There’s been a lot of bad stuff going on recently, with the economy tanking, the threat of a McCain presidency still real, and the Mets discovering new ways to blow a spot in the playoffs. But I’ve done a good job ignoring all that, and I’ve been exceedingly happy this week. As painful as it gets on a macro level, life as it’s lived between individual people can never be all bad. Take it away, Jimmy:
Categories: Personal · Politics · Sports
Tagged: Economy, Jimmy Cliff, John McCain, Mets
I’m a little late in posting this, but last week I wrote a new sports column, which will probably be my last. It came out of an idea I thought would turn into a blog post during the Olympics, but I ultimately directed it toward the column. Read it here.
Categories: Personal · Sports
Tagged: Batman, China, LZR, Michael Phelps, Records, Russia, Sports column, Superheroes, Superpowers, Swimming, Usain Bolt
I’m going back in two days. I don’t always like New Haven, but it’s beautiful in the fall, and it’s got some other pretty awesome stuff, too.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Nine-year-old Jericho Scott is a good baseball player — too good, it turns out.
The right-hander has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.
[HT: Mom.]
Categories: Sports
Tagged: 40 mph, 9-year-old, Badass, Jericho Scott, New Haven
1. Is “getting it on” really in the Times’s stylebook?
2. Those of us near the top of the medal count don’t think about how awesome it is when just one person from a country wins something. Man, they go crazy. (I hope we would, too.)
3. Shouldn’t every competition have different ways to measure success for the different fan bases? That way, everyone wins. It might sound problematic at first, but think about it–everyone actually comes away thinking they’ve won.
Categories: Society · Sports
Tagged: Celebrations, Condoms, Getting It On, Gold Medal, Medal Count, Olympians, Olympics, Sex, Success
I understand why baseball umpires are sensitive about instant reply–the technology threatens to eliminate their jobs, or, at least, embarrass them by correcting blown calls. (The point is, after all, that the machines will make better calls than the human umpires.) But listen to the commissioner: instant reply is coming. And, for all of Bud Selig’s shortcomings in baseball’s top spot, he has consistently gotten his way. So, rather than fight the new plan at every stage, why don’t umpires get on board, and see to it that instant replay is implemented in a way that maximizes their importance on the field and their dignity? I don’t know–maybe it’s just me, maybe the umps aren’t thinking this way, but I wouldn’t like to be on the losing side of history, especially for a change that, in the baseball world, will be a big one.
Update 8/22/08: A friend objected to my implication that Selig was pushing instant replay on the league, reminding me that the commissioner was opposed to the plan until the owners voted in favor of it. Nevertheless, Selig is now a proponent, and it will therefore happen.
Update 8/28/08: And it’s here.
Categories: Sports
Tagged: Baseball, Bug Selig, Instant Replay, Umpires
Or: why I love international sports. Two articles I read today:
Article 1: Some athletes are more than superstars. They carry whole nations on their backs. Their nations have 1.3 billion people and get to host the Olympics. And they are responsible for exposing a whole continent to a sport. Actually, that’s just one (huge) guy.
Article 2: And elsewhere, it’s a victory when your athletes come home at all. See, a lot of the time they don’t, since your country is so poor. (HT: DGP)
Categories: Society · Sports
Tagged: Sierra Leone, Yao Ming
A friend of mine at college has a high school friend who’s in Peru this summer. He sent the two of us an email to introduce us. Here’s how he described me: “Pete is a sports-loving traveller who also happens to enjoy fun. He’s from New York and therefore loves hot dogs, baseball, the Mets, culture, tall buildings, and does not like parking.”
That I am a New Yorker is probably not the source of my love for hot dogs. That I love baseball might better explain why I crave plastic-encased mystery meat. Regardless, I love baseball, New York, and–of course–hot dogs.
So it’s no surprise I loved the op-ed piece in today’s New York Times by a former hot dog vendor at Ebbets Field, the storied home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, about the old days of ballpark hot dogs.
Categories: Personal · Society · Sports
Tagged: Sports, Hot dogs, Ebbets Field, New York, New York Times
Last week a friend commented that I treat politics like sports: I know all the “players,” treat parties like teams, and even have statistics and history at my fingertips. I had never thought about it that way, but he’s right. Politics, the ultimately dirty game, is very much like sports, only without athleticism and with real-world issues hanging in the balance, especially for fans/junkies like me. To the extent that my interest in politics comes from my earlier love for sports, I’m proud to admit a connection. But I’m most happy when the two overlap.
Categories: Politics · Sports
Tagged: Bobblefoot, Larry Craig, Politics, Sports, St. Paul Saints
Only the 14th unassisted triple play in Major League history. Congrats to Asdrubal Cabrera.
Categories: Sports
Tagged: Asdrubal, Triple Play
