The Decision

Everyone's justifiably sick of talking about Lebron's idiotic television spectacle by now but the ESPN Ombudsman offers an interesting take. It's nice to read a thoughtful and original perspective that's not an emotional diatribe against contemporary sport, Lebron James, and where we went wrong as a society. There are many ways that we can read the news and watch television, either as a lazy, passive consumer of infotainment or as an active, intellectually curious citizen of the world. It's easy to see this dichotomy play out with regard to mainstream media, but this article reminds us that the foundational tenets of journalism operate in the realm of sports and entertainment as well (or at least they should).

Thanks to Brad for sending me the article (this post is just my email response to him).

Belichick Mic'd Up

If you watch just one video of an NFL coached mic'd up this year, then please, make it this one. Bill Belichick is a goddamned mastermind.

Gladwell on Football, Dog Fighting and Brain Damage

Bill Simmons called it the best sports piece of 2009. I call it just another Gladwell masterpiece. The first hand accounts of life in football's trenches (i.e. the line) are crazy and the details of dog fighting are grim and repulsive.

“Lately, I’ve tried to break it down,” Turley said. “I remember, every season, multiple occasions where I’d hit someone so hard that my eyes went cross-eyed, and they wouldn’t come uncrossed for a full series of plays. You are just out there, trying to hit the guy in the middle, because there are three of them. You don’t remember much. There are the cases where you hit a guy and you’d get into a collision where everything goes off. You’re dazed. And there are the others where you are involved in a big, long drive. You start on your own five-yard line, and drive all the way down the field—fifteen, eighteen plays in a row sometimes. Every play: collision, collision, collision. By the time you get to the other end of the field, you’re seeing spots. You feel like you are going to black out. Literally, these white explosions—boom, boom, boom—lights getting dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.

Malcolm Gladwell also wrote the forward to Simmon's upcoming Book of Basketball. I've already preordered my copy and hope to have it signed by the Sports Guy when he visits Professor Thom's on October 28th.

The Onion on Favre

I'm ashamed to admit that I owned a #4 Packers jersey back in 97'. Now I hate Brett Favre, or rather, the ridiculous amount of coverage he receives. The Onion, as usual, sums it up perfectly.

"I was looking at a newspaper, and it said, 'Favre Sacks Former Team,' and at that point I realized we really missed one," ESPN president George Bodenheimer told reporters. "I just want to apologize to our viewers. Had the Favre-Packers connection dawned on us sooner, fans could have enjoyed the same quality sports journalism they have come to expect from ESPN: driving storylines into the ground and exploiting every one of their subplots to the point of nausea."

Fall 2009 in NYC

Here's what I'm looking forward to over the next couple of months, in no particular order.

Vermeer's Milkmaid at the Met
- It's just one painting, but it's iconic, and I'll be there anyway to see Robert Frank.
*check*

Philip Seymour Hoffman - Othello - Public Theater
- Not gonna happen. Tickets are nearly impossible to get.

The Informant
- Good cast. Darkish comedy. Should be good.

Fatty Cue
- BBQ and bourbon in Billyburg.

Deitch Projects
- A really cool gallery that I've been meaning to check out.

Where the Wild Things Are
- I'm not buying the outrageous hype, but I do like Spike Jonze. His first commercial film was the music video for Sabotage.
*check*

The Road
- One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors. Do not ruin this Hollywood.

New York, I Love You
- Paris, je t'aime is one of my favorite films of all time and New York is my favorite city. This shouldn't be too hard.

Robert Frank: The Americas
- I love photography and America history.
*check*

Kandinsky at the Guggenheim
- Abstract awesomeness.
*check*

Mitchell Algus Gallery: Paintings and Works on Paper
- I don't know much about this, but it looks like a cool show at a cool gallery.

Sarah Anne Johnson: House on Fire
- I read about this in New York Magazine. It's not at the top of my list but I wouldn't mind checking it out.

30 Rock
- Along with The Office, Sunny and South Park, one of very few consistently funny sitcoms.
*check*

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
- So far, so good. I'm not sure how the noose scene at the beginning of episode 3 was allowed on TV.
*check*

Curb Your Enthusiasm
- How can you not watch the Seinfeld reunion within the show?
*check*

Sufjan Stevens at Bowery Ballroom
- $15 tickets. Tiny venue. Should be an excellent show.
*check*

Inside the Artist's Studio: Chuck Close
- Probably the thing I'm most excited about on this list. A once in a lifetime opportunity to see one of my favorite artists. And I'm not even half as pumped as Tray Funk is.
*check*

Sufjan Stevens: BQE
- This could be an interesting film/album combo.

Monet's Water Lillies at the MoMA
- I loved the Water Lillies exhibit at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris and I'm hoping this is similar.

30 for 30
- One of my favorite writers, Bill Simmons, has been working on this series for the past 3 years. 30 mini sports documentaries by 30 acclaimed directors.
*check*

The Last Great American Hero is Junior Johnson

I thoroughly enjoyed this famous Esquire piece by Tom Wolfe. Yes!

The legend of Junior Johnson! In this legend, here is a country boy, Junior Johnson, who learns to drive by running whiskey for his father, Johnson, Senior, one of the biggest copper still operators of all times, up in Ingle Hollow, near North Wilkesboro, in northwestern North Carolina, and grows up to be a famous stock-car racing driver, rich, grossing $100,000 in 1963, for example, respected, solid, idolized in his hometown and throughout the rural South, for that matter. There is all this about how good old boys would wake up in the middle of the night in the apple shacks and hear an overcharged engine roaring over Brushy Mountain and say, "Listen at him -- there he goes!", although that part is doubtful, since some nights there were so many good old boys taking off down the road in supercharged automobiles out of Wilkes County, and running loads to Charlotte, Salisbury, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, or wherever, it would be pretty hard to pick out one. It was Junior Johnson specifically, however, who was famous for the "bootleg turn" or "about-face," in which, if the Alcohol Tax agents had a roadblock up for you or were too close behind, you threw the car into second gear, cocked the wheel, stepped on the accelerator and made the car's rear end skid around in a complete 180-degree arc, a complete about-face, and tore on back up the road exactly the way you came from. God! The Alcohol Tax agents used to burn over Junior Johnson. Practically every good old boy in town in Wilkesboro, the county seat, got to know the agents by sight in a very short time. They would rag them practically to their faces on the subject of Junior Johnson, so that it got to be an obsession. Finally, one night they had Junior trapped on the road up toward the bridge around Millersville, there's no way out of there, they had the barricades up and they could hear this souped-up car roaring around the bend, and here it comes -- but suddenly they can hear a siren and see a red light flashing in the grille, so they think it's another agent, and boy, they run out like ants and pull those barrels and boards and sawhorses out of the way, and then -- Ggghhzzzzzzzhhhhhggggggzzzzzzzeeeeeong! -- gawdam! there he goes again, it was him, Junior Johnson!, with a gawdam agent's si-reen and a red light in his grille!

Nadal. Federer. Nadal. Federer.

They're both fantastic and they're the only two reasons to watch men's tennis these days.

Federer was profiled by David Foster Wallace back in 2006, and it's safe to say that very few other 21st century authors could have properly captured the grace and artistry of this man's game.

Although not as splendid as DFW's piece, Cynthia Gorney wrote a wonderful profile of Rafael Nadal in this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine. As I was reading about Nadal I thought about the Federer article and I found it interesting that two of the best pieces of sports journalism in the past 5 years were written about these two tennis players who have occupied the number one and two spots in the world rankings during that time period.

Were they just particularly good subjects? Does tennis as a sport lend itself to more literary sports journalism? Was it just a coincidence?

The sports website Deadspin made the point I was searching for:

With this story, The Times Magazine — and its Play, R.I.P. — has published two of the finest long-form profiles of Nadal and Roger Federer. What's more, the authors of the profiles (Gorney, a creative writing professor, and the late David Foster Wallace, he of no further introduction), are not sportswriters but writer's writers.

And those running a sports magazine could take yet another hint from this type of standard: Sometimes, it pays to turn your pages over to outsiders. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes, for a fresh take. They might not know anything about sports — still, DFW did — but they can make sentences cha-cha real smooth. Or squirt a variety of juices in your face.

That's what matters most.

So true. Some of my favorite pieces of sports writing were written by the likes of John Updike, David Foster Wallace and David Halberstam. While all of these writers clearly had a passion for sports, they were, as Deadspin points out, "writer's writers."

The Breaks of the Game

Why did I just read 450 pages about the 1979 Portland Trailblazers? Because David Halberstam is one of the most magnificent writers of the 20th century and he beautifully tells the tale of a young team and a tumultuous season that transcends American sport. This is the story of a Trailblazers organization that is just two years removed from a magical championship season, and is now being torn apart due to trades, injuries, contractual strife and racial acrimony.

My favorite contemporary sports writer, Bill Simmons, often raves about The Breaks of the Game as being the finest sports book ever written. I agree. We'll probably never again see such a comprehensive study of a professional American sports team. Players can't be bothered with extended interviews and organizations are far too guarded to grant even a legendary journalist the kind of access that Halberstam had - the stakes are just too high now.

Anyway, if a 450 book by Halberstam seems like a bit too much, I'd recommend reading one of the last articles he wrote before he passed away in 2007. It's a Vanity Fair piece called The History Boys, and it's one of my all time favorites. Enjoy.

Shaq Tweets - Update

I recently wrote about Shaq's amusing Twitter messages and now it looks like there's some interesting news to report from the land of Twitteronia. Check out this account from two guys who actually sought out and found Shaquille O'Neil at the 5 & Diner in Phoenix.

This report from the waiter reinforced my new found adoration of The Diesel:

"He ordered like 20 dollars worth of food" the kid stammered out, obviously thrilled to be talking about it, "And he left me a 160 dollar tip. Then he asked for a Sprite and gave me forty bucks for it."

I'm also somewhat honored that my favorite blogger just wrote about the exact same thing, and actually used the same title for his post that I did. I actually try to emulate his style, so I guess I'm doing something right.

Shaq Tweets

I've only been involved with Twitter for a few weeks now, but I can tell you the number one reason why I finally signed up: Shaq.

I was never a huge Shaquille O'Neal fan for the same reasons that people often cite: "He's just big, tall and strong. He lacks finesse. He's not very much fun to watch. His game isn't very dynamic."

It's taken me some time to understand Shaq as a loveable goofball in an era of outrageous egos, but he's truly a delight. Add to the mix that he's undeniably one of the most dominant, fearsome and winningest players of all time, and I'm sorry to say that I didn't fully appreciate him in his prime.

I will however, never stop enjoying his weird thoughts confined to 140 characters or less.

His Tweets are doubly as enjoyable if you picture a 7'1", 325 man pecking away at the keypad of his phone while he's stuck in traffic, sitting in the locker room, or watching TV with his teammates.

Just a few minutes ago I received the following Tweets from Mr. O'Neal:

Im at 5 n diner n phoenix

I feel twitterers around me, r there any twitterers in 5 n diner wit me, say somethin

To all twitterers , if u c me n public come say hi, we r not the same we r from twitteronia, we connect

What? I still can't believe that one of the wealthiest, most recognizable athletes in the world is so genuinely gregarious that he would actually reach out to his fans like this. Here are some other gems from The Diesel:

Im wit steve nash, hes the best, a hip hop scott skiles

Just leavn lebrons party, i have no voice, can u hear this , ................... C i told u , no voice, lol

Allen iverson cut off his braids, dam hes cute, lol,

David stern said i dnt mind sounding trite, what does that word mean, any scholars out there

Man that's good stuff. Also, this might be the funniest ESPN commercial I've ever seen.

Stat Ball

There's a long but very interesting article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about Shane Battier and the application of advanced statistics in basketball.

First, here are Battier's career stats:

10.1 points | 4.8 rebounds | 1.8 assists | .447 FG%

These are very unremarkable numbers, yet this article argues that Battier is one of the most efficient players in the NBA today. Take a look at this:

The Grizzlies went from 23-59 in Battier’s rookie year to 50-32 in his third year, when they made the N.B.A. playoffs, as they did in each of his final three seasons with the team. Before the 2006-7 season, Battier was traded to the Houston Rockets, who had just finished 34-48. In his first season with the Rockets, they finished 52-30, and then, last year, went 55-27 — including one stretch of 22 wins in a row.

Obviously there are any number of other factors at work here, but it would appear, at least anecdotally, that Battier's presence significantly increases a team's winning percentage.

In the article, Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball and Liar's Poker) talks about how the Houston Rockets are successfully utilizing new statistical models that emphasize a player's unselfishness and overall efficiency. They argue that in basketball, the goals of the team and the individual players are not necessarily aligned. The key to the Rockets' personnel model is that "...there is no statistic that a basketball player accumulates that cannot be amassed selfishly." This means that the traditional stats, like the ones I've quoted above, are not the best way to gauge a player's overall effect on the winningness of a team.

I found this to be a pretty interesting, but not particularly revelatory; this is the era of sports stats after all, and we've heard about these types of things before. What really blew my mind was the more granular application of these statistics on Shane Battier's defensive gameplanning. Battier, who typically guards the opponent's most dangerous scorer, is given a dossier before each game that outlines that player's most efficient tendencies. For example, is he more effective off the dribble or pass, when he drives to his right or left, or when he shoots from the baseline or the elbow. When a supremely intelligent player like Battier assimilates this information, he is able to put together a gameplan that allows him to dramatically reduce the efficiency of a player like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James. If he's doing everything correctly, Battier is essentially playing the most statistically effective defense possible given the opponent and his own physical abilities.

As I said, it's a long article, but it's definitely worth a look. I'll leave you with one more interesting little tidbit that will slightly diminish the joy of watching a live basketball game:

One statistical rule of thumb in basketball is that a team leading by more points than there are minutes left near the end of the game has an 80 percent chance of winning.

Don't you wish you sort of wish you didn't know that?

Lawdy Lawdy

After the Thrilla in Manila:

His eyes were only slits, his face looked as if it had been painted by Goya. "Man, I hit him with punches that'd bring down the walls of a city," said Frazier. "Lawdy, lawdy, he's a great champion." Then he put his head back down on the pillow, and soon there was only the heavy breathing of a deep sleep slapping like big waves against the silence.

Man, I love Muhammad Ali but this classic Sport Illustrated article made me better appreciate Joe Frazier and the magnitude of this epic rivalry. These men fought each other three times, and their final battle in The Philippines brought them both to the brink of death. Oftentimes we watch a boxing match, or any sporting event for that matter, without much thought about the post-event physical effects. This article paints an elegent picture of this bloody bout, but it also describes the sorry state of Ali and Frazier later that evening; the champ could barely chew his dinner and his opponent was rendered nearly blind.

A hat tip to my favorite contemporary sportswriter Bill Simmons for rattling off a list of his favorite sports journalism of all time in a recent column. I've been having a lot of fun tracking down and reading this stuff.

Updike on The Splinter

I realized that I wrote an entire Updike post without including any quotes, which seems criminal, but I also don't have my copy of Rabbit, Run handy. Instead, I'm including some lines from Updike's famous article entitled Hub Fans Bid Kind Adieu. It's one of the finest pieces of sport writing of all time.

Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg.

What a perfect description of Fenway. I don't think it's possible to improve on any word in these two sentences.

Two girls, one of them with pert buckteeth and eyes as black as vest buttons, the other with white skin and flesh-colored hair, like an underdeveloped photograph of a redhead, came and sat on my right. On my other side was one of those frowning, chestless young-old men who can frequently be seen, often wearing sailor hats, attending ball games alone. He did not once open his program but instead tapped it, rolled up, on his knee as he gave the game his disconsolate attention.

You really feel like you're sitting down next to these people. Again, perfect.

Understand that we were a crowd of rational people. We knew that a home run cannot be produced at will; the right pitch must be perfectly met and luck must ride with the ball. Three innings before, we had seen a brave effort fail. The air was soggy; the season was exhausted. Nevertheless, there will always lurk, around a corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.

This is such a poignant observation and it's something that any sports fan can attest to. There are times when a game, or a storyline or a season seem to play out in such a way, that if it were a film, it would be dismissed as saccharine, or unbelievable or completely far fetched. It's as if the players, fans and officials have a sense of the moment that transcends the actual game, and there is a collective, subconscious effort that impels the chain of events to dramatic perfection.

The above quote describes the buildup to Ted Williams' final at-bat of his career, where he smashed a monstrous homerun into the bullpen at Fenway, and then famously refused to acknowledge the crowd or tip his cap. He never emerged from the dugout again.

nfl sunday ticket

Gregg Easterbrook writes a column for ESPN.com called "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" (TMQ) which I usually read because it offers a very cerebral analysis of the NFL, as well as general musings on other random topics. However, I'm no longer an Easterbrook fan since he decided that the New England Patriots were the Antichrist, and that the cheating scandal would lead to the decline of the NFL. He also compared Tom Brady to Dick Cheney - that was the last straw. Even in the wake of Micheal Vick's abhorrent dog fighting activity, I've never seen so much righteous indignation directed at a sports team before.

Well anyway, I'm not posting to bash Gregg Easterbrook (although he might be an anti-Semite), I'm writing to link to his interesting article that explains why you can't get NFL Sunday Ticket unless you're a DirectTV customer. So if you're like me, and you're obviously never going to get satellite TV because it sucks, but you've actually debated it because Sunday Ticket would be so sweet, read Easterbrook's column.

Or, I can save you the trouble and tell you that the NFL renewed its exclusive contract with DirectTV through 2010. Ouch.

everything that's wrong with baseball

An interesting article from the October 29th issue of the New Yorker profiles Scott Boras, the baseball super agent responsible for some of the largest contracts in team sports. His clients include A-Rod, Barry Zito, Johnny Damon and (gasp) Jason Varitek. The article makes a lame attempt to humanize Boras, and while his work ethic and intelligence are impressive, he still comes out looking like a pompous ass in the end. Like most New Yorker pieces, it's pretty lengthy, but worth the read if you can take it for what it is and not let it ruin your love of the game.