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specialk189
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Interests: Oh you know, this and that.
Some of my other friends and their Web residences. I can't be responsible what's on there, and frankly, I don't feel I should be responsible for what's on here
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Member Since:
3/28/2004
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| Kirby Puckett, as anyone who reads the sports pages knows, died yesterday.
Hopefully, today's athletes will read the headlines, see the photo slideshows and video montages and remember back to watching him play. And maybe they'll remember how much fun it is and how lucky they are.
Puckett was one of my favorite athletes. He played with an outright enthusiasm and love for the game. He was happy to be there, and anyone who saw him knew it. He wasn't the most in-shape, but damned if he'd let that stop him. He zipped around the outfield with the speed and countenance of a pinball. He never ran the bases — he scooted around them. And just because he was having fun didn't mean he wasn't competitive — is asking a team to climb on your back not one of the ballsiest statements ever uttered in sports?
It just seems like there are so few athletes like that now, that still play the game like a little kid. I
look at what happened after, and I'm not surprised — and to my chagrin, so many columnisits dredge it up, saying he ruined his legacy. I think it's irresponsible not to mention it, but it's equally irresponsible to take it out of context. If you saw Puckett play, you knew he loved the game. LOVED it. And that was torn from him, by no fault of his own. He'd worked insanely hard to get there, cherished it while he was there and then in the fading of an eye, it was gone. That's a void so painful, I can't even imagine it. Does it necessarily excuse what actions he did do? No. Does it make them gain a little more sense? Sure. It's easy to judge when you sit at a desk commenting on the actions of others. But say, soon after one of these guys won a Pulitzer, they lost use of their hands. How would they deal? Or if you lost what you loved —what you'd based your very life around? It wouldn't be easy.
Puckett played in an era when I unconditionally adored baseball, no questions asked. I knew the name and position of every player — how could I not, when I had stacks of boxed and binders chocked with baseball cards, religiously following the minute fluctuations in their averages? I knew I'd never play, but there was something honest and pure and fun about the game. I think that's gone from it now. And, sadly, one of the men who embodied that, who was baseball, who was sandlots and Neat's Foot Oil, who was the dream of every kid who spent endless hours winging a ball at the side of a house; now, he's gone too. | | |
| This whole Arab-controlled company controlling U.S. ports story is quickly becoming a dangerous one. For those of you that need background, check it out.
All in all, the situation is a sad state of affairs.
Arab advocacy groups have begun trumpeting the calls of bigotry on the part of officials who would block the deal. See? Now, it's hard to argue with their stance. Certainly, Americans get in an uproar when other countries such as Germany and Japan move to purchase our large primary-job providers. And there are people who call for the deal to be stopped, but rarely are those people in such high positions of influence. No doubt there are security concerns with any sort of port deal — including American ones (we can be terrorists, too, remember?). It's impossible to ignore the history Americans have as far as pigeonholing people, so there's obviously something else happening here, even if it is lurking deep in the dark recesses of our psyches. Because of the unfortunate connotation people of Arab descent here have with terrorism, prejudice is undeniably at work.
Sadly, however, that prejudice is founded. Look at this whole cartoon snafu. It doesn't do a people a whole lot of credit when they destroy things and hurt and even kill others over a cartoon. Yes, many of those Mohammed cartoons could be construed as offensive, and yes, the call for them from the Danes was insensitive and juvenile. That does not excuse the actions of a violent and narrow-minded few, however — for Jeff MacNelly's sake, the cartoonists had bounties put on their heads. Can you imagine the havoc in this country if the Christian fundamentalists went around the bend every time they got offended? The cities would be in ruins, heaps of smoldering rubble, and all the newspapermen, gays and environmentalists would have to develop some sort of underground sewer-city to avoid persecution and reconditioning programs; meanwhile, massive crosses and temples would soar above the fallen secular false idols, ushering in a new era of faith-based America as Bill Frist, Sam Brownback and Pat Robertson gaze on in leathery-faced, too-white-teeth-grinned glee.
Its unfortunate that the many are labeled by the acts of a few. Arabs, who happen to be predominately Muslim, have been slapped with the label of potential terrorists and dangerous fundamentalist freaks. Americans have been derided as world-hating snobs with no regard for pretty much anyone but ourselves, and we'll crush you if you get in our way.
Neither perception is right. Neither is fair. But enough people with enough power are taking enough action to keep them alive, and, by extension, keep them from seeming wrong.
Ports being the latest firestorm seems too appropriate. Don't you get the sense that a ship is sinking here? | | |
| The frothing throng of hockey journalists (do they even qualify as a throng at this point? pack? group? two Canadians in a bar?) have been ranting about the dire need for the NHL to pull its stars from the Olympics. They cite wear and tear, lackadasical play and a missing sense of team cohesiveness.
It's really the only news the hockey world has seen lately short of gambling, gold-digging wives, and I shan't touch either of those. There's a bigger, more pressing issue regarding Olympic hockey going untouched: The USA's uniforms.
Really, could they be more patheitic? USA in block script, with a little star in the "A" and a sort of red-and-white-striped flag pattern weaving out of the bottom end of the "S." That's it. That's duller than a broken spork.
Look at the other countries. They all have some sort of nifty crest or logo representing the spirit, the emblem of the county. Germany has its sleek eagle. Sweden the three crowns. Finland, its rampant lion. Slovakia has ... whatever that cross-thingy they have is. That's pride. That's having something to identify yourselves with. That's knowing your heritage. (Switzerland, by the by, doesn't count. That's a neutral country, and what symbolizes neutral? Maybe they need solid grey uniforms. And Italy, well, its hockey team is a novelty cobbled together for this week-long stretch. What else can we expect?)
Should the Americans' unis sink to the level of those droll nations? I would argue otherwise. We need a crest, something inspired and patriotic, not a bland template that could be used to market anything from athletic apparel to drill bits.
Why not a bald eagle, something emblematic of the presidential seal? Or maybe a statue of liberty-type design (The Capitals and Rangers can suck it up; this is our country dammit!). Something the players can look down to and remember why they leapt on this plane in the first place. Something we can see to remind us why we want to watch and root for them. Something that embodies: AMERICA.
Actually, come to think of it, never mind. We'd end up either with Uncle Sam lighting all those other crests on fire, or a giant "Drink Coke."
U-S-A!
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| Journalism's arbitrary notion that experience makes a good reporter has been exposed, blown wide open thanks to the cold winds sweeping down from the Italian alps.
Sportswriters, desperate and old, are trying to find compelling angles in these Olympic games. And they complain when people like Lindsey Jacobellis and Bode Miller fail to win. I bet that deep down, they did want to win, but they're railing against the media for all the exposure, trying to brush it off.
The media want quotes punctuated with weeps and sobs. The kids just want to have fun. They're still clutching to the memories when an Olympic medal could unite a country; that doesn't happen any more. It's too regional, too fractured. Is it bad or good? It doesn't matter; it's gone. If you want that, move to another country, a country that needs its athletes to add to national pride.
Our sense of nationalism is kaput, in sports at least. Why do we need a Miracle on Ice when we can have a Maraudering in Iraq? We don't need gold medals anymore.
And I understand this. I've seen it happen (and don't get me wrong; I appreciate and enjoy the Olympics and miss watching them, but I know they've changed). The old guard media hasn't. For better or for worse, America has moved on. It's time for those journalists to do the same. | | |
| Valentine's Day.
The cruelest holiday of the year.
If you're with someone, you lord it over other people but really you're just desperately trying to compensate for all the other days of the year when you keep messing things up.
If you're not, you're left to wonder what in holy fuck is wrong with you and why does your life suck and if you see one more smarmy, love-struck shmuck buying a heap of flowers in a store you want to brain them with horseshoe then use those flowers to make that person completely airtight.
I basically try to avoid thinking about it entirely. Of course, I have nothing that can appropriately distract me — see the my sports teams suck post — so I end up failing miserably.
To that though, why the hell would Sports Illustrated release its Swimsuit Issue today? It reminds those of us who don't have anyone that we'll never get a woman like that, and it reminds those of us that do have someone that she'll never look as good as a sand-dappled Marissa Miller. Now, go, my followers, and pursue your unrealistic expectations! I'm off to weep in a corner. | | |
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