While bumping around on the internet last night, I stumbled upon Alex Reisner's site. Worth checking out are his US roadtrip photos and NYC adventures, which include an account and photographs of a man jumping from the Williamsburg Bridge.
But the real gold here is Reisner's research on baseball...a must-see for baseball and infographics nerds alike. Regarding the home run discussion on the post about Ken Griffey Jr. a few weeks ago, Reisner offers this graph of career home runs by age for a number of big-time sluggers. You can see the trajectory that Griffey was on before he turned 32/33 and how A-Rod, if he stays healthy, is poised to break any record set by Bonds. His article on Baseball Geography and Transportation details how low-cost cross-country travel made it possible for the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to move to California. The same article also riffs on how stadiums have changed from those that fit into urban environments (like Fenway Park) to more symmetric ballfields built in suburbs and other open areas accessible by car.
The goal here is not to duplicate excellent resources like Total Baseball or The Baseball Encyclopedia, but to take the same data and present it in a way that shows different relationships, yields new insights, and raises new questions. The focus is on putting single season stats in a historical context and identifying the truly outstanding player seasons, not just those with big raw numbers.
Reisner's primary method of comparing players over different eras is the z-score, a measure of how a player compares to their contemporaries, (e.g. the fantastic seasons of Babe Ruth in 1920 and Barry Bonds in 2001):
In short, z-score is a measure of a player's dominance in a given league and season. It allows us to compare players in different eras by quantifying how good they were compared to their competition. It it a useful measure but a relative one, and does not allow us to draw any absolute conclusions like "Babe Ruth was a better home run hitter than Barry Bonds." All we can say is that Ruth was more dominant in his time.
I'm more of a basketball fan than of baseball, so I immediately thought of applying the same technique to NBA players, to shed some light on the perennial Jordan vs. Chamberlain vs. Oscar Robertson vs. whoever arguments. Until recently, the NBA hasn't collected statistics as tenaciously as MLB has so the z-score technique is not as useful, but some work has been done in that area.
Anyway, great stuff all the way around.
Update: Reisner's site seems to have gone offline since I wrote this. I hope the two aren't related and that it appears again soon.
Last night, Ken Griffey Jr. hit the 564th home run of his career to move into 10th place on the all-time list. Reading about his accomplishment, I was surprised he was so far up on the list, given the number of injuries he's had since coming into the league in 1989. That got me wondering about what might have been had Griffey stayed healthy throughout his career...if he would have lived up to the promise of his youth when he was predicted to become one of the game's all-time greats.
Looking at his stats, I assumed a full season to be 155 games and extrapolated what his home run total would have been for each season after his rookie year in which he played under 155 games. Given that methodology, Griffey would have hit about 687 home runs up to this point. In two of those seasons, 1995 and 2002, his adjusted home run numbers were far below the usual because of injuries limiting his at-bats and effectiveness at the plate. Further adjusting those numbers brings the total up to 717 home runs, good for 3rd place on the all-time list and a race to the top with Barry Bonds.
Of course, if you're going to play what-if, Babe Ruth had a couple of seasons in which he missed a lot of games and also played in the era of the 154-game season. Willie Mays played a big chunk of his career in the 154-game season era as well. Ted Williams, while known more for hitting for average, missed a lot of games for WWII & the Korean War (almost 5 full seasons) and played in the 154-game season era...and still hit 521 home runs.
Free throw shooting is one of my favorite topics. It's the whole relaxed concentration aspect of it: can you focus enough so that the years of practice undertaken to train the unconscious self to shoot override the conscious self's desire to take control of the situation at hand? To me, this battle of the two minds within the individual is the essence of sport: you know how to make the shot, you know you can make the shot, but will you make the shot? Free throw shooting lays this battle bare for all to see. It's the same shot every single time (and the easiest way to score a point in sports), you don't have to be in top physical shape to shoot it, and yet a surprising amount of professional basketball players can't make more than every two out of three attempts.
So, as for Gene Weingarten's assertion (via truehoop) that if an average person took a year to practice, he could beat the best free throw shooter in the NBA, I say "hell yes". Maybe a retired podiatrist would be a worthy candidate: 71-year-old Tom Amberry shot 2,750 in a row in 1993. Amberry was a star college basketball player and was offered a contract with the Lakers after WWII, so maybe that's not fair...but just look at the guy.
When the Chicago Bears take the field against the Indianapolis Colts in early February for Super Bowl XLI, a former foe of the Bears will be close at hand. A kottke.org reader writes:
The "Super Bowl Shuffle" earned The Chicago Bears a [1987] Grammy nomination for best Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance - Duo or Group. They lost to Prince and the Revolution's "Kiss".
As part of a World Series promotion, Taco Bell will give away a free taco to everyone in the United States if someone hits a home run over the left field wall in tonight's game 3. This is a big offer for a big company so of course their lawyers want to make darn sure that we know precisely what "Taco Bell" means when they say "home run", "left field", and "free taco" with an extensive list of terms and conditions. Surely the first legal document containing the phrase "a completely outside the bun idea", the T&C is a fun read, but my favorite is the first condition that you agree to if you take advantage of the offer:
...to release, Major League Baseball Properties, Inc., Major League Baseball Enterprises, Inc., MLB Advanced Media, L.P., MLB Media Holdings, Inc., MLB Media Holdings, L.P., MLB Online Services, Inc., the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, and the Major League Baseball Clubs, and each of their respective shareholders, employees, parents, directors, officers, affiliates, representatives, agents, successors, and assigns (hereinafter, "MLB Entities") and Sponsor and their affiliates, subsidiaries, retailers, sales representatives, distributors and franchisees, and each of their officers, directors, employees and agents ("Promotional Parties"), from any and all liability, loss or damage incurred with respect to participation in this contest and/or the awarding, receipt, possession, and/or use or misuse of any Free Taco
Man, I really hope someone hits a left field home run tonight. I'm dying to see some creative misuse of free tacos.
If you're waiting for people to stop assuming that sports fans are a bunch of beer-swilling chuckleheads, you'll need to wait a little longer. Of the first six paragraphs of a story about Minnesota Twins outfielder Torii Hunter's recent miscues by ESPN "senior writer" Jim Caple, here are three:
"See? This is where Bob makes his crucial mistake. When he orders the eighth beer. If he cuts himself off at seven, he probably doesn't even talk to that woman, let alone go home with her."
"Hank, if you had to do it all over again, would you still say those pants make your wife look fat?"
"That @#&ammp;% Johnson. I would have gotten that promotion if he hadn't accidentally sent those bachelor party photos on an officewide e-mail. What a moron."
Ah, the social tribulations of the red-blooded American male. He told his wife that her pants made her look fat even though she said it was ok to say so and he actually fell for it! OMG! I think read about that in a joke book in the 80s.
Over the weekend, my thoughts kept returning to Michael Lewis' story about Michael Oher, a former homeless kid who may soon be headed for a sizeable NFL paycheck. Checking around online for reaction reveals a wide range of responses to the story. Uplifting sports story was the most common reaction, while others found it disturbing (my initial reaction), with one or two folks even accusing Lewis and the Times of overt racism. While Lewis left the story intentionally open-ended (that is, he didn't attempt to present any explicit lessons in the text itself), I believe he meant for us to find the story disturbing (or at least thought-provoking).
Just look at the way Lewis tells Oher's story. Oher is never directly quoted; it's unclear if he was even interviewed for this piece (although it's possible he was for another part of the book). Instead he is spoken about and for by his coaches, teachers, and new family...and as much as the article focuses on him, we don't get a sense of who Oher really is or what he wants out of life. (An exception is the great "put him on the bus" story near the end.) He's playing football, was adopted by a rich, white family, graduated from high school, and is attending college, but all that was decided for him and we never learn what Oher wants. Religion is referred to as a driving factor in his adopted family's efforts to help him. Again, no choice there...not even his family or school had any say in the matter, God told them they *had* to save this kid.
Then there's the sports angle, the parallels between Oher's lack of control over his own life and how professional athletes, many from poor economic backgrounds, are treated by their respective teams, leagues, owners, and fans. At one point, Lewis compares Oher's lack of enthusiasm for football's aggression to that of Ferdinand the Bull, a veiled reference to the perception of the professional athlete as an animal whose worth is measured in how big, strong, and fast he is.
So what you've got is a story about rich white people from the American South using religion to justify taking a potentially valuable black man from his natural environment and deciding the course of his life for him. Sound familiar? Perhaps I'm being a little melodramatic, but this can't just be an accident on Lewis' part. As I see it, Oher is Lewis' "blank slate" in a parable of contemporary America, a one-dimensional character representing black America who is, depending on your perspective, either manipulated, exploited, or saved by white America. Not that it's bad that Oher has a home, an education, and a family who obviously cares about him, but does the outcome justify the means? And could Oher even have contributed significantly to his direction in life when all this was happening? Who are we to meddle in another person's life so completely? Conversely, who are we to stand idly by when there are people who need help and we have the means to help them?
I'm not saying Lewis' story has any of the answers to these questions, but I would suggest that in a country where racial differences still matter and the economic gap between the rich and poor is growing, this is more than just an uplifting sports story.
Marathon runners, remember this name: Gabriel Sherman. Mr. Sherman runs marathons (6!) but doesn't want you to run in any, believing that you slow johnnys-come-lately to the scene have ruined the marathon:
Among autumn's sporting rituals there is one tradition that fills me with mounting dread: the return of marathon season. If you've been to the gym or attended a cocktail party recently, you know what I mean. Chances are you've bumped into a newly devoted runner who's all too happy to tell you about his heart-rate monitor and split times and the looming, character-building challenge of running 26.2 miles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a slovenly couch potato who abhors exercise. I'm an avid runner with six marathons under my New Balance trainers. But this growing army of giddy marathon rookies is so irksome that I'm about ready to retire my racing shoes and pick up bridge.
Several people I know have either run a marathon or are training for an upcoming one and, while it may sound trite, the experience has made them better people in a way that the "elevated sense of self-worth" that Mr. Sherman sniffs about in the article doesn't begin to describe. (What's more, those that have run a marathon are training smartly to beat their previous time.) Mr. Sherman rightly notes the health problems that running a marathon holds for the ill-prepared, but why exclude from a marathon people who are avid, well-trained runners who happen to be slow? Why should the almighty institution of The Marathon™ be more important than the people running in it? And why doesn't he want more people to enjoy a sport that he loves? Should we implore Mr. Sherman to stop writing because he's ruining journalism with his shallow, insubstantial articles? Hell no! Keep writing, Mr. Sherman...we'll keep reading in the hopes that you'll one day improve and recognize the importance of, every once in awhile, doing something for which you're not ideally suited because you *want* to.
Dave Jamieson used to collect baseball cards and recently uncovered his stash when he cleaned out the closet of his childhood home. In attempting to recoup some of the time and money spent in his youth on this cardboard, Jamieson found that baseball cards aren't as popular or as lucrative as they used to be:
Baseball cards peaked in popularity in the early 1990s. They've taken a long slide into irrelevance ever since, last year logging less than a quarter of the sales they did in 1991. Baseball card shops, once roughly 10,000 strong in the United States, have dwindled to about 1,700. A lot of dealers who didn't get out of the game took a beating. "They all put product in their basement and thought it was gonna turn into gold," Alan Rosen, the dealer with the self-bestowed moniker "Mr. Mint," told me. Rosen says one dealer he knows recently struggled to unload a cache of 7,000 Mike Mussina rookie cards. He asked for 25 cents apiece.
Close readers of kottke.org know that I collected sports cards too. I got involved in this prepubescent hobby later than most; I was 14 or 15 when a friend and his older brother -- who was around 24 and collecting for investment -- introduced me to it. And I loved it:
I still have them all somewhere, in boxes, collecting dust faster than value. The Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie, the 130 different Nolan Ryan cards, the complete 1989 Hoops set (with the David Robinson rookie), and several others I really can't remember right now.
I used to spend untold hours sifting through them, looking up the values in Beckett's Price Guide, visiting card shops, flipping through commons to complete sets, looking for patterns in Topps' rack packs (I scored many a Jim Abbott rookie with this technique), chewing that ancient bubble gum (I bought a pack of 1983 cards once and chewed the gum...it was horrible), and keeping track of the total value of my collection with a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet on my dad's 286. It was a lot of fun at the time (as the Web is fun for me now); I guess that's about all one can ask for from a hobby.
Recently I stumbled across The Baseball Card Blog and was hit by a giant wave of nostalgia for my old obsession. One thing led to another -- you know how that goes -- and before I knew it, a package was speeding its way to me from a card shop in Pennsylvania containing several 1989 Fleer & Donruss wax packs, a 1989 Topps rack pack, and a couple of 1987 Topps wax packs.1
I've been opening a pack every few days since they arrived. Smell is the sense most powerfully associated with memory, so getting a whiff of that cardboard is really sending me back. Like a wine connoisseur, I can even smell the difference between each brand of card; the smell of Topps cards holds the strongest memories for me...the 1989 Topps set was my favorite. I opened the '87 Topps packs with a fellow ex-collector, but when we tried to chew the gum, it tasted like the cards and turned to a muddy dust in our mouths. But that was mostly what happened even when the gum was new, so we were unsurprised.
Because of the aforementioned slump in the baseball card collecting economy, the card packs I ordered were the same price I paid for them as a kid (factoring for inflation), even though they're almost 20 years old and way more scarce. Back then, I used most of my $5/week allowance on cards, and it took weeks and months of patience to buy enough packs to complete a set, procure that Griffey rookie card, or amass enough Mark McGwires to trade to a friend for a desired Nolan Ryan.
As an adult, I have the cashflow to buy any card I want whenever I want (within reason). Or several boxes of cards, so as to compile complete sets instantly. Or I can just purchase the complete sets and skip the intermediate step. I could buy an entire box of 1989 Upper Deck packs -- at $1.25 per pack and nearly impossible to find in rural Wisconsin, an unimaginable extravagance for me as a kid -- right now on eBay. When I think about the financial advantages I now have over my 16-yo self in collecting the same exact cards, I feel like the NY Yankees (and their monster payroll) competing in a Single A league. It's unfair and even thinking about collecting cards in that manner takes a lot of the fun out of it for me. If I do start collecting cards again, I'm going to approach it like I did back then: by hand, a little at a time, and treating even the essentially worthless commons with care. Unless Nolan Ryan is involved...in that case, the sky's the limit, although I might have to sell my bicycle to get it. In the meantime, I'm waiting for the next household footwear purchase so I can put my newly purchased cards in the shoe box for safe keeping.
[1] A quick note on terminology. A "wax pack" is a basic pack of around 15 cards (plus gum, when cards still had gum packaged with them), so-called because the packages used to be sealed with wax. (Now they're all probably packaged in plastic and whatnot...I don't know, I haven't kept up.) The bottom card in such a pack is called a "wax back" because the card got a thin layer of wax on it from the sealing process. A "rack pack" is a hanging triple pack made of see-thru plastic. A "common" is an ordinary card not worth very much, as opposed to cards or rookies, hot prospects, all-stars, and the like. A "box" contains several wax packs, typically 20-40 packs/box. A "complete set" is a collection of every card sold by a company in a particular year. The '89 Topps set had 792 cards. Sets were sold in factory-sealed boxes or were compiled by hand from cards acquired in packs. ↩
The Daily Mail, with corroboration from the Times, has some information on what Marco Materazzi said to Zinedine Zidane to provoke the latter's career ending headbutt in the 2006 World Cup final (more info on that here). They both hired lip readers to decipher Materazzi's dialogue before the incident and this is allegedly what he said (translated from the Italian):
Hold on, wait, that one's not for a nigger like you.
We all know you are the son of a terrorist whore.
So just fuck off.
So it might be fair to say that Materazzi got what he deserved, as did Zidane when he got sent off. Not that two wrongs make a right. Even so, I agree with these thoughts from That's How It Happened:
[Zidane's] willingness to headbutt Materazzi makes him more of a hero, not less. Admittedly, since France went on to lose, he's something of a tragic hero, but a hero none-the-less. If someone insulted my race, or my religion (if I had one), I wish I'd be as ready to attack them, no matter what the circumstances. Zidane's action highlights for the world the fact that the racial unity of France is more important than winning the World Cup.
If the lip reader is correct in what Materazzi said, I may like Zidane even more than I did before the match. (via wikipedia)
I held his shirt for a few seconds only, he turned to me, looked at me from top to bottom with utmost arrogance (and said): "if you really want my shirt, I'll give it to you afterwards". I answered him with an insult.
Update: Several UK newspapers enlisted lip readers to determine what Materazzi said and ended up with many different accounts. Lip reading + language translation = unreliable. (thx, luke)
I'm rooting for France today, but I feel that Italy has the best chance of winning. But we shall see. Allez!
Update: I'm stunned. Not so much about the loss, but Zidane...what was that? That headbutt is one of the craziest things I've ever seen in sports.
Update:Video of the headbutt. There's some speculation that Materazzi twisted Zidane's nipple...or if not, I wonder what he said that could have riled the Frenchman so?
Update: Ok, here's a video of the whole exchange. No twisting that I can see...Materazzi obviously said something. With all his experience, hasn't Zidane heard it all before?
One of the theories about Zidane as a player is that he is driven by an inner rage. His football is elegant and masterful, charged with technique and vision. But he can still erupt into shocking violence that is as sudden as it is inexplicable. The most famous examples of this include head butting Jochen Kientz of Hamburg during a Champions League match, when he was at Juventus in 2000 (an action that cost him a five match suspension) and his stomping on the hapless Faoud Amin of Saudi Arabia during the 1998 World Cup finals (this latter action was, strangely enough, widely applauded in the Berber community as Zidane's revenge on hated Arab 'extremists').
By the way, I've been watching the World Cup for four weeks trying to decide which NBA players could have been dominant soccer players, eventually coming to three conclusions. First, Allen Iverson would have been the greatest soccer player ever -- better than Pele, better than Ronaldo, better than everyone. I think this is indisputable, actually. Second, it's a shame that someone like Chris Andersen couldn't have been pushed toward soccer, because he would have been absolutely unstoppable soaring above the middle of the pack on corner kicks. And third, can you imagine anyone being a better goalie than Shawn Marion? It would be like having a 6-foot-9 human octopus in the net. How could anyone score on him? He'd have every inch of the goal covered. Just as a sports experiment, couldn't we have someone teach Marion the rudimentary aspects of playing goal, then throw him in a couple of MLS games? Like you would turn the channel if this happened?
Link via David, with whom I was chatting last week about Mr. Iverson's excellent chances, soccer-wise.
Not to go on and on about it like the stupid announcers on American TV, but this passage from Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker piece (sadly not online), may explain why the American team did so poorly in the World Cup:
Every kid in the American suburbs, it seems, owns a pair of shin guards. Soccer accords nicely with baby-boomer parents' notions about sports: every kid gets to play, no one stands out too much, there's plenty of running and trophies for all. If [John Robert's] children are typical, they will play neighborhood soccer for a few years, with enthusiastic but inexperienced parent coaches, and then wander away from the game by adolescence. Great high-school athletes tend to migrate to football and basketball, where they can play in front of big crowds and perhaps qualify for college scholarships. Soccer in the suburbs serves mostly as a bridge between Barney and Nintendo; it's a pleasant diversion, not a means of developing brutes like Jan Koller, to say nothing of the magicians who stock the Brazilian team.
This dovetails nicely with what my friend David wrote during a discussion about the disappearance of the US from the World Cup:
Our best athletes go to basketball, football, and baseball, roughly in that order. Soccer gets the dregs, sadly. Don't you think Terrell Owens would be a better striker than Landon Donovan? Even a 50-year-old Darrel Green might be faster than the fastest player on the US Soccer team, and so on.
We know these guys are smart players, and they may have the same instincts that even the Brazilians and Ecuadorians do. But they're just not nearly as good. Watching Brazil decimate Japan yesterday, even briefly, it was obvious how much stronger they were than the US team.
Over IM just now, David and I were musing about Allen Iverson's possible greatness as a soccer player; so creative, quick, and fearless. I bet if some the NBA's best players grew up playing soccer the way they played basketball, the US would have a pretty great team.
Following the examples set by PacManhattan and Nintendo Amusement Park, another popular video game is moving beyond the screen and into the real world. Enthusiasts of EA Sports' Madden NFL 06 have been spotted in various locations around the United States playing a physical game based on the bestselling title.
DeWayne Coleman of Grand Rapids, Michigan said, "it looked so fun on the screen and we thought, 'why can't we go find a flat grassy area to run around, throw the ball, and punt on fourth down?'" Other "football" groups (as they like to be called) have uploaded candid photos of their activity to the Flickr photo-sharing site.
These early amateur efforts bare a crude resemblance to the gameplay in Madden, but a professional league set to begin play this fall in several major US cities will follow Madden NFL 06 much more closely. The National Football League (NFL) will employ athletes that resemble their in-game counterparts that will play for teams named after those in Madden. The teams will go through a full 16-game season, followed by a playoff and a "Super" bowl game to determine the champion. League officials plan to bring in revenue by charging for admission, selling foodstuffs during the games, and memorabilia inspired by the virtual uniforms worn by players in the game. The video game's namesake, TV personality John Madden, will even colorfully describe the action of the games for simultaneous broadcast on network television.
Madden NFL 06 purists have criticized the NFL's ambitious efforts, saying that ticket prices are too high and the games aren't interactive enough. One Madden fan from Phoenix, Arizona summed up the frustrations: "I'm supposed to pay twice as much as I paid for the video game for one lousy live game, not including beer and hot dog costs, and I can't even control what's going on in the game? What the hell is so fun about that?"
You know that "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" song? They should add another verse, something like:
Take your glove to the ballgame
and if you don't, you're an idiot
We went to the Yankees/Red Sox game at Yankee Stadium with David and Adriana last night and in the bottom of the third inning, Yankees second baseman Miguel Cairo hit a line drive just wide of the foul pole in left field. As I watched the ball coming towards us, I thought a million things -- it's foul, it's gonna drop into the seats way in front of us, never gonna get here, what's the count now, is it time for cheese fries yet...almost everything except for "holy shit, it's coming right at me" -- and then stuck my bare hand straight up in the air, leaned slightly to my left, and dropped the ball.
Dropped isn't the right word, really. Deflected the ball off my bare hand is more accurate. It bounced into the seats behind me and then rolled down under Adriana's seat. After a brief scramble, some meatheads who were ambling by on their way to beer, pretzels, or the can stuck their paws in and made off with the ball. A Yankees fan who observed the whole thing got up in Meg's face, framed by her faded Red Sox hat, and yelled, "ha ha, Boston fans can't catch!" His truth stung almost as much as my rapidly swelling hand. David scored the play as an error, Box 324, Seat 3.
But the most entertaining play of the night by a fan who was not me award goes to the fellow in the yellow shirt who, emboldened by too much Miller Lite, dashed out onto the field, arms raised triumphantly, soaking in the cheers of the adoring crowd. Out came security from all corners of the field and the crowd redirected its enthusiasm from the hunted to the hunters, cheering for blood. "Hit em!" the guy behind me was screaming, "HIT EM!!"
Security eventually converged on the would-be outfielder and he adopted the surrendering posture of a man who knows he's had his fun, palms in the air, head down, not running anymore, almost sinking to his knees. And -- BAMMM! -- this security guard, a former linebacker by the looks of him, comes flying in from the blind side and wallops the guy, knocking him to the ground in a full-on lay-out tackle. The crowd roared at the guard's tackle and cheered lustily as the gladiator was removed from the coliseum.
Many basketball fans don't care for the pro game, but you'd have to be made of stone if you're not appreciating the NBA playoffs this year. Have you been watching? What a bunch of great games and series.
Round one featured an old-fashioned duel between LeBron James and Gilbert Arenas, Phoenix battling back from a 3-1 series deficit against a perplexing Lakers team (with Kobe playing team basketball!) to win, and an aging Shaquille O'Neal -- after the refs demonstrated that he was no longer good enough to bull his way through defenders in the post and not get called for offensive fouls -- going for 30 points and 20 rebounds in game six, playing a finesse game unseen from him since his college days at LSU.
And in the second round, the Clippers and Suns are going at it like cats and dogs (2 overtimes in game five, 253 total points in game 1), the defending champion Spurs are trying to come back from a 3-1 deficit to the Mavericks (3 of the games have been decided by 2 points or less and another went to overtime), and the Pistons, who by all accounts should have swept the Cavs in four, find themselves down 3-2 to a team with the best 21-year-old basketball player ever.
Despite the NBA's dogged insistence on promoting individual players as the primary reason to watch games, watching the team play has been the most compelling part of the playoffs. Detroit, Phoenix, San Antonio, the Clippers, and Dallas are great to watch on either end of the court: how a team's offense changes in response to their opponent's defense, how the defense changes to compensate for the tweaks made by the offense, and so on. I don't have a favorite team in the playoffs this year, but this is the most fun I've had watching the NBA since rooting for the Bulls in 1998. (I know, I know.)
Saturday was a sports viewing doubleheader in our household: the Kentucky Derby followed by a lackluster Lakers vs. Suns game 7. During the basketball game, the commentators referred to the speed of the Suns' Leandro Barbosa and that plus the similarity of his name to Derby winner Barbaro's led to a discussion about which of the two would win in a race the length of the basketball court. Three of us argued that the horse would win and one argued for the human winning.
So, how fast are horses and humans? In winning the Belmont Stakes in 1973, Secretariat averaged 37.5 miles/hr over a mile and a half. World record holder Asafa Powell averaged 22.9 miles/hr in the 100 meter dash. Jesse Owens raced horses over a 100 yard distance and beat them, but only because the horses reared at the sound of the starter's pistol, giving him a sizable head-start. In 2004, in an annual race held in Wales, a chap named Huw Lobb beat a field of horses and other humans over a distance of 22-miles.
But that doesn't do much in answering the question of which would win over the short distance of a basketball court (94 feet or 28.7 meters). I searched high and low online and found little about the acceleration of either horses or humans. No doubt horses are much faster than humans, but a man is probably quicker off the line. So I put the question to you in hopes that you can answer it:
In a 94-foot race between a human sprinter and a thoroughbred race horse, who would win? Assume a standing start for both, the horse races on dirt, the man runs on the court, and both horse and man are among the fastest at their respective distances.
Finally, Gelf Magazine compares Olympic predictions with the actual results. The media outlets surveyed all predicted higher medal counts for the US, but weren't off by that much (aside from the ridiculous AP predicitons). Only NBC and Nike were surprised that Bode Miller sucked so royally.
I did some skiing last week up in Vermont and took some videos with my phone on the slopes. The quality isn't great, but hopefully you'll get the gist.
A short clip of me skiing through the trees:
Riding the chair lift:
And one of me skiing behind Meg:
The motion in the last one reminds me of Quake...like I'm chasing after her with a railgun or something.
Since I've been skiing a little bit recently (for the first time in years), I decided to check out what was happening online in the skiing world. Specifically I wondered if there were any ski blogs out there and if the many ski magazines offer online archives of their content.
Most of the skiing blogs I found focus on their respective author's adventures on the slopes. If someone wanted to start a skiing meta-blog (blogging not just skiing adventures but other skiing-related topics and pointing to other people's adventures), would there be enough good information out there to point to? The magazine racks of ski country convenience stores are filled with all kinds of periodicals about skiing...how much of that content is online? From what I can tell, the skiing magazines do offer content on their sites, but not necessarily from the pages of their print magazines. Both SKI Magazine and Skiing Magazine have archived print articles on their sites, but only from June 2005 and earlier. Both have other resources like forums, skiing news, resort details, videos, and online-only features. Neither site is organized particularly well for quick information perusal and retrieval. Skipressworld offers PDF versions of their entire print magazine online, including the current issue. Powder magazine has some online archives as well as online-only features like videos and message boards.
So there's lots of skiing info out there. I know there must be a few skiers among the kottke.org readership...what are your favorite skiing sites and resources online?
One of the pre-conference events was a talk at Fenway Park followed by a tour of the ballpark. Janet Marie Smith, VP of planning and development for the Sox, kicked things off with how the team (especially the new management) works really hard to preserve the essential character of Fenway while at the same time trying to upgrade the park (and keep it from getting torn down). She talked about the advertisements added to the Green Monster, which was actually not a purely commercial move but a throwback to a time when the Monster was actually covered with ads.
Lots of talk and awareness of experience design...the Red Sox folks in particular kept referring to the "experience" of the park. One of the speakers (can't recall who, might have been Jim Dow) talked about how other ballparks are becoming places where only people who can afford $100 tickets can go to the games and what that does to the team's fan base. With Fenway, they're trying to maintain a variety of ticket prices to keep the diversity level high...greater diversity makes for a better crowd and a better fan base and is quite appropriate for Boston (and New England in general), which has always been an area with vibrant blue collar and blue blood classes.
Janet also referred to the "accidental" design of the park. Like many other urban ballparks built in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the placement of the streets constrained the design of Fenway and made it rather an odd shape....these days larger plots are selected where those types of restraints are removed. And over time, the game has changed, the needs of the fans have changed, and the fire codes have changed and the park has changed with the times. In the dead ball era, the walls of the stadium weren't for hitting home runs over; their sole function was to keep people on the street for catching the game for free, so the Fenway outfield ran over 500 feet in right field -- practically all the way to the street -- where there's now 30 rows of seats. Jim Holt observed that American butts have gotten bigger so bigger seats are called for. Fire codes helped that change along as well...wooden seats, bleachers, and overcrowding are no longer a large part of the Fenway experience (save for the wooden seats under the canopy).
The design talk continued on the tour of the park. Our guide detailed how ballparks are built around specific ballplayers. Yankee Stadium was the house that Ruth built but it was also seemingly (but not literally) built for him with a short trip for his home run balls to the right field wall. Boston added a bullpen to make the right field shorter for Ted Williams. Barry Bonds does very well at PacBell/SBC/WhateverItsCalledTheseDays Park. And more than that, the design of Fenway also dictated for a long time the type of team that they could field, which had some bearing on how they did generally. Players who played well in Fenway (i.e. could hit fly balls off of the Monster in left) often didn't do so well in other parks and the team's away record suffered accordingly.
Ben Saunders is a little bit crazy. He does stuff like ski solo from Russia to Canada via the North Pole just for the heck of it. When I was last in London, I called him up to make dinner plans and he apologized if he seemed a "little" tired because he'd been out for a "bit" of a run this morning. That short run turned out to be 20 miles. (At dinner that evening, Ben and his training partner, Tony, ate everything on the table short of the cutlery.)
Here's the plan. The first return journey to the South Pole on foot and the longest unsupported polar journey in history. In October next year, Tony Haile and I will set out from Scott's hut, on the shores of McMurdo Sound on a 1,800-mile, four-month round trip, from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back. No dogs, no vehicles, no kites, no resupplies. We're calling it SOUTH.
The great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen made the only return journey, using dogs, 93 years ago. His rival Captain Scott died on his return from the Pole just 11 miles from the relative safety of his largest depot. Since then every expedition has either been flown out from the Pole or used dogs, kites or vehicles. Many people have blamed Scott's failure on his reliance on human power, and many experts still believe an entirely human-powered journey of this magnitude to be impossible. We think otherwise.
Expeditions of this sort are generally funded by large corporations who give money in exchange for advertising and sponsorship opportunities. On his last expedition to the North Pole, Ben blogged (and photoblogged) daily using a PDA & satellite phone and was cheered along by the thousands who read and commented on the journey. So for SOUTH, Ben and Tony are doing something a little different...they are seeking financial support from private individuals (and companies/groups/etc.). For a donation of $100, you can "own a mile" of the expedition, which means you get a listing on the site, a listing on the front page when your mile of the expedition is completed, your name enscribed on one of the expedition sleds, and your name on a flag planted at the South Pole. Ben and Tony are great guys and I would love to see them succeed, so give them a hand if you can.
Over on TrueHoop, Henry Abbott notes something interesting about Ray Allen's just-signed contract with the Seattle Sonics:
Though the average yearly salary of the contract is $16 million, the starting salary for Allen has not yet been worked out. Allen's side has given the Sonics the freedom to structure the deal however they choose in order to allow the team to surround Allen with talent, possibly by re-signing some of their own free agents or entering the free-agent market and signing top quality players.
Although I'm sure it freaks out the agents and laywers, that concession gives Ray Allen and the Sonics a much better shot at success.
I've always wondered why so-called "franchise" players on pro teams in leagues with salary caps (particularly in the NBA, where the number of players per team is so small) don't do this type of thing more often. Well, besides the fact that their agents, who presumably work on commission, won't let them. You get a guy like Kevin Garnett, who wants to win multiple championships, give him $3-4 million less per year than he could get on the open market (so he's still making millions per year and much more in endorsements) on the condition that the #2-5 guys on the squad are also making below market level by a mil or two, and then spend that money on the bench or on a #3 guy who would be a #2 guy anywhere else in the league. Garnett wins championships, everyone on the team wins championships, everyone's endorsements go up, the team makes more money, and the profile of everyone involved is raised (higher profile = increased future earnings potential). Of course it would never work, but what if it did?
I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out just how full of useless knowledge I am: under the rules of the USATT (specifically 10.10), you're not allowed to touch the table with your free hand during a volley as Hillary is doing here. Point to Bill.
In this interview on ESPN.com, Malcolm Gladwell offers his view on the upcoming Super Bowl and how the lessons of his most recent book, Blink, might apply. My favorite suggestion relates to training quarterbacks to deal with stressful situations:
I'd run them through a live-fire exercise at Quantico. I'd have them spend the offseason working with a trauma team in south-central L.A. It is only through repeated exposures to genuine stress that our body learns how to function effectively under that kind of pressure. I think its time we realized that a quarterback needs the same kind of exhaustive preparation for combat that we give bodyguards and soldiers.
Field goal kickers could benefit from this as well. And poor 4th quarter free throw shooters.
Earlier in the interview, Gladwell supposes that "Joe Montana's heart rate barely got above 100 in any of his fourth-quarter comebacks." I remember reading about a study where researchers hooked heart monitors up to various NASCAR drivers while they took practice laps around the track. The drivers' heart rates were slow and steady in the straightaways and increased markedly in the turns due to stress. All except for Jeff Gordon...his heart rate remained slow and steady all the way around the track.
Overcome by a hankering for soccer**, I tuned into the France v. Switzerland match last night. I don't often watch soccer -- usually only around World Cup time -- but I enjoy it when I do. It's just so hard to find it here on TV...although with TiVo, that's not much of an excuse.
Anyway, there's something about that Zidane, isn't there? Great players on Zidane's level usually make other players look slow, weak, or dimwitted in comparison. Michael Jordan certainly did so, as did Barry Sanders in the NFL, Steffi Graf in tennis, and Wayne Gretzky in hockey. In this case, it's Zidane that appears a step slow. Of course, he's not slow at all...he's just smooth. Very very smooth. He lopes along with the ball, hardly showing any effort, defenders swiftly converging on him from all sides, seemingly screwed, and somehow he pops into the clear and effortlessly flips a pass to a streaking teammate. He looks almost lazy out there. I replayed several of his plays last night, trying to see exactly how he does it, an ultimately futile exercise. Great fun to watch though.
** I'd call it football, but then you'd think I was being pretentious (or anglophilic). But that's what much of the rest of the world calls it. I just wanna do the right thing here. Non-North Americans, just pretend I called it football, ok?
Watching the Pistons beat the Lakers last night to win the NBA championship was a pleasure. No one gave them a chance at the beginning of the series yet they dominated the Lakers with defense, good fundamentals, and team basketball. Some miscellaneous notes:
- The Lakers' age, lack of cohesion, and reliance on luck finally showed in this series. The last few years and especially in these playoffs, whenever the Lakers needed a big bucket or a run to get back in the game, some random player would come off the bench to score 10 points above his average, Kobe would nail an impossible shot, or Shaq would get hot at the free throw line. Except for game 2, that didn't happen in this series. If only Sam Cassell hadn't been hurt and the Lakers had been a little less lucky in the Minnesota series...
- As the Pistons celebrated with the trophy up on the podium, Darko Milicic stood quietly behind his raucous teammates. He's the loneliest championship winner I've ever seen; even some of assorted entourages in attendance were closer to the trophy celebration than Darko. At 18 and the #2 draft pick from Serbia, Darko just doesn't fit in with the rest of the team. You could see it on the bench, when he was on the floor briefly during the playoffs, and after the game.
- Darko's stark separation from his teammates reminded me of the Lakers. As the series started, there was all that talk of Malone being the father figure of the team, bringing them all together. What a load of crap. Neither Malone or Payton ever fit in with the rest of the team, not really. Payton hated the triangle offense. Kobe and Shaq tolerate each other and that's being kind. They had no role players that complemented their strengths. The Lakers prided themselves on being able to "pull together" when they really needed to but were too dysfunctional to do even that much this time.
- Doc Rivers is a fantastic announcer. As an ex-player and an ex-coach, he knows a ton about the game. But unlike many athletes-turned-broadcasters, Rivers is smart, articulate, witty, and outpaced even veteran broadcaster Al Michaels. He is Bill Walton's exact opposite, which is to say he should not be banned from announcing anything other than volleyball for the rest of his life.
ps. Back on May 27th, Ralph Wiley, a writer for Sports Illustrated, nailed the outcome of the Finals before the Lakers/Pistons matchup had even been decided. Further ps. Lots of email about this one...Ralph Wiley passed away recently, right before game 4 of the Finals got underway actually.
First, congratulations on your Minnesota Timberwolves capturing the #1 seed for the playoffs in the Western Conference. I have been a fan for many years, and for the first time, I feel good about the team you have assembled and have high hopes for this postseason.
But we need to talk about Wally Szczerbiak. You've got to get rid of him. Can't you see that when he's in the game, he makes the whole team worse? No one wants to pass to him because he's a black hole; the ball goes in and never comes back out. It disrupts the whole offense. All he wants to do is shoot, shoot, shoot. He's a good individual talent, but doesn't play within the offense at all. Please trade him and get someone who's less selfish and can play some defense.
Reader Jason (no relation) just alerted me to CSFB removing the Thought Leader Forum piece by Paul DePodesta which influenced my recent post about innovation. It seems that DePodesta's recent hiring as the GM for the Dodgers prompted the move, perhaps because they don't want Paul giving away too many trade secrets. (What's next? A Moneyball recall?) The version in Google's cache has been updated already and I can't find the article on the Wayback Machine...does anyone have a copy from their browser cache that they can email to me? The filename is "depodesta_sidecolumn.shtml" from the "csfb.com" domain. Thanks.
Update: A copy of DePodesta's Thought Leader Forum article is available here. A similar article, mentioned in the ESPN piece above, is available here. Thanks to Jason and Richard for the links.
Further update: Paul emailed me and asked me to remove the articles from my site, which I have done (I'm leaving the links to the offsite versions). Nothing to do with the Dodgers...he personally wants to keep a lower profile these days.
Despite this situation, I was grappling with a significant issue: the Indians were very successful at this time. We kept winning the division year after year, selling out every game in our stadium and the owner took the team public at one point and was making more money than any other owner. Thomas Kuhn wrote in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, "As in manufacture so in science-retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it." There was no crisis in Cleveland, at least not on the surface.
Success breeds complacency and isn't conducive to creating an atmosphere of critical analysis or innovation. Peter Merholz riffs about this in the context of user experience on the Web:
One of the most annoying realities of a user experience professional's life is eBay, because it seems to flout everything we stand for. The Web's most popular 'pure play' sports a remarkably unwieldy and unattractive design. eBay is wary of changing it because, hey, we're making money, right? Yet I wonder about the untold billions more eBay could reap if it tightened up its experience. Yes, initially there would be a lot of grousing, and probably loss of revenue, as people adjusted to the status quo. But overtime, the site's ability for higher productivity on the part of its users would lead to greater activity, and more sales.
As to why established systems (like eBay's Web site) have problems making large-scale changes, DePodesta quotes Thomas Kuhn as saying:
The emergence of new theories is generally preceded by a period of pronounced professional insecurity.
No one at eBay wants to lose their job. This applies not only to corporations, but also to other systems. Paul Hammond recalls a recent conversation with Matt Webb about Web design patterns, particularly as it relates to weblogs:
[Matt] argues that we've reached the point where website design is just iterating on the same handful of design patterns, and the gains made with each iteration are slowly lessening. If we were to start somewhere else, even if that something was rubbish, there is the potential for subsequent iterations to be significantly better.
The only problem with this idea is that the sites will suffer in the meantime. But even this isn't an issue on a personal site...
You're certainly not going to fire yourself if your personal site underperforms because you're trying something innovative, but there are other barriers. For many, innovation isn't a priority; people just want to write or share their photos. Or they don't want to lose their audience (if that's a priority) or have their friends get confused. And innovation is hard...the tendancy to follow others or to observe best practices is strong. But it would be fun to see if the introduction of some different web design patterns can do for the Web (or even just eBay) what Beane and DePodesta did for the Oakland A's.
Reading this Salon article on sports video games brought back a ton of memories from college. I never got into Madden properly, but I played a ton of Tecmo Bowl, Tecmo Super Bowl, and NHL '94, the latter of which is, in my estimation, the best sports video game of all time (with which Stewart would agree, I'm sure). A quote from the article:
[Bo] Jackson isn't the only athlete to have achieved fame for his video game likeness. Then-Chicago Blackhawks forward Jeremy Roenick's ability to fill the net and make Wayne Gretzky's head bleed in the "NHLPA '93" game was immortalized in the 1996 cult film "Swingers."
Roenick was good in '93, but with the much-improved gameplay in NHL '94, he was a monster. He was blazingly fast, had a quick stick, could stop on a dime, had the hardest shot in the game, and was easily capable of racking up 15-20 goals in three 5-minute periods. But he also had an unfair advantage over other players in the league because the Blackhawks were such a great team. Players like Steve Yzerman, Pavel Bure, Teemu Selanne, and Alexander Mogilny matched up well with Roenick skill-wise, but their teams just weren't as dominant overall. Not to mention that you couldn't taunt your opponents with new Roenick-related lyrics to Pearl Jam's Jeremy (GarageBand karaoke version coming soon) as easily while piloting Bure or Selanne through the heart of their defense for a completely demoralizing goal. Oh, the sting of being taunted with ad-libbed Pearl Jam.
The best video game QB of all-time. You could roll him out to either side, scramble for first downs, throw 70 yards with him, avoid sacks...and he never self-destructed like he did in real life. Regardless of how his NFL career turned out, he'll always have his video game career to fall back on.
Based upon my experience with Cunningham in Tecmo Super Bowl, I'd put him at #1. The Eagles, who were not a great team in the game, were unstoppable with a properly coached Cunningham at the helm, mainly because he was a double threat at all times. He had the arm of Dan Marino and the wheels of Bo Jackson. If all the receivers were covered, you could just take off running and get a first down every time.
My sophomore year in college, a group of friends and I played an entire Tecmo season and I luckily drew the Eagles out of the hat during the team selection process. With a near-guaranteed first down (or touchdown) every time I had the ball, I rampaged through the regular season with a perfect record and a ridiculous quarterback rating only to buckle under the pressure in the playoffs. In the next season we started (but never finished), the Eagles were not included in the hat. Go, Randall!
For the thirty years I've been on this earth, I've been getting by on my good looks. Or so I thought. Recently I realized that this approach had never worked for me and was probably doing more harm than good. I further realized that my pretty face wasn't going to help me get my ass into shape. Not that I'm out of shape exactly. It's more of a health thing. I eat alright and briskly walk several blocks a day, but mostly I sit in front of various screens (computer, TV, movie) all day. I'm feeling unexercised and no amount of Brad Pitt-ness is going to help with that.
It is with all this in mind that I began thinking a few weeks ago that I needed to start exercising. But what sort of exercise? The gym is out because, well, I'm not a gym person. Getting one of those home gyms is also out because we'd need to get rid of the bed to fit such a contraption into our tiny apartment, and sleep takes much priority over exercise. Team sports are generally more competitive than I'd like (I just want to play, I don't want to hear about how much I suck and how you're going to kick my ass), so those are out too. Swimming? Tennis? Curling? Inline skating? Restaurant dining? All out for various reasons.
What's left? Running. And so I found myself jogging yesterday for the first time in my life ever.
Running and I have never seen eye to eye. It just always seemed dorky and purposeless. Running where and for what purpose? Why not put a racquet in your hand, grab a friend and head for the tennis court? Now there's some fun exercise.
Meg has always said that running is fun, that it provides an environment for thinking, almost like being in a trance. I know that feeling; I get it when I play basketball, just me, the ball, and the hoop. After a few minutes of play, I get "in the zone". The ball and hoop disappear, as does most of me, excluding my brain, which becomes a fertile loam for the sowing of ideas, thoughts I'd never have any other way. It's how I meditate.
I was doing anything but meditating during last evening's run, so self-conscious was I about how goofy I looked, running for no purpose other than to run, decked out in my new running shoes and rumpled exercise clothes rescued from the bottom of my dresser drawer, finishing exactly where I had started, no discernible progress made. That and concentrating on my form and not pushing myself too much the first time out. And tiredness. I'm sure the zen-like state will kick in at some point and running will become an enjoyable and rewarding activity for me. If not, I can always give the good looks thing another shot.
I have a very utilitarian bent. I think the things that people have ended up doing after death, however grisly, are great. It's good to be helpful to others. So there is that message, that you can be useful after death. I've gotten letters from people who've said, "Now I'm going to donate my body to science."
Particularly in the beating-heart cadaver chapter, I really came down strong on the side of being in favor of donating organs. It would be such a waste for someone in that situation not to donate with 18,000 people waiting for organs. But for the most part, it's meant just as a fun and informative read.
"You know the big tent at the east end of the county fairgrounds? Next to the show barn? Imagine it's an oval filled with 90,000 Pakistanis who love to watch pie-eating -- who love pie-eating more than soccer -- even though it seems to the rest of us that eating pie would be a fairly unpleasant reminder of British Colonialism."
And it goes from there. If you're into reading, the above is also available as part of The Manual.
Desperate for some news and warmth, we picked up some English newspapers and headed for a café and some chocolat chaud. When I got to the sport section in The Guardian, I attempted to understand the articles on cricket but failed miserably. An excerpt:
"The Yorkshireman Len Hutton was so eager to let loose Frank 'Typhoon' Tyson upon the Australians that he inserted them on a lifeless pitch and watched in dismay as Arthur Morris and Neil Harvey hit centuries and Australia rattled up 601 for eight. England lost by an innings but Hutton had the last laugh. Tyson ruled from then on and England won the Ashes."
I'm pretty sure I know the meanings of all those words individually, but they make little sense strung together like that.
People are offering all sorts of things on craigslist for tickets to the Giants' World Series games at Pac Bell Park:
- "Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll-What's a Girl Gotta Do to Get 2 WS Tickets? You know what I want. Please tell me what you'd like."
- "I have a ton of Cisco equipment and would trade equipment for tickets"
- "Will trade rounds of golf at private country club"
- "willing to pay face value" [Wow, face value!]
- "I will Photograph your wedding"
- "I have an original w.s. ticket from 1962 when the giants played the yankees I will trade this for a ticket to the 2002 w.s."
- "Will trade my iMac for your World Series Tix"
- "Giants WS tix for trip to Mexico"
- "4 WS tickets for 2 tickets to be a guest of maguel tehada to any game next year yes even the yankees you get on field pass to batting practice meet and get a baseball bat and his autograph be that close to all the players,then sit in his luxury suite to watch the game"
- "Delta Ticket Vouchers for 2 WS Tickets" (from the same sex-for-tickets woman above)
- "I also have golf clubs and nice clothes I'd be willing to trade"
- "I Want a Free World Series Ticket"
and the cream of the crop:
"I will trade fifteen minutes of my ass in exchange for two tickets to the World Series. For fifteen minutes, you may do whatever you wish to my ass--you may kick my ass, kiss my ass, beat my ass, or place my ass and some whoop in a can for subsequent opening. Perhaps you'd like to hear me talk out of my ass, or watch as I get up off my ass, blow it out my ass, get drunk off my ass, and then sit on my ass. You can fire my ass, dump my ass, or spank my ass 'till it shines like the hood of a Volkswagen. For fifteen minutes, my ass is yours, grass or otherwise. No reasonable request will be refused."
For the first time since 1992, a Dream Team stocked with NBA players lost a game of basketball. It's not that unbelievable that they lost; it was inevitable that they would eventually lose a game to somebody. It's this quote by Paul Pierce that amazes me:
"Reggie (Miller) brought us together. He said the world is against us. The world, the stands, the refs are all against us. The only thing we can do is go out and play hard the rest of the games and get the gold medal."
Aaaaair-balllll, aaaaair-ballllll. The world loves Team USA and the NBA superstars that play for the team. The games are being played in the US with US fans in attendance. And blaming the refs? Come on.
I've got the World Cup fever folks. Finally. All the early morning games and limited TiVo hard drive space put a damper on the whole affair for me, but today's Turkey/South Korea game had me on the edge of the couch. In honor of tomorrow's matchup between Brazil and Germany, I'm temporarily changing my name to Rasonaldo Kottke. Despite my German surname and heritage, I'll be rooting for Brazil. Ole, ole ole ole...
If I'm not mistaken, this week brings us another milestone in the "coming of age" of weblogs: the first mention of the word "weblog" on the front page of CNN.com (a link to Time.com's World Cup Weblog, screenshot here).
While watching the men's final at the French Open today, I noticed that the French scorekeeper used "zero" in place of "love" when announcing the score. This is interesting because "love" was originally derived from the French "l'oeuf" which means "egg", a reference to the egg-shaped numeral zero. The British then bastardized "l'oeuf" into "love". Apparently, the French no longer use "l'oeuf" or even "amour", the French translation of "love", but just plain old "zero".
All my sports heroes* are retiring. Steffi Graf, one of my all-time favorite tennis players, won the French Open today and said she was never coming back. She's 30 yo this year and might not be playing in too many more tournaments. Michael Jordan is gone. Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, and even Scottie Pippen aren't far behind him. Wayne Gretsky is gone. The distressing thing is that there doesn't seem to be anyone coming up to take their places.
Or maybe it's just me looking at my childhood slowly slipping away and realizing I can never have it back the way it was.
* My definition of a hero is someone who is so good at something that it inspires me to be that good at something in my life.
Well, I was right, but I'm not too happy about it. The Vikings got beat. Their offense sputtered, and their defense couldn't hold. Just goes to show you that the best team doesn't always win...just about the only thing you can count on is that the winning team wins. Well, maybe the Minnesota fans & media will have more humility next year if the Vikings make the playoffs again; perhaps treating the playoffs like a step-by-step process and not a forgone conclusion would help.
Well, the NBA season is finally on. For the most part, I'm happy. I'll be even happier if Michael Jordan plays.
Some people aren't happy, and I can relate to that. I think the one thing the strike did in the eyes of the public is group both the owners and the players into one big mess of greedy, whining brats. The only difference is that the players are a greedy, whining bunch of millionaires and the owners are a greedy, whining bunch of billionaires.
These entries were posted to kottke.org in the Sports category. If you're looking for a particular entry, try the archive.
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