AROD, THE PRO BOWL AND JOHNNY F.

NEWS:  BASEBALL CRACKS DOWN ON PED USERS

               

VIEWS:  That’s the way the news media are playing the penalties meted out to 14 players implicated in the Biogenesis affair. The newsies depict vigilant B-Men banging down the door of the defunct Miami “anti-aging” clinic, rounding up the johns regardless of rank and nailing them with lengthy sentences. Holy J. Edgar!

               

Trouble is, that doesn’t square with the facts. For one thing, only seven of the Flawed Fourteen are current major leaguers, and one of the remaining seven (Jordan Noberto) is an unemployed free-agent pitcher recovering from elbow surgery.  For another, just one of them—Ryan Braun—ever failed an MLB drug test, and his result was reversed on a technicality. That means that testing-- the game’s main line of pharmaceutical defense-- failed to identify 13 players later revealed as users, hardly an encouraging outcome.

               

Further, the case that triggered the actions wasn’t uncovered by Baseball but by a whistleblower. According to stories in the New York Times and ESPN, one Porter Fischer, a Biogenesis employee and investor, staged a late-night raid on the company’s files after concluding he was being scammed by Tony Bosch, the outfit’s fake-doctor owner, and turned the trove over to the Miami weekly newspaper that initially published it.  Without his out-of-left-field help the episode might never have come to light.

               

As for the penalties, c’mon.  After plea bargaining 12 players received the 50-game suspensions they would have gotten as first-time drug-test flunkers even though their PED use seemingly was substantial and prolonged; the major leaguers among them will be eligible to participate in this year’s playoffs if their teams make it that far. Braun’s sentence of 65 games allowed him to end an injury-plagued season with his last-place club and begin work on the new act he’ll unveil at spring training. My guess is that he’ll be a L.A. Dodger by then.

               

This leaves Alex Rodriguez as the only player whose case still pends. That’s because, at age 38 and with a thick surgical file, ARod’s 200-plus game suspension lasting through 2014, based on his admitted previous drug use and asserted attempt to hamper the investigation, amounts to a career ender, so he might as well seek arbitration. That’s good because it will force Baseball to subject its evidence to scrutiny in a quasi-judicial forum. If it holds up the game at least will have done something right.

NEWS: THE NFL REVISES ITS PRO-BOWL FORMAT

               

 VIEWS: Lots of sports-page stories invite chuckles but few make me laugh out loud. One did the other day, concerning the National Football League’s annual Pro Bowl all-star game that has concluded recent seasons.

               

It’s no news that fan and player indifference has put the game in jeopardy; I joined those addressing the subject in my blog of July 15, which you can scroll down to read.  The league has taken the criticisms to heart my announcing some changes in the way the contest will be played. The ones that got the most ink were a no-kickoffs rule in the name of player safety, and some tinkering with the game clock to speed play.

               

The change that got me, though, was the way the teams will be picked. Players still will be selected by a clunky process blending fan, player and coaches’ votes, but once a pool of the worthy is established the top two individual vote getters will be dubbed captains and allowed to choose sides without regard to the NFC-AFC conference divide.

               

Let me repeat that. The richest, most-buttoned-down, most-self-important sports league in creation will allow its all-star-game teams to be picked by CHOOSING SIDES, just like kids do in the playgrounds. Don’t you love it?

The stories didn’t say who’d get first pick, but I have a couple of suggestions. One would be to take a page from baseball and have one captain flip a bat to the other and then go hand over hand toward the handle until no more room remains and the top hand prevails. The other would have one captain spin a ball behind the other’s back and ask him to choose between laces up or down. That’s more suitable to football but not as much fun as the bat method.  You can’t do chicken claws on a football.

NEWS:  “JOHNNY FOOTBALL” CAN’T STAY OUT OF TROUBLE

                

Of all of sports’ prizes the dumbest and most overblown is the Heisman Award, given annually to the “best” college-football player.  It forces an apples-and-coconuts choice among players at different positions facing different competition, with no guidelines except those of the individual electors.  It’s really a contest among team SIDs (short for sports information directors) to see which can drum up the most votes for his candidate. The gap between hype and reality was sharp last season, when the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, offensive tackle Eric Fisher of Central Michigan U., was a player who’d received no Heisman votes.

                

The guy who won was Johnny Manziel, a quarterback. That was thanks mostly to his catchy nickname of “Johnny Football” and a good-enough season of passing and running. His school, Texas A&M, probably thought it had struck gold because Johnny was a red-shirt freshman whose glow would illuminate the school for seasons to come. It also didn’t hurt that he’s a clean-cut looking white kid.

                

The glow has been anything but golden because it turns out that Johnny gets rowdy after a few beers, sleeps through obligations and sends rude messages from small electronic devices he carries. Other 20 year olds also do those things but they don’t have multitudes of followers, virtual and real, eager to broadcast their every expression.

               

Last week Johnny topped himself when it was alleged he pocketed cash for signing photos and gear, in violation of NCAA rules.  If the charge sticks he’d be ineligible for the games ahead. His daddy is a well-off oilman who has hired a lawyer to protect sonny ’s status, shifting the media focus from the gridiron to the conference (or court) room.  That’s just what the college-sports big-timers deserve, huh?

                   

STAY OR GO?

                Your local pro or college team has a home game scheduled for the evening. The game will be televised. Do you want to go to the expense and trouble of attending or are you content to stay home and watch it on the tube?

                

           Increasingly, fans are opting for the latter choice, and no wonder. With traffic tough everywhere and ticket prices high and rising, it takes quite a lot to budge us from our living rooms, especially in this day of high-def TV. My set is five years old but its picture still is so sharp I can recognize faces in the crowds of the games I watch.  Plus, the fridge is near at hand and I can use the toilet without having to stand in line.

                

            Yeah, I know, it’s fun to go to games—to be out with the like-minded crowd that cheers on the home team. We urbanites (that is, just about all of us) live atomized existences these days, penned into a daily round of work or play and home that’s notably short on communal experiences. Instead of going to the movies we use Netflix, instead of shopping at the mall we click on ebay or amazon, instead of voting at a neighborhood polling place we fill in our ballots at our kitchen tables and mail in the results.  Agorophobia used to be an illness but now it’s a national condition.  

               

             Sports provide an antidote, but one that gets progressively harder to exercise for most people. My own example is a case in point. In 1972 I and three pals went in on a pair of season tickets for the basketball Chicago Bulls, who were just getting established in our home city. The tix were good, in the second row of the first balcony in Chicago Stadium, on a line with the Bulls’ bench. If memory serves they cost $5 or $6 per, or about $100 for my 10 or 11 games, well within my reporter’s budget.

                

               Our group renewed annually for 22 years, and while ticket prices regularly rose they were in the $25-$28 range through 1993, still affordable. Then the Bulls moved into the vastly larger United Center, whose configuration is quite different from that of the Stadium. The seats in the new place the team considered comparable to ours were in the second balcony, far removed from the action, and almost twice as expensive. Seeing the games from there would have been like watching them on a 12-inch TV screen.  We said no thanks and ended the relationship, and with it my career as a season-ticket holder.

                Twenty-years-ago prices seem quaint now, of course. The average single-game ticket in the NBA now costs about $50 and that’s for a not-good seat; according to the Bull’s current seating chart the ones we gave up now go for $125, and there’s a waiting list to get them. Team Marketing Report says the NFL led the average-price standings last season at $78, followed by the NHL at $61. Major League Baseball was last at $27.  Throw in the usual 20 bucks or so for stadium parking and $30 or $40 more for ballpark food and the game bill for a couple today runs from $100 to more than $200, too rich for my blood.   

                You can beat those numbers, but only if you live in or near a city where sports aren’t a religion. I do, in Scottsdale, AZ, near Phoenix. There, the baseball Diamondbacks usually play to half-filled houses no matter how they’re faring afield, and ticket prices are low. The seats wife Susie and I like best are 10 to 12 rows up in the upper deck behind home plate, from where the field stretches out before us. They go for $16 each, and I know a lot where I can park about two blocks from the back gates for six bucks. Add $11 for a brat with kraut and a Pepsi for me (Susie can’t stomach ballpark food and brings her own) and we get off for about $50, not bad as those things go. We’re usually good for 5-6 games a year.

                That doesn’t work here for the other major sports, though, nor does it ever in places like Chicago, Boston, Dallas and New York, where triple-digit prices for single games are common (especially in the so-called secondary market) and lawyers and commodity traders fill the stands. Add the constant fact that everyone at home sees the games better than anyone in the stadiums and you have the attendance declines of the past few years. The gates in the Big 2 sports of baseball and football both peaked in 2007, and while the declines have been small—averaging about 1% a year in each—they’ve been large enough to attract front-office attention.

                The main way teams are attempting to lure the couch-bound is by making their stadiums more like living rooms.  Jumbotrons—huge video display units—decorate stadiums coast to coast. The biggest so far is the one that hangs in Cowboy Stadium in Dallas, that capital of crass. It measures 72 feet by 160 feet. It’s due, however, to be dwarfed by a 55-by-301 unit ordered by the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars. You’ll note that width is one foot longer than the football playing field.

           Jumbotrons carry some of the video replays fans get at home, along with game stats and various between-innings or timeout entertainments. Mostly, though, they’re billboards that turn paying customers into captive audiences for whatever ads home teams can book. A Jumbotron is being planned for Wrigley Field, that erstwhile temple of baseball purity, and Cubs’ owner Tom Ricketts makes no bones about declaring that he wants it for the ad revenue it will generate. That’s honest but it doesn’t make me like him better.

Worse by me is the way the huge TV screens dominate any premises they occupy, turning the action on the field into an afterthought. Their 1984 aspect is magnified when they take to exhorting crowd reactions. At Chase Field in Phoenix, my home park of late, the ovine fans rarely budge unless Jumbo tells them to stand, clap or dance, or sounds that silly “charge” bugle.

 I’m embarrassed for them. I’ve known how to behave at ball games since I was 10 and need no prompting. At least when I’m watching at home no one tells me what to do, unless it’s to take out the garbage or something similar.

                  

STAR DUST

                

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game is tomorrow (Tues., 7/16) and unless wife Susie has other plans for me I’ll probably be watching on TV, a crossword puzzle in my lap. I’m interested enough to tune in and hope to see something memorable, just as I do every time I watch an athletic event, but I don’t care who wins. It’s an evening’s entertainment, nothing more.

                

            I’d guess that most people feel the same way I do about the game, despite the hype that surrounds it. I’d also guess that many of the participants are less than enthusiastic; if that perception didn’t exist MLB wouldn’t spend money running ads to counter it.

The baseball regular season is long, packing 162 games into about 180 days, and while I don’t feel sorry for men who earn princely salaries for playing a kid’s game I can see where the prospect of a four-day holiday might be more attractive than schlepping off to play an exhibition. The players who aren’t picked have all the best of it.

In brief, I’m asking whether tomorrow’s trip—or that for any all-star game in our major spectator sports—is necessary.  While it’s no big deal either way, I suspect we could get along fine without it, or them.

All-star games seem to me to be an idea whose time has passed.  Baseball’s version no doubt sounded dandy in 1933 when Arch Ward, the promotion-minded sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, hatched and brought it to fruition.  The series got off to a grand start in Comiskey Park in Chicago with a 4-2 American League victory sparked by a home run by Babe Ruth, who always rose to the occasion. It’s been held every season since except for the war year of 1945. During four seasons – 1959 through 1962—there were two all-star games, although I can’t imagine why.

The game made sense in the pre-TV dark ages because it brought some of baseball’s stars within reach of fans who otherwise never might see them. The same held true to a lesser extent until 1997, when interleague play began. Now, with an odd number of teams (15) in each league, there is interleague play almost daily, and thanks to the miracle of MLB’s Extra Innings package (to which I subscribe), every game that’s televised anywhere is televised everywhere. I live in a National League city but with a click of my remote any night I can watch Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera play in games that count in the standings.  The All-Star Game can’t offer that.

The business about counting also has occurred to baseball’s honchos. Their epiphany came in 2002 when the game ended in a 7-7 tie after 11 innings because the two managers ran out of subs. Boos and beer bottles rained upon the field in Commish Selig’s home town of Milwaukee, and he responded by decreeing that henceforth the league that wins the All-Star Game would have home-field advantage in that season’s World Series, instead of alternating it by year as before. I like Bud, and think he’s been a pretty good commissioner, but that was dumb. Maybe if the ’02 game had been played elsewhere he might have reacted differently.

   Even with something at stake participant zeal for the game often is lacking. Every year a few players beg off, pleading injury, and managers routinely shuffle their pitching rotations so that pitcher-selectees work the Sunday before the game and thus may not be deemed fit for duty on all-star Tuesday.

Putting a question mark on the whole affair is a hokey election system that encourages repeated balloting; when I read that a player has received, say, 6 million fan votes I figure it’s more likely that 6,000 people voted for him 1,000 times each than 6 million picked him once. This month I voted several dozen times on the MLB web site, and I was just fooling around.

Baseball being a non-contact sport at least allows it to stage a real game between its top players; in our other big leagues injury risk dictates that only half a game (offense) ensues. The worst charade is in football, where the annual NFC-AFC contest is played after a typically brutal season from which no one emerges unscathed. Player defections are numerous, rules changes include no blitzing and legal intentional grounding, no one cares about the outcome and participants seek mainly to escape in one piece. Of the 2012 contest one reporter wrote that the two sides “hit each other as though they were having a pillow fight.” Commissioner Goodell threatened to cancel the series after that one, but relented. He should have stuck to his guns.

The NBA All-Star game is a three-day rappers’ convention capped by a game whose only suspense centers on whether the two teams together will top 300 points (they did in 2012, 152-149). NHL star fests run to 12-10 scores in which goalies are changed after each period so none should suffer shellshock.  It is to laugh.

Players like the honor of being selected for the games, so the elections could continue even if the games don’t. They can do just about anything with electronic games these days so maybe they could program ones around the lineups and put the results on TV. Then the players could watch from the comfort of their homes, like we do. After a couple of years no one will notice the difference.

  

                 

GULLED

Dear Fred--  Hi. My name is Marvin and I’m a seagull. Lately I’ve been spending some afternoons hanging out at Wrigley Field, where the Chicago Cubs play.  Maybe you’ve seen me on TV; I’m the one with the black dot over his left eye. People think all us seagulls look alike but they’re wrong. They just don’t look closely enough.

I’m contacting you because I hope you’ll help me break into journalism. I’ve read your blog and find it simpatico. By that I mean it’s for the birds, which by me is a good thing.

You might ask what a seagull is doing wanting to write.  Actually, we have a literary history, thanks to that Jonathan Livingston guy. I read his book and it was pretty good, but I never liked him much. He was a pretentious jerk, and a showoff. Lots of us can do the flying tricks he could but they’re too much trouble, so we don’t.  Score a good meal and take the rest of the day off, that’s my motto.

I’ll tell you something else about the so-called Jonathan Livingston: his real name was Sheldon Bernstein. Always wanted to be a WASP, if you can believe it. The name change didn’t help him much, though. The real WASP seagulls chased him away every time he tried to visit the yacht club.

Another question you probably have is about how a bird can write. It’s easy, really, because we have two wings and a beak to work with. Talk about hunt and peck, huh? We even can do upper case, unlike that stupid cockroach archy .  Once I found an old Radio Shack computer in a landfill I was in business. Truth is, I type faster than some sportswriters. I’ve peeked into the Wrigley press box, so I know.

Anyway, I have a regular routine on game days. I show up around 3:30 p.m.—around the seventh inning-- and find a nice perch on top of the upper deck along the right-field line. That gives me a good view of who’s eating what below.  I look mostly for popcorn—it’s the world’s greatest food.  When I first started going I’d eat anything that was left behind, but learned quick not to. Bits of hotdog bun are tasty but if they have even a speck of mustard, they’re trouble. Ditto for pizza crust with tomato sauce. I’ve had cases of heartburn from them you wouldn’t believe.

Other places I avoid like the plague—and I mean that literally-- are the floors of the two teams’ dugouts.  They can be tempting because the players always leave lots of uneaten sunflower seeds behind, but they’re usually mixed with so much spilled Gatorade, tobacco juice and plain old spit that they’re inedible. Mix in the dirt those slobs track in and it’s Typhoid City!

I’ve also learned to wait to make my move until the game is over and the people have begun to leave. Some birds who couldn’t wait have paid dearly for it. My granddad told me Dave Winfield killed one of us playing catch in the outfield between innings during a 1983 game in Toronto, and I’ve seen the video of the poor guy that got in the way of a Randy Johnson fastball in a 2001 spring training game in Arizona. Poof! Brutal.

 Lemme tell you, though, we got even with both those bastards. My Uncle Gus says he bullseyed a huge dump down Johnson’s collar at Wrigley and another guy I know says he saw Winfield wearing a suit downtown one day and nailed him good a couple of times. Got the pigeons after him, too. I bet neither of them still go outdoors without an umbrella.

Things at the park have changed a bit in the time I’ve been coming out. A few years back crowds were bigger and hung around longer than they do now. I even learned the words to that song the people sing when the players in white win, although from what I know it’s supposed to be sung before a game, not after.

 These days the players in white usually bat last, and crowds are smaller and leave earlier. That’s okay because sometimes I can fly into the stands and pick off a morsel or two before a game’s over, but not usually. Not much good can happen from being around people, I’ve learned.

I had a perfect day about a week ago. A woman who sat right underneath my perch left behind about a half a box of popcorn—with butter!  Yum! I was there first and had it all to myself for about 10 minutes before the flock gathered, more than enough time for a swell feed.

 By bird standards that was a great moment in sports, good enough for an ESPN highlights reel for sure. Next time I’m at the landfill I’ll rummage around for a video camera.  I hear there’s a better future in TV than in print anyway, and that I’d be better off putting my efforts there. True?

Best,

Marvin

  

      

NEWS, VIEWS

NEWS: Major League Baseball threatens 100-game suspensions for players caught in Miami drug net.

VIEWS: For a long time (1990-2005) capital B Baseball took a see-no, hear-no, speak-no evil stance toward the PED (performance enhancing drugs) users on its diamonds, an infamous period I call its HITS era, for Heads In The Sand. Now it’s hell-belt to get ’em, leaking possible sentences for alleged wrongdoers before the first gavel has been dropped.

That’s admirable in a way, because it shows a seriousness about the issue heretofore lacking. That’s especially true because the 20 players on its “get” list includes Ryan Braun, Alex Rodriguez, Melky Cabrera, Gio Gonzalez, Nelson Cruz and other bright stars in its current firmament. That means the game is willing to shake up its pennant races to give the cheaters their due, a considerable ante.

Trouble is, justice may prove more elusive than many—perhaps including Bud Selig—may think. That’s because the main witness for the prosecution at the hearings that inevitably will follow any formal accusations is a good deal less than estimable. He’s Tony Bosch, a scruffy-looking sort whom Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News recently described as looking like “some loser on Collins Avenue trying to give you a tip on the third race at Hialeah.” 

 Bosch owned the now-defunct Biogenesis Anti-Aging Clinic in Miami that allegedly served as the conduit between the players and their PEDS. That ought to tell you something right away because rejuvenation is Florida’s oldest scam, dating from Ponce de Leon’s visit to the state in 1513. Bosch previously had been connected with a few other such outfits, but they, too, went bust.

Published reports say that at various times Bosch has claimed to be a physician, which he isn’t. One story had it that before he agreed to turn state’s evidence for Baseball he sought a “loan” of several hundred thousand dollars from ARod, but was refused. Can you spell S-H-A-K-E-D-O-W-N?

Probably worse is the deal Baseball is said to have made to obtain Bosch’s cooperation. That includes dropping its own civil lawsuit against him, indemnifying him against judgments resulting from other related suits and putting in a good word for him if he’s held to account for the criminal aspects of his drug-dealing.  I’m not a lawyer but I’ve seen lots of episodes of “Law and Order” and know the prosecution always takes a hit when a defense attorney asks a witness if he’d been promised anything for his testimony, and the answers is, um, yes.

It’s usually true that it takes a crook to catch a crook, and it’s said that Baseball has evidence to back up Bosch’s words. It had better because in this litigious era everyone has a lawyer and I’s must be crossed and T’s dotted before convictions can stand. Baseball’s drug-enforcement efforts suffered a setback when Braun’s lawyers successfully challenged an earlier suspension ruling on grounds that chain-of-custody rules for his urine samples had been violated. If it swings and misses again future cases will be hard to bring.

 NEWS: Serena Williams wins big in Paris.

VIEWS: No doubt about it, Serena is at the top of her game. At age 31 she buzzed through the French Open field like an army barber with his clippers, cementing her world No. 1 ranking.  I’ve seen a lot of tennis but never have witnessed a more dominating performance than her 6-0, 6-1 victory over Sara Errani at Roland Garros. This wasn’t a first-round match against a qualifier but a Grand Slam semi against the world’s No. 5. Serena served at 120 mph.—Pete Sampras’s speed in his heyday—and hit her ground strokes with similar power. No woman out there can beat her except herself.

But the good news for American tennis ends with Ms. Williams. You have to drop to No. 17 (Sloane Stephens) to find the next American woman in the world rankings, and on the men’s side only three Yanks (Sam Querry, 19; John Isner, 21; and Mardy Fish, 43) are among the top 50. All are known quantities with little chance of substantial improvement, and no young U.S. phenoms lurk beneath them. 

The situation is much the same in golf. There, Asians dominate the women’s game and behind Tiger Woods a thoroughly international male pack skirmishes. Europe has won seven of the nine Ryder Cups contested since 1995, reversing long-time U.S. hegemony.

Tennis and golf are middle-class sports in this land so it’s tempting to ascribe the recent U.S. declines in them to societal factors; to wit, well-off American kids today would rather twitter, tweet or text than put in the long hours of individual labor required for playing-field excellence.  I’ve said that myself. Trouble is, young Americans of both sexes and various economic strata do fine in international team sports as diverse as soccer, basketball, hockey and volleyball, so something else must be up.  Maybe it’s that the “me” generation really wants to be part of an “us” and, thus, its members thrive best in social situations.

Just sayin’.

NEWS: Horse racing’s Triple Crown events are won by three different horses.

VIEWS: It’s no news that the Triple Crown is tough to win; it hasn’t happened since 1978. Indeed, in this space and elsewhere I’ve  argued that because of long-term changes in breeding and racing horses today lack the stamina to win three grueling, competitive races in a five-week span, and that the sport is ill served by placing so many of its promotional eggs in such a leaky basket.

But now it seems that just trying the TC can put in jeopardy a horse’s career, or life. Barbaro won the 2006 Kentucky Derby but died trying to win the Preakness two weeks later. Big Brown won the Derby and Preakness in 2008 but came in last in the Belmont and was retired soon afterward. Last year I’ll Have Another was scratched from the Belmont after winning the Derby and Preakness, and never raced again. Union Rags won the ’12 Belmont, but it was to be his last race.

In light of that I was especially intrigued by the behavior of Claude “Shug” McGaughey, the trainer of Orb, the recent Derby winner. He’s widely praised as an “old-school” sort who cares about his horses, and before the Derby he fretted openly about the danger of putting his tender charge into such a long (1 ¼-mile), difficult race so early in life (the TC is contested only by three-year-olds, who are equivalent to 16-year-old humans). But after Orb won the Derby he was sent back for the Preakness, and after finishing fourth to Oxbow there he was sent back again for the longer (1 ½-miles), harder Belmont, even though no Triple Crown was in prospect.  (He finished third to a rested Palace Malice, who skipped the Preakness.)  It’ll be interesting to see if we see Orb again, or the winners of the other two TC legs, for that matter.

 Racing needs its Triple Crown celebs to remain in action for its big summer and fall races, and that hasn’t been happening of late. Maybe the entrance forms for the races should carry a health warning, like cigarette packs do.

      

 

LUCHAR

                New freshmen didn’t have much clout at the University of Illinois in Champaign when I was there. Among other things we had to register last, after everyone else had picked over the course offerings. That meant we got more than our share of undesirable classes, meaning those that began at 8 a.m. or 4 p.m.

                

              We also had last crack at courses in P.E.-- short for physical education-- which every freshman and sophomore had to take. That was why I wound up taking wrestling in my first semester at the school, in the fall of 1955.

               

              Wrestling was a drag from a couple of standpoints. One was that it was a sweaty and unwelcome intrusion on the school day. Another was that it was taught only at Men’s Old Gym (which we scholars naturally called Old Men’s Gym), on Springfield Avenue at the edge of the main campus.

  My wrestling class met at 2 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On those days I also had a three o’clock class at Lincoln Hall, about three-quarters of a mile away, and the 15-minute class break allowed no time to shower. Once there I had to stew in my own juices, feeling about as welcome as a skunk.

The bad news continued on the Old Gym’s mats. You’d never guess it to see me now but I was a little guy as a frosh, standing about 5-feet-8 and weighing about 135 pounds. The next smallest kid in the class was a good 10 pounds heavier than I, and stronger. We were made workout partners, which meant that I spent just about every class with my head in his armpit or similarly offensive juncture as we acted out the moves of the sport. I counted the days until the end of the semester.

Near the end, though, a funny thing happened. The course’s finale was a tournament among the wrestling classes, and for the first time I got to fight people my own size. I won my first two matches with pins, got a decision in the third, and found myself in the finals of my weight group, one win from glory. Trouble was, the whole tournament took place the same day, and by match four I was pooped. I went for a quick pin and missed it, then was reversed and saw the lights myself. 

Still, I came away from the experience with a tad more self-confidence than previously, and an understanding of and liking for real wrestling, as opposed to the theatrical variety. Once I got a sports column I devoted occasional but regular space to the sport, something few of my big-paper peers did. I got to know some of its top-level performers over five Olympiads and found them to be praiseworthy examples of the athletic virtues, and nice guys to boot. That was in keeping with my general observation that the more obscure the sport, the nicer the participants.

Wrestling isn’t important enough at U.S. colleges to justify institutional cheating, so the wrestlers I knew were or had been actual students. Most had occupational goals beyond their sport and one of them—the 1988 Olympian Jim Scherr—got to be CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2003 at age 42. Most could converse about things other than themselves, a rare attribute in jockdom.

That’s why I was dismayed in February when the International Olympic Committee voted to kick wrestling off the Olympic schedule after 2016.  The grapplers had been part of the Games since 708 B.C., and longer if you include the tussles among the gods on the sacred Greek mountain. The sport is about as close to pure athletics as you can get and as democratic, pursued as it is by many thousands of people in hundreds of lands, including women since the start of the new century.  That last thing is in contrast to such elite pastimes as sailing and dressage, which the titled (and entitled) twits who make up the IOC consider sacrosanct.  

 Wrestling can’t entirely plead not guilty to its exclusion. In recent years the sport has enacted so many scoring changes that even aficianados find it hard to follow, and high-level matches tend to be low-scoring and technical as evenly matched contestants maneuver for the tiny edge in leverage that can swing the outcome.  Published accounts hint that its international leadership has been poor, meaning, I guess, that its honchos haven’t been kissing the right butts in Lausanne. If true that’s inexcusable. What else do those guys have to do?

Happily, the sport’s emergency has kicked its supporters into action, and the results have been impressive. Last month wrestlers from the U.S., Iran and Russia, showing amity notably lacking in other spheres, joined at the United Nations in New York to state wrestling’s case, and staged a well-attended exhibition the next day at Grand Central Station. Indeed, one of the best things about covering wrestling at the Olympics was seeing its audience of thick-necked types from usually hostile lands, including Cuba and North Korea in addition to the above-named three, joining in pursuit of non-lethal interests. It looked like the bar scene from “Star Wars” but was uplifting nonetheless.

Wrestling got a boost Wednesday when an IOC subcommittee voted to include it among the sports eligible to fill the schedule void left by its absence (goofy, huh?), but the final decision won’t come until the full committee meets in September.  Sending wrestlers to clamp headlocks on IOC members might help persuade them to do the right thing, but putting together a bribe fund probably would help more.

 I’d contribute.

    

   

                   

ARF

                As an old dog, the old line about tricks has special meaning for me. That’s why I’m glad to report I’ve learned a new one.

                

             It’s a fondness for a team I’d guess few of you will recognize offhand—Tottenham Hotspur. It plays soccer (football to the rest of the world) in the English Premier League. Although I know none of its songs, don’t have a white-and-blue scarf and never have been to its White Hart Lane home in North London, I’m a fan.

 I prove that by knowing that the team’s name is not plural but singular, as in “Miami Heat.”  Collectively, however, they’re the Spurs. Curious, what?

Although I didn’t grow up with the sport, I’ve enjoyed soccer for some years now. My mild affection turned stronger when I covered the 1994 World Cup on these shores, and stronger yet during my attendance at the 1998 edition in France. The color, excellence of the games and passion of the crowds made that event the best I ever covered. The fact that wife Susie and I got to spend five weeks in Paris on the Wall Street Journal’s dime, with side trips to Lyon, Marseilles and Nantes, didn’t hurt, either.

Americans tend to scoff at soccer, finding it low-scoring and dull and and objecting to its numerous tied outcomes. Europeans and others tend to scoff at Americans, believing that our desires for action and finality are evidence of our national immaturity. “Life is a tie,” they’re fond of saying, and I can’t disagree.

But I think we Yanks would like soccer more if we’d glue ourselves down long enough to watch a top-level game from beginning to end. It’s played by average-sized men and thus emphasizes speed and agility, and the players’ skills are nothing short of marvelous. Soccerists can do with their feet almost what basketball players can do with their hands, even though it’s a lot harder. If you don’t believe me, try kicking a ball of any size with your “off” foot. 

Soccer goals may be rare but good passes and goal-threatening situations such as corner kicks are frequent. Action is continuous, with little of the stop-and-go (mostly stop) that bogs down our Big Three team sports.  Once you’re into the flow of a game it’ll start making sense. If you’re a typical, know-it-all American sports fan you’ll be hollering “Work the flanks!” in no time.

 Liking a sport is one thing, though, and rooting for a team is another. I got to the Spurs through my son Michael, an ex-pat who now lives in Copenhagen and works in Amsterdam but lived in England long enough to become a subject of the Queen, and my Scottsdale pal Mike Levy, who has familial ties to fair Albion.  

 Assists go to ESPN and the Fox Soccer Channel, which broadcast most Premier League games into the U.S. “live.”  The eight-hour time difference between London and Phoenix makes for 6 a.m. starts, but through the miracle of TIVO I can tape the games for anytime viewing. I’ve been reserving Sunday mornings for watching Spurs’ replays.

 Son Michael generally phones later on Sunday, and we rehash the action. As he puts it, it’s a “quality bonding experience.” Friend Mike and I also compare Spurs notes. He’s more critic than lover—often down on the team even when it wins—but I enjoy his contrarian viewpoints on many subjects. I mean, how many left-wing gun nuts do you know?

 I have a further bond with the Spurs through religion. That’s because much of the London neighborhood in which they’re based is (or was) Jewish, as am I, and Jews make up such a large part of the team’s fan base that it calls itself the “Yid Army.” Europe isn’t PC the way we are, so that sort of thing goes over there.  Still, like Levy’s rye bread (no relation to Mike), you don’t have to be Jewish to love the Spurs and many goyim do, including actor Kenneth Branagh, rocker Phil Collins, basketballer Steve Nash and WWE wrestler John Cena. My heroes all.

 What really defines Spurs fans, though, is their tolerance for failure. In that way they’re like fans of my Chicago Cubs, so I suppose it was fated that I’d join them eventually. Like the Cubs, the team has been in existence for a long time (since 1882) but has little to show for it. Its last Premier League championship came in 1961, when the circuit was called the First Division. The title before that came in 1951, and its previous history wasn’t more illustrious.

English soccer is like American baseball in that both have a monarchy. In baseball it’s the New York Yankees and in soccer it’s Manchester United. Actually, the Yankees wish they were Man U because that outfit rules as well as reigns, having won 13 crowns in the 21 seasons since the 20-team Premier League was rebranded in 1992-93.  Chelsea and Arsenal each have won thrice in that span, leaving little hardware for the rest.

The Brits keep interest up in the face of such hegemony partly by awarding consolation prizes. The top four Premier League finishers get to play in the Champions League, a lengthy tournament matching the best European clubs, and the top five qualify for the Europa League, a less prestigious go-round. With fourth-place finishes in 2012 and 2010 and a fifth in 2011, Tottenham has been in the mix for such places in recent years, pleasing its fancy.

This season promised to be a good one for the Spurs, but results have been mixed. The year’s highlight has been the blossoming into stardom of Gareth Bale, a tall, 23-year-old Welshman whose specialty is curling long kicks into small corners of the net. His goals have made up a one-man highlight reel and propelled him into election as the Premier League’s Player of the Year, a signal honor. With help from American National Team forward Clint Dempsey and Jermaine Defoe, a flashy but self-regarding scorer (I admire him more than Mike Levy does), the Spurs staged a mid-winter run that gained them a heady third place, behind only Man U and Manchester City, last year’s 2-1 finishers. A third would have been the Spurs’ best standing since the BPL was formed.

Sadly, they’ve staggered since, rallying to beat Man City with an awesome three-goals-in-seven-minutes flourish in April but coming up short against lesser foes.  With one game left to play (Sunday against Sunderland) they’re in fifth place, needing a win and a loss or tie by fourth-place Arsenal to land a Champions League spot. It’s a dim possibility.

Bale’s emergence presages better things ahead for the Spurs, but only if he sticks around. Middle-and lower-level Premier League teams long have made a living by developing young stars and selling their contracts for big bucks to the likes of Man U and rich continental powers such as Barcelona and Real Madrid, but the Spurs say they’ll pay up to keep the young man.  Stay tuned.

 Meantime, I’m adopting a favorite saying of Spurs’ supporters: Wait ‘til next year.

Sounds familiar, huh?