Category: Sports

Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.

Best line of the day

“Looked at that way, players who are compensated beyond what the NCAA thinks is correct are simply finding a way to get paid for their work. This should surprise nobody. Time and again, the ‘amateur’ concept – a foul vestige of the British class system — has failed in this country because it is unsustainable in a nation that believes, even today, and even in Wisconsin, that hard work should return a fair wage. It was unsustainable in golf and in tennis. It was even unsustainable in the Olympics. It is unsustainable in college mega-sport as well. The only question is when the collapse will come, and how thorough the damage will be.”

Charles Pierce

Go read Pierce’s last paragraph, as good an assessment as you’ll read of college sports.

Play ball

It’s opening day for the 2011 Major League Baseball season. If you’re not in the mood for baseball — and if you are an American and aren’t ready for Opening Day, the terrorists have won — then Joe Posnanski’s look at The 32 Best Players in Baseball for 2011 can get you there.

“Albert Pujols has a chance to be known as the greatest player in the history of baseball. There are numerous statistical measurements to make the point, including the simple point that through age 30 he has more homers than Babe Ruth, more hits than Pete Rose, more RBIs than Hank Aaron, more runs than Rickey Henderson did at the same age.

Yes, it’s OK to think about that for a moment.”

Today’s long reads

I don’t blog ’em if I haven’t read ’em.

The Kill Team

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses – and how their officers failed to stop them.

The Lost Boys

In December 1970 two teenagers disappeared from the Heights neighborhood, in Houston. Then another and another and another. As the number of missing kids grew, no one realized that the most prolific serial killer the country had ever seen—along with his teenage accomplices—was living comfortably among them. Or that the mystery of what happened to so many of his victims would haunt the city to this day.

Fiesta Bowl scandal reminder that BCS system invites corruption

In an age of dwindling university budgets, the presidents of some of America’s most prestigious universities outsourced the championship of their most lucrative sport to an organization that may have been involved in criminal activity.

But these new details prove that the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision presidents are venturing into downright reprehensible territory if they continue to support the bowls as a means to crown a national champion in football.

Longer reads

A moment-by-moment account of Butler’s win over Pittsburgh. It begins:

On Saturday night, Shelvin Mack became the 12th-leading scorer in Butler history, passing long-ago Bulldogs star Bobby Plump. Though Plump starred for Butler in the 1950s, he was already a legend before he arrived on campus. In 1954, he made the jumper that earned Milan High the Indiana state championship—the shot and the season that inspired Hoosiers.

The erosion of the Civil War consensus. It begins:

As someone who has studied the Civil War for all of my adult life, I never once contemplated that I would ever hear any American raise once more the issue of secession or the doctrine of nullification, or suggest that the 14th Amendment should be rescinded.

Best lines summing up my week

“I’ve always said that people should enjoy baseball the way they want to enjoy baseball. It is a sport, and it is meant to be loved, and if you love it by doing spreadsheets, if you love it by sitting down the third base line with a beer and without even knowing the players names, if you love it for its history, for its pace, for its drama, for its familiarity, for its connection to spring, for its apparent simplicity, for its apparent complexities, for the way the game reveals character, for the way the game reveals talent, for the way the game rewards consistency, for batting average and wins and RBIs, for UZR and Runs Created and FIP, for whatever … that’s great. Love the game your own way.”

Joe Posnanski

10-9 Reds in sixth

26 hits including a couple of looooooong balls.

Update: 14-9 Reds in 8th.

13,182. Fourth largest single game crowd ever at HoHoKam. Cubs have spent spring training here since 1979.

Update update: Reds won 14-13. 40 hits.

Valentine’s Day

. . . is one of the great days of the year — the day when pitchers and catchers reported to spring training.

Today is an even greater day.

It’s the day when I report to spring training.

Angels and D’backs tomorrow. Rockies and White Sox Thursday. Giants and Dodgers or Cubs and Reds Friday.

Scottsdale temp forecast to be in the 80s all three afternoons.

What he said

Again, I realize it’d never happen, but I’d love to see a situation where all the [NFL] teams were publicly-owned and the players got 80% of all revenues, with the rest of the cash going to pay for road repairs, teachers’ salaries, and so on. Then I’d love to see Jerry Jones or Jerry Richardson and all those assholes strapped to chairs and forced to watch their former profits spent on new school gymnasiums and wheelchair ramps for courthouses and that sort of thing. I would be willing to go without football for a full year – no, make it two years – if at the end of it I could watch a weeping Dan Snyder taken on a tour of a new Public Football League-funded school for the blind.

Matt Taibbi on Politics and the Economy

March Madness

Our printable PDF brackets don’t include extraneous information like team names and seedings. Instead, we provide you with the bare minimum of information you need to make hasty, uninformed predictions: images of 68 mascots and 68 sets of school colors. Do you think the hornet has what it takes to win it all, or do you side with one of the many wildcats? Is blue and orange or green and gold the most fearsome color combination?

Printable NCAA bracket 2011: Alternative March Madness brackets with mascots and team colors

Who needs cable?

I’m not watching a movie tonight. I saw Amadeus: The Director’s Cut last night free via Amazon Prime. It was three hours, so tonight I’m viewing just a slide show of photos — 3 seconds apiece. (Hey, I just looked up and saw the teacher all four of my children had for second grade, Mrs. Radcliffe.)

My experience with director’s cuts by the way is that they are a good demonstration of why films have editors.

The $99 Apple TV got a software update today. Much to my surprise they’ve added Major League Baseball and the NBA. I don’t care about the latter, but I am interested in the baseball package — $99 for the whole season, most games of all 30 teams, except for national and regional blackouts. Alas, that means my favorites the regional Colorado Rockies won’t be included, but the World Champion Giants will. The Apple TV Netflix package is pretty nice, too.

All this streaming, of course, is to one of my TVs — I don’t watch too many movies or ballgames on the computer or iPhone, though I have. There are several ways you can stream, if you’re not already. Roger Ebert gives it a pretty good run down for movies in Stream a little stream with me, posted on his blog 90 minutes ago or so.

Ebert has a nice rant about Facebook too, and they’re always fun.

The slide show continues, Gene Vincent singing “Be Bop a Lula” in the background, and lots and lots of Sweeties in large screen glory.