My heroes this week are Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, but since Gary already wrote about them, I'll also mention the Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres, for playing 22 innings last night in an epic pitchers' duel:

Colorado and San Diego did just that Thursday night and into Friday morning, slogging through a 22-inning game that was the longest in the majors in nearly 15 years.

The Rockies finally won 2-1, with Troy Tulowitzki’s two-out RBI double bringing in Willy Taveras with an unearned run in nearly empty Petco Park. A game that lasted 6 hours, 16 minutes was decided by an unearned run.

Hack this week is Jimmy Carter, as his one man mission for peace (at what cost?) brought him to laying a wreath at Yasser Arafat's grave. Even Obama, who wants to 'meet with our enemies' (which isn't as bad an idea as it sounds, really) was criticizing him for it.

(Dis)honorable mention goes to President Bush, for a lapse of logic worthy of note.

Bush rejected Iran's argument that its nuclear activities are intended only for a civilian energy program.

"If that's the case, why did they have a secret program?" he said at a Rose Garden news conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Now, I'm certainly not a fan of the Iranian regime, but maybe, just maybe, they were hiding their program because the United States is Hell-bent on shutting it down, and the Iranians are worried about an Iraqi invasion redux, which was over an alleged WMD program.

Labels: Blame it on Bush, Hero/Hack, Iran, Israel, Sports

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:37 AM | Permalink | |

In lieu of Hero/Hack, and in honor of the World Series, I'm posting an essay I wrote over the summer about the Boston Red Sox (slightly edited):

I’m not a Yankees fan, but I think I might hate the Boston Red Sox. I didn’t always hate the Boston Red Sox, as neither the teams I usually root for are in rivalries with them (the Phillies and the A’s). I didn’t hate the Red Sox until they won the World Series.

You may say, but Ryan, didn’t the Red Sox and their fans deserve that World Series in 2004? Sure. I sympathize. After all, no major Philadelphia team has won a championship in my lifetime as of this writing. But there is something that happened to Red Sox fans after they won the Series. They became obnoxious.

Before, Red Sox fans were kind of like that friend that is a really great guy, super nice, but always manages to royally screw up any relationship he’s in. Now, they’re like someone who has one accomplishment to their name and manages to bring it up in every conversation he has.

The fans are not entirely to blame, however. I partially hate the Red Sox because I see Red Sox merchandise everywhere. I walk into a Lids in any mall in America and they will have as many Sox hats as they have of the local MLB team. Sox fans used to be like a club that was kind of exclusive. It used to be romantic. Now it’s just pedestrian.

I recently watched two films about the Red Sox phenomena: Fever Pitch, based on the Nick Hornby book of the same name and starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, and Game 6, written by Don DeLillo (a New Yorker) and starring Michael Keaton (Batman).

Game 6 is a drama, and Fever Pitch is a romantic comedy. Released a year apart, they are extremely different films, although both male leads are hopeless Red Sox fan. Michael Keaton’s Nicky Rogan is a writer struggling to balance everything in his life including the opening night of his new play and Game Six of the 1986 World Series. Baseball fans know that the 1986 World Series was especially tragic for Sox fans because it was one of the more spectacular ways to lose, something the Red Sox seem to excel at pre-2004 (both films touch on this phenomenon).

Nicky Rogan ultimately skips opening night of his play to watch the Red Sox. That’s dedication if you ask me. Nicky knows deep in his heart that the Red Sox will lose. It is as certain as the sun rise. Some things just seem doomed for failure. Even though he is urged on to believe, and he does begin to believe, his hopes of a Red Sox victory are ultimately crushed when the ball passes between Bill Buckner’s legs.

Nicky sums up the pre-2004 Red Sox fan when he says, “the Red Sox are always winning, until they lose.” This was the epitome of every Red Sox fan, hoping for the win, expecting the loss. It was romantically tragic.

Fever Pitch may mark the turning point of Sox lore. It’s a good romantic comedy, and Jimmy Fallon isn’t annoying, which is saying a lot on both counts. It’s a charming film. Girl falls for boy who is already in love. With the Red Sox. It has some great moments, and would have been a great film, except that the most unfortunate thing happened while making the movie: the Red Sox won the World Series.

Fever Pitch captures the essence of what it meant to be a Sox fan. Barrymore’s Lindsey Meeks sums it up when she says to Ben, “you're a romantic. You have a lyrical soul. You can love under the best and worst conditions.” This is why being a Sox fan was about romance. It was hopeless, but you held out no matter what, even though they always disappointed you. It makes the Red Sox seem more tragically romantic in end. But winning changes everything.

Suddenly, by the end of the movie, Lindsey and Ben live happily ever after, and the Red Sox win the World Series, something that hadn’t happened since 1918. It just isn’t realistic. The one year the Red Sox win big, and so does he? Only the stuff of fiction. Again, I don’t fault the Farrely brothers, as they couldn’t help the Sox won as they made the movie, but things like that don’t usually happen in real life. For a movie about the most notorious losing team in baseball, it is just too happy.

And so now, almost three years after the Red Sox winning, they are again in the World Series, and their merchandise and their fans are seemingly ubiquitous. The Sox don’t represent anything about our culture anymore. They used to be the ultimate underdog. Now they’re just winners who tease the Luxury Tax. They have become the thing they have despised for so long: the Yankees.

Labels: Movies, Pop Culture, Sports

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:08 PM | Permalink | |

My hero this week is White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. Not only does he have a tough job (one of the most intense White House jobs, but he is doing so while undergoing cancer treatment. His perseverance is inspiring, and I will be sad to see him go. Today is his last day as press secretary:

In fact, Snow said, in a way, being diagnosed with cancer is the best thing that has happened to him.

"In a funny way it is," he said. "Boy do you learn to count your blessings. And you get teary eyed about the dumbest little stuff. You get sentimental about things because all the sudden you realize how much you care about things and how much you really love them."

My hack this week is New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. The Pats were caught cheating the first week of the season, and fined for it. It was a lenient punishment for such a gross act of stupidity. Jay Mariotti writes in the Chicago Sun-Times:

How many of those three Super Bowls were won with the help of illegal video? Has Tom Brady become an American role model and state-of-the-art quarterback because he benefitted from in-game signal theft? Was all that talk about work ethic, pride, unity and The System just a lot of bunk? Shouldn't Belichick's Hall of Fame candidacy, once considered a lock, now be in doubt in the same vein as disgraced baseball names such as Bonds and Mark McGwire?
No different than steroids user

The man is a cheater. And as a coach, he should be held more accountable as an authority figure than even the players who are shaming sports with their off-field indiscretions. Not only did Belichick damage his personal legacy beyond repair, he brings humiliation to the Patriots and embarrassment to the NFL, a league that would love to let millions of football-adoring fans concentrate on the games but can't because too much smut is in the air.

The commissioner with the big hammer, Roger Goodell, didn't come down hard enough on Belichick in announcing penalties Thursday night. If steroids users are slapped with four-game suspensions for trying to gain a competitive advantage, Belichick should have been handed a similar ban for trying to gain his competitive advantage via high tech. By limiting the punishment to an NFL-maximum $500,000 fine for Belichick, a $250,000 fine for the Patriots and the loss of a first-round draft pick if they make the playoffs -- or second- and third-round picks if they don't -- all Goodell has done is create a new mess.

Disgraceful.

Labels: Hero/Hack, Sports

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:41 AM | Permalink | |

For some reason, there are NFL teams in my mind that will always be good or always be bad. No matter what they do on the field, I still think of them as being at some 1990s-abstracted level of performance. For example, the Arizona Cardinals could win the Super Bowl this year and I'd never see it coming. Why? Because they're the Cardinals.

Maybe this is because of the impressions teams made on me in my youth. Or maybe some teams are just that consistent. I don't know, really.

The lists:

"Good" Teams:
Miami Dolphins
Denver Broncos
San Francisco 49ers

"Bad" Teams:
Cleveland Browns
Detroit Lions
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Atlanta Falcons
Arizona Cardinals

Labels: Sports

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:41 AM | Permalink | |

Hube reminded me that Barry Bonds hit his 756th home run last night against the Washington Nationals.

Like lots of people, my feelings are really mixed. I've been reading Chuck Klosterman's IV, and he has an essay about Barry Bonds, written when Bonds was about to pass Babe Ruth. In this essay, (available in full here) he outlines five problems that Bonds presents:

Problem 1: The end of numbers -- in the only realm where numbers matter
Problem 2: We were all fools and now we have to pretend we weren't
Problem 3: Tomorrow, today will be yesterday -- and Bonds will represent what that was like
Problem 4: What Bonds says is occasionally true -- and why this makes things worse
Problem 5: Babe Ruth doesn't exist -- and probably never did

To me, the most interesting is Problem 4. Klosterman elaborates:

A mound of evidence suggests that Bonds has been less than honest about steroids. But it seems like he's been honest about a lot of other things. "The last time I played baseball was in college," he said in his grand jury testimony during the BALCO case. He said almost the exact same thing to The New York Times Magazine in 2002: "The last game I played was in college. Ever since then, it's been a business. This is a business."

So far as I can tell, this is the only plausible explanation for Bonds' alleged decision to use performance-enhancing drugs: the idea of not using them seemed ridiculous. It did not strike him as unethical, because for Bonds, this is not a moral issue. Who possibly worries about such matters? The goal is to do business. This is a job.

Basically, Klosterman writes, "Baseball holds as much symbolic value to him as delivering the mail does to a postman."

Bonds is a fascinating character, and has undoubtedly changed the way baseball operates. McGwire and Sosa may have tried to restore post-strike baseball, but Bonds has just made us all feel worse about it.

Labels: Chuck Klosterman, Sports

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:44 AM | Permalink | |

My heroes this week are the Philadelphia Phillies. My beloved home team is heading towards being the first sports franchise to ever hit 10,000 losses, and there's even a website celebrating this feat:

The five-digit figure has 610 WIP Sportsradio personality Anthongy Gargano impressed.

“The next closest team is 1,000 losses away. You’re talking about six seasons. It’s amazing, it’s such a feat,” he said.

“It’s more about celebrating the fans and the fact that we’re still loyal and passionate about this team even though for the past 125 years they’ve only won one World Series and basically have been losers,” DeBow said.

My hacks this week are the 223 members of the House of Representatives that voted for withdrawing troops from Iraq by April. The hackish thing is that this seems to be motivated not out of a position other than purely political:

Before the House vote, Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: We're the people who decide when to go to war, whether the war should be funded.

"Now, when [the Bush administration] keeps making mistakes as they have made, we have to intercede. The public spoke in the last election and said clearly we want the troops redeployed."

"We are wasting the time and trying the patience of the American people for no useful purpose," said Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, one of four Republicans who voted for the measure.

The public "spoke" by switching parties. Yes, a change of course in Iraq was needed. And it's happened! But as it has been all along, "change of course" is code for "pull out and let thousands of Iraqis be killed because we want to hurt the Republican Party/get re-elected."

Labels: Hero/Hack, Iraq, Sports

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:23 AM | Permalink | |

New format! Going to limit it to five things, and then actually explain each one!
Here goes:

The Clinton Impeachment - Yes, Bill committed a crime. No, it wasn't about sex (the lying was, the impeachment wasn't). I still think that in the end, the GOP lost more than it gained over this whole thing, after repeatedly falling in the "Bill Clinton's a bad man, and if everyone knows he's a bad man, he'll lose the election/reelection/political power!" trap. It didn't work, and now half the American population thinks impeachment is the answer to everything. Gas prices too high? Impeach Bush! Toast came out burnt to a crisp? Impeach Bush!

The McCain-Kennedy(-Bush) Immigration Bill - It's just a bad bill, whether or not you agree with all of the provisions. Typical Washington overstuffed "comprehensive" solution to things that need to be separated out into different pieces of legislation to be dealt with more effectively.

Wolf Blitzer - He's just annoying. And extremely pompous. I'll take odd'ball' questions from Chris Matthews any day over ol' Wolfie.

The Avignon Papacy - The 702nd anniversary of "the Babylonian captivity" of the papacy was two days ago (Clement V's papacy) and the French takeover of the Papacy in the 14th century was just bad on the whole, for everybody. People got so mad at the pope they blamed the papacy in Avignon for the arrival of the Black Death in Europe. Also led to the "Western Schism." Just a nasty affair all around.

The severe lack of European/world football on American television - OK, I enjoy watching soccer from time to time. And when I do (God bless the World Cup and the Olympics), I want to watch the best. Half the time, the only way to watch an Arsenal game is in the middle of the night and in Spanish. Oh well. Note: this may be that I can't afford some fancy satellite or cable package, but that doesn't change my frustration. Also, I think I may be adopting Everton as my favorite team, if anyone's curious.

Labels: Bad Things, History, Illegal Immigration, Sports

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:55 AM | Permalink | |