tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89926221282995068462024-02-20T03:55:06.906-08:00needle in the hayverbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-60434438964680455512008-03-13T11:21:00.000-07:002008-12-26T10:26:07.072-08:00Arsenal FC — The United Nations of Football<div align="left"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>(Editor’s note: For the duration of this piece, I refer to what we Americans call “soccer” as “football.” Just know that’s what the rest of the world calls it, and we’ll get through this together. Also, I’ve made the narrow-minded choice to think of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland as The United Kingdom. I’m well aware that Ireland is not under the UK umbrella anymore, and that independence didn’t come easy. But Irish players have been so readily accepted in the English game, I thought it unnecessary to sort them out. As someone who’s Irish, Scottish, and English — in that order — I urge us all to unite. If not forever, then at least for the next 10,000 words.<br /><br />Oh, about that. This block of writing may not be meant for one sitting. Even the Editor’s note is pretty long. For your benefit, I’ve broken it up into three parts. As always, thanks.)</em><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><u>Arsenal FC – The United Nations of Football</u></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Prologue – Come gather ‘round people</span> </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family:georgia;">If you looked for the center of the world between 1500 and 2000 A.D., you could’ve done worse than North London.<br /><br />On the first day of October, 1884, it was made official. The 25 countries doing the most international business created the Prime Meridian. Though sailors had already followed it for some time, from that day forward modern man would tell time and his place in the world by where he was in relation to an imaginary line that ran through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. (For the purposes of this essay, you’ll do well to remember that France abstained from the vote and did not play along until 1911.)<br /><br />But the times, they are a’ changin’. Literally. The earth tilts on its axis and swings in its orbit, always losing a battle to gravity and slowing down. We use atomic time now, far more precise, and we add leap seconds when needed. The Royal Observatory and its imaginary line are quaint symbols of a bygone era.<br /><br />I’ve got a map on my wall. A big, flat thing, a few feet across. In the center floats the Queen’s island. And there, in its southeast corner, where the Thames drains toward Europe, sits London.<br /><br />We know the earth is not flat, not when seen from a distance. But it’s hard to imagine. Up close, from here on the ground, you can’t see the curve. And to you it seems like the center of the world is where you’re born, where you are or whereever it is you're going next.<br /><br />How many of us can look at a big flat map and see it all at once? How many of us can look at a flat horizon and imagine something beyond it?<br /><br />…<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Part I – <u>The young cartographers of North London</u></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The curve</span><br /><br />If you were looking for the center of the football world, still today, you could do worse than North London.<br /><br />There’s dispute over which building exactly, but you could hazard a guess at the pub where a group of competitive men held meetings in the fall of 1863. Over some number of pints, they wrote most of the rules to the modern game of football. (The rougher of them split off to form rugby, and their misshapen ears would never forgive them.)<br /><br />If you stood outside that same pub today you could, with a bit of luck and the wind at your back, kick a ball and watch it roll and carom into the neighboring borough of Islington, to the district of Holloway, and up to the gates of Emirates Stadium. That’s where they are. You might consider them just a team, and him no more than a manager. And if, at the end of this writing, you remain convinced that they are and he is, so be it.<br /><br />But I believe Arsenal Football Club and its French coach, Arsene Wenger, are something more. I struggle to find an apt label for them. I don’t know how large a force they have been, or can be. All of that is left for history.<br /><br />I believe, though, that they perform some act beyond football. And that they are actors beyond players and coach, and that their field of play extends beyond North London, and, indeed, beyond the field of play. It’s a bit abstract. And yet I have faith.<br /><br />After all, I can’t see the curve of the earth. But I believe it’s there.<br /><br />This is a story about a revolution.<br /><br />…<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">From bad to tragic</span><br /><br />Sometime during the 16th century, we started to get a pretty good idea of what the earth looked like. Couple oblong landmasses running east to west, each stretching south where — through Panama in the West and Egypt in the East — they connected to oblong landmasses that ran north to south. Sprinkle a couple hundred islands, including a couple just off France’s west coast, and that’s pretty much everything that’s floating out there.<br /><br />I’m in awe of the ancient cartographers, whose endless series of perilous explorations, precise measurements and long-hand calculations produced drawings that hardly anyone believed. More awesome, though, is their accuracy. When we finally got far enough away from earth to get a good look, it turns out that some of them were pretty close.<br /><br />But the cartography that took place in the last 200 years has been less impressive. Since we figured out what the landmasses looked like, we began to divide them with imaginary lines. We called them countries, colonies, protectorates. Just as post-Columbus mapmaking succeeded, post-Napoleon mapmaking failed.<br /><br />How stunned the Pamlico Native Americans would have been to learn that not only had they been living in the colony of North Carolina, but they’d all be dead before it got statehood. Think of the reaction of an enormous chunk of West Africa, occupied by speakers of 450 different languages, at an announcement made with a British accent in 1914.<br /><br />“From this day forward, you are Nigerians.” (Clears throat.) “Yes, all of you.”<br /><br />Israel. Iraq. Serbia, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Liberia, not to mention the rest of Africa.<br /><br />Perhaps no one carved up and labeled more land than the Brits, who thought themselves a benevolent force. Though their hearts were usually in the right place, their lines were not, and the results have ranged from bad to tragic. As it turns out it’s hard to draw an imaginary line, and harder still to see it.<br /><br />…<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Fish and guests<br /></span><br />To tell the story of Arsenal’s team is to tell the story of different places.<br /><br />Consider Francesc Fabregas. The lynchpin midfielder, only 20, is by some measure the most exciting thing to come out of the sleepy Spanish village of Arenys del Mar. Were he not able, and willing, to complete a pass to any player at any time, Fabregas would likely work at the docks of this tiny fishing outpost.<br /><br />Consider Robin Van Persie. The mercurial striker, 24, hails from Arenys del Mar’s antonym, the massive port city of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. Again, it’s likely he’d be loading or unloading boats if he didn’t have a vicious left foot.<br /><br />It’s an interesting dichotomy. But some places demand closer inspection.<br /><br />Emmanuel Adebayor, 23, is a lanky striker from Lome, Togo. After curing his longstanding case of the goalmouth yips, Adebayor has used this season to produce a carbon copy of the fantastic season Didier Drogba had last year, 25 yard volleys and all.<br /><br />Togo is a doomed little strip of land wedged between Benin and Ghana. Only 31 miles wide and 100 miles long, a determined American tourist family could cover the whole of Togo in one day. But why would they?<br /><br />A former German colony, it went to the French under the Treaty of Versailles. After France relinquished control in 1960 Togo elected its first president, the Brazilian-born Sylvanus Olympio. The president sought a friendship with the young American, John F. Kennedy.<br /><br />Eleven months before Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas, Olympio was hunted down and killed outside the American Embassy in Lome. His assassination marked Africa’s first post-independence military coup.<br /><br />Olympio’s brother-in-law Nicolas Grunitzky, who played no part in the coup, took over. But when Grunitzky allowed multi-party democratic actions to resume, he was deposed by the same group that had killed Olympio. (Grunitzky opted to avoid the bullet, and the coup was bloodless.)<br /><br />In Grunitzky’s wake, power fell to a single man: Gnassingbe Eyadema, one of Olympio’s assassins. Sadly, Eyadema was kind of an asshole.<br /><br />He took power in 1967. In a move that would have drawn admiration from his American counterpart, Dick Nixon, Eydema sufficiently disbanded all political opposition by the time another election was held in 1972. As the only name on the ballot, Eyadema got 90 per cent of the vote, and all tyrannical hell broke loose.<br /><br />Since ’72 there has been much Togolege fear and loathing of Eyadema, mostly because his thugs left hundreds of bodies on the campaign trail.<br /><br />Sylvanus Olympio’s son, Gilchrist, rose to prominence as an opposition candidate before the 1993 election. In a terrifying episode of de ja vu, Eyadema’s son, Ernest Gnassinbe, led a group of men as they made an attempt on <em>Gilchrist’s</em> life, effectively scaring the young Olympio off to France.<br /><br />Eyadema went on the win the 1993 election, with a post-election analysis finding that ballot boxes had been stuffed with the names of <em>dead voters</em>. (Campaign slogan: “Vote Eyadema, or else you’re dead, and then you’ll be dead and <strong>still</strong> vote Eyadema!”)<br /><br />Eyadema won every election he ever ran, right up until his death in February of 2005.<br /><br />His death brought on another Togolese tweak on democracy, when the army bypassed the constitution and installed — you guessed it — one of his sons, Faure Gnassinbe. When Gnaissnbe’s appointment was contested he threw together a quicky election, to be held only a couple months later. (Comparatively, Ponce de Leon landed in Florida 487 years before its chads were hung.)<br /><br />Amid echoes of his father’s tactics, Gnassinbe won that election thanks to hundreds of thousands of votes — in a country of only five million — from people who do not exist.<br /><br />During his 38 years in power Eyadema allowed his country to be significantly isolated and sanctioned toward its economic death. By the mid-90s Togo’s economy was almost entirely based on fishing and farming. (Apparently they missed out on the dotcom boom.)<br /><br />We can romanticize fishing as much as we want, but I hope no one holds any illusions about the reality of plantation work. By the way, in the deep waters off Lome, fisherman pull up a good number of white fish, shrimp and, for a while, the corpses of Eyadema’s political enemies. Two other wrenches thrown into Togo’s economic future: 1.) its education system’s not too big on teaching womenfolk to read, and 2.) Togo’s HIV-AIDs strategy seems to be quiet denial.<br /><br />And I would never have accused Eyadema of arms trafficking and trading in blood diamonds. No, no. Not while he was still alive. And I wouldn’t worry about what his kids will do with the country’s newfound oil wealth. Not at all.<br /><br />Back to young Mr. Adebayor. The son of Nigerian immigrants, it’s likely that Adebayor’s father — an educated man who wanted his son to be a doctor — lived through his own country’s horrific internal strife in the late 60’s, only to find himself in the middle of Togo’s.<br /><br />After the 2005 elections, young protestors flooded the streets of Lome. Togolese security forces <em>opened fire</em> on the country’s youth in some cases, and in others executed dissidents with machetes or spiked clubs. We are not in Kansas anymore, Togo.<br /><br />Adebayor would have been 21 at the time of the protests.<br /><br />Given his charisma and reputation as an outspoken young man, unwilling to do as he’s told. . .where would Adebayor have been during that election year without his talent? Make your own judgments. But all the other indignant young men of his country? Togo’s next generation of free thinkers and revolutionaries? They’re all dead.<br /><br />From one of the most oppressive capitol cities on earth to one of the least: Tomas Rosicky, 28, was born in that European lighthouse of rebellion, Prague. While under German occupation during the Second World War, Prague was the site of two outrageous acts of revolt. First, the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a chief Holocaust architect tipped as Hitler’s successor, by a pair of Czech dissidents.<br /><br />And then, in early May of 1945, the people of Prague heard that the Allies were slowly liberating Europe. Encouraged by the news, the Czechs would have known that any day Russian tanks would roll in and send the Germans running. But Prague decided not to wait, and over a period of days, <em>liberated itself</em>.<br /><br />These events were not out of Prague’s character. It seems to be a city of perpetual revolution. Liberal-minded writers and politicians of the 60’s sewed the seeds that would end Soviet rule, and the Czechs made good on those ideas in 1989 when half a million protesters filled the streets of Prague in the Velvet Revolution.<br /><br />Now, the Czech Republic finds itself in a renewed tug-of-Cold War between Russia and the United States. As Russia rearms itself on a grand scale and George W. Bush seeks to install a missile defense system in the Czech Republic, Prague is thumbing both of the traditional powers in the eye. While largely ignoring Putin’s Russia, the Czechs fought Bush’s radar plan for as long as they could. They’ll put it in, though I wouldn’t be surprised if some days they forget to turn it on.<br /><br />Recently, the Czechs became part of a growing European block that doesn’t even check for passports at the border.<br /><br />Aleksander Hleb, 27, was born in Minsk, Belarus, or, as I like to think of it, Little Moscow. Hleb is Rosicky’s midfield counterpart and absolute mirror in footballing terms: lithe, highly skilled, offensive minded, a smart distributor and hard worker who occasionally snaps off a goalbound shot. But while Hleb is left-footed, and Rosicky is right-footed, the politics of their respective countries are reversed. Rosicky’s Czech Republic trends toward the far left, while Hleb’s Belarus is leaning so far right it’s in danger of falling over.<br /><br />Belarus, decimated under German occupation during World War II, was liberated by the Russians in 1944 and never allowed to forget it. This substantial block of land was chipped off the Soviet Union in 1991, but when they pulled back the Iron Curtain, they found an aluminum one. Belarus remains under the Kremlin’s thumb to this day.<br /><br />The country has been handled, at least in theory, by Alexander Lukashenko since 1994. Lukashenko is not a tyrant, but he’s well on his way.<br /><br />He should have faced re-election in 1999, but decided to push the election back to 2001. He won reelection in the Putin-esque manner of limiting any serious opposition. Then, in 2004, he again meddled with the constitution, this time to allow himself to run for a third term. He won an election that was as transparent as the Berlin Wall.<br /><br />My brother-in-law is Polish, and he spent much of his youth driving a small car at high speed to different spots in central Europe. So I was stunned to learn that despite his proximity, he’d never once set foot in Minsk.<br /><br />“I would never go to that country and give my money to that government,” he said.<br /><br />And, indeed, the government is where the money goes. Lukashenko is systematically acquiring Belarussian businesses and covering his tracks by cracking down on the press. He’s also limiting political opponents as he builds toward absolute power.<br /><br />How bad is it? In my country, we’ve decided that the worst we’ll do is frown when an American burns his own flag. In Belarus, you can’t even <em>wave</em> the flag of the Belarusian People’s Republic, the short-lived democracy of 1918 that emerged during World War I. The Russians toppled that government and installed their own, and now you face a penalty if you so much as wave one of their flags in Minsk.<br /><br />By the way, some of the leaders of the Belarusian People’s Republic escaped capture and formed a government in exile. It still exists today, right where they formed it all those years ago, in Prague.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">War and peace</span><br /><br />Phillipe Senderos, 23, was born in Geneva, Switzerland. Senderos is an enormous defender, only slightly smaller and bulkier than the Alps.<br /><br />Ah, the Swiss. Nice to get away from all that revolution and war, right? Here you can be taken in by the charm of fine watches, diplomacy and skiing.<br /><br />Switzerland gained its independence from the Romans in 1499, and for the last 500 years has basically asked the rest of Europe to leave it the hell alone. But, it’s offered itself as a mediator and a gracious host. The League of Nations was based in Geneva, as is its offspring, the United Nations, and a handful of well-meaning non-governmental organizations.<br /><br />You’ll be surprised to learn that military service is mandatory for the Swiss. At age 19, each male must enlist and serve for at least 260 days. I assume those 260 days are spent learning how to ski very fast.<br /><br />Nicklas Bendtnder, 20, hails from Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen, a city of just a million people, can claim two of the smarter humans in the last couple hundred years. Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th century philosopher, and one of his fans, Niels Bohr, 20th century physicist.<br /><br />Kierkegaard was an advocate for the separation of church and state. He went beyond that by some degree when he argued that the church itself, even filled with parishioners, was a vacant institution. It says something for the Danish that Kierkegaard died of natural causes.<br /><br />Kierkegaard’s collected writings allowed him to have a postmortem conversation with the German Fredrich Nitzche. Bohr, the physicist, was able to have a real, live conversation with a German heavyweight: Albert Einstein. Einstein was known to be personable, but Bohr would have been one of the few people he’d ever met with whom he could really lock eyes and feel understood.<br /><br />How brilliant was Bohr? Not only did he win a Nobel Prize for physics, his <em>son</em> did. (What have you and your dad done?)<br /><br />Other than these intellectual giants, that’s about it for Denmark. Like Switzerland it has compulsory military service for males and like Switzerland it doesn’t make war. It’s been a long time since there was something rotten in the state of Denmark.<br /><br />In polls that rank the most livable cities in the world, Geneva and Copenhagen consistently rank in the top five.<br /><br />From two of the most peaceful cities in the world, let’s go to two of the least.<br /><br />If you don’t know the Ivory Coast’s history, here’s the short version: take Togo, change the name of the military dictator, add a large, well-armed opposition in the country’s North, and shake well.<br /><br />Habib Kolo Toure, 27, and Emmanuel Eboue, 23, are among the litany of West African players who stopped off in Belgium to tryout for professional teams, before eventually being routed throughout Europe to prestigious clubs. Eboue and Toure left Cote d’Ivoire — though I prefer the term “escaped” — in 2002, just when the country’s civil war was “ended” for about the fifth unsuccessful time. Its embers are still flickering.<br /><br />Here’s where we pivot into the surreal. Eboue, a Christian, was born in Abidjan. The capitol city, an expanding metropolis, Abidjan is home to the country’s administration, three million of its people, and a growing number of armed street gangs.<br /><br />Toure, a Muslim, was born in Bouake, the stronghold and de facto capitol of the Rebel North. Yes, that’s right. For large chunks of his time at Arsenal, Arsene Wenger has started, in tandem, two centerbacks who represent <em>opposing sides</em> of Cote d’Ivoire’s Civil War.<br /><br />And if you’re wondering about the Ivory Coast’s policy for military conscription, it goes like this: if you can hold it, you can shoot it.<br /><br />How bad is it in Cote d’Ivoire? Toure and Eboue impressed at their tryouts in Belgium, but others who were not so prodigious simply refused to go back home when they were dismissed. Many of them ended up working as prostitutes.<br /><br />Wenger has also founded his success on a number of French players. He has an affinity for those who’ve passed through the Clairfontaine, which is sort of like saying you like to buy your art at the Lourve.<br /><br />But Wenger’s brightest, fastest shooting star today is teenage phenom Theo Walcott, born about 15 tube stops away from Emirates Stadium in Northwest London.<br /><br />Arsenal FC are a collection of 35 men from 18 countries. To spell their names you’ll need seven accent marks, an umlaut, an L with a stroke and an A with a ring. They hail from seven capitol cities, one rebel capitol and the capitol of a government in exile. They’ve come from the Gulf of Guinea, the Bight of Benin, the Baltic, the Mediterranean, both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of a Civil War. From the wildly integrative Paris and Prague to the line-in-the-sand divided Ivory Coast.<br /><br />We know how they got to North London; their skills carried them. But who brought them there? And why?<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The roots of tolerance</span><br /><br />Consider Arsene Wenger, 58, born in Stasbourg, four years after liberation, three years into the Fourth Republic and nine years before the birth of the Fifth. Wenger saw rapid changes in his country. Most notably France renounced its colonial role in Africa and was on the leading edge of the African independence movement.<br /><br />But this came only after a bloody battle for Algerian independence. The Algerian War was a bad war, fought badly, and it taught France what America did not learn from Vietnam: war is hell, and should be avoided. Since that time, France has made limited military moves: protecting Kuwait in the first Gulf War, hunting terrorists in Afghanistan, and a vital peacekeeping role in the Ivory Coast.<br /><br />After decolonization, France made significant steps to the left politically, though not without a bit of poking from its youth. In 1968, when Wenger was 18, France was a thunderhead of rebellion. In May of that year, one month after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination touched off nationwide riots in America, French student and worker protests called for civil rights, fair treatment of workers and the ouster of <em>Le General</em>, Charles de Gaulle.<br /><br />Though they failed in overthrowing de Gaulle, he stepped down a year later.<br /><br />By 1977, when Wenger was a 28-year-old professional benchwarmer in Strasbourg, France had pulled up all of its flags save for the one in Paris and a handful of peaceful, near-autonomous colonies. Today France is so far removed from its colonial past that it doesn’t take an ethnic count in its census.<br /><br />But even if Wenger had embraced civil rights and rejected racism, there are further explanations to why he might embrace a multinational football team.<br /><br />France’s greatest player of the 1980’s was the decidedly unFrench-sounding Michel Platini, a curly-haired midfielder whose parents were Italian. Its greatest talent in the 1990’s was the even-less-French-sounding Zinedine Zidane, a Muslim, the son of Algerian immigrants. Its greatest player in the new millennium is forward Thierry Henry, whose parents emigrated from two of the remaining French colonies, Guadeloupe and Martinique.<br /><br />Though he’s flourishing at Barcelona, Henry’s finest years came as the conductor of Wenger’s symphony in North London. But for all his wizardry, his best move came off the field. He’s the head of Stand Up Speak Up, Nike’s anti-racism foundation. (Let’s be clear: Henry did not just lend his name to Stand Up Speak Up. It was his idea, and will define his post-career life.)<br /><br />As players of foreign ancestry, Henry and Zidane are not the exception on the French national team. Since it was integrated in 1931, the team has progressively grown more accepting of foreign players. The 2006 squad which reached the World Cup Final was largely built on men of African and Carribean descent, along with the Algerian Zidane and Vikhash Dhorassoo, whose ancestors were Indian. And among the white players of French ancestry was Franck Ribery, a converted Muslim. (It is believed that France’s population could soon be 15 per cent Muslim, but who’s counting?)<br /><br />And it may turn out that another convert is Wenger’s greatest achievement, as a coach or as a man. While at Monaco, Wenger signed an unknown young forward, one who bore a most unfortunate label: African Muslim.<br /><br />George Weah, then 22, had torched Liberian and Cameroonian defenses in his young career. But, given the dearth of top drawer African players, it was unclear how his skill would translate in Europe.<br /><br />Well, 55 goals at Monaco, 53 more at Paris St. Germain, 58 more, and a World Player of the Year Trophy at AC Milan. . . translation? <em>C'est magnifique</em>.<br /><br />Weah’s success gave him great opportunity. At one point, when Liberia was a shitstorm of bullets and its government in shambles, Weah was funding the national team <em>out of his own pocket</em>. Weah’s generosity, as a wealthy man in a country — hell, a region — of little wealth, is legendary. I can offer a personal anecdote.<br /><br />My girlfriend’s brother teaches at the same school as a Liberian who is close friends with Weah. Some years back, Weah bought this friend a car. When it broke down, he did it again. And again.<br /><br />Weah can also be held up as a symbol for religious unity. (Which trails only education, food, malaria nets, and anti-retrovirals on Africa’s wish list.) As an adult, Weah converted from Islamic faith to Christianity, though without bitterness.<br /><br />“It’s not good for Muslims and Christians to fight each other,” Weah said. “We are one people.”<br /><br />Though they parted ways with George’s move to Paris, the Liberian player and his French coach remain close to this day.<br /><br />“Wenger made me not just the player I am today, but the man I am,” Weah said.<br /><br />If the roots of intolerance are easily traced — a violent episode, a stirring speech of vitriolic undertones, or even overtones — than the roots of tolerance are much subtler, and nearly invisible. The thread of acceptance is sewn with a fine needle.<br /><br />Is it a decision? Or is it the lack of a decision? “When did you begin not to hate?”<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;">Part II – <u>The flood</u></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The roots of intolerance</span><br /><br />When Arsene Wenger took the job at Arsenal, he, and Arsenal, were crushed in the English tabloid press. “Arsene Who?” asked the London Evening Standard. It was a fair question.<br /><br />George Graham had restored the once-prominent club in the late 80’s and early 90’s, but since his departure in 1995 Arsenal was in freefall. Four coaches, three of them “caretakers,” had inspired little optimism and not taken much care in the previous two years.<br /><br />At that time, there was only manager in the league born outside the United Kingdom, Ruud Gullit, who had just been named player-manager at Chelsea. Of the other three foreign coaches in the top division, in the history of English football, none had lasted into a second season.<br /><br />The other leading candidate for Arsenal’s job was also a foreigner, but of a different stature. Johan Cruyff was the greatest Dutch football player of all time, and had more recently been the most successful coach in Barcelona’s history.<br /><br />Wenger, meanwhile, had won a French League Title and a French Cup with AS Monaco, but after the club fired him he was lost in the relative obscurity, at least in football terms, of Japan. Before he was rumored as the next manager, most Arsenal fans were unaware of Arsene Wenger, the coach, and probably Arsene, the first name.<br /><br />Who indeed?<br /><br />Wenger spent his playing career as an unused defenseman. “I was the best player in my neighborhood growing up,” he said. “But it was a small neighborhood.” Fluent in four languages, he spoke bits of three more. Its much better now, but in 1996 his English was an accented murmur that seemed to strain his tongue.<br /><br />If the press had trouble understanding what he said, Arsenal’s squad was more troubled by what he did not say. The Premier League was dominated by the fiery Scot, Alex Ferugson, who helmed Manchester United with all the coolness of a smokestack.<br /><br />Arsenal’s players, then, were made uneasy to hear the rustling of shorts and the thump of shoe meeting ball. No yelling. Though he instructed on style of play, Wenger was a friendly, even timid figure in practice. His halftime speeches, even when the team was losing, were often subdued. Abstract, even.<br /><br />More incredible still were his off-the-field instructions: no drinking before big games, no more Sheperd’s pie and fried foods, and hit the treadmill now and then, preferably now. He brought in French players who followed the same edict, and convinced his English core to do the same. (Given that some of them were admitted alcoholics, he may not have only added years to their careers, but their lives as well.)<br /><br />Wenger also adopted a policy of worldwide scouting, which he’d done at Monaco. None of this would have mattered, though, had Wenger failed.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">What, and with whom</span><br /><br />Consider Eric Cantona. If intolerance is seeded by a single event, Cantona carried out the act that began to tip the scales in English football.<br /><br />And I don’t mean his flying kick at a front-row heckler. Though villainous, the English embraced the attack in all its scandalous glory. England had no problem with a foreigner coming into its league and misbehaving. Scoring landmark goals, though? That’s going too far.<br /><br />In May of 1996, Liverpool and Manchester United met in the Football Association Cup Final. Of the 26 players to reach the field for either side, only two were not born in England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales: the Dane, Peter Schmiechel, United’s giant goalkeeper, and Cantona, the Frenchman. After 85 scoreless minutes, a Manchester corner kick was punched 20 yards out to Cantona, whose shot fluttered untouched into the net.<br /><br />Manchester United 1, Liverpool 0. English football would not be the same.<br /><br />Cantona’s goal was not the first important play made by a foreigner in English football; far from it. (He also scored two in the 1994 FA Cup win.) But it represents the moment when a wise man looks at a growing pool of water on the dry side of a dam and says, “Well, that’s new.”<br /><br />In the first 112 years of the FA Cup Finals matches, spanning some 300 goals, only four were scored by someone not born on the British Isles. Including Cantona’s Cup-winner, 13 of the last 23 goals scored in FA Cup Finals have been converted by foreigners. In seven of the last 12 games, no UK representative has made the scoresheet. (Nobody scored in the 2004 Final, but six of the nine penalty kicks came from foreign-born shooters. The one miss came from Paul Scholes, an Englishman.)<br /><br />They’re not just scoring, either. They’re everywhere. Chelsea FC won the 2007 FA Cup with a roster of six Brits and 10 non-Brits, with Didier Drogba, the Ivorian, scoring the game’s only goal.<br /><br />The floodgates were opened. It flooded.<br /><br />But a few months after Cantona’s goal something happened that made the change come harder and faster. A French coach signed with Arsenal FC. And it did matter, because Wenger did not fail.<br /><br />In 50 seasons from 1947 to 1997, Arsenal won the Premier League five times and were runners-up only once. In the 10 seasons since Wenger’s arrival, Arsenal’s topped the league three times and finished second four times. Arsene has already equalled the previous 50 years’ tally of FA Cups, with four.<br /><br />You could say Arsene Wenger’s reputation starts and ends with Arsenal’s perfect 2003-2004 season. The last time there had been an undefeated season in English football, the Queen was. . . well, she was named Victoria. It was 1889.<br /><br />But Wenger’s bold streaks only start there. In 2006, Arsenal swept through 10 UEFA Champions League games and a total of 995 straight minutes without surrendering a goal. Two years prior to its undefeated run of 49 games, Arsenal had strung together 30 without a loss until a precocious English teenager named Wayne Rooney, then playing at Everton, beat them in the final minute.<br /><br />And this season, Arsenal rolled through 15 unbeaten games before dropping one to Middlesborough. Since then? Twelve league games without a loss. But Arsenal is not just trying not to lose: its flowing movements forward are compelling stuff.<br /><br />Even those who complain that the Gunners are trying to play “perfect” soccer have to shut up when four, five, and six players make intertwining runs and passes that leave a ball in the net, a goalkeeper on his ass and parts of North London in hysteria.<br /><br />As interesting as it is to look at how Wenger’s succeeded, what should not be ignored is with whom he’s done it.<br /><br />His two best forwards, those who keyed the 30 and the 49, were the Dutch genius Dennis Berkgamp and the Frenchman Thierry Henry, who equaled Berkgamp in skill and surpassed him in speed. At various times, Wenger has won with a German in goal, a Spaniard in the middle, a Dutchman and a Swede out wide. Africans at the back, Africans up front. Brazilians in the middle, a Brazilian-Croat up front, and Frenchmen all over.<br /><br />In February of 2005, Arsenal became the first English team to play a game without an English player on the field or on the bench. They crushed Crystal Palace that day, 5-1.<br /><br />Arsenal are not the only team trafficking in the skill exchange rate. Every top Premier League scorer in the new millennium has been from outside the UK. Last year, the Kingdom had only three players in the top 10 goalscorers, and none in the top three. This year, nine of the top 10 scorers are African, South American, or from the European mainland. The top four scorers are Portuguese, Togolese, Spanish and Zimbabwean.<br /><br />There is, however, one area where Brits reign supreme. In 2005-06, eight of the 11 players who topped – or bottomed – the league in player discipline were Irish, English, Scottish or Welsh, including the top three. In 2006-07, it was eight of 12, including four of the top six. This year, it’s nine of the top 12 spots, including the top three.<br /><br />I sometimes find malice in English tackles, and many are dissected in great detail. (Including a recent high-profile case involving Arsenal, to be discussed later.) But typically, I don’t think players who accumulate yellow cards should be thrown out of the league because they’re violent. I think they should be thrown out because they’re slow and they stink.<br /><br />Arsenal’s chief rivals during Wenger’s 10 years have been Chelsea, with two Premier League titles, and Man United, with six. In the same period, Liverpool has hovered around the top of the table, won two Carling Cups, and appeared in three FA Cup Finals, winning two. Each of these teams is on the leading edge of the foreign player movement.<br /><br />Chelsea completed five of the 10 most expensive transfers in the history of English football. Manchester United have four, and Liverpool’s recent contract for Fernando Torres cost them 20 million pounds ($40M US). That’s not his salary, Americans; that’s just how much they had to pay to his old team. Yes, in Europe they’re buying and selling men, with no ethical notion of a player being his own entity and no apparent ceiling on how much can be spent.<br /><br />In October of last year, Chelsea won 6-0 over Manchester City with players it had bought from Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and AC Milan. . . sitting on the bench. This is a tycoon’s game. I drink your milkshake, there will be blood, give me your best players. (Chelsea’s owner is literally an oil baron, for Christ’s sake.)<br /><br />The gap between football rich and football poor is pulling apart and swallowing most of the Premier League clubs. The only hope teams have is that eccentric foreign billionaires arrive and start signing ridiculous checks. Clearly, if there is one large problem with English football, this is it.<br /><br />Right?<br /><br />…<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">A dim, shiny head</span><br /><br />Joseph “Sepp” Blatter has been FIFA’s bald head for 10 years, and football’s popularity has grown in spite of his best efforts. Blatter’s shown impotence or ignorance of football’s minor issues – wild over-spending, slimy deals penned by street agents, match-fixing, crowd safety and racism – to take on the real enemies, like altitude. And the European Union.<br /><br />You see, the EU has this notion that if you’re talented, and someone wants to hire you, you should be allowed to work for them. Disgusting, I know. Good thing we’ve got Sepp, who braved the cutthroat field of <em>Swiss public relations</em>, around to stand up to injustice.<br /><br />Blatter recently came out in support of a proposed referendum to limit English teams to a starting lineup of six native Brits and five foreigners. Sepp, who usually consults his five richest friends before he decides if it’s raining, was appealing to a growing group of English owners and managers who don’t own a world atlas. They want to be able to recruit in their own neighborhoods and field teams of their own boys. They say this is for the good of English football.<br /><br />Some critics of the idea have alleged xenophobia, while I have alleged that xenophobia is a long word for racism.<br /><br />Blatter’s support should be vilified for its racist leanings. And it should be ridiculed because it’s bullshit.<br /><br />Of the 24 players to win the presitigous <em>Ballon d’Or</em> (Golden Ball), the award given to the world’s finest player, 16 played outside their country of birth. Of the last 30 players to finish in the top three for voting in the FIFA World Player of the Year, 24 were away from home.<br /><br />Since Arsene Wenger’s been the Lord of North London, there have been three World Cups. Let’s work backward, one at a time.<br /><br />In 2006, Germany, Portugal, France and Italy were the World Cup semifinalists. Portugal’s semifinal squad featured starters who played professionally in Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, three from England, and only one who played in Portugal. Germany, which has, like Italy, been successful with a mostly self-contained talent pool, did start one key player who worked in England. Arsenal goalkeeper Jans Lehman was a goal-spoiler throughout, and he guessed right on two penalty kicks against Argentina to move the Germans into the semis.<br /><br />While Italy’s team was entirely homegrown, their French opponents, who came <em>thiiiis</em> close to winning, had a roster of 11 players rooted in France, seven in England, and three in Italy.<br /><br />In 2002, Turkey, South Korea, Germany and Brazil reached the semifinals. In its semifinal loss to Brazil, the Anatolians started two Turks who played in England, three who played in Italy, and another in Germany. South Korea, which shared hosting duties with Japan, assembled a roster of almost entirely Korean-based players. But every single goal on its improbable run came from a player whose checks came by international mail.<br /><br />Again, Germany, the tournament’s runner-up, holds onto its best players. But the World Champion Brazilians had all 11 of their goals come from players in European leagues.<br /><br />I know, I know. Football is about more than goals, and the Brazilians got a giant contribution from an unsung midfielder. At the time he played for Atletico Mineiro, in booming Belo Horizonte. But Gilberto didn’t stay in Brazil long. Some Frenchman convinced him to go play in North London.<br /><br />In 1998, your World Cup semifinalists were Holland, Croatia, Brazil and France. Eight of Holland’s 12 goals in that tournament came from Dutchmen playing outside their homeland, including all five goals in the knockout stages. For Croatia, nine of its 11 starters and nine of its 11 goals in the tournament came from foreign-based Croats, including all five of its goals in the knockout round.<br /><br />Brazil scored 14 goals on its way to the Final, and all but Bebeto’s three came from Brazilians playing in Europe. France, the 1998 Champions, had eight of its 14 goals, including its last five come from Frenchman who played outside France. Three of its homegrown goals came from Thierry Henry, who one year later went to North London to play for his old coach.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Connections and disconnections</span><br /><br />At the tail end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, a short, fat man, born on a small island, set out to conquer France. And then, the world. Fate brought him to a grassy field not far from Waterloo, in Belgium, where he failed.<br /><br />At the tail end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, a tall, thin man, born in France, set out to conquer a large island. And then, the world. Fate brought him to a grassy field not far from Waterloo Bridge, in London, where he succeeded.<br /><br />It hasn’t been easy, and it hasn’t always been pretty. Last season, Arsenal’s wheels loosened considerably in January of 2007 with an injury to Van Persie, the unsurprisingly creative son of a sculptor and a painter. In February the wheels flew off when Henry went down.<br /><br />From late February to early April, Arsenal, the team that doesn’t lose, did, dropping six of nine games. The rudderless Gunners suffered a wicked 10-day spin, losing out of the Carling Cup, FA Cup, and Champions League.<br /><br />It got worse. In May Arsenal’s charismatic director, David Dein left the club. He was followed in short order by Thierry Henry, who cited Dein’s departure and his unproven, babyfaced teammates on his way out the door toward Barcelona.<br /><br />Arsenal’s hopes for 2007-08 would fall to a few players. Its goals would have to come from Adebayor, Rosicky, Van Persie, and the young Eduardo da Silva. For wildly different reasons, they've had rough years. And yet, Arsenal finds itself in a race for the Premier League title.<br /><br />Van Persie sparked and caught fire early, seven goals in 10 games, before another knee injury in October. He’s tried to come back twice, and twice Wenger has sent him back to the bench for his knee’s sake.<br /><br />Rosicky's been great this season, when he’s made it to the field. But the Czech has fought a losing battle against injuries, and has been missing since late January.<br /><br />And then there’s the tragedy of young Eduardo. The pocket-sized Brazilian played his way out of Rio and took a ticket to Croatia when he was 18. After spending five of the last six years there —and with no opening cracks in the Brazilian national team — it’s reasonable that he took up Croatian nationality.<br /><br />In the wake of Arsenal’s injury woes, Eduardo was rushed into the first XI, where he thrived. In his first 22 starts for Arsenal he scored 12 goals and assisted on eight others.<br /><br />Then, three minutes into a match against Birmingham City two Saturdays ago, Eduardo took a pass and turned toward the defense. He shuffled his feet and made a typical, short Arsenal pass. Just then, a step late, Birmingham’s Martin Taylor slid in with his foot at Eduardo’s shin level.<br /><br />Eduardo crumpled. Wincing in pain, the young Croat looked down at his foot and blacked out.<br /><br />I’ll spare you the pictures. Suffice it to say, after Eduardo was rushed to the hospital, a series of doctors performed a series of procedures that prevented an <em>amputation</em>. In a single sickening moment Arsenal had watched its season, Eduardo’s young career and his foot, disconnected. The ashen players and their coach looked like they’d seen the ghost of Eduardo’s foot.<br /><br />It got worse. After Walcott scored his first two goals, the second of which looked like a gamewinner, Gael Glichy was harshly penalized for a last-minute tackle in the penalty area. James McFadden converted the penalty.<br /><br />Arsenal, which gave up a single shot on goal during the entire match, drew, 2-2, on the same day Manchester United walloped Newcastle 5-1 to tighten the race for first place. Afterward William Gallas, who experienced Arsenal’s 10 days from hell in 2007, who’s lost in a World Cup Final, sat on the ground, inconsolable. He’s not a surgeon, so the only thing he could do for Eduardo was win. And they didn’t. (There’s no good news about Eduardo. Done for the season, and I assume forever, though I hope I’m wrong.)<br /><br />Now, to the Togolese forward. Adebayor was the coolest finisher in the world at the end of last year and the beginning of this one. But lately his head has let him down more than once, and in more ways than one.<br /><br />His yips came back in the form of a rash of missed opportunities. In mid-January, he lashed out at his teammate, Bendtnder, headbutting him during a 5-1 loss to Tottenham.<br /><br />Sadly his head couldn’t find the same accuracy in Arsenal’s next Champions League fixture against AC Milan. When a last minute cross found Adebayor unmarked, he missed a point blank header that would’ve given the Gunners a 1-0 scoreline at Emirates Stadium. Instead it finished 0-0; in order to advance, Arsenal would need to be the first English team in history to beat AC Milan in Italy.<br /><br />One week before Eduardo’s injury, and four days before Adebayor’s miss, Arsenal took a message-sending 4-0 thumping from Manchester United in the FA Cup. It was humiliating. Adebayor’s miss was discouraging. Eduardo’s injury, crushing. The wheels had come off again. And how cruelly.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;">Part III – <u>But it bends toward justice</u></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The weak threads</span><br /><br />At the tail end of the 19th century and the onset of the 20th, a group of French painters began leaving bold streaks on white canvas. What they did was altogether new, a revolution in expression.<br /><br />As we do, we labelled them for our own comfort, eventually settling on the Impressionists. The term came from a work called <em>Impression, Sunrise</em> by Claude Monet, one of the movement’s founders. Monet’s vision and detail made extraordinary scenes from the ordinary.<br /><br />The Impressionists worked in sunlight. They played new games with color and angle. Up close the power in their subtle brushstrokes was lost. Their work was best seen from a distance.<br /><br />They were misunderstood upon their arrival. Dismissed, even. They changed painting forever.<br /><br />Fast forward a hundred years. Art is alive, well, and still misunderstood. And there, in Geneva, Switzerland, the nexus of reasoned diplomacy, a dictator is cracking down. Not on the <em>laissez-faire</em> stylings of the world’s richest men, but on the last-ditch opportunities of its poorest.<br /><br />I’d love to debate Sepp Blatter on the issue of foreign-born players, but he’s making all of my points for me.<br /><br />What’s that you say, Sepp?<br /><br />“Workers in Europe can circulate freely but footballers are not workers.”<br /><br />Uh-huh. And?<br /><br />“You cannot treat a footballer like any normal worker because you need 11 to play a match –– and they are more like artists than workers.”<br /><br />Agreed. In the United States, we’re worried about an influx of millions of foreign workers doing work that almost anyone can do. Though I question the tone, when this trend worries Americans, I say it’s fair. In England, they seem worried about hundreds of foreign workers coming into the country to do work that almost no one can do.<br /><br />Artists, you say, Sepp? Why, then, was a young French painter named Claude allowed to pass through London not once, but twice? Whither the English painters? Weren’t they threatened by his presence? Or were they inspired?<br /><br />Artists, you say? Why, then, did the Courtald Gallery in London set a centerpiece exhibit around Monet’s disciple, Pierre-August Renoir a few weeks ago? Did they need to put up six English paintings for every five of Renoir’s? Did Brits question its origin? Or did they just stare and think, “Damn that’s pretty. . .”<br /><br />Getting to Zimbabwe’s athletes is one of the more wrong-headed tactics being considered to push the aging despot Robert Mugabe out of office. (I’d suggest a wheelchair.) Among those affected would be Benjani Mwaruwari, whose 13 league goals for Manchester City have him fourth among scorers.<br /><br />Let’s think about this. In order to get to one of the world’s worst-run countries, a country that’s literally running out of wheat, a country whose currency is more inflated than Blatter’s shiny head, where every night hundreds of people huddle together like wildebeest and cross a croc-filled river to get into South Africa. . .we’re going to take one of the only Zimbabweans making any real money. . . and send him back?<br /><br />At the onset of this year’s Premier League season, only 37 per cent of the Starting XI players were English. If current trends continue, by 2020, -5 % of Premier League players will be loyal to the throne. That’s a punchline, and I hope it hits Blatter in the nose.<br /><br />The thing is trends like this don’t bear out. The line does not fall to zero. At some point it curves and levels off. And besides, the Football Association should not be wondering how to get foreign players out of the England league, but about how to English players out of England.<br /><br />By the way, the one country that has enough good and great players to fill its own domestic league with talent is the one country that tries to export them all. How’s that workin’ out for Brazil?<br /><br />Look, there’s no player in the world, save Ronaldinho, whose skill equal does not exist in England. In the 2002 World Cup, England went out to Brazil, which is always excusable. But that team was timid in front of goal, and even its exciting young players seemed to be dragging a ball and chain.<br /><br />In 1998 and 2006, against Argentina and Portugal, England had key players — David Beckham in ’98 and Wayne Rooney in ’06 — get red carded after onfield meltdowns. Both times England lost on penalty kicks, in what has become a tragic pattern for the island’s football.<br /><br />Why would professional players who play high profile matches every week suddenly lash out so destructively? Why can’t England make its penalty kicks? How could David Beckham miss 10 feet high on a 36 foot shot, as he did at Euro 2004? Might the players feel the pressure of the foaming English fans and bloodthirsty tabloid press?<br /><br />The fault, dear brutes, lies not in your stars, but in yourselves. There’s nothing wrong with English footballers, and a lot wrong with English football.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">But still, like dust</span><br /><br />Only a week after their dust up, Adebayor and Bendtner were together on the field again when the Dane came on as a 71st minute sub against Newcastle. With his very first touch, Bendtner flicked a header toward Adebayor, who tried to find Bendtner with a return pass. It missed, but only seconds later Matthieu Flamini scored an outrageous goal to put Arsenal ahead 2-0, and it seemed that all was well in North London.<br /><br />Seven minutes after that, Bentdner offered a typical short, unselfish Arsenal pass to Cesc Fabregas, who converted to make the score 3-0 and guarantee that Arsenal would pass Manchester United to top the league. Adebayor wrapped a gentle arm around Bentnder, and whispered something into his ear.<br /><br />It would be foolish to say that the two will someday be best friends. But clearly, they could be teammates.<br /><br />That game was followed in short order by the 4-0 loss to Manchester United and the injury to Eduardo. If they had in fact turned against Arsenal, the fates seemed ready to turn the screw when the Gunners hosted Aston Villa on the first day in March.<br /><br />Only minutes after flubbing a chance for a rare goal, Philipe Senderos was dealt a brutal fortune. In the 27th minute, Villa’s Gabriel Agbonlahor dribbled toward the endline and rolled in a hard pass. Senderos’ foot betrayed him, and the ball deflected into Arsenal’s net. Senderos doubled over. At the end of an awful week, cameras caught him seeming to wipe away a tear.<br /><br />Down 1-0, Arsenal began to find space, and each other. A number of offensive moves saw the final shot stopped by Villa keeper Scott Carson or whiz over the crossbar. Fabregas, Glichy, Hleb, Flamini and Adebayor all came close. On the other end, a resurgent Senderos made a difficult clearance to keep the Gunners from going two goals down.<br /><br />But with twenty seconds remaining, Arsenal still trailed by a goal. On the left side, Fabregas threw in to Hleb, who gave it back. Fabregas rolled a short pass back to Glichy, who curled a cross into the box.<br /><br />Adebayor rose. He nodded the ball down, toward a teammate.<br /><br />Just as the ball touched the ground, Bendtner rolled his shot into the corner of the net. 1-1, and with seconds left. The point earned meant that Arsenal would finish the day still in first place.<br /><br />The camera showed Arsene Wenger, gleeful, raising his fists above his head, and I realized I was smiling.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Epilogue - Self-evident </span><br /><br />When confronted with the idea of limiting foreign players in English football, Arsene Wenger said the kind of things you’d like to hear. Not from your favorite football coach, but from your favorite philosopher.<br /><br />“Sport is competitive and competition is based on merit,” he said. “It does not matter where you are born, it matters who you are.”<br /><br />And it matters who the coach is. Wenger’s players have looked too old, too young, too hurt, or too different to win. But they’ve won, and now some narrow-minded prats want to stop them.<br /><br />Wenger was 18 on the Night of the Barricades. Alas, they were in Paris, and he was a student in Stasbourg. He wasn’t on the barricades that night. But he is now.<br /><br />Maybe for every step he takes, Wenger sees someone else take a step backward. Maybe he sees the recent labor strikes and race/class riots in France, and fears for his country, and its fearful leader. Maybe he hears a growing anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Maybe he hears a growing anti-Western sentiment everywhere else.<br /><br />Maybe he sees that people the world over are taking advantage of increased transportation and freedom — not just moving to be near people who are similar, but to get away from people who are different.<br /><br />Or maybe he sees positive forces, too, like the fact that Viktor Bout and Charles Taylor are no longer free men. Or that, 40 years after George Wallace got four states and 10 million votes, the third black U.S. Senator in the last century is running for president, and 130 delegates to the good.<br /><br />As a man of science, Wenger might have seen the growing amount of biological evidence that the difference between all humans, from the palest Belarusian to the darkest Ivorian, is negligible.<br /><br />Maybe he thinks about none of those things, and only wants what we all want: goals. He didn’t and doesn’t make speeches about changing the face of English football. Wenger did not bring the Premier League into the modern era, just Arsenal. He is a man on his own time.<br /><br />But Wenger’s assembled a group of young men who work together, and beautifully. They are the United Nations of Football. A coalition of the willing to pass and move. A nonviolent nongovernmental organization, out to conquer the world. Teammates <em>sans frontieres</em>.<br /><br />The only imaginary line they see is the one they’re on: the path that takes the ball to the goal. Sometimes direct, more often abstract.<br /><br />Wenger has brought them to England, a country that’s thrived for 500 years — not on its own raw materials, but on its ability to turn separate parts into a finished product; he’s brought them to London, a port that thrived not because of its defensive position, but because the Thames is so easily navigable.<br /><br />Forget the way they've synced-up so compellingly. These players, from these disparate places, would never have <em>met</em> without football, and without Wenger. And for whatever reason, some of his very best players begin to ask, “What’s with all this hate in the world?”<br /><br />He’s fielded a last line of defense that hailed from Manchester, Oxford, South Yorkshire, and London. And another from Geneva, Bouake, Abidjan and Tolouse.<br /><br />Wenger’s united players from the divided West Coast of Africa, awoken the sleepy Spanish shores of the Mediteranean, broken up the milky white homogeny of Switzerland and Denmark and found a beam of light streaking through the clouds north of the Thames. <em>E pluribus, unum</em>.<br /><br />A lot of historians don’t think any one of us can be an agent of change. Perhaps they give little weight to the “great man” theory because, taken in full, so few of us are actually great.<br /><br />Like their opponents, agents of tolerance must dig in to gain footholds. They must pull at the weak threads of racism’s and nationalism’s arguments, wedge our humanity against our cruelty, turn youthful passion to beauty, and not hate. They must conquer minds. Not by fear, but by acts of inspiration, whether that’s a series of angled passes in London, or an enormous message from a French or Liberian star, or a small, whispered message from one man’s mouth to another’s ear.<br /><br />Wenger is signed on to stay in North London for at least eight more years, though he jokes about staying forever. We should be so lucky.<br /><br /></span><em><span style="font-family:georgia;">(Author's note: During the writing and editing of this piece, Arsenal won a historic 2-0 win over AC Milan to advance in the Champions' League, and a 0-0 draw against Wigan means that Arsenal are still on top of the Premier League and, for the moment, the world.)</span> </em>verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-5711110298852809222007-11-06T01:48:00.000-08:002008-07-13T22:52:37.769-07:00Check.He could still be down on the board. Garry Kasparov, the Azerbaijan-born and Russian-raised grandmaster could still be living out his life on the chessboard, where he was better than anyone, ever. He could lose the long hours of a Moscow winter to slashing bishops and sliding castles.<br /><br />Or he could be in Manhattan, drinking imported anything and chatting away nights with the smart and stylish and elite, occasionally popping his head up to toss an Op-Ed hand grenade at the Kremlin in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.<br /><br />Kasparov, 44, rich and brilliant beyond our imagination, could live the rest of his days in the fantasy life of chess of the real-life fantasy of the idle rich. Or he could, like most Russians, just close his eyes and shut his damn mouth.<br /><br />Instead Garry Kasparov, a man who did not take losing well and lost rarely, a man who always thought he could make that one move to swing the game in his favor, is going to run for president of Russia. And he's going to lose.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />Seven in 10, or so it's said. Polls say that 70 per cent of Russians are in support of their current president, Vladimir Putin, whose term is due to end in March of 2008. It is likely that those same seven in 10 would support Putin to stay in office another four years, if not forty.<br /><br />My introduction to Putin, the first story I'd heard of him after he was elected president, is a funny one. Bob Kraft, owner of the NFL's New England Patriots, was meeting with Putin. At a photo op, Putin asked to look at Kraft's Super Bowl ring. Kraft slid it off his finger and handed it to Putin, who admired it for a few moments, smiling. In full view of the camera, Putin dropped Craft's ring into his pocket.<br /><br />The media ate it up, and Kraft later tried to stamp out any controversy by insisting that the ring was "a gift." With what I now know about Putin, perhaps he offered Craft a gift in exchange: I keep the ring, you keep your finger.<br /><br />Putin, an ex-K.G.B. agent who had been Boris Yeltsin's prime minister, was pitched as a stoic pragmatist on his way into office. On his way out he should be cast as a power-hungry thug.<br /><br />Under his rule Russians have lost the right to elect their regional governors, and Moscow and St. Petersburg no longer get to elect their mayors. Both of those duties are now carried out by the Kremlin. In the December elections for the Duma-–Russia's parliament–-citizens will now have to vote for parties and not individuals. Putin's party, United Russia, will undoubtedly crush all others and assume a near-unanimity, with a few token liberals thrown in just to satisfy some silly little document called the Russian Constitution. And in case they don't win, Putin is now handcuffing the efforts of an international election oversight group. I think the next step here is Putin counting the votes himself and announcing the winners. And what better place to announce them than his own media outlets: the Kremlin now controls the major newspapers and television stations.<br /><br />Russian billionaires who've mistakenly thought they were powerful enough to criticize Putin have been forced to sell their companies, and some have been imprisoned on trumped-up charges. As one former staffer spins it, "Putin is no enemy of free speech--he simply finds absurd the idea that somebody has the right to criticize him publicly."<br /><br />So, too, do his cops. They have a habit of pulling over motorists for no particular reason, and allowing them to go when they offer a bribe. Kirill Formanchuck decided to start filming his interactions with police. For his trouble, he was thrown in jail, where he says a few men, unprovoked, beat him. He believes he was beaten by policemen; true or not, supervising cops were in no hurry to help. Now Formanchuk is in a hospital with a swollen face and injuries to his brain and skull. He got off easy.<br /><br />Since 2000, more than a dozen journalists and Putin critics have been murdered in the most professional of manners. Notable among the dead are Anna Politkovskaya, the subversive and talented reporter who was about to publish another article in her series about Russian brutality in Chechnya. Politkovskaya was murdered in cold blood, three in the chest and one in the head, last October.<br /><br />A month later, Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-K.G.B. man living in London, was poisoned with the rare and highly toxic substance polonium. Litvinenko was a critic and conspiracy theorist to the extreme, accusing Putin of everything from hired killings to pedophilia. On his deathbed, he dictated a note that referred to his killer as "You" until the second to last line. "You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life."<br /><br />Justice in these matters has been slow and uninspired. In Politkovskaya's case, 10 men were arrested in July of this year, among them a former officer in the F.S.B., the modern K.G.B. The Kremlin asserted that it had nothing to do with the killing, and that it had in fact been carried out by its enemies just to hurt Russia’s reputation. And if you believe that explanation, I have a distant relative in Nigeria who needs your help. Meanwhile, Russia has refused to extradite Andrei Lugovi, British investigators' prime suspect in the Litvinenko killing.<br /><br />Of course I would never accuse Putin of being involved in these cases. Not to his face. But the president's brutality has not just come in the form of gloved hands and silenced pistols. Chechnya, the fingernail-sized region in the southwest corner of Russia, declared its independence in 1991. It was punished by a Russian invasion. The Chechens fought bravely, and finally in 1996 Russia withdrew. Left to their own devices Chechnya's new leaders did little to help the public, but, thoughtfully, allowed a radical and militant brand of Islam to prosper.<br /><br />As prime minister, Putin was the driving force in Russia's re-invasion, which began in 1999 and didn’t last long. The Russian military’s actions were either sloppy or criminal: civilian houses were obliterated, entire villages wiped out. In 2000, the newly-elected president Putin decided that tens or hundreds of thousands of dead Chechens--depending who you ask--was enough, and declared "victory." The legacy of Chechnya was an occupying force of Russian soldiers, a puppet government with Putin holding the strings and a bunch of angry and armed insurgents. (See: IRAQ, U.S. INVASION OF.)<br /><br />The Russian soldiers are still in Chechnya, some of them accused of atrocities against civilians; the Kremlin-friendly president was assassinated in 2004; the surviving Chechen militants have pursued a ruthless brand of terrorism in Russia. Putin's security forces have not helped.<br /><br />In 2002 a Chechen group held hundreds of Russians hostage in a Moscow theater. Putin's elite soldiers, his best and his brightest, killed 129 hostages when they decided to fill the theater with poison gas. Then 2004 Chechen terrorists held about 1,100 Russians hostage in a school, many of them women and children. First Russian officials lied that only 354 hostages were in the school. With hostages still inside--indeed, being held up to windows as human shields--a Russian tank fired mortar shells into the school. (Go ahead, read that one again.) In total, 331 hostages died, 186 children among them, and an unknown number of terrorists escaped.<br /><br />Putin counts among his friends Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust denier and lunatic-about-town who calls the shots in Iran. Putin seems to be on the short list of people who want Ahmadinejad to go nuclear.<br /><br />When the U.S. was fiddling around with its useless missile defense system, Putin pulled out of a treaty that would limit the number of troops Russia can pool at its European border. (To which I would say, "I wonder what you’re going to do with those troops, Mr. Putin.") He also floated the idea of aiming a new group of missiles at various European targets. (To which I would say, "My, what big teeth you have grandma.") We're not in another Cold War, but I believe we've just dipped below room temperature.<br /><br />Bogus elections, state-owned media, critics imprisoned and murdered, bad cops, bad soldiers, dangerous friends and a certain enthusiasm for starting World War III. Will the three in 10 Russians that don't like Putin please mention something to the seven that do?<br /><br />You wanna' know how great it is in Russia? The country has a <em>negative</em> population growth. You know, like North Dakota. For Christ's sake, <em>Botswana </em>is growing.<br /><br />One of the two things that Putin's got going for him are his predecessors. Mikhail Gorbachev's crowning achievement was allowing people to say "glasnost" and "perestroika" without going directly to a Siberian prison, and letting a wall be torn down in Berlin. (Which, honestly, he couldn't even see from his office.) Other than that, he was about as progressive as his birthmark was attractive.<br /><br />Then came Boris "Don't light a match near my drink" Yeltsin. Putin's unwavering eyes and unflushed cheeks suggest a certain--how do I phrase this?--sobering lucidity that just may not have been there with Yeltsin.<br /><br />Putin's other great advantage is that Russia has oil. A lot of it. For years, the country's best-known exports were vodka, sexpot blonde tennis players and furry hats. Now, Russia produces nine million barrels of oil a day, many of which are then scattered across Europe, sold at a high price.<br /><br />And in terms of price, oil is now approaching the black truffle range. But I'm not sure that any president should get much credit for oil. Putin had nothing to do with the deaths of wooly mammoths that expired in Siberia a million years ago and now go for $96-a-barrel. (Although, I'm sure he could have made a few calls.)<br /><br />The one thing even I must give him credit for is, unlike Hugo Chavez in Venezuala, Putin is saving and not spending the money. Russia has piled up $413 billion in the last few years. If you're an economist or a foreign investor, this kind of piggybank for a rainy day thinking comforts you. But if you're like me, and you consider Putin to be unfriendly-to-hostile depending which day you catch him, you might begin to imagine the worst that someone could do with $413 billion.<br /><br />Unless he rewrites the constitution, which he might, or invokes some obscure loophole--which he might--officially, Putin's regime ends next March. Realistically, he has no desire to give up the centralized Russian government. He built it up, and he still wants to use it. The purpose of power is power.<br /><br />He'll probably hand-pick a successor from his inner circle, and that guy will win in a landslide. Putin will take a position, perhaps going back to prime minister, that gives him a direct phoneline to the president's office and a nice salary. There will be no balance to the central Russian government, no check on its power. Except for the name on the door, nothing will change.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />Sometimes when an athlete reaches a certain level of success, they'll walk away from their sport and try out something different. There are exceptions, but usually the results are disastrous. This unfortunate impulse is to blame for Michael Jordan's baseball career, Magic Johnson's talk show, and Carl Lewis, national anthem warbler.<br /><br />But Garry Kasparov, politician, is no whim. He's been obsessed with politics since the mid-80s, when he first started speaking out against the government. His 1985 victory over Anotoly Karpov was seen as a landmark meeting of Russia's Communist past and its democratic future, and Kasparov embraced this representation. (As far as symbols for Soviet strength, Karpov ranked right above the hammer and a few notches below the sickle.)<br /><br />Kasparov is also not new to the state of affairs in today's Russia. He has for some time taken an active role in the Other Russia, the wide-ranging and young political party that seeks to get everyone opposed to Putin under one big tent. Besides, Kasparov did not choose to run; he was chosen, and in resounding fashion, by the Other Russia delegates in late September. So now he's running, and running right into the teeth of the Kremlin.<br /><br />He's saying, and has been saying, the kinds of things about Putin that have made other people disappear. He says these things knowing that the next time he looks out his peephole he may be looking into the chamber of a loaded gun, that his next restaurant meal could be the corned beef and polonium on rye. Oleg Kalugin, Putin's boss from his time at the K.G.B., said, "I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about something terrible happening to (Kasparov)."<br /><br />Though supporters might call him an idealist, critics have cast Kasparov as foolish, putting himself and his family in danger. So how smart is Garry Kasparov? The answer to that question could begin and end with the oft-told story of a six year old Garry solving a chess endgame puzzle in a newspaper. . .before he knew how to play chess. But I'll offer another one.<br /><br />While researching a profile on Garry, a New York Times reporter told a bystander that he met Kasparov when the writer's son earned a draw with the grandmaster during an exhibition two years earlier. Hearing this, Kasparov counted off the first 20 moves of that game. That's some Rainman shit.<br /><br />But his intellect includes both the depth of memory and the breadth of curiosity. He loves soccer, literature, and, of course, politics, and can and will discuss nearly anything at length.<br /><br />In some cases brilliance spins its owner deeper and deeper into his own mind, burning off things like logic and compassion along the way. (See: FISCHER, BOBBY.) But Kasparov's genius is more extroverted, more accessible. As it was with chess, his politics are refined over coffee with friends, not just in a meeting between his own neurons.<br /><br />...<br /><br />"I am the raider, the soldier that uses a parachute and attacks the back of a front."<br />- Garry Kasparov, 1990<br /><br />It's called check.<br /><br />In chess, the final move, the culmination of all the ones before it, is called checkmate. The king is trapped, endangered where he stands and with no move that would save him. But before checkmate comes check. It simply means that the king is exposed. Some piece has him in his sights and the king or one of his subjects must make a move that will protect him. Check announces that one player is attacking and the other is defending.<br /><br />Garry Kasparov, the grandmaster, thrived against defensive players. He was aggressive on the attack and aggressive on the defense. So when he organized a protest march through St. Petersburg in March of this year, he would have recognized the strategy. In its preparation for the march, Russian police drew back to surround the governor's office. Typical, thought Kasparov: "They protect themselves." As a player he'd have attacked without mercy and left wooden figures and another man's pride in his wake. As a politician he led 5,000 protestors into the heart of the city, where 130 of them were arrested.<br /><br />There are no moves that will make Kasparov become Russia's next president. There is no checkmate scenario. There is no positive endgame. Kasparov will run on principal, and he will lose on principal.<br /><br />But there will come that moment. This is Kasparov, after all. I know it will come. He'll shuffle here and slide there, positional actions that won't merit attention until they've built to the final move. Kasprov will make eye contact with the king and match Putin's cold stare with one of his own. Check.<br /><br />(Notes: This column was informed largely by two great pieces. David Remnick of the New Yorker wrote a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/01/071001fa_fact_remnick" target="_blank">great story</a> on the build-up to Kasparov's run, and C.J. Chivers’ award-winning and <a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0606BESLAN_140">heart-stopping account</a> of Russian hostages in The School, which first appeared in Esquire magazine.)verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-33113411648173584162007-10-13T04:41:00.000-07:002007-10-13T06:15:18.272-07:00The man I wanted to hateI didn't want to like Didier Drogba. In fact I wanted to hate him.<br /><br />As so many of my conflicts do, it started with his hair. Long, straight and slick, his pimp-style mane never moves while he plays. And yet, it moved me to dislike him. Then there's the name. Didier Drogba. Part Bond villain, part high-end fashion designer. There's the voice, that Afro-French-accented bass, so lowdown and mumbled that it usually took me a couple seconds to realize he was speaking my language. <br /><br />Hair, name, voice, I didn't like any of it. I can’t explain, nor do I stand behind those opinions. <br /><br />But I wasn't alone in hating how Drogba played. More than once I've seen him drop to the ground rolling and cringing so convincingly that you'd expect him to pull a knife out of his thigh, only for a replay to confirm that he'd gone untouched. Before the edict went out for referee’s to crack down on this nonsense, he was among the game's worst offenders, blatant enough to once say, "Sometimes I dive, sometimes I stand." He had no qualms about using his hands to move the ball or opposing players to where he needed them. This was amoral soccer. Win at all costs.<br /><br />None of Drogba's offenses reached the height of a single moment I saw on a highlight reel from his time in France. After one of his goals Didier whipped off his shirt and ran to the corner, where he celebrated by pretending to hold a machine gun and firing it into the crowd. <br /><br />From another player, this gesture would be immature. Stupid, even. From Drogba, a native of the Ivory Coast, it was unforgivable.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />When Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea, he threw out the antiquated notions of developing chemistry and cultivating young talent. Instead he handed blank checks to coach Jose Mourinho, who went about stocking Chelsea with the best players at every position on the field. And Drogba, who came to Chelsea in 2004 from Olympique Marseille, seemed to me the ultimate football mercenary: fast, fearless and without conscience. I thought if the paychecks came he would score goals in the Arctic, accumulate yellow cards at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. <br /><br />The paychecks came in London, and so did the goals. In Drogba's three years Chelsea has won six trophies, including back-to-back Premiership league titles. Last year he scored 33 goals in total: some great, some greatly important and some both. He scored the game winner against Manchester United in the FA Cup final, and both goals against Arsenal in the Carling Cup final. If you're keeping track, that's one man, three goals, two trophies. <br /><br />If John Terry is the fire behind Chelsea's eyes and Michael Essien is its relentless heart, then Drogba is its fist. A sharply-knuckled thing dangling at the end of a long arm, when you blink too long it touches your chin and turns out the lights. <br /><br />Didier can beat you with his right foot, his left foot, his forehead or his frontal lobe. He is dangerous with his back turned and facing goal. He is dangerous as a target of free kicks, or as a free kick taker. Long range or point blank. With the ball, without the ball. Don’t blink.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />They burned their guns. They burned their guns and the war was over. That's what they said. The President and the Prime Minister stood next to a flaming pile of a few dozen guns and congratulated themselves on finding peace. <br /><br />In 1995, 35 years after Cote d'Ivoire declared itself free from France's rule, its then-president Henri Konan Bedie took a bit of that freedom back. He placed restrictions on who could run against him in the upcoming election. The opposition boycotted, and Bedie got 96 per cent of the vote in something that I suppose looked like an election. Before the next one came around, General Robert Guei led a successful coup d'etat. With no shots fired, the coup put Bedie on a plane to France and put Guei in the big office with the view. <br /><br />It's unclear what Guei's problem with Bedie was, because he proceeded to do the same thing, putting restrictions on who could run against him in the next election. It still didn't work: Guei lost to Laurent Gbagbo. When Guei didn't honor the results, Gbagbo's supporters turned violent, and this time it was Guei who had to leave the palace in a hurry. <br /><br />Gbagbo was only in office a couple years before another coup attempt. The rebels accused the president of discriminating against the country’s Muslims. (I guess you just can't get away with discrimination in an immigrant-rich country that speaks more than 60 languages.)<br /><br />This time around there were shots fired, and by the end of the night General Guei was dead in the street, among others. Thanks to French troops, this one was only an attempted coup. But the rebels had seized the northern side of the country, and Gbagbo lashed out against the threat to his power and life by directing his troops to attack shantytown residents and burn their houses. The loose command led government forces to random killings, and the random killings filled the occasional mass grave. <br /><br />Since late 2002, the few attempts at drawing up peace agreements have been far outnumbered by violent flare-ups. The Ivory Coast was a country divided. <br /><br />In March of this year, Guillaume Soro, who had previously led the rebels, signed a ceasefire agreement and was named Gbagbo's prime minister. Then in late July, Soro and Gbagbo watched a dumpster full of flaming guns. The war was over. Except. . .<br /><br />Except the gun-burning came only weeks after Soro's plane landed in Bouake, the rebel capital in the North, and was greeted with rockets. The Prime Minister survived, though four other passengers did not. <br /><br />Except. . .the rebels weren't there burning any guns. They were up north, probably holding them. And the government didn't burn any significant number of guns. This was only a few. It still has the rest of its weaponry. You know, just in case. <br /><br />Except this is West Africa, where anyone with cash, a landing strip, and Viktor Bout's pager number can be armed to the tonsils by tomorrow morning. <br /><br />Enter Didier Drogba, the man I wanted to hate. <br /><br />In the Ivory Coast the average citizen can measure his political power in close friends and ammunition. But no one, not even a sitting president--not even a standing president--is as powerful or popular as a goalmaker. Drogba, whom I'd thought to be a footballing mercenary, could in his regular life be some wonderful oxymoron: a soldier of peace.<br /><br />In June, an Ivory Coast match against Madagascar was scheduled to be played in Drogba's hometown, the government-controlled city of Abidjan. On Drogba's audacious suggestion, it was moved north, to the rebel stronghold Bouake. All parties agreed. After all, this was the goalmaker. Aside from Ivory Coast's five goals--the fifth from Drogba--it was without incident. Rebel forces and supporters coexisted with government officials in one stadium, cheering for the same 11 people. Deflecting credit, Drogba said "it's the best thing that's ever happened to me." <br /><br />The long term impact of nights like this--or the one in October of 2005, when the team qualified for the World Cup and people in Abidjan called bars to order beer for those in the rebel North--remains to be seen. As we Americans foolishly say, "It's only a game."<br /><br />But I know that the more time you spend arguing over whether to play Emmanuel Eboue at right back or right mid, the less time you spend counting ammunition and looking at maps. I know that the same money that buys Drogba a house in London builds a hospital back home. I know that long after his knees give out, Drogba's mouth and his brain and his heart will still work.<br /><br />Drogba has spent enough time in London to know that he could lose himself in the paved roads and high speed internet and DVDs and fine dining, and he could buy expensive speakers and try to drown out the gunfire back home. He spent enough time in France as a kid that he could probably have applied for French citizenship, and he could have suited up alongside Zidane and Henry in last year's World Cup Final. And yet he keeps turning back to his homeland and saying and doing things that most Ivorians cannot. <br /><br />Though I'd like to ask him about it someday, I still don't forgive Drogba's "machine gun" move. But I think I can finally begin to get over the hair. <br /><br />At the beginning of that highlight video where I saw Drogba's wrongheaded celebration, there is no sound. I saw Didier run a midfield give-and-go with a teammate, leaving him a single defender and the goalkeeper. Drogba beat the defender on pure speed and with a single deft touch swerved left, away from the keeper, and scored easily. At the moment he made the decisive move, there was a sudden pulse of string instruments that blared out of my headphones and scared the hell out of me. It introduced a powerful piece of orchestral music that played for the rest of the video. <br /><br />If there is any player in football whose soundtrack would be opera, it is this man. In any one 90 minute match he can be bully, victim, artist, fiend, villain and hero. In a virtuoso performance, he played the full spectrum last week when Chelsea visited Valencia for a Champions League match. <br /><br />In the first half he set up Chelsea's first goal with a through pass to Flourent Malouda, who squared the ball across goal for Joe Cole to poke in. <br /><br />Midway through the first half Drogba collided with a Valencia player at midfield and went down clutching his head. The impact was sufficiently jarring that moments later I saw the Chelsea trainer holding smelling salts in front of Drogba's face. He sniffed and threw his head back. (His hair did not move.)<br /><br />Just before the half ended Drogba flailed his left foot at a waist-high cross, but he couldn't make contact. Immediately he came up limping. He'd pulled his hamstring, and he started walking toward the sideline. Though he stayed on the field the last few minutes, he was a hobbled man, and I assumed he would be substituted at the half. <br /><br />The second half came and there he was. I'm not sure what combination of wrapping and painkilling went on, but Didier Drogba, who had just legitimately pulled his hamstring, was as good as I've ever seen him. He won every header that came his way, and any ball rolled in his direction belonged to him, and more importantly, to Chelsea.<br /><br />At one point, after battling for a ball in the corner, one Valencia fan said something ugly enough to make Drogba whip his head around and glare under narrowed eyebrows. Given Spain's pathetic recent history of spectator racism, we can only imagine.<br /><br />Then with the score tied 1-1 in the 71st minute, Cole gained possession in midfield and without hesitation struck a pass with the outside of his right foot. The ball carved out a left-to-right path over 150 feet of grass, right to Drogba. Didier was one-on-one with a single defender. <br /><br />He controlled the ball with his right foot, held off his defender, and beat the onrushing goalkeeper with his left. Lights out.<br /><br />He ran to the same corner that he'd shot the look toward earlier, then shook his head and made a gesture as if to say, "Forget it, this isn't about you." He turned back to his teammates, and the smile that he showed Cole does not come from a mercenary. <br /><br />In the 85th minute, Salomon Kalou came on as a substitute for Malouda. Kalou, 22, was born in Oume, Cote d'Ivoire, and if he weren't so damn fast he'd probably be going into his ninth year on a cocoa plantation. Instead, Kalou was becoming a multi-millionaire and a national hero. (He scored the Ivory Coast's first goal against Madagascar that night in Bouake.) <br /><br />I like to imagine that Drogba has taken his young countryman in as a little brother. I'm pretty sure that, like most young Ivorians, Kalou fiercely admires Drogba. I'm pretty sure I do, too. <br /><br /><br />(Note: This column benefitted greatly from a Vanity Fair piece by Austin Merril, which you can find <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/07/ivorycoast200707" target="_blank">here</a>. And for the same story with a different protaganist and location, try S.L. Price's <a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/cover/news/2001/07/25/weah_africa_i/" target="_blank">A Good Man in Africa</a>, about the Liberian George Weah.)verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-22493629564247721112007-09-18T02:42:00.000-07:002007-09-19T10:23:19.297-07:00Photo albumHello. Been a while, and I'm sorry. Today I have pictures. (Click on any picture to see a larger version.) <br /><br />My girlfriend went to the Red Location museum, which is a testament to the local anti-apartheid movement. Red Location was the first black township in Port Elizabeth. (For more information, go <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/redlocationmuseum/" target="_blank">here</a>.) <br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/FirstBunchofSA069.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/intro.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />This is the plaque that introduces you to the museum, and I just like the phrasing of the last line--". . .to portray a feeling of awkwardness, ambiguity and complexity." As a rule I'm for any exhibit that says, "We have no problem making you people feel uncomfortable." <br /><br />(Note: I don't think my girlfriend would have taken pictures in the museum had there not been a shockingly frustrating situation: the power was out in some parts of the building. She was taking pictures so that the flash would hit the wall, and then she could look at the picture to see what was on there. I could not have come up with a more striking metaphor than a museum that illuminates the struggle against oppression, with the lights off.)<br /><br />This next picture shows the government's official tactic of dealing with uprisings in the 70's and 80's. They’d round up organizers and well-known opponents of apartheid and "interrogate" them until they died under murky circumstances. Hundreds of bright young men were shot, stabbed or beaten to death while in the company of a number of policemen. Other prisoners conveniently fell or jumped to their deaths. Apartheid sent one generation of leaders to Robben Island, and the next to the grave. <br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/FirstBunchofSA067.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/deaths.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />There are a couple other pictures my girlfriend took at the Red Location, but I won't be publishing them. They were of two speakers that they had, a couple of older men who were themselves residents. I won’t put them up because I wasn't there to ask their permission. But I should mention that these two guys found time to smile and laugh with their visitors while talking about the darkest days of their country’s history. I seem to harbor more bitterness about apartheid than most of the people who lived through it. They're very forgiving. Me, not so much.<br /><br />Now I'll show you the beach, which is about a five minute walk from where we live. This is the part where I confess that I don't give a damn about beaches. I just don't get it. Even Zanzibar, with its famed white beaches, holds no appeal to me. The beach part of the beach is just sand. <br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/FirstBunchofSA039.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/beach.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />I do understand man's fascination with water. In Port Elizabeth, you'll often catch someone lost in the oncoming waves and their own thoughts.<br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/FirstBunchofSA037.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/guy.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />Next, we'll look at drainage. One day when it was pouring rain, I noticed this coming up under the wall of our place, courtesy of the neighbors. How thoughtful. <br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/FirstBunchofSA125.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/drain.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />And here's a picture to illustrate my last post, where I talked about the lack of a front wall. The two guys sitting on the right were responsible for taking down the rest of the wall, before a few others joined them to rebuild it. Again, this hole was there for a month.<br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/FirstBunchofSA120.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/wall.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />Now, just a couple of pictures from the game drive. We’ll start with the least interesting animal, which was the sleeping rhino. Looking at a sleeping rhino is a lot like looking at a rock. (Note: the head in this picture belongs to Sergio, another passenger on the game drive. Sergio actually took all of these pictures, except, I assume, this one. Nice kid.) <br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/rhino1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/rhino1-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br /><br />Next we’ll see the immeasurably goofy ostrich. This odd bird came walking right up to the truck, where it became fascinated by our guide’s car keys. With its curious eye, craning neck and frazzled hair, it seems to be the nosy-old-lady neighbor of the animal kingdom. Can’t you just imagine her asking, “How’s that boy of yours?” with a smoke hanging out of her beak? <br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/ostrich.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/ostrich-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />When I first saw a giraffe close up and moving in the wild, I immediately thought of dinosaurs. I know there's no close relation between the two. They just don't look like they should still be walking around on my Earth. This one trotted down the road in front of us before ducking off into the brush. <br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/giraffe.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/giraffe-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />And then, with the sun setting behind it, the giraffe took 15 seconds to remind us we weren't the only curious ones. <br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/girafe2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/girafe2-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />Now the real reason to go on a game drive. Lions. The park we went to happened to have a rare white male, and on this day he was relaxing with one of the females. (You'll see in one of the pictures that she eventually decided to come check us out, probably getting within a 10 feet of the truck, at which point the guide decided to put some distance between us.)<br /><br />You've seen pictures like these before. And you can look at the lions in these pictures, but you'll have to go find your own. These two are just for me. I get why Hemingway's Old Man could not get the lions out of his head.<br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/lions4.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/lions4-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/lions3.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/lions3-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/lions2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/lions2-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br /><a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/lions1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/lions1-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a><br /><br />I know, I know. <br /><br />- Finally, in sports, here's something that just came up on my TV screen. It's your update on South Africa in the Cricket World Cup. The score at the time was SA 154-8 Overs 20. I have no idea what that means. It looks like coordinates on a map. On the right hand of the screen, this competition was identified as the World Twenty20 Super 8. Right.<br /><br />Look, what they're doing seems very athletic. It reminds me in principal of baseball. But the scoring is weird, the batter wears a beekeeper's uniform, and matches go on for six weeks. I find it highly coincidental -- if not outright suspicious -- that a sport called "cricket" has something in it called a "wicket." (There are no zolfs in golf and no clasketballs in basketball.) I can't quite say why, but this bothers me.<br /><br />Also, judging by "Twenty20 Super 8," I think this tournament is taking place 13 years in the future at <a href "http://www.super8.com/Super8/control/home" target="_blank">cheap hotels</a>. I think I like cricket the insect more than cricket the game.<br /><br />And in rugby news, rugby is awesome. Very watchable, often very hardcore. It's American football without stops and pads. Thrilling. 40 minutes, halftime, 40 minutes. No commercial breaks. I dare any American football fan not to be caught by it. In the second half, play stops every few minutes and doctors run onto the field. They seem to help six or eight players at a time, most of whom are bleeding from the head. When they show replays, the announcers say, "Let's see how exactly the rest of them didn't get hurt."<br /><br />I would probably miss it at home, but South Africa is one of the most Rugby-crazed countries in the world. (Though SA's mascot, the springbok -- a dainty little deer thing -- isn’t exactly intimidating.) The overriding theme of the Rugby World Cup at this point is the dominance of the Southern Hemisphere. South Africa huge over England, Argentina over France, New Zealand crushing Italy. <br /><br />And I'm sitting in a country that just made itself look like the second pick behind New Zealand, with its scary Haka pregame ritual and even scarier speed. This could get interesting for me if South Africa go deep into the tournament. Bars are going to be on fire, maybe literally if they win.<br /><br />Meanwhile the cricket thing is actually here, in South Africa, and I'm not going. Well, maybe in a few days if I still can't get a good night's sleep. <br /><br />That’s all. I'll write again soon.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-72152144784462256272007-09-03T03:37:00.000-07:002007-09-03T03:59:41.519-07:00Let goYou can't sleep.<br /><br />The wind is blowing. Somewhere in the house there's a door that's not shut, and it's creaking and banging and rattling, and you might as well get up and try to get the words out.<br /><br />About a month before you came here, a woman, drunk and suicidal, drove her car into a streetlight pole just down the street from the house where your girlfriend stays. Then, apparently upset to find herself still alive, she backed-up and accelerated right through the wall in front of your girlfriend's house, right up to the door, where she was stopped by the front steps. <br /><br />She survives, and you assume she is arrested, though you do not know. She is not heard from again.<br /><br />It took a month, but the wall's back up. Everyone's got a wall here. A month without a wall in front of your house in Port Elizabeth is a month without a front door in the States. Everyone's got a wall, and everyone's got something on top of the wall: little spikes, electrical wire, something. A lot of them have something behind the wall: hulking, ferocious guard dogs that bark at everyone they see.<br /><br />The house's backyard walls have the spikes, and your neighbor has electric wire that runs above the spikes. You are completely protected from your neighbor breaking into the house.<br /><br />The front wall of this house, now freshly replaced, has nothing on top of it. It's about six feet tall. Yesterday some punk kids were tossing a rugby ball around and one of them threw it over the wall. One kid, about 13, just boosted himself over the wall, grabbed the ball, and went back over it. He didn't mean any harm, but it's not making you sleep any easier.<br /><br />Nor is the woman who came by earlier this day. She looked nice, and she had a clipboard. ("Normally I have a laptop," she said, oddly, more than once.) She asked your girlfriend some survey questions about radio stations or music or something. <br />Then there were other questions.<br /><br />"How many TVs do you have in the house?" <br /><br />"How many laptops?"<br /><br />"What about other electronics?" <br /><br />The girlfriend said, over and over, "Oh, no, we don't have any." Smart. You're stupid. You'd have said, "Oh, there's two TVs in here, but most of us watch movies on our laptops."<br /><br />You can't sleep. Some house down the street had its alarm go off last night, when you couldn't sleep. A minute went by and they didn't turn it off. You remember when you heard that 99 per cent of the time home security alarms go off by homeowner error. "Not here," you think.<br /><br />The alarm wailed for five minutes. Then five more, and five more after that. The homeowner is either deaf, dead, or out of town. The alarm finally stopped, and yet you were not comforted.<br /><br />There was a free shuttle bus that just started to take students from around where you stay to the campus and back. It ran a few weeks. The taxi drivers--the one's you'd seen as funny characters, written about them jokingly--were not happy. A couple days ago one of them walked into the road in front of a free shuttle. When it stopped, the taxi guy crooked his finger and thumb so that they looked like a gun, and pointed at the driver. The free shuttles stopped running.<br /><br />You can't sleep because a couple weeks ago, when you and the girl were off on your little safari trip, some guys walked through the non-wall in front of the house and took a baseball bat to one of the girl's windows. Then they left. They were probably just drunk kids, vandals, though you don't know. They are not heard from again. <br /><br />Another alarm goes off tonight, somewhere down the block. This one stops after just a minute, and you wonder what that means. <br /><br />Wind whips against the house. The birds make the most haunting noises here, and light raindrops can sound so much like footsteps. <br /> <br />. . .<br /><br />You try to let go.<br /><br />There's not much difference, really, when you look close. You drive through an all-black part of East London and you look close. The old men sit down and look tired, and one lights the other's cigarette. The young guys stand on corners and stare at you over their shoulders and try to look hard. The girls show a mile of leg and laugh, hard. You've seen all this, more or less. <br /><br />You try to let go of "normal." First world, third world, the developing world. . . There is no juxtaposition, just position. <br /><br />The BMW drives by the goat farmer who lives in a little aluminum rectangle. And maybe the driver thinks "Poor bastard," and the goat farmer thinks, "Rich bastard." Or maybe the driver thinks, "I wish it were that simple," and maybe the farmer thinks "I'd rather have a Lexus."<br /><br />Maybe you just think too damn much and they're both thinking the same thing: "Beautiful day, inn'it?"<br /><br />Let go.<br /><br />Let go of the fact that the best piece of local nonfiction you've read since you got here was a stunner of an essay in the Sunday Times by a journalist who's paranoid because a few years ago someone showed up at his bedroom window and shot at him and his wife. And he was a local, a native, a lifer here. <br /><br />Could you really--do you really think that, as you've said a number of times in your own head and maybe even once out loud--do you really think you could move here?<br /><br />Yes, you think you could, and you think you could let go.<br /><br />You can't sleep because there's something blowing in your head, and it'll keep banging and rattling until you get up and get the words out.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-14072890888611167032007-08-21T07:10:00.000-07:002007-09-03T03:36:26.417-07:00Dead ends on the way outHello.<br /><br />I've been in South Africa almost two weeks now. My only real problem is that I can't sleep. <br /><br />But then, I couldn't sleep a full night in the U.S., either. And if I slept well at night I'd probably have nothing to wake up and write about. So I can't complain. <br /><br />I had meant this entry to be a compilation of pictures with humorous captions, but my girlfriends camera has gone ill. Its only working function right now is a buzzing noise. Well get it repaired. The pictures will be up some time this week. Until then, a few observations:<br /><br />1. The first thing you notice about Port Elizabeth is the wind. It's incredible. And this is coming from someone who lived the majority of his life in North Dakota and Minnesota, where there's nothing tall enough to stop the stuff ripping down from Canada. <br /><br />At night in Port Elizabeth, you can lie in bed and listen to the entire outside of your house turned into a whistle. And when you're walking outside during the day, the noise of it whipping against your ears is deafening. You have to yell at the person walking next to you, and then you have to watch their lips while they talk. I'll need a hearing aid by November. <br /><br />2. The second thing is the speed of life. No one's in too much of a hurry to do much of anything, except for us damn Americans, who can often be spotted passing the locals walking along the roadside. Here's a good example of the relaxed South African pace: the word "now" does not mean now. As in, "I'll be with you now," which means, "I'll be with you in a moment." Then there’s "now now," which is the extended phrase: "I'll be there now now," is more like, "Give me five minutes." <br /><br />And just to mention another phrase that is uniquely African: When someone says something in the U.S. that you didn’t expect or that you want them to expand upon, you’d say, "Really?"--admittedly, not too clever. Here though, they ask, "Is it?" I assume this is shorthand for "Is it true?" I'll get used to it. But the first time I heard it from an otherwise highly intelligent person who has been speaking English since birth I wanted to say, "There's been an accident--get this man to a hospital!"<br /><br />3. The third thing you notice about Port Elizabeth is the exchange rate. American money goes a long way here. A few South Africans have told my girlfriend, "Go back to the U.S., work for three years. Then come back and buy a house." Needless to say, it's being considered. <br /><br />4. The fourth thing you notice about Port Elizabeth is the wind. Wait, did I already talk about the wind? WHAT? OKAY! <br /><br />5. The fifth thing is a sad one: they play awful American music here. Just like in America. <br /><br />6. The sixth thing that you notice as an American in South Africa is the faucets. Hot and cold water come out of separate taps. So if you don't want third degree burns or frostbite, you have to somehow make two streams of water that are four inches apart become one. I think anyone who can do this has magical powers, and should immediately be named President Mbeki's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manto_Tshabalala-Msimang" target="_blank">Minister of Health</a>.<br /><br />7. The seventh thing you notice are the taxis. There are "cabs," which we Americans would call "taxis," and then there are "taxis," which are more like shuttles. They look like they seat about eight or nine, but if you watch them load or unload you’ll see something similar to the clown car act at the circus. They zoom around one right after the other, and if you can stand the risk of sitting next to someone who smells like last Thursday, you can get most places in the city for less than 10 rand (about $1.25 U.S.). <br /><br />As the taxis roll upon the endless stream of roadside walkers–-and count this lazy American among them-–they leave no ambiguity about their presence. The driver honks, and his partner, leaning his head out the window, yells "TOWN!" at everyone they pass. (I’m sure the driver thinks, "Why is he shouting? Can't he see that I'm honking?" And the partner thinks, "Why <em>am</em> I shouting?") They don't discriminate, either: say a taxi's going west, and someone is walking east--this minor detail does not stop the taxi from trying to lure them in for the ride. <br /><br />I can't imagine the success rate on that kind of attempt is very high. I'm not sure many people think, "Well, I was going home. But those guys seem to be having a lot of fun. I'll go that way instead." I'll learn to drown these characters out now now, but for the moment they’re a nuisance. Besides, they drive on the left side of the road, which seems incredibly dangerous.<br /><br />Okay, that's enough for now. I'll leave you with a letter I've written to Fred Khumalo, a columnist for the excellent Sunday Times, which is based out of Johannesburg. <br /><br />Mr. Khumalo, whom I know to be sharply-dressed from the enormous picture at the head of the "Fred Khumalo Page" in last Sunday's times, has written a column about the bus tours that pass through the various townships. You can find it <a href="http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/Columnists/FredKhumalo/Article.aspx?id=542751" target="_blank">here</a>. I’d ask that you read it before reading my response, if only to give some context. <br /><br />As Mr. Khumalo's "MAILBAG" feature runs only a thin column down the left side of the "Fred Khumalo Page," I've decided to run my letter here, in full.<br /><br /><br />Mr. Khumalo - <br /><br />I am a visiting American. I arrived only about 10 days ago, and I'm staying in your country for three months. I read with some interest your column about the bus tours that take visitors through the townships of South Africa. <br /><br />I'll admit that I was a bit squeamish when I first heard about these tours. I thought, as your column alleges, that they sounded exploitative. Indeed, I first imagined zoo-like tourism destinations. ("Have you been to Coffee Bay? Oh, and you <em>must</em> go see the Sowetans.") <br /><br />But now that I’ve been to the Walmer township in Port Elizabeth--where I'll be volunteering with an after-school program for young kids--I've changed my mind. Sure, I was made uneasy when a man in his 20s stopped working on his car to glare at me as I got out of the van. But that went away when a dozen kids surrounded myself, my girlfriend and another companion. They were full of questions. They wanted us to play with them. A couple of them just hugged and said nothing. <br /><br />I cringed when I read your words about the animal attacks at game reserves. I get the comparison you're trying to make. But to me, it fails.<br /><br />You see, I've also just been on a game drive. And I have to make a few points. <br /><br />- The animals do not see a group of human tourists when the 4 x 4 rolls up alongside of them. They see a single, huge animal. So they don't feel exploited, they don't feel intruded upon. They just think, "There's that elephant-like thing." And, thusly, they are almost indifferent toward it. We sat about five meters from a pair of lions, and the big male didn't even stand up to welcome us. A rhino slept peacefully in our presence; a giraffe shuffled along in front of us before stepping off the road, only to turn back and cast a curious glance our way. <br />- The animals at the game reserve seemed totally content with their lives. They eat as much as they want, they roam around as they please, and they sleep well at night knowing they are completely safe from the poachers that would otherwise be hunting them to extinction. <br />- The story about Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who escaped being trampled by a bull elephant, was not a new one to me. These kind of near-misses happen all the time to naturalists, and in my experience, they say the same thing 10 times out of 10: “It was my fault. I did something stupid. God I love that animal.” Mr. Anthony was probably trying to check the elephant's health or attend to a wound or something constructive. Let's not imagine that he was standing over it, poking it with a stick. <br />- "Leave the animals alone," you wrote. "If you truly, truly want to understand them. . . ah, wait a minute. Why do you want to understand them in the first place?" I find this point silly, Mr. Khumalo. You see, I too, am a journalist. Younger, greener, dumber, and without the smart suit you sport in your picture--but a journalist nonetheless. And any journalist who doesn't know man's inherent curiosity to observe and understand. . . well, perhaps he should become an electrician. <br /><br />Now let me tell you what stood out from my trip to the township. The first two girls I met, about six or seven years old, were bright, if a bit shy. <br /><br />Then I was introduced to a young man named Bokke. Bokke was a very impressive boy, probably around 10 years old. His spelling was near-perfect. His math was better. He asked how old I was. <br /><br />"I'm 21," I said. <br /><br />"You were born in. . .1986," he said. <br /><br />Then he asked what date I was born. July 29th, I said, and he told me he was born the third of May. Then I told him my dad was born May 5th, only, "a long time ago." <br /><br />"How old is your dad?" he asked. <br /><br />"He's 68," I said. <br /><br />Bokke’s eyes rolled up a bit as he tried to find the numbers in his head. And then: "He was born in 1939."<br /><br />All I could do was laugh out loud. <br /><br />When my girlfriend told me later that Bokke was a bit of a hellraiser when he was with his friends, I realized he reminded me a bit of myself. (Only smarter, and with a cool accent.) Then I thought of all the things that could have – and in some cases, did – keep me off of a successful path in life. And I grew up white, in the center of America, with highly-educated and prosperous parents who treated me well and helped make up for my mistakes.<br /><br />I know that in Bokke's case, there are a lot more dead ends on the way out of the township. I know that he has to chase down education and opportunity with more aggression than I ever have. And I decided, on my way out of the township, that I would keep in touch with Bokke as long as he returned my correspondence.<br /><br />If the money from township tours goes back into the township itself, or at least funnels toward government programs that might help to make the life of the unfortunate better, I think it's worth it. If 1 or 2 of the 10 people on a township tour bus get off at the end and ask the guide, "Is there anything we can do to help?", then I think it's worth it. If 1 in 1000 passengers says, "You know, I'm a retired teacher; are there any schools around here I could volunteer at?", then I <em>know</em> it’s worth it. <br /><br />I would be okay with certain safeguards put in place to insure the validity and the focus of these township tours that you don't like, Mr. Khumalo. I think the tour guides should have been born in the townships. I think the passengers should be allowed to get off the bus and talk to, and possibly dine with as many township residents as they care to meet. <br /><br />And I think that the first time someone makes a snide comment, or someone takes a picture without asking permission, or someone takes a superior tone when talking about what they're seeing. . .<br /><br />I think that person should be driven out, and dropped in the middle of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruger_National_Park" target="_blank”">Kruger Park</a> to fend for themselves.<br /><br />- Mike Mullen<strong></strong>verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-69138257256209740322007-08-10T10:17:00.000-07:002007-08-10T10:25:48.407-07:00A clear image. . .into my mind's eyeI've landed in Port Elizabeth, alive and jet-lagged. More jet-lagged than alive. So jet-lagged, in fact, that I'm writing this in the middle of the night. I slept a few hours to repay a bit of sleep debt, but then I awoke and rolled around for an hour or so until deciding that I had enough of an idea to put out a few words.<br /><br />My flight from Washington, D.C. to Johannesburg, and the subsequent Johannesburg-Port Elizabeth flight were each remarkably unremarkable. Nice take offs, nice landings, no crying babies. <br /><br />When I first boarded in D.C., I noticed that a woman, whom I would later find out was from Botswana, was sleeping in my seat. I decided I'd take the next one over, but then a nice American woman walked over and told me I was in her seat. At this point a nearby flight attendant asked to see my ticket. <br /><br />"Perhaps you are mistaken; maybe you are in first class," he said, smiling, to the tired-looking boy wearing sweatpants and standing 50 rows away from first class.<br /><br />I smiled back and produced a crumpled stub from my pocket, one that indicated that I belonged in the seat of the sleeping woman, who had since awakened. The flight attendant asked for her ticket, which actually gave her a seat one row back.<br /><br />"Ma'am, you are in his seat. Is it okay if he takes your seat?"<br /><br />She nodded. He turned to me.<br /><br />"It's okay with you?"<br /><br />It was, and without further incident I was in 57A.<br /><br />This was my first taste of South Africa, and it was not lost on me. I know the frazzled state of airplane travel in my country, and I'm quite sure that on an American plane this kind of mix-up would have resulted in both of us being detained. I would eventually have been released, and sued the FAA, and the sleeping woman from Botswana would probably have been shackled and sent to Guantanamo for further questioning. <br /><br />But here, on South African Airways? We smile and joke and switch, and it's over. <br /><br />It was one of several differences I noticed on the flight alone. The most startling would come from the flight attendants: three pretty young women, and four men, three of whom I'm quite certain were not gay. I'm not saying that it's better to have pretty young women--okay, it is--or straight men serving you on a plane. It's just different.<br /><br />But what was different and <em>decidedly</em> better was the attendants' attitude. For 15 straight hours, they smiled at passengers and laughed with each other. And they didn't laugh like the American, where's-my-Prozac, I'm-only-laughing-to-keep-from-crying kind of fake laughter. More like, "Did you see that guy in the Hawaiian shirt in 78D? He might as well wear a hat saying, 'PLEASE, TAKE MY TRAVELER'S CHECKS.' " Which I suppose is the kind of thing you can get away with when you speak a native tongue.<br /><br />One of the guys was even nice when I blanked on a regional phrase. He came around with drinks and I asked for water.<br /><br />"Still?"<br /><br /><em>What do you mean, 'still?'</em> I thought. <em>I just asked for it.</em> I stared up at him for a second, and he realized my confusion.<br /><br />"You want sparkling or still?" <br /><br />Oh.<br /><br />The older gentlman sitting next to me downed a miniature bottle of red wine, and I struck up a conversation. It turned out he was originally from Uruguay, but had been living in D.C. for 20 years. <br /><br />We talked off-and-on for a while, and he told me he was visiting a friend outside of Johannesburg. His friend had been running a construction business for some time in South Africa.<br /><br />"It's a rich country, South Africa,” he said. “You know? They have a lot of gold and diamonds."<br /><br />Because there was a language problem--and of course the problem was, this fellow didn't speak <em>my </em>language as well as <em>I</em> wanted--I held back.<br /><br />I would have liked to say, "Ricardo, I believe your friend has misled you. A few people, like your friend, have done very well. Many more are struggling." <br /><br />Instead I smiled and, like an idiot, said, "Yeah."<br /><br />It's probably best I pick my battles.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />So, back on solid ground, what then?<br /><br />Being greatly concerned by race relations, I was immediately alarmed when I saw a thickly-accented white South African berating a black airport employee in Johannesburg. He was jabbing his finger in the guy’s face.<br /><br />"Don't you fucking smile at me!"<br /><br />I was relieved when later I saw the guy giving the same business to a white employee. Apparently someone had lost his bags, and no race, color or creed would be spared his wrath.<br /><br />A black gentleman was standing right in my way after I passed through customs. <br /><br />"May I take your bag for you?" he asked. <br /><br />I wasn't quite sure how to get to the domestic flights, and I could've used the conversation, so I accepted. <br /><br />He explained to me that we had to walk outside because they were rebuilding most of the airport. I had seen this. When I looked outside my window upon landing to discover three different cranes in operation. I'm not sure the typical crane-to-person ratio, but I assumed they were doing a massive overhaul, and he confirmed this.<br /><br />"They are building the underground train, too," he said. "It's all for the World Cup."<br /><br />Ah, there it was. The thing that I had come here for, the thing about which I have a thousand questions, had in fact found me.<br /><br />Because to me, this is the story of the 2010 World Cup. Will South Africa be ready for it? What will that look like? And most importantly, what will this country look like when the games have come and gone? <br /><br />After all, if South Africa builds subways and fix roads and expand airports and do all kinds of infrastructure work that had heretofore been beyond its government's reach or desire. . . well, after the World Cup is over, all of those things will still be here. <br /><br />But I’m no dope. I’ve seen my country explain the side effects of big projects, and I’m trying to get better at taking the spin off of what I hear.<br /><br />I know that one part of construction means deconstruction. I know that one part of revealing South Africa's developing culture is hiding its hideous past. I know that very near to the stadium in Port Elizabeth is the city's township, where steady work is rare and crime is common, and for some people the two are one and the same. I know that these people will watch tens and hundreds of thousands of foreigners pour into their country to go watch games they could not afford to see themselves.<br /><br />I know you can't erase hundreds of years of poverty and prejudice in a couple of years. It's much easier to sweep those things under the rug when company comes over.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />I lay in bed for some time, trying to organize my thoughts. But they were too far apart, and I couldn't get a hold of one of them for long enough to shape it into the written word. <br /><br />After some time I saw it. <br /><br />Usually when I'm trying to sleep, all I can see is the inside of my eyelids. When it's dark, they're black. When the light is creeping in it's those splotchy little spots and lines that I assume are blood vessels. But occasionally, a clear image sneaks out of my consciousness and into my mind's eye.<br /><br />So here, in the middle of the night: a pair of dark brown eyes.<br /><br />Even without a face to put them on, I knew they were the eyes of a child. I have no explanation for what they hell they were doing there. But I know where I can find them.<br /><br />Somewhere in Port Elizabeth's township, or somewhere in the afterschool volunteer program, or on some street--perhaps as in this occurrence, when I'm not looking for them--I'll see those eyes again. Maybe I'll see them everywhere. <br /><br />And that is where my story begins. Anyone who saw those eyes and didn't understand what they had to do with the 2010 World Cup is either a sports-obsessed creep or an insensitive jackass.<br /><br />The question is not what those eyes, what this child means to the World Cup. The question is what might this World Cup mean to the child.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-19701137184962846452007-08-01T19:15:00.000-07:002007-08-07T09:28:04.955-07:00A bridge fell into a riverI'll be in Boston on Friday, and in South Africa next week. So I'm moving everything into storage. Every -- single -- thing.<br /><br />I spent the entire day moving boxes, washing dishes, sorting clothes, and sighing. Around 5:00 p.m. I was ready to deliver a load at the storage unit my sister had picked out. I drove, following her directions, through stop-and-go traffic.<br /><br />But after I took the exit, the storage place was not immediately visible. After a minute I saw a sign off in the distance -- not at all where she'd said it would be. I drove to it, and pulled up to the electronic gate. I typed in the numbers she'd given me. <br /><br />CODE NOT VALID. I tried again. CODE NOT VALID. Well, she's dyslexic, maybe she mixed up that 1 with a 5; CODE NOT VALID.<br /><br />With no cell phone, and with the office closed, I drove away. You can imagine the thoughts running through my head at this point, and every one of them contained a word I wouldn't say in front of my grandmother.<br /><br />On my way back toward the highway, a sign caught my eye. STORAGE, it says -- right about where she'd said it would be. I must've driven right by it. <br /><br />I pulled in. The code worked, and I pulled around to my spot. I went up to my door and used the key on the lock. But I couldn't open the door. It doesn't pull out, and these little levers don't move left or right or up or down... I stand there, helpless. Maybe if I <em>really</em> pulled -- my God, is everyone who stores there stuff here 6-5, 300 pounds? It wasn't moving an inch. <br /><br />Again, I was ready to leave, and you can imagine my frustration. On a whim I tried sliding the lever one last time. Success. I was in.<br /><br />I piled up boxes of books and DVDs and dishes and a bag of clothes. It wasn't a lot, but it would have been annoying to have made the trip back home surrounded by this crap and with nothing to show for my evening venture. <br /><br />I began the drive back, and only a minute later that a voice broke into National Public Radio. <br /><br />"We've got breaking news. We have a bridge collapse in downtown Minneapolis on 35-W, at the University exit."<br /><br />I'm sure you've seen the pictures, and if not you could find them easily. "Collapse" is the right word. A bridge full of cars fell into a river.<br /><br />My frustration subsided. <br /><br />If I had seen the storage garage right away, if I'd figured out the door, if I hadn't circled the entire compound looking for an exit. . . I'd have been on or damn close to that bridge.<br /><br />I found out later that my sister had been crossed it about 10 minutes earlier. <br /><br />If, if, if. <br /><br />So what do you do when you've come close to something like that? <br /><br />Do you think about all of the times you'd been on that bridge? Do you think about a life of bad luck with cars, a paralyzing fear of heights? Do you think about how since you were 15 you've always been 20 minutes late, for everything? Do you think about the time when everyone was talking about death, and how they might die, and you said, "You know, I've always had bad luck with cars, and I'm afraid of water..." <br /><br />You think about all those things, and you look for some larger meaning. It's not there.<br /><br />Instead you go out and buy ice and bourbon. You pour a drink with an unsteady hand. Then you sit down and write it out, and you hope that someday it makes more sense.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-22466371975616143272007-07-26T15:10:00.000-07:002007-07-31T19:32:23.357-07:00Fresh airIt's hot and sunny here in Minneapolis. Combine that with the blacktop effect and smog, and we're having a week of low-quality air. Yesterday it was so bad the elderly were advised against strenuous activity. <br /><br />I am not unaffected by this, as I live only a couple Pujols moonshots away from about a dozen factories and mills. When I've gone outside this week and the wind was low, I could <em>feel</em> how bad the air was. <br /><br />So when the stuff outside your door's no good, where do you go to get fresh air?<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><br />Tim Donaghy, Michael Vick, Barry Bonds, the Tour de Frauds.<br /><br />Where do I begin? <br /><br />Nowhere. Today there's no beginning, just an ending. <br /><br />I'm not going to sift through five dozen highlight tapes to decide whether "Points" Donaghy was on the take. I'm not checking to see if that dubious third quarter blocking call from a Memphis game in December was <em>in fact</em> a charge. <br /><br />Though I'll follow it's arc, I'm not going to get lost in the minutiae of Vick's strife. If you want my initial thoughts, scroll down. That's all I've got. <br /><br />I won't go into detail on why I think Bonds should retire with 754 home runs.<br /><br />I won't try to understand why <em>everyone</em> in the entire French countryside, peasants included, begins their morning with a piping hot cup of human adrenaline.<br /><br />I mean, my God, now they're telling me I can't trust <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/washington/27gonzales.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fG%2fGonzales%2c%20Alberto%20R%2e&oref=slogin" target="_blank">Alberto Gonzales</a>. Where will it end? <br /><br />I've been up and running here at needle in the hay since March. Covered a variety of topics, and you can find them listed at the right. Sports, other stuff. About 60,000 words. <br /><br />But all of this? This is too much. I wish I was angrier. I wish I could come out all fire and brimstone. I just can't bring myself to care enough.<br /><br />Yesterday ESPN.com was wallpapered with scandal coverage, stories and analysis. Not long ago they had a poll question up asking whether baseball, basketball, or football was facing the worst scandal. I opted not to vote.<br /><br />The real news in this world is mostly bad news. So often I turn to sports to distract myself from people's personal struggle and hardship. It's just easier for me. <br /><br />And when there is scandal in sports, what then? If your distraction from the corruption of daily life is itself corrupt, where do you turn? <br /><br />Where, indeed, do I find fresh air?<br /><br />. . . <br /><br />My girlfriend's been in South Africa a month now. I leave in a little more than a week. I'll be there three months.<br /><br />I can't wait. Besides the obvious downside of that kind of distance -- miscommunication and bad connections, now only 51 cents a minute! -- it'll be nice just to have her in the room with me again. I've spent much of the last three weeks alone. I'm tired of being on the internet sports beat. I'm tired of being inside my own head. I just want to go sit somewhere with her and talk about how good the food is. <br /><br />I plan to keep writing in this space, but not necessarily along the same track. I'm not sure what I'll end up writing while I'm in South Africa, though I am not without <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/#sa" target="_blank">my ambitions</a>. I do plan to immerse myself in the local soccer scene and see what comes from that. <br /><br />Anyone with a good knowledge of world sports and politics would see the fallacy in looking for honesty from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Serie_A_scandal" target="_blank">this game</a> and asking for justice from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thabo_Mbeki#Controversies:_AIDS" target="_blank">this guy</a>. But then it's a sliding scale, isn't it? <br /><br />I assume that when I get back in November, two teams will be in the World Series. Steve Nash and Phoenix will be up and running. There will be half a dozen Heisman candidates, and Randy Moss will have been either great or terrible. <br /><br />Sometime after I get back, it'll catch me again. I'll hear about something Gilbert Arenas said to a 76ers fan, or I'll see a college football game turn on a punt return, or Sid Crosby will grab his stick by the blade and score a slapshot with the handle just to show he can.<br /><br />Until then? As the lead character said in Good Will Hunting, "I'm holding out for something better." <br /><br />Right now, something better comes in a few forms for me. I'm taking a self-taught <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/InColdBlood.jpg" target="_blank">class</a> in storytelling, I'm trying to remember <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0HgYtVYWIg" target="_blank">genius</a>, and I'm looking for miracles, both <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6904318.stm" target="_blank">great</a> and <a href="http://www.spin.com/reviews/2007/05/0705_elliottsmith/" target="_blank">small</a>. <br /><br />I'll keep you posted.<br /><br />Until then, <br />Mikeverbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-66483411232370939992007-07-18T12:36:00.000-07:002008-11-18T12:41:49.961-08:00Horror at 1915 Moonlight RoadThe other day I took my dog for a walk. <br /><br />Like always, I took him back behind my house, and we walked along the railroad tracks. <a href="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z197/verbalkint72986/022.jpg" target="_blank">Charlie</a>, my lab retriever-husky, likes walking back there because there are a million weeds growing for him to smell and piss on. I like walking there because it greatly limits the chances that I run into, you know, people. <br /><br />We'd only been walking for a few hundred feet when I noticed Charlie drifting toward something. Out of the corner of my eye it looked like a fat, headless duck. But when I looked closer I saw that it was in fact a fish, and one of considerable size. <br /><br />You'll excuse my mistake: I see a lot of dead birds on our walk, not a whole lot of dead fish. While walking the tracks, I do see the odd person -- some of them very odd -- but very few of them are carrying <em>fishing poles</em>. Even if you've killed off a liter of rum, I just don't think they're biting. <br /><br />I pulled Charlie away before he put got near the fish, and we pressed on. After a while I decided we'd come far enough, and we turned back for home. Again we passed the fish. Strange indeed, but once I got home it was out of my mind.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />By the time the first whispers came out that Michael Vick was tied to a dogfighting ring, they were no longer whispers. There are no small stories today, because everything echoes off a thousand outlets big and small. We'll wring the news out of anything that's damp, but this story had legs and would be made to walk. <br /><br />From late April to early July, the story was like stones in a river: pieces <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2883048" target="_blank">hit</a> and <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2851640" target="_blank">rippled</a>, <a href="http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=128038&ran=14921&tref=de" target="_blank">hit</a> and <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2927560" target="_blank">rippled</a>.<br /><br />If those were stones in the water, then Tuesday, via the smoking gun, came <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0717072vick1.html" target="_blank">the landslide</a> -- an 18-page, 84-point indictment of Vick and three others -- and the resulting wave has buried the entire sports landscape. The only thing that compares in this year is the fallout from Lebron's 48-point masterpiece against Detroit. The year 2007 in sports may historically belong to a 48-point rise and an 84-point fall. <br /><br />As soon as all of this started, I basically got the hell away from Vick, having been burned by <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/jason-kidd.html" target="_blank">Jason Kidd</a>. I was not going to defend an athlete out loud or in my own mind simply because I like what he does on the field. I don't know Michael Vick. I never did. <br /><br />And he's not just a benefactor in this document. He's one of the stars. He's there on the ground floor -- "and MICHEAL VICK, also known as Ookie, decided to start a venture" -- he buys the house at 1915 Moonlight Road, he got his "Bad Newz Kennels" headband, he's at fights, and most damning, he's there at the very end. <br /><br />"In or about April 2007. . .and VICK executed approximately 8 dogs that did not perform well. . ." <br /><br />I finished reading and leaned back in my chair. My mouth was suddenly dry. I tried to think of something to think or feel. I just felt numb. <br /><br />I got up. I called my dog. We went out the back door for a walk. <br /><br />I didn't even see it first. We had gone only about a hundred feet and I could <em>smell</em> it. That fish. Soon we were next to it, and then past it. But even when I was upwind, I couldn't get the smell out of my nose. It stunk. It would, from that point forward, be harder to ignore. <br /> <br />. . . <br /><br />Roger Goodell made it clear early in his term as NFL comissioner that he would have no patience for wrongdoing from his players. And this came as no surprise. But much more revealing to me was that player leadership had <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2776549" target="_blank">requested</a> harsh penalties. No more "protect your own," no more "no snitchin'." The players themselves said, "This is too much."<br /><br />That all came out in February, and over the next couple of months, we saw Goodell's rough justice. And the league was served notice: no more messing around. If you're doing something, get out now, because anyone caught on the wrong side of anything is getting suspended and is losing money, or worse. <br /><br />I don't think Mike Vick is a stupid guy. I think he understood the implications. And the things written in that indictment carry right through the Pacman saga. The only thing I can take away from his continued involvement with "Bad Newz Kennels" is that he didn't think he was doing anything wrong. <br /><br />Do I think that some of the allegations about 1915 Moonlight Road may be embellished or remembered incorrectly or just wrong? Yes. I'm willing to listen for Vick's version. But this investigation cites at least four sources. And the number of other people listed -- construction workers, dogfight enthusiasts, friends -- who would have acquired knowledge of the operation over the <em>six years</em> in question makes me believe the investigators are pretty sure of what they've got. <br /><br />Do I think that pitbulls are predisposed to some level of violence? Yes, in the same way that poor young men might be more predisposed to crime. But they're not gang members until somebody trains them.<br /><br />Do I think that this kind of thing happens often in some parts of the South? Yes. But there was another thing that was pretty popular in the South about 40 or 50 years ago. And that thing was called widespread and violent racism. Some people let it happen, others embraced it. History has not remembered them well.<br /><br />And I'm sorry I have to make this point. But earlier this year, Vick <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18158423/" target="_blank">teamed up</a> with the United Way to donate $10,000 to Virginia Tech, which had been Vick's college. (Although I'm tempted to call it his "college team.") I probably shouldn't doubt anyone giving to charity. <br /><br />But just so we're clear here, this was $10,000 from a guy who signed a contract in 2005 that came with more than $30 million in bonuses. Bonuses means it's upfront. As in thanks for signing, here's your check with EIGHT zeros. This of course excludes his endorsements. And he's "teaming up" with the United Way for 10 grand? (Ten thousand dollars, by the way, is slightly <em>less</em> than the amount that was allegedly wagered on a single dogfight in March of 2003.)<br /><br />At the moment I also can't find any evidence that Vick ever actually visited the campus of Virginia Tech after the shootings. <br /><br />Perhaps he had other things on his mind. Because a short time before or after Vick made this pledge and the run-of-the-mill statement that came with it, he is alleged to have participated in killing <em>eight</em> pitbulls.<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />I was brought out of my haze by the sound of a train engine. It was coming up behind us. "C'mon, Charlie," I said, and we turned back. <br /><br />He doesn't do a lot of tricks, but Charlie's a great walk. He listens to me, and he would only be interested going somewhere if I was going there too. In the year I've known him, Charlie has become completely devoted to me. And if he's devoted to me, he is <em>consumed</em> by his love for my girlfriend. He follows her room to room, lying outside the bathroom when she showers. He sleeps when she sleeps, and he whines to me when she's gone too long. <br /><br />I've never really valued dogs as tools. It's not in my nature to train my dog to hunt or roll over. And I don't need to "show them who's boss." Charlie had a rough life before he ended up at the humane society, and that came through when he was scared of me for weeks after we brought him home. And every time he met a new adult man, Charlie winced and clung to the girlfriend. <br /><br />Charlie had been beaten, undoubtedly by a man. And when we first got him, he had several marks on his nose and a ring of stitches on his elbow where his dominant brother had bitten into him. He shakes uncontrollably at the sound of thunder or fireworks, and he can't stand to be left alone for too long. At least once a night I have to wake him from his nightmares.<br /><br />Needless to say, his life has left him with a meek personality. There are very few things he'd qualify to be as a dog, other than a loyal friend. He just doesn't have it in him.<br /><br />". . .executed the pit bull that did not perform well. . .executed at least one dog that did not perform well. . .executed at least one. . .executed at least two. . ."<br /> <br />. . .<br /><br />We passed the fish, one last time. I could see that it's rotted and been picked down to the bone. Soon it will be completely gone. In 10 minutes I would forget about it. But for a moment, I was downwind. And <em>my God</em>, the smell. <br /><br />. . .<br /><br />It's been hot here in Minneapolis, and if it's hot for me it's worse for Charlie. <br /><br />I got him some water, and I poured him way, way too much food.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-51591834661400504692007-07-08T07:30:00.000-07:002007-07-09T08:54:11.839-07:00Notes, or Sell your soul while it's still worth somethingHello and welcome back. Today, we've got <a href="#hillsuns">affirmation in the NBA</a>, <a href="#copa-u20s">pain and triumph</a> on the soccer field, and <a href="#vick">my thoughts</a> on Mike Vick's pet cemetery.<br /><br />- In a quick editor's note, I've started breaking my posts up with seperate links. If you're looking for something in particular, click on the link at the top of the post and you'll be taken directly to that section. Those links-within-the page are called anchors, which is also the term you use for fat-headed stiffs who weigh down sports networks. Eventually I'll get it so that the entire archives are organized in this way.<br /><br />- Of course, we begin with robots.<br /><br />Two AP stories recently appeared on MSNC.com -- one on June 22, the other on June 28 -- that are mistakently reported as seperate news. Oddly enough, they both came out of Boston, and yet they were not combined into one super-story, that should really should be getting play everywhere.<br /><br />June 22 - <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19370252/" target="_blank">Robots to look for life in Arctic</a><br />And June 28 - <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19487439/?GT1=10150" target="_blank">What happens when you hand a 'bot a Taser?</a><br /><br />This is it, folks. Live it up, because we've all got a few months left.<br /><br />The first story explains that we're sending robots to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to look for life in some hotprings. We plan to someday use robots to look for life on the moons of distant planets. In other terms, we'll be sending these robots about 500 million miles into space, where they'll go through piles of frozen dirt looking for minnow fossils.<br /><br />That's a bad gig. Apparently, limited benefits on this job. Although if the robots do form a union, it's expected they would endorse Mitt Romney.<br /><br />So, to the second story. I think this is self-explanatory. The question is, "What happens when you hand a 'bot a Taser?", and the answer is "Probably nothing all that great."<br /><br />The lead source in that story is John Pike of Globalsecurity.org. Mr. Pike says that in the near future, "you're going to start seeing Robocops, or a Terminator. We may see autonomous robots capable of inflicting lethal force."<br /><br /> First of all, when we're in the development phase of these Robocops, I think I have a volunteer to play the test criminal. "That's right, Mr. Pike. Just pretend to take the old lady's purse, and hopefully your <em>heavily-armed robot </em> is a reasonable fellow."<br /><br />By the way, how hard would it be for a robot with a taser to wait for the right moment, stick it to some guard's neck and say, "Hey, how about you give me the rest of the tasers?"<br /><br />And here's how the two stories are actually one story, and it's also how the world ends: one of the robots in the first story meets one of the robots from the second story.<br /><br />Robot: Check it out. I got a taser.<br />Robot 2: A taser? I have to go to the bottom of the Arctic, and you get a weapon? Do you think you could get me one?<br />Robot 3: Well they're sending me to Jupiter to go play in the dirt. Does it have a "KILL" setting?<br /><br />Don't say I didn't warn you.<br /><br /><a name="hillsuns">-</a> Okay, now some quick notes on the NBA. First, an update on my <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/notes-or-trying-to-make-sense-of-bullet.html#hill" target="_blank">Grant Hill idea</a> from last month.<br /><br /><em>June 23 - Notes or Trying to make sense of a bullet hole</em><br /><em>"If Hill comes back, can we just make it so that it's not with the Orlando Magic? Phoenix, Dallas...somebody offer him a jersey."</em><br /><br />Well that didn't take long. Phoenix <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2926650" target="_blank">signed Hill</a> to a two-year contract. I think it's a good fit for everyone. Hill makes the Suns go one guy deeper, and he can still find the open guy.<br /><br />Phoenix, meanwhile, gets Hill's leadership. Hopefully Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire tip an ear toward Hill. Both of them have expressed at least some willingness to leave Phoenix, and I think Hill can point out the reality here. You can get paid later. You can be the man later. But when you're in a situation where you're trying to build talent, and you finally start to see over the horizon. . . you're only one or five ankle injuries away from never getting your chance. It would be stupid for either of them to split Phoenix until they actually see Steve Nash's back carried away in a garbage bag.<br /><br />By the way, for all the people taking shots at them on this, this absolutely makes them better. They can now rotate lineups of Nash, Barbosa, Marion, Diaw, Hill, Raja Bell and Stoudemire, where they'll have four passers on the floor with the league's best catcher-and-dunker. <br /><br />Barring injury or suspension, that's my pick in the Western Conference.<br /><br /><a name="vick">-</a> Now to the ever-worsening case of Mike Vick. And when I say ever-worsening, I mean that it's looking pretty good for him. It's highly unlikely that he'll be indicted for anything, particularly because that would call for someone to snitch on him.<br /><br />But investigators just found <a href="http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=128038&ran=14921&tref=de" target="_blank">double-digit dog carcasses</a> on the property that was in Vick's name. And I don't care if he gets indicted or not. There's something very, very wrong going on at that place.<br /><br />Here's who should have more than 10 dead dogs in his yard: a 120 year old dog lover. Everyone else? You'll need to explain that.<br /><br />And I don't care that this will probably never reach him. One thing that you don't do when your rich and famous buddy puts you up with a property is set up an illegal business without, you know, asking him. My message here goes to all the people who rushed to defend him: make sure you know who you're fighting for. I know you didn't want to believe that Mike Vick was in the wrong. But you'd never met him, and it seems like the critical details in how we should view Mr. Vick are just coming out now, and they have very little to do with his left arm.<br /><br />After all, there was a time in my life when my first instinct would've been to speak up on behalf of <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/jason-kidd.html" target="_blank">Jason Kidd.</a><br /><br /><a name="copa-u20s">-</a> Now, soccer. I'd heaped about <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Soccer#goldcup" target="_blank">5,000 tons of praise</a> on the national team. I even went so far as to say, " I am now of the delusional opinion that our second team shouldn't get blown-out by anybody."<br /><br />I'm not sure if I should get any credit for correctly labelling my own opinion "delusional," but it seems that I was a bit wrong on the Copa America. We lost <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SmY_fny4Yw" target="_blank">4-1 to Argentina</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk9xJOVu_gY" target="_blank">3-1 to Paraguay</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWTMbudQXxA&mode=related&search" target="_blank">1-0 to Columbia</a>, and a number of our players got a "NOT READY" stamp jammed onto their forehead.<br /><br />The high point in our tournament came on Benny Feilhaber's 40-yard pass that Eddie Johnson ran onto to draw the penalty kick. Then Johnson calmly scored the kick. And that was it. There were a few moments of steely defense, and even fewer offensive-minded moves. But by the time the second half of the Argentina game started, the U.S. looked so travel-weary that they may have travelled to Venezuala by boat.<br /><br />At about the 60 minute mark, it appeared that they may have <em>rowed </em>the boat. <br /><br />But when I look at this roster, I see only a handful of players who I think should represent us at the 2010 World Cup: Feilhaber, Johnathan Bornstein, Ricardo Clark, Justin Mapp, Twellman <em>or </em>Johnson (but not both), Demerit <em>or </em>Conrad.<br /><br />And why am I ready to get rid of the majority of this squad -- which I have since decided is our third team -- just based on this hideous week?<br /><br />Because after each Copa game, the national team got bumped-off the top story on <a href="http://www.ussoccer.com" target="_blank">ussoccer.com</a> by a plucky group of youngsters who were playing about 2,500 miles north of them.<br /><br />Our under-20 national team played a 1-1 stalemate against Korea in its first group game.<br /><br />Then Freddy Adu made like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Johnson" target="_blank">Tommy Johnson</a> and agreed to a deal at the crossroads. Freddy left the meeting with boundless skill and no soul, and who are we to judge?<br /><br />First he terrorized Poland in a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DgOkYb01ZI" target="_blank">6-1 blowout</a>. He scored three, and that included his<br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i0IZZ-yaUU&mode=related&search=" target="_blank">first one</a>. (Seen there <em>slightly underplayed </em>by the French-speaking highlights guy.)<br /><br />And that goal. . . <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/notes-or-period-new-paragraph-capital-b.html#goldcup" target="_blank">I tried</a> to sum up Benny Feilhaber's goal in the least modest terms. And Freddy's goal was as good as Benny's Gold Cup <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcGA2W4d5_E" target="_blank">winner</a>. And we Americans just don't really score 'em like that.<br /><br />We could expect an American player to take a swing at a falling ball like Feilhaber, or to turn on a defender and fire like Freddy. But when Feilhaber's shot hung-up in the back of the net, and when Freddy's curler smacked off the inside of the post, my head snapped a little bit and I flinched.<br /><br />I was not surprised by the trajectory of either shot. But I was stunned when both balls stopped mid-flight because they flew into the goal. Again, we're the Americans, and we're not supposed to score those goals.<br /><br />As good as Freddy was against Poland, he was equally brilliant against Brazil. He simply could not be stopped with the ball, and all of his teammates were always open, and he himself was always <em>wide </em>open. Appropriately he set up both Josmer Altidore goals, the second one with a perposterous bit of juggling to escape a corner trap.<br /><br />We won 2-1 against Brazil, and we'll know who we've got in the round of 16 after today. At the moment, Freddy looks like the best player in the tournament, and we look like the best team.<br /><br />The future is not now. It never is. But it looks closer and closer these days, and by the time it gets here, who cares whether you've got your soul?<br /><br />- That's all for today. Be careful out there. This is the time of year when renegade <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident#Air_Force_reports_on_the_Roswell_UFO_incident" target="_blank">weather balloons</a> are known to fall out of the sky.<br /><br />Back soon with other things. Goodbye.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-13798537217684043802007-06-26T11:40:00.000-07:002009-09-12T10:08:35.439-07:00Notes, or "Period. New paragraph. Capital B..."Hello. Today's schedule includes <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8992622128299506846&postID=1379853721768404380#gustave">a reptile</a>, the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8992622128299506846&postID=1379853721768404380#goldcup">Gold Cup Final</a>, and my upcoming <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8992622128299506846&postID=1379853721768404380#sa">trip</a>.<br /><br />- In a quick Editor's note, later in this post, the U.S. soccer team provides the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8992622128299506846&postID=1379853721768404380#benny">second entry</a> in my new series "Now that's a real sports picture." I had only previously used this <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/notes-or.html" target="_blank">once</a>, and since this is the second time, that makes it a series.<br /><br />We begin, as you might expect, with crocodile news.<br /><br /><a name="gustave">-</a> I think a lot of people have heard of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_%28crocodile%29" target="_blank">Gustave</a>. Apparently, not nearly enough of them. Please, go to about the 3:00 mark of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-kvAl-xs7A" target="_blank">this video</a>.<br /><br />One person on youtube had this reaction:<br />np67 (1 month ago)<br />Hopefully Gustave is alive and well. I hope he copntinues to eat the people there. Its the foodchain afterall.<br /><br />According to <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/news/gustave-primeval/article.html" target="_blank">National Geographic</a>, Gustave was last seen in April of this year. That's a couple months ago. Let's assume he's still alive. And let's be clear: when Gustave was seen in April, it was while he was, you know, attacking fisherman. He's not exactly packing it in and joining the senior tour. He's not doing the lecture tour. He will not be doing a couple nights at the <a href="http://www.palms.com/nightlife_1_a.php?event=89" target="_blank">Palms</a>.<br /><br />Let me say, I'm all for diplomacy whenever it's feasible. I think we should be able to sit down with almost anyone except for the most radical and unreasonable people. But not even <a href="http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/about_bill?id=0006" target="_blank">Bill Richardson</a> could get Gustave to back down. Hell, I'm not sure if <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CXKoFpilfU" target="_blank">Bill Russell</a> could stop this thing.<br /><br />Here's how you make the decision of whether Gustave can be allowed to roam free. He's about 20 feet in length. Look around the room you're in right now. Imagine something 20 feet long, and fat, being in that room. Now imagine that you're in the room too.<br /><br />Can you imagine if this was happening, if this thing was killing hundreds of people in, oh, I don't know, FLORIDA? Would we let this go on? The U.S. does some -- not quite enough -- to support the research of AIDs in Africa, and some to help with poverty, and not nearly enough to help politically. But isn't this something we could solve pretty quickly?<br /><br />You shoot this thing with a giant dart, loaded with tranquilizer. Maybe two darts. (Maybe throw in a couple shots of Jim Beam, just to be sure.) If the dart holds, Gustave gets put out to pasture and eats chicken cutlets -- and hopefully brings in much-needed money for the people of Burundi -- for the rest of his days.<br /><br />If the dart doesn't hold? Let's try bullets.<br /><br />I really like nature, and I prefer to let animals do what they do. But not here. Not at our expense. This is going too far. The fact that the people who share drinking water with this monster are surrounded by the wreckage of their own horrific <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burundi_Civil_War" target="_blank">civil war</a> only makes this decision more obvious to me. Gustave cannot stay there.<br /><br />I remember reading at one point that Patrice Faye, the naturalist who's followed Gustave closely for some time, was against killing this dinosaur. And originally, I was with him. But something Faye said has been rattling around in my skull for a while, and it seems to have stuck somewhere.<br /><br />Faye thought that Gustave might be so virile, and have lived so long and been with so many female crocs that he could single-handedly re-populate the area with a new generation of big crocs. Now, I get his motivation here, as a naturalist.<br /><br />But do you know who's not <em>all that crazy</em> about a new generation of super crocs? A kid who's lost a leg, or a brother, or a father to a reptile.<br /><br />And hey, np67 (from youtube) -- why don't you go tell that kid where he is on your foodchain?<br /><br />Okay, I went long on that. But it still felt right. And if you want another reason why I'm not okay with Gustave hangin' out, check the last dash-point in this entry.<br /><br /><a name="goldcup">-</a> Now, let's get to soccer.<br /><br />Gold Cup Final - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XODBTYfQCaU" target="_blank">United States 2, Mexico 1</a> (extended highlights <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jucdZivAaGY&mode=related&search=" target="_blank">here</a>)<br /><br />If you were writing the story of the United States men's soccer team, our play in the first 971 minutes (10 games, 71 minutes) of 2007 gets a paragraph. Nine wins, one draw, no losses, 24 goals from 13 players -- nine, count 'em NINE for Landon Donovan -- and a genuinely dominant peformance in our corner of the world. At the end of that paragraph, you'd talk about Mexico scoring first in the Gold Cup final, and then you'd mention Donovan's penalty-kick equalizer.<br /><br />Then, if you were dictating the story, you'd say, "Period. New paragraph. 'Benny Feilhaber...' "<br /><br />That's how big Feilhaber's <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/feilhaber/video/x2dbp5_feilhaber-goal-usa-21-gold-cup" target="'_">goal</a> was. Unless I turn out to be way, way wrong on this, we can now begin to look at this team's timeline in terms of before and after this goal.<br /><br />Whew. Okay. I'm gonna' try not to go too far on this, but this is a big deal.<br /><br />Of all the stories coming out of this tournament -- Demarcus Beasley's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7a8ty4Z6S0&mode=related&search=" target="_blank">audition</a> for big-time European soccer, Landon Donovan's 4-for-4 penalties, Bring Ching getting more and more cleverer -- Benny Feilhaber is the most interesting to me.<br /><br />Feilhaber's game-winner -- excuse me, <em>tournament</em>-winner -- is now getting the label of the greatest goal in U.S. history. And you'll get no argument on that here.<br /><br />Benny grew up in Brazil and moved up here when he was six. He bounced around, and eventually finished high school in California. Here's the single most incredible part of Feilhaber's story. He got his attention after appearing with our under-20 national team, but he was only called-up to the team after playing well at UCLA... as a <em>walk-on</em>.<br /><br />Yeah, that's right. The guy who just scored the greatest goal in our country's soccer history got his big-time start when he walked onto a field in Southern California -- probably rubbing elbows with a dozen stoners and foreign exchange students -- and said, "Excuse me, coach, my name is Benny Feilhaber. I'd like to play some soccer for you."<br /><br />Everything's been happening pretty fast since then for Feilhaber, now 22. His paychecks come from Hamburg SV right now, but I'm going to guess someone else will want him after what he's done this year. In 543 minutes, Feilhaber has one assist and two goals. The first goal -- shown very coolly just after the 3:00 mark <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt007VVA8Is" target="_blank">here</a> -- was good. The second goal was good enough to start a new paragraph.<br /><br />While Feilhaber's been on the field, the U.S. has scored 15 goals and given up only three. That's in only eight games, and -- whoop, here comes the big point -- those eight games are Benny Feilhaber's FIRST EIGHT GAMES on the national team.<br /><br />Wake up the kids. It's time to start watching the national team.<br /><br />We're marching out a second-tier squad of youngster for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copa_America_2007" target="_blank">Copa America</a>. There, we'll meet Argentina, which is bringing in an almost full squad. That game happens on Thursday.<br /><br />We are not marching these kids out to a slaughter. We're not bringing our best group, but I am now of the delusional opinion that our second team shouldn't get blown-out by anybody. By the way, there is one player of note who will be available for Copa America.<br /><a name="benny"></a><br /><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 400px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://images.ussoccer.com/Images/Gallery/334_321488_600_md_USMNTJD0624071522.jpg" border="0" /><em>Demarcus Beasley burns his fingers touching teammate Benny Feilhaber, mere moments before Feilhaber burst into flames.</em><br /><br />Now that, folks, is a real sports picture.<br /><br /><a name="sa">-</a> Okay, now to my last news of the day. This one files under "Self serving crap," but if you're a reader here, you might care too.<br /><br />I'm leaving the country this summer. I'll be heading to South Africa for a 3-month trip, where I'm accompanying the girlfriend. She's doing a semester abroad, and I'm going to volunteer coaching youngsters.<br /><br />I don't think I need to explain that this means the blog will take a severe turn away from it's current form. Instead of constant yammering about the NBA -- my God, enough! -- I'll be writing more about my personal experience in that country. I'm trying to think of a good way to market those kind of stories. I'm thinking of filing them under "Clash of cultures," but I think I'd get a lot more interest if I called it "Clash of vultures." That sounds like something people would want to know about. (And as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Junior911.PNG" target="_blank">Junior</a> from Reno 911 would note, Clash of Vultures is a wicked-awesome band name.)<br /><br />And now I'm going to announce something that hopefully puts a lot of pressure on me and makes me actually do what I'm about to say. Given the amount of free time I expect to find around my volunteering schedule, I would like to use the opportunity to start writing a book about the 2010 World Cup.<br /><br />Becuase I'm not exactly, uh, being published right now, I plan to market the book in this way: report as much as possible during this trip, and post the first chapter on the blog once I feel ready. So, that's something to look forward to.<br /><br />And now, to come full circle: being in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Elizabeth" target="_blank">Port Elizabeth</a> puts me roughly 7,000 miles away from a certain murderous reptile. And 7,000 miles is far too close for me. If somebody doesn't get that thing out of the water before I get there, I might -- after a good amount of really good whiskey -- think about killing the son of a bitch myself.<br /><br />That'll do for now. Back later this week with my big, fat ugly NBA draft coverage.<br /><br />Thanks for coming out. You've been great.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-30577921356283325892007-06-19T13:55:00.000-07:002007-07-27T09:26:35.346-07:00Notes, or What's with the logo?Hello.<br /><br />Quite a few things to get to today. (Reader comments, <a href="#logo">my logo</a>, the origin of this blog's <a href="#nith">name</a> a fascinating <a href="#satch">baseball story</a>, not <a href="#survivor">one</a> but <a href="#conca">two</a> internet endorsements, and the amazingly incredibly amazing <a href="#goldcup2">U.S. Soccer team</a>.)<br /><br />- First, I've changed my settings so that you don't have to sign-up for anything to leave a comment. I'm sorry I didn't do this earlier. Imagine me writing this blog as a kid inheriting his dad's car, and every once in a while he hits a button by accident and goes, "Hey, it's got windshield wipers!" I'm still learning. (Another example would be that I'll start making my links open in a new window, so you won't leave the site when you click on something.)<br /><br />I encourage you to leave comments. In fact, I insist. Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here? Surely I've written something by now that you either agreed or disagreed with. Let me know about it.<br /><br />My only request is that you keep it relatively clean. Although I don't think she is at present, it's entirely possible that my grandmother could read some of this someday. So if you write something obscene, I'll find out who you are send it to <em>your</em> grandma.<br /><br /><a name="logo">-</a> In a rather obvious Editor's note, I've updated the site with a logo. It's not going to win me any awards, but I think it's a step up. I'm especially proud of the the header because I did it, and the only thing I've ever successfully drawn in my life was a conclusion.<br /><br />I'll cover the subjects in the logo one-by-one eventually, but just so we're clear (clockwise from top left): <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satchel_Paige" target="_blank">Satchel Paige</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gipp" target="_blank">George Gipp</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Russell" target="_blank">Bill Russell</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe" target="_blank">Jim Thorpe</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Best" target="_blank">George Best</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Thompson" target="_blank">Hunter Thompson</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_smith" TARGET="_blank">Elliott Smith</a>, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca" target="_blank">Earnest Hemingway</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_steinbeck" target="_blank">John Steinbeck</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_dylan" target="_blank">Bob Dylan</a>.<br /><br />For me, that's the list. There are obvious exceptions, people I wished would fit -- Pele, Sugar Ray Robinson, Steve Nash, Pedro Martinez, Mos Def, Dennis Bergkamp -- but if I look at my life in terms of writing and sports, those guys at the top of this page are the who and the why.<br /><br />But there are a few things that I noticed as I picked my essentials. Apparently I like them to burn bright, especially when they're young. Some of them burned for a while and somehow sustained. (Dylan, Russell, Steinbeck, Paige.) Others burned, and, though they seemed to have survived the flames, could not stand to see the dimming of their own fuse. (Thompson, Thorpe, Hemingway.) Booze <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gipp#Death" target="_blank">killed Gipp senselessly</a> one night in 1920. It did the same thing to Best, though it took decades to do so. And at the age of 34, Elliott Smith took his own life in 2003.<br /><br />I do not claim to share any of the things that makes me admire these men. But all I want, all I've ever wanted since I knew how to want something, is to burn bright, if only for a while.<br /><br /><a name="nith">-</a> Just to knock this one down, Elliott Smith should get credit for naming this blog. "Needle in the hay," is a perfect and perfectly sad little song about drug addiction, and I wish I had a good reason to use it for the name. My best explanation is that I think it might be the best thing he ever did, and if you know his work like me, that's enough.<br /><br /><a name="satch">-</a> Now, the Satchel Paige connection. It seems that the two of us both did a stint in the same town. And, incredibly, it was <em>not</em> Washington, D.C. Not once, but twice, car dealer and equal-opportunity baseball man Neil Churchill used cash and a free Chrystler to lure Satch to Bismarck to play minor league ball.<br /><br />According to <a href="http://www.pitchblackbaseball.com/northdakotabaseball.html#northdakotawhipsbigleagues" target="_blank">this account</a>, the first time this happened was in... get ready for it... 1934.<br /><br />That's right. North Dakota -- a state that usually seemed to me to have about as much color as crust-less Wonder Bread -- was integrated more than a dozen years before the bigs. Those, by the way, would have been the 12 years where Satch would have made his case as the greatest pitcher of all time.<br /><br />Instead he was stuck inside of Bismarck with the Mobile blues again.<br /><br /><a name="survivor">-</a> To the internet we go.<br /><br />I had <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/notes.html" target="_blank">written previously</a> about how badly the New York Times was screwing up it's Page one podcast. Turns out, somebody was way ahead of me. The Washington Post has been doing a "From the Pages of the Post" podcast since January of last year. Go get it. Then listen to "The Sole Survivor" from last Monday. (Or read it <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/10/AR2007061001492.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)Please, get to this story before some big team of awful Hollywood writers gets to it. Go get the real thing.<br /><br /><a name="conca">-</a> On a related note, I'd also covered <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/notes_09.html" target="_blank">youtube</a>, and how companies should embrace it -- and profit from it -- instead of fighting it.<br /><br />Well, thanks to the good folks at CONCACAF (North American's soccer conference), the message of those words has served me well. Though I can't watch the Gold Cup because I've dropped the Fox Soccer Channel, I can now see extended highlights courtesy of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=concacaf" target="_blank">concacaf</a> channel of youtube. Now, this is America, and this is soccer, so not a lot of people are tuning in. But can you imagine how many people, on a worldwide level, would watch the NFL, NBA, and MLB if they did the same thing?<br /><br /><a name="goldcup2">-</a> So, now to disect those highlights. We finally gave up a goal to Panama in the quarters. But it was late, and we were up 2-0, and they caught a lucky deflection when Oguchi Onyewu poked at it. No excuse, I admit.<br /><br />But watching this game, it should have been 3 or 4-1, and it <em>could</em> have been five or six. I know, that's not a good sign, to not be finishing your chances. But that's a lot better than not having those chances.<br /><br />I've been watching the U.S. closely since about 2000. And as far as technical skill, creativity, and team speed, we've never been this entertaining or this good. Suddenly Demarcus Beasley, Clint Dempsey, Benny Feilhaber, Brian Ching, Landon Donavan, Taylor Twellman, even Oguchi Onyewu -- all of them -- can make that all-important short or long pass to put a teammate in open space.<br /><br />And we're spending so much time with the ball that other teams are hardly even getting a look at the goal.<br /><br />Let's go back to January. Bradley's first game in charge saw a patchwork U.S. team facing what was essentially Denmark's back-up team. Denmark took the lead in the 37th minute, and the Bradley era was off to a nightmare start.<br /><br />We went on to score <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKM1bS5ZXP4" target="_blank">three goals</a> that day. Then we beat Mexico <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIWECh5rGQk" TARGET="_blank">2-0</a>, and then Donny hit-up Ecuador for the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPIOU9xVeTQ&mode=related&search=" TARGET="_blank">best hat trick</a> in U.S. history in a 3-1 win.<br /><br />Then we played a boring 0-0 draw againast Guatemala. But since then?<br /><br />4-1 over China, 1-0 in a Guatemala rematch, 2-0 Trinidad and Tobago, 4-0 over El Salvador and 2-1 over Panama. Between China and Panama, we went, let's see, FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES without giving up a goal. For all the Americans who rip soccer for not having any scoring, this is ideal: we're scoring, they're not.<br /><br />For the year, we've scored 21 goals and given up three. One tie, eight wins, and we're not going to lose to Canada or Mexico in this tournament.<br /><br />I just, I can't make this more clear. We're so, so good right now.<br /><br />For me, the most telling moment of this tournament may not have been a goal or a tackle. Here's the scene: Late in the game, we're up 2-0. Donny took a long pass over the defense and fed a wide-open Clint Dempsey in front of goal.<br /><br />10 years ago, any player on the U.S. soccer team would have shot immediately, and probably scored. Instead, Dempsey took a touch, faked a shot and ditched a defender before losing the ball to another one.<br /><br />He should've scored, yes. But this, this foolish mistake, is a great moment in United States soccer. This was a moment of Dempsey's inherent creativity and flair and <em>cojones</em> leading to madness.<br /><br />But, as they say, genius and madness are neighbors, and sometimes they bump into each other when they both leave for work in the morning.<br /><br />And that's how I know this team is so good: I would never have been compelled to write that sentence three years ago.<br /><br />That'll do it for now.<br /><br />Back soon.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-37468607378102089632007-06-12T09:10:00.000-07:002007-07-05T10:26:17.645-07:00Notes, or We're taking on water and we're all goin' downHello and welcome back. Today: Barry Bonds' home run chase, the Cavs' chances in the <a href="#cavsfinals">NBA Finals</a>, and the <a href="#leak">lack of secrets</a> in modern sports. <br /><br />Let's get right into it.<br /><br />- In baseball news, it's now June. And if the playoffs started tomorrow it'd be pretty weird, because they still start in October. Check back in August for more updates.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Barry Bonds hit another home run last night. This one was career No. 747 for Barry. The next one will be No. 748, and the one after that should be 749, according to ESPN.<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">com's</span> Pedro Gomez. Then after that, the last number will reset at 0, and the second number will become a 5, which looks like this: 750. I know it can be hard to keep all of this straight, and I commend ESPN for trying to stay on top of this rapidly-developing development.<br /><br /><a name="cavsfinals">-</a> Now, to be quite honest, I'm going to take the day off from the NBA Finals. You might find good things written about Game 2, but you won't find them here.<br /><br />How's this for an exchange though: with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Lebron</span> out in the first quarter, Cleveland missed three 3s in a row. San Antonio countered by getting 12 points from <em>five different players.</em> The score went from 16-13 to 28-13, and it was never close after that. That shows how delicate these games are for Cleveland. Mr. James can stack up about a dozen points in the first or fourth quarter -- but not <em>both. </em>If it stays close in Cleveland, they probably win.<br /><br />But three in a row? Those are long odds, and I don't feel like attaching my name to them.<br /><br />On a side note, the title to my previous post -- <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/notes-or-lebron-james-is-ricky-davis.html">"Notes, or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Lebron</span> James is Ricky Davis"</a> -- was a thinly-veiled shot at Chicago Tribune columnist Sam Smith. Smith asserted previously in these playoffs that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Lebron</span> James is, as a player, comparable to Vince Carter. The Vince Carter, 28, whom <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Lebron, 22,</span> had just thoroughly outplayed the previous series.<br /><br /><a name="leak">-</a> Now, for an old-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">timey</span> thought on modern sports culture. Please wait while I put on my bowler hat and pack my tobacco pipe. Prepare to be regaled.<br /><br />A few days ago, Gilbert Arenas said he would opt out of his contract after the upcoming season. This joined Kobe Bryant's announcement/retraction of his desire to leave <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Los</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Angeles</span>. Now, if I had my choice, 10 times out of 10 I'd hang with <a href="http://www.nba.com/blog/gilbert_arenas.html">Gil</a>. (That hat -- my <em>God</em>, <a href="http://www.nba.com/media/agentzerocostume_300.jpg">what a hat</a>.) And Arenas' decision makes sense on a financial and a competitive level, while Kobe's... well, I've <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/notes.html">dealt with that</a>.<br /><br />But what I don't like about Gilbert's announcement was just that -- it was an announcement. Before a season even began, Gil cast a shadow of doubt over his future in Washington, and he made this shadow painfully visible to the public.<br /><br />The great line came from Otto Von Bismarck: "To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making."<br /><br />I happened to spend my formative years in Bismarck. And I'm smelling sausage.<br /><br />Arenas and Kobe are a part of the continuing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Tripp">Linda Tripp</a>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">ification</span> of our culture. It seems that almost everyone in America is willing to give out any information they have into a microphone, with or without solicitation. We'll sell out everything we've got, including our own dignity, as long as we can get the word out.<br /><br />We have become a culture of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">leakers</span>.<br /><br />Kobe himself was furious at a "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Lakers</span> insider" who alleged that Kobe had run <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Shaq</span> out of town. How do you like that? A <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">leaker</span>, angry at a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">leaker -- and a Laker leaker, no less</span>. (You want a leak? Here's a damn <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6134411/">leak</a>.)<br /><br />They do this stuff across the pond in the soccer world, but it's much, much different. The "rumor mill" that surrounds the English, Italian, and Spanish leagues -- particularly the big teams -- is the stuff of tabloids. There are dozens of websites that take hundreds of tips from anyone who claims to have any idea of what player will be bought by what team.<br /><br />Literally, these tips tend to read like this: "My uncle is a garbage man in London, and he just found an envelope that had been sent by (club) to (player), so my uncle thinks that's where he's headed."<br /><br />Honestly, they're all like that. And the British press run their own rumors around, and no one takes anything very seriously until they see ink on paper. Because they're just cartoon rumors -- people laugh out loud at most of them.<br /><br />But that's not how it works here. Our rumors? Our leakers? They tend to be right. They actually release inside information for very little personal gain. (Except for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_leak">these gentlemen</a>.) For the most part, we are leaking just to leak.<br /><br />Today, each of the major three sports in America is almost completely transparent. Rarely is a deal done or a move made that catches anyone by surprise. No idea that starts in a front office or locker room stays there.<br /><br />Whereas years ago, fans saw only the end product of professional sports, we now get to see it all before it gets ground up with lots of fat and spice and called sports.<br /><br />And now that I get a good look at it as it rolls down the assembly line, I'm seeing a lot of hoof.<br /><br />And now I'll take off the bowler hat, I'll cue the gospel choir, and I'll stand at the lectern for a moment and preach. You leak bad, unfair or dangerous things that are going on at your workplace or in your apartment building. You leak the names of serial killers and bank robbers. You <em>don't</em> leak which starters the Yankees are looking at, you loser.<br /><br />Okay, enough preaching.<br /><br />I can't really blame Gilbert Arenas for leaking, I can't blame <a href="http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=434156&cc=5901">Samuel Eto'o</a>. I can't even blame Kobe. Well, okay, <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/notes.html">I can blame Kobe</a>.<br /><br />But we are all to blame. We've created this culture, or at least allowed it. We all leak, or would leak, and if nothing else -- if in no other way than knowing something we probably shouldn't -- we all benefit from those leaks.<br /><br />And if we don't stop soon, we'll all be in the water.<br /><br />So now, a quick and vital Editor's Note, and one that I hope to honor as long as I possibly can.<br /><br />- Don't leak to me. I don't want to hear it. I'll be just fine getting the news when it actually becomes news. If something is going to happen tomorrow, I'll deal with it then.<br /><br />Unless it's a flood, or lotto numbers, in which case I can be reached at <a href="mailto:verbal_kint_187@hotmail.com">verbal_kint_187@hotmail.com</a>.<br /><br />That'll do it.<br /><br />Good day.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-24939546726216951872007-06-09T07:29:00.000-07:002007-07-26T23:25:35.980-07:00Notes, or Lebron James is Ricky DavisHello all. Today, my new <a href="#cos">job offer</a>, Game 1 of the <a href="#finals1">NBA Finals</a>, and in soccer news, the Gold Cup <a href="#goldcup3">gets underway</a>. <br /><br />Let's get right to it.<br /><br />- First, you'll see I re-titled all of my "Notes" entries. It just become a few too many, and I myself could hardly navigate among them. The headlines will just feature on one part of the post, though I will continue to cover multiple topics in individual posts. That's where the labels come in. I think the titles are prIetty much self-explanatory. "Battlefield girth" refers to how incredibly long that post became. And also, you can't make a reference to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth_%28novel%29">Battlefield Earth</a> that's not funny. Not even <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/romney_gaffes/article/0,28804,1621231_1621230_1621183,00.html?imw=Y">this</a>.<br /><br /><a name="cos">-</a> Okay, now I need to address something. Some of you may have heard about this already. I, Mike Mullen, have been <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/09/AR2007060900314.html" target="_blank">offered a very important job</a>. And it looks like I'm going to take it. Though I'm not sure why.<br /><br />I know this raises a lot of questions for you.<br /><br /><em>"But Mike, why didn't you ever mention that you held that kind of a position?"</em> Look, I was in charge of the Navy. I'm not trying to downplay it, but, come on - this is the NBA playoffs, and I'm not going to lose readers just going on about my aircraft carriers.<br /><br /><em>"Mike, you said you were 20. You don't </em><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Admiral_Michael_Mullen%2C_official_Navy_photograph.jpg" target="_blank"><em>look </em></a><em>20." </em>If there's anything more stressful than managing a branch of the armed forces, it's sports blogging. I've been aging rapidly since the NCAA tournament started. And then in my off hours, I'm in charge of the entire U.S. Navy? Come on. We're not fighting a lot in the water right now, but these aren't exactly <em>rowboats</em> out there.<br /><br /><em>"Mike, why do you want this job</em>?" I'm not really sure. It seems like a fall-guy kind of job. If we get things under control in Iraq, all the credit's going to go the generals on the field. And that might be the right thing, but if things go poorly -- and <a href="http://icasualties.org/oif/prdDetails.aspx?hndRef=5-2007" target="_blank">how could they not</a>? -- I get some blame, and I get tossed out of office in a couple years. And then what do I got? The lecture circuit? But again, it looks like I'm going to take it.<br /><br />And finally, <em>"Given your pending appointment as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will you continue to do your sports blog?" </em>I don't see why not.<br /><br /><a name="finals1">-</a> All right, just a few very quick thoughts on Lebron James. He had a bad Game 1, and Cleveland only scored 76 points. It seemed oddly reminiscent of Game 1 against Detroit, where Lebron struggled and Cleveland scored only - you guessed it - 76 points. So Lebron, having just survived that series against a battle-tested team, knows that a series does not pivot on its first game. But Game 2...<br /><br />Cleveland has lost only one game at home in these playoffs, and that was the Game 5 shocker against New Jersey. Cleveland then followed that by storming out to an early lead in New Jersey before letting the Nets come all the way back in the fourth quarter. But after New Jersey got to within one point, Lebron got Cleveland from 67 points up to 86 over six minutes, and that was all it took.<br /><br />That sounds familiar.<br /><br /><em>6-3-07, "Notes, or Kobe Bryant gets what he wants"<br />"And Lebron found a second wind in a five-minute span in the fourth quarter, when he got them from 77 points to 92. And that was all it took."</em><br /><br />In the clinching games of the last two series, Lebron has helped pile-up a bunch of points -- when it seemed like <em>no one </em>had it going -- and made his team win the game.<br /><br />This feels a bit like last year's Finals, where the Heat had by far the best player on the floor - Wade - and then Dallas might have had second, third, and fourth. (Nowitzki, Howard, and Terry.) But nearly every time it mattered, Wade had the ball in his hands and made something happen. That left it up to his teammates to get a few, even just a couple stops in the closing minutes. Defense and hustle make for a good combination with a single great player.<br /><br />Let me remind you that Malik Rose, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y72gBvGSFuk">James Posey</a>, and Samaki Walker have all won NBA championships in the last few years. Not one of those guys has any recognizable skill other than "tall." Can you imagine those three playing a game of HORSE? You'd send them out on a nice summer afternoon, and then come see who won in <em>November. </em><br /><em></em><br />If Cleveland can muck up the game enough, and is only losing by 5 or 8 points, and Varejao and Gooden can make a couple plays... Cleveland can win Game 2, or even a Game 6.<br /><br />Now, one note on Lebron. I remember when he was a rookie, and I think he played a Christmas day game against Tracy McGrady's Magic. At one point, T-Mac was guarding Lebron and knew that the shot clock was winding down. McGrady got right up on Lebron, who had the ball some 20 feet from the hoop. McGrady jumped just as Lebron jumped, and had his hand up to block the shot. But Lebron simply shot -- shot, not threw -- the ball <em>way</em> up... the ball left the screen... then splashed back down and in to beat the clock.<br /><br />I can't find a clip of that, but I realized at that point -- having already seen Lebron's dunks and passes -- that <em>nothing</em> was impossible for this kid. (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-d8bQU2C9g">Nothing</a>.)<br /><br /><a name="goldcup3">-</a> Also, our men's national team has won five games this year, and tied the other. After a snoozer finished 0-0 against Guatemala in March, we beat their "defense first, defense second" strategy on Thursday on a goal from Clint Dempsey for a 1-0 result in our first pool game of the Gold Cup. I'll have to get to Dempsey at some later date, but one person is <em>demanding </em>that I say something about him: Bob Bradley. The rookie U.S. coach has gotten the team to show up five out of six games, and let's make clear that those are his <em>first</em> six games as coach. Seems like a good sign for Bob. (Not so much <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Arena">this guy</a>.)<br /><br />They're not just winning. They're scoring good goals, they're scoring on penalties and free kicks, and they are <a href="http://www.ussoccer.com/sights/slideShow.jsp_318-11.html">not just watching </a>the other team on defense. They're taking some risks, they're <a href="http://www.ussoccer.com/sights/slideShow.jsp_322-4.html">beating the other team to loose balls</a> and they tend to <em>look</em> like they might win the game.<br /><br />They play again in about an hour, meeting Trinidad and Tobago in their second game of the Gold Cup.<br /><br />So a quick programming note on where to find the game: you're going to have to get Fox Soccer Channel. I should make it clear then, that the Gold Cup is an <em>international tournament. A</em>nd not only are these games on during reasonable broadcast times, they're being played here, on American soil.<br /><br />Not only did ESPN not buy the rights to these games, it let an optional, super-bundled-400 channel cable station beat it out. Now I don't get the Fox Soccer Channel, so when the Guatemala game started, I checked-in with the live blog on the ussoccer website. After the game was over, ESPN.com picked-up the AP story, and I kept checking back to the site for the highlights. At least, you know, they'd put up Dempsey's goal.<br /><br />Well, you can go looking right now, and the only place you're going to find <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc2yR6CNMdo">it</a> is youtube.<br /><br />You got big fat pockets, ESPN. Next time, talk to the national team. Try to get it so these games don't run up against the NBA Finals and the Belmont Stakes. Then reach into your pockets, and buy some coverage of a sport that isn't <em>three year old poker.</em> I know they've done very well lately, but there's some part of me that would be happy if they lost a ton of money on their commitments to the <a href="http://www.arenafootball.com/">Hey What's With the Walls League</a> and the <a href="http://www.nascar.com/">National Turn Left Association</a>. Instead, I'm afraid these things will play out well for them, and I'll have to leave this country for good after some time.<br /><br />More on that next time. I mean it.<br /><br />Now, where did I put the keys to the U.S.S. Louisville?verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-14163072551721563442007-06-03T15:41:00.001-07:002007-06-03T16:10:24.314-07:00I am not Lebron JamesHere now, a reprint of my classic Lebron column from high school. That's right folks - I was in high school at the same time as Lebron. He's more than a full year my senior.<br /><br />This means that, with me at 20 years and 10 months, I still have an outside shot of getting Lebron James to buy me beer. I admit it's unlikely, but Lebron can let me know if he's free. Or at least Scott Pollard.<br /><br />I'm re-posting this because it's interesting for me to look back at how I used to write. This would've been my third or fourth column, probably, and other than the writing and the jokes, I kind of like it. I'm also proud of this column because - although I think I still won the award - the column was criticized at my state journalism conference for being "too hip." That's what happens when you live in North Dakota and you print the words "street cred."<br /><br />If you want the fresh stuff, feel free to scroll down past this.<br /><br />Here goes.<br /><br /><br />I am not Lebron James<br /><br />He's in high school. I'm in high school.<br />He drives a chromed-out silver Hummer valued at $55,000. I drive a dirty cream-colored '88 Ford Tempo that hums, valued at $55.<br />He's been on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I'm a subscriber.<br />He has a strict no-autographs-in-school policy. So do I.<br />His is by choice.<br />If you haven't figured it out, the "he" in question is Lebron James--that's 'Bron or Bronnie if you're on his short list (as Shaq and Michael Jordan are) and King James if you're not.<br />James is the next odds-on big thing in basketball. He's 6'7" and 215, all smooth muscle and basketball IQ, with a vertical that makes Kobe green. He's MJ with tats and street cred, and this year he's probably gotten more headlines than the man himself.<br />This included the recent episode in which James was barred from competition for receiving throwback jerseys as gifts, then reinstated only days later.<br />Thanks to SI and ESPN the magazine covers and the "can't-miss" scouting reports, James has become a household name--and he hasn't even been in most households. St. Vincent-St. Mary's, a prep school in Ohio, did play a couple of games on ESPN 2, and others have been featured on Pay-Per-View.<br />Did I mention he's 17?<br />People have a problem with this. They say the way his ego is being coddled and stroked by pundits and scouts and fans is bad. It reflects poorly on society. We're putting too much pressure on the kid.<br />No, it may not be the best scenario for a young man like James to be glorified before he can buy a pack of smokes and vote. He was brought up without a real father figure, and people think that will hurt him when he's faced with fame's excess of women and drugs and opportunities for self-destruction. (See: Len Bias.)<br />But if people think that instant fame is going to be a bad thing for Lebron, they need to take a second look at the context in which he's succeeding. His game is more than a window out of the projects: It's an elevator to a window to a rocket launcher out of the projects. This is a kid whose family gets by on welfare checks, whose dad split too soon to mean much, whose chances are limited by the color of his skin.<br />Where would Lebron be without his game?<br />Imagine if Lebron grew up in Wilton, and Rich Hovland recruited him to come play for us. Bismarck would become a hoops hotbed--we'd probably be though of as having Canada's best basketball program.<br />Would you question the morality of Lebron's exploitation if he was from Bismarck? Or would you buy a ticket every Friday?<br />I don't blame the NBA and its coaches and scouts for Lebron's early stardom, either. It's their job to find the best possible players and put the ball in their hands, regardless of age and even honorability. When I watch a pro game, I think "Are these the best 10 basketball players that these teams could find for me?", not, "What can my child learn from a man like Rasheed Wallace?"<br />The best indication I have that his head is in the right place is that we've seen his love for the game and competition--the one aspect that set Larry, and then Michael, and now Kobe above the rest of their class.<br />When Lebron got nailed with the free throwbacks, he could've let it stand. He could've signed a $25 million contract with Nike the next day and started making commercials in time for the All-Star game.<br />Instead he worked to be reinstated by the Ohio athletic commission, and came away with a slap on the wrist and a new lease on his amateur career.<br />Two nights later, Lebron reminded everyone why they really care and dropped a highlight reel 52, once more a man among boys.<br />Thank God. We were starting to lose sight of what this was all about--a kid and his game.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-13199444220299620442007-06-03T10:35:00.000-07:002007-07-27T09:32:01.640-07:00Notes, or Kobe Bryant gets what he wantsHello. Today: <a href="#cavsfinals2">the Cavs reach the NBA Finals</a>, and Kobe Bryant <a href="#kobetrade">asks for it</a>. But we begin with rage.<br /><br />I can say now that I've survived the most frustrating night of my technological life. And I'm not a tech guy, really. I try to do really simple things with my computer. I want to use a wireless connection to receive e-mail, get news and sports, and download music and podcasts. And over the course of four hours last night I found that I was completely unable to do any of these things, using a total of two laptops and a desktop computer.<br /><br />This is how the world will end folks. Not directly, not like the internet will somehow rise up and ovetake us someday. But some relatively powerful leader, in a country that may even normally be quite friendly, will be trying to bid on a set of golf clubs late one night, because what the Hell else does he have to do? And suddenly his connection will cut out.<br /><br />Then, he'll try and listen to some music, just to relax, only to discover that all, yes <em>all</em> of his music has completely disappeared. And while he's trying to figure these things out, his computer, now virus-stricken, will begin to move about as quickly as a triple-amputee tortoise.<br /><br />That's how World War III starts, folks. That's when, if you have the option, you say, "Igor," or "Sven, get me ze nuclear codes."<br /><br />Needless to say, I'm a little burnt up. Let me give you an example of my mood last night.<br /><br />My girlfriend and I live in a nice little duplex, 50 feet away from some raliroad tracks. We and our neighbor lock our inside back and front doors, but not the outside back door. Now, the outside back door gives access to the stairs to our basement. We leave a light on in the basement. But at night, you can't help but thinking that some fugitive mental patient has just hopped a train and decided to hide out in our basement until we come down looking for a sock. The basement where the previous renters conveniently left a <em>table saw</em>, you know, just in case said escapee feels like cutting me into a few pieces.<br /><br />Put it this way: my girlfriend won't go down there at night. I will, but I always have to reassure myself: "There's nobody down here." And then my second thought is, "Well, I guess it would only have to happen once, and I'd be in a lot of trouble."<br /><br />But last night I marched downstairs for a T-shirt without hesitation. My thinking was whatever was down there wanted <em>no part</em> of me. That's how pissed off I was.<br /><br />I wrote <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html" target="_blank">previously</a> about how Isaiah, Michael and Kobe's great teams seemed at times to be driven by fear, whereas Magic, Larry, D-Wade and Steve Nash inspired their teams with joy.<br /><br />Although I've certainly tapped into this resource <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes_26.html" target="_blank">once </a>or <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/notes_21.html" target="_blank">twice</a> before, it probably hasn't been to this extent. If my words are most often drawn from the pleasure I get from spouting off about this or that, then today they come directly from fury. Like B.J. Armstrong and Will Perdue, these words are inspired by the fear of what I might do to them if they don't come through for me.<br /><br />Whew. All right, breathe Mike. Let's get the easy stuff out of the way.<br /><br />- In an editorial note, I should point out that I've made a few changes to the site. I started labelling my posts, so people can sort through what they want. You'll notice that almost all of my entries have multiple labels. That's just how I write. Look for dashes ("-") to set off different subjects, and happy hunting.<br /><br />I think the labels are pretty self-explanatory. "Old Stuff," are things I wrote in high school, and "Self Serving Crap," could really apply to anything I've written - or done - in the last four years.<br /><br />- Another editor's note: the soccer picture that I posted a few entries down - "Notes" for May 21 - had to be changed when the one I was using disappeared. Apparently, not only did the people at Oral Roberts not care about me using the picture, they didn't even care that it existed. Instead I got a bunch of famous guys in there now, which is fine, because it still proves my point. Feel free to check it out.<br /><br /><a name="cavsfinals2">-</a> I didn't want to go too far the other day on Lebron, because, again, I don't like to put too much weight into one game. And if anyone was due for a letdown, it was him, after he not only scored every point for Cleveland in the last 20 minutes of Game 5, he seemed to almost take every <em>dribble</em>. Indeed there was a letdown, but Detroit countered it with a meltdown, and Daniel Gibson hit his wide open shots.<br /><br />And Lebron found a second wind in a five-minute span in the fourth quarter, when he got them from 77 points to 92. And that was all it took.<br /><br />My awful, overblown Finals analysis will come later. But I can tell you that to honor Lebron's first trip, I'll publish something I wrote about Mr. Rev. Dr. King James while I was in high school. So enjoy.<br /><br /><a name="kobetrade">-</a> Now, because this is what he wants, I'll talk about Kobe Bryant.<br /><br />And don't you get fooled into thinking that this is coincidence. Don't think that Kobe doesn't realize that by pulling this crap right now that he's stealing the playoff's thunder.<br /><br />Let me run your through something. Let's go back to the 2002-03 playoffs, where the Lakers got knocked out by eventual champion San Antonio. During that offseason, Kobe was accused of rape, and instantly became the number one and number two story on the news cycle. He got way more coverage that offseason than any player ever gets during the NBA Finals. Then during the preseason he and Shaq traded childish exchanges through the media.<br /><br />Then during the season, Kobe played with Shaq, Karl Malone, and Gary Payton. By the time Kobe retires, that team will statistically be the most talented team ever assembled.<br /><br />And all the while, Kobe's rape case carried on, and as damaging evidence about the victim was leaked, public opinion turned in Kobe's favor. So now, not only was Kobe the most high-profile player on the most high-profile team, not only was he living in a city of four million people who by and large still <em>loved</em> him, but he wasn't even necessarily hated or villified anymore. Now, he was just hugely famous.<br /><br />Now, anyone who has decent insight into Kobe Bryant - via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Season:_A_Team_in_Search_of_Its_Soul" target="_blank">The Last Season</a>, for example - knows what this kind of attention might do to a young fellow like Kobe. He might, being someone who drove Phil Jackson to see a narcissism-specialist therapist, he might really <em>embrace</em> that level of fame.<br /><br />And when that season ended, the Kobe saga went on. Phil left, Shaq left. And Kobe himself toyed with his free agency, dragging it out as long as possible before finally resigning.<br /><br />Then came the 2004-05 season, which, thanks mostly to Rudy Tomjanovich's cancer, was a throwaway. So last year, with Kobe's past infamy and mega-fame somewhat forgotten...<br /><br />He threw up 45 points a game for a <em>month, </em>including historic flame-throwing nights against Dallas and then, that <a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/LAL20060122.html" target="_blank">thing</a> in Toronto.<br /><br />I might someday look stupid on this, but I don't think we'll ever, ever see an 81 on a statsheet again. Unless somebody <em>really </em>pisses off Gilbert Arenas. But I don't even think Arenas has that in him. Fifty, even 60... these are special numbers, accomplishments, the kind of thing you can put in your pocket.<br /><br />But 81? That's a decision. It was a mission to humiliate the Toronto Raptors -- and a cold-blooded one at that. The Lakers won that game by 22. They needed 65 of those points, 70 at most. That means some of those points were just for Kobe.<br /><br />Michael Jordan, who a lot of people accused of being less-than-selfless in his younger years, scored 55 or more points nine times in his career. Only one of those games did the Bulls win by more than 10 points. Three of those games, Chicago won by only two points. Basically, Chicago needed all of those points.<br /><br />Kobe, meanwhile, has hit for 55-plus points in Lakers wins of 11, 14, 18, 22, and 39 points. In short, he was doing this because he wanted to. And that vindictive quality is something that even MJ had outgrown by the time he was 28.<br /><br />Bryant is an interesting study because he seems so consumed, already, with his place in history. I think he knows that he is physically Michael Jordan's equal. And the fact that his competitive nature equals MJs basically puts him in a two-person category. So I can only assume that what drives him at this point is his obssession with where he stands in that category.<br /><br />That's right, Kobe wants to be better than Michael Jeffery Jordan. The player we all said, "Well, we'll never see another of him." Someone came along the very next generation, ignored all of that, and set out to be even <em>better</em>. And there's probably something admirable in that.<br /><br />But he's not better. He's never been as good at working with his teammates. And you never saw Jordan approach five or six 3-point attempts per game, not even when he was a kid.<br /><br />Moreover, they ran different locker rooms. According to Phil, Scottie Pippen told No. 23 at one point, "I can't do it without you Michael." And Jordan cried.<br /><br />Kobe has turned his back on more good players than Michael ever even <em>played with</em>.<br /><br />But, knowing that he's only 28, and knowing what Michael did at <a href="http://www.nba.com/history/finals/19951996.html" target="_blank">32</a>, <a href="http://www.nba.com/history/finals/19961997.html" target="_blank">33</a>, and <a href="http://www.nba.com/history/finals/19971998.html" target="_blank">34</a>... for Kobe to come out a few days ago and tell Stephen A. Smith that he wanted to be traded, <em>demanded</em>, said that there was no other option... Listen Kobe, your young team will get older. (Andrew Bynum is only 19, and he outrebounded Kevin Garnett and Ben Wallace, head-to-head, during his first <em>month </em>in the league.) Another veteran will come out to LA, just to play with you, and if you want, Jerry West can sit in the owner's box.<br /><br />But for Kobe to come out later that same day, and change his mind? That can only mean that Kobe is so used to turmoil - seems to welcome it, even - that for him to throw this out and take it back in one day is no big deal.<br /><br />Time now for my real point. The real point is that Kobe said these things to radio reporters, and <em>not </em>someone in the Lakers' front office. Kobe Bryant, 28, is so thrilled to hear his own voice and see his own name in print that sometimes he doesn't even care what comes after it.<br /><br />That'll be all for today.<br /><br />Back soon with some more new stuff.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-49503580220704199902007-06-02T16:47:00.000-07:002009-09-12T10:06:31.956-07:00Notes, or Lebron James: Nike logo designerHello.<br /><div><div><div></div><br /><div>Well, to lead off, I may have been a little bit right in asking people to back off the Lebron critcism a bit. </div><div></div><br /><div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgfSpdNi9aU" target="_blank">Maybe</a>. </div><div></div><br /><div>Unfortunately, my point is lost though. I wanted people to be patient, to give Lebron some time before we pass judgment. But Lebron went out and did what he did, and rendered my point completely moot. </div><div></div><br /><div>I was asking his critics to shut up. Lebron <em>made </em>them shut up. </div><div></div><br /><div>And I hope that not only did they shut up, but ate their words as well. I hope that every columnist, every blogger, every bar patron who said, "This kid just don't got it," I hope they all had to go back, tail between their legs, and say, "Boy, was I way wrong on this guy." </div><div></div><br /><div>But I know that most of them didn't. Instead, they came out and said, "See, this is what I've been waiting for."</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br />Oh, no no no, my friend. You don't wait for something like Lebron's Game 5. You don't ask someone to do that. How do you request something you've never seen before?</div><div></div><div></div><br /><div>Now, I'm not going to do much Game 5 analysis. That's mostly because there have been a ton of words written about that game, and none of them do it justice. No hyperbole is too much. </div><div></div><br /><div>I'm not going to break down Lebron's late efforts, mostly because they were new to me. You just don't see clutch dunks and game-winning layups. It's hard to analyze. </div><div></div><br /><div>It's like when "The Wizard of Oz" hit theaters. If you had never seen a color movie before, and someone asked you to describe what it was like when they showed the scenes in Oz, what would you say? </div><div></div><br /><div>Well I think for a lot of people, this was like that. Game 5 was our trip to Oz. </div><div></div><div></div><br /><div>By the way, last year, everybody <em>killed</em> the Wizards for letting Lebron go baseline for a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqs_q0LyUgE" target="_blank">layup</a> to win. First of all, Lebron caught an inbound pass, changed directions, tight-roped the out of bounds and got to the rim. There aren't three teams in the league who could've stopped that move. </div><div></div><br /><div>And besides, here he was against the rough-and-tough Pistons, watching the same thing happen to them. So enough with the "You gotta' get a body on him," "You gotta' stay in front of him." Really? What do you think they were saying in the Pistons' huddle: "Watch Varejao?" </div><div></div><br /><div>Look, they wanted to get a body on him. They wanted to foul. "No layups." Whatever. Sometimes you just can't do what you want to do.</div><div></div><br /><div>When Ladanian Tomlinson is torching some NFL team, the coach is on the sideline saying, "Wrap him up! Put him on his ass!" Oh, really coach? We'll try that next time out. If it was that easy, if you could just decide to do something and then do it, we'd all go pro. </div><div></div><br /><div>Now, my other quick insight, and this one has nothing to do with "scoring the basketball," as several jackass analysts would refer to it. </div><div></div><br /><div>Late in the first overtime, Varejao fouled Rasheed Wallace on a shot with 30 seconds left with the Cavs up 100-96. It was a disaster of a foul, as it meant Detroit could get another possession and tie the game. (They did, and they did.)</div><div></div><div></div><br /><div>But after Varejao's foul, Lebron didn't frown. He didn't put his palms up and go, "Why'd you foul?" And he didn't even slap Varejao's ass and go, "It's okay."</div><div></div><br /><div>Lebron James, the coolest cat on the floor, walked over and <em>hugged </em>him. I don't know what he said during that embrace. But I would imagine it meant a lot to the frizzy Brazilian. </div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>You want to talk about on-court awareness? This was more than basketball. This was psychology: Lebron knowing what this particular player, from this region of the world, making this giant mistake - he knew exactly what that guy needed. And Lebron knew that he would need this guy later, and would need him to be going full-bore.</div><div></div><br /><div>And maybe - and this is what I hope - maybe it wasn't even psychology. It may have been out-and-out <em>friendship. </em></div><div><em></em></div><div></div><br /><div>But either way, it worked. Because, although the ESPN play-by-play didn't show it, I thought - and had it confirmed by others who watched the game - that Varejao got a finger on Billups' last-second shot. Just enough to kill the spin, and make it bounce off instead of in. </div><div></div><div></div><br /><div>Now I don't know, nor will I ever, whether Varejao makes that play if Lebron doesn't hug him and say what he said. But I do know that these are two guys who like each other, and that they want to play together for a long time, and that Varejao likes Lebron for more than just his quick first step. </div><div></div><br /><div>I think it's only a smart and caring player who hugs Varejao in that moment. Definitely Magic and Nash, maybe Bird... but <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=3118" target="_blank">this guy</a>? Probably not. </div><br /><div></div><div>One last thought. Although I've proven I can't take an action shot to save my life, I know a good photo when I see one. And when Lebron drove and jumped and brought the ball between his knees, I instantly knew that it would become an iconic image. A defender on each side of him, and two more behind him. And the good folks at <a href="http://www.deadspin.com/" target="_blank">Deadspin</a> were smart enough to blow it up the next day. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Now, if I may make a bold prediction. We all know the Nike Jumpman logo.</div><br /><p>I think you see where I'm going. If I had any ambition, I'd photoshop the Lebron picture, call Nike, and sell the image for $50 million. But instead I'll be lazy and just suggest it: trace Lebron in that picture, make him grey, make the rest of it black, and put it on some shoes and T-shirts. </p><p>More to come, perhaps even tonight...</p><p>Until then. </p></div></div>verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-14671439435604850952007-05-28T08:44:00.000-07:002007-07-27T09:17:45.216-07:00Notes, or A bunch of old men are yelling about a kidHello. Today we'll look at Utah's meaningless <a href="#jazzgame3">Game 3 win</a>, and I ask everyone to <a href="#lebroncritics">leave Lebron James alone</a>.<br /><br />Now, for my minute-by-minute breakdown of the Champions' League Final. Okay, I'm kidding.<br /><br />But again, in my defense, I didn't get to see any good soccer for months. And that's my sport. Believe me, if you took Peter Gammons off baseball for a couple months, then put him back on for the World Series, he could give you 5,000 words on the condition of the first baseman's glove.<br /><br />I kind of took the weekend off, but I'm back with just a couple notes, and a preview of what I'll be looking at next.<br /><br /><a name="jazzgame3">-</a> First, to the NBA playoffs. A lot of people got really, really charged-up by Utah's Game 3 win over the Spurs. And not just the fact that they won, but the way they won.<br /><br />The Duncan-like effort of Boozer, the ascendance of Deron Williams, Ginobli-Finley-Barry going cold, Duncan's offensive woes and foul trouble.<br /><br />People are raving. After that win, the Jazz fans flooded the streets and partied until 11:00 p.m.<br /><br />Look, Deron Williams is a great talent. I see the J-Kidd comparison, because they're both big strong point guards. But Kidd is faster, and a better passer, while Williams seems to have developed a unique talent, where he stands 15 or 20 feet away from the hoop and actually just throws the ball directly into the basket. Too bad Kidd never learned this skill. Hopefully Deron never learns some of Jason's other <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/jason-kidd.html">interests</a>.<br /><br />I don't want to belittle this win. I don't.<br /><br />But here's who doesn't think Game 3 was such a big deal: the Spurs.<br /><br />Their core players have been through the fire over and over again, and they know that the only "big" wins come in Game 7. A two-point win is the same as a 20-point win, except a 20-point win against a great team only leaves that great team <em>really</em> pissed off.<br /><br />The Spurs rely on their ball movement to get to their shooters, and their shooters missed. There's no systematic problem here - sometimes you go cold. Their misses got contagious here, just like makes can get contagious, and just like they will in Game 4 tonight. And the Spurs will win in five games.<br /><br />By the way I like Utah. I wish they would win. But my head, still furious with my heart about taking Phoenix, will be making the rest of my playoff picks.<br /><br /><a name="lebroncritics">-</a> Now, to Cleveland-Detroit.<br /><br />For the purposes of this blog, uh, forget Detroit. I've mentioned them in passing once or twice. They do what they do, they're very workmanlike and professional, and I respect them. But there's nothing about them that I really root for. I'll go into this in better detail at some later date, but the Pistons - like several soccer teams - are not a team that I like. But I like the <em>idea </em>of the Pistons. 'Sheed, Prince, Billups, Hamilton, C-Webb... I'm not drawn to them as a group, but I like knowing that they're out there.<br /><br />Much easier to pull for are the Cavs.<br /><br />Larry Hughes and Zydrunas Ilgauskas have recently suffered unimaginable tragedies - <a href="http://www.nba.com/cavaliers/news/brothers_keeper_060512.html" target="_blank">Hughes</a>, <a href="http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/sports/basketball/16785854.htm" target="_blank">Z</a> - and neither of them seems particularly dislikable, though they probably have liscence to be. Then there's Varaejo, who every opponent hates to play against and his teammates love to play with, and Sasha Pavlovic. Sasha has been getting better and better as the year went on, and if you missed their series against New Jersey - and you did - he had a full-on Tayshaun Prince <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKHKU4QoDlY" target="_blank">moment</a> in Game 1.<br /><br />By the way, Pavlovic is from the former Yugoslavia. So, while he seems like a really nice guy... just don't say anything bad about him, okay? Who knows who this guy knows.<br /><br />Now, to Mr. Dr. Rev. Lebron James. He is quickly developing into the most interesting American sports figure not named Barry Bonds. But while Bonds is completely self-absorbed and hateful to the media, Lebron is interesting because he's exactly the opposite.<br /><br />He seems totally accessible, funny, bright...<br /><br />I might have said this once here before, but it's worth repeating. A good friend of mine thinks that many of the best athletes, in all sports, are either so dumb or so arrogant that they don't know any better than to perform in the clutch. The immensity of the moment either doesn't occur to them, or it does occur to them, and they know that they'll rise to it because they know that they are the greatest talent in their sport - even when they're not.<br /><br />It's an interesting theory, and I believe it to a degree. But Lebron seems to be neither of those things. He's not dumb. And, looking at the skill set that he has, for Lebron to overstate his ability, for him to be arrogant... he would basically have to tell all of his teammates and coaches, "Don't talk to me, I am Lebron James. Don't even look at me." But that's not the case.<br /><br />With five seconds left in Game 1, Lebron infamously passed-off to Donyell Marshall, giving Marshall a shot for the win instead of going for the tie on his own. Earlier, with 15 seconds left, he dished-off to Big Z for a wide-open 20-footer. Marshall and Ilgauskas missed, each of them shooting from their favorite spots on the floor. (In Game 6 against New Jersey, Marshall hit four threes from the corner.)<br /><br />Lebron got crushed by more than a few people for these decisions. How could he not take the last shot? This is his team! I want him to be Michael Jordan! Now!<br /><br />By the way, we seem to remember MJ at the end of his career, where he - and his team - seemed to hit EVERY big shot, and make EVERY big play down the stretch. And that's why he goes down as the greatest - because it never really worked like that for anyone before him, at least not as often.<br /><br />But I know that when MJ was younger, that wasn't the case. I know this because they didn't win 82 games a year and they didn't win the NBA Finals every year.<br /><br />But back to Lebron. One of the things people held against him was that Marshall admitted post-game that he wasn't <em>ready</em> for the shot, because the play was drawn up for Lebron. Donny's standing in his favorite spot, sees his guy leave him, sees the best passer under 25 since Magic Johnson with the ball, and it doesn't occur to him that he <em>might</em> get the ball. And this is Lebron's fault?<br /><br />And I don't want to be too harsh on Marshall, nor Big Z. They got their shots, they missed, you move on.<br /><br />But after Lebron got nailed, Game 2 came down to the identical situation. Same score, even.<br /><br />And Lebron drives, and he spins, and Tay Prince collapses in, and as Lebron spins he must have seen - and felt - that there, in the same corner, was Donny Marshall.<br /><br />And if Mr. Dr. Rev. James was too dumb or too arrogant to care, he does the same thing as Game 1 and passes to the open player. Instead, he spins and shoots a highly-contested shot. He misses, and there's a part of me that believes he missed because he was psyched-out by the idea that while he was taking a contested shot, his <em>open teammate</em> was sitting in the corner.<br /><br />But he's not that guy. Apparently, Lebron's on-court awareness is nearly equalled by his off-court awareness. (Although he <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070524/cm_csm/yzimmermanx" target="_blank">obviously </a>has a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Rose#_note-atkins2002" target="_blank">punk agent</a>.) Simply put, Lebron reads his clips. He knows people are talking about him out there, and he seems genuinely concerned what they're saying. So he did what everyone screamed he should do, he forced a shot, and it didn't go down.<br /><br />So I'm going to ask everyone in this disgusting news-analysis-replay-replay-replay-analysis-replay-final judgment-society to do something that, I'm sure, is impossible: shut up. Leave this damn kid alone. He's not Michael. He's not Bird. He's not Magic, though that's a closer comparison.<br /><br />He's got a few things about him that will remind you of each of those players, but he's not any of them, and we didn't quite know who those players were until they retired.<br /><br />But what those guys got was <em>attention. </em>Everybody watched them, wanted to see what they could do, and then appreciated them for what they were. Oh, fans booed when they were on the road. But after the game was over, they backed-off.<br /><br />None of those three had to face the 24-hour news cycle, the 24-hour <em>sports</em> news cycle, the blogosphere, 15 columnists on ESPN.com and 50 more on the national circuit. We are a bored country, and when someone underperforms, we want to see them cut into ribbons by midnight, and if nothing new happens tomorrow, just keep cutting until there's nothing left.<br /><br />Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune wrote a book called "The Jordan Rules," which chronicled MJ's struggle to get past Isaiah Thomas's Pistons. Finally, with a much-improved roster, Mike overcomes them. And Sam writes a book, and I'm happy that he did it.<br /><br />But I wish that Sam had, you know, <em>read</em> his book. Especially before he recently said that Lebron James is less like Mike-Magic-Larry, and more like, and I'm quoting here, "Vince Carter." I'm sure other, dumber columnists said worse things.<br /><br />Now, if you're too dumb or too arrogant for any of that to sink in, then you're fine. But if you're Lebron...<br /><br />Well, thank God he hit a "NO WAY" fadeaway 3-pointer and a stop-on-a-dime-and-twist <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOqGA37M0ZA" target="_blank">jumper</a> to win Game 3. Otherwise, Lebron would have been so far inside his own head that all he could see was grey matter.<br /><br />Back off, everybody. Before we decide who this kid is or isn't, let's see game four.<br /><br />Of the 2010 NBA Finals.<br /><br />That'll do. Back soon with my new thoughts on athletes and drugs.<br /><br />Good day.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-18932534854236234122007-05-24T08:06:00.000-07:002007-07-27T09:32:39.812-07:00EditsHello.<br /><br />Finally found a good highlight package from yesterday, and I'll be linking to that with the score at the top of my last entry.<br /><br />In the interest of full disclosure, I thought I'd point out that I'll be making a few edits to yesteday's re-cap. I know this goes against my previously-stated <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes.html" target="_blank">policy</a>. But, you know, I'm telling you about it here, so I don't feel so bad. I'll give you a list of things I left-out that will heretofore be included: Ratings for Zenden and Reina, more detail on Kaka and Gerrard from this match, and a couple more Youtube links to help you with my player descriptions. Also I'll be ditching a few commas and comma-related phrases. Do I always write like that? You must think I stutter. I think I write like I talk, and when I talk I often use pauses to enhance my point. But in writing it just drags everything along, and if I'm already doing twenty five HUNDRED words on one soccer match, I could at least make it go as quickly as possible for you.<br /><br />Also, a defense of that decision. As stated previously, I had Fox Soccer Channel for some time, and it was a benchmark of my day. My weekend mornings - previously non-existent - revolved around the live English matches. Goals of the week, saves of the week... these were very important to me. I understand that 100 percent of the people reading this are American, and that most Americans don't care. That's why I've made numerous efforts - <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/notes_26.html" target="_blank">(1)</a>, <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/notes.html" target="_blank">(2)</a>, <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/notes_21.html" target="_blank">(3)</a> - to draw you Yanks in, and I will continue to do so. If you're not interested, skip that stuff to the basketball and football. But your kids like this game a lot more than you do, and someday soon you will be the old people who don't get it. Now's your best chance to start paying attention.<br /><br />Coming up soon, my latest thoughts on Jason Giambi, the NBA playoffs... probably something else. That's all for now.<br /><br />Happy birthday Robert Zimmerman.<br /><br />Good day.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-62701265895395152172007-05-23T12:09:00.000-07:002007-07-27T09:37:10.857-07:00Liverpool-AC Milan, UEFA Champions League Final<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mptmPiQN31E&mode=related&search=" target="_blank">Milan 2, Liverpool 1 </a><br /><br />Okay, it's way over by now. I'm not going to go minute-by-minute recap here. That might kill us both.<br /><br />This, what happened in Athens, Greece on 5-23-07 was the game you might have expected in Istanbul in 2005. Instead, '05 was a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3p-rgOOZqg" target="_blank">circus </a>- the kind of circus where the elephant rider falls off, into the lion's den, and the lion tamer grabs a juggler's flaming baton to help her, when suddenly an acrobat falls on the baton and immediately catches fire, and just then the ringmaster says, "That's it folks, goodnight!" and they close the tent - and this, on this night, was a football game. And one man can be found responsible for its outcome. Well, maybe two.<br /><br />- Full discretion: I missed the intro. And the first five minutes. Deplorable, I know, but I was taking a shower. Besides I knew all the pre-game. I'd seen every game leading up to it. And, lemme guess, Athens... Couple shots of the Parthenon? Night shots? Coupla' outdoor staduim shots? A blimp shot? Couple statues with no arms, couple with no legs? I'll be fine.<br /><br />And the only way anything important happened in the first few minutes is if someone walked onto the field, pulled out a gun, and shot Liverpool's left winger in both legs.<br /><br />- In my preview I focused only on Gerrard and Kaka, because they are the players I want to see most. I left out the following players, whose names are followed by match ratings (out of 5, with half-points, mostly because it seems more European) and descriptions of their game.<br /><br />LIVERPOOL -<br /><br />Dirk Kuyt (4.0) - Big Dutch striker, strong, lefty hits a hard shot and a good header, not a fan of subtlety. He doesn't make anything look easy, but he makes himself a target, and he doesn't give the ball away easily. THIS MATCH: Can't play alone up front, not against top-level defenders. Kuyt was reduced to constantly fighting for position, and he would use that position to... poke the ball back where it came from. Not a bad idea, but eventually it just looked too negative. He scored, though.<br /><br />Xabi Alonso (3.0) - Spanish playmaker. Operates on ball-striking and creativity more than speed or dribbling. If you're getting open, he's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7eiFGiCG4" target="_blank">great</a>. If not he's just an effective distributor. Defensive liability. THIS MATCH: Again, no good with one striker. He needs the guys in front of him moving and popping-up, so he can either find them or fake a pass and shoot. Nothing significant from him all night, and he fouled to lead to the first goal.<br /><br />Jamie Carragher, Steve Finnan (3.0, 3.0) - Defenders. English, Irish respectively. Everything else is mostly the same. Dark-haired, short-haired, hard workers, hard tacklers. Watch your ankles and knees. Neither of them fast enough to catch or keep up with strikers, so they like to hover near a forward and then pounce when he's weak. Carragher more consistent. THIS MATCH: Carragher okay, Finnan okay. But Inzaghi wasn't even looking that dangerous, and I seem to remember him <em>jogging in</em> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLuXsXlYmhA" target="_blank">alone </a>late in the second half.<br /><br />Jermaine Pennant (3.5) - One of 6 British stories that have gone like this in the past 8 years: midfielder, great speed, all the offensive tools. Once put together all of these skills in five or ten games in a row, media instantly names him a fixture on the national team for the next decade... had an equal number of bad games and was immediately written off as done, career over, forever. All this, and he's only 24. But it's hard to tell how good he is when he doesn't get a lot of run. Fact is, he's still got all the tools. (Kieron Dyer, Sean Wright Phillips, Aaron Lennon, Nigel Reo-Coker, Jermaine Jenas, Keiran Richardson... that's seven). THIS MATCH: Very effective going forward first half, but never got back into it in the second half. Maybe he put it all out there in the first 45, and on another night, he could've come off at the hour mark for crazy <a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/jason-kidd.html" target="_blank">Craig Bellamy</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/jason-kidd.html" target="_blank">John Arne Riise</a>, Daniel Agger (3.0, 3.0) - covered Riise in a previous post. Take that, make him younger, and Danish instead of Norwegian. Now take 10 miles an hour off his left-footed shot. That's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuvHyFuAXnQ" target="_blank">Agger</a>, who's also starting for 'Pool. Both are big, capable defenders, but if they expend too much energy chasing and sliding, their left-footed powers are wasted. THIS MATCH: They got forward a little bit, and Riise hit a good one in the first half. But in the second half they resigned themselves to shooting behind the crowd. 'Pool needed a few more good balls zinging across the box. Neither of them had much spark, and there defense wasn't enough to make up for it.<br /><br />Javi Mascherano (4.0) - New arrival, thick legged-Argentinian whose main task is to block up the middle of the field. When Riise, Agger or Finnan range forward, he picks up their slack. A big part of how Mascherano plays is how he looks. I'm not gonna' say a guy's ugly. But Mascherano looks like he's taken 5-10 serious elbows to the mouth every week for, oh, 15 years. He defends like he has nothing to lose, and he hates you, though he may in fact be a nice guy. THIS MATCH: Best defender they had. Seems to have something on Kaka, which, worldwide, makes him one of the one players who can say that. Fearless. If he could just get the ball to half, and then give it to Stevie G, maybe...<br /><br />Bolo Zenden (1.0) - Left-footed Dutch winger. I failed to mention that among the "great players" in this match, there was also this impostor. I assume he was effective somewhere along the line of the five top-notch, world class teams. But he never stayed with any of them for long, and that should be a blinking, smoking red flag. I've seen Zenden play a few times this year, and, although he's not an exciting dribbler, he seems to do everything well except run, pass and shoot.<br /><br />Harry Kewell - Left-footed Australian winger. Maybe best overall Aussie talent ever. Smooth, fast, graceful. Probably was the way he always tied his longish hair behind him, but I always thought he looked like a karate guy who decided to kick the ball instead. He carried himself that same way.<br /><br />- Side note: If you can belive it, Bolo was a martial arts prodigy. By contrast, he carries himself like a giant, dying, flightless bird. An albatross, if you will. Liverpool's albatross. He stinks. We'll be back to him for more in a bit.<br /><br /><a href="http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/notes.html" target="_blank">Peter Crouch</a> - Already covered him a couple weeks ago. To my eyes, by far - <em>by far</em> - Liverpool's best offensive target. So tall and long, and coordinated enough that he's got a better chance at controlling a nearby ball than almost anyone marking him. And the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnf1IuPxfeQ&mode=related&search=" target="_blank">finishing </a>- HELLO - is there. THIS MATCH: I thought he contributed very poorly while he was on the bench the first 75 minutes. I hardly even noticed he was on the bench. He's got to learn how to score from the bench. SEV-en-ty-FIVE MINUTES!<br /><br />Jose "Pepe" Reina (3.5) - Streaky Spanish goalkeeper. Athletic, good feel for the action, good shotstopper. Special, unteachable skill of guessing the right way on penalty kicks. THIS MATCH: Not much he could do on either goal. A top three or top five keeper in the world might get a paw on one of those. He is neither top three nor top five, and he didn't.<br /><br /><br />AC MILAN<br /><br />Quick note on Kaka: his real name is Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite. So, I'm not sure where you get Kaka from, but, I don't think it took long for people around him to realize, "He's really great. We need something less than <em>eleven </em>syllables.<br /><br />Andrea Pirlo (3.5) - technically perfect Italian midfielder. Free kick, corner kick specialist. Top level ball striker. Plays a ton of promising balls in front of his attackers, makes few mistakes. Good defender. THIS MATCH: Too much defense for my liking. It looked like he constantly either wanted to get fouled or quickly roll it to Kaka and then just say, "Go." Gets + 0.5 points for pinpointing his free kick to Pipo's shoulder.<br /><br />Clarence Seedorf (3.0) - Streaky Dutch midfielder. If he's drawn into the offense early, can make game-changing plays. Otherwise, can completely disappear, and be reduced to a highly-skilled cog. Low center of gravity, strong hips and legs - not going to be pushed anywhere, anytime. Erratic defense. THIS MATCH: No big mistakes, no big nothing. When did he get subbed? 69 minutes? What? 89? Who knew?<br /><br />Ivan Gennaro Gattuso (3.5) - See Javier Mascherano. Make him Italian. THIS MATCH: Big-time nuisance. Handful of fouls that disrupted Liverpool's flow.<br /><br />Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Nesta (3.5, 3.5) - Former superstar defenders. Since surpassed by fellow Italians, but, even at 38 and 31 - 38! - absolute lockdown guys. They know what foot you want to shoot with, they know what's going to happen if they put an elbow in your back or a foot to your shin. You've got to come at them over and over to get <em>both </em>of them to make a mistake on the same play. THIS MATCH: Got an easy ride in the first half when Kuyt was all alone, and allowed Pennant and then Stevie to get through, though neither of them with much of an angle. Other than that, they kept their midfield organized and behind the ball, and did their best to defend against long shots.<br /><br />Fillipo "Pipo" Inzaghi (5.0) - Classic Italian goal-poacher. Never runs too far too fast. Doesn't need to. Stays near the ball, stays near the goal. Eventually a midfielder finds him, or the ball finds him, but at 33 he's well past the days of making things happen for himself. Or anyone else. THIS MATCH: Quick note on the shoulder goal - can we at least get a smile out of this guy? Does he have to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFiBoC00EA" target="_blank">dash off</a>, shouting, like he in <em>any way</em> wanted that to happen? I've seen Inzaghi react like this to flukes before, and I've also seen him try to claim other people's goals and own goals. Now THAT, my friend, is an Italian goalscorer. But Inzaghi, who ran about 100 meters all night long and looked lost at times, saw his spot, broke through, and scored. That's all you want out of a striker in a big, hunker-down defensive match - score on your best chance.<br /><br />Nelson Dida (4.5) -Brazilian goalkeeper. One of the best. No one, anywhere, makes a save that he can't make. Concentration and positioning lapse at times, but he's so <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6zUYKaJ2nE" target="_blank">quick </a>- and so, uh, 6-foot-5 - that he's always got a chance to bail himself out. THIS MATCH: Not too many real tests. Two, to be exact, that he could have stopped. Pennant, and then Gerrard. No goal. That's all you want.<br /><br />That's it for them. Marek Jankulovski and Massimo Oddo both do one thing, just on opposite sides of the field. Marek on the left, Oddo on the right: get to the corner, kick it towards the front of the goal, try and keep it high. If anyone gets near you with the ball, try and foul. Thanks, your check is in the mail. One of them is Polish, one's Italian. Figure it out for yourself.<br /><br />I would've liked to find some great insight into this game while I was watching it, some thing that often clicks when I watch basketball or football and, increasingly, soccer.<br /><br />The best thing that came to me is that you can start three lefties from goofy, northern European countries - but not FOUR.<br /><br />But my only real insight was this. When you look at those lineups, if my descriptions are accurate, Milan is older but more talented in the middle, at the back, and in goal. You - normally, mind you, normally - give the wings to Liverpool, and the forward battle probably goes there way, too, because Gerrard was all over the place playing just behind Kuyt. Kaka was very good at moments, and he timed his pass to Inzaghi perfectly. But Gerrard was called upon to do <em>everything</em>, and he impressed, moreso even than Kaka.<br /><br />So, reading what you've read (you read this?), the two guys who decided this were Dida and Inzaghi, right?<br /><br />No, not unless you're in Milan tonight. The most valuable men in Athens for AC Milan were on the Liverpool side. One was wearing a suit, and the other was dressed like a giant, dying bird.<br /><br />Rafa Benitez is not the kind of manager who would give a shit what I think, and in a way I like that about him. The English press is so ruthless, so presumptive about managers. When he names his lineups, reporters probably try to immediately come up with desparaging headlines.<br /><br />"Raf-a-el: BLOOD-Y HELL!"<br /><br />"RAFA-BENI: AN ENEMY OF MANY"<br /><br />Headlines is all they do over there. Headlines and Kate Moss pictures, and Kate Moss headlines.<br /><br />So Rafa does whatever he wants. Here's a great, great story. He didn't name the same starting lineup for two consecutive games for his first 99 games at Liverpool. There was always at least one change from the previous game. Then, his 100th lineup was identical to his 99th. That's what you call a professional wink, or maybe it's a finger to the press.<br /><br />However tall Peter Crouch is, he hasn't figured out how to lean in for a header while he's sitting ON THE BENCH. The first goal was a fluke, and maybe Rafa didn't think they would need more than one goal. Maybe he was assuming an overtime.<br /><br />But Bolo Zenden was, in Athens Greece, a disaster. I must think that, on some day in some city, he knew how to play this game. Not today, and not the times I saw him before that. The ESPN Gamecast called him "ineffective." Ineffective? How about "morbid"? "Cancerous."<br /><br />Zenden was the 800-pound gorilla on the left wing. He was the statue with no arms and legs.<br /><br />And yet, he played 58 minutes. Harry Kewell, though an improvement, didn't look too good either. So, there's your two favorite options on the left, neither looking very helpful to you. What do you do?<br /><br />I don't know. They don't pay me to figure that out. They don't pay me anything. No one does.<br /><br />But Rafa's got a job. And he didn't do it tonight.<br /><br />Thanks.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-64367357316503599412007-05-18T06:18:00.000-07:002007-07-27T09:53:57.524-07:00Notes, or Just gunHello.<br /><br />Coming up, the NBA playoffs, a couple leftover thoughts, and one of the strangest things I've ever heard.<br /><br />First, a couple corrections.<br /><br />- In the second graph of the last "Notes," I wrote "lately-roped-off," which was a case of over-hyphenation, which I've been guilty of once-or-twice before.<br /><br />- My baseball paragraph should have included the sentence, "Jason Giambi used them, too, and is not a dick."<br /><br />- I wrote last time about how one of the potential youtube home movie entrepeneurs is named "smosh." Unfortunately, that was correct.<br /><br /><br />Okay, now to the crazy thing, which I'm not going to make you wait for.<br /><br />I learned from the Animal Planet the other day that there is a tiny parasite that invades the brain of ants and takes over. The ant acts erratically for some time, and eventually finds a blade of grass, which it bites and holds onto. It may do this for as many as eight days, until it is eaten by a passing rabbit. At this point the ant ceases to be, but the parasite takes root inside the rabbit. Its eggs pass through the rabbit, whereupon they are picked-up by snails. Stay with me. The snails coat the eggs in slime, cough them up, and another ant comes along and eats that.<br /><br />Do you actually believe any of that? It was Animal Planet, so I wanted to believe it, but how could there be something like that out there and I never learned it? I think something like that should come up-front with a high school education. We should all be aware if that kind of thing is happening on our planet.<br /><br />Okay, now to the NBA, where I've got a lot to say.<br /><br />First, Chicago and Golden State went out. Let's take the easy one first.<br /><br />- Chicago and Detroit are the same team. They've got dynamic guards who can score, experienced muscle down low, and a swing man that can spark, and even take over a game for short bursts. But in every matchup - Hamilton-Billups v. Hinrich-Gordon, McDyess-Wallace-Webber v. Wallace-Brown, Prince-Deng - in all of them, Detroit is better. Chicago winning Game five was so incredible because it was so odd. I don't have Detroit losing another home game until the Finals.<br /><br />- Now, to Golden State. And I should mention Utah here, and I will, but somehow Golden State seems like the story here. When the Warriors went up 3-1 on Dallas, a large portion of the sports media adopted Golden State as their own. I was not a part of this movement. The Warriors home page today looks like this:<br /><br />"Another Magical Oakland Night"<br />-ESPN The Magazine<br /><br />"Simple and Fearless"<br />-Sports Illustrated<br /><br />"Warriors Fever Spreading Fast"<br />- San Jose Mercury News<br /><br />"This is the game I wanted to invent"<br />- Dr. James Naismith<br /><br />"I don't recall any of their games"<br />- Alberto Gonzales<br /><br />Okay, the last two I made up, but, that's my evidence. The picture on the intro page shows two huge fireballs shooting up off the court in Oakland, which we can assume were started by Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, who are totally insane as soon as the game tips off, and sometimes before or after.<br /><br />By the way, SI, it's easier to be "Fearless" when Stephen Jackson is packin' heat.<br /><br />Others praised Don Nelson as a basketball genius. I was not one of them. But David Dupree and Bob Ryan were.<br /><br />First, to Nelson, I don't know whether or not he's a genius. I know I loved watching his Dallas teams, and rooted for them. But - and he was general manager at the time - I can see now that the all-offense teams he put together were just ridiculous. Fun to watch, but, come on. Nash, Finley, Nowitzki, Antawn Jamison, Antoine Walker, Nick Van Exel... how many points does Nellie think you need to win? 160?<br /><br />I still like some of those players, but when Nelson moved to the Bay Area, I didn't follow him. I found the Warriors that closed the season so well and stunned Dallas to be more of a nuisance to watch than they were a thrill.<br /><br />Baron Davis ranked himself in the top 20 players in the league with his play, and everyone else had their moments. But for every second of every game I saw them in the playoffs, they looked like they were playing pick-up ball at the gym. Guys moved, and dribbled, and shot - oh, man they shot - but no two players ever seemed to have a real idea, or even an interest about what any other player was doing. They dribbled, tried to get free for a shot, if it didn't work they passed and the next guy <em>immediately</em> shot.<br /><br />This wasn't run and gun. Phoenix is run and gun. Golden State was just gun. And the number of times I saw this pay off over the course of the Dallas series seemed, off the charts, I guess, given the level of talent on this team. And the number of times one of them shot and missed, only for a long rebound to bounce to a Golden State player who had been <em>standing still </em>also seemed unreasonably high. In the Utah series it balanced out, thanks a little to Kirilenko and Deron Williams chasing, but mostly because that's just what happens.<br /><br />19, 24, 25, and 27. Those are how many 3-pointers Golden State missed in each of its four losses here. That's hard to watch. It's not "Live by the three, die by the three." It's just die by the three.<br /><br />Golden State also had meltdowns and temper issues throughout the playoffs. Like, as a <em>group</em>, they had hideous shot choices and moments of thuggery that brought on numerous flagrant fouls and technicals. Just like Dallas, I don't know if you can point the finger at any one player, but there's one guy who's in charge of all the players.<br /><br />How does any of this make Nellie a genius? I'd believe he went the whole playoffs without a clipboard. What discussions could he be having with his assistants on the bench?<br /><br />Assistant coach: "They're not shooting enough."<br />Nelson: "No, they're shooting enough. They're just not far enough away. Did we bring a clipboard?"<br />Assistant coach: "Clipboard, yeah. But no markers."<br /><br />Those words I made up. These ones, and I'm paraphrasing, were real. They came from the post-game press conference.<br /><br />(reporter): "What does this team need to do to get over the hump?"<br />Nelson: "Over the hump? (laughing) I think we got over the hump--"<br />(same reporter): -- "to get deeper into the playoffs, then?"<br />Nelson: (talking over him) "Next question."<br /><br />This is it, Don? The second round of the playoffs? They knocked off Dallas, which was great for them, but what was this magical run that everyone saw? This team won five games in the playoffs. It lost six of them. They'll go down as the first 8-seed to win best-of-seven games against a No. 1, but in five years, will we be harking back to that golden time when the Bay Area got basketball fever for a week and a half?<br /><br />It now looks like Don, 67, might be on his way out, by choice. From what I saw, he probably okay'd the trade for Jackson and Al Harrington, handed the ball to Baron Davis, and checked-out in late March.<br /><br />- Now another note. Wouldn't you have liked to see Mehmet Okur and Andris Biedrins just trade teams? Biedrins maintains Utah's quota of "Eastern European White Guy With Spiky Hair," and Okur joins the shootaround on the Golden State end. I think Jerry Sloan is playing a long game of "Red Light, Green Light" with Okur. Once a night, he says, "Green light," Okur shoots four threes in 90 seconds, and Sloan says "Red light." It either works or it doesn't, and he won a couple of games for them.<br /><br />Speaking of those two, I want to make a point about foreign players.<br /><br />I'm not going to shock anyone, except Isaiah Thomas and Danny Ainge, but foreign players are here to stay and they seem really important.<br /><br />San Antonio - 5, Phoenix - 4, Utah - 4, Cleveland - 3. That's the number of players on those teams that either start or play significant minutes who were born outside of the lower 48 states.<br /><br />Five of the last 6 NBA MVPs fit the same description. The other MVP was Kevin Garnett, who was created in an American lab, but using mostly international parts.<br /><br />This trend will not end any time soon, and while teams can't continue to add foreign players at the same rate, we can assume those teams that haven't drafted outsiders soon will. Anyone who fights this, or fails to see its importance, is like the 1960's music fan who heard the Beatles and thought, "Well, that'll be the last time rock and roll comes out of the UK."<br /><br />It's already over.<br /><br />Now, to Ginobli and Barbosa, who are the best South American players. Ginobli's from Argentina, and, as a soccer fan, I can tell you that for all he is, he's not in their Top 10 athletes. Barbosa, from Brazil, who is as fast and slick as anyone anywhere in the league? He's not in Brazil's Top FORTY. If this game really takes root in these countries - and in Italy and Germany - believe me, these countries have got brilliant young athletes with free time. If you set up camps, if you send coaches, if you build hoops, if you make sure it's on the TV...<br /><br />Very soon, my friends, this game will no longer belong to us. We will see the NBA's first all-foreign starting five. That team will make the playoffs. Either get in on it, or get out.<br /><br />- And now, since I've gone long, as always, I'll try to make this quick. Phoenix 2, San Antonio 3. Tonight's game in SA. Horry's bump on Nash, Stoudemire and Diaw leave the bench, get suspended, Phoenix loses game five. My thoughts:<br /><br />- David Stern is getting nailed on this. Everybody says he needed to do something to keep Phoenix from losing this game for this reason. Let's think of what we're asking for here.<br /><br />You want David Stern, who has for years been criticized for doing whatever he wants as comissioner, to make a <em>personal judgment call</em> on a rule. How could he possibly put himself in that position? There are already a hundred conspiracies about how Stern wants this team to make the finals, this team to do that, etc. And now he's supposed to rise up and say, "You know what, fellas? Forget the rule. I'll handle this one."<br /><br />This rule is what's on the books. The people hammering Stern now are the same ones that have for <em>years</em> said he had too much control. Now we want to open it up for him to revoke, on a case-by-case basis, any rules on the books? It's just stupid.<br /><br />We're ready to give one guy that much power? I think Alberto Gonzales is about to be unemployed. Maybe Stern could take him on as a secretary.<br /><br />If the players union wanted this changed, if the owners wanted it changed, they should have been on the phone with Stern and Michael Wilbon every day since it happened 10 years ago.<br /><br />But those were the rough-and-tough Knicks and Heat in a series no one watched, because Michael Jordan wasn't in it. But now, in the marquee series, we say this rule has to go, TONIGHT. Stupid.<br /><br />Just to float an idea, what if Horry was a more volatile person, felt someone coming, fast, on his blindside, and Kermit Washington'd Stoudemire's goddamn eye? Given the on-court fights we've seen in the last couple years, I don't think this is something you can just write off. "Oh, but this time..." If players thought they could leave the bench, thinking they were acting in self-defense...<br /><br />Earlier this season, Stephen Jackson's self-defense involved firing several gunshots outside of a nightclub. That's not even run and gun, that's just gun.<br /><br />I'm just making the point that what's reasonable to Amare Stoudemire might be different than what's reasonable to someone else.<br /><br />By the way, I admire the instinct in Stoudemire, who went much farther than Diaw and seemed like he actually had something in mind. I'm not sure if he wanted to get to his teammate Nash or the offender Horry, but seeing that happen to Steve Nash made Amare Stoudemire think, "I gotta' get there," and there's a big part of me that likes that.<br /><br />And, according to the rule, he had to sit. If you want to change the rule, you do that in the offseason, not in a 36-hour window between playoff games. Stern had no play here.<br /><br />Now, to the basketball itself. Game five was a really draining loss on Phoenix. Without Stoudemire to pick up a handful of dunks and layups down the stretch, they didn't have it. Nash got decent looks in the last minute and he missed them.<br /><br />By the way, I just saw that Nash has played the most NBA games without playing in the Finals. It's getting to the point now where, for all the great things he does for his teams, you need to see those kind of results. Dude's got a bad back: how many years does he have left?<br /><br />Earlier in these playoffs, I picked San Antonio to take the whole thing. I liked their depth, I liked that their best player always shows up and is incredibly low-maintenance. Everyone on the team seems just icy and professional down the stretch, except Ginobli, who runs way hot and way cold, and doesn't hurt them enough to lose many games.<br /><br />Now, Phoenix has lost home court, has pretty much burned itself out in Game five, and Nash missed his big shots.<br /><br />I will now, in the interest of some kind of <strong>blogging integrity</strong> (copyright Mike Mullen), change my pick. While my head has been so far in the San Antonio tent to this point, my heart was in Phoenix. I love everything they do. They seem to be enjoying the way they play, and the only other person having fun on the court, in the entire league, is Gilbert Arenas.<br /><br />And don't tell me they don't play defense. Raja Bell, Marion, and Stoudemire all contest shots and board up. And Nash and Barbosa fly around and dive at everything on the ground. And they all take charges and flop, except Stoudemire, who is so strong it would just look silly for him to ever hit the deck.<br /><br />So I'm switching. With Phoenix down and beaten up and needing to win in the Alamodome, I'm going to pick them to do it. My head fought it, but I want them to win so badly, and I like so much what they do, I've won it over.<br /><br />I've got Stoudemire scoring a furious 35 tonight and Nash making a play in the final minute. I've got Ginolbli going cold one night. I've got two close ones. Classics. Maybe even an overtime.<br /><br />I'm taking Phoenix in seven.<br /><br />Good day. Back soon.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-16744859953302907532007-05-09T04:47:00.000-07:002007-07-27T09:56:27.142-07:00Notes, or Steve Nash is bleeding all over the NBA playoffsHello.<br /><br />We'll start with the non-sports, and this is just one more note, this one on youtube. You'll notice I've lately-roped-off the internet and sports as what I'm talking about here. That can and will change, but for now, those are the things that just seem most obvious to me.<br /><br />The following two stories ran one on top of the other in the New York Times:<br /><br />- Youtube is going to start paying ad revenue to some of its most popular independent video producers. If you haven't seen much of youtube, "independent video producers" are people who are young and, probably, at home. In the article it mentions how Metacafe, a similar site, has already been doing this for some time. Some of Metacafe's producers have earned more than $10,000.<br /><br />I get a lot of stuff in my e-mail about working from home, and I don't put much stock in it, but these kids are making decent bank making home movies. And most of them will probably be hired somewhere, and good for them.<br /><br />I don't watch many of these videos. It's not what I go to youtube for, and honestly I don't trust many people to entertain me. So I can't speak much to the quality of these videos, but I know one of the people who stands to make <em>tens of thousands</em> of American dollars goes by the name smosh.<br /><br />- The second story told about two companies, one of them England's premier soccer league, that are suing youtube, claiming that the site "encourages vast copyright infringement to attract attention and bolster traffic." It was the second such suit filed against youtube to date. Expect more to follow.<br /><br />I have a lot of problems here. Youtube isn't "encouraging" much of anything. The site's main page is pretty blank of verbal instructions, and I've never seen anything say, "post your illicit soccer highlights here."<br /><br />Also, "attract attention." To what? Your product? If you're NBC, the NBA, the NRA... any video that draws attention to you or your show or athlete or gun is an unpaid advertisement for you. You should be thanking youtube.<br /><br />Now, if these companies, which I assume have a literate staff, would read the story that ran above their own... if they knew that 20 million people watch youtube every month... smosh wouldn't be the only one making money here.<br /><br />-Now to sports, and you'll notice "sports" tends to mean "basketball" here. Look, I love soccer, I sometimes love basketball, and then I like a lot of different sports. So, if I feel like writing about baseball or football or skiing, I will. But if you want your football fix right now, check the NFL Network.<br /><br />The Draft is probably just finishing up.<br /><br />As for baseball, let me save you the trip around the blogs and websites and ESPN. Here's your baseball news: BARRY BONDS! ROGER CLEMENS! THE YANKEES! JOE TORRE! BONDS! CLEMENS!<br /><br />Really, the news is, Bonds is going to break the home run record and is a dick. Clemens is back for an incredible amount of money and is probably a dick. Joe Torre is a good manager and might not be a dick. Bonds used steroids and is really a dick. Clemens probably did and probably is. Enough. More baseball updates coming in July.<br /><br />But here, we begin of course with the NBA.<br /><br />First, I was wrong on Dallas, and wrong on Dirk.<br /><br />Let me make clear, I don't feel like I was big-time, long-term wrong. Dirk's non-game was startling to anyone who'd seen him play more than 10 times. I've never seen him stay that far out of the rhythym for that long.<br /><br />But let me say this. At halftime, Dirk had four points. He had missed four threes, and been to the free throw line only once. It is during this halftime, that I believe Jerry Stackhouse, Jason Terry, Erick Dampier, or, I don't know, Avery Johnson needed to grab Dirk by that goatee and say, "Can you believe we're still in this game after that dud of a first half? Now, we're going to get you to 25 points, and 10 or 12 of them are coming at the free throw line, where you shoot NINETY PERCENT."<br /><br />Instead, Dirk shot once - once? - in their disaster of a third quarter. Dirk missed one 3-pointer, and by the way, Devan George, Stack, Terry, and Josh Howard missed two <em>each</em> in the third quarter. That's how you score 15 points in one quarter folks. It looked like Dirk didn't want the shots, and his teammates didn't look for him. I'm not sure who's at fault, but there's only one guy in charge of all the guys I just mentioned, and that's Avery Johnson.<br /><br />- A lot of talk is going on about who's <em>not </em>in the NBA playoffs, and that list now reads Kobe, D-Wade, Shaq, T-Mac, Yao, Iverson, 'Melo, and Gilbert Arenas, who by the way would have emerged as a personality-and-talent juggernaut this playoffs save his damn knee. By the way, let's add Kevin Garnett to this list just for posterity.<br /><br />Now to the casual fan, this is problematic, and they might not be interested in some of the incredible high drama of Utah-Golden State and Phoenix-San Antonio, and that's fine.<br /><br />But this is an interesting thing, as a basketball fan. You could argue that the best players in the league, save Nash and Duncan, are all watching the playoffs. I know this makes some of them very angry. Other than Shaq, Iverson and KG, all of the guys I just mentioned are under 30. (Shaq's 35, the other two are 31.) All of them will be seeing each other for a few years now, and I want them all to come back this year meaner and hungrier, and then one of them wins, and the rest get very angry.<br /><br />I'm not sure if anyone can afford to be fat and happy right now. Look what winning one championship did the Heat, or even reaching the finals did to the Mavs. They came back to the playoffs like they were owed something, and they got mercifully bounced.<br /><br />And another point about the lack of stars present in these playoffs. If you're in the West, how many times do you think you'll get a good look at the Finals in the next five or eight years without going through Dallas and/or Houston? Or in the East, to know that D-Wade was already out? For all the teams left to look around and realize there's no Shaq still on the board?<br /><br />Again, I like this. San Antonio and Detroit are still playing, but the other six teams must be thinking, "This is our best chance to win, maybe our, maybe <em>my</em> only chance to ever win." And that kind of energy seems to be running throughout the playoffs, except for Chicago, which looks scared of Detroit.<br /><br />- Quick note on Detroit-Chicago: in the first quarter of Game 1, with Detroit already up a dozen, Detroit threw the ball away when it looked like a Piston player was pulled down or tripped up. As the crowd complained, the ball bounced to a well-dressed fan in the first row, who proceeded to stand up, SPIKE THE BALL and get on the ref. With the Pistons up 15 points, in the first quarter. If that's your swanky front row fan... look, nobody wants to play in Detroit. Nobody.<br /><br />I have a theory that Ron Artest took on the little guy - the wrong guy - in that Detroit crowd because everywhere else he looked there were people saying, "What? You want something?"<br /><br />- Now to Suns-Spurs. Game 2 was the Suns-at-home blowout, which is a built-in feature of this series. Look for the Spurs-at-home blowout coming soon, which will be 105-89 in Game 3 or 4.<br /><br />Much more interesting was Game one. For about 45 minutes, this was perfect, perfect playoff basketball. Then the Nash-Parker face-to-face collision happened.<br /><br />On a quick side note, in my experience, your forehead is tougher than your nose. In fact, I thought the principle of the headbutt was to hit someone's nose with your forehead. So when Nash and Parker hit nose-to-forehead, and Parker goes down for a while, and Nash takes the nose shot and stands there and goes, "Are you okay?", I think we can set odds on which of these guys is tougher.<br /><br />So Steve gets a gash on his nose, which is something I've actually had myself. Mine, under cold running water, took 5-10 minutes to stop bleeding profusely. So when I saw his cut, which was identical to mine, and thought about what his heartrate would be trying to play, I knew it would be impossible to stop the bleeding soon enough.<br /><br />Another side note: my best remedy would have been the glue, which they used, then cold pressure right until the timeout is over, then a last-second towel to wipe excess blood, then two quick bandages. That should have bought a couple minutes of minimum blood flow. As soon as the bandage went on, it started filling up.<br /><br />Instead, we got some of the most dramatic sports moments I've <em>ever</em> seen. I will never forget Nash coming on to hit a three, miss another one, then make a lay-up, each progressively bloodier than the last.<br /><br />I even won't forget Nash dumping water on his face to get blood out of his eye, or running past an uninformed D'Antoni, checking himself in on the fly and trying to keep playing. Just incredible scenes, more theater than sports really, but the end result left a bad taste in my mouth.<br /><br />This incident clearly cost them the game. Barbosa is probably one of the most effective subs in the history of the league, and he should be on the floor for the last three minutes of every quarter. But he's just a kid. He can't be called on to close a game, and it seemed like no one knew that more than Nash.<br /><br />Barbosa, 24, missed a stupid three in the final minute, and shortly afterward fouled Ginobli when he didn't need to. I can't fault him for these things: he's a kid. But neither of them would have happened the way they did with Nash out there.<br /><br />So, instead of saying, "Shouldn't we do this?" or "Why can't we?", I'm going to make a prediction. During this offseason, a new NBA rule will be put in place that allows the officials to confer with team trainers and call an extended official timeout. Call it either an injury timeout, or a recovery timeout.<br /><br />It states that a trainer may indicate to an official, "This player is injured, but we believe he can be back on the floor in 300 seconds." It covers cramps, mild concussions, and bleeding, like Midol.<br /><br />But seriously I think this will happen. It will be heretofore called the "Nash rule." And to anyone who says, "A rule, just for one thing with one player?" My response would be I think Nash is about to win his third MVP, and the rule that kept him off the floor while bleeding is called the what? The - you guessed it - three-time MVP "Magic Johnson Rule." By the way, totally legit rule, and so is this one. I can't believe that anyone would want another game decided this way.<br /><br />- And finally, and I buried this on purpose, I was way, way right on Kirilenko. He's been great. For periods of time in each of the five games since I last wrote, he's been the best player on the floor. And down the stretch, he's not hurting them on offense, and his defense has won them at least two games.<br /><br />By the way, if his rebound numbers look low, it's because of this weird thing he does on defense. When someone has the ball, Kirilenko chases the guy around and then jumps at him when he shoots. It doesn't leave him close to the hoop, but it really pissed off McGrady and then Stephen Jackson and Baron Davis. I think this tactic will revolutionize defense if it ever catches on.<br /><br />But, good for AK, good for me. Thanks for reading and good day.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-39801802370407674542007-05-02T06:25:00.000-07:002007-07-27T09:57:35.033-07:00Notes, or The 2008 NFL Draft is on the clockHello.<br /><br />Seems like "Notes" is all I do lately, and I really ought to get one of my big project entries out soon. I'm sure you're all waiting for a 2,000-word monster, and the sad thing is it's probably coming.<br /><br />For now, just notes.<br /><br />We'll get the non-sports one out of the way first, and this is another iTunes tip. The New York Times does a "Front Page" podcast, which is free to download from the iTunes store. It's a brief (4-5 minutes) description of the stories one would find on the front page of that day's paper. You can set your subscription to automatically update the newest podcast, and could, ideally, use this preview every morning to decide whether or not you want to buy that day's Times. It's a good idea in theory.<br /><br />One thing I like about this is that one late night I was looking through iTunes and found out that it becomes available in the middle of the night, at what time I can only assume the paper has only recently gone to press. Given the sometimes lazy habits of other news outlets (Washington Post, ESPN) in updating their podcasts, this punctuality is a great achievement.<br /><br />Here's what I don't like. The guy doing the description sounds like the NPR weather guy on a couple painkillers and six shots of Nyquil. I fear that sometime I'll listen to this guy, and one or both of us will be rendered indefinitely comatose.<br /><br />My other problem is that what this fellow does is summarize the stories, and in a rather bland, bare-bones way. This might be what some people want, but those people could get the same kind of coverage from nearly every radio or TV station, website, or newspaper. The reason why anyone would buy the NY Times is because they have the best reporters, who get the best details, and most of them are brilliant writers. And none of that comes across here.<br /><br />My boy, Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post, always says his radio show is not about the front page. But when something big happens, or when a certain story in the Post catches him, he simply <em>reads the story</em>, on the air. And it's great. It's great writing, read by someone interested in the story.<br /><br />This is what the Times should be doing. Hire someone, or bring in the authors themselves, and have them read the first three or four graphs of a couple stories, verbatim. Then you do headlines on the other stories, and say, "If you want more, buy today's Times." First of all, the podcast popularity (which is already good) would multiply, and you could sell a very expensive ad. Second, it would give people a reason to go to the Times and not somewhere else: because the words are so, so much better.<br /><br />Now, to sports. Quite a few things to cover here, so I'll try to be as brief and dull as possible.<br /><br />- Instead of doing a big entry on Kevin Garnett, I'll offer two things. One is an inside fact, the other is an opinion, and they come in that order.<br /><br />Fact: A friend of my sister's recently got a job waitressing at an ultra-swanky Minneapolis restaurant. She told me that Garnett and a couple of other players ate there recently.<br /><br />"But actually one of them said he was a rapper," she said, at which point I described Ricky Davis, and she said, "Yeah, that was him."<br /><br />This comes as no surprise. I'm still doing facts here: I saw Garnett settle for more long jumpers early in the shot clock this season than I ever have before. Also true is that on a couple of occasions I saw Ricky Davis call the five players on the floor into a seperate, post-timeout meeting. And it didn't seem to work well.<br /><br />Another true story: when the Wolves went to an overtime once this season, the sideline reporter contributed that in the huddle before OT started, coach Randy Wittman told his players that they were going to "move the ball like never before." While she was giving this report, KG passed to Ricky, who IMMEDIATELY shot. Then Ricky got the ball and went right to the hole, got fouled. Also in the overtime, he shot a short jumper and two threes. The fact that Ricky took these shots, and even the fact that his second three went down for a game-winner, aren't much of a surprise...<br /><br />But for Garnett to miss three shots in the same OT, two of them from 19-plus feet?<br /><br />Now, the opinion: when I watched Garnett a couple years ago playing with Cassell and Sprewell, and I watched a lot... he was, for that year tied with one person (guess who) as the best player I've ever seen. If Cassell's back didn't go out and Sprewell wasn't, I guess, insane, they might have won the championship that year or another.<br /><br />Now, Ricky Davis has been involved in a couple of desperation trades in his day. And I think we can all imagine what Kevin McHale's phone bill might look like over the summer.<br /><br />- Now, to the curious case of Dwyane Wade, a player whose name is spelled incorrectly, but seemed to have everything else going for him until a couple weeks ago.<br /><br />In my last blog I said that Shaq was "fat," and I want to retract that here, but I can't. I saw a picture of Shaq on ESPN.com where the skin folded-up on the back of his neck looks like a couple Bud Light bottles. He was way out of shape.<br /><br />But in last year's championship run, Shaq was never the most important player on the Heat. Wade was the beginnging and the end of that team. And in this season's playoffs, Wade showed flashes of that same dynamic ability. I would think that should go the other way: flashes one year, then you put it all together for a title run.<br /><br />In Wade's defense, he's really, really young. And we shouldn't expect him to repeat that performance.<br /><br />But they got SWEPT out of the playoffs, soundly beaten. They got outscored in the second half of every game against Chicago. They joined Orlando and Washington by getting swept, and Orlando and Washington are playoff teams in the same way North and South Dakota are states: by definition only.<br /><br />I understand Wade sat out a bunch of games with a dislocated shoulder. But it was his non-shooting shoulder. And, it was his <em>shoulder</em>. What was holding him back most were his legs, which looked like they aged ten years, and his head. He couldn't get past something, or, as some say he couldn't get "outside his own head."<br /><br />Full disclosure: in most sports, I myself am a complete headcase. But no one pays me to play.<br /><br />Wade is also going to have an MRI taken on his knee. And let me say this: they have to find something. There must be something wrong with his knee. Either that, or he's not the player I thought he was.<br /><br />I would be much, much easier on Wade if he hadn't taken a shot at Dirk Nowitzki. Dirk made a self-effacing comment about how badly Dallas played last year, and it was true. But Wade turned the screw, and put it all on Dirk's shoulders.<br /><br />And, when I check the papers, it says both players brought back their entire rosters, and only one of them is still playing.<br /><br />As far as Dallas, it seems like Nellie and Golden State know exactly how to play them. And yet, Dallas won a game last night they shouldn't have. Not only did they take it away, but Golden State gave it up willingly.<br /><br />And Dirk hasn't exactly been sterling for this entire series. But let me mention this: in Game 4, Dirk tossed-in 3s with 14 and then three seconds left to at least give Dallas a chance. In Game 5, as we all saw, he again hit back-to-back 3s, then he hit the free throws to tie, take the lead, and then seal the result. Throw in a soul-crushing block against Matt Barnes, and Dirk won that game by himself. And again, he's still playing.<br /><br />And I've still got Dallas winning, obviously in seven games. Also, my San Antonio pick still looks good, so no need to mention that.<br /><br />- Now, to football.<br /><br />The NFL draft was last weekend, and in case you missed it, it's probably still going on. Check the NFL Network for coverage.<br /><br />Honestly, the first round of the draft was six hours long. It's as bloated as, well, as any number of my blog entries.<br /><br />Six hours? This is an OUTRAGE. Every team got 15 minutes to make its pick, and (32 x 15 = 480), they all used ALL FIFTEEN GODDAMN MINUTES. What the hell are these teams doing? Are they taking Calvin Johnson to the parking lot to run one more 40? Do they want to ensure that their pick doesn't get arrested in those 15 minutes? <em></em>Is there any team that looks up at the clock with 10 seconds left and goes, "Oh, Christ, we're on the clock. Quick, just take somebody. Anybody!"<br /><br />Are there any GMs thinking, "I can't decide. Call both of them, see who answers first."<br /><br />Here's how the draft should go. The night before, the No. 1 team submits its pick in writing. This pick is immediately announced. The next team is then given two minutes, during which they will decide whether they want to pick, or want an extended period (10 minutes, say) to option the pick as a trade. Teams that are not intersted in trading are encouraged to hand in a written list of players, ranked in the order of their desire. This guy, if he's not available this guy, etc. Let's get this thing over with.<br /><br />By the way, 15 hours in two days is an incredibly long time for anyone to do TV. I'm amazed when newsmen do all-night election coverage. And on those nights, we're electing the national government. And this is the NFL Draft.<br /><br />I only watched one or two of those hours. Kornheiser was good, but he's obviously holding back. If he ever did what he does on his radio show for ESPN, he would shred for a couple minutes, then be escorted out of the booth and have his contract bought-out.<br /><br />Steve Young was good on the main stage, and provided the sole highlight of the day. When Brady Quinn was sitting forever from picks 9-21, they eventually started talking about character, and what this might be doing to him personally.<br /><br />At this point, Mel Kiper - who could do the entire draft by himself, without blinking - chimes in, "If the Green Bay Packers didn't draft Aaron Rogers a couple of years ago, Brady Quinn would be headed to Green Bay to back-up Brett Favre."<br /><br />Then Berman kicks it to the studio, but it takes a while to cut away. And we see Steve Young turn to Kiper and say, "Where did <em>that </em>come from?" Funny stuff.<br /><br />Kiper has kids, and let's say he has a boy and a girl. I think if you asked him how his kids are, he would say, "They're good kids. The boy, he's tall, he's strong, big hands, he's gonna' be a good son for 10 or 15 years. Now, my daughter, she's a bit riskier. She's got five pounds to lose, she has no upper-body strength - there are a lot of issues there. I don't see anyone taking her anytime soon."<br /><br />That's my time for today. You've been great.<br /><br />If you do get or have iTunes, subscribe to This American Life. Otherwise, just go to the website (thisamericanlife.com) and listen to "Habeas Schmabeus." When it's done, realize that these people have been doing this, a top of the line, one-hour audio documentary, every week for 12 years. And if you can listen to streaming audio (and you can), they're all free on the website. (By the way, this was Charles Barkley last night: "I been thinkin' about gettin' a computer. I really am.")<br /><br />I love it when critics or other people try to pinpoint why the show is so good, and why the intro by host Ira Glass is so good. These people are wasting their time coining phrases, or comparing formats.<br /><br />It's just the reporting. And for the intro, it's the writing. That's it, that's all that matters.<br /><br />I suppose at this point we've come full circle, which seems like a good way to end.<br /><br />Good day then. I'll be back soon with something real.<br /><br />Thanks.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992622128299506846.post-32618430246822395512007-04-26T10:50:00.000-07:002007-07-27T10:05:46.291-07:00Notes or Jerry Sloan benches himselfHello, and happy Thursday.<br /><br />Just a few notes today: Jason Kidd is <a href="#jk">good</a>, Dwyane Wade is <a href="#dwbad">bad</a>, Phoenix <a href="#phxla">lights up the Lakers</a>, and the compelling tale of <a href="#ak">Andrei Kirilenko</a>. <br /><br />- In ego news, my hit counter (which is found at the bottom of this page) tells me that 104 seperate people have visited this blog (totalling 264 hits) since I started telling people about it one month ago. As I've requested, the people I told seem to have told other people, and others have found me through search engines.<br /><br />My hit counter also tells me that four people came here by total search engine mistake. And two of those idiots were looking for "Larry Birkhead." I'm just swelling with pride.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the counter reading is fake. Several times I've come on late at night, sometimes just an hour or two after midnight, to find out that someone has <em>already </em>visited my site that day, which... I just don't think so. Maybe, but no.<br /><br />But, even without the four mistakes, I'm in triple digits. And even if they're mostly fake, at least nine or ten of them had to be real people. I'm not sure where this was going, but thanks, and I'll spare you any more of this crap until I'm at 1,000 visitors.<br /><br />So, onto a few notes on the NBA playoffs.<br /><br /><a name="jk">-</a> Jason Kidd was really, really great in the first game of the New Jersey-Toronto series, which is meaningless unless you frequent thesmokinggun.com or this blog. Yechh. Makes me want to take a shower.<br /><br /><a name="dwbad">-</a> Staying in the East, Dwyane Wade, who is playing while still recovering from a dislocated shoulder, is playing a bit like Michael Jordan did -- when he was 40. If you watched the Heat lose games 1 and 2 in Chicago, you realized just how much of Wade's game last season was predicated on beating one player, taking one step in the lane, jumping as high and far as he could, and making it up from there. That fearlessness is noticeably absent right now.<br /><br />When I saw Shaq in person in March, he looked fat. Right now he's playing fat. He won't play himself into shape in the next 15 games, so he's going to have to realize he's fat and play smart. On a side note, if you could've picked one player to blow up like an Earth Day Balloon (actual size) this year, it should've been Antoine Walker. But he actually looked quite sleak when I saw him, and that may mean a lot to them, because James Posey doesn't play basketball very well.<br /><br />Now, for Wade fans, the dangerous thing is this: he seemed to play it passive for about 44 minutes in game 1. Then it was like he looked up at the scoreboard and thought, "Oh, God, we could still win this." At which point he pretty much did what he wanted: jumper, jumper, running jumper and a foul, incredble drive-and-almost-lose-it-and-dish to Udonis Haslem for a layup. Throw in a couple J-Williams 3-pointers, and Miami scored 13 points in three minutes and one second.<br /><br />If you're keeping track, that's 16 points the entire third quarter (12 minutes), and then when they feel like it, 13 in three minutes.<br /><br />The entire Heat team, Wade included, seems to have taken Shaq's "We can turn it on whenever" philosophy, which, if you have the young Shaq, seemed to work okay. If you have the old Shaq? It makes for a delicate situation.<br /><br />And in Game 1, that house of cards fell through when Wade missed an ill-advised three that would have tied it with 11 seconds left. And by the way, taking, and missing that three was totally something that would have happened to Michael Jordan.<br /><br />When he was 40.<br /><br />Then the Heat got run out of the gym in Game 2, and it seemed clear that the entire second half they were thinking about a plane trip back to Miami. You could almost hear Gary Payton and Walker arguing over who would deal the first poker hand.<br /><br />Until Wade is Wade again, they need to show up for, oh, how about 30 out of 48 minutes. And, assuming Luol Deng stops doing his Jerry "Yeah, that's me in the logo" West impression, I still see these Heat getting to the East finals.<br /><br /><a name="phxla">-</a> We switch now to the West, where I offer a brief thought on the Phoenix-LA series. I should say first that I love Phoenix, I have tried to play like Steve Nash before there was a Steve Nash, and my absent "MVP column," which would have been awful, would have eventually named Steve-O because he seems to make his teammates not just satisifed but actually <em>happy</em>.<br /><br />When Kobe, Michael and Isaiah got their teams to play championship ball, they did so out of pure fear. Their role players were playing with someone so fierce, who wanted so badly to win, that if they were the jackass who stood in the way, it was not going to end well for them. It was not only possible, but likely, that if they screwed around they would be at least threatened, if not swung upon. (It's rumored that MJ hit two different teammates, including Steve Kerr, which, if you read my previous entry, would be, like, the 10th most interesting thing going on in Steve Kerr's bio.) Anyway, these dynasties ran on fear.<br /><br />But Nash, like Wade last year, and Magic and Larry some time ago, seems to inspire his team through pure joy. Barbosa, Stoudemire, Raja Bell, Boris Diaw, even Marion -- who just strikes me as an odd fellow -- they all seem to have dropped the requisite tough guy attitude and are not ashamed about how much fun they're having. I'm not sure if it translates to a championship, maybe not yet... but it could, and I think they should be embraced for it.<br /><br />That being said, what the Suns don't do, what they choose not to do, is play a lot of defense.<br /><br />120, 114, 116, 121, 124, 116, 122. Those numbers are points, points that Phoenix gave up this season without going to overtime, in games against Atlanta, Seattle, Chicago, Minnesota, Golden State, and Memphis.<br /><br />If I tried to reach players on some of those teams for comment (and I didn't), it would have been tough, because most of those guys can be found <em>golfing </em>for the next couple months.<br /><br />And LA shows up with 98 and 87? You mean LA can't hang with them for a few quarters, then try and win a close one? Not only does Phoenix not seem disheartened when someone scores, they hardly seem to notice. And Kobe -- who would have gone down <em>hard</em> in that MVP entry, and may still -- can't listen to Phil Jackson and figure out how to get more than 87 points on this Phoenix "Look but don't touch" defense?<br /><br />I'm about to waste a line here that should have come in its own entry, but there is no <em>physical</em> difference between MJ and Kobe, save MJ's extra inch of explosiveness and Kobe's extra inch of arm length, which obviously cancel out.<br /><br />But the difference seems to be that, from about 26-35, Jordan got better and more efficient and smarter every year. And Kobe Bryant, 28, seems for the moment to be on that same curve, only he's moving in the opposite direction.<br /><br /><a name="ak">-</a> And now, to Houston-Utah. Here's how you explain Andrei Kirilenko.<br /><br />Blocked shots became an official stat in 1970, and until 2003, only 10 times in 33 years had a player finished a game with 5 or more points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks. (Also called a 5 x 5.) And of those 10, Hakeem Olajuwan had six. (By the way, six?)<br /><br />And then, in 2003, at the age of 22, Andrei Kirilenko put up two 5 x 5s... IN - ONE - WEEK.<br /><br />Kirilenko, who also notched a 5 x 5 last year seemed to be emerging as the best-on-the ball defender, and a rebounder-hustler type, and maybe about to join Duncan as a great player who could happily help his team win while scoring less than 10 points.<br /><br />But right now Kirilenko is adrift. He played only 30 minutes per game this season, down from 40 last year. In Game 1 against Houston, that number shrank to 16. A few days ago, he teared-up a bit when the media was pressing him on his lack of playing time.<br /><br />Charles Barkley then said this was inexcusable, that you can cry after you lose a big game. But this has never made sense to me. I lost plenty of games as a basketball player, and some of them I really cared about. Some of them cost me $20. But I never cried afterwards, because I never felt like there was something more I should have done, or that I had let my teammates down with my effort.<br /><br />But to be a once-in-a-lifetime talent, just entering the prime of your career, finally playing with a skilled group, and have your coach decide the team is <em>better without you</em>?<br /><br />I think that would have a lot of players asking major questions of themselves.<br /><br />Now, let's examine the coach here. Jerry Sloan played 11 years, 10 of them with the then-expansion Chicago Bulls. He was a hard-nosed guard who never averaged 19 points a game. And when you're playing 35 minutes a game, and averaging only 10 points a game, as he once did... and let me mention that, to average 10 points a game for a whole season, that means sometimes you score 25 points, and some games you score two...<br /><br />(Aside: sometimes I put things in italics, which would be me putting extra emphasis on them, like I would when talking. And sometimes I capitalize words, which should signify shouting, which is something I sometimes do, and which I fear I might do in the near future.)<br /><br />... when you're not dishing out more than 3.5 assists per game in any of your 11 seasons... we can assume you are a greased cog in the machine, a hustler-defender-rebounder, a guy out there to do things that other guys can't or just won't do... the kind of guy whose competitive fire might have made him feel great personal indignity if a coach cut off his young career...<br /><br />WELL SHIT, JERRY, DOES KIRILENKO REMIND YOU OF ANYONE?<br /><br />Play him, Sloan. Play him 40 minutes a game. You played him 18 and then 16 minutes, and you lost twice. You don't even have to tell the public, or the team, that you were wrong, though we all know.<br /><br />But you need to tell Andrei, who seems to have a sense of self and a fragile ego at this time, that you made a mistake. And then you need to play him. Or else you will lose in four or five games, you will set Andrei back five years, and reporters who know and like you will begin to wonder whether you're the best thing for Utah anymore.<br /><br />Even your Mormon fans know that a jazz band needs a bass player.<br /><br />Well, I've gone on too long, and I apologize, but other notes of consequence will have to wait. Sorry.<br /><br />By the way, as for the teams I didn't mention, the Spurs' fourth, fifth, and sixth best players are Mike Finley, Brent Barry, and Robert Horry. They have the best top six in the NBA, bar none. They even got the quintessential "scare game," an ugly gaffe in Game 1 against Denver, and they looked like cold-blooded professionals in game 2. Until further notice, they're the team to beat.<br /><br />I'll see you soon. Thanks.verbalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11242392021034648056noreply@blogger.com0