Category: Sports

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Campus

So, I’m nearing the three-month mark in this law school job (every day a new record for longevity). It’s interesting getting to know the campus again, walking it every day. Interesting to see the students; last time I was up there on an every day basis, I was one of them — a little older than most, actually, but still, within a few years of most of the people in my classes. Now — well, I can hardly ignore the fact pretty much all the students are bracketed by my kids’ ages — 18 and going on 26. I don’t feel a full lifetime away from who I was the last time I was in class (something to do with a senior thesis, I think; never got finished). But in simple age terms, that’s what I am.

That’s not what I started out to say, though. What I started out to say was this overheard snippet, a guy to a couple friends walking down Bancroft Way: “Ted had a press conference the other day. He said Longshore‘s the man.” Translation took a couple of seconds: Football season’s here, and the fans are talking about it.

P.S. And, a lifetime away or not, Nate Longshore is about as fine a sports name as you’ll find occurring in nature.

P.P.S. Pending gridiron excitement: Illinois vs. California in beautiful Memorial Stadium. The last time these squads tilted, the Fighting Illini (caution: politically incorrect) hunted, killed, and skinned the Golden Bears (government notice: extinct hereabouts).

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Dustbin

Listening to the A’s game tonight (they lost, and having lost three out of four they’re close to officially cooled off from their long, long run). Sammy Sosa was up for the Orioles, and announcer Ken Korach observed that with the Cubs last year, he was 2 for 9 against the A’s. Then he said to Bill King, who’s been doing the A’s games since 1981 (before that, he did Oakland Raiders and Golden State Warriors games, and was the best play-by-play announcer I’ve ever heard in both football and basketball; he started as a broadcaster in Pekin, Illinois, in the late ’40s, one-time home of the Chinks (the nickname of the Pekin High teams) and late Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen. …)

How easily I digress.

Then Korach said to King, speaking of the A’s interleague series against the Cubs last year, “But you wouldn’t remember that, Bill.” King hates interleague play, period. He said something like, “No, no I wouldn’t. They play those games and then they go into the dustbin of history.” Korach: “Dustbin of history — I like that.” I was thinking, how many baseball announcers out there are quoting — who? Marx? no, Trotsky — and how many people are making the connection? I’ll bet, but do nothing to back up my wager, which will involve neither doughnuts nor dollars that King knows just where the phrase comes from.

And that concludes this broadcasting day.

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‘This Old Cub’

Kate made an odd find at the neighborhood video store while returning a couple of my late DVDs. “This Old Cub,” a documentary on Ron Santo, the great third baseman, by his son Jeff. The movie’s got an amateurish feel to it, and at the end it comes off as a plea for Santo to be elected to the Hall of Fame. In fact, the movie builds up to the moment when Santo believes he’s about to be elected by a panel of old-timers only to be disappointed.

I haven’t thought about Santo in a long time. He was a great favorite of mine when I was a teen-ager. Playing softball, I used to try to manicure the batter’s box the way he did (I could do a passable impression, since it didn’t involve any athletic ability) and swing like he did (passable again) and hit like he did (a passable fantasy as long as the pitch was only going 3 miles an hour). I took it for granted he was one of the best players at his position when he played, and the numbers show he was. But he was marked as one of the guys on a team that came close but just never quite made it. I still remember the last time I saw him play. He had wound up on the White Sox after he was done with the Cubs and been stuck at second base. When he came up, the Comiskey Park fans — his home crowd — booed him; they recognized a lifetime Cub when they saw one, Sox uniform or no Sox uniform. His last time up, he lined a single to center. Maybe his only hit of the game, and just a shadow of what he’d been. But he’d done that much, anyway, to show he still had a little something left. I stood up and cheered.

Later, the Cubs hired him as a radio color guy. I’ve never been impressed by his work. Too much of a hometown clown on the air (or maybe I’ve just been won over for life by the A’s chief radio man, Bill King; but that’s another story). One of my brothers talked about seeing him outside Wrigley Field once, giving a cop a hard time as he was trying to drive through traffic, saying something like, “Do you know who I am?” He sounded like a jerk.

But the movie, mawkish as it is, changed my mind, or at least will make me think about him differently. The real subject is how he had to cope with Type I diabetes throughout his career, and more recently, how the disease caused him to have both legs amputated. He comes off as a guy with a lot of guts and determination to take on what many people — can’t tell about myself — might not be able to face. Someone else copyrighted the line, but: Check it out.

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Spite ‘n’ Schadenfreude

A couple years ago I told my colleague (and San Francisco Giants fan) Endo that a perfect day for me as a baseball fan would go like this: A’s win, Cubs win, Giants lose. Yeah, that’s the bitterly unhappy level to which my rooting interest in baseball has fallen: I take what passes for glee when a team loses (for now at least I won’t go into the twisted psychohistory behind my dark feelings for the San Francisco nine).

Given my leanings, this week has been special: The A’s started it on an epic roll. The aspiring-to-mediocrity Cubs entertained the mediocrity-would-be-an-improvement Giants for three games at the cute little loser’s paradise at Clark and Addison. The results for the first part of the week: Ecstasy. Agony. Ecstasy again. (Translation: On Monday, the A’s won and the Cubs beat the Giants — which is actually a little spite bonus on my definition of perfection; on Tuesday, the results were reversed; on Wednesday, they swung back the other way).

Now the Giants have left Chicago, and their losses will bring only a normal helping of sour satisfaction (though the way the Giants’ division is going, they could win it if they can get back to .500). The Cubs — well, they’ll dance around the .500 mark for the rest of the season and pack the house all the way to the end; neither wins nor losses will surprise or disappoint much; only three years till the centennial of their last World Series championship — it would be a shame to wipe out that streak before it hits 100. And the A’s: Hey, they’re actually fun to follow, especially after their horrible start this year, and anything they can do from here on in will be both pleasing and surprising.

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A Cyclist, 1884

“In appearance, he was anything but a holiday wheelman. Brown as a nut, and mud-bespattered, all surplus fat had been worn off by his severe and protracted work. His blue flannel shirt was a deal too large for him and much weather-stained. His knickerbockers had given way to a pair of blue overalls, gathered at the knees within a pair of duck hunting leggings, once brown, but now completely disguised as to texture and color by heavy alkali mud.”

Description of Thomas Stevens in Cheyenne, Wyoming, during his transcontinental bicycle “ride” (he pushed his cycle nearly as much as he pedaled it) in 1884. I wanted to read about Stevens because his trip began in Oakland. An account of his journey appears in an 1887 book called “Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle,” by Karl Kron; Kate got me a facsimile reprint a few years ago.

Naturally, I did a little search for more information on Stevens. The very first Google listing brings up an account from Harper’s Weekly with an illustration of someone considerably less weather-beaten than the character described above. Kron’s account mentions that Stevens took his bicycle across the Atlantic the following spring and set out across Europe and western Asia, getting as far as Tehran, Iran, before winter weather stopped him. The Wikipedia account discloses the next chapter (and what happened to Stevens’s bike much, much later): He made it to Japan and sailed back to San Francisco in 1886, the first person, apparently, to have cycled around the world.

And finally, Stevens’s own story of his journey is online, thanks to Project Gutenberg. Here’s how the ride starts:

“With the hearty well-wishing of a small group of Oakland and ‘Frisco

cyclers who have come, out of curiosity, to see the start, I mount and

ride away to the east, down San Pablo Avenue, toward the village of the

same Spanish name, some sixteen miles distant. The first seven miles are

a sort of half-macadamized road, and I bowl briskly along.

“The past winter has been the rainiest since 1857, and the continuous

pelting rains had not beaten down upon the last half of this imperfect

macadam in vain; for it has left it a surface of wave-like undulations,

from out of which the frequent bowlder protrudes its unwelcome head, as

if ambitiously striving to soar above its lowly surroundings. But this

one don’t mind, and I am perfectly willing to put up with the bowlders

for the sake of the undulations. The sensation of riding a small boat

over “the gently-heaving waves of the murmuring sea” is, I think, one

of the pleasures of life; and the next thing to it is riding a bicycle

over the last three miles of the San Pablo Avenue macadam as I found it

on that April morning. …”

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What the People Want …

… Is video of Joe Theisman getting his leg broken on “Monday Night Football.”

In April, I wrote something about Al Lucas, the Arena Football player killed during a game. Later, someone posted a comment asking if anyone knew where to find some Web video of the gruesome Theisman incident from 1985. Somehow, I’ve never seen the sequence, but it involves the former Redskins quarterback getting hit by New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor. Theisman’s leg bends in a way that nature never intended until the lower part snaps. All this was apparently obvious on live TV, and the sequence was replayed many times, at least at the time it happened.

It’s an immortal sports TV moment. Bloggers are still fascinated by it (including one who makes it one of the top 10 most unpleasant things that’s ever happened, along with events like the 9/11 attacks and the Challenger disaster). Every day, several people arrive on this site via Google in search of the Theisman video.

The surprise is that, as far as I can tell — which means, as far as my Google and other search skills go — that video just ain’t online (although I haven’t checked any of the P2P file-sharing services like Kazaa or BitTorrent — they might be the most likely sources). So an idea for ABC Sports: A 20th anniversary DVD of the Theisman moment. They could put the entire game on one disk. They could put Theisman’s leg on another disk, complete with player and fan commentary and maybe an expert explanation with X-rays and such from the orthopedic surgeons who put the leg back together. Maybe they could add a compilation of the 25 most brutal plays in”MNF” history. The package could be promo’d on “Monday Night Football,” which needs something to keep the audiences interested. Every week, the show could do a countdown of the plays. And they could do an audience poll for most memorable mayhem moments.

Hey, I’m just saying there’s a market.

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The Wistfulness of Victory

Lance Armstrong just did what everyone who followed the Tour de France this year saw he would do: He won for the seventh time in a row. Now the race is over and he’s going into retirement. Which makes me feel lost on a couple of counts.

First: No more Tour. For the last three weeks — as for the past several years during Tour time — we’ve gotten up every morning and stumbled straight to the TV to turn on OLN’s live race coverage. I know I’ve whined about the incumbent announcers (it’s only a matter of time before someone gives Phil Liggett the Phil Rizzutto treatment and turns transcripts of his play-by-play into a book of “poetry. No, wait: Someone already has), but the anticipation of the unknown drama to unfold in the next morning’s stage has been wonderful. Would we wake up to a big breakaway? To Lance finally collapsing under relentless attack or having the Tour-ending mishap he always managed to avoid? (No way.) With the tube on, I’d fire up my laptop and keep track of the time gaps from the official Tour site. Every day: a coffee-powered multimedia frenzy. Now, it’ll back to the sports page and box scores when I get up (hey, the serious stuff can wait till I’m really awake).

Second: No more Lance. Paddling free of the hype-and-glitz whirlpool for a second — the cancer miracle, the celebrity girlfriend and all the rest — as an athlete the guy is really in a class by himself not just in cycling but in all sports. It’s astounding: his ability to plan and train the way he has all this time, and the combination of strength, guts and genius to perform when the moment demands it and resist the daily efforts of scores of people who have dedicated themselves to beating you. That has been thrilling to watch year in and year out; and — I probably have lots of company — I’m just a little sad to see it come to an end.

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A Short Nighttime Spin

I’ve got 21.4 miles on my little cycle computer from a ride I did last night. Drove up to Davis to see if I could catch my friend Bruce returning from his 750-mile trek up to the Oregon borderlands and back. I started out from Davis toward a little town called Knight’s Landing about a quarter to 11, a little spooked about riding by myself on a Friday night. But I was fine as soon as I really got rolling, absorbed in taking in the warmth of the night — out in the Valley so much like I remember from Illinois — the moon rise, and watching the little circle of pavement my bike light illuminated. I had no idea how far I’d go before I met Bruce. He’d left the rest stop at Oroville, 88 miles up the road, a little before 6 p.m. Ordinarily, someone of his abilities would make that trip — mostly flat with no wind to speak of — in about a little less than five hours. But with the 670 miles in your legs, and with the heat of the last few days to take the starch out of you, I was figuring the trip would take seven hours, even eight.

A few miles out I encountered a single rider. I didn’t think it was Bruce — the lights were different — but I thought I’d see how the guy was He turned out to be Larry from upstate New York, and he started asking me about the turns he’d have to take on the way to the finish. I wound up riding all the way back in with him to show him.

I rode out again. Saw several riders pass in twos threes and fours. None looked to be Bruce, and I just cheered them on and kept riding. About the same place I encountered the first solo rider I met another. I asked if he needed any help. He said no, he knew just where he was and he’d be fine. About 30 seconds later he said, “I wish I knew where I was.” So I rode up to the next turn with him, too, before turning around once more.

Heading north again, I saw the lights of Woodland ahead; and also those of a couple bikes. They passed, I did my U-turn, and caught up. “I heard that there was really some really hard-core bike ride going on out here,” I said to the trailing rider. He confirmed that and added that he had the sore ass to prove it. Then the leading rider said, “Hey, is that Dan?” It turned out to be Bruce, really tired and really glad to hear that when I said I’d been riding for an hour and a half it did not mean we were an hour and a half from the finish. In fact, we were at the final control in about 10 minutes. Easy ride for me. Awesome one for him and everyone else who did it.

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Thinking About a Ride

I’m sitting in the comfort of my little blogging room — we had one built special here at Infospigot HQ. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have predicted I’d be somewhere else tonight: Out cycling through the dark in the Sacramento Valley. Riding all night in fact, starting a trip that heads up into and across the northern Sierra Nevada and up the eastern, desert side of the lower Cascade Range all the way to the Oregon border. Seven hundred and fifty miles in 90 hours, maximum.

Plans change. So I’m sitting here, thinking of the 100 or so riders who are making the trip and wishing them — well, the way they say in France is “bonne route.” Especially my friend Bruce, with whom I’ve ridden a fair number of miles.

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Calling the Tour

Amid profound popular ennui, I will cease my mean-spirited critiques of OLN’s sterling Tour de France race coverage. Though — one last thing — you start to wonder if play-by-play man extraordinaire Phil Liggett will ever, ever get the difference between kilometers per hour and miles per hour. On practically every big descent on the tour so far, he’s taken a look at some picture of riders hurtling down the road, sized up the situation, then announced: “These boys are going ’round about 50 kilometers an hour here.” No, Phil, that’s 50 miles an hour. There’s actually quite a difference. Sometimes Paul Sherwen, the anointed OLN analyst, corrects him.

But my bashing aside, here’s the point: It’s not that Liggett and Sherwen are so rotten. It’s just that they seem to have a lock on the job no matter how well or badly they do — and much of the time they’re really mediocre. It’s hard to believe that there’s not a single English-speaking sports guy out there who’s deeply knowledgeable about competitive cycling and the Tour and who could sound half-way smart on the tube. Say (Kate’s suggestion) Greg LeMond (though Greg is on the outs with the whole “We Love Lance Armstrong” movement, so he’d never get the job. OK, then. Tyler Hamilton. Wait — he’s an accused doper.

Well, there’s got to be someone.