Entries Tagged 'Sports' ↓
April 6th, 2008 — Politics, Sports
There’s been a lot in the news lately about the growing tension surrounding China, Tibet, and the upcoming Olympic Games. I find a lot of, I dunno, personal unrest, and lack of answers for “what’s right” in this situation.
First off, reference this article.
[Hein] Verbruggen [the IOC coordinator for the 2008 Olympics] reiterated the IOC’s position that athletes must respect the Olympic charter and that the games were “not a place for political gestures”.
That’s funny, you forgot to tell that to history. Berlin in 1936 was all about promoting the Nazi view. Moscow in 1980 was over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. LA in 1984 was mostly seen as a retaliation for 1980. And definitely not outdone by 1968 in Mexico City — while done by individuals and not nations, still a very politically powerful move.
Anything international is political, especially something as competitive and “friendly” as sport. National pride is on the line; we’re better than you. ”Right” and “wrong” is one the line; our politics/policies are the way things should be. Good v. Evil at the water polo venue in 45 minutes; stupid Commies are going down!
That brings us to today, and my reason for posting this. The Olympic torch is making it’s 85,000 mile trek, and today was in London, where it received a very “exciting” welcome. Some protester tried to take it, and another tried to put it out with a fire extinguisher!
My tension comes where the politics meet the field/mat/pool/court.
On one hand, the struggle in Tibet is very, very real. The oft-reported human rights abuses in China are very real. China’s (thankfully currently restrained) military might is very real.
On the other, these are (mostly) amateur athletes, competing at the highest levels, for their respective countries. Most of them make enough money to survive, but not enough to live comfortably. Especially when it comes to basketball, professional teammates shift gears and compete against each other.
And there’s the rub. Once you pull on that uniform, once you are wearing something that says USA, Canada, Jamaica, Venezuela, Australia, China, etc. you are not just an athlete competing for yourself. You are an athlete with thousands and millions of people behind you, and you represent them.
I just don’t know how to react. The IOC is in fact not a political organization. The Olympic Games, however, have a history of being politicized in both healthy and unhealthy ways. This upcoming Olympic Games is being politicized, for what I perceive as healthy reasons. I just am struggling to find internal peace with a “just and reasonable” way to express the political views. I guess I just have to wait until history happens to see how well international leadership handles this politically non-political situation.
February 21st, 2008 — Baseball, General
I done got tagged to do a book meme. This is a meme that I can get on board with.
The rules of the meme are:
- Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
- Find page 123
- Find the first 5 sentences
- Post the next 3 sentences
- Tag 5 people
As for the nearest book, my bookshelf at work is directly behind me, so all of the books were equidistant from me. Therefore, I chose a non-technical book, Management by Baseball: The Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field. It’s an entertaining read, with some enjoyable baseball stories used to describe his management philosophy. On with the reading.
This excerpt is talking about Mickey Mantle’s 565-foot home run in April of 1953.
First, there was the stadium-dimension factor, compounded by estimating the distance from the fence to the adjacent street, compounded by (the Yankee publicist) [Red] Patterson’s use of pacing as a measuring technique, compounded be the 10-year-old’s memory of where the ball was (no where it landed, but where it stopped rolling). And while sometimes a lot of little inaccuracies can cancel one another out, remember it was a publicist doing the measuring — a person who had every incentive to maximize the number to inflate the importance of the story. Bad tools, weak quality control, biased agent: a fatal combo in baseball or in your organization.
On with the tagging.
October 28th, 2007 — Baseball, Family, Red Sox
Coincidence or not, you decide.
September 12, 2004 - Judah born. October 27, 2004 - Red Sox beat St. Louis to win the 2004 World Series.
June 11, 2007 - Abel born. October 28, 2007 - Red Sox beat Colorado to win the 2007 World Series.
July 1st, 2007 — Basketball, Blazers, Family
NPR has a segment called “This I Believe.” I gave Judah my rough impression of NPR as I got dressed on Friday:
“I’m wearing a red shirt today. Do you know why? [silence] Because we can believe in basketball again.”
If you don’t know what I was referring to, perhaps you should read this and this.
August 21st, 2006 — Sports
A buddy of mine from high school and college, and another buddy from college, have been on the team that has won the Hood to Coast each of the last 3 years. This year they are under a new name, Team XO All-Stars, but they are looking to repeat as champions. One of the runners has been keeping a blog over at OregonLive.com. Check it out.
[tags]Hood to Coast, Team XO[/tags]
May 1st, 2006 — Red Sox
I think I just heard Tim Wakefield give the biggest sigh of relief ever.
[tags]Boston Red Sox, Tim Wakefield, Doug Mirabelli[/tags]
April 6th, 2006 — Baseball
The Major League Baseball season has started, and once again I’m sucked into the daily ritual of checking scores and highlights in the newspaper and online. My wife found a new website that is sure to make my search for MLB news easier. Ballbug is like Google News, but specifically for baseball news.
Ballbug spotlights the most buzzed-about baseball news from thousands of web sites. It auto-generates a summary page every 5 minutes, drawing on local news sites, national sports media, and baseball bloggers of various stripes.
It probably will become one of my homepages.
[tags]Ballbug, MLB[/tags]
February 19th, 2006 — Baseball, Red Sox
If you want to know what will be on my mind over the next eight months, this will help you out. Let the games begin!
[tags]baseball, spring training, Red Sox[/tags]
December 8th, 2005 — Baseball, Red Sox
It’s been a while since I’ve had a quality baseball post, so you get one today. This week a sad announcement came out of Boston that John Olerud is retiring after 16 years in the bigs.
John is retiring with an amazing career batting average of .295, and an even more amazing career fielding percentage of .995! He has two World Series rings, both earned in Toronto when the Blue Jays won back-to-back titles in 1992-93. To go along with that John won the AL Gold Glove three times: in 2000, 2002, and 2003.
Being in the Northwest I had the benefit of watching John play from 2000-2004 with the Mariners. He was one of those players that seemed happy to come to the ballpark every day. He was never boastful. He let his bat and glove do his talking. And that swing! I put his swing in the same category as Ted Williams and Will Clark. For me to put anyone in any category with The Kid (Ted, if you don’t know) is a BIG thing. I was happy that the Red Sox picked him up this last year, but was disappointed with the way that Tito handled the platoon at first. But hey, there’s next year. Only next year will be without Olerud.
November 21st, 2005 — Baseball
This had me laughing. Great stuff.