(Originally appeared on Sports-Central.org, 2006)
How many times do you think Ozzie Guillen’s wife has asked him if her butt looked big in those pants?
About once, I’d say. The first time he answered, “Dios mio, si, soy gigante!” she would have decided in the future, she should put the question to someone a with a little more tact.
And in all likelihood, Guillen would have no idea why he was sleeping on the couch.
Apparently, the Chicago White Sox manager was born without that filter that most of us have – the one that keeps us from saying everything we think.
If something is in Guillen’s mind, it’s in his mouth.
And until now, the national sports media has treated it as kind of an endearing trait, as with a Sports Illustrated story last year in which the magazine cast him as being refreshingly honest and all but dubbed the Chisox charter jets as the “Straight Talk Express.”
But with the Chicago media, it has to be different. If the local sports columnists – and this applies everywhere, not just in Chicago – don’t get the coaches ticked off once in a while, they aren’t doing their jobs.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist and ESPN pundit Jay Mariotti was doing his job, which is why Guillen used a homosexual slur in reference to the reporter.
The worst thing about that isn’t that Guillen called Mariotti a “fag.”
Beating up on the media is approved behavior.
That’s usually a figurative expression, but the term “beating up on the media” has been taken literally in places like Iraq, the former Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa. George W. Bush called a New York Times reporter an “asshole,” and got elected president, so Mariotti should expect little sympathy over Guillen’s name-calling.
The worst thing is that, after what passed for thoughtful consideration, “fag” was the worst thing Guillen could think of to say about Mariotti.
If it’s in his mind, it’s in his mouth.
So if Guillen could have come up with something worse than “fag,” he would have said it.
The slur gave America a look, not just into Guillen’s mind, but into the mentality of locker rooms, from junior high school to the pro ranks. In the ultimate men’s bastion, the worst thing you can do to an athlete is question his manhood.
There are probably a lot of athletes who feel that way, but know better than to say it out loud. Guillen doesn’t.
If it’s in his mind, it’s in his mouth.
Homosexuals, in the collective mind of the locker room, are incapable of toughness, courage or any of the other manly attributes so prized in sports.
Of course, that might come as a news flash to those who knew Mark Bingham, a member of two national championship rugby teams – and that sport’s a damn sight rougher than baseball there, Ozzie – at the University of California at Berkeley.
But that’s not all. Bingham – and, yes, he was gay – is believed to have been one of those on Sept. 11, 2001, who tried to wrest control of United Flight 93 from the terrorist hijackers shortly before the airline plunged to earth just outside of Johnstown, Pa.
You can spot Bingham’s character in the movie “United 93" because he’s wearing a Cal rugby jersey.
With “fags” like Bingham, maybe Mariotti should have taken Guillen’s slur as a compliment.
If it’s in his mind, it’s in his mouth.
So it’s not likely the sensitivity training sessions ordered by Commissioner Bud Selig are going to take – Guillen made noise over the weekend about not even bothering with the classes, which pretty much sent the message that he’s going only because Selig said he had to.
Which means something like this is going to happen again, just as certain as there will be more racy photos of Anna Benson or another 10-game losing streak by the Pirates.
So as a favor, Ozzie, might I recommend “Thy Father is a Gorbellied Codpiece,” a collection of more than 100,000 Shakespearean insults including the following gems:
Apish beef-witted quatch-buttock, goatish rug-headed parasite, pestiferous snail-paced rat catcher, unhandsome sodden-witted horn-beast.
Although you might want to stay away from that last one there, Ozzie. You wouldn’t want anyone to think you notice whether other men are handsome or unhandsome.
Anyway, if you can’t find a copy of the book, I’ll loan you mine.
There’s no need to thank me. In fact, don’t even think about me.
I don’t want to be in your mind because if I’m in your mind, well, you know the rest.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Boxer's problems a long time in coming
(Originally appeared on Sports-Central.org, 2003)
After defeating Eugene Johnson in a March 1999 bout, boxer Paul Spadafora sat in the fitness center at the Palace Inn in Monroeville, talking to a member of his entourage.
The guy, who had worked in Spadafora’s corner during that night’s fight, helped trigger a riot when he took a swing at one of Johnson’s cornermen after the final bell.
At the time, Spadafora had made two appearances on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights and was angling for more TV fights and a possible lightweight title shot. Given that, he was mindful the evening’s fracas would be of no help.
Even though he let his supporter know that the incident was unacceptable, Spadafora knew his hanger-on was merely following the code of the rough McKees Rocks neighborhood where they grew up.
“Hey,” Spadafora told him. “I know you got my back.”
The moral of this story is that you can take the fighter out of the street, but you can’t always take the street out of the fighter. And, in Spadafora’s case, you couldn’t even take him entirely out of the street.
These days, Paul Spadaora has a lot more tattoos than he did the night I talked to him in the basement of the Palace Inn. He has a lot more trouble, too.
The former lightweight champion was charged Monday in the shooting Sunday morning of his girlfriend, a tragedy that left the woman fighting for her life in critical condition at Allegheny General Hospital.
Spadafora has been able to find trouble more easily than any other recent-vintage boxer with the possible exception of Mike Tyson. Of course, Spadafora has had a lot more help.
The shooting was Spadafora’s second brush with the law last weekend. On Friday, he was charged with public lewdness when, according to police, he was urinating in public.
During the mid-1990s there were a couple of incidents, mostly the by-product of being a tough kid growing up in a tough neighborhood.
In 1996, Spadafora was a passenger in a vehicle hit by gunfire from a police officer. One of the cop’s bullets pierced his leg, which eliminated the boxer from a probable appearance in the Atlanta Olympic Games.
But an incident in which Spadafora did nothing wrong – legally at least – was perhaps more telling about the boxer’s poor taste in friends.
He posted bail for a man charged with dealing drugs. When the suspect was mistakenly released, Spadafora told police the now-fugitive accused drug dealer was an old buddy.
It says something about Spadafora that a man charged with selling drugs could use his one phone call to contact the IBF lightweight champion of the world. Mostly, it says the fighter never cut himself loose from those who might drag him down.
Let’s be clear, I’m not making excuses for Spadafora here. Ironically, this happened in October, which was Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the fighter is accused of one of the most heinous examples of that type of crime.
Spadafora’s story – that his girlfriend was shot by a robber – is unlikely enough, considering the shooting took place around 6 on Sunday morning, a time when most self-respecting robbers are asleep. But the eyewitness accounts released by the Associated Press make the fighter’s version of events seem even more implausible.
There are two things both Spadafora and Allegheny County police agree on. One is that the girlfriend was driving his SUV when she went over a median strip and flattened two of its tires.
The other is that he was pissed off about it.
No one saw the shooting, but at least one witness heard a shot and saw the girlfriend call for help and say she had just been shot. The witness said Spadafora threatened him when he tried to stem the woman’s bleeding by applying direct pressure.
A witness – the Associated Press report doesn’t make clear whether this is the original witness or a second one – said Spadafora tried to prevent the witness from using a cellular telephone to make a 911 call.
That’s not generally the kind of behavior associated with a man whose girlfriend has just been shot by a mugger. But it is what you might see from a man who has just shot his girlfriend.
Ultimately, that’s for a court to decide. But I’m not inclined to offer Spadafora much sympathy if he’s guilty.
If that happens, it would be more of a waste from Spadafora’s point of view, considering the fact that his success as a fighter gave him an opportunity to get a phone number that isn’t common knowledge to suspected drug dealers and to employ cornermen who don’t start riots during boxing matches.
As it turned out, the Palace Inn fiasco didn’t hurt Spadafora much at the time. His very next fight, in December 1999, brought him the lightweight title, which he held until earlier this year until he relinquished it to have a go in the welterweight division.
I can’t say I know Spadafora well – I’ve met him only a few times – but he seemed to me an earnest young man, wrapped up in the joy of getting paid to do something he had fun at.
“I was fighting all my life for free,” he told me that night. “I’m going to be one of those guys who fights until my trainers say, ‘You’ve got to stop, you’re getting punchy.’”
Now, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that his career is likely to have a different ending.
There’s no doubt Spadafora is proud of being from the Pittsburgh area. He co-opted the “Pittsburgh Kid” moniker once used by 1940s-era light-heavyweight champ Billy Conn and fought his title bouts in Pittsburgh when possible, even when he knew bigger paydays and greater exposure could be had in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
Loyalty is one of the guy’s long suits, for good and for bad.
Even if he had shaken himself loose from the friends of his hardscrabble youth, he might still be up on charges and his girlfriend might still be lying on a hospital bed.
But the fact that Spadafora continued to surround himself with people who still followed the “code of the street” probably made a tragedy like Sunday’s shooting inevitable.
After all, when a story begins with a sentence that contains the words “boxer” and “entourage,” the ending rarely turns out to be a happy one.
After defeating Eugene Johnson in a March 1999 bout, boxer Paul Spadafora sat in the fitness center at the Palace Inn in Monroeville, talking to a member of his entourage.
The guy, who had worked in Spadafora’s corner during that night’s fight, helped trigger a riot when he took a swing at one of Johnson’s cornermen after the final bell.
At the time, Spadafora had made two appearances on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights and was angling for more TV fights and a possible lightweight title shot. Given that, he was mindful the evening’s fracas would be of no help.
Even though he let his supporter know that the incident was unacceptable, Spadafora knew his hanger-on was merely following the code of the rough McKees Rocks neighborhood where they grew up.
“Hey,” Spadafora told him. “I know you got my back.”
The moral of this story is that you can take the fighter out of the street, but you can’t always take the street out of the fighter. And, in Spadafora’s case, you couldn’t even take him entirely out of the street.
These days, Paul Spadaora has a lot more tattoos than he did the night I talked to him in the basement of the Palace Inn. He has a lot more trouble, too.
The former lightweight champion was charged Monday in the shooting Sunday morning of his girlfriend, a tragedy that left the woman fighting for her life in critical condition at Allegheny General Hospital.
Spadafora has been able to find trouble more easily than any other recent-vintage boxer with the possible exception of Mike Tyson. Of course, Spadafora has had a lot more help.
The shooting was Spadafora’s second brush with the law last weekend. On Friday, he was charged with public lewdness when, according to police, he was urinating in public.
During the mid-1990s there were a couple of incidents, mostly the by-product of being a tough kid growing up in a tough neighborhood.
In 1996, Spadafora was a passenger in a vehicle hit by gunfire from a police officer. One of the cop’s bullets pierced his leg, which eliminated the boxer from a probable appearance in the Atlanta Olympic Games.
But an incident in which Spadafora did nothing wrong – legally at least – was perhaps more telling about the boxer’s poor taste in friends.
He posted bail for a man charged with dealing drugs. When the suspect was mistakenly released, Spadafora told police the now-fugitive accused drug dealer was an old buddy.
It says something about Spadafora that a man charged with selling drugs could use his one phone call to contact the IBF lightweight champion of the world. Mostly, it says the fighter never cut himself loose from those who might drag him down.
Let’s be clear, I’m not making excuses for Spadafora here. Ironically, this happened in October, which was Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the fighter is accused of one of the most heinous examples of that type of crime.
Spadafora’s story – that his girlfriend was shot by a robber – is unlikely enough, considering the shooting took place around 6 on Sunday morning, a time when most self-respecting robbers are asleep. But the eyewitness accounts released by the Associated Press make the fighter’s version of events seem even more implausible.
There are two things both Spadafora and Allegheny County police agree on. One is that the girlfriend was driving his SUV when she went over a median strip and flattened two of its tires.
The other is that he was pissed off about it.
No one saw the shooting, but at least one witness heard a shot and saw the girlfriend call for help and say she had just been shot. The witness said Spadafora threatened him when he tried to stem the woman’s bleeding by applying direct pressure.
A witness – the Associated Press report doesn’t make clear whether this is the original witness or a second one – said Spadafora tried to prevent the witness from using a cellular telephone to make a 911 call.
That’s not generally the kind of behavior associated with a man whose girlfriend has just been shot by a mugger. But it is what you might see from a man who has just shot his girlfriend.
Ultimately, that’s for a court to decide. But I’m not inclined to offer Spadafora much sympathy if he’s guilty.
If that happens, it would be more of a waste from Spadafora’s point of view, considering the fact that his success as a fighter gave him an opportunity to get a phone number that isn’t common knowledge to suspected drug dealers and to employ cornermen who don’t start riots during boxing matches.
As it turned out, the Palace Inn fiasco didn’t hurt Spadafora much at the time. His very next fight, in December 1999, brought him the lightweight title, which he held until earlier this year until he relinquished it to have a go in the welterweight division.
I can’t say I know Spadafora well – I’ve met him only a few times – but he seemed to me an earnest young man, wrapped up in the joy of getting paid to do something he had fun at.
“I was fighting all my life for free,” he told me that night. “I’m going to be one of those guys who fights until my trainers say, ‘You’ve got to stop, you’re getting punchy.’”
Now, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that his career is likely to have a different ending.
There’s no doubt Spadafora is proud of being from the Pittsburgh area. He co-opted the “Pittsburgh Kid” moniker once used by 1940s-era light-heavyweight champ Billy Conn and fought his title bouts in Pittsburgh when possible, even when he knew bigger paydays and greater exposure could be had in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
Loyalty is one of the guy’s long suits, for good and for bad.
Even if he had shaken himself loose from the friends of his hardscrabble youth, he might still be up on charges and his girlfriend might still be lying on a hospital bed.
But the fact that Spadafora continued to surround himself with people who still followed the “code of the street” probably made a tragedy like Sunday’s shooting inevitable.
After all, when a story begins with a sentence that contains the words “boxer” and “entourage,” the ending rarely turns out to be a happy one.
Supply and demand at the trading deadline
(Originally appeared on Sports-Central.org, 2004)
I’m haunted by ghosts.
Fortunately, it’s not like you see in the movies. In fact, ghostly apparitions aren’t bad once you get used to them.
When I was younger, it was pretty cool getting visitations from dead rock stars, politicians and polar explorers (Me: So what was it like on the South Pole? Roald Amundsen, in a thick Norwegian accent: Cold.).
Lately, however, I’ve been seeing dead economists. How pathetic is that?
Recently, John Maynard Keynes dropped by with a challenge for Milton Friedman in a best-of-five-falls cage match to settle the whole social-welfare-vs.-supply-side debate once and for all.
And last week, I woke from an absolutely scrummy dream about an all-you-can-eat buffet to find Adam Smith sitting at the foot of my bed.
Smith – author of “The Wealth of Nations,” regarded as the seminal work in the capitalist philosophy – wanted to discuss his economic theories as they applied to the Major League Baseball trading deadline.
“Look,” said Smith, waving a copy of the July 19 daily newspaper. “There are 21 teams within five games of a playoff berth one week beyond the All-Star break. That hasn’t happened since, well, ever.”
“So what’s your point?” I said.
“Did you sleep through economics?” Smith yelled, flecks of powder falling from his wig. “More than two-thirds of Major League Baseball is still in the playoff chase, convinced that they are one left-handed pitcher, one power hitter, one slick-fielding shortstop away from the playoffs.”
Once there, I told Smith, anyone can win the World Series, as Arizona, Anaheim and Florida have so aptly shown over the last three years.
“Exactly,” he said. “But there are only nine teams demonstrably out of the playoff race. That means there is a lot of demand for talented players on non-contending teams ...”
“... but a shortage of supply,” I finished.
“And that means ...”
“The price for those players increases,”
Actually, that’s already been happening, I said. Pittsburgh general manager David Littlefield announced that he won’t trade Kris Benson for anything less than at least one minor leaguer who is ready to play in the majors now.
That’s Kris Benson, a right-handed pitcher who has had an injury-plagued career, a 7-7 record this year with an ERA in the mid fours, and is six games under .500 lifetime.
But over the last six weeks, Benson’s been hotter than the videos he told Penthouse magazine he made with his wife and, as a result, Littlefield just might get what he’s asking for, I told Smith.
Except for the Diamondbacks’ Randy Johnson, Benson is the most sought-after player at this year’s trading deadline. And the Big Unit might not be available for trade – even if he is, no one other than the Yankees, St. Louis or Anaheim need apply.
For everyone else, Benson is the top-shelf acquisition. Among those teams still in the race, pitching help is at the top of the wish list, especially for Texas, Atlanta, Cincinnati, San Diego, San Francisco, Philadelphia and, who am I kidding, everybody except for Chicago.
That, according to Smith’s theories, make every pitcher a more precious commodity. It’s a different story with hitters.
The list of teams looking for offense is more limited – everybody with a realistic playoff hope already has some punch at the plate. But the supply there is smaller too.
Teams with good young hitters want to keep them in order to build for next year. And these days, 32-year-old Danny Bautista of the Diamondbacks qualifies as a good young hitter.
A more intriguing possibility is that contenders looking for offense should check out the bargain bin. That’s where they might find two injury-riddled veterans.
It’s definitely a buyers’ market for Larry Walker and Carlos Delgado, said Smith.
Six years ago, Walker appeared to be a shoo-in Hall-of-Famer. Now, thanks to a near-unbroken run of injuries, he’s a 38-year-old playing out the string. Because he’s been banged up, Walker has appeared in only about two dozen games this year. But he has hit well when he has played.
Colorado’s one-time superstar is looking for a ring and might just have enough left under the hood to lift a team into the playoffs.
Delgado, 32, who is only two years removed from a triple crown run, has seen his batting average mired in the low .200s this year because of injuries. But if the Blue Jays’ star gets healthy late in the season, he could still be the kind of player who can affect a playoff race.
That approach has already worked for the White Sox, who pried Carl Everett from Montreal last week. The former Boston slugger, hampered with injuries this season, has been knocking the ball lopsided for Chicago.
“And they got him rock cheap – two minor-league pitchers,” said Smith, as he got up from his seat on my bed.
“Gotta go,” he said, tipping his three-corner hat.
“One more thing before you leave,” I said. “How do you know so much about baseball?”
Baseball, it seems, is the favorite sport in heaven, Smith said.
“It’s a matter of demographics. We’ve got a lot of former senior citizens up there.”
“Well then, who’s going to win the World Series?” I asked
Smith stopped at the top of the stairs.
“Well,” he said. “The Big Guy doesn’t tell us these things, but there are indications.
“While we get baseball, they have to watch figure skating in hell. Until recently, it was available only on TV, but last spring, in preparation for Tonya Harding’s arrival, Satan finally installed a working ice rink down there.”
I blinked.
“So hell has frozen over, which means ...”
The father of modern capitalism finished my sentence.
“... It’s gotta be the Cubs or the Red Sox.”
(Note: Boston won the World Series that year.)
I’m haunted by ghosts.
Fortunately, it’s not like you see in the movies. In fact, ghostly apparitions aren’t bad once you get used to them.
When I was younger, it was pretty cool getting visitations from dead rock stars, politicians and polar explorers (Me: So what was it like on the South Pole? Roald Amundsen, in a thick Norwegian accent: Cold.).
Lately, however, I’ve been seeing dead economists. How pathetic is that?
Recently, John Maynard Keynes dropped by with a challenge for Milton Friedman in a best-of-five-falls cage match to settle the whole social-welfare-vs.-supply-side debate once and for all.
And last week, I woke from an absolutely scrummy dream about an all-you-can-eat buffet to find Adam Smith sitting at the foot of my bed.
Smith – author of “The Wealth of Nations,” regarded as the seminal work in the capitalist philosophy – wanted to discuss his economic theories as they applied to the Major League Baseball trading deadline.
“Look,” said Smith, waving a copy of the July 19 daily newspaper. “There are 21 teams within five games of a playoff berth one week beyond the All-Star break. That hasn’t happened since, well, ever.”
“So what’s your point?” I said.
“Did you sleep through economics?” Smith yelled, flecks of powder falling from his wig. “More than two-thirds of Major League Baseball is still in the playoff chase, convinced that they are one left-handed pitcher, one power hitter, one slick-fielding shortstop away from the playoffs.”
Once there, I told Smith, anyone can win the World Series, as Arizona, Anaheim and Florida have so aptly shown over the last three years.
“Exactly,” he said. “But there are only nine teams demonstrably out of the playoff race. That means there is a lot of demand for talented players on non-contending teams ...”
“... but a shortage of supply,” I finished.
“And that means ...”
“The price for those players increases,”
Actually, that’s already been happening, I said. Pittsburgh general manager David Littlefield announced that he won’t trade Kris Benson for anything less than at least one minor leaguer who is ready to play in the majors now.
That’s Kris Benson, a right-handed pitcher who has had an injury-plagued career, a 7-7 record this year with an ERA in the mid fours, and is six games under .500 lifetime.
But over the last six weeks, Benson’s been hotter than the videos he told Penthouse magazine he made with his wife and, as a result, Littlefield just might get what he’s asking for, I told Smith.
Except for the Diamondbacks’ Randy Johnson, Benson is the most sought-after player at this year’s trading deadline. And the Big Unit might not be available for trade – even if he is, no one other than the Yankees, St. Louis or Anaheim need apply.
For everyone else, Benson is the top-shelf acquisition. Among those teams still in the race, pitching help is at the top of the wish list, especially for Texas, Atlanta, Cincinnati, San Diego, San Francisco, Philadelphia and, who am I kidding, everybody except for Chicago.
That, according to Smith’s theories, make every pitcher a more precious commodity. It’s a different story with hitters.
The list of teams looking for offense is more limited – everybody with a realistic playoff hope already has some punch at the plate. But the supply there is smaller too.
Teams with good young hitters want to keep them in order to build for next year. And these days, 32-year-old Danny Bautista of the Diamondbacks qualifies as a good young hitter.
A more intriguing possibility is that contenders looking for offense should check out the bargain bin. That’s where they might find two injury-riddled veterans.
It’s definitely a buyers’ market for Larry Walker and Carlos Delgado, said Smith.
Six years ago, Walker appeared to be a shoo-in Hall-of-Famer. Now, thanks to a near-unbroken run of injuries, he’s a 38-year-old playing out the string. Because he’s been banged up, Walker has appeared in only about two dozen games this year. But he has hit well when he has played.
Colorado’s one-time superstar is looking for a ring and might just have enough left under the hood to lift a team into the playoffs.
Delgado, 32, who is only two years removed from a triple crown run, has seen his batting average mired in the low .200s this year because of injuries. But if the Blue Jays’ star gets healthy late in the season, he could still be the kind of player who can affect a playoff race.
That approach has already worked for the White Sox, who pried Carl Everett from Montreal last week. The former Boston slugger, hampered with injuries this season, has been knocking the ball lopsided for Chicago.
“And they got him rock cheap – two minor-league pitchers,” said Smith, as he got up from his seat on my bed.
“Gotta go,” he said, tipping his three-corner hat.
“One more thing before you leave,” I said. “How do you know so much about baseball?”
Baseball, it seems, is the favorite sport in heaven, Smith said.
“It’s a matter of demographics. We’ve got a lot of former senior citizens up there.”
“Well then, who’s going to win the World Series?” I asked
Smith stopped at the top of the stairs.
“Well,” he said. “The Big Guy doesn’t tell us these things, but there are indications.
“While we get baseball, they have to watch figure skating in hell. Until recently, it was available only on TV, but last spring, in preparation for Tonya Harding’s arrival, Satan finally installed a working ice rink down there.”
I blinked.
“So hell has frozen over, which means ...”
The father of modern capitalism finished my sentence.
“... It’s gotta be the Cubs or the Red Sox.”
(Note: Boston won the World Series that year.)
Linebacker needs someone hungry
(Never published but written just before the 2006 NFL season)
I like to think I helped make Tony Siragusa what he is today.
When “Goose” was in college at the University of Pittsburgh he and teammate Burt Grossman – who would also go on to play defensive line in the NFL – worked as bouncers in a bar notorious for serving underage college students.
That bar, perhaps not coincidentally, is now a parking lot.
While Siragusa and Grossman served as imposing presences, I was working across the street at the Original Hot Dog Shop – which, the name notwithstanding, is actually more famous for its french fries.
And woe betide the uninitiated person who asks for a “large” order expecting a McDonald’s “large.”
The Original Hot Dog Shop large fries is about the same size as Siragusa’s head, comes in a bag stamped with a warning from the American Association of Cardiologists and the words “Feeds 6, or one NFL defensive lineman.”
The “O” or “Dirty O,” is open 20-plus hours a day. By bar closing time, the small front counter degenerates into a scene that resembles nothing so much as a Ralph Steadman illustration from one of Hunter S. Thompson’s books.
And each night, Siragusa and Grossman would wade into this mess for their post-work meal, and a joke of the day, two services which were my specialty while working at the O.
Between the daily jokes and the middle-of-the-night meals of the O’s world-famous french fries, Siragusa became the man he is today.
A fat smart ass.
I, or rather the deep-fried food, might deserve some credit for making Siragusa the player he was. Goose’s french-fry-fueled career – let’s be frank here; his french-fry fueled lifestyle – played a big part in his success, not to mention the respective success of the Baltimore Ravens and linebacker Ray Lewis.
Since Siragusa retired after the 2001 season, Baltimore has been looking, without success, for a defensive lineman who can consistently command double teams and keep guards from hounding Lewis.
Filling that need could lift Baltimore into the top echelon of the AFC North, a division so tough that last year’s Super Bowl winner finished in second place.
Lewis knows that and so do the Ravens, whose latest effort to fill Siragusa’s large void comes in the form of Haloti Ngata, Baltimore’s first-round pick and 12th overall selection.
Ngata, an All-American defensive tackle from Oregon, certainly cuts a figure of near-Siragusan proportions at 6-foot-4, 338 pounds.
No word on whether he likes french fries, but his appetite for fried food isn’t nearly as important as his ability to swallow up blockers.
Nobody’s winning the Super Bowl these days unless they have somebody in the middle who can occupy at least two opposing offensive linemen.
If nose tackle Casey Hampton doesn’t take on – and often beat – two and sometimes three blockers, Pittsburgh’s 3-4 defense isn’t nearly as effective as it is, and maybe the Steelers don’t win the Super Bowl.
From an offensive coordinator’s standpoint, you have to throw three guys at Hampton, because if you don’t, he’s making a play deep in your backfield (for reference, see the films from last season’s Pittsburgh-Indianapolis playoff game).
But if you burn a center and two guards trying to block Hampton, that means you have to go after Larry Foote and James Farrior with a fullback, which usually is a mismatch in the Steelers’ favor.
For Lewis, the difference between facing a guard and taking on a fullback is huge. He still gets his 13 tackles a game when healthy, but if he has to contend with a guard, that stop comes about six, instead of two, yards downfield.
And Lewis hasn’t been healthy as often as he used to be because of the physical pounding that goes with battling 300-pound guards instead of being able to pick on someone his own size.
At 31, the linebacker is still too young to attribute the dropoff in his performance to age, but he hasn’t had a really big year since 2003.
Right about now, Lewis might give up body parts – and important ones at that – for the chance to play behind Casey Hampton.
But if Ngata can tie up offensive linemen like Siragusa did, Lewis will not only be satisfied, but he just might want to take Ngata out to dinner.
And Siragusa could have a recommendation.
I like to think I helped make Tony Siragusa what he is today.
When “Goose” was in college at the University of Pittsburgh he and teammate Burt Grossman – who would also go on to play defensive line in the NFL – worked as bouncers in a bar notorious for serving underage college students.
That bar, perhaps not coincidentally, is now a parking lot.
While Siragusa and Grossman served as imposing presences, I was working across the street at the Original Hot Dog Shop – which, the name notwithstanding, is actually more famous for its french fries.
And woe betide the uninitiated person who asks for a “large” order expecting a McDonald’s “large.”
The Original Hot Dog Shop large fries is about the same size as Siragusa’s head, comes in a bag stamped with a warning from the American Association of Cardiologists and the words “Feeds 6, or one NFL defensive lineman.”
The “O” or “Dirty O,” is open 20-plus hours a day. By bar closing time, the small front counter degenerates into a scene that resembles nothing so much as a Ralph Steadman illustration from one of Hunter S. Thompson’s books.
And each night, Siragusa and Grossman would wade into this mess for their post-work meal, and a joke of the day, two services which were my specialty while working at the O.
Between the daily jokes and the middle-of-the-night meals of the O’s world-famous french fries, Siragusa became the man he is today.
A fat smart ass.
I, or rather the deep-fried food, might deserve some credit for making Siragusa the player he was. Goose’s french-fry-fueled career – let’s be frank here; his french-fry fueled lifestyle – played a big part in his success, not to mention the respective success of the Baltimore Ravens and linebacker Ray Lewis.
Since Siragusa retired after the 2001 season, Baltimore has been looking, without success, for a defensive lineman who can consistently command double teams and keep guards from hounding Lewis.
Filling that need could lift Baltimore into the top echelon of the AFC North, a division so tough that last year’s Super Bowl winner finished in second place.
Lewis knows that and so do the Ravens, whose latest effort to fill Siragusa’s large void comes in the form of Haloti Ngata, Baltimore’s first-round pick and 12th overall selection.
Ngata, an All-American defensive tackle from Oregon, certainly cuts a figure of near-Siragusan proportions at 6-foot-4, 338 pounds.
No word on whether he likes french fries, but his appetite for fried food isn’t nearly as important as his ability to swallow up blockers.
Nobody’s winning the Super Bowl these days unless they have somebody in the middle who can occupy at least two opposing offensive linemen.
If nose tackle Casey Hampton doesn’t take on – and often beat – two and sometimes three blockers, Pittsburgh’s 3-4 defense isn’t nearly as effective as it is, and maybe the Steelers don’t win the Super Bowl.
From an offensive coordinator’s standpoint, you have to throw three guys at Hampton, because if you don’t, he’s making a play deep in your backfield (for reference, see the films from last season’s Pittsburgh-Indianapolis playoff game).
But if you burn a center and two guards trying to block Hampton, that means you have to go after Larry Foote and James Farrior with a fullback, which usually is a mismatch in the Steelers’ favor.
For Lewis, the difference between facing a guard and taking on a fullback is huge. He still gets his 13 tackles a game when healthy, but if he has to contend with a guard, that stop comes about six, instead of two, yards downfield.
And Lewis hasn’t been healthy as often as he used to be because of the physical pounding that goes with battling 300-pound guards instead of being able to pick on someone his own size.
At 31, the linebacker is still too young to attribute the dropoff in his performance to age, but he hasn’t had a really big year since 2003.
Right about now, Lewis might give up body parts – and important ones at that – for the chance to play behind Casey Hampton.
But if Ngata can tie up offensive linemen like Siragusa did, Lewis will not only be satisfied, but he just might want to take Ngata out to dinner.
And Siragusa could have a recommendation.
Bonds paid to do more than hit home runs
(originally appeared in the Ellwood City Ledger, May 31, 2008)
This isn't about Barry Bonds, even though his name comes up.
I can’t get too worked up over Bonds, who is fated to be the poster child for his sport's Monsanto – "better baseball through chemistry" – era.
When he retires, Bonds will have more career home runs than anyone who has ever played Major League Baseball. But he won't own the record; he'll merely be renting it from New York Yankees’ star Alex Rodriguez.
And Bonds' statistics aren't baseball's only dubious marks these days – for one thing, it's not like Lou Gehrig had greenies to get him through the back ends of all those Sunday doubleheaders in the 1930s.
I'm not saying conclusively that Cal Ripken Jr. was gobbling fistfuls of Infielders' Little Helpers washed down with Mountain Dew when he broke Gehrig’s consecutive-games-played record, but there is reason to be suspicious.
Again, though, this isn't about Barry Bonds. It's about the San Francisco Giants' other Barry, pitcher Barry Zito.
In an “ESPN The Magazine” guest column last week, Zito leapt to Bonds’ defense – the pitcher said Bonds is a great guy, incidentally. But the first paragraph of the story, where Zito said Bonds gets paid to hit home runs, not to be a hero, says more about Zito than Bonds.
Apparently, Zito thinks he gets paid to take the ball from manager Bruce Bochy every fourth or fifth day and throw strikes. The difference between that line of reasoning and Heather Mills is that Heather Mills has a leg to stand on.
Bonds’ job is not, contrary to Zito’s opinion, to simply hit home runs. If athletic fame and fortune were merely a matter of proficiency, Sean Lugano would still be alive.
A gifted athlete, Lugano might have been a second baseman for the New York Mets, a placekicker for the Giants, a center for the Rangers or a guard for the Knicks.
But Lugano's sport was rugby, and he was good at it. An All-American at Loyola of Maryland in 1997, he led the New York Athletic Club's team to a second-place national finish months before his death.
The key distinction is that, when Bonds and Zito take the field, there are 30,000 people in the stands to see and millions watching on television, while Lugano’s ilk ply their craft before friends-and-family crowds.
If earning a six- seven- or eight-figure salary were simply a matter of hitting home runs – or throwing crisp passes and making tackles, for that matter – Lugano wouldn’t have been working at an investment firm in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, the morning that terrorists flew a passenger jet through his office window.
The moral of this tale, Mr. Zito, is that you don't make the big bucks, wear big bling and live in a big house because you're good at what you do, but because the fans care about what you do. The minute they stop caring, your gravy train comes to a screeching halt.
In other words, athletes are supposed to be heroes.
Not the same way that the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, or firemen and policemen, are heroes, but in the sense that professional athletes perform larger-than-life deeds and they have an obligation not to sully those accomplishments by being jerks, crooks, cheaters or malcontents.
Yes, Barry Zito, Bonds does get paid to do more than hit home runs.
And his job performance leaves plenty to be desired.
Eric Poole can be reached online at epoole@ellwoodcityledger.com
This isn't about Barry Bonds, even though his name comes up.
I can’t get too worked up over Bonds, who is fated to be the poster child for his sport's Monsanto – "better baseball through chemistry" – era.
When he retires, Bonds will have more career home runs than anyone who has ever played Major League Baseball. But he won't own the record; he'll merely be renting it from New York Yankees’ star Alex Rodriguez.
And Bonds' statistics aren't baseball's only dubious marks these days – for one thing, it's not like Lou Gehrig had greenies to get him through the back ends of all those Sunday doubleheaders in the 1930s.
I'm not saying conclusively that Cal Ripken Jr. was gobbling fistfuls of Infielders' Little Helpers washed down with Mountain Dew when he broke Gehrig’s consecutive-games-played record, but there is reason to be suspicious.
Again, though, this isn't about Barry Bonds. It's about the San Francisco Giants' other Barry, pitcher Barry Zito.
In an “ESPN The Magazine” guest column last week, Zito leapt to Bonds’ defense – the pitcher said Bonds is a great guy, incidentally. But the first paragraph of the story, where Zito said Bonds gets paid to hit home runs, not to be a hero, says more about Zito than Bonds.
Apparently, Zito thinks he gets paid to take the ball from manager Bruce Bochy every fourth or fifth day and throw strikes. The difference between that line of reasoning and Heather Mills is that Heather Mills has a leg to stand on.
Bonds’ job is not, contrary to Zito’s opinion, to simply hit home runs. If athletic fame and fortune were merely a matter of proficiency, Sean Lugano would still be alive.
A gifted athlete, Lugano might have been a second baseman for the New York Mets, a placekicker for the Giants, a center for the Rangers or a guard for the Knicks.
But Lugano's sport was rugby, and he was good at it. An All-American at Loyola of Maryland in 1997, he led the New York Athletic Club's team to a second-place national finish months before his death.
The key distinction is that, when Bonds and Zito take the field, there are 30,000 people in the stands to see and millions watching on television, while Lugano’s ilk ply their craft before friends-and-family crowds.
If earning a six- seven- or eight-figure salary were simply a matter of hitting home runs – or throwing crisp passes and making tackles, for that matter – Lugano wouldn’t have been working at an investment firm in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, the morning that terrorists flew a passenger jet through his office window.
The moral of this tale, Mr. Zito, is that you don't make the big bucks, wear big bling and live in a big house because you're good at what you do, but because the fans care about what you do. The minute they stop caring, your gravy train comes to a screeching halt.
In other words, athletes are supposed to be heroes.
Not the same way that the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, or firemen and policemen, are heroes, but in the sense that professional athletes perform larger-than-life deeds and they have an obligation not to sully those accomplishments by being jerks, crooks, cheaters or malcontents.
Yes, Barry Zito, Bonds does get paid to do more than hit home runs.
And his job performance leaves plenty to be desired.
Eric Poole can be reached online at epoole@ellwoodcityledger.com
Bootylicious is as bootylicious looks
(Originally appeared in the Ellwood City Ledger, March 8, 2008)
My wife caught me in an embarrassing situation a few weeks ago.
She walked into the living room while I was watching Australian Open women's tennis finals on TV.
"Are you watching women's tennis? You never watch women's tennis unless –, " she said, then rolled her eyes. "Oh, Serena Williams is playing."
I looked at her and said, "Don’t you roll your eyes at me. I've got two words for you: Rick Springfield."
"Yeah," she said, "But I like Rick for his music. You wouldn't be watching women's tennis if Serena Williams weren’t playing."
She touched Springfield's butt once at a concert so now they're on a first-name basis.
"Hey," I shot back. "It's not like they put women like Serena Williams on television for their looks. And she’s never dropped a clinker like ‘Jesse's Girl.'"
And that's pretty much how I ended up sleeping on the couch most of the last week in January.
OK, that story isn't true, except for the part about my wife touching Rick Springfield's butt.
That actually happened.
Coincidentally, it was another backside – Williams’ – that garnered a lot of attention during her triumphant turn at the Australian Open, where observers accused her of being out of shape because she has a shape.
The champion’s cup hadn’t even had a chance to get warm in her hands before she fired back.
“I’m definitely in better shape than I get credit for, just because I have large bosoms and a big ass,” Williams said, according to Sports Illustrated. “I think if I were not to eat for two years I still wouldn’t be a size 2 … I’m bootylicious and that’s how it’s always going to be.”
That much was evident in a Sports Illustrated’s 2003 swimsuit issue, when Williams appeared in a photo spread that would have had former CBS golf analyst Ben Wright wondering how she could hit a tennis ball so hard.
With roughly one out of every three Americans classified as obese, Williams couldn’t be considered oversized by any standard except that of the popular culture.
This year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover girl, Beyonce, called herself bootylicious in the days before she – like Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon, Christina Ricci and plenty of other Hollywood types before her – cut weight to fit the image.
That outlook has an effect on teenage girls who pick up fashion magazines, which imply that their normal bodies are actually overweight. But none of that exactly qualifies as breaking news.
But there is something new about the pop cultural equation of skinny with attractive – a backlash against it. Last year, the Madrid fashion show, said, contrary to the old saying, that you can be too thin, and turned away models who were too lean.
In January, Williams showed the world that winning comes in all shapes.
And that, at least for young women, is what’s beautiful about sports. It judges its participants on their abilities, not their looks. Unlike Hollywood, sports says – albeit not as forcefully as Williams did – that it’s OK to be bootylicious.
Maybe the popular culture can follow that lead and stop turning to fashion mavens for judgments better left to Sir Mix-A-Lot.
Eric Poole can be reached online at epoole@ellwoodcityledger.com
My wife caught me in an embarrassing situation a few weeks ago.
She walked into the living room while I was watching Australian Open women's tennis finals on TV.
"Are you watching women's tennis? You never watch women's tennis unless –, " she said, then rolled her eyes. "Oh, Serena Williams is playing."
I looked at her and said, "Don’t you roll your eyes at me. I've got two words for you: Rick Springfield."
"Yeah," she said, "But I like Rick for his music. You wouldn't be watching women's tennis if Serena Williams weren’t playing."
She touched Springfield's butt once at a concert so now they're on a first-name basis.
"Hey," I shot back. "It's not like they put women like Serena Williams on television for their looks. And she’s never dropped a clinker like ‘Jesse's Girl.'"
And that's pretty much how I ended up sleeping on the couch most of the last week in January.
OK, that story isn't true, except for the part about my wife touching Rick Springfield's butt.
That actually happened.
Coincidentally, it was another backside – Williams’ – that garnered a lot of attention during her triumphant turn at the Australian Open, where observers accused her of being out of shape because she has a shape.
The champion’s cup hadn’t even had a chance to get warm in her hands before she fired back.
“I’m definitely in better shape than I get credit for, just because I have large bosoms and a big ass,” Williams said, according to Sports Illustrated. “I think if I were not to eat for two years I still wouldn’t be a size 2 … I’m bootylicious and that’s how it’s always going to be.”
That much was evident in a Sports Illustrated’s 2003 swimsuit issue, when Williams appeared in a photo spread that would have had former CBS golf analyst Ben Wright wondering how she could hit a tennis ball so hard.
With roughly one out of every three Americans classified as obese, Williams couldn’t be considered oversized by any standard except that of the popular culture.
This year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover girl, Beyonce, called herself bootylicious in the days before she – like Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon, Christina Ricci and plenty of other Hollywood types before her – cut weight to fit the image.
That outlook has an effect on teenage girls who pick up fashion magazines, which imply that their normal bodies are actually overweight. But none of that exactly qualifies as breaking news.
But there is something new about the pop cultural equation of skinny with attractive – a backlash against it. Last year, the Madrid fashion show, said, contrary to the old saying, that you can be too thin, and turned away models who were too lean.
In January, Williams showed the world that winning comes in all shapes.
And that, at least for young women, is what’s beautiful about sports. It judges its participants on their abilities, not their looks. Unlike Hollywood, sports says – albeit not as forcefully as Williams did – that it’s OK to be bootylicious.
Maybe the popular culture can follow that lead and stop turning to fashion mavens for judgments better left to Sir Mix-A-Lot.
Eric Poole can be reached online at epoole@ellwoodcityledger.com
An Immodest Proposal
(Originally appeared on Sports-Central.org, 2004)
Dedicated to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
(Warning: Contains some adult content)
Somehow, it’s fitting that the Summer Olympics seems to be populated largely by whiny gymnasts begging for “do-overs.”
First, Russia’s Svetlana Khorkina, gymnastics’ hard-luck kid, cried “fix” after she finished second in the women’s overall to Carly Patterson of the United States. Then a judging screw-up deprived Korea’s Yang Tae-young of the gold medal in the men’s overall competition.
Again, an American – Paul Hamm – was the beneficiary.
Svet, Tae, get over it. You knew something like this could happen the first time you did a back handspring into a roundoff.
Or, as U.S. gymnast Blaine Wilson said, “If you can’t deal with gymnastics being subjective, then get out of it.”
So take your silver medals and quit whining before we send a shotputter over to give you something to whine about.
I’m not saying this because this is a case of foreigners complaining about the All-American kids winning gold medals.
I’m saying this because gymnastics – and you can throw in figure skating for good measure – are fundamentally flawed.
It seems we can’t get through an Olympics without having some sort of controversy over judging. In 2002, the Eastern European mob fixed the pairs figure skating (Have you heard the one about the Russian sports mechanic? He fixes figure skating competitions.)
Four years earlier, the results of almost every figure skating event matched exactly the pre-Olympic world rankings. In other words, the outcome was decided in advance, which made it exactly like professional wrestling, only without the WWE’s bothersome excitement.
During the 2000 gymnastics competition in the Sydney Olympics, someone set the vault at the wrong height, which literally tripped up a series of competitors, including Khorkina. After falling on the vault, she totally lost her poise and botched the uneven parallel bars.
Judges gave her a do-over for the vault, but not the bars, so she stormed off in a huff.
That whole thing has to have had Patterson looking at her gold medal and thinking, “Wow. I’ve had this thing for only a couple of days and it’s already tarnished.”
The sad part isn’t that it happened; it’s that the problem can’t be fixed because gymnastics and figure skating are art forms, not real sports.
Listen up. If you’ve got some guy with a pencil and calculator deciding who wins, it’s not a sport. With apologies to all of those little pixies out there, it takes more than athleticism to make an athlete.
What sports have that gymnastics and figure skating don’t is a fundamental sense of fairness. Not that I care who wins. I fervently avoid gymnastics and I watch figure skating only for the crashes.
In figure skating, gymnastics, most boxing matches and any other subjective pseudosport, an official, or a panel of officials decide who wins. In a real sport, the athletes decide who wins, while the officials perform the same task as a judge in a courtroom – they merely adjudicate the rules.
But in gymnastics, the judges are actually juries, deciding the worth of each performance, which creates even more problems for the competitors, starting with the competitors, particularly among women. The Federal Communications Commission really needs to enforce some sort of truth-in-broadcasting rules to keep NBC from calling the event “women’s gymnastics.”
The event really should be called “Little Girls Gymnastics.”
For the parents out there grooming little -- and I do mean little -- Heather, Danielle or Brittany for a spot on the Olympic medal stand, there is something you should know.
If your daughter has ever purchased anything in the feminine hygiene aisle at the drugstore, she’s too old, because the typical Olympic gymnastics career ends not with an exclamation point, but a period.
The irony here, in the middle of what can easily be mistaken for a sexist diatribe, is that sports is good for young women. Girls who take part in sports, as a rule, get better grades, don’t use drugs, have greater self-esteem and are less likely to be victims of domestic abuse than those who do not.
But that applies only to real sports. If you want to do what’s best for your daughter, get Heather a soccer ball, get Danielle a basketball, get Brittany a softball glove.
In gymnastics and figure skating, victory and defeat are not based on performance but on perception, so competitors seek acceptance -- from the judges and coaches -- rather than achievement.
In 1995, Joan Ryan, then a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote a book called “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes,” which discussed the problems inherent with gymnastics and figure skating. Part of Ryan’s book chronicles the selection process for the 1992 U.S. Olympic Little Girls Gymnastics Team, which might have been the thinnest on record.
One competitor earned a place on the team in competition, such as it was. But she was left off on the rationale that she might be marked down in the Olympics by international judges because she had -- and this is a quote, according to Ryan’s book -- “boobs and a butt.”
OK, so what have we learned here, aside from the fact that Jennifer Lopez will never be an Olympic gymnast, is that just about the only people who get excited about gymnastics in non-Olympic years are gymnasts, gymnastics coaches and gymnastics parents.
And pedophiles.
Not that pseudosports like gymnastics and figure skating are likely to be banished from the Olympics anytime soon. You see, those are the sports that draw some of the highest ratings on U.S. television.
Everybody gets excited about figure skating and gymnastics, so the IOC added ballroom dancing as an Olympic sport. But why stop there? Anything can be judged. Why not Olympic Cannonball Diving or Olympic Macrame?
Or Olympic Brass Pole Dancing?
Yeah, that’s right, stripping.
It would certainly renew interest in the Olympic Games, if the popularity of beach volleyball’s Orange Bikini Dance Team at the Athens Games is any indication.
As sports go, brass pole dancing is at least as legitimate than gymnastics and figure skating. The best gymnast is whoever the judges say it is. The best stripper is the one who walks out the door at the end of the night with the most money.
Stripping is physically demanding – when’s the last time you tried to dance on a narrow stage while picking up dollar bills with your butt and fending off a drunk all at the same time?
If anything, stripping is a more valid Olympic sport than either gymnastics or figure skating because there is a reasonably objective way of keeping score. And in keeping with that objective measurement of victory, the brass pole dancing event would be judged by a panel of construction workers from Brooklyn, each of whom have $1,000 to distribute to a round of six competitors.
In each round, the judges -- who presumably have extensive experience in evaluating brass pole dancing -- would grade the competitors on the basis of technical ability, artistic merit and quality of surgical enhancements.
After the competition, the judges would sneak home and lie to their wives about where they’ve been.
The winner would be the one with the most money, as determined by an IRS accountant -- which might lead to some amusing situations involving discrepancies between the amount of money handed out by the judges and the amount tallied.
There also would be a men’s brass pole dancing competition, which would go pretty much the same as the women’s, except that the judges would be the regulars from “Queer Eye For the Straight Guy.”
It’s a great plan -- there’s only one flaw.
Members of the International Olympic Committee have admitted receiving bribes in connection with the awarding of the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee has been accused of making those bribes and looting the federal government coffers in providing amenities for the games.
This year’s Summer Games were put together by a group of people in Greece who had no respect for deadlines and left the main swimming venue unfinished. During the run-up to the games, the major buzz about the Olympics wasn’t centered on who would win the medals, but who was juicing up.
What self-respecting stripper would want to deal with that sort of crowd?
Dedicated to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
(Warning: Contains some adult content)
Somehow, it’s fitting that the Summer Olympics seems to be populated largely by whiny gymnasts begging for “do-overs.”
First, Russia’s Svetlana Khorkina, gymnastics’ hard-luck kid, cried “fix” after she finished second in the women’s overall to Carly Patterson of the United States. Then a judging screw-up deprived Korea’s Yang Tae-young of the gold medal in the men’s overall competition.
Again, an American – Paul Hamm – was the beneficiary.
Svet, Tae, get over it. You knew something like this could happen the first time you did a back handspring into a roundoff.
Or, as U.S. gymnast Blaine Wilson said, “If you can’t deal with gymnastics being subjective, then get out of it.”
So take your silver medals and quit whining before we send a shotputter over to give you something to whine about.
I’m not saying this because this is a case of foreigners complaining about the All-American kids winning gold medals.
I’m saying this because gymnastics – and you can throw in figure skating for good measure – are fundamentally flawed.
It seems we can’t get through an Olympics without having some sort of controversy over judging. In 2002, the Eastern European mob fixed the pairs figure skating (Have you heard the one about the Russian sports mechanic? He fixes figure skating competitions.)
Four years earlier, the results of almost every figure skating event matched exactly the pre-Olympic world rankings. In other words, the outcome was decided in advance, which made it exactly like professional wrestling, only without the WWE’s bothersome excitement.
During the 2000 gymnastics competition in the Sydney Olympics, someone set the vault at the wrong height, which literally tripped up a series of competitors, including Khorkina. After falling on the vault, she totally lost her poise and botched the uneven parallel bars.
Judges gave her a do-over for the vault, but not the bars, so she stormed off in a huff.
That whole thing has to have had Patterson looking at her gold medal and thinking, “Wow. I’ve had this thing for only a couple of days and it’s already tarnished.”
The sad part isn’t that it happened; it’s that the problem can’t be fixed because gymnastics and figure skating are art forms, not real sports.
Listen up. If you’ve got some guy with a pencil and calculator deciding who wins, it’s not a sport. With apologies to all of those little pixies out there, it takes more than athleticism to make an athlete.
What sports have that gymnastics and figure skating don’t is a fundamental sense of fairness. Not that I care who wins. I fervently avoid gymnastics and I watch figure skating only for the crashes.
In figure skating, gymnastics, most boxing matches and any other subjective pseudosport, an official, or a panel of officials decide who wins. In a real sport, the athletes decide who wins, while the officials perform the same task as a judge in a courtroom – they merely adjudicate the rules.
But in gymnastics, the judges are actually juries, deciding the worth of each performance, which creates even more problems for the competitors, starting with the competitors, particularly among women. The Federal Communications Commission really needs to enforce some sort of truth-in-broadcasting rules to keep NBC from calling the event “women’s gymnastics.”
The event really should be called “Little Girls Gymnastics.”
For the parents out there grooming little -- and I do mean little -- Heather, Danielle or Brittany for a spot on the Olympic medal stand, there is something you should know.
If your daughter has ever purchased anything in the feminine hygiene aisle at the drugstore, she’s too old, because the typical Olympic gymnastics career ends not with an exclamation point, but a period.
The irony here, in the middle of what can easily be mistaken for a sexist diatribe, is that sports is good for young women. Girls who take part in sports, as a rule, get better grades, don’t use drugs, have greater self-esteem and are less likely to be victims of domestic abuse than those who do not.
But that applies only to real sports. If you want to do what’s best for your daughter, get Heather a soccer ball, get Danielle a basketball, get Brittany a softball glove.
In gymnastics and figure skating, victory and defeat are not based on performance but on perception, so competitors seek acceptance -- from the judges and coaches -- rather than achievement.
In 1995, Joan Ryan, then a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote a book called “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes,” which discussed the problems inherent with gymnastics and figure skating. Part of Ryan’s book chronicles the selection process for the 1992 U.S. Olympic Little Girls Gymnastics Team, which might have been the thinnest on record.
One competitor earned a place on the team in competition, such as it was. But she was left off on the rationale that she might be marked down in the Olympics by international judges because she had -- and this is a quote, according to Ryan’s book -- “boobs and a butt.”
OK, so what have we learned here, aside from the fact that Jennifer Lopez will never be an Olympic gymnast, is that just about the only people who get excited about gymnastics in non-Olympic years are gymnasts, gymnastics coaches and gymnastics parents.
And pedophiles.
Not that pseudosports like gymnastics and figure skating are likely to be banished from the Olympics anytime soon. You see, those are the sports that draw some of the highest ratings on U.S. television.
Everybody gets excited about figure skating and gymnastics, so the IOC added ballroom dancing as an Olympic sport. But why stop there? Anything can be judged. Why not Olympic Cannonball Diving or Olympic Macrame?
Or Olympic Brass Pole Dancing?
Yeah, that’s right, stripping.
It would certainly renew interest in the Olympic Games, if the popularity of beach volleyball’s Orange Bikini Dance Team at the Athens Games is any indication.
As sports go, brass pole dancing is at least as legitimate than gymnastics and figure skating. The best gymnast is whoever the judges say it is. The best stripper is the one who walks out the door at the end of the night with the most money.
Stripping is physically demanding – when’s the last time you tried to dance on a narrow stage while picking up dollar bills with your butt and fending off a drunk all at the same time?
If anything, stripping is a more valid Olympic sport than either gymnastics or figure skating because there is a reasonably objective way of keeping score. And in keeping with that objective measurement of victory, the brass pole dancing event would be judged by a panel of construction workers from Brooklyn, each of whom have $1,000 to distribute to a round of six competitors.
In each round, the judges -- who presumably have extensive experience in evaluating brass pole dancing -- would grade the competitors on the basis of technical ability, artistic merit and quality of surgical enhancements.
After the competition, the judges would sneak home and lie to their wives about where they’ve been.
The winner would be the one with the most money, as determined by an IRS accountant -- which might lead to some amusing situations involving discrepancies between the amount of money handed out by the judges and the amount tallied.
There also would be a men’s brass pole dancing competition, which would go pretty much the same as the women’s, except that the judges would be the regulars from “Queer Eye For the Straight Guy.”
It’s a great plan -- there’s only one flaw.
Members of the International Olympic Committee have admitted receiving bribes in connection with the awarding of the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee has been accused of making those bribes and looting the federal government coffers in providing amenities for the games.
This year’s Summer Games were put together by a group of people in Greece who had no respect for deadlines and left the main swimming venue unfinished. During the run-up to the games, the major buzz about the Olympics wasn’t centered on who would win the medals, but who was juicing up.
What self-respecting stripper would want to deal with that sort of crowd?
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