Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Sunday Quick Links
It's one of those days when I can't pick just one thing to write about, but don't have time to write about everything:
If you were wondering how Michelle Obama's "secret" trip to Target (did she ever go to Target pre-2008? Does Chicago even have a Target within the city limits?) was memorialized on film, well it's because the White House tipped off the AP. Pretty pathetic.
Chris Christie is the man of the hour. Some say that he is the only (GOP) man for the times: a tough talker who can appeal to Reagan Democrats, and face down the public employee unions. Could be, but unions are only a sliver of the left coalition, and Christie has a lot of political sympathy for virtually every other element of the Democrat base. Among other things, he is as dumb on the environment as Joe Biden (or any other green). We can do better.
Paul Ryan reviews Jeffrey Sachs's new book, describing it as having "veneer of economic analysis cannot conceal what is essentially a crusade against the free enterprise ethic of our republic." Nice to see at least one GOP politician try to take on the intellectual heavies on the left.
This guy wants to believe that the present Wall Street protests are "like Egypt." The protesters are more than just the usual hippies, communists, and nose-ringed college students, says he. There are unions and "grannies" there! Very middle class! (pictures at the link). Right, well any union presence is going to be bused-in astro-turf. As for the "grannies," I think we're all hip to the truth, which is that old leftists like to grasp the mantle of respectable seniors, knowing the media will treat them as cuddly old folks, rather than as socialists who hate their country. Anyway, these protests not "like" Egypt; they are like Greece.
On the other hand, the apparently unprovoked pepper spraying of a couple protesters by a normally desk-bound "cop" is just the sort of thing the blame-America-first crowd loves. You'd think every police officer in NYC would be hip the way leftists use this sort of thing for their own propaganda. San Francisco cops sure do. But, as JFK used to say, there's always one dumb son of a bitch who never gets the word.
The al-Awlaki drone strike was a just result. He may have been "American-born," in the words of media style-books, but he left the US as a small child and was not acting in America's best interests. Obama's been getting this 100% right, but his ambivalence has been undermining his strategy.
An inside view of the intimidation of the health insurance industry during the passage of Obamacare. For all the talk of the "right wing noise machine," if a GOP president and his allies had tried something this heavy-handed, there would have been all sorts of "brave" dissidents rushing to the microphones. But, let Democrats do it, and everyone's all STFU. Has to be because they were worried about unflattering stories published by the White House's media allies - meaning the media - right?
Herman Cain's rise is due entirely to his being the only optimistic candidate. People clearly want to hear his message, yet Cain is held to be "unelectable." OK, assuming he's unelectable, that doesn't mean the "electable" candidates can't learn something from him and his methods.
Btw, I thought Cain (or Santorum) would "shock the world" by running strong in Iowa, but it seems Cain's moment is now, and not four months from now. That means the media will be "vetting" him. In other words, they'll be seeking damning quotes from every disgruntled employee, disappointed corporate rival, and bitter stripper ex-girlfriend (I kid, I kid) that they can find. These are never our republic's finest hours. In fact, they are some of our worst as the elites among us broadcast rumors and innuendos as if they were dispatches from the Somme. Hope Cain is ready for it. I also hope he is ready to fight back in the manner of Clarence Thomas, rather than flinch away in the manner of virtually every other GOP politico unfortunate to have gone through this process.
Michael Wilbon asks a damn good question about a new Walter Payton biography: "what is the exact purpose of writing a book, 12 years after Payton's depressing death at 45, that goes to agonizing lengths to tell us essentially that Payton was flawed?" Supposedly, it's because Payton's public persona was that of a solid citizen when in private he cheated on his wife and used, get this, pain killers. It's that darn hypocrisy, again! Really, a professional athlete who sleeps with women not his wife? That's news? What about a look at Mrs. Payton. Maybe she was a pain in the a**? And since when was pain killer use a scandal? What's really galling is knowing that journalists who love to flog this sort of information probably couldn't stand up to a similar level of scrutiny.
Gold To Lead: Violence Mars SF-Raiders Game
San Francisco police were seeking witnesses Sunday to the shooting of two men and the severe beating of a third in a restroom at Candlestick Park, as city and league officials condemned a rash of attacks and brawls that marred the annual preseason football game between the Raiders and 49ers.
The most severely injured victims from Saturday night - a 24-year-old wearing an anti-49ers T-shirt who was shot, and a 26-year-old who was beaten - were listed in serious condition at San Francisco General Hospital, suggesting they would survive.
Meanwhile, video footage of fights between fans at the stadium popped up on YouTube, showing a chaotic and dangerous scene at an event that drew tens of thousands of fans.
Youth Is Wasted On The Young
Ages of Butler's starters in Monday night's game:- Matt Howard: 22
Ages of Oklahoma City's starters, if James Harden were subbed in for Thabo Sefolosha:
- Shawn Vanzant: 22
- Chase Stigall: 21
- Shelvin Mack: 20
- Andrew Smith: 20- Kendrick Perkins: 26
Additionally, in OKC's game in L.A. on Saturday night, the Clippers started three 22-year-olds in Blake Griffin, Eric Gordon and DeAndre Jordan, with Eric Bledsoe (21) and Al-Farouq Aminu (20) getting rotation minutes, as well.
- Kevin Durant: 22
- Russell Westbrook: 22
- Serge Ibaka: 21
- James Harden: 21
2010: the Year In Bay Area Sports
Pistol
Tweet of the Year
America's Team: Happy Memories With Leon Lett
With Browns rookie quarterbackColt McCoy in a walking boot and nursing a high ankle sprain, Jake Delhomme will start against his former Panthers team Sunday. What makes this even more intriguing is that Cleveland is paying Delhomme $7 million this season while Carolina is paying him $12.75 million. So the Panthers will be paying Delhomme more than the team he is trying to help lead to a victory. But Delhomme could help Carolina in a roundabout way; he could do even more to help the Panthers lock up the draft's No. 1 overall pick.
The Fix Was In: Fake Int'l Soccer Team Loses Match In Barain
Bahrain's national soccer team needed to prepare for an important game. So it jumped at a chance to invite Togo, a small West African country with a highly regarded soccer team, to play an exhibition match.
At least $60,000 was spent on flights, hotels and other expenses, and in early September, the Bahrain team lined up against 11 players in Togo jerseys. The Togo players weren't as good as the Bahrainians expected, and the Persian Gulf team won 3-0.
In Togo's capital, Lomé, the Togo Football Federation was surprised not so much by the team's poor showing as by the game itself: On Sept. 7 the Togo team wasn't actually in Bahrain—but on a bus returning from an official game in Botswana.
TFF officials say the team in Bahrain was a fake one, which they suspect was organized by someone wishing to pocket some of the money spent on the event.
"It's quite annoying," says Togo Sports Minister Christophe Tchao. "We need to make this sport healthier."
Two days later, Mr. Tchanilé acknowledged having been behind the Bahrain game during a press briefing in Lomé. He said he wished to apologize to all Togolese, to Bahrain authorities and also to Mr. Perumal.
"Even if it's tough for me, I must accept [this ruling] in a sportsmanlike manner," he said.
Reached subsequently by telephone, Mr. Tchanilé declined to comment on his role, citing the ongoing probe. Still, he said, the Bahrain game had been a good deed.
"Togo's a mess, we have no proper soccer fields, most talented players drop the sport to work as taxi drivers," he said. "If some kids had a chance to play a game in Bahrain, where's the harm?"
From Russia With Love: Yacht A Arrives In San Francisco
The Can't Do Society: Life Under Progressive Governance
San Francisco officials are moving quickly to acquire an exemption to state environmental law in time for a deadline to submit a proposal on hosting the next America's Cup, The Chronicle has learned.
"Without this legislative action, it is likely that San Francisco will not be selected and the regatta will be held overseas," said a recent memo from Mayor Gavin Newsom's office that was used to brief environmentalists on the proposal, which would cover shoreside facilities for yachts, gear and support services.
Some environmental groups, while appreciative that city officials sought their input, warn that an exemption would open the floodgates for wealthy interests to circumvent state-required environmental review.
"We're not going to sit by idly and let that happen," said Tina Andolina, legislative director for the Planning and Conservation League, an environmental lobbying group.
Walt Szalva and his wife, Blaire Hansen, were on a nearly hopeless mission Wednesday morning. They stopped in at Chinese Immersion School at De Avila on Haight Street on the tiny chance that their 5-year-old daughter, Devon, might be able to get into kindergarten there.
After touring 20 schools, following up with principals, putting in more than 100 hours of research, and camping out at the Educational Placement Center for hours at a time, they were 0-7 on the schools they chose for Devon.
They had hoped that with the first week of school under way, a spot would open up at one of the schools on their list.
So they showed up at De Avila, without an appointment, on the hope that they could chat with Principal Rosina Tong, who might give them a hint of encouragement. She couldn't.
"I know parents come in here hoping," Tong said. "But I'm not sure I can give you hope. I can only say that a system is in place and it will work out."
Frankly, if Szalva hears "a system is in place," one more time, he may start speaking in tongues.
We're Gonna Make It: The Warriors Get Sold
The name "Larry Ellison" was the subject of every rumor throughout the four-month sales process. But the new owner isn't the Oracle CEO. It's Joe Lacob, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose name was rarely mentioned.
Lacob's investment group, which also features entertainment executive Peter Guber, signed a purchase agreement to buy the Oakland NBA team from Chris Cohan for a league record $450 million.
....
"We've got to address the on-court situation and try to improve it," said Lacob, a Warriors season-ticket holder who owns a partial stake in the Boston Celtics, which he will have to sell. "Our job is to turn this team into winners. We've talked about a lot of other things, but that is the bottom line."
Lacob hopes to see the Warriors make the same rebound that the Celtics did after he bought into them in 2006. The Celtics were 57-107 in the two seasons before winning the 2008 championship.
"I feel like I understand basketball. It's a tremendous passion of mine," Lacob said. "I tried to bring that to the Celtics. I was in the draft war room each year, and I'd like to think I had something to do with some of the big, bold moves that we made at the right time to get that thing turned around."
Lacob said he wouldn't talk about potential roster or front office moves with the Warriors until the sale is approved by the league - a process that sources believe will move swiftly. Until then, Lacob said, he expects that Cohan will listen to his suggestions.
Lacob "has incredible financial acumen, he lives there and he's a lifelong Warriors fan," said Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment. "He has great familiarity with basketball, he's extremely clever and he understands partnerships."
The Soccer War: the Right Wing's War on "Football"
I am willing to say that soccer is just as good a sport as my sport of choice (football), and that my fondness for football is largely a product of conditioning and familiarity. That there is, in final analysis, nothing intrinsically, objectively "better" about touchdown-football than soccer-football, but just that I have acquired a taste for the former and haven't bothered to acquire a taste for the latter.
But are progressive hectors like the NPR guy willing to say the same in return? That touchdown-football is every bit as good a sport as soccer-football?
I don't think they are. I detect a lot of culture-warrior rejectivism going on among progressives, here, actively championing soccer not just because they simply like soccer better, but because they actively and affirmatively reject the culture they grew up with and seek, as they often do, an alternative that is both foreign and therefore "better," and which also, quite consciously, places them in position outside the American cultural mainstream.
And from that position, they are better able to do what they always wind up doing anyway -- mocking American traditional culture and positing that every other culture, no matter how stupid, primitive, or barbaric, needs be necessarily better than American culture simply because it's not American.
Instant Legacy Mix
Donald Fehr's announcement that he is retiring as head of the Major League Baseball Players Association has brought forth a lot of commentary about his "mixed legacy." On the one hand, baseball players are making a lot more $$ than they were 25 years ago. On the other, Fehr was one of the major voices impeding any sort of steroid testing in baseball and effectively helped cover up the true extent of steroid use in the major leagues.
Truth be told, Fehr's legacy isn't mixed at all: the sizable increase in players' salaries was intimately linked to increased steroid use. As salaries headed for the stratosphere, the incentives to boost your athletic and financial fortunes through juicing grew exponentially, especially when everybody "knew" that some of the top performers are openly using steroids. Not only that, the temptation to use steroids to recover from injuries, as apparently happened with Andy Pettite and Rick Ankiel, is even more overwhelming. A little juice and you can maybe stay in the big leagues just a little longer, living the good life and putting a little more $$ in the bank.
I won't begrudge baseball players their salaries, or Fehr's efforts to secure said salaries. However, the MLBPA's willingness to look the other way on steroids didn't do anyone any good. Ultimately, it has left all of the players in the post-strike era under a cloud of suspicion. That is Fehr's true legacy.
The Spirit of '49
Little Santa Clara has been waging a low-level war to steal the San Francisco 49'ers from San Francisco. Ominously, the team is 100% supportive of the effort to woo them. The bait? A new stadium. Mmmmmm. Stadium: Council Vote A Win, But Battles Loom For 49'ers
The Santa Clara City Council has approved a financing plan for a new $937 million stadium, but significant challenges lie ahead for the South Bay city that wants to lure the football team from San Francisco.
The most obvious is convincing Santa Clara voters to back a deal that calls for a $79 million public subsidy and another $35 million from a new tax on guests at eight hotels near the stadium site.
"If you want a football analogy, we just won our division," team President Jed York said after the City Council's 5-2 vote that took place early Wednesday. "But we still need to get through the playoffs."
For those of you who are not hip to Bay Area geography, Santa Clara is a suburb of San Jose, not San Francisco, so the 49'ers moving down there would effectively be the end of SF's having a football team. There's talk of "suing" the 49'ers to prevent them from changing the name, but I don't know what good that would do. San Jose is to SF as Baltimore is to DC. Could the Ravens credibly call themselves the Washington Ravens? Of course not.
San Francisco for its part has been promising to build a new stadium for the better part of 15 years with absolutely nothing to show for it. You could almost say this is a symbol of the change in the Bay Area's economic and political balance of power: South Bay = dynamic, risk taking, pro-$$; SF = slow, hide-bound, short-sighted, unwilling to dirty its hands for $$.
And, of course, SF's plans for the "new" SF stadium involve "green" concerns. Lots and lots of "green" concerns. But, don't call environmentalism a job killer! Gavin's Green Turned 49'ers Red
The Niners' brass tell us that their biggest concerns about the city's plan to clear a spot for a stadium at the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard were the toxic cleanup issues and fan access.
Getting into and out of Candlestick Park is already a nightmare, and the existing stadium is a lot closer to Highway 101 than the shipyard site. The 49ers told the city they wanted a bridge built across South Basin that would connect the site to the freeway, something environmentalists oppose.
The cleanup money came through, but the team was less than impressed with progress on the bridge.
It didn't help that when the 49ers expressed their concerns, the ever eco-conscious Newsom came back with a big concern of his own - namely, that the $900 million-plus stadium be LEED-certified, which means green as green can be.
For example, Newsom wanted solar panels to generate power for the stadium. The team thought that was nice, but not necessarily a top priority.
This is almost beyond parody. Solar power for a football stadium? "Environmental concerns" over a bridge in Hunter's Point (Take my word for it, nothing lives there)? Obviously, no one at City Hall actually wants to get anything done. But they, like Michigan Democrats who did so much to screw up the Big Three, will be leading the shocked press conference when the 49'ers leave the City.
(Yes, I realize the team could simply be using Santa Clara to get SF's attention. Hey, it works in dating, why not in pro-football stadium financing? I also realize that the 49'ers are deserately trying to obtain public financing, rather than pay for a stadium themselves. Boooo! But, SF politicos seeming willingness to lose the City's football team is deserving of note.)
The real problem is the snotty high-mindedness of SF's leaders when football demands a different attitude. A football stadium isn't a platform for "green" tech. It is an entertainment facility and beer delivery system. Santa Clara understands this well:
Mayor Gavin Newsom has also raised the possibility of suing the team over the use of San Francisco in its name if it heads two counties south.
Mahan and other Santa Clara leaders have said they have no intention of trying to change the team name.
"We're not in it for the name," Mahan quipped. "We're in it for the money."
A mercenary attitude will take you far, especially against the fading snobs to the north.
NFL Draft Preview
Actually, this is not a real draft preview, as I have no idea who's going to be picked in what round by what team. This is merely my opportunity to note that I will be watching the draft fates of two players: Michael Oher and Pat White.
Oher is, of course, the subject of Michael Lewis' excellent "The Blindside," a hybrid sports book and socio-economic study. In the book, it is repeatedly expressed that Oher has the potential to be the greatest left tackle of all time. It doesn't appear that it has worked out this way. His college career was quiet, although that was undoubtedly due to his attending the mediocre Ole Miss, rather than LSU or Tennessee. Still, Oher is a good guy with a compelling life story. No matter where he ends up (and one of our local sports scribes has predicted he will end up on the 49'ers), I am sure he will have an interesting few years.
Pat White is the former quarterback for West Virginia, and another appealing guy; a tall skinny player who could be a hybrid quarterback, running back, and receiver. His credentials are pretty much impeccable - his leading WV to victory over Oklahoma in the 2007 Feista Bowl was one of the great moments in sport in this decade - but, his size might doom him as a pro. But, like Oher, White has a ton of character and good will, which might take him farther than his diminutive size might indicate.
And, here's a story about another American original who found himself in football: Mel Kiper, the strangely compelling, old fashioned draft expert who should really be considered the Bill James of modern football: The NFL Draft is the Kiper Family Business
The Wrong Kind of Hero, Apparently
Alan Barra wants to know why no one, outside of baseball fans, knows that Albert Pujols is the one of the greats among contemporary players: Pujols Is Baseball's Best
In his rookie season in 2001, Mr. Pujols burst into the major leagues as a star, batting .329 with 37 home runs and 130 runs batted in. Since then he has been more consistent than beer sales in the sixth inning. Mr. Pujols has the highest batting average and slugging percentage of any active player. Since his rookie season, in 2001, he has won the National League's Most Valuable Player award in 2005 and 2008, finished second three times, third once and fourth once.
And yet, to the average fan outside baseball-mad St. Louis, Albert Pujols is just another very good player. Why hasn't he achieved fame commensurate with his performance? Playing his entire career outside of baseball's media centers probably hasn't helped.
Neither has the fact that Mr. Pujols -- married, the father of three, and active in the cause of Down Syndrome, which afflicts his oldest daughter -- has never earned a single headline for off-the-field activities. "He isn't colorful and he isn't controversial," says his manager, Tony LaRussa. "He's just great."
Great, and perhaps too consistent for his own good. Mr. Pujols has several nicknames. To Cardinals fans he is "El Hombre," but the name many players around the league refer to him as -- "The Machine" -- indicates respect yet generates no excitement. How can you get excited over a machine?
UConn v Syracuse
