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Colorado Rockies catcher Miguel Olivo:
With his team trailing 5-1 in the 8th inning, the Colorado backstop slipped into the team’s bathroom and passed a kidney stone. Astonishingly, as soon as he got the stone out of his system, Olivo quickly jumped into his catching gear and trotted back onto the field.
The Yankees have a guy in the minors who can pitch righty and lefty. SI.com:
Making his first appearance for the Yankees, Venditte took over for CC Sabathia with two outs in the fifth inning and tossed four warmup pitches with each hand. Venditte switched back and forth, depending on whether he was facing a righty or lefty, and gave up two hits and a walk.
The 24-year-old reliever, who uses a six-finger glove, pitched for two teams in Class A last season and went a combined 4-2 with 22 saves and a 1.87 ERA. He is scheduled to begin the season at Class A Tampa.
Sabathia said he knew the Yankees had an ambidextrous pitcher in their organization, but did a double take when Venditte took the mound.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Sabathia said. “I felt like we kept changing pitchers before I figured out what was happening.”
I’m no diehard sports fan, but Michael Oriard’s whining over at Slate that the Phoenix Cardinals have no business playing in the Super Bowl, despite their two playoff victories, irks me:
This simple fact is that the very presence of the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl is at best a fluke and, at worst, a disgrace. They played in a landfill of a division. They won their two playoff games because Jake Delhomme of Carolina turned the ball over six times and because the Philadelphia Eagles all looked at the newspapers last Sunday and discovered they were in the NFC championship game again. The Cardinals are a glorified Arena Football League team with a soft defense and a running game unworthy of the name. They are in the position that they’re in because the NFL rigs its season worse than any carny rigs his wheel. For all the macho posturing of its principal propagandists, between the jiggering of the schedule and the conniving of the draft and the socialistic revenue schemes, and the desperate grab for any mechanism that will flatten out the differences between really good teams and really bad ones, the NFL is the league that comes closest to the biddy soccer league philosophy of making sure that everyone gets a trophy.
Oriard is missing an essential aspect of sports: you have to play the games. I love it–just love it–when teams outperform their talent (it’s the American way, isn’t it, to root for the underdog? Isn’t it the American way to say that, too?). If the most talented teams always won, why would anyone bother to watch? Where’s the drama? It’s obvious, right?
Now, I stopped paying much attention to baseball many years ago and even though I prefer hockey to football, I watch football more than any other sport (hockey is virtually nonexistent on TV), but very rarely, maybe two, three times a season, will I watch a game that doesn’t include the Saints (and I miss them from time to time as well). I Tivo Saints games, giving them an hour or two head start so I can fast forward through most of the inane game commentary and the commercials. Like I said, I’m no diehard.
What turns me off from sports isn’t so much the spoiled millionaire athletes as much as the fans and professional commentators like Oriard (in his defense, maybe his other work isn’t so small and pathetic). Many of the spoiled millionaire athletes have been pampered and celebrated so much that by the time they turn pro they’re more akin to Zsa Zsa Gabor than anyone I know. I don’t take professional athletes that seriously, just like I’ve never taken Zsa Zsa seriously. They talk about themselves in the third person and thank god for the touchdowns they score. They’re funny, even silly. They’re brawny fops.
Sports fans, though, what’s their excuse? If their chosen team doesn’t win it all they turn mean and hysterical, trashing coaches and players as if they had directly been insulted by them. They sulk and whine. The excuse most often cited for such nastiness is how well paid the players are or how unexemplary they are as citizens or human beings, as if fans play no role in the obscene wealth and behavior of sports stars. With that cover, the sports fan rages like the games matter in some deep, substantial way. The sports fan becomes convinced that virtually every team that doesn’t win the Super Bowl is run be total morans, even if the year before the same fans celebrated the same morans as geniuses. Every year, 31 NFL teams are run by idiots and assholes, and the Super Bowl winner is run by brainiacs and Jesus’ kid brother*.
Maybe my formative years as a Cubs fan account for my live-and-let-live fandom. My brother took me to quite a few Cubs games in the 70s and early 80s back when the Cubs were truly horrible and they’d often draw only 5,000 or so fans. They were always in last, or that’s how it seemed. So finding ways of enjoying their games was difficult, especially since I was too young to get drunk with my brother and his friends. So I rooted for individual players, guys like Rick Monday and Bill Buckner and Dave Kingman and Bruce Sutter and Many Trillo and Ivan DeJesus. I even enjoyed the more limited exploits of obscure guys like Larry Biitner (a career utility outfielder/pinch hitter who the Cubs let pitch a couple innings in 1977, giving up 6 earned runs and striking out 3) and Jose Cardinal (another utility outfielder, a total joker and crowd pleaser, I distinctly remember him breaking up a double play by clowning and wrapping his arms around the first baseman, not allowing the guy to throw the ball across the infield). Kingman was something of a boor but a lot of his homers landed on Waveland Avenue and it doesn’t get much better than that, Trillo didn’t seem to have much passion or personality but he was always so fluid, never a wasted movement, while his double play partner, DeJesus, couldn’t hit his weight (yes he was a small guy, and yes I’m exaggerating) but was a fabulous fielder with incredible leaping ability, and Buckner had a bum ankle so his triples and doubles turned into doubles and singles but he did win the batting title one year. My point is the Cubs sucked in almost every way but I appreciated their unique brand of suckiness without resorting to being a hater. And I was just a kid.
Even if your team loses, isn’t the game still kind of fun? If it’s not, isn’t the phrase “get a life” operative?
* “Jesus’ kid brother” isn’t original. I’m stealing it from my friend Hix who wrote a short story with the phrase “he gave me a kid brother of Jesus look” that I’ve always been fond of.
I don’t watch much baseball anymore (okay, hardly/if any), but even I know this is embarrassing in the extreme:
LSU had scored a run and had the bases loaded but UC Irvine second baseman Casey Stevenson snuffed the rally by pulling the hidden ball trick on the Tigers’ D.J. LeMahieu at second base.
Three two-out walks loaded the bases for LSU. Leon Landry then hit a grounder off pitcher Scott Gorgen’s glove. The ball caromed to Stevenson who did not make a throw but apparently held the ball. When play resumed and LeMahieu took his lead off second, Stevenson tagged him and second base umpire David Rogers called LeMahieu out.
An LSU Assistant Coach was subsequently thrown out; the LSU head coach argued the call; fans booed. But come on, your guy fell for the hidden ball trick.
Below: different coach, same idea.
(photo credit: TipsterHog)
(photo credit: Falling Heavens)
I didn’t watch a Hornets game this year until the San Antonio series, and even then I think I only watched three games. Basketball just doesn’t do it for me. NBA games always seem to come down to the last 2 minutes, which usually takes a half hour or more to complete. And all the flopping around and arguing with the refs only frustrates me. Sure I’m being unfair and I know better. I cheered for the Bulls and their 6 championships, so I know there’s more to it (at least as long as the Michael Jordan Bulls are involved). And I’ll grant that Chris Paul is a special player. Still. Give me NHL hockey any day.
I went to countless Chicago Blackhawks games when I was in high school since my brother had nose bleed season tickets. My brother, wonderful guy that he was and remains, was certainly a bad influence. Let’s just say I saw (and participated in) much bad behavior. But the hockey was great and minted me a lifelong fan. I love the movement and speed and flow of the game (theoretically, the game can be played continuously without a whistle until a goal is scored, and playoff games often feature such non-stop play), the shocking skating ability of the players, the absurd finesse of stickhandling, all of it. Even the bloodier aspects, the fighting, the slashing, the pounding checks, I cheer it all. It all has a place in the game (though note the fights hardly ever occur during playoff games).
So this past hockey season has been a delight as my team–the Blackhawks–has shown that it’s on the verge of becoming a playoff contender. And not to be heartless, since its longtime owner Bill Wirtz died, it’s been like the new owner, Bill Wirtz’ son, Spike, has ushered in an era of Glasnost. Bill Wirtz refused for decades to broadcast many home games because he believed it cheated season ticket holders. He alienated former stars as far back as Bobby Hull in the 1970s. The fans hated him. But now that Spike is running things, he’s hired away a PR legend from the Cubs who has signed a deal to televise all Blackhawks games, brought back into the fold the spurned former stars, and now it’s being reported he’s got the Blackhawks next year’s Winter Classic, an outdoor game against the Detroit Red Wings (currently leading the Pittsburgh Penguins 2 games to 1 in the Stanley Cup Finals). The game will probably be played at Wrigley Field. Let’s hope there’s snow flurries.
To get a sense of how deeply many Blackhawks fans loathed Bill Wirtz (typically derided as “Dollar Bill Wirtz,” for his cheap ways), check out this video clip of him being mercilessly, painfully booed at the ceremony retiring Denis Savard’s number a few years ago:
And here’s a clip that shows a big reason why things look up for the Blackhawks:
While looking for video of the New Orleans Brass, I came across this odd guy puzzling over the Brass, New Orleans, and the state of Louisiana. He seems to be confusing the city for the state–well, he seems generally confused:
Note: If I remember correctly, the Brass left New Orleans prior to Katrina (due to the Hornets taking over the Arena).
