It's about time!

The Dodgers decided that there putting the names back onto players jerseys. Apparently Frank McCourt really does have a brain! Finally I will once again be able to reciongize the players on the field...Which reminds me, how many are we trading away/giving away this offseason. Hopefully Juan Pierre won't suffer the Dodger's curse, but either way, the Dodgers will have something consistent. If he plays every game, he'll be the first Dodger in god knows how long to do so. If not, the Dodger curse will prove o so consistent.

Ahh, What

Eric Sondhiemer of the LA Times recently wrote a feature story on the Oaks Christian offensive line. The story, which in itself was a waste of space, said that the Oaks Christian line had only allowed the SuperJimmyClassuen to be sacked twice all year. It says, and I qoute, "That's unheardof at any level". It's also an acomplishment for Mr. Sondhiemer's imagination.

The article says that the only two players to have brought down Classuen are Aaron Garcia and Mark Lewis. That is not correct.

On September 28, the Venice High School Gondoliers took the field against the Oaks Christian Lions. On National TV. Viewers of the game saw Kris Woods and Chris Johnson take Classuen down on their own, for a collective loss of 14 yards. According to Sondhiemer (who says he got his stat from an ocstat guy) these two sacks never happened.

Hmm. Y'know thats funny, because I was there and I'm pretty sure they did happen. So is maxpreps.com.

So yes, it is unheardof at any level, and it isn't true at anylevel, to the best of my knowledge.

The Worst World Series (And Thats Saying Something)

Baseball is supposed to be a beautiful game. It is supposed to flow, to have that magnificently tense feel, despite the lack of nonstop action which rivals golf. It is the simplest game, yet the most complex.
The individuality of the pitchers wind-up, the blur of white that is a 90-mph fastball, the swing of the wooden bat, the crack of the ball on the sweet spot… Nothing quite like it; nothing at all.
Normally, the champions of the two leagues that make up the Major League, the National and American, play in the World Series. They’ve done it every year since 1903, with the exceptions of 1904, because it was not an established tradition and 1994 because of a players’ strike.
The World Series is supposed to be one of the most holy spectacles in all professional sports. The previous series lived up to that expectation. This year’s series did not. The biggest difference between this year, and the other 100 series, was that this year, nobody really won.
Yes, Cards fans, I can hear you yelling from here. I know, the St. Louis Cardinals did win the World Series in five games, but they really didn’t win, per se. They just played good-enough baseball and watched the Tigers choke on glory.
The Tigers played so terribly, St. Louis could have easily let their AA affiliates (the middle level of three minor league teams) the Springfield Cardinals play, and they probably still would have won.
Don’t get me wrong, I give credit where credit is due. The Cardinals did play well enough in the 162-game regular season to make the playoffs, and they easily defeated the Padres and Mets in the National League Playoffs, but when it came to the World Series all they did was avoid choking.
Or maybe the Tigers didn’t choke…Maybe they just froze in the terrible, cold and rainy weather Detroit offered. Whatever it was, the Tigers didn’t just play poorly, they played like amateurs (no offense, amateurs). Before I present evidence of how terribly the Tigers played, small and easily impressionable children may want to stop reading. In addition, those with heart conditions are advised to skip the next few paragraphs. There’s nothing dirty, but it is really sad.
The Tigers committed eight fielding errors in five games. That allowed eight unearned runs, the most allowed by a team in the World Series in 50 years. That’s not just bad—that is unexplainably awful.
The Tigers couldn’t get on base if their lives depended on it. As a team, they had a .199 batting average in the World Series—and they weren’t exactly stepping into the batters’ box against hall of fame pitchers. Instead, the Cardinals sent a bunch of young pitchers up to the mound, and still got the best of the Tigers.
Not even Placido Polanco, the Tigers slugger, who was batting.471 in the first two rounds of the playoffs; was able to hit a barn door with a banjo in the fall classic. The Tigers “slugger” hit a depressing 0-17, .000 against the young relatively inexperienced pitching staff of the Cards.
Polanco wasn’t alone in the category of key players letting their team down. Kenny Rodgers, Detroit’s pitching ace, also put his mark on the series. Rodgers embarrassed himself and his team—for that matter the sport, by winning a game. He pitched eight scoreless innings in game two, and at the same time disgraced the series. He embarrassed the series because of the “dirt smudge” found on his right hand.
Depending on who you ask, it wasn’t dirt at all. Allegedly, the substance was pine tar, a substance sometimes used legally by batters, and illegally by pitchers, to enhance grip.
Regardless of what it was, and I have my doubts about the “dirt defense.” The smudge of whatever-it-was also joined on the beating up of this series.
I won’t even talk about the terrible baserunning display the Tigers put on, except to say that it looked more like the “before” picture of a baseball fundamentals DVD than it did a Major League Baseball team.
But what can you do? Thankfully, we only have to wait until April before the new season. Hopefully the local Little League coach can teach the Tigers how to play by then.

Published for the November 22 issue of The Oarsman

Come On!

Pali walks off the field with 5:35 left in the fourth quarter! What the heck!? Pack of crazy fools!
Anywho, why in the name of all things football would you forfeit when it is a homecoming game?

To think Moody still had 4 TDs and 100+ yards! Wow.

Next week we got Banning, again. How many will Moody run in against the Piolts in round two? I can't wait

Sheesh, Not Again!

Yes, Again. Another horse has died.

Another broken leg has turned into an unearned death sentance for an innocent animal. Look; I know I sould very unmanly by saying this but horses are beautiful animals, and they need to be respected. Forget that, horses are beautiful athletes and that needs to be respected!

If spirinters suddenly started breaking their legs left and right, they way horses do, there's no way there'd be any money in the sport. Still, we throw our money, again and again at horse racing, cause we wanna see horseys go fast!!!!!

It's really time for a change. All tracks with NTRA races should be polytrack, effective NOW!

Once again, I qoute Bob Dylan, "how many deaths/will it take till we know/that too many [horses] have died?"

Posted in memory of Pine Island

State Championship? Ha!

You have got to be kidding me!

California finally gets around to developing a State Championship for High School Football, but it is really nothing more than a very bad joke.

There will be three state champions, because there are 3 divisions, actually six, 3 north and 3 south. That much I have no problem with. But the fact that the divisions are represented by a single team selected only by some arbitary ranking, means that there will never be a cinderella story team. It also means that while Backcountry high, who may very well have a worse team than SuperCathloic High, will never even get to dream. Instead, they'll watch 8-2 SuperCathloic, who had a "stronger schedule" win state while they finished 10-0. California needs a state playoff system. Even if this has SuperCathloic High eventually blowing out BackCountry High, it does allow for a dream.

Even if this High School age bastardization of the BCS develops a lasting regime, it needs to be reworked. If I'm gonna see computer championships, I want to see Concord De La Salle and Oaks Chiristian, the holders of the two longest active win streaks in the state, play for the state title, but no no no. There different different divisions.

Enough Allready!

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Enough Allready!
I thought I’d seen it all when I saw hockey player Marty McSorley slash an opponent on the neck with his stick. I hadn’t. I thought I’d seen enough when I saw basketball’s Jermaine O'Neal go into the stands and attack a fan. I hadn’t. I thought I’d seen it all when I saw Phoenix Suns baller, Raja Bell, slam Kobe Bryant to the ground by the neck. I hadn’t. Now, in the name of sports, I hope and plead that I’ve seen enough after watching the 5-minute brawl between players on the University of Miami and Florida International football teams.As a hockey fan, I’ve seen some pretty creative attacks, but never in my life had I even imagined seeing a football player attack another player with his helmet. That is, until my innocent vision of sports was blurred when I watched the disgusting brawl on Sportscenter on Oct 14 . The vicious riot in Miami escalated from a minor scuffle, a harmless scrap that adds flavor to the soup of the game, to an uncontrollable melee, which was like adding ten tons of garlic to an 8 oz. cup of soup.The fight resulted in 31 players being suspended. Before I discuss how ineffective a simple suspension is, I’d like to point out that at any given time, there are only 22 players on the field. All players involved were eventually suspended for the remainder of the season, and one player was suspended indefinitely—and he was only suspended indefinitely because he was using his helmet like a medieval armament. He should not be suspended indefinitely, he should be arrested and in a state penitentiary indefinitely.It gets worse. Initially, the players involved in the fight, which required police intervention to be stopped, were initially suspended for only one game. Thank goodness the Atlantic Coast Conference came to its senses and changed the laughable one-game suspensions to slightly less laughable suspensions for the rest of the season, meaning that both teams will be without most of their starters. Given the intensity of the brawl, suspending players for the rest of the season really isn’t enough. I’d venture, far enough to say that program sanctions--a year off from competitive play next season--are necessary.The real losers in all of this are the students of Florida International University. A month ago, if somebody said they went to Florida International, a standard response might have been, “Florida What?” Now, if somebody said they went to Florida International, the more standard response would be a timid “Oh”. At least Miami is a big name university famous for things other than the disgraced football fight.Those who lost even more are the players from Florida International not involved in the debacle. For anybody to tell their grandkids that they played college football, it makes a great bedtime story. When the benchwarmers not involved in the madness tell their grandkids about their days playing college ball at Florida International, it’ll be a pg-13 if not R-rated horror story.

Originally Published For October Issue of The Oarsman

Whats Wrong With Polytrack?!

Barbaro was the kind of horse who was no less an athlete and deserved no less respect than Pele, Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, or any human athlete. He was supposed to be a shoo-in for the Triple Crown, the three most prestigious races in horse racing, and it is one of the most prestigious awards in all of sports. Barbaro won the first of these three races, the Kentucky Derby by one of the largest margins in race history. He entered the second race, The Preakness, with even money odds. It looked as if the most recent Triple Crown winner Secretariat would have to make room for a new hero-horse.
Shockingly and sadly, Barbaro shattered his right hind leg in the beginning of the Preakness, instantly ending his career, and seriously jeopardizing his life.
The only positive note than can come out of that, is that Barbaro will probably survive, a victory far greater than winning the Triple Crown.
After watching its poster-horse instantly end his career, it would seem obvious that track owners should convert more tracks to Polytrack, a synthetic "fake" dirt that is safer for the horses. However, track owners and National Thoroughbred Racing Association officials continue to widely reject the use of Polytrack, because they fear that because it is a faster surface, age old records would be shattered, and the new records would be insignificant.
To think that this could save the lives of many horses in the future, yet that horse racing purists have looked the other way, raises serious questions about the ethics of a sport that is already underfire.
While Polytrack would not eliminate racing injuries, it would bring the number of injuries down a great deal. At one particular California racetrack, after eight months of racing on Polytrack, only three horses had to be euthanized because of racing injuries, compared to eight horses in a single month at that same track before Polytrack was installed.
If the "safer" alternative still kills three horses, animal rights groups have enough of a case against horse racing, yet the purists aloofly push away the complaints, balking that the use of Polytrack would jeopardize the integrity of the existing records. This implies the big shots at the NTRA care more about the safety of arbitrary records than they do about the safety of the horses. They don't want past records broken, so they keep the horses from breaking them by making the sport unsafe.
Personally, I feel disgusted with myself that I have respected horse racing as a sport this long.
The day Barbaro injured his leg was a tragic day for racing and should not be the basis of jokes or headline-puns. And if I seem to be ranting from my soapbox, then forgive me for caring about living things.
After weighing all the circumstances, I still for the life of me can't figure out why track owners are against Polytrack.
Equally shocking, is how so many members of the community have rallied behind the injured Barbaro, yet nobody is willing to acknowledge that horse racing is an extremely dangerous and unethical sport.
Also disturbing, is how a horse breaking its leg is only front page news because Barbaro was the Paris Hilton of the racing world. It is not a rare occurrence for horses to have to be put down. In addition, if it is reported in the media, which it often isn't, it is relegated to the bottom corner of the inside of the back page.
My heart goes out to Barbaro's wonderful vet staff. You are as much heroes as emergency room doctors. My hat is off to you Barbaro; I wish you a speedy effective recovery.
It really makes one think, if I may steel a line from Bob Dylan, how many deaths, will it take till we know, that too many horses have died?

Note: This was written for the June 2006 Issue of The Oarsman.