Category: sports
I have never desired Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine (Hania does a lovely job with hers), but I do like listening to the NPR news quiz show "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!" The questions tend to be fairly easy, but the panelists are usually funny and irreverent.
Usually. This past Saturday, the celebrity guest was Pete Carroll, the new coach of the Seattle Seahawks and the former coach of the University of Southern California Trojans. USC was recently penalized by the NCAA for a number of violations, mostly in its football program. Carroll is believed by many to have taken the job in Seattle so he could avoid the mess at USC. He has claimed that he knew nothing about the violations.
The always affable Peter Sagal refrained from bringing up this matter during his interview with Carroll - perhaps forgetting that he is the host of a "news quiz show." It is also a humor show. And none of the normally astute panelists noted that the coach now under suspicion for turning a blind eye was on the segment of the show called "Not My Job."
I'm a little disappointed at the lack of enthusiasm with which South Florida has greeted the news of LeBron James' decision to play for the Heat.
Sure, the evening of the announcement it was news, but if you stayed tuned for sports you still heard the Marlins score. The Marlins! Today is the second straight day that LeBron's name does not appear on the front page of the Herald. Yesterday, the cover was devoted to a soccer team!! From Spain!!!!
People, we're not talking about just anybody here; we're talking about a BASKETBALL PLAYER! A man who can put a ball into a basket - from many different locations!! If close enough to the basket, he can actually stuff it in!! Not only that, with his long arms he can keep other people from putting it in!
I hope this helps South Floridians grasp the magnitude of this moment. We should cover the Bank of America building with his image. We should give him Vizcaya as his new home. We should pay proper homage to the king with a little renaming: The LeBron Expressway. LeBron International Airport. LeBronglades National Park. Or, at least nearby, a little fruit stand called "LeBron is Here."
The Old Heidelberg oozed gemutlich yesterday afternoon, with blue and white paper garlands hammocking the ceilings and a German flag tucked around the base of the wide-screen TV.
John had not only reserved me a seat, he had deposited a plate of wurst and sauerkraut at my place. The long tables filled with people drinking beer reminded me of Oktoberfest.
By the second half, the German team looked spent, having trouble getting the ball past midfield. Forget about an attacking strategy, they seemed to have lost their wanderlust.
The manager's little boy began rolling his toy cars across the floor in front of the TV, as if he were at kindergarten. Then Spain scored, and I imagined Maradona, sitting at home in Buenos Aires and experiencing a feeling of schadenfreude.
Of all the sports I watch, tennis is the only one I still play. In fact, after the first set of the "gentleman's" final at Wimbledon on Sunday I grabbed my racket and headed off to Holiday Park.
I felt like my neighbors, who always go see a movie the night of the Oscars. But I knew who was going to win, and I knew it wasn't going to be pretty.
A few years ago you also knew who was going to win - Roger Federer - but it was a joy to behold. Compared to gracefully gliding Federer, creating impossible angles and spins, the other players look like workers, pummeling the ball shot after shot. Granted, Nadal takes this laborious approach to a new level, becoming, in effect, a miracle worker, but a worker nonetheless. He may surpass Federer in grand slam titles (though I doubt it, considering the toll on his body his take-no-prisoners style of tennis exacts), but he will never surpass him in beauty and grace. It's hard to imagine anyone will.
I've always liked Andy Roddick. Not his tennis - that herky-jerky power game - but his dealings with the media, which are generally free of cliches and often quite funny.
But Monday, during his press conference after his loss to Yen-Hsun Lu, his usually refreshing bluntness turned caustic. When a reporter asked about his serve, he fired back in a harsh, scolding tone that the problem had been his return of serve. He lashed out at another who asked him to speculate on how he might feel when he woke up the next morning. Like a bitter, frustrated schoolmaster, he looked out over the assembled writers and mocked them for not being able to come up with anything better than that.
Of course he was transferring his criticism of his own performance onto theirs. But it was still absurd, a man who hits a fuzzy ball for a living abusing people who work with their brains. An athlete can create beauty, but because it's physical, it's evanescent; a writer's aesthetic triumphs live forever. I hope the tennis writers told themselves that as they filed, chastised, out of the press room.
Thursday morning found me at a bar in the Charlotte airport watching the epic John Isner and Kevin Bacon - I mean Nicolas Mahut - match. A man pulled up a chair next to me and ordered a beer. He looked more like a NASCAR than a Wimbledon guy, but a TV screen, no matter what's on it, is a powerful thing; his gaze lifted toward it. The score at the time was 62-62 in the fifth set. "I'd say those two," the man observed quietly, "are pretty evenly matched."