Category: Sports

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On the Bike

Stormradar

I’ve been out cycling more this month and last than I have for a while, and a new thought about riding — new for me, I mean — bubbled up while I was going through my usual bout of bike procrastination this morning. Just this: There’s a certain story that forms in your head during every ride about the ride. Everything you see and hear and feel, all the conditions, builds into a narrative about the experience. Maybe this is true to some extent of everything we do. But I realized when I started thinking about it that the story is especially focused and intense during a ride.

Today’s story: Tired legs after two short-ish but hilly and fairly intense rides Friday and Saturday. I started out with no fixed destination or route or purpose, except to get back home ahead of the storm that was just off the coast. I wound up heading up onto the main road through the Berkeley Hills (Grizzly Peak Boulevard), trying not to push too hard while keeping my pedaling smooth and (for me) reasonably fast. As I chugged along, another cyclist blew by, standing on the long gradual ascent, moving away so fast that it seemed like he was out of sight in about 30 seconds. Over the top of Grizzly Peak –about a 1,500-foot climb from home in about six and a half miles — the winds were picking up. There are big eucalyptus groves up there; you think about them in a high wind — about a branch getting dropped on you, or in the road in front of you, as you ride by. Big banks of dark clouds were blowing in over the Bay; but the Golden Gate Bridge and all of Marin County were still visible, so no rain was falling over there yet.

As long as the storm still had a way to come, I kept on south, onto Skyline Boulevard in Oakland, which rolls up and down a series of little ridges before making a long fast descent — the same place I knocked out my front teeth in 1991 — to a junction with a street that plummets back down to the city. I turned around there and headed back up; cresting the first climb and rounding a curve, I could see that the storm was finally near — a big curtain of rain was sliding across the Mount Tamalpais in Marin.

So now I had a race — could I get back across the hills and down before things got wet? I decided to stay on the top of the ridge as long as I could because turning that earlier six-and-a-half mile climb into a descent is a local riding highlight for me. Every time I came to a road where I could bail out and head down from the hills, I decided I could still make it. So I wound up riding north to Kensington, taking the narrow and precipitous streets that drop down to another major hills boulevard called The Arlington (yes, "the). The Berkeley portion has just been repaved; the downhill stretch from Kensignton is like a raceway; a Subaru Outback passed me, even though I was going faster than the speed limit, and I managed to draft behind it most of the way down; possibly foolish, but definitely fun. The first rain started to fall when I was about four blocks from home.

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Sports, Entertainment, History

In its listing of today’s important anniversaries and birthdays, the Wikipedia notes that it was on this date in 1970 that Vinko Bogotaj flew into television history. He’s the guy who was featured in the opening montage of “ABC’s Wide World of Sports.” tumbling off the end of a ski-jump ramp. You know — the agony of defeat. The surprise to me is that this happened so late; I would have sworn I’d seen it back during the Johnson (Lyndon, not Andrew) administration.

The anniversary list also reports that Charles Lindbergh received the Medal of Honor — yes, the one usually called “the Congressional Medal of Honor” — on this date in 1928. That’s a new one on me, as I thought the medal was reserved for combat heroics (or for wiping out virtually defenseless Indians, as at Wounded Knee, which produced 18 or 20 Medal of Honor recipients). In any case, Congress’s vote to award the medal demonstrates how huge Lindbergh’s accomplishment loomed at the time. The citation said:

“For displaying heroic courage and skill as a navigator, at the risk of his life, by his nonstop flight in his airplane, the ‘Spirit of St. Louis,’ from New York City to Paris, France, 20-21 May 1927, by which Capt. Lindbergh not only achieved the greatest individual triumph of any American citizen but demonstrated that travel across the ocean by aircraft was possible.”

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Friday Notebook

Welcome to a probable one-time installment of a weekly Infospigot feature, the Friday Notebook. It is Friday, right?

Actual quote heard in my household: “Do you even want to reckon with my muscular ass?” The context was G-rated, but still, to protect the innocent I’d rather not identify the speaker.

He’s your what? “Barry’s our figurehead. He’s our man.” Giant’s pitcher Matt Herges talking about Barry Bonds’s impact on San Francisco’s National League nine. On the misdemeanor level, the figurehead, the carved figure at the prow of old-time ships, was usually (but not always) a woman. On a felony level, a figurehead is exactly the opposite of what Mr. Herges proposes. Quoting a work with the word Webster’s in the title: “a person put in a position of leadership because of name, rank, etc., but having no real power, authority, or responsibility.” The living example in baseball is Bud Selig, the man who couldn’t figure out how to untie a game.

That’s enough snottiness for now.

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The Madness

I’m a distant member of the Davis Bike Club. Although I live in Berkeley, I’ve joined this club 60 miles away because it sponsors all sorts of long-distance cycling events, like the qualifying brevets (that’s French for “long-ass bike ride) for Paris-Brest-Paris and other butt-numbing feats of cycling endurance. One of the things the club is known for is its annual “March Madness” frenzy. Members are encouraged to ride lots of miles. For every member mile recorded, the club donates a penny to buy bike helmets for kids.

It sounds like a mild-mannered, fun, civic-minded undertaking. But beneath bizarre, extreme behavior lurks just beneath that veneer of innocence and public-spiritedness. Every year, a handful of club members — people with lives it’s hard for me to imagine — put in 100 miles or more on the bike every day for the whole month. Here we are on the 12th of March, and there’s a real horse race among four riders: One, listed as “Howard Hughes,” has ridden 1,442.38 miles this month — an average of 120.2 a day. Howard’s followed by three guys bunched between 1,237 and 1,247 miles. (Fpr comparison’s sake, and for an idea of what saner people are doing — and this is one of the few times I’d ever advertise myself as “sane” — I’ve ridden 312 miles since the 1st; that happens to be about two miles below the overall average for the 142 people signed up.)

From what I remember, the record March Madness total is something like 4,130 miles. That’s more than 130 miles a day. There was controversy on the club email list that March over allegations that some riders were getting rides way up north in the Sacramento Valley so that they could take advantage of strong tailwinds to enhance their mileage totals. Wind or no wind, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to eat enough to ride all those miles, and I don’t want to contemplate what some of the physical wear and tear must be like.

[Addendum: Checking the mileage totals for last year, the top total was a shocking 4,486 miles, 144.7 miles a day. Still can’t imagine. Also, 11 riders topped 2,000 miles and 50 others topped 1,000.]

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On the Bike

200medal

Yesterday (Saturday) was a no-post day because of excessive bicycle-related preoccupations. I did the Davis Bike Club’s 200-kilometer brevet. For those uninitiated or uninterested in the argot of randonneuring — and I imagine that’s about 100 percent of non-randonneurs — what that means is I got on my bike at 7 a.m. in Davis to ride 62.5 miles or so out to a little Grange Hall out in the middle of what passes for nowhere in California, then turned around and rode 62.5 miles or so back. Beyond all the great scenery and Spandex you get to see, one of the reasons people go out and do this is to qualify for one of the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile), 90-hour rides (randonnee) held around the world as a test of cycling toughness, fatigue tolerance, and overall ability to outlast your sore ass. (Plus, you get nifty medals, like the one here, for a reasonable price after you climb off your bike at the end).

The ride went tolerably well for someone who had not ridden 100 miles in a day since last August. I went out a little too hard the first few miles — mostly because I just get swept along in the excitement of riding in a big group. I felt slightly queasy and found it hard to eat for a good part of the ride. There was something of a headwind coming back into Davis — not a killer, just a good consistent breeze from the north and east that made us work a little. And I lost my brevet card, the little passport you carry to check in at various spots along the way to prove you did the ride; I’m hoping I won’t be disqualified for that. But otherwise, the day was perfect — we went from gray, rainy, cool winter to spectacularly clear and warm spring overnight.

After the ride was over, I got a burger, drove back to Berkeley to pick up Kate, then went up to Napa to stay with our friend Pete. We were there to stay with his son Niko while he got up well before dawn to run the Napa Valley Marathon. He did well — running it in about 3 hours and 41 minutes and finishing in the 80th percentile of all runners. Then — the most impressive feat of all — he came back home and grilled up a midday repast for his visitors.

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The Pumped Fist

Michael Sokolove, The New York Times Magazine’s apparent writer-on-sports, has a story today on the decline of U.S. hoops, or at least the overall quality of play in the National Basketball Association. The villain in the piece is the slam dunk, which he finds emblematic of the selfish, highlight-reel style of so many NBA players, stars and would-be stars alike. He also indicts the dunk and selfish play as a symptom of something deeper: the decline in basic individual and team skills among today’s players. His prescription for a quick fix: Ban the dunk. His fallback, realizing the league will never ban the dunk: Ban the dunk in college and high school, and maybe do something to stop kids from jumping directly to the pros from high school.

His argument is interesting as far as it goes. He points out that scoring is down and free-throw shooting is bad. The U.S. squad’s losses in the Olympics show the selfish American style’s vulnerability to sides well-versed in team skills. Can’t deny any of that, but I think Sokolove skips over another development that has led the pro game to where it is:

the sanctioning of rugby-style play on both ends of the floor. Basketball could always be rough — the Jerry Sloan-Norm Van Lier Bulls come to mind, and the Detroit Pistons of the late ’80s — but what makes those teams stand out was that their defensive approach was exceptional as well as effective. Now it seems like every team defends the basket and attacks it like they were trained for the job in the National Football League. Those tactics keep scores down, too, and they may have helped encourage the offensive philosophy of going for the sure score by slamming the ball through the hoop or, as the chief alternative, going for three-pointers from areas of the floor that are less fiercely defended.

You also have to wonder whether the selfish, “look at me!” kind of play that typifies not just high-level hoops but college and pro football and baseball, too, is really just a mirror of the kind of society we are: Just as for Donald Trump it’s proven more valuable to play the part of a hard-nosed successful business mogul than to actually be one, you’re only really somebody in what you do in a series brief triumphs. Sack the quarterback. Make a big sale. Cut someone off on the highway in your Hummer. Something, anything to pump our fists about.

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I Dichotimize

Some matters of pressing importance:

Patriots-Eagles: Eagles. Dad points out that the Eagles’ quarterback, Donovan McNabb, went to Mount Carmel High School — the team is nicknamed “The Caravan” — with which my mom’s family has a long association. That’s enough for me. Go Eagles.

Sunni-Shiite: Tossup. You got to like the Shiites’ numbers. But the Sunnis know how to put the hurt on infidel and co-religionist alike, especially with their patented triangle offense. This one could go into OT.

Social Security (old)-Social Security (new): Old, for the moment, because at least we know what it is and what the problems with it are. Bush’s “new” deal has got the stink of Enron to it — a hustle that will make a few people rich

Schwarzenegger (actor)-Schwarzenegger (politician): He sucked as an actor, but I liked him better then because you could walk out of the movie theater or turn off the TV and be done with him.

To be continued … or not.

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Chocolate Hall of Fame Guy

A reader in Chicago who attended his first game at Wrigley Field in the early 1930s asks: Now that Ryne Sandberg is headed to the Hall of Fame, what do you think my commemorative Ryne Sandberg chocolate bar is worth? In a bygone era, before there were lights at Wrigley Field or a World Wide Web, that would have been an idle question. But now they play in the dark at Addison and Clark, and you can go online to find out the going price for any old keepsake, even a chocolate bar from a lapsed century.

I looked for the Ryne Sandberg bar on eBay, and I found three listings. One’s up for auction with an opening price of $7.99 (or $14.99 if you just want to skip the bidding and buy it right now) and has collected zero bids. Another, described as “melted a little,” asks an opening bid of $3.99 (no interest so far). The last one’s going for a buck and has failed to draw a bid even from immortal Cubs fan Steve Bartman. Maybe because the picture of the merchandise (above) is a little blurry.

My advice to the Chicago reader; Contact Christie’s.

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Hall of Fame Guy

A Cubs fan (me) belatedly notes: The baseball writers, discharging their sacred annual duty, have elected Ryne Sandberg, former Cubs second baseman (actually, the first game I saw him play, one of the more memorable games I ever attended because it was called because of darkness after 17 innings, he was at third) to the Hall of Fame. Somehow, the news didn’t stir the wild elation in me that I might at one time have expected (actually, I find former A’s and Twins’ catcher Terry Steinbach getting one vote for the Hall almost as interesting as Sandberg getting elected. I’d love to hear the Steinbach partisan explain the passion that led to that vote).

My subdued reaction is due partly to my ambivalence toward baseball tipping over to estrangement. On one hand there’s the game, which still displays beautiful and subtle moments. On the other hand, there’s the relentless insistence on nonstop entertainment at the ballpark, the wacky player salaries, the prevalence of free agency and constant player movement that makes it hard to figure out just who’s on which team, and the owners and league establishment who treat fans as saps to be milked for as many bucks as possible before they’re hustled out of the park.

And then there’s simple Cubs fatigue. As Steve Goodman asked, “What do you expect when you raise up a young boy’s hopes and then just crush ’em like so many paper beer cups year after year after year after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, ’til those hopes are just so much popcorn for pigeons beneath the El track to eat?”

So, Sandberg was elected to the Hall. My first question was whether he deserved it, because my impression of his career was that he was a very good player, but not one who had the lasting dominance both in the field and at the plate to make him a Hall of Famer. I’m sure that impression is influenced by how the Cubs had a couple of moments of real brilliance during Sandberg’s career (especially winning the National League East in 1984, Sandberg’s MVP year) that ended in disappointment (losing the ’84 playoffs after going up on the Padres two games to none). They reached the playoffs just once more during his career, in 1989, when they lost four out of five to the Giants, who went on to get swept by the A’s and an earthquake.

Beside those two playoff years, the Cubs never had another winning season during his career (they were 73-71 in ’95, the year of his first retirement). That’s a little different from the last few Cubs to make it into the Hall — Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Fergie Jenkins — who were all part of a team that put together a decent string of winning seasons and served as the semi-tragic victims of the ’69 Mets.

But I’m not a Hall of Fame voter or a sportswriter, or even that up-close a fan of the game anymore, so maybe I’m just not remembering how good Sandberg was in the midst of all those bad, so-so, and occasionally good teams. Of course, my wet-blanket attitude does not affect Sandberg’s standing, in the opinion of Kate and many other fans of the distaff persuasion, as one of the cutest players ever.

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By Tandem to L.A.

Here’s a beautiful little story by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Steve Rubinstein (a fine reporter and writer who you have a sense from the outside has been a little misused over the years, or maybe that’s just me projecting) about a tandem bike trip he took with his 13-year-old son from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. There’s a nice, relaxed feel to the writing, and the trip sounds fun, too:

For seven days we were 15 inches apart. During the teenage years, that is very long and very close. Perhaps the seating plan helped. On a tandem, the teenager cannot read his father’s facial expression, and the father cannot keep an eye on the teenager at all. We invested in a pair of squirt guns to improve father-son communication, especially when the midafternoon heat kicked in.