Bygones Be Bygones

People handle humiliating mistakes if various ways.  Some use self deprecating humor to make fun of the situation, others will be absent from a scene until the incident blows over, or perhaps the best technique is to own up to the mistake and minimize the humiliation by showing it doesn’t bother you.  For some people, namely Bill Buckner, there is no right answer.  Nothing that guy did after letting a weakly hit ground ball through his legs to end game 6 of the 1986 World Series was going to change his destiny of becoming the nation’s prime exemplary of blowing it.

He returned the next season, was traded thereafter, returned to the Red Sox for a quick bit in 1990 with warm greetings by the fans in Boston.  But it didn’t change the fact that his name would forever be associated with those split seconds in the 10th inning from 1986.  In fact, it wasn’t until the Red Sox won two subsequent World Series that Buckner ever returned to Fenway in 2007.  So the good news for Bill is that he was able to move on and avoid the Ray Finkle path.

In fact, it turns out that when you lead your field in anything, even being the butt of half of baseball’s jokes, it’ll pay out.  Over the years, Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson, have been signing pictures of that “memorable” moment and now they have stepped it up.  Should anyone really want to solidify Buckner for years to come you can get a signed painting of him, looking sullen, as Mookie drives home the winning run.  Seriously, its just $399 at http://www.theplay86ws.com/.

The invention of the high-five

(Yes, I’m still the guy that high-fives.) I had no idea what the story of the invention of the high-five entailed. Jon Mooallem at ESPN Magazine writes about the inventor, gay baseball player Glenn Burke, who had a hard time with rumors of his homosexuality in the 1970s, which led to him going to Oakland and eventually leaving professional baseball:

After unproductive years in 1978 and ’79, Burke hoped for a fresh start in 1980 under new A’s manager Billy Martin. But the gay rumors followed him to Oakland. Martin threw the word “faggot” around the clubhouse and didn’t play Burke. Some teammates even avoided showering with him. Burke, accustomed to being the heart of the clubhouse, felt crippled by the discomfort he was causing. His unhappiness was compounded by a knee injury and a demotion to Triple-A. After playing just 25 games in the minors in 1980, he abruptly retired, feeling it was his only option.

He was 27 years old. “It’s the first thing in my life I ever backed down from,” he later said.

Burke started hanging around San Francisco’s Castro district. He became a star shortstop in a local gay softball league and dominated in the Gay Softball World Series. “I was making money playing ball and not having any fun,” he said of his time in the majors. “Now I’m not making money, but I’m having fun.” Jack McGowan, a friend in the Castro who has since passed away, once said of Burke: “He was a hero to us. He was athletic, clean cut, masculine. He was everything that we wanted to prove to the world that we could be.”

In the Castro, Burke’s creation of the high five was part of this Herculean mystique. He would regularly sit on the hood of a car — whichever one happened to be parked in front of a gay bar called the Pendulum Club — flash his magnetic smile and high-five everyone who walked by. In 1982, Burke came out publicly in an Inside Sports magazine profile called “The Double Life of a Gay Dodger.” The writer, a gay activist named Michael J. Smith, appropriated the high five as a defiant symbol of gay pride. Rising from the wreckage of Burke’s aborted baseball career, Smith wrote, was “a legacy of two men’s hands touching, high above their heads.”

Just add that with Gary Glitter and Freddie Mercury to your list of sports cliches that came straight from gay Americans.

Congratulations UConn Huskies

Some say Jim Calhoun is getting a little too old for his profession, and that he’s likely to retire soon.  But the coach who led the UConn Huskies to their third national championship this year is looking pretty good by my standards.  Not only does he have a lot to look forward to with next year’s returning players, but he may want to consider a run for office.  Put Connecticut a little earlier in the primary season and the man has a legitimate chance.  There aren’t many who can cut through partisan hogwash like Calhoun, no one else with the respect, and no one else holds the trust of the people quite like he does.  If not President, perhaps Governor is in his future.

Here’s one way to enjoy a rain delay if you’re a player

College kids and their “jousting.”

Here’s some help filling out your brackets

Leonardo Aranda created a pretty impressive chart that shows the winners of the NCAA basketball tournaments from 1985-2010.

Basically, I think this means you should just pick all the one-seeds. Every time. Right?

A lesson in sportmanship: Putting rivalry aside when tragedy strikes

With baseball season quickly approaching, here’s a heartwarming story that takes place amidst one of sport’s greatest rivalries:

[T]he players were huddled up, and [Yankees hitting coach Kevin Long] Long told them about Bridget, an 11-year-old girl they had never met, the daughter of Ron Johnson, the first base coach for the Red Sox.

Bridget, Long said, had been in an accident. She was riding a horse alongside the road in August, near the Johnsons’ Tennessee home. A driver came around the corner a little too fast and plowed into Bridget’s horse, severing the young girl’s leg above the knee.

Bridget survived, and doctors re-attached the leg—but her body rejected it, and it had to be removed. She would need a prosthetic leg, and although the Red Sox had been financially generous to Johnson, money was still a problem, Long told the roomful of Yankee players.

….

One by one, they wrote out checks to help—significant checks, though none would say how much. They were said to be just as generous as the Red Sox players, who themselves had ”passed the hat” and opened their wallets to help the Johnsons through.

Long gathered it all up and mailed it to Tennessee, where Ron Johnson had just spent 34 straight days living in the hospital with his daughter, as she healed and learned to adjust to life without her leg.

The whole story is worth reading. Even after reading, and it making you feel just a little bit better about humanity, one question lingers. How on earth is it possible that a man working as a coach for a major league baseball team (in a huge market, no less) needs additional financial support because of his poor daughter’s accident?

But, of course we didn’t and don’t need health care reform. Because, well, what would you do if you didn’t have friends that could raise money from professional athletes?

What baseball team should you support?

It’s getting close to that magical time of year—baseball season. Spring training is already underway (David Ortiz stole a base yesterday!), and, if you haven’t been baseball-inclined before, you may be wondering what team to root for. Of course, the correct answer is almost always “The Home Team.” But, perhaps you want a more logical way of deciding. Interpretation by Design offers a flowchart. Choose wisely.

Update: Traffic actually crashed their website. Here’s another link to the chart.

High Hurdles

Just a crazy video of retired Swedish high-jumper Stefan Holm training. Carry on.

Ronaldo Retires

Yesterday, Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, more commonly known as simply “Ronaldo” or O Fenomeno, retired from football at 34. After several years of slowed-down play for Corinthians, he was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. In order to control the condition, he’d have to take hormones, which are illegal in football due to doping concerns.

Ronaldo played for a number of great clubs: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and A.C. Milan. He won two World Cups with Brazil in 1994 (although he didn’t play) and 2002, and currently holds the record for most World Cup goals scored (15).

Here’s a compilation of all fifteen of Ronaldo’s World Cup goals:

What should Favre do?

Pretty brilliant video featuring (an actor playing) Brett Favre parodying the infamous LeBron ad.

Brett Favre retired from making commercials. Then he changed his mind and made this one.

Directed by Tony Yacenda. Written and Produced by Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda. Sean Carrigan as Brett Favre. Executive Producer James Snyder. Producer Ethan Rosenberg. Cinematography by Alex Disenhof. Associate Producer Matt Dahan. Sound Design by Sam Ejnes.

Who supports whom

Map of London colored by what team the majority supports:

This is an attempt to show London football supporters on a map. It’s a working progress and with feedback is going to change a lot. The map shoud show traditionall supporters and no glory hunters.

Handy for those of us with little functional geographic knowledge of London while hearing about cross-town rivalries. Well, if you’re a supporter of a London-based club that is (ahem, GhostofHemingway’sGun).

So what’s the deal with Qatar hosting the World Cup?

Nate Silver takes on the confounding—and downright questionable—selection of Qatar as the host of the 2022 World Cup:

In contrast to the decision to award the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio de Janeiro ahead of Chicago, Madrid, and Tokyo — the four cities were scored similarly on technical merits, and South America had never hosted either the summer or winter Olympics before — this one is much harder to explain.

Of the countries in the running for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, Qatar was the only one designated as high-risk by FIFA, which expressed concern about its weather (summer temperatures can reach 110 there, although Qatar says it has developed technology to air-condition its stadiums), and its logistics (all 12 of its stadiums, none of which are fully constructed, are in a 20-mile radius encompassing its capital, Doha).

And if the downside to the Qatari bid was high, its upside is also questionable. The country has only 1.5 million people, according to the World Bank, but most are expatriates or migrant workers: the citizen population is closer to 200,000. Although Qatar might be thought of as staging the tournament on behalf of the Middle East in general, the region itself also has a fairly small population — about 350 million as the area is traditionally defined. And much of the infrastructure that Qatar develops for the tournament will be superfluous: all 12 of the stadiums that it constructs will be partially dismantled after the tournament (their spare parts, Qatar says, will be shipped off to developing countries after the World Cup).

So what explains the decision?

That is hard to say. A number of explanations have been suggested, and none of them seem to be entirely satisfactory.

He goes on with very detailed list of the variety of things that might have brought the future World Cup to Qatar. It’s good reading if you, like me, were entirely confused how this tiny country, with no infrastructure and no yet-built stadiums, could  possibly win the hosting duty.

This is where Qatar is

This is where Qatar is, for those of you who don’t know. Qatar was just announced as the host of the 2022 World Cup, so it’s also going to be where a lot of association football will be played that summer (twelve years from now!), as well as the place where a lot of fans will be watching…sober. Sad-pants for America, who hoped to grab the hosting duties. Looks like the world doesn’t trust us to host anything anymore.

It’s a good thing Brazil is hosting in 2014, so Americans get at least one World Cup played during the day-time before two in a row (Russia picked up 2018—sorry Brits!) are again played at wacky times for those of us on this side of the globe.

Fun Fact: Moscow and Qatar are in the same time zone, which, for those of you playing at home, is GMT +3 (or 8 hours ahead of EST in the U.S.).

Athelete finally blames God for defeat

Normally, athletes like to praise God when they emerge victorious, whether by catching a touchdown pass, dinging a home run, scoring a goal. And yet, God never gets the blame for losses. Well, until now. Buffalo Bills receiver Steve Johnson dropped a game-winning touchdown pass in overtime yesterday. How did he react? By dropping by Twitter, of course, and blaming God:

I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…

Maybe this will make the late and great George Carlin smile:

What can we do to silence these Christian athletes who thank Jesus whenever they win and never mention his name when they lose? Never a word. You never hear them say, “Jesus made me drop the ball,” or “The Good Lord tripped me up behind the line of scrimmage.” According to these guys, Jesus is undefeated; meanwhile, these assholes are in last place. Must be another one of those “miracles.”

Buckeyes Triumphant, and I Win the Bet

Unsurprisingly, the Ohio State Buckeyes kicked some major Wolverine ass today.  In OSU’s seventh consecutive victory in the rivalry, the final score was 37-7.

Back on Election Night, Ghost and I made a bet that whoever’s team won would get to assign the other a blog post.  Ghost, your assignment is to write a Book Rec, on the topic of your choice.  You have 2 weeks.  Also, sorry your college team sucks so bad.  That must be sad for you.