailhead I can walk for 15 or 20 minutes and enter a world of desert serenity that’s as different as it can be from the hubbub of the city around it. It’s free, and I can poke around for as long as I wish. You might not live in Scottsdale, AZ, and be able to go there, but I bet there’s somewhere like it reasonably near you.
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