Boston Vs. New York, again.

NOTABLE BOSTON SPORTS FANS:
Adolph Hitler (red was chosen for Nazi armbands in tribute to Ted Williams)
Osama Bin Laden (9/11 attacks provoked by 1991 autograph snub by Larry Bird, fuck you Larry Bird)
Dane Cook (likes Boston teams because they're trendy)
Rev. Jim Jones (had a tryout with the Bruins)
Dick Cheney (admires Bill Belichick's tactics, sportsmanship)
Pol Pot (favorite article of clothing: Bobby Orr jersey)
Idi Amin (huge BC fan, apparently - who knew?)
Joseph Stalin (again with the color red - coincidence?)
Heinrich Himmler (nicknamed penis "The Green Monster")

NOTABLE NEW YORK SPORTS FANS:
Pope John Paul II (cried when Rangers won Stanley Cup in 94)
Mother Teresa (secret crush on ex-Yankee outfielder Mel Hall in 80s)
Dalai Lama (loves Knicks despite Isaiah Thomas, prays for firing daily)
Princess Diana (Prince Harry conceived after Game 6 of 86 World Series)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Elston Howard was a close confidante)
John Lennon (season ticket holder, NY Cosmos soccer)
Mahatma Gandhi (family friend of the Mara family)
Jonas Salk (schoolmate of Lou Gehrig's at Columbia)

Choose a side, America.

A quick thought for Kevin Everett...

I've been a Buffalo Bills fan for pretty much my entire life (it's a byproduct of having spent several summers of my life within a quick drive of the Bills' old Fredonia, NY training grounds).

I'm not going to lament the team's last second loss to the Broncos on Sunday. However, I will break from my tradition (thus far) of using no pictures on this site.

This is Kevin Everett. He's a tight end for the Bills. On Sunday, he got hurt quite badly in a head-to-head hit on a special teams play.

The prognosis is bleak; doctors expect that Everett will be paralyzed, and fear that Everett might suffer from complications that involve his various involuntary processes.

Keep Everett in your thoughts; from all accounts, he was a hard-working football player who had already overcome a major injury in his career. The newswires are filled with reports about how kind and generous this guy was.

Football is a dangerous game, and yes, these are risks that players undertake whenever they strap on the pads. But, let's be real here: Everett is 25 years old. Nobody deserves this at 55, much less 25. He's just a kid. Keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

Meandering Thoughts: ESPN Brings Forth The Apocalypse

I was home sick from work today, which gave me the opportunity to watch some daytime television. In between trips to the bathroom, my television basically stayed glued to ESPN. It used to be that ESPN could be counted on provide some great sick-day programming; if it wasn't something decent like "SportsCenter" (which - despite its many misses and the fact that the show itself has become a series of commercials and sponsorships that has drained it of every single iota of journalistic credibility - can still be counted on for some mostly solid programming), it would be something awesome like "NFL Films Presents," which could leave you breathless after watching 1986 Buccaneers highlights for a half-hour.

However, what I beheld on ESPN - between the hours of 2:30 and 3:00 pm - was so very atrocious, so horrendous, so horrifying that I actually peeked out my living room window a couple of times to make sure that four horsemen were not stampeding down my street and that the apocalypse was not actually nigh. And while I'm still not actually sure this wasn't the case, I can say with some surety of what was actually occurring on my television.

The name of the show is "First and Ten," and the ESPN website describes it thusly: "With ESPN First Take's Jay Crawford and Dana Jacobson refereeing the always heated discussion, Skip Bayless and daily guests debate the top ten sports stories of the day from number ten to number one. In the show's first three segments, Skip and panel sound-off on each of the ten topics in a point-counterpoint debate. The final segment is "Extra Point" - the final word from all three on any sports issue they pick."

The show that I saw barely resembled that description. Yes, Dana Jacobsen and Skip Bayless were present. (Jay Crawford was apparently on vacation; the nondescript female talking head who assumed his place was possibly the least distinguished person to have graced the small screen at all. I couldn't tell you her name, or for that matter, anything else about her aside from her gender.) There was no "panel." Rather than having "daily guests," they had talking head/"sportswriter" Stephen A. Smith appearing. To call this show one of "discussion" and "debate" is like calling John Wayne Gacy "quirky." There was no discussion. There was no debate. There was a lot of screaming and posturing.

Why was this show atrocious? Let's look at the blustery talking heads at its Satanic core: Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless.

First, Stephen A. Smith. In the history of mankind, there has never been so much credit and credence given to someone who has so little credibility. Smith has been a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1994 - according to the paper's website, he has covered "Philadelphia 76ers, Temple University basketball and football, and college sports" and is now a columnist-at-large (which he began doing in 2003). Smith's lone other credit? Working for ESPN as a talking head, Smith has moved from commenting on basketball to a slew of other duties, including co-hosting SportsCenter and NBA Basketball coverage. ESPN even gave Smith his own television show, "Quite Frankly With Stephen A. Smith," a talk show which gave a retroactive intelligence to "Thicke Of The Night" and "The Pat Sajak Show." ESPN banks on Smith as a personality - but there seems to be no rhyme or reason for this; Smith comes off on television as a belligerent, blustery ignoramus who makes up for content and reason by generally maintaining a vocal volume that seems better suited to amplifiers at a punk-rock show.

Then there's Skip Bayless. I do not know how ESPN executives looked at this person, and said, "hey, there's a guy we'd love to see representing us on a regular basis." He does not look good on television - facially, he resembles something akin to a wrinkly, harsh-faced Satan, if Satan were forced to suck on lemons on a regular basis. He makes very terrible points that make it seem less like he's a journalist considering a variety of topics and more like someone saddled with a case of utter incoherence matched with Oppositional Defiance Disorder. He comes off not just as grumpy, but as an unlikeable person who would have no qualms about saying something like "Hitler had the right ideas but didn't go far enough."

Putting these two together is a terrible, terrible idea. Their personalities are grating enough, but the true difficulty with watching these two is the fact that they do not actually debate. They barely engage each other (hardly surprising, given their narcissistic tendencies). For a half-hour, they speak in absolutes. Which is a terrible, terrible thing when you consider that they are paid to talk about things that (1) haven't occurred yet, and (2) really require opinions and discussion. Neither entertains the possibility that the future sporting events that they're debating (today, it was the forthcoming NFL season and the New York Yankees) might deviate from the course set forth by their opinions.

The two of them went on and on about nothing. Smith "repeated" the "rumor" again and again that A-Rod is actually called "She-Rod" (as a Yankees fan who's heard just about everything, I have to say that I've never heard this one - it is more than plausible that Smith made this one up), and then went absolutely ballistic when Bayless called Terrell Owens "Team Obliterator." They literally only engaged each other about their made-up nicknames for athletes. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, these two are paid journalists! (Paid by multiple organizations, no less. Oy vey.)

Smith and Bayless are hardly the only individuals on television that do this; they're following a path forged by news channels like Fox and CNN, where journalists ranging from the quasi-likeable (I'm sure some name will come to me soon) to the blustery, Vader-esque (Robert Novak, Bill O'Reilly, everybody eles) insert their opinions into every single news story, obliterating the very concept of journalistic independence for the sake of ratings. However, Smith and Bayless have elevated meaningless, bad-for-our-society bluster to a new high in this - they suck the remaining drops of joy from sports, instead of contributing to our enjoyment of them. For that - although, surely, not that in and of itself - they should both be drawn, quartered, tarred, feathered, shivved, and shot.

And do it quick. Every time they "debate," those horsemen draw closer.

300: To Victory

Quite a weekend for baseball, no?

For those of you who live under a rock, baseball – the American sport which most relies on its past for its current sense of status – experienced quite a historic weekend. Within the span of two days, San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds hit his 755th home run (which tied Hank Aaron for the most career round-trippers), New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez hit his 500th home run (setting the record for the youngest in baseball history to such a milestone), and New York Mets pitcher Tom Glavine won his 300th game.

I’m going to set aside the home run-based achievements for the time being, and focus on Glavine winning number 300. Glavine’s win against the Cubs last night marked the 23rd time in baseball history a pitcher has reached this milestone, and only the 5th time in the history of the game that a left-handed starter has made it to 300. It’s a tremendous achievement, one that should absolutely be applauded – after all, it’s a triumph based in both longevity, team strength, and personal dominance. Glavine’s been a healthy, front-line starter who produces time and time again, and for that alone, he warrants every breath of praise that he’ll receive.

Yet, I turned off the television last night with a bad taste in my mouth. Why? If I could trace my feeling of disgust to one thing, it would be the constant speculation, by both the broadcasting team responsible for the game as well as the analysts on SportsCenter, that Glavine was “the last 300 game winner.” I found this speculation terribly irresponsible, and I think it unnecessarily overshadowed what should have been a moment of unadulterated triumph for Glavine.

I understand that the current statistics point to no pitchers achieving this milestone any time soon. The next closest to 300 wins is Arizona Diamondbacks starter Randy Johnson, who may be perpetually mired at 283 wins due to chronic back injuries. More than half of the current starters with 200 wins are forty-plus years old and, as such, unlikely to make it through another 100 starts, let alone 100 wins.

However, and especially in the sport of baseball, saying the words “never again” is an act of myopic foolishness. And those were the words that were thrown about over and over again by ESPN analysts Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. (I’m not surprised about Morgan’s arrogance about this – I could go on and on about his commentary, which tends to veer into the land of insane rambling on a regular basis.)

300 wins might seem undoable right now, but you know what? The first pitcher to reach this milestone did so in 1888. This means that the achievement has only been done 23 times in 119 years – and we’ve seen 3 pitchers get there over the last 4 years (Roger Clemens, now of the Yankees, and Greg Maddux, now of the Padres, are the other two). Here’s another fun stat – did you know that there were no 300 game winners between the years of 1963 (Early Wynn) and 1982 (Gaylord Perry)? That’s a span of 19 years that bridged the Kennedy and Reagan administrations! At the end of the 1963 season, Gaylord Perry had precisely 4 career wins.
Look, perhaps Tom Glavine’s win is the end of an era of achievement for starting pitching. Yes, relief pitching is a more dominant force than it was, say, ten years ago, and pitching has become a more specialized art form. However, unless they’re eliminating the statistic of the win altogether, nobody should ever be counted out. Just as records are made to be broken, milestones are made to be met.

King Barry

Someday, probably soon, San Francisco Giants left fielder Barry Bonds will hit his 756th career home run. This is not an implausible thought at all; he has, after all, already hit 754 of these, and barring a catastrophic injury involving (but not limited to) something on the level of the severing of his carotid artery, he will hit 2 more home runs.

There’s a lot of controversy about this, for some reason. A lot of this commotion is based on the speculation that Barry Bonds knowingly used illegal, steroid-based performance-enhancing substances. Did he definitively use these? He has admitted to unwittingly using a cream-based steroid, noting that he thought it was flaxseed oil. Aside from that, though, he’s admitted to nothing else. Circumstantial evidence – clubhouse rumors, speculation from authors ranging from the journalistically-credibly Jeff Perlman to the morally-shaky Jose Canseco, and the kind of visual evidence available to everybody (comparing pictures of a rookie-era Bonds to a current-day photo) – abounds.

I will say this: Barry Bonds probably used steroids.

You know what? That’s okay.

Well, it’s probably not okay on the grand scale of things. The long-term drawbacks of steroid use are only now becoming known, and the odds are high that their use will provide definitive ramifications for users, including the shrinking of testicles and potentially higher risk for cancer. Also, the use of steroids is a crime; Bonds testified that he’d never unwittingly used them, and if this proves him to be a liar, then he’s probably due for a stretch in prison.

However, between the foul lines, I don’t think that Barry Bonds was necessarily wrong. From all accounts, baseball, for the better part of the last two decades, has created an environment in which players were all but encouraged to use performance enhancers. (This was probably true in all major professional sports – we’re probably fifty years or two generations removed from culpability before we’ll see how widespread it was.) Baseball did not provide punishment for players using the steroids, and celebrated the achievements of players widely speculated to have been using such substances. The era of permissibility created a grey area of epic proportions; it was in this grey area that players like Bonds flourished.

As baseball fans, we have to come to terms with the steroid era. This is not a choice. We have to. This is not as easy as it sounds. It means taking your favorite players – for me, it’s any Yankee from the championship run between 1996 and 2000 – and coming to grips with the fact that they might have played dirty. Sure, a player like Curt Schilling might come out and say that he didn’t use steroids; however, unless we can see a lifetime of negative tests, then that player can not escape suspicion. It’s a sad but ultimately necessary designation that must accompany every single player from that era.

Ultimately, it’s no different from assuming that every major leaguer who lived as an adult through prohibition made it to a speakeasy, or that every major leaguer who could possibly partake of the amphetamines widely available in every clubhouse did. In those situations, the culture made it permissible. Would players have played the game better if they hadn’t been partaking of illegal alcohol, or would they have played the game worse if they hadn’t been hopped up on greenies? Possibly, and possibly. The answer, just like it is for steroids, is that we’ll never know.

Baseball should be all about celebrating the achievements that occur on the field. While we can never assume a lily-pure culture, we can look at what we do know: the numbers. Barry Bonds will hit his 756th home run, and it will be something special – because nobody in the colorful, storied, muddy history of Major League Baseball has ever done that before.

Now, will I (personally) cheer Barry Bonds? Probably not. If I’ve learned anything about Bonds from years of following his exploits from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, it’s that Bonds is a selfish, churly individual with the likeability quotient of a boot full of dog poo. There are definitely better people out there who could set the home run record. But that’s my opinion. If you feel differently and decide that you should cheer him, then, by all means, cheer him.

He’s been the best of his time, and with that in mind, he’s earned it. Records are made to be broken. The king is dead. Long live the king.

Granted, I think the king has no clothes, but again, that's my opinion.

Doesn't mean he's not the king.

ESPN, The Cult of Personality, and "Who's Now"

In the late 1990s, the brilliant playwright/screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who had been previously known for crafting the script for the play "A Few Good Men," began his career in television (which would lead to the magnificent "The West Wing" and the flawed but intriguing "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip") by creating a sitcom that centered around the ups and downs of the cast and crew of a flagship sports highlight on a 24-hour sports network. The sitcom took its name from the sportscast central to the show: "Sports Night." (If you've never seen it, seek it out on DVD.)

By the time this sitcom aired, the show and network from which it drew inspiration - "SportsCenter" on ESPN - had already been airing for nineteen years. During this time, though, ESPN was experiencing an unprecedented boom-time. Between the years of 1990 and 2002, the network secured exclusive deals with all four major American professional sports (baseball, football, basketball, and, yes, hockey). As these deals fell into place, ESPN gained viewership at an unprecedented rate.

Ultimately, the growth (and resultant success) of ESPN during this 12-year period was contingent on the sports which the network was covering. The network attempted to build on this success this by, in 1994, launching the "This Is SportsCenter" series of commercials, which presented the anchors and reporters of the flagship program as more than just news presenters, but stars in their own right.

For better or worse, ESPN anchors became "names" - people like Chris Berman, Dan Patrick, Craig Kilborn, Stuart Scott, and Keith Olbermann were given exposure on a level that had been heretofore reserved for athletes. In fact, the plots of the commercials featured the athletes and anchors interacting as peers. It was truly the beginning of a "cult of personality" era for ESPN - a time where the people participating in and announcing the sports were treated with more and more reverence than the sports themselves.

Additionally, ESPN has gone above simply covering sports events - they have actually created sports events and assigned them a significance on a par with established sports. Most prominent of these was the 1995 creation of the X-Games, a sports festival of "extreme" sports like motocross, skateboarding, and BMX bicycling. This was joined with the 1997 introduction of the Winter X-Games, which featured snowboarding and snowmobiling. Additionally, ESPN has been instrumental in the coverage of fringe sports like women's professional basketball and arena football - these are sports which, in my opinion, have been covered on SportsCenter primarily because of ESPN's stake in broadcasting them - and as such, have been assigned an "importance" which they hadn't really earned prior to their broadcasting contracts with the network.

As time has gone on, ESPN has continued their emphasis on personality over action. Sports anchors have been given the free reign to let their personalities seize the emphasis in their presentation of the highlights. Commentators have been given extra screen-time, in packaged, sponsored features like "The Budweiser Hot Seat." The highlights - the sports themselves - have taken a backseat.

This summer, in lieu of presenting an actual sports highlight show, SportsCenter has featured a "contest" called "Who's Now." Presented by the ubiquitous, cyclopsian Stuart Scott, it has been a a chance to pit 32 athletes from all sports against each other in a tournament. The point of "Who's Now" -at least as they have stated it on ESPN - is to determine a pecking order based on on-field performance and off-field clout.

The 32 athletes selected by ESPN for this tournament, however, indicate the probability that something else is going on - among the athletes chosen for "now" status are individuals from fringe sports like women's softball (Amanda Beard), ultimate fighting (Chuck Liddell), surfing (Kelly Slater), and snowboarding (Shaun White).

Why would these athletes be chosen for this type of tournament? Does anybody at ESPN seriously believe that snowboarding and surfing are on a par with tennis and golf, let alone the four major sports? My head tells me "no." So, why are they there?

Ultimately, my suspicion is that "Who's Now," a journalistically-shaky competition on all levels, is essentially a focus group. A focus group for what? Well, let's look at it this way: ESPN has obviously been major dabblers in the cult of personality for quite some time. The X-Games, which have been considered the centerpiece of the extreme sports culture for sometime, are an ESPN property. In placing extreme athletes up for consideration with individual athletes in major individual sports (tennis stars Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and Maria Sharapova and golfer Tiger Woods) and star athletes in team sports (footballer Tom Brady, baseball star Derek Jeter, and basketball's LeBron James), they can gauge how they're doing. The X-Games are theirs, and the stars that are central to these events are the stars that ESPN have created and showcased.

With that in mind, it's hard not to think of "Who's Now" as a state of affairs check-up for ESPN - it's a way to see how what they do in the business of creating stars matches up with what they do in the world of broadcasting the highlights of established stars. It's a logical step for a network that refers to itself as "The Worldwide Leader" - to use its resources to see how successful and influential they truly are.

It makes me yearn for the days of the late-1990s, when it was easy to think of ESPN as being a hands-off network, the type that would inspire characters on "Sports Night" like Dan Rydell (Josh Charles) and Casey McCall (Peter Krause) - the type of characters that gave you the hope that your sports-news personalities were ethics-and-responsibility driven, instead of working (as folks as questionable as Stuart Scott and respected as Michael Wilbon seem to be) for the benefit of the advertisers and the almighty buck.

In the great Living Colour song "Cult of Personality," lead singer Corey Glover sings "You gave me fortune/you gave me fame." Which seems to fit the world of ESPN. He then takes it up a notch: "You gave me power...I exploit you, you still love me."

Is that too harsh? Possibly. Does it fit the way ESPN does business? Boo-ya.

Correction: My friend Scott Jennings has pointed out, correctly so, that Amanda Beard is a swimmer (and not a softball player, as I asserted). I stand corrected. That being said, she remains absolutely irrelevant to most Americans, aside from her appearance in "Playboy" magazine. Spank bank material? Probably. A "now" athlete on a par with, say, the leadoff hitter for the New York Mets? No.