The Best American Sports Writing 2005

This was a gift from my soon to be in-laws over the holidays, and after Abby and I moved in, I picked it up and raced through it. The series collects sports writing from North America over the prior year, and a guest editor (in this case Mike Lupica) helps select the articles and writes a foreword. I often find Lupica a touch annoying, but his piece here is quite nice as are most of the stories.

One thing a reader can't help but notice is that the vast majority seem to be of the same variety: tragedy. Whether it's telling the story of a failed athlete who can't get past his or her demons, illness befalling an athlete in her prime, drugs, etc...most of them all follow the same theme. They are good, but as I started reaching the end of the book, I was yearning for a straight sports story - one about a team that won a championship, and how the games played out. Which is why the second to last story, Tom Verducci's Sportsmen of the Year about the 2004 champion Red Sox, was so particularly great. Seriously, it's one of the better things I've read about the Sox, and like any sports fan, I've read quite a bit about that team.

I was disappointed to see that Lupica felt it necessary to tarnish this by including as the last story, a short article by Bill Reynolds from the Providence Journal about how some of these same Red Sox were soon at card shows, charging high prices for autographs and memorabilia. The article itself is quite good, and the point valid, but it definitely did not serve as a capstone to the collection, as the prior article had. The fact that the choice of articles, and their order, has to ultimately fall on Lupica, only confirms my earlier suspicion that he's an ass. So, that was a disappointment. However, the book (and, in turn, the series) is well worth it. Not only does one get a chance to read articles they'd otherwise miss, but it's always nice to read about sports. Seriously. Always. I'll keep an eye out next year for the next version, and that's probably as good an indication as any that it's a good book.

Rating: 7.0/10.0

Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

When I saw this book available on Bookins.com, I put it straight into my Wish List. I've always been a fan of SNL, even though I barely watch it anymore. Everyone has their favorite SNL skits; I'm still partial to "Landshark," Eddie Murphy in his prime, and just about anything with Chris Farley or Phil Hartman in it.

The book is an oral history, in the same manner (though ultimately less effective) as Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me. Where that book often felt like a direct smack to the face with the brutal truth being discussed, Live from New York tells a great story with only a few suprises. Perhaps it's how public the show has been, how the lives of most actors have been open books for tabloids and Entertainment Tonight (wait, that might be redundant) - or perhaps it's because the people talking to authors Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller still have careers they care about. Some, like Garrett Morris, are pretty direct - and in truth, Morris sounds like a pain in the ass. As does Chevy Chase - this is information I really enjoyed, and the celebration of Gilda Radner is actually very touching. But often, I felt like there was no "there" there, to repeat a phrase. It's good, and I learned more about Lorne Michaels than I knew, but I'm not sure I needed to learn that stuff. I enjoyed it and actually raced through the book, so it's clearly entertaining. I actually finished the book a week or two ago, and liked it more when I initially put it down. In the short period since, it's waned on me. A cleverer writer would think of an analogy to a SNL skit to compare this to, but I"m not feeling it right now. In any event, like many of those skits, the book has promise which occasionally delivers but ultimately doesn't quite get there.

Rating: 6.0/10.0

On Jerry Rice

Flash 80...he was, without any reasonable doubt, the greatest wide receiver in the history of the National Football League. Some argue that he's the greatest PLAYER, regardless of position. My red-and-gold fever is fierce, but even I won't make that claim. (Though...who is? Something to mull over.) But still, nothing gives me chills like seeing Jerry catch a slant pass and just glide past diving defenders, into the endzone, arms outstretched. Catching balls with one hand, and scoring...relentlessly. He was the ultimate threat, the ultimate team player and he never did anything but make 49ers fans proud.



Which is why THIS, despite the photographic evidence, NEVER HAPPENED:

On the other hand, apparently Dancing with the Stars had twice as high ratings as the Closing Ceremonies of the Most Boring Olympics Ever...so maybe that isn't all bad?

No...it's bad. It's very, very bad.

The Breaking Point

So, it appears that Iraq just might be on the verge of a civil war…which, I suppose literally speaking it has been now for almost three years. (Astute readers will note that this not coincidentally ties right into the time when Bush, Cheney and some others marched forward with their wet dreams of invading Iraq despite the fact that they had to obfuscate, lie and ignore experts to make it happen.) Apparently we’ve calmed things down with a daytime curfew.

Daytime curfew…hm. That sounds like martial law. Good times, good times.

This isn’t the latest in a rant of how pathetic the U.S. remains in Iraq; we are on a collision course with our own arrogance, and refuse to listen to our military leaders, who by law can’t complain but filter things through folks like Jack Murtha…who then gets labeled a coward by the actual cowards like Jean Schmitt and Shooter Cheney. I just can’t stop thinking about the long-term damage we are doing over there. Forget ousting Saddam; that was relatively easy and few argued that it wouldn’t be. I’m talking about leaving a dilapidated war-zone that has become a breeding ground for everything we are supposedly fighting against. (It’s almost as if Bush and Cheney want a long-term war to keep defense companies flush…nah, that is crazy talk.)


Of course, what is particularly sad about any war is the civilian casualties that occur as a result. I’m not a pacifist in general; I do think that, sadly, our cultures haven’t evolved to a point where war is always avoidable. (This one? Completely. Every death, both U.S. and Iraqi is on George Bush’s hands, even if he could care less about “those people.”) I get that innocent Germans died in the Dresden bombings, and that U.S. forces caused the deaths of numerous civilian Allies in WWII (which is the only war that most people can agree had to happen, in terms of U.S. involvement). But the numbers of Iraqi civilians, which Bush estimated blithely at about 30,000, is probably a low-ball estimate at best. Other numbers suggest way, way more than that – upwards of 130,000. We know that about 100,000 Iraqis died in the Gulf War. When is enough enough? Forget the means and ends of the war…how is it rationalized that this will somehow win the hearts and minds of Iraqis over to our side? The longer this happens, the more we ensure that virtually everyone will have a friend or relative that the U.S. had a hand in killing or maiming. That…is not smart. Plus, so many of these are children. It’s simply heart-breaking.

Every ten year-old enemy soldier
Thinks falling bombs are shooting stars sometimes
But she doesn't make wishes on them
When she wishes, she wishes for less ways to wish for
More ways to work toward it


IOU, Metric

By the way…anyone who still thinks the Iraq war was and is a smart thing to do is an idiot. They may be geniuses in other parts of their life, but their view and opinion on the war belies utter, complete stupidity at this point. There is right, and there is wrong, and clearly this was a disaster of virtually biblical proportions. You can’t support the war and acknowledge the post-war planning was shoddy, when it was blatantly obvious that this was the case pre-invasion. (However, those in the GOP are good at this – supporting a candidate or policy based on one thing that feels right to them, and deciding the other stuff is things they don’t support…but providing their vote nonetheless. These are the voters that routinely get used by Karl Rove and others like a sad, lonely person desperate for love gets used by abusers.)

My grandchildren will feel the effect of this stupidity. Anyone who feels otherwise just doesn’t want to look in the mirror and admit they were wrong. Simple as that.

Updated: If you ever needed a reason to hate Fox News, well...there's about a million reasons why that is sad. All they are is loathsome. But this graphic might just seal the deal...god, what fuckheads.

All I'm Saying...

...is that isn't it a darn shame that Dick Cheney's hunting buddy wasn't, for example, Dick Cheney?

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America

With a title like this, one would expect a lot from Triangle, and it is - at points - a very compelling book. The description of the shirt-waist factory fire, which killed about 145 people (mostly young, Jewish women) and was the greatest workplace disaster in New York history until 2001, is devastating. The fire - which as a poor student of history I'd never heard of - lead to major changes in terms of shifting power towards labor and away from business (at least in relative terms). For me, that was the reason I bought the book, to find out what impact this fire had on the country...and author David Von Drehle sort of punts on that aspect. He covers this, to be sure, but the book is more about the immediate events leading up to the fire, and the trial that followed. Discussions of the actual impact are nominal, and that's a disappointment. The book is good, to be sure, but it wasn't what the title led me to believe it would be, and in the end, I'm not sure I could recommend it.

Rating: 5.0/10.0

On the Super Bowl

First off, it wasn't so super. I remember when the 49ers trounced the Broncos 55-10 in 1990. Most of my friends who weren't die-hard Niner fans mentioned how awful the game was. After a struggle to see their point, I admitted that it was such a blowout, that it wouldn't be much fun unless you bled red and gold.

That's not the reason this game sucked. First of all, Matt Hasselback was the better quarterback, and his QB rating was something like 67.8. Um...that ain't good. Roethlisberger was pathetic, even if you include the touchdown he didn't score.

All that being said, Mike Holmgren's post-game remarks about not realizing he had to play against the officials is nothing more than whining and being a bad loser. Yes, there were some questionable calls - two, really, and both went against the Hawks. But had they played even reasonably well aside from those, they would have killed the Steelers who played poorly throughout. Seattle did not do this, and they lost.

On those calls...

The first was Darrell Jackson getting called for offensive pass interference in the endzone on a play where he caught a TD. Was there contact? Sure. Was it egregious? Not even close. Receivers do that on almost every play, and a Super Bowl is not the place to call 'touch' plays like that. I look at it this way - had the official kept the flag in his pocket, Steelers fans would have been upset, but not massively so. And by the second half, they would have forgotten about it entirely. Just a JOKE of a call.

The second was Ben Roethlisberger's touchdown "run." Even Big Ben says he doesn't think he got in, which tells you everything you need to know. The bigger question is why officials couldn't determine this on replay. The follow-up question is, would Pittsburgh have gone for it on 4th and inches? Post game, they said they would have...but what else are they going to say? I'm not so sure they wouldn't have kicked a field goal...and I'm also not convinced they would have scored had they tried to blast it in.

So that's a 14 point swing, or 11 if you assume Pittsburgh would have kicked in a chipshot. And the Steelers won by...11 points. Hmm. All I'm saying is, Seattle fans have a right to feel slighted...but they also can't possibly imagine they DESERVED to win, given how the team played.

And here is the deal with that -- in the long run, this is a good thing. It seems to me that there is a LOT of press about the crap officiating, and the NFL is nothing if not image conscious. In some way, they are going to have to make some modifications. The best way is to make the officials year-round employees, something the NBA and MLB long ago did. It's just plain reasonable to expect them to be better at this job if its the only one they have. If they band-aid it, it's not a solution, but in any event, they'll have to address this issue...and that's a good thing.

A few other notes. Were the commercials just wholly uninteresting this year, or was I distracted? I was unpacking most of the game so it's possibly the latter...but I haven't heard any chatter about commercials after the game the way I have in years past. Even the Go Daddy girl was a snoozefest, I thought. (On that note, going to the above site is...interesting. She's a pretty girl in a blown-out, plasticky way. But she looks completely different in half the photos...almost all of them better than the Go Daddy brunette look. And I like brunettes. Just interesting how they chose to make her look. I've also heard that the CEO of this company is a hard right-wing Bush lover, so, fuck Go Daddy. OK. Done.)

The biggest disappointment of the game for me is that with all the MVP's, Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana weren't there. Regardless of why that happened, it's almost not worth having the ceremony without those two guys. And...it seems impossible to ignore the reports that Montana wanted $100,000 to be there. I'd discount it but stories like these usually have legs for a reason, and that's just insanely disappointing. Given his wealth, I'm assuming it was actually less about the check and more about priorities - that he decided he'd rather be with his family unless there was a compelling monetary reason to be there. And that's still just not right. The NFL doesn't do nearly what it should for its veterans, but guys like Montana would have been working in a mine in Pittsburgh if the NFL weren't around. Does it hurt so much to give back a little? Look at Tom Brady, who had to be crushed he wasn't playing in the game...he showed up for the freakin coin flip (in a velvet jacket, nonetheless).

Say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't so.

Quote of the day...or year.

A lot of left-minded folks are hoping that Russ Feingold, D-WIS, will run for President in 2008. I can't get my arms around it quite yet though I like virtually everything I hear about this guy. And his latest quote, stated during the wiretapping hearings today, is a gem among gems:

This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view. Our government has three branches, not one. And no one, not even the President, is above the law. -- Senator Russ Feingold

One day, the wall will come crumbling down...