The Original Sportsdiva's Weblog » sports

Seven for Seven

sportsdiva — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 04:52:14 +0000

Yes, today may be the day that the Phils finally blow the tinfoil hats off the silly curse promoters. But before we revel in the potential fulfillment of our sports dreams, the weekend just past deserves some celebration all its own.

I started out this weekend hoping for a nearly impossible run–seven for seven from my favorite teams. And this is how it went:

On Friday night, the Flyers beat the Devils in NJ for the first time since 2004. It was the Flyers first win of the season

Saturday started with a rare 4pm start game for the Flyers, who followed up their Friday victory with a home win against the Devils in overtime.

After just enough of a break to let Flyers fans get home, Penn State beat Ohio State in the Horseshoe in Columbus for the first time in 30 years, keeping hopes of a championship run alive.

Overlapping the PSU game by only a little, because of the rain, the Phils won an exciting game 3 of the World Series over the Tampa Bay Rays, setting off fireworks at 1:47am.

Sunday started with a stunning Liverpool win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea hadn’t lost in 86 matches. This moved the Reds into first place in the Premiership and legitimizes their league championship hopes. I realize this doesn’t fit an amazing Philadelphia sports weekend. But you’ll note this is MY amazing sports weekend. Sadly, the game was not even available PPV. So of all the events of the weekend, I didn’t get to see this one.

Then the Eagles beat Atlanta making it hard for Eagles tailgaters to follow instructions and leave immediately after the game, so the parking lots would be ready for Phillies fans.

Finally, The Phils crushed the Rays in a dominating game 4 performance.

If you’re anything like me, you are exhausted and happy and looking forward to losing your mind tonight. It couldn’t happen to a more fiercely loyal, frustratingly pessimistic fanbase. None of that curse stuff today. None of the woe is me stuff. No complaining about perceived weaknesses. This is the day to take down the walls around your heart and let it beat for the Phillies. Love them right to a historic victory. Enjoy the ride!

Enough Already!

sportsdiva — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:51:59 +0000

I am, of course, an Olympics junkie. And I’ve spend countless hours already glued to NBC’s various outlets’ coverage of sports as diverse as equestrian 3-day eventing, badminton, and the ubiquitous swimming.

I love the swimming. I love tall men with arms long enough to hug the world clad in lycra, or sometimes barely clad in lycra. Do you suppose they half strip those suits off just so we can see exactly how shaved down they are?

And NBC is doing a pretty good job, whether the commentators are at the venue or in New York, they mostly seem awake on all counts and provide the kind of information you need, whether neophyte or afficionado.

I’m particularly happy with Andrea Kremer as the poolside interviewer. First of all, and probably most importantly, she’s a really really good interviewer. She asks good questions, listens to the answers (when the director is yelling in her ear, that has to be hard), and handles the task with appropriate composed excitement.

But there’s one rotten spot in my Olympic apple. Her name is Cynthia Potter. NBC decided to continue to employ as a diving commentator a woman with a dramatic command of the obvious who at the same time has a tenuous command of her facts and, worst of all, has the most annoying, loudest, unmodulated fingernails on a blackboard voice in the history of sports broadcasting. I’d take Dick Vitale over this woman in a heartbeat. And I HATE Dick Vitale.

The voice is horrible. The timbre high, the quality nasal, and she says nearly everything at the same unmodulated yell, except when she decides to accent a word in a sentence completely AT random. “But Diva,” you say, “shes a former diver. What besides her voice bothers you?” Here are just a few examples from Tuesday night’s women’s synchronized diving broadcast.

In discussing U.S. team Dunnichay and Ishimatsu, she brought up the fact that Ishimatsu’s whole family had moved to Indianapolis (site of the U.S. Olympic Training Center) so that the divers could train together and then said (I’m not making this up), that it’s really important for synchronized divers to live in the same place so they can train together. Ya think?

“Ok, Diva,” you say, “That’s just a slip. In hours of competition, she’s bound to slip up once or twice.” Fine. Let’s stick just to the commentary on the diving, in which she is supposed to be an expert.

On their first dive, the U.S. pair scored right around 50 and Potter’s professional announcer nonexpert sidekick wondered if that was good enough. Potter said it was as good as could be expected and it didn’t matter, other teams wouldn’t score more than 55 or so. Just a few minutes later, the Chinese pair, Wang and Chen, accomplished around a 55 and Potter said that’s why they’re so dominant, they jump out to that early lead and are hard to catch. Does she listen to herself? Does she have short-term memory loss from her head’s impact on the water during all those years of diving?

“Well maybe, Diva,” you say, “she’s better at dissecting the actual dives.” Oh, no, kittens, not really. On the first dive by the Chinese pair she went on and on about their amazing synchronization, when I, not a former diver, not an expert, could easily see that one diver dove with her arms spread wide from her body and the other with her elbows close to her body. This is on the dive that earned the 55-ish score.

So forgive me if I say, enough is enough. Couldn’t NBC find someone (Greg Louganis is interested) with the expertise, sense, and acuity necessary and without the horrible voice?

The Dork Knight

sportsdiva — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:11:49 +0000

Mark Kiszla of The Denver post explains why America is falling in love with Aquaman, Michael Phelps, also now to be known as The Dork Knight.

How Can It Be Memorabilia When There Are No Memories?

sportsdiva — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:12:52 +0000

The FBI has apparently begun a crackdown on the sports memorabilia business.

I’ll admit that I don’t really understand the collection of autographed memorabilia. It isn’t that I don’t have autographed items, but apart from a lithograph that was produced by and for the Flyers Wives Fight for Lives carnival a number of years ago, a couple of gifts the Flyers sent to me as a season ticket holder, and the irreplaceable (don’t laugh too hard, now) Ricky Botallico autographed baseball sent to Phillies season ticketholders after his All-Star season, I don’t own, nor have I ever coveted, an autographed item that was not autographed in my sight by an athlete or former athlete.

The autographs I’ve collected were acquired for free at events held by sponsors for the purpose of athletes or former athletes interacting with their clients and prospects or at events where autographs were being offered in return for charitable contributions. I’ve never stalked someone for an autograph, never run into someone in a hotel lobby, or restaurant, or on the street and asked for an autograph. Never attended a card show or bought admission to have someone sign for their own enrichment.

Also, I happen to think that if I meet a famous person on their own time that I really don’t have the right to demand, or even ask, something of them. The most I’ll do in that situation is engage the person in conversation. It may be something as simple as saying, “I’ve really enjoyed seeing you play.” But in a few cases it’s become a real conversation. And, unlike the experiences of autograph collectors, I’ve never had a bad interaction.

For me, it’s been about collecting experiences. I have memories I can recall with a smile–a wink from Ozzie Smith, a hug from Tug McGraw, a few flirtatious comments from Paul Blair, a wave and a smile from Randall Cunningham–all so much more valuable in nonmonetary terms than a scrawl on an object or scrap of paper.

So I find myself shaking my head in incomprehension when I read about people paying money, in many cases big money, for signed baseballs, autographed scraps of uniform fabric, or (and this really boggles) collectible sports cards with embedded threads of uniform fabric.

I do collect things. Even sports-related things. I have a number of bobbleheads, mostly Phillies and Flyers, and a few of the Flyers bobbles are even autographed by the real owners of the heads. And I have photographs I’ve taken of athletes at work playing, getting ready to play, or at a charity event, but none of a guy who isn’t. At the end of the day, though, I’m not a collector in the sense I don’t seek these things out with any kind of method or passion.

But I don’t get collecting things, autographed or not, that you pay hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for. Especially when you know that the industry dealing in these things is full of shysters selling bogus memorabilia. ‘xplain it to me?

Don’t Pay Not to Play

sportsdiva — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:46:19 +0000

If you’re the NFL. Do you let this kind of thing happen? You don’t want teams paying people to prevent them from playing, do you?

What prevents a team with no room under the cap from paying a guy not to play just to keep him from signing with a competitor? And what keeps a player who’s had a few injuries and could really stand a year off (he’s cleared to play, but clearly could use more time) from taking the money to not play for a year, then coming back the next year to sign with someone?

It just seems to be against the best interest of the league to have teams able to pay people not to play. Anticompetitive, at the very least.

Gays in Sports

sportsdiva — Wed, 30 Apr 2003 23:30:24 +0000

Once again an athlete (in this case Todd Jones of the Colorado Rockies) has decided it’s the thing to do to gay bash. In the context of commenting on “Take Me Out,” a play that deals with a superstar baseball player who announces that he is gay, Jones is quoted in the Denver Post. “I wouldn’t want a gay guy being around me,” Jones said. “It’s got nothing to do with me being scared. That’s the problem: All these people say he’s got all these rights. Yeah, he’s got rights or whatever, but he shouldn’t walk around proud. It’s like he’s rubbing it in our face. ‘See me, hear me roar.’ We’re not trying to be close-minded, but then again, why be confrontational when you don’t really have to be?” He later apologized, saying at a Rockies press conference. “I think my only mistake was that I made my views public.” (Huh?) The thing is, he already likely shares the field and the locker room with a gay team mate. Apparently he thinks as long as a guy isn’t wearing spike heels and putting Liza Minelli on the clubhouse sound system, he’s not gay. But if 1 in 10 men would self identify as gay, there are gay athletes on professional sports teams. It is impossible for me to believe that all athletic gay men gravitate to individual sports. So are there dozens of gay baseball players? Or scores? There are likely scores of gay football players, and dozens of gay hockey and basketball players. Yes, they’re in the closet. And some of the closeted are married and have families. Don’t pretend shock. Until recently, the only way a gay man could have a family was to marry a woman, either aware (and accepting for her own reasons) or unaware of her spouse’s true preference. And even now, gay men choose to subvert their own sexuality to have so-called “normal” lives, with varying degrees of success. There is, in fact, right this very minute, an athlete in one of the four major sports who is gay (I’m not getting any more specific because he has every right to stay in the closet if that’s where he chooses to live) and was fairly indiscreet about it in one of the cities in which he played. But he was never outed. He will eventually, indisputably, be in his sport’s hall of fame. And I do sometimes wish he’d come out at his induction. But, no, I don’t really think that will happen. Of course, those of the God squad persuasion will say it’s about morality. Now, I’ll admit I don’t see homosexuality as immoral. I believe gay men have more choice in hair color (there is that Clairol bottle) than they do about sexual preference. But even if you accept the idea that being gay is somehow sinful, why is it seen as any different from any other bad behavior? The moralizers are the same fine upstanding Christian men who accept among their ranks wife beaters, philanderers, adulterers, and those who use illegal substances for recreational purposes. There’s the NHL player who threw his pregnant wife from a moving car; a MLB superstar who thinks his wife beating is his own business; the NHL superstar who when he was 29 was dating a 16-year-old (precocious or not, parental approval or not, she was still 16); the NFL player who groped the next door teen ager in the bathroom, the NHL coach who killed a woman while driving drunk. There’s the college player who beat his pregnant ex-girlfriend and pushed her down the steps (and later was drafted into the NFL, where he, surprise, had socialization problems). The only ones who are immediately and irrevocably punished with exile are those who steal from another player’s locker. Yeah, stealing a baseball glove from a teammate is much more reprehensible than having an affair with your married but separated sister-in-law while you are unseparatedly married. I just can’t understand, really I can’t, why it is such a big problem for folks to accept gay athletes. In fact, I’m especially at a loss about the reactions of current athletes. Think about it. These guys have spent their entire lives in what is basically an adolescent subculture. A subculture that glories in all the foolish hijinx of hazing and practical jokes. Hazing that frequently includes such homoerotic activities as teabagging (the hazer smacking his scrotum into the face of a hazee) and having the hazee sit naked on a block of ice until the family jewels are quite hidden away. But then, maybe that explains it. I do wonder, when I hear the vehement responses of athletes about gays in sports, if their fear is more of their own histories than anything else. If it is true that roughly half of all adult men have had at least one voluntary homoerotic experience before leaving adolescence, are they worried that someone will reveal a pissing contest, a jerking off contest, an exploratory kiss or cuddle? And because it is true that so many people have been fed the fear that one gay experience makes you gay, then are these guys walking around in fear of being found out? No matter how straight, there are loads of straight guys out there who could be outed by some mean-spirited or greedy acquaintance for something done as a 12-year-old. Pontificators talk about educating the athletes. Education is all well and good. But if that education happened when the boys were boys, the lessons would be a whole lot more valuable–to the men they’d become and to the communities in which they live. Sexual curiosity is a normal part of a boy’s development. What you did when you were 12, or 18, or even 21 (let’s face it, men are adolescents into their mid- to late 20s) doesn’t define who you are. In fact, your sexual behavior doesn’t define who you are. If they aren’t in fear of themselves, they won’t be in fear for themselves. And then maybe they could let themselves accept their gay team mates. At least, that’s my theory.