FIRST DRAFT

Malaka Of The Week: David Martin

I'd never heard of David Martin until yesterday and hope to hear as little as possible of him in the future. He's the owner of a new franchise in the independent Frontier League. His team is located in London, Ontario so he decided it would be clever to name it the Rippers. That's right, as in Jack the Ripper, the most famous serial killer in history. Mr. Martin is one of those people who thinks that any publicity is good publicity, which is why he's this week's exemplar of malakatude.

As publicity stunts goes it's a pretty good one BUT as promotion for new ball club it sucks. Why? Baseball teams play a lot of games so they depend on repeat business and it's better if the Mayor of your town is NOT pissed off at you and offended by your malakatudinous moniker:

Now London mayor Joe Fontana is asking the team to change their name, according to London radio station AM980. He released a statement:

 “On behalf of London City Council, we want to express serious concerns about the name of London’s newest baseball team. While the team owner’s intention may not have been to draw a connection to Jack the Ripper, we believe this name is unfortunate particularly in light of our focus on ending woman abuse. We will be speaking to the owner today and give him an opportunity to reconsider the name.”

 But stop right there, Martin tells the London Free Press any link to Jack the Ripper is completely coincidental. Their mascot is a different Jack. Yes.

 “That (Jack The Ripper) is not our story,” he tells the newspaper.“Ripping a ball is used in baseball all the time.”

Here is the story he told the Free Press:

 “The character’s name is Diamond Jack, a frustrated hockey player who found he could ‘rip’ the cover off baseballs. Despite his talent, teams grew weary of the expense of replacing balls so Diamond Jack decided to form his own team in London, Ontario."

Wink, wink. What a ripping yarn. That's why he's got the dude in Victorian garb and has put out this image to promote the team:

Lurking? Sounds like Jack the Ripper will be hiding in the corridors ready to strike. Women's groups are already threatening to picket games if there's no name change. Pissing off half the population is a helluva way to attract customers, Malaka Martin.

Can you imagine the promotions the London Rippers could have? Meat cleaver night. Free admission for hookers. Ripper theorist night: is it the Queen's doctor or the Duke of Clarence? The possibilities are endless as is the malakatude.

Jeez, Timmeh

The Tebowmaniacs are at it again, y'all. As an atheist I cannot call this blasphemous but tacky is tacky is tacky:

I traded a few emails with Scout yesterday about this idiocy, which inspires me to ask this question: what would you put on the back of a Tebow jersey?

I'd put: Malaka.

David Brooks: I Am An Asshole, and Therefore Secretly So Are You

David Brooks cannot bear how superior everyone sticking up for victims of child sexual abuse is these days: 

First came the atrocity, then came the vanity. The atrocity is what Jerry Sandusky has been accused of doing at Penn State. The vanity is the outraged reaction of a zillion commentators over the past week, whose indignation is based on the assumption that if they had been in Joe Paterno’s shoes, or assistant coach Mike McQueary’s shoes, they would have behaved better. They would have taken action and stopped any sexual assaults.

Unfortunately, none of us can safely make that assumption. Over the course of history — during the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the street beatings that happen in American neighborhoods — the same pattern has emerged. Many people do not intervene. Very often they see but they don’t see.

First up: Advocating for action to stop sexual abuse as it occurs, and then strenuous laws aimed at preventing it from ever happening again, comes across as morally superior BECAUSE IT IS. If it's now out-of-bounds smug to say we should as a society better protect the powerless from those who prey upon them, smug sounds pretty good to me.  

Second: It's entirely possible to say that someone in such-and-such position should have done something, while also acknowledging that in that same position, you don't know what you would have done. 

But even if you can't say precisely what you would have done, you should at least know what should be done. And every time you say it out loud, you move us all a little farther away from the place where we riot in favor of an institution that enabled sexual abuse. The entire point of talking about the people who didn't see, or saw and didn't act, or acted but not strongly enough, is to reinforce the idea that passivity in the face of evil is not okay. 

So of course along comes David Brooks to talk about how that's just a normal human reaction, so, you know, whatevs. It's interesting that he assumes that all outrage on the part of "a zillion commentators" (obviously not this very good one that makes the same point without the smarm and judgment) comes from a place of vanity. What else could possibly motivate such outrage? 

Commentators ruthlessly vilify all involved from the island of their own innocence. Everyone gets to proudly ask: “How could they have let this happen?”

The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive. That was the proper question after Abu Ghraib, Madoff, the Wall Street follies and a thousand other scandals. But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.

Brooks prefaces this, his oh-so-brave contrarian stance, with a few grafs that blither on about how we used to acknowledge our sinfulness but now kids have self-esteem so we can't do that anymore. Or something. 

As to David's other examples: The problem in the wake of our torturing innocent people in secret prisons was not insufficient self-examination. It was that we were torturing innocent people in secret prisons and needed to not ever be doing that. David Brooks, now so concerned that we turned away from our inner angels, spent much of the past decade studiously not mentioning the innocent man shipped off to Syria to be tortured. 

I assume he didn't say anything at the time because he didn't want to appear superior. 

A. 

Caption This: Injured Coach Edition

One of the joys of Sunday's Saints victory over the Dirty Birds was Coach Sean Payton's return to the sideline. He was on crutches, which made the whole thing pretty damn funny and very captionable:

Photo by Michael DeMocker/Times-Picayune

Joe

Since this appears to be the week to discuss sports and second-guess people, I figured I’d weigh in. No, not on the Penn State thing; that’s been beaten to death and will continue to be.

Hey, don’t get me wrong: Raging against a pedophile and those who were within five miles of him is easy. Very few people are going to disagree with you.

(In a Twitter jihad, one person I follow noted that Joe Paterno should be in prison. When someone else had the temerity to ask why, the “How could you defend Paterno? What if it was your kid?” tweets set my iPhone on fire. If it were my kid, I’d want to strangle Jerry Sandusky. I’d want to rain vengeance down on him that would make Marcellus Wallace say, “Holy shit, are you demented!” This is why we have courts: So that crime doesn’t perpetuate rage which then perpetuates more crime and so forth. It’s also why I shouldn’t route Twitter into my iPhone.)

You can convict him before a court of law does, or as some columnists have done, figured anyone around him is fair game.

I’m quite surprised that Sandusky’s postal carrier hasn’t been indicted for something…

I’m talking about Joe Frazier, who died of liver cancer this week at the age of 67. He lived a good life, scaled heights few ever have and yet he died a bitter man.

He fought Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Jimmy Ellis  and more, but he couldn’t fight hard enough to get his own trainer to believe in him.

If you want to talk about a legacy changed or an image altered, forget Joe Paterno and look at Joe Frazier.

---

Last night, I got a chance to catch a documentary on the Thrilla in Manila, the final fight of the Frazier/Ali trilogy.

Each man had won once. This third fight was for more than the heavyweight championship. As Ali biographer Thomas Hauser once explained, “They were fighting for the championship of each other.”

For Frazier, it was much more than that.

He beat Jimmy Ellis in 1970s to unify the heavyweight title, claiming the title Ali was forced to vacate when he refused to be drafted for the Vietnam War. In many people’s eyes, Ali remained the true champion.

In the 1971 “Fight of the Century,” Frazier and Ali met for the first time.

Frazier held on in a 15-round unanimous decision, flooring Ali with a wicked left hook that should have taken Ali’s head off.

Frazier was desperate to hear Ali provide him with some level of respect after defeating the former champion. Prior to the fight, Ali had said if he lost, he’d crawl across the ring and admit Frazier was better. Instead, he and his trainer, Angelo Dundee, took to the media room and told the press they had no idea what the judges saw.

It wasn’t a loss, they explained. It was an error. And it stung Frazier.

The 1974 rematch wasn’t much to write home about. No title was on the line and experts noted that it matched two former champions who were both past their prime. Ali earned a unanimous decision, with the fight going the distance.

The “Thrilla” would settle the issue, but this time with the title on the line. Ali had dethroned George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire.

In the build up to the fight, Ali called Foreman stupid, ignorant, ugly, an Uncle Tom and worse.

He told people it would be a Thrilla when he beat the gorilla in Manila. He went as far as to carry a rubber gorilla to meetings with the press.

Say what you want to about the greatness of Ali and his impact on American culture over the span of his life, but this clearly crossed a line. It was one thing to want to kick someone’s ass in the ring. It was quite another to go where Ali went.

---

The fight took place on an oppressively hot morning. People who attended the fight said they were unable to even breathe and all they had to do was sit there. Frazier’s companion said she had no idea how her guy could breathe, let alone fight.

Peter Bonaventure once described the battle as a fight in three parts:

In the first four rounds, Ali dominated the fight. He often grabbed Frazier, smacked him around and the evaded the giant left hook that Frazier threw with ferocity. By about Round 5, the referee started separating the fighters each time Ali put his hand on the back of Frazier’s neck.

Able to move inside with impunity, Frazier cut off the ring, pressed forward and was tearing Ali apart. While head shots often make for good-looking punches, body shots kill a fighter. Frazier took to the body, punishing Ali’s lungs, kidneys and liver. He punched Ali in the hips, causing huge hematomas and slowing down the quicker champion.

Hauser once explained that in those rounds Ali tried to regain the psychological edge by whispering to him, “Joe Frazier, they told me you were washed up.”

Frazier’s response? “They told you wrong, pretty boy.”

Despite his proclamation that a sledgehammer couldn’t stop him, Frazier found himself fighting against his own blindness more than Ali as the fight reached the final four rounds. His left eye had been damaged in 1964 during a sparring session, leaving him mostly blind from that side. His right eye, pummeled by Ali, was slowly but steadily closing.

By the 13^th round, Frazier couldn’t see Ali. He would use his body and head to weave near Ali, wait for Ali to hit him and then counter.

Ali wasn’t doing much better, telling his trainer, “I think I’m dying. This must be what death feels like.”

When the 14^th round closed, both men were crippled by exhaustion, pained from the beatings they had inflicted and uncertain if they could continue. Ali went back to his corner, slumped down in his chair and told his trainer to cut the gloves off of him. He was finished.

Dundee screamed at him and prodded him to continue, but Ali wanted no part of the 15^th round.

In Frazier’s corner, legendary trainer Eddie Futch told Frazier he was throwing in the towel. In recalling the conversation years later, Frazier said Futch told him, “It’s over, Joe. You can’t see him and I know it.”

Frazier shook his head no, “Don’t worry, I can visualize him.”

The last living member of Frazier’s corner remembers a far different conversation:

“Joe was telling Ed, ‘Don’t you dare stop this motherfucking fight. Don’t you fucking think about stopping this motherfucker.”

Frazier had the guts and the stamina. Ali was ready to quit.

Instead, Futch stepped in and called the fight. Moments later, Ali attempted to stand and collapsed in the middle of the ring.

Frazier had lost. Ali kept his title. History was written.

Shortly before his death, a reporter asked Frazier if he would have been willing to go on, even if it meant he might die. The usually verbally challenged Frazier, who often sounded like a mix between Clint Eastwood and Marlon Brando in “The Godfather,” uttered a single word in perfect clarity:

“Absolutely.”

Futch, who died 2001, refused to second guess himself for stopping the fight. He once recounted to sports writer Jerry Izenberg the eight men he had watched die in the ring. One more would have been one more too many, he explained.

I understand that and yet it’s not his call.

As adults, we all have the right to write our own life story. The choices we make lead to certain outcomes and those outcomes have consequences and those consequences shape the future.

Frazier understood this. He was a Philly fighter, a man for whom nothing was easy.

When Ali was out of boxing, Frazier supported him publically and privately, providing him with positive attention and cash. He refused to enter the 1967 tournament that was held to decide who should receive Ali’s belt, arguing that it would be an ill-gotten gain.

When Ali came back, Frazier could have made him wait around for a couple years for a title shot.

“Oh, you want a shot at the title, Muhammad? Fuck you, Mr. “I don’t have to do what other people say.” Wait your turn. I’m fighting Jerry Quarry.

To pay him back, Ali belittled him, marginalized him, dehumanized him and turned an entire race of people against him. Joe Frazier knew he could give three more minutes of his life to regain all Ali had taken from him.

Had Futch just let him stand up and answer the bell for the 15^th round, the world might have seen Frazier for who he always was.

The stronger man.

Rioting Kids are Only Part of the Problem

From the Penn State Daily Collegian, which did outstanding journalism all week: 

If anything, it is clear from the allegations that the university’s investigation was not handled properly. Curley and Schultz brought their course of action to Graham Spanier in 2002 — and he signed off on it. Their action plan? Sandusky was not allowed to bring any more children from his charity, The Second Mile — which works with at-risk children — on campus.

This was not enough.

Penn State’s reaction to these allegations would suggest that the university didn’t mind what Sandusky did, so long as it wasn’t in its backyard.

The moral failure of every single person involved is appalling. No one did anything more than try to sweep this problem off-campus.

It's easy to subject dumbass football fans to contempt on Facebook, but students don't just come to the independent conclusion that their football coaches or athletic directors or chancellors or whatever are adorable mascots without any flaws, rather than incredibly powerful and wealthy actors in a system. Any major university, including my own, makes millions of dollars pretending their sports programs are the realms of heroes, and everybody gets inundated with it. Plenty of kids didn't lose their fucking heads, and with all the misery in this story, we need to remember that not all of humanity sucks as bad as those tipping over news vans, if only so that we don't slit our wrists:

“I’ve heard many, many people express that not enough is being done for the sexual assault victims,” said Kyle Harris, 21, a senior public relations major from Massachusetts who is helping to plan the vigil. “We want to support these victims. We’re just horrified.”

You know what WILL change the culture of admiring those who helped protect a child molester and helped him continue to prey on victims? FUCKING PRISON TERMS FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED. The court of public opinion is one thing, but depending on there never to be any total idiots who will stand up for those in power no matter what is not, shall we say, realistic. Throw a few more bastards in jail, instead of starting a bidding war for their memoirs or letting them disappear back into academia, and the idea of getting outraged on behalf of anyone caught doing this again will start to seem a lot less attractive, no matter how may kegs got tapped at the frat house. 

A. 

Whose Tragedy #PennState Is

What is happening at Penn State is not a tragedy for Penn State.

It's not a tragedy for Joe Paterno, or Graham Spanier, or any one of a thousand students whose school just became a national punch line. 

It's not a tragedy for alumni who will have to answer questions for a week or two from prurient and stupid work colleagues. 

It's not a tragedy for football fans, or for student athletes. 

This is a tragedy for the children raped by Jerry Sandusky, and that is IT. 

I am just about done hearing everybody describe this as a terrible situation for all those involved. It's actually not a terrible situation for all those involved. It's a difficult situation for just about everybody who will maybe do some interviews, write a book, and otherwise not miss a meal or have any problems beyond a couple of seriously awkward Thanksgivings. This includes Joe Paterno, who by the most charitable description of his conduct was deliberately oblivious to a very sick man in his employ. This includes Graham Spanier, who actually comes off looking the worst in all this, as the guy who said, "Look, an adequate response here is that we just ask him not to bring his victims around here anymore." 

I am just about done with pontificating about what this all means for the future of the football program and what it means for college athletics and what it says about our culture and blah blah blah, because none of those consequences are actual, you know, things. Joe Paterno's "legacy" will be tarnished as a result of this.. Penn State's legacy will be tarnished. Let me ask you this: SO WHAT? Tell me in actual terms what that might mean. No applause at the alumni dinners? Maybe donations take a little bit of a dip for ten minutes? Paterno and Spanier don't get invited to the swank parties anymore? 

None of that can even compare to the damage done to those Sandusky harmed and others failed to protect. What has happened to Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, and Penn State is an inconvenience. What has happened to Sandusky's victims is a tragedy. Paterno and Spanier may be publicly embarrassed, footnoted in Wikipedia, and looked at sideways for a while. Sandusky's victims will carry this forever, and there will be no sympathetic retrospective for them in 10 years, in which they can thoughtfully reflect on how hard it all was but how it brought them closer to Jesus or whatever it is these people will say. 

I used to cover stories like this, back when the priest abuse scandal broke. I covered a trial in which victim after victim testified to the harm done to them, to the lives they had after being used so cruelly by someone they trusted. I sat next to a father as he wept outside the courthouse, because he had encouraged his children to spend time with the man who ruined them. It saved some of them, coming forward. It ruined others. A few years later one of those same victims was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. This ruins everything, stains everything forward. Very little that can be done in the way of firings, resignations, or public humiliation can even come close. 

A. 

The Throwback Bowl

Was it the game of the new century? Maybe not but there was something special about the defensive struggle that ended up with LSU beating Alabama 9-6. It was not the sort of football game that people are used to in this era when the scores are high and the ball is always in the air. It was the sort of old school 3 yards and a cloud of dust game, however, that coaches such as Vince Lombardi, Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler to name but a few would have thought was grand. Two teams giving their all to bring glory to themselves their schools and their states.

I know that the college game is hypocritical and think that players should be paid a stipend but I prefer the passion of the college game to the NFL. There I said it. There's something special about a blood rivalry like the one LSU and Alabama have: it gets one's, uh, blood flowing. The game even overshadowed the Saints in New Orleans for a week. That's saying a lot.

The picture is of two coaching legends: Bear Bryant of Alabama and Charlie McLendon of LSU. I had the pleasure of being acquainted with Charlie Mac. He was a charming man who would have been very proud of the Tigers right now. It was his kind of game: no frills football stripped down to its essentials.

As a Tiger fan I would rather not have a rematch with Coach Grumpy and his team. It was hard enough beating them once.

Now where the hell is my giant foam finger?

Ron Washington Meets Al Swearingen

The reason I *tried* rooting for the Texas Rangers is that manager Ron Washington is not only from New Orleans but still lives here in the off-season. Having to stare at former President Beavis during the games ended my brief attempt at sports detente with Texas.

I still really like Wash and it turns out he swears even more than Jude or Athenae: his potty mouth is of Swearingenesque proportions.  Wash's game 7 pep talk to his team is a motherfucking classic as the man himself would say. Warning, do not listen to this at work or in the presence of wee chirren:

Ron Washington's Game 7 Clubhouse Speech from JoeSportsFan.com on Vimeo.

 

Seasons in Hell

After the Cardinals tied it for a second straight inning last night, I went to bed. I didn’t need to know what I already knew: There would be a seventh game.

I didn’t need to see Ron Washington standing on the steps of the dugout, imploring Cardinal hitters to do something stupid and hand him the World Series.

I didn’t want to see the requisite camera shots of Tony LaRussa looking like he knew he’d win. Baseball’s version of Benjamin Button is annoying enough in the regular season, let alone the playoffs, where he always seems to have this misplaced sense of destiny.

And, as The Missus noted after her second drink of the night, “They can stop showing me that skinny blonde bitch in the Cardinals hat who is praying in the stands.”

The Rangers hold a special place in my heart, though, and I’m sure I’ll be watching Game 7. Not so much for the baseball, but because of writer Mike Shropshire.

Perhaps the funniest baseball book I’ve ever read  (and that takes in a lot of territory) comes from Shropshire.

“Seasons in Hell” and I got together in a chance meeting when the local library was closing and it was a buck a bag for books. While The Missus raided the cooking section, I cleaned the shelves in the sports area. “Seasons in Hell” landed in one of the bags and the rest is history.

Shropshire’s book covered the Rangers from 1973 to 1975. The team was managed in that time span by Whitey Herzog and Billy Martin, one a hall of famer and the other who probably should be. The team had stars like Jim Bibby, Ferguson Jenkins and MVP Jeff Burroughs. Pheenom David Clyde was on the roster as well and Bob Short was calling the shots from the administrative level.

On paper, they should have been a force.

On the pages of Shropshire’s book, they were a hysterical mess.

Between his binges of press-box alcoholism, Shropshire managed to crank out daily coverage of a team that lost 105 games in 1973, teased fans with a second place finish the following year and then finished with a sub .500 record in 1975.

Yet, it is his recalling of the characters of the day and the weirdness of the franchise is epic.

He noted that Jim Bibby had a dick of “equine proportions” and that Owner Bob Short’s biggest quandary was trying to figure out a way to make it a gate attraction.

He talked about “Hot Pants Night,” in which the team wasn’t going to give away the clothing item but rather ask women to show up wearing them. Women would then compete for a trophy that confirmed for the winner that “she and only she the best-looking ass in North Texas.”

He followed the meteoric rise and fall of David Clyde, an 18-year-old Texas boy who was driven like a rented mule and burned out before his 20^th birthday. His name still serves as the cautionary tale for abusing young talent.

However, my favorite story came as a result of Herzog’s displeasure with the ass-kicking the Rangers were receiving in Milwaukee:

“It started yesterday, when they were beating up on us with 17 runs. I knew something was up and figured the third base coach was stealing… signs,” said Herzog, speaking rapidly and making wild, pointing gestures, like in an old film of Mussolini making a speech. “But today, in the first game, I figured it out. I got some binoculars and looked out there in centerfield where they keep that little asshole in the costume.

“And that’s when I saw the other guy and that’s when I was positive. He had binoculars too, picking up our signs… Either they were getting our pitches or this is the greatest hitting team of all time.”

Herzog’s rant about Bernie Brewer, sitting in his barrel chalet, stealing signs is a classic. For those of you not familiar with old County Stadium, when a Brewers player would hit a homer, Bernie would slide down the barrel into a mug on this giant chalet mounted above the centerfield bleachers. He would then release a set of balloons.

While it ended up not being proven, the Milwaukee answer in Shropshire’s book was a classic:

“Some guy in the Brewers’ clubhouse took me aside and said that the Bernie, in real life, was the son of some team employee. ‘The kid… and please don’t print this… but his blender doesn’t go all the way to puree if you know what I mean. Steal signs? Hell. It’s all he can do to release those goddamn balloons.’”

Shropshire eventually moved on from the Rangers, and sports writing in general, but his recall of the events of those seasons will always be for me the epitome of Ranger baseball.

Still, I’ll be watching tonight to see what happens in Game 7 to this might oak that grew from a guy with a huge dick, some stupid promotions and a rant about a little asshole in a costume.

Odds & Sods

It's time for a new feature here at First Draft. It's my busy season so I'll have less time for long posts. (Of course, every time I say something like that I post a long un.) So, I'll be posting quick items under this rubric from time to time. I also like using the cool elpee cover with the Who in football helmets. Rock on, readers.

--> The Gret Stetwide election was a snoozer but David Vitter was a loser. The two statewide candidates he endorsed-Billy (300 pounds of shit in a 200 pound bag) Nungesser and Jim Tucker-lost their races. The talk is that Vitty wants to run for Governor in 4 years. Sheeee-it.

--> The New Orleans Saints channeled the LSU Tigers last night and blew away the Indy Colts 62-7. I'm not sure why the Colts defense has collapsed as badly as their offense. The last I heard, Peyton Manning didn't play both ways. Where have you gone Bronko Nagurski?

--> I've tried to root for the Texas Rangers in the World Series but simply cannot. Why? Ron Washington is from NOLA and I dislike Cardinal manager Tony LaRussa's incessant overmanaging. BUT every time the cameras show former President Beavis they lose me. I'm also a National League kinda guy so what I can I tell ya?

--> I'm avidly watching season-2 of Work Of Art on Bravo. My favorite artestant is the Sucklord. Can't say I care that much for his toy art but I love hearing the uber-elegant Simon de Pury say his name. Repeat after me: Sucklord. He's actually a pretty nice guy who reminds me of one of my closest NOLA blogger friends. Any guesses from those in the know?

I couldn't find a clip of Monsieur de Pury saying Sucklord but here's a sample of his fabulousness for those of you who haven't seen the show:

 

Malaka Of The Week: Bud Selig

Bud Selig listens for his master's voice.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig could be a charter member of the malakatude hall of fame, schmuck division. He was selected Commissioner because his fellow owners thought that they could control him. They were right. Bud has a weak chin and I bet his handshake feels like a dead fish and he has a spine like a jellyfish.

Selig has presided over some of the changes that baseball purists such as me dislike. My personal bete noir is the wild card and the LDS, which sounds like Mitt Haircut's church to me, y'all. It's too late in the year to be playing baseball: it was fucking cold in St Louis last night. Selig also played ostrich during the steroid era and then tried looking stern when it blew up in his pasty face. Bud is not only  a malaka, he's a serious fuckup. We won't even go into the canceled World Series and the game's obsessive focus on money, money, money during his tenure as the owner's puppet.

I originally picked Buddy boy for this week's "honor" because of this story at Deadspin. Selig initially refused to allow Dirk Nowitzki to throw out the first pitch at a Rangers home game during the Wolrd Series out of solidarity or some such shit with NBA owners during their lockout. Apparently, Buddy takes orders from David (the Hoops Napoleon) Stern too. Then, in classic Bud Selig fashion, he flip flopped and Dirk the great will throw out that first pitch, after all. Selig is resolute in his irresolution. Buddy has a rare gift of bringing people together: former President Beavis and I agree on this one. Thanks, Buddy Malaka.

I won't even go into Selig's days as the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. Doc knows a helluva lot more about that than I do. Suffice it to say that he had the wrong stuff there as well. Now that I think of it, Bud Selig is one of the luckiest people on the face of the earth, earth, earth: he's not very bright and is a perrenial fuckup but has somehow failed his way into success. I'm not sure if that makes any sense but it does make Bud Selig malaka of the week.

Les Miles meets Elvis

Not really but the number one LSU Tigers kicked some more ass today, which means it was time for Les to do his happy dance. Hey, it beats the hell outta eating grass:

Quote of the day

Former Saints Tight End Jeremy Shockey is now with Carolina and faced his former teammates last Sunday. He trash talked them during the game and didn't shake anyone's hand afterwards, which is poor form since Saints players and coaches have said nothing but nice things about him.

Shockey's tackiness inspired the normally mild-mannered voice of the Saints, Jim Henderson, to  lambaste him:

“I never liked Jeremy Shockey, I didn’t like him as a Giant.  I didn’t like him as a Saint.  I didn’t think he fit in with this team in the locker room.  And the Saints to their credit said all the right things about him.  You know, ‘He was a great teammate.  He was a mentor to Jimmy Graham.’  I think that’s bull.  I think deep down inside, I think they thought he was a jerk, too.”

Is Bitter There?

Well, now baby's more famous, just like he wanted:

In retaliation Williams, the son of legendary country singer Hank Williams Sr., has cut a song called "I'll Keep My ...," that says the Fox News broadcasters twisted his words.

"So Fox 'n Friends wanna put me down/ Ask for my opinion/ Twist it all around." He finishes the verse: "Well two can play that gotcha game you'll see."

Williams says he wrote the verse when he woke up Friday morning and recorded it in a Nashville studio that same afternoon. It could be on iTunes late Monday or early Tuesday.

Early in the song, he says the U.S. is "going down the drain" and says it's becoming "The United Socialist States of America." He then encourages viewers not to watch "Fox & Friends" or ESPN.

I fail to see that great injustice has been done in this case. Somebody acted like a dick, got fired, and is now getting lots of attention when previously everybody's reaction was "WHO? Oh, that annoying yelly jerkoff who delays the start of the football game with his yowling."

The problem with him being on ESPN after he said what he said was the problem with him being on ESPN at all: That song fucking sucked. He should have been shitcanned years ago for getting his redneck all over everything.

A.

Al Davis 1929-2011

I grew up in the Bay Area and was a Raider fan whilst a tadpole. The 49ers were erratic at best in the pre-Walsh-Montana era and the Raiders were not only a great team on the gridiron but wildly individualistic off the field. I was smitten and then disillusioned by owner Al Davis's decision to move the team to LA. I also never forgave him for running off John Madden and trading Ken Stabler, which made Davis my first owner hate.

Now Davis has died at the age of 82. I considered calling this post "Just die, baby" in tribute to Al's own motto "Just win, baby." I consulted with my publisher lady and we agreed that it was a bit on the creepy side. Al Davis was the best sports villain of his day but my dislike for him ebbed as the Raiders got worse and worse and worse. The game had passed him by and he was too stubborn and proud to admit it. Al Davis was not a very nice man but he was neither dull nor corporate. 

I'll let the great Joe Posnanski have the last word:

Al Davis was a great American sports villain, the best of his time, the best of all time. He was great, I think, because he played it big. Who else would design their team logo with an eyepatch? Think about that for a minute. Who else would say that the key to winning a football game is that “their quarterback must go down, and he must go down hard.” Who else would insist that the Raiders put “Commitment to Excellence” on all of their official materials after seven straight years of the team winning five games or less? Who else could be summed up with the three words he said more often than any other: “Just Win Baby!”

Who else? Nobody else. Davis lived through times of great sports villains — Steinbrenner, Butkus, Liston, Reggie, Laimbeer, Alzado, McEnroe, Tiger Williams, on and on — but nobody could touch him. You expected him every year to announce before the season began that he intended for the Raiders to win the Super Bowl AND steal the moon. I remain convinced that somewhere in the Oakland Coliseum there is a secret lair where sharks swim, where gas rises in a glass chamber, where a Marcus Allen voodoo doll rests with pins stuck in from all sides.

Malaka Of The Week: The Guy Who Put This Billboard Up

Tim Tebow is a past "winner" of malaka of the week honors and now there's some douchey businessman in Denver who really, really wants Tebow to play. Either that or he wants some publicity and I've fallen into his trap. I don't, however, have to mention his name; especially since he's into exclamation points and pounding on the caps lock key, which are both evidence of egregious malakatude.

Fandamonium

The word “fan” comes from the word “fanatic” and there’s very little good about the definition in there:

a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.

Or sports, as the case may be.

Last week, I wrote about the idiot who threw a banana at Wayne Simmonds, an action viewed as racist or stupid or both. The guy, Chris Moorhouse, has been arrested and has pleaded to absolute stupidity, noting that the banana was merely a fruit of convenience.

This week, I finally got the chance to see “Catching Hell” the ESPN documentary on Steve Bartman and the 2003 Chicago Cubs. Bartman’s infamous grab at a foul ball became the focal point of fans’ scorn and rage, as the Cubs booted away yet another chance at breaking the Curse of the Billy Goat.

I was working that night in 2003 and managed to see just a brief glimpse of what had happened. In reviewing our coverage years later, Bartman wasn’t but a footnote. The headline instead read “Crazy 8s,” playing on the idea that the eighth inning was a mess in which the Marlins scored eight runs.

In watching this documentary, I finally figured out what made people so nuts: It was the uncontrollable urge to be fans. It was the sense that because it was “their” team and “their” World Series on the line, it was fine for them to cast out the pariah who cost them everything.

The documentary never talks to Bartman, which I think was a good thing. I hope he’s found peace and quiet somewhere safe and that this movie finally lays to rest the obsession with him. I doubt it, as people didn’t forgive Bill Buckner until the Red Sox won the World Series. As an interesting side note, when those “loveable losers” from Boston missed the playoffs this year after winning not one but TWO World Series rings in eight years, the push is on to fire manager Terry Francona. This is the same guy who could have become governor of any of the six New England states after 2004 or 2007.

Fans can be fickle.

They can also be brutal, firing off their salvo of anger at anyone with the temerity to speak ill of their team. I’ve been a victim of this when it came to the Tribe and their run at the post season. Bobby Valentine, whom the Indians had passed over for manager, was doing color commentary on a Tigers/Tribe game on ESPN when he noted the Tribe wasn’t good enough to make the playoffs. At this point, people were healthy, the pitching was great and the team had a couple game lead in the division. I was cursing and muttering and changing channels. I went so far as to mute the game, although that didn’t last long. Still, that was the privacy of my own home.

Bills fans have a different way of approaching their bile: it’s called Voicemail.

Jennifer Gish of the Albany Times Union wrote about the Bills’ 2-0 start in a way that wasn’t “Go, Bills, GO!” and found herself on the back end of some ugliness. As a fan (not of the Bills), I can understand why fans would be pissed off by Gish’s column. It’s written in a mocking tone, it tells the fans to “keep it real” and it essentially pokes the bear.

Do I think she was unfair in telling the fans the 2-0 start is probably fool’s gold? No.

Do I think she approached in a smart or well-written way? No.

Did she deserve what came next? Hell no.

The fans posted her picture everywhere and made debating her sexuality, her “square jaw and pig-faced nose” and her “moustache” a trending topic in Bills land. They  then took to the phone lines to rip the holy shit out of her. As you can imagine, being a woman in sports isn’t easy, but these fans felt it necessary to give her a gentle reminder of that:

 

So how does it feel to be both a woman and so wrong about football? I guess those two go hand in hand.

F*** yourself ya stupid C***, Go Bills!

seen some photos of you and you are as ugly as your story about we bills fans. we may lose, we may win but you will still be ugly either way.

YOU SUCK DONKEY D***! That's why females shouldn't be allowed to write articles about sports. You better not write a good article about the Bills now because then everyone will know that you really just a dumb, bandwagon slut.

I am a well educated, compassionate, thoughtful, and caring man. I still am after reading your article, but my response will not be erudite or clever; that I promise you.

Simply put, f*** you you stupid, arrogant, thoughtless b****, and stick all of your snide Bills comments up your a** ...

Well great prediction! Maybe your article will help get women like you removed from sports media. You are incompetent and really offered no unique points that haven't already been beaten to death in the past ten years in your tirade against the bills. Glad they could prove a hack borderline blogger like you wrong.

Maybe you should stay in the kitchen next time.

 

Nothing like the “class” of a fan. Of course these came via voicemail, which unlike email can’t be easily tracked back to these proud, strong men who call themselves fans.

Gish has the whole laundry list of comments here and if you read them, you’ll likely find yourself wondering what the hell is wrong with this world.

As for me, I plan to lock myself in my basement Saturday. The Badgers play Nebraska and the Brewers kick off the series against Arizona for a shot at the NLCS. I might get radiation burns from my TV by the time all is said and done.

And yes, I will curse and scream and wail. I might also cheer and cry if things go well.

Emotion is part of being a fan. It’s just hard when those emotions are the wrong ones.

Pulitzer Worthy

Steve Gleason was never a star when he played in the NFL. He was, however, responsible for one of the greatest moments in New Orleans Saints history: a blocked punt in the Saints post-K return to the Superdome on September 25, 2006.

Steve was honored before yesterday's game. He has ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's Disease.) Jeff Duncan wrote a *brilliant* profile of Gleason that was on the front page of the Sunday Picayune. It's one of the best pieces I've read in a long time. Yup, it's Pulitzer worthy.

Finally, here's a clip of Steve Gleason's moment in the limelight:

 

Come see what's Brewin'

Although every fan thinks his or her team deserves something, I can’t help but think the Milwaukee Brewers really deserved tonight.

This is the team that wasted Robin Yount’s prime, oversaw the exile of Paul Molitor and was content to slide into the recipient role of MLB’s revenue-sharing system. Year after year, we saw mediocre baseball and year after year we stopped caring about the team by mid-July.

For years, the only thing worth paying attention to when it came to the Brewers was their Hall-of-Fame announcer Bob Uecker. Uke kept us smiling and laughing all the way through those horrific seasons of loss after loss.

In the middle of the 2000s, it was the Brewers who were the joke.

The stadium’s retractable roof leaked and it played host to the only tie in All-Star Game history. The team was on the way to a 56-106 season and any hope of respectability seemed farfetched at best. It would be the first of three-straight sixth-place finishes in the moribund NL Central.

In 2005, Bud Selig’s family finally sold the team, which finished at .500 for the first time in more than a decade. After slipping back to a sub-.500 record, they finished second  in the Central with a 83-79 record.

The 2008 Season was “The Leap.” Owner Mark Attanasio pulled off the biggest trade of the year and perhaps the most important trade since the last time the Brewers made a run at glory. He pried CC Sabathia from the Cleveland Indians for a trove of prospects. Manager Ned Yost rode him to a 10-2 record, often pitching him on short rest. With 12 games left in the season and the playoffs slipping away, Attanasio fired Yost and replaced him with bench coach Dale Sveum. The team went 7-5 over that stretch and on the last day of the season secured the Wild Card for the National League.

Things looked like they would be returning to mediocrity, with two sub-.500 seasons. With stars Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder heading toward potential free agency and the team regressing, Milwaukee had every reason to believe it was headed for disaster.

Instead, Attanasio and GM Doug Melvin stopped panicking and started building. They traded Cutter Dykstra for Nyjer Morgan.

They sent Brett Lawrie to Toronto for Shaun Marcum, giving them a front of the line starter with a moderate and consistent record.

Then, they went for it: They gave up four prospects and essentially gutting their farm system for Zack Greinke, a one-time Cy Young Award Winner.

While this could be perceived as going “all in” on one shot at a winner, Melvin picked up pieces that could be had for cheap or players whom he could control beyond this year. Unlike the Sabathia deal, which was a half-year rental, Melvin knew he could get players who were young, hungry and valuable and yet proven and strong.

The Brewers started 0-4 and finished April at 13 and 13, but after that, they never had a losing month. They gained on, caught and eventually passed the Cardinals for first place. The one-game lead grew to 10.5 before eventually evening out a bit. The papers started publishing the “magic number” for the team to clinch.

It’s been 29 years since Milwaukee had a division winner. It has won only one playoff game in that time span as well. And yet, unlike 2008, the Brewers seem to belong. They’re not the back-door slider that luckily caught the corner of the plate.

They are here for a reason. They’re fun, not funny.

And I couldn’t be more grateful.

Politically Correct Fruit

Word of warning to people who like to make professional sporting events more interactive: Know your fruit.

Philadelphia Flyers winger Wayne Simmonds, who is black, had a piece of fruit flung at him while participating in a game against the Red Wings. The exhibition, which was taking place in Ontario, has garnered a great deal of press coverage primarily because the fruit in question was a banana.

While people may be quick to jump to the conclusion that this is racism, this might be unfair to the idiot responsible. We have not heard from the flinger, so God alone knows if he was tossing it at Simmonds as a racial insult or because he ran out of other forms of animals, minerals and vegetables.

It could have been just a fruit of convenience.

When I used to cover crime in Madison, I caught a report in which a guy was walking with a couple female friends and a drunken lout made an inappropriate comment to one of the ladies. When the guy stepped in to say something, the whole thing got physical and he got the unholy shit kicked out of him. As the violence ensued, the attacker let loose with various vulgarities, including “faggot.” For this choice of verbiage, police were trying to charge him with a hate-crime enhancement.

I knew the guy who got beat up. He was a Level 24 poon hound. He spent more time between women’s legs than the Victoria’s Secret fall underwear collection. Still, the guy kicking his ass hit a trigger word and that made bad more than a bit worse.

As a matter of course, I’m leaning toward the racism when it comes to Simmonds’ situation, but I’d like to use the FD forum to suggest that idiots who feel the need to test out their throwing arms at sporting events pick a better fruit.

I humbly suggest the politically correct kiwi.

My rationale is as follows:

The size: It’s about the size of a lemon, making it convenient to carry and easy to hide as you attempt to enter the arena of your choice. In fact, if you’re wearing a big coat, have a decent sized purse or you still use a fanny pack, you can take five or six of these things, just in case you aren’t satisfied with your first throwing effort.

The hardness: Apples, oranges, lemons and pears are too hard. You hit someone with one of those from the upper-deck of a decent stadium or arena and you’re likely to cause serious injury. Peaches, nectarines and the like are too squishy, so when they hit, you’ve got to stop the game to clean the ice or scrape up the goo off the grass. Mangos, melons and grapefruits? You're looking at rotator cuff surgery. Kiwis have a nice shell on them that protects them from shattering on impact, but are soft enough inside (if you get them in a fairly ripened state) to not do any major damage.

The color: The turd-like hue can convey your displeasure and people can still see it on TV. It can show up on grass or ice. Works for either way.

The PC factor: Bananas have that same “outer-shell, mushy-center” thing, but again, there’s that whole racism thing. Kiwis are brown and fuzzy on the outside, showing a softer size of people’s general crankiness. Inside, you’ve got black seeds and a white core, living together, intermingled in harmony. If aliens are discovered and start to dominate our games, you’ve got the green fruit built right in. As these things look like fuzzy testicle totes, the only people who should be insulted are people who look like ball sacks.

Sure you could pick any one of a dozen other fruits, but the kiwi seems perfect. It’s light, small and non-racially charged. That way, when you physically attack a player, embarrass yourself and get thrown in jail, you’ll only be arrested for being a moron and not a racist.

Family Feud

   

We here at First Draft are usually on the same page; other than Athenae and Doc's ice people obsession with hockey. This week, however, we are divided by football: the fleur de lis helmeted dudes versus the cheeseheads. I'm not planning to secede from FD because I'm very fond of the Packers and root for them against everyone else. If I didn't, A might slip a ferret down my pants and if she were in a pissy mood, it would be Riot the hard ass instead of wee Claire. I won't even describe the unspeakable stuff Scout might do because she's too nice to do anything unspeakable unless she delegates the dirty work to Jude...

I'll give the awesome Saints blogger Grandmaster Wang the last word:

 It's a shame that the Packers are a threat to the Saints' efforts toward renewed NFC dominance, because otherwise, I wish them no specific harm.

There's an awful lot to like about the Packers. There's the whole municipally-owned thing they've got going on, Mike McCarthy's uncanny resemblance to Ralph Wiggum, his and Ted Thompson's hilarious curbstomping of Brett Favre back in 2008, the rich history, Vince Lombardi, their tailgating virtuosity, and on and on. I think we can all agree that the Packers are nowhere near Chicago and Minnesota on the asshole scale.

And of course we all respect the hell out of Wisconsin's longstanding contributions to keeping Americans' pie holes perpetually stuffed with various meat and cheese products, not to mention alcoholic beverages. By golly, if they weren't the enemy, we could probably be friends.

Unfortunately, they are in fact the enemy. So fuck them. We can be friends in week 5, assuming this time they can manage to not shit the bed in the last minute against Atlanta

Losing Ugly

College football is back and my LSU Tigers played a helluva game without their first string QB who is suspended for having 49 pairs of sneakers. Actually, Jordan Jefferson is accused of kicking some drunk douchebag in the head whilst wearing sneakers but the number 49 has stuck in my head. The only kicking I saw last night was of Duck ass: LSU 40 Oregon 27. The game wasn't as close as the final score either.

It was a great opener and young Tyrann Mathieu scored the first TD of the season for LSU by recovering a fumble. I mention him because his father Tyrone is my UPS man and I have derivative bragging rights. Tyrone is a rock star in his own right: he was Zulu King in 2009.

I came not to praise LSU but to ridicule the Oregon Ducks uniforms. There was much mockery of their jammy looking unis on the tweeter tube and I came up with a frequently re-tweeted one liner: The color of Oregon's shoes is regurgitated margarita:

Oregon wasn't the only losing college football team to wear hideous uniforms in their 2011 debut. How about dem Dawg unis? 

 

A rule of thumb is that when you play in your pyjamas, you will get your ass kicked...

Rare Good News

I don't know about you but I needed some good news. The NFL Lockout is over and Dead Spin used it as an excuse to drop a whole lotta F-bombs. My addition: fuck you Reggie Bush, take your overpriced ass elsewhere.

I'm looking forward to a bit of good natured woofing with Athenae and Doc over the season opening tussle between the Saints and Packers. Then, I'll resume rooting for the Pack against everyone else. Y'all better do likewise with the Saints or I'll sick my goons on you...

One more fusillade: fuck the Falcons.

Good night, John Mackey

When it mattered most, John Mackey had an incredible sense of timing.

In Super Bowl V, with the Baltimore Colts trailing 6-0, the Hall of Fame tight end made the most of a broken play, grabbing a ball tipped by two other players and racing 75 yards for the game’s first touchdown.

Baltimore would go on to win the game 16-13, in what was later dubbed “The Blunder Bowl” for all of its turnovers and penalties. Still, the victory helped wash away some of the sting from the Super Bowl III loss, which was highlighted by Joe Namath’s “guarantee.”

Mackey, who died Wednesday, helped revolutionize the game on several important fronts.

After being drafted out of Syracuse in 1963, he helped move the tight end position from  being that of a blocker to one of an offensive weapon. At 6-foot-2, 225 pounds, he was a mammoth receiver for his day. Teammates said he’d almost rather run through you than around you, even though he could do the latter with ease. His speed had the Colts using him for punt and kickoff returns in the mid-1960s.

Today, tight ends like Jermichael Finley and Kellen Winslow are common in the passing game, but they owe their role in the offense to Mackey and his contemporaries.

They owe their livelihood to him as well.

He served as the president of the players’ association during the post-NFL merger era. His efforts brought more than $11 million in pension and benefits to the players, a sizeable sum now and a hefty one in 1970.

His anti-trust suit in 1977 helped overturn a rule requiring heavy compensation for teams that signed free agents. Mackey’s argument was that this penalty prevented players from moving freely from team to team.

According to all accounts, Mackey was an intelligent man who understood that you couldn’t play on Sunday forever and you needed some sort of fall-back plan. He fought for players’ rights to his own detriment.

Despite being one of the best receiving tight-ends of his era and being named to the All-Century Team at his alma mater, he didn’t enter the Hall of Fame until 1992. Many speculated the 20-year gap between his last game and his gold jacket was due in large part to his union efforts.

Mackey didn’t have much time to enjoy his life as a Hall of Famer. The punishment he suffered in the “if it ain’t broken, you’re playing” era led to a series of concussions. He spent the last years of his life suffering from dementia that required constant care.

For those of us who remember seeing Mackey at his most eloquent, the sight of him in that giant cowboy hat and sunglasses, begging his wife for a ride in the car was almost too much to bear.

The pension he received, which had not grown much in the years since he secured the benefits, only provided $2,500 a month to him. The cost of his basic care far exceeded that amount.

The man who once ran over players was now required to run to them, pleading for help not just for himself, but for the others who would be sure to follow. In response, the NFL and its players created the “88 Plan,” which provided care for people like Mackey. Critics of the plan argue it’s not enough and fails to fully address the needs of retired players who are suffering untold damages.

Today, the family of John Mackey is making plans for his funeral. While his body may be committed to the earth, his brain is going to Boston for study at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. The center, hosted at Boston University, has the brains of more than 30 players and commitments from dozens more as it attempts to establish a link between violent sports collisions and dementia, depression and suicide.

Meanwhile, NFL players and owners will continue their wrangling over how to divide the proceeds of a multi-billion-dollar business. One of the areas of discussion has been how much of what is being earned now should be used to help those who played earlier. Retired players have also requested a seat at the table for future contract negotiations.

In his final act on this earth, Mackey’s death may serve as an impetus for stronger consideration of both of these topics.

Once again, it appears that John Mackey had incredible timing when it mattered the most.

Locked Out

The inevitable has happened: the NBA has locked out its players. Wonder if anyone asked Neil Finn what he thought? Probably not:

 

Nut free nights

Some people have severe nut allergies, which is something I don't recall hearing about until recently. Major League Baseball is on the case:

From Cracker Jacks to bags of straight-up peanuts, baseball games can be a bit of a nightmare for fans with severe nut allergies. According to Reuters, about half of all MLB teams will host at least one "nut-controlled game" this season, so even the most allergic fans have a chance for to catch a foul ball with their beer. A nut-free game typically means "an isolated section of around 100 seats that have been thoroughly cleaned," not selling nuts nearby, and having medical staff on hand in case of an emergency. One Chicago mother of a highly nut-allergic young baseball fan said that hearing the crunching of peanut shells during a game is "like being in a horror movie."

Huh? I have allergies and Dr. A has some pretty bad ones but audio allergies? The only audio allergies I have are to Lawrence Welk and eurotrash electronica. <synth drum rim shot>

I don't really have a problem with nut free nights: it's never a bad thing when a business tries to please its customers. Besides, nut free nights is (are?) fun to say and evokes some inordinately silly imagery such as players with empty cups... <painful rim shot>

I know, however, one person who might find this trend worrisome and it's Harlan Pepper the nut naming dog dude from Best In Show.

 

 What's a nut namer to do without any nuts? Sing this song?

 

I couldn't find the version I really wanted: Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts. I haven't heard their Nuts To You LP since I was in kneepants. Wait a minute, I'm wearing shorts right now so I am indeed wearing knee pants. It's fucking hot here y'all.

Back to Doug Clark, here's the classic as well as "classy" in the Good Fellas sense cover:

Bleeding Dodger Red Ink

 
Tommy LaSorda and Steve Garvey: reunited and it feels so good.

Tommy LaSorda managed the Los Angeles Dodgers for 20 years. LaSorda was a dick who hid his malakatude beneath a rah-rah facade. He famously claimed that he "bled Dodger blue." The current ownership is bleeding so much red ink that they've declared bankruptcy. Incompetence, venality and shark-like divorce lawyers have combined to run one of the crown jewels of American sports into the ground. Ownership of the Dodgers was a license to make big bucks until the McCourts got their hands on the team.

As a lifelong fan of the rival San Francisco Giants, I shouldn't give a rat's ass but I do. Why? It was more fun to hate the Dodgers when they were the wealthiest team in MLB not owned by George Steinbrenner. I had a pathological loathing of 1B Steve Garvey when I was a tadpole. Garvey was a sanctimonious family values Gooper type who turned out to have major zipper issues. I learned a lot about hypocrisy and malakatude from observing Garvey who was a good but overrated player as well as a serious candidate for the malakatude hall of fame.

The Dodgers were once the model of a well-run organization: they developed their own players, kept their managers forever and were, all in all, a worthy adversary and worthy of my sports hatred. Recently, they've been decent and unmemorable as opposed to the historic franchise that integrated baseball whilst in Brooklyn.

The current ownership stopped maintaining Dodger Stadium and cut corners on security so badly that a Giants fan was nearly beaten to death in the parking lot at Chavez Ravine earlier this season.

There's a lot of chatter that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is interested in buying the team. I hope so: I'd prefer that the Dodgers be worthy of my sports hatred again.

Twitterweenies

Oh, for fuck's sake:

Rich Eisen was not "so horny." He was hacked.

Ray Allen did not ask anyone if when they masturbate, do they "think about my tongue or your clit and switching back and forth from my dick to my tongue." He was hacked.

Carmelo Anthony did not put out a hit on groupie Kat Stacks. He was hacked.

Will Hill did not and does not go harder than a Russian, nor does he shit in airports. He was hacked.

I really think there needs to be some kind of on-ramp for the Internet, especially for adults. For every stupid drunk picture I see some college-age kid uploading to Facebook, there's some grown-ass man sending pictures of his dong out into the public and expecting, despite Brett Favre's spectacular example, nobody to actually notice it. Is something going on with people my parents' ages, where we have to sit down and have The Talk about appropriate online behavior? I ask you.

A.

Malakas Of The Week: The Vancouver Hockey Rioters

I don't know anything about hockey but I know from malakatude. This whole riot thing cuts against everything I thought I knew about Canadians. The Canadians I've met aren't rioters and they're certainly not malakas: they tend to be very polite people but polite is the last word I'd use to describe this:

 

I have a funny feeling that these malakas were likkered up.  It probably smelled like a cross between a brewery, distillery and refinery on the usually clean streets of Vancouver. Oy, such malakatude.

I'm waiting for the first American wingnut to blame this bloody mess on socialized medicine. Anyone have any guesses as to who it will be? My money is on Rushbo: he gets rather cranky without his oxycontin, after all. Plus I believe he played hockey without a helmet as a young man, which could explain a great deal...

One thing about this clusterfuck: at least Canadians riot when their team loses. American fans tend to torch cars and smash beer bottles when they win. Why? I'll never know...

This violent and disgusting episode has, of course, been condemned by decent folk in Vancouver but it leaves me with two thoughts. First, it reminds me of the old joke "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out." Second, it explains why one of my comedic heroes Don Rickles calls malakas, "hockey pucks."

I'll let the late Warren Zevon have the last word:

 

UPDATE: One of my tweeter tube pals has put up a new  tumblr site, Stuff White People Like: the Vancouver Riots.

LeBron and Me

(Got a "hall pass" from A to post as long as it was before midnight. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. -- Doc)

One year ago, I took advantage of an off-day “hall pass” to complain about “The Decision” and the loss of LeBron James from my beloved Cavaliers.

I then spent every second of my basketball watching hoping that he would hurt as much as I hurt.

Every Miami loss was a celebration, every bad game, a triumph.

As the playoffs began, I found myself watching game after game, hoping that the Heat would get bumped off.

Each game they won, I wondered if there really was such a thing as karma.

I started getting very emo.

“If there is a God, how can he let this group of mercenaries and self-centered assholes win?”

“If life is fair, how can this be happening?”

“If I have to say, ‘NBA Champion LeBron James,’ I might start Betsy up in the garage, close the garage door and turn on a Cure album.”

Tonight, I realized that it had to be this way for karma to fully bloom.

For James to hurt as much as I did, several things had to happen:

• He had to be teased.
• He had to get as close as possible, only to have the diamond snatched away from him.
• He had to be crushed under the weight of his own ego.
• He had to lose in the worst way.

Mission accomplished.

He lost, not in the first or second or third round, but in the finals. He got there, got close and got kicked in the balls.

He lost to a team led by a guy who never asked out of town, never threatened to leave and never went on TV talking about himself in the third person.

Dirk Nowitzki said in an ESPN interview that when he was available as a free agent, not a single team called him. It wasn’t due to their lack of interest or his lack of talent.

They knew he was staying in Dallas. Why bother?

Loyalty.

A word that tested Dirk when owner Mark Cuban let his running partner and point guard of the gods, Steve Nash, bolt for Phoenix.

A word that angered Dirk when media pundits argued he’d need to leave the Metroplex if he were to ever win a title.

A word Dirk saw every day at practice, as it was tattooed down the left arm of Shawn Marion.

Marion, one of the pieces that Cuban quietly brought to Big D in an attempt to give Nowitzki one more run at a title, was no longer the Matrix.

He was more name than game.

The same could be said for the other broken toys that Cuban added.

Jason Kidd, the same point guard that was sent from Dallas to the Phoenix Suns in 1996 for Michael Finley, A.C. Green and Sam Cassell.

Tyson Chandler, a former first-round pick of the Bulls who never lived up to expectations.

J.J. Barea, an undrafted 5-foot-9 point guard who was best known for dating Miss Universe 2006.

Brian Cardinal, Brendan Haywood, Ian Mahinmi, DeShawn Stevenson, Corey Brewer and more. All guys who were bit players, castoffs or otherwise damaged.

All of these guys played meaningful minutes in a finals series built for crunch time.

Three of the six games came down to the final shot.

In none of those games was it James who delivered.

----

 The thing that kept playing in my head all night, as the clock wound down and the Mavericks’ lead grew to an insurmountable level was the opening scene of “Miracle.” When the Olympic hockey committee is yammering about how the Russians beat their guys, the NHL, the All-Stars, a clearly perturbed Herb Brooks makes the passing remark, “It wasn’t because you weren’t good enough.”

When the men cast an incredulous stare upon him, Brooks elaborates with, “All-Star teams fail because they rely solely on the individuals talent.”

That was the Miami Heat: An insanely talented group of individuals.

Not a team.

A team knows where it’s going when the chips are down. In two of the finals games, it was Nowitzki making the final plays, calling for the final shots and making the crucial decisions.

A team knows how to step up. When Nowitzki started off Game 6 with 1-for-12 slide, Jason Terry and DeShawn Stevenson stepped up, drilling shot after shot, holding off the Heat until reinforcements arrived.

A team knows to have faith in each member of that team. When Haywood couldn’t go and Chandler got into foul trouble, Mahinmi and Cardinal played gut-check minutes, despite lacking the Heat’s star power or talent level.

A team wins, because it’s greater than the sum of its parts.

That was always Brooks’ message.

It’s one I doubt the Heat won’t get tonight.

It’s something James will never understand.

---

A river of schadenfreude is likely flowing freely through the streets of Cleveland tonight. Sure, we didn’t win the NBA title, but neither did the man who quit on us and then pissed on us and then tried to pretend like we should all get on with our lives.

He walked down an empty hallway to a locker room that was devoid of championship goods. No special hats, no T-shirts, no champagne.

Tomorrow, thousands of kids in Nairobi, or wherever we send the losing merchandise, will likely be donning “A Ring for the King” T-shirts that were supposed to be flying off the shelves in Miami this week.

Tomorrow, he can read the clever headlines, the pundit columns and the general bile directed at him.

Tomorrow, I’ll get up and he’ll get up and we’ll be exactly the same.

Two guys without an NBA title.

Only this time, he’ll be hurting.

And I won’t be.

Dirktastic

Lebron James could learn a thing or three from Dirk Nowitski. Dirk had a horrible first half but kept shooting and busting his ass and scored 10 crucial points in the 4th Quarter.

I have *never* rooted for a Dallas sports team before but I've become very fond of this Mavericks team. Congratulations, y'all.

Repeat after me: it was Dirktastic.

Deep Hoops Thought

If Lebron disappears again in the Fourth Quarter, I wonder if announcers Van Gundy and Jackson will stop calling this mook the greatest player ever. Probably not. LeBron always has an excuse for folding under pressure and they buy it every time. I'm not sure if he's more like the incredible shrinking man or the invisible man...

In contrast to Lebron, Dirk Nowitzki is excelling in the Fourth Quarter and has gotta be the first underrated white superstar in NBA history. Guess it's zat German accent. I usually root against Dallas sports teams but I've come to think that he's Dirktastic even if his owner is douchetastic.

O-H! Oh NO!

The news that Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel resigned this week wasn’t a shocker. The national media had been pounding on him for weeks about his lack of honesty when it came to the “memorabilia-for-ink” scandal. The story goes that several of his players had traded championship rings, jerseys and other iconic pieces of merchandise for discounted or free tattoos, among other things. One of the tattoo artists was in the crosshairs of the Feds as a potential drug distributor, so the scrutiny was a bit tighter than it might have been otherwise. The NCAA was peeved at all of this, but that’s not what got Tressel run out of town. He denied knowledge of this whole thing, even though he possessed emails from a concerned alumnus, stating this was going on. He kept denying until the emails came out and the shit hit the fan.

It’s also not shocking that the OSU student newspaper, The Lantern, helped bust this story wide open. In advance of a long, painfully drawn out story in Sports Illustrated, which showed this stuff had been going on for years, the paper got an exclusive interview with a player who not only ratted himself out, but said that a ton of others had been doing it and that most of the players “don’t think about the rules.”

Student journalists are often at the frontlines of stories like these and they do a great job because a) they’re better connected than the national media who sweep in and expect to catch up in a day or two and b) they’re tenacious as a cockroach and as unrelenting as a toothache. They’ve not been stripped of their soul yet.

Here are two things that ARE either surprising, disappointing or just plain stupid:

1) Both Tressel and former wide receiver Ray Small, who was the primary source for the Lantern piece, denied saying, doing or even thinking about any rule breaking. Immediately after the situation began to unravel, Small talked to multiple national media outlets, including ESPN, and said the paper “just flipped my words around.” Although denials happen every day, Small’s interview was recorded and he KNEW it was recorded. After he accused the paper of lying, the staff of the Lantern put the audio online. It was worse than what was in the story.

This isn’t the Nixon White House. You know that you’re being recorded (or in Tressel’s case, you know “You’ve Got Mail!”). Denying that you said or heard or did something makes absolutely no sense and only makes you look dumber and more weasel-like in the process.

When I was in grad school, I had a confrontation with another TA over some sort of union action she wanted me to take. I disagreed as politely as possible until she left. When she was gone, I turned to my officemate, whom I liked quite a bit, and said words that are unprintable, even here. He politely heard me out and then said, “You realize that’s my fiancée you’re talking about.”

I could have done the Tressel thing. I could have done the Small thing. Instead, I just said, “Sorry about that” and let it go. He stopped talking to me for the rest of the term, but I understood.

For people who are in such a “manly sport” where you “man up” and “take it like a man” when punishment is delivered on the field, these guys are acting like little bitches.

2) A recent ESPN report has noted that Zack Meisel, the Lantern’s editor in chief, has been getting death threats regarding the publication of the piece. For starters, it’s not his fault this was going on. The paper wasn’t running a “turn in your championship shit for FREE INK” ads, entrapping these idiots.

Second, the end was coming down the tracks anyways. The Feds were involved, SI had a huge cover story coming out and the Columbus Dispatch had set up camp in Tressel’s rectal cavity. It’s not like this kid single-handedly killed your program. It was a great story and a big part of this, but he’s not the David Stanley of OSU.

Finally, and most importantly, what the hell is wrong with people? I understand sports are vital to many people (and I count myself among them), but it’s not really life and death. Tressel was a great coach, a good motivator and he was 9-1 against Michigan (the true measure of an OSU coach). He was not Gandhi, MLK or John F. Kennedy.

A threat like this should come with some heavy penalties. It probably won’t, because, hey, the person sending the probably was upset or didn’t mean it or was just having a bad day or hyperbolic.

Please. Spare me the bullshit.

We tend not to take these threats seriously, which is why we have a U.S. representative recovering from a bullet to her brain and why six people are dead today in Arizona. When it comes to the media, we tend to be even less serious about it. When it comes to STUDENT media, it almost passes without incident because, as one colleague once told me, they’re only “playing reporter.” Not really, but even if it’s just “pretend journalism,” it could be a real gun.

Threats against the media should be treated as an affront to the foundation of our nation. The Framers didn’t put “freedom of the press” in the First Amendment because they were trying to round it out and figured it sounded good. They knew that without free and open discussions via the media, we’d be no better off than we were under English rule.

When you threaten to take away that right through acts or threats of violence, you debase our country and you undermine our citizenry.

The Internet Confesses to Murder: Sports Journalism Edition

This will sound familiar to anyone who's watched the Washington press corps in action in the past decade:

This is what Berman said in regard to the NFL forcing the network to cancel its Playmakers series:

I'm a simple guy. I don't watch TV. I don't go on the Internet. So I never watched Playmakers, but I knew if the league was pissed, I probably should be pissed.

[snip]

"So I never watched Playmakers, but I knew if the league was pissed, I probably should be pissed."

What the fuck? Hey, I never watched this show. But I knew if a bunch of assholes at the league office were yelling at my colleagues about it, then I probably should yell at them too!

The reason I bring this up, apart from that it's a great dissection of a dipshit famewhore who's just spouting nonsense to justify his existence, is that it points out that yet again the real problem with much of today's high-level journalism is too much identification with sources, and an absence of balls on the part of the bosses who are supposed to be watching out for this sort of thing and yanking on the offender's choke collar.

I can't stress enough how critical this is, and how lacking it really is at the highest levels where you need some people to tell you, look, you're too close to this, take a day off, take Dick Cheney's balls out of your mouth, and try not to get so excited that you got invited to the White House Correspondents' Dinner because it's gross. It's a human impulse to sympathize with people you spend a lot of time around. There's nothing mysterious about how it works, which is why smart managers of newsrooms keep an eye out for this shit.

Lickspittle spoiled brats who think they're above such base considerations, like Berman or just about any other TV pundit you could name covering everything from NASCAR to the NYSE, have developed such star power, such a "brand" in their own right, that everybody's afraid to tell them they're being enormous douchebags and siding with the wrong people. Even people whose express job it is to say those things. You're supposed to know where your loyalties lie, and here's a free hint: Not with anybody on the other side of your microphone.

A.

Caption This

Bring out the gimp

There’s been a lot of stupid out here in the north lately, but fortunately for Wisconsin, we’ve got Minnesota to make us look good. Sure, we have Governor Deadeyes and his merry band of idiots passing laws that will have pollsters screaming “Papers, please! You must have your papers in order!” prior to voting, cutting funding to public land programs and making decisions that have yielded about 912 legal challenges to about everything he does.

And yet, Minnesota has Timberwolves GM David Kahn. This guy makes Scott Walker look like a Mensa candidate. Or at least a college graduate.

Minnesota had the best chance of landing the top pick in the 2011 NBA draft this week, only to be undone by the bad luck of the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers, whose woes are explained here in unending detail, traded their unprotected lottery pick in this year’s draft to Cleveland as part of a salary dump. When the Clips traded the pick, they had less than a 5 percent chance of winning this thing. By the time the season ended, the odds had dwindled to 2.8 percent.

Of course, their ping pong ball bounced to the top of the draft lottery, giving the Cavs the first pick in the draft.

Representing Cleveland was Nick Gilbert, the 14-year-old son of the team’s owner Dan Gilbert. Nick suffers from neurofibromastosis, a disease that has tumors popping up on his body wherever and whenever. The way most teens get acne, this kid gets tumors. He’s lost vision in one eye, gone through tons of cancer treatment and suffered through brain surgery. Dan Gilbert called his son, “my personal hero” and sent him up there as a good-luck charm for the luckless Cavs.

When he won, it was a great story. Too great to be a coincidence for Kahn:

Wolves general manager David Kahn said he knew Minnesota was "dead" when it got down to the final three of himself, Utah executive Kevin O'Connor and Nick Gilbert.

"This league has a habit, and I am just going to say habit, of producing some pretty incredible story lines," Kahn said. "Last year it was Abe Pollin's widow and this year it was a 14-year-old boy and the only thing we have in common is we have both been bar mitzvahed. We were done. I told Kevin: 'We're toast.' This is not happening for us and I was right."

In other words, the fix was in. If you bring a widow or a kid with a freakish illness on the stage, the NBA (where caring happens) will find a way to give you a reason to smile.

Kahn tried to backpedal out of this by telling the media later he meant this to be a joke. If you heard it live, you know it really wasn’t. It was a grumpy old man being grumpy that his franchise didn’t get what it wanted. In doing so, he insulted a kid who was having the time of his life (he told one reporter “What’s not to like?” spawning the next generation of T-shirt slogans for Cleveland). Kahn also called into question the integrity of his own business, something for which I’m sure Commissioner David Stern will lighten Kahn’s wallet.

The most disgusting thing, however, is that Kahn played the “gimp card.” He didn’t say it directly, but it was right there. You could practically hear the gerbil huffing and puffing inside his head as he thought to next year’s lottery:

“I need to go out and get my own hard-luck story to prop up here. Wonder if I can find the mother of a  kid who died after a terrorist threw him in a farming thresher or a guy with VD so bad it’s crawled up onto his hands and eats the wood off his pencils…”

There are a hell of a lot worse things in life than not winning the NBA’s number one pick (especially in a draft as shitty as this), and Nick Gilbert is living with one of them. When the NBA decides to hit Kahn with a fine for being an idiot, I hope they make him cut the check to Washington University’s School of Medicine.

It hosts the NF Center, which is positioning itself as an international leader in research and support for people who suffer from this illness.

Harmon Killebrew, R.I.P.

The gentle, slow afoot but fearsome at the plate Baseball Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew has died at the age of 74. Killebrew would have been the one to break Roger Maris' home run record if he'd played in the whip bat, steroid, small ballpark era. He still hit 573 dingers in his career and was universally loved and respected during his days as a Minnesota Twin.

Now that I've said my piece, check out the great Joe Posnanski's ode to Harmon.

Malaka Of The Week: Jamarcus Russell

Malakatude comes in many forms. In the case of Jamarcus Russell, it's a combination of schmuckery and hubris and as much as I hate piling on a former LSU Tiger great, he's the obvious choice for this week's "honor." 

Jamarcus was a great college Quarterback. He improved every year at LSU and looked like he had the chance to be at least as good a pro as fellow Louisianian Doug Williams. Williams was also a big QB with a powerful arm. It took him awhile to develop as a pro but he was pretty damn good. Williams, however, is a smart guy and Jamarcus, well, not so much.

I have friends who are fanatical Tiger fans as well as some who are in the loop about all things LSU sports. I kept hearing that Jamarcus was as dumb as a bag of hammers but since some of the guys who held that opinion have some issues with black folks, I dismissed it as racist hoo-ha. It used to be a cliche that blacks didn't have-in former Dodger GM Al Campanis' memorable phrase-the "necessities" to do certain things in the world of sports including play QB in the NFL. Mercifully, those days are long gone and African-American QB's are very common. That's why I dismissed the "Jamarcus is a dumbshit" chatter but I was wrong.

Russell was the first pick in the 2007 NFL draft. He held out his rookie season and played for the Oakland Raiders who have gone from one of the best organizations in pro football to one of the worst. He played poorly in his rookie season but I was certain he'd improve as he had in college. I was wrong about that too. If anything, Russell, got more confused by NFL defenses and was released in 2010 by the Raiders whose alternatives at QB were Jason Campbell and Bruce Gradkowski. Neither is exactly the next Snake Stabler or Jim Plunkett.

After his release, Russell's life seem to skid out of control: he was arrested for morphine possession in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama and seems to have spent his fat guaranteed contract money. And his McMansion is in foreclosure.

One one level, I feel sorry for Jamarcus but the latest news item confirms his malakatude. He has been let go by his "life coach" former NBA point guard John Lucas. Lucas is a highly intelligent man, who was plagued with drug and booze problems, but has turned his life around and works to straighten out troubled athletes. Russell doesn't know a good thing when he's got one and may have lost his last chance to get another shot at the NFL. If John Lucas can't help him, who can?

Money, stupidity and hubris are a toxic brew: not only is Jamarcus Russell the biggest bust in NFL draft history, he's also malaka of the week.

It's Over

It was a Hoop nightmare in Houston: two very good college teams shot very poorly. The Huskies ate the Bulldogs but it was ugly, ugly, ugly. The only good thing about the game was that it gave me an excuse to post this swell Squeeze song:

 

 

Discovering Japan

I've never been to Japan but have always had an affinity for the Japanese. Part of it has to do with growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area but most of it has to do with my father, Lou. He was honorary Japanese for a very unusual reason: he spoke the language pretty damn well for a Greek dude from the Mountain West.

He learned Japanese when he was in the army during World War II. It was a classic application of illogical military logic: since he spoke fluent Greek, which was an oddball language so as far as the Army was concerned, he could bloody well learn Japanese. Lou wasn't big on talking about his wartime experiences: he died before Band Of  Brothers made sharing war stories more common but I've pieced together some story fragments. My mom assured me that he was VERY relieved to be assigned to G-2 instead of being infantry cannon fodder.

Interestingly enough, working as a wartime translator made Lou sympathetic to, and fond of, the Japanese soldiers he debriefed. He told me that the guys from Captain on down through the ranks, weren't the bloodthirsty maniacs he saw in the propaganda films but ordinary guys hoping to survive the war and get back to their families just like him. Obviously, he never interrogated any kamikaze pilots...

After the war, he let his Japanese language skills rust until we moved to California. He realized right away that speaking Japanese could be an asset so he brushed up on his Japanese and became proficient again. It paid off: as I said before, he became honorary Japanese. His best friend, a banker named Joe Kubokawa, left my father his beloved Cadillac in his will. An odd bequest but Lou had once admired the Caddy and Joe never forgot. Joe was old school that way. He also had season tickets for the Giants so I liked him for that reason as well. Joe's seats were so good that I halfway expected either Juan Marichal's high leg kick or the gunk from Gaylord Perry's spitter to hit me upside the head.

I suppose that little waltz down memory lane should lead to my posting Cadillac Ranch BUT rumour has it that I've had Graham Parker's Discovering Japan in my head ever since nature did a number on Japan:

 

Newt's code

What he said:  Obama is too into hoops.

What he meant: Obama is too black.

That concludes this evening's edition of dog whistle theatre.

Winning at the Whole World Forever

Via Cliff's Crib, this guy is really, really, really something:

Even though his right side was still tender and sore, Kevin Jordan hasn't felt this good since last February, when a mysterious illness began sapping his strength and eventually caused his kidneys to shut down.

To his right was Wake Forest coach Tom Walter, who has always considered his players to be like family. No one will ever doubt the sincerity of those words. Not after he gave up one of his healthy kidneys so the 19-year-old Jordan would have a shot at a normal, healthy life.

[snip]

Sure, there were some reservations. Walter has two young children of his own, an 11-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter.

"One of the things you think about is, what happens if one of your kids needs a kidney and you can't provide it?" Walter said. "But you can't worry about things like that. It's like never leaving the house because you're afraid you'll get hit by a car. You can't live like that."

A.

How could I forget this?

Mike and the bots make like rabid Packers fans. I bet it looked like this at Doc's crib the other night:

 

Via Steve Caldwell on Facebook. The clip is from Giant Spider Invasion.

So There Was a Game Last Night

I love my people, I really do:

Elation was the word Jim Zirbel used for the emotion he experienced Sunday night, though the smile across his face made it obvious.

His beloved Green Bay Packers had just won Super Bowl XLV, and Zirbel knew thousands of fellow fans soon would descend on the parking lot at Lambeau Field to join in the celebration, turning what had been a quiet night of tailgating into bedlam.

The Madison-area resident had watched the game with friends on a generator-powered TV beneath a tent on the Oneida Street side of Lambeau. The group chose Lambeau over a site with amenities — heat and restrooms among them — because, as Zirbel said, “this is the epicenter.”

[snip]

Matt Richardson, 21, a student a Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas, got a goldfish with a Packers logo tattooed to the left side of his rear Saturday night. Now that the Packers won, he said he’ll buy a live goldfish.

And I hope he will name it Aaron. Or Rodger. Or Woodson. Or Clay.

I think I'm still a little drunk. Mr. A and I watched the game at Doc's, where we thoroughly corrupted his Midget by forgetting to say "earmuffs" before wishing unspeakable acts upon the officials, receivers who dropped passes, various Steelers and the press box full of Bush administration war criminals. Mr. A then made it up to her by building a Lego house in the waning moments of the game, while Doc's Missus and I experimented to find the precise amount of vodka that would be an appropriate response to the situation without being needlessly dramatic.

I hereby apologize to the entire cul-de-sac for scooping up the Midget and a couple of Packer flags and staging a one-woman, one-Midget parade around the snowy driveway yelling at the top of our lungs. It was her first Super Bowl. It had to be special, and it was, because a beat-up bunch of guys who were counted out months ago, who are owned by their town and loved by their state just won the whole shebang. I'm a lot tired and a little hungover this morning, and I'm happy for my team and my state and my people everywhere, but mostly I'm just sorry this football season's finally over. It was so much fun to watch.

A.

Champagne Supernova

It's Super Bowl Sunday. I'm rooting for the Packers partially because I have ancestral roots in Cheeseland and partially because I don't want Athenae, Doc and Scout coming after me. I dread the wrath of Riot...

Anyway, since it's Super Sunday it's clearly time to head to the Oasis for some Champagne Supernova:

 

 

First Amendment Friday (or thank you Dan Snyder for giving me a posting topic...)

Several people in high places have apparently failed to understand the Constitutional protections of the First Amendment. Thus, we here at First-Draft will be offering this brief refresher course on that fun little tack-on to the Constitution.

Since his team isn’t in the Super Bowl, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder apparently has some time on his hands. He used that free time between the end of the season and the Big Game to file suit against D.C.’s alternative weekly, Washington City Paper, alleging libel, anti-Semitism and general bad manners. The piece in question is titled The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder and pokes at the various ways in which Snyder has failed in football and life in general.

The suit has done three things quite clearly: 1) driven so much site traffic to the paper’s website that the sun has practically dimmed, 2) shown that money can’t buy you everything, especially a sense of humor and 3) illustrated that Dan Snyder needs to retain much better legal counsel.

Here’s the Amendment itself:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It’s only 45 words, probably just the right length for Snyder’s lawyers to read it carefully and bill him for another hour. Instead of giving that a looksee, his counsel wrote a three-page letter about this issue. They didn’t write it to the paper, mind you, but rather to Atalaya Capital Management, which had purchased the paper out of bankruptcy in 2009. They noted that they did this because they wanted to address the columnist’s “desire to patronize his paper’s new masters, who compete with Snyder’s own private equity fund for investors and investments.” Hidden nicely in there is the allegation that the columnist was trying to use his position at an alt-weekly to destroy a billion-dollar investment fund. Uh-huh...

Among the more compelling legal arguments they make regarding their concerns include:

“Can you imagine if your wife was battling breast cancer and her public role as the National Football League’s national spokesperson on breast cancer awareness was demeaned as a mere public relations ploy to “sell” the “transformation” of her husband’s public image?”

“Likewise, how would you react if you were vilified by an anti-Semitic caricature of you?”

In other words, OMG MEEENN!!!!! It also helps to note that the “anti-Semitic caricature” consisted of scribbling a unibrow, a beard and horns on a photo of Snyder. Had they included an arrow through his head or several blacked out teeth, I’m sure Snyder would have had grounds to sue on being anti-William Tell or anti-bad dental hygiene.

The letter goes on to laundry list of things Snyder considered to be “blatantly false, misleading or simply irrelevant items.” Good. Glad to know Dan Snyder gets to decide what’s an irrelevant item. Glad we got that cleared up. It’s also worth noting that for lawyers, they apparently don’t own a law book or felt no reason to open one. They did not deal in any way with the First Amendment, any court precedents or anything else legal. In other words, I could have written this. And I might have if I felt like being a bully. To wit:

“We presume that defending such litigation would not be a rational strategy for an investment fund such as yours. Indeed the cost of litigation would presumably quickly outstrip the asset value of the Washington City Paper.”

In other words, cute little investment fund you got here. Shame if something were to happen to it. You might wanna go see the Don and make nice…

The letter back was a thing of beauty. Read the whole thing. I can’t even recap it well enough here. However, here’s my favorite part:

“We encourage you to consult with First Amendment counsel in regard to your claims and would be happy to discuss the matter with such counsel at any time. I expect that, with the advice of counsel and upon further consideration, you will agree that continued debate over the relevant law serves little productive purpose.”

Translation: Dear counselor, Go get yourself a real lawyer who has read the First Amendment and have that person get back to us if you need to. We are happy to discuss this with grown ups.

I suppose I could forgive Dan Snyder for his anger, as he probably doesn’t really value the First Amendment because he was unable to charge it $25 to park some place. However, his lawyers are a different story. If you work with the law, you need to know what the law says. If this particular portion of the law isn’t in your wheelhouse, that’s fine, but don’t fake it.

Speaking of legal people who don’t understand the law, the Florida bar is attempting to limit the use of recording devices in the courtrooms to those of “professional journalists.” In other words, freelancers, book authors, Web folks and other citizen journalists could be prohibited from using these tools as they aren’t being paid cash for their work. Quick, let’s check back in with that Amendment again:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Notice the lack of the word “professional” or “journalist” or “paid” in there anywhere. There’s a good reason you didn’t find them. They’re not there. The Constitution isn’t a document that governs journalists. It governs us all. The Amendment doesn’t set up professional standards. It outlines inalienable rights. What’s next? You need to have a United Protest Workers union card to peaceably assemble? A Talker’s Rights Badge to speak your mind?

In J-school, we make students take communication and media law for a very good reason: If you don’t understand your rights, it is so much easier for people to take them away from you. The more you know, the harder you can push back when that official-sounding letter on Angry Lawyer stationary lands on your desk and demands you stop exercising your rights as a citizen because they can outspend you in a court of law.

(And just in case you're worried that Snyder or Florida or some other ill-informed Constitutional scholar might harm me, you can relax. What I'm doing here is called fair comment. It allows for the review of newsworthy (and other) things. It's a defense against libel. As Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up!")

Today's Aaron Rodgers Fangirling

I can't imagine how I would feel if I was that guy.

A.

"It's just a bruise..."

A good deal has been made of Jay Cutler’s decision not to re-enter the NFC Championship game after sustaining a knee injury. Early chatter had him being a malingerer and a general douche about playing through whatever ailment he had. Current and former players called him out as he wandered the sidelines like the pouty kid who was sitting out a game of kickball because he wasn’t allowed to pitch.

When an MRI revealed an MCL “sprain” or a “tear” depending on how you’re looking at it, the questions went one of two ways: 1) “Why didn’t someone get him a damned ice bag and crutches so he at least LOOKED hurt?” or 2) “Why didn’t that wuss take a shot of something, strap on a knee brace and get back out there?”

I was hoping he’d get back out there. He was really helping to author a Packers-Whomever Super Bowl Sunday. After “Stupid Cutler Decision” #231,352 that day, The Missus was planning her Super Bowl Party menu. Only after Caleb Hanie started evoking the ghost of Frank Reich did she stop trying to figure out how to make buffalo wing pierogis and join me in my panic.

In retrospect, maybe the only smart thing Cutler did all day was to sit out that second half. A recent study by Washington University, commissioned by ESPN, found that painkiller misuse among current and former players is bordering on an epidemic. The study, which you can read here, found that 52 percent of the retired players surveyed stated they used painkillers during their careers. Of that group, more than 70 percent said they misused them. Finally, the study revealed that the rate of misuse of opioid painkillers by retired players was more than four times that of the general public.

The NFL’s response was what you would expect:

Dr. Lawrence S. Brown, the NFL's medical adviser for substances of abuse, cast doubt on the research: "It is scientifically flawed to compare the general population with athletes, active or retired."

Brown said comparing retired NFL players to the general population is like "comparing apples to oranges" and added that former NFL players understandably would be more susceptible to the misuse of painkillers simply due to their increased exposure to the drugs during their playing days.

"In the NFL and all sports, part of employment includes relief of pain because of the prevalence of injury," Brown said. "If you don't have the exposure, you're less likely to misuse."

(SNIP)

The NFL's Brown said that drug-use statistics for the general population tend be artificially low because surveys typically do not include high-risk populations like prisoners or the homeless.

Yes, because the fact that so many of them are abusing the painkillers (some participants said they took upwards of 130 pills per day) isn’t important. The fact that these people admitted that the pharmacy was always open doesn’t matter. The fact that the lack of guaranteed contracts meant that they were in constant fear of being discarded and that drove them to pill abuse doesn’t matter.

It’s that the researcher didn’t survey the homeless. That’s the problem.

By focusing on the comparative nature of the data, the NFL can shift the discussion away from the reality that men who are in their 40s can’t walk without pain. It can also move the discussion away from the idea that misuse is rampant and that either through commission or omission, the NFL isn’t helping the matter. The fact is football is a violent game and that most of these men will do anything to play.

Until they can’t.

Yet, on game days, couch-dwelling meatbags, who are watching the game on their 90-inch TV screen over the top of their protruding guts, are screaming at a guy like Cutler, “GET UP, YOU PUSSY!” They consider his inability to stand on a flayed knee, a broken back or a crushed foot a sign of weakness. They want him to tape it up, brace it up or shoot it up and GET THE FUCK IN THERE RIGHT NOW! WE GOT A GAME TO WIN!

Perhaps Cutler isn’t the most likeable figure in football today, but in deciding not to drug the hell out of himself for a shot at the Super Bowl, maybe he was a lot stronger and a lot braver than we give him credit for.

Today's Story of Yay

Because as I try to read Bill Keller, I keep wanting to smash holes in the wall with my head or possibly this laptop, and that's not healthy, so here, have some happy:

Outdoor Afro fans learned about Barbara Hillary, of Queens, NY back in 2009, when she shared how she not only waved goodbye to lung cancer, but also took on a trek hardly imaginable to most to the North Pole on skis at age 75!

Not willing to remain still, this month the venerable Hillary started on another trek, this time to the South Pole. After facing many obstacles to navigate the violent political unrest of gateway countries, many of her crew  returned home after running out of cash, time, and nerves. Hillary, and what remained of her group, finally embarked on the journey just days ago.

A.