Tag: Sports

Sporty

Friday Feature, Movies, Sports

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the great good fortune to watch a few sports movies, again.  (I’ve seen them all at least twice before, but I hadn’t watched many of them for well over a decade.  It was like saying hello to old friends, it was.)  Here they are, in no specific order:

Bull Durham — Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins.  I know the last two are ‘orrible Commies, but that doesn’t take away from the movie’s excellence.  Best part is that it’s pure comedy, unlike the realism of the ones that follow.

Trouble With The Curve — Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams.  Somehow, within the overall frame of the movie, Clinty managed to fit in three little sub-plots:  his relationship with his daughter, her budding relationship with her admirer, and the eternal struggle between the job you love and the successful career (in this case, also hers).  The main plot, that of Clinty struggling to keep his job while persisting in the old ways, is of course brilliant because Eastwood.

Moneyball — Brad Pitt.  Like Draft Day, throw in an actual plot with real characters, drop Brad’s excellent take on Billy Beane’s career with Oakland, and you have it all — without the happy happy joy joy denouement for Billy, just as it actually happened.

Thus spurred on by baseball, I turned to (American) football.

Draft Day — Kevin Costner (again).  Take a suspenseful plot, sprinkle it with realism (real NFL teams and some actual characters, e.g. Jim Brown and Bernie Kosar), throw in an unforgiving timeline, and you have a lovely sports movie that looks behind the scenes instead of on the field.  I have no idea how realistic it was, but that’s not important.

North Dallas Forty — Nick Nolte, Mac Davis.  After watching all the above, I dug into my DVD collection to watch this old warhorse again, and surprise surprise!  this gritty NFL story was pretty much as relevant today as it was back in the early 70s.  (And who would have thought C&W star Mac Davis could turn in such a clever performance?)

Any Given Sunday — Al Pacino.  I really love this movie, because even though it’s highly dramatized — it’s a movie, duh — I like the realism of the characters, all of them.  And for once, Pacino doesn’t chew up the scenery but is actually quite a sympathetic character.

Rudy — Quite possibly one of the greatest true sports stories ever put on film.  Absolutely brilliant, all the way through.

Everybody’s All-American — Dennis Quaid, Jessica Lange.  What happens to the college superstar after the spotlight has moved on to the next generation.  Quaid is perfect in the role, that shit-eating grin and past glories powering him through life’s disappointments, with the ex-homecoming queen at his side.

The Blind Side — Amy Adams  Sandra Bullock.  Another true story, only slightly dramatized for the movies.  Sandra just steals this movie and takes it home with her.  Even better is that it’s all mostly true.  Of course, the critics hated it because of all the usual reasons: a gun-toting pretty Christian mom doing the right thing by a poor Black kid, and succeeding.

Of course, this is by no means a comprehensive list — and yes I know there are dozens of others out there.  I just happened to hit on this lot, got hooked into watching them all, and enjoyed every single one of them.

You will, too.

Constitutional Lesson

Rights, Sports

All those English people who came over here and swooned about the United States — the freedom, the politeness, the hospitality, Buc-ees (and did I mention the freedom?) had a somewhat rude awakening after their team got beaten by the Argies in the semi-finals.

Seems as though some things are not easily forgotten, among them being the Margaret Thatcher-era beating dished out to the Argies when the latter tried to invade the Falkland Islands (a.k.a. the Malvinas).

So after beating England at their own game last week, the Argie football team had a little celebration in their dressing room, waving a banner which said “Malvinas are Argentina” (or something like that).

Well, the response was an outburst of “How dare they?” from the UKgov:

“It prompted a fierce response in London as Business Secretary Peter Kyle demanded a FIFA investigation into the matter before (then-BritPM) Sir Keir Starmer publicly backed those calls.”
A FIFA spokesman said: “As is standard procedure, FIFA’s independent Disciplinary Committee is currently assessing the match reports and considering the relevant circumstances before deciding on potential further steps based on the FIFA Disciplinary Code.'”

Yeah, well fuck FIFA, their disciplinary code and the UKgov.

You see, this particular World Cup match was played in the United States of America, where we have a First Amendment — basically guaranteeing the right of the Argies to be as rude and disrespectful as they want.  (I should point out that the Brits still mock the Krauts for having lost the last pair of World Wars, so their peevishness is somewhat ironic.)

So here’s the lesson for the Brits:  freedom of speech sometimes means putting up with stuff that you find offensive.  I know that BritLaw seems to have overridden that simple precept recently — where people can get arrested just for posting naughty things on Teh Intarwebz — but there ya go.  Deal with it.

As for FIFA:  your little disciplinary code doesn’t supersede our laws, so if you don’t want stuff like this to happen during your precious tournaments, feel free to hold your future World Cups in countries that don’t have a First Amendment.

Good luck in North Korea.

Footnote:  The Argies lost the final to Spain (0-1), in the most boring football match ever played.

Keen Insight

Sports

I often watch a podcast show called “Stick To Football”, because I love football.  It’s hosted by Gary Neville (ex-Manchester United and England captain), who is arguably one of the best right backs ever to play the game.  It’s no understatement to say that without Neville at his back, David Beckham might not have been as successful as he was, in no small part because Beckham was always assured of having a rock-like and intelligent defender behind him, and someone who could always be counted on to lay an intelligent pass on to him so that Golden Balls could work his own magic in turn.

Alongside Neville are the dour, waspish midfielder Roy Keane (also ex-Man U, and Ireland) and the brilliant goalscorer Ian Wright (Tottenham and Newcastle United).  Between the three of them, they provide excellent coverage for their various guests, themselves all fine former footballers and football managers.

It’s a show, however, that would mostly be lost on Murkins because Murkins prefer to watch and talk about their own brand of “football” and not that boring FIFA rubbish, and mostly their discussions are about events that are well known to Brits and Euros, but in large part unknown Over Here.

Neville & Co. don’t always have footballers as guests, however;  Rory McIlroy has been on a couple of times, for example, as has snooker genius Ronnie O’Sullivan.  And what has happened is that the show is starting to evolve into a discussion and analysis of sporting greatness rather than just great footballers.  And in keeping with the current World Cup show Over Here, they’re interviewing Americans and not just Brits and Euros.

Which is why I have to recommend their latest show to y’all, because their guest is none other than superstar quarterback Tom Brady.

Now as any fule kno, NFL football is not my favorite sport, but as I enjoy most sports, I do know something of the game, and especially shall we say “highlights” of both the game and its players — so Tom Brady is not unknown to me.

What I did not know was how intelligent this guy is, and how much he devoted to making himself inarguably one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game.  Seven Superbowl rings (one with a team not the New England Patriots) pretty much speaks for itself, because seven championships in any sport (e.g. Lewis Hamilton’s string in F1) has to be treated with respect for the rarity of such an achievement.

So take an hour and a half out of your busy lives and watch this episode of Stick to Football.  I think it’ll be worth your time.

Quote of the show (from Brady):  “The standard was perfection;  we settled for excellence.”

The Day That Baseball Died

Sports

When I came Over Here in the Great Wetback Episode of 1986, I knew nothing about baseball, other than its mechanics — we’d played rounders in grade school occasionally, but of course it was very much looked down upon when compared to the King of Ballgames (that would be cricket, to you colonial peasants).

So I never really showed any interest in going to the ballgames to watch the Texas Rangers play during my first few months living in Texas, right after I arrived.  It didn’t help that back then the Rangers’ stadium was a dank, miserable piece of steel and concrete, devoid of any character or atmosphere.

But all that changed when I moved to Chicago.  As the Great Big Research Company’s headquarters (GBRC) was located in the northwest suburb of Willowbrook, it was naturally a breeding ground for Chicago Cubs fans — the White Sox being of the southern suburbs (ergo, very infra dig) and whose home field of Comiskey Park was of the Texas Rangers type:  horrible.  Compared to the cozy and intimate confines of Wrigley Field, with its ivy-covered walls lining the infield, there was no comparison.

My then-boss was a keen baseball fan, and as our department was allocated a certain number of season tickets (for “client entertainment”, yanno), he encouraged me to use one of the tickets to go to Cubs games.  I turned the offer down at first, and then he decided to take me to a game.  There, he proceeded to school me in the game of baseball, with all its intricacies and subtleties.  Once I saw that, I became a rabid baseball fan (helped of course by the massive database of statistics available, which was like catnip to this one-time statistician), and I started to go to every one of their home games, and to a few of their away games, when coincidental to a client business trip to places like St. Louis.

The only thing that bothered me was that the Cubs were perennial losers.  I mean, you can only watch so many losing games before getting disenchanted.  However, there were times that the Cubs didn’t lose, and it didn’t take much for me to learn that most of the times they won was because of their star pitcher, Greg Maddux.  So I became a student of pitching, because I was deeply curious as to how this skinny guy could deliver so many strikes, no-hitters and wins when he didn’t have a rocket fastball like other pitchers.  Our season tickets weren’t behind home plate but over the Cubs dugout in right field, so I couldn’t see what Maddux was doing that made him so unplayable.  To learn more, therefore, I watched the Cubs games on WGN-TV, and with the aid of more seasoned baseball fans (like my boss), I saw how “Mad Dog” did it, and I became a rabid Greg Maddux fan.  I believe that in one season (I forget which) I saw every single game he played, either live at Wrigley Field or on TV when playing away.

What irritated me, though, was that the Cubs organization seemed to have little interest in building a team — specifically, spending money on bulking up the pitching staff — around him so that they could go to the playoffs, at least.  It’s not like they didn’t have any good players, anything but:  first baseman Mark Grace, shortstop Ryne Sandberg and outfielder Andre Dawson were outstanding.  But it doesn’t matter how good the other players are if your pitchers are giving up five or six runs a game, compared to Maddux’s one (or often zero).

What it looked like to me was that the Tribune Corporation (who back then owned the Cubs) were treating the team like a marketing exercise more than a sports franchise.  I mean, Wrigley Field was always sold out for home games, even during the work week, and merchandise sales were as high as any MLB team except the New York Yankees, and they had TV coverage locked up with WGN-TV — which had national coverage through cable for out-of-towners;  so (I asked myself) what was the incentive to spend money when they were pretty much maxxing out revenue already?  It was a pretty cynical attitude — and nobody has ever been able to convince me that it wasn’t the Tribune’s policy, by the way — but what the hell:  Chicago is a lovely place in summer, Wrigley Field lovelier still, and the Cubs got me out of the office at least several times a month.  (I should point out that should anyone wonder why the GBRC was so lenient in this regard was because I worked longer hours than anyone else in the department, I had built excellent relationships with my clients, and I had come up with a couple of data analysis programs which were not only efficient but revenue generators.  Funny how that works.)

Then it all went to shit.

Maddux’s contract with the Cubs came to an end, and their offer for a new contract was absolutely pitiful for a Cy Young award winner with one of the best pitching records in Major League Baseball.  It’s not like the Tribune Corporation had financial difficulties, so it seemed pretty obvious that they cared more about the bottom line than winning — not that this was a new thought, as seen above — and their absolute refusal to pay Maddux what he was worth ended up with him going to the Atlanta Braves, who knew what they were getting:  a World Series championship and an endless stream of divisional titles over the next decade or so of Maddux’s tenure.  They, at least, had a decent pitching staff, unlike the Cubs ever did.

When Maddux left the Cubs for Atlanta, therefore, was the day that baseball died for me.  I stopped watching the Cubs, and baseball altogether, and threw away my treasured Cubs T-shirt.  When he came back to the Cubs for his “farewell” tour, I watched occasionally, but he was in his late thirties by then, and while still capable of flashes of his earlier brilliance, he was nowhere close to the pitcher he’d been.  No fun at all, even though I still believe he was the greatest pitcher ever to play baseball.

For those Readers of short memories or to my Furrin Readers who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, here’s a decent summary of Greg Maddux.

Also, it should be remembered that the Cubs did eventually win the World Series (after a drought of 108 years);  but it was in 2016, eight years after the Tribune Corporation had sold them, and fifteen years after I’d left Chicago for Texas.

Long Time… Gone

Corporate Fuckery, Entertainment, Management

I have been a fan of Formula One racing since my early teens, which makes me older than just about everyone involved in running F1 today.

Just recently, I had a problem with my AppleTV account and couldn’t change the payment method — no need for details, but it’s a fucking nightmare and would be easier if I just created a new account.  Why am I subscribing to AppleTV, you ask?  Well, late last year F1 told me that their own website (F1.com) would no longer be streaming races because they’d sold the broadcast rights to AppleTV.  Fair enough:  it’s their absolute right to do so, and the AppleTV sub was actually cheaper than the F1 sub;  so that, coupled with my desire to watch the Slow Horses TV series (read the books, loved them), I made the change even though once I’d watched all the episodes, I found that AppleTV doesn’t have much worth watching anyway.  But there was always the F1 racing, which (did I already mention? I’ve loved since my early teens) so what the hell.

Of course, the modern F1 is no longer the F1 I used to love.  Gone were the earsplitting roar and howls of V6- and V12 car engines, and in their place came hybrid engines, using pathetic little 1500cc turbo motors with laptop batteries to “boost” performance because Green Is Mighty and Internal Combustion Engines Are Evil, or some such nonsense.

Then this season saw new rules (a.k.a. the “formula” in the product description), which made the cars even MOAR BATTERY, except of course that batteries when used to propel cars at 300mph run out of spark within yards not miles, so we were greeted with the spectacle of the world’s finest drivers and the world’s most accomplished engineers becoming software managers.  Put in plain terms, cars would overtake other cars, and then immediately lose their position because their batteries were drained whilst their competitors had recharged theirs so could take back the position:  repeat ad nauseam.  Not only was the spectacle unsatisfying, it became outright dangerous, as was seen in the last race where a driver with a full battery was about to move to overtake, but the car in front suddenly lost 25mph because his battery had just gone flat.  At a closing speed of 275mph, no human reactions are quick enough to address that impending crash — but amazingly, young Ollie Bearman’s were almost that quick and he pulled off the track to avoid a massive collision.  Unfortunately, his car’s battery was still in flat-out mode, and Bearman hit the barrier head-on with a force of 50 Gs.  How he survived is a miracle;  how his electric motor didn’t catch fire and turn him extra-crispy is a credit to the engineers who built the car.  Nor did his car crumple like a newspaper and turn his skeleton into soup.

Of course, the F1 organization recognized all this for the disaster it is, and have hurriedly put through a massive rules change.  They were fortunate in that next two Grand Prix races in Saudi Arabian peninsula had been canceled because Trump’s merry war on Iran had resulted in the latter sending missiles raining on the Gulf states — and nobody wanted to see battery-powered race cars having to take action to avoid incoming SCUDs, let alone their competitors’ cars, and F1 audiences in the stands deciding that watching electric go-karts play swapalongs would not be sufficient spectacle to keep them from being turned into hamburger by the aforementioned missiles.  So F1 caught a break, and having three weeks before the next race (Miami GP), changed a whole bunch of rules, making the thing even more complex than before.  (Please watch this video — it’s less than ten minutes long — to see the absolute clusterfuck that F1 racing has become.)

Why am I telling you all this?  Because after sixty-odd years of F1 fandom, I’ve decided that enough is enough.  I’m not interested in watching what F1 has become, I don’t like what F1’s owners, the foul Liberty Media, have created — four races in the Saudi Peninsula?  WTF? — and even worse, losing various countries’ Grand Prix races because European organizers can’t match those of the oil-rich Arabs.  I mean, the entire Grand Prix concept began in France, and there’s no room on the calendar for a French GP?  WTFF?

So I’m walking away.  I would say that I’ll content myself by watching the “highlights” videos on EeewChoob, but honestly, I don’t think there will be any highlights worth watching, anymore.

Here’s a thought:  throw away the stupid hybrid engines and go back to racing with real engines, the aforementioned V6 and V8 monsters, let the drivers race these cars to the utmost limit of mechanical and human performance, and make F1 watchable again.  Like it was in, say, 1975.  (And yes I know, the cars were deathtraps.  I’m not suggesting throwing out the entire car, just the stupid engines.)

I know, I know:  “You can’t stop progress, Kim;  you can’t go back to the old ways.”

And don’t suggest I try to follow other motor racing types, either.  Once you’ve watched Formula 1, all other car types resemble tortoises and hippos racing.  Even Le Mans, which I watch every year, all 24 hours at a time if there’s no highlights video, doesn’t begin to compare.

I think I’ll start watching horse racing instead.  That is, until Liberty Media buys them out, makes the owners strap rockets to their horses’ asses “to improve the spectacle”, and gets fifty racing tracks built in Saudi Arabia to host the new F1 Horse Racing Circuit, doing away with Belmont, Saratoga, Aintree and Epson in the process.

And speaking of horses’ asses:  so long, F1/Liberty Media — and AppleTV.  Neither of you is worth the trouble of supporting anymore.

So Much For That Trend

Men & Women, Sports

People have been moaning recently about how Gen Z kids aren’t having sex anymore, also seeming to prefer hanging out on porn websites or (worse) relying on A.I.-created partners for their jollies.

Well as it turns out, that’s apparently not true for all Gen Z kids:

The village where Winter Olympics athletes are staying in Milan has reportedly run out of condoms after slashing its supply from 300,000 to a mere 10,000.

I would have thought that the condom needs for just the Swedish Olympians would have emptied [sic]  that supply — the Swedes (Winter and Summer) being generally regarded as the most prolific users thereof — but hey, I guess the Olympics Committee was trying to save money or something.

I guess it’s also quite telling that these kids felt they could rely on “government” to take care of their every need.  (Without any proof, though, I’m pretty sure that most of the American kids brought their own supplies of said items with them — I know I would have, under such circumstances.)

And just to head one argument off at the pass, let’s at least acknowledge that when you throw a group of superbly-fit youngsters from all over the world together into confined quarters, they’re going to go at it like rabbits.  (And the organizers need to be kicked in the ass for thinking that these young Olympians were going to be any different from previous athletes.)

No need to spend time at PornHub or ai.com when you can have easy access to real-life willing bodies, after all.