Turning on the All-Star Game last night at 8, and not seeing the first pitch until 8:39, I wondered if we are becoming like England: an old, doddering, prideful former power that now puts its best efforts into pageantry.
After the first set of the first women's semi-final at Wimbledon, Cliff Drysdale sent us back to the studio for a video ode to the Williams sisters narrated by Dick Enberg.
This might have made sense - might - if Venus and Serena had been playing in the match that we were watching. But they weren't (they were both knocked out in the fourth round). The match was between Petra Kvitova and Victoria Azarenka.
The Williams tribute, showing their triumphs on grass in both singles and doubles, went on for some time. I switched channels to see if perhaps NBC had picked up the match. It hadn't. Yet I knew that play had resumed; this was a break between sets, not halftime at a Super Bowl.
We eventually rejoined the match, in the second game of the second set. No explanation was given for the interruption. My guess is that the video was made before the Williams sisters bowed out of the tournament and, rather than waste it, the folks at ESPN decided to show it anyway. But why they didn't wait until after the match is beyond me.
I'm taking the day off, but I can be found here: http://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/4551
Met my friend Mari at 6:45 pm yesterday at Gate H of Sun Life Stadium.
"Driving here I realized I only had credit cards," Mari said. "So I asked the parking attendant if I could drive in to an ATM and then come back. She said 'Happy Birthday' and let me in for free."
We walked to the ticket window.
"We'd like to see the game," Mari told the young man.
"Inside?" he asked. Then he told us that Founders' Club seats were hard to come by tonight because of a special $7.90 offer if you presented a bumper sticker. He said there was a man in van around the corner who was handing out the stickers.
Like people hoping to score drugs, we went looking for the man in his van. And he was there, parked by a tree. He slipped us two bumper stickers - advertising sports talk radio station 7.90 - which we carried back to the ticket window.
We were given two tickets for bull pen seats. They were in the last row of section 140, behind a young man and his snowbird father from Philadelphia. The father took off his cap to show us the Northeast High School logo on the front.
After the first inning, we went to get something to eat. I told Mari that my favorite item - the Reuben wrap - was discontinued a few years ago. We passed a grill lined with sweating arepas. "I take a bite of an arepa and I think it's the most delicious thing in the world," I said. "Then by the third bite I want to throw it away."
Mari got in line at a sausage and cheesesteak stand, while I went for beers. "Do you have Sam Adams?" I asked.
"No, but there's IPA down in Section 101."
I went back to get Mari and, with our sandwiches, we walked to the beer counter, on the way passing more arepas.
"Do you want me to see," asked Mari, "if I can get you just one bite?"
The beers cost almost as much as our tickets. Hands full, we walked through the tunnel, past the attendant, and into section 101. Row 15 had a cluster of empty seats. Except for the four young men a few rows in front of us - a combination cheerleading squad and synchronized dance troupe - most of the people around us were Phillies fans.
The jumbo tron showed an interview with a Marlins Mermaid. Her pet peeves were liars and people with body odor, and her goal was to get into journalism, an odd career choice for someone who doesn't like liars and people with BO.
When Omar Infante came to the plate, the man on the other side of Mari yelled something in Spanish. I caught the word for "ball," followed by "Infante."
"Hit the ball Infante," Mari helpfully interpreted.
He didn't.
But the Phillies, starting in the 7th inning, did. Chants of "Let's go Phil-lies" rose up around us. I asked Mari if she'd been to a Wallcast of the New World Symphony.
"It's wonderful," I said. "You sit outside, under the stars, and people bring picnics. And nobody stands up and chants: 'Let's go Cleveland Orchestra! Let's go Cleveland Orchestra!'"
Yesterday was the funeral for Fred Turner, long-time sports editor of the Sun-Sentinel. I didn’t attend – didn’t want to run into the man who laid me off – but I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Fred.
I never really hung out with him, but I spent a fair amount of time in his department. You can tell a lot about a man from the people he hires. For a good few years, a kind of comedy central existed just outside Fred’s office, and I would wander over whenever there was a lull. Inevitably, Brian White would deliver an exquisitely deadpan quip. (If it was a Friday in the fall, he would tap into motion his Woody Hayes bobblehead.) Across the aisle, Steve Svekis would launch into a spot-on impersonation of some pompous athlete (or politician). In the cubicle in front of Brian’s, Bonnie DiPacio, nearly in tears, would tell an outrageous story about some clueless – and impeccably indignant – caller.
It is a sad truth of journalism that newsrooms are always funnier than newspapers. (At least they were up until a few years ago.) But the Sports section of the Sun-Sentinel managed to retain a lot of the personality of its staff – a group that ranged from the benevolent Robes Patton (a lifeshort Mormon) to the suave Dave Hyde. One of my freelancers, who lived in Miami Beach, said that whenever she’d go to the store to buy the Sunday Sun-Sentinel (which was usually when she had a story in Travel) it would be sold out by the time she got there. “People buy it for the Sports section,” the cashier always explained to her.
I’m sure I told Fred that, not that he needed the news; his section regularly raked in awards. So of course I was honored when I became a temporary member of his staff, during the week of Super Bowl XXIX. Fred had me write feature stories, one of which was about a “nude” cruise. It was a somewhat stupefying assignment. Toward the end of the evening I got up the nerve to talk to a few of the young ladies – you couldn’t really call them strippers, since they didn’t have any clothing to begin with – but I only got the name of one of them: Tiffany. Writing the story, so as not to quote anonymous sources, I gave all of the women the name Tiffany. Fred thought this was hilarious, and published the story exactly as I wrote it. And for years afterwards, whenever he’d pass me in the hall, he would ask with a grin, “Hey Tom, how’s Tiffany?”
Instead of blogging, I'm writing about tennis this week. Here's my first dispatch from the Sony Ericsson in Key Biscayne: http://www.tennisgrandstand.com/archives/9227