For sports fans, this is among the best times of year. The Major League Baseball season has begun, hockey is in its playoffs phase, pro basketball soon will be there and the pro-football draft is about a fortnight away. Gatherings of all sorts are abuzz with sports talk, to the virtual exclusion of other topics.
For nonfans—a persecuted minority at any time—the situation is uncomfortable, if not dire. Not only are they left out of the chatter, they’re apt to feel bewildered and culturally derived as well. That’s because sports has a vocabulary of its own, understood only by the cognoscenti. If you’ve traveled broad and aren’t adept at foreign languages, you know what it’s like to overhear conversations that are totally unintelligible. Imagine how that must feel in your own land.
I’m a sports fan, of course, but have some knowledge of the psyche of the nonfan. My daughter Jessica, raised in a four-brother family of fans, is one, as were both my parents and my lone sibling, sister Judy. Their examples have caused me to ponder the fan/nonfan phenomenon and conclude that it stems from nature, not nurture. Somewhere in our makeup is a gene that twisted one way produces fans, and twisted another produces nons. Some day someone will identify it, and, thus, open the way to its manipulation. Couples of the future will be able to control whether or not their offspring will follow sports, ending the heartbreak of houses divided. Indeed, the time can’t be far away when parents will be able to specify which sports will enthuse their children—and, even, which teams!
Until that happy day comes, however, we must depend on education to close the gaps, but there are difficulties. Rather than educate, the sports pages of our daily newspapers obfuscate, regularly employing the sort of shorthand that widens the cultural divide. As a young reporter I was told by a wise editor that the three main rules of journalism were “explain, explain, explain,” but that message never seems to make it to the sports departments. They throw around initials such as NBA and NHL with nary a word of explanation, and just about daily carry entire stories in which the subject sport is never named.
Like most fans I ignored that last thing until a jarring experience set me straight. It came during a long-ago trip to England, where I made my way through a lengthy, jargon-filled sports-page piece without ever discovering what sport it was about. (It was cricket, I later learned.) Then and there I resolved never to write a sports story without naming the sport early on. One of my proudest boasts is that I’ve stuck to that pledge.
So call a nonfan to read this over your shoulder—he or she will learn something. NBA stands for National Basketball Association and NHL for National Hockey League. That’s important to know even if candor requires me to point out that both titles are misnomers because the entities really are international, encompassing teams from both the U.S. and Canada.
Obversely, our annual baseball championship is grandly called the World Series even though only U.S. teams (and one from Toronto) are eligible to participate. Since 2006 there has been a real world series, called the World Baseball Classic, involving national all-star teams from many countries. It’s been contested twice (in 2006 and 2009), with Japan winning both times. That the U.S. never has finished higher than fourth in the event is something our Major League would prefer to ignore.
Now let’s move on to decoding things that sports figures say; like the writers who describe their deeds, they have a language all their own. The main places to hear it are the ESPN television stations. Without a glossary the talk they broadcast is meaningless.
For example, when a player says he is “struggling” it means he is failing; a baseball player who confesses to “struggling at the plate” means that he couldn’t get a hit if the pitcher handed him the ball. The reasons usually given for such struggles are called “distractions.” These can be anything that might keep an athlete’s mind from his on-field duties, from a hangnail to a pending rape trial.
When a player signs a multi-year, multi-multi-million-dollar contract, he typically expresses his satisfaction by saying that the vast sum finally will enable him to “take care” of his family, even though it guarantees than even with moderate overspending none of his descendants for many generations will have to work. The flip side of that line is a team owner saying he won’t meet the market price for a desirable player because he needs to maintain his team’s “salary structure.” That means that if he pays one guy what’s he’s worth his other employees also might demand similar treatment.
“All I really want is a ring” is another thing an athlete says after he’s signed a huge contract. Members of championship teams usually receive rings, which have come to emblemize unselfish achievement.
But when his contract offers an “out,” whether or not a ring has been attained, this same fella is as likely as not to ditch his team for one that offers him more money. Why would he do such a thing? BECAUSE HE HAS TO TAKE CARE OF HIS FAMILY.
See how easy it is once you get the hang of it?
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
SMELLIVISION
I like boxing but hate to admit it. It’s a brutal activity that offends just about everyone’s notions of civility and is saved only by the courage and skill of its best practitioners. Still, for the tingle of pure excitement, nothing beats the opening bell of a big fight. I attended many as a columnist, and miss the privilege of a ringside seat.
I feel pretty much the same about college sports, the annual climax of which—the NCAA basketball title game—tips off tomorrow (Monday) night. Yeah, the games are swell, and well worth watching, but their administration is so steeped in hypocrisy and corruption that the odor comes right through my television set and into my living room. That also was the case when I had a much-less-fancy TV than I do now.
Nothing makes that point better than the contrast between the parlous state of higher education in this land and the lavishness of the college-sports establishment. While states slash their support of public colleges and universities, and the resulting tuition increases turn a college education for most into a luxury supportable only by painful borrowing (total student-loan debt exceeds credit-card debt in the U.S.), schools pour ever-larger sums into new stadiums and athletics-support facilities. Nothing is too good for our jocks.
I thought the prevailing mindset on this issue was expressed nicely a few weeks ago when a member of the fine legislature of my home state of Arizona introduced a bill requiring every scholarship student at a state university to make a minimum tuition payment of $2,000 from his own or his parents’ pocket. The gentleman was quick to note, however, that holders of athletics scholarships would be exempt from the charge because their talents “help” their schools.
As exemplified by this season’s basketball Final Four, the nothing-is-too-good rule goes double for big-time college head coaches; according to USA Today the combined annual salaries of the four schools’ sideline bosses total $17.6 million, or, probably, more than that of the entire engineering faculties of the institutions involved. Louisville’s Rick Pitino heads the list at $7.5 million a year, a sum which, as far I can tell, exceeds the salary of any NBA coach now that Phil Jackson has retired. Kentucky’s John Calipari is next at $3.9 million, and Kansas’s Bill Self is close behind him at $3.6 million. Thad Matta of Ohio State makes a paltry $2.6 million, but I’m sure he’ll get a raise soon.
It would be good to report that the above-named gentlemen are moral exemplars who are a credit to their schools, parents and race. Hah! Calipari heads just about everyone’s all-sleaze list, with Pitino close behind. The jury remains out on Self and Motta, as it does on just about every other college coach at their level of pay and accomplishment.
Calipari’s rep is based mostly on the fact that he’s the only coach to have had the NCAA vacate the records (and take back the trophies) of two Final Four teams he guided—Massachusetts in 1996 and Memphis in 2008. UMass was whacked after it was revealed that its star center, Marcus Camby, received about $40,000 in cash and gifts from an agent while he was a so-called student-athlete. Memphis got it because Derrick Rose, the freshman leader of its 2008 national runnerup, got into the school because someone else took his college-entrance exam.
Calipari, of course, maintained that he’d been ignorant of those misdeeds. The NCAA chose to believe him despite the fact that coaches of his ilk know what each of their players eat for breakfast every morning. That’s why they call the cartel the No Consequences Athletics Association.
Indeed, Calipari’s career has sailed right along no matter what ethical icebergs he’s banged into, culminating in 2009 in the UK job, reputed to be the best in academe. He’s so far escaped formal obloquy there, but not for lack of trying. Eric Bledsoe, the star freshman guard of his first Kentucky team, left school for the pros after an examination of his high-school records revealed evidence that his grades had been altered to meet college standards. Then the coach tried to get Enes Kanter, a Turkish seven-footer, cleared to play at UK despite Kanter having been paid more than $100,000 to perform for a season at a top-tier professional team in his homeland. Calipari lost that one, and Kanter took the next-best offer, with the NBA’s Utah Jazz.
Fact is, though, that the young Turk spent only one year fewer in college than have many other Calipari recruits. He’s the master of the one-and-done, the cup-of-coffee college stay for the highly talented dictated by a 2005 NBA decision to deny employment to kids until they turn 19 years of age and are a year out of high school. Four members of Calipari’s first Kentucky team escaped to the pros after taking this academically dubious path, as did two of his second. A few from this team probably will, too.
Louisville’s Pitino made his early mark on his sport with his Armani suits and have-whistle-will-travel portfolio that had him flitting at short intervals between the colleges and the pros. His notion of allegiance is best illustrated by his signing with Louisville in 2001 after having led UK against the school in one of college hoops’ bitterest rivalries.
Pitino gained tabloid fame a couple years back when a woman who would marry and divorce his team’s equipment manager (!) claimed Pitino had raped her. The married father of five admitted to having had consensual sexual with the lady, and giving her $3,000 for “health insurance” (she said it was for an abortion), but that was it. The episode came to light when the woman was arrested and later convicted for using the episode to try to shake down Pitino for further funds. He came off as the victim, and not only has survived as a leader of young men, but also has prospered.
Matta’s Ohio State basketballers have been OK with the NCAA but the school’s football team recently was ensnared in scandal. Typically, the NCAA focused on the trivial benefits (tattoos) Buckeye football players got from a booster while ignoring the fact the guy was a drug dealer and his Columbus tattoo parlor was their social club. If a lot of gridders found the place maybe a few cagers did, too, huh?
Kansas under Self has prospered by recruiting from yon rather than from hither. The current 15-man Jayhawks’ roster contains only two Kansans. They sit on the bench while kids from Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington D.C. perform. Did those youngsters seek out the bright lights of Lawrence, Kas., only because of Self’s cute smile? Just asking.
So enjoy tomorrow night’s finale, but don’t forget the clothes pin for your nose. If you don’t have a clothes pin a big paper clip will do. I’ve used both.
I feel pretty much the same about college sports, the annual climax of which—the NCAA basketball title game—tips off tomorrow (Monday) night. Yeah, the games are swell, and well worth watching, but their administration is so steeped in hypocrisy and corruption that the odor comes right through my television set and into my living room. That also was the case when I had a much-less-fancy TV than I do now.
Nothing makes that point better than the contrast between the parlous state of higher education in this land and the lavishness of the college-sports establishment. While states slash their support of public colleges and universities, and the resulting tuition increases turn a college education for most into a luxury supportable only by painful borrowing (total student-loan debt exceeds credit-card debt in the U.S.), schools pour ever-larger sums into new stadiums and athletics-support facilities. Nothing is too good for our jocks.
I thought the prevailing mindset on this issue was expressed nicely a few weeks ago when a member of the fine legislature of my home state of Arizona introduced a bill requiring every scholarship student at a state university to make a minimum tuition payment of $2,000 from his own or his parents’ pocket. The gentleman was quick to note, however, that holders of athletics scholarships would be exempt from the charge because their talents “help” their schools.
As exemplified by this season’s basketball Final Four, the nothing-is-too-good rule goes double for big-time college head coaches; according to USA Today the combined annual salaries of the four schools’ sideline bosses total $17.6 million, or, probably, more than that of the entire engineering faculties of the institutions involved. Louisville’s Rick Pitino heads the list at $7.5 million a year, a sum which, as far I can tell, exceeds the salary of any NBA coach now that Phil Jackson has retired. Kentucky’s John Calipari is next at $3.9 million, and Kansas’s Bill Self is close behind him at $3.6 million. Thad Matta of Ohio State makes a paltry $2.6 million, but I’m sure he’ll get a raise soon.
It would be good to report that the above-named gentlemen are moral exemplars who are a credit to their schools, parents and race. Hah! Calipari heads just about everyone’s all-sleaze list, with Pitino close behind. The jury remains out on Self and Motta, as it does on just about every other college coach at their level of pay and accomplishment.
Calipari’s rep is based mostly on the fact that he’s the only coach to have had the NCAA vacate the records (and take back the trophies) of two Final Four teams he guided—Massachusetts in 1996 and Memphis in 2008. UMass was whacked after it was revealed that its star center, Marcus Camby, received about $40,000 in cash and gifts from an agent while he was a so-called student-athlete. Memphis got it because Derrick Rose, the freshman leader of its 2008 national runnerup, got into the school because someone else took his college-entrance exam.
Calipari, of course, maintained that he’d been ignorant of those misdeeds. The NCAA chose to believe him despite the fact that coaches of his ilk know what each of their players eat for breakfast every morning. That’s why they call the cartel the No Consequences Athletics Association.
Indeed, Calipari’s career has sailed right along no matter what ethical icebergs he’s banged into, culminating in 2009 in the UK job, reputed to be the best in academe. He’s so far escaped formal obloquy there, but not for lack of trying. Eric Bledsoe, the star freshman guard of his first Kentucky team, left school for the pros after an examination of his high-school records revealed evidence that his grades had been altered to meet college standards. Then the coach tried to get Enes Kanter, a Turkish seven-footer, cleared to play at UK despite Kanter having been paid more than $100,000 to perform for a season at a top-tier professional team in his homeland. Calipari lost that one, and Kanter took the next-best offer, with the NBA’s Utah Jazz.
Fact is, though, that the young Turk spent only one year fewer in college than have many other Calipari recruits. He’s the master of the one-and-done, the cup-of-coffee college stay for the highly talented dictated by a 2005 NBA decision to deny employment to kids until they turn 19 years of age and are a year out of high school. Four members of Calipari’s first Kentucky team escaped to the pros after taking this academically dubious path, as did two of his second. A few from this team probably will, too.
Louisville’s Pitino made his early mark on his sport with his Armani suits and have-whistle-will-travel portfolio that had him flitting at short intervals between the colleges and the pros. His notion of allegiance is best illustrated by his signing with Louisville in 2001 after having led UK against the school in one of college hoops’ bitterest rivalries.
Pitino gained tabloid fame a couple years back when a woman who would marry and divorce his team’s equipment manager (!) claimed Pitino had raped her. The married father of five admitted to having had consensual sexual with the lady, and giving her $3,000 for “health insurance” (she said it was for an abortion), but that was it. The episode came to light when the woman was arrested and later convicted for using the episode to try to shake down Pitino for further funds. He came off as the victim, and not only has survived as a leader of young men, but also has prospered.
Matta’s Ohio State basketballers have been OK with the NCAA but the school’s football team recently was ensnared in scandal. Typically, the NCAA focused on the trivial benefits (tattoos) Buckeye football players got from a booster while ignoring the fact the guy was a drug dealer and his Columbus tattoo parlor was their social club. If a lot of gridders found the place maybe a few cagers did, too, huh?
Kansas under Self has prospered by recruiting from yon rather than from hither. The current 15-man Jayhawks’ roster contains only two Kansans. They sit on the bench while kids from Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington D.C. perform. Did those youngsters seek out the bright lights of Lawrence, Kas., only because of Self’s cute smile? Just asking.
So enjoy tomorrow night’s finale, but don’t forget the clothes pin for your nose. If you don’t have a clothes pin a big paper clip will do. I’ve used both.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
TAKE A NUMBER
If I were a law student pondering a specialty, I’d consider personal injury suits with an emphasis on football. Former National Football League players alone could create a clientele that would keep me busy for an entire career.
If you’ve been reading the sports pages for more than the box scores lately, you know what I’m talking about. Not only have former NFL players—some still in their 20s-- been suing the league en masse for compensation for the results of concussions they sustained on the gridiron, but revelations about the organized administration of the post-surgical pain-killer Toradol, to keep players with various ailments on the field, have opened a broader area of litigation.
Then came the NFL itself with the appalling charge that the New Orleans Saints made “bounty” payments to defensive players who maimed opponents, and comments by players from other teams who said that, yeah, their clubs did pretty much the same thing. According to experts quoted in a piece in last week’s the New York Times, this means that individual players, coaches and teams might be dragged into civil court to answer (and pay) for their misdeeds, with consequences as yet undetermined. Suffice it to say that the defense-lawyer side of the situation might prove as lucrative as the plaintiff’s side.
Of course, as any honest lawyer (I’m sure there are some) will tell you, suing ain’t the same as winning, so it’s too soon to start toting up damages. Further, football being the institution that it is, predictions of the NFL’s demise under the lawsuit avalanche probably are overstated. Nevertheless, the NFL certainly is in for a rocky stretch and may suffer collateral problems from the spotlight on injuries the legal actions will bring. Given the sport's multiple dangers, more parents will be withholding permission for their kids to play it on the lower levels, and without such feeders the head eventually could die. As evidence mounts that concussions’ effects are cumulative and that even ones not recognized at the time of occurrence may bite years later, would you sign Junior’s consent form?
Over the past couple of seasons the NFL has taken steps to deal with the issue. Ironically, however, that may only strengthen the legal hands of head-injury suffers who say that those measures are based on information previously known but ignored. Surely, the NFL can’t claim to only recently have heard about “The Silent Epidemic.” I began writing about it in the Wall Street Journal in 1982, and I wasn’t the first.
The recent case that most stirred the pot was the 2011 suicide at age 50 of Dave Duerson, an ex-Chicago Bears safety who shot himself to death after wrestling unsuccessfully with the progressive headaches, memory loss and general lack of function his head injuries caused. Duerson’s post-mortem exam revealed that he suffered from advanced brain damage called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, rare in someone his age. Team doctors must have—or should have—noticed this and blown the whistle on his career long before the condition became acute, his heirs assert.
To make that point in court, though, they’ll have to stand in line. About 650 other retired players also have filed suit against the league, saying it taught such unsafe practices as head-first tackling, ignored scientific evidence of the seriousness of head traumas and failed to treat them properly once they occurred. So many such suits pend that a Philadelphia federal judge recently consolidated some of them, but 18 separate actions remain and the number climbs.
The damaging assertion that teams encouraged players to play through injuries was underlined in a New York Times op ed piece on Toradol last December by Nate Jackson, whose eight-year NFL career as a wide receiver and tight end ended in 2009. By using such pain-maskers, players run the risk of turning small injuries into large ones. Jackson wrote:
“When I played for the Denver Broncos from 2003 to 2008, Toradol was a popular pregame injection. The night before we took the field 10 to 20 of us would go into a designated room and stand in line to receive our shots. I don’t remember what if any specific injury I was nursing but I do remember that my body was perpetually feeling bad, as were those of my teammates. Our training staff knew this and would encourage us to get a shot. We were told it would make us feel better so we lined up for the needle.
“When I got to the front of the line I was told that the shot was known to cause internal bleeding in a very small percentage of patients but was otherwise safe. The disclaimer was given with needle in hand and a line of men waiting behind me. There was no hesitation, no trepidation, no point at which I felt that taking Toradol was a risk… The big risk, in my mind, was not being at my best the next day. The big risk was not taking the shot, playing poorly and being viewed by the staff as unwilling to do what it took to help the team win. The big risk was losing my job.”
The fact that Jackson and others like him weren’t forced onto the field at gun point will be used in its defense by the NFL, and by the individuals possibly sued for “bounty” hits. So will the concept of “assumed risk,” which in football means that anyone who plays the brutal game does so knowing that the potential for injury is high. Indeed, a case can be made that whatever they tell their wives football players are daredevils like test pilots, fire fighters and war correspondents, machos types for whom risk adds to their jobs’ appeal.
The league, however, ought to immediately do a couple of things to protect players from themselves. One is to award lifetime, Cadillac-level health coverage to anyone who dons an NFL uniform; it’d be expensive but probably less so than what the current lawsuits will cost. The other is to abolish forevermore the post of team doctor; while medical personnel should be available for sideline emergencies, further care should be entrusted only to the players’ own physicians. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone who works for someone else sticking a needle in my butt.
If you’ve been reading the sports pages for more than the box scores lately, you know what I’m talking about. Not only have former NFL players—some still in their 20s-- been suing the league en masse for compensation for the results of concussions they sustained on the gridiron, but revelations about the organized administration of the post-surgical pain-killer Toradol, to keep players with various ailments on the field, have opened a broader area of litigation.
Then came the NFL itself with the appalling charge that the New Orleans Saints made “bounty” payments to defensive players who maimed opponents, and comments by players from other teams who said that, yeah, their clubs did pretty much the same thing. According to experts quoted in a piece in last week’s the New York Times, this means that individual players, coaches and teams might be dragged into civil court to answer (and pay) for their misdeeds, with consequences as yet undetermined. Suffice it to say that the defense-lawyer side of the situation might prove as lucrative as the plaintiff’s side.
Of course, as any honest lawyer (I’m sure there are some) will tell you, suing ain’t the same as winning, so it’s too soon to start toting up damages. Further, football being the institution that it is, predictions of the NFL’s demise under the lawsuit avalanche probably are overstated. Nevertheless, the NFL certainly is in for a rocky stretch and may suffer collateral problems from the spotlight on injuries the legal actions will bring. Given the sport's multiple dangers, more parents will be withholding permission for their kids to play it on the lower levels, and without such feeders the head eventually could die. As evidence mounts that concussions’ effects are cumulative and that even ones not recognized at the time of occurrence may bite years later, would you sign Junior’s consent form?
Over the past couple of seasons the NFL has taken steps to deal with the issue. Ironically, however, that may only strengthen the legal hands of head-injury suffers who say that those measures are based on information previously known but ignored. Surely, the NFL can’t claim to only recently have heard about “The Silent Epidemic.” I began writing about it in the Wall Street Journal in 1982, and I wasn’t the first.
The recent case that most stirred the pot was the 2011 suicide at age 50 of Dave Duerson, an ex-Chicago Bears safety who shot himself to death after wrestling unsuccessfully with the progressive headaches, memory loss and general lack of function his head injuries caused. Duerson’s post-mortem exam revealed that he suffered from advanced brain damage called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, rare in someone his age. Team doctors must have—or should have—noticed this and blown the whistle on his career long before the condition became acute, his heirs assert.
To make that point in court, though, they’ll have to stand in line. About 650 other retired players also have filed suit against the league, saying it taught such unsafe practices as head-first tackling, ignored scientific evidence of the seriousness of head traumas and failed to treat them properly once they occurred. So many such suits pend that a Philadelphia federal judge recently consolidated some of them, but 18 separate actions remain and the number climbs.
The damaging assertion that teams encouraged players to play through injuries was underlined in a New York Times op ed piece on Toradol last December by Nate Jackson, whose eight-year NFL career as a wide receiver and tight end ended in 2009. By using such pain-maskers, players run the risk of turning small injuries into large ones. Jackson wrote:
“When I played for the Denver Broncos from 2003 to 2008, Toradol was a popular pregame injection. The night before we took the field 10 to 20 of us would go into a designated room and stand in line to receive our shots. I don’t remember what if any specific injury I was nursing but I do remember that my body was perpetually feeling bad, as were those of my teammates. Our training staff knew this and would encourage us to get a shot. We were told it would make us feel better so we lined up for the needle.
“When I got to the front of the line I was told that the shot was known to cause internal bleeding in a very small percentage of patients but was otherwise safe. The disclaimer was given with needle in hand and a line of men waiting behind me. There was no hesitation, no trepidation, no point at which I felt that taking Toradol was a risk… The big risk, in my mind, was not being at my best the next day. The big risk was not taking the shot, playing poorly and being viewed by the staff as unwilling to do what it took to help the team win. The big risk was losing my job.”
The fact that Jackson and others like him weren’t forced onto the field at gun point will be used in its defense by the NFL, and by the individuals possibly sued for “bounty” hits. So will the concept of “assumed risk,” which in football means that anyone who plays the brutal game does so knowing that the potential for injury is high. Indeed, a case can be made that whatever they tell their wives football players are daredevils like test pilots, fire fighters and war correspondents, machos types for whom risk adds to their jobs’ appeal.
The league, however, ought to immediately do a couple of things to protect players from themselves. One is to award lifetime, Cadillac-level health coverage to anyone who dons an NFL uniform; it’d be expensive but probably less so than what the current lawsuits will cost. The other is to abolish forevermore the post of team doctor; while medical personnel should be available for sideline emergencies, further care should be entrusted only to the players’ own physicians. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone who works for someone else sticking a needle in my butt.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
JEREMY & RYAN
People used to ask me (and sometimes still do) where I got my column ideas. We in the business know that’s no mystery. God always provides.
The last several weeks have been a case in point. Before February the only people who’d heard of Jeremy Lin were Harvard basketball fans and members of his immediate family, a group you could count on your fingers and toes. Now, just like that, everybody has.
And until last week the common wisdom had it that Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers’ strongboy, was going down for steroids use, the latest in a dreary line of baseballers to suffer that fate. But what do you know, he beat the rap! How’d he do that?
First things first, so let’s start with young Jeremy. His is a heart-warming tale if there ever was one, that of a modest-appearing, Chinese-American kid from California who suddenly—magically!—blossoms into an NBA star, kind of like the guy who turned into Spiderman. And in New York, no less. That’s astonishing in an era when kids are cataloged nationally for athletic ability starting at about age 10.
For my money, Lin’s emergence is only the second-best recent-year story of its sort, ranking behind that of the football quarterback Kurt Warner. Lin was a three-year starter at Harvard and All-Ivy twice, while Warner never cracked the lineup at far-more-obscure Northern Iowa U. until he was a senior. Further, Lin went right from college to the top pro level (albeit as an undrafted free agent), while Warner worked as a grocery-store stock clerk and labored for years in his sport’s basements before getting his break. That’s a quibble, though.
The more one reads up on Lin, the more sense his success makes. He was a good athlete from the start—an all-state guard as a high schooler in his populous state—and probably was passed over by the top-echelon basketball schools only because of the stereotypes that attach to his ethnicity. Although he was undrafted he made the Golden State Warriors’ roster out of school. He played little in SF last year but made the best of his Development League assignments there, and early this season with the New York Knicks. An inveterate and maybe obsessive gym rat and game-film watcher, he worked diligently to improve every facet of his game, all the while adding weight and strength. Withal, he was a player whose whole exceeded the sum of its parts, and when his prime-time opportunity came he was ready for it.
The other day on the radio I heard Frank Deford, the Sports Illustrated and NPR wiseman, say that Lin’s story makes the sad point that there are other benchwarmers in great number who will go to their graves undiscovered for lack of a chance to shine. I disagree. In this land athletics and the performing arts are about as thoroughly meritocratic as can be imagined, and talent will out. But not often, however, with the splash that Lin’s has.
Ryan Braun’s saga has been quite different from Lin’s. He’s been the can’t-miss kid who didn’t miss—the fifth choice overall in the 2005 Major League Baseball draft, National League rookie-of-the-year in 2007, the NL’s most-valuable player last season, and a reputed nice guy to boot. He appeared almost too good to be true, and when word leaked last fall that he’d flunked an MLB test for performance-enhancing drugs, it seemed that he was.
Braun appealed the ruling. Lo and behold he won, thanks to a lawyer who discovered a hole in the game’s handling of his client’s drug sample (it sat around a courier’s home for two days before being sent to the lab) and convinced an arbitrator that that alone was grounds for overturning a positive test result. No player had won such an appeal in a dozen previous cases in baseball.
Back on the field without penalty last week, Braun might have greeted his acquittal with a wink and a nod, but he went further, full-voicedly declaring his innocence of ever doping even though his appeal succeeded on purely technical ground. That’s what athletes say even after they’ve been nailed beyond doubt, so his denial rang hollow. But some aspects of his case give cause for doubt.
Braun flunks none of the smell tests for steroids use. He doesn’t have the perennially pissed-off personality of, say, Roger Clemens, and his listed weight of 210 pounds (he stands 6-foot-1) was the same last season as it was in his rookie year, meaning that he hasn’t turned into the Michelin Man the way Barry Bonds did. Braun has declared—so far without contradiction—that Brewers’ records show that his speed afoot and weight-room stats also haven’t changed much since he broke in, meaning either that he’s clean or that he’s always used, something that’s doubtful because he’d passed some two dozen official drug tests since 2005 before coming up short last fall.
Finally, Braun’s performance signature has been consistency, not the sudden surges one sees from drug users. With a .332 batting average, 33 home runs and 111 runs batted in, 2011 was his best year overall, but he hit more home runs in 2008 (37) and had more RBIs (114) in 2009, and on a per-game basis his power numbers last year weren’t as good as those of his first season. Contrast that with the stats of Luis Gonzalez, ex of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who averaged 15 home runs a year over a dozen Major League seasons before up and hitting 57 in 1998.
Now that was amazing—almost as amazing as Jeremy Lin’s debut. Hey, maybe it’s Lin who should be drug tested.
NOTE: You might check out ChicagoSideSports.com, which, as its title suggests, is a new web site devoted to athletic doings in the Windy City, where I’m from. Already up and running, and scheduled to go daily on April 1, it will feature bright sports writing from a number of sources, including me. Its editor is Jonathan Eig, an ex-Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of excellent biographies of Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson. You should check those out, too.
The last several weeks have been a case in point. Before February the only people who’d heard of Jeremy Lin were Harvard basketball fans and members of his immediate family, a group you could count on your fingers and toes. Now, just like that, everybody has.
And until last week the common wisdom had it that Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers’ strongboy, was going down for steroids use, the latest in a dreary line of baseballers to suffer that fate. But what do you know, he beat the rap! How’d he do that?
First things first, so let’s start with young Jeremy. His is a heart-warming tale if there ever was one, that of a modest-appearing, Chinese-American kid from California who suddenly—magically!—blossoms into an NBA star, kind of like the guy who turned into Spiderman. And in New York, no less. That’s astonishing in an era when kids are cataloged nationally for athletic ability starting at about age 10.
For my money, Lin’s emergence is only the second-best recent-year story of its sort, ranking behind that of the football quarterback Kurt Warner. Lin was a three-year starter at Harvard and All-Ivy twice, while Warner never cracked the lineup at far-more-obscure Northern Iowa U. until he was a senior. Further, Lin went right from college to the top pro level (albeit as an undrafted free agent), while Warner worked as a grocery-store stock clerk and labored for years in his sport’s basements before getting his break. That’s a quibble, though.
The more one reads up on Lin, the more sense his success makes. He was a good athlete from the start—an all-state guard as a high schooler in his populous state—and probably was passed over by the top-echelon basketball schools only because of the stereotypes that attach to his ethnicity. Although he was undrafted he made the Golden State Warriors’ roster out of school. He played little in SF last year but made the best of his Development League assignments there, and early this season with the New York Knicks. An inveterate and maybe obsessive gym rat and game-film watcher, he worked diligently to improve every facet of his game, all the while adding weight and strength. Withal, he was a player whose whole exceeded the sum of its parts, and when his prime-time opportunity came he was ready for it.
The other day on the radio I heard Frank Deford, the Sports Illustrated and NPR wiseman, say that Lin’s story makes the sad point that there are other benchwarmers in great number who will go to their graves undiscovered for lack of a chance to shine. I disagree. In this land athletics and the performing arts are about as thoroughly meritocratic as can be imagined, and talent will out. But not often, however, with the splash that Lin’s has.
Ryan Braun’s saga has been quite different from Lin’s. He’s been the can’t-miss kid who didn’t miss—the fifth choice overall in the 2005 Major League Baseball draft, National League rookie-of-the-year in 2007, the NL’s most-valuable player last season, and a reputed nice guy to boot. He appeared almost too good to be true, and when word leaked last fall that he’d flunked an MLB test for performance-enhancing drugs, it seemed that he was.
Braun appealed the ruling. Lo and behold he won, thanks to a lawyer who discovered a hole in the game’s handling of his client’s drug sample (it sat around a courier’s home for two days before being sent to the lab) and convinced an arbitrator that that alone was grounds for overturning a positive test result. No player had won such an appeal in a dozen previous cases in baseball.
Back on the field without penalty last week, Braun might have greeted his acquittal with a wink and a nod, but he went further, full-voicedly declaring his innocence of ever doping even though his appeal succeeded on purely technical ground. That’s what athletes say even after they’ve been nailed beyond doubt, so his denial rang hollow. But some aspects of his case give cause for doubt.
Braun flunks none of the smell tests for steroids use. He doesn’t have the perennially pissed-off personality of, say, Roger Clemens, and his listed weight of 210 pounds (he stands 6-foot-1) was the same last season as it was in his rookie year, meaning that he hasn’t turned into the Michelin Man the way Barry Bonds did. Braun has declared—so far without contradiction—that Brewers’ records show that his speed afoot and weight-room stats also haven’t changed much since he broke in, meaning either that he’s clean or that he’s always used, something that’s doubtful because he’d passed some two dozen official drug tests since 2005 before coming up short last fall.
Finally, Braun’s performance signature has been consistency, not the sudden surges one sees from drug users. With a .332 batting average, 33 home runs and 111 runs batted in, 2011 was his best year overall, but he hit more home runs in 2008 (37) and had more RBIs (114) in 2009, and on a per-game basis his power numbers last year weren’t as good as those of his first season. Contrast that with the stats of Luis Gonzalez, ex of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who averaged 15 home runs a year over a dozen Major League seasons before up and hitting 57 in 1998.
Now that was amazing—almost as amazing as Jeremy Lin’s debut. Hey, maybe it’s Lin who should be drug tested.
NOTE: You might check out ChicagoSideSports.com, which, as its title suggests, is a new web site devoted to athletic doings in the Windy City, where I’m from. Already up and running, and scheduled to go daily on April 1, it will feature bright sports writing from a number of sources, including me. Its editor is Jonathan Eig, an ex-Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of excellent biographies of Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson. You should check those out, too.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
LOST TRACK
This is an Olympic year, and in early August fans will be focused on the track-and- field segment of the quadrennial Games, its main event. People will know who won the 100-meter dash and care about who will win the metric mile when it’s run. You might be surprised to know that Americans promise to contend strongly in the latter race, for the first time in decades.
Right now, though, the thinclads (as we used to call them) toil in anonymity in this land, their usual recent status. That was brought home last weekend when the Millrose Games, which used to be the highlight of the annual indoor track season, ended a 98-year run at New York’s Madison Square Garden and moved to the Armory at 168th Street near Broadway. The reasons for the move were both economic and aesthetic: the 5,000 or so people the show was expected to draw didn’t justify midtown rent and would look better packing the Armory than rattling around in the Garden.
It’s no news that track and field is in decline in the U.S. of A., a casualty of a calendar packed with better-hyped and more telegenic attractions. The indoor season that once flourished in lots of big cities is all but gone, along with the sponsorship that supported it. Things have gotten so tight for some individual athletes that one— Adam Nelson, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the shot put—felt moved to go on ebay to seek training sustenance a few years back (he got a one-month deal from a medical supply company), and others have been offering to tattoo their bodies (temporarily) with corporate logos in exchange for aid.
Squabbles over money between the International and U.S. Olympic committees hurt everyone, most especially the athletes. Did you know that the Olympics take in billions of dollars in TV revenues and sponsorship fees but offer zero prize money to medal winners, leaving that to national governing bodies? Now you do. If it weren’t for the shoe companies the sport would by necessity revert to its bad old amateur days.
By me that’s sad. While most of my sports-writing colleagues agreed with Bernie Lincicome, late of the Chicago Trib, that the only thing duller than track was field, I always enjoyed the sport and the people who engaged in it. Its events include the most-natural of athletic competitions (I have no doubt that the first humans vied to see who could run fastest from here to there, or throw a rock farthest) and, on the youth level, are the most welcoming to boys and girls of normal sizes and proportions. The cross-country teams from my local high school in Scottsdale sometimes train on the streets of my semi-rural neighborhood, and I can’t help but smile every time I see them canter by.
Partly in consequence of its low commercial profile, track and field also is our most-democratic sport. School tracks commonly are used by recreational runners when the teams aren’t using them, and runners of various ages and degrees of proficiency often share the same space. I fondly recall the late, sainted Ted Haydon, the longtime track coach at the University of Chicago, hanging around after practice to advise any kid or grownup who asked for his help, and seeing young runners change their shoes in his infield next to the likes of Rick Wolhuter, one the best American middle-distance men ever.
Indeed, without a Haydon-like volunteer effort, the Millrose Games might have had nowhere to go once their MSG run ended. The Armory exists as a track-and-field facility only because of Norbert Sanders, a New York physician who ran track in his school and college days and later went on to win the 1974 New York Marathon.
Dr. Sanders, whom I profiled in a 1999 column, had pretty much left the sport for doctoring after his marathon triumph, but was pulled back into it by the shock of the death of his high-school coach, Joe Fox. That event caused him to reexamine his life and conclude that the youthful discipline he’d gained from running had been instrumental in his later accomplishments. At the time the city of New York was pondering what to do with the Armory, and ancient but solid building that in its last incarnation had been a homeless shelter so vast (it housed 1,200) that it had become unmanageable and notorious. He founded a group that dedicated itself to returning it as the track-and-field installation for city teams that it had been 30 years before.
Dr. Sanders pestered decision-makers for years, and raised $11 million, to make his dream a reality. Once successful, he oversaw an Armory cleanup of Augean proportions and the purchase of a state-of-the-art, 200-meter rubberized running track that was one of the best anywhere. Seven days a week from mid-November to mid-March the place is so much in use by teams and elite and recreational runners that its door hinges have to be replaced frequently. It’s a civic treasure.
Thanks mostly to our large population and deep gene pool, the U.S. probably will do well in track and field at this summer’s Games in London. It always does, and makes us proud. Still, it would be nice if we could rejigger our sports priorities just a bit to help improve our standard bearers’ lots the other 99% of the time.
Right now, though, the thinclads (as we used to call them) toil in anonymity in this land, their usual recent status. That was brought home last weekend when the Millrose Games, which used to be the highlight of the annual indoor track season, ended a 98-year run at New York’s Madison Square Garden and moved to the Armory at 168th Street near Broadway. The reasons for the move were both economic and aesthetic: the 5,000 or so people the show was expected to draw didn’t justify midtown rent and would look better packing the Armory than rattling around in the Garden.
It’s no news that track and field is in decline in the U.S. of A., a casualty of a calendar packed with better-hyped and more telegenic attractions. The indoor season that once flourished in lots of big cities is all but gone, along with the sponsorship that supported it. Things have gotten so tight for some individual athletes that one— Adam Nelson, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the shot put—felt moved to go on ebay to seek training sustenance a few years back (he got a one-month deal from a medical supply company), and others have been offering to tattoo their bodies (temporarily) with corporate logos in exchange for aid.
Squabbles over money between the International and U.S. Olympic committees hurt everyone, most especially the athletes. Did you know that the Olympics take in billions of dollars in TV revenues and sponsorship fees but offer zero prize money to medal winners, leaving that to national governing bodies? Now you do. If it weren’t for the shoe companies the sport would by necessity revert to its bad old amateur days.
By me that’s sad. While most of my sports-writing colleagues agreed with Bernie Lincicome, late of the Chicago Trib, that the only thing duller than track was field, I always enjoyed the sport and the people who engaged in it. Its events include the most-natural of athletic competitions (I have no doubt that the first humans vied to see who could run fastest from here to there, or throw a rock farthest) and, on the youth level, are the most welcoming to boys and girls of normal sizes and proportions. The cross-country teams from my local high school in Scottsdale sometimes train on the streets of my semi-rural neighborhood, and I can’t help but smile every time I see them canter by.
Partly in consequence of its low commercial profile, track and field also is our most-democratic sport. School tracks commonly are used by recreational runners when the teams aren’t using them, and runners of various ages and degrees of proficiency often share the same space. I fondly recall the late, sainted Ted Haydon, the longtime track coach at the University of Chicago, hanging around after practice to advise any kid or grownup who asked for his help, and seeing young runners change their shoes in his infield next to the likes of Rick Wolhuter, one the best American middle-distance men ever.
Indeed, without a Haydon-like volunteer effort, the Millrose Games might have had nowhere to go once their MSG run ended. The Armory exists as a track-and-field facility only because of Norbert Sanders, a New York physician who ran track in his school and college days and later went on to win the 1974 New York Marathon.
Dr. Sanders, whom I profiled in a 1999 column, had pretty much left the sport for doctoring after his marathon triumph, but was pulled back into it by the shock of the death of his high-school coach, Joe Fox. That event caused him to reexamine his life and conclude that the youthful discipline he’d gained from running had been instrumental in his later accomplishments. At the time the city of New York was pondering what to do with the Armory, and ancient but solid building that in its last incarnation had been a homeless shelter so vast (it housed 1,200) that it had become unmanageable and notorious. He founded a group that dedicated itself to returning it as the track-and-field installation for city teams that it had been 30 years before.
Dr. Sanders pestered decision-makers for years, and raised $11 million, to make his dream a reality. Once successful, he oversaw an Armory cleanup of Augean proportions and the purchase of a state-of-the-art, 200-meter rubberized running track that was one of the best anywhere. Seven days a week from mid-November to mid-March the place is so much in use by teams and elite and recreational runners that its door hinges have to be replaced frequently. It’s a civic treasure.
Thanks mostly to our large population and deep gene pool, the U.S. probably will do well in track and field at this summer’s Games in London. It always does, and makes us proud. Still, it would be nice if we could rejigger our sports priorities just a bit to help improve our standard bearers’ lots the other 99% of the time.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
LAST MEN STANDING
The National Football League playoffs are in full swing and I’m sure you’re wondering who I think will win. Sorry to disappoint but my crystal ball is out of order, as always. Except at the racetracks I don’t pick winners (and there not enough), and have no patience with commentators who do. If they knew who was going to win even a bit more than half the time they wouldn’t have to work. Nobody who could would.
But I will make one prediction: No NFL team will go all the way with its No. 1 quarterback on the sidelines. That’s about the nearest thing to a “lock” I can imagine.
A review of league action to date fully supports that view; teams whose QBs have gone down have gone home, or will soon. Indeed, even ones whose signal callers were partially impaired will watch this weekend’s games on TV, like the rest of us.
The list starts with the Indianapolis Colts, whose nonpareil helmsman, Peyton Manning, hasn’t taken a snap all season because of a neck injury that, it seems, resulted from no particular blow but from the cumulative effects of his 13 NFL campaigns. His loss transformed the Colts from one of the league’s best teams to its worst. Nuf said.
The Chicago Bears’ season turned to ashes in Game 10 when it lost Jake Cutler to a broken thumb. Yeah, the injury came not from a sack but from his attempt to be a real football player and tackle a guy who’d intercepted one of his passes, but with the pummeling he was taking behind a weak O-line it was only a matter of time before he was hurt. Cutler was bashed as a wimp when a knee injury knocked him (and his team) out of a playoff game last season, but his fortitude in the face of adversity in this one should have put that rap to rest. Maybe from now on he won’t feel obliged to prove his manhood.
The Arizona Cardinals spent big money to bring in QB Kevin Kolb, but because of concussions and a foot injury hardly got to see him play. Concussions ended the Cleveland Browns’ Colt McCoy’s season prematurely and, maybe, his career as well. The Miami Dolphins’ Chad Henne lasted four games before going out with a separated shoulder. The Houston Texans lost Matt Schaub to a foot injury in Game 8 and his backup, Matt Leinart, to a broken collarbone the next week. The Texans soldier on behind QB3, the rookie T.J. Yates, but you’ll get really good odds if you think he’ll take them past this weekend.
Quarterback injuries that weren’t season-ending spoiled other teams’ hopes. Michael Vicks’ midseason hiatus with broken ribs hurt the Philadelphia Eagles, the Dallas Cowboys’ playoff bid was sabotaged by Tony Romo’s broken hand, and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger looked like he was running on stilts after a late-season ankle injury ended his year in playoff defeat.
Such stories are all too typical of a sport that, against all reason, exposes its most-important (and highest paid) performers to the greatest injury risk. In the act of passing, which they do on most plays, quarterbacks usually are stationary and their attention is on their receivers downfield, not on the behemoths bearing down on them. Even getting the ball away in time doesn’t always save them from getting creamed.
It’s instructive, I think, to compare the league’s treatment of quarterbacks with that of punters. The latter are the lowest-paid players on most teams, and the most-easily replaced, but if they are molested during or immediately after they carry out their task the punishment is swift and severe. Hence, their injury rate is low.
On the other hand, it’s always open season on QBs, the players around whom every team’s offense revolves, so those guys take more blows than Evander Holyfield on a bad night. Indeed, a legal tackle after a pass has been released is so common that there's a boxing-like statistic for it—the “hit.” Further, the line between a legit “hit” and a penalizable “late” one is thin and the reward for stepping over it is high. Is it worth 15 yards to sideline a Tom Brady or a Drew Brees? Need I ask?
In recent seasons the league has moved to increase quarterback protection by instituting the “in the grasp” rule that stops a play before a QB has been wrestled to the ground and banning below-the-knees tackles by would-be sackers. That’s fine but not enough. Limiting to six the number of defensive players who can rush the passer on any play would help. So would a blanket extension of the “intentional grounding” rule. Trading a few quarterback sacks for more ambulatory QBs would be a good deal, I think.
Whenever the subject of protecting quarterbacks comes up on sportsblab radio or TV somebody coughs up the line that you might as well put those guys in skirts. Football’s a rough game any way you slice it, and it’s played by volunteers who willingly accept the risks, so let the boys be, the knuckleheads say.
But that argument weakens with every new study of the long-term effects of football-related injuries, and as a fan I’m tired of watching backups play as every season’s schedule unfolds. If the league won’t shield its players for their own sake they might consider the people who pay the bills.
But I will make one prediction: No NFL team will go all the way with its No. 1 quarterback on the sidelines. That’s about the nearest thing to a “lock” I can imagine.
A review of league action to date fully supports that view; teams whose QBs have gone down have gone home, or will soon. Indeed, even ones whose signal callers were partially impaired will watch this weekend’s games on TV, like the rest of us.
The list starts with the Indianapolis Colts, whose nonpareil helmsman, Peyton Manning, hasn’t taken a snap all season because of a neck injury that, it seems, resulted from no particular blow but from the cumulative effects of his 13 NFL campaigns. His loss transformed the Colts from one of the league’s best teams to its worst. Nuf said.
The Chicago Bears’ season turned to ashes in Game 10 when it lost Jake Cutler to a broken thumb. Yeah, the injury came not from a sack but from his attempt to be a real football player and tackle a guy who’d intercepted one of his passes, but with the pummeling he was taking behind a weak O-line it was only a matter of time before he was hurt. Cutler was bashed as a wimp when a knee injury knocked him (and his team) out of a playoff game last season, but his fortitude in the face of adversity in this one should have put that rap to rest. Maybe from now on he won’t feel obliged to prove his manhood.
The Arizona Cardinals spent big money to bring in QB Kevin Kolb, but because of concussions and a foot injury hardly got to see him play. Concussions ended the Cleveland Browns’ Colt McCoy’s season prematurely and, maybe, his career as well. The Miami Dolphins’ Chad Henne lasted four games before going out with a separated shoulder. The Houston Texans lost Matt Schaub to a foot injury in Game 8 and his backup, Matt Leinart, to a broken collarbone the next week. The Texans soldier on behind QB3, the rookie T.J. Yates, but you’ll get really good odds if you think he’ll take them past this weekend.
Quarterback injuries that weren’t season-ending spoiled other teams’ hopes. Michael Vicks’ midseason hiatus with broken ribs hurt the Philadelphia Eagles, the Dallas Cowboys’ playoff bid was sabotaged by Tony Romo’s broken hand, and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger looked like he was running on stilts after a late-season ankle injury ended his year in playoff defeat.
Such stories are all too typical of a sport that, against all reason, exposes its most-important (and highest paid) performers to the greatest injury risk. In the act of passing, which they do on most plays, quarterbacks usually are stationary and their attention is on their receivers downfield, not on the behemoths bearing down on them. Even getting the ball away in time doesn’t always save them from getting creamed.
It’s instructive, I think, to compare the league’s treatment of quarterbacks with that of punters. The latter are the lowest-paid players on most teams, and the most-easily replaced, but if they are molested during or immediately after they carry out their task the punishment is swift and severe. Hence, their injury rate is low.
On the other hand, it’s always open season on QBs, the players around whom every team’s offense revolves, so those guys take more blows than Evander Holyfield on a bad night. Indeed, a legal tackle after a pass has been released is so common that there's a boxing-like statistic for it—the “hit.” Further, the line between a legit “hit” and a penalizable “late” one is thin and the reward for stepping over it is high. Is it worth 15 yards to sideline a Tom Brady or a Drew Brees? Need I ask?
In recent seasons the league has moved to increase quarterback protection by instituting the “in the grasp” rule that stops a play before a QB has been wrestled to the ground and banning below-the-knees tackles by would-be sackers. That’s fine but not enough. Limiting to six the number of defensive players who can rush the passer on any play would help. So would a blanket extension of the “intentional grounding” rule. Trading a few quarterback sacks for more ambulatory QBs would be a good deal, I think.
Whenever the subject of protecting quarterbacks comes up on sportsblab radio or TV somebody coughs up the line that you might as well put those guys in skirts. Football’s a rough game any way you slice it, and it’s played by volunteers who willingly accept the risks, so let the boys be, the knuckleheads say.
But that argument weakens with every new study of the long-term effects of football-related injuries, and as a fan I’m tired of watching backups play as every season’s schedule unfolds. If the league won’t shield its players for their own sake they might consider the people who pay the bills.
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